“The Japanese are of a kindly disposition, not at all given to cheating, wonderfully desirous of honour and rank. Honour with them is placed above everything else. There are a great many poor among them, but poverty is not a disgrace to anyone.

There is one thing among them of which I hardly know whether it is practised anywhere among Christians. The nobles, however poor they may be, receive the same honour from the rest as if they were rich.

They listen with great avidity to discourse about God and Divine things… They do not worship any gods under the form of beasts. Most of them venerate certain ancient men, who, as far as I have been able to ascertain, used to live after the fashion of the old philosophers.”

~ St. Francis Xavier to St. Ignatius Loyola in Rome, The Christian missionaries Letter

In Europe, every consciously established link with the centre through the medium of orthodox organizations is now broken, as has been the case for several centuries. This severance was gradual, completed in various successive stages rather than at once.

The first of these breaks occurred at the beginning of the fourteenth century, at which time one of the principal roles of the Orders of Chivalry was to make a direct connection between East and West. The importance of such a link will be readily understood when it is recalled that the centre has always, at least in 'historical' times, been depicted as being situated in the Orient.
After the destruction of the Order of the Templars, the liaison was maintained in a less overt fashion by the Rosicrucians, or those to whom this name was afterwards given.

. . .

"Orientals have been Westernized-so someone wrote-if they believe something foolish.

But if they were wise before the poison of the West, why did they let themselves be robbed of their wisdom? The East does not bear the first guilt for the fall of humanity –– but we are all human beings!"

– Schuon, Autumn Leaves

'The Mithraic mysteries lead to the very heart of the magical Western tradition – a world characterized by self-affirmation, light, greatness, regal spirituality and spiritual regality. In this path there is no room for escapism; or asceticism; or mortification of the self through humility and devotion; or renunciation and contemplative abstraction. Mithras' path is one of action, of solar power and of spirituality, which is opposed to both the dull and dreamy orientalism and to Christian sentimentalism and moralism.

It is said that only a "man" could proceed along this path; any "woman" would be consumed and broken by the "taurine strength." The brightness of the hvareno, of the glorious and radiant Mithraic halo, arises only out of a frightful tension, and it only crowns the "eagle," which was capable of "staring" at the Sun.'

Julius Evola – The Path of Enlightenment According to the Mysteries of Mithras

Prochoros Kydones was condemned by the Greek Church for upholding the Traditional doctrine of Divine Simplicity that was taught by Augustine, Boethius, and Aquinas. The Byzantine Humanists were in line with both the Traditions of the Pagan Philosophers and the Christian Patristics unlike the followers of Palamism.

Augustine has interesting takes but they are on the field of philosophy. . . On exegesis, metaexegesis, metaphysics (higher sense), and unironically pagans they are crappy. Same problem with Ficino when he starts christianizing some aspects of Platonism by siding with Origen, Augustine and Boethius against Plato and Aristotle.

The problem with Aristotle (and hence scholastics) is that it is a natural philosophy. A pure exercise of the intellect means you can make calculations but it doesn't help you in itself. Instead it paves the way to the Divine madness. Without understanding him, one will never understand Plato. Damascius, Bessarion and Ficino agree on this point. In regards to the point made before this, a medium is established by Dionysius of Areopagite between the Renaissance Humanists and Platonists: the Bacchic approach to God through the negation of the intellect. Both Pico and Ficino agreed that the highest form of love is blind. Pico in particular believed that man must surrender himself utterly to a state of unknowing and approach the divine secret in the blindness of self destruction.

This comment is misunderstanding the goal of Scholasticism. Scholasticism was never meant to be an ends in itself but a means to the end. Scholasticism is meant to be the preparation for the mystical experience of God. The words of Tomberg would be helpful here:

"St. Thomas Aquinas was not the only one. Just as he arrived at contemplation through scholastic reasoning, so did the peak of the scholastic wave reach gnosis [mystique], that is to say, intuition or the state of union of faith and intelligence, which is the aim of scholasticism. A Meister Eckhart, a Ruysbroeck, the Admirable Doctor, a St. John of the Cross are in fact spirits amongst whom you will search in vain for a spirit of opposition to scholasticism. For them also it was true that scholasticism was “like straw”, but they knew at the same time from their own experience that this straw is an excellent combustible. They certainly surpassed scholasticism, but after having attained its aim. For the aim of scholastic effort is contemplation, and it is gnosis [mystique] which is the fruit of the scholastic tree."  - Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XIX, The Sun

Also the Renaissance Humanists such as Pico and Ficino were very indebted to both Aristotle and the Scholastics, especially St. Thomas Aquinas. Ficino stated that one needs to be “initiated into the disciplines of Aristotle” before one can understand the doctrines of Plato:

"From natural things one ascends to divine things, and this is why no one can ever understand the sublime mysteries of Plato unless he has already been initiated into the disciplines of Aristotle." - 𝑶𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒂 𝑶𝒎𝒏𝒊𝒂, 𝒑. 𝒄𝒎𝒍𝒊𝒊𝒊.

We here at NFTU don’t believe in “Mysticism vs Reason” but we affirm the union of the two.

Thanks to NFTU's recent comment on shedding clarification on my judgement:
»This comment is misunderstanding the goal of Scholasticism. Scholasticism was never meant to be an ends in itself but a means to the end. Scholasticism is meant to be the preparation for the mystical experience of God.«

The underlined portions were my point exactly that it wasn't an end in itself and couldn't be (theoretically speaking)

Wisely show yourself spirited and resolute when perils press you; likewise reef your sails when they swell too much by a favoring breeze.
• Horace

Will you not allow that I have as much of the spirit of prophecy in me as the swans? For they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long, do then sing more lustily than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are about to go away to the god [i.e., Apollo] whose ministers they are. But men, because they are themselves afraid of death, slanderously affirm of the swans that they sing a lament at the last, not considering that no bird sings when cold, or hungry, or in pain, not even the nightingale, nor the swallow, nor yet the hoopoe; which are said indeed to tune a lay of sorrow, although I do not believe this to be true of them any more than of the swans. But because they are sacred to Apollo, they have the gift of prophecy, and anticipate the good things of another world; wherefore they sing and rejoice in that day more than ever they did before. And I too, believing myself to be the consecrated servant of the same God, and the fellow-servant of the swans, and thinking that I have received from my master gifts of prophecy which are not inferior to theirs, would not go out of life less merrily than the swans

Plato

"Where the object is an invisible one, ... the composition will be to see with the gaze of the imagination, and to consider, that my soul is imprisoned in this body which will one day disintegrate, and also my whole composite self (by this I mean the soul joined with the body), as if exiled in this valley among brute beasts."

- 𝑽𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒂 𝒅𝒆 𝒍𝒂 𝑰𝒎𝒂𝒈𝒊𝒏𝒂𝒄𝒊𝒐́𝒏 (𝑬𝒙𝒙. 𝒙𝒍𝒗𝒊𝒊), 𝒃𝒚 𝑺𝒕. 𝑰𝒈𝒏𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒖𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝑳𝒐𝒚𝒐𝒍𝒂