Stephen MacKenna on Plotinus and Mars

[sdi]

Before digging into a work, I like to know a little about where the author is coming from. My book on Plotinus has an adequate little biography of him (an abridgment of Porphyry's), but of MacKenna, the translator, nothing is; what one finds of him, looking online, is a mystery. Not in that he is obscure, but in that he is a thread that, being tugged, draws you down the rabbit-hole into a still-greater mystery, one which enchants and bewitches and entices and maddens. That is all to say, MacKenna seems to have been very interesting indeed.

So to attempt to get a sense of the man, I turn to his published letters and diary, and clicking around randomly—ha!—brought me to a letter from MacKenna to Sir Ernest Debenham, penned in January of 1916 (and hastily transcribed by me, so I apologize for any errors):

I hope you and yours are well and as happy as the dismal times allow: myself I sicken at the all the blood, the mowing down of the youth of Europe, the stop, dead, of all we have thought of civilization, the multiform, wide as the world almost, agony and desolation. Plotinus mocks at all such emotions—if I weren't too lazy I'd transcribe a passage ad hoc, very fine as literature but dreadfully unreal to-day, at least to my lower sense—and this tho' Plotinus had been a soldier and seen, ce qu'on appelle vu ["what we call seen"], on no small scale too, the horrors of which his "Sage"—really our "Saint" tho' one daren't use the word— declares a trivial ragged fringe on his beautiful inner peace. For my part I find this war, with all that it entails to the world and to my own poor little land, setting me blaspheming. I see men as trees walking—soulless motion merely, and no purpose over it all—perhaps beasts ravening would be better, nearer to my mind, and no thought ruling the rage even to some sound material end. I suppose in the light of history all this is absurd—and then Plotinus would be right—all comes out smiling at the end, and the fall of one civilization is the beginning of another: if the Yellow Peril that once was a music-hall joke turned into a Yellow Actuality and all the world was yellow, there would once be once more arts and religions and contempt for the ancient and passed thing with lyric celebrations of the triumph of light at last. The world certainly renews itself, and always manages, with relatively brief periods of disaster and ugliness, to keep a sober average—but at the moments of ugliness, it is no pretty thing, no cheerful sight, and we get a sharp reminder (which our history is generally too dead in our minds to give us) that all our "truths" are merely dreams and that nothing is sure but birth and death, both sure but dark in their meaning. The God of the world is discovered to be an incalculable: we do not know what he is up to, or whether there is any care up there at all: ["but he is impious"], says Æschylus of the man that thinks this, that Gods do not deign to care for the good and ill doings of men: I'm afraid I'm ["impious"]. Of course, by the way, so is Plotinus in this: his Supreme is too great and different to care: it is man that must care; and on that Plotinus gets as stern a moral code as others get out of the God who is offended and appeased and always working at the wheel of the world. The Father's house has many mansions and still more approaches: all roads lead to its peace, and a good Plotinian would be undistinguished in life from a good Christian, except perhaps being better.

I imagine we will, ourselves, be in the same times MacKenna lamented quite soon! But the dance of Mars gives way to the dance of Venus, just as the dance of Venus gives way to the dance of Mars. If we embrace the show of Venus in all Her beauty and grace and joy and voluptuousness, should we not, too, embrace the show of Mars? Sure, it may be dirty and hard and sorrowful and severe, but ah! what He brings with Him!

I am reminded of a Sufi parable:

A dervish fell into the Tigris. Seeing that he could not swim, a man on the bank cried out, "Shall I tell some one to bring you ashore?" "No," said the dervish. "Then do you wish to be drowned?" "No." "What, then, do you wish?" The dervish replied, "God's will be done! What have I to do with wishing?"

Perhaps we each have our favorite Divinity, but nonetheless may we all learn and learn well to trust all Divinity, and in so doing learn to appreciate every dance.

Comments

[boccaderlupo]

The Lovers, indeed.

[sdi]

Hrm! Thank you for saying so. I'm not much of a student of the Tarot, but you prompted me to look The Lovers up in the books I have handy, which was fruitful. Yes, I think you have it right.

[boccaderlupo]

Desire and Will. When he is shunned, Mars grows rapacious, capable of any atrocity. When he is welcomed and reintegrated into the pantheon, he becomes that "bulwark of Olympos," the leader of the truly just, and Venus beams on him.

