Ludi

 

"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games... "

Carl G. Jung

 

Magister Ludi (Masters of the Game)

 

 

"The Glass Bead Game is thus a mode of playing with the total contents and values of our culture; . . . ."

"Although we recognize the idea of the Game as eternally present, and therefore existent in vague stirrings long before it became a reality, its realization in the form we know it nevertheless has its specific history."

"He had already learned by experience that faith and doubt belong together, that they govern each other like inhaling and exhaling . . ."

 

"And those of us who trust ourselves the least,
Who doubt and question most, these, it may be,
Will make their mark upon eternity,
And youth will turn to them as to a feast . . ."

Poem by Joseph Knecht

 

"No noble and exalted life exists without knowledge of devils and demons, and without continual struggle against them."

Father Jacobus

"It is an old idea that the more pointedly and logically we formulate a thesis, the more irresistibly it cries out for its antithesis."

Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi.

 

Ludi is the root of ludicrous (adjective)

 

1610s, "pertaining to play or sport,"

 

 

Etymology of the word is derived from Latin, ludicrus, from ludicrum "a sport, game, toy, source of amusement, or joke,"

 

Derived from ludere "to play," which, with Latin, ludus "a game, play," perhaps is from Etruscan, or

Perhaps from Indo European root *leid- "to play."

Sense of "ridiculous" is attested from 1782.

Related: Ludicrously; ludicrousness.