this.

some of which is what i've been up to recently. that and talking greek. οἴμοι.

"Paracelsus" was the Latin pen name of Phillippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim.

Hohenheim died in Salzburg in 1541 at the age of 48. "He was a Renaissance physician, botanist, alchemist, astrologer, and general occultist" (wiki, emphasis mine). He gave the element zinc its name, and is credited as being the first systematic botanist. He was the first to synthesize laudanum, later to become the opiate of choice for much of Europe's aristocracy. He also invented the alphabet of the Magi, used to engrave the names of angels on talismans.

now. tell me that isn't the greatest thing you've heard in while. i dare you.

via wikipedia and danny r. inexpressible gratitude.

well, that about sums it up.

via vintage_ads

For teaching, of course, true eloquence consists, not in making people like what they disliked, nor in making them do what they shrank from, but in making clear what was obscure...

st. augustine, on christian teaching, iv.11

If heroes like Goethe and Schiller could not succeed in breaking open the enchanted gate which leads into the Hellenic magic mountain ...

friedrich nietzsche, the birth of tragedy (p. 75)

"hellenic magic mountain" is with no doubt at all one of the five best phrases of all time, by any standard, and under any judge.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! --- An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And floundering like a man in fire or lime ---

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,---

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

by wilfred owen

contrary to the shrill comment strings on every website i've seen this poem on, the title means "sweet and honorable it is," being the first phrase of the line of horace that ends the poem: dulce et decorum est pro patria mori: "sweet and honorable it is to die for one's country" (patria literally meaning fatherland).

this, i believe, is why Christianity died in so much of europe. our children asked for bread, and we (the Church) gave them gas bombs and ypres. we thought like the enemy did, and placed our trust in chariots, peace treaties, and the unalienable rights of men rather than in God. but that's just me.