"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.

"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

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