Art of Persistence

"The art of love ... is largely the art of persistence." -Albert Ellis

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Magic in the Everyday

'In Tolkien's cosmology, as in all pre-modern cosmologies, everything is more alive. Where the modern cosmology reduces the life of a dog to the life of a complex machine, the cosmology of Tolkien expands the life of a mountain ("cruel Caradhras") to something like the life of an animal. Nothing is mere matter. Nothing is mere anything....there is so much life in things that we would call it "magic".'
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'But there are two very different kinds of magic. One kind of magic, Enchantment, is our healing, and the other - the kind exemplified by the Ring - is our destruction.'
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'The magic of enchantment means entering the holy city of beauty, truth and goodness and letting it conquer you. Ultimately, it means letting God conquer you, since beauty, truth and goodness are divine attributes; they are what God is. But the magic of the "laborious, scientific magician"...means playing God, like Sauron.'

-Peter J. Kreeft, The Philosophy of Tolkien

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