Quotes from Roberto Calasso

Nothing enchants the mind more than the existence of the outside world, of something that resists it and will not obey.

They're afraid I'll die," Prajapati thought. "They'll always be afraid I'll die, and they'll always be trying to kill me.

Yahweh was, among many other things, an allegorist.

Every construction is temporary, including the fire altar. It is not a fixed object, but a vehicle. Once the voyage is complete, the vehicle can be destroyed. Thus the Vedic ritualists did not develop the idea of the temple. If such care was given to constructing a bird, it was to make it fly. What remained on earth was an inert shell of dust, dry mud, and bricks. It could be left behind, like a carcass.

Y?jñavalkya immediately separated out the two essential points in every sacrificial act: substitution and the transposition from the visible to the realm of the mind.

Ade accennò un sorriso con le sopracciglia: non abbiamo notizia di un sorriso più misterioso di quello che increspò allora la fronte del signore dei morti. Era il sorriso di colui che sa, e segnala con quel lieve cenno la sua distanza da tutto ciò che avviene.

Then the gods realized they must create substitutes for themselves: men. But how? For them to be truly alive, a god must die.

I've been silent for so long I don't know where to start. Anywhere would do. But ancient custom has it that everything begins with the gods.

Savage words: how one can destroy someone by simply sitting there in an armchair reading a book, not too far from him.

Some would sing as they killed the bear, so that the bear, while dying, could say: "I like that song.

People criticized Guénon for writing like a bookkeeper of metaphysics, with no enthusiasm, with no heart. They thought he lacked inspiration. But Guénon was simply obeying "the esoteric, and particularly the Rosicrucian precept according to which it was better to talk to every person in their own language.

They used to say that the universe is made essentially of hexagonal rock crystals, also — and especially — where it is darker and more shapeless, in the spaces that open up beyond the Milky Way. Those same hexagonal crystals are alveoli in the brain, where images emerged. And the central commissure of the encephalon, two entwined serpents, is to be found in the Milky Way.

For society to be well ordered, it will have to regard great pleasures as hostile and troublesome in relation to the whole. But not because they conceal the power of the unlimited. On the contrary: because they would compel us to recognize that the power of the unlimited is concealed in money itself.

Where there is no initiation, there is the autodidact. Anyone for whom knowledge is not wisdom transmitted through experience is enrolled in a university that is a correspondence course.

E***: Our fate is governed by two mummies: that of Lenin in his mausoleum and that of Bentham at University College, London.

Above all, we have to remember, Marx is greedy. He wants more of everything. He is suspicious of quality unless it is simply the mark of greater quantity: even if quality could exist alone, it would always be less admirable than a quantity in continual prospect of increase.

Detachment and renouncement: often synonyms in Sanskrit, but not in the G?t?: here 'renouncement' (sa?ny?sa) is the lower form that consists of becoming a hermit, sitting beneath a tree and moving no further. 'Detachment' (ty?ga) is making use of this world as if not using it.

Myth is never a single story. It is always a tree with many branches.

Stories never live alone; They are the branches of a family that we have to trace back, and forward.