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Category: Magical Thinking

January 7, 2015

The Extortionate Costs of Funerary Rites in Ancient Babylonia

” … It seems remarkable that the doctrine of Eternal Bliss, which obtained in Egypt on the one hand and in India on the other, should never have been developed among the Babylonians. Of course, our knowledge in this connection is derived from the orthodox religious texts.

Perhaps the great thinkers, whose influence can be traced in the tendencies towards monotheism which became marked at various periods, believed in a Heaven for the just and good. If they did, their teachings must have been suppressed by the mercenary priests.

It was extremely profitable for these priests to perpetuate the belief that the spirits of the dead were consigned to a gloomy Hades, where the degree of suffering which they endured depended on the manner in which their bodies were disposed of upon earth.

An orthodox funeral ceremony was costly at all times. This is made evident by the inscriptions which record the social reforms of Urukagina, the ill-fated patesi of Lagash. When he came to the throne he cut down the burial fees by more than a half.

“In the case of an ordinary burial,” writes Mr. King, “when a corpse was laid in a grave, it had been the custom for the presiding priest to demand as a fee for himself seven urns of wine or strong drink, four hundred and twenty loaves of bread, one hundred and twenty measures of corn, a garment, a kid, a bed, and a seat.”

The reformer reduced the perquisites to “three urns of wine, eighty loaves of bread, a bed, and a kid, while the fee of his (the priest’s) assistant was cut down from sixty to thirty measures of corn.”

Donald A. Mackenzie, Myths of Babylonia and Assyria, 1915.

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December 25, 2014

Rituals of Human Sacrifice and Moloch

” … Without being unduly rash we may surmise that the tribute of seven youths and seven maidens whom the Athenians were bound to send to Minos every eight years had some connexion with the renewal of the king’s power for another octennial cycle.

Traditions varied as to the fate which awaited the lads and damsels on their arrival in Crete; but the common view appears to have been that they were shut up in the labyrinth, there to be devoured by the Minotaur, or at least to be imprisoned for life.

Perhaps they were sacrificed by being roasted alive in a bronze image of a bull, or of a bull-headed man, in order to renew the strength of the king and of the sun, whom he personated. This at all events is suggested by the legend of Talos, a bronze man who clutched people to his breast and leaped with them into the fire, so that they were roasted alive. He is said to have been given by Zeus to Europa, or by Hephaestus to Minos, to guard the island of Crete, which he patrolled thrice daily. According to one account he was a bull, according to another he was the sun.

Probably he was identical with the Minotaur, and stripped of his mythical features was nothing but a bronze image of the sun represented as a man with a bull’s head. In order to renew the solar fires, human victims may have been sacrificed to the idol by being roasted in its hollow body or placed on its sloping hands and allowed to roll into a pit of fire. It was in the latter fashion that the Carthaginians sacrificed their offspring to Moloch.

The children were laid on the hands of a calf-headed image of bronze, from which they slid into a fiery oven, while the people danced to the music of flutes and timbrels to drown the shrieks of the burning victims. The resemblance which the Cretan traditions bear to the Carthaginian practice suggests that the worship associated with the names of Minos and the Minotaur may have been powerfully influenced by that of a Semitic Baal.

In the tradition of Phalaris, tyrant of Agrigentum, and his brazen bull we may have an echo of similar rites in Sicily, where the Carthaginian power struck deep roots.”

James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 1922, The Killing of the Divine King, np.

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November 17, 2014

Miracles

“And as for thee, Joseph, the son of Jacob, shall be a symbol of thee. For his brethren sold him into the land of Egypt from Syria, the country of Laba (Laban), and on his going down into the land of Egypt there arose a famine in Syria and in all the world. And through his going down he called his kinsfolk and delivered them from famine and gave them a habitation in the land of Egypt, the name whereof is Geshen (Goshen). For he himself was King under Pharaoh, King of Egypt.

“Similarly the Saviour Who shall come from thy seed shall set thee free by His coming, and shall bring thee out of Sheol, where until the Saviour cometh thou shalt suffer pain, together with thy fathers; and He will bring thee forth. For from thy seed shall come forth a Saviour Who shall deliver thee, thee and those who were before thee, and those who shall [come] after thee, from Adam to His coming in the kin of your kin, and He shall make thee to go forth from Sheol as Joseph brought out his kinsfolk from the famine, that is to say the first Sheol in the land of famine, so also shall the Saviour bring out of Sheol you who are His kinsfolk. And as afterwards the Egyptians made [the kinsmen of Joseph] slaves, so also have the devils made you slaves through the error of idols.

“And as Moses brought his kinsmen out of the servitude [of Egypt], so shall the Saviour bring you out of the servitude of Sheol. And as Moses wrought ten miracles and punishments (or, plagues) before Pharaoh the King, so the Saviour Who shall come from thy seed shall work ten miracles for life before thy people. And as Moses, after he had wrought the miracles, smote the sea and made the people to pass over as it were on dry land, so the Saviour Who shall come shall overthrow the walls of Sheol and bring thee out. And as Moses drowned Pharaoh with the Egyptians in the Sea of Eritrea, so also shall the Saviour drown Satan and his devils in Sheol; for the sea is to be interpreted by Sheol, and Pharaoh by Satan, and his hosts of Egyptians by devils.

“And as Moses fed them [with] manna in the desert without toil, so shall the Saviour feed you with the food of the Garden (i.e. Paradise) for ever, after He hath brought you out from Sheol. And as Moses made them to dwell in the desert for forty years, without their apparel becoming worn out, or the soles of their feet becoming torn, so the Saviour shall make you to dwell without toil after the Resurrection.

And as Joshua brought them into the Land of Promise, so shall the Saviour bring you into the Garden of Delight. And as Joshua slew the seven Kings of Canaan, so shall the Saviour slay the seven heads of ‘Iblis. [i..e. Satan, the Devil] And as Joshua destroyed the people of Canaan, so shall the Saviour destroy sinners and shut them up in the fortress of Sheol. And as thou hast built the house of God, so shall churches be built upon the tops of the mountains.”

E.A. Wallis Budge, The Kebra Nagast, [1922], p. 110-1, at sacred-texts.com

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November 9, 2014

On Mummification

MAGICAL CEREMONIES.
“IN the preceding pages we have seen how the Egyptians employed magical stones or amulets, and magical words, and magical pictures, and magical names, in the performance of deeds both good and evil; it remains to consider these magical ceremonies in which the skill of the magician-priest was exerted to its fullest extent, and with the highest objects, that is to say, to preserve the human body in a mummified condition, and to perform the symbolic acts which would restore its natural functions.

When we think of the sublime character of the life which the souls of the blessed dead were believed to lead in heaven with the gods, it is hard to understand why the Egyptians took such pains to preserve the physical body from decay.

No Egyptian who believed his Scriptures ever expected that his corruptible body would ascend into heaven and live with the gods, for they declare in no uncertain manner that it remains upon the earth whilst the soul dwells in heaven.

But that the preservation of the body was in some way or for some reason absolutely necessary is certain, for the art of mummification flourished for several thousands of years, and unless there was some good reason, besides the observance of conservative custom and traditional use, why it should do so, king and priest, gentle and simple, and rich and poor, would never have burdened their relatives and heirs with the expense of costly funeral ceremonies, and with the performance of rites which were of no avail.

At first sight, too, it seems strange to find the Egyptians studying carefully how best to provide the dead with a regular supply of sepulchral offerings, for when we come to think about it we notice that in arranging for the well-being of the dead nothing whatever was left to chance.

For example, a papyrus will contain several prayers and pictures with appropriate formulæ, the object of each of which is to give the deceased meat and drink; any one of these would have been enough for the purpose, but it was thought best in such an important matter to make assurance doubly sure, and if there was the least doubt about the efficacy of one Chapter one or more of the same class were added.

Similarly, the tendency of the natural body after death being to decay, the greatest care was taken in mummifying its various members, lest perchance any one of them should be neglected accidentally, and should, either by the omission of the words of power that ought to have been said over it, or through the lax performance of some ceremony, decay and perish.

The Egyptian declared that he was immortal, and believed that he would enjoy eternal life in a spiritual body; yet he attempted by the performance of magical ceremonies and the recital of words of power to make his corruptible body to endure for ever.”

E.A. Wallis Budge, Egyptian Magic, London, 1901. P. 182-4.

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November 2, 2014

Rameses III, King of Egypt: Account of a Conspiracy

“The next instance worth mentioning of the use of magical figures we obtain from the official account of a conspiracy against Rameses III., king of Egypt about B.C. 1200.

It seems that a number of high officials, the Overseer of the Treasury included, and certain scribes, conspired together against this king apparently with the view of dethroning him. They took into their counsels a number of the ladies attached to the court (some think they belonged to the harîm), and the chief abode of these ladies became the headquarters of the conspirators.

