Tag Archives: memory

AN INVOCATION OF THE GODS!

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INNVOCATION OF THE GODS

” Where upon Olympus stand the gods who once ruled over Man?  Fallen from the Lofty Land to dwell on Earth as mortal men?

 PAN GOD OF THE WOODSWho remembers how to fly as freeborn spirits through the sky? What powers can be exercised while trapped within a mortal guise?

The gods once caused themselves to bring The Breath of Life itself to being.  Their very thoughts made every thing: the sea, a sigh, the sky, the spring!
The Gods of Old, like you & me, created everything we see. Have they lost causality?  Abandoned their abilities?

Where are the gods of history?  What happened to their memory? If we are them and they are we, who will cause our destiny?

Merchant Lords now rule the fold. They want us all to fit their mold: “Be a Man!  Do as you’re told!  The only god there is, is gold!”

How did we ever sink so low, pretending we don’t really know that we’re the spark that makes life grow, like springtime flowers through the snow?

Infinity is passing by, but time is really just a lie. Are we immortal, you and I?  A question states its own reply…
We never really know we’re blind until we search around to find a simple way to leave behind the suffering that is Mankind.

Can godly powers be regained, like oceans fall to Earth as rain? Can we go back from whence we came, to greater heights and bigger games?

Lead us homeward once again, to realms beyond the dreams of men. We’ve gone astray, we’ve lost our ken*.  We need your help, Immortal Friends! “

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*ken = perception; understanding, range of vision, view; sight.

ANAMNESIS

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ANAMNESIS

Anamnesis (/ˌænæmˈnsɪs/) is a concept in Plato‘s epistemological and psychological theory that he develops in his dialogues Meno and Phaedo, and alludes to in his Phaedrus.

It is the idea that humans possess knowledge from past incarnations and that learning consists of rediscovering that knowledge within us.

Socrates suggests that the soul is immortal, and repeatedly incarnated; knowledge is actually in the soul from eternity, but each time the soul is incarnated its knowledge is forgotten in the shock of birth. What one perceives to be learning, then, is actually the recovery of what one has forgotten. (Once it has been brought back it is true belief, to be turned into genuine knowledge by understanding.) And thus Socrates (and Plato) sees himself, not as a teacher, but as a midwife, aiding with the birth of knowledge that was already there in the student.

Plato develops his Theory of Anamnesis, in part by combining it with his theory of Forms. First, he elaborates how anamnesis can be achieved: whereas in Meno nothing more than Socrates’ method of questioning is offered, in Phaedo Plato presents a way of living that would enable one to overcome the misleading nature of the body through katharsis (Greek: κάθαρσις; “cleansing” (from guilt or defilement), “purification”). The body and its senses are the source of error; knowledge can only be regained through the use of our reason, contemplating things with the soul (noesis). Secondly, he makes clear that genuine knowledge, as opposed to mere true belief (doxa), is distinguished by its content. One can only know eternal truths, for they are the only truths that can have been in the soul from eternity.

For the later interpreters of Plato, anamnesis was less an epistemic assertion than an ontological one. Plotinus himself did not posit recollection in the strict sense of the term, because all knowledge of universally important ideas (logos) came from a source outside of time (Dyad or the divine nous), and was accessible, by means of contemplation, to the soul as part of noesis. They were more objects of experience, of inner knowledge or insight, than of recollection.

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Socrates — (c. 469 BC – 399 BC) was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes.

Plato —  (428/427 BC– 348/347 BC) was a philosopher in Classical Greece. He was also a mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science.

— Reference Source: Wikipedia.org

THE FIRE

THE FIRE“The soul, being eternal, after death is like a caged bird that has been released. If it has been a long time in the body, and has become tame by many affairs and long habit, the soul will immediately take another body and once again become involved in the troubles of the world. The worst thing about old age is that the soul’s memory of the other world grows dim, while at the same time its attachment to things of this world becomes so strong that the soul tends to retain the form that it had in the body. But that soul which remains only a short time within a body, until liberated by the higher powers, quickly recovers its fire and goes on to higher things.” 
~ Plutarch (The Consolation, Moralia)

PLUTARCH (c. AD 46 – AD 120)  was a Greek historian, biographer and essayist, known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia.

Plutarch was born to a prominent family in the small town which lies approximately eighty kilometres east of Delphi, in the Greek region known as Boeotia.  He lived most of his life at Chaeronea, and was initiated into the mysteries of the Greek god Apollo. However, his duties as the senior of the two priests of Apollo at the Oracle of Delphi (where he was responsible for interpreting the auguries of the Pythia) apparently occupied little of his time. He led an active social and civic life while producing an extensive body of writing, much of which is still extant.

Plutarch spent the last thirty years of his life serving as priest in Delphi. He thus connected part of his work with the sanctuary of Apollo, the processes of oracle giving and the personalities which lived or traveled there. One of his most important works is the “Why Pythia does not give oracles in verse”