It's That Time Again

I've lamented before how very long life seems to be. I was contemplating this again in light of Plotinus' assessment of time.

Einstein, it is said, explained relativity by saying, "When you sit with a nice girl for two hours you think it's only a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute you think it's two hours." In the same way, it seems to me that Time has a dual nature: it is short to the degree one is satisfied and long to the degree one is dissatisfied.

Plotinus said that Soul's motion is the cause of Universal Time and that each individual soul's motion is the cause of one's personal experience of time. But one's soul can very easily be torn in two directions: its lower part inclined towards the material and its upper part inclined towards the immaterial simultaneously. I think this wishing for both where one is and where one is not is the cause of those who report time feeling both fast and slow at once.

Sacred Tales

If anyone is interested in an account of what one's relationship with their dæmon looks like, I found Ælius Aristides' Sacred Tales fascinating and worthy of study. It's very clear that Aristides' dæmon is a Solar one, and I found it helpful to compare and contrast the directions he was led with the directions my own Venereal tutelary leads me.

I read Behr's translation; a copy can be found on the Internet Archive.