They are made of earth and rock. These women. The mountain’s skin. The waves of the ocean have sculpted them. They traced salty waters guiding their ships. Open. Bodies. They stand in fire becoming spirits. Burning matches. The space they share is a ghostly power… and sacrifice.
Author: polymorph
Those Who(se Bodies) Do Not Look Like Us
Early in the morning at the Pnyx, west of the Acropolis, Aristotle and Spinoza walk and chat on the eve of the Greater Eleusinian Mysteries… Aristotle: “But don’t we say that the body is defined in two ways: as a compound of form and matter, on the one hand, and, in physical terms, by its…
Fra Angelico’s Wings qua Event
The theme is a commonplace: a virgin receives the visit of an angel who tells her she will bear a divine child. The narrative entirely conventional: the angel visits her in her room, outside of which a more-or-less Edenic garden is also offered to our view, eventually with Adam and Eve being expelled from it…
On Beauty and Perfection // Carlos
Perfect is an adjective meaning thoroughly done (Latin per-fectus) and thereby done with care and eventually too, then, completed or free of fault. If, as a general rule, what is beautiful is that which is perfect, then neither everyone nor everything can be equally beautiful. Conversely, if, as a general rule, what is beautiful is…
Herákleitos (Heraclitus) // Carlos
Heraclitus is the first philosopher from whom we have a large collection of fragments, all likely pertaining to a book about which, nevertheless, we ignore many things(*). We have encountered him twice so far: First, when examining life’s autopoiesis (**). Secondly, when analysing the Greek gods in poetical perspective and the relation between the ephemeral…
On Abstract Music // Sofya
Abstraction is a mystery—a question mark, an opening to the unknown. Butoh, a contemporary avant-garde theatre-dance originated in Japan, is danced from a question mark, from the unexpected. Abstraction seems to me to be something similar when the mind alone is involved. Let’s take music. Music, like painting, can be both abstract and figurative; and…
Of Poetry, Gods, Heroes & Mortal Things // Carlos
The Greek gods are a matter of poetry. First, we know of them through the verses of various Ancient Greek poets; eventually poet-philosophers, but poets in any event. Secondly, their very presence – ultimately, their very being – makes sense in poetic terms alone. In other words: talking of the gods meant in Ancient Greece…
A Simplified World // Sofya
Hypercomplexity. It is hypercomplexity we are in need of in both ontological and epistemological terms—that is to say, in terms of our descriptions of what things are and of how we should study them. For we have lacked it for too many centuries, since Aristotle (and later Boethius, followed in this by the medieval Christian…
On Nishitani’s Notion of Nothingness (Sūnyatā) // S&C
Nishitani on Nothingness // Sofya What Keiji Nishitani intends to think in his famous essay Shūkyō to wa Nanika (What is Religion?), originally published in 1961 and translated into English in 1982 as Religion and Nothingness, is beautiful in a way. Firstly, he proposes that all life and non-life form oneself’s being. Nishitani quotes Miso Kokushi:…
Omar Khayam on Life and Love at the Antipodes of Hinduism and Buddhism // Carlos
This is a post on life and love as portrayed in the poetry of Omar Khayam; and, additionally, on a major difference between the spiritual worlds of Iran and India. Allow me to start by saying that, unlike many Westerners since Anquetil-Duperron had the Upanishads translated in the 18th century, I have never had the…