This volume makes available to the modern reader selected writings of Thomas Taylor, the eighteenth-century English Platonist. TO Taylor we are indebted for the first full translation into English of Plato and Aristotle. Platonism, as Taylor saw it, was an informing principle, transmitted through a "golden chain of philosophers," a doctrine received by Socrates and Plato from the Orphic and Pythagorean past and transmitted to the future. It emerged again and again, enriched in the School of Alexandria, in Renaissance art, in the works of Spenser, Shelley, Yeats. Kathleen Raine is well known as a poet. GEorge Mills Harper is Professor of English, University of Florida. Bollingen Series LXXXVIII. Originally published in 1969. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Orpheus occupied one of four great seats of learning in ancient Egypt. He brought the Indian Mysteries of Initiation to Greece, nine millennia before Homer and Hesiod. Pythagoras was initiated to the Orphic Mysteries and Plato received a perfect knowledge of them. H.P. Blavatsky explains: 1. How the Orphic Mysteries were disfigured by the exoteric rites of Bacchus. Dionysos is god Dis from Mount Nys in India. Bacchus, crowned with kissos or ivy, is Krishna. Orpheus is orphnos or a tawny-coloured Hindu. 2. And why Initiates were persecuted, tortured, exiled, executed, murdered. Orpheus-Enoch is the possessor of the phorminx, the 7-stringed lyre. He is one of seven Primordial Creators, a branch of the Tree of Salvation grown out of One Seed. He called Nature “resourceful Mother,” and taught the “god-given” doctrine of the seven “Star-Regents” of the Unknown to Grecian philosophers. He also taught how to affect a whole audience by means of a lodestone. He even imparted the art of oömancy.

Do not think too much of me, direct your thoughts to the Eternal Truth. For only he who is free from the heresy of separateness, brought forth by false self-identity and self-importance, can rise above the trappings of personal life and live for others. Never seek knowledge or power for any other purpose than to sacrifice it on the altar of the Great Heart, which is humanity at large. Do not fear nor fail because you feel dark and heavy. After a while, the very rage you feel will break the shrine that covers the mystery. No one can really help you till then. The “moment of choice” between good and evil, between white and black magic, is neither in space nor in time, it is the momentum of all those moments in the battle between unselfish and selfish impulses taking place in those who try to follow the higher purposes of Nature. I am my friends and my enemies, I feel them all. I am the poor, the wicked, the ignorant. Those moments of gloom are the moments when I am influenced by those ignorant ones, who are myself. Duty lies in the act itself. Our duty is to never consider our ability, but to do what needs to be done in whatever way we can, no matter how inadequate the work may appear to others. We are not the only ones to suffer upon the path. Like ourselves Masters have wept, though They do not weep any longer. Sadness comes from an appreciation of the difficulties in our way, and of the unspeakable wickedness of the human heart. The Divine Spirit, which overshadows the soul of every man, is the throne of the Invisible and Unknown God. If you reflect on That, little room will be left for sorrow or delusion. Please don’t be anxious. Insist on Carelessness. Anxiety obscures and deters. Fear and anxiety are a formidable barrier against progress, by perturbation and straining harshly. Anxiety densifies and perturbs our magnetic sphere (aura), thus rendering us less permeable to the efflux of inner life and love. Immediate rebirth is for those who are working with their heart on Master’s work and are free from self interest. Nothing foreign to Master can pollute the pure heart; our faults are not there. The heart reaches Him always, and He replies. He needs not to stoop to see our devotion for devotional love, being of a supernal quality, reaches anywhere. Even in the most menial sorts of labour, the moment a man begins working, his soul enters into a state of harmony and peace. On the plane of social intercourse words are things, but soulless and dead because that convention in which they have their birth has made abortions of them. Let us then choose with care those living messengers called words. When the soul turns its attention to the astral plane, its energy is transferred from the gross material plane to a more subtle plane composed of imponderable matter, and we then have an influx of many confused dreams and strange experiences, whether awake or asleep. Clairvoyants and