Showing 70 articles

The Rise and Fall of Mayan Civilization

Author: NA El Salvador

December 9, 2020

The people of Mayan society built large cities, sumptuous temples, and towering pyramids. At its peak, around 900 AD, the population was estimated at about 200 people per Sq km in rural areas, and more than 800 people per sq km in cities (comparable to the modern Los Angeles County). This vibrant “Classic Period” of [...]

Plant Lore – A Brief Insight Into the Mythology and Symbology of Plants

Author: Gareth Kinsella

November 19, 2020

“And just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.” – Humphrey Carpenter You may not know it, but as a child, plant allegories may have left a bigger impact on you than first imagined. Vivid and captivating fables, like conceptual seeds that were sown in your mind through [...]

A Diary of a Struggling Ecologist

Author: Ubai Husein

October 14, 2020

This journey started with my love for food, which prompted me to pursue a degree in Culinary Arts. There, in addition to simply cooking, I was introduced to the various aspects about growing and producing food before it enters the kitchen, including the entire mechanism of factory farming and the resulting destruction caused to the [...]

The Philosophy of Climbing

Author: Eddie Selby

October 1, 2020

“I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart, I love not the plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still. And whatever may still overtake me as fate and experience  a wandering will be therein, and a mountain-climbing: in the end one experienceth only oneself.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche Nietzsche (1844–1900) [...]

Myths of Africa: Deepening our Understanding of Life and Death

Author: Siobhan Farrar

October 1, 2020

Africa is a vast continent with many different peoples and a diverse diaspora whose cultural and spiritual heritage has often been misunderstood and misrepresented through colonial and Western perspectives. The ability to move past assumptions and conditioning always presents a challenge, which requires that we aim to see the essence of human life and experience. [...]

John Keats: Immortal Beauty

Author: Maria Virginia Reina

October 1, 2020

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever. Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness” So begins the epic poem Endymion by John Keats. And in these opening lines, as through his exquisite body of work, he presents to us one of the core themes of his poetry, if not all art: that [...]

Terra Preta, the Black Earth upon which Civilisations were Built

Author: Gareth Kinsella

July 30, 2020

“Agriculture is the noblest of all alchemy; for it turns the earth, and even manure, into gold, conferring upon its cultivator the additional reward of health.” – Hebrew proverb In 1542, a Spanish conquistador named Francisco de Orellana set sail along the Amazon river with a group of his fellow countrymen, looking high and low [...]

Anne Conway: the Ultimate Unity of Spirit and Matter

Author: Siobhan Farrar

July 30, 2020

Seventeenth century England was a time of conflict and rapid change, and it is under such conditions that Countess Anne Conway, one of the few female philosophers of her time, developed her clarity of vision and influence. From her home at Ragley Hall and mostly through letters, Anne Conway was in continuous dialogue with the [...]

Paracelsus: the Five Causes of Disease

Author: Julian Scott

July 30, 2020

As we are at present living in the throes of a worldwide disease, it might be interesting to look at other possible causes than the ones we are familiar with from the news bulletins. This esoteric perspective comes to us from a late medieval/renaissance doctor, alchemist, astrologer and general philanthropist (lover of humanity), known by [...]

Human Symbiosis with Plants

Author: Gareth Kinsella

June 21, 2020

Over the course of time, there has been a progressive coevolution between plants and humans, with domestication possibly playing an integral role in this symbiosis. Some anthropologists propose that, before plant domestication began, carnivorous hunter gatherers had to seek alternative options during droughts, subsequently tapping into the seasonal cycles, and would have started remembering where [...]

The Spring Equinox

Author: Nataliya Petlevych

April 17, 2020

We all are cheered by days full of the renewing energy of spring – a beautiful time when nature awakens, the days become longer and everything living rejoices. There is a special time in the year when the Sun is exactly above the equator, hence the Earth’s axis neither points toward nor away from the [...]

The Curse of the Poisoned Soil

Author: Istvan Orban

April 17, 2020

Soil is the uppermost part of the Earth’s crust, the ground of human civilization. It is one of the most crucial parts of our ecosystem. The home of minerals, nutrients, insects and other animals, our food is produced in the soil. Only half of it contains solid materials, while the other half is filled with [...]