Creature and Creator

The Cathars

Feb 11, 2023 / terry / 2 comments

The Cathars

From the 12^th to 15^th Centuries groups of people called the Cathars lived quietly in various regions of Western Europe – Northern Italy, the Rhineland and, most especially, Southern France. They followed the moral teachings of Jesus, forsaking worldly goods and loving one another, but they did not believe in the basic theology of Christianity. They considered that the world was evil, that human beings were spirits imprisoned in the flesh, and that the soul could only be set free at death if one had lived a life of purity. The Catholic Church considered these beliefs heretical, and in 1208 Pope Innocent III called for a crusade to eradicate the heresy. Named after the inhabitants of the city of Albi which had a flourishing Cathar population, the Albigensian Crusade lasted from 1209 until 1229. After years of terrible violence and cruelty, most of those who professed Cathar beliefs were dead. All that now remains of these peaceful people are the ruins of the hilltop castles in which they sought refuge.

Category: Architecture, Art, Ethics, History, Literature, Poetry, Religion / Tags: Albi, Arnaut Daniel, Bogomils, Carcassonne, Cathars, Crusades, Dominicans, Dualism, Heresy, Innocent III, Langudoc, Peyrepertuse, Simon de Montfort, Toulouse, Troubadours

Cézanne

Jan 28, 2023 / terry / One comment

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) learned to experience nature with the vividness of the Impressionists but evolved his own individual style of painting. How he perceived the world was as important as the way it appeared. For most of his life he lived and painted in Aix-en-Provence. He had no students and his work became recognized only toward the end of his life. Nevertheless, many of the proponents of the modernist movement that began in the first decade of the 20^th Century acknowledged Cézanne as their artistic father (Hook, 2021). This post comments on some of his paintings.

Category: Art, History, Painting, Philosophy, Poetry / Tags: Aix-en-Provence, Apples, Bathers, Camille Pissarro, Chardin, Impressionism, Manet, Maurice Denis, Modernism, Mont Sainte Victoire, Paul Cezanne, Pontoise, Still Life

Apostola Apostolorum

Dec 9, 2022 / terry / 3 comments

Apostola apostolorum

In the gospels of the Christian New Testament, Mary Magdalene was the first person to recognize the risen Christ. He told her to tell the disciples the news of his resurrection, thus honoring her as the “apostle to the apostles.” In the Gnostic Gospels she appears as a visionary disciple of Jesus. In the centuries after her life, her story was conflated with that of the sinful woman who anointed the feet of Jesus at a feast in the house of Simon, and Mary thus became a model of repentance. This posting discusses these and other ways in which we conceive of Mary Magdalene.

Category: Art, Painting, Poetry, Religion, Sculpture / Tags: Da Vinci Code, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Fra Angelico, Gnostic Gopels, Holy Grail, Joseph of Arimathea, Mary Magdalene, Noli me tangere, Titian

Belief and Heresy

Nov 16, 2022 / terry / 2 comments

Religious belief differs from everyday belief. Since it cannot be tested or independently confirmed, religious belief must be accepted on faith. Religious belief generally starts with a few powerful and attractive ideas. For example: would it not be wonderful if we did not have to die? As time passes these foundational principles are elaborated and bolstered by other equally untestable beliefs to form a relatively coherent set of teachings. These “doctrines” can then organize communities of the faithful, govern the behavior of believers, and attract new converts. Some believers may choose to interpret the foundational ideas of a faith differently from the system of beliefs that are considered “orthodox” (Greek: ortho straight, correct + doxa, opinion). Beliefs that differ from the orthodox are termed heretical (Greek: hairesis, choice). Heresies are usually considered dangerous since they can easily disrupt the accepted doctrine and question the power of those who promote orthodoxy. Heresy occurs in the history of all the world’s religions (Henderson, 1988) This post limits itself to the early Christian beliefs and heresies about the nature of God, particularly those concerning the Trinity.

Category: Art, History, Painting, Philosophy, Religion / Tags: Arianism, Arius, Carafa Chapel, Constantine, Filippino Lippi, Historical Jesus, Justin Martyr, Nicene Creed, Ravenna, Sabellius, Son of God, Son of Man, Theology, Trinity

The White Monks

Oct 18, 2022 / terry / No comments

In 1098 a small group of monks left the Benedictine monastery of Molesme in Burgundy to live in the forest of Cîteaux (Latin Cistercium) just south of Dijon. They considered their original home too lax and luxurious, and wished to return to the austere life of solitude, chastity, poverty and manual labor that St Benedict had originally proposed in the 6^th Century. They distinguished themselves from the Benedictines by wearing undyed white robes rather than black. Over the next hundred and fifty years, the small monastery founded by these “white monks” at Cîteaux became the center of the Cistercian Order, which linked together over 500 abbeys in Europe, extending from Portugal to Estonia and from Sicily to Norway. The Cistercians were noted for the proficiency of their agriculture, the fervor of their scholarship, and the beauty of their buildings. This post comments on their achievements.

