/lit/ - Literature

Here begins ontology.

Now when Morning, clad in her robe of saffron, had begun to suffuse light over the earth, Zeus called the gods in council on the topmost crest of serrated Olympus. Then he spoke and all the other gods gave ear. "Hear me," said he, "gods and goddesses, that I may speak even as I am minded. Let none of you neither goddess nor god try to cross me, but obey me every one of you that I may bring this matter to an end. If I see anyone acting apart and helping either Trojans or Danaans, he shall be beaten beyond the limits of universal order [kosmos] ere he come back again to Olympus; or I will hurl him down into dark Tartaros far into the deepest pit under the earth, where the gates are iron and the floor bronze, as far beneath Hades as heaven is high above the earth, that you may learn how much the mightiest I am among you. Try me and find out for yourselves. Hang me a golden chain from heaven, and lay hold of it all of you, gods and goddesses together - tug as you will, you will not drag Zeus the supreme counselor from heaven to earth; but were I to pull at it myself I should draw you up with earth and sea into the bargain, then would I bind the chain about some pinnacle of Olympus and leave you all dangling in the mid firmament. So far am I above all others either of gods or men."

>>14584027
Herodas Mimes?
Hermogenes On Issues
Just get the Whole Green Loeb library.
Secondary:
The World of Odysseus
Orpheus and the Roots of Platonism
Dillon's The Roots of Platonism
Dillon The Middle Platonists
Simplicius Commentary on Aristotle's Physics
Philosophy as A Rite of Rebirth
C. D. C Reeves editions of Aristotle
Gerson From Plato to Platonism
His Aristotle and Other Platonists
Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
Hellenism in Byzantium

Hellenic trash:
Layton's The Gnostic Scriptures

Corpus Hermeticum (skip definitions)
Plato's Sophist-Statesman, Phaedrus, Timaeus.
Plotinus' 6th Ennead
Iamblichus The Mysteries.
Papyrus of Ani
The Orphic Poems
Music of Philosophy Series by Guy Wyndham Jones

Indo European Poetry and Myth
The Idea of the Holy
The Principle of Hope
The Wellsprings of Religion
The Sacred and the Profane
The Origins of the World's Mythologies
>Maps of Meaning
Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth
Orpheus and the Roots of Platonism
Pre-Animistic Religion
Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many
Blumenberg's Work on Myth; and Care Crosses the River
Then there's Eliade's massive works on Religion.

I keep a commonplace book on Google; all my great 4chanel and discord posts and other inspired thoughts I get from reading the philosophical cannon.

>>14425070
Plato.
And all myth read through the lens of Plato.
And Plato is read through the lens of Plotinus and Iamblichus.
And they are better understood by Proclus' massive corpus (but not corrected by Proclus, even if he tried).
Proclus is perfected by Damascius.
And because the gods are merciful they grant the gift of the muses to anyone who looks within, which is why we find the fundamentals of Contemplation and first principles in the traditionless philosophies.
Such as Pseudo-Dionysius and Eriugena who transmitted the doctrine interwoven with Christianity; they showed the way to extract veiled truth from the Bible too.
Likewise after the closing of the School's the tradition hid in the east right under the nose of the Arabs, Farabi being the most blessed among them.
Then with the reformation he tradition has been diffused if not hijacked by the new age of "Gurus".
This spawned orientalism, the search for the basically independent tradition in India since the living one in the West had become impossible to find (not saying it didn't exist), escaping the abomination "esoteric" cults, feigning the possession of "secret knowledge". Gnostics all over again.

The truth is we don't need India (not saying the old vedas aren't divine inspiration, they probably are), just that the original exegeses of the Ancients are still here.

The purpose of the tradition is to help you understand what you're actually experiencing. I'm not denying the mystics' visions but stating the fact that they've lacked the tools to transcribe the experiences: they are ontologically illiterate, which why they keep branching off and separating into an ever expanding heap of misinformation and misinterpretation. The ancients disagreed but stayed united, that is what a tradition is.

>>14409775
Deluding themselves.
>>14409923
Because Plato says it is immoral, and he is the highest authority of all scripture ever written. God does not allow permanent union.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt one can argue they were in union with Soul thinking that this was the highest. Since each sphere of Being has its One and union; merely ascending up to the encosmic Apollo will feel like the highest realm if the order of your Soul is of that rank, and in deed he is in a way the One yet not.
This is why we cannot believe anyone's claim of permanent union (in bodily life) with the Ineffable One, it is ontologically impossible.

We aren't soul communists, this is the whole metaphysics of evil and good in Plotinus. Being is the whole hierarchy harmony and order, and we are each the Good by being in our right order and by being this virtuous duty we turned back to the One and together with the chorus of all Being ascend ever upwards. Eventually we will be the Guardians who willingly "descend" to lead others in the ascension of Olympos.