Looking to the Spiritual vertical way, as the Maypole do, gives us an opportunity of discerning an understanding between Non-Virtues and Virtues, developing Spiritual values needed in our times.

We need to be sincere with our selves , to be “upright” strictly honourable and honest, as the symbol of the Maypole is. Together we can initiate and erect a maypole as various European folk festivals do, in respect of the safely coming of Spring. But as many Folklores in Europe did, to keep it more permantly, we can plant a Lime Tree in the center of the village of on squares in the city, to keep the remenbering of “uprightness”,of sincerity in our mind, in our heart and in our allday lives. In this way,as in many folklores of Europe, they recognize their dependance to Nature and their submission to something Higher than themselves. And happy they danced under the Lime Tree on important opportunities. Man has always be in need of a symbol, but certainly a symbol for communality and fraternity: The Lime Tree of Wisdom – Forum for Ethics, Virtues and Uprightness.

Why Aren’t the Systems Changing? – Charles Eisenstein

“I can’t Breathe” is the expression of the Crisis of the modern world.

“I can’t breathe“ is sure the slogan associated with the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. The phrase is derived from the words of Eric Garner and George Floyd, two African-American men who died of asphyxiation during their arrests in 2014 and 2020, respectively, as a result of excessive force by primarily white police officers. The phrase is used in protest against police brutality in the United States.

But this protest, this Cry show us the real problem of the Modern man:

Modern man is a human without Soul, without the “Living Breath”.

The protest is the expression of his deep spiritual Crisis.

Modern man suffocates and cries: “i can’t breathe” , because a human without “the living Breath” is always dying. It is his only certainty in life, man shall once die and all traditions in the world teach us to take care of our Soul, our “Living Breath”, always in our daily life, but sure at the moment when we are dying. Modern man is the only one of all the traditions of the world who dares to think that he is right to live without his soul and without his “Living Breath”. What a Vanity! But remember Vanity is the quality of being vain, something that is vain, it is always empty, or valueless.

The Art of Dying Well according to Erasmus of Rotterdam and Teresa of Ávila

Contemporary conversations about death and dying are lost and unsatisfying on many levels. This phenomenon subsists not only in fields like bioethics, but also in religion and spirituality. Modern culture is preoccupied with seeking ways to live a longer, youthful life, ignoring the inevitable forthcoming of death. One period during which the topic of death and dying was reflected upon by the common Christian was between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries, during which a specific genre of literature was formed: ars moriendi. This genre attempted to provide intellectual, cultural and religious answers as to how death should be understood and ritualized. Two spiritual writers who contributed to the understanding of ars moriendi are Desiderius Erasmus and Teresa of Ávila. What unites these figures of the Catholic tradition is their attempt to show that preparation for death is a lifelong process of cultivating appropriate virtues. Read hereThe Art of Dying Well according to Erasmus of Rotterdam and Teresa of Avila

As the Corona virus is taking a toll on all of us and is attacking our lungs, giving us serious problems of breathing, especially those least able to retreat into their homes until the worst is over.

But, beyond the health and humanitarian measures urgently needed for those affected, it also offers a chance to right historical wrongs – the abuse of our earthly home and of marginalised societies, the very people who will suffer most from this pandemic. This viral outbreak is a sign that by going too far in exploiting the rest of nature, the dominant globalising culture has undone the planet’s capacity to sustain life and livelihoods. The unleashing of micro-organisms from their animal hosts means that they must latch on to other bodies for their own survival. Humans are a part of nature – and everything is connected to everything else.

Ego rules the world: Anti-“God”, Anti-“Humanity”, Anti-“Nature

The story of the Tower of Babel (like that in The Suicide of Saul, Bruegel’s only other painting with an Old Testament subject) was interpreted as an example of pride punished, and that is no doubt what Bruegel intended his painting to illustrate. Moreover, the hectic activity of the engineers, masons and workmen points to a second moral: the futility of much human endeavour. Nimrod’s doomed building was used to illustrate this meaning in Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools. Pieter Bruegel’s Tower of Babel , originally displayed in the suburban villa of Antwerp entrepreneur Niclaes Jonghelinck as an image that fostered learned dinner conversation (convivium) about the well-being of the city. Looking at various sources, the author analyzes how the theme of the painting, a story of miscommunication and disorder, resonated with the challenges faced by the metropolis. Antwerp’s rapid growth resulted in the creation of a society characterized by extraordinary pluralism but with weakened social bonds. Convivium was one of the strategies developed to overcome differences among the citizens and avoid dystrophy of the community. Read more Here

More about the tower of Babel here

The Ascent of Humanity:

Charles Eisenstein explores the history and potential future of civilization, tracing the converging crises of our age to the illusion of the separate self. In this limited hardcover edition of Eisenstein’s landmark book, he argues that our disconnection from one another and the natural world has mislaid the foundations of science, religion, money, technology, economics, medicine, and education as we know them. It has fired our near-pathological pursuit of technological Utopias even as we push ourselves and our planet to the brink of collapse.

Fortunately, an Age of Reunion is emerging out of the birth pangs of an earth in crisis. Our journey of separation hasn’t been a terrible mistake but an evolutionary process and an adventure in self-discovery. Even in our darkest hour, Eisenstein sees the possibility of a more beautiful world–not through the extension of millennia-old methods of management and control but by fundamentally reimagining ourselves and our systems. We must shift away from our Babelian efforts to build ever-higher towers to heaven and instead turn out attention to creating a new kind of civilization–one designed for beauty rather than height. Breathtaking in its scope and intelligence, The Ascent of Humanity is a landmark book showing what it truly means to be human. Read here online

Our civilization is in decay. Because we have blown-up our ego. Cosmic Balance has been disturbed. The painting “Dulle Griet”of the great painter Bruegel express very clearly the Crisis of Modern man: Modern Man with all his “economical grow- energy” and scientifical research based on his rebellion against his Soul, is landed in an apocalyptic “theather” prophesying the complete destruction of the world.

Dulle Griet is the model of modern man’s Rebellion against his soul and Anger against it. How can Dulle Griet find a way to calm her anger?

She can looks in the mirror and see herself,making more “selfies”, so seeing more anger as the portait of vanity of Hans Memling shows us. The lady see only more vanity The message of Memling is in his Triptych of Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation focuses on the idea of “Memento mori,” a Latin phrase that translates to “Remember your mortality.” Memling’s triptych shockingly contrasts the beauty, luxury and vanity of the mortal earth with images of death and hell. In the time of Breughel and in our times the message is that Vanity is not the solution. see: Nothing Good without Pain: Hans Memling”s earthly Vanity and Divine Salation

Don’t change the world in hopes of changing yourself,

change yourself so the world changes because of you.

For more info see: The Spiritual Land of Peace of the “Holy Refugees”

Life out of Balance: the Qatsi trilogy

In his Qatsy trilogy film director Reggio, use the world qatsi from the Hopi language, in which the word qatsi translates to “life.” see Life out of Balance: the Qatsi trilogy

POWAQQATSI’s overall focus is on natives of the Third World — the emerging, land-based cultures of Asia, India, Africa, the Middle East and South America — and how they express themselves through work and traditions. What it has to say about these cultures is an eyeful and then some, sculpted to allow for varied interpretations.The title POWAQQATSI is a Hopi Indian conjunctive — the word Powaqa, I ( Ego),which refers to a negative sorcerer who lives at the expense of others, and Qatsi –i.e., life.

where KOYAANISQATSI dealt with the imbalance between nature and modern society, POWAQQATSI is a celebration of the human-scale endeavor the craftsmanship, spiritual worship, labor and creativity that defines a particular culture. It’s also a celebration of rareness — the delicate beauty in the eyes of an Indian child, the richness of a tapestry woven in Kathmandu — and yet an observation of how these societies move to a universal drumbeat.

