The Twelfth Empyrean


Book Description

Jehovah drove out Adam and Eve and placed at the east of the Garden of Eden a cherubim and flaming sword that turned every way to keep the way of the Tree of Life. So too when the ship of Joseph of Arimathaea left Jerusalem after the Crucifixion and ultimately alighted on Englands shore, legends divulge that he had rescued artifacts and untold treasures from the Roman hordes. The Holy Grail was reportedly whisked up to Scotland by the Knights Templar, but that was not the only treasure Joseph managed to protect. In Pilton Wood, the Creator set another sentinel: to thwart and impede the avarice of unscrupulous men through passing centuries. With her formidable Paraclete, she watches until the Final Day: when the Twelfth Empyrean may, at long last, end her watch and revisit the halls of heaven.




The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy


Book Description

The recovery of Dante's metaphysics-which are very different from our own-is essential, argues Christian Moevs, if we are to resolve what has been called 'the central problem in the interpretation of the Comedy.' That problem is what to make of the Comedy's claim to the status of revelation, vision, or experiential record - as something more than imaginative literature. In this book Moevs offers the first sustained treatment of the metaphysical picture that grounds and motivates the Comedy, and the relation between those metaphysics and Dante's poetics. Moevs arrives at the radical conclusion that Dante believed that all of what we perceive as reality, the spatio-temporal world, is in fact a creation or projection of conscious being. Armed with this new understanding, Moevs is able to shed light on a series of perennial issues in the interpretation of the Comedy.




Planets, Stars, and Orbs


Book Description

Edward Grant describes the extraordinary range of themes, ideas, and arguments that constituted scholastic cosmology for approximately five hundred years, from around 1200 to 1700. Primary emphasis is placed on the world as a whole, what might lie beyond it, and the celestial region, which extended from the Moon to the outermost convex surface of the cosmos.




Immortal Primordial World


Book Description

Creation Immortal Emperor: Immortal Emperor Sky Tyrant has been dead for ten thousand years, no one can defeat him. With a single sword strike, Heaven and Earth will be destroyed. The Heavenly Emperor of Wei was extremely talented, his Eight Devils Mysterious Eyes overlooked the ancient river, and his killing power was the highest in the world. Meng Xuan, is killing them a small task? Meng Xuan: I can't say it was a small matter, right? That would seem too arrogant. Interesting, right? There were 3,000 great Daos, 100,000 Planets, and various types of Chosen vying for the Emperor's Road. ... 




The Unmaking of the Medieval Christian Cosmos, 1500–1760


Book Description

From the early Christian era and throughout the Middle Ages, theologians exerted considerable effort to achieve a synthesis bringing together Greek cosmology and the Creation story in Genesis. In the construction of the medieval Empyrean, the dwelling place of the Blessed, Aristotle’s philosophy proved of critical importance. From the Renaissance on, largely in revolt against Aristotle, humanist Bible critics, Protestant reformers and astronomers set themselves to challenge the medieval synthesis. Especially effective in the ensuing dismantlement, from the 16th to 18th centuries, was the pagan concept of an infinite universe, resuscitated from Antiquity by the Italian philosophers Bruno and Patrizi. Indirectly inspired by the latter, the doctrines of the French pre-Enlightenment thinkers Descartes and Gassendi spread throughout Latin Catholic Europe in spite of considerable resistance. By the middle of the 18th century the Roman ecclesiastical authorities were brought to acknowledge an end to the medieval cosmos, allowing Catholics to teach the theory of heliocentrism.




On Wings of Bronze


Book Description

Doctrines boast of ancient creatures that abode with Deity - beings far more subtle than naïve humanity might even begin to comprehend. Entities far older still: that might well have been in attendance when the Firmament parted and Earth came to be - beasts that may well have ever stared knowingly into the abyss: ere mankind grasped its own mortality or pondered implications of the grave. Ghastly brutes: already ancient before timid humanity ever thought to rise up across the desecrated land – eternal sentinels of the Celestial that may just as easily divine the incomprehensible as deduce the inexplicable. Beyond the ken of humanity: they recognize and disregard the nameless horrors from forgotten pantheons of which all men and women still dare not speak. Mankind’s prayers might well have been answered eons ago: what with humanity never being perceptive enough to ever notice. Taking to our knees each night to beg for wisdom; when, unbeknownst to all, Wisdom eventually grew tired of waiting for humanity and simply chose to abandon us. Alone ... to forever wonder if we ever truly were the lords of our own creation. Oblivious, we paint ghoulish images with our pens: imprisoning the finest and frailest of human character within the confines of feeble words where each is exaltedly whisked to Eternity upon the brazen Wings of Lions.




The Lord of Ether


Book Description

Far above intelligence loom hints of the divine. Staggered, we hear but cannot comprehend Witness - yet are unable to describe Caress - but never dare to hold. Immortal truths whose mere possession extinguishes our poor and pale mortality.




Heaven


Book Description

In so doing, they shed new light on both the private and public dimensions of western culture. This second edition includes a substantial new preface relating the book to changing views of life after death in the new century."--BOOK JACKET.




Sylph


Book Description

Flashing through crystalline skies on prism wings of gossamer or madly cantering through autumn’s fallen leaves astride their nutmeg-colored mounts of sable voles and ash-colored mice: images of sprite-like fairies with insanely delicate features, bedecked in gauzes of layered green, shimmering with morning’s dew. Fairies bequeath themselves as the virtually immortal emissaries of enchanted glens and timeless worlds that twinkle amidst the shattered nonsense of our dreams. Well may that all be true. Quite possible, then every bit as real, may be phantasmal, spectral creatures that glide through the folding fogs of night: an entire world of entities who, long fallen from the morning stars, have twisted their whole existence to thwart the intent of God and pathetic exploits of man. Horrific and terrifying, blackened apparitions lurk at the very edge of short-sighted humanity’s periphery with features that curdle both our hearts and our imaginations—soulless, illusory beings that nightly prance and plot amidst a nightmarish existence that lies just outside mankind’s perception. Enduring the squalid darkness eternally, they wait patiently, every iota as legitimate as the fleeting, pale, and all too fragile physical reality humanity chooses to acknowledge and inhabit. One would do well to keep in mind that not all fairy tales are purely make-believe.




The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages


Book Description

This 1997 book views the substantive achievements of the Middle Ages as they relate to early modern science.