Τετάρτη 30 Νοεμβρίου 2011

Amy Winehouse - Lioness Hidden Treasures - 2011


Amy Winehouse - Lioness Hidden Treasures -2011

Our Day Will Come (Reggae Version)
Between the Cheats
Tears Dry
Wake Up Alone (Demo)
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow
Valerie (Demo)
Like Smoke (Featuring Nas)
The Girl From Ipanema
Halftime
Best Friends
Body and Soul (With Tony Bennett)
A Song for You






2011 posthumous release, a collection of previously unreleased tracks, alternate versions of existing classics, as well as a couple of brand new Amy compositions. Following her tragic passing, some of the producers and musicians who worked closely with Amy Winehouse, among them Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi, spent time listening over the many recordings that Amy had made, before, during, and after the release of Frank and Back To Black. It was said by all who worked with Amy that she never sang or played a song the same way twice. It quickly became apparent to Salaam and Mark that they had a collection of songs that deserved to be heard, a collection of songs that were a fitting treatment to Amy the artist and, as importantly, Amy the friend.

Links :
http://www.filesonic.gr/file/4047486104
http://uploaded.to/file/eq2n0ovu

Thanks to Beach Man

Ευχαριστώ για την αποδοχή σας - Many thanks for your support

Θα ήθελα να ευχαριστήσω τους φίλους που διάβασαν το blog μου,ποτέ δεν περίμενα τόσα views αν και τα θέματα είναι ιδιαίτερα.Κάθε σχόλιο ή ερώτηση ή διαφωνία είναι θεμιτή όταν γίνετε με όμορφο τρόπο.Ελπίζω να μπορέσω να προσφέρω περισσότερα σε όλους εσάς.
Φιλιά Gregory.......

 132973 pageviews - 370 posts, τελευταία ημερομηνία δημοσίευσης 28 Νοε 2011 - 11 ακόλουθοι

Many thanks to all friends for their interesed to my blog :)

Δευτέρα 28 Νοεμβρίου 2011

Epiclesis of Athena - Επίκληση στην Αθηνά

Some Classical music for you



























Είναι η ζωή μας ένα μεγάλο ψέμα?


 Louis Welden Hawkins - Masc

Έρχεται μια στιγμή στην πορεία της ζωής μας που ξαφνικά ανακαλύπτουμε ότι σχεδόν όλη η ζωή που περνάει σαν φλας μπροστά από τα μάτια μας δεν μας ανήκει, δεν την ορίζουμε εμείς, και βήμα με βήμα έχουμε σπρωχτεί προς μια πορεία ζωής που σχεδόν η βαθύτερη όψη του τι είμαστε σαν άνθρωπος σαν ποιότητα,απλά δε υπάρχει.

Έχοντας δημιουργήσει ένα ψέμα, μια αθέμιτη σκηνοθεσία, ένα έργο φαντασίας δύσκολα ψηλαφούμε τις αξίες και τις ποιότητες αυτού που νομίζαμε κάποτε πως ήμασταν, που ονειρευόμασταν, που ελπίζαμε.

Είναι η ζωή μας ένα μεγάλο ψέμα? 

Αναγνωρίζουμε κάτι από εμάς τούς ίδιους μέσα από όλες αυτές τις σκληρές διεργασίες της ζωής μας? 

Εμείς επιλέξαμε αυτούς τους ανθρώπους που μας περιστοιχίζουν μέσα από τις διαπροσωπικές μας σχέσεις, την δουλειά που κάνουμε, τους ανθρώπους που έχουμε ερωτευτεί?

Ζούμε κάτι το αληθινό ή όλη μας η ζωή έχει παρασυρθεί, έχει δημιουργήσει μια τεράστια ψεύτικη φούσκα?

Αναρωτηθείτε το τι είναι αληθινό και τι είναι ψεύτικο, πλασματικό, άχρηστο και κύριος τραυματικό.
Και αλλάξτε τώρα, αναζητήστε την έμπνευση σας μέσα από το Πνεύμα που έχει την δυνατότητα της αλλαγής της μεταμόρφωσης όλου του όντος μας κυριολεκτικά και θεμελιακά.

Παρασκευή 25 Νοεμβρίου 2011

A Door Will Open for Europe by Marcel Messing

 http://www.ritmanlibrary.com/

A Door Will Open for Europe by Marcel Messing

Since January 1 1984, the Amsterdam library Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica has become known to the public. On national and international levels the press has paid wide attention to this library, the largest private hermetic-christian library of Europe.

The publications comprise : a 37 page article in the Dutch esoteric magazine Bres (No. 103, January 1984); a six page article in the French weekly Le Figaro Magazine (May 5th, 19841, with a circulation of approximately one million; the library was mentioned in the German weekly Die Zeit (July 1984); there was a 7 page article i n the French esoteric magazine Millenaire (JuneIJuly 1984); a 1 112 page long article in the cultural supplement of the Dutch newspaper NRC/Handelsblad (27th July, 1984). Within the November/December period, articles will be published in the Swiss journal Cahiers des Cathares, the American esoteric magazine Cauda Pavonis and in the Dutch Journal for librarians Open. And now this present article in the English magazine The Hermetic Journal published by Adam Mclean.

Several contacts with the worlds Dress and e.a. with the broadcasting companies will most likely result in arrangements with them in the coming months.

Within one year, then, millions of people especially in Europe have become acquainted with the Amsterdam Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica.

Reactions
The response t o these articles has been overwhelming. Thousands of people reacted : by letter, by telephone or by visiting the library. Within an exceptionally short period of time a lively network of contacts within Europe and North America developed. Contacts and agreements were made with e.g. several foundations, esoteric movements, universities and educational establishments in general, whereas also individual contacts were made with several interested persons, with authors in several countries and with antiquarian booksellers all over Europe and North America (e.g. in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, London, New York, Paris, Stuttgart and Zurich).

Meanwhile friendly contacts have developed with libraries such as the Herzog August Bibliothek a t Wolfenbuttel, the place where the complete correspondence of Johann Valentin Andreae consisting of more than 3000 letters is preserved; the Blibliotheca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence; Yale the Pierpont University Library (Mellon Collection) at New Haven (U.S.A.); Morgan Library in New York; the University of Strathclyde Library (Young Collection) in Glasgow; the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp; the Amsterdam University Library; the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Royal Library) in the Hague;the Freemasons' Library in The Hague; the British Library in London and the Philosophical Research Society of Manly P. Hall.

In addition, through many national and international congresses and symposia, exchanges of thoughts could take place, and the library could become more widely known.
Within one year a great number of people have become acquainted with the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica. But acquainted with what? Acquainted with what purpose or meaning? To answer this question allow us to carry you back in time, time which is continuously illuminated by eternity, time which lies behind us like a snake's skin, while the spiralling movement of the snake itself goes on and on.

Wisdom is..
Wisdom is. Nobody owns it. It is not fully understood or defined. Wisdom It is the perpetual Truth and Love. It knows no boundaries, no is. definitions, no structures, no organisations. Wisdom is. Everything has sprung from it, everything shall return to it. It is the Bride of Light, the tender whisper in all creatures.

Wisdom builds its House on seven pillars, and only he who seeks it in his heart shall be found by it. Wisdom is. It turns the scientists' judgment into foolishness, the mockerers vanity into delusion, worldly knowledge into a cloud in the infinite Light.

Wisdom flourishes within all creatures, it acquires its scent in perfection, speaks all languages where mouths are silent. Wisdom is. It links everything and everybody with the one Arbor Vitae, with the one Source, with the one Truth of the everlasting Light. Those who breathe in Wisdom are linked with it, they live from heart to heart. The hearts of those who turn away from it shall be clouded; they will live in a fragmentary consciousness of the One. Wisdom is. He who forsakes it will encounter the wilderness of the other consciousness; he will meet thorns and thistles and will leave the paradise of the All-One-Being. Wisdom has no choice ... It is.

