The Philosopher's Secret Fire: A History of the Imagination
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I love Patrick Harpur's previous book - Daimonic Reality. This book goes much further into the nature of that reality. You have to keep putting the book down for a boggle break. I am reading the book for the second time just now and getting twice as much out of it as I did the first time.My mind must be getting better at boggling. Harpur challenges all our accepted notions about reality, truth and experience. Not in some brainless way like "the secret" and other such new-age waffle but in an intelligent, slightly academic and very unsettling way... The book is very readable, quite funny in places.I can forgive him the odd bit of mumbo jumbo or waffle. There is not a lot in the book about actual alchemy. If that is your interest you would be better off with Harpur's novel, Mercurius. What there is is quite difficult for me to grasp but that does not take away from my enjoyment or the WOW factor of the whole book.
Some months after my first reading of this book I find that my thinking has really changed about reality and truth. That in this age and every age in the Christian era we have been hooked up on a literal, black and white reading of everything. What about the truth that there is in a good novel or poem? And why do we feel the need for metaphor so much in literature? How come things just keep happenng in our lives that are just that bit beyond our control and understanding? How is it that people see the world so very differently from each other even though they may have been brought up in the same family and circumstances? Because we are not literal creatures and this is not a literal universe. Harpur explains this well in terms of how other societies well understand that everything has its truth only in relation to other things' truths and that we do well to remember that we do not know or control the half of it. Fundamentalists like Richard Dawkins should remember that there have always been folks who believed they knew it all and understood it all and up to now they have always been wrong and look very silly on the pages of the history books. Isn't it odd how it is just this type of mindset that has caused all the major violence in the world?
Some months after my first reading of this book I find that my thinking has really changed about reality and truth. That in this age and every age in the Christian era we have been hooked up on a literal, black and white reading of everything. What about the truth that there is in a good novel or poem? And why do we feel the need for metaphor so much in literature? How come things just keep happenng in our lives that are just that bit beyond our control and understanding? How is it that people see the world so very differently from each other even though they may have been brought up in the same family and circumstances? Because we are not literal creatures and this is not a literal universe. Harpur explains this well in terms of how other societies well understand that everything has its truth only in relation to other things' truths and that we do well to remember that we do not know or control the half of it. Fundamentalists like Richard Dawkins should remember that there have always been folks who believed they knew it all and understood it all and up to now they have always been wrong and look very silly on the pages of the history books. Isn't it odd how it is just this type of mindset that has caused all the major violence in the world?
24 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
It's hard to put into words exactly what I got out of this book.
For some time now I've had an interest in folklore, both as an ancient tradition and in the ways in which it is re-emerging in new-age trends. I've had trouble reconciling the duality between what is imagined and what is real, and exactly where the line is drawn.
This book answered that question for me. The distinction between "reality" and "literal reality" is a valuable one, for which I will always be grateful to Mr Harpur. You may not get the same kind of insight from the book, but you might be surprised at what you do take from it.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I got tuned into Harpurs work serendipitiously through coming across the tremendous reviews below. The book is quite an unusual experience of a read and Mr Harpur's ideas on the Imagination are heavily indebted to the writings of James Hillman and Jung. His grasp of the diverse material he covers is masterly and I especially found the imaginative revisioning and 'seeing through' of current science and evolutionary theory thought provoking. Must thank the hermetic Mr Harpur for re-introducing me to the thought and work of poets such as Yeats. Has to be read and read again because the ideas and metaphors, the history and twists and turns are too rich to digest in one reading and definately one to read slowly and leisurely with enjoyment. Probably the most interesting, imaginative and original post-hillmanian author I have come across!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Failed synthesis: fascinating and annoying in equal measure
Subtitled `a history of the imagination,' Harpur is trying to rehabilitate the Otherworld of the shaman, to achieve a possible integration with our modern, rational, and as he... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Dr. J. M. Dace
A book to reinforce views, not convert them
Patrick Harpur puts it best himself in the chapter 'The Transmutation of the Species' (pg 109 in my edition) "The fervour of an ideology can sometimes lead its devotees to be a... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Yet Another IT Guy
Philosospher's secret fire.
It must a well written book! I haven't started reading it yet, but I'll in the weeks to come since it's included in my studies' course that I currently attend. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Agathi
Wisdom of the Ages
This book is the perfect antidote to the bleak rationalism that the science fraternity has bestowed upon us in the guise of reality and ultimate truth. Read more
Published 15 months ago by nicholas hargreaves
Different Level
Goodness me, this book's got it all - a sweeping tour d'horizon of the human imagination from the earliest times to the present, written in a passionate and highly engaging... Read more
Published on 9 Mar 2010 by J. Fitzgerald
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