Podcasts about Plotinus

Max completed his PhD at Boston College in spring 2025 and currently teach philosophy at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. He primarily work in the history of philosophy, with my primary area of specialization in ancient Greek and Roman metaphysics and natural philosophy. He has also done work on medieval philosophy and cosmology, and is generally interested in exploring pre-modern conceptions of nature, the heavenly bodies and their interactions with terrestrial life, and the artificial-natural divide. His dissertation was on Plotinus' ontology of artifacts.Wade's site: https://maxwade.online/---Become part of the Hermitix community:Hermitix Twitter - x.com/hermitixpodcast Support Hermitix:Patreon - patreon.com/hermitix Donations: - https://www.paypal.me/hermitixpodHermitix Merchandise - http://teespring.com/stores/hermitix-2Bitcoin Donation Address: 3LAGEKBXEuE2pgc4oubExGTWtrKPuXDDLKEthereum Donation Address: 0x31e2a4a31B8563B8d238eC086daE9

Send us Fan MailYou go for a drink with a buddy, and he unloads what's happened with his girl. A lot of push-pull, ignored texts, mood swings, drama. He wonders what's going through her mind, and enlists your help in figuring her out too.What do you say?Do you engage your own anxious brainwaves, and try and decipher her motives? Or do you tackle the real issue on display:Never mind the woman… what's going on with you?I don't believe pondering a woman's motives and feelings is entirely a fool's game. But it's amazing how men get caught in this loop. All day, all month, thinking of her, wondering what to text, how to approach the issue, how to get what you want without losing the little you already have.We all know what happens when we overthink things. Action ends up awkward. Whatever we end up saying or doing, it seems to drive her away.When it comes to drama, pulling away, mixed messages, heightened emotions, many men feel a subtle distress. And it's the distress that drives these endless questions.What if, instead of the week lost chasing her in your mind, you could find tranquility amidst the storm? Today's episode is about exactly that.Because in the end, 90% of drama resolves by itself. Let her unravel and come to you in good time.__________________________________________________If you're working with the patterns of a lifetime, and want to learn to hold yourself steady when desire and drama collide:I'm running a small private coaching afternoon called Desire in the Afternoon. An intimate consultation about your past, present and future with desire, lust, and love.DITA is a breakthrough session for a man dedicated to finding mastery in the themes of attraction and love.Oxford — Saturday June 27.Paris — Saturday July 4.Max. three seats per city. Details and application here: https://desireintheafternoon.carrd.co/Or, to go all in with me and Zan for a full calendar year, join The Guild: https://arsamorata.com/guild~ Jordan__________________________________________________#zanperrion #fearofintimacy #dating #mendating #flirting #datingadviceformen #flirttips #relationship #jealousy #attraction #menandwomen #bodylanguage ____________________________________________________Need a gunslinger? Someone who rides into town, completely solves your problem, then rides off into the sunset. Contact Zan Perrion personally to inquire about his incredibly effective one-on-one Laser Coaching. Find him here: https://arsamorata.com/gunslinger/__________________________________Get instant access to our 4 part mini-course with Zan Perrion

What did "materialism" actually mean to the ancients, and how does it differ from our modern scientific understanding? In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Max Wade (Ph.D., Boston College) to bridge the gap between ancient Greek ontology and modern philosophical debates.We dive deep into the "weirdness" of ancient thought, exploring why the Stoics believed in physical gods and why the Epicureans were the only true ancient materialists. Dr. Wade challenges the secularized modern reading of Socrates and Plato, revealing how their theories of divine design were actually a reactionary response to pre-Socratic natural philosophy.In this episode, we discuss:The Miriology of Being: Why the relationship between parts and wholes is the key to unlocking ancient ontology.Active vs. Passive Matter: The crucial distinction that separates Platonists, Aristotelians, and Stoics from the Epicureans.The "Swerve": Why materialism and determinism were considered incompatible in the ancient world.Plato's Atlantis & Egyptian Wisdom: Why reading Plato literally misses his point about the soul's forgetfulness and eternal truth.Marxism & Hegel: How modern materialism is often a misreading of ancient concepts through a German Idealist lens.About Our Guest: Dr. Max Wade is a scholar of ancient philosophy whose dissertation focused on Plotinus' Ontology of Artifacts. Follow his work at maxway.substack.com.Send us Fan Mail Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to BitterlakeSupport the showCrew:Host: C. Derick VarnIntro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.Intro Video Design: Jason MylesArt Design: Corn and C. Derick VarnLinks and Social Media:twitter: @varnvlogblue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.socialYou can find the additional streams on YoutubeCurrent Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic,Julian, Drea, Free Beer 

Send us Fan MailWe all know it's not about what you say to her. It's the inner coherence, the calmness of vibration in your body, that shapes the interaction before your words do.One of our Guild members wrote about a moment at the gym. He saw a woman, was instantly spellbound, a little frozen. He approached, took his shot, and asked for feedback.His story is one we can all relate to — great, great desire… and the wish to connect with her with delight and transparency. Zan is so inspiring when he talks about this. But the coolest line in the world doesn't land when your body is in turmoil.Today we dive into that interior territory. How do you deal with the sheer force of your own desire? Can you align the embodied experience of your attraction so you communicate in the most compelling way?There are women here and there, and there is beauty that makes you quake. If you want to learn to walk the tightrope of your most intense feelings, a timely invitation:I'm running a small private coaching afternoon called Desire in the Afternoon. An intimate consultation about your past, present and future with desire, lust, and love.DITA is a breakthrough session for a man dedicated to finding mastery in the themes of attraction and love.Oxford — Saturday June 27. Paris — Saturday July 4.Three seats per city. Details and application here. https://desireintheafternoon.carrd.co/~ Jordan__________________________________________________#zanperrion #fearofintimacy #dating #mendating #flirting #datingadviceformen #flirttips #relationship #jealousy #attraction #menandwomen #bodylanguage ____________________________________________________Need a gunslinger? Someone who rides into town, completely solves your problem, then rides off into the sunset. Contact Zan Perrion personally to inquire about his incredibly effective one-on-one Laser Coaching. Find him here: https://arsamorata.com/gunslinger/__________________________________Get instant access to our 4 part mini-course with Zan Perrion

Send us Fan MailThere is far more attraction in the world than most of us are able to perceive. And far more women into you than you might ever notice.Today's episode unpacks how the ego distorts our ability to perceive the signs of mutual attraction. This is a deep-dive about how we get in our own way, and what becomes possible when we ‘cleans the windows of perception'.If you're listening to this, and you recognise how your ego patterns are diminishing the quality of attraction in your life, here's an invitation:I'm running a small private coaching afternoon called Desire in the Afternoon. Three men, four hours, a private room. We work directly with your life's story around desire, the particular patterns your ego is making, and what a completely different future for your intimate life can look like.DITA is a breakthrough session for a man on the cusp of understanding his pattern and ready to shift it.Oxford — Saturday June 27. Paris — Saturday July 4.Three seats per city. Details and application here.https://desireintheafternoon.carrd.co/~ Jordan__________________________________________________#zanperrion #fearofintimacy #dating #mendating #flirting #datingadviceformen #flirttips #relationship #jealousy ____________________________________________________Need a gunslinger? Someone who rides into town, completely solves your problem, then rides off into the sunset. Contact Zan Perrion personally to inquire about his incredibly effective one-on-one Laser Coaching. Find him here: https://arsamorata.com/gunslinger/__________________________________Get instant access to our 4 part mini-course with Zan Perrion

Send us Fan MailMost men leave an interaction having done everything right — approached, connected, built rapport for forty-five minutes — and then walked away without ever pulling the trigger. They got the number. They didn't invite. And those are not the same thing.In this episode, Zan and Jordan return to one of the most fundamental and most overlooked principles in the Ars Amorata: the invitation. Not as a technique for scheduling a meeting, but as a spirit — a way of being that tells every woman in your orbit, I would rather have you near me than not.They get into why most men's invitational energy has an invisible ceiling on it: come close, but not too close. The father archetype Zan reaches for when explaining how a man can contain feminine chaos without walling himself off from it. The David Deida debate — whether the male nervous system is inherently stressed by female proximity, or whether that's just a man who hasn't found gratitude yet. And the single sentence that Zan says captures everything: I don't know you at all, but I would love to have you around me.Watch until the end for the practical layer: when to invite, how to invite, and why it doesn't matter at all whether she says yes or no.

Send us Fan MailMost men arrive at a retreat, a workshop, or a pilgrimage to the mentor with the same silent demand underneath everything else: make it click. They've read the books, done the programs, sat through the silent retreats. They're well-theorized. Now they want it to land — permanently, finally, done.In this episode, recorded the Friday before Zan's ten-day training week in Bucharest, Zan and Jordan pull apart what the click actually is, whether it's even possible to engineer it, and what to do in the long dark stretches when nothing clicks at all.They get into the man who travels across the world for ten days hoping something will permanently shift — and why the pressure of that hope is exactly what blocks it. Jordan's 19-year-old diary, rediscovered in a childhood bedroom: three months backpacking Southeast Asia, parties until sunrise, pages of email addresses from strangers across the world — and a pervasive feeling throughout all of it that he was lonely and missing out. The spiral of workshop-after-workshop that kicks in when nothing clicks and a man decides he must be broken. And Zan's answer to the question everyone asks him: when did you finally get it? I never did. I'm still trying.Watch until the end for Jordan's biggest click — the one that freed him from second-guessing every interaction — and the homework Zan and Jordan leave you with.

Send us Fan MailMost men reading Zan's work assume the Ars Amorata vision is a soft one — all light and ease, women as fluttering butterflies, every interaction kissed by poetry. But there's a shadow side to the archetype that gets quietly ignored, and an answer to a question that almost nobody dares to ask: what would the world actually look like if every man embodied this philosophy?In this episode, Jordan brings a question from a Guild member known only as X — a sweeping, visionary inquiry about what happens to relationship forms, dating culture, and the wider social fabric if all boys grew up versed in these principles. Zan and Jordan take the question seriously, and the conversation moves into territory neither expected.They get into Zan's heresy that women are a reflection of the men in society — and why he doesn't coach women at all. The dividing line between a man who's angry at women (workable) and a man who hates women (closed). The middle-of-the-road guy with no role models, caught between the gun-toting carnivore podcaster and the matcha-latte male feminist. The institutionalised hatred of masculinity in certain cultures that some Guild members are quietly writing in about. And Zan's growing conviction that his future work belongs with thirteen-year-old boys, not thirty-year-old men.Watch until the end for Jordan's take on what would actually change in a world full of Amorati men — and the one global shift he believes would matter more than any other.

Explore the fascinating world of religion in Ancient Greece, from the powerful Olympian gods like Zeus, Athena, and Apollo to sacred rituals, temples, myths, and festivals that shaped daily Greek life.Find me and my music here:https://linktr.ee/filipholmSupport Let's Talk Religion on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/letstalkreligion Or through a one-time donation: https://paypal.me/talkreligiondonateSources/Recommended Reading:Bowden, Hugh (2010). "Mystery cults in the Ancient World". Thames and Hudson Ltd.Burkert, William (1987). "Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical". Wiley-Blackwell. Burkert, Walter (1988). "Ancient Mystery Cults". Harvard University Press.Chulp, Radek (2016). "Proclus: An Introduction". Cambridge University Press.Cooper, John M. et. al (translated by) (1997). "Plato: Complete Works". Hackett Publishing.Dodds, E.R. (2004). "The Greeks & The Irrational". University of California Press.Eidinow, Esther & Julia Kindt (ed.) (2017). "The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion". Oxford University Press.Gerson, Loyd P. (ed.) (2019). "Plotinus: The Enneads". Cambridge University Press. (This is the translation of the Enneads I have been using in this episode).Gerson, Loyd P (2008). "Cambridge Companion to Plotinus". Cambridge University Press.Gregory, John (ed.) (1998). "The Neoplatonists: a reader". Routledge.Huffman, Carl A. (ed.) (2017). "A History of Pythagoreanism". Cambridge University Press.Iamblichus "On the Mysteries". Tranlsated by Emma C. Clarke, John M. Dillon & Jackson P. Hershell. Writings from the Graeco-Roman World. Society of Biblical Literature.Inwood, Brad (ed.) (2003). "The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics". Cambridge University Press.Kirk, G.S., J.E. Raven & M. Schofield (1983). "The Presocratic Philosophers". Second Edition. Cambridge University Press.Parker, Robert C.T. (2011). "On Greek Religion". Cornell University Press.Proclus "The Elements of Theology: A Revised Text with Translation, Introduction, and Commentary". Translated by E.R. Dodds. Second Edition. Oxford University Press.Shaw, Gregory (2014). "Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus". Angelico Press/Sophia Perennis.Ustinova, Yulia (2017). "Divine Mania: Alterations of Consciousness in Ancient Greece". Routledge.Wallis, R.T. (1998). "Neoplatonism". Second Edition. Bristol Classical Paperbacks. Hackett Publishing Company.Zhmud, Leonid (2012). "Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans". Translated by Kevin Windle & Rosh Ireland. OUP Oxford. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Send us Fan MailMost men preparing for an encounter with a woman are reaching for the wrong tool: a script, an opening line, a prescribed posture. They walk in armoured with a battle plan, hands at their sides, leaning back on their heels — and wonder why nothing sticks.In this episode, Zan and Jordan unpack what's actually moving underneath a magnetic interaction: the rhythm a man carries in his body, the poetry of his presence, and the strange truth that a man's greatest asset in a room is everything that arrives with him before he speaks a word.They get into the four-hour coaching session where a guy was animated, alive, full of stories on his couch — and then turned into a statue the moment he stepped onto the street to approach women. The therapeutic frame that tells you your humour is a “shield” — and why that frame might be costing you the very thing that makes you compelling. The musician who has rhythm in his fingers but shuts it off the second he tries to flirt. And the question Zan asks every man he coaches before they even get to “the situation”: what do you love, what do you do with leisure time, what are you looking forward to?Watch until the end for the practical layer: how rhythm actually shows up in the body — the rock step, the in-and-out, the slow-then-quick — and why men who learn this stop needing techniques altogether.

Send us Fan MailEvery once in a while a new paradigm of thinking enters your mind, reformats your worldview, and blows your sense of what's possible in life wide open.A friend of mine used to refer to these as brainquakes, and they might only happen once every few years.Zan gave many of us such a brainquake with his initial Ars Amorata philosophy. Now, a brainquake has happened unto Zan.The mathematician-philosopher Alfred North Whitehead spent his life trying to understand the nature of reality. His conclusion: beauty is the purpose of the universe — and God's entire project is forever luring you toward more beauty.The upside of this is that every single event in the cosmos happens as an invitation… ushering us, ever deeper, into moments of wonder, beauty, awe, enchantment.However, every time you stay in your seat, delete the message, swallow your truth — you're not just missing an opportunity. You're choosing inertia over beauty. And inertia, argues Zan, is evil.My inner critic was already giving me stick for not talking to that beautiful woman; now you're telling me my failure to approach her is evil?!Well, it takes a lot of energy to suppress God's plan of beauty.On the other side: the more courageous the jump, the more beauty can come.

Send us Fan MailMost men chasing the writer's life have the same fantasy: quit the corporate world, escape to Paris, find the bohemian enclave where great work just happens. But that Paris doesn't exist anymore — and Zan would argue it never quite existed the way we imagine it.In this episode, Jordan presses Zan for an update on his next book (still no release date — sorry, you've been warned), and Zan opens up about the slow, painterly way he writes: six hours a day in the chair, no Substack dribbles, no early drafts shown to anyone. Then the conversation turns to a question many men in our audience are quietly wrestling with: how do you hold a creative life and a corporate life in the same body, without one suffocating the other?They move through the four archetypes of the would-be artist, the romance of place (Paris in the 20s, Brooklyn now, Bucharest, Bali), and the strange truth that even with the internet “democratising” creativity, most of us are working alone — without that gentle rivalry between Picasso and Matisse looking over each other's shoulders.Watch until the end for Zan's plans for a literary retreat in Venice this autumn, haunting the ghost of Casanova through the city that shaped him.

Send us Fan MailMost men who want more sexual energy are refusing to sit on a stallion that's already inside them.That wild horse energy is already there — it always was. The question isn't how to generate more of it. It's how to feel it breathe beneath you as you step out of your bedroom. It's about letting it purr during small-talk: with enough force to be felt, and enough restraint to be respected.In this episode, Zan and Jordan explore what it actually looks like for a man to move from suppression to full expression — without tipping into the shameless, invasive territory that makes everyone uncomfortable. Many of our viewers say they don't have a single man in their lives that gives an image of full, wide-hearted male sexual vitality. Here, we do our best to provide a concrete image for those who say they've never seen this sort of energy up-close before.

Episode Description In this episode, Austin Bridges (co-director of L/L Research) and Doug Scott present the first half of a structured introduction to the Ra Contact for process philosopher Matt Segall, whose work on Whitehead's process philosophy has been a central inspiration for Doug's book Raian Process Metaphysics. The conversation moves from the historical origins of the Ra Contact through Ra's cosmological framework—intelligent infinity, the primal distortions, and the nested hierarchy of Logoi—to Doug's concept of teleopotentiation: the creative principle by which genuine novelty enters existence through the interplay of Affirming, Denying, and Reconciling forces. Matt responds with immediate recognition of Neoplatonic resonances, and the group engages a candid discussion of Don Elkins's death and the psychic risks inherent in this kind of work. Part one of two. Opening Invocation — Doug Scott Topics Covered I. Who Is Austin Bridges? Co-director of L/L Research, steward of the Ra Contact material and its community for over thirteen years. Austin frames his relationship to the material through epistemic humility—holding it as the backbone of his spiritual seeking without claiming it as ultimate truth. His excitement about Doug's process-philosophical synthesis as a new avenue for the material to serve the world. II. The Three Principals: Don, Carla, and Jim The unique trio whose convergence made the Ra Contact possible. Don Elkins — UFO investigator, pilot, physics professor at the University of Louisville. His journey began with the death of Captain Thomas Mantell in pursuit of a UFO and moved through hypnotic regression, past-life regression, and eventually channeling experiments with his physics students. Designated by Ra as "the questioner." Carla Rueckert — Christian mystic, cradle Episcopalian, library scientist. A direct mystical experience of Jesus at age two shaped her lifelong devotion. Became Don's research partner in 1968 and began channeling in 1974, discovering an extraordinary aptitude. Designated by Ra as "the instrument." Jim McCarty — Wilderness school graduate turned off-grid educator in rural Kentucky. Heard Don and Carla on the radio, joined their work, and moved in with them in 1980. Two weeks later, the Ra Contact began. Designated by Ra as "the scribe," his deeper role was sustained energetic focus and protection during sessions. III. The Nature of the Ra Contact (1981–1984) 106 sessions of trance channeling—completely distinct from the conscious channeling that preceded it. Carla was fully unconscious during sessions, her spirit displaced while Ra directly used her vocal cords. Three microphones and three tape recorders were required because equipment consistently failed. The ritual setup included a virgin chalice, incense, a virgin candle, and a Bible opened to the Gospel of John, chapter one. The material's language, rigor, and depth were unlike anything channeled before or since. IV. Who Is Ra? A sixth-density social memory complex originally evolved on Venus. Member of the Confederation of Planets in Service to the One Infinite Creator. The same Ra known to the ancient Egyptians—though their intended teaching of spiritual philosophy was distorted into deity worship by Egyptian politics and power structures. Ra responds to a "calling" generated by Earth's suffering, offering guidance exclusively through Q&A format to protect free will. V. The Density Structure Seven densities as bandwidths of conscious awareness—not physical locations but vibrational spectra through which consciousness evolves. Humanity occupies third density (self-awareness and choice). Fourth density (love and understanding) is dawning, but the transition is chaotic because the incoming energy must manifest through beings still enmeshed in third-density separation. An eighth density serves as the first density of a new octave—the pattern is cyclical. VI. Social Memory Complex as Whiteheadian Society (Doug) Doug translates Ra's concept into process terms: a social memory complex is a singular plurality—"the many become one, and are increased by one." Its formation is a fourth-density achievement prefigured in third density through the ecclesia, the gathered community. The noosphere coming online. The collective unconscious becoming collective conscious. In Whiteheadian terms: a higher-grade society sheltered by the third-density framework until a metaphysical threshold of wholeheartedness is reached. VII. Intelligent Infinity and the Primal Distortions (Austin) The One Infinite Creator as undistorted unity—"the macrocosm of the mystery-clad being." Ra's two uses of "intelligent infinity": (1) absolute non-dual reality, and (2) the potential aspect of creation paired with intelligent energy as the kinetic aspect. The three primal distortions as the logical structure giving birth to creation: Free Will (awareness awakening within infinity), Love/Logos (focusing of intelligent energy into creative form), and Light (the first manifestation—all that exists, organized by love). VIII. Ra's Use of Logos (Austin) The Logos as a nested, fractal hierarchy: Primal Logos → Galactic Logoi → Solar Logoi → Planetary Logoi → individual mind/body/spirit complexes. Each level receives intelligent energy from its parent Logos and has the free will to further refine its own creation. The engagement is participatory—creation gives experience back to the Logos, and the Logos iterates. "Each Logos desires to create a more eloquent expression of experience of the Creator by the Creator." IX. Teleopotentiation: The Engine of Creative Advance (Doug) Doug's central contribution: teleopotentiation names the universal creative principle underlying both Ra's cosmology and Whitehead's process thought. Drawing from Gurdjieff's Law of Three (via Cynthia Bourgeault): Affirming Force meets Denying Force, and through a Reconciling Force, a New Higher Arising is generated—genuine novelty, not compromise or rearrangement. Doug defines intelligence as "awareness in motion towards more—awareness as desire for gnosis." The will's focusing act by which infinite possibility becomes potentiated probability, becomes manifested actuality. X. The Torus and the Ankh (Doug) Teleopotentiation has a geometry: the torus—the shape of continuous self-referential flow, the shape that self-knowing takes. The Ankh is the two-dimensional cross-section of this toric reality. The circle is the eternal; the cross is manifestation; the eternal experiences itself through extended embrace. The primal rhythm carries three affects: yearning (outward flow), longing (the turn toward return), and rejoicing (coalescence at the center). Rhythm itself necessitates three—and this triadic structure is "the rhythms clothed in mystery, for they are being itself." XI. Matt Segall Responds Matt identifies immediate Neoplatonic resonances—Plotinus's emanation from the One, the levels of density recalling the hypostases. He suggests this resonance may itself trace back to Ra's Egyptian teaching seeding Plato's philosophical understanding. His assessment: "None of this feels foreign to me. The concepts and the deep pattern of creation and manifestation feel intimately familiar." He affirms that Whiteheadian language could have helped Ra express what the noun-based structure of English made difficult. XII. The Death of Don Elkins Matt asks about Don's suicide and its relationship to the channeling project. Austin explains: the positive magical charge of the contact attracted a fifth-density service-to-self entity that could not create distortion but could energize distortions already present. Don's pre-existing mental health vulnerabilities became inroads for this influence. A diagnosis of depressive psychosis with schizophrenic tendencies. The mental health system's failure. A tragic standoff with police ending in Don's death by his own hand. The trio's unique synergy was irreplaceable; the Ra Contact ended permanently. Doug adds: fifth density is the ceiling for negative polarity—in sixth density, one can no longer ignore one's unity with the other, and the negative path collapses. But at fifth density, extraordinary black magic is possible, though negative beings cannot create—they can only amplify what is already there. Closing Benediction — Tim Merrill "Out and within to all that is beautiful and noble, virtuous, all that is worthy of our best selves. And we express gratitude for this experience, for the catalyst that has brought us here together, and for the iron that we are forging. May it become gold, and the athanor of love. Amen." Key Terms in This Episode Density — Bandwidth of conscious awareness through which consciousness evolves; seven densities within an octave of experience Social Memory Complex — Collective consciousness where individual beings achieve sufficient harmony that memories and experiences become mutually accessible; Ra is a sixth-density social memory complex Intelligent Infinity — Pure undifferentiated potential; the ground of all being before focus or manifestation Intelligent Energy — Intelligent infinity focused as creative force; the Logos Logos / Logoi — Creative consciousness at various scales: Primal, Galactic, Solar, Planetary, Individual Primal Distortions — The three fundamental "distortions" (complexifications) from unity: Free Will, Love/Logos, Light Teleopotentiation — Purposive bringing-forth of genuine novelty through the Law of Three: Affirming meets Denying, Reconciling generates New Higher Arising Law of Three — Every manifestation requires three forces: Affirming, Denying, and Reconciling (Gurdjieff via Cynthia Bourgeault) Torus — The geometry of continuous self-referential flow; the shape that self-knowing takes at every scale Ankh — The cross-section of toric reality; the eternal experiencing itself through extended embrace and transformation Wanderer — A higher-density being who incarnates into third density to serve The Veil — The forgetting that characterizes third-density incarnation, intensifying the experience of choice References & Resources The Ra Contact: Teaching the Law of One — Don Elkins, Carla Rueckert, Jim McCarty (L/L Research, 2018) lawofone.info — Free searchable archive of all 106 sessions llresearch.org — L/L Research, publishers and stewards of the Ra Contact Raian Process Metaphysics — Doug Scott (Building 4th Press, 2026) Physics of the World-Soul — Matt Segall (SacraSage Press, 2021) The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three — Cynthia Bourgeault (Shambhala, 2013) Process and Reality — Alfred North Whitehead (Free Press, 1978) Building 4th Community — cosmicchrist.net Next Episode: Part two of the Law of One introduction, continuing with deeper process parallels, the dipolar God, and fuller group discussion. Recorded April 24, 2026. "The many become one, and are increased by one." — Alfred North Whitehead

Send us Fan MailMost men who find our work say they want the same thing: more sexual energy. It seems like the way to avoid being felt as a nice-guy and to escape the friend-zone.But the downside of our sexual desire is the agony that it brings up: physically, mentally, emotionally. It's handy, therefore, that our subconscious engages in sexual repression, to keep this angst at bay.In this episode, Zan and Jordan touch on entitlement, blame, and distress as three aspects that keep our sexual desire feeling painful, and how to access ‘pure, life-giving desire' as a way out of this angst.Watch until the end, and get some concrete examples of what sexual energy channelled into a creative force actually looks like.

