Month: April 2016

Poetry and Madness: Blake, Eigen and the Psychotic God, by Peter Anderson

Posted on by Golgonooza

Ecstasy and Psychosis: Who We Really Are

ECSTASY-1

In many ways, I believe that Michael Eigen is attempting to restore to psychology a dimension suppressed by the scientistic ambitions of the academicized discipline, where the drastic attempt to reduce language to a vehicle for hard data makes of language itself nothing but an empty shell, good only to serve as a frame for the apparent objectivity of statistics. Where Freud could only grudgingly wonder at poetry as a form of psychological gnosis, Eigen understands that poetry—and, very possibly, therapy, too—has the function of revealing who we are. “Poetry”, he says, “is dusting off the true self”.

Read More

The 40 Rules of Love, by Shams Tabrizi

Posted on by Golgonooza

Rumi, Shams, and Whirling Dervishes

558386_440269706046483_367614937_n

Shams of Tabriz was a Persian Sufi and roaming dervish who lived at the end of the twelfth/ early thirteenth century. He was the spiritual teacher and advisor of Rumi, and indeed it’s often said that Rumi was a professor who Shams transformed into a mystic, a lover, and a poet. There are many legends describing their meeting in Konya: Rumi was taught by Shams in seclusion for 40 days, and the period after this is described as Rumi’s ‘mysticism’, where sufis danced, played music (rabab), and drank wine. It is in this time, that the concept of “whirling dervishes” originated.

Read More

Shelley, Blake and the Prophetic Imagination, by Andrew O. Winckles

Posted on by Golgonooza

Prophecy and Social Change: the Unacknowledged Legislators, the Watchmen, and the Prophets

Screenshot 2022-07-16 at 09.08.09

Screenshot 2022-07-16 at 09.00.03

Watchmen_Smiley_Face_Broken_Glass_Shattered_Blood_1920x1080

A prophet, Shelley once observed, is someone who can see into the present. And like all great poets, he added, they not only see – they communicate, they rage, and they galvanise, and in this role they’ve traditionally presented a major problem for the ruling elites. As Andrew O. Winckles notes in this compelling article, prophets have always told it like it is, spoken truth to power, and their main object of scorn and anger has usually been the elites themselves. It’s a tradition that political and religious authorities have always found uncomfortable, always sought to silence, for what the prophets say fundamentally challenges the authority of their rule and lays bare its usurping, brutalising character.

Read More