Is There Life After Death?: Michio Kaku, Bill Nye, Sam Harris & More Explore One of Life’s Biggest Questions

in Life, Religion, Science | July 22nd, 2022

We should prob­a­bly not look to sci­ence to have cher­ished beliefs con­firmed. As sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing of the world has pro­gressed over the cen­turies, it has brought on a loss of humans’ sta­tus as priv­i­leged beings at the cen­ter of the uni­verse whose task is to sub­due and con­quer nature. (The stub­born per­sis­tence of those atti­tudes among the pow­er­ful has not served the species well.) We are not spe­cial, but we are still respon­si­ble, we have learned — maybe total­ly respon­si­ble for our lives on this plan­et. The meth­ods of sci­ence do not lend them­selves to sooth­ing exis­ten­tial anx­i­ety.

But what about the most cher­ished, and like­ly ancient, of human beliefs: faith in an after­life?  Ideas of an under­world, or heav­en, or hell have ani­mat­ed human cul­ture since its ear­li­est ori­gins. There is no soci­ety in the world where we will not find some belief in an after­life exist­ing com­fort­ably along­side life’s most mun­dane events. Is it a harm­ful idea? Is there any real evi­dence to sup­port it? And which ver­sion of an after­life — if such a thing exist­ed — should we believe?

Such ques­tions stack up. Answers in forms sci­ence can rec­on­cile seem dimin­ish­ing­ly few. Nonethe­less, as we see in the Big Think video above, sci­en­tists, sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tors, and sci­ence enthu­si­asts are will­ing to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ty, or impos­si­bil­i­ty, of con­tin­u­ing after death. We begin with NASA astronomer Michelle Thaller, who ref­er­ences Ein­stein’s the­o­ry of the uni­verse as ful­ly com­plete, “so every point in the past and every point in the future are just as real as the point of time you feel your­self in right now.” Time spreads out in a land­scape, each moment already mapped and sur­veyed.

When a close friend died, Ein­stein wrote a let­ter to his friend’s wife explain­ing, “Your hus­band, my friend, is just over the next hill. He’s still there” — in a the­o­ret­i­cal sense. It may not have been the com­fort she was look­ing for. The hope of an after­life is that we’ll see our loved ones again, some­thing Ein­stein’s solu­tion does not allow. Sam Har­ris — who has leaned into the mys­ti­cal prac­tice of med­i­ta­tion while pulling it from its reli­gious con­text — admits that death is a “dark mys­tery.” When peo­ple die, “there’s just the sheer not know­ing what hap­pened to them. And into this void, reli­gion comes rush­ing with a very con­sol­ing sto­ry, say­ing noth­ing hap­pened them; they’re in a bet­ter place and you’re going to meet up with them after.”

The sto­ry isn’t always so con­sol­ing, depend­ing on how puni­tive the reli­gion, but it does offer an expla­na­tion and sense of cer­tain­ty in the face of “sheer not know­ing.” The human mind does not tol­er­ate uncer­tain­ty par­tic­u­lar­ly well. Death feels like the great­est unknown of all. (Har­ris’ argu­ment par­al­lels that of anthro­pol­o­gist Pas­cal Boy­er on the ori­gin of all reli­gions.) But the phe­nom­e­non of death is not unknown to us. We are sur­round­ed by it dai­ly, from the plants and ani­mals we con­sume to the pets we sad­ly let go when their lifes­pans end. Do we keep our­selves up won­der­ing what hap­pened to these beings? Maybe our spir­i­tu­al or reli­gious beliefs aren’t always about death.…

“In the Old Tes­ta­ment there isn’t real­ly any sort of view of the after­life,” says Rob Bell, a spir­i­tu­al teacher (and the only talk­ing head here not aligned with a sci­en­tif­ic insti­tu­tion or ratio­nal­ist move­ment). “This idea that the whole thing is about when you die is not real­ly the way that lots of peo­ple have thought about it.” For many reli­gious prac­ti­tion­ers, the idea of eter­nal life means “liv­ing in har­mo­ny with the divine right now.” For many, this “right now” — this very moment and each one we expe­ri­ence after it — is eter­nal. See more views of the after­life above from sci­ence edu­ca­tors like Bill Nye and sci­en­tists like Michio Kaku, who says the kind of after­lives we’ve only seen in sci­ence fic­tion — “dig­i­tal and genet­ic immor­tal­i­ty” — “are with­in reach.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Nick Cave’s Beau­ti­ful Let­ter About Grief

Richard Feyn­man on Reli­gion, Sci­ence, the Search for Truth & Our Will­ing­ness to Live with Doubt

Michio Kaku & Bri­an Green Explain String The­o­ry in a Nut­shell: Ele­gant Expla­na­tions of an Ele­gant The­o­ry

Philoso­pher Sam Har­ris Leads You Through a 26-Minute Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The Otherworldly Art of William Blake: An Introduction to the Visionary Poet and Painter

in Art, History, Poetry, Religion | June 22nd, 2022

Giv­en his achieve­ments in the realms of both poet­ry and paint­ing, to say noth­ing of his com­pul­sions to reli­gious and philo­soph­i­cal inquiry, it’s tempt­ing to call William Blake a “Renais­sance man.” But he lived in the Eng­land of the mid-eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry to the near mid-nine­teenth, mak­ing him a Roman­tic Age man — and in fact, accord­ing to the cur­rent his­tor­i­cal view, one of that era’s defin­ing fig­ures. “Today he is rec­og­nized as the most spir­i­tu­al of artists,” say the nar­ra­tor of the video intro­duc­tion above, “and an impor­tant poet in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture.” And whether real­ized on can­vas or in verse, his visions have retained their pow­er over the cen­turies.

That pow­er, how­ev­er, went prac­ti­cal­ly unac­knowl­edged in Blake’s life­time. Most who knew him regard­ed him as some­thing between an eccen­tric and a mad­man, a per­cep­tion his grand­ly mys­ti­cal ideas and vig­or­ous rejec­tion of both insti­tu­tions and con­ven­tions did lit­tle to dis­pel.

Blake did­n’t believe that the world is as we see it. Rather, he sought to access much stranger under­ly­ing truths using his for­mi­da­ble imag­i­na­tion, exer­cised both in his art and in his dreams. Cul­ti­vat­ing this capac­i­ty allows us to “see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heav­en in a Wild Flower / Hold Infin­i­ty in the palm of your hand / And Eter­ni­ty in an hour.”

Those words come from one of Blake’s “Auguries of Inno­cence.” Despite being one of his best-known poems, it mere­ly hints at the depth and breadth of his world­view — indeed, his view of all exis­tence. His entire cor­pus, writ­ten, paint­ed, and print­ed, con­sti­tutes a kind of atlas of this rich­ly imag­ined ter­ri­to­ry to which “The Oth­er­world­ly Art of William Blake” pro­vides an overview. Though very much a prod­uct of the time and place in which he lived, Blake clear­ly drew less inspi­ra­tion from the world around him than from the world inside him. Real­i­ty, for him, was to be cul­ti­vat­ed — and rich­ly — with­in his own being. Still today, the chimeri­cal con­vic­tion of his work dares us to cul­ti­vate the real­i­ty with­in our­selves.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Enter an Archive of William Blake’s Fan­tas­ti­cal “Illu­mi­nat­ed Books”: The Images Are Sub­lime, and in High Res­o­lu­tion

William Blake’s Paint­ings Come to Life in Two Ani­ma­tions

William Blake’s Mas­ter­piece Illus­tra­tions of the Book of Job (1793–1827)

William Blake’s Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Illus­tra­tions of John Milton’s Par­adise Lost

William Blake Illus­trates Mary Wollstonecraft’s Work of Children’s Lit­er­a­ture, Orig­i­nal Sto­ries from Real Life (1791)

William Blake: The Remark­able Print­ing Process of the Eng­lish Poet, Artist & Vision­ary

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Greatest Hits of Alan Watts: Stream a Carefully-Curated Collection of Alan Watts Wisdom

in Philosophy, Religion | May 31st, 2022

“My name, ‘Alan,’ means ‘har­mo­ny’ in Celtic and ‘hound’ in Anglo-Sax­on. Accord­ing­ly, my exis­tence is, and has been, a para­dox, or bet­ter, a coin­ci­dence of oppo­sites.”

Zen Bud­dhism is full of para­dox­es: prac­ti­cal, yet mys­ti­cal; seri­ous­ly for­mal, yet shot through with jokes and plays on words; stress­ing intri­cate cer­e­mo­ni­al rules and com­mu­nal prac­tices, yet just as often brought to life by “wild fox” mas­ters who flout all con­ven­tion. Such a Zen mas­ter was Alan Watts, the teacher, writer, philoso­pher, priest, and cal­lig­ra­ph­er who embraced con­tra­dic­tion and para­dox in all its forms.

