Holy Daimon Quotes

“Judging without even trying is incredibly convenient—especially if it lets us remain the victims of circumstances created by global forces far beyond our realm of control or influence. Behaving like a wolf when surrounded by wolves often seems like the safest option. Unfortunately as human beings, rather than following our blood, instinct and tribe, each one of us carries the burden of first finding a vision, and then realizing a version of our noble selves.”
― Frater Acher, Holy Daimon

“One horse represents what we may as well call the biological self, guided by what Romantics called the instincts and Platonists called the appetites. The other horse, though, represents what the ancient Greeks called thumos, the spirited or irascible part of the self, the part that responds non-rationally to praise or blame from others, and more generally is guided by the pressures and influences of the community to which the individual belongs. To use a phrase Plato didn’t, where the first horse is the biological self, the second horse can be described as the social self.”
― Frater Acher, Holy Daimon

“more often than not, our failures are not due to any evil daimon: they are all our own work. For it is exceptionally hard to become what only humans can become: a bridge which allows for undistorted communication between nous and matter, one flowing into the other. Yet man can be such a bridge, standing in the service of what passes through him, unconditional and free from all appetites and desires. Man can be a noble soul.”
― Frater Acher, Holy Daimon

“The purpose of man can be thought of as the work of a stonemason: to set free an invisible shape caught in rough matter, to bring to light a perfect idea in a world of unruly senses. The logos is man’s chisel, the thumos his hammer, the eros the stone he works on, and the nous the light that shines in his mind. A good sculptor is guided by vision and well supported by the skill of his craft. A bad sculptor, however, is not necessarily led astray by an evil daimon; more likely he is simply insufficiently skilled to tame his stone’s unruliness.”
― Frater Acher, Holy Daimon

“Socrates believed that the sort of relationship he had with his daimonion was accessible to anyone. Even though he had been granted this gift in childhood, he offers clear guidance on how to develop this inner contact: by understanding the world and all experiences within it as direct expressions of the gods, by recognizing the divine spirits according to their deeds and creations, and by not waiting to be granted a direct vision of them. Thus next to dreams and oracles35 any experience in life can become an encounter with the divine. Hidden in the book of nature is the voice of our daimonion.”
― Frater Acher, Holy Daimon

“Serve the gods and you will experience how they are looking after you and that they are sending you mentors.27 With Socrates and Plato, the idea of a personal daimon becomes part of the historical record, though most likely the notion had already been around for quite some time.28 While Socrates’ confident claim of a personal daimonion that advised him throughout his life ultimately led to his death sentence, he refused to give details about this being or inner voice during his apologia at court. Indeed, his daimonion had advised him not to defend himself; thus he appeared unprepared during his trial and even rejected an apologia offered to him by the speaker Lysias.”
― Frater Acher, Holy Daimon

“We might map thumos and eros onto Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs by viewing thumos as the higher, social needs, and eros as the source and container of the physiological ‘life energy’—a term in which sense the word eros has often been used in Greek philosophy. As we can see, both horses had a place and function in the human soul, and when a healthy mind holds the reins, it can drive the ‘chariot’ forwards. The logos, therefore—the charioteer in the analogy—was of utmost importance. This was where intellect had its throne, and from which reason and logic emerged. Whereas the horses pulled in the directions of social status and biological needs, the logos desired nothing but learning and wisdom. Only by means of this mental function was the soul able to balance the impulses and urges of the two winged horses. According to Plato, people dominated by the logos or logistikon made great philosophers or politicians.”
― Frater Acher, Holy Daimon

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
― Frater Acher, Holy Daimon

“It would be foolish of us to aspire to be flawless in the thousands of encounters we pass through each day. Flawlessness is for tyrants and the mythical dead. As living humans, our hands are always stained. We mess up, we clean up, and mostly are blissfully ignorant of the damage or good we have done. That is not a bad state to be in.”
― Frater Acher, Holy Daimon