But he whose initiation is recent, and who has been the spectator of many glories in the other world, is amazed when he sees any one having a godlike face or form, which is the expression of divine beauty; and at first a shudder runs through him, and again the old awe steals over him; then looking upon the face of his beloved as of a god he reverences him, and if he were not afraid of being thought a downright madman, he would sacrifice to his beloved as to the image of a god; then while he gazes on him there is a sort of reaction, and the shudder passes into an unusual heat and perspiration; for, as he receives the effluence of beauty through the eyes, the wing moistens and he warms.
And as he warms, the parts out of which the wing grew, and which had been hitherto closed and rigid, and had prevented the wing from shooting forth, are melted, and as nourishment streams upon him, the lower end of the wings begins to swell and grow from the root upwards; and the growth extends under the whole soul-for once the whole was winged.
During this process the whole soul is all in a state of ebullition and effervescence,-which may be compared to the irritation and uneasiness in the gums at the time of cutting teeth,-bubbles up, and has a feeling of uneasiness and tickling; but when in like manner the soul is beginning to grow wings, the beauty of the beloved meets her eye and she receives the sensible warm motion of particles which flow towards her, therefore called emotion (imeros), and is refreshed and warmed by them, and then she ceases from her pain with joy.
But when she is parted from her beloved and her moisture fails, then the orifices of the passage out of which the wing shoots dry up and close, and intercept the germ of the wing; which, being shut up with the emotion, throbbing as with the pulsations of an artery, pricks the aperture which is nearest, until at length the entire soul is pierced and maddened and pained, and at the recollection of beauty is again delighted.
And from both of them together the soul is oppressed at the strangeness of her condition, and is in a great strait and excitement, and in her madness can neither sleep by night nor abide in her place by day.
And wherever she thinks that she will behold the beautiful one, thither in her desire she runs.
And when she has seen him, and bathed herself in the waters of beauty, her constraint is loosened, and she is refreshed, and has no more pangs and pains; and this is the sweetest of all pleasures at the time, and is the reason why the soul of the lover will never forsake his beautiful one, whom he esteems above all; he has forgotten mother and brethren and companions, and he thinks nothing of the neglect and loss of his property; the rules and proprieties of life, on which he formerly prided himself, he now despises, and is ready to sleep like a servant, wherever he is allowed, as near as he can to his desired one, who is the object of his worship, and the physician who can alone assuage the greatness of his pain.
And this state, my dear imaginary youth to whom I am talking, is by men called love, and among the gods has a name at which you, in your simplicity, may be inclined to mock; there are two lines in the apocryphal writings of Homer in which the name occurs.
One of them is rather outrageous, and not altogether metrical.
They are as follows: Mortals call him fluttering love, But the immortals call him winged one, Because the growing of wings is a necessity to him.
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 text describes a direct physical reaction where beauty flowing into the eyes causes the soul to grow wings.
Ecstatic irrational rapture — Plato's mania, Bruno's furore — by which the soul transcends ordinary reason and attains direct contact with divine reality; madness reframed as higher knowledge.
The passage explicitly defines the state of the lover as madness ('pierced and maddened') that brings delight at recollection.
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 implies a divine ordering where beauty is the physician assuaging pain.
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 passage describes the ascent from love of beautiful bodies to the worship of the image of a god as the highest state.
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 passage details the intense pangs and pains when the lover is parted from his beloved and moisture fails.