Send us Fan MailWho Longs More: Women or Men?The words “longing” and “yearning” have become mainstays in our recent conversation with men. Strange - these are terms you find in Rumi's mystic poetry, or in femininity goddess work, not the male dating arena. But here we have it: men owning their longing for relationship, and all the poetic wisdom that the longing itself contains.At the same time, more men than ever are voicing their discomfort with terms like “certainty” and “conviction”. These are classic ‘masculine qualities'. Sure, it's dicey to claim certainty and conviction over anything in today's world… but will any great love affair take off if both parties are restricted to yearning, and neither embodies a bit of conviction about their feelings?Today, Zan and Jordan explore this well-worn language used in today's ‘conscious' or ‘spiritual intimacy' circles. Zan debunks a number of definitions of these terms. I, Jordan, don't necessarily agree. What do you think?

Send us Fan MailWhat a Man Transmits Before He SpeaksMost men in the dating world focus on entirely the wrong questions.It's not about what you say to her, but the ‘world' you're arriving from.There is a stark difference between running someone through well-designed stages, and transmitting a context of being. One is shallow: sequence, steps, clear-defined outcome. The other is deep: you as a mythical sense of ‘world' in which unpredictable things might happen.As we kick off Season #2 we get into this distinction, what it looks like in practice with a woman who's testing your frame, and why the men who get this stop needing techniques altogether.

As we continue through "Life, Death, and Meaning with Beowulf and Boethius," I survey the emergence of Neoplatonism from the pre-Socratics to Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, and Boethius.Watch the video of this episode and subscribe to my YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/O0K6HKbHFp0Become a patron of Mythic Mind at patreon.com/mythicmindListen to all THREE Mythic Mind podcasts:Mythic MindMythic Mind GamesMythic Mind Movies & Shows(or become a patron to get all three shows in one ad-free feedBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mythic-mind--5808321/support.

