Download or read book Why Oracles Are Silent written by Tom Gelinske and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 1998-12 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the belief in oracles back to Orpheus, the legendary poet-prince, who travelled with Jason, charmed the sirens, and descended into Hades trying to save his Eurydice. Orpheus is one of those figures like Theseus, somewhat historical, fascinating, the subject of 27 operas. Orpheus may be the first Kristos, 'anointed one,' said to be a pioneer, a preacher (of apparently very persuasive talents), who preached a belief in metempsychosis, forbade sacrifice, murder, or the eating of meat - went against the mainline of belief and was said to have been assassinated during a Dionysian ceremony. Orphic writings, while mentioned by Plato and others, are lost, but his ideas have come down to us through a succession of Christos -Zoroaster, Krishna, Gautama, Jesus, Mani, Muhammad - not all of whom found martyrdom to be sure: Zoroaster was said to have been consumed by a flash of lighting, and there is Muhammad, suspended between heaven and earth. The lost poems of Orpheus are said to be oracular in nature and Bakkids and Sybils roamed the byways reciting them. This was before temple building, and on of the earliest of these was the shrine at Delphi. Of course belief in oracles goes hand in hand with a belief in any immaterial and parallel world inhabited by spirits or 'souls' where the future is as clearly perceived as the past. The priest of the shrine - or the shrine itself - provided mortals some access to that other world and its foreknowledge - the ancient Greeks believed. The author wants to demonstrate, not the truth (necessarily) of oracles but the power of belief in them, and in the attempt to show the influence of Orpheus on oracular belief we must also acknowledge his influence on spiritual or "Orphic religions," and how we have traded an entire world of the spirit for something more efficient but far less 'soul-satisfying.' Nostradamus emerges somewhere out of the Middle Ages to show that belief in oracles had not yet died. After all, the spirit was still with us in almost universal belief. The author interprets one of Nostradamus' quatrains that seems to presage the Gulf War and Norman Schwartzkopf.

Download or read book Plutarch s Lives and Writings written by Plutarque and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Plutarch s essays and miscellanies comprising all the works collected under the title of Morals translated from the Greek by several hands corr and rev by William W Goodwin written by Plutarch and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays Miscellanies written by Plutarch and published by . This book was released on 1906 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays and Miscellanies written by Plutarch and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Morals written by Plutarch and published by . This book was released on 1874 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Plutarch s Essays and Miscellanies written by Plutarch and published by . This book was released on 1905 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Plutarch s Miscellanies and Essays written by Plutarch and published by . This book was released on 1889 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Plutarch s Morals written by Plutarch and published by . This book was released on 1874 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Plutarch s Lives written by Plutarch and published by . This book was released on 1874 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book An Answer to Mr de Fontenelle s History of Oracles written by Jean François Baltus and published by . This book was released on 1709 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A History of Roman Literature written by Charles Thomas Cruttwell and published by . This book was released on 1898 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Philosophic Silence and the One in Plotinus written by Nicholas Banner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-29 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plotinus, the greatest philosopher of Late Antiquity, discusses at length a first principle of reality - the One - which, he tells us, cannot be expressed in words or grasped in thought. How and why, then, does Plotinus write about it at all? This book explores this act of writing the unwritable. Seeking to explain what seems to be an insoluble paradox in the very practice of late Platonist writing, it examines not only the philosophical concerns involved, but the cultural and rhetorical aspects of the question. The discussion outlines an ancient practice of ‛philosophical silence' which determined the themes and tropes of public secrecy appropriate to Late Platonist philosophy. Through philosophic silence, public secrecy and silence flow into one another, and the unsaid space of the text becomes an initiatory secret. Understanding this mode of discourse allows us to resolve many apparent contradictions in Plotinus' thought.

Download or read book Work on Myth written by Hans Blumenberg and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1988-03-18 with total page 727 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this rich examination of how we inherit and transform myths, Hans Blumenberg continues his study of the philosophical roots of the modern world. Work on Myth is in five parts. The first two analyze the characteristics of myth and the stages in the West's work on myth, including long discussions of such authors as Freud, Joyce, Cassirer, and Valéry. The latter three parts present a comprehensive account of the history of the Prometheus myth, from Hesiod and Aeschylus to Gide and Kafka. This section includes a detailed analysis of Goethe's lifelong confrontation with the Prometheus myth, which is a unique synthesis of "psychobiography" and history of ideas. Work on Myth is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.

Download or read book The National Quarterly Review written by and published by . This book was released on 1862 with total page 836 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Omens and Oracles written by Matthew Dillon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addressing the role which divination played in ancient Greek society, this volume deals with various forms of prophecy and how each was utilised and for what purpose. Chapters bring together key types of divining, such as from birds, celestial phenomena, the entrails of sacrificed animals and dreams. Oracular centres delivered prophetic pronouncements to enquirers, but in addition, there were written collections of oracles in circulation. Many books were available on how to interpret dreams, the birds and entrails, and divination as a religious phenomenon attracted the attention of many writers. Expert diviners were at the heart of Greek prophecy, whether these were Apollo’s priestesses delivering prose or verse answers to questions put to them by consultants, diviners known as manteis, who interpreted entrails and omens, the chresmologoi, who sang the many oracles circulating orally or in writing, or dream interpreters. Divination was utilised not only to foretell the future but also to ensure that the individual or state employing divination acted in accordance with that divinely prescribed future; it was employed by all and had a crucial role to play in what courses of action both states and individuals undertook. Specific attention is paid in this volume not only to the ancient written evidence, but to that of inscriptions and papyri, with emphasis placed on the iconography of Greek divination.

Download or read book The Journal of Roman Studies written by and published by . This book was released on 1916 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes proceedings of the society, report of the council, lists of members, etc.