Soothsayer

@Apech, @Zhongyongdaoist - thanks for the postive feedback and apologies for the late response, I've been indisposed of late. Your posts are always stimulating with further lines of enquiry to follow. It is interesting to note similar themes across the literature. The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz echos the imagery of the parlous state of the wing clipped collective in the Phaedrus: "For I was yet scarcely fallen asleep, when I thought that I, together with an innumerable multitude of men, lay fettered with great chains in a dark dungeon, in which, without the least glimpse of light, we swarmed like bees one over another, and thus rendered each other's afflicition more grevious." There is also clear Tarot imagery in the discussion of the Virtues in Porphyry's Launching Points to the Realm of Mind. : )

This: "the human charioteer drives his in a pair; and one of them is noble and of noble breed, and the other is ignoble and of ignoble breed; and the driving of them of necessity gives a great deal of trouble to him" suggests this: This: "The soul in her totality has the care of inanimate being everywhere, and traverses the whole heaven in divers forms appearing--when perfect and fully winged she soars upward, and orders the whole world; whereas the imperfect soul, losing her wings and drooping in her flight at last settles on the solid ground-there, finding a home, she receives an earthly frame which appears to be self-moved, but is really moved by her power; and this composition of soul and body is called a living and mortal creature" suggests this: This: "The divine is beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the like; and by these the wing of the soul is nourished, and grows apace; but when fed upon evil and foulness and the opposite of good, wastes and falls away" and this: "The rest of the souls are also longing after the upper world and they all follow, but not being strong enough they are carried round below the surface, plunging, treading on one another, each striving to be first; and there is confusion and perspiration and the extremity of effort; and many of them are lamed or have their wings broken through the ill-driving of the charioteers; and all of them after a fruitless toil, not having attained to the mysteries of true being, go away, and feed upon opinion." suggest this: This: "There abides the very being with which true knowledge is concerned; the colourless, formless, intangible essence, visible only to mind, the pilot of the soul." possibly this: or this: And this: "For the immortals, when they are at the end of their course, go forth and stand upon the outside of heaven, and the revolution of the spheres carries them round, and they behold the things beyond." suggests this: How did I do?

Alright there! I'm a pragmatic wayfarer open to anything that works. Been practicing internal martial arts for two years along with some western fisticuffs. My main focus is that enigmatic pack of cards known as the Tarot. See ya all around!