Sublime

the deluge, the creation; archetypal situations might include the battle between good and evil, the heroic task, the descent to the Underworld, the cycle of death and rebirth.

But they know in the end they will face their own slaughter. They know the infants they circle in their arms will before long be bloodied toys kicked about these cobbles. They know because they’ve seen it already, from whence they fled. They’ve seen the enemy burn and cut, take turns to rape young girls even as they lie dying of their wounds. They

Yet what happened was shown to be to a large extent in the hands of what the Greeks called ‘fate’ or ‘the gods’. It was the Greeks’ poetic way of saying that things often work out randomly, according to dynamics that simply don’t reflect the merits of the individuals concerned. The great Greek tragedians – Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles – recou

Duty and honor came from the courage to fill the gap between our limitations with remarkable feats and the laurels of glory. In short, an athlete who stretched his body ultra its limits was not greeted by the sound of cheers in the stadium but by the sound of the Titans’ broken nails as they crawled to the heavens and were immediately driven back d

We know nothing more, with such certainty, of the post-death state, for those who reach this realm of beauty are then brought to a being who tells them that they must return to their body – their visit, this time, has been only temporary. What does this tell us of the Ovate work? Firstly that the realm of the ancestors does exist, and that it can p

But who or what plays the role of the Minotaur? From what, in other words, must Socrates’ companions be saved? Is it their fear of death? Or is it the great evil known as misology or “hatred of arguments,” the evil which, near the center of the dialogue, threatens to drown the conversation in disillusionment and despair?

According to sources, Arrichion died by strangulation while obstructing his opponent’s feet and forcing him to call the fight. Whatever really happened, we know that the victory laurels were placed on the dead man’s head. A statue of him was erected in the market of Phigalia, his hometown, to remind future generations of his feat.

These are our origins: chaos, violence, and death. And this is the case wherever we turn in the ancient world. The Romans adopted much of the Greek mythology, performing more of a rebrand than a rewrite.

Beauty could be a bridge, but we can’t be so sure. Huldra’s back may be a horror; after all, the woodsman dies lost and frozen. So, though beauty has been defined by Neoplatonists1 as invisible presence in visible form and the divine enhancement of earthly things, it offers no structure and no permanence. Tracking its definitions through history wi