Post by Charlotte on Mar 18, 2009 12:02:22 GMT -5
With my poems I also found a lecture from my Philosophy Teacher in sympathy with a good diner and black stuff celebrating the snake chaser St. Patrick, Valentine's Day of Love and Lovers not long past, and the general context of our recent posts. A bit of a mixed bag but the same general philosophical ideas as taught by this teacher in his easygoing way.
You probably know all this, but it gives me another day of reprieve from having to go to tombs and graveyards.
Each year in late spring, all Greece celebrated the Festival of Dionysius or Trietericus Bacchus, the god of wine and ecstasy. Aristodemes and Apollodorus were in great spirits and walked toward the House of Agathon where a lavish diner party was prepared to honor the god.
Everybody who was anybody was invided, the dancing girls had arrived, and the flute girl dressed in an empire style indigo gown had just stepped from her beautifully adorned chariot and walked toward the festively decorated villa. The young philosophers sometimes talked among themselves why she never looked at anyone when she walked came to Symposiums, and why her golden sandels never made a sound.
No wine was yet served, but in the garden the Bacchanti were seen dancing wildly as if the very thought of Bacchus put them in a mystical trance. One by one and in pairs, the philosophers gathered and looking on wholy mesmerized inspired them to great intellectual dialog.
So the most brilliant minds of the time had arrived. The immortal Parmenides shows up, Urimacas is there, Glaucon is invited, the great classic comedian Aristophanes comes barefoot and dusty as usual, the arrogant pretty boy Alsibiades had a drink at home already, a few Generals show up and maybe learn something, and Plato's favorate go get 'em student Phédre has been there for hours. So 60 or 70 of Athens greatest oddball great each other and frequent the bar.
Urimacas is anxious, he looks around and says loudly: "We don't know when Socrates will get here, but we know he is equal to any occasion, drunk or sober, so let's dispense with the services of the flute girl, sit down and have a great discussion. What we are going to talk about?"
They are going to talk about Love, everything else can wait. That is really what they are interested in, what they each other think about love. And of course, Phédre is there, and Phédre needs to talk about Love all the time.
Agathon says: "We have to wait for Socrates, you know he has this habit, off he goes and stands there no matter where when his inner voice speaks to him in specific peculiar moments." Whenever Socrates is about to do something extraneous his inner voice checks him. He had this since he was a child , and learned to listen to it intently. The Spirit of Truth is ever with Socrates, and when he gets into a situation where he starts to fritter, his inner voice nabs him, and so in a kind of stop action, Socrates characteristically delays his life process so that his inner visionary process can come to settle on what is truthfully real for him, here.
Socrates finally arrives, and Agathon says to him: "Here you are Socrates. come and sit down next to me , I want to share this great thought that just struck you on the porch next door. I am sure you must have mastered it, or you would still be standing there."
The sophisticated Agathon knows Socrates very well, they all know him, they want to know what happens to Socrates, they don't have anything like this going on in their lives. Socrates is in touch with the Spiritual Realm, he becomes so transparent that the physical worlds activities cease to really play as a screen of appearances for him, and the visionary spiritual elan comes crackling through. Everyone knows that this is happening to Socrates, and now, that they are together under special circumstances, they want to pin him down.
Like an old stockbroker, who knos everyone's portfolio, Socrates says: "My dear Agathon", yes you have a soul, yes we'll get to it, "I only wish that wisdom were the kind of thing one could share by sitting next to someone. If it flowed for instance from the one that was full to the one that was empty like water in two glasses finding its level, what a beautiful thing it would be."
He says: " My understanding is a shadowy thing at best. I can see my inner mind with enough clarity to know that I can only see shadows." Clarity of the mysteries used to belong to the the gods, but Socrates is beginning to suspect, because his inner voice keeps telling him, that it's time for man to know also, and the only way that man is going to know also, is for man to be able to lift his mind up to a divine level.
In order to lift his mind up to a divine level, he has to have help, companions who can do this, those companions are the Sprits, they are the guides, the envoys, and Love is the most powerful of all the Spirits. One cannot jump from opinion to truth, so there are these interpreters that fly between heaven and earth, that midpoint area we get to when we have an informed opinion and realize the need for further knowledge, that midpoint then there is the Spiritual Realm.
