Mechthild von Magdeburg (c. 1210 – c. 1290) was one of the many female mystics who found her way to distinguish herself in the religiously dynamic era of the 13th century. It was the century of the mendicant orders, the great Gothic cathedrals and the crusades. The...
Khalil Gibran, a Lebanese-American poet and philosopher, is known for his insightful reflections on various aspects of life, with love being a prominent theme in his work. Born in 1883, Gibran's writing has left a lasting impact, thanks to his ability to distill...
Non-duality is about experiencing reality as it is, one undivided whole. Duality pertains to the mind while reality transcends the mind. Duality is a way of perceiving, and not the actuality of the whole. The truth of the whole is neither one nor two. It is simply...
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? Epicurus (according to Lactantius)...
The stoics are best known for their discipline, wisdom and dedication to virtue. We rarely hear about their thoughts around the topic of love and affection. With that in mind, here are a collection of 10 notable quotes on love, friendship and affection by the greatest...
With Plato, philosophy as we know it, took shape. Born in Athens somewhere around 428 BCE into an aristocratic family, Plato is probably the single most influential person in Western philosophy. Unlike most philosophers of ancient Greece, all of Plato’s writings are...
What is the universe made of? What is the arche? Is it one singular primordial thing or is it many things? Is it water or is it fire? Earth or air? For most of the ancient pre-Socratic philosophers the fundamental reality was made out of one single substance, though...
Our world is a mistake, everything bodily and material is bad and last but not least the god most people worship is evil. That’s the Gnostic worldview in a very compact nutshell. However that isn’t the whole picture of Gnosticism; there is much more to be said about...
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE – 65 ACE), also known as Seneca the Younger, was a Roman statesman, dramatist and Stoic philosopher. He was chiefly known as a philosopher who taught the Stoic art of self-restraint, mainly in order to help man better navigate and cope...
Few have expressed the inexpressible as compellingly as Hermes Trismegistus. But who was he really? Will we ever know? What we do know is that Hermes Trismegistus was/is the alleged and attributed author of the Hermetic Corpus (Hermetica), an influential set of...
We all believe ourselves to be someone in particular. We’re born into a physical body, given a name by our parents, grow and biologically ripen alongside our inevitable psychological conditioning bestowed upon us by the socio-cultural machine that we find ourselves...
There is something meaningful to be said about pain, pleasure and how we as humans relate to these two phenomena. Intrinsically it seems that all animals, us included, strive towards maximizing pleasure while trying to minimize pain. But what are these two things?...
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