It is said that history is an unrolled scroll of prophecy, and that without study and recognition, it unravels itself and we play out our fates unknowingly. But in learning our past—the seminal historical and impactful events throughout history, in recognizing the emergence of powerful civilizations and individuals, empires, tyrants, revolutionaries, and profound achievements—we can move forward with clarity and wisdom. Tradition helps us by keeping alive the old rituals and ancient understandings of the world around us. According to composer Gustav Mahler, “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”
Here we feature History and Tradition:
Alexander the Great has been termed a maverick whose 13-year meteoric reign was an aberration in the history of the age. He was a mythopoeic conqueror who simultaneously lived by the tenets of the strategically sound and the proportionally outrag...
The Varangians were an elite guard that once served as the personal bodyguards of Byzantine emperors. When not protecting the emperor, they served at the frontlines in times of war to protect and expand the borders of the Byzantine Empire. But wh...
The word ‘crusader’ conjures up images of scarlet-cross Knights Templar. Although these heroes of the 12th century may dominate popular culture, their Order was rivalled by the black-cross Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary i...
Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. One of the debates among fans of the ‘Potterverse’ – the fictional universe that is the setting for the Harry Potter-related novels and movies – is where did the author J.K. Rowling draw her inspi...
Both Empress Euphemia and the succeeding empress Theodora transformed from sinners to Saints and although 5th to 6th century Roman society may have been more lenient, due to the empresses’ charity and piety, contemporary historians were not tha...
Erected 7,000-years-ago, 20 unique standing stone monuments in the remote north of Scotland mystify archaeologists, because they are unparalleled anywhere else in the world. By conducting a research project, analyzing the location properties of t...
Not much was known of the young Antinous before he attracted the attention of the ruler of the Roman world at its zenith. He was born in 111 AD in the Roman province of Bithynia, which would include the Asian side of Istanbul and surrounds, in mo...
A 1,500-year-old carved marvel, the Ulbster Stone, was unearthed from the grounds of an ancient Celtic chapel in the remote Highlands of Scotland and is renown to have more symbols than any other Pictish monument. Severely faded and almost lost m...
In 636 AD, the armies of Islam under the Rashidun Caliphate, defeated the forces of the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of Yarmouk (near the Yarmouk River, along what today are the borders of Syria–...
Gold has always captured the imagination of mankind. Long before it acquired any monetary value and became a source of greed, gold was valued for its spiritual connotation. By 2000 BC the Muisca people in South America had forged gold and creat...