The Ironist
Differing Perspectives
Horizon in Their Hands
Nigel writes about his experience at an exhibition at the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture - Ithra Centre in Dhrahan, Saudi Arabia. The View, by Rima Mardam Bey, 1983 During my visit to Saudi Arabia this year, I went to an exhibition of women artists (Horizon...
From San Blas to Oxford: A Review of Shooting Up
A missionary family raises four boys in one of Madrid's most drug-ravaged neighbourhoods. Jonathan Tepper's memoir traces an extraordinary journey. Jonathan Tepper’s Shooting Up is much more than the account of four brothers in a missionary family growing up in Spain...
The Celestial Bureaucracy: Hierarchies of Angels
In her third post, Dr. Hara tells us how Seraphim came to outrank Cherubim, and Archangels ended up near the bottom. In the previous essay, we traced the angel’s transformation from local guardian spirit to cosmic warrior under the influence of Zoroastrian dualism....
WORDS, WORDS, WORDS III
This is the third essay by Peter as part of The Ironist’s continuing series of articles on language and literature. Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words. Polonius: What is the matter, my lord? Hamlet: Between who? Polonius: I mean, the...
From Ahura Mazda to Lucifer: Angels and the Dualism of Good and Evil
The second part of Dr. Hara's series on angels traces how Zoroastrian dualism handed the cosmos its central plot - good versus evil. In the previous essay, we traced the lineage of the guardian spirit from Sumerian temple guardian to Assyrian colossal. Yet that...
Polite Revolutions: A Gentleman in Moscow and the Comforts of Confinement
First a bestseller and now a prestige television series, A Gentleman in Moscow invites us to believe that grace and civility might yet survive the twentieth century’s great undoing. Picture Credits: Amazon Some months ago, I read A Gentleman in Moscow during a...
Guardians Before God: The Sumerian Origins of Angels
Dr Hara's research on the winged messengers of Western faith starts with these wingless creatures guarding Sumerian doorways. This is the story of angels and how they learned to fly... When we think of angels, we conjure images refined by centuries of Christian art:...
RAMBLINGS #10 – Goodbye Mt. Parnassos, Hello War
A drive down from myth-haunted Mt. Parnassus into the passes, graveyards, and battlefields Picture Credits: Edward Dodwell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons It is said that Zeus, the great philanderer, lay with Mnemosyne (Memory), a Titan, for a marathon...
Words, Words, Words II: Inspiration
This is the second essay by Peter on the intricacies of the English language. Here, he writes on where inspiration comes from, and why no amount of effort can quite summon it. My first piece in the English language series talked about the quality of writing that...