“The landscape of Middle-earth England was both geographical and mystical. The hidden history reveals, for example, their belief in the existence of dragons. A creature of fantasy to us, the dragon is shown to embody philosophical views for them about the dark side of wealth, and the inevitable life-cycle of civilizations. Dealing death to dragons turns out to be a deep and subtle element of their understanding of life.”
―Brian Bates, The Real Middle Earth, Magic and Mysteries in the Dark Age

Image: Conversations with Smaug by J.R.R Tolkien

“I believe that most of what was said of God was in reality said of that spirit whose body is the Earth.”
―Æ (George William Russell), The Candle of Vision

Notes: George William Russell (1867–1935), known by his pen name Æ, a name he coined when he first encountered the word Aeon, a gnostic designation for god or divinity. Russell was a writer, painter, and social visionary who played a significant role alongside his close friends William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory in the Celtic Revival, a cultural and spiritual movement that emerged as part of the broader European occult revival.

Russell was known for his mysticism and exceptional clairvoyant abilities, coupled with his profound spiritual insight. One of his most salient contributions was the observation that the rigid dichotomy of good and evil serves to constrain human consciousness and perception, thereby precluding the full and authentic appreciation of beauty.

Image: The Spirit of the Pool by George William Russell

“For more than 99 percent of human history, the world was enchanted and man saw himself as an integral part of it. The complete reversal of this perception in a mere four hundred years or so has destroyed the continuity of the human experience and the integrity of the human psyche. It has very nearly wrecked the planet as well. The only hope, or so it seems to me, lies in a reenchantment of the world.”
― Morris Berman, The Reenchantment of the World

Image: Psyche Entering Cupid’s Garden by John William Waterhouse

“The artisan is a connoisseur of secrets, a magician; thus all crafts include some kind of initiation and are handed down by an occult tradition. He who 'makes' real things is he who knows the secret of making them.”
― Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible

Image: Svarog by Andrey Shishkin

“Imagination creates reality. The purpose of art: to make the unconscious conscious.”
― Richard Wagner

Image: ‘The Grail Miracle’ Neuschwanstein Castle, Bavaria by Wilhelm Hauschild

"En-Sof cannot be counted among the numerations [Sefiroth] because it constitutes their unity, abstract and additional, and not unity associated with these numerations"

Pico della Mirandola

This could give serious clues into what the religions of the middle eastern polytheists pre-Islamization may have actually entailed and it furthers solidifies the evidence that the Kaaba was not built by Ibrahim, but by those practicing their native polytheistic faith.