sdi

Okay, so while I just revised Enneads I iv, it seems I might as well revise the joke that went with it. Perhaps you recall how I was tired after work, but since I'm a burning-the-candle-at-both-ends kind of person, forged ahead to study this particular essay, but a bird flew overhead and pooped on the page I was reading, an obvious omen to just give it a rest already.

My daughter was asking me about my angel today, as I mentioned how they have a very playful personality. She asked for examples, and so I told her a number of my angel stories. I got to this one, and while she was laughing about it, I was telling her how that page of the Enneads is still kinda messed up since of course I had to wash the poop off. She fetched the book from the shelf and asked me to show her which page it was, so I turned to the beginning of Enneads I iv and pointed to the worn-out section near the top of the page.

As I did so, I realized that I had missed the joke's punch line!

See, in the edition of the Enneads I was reading, the essay on True Happiness starts halfway down the page; the top half of the page is the last part of the prior essay on Dialectic. Here is the relevant section, with where the poop landed (which is now half-erased from being scrubbed clean) highlighted:

And while the other virtues bring the reason to bear upon particular experiences and acts, the virtue of Wisdom [...] is a certain super-reasoning much closer to the Universal; for it deals with correspondence and sequence, the choice of time for action and inaction, the adoption of this course, the rejection of that other [...].

The bird didn't just poop on my book, it literally pointed out that it would have been wise for me to rest. Lorna Byrne says somewhere that "angels find it easier to move minds than physical objects," but it seems to me that they're plenty capable of fine movements when need be...

I've been pretty down lately: most of this month I've been ill and very weak, and even after that, it's been stressful trying to catch back up with everything that fell by the wayside, and frustrating to strugglingly clear the fog from my mind and get back to being capable of thinking. I had a little space available to me, today, and I thought I might pluck Plotinos off the shelf... little did I know that this essay, which I struggled to make sense of two years ago, was just what I needed today.

Despite being a little lost last time, my summary actually wasn't too bad, but I still wanted to tinker with it, some:

I iv: On Well-Being [Revision of my original summary.]

Let us consider a musician and his lyre. It is the lyre that sings sweetly, but can it be considered to have well-being? No—the lyre might be in tune or in good repair, but it is the musician that can be well; the lyre is a mere instrument of the musician's well-being. But let us suppose that the lyre is out of sorts: does this mean the musician is unwell? Not necessarily: perhaps it fell out of tune in his absence and he is not even aware of it, or perhaps he sings on even without accompaniment, or perhaps he has grown tired of playing and does something else. In whatever case, the musician cares for the instrument, tuning it and fixing it as needed, but only insofar as it contributes to his own well-being.

In the same way, a man's body is the mere instrument of the soul; and while the body might experience pleasure or contentment, this is merely akin to the lyre being in good shape. No, the Good is the highest of all, and so a man's good must come from his higher part: his well-being is of the soul, and being of the soul it is to be found solely within and not subject to the vagaries of without.

Just like how the lyre is not essential to the musician's well being, what does the saintly man—he who is consumed with divinity—care for the body? He will be swayed neither by power and luxury, on the one hand, nor disease and disaster, on the other. Would we not call him a man of tremendous well-being, who could be satisfied even as he is placed on the pyre? But this is just what happens when the practice of the virtues is taken to its end.

In general, in my summaries of Plotinos, I have taken the tack of summarizing his conclusions and more-or-less ignoring his arguments. I think I was upset with my summary the first time since this was the first essay in which doing so was really glaring... it really leaves a lot out. But I think, by the end of summarizing the Enneads, I came to the conclusion that I can't really do justice to the full arguments; really, these summaries exist to A) remind me of the contents of the essays, and B) maybe, hopefully, entice others to read Plotinos—at least, those essays that seem most interesting to them. So if my summary seems abrupt and you want to know what the good man is like and why, then just read the real thing: it's linked above and it's not very long.

I didn't realize this the first time through Plotinos, but this essay is about εὐδαιμονία eudaimonia, the meaning of which was one of my Big Questions™ when I went through On the Gods and the World. The dictionary gives "prosperity, good fortune, wealth;" Murray and Nock translate this word as "happiness;" Taylor translates it "felicity;" MacKenna goes a little further and translates it "true happiness;" and Armstrong is critical of these and translates it as "well-being." I agree with Armstrong that any variation on "happiness" is misleading: the philosophers are not saying that the virtuous feel good, they are saying that they have transcended feeling. But it would be wrong to call such people "stoic" or "impassive," I think: Taoist and Zen masters are well known for their good humor, and angels (as the beings intrinsically possessing the virtues we try to take on) are full of joy. (Indeed, when I think of my own angel, I think of them first and foremost as playful.) Perhaps a very literal translation of eudaimonia might be "well-spirited," which I can sorta see as encompassing all of these notions.

