Only a very gifted man can come to know that for each thing there is some kind, a being itself by itself; but only a prodigy more remarkable still will discover that and be able to teach someone else who has sifted all these difficulties thoroughly and critically for himself. ... Yet, on the other hand, Socrates, said Parmenides, if someone, having an eye on all the difficulties we have just brought up and others of the same sort, won't allow that there are forms for things and won't mark off a form for each one, he won't have anywhere to turn his thought, since he doesn't allow that for each thing there is a character that is always the same. In this way he will destroy the power of dialectic entirely.

Plato, Parmenides 135b-c

"Just as persons who are being initiated into the mysteries throng together at the outset amid tumult and shouting, and jostle against one another, but when the holy rites are being performed and disclosed the people are immediately attentive in awe and silence, so too at the beginning of philosophy: about its portals also you will see great tumult and talking and boldness, as some boorishly and violently try to jostle their way towards the repute it bestows; but he who has succeeded in getting inside, and has seen a great light, as though a shrine were opened, adopts another bearing of silence and amazement, and 'humble and orderly attends upon' reason as upon a god."

Plutarch, Moralia: Progress in Virtue 81d

“He [Apollo] holds the Graces in his right hand and his bow and arrows in the left because he heals faster than he harms”

Marcobius, Saturnalia

Giant of gold! king of fire in the mind,
Ruler of light; with you, above all else,
The splendid source of life’s prolific fount;
And from on high you pour the wealth of your
Harmonic streams into our world of matter here.
Hear! for high above, on planes of ether,
And in the world’s bright middle realm you reign,
While all things by your sovereign power are filled
With mind-enflaming, providential care.
The fires of stars surround your vigorous fire,
And ever in unwearied, ceaseless dance,
Their vivid dew on earth’s wide bosom drops.
By your eternal and repeated course
The hours and seasons come and go;
And elements opposed are joined in harmony,
In sight of your majestic beams, great king,
From deity ineffable and secret born.
Unmoving Fates will yield to your command,
Roll back the fatal thread of mortal lives;
For wide-extended sovereign sway is yours.
From your fair series of attractive songs,
Divinely charming, Phoebus leaps forth
into light in joy; and with his god-like harp,
To rapture strung, he calms the raging din
Of dire-resounding Matter’s mighty flood.
And from your gentle dance, repelling harm,
A healing Hymn expands its light,
Diffusing Health, and filling all the world
With streams of harmony.
You, too, they celebrate in sacred song
The illustrious source whence mighty Bacchus came;
In matter’s utmost churning depths they chant
“Euan Ate” to you forever,
While others sound your praise in tuneful verse,
As famed Adonis, delicate and fair.
Ferocious daemons, noxious to mankind,
Dread the dire anger of your rapid scourge;
These Daemons plot a thousand ills,
And hatch their plans for wretched souls
That founder in life’s dreadful-sounding seas.
Enslaved and shackled by the body’s chains,
Souls lose all thought of fire sublime
And in the dark abyss they writhe.
O best of gods, spirit blessed and crowned with fire,
Image of nature’s all-producing god,
And leader of our souls to realms of light-
Hear! and purify my stains of guilt;
Receive the supplication of my pleas,
And wash away the poison from my wounds!
Release me from the torments of my sins,
And mitigate the swift, all-seeing eye
Of justice, boundless in its view!
By your pure law, the constant foe of evil,
Direct my steps, and pour your sacred light
In rich abundance on my darkened soul!
Dispel the dismal and malignant shades
Of darkness, pregnant with invenomed ills!
Give me strength! And give my body
Health, whose presence splendid gifts imparts.
Give lasting fame; and give that sacred care
That fair-haired muses, long ago,
Gave to my pious forebears.
Add, if it please you, o, all-bestowing god,
Reward my piety with your enduring wealth;
Because the power and strength of all
The Universe invests your throne.
And if the whirling spindle of the fates
Spins threats and dangers from web of stars,
May your arrows, rays of light, sound through the air
And vanquish ere it falls the coming ill.

Proclus - hymn to the sun 🌞

"Just as comedies contain ridiculous lines, which, though inferior in themselves, add a certain charm to the play as a whole, so, although if you took vice on its own you might censure it, the universe as a whole does not find it useless."

Chrysippus, quoted in Plutarch, On Common Conceptions 1065d

"The authors of the Orphic hymns supposed Zeus to be the mind of the world, and that he created all things therein, containing the world in himself. ... Zeus, therefore, is the whole world, animal of animals, and god of gods; but Zeus, that is, inasmuch as he is the mind from which he brings forth all things, and by his thoughts creates them."

