Select Works of Plotinus · 60 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor
Select Works, Section 66 (part 2)
The dishonour of the Soul is in its ceasing to be clean and apart.
Gold is degraded when it is mixed with earthy particles; if these be worked out, the gold is left and is beautiful, isolated from all that is foreign, gold with gold alone.
And so the Soul; let it be but cleared of the desires that come by its too intimate converse with the body, emancipated from all the passions, purged of all that embodiment has thrust upon it, withdrawn, a solitary, to itself again- in that moment the ugliness that came only from the alien is stripped away.
Themes
◇Ladder Of Lovesoteriology
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.
[auto] The passage explicitly describes the ascent from love of beauty outside sense to the beauty of souls and virtues, mirroring Diotima's scala amoris.
All passages →◇Return To Sourcesoteriology
The soul's journey back to its divine origin, reversing the fall into matter through stages of purification or illumination.
[auto] The text urges the soul to 'win back his grace' and 'make himself what he was,' reversing the fall into matter.
All passages →Related passages · 4 parallels
◆greek_mystery|Orphic Hymns|Hymn LXXV. THE MUSES (part 2)
“207 fury arises from truth, and the amatorial from beauty; so the poetic proceeds from divine symmetry, by means of which it most intimately unites the poets with the Gods.
Plato, in the Phædrus, speaking of this Fury, says that it is an o…”
Both passages explore the concept of divine inspiration and its effect on the soul. Plotinus discusses the soul's longing for beauty and virtue, while the Hymn to the Muses describes the Muses' role in inspiring poetry and elevating the soul through divine knowledge and virtue.
◆platonism|Plato: Symposium|Section 1|
“This, my dear Socrates," said the stranger of Mantineia, "is that life above all others which man should live, in the contemplation of beauty absolute; a beauty which if you once beheld, you would see not to be after the measure of gold, an…”
Both passages explore the concept of divine beauty and the soul's aspiration towards it. Plato's Symposium discusses the contemplation of absolute beauty leading to immortality, while Plotinus' Enneads describe the soul's love for moral beauty and its longing to break away from the body to unite with the divine.
◆renaissance_hermeticism|The Heroic Enthusiasts, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori)|First Dialoguec
“And I will say, because to me this pain Is dearer than all other pleasures are.
Mar.
In reference to this I told you that although one should be attached to corporeal and external beauty yet he may honourably and worthily be so attached;…”
Both passages explore the concept of ascending from the appreciation of physical beauty to the contemplation of divine or spiritual beauty. They emphasize the transformative power of love and virtue in elevating the soul towards higher, more abstract ideals.
◆taoism|Tao Te Ching|Chapter 2
“All in the world know the beauty of the beautiful, and in doing this they have (the idea of) what ugliness is; they all know the skill of the skilful, and in doing this they have (the idea of) what the want of skill is. So it is that existe…”
Both passages explore the concepts of beauty and ugliness, particularly in relation to the soul or inner self. They discuss how the presence or absence of certain qualities leads to beauty or ugliness, and how these qualities are perceived and valued. The passages share a mystical perspective on the nature of beauty and the soul's relationship with it.