In my summary I mention tossing the good man on a pyre, but Plotinos's actual example was of tossing him in the Bull of Phalaris. I wasn't familiar with it, but good old Diodoros tells us the story in the Library of History IX xviii–xix. Yipes!

Even though Plotinos is following Plato in his arguments, and even though Plato and Diogenes were at odds, it is hard not to see the stray dog as an exemplar of eudaimonia, retaining his well-being even as he was sold into slavery.

ὄρνις γάρ σφιν ἐπῆλθε περησέμεναι μεμαῶσιν αἰετὸς ὑψιπέτης ἐπ᾽ ἀριστερὰ λαὸν ἐέργων φοινήεντα δράκοντα φέρων ὀνύχεσσι πέλωρον ζωὸν ἔτ᾽ ἀσπαίροντα, καὶ οὔ πω λήθετο χάρμης, κόψε γὰρ αὐτὸν ἔχοντα κατὰ στῆθος παρὰ δειρὴν ἰδνωθεὶς ὀπίσω: ὃ δ᾽ ἀπὸ ἕθεν ἧκε χαμᾶζε ἀλγήσας ὀδύνῃσι, μέσῳ δ᾽ ἐνὶ κάββαλ᾽ ὁμίλῳ, αὐτὸς δὲ κλάγξας πέτετο πνοιῇς ἀνέμοιο. Jove's bird on sounding pinions beat the skies; A bleeding serpent of enormous size His talons trussed; alive, and curling round, He stung the bird, whose throat received the wound: Mad with the smart, he drops the fatal prey, In airy circle wings his painful way, Floats on the winds, and rends the heaven with cries; Amidst the host the fallen serpent lies. (Homer, Iliad XII ll. 200–7, tr. Alexander Pope.)

As I said previously, I think that the myth of Isis describes the macrocosm, the myth of Osiris describes the mesocosm, and the myth of Horus describes the microcosm. Meditating on the first, therefore, taught me all sorts of interesting things about the structure of the cosmos. Meditating on the second can, presumably, teach us many things about society, but I confess that (as something of a hermit and a misanthrope) my meditations on the topic have not been very fruitful. But the last is, perhaps, the most interesting of the three to me, because, given that Fire has descended and divided, meditating on it should teach us what we can do about it.

Alas, though, what Plutarch gives us to work with is so sparse! So little of the ancient mysteries are recorded, and Plutarch has explicitly neutered much of what little was available in the interests of propriety. I have endeavored to reconstruct as much of the myth as I can from other sources, but even with those, there is not a lot to work with. (We do happen to have a papyrus specifically concerning this part of the myth, but it's very fragmentary and pretty weird, and I had trouble making much use of it.) So, just like in the Isis and Osiris myths, I've wished to attach an equivalent Greek myth to compare against. I had two candidates especially to dig into for this.

The first was the myth of Apollo, which is recounted in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. (This is pretty reasonable since Apollo is implicitly related to Horus by Homer, Odyssey XV 525–6; and explicitly equated with Horus by Herodotus, History II cxliv; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History I xxv; Plutarch, Isis and Osiris XII; etc.; and Leto is explicitly equated with Isis by Isidorus, the Oxyrhynchus papyrus, etc.) In that myth, Zeus is Osiris; Hera, Set; Leto (Lycian lada, "wife"), Isis; Asteria ("starry," cf. astral), Nephthys; Apollo, Horus; Artemis (here, daughter of Zeus and Asteria rather than Apollo's twin), Anubis; and Delos, Buto. Leto wanders before giving birth to Apollo in Delos in the same way that Isis wanders before giving birth to Horus in Buto; Leto does not nurse Apollo but he is fed ambrosia and nectar in the same way that Isis does not nurse Diktys; finally, Apollo slays the Delphic serpent in the same way that Horus's men slay the serpent chasing Tewaret. The Apollo myth came to Greece by way of Lycia—presumably this is why Apollo was on the side of the Trojans in the Iliad?—and since the myth claims the first priests of Apollo were sailors from Crete, I suppose that the transmission of this myth is from Egypt, to Crete, to Lycia, to Greece.

The second was the myth of Io, which is recounted in Pseudo-Apollodorus, Library II i. (Again, this is pretty reasonable since Io is explicitly equated with Isis by Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, I xxiv; Ovid, Metamorphoses IX l. 666 ff.; the Oxyrhynchus papyrus; the Suda; etc.) Io is turned into a cow in the same way Isis's head is replaced with a cow's; Hermes frees Io in the same way as Thoth rescues Isis; Hera induces Io to wander in the same way as Set induces Isis to wander; Io gives birth to Epaphus when she reaches Egypt in the same way as Isis gives birth to Horus upon her return to Egypt; Hera's kidnapping of Epaphus causes Io to search for him in the same way as Set's dismemberment of Osiris causes Isis to search for him, producing Horus; the queen of Byblos nurses Epaphus in the same way as Isis "nurses" Diktys; and finally, upon her return to Egypt, Io becomes queen and institutes the mysteries in the same way as Isis institutes the mysteries after finding Osiris's pieces. Since Io is said to be the ancestor of a great many heroes (Perseus, Cadmus, Heracles, Minos, etc.)—some of whom are directly related to Dionysus—I suppose that those myths all share some chain of transmission, though it is difficult to say exactly how.

