Journal articles on the topic 'Mystics Europe History'

This article examines how and why criminal proceedings were brought against alleged cases of Catholic mysticism in several European countries during modernity. In particular, it explores how criminal charges were derived from mystical experiences and shows how these charges were examined inside the courtroom. To bring a lawsuit against supposed mystics, justice systems had to reduce their mysticism to ‘facts’ or actions involving a breach of the law, usually fraud. Such accusations were not the main reason why alleged mystics were taken to court, however. Focusing on three representative examples, in Spain, France and Germany, I argue that ‘mystic trials’ had more to do with specific conflicts between the defendant and the ecclesiastical or secular authorities than with public concern regarding pretence of the supernatural. Criminal courts in Europe approached such cases in a similar way. Just as in ecclesiastical inquiries, during the trials, judges called upon expert testimony to debunk the allegedly supernatural. Once a mystic entered the courtroom, his or her reputation was profoundly affected. Criminal lawsuits had a certain ‘demystifying power’ and were effective in stifling the fervour surrounding the alleged mystics. All in all, mystic trials offer a rich example of the ways in which modern criminal justice dealt with increasing enthusiasm for the supernatural during the 19th century.

AbstractIn 1577 Teresa de Jesús composed the Interior Castle, an account of her spiritual experiences that deployed architectural images designed to incite readers to piety and devotion. Critical readings have identified the castle as a spiritual and aesthetic emblem of Christian hegemony, emplotting de Jesús's works in the rhetorical frame of Reconquista narratives. But the Castle, like the houses in the 1562 Book of Life and the palaces in the 1562-1564 Way of Perfection, moves readers to remember landscapes that differ from a monocultural event, as it narrates the ultimate spiritual encounter in frank dissidence with the hegemonic politics and aesthetics of Catholicism that became the law of the land in Spain after 1492. In line with a diversity of medieval mystical traditions from Europe and the Middle East, the choice of a castle—a key architectural sign of the Middle Ages—as the place of paradox, memory, and experience of the sublime offers clues that de Jesús figured out a way to communicate what seemed to be an unaccountable event in Counter-Reformation Spain: being in the presence of divinity and living to tell such story in cross-confessional terms. This essay analyzes the polysemic traces of the castle built by this mystic woman with the figurative fragrance of multicultural medieval Iberia, a space where she carefully negotiated war, crusades, and other kingdoms of heaven with contemplation, survival (pervivencia), and adaptation.

This essay deals with the hagiographic afterlife of Catarina de San Juan, the seventeenth-century slave from Asia who became a renowned mystic in colonial Mexico, in writings by German Jesuits, notably Joseph Stöcklein’s popular Welt-Bott. Why and how was Catarina de San Juan’s story told for a German-speaking audience in Central Europe? The specific German appropriations of her vita suggest that missionary writings could serve as a transmission belt for ‘colonial fantasies’, linking the early modern period when the Holy Roman Empire did not have colonies to the modern period when the German Nation acquired colonial holdings in the Pacific.

The article examines the phenomenon of “Western Sufi sm”, the complex of spiritual practices and movements, widely spread in Europe and the US in the 1960–1970th. The history of the relationship between the Western society and the Muslim esoteric tradition dates back to the Middle Ages, when the Muslim world had a signifi cant impact on Europe, drawing inspiration and knowledge from the Islamic culture. During the colonial era, Sufi sm was viewed by Europeans primarily as “ethnographic exotics”, but in the 1960–1970th together with the general interest in eastern mystical teachings and the advent of “alternative” religious movements, Sufi sm (or Neo-Sufi sm) acquires the status of Western cultural category, ceasing to be identifi ed with an exclusively Islamic tradition and taking an increasingly universalistic character. Its new adherents become people of diff erent religious beliefs and nationalities.

The article proves that the idea of the historical development of mankind, which is expressed in the Philosophical Letters P.Ya. Chaadaev, became a universal model of understanding of history for all Russian religious philosophy. Accord­ing to Chaadayev, the meaning of history is the gradual refusal of people from selfish freedom, from personal independence, from adherence to material goals and in complete submission to the divine power acting in the world and leading people to connect with each other and with spiritual reality. The result of this process should be the emergence of a perfect humanity. The subjects of history directing its course are the few “higher personalities”; they generate great ideas that turn into traditions and thereby become powerful forces of influence on peo­ple. A.S. Pushkin shared Chaadayev’s view that history is determined by a few “higher personalities” who have a mystical connection with God, with a higher reality. The importance of cultural traditions in history was emphasized by A.I. Herzen, however he believed that Europe had ceased to follow its traditions and this leads to its death. F.M. Dostoevsky after Herzen argued that Europe had renounced its destiny to be the cultural center of mankind, now Russia should become such a center and lead humanity along the path of cultural creativity and spiritual unity. Dostoevsky also saw the historical development of mankind as the result of the activities of individual “higher personalities”, whose instruments are “higher ideas”.

The article proves that the idea of the historical development of mankind, which is expressed in the Philosophical Letters P.Ya. Chaadaev, became a universal model of understanding of history for all Russian religious philosophy. Accord­ing to Chaadayev, the meaning of history is the gradual refusal of people from selfish freedom, from personal independence, from adherence to material goals and in complete submission to the divine power acting in the world and leading people to connect with each other and with spiritual reality. The result of this process should be the emergence of a perfect humanity. The subjects of history directing its course are the few “higher personalities”; they generate great ideas that turn into traditions and thereby become powerful forces of influence on peo­ple. A.S. Pushkin shared Chaadayev’s view that history is determined by a few “higher personalities” who have a mystical connection with God, with a higher reality. The importance of cultural traditions in history was emphasized by A.I. Herzen, however he believed that Europe had ceased to follow its traditions and this leads to its death. F.M. Dostoevsky after Herzen argued that Europe had renounced its destiny to be the cultural center of mankind, now Russia should become such a center and lead humanity along the path of cultural creativity and spiritual unity. Dostoevsky also saw the historical development of mankind as the result of the activities of individual “higher personalities”, whose instruments are “higher ideas”.

The article based on the research of medieval West European political thought’s texts and mainly on the basic treatise “Policraticus” of John of Salisbury and works by other authors in XII century is devoted to analysis of concepts concerning power and society in light of “body politic” metaphor. The most representative and influential sources (and first of them is “Policraticus”) transmitting the idea of “body politic” in Latin intellectual culture are researched, the metaphor usage logic and ways of its usage in polemical tradition are identified. The “body hierarchy” considered in the article focuses in medieval authors opinion not only on mystical but real social and political arrangement, it underwent definite transformations connected with power and its welder’s figure reception through ages.

Abstract Kavanot, or mystical intentions, have acquired varied meanings and interpretations in kabbalistic literatures, from the practice of harmonising one’s mind with the requirement of performed ritual to elaborate processes of mental focus, exercised during prayer and other ritual acts, on divine attributes signified by divine names and stipulated meticulously in kabbalistic prayer-books. Early modern practical kabbalistic manuals also, to no surprise, abound with instructions which recommend a variety of kavanot. In many of these manuals and books of recipes, it is the intention that enables extending of one’s mind toward matter, and builds a new type of continuity between the practitioner and the outside world. Intentionality in kabbalistic practice thus channels the emergence of the performing, knowledgeable self, engaged in shaping the material world, a development which runs parallel to the emergence of new configurations of knowledge in the early modern period. This rise of intentional self, manifest in kabbalistic practices as expressed in early modern handwritten books of recipes of East-Central European provenance, will be the focus of this article.

