Iamblichus: On the Mysteries · 169 of 218 · tr. Thomas Taylor
Chapter VIII-i
This, however, our philanthropic lord and father Jupiter understanding, that we might not be entirely deprived of communion with the Gods, has given us observation through sacred arts , by which we have at hand sufficient assistance.” For the cause why, at stated times, sacred arts, oracles, and inspiration fail, see the additional notes to my translation of Iamblichus’s Life of Pythagoras.
P.
24 .
The participant of the rational soul becomes the cause of suffering to the composite.
See my translation of Plotinus on the Impassivity of Incorporeal Natures, in which this is beautifully and profoundly demonstrated.
Proclus, also, in Tim.
lib.
v.
p.
340 , admirably observes, that the motion of the nutritive power, and the percussions of sense, are the causes of the perturbation of the soul; but that we must not fancy that the soul suffers any thing through these.
“For as if,” says he, “some one standing on the margin of a river should behold the image and form of himself 348 in the floating stream, he indeed will preserve his face unchanged; but the stream, being all-variously moved, will change the image, so that at different times it will appear to him different, oblique and erect, and perhaps divulsed and continuous.
Let us suppose too, that such a one, through being unaccustomed to the spectacle, should think that it was himself that suffered this distortion, in consequence of surveying his shadow in the water, and thus thinking, should be afflicted and disturbed, astonished and impeded.
After the same manner, the soul beholding the image of herself in body, borne along in the river of generation, and variously disposed at different times, through inward passions and external impulses, is indeed herself impassive, but thinks that she suffers; and being ignorant of, and mistaking her image for, herself, is disturbed, astonished, and perplexed.” P.
35 .
Since, however, the order of all the Gods is profoundly united.——For the very existence in them, whatever it may be, is the one of their nature.
The Gods are self-perfect superessential unities, so far as they are Gods.
For the principal subsistence of every thing is according to the summit of its essence, and this in the Gods is the one , through which they are profoundly united to each other and to the one itself , or the ineffable principle of things, from which they are ineffably unfolded into light.
Concerning this union of them with each other, Proclus admirably observes as follows, in his MS.
Commentary on the Parmenides of Plato.
“All these unities are in, and are profoundly united to, each other, and their union is far greater than the communion and sameness which subsist in beings.
For in the latter there is indeed mutual mixture of forms, similitude, and friendship, and a participation of each other; but the union of the Gods, as being a union of unities, is much more uniform, ineffable, and transcendent: for here all are in all , which does not take place in forms or ideas; and their unmingled purity, and the characteristic of each, in a manner far surpassing the diversity in ideas, preserves their natures unconfused, and distinguishes their peculiar powers.
Hence, some of them are more universal, and others more particular; some of them are characterised by permanency, others by progression, and others by conversion, or regression.
Some, again, are generative, others anagogic, or of an elevating nature, 349 and others demiurgic; and universally, there are different characteristics of different Gods, viz.
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 passage notes that Gods are profoundly united and their union is ineffably unfolded into light.
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 text mentions Gods being 'ineffably unfolded into light' from a single source.
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.
Suffering is attributed to the motion of the nutritive power and sense rather than the soul's true nature.