Sadly, since only rags and tatters match up—and not even in order!—neither shed a lot of light on our myth. While pondering this in my perplexity, though, my angel (ever a tease) posed a riddle to me, which lead me to realize that the story of Tiresias advising Odysseus in Hades (Odyssey XI) is the mirror image of Osiris training Horus from Hades. Tiresias prophesies the last leg of Odysseus's homeward journey, and the structure of this prophecy matches closely with the Horus myth:

I find the parallels between these two narratives compelling, and will need to reread the Odyssey with the Isis and Osiris myths in mind. I have, in the past, been fairly critical of using Homer as a theological source, but one cannot dispute that the blind Chian casts a long shadow over the philosophers; his stories obviously came from somewhere, and these days I am becoming increasingly suspicious that "somewhere" means "Egypt" in the same way that "Western philosophy" means "Plato." (Plutarch (Isis and Osiris XXXIV) says as much, and there are those legends that Homer studied under the "imagination of Egypt;" cf. Photius, Library CXC; Eustathius on the Odyssey I.) Anyway, the linking of Horus and Odysseus puts us on firm ground, since Plotinus (Enneads I vi §8–9) and Thomas Taylor (The Wanderings of Ulysses) both explain what Odysseus's journey means in a manner agreeable, it seems to me, with the interpretation of Empedocles that I have been working with, so let's take a look.

Osiris's questions to Horus (D1, above) run like this:

Osiris. What do you think is the best thing?

Horus. To avenge one's parents!

Osiris. Okay. What animal is most useful to a soldier?

Horus thinks for a moment. A horse.

Osiris raises his eyebrows. Why?

Horus. Well, a lion would be better in a pinch, but without a horse, how could you annihilate the fleeing enemy!?

Osiris beams. Yes! You are ready, my son!

I should emphasize how out-of-character this is for Osiris: he is elsewhere described as gentle, charming, laughter-loving, fond of dance, and he went out of his way (as king of Egypt) to civilize the world through pursuation rather than force. Horus, on the other hand, is bloodthirsty and merciless. If you've ever seen a falcon eat, perhaps that's unsurprising, but in terms of the myth, I believe Horus is so determined because there is no half-assing spirituality: if one is to try to ascend, they must devote their whole being to it; if they do not, they cannot become whole, and the soul must be whole to be like Fire, which is indivisible. So even though Osiris is, himself, peaceful and gentle, he encourages Horus's resolve of Necessity: after all, Horus is the son of stern-and-severe Isis, too, and having the backbone she furnishes is table stakes for the difficult climb up the mountain. Tiresias says as much to Odysseus, too: "You seek to return home, mighty Odysseus, and home is sweet as honey; but heaven will make your voyage hard and dangerous, because I do not think the Earthshaker will fail to see you and he is furious at you for blinding his son." Odysseus is less bloodthirsty than Horus, but nonetheless resigns himself to his fate: "Alas, Tiresias, if that is the thread which the gods have spun, then I have no say in the matter."

Then we have the three battles between Horus and Set, only the first of which is really described in any detail. In this part of the myth, I don't think Set is acting as Air itself, but rather as something of a proxy for Strife; this is because Air is separatory from the perspective of Fire, and Horus is "avenging" Osiris. The three battles represent the individual soul transcending each of Earth, Water, and Air, respectively, in the process of returning to its Source. This isn't as straightforward as it seems at first, though, because of a couple structural considerations stemming from how the natures of the four roots. First, Earth and Water are both material and separate out under the influence of Strife simultaneously, so a soul still requires the use of a material body until it has transcended both. Second, Fire is indivisible and descends whole and therefore must reascend whole; this implies that the third battle with Set cannot occur until all souls are ready to transcend Air simultaneously, which is something that only occurs at the end of time, when the cosmos again comes completely under the influence of Love.

