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The Book of Life
Book by Ficino, Marsilio
217 pages, Paperback
First published December 12, 1980
6 people are currently reading
241 people want to read
About the author
Marsilio Ficino
152 books77 followersMarsilio Ficino (Italian: [marˈsiːljo fiˈtʃiːno]; Latin name: Marsilius Ficinus; 19 October 1433 – 1 October 1499) was an Italian scholar and Catholic priest who was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance. He was also an astrologer, a reviver of Neoplatonism in touch with every major academic thinker and writer of his day and the first translator of Plato's complete extant works into Latin. His Florentine Academy, an attempt to revive Plato's Academy, had enormous influence on the direction and tenor of the Italian Renaissance and the development of European philosophy.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 1, 2020
Despite awkward word-flow and seemingly illogical diatribe, Ficino paints a rather fascinating insight into Renaissance medical practices. Readers proficient in Vedic knowledge will recognize some common world views, such as as planets being actual gods and their subsequent effects on human health. However, if you're looking for an easy read with well-thought out medical insight... ah... nope.
Despite the Church's increasing influence, Ficino's heretical prescriptions rely on Greco-Roman polytheism. Every bodily affliction, the taste of each morsel of food, and all weather conditions are solely the cause of Jupiter, Venus, Saturn & Co. Kudos to the book's translator, who was honest enough to rate Ficino a bad doctor, noting most his patients died young. Chapter 11 is shockingly disturbing, and best left unreviewed. Most interesting are the medicaments themselves - including crushed gems, raw purple silk, ox-tongue juice, and musk.
Where Ficino was right :
-------------------------
"One must rise in the morning hours so that each part of the body might purge all the excrement that was retained in sleep."
"When you have got out of bed, do not rush … but for at least half an hour go off and get cleaned up. Then diligently enter your meditation."
"I recommend the frequent sight of shining water, the sight of green or red colors, the use of garden or woods, walks and rivers. Take strolls through beautiful meadows, go horse-back riding, travel in carriages, and go sailing. Above all, I recommend easy occupations, diverse employments that are not a bother, and the constant companionship of gracious men."
"Let food wait until you are hungry."
"Our work must be done in such a way that we need nothing from a doctor's office…"
"Men who seek truth ought to take care of their bodily spirits with as much diligence as doctors, for neglecting these spirits creates impediments to the search for truth, and one's service in the cause of truth then becomes inept."
"It is not all right just to take care of the body, which is only the servant of the soul, and neglect the soul, which is the king and master of the body."
"If this congestion and junk are to be avoided, we must flee from foods of this kind, and from lethargy, indigestion, and filth."
"Avoid fatigue, and avoid laxness. Let us get ourselves out from the shadow of dullness and decay. Let us live under the open sky, under the light."
"If you eat meat everyday, even if with an equal amount of bread, it quickly leads to putrefaction. Thus Porphyry, on the authority of the ancient Pythagoreans, detested all food from animals. Did not men live long lives before the Flood because they did not eat the meat of animals?"
"Exercise twice a day after you have digested, until you first begin to sweat."
"Sleeping at night, because it is always necessary, is always good, but sleeping by day, unless absolutely necessary, is never good."
"There is a saying of the maguses, and of Plato, that the entire body so hangs from the soul that unless the soul is well, the body cannot be well."
.
Despite the Church's increasing influence, Ficino's heretical prescriptions rely on Greco-Roman polytheism. Every bodily affliction, the taste of each morsel of food, and all weather conditions are solely the cause of Jupiter, Venus, Saturn & Co. Kudos to the book's translator, who was honest enough to rate Ficino a bad doctor, noting most his patients died young. Chapter 11 is shockingly disturbing, and best left unreviewed. Most interesting are the medicaments themselves - including crushed gems, raw purple silk, ox-tongue juice, and musk.
Where Ficino was right :
-------------------------
"One must rise in the morning hours so that each part of the body might purge all the excrement that was retained in sleep."
"When you have got out of bed, do not rush … but for at least half an hour go off and get cleaned up. Then diligently enter your meditation."
"I recommend the frequent sight of shining water, the sight of green or red colors, the use of garden or woods, walks and rivers. Take strolls through beautiful meadows, go horse-back riding, travel in carriages, and go sailing. Above all, I recommend easy occupations, diverse employments that are not a bother, and the constant companionship of gracious men."
"Let food wait until you are hungry."
"Our work must be done in such a way that we need nothing from a doctor's office…"
"Men who seek truth ought to take care of their bodily spirits with as much diligence as doctors, for neglecting these spirits creates impediments to the search for truth, and one's service in the cause of truth then becomes inept."
"It is not all right just to take care of the body, which is only the servant of the soul, and neglect the soul, which is the king and master of the body."
"If this congestion and junk are to be avoided, we must flee from foods of this kind, and from lethargy, indigestion, and filth."
"Avoid fatigue, and avoid laxness. Let us get ourselves out from the shadow of dullness and decay. Let us live under the open sky, under the light."
"If you eat meat everyday, even if with an equal amount of bread, it quickly leads to putrefaction. Thus Porphyry, on the authority of the ancient Pythagoreans, detested all food from animals. Did not men live long lives before the Flood because they did not eat the meat of animals?"
"Exercise twice a day after you have digested, until you first begin to sweat."
"Sleeping at night, because it is always necessary, is always good, but sleeping by day, unless absolutely necessary, is never good."
"There is a saying of the maguses, and of Plato, that the entire body so hangs from the soul that unless the soul is well, the body cannot be well."
.
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August 12, 2011Ficino wrote that spirit and body, religion and world, spirituality and materialism can all be trapped in a polarizing split: the more compulsively materialist we are, the more neurotic our spirituality will be, and vice versa. In other words, perhaps our madly consumerist society is showing signs of runaway spirituality in its tendencies toward an abstract and intellectualized approach to life. Ficino's recommendation for healing such a split is to establish soul in the middle, between spirit and body, as a way to prevent the two from becoming extreme caricatures of themselves. The cure for materialism, then, would be to find concrete ways of getting soul back into our spiritual practices, our intellectual life and our emotional and physical engagement with the world.
February 3, 2022
Genomgång av renänssansbotemedel.
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January 19, 2009Red wine is better than white for you,all so called negative experiences are opportunities for purgation and insight.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews