Resultado narrado por "Matthew Schmitz" em Todas as categorias

This brief outline of the comparatively meagre information we possess on what at one time was the most widely spread mystery-institution in the Roman empire, is introductory to the following small volume which will deal with the only Mithriac Ritual known to us. In dealing with this exceedingly instructive Ritual I found that the limits of one booklet would not suffice for an adequate introduction; and without this, I fear, many listeners will not be in a position to appreciate the Ritual at its just value.

Twenty Drawings is a brief but evocative art volume first published in 1919 that gathers twenty of Kahlil Gibran’s drawings, presented with an introductory essay by Alice Raphael. Rather than telling a conventional story, the book offers a visual meditation on beauty, the human form, spirituality, longing, and the dreamlike union of Eastern and Western artistic sensibilities that shaped Gibran’s work.

Brought to you by Altrusian Grace Media and human-narrated by Matthew Schmitz. This combined edition of The Prophet and The Forerunner by Kahlil Gibran gathers two of the author’s most beloved spiritual and poetic works into a single volume of timeless reflection. In The Prophet, the wise seer Almustafa prepares to leave the city of Orphalese and, before departing, offers luminous meditations on the central experiences of human life: love, marriage, children, work, freedom, sorrow, joy, death, and the soul’s relation to the divine.

The Meaning of the Glorious Quran by Marmaduke Pickthall is a revered English rendering of the Qur’an that presents the central message of Islam: the oneness, majesty, and mercy of God; the call to faith, prayer, moral discipline, and compassion; and the repeated reminder that human life is a test whose final meaning is fulfilled in divine judgment and the hereafter.

In “The Green Meadow,” an isolated narrator awakens in a strange, alien landscape between a sinister green forest and a distant, luminous meadow across blue water, with only fragments of memory and an overwhelming sense of cosmic dread. As the piece of land beneath him breaks away and drifts across the sea, he senses that the forest harbors hostile, sentient forces, while the radiant meadow exerts a terrible fascination and eerie promise of safety.

In “The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast,” the official Yalden discovers that the treasury of the strange city of Zeth has been emptied by corruption, and on the advice of the dubious oracle Oorn he is sent to recover the legendary treasure of the monstrous sorcerer Anathas, who dwells in the dreaded Cave of Three Winds. Armed with magical protections and driven by duty, greed, and youthful ambition, Yalden survives a hazardous journey across an alien wasteland and reaches the wizard-beast’s lair, where he finds an immense hoard of jewels and relics beyond a floor of blazing coals.

F. Lamplugh’s The Gnosis of the Light presents an esoteric “apocalypse” as a roadmap of initiation, in which salvation is not secured by belief alone but by awakening to an interior radiance that reorders the whole person. Moving through dense, emblematic visions and hierarchies, the work depicts the soul’s ascent from the world’s entanglements into a realm of intelligible Light, where names, powers, and ritual images function as stages of purification and recognition rather than mere mythology.

The Cloud of Unknowing (an anonymous 14th-century Christian mystical text often presented in modern editions with Evelyn Underhill’s introduction/editorial work) is a practical guide to contemplative prayer that teaches the seeker to move beyond discursive thinking and images in order to “know” God by love rather than intellect.

Brought to you by Altrusian Grace Media and narrated by Matthew Schmitz. The Madman: His Parables and Poems" by Kahlil Gibran is a poetic collection that delves into profound themes of identity, existence, and the nature of humanity, characteristic of Gibran's literary style in the early 20th century. This work reflects a philosophical exploration of the human condition through parables and poems, imbuing them with spiritual and metaphysical insights. Written during the early modern period, the book brings a unique blend of mystical thought and artistic expression.

Lamia is the English Romantic poet John Keats's lush, eerie tale of enchantment defeated by merciless rationality. Set in the world of ancient Greco-Roman myth, the poem tells the story of the serpent-spirit Lamia, who talks the god Hermes into transforming her into a beautiful woman so she can pursue her beloved, a handsome young man named Lycius. The couple is blissfully happy for a time—but their joy can't last. Icy reason, in the form of the philosopher Apollonius, at last punctures their shared dream.

Brought to you by Altrusian Grace Media and narrated by Matthew Schmitz. Sanai's book, The Enclosed Garden of the Truth, a treatise on God and the seekers journey to Him, forms one part of three highly influential early Sufi works. The others being Attar's Conference of the Birds and Rumi's Masnavi. Sanai's work is considered to be the first to use poetry to express religious, spiritual and mystical ideas. Rumi acknowledges both Sanai and Attar as having a major influence on his own poetry and stated 'Attar is the soul and Sanai the two eyes'.

The New Testament tells the story of Jesus Christ and the beginning of Christianity. It starts with the four Gospels, which describe Jesus’ teaching, miracles, conflicts with religious leaders, death by crucifixion, and resurrection. Acts follows by showing how the apostles, empowered by the Holy Spirit, preach in Jerusalem and beyond, leading to the growth of the early church and the spread of the message throughout the Roman world, especially through the missionary work of Paul.

Nostradamus’s The Prophecies presents hundreds of tightly compressed quatrains that fracture time and history into symbolic glimpses of upheaval, power, and ruin. The work avoids narrative order; instead it disperses images of kings, empires, celestial disturbances, plagues, and wars across a fog of allegory, where each vision feels suspended between history and imagination. The language is deliberately opaque—layered with astrological references, classical allusions, and oblique metaphors—forcing the listener to navigate a shifting terrain of potential meanings rather than fixed predictions.

Taylor frames the Orphic hymns as fragments of a primordial theology in which the gods are not personalities but cosmic powers, each hymn functioning as a precise invocation of a universal principle. His translation exposes an initiatory system built on purification, cosmic sympathy, and ascent through successive layers of divine order.

Dion Fortune’s Psychic Self-Defense is a seminal work on the hidden dimensions of psychic and spiritual vulnerability, exploring how unseen forces—whether psychological projections, unconscious influences, or genuine occult phenomena—can affect human well-being. Drawing from her own experiences as a psychotherapist and occultist, Fortune examines cases of psychic attack, obsession, and energy vampirism, offering practical methods of protection through mental discipline, moral clarity, and spiritual hygiene.

A Road to Self-Knowledge by Rudolf Steiner is a spiritual-guide structured as eight meditations, each focusing on successive layers of human being — from the physical body and etheric (life-force) body, through the elemental world and the “Guardian of the Threshold,” to the astral body, the I- or thought-body, the nature of experience in supersensible realms, and finally the remembrance of one’s repeated earthly lives.

The unabridged and enhanced 2nd edition of Zetetic Astronomy, formulated in the 19th century by Samuel Rowbotham, presents a flat-earth cosmology grounded in direct sensory observation rather than theoretical abstraction. Rejecting Newtonian and Copernican astronomy, Rowbotham argued that the Earth is a flat, stationary plane with the Sun, Moon, and stars moving in circular paths above it, asserting that empirical evidence—such as the apparent flatness of horizons and the behavior of water surfaces—supports this model.

Neville Goddard’s *The Creative Use of Imagination* presents imagination as the central creative principle in life, emphasizing that every external condition originates in the unseen images held within the mind. He argues that imagination is not fantasy or idle daydreaming, but a disciplined act of inner vision that shapes destiny. The book positions imagination as the very power of God working through the individual, making one’s inner world the blueprint for all external experience.

Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows is a tale of creeping dread set along the shifting banks of the Danube, where two travelers find themselves stranded on a remote island overwhelmed by sinister willow trees. As the river swells and the land erodes beneath them, they become aware of an unseen, inhuman presence pressing against the fragile boundaries of their world. The natural landscape itself seems animated with hostile intent, its whispering branches and ceaseless currents hinting at cosmic forces beyond comprehension.

Brought to you by Altrusian Grace Media and narrate by Matthew Schmitz. This is the first English translation and the only one sanctioned by Rudolf Steiner himself. First published in 1916, it is based on the original 1894 German Die Philosophie der Freiheit. Other translations have been based on the 1918 revised German edition. It includes inspiring passages about individualism that were removed from the book in 1918 and are missing in later translations. The Philosophy of Freedom is the fundamental philosophical work of philosopher, Goethe scholar and esotericist Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925).