What does it mean for the soul to transcend the roots? Plato's Diotima discusses it (in a roundabout sort of way) in the Symposium (201D ff.) and Plotinus discusses it in Enneads I ii "On Virtue" (which Porphyry summarizes, more lucidly I think, in the 34th of his Sentences). One's Earthy part is the physical body, the soul's "bestial" part: to transcend Earth is to move beyond purely sensory experience and gain the ability to consider ideals on the same level as them; this is the mastery of Plato's "civic virtues," the ability to live a civilized life as a man rather than the savage life of an animal. One's Watery part is one's desiring faculty, its hungers and needs: to transcend Water is to move beyond material desires; this is the mastery of Plotinus's "purificatory virtues," the ability to cease to concern oneself with material things in favor of spiritual things. One's Airy part is the soul's emotional faculty, its ability to experience and judge things from an individual perspective: to transcend Air is to move beyond individuality completely; this is the mastery of Plotinus's "contemplative virtues," the ability to process things from all perspectives simultaneously, rather than one-at-a-time. Diotima says concordantly that one climbs the ladder of love from personal beauty to general beauty, from general beauty to abstract beauty, and from abstract beauty to universal beauty. Meanwhile, Porphyry explains that mastery of the civic virtues makes one a human; the purificatory virtues, an angel; and the contemplative virtues, a god (indeed, in this context, the god Osiris-Horus specifically, as all souls return to their Source).

Only the first of these is illustrated in the Horus myth, the transcending of Earth. That it is Earth and not Water is made clear in a few ways. First, we have the killing of the snake: we have seen destroyed phalluses already, with Isis cutting Osiris out of the heather stalk (representing matter being made to support other-than-bestial forms) and with the fish eating Osiris's penis (representing society being structured to foster an other-than-bestial life). The killing of the snake itself seems to be one "hacking to pieces" (analysing and overcoming) their bestial nature. Second, Tewaret is a concubine of Set's—a "lesser Nephthys," perhaps a being of Water rather than Water itself—which suggests to me the harnessing of desire (for peace, for comfort, for security, etc.) to create a civilized existence; that is, it is for this desire that the bestial nature is hacked to pieces. Third, Horus's violent deposing of Isis is a pretty literal—if violent, calling to mind the words of another initiate—description of the individual soul transcending Earth.

In the Odysseus story, this first battle plays out between Ææa (representing the bestial life, which is why everyone is a pig except Odysseus, who has Hermes—intelligence—guiding him) and Ogygia (home to Calypso, the seductive daughter of Atlas "who separates Earth from Heaven"). Odysseus encounters many monsters and troubles, and while he manages to escape from each (with difficulty), his men are unable to control themselves and are not so lucky, and so Odysseus comes to Ogygia alone. From this, Thomas Taylor (riffing on Plotinus, Enneads II iii §13?) makes the excellent point that there are three categories of souls. The first, which he likens to Heracles (and I might liken to Pythagoras or the Buddha or Jesus), is mighty and is capable of saving both themselves and others; if Odysseus was one of these, he and his men would have traveled swiftly back to Ithaca. No, Odysseus (who I might liken to dear Porphyry), rather, is of the second category, strong enough to save himself but not strong enough to save others, and this is why he struggles and strains to return to Ithaca, and manages it only after tremendous delay with neither his men nor his ship nor his plunder. (The third category is the mass of men, strong enough to accomplish nothing but get eaten by some monster or drown at sea—that is, to be lost in sense experience. Here, I disagree a little with Taylor, as eventually all souls must return to their Source, but it may take such time and suffering as to make Odysseus's journey seem luxurious by comparison.)

The episode with Horus's eye is pretty opaque, and in fact Plutarch omits it entirely from his recording of the myth, but it becomes much more understandable when we compare it to the Odysseus story. Notice how, in D3, Horus loses his eye while Odysseus loses his ship, while in D8, Horus gets his eye back and Odysseus is ferried to Ithaca on a Phæacian ship; these imply that Horus's eye and Odysseus's ship are, symbolically, the same. I didn't notice any references describing it specifically, but Odysseus's original ship is presumably a normal one (if of fine quality); on the other hand, Homer tells us the Phæacian ships are magical, the gift of Poseidon and "swift as a thought." Recall what Empedocles says of sight:

γαίῃ μὲν γὰρ γαῖαν ὀπώπαμεν, ὕδατι δ' ὕδωρ,
αἰθέρι δ' αἰθέρα δῖον, ἀτὰρ πυρὶ πῦρ ἀίδηλον,
στοργὴν δὲ στοργῇ, νεῖκος δέ τε νείκει λυγρῷ.

We see Earth by Earth, Water by Water,
Aither by divine Aither, Fire by destructive Fire,
Love by Love, and Strife by baneful Strife.

