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Flow Down Like Silver (Hypatia of Alexandria), by Ki Longfellow
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From the dawn of history, countless women have marked their times in extraordinary ways. Women have been warriors, Pharaohs, popes, queens and kings, philosophers, poets, mathematicians, composers, painters, writers, revolutionaries and "witches."
But there was only one HYPATIA.
Brilliant, beautiful, accomplished and free, Hypatia of Alexandria was the last of the great Pagan teachers. Her brutal death at the hands of a Christian mob foretold the death of reason, of questioning, of reverence for nature, of the Goddess herself.
Following her acclaimed novel "The Secret Magdalene," Ki Longfellow now offers a stunning portrait of the life and death of Hypatia of Alexandria.
- Sales Rank: #702867 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Eio Books
- Published on: 2009-09-09
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .78" w x 5.50" l, .87 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 310 pages
- ISBN13: 9780975925591
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Review
"She has a very special bond with her subjects, almost as if she calls them back from the dead to hear and write their stories...the words are so precise and so vivid." --Michelle Moran, author of "Nefertiti," "Cleopatra's Daughter," & "The Heretic Queen"
"Put down the book and was shocked to find myself at home--so magical to be transported back to�hear, see, feel, taste and smell Alexandria as if I were there. Beautifully orchestrated.� Had me on the edge of my seat." --Nancy Savoca, Sundance Grand Jury prize award winning filmmaker
"A feast for the spirit and the mind, set in the dying flames of the
ancient world." --Margaret George, author of “The Memoirs of Cleopatra,” and “Mary, called Magdalene.”
From the Publisher
Hypatia was a privileged Greek born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt, the daughter of the city's leading mathematician, Theon of Alexandria. She was not merely bright or gifted, she was a mathematical and philosophical genius and her work was once found in every library in the ancient world. Immediately after her early death, every book she wrote or commented on was made to "disappear." If there were works written about her during her lifetime or soon after, they also disappeared. To know anything at all about Hypatia of Alexandria, today's scholars depend on the efforts of other men writing long after her death, and none of these used original source material simply because there wasn't any...or more accurately, there was very little and none of it in her own hand. Lacking anything else, older "scholars" resorted to hearsay and tradition and the ardent attempts of Christian apologists to whitewash what was very black indeed. Only her most devoted student left us first hand information in the form of letters to his beloved teacher, Hypatia. In them we see a Bishop of the Christian Church besotted with a Hellenistic mind, perhaps even a Hellenistic body. His need for her attention and respect overflows his pages. His complaints ("...you don't answer, you leave me alone, bereft, lost without the sound of your exalted voice or the sight of your exalted words") tells us that her time was filled with teaching and studying and the constant visits of important men whose first task upon reaching Alexandria was an audience with Hypatia.
We have what we think of as "facts." Virtually all of these facts are taken from writers working with the Suda, a 10th century encyclopedic lexicon, much of which was culled from Christian sources. To imagine that a learned teacher of ancient mysteries was distainful of the delights of the body stems from those who lived in a later time where virtue meant chastity. In Hypatia's time chastity was rare and laughable. Those who practiced it were the small but growing number of desert ascetics who believed that abusing and neglecting the body pleased their god.
But one thing is true and undeniable: Hypatia was murdered. Brutally, publically, and shamefully.
Hypatia wore a philosoper's robe as a male would. She drove her own chariot, sailed her own boat, rode blooded horses alone out into Alexandria's encircling deserts. She stood before thousands when she spoke, and being both young and lovely, knew many men. Before she was twenty, she surpassed her famous father in mathematics and astronomy.
To some she was a witch, deserving of her fate. To some, her death signaled the end of Hellenism, of reason, of asking questions and searching for answers. To some, she was criminally put to death at the hands of fanatical Christians and their jealous bishop. To some, her murder was mere bad luck: wrong place, wrong time. And some wish to believe she was the last of the "pure" scientists. Whatever pure science is, it did not exist in 400 CE. Mathematics mingled with divination, cosmology and astronomy went hand in hand with astrology. Alchemy was a secret "science" that did indeed work with the transmutation of metals, but its deeper truer purpose was the transmutation of the spirit. In the mystery teachings, and Hypatia was a leading teacher of the ancient mysteries, alchemy was practiced with her inner circle in an attempt to reach the Divine.