2.Powwaqatsi (1988) from Stephen Galleher on Vimeo.

Seek Wisdom:

Plato’s words are as relevant now as they were during his time. He is still one of the world’s greatest teachers.

Philosopher Plato discusses five types of regimes (Republic, Book VIII). They are Aristocracy, Timocracy, Oligarchy, Democracy, and Tyranny. Plato also assigns a man to each of these regimes to illustrate what they stand for. The tyrannical man would represent Tyranny, for example. These five regimes progressively degenerate starting with Aristocracy at the top and Tyranny at the bottom

Democracy:

Oligarchy then degenerates into a democracy where freedom is the supreme good but freedom is also slavery. In democracy, the lower class grows bigger and bigger. The poor become the winners. People are free to do what they want and live how they want. People can even break the law if they so choose. This appears to be very similar to anarchy.

Plato uses the “democratic man” to represent democracy. The democratic man is the son of the oligarchic man. Unlike his father, the democratic man is consumed with unnecessary desires. Plato describes necessary desires as desires that we have out of instinct or desires that we have to survive. Unnecessary desires are desires we can teach ourselves to resist such as the desire for riches. The democratic man takes great interest in all the things he can buy with his money. Plato believes that the democratic man is more concerned with his money over how he can help the people. He does whatever he wants when ever he wants to do it. His life has no order or priority. So can a happy few ( 1% of the world population) try to dictate the rest of the human and using them as robotic slaves and wanting them to live without a soul.

Vandana Shiva On the Real Cause of World Hunger

Oneness vs. The 1%: #VandanaShiva at the United Nations Office at Geneva.

Based on economic growth, financial hegemony of the “happy few”” and abuse or rape of cheapest labor worker in Low-cost country or homeland, the democracy of Modern man shall never succeed to recover his soul with fake “sincere political change” or with fake “concern”.

It is and always shall be a dead End…

Democracy has to be based on Spiritual values and Virtues

Spiritual Rescue is to be find in the African Tradition as Ubuntu: Ubuntu (Zulu pronunciation: [ùɓúntʼù])^[1] is a Nguni Bantu term meaning “humanity.” It is often translated as “I am because we are,” or “humanity towards others,” or in Xhosa, “umntu ngumntu ngabantu” but is often used in a more philosophical sense to mean “the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity.

Traditional education system, still in use in our time by the Xhosa, where Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born to the Thembu royal family in Mvezo can help to revover our humanity as the Rites of passage used fort he youth

In his remarkable book, Clyde Ford restores to us the lost treasure of African mythology, bringing to life the ancient tales and showing why they matter so much to us today.

African myths convey the perennial wisdom of humanity: the creation of the world, the hero’s journey, our relationship with nature, death, and resurrection. From the Ashanti comes the moving account of the grief-stricken Kwasi Benefo’s journey to the underworld to seek his beloved wives. From Uganda we learn of the legendary Kintu, who won the love of a goddess and created a nation from a handful of isolated clans. The Congo’s epic hero Mwindo is the sacred warrior who shows us the path each person must travel to discover his true destiny.These and other important African myths show us the history of African Americans in a new light–as a hero’s journey, a courageous passage to a hard-won victory. The Hero with an African Face enriches us all by restoring this vital tradition to the world. Here free downoad.

Hell Is for White People A painting from 1515 turns a mirror on its viewers

Artist unknown (Cristovão de Figueiredo?), Hell, Museu da Arte Antiga, Lisbon, ca. 1515. Oil on oak, 119 x 217.5 cm.

In his post Alexander Nagel explains:Our painting of hell is big, much bigger than you might expect from looking at a photo. It doesn’t fit clearly into any category of picture known at the time. It is an independent panel, not a scene in a fresco cycle that gains meaning from the larger program. It’s not an altarpiece, nor is it a typical private devotional image, which would have been smaller. Its oblong shape suggests it was not part of a larger structure, as in triptychs by Bosch and others, where hell occupies one compartment, one part of a larger statement about human life and the world. This is a big stand-alone painting of a subject that normally didn’t stand alone. The painting lowers you right down to the sub-basement of hell and lets you look. The looking begins as voyeuristic fascination and then sinks into self-reflection. Hell Is for White People

Wolfgang Smith | We Are Born for Wisdom

What emerges from the considerations of Physics and Vertical Causation is an incomparably enlarged worldview: a cosmos vast enough to encompass not only all of modern science — from the distant stars to subatomic particles — but also the quintessential patrimony of antiquity, with its higher spheres inhabited by allegedly “mythical” beings. The discovery of vertical causality has reopened the door to the wisdom of ancient cosmologies, which, far from being “prescientific superstitions,” refer to truths higher than those discoverable by way of physics. Wolfgang Smith has shown that a radical expansion of our Weltanschauung is not only scientifically admissible, but is in fact absolutely necessary for a proper understanding of physics. see The-Wisdom-of-Ancient-Cosmology-Contemporary-Science-in-Light-of-Tradition

Long before face masks, Islamic healers tried to ward off disease with their version of PPE (“personal protective equipment”)

Just as many now don face masks and do breathing exercises to protect against COVID-19 – despite debate around the science behind such practices – so too did the Islamic world turn to protective devices and rituals in premodern times of trouble. From the 11th century until around the 19th century, Muslim cultures witnessed the use of magic bowls, healing necklaces and other objects in hopes of warding off drought, famine, floods and even epidemic diseases. Read more here

A metal magico-medicinal bowl, left, and a ceramic ablutions basic inscribed with the word ‘taharat,’ meaning purity.

Taweez of Naqshandi Tariqat

The spiritual potential of quarantine

Being alone in quarantine, devoid of friends, family, co-workers and community, a person is truly lonely. Talking on the phone, messaging and even video chatting is no substitute for being in the physical presence of others. There is no replacement for the hug, kiss or even the handshake. Just having others around gives a person a sense of security and comfort. Quarantine forces a painful loneliness.

Yet the loneliness of companionship can also create an opportunity. The loneliness of others creates the solitude of the person with God. All alone, a person is able to commune with God as never before. God is eternally listening to our voices, and God awaits our prayers.

The silence of prayer/meditation provides a person the opportunity to connect to God on the deepest of levels. Without the pressures of work, a schedule or family chores, a person can turn to God, pour their heart out and deepen their relationship with the Creator. The gaping hole of spirituality left by the absence of ritual can be filled with a more unique connection to God.

Quarantine is a challenge previously unthought of by our Sages. It is lonely and depressing. Those feelings are natural and valid. All of us in quarantine are feeling them. But taken in the right way, it can provide time and opportunity to connect with God, rethink values and recommit to the priorities that are important to us. It means to become a “Refugee”, to recover our soul and to take refuge in the “Living Breath” and take care of it.

Don’t change the world in hopes of changing yourself,

change yourself so the world changes because of you.

The Soul That Does not Live in God is not Alive

Spring makes red and white flowers appear on the trees,

But the spring that is the origin of colors is colorless.

Understand what I have said, and give up all talk;

Run to the Origin without color and unite yourself to it.

Annihilate yourself before the One Existence

So that thousands of worlds leap out of you

And your pure existence flames out of itself

And goes on and on birthing different forms.

Of course, none of these forms will last.

Happy is the one who knows this mystery!

Happy is he who gives his life to know this!

He leaves this house for another far more radiant.

You cannot understand this mystery through reason;

The Way to Knowledge winds through suffering and torment.

If you do not feel pain, you do not look for healing.

The soul that does not live in God is not alive.

She seems like a soul, but does not deserve the name:

She has not been made alive by the Beloved.

The soul is given life by the four-elements

Like a lamp that burns through the night:

The light is from oil and wick, it is not eternal.

While the oil exists, the lamp burns, but then goes out.

The one made alive by God will never die.

He lives through God and not through gold or bread.

God is the Light, the Eternal Source of Lights.

The Light is causeless, as is His fiery radiance.

Like gold, God’s value comes from His pure, perfect essence.

Sultan Valad

To Become a “Refugee” means to make a migration to Sincerity or to the“uprightness” of Love.

What the Emigration to Sincerity demands of us? see To Become a “Refugee”: Emigration to Sincerity or “uprightness” of Love

and Migration to the Spiritual Land of Peace -Exercise.

Educating Desire: Conversion and Ascent in Dante’s Purgatorio

by Paul A. Camacho

In Cantos 17 and 18 of the Purgatorio, Dante’s Virgil lays out a theory of sin, freedom, and moral motivation based on a philosophical anthropology of loving-desire. As the commentary tradition has long recognized, because Dante placed Virgil’s discourse on love at the heart of the Commedia, the poet invites his readers to use love as a hermeneutic key to the text as a whole. When we contextualize Virgil’s discourse within the broader intention of the poem—to move its readers from disordered love to an ordered love of ultimate things—then we ﬁnd in these central cantos not just a key to the structure and movement of the poem ,but also a key to understanding Dante’s pedagogical aim. With his Commedia, Dante invites us to perform the interior transformation which the poem dramatizes in verse and symbol. He does so by awakening in his readers not only a desire for the beauty of his poetic creation, but also a desire for the beauty of the love described therein. In this way, the poem presents a pedagogy of love, in which the reader participates in the very experience of desire and delight enacted in the text. In this article, I oﬀer an analysis of Virgil’s discourse on love in the Purgatorio, arguing for an explicit and necessary connection between loving-desire and true education. I demonstrate that what informs Dante’s pedagogy of love is the notion of love as ascent, a notion we ﬁnd articulated especially in the Christian Platonism of Augustine. Finally, I conclude by oﬀering a number of ﬁgures, passages, and themes from across the Commedia that provide fruitful material for teachers engaged in the task of educating desire. Read more here

Proclaiming St George’Day ( 23rd of April): A Day of “uprightness”, and a day of remembering, sharing and of coming together, organizing “Convivium” or Forum for Ethics, Honesty and “Uprightness” or Convivium for Sincerity

Asking St George his Intercession, protection and patronage for the project:

The saint was then beheaded on April 23, 303. And his feast day is still celebrated all over the world! 1717 years later, in the Year 2020 we ask to pray :

The Prayer to Saint George directly refers to the courage it took for the saint to confess his Belief before opposing authority:

Prayers of Intercession to Saint George:

Faithful servant of God and invincible martyr, Saint George; favored by God with the gift of faith, and inflamed with an ardent love of Christ, thou didst fight valiantly against the dragon of pride, falsehood, and deceit.

Neither pain nor torture, sword nor death could part thee from the love of Christ. I fervently implore thee for the sake of this love to help me by thy intercession to overcome the temptations that surround me, and to bear bravely the trials that oppress me, so that I may patiently carry the cross which is placed upon me; and let neither distress nor difficulties separate me from the love of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Valiant champion of the Faith, assist me in the combat against evil, that I may win the crown promised to them that persevere unto the end.

O God! You are the Bestower of favours. No one has favour over You. O Possessor of Majesty and Nobility, You are the One Who constantly bestows His bounties. There is no deity other thanYou. You are the One who grants safety and refuge to those that seek it and to those in fear. We ask You to remove all tribulations, those that we know and those that we do not know and those about which You know more, for truly You are the Most Mighty, the Most Generous. ( From the Prayer on Bara’a Night )

St George and Al kidhr

Note on Al khidr: His original name seems to have been al-Khadir (“the green one”), which over time in many places became al-Khidr or Khidr or Hizr. In the modern Middle East the spelling is Khodor is often used as a person’s name. We shall use the shortened form, Khidr.

look here Celebrations of St George’s Say all over the world

and the Patronages of Saint George all over the world

At first sight there seems to be little connection between Elijah, George and Khidr, apart from the fact that in the Middle East they are frequently associated with the same place by different religious traditions. Is it then a simple case of overlapping traditions, Jewish, Christian and Muslim, all of whom focus on the Holy Land as part of their own heritage and take Abraham as their forefather?

Certainly there is a view which suggests that Khidr is to Muslims what Elijah is to Jews, in respect of them both acting as initiator to the true believer, and which in itself is testimony to attempts to find common ground between the three traditions.

The sacred sites associated with Elijah, George and Khidr over centuries seem to have accumulated worship in various forms, so that one sits quite literally on top of or next to another. The sites often exhibit similar attributes: for instance, the presence of water and greenness, suggesting fertility in a barren land; or perhaps a cave, which represents a meeting-place of two worlds, the manifest and the hidden (and on occasion both elements are present, as at Banyas).

Then there is the ancient theme of the spiritual side of man being dominant over the material, as suggested in the stories by the holy rider on a chariot or horse (or in the case of Khidr, a fish).

This is a clear picture of the divinised human, who comes to deliver mankind:

Elijah is zealous for God and the destroyer of false prophets,

while St George is the conqueror of animality in the form of the dragon;

Khidr’s role is rather less vividly martial – he brings real self-knowledge, delivering the individual from the false and base nature of the soul. read more here

Look here Celebrations of St George’s Say all over the world

and the Patronages of Saint George all over the world

The Lime Tree of Wisdom can become again a beautiful symbol of Fraternity, and also draw strength together to face the future and a place of remembering, sharing and of coming together. Than Maybe, this message from the Past can help us to be able to rediscover the meaning of the Eternal Spring. Or as Hildegard of Bingen call it The Greenness ( Viriditas) of our soul.

The Lime Tree of Wisdom will realize a meeting place for everybody, and for all the cultures, traditions and religions. It will be functioning as a bridge between cultures, spiritual knowledge, folklores, art and wisdom from our interconnected world, organizing “Convivium” or Forum for “Uprightness” or Convivium for Sincerity.

But the project is also the intention to plan the Lime Tree of Wisdom in our heart using pollarding and pruning to make our tree stronger, with profound roots of “uprightness”, sincerity, love and wisdom.

