"Vigor and strength of body are the nobility of cattle; but the rectitude of manners is the nobility of man."

The Golden Sentences of Democrates 24

"And the priests ought to keep themselves pure not only from impure or shameful acts, but also from uttering words and hearing speeches of that character. Accordingly we must banish all offensive jests and all licentious intercourse. And that you may understand what I mean by this, let no one who has been consecrated a priest read either Archilochus or Hipponax or anyone else who writes such poems as theirs. And in Old Comedy let him avoid everything of that type—for it is better so—and indeed on all accounts philosophy alone will be appropriate for us priests; and of philosophers only those who chose the gods as guides of their mental discipline, like Pythagoras and Plato and Aristotle, and the school of Chrysippus and Zeno [i.e., the Stoics]. For we ought not to give heed to them all nor to the doctrines of all, but only to those philosophers and those of their doctrines that make men god-fearing, and teach concerning the gods, first that they exist, secondly that they concern themselves with the things of this world, and further that they do no injury at all either to mankind or to one another, out of jealousy or envy or enmity. I mean the sort of thing our poets in the first place have brought themselves into disrepute by writing, and in the second place such tales as the prophets of the Jews take pains to invent, and are admired for so doing by those miserable men who have attached themselves to the Galilaeans. ... For just as not every road is suitable for consecrated priests, but the roads they travel ought to be duly assigned, so not every sort of reading is suitable for a priest. ... Let us not admit discourses by Epicurus or Pyrrho; but indeed the gods have already in their wisdom destroyed their works, so that most of their books have ceased to be."

Emperor Julian, Letter to a Priest 325-329

Explore the River of the Soul, so that although you have
become a servant to body, you may again rise
to the Order from which you descended, joining works to sacred reason.

The Chaldean Oracles

Virtue in the Classical Tradition: Techniques

Technique 1: The Rule of the Stoics

“There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power.” These are the opening words of the Handbook by the Stoic philosopher, Epictetus. He continues, “Within our power are opinion, aim, desire, aversion, and, in one word, whatever affairs are our own. Beyond our power are body, property, reputation, office, and, in one word, whatever are not properly our own affairs.”

Method:
This technique can be used in any setting and for any length of time, but I recommend sitting quietly and taking at least 5 minutes to go through the following steps.
Note what kinds of things are in your power: opinion, aim or intention, what you avoid, what you move towards. Note what kinds of things are not truly in your power: everything else, including your body, your property, your reputation, as well as the behaviors and opinions of other people. Then, recall anything you may be anxious about, angry about, feel guilty about, or are otherwise troubled by, and determine whether those worries belong to the class of things within your power or to the class of things that are beyond your power. If they are within your power, commit to taking corrective action. If they are beyond your power, release them and return your focus to those things within your power.

Source: Epictetus, Handbook 1

"Everything changes; nothing dies; the soul
Roams to and fro, now here, now there, and takes
What frame it will, passing from beast to man,
From our own form to beast and never dies.
As yielding wax is stamped with new designs
And changes shape and seems not still the same,
Yet is indeed the same, even so our souls,
Are still the same for ever, but adopt
In their migrations ever-varying forms."

Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.164-172

The Powers of the Soul

NOTE: The outline presented here is drawn from the Platonic literature.

The soul is the immaterial substance by which the living differs from the nonliving.

Beginning from this simple definition, we can, by observation and analysis, develop a more sophisticated model of the soul, outlined below.

We observe that there are many ways to be alive. For example, comprehension, perception, sensation, self-movement, nourishment, and growth. We further observe that some living things live in all of these ways (like humans), while other living things live in only some of these ways (like plants).

Therefore, the powers of the soul are arranged hierarchically, with those characteristic of e.g. plant life at the bottom, and those characteristic of more divine natures at the top, and the animal nature midway between the two.

Since living virtuously (i.e., in imitation of the Gods) is our life's purpose, this hierarchy is important because virtue is the perfection of the powers of our soul.

The virtue of the rational soul is Wisdom; the virtues of the nonrational soul are Courage and Temperance; and the virtue that ties them all together is Justice.

🔸Rational:
Intellect: Mental sight. That which knows fully and immediately. Its energy is weak in those who are not spiritually advanced.
Reason: That which moves from premise to conclusion and knows the "why" of things.
Opinion: That which knows data. It knows that something is, but it doesn’t know why something is.
Intention (or Will): That which has a voluntary directedness or orientation towards the good.
🔸Nonrational:
Imagination: That faculty which has a kind of internal image of sensory information.
Sensation: That which apprehends external phenomena present to the individual.
Passion (Gr. thumos): That which nonrationally opposes the harmful or obstructive and rejoices in overcoming them. Concerned with preservation.
Desire (or Appetite): That which seeks what is (or appears to be) good. Concerned with acquisition.
Vegetative:
Reproduction: In imitation of the immortal Gods, mortal creatures generate beings like themselves, one after the other.
Growth
Nourishment

This poll has confirmed my impression that the American South punches above its weight in this community! Much love to all and thanks for satisfying my curiosity. Back to our regularly scheduled programming...

- CWT Admin

A subtle but basic shift in perspective is necessary for European peoples to most effectively advance our spirituality: we must see that our classical inheritance is spiritual in nature and is the Western analog of the Vedic tradition.

The average person no longer perceives e.g. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the great Poets as figures of spiritual wisdom, but they do so perceive Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tze, and others. The first group is thought to inhabit a tedious academic realm of no real importance. Westerners -- tragically -- do not even understand that their deepest well of spiritual wisdom is spiritual.

How many people know, for example, that Platonism is a polytheistic spiritual path involving the purification of the soul over a series of reincarnations, ending in apotheosis? Nobody leaves a college philosophy course with that understanding, but it is the vision which animates the whole Platonic project. How many people know that there's an ancient tradition of reading Homer, not as a mere story teller, but as a divinely inspired sage?

But this situation we find ourselves in is not only a spiritual matter. We're losing more than a wisdom tradition. To know ourselves, says the Platonic tradition, is to know our causes; to look deep inside ourselves is to, eventually, find something higher than ourselves, that which we descend from, and this inner vision refreshes and energizes us - it gives us form. I believe the same idea applies at the level of civilization. A civilization that no longer remembers its causes, its traditions, is a civilization in disintegration. We are losing our identity because we are disconnected from the past.

Our people will likely continue to turn to Buddha or Jesus or (worst of all) atheism until this change of perspective occurs.

- CWT admin

"At the twilight of antiquity there were still wholly unchristian figures, which were more beautiful, harmonious, and pure than those of any Christians: e.g., Proclus. ... In comparison with them Christianity looks like some crude brutalisation, organised for the benefit of the mob and the criminal classes."

Friedrich Nietzsche, We Philologists 249

"Nevertheless I long - I pine, all my days -
to travel home and see the dawn of my return.
And if a god will wreck me yet again on the wine-dark sea,
I can bear that too, with a spirit tempered to endure.
Much have I suffered, labored long and hard by now
In the waves and wars. Add this to the total -
Bring the trial on!"

Odyssey, 5.221-27

"For Fate alone with vision unconfin'd
Surveys the conduct of the mortal kind.
Fate is Jove's perfect and eternal eye,
For Jove and Fate our ev'ry deed descry."

The Orphic Hymns 59 "To the Fates"

"Unrighteousness in men causes surprise, because people expect man to be the really valuable part in the All, because there is nothing wiser. But the fact is that man has the middle place between gods and beasts, and inclines now one way, now the other, and some men become like gods and others like beasts, and some, the majority, are in between. Those, then, who are corrupted, so that they come near to irrational animals and wild beasts, pull down those in the middle and do them violence; these are certainly better than those who assault them, but all the same they are mastered by the worse men, in so far as they are worse themselves too, and are not really good, and have not prepared themselves not to suffer wrongs. If some boys, who have kept their bodies in good training, but are inferior in soul to their bodily condition because of lack of education, win a wrestle with others who are trained neither in body or soul and grab their food and their dainty clothes, would the affair be anything but a joke? Or would it not be right for even the lawgiver to allow them to suffer this as a penalty for their laziness and luxury, these boys, who, though they were assigned training-grounds, because of laziness and soft and slack living allowed themselves to become fattened lambs, the prey of wolves? ... The law says that those who fight bravely, not those who pray, are to come safe out of wars; for, in just the same way, it is not those who pray but those who look after their land who are to get a good harvest, and those who do not look after their health are not to be healthy; and we are not to be vexed if the bad get larger harvests, or if their farming generally goes better. ... But the wicked rule by the cowardice of the ruled; for this is just, and the opposite is not."

Plotinus, Enneads 3.2.8

"There was a boy tending the sheep who would continually go up to the embankment and shout, 'Help, there's a wolf!' The farmers would all come running only to find out that what the boy said was not true. Then one day there really was a wolf, but when the boy shouted they didn't believe him and no one came to his aid. The whole flock was eaten by the wolf."

Aesop, The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Wise men in the pagan movement point out that Socrates (and Plato, by extension) was discredited by his conviction in the Athenian court. Truly, a brilliant insight -- nothing in the news right this moment, for example, would ever lead me to question the legitimacy of state courts.

- CWT Admin

According to Aristotle, a quarter of the state's land should be dedicated to religious use:

"The expense of religious worship should likewise be a public charge. The land must therefore be divided into two parts, one public and the other private, and each part should be subdivided, part of the public land being appropriated to the service of the Gods ..."

Aristotle, Politics 1330a

"Someone would be better advised to say: 'let us flee to our beloved fatherland' (Iliad 2.140). But what is this flight, and how is it accomplished? Let us set sail in the way Homer, in an allegorical way, I think, tells us that Odysseus fled from the sorceress Circe or from Calypso. Odysseus was not satisfied to remain there, even though he had visual pleasures and passed his time with sensual beauty. Our fatherland, from where we have actually come, and our father are both in the intelligible world."

Plotinus, Enneads 1.6.8

"Pythagoras said that man was a microcosm, which means a compendium of the universe; not because, like other animals, even the least, he is constituted by the four elements, but because he contains all the powers of the cosmos. For the universe contains Gods, the four elements, animals and plants. All of these powers are contained in man. He has reason, which is a divine power; he has the nature of the elements, and the powers of moving, growing, and reproduction."

Anonymous Life of Pythagoras 15

"One after another the roots prevail as the cycle goes around,
Fading into one another and increasing as their appointed turn arrives.
For they are just themselves, and by running through one another
They become men and all the other kinds of creatures,
Now being brought together by love into a single orderly arrangement,
Now being borne asunder by the hostility of strife,
Until they grow together as one and the totality is overcome.
Thus, in that they have learnt to become one from many
And turn into many again when the one is divided,
In this sense they come to be and have an impermanent life;
But in that they never cease from alternation,
They are for ever unchanging in a cycle."

Empedocles, fragment DK 31B26