"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

I think that, if there is anything beautiful besides the Beautiful itself, it is beautiful for no other reason than that it shares in that Beautiful, and I say so with everything. … I no longer understand or recognize those other sophisticated causes, and if someone tells me that a thing is beautiful because it has a bright color or shape or any such thing, I ignore these other reasons - for all these confuse me - but I simply, naively and perhaps foolishly cling to this, that nothing else makes it beautiful other than the presence of, or the sharing in, or however you may describe its relationship to that Beautiful we mentioned, for I will not insist on the precise nature of the relationship, but that all beautiful things are beautiful by the Beautiful. That, I think, is the safest answer I can give myself or anyone else. And if I stick to this I think I shall never fall into error. This is the safe answer for me or anyone else to give, namely, that it is through Beauty that beautiful things are made beautiful. Or do you not think so too?

Plato, Phaedo 100c-e

The three core dogmas of classical theology:

1. The Gods exist.
The Gods really exist. They are not metaphors or social constructs, nor are they merely anthropomorphic depictions of natural phenomena. This does not mean myths should be understood literally.

2. The Gods govern the universe well and justly.

3. The Gods cannot be corrupted.
Gods cannot be bribed, manipulated, or tricked. They cannot be influenced for evil by anyone or anything.

I do not claim that all classical pagans accepted these three things, only that they are true, that there was something close to a consensus on them (especially in the philosophical literature) and that they are an excellent set of parameters for us to operate in.

- CWT Admin

"...They should exercise especial heed and caution lest they unwittingly erase and dissipate things divine into winds and streams and sowings and ploughings, developments of the earth and changes of the seasons, as do those who regard wine as Dionysus and flame as Hephaestus. ... It is impossible to conceive of these things as being gods in themselves; for God is not senseless nor inanimate nor subject to human control. As a result of this we have come to regard as gods those who make use of these things and present them to us and provide us with things everlasting and constant. Nor do we think of the gods as different gods among different peoples, nor as barbarian gods and Greek gods, nor as southern and northern gods; but, just as the sun and the moon and the heavens and the earth and the sea are common to all, but are called by different names by different peoples, so for that one rationality which keeps all these things in order and the one Providence which watches over them and the ancillary powers that are set over all, there have arisen among different peoples, in accordance with their customs, different honours and appellations. Thus men make use of consecrated symbols, some employing symbols that are obscure, but others those that are clearer, in guiding the intelligence toward things divine, though not without a certain hazard. For some go completely astray and become engulfed in superstition; and others, while they fly from superstition as from a quagmire, on the other hand unwittingly fall, as it were, over a precipice into atheism."

Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 377d-378a [emphasis mine]

"Jove is a circle, triangle and square,
Centre and line, and all things before all."

Pherecydes of Syros, quoted by Thomas Taylor in Works of Plato v.1 p.18