Cross is the time-honoured symbol of pre-Cosmic Divine Mind. The four points correspond to birth, life, death, and immortality. The Hidden Deity represented by the circumference of a Circle, and the Creative Power (Androgynous Word) by the diameter across it, is the cornerstone of Esoteric Cosmogony, Theogony, and Anthropogony. With the old Aryans, the Egyptians, and the Chaldeans, the diameter across the Circle embraced the idea of eternal and immovable Divine Thought in its Absoluteness, separated entirely from the incipient stage of the so-called creation. With the Hebrews, however, that which has been embodied in the Pentateuch and especially in Genesis, is simply the secondary stage of Cosmogenesis, i.e., the mechanical law of creation, or rather of construction; while Theogony is hardly, if at all, outlined. Jehovah was the tribal property of the Jews and no higher, inseparable from, and unfit to play a part in, any other but the Mosaic Law. Astronomically, the “Most High” is the Sun, and the “Lord” is one of his seven planets.. The meaning of Moses beseeching the Lord to show him “his glory” interpreted by two Kabbalists. Moses and Jehovah are in numerical harmony because the number of Moses is that of “I am, That I am,” i.e., 345. The number of Jehovah is 543, the reverse of 345. When the “back parts” of Moses and his “face” are added up we have 888, which is the Gnostic-Kabbalistic name of Jesus. The Sphinx has been devouring the brightest and the noblest intellects of Christendom but, at last, she is now conquered. It is not the Sphinx, however, who, burning with the shame of defeat had to bury herself into the sea, but the variegated symbol of Jehovah, whom Christians have accepted as their God. The Cross is one of the most ancient symbols, perhaps the most ancient. IAO is certainly a title of the Supreme Being, and belongs partially to the Ineffable Name; but it neither originated with, nor was it ever the sole property of, the Jews. IAO is an old mystic name of the Supreme deity of the Semites. In the old religion of the Chaldeans the highest divinity, enthroned above the seven heavens representing the spiritual light principle, was also called IAO who, like the Hebrew Yaho, was mysterious and unmentionable, and whose name was communicated only to the initiated. The ansated Cross represented Vishvakarman, the carpenter and artificer of the Gods crucifying the “Sun-Initiate” on the cruciform lathe, imparted the grand idea of man’s spiritual birth, not his physical regeneration. The candidate for initiation, being attached to the astronomical Cross, is a much grander and nobler idea than that of the origin of terrestrial life. On the other hand, the Semites had no other or higher purpose in life than that of procreating their species. Geometrically demonstrated, the Jewish Deity is merely an even number — the illusionary duad — never the One Absolute All; symbolically, a euhemerized Priapus. And all this can hardly satisfy those thirsting after real spiritual truths, not such a blasphemous and gross caricature of the Ever Unknowable. Even the most learned of modern Kabbalists can see in the Cross and Circle nothing but a symbol of the manifested creative and androgyne deity in this phenomenal world. But the Eastern Occultist declines to worship any anthropomorphic God. A Being, “having a mind like that of man, only infinitely more powerful,” is no God that has any room beyond the cycle of physical creation. That Being is, at best, one of the creative subordinate powers, the totality of which is called the Sephiroth, the Heavenly Man, and Adam Kadmon — the Second Logos of the Platonists. The initiated Hindus know how to “square the Circle” far better than any European. Western Mystics commence their speculation only at that stage when the universe “falls into matter,” as the Occultists say. From the first to the last chapter of the Pentateuch every scene, character, and event are connected with the origin of birth in its crudest and most brutal form. God is a Circle, the centre of which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere. Circle and Cross are inseparable. It is not in the Bible that we have to search for the origin of the Cross and Circle, but beyond the Flood. Deity is eternal perpetual motion, the Ever-Becoming, as well as the Ever-Universally-present, and the Ever-Existing. The Circle is its outward veil. The Crux Ansata unites the Circle and the four corners of the Cross. The Cross below the Circle stands for human procreation, and therefore oblivion of the divine origin of the Cross within the Circle and the divine pedigree of Man. The cruciform noose is a Cross in a Circle, a Crux Ansata truly; but it is a Cross on which all the human passions have to be crucified before the Yogin passes through the “strait gate,” the narrow Circle that widens into an infinite one, as soon as the inner man has passed the threshold. The Pleiades are the central group of the Milky Way, and the Central Point around which our Universe of fixed stars revolve in their respective orbits. It is this Circle and the starry Cross on its face that play the most prominent part. The Universe is periodically manifested by accelerated Motion, propelled by the Breath of Unknowable Power. The Spirit of Life, Infinite Wisdom, and Immortality are symbolised by the Circle and the Astronomical Cross within, the ouroboric Serpent or Dragon, and the Winged Globe which evolved as the Egyptian Scarabæus — suggesting the peregrinations of the Soul, each lower form unfolding a higher one. Self-moving numbers preceded mathematical numbers. The Planetary Spirits, or Creative Powers, were represented as Invisible Circles, the prototypic causes and builders of the heavenly orbs, which are Their visible bodies or coverings. Our visible Sun orbits ever closer around the Invisible Central Sun, which is the Spirit of Kosmos — abstract and formless because homogeneous and impartite — the Centre of Intelligence-Wisdom in every organised Universe, and Solar systems to be. Theos is neither the Spirit of Truth nor Spiritual Intelligence, but their Father. Far greater and more exacting deity than the “god” of this world, supposed to be “good,” is the Law of Karma. And this Universal Deity demonstrates that the lesser one, our personal god, has no power to arrest her mighty hand, for causes initiated by our thoughts and actions generate smaller causes, and call forth the unerring Law of Retribution that predestines nothing and no one. The Honoured One dwells in the Centre as in the Circumference, but it is only the reflection of the hidden Deity. The plane of the surface of the Circle is the World Soul. Those who, by unifying and individualizing the Universal Presence, have synthesized it into one symbol — the Central Point in the Crucifix — they have never seized the true Spirit of the teaching of Christ, and by their spurious interpretations they have degraded it in more than one way. They have forgotten the Spirit of that universal symbol and have selfishly monopolized it — as though the Boundless and the Infinite can ever be limited and conditioned in one man, or even in a nation! Alone, among the Apostles of the Western religion, Paul seems to have fathomed out the archaic mystery of the Cross. The four points of the Cross represent in succession birth, life, death, and immortality. To crucify before the sun is a phrase used of initiation. It comes from Egypt via from India. The initiated adept, who had successfully passed through all the trials, was simply tied on a couch (not nailed) in the form of a Tau or a Svastika, without the four prolongations, and then plunged in a deep sleep, the Sleep of Siloam. Vishvakarman, the all-seeing god, the great architect of the world and creative power, sacrifices himself to himself. The Spiritual Egos of every mortal are of His own essence, and one with Him. The symbol of Crucifixion is the origin of measures, shadowing forth creative law and design. Man was the primordial Word, the very first word possessed by the Hebrews, whoever they were, to carry the idea by the sound of a man. The numerical value of that word is 113, and carried with it the elements of the cosmical system displayed. The figure of Vithoba, even to the nail-marks on the feet, is that of Jesus crucified, in all its details, save the Cross. That man was meant, is proved by the fact of the Initiate being reborn after his crucifixion on the Tree of Life. That tree, through its use by the Romans as an instrument of torture, and by the ignorance of Christian schemers, has now become the tree of death! Thus one of the seven esoteric meanings, implied in the mystery of Crucifixion by the inventors of the system, is now revealed by the geometrical symbols containing the history of the evolution of man. The queer injunction in the Old Testament to crucify men before the Lord, the Sun, is no prophecy at all but has a direct phallic significance. The Cross is not a human invention, it is a time-honoured symbol of cosmic ideation and of the divine soul in man: eternal in its potentiality, periodical in its potency. Later, it expanded in that of the mortal who, by crucifying his flesh and passions on the Procrustean bed of torture, is reborn Immortal — leaving behind the animal-man tied on the Cross of Initiation. Like an empty chrysalis, the Spiritual Soul is now free as a butterfly. Much later, owing to the gradual loss of spirituality, the Cross was degraded to a phallic symbol. Eventually, the Cross was adopted and manipulated by Christianity, yet it was phallic from the very beginning. But the Cross does not belong exclusively to the Churches: its metaphysical meaning is too much for the champions of the religion of sensualism to grasp. The Cross is pre-eminently is Kabbalistic, representing the opposition and quaternary equilibrium of the elements.

