I had two major goals for this channel:
1. Increase awareness of Europe's inherited wisdom tradition as the Western analog to the Upanishads.
2. Help to point our community in the right direction.

After four years of running this channel, I think I have accomplished both. I feel that now is the time for me to refocus on being a private student of the tradition, and so I will be taking an indefinite break from posting until the time is right to return. The chat room will remain open for the time being.

- CWT Admin

Platonic Meditation: Dialectic and Contemplation"[Dialectic] is actually the capacity to say what each thing is, and in what way it differs from other things, and what it has in common with them... Then, it remains still ... no longer busying itself with many things, but having become one [with its objects], it just looks." Plotinus, Enneads 1.3.4Dialectic
In the Platonic tradition, "meditation" can be broken into two main components: dialectic and contemplation.

Dialectic uses reason to bring the mind up to a point of knowing. Reason is the nobility of the soul and an important spiritual tool; reason is not antithetical to spirituality. Indeed, rationality, at the individual level, corresponds to the Philosopher King at the political level and to Jupiter among the Gods.

The dialectical method consists of considering a proposition from multiple angles with the aim of arriving at a precise definition. Crucially, the object of this definition, if it is accurate, has a real existence and can be accessed by the mind.

For example, you might think about the nature of the soul, or what justice really is, or what Beauty Itself is.

The God Mercury (Hermes) is our guide through the dialectic process.

Contemplation
Our modern conception of meditation derives primarily from Hinduism and Buddhism. What we now tend to think of as "meditation" is akin to what in the Platonic tradition is called contemplation. It is a state of beholding and receptivity. For this reason, it usually follows and, so to speak, crowns dialectic meditation, since the soul will have been elevated to a purer state of knowing by dialectic from which it can now receive the rewards of its effort.

It is important to practice dialectic and contemplation within the context of devotion to the gods. Before you start, always ask that the gods guide you and grant you success.

- CWT Admin

An inconsistent application of rational standards is a sign of a weak mind which prefers talking to acting:

"Philosophy teaches us to act, not to speak; it exacts of every man that he should live according to his own standards, that his life should not be out of harmony with his words, and that, further, his inner life should be of one hue and not out of harmony with all his activities. This, I say, is the highest duty and the highest proof of wisdom, —that deed and word should be in accord, that a man should be equal to himself under all conditions, and always the same. ... You should lay hold, once for all, upon a single norm to live by, and should regulate your whole life according to this norm. Some men restrict themselves at home, but strut with swelling port before the public; such discordance is a fault, and it indicates a wavering mind which cannot yet keep its balance."

Seneca, Letters 20

"Still, I would try to teach [Christians] something, slow-witted though they are: If one shuts his eyes to the things of the senses and tries to see with his mind's eye, and if one turns from the flesh to the inner self, the soul, there he will see God and know God. But to begin the journey, you must flee from deceivers and magicians who parade fantasies in front of you. You will be a laughingstock so long as you repeat the blasphemy that the gods of other men are idols, while you brazenly worship as God a man whose life was wretched, who is known to have died (in disgraceful circumstances), and who, so you teach, is the very model of the God we should look to as our Father."

Celsus, The True Doctrine 9

"I beseech you, Lord, father and guide of the reason in us, remind us of our noble origin, which we were deemed worthy to receive from you. Act with us (as we are self-movers) for our purification from the body and its irrational emotions, that we may be superior to them and rule them, and that we may use them as instruments in the fitting way. Act with us also for the precise correction of the reason in us and its unification with the genuinely existent things through the light of the truth. And the third request to the Saviour: I beseech you, completely remove the mist from the eyes of our souls, 'so that we may clearly know,' as Homer says, 'both God and man.'"

Simplicius, Commentary on Epictetus' Handbook 454

"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

But he who neither perceives by himself nor takes in a lesson from another, he on the other hand is a worthless man.

Hesiod, Works and Days

"This whole cosmos, in fact, would be dissolved, if one were to entrust it to the binding power of matter, granting it the rank of soul so far as titles are concerned, that is to say, to air and breath, things supremely liable to dispersion and having their principle of unity not from within themselves. For how, when all bodies are subject to fragmentation, in attributing this universe to any one of them, will one not render it non-intelligible and random in its motions? For what order could there be in a breath which itself requires ordering from soul? What reason, or what intellect? Rather, if soul exists, all these things will be subject to it for the establishment of the cosmos and of each living being, with various powers from various bodies contributing to the whole, whereas if this is not present in the cosmos, these things will not even exist, never mind not being in an ordered system."

Plotinus, Enneads 4.7.3.25-35

"But the universe must be truly perfect since it embraces everything and nothing exists that is not in it. How therefore can it fail to possess that which is best? Nothing is better than intelligence and reason, so the universe cannot lack these things."

Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.38

? Click on the links in the text below to view some supporting quotes. The text is from the Romanist Society creed posted above.

I believethat the Gods exist;
that they govern the universe well and justly; that they are causes only of good;
that they are providential;
that they cannot be influenced by evil.

I honor,first, Jove, KingandFather of the Gods,maker of the whole visible and invisible world-order;
and the immortal Holy Gods, His divine children.
Next, those beings who unfold the powers of the Gods and purify lower natures:
the angels;
the good spirits [daimones];
the illustrious heroes. Lastly,the saints;
ancestral divinities;
my living kin.

I holdthat the human soul, being akin to the Gods, is immortal;
that, by a life of virtue and the favor of Father Jove, I will be purified of all evils;that thereby having been freed from the wheel of destiny and generation,I will rejoin the procession of the Gods and govern the universe with them.