I think Horus's eye and Odysseus's ship represent what one is capable of seeing: Horus's original (mundane) eye is the Earth-eye by which we see Earth, while the returned eye is the (magical) Water-eye by which we see Water. (In theory, there is also a (divine) Air-eye by which we see Air, but this last is inherent to the individual soul and it doesn't need a vehicle to house it, which is why Horus doesn't lose his eye a second time and why Odysseus's final journey must be made on foot and without the use of a ship at all.) It is of interest to me that Horus does without his eye for a while, able neither to properly see Earth nor Water, since I have experienced this myself: I have nearly lost the ability to perceive and enjoy the beauty of Earth, but I am only very slowly developing the ability to see and appreciate higher beauty, so there is something of a gap where I seem to have a foot in both worlds but it feels more like having a foot in neither. (I wonder if this is what St. John of the Cross was talking about when he describes "the dark night of the soul.") In any case, just as we see Odysseus climbing the ladder of roots in his use of vehicles, we see the same thing reiterated in the guidance he receives: in escaping from Circe and Calypso (transcending Earth), Odysseus is guided by Hermes, who (in terms I've discussed previously) is his intelligence; in reclaiming his household (transcending Water), Odysseus is guided by Athena, who is his wisdom; however, Odysseus receives no help at all in propitiating Poseidon (transcending Air), since in doing so he is guided only by Truth.

At the same time as the soul loses its eye for material things, Set is said to lose his testicles, for which the Pythagoreans' famous censure of "beans" comes to mind:

An old and false opinion has seized men and prevailed, that the philosopher Pythagoras [...] abstained from the bean, which the Greeks call κύαμος. In accordance with this opinion, the poet Callimachus wrote:

As Pythagoras, I tell you too:
Abstain from beans, a malign food.

[...] It seems that the cause of the error about not dining on beans is that in the poem of Empedocles, who followed Pythagoras's teachings, this verse is found:

δειλοί, πάνδειλοι, κυάμων ἄπο χεῖρας ἔχεσθαι

Wretches, utter wretches, keep your hands off beans!

For most people thought that κύαμοι refered to the legume, as is the common usage. But those who have studied Empedocles's poem with more care and learning say that in this place κύαμοι means "testicles" and that these are called κύαμοι in the Pythagorean manner, cryptically and symbolically, because they conceive [punning κύαμος "bean" with κυεῖν "to conceive"] and supply the power of human reproduction. So, in that verse Empedocles wanted to draw men away not from eating beans but from a desire for sex.

(Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights IV xi.)

The first battle closes with Set in chains, brought by a triumphant Horus before Queen Isis. In the same way that gentle Osiris acts bizarrely in this myth, so too does his wife: normally severe and uncompromising, here she meekly lets her husband's murderer go free. The reason for this is, of course, that Earth is the extremity of the cosmos and most under the influence of Strife: Isis has no power over Set, whether she wishes it or not. Horus's decapitating of Isis and claiming the throne demonstrates that he asserts control over Earth, and is no longer bound to submit to her will: having mastered the civic virtues, he now is bound by a higher law than those of the Law-Giver. The replacement of Isis's head with that of a cow's shows that, rather than Earth being the master (as a human), she is now a docile beast of burden (as a cow): since Horus has mastered being human, the body can now be recognized as a mere tool rather than one's whole being. This is similar to Odysseus on Ogygia: Calypso is ever trying to seduce Odysseus, but even with all her blandishments, Odysseus simply no longer cares for creature-comforts, even those of a goddess, but is completely detached from them and ever sits on the shore looking towards Ithaca and hoping to see even a wisp of smoke on the horizon. Calypso even promises him immortality, but Calypso's sort of immortality is just more turnings on the wheel of rebirth.

While I am following what I think is a Pythagorean take on the myth, it must be noted that Manetho (Epitome of Physical Doctrines) and Diodorus Siculus (Library of History I xi) say that the Egyptians came up with all this by watching the Sun and Moon in their revolutions in the sky. I have avoided following that interpretation for now, though it has much to recommend it. (For example, the fourteen pieces that Osiris is chopped into is the two week period of the waxing Moon; Set is said to have killed Osiris under the light of the full Moon; Set is likened to the eclipses, which "eat" the Sun; etc.) But consider: if the Sun is Osiris, the soul, and the Moon is Isis, the body, then the Moon is full when she is furthest from the Sun; this is when the soul is lost in matter and the body shines brightest. But just after this, as the Moon begins to return to the Sun, she wanes, and at the very point when the body is less bright than the soul (that is, less than half of it is illuminated), the Moon becomes crescent-shaped. Perhaps this is also what is signified by Isis taking on the horns of a cow.