"[This] magnificent critical survey, with its inherent respect for both the 'Westt's mainstream high culture' and the 'radically changing world' of the 1990s, offers a new breakthrough for lay and scholarly readers alike....Allows readers to grasp the big picture of Western culture for the first time." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Here are the great minds of Western civilization and their pivotal ideas, from Plato to Hegel, from Augustine to Nietzsche, from Copernicus to Freud. Richard Tarnas performs the near-miracle of describing profound philosophical concepts simply but without simplifying them. Ten years in the making and already hailed as a classic, THE PASSION OF THE WESERN MIND is truly a complete liberal education in a single volume.

Reproduction of the original. The publishing house Megali specialises in reproducing historical works in large print to make reading easier for people with impaired vision.

This innovative volume explores the idea that while photographs are images, they are also objects, and this materiality is integral to their meaning and use. The case studies presented focus on photographs active in different institutional, political, religious and domestic spheres, where physical properties, the nature of their use and the cultural formations in which they function make their 'objectness' central to how we should understand them. The book's contributions are drawn from disciplines including the history of photography, visual anthropology and art history, with case studies from a range of countries such as the Netherlands, North America, Australia, Japan, Romania and Tibet. Each shows the methodological strategies they have developed in order to fully exploit the idea of the materiality of photographic images.

Collected essays from bestselling author Michael Shermer's celebrated columns in Scientific American For fifteen years, bestselling author Michael Shermer has written a column in Scientific American magazine that synthesizes scientific concepts and theory for a general audience. His trademark combination of deep scientific understanding and entertaining writing style has thrilled his huge and devoted audience for years. Now, in Skeptic, seventy-five of these columns are available together for the first time; a welcome addition for his fans and a stimulating introduction for new readers.

Publisher description

Completed in 1173, The Book of Divine Works (Liber Divinorum Operum) is the culmination of the Visionary’s Doctor’s theological project, offered here for the first time in a complete and scholarly English translation. The first part explores the intricate physical and spiritual relationships between the cosmos and the human person, with the famous image of the universal Man standing astride the cosmic spheres. The second part examines the rewards for virtue and the punishments for vice, mapped onto a geography of purgatory, hellmouth, and the road to the heavenly city. At the end of each Hildegard writes extensive commentaries on the Prologue to John’s Gospel (Part 1) and the first chapter of Genesis (Part 2)—the only premodern woman to have done so. Finally, the third part tells the history of salvation, imagined as the City of God standing next to the mountain of God’s foreknowledge, with Divine Love reigning over all.

Discusses the elements of a sign, and looks at pictograms, alphabets, calligraphy, monograms, text type, numerical signs, symbols, and trademarks.