FEATURE image: 16th century/Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), The Daoist Immortal Lü Dongbin (detail), artist unknown, China. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Public Domain.
A spiritual master and the “Sage of Herat,” Abdullah Ansari of Herat (1006-1088) was a Muslim Sufi saint. Public Domain.The Secret of the Golden Flower is a Chinese Taoist book about Neiden, or inner alchemy. It provides an array of physical, mental, and spiritual practices that Taoist initiates use to prolong life. The text is attributed to Chinese scholar and poet Lü Dongbin (796 -1016) of the late Tang dynasty which ruled from 618 to 907. The Daoist Immortal Lü Dongbin (detail), artist unknown, China, 16th century/Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Philadelphia Museum of Art. Public Domain.Gustave Moreau (1826-1898), Song of Songs (Cantique des Cantiques, Ohara Museum, Japan. The Song of Solomon (Song of Songs) or Canticle of Canticles is a book of the Old Testament. The Song of Songs is unique within the Hebrew Bible:. It shows no interest in Law or Covenant or the God of Israel, nor does it teach or explore wisdom but celebrates sexual love, giving “the voices of two lovers, praising each other, yearning for each other, proffering invitations to enjoy.” The two are in harmony, each desiring the other and rejoicing in sexual intimacy. The women of Jerusalem form a chorus to the lovers, functioning as an audience whose participation in the lovers’ erotic encounters facilitates the participation of the reader. Jewish tradition reads it at Passover as an allegory of the relationship between God and Israel. Christianity interprets it as an allegory of Christ and the Church, his bride. Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950) was an Indian Hindu sage and jivanmukta (liberated being). Photo G.G. Welling. Public Domain. Giovanni Boccaccio by Andrea del Castagno, c. 1450, Uffizi, Florence. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) together with Dante Alighieri (c. 1265–1321) and Petrarch (1304- 1374) is part of the so-called “Three Crowns” of Italian literature of the fourteenth century. He was a versatile writer who put together different literary genres and trends and making them into original works. His creative activity was characterized by experimentation. Boccaccio’s most notable work is The Decameron, a collection of short stories or tales begun in 1349 and completed in 1353. Ranging from the tragic to erotic, the 100 tales are told during the Black Death by a group of three young men and seven young women who are sheltering in a villa outside Florence to escape it. Boccaccio revised The Decameron in the early 1570’s, after likely having conceived the series of novellas after an epidemic in 1348. The Amorosa Visione was a fifty-canto allegorical poem.Allan Ginsburg (1926-1997) was a poet and writer. Starting in the 1940’s, Ginsburg was a member of the Beat Generation along with Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) and William S. Burroughs (1914-1997). Ginsburg opposed militarism, capitalism, and sexual repression. His views on drugs, hostility to the government, and an openness to Far Eastern religions and philosophy were countercultural. Ginsburg’s Indian Journals: March 1962 – May 1963 is a travel journal during Ginsberg’s journey in India with partner Peter Orlovsky. This file is made available under the Creative CommonsCC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.Tikunei haZohar is a main text of the Kabbalah which is a method, discipline, and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. Shiv’im Tikunei ha-Zohar by Tzvi Hirsch ben Rachmiel Chotsh, Amsterdam, 1706. Public Domain. https://cja.huji.ac.il/gross/browser.php?mode=set&id=35354Angelus Silesius (1624-1677) was born Johann Scheffler in Breslau, the capital of Silesia. Raised a Lutheran, he changed his name when he became a Catholic in 1653. He became a Franciscan Catholic priest in 1661. During this time, Silesius began publishing polemical essays against Protestantism as well as religious mystical poetry. Angelus Silesius, 1677, Wrocław, Poland. Public Domain. Richard of Saint-Victor (d. 1173) was one of the founders of medieval Christian mysticism. A Scottish philosopher and theologian, Richard was a member of a religious order called a “canon regular.” From 1162 to 1173 he was the superior of the famous Augustinian Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris, a richly endowed monastery and school. The abbey and school of Saint Victor was an international center of piety and learning. During the first (though less famous) Renaissance of the 12th century, the monastery and school attracted many famous scholars, students, and retreatants, such as Peter Abelard (1079-1142), Hugh of St. Victor (1096-1141), Peter Lombard (1096-1160), Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) and Thomas Becket (1119-1170). Miniature of Hugo of Saint Victor (1096-1141) teaching young canons of whom Richard of Saint-Victor was one. Public Domain. Barry Lopez (1945-2020) was an American writer of both fiction and nonfiction. His extensive nature writing is known for its humanitarian and environmental concerns. Lopez won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for Artic Dreams (1986) and Of Wolves and Men (1978) was a National Book Award finalist. “Barry Lopez at the Vancouver Writers Festival, Granville Island Stage” by roaming-the-planet is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.Joseph Auslander (1897-1965), 1927, was an American poet who was appointed as the first Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1937 and served until 1943. Public Domain. Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950) grew up in Sangamon County in Central Illinois. In Chicago he built a successful law practice, and for eight years he was the partner of Clarence Darrow. At 30 years old, in 1898, Masters published A Book of Verses, his first collection of poetry. His Spoon River Anthology, a collection of monologues from the dead in an Illinois graveyard, was published in 1915. It was wildly successful and is one of American literature’s most popular books of poetry. Masters was friends with other Illinois poets such as Carl Sandburg and Vachel Lindsay.One of the sayings of Jesus on trust in God. In talking about the Kingdom of God, Jesus develops it in terms of one’s own death. He keeps its ideal positive and demanding. Detail of Deesis (traditional representation of Christ, the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Baptist), Hagia Sophia, Constantinople, 1261. “Jesus from the Deesis Mosaic” by jakebouma is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. George Santayana (1863-1952) was a Spanish-American philosopher, poet, and humanist who made important contributions to aesthetics, speculative philosophy, and literary criticism. A one-time professor of philosophy at Harvard University, Santayana was well known for his aphorisms. Attributed to Santayana is the famous aphorism: “”Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In The Philosophy of Travel (published in The Virginia Quarterly Review in Winter 1964), Santayana speculates on the human capacity for locomotion as the source and definition of our intelligence. According to certain scholars Ezekiel (6th-century BCE) is the “first fanatic in the Bible” and whose motto was “for the greater glory of God” (R.H. Pfeiffer, Introd., 543). Ezekiel’s visions and actions are strange, prompting many in modern scholarship to interpret them as symbolic. Ezekiel prophesied starting about the year 600 BCE and whose oral tradition was written down later by others. Traditionally, Ezekiel is understood as being the major prophet of the Babylonian Exile and whose major theme is the condemnation of idolatry as the source of evil befalling humankind. “Cappella Sistina, Prophet Ezekiel” by f_snarfel is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.Shmuel Hanagid (993-1056) was a medieval Sephardic Jewish Talmudic scholar, grammarian, philologist, soldier, merchant, politician, and influential poet who lived in Iberia (the Spanish peninsula) at the time of the Moorish rule.
