The Legend of BaggerVance

A Philosophical Take onEmbracing Diversity

Some Thoughts onHomeopathy

PHILOSOPHYCULTURESOCIETY

ESOTERICAART

ANDMORE

What is the UniverseMade of?

Philosophy and Education for the Future

NewAcropolisIssue No. 47 AUG - SEP 2021

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EditorialTeam

Sabine Leitner - Director

Julian Scott - EditorAgostino Dominici - Project

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Natalia Lema - Public Relations

Philosophy Culture Volunteering

NEW ACROPOLISINTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION

PHILOSOPHYA Philosophical Take

on EmbracingDiversity

ESOTERICASome Thoughts on

HomeopathySOCIETY

The Persistence ofSuperstition

ARTThe Legend ofBagger Vance

CULTUREThe Role ofReligion inCulture and

History

MYTHS OF THEWORLDMyths of the Pleiades

SCIENCE & NATUREWhat is the Universe

Made of?

What’s Inside

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04 05EDITORIAL

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Editorial

Is Truth Dead?

Truth used to seem quite simple: somethingwas either true or not, and there was usually ageneral consensus as to what was true. Today,it seems we are living in a post-truth worldwhere the ‘Truth’ doesn’t exist anymore, only‘your truth’ and ‘my truth’. And where,obviously, one’s own truth is always more truethan someone else’s truth. But is truth reallydead? And has it ever been so simplistic andone-dimensional?

Maybe the only thing that has really changedis that we have realized that truth is morecomplex than we thought. And that even factsare not purely ‘factual’, but actually haveseveral layers to them. Imagine the followingscene: a loving and conscientious mothergives her two children cod liver oil on therecommendation of the paediatrician. Bothchildren dislike it because at that time therewere no tablets available to mask its awfultaste. However, one child has a positiveexperience because her mother’s actionmakes her feel loved. The other has a negativeexperience because she feels forced to dosomething against her will and therefore doesnot feel loved. Two very different experiencesand narratives of the same event and thesame mother. Was the mother good or bad?

Maybe truth used to be more simple becausewe kind of believed that it was somethingabsolute. When our world became moremulticultural and a global village, we weresuddenly faced with the relativity of what wethought was right, decent and good. Webecame more conscious that simple ‘facts’ likethe time of day are relative. It might be 5 pmin one place and 5 am on the other side of theworld. Similarly, is it day or night, summer orwinter? It depends.

The safety and comfort of ‘absolute truths’has been shattered and we are overwhelmedby the unfathomable complexity ofeverything. But the world has not changed.Maybe we have only woken up from a morechildlike ‘binary’ understanding of the world(true or false, right or wrong) and need todevelop a higher form of consciousness that

enables us to perceive the unity behind thedifferent appearances. Imagine you were a 2-dimensional being who is unable to ‘see’ a 3-dimensional cylinder. All you can see is its 2-dimensional shadow, for example a circle or arectangle. Only by developing a 3-dimensionalconsciousness would you be able tounderstand that both the circle and therectangle can be part of the same thing.

The previous example of the mother showsthat we create our own experience of reality.The reality of the loving mother who doeswhat she thinks is best for her children can beexperienced in very different ways. However,the fact that we create our own experience ofreality does not imply that there is nounderlying reality.

In Eastern philosophy the distinction betweenthe underlying reality and the experiencedreality is sometimes referred to as theAbsolute and the Relative. The Absolute is theunderlying reality, which does not changeaccording to who is experiencing it. It is as it is,an independent reality. The Relative is thereality we observe and experience, the realitygenerated in our minds.

In Greek philosophy a distinction is madebetween the phenomenon (“appearance”) −the reality generated in the mind − and thenoumenon, or unknowable reality, thatunderlies it. According to both philosophies,there is only one Absolute, but there arenumerous relative realities, each relative to aparticular experiencer at a particular point intime and space.

The antidote to the relativity of truth is not areturn to the comfort of simple truths. Theantidote is to embrace the complexity and riseup to a higher dimension where the differingviewpoints can be understood as facets of thesame ‘archetype’. Truth is not dead, only ourunderstanding of it needs to change. Maybewe just need to be more ‘inclusive’ with thetruth and accept that different and evencontradictory accounts of the same fact can allbe true. And the first step towards Truthwould be to learn to put ourselves intosomeone else’s shoes and try to see the worldfrom their point of view.

Sabine Leitner

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PHILOSOPHY

A PhilosophicalTake on Embracing

DiversityDiversity is a big topic and probably one of the

biggest cultural values of our time. Diversitymeans “a range of people or things that aredifferent to each other”; and in our society’s contextit goes hand in hand with inclusion, which inpractice is the act of including someone within agroup without concern for any difference.Thedifference could be of ethnicity, gender, education,ability, sexual orientation, wealth, etc. A particular

‘hot rod’ that this article will explore is genderdiversity. I won’t be going into the philosophy ofhuman rights here (it would need the entiremagazine for a bare introduction!), but will explorethis topic from a more simple and mystical

perspective. Most people today know that we allneed to embrace diversity and practise inclusion inorder to achieve a harmonious coexistence, butthere are some deeply ingrained aspects of ourpersonality which sometimes cloud over our higherfunctions.