Ahead of her new book What's So Great About the Great Books? coming out in April, Naomi Kanakia and I talked about literature from Herodotus to Tony Tulathimutte. We touched on Chaucer, Anglo-Saxon poetry, Scott Alexander, Shakespeare, William James, Helen deWitt, Marx and Engels, Walter Scott, Les Miserables, Jhootha Sach, the Mahabharata, and more. Naomi also talked about some of her working habits and the history and future of the Great Books movement. Naomi, of course, writes Woman of Letters here on Substack.TranscriptHenry Oliver: Today, I am talking with Naomi Kanakia. Naomi is a novelist, a literary critic, and most importantly she writes a Substack called Woman of Letters, and she has a new book coming out, What's So Great About the Great Books? Naomi, welcome.Naomi Kanakia: Thanks for having me on.Oliver: How is the internet changing the way that literature gets discussed and criticized, and what is that going to mean for the future of the Great Books?Kanakia: How is the internet changing it? I can really speak to only how it has changed it for me. I started off as a writer of young adult novels and science fiction, and there's these very active online fan cultures for those two things.I was reading the Great Books all through that time. I started in 2010 through today. In the 2010s, it really felt like there was not a lot of online discussion of classic literature. Maybe that was just me and I wasn't finding it, but it didn't necessarily feel like there was that community.I think because there are so many strong, public-facing institutions that discuss classic literature, like the NYRB, London Review of Books, a lot of journals, and universities, too. But now on Substack, there are a number of blogs—yours, mine, a number of other ones—that are devoted to classic literature. All of those have these commenters, a community of commenters. I also follow bloggers who have relatively small followings who are reading Tolstoy, reading Middlemarch, reading even much more esoteric things.I know that for me, becoming involved in this online culture has given me much more of an awareness that there are many people who are reading the classics on their own. I think that was always true, but now it does feel like it's more of a community.Oliver: We are recording this the day after the Washington Post book section has been removed. You don't see some sort of relationship between the way these literary institutions are changing online and the way the Great Books are going to be conceived of in the future? Because the Great Books came out of a an old-fashioned, saving-the-institutions kind of radical approach to university education. We're now moving into a world where all those old things seem to be going.Kanakia: Yes. I agree. The Great Books began in the University of Chicago and Columbia University. If you look into the history of the movement, it really was about university education and the idea that you would have a common core and all undergraduates would read these books. The idea that the Great Books were for the ordinary person was really an afterthought, at least for Mortimer Adler and those original Great Books guys. Now, the Great Books in the university have had a resurgence that we can discuss, but I do think there's a lot more life and vitality in the kind of public-facing humanities than there has been.I talked to Irina Dumitrescu, who writes for TLS (The Times Literary Supplement), LRB (The London Review of Books), a lot of these places, and she also said the same thing—that a lot of these journals are going into podcasts, and they're noticing a huge interest in the humanities and in the classics even at the same time as big institutions are really scaling back on those things. Humanities majors are dropping, classics majors are getting cut, book coverage at major periodicals is going down. It does seem like there are signals that are conflicting. I don't really know totally what to make of it. I do think there is some relation between those two things.Ted Gioia on Substack is always talking about how culture is stagnant, basically, and one of the symptoms of that is that “back list” really outsells “front list” for books. Even in 2010, 50 percent of the books that were sold were front-list titles, books that had been released in the last 18 months. Now it's something like only 35 percent of books or something like that are front-list titles. These could be completely wrong, but there's been a trend.I think the decrease in interest in front-list books is really what drives the loss of these book-review pages because they mostly review front-list books. So, I think that does imply that there's a lot of interest in old books. That's what our stagnant culture means.Oliver: Why do you think your own blog is popular with the rationalists?Kanakia: I don't know for certain. There was a story I wrote that was a joke. There are all these pop nonfiction books that aim to prove something that seems counterintuitive, so I wrote a parody of one of those where I aim to prove that reading is bad for you. This book has many scientific studies that show the more you read, the worse it is because it makes you very rigid.Scott Alexander, who is the archrationalist, really liked that, and he added me to his blog roll. Because of that, I got a thousand rationalist subscribers. I have found that rationalists at least somewhat interested in the classics. I think they are definitely interested in enduring sources of value. I've observed a fair amount of interest.Oliver: How much of a lay reader are you really? Because you read scholarship and critics and you can just quote John Gilroy in the middle of a piece or something.Kanakia: Yeah. That is a good question. I have definitely gotten more interested in secondary literature. In my book, I really talk about being a lay reader and personally having a nonacademic approach to literature. I do think that, over 15 years of being a lay reader, I have developed a lot of knowledge.I've also learned the kind of secondary literature that is really important. I think having historical context adds a lot and is invaluable. Right now I'm rereading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. When I first read it in 2010, I hardly knew anything about French history. I was even talking online with someone about how most people who read Les Miserables think it's set in the French Revolution. That's basically because Americans don't really know anything about French history.Everything makes just a lot more sense the more you know about the time because it was written for people in it. For people in 1860s France, who knew everything about their own recent history, that really adds a lot to it. I still don't tend to go that much into interpretive literature, literature that tries to do readings of the stories or tell me the meaning of the stories. I feel like I haven't really gotten that much out of that.Oliver: How long have you been learning Anglo-Saxon?Kanakia: I went through a big Anglo-Saxon phase. That was in 2010. It started because I started reading The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. There is a great app online called General Prologue created by one of your countrymen, Terry Richardson [NB it is Terry Jones], who loved Middle English. In this app, he recites the Middle English of the General Prologue. I started listening to this app, and I thought, I just really love the rhythms and the sounds of Middle English. And it's quite easy to learn. So then, I got really into that.And then I thought, but what about Anglo-Saxon? I'm very bad at languages. I studied Latin for seven years in middle school and high school. I never really got very far, but I thought, Anglo-Saxon has to be the easiest foreign language you can learn, right? So, I got into it.I cannot sight read Anglo-Saxon, but I really got into Anglo-Saxon poetry. I really liked the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Most people probably would not like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle because it's very repetitive, but that makes it great if you're a language learner because every entry is in this very repetitive structure. I just felt such a connection. I get in trouble when I say this kind of stuff, because I'm never quiet sure if it's 100 percent true. But it's certainly one of the oldest vernacular literatures in Europe. It's just so much older than most of the other medieval literature I've read. And it just was such a window into a different part of history I never knew about.Oliver: And you particularly like “The Dream of the Rood”?Kanakia: Yeah, “The Dream of the Rood” is my favorite Anglo-Saxon poem. “The Dream of the Rood” is a poem that is told from the point of view of Christ's cross. A man is having a dream. In this dream he encounters Christ's cross, and Christ's cross starts reciting to him basically the story of the crucifixion. At the end, the cross is buried. I don't know, it was just so haunting and powerful. Yeah, it was one of my favorites.Oliver: Why do you think Byron is a better poet than Alexander Pope?Kanakia: This is an argument I cannot get into. I think this is coming up because T. S. Eliot felt that Alexander Pope was a great poet because he really exemplified the spirit of the age. I don't know. I've tried to read Pope. It just doesn't do it for me. Whereas with Byron, I read Don Juan and found it entertaining. I enjoyed it. Then, his lyric poetry is just more entertaining to read. With Alexander Pope, I'm learning a lot about what kind of poetry people wrote in the 18th century, but the joy is not there.Oliver: Okay. Can we do a quick fire round where I say the name of a book and you just say what you think of it, whatever you think of it?Kanakia: Sure.Oliver: Okay. The Odyssey.Kanakia: The Odyssey. Oh, I love The Odyssey. It has a very strange structure, where it starts with Telemachus and then there's this flashback in the middle of it. It is much more readable than The Iliad; I'll say that.Oliver: Herodotus.Kanakia: Herodotus is wild. Going into Herodotus, I really thought it was about the Persian war, which it is, but it's mostly a general overview of everything that Herodotus knew, about anything. It's been a long time since I read it. I really appreciate the voice of Herodotus, how human it is, and the accumulation of facts. It was great.Oliver: I love the first half actually. The bit about the Persian war I'm less interested in, but the first half I think is fantastic. I particularly love the Egypt book.Kanakia: Oh yeah, the Egypt book is really good.Oliver: All those like giant beetles that are made of fire or whatever; I can't remember the details, but it's completely…Kanakia: The Greeks are also so fascinated by Egypt. They go down there like what is going on out there? Then, most of what we know about Egypt comes from this Hellenistic period, when the Greeks went to Egypt. Our Egyptian kings list comes from the Hellenistic period where some scholar decided to sort out what everybody was up to and put it all into order. That's why we have such an orderly story about Egypt. That's the story that the Greeks tried to tell themselves.Oliver: Marcus Aurelius.Kanakia: Marcus Aurelius. When I first read The Meditations, which I loved, obviously, I thought, “being the Roman emperor cannot be this hard.” It really was a black pill moment because I thought, “if the emperor of Rome is so unhappy, maybe human power really doesn't do it.”Knowing more about Marcus Aurelius, he did have quite a difficult life. He was at war for most of his—just stuck in the region in Germany for ages. He had various troubles, but yeah, it really was very stoic. It was, oh, I just have to do my duty. Very “heavy is the head that wears the crown” kind of stuff. I thought, “okay, I guess being Roman emperor is not so great.”Oliver: Omar Khayyam.Kanakia: Omar Khayyam. Okay, I've only read The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edward Fitzgerald, which I loved, but I cannot formulate a strong opinion right now.Oliver: As You Like It.Kanakia: No opinions.Oliver: Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.Kanakia: Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. I do have an opinion about this, which is that they should make a redacted version of Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. I normally am not a big believer in abridgements because I feel like whatever is there is there. But, Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, first of all, has a long portion before Boswell even meets Johnson. That portion drags; it's not that great. Then it has all these like letters that Johnson wrote, which also are not that great. What's really good is when Boswell just reports everything Johnson ever said, which is about half the book. You get a sense of Johnson's conversation and his personality, and that is very gripping. I've definitely thought that with a different presentation, this could still be popular. People would still read this.Oliver: The Communist Manifesto.Kanakia: The Communist Manifesto. It's very stirring. I love The Communist Manifesto. It has very haunting, powerful lines. I won't try to quote from it because I'll misquote them.Oliver: But it is remarkably well written.Kanakia: Oh yeah, it is a great work of literature.Oliver: Yeah.Kanakia: I read Capital [Das Kapital], which is not a great work of literature, and I would venture to say that it is not necessarily worth reading. It really feels like Marx's reputation is built on other political writings like The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and works like that, which really seem to have a lot more meat on the bone than Capital.Oliver: Pragmatism by William James.Kanakia: Pragmatism. I mean, I've mentioned that in my book. I love William James in general. I think William James was writing in this 19th-century environment where it seemed like some form of skepticism was the only rational solution. You couldn't have any source of value, and he really tried to cut through that with Pragmatism and was like, let's just believe the things that are good to believe. It is definitely at least useful to think, although someone else can always argue with you about what is useful to believe. But, as a personal guide for belief, I think it is still useful.Oliver: Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw.Kanakia: No strong opinions. It was a long time ago that I read Major Barbara.Oliver: Tell me what you like about James Fenimore Cooper.Kanakia: James Fenimore Cooper. Oh, this is great. I have basically a list of Great Books that I want to read, but four or five years ago, I thought, “what's in all the other books that I know the names of but that are not reputed, are not the kind of books you still read?”That was when I read Walter Scott, who I really love. And I just started reading all kinds of books that were kind of well known but have kind of fallen into literary disfavor. In almost every case, I felt like I got a lot out of these books. So, nowadays when I approach any realm of literature, I always look for those books.In 19th-century American literature, the biggest no-longer-read book is The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, which was America's first bestseller. He was the first American novelist that had a high reputation in Europe. The Last of the Mohicans is kind of a historical romance, à la Walter Scott, but much more tightly written and much more tightly plotted.Cooper has written five novels, the Leatherstocking Tales, that are all centered around this very virtuous, rough-hewn frontiersman, Natty Bumppo. He has his best friend, Chingachgook, who is the last of the Mohicans. He's the last of his tribe. And the two of these guys are basically very sad and stoic. Chingachgook is distanced from his tribe. Chingachgook has a tribe of Native Americans that he hates—I want to say it's the Huron. He's always like, “they're the bad ones,” and he's always fighting them. Then, Natty Bumppo doesn't really love settled civilization. He's not precisely at war with it, but he does not like the settlers. They're kind of stuck in the middle. They have various adventures, and I just thought it was so haunting and powerful.I've been reading a lot of other 19th-century American literature, and virtually none of it treats Native Americans with this kind of respect. There's a lot of diversity in the Native American characters; there's really an attempt to show how their society works and the various ways that leadership and chiefship works among them. There's this very haunting moment in The Last of the Mohicans, where this aged chief, Tamenund, comes out and starts speaking. This is a chief who, in American mythology, was famous for being a friend to the white people. But, James Fenimore Cooper writing in the 1820s has Tamenund come out at 80 years old and say, “we have to fight; we have to fight the white people. That's our only option.” It was just such a powerful moment and such a powerful book.I was really, really enthused. I read all of these Leatherstocking Tales. It was also a very strange experience to read these books that are generally supposed to be very turgid and boring, and then I read them and was like, “I understand. I'm so transported.” I understand exactly why readers in the 1820s loved this.Oliver: Which Walter Scott books do you like?Kanakia: I love all the Walter Scott books I've read, but the one I liked best was Kenilworth. Have you ever read Kenilworth?Oliver: I don't know that one.Kanakia: Yeah, it's about Elizabeth I, who had a romantic relationship with one of her courtiers.Oliver: The Earl of Essex?Kanakia: Yeah. She really thought they were going to get married, but then it turned out he was secretly married. Basically, I guess the implication is that he killed his wife in order to marry Queen Elizabeth I. It's a novel all about him and that situation, and it just felt very tightly plotted. I really enjoyed it.Oliver: What did you think of Rejection?Kanakia: Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte? Initially when I read this book, I enjoyed it, but I was like, “life cannot possibly be this sad.” It's five or six stories about these people who just have nothing going on. Their lives are so miserable, they can't find anyone to sleep with, and they're just doomed to be alone forever. I was like, “life can't be this bad.” But now thinking back over it, it is one of the most memorable books I've read in the last year. It really sticks with you. I feel like my opinion of this book has gone up a lot in retrospect.Oliver: How antisemitic is the House of Mirth?Kanakia: That is a hotly debated question, which I mentioned in my book. I think there has been a good case made that Edith Wharton, the author of House of Mirth, who was from an old New York family, was herself fairly antisemitic and did not personally like Jewish people. What she portrays in this book is that this old New York society also was highly suspicious of Jewish people and was organized to keep Jewish people out.In this book there is a rich Jewish man, Simon Rosedale, and there's a poor woman, Lily Bart. Lily Bart's main thing is whether she's going to marry the poor guy, Lawrence Selden, or the rich guy, Percy Gryce. She can't choose. She doesn't want to be poor, but she also is always bored by the rich guys. Meanwhile, through the whole book, there's Simon Rosedale, who's always like, “you should marry me.” He's the rich Jewish guy. He's like, “you should marry me. I will give you lots of money. You can do whatever you want.”Everybody else kind of just sees her as a woman and as a wife; he really sees her as an ally in his social climbing. That's his main motivation. The book is relatively clear that he has a kind of respect for her that nobody else does. Then, over the course of the book, she also gains a lot more respect for him. Basically, late in the book, she decides to marry him, but she has fallen a lot in the world. He's like, “that particular deal is not available anymore,” but he does offer her another deal that—although she finds it not to her taste—is still pretty good.He basically is like, “I'll give you some money, you'll figure out how to rehabilitate your reputation, and later down the line, we can figure something out.” So, I think with a great author like Edith Wharton, there's power in these portrayals. I felt it hard to come away from it feeling like the book is like a really antisemitic book.Oliver: Now, you note that the Great Books movement started out as something quite socially aspirational. Do you think it's still like that?Kanakia: I do think so. Yeah. For me, that's 100 percent what it was because I majored in econ. I always felt kind of inadequate as a writer against people who had majored in English. Then I started off as a science fiction writer, young adult writer, and I was like, “I'm going to read all these Great Books and then I'll have read the books that everybody else has read.” In my mind, that's also what it was—that there was some upper crust or literary society that was reading all these Great Books.That's really what did it. I do think there's still an element of aspiration to it because it's a club that you can join, that anyone can join. It's very straightforward to be a Great Books reader, and so I think there's still something there. I think because the Great Books movement has such a democratic quality to it, it actually doesn't get you to the top socially, which has always been the true, always been the case. But, that's okay. As long as you end up higher than where you started, that's fine.Oliver: What makes a book great?Kanakia: I talk about it this in the book, and I go through many different authors' conceptions of what makes a book great or what constitutes a classic. I don't know that anyone has come up with a really satisfying answer. The Horatian formulation from Horace—that a book is great or an author is great if it has lasted for a hundred years—is the one that seems to be the most accurate. Like, any book that's still being read a hundred years after it was written has a greatness.I do think that T. S. Eliott's formulation—that a civilization at its height produces certain literature and that literature partakes of the greatness of the civilization and summarizes the greatness of the civilization—does seem to have some kind of truth to it.But it's hard, right? Because the greatest French novel is In Search of Lost Time, but I don't know that anyone would say that the France in the 1920s was at its height. It's not a prescriptive thing, but it does seem like the way we read many of these Great Books, like Moby Dick, it feels like you're like communing with the entire society that produced it. So, maybe there's something there.Oliver: Now, you've used a list from Clifton Fadiman.Kanakia: Yes.Oliver: Rather than from Mortimer Adler or Harold Bloom or several others. Why this list?Kanakia: Well, the best reason is that it's actually the list I've just been using for the last 15 years. I went to a science fiction convention in 2009, Readercon, and at this science fiction convention was Michael Dirda, who was a Washington Post book critic. He had recently come out with his book, Classics for Pleasure, which I also bought and liked. But he said that the list he had always used was this Clifton Fadiman book. And so when I decided to start reading the Great Books, I went and got that book. I have perused many other lists over time, but that was always the list that seemed best to me.It seemed to have like the best mix. There's considerable variation amongst these lists, but there's also a lot of overlap. So any of these lists is going to have Dickens on it, and Tolstoy, and stuff like that. So really, you're just thinking about, “aside from Dickens and Tolstoy and George Eliot and Walt Whitman and all these people, who are the other 50 authors that you're going be reading?”The Mortimer Adler list is very heavy on philosophy. It has Plotinus on it. It has all these scientific works. I don't know, it didn't speak to me as much. Whereas, this Clifton Fadiman and John Major list has all these Eastern works on it. It has The Tale of Genji, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Story of the Stone, and that just spoke to me a little bit more.Oliver: What modern books will be on a future Great Books list, whether it's from someone alive or someone since the war.Kanakia: Have you ever heard of Robert Caro?Oliver: Sure.Kanakia: Yeah. I think his Lyndon Johnson books are great books. They have changed the field of biography. They're so complete, they seem to summarize an entire era, epoch. They're highly rated, but I feel like they're underrated as literature.What else? I was actually a little bit surprised in this Clifton Fadiman-John Major book, which came out in 1999, that there are not more African Americans in their list. Like, Invisible Man definitely seemed like a huge missed work. You know, it's hard. You would definitely want a book that has undergone enough critical evaluation that people are pretty certain that it is great. A lot of things that are more recent have not undergone that evaluation yet, but Invisible Man has, as have some works by Martin Luther King.Oliver: What about The Autobiography of Malcolm X?Kanakia: I would have to reread. I feel like it hasn't been evaluated much as a literary document.Oliver: Helen DeWitt?Kanakia: It's hard to say. It's so idiosyncratic, The Last Samurai, but it is certainly one of the best novels of the last 25 years.Oliver: Yeah.Kanakia: It is hard to say, because there's nothing else quite like it. But I would love if The Last Samurai was on a list like this; that would be amazing.Oliver: If someone wants to try the Great Books, but they think that those sort of classic 19th-century novels are too difficult—because they're long and the sentences are weird or whatever—what else should they do? Where else should they start?Kanakia: Well, it depends on what they're into, or it depends on their personality type. I think like there are people who like very, very difficult literature. There are people who are very into James Joyce and Proust. I think for some people the cost-benefit is better. If they're going to be pouring over some book for a long time, they would prefer if it was overtly difficult.If they're not like that, then I would say, there are many Great Books that are more accessible. Hemingway is a good one and Grapes of Wrath is wonderful. The 19th-century American books tend to be written in a very different register than the English books. If you read Moby Dick, it feels like it's written in a completely different language than Charles Dickens, even though they're writing essentially at the same time.Oliver: Is there too much Freud on the list that you've used?Kanakia: Maybe. I know that Interpretation of Dreams is on that list, which I've tried to read and have decided life is too short. I didn't really buy it, but I have read a fair amount of Freud. My impression of Freud was always that I would read Freud and somehow it would just seem completely fanciful or far out, like wouldn't ring true. But then when I started reading Freud, it was more the opposite. I was like, oh yeah, this seems very, very true.Like this battle between like the id and the ego and the super ego, and this feeling that like the psyche is at war with itself. Human beings really desire to be singular and exceptional, but then you're constantly under assault by the reality principle, which is that you're insignificant. That all seemed completely true. But then he tries to cure this somehow, which does not seem a curable problem. And he also situates the problem in some early sexual development, which also did not necessarily ring true. But no, I wouldn't say there's too much. Freud is a lot of fun. People should read Freud.Oliver: Which of the Great Books have you really not liked?Kanakia: I do get asked this quite a bit. I would say the Great Book that I really felt like—at least in translation—was not that rewarding in an unabridged version was Don Quixote. Because at least half the length of Don Quixote is these like interpolated novellas that are really long and tedious. I felt Don Quixote was a big slog. But maybe someday I'll go back and reread it and love it. Who knows?Oliver: Now you wrote that the question of biography is totally divorced from the question of what art is and how it operates. What do you think of George Orwell's supposition that if Shakespeare came back tomorrow, and we found out he used to rape children that we should—we would not say, you know, it's fine to carry on to doing that because he might write another King Lear.Kanakia: Well, if we discovered that Shakespeare was raping children, he should go to prison for that. No. It's totally divorced in both senses. You don't get any credit in the court of law because you are the writer of King Lear. If I murdered someone and then I was hauled in front of a judge and they were like, oh, Naomi's a genius, I wouldn't get off for murder. Nor should I get off for murder.So in terms of like whether we would punish Shakespeare for his crime of raping children, I don't think King Lear should count at all, but it's never used that way. It's never should someone go to prison or not for their crimes, because they're a genius. It's always used the other way, which is should we read King Lear knowing that the author raped children, but I also feel like that is immaterial. If you read King Lear, you're not enabling someone to rape children.Oliver: There's an almost endless amount of discussion these days about the Great Books and education and the value of the humanities, and what's the future of it all. What is your short opinion on that?Kanakia: My short opinion is that the Great Books at least are going to be fine. The Great Books will continue to be read, and they would even survive the university. All these books predate the university and they will survive the university. I feel like the university has stewarded literature in its own way for a while now and has made certain choices in that stewardship. I think if that stewardship was given up to more voluntary associations that had less financial support, then I think the choices would probably be very different. But I still think the greatest works would survive.Oliver: Now this is a quote from the book: “I am glad that reactionaries love the Great Books. They've invited a Trojan horse into their own camp.” Tell us what you mean by that.Kanakia: Let's say you believed in Christian theocracy, that you thought America should be organized on explicitly Christian principles. And because you believe in Christian theocracy, you organize a school that teaches the Great Books. Many of these schools that are Christian schools that have Great Books programs will also teach Nietzsche. They definitely put some kind of spin on Nietzsche. But they will teach anti-Christ, and that is a counterpoint to Christian morality and Christian theology. There are many things that you'll read in the Great Books that are corrosive to various kinds of certainties.If someone who I think is bad starts educating themselves in the Great Books, I don't think that the Great Books are going to make them worse from my perspective. So it's good.Oliver: How did reading the Mahabharata change you?Kanakia: Oh yeah, so the Mahabharata is a Hindu epic from, let's say, the first century AD. I'm Indian and most Indians are familiar with the basic outline of the Mahabharata story because it's told in various retellings, and there's a TV serial that my parents would rent from the Indian store growing up and we would watch it tape by tape. So I'm very familiar with it. Like there's never been a time I have not known this story.But I was also familiar with the idea that there is a written version in Sanskrit that's extremely long. It is 10 times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey combined. This Mahabharata story is not that long. I've read a version of it that's about 800 pages long. So how could something that's 10 times this long be the same? A new unabridged translation came out 10 years ago. So I started reading it, and it basically contains the entire Sanskrit Vedic worldview in it.I had never been exposed to this very coherently laid-out version of what I would call Hindu cosmology and ethics. Hindus don't really get taught those things in a very organized way. The book is basically about dharma, the principle of rightness and how this principle of rightness orders the universe and how it basically results in everybody getting their just deserts in various ways. As I was reading the book, I was like, this seems very true that there is some cosmic rebalancing here, and that everything does turn out more or less the way it should, which is not something that I can defend on a rational level.But just reading the book, it just made me feel like, yes, that is true. There is justice, the universe is organized by justice. It took me about a year to read the whole thing. I started waking up at 5:00 a.m. and reading for an hour each morning, and it just was a really magical, profound experience that brought me a lot closer to my grandmother's religious beliefs.Oliver: Is it ever possible to persuade someone with arguments that they should read literature, or is it just something that they have to have an inclination toward and then follow someone's example? Because I feel like we have so many columns and op-eds and “books are good because of X reason, and it's very important because of Y reason.” And like, who cares? No one cares. If you are persuaded, you take all that very seriously and you argue about what exactly are the precise reasons we should say. And if you're not persuaded, you don't even know this is happening.And what really persuades you is like, oh, Naomi sounds pretty compelling about the Mahabharata. That sounds cool. I'll try that. It's much more of a temperamental, feelingsy kind of thing. Is it possible to argue people into thinking about this differently? Or should we just be doing what we do and setting an example and hoping that people will follow.Kanakia: As to whether it's possible or not, I do not know. But I do think these columns are too ambitious. A thousand-word column and the imagined audience for this column is somebody who doesn't read books at all, who doesn't care about literature at all. And then in a thousand-word column, you're going to persuade them to care about literature. This is no good. It's so unnecessary.Whereas there's a much broader range of people who love to read books, but have never picked up Moby Dick or have never picked up Middlemarch, or who like maybe loved Middlemarch, but never thought maybe I should then go on and read Jane Austen and George Eliot.I think trying to shift people from “I don't read books at all; reading books is not something I do,” to being a Great Books card-carrying lover of literature is a lot. I really aim for a much lower result than that, which is to whatever extent people are interested in literature, they should pursue that interest. And as the rationalists would say, there's a lot of alpha in that; there's a lot to be gained from converting people who are somewhat interested into people who are very interested.Oliver: If there was a more widespread practice of humanism in education and the general culture, would that make America into a more liberal country in any way?Kanakia: What do you mean by humanism?Oliver: You know, the old-fashioned liberal arts approach, the revival of the literary journal culture, the sort of depolitical approach to literature, the way things used to be, as it were.Kanakia: It couldn't hurt. It couldn't hurt is my answer to that question.Oliver: Okay.Kanakia: What you're describing is basically the way I was educated. I went to Catholic school in DC at St. Anselm's Abbey School, in Northeast, DC, grade school. Highly recommend sending your little boys there. No complaints about the school. They talked about humanism all the time and all these civic virtues. I thought it was great. I don't know what people in other schools learn, but I really feel like it was a superior way of teaching.Now, you know, it was Catholic school, so a lot of people who graduated from my school are conservatives and don't really have the beliefs that I have, but that's okay.Oliver: Tell us about your reading habits.Kanakia: I read mostly ebooks. I really love ebooks because you can make the type bigger. I just read all the time. They vary. I don't wake up at 5:00 a.m. to read anymore. Sometimes if I feel like I'm not reading enough—because I write this blog, and the blog doesn't get written unless I'm reading. That's the engine, and so sometimes I set aside a day each week to read. But generally, the reading mostly takes care of itself.What I tend to get is very into a particular thing, and then I'll start reading more and more in that area. Recently, I was reading a lot of New Yorker stories. So I started reading more and more of these storywriters that have been published in the New Yorker and old anthologies of New Yorker stories. And then eventually I am done. I'm tired. It's time to move on.Oliver: But do you read several books at once? Do you make notes? Do you abandon books? How many hours a day do you read?Kanakia: Hours a day: Because my e-reader keeps these stats, I'd say 15 or 20 hours a week of reading. Nowadays because I write for the blog, I often think as I'm reading how I would frame a post about this. So I look for quotes, like what quote I would look at. I take different kinds of notes. I'll make more notes if I'm more confused by what is going on. Especially with nonfiction books, I'll try sometimes to make notes just to iron out what exactly I think is happening or what I think the argument is. But no, not much of a note taker.Oliver: What will you read next?Kanakia: What will I read next? Well, I've been thinking about getting back into Indian literature. Right now I'm reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. But there's an Indian novel called Jhootha Sach, which is a partition novel that is originally in Hindi. And it's also a thousand pages long, and is frequently compared to Les Miserables and War and Peace. So I'm thinking about tackling that finally.Oliver: Naomi Kanakia, thank you very much.Kanakia: Thanks for having me. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

