First Steps in Neoplatonist Cosmology

[sdi]

Back when I was doing my On the Gods and the World series, I ran face-first into a lot of things I didn't understand because I didn't have the right mental model to make sense of it. If others are interested in starting to study Neoplatonism, here are a few core concepts that I wish I had known from the get-go in order to make sense of what I was reading:

1. There are two levels of reality relevant to us: the "intellectual" (e.g. the spiritual world, heaven) and the "sensible" (e.g. the material world, earth).

2. The "intellectual" is something of a misnomer: it was so called because it refers to things apprehended by the mind rather than by the senses, but this should be understood as intuition or inspiration rather than as reason, as George Bernard Shaw says of Saint Joan:

   ROBERT DE BAUDRICOURT. What did you mean when you said that St. Catherine and St. Margaret talked to you every day?

   SAINT JOAN. They do.

   ROBERT. What are they like?

   JOAN (suddenly obstinate). I will tell you nothing about that: they have not given me leave.

   ROBERT. But you actually see them; and they talk to you just as I am talking to you?

   JOAN. No: it is quite different. I cannot tell you: you must not talk to me about my voices.

   ROBERT. How do you mean? Voices?

   JOAN. I hear voices telling me what to do. They come from God.

   ROBERT. They come from your imagination.

   JOAN. Of course. That is how the messages of God come to us.

3. The intellectual is more real than the sensible, because it is eternal and unchanging, while the sensible is always in flux. The sensible may be thought of as the reflection of the intellectual, with matter being the mirror. Because it is a reflection of something eternal, the sensible as a whole is similarly eternal and cannot be said to have been created, even as the things within it are born and die.

4. The gods are the native inhabitants of the intellectual, and there are many kinds of them, ranging from truly mighty to very minor. Animals and plants and minerals are the native inhabitants of the sensible. "Dæmons" live at the interface between the two. (In modern English, we generally call these "angels" if they live on the intellectual side and "spirits" if they live on the sensible side.)

5. Humans have a sort of amphibious existence, possessing both an intellectual soul and a sensible body. The higher gods (e.g. the Olympians of the Greeks) do not possess a body at all. The lower gods (e.g. the sun and moon and planets) are amphibious like we are (though their souls and bodies are much greater than ours).

6. The higher gods are impersonal and, indeed, so fundamental to existence that it is difficult to conceive of them as people. (They are more like "forces," though unlike our modern notion of forces, they are sentient—or, rather, super-sentient.) Personal gods, like the Athena of the Odyssey, are, properly speaking, dæmons.

7. Since one is prior to many at every level of existence, there is, in fact, a highest god. (Various authors call it "the God" as opposed to "a god" or "the gods." Plotinus calls this god "Soul.") In this sense, Neoplatonism is both monotheistic and polytheistic.

8. The intellectual is itself a being, of an even higher sort than the gods. (Porphyry calls it "the father of the gods.") There is, in fact, an even more fundamental reality than the intellectual, called "the One" or "the Good," but it is impossible to reason about and may only be experienced.

9. The intellectual world is characterized by unity, while the sensible world is characterized by separation. Conflict between the gods is not possible, and it is silly to think that, e.g., there was a war between the Greek gods and the Christian god: to the Neoplatonists, the Greek gods gracefully gave way to the Christian god as times moved on.

10. To the Neoplatonists, the Greek myths generally aren't literally talking about the gods at all. (Trying to find theology in Homer or Hesiod requires a lot of mental gymnastics.) Instead they're using mythic language to describe other phenomena. (For example, the myths of Hades and Persephone, or Aphrodite and Adonis, etc., are actually about human souls.)

Comments

[tunesmyth]

Hi SDI,

Really very helpful! I hope this gets noticed somehow by people who need it. (Well, *I* noticed it, anyway!)

Would you be willing to expand on point 10? Or if it's something covered under any of your summaries of ancient works, point me to where you've written on it before?

[sdi]

Sure!

Sallustius talks about myths in §3 and §4 of On the Gods in the World (where he is explicit about the myths of Cybele and Attis and Hades and Kore). Plotinus sometimes explains myths in various places... the one that comes to mind offhand is Enneads IV 3 xiv (which is about Prometheus and Pandora). Porphyry famously has an essay concerning part of the Odyssey. Thomas Taylor explains Cupid and Psyche and the entire epic cycle as if they were myths. So I'm drawing on these sorts of sources. (I seem to remember somebody somewhere talking about the myth of Dionysus, too, but I can't find it now.)

The idea is that the characters in the myths aren't literal depictions of the gods, since that's ridiculous—Zeus, even as a metaphysical principle of creativity, doesn't literally go around fucking everything on two legs (except his wife). Indeed, even suggesting so much is impious! No, to the Neoplatonists, these must conceal a deeper meaning since the literal one is silly at best and blasphemous at worst.

And this makes sense when you consider the myths in their historical context, right? These things didn't come out of nowhere, and indeed many of them closely associated with the mysteries. By Roman times, most of the traditional religious purpose had been lost or consigned to a barbarous past, and writers like Ovid treated them a lot like modern commentators do today, as bedtime stories or pop-culture references to be mined for entertainment. Sallustius was writing against this tendency, saying, "no look, these myths really did serve a purpose."

So let's take the myth of Adonis, which I mentioned above, as an example. This isn't a story about literal divine beings named Aphrodite and Kore and the mortal named Adonis. (Intellectual beings don't even have names in the way we think of them—language is a property of the sensible world; in the intellectual, beings are self-identified.) In fact, it's not a story at all—it's an initiation ritual! The characters in the story are all stand-ins for real things, to wit: Aphrodite is the intellectual world (and presumably a costumed person in the ritual), Kore is the sensual world (and also presumably a costumed person in the ritual), Zeus is the divine order (and also presumably the costumed elder administering the ritual), and YOU are Adonis.

Adonis' incestuous parentage is because souls come into being from the intellectual contemplating itself, and also that the soul coming into existence necessarily implies it's descent into the sensual world, which is considered sinful, so it's necessary that Adonis coming into being involves some amount of shocking behavior.

Aphrodite is the one to discover Adonis because everything has it's origin in the intellectual.

As a baby, Aphrodite sends Adonis to live with Kore. This represents the (involuntary) process of involution, where souls descend into the sensual world. Presumably, early on human souls aren't human at all, but spend long ages as rocks or plants or animals or whatever, so they have no agency in the matter.

When grown, Adonis is considered extremely handsome for the same reason Psyche is: souls are the jewel of the intellect and of infinite worth.

Upon maturity, Adonis spends a third of the year with Kore, a third of the year with Aphrodite, and a third of the year with the goddess of his choosing (by the will of Zeus). This is because human souls oscillate between the sensual world (when alive) and the intellectual world (when dead)—but, notably, they now have agency, and can choose whether they want to focus on the sensual or the intellectual. Adonis chooses Aphrodite because that's the climax of the initiation ritual: the whole point is to teach the initiate to "store up their treasures in heaven" and focus on the intellectual, in order to proceed on the process of evolution (the re-ascent of the soul).

Later, Adonis being gored by a wild bull, dying in Aphrodite's arms, and being transformed into an anemone is representative of the dissolution of the physical body and is a reminder of why the initiate should choose Aphrodite—so that the intellectual is mindful of him when only a token image of him remains behind on the earth.

Now, this is just, like, my opinion, man—my read of something that has been long gone for a long time and, notably, disagrees with everything I've ever seen published on the topic. But I think it's right, at least in the broad strokes, and it certainly follows the methods used by the Neoplatonists. So assuming I'm right, none of this has anything at all to do with the specific beings mentioned, and indeed could not—if Aphrodite and Kore and Zeus and so on acted in the way the myth mentions, they would be dæmons at best rather than gods. No, they serve as characters, even archetypes, in a pageant specifically for the purpose of teaching a specific truth.

