"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

“To live, indeed, is not in our power, but to live rightly is.” Quintus Sextius

Seneca writes of Sextius:

“All our senses ought to be trained to endurance. They are naturally long-suffering, if only the mind desists from weakening them. This should be summoned to give an account of itself every day. Sextius had this habit, and when the day was over and he had retired to his nightly rest, he would put these questions to his soul: ‘What bad habits have you cured today? What fault have you resisted? In what respect are you better?’ ... When the light has been removed from sight, and my wife, long aware of my habit, has become silent, I scan the whole of my day and retrace all my deeds and words. I conceal nothing from myself, I omit nothing.” Seneca, De Ira, III.XXXVI

Here we have another example of the practice of nightly self-examination.

Daily self-examination is a core practice of our wisdom tradition, and I highly recommend incorporating it into your practice. It can be (but doesn't have to be) combined with journaling.

- CWT Admin

"The Pythagoreans also insisted upon a very great exercise of the memory, setting up the following way of giving it practice. They would not arise from their beds until they had frankly disclosed to one another everything they had done the day before, beginning with early dawn and closing with the evening. ... This practice they followed to gain knowledge and judgement in all matters and experience in the ability to call many things to mind."

Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library 10.5.1

"Shrill muse, sing of Hephaestus, great inventor.
He and gray-eyed Athena taught all bright works
To mortals on the earth, who made their poor homes,
Like animals, in caverns in the mountains.
But now Hephaestus, glorious in his knowledge,
Has made them skilled. They spend the seasons' circle
In peace and comfort now, in their own houses.
Hephaestus, lend your grace: teach and reward me."

Homeric Hymns 20 "To Hephaestus"

"Every pleasure or pain provides, as it were, another nail to rivet the soul to the body and to weld them together. It makes the soul corporeal, so that it believes that truth is what the body says it is. As it shares the beliefs and delights of the body, I think it inevitably comes to share its ways and manner of life and is unable ever to reach Hades in a pure state; it is always full of body when it departs, so that it soon falls back into another body and grows with it as if it had been sewn into it."

Plato, Phaedo 83d

"Truly, above all I disclosed the stern inevitability of ancient Chaos, and Time, who in his boundless coils, produced Aether, and the twofold, beautiful, and noble Eros, whom the younger men call Phanes, celebrated parent of eternal Night, because he himself first manifested."

From the theogony of the Orphic Argonautica

"I beseech you, Lord, father and guide of the reason in us, remind us of our noble origin, which we were deemed worthy to receive from you. Act with us (as we are self-movers) for our purification from the body and its irrational emotions, that we may be superior to them and rule them, and that we may use them as instruments in the fitting way. Act with us also for the precise correction of the reason in us and its unification with the genuinely existent things through the light of the truth. And the third request to the Saviour: I beseech you, completely remove the mist from the eyes of our souls, 'so that we may clearly know,' as Homer says, 'both God and man.'"

Simplicius, Commentary on Epictetus' Handbook 454

"Still, I would try to teach [Christians] something, slow-witted though they are: If one shuts his eyes to the things of the senses and tries to see with his mind's eye, and if one turns from the flesh to the inner self, the soul, there he will see God and know God. But to begin the journey, you must flee from deceivers and magicians who parade fantasies in front of you. You will be a laughingstock so long as you repeat the blasphemy that the gods of other men are idols, while you brazenly worship as God a man whose life was wretched, who is known to have died (in disgraceful circumstances), and who, so you teach, is the very model of the God we should look to as our Father."

Celsus, The True Doctrine 9

"We ought to learn by heart the hymns in honor of the Gods."

Flavius Claudius Julianus, also known as Julian the Philosopher, died on this day in the year 363. He was the last pagan emperor of Rome.

Julian rejected his Christian upbringing and, returning to his true ancestral faith, sought to re-paganize the empire. Tragically, he did not succeed, but his memory and writings have endured.

In a letter to a priest, Julian explained that priests ought to be beyond reproach and should only study pious philosophers. He named Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics as examples and rejected philosophers such as Epicurus and Pyrrho. While this strict advice was meant for priests, not laymen, it does nevertheless indicate the shape that post-Christian paganism would likely have taken, officially, had the Empire not succumbed to Christianity.

May his memory endure forever!

"After the souls have been freed from generation, according to the ancients they administer the universe together with the gods, while according to the Platonists they contemplate the gods' order. According to the former, in the same way they help the angels with the creation of the universe, while according to the latter they accompany them."

Iamblichus, De Anima 53

"'Heroes' refers also to souls separated from bodies, whose conduct has been good, except that these are located in a lower position than the demons. Pythagoras held the heroes in esteem also, and we honor them by believing them to be eternally existent, and by believing that they requite with evil or good whoever does harm or good to them. For them there are prescribed exaltation, incense and sacrifice on the twenty-fifth day of January."

Proclus(?), Commentary on the Pythagorean Golden Verses 94b