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Myth Of Er
The Myth of Er is a legend that concludes Plato's ''Republic'' (10.614–10.621). The story includes an account of the cosmos and the afterlife that greatly influenced religious, philosophical, and scientific thought for many centuries. The story begins as a man named Er (; grc-gre, Ἤρ, ''gen''.: ), son of Armenios (), of Pamphylia dies in battle. When the bodies of those who died in the battle are collected, ten days after his death, Er remains undecomposed. Two days later he revives on his funeral-pyre and tells others of his journey in the afterlife, including an account of reincarnation and the celestial spheres of the astral plane. The tale includes the idea that moral people are rewarded and immoral people punished after death. Although called the Myth of Er, the word "myth" means "word, speech, account", rather than the modern meaning. The word is used at the end when Socrates explains that because Er did not drink the waters of Lethe, the account (''mythos'' in Greek) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plato Republic Manuscript
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution of higher learning on the European continent. Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato is a central figure in the history of Ancient Greek philosophy and the Western and Middle Eastern philosophies descended from it. He has also shaped religion and spirituality. The so-called neoplatonism of his interpreter Plotinus greatly influenced both Christianity (through Church Fathers such as Augustine) and Islamic philosophy (through e.g. Al-Farabi). In modern times, Friedrich Nietzsche diagnosed Western culture as growing in the shadow of Plato (famously calling Christianity "Platonism for the masses"), while Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spindle (textiles)
A spindle is a straight spike usually made from wood used for spinning, twisting fibers such as wool, flax, hemp, cotton into yarn. It is often weighted at either the bottom, middle, or top, commonly by a disc or spherical object called a whorl; many spindles, however, are weighted simply by thickening their shape towards the bottom, e.g. Orenburg and French spindles. The spindle may also have a hook, groove, or notch at the top to guide the yarn. Spindles come in many different sizes and weights depending on the thickness of the yarn one desires to spin. History The origin of the first wooden spindle is lost to history because the materials did not survive. Whorl-weighted spindles date back at least to Neolithic times; spindle whorls have been found in archaeological digs around the world. A spindle is also part of traditional spinning wheels where it is horizontal, such as the Indian charkha and the great or walking wheel. In industrial yarn production, spindles are used a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Near-death Experience
A near-death experience (NDE) is a profound personal experience associated with death or impending death which researchers claim share similar characteristics. When positive, such experiences may encompass a variety of sensations including detachment from the body, feelings of levitation, total serenity, security, warmth, the experience of absolute dissolution, and the presence of a light. When negative, such experiences may include sensations of anguish, distress, a void, devastation, and vast emptiness. People often report seeing hellish places and things like their own rendition of "the devil." Explanations for NDEs vary from scientific to religious. Neuroscience research hypothesizes that an NDE is a subjective phenomenon resulting from "disturbed bodily multisensory integration" that occurs during life-threatening events. Some transcendental and religious beliefs about an afterlife include descriptions similar to NDEs. In the U.S., an estimated 9 million people have rep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dream Of Scipio
A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5 to 20 minutes, although the dreamer may perceive the dream as being much longer than this. The content and function of dreams have been topics of scientific, philosophical and religious interest throughout recorded history. Dream interpretation, practiced by the Babylonians in the third millennium BCE and even earlier by the ancient Sumerians, figures prominently in religious texts in several traditions, and has played a lead role in psychotherapy. The scientific study of dreams is called oneirology. Most modern dream study focuses on the neurophysiology of dreams and on proposing and testing hypotheses regarding dream function. It is not known where in the brain dreams originate, if there is a single origin for dreams or if multiple regions of the brain are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daniil Andreev
Daniil Leonidovich Andreyev ( rus, Дании́л Леони́дович Андре́ев, p=dənʲɪˈil lʲɪɐˈnʲidəvʲɪtɕ ɐnˈdrʲejɪf, a=Daniil Lyeonidovich Andryeyev.ru.vorb.oga; November 2, 1906, Berlin – March 30, 1959, Moscow) was a Russian writer, poet, and Christian mystic. Biography Daniil Andreyev, the son of Leonid Andreyev (a prominent Russian writer of the start of the 20th century), had Maxim Gorky as his godfather. After the infant's mother, Aleksandra Mikhailovna (Veligorskaya) Andreyeva (a great-niece of Taras Shevchenko), died shortly after childbirth, Leonid Andreyev gave the infant Daniil to his late wife's sister, Elizabeth Mikhailovna Dobrova, to raise. This act had two important consequences: it meant that when Leonid Andreyev, like many other writers and intellectuals, left Russia (he emigrated to the newly independent Finland in December 1917 after the Bolshevik Revolution), his young son remained behind; it also meant that Daniil was rai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dante's Inferno
''Inferno'' (; Italian for "Hell") is the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem ''Divine Comedy''. It is followed by ''Purgatorio'' and '' Paradiso''. The ''Inferno'' describes Dante's journey through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine concentric circles of torment located within the Earth; it is the "realm ... of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen". As an allegory, the ''Divine Comedy'' represents the journey of the soul toward God, with the ''Inferno'' describing the recognition and rejection of sin. Prelude to Hell Canto I The poem begins on the night of Maundy Thursday on March 24 (or April 7), 1300, shortly before the dawn of Good Friday. The narrator, Dante himself, is thirty-five years old, and thus "midway in the journey of our life" (''Nel mezzo del ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Axis Mundi
