The soul is bound to the body by a conversion to the corporeal passions; and again liberated by becoming impassive to the body.

Porphyry

Natural Virtue: Part Three of a Multipart Series on Virtue

The lowest level of virtue on the scale of virtues is Natural Virtue.

Each virtue is possessed in some sense naturally, since everyone has a measure of wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance from birth. Individuals are more or less brave, more or less self-controlled, and so on, and it is clear that these dispositions are to some extent innate, whether they come to us by chance of birth or were acquired in a past life.

These natural virtues are the sort of virtues we share with animals. Just as it is plain to everyone that some animals have more excellent natures than other members of their species, so it is with human beings. And just as lions are courageous, cattle are temperate, and storks are just, humans are characterized by rationality, natural wisdom.

Along with disposition, natural virtue also encompasses such things as bodily vigor, natural intelligence, acute sense perception (such as good eyesight), and other things of that kind.

Therefore, we see that a naturally virtuous person is one who is by birth fair minded (just), gentle (wise), resistant to fear (courageous), not easily overwhelmed by impulse (temperate), with a sharp mind and a strong body.

But insofar as our endowments are natural, they are, for better or worse, difficult to change through training. As Aristotle wrote, a stone won’t learn to fly no matter how many times you throw it in the air. Some people are predisposed to a life of virtue, others less so. Virtue comes easier for some. That is the way of things.

But everyone, regardless of how naturally excellent they may be, is imperfect. Arrogance is not a virtue, and so we must be aware of our strengths and weaknesses. We must make the most out of what we were born with, erring neither in the direction of conceit nor bitterness.

Sovereign: Bacchus.

Other divinities of particular relevance: Vulcan.

Texts: Plato discusses them in The Laws and Statesman.

"Sin should be abstained from, not through fear, but for the sake of the becoming."

The Golden Sentences of Democrates 7

"And [Dionysius the Great] asked [Plato] again: 'What do you consider to be the work of the statesman?'; and he answered, 'To make his citizens better.'"

Olympiodorus, Commentary on the Alcibiades of Plato 102-103

"Nevertheless I long - I pine, all my days -
to travel home and see the dawn of my return.
And if a god will wreck me yet again on the wine-dark sea,
I can bear that too, with a spirit tempered to endure.
Much have I suffered, labored long and hard by now
In the waves and wars. Add this to the total -
Bring the trial on!"

Odyssey, 5.221-27

"You will also find in Homer other principles and origins of all-various names, which are considered by the stupid as nothing more than fables, but are regarded by the philosopher as realities. There is also in him the principle of virtue, but it is called Minerva, and is present with its possessor in all-various labours. There is likewise the principle of love, but it is ascribed to Venus, who presides over the cestus, and imparts desire. The principle of art too is to be found in him, but it is Vulcan who governs fire and communicates art. But with him Apollo rules over the choir, the Muses over the song, Mars over war, Aeolus over the winds, Ocean over rivers, and Ceres over fruits; and there is nothing in Homer without deity, nothing without a ruler, nothing without a principle, but all things are full of divine speeches, and divine names, and divine art."

Maximus Tyrius, Dissertation 16

"Let everyone dearly love his lawful wife and beget children by her. But let none shed the seed due his children into any other person, and let him not disgrace that which is honorable by both nature and law. For nature produced the seed for the sake of producing children, and not for the sake of lust.

A wife should be chaste and refuse impious connection with other men, for otherwise she will subject herself to the vengeance of the daimons, whose office it is to expel those to whom they are hostile from their house, and to produce hatred."

Preface to the Laws of Charondas the Catanean

"The soul reasons best when none of these senses troubles it, neither hearing nor sight, nor pain nor pleasure, but when it is most by itself, taking leave of the body and as far as possible having no contact or association with it in its search for reality."

