In thee compassion is, in thee is pity, In thee magnificence; in thee unites Whate’er of goodness is in any creature. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Dante
Faithful to Love
Your desire then is to penetrate her soul; that is what is needed, even if the reasons are unclear. Skin, which a moment ago was an organ of intense pleasure, suddenly becomes an obstacle. The frustrating conclusion is that the soul is impervious to physical contact. Continue reading
Dante’s Contemplation
What is a worse punishment than always to will what will never be and to be constantly opposing what will always be? The soul will never have what it wants and will endure forever what it does not want. Continue reading
The Greatness of the Soul
Saint Augustine describes a path that leads the soul from “its vivifying, perceptive, rational and contemplative powers that enable it to move close to God”. Continue reading
Amor Fati and the Heroic Life
My formula for the greatness of man is amor fati — to change nothing, neither before nor after, throughout all eternity. Not only to bear Necessity, and still less to hide it — all idealism is a lie in the face of Necessity — but to love it. ~ Friedrich … Continue reading
Things have always been pretty bad
the suffering inside the Church “would have originated not from external enemies, but from within the same Church” … ~ Pope Benedict XVI The title was motivated by the idea that, as bad as things seem today, things were bad in yesteryear. So I used the story of Abraham from … Continue reading
The Emperor
“The ones who truly love their traditions don’t take them too seriously. They march to get their heads shot off with a joke on their lips. And the reason is that they know they’re going to die for something intangible, something sprung from their fancy, half humor, half humbug. Or … Continue reading
Art and Illusion in Meyrink
So the psychic appearances that play such a prominent part in his books are not real in themselves, but illusions whose reality comes from the formless realm. Continue reading
Man, Woman, and Self
For Adam, the Self is dead, represented by the rib since the bones are the last to decay. That rib is vivified by Eve, who appears therefore as the exteriorization of his own Self. She is almost his identical twin, genetically the same apart from her having two X chromosomes, his “reciprocal”. Hence, she is the perfect woman for him. In knowing Eve, Adam is knowing himself. Continue reading
Nietzsche, Aquinas, Dante
Nietzsche’s claim to fame is as a psychologist. In that, he can be very insightful in exposing hypocrisy, ressentiment, and the like. In that as a side effect, he is a creator of the modern world which has replaced discussion and dialog with accusation. Today, a man’s ideas are barely considered, but instead his motives are questioned; certain points of view are even considered to be “mental illnesses”. Continue reading