I had the honor of appearing on The Platonists podcast today with Eric Claussen. Check it out!

https://youtu.be/yeeWH4jR28U?si=BwOyMGJfiBnxYRLg

"But they who give straight judgments both to foreigners and to the men of the land, and do not turn aside from what is just, their city flourishes and the people prosper in it. Peace, the nurse of children, is abroad in their land, and all-seeing Zeus never decrees cruel war against them. Neither famine nor disaster ever haunt men who do true justice; but they lightheartedly tend the fields which are their care. The earth bears them food in abundance, and on the mountains the oak bears acorns upon the top and bees below. Their woolly sheep are laden with fleeces; their women bear children resembling their parents. They flourish continually with good things and do not travel on ships, for the grain-giving earth bears them fruit."

Hesiod, Works and Days 225-237

"How long, then, will you delay to demand of yourself the noblest improvements, and in no instance to transgress the judgments of reason? You have received the philosophical principles with which you ought to be familiar; and you have been familiar with them. What other teacher, then, do you wait for as an excuse to delay your self-reformation? You are no longer a boy but a grown man. If, therefore, you will be negligent and slothful, and always add procrastination to procrastination, proposal after proposal, and setting one day after another after which you will pay attention to yourself, you will insensibly continue to accomplish nothing, and, living and dying, remain of vulgar mind. This instant, then, think yourself worthy of living as a full-grown man and as someone making progress. Let whatever appears to be the best be an inviolable law for you. And if anything painful or pleasant, glorious or disgraceful, be presented to you, remember that now is the contest, now the Olympic Games have come, nor can it be put off, and that by one failure and defeat honor may be lost—or won. Thus Socrates became perfect, improving himself in all things, following reason alone. And though you are not yet a Socrates, you ought to live as one who wishes to be a Socrates."

Epictetus, The Handbook 51

"Come now, take courage, the race of men is divine."

The Golden Verses of the Pythagoreans 63

The Western spiritual renaissance must be:

1. Rooted in tradition but centered on the present. If we remain an eccentric history club, we will never escape the cultural backwaters we currently occupy.
2. Deep and broad enough to shepherd the majority AND offer paths for the elite.
3. Grounded in fact and tradition while retaining flexibility. We are not ancient people and we must allow for evolution. At the same time, a solid foundation is required to shield us from the "trend of the month" as well as any cultural baggage we might collectively bring with us.

- CWT Admin

In this interview, I stated that there's a tendency for people to "jump into fancy meditation and rituals" before they are ready. I want to clarify what I meant by this, especially with regard to meditation. It was not my intention to imply that either meditation or ritual are bad, to be avoided, or in any way illegitimate.

"Meditation" is a fuzzy word. If "meditation" means "sitting in the lotus position focusing on the breath," you're going to have a hard time finding meditation in the Western classical literature. However, if we take a broader view of meditation as "spiritual exercise," then Western spirituality is chock full of meditation techniques.

What is essential to understand is that classical spirituality, especially when viewed from within the Platonic framework, is tiered. It's tiered in a way analogous to a university, say, or a martial art. You do not start karate class as a black belt; instead, you begin by learning the fundamentals of stretching, how to hold your hands, how to throw basic punches and kicks, and so on. You can, I suppose, jump into sparring against black belts, but it won't likely work out well for you—it isn't recommended.

Meditation, or spiritual exercise, is also tiered. Some meditation techniques are appropriate for the "lower" levels of practice, some are not. For example, the Pythagoreans recommended that we analyze our day before bed, taking note of what we did well and what we did poorly, praising ourselves for the good and reprimanding ourselves for the bad. This is in fact a key spiritual exercise (meditation) for us. There are others. Importantly, this meditation technique is at the "civic" or practical level of virtue. Another example of "practical" or "civic" meditation would be the various techniques of the Stoics: contemplating what is and what isn't in our power, for instance. But there are higher forms of meditation in this tradition. An example would be the contemplation of Forms. Another example would be mathematical theurgy, where the inner mathematical constructs of our psyche are ritualized so as to commune with the corresponding divinities of those mathematical objects.

Similarly for ritual... I hope this brings some clarity to what can be a confusing topic.

- CWT Admin

"What the Sun is to our world, God is to reality itself. Just as we cannot see without the light of the Sun, we cannot know what is true or real without the light of truth that flows from God. And just as life would perish without the warmth of the Sun, so the very fabric of reality would unravel without God. Yet, unlike the Sun, God is immaterial and invisible. We cannot reach Him with our senses, but He is everywhere, and everything depends on Him. He is 'that which is beyond all things and to which all things aspire.' The formal names for God are the Good and the One. We call Him the Good insofar as He is that to which all things aspire, and the One insofar as He is that which is beyond all things and their first principle."

From "On God" in The Flower of the Mind.

"To lay low a despot who devours the people, by whatever means you please, is no cause for wrath from Heaven."

Theognis, Elegies 1181-1182

ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΕΑΥΤΟΝ
KNOW YOURSELF

"We can attain likeness to God, first of all, if we are endowed with a suitable nature, then if we develop proper habits, way of life, and good practice according to law, and, most importantly, if we use reason, and education, and the correct philosophical tradition, in such a way as to distance ourselves from the great majority of human concerns, and always to be in close contact with intelligible reality.

The introductory ceremonies, so to speak, and preliminary purifications of our innate spirit, if one is to be initiated into the greater sciences, will be constituted by music, arithmetic, astronomy, and geometry, while at the same time we must care for our body by means of gymnastics, which will prepare the body properly for the demands of both war and peace."

Alcinous, The Handbook of Platonism 28.4

The above quote from Alcinous summarizes the Platonic spiritual program and is an excellent place for us to start when trying to understand what Platonic spirituality looks like as a practice. Alcinous is drawing heavily from The Republic, and so we can look there for guidance as well.

It is important that we understand the Platonists on their own terms, else we risk smuggling in false assumptions.

You do not need any kind of initiation to be an authentic and pious follower of this tradition.

This is a misunderstanding, largely stemming from an inappropriate application of Eastern, Traditionalist, or Christian ideas. In the classical West, while there were initiatory cults and the like, the validity of priests was not tied to initiation, and there was no obligation for practitioners to gain initiation into a mystery cult. The deeper mysteries of philosophical ascent were often understood in terms of initiation, but this likewise was not dependent upon lineage and was above and beyond ordinary practice and piety.

CORE DOGMAS OF CLASSICAL SPIRITUALITY

Correct practice is insufficient! Correct opinion is essential!

A very common view in the pagan community is that one's opinions matter very little, and that only correct practice matters. But the surviving philosophical literature could not be clearer: though action is key, opinion is of critical importance.

Four core beliefs:
1. Gods exist.
2. Divine providence (care, guidance) extends to all things.
3. The gods govern the universe well and with justice.
4. The gods cannot be corrupted.

Sources: Proclus, Theology of Plato 1.13; Epictetus, The Handbook 31.

"When we are become wholly soul, and are out of the body, and raised up in the intellect, we traverse the heights in company with all the immaterial gods; but when again we are confined in our hard-shelled body, we are held fast by matter and are corporeal. Once again, then, we come back to the necessity of the double mode of worship; for the one type will be simple and immaterial and purified from all taint of generation, that which relates to unpolluted souls, whereas the other is filled with bodies and every sort of material business, that which is proper to souls which are not pure nor released from all generation. And so I postulate two sorts of sacrifice; the one which is that of men who are entirely purified, which would only arise rarely … the other being material and corporeal and based on alteration, as is suited to those still in the grip of the body. So if one does not grant some such mode of worship to cities and peoples not freed from the fated processes of generation and from a society dependent on the body, one will contrive to fail of both types of good, both the immaterial and the material; for they are not capable of receiving the former, and for the latter they are not making the right offering. Similarly, each person performs his cult according to the nature that he has, not that which he does not have; one should not, therefore, overstep the measure proper to the sacrificing agent."

Iamblichus, On the Mysteries 5.15

"Govern yourself no less than your subjects, and consider that you are in the highest sense a king when you are a slave to no pleasure but rule over your desires more firmly than over your people."

Isocrates, To Nicocles 29

"But when the soul inquires alone by itself, it departs into the realm of the pure, the everlasting, the immortal and the changeless, and being akin to these it dwells always with them whenever it is by itself and is not hindered, and it has rest from its wanderings and remains always the same and unchanging with the changeless, since it is in communion therewith."

Plato, Phaedo 79d

You may send any questions, critiques, or comments to ClassicalWisdomTradition@gmail.com.

Just as land must be specially cultivated by him who wishes to obtain from it the best fruit, so the soul should be most carefully and attentively cultivated, in order that it may produce fruit worthy of its nature.

Iamblichus, Exhortations 15