Plato, Phaedo 65c

"The beauty of a household consists in the conjunction of man and wife, united to each other by destiny, and consecrated to the Gods presiding over nuptial birth and houses, and who harmonize, and use all things in common for their bodies, or even their very souls; who likewise exercise a becoming authority over their house and servants; who are properly solicitous about the education of their children; and to the necessities of life pay an attention which is neither excessive nor negligent, but moderate and appropriate. For, as the most admirable Homer says, what can be more excellent

Than when at home the husband and wife
Live in entire unanimity.
(Odyssey, 7.183)

That is the reason why I have frequently wondered at those who conceive that life in common with a woman must be burdensome and grievous. Though to them she appears to be a burden and molestation, she is not so; on the contrary, she is something light and easy to be borne or, rather, she possesses the power of charming away from her husband things burdensome and grievous. No trouble so great is there which cannot easily be borne by a husband and wife who harmonize and are willing to endure it in common."

Hierocles, Ethical Fragments: On Marriage

"Do not, then, seek to see with mortal eyes [the One] as our account describes it, nor to see that it is in the way in which someone would expect it to be who assumes that all things are perceived by the senses, by which supposition he eliminates that which is most real of all. For the things which one thinks are most real, are least real; and the [materially] large has less genuine existence. But the First is the principle of existence and, again, more authentic than substantial reality. So reverse your way of thinking, or you will be left deprived of God, like the people at festivals who by their gluttony stuff themselves with things which it is not lawful for those going in to the Gods to take, thinking that these are more obviously real than the vision of the God for whom they ought to be celebrating the festival, and take no part in the rites within."

Plotinus, Enneads 5.5.11

"In our view it is God who is preeminently the 'measure of all things', much more so than any 'man', as they say."

Plato, Laws 716c

Some common Christian attacks on paganism followed by strong responses.

Paganism was proto-Christianity.
Counter: Christianity is crypto-paganism.

Elaboration: Christianity is a schizophrenic, rogue quasi-paganism which tried to meld Judaism with pagan philosophy and cult. It isn't even happily monotheistic: the Trinity is incoherent unless understood polytheistically, and most Christians are functionally tritheistic.

Paganism is larping, it's made up, there's no tradition.
Counter: Most of what could be interesting about Christianity is rooted in European paganism, and most of what isn't interesting about it is Jewish. There has always been an undercurrent of pagan spirituality in Europe, and it's beginning to shine brighter now as Christianity slowly dies.

Elaboration: The pagan classics have formed a very significant part of the bedrock of Western Civilization. The worldviews of Medieval and Renaissance Europe, though officially Christian, were heavily influenced by pagan Rome and Greece as well as the native spiritualities of northern Europe. Many people were suspected or accused of being pagan over the centuries. It isn't uncommon in European literature to encounter invocations of the Muses or references to pagan Gods mixed in with references to the Bible. In addition to that, many folk customs with pagan origins have survived. It's true that we cannot - and should not try to - return to the past. We are not ancient Romans or Greeks, nor are we Vikings; we are deeply spiritual modern people who are drawing on a very European spiritual current that has always been there.

Paganism is relativistic, materialistic, amoral, and hedonistic.
Counter: No, it's not. In fact, virtually everything about Christian teaching - including moral teaching - that is good and true was either borrowed from paganism or coincides with paganism. What is bad and false about Christian teaching is either Jewish or unique to Christianity

Elaboration: Paganism is a strong, ennobling way of life with serious metaphysics behind it. We believe that the light of the Gods is constantly shining throughout the universe, and we seek to live in that light.

Christianity is the only thing that can save us from globalism.
Counter: LOL.

Elaboration: First, adopting a religion purely for political reasons is illegitimate and should be avoided. Second, far from saving us from the problems of globalism, Christianity naturally falls in step with it as it seeks to convert even the most foreign peoples to its dogmas, and it struggles (because of its monotheism) to understand how different peoples could have their own different, valid spiritual expressions.

"[Pythagoras] required that libations be made before dining to Zeus the deliverer, and to Heracles and the Dioscuri, celebrating Zeus as the chief and leader of this nourishment, and Heracles as the power of nature, and the Dioscuri as the harmony of all things."

