Much of the cultural production of the ancient world, east and west, was based on the idea of reflecting aspects of the divine in human life and thought. Many social structures and institutions were based on this approach. The model for these things was was astronomy and the heavens, and the heavens were conceived of as a moving image of eternity, and eternity was understood to be coterminous with the Divine. Since it moved, it contained life and thought, and repaid the attention of man. W...

When he was only twenty-four years old, James Frazer won a Cambridge fellowship with an essay on the development of Plato's theory of the Forms or Ideas (eidos). In this essay he argued that there was no overarching theory of Being in Plato's mind before he embarked on the writing of his dialogues, and that consequently differences in approach and discussion apparent in his work are the result of the development of his thought. He also argued that the very idea of Being is a barren notion,...

There are many puzzling things about the ancient world, since those who peopled that world lived and thought within quite different models of reality. Why did they practice the sacrifice of animals? Why did they think they could understand the future by examining the entrails and the liver of a ram? What was the logic beneath the practice of magic? Other questions are equally problematic to answer, such as their understanding of religion, which, on close examination, does not closely resem...

This is my second collection of essays on philosophy and ancient history. Like my first collection, 'Understanding Ancient Thought', it expands further on the arguments of 'The Sacred History of Being', which appeared in November 2015. A theme of my work is that abstract philosophical thought was a key component in the development of ancient Divine cult.Many of the essays deal with the question of esoteric knowledge in antiquity, often from slightly different angles. 'The Death of ...

The argument that the discipline of philosophy was not invented by the Greeks, but was in existence elsewhere, and as far back as the middle of the second millennium B.C.E., has been gaining traction over recent years. It is now possible to trace the detail of its presence in the civilizations around the ancient Near East.'The Sacred History of Being' collects some of the key evidence together, and examines the idea of the divine as a philosophical concept in Greece, ancient Assyri...

This book will be of interest to a wide range of readers, from students of Ancient History and early Christianity, to Qabalists and modern magicians. Extensive notes and citations from original sources will make this authoritative work an essential reference for researchers and practitioners for years to come. Includes are appendices for tables of alphabetic symbolism, a list of authors, and a numeric dictionary of Greek words, which represents the largest collection of gematria in print.

Augustine of Hippo, one of the greatest and most influential minds in the history of Christendom, was not only a Bishop and theologian, but the author of arguably the most influential and authoritative 'Grand Unified Theory', in the true sense, in the last two thousand years. Augustine's writings cover not only pastoral and ecclesiastical matters, but wander all over the knowable intellectual universe. Sometimes in large works such as the City of God, and still other times in bits and piec...

A wonderfully enlightening work on the affinities between angels and human beings.Mortimer Adler has always been ahead of his time. In 1982, before the current revival of interest in angels, Dr. Adler published "The Angels and Us," an engaging look at the various images and hierarchies of angels (including guardian angels). Dr. Adler, the bestselling author of "Ten Philosophical Mistakes," "Aristotle for Everybody," and "The Great Ideas," speculates on the existenc...

John Scotus Eriugena was born and raised in Ireland during the early ninth century. Neither monk nor priest but a "holy sage," he carried to France the flower of Celtic Christianity. His homily, The Voice of the Eagle, is a jewel of lyrical mysticism, theology, and cosmology, containing the essence of Celtic Christian wisdom. He meditates on the meaning and purpose of creation as revealed by the Word made flesh, distilling into twenty-three short chapters a uniquely Celtic, non-dualistic fusi...

The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity

Rowan Williams says that David Bentley Hart "can always be relied on to offer a perspective on the Christian faith that is both profound and unexpected." The Hidden and the Manifest, a new collection of this brilliant scholar's work, contains twenty essays by Hart on theology and metaphysics.Spanning Hart's career both topically and over time, these essays cover such subjects as the Orthodox understanding of Eucharistic sacrifice; the metaphysics of Paradise Lost; ...

This book is no less than a guide to the whole of Western philosophy -- the ideas that have undergirded our civilization for two-and-a-half thousand years. Anthony Kenny tells the story of philosophy from ancient Greece through the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment into the modern world. He introduces us to the great thinkers and their ideas, starting with Plato, Aristotle, and the other founders of Western thought. In the second part of the book he takes us through a thousand years of med...