Mystai

Alcinous' 2nd Century C.E Handbook of Platonism was, for a long time, misattributed to the Middle Platonist Albinus. Typical of Late Middle Platonism, and the rising Neopythagorising tendencies that began in the 1st century B.C, it contains Stoic, Pythagorean and Aristotelian ideas that are subsumed into a Perennenial Tradition, of which Plato was considered the clearest exponent.

In the 1940s, Cherniss began an influential wave of reductionist interpretations of Plato that seperated the dialgoues themselves from their interpretations among later Platonists, and sought to define (by 20th century standards) which sources of evidence were considered "valid" in attempting to understand "what Plato meant to say" (assuming he is, in fact, saying anything). In his view, only the written dialgoues themselves could be taken as evidence of Plato's thought, which was argued to mature and change throughout his life. This led to Alcinous' Handbook being somewhat relegated to the background.

The Tübingen school marked a return to Late Platonist hermeneutics, and argued that the oral traditions of the Academy (both Old and New) couldn't be ignored.

The Handbook was likely intended for teachers or advanced students and assumes a general familiarity with Platonic terminology and doctrine. It is a kind of distillation of a long tradition of systematisation of Plato rather than a critical engagement with the dialgoues themselves. Alcinous seems in some ways to be reliant on Arius Didymus' earlier handbook and often quotes from it in a mirror fashion, altering certain word orders.

The One is said to be ineffable and "graspable only by intellect", since it has no essential quality nor possesses any attributes. It is also not part of anything, nor necessarily a whole with parts.

The Method of Negation/Abstract, for Dillon (2002: 107) begins to understand God by denying It any quality, or non-quality, to emphasise its superiority. God can begin to be grasped only by Noeticising It, a kind of intuition that transcends Logos/discursive reason. It cannot be defined because it transcends the Aristotlean Categories and Accidental Attributes. The central idea here is that there can't be any scientific/discursive knowledge of First Principles, only direct intuitive. The things that can be said of God, are only its powers, attributes or relationships with the world.

Alcinous uses mathematics to abstract a concept from a solid body, an idea that may even go back to the Old Academy.

The Method of Analogy works by conceiving a didactic illustration of intelligible reality, usually one grounded in everyday experience. We conceive an image or metaphor of God (here the example of the Sun from the Republic 6.508b-509b) and use it as a pathway to a higher conscious interpretation, enabling us to pass from image to paradigm, mainly because the Paradigm is present in the image.

When we think about the sun as essential to our vision, providing light to the senses and enabling them to function and 'see' things, this is a similar way to how Nous acts to intelligibles; as a principle that makes them intelligible in the first place.

The Method of Pre-Eminence isn't given a direct name by Alcinous, but is called "by virtue of his pre eminence", and is modelled on the ascent to the Form of Beauty from the Symposium (210a ff). He links passages from Aristotle's Metaphysics to consider the Unmoved Mover an "object of striving".

The process works by observing and following stages of beauty, through bodies, souls, customs and laws, although, interestingly he omits sciences. All of this leads to "the great sea of beauty" (Symp 210d), which ultimately points beyond the Forms to the Good.

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1 week ago | [YT] | 26

Mystai

New addition to my little Hermetic library finally arrived!

It seems Agrippa was influenced by the Glosses of Trimagistrus (Trismegistus) for his 'On the Threefold Way of Knowing God', and (on my reading, at least) its spirit is infused throughout his Oration and lecture at Pavia in 1515.

Interestingly, where the Trimagistrus Mercurius has a fourfold way of gnosis (through contemplating Creation/Nature, arriving at God through Reason, through scripture and through Divine Grace), these do not map as neatly onto Agrippa's own model (Nature/Creation, the Old Testament Law and Prophets, and the Christian Gospel/Christ).

It's interesting to see him dispense with Reason as a pathway to God, but not unsurprising, since one of his main arguments is the limitation of human reason compared to transcendental and supramundane gnosis. I suspect some influence from his Against the Scholastics is also partly to blame.

Very much looking forward to digging in!

#agrippa #hermetica #asclepius #hermestrismegistus #theoria

1 month ago | [YT] | 79

Mystai

This one was quite fun to write, and ended up (as usual) being another 15,000 word-er over the weekend, but it's worth it. I've been thinking about the 6th century Anonymous Prolegomena, and the mapping of Plato's dialgoues onto the Scala Virtutum (Ladder of Virtues). It's common enough to hear that the Prolegomena presents a kind of reading order for the dialgoues, and this is partly true. It does seem to have been used as a kind of curriculum for the Late Academy. A reading order does not seem to have been fixed under Plotinus, so it appears we owe the systematisation to Porphyry, who also heavily integrated the Aristotelian aspects. The mapping of dialgoues to virtues seems more of an Iamblichean invention.

Nevertheless, the curriculum is taken up after Iamblichus as fairly authoritive. There are however, a few things to be cautious of. The Anonymous list as it has come down to us is 6th century, so presents a model of Plato as he was understood in late Alexandria. It is complete with all manner of esoteric posturing and myth, giving Plato a virgin birth with honey pouring from his lips uttering divine prophecy, and positions him within an Apollonian Seira.

It also assumes a working familiarity with most of the Aristotelian corpus. Quite simply, studying Platonism didn't begin with the Aclibiades. Starting your reading with the Prolegomena is tantamount to starting the order of study in the middle, and often gets people quite lost.

So in this article, I've attempted to lay out my understanding of the Platonic Paideia, what it's aims are, what it's doing, how it is analogous to the progression of the Eleusinian Mysteries, and ultimately, the wider order of study for a Late Antique theurgist.

You can read it now on Substack:

open.substack.com/pub/mystaiofficial/p/the-olympia…

#platonism #theurgy #prolegomena #iamblichus #proclus

1 month ago | [YT] | 17

Mystai

The deification of limbs is a practice considerably more well known from Egyptian culture. In the construction of cult statues, various mundane materials (usually plants, oils, metals or the parts of animals) are often given sacramental interpretations and characterised as the bodily effluxes of gods. We have evidence for such correspondences (and the secret codeword lists that accompanied them) from the various temple labs active in the Roman period.

However, like alchemical procedures of boiling, dying, and glass making that have their origins in Old Akkadian and Babylonian texts, we also have evidence of Neo Assyrian and Late Babylonian documents that testify to a similar practice of equating materials with the body parts of gods, primarily for the purpose of creating their cult statues. Like the Egyptians, the Akkadian Mīs Pî (Washing of the Mouth) was used to awaken the matter of a cult statue and animate it with divine presence.

Two Neo-Assyrian God Description texts from Aššur are partially matched by two Late Babylonian editions. one of which appears to have been housed in the library of Ešumenša in the temple of Ninurta at Nippur. The texts describe a male deity (perhaps Šamaš) whose body parts are equated with various metals, plants, animals, substances and objects. Such correspondences are grounded in theological, mythical and philosophical meanings that relate the deity to its creations.

As described by Livingstone (1986: 92-103), part of the literary style is to emphasise the ineffability of the divine by giving descriptions or equivalences that are deliberately inconceivable. The texts are philologically interesting, treating the respective body part as a nominal subject in its own right, but it is often difficult to work out which elements are intended as metaphors, and which are to be taken literally as indicative of actual materials. Equally, the equation of certain deities' body parts with other deities can be a means of expressing religious syncretism.

#akkadian #sumerian #cultstatue #mesopotamianreligion #melothesia

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1 month ago | [YT] | 15

Mystai

Working on the next series of articles inspired by the release of Butler's Polytheistic Platonism. In this first one, I lay out some conceptual ground for my essential thesis that Metamodernism presents a useful opportunity to tackle the Meaning Crisis, and contribute to wider Philosophical Realist projects. I also introduce the notion of Amazonian/Amerindian Perspectivism, which I hope to be building on quite a bit in follow up articles.

I also outline some essential Buddhist tathāgatagarbha perspectives and how they may help resolve some conceptual tensions in the Many and One debate of Platonism.

Read here open.substack.com/pub/mystaiofficial/p/a-metamoder…

Available on my substack now.

#tathagatagarbha #platonism #polytheism #buddhism #metamodernism

1 month ago | [YT] | 6

Mystai

As I continue to read Ficino's corpus, I find more and more things that interest me, especially as he builds out his view of the interaction between the Musica Mundana and Musica Humana.

In his Letter 76 (written around c. 1460-1507) to Domenico Benivieni, a teacher of Logic at the University of Pisa, Ficino (building on Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos as a foundation) proposes a connection between whole- sign astrological houses and musical intervals on the basis of aspects using a one-octave scale (cf. Godwin, 1993: 168; Voss, 2006:186)

Starting from the First House, he describes how each successive sign relates musically to the original starting point. These aspects are then implied by sign-distance, and can be mapped onto musical notation within a given scale. Combined with Ptolemy's Greek Modes, these ratios form the basis of his iatromathematical music that he believed to be able to heal, rise, sustain and qwell passions of the body and soul.

These intervals are described in terms of their dissonance or consonance with their priors. Sextiles (major 3rds) are friendly to the Base (First House), Sqaures (4th's) are moderately dissonant, while Trines (5th's) are very friendly and agreeable. Oppositions (7th's) are considered hostile, and strongly dissonant, and in the zodiacal wheel, fall at the midpoint relative to the First House, which historically was occupied by the augmented fourth/diminished fifth, and known as the tritone (diabolus in musica).

Interestingly, the Octave (8th, 210•) has perfect consonance, and can be unfavourable, but is considered spiritually fortunate and marks a return to concordance. Another way to view the scheme is as creating a morally ordered harmonic cosmos, whereby Sextiles signify friendship, trines benevolence, oppositions enmity and octaves liberation and restoration.

#ficino #iatromathematica #astrologicalmusic #renaissanceastrology #hermetica

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2 months ago | [YT] | 26

Mystai

Just recieved a copy of Sneddon and Erneus' translation of the Summa Sacre Magice Book I. Don't cancel me, but I must say, this edition surpasses Skinner's in my opinion. It is interlinear, so has the corresponding Latin on each page, and the index and appendix contains a lot of very useful information. It's also much cheaper, which in this current economy, really matters.

Amazon UK: www.amazon.co.uk/Summa-Sacre-Magice-transcription-…

Amazon US: www.amazon.com/Summa-Sacre-Magice-transcription-tr…

2 months ago | [YT] | 14

Mystai

It's taken me a good few days to collate everything together, but my Confrence Proceedings are finally written up and published! For those of you who are interested in my research (Hermetica, Egyptian Priestly Education in the Roman Period, State Formation and Prehistoric Cognition etc), and are curious what I got up to/spoke on at Cambridge last week, I have written up all my reflections, and the details of each talk (including mine!).

It is quite extensive, and the first half consists of a preamble on state formation, trade, and Egyptian religion. You can scroll ahead to the confrence proceedings to find each paper headlined appropriately, and my discussions of each.

All available for free on my substack. Link in story and on my page.

open.substack.com/pub/mystaiofficial/p/commerce-co…

#egyptianreligion #archaeology #cambridge #theurgy #trade

2 months ago | [YT] | 8

Mystai

Ideas about melothesia, planetary and astrological influence (heimarmene) and iatromathematica tend to form central aspects of Hermetic texts.

SH 6, a treatise on the Decans, Energeia and various cosmological activities, echoes the Republic (528e-530c) at 6.18, where it specifies that a knowledge of astrology, the decans and their effluxes (earlier conceptualised as daimons) are a necessary prerequisite to attaining "sight of the Beautiful and Good" and properly being able to conceive of God. To do so, one must "exercise one's soul down here first, to arrive up there where it can behold and not slip from the Way".

According to Litwa, this combination of a God that is beyond Being and Name, and yet with whom we can attain intimate communion is something distinct about the Hermetic tradition. Further, the motif of a Nameless god as signifying transcendence finds a secure Egyptian precedent in texts like P.Leiden (1.350).

While most people are more familiar with the negative planetary qualities that are described as being shed in the ascent of Nous in CH.1, the SH presents a variety of other inheritances that we acquire from the planets, many of them positive. In general, theology and philosophy in the SH differ in sometimes significant ways from the CH, and texts like the Kore Kosmou display traces of possible different lineages of Hermetic thought, particularly a possible Isaic line.

Taken together, we can start to see a Hermetic view of the planetary body, its constituents and sympathetic resonances.

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3 months ago | [YT] | 15

Mystai

"The main 'innovations' of Vajrayāna, when compared to to Mahāyāna, thus lie in the methods used, such as initiations (abhiṣeka) samaya, sādhana, visualisation, mantra, mudrā, and the Vajra Master (vajrācārya), all of which help to speed up the journey towards awakening...

...Vajrayāna transforms poisons or disturbing emotions into the Five Wisdoms of Primordial Knowledge. Unlike Mahāyāna, which remains a vehicle of Cause (with potential yet to be developed), the Tantras are a vehicle of Fruit, meaning [liberation] is considered to be already there. It is, therefore, impossible to "attain" liberation, since, it is simply what has always been present, remaining non-actualised or non-realised.

The emotional and conceptual veils are purified by transforming the impure perception of gross reality into pure perception, of which it is the real inherent nature.

The Yogin then moves from subject-object duality to a more subtle and, finally, non-dual perception. [In doing so] the external (i.e physical/material) world is recognised for what it truly is, a Pure Land of its own; Sentient Beings [are recognised] as Buddhas and Bodhisattvas: Ordinary Sounds [are recognised] as the sounds of the Mantra; and Thoughts (mental events) [are recognised] as Wisdom itself".

Langouët, G. 2025: 126 (clarified and re-paragraphed).

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Photos are mine from when I stayed at the Azom Monastery in Dakshinkali, Nepal.

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3 months ago | [YT] | 7