Love is the greatest of Spirits that inhabit this Realm, for there never was a god that needed to quest for wisdom, gods are wise already, and when a human being makes himself afine to that Spiritual Realm, then he too becomes infected with the need to know and starts klimbing Jakob's Ladder.
Aristophanes has the floor, and when he thinks about Love he thinks about sex and is trying to make it interesting, viz, the nature of man and the changes it has undergone, that the race was divided into three sexes, male, fimale, and Hermaphrodite, now thought of with contempt.
Phédre says Love is older than Kronos, chief god before Zeus; Agathon says just the opposite, that Love is an imperishable youth, another talks about Love's daintiness, her delicate feet that shun the ground, stepping in tip-toe on the heads of men, and if Madam Blavatzky had been there she would have said, "Love laughs at locksmiths".
And when they all had their say, Socrates remarks that there is not much left for him to say after all these great dissertations and the wonderful speech by Agathon, who told us Love is young, dainty, subtle, tender, has symmetry, valor, temperence, righteousness, creative power, loveliness and so on. But, says Socrates, none of these is the thing itself, all of these are qualities, but what I want to know, what are these qualities of, what is the thing itself? Are these shadows of something invisible?
He says: "The truth, it seems, is the last thing the successful eulogist cares about. I take it then that what we are really doing here was to flatter, rather than to praise the god of Love. All you did was cloud forming with shadows coming into the mind from the outside, and therefore a reflection of the material world. Tell me, do you think it is the nature of Love to be the love of somebody or nobody? When Love occurs, is it not the love of someone? I want to talk about some lessons I once had" from the learned Diotima, who tells him that Love is an intemediary Spirit called Dæmon, that Eros longs for good things and Beauty, that we seek Beauty and Harmony through procreation and our constant desire for procreation is our longing for immortality.
The other teacher of Socrates was Parmenides. To his polarity of 'what is is, and what isn't isn't, Diotima said that Love is an intermediate Spirit between the mortal and divine worlds, therefore uniting that which is and which is not, confirming that Love is the most powerful Spirit.
Charlotte
You probably know all this, but it gives me another day of reprieve from having to go to tombs and graveyards.
Each year in late spring, all Greece celebrated the Festival of Dionysius or Trietericus Bacchus, the god of wine and ecstasy. Aristodemes and Apollodorus were in great spirits and walked toward the House of Agathon where a lavish diner party was prepared to honor the god.
Everybody who was anybody was invided, the dancing girls had arrived, and the flute girl dressed in an empire style indigo gown had just stepped from her beautifully adorned chariot and walked toward the festively decorated villa. The young philosophers sometimes talked among themselves why she never looked at anyone when she walked came to Symposiums, and why her golden sandels never made a sound.
No wine was yet served, but in the garden the Bacchanti were seen dancing wildly as if the very thought of Bacchus put them in a mystical trance. One by one and in pairs, the philosophers gathered and looking on wholy mesmerized inspired them to great intellectual dialog.
So the most brilliant minds of the time had arrived. The immortal Parmenides shows up, Urimacas is there, Glaucon is invited, the great classic comedian Aristophanes comes barefoot and dusty as usual, the arrogant pretty boy Alsibiades had a drink at home already, a few Generals show up and maybe learn something, and Plato's favorate go get 'em student Phédre has been there for hours. So 60 or 70 of Athens greatest oddball great each other and frequent the bar.
Urimacas is anxious, he looks around and says loudly: "We don't know when Socrates will get here, but we know he is equal to any occasion, drunk or sober, so let's dispense with the services of the flute girl, sit down and have a great discussion. What we are going to talk about?"
They are going to talk about Love, everything else can wait. That is really what they are interested in, what they each other think about love. And of course, Phédre is there, and Phédre needs to talk about Love all the time.
