As the Confucian school was referred to as Rújiā, the Daoist school was referred to as Daojiā, each called out as one of the six main philosophical schools during the Warring States Period to the Early/Former Han. While a Daoist “canon”… Read More ›
Ancient Civilization
Early Chinese Philosophy: The Humanism of Confucius
The classical period of ancient Chinese philosophy runs from about the 6th century BCE till the 2nd century BCE and is marked by the proliferation and flowering of many varying philosophical schools, an era in Chinese history referred to (by Chinese… Read More ›
The Legacy of Socrates: Skepticism, Knowledge and Reason
One of the best indications of the influence of Socrates on the development of Western philosophy, what the Hellenes, or Greeks, termed philosophia, his ideas being primarily represented by the writings of his best known pupil Plato, is the more modern… Read More ›
Pythagoras: The Father of Hellenic Philosophy
Pythagoras, Thales of Miletus, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Xenophanes, Zeno, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, and Democritus all made contributions to Pre-Socratic philosophical thought and were referenced by later philosophers and historians to some extent or another. Although none of the complete works of Pre-Socratic philosophers survive today… Read More ›
The Metaphysics of the I Ching: The Alignment of Heaven, Man and Earth
While the translational difficulties from Traditional Chinese into English are fairly well documented, even with the introduction of the Pinyin Romanization system of Chinese words in the middle of the twentieth century which is now predominantly used, it’s with noting… Read More ›
Ancient Chinese Theology: From Shàngdì to Tiān
The Chinese civilization is if not the, then certainly one of, the oldest persistent civilizations on the planet.[1] Its roots go back to the early part of the second millennium BCE with the first dynastic empire, the Xia Dynasty (circa c…. Read More ›
From the (Ancient) Far East: The Translation Challenge
We see the first evidence of Chinese writing, pictograms or logograms on bronze and bone artifacts from the last years of the Xia Dynasty (2070 – 1600 BCE), almost four thousand years ago. This writing system, the foundations of which became the what… Read More ›
Eurasian Mythos: Establishing the Laurasian Hypothesis
These mythological narratives clearly reached back at some level or another into the pre-civilization times of the societies within which they emerged, there was clearly not only similarities between the accounts, but also clearly some “borrowing” of the narratives between… Read More ›
Roman Cosmogony: The Metamorphoses of Ovid
When trying to ascertain the belief systems of the ancients, and specifically as related to their views on cosmogony and theogony, one is apt to conclude that anything written by the Latin/Romans can add nothing to the historical record of value… Read More ›
Ancient Chinese Theology: Shàngdì, Pángǔ, Tiān and the Dao
Before the evolution of the more esoteric and all-encompassing principle of Heaven (Tiān) which we find so prevalent in classical Chinese philosophical circles after the advent of the Zhou Dynasty, the primary divine entity that is worshipped and looked to as… Read More ›
Vedic Cosmogony: Skepticism, Puruṣa and Hiraṇyagarbha
When one looks at the early creation myths, i.e. mythos, of the Indo-Aryans[2], what we today call Hinduism, one is confronted with the fact that their early mythology was not so clearly codified or synthesized as its sister cultures in… Read More ›
Orphic Theogony: Thanes and the Great Cosmic Egg
While Hesiod’ Theogony remains the standard, orthodox version of theogony (i.e. the story of the origin and genealogy of the gods) to the ancient Greeks, there exists an alternate tradition attributed to pseudo-historical and somewhat mythical figure of Orpheus, a character whose… Read More ›
Classic Hellenic Theogony: Chaos, Chronos and Eros
One of the nice things that you found as you studied more advanced civilizations, as you got further into the first millennium BCE, you had better material and source texts to work with. You no longer had to rely on… Read More ›
Ancient Persian Theology: Zarathustra and the Avesta
In the 2nd and first millennium BCE, some 1500 years before Christianity and the Roman Empire spread throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East, we see evidence of the prevalence of a faith that has come to be known as Zoroastrianism, a term… Read More ›
The Enûma Eliš: Sumer- Babylonian Creation Mythos
Like all ancient mythological traditions, in order to have a contextual understanding of ancient myth and the culture within which it evolved, one must look at the historical and archeological record, along with the extant textual and writing material, most… Read More ›
