Tag: Nymphs

René Guénon: "The symbolism of the Zodiac in the Pythagoreans"

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Astrotheology, Esotericism, Extracts, History of Religions

On the symbolism of the solstitial doors in the ancient Hellenic and Vedic tradition: Cancer and Capricorn, the "door of the gods" and the "door of men", the dêva-loka and the pitri-loka of the Hindu tradition. Thus the traditional doctrines framed the zodiacal symbolism to the process of migration of souls from the celestial to the sublunar plane, and vice versa.

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Terror and Ecstasy: Arthur Machen's "Hill of Dreams"

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Esotericism, folklore, Italian Literature, Mito, Characters, Guests Book, History of Religions

Arthur Machen was born on March 3, 1863, one of the greatest writers of Fantastic literature of his time and, together with WB Yeats, one of the most important standard bearers of the so-called «Celtic Revival». After having already reviewed on our pages his work before him, "The Great God Pan", We now turn to his third novel," The Hill of Dreams "(1907), perhaps his greatest masterpiece by virtue of the indissoluble union, here as never before, between the two dichotomous aspects of the Sacred in the Gaelic tradition: the terrifying and the ecstatic one.

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Apollo the Destroyer: "coincidentia oppositorum" in hyperborean mysticism and eschatology

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Esotericism, Mito, Shamanism, History of Religions

Although mostly considered in his "luminous" and "uranic" meaning, in the archaic tradition Apollo combines the most extreme dichotomies in his mystical and eschatology: the bow and the lyre, wisdom and "mania", depth and elevation, the catabasis and the journey in spirit to the White Island, the "Fall" of Being and the return of the Golden Age. Starting from ancient sources, we can find similar concepts not only to those of North Asian shamanism and Celtic spirituality, but even to the sacred vision of some modern poets — like Blake, Shelley and Yeats - whose Apollonian chrism will appear clearer to us if we analyze their “Weltanschauung” in the light of the Platonic and Heraclitean doctrines.

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