Why do some of us feel triggered when watchingsuper-extravagant Pride parade-goers; or when ourchildren come home after their first lesson at schoolabout same-sex relationships and we fear they’renow at risk of ‘turning gay’? If they weren’t offeredthis education at school, they would certainly growup heterosexual, but now there’s a risk they won’t…is this true?

There is a common fear amongst parents that theirchildren are influenced by pressures from theirpeers, and we see it continuously by their choices ofclothing, make-up, music, style, language andfriends.The pressure to conform these days is huge,and the consequences can sometimes be devastatingto individuals and families. When it comes togender identity and orientation, there is a fear thatthey’ll want to be or act in a way that’s not in theirnature.

Students and lovers of philosophy understand thatthe soul has no gender, and the human spirit has nogender either. Gender, race and our other physical,social and ‘mental’ diversities are parts of our

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1. Ikeda, D. Faith into Action. 1; p.25

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personality – our intersectionality, the many partsthat make up our whole.These parts are what welearn that enable us to feel a sense of belonging inthis humanity. Being attracted to a particulargender (or more than one) is something we’re bornwith.What we experience thereafter is driven byour preference and confirms it; it isn’t a choice wemake according to what we see around us. If thatwere the case, there wouldn’t be homosexual people,since according to current UK statistics about 90%of the population is heterosexual. Daisaku Ikeda, aJapanese peacebuilder and Buddhist philosopher,says “Life is diverse, human beings are diverse.Thatis the natural way of things.The opposite would bestandardisation”¹. Standardisation is in itselfinequality; as Aristotle puts it, “the worst form ofinequality is to try to make unequal things equal”.

What is important is dialogue. Dialogue to becomeaware of one’s curiosity and explore what it reallymeans; to become aware of conformity and of one’strue self.The people to lead this dialogue aren’tnecessarily teachers, who are often blamed andjudged by unhappy parents, but at the same timehave limited influence over young people, especiallyin the middle and higher school years.These youngpeople are mostly influenced by their peers, andnowadays they turn to their peers for support, eventhough neither has enough experience, discernmentor internal resources to deal with the questionwithout bias.

Young people typically don’t open up to adultsabout their experiences for worry of judgement anda feeling of “generational gap”. Adults have goodintentions in supporting young people with thesequestions, but can have the fear described abovethat the young person will act in a way that’sdifferent to what the adult believes their nature is.So how to address this fear that young people cansway and conform to things beyond their nature?

Let’s return to dialogue. Good dialogue is withoutjudgement; it’s opening up the conversation, even ifit feels awkward and out of the comfort zone. Fromthe Bhagavad Gita we can take a good internalposition for dialogue: “There is no wisdom for aman without harmony, and without harmony there

is no contemplation”² and “A man free from thechains of selfish attachments, free from his lower “Iam”, who has determination and perseverance, andwhose inner peace is beyond victory or defeat –such a man has pure Sattva”³. Referring to selfishattachments and the lower “I am”, the BhagavadGita can explain how the prospecting philosophercan engage in dialogue about diversity and

differences. It describes the 3-fold division ofwisdom and steadiness according to the 3 Gunas,the 1st as pure wisdom, the 2ⁿd as impure wisdom,and the 3rd as “a wisdom obscured in darknesswhen wrong is thought to be right, and whenthings are thought to be that which they are not”⁴.This latter can prevail when humans are surroundedby temporal morals which actually divide people,rather than unify.

To conclude, this approach of dialogue spreadstolerance, principles of wisdom and encouragesrespect for the many ways there are to understandthe world and to live what the Greek philosophersunderstood as the ‘good life’. Socrates’ approachgives us adults inspiration: “I cannot teach anybodyanything, I can only make them think”.

Sofia Venuti

2 – Bhagavad Gita 2;663 - Bhagavad Gita 18;264 - Bhagavad Gita 18;31

The Persistence of

SuperstitionThere is an old Buddhist story about a monk

who lived with his disciples in a monastery.One day a lost kitten came into the monastery andthe monk and the disciples started to care for it.From that time on, the kitten never left them.When the monk started to meditate, the kittenoften disturbed him by coming over to him, sittingon his lap or climbing onto his shoulder, so themonk told his disciples to tie the kitten to a tree inthe monastery’s garden before his meditation. Itbecame a daily routine to tie the kitten to the tree.Later, the old monk passed away and one of his

Truth represented as a woman, beleaguered on all sides by persecution, superstition and violence. Etching by C. Murer after himself, c. 1600-1614.

disciples took his place. He also followed theroutine of tying the cat to the tree beforemeditations. But the cat died one day too and theinhabitants of the monastery missed the cat.Theythought that if a cat is not tied to a tree themeditation may fail. So, they brought another catand followed the old routine. As decades passed,the tradition of tying a cat to the tree beforemeditation did not fade, even though nobodyremembered why this act had to be done.This is agood example of how a superstition changespeople’s habits.

