Word: 13th
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...13th century Persian poet Jalal al-din Rumi, the reed was a metaphor for man. Rumi was a follower of the ancient principles of Sufism, a mystical movement that is to Islam roughly what Hasidism is to Judaism. He believed that the soul and God are one and the same. The world, he taught the faithful, is but a tomb, temporarily separating the soul from its divine milieu. In order to release the imprisoned spirit, he taught the Sufi dervishes (Persian for beggars) to dance themselves into an ecstatic trance; all their movements were made in rhythm with the music...
...loss put the final record of the junior varsity at 1-5-1. The team gained its only victory on unlucky Friday, the 13th of October...
JAPAN'S militant Nichiren Shoshu sect of Buddhism, better known as Soka Gakkai (the Value Creation Society), is a phenomenally successful blend of 13th century Buddhist theology and 20th century power-of-positive-thinking. Scarcely 3,000 strong in 1945, the sect numbers 8,000,000 members today, including at least 100,000 in the U.S. It was the founding force and remains the sustaining power behind Japan's third largest political party, the Komeito (Clean Government) Party. Its formula for success, both personal and collective, is simple: the relentless chanting of a brief ritual prayer before replicas...
...13th century cathedral, perched on the hillside that in medieval times constituted the entire town, dominates the skyline of Limburg and, to a degree, the thinking of many of its citizens. Fully 70% of the population is Catholic, most of them regular churchgoers. City fathers chat amiably about the history of the cathedral. But they talk with more passion about the seven banks that have established branches in Limburg-all monuments to the new Germany...
...stock market so often seems to be ruled by arcane forces that its more imaginative speculators have tried to correlate its gyrations with all sorts of noneconomic indicators: sunspot activity, hemline lengths, the 13th century "Fibonacci sequence" of numbers, or even the messages flashed on a Jehovah's Witnesses sign in Brooklyn that is visible from Wall Street's towers.* The newest indicator, and an unusually reliable one, is the itinerary of Henry Kissinger. When President Nixon's personal agent jets to Peking or Paris for talks about Viet Nam, stock prices often shoot...