Utopia

Utopia by Vanessa Hall

Utopia [Gk: not a place]

A word coined by St. Thomas More in 1516, within a work by the same title, to depict an ideal society found on a fictional island in the Atlantic ocean.

The Oxford English Dictionary adds:

1551 (title), A fruteful and pleasaunt Worke of the beste state of a publyque weale, and of the newe yle called Utopia; written in Latine by Syr Thomas More knyght [publ. 1516], and translated into Englyshe by Raphe Robynson.

The word was later used by the French writer François Rabelais (c. 1494-1553) as the name for an ideal island. And many others followed suit. » Atlantis

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Uriel

"St Uriel" by Jenny Mansfield - Tim Mansfield

Uriel

One of the four Catholic Archangels, along with Michael, Gabriel and Raphael.

He is not mentioned in the Bible but appears in various apocryphal works–that is, in books that are similar to the Bible but which have not been accepted by a major Christian religion.

Occult writers have picked up on the apocryphal writings and added their own fanciful interpretations as to who and what Uriel is.

Of course, a similar criticism has been leveled at the Catholic interpretation of Uriel.

Non-Catholics say that Catholic teachings such as this are unbiblical and hence man-made fictions.

This leads to the ongoing debate between Catholics and non-Catholics about the supposed authority of the Catholic Tradition.

Contemporary Catholics believe that the Catholic faith articulates the authentic teachings of Christ as given to the apostles and recorded in scripture, these teachings being preserved, present and developed through a legitimate and holy apostolic tradition. Whereas non-Catholics tend to see this claim as so much pompous hokum.

Uriel is also mentioned in works of fiction, such as John Milton‘s Paradise Lost, where the sharp-sighted angel acts as God’s eyes and helps Raphael to defeat the pagan god, Adramelech.

» Angels, Catholicism

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Uranus

You are Here by Chris Christner

Uranus (Gk: Ouranos)

In astronomy Uranus is the 7th planet orbiting our sun, lying between Saturn and Neptune.

In Greek myth Uranus personifies the sky or the Greek view of Heaven.

Although Uranus’ cultic worship is rare, Hesiod makes ample reference to him in the Theogony. With Gaia his offspring are the Titans, the Cyclops and the Hecatonchires.

Not exactly the best father, he generally despised his offspring and thrust them into Tartarus, a dark and gloomy underworld.

Uranus was later overpowered and castrated by his son Cronus, on the urging of Gaia. This act separated Heaven and Earth. Some variants of the myth say that Uranus’ castration by Cronus led to the birth of Aphrodite when his genitals fell to and churned up the sea.

The Castration of Uranus by ben capozzi

Pierre Grimal notes that another variant of the Uranus tradition is recorded by Diodorus Siculus. Here Uranus is portrayed as the first king of the Atlantes.

The Atlantes apparently were a fair, God-fearing race living on the shores by an ocean. This Uranus was also a skilled astronomer who devised the first calendar that predicted major events. After being given divine honors at his death and siring 45 children, he eventually came to be identified with the sky.†

» Aphrodite, Aquarius, Athena, Furies, Hesiod, Titans

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† Pierre Grimal, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology p. 463.

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Upanisads

Taittriya Upanisad Title Page by Gabriel Jones

Upanisads (Skt. “sit near the teacher”)

Hindu spiritual texts (circa 1000-600 BCE) known as part of the Vedanta (Skt. “the end of the Veda“).

As hindu-blog points out, the Upanisads are based on a longstanding oral tradition of uncertain duration, making precise dating extremely difficult:

The Upanishads and Vedas were rendered orally and were passed on for generations before being written. Nobody is sure about the actual dates of these texts. » Source

But there is some debate here, and some scholars say these scriptures became formally known as Upanisads around 800 CE.

The Upanisads are premised on the idea that a sacred teacher (guru) imparts esoteric mystical knowledge to those ready and prepared to learn not conceptually but experientially.

The texts contain several key Hindu images. One of the most accessible, found in the Mundaka-Upanisad, is that of two birds sitting on a tree. One bird eats the sweet fruit on the branches while the other watches.

The eater symbolizes the active, temporal and perishable aspects of creation, while the watcher symbolizes an immovable, omniscient and eternal Self.

In another principle Upanisad, the Katha-Upanisad, a young man, Nachiketa, seeks the wisdom of immortality by entering into a dialogue with his teacher Yama (death). Yama initially advises Nachiketa to pursue anything but this particular question due to its inherent difficulties.

But the young man persists and, after recognizing his sincerity and determination to achieve ultimate truth, Yama begins to instruct Nachiketa on the nature of the eternal self, as he understands it.

One of the teaching devices Yama uses is the “chariot analogy.” The following is an excerpt from Max Müller’s translation.

‘Know the Self to be sitting in the chariot, the body to be the chariot, the intellect (buddhi) the charioteer, and the mind the reins.’

‘The senses they call the horses, the objects of the senses their roads. When he (the Highest Self) is in union with the body, the senses, and the mind, then wise people call him the Enjoyer.’

‘He who has no understanding and whose mind (the reins) is never firmly held, his senses (horses) are unmanageable, like vicious horses of a charioteer.’

‘But he who has understanding and whose mind is always firmly held, his senses are under control, like good horses of a charioteer.’

‘He who has no understanding, who is unmindful and always impure, never reaches that place, but enters into the round of births.’

‘But he who has understanding, who is mindful and always pure, reaches indeed that place, from whence he is not born again.’

»  Atman, AUM, Hinduism, Müller (Max), Sutra, Veda, Vedanta

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Untouchables

Untouchable village III by Mira John

Untouchables

Traditionally, the so-called ‘untouchables’ are the social outcastes in Hindu India.

Untouchables have been marginalized to the extent of not belonging even to the lowest of the four recognized castes (Sudras).

