In ancient Greece there was a philosophical idea that the world could be divided between spirit and matter, and that spirit is good while matter is bad. It isn’t entirely fair to just label this as Gnosticism since that label describes a bunch of other views too, and this spirit-good, matter-bad distinction was just common…
Greek Myth, a summary. (Disclaimer, it’s basically all open to interpretation. Different ancient writers give different facts.) There is Gaia, the earth. Gaia gives birth to Ouranos, heaven. Ouranos then marries his mother and they have three sets of children; the Cyclopes (one-eyed giants), the Hecatoncheires (the Hundred-handed giants), and the Titanes, giants who look…
It is a common error to refer to Atlantis as Greek Mythology. There is only one source for the story (or rather, two sources with the same author) and that is Plato. Plato was not a mythologer, but a philosopher. The purpose of the story was to depict a civilisation that held to his ideal…
If you follow posts about, for example, Japanese history and somebody refers to Hirohito or Akihito as king of Japan, some pedant with insist “no, he is an emperor.” So what actually is the difference between king and emperor? Surprisingly the difference is… actually nothing whatsoever. Or it is arbitrary. King is a Germanic word.…
So I’ve been learning a fair bit about modern Chinese history. This will be in small chunks to try and get the bulk of it out as well as possible. The Mandate of Heaven. In Chinese belief, Heaven, or Tian, grants a Mandate to a ruler/dynasty to rule over China. This began with Yu, who…
