#phaedo

[rilke]

[kebriones]

The Phaedo comic is now available both in english and greek as pdf on my kofi store with a pay-what-you-want option!

read about socrates killing himself from the comfort of your home!

[arch--ang3l]

I’m in a very Plato time of my life you guys

[funeral]

Plato, Phædo

[platonicfrendswithsocrates]

It’s Phaedo Phursday!

[histinart]

the death of socrates by jacques-louis david (1787)

[hermitslibrary]

"how singular is the thing called pleasure, and how curiously related to pain, which might be thought to be the opposite of it; for they never come to a man together, and yet he who pursues either of them is generally compelled to take the other. they are two, and yet they grow together out of one head or stem; and i cannot help thinking that if aesop had noticed them, he would have made a fable about god trying to reconcile their strife, and when he could not, he fastened their heads together; and this is the reason why when one comes the other follows, as I find in my own case pleasure comes following after the pain in my leg…”

plato’s phaedo, translated by benjamin dowett

[pathofregeneration]

Joseph Parker, Untitled

* * *

The Visions of Joseph Parker, part III

“In Aldous Huxley's 1959 lecture, Natural History of Visions, Huxley articulates the visionary realm as ‘…jewel-like luminescence evoking clarity in its multi-faceted and transparent shimmer and iridescent hues.’ This description evokes Parker’s world, a spectral world with one-point perspective using the symbol of the ascending path up the mountainous road to enlightenment.

In Parker’s own words:

Attaining the mountain top has a spiritual meaning as follows: All human souls on this planet are in a school of learning to perfect themselves in order to attain a higher state of being. I have painted the mountains very steep because as the soul masters the difficulties on the path, more difficult tests lie ahead. Once the soul reaches the peak, it attains what the Buddhists call Nirvana. Then the soul does not need to be reborn, but continues its evolution in the Spiritual Sun that surrounds the physical sun. On the top of the mountain is a holy being radiating out love in all directions.

Joseph Parker is one of the great mystic painters of the late 20th century. Mysticism, according to The Abingdon Dictionary of Living Religions, is summarily defined as: ‘an apprehension of an ultimate non-sensuous unity in all things, a direct apperception of deity, the art of union with reality, an immediate contact or union of the self with a larger-than-self.’ Images of paradise can be found in the literature of all the world’s wisdom paths. The visionary abode of Buddha, as described in the Flower Ornament Sutra, is ‘made of jewels of various colors and decorated with all kinds of precious flowers. The various adornments emanated lights like clouds.’ Joseph Parker’s vision-scapes of the soul confirm the ideal world described by Socrates in the Phaedo, a world beyond compare to that which we know. ‘In this other earth the colors are much purer and more brilliant than they are down here. The mountains and stones have a richer gloss, a livelier transparency and intensity of hue.’”

— Joseph Parker, Carl Hammer Gallery