The encyclopaedia iranica, linked to above, contains a wealth of information worthy of the "what are you reading now" thread. The style is much more "Encyclopaedia Britannica with hotlinks," than the Funk n Wagnall's pop mechanics style of wikipedia.
So you might actually find things there that can not only "inform you," but remind you of ideas you already knew, giving them a fresh look through the light of "in other words."
There's much more to be said here, not about that, but along the lines of free association, on the relationship between desires and boons, interstition and superstitions, and the value of Jimi's rhetorical questions, like when the god says to his angels, "am I not your lord?"
And even more about the objective qualities which the boons represent, the shoes and ships and ceiling wax, cabbages and kings and why the sea is boiling hot.
But this train of thought does not stop at every station. So it's like you caught the four train instead of the six, took the express. Except the value of science may be seen now not as "raising more questions than answers," but in raising answers that are so comprehensive they can only be unfolded through a series of express stops, and then taking the local back along the line.
Other stations like the ones around the grand central station of information, and the difference between intelligence as information, and intelligence as the first production of thought. And other stations that you may have just caught in blurry vision for a moment as the stop zipped by in wordless silence, like in a nickel picture show arcade machine.
But the express train clicks ahead to another broadway junction, the major question of omniscience. Would a truly omniscient being be omnipotent? I would say clearly not.
The implications reach down to the core of understanding what role the actual human being, in the objective sense, plays in the universe in which it finds itself, or "in which it exists." Because if there is an omnipotent force that creates evil, it is clearly not omniscient. And an omniscient force that creates good, is clearly not omnipotent.
To give example, we compare two religious metaphors. An omniscient, omnipotent god creates a universe where free will dictates that evil may flourish alongside good. Since god created everything, either he is inhumane and therefore inhuman, or evil has some function in a scheme of redemption that looks like an absolute horror show from the perspective of an actual human being, in the objective sense.
An omniscient god that is not omnipotent, on the other hand, did not create evil. The metaphor is best expressed in story form. The omniscient lord and lady create a hundred universes, worlds of light where no evil exists or can exist. One day the lord becomes fascinated with the goings on in one universe. Maybe with the one with the rock he created that he cannot lift in it. He momentarily forgets his lady, who also happens to be the first universe, the world of his soul. The first universe immediately vanishes.
From the vacuum where his soul was, an active darkness comes, not the darkness of night, or space, that light cuts through like it's nothing, or the shadow cast behind a mass in the light. This darkness actually casts its shadow forwards, against the light.
As soon as the omniscient god feels the pain of pushback against his light, he remembers his lady, who instantly reappears. The light of the world of his soul is restored, and the first universe exists as it did before, and the light pushes the active darkness back, as it retreats through the hundred worlds.
The first forty-nine worlds or universes after the world of the soul are overtaken by the light immediately after, in no time at all. The fifty-first world takes a second, though, and the fifty-second takes a few more, and the further the worlds are along the chain, the longer it takes for the light to cast the active darkness out of them entirely.
So by the time the light of the omniscient god is taking back the eighty-fifth world that it created in perfect light, the time it takes starts to really add up. The active darkness has collected in the hundredth world, and pushes up against the worlds retaken by the light with all its might.
In the eighty-sixth universe and beyond, it takes the omniscient god time on the order of billions of years to cast out the active darkness.
So the universe we are in right now is on the front line, where the omniscient lord is still overtaking the active darkness. And the actual human being may now choose to toy with the idea of a god that creates evil, or know itself as part of the omniscient god's creation, the shock troops on the latest mission in the restoration of the hundred worlds of light.
The idea that "my god did not create evil" is something worth contemplating, I guess is my point here. Seeing the cruelty of the active evil that casts its shadows fowards against the light, then, when the human being asks "why?" The answer can only begin in the rhetorical, as "Am I not your lady? It is the reminder, my lord, that you will not forget me ever again, your very soul."
The next stop on the express line is somehow rockefeller center. Television studios, St.Pat's cathedral, nintendo world store. The question is of a bringer of false light, and a bringer of true light. Truth becomes the matter at hand, which now can maybe be derived better through its relationship with accuracy and the surprisingly fertile qualitative framework of "adequacy."
But the doors close and the express train lurches into the tunnel again. The stops that fly by are not the matter at hand.
The doors open on Times Square. Three things stand out worth mentioning. The preacher, speechifying on "the xvarnah," and the necessity of the production of a third type of matter, hylian matter, between the matter of thought and the matter of mass.
Rambling on and on. Blind, with a cat on his shoulder that seems to be doing his seeing for him. The second thing that stands out is the fellow standing under a staircase, throwing three matters at hand around, juggling his balls.
The third thing that stands out is the matter at hand, which is always hylian, the next matter, which is thought or is dead, and the matter that was at hand, which is also thought, or dead. Which is thought and which is dead have yet to be determined.
This next link is not from encyclopaedia iranica, but it goes further into the idea of the cup of jamshid, magnifying the idea of it from the story above:
Kay Khosrow was seated like Jamshid himself, the cup of Jamshid placed in the sun beforehim. In it he observed the secrets of the seven climes and then perambulated the seven plantes
He sought to see the cup itself in order for a moment to see the whole world at once But though he saw the whole world he could not see in the cup of Jamshid the cup itself. He puzzled much over that mystery, but no veil was raised from before it.
Finally he descried a piece of writing: How canst thou see me in myself? Since I have quite vanished from myself who shall see any mark of me in this world of dust? Since both body and sould have vanished from me, there remains netiehr name nor trace of me. Since my image has been changed into lack of image, why dost thou seek my image which has departed to eternity? If thou wouldst be like me, become like me, bid farewell to thyself, vanish into annihilation.Thou must build a castle of annihilation, otherwise blows will rain down on thee from every side."
When Kay Khosrow learnt of this mystery, he found his hands empty of his own kingdom. He knew for certain that he had no kingdom but annihilation, for in this world existence itself does not survive. Manfully he bade farewell to his short-lived kingdom; he made the profession of faith and laid himself to rest in the arms of annihilation.
Luhrasp chanced to be at hand. He called him and set him up in his place in the kingdom. He entered a cave taking the cup with him. He disappeared under the snow; think no more of him.
(Boyle 1976, pp.176"
https://www.academia.edu/36501728/The_true_meaning_of_the_Cup_of_Jamsheed***
We get off at the next to last stop on the express line, to get a drink at a barcade nearby. Here, nature looks like a dimly-lit cavern, where the forest is alive and attracted to the television light. The patrons all seems to be drunk in ecstatic misery, as much here for the drink as on the chance they might find some good company to love.
The talk is of the boons of good strategy, instinctive reflexes, puzzle-solving abilities, and the three combinations of the two, as six distinct classes of games. Not talk of video game culture, but discussion in the language of sports and games, hobbies and entertainment.
The talks hearken back to discussions from earliest times, before chess, to Plato's Atlantis, to Go. The pinball machine, the sports tables, and the shooting gallery arcades become the bars and birthday party joints where the language translates easily into video games which require different balances of strategy and reflexive skill, with the efficiently tuned puzzle-solving ability.
And a bit of slot-machine chance and poker luck thrown in. The needs of mass production push pure strategy games out of the commercial spaces, into computer and console role playing games. Games of skill become the basic platform style of video games, guiding a character on the screen, avoiding obstacles and saving princesses through well-timed jumps and jukes, like Donkey Kong.
The puzzle game takes its basic form as the maze, like Pac-man. Tetris blocks fall in the shapes of the Pac-man maze's basic form. The Pac-man appears to exit the maze from one side, only to reappear through an entrance on the other. The idea becomes the portal, a popular idea used in many future games. Including the rainbow spinning disc of Q*Bert, that takes him back to the top of the pyramid of cubes, while the springy snake hopping after him drops off the edge, hitting the floor of the cabinet with the satisfying sound of a pinball knocker.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.