One official was charged with “carrying abroad their words to their mothers and sisters who were there to stir up men and to incite malefactors to do wrong to their lord”; another was charged with aiding and abetting the conspiracy by making himself one with the ringleaders; another was charged with being cognizant of the whole matter, and with concealing his knowledge of it; another with “giving ear to the conversation held by the men conspiring with the women of the Per-khent, and not bringing it forward against them,” and so on.

The conspiracy soon extended from Egypt to Ethiopia, and a military official of high rank in that country was drawn into it by his sister, who urged him to “Incite the men to commit crime, and do thou thyself come to do wrong to thy lord”; now the sister of this official was in the Per-khent, and so she was able to give her brother the latest information of the progress of the disaffection.

Not content with endeavouring to dethrone the king by an uprising of both soldiers and civilians, Hui, a certain high official, who was the overseer of the [royal] cattle, bethought him of applying magic to help their evil designs, and with this object in view he went to some one who had access to the king’s library, and he obtained from him a book containing formulæ of a magical nature, and directions for working magic.

By means of this book he obtained “divine power,” and he became able to cast spells upon folk. Having gained possession of the book he next looked out for some place where he could carry on his magical work without interruption, and at length found one.

Here he set to work to make figures of men in wax, and amulets inscribed with words of magical power which would provoke love, and these he succeeded in introducing into the royal palace by means of the official Athirmâ; and it seems as if those who took them into the palace and those who received them were under the magical influence of Hui.

It is probable that the love philtres were intended for the use of the ladies who were involved in the conspiracy, but as to the object of the wax figures there is no doubt, for they were intended to work harm to the king.

Meanwhile Hui studied his magical work with great diligence, and he succeeded in finding efficacious means for carrying out all the “horrible things and all the wickednesses which his heart could imagine”; these means he employed in all seriousness, and at length committed great crimes which were the horror of every god and goddess, and the punishment of such crimes was death.

In another place Hui is accused of writing books or formulæ of magical words, the effect of which would be to drive men out of their senses, and to strike terror into them; and of making gods of wax and figures of men of the same substance, which should cause the human beings whom they represented to become paralysed and helpless.

But their efforts were in vain, the conspiracy was discovered, and the whole matter was carefully investigated by two small courts of enquiry, the members of which consisted, for the most part, of the king’s personal friends; the king’s orders to them were that “those who are guilty shall die by their own hands, and tell me nothing whatever about it.”

The first court, which consisted of six members, sat to investigate the offences of the husbands and relatives of the royal ladies, and those of the ladies themselves, but before their business was done three of them were arrested because it was found that the ladies had gained great influence over them, that they and the ladies had feasted together, and that they had ceased to be, in consequence, impartial judges.

They were removed from their trusted positions before the king, and having been examined and their guilt clearly brought home to them, their ears and noses were cut off as a punishment and warning to others not to form friendships with the enemies of the king.

The second court, which consisted of five members, investigated the cases of those who were charged with having “stirred up men and incited malefactors to do wrong to their lord,” and having found them guilty they sentenced six of them to death, one by one, in the following terms:—

“Pentaura, who is also called by another name. He was brought up on account of the offence which he had committed in connexion with his mother Thi when she formed a conspiracy with the women of the Per-khent, and because he had intent to do evil unto his lord.

He was brought before the court of judges that he might receive sentence, and they found him guilty, and dismissed him to his own death, where he suffered death by his own hand.”

The wretched man Hui, who made wax figures and spells with the intent to inflict pain and suffering and death upon the king, was also compelled to commit suicide. (See Devéria, Le Papyrus Judiciaire de Turin in Journal Asiatique, 1865; and Chabas, Le Papyrus Magique Harris, p. 169 ff).

The above story of the famous conspiracy against Rameses III. is most useful as proving that books of magic existed in the Royal Library, and that they were not mere treatises on magical practices, but definite works with detailed instructions to the reader how to perform the ceremonies which were necessary to make the formulæ or words of power efficacious.”

E.A. Wallis Budge, Egyptian Magic, London, 1901. Pp. 73-7.

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July 23, 2014

On Fear, Anxiety, Angst, and Mythology

“Fear is to be met and managed by the hero on his path to manhood, and an encounter with fear plays a major part in initiation ceremonies.”