When man turns away from Wisdom, he turns away from the Truth, from Love, He creates his own surroundings out of a fragmentary from Light. consciousness and creates a world that reflects himself. When the Light-crystals i n the mind are split into good and evil, a tree of good and evil will sprout from the seed of ignorance. The tree of illusion, the tree of dichotomy. Wisdom, however, remains. The Truth remains. Love remains. Man may build himself a house of limitations, but the House of Wisdom is founded on seven pillars.

When man can no longer reflect the Light, he reflects his limitations wherever he goes. He becomes the stream which separates from the Source, the branch which breaks from the one Arbor Vitae.

But Wisdom, Light and Love never departs the errant man. "God does not forsake the work of His hands". The Light shines, if gloom gathers. And Wisdom keeps revealing God's Great Plan. There is always a way "back", the It links the connection with the All remains possible. For Wisdom is. wandering with the Sons of Wisdom, God's messengers. It points at the heart of every religion: the religion of the heart. For Wisdom is.

For Wisdom and Light "God's Sons" emanated. They tried to link man with the One Source. The source of Wisdom, Love and Light. We know them under many names: Rama, Krishna, Hermes Trismegistos, Abraham, Moses, Orpheus, Aglaophemus, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Vardhamana, Buddha, Lao Tse, Confucius, Zoroaster, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel... They all drew attention to the deep ignorance of man and showed him the path of inner redemption. Buddha already sighed: "The root of all sorrow lies in the very beginning and is being concealed in ignorance, from which life originates". And Lao Tse said in his Tao Teh King: "The highest knowledge is to know not. However, it is extremely painful to know how scant our knowledge is". Therefore Herrnes already spoke the words: "Stop and become sober: perceive with the eyes of your heart again! And if all of Thee cannot do this, then at least those who are able to do so. For the wickedness of ignorance floods the whole world, destroys the soul which is locked in the body and prevents it from docking into the port of salvation". Ignorance is the true cause of sorrow, "Father forgive them; for they know not what they do," t h e teacher Jesus was to sigh. Seen from the human awareness of time they carried out their task in the course of time, the period before Christ - as western chronology it so considers.

In Christ all that took place "before" Him and all that comes into activity after Him is connected in the circle of the present, a zeropoint in chronology, the symbolic year one.

What under the name of MELCHIZIDEK had been transmitted to Abraham under the symbols of bread and wine, is the work of Christ the Christ as Light, Love and Wisdom, one with the Father, the All.

What Christ as a planetary Spirit bestows on the earth is the spiritual power of the Sun which can fulfil the Christian mysteries in the heart of man. All peoples of the world have recognised the Sun as the source of all life. The Indian called it AGNI, the Egyptian called it HORUS or RA, the Babylonians MARDUK and later SHAMASH, the Persians spoke of MITHRAS, the Greeks of ADONIS, HELIOS or APOLLO-DIONYSIOS, the Norwegians of BALDUR or ODIN.

Countless temples, pyramids and monuments have been dedicated to the Sun: the Cheops pyramid In Egypt, the Yucatan temple in Mexico, the suntowers in Ireland, the Zikkurats in Babylonia, Stonehenge in England and Carnac in France. Countless lips formed their holy prayers addressed t o the Light of the Sun; from Echnaton to St. Francis. And many a mountain became a sacred sun altar for this Light, like the MONTSEGUR, the TABOR, t h e OLYMPUS, the MERU and mount ATHOS. That which was worshipped and glorified, for which numerous people joined hands and reached out, what in several countries was expected in the deepest darkness of winter solstice, it is always the Light, the Light of t h e SPIRITUAL SUN, which is the CHRIST. It is the Light that is reflected by the Sun, which illuminates the earth in our solar system. It is the Light that keeps shining in the darkness...

In the boundless mystery of Golgotha this Light is drawn around the earth like a "cloak without seams".

What is freed by this immense deed of Love is the Strength of the Comforter, the Strength of the purifying, Sanctifying Spirit who unites with every one who lets the inner Christ come into activity within his heart. For in the heart is the "Kingdom of God", called Atman-Brahman by the Indian, Osiris in the heart by the Egyptians and called the precious jewel of the lotus by Buddha. It is the golden grain of corn, Jesu, the Rose of the heart, from which this inner Kingdom, this All-Consciousness can begin to flourish.
The heart is the true "grotto" of  Bethlehem, the "Granary" by which the radiant shape within man is fed, is nourished.

By Christ the periods of time before and after Christ are abolished in the zero of eternity, in the perpetual potentiality of the present.

"And look, I am with you all the time till the completion of the world", the Christ says.

All those who were seized by the Light bore testimony to it; to this day. Despite persecution, hatred, murder, death by fire, being bricked up alive,gossip or denial. There has always been testimony to this Light. Now in private, then again openly. Sometimes by maintaining silence, by speaking or writing.., He who was touched by the Light has always tried to pass on his experience, to actuate it, to express it, to sing it, to write it down. In Upanishads, in Gathas, in Mudras, in Hieroglyphs, in Psalms, in Proverbs; in poems, in manuscripts, in books... Between what is written on the ancient clay tablets, the tables of the laws, the parchment and contemporary books there often is a mere difference in time. The contents, however, repeatedly refer to the one and the same Truth, to Wisdom. For Wisdom is.

Besides the spoken word, an immense tradition of the written word developed in the Occident. Thousands who were seized by the Light have testified to it by means of hieroglyphs of Light. Many stood in the Light, breathed from it; others looked for it intensely and experienced its touch.

For the first time in the history of Europe the principal currents of hermetic Christianity have now - together with other essential christocentric currents - been brought together in a unique library: the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, a library which will have reached its completion in the year 2000.

From : Hermetic Journal - Issue Number 27 - Spring 1985 Edited by Adam McLean
http://www.ritmanlibrary.nl/
http://www.ritmanlibrary.nl/c/p/exh/tour/tour_01.html
http://www.ritmanlibrary.nl/c/p/lib/ab.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_Philosophica_Hermetica
http://heterodoxology.com/2010/11/24/save-the-bibliotheca-philosophica-hermetica/

Immortals (2011) DVDScr.XVID.AC3.V1-SPEEDY











Immortals (2011)

