Showing 256 articles
Saying it Right – Doing it Right
Author: Michael LassmanJuly 30, 2016
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” was a little ditty chanted in the school playgrounds of the 1960s as a retort from one child to another after being teased or taunted. In truth, it should have been “…but words will really hurt me” – why? Because they can [...]
Renaissance Art and the Enigmatic Genius of Giorgione
Author: Agostino DominiciJuly 25, 2016
The Royal Academy of Arts has recently put together an excellent exhibition presenting some of the greatest painters of the high Renaissance (c. 1490-1530) in a single show. The main intent of the exhibition was to revisit in particular the enigmatic figure of Giorgione, considered by many to be the founder of Venetian painting of [...]
Gobekli Tepe – A New Look at Ancient Civilisation
Author: Florimond KrinsJune 16, 2016
A German archaeologist called Klaus Schmidt found the ancient site of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey in the early 1990s. It took Schmidt almost two decades of digging to unravel only a small part of the site, which is huge (around 30 times larger than Stonehenge). It is composed of large circles of T-shaped columns, most [...]
Prometheus the Awakener
Author: Natalya PetlevychJune 10, 2016
Busy as we are, it’s not easy to stop to admire the awakening of life in nature, but the growing light seems to be rekindling us too. Ancient myths tell us a story of another awakening that took place a very long time ago – the awakening of the human mind. One courageous, quick-witted and [...]
The Various Faces of the Divine Feminine
Author: Sangeeta IyerMay 26, 2016
O Mother, Thou who art present everywhere, Thou who art the embodiment of Power and Energy, I Bow to Thee! I Bow to Thee! I Bow to Thee! – Invocation to Shakti, the Feminine Principle The universe is a place of balance…Yin and Yang, night and day, summer and winter, masculine and feminine. A balance [...]
Best of the Human Potential through Sports
Author: Kurush DordiMay 26, 2016
The year is 1936. The Olympic Games in Munich are underway and Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of Germany, publicly comments, “The sportive, knightly battle awakens the best human characteristics. It doesn’t separate, but unites, the combatants in understanding and respect. It also helps to connect the countries in the spirit of peace. That’s why the Olympic [...]
Habits and Automatism
Author: Natalia LemaMay 20, 2016
Amongst the many human conditions that characterise us, there is one that in a subtle way permeates who we are and what we do, not only on a physical level but also in terms of emotional and mental traits: habits or repetitive behaviour The very lack of awareness and the fact that we fall easily [...]
Maypole Dancing
Author: Pinar AkhanMay 20, 2016
This May, there will be celebrations across small villages in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Worcestershire and many other places around England, with folk dances, local food, communities coming together, marking the time of spring being established and moving into summer. Most of the May Day celebrations in England have their roots in Celtic traditions. Maypole dancing is [...]
Invisible Egypt
Author: Sabine LeitnerMay 17, 2016
In our culture the word ‘invisible’ is often taken to mean ‘non-existent’. But for the ancient Egyptians, the invisible was the cause of the visible and therefore, in a sense, more important. They realised that the form of a person, what they wear and how they appear is only a reflection of something internal which [...]
Mozart and Freemasonry
Author: Julian ScottMay 13, 2016
Though some people are aware that Mozart was a Freemason and many know that his opera The Magic Flute is a Masonic allegory, it is less well known what Freemasonry is and how central it was to Mozart’s life and work. According to the great Mozartean scholar Alfred Einstein, however, “the consciousness of his membership [...]
Dance and Sacred Stillness
Author: Miha KosirMay 13, 2016
After a long dark night and a very deep sleep a sound like a ray of light ignited a dense inertia. The movement started and there was time and the beginning of the universe. And so the cosmic dance started, moving galaxies, stars, planets and our souls. Shiva Nataraja. Shiva’s dance is life and death, [...]
Could geodesic domes be the homes of the future?
Author: Istvan OrbanMay 13, 2016
They look weird, but cool. Even film-makers are inspired by them: in the famous James Bond movie You only live twice the world leaders gather in a building that has a geodesic dome shape. But what are they like? According to mathematicians, the geodesic dome is a triangulation of a polyhedron to form a close [...]