The writings of ancient and medieval Christian mystics were rediscovered in the twentieth century, and today they are read more widely than ever before. But do modern assumptions about religious experience influence how we hear those premodern voices? Do we do them justice by thinking of mysticism as interior and ineffable? Or can mystical experience intersect with the natural environment, and indeed the cosmos, which science calculates with precise quantities? David Albertson's The Geometry of Christian Contemplation: Measure without Measure (Oxford UP, 2025) suggests a fresh approach to the history of mystical theology that is oriented toward exteriority more than interiority, and toward the measurable world outside more than the invisible world within. The ancient Greek philosopher Plotinus had taught contemplatives to close their eyes and withdraw into the soul. Most Christians followed his directions, but others dissented. In three critical episodes, an alternative model of Christian contemplation began to emerge: from Dionysius the Areopagite, to the Byzantine monks John of Damascus and Theodore the Studite, to eccentric humanists in medieval Paris. Together these episodes add up to a very different theological aesthetics, one that can enliven the modern study of mysticism and correct some of its imbalances. For in the centuries before the scientific revolution and the secularization of nature, Christians still saw God in the exterior world, not only the interior soul. God was not an ineffable and formless Absolute, immeasurable as the soul, but an infinite Measure who leaves behind geometrical traces in the figures of the world. The God who became a human body in the Incarnation not only entered time and matter, but also spatial extension, and with it the conditions of measure: points, lines, curves, shapes, planes, dimensions, and magnitudes. Today the wisdom of this counter-tradition can strengthen the study of mysticism, not only by supplementing our contemporary fascination with negative theology by redefining what it means to name God positively, but by suggesting a new connection between Christian mysticism and the hyper-measured, hyper-technologized world that surrounds us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The writings of ancient and medieval Christian mystics were rediscovered in the twentieth century, and today they are read more widely than ever before. But do modern assumptions about religious experience influence how we hear those premodern voices? Do we do them justice by thinking of mysticism as interior and ineffable? Or can mystical experience intersect with the natural environment, and indeed the cosmos, which science calculates with precise quantities? David Albertson's The Geometry of Christian Contemplation: Measure without Measure (Oxford UP, 2025) suggests a fresh approach to the history of mystical theology that is oriented toward exteriority more than interiority, and toward the measurable world outside more than the invisible world within. The ancient Greek philosopher Plotinus had taught contemplatives to close their eyes and withdraw into the soul. Most Christians followed his directions, but others dissented. In three critical episodes, an alternative model of Christian contemplation began to emerge: from Dionysius the Areopagite, to the Byzantine monks John of Damascus and Theodore the Studite, to eccentric humanists in medieval Paris. Together these episodes add up to a very different theological aesthetics, one that can enliven the modern study of mysticism and correct some of its imbalances. For in the centuries before the scientific revolution and the secularization of nature, Christians still saw God in the exterior world, not only the interior soul. God was not an ineffable and formless Absolute, immeasurable as the soul, but an infinite Measure who leaves behind geometrical traces in the figures of the world. The God who became a human body in the Incarnation not only entered time and matter, but also spatial extension, and with it the conditions of measure: points, lines, curves, shapes, planes, dimensions, and magnitudes. Today the wisdom of this counter-tradition can strengthen the study of mysticism, not only by supplementing our contemporary fascination with negative theology by redefining what it means to name God positively, but by suggesting a new connection between Christian mysticism and the hyper-measured, hyper-technologized world that surrounds us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The writings of ancient and medieval Christian mystics were rediscovered in the twentieth century, and today they are read more widely than ever before. But do modern assumptions about religious experience influence how we hear those premodern voices? Do we do them justice by thinking of mysticism as interior and ineffable? Or can mystical experience intersect with the natural environment, and indeed the cosmos, which science calculates with precise quantities? David Albertson's The Geometry of Christian Contemplation: Measure without Measure (Oxford UP, 2025) suggests a fresh approach to the history of mystical theology that is oriented toward exteriority more than interiority, and toward the measurable world outside more than the invisible world within. The ancient Greek philosopher Plotinus had taught contemplatives to close their eyes and withdraw into the soul. Most Christians followed his directions, but others dissented. In three critical episodes, an alternative model of Christian contemplation began to emerge: from Dionysius the Areopagite, to the Byzantine monks John of Damascus and Theodore the Studite, to eccentric humanists in medieval Paris. Together these episodes add up to a very different theological aesthetics, one that can enliven the modern study of mysticism and correct some of its imbalances. For in the centuries before the scientific revolution and the secularization of nature, Christians still saw God in the exterior world, not only the interior soul. God was not an ineffable and formless Absolute, immeasurable as the soul, but an infinite Measure who leaves behind geometrical traces in the figures of the world. The God who became a human body in the Incarnation not only entered time and matter, but also spatial extension, and with it the conditions of measure: points, lines, curves, shapes, planes, dimensions, and magnitudes. Today the wisdom of this counter-tradition can strengthen the study of mysticism, not only by supplementing our contemporary fascination with negative theology by redefining what it means to name God positively, but by suggesting a new connection between Christian mysticism and the hyper-measured, hyper-technologized world that surrounds us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

How did Plato influence St. Augustine? Today on Ascend: The Great Books Podcast, Dcn. Harrison Garlick and Dr. Chad Pecknold of the Catholic University of America discuss Plato's influence on St. Augustine.Check out our account on X for daily postings on the great books!Check out our library of written guides to the great books!Check out FIRE ON THE ALTAR by Dr. Chad Pecknold.The discussion begins with the historical evolution of Platonism—from the original Academy of Socrates and Plato, through Middle Platonism (with figures like Plutarch and Apuleius), to the late or Neoplatonism of Plotinus and others—showing how it became increasingly religious, mystical, and hierarchical in the Roman Empire, complete with daemons (intermediary spiritual beings) and a strong emphasis on the soul's ascent to the divine.St. Augustine, after years as a Manichaean and skeptic, encountered Platonic texts (likely including Plotinus) in Milan around 385–386 AD through Christian Platonists like Bishop Ambrose and Simplicianus. These writings played a crucial role in his intellectual conversion: they revealed a transcendent, immaterial God as Being itself, the eternal Word/Logos, and the soul's capacity for contemplative ascent beyond the material world—ideas strikingly parallel to the prologue of John's Gospel.Yet St. Augustine recognized Platonism's crucial limitation: it allowed him to "catch the fragrance" of God but not to "feast" through union, because it lacked the Word made flesh—the incarnate Christ as the true mediator who bridges the gap between the divine and humanity, solving the problem of mediation and purification that Platonism itself raised but could not resolve.Ultimately, Pecknold presents Platonism as a providential praeparatio evangelica—a promise that raises the restless heart's longing for God, truth, beauty, and eternal happiness—but one fulfilled only in Christianity. St. Augustine adopts and transforms Platonic elements (such as the ideas/forms residing in the divine mind, now identified with the Logos/Christ, and the soul's ascent through purification) while critiquing its errors, especially its inadequate mediators and inability to address incarnation, bodily resurrection, and grace. In this way, St. Augustine shows that Plato comes closest among philosophers to Christianity, yet only the Word made flesh satisfies the hunger Plato so powerfully articulated.Plato on St. Boethius is up next week!

Send us a textWhy women test, and how to pass.(Hint: it has nothing to do with tactics—and everything to do with truth.)WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:- The single quality that women ultimately probe for when they meet a man- The behavioral nuances most men miss—but women never do- What Zan wouldn't do—why the spirit of invitation makes all the differenceTIMESTAMPS:00:00 Highlights02:15 Today's question06:55 The quality that sets certain men apart from all others20:08 Be honest, but not crude – the art of being gentlemanly 22:00 What Would Zan Not Do? 42:15 How truth releases tension and creates openness in a woman49:45 Women light up when you own your desire and express it52:00 Another flavor of approachWhat part of yourself are you most tempted to hide from a new woman you meet? Share your experience with us. ABOUT THIS VIDEO:When a woman tests you, she isn't asking you to perform.What she wants to know is: are you genuine? Or is there more going on beneath the surface that she can't see? Women love to have fun—but trying to figure out whether your interest in her is real, or whether you're just engaging her for a quick ego boost before disappearing, is not a game she wants to play.It often surprises men how accepting women are of desires the men themselves have difficulty accepting. It's not what you want that turns her off. It's the fact that it scares you. Today's episode explores what it means to be trustworthy—and the different flavors desire can take when it's honestly expressed.#zanperrion #fearofintimacy #dating #mendating #flirting #datingadviceformen #flirttips #relationship #jealousy ____________________________________________________Read The Full Amorati Guild Invitation → https://arsamorata.com/guild/____________________________________Need a gunslinger? Someone who rides into town, completely solves your problem, then rides off into the sunset. Contact Zan Perrion personally to inquire about his incredibly effective one-on-one Laser Coaching. Find him here: https://arsamorata.com/gunslinger/____________________________________Get a gifted copy of The Alabaster Girl, personally signed by Zan Perrion. Go to https://alabastergirl.com____________________________________Get instant access to our 4 part mini-course with Zan Perrion

Where did the medieval via negative come from? In large part, it was inspired by Plato and those who followed him an innovated on his way of thinking. In the second of two parts on the Cloud of Unknowing we consider Plotinus and Pseudo-Dionysius.