Ο Υπερίωνας μαζεύει το στρατό των Ηρακλειδών, ψάχνοντας το Τόξο της Ηπείρου για να ελευθερώσει τους Τιτάνες και να φάει τους θεούς του Ολύμπου, όμως λογαριάζει χωρίς τον Θησέα.Οποιαδήποτε ομοιότητα με μυθολογικά πρόσωπα και καταστάσεις είναι απλά συμπτωματική και μάλλον κατά λάθος, σ’ αυτό το ολοκληρωτικό, ελεύθερο ξαναγράψιμο της Τιτανομαχίας και της ιστορίας του Θησέα, που έβαλαν στο μπλέντερ τους οι προφανούς ελληνικής καταγωγής σεναριογράφοι, για να δώσουν στους παραγωγούς του 300 (2007) μια ευκαιρία να επανέλθουν στην χλαμυδοπεριπέτεια που ανέστησαν τότε, και στον Tarsem Singh μια αφορμή να ξαναπλώσει στην οθόνη τα ντελιριακά εικαστικά του πανηγύρια, μια δεκαετία μετά τις πρώτες σας συστάσεις με το The Cell (2000). Λίγους μήνες πρωτού ντυθεί Superman, ο Henry Cavill γδύνεται αρχαίος Έλληνας και βάζει μπροστά το υπερτροφικό του στήθος για να σταματήσει την επέλαση ενός τυπικά αποπροσανατολισμένου Mickey Rourke με φετίχ για γελοίες κάσκες, ενώ από πάνω τους οι θεοί του Ολύμπου παίρνουν πόζες στολισμένοι σα μοντέλα για φωτογράφηση-παρωδία gay ιλουστρασιόν περιοδικού, στα διαλείμματα της εξωφρενικής δράσης που κάθε φορά και περισσότερο αποδεικνύεται στημένη για να έχει κάπου ο Singh να διοχετεύσει τις εμμονές του για εξαντλητικό στιλιζάρισμα, παρά για να γεμίσει τα κενά των υποτυπωδών δραματικών αψίδων που σκαρώνουν για τους χαρακτήρες τους οι γραφιάδες. Η Freida Pinto μαθαίνει να μιλάει κάποια αρχαία ελληνικά με την άνεση Ολλανδέζας τουρίστριας που προσπαθεί να παραγγείλει ελληνικό καφέ για να την τραβήξουν βίντεο-σουβενίρ οι φιλενάδες της, κι ο Stephen Dorff περιφέρεται σα sidekick του τηλεοπτικού Ηρακλή, τόσο θλιβερό που σε κάνει να παρακαλάς να κατέβει ο Kevin Sorbo να δώσει δυο ανάποδες μπουνιές, να καθαρίσει αυτό το θλιβερό θέαμα σκηνοθετικής αυτοϊκανοποιητικής υπερπροσπάθειας να μπαλατζάρει μια βάρκα που όσο πιο πολύ απομακρύνεται απ’ το λιμάνι, τόσο πιο βαθιά βουλιάζει στον ωκεανό της αφέλειας και της ευκολίας που την περιβάλει. Ή, αν θες με πιο λίγα λόγια, ο καθολικός κι απροκάλυπτος βιασμός της μυθολογίας απ’ την οποία εμπνέεται τη χαρακτηρολογία του, είναι το μικρότερο απ’ τα προβλήματα αυτού του μισοψημένου τσίρκου ακροβατικών, που κινείται στα όρια της παρωδίας.

Synopsis
Eons after the Gods won their mythic struggle against the Titans, a new evil threatens the land. Mad with power, King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) has declared war against humanity. Amassing a bloodthirsty army of soldiers disfigured by his own hand, Hyperion has scorched Greece in search of the legendary Epirus Bow, a weapon of unimaginable power forged in the heavens by Ares. Only he who possesses this bow can unleash the Titans, who have been imprisoned deep within the walls of Mount Tartaros since the dawn of time and thirst for revenge. In the king's hands, the bow would rain destruction upon mankind and annihilate the Gods. But ancient law dictates the Gods must not intervene in man's conflict. They remain powerless to stop Hyperion...until a peasant named Theseus (Henry Cavill) comes forth as their only hope. Secretly chosen by Zeus, Theseus must save his people from Hyperion and his hordes...

http://www.immortalsmovie.com/splash/index.html
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi4119502361/
http://mftm.blogspot.com/2011/11/immortals-2011.html

Greek subtitles
Link :
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ΟΡΧΗΣΤΡΑ ΤΩΝ ΧΡΩΜΑΤΩΝ 20 ΧΡΟΝΙΑ (on line video)


 Το επεισόδιο αυτό με αφορμή την επέτειο 20 ετών από την πρώτη παράσταση της ΟΡΧΗΣΤΡΑΣ ΤΩΝ ΧΡΩΜΑΤΩΝ στις 23 Νοεμβρίου του 1989 στην αίθουσα """"ΠΑΛΛΑΣ"""", πραγματοποιεί ένα ταξίδι στην ιστορία της δημιουργίας του μουσικού αυτού συνόλου.
Συνεργάτες του ΜΑΝΟΥ ΧΑΤΖΙΔΑΚΙ, όπως ο ΓΙΩΡΓΟΣ ΚΟΥΡΟΥΠΟΣ και ο ΝΙΚΟΣ ΚΥΠΟΥΡΓΟΣ, επισημαίνουν την ιδιαιτερότητα της ορχήστρας αυτής που σχεδιάστηκε από τον ίδιο τον ΜΑΝΟ ΧΑΤΖΙΔΑΚΙ ως ομάδα μουσικών που θα προσέφερε μια ιδιαίτερη οπτική στην κλασσική και γενικότερα τη συμφωνική μουσική στην Ελλάδα.
Μουσικοί της ορχήστρας, όπως ο ΣΩΚΡΑΤΗΣ ΑΝΘΗΣ και ο ΓΙΩΡΓΟΣ ΚΙΝΔΥΝΗΣ επισημαίνουν τις διαφορές που χαρακτήριζαν την ορχήστρα αυτή και τον επίμονο αγώνα του ΜΑΝΟΥ ΧΑΤΖΙΔΑΚΙ για να εδραιωθούν και να στηριχθούν οι επιλογές του.
Η σολίστ ΝΤΟΡΑ ΜΠΑΚΟΠΟΥΛΟΥ θυμάται την πρώτη παράσταση της ΟΡΧΗΣΤΡΑΣ ΤΩΝ ΧΡΩΜΑΤΩΝ και την προσωπική και καλλιτεχνική σχέση της με τον ΜΑΝΟ ΧΑΤΖΙΔΑΚΙ. Αντίστοιχα ο ΜΙΛΤΟΣ ΛΟΓΙΑΔΗΣ αναφέρεται στην δική του εμπειρία ως αρχιμουσικός της ορχήστρας και εξηγεί τον υψηλό βαθμό ταύτισης που νιώθει με το όραμα του ΧΑΤΖΙΔΑΚΙ.
Η οργανώτρια συναυλιών ΜΑΡΙΑ ΜΑΤΕ περιγράφει τον τρόπο με τον οποίο ο ΜΑΝΟΣ ΧΑΤΖΙΔΑΚΙΣ οργάνωνε και φρόντιζε για την οικονομική επιβίωση της ορχήστρας, συχνά αγνοώντας τις συμβουλές που του πρότειναν να μειώσει παραστάσεις και πρόβες.
Οι συνεργάτες και μουσικοί της ορχήστρας δίνουν τις δικές τους περιγραφές και αφηγήσεις που αποδίδουν με γλαφυρό τρόπο τόσο την ξεχωριστή ταυτότητα της ορχήστρας, όσο και το εύρος των προσπαθειών του ΜΑΝΟΥ ΧΑΤΖΙΔΑΚΙ να παρουσιάσει στο κοινό έργα κλασσικά, μουσικές παραστάσεις και κοντσέρτα σε συνεργασία με φίλους του μουσικούς όπως οι ΑΣΤΟΡ ΠΙΑΤΖΟΛΛΑ και ΓΚΙΟΡΓΚΙ ΣΑΝΤΟΡ και άλλους μεγάλους σολίστ και ερμηνευτές όπως η ΝΤΟΡΑ ΜΠΑΚΟΠΟΥΛΟΥ, η ΚΙΚΗ ΜΟΡΦΟΝΙΟΥ και η ΜΑΡΙΝΑ ΚΡΙΛΟΒΙΤΣ.
Το τελευταίο μέρος του επεισοδίου επικεντρώνεται στις δραστηριότητες της ορχήστρας μετά το θάνατο του ΜΑΝΟΥ ΧΑΤΖΙΔΑΚΙ, την προσπάθεια να κρατηθεί ζωντανό το όραμά του, να προβληθεί το έργο του, η ανάδειξη νέων ταλαντούχων συνθετών και η παρουσίαση μουσικών έργων που συνδέουν τη μουσική με τις υπόλοιπες τέχνες.
Κατά τη διάρκεια της εκπομπής παρεμβάλλονται αποσπάσματα από πρόβες και παραστάσεις της ορχήστρας με διευθυντή τον ΜΑΝΟ ΧΑΤΖΙΔΑΚΙ και τον ΜΙΛΤΟ ΛΟΓΙΑΔΗ. Επίσης προβάλλονται αποσπάσματα από συνεντεύξεις του ίδιου του ΧΑΤΖΙΔΑΚΙ στον ΑΛΕΞΗ ΚΩΣΤΑΛΑ, στον ΚΩΣΤΑ ΚΩΒΑΙΟ και στον ΓΙΑΝΝΗ ΕΞΑΡΧΟ, όπου μιλάει για το όραμα της ΟΡΧΗΣΤΡΑΣ ΤΩΝ ΧΡΩΜΑΤΩΝ για τη σχέση του θεατή με τη μουσική και τα όρια της εμπορευματοποίησης, για τα επιτεύγματα της ΟΡΧΗΣΤΡΑΣ ΤΩΝ ΧΡΩΜΑΤΩΝ και την προσπάθειά του να μιλήσει μέσα από την ευαισθητοποίηση του κοινού δια της μουσικής και για σημαντικά κοινωνικά θέματα.

