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Apuleius Plutarch & Eliade
Yes. And putting the three together makes something especially interesting visible: Plutarch gives us the mythic meaning, Apuleius gives us the initiate’s experience, and Eliade extracts the structural pattern. One caution first: Plutarch does not actually describe the Isis initiation ceremony in the way Apuleius does. His On Isis and Osiris is principally an interpretation of the Isis–Osiris myth and its religious/philosophical meaning. Apuleius XI is our fullest literary ac
davidsmith208
1 day ago6 min read
Apuleius initiation
Yes. Apuleius gives the famous description in The Golden Ass, Book XI, especially chapters 21–24—but there is an important wrinkle: he also describes two subsequent initiations into the mysteries of Osiris and Serapis later in Book XI. 1. The Isis initiation — Metamorphoses XI.21–24 This is the passage you are probably thinking of. The sequence is: XI.21 — The priest Mithras explains that initiation occurs only when Isis herself indicates the appropriate time. Apuleius calls
davidsmith208
1 day ago3 min read
Read more Mircea Eliade
Yes. If what you liked about Mircea Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane is the combination of big comparative ideas, mythology, symbolism, ritual, sacred space/time, and a very readable attempt to see what different religions have in common, there are several successors—but none is an exact replacement. Eliade’s approach has actually become somewhat controversial in academic religious studies. Later scholars often criticized him for imposing universal patterns too readily. B
davidsmith208
2 days ago4 min read
Yoga mat workout
Yes. Given how much tennis/pickleball and swimming you do, I would make a short mat routine that fills the gaps those sports leave rather than trying to duplicate them. And I wouldn’t accept the theory “do what you hate because you need it most” literally. Sometimes you hate an exercise because it’s exposing a weakness—but sometimes you simply hate the exercise. The better rule is: Do the movements your sports don’t give you, especially the ones you can do consistently. Your
davidsmith208
2 days ago2 min read
Don’t be friends with a Bear
Yes. And the page you photographed is making a very interesting composite: Rumi is drawing on Qur’anic ideas about Jesus, but the story of Jesus literally running up a mountain to escape a fool is not in the Bible or the Qur’an. 1. The “Jesus fleeing from the fool” story is Rumi’s story The passage is in Rumi’s Mathnawi, Book III, approximately verses 2570–2599. The heading itself is essentially: “The story of Jesus, peace be upon him, fleeing to the mountain from fools.” Rum
davidsmith208
2 days ago6 min read
Hay Ya get up for prayer!
Yes—but there is an interesting correction to your intuition. “Ḥayya ʿalaṣ-ṣalāh” (حَيَّ عَلَى الصَّلَاةِ) is usually translated “Come to prayer,” but the Arabic has a stronger sense of summoning or urging someone to come forward. And the fact that you hear it at dawn is connected to a fascinating early history of the Islamic call to prayer. 1. Breaking down the Arabic حَيَّ عَلَى الصَّلَاةِ Ḥayya ʿalaṣ-ṣalāh Literally: ḥayya (حَيَّ) — come! / come forward! / hasten! ʿalā (عل
davidsmith208
2 days ago4 min read
Coomaraswamy
Yes. Coomaraswamy is probably an excellent next author for you if you are enjoying Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane. There is a real intellectual overlap: both are trying to recover the meaning of myth, symbol, sacred space, cosmic order, and traditional religion. But they approach it differently. Eliade is primarily a historian/comparative phenomenologist of religion; Coomaraswamy is more of a metaphysician of traditional cultures who happens to write extensively about ar
davidsmith208
3 days ago4 min read
The neighbor then the house
Yes. The line you are remembering from Rumi, Book VI is drawing on a very old Islamic maxim associated with the Prophet Muhammad: “The neighbor, then the house.” Arabic: الجار ثم الدار (al-jār thumma al-dār) The fuller formulation is often given as: “First the neighbor, then the house; first the companion, then the journey.” al-jār thumma al-dār; al-rafīq thumma al-safar. There is actually an important nuance about attribution: the short maxim is widely attributed to Muhammad
davidsmith208
4 days ago2 min read
Ballsville Tennis Center
THE BALLSVILLE DATA CENTER COMMUNITY BENEFIT PRINCIPLE If Ballsville is going to become the next great data-center destination, I would like to suggest that we learn from the experience of Loudoun County, Virginia. Loudoun discovered that data centers can produce extraordinary amounts of local tax revenue — enough to help pay for schools, roads, public safety, libraries, parks, recreation and community facilities. Ballsville should therefore adopt a simple principle: If you a
davidsmith208
5 days ago2 min read
Training before PB
Yes. Based on the exercise pattern we’ve been developing, I would add gym strength work rather than create a whole additional Wednesday workout. The key is that tennis, pickleball, and swimming already give you a lot of cardiovascular and lower-body activity. What you’re missing is deliberate resistance training, especially: pushing muscles — chest, shoulders, triceps pulling muscles — upper back, lats, biceps glutes/hamstrings core/rotational stability hip abductors/adductor
davidsmith208
6 days ago2 min read
Musk scent
Yes. The translator has captured an important point, but “divine light inside” is actually an interpretation of Rumi’s imagery, rather than what the Persian literally says. The two lines you are asking about are Masnavi, Book II, 163–164: چون که شُکر گام کرد و ره بُرید لاجرم زان گام در کامی رسید رفتنِ یک منزلی بر بویِ ناف بهتر از صد منزلِ گام و طواف A fairly literal rendering would be: When he has given thanks for the tracks and traversed the road, inevitably, through those
davidsmith208
7 days ago3 min read
Complimentary exercises
Yes. Given how much tennis + pickleball + swimming you already do, you have a very specific imbalance: you get plenty of legs, rotation, pulling through the stroke, shoulder endurance, and cardiovascular work, but relatively little deliberate pushing strength, scapular/rear-shoulder strength, hip stability, and basic lower-body strength. I would think of your gym work as “fill the holes,” not add more conditioning. Your highest-value exercises Exercise Why it matters for you
davidsmith208
Sep 32 min read
All you need is the morning
Yes—but I think there is an important distinction: I cannot find a well-attested classical Indian proverb whose literal wording is “all you need is the morning.” What you are remembering, however, corresponds remarkably well to a much older Indian conception of what the morning is for. The closest traditional idea is not simply “get up early.” It is that the properly received morning already gives you many of the fundamental things needed for a good day: light, fresh air, con
davidsmith208
Sep 24 min read
Today’s Ai study
Yes. And I think the connection you are seeing is stronger than a superficial similarity, but we have to be precise about what is actually being substantiated. The key is that Eliade’s statement on your page and the Sant Mat teaching can be read as describing the same symbolic structure at two scales: cosmos outside → consciousness inside. 1. What Eliade is actually claiming The important sentence on your page is: “the very structure of the cosmos keeps memory of the celestia
davidsmith208
Aug 314 min read
Bright Sky
Yes — your intuition is basically right, but there is an important linguistic refinement: Dyēus did not originally mean simply “the sun” or even “sunshine.” It is better reconstructed as the bright/daylight sky, and the deity-name arose from that conception. The page you’re reading in Eliade is pointing toward a very deep Indo-European semantic chain: shine → brightness → bright sky → daylight → heaven → celestial being/god And Sanskrit preserves this chain unusually well. 1.
davidsmith208
Aug 305 min read
Chidakash
Yes. Chidākāś / Chidākāsha (चिदाकाश, cidākāśa) is a very interesting term in Sant Mat because it sits at the intersection of several older Indian mystical vocabularies. But there is an important distinction: it does not originally mean simply “a region in the inner world where the soul travels.” That is a later, more systematized Sant Mat usage layered onto a much older idea of the “space of consciousness.” 1. First, the word itself The Sanskrit is: cit / cid + ākāśa cit (चित
davidsmith208
Aug 295 min read
Life is Short
Yes. If we set aside the Sant Darshan Singh context and examine the couplet itself, it becomes even more interesting. The couplet is: عمرِ دراز مانگ کے لائی تھی چار دن دو آرزو میں کٹ گئے، دو انتظار میں Umr-e-darāz māng ke lā’ī thī chār din Do ārzū mein kaṭ gaye, do intizār mein. A significant correction to my previous answer: the strongest documentary evidence points to Seemab Akbarabadi (1882–1951), not Bahadur Shah Zafar. The poem appears in Seemab’s Kalim-e-Ajam, published
davidsmith208
Aug 274 min read
All men over 40 are scoundrels
Yes. The quotation occurs in the “STRAY SAYINGS” subsection of Shaw’s Maxims for Revolutionists. The immediate context is particularly revealing because Shaw surrounds the famous line with remarks about progress, decadence, reformers, youth, and age. Here is the surrounding passage, with the central line in bold: “Decadence can find agents only when it wears the mask of progress. “In moments of progress the noble succeed, because things are going their way: in moments of deca
davidsmith208
Aug 252 min read
The Time of Origin
Yes — your intuition is very close to what Eliade is doing, but there is an important distinction between validating the structure of the myth and proving the myth literally happened. In fact, the distinction becomes especially interesting if you bring mystical experience, reincarnation research, and modern cosmology together. 1. What Eliade actually means by illud tempus On pp. 80–85, Eliade is not simply saying that religious people remember a historical event in the past.
davidsmith208
Aug 256 min read
Patanjali and Soham
Yes — and this is a fascinating case where the spiritual interpretation is much stronger than the historical claim. The passage you quoted is from Abbot George Burke/Swami Nirmalananda Giri’s Yoga: Science of the Absolute, and he is quite explicit about what he is doing. His statement that “Patanjali was a Nath Yogi whose sadhana was centered on Soham” is a Nath-tradition claim, not something established by historical research. 1. What Patanjali actually says The crucial sequ
davidsmith208
Aug 235 min read
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