A Summary of Pythagorean Theology
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Deconstructing the western worldview: toward the repatriation and indigenization of wellness Item Type Thesis Authors Rahm, Jacqueline Marie Download date 23/09/2021 13:22:54 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/11122/4821 DECONSTRUCTING THE WESTERN WORLDVIEW: TOWARD THE REPATRIATION AND INDIGENIZATION OF WELLNESS A THESIS Presented to the Faculty of the University of Alaska Fairbanks in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By Jacqueline Marie Rahm, B.A., M.A. Fairbanks, Alaska December 2014 Abstract As Indigenous peoples and scholars advance Native histories, cultures, and languages, there is a critical need to support these efforts by deconstructing the western worldview in a concerted effort to learn from indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing for humanity’s future wellbeing. Toward that imperative, this research brings together and examines pieces of the western story as they intersect with Indigenous peoples of the lands that now comprise the United States of America. Through indigenous frameworks and methodologies, it explores a forgotten epistemology of the pre-Socratic and Pythagorean Archaic and Classical Greek eras that is far more similar to indigenous worldviews than it is to the western paradigm today. It traces how the West left behind this timeless wisdom for the “new learning” and the European colonial settlers arrived in the old “New World” with a fragmented, materialistic, and dualistic worldview that was the antithesis to those of Indigenous peoples. An imbalanced and privileged worldview not only justified an unacknowledged genocide in world history, it is characteristic of a psycho-spiritual disease that plays out across our global society. -
The Spiritual Tradition at the Roots of Western Civilization
The Spiritual Tradition at the Roots of Western Civilization Excerpts from In the Dark Places of Wisdom and Reality by Peter Kingsley1 1 A compilation by Ulrich Mohrhoff In The Dark Places of Wisdom 255 pages The Golden Sufi Center (1999) Paperback ISBN 189035001X Reality 600 pages The Golden Sufi Center (2003) Softcover ISBN 1-890350-09-5 Hardcover ISBN 1-890350-08-7 1 Prologue We are human beings, endowed with an incredible dignity; but there’s nothing more un- dignified than forgetting our greatness and clutching at straws. (DPW 4) So many of us today are concerned about the extinction of all the species that the west- ern world is wiping out. But there’s hardly anyone who notices the most extraordinary threat of all: the extinction of our knowledge of what we are. (DPW 9) Perhaps the simplest way of describing the situation would be to say that, two and a half thousand years ago in the West, we were given a gift — and in our childishness we threw away the instructions for how to use it. We felt we knew what we were playing with. And, as a result, western civilization may soon be nothing but an experiment that failed. (R 20–21) 1 Published with permission. Copyright © 1999, 2003 Peter Kingsley. For further information about Peter Kingsley and his work, visit www.peterkingsley.org . 112 ANTIMATTERS 1 (2) 2007 Even in these modern times, what half-heartedly is described as mystical perception is always pushed to the periphery. When it’s not denied it’s held at arm’s length — out there at the margins of society. -
Stony Brook University
SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... Heraclitus and the Work of Awakening A Dissertation Presented by Nicolas Elias Leon Ruiz to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Stony Brook University August 2007 Copyright by Nicolas Elias Leon Ruiz August 2007 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Nicolas Elias Leon Ruiz We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Dr. Peter Manchester – Dissertation Advisor Associate Professor of Philosophy Dr. David Allison – Chairperson of Defense Professor of Philosophy Dr. Eduardo Mendieta Associate Professor of Philosophy Dr. Gregory Shaw Professor of Religious Studies Stonehill College This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Lawrence Martin Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation Heraclitus and the Work of Awakening by Nicolas Elias Leon Ruiz Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Stony Brook University 2007 Heraclitus is regarded as one of the foundational figures of western philosophy. As such, he is typically read as some species of rational thinker: empiricist, materialist, metaphysician, dialectician, phenomenologist, etc. This dissertation argues that all of these views of Heraclitus and his work are based upon profoundly mistaken assumptions. Instead, Heraclitus is shown to be a thoroughly and consistently mystical writer whose work is organized around the recurring theme of awakening. He is thus much more akin to figures such as Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Empedocles than to Aristotle or Hegel. -
Asclepius and Epidaurus: the Sapiential Medicine As Divinatory Art Between Therapeutic Landscapes and Healing Dreams
Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, vol. 15, no. 1, 2019 ASCLEPIUS AND EPIDAURUS: THE SAPIENTIAL MEDICINE AS DIVINATORY ART BETWEEN THERAPEUTIC LANDSCAPES AND HEALING DREAMS Nicola Luigi Bragazzi, Mariano Martini, Riccardo Zerbetto, Tania Simona Re ABSTRACT: Epidaurus was in the antiquity a therapeutic complex which included several buildings to which people came from every part of Greece to be cured by the god Asclepius, a deity venerated from 500 before Christ to the fourth-fifth century anno Domini, when many other pagan cults had already ceased to exist. Epidaurus was a very complex structure, a sort of city-state or sovereign state, able to host thousands of adepts. Here, patients were subject to ablution, purification and sporadic fasting. Asclepius appeared in a dream, in a sort a practice of magic-ritual and sapiential medicine. KEYWORDS: Asclepius; Epidaurus; Sapiential medicine; Templar medicine; Incubation sanctuary Originally, medicine was a divinatory art. Hoverer, the term "divination" has lost its original meaning throughout the centuries, with respect to the ancient times and, in particular, to the Greek archaic world, in which it held an enormous value. Divination, in fact, was the most genuine form of knowledge, a sort of half-closed door or bridge that connected the human world with the divine one. Apollo, a plague-dealer with a silver bow, is considered the father of medicine. We see him at the beginning of the Iliad with his poisoned arrows and darts disseminating illness and destruction to the Achaeans. The death www.cosmosandhistory.org 193 COSMOS AND HISTORY 194 inflicted by the divinity is terribly long and painful. -
Parmenides' Theistic Metaphysics
Parmenides’ Theistic Metaphysics BY ©2016 Jeremy C. DeLong Submitted to the graduate degree program in Philosophy and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________ Chairperson: Tom Tuozzo ________________________________ Eileen Nutting ________________________________ Scott Jenkins ________________________________ John Symons ________________________________ John Younger Date Defended: May 6th, 2016 ii The Dissertation Committee for Jeremy C. DeLong certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Parmenides’ Theistic Metaphysics ________________________________ Chairperson: Thomas Tuozzo Date Defended: May 6th, 2016 iii Abstract: The primary interpretative challenge for understanding Parmenides’ poem revolves around explaining both the meaning of, and the relationship between, its two primary sections: a) the positively endorsed metaphysical arguments which describe some unified, unchanging, motionless, and eternal “reality” (Aletheia), and b) the ensuing cosmology (Doxa), which incorporates the very principles explicitly denied in Aletheia. I will refer to this problem as the “A-D Paradox.” I advocate resolving this paradoxical relationship by reading Parmenides’ poem as a ring-composition, and incorporating a modified version of Palmer’s modal interpretation of Aletheia. On my interpretation, Parmenides’ thesis in Aletheia is not a counter-intuitive description of how all the world (or its fundamental, genuine entities) must truly be, but rather a radical rethinking of divine nature. Understanding Aletheia in this way, the ensuing “cosmology” (Doxa) can be straightforwardly rejected as an exposition of how traditional, mythopoetic accounts have misled mortals in their understanding of divinity. Not only does this interpretative view provide a resolution to the A-D Paradox, it offers a more holistic account of the poem by making the opening lines of introduction (Proem) integral to understanding Parmenides’ message. -
Heroic Furies: Spirituality and Nihilism in European Thought
Heroic Enthusiasts: Spirituality and Nihilism in European Thought Dr. Melanie J. Van Oort - Hall The separation of philosophy from religion, but also of religion from spirituality is a recent phenomenon. In our postmodern, subject oriented civilization, oftentimes, religion is associated with ‘overbearing dogma,’ ‘authoritarianism,’ while spirituality is associated with ‘freedom,’ ‘creativity,’ ‘harmony,’ etc. Nevertheless, there is another side to spirituality in the history of European thought that rather celebrates the opposite of harmony and is more nihilistic. This more nihilistic side of spirituality is probably particular to Modernity in that it tends to celebrate the self over against the community and sometimes advocates the self’s necessary destruction or annihilation in an attempt to recreate itself – a project with a questionable ratio of success. In order to better understand the development of the rise of nihilistic spirituality in modern European thought, we will focus on the philosophical background to Giordano Bruno’s suicidal figures in Gli eroici furori or The Heroic Enthusiasts. As perhaps one of the first ‘modern’ thinkers, who attempted to re-vitalize the philosophy and religion of the Presocratic philosophers within the framework of Renaissance Neoplatonism and Hermetism, Bruno represents a new understanding of the self in relation to the Cosmos that by nature becomes nihilistic. The word nihilism, which Friedrich Nietzsche characterized as the spirit of modernity, is derived from the Latin term, nihil or “nothing.” In Zur Genealogie der Moral or On the Genealogy of Morals, he deemed nihilism as a form of spirituality, a detail important for this paper. In his posthumously published Will to Power, notes he wrote around the same time he published Genealogie (1887), Nietzsche says that “Radical nihilism is the conviction of an absolute untenability of existence when it comes to the highest values one recognizes...”1 Significantly for Nietzsche, nihilism is a devaluation of this existence. -
