The Golden Chain Quotes

“The ultimate goal of Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy was assimilation to god through the cultivation of virtue and truth. It meant a return to the first principles reached through philosophical education (paideia) and recollection (anamnesis), scientific investigation, contemplation, and liturgy (or theurgic ascent), based on the ineffable symbols and sacramental rites.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“According to such a universalist and perennialist perspective, the teachings of Neoplatonism were not a sort of regrettable innovation (as modern classicists would have it), but the faithful perpetuation of pre-Platonic metaphysics put into a new dress. Plato himself was merely a link (albeit crucial) in the Golden Chain of the Pythagorean, Orphic and different Oriental traditions.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“Having a daemonic and intermediate nature, Eros was one of the links between the sensible cosmos and the eternal world of the gods. Accordingly, Eros was regarded as a paradigm and pattern for the philosopher, or lover of wisdom, because wisdom was beautiful and beauty was loveable.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“18B. (Iamblichus, Theol. Arith. 61). The Decad is also named Faith, because, according to Philolaus, it is by the Decad and its elements, if utilized energetically and without negligence, that we arrive at a solidly grounded faith about beings. It is also the source of memory, and that is why the Monad has been called Mnemosyne.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“For everything that exists there are three classes of objects through which knowledge about it must come; the knowledge itself is a fourth, and we must put as a fifth entity the actual object of knowledge which is the true reality. We have then, first, a name, second, a description, third, an image, and fourth, a knowledge of the object.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“The Form of the Good itself was beyond Being (epekeina tes ousias); however, every concrete being depended on, and was turned towards, this supernal Sun, the source of truth and beauty, life and intelligence.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“No wonder that Plato’s Phaedrus and Symposium provided certain models for the theurgic ascent; and in fact these crucial accounts, masterfully introduced as they are by Plato, themselves imitate the ancient cultic patterns recognizable in Mesopotamian and Egyptian cosmogonical rites.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“The stages of philosophical ascent led from the love of particular physical beauty to physical beauty in general; thence to beauty of soul separated from the beauty of the body and so on. Finally, the beauty of divine knowledge was reached and the vision of the Form of Beauty itself was granted.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“The task of the philosopher was thus to regrow his wings and to pass from the shadows of the sensible world to the divine realm, and to contemplate not the remote images, or shadows, but the Forms, or realities, themselves. This was the spiritual and intellectual way of recollection (anamnesis) which constituted the heart of Platonic philosophy.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“According to Plato, the visible cosmos is “a shrine brought into being for the everlasting gods” (ton aidion theon gegonos agalma), a living and self-moved creature modeled according to the pattern of the Intelligible Living Being (i.e., the realm of Ideas, kosmos noetos) that is forever existent.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“In their mythological and theological dresses (intimately related to corresponding hieratic rites), the so-called theory of Ideas and Archetypes can be traced back to the ancient Egyptian and Sumerian cosmogonies. Plato received this doctrine in its semi-Pythagorean form, along with conceptions of the ultimate metaphysical principles (the One, Limit, and Unlimited), Form and Matter—woven together through numerical harmony and the doctrine of the tripartite soul.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“The Platonic Forms were noetic paradigms, archetypes, and universals arranged in a hierarchy, crowned by the Form of the Good (or Beauty). They constituted the only true objects of divine knowledge. In the myth of Phaedrus they were contemplated by the charioteers of souls before they crashed into the world of Becoming, and were thereafter unable to contemplate the Ideas directly.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“Through an association with that which is divine—the good, beautiful and orderly (kosmios)—the philosopher attained to divinity and orderliness (kosmios).”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“For Plato, philosophy was a practice of and for death; a discipline of immortality aimed at the purification and separation of the soul—which was no longer regarded as the illusory phantom (eidolon) of the body, but as the immortal psuche—and which was now considered as the very essence of the being. By shifting the emphasis from the mortal body to the immortal soul, Plato initiated a philosophically oriented paideia, the final goal of which was a learning to live according to the highest metaphysical truth and virtue, to be attained by imitating God, the cause of all blessedness.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“These two principles then are opposite to each other, of which Form is analogous to a male power and a father, while matter is analogous to a female power and a mother. The third thing is their offspring. Being three, they are recognizable by three marks: Form, by mind, according to knowledge; Matter by a spurious kind of reasoning, because it cannot be mentally perceived directly, but by analogy; and their production by sensation and opinion.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“1. Timaeus of Locri said the following: Of all the things in the universe there are two causes: Mind, of things existing according to reason; and Necessity, of things [existing] by force, according to the power of bodies.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“Timaeus of Locri is the main character of Plato’s dialogue Timaeus which presents the Pythagorean cosmology. We know nothing about Timaeus as a person. The Neoplatonists thought that the writings by Timaeus inspired Plato, but it seems that the treatise surviving under his name was only an epitome of the cosmology espoused by Plato and consists of reduced statements along with some later additions. It thus seems to be a summary made by a student of Hellenistic times (3rd–1st century B.C.E.).”