Empedocles’ Sky, Sun, Earth and Sea

By James Paul Roolvink

This book consists broadly of two parts. The first part contains a translation and commentary on Empedocles' 'On Nature'. This translation is preceded by an introduction to Greek thought.

This will show, amongst other things, that Empedocles is primarily engaged in dialogue with Parmenides, whose ideas he further develops. For both thinkers, knowledge of nature ultimately serves the purpose of healing living beings.
Knowledge of nature is knowledge of life. Life is the intertwining of the elements air, sun, earth and sea. In other words: life is the fourfold unity of air, fire, earth and water. The four elements do not exist in life, for life is nothing other than their intertwining.

Empedocles speaks of a single divine force with two faces, those of Love and Hate, symbolised by Aphrodite and Ares. Love blends the elements into life, and Hate separates the elements, so that they may rest purely within themselves, which leads to the death of the living mixture. Hate, death, therefore also plays a role in the growth of mixtures, living beings. Empedocles instructs his pupil in the knowledge of this force and the elements, with the aim that his pupil may master this force and, through it, the elements, thereby enabling him to fulfil the desires of embodied souls and even to bring the dead back to life. This, however, requires wisdom, for if power over the elements is misused, his pupil will swiftly lose that power.
We also learn from Empedocles that the heart is not the primary cause of blood circulation and that the eye perceives in a very different way from the other senses. This not only contradicts the current consensus on Empedocles, who is said to have espoused a materialist theory of perception, but also contradicts objective scientific knowledge. Empedocles was a magician, like Parmenides, and possessed absolute knowledge. This knowledge even precedes knowledge of the Force and concerns knowledge of the entirety of reality, the All, in the form of a sphere, and of the transcendent gods and the transcendent One.

The second part of this book explores thinking in terms of four-fold units in greater depth, presenting a section of 'The Tables of James' and the highest theology, which describes how that One becomes God, how the Immaculate Conception is possible, and how the dead can be brought back to life. In this respect, the first part serves as a backdrop against which part two and the whole of 'Magical Humanism' - the title of James Paul Roolvink's magnum opus - can be brought into sharper focus.

This book has been translated from Dutch into English by the translation machine DeepL.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H83MPH1L
• ISBN13: 9798186251361
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 273 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.7" x 6.0"