Ancient Religions

Hard to find research into various Kabbalistic concepts.

Excellent book for an introduction to the Kabbalah.

Although appearing in the full light of historical times, Pythagoras has come down to us as almost a legendary character. The main reason for this is the terrible persecution of which he was the victim in Sicily, and which cost so many of his followers their lives. Some were crushed to death beneath the ruins of their burning schools, others died of hunger in temples. The Master's memory and teaching were only perpetuated by such survivors as were able to escape into Greece.

In the shade of the house, in the sunshine of the riverbank near the boats, in the shade of the Sal-wood forest, in the shade of the fig tree is where Siddhartha grew up, the handsome son of the Brahman, the young falcon, together with his friend Govinda, son of a Brahman.

What I have called the "war dead," the multitudes passing over from battle, are the bereavements that hit with the strongest impact. Yet actually they differ in no manner from any other loss by death. We are inclined to think more of their mass, their sheer weight of numbers, than of the fact that each carries its full of poignancy. Indeed, it may even be some small comfort to reflect that others are grieving too! And there is the sustaining glow and pride in sacrifice for a common cause. But each death on the battlefield is to some one the full measure of bereavement.

THE little work, whose original title-page I reproduce exactly as printed in the middle of the seventeenth century, fairly deserves a place in hermeneutic, and therefore hermetic, literature.

Freedom and determinism. The author of Jubilees is a true Pharisee in that he combines belief in Divine omnipotence and providence with the belief in human freedom and responsibility. He would have adopted heartily the statement of the Pss. Sol. ix. 7 (written some sixty years or more later)