untrained seers cannot distinguish between psychic and spiritual perceptions. The age is black as hell, hard as iron. Yet noble hearts keep fighting the ancient fight. They seek each other and help each other. We will not fail them. To fail would be nothing, but to stop working for Humanity and the Brotherhood of Man would be awful; we cannot and will not. The student of Occultism must either reach the goal or perish. Those who rush unprepared and before the ripe moment risk insanity. But then that insanity is their safety for the next life, or for their return to sanity. The road to heavens is dark and difficult because we do not live up to our highest ideals. And as we hamstrung by our own weaknesses, it’s no use blaming others for our own shortcomings. Egoism is a sign of shameful cowardice. The egocentric man is insignificant and helpless. All our obstructions are of our own making. All our power is drawn from the storehouse of the past. Let us love and worship humanity, instead of self, and all shall be well. Even selfishness is love, though tainted and misdirected. Let us live for each other, forgetting ourselves in the midst of so many selves who, as formerly and forever, are but our own phantasms of thinking throblets, and all shall be well. Drink the cup of life without a murmur to the last drop, whatever Karma may have in store for you. The lesson in your present life is sweet Patience that nothing can ruffle. Higher Patience is a fine line between pride and humility. Both are extremes and mistakes. How shall we be proud when we are so small? How dare we be humble when we are so great? In both we blaspheme. Regret is productive only of error. Regret is a thought, hence an energy. If we turn its tide upon the past, it plays upon the seeds of that past and vivifies them; it causes them to sprout and grow in the mind and, from thence, expression in action is but a step. Evil is the infernal end of the polarity of spirit-matter. Evil-devil is the dark side of good, yet a mighty motor on the eternal struggle of the two ever-Opposing Forces — Light versus Darkness, Buddhi versus Kama-Manas — dual aspects of the One Manifested Creative Power, which keeps building worlds and thinks through man. Like Ormuzd and Ahriman, good and evil are inseparable and interdependent. We cannot murder Life but we can destroy a vehicle of the divine Principle of Life and impede the course of a soul using that vehicle. We far more injured by this atrocious deed than by any other. It is the man of clay that sins, not the innocent Higher Ego self-imprisoned within us and spectator of our life, who suffers and weeps silently at our cruelty. Condemn the sin not the Sinner. Higher, as within us all, the divine spirit looks down in the secure knowledge that, when the lower nature has subsided into its spiritual source, all this struggle and play of force and will, this waxing and waning of forms, this progression of consciousness that throws up clouds and fumes of illusion before the eye of the soul, will have come to an end. But the real test of a man is his motive, which we neither see, nor do his acts always represent it. If acts of valour are motivated by self-interest, they are still virtuous acts, but they will not elevate the actor and will throw his calculations off-kilter. Nature strives to contain spirit, and spirit strives to be free. Despondency, doubt, fear, vanity, pride, self-satisfaction, are traps used by Nature to detain us on earth. The kind of thoughts that appeal to our senses, and which fascinate and transfix us, is another snare set by Nature lest we discover her inmost secret and rule her. Spirituality is no virtue, it is divine impersonality. Spirituality is the rootless root of all things, unborn, exempt from dissolution, eternal, and beyond the condition of spirit. In essence and substance, It is the Whole of this Universe. Death disappoints the Self for it is neither productive of real knowledge nor of service to the living. Death is the sudden lowering of a stage curtain only to be raised again at the beginning of the next act. The living have a greater part in the dead than the dead have in the living. Rise, then, from this despondency. With the sword of Knowledge and with Love, you can “become one with the great tides of being, and reach the peaceful place of safe self-forgetfulness at last.” In dreams we see the truth and taste the joys of heaven. In waking life we gradually distil that dew into our consciousness. Let thy pulses beat to heaven’s own music. Despise the life that only seeks its own. Listen to the words of the Great Teachers. Good company removes the dullness of intellect, infuses truth into speech, bestows great