SirPalomides

Origin of the Qing dynasty flag:

In the classic geocentric Western cosmology developed from Plato and Aristotle, the realm of the four elements below the lunar sphere is where things are impermanent and constantly changing. Everything from the moon outward is eternal. This is the cosmology that was basically standard up until Copernicus. You see it all over ancient and medieval literature, e.g. Dante's Divine Comedy. A short and sweet summary can be found in the Dream of Scipio at the end of Cicero's Republic. The commentary on this passage by Macrobius was hugely important for transmitting this cosmology to the Latin-speaking world.

Well, on a geographic note, I don't think "western hemisphere" is what you mean to say. As for dualism in the West (the inheritors of Greco-Roman culture and related currents, which would include the Islamicate world) the origins are very murky. Yes, people have tried to pinpoint Zoroastrianism as a source but that's always been more conjecture than something really established. I think two probable key sources (not the only ones) would be Platonic distinctions between mind and matter, monad and dyad, etc. and Jewish apocalyptic thinking. These get mixed up and refracted through other currents like gnosticism and hermeticism. There might be something also to the social-historical context of the Roman empire where a lot of different people seemed to be saying the world was some kind of prison. However, very rarely are any of these people true dualists- oftentimes what appears to be dualist resolves into some sort of monism. The Manichaeans seem to be real dualists to me though. In their system, light and dark are co-eternal and irreconcilable principles. The present world is a mixture of the two resulting from their war which will eventually lead to the triumph of the light, separating itself completely from the darkness and rendering it inert. By the way, if anyone wants to see some enjoyable Shaw Brothers mayhem with Chinese Manichaean (mingjiao) heroes check out the two part film Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre.

Man if I could do that, I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d go on an Internet forum and tell a bunch of strangers about it. Then argue with them. Maybe threaten them with nocturnal visits by skeletal minions.

I think the earliest source is the fragments of Chrysippus. If you’re interested in early Stoic thought the Stoics Reader published by Hackett is a good resource.

The history of Christianity, especially imperial/Nicene Christianity, is often framed with a sharp division between Christians and "pagans", that required everyone to choose one camp to the exclusion of the other. Sometimes this was true but I think often things were considerably more fluid. The case of Synesius of Cyrene offers a really interesting case. Synesius was a Platonist and disciple of Hypatia whose rhetorical skills won him admiration in the Alexandrian Christian community, to the point that Pope Theophilus of Alexandria agreed to make Synesius bishop of Ptolemais. Did Synesius reject his earlier views to accept this office? Not at all. We have an open letter he wrote to his brother which states clearly that he refused to accept the office unless, 1. he was allowed to remain married to his wife and 2. well, read the following: Basically, he retained his Platonist convictions in pre-existence of souls and the eternity of the world, and rejected the bodily resurrection as anything more than an allegory. Pope Theophilus, who is often regarded as stringently orthodox, and whose nephew Cyril would succeed him and take orthodox militancy to infamous heights, nonetheless accepted Synesius' preconditions. Synesius' last letter, on his deathbed, was a fond farewell letter to his teacher Hypatia who would later be murdered by Cyril's followers. For those interested in hearing more, the SHWEP had a great interview about Synesius discussing his life and work, that you can listen to here: https://shwep.net/podcast/jay-bregman-on-synesius-of-cyrene/ Synesius' fascinating essay On Dreams, a really interesting collection of dream and divination lore and speculation, can be read free online here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv9b2wvp

It's often presented as typical but it's not. Most people don't have time to travel to monasteries, even once or twice a year; for those that do, even fewer are able to meet with one of the elders. And this is talking about people who live in a region that actually has monasteries and elders at all. One problem with contemporary orthodoxy, especially in the diaspora, is that a peculiar sectarian viewpoint, to a significant extent of modern vintage, has come to dominate the spiritual discourse as the "traditionalist" party, with dissenters dismissed as lax, nominal, modernist, westernized, etc. They think lay people should behave as far as possible like monks. It does seem to make sense but then you have to take into account that most of these monks have no experience with marriage, raising a family, etc., whereas the average parish priest does all of that. These monastic spiritual fathers may, for instance, prescribe an onerous prayer rule that takes several hours a day to complete; they may ask for rigorous requirements for preparing for communion that result in someone only communing once or twice a year; they may even get into a married couple's bedroom, so to speak, and impose stringent requirements for when and how the couple may boink, on a narrow set of acceptable days throughout the year. I'm not speaking theoretically here, this is all stuff that people have dealt with after approaching monks for spiritual guidance.

