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Where did archeologists find Mithraeums?

In his Mysteries Of Mithra Cumont has a map from Roman times and notes where Mithraic findings have been done by archeologists and where Mithras-temples (“Mithraeums”) have been found. For years I have wanted to visit one of these temples and some of the marks on the map are even not that far away from where I live. The closest Mitraeum is marked at “Vetera”. It took some investigation to find out that nowadays this is Xanten in Germany not too far from the Dutch border. My girlfriend knew about an archeological park in Xanten where a Roman city is being excavated. Still, nowwhere could I find information about a Mithraeum in this park. Digging up old folders of the time that my girlfriend visited the park as a girl proved that the park is called “Colonia Ulpia Traiana” after the city, but that “Vetera” was an army-camp a few… Read More »Where did archeologists find Mithraeums?

the mithraeum of Saarbrücken – report of a visit

During my summer 2005 holidays in Germany, I paid a visit to the Mithraeum of Saarbrücken, or to be more correct: what is left of it. As I wrote in my article about Mithraeums, most have been smashed to bits. I didn’t have a whole lot of information about any of the Mithraums and the same was the case with Saarbrücken. This site has a few nice photos and a description of how to get there which was very helpfull. A few remarks about the route. The site that I refer to says (in my interpretation): – From Saarbrücken downtown follow the A 620 in the direction of Mannheim; – Pass the Bismarck-bridge; – Go left on the roundabout; – Then take the second street on the right (Mainzerstrasse). This is the hardest part. A map of the city is more than helpfull, because however we came from the centre… Read More »the mithraeum of Saarbrücken – report of a visit

Julius Evola – a biography

Evola is a name of which more and more people have heard, but not too many people know something about. When you try to find books of the man, you will have a hard time on the European continent, but in the USA or UK you may succeed. The internet is the best solution when you want to learn something about Evola. When you try one of the bigger search engines, you will have found some good pages pretty quickly, many are in Italian, but in German or English is enough to be found. That the attention and familiarity of Evola starts to increase lately, is mainly caused by the fact that the American publisher Inner Traditions started to release English translations of different books for the first time. Until now 13 books and several articles are available in english. This is only a small part of Evola’s bibliography which… Read More »Julius Evola – a biography

The death of fortune

This article is mostly for foreign visitors. Dutch visitors who watch the news will probably not read much new. Politics in the Netherlands used to be easy. The people from the Catholic south voted for the CDA (Christian democrats), making it the biggest party in many elections. In the (Protestant) north and of course the non-Catholic or critical south, there were only a few other options. There was the PVDA (labour party), D’66 (democratic party founded in 1966) for the more leftish-oriented voters and the VVD (the liberal and conservative party) that was mostly regarded as the party for the rich people. A small but uncoming party as Groen Links (green left), as the name suggests an environmentally oriented leftisch party. Further there were no parties with any influence, just one for the old people, another small Christian party and a very small reformed party and some hardly worth mentioning.… Read More »The death of fortune

Against the modern world?

The non-Traditionalist Muslim Haji Muhammad Legenhausen has written a very nice essay called Why I am not a Traditionalist which is online on a few places on the internet. Legenhausen gives a lengthy and critical comment on the Traditionalist School and some leading Traditionalists. On a few occasions, Legenhausen surely has a point, but his overall critique is fairly easy to shoot holes through. That is not the purpose of my article though. “Traditionalism [and] its rejection of modernity” Legenhausen writes: “The basic point is that nothing should be accepted or rejected merely because it is modern and likewise, nothing should be accepted or rejected merely because it is traditional. There is much that is good in modernity, and much that is good in traditional societies. There is much that is bad in modernity, and much that is bad in traditional societies.” Personally I didn’t get the idea that Traditionalism… Read More »Against the modern world?

Lola Rennt

This article was written quite a while back. After publishing my article “The Matrix and the Eastern doctrine of Maya” in the Dutch magazine “Religie & Mystiek” the readers asked for a similar article based on a film. I knew that Lola Rennt (“Lola runs”) is a good film to explain Karma, so I wrote the article below. It was supposed to be published in the last issue, but due to miscommunication, it will be in the upcoming issue. Here you have the English version: The film is not as well-known as with The Matrix. Lola Rennt is a German film from 1998 made by Tom Tykwer and with Franka Potente as Lola. Potente made it to Hollywood for a few films and Tykwer also made some new movies. Together they recently made the film Der Kaiser Und Der Kaiserin. After this film Lola Rennt got new attention and most… Read More »Lola Rennt

Karma and free will

Many lengthy articles have been written about this subject. If you believe in Karma, can you believe in free will? Isn’t Karma just another word for Fate? Isn’t everything predestined? Most people will say “no”. We don’t like the idea of having no free will and many articles about this paradox are mostly to defend the idea of the free will within the ‘law of karma’. Personally I think I don’t need such a lengthy article to explain my view on the subject. As you probably know Karma is the law of cause and consequence. Often it is explained as “if you do something bad, something bad will happen to you”. This is mostly caused by the bad understanding of Karma by us people from the west. Slowly the idea/explanation of “what you sow, you will reap” gets acclimatized, so also being good will have its benefit in the future.… Read More »Karma and free will

The Matrix

I think many of you will have seen the movie The Matrix. It took a long time before I came to watch it myself, because I am no fond of action movies nor easily impressed by new technology. When I did see it in the end (quite a while ago now) I not only enjoyed the movie quite a bit, but I found it a very good way of explaining the ancient Eastern doctrine of Maya (illusion) to a young western audience. For your remembrance and for those who haven’t seen the movie yet, the basic idea behind the film as introduction to the article. The movie suggests that mankind developed artificial intelligence so far that the machines took over control. In a strike of despair, mankind “scorched the earth” because the machines lived of solar energy. This didn’t stop the machines, since they found out that mankind is not… Read More »The Matrix

Quantum Physics

Yes, more science, but this time more ‘real’ science than in “science vs spirituality”. In this article I will hopefully learn you a bit about the interesting subject of quantum physics in which scientists did and do discoveries that seem quite disturbing and which forced them to philosophise to find a descent answer. There are different opinions and theories and (as usual) this divides the scientific community in two camps: materialists and those who believe that there is more than meets the eye. Quantum physics actually sprung from scientific experiments to discover what light actually is. For a long time there had been different theories about light. Some scientists said that light consists of waves, others said particles and others said both particles and waves. In 1801 Thomas Young (1773-1829) thought of a test to find this out. This test became known as the “two-hole experiment” and the idea was… Read More »Quantum Physics

Time

The spinning earth gives us a certain regularity. So do the changing seasons (the earth going around the sun). Over time mankind has scaled this regularity and ‘invented’ what we call time. A full round of seasons became a year. Each season was divided into three months. A month consists of 28 to 31 days. Of course this is known to you. What you may also know is that it was Julius Ceasar who came up with the calendar as we still use it today. Inside this calendar there are days and a nights which together became 24 hours. Hours were split up into minutes and they in seconds and so forth. Society as it is now, is totally dependant on our perception of time. You come out of bed at a certain time for the sole reason to be at work in time. Appointments, break, holidays, etc. are all… Read More »Time