The Great Practice Master
The Great Practice Whit Griffin 1 The Great Practice Whit Griffin Table Of Contents The Great Practice 3 The Poetics Of Reincarnation 166 A Selected / Suggested Bibliography 182 Acknowledgments 187 2 The Great Practice Whit Griffin The ferocious alligator pisses the tobacco plant. The crying baboons who piss each hour during the equinoxes. Urinating on cereal grains to test for pregnancy. The birth of the divine child, whether he bears the name Horus, Osiris, Helios, Dionysus, or Aeon, was celebrated in the Koreion in Alexandria, in the temple dedicated to Kore, on the day of the winter solstice, when the new divine light is born. The Great Central Sun of Sacred Power. I am perception and Knowledge, uttering a Voice by means of Thought. I am the real Voice. The voice of the sun. The ring of deliverance. The silver apples of wisdom. A wisdom of loving participation. The tortoise stands in opposition to the sun. In the mythology of the oldest known Semitic-Babylonian calendar, the moon signifies life; the sun signifies death. 3 The Great Practice Whit Griffin Some say poets invented the gods, the Trojan War was directed by hallucinations. Was the Israelite exodus from Egypt contemporaneous with the Trojan War? * The lotus blossom of psychic flowering. Energy with the quality of mind. The blond moon. The soul is hundreds of thousands of times finer and more powerful than intelligence. A stream of wind is blowing through the tube of the sun. As the Gorgon is the night sun. As the moon is the night snake that walks in the water. -
Apollo and His Cult in the Geometric and Archaic Periods
Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of Archaeology and Museology Classical Archaeology Barbora Chabrečková Apollo and His Cult in the Geometric and Archaic Periods Bachelor's Diploma Thesis Supervisor: PhDr. Marie Pardyová, CSc. 2014 I hereby declare that this thesis is my own work, created with use of primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………… Author’s signature 2 Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor PhDr. Marie Pardyová, CSc., for guidance, constructive criticism and all the valuable advice. And thank my mother, for endless support, encouragement, and patience. 3 Table of contents 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 5 2. Origin of the deity ........................................................................................................................... 7 2.1 Doric origin based on etymology of the name ........................................................................ 7 2.2 Mythological birth at Delos and its later significance ............................................................. 8 2.3 Hypothesis on Asian origin ................................................................................................... 10 2.3.1 Based on epithet Lykeios ............................................................................................... 10 2.3.2 Based on Hittite and Luwian sources ........................................................................... -
000000304.Sbu.Pdf
SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... Borderlands of Psyche and Logos in Heraclitus: A Psychoanalytic Reading A Dissertation Presented by Jessica Ann Mayock to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Stony Brook University May 2008 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Jessica Ann Mayock We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Dr. Edward Casey – Dissertation Advisor Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Dr. Donn Welton – Chairperson of Defense Professor of Philosophy Dr. Peter Manchester Associate Professor of Philosophy Dr. Bruce Wilshire Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers University This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Lawrence Martin Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation Borderlands of Psyche and Logos in Heraclitus: A Psychoanalytic Reading by Jessica Ann Mayock Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Stony Brook University 2008 Heraclitus is the first philosopher to focus on the psyche, but he also raises language to a cosmological principle, thereby giving his enigmatic statements a unique status. They are not intended to describe cosmos as much as to evoke it, making his cosmology a psychology. The true subject of his work is the psychological process it initiates. Attempts by commentators to attribute a doctrine to Heraclitus or to impose an order upon his fragments have therefore always misrepresented him, since his ‘method’ is to frustrate any method that would project itself upon him. -
Velia and the Cilento