SOCIETY

Photo by Thomas de LUZE on Unsplash

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Superstitions are as old as humanity itself. Most ofthem are based on a false belief or amisunderstanding. Or a simple prejudice. One ofthe most well-known superstitions is that if a blackcat crosses our path, it brings disaster. But noteverywhere. In Scotland, for example, a strangeblack cat which arrives on the doorstep means luck.Or in Japan, black cats help single women findsuitors. Superstitions are fed by fear and ignorance.When people are afraid of something, they create anexplanation or a solution to eliminate the problem.In this case, the black cat causes no harm, but thereis a long tradition that can be traced back to theMiddle Ages, when black cats were often connectedwith the devil and witches.

In classical times, the Romans understoodsuperstition as an excessive fear of the Gods. Cicerowanted to abolish superstitions and distinguishedthem from religion. He wrote that superstitionimitates religion in the same way that rashness (avice) imitates courage (a virtue). Some superstitionsdemand a rite or act to be done. For example, inSpain on New Year’s Eve, 12 grapes have to be

eaten at midnight, one with each stroke of theclock, in order to bring good luck and prosperityfor the next 12 months.This tradition, which wasintroduced by wine growers at the end of the 19thcentury, quickly became popular not just in Spain,but in Latin America and in the Philippines too.

Eating grapes at New Year is not a harmfulsuperstition, but there are some that can causeserious issues, such as the fear of the number 13 insome countries. As 12 symbolizes wholeness and isoften seen as positive, the number 13 is consideredan unlucky number by many people and Friday the13th is regarded as a day with bad luck. It isconnected to the Last Supper, where Judas Iscariotwas the 13th guest, and it was he who led Jesus tocrucifixion.There is no evidence for the truth ofthis belief that 13 causes bad luck, but there arepeople who suffer seriously from this superstitionand try to avoid the bad luck by keeping themselvesaway from this number in every possible way. Inmedical science, it is called triskaidekaphobia, basedon the Greek words treiskaideka (thirteen) andphobos (fear). For this reason, in some hotels thenumber 13 is removed.

In Asian countries, like in China, instead of 13 thenumber 4 is considered as a bringer of bad luck,and in the hotels all numbers ending in 4 areskipped, because the word four is a homonym ofdeath in their language, and they pronounce it in asimilar way. On the other hand, the number 8 isconsidered as a lucky number in Chinesenumerology.

Despite the longstanding efforts of philosophersand scientists, superstitions have survived and arestill with us, even in our techno-civilized society.One of the explanations as to why we need themmay be that our mind always needs reasons toexplain and control the unknown, and to hide ourignorance. But until we reach knowledge, it may bebetter for our peace of mind not to walk under aladder and to put a horseshoe on the front door ofour house.

Istvan Orban

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ESOTERICA

Homeopathy seems to be very controversial thesedays, although it has not always been like this.Most people know very little about it, some swearby it and some oppose it vehemently. Since I grewup in a country where homeopathic remedies were(and still are, I believe) readily available in everysingle pharmacy, I maybe have a positive mindsetabout it.That’s why a year ago, due to chronic andworsening health problems of my cat, I started to

look for alternative treatments and consulted ahomeopathic vet.The treatment worked incrediblywell and she is now better than she has been formany years.This made me curious and I started toread up on the subject.

Homeopathy was founded by the Germanphysician Samuel Hahnemann (1755 – 1843), whowas dissatisfied with the state of medicine in histimes, and is based on two principles: “Like cureslike” (Simila similibus curantur) and the “principle ofpotentisation”. Hahnemann discovered the firstprinciple when he was researching why cinchona(also called China, the bark of a Peruvian tree) waseffective in treating malaria. When he took a doseof cinchona to test it on himself, he discovered thatit produced malaria-like symptoms.This led him tothe conclusion that “that which can produce a setof symptoms in a healthy individual, can treat a sickindividual who is manifesting a similar set ofsymptoms.”

This idea was not completely new in the history ofmedicine. Similar ideas exist in the writings ofHippocrates and Paracelsus, the pioneer of the‘medical revolution’ of the Renaissance (according toWikipedia), who wrote: “Never a hot illness hasbeen cured by something cold, nor a cold one by

Some Thoughts on

Homeopathy

AportraitofSamuelHahnemann(1755-1843)

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something hot. But it has happened that like hascured like.”