After the triumph over Earth comes the trial of Horus, and given the placement in the myth and the overall symbolism of a courtroom, this must surely refer to the judgement of the dead for their deeds and misdeeds in life (cf. J. Gwyn Griffiths, The Conflict of Horus and Seth III). Unlike the cautionary episodes in the myth of Isis (e. g. of Diktys and his brother), this episode is salutary: Horus has acted righteously and is rewarded for his behavior, as his eye is returned to him and his authority is legitimized. In the Odyssey, Zeus judges Odysseus to be "beyond all men in understanding and in sacrifice to the deathless gods" and lends the explicit support of Olympus to his return home. The message here is that if one acts righteously and devotes themselves to heaven, then heaven will return the favor and support them in their upward journey. Since, as I have said, one must transcend both Earth and Water to become free of material existence, and since Water has not yet been transcended by this point in the narrative, then I must suppose that this refers to reincarnation into circumstances more conducive to their spiritual growth.

Reincarnation wasn't a widespread belief in ancient Greece (cf. Homer, Iliad XXI l. 569); in fact, it was considered a peculiarity, and perhaps the keynote, of Pythagoras's teachings:

[Pythagoras] was accustomed to speak of himself in this manner: that he had formerly been Æthalides, and had been accounted the son of Mercury, and that Mercury had desired him to select any gift he pleased except immortality; he accordingly had requested that, whether living or dead, he might preserve the memory of what had happened to him. [...] At a subsequent period he passed into Euphorbus, and was wounded by Menelaus, and while he was Euphorbus, he used to say that he had formerly been Æthalides, and that he had received as a gift from Mercury the perpetual transmigration of his soul, so that it was constantly transmigrating and passing into whatever plants or animals it pleased, and he had also received the gift of knowing and recollecting all that his soul had suffered in hell, and what sufferings too are endured by the rest of the souls.

But after Euphorbus died, he said that his soul had passed into Hermotimus, and when he wished to convince people of this, he went into the territory of the Branchidæ, and going into the temple of Apollo, he showed his shield which Menelaus had dedicated there as an offering, for he said that he, when he sailed from Troy, had offered up his shield which was already getting worn out, to Apollo, and that nothing remained but the ivory face which was on it. When Hermotimus died, then he said that he had become Pyrrhus, a fisherman of Delos, and that he still recollected everything, how he had been formerly Æthalides, then Euphorbus, then Hermotimus, and then Pyrrhus. When Pyrrhus died, he became Pythagoras, and he still recollected all the aforementioned circumstances.

(Diogenes Laertius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers VIII i §4. Aulus Gellius (Attic Nights IV xi) adds that Pythagoras also claimed to have been "a beautiful courtesan named Alco.")

Empedocles famously echoes Pythagoras's teachings:

ἤδη γάρ ποτ' ἐγὼ γενόμην κοῦρός τε κόρη τε
θάμνος τ' οἰωνός τε καὶ ἐξ άλὸς ἔμπορος ἰχθύς.

For I have already become a boy and a girl
And a bush and a bird and a fish from the sea.

This is one of those teachings that causes modern commentators to suppose that Pythagoras got his doctrines from the East, but I see no reason not to suppose that the Egyptians had some similar belief. Herodotus says so explicitly (Histories II cxxiii); meanwhile, Diogenes Laertius (Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers VIII ii §2) tells us that Plato was an initiate of the Pythagoreans but, like Empedocles, was expelled for revealing the mysteries in writing; and he espouses the doctrine in the Republic, and in the Phædrus (246A–9D) he goes further and says that normal souls must struggle for ten thousand years to "grow their wings," but those souls who choose philosophical lives three times in a row "will have wings given them." In the Odyssey, after Zeus judges Odysseus favorably, he has three days' swim ahead of him before he is given the use of the Phæacian ship, "swift as wings," exhibiting nearly identical symbolism. Since the return voyage part of the Odyssey fits the Horus myth so closely, it seems plausible to me that the teaching ultimately comes from Heliopolis but the detail was either not available to Plutarch, or else was excised from the myth along with Isis's beheading and the loss of Horus's eye. (It's hard to say which! In describing the Eleusinian mysteries (On the Man in the Moon XXVII ff.), Plutarch speaks of triumphant souls being given "wreaths of feathers," and while he connects the Isis myth to his explanation there (Isis and Osiris XLIV ff.) it's perhaps more likely that he's simply following Plato.)

Not only does wisdom support Odysseus in those philosophical lives, but Zeus gives explicit divine aid comes in the form of the White Goddess (Ino, daughter of Cadmus, whom Zeus divinized), who gives Odysseus her veil so that he might safely reach land, which seems to me to symbolise those dæmons who call to the souls nearing the upper world as (for example) those of Socrates or Plotinus.