The article is devoted to the analysis of one of modern Russia’s local or group historical narratives, which articulates the mystical connection of the north-Russian population with Finno-Ugric shamanic practices based on runes «Kalevala». The TV series «Northern Lights» (the original script of Victoria Platova) in the genre of a mystical detective discusses one of the ways to deploy a «folk» or popular historical narrative, which is some controversial attitude of the state policy of memory and a conservative turn in historical policy. The relationship of the representations about Finnish roots of Russian ethnos with such unrelated concepts as «escapism» and «Aryan myth» was analyzed. The gradual drift of popular history in mass media is considered from the purely Slavic narrative of origin and ancient mystical practices of the people of north-western Russia to the recognition of Finno-Ugric roots or even the unity of Russian and Finnish peoples of the Russian north. The deconstruction of the series by visual anthropology techniques revealed a constant appeal to the everyday magical practices of the Karelian heroes of the series, who identify themselves as Russians. The inhabitants of the Island, where the action takes place, all the structure of their daily lives and holidays are built around the gods and heroes of Kalevala. The narratives «Finnish roots» in media are considered in connection with the interpretation of dubious results «Russian Nobility DNA Project», the origin of Princess Olha and Old Ladoga, as the source of Russia. The conclusion is reached on the participation of many actors and polyphonicity of modern Russian historical narrative, search for new lines of interface of Russian history and Europe.

The article describes the history of two Pavel Annenkov’s publications in the magazine "Vestnik Evropy" (Herald of Europe) ("The Extraordinary Decade", "The Idealists of the 1830s"), according to his letters to the editor; defi nes more precisely the facts of the preparation of the memoirs "Gogol in Rome at the Summer of the Year 1841" for the fi rst book "Memoirs and Critical Essays" in Mikhail Stasyulevich’s publishing house. Special attention is paid to the new details of the creative history of the memoirs "The Extraordinary Decade" by Pavel Annenkov’s letters to Mikhail Stasyulevich. The article tells about Vissarion Belinsky’s role in the memoir’s structure and about the features of the narration, originated from oral materials, and the difference between this book and Alexander Pypin’s biography of Vissarion Belinsky. The analysis of Pavel Annenkov’s article "The Idealists of the 1830s" brightened up the meaning of the mystical romantic ideals of young Alexander Herzen in his future. The comparison of two texts about Alexander Herzen during the years of emigration lets understanding the difference between a memoir and an essay.

The article considers the views of the German philosopher Ernst Bloch on the problem of the evolution of the idea of the “Third Reich” in the European Christian tradition of the Middle Ages and New Times, as well as its actualization by German Nazism. The author of the paper is the translator of many texts by E. Bloch. He attempts to understand the origins of the popularity of Nazism from a culturological and historical-philosophical point of view E. Bloch in a series of works turns, for the first time in 1924, to the European Christian tradition, to those images and figures that have defined the mental landscape for many centuries. The image of the Third Reich occupies an essential place in the intellectual history of Europe and the European Christian tradition. The influence of this image on the consciousness of the masses cannot be underestimated. Bloch reveals the inconsistency of the concept of the Third Reich and the figure of the savior (“Kaiser-liberator”, “leader”), which contains both the origins of the junction of Christianity and anti-fascism, and the grounds for inversion in favor of Nazism. The author also focuses on E. Bloch’s views on the legacy of the theologian Joachim Florsky (12th century), who created a historiosophical scheme that had an impact on many philosophical and religious concepts of history. Bloch enters Joachim Florsky into the historical and philosophical tradition, analyzing the mythologeme of the Savior in the cultural history of Europe. The paper presents an overview of modern research on the legacy of I. Florsky by Russian and foreign scientists, which prove the relevance of the ideas of E. Bloch, who revealed the connection between medieval religious movements and Nazism, opening a discussion with opposing points of view. The author examines the relationship between chiliasm and revolution, the influence of mysticism on the consciousness of German society at the beginning of the 20th century and on intellectuals. The article characterizes the position of E. Bloch, who believed that German Nazism committed an ideological theft of theological Christian concepts. The article highlights Bloch’s call to change the attitude to medieval chiliasm and mysticism in connection with the revolutionary potential existing in these currents.

Fin-de-Siècle Europe appears in the prose of the Czech poet and writer Jiři Karasek from Lvovice (1871–1951) as a mystical space full of nostalgia and claustrophobia, which force the characters to experience the hereditary involvement of history. This is, for example, how the hero of the novel “Gothic Soul” (Czech: Gotická Duše) feels. The novel shows Prague at the turn of the century as a place where the past is more real than the present. The trilogy “Novels of the Three Magicians” (Czech: Romány tří mágů), inspired by the legends about European “sorcerers”, uses Vienna, Venice, and Prague as magic or decadent territories that affect the characters’ behaviour. Karasek creates urban images with decadent aesthetics by applying special features and techniques. Among them we can highlight the night atmosphere, intentional emphasis on the artificiality of the reality, and the description of the scene with the symbols of decline or decay. Such a subjective view from the eyes of a decadent character can open up a city from a unique perspective, making it possible to distinguish previously unseen details. The image of Prague in Karasek’s works is dual and ambivalent. On the one hand, it is an aesthetically artifi cial decadent Prague and on the other, a mystical, magical Prague. Venice by Karasek is also a decadent city where only the past is alive. With help of Karasek’s prose one can obtain the prism of decadent and “gothic” novels — rather rare and original for Czech literature genres. His works also give us the opportunity to experience the lost atmosphere of pre-war Europe.

Much of the spirituality peculiar to African Christians bears traces of the influence of African Traditional Religions (atr). Prayer traditions like incantations, melodious choruses and appeal to spirits, typical of atr, have infiltrated the religious life of African Christians both at home and in Diaspora, amongst Christians in the mainline churches as well as in the African Independent Churches. Though the flow of African spiritual heritage into Christianity happened in the early history of Christianity, it accelerated in the lives of slaves in diaspora in the West Indies, the Americas and Europe. Today, the process continues amongst African migrants fleeing the unbearable political and economic strangulations in Africa; they migrate with their culture and spirituality and impact on Christianity worldwide. It is the intent of this paper therefore to explore how the African mystic sentiment, frenzied excitement and spirit-laden spirituality, which combine the sacred and the secular in practical life, influenced Christian worship and thought down the ages and, in recent times, contributed to the emergence of the Pentecostal and charismatic spirituality.

Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle is a historical novel that is set during the Ottoman reign. The novel presents the metaphysical opposition of East and West, self and the other, intuition and reason, mysticism, science and global and local, and the recurring issues of conflict of civilization, identity crisis, and cultural variations. Orhan Pamuk as a postmodern writer tries to bridge the gap between the East and the West through his writings. Although Turkey is at the backdrop in most of his novels, the treatment of themes is universal. The paper proposes the theory of Orientalism by Edward Said, which represents the encounter and treatment of the "Orient." The concept of identity expressed by Pamuk in his wide range of novels also can be related to the “Orient” and “Occident.” The culture of the East has always been portrayed as the binary opposite of Europe in history and fiction. The loss of identity of the East reflected in the works of Pamuk is an outcome of the clash between East and Europe, further leading to chaotic contexts and dilemmatic protagonists. Individuals unable to choose between the traditional self and the fashionable West mourn the lost identity of a country and their self.

This paper introduces the notion of “nesting orientalisms” to investigate some of the complexity of the east/west dichotomy which has underlain scholarship on “Orientalism” since the publication of Said's classic polemic, a discourse in which “East,” like “West,” is much more of a project than a place. While geographical boundaries of the “Orient“ shifted throughout history, the concept of “Orient” as “other” has remained more or less unchanged. Moreover, cultures and ideologies tacitly presuppose the valorized dichotomy between east and west, and have incorporated various “essences” into the patterns of representation used to describe them. Implied by this essentialism is that humans and their social or cultural institutions are “governed by determinate natures that inhere in them in the same way that they are supposed to inhere in the entities of the natural world.” Thus, eastern Europe has been commonly associated with “backwardness,” the Balkans with “violence,” India with “idealism” or “mysticism,” while the west has identified itself consistently with the “civilized world.“

One of the most significant phenomena in the course of modern Jewish history is undoubtedly the astonishing success of the hasidic movement in winning and retaining large numbers of followers. What is even more remarkable is that this process took a relatively short time to come to fruition: It is widely agreed that at the death of the Ba‘al Shem Tov (who is often still regarded as the founder of the movement) in 1760, his circle numbered no more than a few dozen initiates, but by the 1820s, the movement had become dominant in the Jewish society of large swathes of eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine and Galicia.1 Many different explanations for this success have been proposed: Hasidism's attraction has been variously perceived as a result of its being a movement of religious revival and reform, a movement of social protest and class struggle, a movement popularizing elite Jewish mystical thought, and a movement of social reconstruction.2 In terms of social structure, all scholars agree that Hasidism's main innovation—and a major factor in its success—was the creation of the figure of the zaddik: a charismatic spiritual leader who acts as an intermediary between the individual hasid and God and provides answers to all problems, whether they are spiritual or earthly.3 However, relatively little attention has been paid to the social organization of the early hasidic movement as a whole, which allowed Jews from all over eastern Europe to find their place and nurture their new identity as hasidim.4 My goal here is to examine the development of Hasidism as a social movement from the perspective of the structures that it created to solidify the bond between the zaddik and the hasid. In particular, I shall focus on the ways in which the new movement overcame the geographic barriers separating Jews in different parts of eastern Europe.

Karolina Ivanna Fedorovych-Malytska (1893–1945) came into Ukrainian writing and culture as Dariia Vikonska, the author of short prose, literary studies, critical reviews and art studies. She was close to the circle of ʻvisnykivtsiʼ (the ʻVisnyk-poetsʼ). The history of literary contacts between Yevhen Malaniuk and Dariia Vikonska remains fragmentary and little known. The paper focuses on the poem “Pobachennia” (“Meeting”) by Malaniuk that transforms the history of Fedorovyches family in an artistic way. Ukrainian princely family of Fedorovyches spread all over the Europe creating its history, culture and contributing to its economic development. The line in which Karolina Ivanna Fedorovych-Malytska was the last representative remained Ukrainian. Other lines dissolved in other national cultures (often Polish). Yevhen Malaniuk left a brief memoir about Dariia Vikonska within an episode of his visit to the estate of Malytskyis in Podillia region. Some fragments of conversations and reminiscences in the fi rst part of the poem “Meeting” supplement the description of this visit. The poem was written in 1939–1941 and consists of three parts although its structure is somewhat obscure. The fi rst part of the poem artistically describes the fate of the Ukrainian princely family of Fedorovyches in historiosophical perspective. This family is rooted in the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The second and third parts of the poem are oneiric visions of the lyrical character. The poet tells about the meeting with the general Vasyl Tiutiunnyk, the deceased chief of the Armed Forces Headquarters of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, and premonition of a mysterious meeting with already deceased parents and grandparents that should happen after the death of the character. The mystical third part of the poem describes the transition of the human soul to eternity in a lyrical literary way.

Abstract This study examines the respective theological assumptions of two major forces in nineteenth-century Judaism—the Musar and the early Hasidic movements, and the way in which the budding concept of the unconscious illuminates both. Often translated as an ethical approach, the Musar movement originated from Lithuania and focused on Torah study as it deemed Talmud insufficient to create a deep, emotional attachment to Judaism; yet, despite their shared emphasis on emotions and their criticism of talmudic studies, the Musar movement was at odds with Hasidism, the mystical Jewish current that swept Eastern Europe from the eighteenth century onward. Through an examination of the biblical motif of the binding of Isaac, and the reaction of Abraham, this article will probe both movements’ analysis of the patriarch’s psychological make up. Such a comparison of their understanding of the pre-conscious psychic states will illustrate the nature of their theological opposition.

There is a common misconception among some Christians that the idea of God as a feminine principle is strongly influenced by liberal theology and queer studies of the 20th and 21st centuries. In part, this is true: attention to women’s legal awareness in modern Europe raises the question of the relationship between the sexes. However, carefully studying earlier periods of the history of church creativity, we find that saints and heroes of faith of different denominations came to the conviction that God is the Mother and has traditionally female characteristics, not at all in connection with the struggle of the fair sex for their rights, but thanks to personal mystical experience and perception of the Trinity as a prototype of the earthly human family. The article is devoted to the study of the topic of the femininity of God in general and the Holy Spirit in particular. The author suggests looking at the Holy Trinity through the prism of the outstanding writers of the Christian world from the 1st to the 19th centuries, showing that the modern theology of femininity has a long and rich prehistory, rooted in Christian antiquity and closely connected with family archetypes.

Louis I. Kahn fascinate us all with his passion for Mediterranean culture. Precisely at the moment when the center of the dominant culture moved from Europe to North America, he was able to immerse himself in the Roman brick structures of the great classical buildings, interpreting the timeless forms of antiquity. When the glass curtain of the bureaucratic International Style became trivialized, he turned to the archaic sources of architecture to discover light, matter and desire, in the pyramids of Gis. or in the ruins of the Caracalla Baths. Kahn is a unique case in the history of 20th-century architecture: he introduced the question of monumentality, a matter heretical to the Modern Movement, and emphasized the value of permanence, and the tectonic character and materiality of constructive elements. He was able to read History creatively, interpreting the permanent value of the monuments for the community and rescuing their public sense of place. Posing questions such as “what do you want, brick?” or “does the inside of a column contain a promise?”, he produced an impressive body of work and a doctrine with originality, often appearing philosophical, poetic or even mystical. Moving away from dogmas, but never losing the functional and constructive sense of modulation, he broke the systematic use of fluid space and reintroduced a sense of ritual and the value of solemnity, while achieving the most suggestive syntheses between modernity and tradition, as Otávio Paz recognized, between the use of technique and memory.

