
“It takes pure love to be possessed by the spirit of God.”
From The Goad, the Flames, the Arrows and the Mirror of the love of God
“It takes pure love to be possessed by the spirit of God.”
“Now, as the Word of God is the Son of God, so the love of God is the Holy Spirit.”
Sermon on the Apostles' Creed (c. 1273), Art. 8
From The Goad, the Flames, the Arrows and the Mirror of the love of God
Variant: Aspiration, practiced as a familiar, respectful and loving conversation with God, is such an excellent method, that, by means of it, one soon arrives at the summit of all perfection, and falls in love with Love.
An introduction to this book
The Religion of God (2000)
Source: Reason and Hope: Selections from the Jewish Writings of Hermann Cohen (1971), p. 52
Explanation of Stanza 28 part 8
Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom, Notes to the Stanzas
IV. That the species of myth are five, with examples of each.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: Of myths some are theological, some physical, some psychic, and again some material, and some mixed from these last two. The theological are those myths which use no bodily form but contemplate the very essence of the Gods: e. g., Kronos swallowing his children. Since god is intellectual, and all intellect returns into itself, this myth expresses in allegory the essence of god.
Myths may be regarded physically when they express the activities of the Gods in the world: e. g., people before now have regarded Kronos as time, and calling the divisions of time his sons say that the sons are swallowed by the father.
The psychic way is to regard the activities of the soul itself; the soul's acts of thought, though they pass on to other objects, nevertheless remain inside their begetters.
The material and last is that which the Egyptians have mostly used, owing to their ignorance, believing material objects actually to be Gods, and so calling them: e. g., they call the earth Isis, moisture Osiris, heat Typhon, or again, water Kronos, the fruits of the earth Adonis, and wine Dionysus.
To say that these objects are sacred to the Gods, like various herbs and stones and animals, is possible to sensible men, but to say that they are Gods is the notion of madmen — except, perhaps, in the sense in which both the orb of the sun and the ray which comes from the orb are colloquially called "the sun".