Category: Cultural History
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Frederick Douglass’s Travels to Italy and Egypt (1886-1887)
Reflections tying classical worlds to Black American history and Douglass’s rhetorical strategy in engaging with classical antiquity and critiquing aspects of Catholic ceremonial from a republican, Protestant perspective. In the waning days of September 1886, Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist and statesman set sail from New York aboard the steamer City of Rome, beginning an extended…
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The Fourteen Black Classicists from Michele Valerie Ronnick’s Exhibition
Michele Valerie Ronnick’s traveling photographic exhibition originally focused on twelve BLACK CLASSICISTS debuted in 2003 and was later expanded to fourteen Black Classicists. Ronnick’s exhibition has undergone 50 iterations in 15 years and her project began in the 1990s. This mosaic history displays pioneering Black scholars of Greek and Latin from the late nineteenth and…
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How Lenin and Bolshevism displaced Civic Republicanism with Socialism in Black Radicalism
After 1917, the global meaning of “REVOLUTION” was successfully seized by Lenin, the Bolsheviks, and their descendants. CIVIC REPUBLICANISM did not disappear because it was defeated in open ideological combat. It was crowded out by a louder, better-funded, more institutionally disciplined international movement that claimed the entire moral and linguistic territory of “revolution,” “liberation,” and…
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Introduction to the Pre-Socratic Sages: All the Wise Sages
THE TRADITIONAL SEVEN SAGES OF GREECE AND THEIR FAMOUS MAXIMS Peter Kingsley portrays these pre-Socratic philosophers not as rationalists but as sages in a sacred, shamanic tradition and lineage originating from eastern influences e.g., Phocaea, an ancient Ionian Greek city of Anatolia, transplanted to southern Italy. The schools of these eminent sages emphasized incubation, divine…
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Our Pre-Stoic Roots in Human Rights Theory in the United States
On the sacred philosophical tradition underlying the foundations of Western Civilization influencing republican theory of human rights in the United States from Heraclitus of the Ioanian tradition, even preceding him. Tracing this history demonstrates how the concept of a divine (primordial) element becomes gradually secularized through the Renaissance Humanists, Enlightenment and Neo-Classical Republican traditions. ORIGINS…
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Introduction to Black Republicanism: Five Early Figures, Wheatley to Douglass
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a small but influential group of Black intellectuals engaged deeply with Greco-Roman classics and the ideals of classical republicanism. This engagement was multifaceted in that they drew on ancient texts to demonstrate Black intellectual capacity in the face of racist denials. This challenged e.g., claims by Thomas…
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Abolitionist David Walker turns Fire into Radical Revolution against Slaveholding Republic
David Walker turns ancient philosophy of Fire into radical revolutionary resistance against the slaveholding Republic. DAVID WALKER’S APPEAL AS THE FULLEST AMERICAN EMBODIMENT OF THE ARCHAIC PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE David Walker’s Appeal (1829) is indeed the fullest and single most American embodiment of the ancient tradition of FIRE come down to us through the philosophy…
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Oral Traditions in Africa
The statement that oral traditions in Africa predate writing for example is well-supported by scholarly consensus in African historiography, linguistics, archaeology, and anthropology. The only people that initially denied these facts were scientists with bias during the colonial-era. Oral traditions tend to encompass storytelling, epics, proverbs, genealogies, praise poetry, and historical narratives transmitted verbally across…
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Reconciling Black Identity and Western Civilization: A Philosophical View
A Black American explores reconciling identity with Western civilization rejecting alienation, false myths, and apathy for full leadership and belonging in America’s future.
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Aegean Origins and History of the Fasces: Minoan Crete to Revolutionary Republicanism
INTRODUCTION The fasces did not emerge fully formed in Rome and has its roots in prehistoric traditions. Few symbols encapsulate the ideals of unity, authority, and disciplined governance as profoundly as the fasces. In the American psyche, the fasces became tied to Italian Fascism, Adolf Hitler and the hellish drama of World War II. Symbols…
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Rhineland Pietists to Mishnaic Period: Medieval and Pre-Medieval Transmission of Jewish Esoteric Traditions
ORAL AND INITIATORY Tannaitic and Amoraic periods to the German Pietists. Consider all the well-known lines in Jewish and Christian sacred literature about knowledge for the public and knowledge restricted to the initiated few. RHINELAND PIETISTS, HASIDEI ASHKENAZ INSPIRES 17TH CENTURY GERMAN PIETIST MOVEMENT ⑇ The German Pietists in the 17th to 18th century owe…
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Crusades to Late Renaissance Occultism to Enlightenment Timeline (1075-1680)
HISTORY ABOUT THE TIMELINE This timeline focuses on significant events and personages specifically from the Crusades to the Late Renaissance, which leads into the Enlightenment. It is a record of Europe’s most riveting historical developments in the study of Religion and War in Europe, and the history of the Catholic Church and Occult Philosophy from…
The American Minervan 