Enneads III 4: Our Tutelary Spirit

[sdi]

III 4: Our Tutelary Spirit

Things of the material world, as we have said, are lifeless. Things of the ætherial world can take on several forms, for example: the vegetative, which grows; the sensitive, which responds to stimuli; and the reasoning, which thinks. Humans are a composite of all of these, with the soul overseeing all: not unfailingly, as the lower may overwhelm the higher, but the quality of a person is whichever of these is dominant.

A soul moves to orbit that which it desires, and this motion is the means by which it produces. But the production of a soul is a body, and so a soul which is disembodied must necessarily take on a body of some sort again. If a soul is focused vegetatively, it will take on a plant body; if a soul is focused sensitively, it will take on an animal body; if a soul is focused rationally, it will take on a human body. Note well that this is by choice: the soul takes on the body appropriate to its own desires.

So what is one's dæmon? It is the being that the soul orbits, the immediate source of it's motion, and is always of a higher sort (since that is the soul's connection to the One). So a vegetative soul orbits a sensitive soul, a sensitive soul orbits a rational soul, and a rational soul orbits a still higher soul. If a soul follows its dæmon's guidance and rises to its level, it must obtain a dæmon of a higher level; but if a soul sinks itself into a lower character, then it will obtain a dæmon of that lower level.

But what of these higher-than-rational dæmons? They are of an empyrean rather than an ætheric character, and if one's soul rises back to such a level, then the body it produces can no longer be a material one.

I posted The Myth of Er yesterday, as—in my opinion—it is of a piece with this tractate and provides crucial context. (Plotinus also calls out the Timæus in §5 and the Phædo in §6... I have a hardcopy of Plato now, and will get there...)

For some additional context, Porphyry says in his biography of Plotinus (§10):

In fact Plotinus possessed by birth something more than is accorded to other men. An Egyptian priest who had arrived in Rome and, through some friend, had been presented to the philosopher, became desirous of displaying his powers to him, and he offered to evoke a visible manifestation of Plotinus' presiding spirit. Plotinus readily consented and the evocation was made in the Temple of Isis, the only place, they say, which the Egyptian could find pure in Rome.

At the summons a Divinity appeared, not a being of the spirit-ranks, and the Egyptian exclaimed: "You are singularly graced; the guiding-spirit within you is not of the lower degree but a God." It was not possible, however, to interrogate or even to contemplate this God any further, for the priest's assistant, who had been holding the birds to prevent them flying away, strangled them, whether through jealousy or in terror. Thus Plotinus had for indwelling spirit a Being of the more divine degree, and he kept his own divine spirit unceasingly intent upon that inner presence. It was this preoccupation that led him to write his treatise upon Our Tutelary Spirit, an essay in the explanation of the differences among spirit-guides.

And this is exactly what Plotinus himself expresses in this tractate: his soul was already brushing the upper bound of the ætherial, and so his dæmon could not be any denizen of the ætherial, but must instead be a denizen of they empyrean: that is, as the Egyptian said, no mere spirit but a God. And so, having attained the level of his dæmon, when he finally "quitted the tomb that held his lofty soul," he went on to "spend his days among the Ever-Holy."

It is worth noting that some authors equate the "higher self" and one's dæmon: Plotinus emphatically does not, drawing a distinction between one's own soul and the soul it strives to emulate.

MACKENNA ALSO SAYS "EVIL-LIVER"

Comments

[sdi]

I suppose I should clarify that Plotinus says that souls are always empyrean things: but the turning of their focus downward causes them to "orbit" lower things, and this is what I'm getting at when I say a "vegetative soul," etc.

The part of this I'm not quite clear on is how the ætherial dæmons don't also possess material bodies. (Presumably they simply have bodies of another sort. Or, perhaps they do have material bodies, at least sometimes? Maybe this is how gurus and cults of personalities and so on work?)

[boccaderlupo]

Glad to hear "evil-liver" made the cut...

A lot to meditate on in this one, both in terms of the interaction of the personal daemon and regarding incarnation and the various bodies.

The subject of Love, I believe, is up next...