Still loathed by many as ritually impure, untouchables are considered outsiders and physical contact is often avoided by members of higher castes.

Mohatma Gandhi decried this state of affairs, calling the untouchables harijans (“the children of God”). Likewise many bhakti (i.e. devotional) saints, such as the Bauls of West Bengal, protest through song and openly affiliate with and embrace into their inner circle the so-called untouchables.

In contemporary India general attitudes are evolving toward a more enlightened, inclusive view but caste-based discrimination still exists, just as class-based discrimination is alive and unwell in most corners of the word.

The practice of untouchability was made illegal by the Constitution of India in 1950 and the former untouchables, being a mixed population, now call themselves Dalit.

» Brahmin, Caste System, Kshatriya, Sudra, Vaisna

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Universalism

Welcome to Salvation Mountain by slworking2

Universalism

1) In theology this is the idea that everyone will be saved in the fullness of time.

Recent versions of this theology exclude for need for Jesus and argue that all persons will be saved in all religions, paths and life-situations.

2) In philosophy universals are ideals like Plato‘s forms.

It’s often debated as to whether universals exist in themselves or merely as a product of language (i.e. conceptualism). » Origen, William of Ockham

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Unitarianism

Unitarian Church, St Stephen's Green, Dublin by infomatique

Unitarianism

A religious movement found mostly in Europe and North America that emerged from John Calvin’s Puritanism, emphasizing the oneness of God and denying the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Unitarianism is said to be based on reason and individual conscience and does not rely on any scriptural or religious authority.

A diverse movement, some groups may embrace aspects of traditional religions, along with transcendental literature and folklore.

Unitarians may also advocate an awareness of current social and global issues.

On the World Wide Web:

• “A short history of the Unitarian Church, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin.”

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Undoing

John Singer Sargent: Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth (detail) by freeparking

Undoing

A defense mechanism in which an unpleasant thought or action is blotted out from consciousness.

Undoing differs from or could be seen as a subtype of repression in that the negative memory is repressed through obsessive ritual activity.

Lady Macbeth‘s repeated hand washing “Out, damned spot!” after the murder of King Duncan in Act V of Macbeth could be taken as a loose literary example of undoing.

It’s loose because she still talks about blood, death and hell during her late-night washing ritual. In short, she goes a little off base in an attempt to deal with guilt and anxiety. » Obsession

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Underworld

Orpheus in the Underworld by jepoirrier

Underworld

In mythology the underworld variously refers to a place beneath the earth’s surface or under the sea, the land of the deceased or a hellish realm filled with demons.

The mythological underworld is usually separated from everyday reality by an expanse or an abyss.

Often the gates of the underworld are guarded by menacing creatures, such as snakes or the giant three-headed dog and underworld’s Lord of Death, Cerberus.

The legendary Greek Orpheus used his melodious lyre to try to liberate Eurydice from Cerberus. But not unlike Lot’s wife, Orpheus ignored a dire warning to not look back during the escape. And while casting a glance over his shoulder Orpheus lost Eurydice to the underworld forever.

In ancient Egypt the sun god Re (or Ra) was said to pass through the underworld on a nightly basis. David Leeming notes that he was attacked by his enemies, particularly Apep, but defended by Seth and other benevolent spirits who had passed into the afterlife.†

The Egyptian Osiris was taken to be the ruler of the underworld, being a sort of death and resurrection figure due to his dismemberment and subsequent reassembly.

A similar belief  to the Egyptian Re myth is expressed in India with the sun temple at Konark, essentially a chariot of 24 wheels, where the sun god  Surya begins the day as Brahma, enters midday as Siva, and spends the night as Visnu.

A 2003 film about vampires and werewolves is called Underworld and its sequel is Underworld: Evolution (2006).

Depth psychologists tend to link underworld myths with the idea of the unconscious.

» Abyss, Archetypal Image, Blessed Isles, Bowie (David),  Death and Resurrection, Demeter, Doors, Eleusinian Mysteries, Ereshkigal, Eurydice, Faeries, Fates, Furies, Han Solo, Heaven, Hell, Hendrix (Jimi), Hercules, Hero, Ishtar, Jedi, Jung (Carl Gustav), Kraken, Mesopotamia, Mistletoe, Odysseus, Persephone, Pisces, Shaman, Tammuz, World Tree

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† David Leeming, Oxford Companion to World Mythology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 337.

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Underhill, Evelyn

Evelyn Underhill and Michael Ramsey by mberry

Underhill, Evelyn (1850-1941)

Respected British author on the subject of mysticism.

Underhill is often described as an Anglo-Catholic. Her book, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness (1911) is widely regarded as a Christian classic.

Sincere mystics, she writes, are aware of the need for intense rational discernment and self-analysis.

Ecstasies, no less than visions and voices, must, they declare, be subjected to unsparing criticism before they are recognized as divine: whilst some are undoubtably “of God,” others are no less clearly “of the devil.”¹

In Practical Mysticism: A little book for normal people (1914), published at the outbreak of WW-I, Underhill makes a distinction between meditation and contemplation.

While these two terms often overlap, Underhill suggests that, for the most part, meditation may lead to more elevated forms of contemplative understanding. As Underhill puts it:

Now meditation is a half-way house between thinking and contemplating: and as a discipline, it derives its chief value from this transitional character.²

Arguably the strength of this definition is that it’s not ‘this or that,’ ‘black or white,’ as so many fundamentalists and conservatives depict the world. Rather, it represents a developmental approach. » Alice in Wonderland, Aurobindo (Sri), Clairaudience, Kabbala

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¹ Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness (New York: The New American Library, 1955 [1911]), p. 361.

² ___, Practical Mysticism: A little book for normal people (London: Dent, 1914), p. 46.

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