Watts was a nat­ur­al con­trar­i­an, becom­ing a Bud­dhist at 15 — at least part­ly in oppo­si­tion to the fun­da­men­tal­ist Protes­tantism of his moth­er — then, in the 1940s, ordain­ing as an Epis­co­pal priest. Though he left the priest­hood in 1950, he would con­tin­ue to write and teach on both Bud­dhism and Chris­tian­i­ty, seek­ing to rec­on­cile the tra­di­tions and suc­ceed­ing in ways that offend­ed lead­ers of nei­ther reli­gion. His book of the­ol­o­gy, Behold the Spir­it, “was wide­ly hailed in Chris­t­ian cir­cles,” David Guy writes at Tri­cy­cle mag­a­zine. “One Epis­co­pal review­er said it would ‘prove to be one of the half dozen most sig­nif­i­cant books on reli­gion in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.’ ”

As a Bud­dhist, Watts has come in for crit­i­cism for his use of psy­che­delics, addic­tion to alco­hol, and unortho­dox prac­tices. Yet his wis­dom received the stamp of approval from Shun­ryu Suzu­ki, the Japan­ese Zen teacher often cred­it­ed with bring­ing for­mal Japan­ese Zen prac­tice to Amer­i­can stu­dents. Suzu­ki called Watts “a great bod­hisatt­va” and died with a staff Watts had giv­en him in hand. Watts did­n’t stay long in any insti­tu­tion because he “just did­n’t want his prac­tice to be about jump­ing through oth­er peo­ple’s hoops or being put in their box­es,” writes a friend, David Chad­wick, in a recent trib­ute. Nonethe­less, he remained a pow­er­ful cat­a­lyst for oth­ers who dis­cov­ered spir­i­tu­al prac­tices that spoke to them more authen­ti­cal­ly than any­thing they’d known.

Watts, a self-described trick­ster, “saw the true empti­ness of all things,” said Suzuk­i’s Amer­i­can suc­ces­sor Richard Bak­er in a eulo­gy — “the mul­ti­plic­i­ties and absur­di­ties to the Great Uni­ver­sal Per­son­al­i­ty and Play.” It was his con­trar­i­an streak that made him the ide­al inter­preter of eso­teric Indi­an, Chi­nese, and Japan­ese reli­gious ideas for young Amer­i­cans in the 1950s and 60s who were ques­tion­ing the dog­mas of their par­ents but lacked the lan­guage with which to do so. Watts was a seri­ous schol­ar, though he nev­er fin­ished a uni­ver­si­ty degree, and he built bridges between East and West with wit, eru­di­tion, irrev­er­ence, and awe.

Many of Watts’ first devo­tees got their intro­duc­tion to him through his vol­un­teer radio broad­casts on Berke­ley’s KPFA. You can hear sev­er­al of those talks at KPFA’s site, which cur­rent­ly hosts a “Great­est Hits Col­lec­tion” of Watts’ talks. In addi­tion to his 1957 book The Way of Zen, these won­der­ful­ly mean­der­ing lec­tures helped intro­duce the emerg­ing coun­ter­cul­ture to Bud­dhism, Tao­ism, Hin­duism, for­got­ten mys­ti­cal aspects of Chris­tian­i­ty, and the Jun­gian ideas that often tied them all togeth­er.

No mat­ter the tra­di­tion Watts found him­self dis­cussing on his broad­casts, lis­ten­ers found him turn­ing back to para­dox. Hear him do so in talks on the “Fun­da­men­tals of Bud­dhism”, and oth­er talks like the “Spir­i­tu­al Odyssey of Aldous Hux­ley,” the “Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of Oppo­sites” and a talk enti­tled “Way Beyond the West,” also the name of his lec­ture series, more of which you can find at KPFA’s “Great­est Hits” col­lec­tion here.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alan Watts Presents a 15-Minute Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion: A Time-Test­ed Way to Stop Think­ing About Think­ing

Alan Watts Dis­pens­es Wit & Wis­dom on the Mean­ing of Life in Three Ani­mat­ed Videos

Alan Watts Reads “One of the Great­est Things Carl Jung Ever Wrote”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The History of Birth Control: From Alligator Dung to The Pill

in Gender, Health, History, Politics, Religion | April 25th, 2022

The his­to­ry of birth con­trol is almost as old as the his­to­ry of the wheel.