Send us a textWhy being mysterious is so attractive to women, and the body language and texting that keeps women interested. ____________________________________________________Episode 40 — What Makes a Man Mysterious — And Why Women Melt in His Presence____________________________________________________80% of communication between men and women is nonverbal. “It's not what you say, but how you say it”.  Most of the time, you're just ‘another guy' to her. And you have opportunities to show her that you aren't, but what do you do… say… in those situations? Being mysterious is a fine art that's far too daunting for most men to practice, and those who do attempt it often end up in some extreme caricature of themselves, out of alignment and frustrated. In today's episode, Jordan and Zan explore what a truly mysterious presence looks like in a man. With live demonstrations on ways to stand and gesture to women in person, to how to text them later on, watch and see how you, too, can start moving through the world with more mystique and intrigue. What thoughts come up for you after watching? Let us know in the comments below.____________________________________________________Come join us! Sign up today and enjoy all the perks of the Amorati Membership, including live calls with Zan and his team. Go here: https://www.Amorati.net/____________________________________Need a gunslinger? Someone who rides into town, completely solves your problem, then rides off into the sunset. Contact Zan Perrion personally to inquire about his incredibly effective one-on-one Laser Coaching. Find him here: https://arsamorata.com/gunslinger/____________________________________Get a gifted copy of The Alabaster Girl, personally signed by Zan Perrion. Go to https://alabastergirl.com____________________________________Get instant access to our 4 part mini-course with Zan Perrion

In this episode I am joined by Dr Francisco José Luis, scholar of Indo-Iranian Studies and Comparative Religion trained at the Sorbonne, Paris and SOAS, London. Francisco recalls his upbringing and education in Luxembourg; details his rigorous academic training in classical languages such as Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit; and laments what he sees as the rise of idealogical indoctrination in modern education Francisco discusses his PhD in pre-reformist Sikhism, his years of field work living in the Punjab, and expresses his love of the German intellectual tradition. Francisco reveals the influence of Neoplatonism in Islamic theology and mysticism, describes his own turn to Shiʿi Islam, and explains why he believes that even today there is a living lineage of Neoplatonism that stretches directly back to Plotinus. … Video version: https://www.guruviking.com/podcast/ep327-neoplatonic-mystic-dr-francisco-jos-luis Also available on Youtube, iTunes, & Spotify – search ‘Guru Viking Podcast'. … Topics include: 00:00 - Intro 01:01 - Upbringing in Luxembourg 02:56 - Classical education 04:28 - Learning Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit 08:03 - Germanic intellectual tradition and WW2 12:37 - Advantages of an anti-American education 15:06 - Critical thinking and intellectual independence 17:04 - Boomer educators and idealogical indoctrination 20:59 - German literature 22:56 - Post WW2 culture shock and the boomer revolution 27:20 - Vatican II and loss of trust 30:35 - Filling education gaps 32:06 - A deeply pagan Catholic 35:21 - Meditation practice and interest in Neo-Vedanta 37:52 - Studying two masters degrees simultaneously at the Sorbonne 39:57 - Rigorous training in Sanskrit 43:56 - MA theses in French literature and pre-reform Sikhism 45:20 - PhD at SOAS in pre-reformist Sikh monastic orders 46:48 - Living among the Sikh community and learning Punjabi 49:54 - Young Sikh's interest in pre-reformist religion 50:54 - Death threats from Sikhs 53:00 - Changes in Sikhism 55:20 - Tradition religious music of Sikhism and other pre-reformist features 01:00:18 - Neo-traditionalist Sikh movements in the UK and India 01:03:59 - Falling in love with Shiʿi Islam 01:10:16 - Conversion to Islam? 01:11:45 - Shi'ism as a personal practice 01:13:23 - Cultural barriers against European converts 01:16:12 - Neo-Platonic Vajrayanism 01:17:43 - Mysticism perceived as a threat 01:21:48 - Neoplatonic influence on Islam 01:27:28 - Surprising Neo-Platonic features of Islamic mysticism 01:33:30 - Metempsychosis in Islam 01:37:16 - Francisco is a Neoplatonist 01:43:08 - Vajrayana and Shiʿi inner alchemy and dream yoga 01:50:43 - Islamic tummo … To find our more about Dr Francisco José Luis, visit: - https://www.instagram.com/hludvig_tradicionalista For more interviews, videos, and more visit: - https://www.guruviking.com Music ‘Deva Dasi' by Steve James

This two-part video series provides a deep historical analysis of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD), tracing its ingredients from 19th-century New England intellectual and social revolutions to its status as America's de facto civic religion. We argue that MTD collapsed when the sexual and moral revolutions forced a devastating fracture between its Christian heritage and its core principles of self-actualization and benevolence, leading to the polarized political landscape of today.Moralist Therapeutic Deism Part 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eHYMzanOvs&t=4679s @triggerpod   @InterestingTimesNYT   @JonathanPageau   @PaulVanderKlay 00:00:00 - Introduction and Recap00:10:07 - MTD, Chicago, and Obama00:13:00 - Cornell as Microcosm00:25:15 - Tim Keller on programatic secularism00:35:55 - Mainline Christianity00:37:45 - Wokeness and MTD00:47:05 - MTD and Partisanship00:49:20 - Arena vs Agent00:51:00 - Donald Trump 00:56:15 - Nationalism vs Globalism01:03:40 - Who killed MTD?01:05:55 - Competing Arenas01:08:25 - The future of Christian NationalismIn this video I mention:Aaron Renn, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Baker, Alfred, Allen C. Guelzo, Amos, Andrew Jackson Davis, Ann Lee, Anagarika Dharmapala, Arthur Conan Doyle, Athanasius, Barack Obama, Benjamin Franklin, Billy Graham, Black Lives Matter, Bud, Buddha, Calvin, Cathleen Falsani, Catherine Fox, Charles B. Rosna, Charles Carroll Bonney, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Charlie Kirk, Christian Smith, Christopher Pearse Cranch, Clement of Alexandria, Conrad Grebel, Constantine, David Bentley Hart, Deepak Chopra, Donahoe, Donald Trump, Eddie Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, Elijah Muhammad, Eliott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Elizabeth Keckley, Ellen Todd, Emilie Todd Helm, Emanuel Swedenborg, Epictetus, Erica Kirk, Ernst Troeltsch, Ezra Klein, Fanny Hayes Platt, Faustus Socinus, Finney, Fox Sisters, Franz Anton Mesmer, Fred Shuttlesworth, Frederick the Wise, Friedrich Nietzsche, Galen, George Barna, George Fox, George W. Bush, Gregory of Nyssa, Henry Clay, Henry David Thoreau, Henry James, H. P. Blavatsky, H. Richard Niebuhr, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harold Ockenga, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Helen Schucman, Hosea Ballou, J. Gresham Machen, Jacob Blake, James, James Comey, James Lindsay, James Russell Lowell, Jared Sparks, Jean H. Baker, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, Jesus Christ, Jim Lindsay, John, John Adams, John Bunyan, John D. Rockefeller, John Henry Barrows, John Locke, John Milton, John Murray, John Stott, Jonathan Edwards, Jordan Peterson, Joseph Priestly, Joseph Smith, Judith Skutch, Julius Dresser, Kant, Karl Menninger, Karlstadt, Kate Fox, Kenneth Minkema, Koot Hoomi, Kyle Rittenhouse, Lelio Socinus, Leonard Zusne, Lou Malnatis, Luke Thompson (  @WhiteStoneName  ), Lyman Beecher, Madame Blavatsky, Margaretta Fox, Marianne Williamson, Mark Parker (  @MarkDParker  ) , Mark Twain, Mary Baker Eddy, Mary Todd Lincoln, Matt Herman, Meister Eckhart, Melinda Lundquist Denton, Mesmer, Micah, Michael Bronky, Michael Servetus, Monophysite, Morya, Moses, Nancy Pelosi, Napoleon Bonaparte, Nettie Colburn Maynard, Newton, Niccolò Machiavelli, Nicholas of Cusa, Norman Vincent Peale, Oprah, Origen, Paul, Paul Tillich, Paul Vanderlay, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, Plotinus, Proclus, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ramakrishna, Rick Warren, Robert Schuller, Robin D'Angelo, Rod Dreher, Ronald Reagan, Ross Douthat, Rowan Williams, Rudolf Steiner, Samuel Johnson, Septimus J. Hanna, Shailer Mathews, Shakers, Shadrach, Socrates, Soyen Shaku, Swami Vivekananda, Tad Lincoln, Tertullian, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Starr King, Tracy Herman, Virchand Gandhi, Victoria Woodhull, Warren Felt Evans, William Ellery Channing, William James, William Lloyd Garrison, William Newton Clarke, Willie Lincoln, Winthrop, Zwingli.

In this episode, we talk with Anna Viatkina about Plotinus's views on freedom and moral responsibility and how they relate to ancient Stoic and contemporary rational abilities views. Anna's Google Scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KJmxq2gAAAAJ&hl=ruTwitter: https://twitter.com/thefreewillshowInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefreewillshow/?hl=enFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/The-Free-Will-Show-105535031200408/

Send us a textEpisode 37 — Is There an 80/20 Approach to Seduction?Note: Part 1 of this series called "Return to the Land of Women" premiered here: https://youtu.be/dqMT7HdqioM____________________________________________________Come join us! Sign up today and enjoy all the perks of the Amorati Membership, including live calls with Zan and his team. Go here: https://www.Amorati.net/____________________________________Need a gunslinger? Someone who rides into town, completely solves your problem, then rides off into the sunset. Contact Zan Perrion personally to inquire about his incredibly effective one-on-one Laser Coaching. Find him here: https://arsamorata.com/gunslinger/____________________________________Get a gifted copy of The Alabaster Girl, personally signed by Zan Perrion. Go to https://alabastergirl.com____________________________________Get instant access to our 4 part mini-course with Zan Perrion

Send us a textAbundance in the Land of WomenEpisode 33 — Building Community and Attracting People Into Your Circle____________________________________________________Come join us! Sign up today and enjoy all the perks of the Amorati Membership, including live calls with Zan and his team. Go here: https://www.Amorati.net/____________________________________Need a gunslinger? Someone who rides into town, completely solves your problem, then rides off into the sunset. Contact Zan Perrion personally to inquire about his incredibly effective one-on-one Laser Coaching. Find him here: https://arsamorata.com/gunslinger/____________________________________Get a gifted copy of The Alabaster Girl, personally signed by Zan Perrion. Go to https://alabastergirl.com____________________________________Get instant access to our 4 part mini-course with Zan Perrion

If you enjoy this episode, we're sure you will enjoy more content like this on The Occult Rejects.  In fact, we have curated playlists on occult topics like grimoires, esoteric concepts and phenomena, occult history, analyzing true crime and cults with an occult lens, Para politics, and occultism in music. Whether you enjoy consuming your content visually or via audio, we've got you covered - and it will always be provided free of charge.  So, if you enjoy what we do and want to support our work of providing accessible, free content on various platforms, please consider making a donation to the links provided below.  Thank you and enjoy the episode!Links For The Occult Rejects and The Spiritual Gangsters https://linktr.ee/theoccultrejectsOccult Research Institutehttps://www.occultresearchinstitute.org/Cash Apphttps://cash.app/$theoccultrejectsVenmo@TheOccultRejectsBuy Me A Coffeebuymeacoffee.com/TheOccultRejectsPatreonhttps://www.patreon.com/TheOccultRejectsEvents The Occult Rejects will be atSept. 26-27 - Bigfoot Comicon, Mt. Airy, GAOctober 4 - Bigfoot Comicon, Franklin, NCOctober 18th - Charlies Beyond Belief FT Myers FLOctober 25-26, UFO Comicon, Greenville, SCNovember 22 - UFO Comicon, Mooresville, NCDecember 5-6 - ArtComicon, Mt. Airy, GA (Authors, Artists, Filmmakers)Vanessa's Tie Dye stuffhttps://www.etsy.com/shop/TruthAndDyesInstagram @truthanddyestruthanddyes@gmail.comEvents The Occult Rejects will be atSept. 26-27 - Bigfoot Comicon, Mt. Airy, GAOctober 4 - Bigfoot Comicon, Franklin, NCOctober 18th - Charlies Beyond Belief FT Myers FLOctober 25-26, UFO Comicon, Greenville, SCNovember 22 - UFO Comicon, Mooresville, NCDecember 5-6 - ArtComicon, Mt. Airy, GA (Authors, Artists, Filmmakers)