Since some of the remedies of Hahnemann’s time,like arsenicum, lead or mercury, were actuallypoisons (the Greek word pharmakon interestinglymeans both remedy and poison), Hahnemanntherefore tried to find out what the necessaryminimum amount of a remedy would be in order tobring about a curative effect. He discovered thatthat by diluting it in a specific way, the remedybecame more potent in its healing power. To givean example of this methodical way of dilutionwhich is called potentisation: a tincture producedfrom the fruit of the plant Belladonna is diluted bytaking 1 part of the tincture and 9 parts water (oralcohol or other carrier substance), and shaking itrhythmically (succussion).This results in BelladonnaD1 (the first decimal power).This process (taking 1part of this D1 solution and shaking it with 9 partswater) is repeated and leads to D2. Another repeatwill lead to D3 and so on. After D23, not a singlemolecule of the original substance can be detected.

This has led to the somehow understandableaccusation that homeopathic remedies containnothing but alcohol with some impurities and thatall the hundreds of different remedies areindistinguishable from each other. However,according to homeopathy, the more potentised(“diluted”) a remedy is, the more powerful it is and,as a tried and tested result, higher potencies need tobe taken less frequently than the lower ones.Furthermore, homeopathy not only works withdecimal potencies but also C potencies (and evenM potencies!) where 1 part is mixed with 99 parts(or 999 parts!) of a solution and even sooner not asingle molecule of the original substance can bedetected.

It is not surprising that homeopathy can be easilylabelled ‘quackery’. Wikipedia quotes the followingfrom the book Philosophy of Pseudoscience: “[…]homeopathy is a paradigmatic example ofpseudoscience. It is neither simply bad science norscience fraud, but rather profoundly departs fromscientific method and theories while being

described as scientific by some of its adherents(often sincerely).”

I think it is legitimate to say that homeopathy isscientific because it has always been empirical andfollows the rules of careful observation, hypothesis,experiment, results and conclusions. Hahnemannwas a physician and a chemist himself andcompletely insisted on stringent procedures.However, where homeopathy departs from modernscience is its theoretical framework. But there is no

doubt that homeopathy works, otherwise its successwould not have been attributed to the placeboeffect. Which, by the way, would not work onanimals or small children and these are groupswhere homeopathy has proven particularly useful.But modern science does not have an explanationof why homeopathy has achieved such remarkableresults, for example with the cholera outbreaks inthe late 1830s and early 1840s and a yellow feveroutbreak in 1878. As a result of these successes,homeopathy spread fairly quickly all over Europe,to the United States, South America and India,where there are still a large number of homoepathicdoctors.

As a thought experiment, let’s think outside the boxfor a moment.What if the healing property of aplant − let’s call it its ‘information’ − does not lie in

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its material aspect? What if the actual ‘information’is intangible and independent of its physical‘carrier’, much in the same way as music isindependent of the CD through which I can listento the music? If we analysed the CD in alaboratory, we would not find any music on it.Imagine we had several CDs with different types ofmusic recorded on them – a laboratory analysiswould not be able to distinguish between them.They would all be shown to be made of the samematerial although they also contain very different

types of music.The same would happen with theinformation contained in a book. A chemicalanalysis would not yield the information containedin the book. Having two books with the samecontent would also not give more information thanhaving one book, which might explain why takingdouble the amount of the prescribed homeopathicdose does not make it any more effective.

I can think of a lot of examples of the differencebetween information (or the ‘idea’) and the means(or carriers or vehicles) through which it isexpressed. I could write my ideas on paper, on a

computer, put them on a USB stick, a microchip,upload them to a cloud, burn them on a CD, etchthem into metal or stone or wood.The carrier issecondary, whereas the information is somethingalmost immaterial. What if each plant containsinformation which constitutes its healing propertyand the specific homeopathic process of dilutionsactually ‘liberates’ the information from its carrierand makes it more ‘accessible’? In an age where asmall kindle device can contain a whole library, it ismaybe less strange to think of the possibility thatless can be more.

We currently live at a time where the conventionalworldview is ‘materialistic’ – in the sense that it isbelieved that physical matter is the only reality andthat everything, including thoughts, feelings, mindand will, can be explained in terms of matter andphysical phenomena. However, from a more‘alternative’ or ‘traditional’ point of view, which doesnot automatically rule out more ‘subtle levels’ ofexistence and a ‘meta-physical dimension’ beyondthe physical one, it is not so difficult to understandthat the ‘information’ of belladona could be presentin the highly diluted solution, even if there is nodetectable material trace of the plant itself anymore.

Every new theory is a break with the existing oneand it is logical that the new will sometimes beopposed by the old.The German philosopherSchopenhauer, a contemporary of Hahnemann,coined the following adage: “All truth passesthrough three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, itis violently opposed.Third, it is accepted as beingself-evident.”

