/lit/ - Literature

>>16021397
From Orpheus:/ Zeus the beginning of everything, Zeus the middle, Zeus the end; / Zeus the highest, Zeus is both of the earth and of the sea, / Zeus male, Zeus female / again / and Zeus all things, / shining on all things in a circle, Zeus the beginning, middle, end; / and Zeus has power over everything, Zeus himself holds everything in himself.

Dionysus. . .is the Soul of the universe, which is divided and yet retains its indestructible unity. The Titans represent the evil principle of division, which is hostile to the abiding aspiration of the universe toward unity.. . .The heart of Dionysus, which is saved by Athena, is the undivided Mind, which is approximate, but superior, to Soul.

>Plato in this present passage too says that he creates while looking toward the Paradigm, so that by thinking its contents he becomes all things and gives existence to the sense- perceptible cosmos. [The Paradigm] was everything in the Intelligible mode, he himself was everything in the Intellective mode, and the cosmos is everything in the sense- perceptible mode. For this reason the theologian also says, “Having concealed everything in turn, he intended to bring it forth / back again into the delightful light from his heart, doing wondrous things.”291
Zeus represents the center- point between the Forms as they exist only in the realm of the Intelligibles and the particular instances of the Forms as they appear in the sense- perceptible universe. “By thinking” about the contents of the Paradigm, the Demiurge “becomes all things,” thus absorbing the Forms, and he “gives existence to the sense- perceptible cosmos.” It is from Zeus on the level of Intellect that the lower levels of the metaphysical system flow, and it is from these lower levels that the physical universe comes into being. Elsewhere Proclusasks,
>How else would [the Demiurge] be in a position to fill all things with gods and make the sense- perceptible realm resemble the Living- Thing- itself unless he stretches out toward the invisible causes of the universe and, himself filled with these, is in a position to “bring forth back again from his heart wondrous deeds”?