During the peak of the Holy Roman Empire, families would be required to offer carts of fruit, incense, and livestock to priests and churches once a week. The carts were pulled over three kilometers by the teeth as a sign of humility. A select few families had a member, whether it be the father, mother, son or daughter, who would purposely neglect ( Read more... )

In one passage, Huxley recalls the extravagant Roman shows of light to celebrate power and inspire disorder.

Pope John Paul and Adolf Hitler are fused through pageantry.

"Two distinct and separate arts are practiced in the theater - the human art of the drama and the visionary, other-world art of spectacle. Elements of the two arts may be combined in a single evening's entertainment - the drama being interrupted (as so often happens in elaborate productions of Shakespeare) to permit the audience to enjoy a tableau ( Read more... )

The Dionysiac element: the core of nature, true chaos, the human will unveiled. The Apolline element: a distorted vision of nature; primal oneness forced to conform to human senses. The lyric poet Achelichus used music, the true art of the will, to inspire his writing. The writing ..inspired by will ..was transformed into mere aesthetic phenomena. ( Read more... )

Original Quatrain (Century 2, Quatrain 62 ( Read more... )

Dear God ( Read more... )

Live of fear and consummation. Brief inhumane intervals of love and beauty to keep sane. This is why Zeus sewed his child in his thigh; why Dionysus gave us intoxicants, wine of his own tears, so we could feel pleasure in a world of tragedy ( Read more... )

Was it even truth Socrates was striving for? Or just the Appoline method of illusionary reasoning? Wouldn't truth lie in the Dionysaic world in which our instincts and inner turmoil are left to run rampant and free? This is what Nietzsche taught us; that our true nature does not lie within reasoning or the Socratic Method, for to make sense of a ( Read more... )

Wise Greeks welcomed death without apprehension. During Phaedo, Socrates brings light to the concept of death being any true philosopher's ultimate goal. For when are we most inhibited to true thought? Does not our body affect the way we think? Emotions and senses were the Socratic enemy, the body. Reason and truth were the Socratic goal, the soul ( Read more... )

One account can be taken from Lao Tzu's Tao Teh Ching in the matter of this world, this reality, composed of a handful of senses, is all illusion. The tangible(body) is impermanent while the intangible(soul) is permanent ( Read more... )