Daily Devotional: January 16th

Daily Prayer XVII

Dionysus, lord of ecstasy and liberation,
Child of the divine union, bearer of eternal joy.
You who dance at the heart of creation,
Reveal the mysteries of life, death, and rebirth.

You are the vine that nourishes the soul,
The wine that frees the spirit from its chains.
Through you, the boundaries dissolve,
And the unity of all things is made known.

O wild and gentle one, breaker of bonds,
Lead us through the labyrinth of our fears.
In your revelry, we find truth,
In your madness, the wisdom of the eternal.

Son of Jove and the mortal womb,
You unite heaven and earth in your being.
You are the song of life and the silence of death,
The guide to the divine within and beyond.

Dionysus, eternal redeemer,
Show us the path of return,
That we may shed all division and illusion,
And find union in the sacred dance of all.

Daily Meditation

"There is also God, the Father and Cause of all things. The Idea is, in relation to God, His thought; in relation to us, it is the first intelligible; in relation to matter, it is measure; in relation to the sensible world, it is a model; in relation to itself it is reality."

—Albinus

Platonic Doctrines 9

Monthly Ascesis: Praying for Virtue

“Ask from God those things that you cannot receive from man.”

-Sextus

“In the Pythagorean sentences, we are also advised not to pray for things that we can do for ourselves. For example, we should not pray for money or material goods because these are things we can work to gain by ourselves. Rather, the things we should ask the gods for are things that are, like them, immaterial and perfect. The best things for us to ask the gods for are virtues.

When we pray, we should ask the gods to show us the way to immaterial things that are aligned with their perfect nature. Cardinal virtues like prudence, courage, justice, and temperance are great starting points. But any virtue is worthy of our prayers of petition.”

Excerpt from Ascesis: The Handbook of Platonic Practice

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