In astronomy, axis mundi is the Latin term for the axis of Earth between the celestial poles. In a geocentric coordinate system, this is the axis of rotation of the celestial sphere. Consequently, in ancient Greco-Roman astronomy, the ''axis mundi'' is the axis of rotation of the planetary spheres within the classical geocentric model of the cosmos. In 20th-century comparative mythology, the term axis mundi — also called the cosmic axis, world axis, world pillar, center of the world, or world tree — has been greatly extended to refer to any mythological concept representing "the connection between Heaven and Earth" or the "higher and lower realms." Mircea Eliade introduced the concept in the 1950s. Axis mundi closely relates to the mythological concept of the ''omphalos'' (navel) of the world or cosmos. Items adduced as examples of the ''axis mundi'' by comparative mythologists include plants (notably a tree but also other types of plants such as a vine or stalk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allegorical Interpretations Of Plato
Many interpreters of Plato held that his writings contain passages with double meanings, called allegories, symbols, or myths, that give the dialogues layers of figurative meaning in addition to their usual literal meaning. These allegorical interpretations of Plato were dominant for more than fifteen hundred years, from about the 1st century CE through the Renaissance and into the 18th century, and were advocated by major Platonist philosophers such as Plotinus, Porphyry, Syrianus, Proclus, and Marsilio Ficino. Beginning with Philo of Alexandria (1st c. CE), these views influenced the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic interpretation of these religions' respective sacred scriptures. They spread widely during the Renaissance and contributed to the fashion for allegory among poets such as Dante Alighieri, Edmund Spenser, and William Shakespeare. In the early modern period, classical scholarship rejected claims that Plato was an allegorist. After this rupture, the ancient follo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semiramis
''Samīrāmīs'', hy, Շամիրամ ''Šamiram'') was the semi-legendary Lydian- Babylonian wife of Onnes and Ninus, who succeeded the latter to the throne of Assyria, according to Movses Khorenatsi. Legends narrated by Diodorus Siculus, who drew primarily from the works of Ctesias of Cnidus,Diodorus Siculus: The Library of History, Book II, Chapters 1-22 describe her and her relationships to Onnes and King Ninus. Armenians and the Assyrians of Iraq, northeast Syria, southeast Turkey, and northwest Iran still use ''Shamiram'' as a given name for girls. The real and historical Shammuramat (the original Akkadian form of the name) was the Assyrian wife of Shamshi-Adad V (ruled 824 BC–811 BC). She was the ruler of the Neo-Assyrian Empire as its regent for five years before her son Adad-nirari III came of age and took the reins of power. She ruled at a time of political uncertainty, which is one of the possible explanations for why Assyrians may have accepted the rule of a wom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ara The Handsome
Ara the Handsome ( hy, Արա Գեղեցիկ ''Ara Gełec‘ik'') is a semi-legendary Armenian hero and king. Ara is notable in Armenian literature for the popular legend in which he was so handsome that the Assyrian queen Semiramis waged war against Armenia to capture him and bring him back to her, alive. Ara is sometimes associated Arame of Urartu, who ruled the Kingdom of Urartu Biainili during the 9th century BC. Genealogy In Movses Khorenatsi's ''History of Armenia'', Ara the Handsome is presented as the son of Aram and a descendant of Hayk, the legendary forefather of the Armenians. Khorenatsi writes that Ara the Handsome had a son, also named Ara, by his wife, Nuard (Nvard). Ara, son of Ara, who was twelve years old at the time of his father's death, was appointed ruler of Armenia by Semiramis and later died in a war against her. Legend According to the legend, Semiramis (''Shamiram'' in Armenian) had fallen in love with the handsome Armenian King and asked him to m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Armenian Mythology
Armenian mythology originated in ancient Indo-European traditions, specifically Proto-Armenian, and gradually incorporated Hurro- Urartian, Mesopotamian, Iranian, and Greek beliefs and deities."Armenia (Vannic)" by A.H. Sayce, p.793-4; "Armenia (Zoroastrian)", by M(ardiros). H. Ananikian, p.794-802; in Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastingsvol. 1 1908 Formation of Armenian mythology The pantheon of Armenian gods, initially worshipped by Proto-Armenians, inherited their essential elements from the religious beliefs and mythologies of the Proto-Indo-Europeans and peoples of the Armenian Highlands. Historians distinguish a significant body of Indo-European language words which were used in Armenian pagan rites. The oldest cults are believed to have worshipped a creator called Ar (or possibly Ara), embodied as the sun (Arev or Areg); the ancient Armenians called themselves "children of the sun". Also among the most ancient types of Indo-European-derived ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Planetary Sphere
The celestial spheres, or celestial orbs, were the fundamental entities of the cosmological models developed by Plato, Eudoxus, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus, and others. In these celestial models, the apparent motions of the fixed stars and planets are accounted for by treating them as embedded in rotating spheres made of an aetherial, transparent fifth element ( quintessence), like jewels set in orbs. Since it was believed that the fixed stars did not change their positions relative to one another, it was argued that they must be on the surface of a single starry sphere. In modern thought, the orbits of the planets are viewed as the paths of those planets through mostly empty space. Ancient and medieval thinkers, however, considered the celestial orbs to be thick spheres of rarefied matter nested one within the other, each one in complete contact with the sphere above it and the sphere below.Lindberg, ''Beginnings of Western Science'', p. 251. When scholars applied Pto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
