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Select Works of Plotinus · 177 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor

Select Works, Section 182

Section 6 6. But in fact everything follows its own Kind; the birth is a horse because it comes from the Horse Kind, a man by springing from the Human Kind; offspring answers to species. Allow the kosmic circuit its part, a very powerful influence upon the thing brought into being: allow the stars a wide material action upon the bodily part of the man, producing heat and cold and their natural resultants in the physical constitution; still does such action explain character, vocation and especially all that seems quite independent of material elements, a man taking to letters, to geometry, to gambling, and becoming an originator in any of these pursuits? And can we imagine the stars, divine beings, bestowing wickedness? And what of a doctrine that makes them wreak vengeance, as for a wrong, because they are in their decline or are being carried to a position beneath the earth- as if a decline from our point of view brought any change to themselves, as if they ever ceased to traverse the heavenly spheres and to make the same figure around the earth. Nor may we think that these divine beings lose or gain in goodness as they see this one or another of the company in various aspects, and that in their happier position they are benignant to us and, less pleasantly situated, turn maleficent. We can but believe that their circuit is for the protection of the entirety of things while they furnish the incidental service of being letters on which the augur, acquainted with that alphabet, may look and read the future from their pattern- arriving at the thing signified by such analogies as that a soaring bird tells of some lofty event.
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Themes
Body As Obstacleanthropology

The material body viewed as a prison, tomb, or source of error that hinders spiritual knowledge and return.

The author distinguishes between bodily constitution (influenced by stars/climate) and the mind/ideas (derived from another Principle), implying the body is subject to external limitation.

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Correspondencecosmology

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 argument regarding augury and stars foretelling individual events implies a legible map of cosmic forces reflected in human life.

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Cosmic Sympathycosmology

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 explicitly discusses 'sympathetic relations with the heavenly bodies' as a determining factor for growth and human constitution, which is the core of this doctrine.

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Divine Providencetheology

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.

The text debates the extent to which the 'universal circuit' or 'monarch of the All' orders human affairs versus individual free will, central to discussions of Providence.

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Microcosm Macrocosmcosmology

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.

The astrological theory critiqued in the passage relies on the premise that human fate and constitution reflect the positions of the heavenly bodies.

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Monadcosmology

The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.

[auto] The passage explicitly concludes that the universal circuit is the monad, identifying it as the central unifying principle.

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Self Knowledgesoteriology

The recognition of one's own true divine nature as the primary path to liberation; 'know thyself' as soteriology.

The passage emphasizes the need to distinguish 'our individual act' from what is 'thrust upon us,' requiring recognition of one's own agency.

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Unity Of Beingtheology

The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.

[auto] The passage describes a universal circuit and sympathetic relations connecting plants, animals, humans, and the cosmos into a single determined system.

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Related passages · 8 parallels
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