Tags
esoteric, mystical, mysticism, neoplatonism, philosophy, plato
Published in the Summer 2012 Edition of ESOTERICA Vol.3 No 2
ESOTERICA is published by the Theosophical Society in England
Neoplatonism is a modern term for a mystical system of thought that developed around the 3” Century AD and the Early Renaissance (15th Century). It derived from the works and philosophy of Plato.
The founder was Ammonius Saccas who used the term ‘theosophia’ to describe his teaching. His most important pupil was Plotinus (c. 204-270) and it is in his Enneads that we can read the clearest account of the belief system. Plotinus saw this philosophy as a form of mystical belief containing both theoretical and practical parts. The first part dealt with the origin of the human soul and showed how it had departed from its perfect and original state. The second part showed the way the soul may return to the Eternal and Supreme State. Other important Neoplatonic philosophers of the time include Porphyry (233-309), lamblichus (245-325) and, later, Proclus (412-485).
Plotinus claimed he was restoring Plato’s own doctrine. He emphasised the aesthetic, cosmological and psychological aspects of Plato’s thought and omitted the political and ethical. Plotinus was Greek and studied in Alexandria, Egypt and later taught for twenty five years in Rome. In his philosophical system there are three principles: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. The concept of the One is that there is a supreme, totally transcendent reality, containing no division, multiplicity or distinction; beyond all categories of being and non-being. It cannot be any existing thing or the sum of all things. Plotinus identified the ‘One’ with the concept of ‘Good’ and the principle of ‘Beauty’.
The One is not just an intellectual conception but something that can be experienced, an experience where one goes beyond all multiplicity. Plotinus writes, “We ought not even to say that he will see, but he will be that which he sees, if indeed it is possible any longer to distinguish between seer and seen, and not boldly to affirm that the two are one:’ For Plotinus reality is a hierarchy of levels of being, an eternal descent from the transcendent ‘One’ down through a succession of stages to the material world of the senses and physical manifestation. For the human soul wishing to find Absolute Truth they must return and ascend these levels back to the ‘One’. The aim of the Soul is to progressively purify itself through the experience of mystical experiences to complete union with the ‘One’. In some ways this echoes many esoteric systems in this return to the Divine, Universal or Higher Self or Higher Soul.
This return is not automatic and cannot be accomplished by means of magic, techniques, or secret knowledge (gnosis). It is achieved by awakening to the illusion of the physical world and its material needs and turning inwards towards the inner self where the individual prepares themselves and their life both intellectually and morally.
Later Neoplatonists also took from Plotinus several major ideas: the hierarchical nature of reality; the created world animated by a World Soul; the importance of correspondences and sympathies; the Soul’s ability to ascend the levels of reality back to the Perfect One.
In the fifteenth century in Italy the Catholic Church dominated the spiritual and intellectual life of many city states and beyond. In Florence, early in the Italian Quattrocento, there was a movement by scholars and artists to re-discover original classical sources from Greece, Egypt and other parts of the Middle East. Their inspiration was the classical, and often beautiful, antique sculptures and architecture they saw in Italy (and sometimes Greece and Egypt).
Cosimo de Medici became influenced by the lectures of Plethon and became very interested in philosophy and the arts. Cosimo had many ancient manuscripts in his collection but in 1437 he acquired the collection of manuscripts from the humanist scholar Niccolo Niccoli. He began to expand his collection of classical manuscripts by employing people, such as his good friend Bracciolini, to search for various sacred and philosophical works in Italy, Greece and other areas in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean. In 1444 he opened the doors to Europe’s first public library at San Marco. In 1463 Cosimo established the Platonic Academy at the Villa Careggi . The following year Cosimo died at the Villa. A few months before his death he had written “Yesterday I came to my villa at Careggi not to cultivate the fields, but my souL”
The Academy met regularly to discuss Platonic philosophy. Marsilio Ficino led the Academy and also used a farm in the grounds of the Villa as a base to translate many valuable and precious manuscripts into Latin including by Plato’s whole work, Plotinus’s Enneads, and the Corpus Hermeticum. The Academy attracted important thinkers, poets and artists such as Angelo Poliziano, Pico della Mirandola, and Cristoforo Landino and continued until the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent in 1492 In recent analyses (2007) of the bodies of Poliziano and Mirandola who both died in 1494 it has been found that both bodies contained arsenic — indicating that they may have been murdered by Piero de Medici. It may show that the pursuit of ‘truth,’ in terms of the Platonic and humanist viewpoints, at the Academy was not the without its critics!
Barry Seabourne