It's hard to generalize but at least some of them did. The Stoic explanations of divination based on cosmic sympathy were influential for later Platonists. I think Synesius' preference for dream divination over, say, haruspicy, has something to do with his lineage- his teacher Hypatia was in the vein of Plotinus and Porphyry, who were not entirely keen on the bloody sacrifices of traditional rituals, whereas Iamblichus was a fierce defender of them.

Just to reiterate- the Philokalia covers a wide range of disciplines and concepts, so one does not "practice Philokalia" just by doing the Jesus prayer/ prayer of the heart. Kallistos Ware was an excellent and kindly popularizer of Orthodox spirituality. He produced both popular works and ones with scholarly merit. An all around decent guy and I would second the recommendation of his works. He would disagree that one needs instructions from a monk to practice the Jesus prayer- in fact he, and many other teachers of the prayer, explicitly counsel against such requirements. It's amazing that people keep raising such prerequisites even after they read works that explicitly say, Everyone can start using this prayer, right now. This goes back to my point about people trying to make the Jesus prayer into an esoteric incantation. I think the practice of having lay Christians seek "spiritual fathers" other than their parish priests has created a lot of weird situations in orthodox churches where the parish priest will give some advice, and the monastic "spiritual father" will give something very different, sometimes extremely rigorous and unsuited for laity. Like with Buddhist and Hindu gurus, the orthodox spiritual father business sounds cool and mystical but in practice can often lead to abuse and unbalanced sectarian behavior. I have met enough Orthodox monastics to be extremely skeptical of the assumption that they are inherently wiser or more spiritually advanced. Speaking generally, there is much that is beautiful in Orthodoxy, and much that is profoundly screwed up. I would advise inquirers into Christianity to take what seems useful to them in the orthodox traditions but not to get sucked in by the very slick and alluring presentations of the "Ancient Faith", "Holy Orthodoxy", etc.

Yes I also linked to an online translation of Synesius’ On Dreams. It’s a fascinating book. I don’t know which is the better translation but the one on Jstor also has some helpful commentary, essays, and other scholarly goodies.

The Philokalia is an anthology of Greek Christian spiritual and ascetic writings from the 4th to the 15th century (not to be confused with an older Philokalia that Sts Basil and Gregory Nazianzen made of Origen's writings). There are also much-expanded Romanian and Russian editions. The plan of the original Greek text, in 5 volumes, is roughly chronological rather than thematic. The 18th century compilers Nikodimos the Hagiorite and Makarios of Corinth published it with the intention that it would be widely read by Orthodox Christians but over the years some Orthodox teachers have cast an esoteric veil over it, saying that someone should have some kind of special initiation/ instruction from a spiritual father before reading it. Other teachers have pointed out that this is nonsense but the air of esotericism persists. In any case a lot of the teachings in the Philokalia, especially on the Jesus prayer, have been thoroughly popularized in Orthodox churches so that you'll find summaries in lay prayerbooks or hear about it in sermons. If you want to get a good idea of what the Philokalia is about without poring through all five volumes, the book Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart is a good single-volume collection which largely follows the plan of reading given in the Russian spiritual classic Way of the Pilgrim. You can't really boil down the Philokalia to a particular practice. The various fathers talk about a wide range of topics, from virtues and vices, dealing with temptations, fasting, etc. to stages of prayer and some heavy theological speculation. Yes, some of it is advanced but other parts are quite straightforward, basic Christian stuff. Most of the texts assume a monastic audience- the only pieces addressed to laity appear in the fifth volume- so there are many references to monastic life and the day-to-day problems of monks. Stoic and Platonic themes are readily apparent throughout (the first volume includes significant texts by Evagrius, one of the greatest of the "Origenists"). I believe the first version of the Jesus Prayer in its modern form appears in Abba Philemon's discourse in Volume 2 (which also contains writings of Maximus the Confessor, whom everyone interested in esoteric Christianity should be acquainted with). Many people confuse hesychasm with the Jesus prayer. The Jesus prayer is the prayer most associated with hesychasm but its practice is not necessarily tied to hesychasm. Sometimes people talk about the Jesus prayer like it's a magic spell requiring initiation to practice. This is directly contradicted by all the key sources for this prayer- anyone can pray it. Likewise hesychastic meditation can use other prayers, it's just that the Jesus prayer is the most popular and widely known. As for hesychasm,I have come to the conclusion that hesychasm is for monks and hermits. It assumes you have hours in the day and night to pray without distraction, coupled with intense fasting, vigil, and other rigors, not to mention a community of likeminded ascetics to offer mutual support and guidance. Many attempts have been made to popularize hesychasm, and to monasticize the Orthodox laity in general, and in my opinion this leads to no good. Anytime I encounter Orthodox laity who try to be hesychasts, with or without the blessing of their priest or spiritual father, they are weirdos and not in a cool way. If they have families it's even worse.

