GLOSSARY OF KEY TERMS

Mīzān –

An Arabic term which can be translated as balance, justice, measure, harmony or weighing scales. It is a term which contains a spiritual dimension that is not conveyed by our secular understanding of balance. It is the lens through which this study has been made.

 

Mereological Principle –

‘the whole can contain the part, but the part cannot contain the whole’. This is a fundamental principle that has been developed in this study. It is essential in understanding the nature of unity and universality, and the aberrations that occur when the part claims to be the whole. 

 

Chthonic Principle

‘The deeper you go into matter, the greater the forces that are released’. This is another fundamental principle that has been developed in this study.

 

Ontological Triad –

The relationships between the heavenly, human and material domains. 

 

Vocational Triad

Priests & Scholars, Warriors & Statesmen, Merchants & Craftsmen; these are the key categories whose relationships determine the character and dynamic of civilisations.   

 

Platonic Triad

Plato formulated the principle of the need to balance three faculties within the human being, namely, those of Intellect, Anger and Desire, a principle that was adopted and developed by both Christianity and Islam. 

 

Dynamic Equilibrium

I have introduced the term ‘dynamic equilibrium’, which comes from the material sciences and is defined as ‘a state of balance between continuing processes,’ or ‘a system in a steady state’, to describe the dynamic which maintains the mīzān or balance.

 

Idealisation of a Dead World

The Renaissance idealisation of the Greco-Roman world, a world that had been dead and buried for a thousand years. This resulted in the European becoming a detached observer, and the separation of religion and culture.

 

Dialysis of the Imagination

the dependence on a machine-delivered source of entertainment that takes over the imagination and produces an addictive state.

 

Normalising the Abnormal

Humanity is used to living in a state where fundamental norms exist. The modern cult requires the normalisation of the abnormal for its existence. 

 

Modern Fallacy

The idea that humanity has been delivered from a past of misery, poverty and stagnation into the light of the modern age. 

 

Modern Cult

I have likened the modern world to a cult because, as the historian Christopher Dawson observed, modern man is cut off from both the heavens and the earth. Modernity only makes sense in terms of its own criteria and is out of step with reality.