Porphyry, On Cult Images fr. 3

"A day can press down all human things, and a day can raise them up. But the Gods embrace men of sense and abhor the evil." -Athena to Odysseus, The Odyssey

"When I was a young man I was wonderfully keen on that wisdom which they call natural science, for I thought it splendid to know the causes of everything, why it comes to be, why it perishes and why it exists. ... One day I heard someone reading, as he said, from a book of Anaxagoras, and saying that it is Mind that directs and is the cause of everything. I was delighted with this cause and it seemed to me good, in a way, that Mind should be the cause of all. ... I eagerly acquired his books and read them as quickly as I could in order to know the best and the worst as soon as possible. This wonderful hope was dashed as I went on reading and saw that the man made no use of Mind, nor gave it any responsibility for the management of things, but mentioned as causes air and ether and water and many other strange things. That seemed to me much like saying that Socrates' actions are all due to his mind, and then in trying to tell the causes of everything I do, to say that the reason that I am sitting here is because my body consists of bones and sinews, because the bones are hard and are separated by joints, that the sinews are such as to contract and relax, that they surround the bones along with flesh and skin which hold them together, then as bones are hanging in their sockets, the relaxation and contraction of the sinews enable me to bend my limbs, and that is the cause of my sitting here with my limbs bent."

Plato, Phaedo 96a - 98d

"Crown your ancestors."

Delphic Maxims 131

"Make it a systematic practice to consider how all things change into one another, pay constant attention to the changing, and train yourself in this respect. Nothing is more conducive to objectivity. A man who looks at things objectively divests himself of his body. He knows that very shortly he'll have to leave all this behind when he departs from the world, and so he commits himself wholly to justice in his own actions and entrusts himself to universal nature when it comes to events that are beyond his control. It never occurs to him to wonder what people will say or think about him, or what they'll do against him, but he's content, first, if he always does what is right and, second, if he embraces his lot in its entirety. He gives up every distraction and diversion, and all he wants is to continue straight on the path of law and thereby to follow God."

Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.11

"All soul looks after all that lacks a soul, and patrols all of heaven, taking different shapes at different times. So long as its wings are in perfect condition it flies high, and the entire universe is its dominion; but a soul that sheds its wings wanders until it lights on something solid, where it settles and takes on an earthly body, which then, owing to the power of this soul, seems to move itself."

Plato, Phaedrus 246c

"Now they say that a vision of Apollo coupled with [Plato's] mother Perictione, and appeared to [his father] Ariston in the night, instructing him not to have intercourse with Perictione until she gave birth, and he acted accordingly. And when Plato was born, his parents took the newborn and placed him on Mount Hymettus, wishing to make sacrifices on his behalf to the gods there, Pan, the Nymphs, and Shepherd Apollo."

Olympiodorus, Life of Plato 2.20-27

The earliest extant account of Plato's Apollonian origin is found in Plutarch, but according to Diogenes Laertius, the claim originates much earlier with Plato's nephew Speusippus and was, he says, believed by Athenians at that time.

[Examples of vices and virtues derived from Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 2.3]

It is important to understand that divinity, at its purest height and origin, is ineffable. This is a pagan truth that was forgotten by many in Europe beginning, it seems, around the end of the Middle Ages.

The All-Things-Before-All-Things, which is the One (see Plotinus, Enneads 5.3.15.25-35), and the Gods, which in some way produce all beings, are incomprehensible and, in themselves, utterly beyond us.

They are beyond us because, being in some sense the causes of everything, they are not a part of the "everything" they cause. Even referring to them as causes risks misunderstanding them. We can, to some extent, understand them through their effects, but we cannot understand them.

You might wonder why this matters. It matters because it is the best philosophical explanation of reality. But in addition to that, and more importantly, it matters because, if we mistakenly believe that divinity at its height is just one of many beings, we are mentally dragging the Gods off their thrones and, in doing so, risking impiety.

- CWT admin

King Zeus, whether we pray or not, give us what is good for us; what is bad for us, give us not, however hard we pray for it.

Socrates, Second Alcibiades, 143

"Regard no woman as beautiful apart from your own wife."

Epictetus, Discourses 3.7.21

"You see, it's not mastery that enables [poets] to speak those verses, but a divine power, since if they knew how to speak beautifully on one type of poetry by mastering the subject, they could do so for all the others also. That's why the god takes their intellect away from them when he uses them as servants, as he does prophets and godly diviners, so that we who hear should know that they are not the ones who speak those verses that are of such high value, for their intellect is not in them: the god himself is the one who speaks, and he gives voice through them to us. The best evidence of this account is Tynnichus from Chalcis, who never made a poem anyone would think worth mentioning, except for the praise-song everyone sings, almost the most beautiful lyric-poem there is, and simply, as he says himself, 'an invention of the Muses.' In this more than anything, then, I think, the god is showing us, so that we should be in no doubt about it, that these beautiful poems are not human, not even from human beings, but are divine and from gods; that poets are nothing but representatives of the gods, possessed by whoever possesses them. To show that, the god deliberately sang the most beautiful lyric poem through the most worthless poet."

Plato, Ion 534c-e

Only he knows how to pay honour [to divinities] who does not confuse the worth of those being honoured and who renders above all himself as a sacrifice, crafting his own soul into a divine sculpture and making his own intellect a temple for the reception of the divine light.

Hierocles of Alexandria, Commentary on the Pythagorean Golden Verses

The ritual would consist of introduction, reading, offering, and meditation.