The Classical Wisdom Tradition

"The Golden Verses order, that the immortal Gods be honoured first as they are disposed by law; afterwards the illustrious Heroes, under which appellation, the author of the verses comprehends also angels and daemons properly so called; and in the last place the terrestrial daemons, i.e. such good men as transcend in virtue the rest of mankind. But to honour the Gods as they are disposed by law, is, as Hierocles observes, to reverence them as they are arranged by their fabricator and father; and this is to honour them as beings superior to man." And in a footnote: "Diogenes Laertius says of Pythagoras, That he charged his disciples not to give equal degrees of honour to the Gods and Heroes. Herodotus (in Euterpe) says of the Greeks, That they worshipped Hercules two ways, one as an immortal deity, and so they sacrificed to him: and another as a Hero, and so they celebrated his memory. ... But the distinction is no where more fully expressed than in the Greek inscription upon the statue of Regilla... It seems by the inscription of Herodes, and by the testament of Epictete, extant in Greek in the Collection of Inscriptions, that it was in the power of particular families to keep festival days in honour of some of their own family, and to give heroical honours to them. In that noble inscription at Venice, we find three days appointed every year to be kept, and a confraternity established for that purpose with the laws of it. The first day to be observed in honour of the Muses, and sacrifices to be offered to them as deities. The second and third days in honour of the heroes of the family; between which honour and that of deities, they shewed the difference by the distance of time between them, and the preference given to the other." Thomas Taylor, The Theology of the Greeks

"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

"...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." Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 377d-378a

The three core dogmas of classical theology: 1. The Gods exist. The Gods really, genuinely exist - they are not metaphors or social constructs. This does not mean myths should be understood literally. 2. The Gods govern the universe well and justly. The Gods are eternally good, providential, and powerful. They don't mess up, and they are neither evil nor amoral. Gods are free from passion - they do not get sad or angry or bored. 3. The Gods cannot be corrupted. Gods cannot be bribed, manipulated, or tricked. Nor are the Gods like a supernatural mafia that will whack you if you don't buy them off with sacrifices.

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

A subtle but fundamental 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. To some of us, it seems obvious, but most people do not perceive e.g. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus as figures of spiritual wisdom, but they do perceive Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tze etc in such a way. The former are seen as inhabiting some sort of tedious academic realm of no real importance or use. In other words, Westerners - tragically - do not even understand that their deepest well of spiritual wisdom is spiritual. Our people will likely continue to turn to Buddha or Jesus or (worst of all) atheism until this change of perspective occurs.

"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

The ritual would consist of introduction, reading, offering, and meditation.

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

"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

"Regard no woman as beautiful apart from your own wife." Epictetus, Discourses 3.7.21

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

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, first, because it is the best philosophical explanation of reality. But it also matters because if we mistakenly believe that divinity at its height is just one of many beings, we are dragging the Gods off their thrones and, in doing so, risk impiety.

[Examples of vices and virtues derived from Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 2.3]

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.

"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

"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

"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