Select Works of Plotinus · 104 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor
Select Works, Section 112 (part 1)
Section 9 9.
This brings us to the Spindle-destiny, spun according to the ancients by the Fates.
To Plato the Spindle represents the co-operation of the moving and the stable elements of the kosmic circuit: the Fates with Necessity, Mother of the Fates, manipulate it and spin at the birth of every being, so that all comes into existence through Necessity.
In the Timaeus, the creating God bestows the essential of the Soul, but it is the divinities moving in the kosmos [the stars] that infuse the powerful affections holding from Necessity our impulse and our desire, our sense of pleasure and of pain- and that lower phase of the Soul in which such experiences originate.
By this statement our personality is bound up with the stars, whence our Soul [as total of Principle and affections] takes shape; and we are set under necessity at our very entrance into the world: our temperament will be of the stars' ordering, and so, therefore, the actions which derive from temperament, and all the experiences of a nature shaped to impressions.
What, after all this, remains to stand for the "We"?
The "We" is the actual resultant of a Being whose nature includes, with certain sensibilities, the power of governing them.
Cut off as we are by the nature of the body, God has yet given us, in the midst of all this evil, virtue the unconquerable, meaningless in a state of tranquil safety but everything where its absence would be peril of fall.
Our task, then, is to work for our liberation from this sphere, severing ourselves from all that has gathered about us; the total man is to be something better than a body ensouled- the bodily element dominant with a trace of Soul running through it and a resultant life-course mainly of the body- for in such a combination all is, in fact, bodily.
There is another life, emancipated, whose quality is progression towards the higher realm, towards the good and divine, towards that Principle which no one possesses except by deliberate usage but so may appropriate, becoming, each personally, the higher, the beautiful, the Godlike, and living, remote, in and by It- unless one choose to go bereaved of that higher Soul and therefore, to live fate-bound, no longer profiting, merely, by the significance of the sidereal system but becoming as it were a part sunken in it and dragged along with the whole thus adopted.
For every human Being is of twofold character; there is that compromise-total and there is the Authentic Man: and it is so with the Kosmos as a whole; it is in the one phase a conjunction of body with a certain form of the Soul bound up in body; in the other phase it is the Universal Soul, that which is not itself embodied but flashes down its rays into the embodied Soul: and the same twofold quality belongs to the Sun and the other members of the heavenly system.
To the remoter Soul, the pure, sun and stars communicate no baseness.
In their efficacy upon the [material] All, they act as parts of it, as ensouled bodies within it; and they act only upon what is partial; body is the agent while, at the same time, it becomes the vehicle through which is transmitted something of the star's will and of that authentic Soul in it which is steadfastly in contemplation of the Highest.
But [with every allowance to the lower forces] all follows either upon that Highest or rather upon the Beings about It- we may think of the Divine as a fire whose outgoing warmth pervades the Universe- or upon whatsoever is transmitted by the one Soul [the divine first Soul] to the other, its Kin [the Soul of any particular being].
All that is graceless is admixture.
Themes
◆Divine Simplicitytheology
The doctrine that God has no parts, divisions, or composite attributes; pure undivided being.
The reference to a singular 'one principle' underlying the multiplicity of signs implies an undivided source of order.
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.
It describes a continuous progression of Kinds working itself out starting from the Firsts.
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.
[auto] The passage explicitly discusses sympathy and correspondence in the All as the basis for reading signs in parts.
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.
[auto] It defines the metaphysical basis for divination as hidden affinities enchaining all things in the All.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
[auto] It states there is nothing undesigned or of chance, but a purposeful arrangement from the Firsts.
The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.
[auto] The passage centrally seeks the 'comprehensive principle of co-ordination' that orders the stars and allows for signification, aligning with the definition of divine reason or ordering principle.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
[auto] It draws a direct analogy between body parts indicating character and humans being members of the cosmic whole.
The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.
[auto] The passage references a 'one principle underlying any living unit' that enables reasoning from member to member, reflecting the concept of a singular first principle.
The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.
[auto] The text asserts that 'in different ways the one law applies' and 'All teems with symbol,' indicating a unified reality where parts reflect the whole.