alanbjones

A Philosophical Etymology Gone Wrong Modern Psychics and Mediums: Divorced from their Philosophical origins Lost in Translation: The Unfortunate Philosophical Fate of "Psychic" & "Medium" How two perfectly respectable words, one beloved by Plato, one admired by Newton, were kidnapped by the Victorians and put to work in velvet-curtained parlours, reading the fortunes of credulous duchesses. Imagine, if you will, that the word “cardiac”. meaning of or pertaining to the heart. had been co-opted...

Portrait, circa 1366 God in the Basement: The Radical Mysticism of Meister Eckhart How a fourteenth-century Dominican friar dissolved the self, annoyed the Pope, and accidentally invented half of Western philosophy Imagine you are a senior manager at one of the most powerful organisations in medieval Europe. You are respected, educated, articulate, and genuinely pious. You have a gift for preaching that fills churches to capacity. And then one day, after a long and distinguished career, your...

ALL SHALL BE WELL The Visions, the Wisdom, and the Magnificent Stubbornness of Julian of Norwich c. 1343 – c. 1416 In the year 1373, a thirty-year-old woman in Norwich lay dying. Or at least, everyone thought she was dying. Her priest had already arrived to administer the last rites, which in medieval England was less a hopeful sign than a polite farewell. Then something extraordinary happened. Instead of obligingly departing this mortal coil, she had sixteen visions of such staggering...