Iamblichus: On the Mysteries · 25 of 218 · tr. Thomas Taylor
Chapter XVIII-a
Your next inquiry doubts, “ how some of the Gods are beneficent, but others malefic .” This opinion, therefore, is assumed from the predictors of nativities.
It is, however, entirely remote from the truth.
For all the Gods are good, and invariably the causes of good; and all of them are uniformly convolved to one good, according to the beautiful and good alone.
The bodies, likewise, which are subject to them possess immense powers; some of which are firmly established in the divine bodies themselves, but others proceed from them into the nature of the world, and into the world itself, descending in an orderly manner through the whole of generation, and extending without impediment as far as to things which have a partial subsistence.
With respect to the powers, therefore, which remain in the heavens in the divine bodies themselves, there can be no doubt that all of them are similar.
Hence, it remains that we should discuss those powers which are thence transmitted to us, and are mingled with generation.
These, therefore, descend with invariable sameness for the salvation of the universe, 69 and connectedly contain the whole of generation after the same manner.
They are likewise impassive and immutable, though they proceed into that which is mutable and passive.
For generation being multiform, and consisting of different things, receives the one of the Gods, and that in them which is without difference, with hostility and partibility, conformably to its own contrariety and division.
It also receives that which is impassive, passively; and, in short, participates of them according to its own proper nature, and not according to their power.
As, therefore, that which is generated [or has a subsistence in becoming to be,] participates of being generatively, and body participates of the incorporeal, corporeally; thus, also, the physical and material substances which are in generation, participate of the immaterial and etherial bodies, which are above nature and generation, in a confused and disorderly manner.
Hence they are absurd who attribute colour, figure, and contact to intelligible forms, because the participants of them are things of this kind; as likewise are those who ascribe depravity to the celestial bodies, because their participants sometimes produce evils.
For the participation from the first could not be a thing of this kind, unless the recipient had some mutation.
70 But if that which is participated is received as in another and different thing, this other thing in terrene natures is evil and disorderly.
The participation, therefore, becomes the cause of the abundant difference in secondary natures, and also the commixture of material substances with immaterial effluxions; and besides these, another cause is this, that what is imparted in one way, is received in another by terrestrial substances.
Thus, for instance, the efflux of Saturn is constipative, but that of Mars is motive; but the passive genesiurgic receptacle in material substances receives the former according to congelation and refrigeration, but the latter according to an inflammation which transcends mediocrity.
Do not, therefore, the corruption and privation of symmetry arise from an aberration which is effective of difference, and which is material and passive?
Hence the imbecility of material and terrene places, not being able to receive the genuine power and most pure life of the etherial natures, transfers its own passion to first causes.
Just as if some one having a diseased body, and not being able to bear the vivific heat of the sun, should falsely dare to say, in consequence of looking to his own maladies, that the sun is not useful to health or life.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The passage describes powers descending from divine bodies into the world in an orderly manner through generation.
The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.
The text discusses how terrestrial substances participate in celestial powers and are affected by them.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The passage explicitly describes powers descending from divine bodies into the world through an orderly manner of generation.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
Evils are attributed to celestial bodies only because their participants sometimes produce them due to material passivity.
The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.
Terrestrial places are described as imbecile and unable to receive the genuine power of etherial natures.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
Physical substances participate of immaterial effluxions and are connectedly contain the whole of generation.