See it on line :)
http://www.ert-archives.gr/V3/public/main/page-assetview.aspx?tid=91439&tsz=0&autostart=0

Πέμπτη 24 Νοεμβρίου 2011

The Golem (1920) On line (film)


Classic story of a creature made of clay that comes to life and causes havok. Silent film starring Paul Wegener.

The fall of Madam Angela Dorothea Merkel


Next month don't loose in a hall near you the brand new award film
of Sir Asta na Pane
'The fall of Madam Angela Dorothea Merkel'
I adore German coulture
but

Dimitris Sgouros Piano Recital


Dimitris Sgouros  Piano Recital

The Greek pianist performs a number of demanding solos by Busoni, Balakirev, Chopin, Scriabin, Schuz-Evier, Rachmaninov, de Falla and Liszt.

Δευτέρα 21 Νοεμβρίου 2011

Rudolf Steiner - An Esoteric Cosmology



An Esoteric Cosmology

II

THE MISSION OF MANICHEISM


The purpose of this lecture is to expand and deepen what was said in the preceding lecture.

The difference between Occult Brotherhoods before and after Christianity is that before the advent of Christianity their chief mission was to guard the sacred tradition; afterwards, it was to form and mould the future. Occult science is not abstract and dead but active and living.

Christian occultism is derived from the Manicheans whose founder, Manes, lived on the Earth three hundred years after Jesus the Christ. The essence of Manichean teaching relates to the doctrine of Good and Evil. In ordinary thought, the Good and the Evil are two irreducible qualities, one of which — the Good — must destroy the other — the Evil. To the Manicheans, however, Evil is an integral part of the cosmos, collaborating in its evolution, finally to be absorbed and transfigured by the Good. The great feature of Manicheism is that it studies the function of Evil and of suffering in the world.

To understand the development of humanity, it must be viewed in its whole range. Only so can we see its high ideal. To believe that an ideal is not necessary for action is a great error. A man without ideals is a man without power. The function of an ideal in life is like that of steam in an engine. Steam comprises in a small area a vast expanse of ‘condensed space’ — hence its tremendous power of expansion. The magic power of thought is of the same nature. Let us then rise to the thought of the ideal of humanity as a whole, guided by the thread of its evolution through the epochs of time.

Systems like that of Darwin are also seeking for this guiding thread. The grandeur of Darwinian thought is not disputed, but it does not explain the integral evolution of man. It only sees the lower, inferior elements. So it is with all purely physical explanations which do not recognise the spiritual essence of man's being. Theories of evolution based entirely on physical facts, attribute to man an animal origin because science has established that in fossilised man the brow is lacking. Occultism, knowing that physical man is but an expression of etheric man, sees something very different. 

At the present point of time, the etheric body of man has practically the same form as his physical body, although extending a little beyond it. But the farther back we go in history, the greater is the difference in size between the etheric head and the physical head. The etheric head is found to be much larger. Especially was this so in the period of earthly development which precedes our own. The men living at that time were Atlanteans. Geologians, indeed, are beginning to discover traces of ancient Atlantis, of the minerals and flora of this ancient continent now submerged under the ocean that bears its name. Traces of man himself have not yet been discovered but that is only a matter of time. Occult prophecies have always preceded authentic history.

The frontal part of the human head began to develop in the European races which followed those of Atlantis. The focus-point of consciousness in the Atlanteans lay outside the brow, in the etheric head. Today it lies within the physical head, a little higher than the nose.

Nifelheim or Nebelheim (the land of mists) in Germanic mythology is the country of the Atlanteans. In that age the Earth was hotter and still enveloped by vaporous clouds. The continent of Atlantis was destroyed by a series of deluges, as a consequence of which the terrestrial atmosphere cleared, — Then and only then came the blue sky, the storm, rain, the rainbow. That is why the Bible says that when Noah's Ark had come to rest, the rainbow, the “bow in the cloud” was a new token of alliance between God and man.

The ‘I’ of the Aryan race could only be consciously realised when the etheric body was centralised in the physical brain. Not until then could man begin to say: ‘I.’ The Atlanteans spoke of themselves in the third person.

Darwinism has made many errors in regard to the differentiation expressed by the races actually existing on the Earth. The higher races have not descended from the lower races; on the contrary, the latter represent the degeneration of the higher races which have preceded them. Suppose there are two brothers — one of whom is handsome and intelligent, the other ugly and dull-witted. Both proceed from the same father. What should we think of a man who believed that the intelligent brother descends from the idiot? That is the kind of error made by Darwinism in regard to the races. Man and animal have a common origin; the animals represent a degeneration of the one common ancestor, whose higher development comes to expression in man.

This should not give rise to pride, for it is only thanks to the lower kingdoms that the higher races have been able to develop.

Christ washes the feet of the Apostles. That is a symbol of the humility of the Initiate in face of his inferiors. The Initiate owes his existence to those who are not initiated. Hence the deep humility of those who truly know in face of those who do not. The tragic aspect of cosmic evolution is that one class of beings must abase themselves in order that the other may rise. In this sense we can appreciate the beauty of Paracelsus' words: “I have observed all beings — stones, plants, animals — and they seem to me nothing but scattered letters, man being the word, living and whole.”

The animals are crystallised passions.

In the course of human and animal evolution the inferior descends from the superior.

The contradictions in man, the way in which the elements mingle in him, constitute his karma, his destiny.

Just as man has wrested himself from the animal so will he wrest himself from evil. But never yet has he passed through a crisis as severe as that of the present age.

The evil and the good are still within man just as in days of yore the animals were within him.

The aim of Manicheism is to sublimate men to be redeemers.

The Master must be the servant of all.

True morality flows from an understanding of the mighty laws of the universe.


Part of An Esoteric Cosmology by Rudolf Steiner
Eighteen Lectures delivered in Paris, France May 25 to June 14, 1906 GA 94
Copyright © 1978
This e.Text edition is provided with the cooperation of:
http://www.rudolfsteinerpress.com/
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Κυριακή 20 Νοεμβρίου 2011

Love like God is infinite


Love like God is infinite, but in our reality love (like man) has a starting point but without boundaries.
Because man it is born out of this nature but its essence comes out of the divine world as the last inheritance of his true origin .