In today's episode I want to talk about the curious case of Plotinus. The late ancient Greek philosopher who's views on God and the world had a massive influence on subsequent Western thought. I want to draw out some surprising insights and neglected criticisms that can be gained by considering Plotinus' story of God and the world.CreditsHost: R.T. Mullins (PhD, University of St Andrews; Dr. Habil. University of Helsinki) is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Lucerne, senior research fellow at the Polin Institute, and a docent of dogmatics at the University of Helsinki.Music by Rockandmetal_domination – Raising-questions.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠rtmullins.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support the Show:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/user?u=66431474⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ko-fi.com/rtmullins⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Mari Otsu joins Stephen Blackwood for a deeply personal conversation about her journey through the wounds of materialism, ideology, and spiritual forgetting, and her return to the soul through the beauty of the humanities. Reflecting on her years at NYU and the Grand Central Atelier, Mari speaks of a longing that nothing in the modern, politicized worldview could satisfy, and how she found healing in therapy, classical painting, and, most profoundly, the living philosophical community of Ralston College. Engaging with the works of Plotinus, Boethius, and Dante, she discovered a path of purification and ascent that restored her sense of meaning and inspired her to share these treasures with others. This conversation explores the roots of today's meaning crisis and the redemptive power of beauty, thought, and imagination to heal the soul. Subscribe to receive the latest Ralston College updates at www.ralston.ac/sign-up. Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Plotinus' Enneads Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy Augustine's Confessions Plato Dante's Divine Comedy Monique Wittig's The Straight Mind Chapters 00:00 - Introduction 01:29 - Conversation Begins 02:18 - About Mari 6:00 - Βrief Review of Mari's time at Ralston 8:00 - Mari's Descent into Anguish and Fragmentation 15:20 - The Ideological Component: NYU 23:30 - Leaving Blame Behind 27:20 - Fear as a Symptom of a Spiritual Pathology 29:00 - The Role of Therapy and Right Relationship 34:00 - The Power of Art 44:16 - Moving from Beauty to Contemplation 46:51 - Beginning at Ralston 1:00:00 - Plotinus Moving Beyond Beauty 1:08:00 - Wrapping It All Up 01:11:01 - Exit Music and Fade  

Send us a textAbundance in the Land of WomenEpisode 31 — How To Know if You Found a ‘One'?____________________________________________________Come join us! Sign up today and enjoy all the perks of the Amorati Membership, including live calls with Zan and his team. Go here: https://www.Amorati.net/____________________________________Need a gunslinger? Someone who rides into town, completely solves your problem, then rides off into the sunset. Contact Zan Perrion personally to inquire about his incredibly effective one-on-one Laser Coaching. Find him here: https://arsamorata.com/gunslinger/____________________________________Get a gifted copy of The Alabaster Girl, personally signed by Zan Perrion. Go to https://alabastergirl.com____________________________________Get instant access to our 4 part mini-course with Zan Perrion

I sit down with my old friend from the Paul VanderKlay discord days, Dave W., to discuss the upcoming South Estuary conference and dive deep into the differences between "Light Woo" and "Dark Woo." We explore the nature of evil as a parasitic force and contrast the path of self-empowerment with the Christian concept of Theosis.Register for Dave's conference, Southestuary, here: https://www.southeastuary.com/Midwestuary : https://www.midwestuary.com/Dave's convo with PVK - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnxGugpTJZg&t=1744sPeople MentionedPaul VanderKlay (  @PaulVanderKlay  ) , Jordan Hall, Jordan Daniel Wood, JD Lionheart, Michael Martin, Nate Hile (  @grailcountry  ) , Shari, Yoseph Razin, Chris Green, St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Isaac the Syrian, Origen, St. Seraphim of Sarov, St. John Chrysostom, Rod Dreher, Vin Armani, John Vervaeke (  @johnvervaeke  ) , Ashley Lande, Scott Adams, Augustine, Plotinus.

Promovendus Daan Mulder van de Universiteit Utrecht neemt ons deze week week mee naar "onderzoek buiten de gebaande paden": we gaan kijken naar de neoplatoonse filosoof Plotinus! Daan doet vooral onderzoek naar Plotinus' stijl van schrijven, maar wat maakt nou dat dit onderzoek buiten de gebaande paden gaat? We maken kennis met Plotinus, ook wel de grondlegger van het neoplatonisme genoemd, met zijn achtergrond en werk... en met zijn stijl!Shownotes

Send us a textEpisode 29 — How To Recapture Your Mojo After a Break-up or Divorce____________________________________________________Come join us! Sign up today and enjoy all the perks of the Amorati Membership, including live calls with Zan and his team. Go here: https://www.Amorati.net/____________________________________Need a gunslinger? Someone who rides into town, completely solves your problem, then rides off into the sunset. Contact Zan Perrion personally to inquire about his incredibly effective one-on-one Laser Coaching. Find him here: https://arsamorata.com/gunslinger/____________________________________Get a gifted copy of The Alabaster Girl, personally signed by Zan Perrion. Go to https://alabastergirl.com____________________________________Get instant access to our 4 part mini-course with Zan Perrion

Send us a textEpisode 28 — Dealing With One-Sided Attraction? Here's Something To Consider____________________________________________________Zan famously writes in The Alabaster Girl, “Love is symmetrical…The ones you love are the ones who love you”. Many men (and women) have read and re-read this line, understanding it conceptually, yet fail to *know the experience of being symmetrically in love*.  Why? Zan and Jordan explore the answer in today's episode. Many men who experience feelings of limerence or ‘asymmetrical love', do so because something clouds their judgement. Seeking to fill an inherent feeling of lack with external stimuli, they pursue partners to cover up deep wounds like a band-aid, failing to experience mutual fulfillment on a heart level. It's often prescribed that lasting satisfaction comes when you fill your own voids, inwardly. What do you think? Have you ever experienced what you could call ‘fully reciprocal love'? If not, do you believe it's possible? And if so, what can you actually do about it? Send us your thoughts. ~Anthony____________________________________________________Come join us! Sign up today and enjoy all the perks of the Amorati Membership, including live calls with Zan and his team. Go here: https://www.Amorati.net/____________________________________Need a gunslinger? Someone who rides into town, completely solves your problem, then rides off into the sunset. Contact Zan Perrion personally to inquire about his incredibly effective one-on-one Laser Coaching. Find him here: https://arsamorata.com/gunslinger/____________________________________Get a gifted copy of The Alabaster Girl, personally signed by Zan Perrion. Go to https://alabastergirl.com____________________________________Get instant access to our 4 part mini-course with Zan Perrion

Send us a textEpsiode 26 — Build a Vision of Your Masculinity from a Blank CanvasToday's discussion starts in response to one viewer's comment on his perception of the use of “re-” in the messaging of last episode's ideas around men ‘reclaiming' and ‘restoring' their masculine essence. “Spaking in these terms, you're looking backwards…it's not forward-creating”, he commented. Zan tells us that what he champions is not a full pendulum swing back to anything. Rather, it's about marrying beauty that was present in the past with upgrades in our intellect and knowledge that we've gained since. Today's conversation is full of moments that spark contemplation.Towards the end of the episode, you'll hear the latest from Jordan and Zan on how they're seeing the Vita Amorata come into the world. Share your thoughts and questions in response to today's conversation in the comments section. We want to hear from you.____________________________________________________Come join us! Sign up today and enjoy all the perks of the Amorati Membership, including live calls with Zan and his team. Go here: https://www.Amorati.net/____________________________________Need a gunslinger? Someone who rides into town, completely solves your problem, then rides off into the sunset. Contact Zan Perrion personally to inquire about his incredibly effective one-on-one Laser Coaching. Find him here: https://arsamorata.com...____________________________________Get a gifted copy of The Alabaster Girl, personally signed by Zan Perrion. Go to https://alabastergirl.com____________________________________Get instant access to our 4 part mini-course with Zan Perrion

Send us a textThe Zan and Jordan Show — Episode 25 — Women Don't Desire You When You're Afraid of Your Own Masculine Essence____________________________________________________Women Don't Desire You When You're Afraid of Your Own Masculine EssenceToday, Jordan and Zan shed light on one of the most fundamental, core (literally) shortcomings that men who want to be able to turn women on, must resolve. Tune in and discover some very simple practices that will help you become more aware of the energy moving deep within your body that makes you desirable to women, and learn to enjoy, love and celebrate those parts of yourself so that they can too. Soon, Jordan will be running a coaching program that will help men integrate their masculine edge and express it freely, opening up worlds of possibilities for their dating lives, and beyond. See the top comment pinned for more info. Share what you think about today's discussion in the comments section. We want to hear from you.____________________________________________________Come join us! Sign up today and enjoy all the perks of the Amorati Membership, including live calls with Zan and his team. Go here: https://www.Amorati.net/____________________________________Awaken The Virtue Of Passion — Re-Ignite Your Aliveness, Your Creativity, Your Raw Sexual Power: https://arsamorata.com____________________________________Need a gunslinger? Someone who rides into town, completely solves your problem, then rides off into the sunset. Contact Zan Perrion personally to inquire about his incredibly effective one-on-one Laser Coaching. Find him here: https://arsamorata.com/gunslinger/____________________________________Get a gifted copy of The Alabaster Girl, personally signed by Zan Perrion. Go to https://alabastergirl.com____________________________________Get instant access to our 4 part mini-course with Zan Perrion

Ralston College presents a talk by Christopher Snook, Lecturer in the Department of Classics at Dalhousie University, on St. Augustine's great autobiographical text The Confessions. This talk offers a detailed walk through of Books VII and VIII of Augustine's text in light of Augustine's “abiding preoccupation with the nature of the created order.”  Snook explores how Augustine absorbed the  insights of Platonist philosophers like Plotinus and Porphyry but also moved beyond them as he sought a more embodied account of the nature of the human person. Augustine's own conversion stresses the importance of encountering models for life and reveals the centrality of the incarnate Logos to the Christian understandings of self-realization. This lecture was delivered on January 9th, 2025 at Ralston College's Savannah campus during the third term of the MA in the Humanities program. Support Ralston College's mission to revive the conditions of a free and flourishing culture. Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Dante, The Divine Comedy Cicero, Hortensius T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock St. Ambrose Plotinus Porphyry Gaius Marius Victorinus Plato, The Republic Virgil, The Aeneid  Iamblichus Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol St. Anthony the Great John Scotus Eriugena Anselm of Canterbury Martin Luther Rene Decartes  

Episode 22 — Explore Your Relationship to Women and Step Into What's Beyond____________________________________________________On the heels of gathering in Bucharest for the Spring 2025 Amorati Conference, Jordan and Zan meet this week and reflect on the conversation had, discuss the true value of embracing the Ars Amorata philosophy, and answer the much-asked question, “How do I get more of ‘all this' where I am?” Philosophers and laymen alike have long contemplated life's great mysteries. What of Ars Amorata? What has been, is currently, and will be its contribution? Ultimately, it's a certain kind of man who seeks out answers to the questions we ask here.Follow today's discussion for how to live the beauty of this philosophy, and to better understand where you stand in life's most important journey: taking honest stock of your relationships. Keep the conversation going by sharing your thoughts with us.____________________________________________________Come join us! Sign up today and enjoy all the perks of the Amorati Membership, including live calls with Zan and his team. Go here: https://www.Amorati.net/____________________________________Need a gunslinger? Someone who rides into town, completely solves your problem, then rides off into the sunset. Contact Zan Perrion personally to inquire about his incredibly effective one-on-one Laser Coaching. Find him here: https://arsamorata.com/lifementoring/____________________________________Get a gifted copy of The Alabaster Girl, personally signed by Zan Perrion. Go to https://alabastergirl.com____________________________________Join our newsletter here & get all our latest: https://arsamorata.com____________________________________THE AMORATI is a close-knit fraternity of men from all over the world who have devoted their lives to the philosophy of The Ars Amorata.The Amorati are lovers of women. The Amorati are lovers of life. The Amorati are treasure hunters and raconteurs. The Amorati are on a lifelong quest for beauty and adventure.JOIN US in the AMORATI membership - Go to https://www.Amorati.net/. Talk to Anthony, our membership coordinator, here: https://cal.com/arsamorata. ____________________________________ARS AMORATA is a celebration of the art of seduction, the rebirth of romance, and a lifelong quest for beauty and adventure.Ars Amorata is a philosophy of beauty. It is a way of life. It is not a religion. It is a belief system, similar to the way one might call Stoicism a belief system or a way of life. It is a layer that exists (or not) below all religion and all social structures. And it belongs to all of you.Philosophers throughout the ages have argued whether beauty is objective or subjective, but in my view, beauty is neither. It is neither inherent as a property of the object (the objective view) nor is it in the eye of the beholder (the subjective view). Beauty is a third thing altogether.Beauty is prime. It stands alone. It is a thing apart, in Kant's words: a Thing-In-Itself (Ding an sich). Beauty emanates from what Aristotle called the Unmoved Mover, what Plotinus called The One, what scientists call the Big Bang, and what John in the New Testament called the Word or Logos.Ars Amorata is an attempt to lift Beauty to its rightful place as the primary guiding principle in our hearts and in the world.____________________________________Visit the Ars Amorata WEBSITE: http://www.ArsAmorata.comVisit the Zan Perrion WEBSITE: http://www.ZanPerrion.comSupport the show