Ki Longfellow, author of the acclaimed "The Secret Magdalene," has now written the astonishing life of Hypatia, famed throughout the Mediterranean world, a beauty and a genius, yet for 17 centuries ignored by history. As the Roman Empire fights for its life and emerging Christianity fights for our souls, Hypatia is the last great voice of reason. A woman of sublime intelligence, Hypatia ranks above not only all women, but all men. Hypatia dazzled the world with her brilliance, was courted by men of every persuasion and was considered the leading philosopher and mathematician of her age...yet her mathematics, her inventions, the very story of her life in all its epic and dramatic intensity, has gone untold. A heart-breaking love story, an heroic struggle against intolerance, a tragedy and a triumph, Hypatia walks through these pages fully realized while all around her Egypt's Alexandria, the New York City of its day, strives to remain a beacon of light in a darkening world.
From the Author
With the publication of Flow Down Like Silver, Hypatia of Alexandria, Ki Longfellow is now at work on the third and last in this series, The Woman Who Knew the All, a life of the Magdalene after the death of Jesus.
Most helpful customer reviews
36 of 38 people found the following review helpful.
Remember Hypatia
By Wyatt at Pan Historia
This is a lyrical telling of the story of nearly forgotten Hypatia - a giant of antiquity so shunted aside by the 'flaw' of her gender and the antagonism of the Catholic Church that little has remained of her life's work beyond the lurid cruelty of her death at the hands of the fledgling Church threatened by her wisdom and erudition #doubt me, then be alerted that the Catholic Church has tried to stop the new movie on Hypatia to be shown in Italy#. Author Ki Longfellow, like a forensic anthropologist, has skillfully added color and flesh back to the few remaining bones of history to create a spellbinding novel of a very alive woman.
Those familiar with the history and those fresh from viewing the new movie Agora starring Rachel Weisz will be all to aware of the impending ending as they read this novel; though the author does an excellent job in allowing us to forget and be swept up in Hypatia's soaring thoughts as she juggles philosophy with mathematics and then matters of faith as she seeks to answer the timeless questions of "who are we?" and "what does it all mean?" There is plenty here, too, for the historical reader as Hypatia was a woman of many talents living through a very turbulent era in human history. There is romance, action, and drama.
Scenes that stand out in my mind because of the intensity of the writing include a fascinating depiction of the terrifying rigors of ancient surgery, Hypatia's battles with bandits, the burning of the Library of Alexandria, as well as an incredibly beautifully written storm at sea where Longfellow authoritatively evokes the art of sailing within the eye of the storm.
I suppose my biggest criticism of the novel is that it seems too short. I wish I had been able to spend more time in Hypatia's world, looking through her eyes.
26 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
A shining novel about a shining woman
By Amazon Customer
I have just finished reading this book - much too soon! Like its subject, the mathematician, astronomer and philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria, it beguiles at first with its brilliance and high drama, then demands the attention of the mind, the understanding of the heart, and finally, it touches the soul, with mingled pain and discovery, and the glimpse of something precious - a vision of gnosis, if not its experience. Longfellow's characterization is in the heroic rather than realistic style - all her characters are larger than life, higher, lower, etched like Egyptian tomb drawings (for the "higher") and newspaper caricatures (for the "lower"), and hits with as much impact. She weaves together public and private history, the dying years of an extraordinary civilization, city and woman; and the intellectual, emotional and spiritual struggles that all who lived through that time went through. Above all, she recreates - part imagination, part spiritual understanding, part historical reconstruction - the intimate path to Light of a woman who rose to be a public figure more feted than some of the greatest men of her time, friend to exceptional minds, Christian, Jew and Pagan, during a period when tolerance died and a single, overwhelming, fanatical version of a single belief system arose and plunged the Mediterranean world in darkness for centuries.
