Typically, as Mihai has pointed out, the imagination functions to degrade man. It offers him pornography, violence, and all other species of lust: a 24/7 cinema strip of running images. If it’s not doing this, it’s running narcissistic movie clips of nonstop happy endings for the engrossed slave, who lives … Continue reading
Poets of the Reunion
Here is Chesterton: The originality of George MacDonald has also a historical significance, which perhaps can best be estimated by comparing him with his great countryman Carlyle. It is a measure of the very real power and even popularity of Puritanism in Scotland that Carlyle never lost the Puritan mood … Continue reading
Finishing What the Inklings Started
Given the level of interest in Christian circles in the Inklings, as well as the responsive reading of articles on Tolkien or Lewis at this site, it might be helpful to pinpoint what the perennial appeal of the Inklings is, wherein the power lies, and how one might recover and … Continue reading
Putting a Rose Back on the Cross
Cologero has been very generous in allowing many of us to write on Gornahoor. For that reason, I’ve sometimes repaid him by not posting anything, when I was sure I had nothing important or clear to say. I am ending the series on Iamblichus; the reader will have to write … Continue reading
Octad
The Octad is a short chapter. Iamblichus continues his march through numbers noting that all men, without exception, count 1-10. The empiricist says this is because they have 10 fingers, and the Hermeticist says “why do you suppose that is?”. In any case, it is not impossible to conceive … Continue reading
The Road to the true West
We will return to the Number 8 & Iamblichus, very soon. The Inklings are well-known to Christians, and greatly lauded; unfortunately, very few are interested in the more profound portions of any of their work. Gornahoor has already pointed out that CS Lewis ultimately held a reductive view of the … Continue reading
Heaven By Storm on the Number Seven
I have paused, once more, at the Number Seven, for there are seven deadly sins which every mortal must purge themselves from, before the ascent, and there are seven corresponding virtues, four classical ones, and three theological ones, which (no doubt), ingenious readers can correspond in various ways to each … Continue reading
Hebdomad
Seven is called the Virgin, Guardian, Message, Critical Time, Athena, Chance & Acropolis. It is a mean between the second Monad (ie., the Hexad, issuing into material Creation, since Dyad and Triad belong more properly to the One) and the Decad. It is perfect: it is 3 from 4 and … Continue reading