In Gods creation there is no starting or ending,this matter because is born out of the Spirit never stops to progress,changing forms endlessly in a glorious way not for it self but for the totality,for the wholeness.

So true love for us (not passion or pleasure) never ends always is testing our devotion and the clearness of our soul.

It is true not all people can feel this blessing but time and experiences educate our soul, when it lives our body after dead then return again with more knowledge deep in his unconscious part.

Love needs this  knowledge of the soul,its like tinny sparks were they can  lighten our dark reality of our ego and so make us understand the reason of our existence and the task of each of us.

So man can feel,taste what love is and slowly in time be one with it.

This journey never ends, Love never ends.

Τρίτη 15 Νοεμβρίου 2011

11-11-11. (2011) Movie


11-11-11. (2011)

Official Trailer :

After the death of his wife and child, an author travels to Barcelona to see his estranged brother and dying father, where he learns that his life is plagued by events that occur on 11/11/11.







Info's :
https://www.facebook.com/111111TheMovie?ref=ts&sk=wall
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1712159/

Download :
http://linksafe.me/d/44f3ccac6c

Thanks to  FreedomFighter

Δευτέρα 14 Νοεμβρίου 2011

Gustav Mahler : The Symphonies (1-9) with Georg Solti & Chicago Symphony Orchestra


Gustav Mahler 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic. Then his family moved to nearby Iglau (now Jihlava) where Mahler grew up.

As a composer, he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 the music was discovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.

Born in humble circumstances, Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in 1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera (Hofoper). During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism from Judaism to secure the post—experienced regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic press. Nevertheless, his innovative productions and insistence on the highest performance standards ensured his reputation as one of the greatest of opera conductors, particularly as an interpreter of the stage works of Wagner and Mozart. Late in his life he was briefly director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.


Mahler's œuvre is relatively small—for much of his life composing was a part-time activity, secondary to conducting—and is confined to the genres of symphony and song, except for one piano quartet. Most of his ten symphonies are very large-scale works, several of which employ soloists and choirs in addition to augmented orchestral forces. These works were often controversial when first performed, and were slow to receive critical and popular approval; an exception was the triumphant premiere of his Eighth Symphony in 1910. Mahler's immediate musical successors were the composers of the Second Viennese School, notably Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten are among later 20th-century composers who admired and were influenced by Mahler. The International Gustav Mahler Institute was established in 1955, to honour the composer's life and work.

Sir Georg Solti, KBE,  21 October 1912 – 5 September 1997) was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor. He was a major classical recording artist, holding the record for having received the most Grammy Awards, having personally won 31 as a conductor, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.In addition to his recordings he is probably best known for leading the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1969-91. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest conductors of the second half of the 20th century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Mahler
http://mahler-symphonies.com/mahler-composer.htm
http://public-domain-archive.com/classic/compositions.php?lang=eng&composer_no=10
http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=7312
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Solti
http://www.georgsolti.com/
http://www.soltifoundation.com/

Text for downloading the links :
http://www.wupload.com/file/2302959057/Mahler_SymSol.txt

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If you have the money and this interpretation holds you with heart, you can buy it at moderate prices. For example thanks to the independent salesmen like those present on Amazon.com.

Thanks to  Julien

Παρασκευή 11 Νοεμβρίου 2011

The Cloud upon the Sanctuary By Karl von Eckhartshausen (1752-1803)


The Cloud upon the Sanctuary By  Karl von Eckhartshausen (1752-1803)

TRANSLATED (with notes) BY MADAME ISABEL DE STEIGER
 Published in six parts in the periodical "The Unknown World", 1895.

LETTER I
Scanned from "The Unknown World", No. 6 - Vol. I, Jan. 15, 1895, and corrected by hand.
There is no age more remarkable to the quiet observer than our own. Everywhere there is a fermentation in the minds of men; everywhere there is a battle between light and darkness, between exploded thought and living ideas, between powerless wills and living active force; in short everywhere is there war between animal man and growing spiritual man. 
It is said that we live in an age of light, but it would be truer to say that we are living in an age of twilight; here and there a luminous ray pierces through the mists of darkness, but does not light to full clearness either our reason or our hearts. Men are not of one mind, scientists dispute, and where there is discord truth is not yet apprehended. 
The most important objects for humanity are still undetermined. No one is agreed either on the principle of rationality or on the principle of morality, or on the cause of the will.  This proves that though we are dwelling in an age of light, we do not well understand what emanates from our hearts- and what from our heads.  Probably we should have this information much sooner if we did not imagine that we have the light of knowledge already in our hands, or if we would cast a look on our weakness, and recognize that we require a more brilliant illumination.  We live in the times of idolatry of the intellect, we place a common torchlight upon the altar and we loudly proclaim the aurora, that now daylight is really about to appear, and that the world is emerging more and more out of obscurity into the full day of perfection, through the arts, sciences, cultured taste, and even from a purer understanding of religion. 
Poor mankind!  To what standpoint have you raised the happiness of man? Has there ever been an age which has counted so many victims to humanity as the present? Has there ever been an age in which immorality and egotism have been greater or more dominant than in this one?  The tree is known by its fruits. Mad men! With your imaginary natural reason, from whence have you the light by which you are so willing to enlighten others? Are not all your ideas borrowed from your senses which do not give you the reality but merely its phenomena?  Is it not true that in time and space all knowledge is but relative? Is it not true that all which we call reality is but relative, for absolute truth is not to be found in the phenomenal world? Thus your natural reason does not possess its true essence, but only the appearance of truth and light; and the more this appearance increases and spreads, the more the essence of light inwardly fades, and the man confuses himself with this appearance and gropes vainly after the dazzling phantasmal images he conjures. 
The philosophy of our age raises the natural intellect into independent objectivity, and gives it judicial power, she exempts it from any superior authority, she makes it voluntary, converting it into divinity by closing all harmony and communication with God; and this god Reason, which has no other law but its own, is to govern Man and make him happy! ... 

... Darkness able to spread light! 

.. Death capable of giving Life! 

... The truth leads man to happiness. Can you give it? 