Pes­saries dat­ing to Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt pro­vide the launch­ing pad for doc­u­men­tar­i­an Lind­say Hol­i­day’s overview of birth con­trol through­out the ages and around the world.

Holiday’s His­to­ry Tea Time series fre­quent­ly delves into women’s his­to­ry, and her pledge to donate a por­tion of the above video’s ad rev­enue to Pathfind­er Inter­na­tional serves as reminder that there are parts of the world where women still lack access to afford­able, effec­tive, and safe means of con­tra­cep­tion.

One goal of the World Health Organization’s End­ing Pre­ventable Mater­nal Mor­tal­i­ty ini­tia­tive is for 65% of women to be able to make informed and empow­ered deci­sions regard­ing sex­u­al rela­tions, con­tra­cep­tive use, and their repro­duc­tive health by 2025.

As Hol­i­day points out, expense, social stig­ma, and reli­gious edicts have impact­ed ease of access to birth con­trol for cen­turies.

The fur­ther back you go, you can be cer­tain that some meth­ods advo­cat­ed by mid­wives and med­i­cine women have been lost to his­to­ry, owing to unrecord­ed oral tra­di­tion and the sen­si­tive nature of the infor­ma­tion.

Hol­i­day still man­ages to truf­fle up a fas­ci­nat­ing array of prac­tices and prod­ucts that were thought — often erro­neous­ly — to ward off unwant­ed preg­nan­cy.

Some that worked and con­tin­ue to work to vary­ing degrees, include bar­ri­er meth­ods, con­doms, and more recent­ly the IUD and The Pill.

Def­i­nite­ly NOT rec­om­mend­ed: with­draw­al, hold­ing your breath dur­ing inter­course, a post-coital sneez­ing reg­i­men, douch­ing with Lysol or Coca-Cola, tox­ic cock­tails of lead, mer­cury or cop­per salt, any­thing involv­ing alli­ga­tor dung, and slug­ging back water that’s been used to wash a corpse.

As for sil­phi­um, an herb that like­ly did have some sort of sper­mi­ci­dal prop­er­ties, we’ll nev­er know for sure. By 1 CE, demand out­stripped sup­ply of this rem­e­dy, even­tu­al­ly wip­ing it off the face of the earth despite increas­ing­ly astro­nom­i­cal prices. Fun fact: sil­phi­um was also used to treat sore throat, snakebite, scor­pi­on stings, mange, gout, quin­sy, epilep­sy, and anal warts

The his­to­ry of birth con­trol can be con­sid­ered a semi-secret part of the his­to­ry of pros­ti­tu­tion, fem­i­nism, the mil­i­tary, obscen­i­ty laws, sex edu­ca­tion and atti­tudes toward pub­lic health.

From Mar­garet Sanger and the 60,000 women exe­cut­ed as witch­es in the 16th and 17th cen­turies, to econ­o­mist Thomas Malthus’ 1798 Essay on the Prin­ci­ple of Pop­u­la­tion and leg­endary adven­tur­er Gia­co­mo Casano­va’s satin rib­bon-trimmed jim­my hat, this episode of His­to­ry Tea Time with Lind­say Hol­i­day touch­es on it all.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Birth Con­trol Hand­book: The Under­ground Stu­dent Pub­li­ca­tion That Let Women Take Con­trol of Their Bod­ies (1968)

I’m Just a Pill: A School­house Rock Clas­sic Gets Reimag­ined to Defend Repro­duc­tive Rights in 2017

The Sto­ry Of Men­stru­a­tion: Watch Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Sistine Chapel: A $22,000 Art-Book Collection Features Remarkable High-Resolution Views of the Murals of Michelangelo, Botticelli & Other Renaissance Masters

in Art, Books, History, Religion | April 22nd, 2022

Michelan­ge­lo did­n’t want to paint the ceil­ing of the Sis­tine Chapel. Hav­ing con­sid­ered him­self more of a sculp­tor than a painter — and, giv­en his skill with stone, not with­out cause — he felt that tak­ing on such an ambi­tious project could bring him to ruin. But one does not sim­ply turn down a job offer from the Vat­i­can, and espe­cial­ly not when one is among the most respect­ed artists in six­teenth-cen­tu­ry Italy. In the event, Michelan­ge­lo proved equal to the task, or rather, much more than equal: he com­plet­ed his ceil­ing fres­coes in 1512 for Pope Julius II, and 23 years lat­er was com­mis­sioned again by Pope Paul III to paint the Last Judg­ment over the altar.