In any case, after the three philosophical lives, Horus defeats Set a second time, meanwhile Odysseus is "given wings" in the form of the Phæacian ship, returns to Ithaca, and sets his house in order, turning out all things discordant and foreign. (Indeed, the suitors remind me of nothing so much as of Plotinus's analogy of the assembly (Enneads IV iv §17), where the "brawlers and roarers" overpower the wise-but-quiet words of the best; but here, the best overrules them.) The individual soul has thus traversed the ocean (transcended Water) and become a hero: no longer do they require a material body, but they proceed to live in the world of Air as a pure soul alongside the golden race. What does the soul do there? I really don't know, and I suspect we couldn't comprehend it anyway: Horus is the child of Fire and Earth, and so those two realms must be completely natural to him; similarly, he was nursed by Water, and so while he is a foreigner there, it is at least familiar to him; but he lacks that same sort of connection with Air, and so it must be rather alien. I suppose, like Socrates (Phædo 67A–C) that we should simply have the good hope that when we reach there, that we shall "be with the pure and know all that is pure."

There remains only the third battle between Horus and Set, and for Odysseus to propitiate Poseidon. I think it very appropriate that, while it is foretold by Tiresias, the Odyssey ends before Odysseus actually goes and accomplishes it. This is because Fire is indivisible: in the same way as it must descend whole, it must also reascend whole. This means that the soul finally rejoining its Source and Goal can only occur for all souls simultaneously countless eons from now, after the last souls finally leave the material world behind and the roots begin to collapse together again. At that point, this cycle of the cosmos will end, all will be joined in Love (as Tiresias says, "your people shall be happy round you"), and a new cycle will begin where Fire will descend into matter anew (as Tiresias says, "death shall come to you from the sea"). All this is beyond the scope of the individual, and that is why the Odyssey, which is about the individual soul, ends before it takes place; in any case, I imagine this final battle to be much more sedate, requiring none of the tremendous trauma of the first two: merely long ages of time.

And with that, we're through the mysteries of Isis, Osiris, and Horus! (Phew!) I never expected to spend five months on a mere nine pages of prose, and yet exploring them has helped me to make a lot more sense of Greek mythology, the philosophical tradition, and my own personal theology and place in the cosmos; so I can see why my angel led me to it and encouraged me to study it.

While I'm satisfied with my first—erm, first-and-a-half?—pass through the myth itself, there are still a few bits and pieces I'd like to follow-up on. What's the deal with Perseus and Andromeda? There's supposedly an echo of the myth in the Iliad XIV, is that so? I've shown the second half of the Odyssey to fit the myth, but what about the rest of it? I've mentioned that I think Apuleius was an initiate of Isis, Osiris, and Horus; but does his myth of Cupid and Psyche fit, too? Is there anything to be gained by more deeply considering the Sun and Moon cycle as the origin of the myth? These are all interesting to me and you may see a smattering of smaller and less formal posts on them in the coming weeks and months as I have a chance to explore them, but they're tangential to the myth itself and so I'm considering them more in the mode of appendices.

One of those bits and pieces, though, is Achilles; I've been re-reading the Iliad over the holidays, so why don't I deal with him briefly, here? I mentioned before that his birth and childhood match the myth of Isis; it is also the case, I think, that his prophecy and death match the myth of Horus. Achilles's signature characteristic is wrath, just like Horus's is vengeance. At Horus's trial, it is said that Geb, his grandfather, was the judge; in the same way, Achilles's grandfather, Æacus, is the judge of the dead in the underworld. Just like Horus, Achilles is a demi-god, possessing a mortal half (his body) and an immortal half (his name); and just like Odysseus with Penelope and Calypso, Achilles got to choose which half was which: he could live forever as a nobody, or die young but be immortalized in glory. Achilles made the right choice, favoring soul over body. Will you?

Persephone's name, we are told, was taboo; this is why she is usually referred to as ἡ Κόρη "the Maiden" or ἡ Δέσποινα "Milady" or the like. But this makes no sense. In the Demeter myth, Persephone is you: her generic name is because there are as many Persephones as there are initiates. And if I'm right in synthesizing the Isis myth with Empedocles, and if Persephone/Nephthys is, in fact, the dread queen of the dead, then she is nonetheless the nurse of Horus (that is, you) and one of those who supports and aids you on your upward way.

Death is no evil; indeed, it is the gift which Zeus, in his infinite pity, bequeaths to us. Why fear that which is good? Is it because we do not wish to be rid of our illusions?

Rereading Enneads I iii "On Dialectic," I think my previous summary was more-or-less fine, and have limited myself to making minor edits directly on that post (mostly by making my terminology consistent).

One thing that struck me is that I had thought Plotinus only described two paths—the aesthete and the philosopher—but upon rereading, it's clear that he's describing three (drawn from the Phædrus, which I have not yet studied): the ἐρωτικός ["lover"], the μουσικός ["sophisticate, man of the world"], and the φιλόσοφος ["philosopher"]. (MacKenna's translation is my preferred one in general, but in this case Armstrong's was clearer.) His discussion of the first two are very similar, and he singles out the philosopher as "better" than them (which is typical of Platonism), but all three are without doubt considered separately: I no longer think I'm being the least bit original in likening the three goddesses contending for the apple to the three broad paths upward.