Here some propositions and reasearchs:

To See Yourself within It: Bruegel’s Festival of Fools by Todd Marlin Richardson

Bruegel’s Festival of Fools

The topics of blindness and self-awareness I discussed in relation to the
Peasant and Nest Robber bring me to the focus of my fourth and final chapter,
Bruegel’s Festival of Fools . In addition, the practices of making and viewing
works of art I have described for all of Bruegel’s later peasant paintings are also
helpful in thinking about this particular design. Nadine Orenstein argues for a late
dating of the print, after the now lost drawing by Bruegel, based on the words Aux
quatre Vents inscribed at the bottom center. This is the form of the publisher’s address
used by the widow of the print’s publisher, Hieronymus Cock, following his death in
1570. Orenstein speculates the drawing was completed in the last years of Bruegel’s
life, during the same time he painted the peasant panels, and the print produced after
his death.

Although fairly subtle, the composition of the Festival of Fools stages a
procession similar to a wagon play. (Wagon plays were processional dramas that took place during Ommegangen (devotional processions) in the 1550s and 1560s. Rhetoricians conceived of wagon plays as didactic episodes that could morally
edify and educate their audience. The plays utilized overt metaphors and personifications to create allegorical productions that focused on collective civic identity.

The crowd of lively characters enters from the left, beneath the trellised pergolas, and processes to the right, before dancing hand-in-hand and meandering their way into the background where the musicians provide music. The right side of the building through which they process is a gallery for viewing. On the far left side, two men support a makeshift carriage, made just visible by the handle they carry, which bears a bald-headed fool above their shoulders holding a ball before his gaze.

At first sight, the collection of figures seems to be rather chaotically constructed; they engage in acrobatic manoeuvres, heads swivelled awkwardly on bodies and bodies piled on top of one another. In the foreground, multiple fools play a bowling game, while in the background people on a platform strum or bang various instruments. The figures are in full costume with hood and bells; they dance, exhibit bawdy gestures and participate in proverbial activities, examples of which I will discuss shortly. All of this is mentioned in the accompanying text below the image.

The text reads, in translation, “You sottebollen (numbskulls), who are
plagued with foolishness, / Come to the green if you want to go bowling, / Although one has lost his honor and another his money, / The world values the greatest sottebollen. // Sottebollen are found in all nations, / Even if they do not wear a fool’s cap on their heads. / They have such grace in dancing that their foolish heads spin like tops. // The filthiest sottebollen shit everything away, / Then there are those who take others by the nose. / Some sell trumpets and the others spectacles / With which they deceive many nitwits. // Yet there are sottebollen who behave themselves wisely, / And taste the true sense of ‘tSottebollen (numbskulling) / Because they [who] enjoy folly in
themselves / Shall best hit the pin with their sottebollen.” Read more

“The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible”

The world outside of ourselves isn’t truly outside.” – Charles Eisenstein In this Speakeasy talk from Wanderlust Aspen-Snowmass, author and speaker Charles Eisenstein discusses his latest novel The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible, which delves into the possibilities of human translational power. It may not be something we consciously realize, but the small choices we make each day affect the bigger picture of our lives. Each choice we make connects us to each other. Eisenstein explores what he calls the principle of interconnectedness, also known as interbeing, which states that as we become more confident in ourselves and our choices, our positivity can have a wholesome impact on the world. “Humility is not something that we can strive for, it’s simply the result of seeing accurately, seeing other people as mirrors of ourselves.” – Charles Eisenstein As someone who became dissatisfied with life in an office, Eisenstein set out at young age to explore the world. He studied many cultures and belief systems and immersed himself with open eyes to different ways of living. His curiosity and intellect drove him to ask the big questions of human purpose and seek answers within himself and through various teachers. He continues on his path of exploration and hopes that through his work and lectures he can spread a message of positivity, humility, and confidence and inspire change for the path ahead. To learn more about Charles Eisenstein visit http://charleseisenstein.net.

Read here: The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

-The Dance Lime Tree project of Pierre ALBUISSON

The Dance Lime Tree project of Pierre ALBUISSON is aimed at city neighbourhoods, villages, and local societies. And there are also another projects in Europe

Its goal is to revitalise European villages with Dance Lime Tree events and the eight annual Nature Festivals, resulting in a renewed role at the community centre for the Tree. For years and centuries to come, the Tree will be part of the village, facilitating the transmission of traditions and cultural heritage. see project here

-Traditionalism and Folklore

Among the Traditionalists, Ananda Coomaraswamy and René Guénon touched upon folklore, but never made an extensive study of it. And Martin Lings, in the anthology Sword of Gnosis, did a metaphysical exegesis of a Lithuanian folk song. That’s about the extent of the Traditionalist treatment of folklore, though Rama Coomaraswamy told me that his father Ananda had made a collection of folk songs with a view toward a metaphysical treatment of them, but never finished the project. Among Sophia Perennis titles, Cinderella’s Gold Slipper: Spiritual Symbolism in the Grimms’ Tales by Samuel Fohr deals with this neglected area, as does Tales of Nasrudin: Keys to Fulfillment by Ali Jamnia, as well as Mining, Metalurgy and the Meaning of Life: A Book of Stories by Roger Sworder.

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy had this to say about the metaphysical dimension of folklore:

[By] “folklore” we mean that whole and consistent body of culture which has been handed down, not in books but by word of mouth and in practice, from time beyond the reach of historical research, in the form of legends, fairy tales, ballads, games, toys,crafts, medicine, agriculture, and other rites, and forms of organization, especially those we call tribal.

This is a cultural complex independent of national and even racial boundaries, and of remarkable similarity throughout the world. . . . The content of folklore is metaphysical.

Our failure to recognize this is primarily due to our own abysmal ignorance of metaphysics and of doctrines are received by the people and transmitted by them.

In its popular form, a given doctrine may not always have been understood, but so long as the formula is faithfully transmitted it remains understandable;

“superstitions,” for the most part, are no mere delusions, but formulae of which the meaning has been forgotten. . . . We are dealing with the relics of an ancient folk metaphysics its technical terms. . . . Folklore ideas are the form in which metaphysical wisdom, as valid now as it ever was. . . . We shall only be able to understand the astounding uniformity of the folklore motifs all over the world, and the devoted care that has everywhere been taken to ensure their correct transmission, if we approach these mysteries (for they are nothing less) in the spirit in which they have been transmitted (“from the Stone Age until now”) with the confidence of little children, indeed, but not the childish self-confidence of those who hold that wisdom was born with themselves.

The true folklorist must be not so much a psychologist as a theologian and metaphysician, if he is to “understand his material”. . . . Nor can anything be called a science of folklore, but only a collection of data, that considers only the formulae and not their doctrine. . . .

René Guénon, who died in 1951, also dealt with the folklore as the transmission of the Primordial Tradition, in his book Symbols of the Sacred Science:

The very conception of folklore, in the generally accepted sense of the term, is based on an idea that is radically false, the idea that there are “popular creations” spontaneously created by the mass of the people….As has been rightly said [by Luc Benoist], “the profound interest of all so-called popular traditions lies in the fact that they are not popular in origin”; and we will add that where, as is almost always the case, there is a question of elements that are traditional in the true sense of the word, however deformed, diminished and fragmentary they may be sometimes, and of things that have a real symbolic value, their origin is not even human, let alone popular.

What may be popular is solely the fact of “survival,” when these elements belong to vanished traditional forms…. The people preserve, without understanding them, the relics of former traditions which go back sometimes to a past too remote to be dated, so that it has to be relegated to the obscure domain of the “prehistoric”; they thereby fulfill the function of a more or less subconscious collective memory, the contents of which have clearly come from elsewhere.

