The name “Apollyon” from Revelation 9:11 signals a theological crisis. By referencing a demonic presence from both scripture and Paradise Lost, where Milton casts Apollyon among the forces of Hell, Browning frames Roland’s journey as a passage through a world abandoned by providence. As Christopher MacKenna argues, the poem reflects a nineteenth-century “crisis of faith… [and] of knowing/meaning” (MacKenna 475). In a world “without light or redemptive purpose, ” Victorian readers, facing Darwinian science, biblical criticism, and rapid social change, often felt the same disorientation and loss of certainty as Roland (MacKenna 478). Thus, Browning created an image, the Tower, that became a touchstone for future generations confronting existential crises, helping to explain its powerful afterlives in later literature.

This 1859 painting by Thomas Moran, inspired directly by Browning’s “Childe Roland,” visualizes the poem’s barren and hostile terrain. Turbulent clouds, jagged rocks, and desolate expanses dramatize the emotional weight of the quest. Additionally, the fiery, ominous sky evokes Romantic and Sublime traditions, but instead of ennobling Roland’s journey, the natural grandeur seems to overwhelm him. Rather than a knight striding toward a glorious destiny, the lone figure of Roland, dwarfed by the vast landscape, gazes toward the distant, looming tower. By pairing the poem with such imagery, anthology audiences can more fully experience the poem’s tension between heroic aspiration and environmental hostility. This artistic reimagining also shows how the Tower’s imagery quickly began to shape visual as well as literary culture.

for - quote - youtube - interview - Geoffrey Hinton - AI - spiritual crisis - AI - Geoffrey Hinton - self - spiritual crisis

quote - AI - spiritual crisis - We only have the dimmest understanding of, at present the nature of people and what it means to have a self - We don't understand those things very well and they're becoming crucial to understand because we're now creating beings - (interviewer: so this is becoming a philosophical, perhaps even spiritual crisis as a practical one) - Absolutely, yes

for - spiritual seeking in modernity - initiation - third stage - mind - John Churchill - meaning crisis - spiritual initiation - third stage - mind - John Churchill - initiation - third stage - mind - examples - sacred geometry - sacred mathematics - deeper meditation practices - John Churchill

for - spiritual seeking in modernity - initiation - fourth stage - interdependent origination- John Churchill - meaning crisis - spiritual initiation - fourth stage - interdependent origination - John Churchill - initiation - fourth stage - interdependent origination - John Churchill

for - spiritual seeking in modernity - initiation first stage body - John Churchill - meaning crisis - spiritual initiation - first stage - body - John Churchill - initiation - first stage - body - example - yoga and green juice - getting stuck here is possible - John Churchill - meaning crisis - spiritual initiation - first stage - body - John Churchill

for - spiritual seeking in modernity - initiation second stage - emotional body - John Churchill - meaning crisis - spiritual initiation - second stage - emotional body - John Churchill - initiation - second stage - emotional body - examples - psychotherapy - breath work - crystals - Ayahuasca - securely tantric practice - John Churchill

for - article - Why Human (Contributive) Labor remains the creative principle of human society - Michael Bauwens - PhD thesis - From Modes of Production to the Resurrection of the Body: A Labor Theory of Revolutionary Subjectivity & Religious Ideas (2016) - Benjamin Suriano - to - P2P Foundation - more detailed presentation of Benjamin Suriano's PhD paper

Summary - This is a review and high recommendation of the PhD dissertation of Benjamin Suriano by Michael Bauwens - The subject is the historical analysis of labour in medieval times, and - how Christian monasticism provided a third perspective on labour that was an important alternative to the false dichotomy of - cleric - warrior - that was inclusive of the alienated within class majority - a proposal for revival the spirit of this spiritual view of labour - as a means to mitigate modernity's meaning crisis as it relates to the lack of purpose usually associated with work in contemporary society

to - P2P Foundation - more detailed presentation of Benjamin Suriano's PhD paper - https://hyp.is/7PeMMIxtEe-NOmuU08T3jg/wiki.p2pfoundation.net/From_Modes_of_Production_to_the_Resurrection_of_the_Body

for - quote - reviving the view of labour as a spiritual activity - to counter the meaning crisis of modernity - Benjamin Suriano - question - how do we find the eternal in labour? quote - reviving the view of labour as a spiritual activity - to counter the meaning crisis of modernity - Benjamin Suriano - (see below) - What is needed, - and what I attempt to think through within this dissertation, - is then a return to labor as a self-transcending activity. - This is nothing short of resurrecting a revolutionary sense of labor as itself an act of resurrection, - a fundamentally social and creative activity - whose final cause is to raise humanity into a new historical body - beyond any reduction to the merely mortal flesh prescribed by the present. - Thus, the laboring body qua labor - always already harbors all the seeds for its immortality, - for producing the perfection of life for itself, - which is the qualitative perfection of eternal life. - The task, then, - is not to eliminate its religious consciousness, - but to develop it from the true rationalization of labor - according to its own ratio of perfection, - i.e. to therein find its corresponding religious forms of thought - that illuminate and reinvest in its capacities - for the infinite and eternal."

for - cliche - the more things change, the more they remain the same - quote - labour - transforming - to - spiritual - sacred - meaningful - Benjamin Suriano - adjacency - meaninglessness of labour in modernity - sacred - spiritual - reviving spirit of monastics Benjamin Suriano - meaning crisis - John Vervaeke

adjacency - between - the meaninglessness of labour in modernity - Benjamin Suriano - the proposal for revival of labour as spiritual activity -- mitigating the meaning crisis - John Vervaeke - adjacency relationship - In his PhD dissertation, Benjamin Suriano argues that reviving the spirit of Christian monastics of the medieval era could mitigate modernity's meaning crisis.

quote - labour - transforming - to - spiritual - sacred - meaningful - Benjamin Suriano - (see below) - Because the substantial surplus expropriated by the few - allowed them to invest their time into developing a state, military, and cultural apparatus that reproduced their exploitative position of privilege, - the collective consciousness ruling this sociopolitical body tended to comprehend its free citizenship abstractly, - as if a natural given, - with little consciousness of the contribution of the laboring body

!- Beyond physicalism and environmental crisis : also a spiritual one - we have wounded spirits