How Hesiak got religion
When I saw this I couldn't help but think of our friend, whom the ladies refer to as the Hesmaniak Heart Attack.
A LOVE SUPREME
I am now blogging at a new blog: erdman31.com
If you post comments here at Theos Project, please know that I will respond and engage your thoughts in a timely manner.
If you post comments here at Theos Project, please know that I will respond and engage your thoughts in a timely manner.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
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3 comments:
I too have been reminded of the Golden Ass lately. We went to see "As You Like It" the other night. During the course of the play Puck gives one of the characters the head of an ass. Then I was reading somebody discussing soul music as both disciplined and "voluptuous." Voluptuous got me thinking about Volupta, who in mythology was the daughter of Psyche and Cupid, which is Soul and Love. This legend of Volupta appears in an ancient novel written by Apuleius entitled "The Golden Ass."
Poor democrats, they lost the mascot lottery big time.
In the ceiling over the front entrance of Le Corbusier's most famous building the structural beams are in a certain mathematical relation to each other that gives a student the hidden geometrical key to the building. The Doyle has found the key to my blog.
http://jasonhesiak.blogspot.com/2006/01/golden-ass.html
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Some of you may recognize the title of my blog to be the title of a Roman "novel" by a one Lucius Apuleius. The plot consists of a young man wandering around Rome, obsessed with what one might call magic or enchantment, seeking to learn all that he can. In the process he is transformed into a donkey (or "ass"), and is forced to be treated as a "beast of labor", similar to a slave. Fortunately (sort of), he is "saved" by the cult gods Isis and Osiris, and is initiated into their mysteries.
The story, even in brief-synopsis form, is easy to smile with in its comedic aspect. In being able myself, however, to give witness to having lived a similar life (sort of), I have to confess that I find the topic to be heavy. The hilarity of the image of a man as a "golden ass", especially when combined with the background of "animism" and "personification" and/or "figuration" inherent in the attitude of the ancient mystery cults, for me enlightens the mood a bit. In my learning about The Golden Ass, I find it necessary as a Christian to ask, "who's the golden ass here?". Is it me? Or is it some more comedic parallel to "the golden calf", soon to be melted like the wicked witch of the West? Or is the "golden ass" in question actually the one in the story?
See when I say "in my learning about The Golden Ass", I am not just referring to the novel. The book is about salvation of the main character by means of mystical knowledge that, for the author of the book, extends back in history primarily to the infamous Pythagoras
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And whadday know, the geometry of the axial and the circular, by which we draw rectangles and find ratios and proportions that regulate buildings, happens to parallel quite nicely with the voluptuousness of the love story between heaven and earth.
:)
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