essays on polytheism, minimalism, and everything in between
“Prayer to All of the Gods I” was designed to incorporate deities whom I judged to be important to acknowledge overtly in prayer. The choices of Gods grew out of previous decisions that I made while writing Acts of Speech (availability info here), specifically for the poems addressing public speech, good conduct, and civility. There is a … Continue reading Every Goddess Is Good
Today, I finished reading Olympiodorus’ Gorgias commentary. One of the most striking things about the footnotes and the conversation in general is his attempt to sanitize Hellenic theology and Platonism in a way that is palatable to students on whom he relies for his livelihood in a culture that was now hostile to pagan teachers. While … Continue reading Praying to a God, Religious Identity, and Boundaries
This week, after over a month of waiting, my Brill MyBooks came in. One of the books was Iamblichus' De Anima — or, after the front cover, shall I say <html>Iamblichus' De Anima (yes, literally, I guess he was in fact Very Online) — and the other was a MyBook print-on-demand of Proclus' Hymns by van … Continue reading Two Quotations — van den Berg on Proclus not being Athenian and what that means for sympatheia and Proclus’ prose prayer to the Gods in the Parmenides commentary
This is the last of the three prayers that I wanted to write in 2021 — hopefully, a decent enough go at it. It's the most Platonic of the three (but, let's be blunt, that's all of them), and it was a good exercise in hammering out where I solidly understand Proclus' Platonic Theology and … Continue reading Prayer to All of the Gods III
On Thursday, I switched inks in my main TWSBI for the first time in years. While I flushed the barrel, watching the J. Herbin Poussière de Lune dissipate into the purified water, deceptively dark but absolutely transparent the first few times I pumped the pen, I thought through my superstitions about the switch to the … Continue reading Ink, Meditation, Change
In January, I read eight books, among them Olympiodorus' Commentary on Plato's Phaedo. It comes from notes taken during his lectures, so as with any lecture notes, mileage may vary based on the likely-Christian student's (or students') accuracy and attentiveness. Here are a few notes. (As a reminder, I have a commonplace book tag with … Continue reading Some Quotations from Olympiodorus’ Commentary on Plato’s PHAEDO
I just finished reading Damascius' discussion of the Phaedo, and I have a few quotations that I would like to share with you all. It's sometimes an unwieldy challenge to pull quotations that are striking from a commentary because the passages are very contextual. Here, the discussion of the Phaedo focuses on the various arguments … Continue reading Some Passages from Damascius’ Commentary on the PHAEDO
If you have been wondering what A CASTING OF LIGHT and THE SONG OF PROCLUS, compiled by Guy Wyndham-Jones and published by the Prometheus Trust, contains, this post provides some helpful information about the format, arrangement of quotations, and other elements, with a few photos for clarity.
Any well-written piece of literature can be compared to a living being; if, then, the dialogue is comparable to a living being, and a living being has only one purpose, the Good (for the sake of which it has been created), the dialogue must also have one purpose, that is, one theme.Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic … Continue reading Well-Written Literature
KALLISTI 