[…]

Simply, there are two faces to panic: lived out in relation to a stimulus and called fear; held in with no known stimulus and called anxiety. Fear has an object; anxiety has none. There can be panicky fear, a stampede, say; there can be panicky anxiety in a dream. In either condition, death can result. Psychoanalytic and psychosomatic case reports, as well as dream research and anthropological studies (for instance, on Voodoo death) provide instances of the fatal consequences of anxiety.

The anxiety dream can be distinguished from the nightmare in the classical sense. The classical nightmare is a dreadful visitation by a demon who forcibly oppresses the dreamer into paralysis, cuts off his breath, and release comes through movement. The anxiety dream is less precise, in that there is no demon, no dyspnea, but there is the same inhibition of movement. (A collection of these dreams is given by M. Weidhorn, “The Anxiety Dream in Literature from Homer to Milton,” Studies in Philology 64, pp. 65-82, Univ. of NC., 1967). A literary prototype of the anxiety dream, emphasizing an inhibited peculiarity of movement, occurs in the Iliad xxii, 199-201 (Achilles in pursuit of Hector):

“As in a dream a man is not able to follow one
who runs from him, nor can the runner escape,
nor the other pursue him, so he could not run
him down in his speed, nor the other get clear.”

[…]

Contemporary existential philosophy gives to anxiety, dread or Angst a more intentional, a more fulsome interpretation. Angst reveals man’s fundamental ontological situation, his connections with not-being, so that all fear is not just dread of death, but of the nothing on which all being is based. Fear thus becomes the reflection in consciousness of a universal reality.

Buddhism goes yet further: fear is more than a subjective, human phenomenon. All the world is in fear: trees, stones, everything. And the Buddha is the redeemer of the world from fear. Hence the significance of the mudra (hand gesture) of fear-not, which is not merely a sign of comfort but of total redemption of the world from its “fear and trembling,” its thralldom to Angst. Buddha’s perfect love, in the words of the Gospels, “driveth out fear.”

“…to further mix the contexts: let us say that the world of nature, Pan’s world, is in a continual state of subliminal panic just as it is in a continual state of subliminal sexual excitation. As the world is made by Eros, held together by that cosmogonic force and charged with the libidinal desire that is Pan, an archetypal vision most recently presented by Wilhelm Reich–so its other side, panic, recognized by the Buddha belongs to the same constellation. Again, we come back to Pan and the two extremes of instinct.

Brinkman has already pointed to the bankruptcy of all theories of panic that attempt to deal with it sociologically, psychologically or historically and not on its own terms. The right terms, Brinkman says, are mythological. We must follow the path cleared by Nietzsche whose investigation of kinds of consciousness and behavior through Apollo and Dionysos can be extended to Pan. Then panic will no longer be regarded as a physiological defense mechanism or an inadequate reaction or an abaissment du niveau mental, but will be seen as the right response to the numinous.”

–W.H. Roscher, Pan and the Nightmare: Ephialtes–A Pathological-Mythological Treatise on the Nightmare in Classical Antiquity, & An Essay on Pan by James Hillman, 1972. Pp. xxvi-xxviii. (James Hillman, “An Essay on Pan.”)

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July 23, 2014

On the Nymphs

“But the nymph continues to operate in our psyches. When we make magic of nature, believe in natural health cures and become nebulously sentimental about pollution and conservation, attach ourselves to special trees, nooks and scenes, listen for meanings in the wind and turn to oracles for comfort–then the nymph is doing her thing.”

–W.H. Roscher, Pan and the Nightmare: Ephialtes–A Pathological-Mythological Treatise on the Nightmare in Classical Antiquity, & An Essay on Pan by James Hillman, 1972. Pp. lii. (James Hillman, “An Essay on Pan.”)

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July 23, 2014

When Time Stands Still

“Pan’s hour was always Noon. At this moment he would appear in the blaze and shimmer of midday, startling man and animal into blind terror. This seems to have little to do with the nightmare.

Perhaps we need to regard high Noon, the zenith of the day, as the highest point of natural strength, which constellates both the life force and its opposite, the necessary fall from this height. It is the uncanny moment when I and my shadow are one.

Noon like midnight is a moment of transition and, like midnight, daybreak and sunset, a radix of primordial orientation for what might be called the symbolic clock. These are the moments when time stands still, when the orderly procession of moments disrupts.

So must certain things be accomplished before the cock’s crow at dawn, or the stroke of midnight, or before night falls. At these moments time is broken through by something extraordinary, something beyond the usual order.”