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“And we must not forget that Philolaus assigns the angle of the triangle to four divinities, and the angle of the tetragon to three, thereby indicating their penetrative faculty, whereby they influence each other mutually, and showing how all things participate in all things, the odd things in the even and the even in the odd.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“Philolaus, with another stroke of genius, calls the angle of the tetragon that of Rhea, of Demeter, and of Hestia. For considering the earth as a tetragon, and noting that this element possesses the property of continuousness, as we learned from Timaeus, and that the earth receives all that drips from the divinities, and also the generative powers that they contain, he was right in consecrating the angle of the tetragon to these divinities which procreate life. Indeed, some of them call the earth Hestia and Demeter, and claim that it partakes of Rhea, in its entirety, and that Rhea contains all the begotten cause. That is why, in obscure language, he says that the angle of the tetragon contains the single power which produces the unity of these divine creations.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“The Pythagoreans say that the triangle is the absolute principle of generation of begotten things, and of their form; that is why Timaeus says that the reasons of physical being, and of the regular formation of the elements are triangular; indeed, they have the three dimensions, in unity they gather the elements which in themselves are absolutely divided and changing; they are filled with the infinity characteristic of matter, and above the material beings they form bonds that indeed are frail. That is why triangles are bounded by straight lines, and have angles which unite the lines, and are their bonds. Philolaus was therefore right in devoting the angle of the triangle to four divinities, Kronos, Hades, Ares, and Bacchus, under these four names combining the fourfold disposition of the elements, which refers to the superior part of the universe, starting from the sky, or sections of the zodiac. Indeed, Kronos presides over everything humid and cold in essence; Ares, over everything fiery; Hades contains everything terrestrial, and Dionysus directs the generation of wet and warm things, represented by wine, which is liquid and warm. These four divinities divide their secondary operations, but they remain united; that is why Philolaus, by attributing to them one angle only, wished to express this power of unification.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“113. The theorems of philosophy are to be enjoyed as much as possible, as if they were ambrosia and nectar. For the resultant pleasure is genuine, incorruptible and divine. They are also capable of producing magnanimity, and though they cannot make us eternal, yet they enable us to obtain a scientific knowledge of eternal natures.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“A great many Pythagorean works were composed around the 3rd century B.C.E., probably as philosophical textbooks for the uninitiated, since the main teaching was transmitted orally.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“Philolaus reinterpreted Homeric mythology and transposed it into his own cosmology, which was also shaped by Babylonian influences.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“There is underlying continuity—which cuts across the recognized boundaries—and similarity between early Pythagoreanism and so-called “Neopythagoreanism.” The latter term was invented by modern scholarship both for reasons of classification and for the rather sinister wish to dismiss the clear analogies between early Pythagoreanism (which already regarded the philosopher as a healer of souls) and later Pythagoreanism, ostensibly “transformed into revelation” and blended with Greco-Egyptian alchemy.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“In this brevity of diction he deposited an extension of theory most ample and difficult to grasp, as in the maxim, “All things accord in number,” which he frequently repeated to his disciples. Another one was, “Friendship is equality; equality is friendship.” He even used single words, such as kosmos or “adorned world”; or, by Zeus, philosophia, or further, Tetraktys!”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“However, no one will deny that the soul of Pythagoras was sent to mankind from Apollo’s domain, having either been one of his attendants, or more intimate associates, which may be inferred both from his birth and his versatile wisdom....”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“Certain things he declared mystically, symbolically, most of which were collected by Aristotle, as when he called the sea a tear of Kronos, the Great and Little Bear the hands of Rhea, the Pleiades the lyre of the Muses, and the planets the dogs of Persephone. He called the sound caused by striking on brass the voice of a daemon enclosed in the brass....”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“The only altar at which he worshiped was that of Apollo the Giver of Life, at Delos, which is at the back of the Altar of Horns, because wheat and barley, and cheese cakes are the only offerings laid upon it, as it is not dressed by fire, and no victim is ever slain there, as Aristotle tells us, in his Constitution of the Delians.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“Porphyry the Phoenician regarded Pythagoras as essentially a Platonic philosopher whose views could be corroborated by reference to the divinely revealed teachings of the Egyptian priesthood. The Life of Pythagoras was initially part of the first book of a Philosophical History in four books. This history, now lost, covered Hellenic philosophy from Homer to Plato.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“17. There are eight organs of knowledge: sense, imagination, art, opinion, deliberation, science, wisdom and mind. Art, prudence, science and mind we share with the Gods; sense and imagination, with the irrational animals; while opinion alone is our characteristic. Sense is a fallacious knowledge derived through the body; imagination is a notion in the soul; art is a habit of cooperating with reason. The words “with reason” are here added, for even a spider operates, but it lacks reason. Deliberation is a habit selective of the rightness of planning deeds; science is a habit of those things which remain ever the same, with Sameness; wisdom is a knowledge of the first causes; while Mind is the principle and fountain of all good things.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy