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

"In a nativity the all-seeing sun, nature’s fire and intellectual light, the organ of mental perception, indicates kingship, rule, intellect, intelligence, beauty, motion, loftiness of fortune, the ordinance of the gods, judgement, public reputation, action, authority over the masses, the father, the master, friendship, noble personages, honors consisting of pictures, statues, and garlands, high priesthoods, <rule over> one’s country <and over> other places. Of the parts of the body, the sun rules the head; of the sense organs, it rules the right eye; of the trunk, it rules the heart; of the spiritual (i.e. the perceptive) faculties, the nerves. Of materials, it rules gold; of fruits, it rules wheat and barley. It is of the day sect, yellowish, bitter in taste."

Vettius Valens, Anthologies I.1.1-13

Where to turn to for guidance? How can I live my best life? Where can I learn more about the Gods?

There are many works in our tradition which will help you as you seek answers to those questions, but below is a list of some of the best texts for living a life of daily devotion to the ancient Gods. Additionally, these texts are suitable for beginners.

1. Pythagorean
The Golden Verses of Pythagoras
The Similitudes of Demophilus
The Pythagoric Sentences of Demophilus
Pythagoric Ethical Sentences from Stobaeus
Pythagoric Sentences from the Protreptics of Iamblichus
The Golden Sentences of Democrates
The Life of Pythagoras
2. The Orphic Hymns
3. The Homeric Hymns
4. The Handbook of Epictetus
5. On the Gods and the World

Below is a reconstruction of the Orphic Theogony, but with Roman deity names in place of the original Greek ones.

https://nistsocietytheroma.substack.com/p/the-orphic-theogony

Today is the anniversary of the death of Thomas Taylor (1758 – 1835), the English platonist who was the first to translate the complete works of Plato and Aristotle into English, as well as many other important works of our tradition. We all owe much to Taylor. Please say a prayer in his memory.

"For those under [Pythagoras'] guidance, according to his instruction, acted as follows: they made their morning walks alone and in such places where there was suitable calmness and stillness, and where there were temples and sacred groves and anything else that gladdened the heart. For they thought it necessary not to meet anyone until they set their own soul in order and were composed in their intellect; and such quietness is agreeable to the composure of the intellect. For to be shoved together in crowds immediately on arising they considered disturbing."

Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras 96

"Moral excellence is destroyed by defect and excess. ... For one can see this at once in the case of gymnastic exercises. If they are overdone, the strength is destroyed, while if they are deficient, it is so also. And the same is the case with food and drink. For if too much is taken health is destroyed, and also if too little, but by the right proportion strength and health are preserved. The same is the case with temperance and courage and the rest of the excellences. For if you make a man too fearless, so as not even to fear the gods, he is not brave but mad, but if you make him afraid of everything, he is a coward. To be brave, then, a man must not either fear everything or nothing. The same things, then, both increase and destroy excellence."

Aristotle, Magna Moralia 1185b1

"[By having children], we shall be cooperating with the ardent wishes and fervent prayers of those who begot us. They were solicitous about our birth from the first, thereby looking for an extended succession of themselves, that they should leave behind them children of children, therefore paying attention to our marriage, procreation and nurture. Hence, by marrying and begetting children we shall be, as it were, fulfilling a part of their prayers; while, acting contrarily, we shall be destroying the object of their deliberate choice. Moreover, it would seem that everyone who voluntarily, and without some prohibiting circumstance avoids marriage and the procreation of children, accuses his parents of madness, as having engaged in wedlock without the right conception of things. ... We must remember that we beget children not only for our own sake but, as we have already stated, for our parents'; but further also for the sake of our friends and kindred. ... For this reason, then, will a man who is a lover of his kindred and associates earnestly desire to marry and beget children. Our country also loudly calls upon us to do so. For after all we do not beget children so much for ourselves as for our country, procuring a race that may follow us, and supplying the community with successors to ourselves. Hence the priest should realize that to the city he owes priests; the ruler, that he owes rulers; the orator, that he owes orators; and in short, the citizen, that he owes citizens."

Hierocles, Ethical Fragments: On Marriage

Just shut your eyes, and change your way of looking, and wake up.

Plotinus, Enneads 1.6.8

"Now, do such leisured circumstances leave them no pressing work to do, no genuinely appropriate occupation? Must each of them get plumper every day of his life, like a fatted beast? No: we maintain that's not the right and proper thing to do. A man who lives like that won't be able to escape the fate he deserves; and the fate of an idle fattened beast that takes life easy is usually to be torn to pieces by some other animal - one of the skinny kind, who've been emaciated by a life of daring and endurance."

Plato, Laws 807a

"In such a mighty contest, sedition and discord, you will see one according law and assertion in all the earth, that there is one God, the king and father of all things, and many gods, sons of God, ruling together with him."

Maximus Tyrius, Dissertation 1