booknotes
Armstrong’s confusion over ‘Axial spirituality’, ‘Axial peoples’
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009“The first people to attempt and Axial Age spirituality were pastoralists living on the steppes of southern Russia, who called themselves the Aryans’,
Chapter 1, first paragraph, of Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation’.
Armstrong’s first sentence in her book is completely wrongheaded, and shows the first of a series of fallacies that completely wreck her whole [...]
Online selections from World History And The Eonic Effect
Sunday, January 25th, 2009The online selections from World History And The Eonic Effect have a lot of material on, and insight into, the question of the Axial Age. Start here: Mysterious Drumbeat
The Axial Age, and the ‘middle’ ages
Monday, November 10th, 2008Selection from World History And The Eonic Effect, the last paragraph of one section leading into the next, with its question.
We are ready to move backwards again toward antiquity in search of the right perspective on the rise of the modern world. We have asked ‘middle of what?’ There can be only one answer, [...]
The Axial Age and the eonic effect
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008Reviewing WHEE:
Seeing the Axial Age in a nutshell
The prime objective is to describe a beautiful discovery: a non-random pattern in world history. This is called the ‘eonic effect’. The term ‘eonic’ is a pun on ‘eon’ and ‘eonic’ (as in digital sampling electronics, type ‘eonic in google’ and see all the DSP companies listed).
Even superficial [...]
The Great Transformation: Karen Armstrong on the Axial Age
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008An old essay on Armstrong’s book on the Axial Age
Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation, an historical depiction of the Axial Age, is in many ways a poor addition to the literature, although one destined to remain popular, no doubt. Perhaps, however, her account will draw attention to a question that has been neglected for too [...]