Ever since the first flowering of scholarship on women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, convents have occupied a central place in historians' estimate of the position of women in medieval and early modern Europe. In 1910, Emily James Putnam, the future dean and president of Barnard College, wrote enthusiastically in The Lady, her path-breaking study of medieval and renaissance aristocratic women, “No institution in Europe has ever won for the lady the freedom of development that she enjoyed in the convent in the early days. The modern college for women only feebly reproduces it.” In equally pioneering works published in the same period, both Lena Eckenstein and Eileen Power recognized the significance of the nunnery in providing a socially acceptable place for independent single women.Many contemporary historians share this positive view of convents. In Becoming Visible, one of the most widely read surveys of European women's history, for example, William Monter wrote approvingly of convents as “socially prestigious communities of unmarried women.” Similarly, Jane Douglass praised nunneries for their importance in providing women with the only “visible, official role” allotted to them in the church, while Merry Wiesner, sharing Eckenstein and Power's perspective, has observed that, unlike other women, nuns were “used to expressing themselves on religious matters and thinking of themselves as members of a spiritual group. In her recently published study of early modern Seville, to give a final example, Mary Perry criticized the assumption that nuns were oppressed by the patriarchal order that controlled their institutions; instead, she emphasized the ways in which religious women “empowered themselves through community, chastity, enclosure and mystical experiences.”

This article examines the history of Kabbalah in Sweden. The reader is presented with an overall view to Kabbalah in Sweden: first, the Johannes Bureus and the Nordic Kabbalah, Kabbalah after Bureus, Kabbalistic literature, and last, Kabbalah in Sweden today. When the Kabbalah reached Sweden it was mainly the non-Jewish Kabbalah that gained influence, even if its Jewish roots were acknowledged. Johannes Bureus unites, in a similar fashion as do the Christian Kabbalists in continental Europe, Christian motifs with the symbolic world of the Kabbalah. Bureus, however, adds runes, ancient Norse gods and Gothic ideas in his own unique manner. The Kabbalah invites speculation and the search for correspondences which has caused the Kabbalah in Sweden to be united with a number of other traditions. Bureus combined the Kabbalah with runes and Gothicism; in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries we can find the Kabbalah in Freemasonry and Esoteric societies, while the Kabbalah in the twentieth century and onwards has been associated with New Age, Parapsychology and Indian Mysticism. Apart from Bureus, most Kabbalists in Sweden have followed the trends that flourished in the rest of the world. Bureus was the first to create a specifically Swedish interpretation of the Kabbalah.

In the Renaissance Europe, along with the keen admiration for Egyptian antiquities, a custom has been recorded of production and consumption of a powder healing a number of ailments, produced by grating mummies. The practice extended into the 20th century. The belief in the remedial effects of this substance is derived from the Classical and Arabic written sources, and may have been augmented by the ideas about the mystical wisdom of the ancient Egyptians, running throughout the European history and originating among the Classical Greeks. This exceptional example raises the problem of various ways in which the material remains of the past are perceived and classified. In the case of an Egyptian mummy, the object is a human body prepared for Afterlife in a culturally specific manner. Reception of ancient Egypt in subsequent epochs shrouded the practice of mummification, along with other aspects of this culture, in the veil covering the original character of the materialized trace. A human body – ecofact, subjected to a ritualized treatment, thus became an antiquity – artefact, whose possession insured social prestige. At the same time, precisely because its cultural affiliation, it was perceived as a source of healing powers, in the same way as some natural substances derived from plants or animals. The case of the Egyptian mummy illustrates the porosity of demarcation lines between the material traces of the past categorised as natural/cultural, artefact/ecofact, further leading to specialized and insufficiently integrated archaeological interpretations.

Jewish mystical and magical texts are remarkably relevant to some of the most central historiographical themes of early modern Europe; they are also remarkably esoteric and confounding to any nonspecialist. Providing a remedy to this incongruity, J. H. Chajes makes a major contribution to both Jewish and general early modern historiography with his first book, on Jewish spirit possession and exorcism. His work offers a useful narrative of the development of Jewish exorcism traditions, presenting the complex subject in terms that make it more approachable without over-simplification. At the same time, Chajes lends the material depth and relevance through sensitive analysis of the chronologically and geographically local circumstances of the most significant early modern treatments of the phenomenon. The appendix alone would be an offering of some significance, consisting of eleven original translations of early modern accounts of spirit possession, and this quality of presenting important raw material runs throughout the volume. Competent and detailed legwork is evident in the exposition of various exorcists' techniques from the ancient world and Middle Ages, through Luria's unique methods in sixteenth-century Safed, and up to later seventeenth-century attitudes to possession and demonology. Much of this material is in the first chapter, “The Emergence of Dybbuk Possession,” which argues that “there was something new in the sixteenth century” as a long percolation of diverse traditions culminated in the formation of the “classic” view of the dybbuk in a period of unprecedented frequency of possession and exorcism events.

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes how the Western concept of minerals evolved over time. Greco-Roman philosophers saw minerals as a form of plant that yielded useful metals or medicines. Most of their data came from mines and focused on ore minerals, but medicinal uses were more highly regarded and were the principal intentional focus of early mineral literature. As mining waned in the early medieval period, the focus of mineral literature shifted to emphasize gemstones rather than ores and mysticism rather than metallurgy, while medicine continued to be prominent. Descriptions from firsthand observation became rare. Starting in the 9th century AD, an inorganic concept of minerals as chemicals began to arise from alchemical experiments in the Middle East. The alchemical mineral literature demonstrated that minerals differed from plants in being separable into constituent ingredients by chemical processes, focusing on ores. The sulfur-mercury model of mineral origin also reflects a strong emphasis on metal ores at the expense of other minerals. As mining rates increased again in Europe after the 10th century, this alchemical concept of minerals caught on. However, the alchemical model acquired a spiritual gloss, leading to a divide in the 16th century between a spiritualized organic model of minerals and an inorganic or mechanical alternative, both focused mainly on ores. Eventually the concept of spiritual or living minerals diverged from the mineral to the alchemical literature in the 16th century, as the mechanical model evolved into the modern chemical identification of minerals.

The 19th century is called the “golden age” of a children’s book. At this time, a variety of children’s literature appeared, first of all in Britain. The model of a decorated book are the books of Kelmscott Press. However, it was precisely at this time that a series of children’s books with a modest design at affordable prices, such as the so-called “one-penny” series “Books for the Bairns”, emerged. Ideologist and permanent editor of Books for the Bairns William T. Stead was a well-known journalist, founder and editor-in-chief of periodicals, public figure, child rights defender and a fighter against child prostitution. In 1912 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, but scandalous reports, imprisonment, and his interest in spiritualism made W. Stead’s im- age controversial. The concept of the series, created by Sted, is based on a combination of an adapted simplified literary translation and a detailed step-by-step visual story that accompanies the text. The chief illustrator and visual co-author of W. Sted was the Irish artist B. Le Fanu (Brinsley Le Fanu, 1854–1929). For B. Le Fanu, the illustration of the series was the biggest art project. At his time, B. Le Fanu was known for the illustrations to the works of his father — Sheridan Le Fanu, one of the founders of the Irish mystical novel. They have the characteristic features of the Victorian era. Making illustrations for children’s books, B. Le Fanu does not lose their fantastic nature, but combines them with a realistic drawing. Each cover of the series represents one of the main characters of the book. A simple but vivid picture, one or two characters on the cover, a landscape or interior outlined by several elements — that’s what the covers by B. Le Fanu were like. None of them are decorated with patterns or ornamental details. The artist consistently implemented the concept of simplicity and clarity suggested by W. Sted, but not primitiveness. The best volumes in the series are his illustrations of L. Carroll’s “Alice’s in Wonderland” and M. Servantes’s novel “The Adventures of Don Quixote”. The “Books for the Bairns” series, although not exquisitely designed and illustrated, has become a model for children’s literature publishers for half a century and inspired the appearance of similar series of cheap children’s books in Western Europe and also Russia and Ukraine.

