/lit/ - Literature

>>16581154
Olympiodorus continued it in Alexandria (later moved to Constantinople where it likely fused with Byzantine secular schools) and his influence was still seen in guys like Stephanus of Alexandria who used his methodology, likewise Michael Psellos lived in the 11th century, after him and before him there are interspersed various byzantine scholars with neoplatonic tendencies, like Plethon who shows they never died out.
Then it is unlikely that the other half-dozen Neoplatonists who stayed in Syria/Levant just sat around and did nothing, we know Simplicius was still active and respected since most of his works are dated to after the exile and return to the empire. Indeed, it is the survival of them, but semi-underground, that explains the popping up of Sufism and Kabbalah and Scholasticism and the ever increasing mysticism in Orthodox praxis; some "Islamic" Neoplatonists could hardly even be said to have been Muslim.
The initiatory aspect of Platonism isn't essential to the Philosopher, 'the true one' is to reach That through himself anyway. Initiation is in fact a shortcut (and that isn't a bad thing); or an interpersonal pathway, similar to how the Mathematician can reach 'there', or how the Lover reaches the Good through others and the beauty of the world; the Philosopher encapsulates all four of these in addition to being a soul-master. Saccas and Plotinus, after-all, weren't passed down a retrieved physical tradition but rather revived it (by means of the noetic and scriptural tradition, and direct inspiration) He also revealed Saccas' secret doctrine in the Enneads, he just didn't tell us where (somewhere in the later half). The Enneads are also literally a step by step guide-book of self-initiation, but you have to obviously be a 'Philosopher' by nature for it to work, a Lover/Musician/Mathematician won't reach That (or at least not in such a way).

>>16411569
fucking protestant theology, "the sacraments are just symbolic", fuck off, I'm not christian but literally the same retarded thinking.
There is no initiation without the mystic experience and the experience only comes through faith.

"For being pure," says he, "and liberated from this surrounding vestment,
which we now denominate body, we obtained
this most blessed muesis and epopteia, being full of intelligible
light. "For the pure splendor [which he mentions] symbolically unfolds
to us intelligible light. Hence, when we are situated in the intelligible,
we shall have a life perfectly liberated from the body. But elevating the
head of the charioteer to the place beyond the heaven, we shall be fi11ed
with the mysteries which are there, and with intelligible silence. It also
appears to me that Plato sufficiently unfolds the three elevating causes,
love, truth, and faith, to those who do not negligently read what he has
written. For what besides love conjoins with beauty?
Where is the plain of truth, except in this place? And what else than faith
is the cause of this ineffable muesis? For muesis in short, is neither through
intelligence nor judgment, but through the unical silence imparted by
faith, which is better than every gnostic energy, and which establishes
both whole souls and ours, in the ineffable and unknown nature of the
Gods. These things however, have proceeded to this length from my
sympathy about such like concerns.

>>16129443
The world and the world soul didn't come into being at some certain time, they've always existed.
>“All soul is immortal. That is because whatever is always in motion is immortal, while what moves, and is moved by, something else stops living when it stops moving. So it is only what moves itself that never desists from motion, since it does not leave off being itself. In fact, this self-mover is also the source and spring of motion in everything else that moves; and a source has no beginning. That is because anything that has a beginning comes from some source, but there is no source for this, since a source that got its start from something else would no longer be the source. And since it cannot have a beginning, then necessarily it cannot be destroyed. That is because if a source were destroyed it could never get started again from anything else and nothing else could get started from it—that is, if everything gets started from a source. This then is why a self-mover is a source of motion. And that is incapable of being destroyed or starting up; otherwise all heaven and everything that has been started up would collapse, come to a stop, and never have cause to start moving again. But since we have found that a self-mover is immortal, we should have no qualms about declaring that this is the very essence and principle of a soul, for every bodily object that is moved from outside has no soul, while a body whose motion comes from within, from itself, does have a soul,that being the nature of a soul; and if this is so—that what ever moves itself is essentially a soul—then it follows necessarily that soul should have neither birth nor death

>Now when the Father who had begotten the universe observed it set in motion and alive, a thing that had come to be as a shrine for the everlasting gods, he was well pleased, and in his delight he thought of making it more like its model still. So, as the model was itself an everlasting Living Thing, d he set himself to bringing this universe to completion in such a way that it, too, would have that character to the extent that was possible. Now it was the Living Thing’s nature to be eternal, but it isn’t possible to bestow eternity fully upon anything that is begotten. And so he began to think of making a moving image of eternity: at the same time as he brought order to the universe, he would make an eternal image, moving according to number, of eternity remaining in unity. This number, of course, is what we now call “time.”
>Time, then, came to be together with the universe so that just as they were begotten together, they might also be undone together, should there ever be an undoing of them (there won't, except perhaps on the particular level).