Long before Michelan­ge­lo touched a brush to the Sis­tine Chapel’s ceil­ing, a team of painters includ­ing San­dro Bot­ti­cel­li, Pietro Perug­i­no, and Pin­turic­chio had already adorned the build­ing’s inte­ri­or with fres­coes depict­ing the lives of Moses and Jesus Christ.

Tak­en togeth­er, the Sis­tine Chapel has long been regard­ed as one of the great­est achieve­ments in West­ern art, if not the great­est of them all. Hence the six mil­lion tourists who vis­it­ed it each year before COVID-19; hence, more recent­ly, the painstak­ing care that has gone into the pro­duc­tion of The Sis­tine Chapel, a three-vol­ume at-book set that brings the build­ing’s Bib­li­cal visions as close as any earth­ly read­er cold hope to see them.


The fruit of a half-decade-long col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Vat­i­can and two pub­lish­ers, Call­away Arts & Enter­tain­ment and Scrip­ta Maneant, The Sis­tine Chapel demand­ed 65 nights of con­sec­u­tive work from its pho­tog­ra­phers, who shot 270,000 high-res­o­lu­tion images. Cap­tur­ing the mas­ter­works on the walls and ceil­ing down to the tex­tures of their paint and brush­strokes neces­si­tat­ed climb­ing up on scaf­fold­ing, just as Michelan­ge­lo him­self famous­ly did to make his con­tri­bu­tions in the first place. Lim­it­ed by the Vat­i­can to a print run of 1,999 copies, the set is now avail­able for pur­chase at Abe­Books, though it will cost you $22,000. In a sense that’s a small price to pay, for as Goethe put it, “with­out hav­ing seen the Sis­tine Chapel one can form no appre­cia­ble idea of what one man is capa­ble of achiev­ing.” Find The Sis­tine Chapel book col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and Oth­er Art-Adorned Vat­i­can Spaces

Michelangelo’s David: The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry Behind the Renais­sance Mar­ble Cre­ation

New Video Shows What May Be Michelangelo’s Lost & Now Found Bronze Sculp­tures

Michelangelo’s Hand­writ­ten 16th-Cen­tu­ry Gro­cery List

The Sis­tine Chapel of the Ancients: Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er 8 Miles of Art Paint­ed on Rock Walls in the Ama­zon

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Library of Esoterica: Taschen’s Visual History of Tarot, Astrology & Witchcraft

in Art, Books, Religion | April 18th, 2022

Gen­er­a­tions and gen­er­a­tions of Amer­i­cans dis­sat­is­fied with life in their home­towns have act­ed on the same migra­to­ry impulse: to go west. Many have done so in order to make their for­tunes, but a fair few have been seek­ing vari­eties of sat­is­fac­tion alto­geth­er less tan­gi­ble. In the human spirt in gen­er­al and the Amer­i­can spir­it in par­tic­u­lar, there is a yearn­ing for “secret knowl­edge” of real­i­ty’s hid­den work­ings. Those whose spir­its most yearn for that knowl­edge tend to end up in Cal­i­for­nia, the log­i­cal end of Amer­i­can civ­i­liza­tion. There they’ve found vibrant com­mu­ni­ties of yogis, spir­i­tu­al­ists, Aene­r­i­ans, theosophists, heal­ers, Unar­i­ans, alchemists, Rosi­cru­cians, witch­es, tarot read­ers, astrologers… the list goes on.

More recent­ly, Cal­i­for­nia has also been home to Taschen’s Amer­i­can head­quar­ters, the acclaimed pub­lish­ers of lav­ish­ly pro­duced books on art and cul­ture with no com­punc­tion about explor­ing the fringes of human expe­ri­ence. A cou­ple of years ago we fea­tured their visu­al his­to­ry of tarot Divine Decks here on Open Cul­ture; now they’ve put out a three-vol­ume cof­fee-table Library of Eso­ter­i­ca that includes books on not just tarot but astrol­o­gy and witch­craft as well.