Category: Architecture, Art, History, Photography, Religion / Tags: Benedictines, Cistercians, Cloisters, Desert Fathers, Dissolution of the monasteries, Lay-brothers, Le Thoronet, Lucien Herve, Monasteries, Saint Bernard, Stephen Harding

Frames of Reference: The Art of William Kurelek

Sep 8, 2022 / terry / 2 comments

Frames of Reference: The Art of William Kurelek

This post discusses the life and work of William Kurelek (1927-1977), one of the most distinctive and prolific Canadian painters of the latter half of the 20^th Century. Kurelek was a figurative artist during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, and a fervent Christian artist in the years of unbridled secularism. His work should be considered in the context of a life framed by memory, madness and religion (Kurelek, 1980; Morley, 1986). The post contains illustrations of many of his paintings, which can speak for themselves independently of my commentary.

Category: Art, Painting, Poetry, Psychiatry, Religion / Tags: Canadian Prairies, Gospel of Matthew, madness, Maudsley Hospital, memory, naive art, Passion of Christ, Toronto, trompe-l'oeil, William Kurelek

Windfall Light

Aug 27, 2022 / terry / 2 comments

Windfall Light is an old man’s self-indulgence: a small book of poems written over the course of my life. The cover shows a painting by Paul Klee. The title comes from a poem by Dylan Thomas. Most of the poems are formal in style, although the rhymes are as often slant as regular. This post presents three poems from the book.

Category: Photography, Poetry / Tags: Dylan Thomas, Paul Klee, Poetry

The Divine Feminine

Aug 15, 2022 / terry / No comments

All the major religions of the present world are androcentric in nature and misogynistic in practice. The following are some typical injunctions in the Christian scriptures:

Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law.
And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. (I Corinthians 14: 34-35)

Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. (1 Timothy 2: 11-12)

These rulings are in spite of (or perhaps because of) women being more attentive to religious teachings, and participating more often in religious services than men (Pew Research Foundation, 2016). The two passages nevertheless serve a purpose – they provide clear evidence that the New Testament does not always represent the word of God.

The androcentricity of organized religion differs completely from prehistoric religious beliefs, wherein God was more likely female than male (Stone, 1978). Over recent centuries, however, female aspects of the godhead have become more and more recognized. This posting briefly considers some of the manifestations of the divine feminine, and mentions what might be involved in a feminist theology.

Category: Art, Literature, Music, Painting, Religion, Sculpture / Tags: Buddhism, Christianity, Eternal Feminine, Feminist Theology, Goethe's Faust, Gounod, Hinduism, Judaism, Kabbalah, Mahler, Primordial Mother, Sophia, Theosophy, Venus Figurines, Virgin Mary, Wisdom

Searching for the Dao

Jul 1, 2022 / terry / No comments

This post presents some ideas about the Dào (“Way”) as described in the Dàodéjīng (“Book of the Way and its Virtue”), that legend claims was composed by Lǎozī in the 5^th Century BCE. The Dào cannot be explained in words. But that has never stopped anyone from writing about it.

Category: Art, History, Language, Literature, Painting, Philosophy, Religion, Sculpture / Tags: Ancient China, Chinese Calligraphy, Chinese Painting, Daodejing, Daoism, Lao Tzu, Laozi, Ni Zan, Tao Te Ching, virtue

Thoughts on the Kaballah

Jun 18, 2022 / terry / No comments

The Kabbalah is a body of Jewish thought based on mystical insight into the nature of God and an imaginative interpretation of the Torah. The word itself means “received.” According to legend this special knowledge was imparted by God either to Adam in Eden or to Moses on Sinai, and handed down thereafter from generation to generation to an enlightened few, who preserved the received wisdom and taught it to their students. This post presents some thoughts about the Kabbalah from someone who, though neither Jewish nor fluent in Hebrew, is fascinated by the intricacy of its ideas.

Category: Ethics, History, Language, Literature, Philosophy, Religion / Tags: Ein Sof, Esotericism, Judaism, Moses de Leon, Mysticicm, Pico della Mirandola, Religion, Sefirot, Tikkun HaOlam, Zohar

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