–W.H. Roscher, Pan and the Nightmare: Ephialtes–A Pathological-Mythological Treatise on the Nightmare in Classical Antiquity, & An Essay on Pan by James Hillman, 1972. Pp. lvi. (James Hillman, “An Essay on Pan.”)

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June 27, 2014

Jung on the Prophetic Significance of Dreams.

“Just as the largest part of the past is so far removed that it is not reached by history, so too the greater part of the unconscious determinants is unreachable.

History, however, knows nothing of two kinds of thing, that which is hidden in the past and that which is hidden in the future. Both perhaps might be attained with a certain amount of probability; the first as a postulate, the second as an historical prognosis.

In so far as tomorrow is already contained in today, and all the threads of the future are in place, so a more profound knowledge of the past might render possible a more or less far reaching and certain knowledge of the future (…)

Just as traces of memory long since fallen beneath the threshold of consciousness are accessible in the unconscious, so too there are certain very fine subliminal combinations of the future, which are of the greatest significance for future happenings in so far as the future is conditioned by our own psychology… it appears from time to time, in certain cases, significant fragments of this process come to light, at least in dreams. From this comes the prophetic significance of the dream long claimed by superstition.

The aversion of the scientific man of today to this type of thinking, hardly to be called phantastic, is merely an overcompensation to the very ancient and all too great inclination of mankind to believe in prophesies and superstitions.”

–Carl Gustav Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious, 1916.

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June 27, 2014

The Zohar and Reflection.

“The author of the Zohar put on, when writing this work, several layers of disguise, hiding his own personality, time, and language. He created an artificial language, an Aramaic that is not found in the same way anywhere else, innovating a vocabulary and grammatical forms. He attributed the work to ancient sages, and created a narrative that occurs in a distant place at another time …

“The radical mythological descriptions of the divine powers, the unhesitating use of detailed erotic language, and the visionary character of many sections–these are unequaled in Jewish literature, and place the Zohar among the most daring and radical works of religious literature and mysticism in any language.”

“…. the Zoharic worldview is based on the concept of reflection: everything is the reflection of everything else. The verses of scriptures reflect the emanation and structure of the divine world; as does the human body, in the anthropomorphic concept of the sefirot, and the human soul, which originates from the divine realm and in its various parts reflects the functions and dynamism of the sefirot.

“…The structure of the temple in Jerusalem and the ancient rituals practiced in it are a reflection of all other processes, in the universe, in man, and within the heavenly realms….Everything is a metaphor for everything else….All of this is presented as a secret message, a heavenly revelation to ancient sages, using conventional, authoritative methodologies.”

—-Joseph Dan, Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction, 2006, pp. 32-4

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June 23, 2014

Alchemical Implications of Dee’s Monas

“As with Dee’s Pythagorean speculations, here, too, we find instances of later writers either directly referring to Dee or at least making use of similar techniques. Petrus Bungus’s Numerorum Mysteria (1618), for instance, refers the reader to Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica in a discussion of the letter X and the significance of the point at the intersection of the four radiating lines, with unity denoting God and a good intellect, and duality a demon and bad intellect.

Dorn, in another of his scholia to the Tractatus Aureus, this time commenting on Hermes’ ruminations on the symbolism of a hen’s egg, takes Dee’s Roman numeral speculations in Theorem 16 a stage further.

He argues that the two letter Vs which mirror one another represent, as it were, the “As above, so below” maxim of the Emerald Tablet, with the upper V being incorporeal, and the lower corporeal. When these two are brought together, they form the letter X, i.e. the denarius or number of perfection, represented otherwise by the letters IO, as if one were saying “one circle,” or one revolution of a circle, this denary number being the Mercury of the Philosophers.

In addition, the Roman letter M equals the number 1,000, which is the ultimate perfection of all other numbers, and for Dorn denotes sulfur, which (containing fire, the fifth essence, and spirit) makes all things bear fruit.

If you join all these letters together, you get the word OVUM; the letter O signifies earth, for philosophical earth should be round and circular like the motion of the heavens; the letters VU represent water and air, and the final letter M represents fire (possibly because it resembles the astrological glyph for Aries ) — all combining to make the word “EGG.”

–Peter J. Forshaw, “The Early Alchemical Reception of John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica,” AMBIX, November, 2005, pg. 253.

