/lit/ - Literature

>>18380868
>>18384284
Here's Plotinus.

In this way, then, though soul is a divine being and derives from the
places above, it comes to be encased in a body, and though being a god,
albeit of low rank, it comes thus into this world by an autonomous
inclination and at the bidding of its own power, with the purpose of
bringing order to what is inferior to it. And if it extricates itself
promptly, it suffers no harm, acquiring a knowledge of evil and learning
the nature of vice, while bringing its own powers into the light and
exhibiting deeds and productions which, if it had remained inactive in
the incorporeal world, would have been useless, as never coming to
actuality; and the soul itself would never have known what capacities it
had, since they would never have been revealed or developed. This is so,
if indeed in all cases actualization reveals the potentiality that would
otherwise have been entirely hidden and in a way blotted out and non-
existent, since it never would truly exist. As it is, however, everyone is
brought to wonder at what is inside it by reason of the variegation of
what is outside, reflecting on what sort of a thing it is from the obser-
vation of its sophisticated acts.

>>16328638
>dedicated to the rationalistic lens that is predominant in platonism
If then, we have shown that names and definitions and rational knowledge are worthless for grasping intclHgible objects, what should we say about them with regard to the One? Surely that all names and all discourse and all rational knowledge fall short of it? So the One is not nameable or expressible or knowable or perceptible by anything that exists. This is why it is beyond the grasp of all sensation, all judgement, all science, all reasoning, all names. But, you will say, what is the difference between this and what he has already said? For he said before that there is no apprehension of the One. But there he said that the One (is not knowable) by others . . . He is showing by this very insistence that it is not unknowable becauseof the weakness o f other things, but by its own nature. By what he said before, he indicated the inferiority of other things in relation to the One, but here its super-excellence with regard to itself. But we must attend to the fact that when he says that the One is not known, by “knowledge” he means “rational knowledge.” Before, he mentioned three things— rational knowledge, opinion, and sensation— and as in this sentence he takes up two that are the same as in the previous one. namely sensation and opinion, it is obvious that by the third, “knowledge,” he means only rational knowledge, so that if there is a divinely inspired knowledge that is better than rational knowledge and which leads the One in ourselves towards that One, obviously the argument did not eliminate this, and learning it is the “final discipline’ as Socrates rightly says (Rep, VI, 505a), because it is discipline in the final knowledge. But this final knowledge is not science, but is higher than science.

>>16328638
>The Church does not take Platonism to be a revealed symbolique
Vatican 2 is perhaps the first real flawed step away from this, or rather towards the acceptance of extra-biblical revelation.
Zeus found in Semele a flawless woman, whose beauty and purity in her simplicity surpassed all the heavens, from whom he begat the dead undying living King of kings and God of gods—Dionysus, the heart of the world. Man and August God.

the first number is 4

>>16130056
likewise the many worlds will come to an end and had a beginning, but whole never will and never had, this is necessary reading Statesman and the Cycles of Time. This aspect of the Sun (Helios) that will die and be reborn is Dionysus, but the aspect that never changes is Apollo.
Again, "every" sentence of the Timaeus is multilayered.

>>16098701
>a symbol for the relation between cataphatic and apophatic theology
Plato's Parmenides, Plotinus, Gregory of Nyssa, Proclus, Dionysius, Damascius, Maximus the Confessor.
Bonaventure is also Kataphatic in the end, which implies God's essence as being being knowable (describing it as light, but knowledge is relational, it can only mean that he never breached Otherness remaining an eye, he never became Light itself).
>the encounter of Christ and humanity as a metaxu for ascension and recollection.
Eros, Dionysus/Osiris and Apollo/Horus, and Beauty itself.
>I doubt someone with this mentality has the least aptitude to partake of such studies.
again I don't read catholic shit
There are many stages of 'holy visions', reach the lowest for the first time and you'llthink you've grasped enlightenment, this is how so many get the mid wit idea "we're all one"; the Stoics only being able to reach the one of the World Soul thought this to be the 'First Principle'; Aristotelians couldn't think beyond lower Intellect and thought this was the First Principle; Pythagoreans couldn't think beyond the Monad/absolutely simple and thought this was the highest (scholastics then adopting this). Even Plotinus (same with Proclus) wavered between the 'Monad' and the Ineffable, though he could experience this he lacked the tools to reliably understand it. Iamblihcus and Damascius through Dionysius (the latter likely studied under him or Proclus), and obviously Plato, in the Greek world ever expressed this even 'beyond divinity'. But the Egyptians did, and Orthodox theology grazes it nearly touching upon it, Catholics are supposed to but never will as long as they cling to scholasticism.

>The one who crafted himself, whose appearance is unknown. Perfect aspect, which developed into a sacred emanation. Who built his processional images and created himself by himself. Perfect icon, whom his heart made perfect. Who knit his fluid together with his body to bring about his egg in isolation.

> Priorto the true beings and to the universal principles, there is the one god, prior cause even of the first god and king, remaining unmoved in the singularity of his own unity. For no intelligible is linked to him nor is anything else. He is established as a paradigm for the god who is his own father and his own son, and sole father of the true Good; for it is something greater and primary, and fount of all things and basic root of all the first intelligibles, which are the Forms. From this One there has shone himself forth the self-sufficient god, for which reason he is termed "father of himself" and "principle of himself"; for he is first principle and god of gods, a monad springing from the One, preessential or principle of essence. For from him springs essentiality and essence, for which reason he is termed "father of essence"; he himself is preessential being, the principle of the intelligible realm, for which reason he is termed "principle of intelligibles."

>>16087537
For the sake of clarity, our account has often used the example of many lines drawn from one centre in order to illustrate the concept of a generated plurality. But one should preserve the characteristic of the things said to have come to be many from ‘being all together’, just as in the circle, too, it is not possible to grasp the lines as being separated off. For it is one plane. But where there is no interval in one plane, and instead powers and substances without intervals, then it is appropriate to say that, due to their centres, they are all Unified together in one centre, as though their limits produced lines which, when they are at the centre, are actually then all one.
Again, if you add the lines which touch the centres themselves, which each of them left, then they are nonetheless each a centre, which is not cut off from the one first centre; each is then together with that centre, and there are as many centres as there are lines for which they provide the limits, and the centres appear to be as many as the lines they touch, and yet they are all together one. If, then, we liken all the intelligibles to the many centres, leading back to the one centre where they are Unified, they appear many through the lines, not because the lines have produced them, but because they reveal them. In the present case, the lines serve our need by providing us with an analogue for those things which by contact with the intelligible nature appear to be many and to be present in many places.

§6.5.6. For although intelligibles are many, they are one, and although they are one, they are many through their unlimited nature, and many in one and one over many, and all together. They are active in respect of the whole with the whole, and are active towards the partal so with the whole. The part receives into itself the result of the first act as of a part, and the whole follows. It is as if Human Being, going to a human being, becomes a human being, while still being Human Being. The human being, then, when embodied in matter, and coming from the one ideal Human Being, produces many human beings themselves. The identical thing is one in many in such a way that one thing itself is in a way stamped on many things.

Dionysus, the Divine Child, Nefertem, Ra-Horathky; in the beginning of eternity when all has been remade new, One. Reclined upon the Throne, with nothing ahead and nothing behind him, only formlessness; an instant, one moment, the glimpse of innocence, a child's curiosity, a boredom to dream; so he peers into the Night and beholds himself, another: A Seed, a Child, a Man, Father, a Brother, a Friend.