Quotations relevant to the Path

[Mimesis]

"Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither...."

- Job 1:21

[obnoxion]

All actions connected with your worship
Will promote siddhis.
But for your devotees
Who are already one with you,
These actions are siddhis in and of themselves.

- Utpaladeva-

(Translation from Constantina Rhodes Bailly's "Shaiva Devotional Songs of Kashmir - A Translation and Study of Utpaladeva's Shivavastotravali" SUNY, 1987)

[Insanus]

“The theater, bringing impersonal masks to life, is only for those who are virile enough to create new life: either as a conflict of passions subtler than those we already know, or as a complete new character. It is obvious that Hamlet, say, is more alive than the man in the street, being both more complicated and more integrated, and perhaps he is the only one really alive, for he is a walking abstraction. Therefore it is harder for the mind to create a character than for matter create a man; and if we are absolutely incapable of creating and giving birth to a new being, then we would do better to keep quiet.”
― Alfred Jarry, Selected Works

[Mimesis]

"Only a feeble light glimmers like a tiny star in a vast gulf of darkness. This feeble light is but a presentiment, and the soul, when it sees it, trembles in doubt whether the light is not a dream, and the gulf of darkness reality. This doubt, and the still harsh tyranny of the materialistic philosophy, divide our soul sharply from that of the primitives. Our soul rings cracked when we seek to play upon it, as does a costly vase, long buried in the earth, which is found to have a flaw when it is dug up once more."

- Wassily Kandinsky

[obnoxion]

"Only a feeble light glimmers like a tiny star in a vast gulf of darkness. This feeble light is but a presentiment, and the soul, when it sees it, trembles in doubt whether the light is not a dream, and the gulf of darkness reality. This doubt, and the still harsh tyranny of the materialistic philosophy, divide our soul sharply from that of the primitives. Our soul rings cracked when we seek to play upon it, as does a costly vase, long buried in the earth, which is found to have a flaw when it is dug up once more."

- Wassily Kandinsky

When I first took a more systematic approach to my private study of art history, the few asbtract expressionist pieces I knew from him were almost an anathema to me. But since I studied his oeuevre more in depth, I beecame to adore him. This happened also with Kazimir Malevich and Marc Chagall. For me the bond of souls transcends the bond of blood, and especially with Kandinsky (my Vergil to abstract art)I always feel towards him like I would to an uncle. He just feels like family. There is a sensation of warmth attached to the thought of him - a warmth in the heart that feels similar to the sensation that courage produces in the chest.

[Heith]

"Choose only one master — Nature."
-Rembrandt

[obnoxion]

Although Bhairava is all things (visvarupa) he is "more void than the void". We may define this characterization of the transcendent as so strongly apophatic that in phenomenal terms it is even more than the "nothing" we experience as the absence of something. Supremely passive and transcendent, and yet attainable by Yoga and even ritual because this Non-Being is not pure antithesis of Being, it is its transcendental aspect. Experienced directly in the most elevated state of consciousness of the deity, it is not amenable to the binary dichotomy of reason...

- Mark S. G. Dyczkowski: "A Journey in the Workd of the Tantras"

[Nefastos]

"The contemplation of men may certainly become better than human, but as compared with the divine knowledge it may be fair and fine, but not enough to be able to grasp the depths as the gods grasp them. Thus much the oracle has told about Plotinus's activity and fortunes while he was still in the body. After his deliverance from the body the god says that he came to "the company of heaven," and that there affection rules and desire and joy and love kindled by God, and the sons of God hold their stations, who are judges of the souls, as we are told, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aecus; to them, the god says, he went not to be judged but to be their companion, as are the other noblest of mankind. Such are their companions, Plato, Pythagoras, and all who "set the dance of immortal love.""

– Porphyry: The Life of Plotinus, XXIII. Translated by A.H. Armstrong.

[Heith]

“There is always a way, if the desire be coupled with courage,” answered the Cimmerian”
― Robert E. Howard, Conan the Barbarian: The Complete Collection

[Silvaeon]

I love Conan ^

"He who dwells in the Darkness, and within the Darkness, whom the Darkness does not know, whose body the Darkness is, and who rules the Darkness within, he is thy Self, the ruler within, the immortal." - Brihadaranyaka Upanishad