What may seem most surprising is that the things so preserved are found to contain, above all, abundant information of an esoteric order, which is, in its essence, precisely what is least popular, and this fact suggests in itself an explanation, which may be summed up as follows: When a traditional form is on the point of becoming extinct, its last representatives may very well deliberately entrust to this aforesaid collective memory the things that otherwise would be lost beyond recall; that is in fact the sole means of saving what can in a certain measure be saved.

At the same time, that lack of understanding that is one of the natural characteristics of the masses is a sure enough guarantee that what is esoteric will be nonetheless undivulged, remaining merely as a sort of witness of the past for such as, in later times, shall be capable of understanding It. Read more here

Lime tree of Wisdom and the Cross

The Patriarchal cross (☨) is a variant of the Christian cross, the religious symbol of Christianity. Similar to the familiar Latin cross, the patriarchal cross possesses a smaller crossbar placed above the main one so that both crossbars are near the top. Sometimes the patriarchal cross has a short, slanted crosspiece near its foot (Russian Orthodox cross). This slanted, lower crosspiece often appears in Byzantine Greek and Eastern European iconography, as well as in other Eastern Orthodox churches^[^{citation needed}^].

The top beam represents the plaque bearing the inscription “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” (often abbreviated in the Latinate “INRI“, and in the Greek as “INBI“). A popular view is that the slanted bottom beam is a foot rest, however there is no evidence of foot rests ever being used during crucifixion, and it has a deeper meaning. The bottom beam may represent a balance of justice. Some sources suggest that, as one of the thieves being crucified with Jesus repented of his sin and believed in Jesus as the Messiah and was thus with Christ in Paradise, the other thief rejected and mocked Jesus and therefore descended into Hades.

Many symbolic interpretations of the double cross have been put forth. One of them says that the first horizontal line symbolized the secular power and the other horizontal line the ecclesiastic power of Byzantine emperors.^[^{citation needed}^] Also, that the first cross bar represents the death and the second cross the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In Holland:

The Virgin Mary and the Lime Tree

The Virgin Mary is often represented asThe woman clothed with the sun, and with the moon under her feet in Chapter 12 of Revelation. As Bruegel and the Family of Love see it: She is the love of God.
We find her often associated with the Lime tree.The lime tree was traditionally a sacred and magical tree. Lime trees were often found at three-way junctions. Mostly these places were old cult places that later became Christianized and in which a little chapel was hung.In other places one finds the lime as a court tree, the tree under which the Vierschaar sat.

A Vierschaar is a historical term for a tribunal in the Netherlands. Before the separation of lawmaking, law enforcement, and justice duties, the government of every town was administered by a senate (called a Wethouderschap) formed of two, three, or sometimes four burgomasters, and a certain number of sheriffs (called Schepenen), so that the number of sitting judges was generally seven. The term Vierschaar means literally “foursquare”, so called from the four-square dimensions of the benches in use by the sitting judges. The four benches for the judges were placed in a square with the defendant in the middle. This area was roped off and the term vierschaar refers to the ropes.The Dutch expression “vierchaar spannen” refers to the tightening or raising of these ropes before the proceedings could begin. (Accompanied by the question whether the sun is high enough, ‘hoog genoeg op de dag‘, since the practice stems from the Middle Ages when these trials were held outdoors.) Most towns had the Vierschaar privilege to hear their own disputes, and the meeting room used for this was usually located in the town hall. Many historic town halls still have such a room, usually decorated with scenes from the Judgment of Solomon.Later it has been tranmsformed in great and impressive buildings as The Palace of the Dam in Amsterdam

The lime tree was the symbol of civil liberty and often we see lime trees as liberty trees in the village centers.We know from the annals that the dukes of Brabant took their oath under a lime tree. The lime leaf represents truth and sincerity and many countries have a linden tree or linden leaf in their shield.This is the case, for example, in the Czech Republic. In former Prussia, the lime blossom was the national flower. Linden was also known as a witch tree. In the popular belief, witches, nymphs and ghosts hid in the bark and in the armpits. It was considered dangerous to go past old lime trees during the night, because then one could be ridden by a witch.That is why they used to hang chapels and they became “chapel trees” that the evil powers no longer had any control over. In chapel trees, deceived girls came knocking nails while under the effigy of the Blessed Virgin pampering and blaming their ex-lovers. This form of fetishism is called “nailing”.

As the oak is the symbol of strength, courage and fame, the linden symbolizes desire, love and tenderness. It is therefore not difficult to understand that the linden tree is the Mary tree par excellence and so many statues of Mary and Mary shrines are situated in or in the vicinity of a linden tree.

It is not just that this chapel is called “Our Lady under the Linden”. The linden is a sacred tree associated with the goddess. In the Dutch language, linden is female. Strangely enough, this is also the only tree that is female with us. Anyway, in Norse mythology, the linden tree was dedicated to the goddess Freya (there is a reason that there is a linden tree on the Kattenberg in Heiloo) and among the Slavic peoples to the love goddess Krasogani. In legends and fairy tales, the lime tree is considered to be the home of the white or wise woman. Romantic poets felt that this tree once had a religious significance. Often a lime tree stood near a well in the middle of a village. It was once the center of folk festivals. Many madonna statues are made of the soft lime wood. Sometimes Mary figurines are attached to a lime tree. So the linden is connected to Mary, our Lady, with the Goddess.

This custom is still alive as we see in Uden ( the Netherlands)

“Onze Lieve Vrouw ter Linde” –Our Dear Lady under the Linden in Uden ( the Netherlands)

“Our Lady of the Linden returns to its roots in Uden. Next month, a lime tree will be planted near the Crosier Chapel in Uden, depicting Mother Mary. Just like before”. May 2019

With the tree and the statue, the chapel community honors the basis of the Maria worship in Uden. This is exactly where the centuries-long worship of Mother Mary in Uden started. As early as the thirteenth century, a Virgin’s chapel stood here. Initially no more than a statue in or near a lime tree – hence the lime tree – but documents from 1358 show that there is already an Osse pastor who keeps this chapel.
Pilgrimage:
The worship of Mary really takes off when the Kruisheren are driven from Den Bosch and in 1648 decide to build a monastery in Uden. Initially this is on the Veghelsedijk, the monastery where the Birgittinesses still live, later they move to what is now the Kruisheren chapel and the monastery.Centuries ago people from all over the country go on a pilgrimage to Uden:

People from all over the country, as far as Amsterdam, go on a pilgrimage to Uden. In its heyday, there are seventy processions per year, in 1786 30.000 pilgrims are given Holy Communion. The fact that at least nine miracles are attributed to OL Vrouw ter Linde will certainly have contributed to this. The annual holiday of OL Vrouw ter Linde is on October 23.The original statue of OL Vrouw ter Linde is housed at the Museum of Religious Art in Uden for security reasons. That is the famous wooden, gold-colored statue from circa 1520. The museum also shows all kinds of gifts that pilgrims have given to Mary over the centuries. The stone statue of OL Vrouw ter Linde, dating from 1400-1500, is located in the vault of the Heritage Center of Dutch Monastic Life in Sint Agatha.

