Good morning! 😊

Posted on January 29, 2022 by ancientworld

Morning coffee 🌇☕️

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The nature of Abundance, and Rebirth.

Posted on January 25, 2022 by ancientworld

At the end of Chapter one in Dante’s Purgatory, Virgil picks up a reed at the shores – a symbol of Humility – and girds the waist of the pilgrim as Cato had instructed them. Then comes one of the most beautiful and deepest metaphors of the whole canticle:

Oh, miracle! When he pulled out the reed,
immediately a second humble plant
sprang up from where the first one had been picked.

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A Brief Review of “The Matter with Things”

Posted on January 25, 2022 by ancientworld

Here is a quick review and rating of McGilchrist’s new book “The Matter with Things”, on GoodReads:

The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the WorldThe Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World by Iain McGilchrist
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This Masterwork is potentially a depth charge for decades to come. Towards the end McGilchrist walks us to the very boundaries of science and rationality through rational language, and then gives us a bridge into the intuitive and Sacred world only apprehended by the right hemisphere. And then walks us back again.

A life-changing book.

View all my reviews

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The Sacred, and “The Matter with Things”

Posted on January 23, 2022 by ancientworld

A brief reflection on the last two chapters of “The Matter with Things”:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/sacred-and-with-61530792

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McGilchrist on the Sacred, and Intellectual Humility

Posted on January 23, 2022 by ancientworld

In his newest masterpiece “The Matter with Things”, McGilchrist writes about the approach to the apprehension of something transcendent, or Divine:

“What the term ‘G-d’ requires of us is not a set of propositions about what cannot be known, but a disposition towards what must be recognised as beyond human comprehension.”

A similar argument is made by Dante on the beach of the Island of Mount Purgatory. The first and crucial key to learning and growing – is the Reed of Humility. And the “washing” of the face.

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Jason and the Argonauts

Posted on January 18, 2022 by ancientworld

Great new episode from Adam Bishop on the Unlimited Opinions Podcast:

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Re-discovering the First Millennium

Posted on January 15, 2022 by ancientworld

This is another great conversation – an Orthodox Icon Carver and a Protestant Pastor in North America, discussing how the Internet is creating new forms of ecumenical dynamics and growth, and re-discovery of the old Greek Church Founders:

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Schism, Dante, and the history of the last two millennia

Posted on January 15, 2022 by ancientworld

A great conversation between historian Fr. John Strickland, and Sam Adams of the “Transfigured” Youtube Channel.

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For better waters now..

Posted on January 14, 2022 by ancientworld

The beautiful opening of Purgatory:

For better waters, now, the little bark
of my poetic powers hoists its sails,
and leaves behind chat cruelest of the seas.

And I shall sing about that second realm
where man’s soul goes to purify itself
and become worthy to ascend to Heaven.

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Ainulindalë – The Creation Story

Posted on January 13, 2022 by ancientworld

We’ve just finished the Creation Myth of Tolkien and will make a podcast episode shortly! It ties wonderfully in with several aspects of Paradiso in the Divine Comedy, the opening of the Biblical Stories, Greek Mythology, Aristotelian metaphysics, and some aspects of the “battle of the brain hemsipheres” too. But more than that, it’s a brilliant and beautiful story, with breath-taking depth and scope. And it adds an even larger context of wisdom and cosmology to the Lord of the Rings stories.

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