The parallels with our own century, when questioning and intelligence are so widely devalued and opposed with powerful and violent stupidity (not least by the Catholic Church, who want to stop people from seeing a recent film of Hypatia's life and death, Agora), are not a coincidence. But for all that, the culmination of the novel is not a rant or a lament, but Hypatia's gnosis, a mirror of Innana's descent and rebirth. Though Hypatia's ending is well known - tragically better than her works and life - in coming after such a stellar experience as her personal discovery of the divine, it seems to concern more the world she loved, and which was dying with her, than Hypatia herself: the ultimate symbol of the victory of fanaticism over intelligence, compassion or even good sense. Hypatia herself died a free and accomplished woman.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
Artistic Richness
By Snow Cone
After reading The Secret Magdalene last March, I was completely overwhelmed by the sheer depth of the story she presented to me. Not just the depth of the story, but also the beauty of her language, the solid composition of the book thrilled me. Having read her latest novel, Flow Down Like Silver, Hypatia of Alexandria, I know that The Secret Magdalene was not a one-time high. This lady - I'm referring to the author now - contains gold and I can only hope that she's given the perseverance and the time to share more of her artistic wealth with us.
As in The Secret Magdalene gnosis plays a major role in Flow Down Like Silver, although it is not as much on the surface as in Magdalene. Silver relates the story of the last 24 years of the 4th-5th century scientist Hypatia of Alexandria, as told through the eyes of different characters. We learn how Hypatia has grown up, as if she were a son to her father. Being left with only daughters by his wife, who died in childbirth from the third child, he chooses Hypatia, the middle one, to follow in his footsteps as a teacher of mathematics, philosophy, science, music and so on. Her older sister, Lais, is a mysterious and introvert character. She seems to understand life, its meaning or is content with the fact that it just lacks all meaning. There is something acquiescent about her. She and Hypatia love each other very much, as the latter in the beginning of the book says: "my sister, more precious than the beating of my own heart." (2) Her younger sister, Jone, is not loved by her father. In his eyes she caused the death of his wife and for this he ignores her and with that branding her for life. She is the most tragic of the three sisters. One of the main characters in the book, Minkah the Egyptian summarizes: `Hypatia is all mind, Lais all spirit, Jone all bodily emotion.' (40)
The novel starts in the year 391. In Roman Egypt the `new' religion, christianity, is on the rise. These christians are raiding the libraries of the city and are burning books that in their eyes are superfluous. Throughout the story it becomes painfully clear that the actions of many so-called christians have nothing whatsoever to do with the intentions of the one they claim to follow: Jesus. Lais is the neutral observer, free of judgment or any urge to evangelize her point of view. But the young Hypatia is furious about the way the christians burn books. Then Lais says this: `What they love is not this life (...), but the one that follows. If you were they: poor, ignorant, suffering, without privilege of any earthly kind, might you too not listen to this new faith which promises so much after death?' At this Hypatia marvels: `My sister is theodidactos; God-taught'. (12/13)
This book is filled with allusions to or direct descriptions of alchemy (even the Atalanta Fugiens appears very briefly), Hermes Trismegistus and all that goes up and comes down with gnosis. (The table Hypatia inherits from her mother `made of stone as green as emeralds' might be in fact the Emerald Tablet, that is said to reveal the secret of primordial substance and how life as we know it came into being.) In Magdalene the whole journey towards gnosis, is stronger interwoven into the story. In Silver I find it is more hidden between the lines, although hard to miss for an interested reader. Lais knows gnosis, she intuitively knows THE ALL. Hypatia has to make a long and arduous journey, but at an early age she understands the bliss that surrounds Lais: `I think if I desire anything, I desire this: to know what Lais knows.' (20) Hypatia repeatedly asks herself who she is and what is her contribution to mankind.
