Enneads II 3: Are the Stars Causes?

[sdi]

You know, there's something very compelling about Plotinus' question-and-answer format. The Enneads are something of a great, big Frequently Asked Questions about life, the universe, and everything. What an encouragement it is to get answers to some of those Big Questions that I have had a dim intuition of but no logical reasoning to shore up! Of course, as with all such things, digging up those answers only leaves bigger questions behind them...

II 3: Are the Stars Causes?

Suppose one is suffering from some disease, and a doctor feels their forehead, takes their pulse, examines their eyes, and so on, and is able to determine the disease and prescribe a medicine for it. This doesn't mean that their forehead or eyes or whatever is the cause of the problem, merely that every part of the body is affected when one part of it is benefited or ailing.

So it is with the stars: barring such effects as the sun's heat and the moon's tides, they are too distant to exert forces upon us directly but nonetheless they participate in the same universal Body that we do. The astrologer, like the doctor, is merely diagnosing the condition of one part from that of another.

But what, then, is the cause of such things as wealth or power or marriage? There are, in fact, several that must negotiate with each other. First, there are limits imposed by the dictates of Necessity, which are the results of forces already brought into matter that have not finished playing themselves out. Astrology and other forms of divination read the signs of this first cause. Second, before the soul becomes bonded to body, there is also an element of chance in the nature of the bond which continues after the bond is formed. Finally, there are the desires of the soul itself, for it can only become bonded to a like body and thereafter it continues to exert influence upon the body, the influence varying to a greater or lesser extent depending upon the purity of the soul.

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