/lit/ - Literature

The Wisdom Books—especially the Platonic Wisdom of Solomon written in the last century BC that's not even in the Hebrew Bible—are high level.

heroes journey is ontologically masculine
women are custodians, keepers, tenders, the bones of society, men's parachute, cushion for our failures, the canvas of creation, the distant sun of man's aspiration. She's the flame behind the prisoner in the cave and the light of the exist, but she's also why we trap ourselves and cause of the shadows on the wall.
Ananke.

obviously divinely inspired

“Behold, Lucius,” she said, “moved by your prayer I come to you—I, the natural mother of all life, the mistress of the elements, the first child of time, the supreme divinity, the queen of those in hell, the first among those in heaven, the uniform manifestation of all the gods and goddesses—I, who govern by my nod the crests of light in the sky, the purifying wafts of the ocean, and the lamentable silences of hell—I, whose single godhead is venerated all over the earth under manifold forms, varying rites, and changing names. Thus, the Phrygians that are the oldest human stock call me Pessinuntia, Mother of the Gods. The aboriginal races of Attica call me Cecropian Minerva. The Cyprians in their island-home call me Paphian Venus. The archer Cretans call me Diana Dictynna. The three-tongued Sicilians call me Stygian Proserpine. The Eleusinians call me the ancient goddess Ceres. Some call me Juno. Some call me Bellona. Some call me Hecate. Some call me Rhamnusia. But those who are enlightened by the earliest rays of that divinity the sun, the Ethiopians, the Arii, and the Egyptians who excel in antique lore, all worship me with their ancestral ceremonies and call me by my true name, Queen Isis.”

>>15141414
rites are for your mind not for the divine
They habituate your thought processes, by establishing certain elaborate and beautiful rituals, when you perform them your soul is attuned to being receptive of the holy vision. Why some rituals are better than others is because we've had tens of thousands of years to "scientifically" test the most apt rite for most souls. You can fantasize any ritual or movement or dance that you feel like, and eventually it will work no matter how nontraditional your method is: the goal of all of them is to open the eye of your soul, the flower of mind. What actually matters is your sincerity and determination and willingness to turn your nous to the light. For the divine light shines everywhere, he is always with you.

>>15131679
>“I suppose you think each form is one on the following ground: whenever some number of things seem to you to be large, perhaps there seems to be some one character, the same as you look at them all, and from that you conclude that the large is one.”
“That’s true,”
“What about the large itself and the other large things? If you look at them all in the same way with the mind’s eye, again won’t some one thing appear large, by which all these appear large?”
“It seems so.”
“So another form of largeness will make its appearance, which has emerged alongside largeness itself and the things that partake of it, and in turn another over all these, by which all of them will be large. Each of your forms will no longer be one, but unlimited in multitude.”
“But, Parmenides, maybe each of these forms is a thought,and properly occurs only in minds. In this way each of them might be one and no longer face the difficulties mentioned just now.”
“What do you mean?” “Is each of the thoughts one, but a thought of nothing?”
“No, that’s impossible,”
“Of something, rather?”
“Yes.”
“Of something that is, or of something that is not?”
“Of something that is.”
“Isn’t it of some one thing, which that thought thinks is over all the instances, being some one character?”
“Yes.”
“Then won’t this thing that is thought to be one, being always the same over all the instances, be a form?”
“That, too, appears necessary.”
“And what about this? Given your claim that other things partake of forms, won’t you necessarily think either that each thing is composed of thoughts and all things think, or that, although they are thoughts, they are unthinking?”
“That isn’t reasonable either, Parmenides,”
“No, what appears most likely to me is this: these forms are like patterns set in nature, and other things resemble them and are likenesses; and this partaking of the forms is, for the other things, simply being modeled on them. If something resembles the form, can that form not be like what has been modeled on it, to the extent that the thing has been made like it? Or is there anyway for something like to be like what is not like it?”
“There is not.”
“And isn’t there a compelling necessity for that which is like to partake of the same one form as what is like it?”
“There is.”
“But if like things are like by partaking of something, won’t that be the form itself?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Therefore nothing can be like the form, nor can the form be like anything else. Otherwise, alongside the form another form will always make its appearance, and if that form is like anything, yet another; and if the form proves to be like what partakes of it, a fresh form will never cease emerging.”
“That’s very true.”
“So other things don’t get a share of the forms by likeness; we must seek some other means by which they get a share.”
“So it seems.”

>>15024560
Behold Lucius I am come; your weeping and prayers have moved me to provide solace to you. I am she who is the natural mother of all things, mistress and governess of all the elements, the initial progeny of worlds, chief of powers divine, Queen of heaven! I am the principal of the celestial Gods, the light of the goddesses. At my will, the planets of the air, the wholesome winds of the seas, and the silences of hell are disposed. My name, my divinity is adored throughout the world in diverse ways, through various customs and under many names.The Phrygians call me the Mother of the Gods; the Athenians, Minerva; the Cyprians, Venus; the Candians, Diana; the Sicilians, Proserpina; the Eleusians, Ceres. Some Juno, others Bellona, others Hecate. And principally, the Ethiopians in the East, and the Egyptians who are excellent in all manner of ancient doctrine and who worship me by their proper ceremonies and customs, call me Queen Isis.
Behold, I am here to take pity of your fortune and tribulation; I am present to favor and aid you. Leave behind your weeping and lamentation and put away all your sorrow. Rather, look upon the healthful day that is ordained by my providence, and therefore be ready to attend to my commandment.

