#platonist

"The gods, too, are fond of a joke."

Why is no one talking about daimons these days? People used to talk about the daimons all the time!

How to flirt badly with a platonist

For fortune can afflict us with disease, take away our money, calumniate us to people or the tyrant, but it cannot make a good and brave and high-souled man bad and cowardly and ignoble and malicious, nor deprive him of the disposition which, as long as he keeps it, is of more value to him in the conduct of his life than is a pilot to a ship at sea.

Like Kore, the soul descends into genesis, like Dionysus she is scattered by generation, like Prometheus and the Titans she is chained to the body. She frees herself by acquiring the strength of Hercules, gathers herself together through the help of Apollo and of Athena the Savior, i.e. by truly purifying philosophy, and she elevates herself to the causes of her being with Demeter.

If someone should regard it as reasonable and true that the gods are not subject to change, but is in doubt how they take joy in the good and turn away from the evil, how they are wrathful with wrongdoers and are made propitious when appeased, then we must say that a god does not ‘take joy’, because what takes joy can also feel sorrow. They also do not grow ‘wrathful’, because being wrathful is an affect. Neither are they appeased with gifts, or they would be overcome by pleasure. In all, it would not be licit for the divine to be in a good or bad condition on account of human affairs. Rather, they are always good, and only beneficial; they never cause harm, because they are always in the same state as far as these things are concerned.

"These, therefore, being arranged according to triads, as we have said, of the demiurgic triad, indeed, Zeus is allotted the highest order, supernally from intellect governing souls and bodies, and as Socrates says, taking care of all things. But Poseidon here also gives completion to the middle of the demiurgic [triad], and especially governs the psychical order. For this God is the cause of motion, and of all generation. But soul is the first of generated natures, and is essentially motion. And Hephaestus inspires the nature of bodies, and fabricates all the mundane seats of the Gods. Again, of the guardian and immutable triad, the first indeed is Hestia, because she preserves the very being of things, and an undefiled essence. For Socrates in the Cratylus gives to her the highest order, as connectedly containing the summits of wholes. But Athena preserves middle lives inflexible, through intellection, and a self-energizing life, sustaining them from [the incursions of] matter. And Ares illuminates corporeal-formed natures with power, and an infrangible strength, as Socrates says in the Cratylus. Hence he is perfected by Athena, and participates of a more intellectual inspiration, as the poetry [of Orpheus] says, and of a life separate from generated natures. Moreover, of the vivific triad, Demeter is the chief, entirely generating all mundane life, viz. the intellectual, the psychical, and that which is inseparable from body. But Hera contains the middle of the triad, and imparts the generation of soul. For the intellectual goddess emits from herself all the progressions of the other psychical genera. And Artemis is allotted the end of the triad, moving all natural reasons into energy, and perfecting the imperfection of matter. Hence theologists, and Socrates in the Theætetus, call her Lochia, (or the power that presides over births) as being the inspective guardian of psychical progression and generation. Of the remaining triad, therefore, the anagogic, or elevating, Hermes indeed is the supplier of philosophy, and through this elevates souls, and by the dialectic powers, sends upward both total and partial souls to the good itself. But Aphrodite is the first-effective cause of the amatory inspiration which pervades through wholes, and familiarizes to the beautiful the lives that are elevated by her. And Apollo perfects and converts all things through music, convolving, as Socrates says [in the Cratylus], and through harmony and rhythm attracting to intellectual truth, and the light which is there."