My intention with this article is not to encourageanyone to drop conventional treatments forhomeopathy. But I would like to encourage everyone of us to keep an open mind and not to discardsomething that has been proven to produce verygood results on countless people and animals, justbecause it does not fit with our accepted way ofthinking. It is good to remember that today’sorthodoxy can easily become tomorrow’s fallacy.

Sabine Leitner

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ART

This film, with its strange title, was made in 2000as an adaptation of a book by Steven Pressfield,

who is most famous for his best-selling novel aboutthe Spartans, Gates of Fire. InThe Legend of BaggerVance, Pressfield tried to transfer to the world ofgolf the teachings of the Indian Bhagavad Gita, amystical work which had greatly impressed him.

For those who have read the Bhagavad Gita andassimilated the richness of its teachings, this mightcreate great expectations. But we have to bear inmind that the film is only an adaptation, which usesthe model of a dialogue between master anddisciple, in which the master awakens the disciplefrom the lethargy into which he had fallen. It doesnot, however, reproduce all the other teachings of

the Bhagavad Gita itself, which would probably bean impossible undertaking, especially for Hollywood!

The Storyline

Directed by Robert Redford, with a script byJeremy Leven, the film is characterized by a sobertone and beautiful photography.The story is set inthe early decades of the 20th century and has as itsprotagonist a hugely talented young golfer calledRannulph Junuh — played by Matt Damon —with a brilliant future ahead of him.The FirstWorld War arrives and he sets off as an officercommanding a company of soldiers from hishomeland, Savannah, Georgia, in the southernUnited States, returning traumatised after the waras the only survivor from his company.

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On his return, he simply disappears from circulation,ignoring the fiancée who had been waiting for him— played by Charlize Theron— and never touchinga golf club again. In other words, he becomes lost inhis own hell and refuses to come out of it. Heremains in that state for the entire decade, until thefamous stock market crash of 1929 and thesubsequent Great Depression. His fiancée’s fatherhad invested in a hotel and golf club, but is ruinedby the crash and dies. His daughter, faced with thethreat of losing everything and with predatorshovering around her to take possession of herproperty, takes the decision to organise a grandexhibition golf match.With this end in view, sheinvites the two great golf stars of the day –managing to persuade them to take part against allexpectations and with great skill – but thedignitaries of Savannah demand that a localparticipant should also take part in the match as thecity’s representative.The problem then arises offinding a local golfer, which is solved by a young boywho remembers the long-forgotten Captain Junuh.

Undoubtedly, everything makes much more sense ifthe person watching the film is a golf fan.The twogreat figures who were invited to take part in thematch — Walter Hagen, played by Bruce McGill,and Bobby Jones, by Joel Gretsch — are realfigures, who were hugely famous in their day.Theyhad completely opposite and complementarypersonalities in the eyes of the public. WalterHagen was a professional and a lover of the goodlife, while Bobby Jones — golf perfectionpersonified — always remained an amateur in spiteof being perhaps the best golfer in history.

It is here that a mysterious character called BaggerVance — Will Smith — makes his appearance andoffers to become Junuh’s caddie. From that momenton, the author tries to represent somehow thedialogue that takes place in the Bhagavad Gita,giving Bagger Vance the role of the master whoguides the confused disciple, helping him torediscover himself.The guidance he offers him isreminiscent of the idea of becoming one with thearrow to hit the target in Zen archery. Adapted togolf, it is about seeing the course in one’s mind andbecoming one with it so that the ball will find thehole naturally when hit.The process, of course, hasits ups and downs until reaching an unexpected but

happy ending, at which point Bagger Vance saysgoodbye, having accomplished his mission.

The figure of the narrator, who recalls the events asan old man, was the young boy who had foundJunuh at the time of the match and asked him tocome back, and was with him and Bagger Vancethroughout the process as assistant caddie. Imention this, because in his role as an old man he isplayed by Jack Lemmon in what was his last cinemaappearance before he died. If you’re a cinema lover,it’s worth watching the film just for this.

What the critics said

For one reason or another, many critics werescathing about the film, finding it “pretentious andsilly”, even if “magnificently photographed” (BBC),or criticizing it for presenting Will Smith in thestereotypical role of a “magical Afro-Americanfriend” (Time). Be that as it may, I enjoyed it andwould recommend it to anyone who wants to see aportion of the Bhagavad Gita portrayed inHollywood style.

Alfredo Aguilar

Aself-portraitofJacquesLouisDavid,1794

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CULTURE

The Role ofReligion in Culture

and History

This article is based on thewritings of a 20th centuryhistorian called ChristopherDawson. Few people in the UKwill have heard of him (he ismore popular in the USA and,curiously, Brazil) and I am onlyaware of him because he was mygrandfather and I inherited hisliterary estate. So when this cameinto my possession I decided tofamiliarize myself with his workand promote his books via a website(www.christopherdawson.org).As he was a historian of ideasrather than bare facts (though hiserudition was immense), many ofthese ideas are still very relevanttoday.

