Showing results by narrator "Matthew Schmitz" in All Categories

Jung's primary concern in Flying Saucers is not with the reality or unreality of UFOs but with their psychic aspect. Rather than speculate about their possible nature and extraterrestrial origin as alleged spacecraft, he asks what it may signify that these phenomena, whether real or imagined, are seen in such numbers just at a time when humankind is menaced as never before in history. The UFOs represent, in Jung's phrase, "a modern myth."

Herbert Silberer’s Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts (1917) explores the deeper meanings behind alchemical texts, Rosicrucian allegories, and mystical traditions, arguing that these works are not simply about chemical experiments but are symbolic accounts of inner transformation. Using both Freudian psychoanalysis and spiritual interpretation, Silberer demonstrates how myths, dreams, and esoteric emblems express unconscious drives as well as higher religious aspirations.

The central concept of analytical psychology is individuation—the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy. Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development.

Meditations is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from AD 161 to 180, recording his private notes to himself and ideas on Stoic philosophy. Marcus Aurelius wrote the 12 books of the Meditations in Koine Greek as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement. It is possible that large portions of the work were written at Sirmium, where he spent much time planning military campaigns from 170 to 180.

Brought to you by Altrusian Grace Media and narrated by Matthew Schmitz."Kīmīyā-yi Sa'ādat, English: The Alchemy of Happiness/Contentment, is a book written by Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī, a Persian theologian, philosopher, and prolific Muslim author, often regarded as one of the greatest systematic thinkers and mystics of Islam, in Persian. The Kimiya-yi Sa'ādat was written towards the end of his life shortly before 499 AH/1105 AD.

La Très Sainte Trinosophie, The Most Holy Trinosophia, or The Most Holy Threefold Wisdom, is a French esoteric book, allegedly authored by Alessandro Cagliostro or the Count of St. Germain.

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'.

This early work by Robert E. Howard was originally published in 1934. 'The Valley of the Worm' is a story in the James Allison series and tells the tale of a Texan who recalls his past lives as ancient heroes. Robert Ervin Howard was born in Peaster, Texas in 1906. During his youth, his family moved between a variety of Texan boomtowns, and Howard - a bookish and somewhat introverted child - was steeped in the violent myths and legends of the Old South.

The Frost-Giant’s Daughter, written by Robert E. Howard in 1932, is one of the earliest tales of Conan the Barbarian, set in the mythical Hyborian Age. Originally rejected by Weird Tales magazine during Howard’s lifetime, the story was later published posthumously in 1953 in The Coming of Conan. This tale stands out for its dreamlike quality, blending raw, brutal action with haunting, mythic beauty.

The Ten Principal Upanishads is a version of the Upanishads translated by Irish-poet W. B. Yeats and the Indian-born mendicant-teacher Shri Purohit Swami. The translation process occurred between the two authors throughout the 1930s, where the book was published in 1938. It is one of the final works of W. B. Yeats.

One of the best-known Arthurian stories—adapted many times into verse, prose, games, and film. It recounts an adventure undertaken by King Arthur’s famous nephew, Sir Gawain, who is brave and the model of knightly grace. When a mysterious knight in green armor issues a challenge to the Round Table, the gallant Gawain volunteers to do battle for his king, beginning an adventure that explores chivalric tradition, loyalty, and the virtue of forgiveness, as well as alchemical symbolism and the psychological process of individuation.

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.

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 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.

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.

The Book of Enoch is an ancient Hebrew apocalyptic religious text, ascribed by tradition to the patriarch Enoch who was the great-grandfather of Noah. The Book of Enoch contains unique material on the origins of demons and Nephilim, why some angels fell from heaven, an explanation of why the Genesis flood was morally necessary, and prophetic exposition of the thousand-year reign of the Messiah.

G. R. S. Mead has issued a translation of the whole body of extant literature, with extended prolegomena, commentary, etc. There is a wide difference of opinion as to the date at which this literature was produced. Mead believes that some of the extant portions of it are at least as early as the earliest Christian writings, while von Christ assigns them to the third Christian century. To affirm that they influenced New Testament usage would be hazardous, but they perhaps throw some light on the direction in which thought was moving in New Testament times.

Along with Aleister Crowley, Madame Blavatsky, and George Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky (1878-1947) was one of the most important and influential figures in the occult movement of the 20th century. His book on the tarot has remained practically unknown since its initial publication in Russia in 1913. Yet, it is an important work presenting a general introduction and Ouspensky’s insights on the 22 cards of the Greater Arcana.

Dreams are part of common experience, yet a mystery that is little understood. Psychologists and others who are ignorant of the human being's true constitution, ranging across several subtle levels, are only groping to learn their significance.

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.