(It is worth noting that this particular myth is imported from Phoenicia, which in turn imported it from Babylon: this is the point of the Inanna's Descent Into the Underworld myth, too. That one has greater depth, like the seven gates of the underworld representing the seven spheres of the planets the soul passes through on the way to the sensible, and the need for philosophy—the creation of Enki, that is, Mercury—to free the soul from bondage and return it to life.)

(it is also worth noting that the Neoplatonist take on myths was controversial in it's day, and I suspect there was a significant rift between them and the more traditional Olympian worshippers on the topic.)

...that was longer than I thought, sorry! But does it help?

Thank you!

[tunesmyth]

Yes, that absolutely helps! You've made things very clear. So according to this point of view, then when people experience direct communications from the gods, then (in line with number 6 above), strictly speaking, those are actually daemons, albeit perhaps daemons in touch with those deities and incarnating/channelling their force?

You've written enough there that I cetainly wouldn't blame you for turning it into a proper post by itself. In fact, I hope that you do!

Re: Thank you!

[sdi]

So according to this point of view, then when people experience direct communications from the gods, then (in line with number 6 above), strictly speaking, those are actually daemons, albeit perhaps daemons in touch with those deities and incarnating/channelling their force?

Yup, exactly! Proclus even talks about that, saying that dæmons in the retinue, so to speak, of a god rejoice in taking the name of that god when interacting with mortals, since not only are they acting on behalf of that god, but also that god is their exemplar, their ideal, and it's flattering to be likened to one's ideals: "And about each of the divinities, there is an innumerable multitude of dæmons, and which are dignified with the same appellations as their leading gods. Hence they rejoice when they are called by the names of Jupiter, Apollo, and Hermes, &c. as expressing the idiom, or peculiarity of their proper deities [...]."

And thanks, maybe I will turn it into a post; the Neoplatonists take myths very seriously so it's a topic well worth contemplation...

Re: Thank you!

[tunesmyth]

Thank you, this is fascinating, and as someone with an active prayer practice with deities, interesting food for thought.

[sdi]

I remembered another of Plotinus' myth-expounding: Narcissus, in Enneads I 6 viii

[sdi]

Note to myself: if I revisit this, I think I should be clearer that the "sensible" isn't merely the material world, but rather is that part of reality that is experienced by the senses, which includes the material world, but includes some things that moderns might consider "spiritual," like the imaginative world (e.g. astral plane).

[sdi]

Oh man, Porphyry is just the best. From "On the Faculties of the Soul:"

On the one hand, intelligence possesses a quite peculiar nature, as is also the case with discursive reason, which is next below it. The function of the former is intuitive thought, while that of the latter is discursive thought. On the other hand, sensibility differs entirely from intelligence, acting with or without the help of organs; in the former case, it is called sensation, in the latter, imagination. Nevertheless, sensation and imagination belong to the same genus. In understanding, intuitive intelligence is superior to opinion, which applies to sensation or imagination; this latter kind or thought, whether called discursive thought or anything else [such as opinion], is superior to sensation and imagination, but inferior to intuitive thought.

That is:

Level	Being	Nature
Intelligible	Intellect	Intuition
	Soul	Reason
Sensible	Pneumatic Vehicle	Imagination
	Body	Sensation

Hard not to see fire, air, water, and earth in there.

[sdi]

Another note to myself: I think I made a mistake on [7]. The nature of the Soul itself is division, and so it can't be treated as a wholly unified entity—Soul entire is more like a body with parts, except that it can't be divided indefinitely, as individual souls aren't divisible. I have some re-reading to do to be sure, but I think that in the places where Plotinus is referring to the Soul entire, he's aggregating it not as a cosmological entity but rather for the purposes of making logical statements about things above it. (Going through Taylor's translation will help—MacKenna seems to be a little sloppy about things like this.)

There's certainly a "first' or "highest" or "greatest" god, but just because something is "biggest" doesn't mean it is "absolute" in the sense that monotheists make it out to be.

[sdi]

Oof. A friend asked that I give the basics of "what constitutes truth specifically and objective reality generally" as a part of this. To do that, I'd need to give a quick scope of each layer of reality and how and why it varies from the previous. That may be doable...

Maybe also a bullet point on reincarnation and how and why it fits...