With the tree and the statue, the chapel community honors the basis of the Maria worship in Uden. This is exactly where the centuries-long worship of Mother Mary in Uden started. As early as the thirteenth century, a Virgin’s chapel stood here.In the time of Bruegel the Lime tree was branding:In 2019 the Lime Tree and The Virgin Mary as Love of God come again to live!Prior to the blessing, there was a celebration of the Eucharist in the chapel that revolved around the great importance of Mary as a “humble but strong woman.” Everybody was happy with the return of the tree as it stood in front of the chapel for centuries and which resulted in well-attended pilgrimages to Uden.
The new tree is the great achievement of artist Ine van Grinsven. She also made replicas of the famous statue of the Virgin Mary. One was placed at the roots of the tree when it was planted in February. The other is attached to the trunk and, if it is good, will be absorbed by the trunk as ever, the original.
The tree of faith, a 50-year-old lime tree, is made up of three layers: the bottom layer symbolizes all people together, the second layer the group of leaders – from politicians and artists to priests – and in the top God the almighty.

Lime Tree of Wisdom and Cosmos in our time

Wolfgang Smith : Vertical Causation

According to the experts of standard cosmology, we live in a universe which is uniformly egalitarian — a meaningless homogeneous mass of subatomic particles — and this so-called “cosmological principle,” we are told, holds true from the furthest observable reaches of the universe to the ordinary moment of lived experience. For over 35 years Wolfgang Smith has been gradually chipping away at this cosmological impasse, and his project has reached its zenith in Physics and Vertical Causation: The End of Quantum Reality (Angelico Press, 2019) — the latest and likely final work of the author, whose life and thought is the subject of the Initiative’s upcoming documentary film, The End of Quantum Reality. In many ways the true sequel to the author’s paradigm-shifting 1995 monograph, The Quantum Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key — picking up precisely where the latter left off, namely the discovery of “vertical causality” — Physics and Vertical Causation explores the presence of this hitherto unrecognized form of causality with respect to several spheres of inquiry. While it may not be readily apparent by its title, this work is fundamentally a study in cosmology; the title is simply a recognition of whence cosmology must, in our time, take its point of departure. And if, as the author maintains, quantum mechanics is the foundational science — physics, as it were, “come into its own” — then our entire cosmological vision is necessarily affected by how we interpret quantum theory. Indeed, Smith’s interpretation has implications for every domain of science. … ( see Wolfgang-Smith-Science-Myth )

What constitutes perhaps the most astonishing realization — especially to those unschooled in metaphysics and classical philosophy — is the author’s analysis and appropriation of what he calls the “tripartite cosmos,” manifested, in its respective ways, in both the macrocosm and the microcosm. His analysis of the “cosmic icon” (shown on the book cover) presents us with a symbolic depiction that effectively encapsulates the author’s entire cosmological vision. The magisterial final chapter (“Pondering the Cosmic Icon”) brings into full view this fecund symbol to which he has referred several times in his previous works as a kind of primordial archetype whose presence reverberates throughout the history of traditional cultures, but whose meaning and import has apparently not been articulated in any surviving sources.

The decoding of the cosmic icon constitutes the rediscovery of the “integral cosmos,” a conception which vanished from the Occidental worldview centuries ago. Basing himself upon traditional sources, Smith maintains that the cosmos consists of three tiers, or domains — the corporeal, the intermediary, and the spiritual.

What differentiates these domains are their “bounds”:

whereas the corporeal world is manifestly subject to the conditions of space and time,

the intermediary is subject to time alone,

while the spiritual is subject to neither space nor time. And one should note well that the corporeal domain in its entirety constitutes but the lowest stratum of the tripartite cosmos.

This paradigm proves to be the key to the major worldviews of antiquity, what some refer to as the cosmologia perennis. The author strenuously contends — not only in the present work but ever since his 1984 classic, Cosmos and Transcendence — that it is high time to break through the barriers of our contemporary prejudices, our intellectual “provincialism.”

For what actually confronts us in the architecture of the cosmic trichotomy are rudiments of a long-forgotten wisdom, a higher knowledge which is, in a sense, not man-made — truths which, since the advent of the so-called Enlightenment, have been decried as mere vestiges of “prescientific superstition.”

The blame for this predicament, of course, falls upon us: for inasmuch as we have reduced all causation to its horizontal — and in fact its lowest — mode, the traditional cosmology has become incomprehensible to the contemporary mind. We need to realize that our vaunted differential equations simply do not apply above the corporeal plane, for the simple reason that they presuppose the spatial bound. Whereas vertical causality acts from the highest reaches of the ontological hierarchy, physics — by virtue of its modus operandi — is restricted to what might be dubbed the “lower third” of the integral cosmos. …

– A lifelong pilgrimage: The Mirror of Jheronimus bosch

Bosch makes art personal, on different levels, and thatmakes him modern. He was one of the first artists in the Low Countries to sign his paintings: ‘Jheronimus bosch’. It was plainly important to him that the works he left behind should be traceable to him. The Haywain (cat. 5) too was signed with his standard signature, affixed like a stamp to the bottom right of the central panel. Bosch also made his art personal, however, for those who look at it. The Haywain is so famous nowadays that it is hard to imagine that when he created it no other painting existed with this subject matter or anything remotely resembling it. We do not know of a single visual precursor for either the Haywain or the Wayfarer. Bosch created an image here that is entirely contemporary – hypermodern art from around 1510–15. Despite their moralizing content, the Haywain and the Wayfarer are not dogmatic paintings; they hold up a mirror to their viewers, to teach them to see themselves better. It was important to Bosch to make his viewers aware of how they bumble their way through life, longing for earthly things. He offered them a personal, exploratory way to realize that if they were to avoid hell and damnation they needed to turn to the good. It is also an important shift in emphasis in the approach to the question of what it means to be a good Christian. Bosch’s work is closely related in this respect to the message of the Devotio Moderna.

According to this spiritual movement, which was particularly strong at the time in the Low Countries, human beings themselves are responsible for their actions: they have to reflect and to make choices, and will be held to account for them personally. ‘Modern Devotion’ also believed that everyone should read the Bible in their own language so they could truly understand the Christian message. Bosch painted in such a way that his paintings likewise have to be ‘read’. We are invited to look, reflect, relate the image to ourselves, and to take its moral to heart. Alongside the familiar positive examples, Bosch introduced exempla contraria – ones to be avoided. In these cases, turning to the good was a question of turning away from evil: a long and arduous road, and a lifelong pilgrimage. Read More here

-Discerning an understanding between Non-Virtues and Virtues with Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Discerning an understanding between Non-Virtues and Virtues is needed in our times. And the works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder can help us to find an answer. Read more

PETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER AND ESOTERIC TRADITION

By Sir Richard Temple at The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts

The late paintings of Peter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525 – 1569) are full of symbolism and allegory whose meaning has been widely and differently interpreted. Some see Bruegel as a gifted, humorous peasant, others as a satirist and political commentator and yet others as a Renaissance humanist and mystic. There is no consensus on the significance of the paintings and hardly any documents to help the historian.

This thesis considers Neoplatonic humanist ideas at the heart of the Renaissance in Italy and in Flanders in the 16th century, relating them to the historical continuum known as the Perennial Philosophy. This concept is little understood today and this work traces its history and demonstrates that it was widely, if not universally, accepted in the Hellenistic era and in the Renaissance.

It also considers the tradition of religious mysticism in Germany, the Netherlands and Flanders throughout the late Middle Ages that led up to the Reformation and points out that this movement is also an expression of the Perennial Philosophy, citing the works of Meister Eckhart, the Rhineland mystics and the schools that came out of the Devotio Moderna.