[sdi]

A few more associations that jumped out at me:

• Venus and Mars have three children: Fear and Terror, yes, but also Concord. (This is another way of saying what you have, above, I think.)
  
• The angel uniting the two is Raphael, "God heals." What I call "trust" and what might also be termed "love of the Divine" is what heals us, brings harmony, blesses us.
  
• The figures in The Lovers correspond to the alchemical Sun (male) and Moon (female) which is united by Mercury (angel of Air)—that is to say, the two halves of ourselves to be reintegrated. As above, so below; the world is a mirror; to love the things of nature is to love the nature of things. If we learn to appreciate the capacities of Venus and Mars in the world, we learn to appreciate the capacities of Venus and Mars in ourselves, and we bring about their marriage, the Great Work.

I am also reminded of Laozi—"Know the male, but keep to the female."

[sdi]

Oh, no, here's a better line from Laozi:

The Tao doesn't take sides;
it gives birth to both good and evil.
The Master doesn't take sides;
she welcomes both saints and sinners.

The Tao is like a bellows:
it is empty yet infinitely capable.
The more you use it, the more it produces;
the more you talk of it, the less you understand.

Hold on to the center.

[boccaderlupo]

The Tao is an endless delight...

[boccaderlupo]

Funny, I was meditating on this theme some more yesterday, and noted that in the system I use, both Mars and Venus are variants of red—Mars a fire engine red, Venus a kind of saffron—as if they are themselves a spectrum.

Been reading the hesychasts, and they speak of the soul's "incensive" and "appetitive" powers. These can degenerate into violence and lust if they are not maintained, but they alternately have more positive uses, in their telling—the incensive as righteous wrath against evil (I think again of the Homeric hymn to Ares) and the appetitive as desire for the Good.

[sdi]

I think Plotinus was a bit of fresh air to me, when he speaks of Desire—I am used to spiritual types saying that Desire is evil, that one must stamp out all Desire from themselves. But no, Plotinus says that Desire is a movement toward the Good, and is indeed one of the highest virtues of which a soul is capable.

He even has only kind things to say of lust: it is the first step taken on the highest path.

[boccaderlupo]

I would agree with that, insofar as all things tend in their particular ways toward the Good, though I can also can imagine instances in which lust and anger perpetuate real-world suffering on some levels.

[sdi]

Of course!—but I am perpetually mystified why the caveat, rather than the ideal, is placed front-and-center. Should we not steer towards good, rather than away from harm?

(Of course, I know the answer to this already: we only see what we are. Those who contain the capacity for mischief and harm see mischief and harm. Those who are idealistic see ideals. Still, I have a very difficult time putting myself in others shoes!)

[boccaderlupo]

My suspicion is that every individual is striving towards the Good...but in cases where one expression of the Good (a particular good) collides with another expression of it, we see suffering.

(Suffering's been on my mind of late, given everything that is going on, and I hope that doesn't sound like an overly intellectualized equivocation of it—it is acutely vivid and vicious.)

[sdi]

So, what is good for you contra what is good to you?

I can't speak for others, but that tension is certainly the cause of the suffering in my own life.

[boccaderlupo]

Well—and keep in mind this is all my own opinion—this where the exhortation in many religions to think of others' good rather than what is merely good for oneself may come into play; when we pursue our own good at the expense of the good of others (which we wall inevitably do, to some degree), we increase the potential of suffering for some party (we inevitably will not get it right 100 percent of the time, of course). This then becomes part of the karmic cycle of blowback that we must endure along the path of return. Just my perspective.

[sdi]

Well, but what of suffering that has no direct causes? For example, most of my suffering (at least, that which is not self-inflicted) is not because of any specific person's actions, but because of the collective decisions that humankind has made over generations, poisoning the air and the earth beyond my body's ability to cope. It is hard to assign blame to such things! And, presumably, I too have played my own part in it.

Perhaps this is why I tend to consider suffering strictly internally rather than interpersonally. I may not like it, but it is good for me to suffer, since it turns my attentions to better things...

[boccaderlupo]

I wish I had a better reply for you on that one, my friend, though I suspect that the external (natural) sufferings somehow parallel the internal (spiritual and moral) sufferings. It's at this point that those far wiser than me attribute all things to the gods, and of any more remain silent.

Axé, and may the divine light pour forth in your life...