/lit/ - Literature

>>16218803
theory of forms on the most general scale, that being identity: everything that is necessarily is one before it is anything else. Not 'also' one, being one is the precondition to being at all.

>>16218807
I created the gods from my sweat, and mankind from the tears of my eye;

>>16063731
>>16063854
>let us not attempt to count the intelligible on our fingers, nor corrupt it with our distinct ideas, but let us concentrate all thoughts simultaneously, and closing our eyes, open up the one great eye of the soul, by which nothing differentiated is visible, (although it is not the One itself in reality that becomes visible with this eye, but only the Unified, nor is this the Unifi ed that is opposed to the differentiated, but that which also contains the differentiated) and look there with this kind of eye, even if from afar and, as it were, from the outer limits, nevertheless, let us see the intelligible, except that what will appear in us, if one can put it this way, is the simplicity of it, and the plurality of it, and the completeness of it. The intelligible is one, many, and all, to explicate its single nature with three aspects.
And yet how are the one and the many a single nature? Because the “many” are the indefinite power of the One. And how is it One and all? Because “the all” is an activity of the One that embraces all things. But the word “activity” must not be said in the sense of the extension of the power into something outside the One]nor a power that is an extension of the subsistence remaining within, but again, it is meant in the way that we speak of three instead of one. For there is no one name that can be adequate for the clarification of those realities, as we have often given ample evidence. {the anteceding 400 pages}
Is it the case, then, that these realities are undifferentiated? And how might one more easily venture an explanation about them? For we say that there are three principles in succession to each other, father and power and paternal intellect. But in truth, they are not one or three, but it is necessary for them to be revealed by us through these names and concepts, since we lack ones that are appropriate for them, or rather, in our eagerness for clarifications that in no way are appropriate. For just as we call the One both many and all things, and father and power and paternal intellect, and again limit and unlimited and mixed, so we call it monad and indefinite dyad and the triad composed from both of these. And just as was the case with those names, so with these, by purifying our conceptions insofar as possible, we subject them to a strict accounting and they fall short when we fit them to the realities themselves. Therefore, let the intellective triad be called, to the extent that it is possible to call it anything, a triad, in the sense of, “the one of the triad,” with that triad apparently composed from the three first principles. But concerning that unity we could not make progress by continuing to speak.

>>15758295
The world is born from Dionysus choosing to die for multiplicity and choice to be.
You do realize that your great good causes what you call evil? Thus making him too evil, destroying pure good. This is the fundamental critique of Plotinus, the only one you need regardless of the flaws of his other ones. Gnostics unknowingly make their great Monad evil.

>>15351825
Schopenhauer is Pessimistic Neoplatonism. But his anagoge could only reach the Night, the indefinite abyss of power, the dynamis ton panton, the pure Wille before all things for all things to be.
But, for all his insight, he never beheld Atum-Ra in the Horizon of Night. That the beginning is the end, that rest is flow. The Flower of his soul peered beyond the cave but never overcame the blinding illumination, not knowing that he was standing in the sun he thought he walked in the meaningless void of oblivion.
And indeed it is a circle, you never left what you chose to leave.

>>15103394
The One-Being is both rest and change.
The Monad precedes the Five Greatest Kinds and all things; but he as the Unified is also the Unity of all things; and as the Indefinite Dyad he is the Power of all things.
The three are one, the one is beyond himself—Ineffable.
The Absolute is neither the uniform white light nor the prism, nor is he the infinitely polychrome rainbow.
Solely each, solely none of them, solely all of them—simultaneously, yet this is not enough.
For to deny the uniqueness and individuality of each thing, is to deny the individuality and uniqueness of the One which he as Love also accord all things.

>There is an intelligible, which you should contemplate with the flower of your mind. For if you incline your mind toward it and contemplate it as something, you will not contemplate that. It is the power of strength, shining from all sides, fl ashing with the intellectual rays. You should not use force to contemplate that intelligible, but rather the subtle flame of subtle mind that measures all things, except that intelligible. And I ask you to contemplate this not with intensity, but carrying the sacred backward turning eye of your mind extend an empty mind to that intelligible, until you learn the intelligible, since it is fundamentally beyond mind.

>There exists a fire (phlogmos) which has occupied a vessel above the heavens - a fire infinitely in motion, a boundless eternity. It is not within the grasp of the blessed Gods, unless the mighty Father should plan His purposes so that He Himself might be looked upon: in that place the ether does not bear the radiant stars; nor is the luminous moon raised up there. No God meets Him the Father, who is fire on His path, nor am I myself solar Apollo spread out so far as to reach Him, though I whirl through the ether in company with my light-rays. God is fire, a vast channel moving in a spinning motion with a whirring sound. But if someone touched that ethereal fire, he would not feel fear in his heart, for it has not power to burn. Through an unceasing care that derives from God Himself, eternity mingles with eternities. Self-begotten, untaught, without a mother, unshakeable, nameless, many-named, and dwelling in fire - that is God; we are messengers (angeloi), only a small part of God.