The work considers the esoteric, ‘heretical’ school called the Family of Love that claimed among its adherents a number of highly illustrious artists, thinkers and politicians. Such men as Christoffe Plantin, Abraham Ortelius and Justus Lipsius spurned the religious turmoil of the period and rejected Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists alike in favour of an inner mystical state they called the ‘invisible church’. They were close to Bruegel, bought his paintings and, it cannot be doubted, shared his thought.

While there are no surviving documents to prove Bruegel’s personal connection with the Familists, the weight of circumstantial evidence, especially when seen in the context of the Perennial Philosophy, is compelling. However, it is the paintings themselves that open comprehensively and convincingly to an esoteric interpretation – once one has the key that unlocks their meaning. This thesis provides that key and leads the reader through an analysis of seven of Bruegel’s last paintings.

The Introduction consists of two sections; the first summarises the discoveries and
opinions of scholars and art historians during the last seventy years and their differing
and often incompatible views as to Bruegel‟s religious and social status and the
significance of his art. The second section analyses in some detail his painting The
Numbering at Bethlehem along the line of esoteric ideas and symbolism that will be
developed throughout the whole work .

The form of the ideas of this thesis could be illustrated by a picture of three concentric circles of which the outer would be the Perennial Philosophy – what Renaissance thinkers regarded as the body of truth drawn by the ancients from their knowledge of the cosmos and which, like the universe, has no external boundary. In writing about the Perennial Philosophy I have cited Plato and Hellenistic and Renaissance Neoplatonists as well as writers of the 20th-century, among whom are Ananda Coomaraswamy and René Guénon and writers associated with their ideas; I have also quoted the theosophist W. Thackara.
Within this is the second circle containing aspects of the Perennial Philosophy that found expression in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance periods and which culminated in Antwerp in the 16th-century. What may at first appear to be diverse influences are drawn from Renaissance „paganism‟, the mysticism of Meister Eckhart and his followers as well as „gnostic‟ or „heretical‟ schools such as the Adamites with whom Hieronymus Bosch was associated. At the centre of all this – in the innermost circle – is Bruegel or, rather, his paintings, for the man himself is more or less silent and invisible. Yet the testimony of the later paintings is like a kernel containing the wisdom of the Perennial Philosophy.
The paintings are there for all to see and yet their colours, forms and narratives are a veil
– albeit a veil of great beauty – that covers a high order of knowledge. They are,
therefore, esoteric.

In fact the form of the ideas set out here is necessarily linear but we can remind ourselves that the right to speak of the ultimate truths of Man and the universe was regarded in the 16th-century as traditionally belonging to the realm of prophets, poets, mystics and artists.
Such men spoke in multi-layered symbols and their vision is not limited to mens and
ratio only. Read more Here

-The guidance of Sufism in our Times

Islamic Spirituality

A broad-ranging, illustrated, scholarly treatment of core topics in Islamic spirituality. This book discusses the foundations of Sufism, including the Qur’an, the Hadith, pilgrimage, and prayer, as well as a study of the rise of Islam. The companion book Islamic Spirituality: Manifestations delves more deeply into the different ways that Sufism is lived out around the world, with attention to the various sects and their writings. Read Here

– What It Means to Be Human?
Who Are We and What Are We Doing Here?

–Truth –The Knowledge That Illuminates and Delivers from the Bondage of Ignorance

-Love and Beauty –The Fire That Attracts and Consumes, the Peace That Calms and Liberates

-Goodness and Human Action –To Do His Will, to Conform to the Divine Norm.

-How Do We Reach the Garden of Truth? –The Path to the One

-Access to the Center –Sufism Here and Now

-The Sufi Tradition and the Sufi Orders- Reflections on the MaMfèstation of Sufism in Time and Space

-The Tradition of Theoretical Sufism and Gnosis

-Glossary of Technical Terms

For more info look at the website Sufi Path of Love

-The Metamorphosis of Plants

The Metamorphosis of Plants, published in 1790, was Goethe’s first major attempt to describe what he called in a letter to a friend “the truth about the how of the organism.” Inspired by the diversity of flora he found on a journey to Italy, Goethe sought a unity of form in diverse structures. He came to see in the leaf the germ of a plant’s metamorphosis—“the true Proteus who can hide or reveal himself in all vegetal forms”—from the root and stem leaves to the calyx and corolla, to pistil and stamens. With this short book—123 numbered paragraphs, in the manner of the great botanist Linnaeus—Goethe aimed to tell the story of botanical forms in process, to present, in effect, a motion picture of the metamorphosis of plants. This MIT Press edition of The Metamorphosis of Plants illustrates Goethe’s text (in an English translation by Douglas Miller) with a series of stunning and starkly beautiful color photographs as well as numerous line drawings. It is the most completely and colorfully illustrated edition of Goethe’s book ever published. It demonstrates vividly Goethe’s ideas of transformation and interdependence, as well as the systematic use of imagination in scientific research—which influenced thinkers ranging from Darwin to Thoreau and has much to teach us today about our relationship with nature. Read here

The Metamorphosis of Plants can be use to discover the Relation and use of Books of Hours in our lives looking at the Manuscrit Horae ad usum Romanum , dites Grandes Heures d’Anne de Bretagne

Look also to Henri Bortoft, the author of The Wholeness of Nature (1996), the definitive monograph on Goethe’s scientific method. Bortoft did his postgraduate research on the problem of wholeness in quantum physics with physicist David Bohm. When I met him in London, we began our conversation by talking about his views on quantum physics. Here an interview

-Wholeness in Science van the Louis Bolk Institute

The Louis Bolk Institute has conducted scientific research to further the development of organic and sustainable agriculture, nutrition, and health care since 1976. Its basic tenet is that nature is the source of knowledge about life.

The Institute plays a pioneering role in its field through national and international collaboration by using experiential knowledge and by considering data as part of a greater whole. read here Wholeness in Science

And The Experiential Process of Plant Observation of schumacher College

-POLISHING THE HEART – The Ghazali Children’s Project worldwide

POLISHING THE HEART’ – a major new Ghazali Children’s Project documentary on Muslim children’s education. Featuring interviews with many teachers, parents and scholars including Sh. Hamza Yusuf, Prof. Ingrid Mattson, Sh. Abdal Hakim Murad, Dr. Tamara Gray, Prof. Mustafa Abu Sway, Sh. Yahya Rhodus, Baraka Blue and many more. A little inspiration during these difficult times. After a decade of work with a dedicated team of scholars, we see here the project in action worldwide and hear from teachers, parents and children about its transformative impact.

