Select Works of Plotinus · 271 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor
Select Works, Section 263 (part 1)
Section 11 11.
To this end we must go back to the state we affirmed of Eternity, unwavering Life, undivided totality, limitless, knowing no divagation, at rest in unity and intent upon it.
Time was not yet: or at least it did not exist for the Eternal Beings, though its being was implicit in the Idea and Principle of progressive derivation.
But from the Divine Beings thus at rest within themselves, how did this Time first emerge?
We can scarcely call upon the Muses to recount its origin since they were not in existence then- perhaps not even if they had been.
The engendered thing, Time, itself, can best tell us how it rose and became manifest; something thus its story would run: Time at first- in reality before that "first" was produced by desire of succession- Time lay, self-concentrated, at rest within the Authentic Existent: it was not yet Time; it was merged in the Authentic and motionless with it.
But there was an active principle there, one set on governing itself and realizing itself [= the All-Soul], and it chose to aim at something more than its present: it stirred from its rest, and Time stirred with it.
And we, stirring to a ceaseless succession, to a next, to the discrimination of identity and the establishment of ever-new difference, traversed a portion of the outgoing path and produced an image of Eternity, produced Time.
For the Soul contained an unquiet faculty, always desirous of translating elsewhere what it saw in the Authentic Realm, and it could not bear to retain within itself all the dense fullness of its possession.
A Seed is at rest; the nature-principle within, uncoiling outwards, makes way towards what seems to it a large life; but by that partition it loses; it was a unity self-gathered, and now, in going forth from itself, it fritters its unity away; it advances into a weaker greatness.
It is so with this faculty of the Soul, when it produces the Kosmos known to sense- the mimic of the Divine Sphere, moving not in the very movement of the Divine but in its similitude, in an effort to reproduce that of the Divine.
To bring this Kosmos into being, the Soul first laid aside its eternity and clothed itself with Time; this world of its fashioning it then gave over to be a servant to Time, making it at every point a thing of Time, setting all its progressions within the bournes of Time.
For the Kosmos moves only in Soul- the only Space within the range of the All open to it to move in- and therefore its Movement has always been in the Time which inheres in Soul.
Putting forth its energy in act after act, in a constant progress of novelty, the Soul produces succession as well as act; taking up new purposes added to the old it brings thus into being what had not existed in that former period when its purpose was still dormant and its life was not as it since became: the life is changed and that change carries with it a change of Time.
Time, then, is contained in differentiation of Life; the ceaseless forward movement of Life brings with it unending Time; and Life as it achieves its stages constitutes past Time.
Would it, then, be sound to define Time as the Life of the Soul in movement as it passes from one stage of act or experience to another?
Yes; for Eternity, we have said, is Life in repose, unchanging, self-identical, always endlessly complete; and there is to be an image of Eternity-Time- such an image as this lower All presents of the Higher Sphere.
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 passage explicitly states that Time is 'an image of Eternity' and the Kosmos is 'the mimic of the Divine Sphere,' making each lower level a legible reflection of the higher.
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
The passage is explicitly a narrative of cosmic origin, asking 'how did this Time first emerge?' and describing step by step how the Kosmos came into being from the Soul's stirring.
The doctrine that God has no parts, divisions, or composite attributes; pure undivided being.
Eternity is defined as 'undivided totality, limitless, knowing no divagation, at rest in unity,' and the Authentic Existent is 'self-concentrated' and 'self-identical.'
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 passage traces a clear cascade from the Authentic Existent through the All-Soul to Time to the Kosmos, each level a lesser image of the one above.
The Gnostic myth of Wisdom's prolapse from the Pleroma — her unilateral desire or error producing the Demiurge and the entrapment of divine sparks in matter.
The Soul's 'unquiet faculty, always desirous of translating elsewhere what it saw' and its inability to 'bear to retain within itself all the dense fullness' mirrors Sophia's unilateral desire producing a lower realm.
The doctrine that the cosmos unfolds as a structured descent of spirit into matter — a directional process traced stage by stage from an unconditioned principle down through successive planes to full materialization — complemented by its own eventual return ('evolution'). Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (the static structure of the resulting levels of the cascade) and cosmogony (a single originating event rather than an ongoing staged process) in naming the directional cosmic PROCESS of descent itself, paired with its own complementary ascent.
The passage describes a directional staged descent from the unconditioned Authentic Existent through the Soul to Time to the material Kosmos, with the seed analogy illustrating the progressive unfolding of unity into multiplicity.
The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.
The All-Soul functions as the mediating ordering principle between the transcendent Authentic Existent and the material Kosmos, choosing to aim beyond its present state and producing the world.
The divine fullness or totality of the highest realm, populated by aeons and divine attributes, contrasted with the deficient material world.
The 'Authentic Realm' is described as a 'dense fullness of its possession' that the Soul cannot bear to retain within itself, contrasting with the deficient Kosmos below.
The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.
The Soul 'stirred from its rest' and 'going forth from itself, it fritters its unity away,' describing the departure from and loss of the original undivided state.