Agathon says: "We have to wait for Socrates, you know he has this habit, off he goes and stands there no matter where when his inner voice speaks to him in specific peculiar moments." Whenever Socrates is about to do something extraneous his inner voice checks him. He had this since he was a child , and learned to listen to it intently. The Spirit of Truth is ever with Socrates, and when he gets into a situation where he starts to fritter, his inner voice nabs him, and so in a kind of stop action, Socrates characteristically delays his life process so that his inner visionary process can come to settle on what is truthfully real for him, here.
Socrates finally arrives, and Agathon says to him: "Here you are Socrates. come and sit down next to me , I want to share this great thought that just struck you on the porch next door. I am sure you must have mastered it, or you would still be standing there."
The sophisticated Agathon knows Socrates very well, they all know him, they want to know what happens to Socrates, they don't have anything like this going on in their lives. Socrates is in touch with the Spiritual Realm, he becomes so transparent that the physical worlds activities cease to really play as a screen of appearances for him, and the visionary spiritual elan comes crackling through. Everyone knows that this is happening to Socrates, and now, that they are together under special circumstances, they want to pin him down.
Like an old stockbroker, who knos everyone's portfolio, Socrates says: "My dear Agathon", yes you have a soul, yes we'll get to it, "I only wish that wisdom were the kind of thing one could share by sitting next to someone. If it flowed for instance from the one that was full to the one that was empty like water in two glasses finding its level, what a beautiful thing it would be."
He says: " My understanding is a shadowy thing at best. I can see my inner mind with enough clarity to know that I can only see shadows." Clarity of the mysteries used to belong to the the gods, but Socrates is beginning to suspect, because his inner voice keeps telling him, that it's time for man to know also, and the only way that man is going to know also, is for man to be able to lift his mind up to a divine level.
In order to lift his mind up to a divine level, he has to have help, companions who can do this, those companions are the Sprits, they are the guides, the envoys, and Love is the most powerful of all the Spirits. One cannot jump from opinion to truth, so there are these interpreters that fly between heaven and earth, that midpoint area we get to when we have an informed opinion and realize the need for further knowledge, that midpoint then there is the Spiritual Realm.
Love is the greatest of Spirits that inhabit this Realm, for there never was a god that needed to quest for wisdom, gods are wise already, and when a human being makes himself afine to that Spiritual Realm, then he too becomes infected with the need to know and starts klimbing Jakob's Ladder.
Aristophanes has the floor, and when he thinks about Love he thinks about sex and is trying to make it interesting, viz, the nature of man and the changes it has undergone, that the race was divided into three sexes, male, fimale, and Hermaphrodite, now thought of with contempt.
Phédre says Love is older than Kronos, chief god before Zeus; Agathon says just the opposite, that Love is an imperishable youth, another talks about Love's daintiness, her delicate feet that shun the ground, stepping in tip-toe on the heads of men, and if Madam Blavatzky had been there she would have said, "Love laughs at locksmiths".
And when they all had their say, Socrates remarks that there is not much left for him to say after all these great dissertations and the wonderful speech by Agathon, who told us Love is young, dainty, subtle, tender, has symmetry, valor, temperence, righteousness, creative power, loveliness and so on. But, says Socrates, none of these is the thing itself, all of these are qualities, but what I want to know, what are these qualities of, what is the thing itself? Are these shadows of something invisible?
He says: "The truth, it seems, is the last thing the successful eulogist cares about. I take it then that what we are really doing here was to flatter, rather than to praise the god of Love. All you did was cloud forming with shadows coming into the mind from the outside, and therefore a reflection of the material world. Tell me, do you think it is the nature of Love to be the love of somebody or nobody? When Love occurs, is it not the love of someone? I want to talk about some lessons I once had" from the learned Diotima, who tells him that Love is an intemediary Spirit called Dæmon, that Eros longs for good things and Beauty, that we seek Beauty and Harmony through procreation and our constant desire for procreation is our longing for immortality.
The other teacher of Socrates was Parmenides. To his polarity of 'what is is, and what isn't isn't, Diotima said that Love is an intermediate Spirit between the mortal and divine worlds, therefore uniting that which is and which is not, confirming that Love is the most powerful Spirit.
Charlotte