Assem­bled and designed to Taschen’s usu­al aes­thet­i­cal­ly painstak­ing stan­dard, the set comes edit­ed by writer and film­mak­er Jes­si­ca Hund­ley, who used the oppor­tu­ni­ty to open the most “inclu­sive and seduc­tive way into these prac­tices, which is through the art” they’ve inspired.

That’s what she told Los Ange­les Times’ Steffie Nel­son, who writes that “Hund­ley has been fas­ci­nat­ed by alter­na­tive spir­i­tu­al­i­ties and the occult since she was a goth-punk teenag­er on the East Coast.” Lat­er she moved to Los Ange­les, “drawn to the city’s lega­cy of eso­teric explo­ration and its renown as a place where dreams are made man­i­fest and iden­ti­ty is muta­ble.” This  pro­jec­t’s world­wide search for art and oth­er mate­ri­als relat­ed to these fields of eso­ter­i­ca began at Los Ange­les’ own Philo­soph­i­cal Research Soci­ety, found­ed in the nine­teen-thir­ties by mys­tic Man­ly P. Hall. With its rich­ly repro­duced imagery and accom­pa­ny­ing explana­to­ry essays, the Library of Eso­ter­i­ca offers a read­ing expe­ri­ence liable to open any­one’s doors of per­cep­tion. The age of Aquar­ius may be over, but there’s a seek­er born every minute.

The Library of Eso­ter­i­ca can be pur­chased as a com­plete col­lec­tion. Or you can pur­chase sep­a­rate install­ments on Astrol­o­gy, Tarot and Witch­craft.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Divine Decks: A Visu­al His­to­ry of Tarot: The First Com­pre­hen­sive Sur­vey of Tarot Gets Pub­lished by Taschen

The Artis­tic & Mys­ti­cal World of Tarot: See Decks by Sal­vador Dalí, Aleis­ter Crow­ley, H.R. Giger & More

Exquis­ite Water­col­ors of Demons, Mag­ic & Signs: Behold the Com­pendi­um Of Demonolo­gy and Mag­ic from 1775

Aleis­ter Crow­ley: The Wickedest Man in the World Doc­u­ments the Life of the Bizarre Occultist, Poet & Moun­taineer

Watch Häx­an, the Clas­sic Cin­e­mat­ic Study of Witch­craft Nar­rat­ed by William S. Bur­roughs (1922)

Athe­ists & Agnos­tics Also Fre­quent­ly Believe in the Super­nat­ur­al, a New Study Shows

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A Survival Guide to the Biblical Apocalypse

in Religion | April 4th, 2022

The Book of Rev­e­la­tion is a strong com­peti­tor for weird­est text in all of ancient lit­er­a­ture. Or, at least, it is “the strangest and most dis­turb­ing book in the whole Bible,” says the nar­ra­tor of the video above from a chan­nel called hochela­ga, which fea­tures “obscure top­ics that deserve more atten­tion.” Most of these are super­nat­ur­al or reli­gious in nature. But if you’re look­ing for a reli­gious or the­o­log­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tion of St. John of Pat­mos’ bizarre prophet­ic vision, look else­where. The exam­i­na­tion above pro­ceeds “from a sec­u­lar, non-reli­gious per­spec­tive.”

Instead, we’re promised a sur­vival guide in the unlike­ly (but who knows, right) event that the prophe­cy comes true. But what, exact­ly, would that look like? Rev­e­la­tion is “high­ly sym­bol­ic” and very “non-lit­er­al.” The mean­ings of its sym­bols are rather inscrutable and have seemed to shift and change each cen­tu­ry, depend­ing on how its inter­preters want­ed to use it to for­ward agen­das of their own.

This has, of course, been no less true in the 20th and 21st cen­turies. If you grew up in the 1970s and 80s, for exam­ple, you were bound to have come across the works of Hal Lind­say – author of The Late Great Plan­et Earth (turned into a 1977 film nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles). And if you lived through the 1990s, you sure­ly heard of his enter­tain­ing suc­ces­sors: the bloody-mind­ed Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jer­ry Jenk­ins.

