"The world is a scene; life is a transition. You came, you saw, you departed."

The Golden Sentences of Democrates 83

"...It behoves the brave to set their hands to every noble enterprise, bearing before them the buckler of hope, and to endure gallantly whatever fate God may allot."

Demosthenes, On the Crown 97

"Just shut your eyes, and change your way of looking, and wake up. Everyone has this ability but few use it. Go into yourself and look. If you do not yet see yourself as beautiful, then be like a sculptor who, making a statue that is supposed to be beautiful, removes a part here and polishes a part there so that he makes the latter smooth and the former just right until he has given the statue a beautiful face. ... If you see that you have become this, at that moment you have become sight, and you can be confident about yourself, and you have at this moment ascended here, no longer in need of someone to show you. Just open your eyes and see, for this alone is the eye that sees the great beauty."

Plotinus, Enneads 1.6.8-9

"What has soul is distinguished from what lacks soul by living. But things are said to be living in many ways, and we say that a thing is alive if any one of these alone is present, for example, understanding, perception, movement and rest with respect to place, further the movement involved in nourishment, and also both withering and growth. This is why all plants too seem to be alive. ... To plants only the nutritive part belongs, whereas to others it belongs together with the perceptual part. ... Further, animals have a perception of what is nourishing, since touch is a perception of what is nourishing. For all animals are nourished by dry, hot, wet, and cold things, of which the perception is touch. ... those living things that have touch also have desire. ... Some have in addition to these the part capable of causing movement with respect to place, while others also have the thinking part and also understanding (nous) - for example, human beings and anything else there may be that is similar or more estimable."

Aristotle, De Anima (On the Soul) 413a20 - 413b19

"Ideas are at once the demiurgic and the intelligent causes of all things that naturally come into existence - being established as unchangeable and prior to the changing, simple and prior to compounds, separable and prior to the things that are inseparable from Matter."

Proclus, Commentary on Plato's Parmenides 2.732

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.

The classics of Greece and Rome are the Upanishads of the West – Homer, Ovid, and Virgil; Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics; and all the rest.

It is important to understand this and what it entails. We must remind our people of the spiritual significance of our classical inheritance.

In times of civilizational crisis, it is predictable that many people will turn back to their roots, looking for strength, guidance, and clarity – looking for civilizational Form.

To engage with the classics is to engage with one of the most important wellsprings of Western Civilization.

"God's other name is 'father' because he is capable of making all things. Making is characteristic of a father. Prudent people therefore regard the making of children as a duty in life to be taken seriously and greatly revered, and should any human being pass away childless, they see it as the worst misfortune and irreverence. After death such a person suffers retribution from demons. This is his punishment: the soul of the childless one is sentenced to a body that has neither a man's nature nor a woman's - a thing accursed under the sun."

Corpus Hermeticum 2.17

On Cerealia we honor the Goddess Ceres who brings peace to the world. Offerings of spelt cake, incense, milk, wine and honey are all appropriate on Cerealia.

We also honor the rebirth of Liber from Father Jove breaking our Lenten fast.

"The divine Mind has distributed different guardians and different cults to different cities. As souls are separately given to infants as they are born, so to peoples the genius of their destiny. Here comes in the proof from advantage, which most of all vouches to man for the gods. For, since our reason is wholly clouded, whence does the knowledge of the gods more rightly come to us, than from the memory and evidence of prosperity? Now if a long period gives authority to religious customs, we ought to keep faith with so many centuries, and to follow our ancestors, as they happily followed theirs."

Symmachus, Relationes ("Symmachus' letter on behalf of the Senate, petitioning the three emperors") 3.8

"O Ceres and Libera, whose sacred worship, as the opinions and religious belief of all men agree, is contained in the most important and most abstruse mysteries; You, by whom the principles of life and food, the examples of laws, customs, humanity, and refinement are said to have been given and distributed to nations and to cities; You, whose sacred rites the Roman people has received from the Greeks and adopted, and now preserves with such religious awe, both publicly and privately, that they seem not to have been introduced from other nations, but rather to have been transmitted from hence to other nations. You, again and again I implore and appeal to, most holy Goddesses, who dwell around those lakes and groves of Enna, and who preside over all Sicily,… You whose invention and gift of corn, which You have distributed over the whole earth, inspires all nations and all races of men with reverence for Your divine power;–And all the other Gods, and all the Goddesses, do I implore and entreat."

Cicero, In C. Verrem IV.72 187-8

Perhaps one who is truly a man should stop thinking about how long he will live. He should not be attached to life but should commit these concerns to the god and believe the women who say that not one single person can escape fate. He should thereupon give consideration to how he might live the part of his life still before him as well as possible.

Plato, Gorgias, 512e

Once we are in a position to display the full wealth of our tradition, many Catholics and other Christians will convert as they realize that so much of what they appreciated in Christianity was in fact pagan, and that there is no need to obfuscate and distort pagan truths with useless Judaic accretions.

"Holy is god, father of all;
Holy is god, whose counsel is done by his own powers;
Holy is god, who wishes to be known and is known by his own people;
Holy are you, who by the word have constituted all things that are;
Holy are you, from whom all nature was born as an image;
Holy are you, of whom nature has not made a like figure;
Holy are you, who are stronger than every power;
Holy are you, who surpass every excellence;
Holy are you, mightier than praises.

You whom we address in silence, the unspeakable, the unsayable, accept pure speech offerings from a heart and soul that reach up to you. Grant my request not to fail in the knowledge that befits our essence; give me power; and with this gift I shall enlighten those who are in ignorance, brothers of my race, but your sons."

Corpus Hermeticum 1.31-32

"For he who pays attention to his soul alone, but neglects the body, does not purify the whole man. Conversely, he who thinks he must care for the body apart from the soul or that the treatments of the body will accomplish anything for the soul, if the soul is in no wise being purified in itself, makes entirely the same mistake. But he who continues properly with both becomes wholly perfected. Accordingly, philosophy has been joined to the art of sacred rites, on the grounds that this art engages in the purification of the luminous body. ...

By the operation of telestic [or theurgical] rites I mean the power of purifying the luminous [body], so that, of philosophy taken as a whole, the contemplative part, as intellect, takes the lead, and the practical part, as power, follows. Of the practical we should posit two kinds, the civic and the telestic: the former purifies us of the irrational through the virtues, the latter cuts off our materially based imaginations through the methods of sacred rites. Evidence of a not insignificant kind for civic philosophy is provided by the commonly established laws, and for telestic philosophy by the sacred rites of the city-states. The contemplative intellect is the summit of the whole of philosophy, the civic is intermediate, and the telestic is third."

Hierocles of Alexandria, Commentary on the Golden Verses 26.24-27 [emphasis mine]

"It is likely that those who established the mystic rites for us were not inferior persons but were speaking in riddles long ago when they said that whoever arrives in the underworld uninitiated and unsanctified will wallow in the mire, whereas he who arrives there purified and initiated will dwell with the gods. There are indeed, as those concerned with the mysteries say, many who carry the thyrsus but the Bacchants are few. These latter are, in my opinion, no other than those who have practiced philosophy in the right way."

Plato, Phaedo 69c-d

"For the same thing both can be thought and can be."

Parmenides, fr. DK 28B3

"Those who, by inhaling, drive out the soul, are free."

The Chaldean Oracles, fr. 124

"As to exposing or rearing the children born, let there be a law that no deformed child shall be reared; but on the ground of number of children, if the regular customs hinder any of those born being exposed, there must be a limit fixed to the procreation of offspring, and if any people have a child as a result of intercourse in contravention of these regulations, abortion must be practised on it before it has developed sensation and life; for the line between lawful and unlawful abortion will be marked by the fact of having sensation and being alive."

Aristotle, Politics 7.16

"But a controversy has arisen. For one party banishes abortives, citing the testimony of Hippocrates who says: 'I will give to no one an abortive'; moreover, because it is the specific task of medicine to guard and preserve what has been engendered by nature. The other party prescribes abortives, but with discrimination, that is, they do not prescribe them when a person wishes to destroy the embryo because of adultery or out of consideration for youthful beauty; but only to prevent subsequent danger in parturition if the uterus is small and not capable of accommodating the complete development, or if the uterus at its orifice has knobby swellings and fissures, or if some similar difficulty is involved. And they say the same about contraceptives as well, and we too agree with them."

Soranus, Gynecology 1.60