It seems to me that the last step, from abstraction to Truth, is the hard one—the vision of the Good is something we can only cultivate ourselves in preparation for (and this is what Dialectic is supposed to be about), and not something we can undertake directly. But then—I have not yet attained, and maybe I will think differently once I get there.

The Egyptians think that little children possess the power of prophecy,​ and they try to divine the future from the portents which they find in children's words, especially when children are playing about in holy places and crying out whatever chances to come into their minds.

[Plutarch, Isis and Osiris XIV, as translated by Frank Cole Babbitt.]

More found Plotinian wisdom, this time from a sketchbook that my daughter bought somewhere:

He smoked, and when he offered me a cigarette, I refused politely, telling him about my lungs, and that I had to care for my health. He only laughed. "Do you really feel there is something still wrong in your chest, dear Doctor?"

Instinctively I breathed deeply, trying to find the old pain. But it was not there. I was cured? "Yes, my son," he said, "you are cured of your inner faults, so how could the physical ones resist being cured?" He read my thoughts as one reads the lines of an open book.

(Paul Sédir, as translated by Mouni Sadhu, Ways to Self-Realization XLVII)

By contrast, in Life of Plotinus II, Porphyry says that Plotinus—who Apollo Himself declared to be one cured of his inner faults—suffered from a lifelong intestinal disease (for which, in fact, he would refuse treatment). How can the statement of Sédir's guru and Plotinus' example be reconciled?

I asked my angel about this and They answered, "Sédir was cured because it benefited him. Plotinus suffered disease because it benefited him. Simple as that."

So it is with me. A number of you have kindly asked about praying for my health, and I've refused, since my angel's told me in that past that I wouldn't be healed. Well, there's why.

Quite some time ago, I was speculating on the computability thesis and how it relates to Plotinus' metaphysics. I think Enneads VI 6 really solidified everything in my mind, but while I was discussing this all with a friend yesterday, it occurred to me that I never wrote up where my thoughts ended up. I figure I'll briefly remedy that.

There are many models of computation—that is, "how can one define an algorithm?"—but it turns out that we've proven all of them that we can actually make equivalent to a particularly famous one called a Turing machine. (You can think of it as a simple kind of computer that can do one thing at a time.) The fact that they're all equivalent led several famous mathematicians to propose that something is computable if and only if it can be computed by a Turing machine (or one of these other, equivalent, systems).

I note that doing one-thing-at-a-time is characteristic of souls, and Plotinus says that this is why time exists in the sensible world (e.g. because it is generated by one-thing-at-a-time souls). Consequently, let us assume that the computability thesis is true for the sensible world.

The next level above souls, Mind, differs from them in that it doesn't operate sequentially: rather, it operates comprehensively, in an everything-at-once manner. The obvious variation on such a Turing machine is that, instead of doing operations one-at-a-time, it does all-operations-at-once. (The reason we can't build such a machine is that the number of operations may become infinite, and one cannot get to the end of an infinite sequence of steps in a finite amount of time. However, we're saying here that the Mind can because time doesn't exist.) Such hypercomputers have been discussed by mathematicians, and unless I misunderstand the literature, this one is effectively equivalent to what's called an Oracle machine (which is just a machine you can instantly get the "right" answer to whatever problem you want). Therefore, I think the psychic world is hypercomputable in the sense of Oracle machines. (I therefore half-joke that heaven, for a computer programmer, is to finally get to solve all those pesky NP-complete problems that have been bugging us for generations.)

The next world up is the mental world, where the Mind itself exists. Plotinus already answered this one for us, since the Mind is the definition of truth. That is, this is simply the world in which computation itself is defined. That is, it is the world in which all questions, all answers to those questions, and all means of finding those answers, are all defined. Therefore it is above computation of all kinds.

Finally, of course, in the highest world, the One itself, computation isn't its own thing because what would you distinguish it from? Everything in the One is just the One.

A. But is all that true? That is, do you really believe it?

B. It is a truth. The truth is all things at once.

Plato (in the Symposium) and Plotinus (in III v "On Love" and VI ix "On the Good") made a pretty big deal of the distinction between vulgar love and heavenly love, treating the former as being of the sensible world and the latter as being of the intelligible world, and therefore capital-B Better. But I'm not so sure this is so: is it not the case that the nature of the sensible world is separation, while the nature of the intelligible world is unity?

This would lead me to expect that while there are many kinds of love here in the sensible world, all of them should blend together into a harmonious whole There in the intelligible world. Here we speak of physical sex, emotional affection, imaginal devotion; but There, Love is all of these at once and more. Here, we have Aphrodite Pandemos and Aphrodite Ourania; but There, there is only Aphrodite.