That which you call truth is a form of conception empty of real matter, the knowledge of which is acquired from without and through the senses, and the understanding co-ordinates them by observed synthetic relationship into science or opinion. 
You abstract from the Scriptures and Tradition their moral, theoretical and practical truth; but as individuality is the principle of your intelligence, and as egotism is the incentive to your will, you do not see, by your light, the moral law which dominates, or you repel it with your will.  It is to this length that the light of to-day has penetrated. Individuality under the cloak of false philosophy is a child of corruption. 
Who can pretend that the sun is in full zenith if no bright rays illuminate the earth, and no warmth vitalizes vegetation? If wisdom does not benefit man, if love does not make him happy, but very little has been done for him on the whole. 
Oh! If only natural man, that is, sensuous man, would only learn to see that the source of his intelligence and the incentive of his will are only his individuality, he would then seek interiorly for a higher source, and he would thereby approach that which alone can give this true element, because it is wisdom in its essential substance. 
Jesus Christ is that Wisdom, Truth and Love.  He, as Wisdom, is the Principle of reason, and the Source of the purest intelligence. As Love, He is the Principle of morality, the true and pure incentive of the will. 
Love and Wisdom beget the spirit of truth, interior light; this light illuminates us and makes supernatural things objective to us. 
It is inconceivable to what depths of error a man falls when he abandons simple truths of faith by opposing his own opinions. 
Our century tries to decide by its (brain) intelligence, wherein lies the principle or ground of reason and morality, or the ground of the will; if the scientists were mindful, they would see that these things are better answered in the heart of the simplest man, than through their most brilliant casuistry. The practical Christian finds this incentive to the will, the principle of all morality, really and objectively in his heart; and this incentive is expressed in the following formula:- "Love God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself." 
The love of God and his neighbor is the motive for the Christian's will, and the essence of love itself is Jesus Christ in Us. 
It is in this way the principle of reason is wisdom in us; and the essence of wisdom, wisdom in its substance, is again Jesus Christ, the light of the world. Thus we find in Him the principle of reason and of morality.     
All that I am now saying is not hyperphysical extravagance; it is reality, absolute truth, that everyone can prove for himself by experience, as soon as he receives in himself the principle of all reason and morality- Jesus Christ, being wisdom and love in essence. 
But the eye of the man of sensuous perception only is firmly closed to the fundamental basis of all that is true and to all that is transcendental. 
The intelligence which many would fain raise to legislative authority is only that of the senses, whose light differs from that of transcendental reason, as does the phosphorescent glimmer of decayed wood from the glories of sunshine. 
Absolute truth does not exist for sensuous man; it exists only for interior and spiritual man who possesses a suitable sensorium; or, to speak more correctly, who possesses an interior sense to receive the absolute truth of the transcendental world, a spiritual faculty which cognizes spiritual objects as objectively and naturally as the exterior senses perceive external phenomena. 
This interior faculty of the man spiritual; this sensorium for the metaphysical world is unfortunately not known to those who cognize only outside of it- for it is a mystery of the kingdom of God. 
The current incredulity towards everything which is not cognized objectively by our senses is the explanation for the misconception of truths which are, of all, most important to man. 
But how can this be otherwise?  In order to see one must have eyes, to hear, one must have ears.  Every apparent object requires its appropriate senses.  So it is that transcendental objects require their sensorium- and this said sensorium is closed in most men.  Hence men judge the metaphysical world through the intelligence of their senses, even as the blind imagine colors and the deaf judge tones- without suitable senses. 
There is an objective and substantial ground of reason, an objective and substantial motive for the will.  These two together form the new principle of life, and morality is there essentially inherent. This pure substance of reason and will, re-united in us the divine and the human, is Jesus Christ, the light of the world, who must enter into direct relationship with us, to be really recognized. 
This real knowledge is actual faith, in which everything takes place in spirit and in truth. 
Thus one ought to have a sensorium fitted for this communication, an organized spiritual sensorium, a spiritual and interior faculty able to receive this light; but it is closed to most men by their senses. 
This interior organ is the intuitive sense of the transcendental world, and until this intuitive sense is effective in us we can have no certainty of more lofty truths. 
This organism is naturally inactive since the Fall, which degraded man to the world of physical senses alone. The gross matter which envelops this interior sensorium is a film which veils the internal eye, and therefore prevents the exterior eye from seeing into spiritual realms.  This same matter muffles our internal hearing, so that we are deaf to the sounds of the metaphysical world; it so paralyses our spiritual speech that we can scarcely stammer words of sacred import, words we fully pronounced once, and by virtue of which we held authority over the elements and the external world. 
The opening of this spiritual sensorium is the mystery of the New Man- the mystery of Regeneration, and of the vital union between God and man- it is the noblest object of religion on earth, that religion whose sublime goal is none other than to unite men with God in Spirit and in Truth. 
We can therefore easily see by this how it is that religion tends always towards the subjection of the senses. It does so because it desires to make the spiritual man dominant, in order that the spiritual or truly rational man may govern the man of sense. Philosophy feels this truth, only its error consists in not apprehending the true source of reason, and because she would replace it by individuality by sensuous reason. 
As man has internally a spiritual organ and a sensorium to receive the true principle of divine wisdom, or a true motive for the will or divine love, he has also exteriorly a physical and material sensorium to receive the appearance of light and truth. As external nature can have no absolute truth, but only phenomenally relative, therefore, human reason cannot cognize pure truth, it can but apprehend through the appearance of phenomena, which excites the lust of the eye, and in this as a source of action consists the corruption of sensuous man and the degradation of nature. 
This exterior sensorium in man is composed of frail matter, whereas the internal sensorium is organized fundamentally from incorruptible, transcendental, and metaphysical substance. 
The first is the cause of our depravity and our mortality, the second the cause of our incorruptibility and of our immortality. 
In the regions of material and corruptible nature mortality hides immortality, therefore all our trouble results from corruptible mortal matter.  In order that man should be released from this distress, it is necessary that the immortal and incorruptible principle, which dwells within, should expand and absorb the corruptible principle, so that the envelope of the senses should be opened, and man appear in his pristine purity. 
This natural envelope is a truly corruptible substance found in our blood, forming the fleshly bonds binding our immortal spirits under the servitude of the mortal flesh. 
This envelope can be rent more or less in every man, and this places him in greater spiritual liberty, and makes him more cognizant of the transcendental world. 
There are three different degrees in the opening of our spiritual sensorium. 
The first degree reaches to the moral plane only, the transcendental world energizes through us in but by interior action, called inspiration. 
The second and higher degree opens this sensorium to the reception of the spiritual and the intellectual, and the metaphysical world works in us by interior illumination. 
The third degree, which is the highest and most seldom attained, opens the whole inner man.  It breaks the crust which fills our spiritual eyes and ears; it reveals the kingdom of spirit, and enables us to see objectively, metaphysical, and transcendental sights; hence all visions are explained fundamentally. 
Thus we have an internal sense of objectivity as well as externally. Only the objects and the senses are different. Exteriorly animal and sensual motives act in us and corruptible sensuous matter energizes.  Interiorly it is metaphysical and indivisible substance which gains admittance within, and the incorruptible and immortal essence of our Spirit receives its influence. Nevertheless, generally things pass much in the same way interiorly as they do externally. The law is everywhere the same. Hence, as the spirit or our internal man has quite other senses, and quite another objective sight from the rational man; one need not be surprised that it (the spirit) should remain an enigma for the scientists of our age, for those who have no objective sense of the transcendental and spiritual world.  Hence they measure the supernatural by the measurement of the senses.  However, we owe a debt of gratitude towards the philosopher Kant for his view of the truths we have promulgated. 
Kant has shown incontestably that the natural reason can know absolutely nothing of what is supernatural, and that it can never understand analytically or synthetically, neither can it prove the possibility of the reality of Love, Spirit, or of the Deity. 
This is a great truth, lofty and beneficial for our epoch, though it is true that St. Paul has already enunciated it (I Cor., i., 2-24). 
But the pagan philosophy of Christian scientists has been able to overlook it up to Kant.  The virtue of this truth is double. First it puts insurmountable limits to the sentiment, to the fanaticism and to the extravagance of carnal reason. Then it shows by dazzling contrast the necessity and divinity of Revelation. It proves that our human reason, in its state of unfoldment, “has no other” objective source for the supernatural than revelation, the only source of instruction in Divine things or of the spiritual world, the soul and its immortality; hence it follows that without revelation it is absolutely impossible to suppose or conjecture anything regarding these matters. 
We are, therefore, indebted to Kant for proving philosophically now-a-days, what long ago was taught in a more advanced and illumined school, “that without revelation no knowledge of God, neither any doctrine touching the soul could be at all possible”. 
It is therefore clear that a universal Revelation must serve as a fundamental basis to all mundane religion. 
Hence, following Kant, it is clear that the transmundane knowledge is wholly inaccessible to natural reason, and that God inhabits a world of light, into which no speculation of the unfolded reason can penetrate.  Thus the rational man, or man of human reason, has no sense of transcendental reality, and therefore it was necessary that it should be revealed to him, for which faith is required, because the means are given to him by faith whereby his inner sensorium unfolds, and through which he can apprehend the reality of truths otherwise incapable of being understood by the natural man. 
It is quite true that with new senses we can acquire sense of further reality.  This reality exists already, but is not known to us, because we lack the organ by which to cognize it.  One must not lay the fault to the percept, but on the receptive organ. 
With, however, the development of the new organ we have a new perception, a sense of new reality.  Without it the spiritual world cannot exist for us, because the organ rendering it objective to us is not developed. 
With, however, its unfoldment, the curtain is all at once raised, the impenetrable veil is torn away, the cloud before the Sanctuary lifts, a new world suddenly exists for us, scales fall from the eyes, and we are at once transported from the phenomenal world to the regions of truth. 
God alone is substance, absolute truth; He alone is He who is, and we are what He has made us.  For Him, all exists in Unity, for us, all exists in multiplicity. 
A great many men have no more idea of the development of the inner sensorium than they have of the true and objective life of the spirit, which they neither perceive nor foresee in any manner.  Hence it is impossible to them to know that one can comprehend the spiritual and transcendental, and that one can be raised to the supernatural, even to vision. 
The great and true work of building the Temple consists solely in destroying the miserable Adamic hut and in erecting a divine temple; this means, in other words, to develop in us the interior sensorium, or the organ to receive God.  After this process, the metaphysical and incorruptible principle rules over the terrestrial, and man begins to live, not any longer in the principle of self-love, but in the Spirit and in the Truth, of which he is the Temple. 
The moral law then evolves into love for one's neighbor in deed and in truth, whereas for the natural man it is but a simple attitude of thought; and the spiritual man, regenerated in spirit, sees all in its essence, of which the natural man has only the forms void of thought, mere empty sounds, symbols and letters, which are all dead images without interior spirit. The lofty aim of religion is the intimate union of man with God; and this union is possible in this world; but it only can be by the opening of our inner sensorium, which enables our hearts to become receptive to God. 
Therein are mysteries that our philosophy does not dream of, the key to which is not to be found in scholastic science. 
Meanwhile, a more advanced school has always existed to whom this deposition of all science has been confided, and this school was the community illuminated interiorly by the Savior, the society of the Elect, which has continued from the first day of creation to the present time; its members, it is true, are scattered all over the world, but they have always been united in the spirit and in one truth; they have had but one intelligence and one source of truth, but one doctor and one master; but in whom resides substantially the whole plentitude of God, and who alone initiates them into the high mysteries of Nature and the Spiritual World. 
This community of light has been called from all time the invisible celestial Church, or the most ancient of all communities, of which we will speak more fully in our next letter. 

