Iamblichus: On the Mysteries · 198 of 218 · tr. Thomas Taylor
Chapter VIII-al
For these conceptions and these works teach us, that in reality we, through sacred operations, approach to divinity, but that divinity does not draw near to us.
Hence Proclus in Alcibiad.
εν ταις κλησεσι, και εν ταις αυτοψιαις προσιεναι πως ημιν φαινεται το θειον, ημων επανατεινομενων επ’ αυτο .
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“In invocations of the Gods, and when they are clearly seen, divinity, in a certain respect, appears to approach to us, though it is we that are extended to him.” 80 .
Gale, in his note on these words, after having observed that Porphyry says, that ignorance, darkness, and folly attend the soul in its lapse into body; and that, according to Servius, the soul, when it begins to descend into body, drinks of folly and oblivion, quotes also Irenæus (lib.
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59), who makes the following stupid remark: “Souls entering into this life [it is said] drink of oblivion, before they enter into bodies, from the dæmon who is above this ingress.
But whence do you know this, O Plato, since your soul also is now in body?
For if you remember the dæmon, the cup, and the entrance, it is likewise requisite that you should know the rest.” To this it is easy to reply, that a soul purified and enlightened by philosophy, like that of Plato, is able to recognise many things pertaining to its preexistent state, even while in the present body, in consequence of partially emerging from corporeal darkness and oblivion; but that it is not capable of knowing every thing distinctly , till it is perfectly liberated from the delirium of the body.
And Gale, no less sillily, adds, “respondebunt Platonici hæc omnia cognovisse Platonem ex narratione, quæ circumferebatur de Ere Armenio, qui Lethes aquam non biberat.” i.
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“The Platonists will answer that Plato knew all these things from the narration of the Armenian Erus [in the Republic] who did not drink of the water of Lethe.” For Plato did not obtain this knowledge from any historical narration, but from possessing in a transcendent degree the cathartic and theoretic virtues, and from energizing enthusiastically (or according to a divinely inspired energy) through the latter of these virtues.
81 .
Agreeably to this, Porphyry says in his Αφορμαι προς τα νοητα , or Auxiliaries to Intelligibles , ψυχη καταδειται προς το σωμα, τῃ επιστροφη τῃ προς τα παθη τα απ’ αυτου .——And ψυχη εδησεν εαυτην εν τῳ σωματι .
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Diotima's staged ascent from love of beautiful bodies → beautiful souls → beautiful pursuits → beautiful knowledge → Beauty itself; the canonical scala amoris that grounds Plotinus's On the Beautiful and Bruno's Eroici Furori — distinct from generic spiritual_ascent in that eros is the specific motive force.
The mention of 'sacred operations' aligns with the staged ascent motif found in Diotima's scala amoris.
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.
The passage teaches that through sacred operations we approach divinity and become partakers of it, aligning with the doctrine of deification.
Iamblichean ritual practice that engages the gods directly through consecrated material symbols and actions, on the premise that divine power descends into properly prepared matter — distinct from philosophical contemplation alone.
The passage explicitly references 'sacred operations' as the means by which we approach divinity through ritual engagement.