This is an initiation into the tone, structure, and mentality of Egyptian knowledge, the basis of all Western theology and science. It is a redefinition of those concepts which are basic to the pharaonic transmission--the glory of ancient Egypt. The author explores the "process of becoming" as related to consciousness and revealed in nature; the kinship between man and the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms; the stages of awareness leading to "Cosmic Consciousness"; and the mystery of the formation of substance into matter.
Symbolism is the intuitive means of overcoming the limitations of reason. Here Schwaller explains how true progress in human thought can be made only if we call upon the "symbolizing" faculty of intelligence, developed and refined in the temple culture of ancient Egypt and reflected in its hieroglyphs.
The Symbolism of the Cross is a major doctrinal study of the central symbol of Christianity from the standpoint of the universal metaphysical tradition, the 'perennial philosophy' as it is called in the West. As Guernon points out, the cross is one of the most universal of all symbols and is far from belonging to Christianity alone. Indeed, Christians have sometimes tended to lose sight of its symbolism of its symbolical significance and to regard it as no more than the sign of a historical event. By restoring to the full spiritual value as a symbol, but without in any way detracting from its historical importance for Christianity, Guenon has performed a task of inestimable importance which perhaps only he, with his unrivaled knowledge of the symbolic languages of both East and West, was qualified to perform.
The theme of Nature Word is the intelligence of the heart, the innate, functional consciousness, or way of thinking, that is in harmony with nature and able to understand life and living things.
R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz (1887-1961), one of the most important Egyptologists of this century, links the sacred science of the Ancients to its rediscovery in our own time. Sacred Science represents the first major breakthrough in understanding ancient Egypt and identifies Egypt, not Greece, as the cradle of Western thought, theology, and science.
This book contains the first published results of Schwaller's 12 years of research at the temple of Luxor and its implications for interpreting the symbolic and mathematical processes of the Egyptians through their sacred architecture.
In this groundbreaking book, Andrei Pop presents a lucid reassessment of those writers and artists in the late nineteenth century whose work merits the adjective “symbolist.” For Pop, this term denotes an art that is self-conscious about its modes of making meaning and he argues that these symbolist practices, which sought to provide more direct access to the viewer by constant revision of its material means of meaning-making (brushstrokes on a canvas, words on a page), are crucial to understanding the genesis of modern art. The symbolists saw art not as a social revolution, but a revolution in sense and in how we conceptualize the world. At the same time, the concerns of symbolist painters and poets were shared to a remarkable degree by theoretical scientists of the period, especially by mathematicians and logicians who were dissatisfied with the strict empiricism dominant in their disciplines, and which made shared knowledge seem unattainable. A crisis of sense made art and science look for conceptual foundations underlying the diverging subjective responses and perceptions of individuals. Unlike other studies of this period, Pop’s focus is not on how individual artists may have absorbed bits of scientific theories, but rather on the philosophical questions that were relevant to both domains. The problem of subjectivity in particular, of what in one’s experience can and cannot be shared, was crucial to the possibility of collaboration within science and to the communication of artistic innovation. Pop’s brilliant close readings of the literary and visual practices of Manet and Mallarmé, of drawings by Ernst Mach, William James and Wittgenstein, of experiments with color by Bracquemond and Van Gogh, and of the philosophical systems of Frege and Russell add up to a startling but coherent picture of the symbolist heritage of modernity and its consequences.
A prolific writer and author of over 24 books, Rene Guenon was the founder of the Perennialist/Traditionalist school of comparative religious thought. Known for his discourses on the intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of the modern world, symbolism, tradition, and the inner or spiritual dimension of religion, this book is a compilation of his most important writings. A key component of his thought was the assertion that universal truths manifest themselves in various forms in the world's religions and his writings on Hinduism, Taoism, and Sufism are particularly illuminating in this regard.
We lack direct consciousness of Space and Time. We can know of them only indirectly by mass, force, and energy, and by the intermediary of phenomena such as may be tested by our five senses. Without direct awareness of Space or Time, human beings lack two “senses” necessary for the knowledge of all causes. From this imperfection, of which we are always being made aware, is born our need to simplify. Thus we reduce everything to fundamental properties, without paying any attention to the underlying universal organization, the effects of which are all around us. The result is that the science of numbers, the most wonderful guide to the constant creation of the universe, remains an enormous hypothesis so long as its use has not awakened in us the higher consciousness of a universal order. By deepened knowledge of things and their process of becoming, we must come to recognize Numbers as a truth, and to experience with our senses the living relation of a cause to an effect, this relation being truer and more real than the effect could ever be. Published in 1917 under the author's given name of René Schwaller, A Study of Numbers is the first expression of the teachings we have come to associate with his later and better known name, R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz. It is a masterly account of the living, universal, qualitative, and casual reality of numbers. Starting from the irreducible one, Schwaller deals with the unfolding of creation through the cycles of polarization, ideation, and formation. Topics covered include: numbers, values, and relations; the disengagement of numbers; the harmonic basis of numbers; the development of values; and the establishment of harmony.
#1 WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER • An intelligent, lightning-paced thriller set within the hidden chambers, tunnels, and temples of Washington, D.C., with surprises at every turn. “Impossible to put down.... Another mind-blowing Robert Langdon story.” —The New York Times Famed Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon answers an unexpected summons to appear at the U.S. Capitol Building. His plans are interrupted when a disturbing object—artfully encoded with five symbols—is discovered in the building. Langdon recognizes in the find an ancient invitation into a lost world of esoteric, potentially dangerous wisdom. When his mentor Peter Solomon—a long-standing Mason and beloved philanthropist—is kidnapped, Langdon realizes that the only way to save Solomon is to accept the mystical invitation and plunge headlong into a clandestine world of Masonic secrets, hidden history, and one inconceivable truth ... all under the watchful eye of Dan Brown's most terrifying villain to date.