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.
I am afraid that some readers who are interested in "Mysticism," or rather are desirous of entering into its study, may be deterred from doing so by reading these letters of the excellent Mystic, Eckartshausen. For the reason that his doctrine, Regeneration, has been so much misunderstood owing to the over-familiarity with the ordinary signification of that deeply important word, that modern Religion mostly given us. Nevertheless, no reader can fail to see that Eckartshausen has a very real and vital reason for all he says. His language is extraordinarily simple, so much so that many may consider that he hides deeper matter purposely. 
This is not quite the case; in all Catholic and central truth there are various meanings, not opposing ones, but each opening, as it were, according to the grade of the student's own spiritual understanding. 
Indeed, it is very frequently urged against mystic and alchemic writings that they purposely and selfishly veil the truth. No doubt in many cases it has been purposely done, for very sincerely good reasons that real enquiry would amply endorse; but it is by no means a true bill against "Mystic" writings that the language is deliberately symbolic, allegoric, or in a sort of cipher-code, as it were, in which one word is mischievously meant for another and so forth.  I have heard all alchemic works described, indeed once thought so myself, as a farrago of pure bosh.  But we know, as most people now-a-days who pretend to any philosophy at all, that there are other planes of nature besides the physical, and that mystic and alchemical writings are not generally dealing with physical or mental matters and nomenclature. They refer to higher planes of nature- and if a student is able to enter into higher planes I understand that the terms and expressions all take simple and rightful place.  But all that a student can do in his first study in these matters is to try and discern somewhat where the planes change and where the writer mean literally on the higher plane or parabolically on the physical or on what plane is the literalness?  But most alchemic writing is hyperphysical.  Origen says "to the literal minded (or carnal) we teach the Gospel in the historic or literal way, but to the proficients, fired with the love of Divine Wisdom, we impart the Logos." Also we must remember that these writers were Spiritual giants; men who had gone through the vital process of Regeneration, and who wrote to others in like condition, not to the carnal minded or literal man, who have their spiritual "sensorium," as Eckhartshausen calls it, still sealed. 
We are, therefore, grateful when a Spiritual giant like Eckhartshausen writes as he does in simpler fashion, one more suitable to the plane of intellectuality on which we usually are. He tells us literally that man has fallen from his high estate, as we have all been taught in "common" Christianity, and he proceeds to point out the Spiritual rationale whereby man may attain his former Greatness.  In doing so, he explains in a most suggestive manner the real value of the rites and ceremonies of Catholic Christendom, the Church as he teaches being the outer manifestation of that Inner Society (the nameless one), that Society of the Elect which has always existed, and must still exist, for the protection of mankind.  If this Sacred Circle, this Celestial Church, did not subsist, our earthly sinful Churches could not exist. That they do is a proof of its holy Guardianship- Eckhartshausen's letters on the subject explanatory of this position, are most instructive. There are doubtless a few elect souls who are so richly laden with the ten talents they have earned in preceding lives, that they can, so to say, take the Kingdom of Heaven with violence and obtain their Regeneration and Immortality early in this life, without possibly belonging to any Society, whether Church organization or otherwise, but to most people this is impossible; and we then, as humbler students, do well to lay heed to the great importance of Christian rites and ceremonies- especially that of the Sacred Supper. This is, of course, not new teaching to instructed Catholics, but I would respectfully suggest that Eckhartshausen does lead the understanding to higher ground and higher possibilities, as a permitted Initiate, than Church teaching generally can do, because Catholic Doctrine does not, cannot fully explain.  It is her function only to enunciate ex cathedra as the legitimately authorized channel of communication; but certain writers, Initiates and Regenerate men, have special offices, of instructors and explainers.  Therefore those peeple who have not the gift of Faith to receive enunciated Doctrine, have indeed much to be thankful for in that there are such writers who are permitted to explain the reason why of doctrine and dogma. To minds, then, who are not gifted with Faith, or who have not attained to it, the writings of the mystics are priceless, as no doubt through them the student who only commenced the quest through mere but honest curiosity and desire, if, however, he continue sincere and earnest, can without doubt rise not only to the region of faith, but in addition with a clear understanding, and he then is in a still better condition for further advancement. Mad is that person who with the grace and gift of Faith to commence with has left his talent untouched! 
"The Cloud upon the Sanctuary" is written in six letters, and they show the meaning of Revelation, the means whereby man can receive it; the supreme importance of man's Regeneration and the means whereby he can attain to it.  And I may here say that a Regenerated Man in Mystic phraseology is equivalent to "Mahatma," or may be more; in modern theosophic terms, it means a Master, and until man attains to this rank he is not able to fully recognize the Master, so must always remain until that time outside the Temple, not yet fit to enter within the sacred precincts and be hailed as a true Builder by the Master Builder Himself.  Regeneration is moreover the only means by which he gains freedom from Karma, and is thenceforth freed from the Circle of Necessity or Re-birth.  There is one other matter to note, both in reading sacred writ and mystic writers, that if we find one meaning pretty clear throughout we may conclude we have one key, but that is all, and because we understand this side of the truth is just the reason that we have not all the truth.  If we keep this well in our minds it will be a useful preventive against spiritual pride, for it will keep us always respectful to out brothers' and sisters' versions of the matter. Nevertheless there is something so real, so solid, so concrete in the presentment of Mystic Truth that if that foundation be firmly realised it is remarkable how much more easily the building is raised than we could imagine while wandering in the phantasmal regions of astral Revelations- that realm of Chaos out of and from which man has been lifted, by being created Rational Man, but towards which he too easily returns on a retrograde course.  We must also note that Eckhartshausen lived and wrote at the period of the French Revolution; at an era very similar to our own in all but its sad consummation. "Magic" was the fashion, and quite as much was known then on these matters as is known now. There were spiritual circles, occult societies, brotherhoods, and a great searching into the "hidden things of the Spirit." 
We have St. Martin's valuable authority at that period for thinking very highly of Eckhartshausen as a man who worked and thought centrally, and whose writings commanded his highest respect. 
ISABEL DE STEIGER. 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_von_Eckartshausen

