Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
To the primitive mind trying to figure out what caused the pain and sorrow of human existence, an obvious answer was that a powerful and unpredictable supernatural agency was responsible. It made sense, therefore, to keep it sweet by offering it gifts and tributes.
Richard Holloway • Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe
“Rather than having women in the control of men,” says Dr. Fiachra Mac Góráin, a classicist at University College London, “this cult is putting young, impressionable men under the control of women.”41 In a staunchly patriarchal society like Rome, that was an act of war. So the authorities made the flood of magical wine slow to a trickle.
Brian C. Muraresku • The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name
This new-found pride in ancestry coincided with the movement away from imperialism and towards nationalism.
Philip Carr-Gomm • Druid Mysteries: Ancient Wisdom for the 21st Century
By degrees, as this old religion lost its hold, the voice of blood spoke louder, and the relationship of birth was recognized in law.
Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges • The Ancient City: A Study of the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome (Illustrated)
The central theme developed in this book is that psi, the paranormal, and the supernatural are fundamentally linked to destructur-ing, change, transition, disorder, marginality, the ephemeral, fluidity, ambiguity, and blurring of boundaries. In contrast, the phenomena are repressed or excluded with order, structure, routine, stasis, regularity,
... See moreGeorge P. Hansen • The Trickster and the Paranormal
Carter noted that the roots of the contemporary skepticism of religion are essentially modern, beginning with Freud perhaps, who viewed religion as a sort of obsessive impulse.
Nicholas W. Zamiska • The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West
It was clear that Iron Age burial rites varied considerably across Britain. That even seemed to fit quite well with the picture of the political landscape that the Romans give us, both before and after much of Britain becomes subsumed into that huge, literate empire. They tell us that Britain was divided up into territories, a different tribe
... See moreAlice Roberts • Ancestors
There’s a house fire inside many of us,14 Vincent had come to believe, and we’ve been concentrating on the smoke.
Johann Hari • Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions
DURING ITS LIKELY beginnings in Neolithic times, Druidry was probably at first animistic and shamanistic in nature, until gradually it evolved into its three separate streams of Bardic, Ovate and Druid practice described by the classical authors. This period of sophisticated, even complex, spiritual practice continued probably for at least a
... See more