In Aesop’s “The Shipwrecked Man and Athene”, a shipwrecked sailor prays to Athene to be saved from the ocean. Another man, swimming by, says, “Pray to the Goddess for success, but move your arms!” — the Gods can open up pathways for us, but we need to commit effort.

According to Hierocles, when we encounter a position that we know is incorrect, we can reflect on how we escaped the error. TBH, when we reflect, there is a small chance that we will realize the other person was right and be embarrassed. We’ve all been in both places.

Damascius on cultivating our conscience, even when it means we must go against the grain. In his youth, he survived a brutal anti-polytheistic intellectual crackdown in Alexandria (many were tortured, including his brother) and fled with Isidore, who became his teacher.

A bit of guidance on prayer.

Honey and water.

Close your eyes, find that stillness, and the God who is intrinsic to you is there. This is not something available to the privileged few, but directly accessible to all. Every single one of us, and I do mean all of us, has this connection to our presiding God.

Honoring the Gods is vital for our well-being and happiness.

The journey of the soul in embodiment.

While a person may occasionally pray and ask for something specific, the primary purpose of venerating and praying to a higher power is to establish and deepen a relationship with them, a sacred dance between you and the holy.

Becoming conscious of our connection to the Gods is a lifelong process, a dance around that anchor, and regular practice enriches our awareness of it no matter how much the winds howl.

When it rains, I sometimes think of the diamond rain on big planets and fall into silence — it is that smallness, that sense of being tuned into what is common between the worlds, that makes me feel connected to the cosmos. The same patterns exist everywhere. Nothing is exotic.

It is the dizzyingly complex interpolation of a myriad Gods into the receptive beauty of matter that causes everything around us. They are the river’s myriad sources, and we are the ones swimming in the rapids downstream.

When we pray to the Gods, we are engaging with both them and a plethora of symbols and signs that point to them. Symbolically, doing a purification is a “stripping away” of material garments and the excesses that harm our focus.

🪷 Flower of the Intellect 🪷

Hedonic equilibrium means that reaching for pleasure will never leave one satisfied. Like Tantalus, the food and drink recede even as we reach them.

Practice auspicious speech.

Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, V.26, trans. Clarke et al. One of the passages on prayer.

If running a ritual on Zoom or another platform, be sure that someone is taking the role of Zoom host — this person can spotlight the participants leading each part of the ritual. Chanting isn’t as easy on Zoom as it is in person — mute everyone except the chant leader.

“God” is used as a class term for a wide range of divine persons, sometimes accurately, sometimes imprecisely. Often, the term is used when translating indigenous terms for divine beings. The word spirit is used just as often. Be aware of how fuzzy the term is!

It is important to cultivate virtue, and this quotation from Iamblichus gives us a glimpse at the Platonic rationale for prioritizing it so much.