We just looked at the ‘Logos’ — an idea that goes back to the Greek philosopher Heraclites around 500 BCE. Heraclitus (and his intellectual heirs) said that Logos is the organizing principal that turns the cosmos and everything in it (including you and me) from a pile of atoms into the magnificent dancing structures we

Since we’re beginning a new year, I thought we might consider the Mother of All Beginnings — namely “In The Beginning…”. The Gospel of John famously begins “In the beginning was the Word…” Now, the Greek word for ‘Word’ here is LOGOS. ‘Word’ is actually a terrible translation for LOGOS — but there isn’t really

The last two weeks we’ve discussed the transformation of lead into gold in Medieval Alchemy, including the metaphorical transformation of the human heart from its default ‘leaden’ state into the ‘gold’ of Enlightenment or Oneness with God. Commonly this was described as taking place in four steps. The first step is ‘Nigredo’ — darkness. One

I would say that in the last few years my music composition facility has almost exploded. My composition is much better (not just MY opinion) but also is much more facile — a day or two at most for a finished 5 minute piano piece including the polished score. A shift in my process has

In many cases, seeming opposites are actually ‘dance partners’ in the never ending flow of the Cosmos. Protons are positively charged, electrons negatively so, and their balanced pairing is what holds atoms together and makes all the matter in the universe possible. The force of gravity by the Sun on our planet is balanced by

This much from Wikipedia (for convenience): The knowledge argument (also known as Mary’s room or Mary the super-scientist) is a philosophical thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson in his article “Epiphenomenal Qualia” (1982) and extended in “What Mary Didn’t Know” (1986). The experiment describes Mary, a scientist who exists in a black and white world

The fall of Rome didn’t happen overnight — it was a centuries long process as the Empire declined in stair steps from, say, Marcus Aurelius (121-180) — the last ‘good emperor’, to the THIRD sack of Rome in 546. The Catholic Church stepped into this power vacuum — to ‘keep the lights on’ as much

Christina Grozik is a filmmaker interested in the spiritual dimensions of sound and music. She recently interviewed me:

I‘ve just started working through Homer’s Iliad in the Greek (I’m always amazed at what you find in the original language that isn’t there in translations) and right away I’ve come across an interesting item. It’s the Greek word μῦθος/MYThOS, from which we get the English word ‘myth’. In ancient times it also generally meant