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From The Maze Where Realities Converge - the psychedelic encyclopedia of reality from The Ultimate Comment
Sir Richard Burton - legend.
He was a British explorer, poet, translator, hypnotist, duellist and erotologist in Victorian times. He studied, explored and experimented with the languages, customs and sexual practises of India, Ethiopia, Somalia, central Africa and the Arab world. He spoke 29 languages.
He translated the Kama Sutra, The 1001 Nights and The Perfumed Garden into English and wrote accounts of erotic practises in the countries he explored, which scandalized Victorian society. (Anyone who scandalizes Victorian society scores points with us.) He was initiated as a Sufi, which definitely gets him more points. He wrote the Sufi poem The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi, which is totally awesome.
"All Faith is false, all Faith is true:
Truth is the shattered mirror strown
In myriad bits; while each believes
His little bit the whole to own."
"Conquer thyself, till thou has done this, thou art but a slave; for it is almost as well to be subjected to another's appetite as to thine own."
"Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws."
"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself."