Iamblichus, On the Pythagorean Way of Life 155

Pope Theophilus I of Alexandria, who defiled the temple of Serapis in 391 AD, ordained as bishop a man called Synesius who, despite being an orthodox Christian, regularly studied the pagan Chaldean oracles. In one of his letters we learn what early Christian elites really thought. He only consented to be a bishop on condition that he never had to believe in Orthodox Christianity, which he saw merely as a “noble lie” in Platonic terms. Despite his clearly heretical beliefs and pagan philosophy the Pope was happy to make him a bishop! They knew that theologically it made no sense compared to paganism, but it was justified as a necessary lie to control simple people and bring about the world they wanted.

I dare to believe that it's possible to popularize a sophisticated, truthful European spirituality that will be a friend both to reason and the common man.

"...[The] legislator's first job is to locate the city as precisely as possible in the center of the country, provided that the site he chooses is a convenient one for a city in all other respects too ... Next he must divide the country into twelve sections. But first he ought to reserve a sacred area for Hestia, Zeus and Athena (calling it the 'acropolis'), and enclose its boundaries; he will then divide the city itself and the whole country into twelve sections by lines radiating from this central point. ... He should also divide the population into twelve sections ... Finally, they must allocate the sections as twelve 'holdings' for the twelve gods, consecrate each section to the particular god which it has drawn by lot, name it after him, and call it a 'tribe'."

Plato, Laws 745b-e

"Our guardian must be both a warrior and a philosopher."

Plato, Republic 525b

"It must be that what can be spoken and thought is, for it is there for being
And there is no such thing as nothing. These are the guidelines I suggest for you."

Parmenides, fragment 5

"So let us start from the beginning with the theologians and apply our proofs about [Hephaestus] to the tradition we have received. That he belongs to the creative [i.e., demiurgic] series, and not to the life-giving or conserving ones, or to some other, the theologians show by leaving a tradition of him in the role of a blacksmith who applies the bellows, and basically as a ‘worker of crafts’. These same people also show that he is a fashioner of sensible things, not of psychical or intellectual deeds. For his manufacture of the mirror, his bronze, his being lame, and all such things, are symbols of his productivity in the sensible realm. Moreover, that he is a maker of all sensible things is clear from the same sources, who say that he was carried from Olympus above all the way to earth, and who make all the receptacles of the encosmic gods ‘Hephaestus-wrought’. So if we claim that this is so, then this god would be the overall fashioner of the entire bodily construction. He gets the gods’ visible dwelling-places ready for them in advance, contributes everything required for the single harmony of the cosmos, provides all the creations of bodily life, and uses forms to give coherence to the intractable and dense nature of matter. That is the reason why he is also said by the theologians to be a smith, as being a worker of solid and resistant materials, and because the heaven is brazen insofar as it is an imitation of the intelligible, and the maker of the heaven is a smith. He is said to be lame in both legs, because he is the demiurge of the final phase of the procession of reality – that being bodies – and because he is no longer able to advance to another stage [because bodies are the last stage]. ... He is cast from above to the earth, because he extends his creative activity through the whole of sensible substance. Whether people speak of ‘natural’ or of ‘spermatic principles’ one should attribute the cause of all of them to this god. For what nature produces by sinking down into bodies, is also shaped in a divine and transcendent manner by this god, setting nature in motion and using it as a tool for his own creative activity. For innate warmth is Hephaestan, introduced by him for the making of bodies. So our account traces the universal cause of things that come to be back to this god."

Proclus, Commentary on Plato's Timaeus 142.20 - 143.24

"[The soul] loves then to be quiet, having closed its eyes to thoughts that go downward, having become speechless and silent in internal silence. For how else could it attach itself to the most ineffable of all things than by putting to sleep the chatter in it? Let it therefore become one, so that it may see the One, or rather not see the One. For by seeing, the soul will see an intelligible object and not what is beyond intellect, and it will think something that is one, not the One itself. … Thus, my friend, when someone actualises what really is the most divine activity of the soul, and entrusts himself only to the ‘flower of the intellect’ and brings himself to rest not only from the external motions, but also from the internal, he will become a god as far as this is possible for a soul, and will know only in the way the gods know everything in an ineffable manner, each according to their proper one."

Proclus, On Providence 31 & 32