The last decades are time of dynamic changes in folk music, which is a part of contemporary Bulgarian musical culture. Singer's performing art related to Bulgarian musical folklore is the part of Bulgarian culture that makes it recognizable and valued in the world. Thus, the Bulgarian folk song presented by its contemporary performers is perceived simultaneously as one of the oldest and most local manifestations of art in the cultural world, and as well as an artefact and a value, one of the most modern and global manifestations of the shared cultural heritage of humanity. The Bulgarian folklore, with its specificity and characteristics, develops on the land of the Bulgarian ethnos and it was formed on a space in Southeastern Europe, which far exceeds the state borders of present-day Bulgaria. Bearers of this culture are as numerous diasporas in southern Russia, in Ukraine and Moldavia, as well as Bulgarian settlers in the Banat region of present-day Romania, population in Bosilegrad, Dimitrovgrad and the surrounding villages in present-day Serbia. Why is it so important to preserve and rediscover our folk song, to develop it as art, concert policy, media content, educational practices, market mechanisms? Bulgarian folk song contains every single human experience, every emotion, the history of past and present generations, wisdom, folly, heroism, cunning, love, hate, faith, hope, kindness ... It is a mystical memory, a philosophy of life, a way to understand the spiritual and the eternal. The folklore song is both old and modern; simultaneously our, local and common, global; because it reflects our cultural identity and makes us unique and recognizable in the world; because it is one of the strongest manifestations of the human, the aesthetic, the moral. Imagine that you are listening to a favorite folk song: the power of words pierces the brain, the melody caresses and warms the heart, the magic of the song carries you like a time machine backwards, in the memory of the Golden Ages of harmonious worlds and forward, in the dreamed better worlds... Without the folk song, our Bulgarian world will not be the same because our Bulgarian folk song is bread, life, history, past, present and future.

In the historical context of the total disintegration that occurred in Europe between 1920 and 1940, the Russian community abroad was particularly interested in Buddhism and the Buddhist worldview. This is connected with the general pessimistic atmosphere among Russian emigrants. Because of their disillusionment with harsh reality, many of them find consolation in Eastern religion to escape from the whirlwind of earthly existence. Such an unusual phenomenon wasnoticed by the young writer Gaito Gazdanov. The writer described this psychological phenomenon in his fiction. The main purpose of this article is to discover in Gazdanov's characters a psychological mindset closely linked to Buddhism. Accordingly, the aim of the study is to highlight the main characteristics of the Buddhist worldview in Gazdanov's characters, analyse the writer's perception of some Buddhist concepts and examine Gazdanov's attitude to the Buddhist teaching on life and superrealism. The material for the study is the novels An Evening at Clare's and The Return of the Buddha, meaningful in the early and mature periods of the writer's work. The analysis of the «Buddhist text» in Gazdanov's novels reveals a number of psychological traits in the characters that are similar to the category of Buddhism, such as detachment from the major history, deliberate alienation from the real world and dreamlike meditation as the main way of perceiving the world. At the same time, a number of Buddhist concepts, such as metempsychosis and nirvana, become the theme of the writer's work as well. This shows the mystical side of Gazdanov's work. However, the article concludes that the writer also warns of the danger and harm of the nihilism and indifference to life inherent in this Eastern religion, which eventually leads to the disappearance of the personality

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Transcendentalism was an innovation against Legalism and Antinomianism in those days. However, it was not an anti-religious movement but a serious issue of religious antagonists having dealt with the nefarious authority of religion that suppressed human self. Therefore, Transcendentalism must be arisen against the Calvinistic tradition of America. In the age of Emerson, many people were spiritually confused by the state of irreligion, so Emerson tried to show them the way how to search for the existence of God with the remark “The sun also shines today.” In addition to this, he insisted that in the past as well as in the present, God should exist and rule all over the world. The first anti-authoritarian colonists immigrated to the New World, America, over-spreaded with primitive forest to search for the religious freedom and the genuine relief in God. Here, they could escape from the false and deceptive traditions of religion and conventions of the Old World, Europe, that suppressed the human self. Consequently, we can conclude that the view of nature within Emerson and Hemingway’s works became a kind of the American tradition in culture and literature. Insisting the point that we can attain the state of mystical union of the soul with God in nature, their view of nature has expressed the anti- authoritarianism in American culture and literature for its boundless finding of personal freedom and human integrity since the coming of the first immigrants to America.(Konyang University)

The first known specimen of urological interest was a vesicle calculi dated to 5000 BC, found by Elliot Smith in 1901, in an ancient tomb in Egypt. Since these ancient times, urolithiasis has been a condition which fascinated and frustrated the medical world, both in understanding of its etiology and in how to treat patients afflicted with such stones. Medical management of urinary calculi has a complex and suspect past; when such therapies failed, as their mystical and unscientific approaches often did, patients sometimes resorted to more drastic and dramatic means such as lithotomy. Lithotomy was known since early times in India and Persia; when it was introduced to Europe is unclear. Writings by Susruta in India describe early forms of the procedure, and techniques were improved by Celsus of Rome (1st Century AD), remaining in use, largely unchanged until the eighteenth Century. Marianus Sanctus (1490-1550) described a technique, the “grand appareil” which superseded the Celsus method, and other approaches by Franco (1500-1570), Jacques de Beaulieu (1651-1714), Johann Rau (1658-1709) and William Cheselden (1688-1752) gained and lost dominance over the centuries. Perhaps most interesting about lithotomy was the development of the tools used in its practice. From the beginning, the various knives, forceps, dilators and sounds became ever more complicated, intricate and gruesome looking, resembling more the armamentarium of a torture master than the curative tools of a physician. As endoscopic techniques began and evolved, the necessity to make large incisions for stone removal decreased. Nonetheless, the approaches and instrumentation used to treat bladder stones helped shape the practice of urology and contributed to the continuing goal of minimizing invasion of the patient while still providing effective treatment of stone disease and other genitourinary problems. Murphy LJT. The History of Urology. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1972. Chevalier RL. Kidney and urologic disorders in the age of enlightenment. Am J Nephrol 1994; 14(4-6):461-6. Herman, JR. Urology; a view through the retrospectroscope. Hagerstown, Md.: Harper & Row, 1973.

