Tag: Ancient Greece
The divine service of the Greeks
The ancient Hellenic religion βlived on the harmonious and reciprocal response of reality and of the divine will. The faith of the Greek man is in the cosmos, in the ordered rhythm of the stars; and the intertwining of their motions can only supervise the god Β». The Hellenic conception of the Sacred is in fact based on a dense network of mythical-historical-astrological correspondences, which allows the historian of religions to consider it under various aspects linked to each other: Theogony, esoteric history of the cosmos and human lineages, eschatology of the Mysteries, Hyperborean shamanism.
Pierre Hadot and the spiritual exercises in antiquityΒ
Pierre Hadot's essay offers the opportunity to immerse oneself in the philosophical practice widespread above all in the Hellenistic era: an art of life aimed at forming men in harmony with themselves and with what surrounds them.Β
Arturo Reghini: "The myth of Saturn in Western Tradition"
An extract from Arturo Reghini's essay "On the Western Tradition", originally published in 1928 on the pages of "UR", focusing on the myth of Saturn in the Latin and more generally Indo-European tradition. For those interested in reading it in its entirety, we have attached the PDF downloadable for free.
The Bringer of Fire: Prometheus and the sense of the tragic in ancient Greece
On the one hand the fire represents the Logos, but on the other Prometheus embodies the wild nature of ancient cosmology, as opposed to the rationalization implemented by the society of the polis on the world outside the Hellenic civilization considered "barbaric" and irrational. The very sense of the tragic is based exactly on the sphere of non-rationality, on the mythical representation of the unconscious shadows of the Greek population of the polis and of man himself.
Ioan P. Culianu: the Hyperborean shamanism of ancient Greece
cover: Ilyas Phaizulline, "Orpheus at the Empire of the Dead"
Introduction
curated by Marco Maculotti
When it comes to "shamanism" [I], we usually tend to think of the Siberian one [II], from which the term itself derives, or to the Himalayan one, which often synchronizes with the Buddhist and / or Hindu tradition, or to that of the native populations of North America, Mexico and the Andes, as well as that of the Australian aborigines. More rarely, the importance of shamanic practices for the Indo-European peoples is emphasized, although the classical sources are not poor in this regard.
The symbolism of the Spiral: the Milky Way, the shell, the "rebirth"
di Marco Maculotti
Having analyzed in recent months [cf. Cosmic-agrarian cults of ancient Eurasia] a series of rites, myths and deities connected to the theme of cosmic rebirth, we want in this appointment and in the next ones to focus our attention on some symbols, which we have already mentioned, which archaic man recognized as images capable of eschatologically raising him towards the understanding of this mystery.