Occasionally the reader is confronted with the real background of the Christian faith and its rites and symbols with the cults of Mithras, Isis and Osiris and much more that justifies the question of how original the christian faith is. More than once does Hypatia question her contribution or her being: `I am only what I am, a thing of the mind (...) questioning constantly all it sees and all it hears. I believe nothing, not even what my senses assure me is so, for fear that by holding to one belief I lose the possibility of another.' (93) For Hypatia asking questions is a way of life, a way to constantly checking if her reality is still her home. It is the way of the scientist that is continuously seeking proof of what his senses tell him. After a discussion on religion with a christian she realizes: `One who believes is like a lover; he would hear nothing ill of his beloved.' (97) Or later on: `I ask christians: where are your questions? Where are your great doubters, those who lead us all to discovery?' (157) During a visit to Constantinople, Hypatia shows courage by questioning Atticus, the Bishop of this Byzantine capital. As he rambles on about the low place the woman has, Hypatia speaks up. `(...) to hear the ignorant speak out with authority is a great evil. (...) You repeat what you have heard. You question nothing. You expect no one to question you.' (215)
Again I underlined very much in this books. Sentences that struck me as pure poetry (`a man whose brain would not threaten a cow' (227)), parts that delivered me insight or that rare shock of recognition. As shown above, there is a lot of questioning about the christian faith. One of the things that I for instance have always wondered about is the strong rules that Islam, or Jewry, or Christianity enforce regarding the human body. The many dietary rules, the cloaking of the female body to extremes, circumcision. Ki Longfellow lets Hypatia say it thus: `If God (...) created the world and all that is in the world, how then can anything made by His Hand be impure?' (110) A very just question.
Hypatia has hidden many of the forbidden books, that she saved from the raiding and arsonist christians, in a cave in the desert. After the early death of her beloved sister Lais, her poetry is added to this secret library. Later on Hypatia comes across Gnostic gospels that had lain hidden under an old temple for hundreds of years. This find, with the gospel of Mary Magdalene among them, prompts Hypatia to write her own path to glory: The book of Impossible Truth. Names that we know from Magdalene come forth, like Seth of Damascus. And once again the subjection of women is condemned strongly. `(...) man has come to fear woman's sexual power before which he is helpless, so turns it back on her, making her the one who is helpless.' (232)
At the very end of her life - when it has become clear to her that the end of science and therewith of her part in the world of her time is very near - she hides these books in the same cave. (The Nag Hammadi Scrolls that were found in 1945, are located about 350 miles to the south of Alexandria. Wouldn't it be wonderful to believe that there is still a place somewhere near Alexandria, where in a cave are many jars containing not only Gnostic gospels, but also many of the lost books from the ancient library of Alexandria.) It is a long walk through the cave, and she loses her way. Lost in the utter darkness she realizes that this may very well be the end. It is one of the most impressive parts of the novel, filled with highly insightful phrases. Again Hypatia wonders what the meaning of her life is. `What did it serve? (...) All I have done is learn only to learn this one last true thing. I know nothing.' (281) Even though this truth breaks her heart, she gradually accepts this. She undergoes the alchemical process of death and being reborn. `I am snatched away from me and suddenly I fall out of myself, and then I fall into myself - completely.' (282)
In this scene she finally finds gnosis. It is one of the most beautiful and pieces of prose I've ever read on the core of gnosis, and coming very close to finally catching this what is beyond words in words nevertheless. The reader who knows, can almost feel the transition.
Incredibly beautiful also are the final words of Minkah the Egyptian, when he's on the verge of his death. He is the great love in life of Hypatia and she is his. I'll not repeat them here, for I've quoted more than enough from this superb novel. The best review would be to hand over the book itself and urge the receiver to `please, please, read it'. Ki Longfellow is working on the sequel of The Secret Magdalene. With every book she publishes it becomes more clear to me that she is one of my favourite authors. To all you questioners, searchers and lovers of beauty in words out there: please, please, read Flow down Like Silver, Hypatia of Alexandria!
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