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VOL. 02:3
Price:
$12.50
Parabola's Fall 1977 issue: Cosmology The vision of a harmonious universe shows everything in its right place except the human being. Man seems to be the only living thing that has to question himself, that doesn't know who he is nor what he is for. Plants and animals fulfill their function without discussion, unless we interfere with them. It is only we who don't know what to do with ourselves; we have forgotten our lines, and there is no prompter. We drift onstage as though struck with amnesia, not knowing our own name, nor how to find ourselves again. Our whole world is a Jericho whose walls are tumbling down. Will our dissonance destroy us? Or is there another, truer note within our range, a resolving chord through which we could find our balance again in the rhythm and melody of creation? Perhaps we can remember, rather than invent, the answers; perhaps a deliberate searching in our past can help us understand our inexplicable present. --from the editorial Focus Cover: Mandala From an illustrated manuscript page, symbolizing the evolving and dissolving universe Rajasthan, c. seventeenth century Courtesy Ajit Mookerjee Collection In this issue:
"Views of the Cosmos" by Brother David Steindl-Rast
- Our images of the universe can either open or close us to the mystery at its core
"Do-It-Yourself Cosmology" by Ursula K. Le Guin
- Playing God with the author of The Left Hand of Darkness
"The Intelligence of the Heart: An Outline of the Symbolic Method and Its Hieratic Nature" by R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz
- A legendary and controversial Egyptologist proposes a radical approach to knowledge
"Five Poems" by Lorel Desjardins
"The Cosmos Is His Sanctuary" by Ernesto Cardenal
- A Nicaraguan poet's reading of Psalm 150
"The Spiritual Landscape" by Elaine Jahner
- For the Lakota the vision quest takes place simultaneously in the heart and on the plains; a little-known Sioux myth shows how they have always been the same
"Selections from Essentials: Definitions and Aphorisms" by Jean Toomer
- Best known as the author of Cane, Toomer published these observations "on the nature and forms of human existence" in a private edition in 1931. The first in a series of excerpts.
"Outer Worlds, Inner Teachings" by Anne Bevan
- Some surprising views on the esoteric meaning of astrology, the flat earth and the cosmos within us
"On the Principles of Movement" by Harry Remde
- A graphic demonstration of the laws of psychic and physical movement, from circle to spiral
"The Triumph of the Improbable: A conversation with Lloyd Motz"
- The author of The Universe: Its Beginning and End, gives an astronomer's view of the forces that pattern both molecular and galactic worlds
Tangents - Reviews
John A. Miles, Jr. on Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden
Epicycles - Traditional stories from around the world
"Tales of a Demon: The Faithful Minister" / Indian retold by Paul Jordan-Smith
"The Breath of Brahma" / Vedic retold by Paul Jordan-Smith
"The World-tree Yggdrasil" / Norse retold by Ann Himler
"The Gela-from-Above and the Gela-from-Below" / Ivory Coast (Africa)
"The Chain of Worlds" / Campa (Peru) retold by Chief Kecizate Ashaninga