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June 23, 2014

Dr. John Dee, the Monas, and the Hebrew Alphabet as the Device of Divine Creation.

“…Dee was fascinated with the application of the exegetical techniques of cabbala to alchemy. He was well aware that each letter of the Hebrew alphabet has a numerical equivalence, and that the computation of these numbers in words and comparison with other significant words was believed to provide insights into various levels of reality. The fourth-century Sefer Ytzirah, or Jewish Book of Formation, gives a cosmogonic account of God engraving the universe with the twenty-two foundational letters of the Hebrew alphabet.”

–Peter J. Forshaw, “The Early Alchemical Reception of John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica,” AMBIX, November, 2005, pg. 252 (6).

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June 22, 2014

Consequences of Forbidden Fruit.

“Or it may mean that they are unfallen, having not yet eaten of the fruit of the forbidden tree.”

–Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Saga: Speaker for the Dead.

How would our consciousness differ, had we not eaten from the Forbidden Tree?

Did we learn values?

It is said that we learned right and wrong with one bite.

What would it be, to live with no knowledge of right and wrong?

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June 22, 2014

From Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

“Trying to overcome his disturbance, he grasped at the voice that he was losing, the life that was leaving him, the memory that was turning into a petrified polyp, and he spoke to her about the priestly destiny of Sanskrit, the scientific possibility of seeing the future showing through in time as one sees what is written on the back of a sheet of paper through the light, the necessity of deciphering the predictions so that they would not defeat themselves, and the Centuries of Nostradamus and the destruction of Cantabria predicted by Saint Milanus.”

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

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June 20, 2014

Law of Correspondence 2.

Throw a rock into the ocean.

Your rock causes ripples. Those ripples interact with waves and tides and currents and other ripples to create a symphony of effects, which are influenced in invisible ways by an infinitude of other disturbances.

Chaos is a cacophony, yet there is order.

Everything interacts with everything else. Until entropy.

The consequences of your rock cannot all be hung around your neck. We generate our own world, we throw rocks, but so does everyone and everything else.

Because we can only imagine the changed molecules of wavelets breaking on distant shores as a result of our rock, does not mean that our rock had no impact. It did.

The infinite interactions of the ripples of our rock with all of the other events in the ocean may be unknowable for us, but it does not mean that they are unknowable.

There is an ocean. There is a rock. There are laws of the universe.

Except that the universe is not an ocean, and actions and thoughts, which are indistinguishable from one another, are not rocks.

And the laws of the universe include the caveat that all laws have their neutralizing opposite.

Including the law that there are no laws.

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June 20, 2014

The Law of Correspondence.

I believe that serendipity is dictated by the law of correspondence.

Everything is connected to everything. There are no coincidences.

My therapist dismisses this as “magical thinking,” as though this is a criticism rather than an observation. I laugh at him.

Clark observed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

O’Toole’s Corollary of Finagle’s Law posits that the perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum. For me, that about covers it.

Just because we subconsciously create the events of our lives does not mean that we are not responsible for them.

Dimly apprehending the implications of our experiences is just another revelation about the limitations of our thinking.

Because we create ourselves thinking about ourselves creating ourselves thinking about ourselves, we dance along a perpetual precipice.

What is vertigo, if not a glance into the abyss?

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June 20, 2014

Einstein on God.

“I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?”

–Albert Einstein, Cosmic Religion: With Other Opinions and Aphorisms (1931).

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein

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June 20, 2014

The Liar Paradox.

An example of the liar paradox: “this sentence is false.”

This cannot be true, as the sentence would then be false.

Nor can it be false, for the sentence would then be true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel’s_incompleteness_theorems

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June 20, 2014

Borges on Nirvana.

“What does it mean to reach Nirvana? Simply that our acts no longer cast shadows.”

–Jorge Luis Borges, “Buddhism,” Seven Nights, 1984, pg. 60.

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June 18, 2014

Borges on the doctrine of rebirth.

“In the West the idea has been propounded by various thinkers, above all by Pythagoras–who recognized the shield with which he had fought in the Trojan War, when he had another name.

In the tenth book of Plato’s Republic is the dream of Er, a soldier who watches the souls choose their fates before drinking in the river of Oblivion.

Agamemnon chooses to be an eagle, Orpheus a swan, and Odysseus–who once called himself Nobody–chooses to be the most modest, the most unknown of men.”

–Jorge Luis Borges, “Buddhism,” Seven Nights, 1984, pp. 55.

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