One of his main themes is theimportance of Culture. Todescribe its function, he compares

it to a plant in this very strikingimage:

“Every culture is like a plant. Itmust have its roots in the earth,and for sunlight it needs to beopen to the spiritual. At thepresent moment we are busycutting its roots and shutting outall light from above.”

It is, he says, “a fragile thing”,which, like a plant, needs to benurtured and can be easilydestroyed. But, in many cases, itcan also be revived, as any plantlover knows, and this hashappened many times in history.

What did he mean by “cutting theroots”? He was referring to thelack of importance given tohistory, especially the Europeanpast, and in particular the MiddleAges. For this reason he

Christopher Dawson (1889 - 1970)

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with the following words: “Themind of the student isoverwhelmed and dazed by thevolume of new knowledge whichis being accumulated by thelabour of specialists, while thenecessity for using education as astepping-stone to a profitablecareer leaves him little time tostop and think. And the same istrue of the teacher, who hasbecome a kind of civil servant

tied to a routine over which hecan have little control.”

In Dawson’s view it wasfundamental to become familiarwith our past in order toreconnect with those roots. “Thecrisis of Europe is the crisis of theworld”, he wrote. “All the livingforces that are moving the worldtoday, whether scientific,economic or political, have theirroots in European culture andwould wither if that culture wereto break down.”

This statement will certainly gratewith our modern sensibilities andsound ‘ethnocentric’, or‘eurocentric’. However, I think we

also need to practise tolerancetowards earlier views if we are toextract ideas that can be usefulfor us today; and Dawson waswell aware that culture (like aplant) is not a closed system, butis constantly being transformedby a multitude of influences.Science, for example, re-enteredthe West through the influence ofthe Arabic world in the MiddleAges. Likewise, many ideas of

European origin, such ascommunism or the ideals offreedom, equality and democracy,spread from Europe to otherparts of the world. And in today’sglobal village, cross-fertilization isconstantly occurring.

Let us now look at the secondpart of the sentence quotedearlier, where he states that weare “shutting out all light fromabove”. Here we come to one ofthe main ideas that permeates allof Dawson’s writings - thatreligion is one of the great drivingforces of history and a crucialfactor in the rise and fall ofcivilizations: “The world religions

advocated the study of Christianculture, which in his view hadcontributed much more thanpeople generally think to thedevelopment of Western culture,which has now been transformedinto a global culture. I cannot gointo all the reasons he cites forthis, but you can find more detailson the website mentioned above.

His study of history, however,embraced the entire world, andhis first book entitledThe Age ofthe Gods, surveyed the greatcultures of the ancient world. Hedid not look at those cultureswith a condescending eye, butvalued them equally with an openmind. One of his maxims was: “aculture can only be understoodfrom within”.This sympatheticapproach to all cultures of thepast led him to point out, forexample, that the sophisticatedadministration of ancient Egypt“exerted a vital formative influenceon the tradition of European stateadministration through itsinheritance by the Hellenisticmonarchies and the RomanEmpire.” Egypt, therefore, wouldbe one of those ‘roots’ of modernculture.

He also criticized the modernisttendency to specialisation and thefocus on technological progress,which has led to the neglect oftruly ‘human’ progress. In hisbookThe Crisis of WesternEducation, he warns that byprogressively abandoning the‘liberal arts’, in favour of morepractical, career-oriented subjects,we are in danger of losing the‘soul’ of our culture. Teachers andstudents today might resonate

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are the great spiritual highwaysthat have led mankind throughhistory from remote antiquity tomodern times.”

Nowadays, religion is very muchout of fashion, at least in much ofthe Western world. Dawson’sview, however, is that “thereligious instinct is part of thenature of man”. Even more, hestates that “the forms of violenceand aggression that threaten todestroy our world [he was writingthis in the 1940s] are the result of

the starvation and frustration ofman’s spiritual nature.” Dawsonwas not entirely alone in thisview.The great historian ofreligious ideas, Mircea Eliade,remarked that instead of ‘HomoSapiens’, we should talk about‘Homo Religiosus’, so central isreligion – or the idea of thesacred, as Eliade referred to it –to the structure of humanconsciousness.

In Dawson’s view, therefore, if wecollectively deprive ourselves ofspiritual nourishment, ourcivilization will wither and die,

because it will be deprived of itsvitality. As he says in one of hisworks, “what our civilisation lacksis not power and wealth andknowledge, but spiritual vitality”.Through all his wide-ranginghistorical research, he came to thefollowing conclusion: “A societywhich has lost its religionbecomes sooner or later a societywhich has lost its culture”.

