The Sacred SUN

 T he son of a wealthy and noble family, Plato (427-347 B.C.) was preparing for a career in politics when the trial and eventual execution of Socrates (399 BC) changed the course of his life. He abandoned his political career and turned to philosophy, opening a school on the outskirts of Athens dedicated to the Socratic search for wisdom. Plato's school, then known as the Academy, was the first university in western history and operated from 387 B.C. until A.D. 529, when it was closed by Justinian.   Unlike his mentor Socrates, Plato was both a writer and a teacher. His writings are in the form of dialogues, with Socrates as the principal speaker. In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato described symbolically the predicament in which mankind finds itself and proposes a way of salvation. The Allegory presents, in brief form, most of Plato's major philosophical assumptions: his belief that the world revealed by our senses is not the real world but only a poor ...

  Yggdrasil (Old Norse Yggdrasill or Askr Yggdrasils) is the mighty tree whose trunk rises at the geographical center of the Norse spiritual cosmos. The rest of that cosmos, including the Nine Worlds, is arrayed around it and held together by its branches and roots, which connect the various parts of the cosmos to one another. Because of this, the well-being of the cosmos depends on the well-being of Yggdrasil. When the tree trembles, it signals the arrival of Ragnarok, the destruction of the universe. The first element in Yggdrasil’s name, Yggr (“Terrible”), is one of the countless names of the god Odin, and indicates how powerful and fearsome the Vikings perceived him to be. The second element, drasill, means “horse.” So Yggdrasil’s name means “Horse of Odin,” a reference to the time when the Terrible One sacrificed himself to discover the runes. The tree was his gallows and bore his limp body, which the Norse poetic imagination described metaphorically as a horse and a rider. In...

An illustration for the story Bruce and the Spider by the author James Baldwin           Battle of Bannockburn, Bruce addresses his troops There was once a king of Scotland whose name was Robert Bruce. He had need to be both brave and wise, for the times in which he lived were wild and rude. The King of England was at war with him, and had led a great army into Scotland to drive him out of the land. Battle after battle had been fought. Six times had Bruce led his brave little army against his foes; and six times had his men been beaten, and driven into flight. At last his army was scattered, and he was forced to hide himself in the woods and in lonely places among the mountains. One rainy day, Bruce lay on the ground under a rude shed, listening to the patter of the drops on the roof above him. He was tired and sick at heart, and ready to give up all hope. It seemed to him that there was no use for him to try to do anything more. As he lay thinking, he saw a spi...