The Apoc­a­lypse has been big busi­ness in pub­lish­ing and oth­er media for 50 plus years now. Rev­e­la­tion itself is an incred­i­bly obscure book, but the use of its lan­guage and imagery for prof­it and pros­e­lyt­ing “made the Apoc­a­lypse a pop­u­lar con­cern,” as Erin A. Smith writes for Human­i­ties. Lind­say’s book sold both as reli­gious fact and sci­ence fic­tion, a genre lat­er evan­gel­i­cal writ­ers like LaHaye and Jenk­ins exploit­ed on pur­pose. The influ­ence has always gone both ways. “A kind of sec­u­lar apoc­a­lyp­tic sen­si­bil­i­ty per­vades much con­tem­po­rary writ­ing about our cur­rent world,” Paul Boy­er, Pro­fes­sor of His­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin, Madi­son, tells PBS.

Whether it’s a dis­cus­sion of cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe, viral pan­dem­ic, eco­nom­ic col­lapse, the rise of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, or civ­il strife and inter­na­tion­al war­fare, the apoc­a­lyp­tic metaphors stack up in our imag­i­na­tions, often with­out us even notic­ing. Get to know one of their pri­ma­ry sources in the video intro­duc­tion to Rev­e­la­tion just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: A Wit­ty, Eru­dite Atheist’s Guide to the World’s Most Famous Book

Chris­tian­i­ty Through Its Scrip­tures: A Free Course from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty 

Free Online Reli­gion Cours­es 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

In 1704, Isaac Newton Predicted That the World Will End in 2060

in Religion, Science | March 16th, 2022

Newton Letter

We have become quite used to pro­nounce­ments of doom, from sci­en­tists pre­dict­ing the sixth mass extinc­tion due to the mea­sur­able effects of cli­mate change, and from reli­gion­ists declar­ing the apoc­a­lypse due to a sur­feit of sin. It’s almost impos­si­ble to imag­ine these two groups of peo­ple agree­ing on any­thing oth­er than the omi­nous por­tent of their respec­tive mes­sages. But in the ear­ly days of the sci­en­tif­ic revolution—the days of Shake­speare con­tem­po­rary Fran­cis Bacon, and lat­er 17th cen­tu­ry Descartes—it was not at all unusu­al to find both kinds of rea­son­ing, or unrea­son­ing, in the same per­son, along with beliefs in mag­ic, div­ina­tion, astrol­o­gy, etc.

Yet even in this mael­strom of het­ero­dox thought and prac­tices, Sir Isaac New­ton stood out as a par­tic­u­lar­ly odd co-exis­tence of eso­teric bib­li­cal prophe­cy, occult beliefs, and a rigid, for­mal math­e­mat­ics that not only adhered to the induc­tive sci­en­tif­ic method, but also expand­ed its poten­tial by apply­ing gen­er­al axioms to spe­cif­ic cas­es.

Yet many of Newton’s gen­er­al prin­ci­ples would seem total­ly inim­i­cal to the nat­u­ral­ism of most physi­cists today. As he was for­mu­lat­ing the prin­ci­ples of grav­i­ty and three laws of motion, for exam­ple, New­ton also sought the leg­endary Philosopher’s Stone and attempt­ed to turn met­al to gold. More­over, the devout­ly reli­gious New­ton wrote the­o­log­i­cal trea­tis­es inter­pret­ing Bib­li­cal prophe­cies and pre­dict­ing the end of the world. The date he arrived at? 2060.

NewtonPapers1AP_468x603

New­ton seems, writes sci­ence blog Anoth­er Pale Blue Dot, “as con­fi­dent of his pre­dic­tions in this realm as he was in the ratio­nal world of sci­ence.” In a 1704 let­ter exhib­it­ed at Jerusalem’s Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty, above, New­ton describes his “rec­coning”:

So then the time times & half a time are 42 months or 1260 days or three years & an half, rec­coning twelve months to a yeare & 30 days to a month as was done in the Cal­en­dar of the prim­i­tive year. And the days of short lived Beasts being put for the years of lived [sic] king­doms, the peri­od of 1260 days, if dat­ed from the com­plete con­quest of the three kings A.C. 800, will end A.C. 2060. It may end lat­er, but I see no rea­son for its end­ing soon­er.

New­ton fur­ther demon­strates his con­fi­dence in the next sen­tence, writ­ing that his intent, “though not to assert” an answer, should in any event “put a stop the rash con­jec­tures of fan­ci­full men who are fre­quent­ly pre­dict­ing the time of the end.” Indeed. So how did he arrive at this num­ber? New­ton applied a rig­or­ous method, that is to be sure.