>>14947387
christian* religious thinking
my friend

>>14884878
or

There is in her a spirit that is intelligent, holy,
unique, manifold, subtle,
mobile, clear, unpolluted,
distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen,
irresistible, 23 beneficent, humane,
steadfast, sure, free from anxiety,
all-powerful, overseeing all,
and penetrating through all spirits
that are intelligent, pure, and altogether subtle.
24
For wisdom is more mobile than any motion;
because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things.
25
For she is a breath of the power of God,
and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty;
therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her.
26
For she is a reflection of eternal light,
a spotless mirror of the working of God,
and an image of his goodness.
27
Although she is but one, she can do all things,
and while remaining in herself, she renews all things;
in every generation she passes into holy souls
and makes them friends of God, and prophets;
28
for God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom.
29
She is more beautiful than the sun,
and excels every constellation of the stars.
Compared with the light she is found to be superior,
30
for it is succeeded by the night,
but against wisdom evil does not prevail.

>>14603740
philosophy is labor and philosophers are midwifes

SOCRATES: Now my art of midwifery is just like theirs in most respects. The difference is that I attend men and not women, and that I watch over the labor of their souls, not of their bodies. And the most important thing c about my art is the ability to apply all possible tests to the offspring, to determine whether the young mind is being delivered of a phantom, that is, an error, or a fertile truth. For one thing which I have in common with the ordinary midwives is that I myself am barren of wisdom The common reproach against me is that I am always asking questions of other people but never express my own views about anything, because there is no wisdom in me; and that is true enough. And the reason of it is this, that God compels me to attend the travail of others, but has forbidden me to procreate. So that I am not in any sense a wise man; I cannot claim as the child of my own soul any discovery worth the name of wisdom. But with those who associate with me it is different. At first some of them may give the impression of being ignorant and stupid; but as time goes on and our association continues, all whom God permits are seen to make progress— a progress which is amazing both to other people and to themselves. And yet it is clear that this is not due to anything they have learned from me; it is that they discover within themselves a multitude of beautiful things, which they bring forth into the light. But it is I, with God’s help, who deliver them of this offspring. And a proof of this may be seen in the e many cases where people who did not realize this fact took all the credit to themselves and thought that I was no good. They have then proceeded to leave me sooner than they should, either of their own accord or through the influence of others. And after they have gone away from me they have resorted to harmful company, with the result that what remained within them has miscarried {Aristotle}; while they have neglected the children I helped them to bring forth, and lost them, because they set more value upon lies and phantoms than upon the truth; finally they have been set down for ignorant fools, both by themselves and by everybody else.

Scrambling ever up the steep ascent into that which is ever less multiple, at the same time we become aware in some way, even in our current state of division, of that which has a unique form. Thinking this division to be of no worth in comparison to the flood-like apprehension of that, we could not even intuit this, unless the trace of this flood-like intellection were stirring up something within us, and this is just that light of truth that suddenly kindles as if from fire sticks rubbed together. For as our divided conceptions are concentrated and exercised against each other, they resolve themselves in that summit that converges into something that is unique and simple, as if into a convergence, such as when, in the center of a circle, the terminal points of the straight line from the periphery press into the center. So in this way, although there is division present in us, while we press into the unity, a trace of that knowledge of the form in us is stirred up beforehand, just as in the case of the center. The center is without dimensions, and yet the single convergence that strives toward the center of the circle equally from all sides offers a dim indication of the center. And in the same way we strive toward Being, first by means of each form that we encounter as a separate thing, and then we become aware that it is not just undivided but actually unified, and so we fuse the many in each, if one may put it like this. Then taking all the forms that are distinct at once and dissolving their circumference, as if making many bodies of water into one unbounded body of water, except that we do not conceive of that which is unified from all things as one body of water, but rather as what is prior to all, more like the form of the water before water is something distinct. And this is therefore the way that we simplify ourselves back to the One, first by concentrating our thoughts and then by letting go of what has been concentrated, into what is beyond simplicity, the transcendence of that One.
Then having made this ascent do we encounter the One as something known, or in our desire to encounter this have we returned to the unknowable? Each of these is true. It is true that we encounter the One as knowable from afar, and when we have become one with it, then we transcend our own ability to know the One and we are resolved into being the One, that is, into the unknowable instead of the knowable. Now this contact itself is, as it were, of the One with the One and so beyond our capacity to know, whereas the former is like that of the knower with respect to the One.

Then, my face wet with tears, I prayed to the Great Goddess:

‘Queen of Heaven, whether you are known as bountiful Ceres, the primal harvest mother, who, delighted at finding your daughter Proserpine again, abolished our primitive woodland diet, showed us sweet nourishment, and now dwell at Eleusis; or heavenly Venus, who at the founding of the world joined the sexes by creating Love, propagating the human race in endless generation, and worshipped now in the sea-girt sanctuary of Paphos; or Diana, Apollo’s sister, you who relieve the pangs of countless childbirths with your soothing remedies, venerated now at Ephesus; or dread Proserpine herself, she of the night-cries, who triple-faced combats the assault of spirits shutting them from earth above, who wanders the many sacred groves, propitiated by a host of rites; oh, light of woman, illuminating every city, nourishing the glad seed with your misty radiance, shedding that light whose power varies with the passage of the sun; in whatever aspect, by whatever name, with whatever ceremony we should invoke you, have mercy on me in the depths of my distress, grant good fortune, give me peace and rest after cruel tribulation. Let the toil, the dangers I’ve endured suffice. Rid me of this foul four-footed form, restore me to the sight of my own people; make me the Lucius I once was. Or if I may not live, if I have offended some deity who hounds me with inexorable savagery, grant me the gift of death.’