Hammering Hot Iron
By Charles Upton
Pub Date: 1993
Publisher: Quest Books
Binding: Paper, 262pp.
ISBN: 083560697X
Our Price:  $14.00

Related Books: Tradition and Religion Today,  The New Age

Charles Upton critiques the views of John Bly, poet and popularizer of sociological and psychological "truths of the day," particularly as Bly presents those truths in his book Iron John. Mr. Upton acknowledges that Bly shows a good deal of psychological understanding, but when it comes to metaphysical truth, to the Sophia Perennis, Bly is clearly elsewhere. 

One purpose Hammering Hot Iron is to untangle the confusion of metaphysical levels of being, a confusion perpetuated by Bly in his discussion of the relationship between the psychic and the spiritual. This confusion, common in Western culture, obscures a viable hierarchy of values and forces contemporary man to place all values on the same level, leaving no clear answers to what is right and wrong. Without understanding that religious values that come from the Spirit, beyond subjectivity, are the highest values and the source of all others, the misunderstanding and corruption of  spiritual truths will continue, to the detriment of individuals seeking a better way to live.  The second purpose of the book is to criticize cultural beliefs and attitudes which work to destroy our sense of the sacred, and defend those which nurture it.