Velia and the Cilento An Introduction Clopper Almon 2010 Copyright 2004, 2005, 2010 Clopper Almon Material not otherwise copyrighted may be freely used with attribution. 2 Table of Contents 1. Geology..........................................................................................................................4 2. Cilento human history before the Greeks.......................................................................9 3. Coming of the Greeks to Elea-Velia.............................................................................16 4. The Eleatic Philosophers and Medicine at Velia..........................................................18 5. Velia in Roman Times..................................................................................................27 6. From Barbarians to the Present....................................................................................29 7. The Consorzio Velia.....................................................................................................39 8. The Story of Archeology at Velia.................................................................................41 9. Geological Evolution of Velia in Historical Times......................................................46 10. Particular archeological findings................................................................................47 References........................................................................................................................54 Scope of this Account This account focuses on -
The Divine Disease
THE DIVINE DISEASE Throughout the course of the 5th Century BCE evidence points to the parallel development of two broad streams of medical practice, each poised to spread throughout the Greek world. One approach is called ‘rational’ medicine, spearheaded under the aegis of Hippocrates of Cos, which presented a scientific approach to disease and cure, attempting to disassociate itself from magical and supernatural beliefs. The other was ‘religious’ medicine aligned with the cult of Asclepius, which attended to the belief in the divine origin of disease and cure. by Brian Clark INTRODUCTION THE DIVINE DISEASE ‘Hippocratic writers, with their use of terms and concepts such as katharsis (cleansing), apostasis (separation and/or expulsion) and pharmakon (drug), draw inspiration from traditional religious ideas. Thus, despite their insistence on non-divine, natural causality and natural principles of remedy, the fifth century medical writers cannot escape certain ways of thinking about disease deeply embedded in Greek culture.’ 1 - Jennifer Clarke Kosak At the end of the 5th Century Hippocratic concepts and principles had developed out of time-honoured traditional ideas about disease. Embedded in the Greek concept of illness was a religious dimension, shaped through its continuous connection to the divine and accompanying rituals of purification.2 Towards the close of the 5th Century the threads of this motif had become tightly woven into the myth of Asclepius whose emergent cult practice of temple healing coexisted alongside Hippocratic medicine. However, it was not only Hippocratic writers on sickness, but also mythmakers, historians, poets and playwrights who were influenced by long-held attitudes and beliefs in the role of the divine in illness and healing.3 From the earliest literary sources it is apparent that Greek culture had always associated the divine with disease, investing illness with a moral causation. -
The Palamite Paradigm of Ecstasy and Its Impact on Eastern Christian Model Adriana Elena Vlaicu, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University
The Palamite Paradigm of Ecstasy and its Impact on Eastern Christian Model Adriana Elena Vlaicu, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Romania The Asian Conference on Ethics, Religion & Philosophy 2021 Official Conference Proceedings Abstract “Is human being an ecstatic being? Is it possible for a human being to live without any kind of spiritual experience?” Even from ancient times people were searching through various methods, ways to reach some high spiritual experiences regardless their religious views or methods they used such as iatromantis, yoga, Buddhist meditation, Kabbalah, Rumi or Christian and not only. This is proof that human beings do search for a spiritual experience that exceeds the material world and its rationality. For Eastern Christianity a moment of a great importance was the controversy between Barlaam, the monk from Calabria and Gregory Palamas, a greek theologian and philosopher, this controversy marking actually the first confrontation between Eastern tradition and the new occidental man. It pinpointed the articulation of hesychasm, moving from living the experience to reflecting upon it. Eastern mysticism talks about a direct knowing of God, a union with Him, while Western rationalism implies more of an imitation of God, a rational knowing of God, denying any divine implication in this process, which makes ecstatic experience completely different. Palamas presents the monologue kind of prayer, focused on repeating the name of God. It was used by the Dessert Fathers and was known as Kyrie eleison, Prayer of the mind, Prayer of the Heart to transform later into Jesus’ Prayer or Remembering the Word. This prayer is the core of the whole byzantine spirituality.