Great Initiates of Fire

Course XXV - Teaching 1: Death of Cleopatra

Before the beginning of this commentary on some lives of Piscean Initiates of Fire (an era in which the feeling would play so important part in the struggle between love and hatred), it will be proper to know the life of an Initiate of Fire, belonging to the pre-Christian era.

Course XXV - Teaching 2: Ammonius Saccas and Neoplatonism

Greek culture penetrated the Christian world first through Neoplatonism and later through an adaptation of the latter to Christian dogmas and teachings. In second century, Alexandria was not any more the flourishing city of the Ptolomei.

Course XXV - Teaching 3: Ecstatic Mysticism of the Ancient World

Plotinus was born in Lykopolis, Egypt, in 205. All details about the life of this great being are full of deep meaning in relation to the mission developed by him on Earth.

Course XXV - Teaching 4: Isidore of Seville and His Relatives

Intrinsically the life of the Initiates cannot be known in his historical and geographical situation but by knowing the characteristic and strategic mission that they have performed. Isidore of Seville’s mission is peculiar and extraordinary.

Course XXV - Teaching 5: Aristotelian Revival of Avicenna and Averroes

Greek culture and wisdom with all their purity and clarity disappeared, if one may say like that (for Christian Neoplatonism weakened it a lot), after the definite suppression of paganism and banishment of its sages, decreed by Justinian in the 500.

Course XXV - Teaching 6: Aristotelianism of Maimonides

Maimonides, Rabi Moses ben Maimon, was born in Cordoba, Spain, on March 30, 1135. His first master was a disciple of the great philosopher Ibn Badra, and his companion of studies were the Great Vizier Abu Bevier and the son of the famous astronomer of Seville Abu Maimad Drabar.

Course XXV - Teaching 7: Innocent III

Enlightened by fights for the investitures so much resisted by Gregory VII, Innocent III established the whole power of the Roman pontificate on juridical absolutism. In 1198 the chair of Saint Peter was occupied by a man of a noble family from Signa, in the prime of life, who with the name of Innocent III had to fight with insuperable courage all enemies of justice and the Church, and had to give the world the most perfect model of a sovereign Pontiff, of the true king Priest Initiate, the prototype of the Vicar of Jesus Christ.

Course XXV - Teaching 8: Hernan of Salza and the Teutonic Order

At the end of the tenth century and beginning of the eleventh century, when the first crusades started their conquest of the Holy Land for Christendom, as a result and effect of them and very especially by lack of previsions in their execution, a phenomenon took place in those days: the number of sick, destitute and poor people that being unprotected would pullulate in Jerusalem and other cities.

Course XXV - Teaching 9: Mystical Poetry of Jacopone di Todi

Jacopone di Todi is called ascetic because his spiritual path was a continuous effort to be near God, but because of his inner spirit of sublime sacrifice, he never reached the mystical state of Divine Union.

Course XXV - Teaching 10: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola is one of the most controversial figures in the literary and philosophical world. Even lights of the emerging and glorious Renaissance were unable to dissipate the medieval darkness of fraud and superstitions around the figure of this man, since he was truly one of the main connections between the Middle Ages and Renaissance.