Living through a large part of the20th century (1889-1970),Christopher Dawson witnessed

the horrors of the First WorldWar, followed by those of theSecond. Like many of hiscontemporary thinkers, he wasprofoundly disturbed by theseevents and could see mankind’sseemingly unstoppable ‘progress’towards totalitarianism. Unlikemany others, however, he saw thismovement as not only beingcharacteristic of Fascism andCommunism, but also ofCapitalism. He saw them as threeforms of the same thing – amaterialistic tendency towards themechanization of human life and

the complete subordination of theindividual to the State and to theeconomic process.

What can save us from this? InDawson’s view, the best way tocombat totalitarianism in any ofits forms is by “a turning of thehuman mind from thecircumference to the centre”. Inother words, “it is only by therediscovery of the spiritual worldand the restoration of man’sspiritual capacities that it ispossible to save humanity fromself-destruction.”

To conclude, Dawson’s view ofthe importance of religion in thehistory of culture may becurrently unfashionable, given theprevailing worldview that religionis something that belongs to thepast, whereas the future belongsto technology. But who knowswhat the position may be in 20 or100 years’ time? While many haveclaimed that religion is a forcethat obstructs the development ofscience, Dawson points out theflaw in this argument, becausescience flourished in the earlycenturies of Islam and it wasfrom that religious culture thatscience returned to the West.Theprobable etymological root of theword ‘religion’ – from ‘religare’meaning to bind together –shows us that it is not in itself adivisive force. Every human ideacan become divisive if it iswrongly used by human beings. Ifused rightly, religion, like politicsor science, can be a force forunion and harmony.

Julian Scott

SCIENCE

galaxy, we started to observe the patterns, sizes,shapes and movements of the distant stars, galaxiesand nebulas. From those observations, great mindscame up with theories to describe the laws of physicsin mathematical terms. Following the relativelysimple observations of Copernicus, Kepler andNewton, to name but a few, Einstein came up with

An Introduc�on to Dark Ma�er and Dark Energy

Ever since human beings have been looking at thestars, we have been wondering what the universeoutside of our little planet is made of. From religiousbeliefs to scientific theories, the wonders, and manyunanswered questions, remain.

As our tools evolved and became more precise,enabling us to look beyond our solar system and

PhotobyBryanGoffonUnsplash

What is theUniverseMadeof?

the theory of General Relativity. It is so far the mostcomplete theory that has allowed us to determinethe movement of all objects in time and space.

In the 20th century we were able to observe othergalaxies apart from our own and we discovered thatthe stars on the outer rim of galaxies such asAndromeda are spinning faster than those at thecentre. This goes against the laws of gravity and itwas for that reason that astrophysicists have assumedthat there must be more matter out there than wecan see. This is known as Dark Matter, a type ofmatter that does not interact with light, which mustexist in order for the General Relativity theory tomake sense. But how much Dark Matter is outthere? Scientists have estimated that matter must bemade from at least 85% Dark Matter for the theoryto work.Unfortunately, as this Dark Matter does notinteract with light, it is extremely difficult tomeasure and we have yet to detect any of itphysically.

But this is not all. Astrophysicists have also observedthat the universe is expanding, meaning that thereis a force greater than gravity (coming from bothvisible and dark matter) which is “pushing” theuniverse outward. Again, in order for the GeneralRelativity theory to make sense, there must be anundetected force that achieves this.This force, as you

might have guessed, has been called Dark Energy.How much Dark Energy would be necessary for thetheory to work? Well, as Einstein explains with hisfamous equation “E=mc2”, energy (E) and mass (m)are connected with the speed of light (c). So, theequivalent of 75% of what our Universe is made ofwould be dark energy.

To recap, according to the General Relativity theoryand recent observations, our Universe is composedof 75% dark energy, 20% dark matter and only 5%visible matter. It is difficult to grasp that 95% of ouruniverse might be made of something that wecannot see or measure, at least so far. But this is justa theory, like other theories such as MOND(Modified Newtonian Dynamics) or String Theory,which are trying to make sense of reality.

There might not be any dark matter or energy, as theyare for now only a product of our imagination. Andthis is the point of the great exercise of trying tounderstand the world we are living in: it requires allthe imagination we can muster and then thepatience, discipline and love for the truth to make ita reality.

Florimond Krins

ImagebyCouleurfromPixabay

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MYTHS OF THEWORLD

The Pleiades is an open clusterof stars located in the

zodiacal constellation of Taurus.It contains over 1000 stars butwith the naked eye it is possible

to see only about six of them,depending on the conditions ofvisibility.

The Pleiades have been knownsince antiquity to cultures allaround the world.They areamongst the first stars mentionedin ancient literature, appearing inChinese annals from about 2350BC. Seven Pleiades are depictedon the Nebra disk (Fig.1), the

oldest representation of the nightsky that has come down to us,dating back to around 1600 BC.The earliest references inEuropean literature are in a poemby Hesiod (around the 7th C. BC)and in Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad,where they are referred to as the“seven maidens” or “seven sisters”.

How did this cluster come to becalled the Pleiades ? Their mostlikely origin resides in thematernal lineage of the “sevensisters” of Greek mythology.According to this myth, the“seven maidens” are the daughtersof Atlas and his wife, Pleione.Since the seven came forth fromtheir mother Pleione, heroffspring were thus collectivelyknown by a slight adaptation ofher name.

There is another possibility for theorigin of their name. One of themany versions of the storyassociated with this star groupingmaintains that the seven Pleiadesare in fact the “seven doves” (fromthe Greek word peleiade) whocarried ambrosia (a drink whichbestowed immortality on men and

gods) to the infant Zeus. Somehave held that when these “sevendoves” flew up to the heavens, onewas lost, and this is why only sixstars are now readily visible to thenaked eye. In Greek mythology,an important role of the Pleiadeswas that of companions andattendants to the goddess of thehunt, Artemis.The seven Pleiadeswere also thought to benursemaids and teachers to theyoung “vine god”Dionysus.

Finally, one more source claimsthat the name ‘Pleiades’originates from the ancientGreek word plein, meaning ‘tosail’. Indeed, since remoteantiquity, sailors have relied onthe stars for navigation.

Just as the classicalMediterranean mind saw thePleiades as a group of closelyrelated (female) individuals, soother cultures around the worldhave also seen this cluster of starsas emblematic of groups ofpeople, herds of animals, flocks ofbirds, and the like. For example,one of the North AmericanIndian tribes saw what is now

The Nebra DiskFig.1

TheWisdom

KingGundari

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called the Pleiades as a group ofchildren who had become lostwhile wandering among the stars,now huddled together forwarmth and reassurance. Otherstar watchers echoed thematernal theme and saw this stargrouping as a hen with herchickens. Some perceived thisconstellation as a group of sisters,brothers, or animals, the numberbeing as few as six and as manyas sixteen. Central to all thesenotions is the idea of a family orintimate assemblage, with theimplied need for attention to thewelfare of its members.

The risings and settings of thePleiades together with oropposite to the Sun have beenused the world over as timesignals indicating the right pointat which to undertake criticalagricultural tasks at both thebeginning and the end of thegrowing season.These seasonalindicators were of utmostimportance to the peoples whorelied upon them for accurateguidance in matters of physicalsurvival. Hence, the Pleiadesbecame emblematic of theseasonal rituals that kept

communities alive and insuredthe continuity of human life.

Given the importance of rainfalland moisture to agriculture, it isnot surprising that the Pleiadeswere sometimes associated withrain, rivers, hail, snow and evenwith floods.This linkage nodoubt arose because theconjunctions and oppositions ofthe Sun with the Pleiades (in theZodiacal sign of Taurus andScorpio) indicate the time ofspring and autumn rains,respectively (in the northernhemisphere).

However, not all groups andcultures have associated thePleiades with typical femininequalities such as reproduction,nurturing, protecting, harvesting,etc. The Hindu system ofastronomy calls this star groupingKrittika, the “seven nurses” ofKartikeya, the Hindu god of war.Perhaps even the Greekassociation with the warlikegoddess Artemis is a reference toan older myth of Hindu origin.In ancient Mesopotamia thePleiades are mainly associatedwith the god of the netherworld,Nergal, who corresponded to theRoman god of war, Mars.

In this regard, the story of thefounding of Rome and theimportance of Mars, father of thetwins Romulus and Remus, iswell known. Interestingly, theRoman poet Ovid also tells us ofthe importance of the Pleiadesand the star Maia, the older ofthe “seven sisters” and herconnection to the secret name ofRome.There is good reason tobelieve that not only the sevenhills of Rome, but even their

arrangement on the territorybounded by the ancient ServianWall, seems to reflect that of thePleiades in the sky (Fig.2). Maia’scounterpart would be thePalatine Hill, where Romulusploughed the furrow that startedthe founding of Rome.Thetraditional date of the foundingof Rome, April 21st (at the startof the astrological month ofTaurus), also brings us back tothe Pleiades. Ancient Rome thusreflects the appearance of thePleiades on Earth, but also thedate of its founding makes aprecise reference to their annualcycle in the celestial sphere.

In summary, in this mysteriousgroup of stars and their hiddensymbolism we find interwoventogether mythological,astrological, astronomical andphilosophical teachings whichopen up the door to the lostworld of the ancients.

Agostino Dominici

(TAIGETE)

(MAIA)

(ALCYONE) (CELENO)

(ELETTRA)

(MEROPE)

(ASTEROPE)

The Pleiades (1885) by the Symbolist painter Elihu Vedder

Correspondencebetweenthe7hillsofRomeandthepositionofthePleiadesinthesky.

Fig.2

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