Parabola's Summer 1987 issue: Addiction Quite apart from the personal and social problems caused by addictions, many of the contributors to this issue view these states as the result of a deeper and more far-reaching forgetfulness, or ignorance, than is usually perceived. Faced with the inner and outer conflicts and contradictions inherent in the human condition, we lack a context in which these paradoxical elements might assume purpose and meaning. We are, in Heinrich Zimmer's words, "hampered on every hand by insufficient solutions of the great life questions." The development in Western culture of rationality and the concomitant pursuit of control over physical forces have left us bereft of a sacred and symbolic world to which we also belong and that is essential to a fully human life. --from the editorial Focus Cover: "The Dance Around the Golden Calf" by Emil Nolde, 1910 Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, Munich. SEF/ Art Resource, New York. In this issue:

• "Abu Kasem's Slippers" by Heinrich Zimmer
  - The crystallization of destiny
• "A Physician's Journey" by Richard S. Sandor
  - Looking beneath the force of habit
• "The Center of Our Need"
  - An interview with Pauline de Dampierre
• "On Love" by A. R. Orage
  - A survey of the possibilities
• "The Middle Way" by Robert Aitken
  - Standing on one's own feet
• "O Children of this World!"
  - a poem by P. L. Travers
• "Intoxication and Sobriety in Sufism" by Victor Danner
  - The thirst for transcendence
• "Worshiping Illusions"
  - An interview with Marion Woodman
• "Spiritus contra Spiritum: The Bill Wilson / C. G. Jung Letters"
  - The roots of the Society of Alcoholics Anonymous

Tangents - Reviews

• "An Encyclopedia for a New Generation" by Lawrence E. Sullivan
  - A first-hand look at Mircea Eliade's last and most ambitious project
• "A Guide Within" by James A. Hall
  - A review of The Way of the Dream, twenty half-hour films featuring Marie-Louise von Franz
• "Traditionalism and Search" by Paul Jordan-Smith
  - An approach to the thought of Frithjof Schuon

Epicycles - Traditional stories from around the world

• "The Sinless Man" / Hindu
• "Old Thorns and Old Priests" / Irish
• "The Trials of Ulysses" / Greek
• "How to Catch Monkeys" / Islamic
• "Not Eating Dates" / Islamic