If you have the patience for exhaus­tive descrip­tion of how he worked out his pre­dic­tion using the Book of Daniel, you may read one here by his­to­ri­an of sci­ence Stephen Sno­be­len, who also points out how wide­spread the inter­est in Newton’s odd beliefs has become, reach­ing across every con­ti­nent, though schol­ars have known about this side of the Enlight­en­ment giant for a long time.

For a sense of the exact­ing, yet com­plete­ly bizarre fla­vor of Newton’s prophet­ic cal­cu­la­tions, see anoth­er New­ton let­ter at the of the post, tran­scribed below.

Prop. 1. The 2300 prophet­ick days did not com­mence before the rise of the lit­tle horn of the He Goat.

2 Those day [sic] did not com­mence a[f]ter the destruc­tion of Jerusalem & ye Tem­ple by the Romans A.[D.] 70.

3 The time times & half a time did not com­mence before the year 800 in wch the Popes suprema­cy com­menced

4 They did not com­mence after the re[ig]ne of Gre­go­ry the 7th. 1084

5 The 1290 days did not com­mence b[e]fore the year 842.

6 They did not com­mence after the reigne of Pope Greg. 7th. 1084

7 The dif­f­ence [sic] between the 1290 & 1335 days are a parts of the sev­en weeks.

There­fore the 2300 years do not end before ye year 2132 nor after 2370.

The time times & half time do n[o]t end before 2060 nor after [2344]

The 1290 days do not begin [this should read: end] before 2090 [New­ton might mean: 2132] nor after 1374 [sic; New­ton prob­a­bly means 2374]

The edi­to­r­i­al inser­tions are Pro­fes­sor Snobelen’s, who thinks the let­ter dates “from after 1705,” and that “the shaky hand­writ­ing sug­gests a date of com­po­si­tion late in Newton’s life.” What­ev­er the exact date, we see him much less cer­tain here; New­ton push­es around some oth­er dates—2344, 2090 (or 2132), 2374. All of them seem arbi­trary, but “giv­en the nice round­ness of the num­ber,” writes Moth­er­board, “and the fact that it appears in more than one let­ter,” 2060 has become his most mem­o­rable dat­ing for the apoc­a­lypse.

It’s impor­tant to note that New­ton didn’t believe the world would “end” in the sense of cease to exist or burn up in holy flames. His end times phi­los­o­phy resem­bles that of a sur­pris­ing num­ber of cur­rent day evan­gel­i­cals: Christ would return and reign for a mil­len­ni­um, the Jew­ish dias­po­ra would return to Israel and would, he wrote, set up “a flour­ish­ing and ever­last­ing King­dom.” We hear such state­ments often from tel­e­van­ge­lists, school boards, gov­er­nors, and pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates.

As many peo­ple have argued, despite Newton’s con­cep­tion of his sci­en­tif­ic work as a bul­wark against oth­er the­olo­gies, it ulti­mate­ly became a foun­da­tion for Deism and Nat­u­ral­ism, and has allowed sci­en­tists to make accu­rate pre­dic­tions for hun­dreds of years. 20th cen­tu­ry physics may have shown us a much more rad­i­cal­ly unsta­ble uni­verse than New­ton ever imag­ined, but his the­o­ries are, as Isaac Asi­mov would put it, “not so much wrong as incom­plete,” and still essen­tial to our under­stand­ing of cer­tain fun­da­men­tal phe­nom­e­na. But as fas­ci­nat­ing and curi­ous as Newton’s oth­er inter­ests may be, there’s no more rea­son to cred­it his prophet­ic cal­cu­la­tions than those of the Mil­lerites, Harold Camp­ing, or any oth­er apoc­a­lyp­tic dooms­day sect.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

M.I.T. Com­put­er Pro­gram Pre­dicts in 1973 That Civ­i­liza­tion Will End by 2040

Isaac New­ton Cre­ates a List of His 57 Sins (Cir­ca 1662)

Isaac New­ton Con­ceived of His Most Ground­break­ing Ideas Dur­ing the Great Plague of 1665

Videos Recre­ate Isaac Newton’s Neat Alche­my Exper­i­ments: Watch Sil­ver Get Turned Into Gold

The Icon­ic Design of the Dooms­day Clock Was Cre­at­ed 75 Years Ago: It Now Says We’re 100 Sec­onds to Mid­night

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 10 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast