The Classical Wisdom Tradition – Telegram
The Classical Wisdom Tradition
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Exploring the spirituality inherited by Europe from Greece and Rome.
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The Classical Wisdom Tradition pinned «Below is a list of classical music compositions which are based on or inspired by Greek or Roman mythology, religion, or philosophy. Ludwig van Beethoven The Creatures of Prometheus (ballet) Hector Berlioz The Trojans (opera: based on Virgil's Aeneid)…»
Forwarded from Goat’s Milk and Honey
Lamentation d'Orphée
By: Alexandre Séon
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Forwarded from Polina Sarris
If you want to make progress, put up with being perceived as ignorant or naive in worldly matters, don't aspire to a reputation for sagacity. If you do impress others as somebody, don't altogether believe it. You have to realize, it isn't easy to keep your will in agreement with nature, as well as externals. Caring about the one inevitably means you are going to shortchange the other.

Epictetus
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"The world's wide bounds, all-flourishing, are thine,
Thyself of all the source and end divine.
'Tis thine all Nature's music to inspire
With various-sounding, harmonizing lyre:
Now the last string thou tun'st to sweet accord,
Divinely warbling, now the highest chord;
Th'immortal golden lyre, now touch'd by thee,
Responsive yields a Dorian melody.
All Nature's tribes to thee their diff'rence owe,
And changing seasons from thy music flow:
Hence, mix'd by thee in equal parts, advance
Summer and Winter in alternate dance"

Orphic Hymn to Apollo
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GreekMedicine.net has a lot of useful information about traditional European holistic medicine. From the website's introduction:

"It's highly ironic that Western man has been increasingly turning to the Orient in recent years for natural healing solutions when Western civilization has at its very roots a fine, outstanding holistic healing system of its own. The basic ideas, philosophies and archetypes that underly Greek Medicine are not foreign but rather indigenous to Western civilization and culture. And so, reviving Greek Medicine as a holistic healing system can have a profound healing and regenerative effect on Western civilization itself, and create a renewed appreciation and respect for our relationship with Nature. Greek Medicine offers a wealth of natural remedies, treatments and therapies to heal body, mind and spirit.

Modern medicine would benefit greatly by returning to its traditional Greek roots to recover the natural, holistic perspectives and virtues it has lost. This need not be done in a blind, uncritical manner, but rather with a discerning, integrative approach that synthesizes and combines the best of the old with the best of the new."
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The original Hippocratic oath swore by the Gods of healing.

"I swear by Apollo Healer, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture."
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Forwarded from Hermanubis
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Forwarded from Goat’s Milk and Honey
Orpheus And Eurydice (1876) by Emil Neide.
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Today we celebrate Mercuralia. This is a time to honor Mercury by reading his myths and the revelations of Mercurius ter Maximus.
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"Do not form your vision by diverting your thought elsewhere. ... Rather, it is as one says in the case of matter, that [the soul] has to be unqualified by anything, if it is to take on the impressions of all things; so, in this case, the soul has to be formless to a greater degree, if it is not to be prevented from being filled and illuminated by the first nature.

If this is so, then the soul should withdraw from everything external and revert entirely to its own inside, without any inclination to anything external. Rather, the soul should ignore everything, especially things in sense-perception, but also in forms, and then, in considering the One, come to ignore itself. And when the soul has come to be with the One, and, in a way, communed with it to a sufficient degree, then it should tell others of this intimate contact, if it can. It is, presumably, because he had such intercourse that Minos is famed as 'Zeus' familiar'.

In fact, not considering politics to be worthy of himself, he wanted always to remain up there, a state which anyone who has seen much may well be in. Plato says that the One is outside nothing, but it has intercourse with all things, without them knowing, for they flee outside it, or better, outside themselves, and so cannot grasp what they have fled from; indeed, because they have destroyed themselves, they cannot look for someone else, any more than a child which is beside itself with madness knows its father. In contrast, someone who knows himself knows where he is from."

Plotinus, Enneads 6.9.7
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"What good do you have or what pleasure do you know, if you do nothing to get them? You don't even await the desire for pleasant things but fill yourself with all things before you desire them: eating before you're hungry, drinking before you're thirsty; for good eating getting yourself cooks, for good drinking buying expensive wines and running around in the summertime in search of snow; for good sleeping you buy not only soft blankets but bed frames too. For it is not toil but the tedium of having nothing to do that makes you long for sleep. You force lust when there is no need, by all kinds of tricks and by using men as women: thus you train your own friends, running riot at night and sleeping through the best part of the day."

Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.1.30 (This is excerpted from Socrates's retelling of The Choice of Hercules, in which Virtue, who is here speaking, warns Hercules not to follow Vice.)
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"All things are full of Gods."

Thales
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"The consort I invoke of Jove divine,
Source of the holy, sweetly speaking Nine;
Free from th’oblivion of the fallen mind,
By whom the soul with intellect is join’d.
Reason’s increase and thought to thee belong,
All-powerful, pleasant, vigilant, and strong.
‘Tis thine to waken from lethargic rest
All thoughts deposited within the breast;
And nought neglecting, vig’rous to excite
The mental eye from dark oblivion’s night.
Come, blessed pow’r, thy mystics’ mem’ry wake
To holy rites, and Lethe’s fetters break."

Orphic Hymn to Mnemosyne, or the Goddess of Memory
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"The fountain and origin of all beings is the Good. For what everything strives for, and what everything stretches up towards, is the origin and goal of all things. The Good produces everything from itself, both the first things, and the intermediate things, and the lowest things. But it produces the first things contiguous to it and like itself. One Goodness produces many goodnesses, one Simplicity produces many simplicities, one Henad above all henads produces many henads, and one Origin produces many origins. For the same thing is One, and Origin, and Good, and God, since God is the first thing, and the cause of everything. But it is necessary that what is first must also be most simple, because what is composite in any way and has plurality is secondary to the one, from which the composite things and plurality come. ... It is also necessary that it should have the highest power, and all power. Superabundance of power means that in producing everything from itself it produces the things that are like it before the things that are unlike it. ... For all of the beings, which are differentiated from one another and are pluralised by their own proper differentia, are referred back each to their own single origin. (For instance, all beautiful things, whether in intellects, souls or bodies, are referred back to one fountain of beauty. ...)."

Simplicius, Commentary on Epictetus' Handbook 5.2-28
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Socrates instead of Jesus; Plato instead of Paul. Proclus instead of Aquinas. Instead of the Psalms, the Homeric and Orphic Hymns. Instead of the Beatitudes, the Golden Verses. The Cave instead of the Crucifixion. Instead of the parables, the Choice and Labors of Hercules. Instead of the Old Testament histories, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Metamorphoses and the Aeneid.
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"No one is free who has not obtained the empire of himself."

Pythagoric Sentences of Demophilus
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TheGoldenVersesOfPythagoras.pdf
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This is a nice, one page version of The Golden Verses. I have this version framed on my wall.
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"Upon the king of all do all things turn; he is the end of all things and the cause of all good. Things of the second order turn upon the second principle, and those of the third order upon the third."

Plato(?), Letter II 312e
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"To these four causes [of Aristotle] Plato adds a fifth in the model - what he himself calls the idea - this being what the sculptor had constantly before his eyes as he executed the intended work. ... God has within himself models like this of everything in the universe, his mind embracing the designs and calculations for his projects; he is full of these images which Plato calls ideas, eternal, immutable, ever dynamic. ... As Plato has it, then, there are five causes: the material, the agent, the form, the model and the end; and finally we get the result of all these. In the case of the statue, to use the example we began with, the material is the bronze, the agent is the sculptor, the form is the guise it is given, the model is what the sculptor making it copies, the end is what the maker has in view, and the final result is the statue itself. The universe as well, according to Plato, has all these elements. The maker is God; matter is the material; the form is the general character and lay-out of the universe as we see it; the model naturally enough is the pattern which God adopted for the creation of this stupendous work in all its beauty; the end is what God had in view when he created it, and that - in case you are asking what is the end God has in view - is goodness."

Seneca, Letters 65.7-10
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Pythagoras Instructing the Fishermen, Salvator Rosa 1662

"While at the Olympic games, he was discoursing with his friends about auguries, omens, and divine signs, and how men of true piety do receive messages from the Gods. Flying over his head was an eagle, who stopped, and came down to Pythagoras. After stroking her awhile, he released her. Meeting with some fishermen who were drawing in their nets heavily laden with fishes from the deep, he predicted the exact number of fish they had caught. The fishermen said that if his estimate was accurate they would do whatever he commanded. They counted them accurately, and found the number correct. He then bade them return the fish alive into the sea; and, what is more wonderful, not one of them died, although they had been out of the water a considerable time. He paid them and left."
Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras 25
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