2019-08-22, 03:57 AM
'But who is an initiate? A person who has experienced a knowledge invisible from without and incommunicable except through the same process of initiation. Inevitably, Plato explains, there can be but "few" initiates. And in fact when compared with the Spartan version, Plato's initiation process is more subtle and more arduous. There are a greater number of trials to overcome and, having survived the last, the initiate may find is "the only one." Then there may not be enough time for him to pass on his initiation. And there may not be anyone to follow him, with the result that the chain is broken.
So one day Plato began to write the Republic. And he wrote the text in the form it is in so that one who wanted to understand it might be subjected to that initiatory process of "sufferings and pleasures...labors, fears, and convulsions." The many who did not understand, and were not supposed to understand, imagined they were reading a treatise on the perfect State.'
-R.Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
So one day Plato began to write the Republic. And he wrote the text in the form it is in so that one who wanted to understand it might be subjected to that initiatory process of "sufferings and pleasures...labors, fears, and convulsions." The many who did not understand, and were not supposed to understand, imagined they were reading a treatise on the perfect State.'
-R.Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony