An Endless Trace: The Passionate Pursuit of Wisdom in the West (Codhill Press) [Paperback]

Christopher Bamford (Author), Philip Zaleski (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2003 | Series: Codhill Press

Two powerful motives weave beneath the surface of our spiritual history: the desire to know and the desire to love. The secret history of the West is the story of saints, mystics, alchemists, poets, and philosophers trying to unite these two streams and celebrate - in the world and in their own persons - the sacred marriage of Logos and Sophia, Word and Wisdom.

This book, an impressionsitic history of the Western spiritual tradition, follows - from anceint Greece to modern times - the traces of those who sought to know the world and themselves, while realizing that they must overcome themselves to love the world and one another.

Included are chapters on Pythagoras, Sophia, Celtic Christianity, the Troubadours, the Grail, the Rose Cross, Renaissance spirituality, Romanticism, nineteenth-century occultism, and twentieth-century esotericism. Inspirational interludes place the whole within an atmosphere of Christian mysticism.

Tracking this endless trace of our evolving relationship with one another, God, and Nature, we begin to understand how human consciousness has changed and evolved and perceive the present purpose of humankind.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a collection of essays, Bamford, director of Lindisfarne Books, explores Sophia, or divine feminine wisdom, as expressed throughout the hermetic or esoteric tradition in Christianity, and in the profound insights of many great Western thinkers and poets, and potentially in each of us as we learn to act like Wisdom herself, opening to receive what God gives. Bamford embraces a difficult subject with personal passion, rendering it with a poetry and incision that sincere readers will find deeply inspiring. Bamford describes the way feminine wisdom acts as the companion and helper to God, a kind of omnipresent cloud or mist that mirrors God's creation. Creation, we learn, took place as a great sigh of compassion, as Sophia helped God become known by becoming incarnate in all that exists. "Sophia's other name, revealed since the Mystery of Golgotha, is primordial cosmic human nature itself," writes Bamford. Christianity is founded upon the belief that Christ is not a teacher or a teaching, but an act of divine creation that reprises the original creation. Through Christ, God enters creation again and again; if only our hearts could awaken to see how "the sacred is in the commonplace and the ordinary is the potentially divine." Bamford proceeds to give a thrilling glimpse of what it might mean to awaken to our original, pure nature, to become wise and to know the world and ourselves through the Incarnation. Ranging through Western tradition, from the ancient Hermetic tradition to the medieval troubadours to the Romantics, Bamford offers a jewel box full of gems about what it can mean to be compassionate and open-hearted, to be Sophia.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Through the vast plain of European philosophic and religious thought meanders a small stream of unorthodox, sometimes occult belief that Bamford traces comprehensively, from the hermetic and Orphic traditions of ancient Greece, to the Celtic world's vision of Christianity, down to the fellowship of the Rosy Cross and the Romantics. Bamford argues that far from being invariably dualistic and body-denying, Western thought has always included a competing vision of wholeness and sensual joy. Many of the figures and schools of thought (the troubadours, Novalis) he examines are familiar to readers of perennial philosophy, but Bamford introduces lesser-known material as well and views familiar subjects from a uniquely optimistic standpoint. His chapter on Johann Georg Hamann, the "Magus of the North," describes that visionary philosopher's idiosyncratic but profound interpretation of the Bible as a revelation of mystical experience, and those on walking as prayer and the occult significance of the rosary offer unusual perspectives. Learned but accessible, Bamford's vision of the Western tradition may be embraced by many. Patricia Monaghan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr (July 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1930337078
• ISBN-13: 978-1930337077
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #984,515 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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