What is it about this forum that keeps attracting people like this?

Can confirm that I heard from a woman who lived in Moscow that she was yelled at by babushkas for sitting on concrete curbs or other cold surfaces- "you'll hurt your lady parts."

That God is omnipresent and that human beings have a divine spark is standard Christian doctrine, though the specific meaning of the divine spark is debated. The meaning of the Trinity though is something else. In fact the Trinity is basically an inscrutable doctrine and various attempts to rationalize/ explain it over the centuries (e.g. modalism, tritheism) have been rejected. One of the basic principles of orthodox Christology is that the Son assumed human nature as the New Adam, not simply in an individual sense but the common human nature, so that all humans are somehow restored through him. This is sometimes called the "recapitulation theory of atonement" which is especially prominent among the Greek fathers but which is at least implicitly present in Latin Christianity too. Humans are grafted onto this restored, deified humanity through faith and the Mysteries (baptism, the eucharist, etc.)

The naturalistic fallacy is a fallacy because there is nothing outside of nature so it fails to provide an ethical standard. If you can do it, it's natural. I don't think that's what Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics were quite on about though- they are thinking in terms of providence and fate, their concept of nature is sufficiently broad to account for all kinds of activity. Myself, I find the Stoic system ultimately rather sterile and oppressive, particularly due to its fatalism and asceticism. It proposes essentially a self-induced dissociation, an intellect isolated from its own embodiment. It's a good fit for a civilization that revels in work, duty, violence, the ceaseless grind, misery. I prefer the Epicureans and their Garden.

I'm not limiting anything to people who sell services. I'm just saying, there are "white magi" who will indeed insist that black magic is real, and that they have skills that can ward it off. As for Jesus... well, by the examples you provided in the OP, the imprecatory psalms would count as black magic.

I have family members who insist vehemently that they have been cursed (by other family members) and as a result have had no communication with a part of the family for decades. From what I've seen, "white magi", at least the ones who are clever, will very much insist that black magic works, which is why you need their services. Mao Shan Daoists will certainly tell you that black magic is real and what you need to do to protect yourself. Michael Saso's book Taoist Master Chuang has an entire chapter devoted to "the Tao of the Left" which the Zhengyi master learns so as to better defend against it. I think the explanation "it's psychological" is suggestive of a mind-body dualism that seems less and less tenable the more I learn about magic (or psychology, for that matter). Or let's concede the point- it's psychological... and? Is the psyche somehow unreal? Magic has many, many forms. Some people think it requires accumulating some kind of mojo through arduous practice, but it can also be as simple as poetry.

John probably has in mind the Stoic concept of katalepsis, basically the act of getting a firm knowledge of something, but literally meaning grasping.

https://libcom.org/article/anarchist-communism-introduction

They regarded philosophy as a way of life, something to be practiced, so of course it was experiential for them. What that looked like depended on what current/ era we were looking at. Certainly by late antiquity the main current of Platonism had elaborated a theory/practice of theurgy, ritual and meditative practice for uniting with gods or channeling divine influence. @Zhongyongdaoist has discussed this quite a lot on this forum, so you can peruse his posts if you're interested. For an excellent summary of this brand of Platonism check on Sallustius' short book On the Gods and the World https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Sallust_On_the_Gods_and_the_World/Sallust_on_the_Gods_and_the_World

Valentinus and Basilides had been firmly rejected by leading orthodox and proto-orthodox fathers, including Origen. I don't know if there was ever a conciliar condemnation of them- it might not have been thought necessary since their movements had died out or at least were separated from the mainstream Christian body.

No one really knows what the Pythagoreans were about since all the information we have about them was written down centuries later. But the Platonists claimed to heirs of Pythagoras and Kabbalah has a strong Platonist streak.

If it was collectively decided then there must be a genuinely autonomous/ decentralized social structure in place. In which case we're looking at libertarian communism along the lines described by Peter Kropotkin.

The final anathema of the council names "Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Apollinaris, Nestorius, Eutyches and Origen, together with their impious, godless writings." Of those named persons, only Origen taught pre-existence of souls. In any case, many of Origen's writings continued to be copied and read by orthodox Christians, even though many more were lost.