Karl von Eckartshausen (1752-1803): “Die innere Kirche entstund…”

 The Christian theosopher Karl von Eckartshausen was an eminent and influential exponent of early German romanticism. His work in natural philosophy and Christian theosophy was read and discussed by some of the most well-known European writers and poets of his time. In Germany Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Johann Gottfried Herder (who regarded him as the prophet of ‘Harmonie im Sittlichen und in der Natur’ – harmony in morality and in nature) and especially also Novalis knew his work. In Russia, where his works appeared in translation, he was mentioned in the novels of Nikolai Gogol (Dead Souls) and Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace). Tsar Alexander I was an avid reader of his work. In France, Eckartshausen influenced contemporary mystical thinkers and Böhmist theosophers such as Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin (‘le Philosophe Inconnu’) (1743-1803) and members of various Martinist circles.

With regard to Naturphilosophie, the Christian kabbalah and Christian theosophy, corresponding themes may be discovered between his work and that of his friends, the Christian theosophers and philosophers Franz von Baader (1765-1841) and Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling (1740-1817). Works by Eckartshausen were translated in several languages and published especially in France and Russia, as part of a strongly revived interest in these countries in Hermetic philosophy and Christian kabbalah. In Russia, this revival was stimulated through the book production in the masonic and Rosicrucian circles of Nikolai Novikov and Ivan Vladimirovitch Lopuchin (1756-1816). Only much later (towards the end of the 19th century), English translations of Eckartshausen’s works began to appear. Through the exertions of Arthur Edward Waite, the mysticism of both Eckartshausen and Lopuchin received more public attention in the Anglo-Saxon world.

Eckartshausen lived and worked in the south of Germany, straddling the cultural divide between the German Aufklärung (Enlightenment) and the early Romantic period. He defended his own kind of religious philosophy against the new rationalism and materialism of what he considered the wrong sort of Enlightenment. Strongly involved in the social and legal developments in his society, he foresaw and warned against the political and religious unrest in the era of the French Revolution (1789-1801). He joined Adam Weishaupt’s masonic order of the Illuminaten (Illuminates) but withdrew his membership soon after discovering that this order only recognized enlightenment through human reason (‘Man cannot enlighten: the truth enlightens…’). His works have always confronted the turbulent political, social and religious reality of his times and thus caught the early romantic Zeitgeist. This holds true for his early legal studies, the didactic, political and polemic works (Über Religion, Freydenkerey und Aufklärung, 1785-86), the theatrical plays, the sentimental and romantic-theosophical narratives (Kostis Reise), and the later religious, theosophical and spiritual works from Aufschlüsse zur Magie onwards.

Eckartshausen did not always mention his sources (but see nrs. 9a-b). However, his esoteric thinking unmistakably contains elements from the writings of Paracelsus, the theosophy of Jacob Böhme, the Christian kabbalah (e.g. in Zahlenlehre der Natur, 1794, possibly through Welling’s influential Opus mago-cabbalisticum), the Hermetic Gnosis and from spiritual alchemy (e.g. the posthumously published Katechismus der höheren Chemie zum Beweis der Analogie der Wahrheiten der Natur mit den Wahrheiten des Glaubens).

Antoine Faivre, who devoted his PhD thesis to Eckartshausen, has recognized a number of themes and motives in his work. First, Faivre distinguishes the principle of analogy or correspondence. This Hermetic principle allowed new insights attained by modern natural science to be interpreted as so many confirmations of long-existing theosophical intuitions. Another motive appearing in the major texts by both Ivan Lopuchin and Eckartshausen is the concept of the Inner Church. Here Faivre sees Lopuchin’s indebtedness to Eckartshausen, but the influence may have been less pronounced or may have been mutual (for this point, see also Danilov’s study of Lopuchin). The outer church and its many changing appearances and doctrinal differences were neither denied nor dismissed – in fact an interdependence of outer and inner church was recognized, but the spiritual meaning of the mystical inner room was given special emphasis. Ideas about the relations between man and the divine and between creation and the mortality of nature were formed on the basis of especially gnostic and theosophical insights. Eckartshausen further valued nature and the principle of regeneration, which made a union with God a possibility. Influences of alchemy (the three principles mercury, sulphur and salt), Pythagorean number symbolism (arithmology or arithmosophy), and the Christian and magical kabbalah directed his religious-philosophical as well as his scientific search.

According to Eckartshausen, philosophy without religion would lead to freethinking; religion without philosophy to Schwärmerei and superstition. In Die Wolke über dem Heiligtum (The cloud upon the sanctuary) Eckartshausen expressed it as follows: ‘Alles was die äussere Kirche an Symbolen, Zeremonien und Ritualen besitzt, ist Buchstabe, von dem der Geist und die Wahrheit in der inneren Kirche liegt’ (‘Everything the outer Church possesses by way of symbols, ceremonies and rituals, is Letter, the spirit and truth of which lies in the inner Church’). He also discovered the outer and inner qualities in language and letters and developed his own aphoristic writing style without too many structural elements or any clear progression of thoughts and ideas. Still, this outwardly formless style, according to some, was most apposite in order to call forth his inner ideas and the coherence of his mystical insights.

1785 Über Religion, Freydenkerey und Aufklärung, Munich
 
Select bibliography:

Andrej V. Danilov, Iwan Lopuchin. Erneuerer der russischen Freimaurerei. Seine Lehre von der inneren Kirche als eigenständiger Beitrag zum Lehrgebäude der freimaurerischen Mystik, Dettelbach 2000
Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, ed. W.J. Hanegraaff et.al., 2 vols, Leiden 2005, for entries on Baader (Arthur Versluis), Eckartshausen (Jacques Fabry), Lopuchin (Antoine Faivre), Saint-Martin (Arthur McCalla).
Raffaela Faggionato, ‘Un' utopia rosacrociana. Massoneria, rosacrocianesimo e illuminismo nella Russia settecentesca: il circolo di N.I. Novikov’, in: Archivio di storia della cultura, 10 (1997), pp.11-276
Antoine Faivre, Eckartshausen et la théosophie chrétienne, Paris 1969
Hans Grassl, Aufbruch zur Romantik. Bayerns Beitrag zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte 1765-1785, München 1968, pp. 319-335
Edward Burton Penny, ed. Theosophic correspondence between Louis Claude de Saint-Martin and Kirchberger, Baron de Liebistorf, Pasadena, Ca 1949
Arthur Edward Waite, “Introduction” to 3rd edition of English translation The Cloud upon the Sanctuary by Isabelle de Steiger, 1909 (first ed. of tr. 1896)
Arthur Edward Waite, “Introduction” to I.V. Lopuchin, Some characteristics of the interior church, tr. D.H.S. Nicholson; ed. Waite, 1912
From :  http://www.ritmanlibrary.nl/c/p/h/bel_16.html