The author analyzes the prerequisites for the formation of a theological and philosophical school, founded in 990 by Bishop Fulbert in Chartres, which flourished during the years of the Episcopal ministry of Yves of Chartres (1090–1115), a recognized intellectual center of Western Europe. The role of the Chartres Cathedral School as a citadel of metaphysical, cosmological and natural-scientific Platonism in the era of early scholasticism is revealed. The philosophical orientation of the Chartres school (orientation to the ideas of Neoplatonism), as shown in the work, is the result of a combination of the ideas of Plato, aristotelism, stoicism, pythagoreanism, Eastern and Christian mysticism and religion. The body of ideas characteristic of the Neoplatonism tradition is analyzed, the account of which is essential in understanding the specifics of the Chartres school ideological platform: the ideas of a mystically intuitive knowledge of the higher, the stages of transition from “one and the universal” to matter, the idea of comprehension of pure spirituality. The thesis is substantiated that the time of the highest prosperity of the Chartres school, its highest fame is the XII century, which went down in the history of civilization as the era of the cultural renaissance taking place in France. The specificity of the 12th century renaissance, as shown in the study, lies in the growing interest in Greek philosophy and Roman classics (this also determines the other name of the era – the Roman Renaissance), in expanding the field of knowledge through the assimilation of Western European science and the philosophy of the ancient Greeks. The thesis in which the specifics of the entry of Greek science into the culture of Western Europe is also identified. This entry was carried out through the culture of the Muslim world, which also determined the specifics of the cultural renaissance of France of the XII century. Radical changes are revealed that affect the sphere of education and, above all, religious education; the idea of reaching the priority positions of philosophy and logic is substantiated – a situation that has survived until the end of the Middle Ages. This situation, as shown in the work, was facilitated by the rare growth rate of the translation centers of Constantinople, Palermo, Toledo. It is shown that scholasticism in its early version is oriented towards religious orthodoxy. In the teaching of philosophy, the vector turned out to be biased towards natural philosophy, which was due, as shown in the work, to the spread of the ideas of Aristotle and Plato. In its educational program, the school synthesized the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. Elements of natural philosophy are inherent in the works of Bernard of Chartres, Gilbert of Poitiers, Thierry of Chartres representing the Chartres school. Deep studies on the problem of universals ensured the invasion of logic in the field of metaphysical constructions of the Chartres school.

The intellectually and politically tempestuous crystallization of the civic ideal in the nineteenth and twentieth century manifested not only in Europe (especially Western), but also in North and Middle America, and in time – all over the globe. An intense search for the “civic ideal” is clearly discernible in societies comprising the former Polish Republic, whose demise towards the end of the eighteenth century and the subsequent phases of its increasingdecompositionnot only failed to annihilate the republican tradition but in fact intensified authentic debate on possible roads toward modern society in the future independent state. A key role in this important dialogue was played by representatives of the landed gentry and the intelligentsia, the latter emerging in the nineteenth century as a new social formation that basically had no exact counterpart in other countries. In time, a few representatives of other classes also joined this dialogue on the shape of the future Polish state. What is the meaning of the phrase “civic society”? Today, it is used almost naturallyby columnists and politicians representing various positions, but it was virtually non-existent during Norwid’s lifetime, although the very ideaof organizing collective life on the basis of “civic” virtues has an almost immemorial provenance. This article attempts to describe Norwid’s civic thought, mainly by analysing his discursive statements, chiefly in journalism. Norwid was decidedly opposed to any doctrinaire elevation of “humanity” (which he called a “holy abstraction”) over “nation” and “Church,” through which individuals can actually partake in “the work of ages.” Another area in which Norwid struggled to develop clear civic categories comprises visions of humanity’s universal happiness and/or its apocalyptic fall, many of which were promulgated at the time. In his polemics with utopias of “fulfilled history” it is possible to discern clear echoes of ideological debates held at the time, especially ones between mystical and political visions used by various “prophets” to describe the ultimate perspectives for the development of current events whose subject is “humanity” – a category replacing “nations,” which would be thus seen as ending their historical “mission.”From this angle, Norwidwould criticise Skład zasad[A collection of principles] by Adam Mickiewicz– a manifesto of revolutionary transformations of civic rights, which are part of the legacy of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.In a letter to Józef Bohdan Zaleski, dated 24 April 1848, Norwid expressed his outrage at most theses contained in Skład, which he saw as undermining traditional values such as “homeland,” “property,” “lineage,” “nation,” etc.

<p>對於多數法語系國家的人來說，遠東地區的重要學說如道家思想，很難嚴謹地被理解。大部份寫過此主題的法語作家都侷限於嘗試將道家與在法國或是歐洲文化中既有的文化元素來作比較。自從啟蒙運動以來，法國傾向給亞洲東北地區貼上「儒家」的標籤，然而這個做法似乎流於簡化。相較於儒家和佛教，道家思想的知名度小，相關研究亦少，這是因為道家常被視為一種神秘且難以理解的文化。本文致力於探究道家在法國的接受度，以及法國學者（作家、詩人、旅行家、哲學家、民族學家、漢學家等）如何看待和詮釋道家思想。本文以法國和歐洲近代道家相關著作中所呈現的多樣且變動的表徵為本，進行跨文化研究。我們從中可以看到道家思想重新被創造:有時是非理性的或反啟蒙的；有時是基督教的姊妹宗教；有時被認為是不道德的或主張消極的，或甚至因其反物質主義或泛神論的反消費主義而受到推崇。道家也被視為是對永恆回歸學說的期待，就像新時代的神祕主義，一種作為後現代主義的精神力量或是作為重新關注自身肉體的源泉。</p> <p>&nbsp;</p><p>For most French/Francophones, the great Far Eastern doctrines, such as Taoism, are difficult to grasp rigorously. Most French-language authors who have written on the subject have generally confined themselves to trying to compare the Taoist doctrine with pre-existing elements of culture in French or European culture. Since the Enlightenment, France has often tended to label the northeast area of Asia as &quot;Confucian&quot;. This is probably a bit of a simplification. Unlike Confucianism or Buddhism, Taoism is generally less known and less often mentioned. It is that Taoism often appears as a mysterious and difficult culture to grasp. It therefore seems interesting to study the reception of Taoism in France and the way in which French scholars (writers, poets, travelers, philosophers, ethnologists, sinologists, etc.) have received and interpreted this doctrine (religious and philosophical). This article necessarily implies an intercultural reflection, based on the study of the diverse and changing representations that have arisen in the recent history of writings on Taoism in France and Europe. This is how certain receptions showed real recreations of Taoism: a Taoism sometimes irrational or anti-enlightenment doctrine, sometimes religion sister of the Christian religion, sometimes considered immoral or advocating passivity, or even praised for its anti-materialism or its pantheistic anti-consumerism. Taoism was also seen as an anticipation of the doctrines of the eternal return, as a new-age mysticism, as a resource for post-modernism or as a source of renewed attention to the body.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