KEY RESOURCES: 1) Ghazali Children’s Books: https://bit.ly/340CfP0 2) Ghazali Children’s Resources, Links & Films: https://bit.ly/2yoLvAL 3) Ghazali Children’s Pilot School signup: https://bit.ly/3dON6jJ 4) Official website: https://ghazalichildren.org/ We are sending out prayers for everyone’s safety in these turbulent times. Greetings of peace, The Fons Vitae Ghazali Children’s Project Team

-The Art of Dying Well according to Erasmus of Rotterdam and Teresa of Ávila

12– Die Before You Die

“Living as a dry leaf taken by the wind of the divine inspiration which takes it anywhere it wants” Maulana Sheikh Nazim Al Haqqani

Using the message Sultan Valad( Son of Rumi) from The Skills of Soul Rapture :

“God is the Light of the heavens and the earth.” (Qoran 24-35)

God, the Most High, declares: “I am the Light of the heavens and the earth. If you see darkness, light, life or beauty in the heavens or on the earth, consider them all coming from Me. In reality, everything with goodness is Myself. Since you do not have direct vision of My Beauty or Goodness without intermediary or association, I show it to you by means of forms and veils. Since your Incomparable Soul is intermixed with form, and that which is adulterated cannot see that which is pure. My Virtue is adulterated to enable you to see It. Existence is like a being whose head is the heavens and whose feet are upon the earth.” Read more here

For Translation in French and Dutch : look here

13- Art as History, History as Art Jheronimus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Assembling knowledge not setting puzzles

This book challenges many of the assumptions about Jheronimus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The academic contest to unravel these two has never abated. What exactly is the meaning of their work is one of art history’s blood sports. The answer lies in the cultural relationship between the artwork and its audience. Both artists demonstrate social, economic and political resonances in paintings that are numbingly familiar yet still poorly understood. There is social, religious, and political motivation in their art, an art that is frequently described in art historical isolation. For Bosch the image was a morality play about the paucity of good in a world teeming with evil monsters. For Bruegel it was frequently a reference to political events.

Far from producing puzzle pictures they were assembling knowledge as part of a visual culture that was central to the life of society. It relates to the knowledge of the world at a particular time and two artists’ experiences of it. It stretches from the sexuality and spirituality of Bosch to secular satisfaction in Bruegel at a time of social upheaval and a great turning point of world history – the beginning of the modern world and the end of the Middle Ages. Read here

An Hermeneutic Exploration of René Guénon’s ‘The Symbolism of the Cross’ Applied to Sacred Architecture

This thesis examines how the architecture of the various sacred traditions, all manifest in their built expressions a universal symbolic content, while at the same time being absolutely unique in their own inherent particular spiritual dispensation. One major aspect of this symbolic content is the embedding of the three-dimensional cross in its various modes within their built arrangements.

The correlation between the three dimensions of space and the metaphysical symbolism of the cross was the subject of a short but important work by the French traditional metaphysician René Guénon titled Symbolism of the Cross (Le Symbolisme de Ia Croix). In describing the purpose of the work Guénon wrote that it was ‘to explain a symbol that is common to almost all traditions, a fact that would seem to indicate its direct attachment to the great primordial tradition’. While several authors on sacred architecture acknowledge the importance of Guénon’s work, it has generally been applied only in limited considerations and to particular traditions. However, there remains many levels to this work that require further general elaboration and exploration.

Guénon uses the symbolic potential of three-dimensional space as a coherent and indispensable means of developing traditional metaphysics. An hermeneutic exploration and study of Guénon’s Symbolism of the Cross, allows insights into various aspects of all sacred architecture, even when the tradition is unfamiliar. Equally, exploring various themes related to spatial symbolism in sacred architecture can give insights into the interpretative reading of Symbolism of the Cross. Read here

And Symbolism of the Cross and The GreatTriad by Rene Guenon

The history of the modern West is the history of “l’homme sans Ame.” ( “the being without soul”)

It is this Soul which gives its true dimension to the person. The human person is only a person by virtue of this celestial dimension, archetypal, angelic, which is the celestial pole without which the terrestrial pole of his human dimension is completely depolarized in vagabondage and perdition. The people of the modern West are falling into darkness, falling through depthless valleys.

“Day by day they are falling through (the) darkness of an endless well that no one can take them out, except, if the Lord of Heavens (is) sending to you a rope. That rope it is impossible to be cut off, always (it) is ready. Keep that rope, you should be saved and rewarded and honoured and glorified in His divinely Presence”. Maulana Sheikh Nazim al Haqqani ( 30-03-08)

The Recovery of Human Nature (William C. Chittick)

Islam isn’t the ass-backward religion many in the West think it is – there is a long tradition of mystical Muslim philosophy that is as rich and complex as anything in the Western tradition. William C. Chittick argues for a subjective science of experience as a means of regaining our true human nature, and uses Islam as a way into this integral point of view.

Here is a key quote: ” In short, two grand movements can be observed in the cosmos as a whole: One is that of exteriorization, the other that of interiorization; one is that of creation or cosmogenesis, the other that of dissolution or destruction; one is manifestation, the other disappearance. These two movements are given a variety of names. Among the most common are “Origin and Return,” a phrase that was used as a book-title by both Avicenna and Mulla Sadra. The Origin is pictured as centrifugal, dispersing, and devolutionary, and the Return as centripetal, integrating, and evolutionary. The two movements together are depicted as a circle. Beginning at the top, all things come into existence through a gradual process of descent and differentiation, and they appear in a multiplicity of modes. Having reached the bottom of the circle—the realm of visible reality—they reverse their course and ascend back toward the top. The two movements are thus called the Arc of Descent and the Arc of Ascent”.

It’s great to see this perspective being offered within an Islamic framework. Too many people reject Islam as backward as a result of the radicals in Iraq, Iran, and the rest of that region. But there is so much more to that tradition. Read here The Recovery of Human Nature

See also : the Seven Levels of Being

Oikosophia: For we need a home where we may once again speak the language of the soul, and a language of the soul that may take us home.

…To awaken the Functional Consciousness is to be Love, to be Unity. Qualification separates you from the water of the sea, from the stone, from the earth, from vegetation, from the amorous turtle dove, from the ferocious beast, from all human races; but all that appears outside of you is functionally within you, man of the end of a Time.

Qualification shows you a Moslem separate from a Jew, a Buddhist, a Brahman, a Taoist, a Christian; it discusses endlessly their “philosophies” and their merits. What is your criterion, you who do not know the revelation of Knowledge? Everything in its own fashion tells you the Truth, while only Truth speaks to you openly of Redemption.

Redemption is within us, provided we awaken the Consciousness of the function which unifies, and renders all discussion null and void. Is not Knowing more precious than seeking Learning?

…Sophia, then: the wisdom language that unites, rather than divides. For the time of homecoming has come. At long last. Read the complete paper Oikosophia by Daniela Boccassini

The Relationship between the Environment and Man

The Macro-Micro Mirror-play

God says in the Holy Qur’an:

We shall show them Our signs on the horizons and in their own souls until it becomes clear to them that He is the Truth … (Fussilat, 41:53)

And: And in the earth are signs for those whose faith is sure / And [also] in yourselves. Can ye then not see? (Al-Dhariyat, 51:20-21)

In these verses, God links His signs in the environment with His signs within ourselves. This means that the Divine Metacosm is reflected in both the microcosm which is man and the macrocosm which is the universe.

In other words, man is like a small world, and the universe is like a large man, and by recognising the signs in either of these worlds we can come to know the Truth of God, for His signs are both within us and within the world. Read the complete paper THE HOLY QUR’AN AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Path to the Maypole of Wisdom

A Choice for Spiritual Ethics,Virtues and Uprightness in our times

Forum for Ethics, Virtues and Uprightness

Democracy:

Vandana Shiva On the Real Cause of World Hunger

Oneness vs. The 1%: #VandanaShiva at the United Nations Office at Geneva.

Democracy:

Vandana Shiva On the Real Cause of World Hunger

Oneness vs. The 1%: #VandanaShiva at the United Nations Office at Geneva.

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