honour, removes sin, purifies the heart, and spreads fame in all directions. Evil company should be shunned because it gives rise to lust, anger, delusion, memory loss, discrimination loss and, at long last, total loss of one’s “Infinite Potency born from the concealed Potentiality.” Spreading like ripples at first, evil company swells vices to large-scale waves in an ocean of misery. Is there any hope for the aspirant who has no heredity of psychical development to call upon, who is not introspective by nature, and with no access to chelas for guidance reach? There is, if he purifies his motive, and cultivates an ardent and unwavering faith and devotion to the Masters who are Truth personified, though They are not yet known to him. They are generous and honest debtors, and always repay. Beyond the Hall of Learning is the Great White Lodge, the magnificent hierarchy of Masters, Gurus, and Chelas all over the world. Every aspirant to chelaship has a Guru, although he many not be aware of it. Guru is chela’s benefactor. If we have reverenced our teacher, we will now revere our unknown Guru. We must place our hand in his hand with all love, and trust, and confidence, for it is to mighty Karma we have appealed, and the Guru is an agent of Karma. Madame Blavatsky sacrificed all that mankind holds dear to bring the glad tidings of Theosophy to the West through the Theosophical Society, which thereby stands to her as a chela to his Guru. She is our next higher link in the Guruparampara chain, of which no link can be missed or by-passed. Those who try to reach The Masters by other means while disregarding or underrating scornfully her high services, violate an occult rule that cannot be broken with impunity. The limitations of self impede progress. Unless the intention is entirely unalloyed, the spiritual will transform itself into the psychic and, by acting on the astral plane, dire results may be produced by it. The highest aspirations for the welfare of humanity will become sullied with selfishness if, in the mind of the philanthropist, there lurks the shadow of a desire for self-benefit, or a tendency to do injustice, even when these exist unconsciously to himself. The powers of evil revenge themselves upon the ignorant man and his friends, and not upon those who are beyond their reach. As long we hope and desire, we shall remain apart from the Self. We are rich in hope, knowing the prize at the end of time, and are not deterred by the clouds, the storms, the miasmas, and the dreadful beasts of prey that line the road. Let us then, at the very outset, wash out of our souls all desire for reward, all hope that we may attain what we sought. We may perhaps have found one spot we may call our own, and possess no other qualification for the task. That spot is enough, it is our wholly unshaken belief in Self and the Masters. That spot is our Higher Ego, symbolised by Homer as the wild fig tree, which Odysseus took hold of it and clung to it like a bat, in order to escape falling into the whirlpool of passions below. Beware of the dreadful lures, the great causes of misery, inflamed by the malignant fever of scepticism. They keep us ensnared in our earthy prison. Compassion is the Divine Law of Universal Sympathy and Sacrifice. Overseen by Spiritual Intelligences above, Compassion is enacted by the Intelligence of Nature and Her dual forces below. Deity is Unerring Karma or Abstract Nature — the Mind and Soul of the Universe.

What have the Middle Ages got to do with us? For Jung, it seems, quite a lot, after all, he tells us: “I must catch up with a piece of the Middle Ages — within myself,” adding: “We have only finished the Middle Ages — of others.” In Wolfram von Eschenbach’s “Parzival” and the Grail as Transformation, Paul Bishop considers the significance for Jung of a masterpiece of medieval German literature, and a major work in the tradition of the legendary Holy Grail. Wolfram’s Parzival epic depicts a three-fold quest: for the hero’s identity, for vröude (“joy”), and for the mysterious Grail. In the course of this quest, Parzival himself is transformed from a fool into the lord of the Grail, and the power of the Grail brings about a collective transformation as well. This is the first volume in a series of books, examining key texts in German literature and thought that were, in Jung’s own estimation or by scholarly consent, highly influential on his thinking. The project of Jung and the Epic of Transformation consists of four titles, sequentially arranged to explore great works from a Jungian perspective and in turn to highlight their importance for interpreting The Red Book.

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