Background.Rosa, as the "Queen of Flowers" has always occupied a special place in the garden. The emergence of rose gardens is rooted in antiquity. Rose is a kind of “tuning fork” of eras. We can see how the symbolism of the flower was transformed, depending on the philosophy and cultural values of society. And this contributed to the various functions and aesthetic delivery of roses in gardens and parks of different eras. Despite the large number of works on roses, today there are no studies that can combine philosophy, cultural aspects of the era, the history of gardens and parks with symbols of the plant world (in particular roses) with the identification of a number of features and patterns.Objectives.The purpose of the article is to study the symbolism of rosesin landscape gardening art of different eras.Methods.The historical method helps to trace the stages of the transformation of the symbolism of roses in different historical periods. The inductive method allows you to move from the analysis of the symbolism of roses in each era to generalization, the identification of patterns, the connection of the cultural life of society with the participation of roses in it. Graph-analytical method reveals the features of creating various types of gardens with roses, taking into account trends in styles and time.Results.In the gardens of Ancient Greece, the theme of refined aesthetics, reflections on life and death dominated. It is no accident that in ancient times it was an attribute of the goddesses of love. In antiquity, she was a favorite flower of the goddess of beauty and love of Aphrodite (Venus). In connection with the legend of the goddess, there was a custom to draw or hang a white rose in the meeting rooms, as a reminder of the non-disclosure of the said information. It was also believed that roses weaken the effect of wine and therefore garlands of roses decorated feasts, festivities in honor of the god of winemaking Dionysus (Bacchus). The rose was called the gift of the gods. Wreaths of roses were decorated: statues of the gods during religious ceremonies, the bride during weddings. The custom of decorating the floor with rose petals, twisting columns of curly roses in the halls came to the ancient palace life from Ancient Egypt, from Queen Cleopatra, highlighted this flower more than others. In ancient Rome, rose gardens turned into huge plantations. Flowers from them were intended to decorate palace halls during feasts. In Rome, a religious theme was overshadowed by luxurious imperial greatness. It is interesting that in Rome, which constantly spreads its borders, a rose from a "female" flower turned into a "male" one. The soldiers, setting out on a campaign, put on pink wreaths instead of helmets, symbolizing morality and courage, and returning with victory, knocked out the image of a rose on shields. From roses weaved wreaths and garlands, received rose oil, incense and medicine. The banquet emperors needed so many roses, which were also delivered by ships from Egypt. Ironically, it is generally accepted that Nero's passion for roses contributed to the decline of Rome. After the fall of the Roman Empire, rose plantations were abandoned because Christianity first associated this flower with the licentiousness of Roman customs. In the Early Middle Ages, the main theme is the Christian religion and roses are located mainly in the monastery gardens, symbolizing divine love and mercy. Despite the huge number of civil wars, when the crops and gardens of neighbors were violently destroyed, the only place of peace and harmony remained the monastery gardens. They grew medicinal plants and flowers for religious ceremonies. During this period, the rose becomes an attribute of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ and various saints, symbolizing the church as a whole. More deeply, the symbolism of the rose was revealed in Catholic life, when the rosary and a special prayer behind them were called the "rose garden". Now the rose has become the personification of mercy, forgiveness, martyrdom and divine love. In the late Middle Ages, in the era of chivalry, roses became part of the "cult of the beautiful lady." Rose becomes a symbol of love of a nobleman to the wife of his heart. Courtesy was of a socially symbolic nature, described in the novel of the Rose. The lady, like a rose, symbolized mystery, magnificent beauty and temptation. Thus, in the Late Middle Ages, the secular principle manifests itself on a par with the religious vision of the world. And in the Renaissance, the religious and secular component are in balance. The theme of secular pleasures and entertainments was transferred further to the Renaissance gardens. In secular gardens at palaces, villas and castles, it symbolized love, beauty, grace and perfection. In this case, various secret societies appear that choose a rose as an emblem, as a symbol of eternity and mystery. And if the cross in the emblem of the Rosicrucians symbolized Christianity, then the rose symbolized a mystical secret hidden from prying eyes. In modern times, secular life comes to the fore, and with it new ways of communication, for example, in the language of flowers, in particular roses. In the XVII–XVIII centuries. gardening art is becoming secular; sesame, the language of flowers, comes from Europe to the East. White rose symbolized a sigh, pink –an oath of love, tea –a courtship, and bright red –admiration for beauty and passionate love [2]. In aristocratic circles, the creation of lush rose gardens is in fashion. Roses are actively planted in urban and suburban gardens. In modern times, rose gardens carry the idea of aesthetic relaxation and enjoyment. Many new varieties were obtained in the 19th century, during the period of numerous botanical breeding experiments. At this time, gardening ceased to be the property of the elite of society and became publicly available. In the XX–XXI centuries. rosaries, as before, are popular. Many of them are located on the territory of ancient villas, palaces and other structures, continuing the tradition.

The 4000-year quest for GodSouth Africans live in a time of growing unease amongst Afrikaansspeaking Christians about the traditional God-image of their childhood. As a con-sequence, churches are losing members – which is of concern to the church’s leaders. By referring to Karen Armstrong’s book, A History of God (1999), this article shows that rethinking the idea of God is not new and that healthy iconoclasm is part and parcel of religions as evolving and changing organisms. Over the past 4000 years, each generation created an image of God that worked for them. The article reflects on the God of Judaism, the Christian God, the God of Islam, the God of the philosophers, the mystics, the reformers and the thinkers of the Enlightenment to the eventual eclipse of God in twentieth-century Europe. The purpose of the exercise is to encourage Christians to engage with the process and create a sense of God for themselves by taking heed of the negative and positive moments in God’s long history.

Imam Gazzali is known one of the most prominent and influential philosophers, theologians, jurists, logicians and mystics of the Islamic Golden Age. He is considered to be the 5th century’s mujaddid, means a renewer of the faith, who, according to the prophetic hadith, appears once every hundred years to restore the faith of the Islam and its community. His works were so highly acclaimed by his contemporaries that al-Ghazali was awarded by the honour of the title “Hujjat al-Islam” means “Proof of Islam” Gazzali believed that the Islamic spiritual tradition had become moribund and that the spiritual sciences taught by the first generation of Muslim had been forgotten. This belief led him to write his mugnum opus entitled ‘Ihyaulumad-din’ (The Revival of the Religious Science). Among his other works, the Tuhfat al- Falasifa (Incoherence of the philosophers) is a landmark in the history of philosophy, as it advances the critique of Aristotelian science developed later in 14th century in Europe. Others have cited his opposition to certain stands of Islamic philosophy as a detriment to Islamic scientific progress. Besides his work that successfully changed the course of Islamic philosophy the early Islamic Neo-Platonism that developed on the grounds of Hellenistic philosophy, for example, was so successfully criticized by al- Ghazzali that it never recovered—he also brought the orthodox Islam of his time in close contact with Sufism. It became increasingly possible for individuals to combine orthodox theology and Sufism, while adherents of both camps developed a sense of mutual appreciation that made sweeping condemnation of one by the other increasingly problematic.Al-Ghazzali occupies a unique position in the history of Muslim religious and philosophical thought by whatever standard we may judge him. Al-Subki went so far in his estimation of him as to claim that if there had been a prophet after Muhammad, al-Ghazzali would have been the man. Various spiritual phases developed by him. He was in turn a canon-lawyer and a scholastic, a philosopher and a skeptic, a mystic and a theologian, and a moralist. His position as a theologian of Islam is undoubtedly the most eminent. Through a living synthesis of his creative and energetic personality, he revitalized Muslim theology and reoriented its values and attitudes.His combination of spiritualization and fundamentalism in Islam had such a marked stamp of his powerful personality that it has continued to be accepted by the community since his time. His outlook on philosophy is characterized by a remarkable originality which, however, is more critical than constructive. In his works on philosophy one is struck by a keen philosophical acumen and penetration with which he gives a clear and readable exposition of the views of the philosophers, the subtlety and analyticity with which he criticizes them, and the candour and open-mindedness with which he accepts them whenever he finds them to be true. Nothing frightened him nor fascinated him, and through an extraordinary independence of mind, he became a veritable challenge to the philosophies of Aristotle and Plotinus and to their Muslim representatives before him, al-Farabi and ibnSina. The main trends of the religious and philosophical thought of al-Ghazali, however, come close to the temper of the modern mind. The champions of the modern movement of religious empiricism, on the one hand, and that of logical positivism, on the other, paradoxical though it may seem, would equally find comfort in his works. The teachings of this remarkable figure of Islam pertaining either to religion or philosophy, either constructive or critical, cannot, however, be fully understood without knowing the story of his life with some measure of detail, for, in his case, life and thought were one: rooted in his own personality. Whatever he thought and wrote came with the living reality of his own experience.

