Alchemy, in our day, is an aspect of our European heritage which many of us view as being silly. The general consensus is that alchemy was a product of a more primitive worldview. It is somewhat puzzling as to why a twentieth-century psychologist like C.G. Jung would have such a passionate interest in the subject. In this article, I will attempt to explicate Jung’s ideas concerning alchemy. Following a short critique of his views, I will add a few of…
Whoever . . . scrutinizes his mind . . . will find his own natural work, and will find likewise his own star and daemon, and following their beginnings he will thrive and live happily. Otherwise, he will find fortune to be adverse, and he will feel that heaven hates him (Ficino 169). The daimon is a sort of inner mentor, dissuading us from taking certain paths in life. Heraclitus adds that our ethos is our daimon. In this work,…
The Japanese Footbridge, by Claude Monet Ficino writes, “Man is the soul itself. . .” (Ficino 74). In his Commentary On Plato’s Symposium, Marsilio Ficino makes a statement that is totally antithetical to the teachings of modern psychology. For the most part, psychology today refuses to accept any idea of Soul. The predominant view of our day is Behaviorism, which is totally materialistic and scientistic. Man is a material entity. There is no metaphysical element, such as Soul, mind, or…
One of the most ignored and underestimated thinkers in Western history is Giambattista Vico (1668-1744). Here is a brief biography from the Wisdom Supreme: Giambattista Vico (or Giovanni Battista Vico) was a Neapolitan philosopher, historian, and jurist. Vico is famous for his concept of truth as an act, verum factum. His major work is the New Science (Scienza Nuova), published in 1725 and, as a completely rewritten work, in 1730. His major idea — that truth is an act, is…
Occasionally, when things look dark and dismal in the world, as they very much do now, the voice inside my head reminds me that such times are simply birth-pangs. A new society is struggling to be born. From the ashes of the twentieth-century totalitarian paradigm, a great Phoenix is rising. No, it will not be a Third Awakening of religious devotion; rather, it will be an awakening of humans devoting themselves to one another, to care for one another, to…