The Zan and Jordan ShowEpisode 20 — Semen Retention: Benefits, Usefulness, and Can You Go Too Far?____________________________________________________Have you ever gone a few days without ejaculating, and noticed that you felt stronger, more confident, or that people seemed more attracted to you? Could consciously not cumming grant you access to some otherwise-impossible-to-experience level of ‘divine power'? For millennia, and across cultures, men have believed exactly this. Jordan has experimented with semen retention, and shares his experiences–the helpful and the unhelpful–in today's episode. Today's conversation will leave you considering the kind of healing that only sex–and release–with a woman can give you. It requires letting go on your part. Rigid practices and dogmatic obedience are simply incompatible.  Have you experienced the beauty of coming together with a woman, as Zan describes it? To what degree do you believe you should, or should not, ‘retain your essence'? Consider these questions, and share your thoughts. ~AnthonyArs Amorata Membership Coordinator ____________________________________________________Come join us! Sign up today and enjoy all the perks of the Amorati Membership, including live calls with Zan and his team. Go here: https://www.Amorati.net/____________________________________Need a gunslinger? Someone who rides into town, completely solves your problem, then rides off into the sunset. Contact Zan Perrion personally to inquire about his incredibly effective one-on-one Laser Coaching. Find him here: https://arsamorata.com...____________________________________Get a gifted copy of The Alabaster Girl, personally signed by Zan Perrion. Go to https://alabastergirl.com____________________________________Join our newsletter here & get all our latest: https://arsamorata.com____________________________________THE AMORATI is a close-knit fraternity of men from all over the world who have devoted their lives to the philosophy of The Ars Amorata.The Amorati are lovers of women. The Amorati are lovers of life. The Amorati are treasure hunters and raconteurs. The Amorati are on a lifelong quest for beauty and adventure.JOIN US in the AMORATI membership - Go to https://www.Amorati.net/. Talk to Anthony, our membership coordinator, here: https://cal.com/arsamo.... ____________________________________ARS AMORATA is a celebration of the art of seduction, the rebirth of romance, and a lifelong quest for beauty and adventure.Ars Amorata is a philosophy of beauty. It is a way of life. It is not a religion. It is a belief system, similar to the way one might call Stoicism a belief system or a way of life. It is a layer that exists (or not) below all religion and all social structures. And it belongs to all of you.Philosophers throughout the ages have argued whether beauty is objective or subjective, but in my view, beauty is neither. It is neither inherent as a property of the object (the objective view) nor is it in the eye of the beholder (the subjective view). Beauty is a third thing altogether.Beauty is prime. It stands alone. It is a thing apart, in Kant's words: a Thing-In-Itself (Ding an sich). Beauty emanates from what Aristotle called the Unmoved Mover, what Plotinus called The One, what scientists call the Big Bang, and what John in the New Testament called the Word or Logos.Support the show

This is part two of a series about Jonathan Pageau (  @JonathanPageau  ) and John Verkvaeke (  @johnvervaeke  ) and their respective views on Spirit and pneumatology. I mention Jonathan Pageau, John Vervaeke, Paul Vander Klay, Elizabeth Oldfield, Kale Zelden, Rod Dreher, Grim Grizz, , Ed Hutchins, Tucker Carlson, St. Anthony of the Desert, Athanasius, David Sloan Wilson, John Calvin, Tanya Luhrmann, Charles Taylor, Chuck Colson, Will Barlow, Scott Alexander, Robert Falconer, Richard Schwarz, Chris Masterpietro (Vervaeke's collaborator), Jung (Carl Jung), Michael (Archangel), Jesus Christ, Satan, Andre Antunes, Daniel (prophet), Mary Harrington, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Meno, Gregory of Nyssa, Father John Bear, Hank (presumably Hank Green from a referenced conversation), Barack Obama, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, George Cybenko, Kurt Hornik, Jonathan Losos, Richard Dawkins, Jordan Peterson, Baldwin (James Mark Baldwin), Alex O'Connor, Nero Caesar, Adam, Plotinus, Spinoza (Benedict de Spinoza), Dan Wagenmaker, (Upton) Sinclair, Bishop VT Williams, Raphael (Raff), Anderson Day, William Desmond, Charles StangMidwestuary Info and Tickets - https://www.midwestuary.com/Part 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMjEY3BOPPI&t=928sDavid Sloan Wilson Dialogue - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CAyvVdNSzIWill Barlow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DoIgcSWJnE&t=4065s

This conversation discusses the similarities between Jonathan Pageau and John Vervaeke with regards to ontology, teleology, and epistemology. This is in preparation for a conversation in preparation for the midwestuary conference. I mention John Vervaeke (  @johnvervaeke  ), Jonathan Pageau (  @JonathanPageau  ), Mary Harrington, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Meno's Paradox, Gregory of Nyssa, Father John Behr, Hank, Immanuel Kant, John Locke, George Cybenko, Kurt Hornik, Charles Darwin, Jonathan Losos, The Timmaeus, Jordan Peterson (  @JordanBPeterson  ), Richard Dawkins, The Baldwin Effect, William James, Renes Descartes, Plotinus, and more. Midwestuary - https://www.midwestuary.com/Jonathan Pageau and Mary Harrington - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJnGDEAka7I&t=1525sJonathan Losos - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70waxmiQa8I&t=1143sPeterson and Dawkins - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wBtFNj_o5k&t=5364sSam and Vervaeke - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0RDjahsd1M&t=5176s

Episode 14 – Stop Being So Serious: how to let go and enjoy the dance with women____________________________________________________“How do I stop being so serious and become genuinely more playful?”I find it fascinating that it took 14 episodes of Abundance in the Land Of Women for this question to come up–but I'm not surprised. You see, while the man who asks himself what he'd like his life to look like and strives to create it is already a rare breed, it's even rarer for a man to go about his lifetime adventure with a sense of gratitude, humour and ease through the highs and lows. No matter how much, or little playfulness you think you embody right now, the truth is that we all like fun. Women are no different. And, while contemplating your future, designing your life and being integral all make you an attractive man, accepting that life is short, laughing at your shortcomings and choosing to make good memories is sure to make you stand out, high and above, in her eyes.How to bring out that sense of playfulness from within you is the subject of Zan and Jordan's conversation today. Let us know what you think in the comments section. When you're faced with a decision, do you know what motivates your choice? Our lives are the sum of the choices we make. Will you choose to enjoy yourself? ____________________________________________________Come join us! Sign up today and enjoy all the perks of the Amorati Membership, including live calls with Zan and his team. Go here: https://www.Amorati.net/____________________________________Need a gunslinger? Someone who rides into town, completely solves your problem, then rides off into the sunset. Contact Zan Perrion personally to inquire about his incredibly effective one-on-one Laser Coaching. Find him here: https://arsamorata.com/lifementoring/____________________________________Get a gifted copy of The Alabaster Girl, personally signed by Zan Perrion. Go to https://alabastergirl.com____________________________________Join our newsletter here & get all our latest: https://arsamorata.com____________________________________THE AMORATI is a close-knit fraternity of men from all over the world who have devoted their lives to the philosophy of The Ars Amorata.The Amorati are lovers of women. The Amorati are lovers of life. The Amorati are treasure hunters and raconteurs. The Amorati are on a lifelong quest for beauty and adventure.JOIN US in the AMORATI membership - Go to https://www.Amorati.net/____________________________________ARS AMORATA is a celebration of the art of seduction, the rebirth of romance, and a lifelong quest for beauty and adventure.Ars Amorata is a philosophy of beauty. It is a way of life. It is not a religion. It is a belief system, similar to the way one might call Stoicism a belief system or a way of life. It is a layer that exists (or not) below all religion and all social structures. And it belongs to all of you.Philosophers throughout the ages have argued whether beauty is objective or subjective, but in my view, beauty is neither. It is neither inherent as a property of the object (the objective view) nor is it in the eye of the beholder (the subjective view). Beauty is a third thing altogether.Beauty is prime. It stands alone. It is a thing apart, in Kant's words: a Thing-In-Itself (Ding an sich). Beauty emanates from what Aristotle called the Unmoved Mover, what Plotinus called The One, what scientists call the Big Bang, and what John in the New Testament called the Word or Logos.Ars AmoraSupport the show

  What is the true nature of contemplation, and how does it intertwine with our understanding of reality? John Vervaeke is joined by Mateusz Stróżyński to discuss his masterful work, Plotinus and the Contemplation of the Intelligible World. They explore the deep and often overlooked wisdom of Plotinus, one of history's greatest thinkers. Together, they dive into the connection between thought and experience, revealing how contemplation isn't just about thinking it's about actively participating in reality itself. Mr. Stróżyński breaks down Plotinus' intricate view of the universe, showing how everything is woven together in a way that challenges our modern, fragmented way of seeing the world. They go on to discuss the nature of the self and what it means to truly “know” something, touching on insights from Buddhist Dzogchen, Christian mysticism, and personal experience. Mateusz Stróżyński is a professor of classical philology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, and a practicing psychoanalyst. His research focuses on the intersection of Platonism, mysticism, and spirituality, exploring how ancient philosophical traditions inform modern contemplative practice. He is the author of Plotinus and the Contemplation of the Intelligible World. Connect with a community dedicated to self-discovery and purpose, and gain deeper insights by joining our Patreon.   Notes:  (0:00) Introduction to the Lectern  (0:30) Mateusz Stróżyński joins John Vervaeke to explore Platonism (2:00) The Interplay of Philosophy and Experience  (6:00) A Kinship Between Works (8:00) Interweaving Phenomenological and Conceptual Perspectives (11:30) The Role of Contemplation in Plotinus's Philosophy (15:30) The Threefold Structure of Consciousness (20:00) The Fall and the Multiplicity of Experience (30:00) The Hierarchical Nature of Reality (43:00) Fractal Coherence in Plotinus's Philosophy (50:30) Democratic Views and Reality Perception (52:00) Exploring Plotinus' Worldview (57:00) Plotinus' Analytical Approach (1:05:00) Mapping Cognition and Reality (1:16:30) Skepticism and Participatory Knowing (1:28:00) Modern Science and Metaphysics (1:34:30) Concluding Thoughts   ---  Connect with a community dedicated to self-discovery and purpose, and gain deeper insights by joining our Patreon. The Vervaeke Foundation is committed to advancing the scientific pursuit of wisdom and creating a significant impact on the world. Become a part of our mission.   Join Awaken to Meaning to explore practices that enhance your virtues and foster deeper connections with reality and relationships.   John Vervaeke: Website | Twitter | YouTube | Patreon     Ideas, People, and Works Mentioned in this Episode The Nature of Contemplation Interweaving of Knowing and Being Fractal Metaphysics The Threefold Structure of Consciousness Modern vs. Premodern Worldviews The Relationship Between Science and Mysticism Plotinus Marcus Aurelius St. Augustine Nishida Kitarō “Plotinus and the Contemplation of the Intelligible World” by Mateusz Stróżyński  “Waking, Dreaming, Being” by Evan Thompson   Quotes: "Plotinus does not create a system—he reveals a dynamic interplay where intellect and experience are seamlessly interwoven." - Mateusz Stróżyński (10:00)   "If we want to truly understand something, we must go beyond it—transcend it—because reality unfolds from higher principles." - John Vervaeke (15:00)   "Everything that exists contemplates—existence itself is an act of seeing, an act of knowing." - – Mateusz Stróżyński (20:00)  

In this talk I dive into an overview of the Enneads of Plotinus. We consider its similarity with the rest of so-called ‘perennial philosophy' and how this doctrine is not compatible with biblical theology and why Augustine was influenced by it in his filioquism. Full talk available in my archives for paid subs. Send Superchats at any time here: https://streamlabs.com/jaydyer/tip Get started with Bitcoin here: https://www.swanbitcoin.com/jaydyer/ The New Philosophy Course is here: https://marketplace.autonomyagora.com/philosophy101 Set up recurring Choq subscription with the discount code JAY44LIFE for 44% off now https://choq.com Lore coffee is here: https://www.patristicfaith.com/coffee/ Orders for the Red Book are here: https://jaysanalysis.com/product/the-red-book-essays-on-theology-philosophy-new-jay-dyer-book/ Subscribe to my site here: https://jaysanalysis.com/membership-account/membership-levels/ Follow me on R0kfin here: https://rokfin.com/jaydyernism, evangelicalism, Arianism, cults, Hebrew roots, JWs, etc. Subscribe to my site here: https://jaysanalysis.com/membership-account/membership-levels/ Follow me on R0kfin here: https://rokfin.com/jaydyerBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/jay-sanalysis--1423846/support.

Adversity and tragedy are one-two punches that often break a human being right down to the very core of her/his being, especially when he/she is young.Luke Storey describes how he survived his addictions and a cult meant to “reform” him, then found his way to healing through the process of surrender this week on Spirit Gym.Learn more about Luke, browse his favorite products and listen to his podcast, The Life Stylist Podcast With Luke Storey, on his website. Check him out on social media via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Telegram and Rumble.Sign up for your Spirit Gym podcast membership so you can access members-only extended versions of the podcast along with exclusive Q&A opportunities with Paul. Timestamps3:45 “In the case of my parents, what they didn't know, they didn't know.”9:05 Craving a warm blanket of safety but not knowing how to get that from people, Luke turned to drugs.18:02 Do you create chaos for yourself every day?23:13 Developing the witness-observer perspective.28:54 Be present for the feminine storm.36:20 Luke becomes a participant in the cult-like troubled teen industry.42:32 There were survivors, not graduates or alumni of Luke's days at the Rocky Mountain Academy.50:08 Can there be “good” brainwashing?1:00:13 The contagious nature of trauma.1:15:47 Is our society disempowering men?1:26:37 Creating micro-communities.1:32:18 “We have an opportunity to change the trajectory of the collective.”Resources The work of Plotinus, Dr. Leonard Sax and Steven TylerThe Sacred Art of Listening by Kay LindahlFreedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults and Beliefs by Steven HassanCEDUSynanonFind more resources for this episode on our website.Music Credit: Meet Your Heroes (444Hz) by Brave as BearsAll Rights Reserved MusicFit Records 2024Thanks to our awesome sponsors:PaleovalleyBiOptimizers US and BiOptimizers UK PAUL10Organifi CHEK20Wild PasturesWe may earn commissions from qualifying purchases using affiliate links.