Abstract The article demonstrates that the knowledge of the Syriac language in Western Europe first developed amongst Christian scholars with a strong interest in Kabbalah and that they attributed a mystical dimension to the Syriac language that was not associated with it before. After a survey of the first authors that played a significant role in shaping the appropriation of Syriac as a mystical language (Teseo Ambrogio, Postel, Widmanstetter), I show that the newly discovered last work of Christian Knorr von Rosenroth constitutes the climax of that movement. The study of the later reception of Knorr’s work in modern occultism indicates that the Syriac language was eclipsed by the renewed favor of Hebrew language, considered as the magical and mystical language par excellence.

The article reviews the contents of published special course “History of Crusader Age” by V.K.Nadler, Professor of Kharkov University. It is emphasized that this special course reflected the most advanced trends on this question in European medievistics. V.K.Nadler rejected obsolete concepts by F.Wilcken and J.Michaux who treated Crusades as purely religious enterprises and specified a whole set of Crusade-generating causes, including political and social-economic changes inside West European society. Among researchers of Crusades history V.K.Nadler deservedly marked out H.Sybel, his new treatments based on critical study of medieval annals. Some of these advanced treatments were adopted by V.K.Nadler. The main initiator of Crusades, according to V.K.Nadler, was not Peter of Amiens, but papacy, namely, Urbanus II. The researcher from Kharkov refuted the widespread opinion that the idea of Crusades in the form in which it was implemented was originated still by Gregory VII. V.K.Nadler marked out that already the crusade of 1101-1102 lacked the mystical ardor and godliness that distinguished First Crusade. The later, the more mundane trends dominated. Though Fourth (Sixth by V.K.Nadler) was arranged, as V.K.Nadler correctly specified, by efforts of famous Pope Innocent III, he treated this event as a reflection of secular trends. The researcher fairly explained devastation of Byzantium in 1204 not only by military power of Crusaders. He connected this to internal reasons as well: weakening of Byzantine supreme power, growing separatism of aristocracy, mass destruction of peasantry, impoverishment of people. The subsequent Crusades, as V.K.Nadler supposed, were doomed mostly due top politics of Papacy which turned them into an instrument against its enemies both in the East and in Europe. Presentation by V. K. Nadler of causes, progress and consequences of Crusades strongly loosened Europe-centered approach inherent in numerous foreign and Russian historians.

Abstract This article is dedicated to the notion of “mystical smoking” in Kabbalah and Hasidism. In spite of the fact that many researchers have dealt with the smoking habits of the Hasidim, the sources and meanings of this behavior have not yet been fully clarified. This paper will reexamine “mystical smoking” by reading some of the writings of R. Moshe David Valle, an eighteenth-century Italian kabbalist. According to Valle, the act of smoking plays a crucial role in the enduring struggle of the righteous person (tsaddik) against the powers of the Evil Side (sitra achra) and the impure husks (qelipot). From several paragraphs of Valle’s writings, it becomes clear that smoking is equated with sacrificing to the sitra achra, and is as necessary and important as the biblical scapegoat in the struggle against the sitra achra. Moreover, the calming, relaxing, or clouding effect that comes naturally with smoking causes the sitra achra within the tsaddik’s soul to be satisfied and to restrain itself from fighting against the Holy Side. In light of “the secret of the pipe,” which Valle discusses at length, Hasidic stories and sermons in which smoking plays an essential role will be reevaluated. Until now, these sources have been subject to ultra-positivist, psychological, or literary explanations, which are unsatisfying and insufficient. In this paper, a new explanation, based on specific kabbalistic ideas, will be suggested, and conjectures regarding the transmission of knowledge from Italy to Eastern Europe will be proposed.

AbstractGershom Scholem, the most predominant scholar of Jewish Mysticism in our times, is highly known for his contribution to the field of Jewish history. But his intellectual origins lay in his adolescence, and in his heretical-philosophical criticism of the Judeo-Christian morality and the ideology of the German bourgeoisie. These early impressions and thoughts appeared in one of his first Hebrew articles, “Redemption Through Sin”, published in Palestine in 1937. Scholem’s discussion analyzed the “nihilistic revolution” of the Sabbataeans and Frankists in the seventeenth and eighteenth century in Europe, whose main feature was the rejection of the normative ethics of rabbinic Judaism. The hidden core of the young Scholem, his revolutionary thought, was followed by an early encounter with the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. The dream of young Scholem, as revealed by his diary, to write “Zarathustra for the Jews”, eventually came into being in an original adaptation. His great book Sabbatai Sevi (1957), can be read as a Nietzschean re-reading of “Redemption Through Sin”. The biography of Sabbatai Sevi as a Jewish Zarathustra may provide refreshing insights into the development of Scholem’s thought and an opportunity to challenge him through an analogical perspective.

Isaac Bashev is Singer cherished the short story because, in his opinion, it provided a considerably greater opportunity for perfection than the novel did. His stories, however, rarely exhibit the meticu-lous craftsmanship of a conscious craftsman; instead, they flow effortlessly, often mindlessly, without any sense of manipulation. Indeed, Singer’s work derives from a rich oral storytelling tradition that has been thriving for generations throughout Eastern Europe. As the de facto historian of the Jewish experience in the twentieth century, Singer opts to ignore the Holocaust and the six million European Jews who were killed by Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Since he doesn’t think a simple storyteller could ever convey a tale this awful and unintelligible, he instead evokes it by describing the civilization it wiped out in detail and the scattered melancholy it left behind. Singer’s protagonists, like the Jewish people as a whole, face unfathomable atrocities and fight with their identity in a changing world. They must decide whether to give up or endure. The person in their family, neighborhood, and world is eventually the person in their universe, frequently by themselves with the supernatural forces that rule it. Singer uses a variety of Jewish mysticism and demonology to embellish and draw from to personify these forces and their impact on the human condition. In this research paper, I tried to anlyze the element of this Jewish mysticism in some of his popular works. Isaac Bashevis Singer was a Polish-born American Jewish author who first authored and published in Yiddish before translating himself into English with the assistance of editors and collaborators.

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