[IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: I've just learned that the behemoth Yahoo! is terminating this website (along with all other Geocities websites) at some point 'later this year' - not enough profit for somebody, apparently. I'm sad about this. I've used this platform to communicate with many people since I created it back in the Neolithic Age (1998) by writing the thing in HTML. I will look into creating another website, and I will share its location as soon as I know more. Thanks to those who have expressed an interest in what I've been trying to share through this site over the past eleven years.]
Greetings! My name is Leonard George. The aim of this site is to encourage us toward a vision of beauty. It's easy to see ugliness nowadays, easy to get lost in it and forget that there's more to this world than that. Greed, hatred, delusion - these ugly things are real. But kindness, wisdom, beauty - these are also real. I believe we need to experience the beauty, because from it comes the only wise response to the ugliness. (Of course I'm not referring merely to the commodified sorts of beauty that are used to make us feel inadequate in order to sell us things.) Similarly, we must experience the ugliness to relate maturely to the beauty. The ancient philosopher Plotinus hinted how to do this:
Those who do not see the Whole only acknowledge the surface of things. But those who are drunk with this wine and filled with this nectar, the beauty permeating their entire souls, are not mere spectators. For there is no longer one viewing and one viewed outside of each other, but the clear-sighted hold what they see inside themselves. Usually they do not know that the object is within, but look as if it were external and seen by an act of will. But all that they view as a spectacle is outside of them. They must bring what they see within, and know it as they know themselves. When a person is possessed by a deity, they no longer look around for a divine vision if they have the power to see the inner god.
------------------ Ennead V.8.10 (my translation)
It may not be easy to understand such a thing, much less to live it. But it's worth a try.
I invite you to browse the menu below. Perhaps you'll find something of interest. In particular, check the 'Calendar' link for announcements of events you might wish to attend. This site, like me, is incomplete and under development. Thanks for your patience.
"The Gods are the real doctors,
though people do not think so."
~~ Hippocrates
~ ~ GUIDE TO THE LAIR ~ ~
Calendar of Events
Link of the Month
Soul
Imagination
Poems
Iamblichus and Theurgy
Hymn to Eros
Heretics and Heresies
Books
On Tom Harpur's 'The Pagan Christ'
Range of the Strange
Visiting the Goddess
Aphorisms of Raven Trismegistus
Matters Musical
Gallery of the Planets
Wedding of the Worlds
Wandering Wombs and Shrieking Mandrakes
After September 11
Bear Witness
Me Here Now
Here's Where You Come In
"The universe itself can be called a myth,
since bodies and material objects are apparent in it,
while souls and minds are concealed."
~~ Sallustius
