May 2, 2024
Thanks to the benevolent faith there are over a hundred letters preserved from my favorite philosopher – Lucius Annaeus Seneca, in which he is mentoring his younger friend Lucilius. In one of those letters (No 27) Seneca mentions Calvisius Sabinus – a rich fellow, who wanted to become a memorable part of the society of [...]April 9, 2023
One night, like most nights, I was reading while lying in bed. It was a book of lectures by Professor Jorge A. Livraga. It was the end of the day, darkness all around, silence…. By the light of the small lamp on the bedside table, my intellectual activity extended into the moments before sleep. Reading, [...]June 27, 2022
“If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.” This startling revelation often attributed to the physicist and Nobel laureate, Albert Einstein (1), although it has been hotly debated (2), opens our eyes to how essential bees are – as, perhaps, is each and every [...]June 27, 2022
Today, we often think of theatre as merely a form of “entertainment” or “fiction”, yet in many ancient traditions such as Greek, Indian, and Egyptian, theatre played a very important role in society. It was considered to be educational, even mystical, with the aim of allowing people to connect to some invisible, intangible principles of [...]April 30, 2017
Even though we are separated by several centuries from the intellectual revolution initiated by Giordano Bruno, it is a revolution that it is still very interesting to join. It starts by increasing our memory, in other words, by knowing how to live. Instead of passing through life like a leaf on the wind, we can [...]June 1, 2016
In most ancient civilizations – like in an important number of faiths – we find the idea of reincarnation, the process that follows physical death. Modern occidental cultures consider death as the opposite of life, and in logical consequence reject death. Death is considered an aim, a disaster, and today most of us are afraid [...]May 22, 2014
Gaia, the Earth, gave birth to the Giants in order to avenge the Titans whom Zeus imprisoned in Tartarus. They are chthonian beings, symbolizing, by their gigantic physical mass and their spiritual poverty, the predominance of forces arising from the Earth. Giants represent magnified commonplaceness and the image of unrestrained physical and brutal instincts. They [...]February 22, 2014
The scarab is the most venerated, the most common and the most familiar of the Egyptian symbols. Its symbolism is twofold: with its folded wings, it represents the disciple, life that has not yet come into existence, that starts its journey trying slowly to unfold its wings until it can flap them quickly. Then, this [...]