Divine Self Research Articles

Vyacheslav Ivanov’s Dionysian-mysterial Plot and his Mystical Anthropology (the Concept of «Thou art»). Second Article

The purpose of the second article on Ivanov’s mystical anthropology is to demonstrate how the plot «thou art» grows out of the Dionysian-mysterial plot that developed in Ivanov’s early work. The research material was Ivanov’s poetic, philosophical, scientific and epistolary texts. Comparative, hermeneutic, structural and semantic methods were used. Ivanov’s mystical anthropology appears as a detailed narrative, the elements of which are symbols denoting mystical entities. This narrative represents the story of the relationship between Anima and Animus, feminine, irrational and masculine, rational. This story is symbolic, it can be interpreted psychologically, mystically, cosmologically. The plot of «thou art» is modeled on the Dionysian-mysterial plot and can be divided into two lines – the mysterial and soteriological ones. Each of them is divided into «male» and «female» versions. In the «male» version of the mysterial line, the Animus distorts the divine Self in itself and separates from the Anima; in the «female» version, the Anima assumes a priestly role and renounces the God-fighting Animus. In the «male» version of the soteriological plot, the Animus acquires its God-human primordial image and transforms into the son of God, Adam, who has risen from the mortal dream. This transformed Animus appears as a Godhuman Bridegroom, with whom the Anima-Bride marries, as a result of which a complete transformation of the human personality is accomplished, the reconciliation of the male and female principles and the birth of a new Dionysus-Bacchus.

Non-dual Reality and Empirical Existence in Advaita Vedānta and Ghazālī’s Metaphysics of Unity

AbstractThis essay explores the ways in which two distinct spiritual traditions, Ghazālī’s Ṣūfīsm and Śaṅkarian Advaita Vedānta, articulate an exclusive metaphysical affirmation of the Ultimate Reality with an empirical recognition of relative existence. Both perspectives are shown to be radically absolutist in their discernment of the Real and in their denying metaphysical reality to other-than-the-Absolute. This raises the question of the ontological status of relativity and empirical existence. Although Islam would seem to assign a greater reality to the world of relativity and human experience, Ghazālī’s most metaphysical treatise, Mishkāt al-anwār (The Niche of Lights), utterly denies the intrinsic reality of creatures in themselves. Similarly, Śaṅkara affirms the non-existence of māyā, the principle of ignorance and duality, as a superimposition upon ātman, the Divine Self immanent to all. Ghazālī concedes, however, that relative existence is “metaphorically” existent (majāz) while Śaṅkara acknowledges the “transactional” reality (vyāvahārika) of empirical existence. Such recognitions involve a multi-stratified view of reality that must account for both metaphysical consistency and empirical access to Reality. This essay shows that although fundamental parallels between the two worlds of meaning can be highlighted, their respective metaphysical perspectives and views of relativity are also quite distinct inasmuch as they are informed by profoundly different religious and traditional contexts.

THE VISION OF RICH DEATH IN JOHN KEATS’S “ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE”: AN AUROBINDONEAN PERSPECTIVE

John Keats’s vision of rich death while listening to the melodious voice of Nightingale, the manifestation of the Immortal on the earth, takes one beyond the plane of corporeality of the terrestrial existence. One comes to the plane of death-birth continuum, and, consequently, discovers a supra-earthly, nay, spiritual truth, the plane which earlier comes into the vision of the ancient Rishis of India. The richness of death which comes into the vision of Keats is revealed when we explore death in the light of the yogic discovery of Sri Aurobindo, a literary luminary of the 19th-20th century of India of, what he calls, ‘Psychic Being’, a flame of the Divine Self in the being of man. Sri Aurobindo discovers that the psychic being is instrumental in the evolution of consciousness to its spiritual and supramental planes in the death-birth phenomenon as it gathers the spiritual experiences of man’s life and, accordingly, lays foundation of his higher spiritual life to come in his next birth. Being immortal, it carries the foundation in the next birth of man. He also discovers that the foundation is laid at the time of the physical death of man. Such death, therefore, comes to be rich.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0011/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

‘SPACELESS SELF’ IN SAVITRI: THE ETERNAL SELF OF SUPRAMENTAL MAN IN SRI AUROBINDO’S EPIC ‘SAVITRI’

‘Spaceless Self’ which Sri Aurobindo unveils in Savitri in his epic Savitri is the eternal Self, the central being of the Supramental Man as distinct from Jivatman which is the central being of man. In the being of man, as he discovers, Jivatman exists simultaneously in its other poise i.e., its spark state, —the spark state which grows to be ‘Fire’, the ‘Psychic Being’ he terms it. These two poises of Jivatman, the Divine Self existing separately though one at the base in the being of man brings the separative principle of consciousness into existence to reign him. In other words, the separate existence of Jivatman, the central being, and its spark state, to be more specific, the very separation between the two gives birth to the separative principle of consciousness in the being of man. The separative consciousness manifests in limitations, finiteness. When the Psychic Being comes to be one with Its Divine Origin, Jivatman as a result of its growth into ‘Fire’ which is the spiritual ascent of man, manifesting his resultant transformation, the separative principle of consciousness comes to its end. The limitations end, and man enters into the world of Infinity consequently. What Sri Aurobindo terms ‘Spaceless Self’, the Self of the One which remains eclipsed or remains in bondage on account of the reign of the separative principle of consciousness gets its release consequent upon the oneness of the Psychic Being and the Jivatman. It rises to take over the rein of the being of man. Consequently, the Supramental Man emerges, the Man in whom the transcendent consciousness of the One, the Integral Consciousness reigns.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0083/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

The structure of Tahmeed in the letters of Ibn Munjib al-Sayrafi , d. (542) an analytical study

during the time of the Fatimid state. Saying, the mention of praise will continue in sermons and messages until it reached the sixth century AH according to written customs, after which it is a basic prerequisite for the initiation and a complement to the structure of the message, both intellectually and formally, as the work varied according to the subject, especially in mentioning the blessings and virtues that are praised by God, and the use of praise in its nominal form is stronger in its nominal form. The style is from its Gaelic form because it carries stability and strength, as well as honoring the divine self. The praise is reinforced by the method of assonance, counterpoint, and the Qur’anic verses cited, especially when dealing with authority and the official position. Sometimes the praise is repeated in the same message on the subject of congratulations and condolences. It deserves it, with the repetition of the words (praise and praise) when sensing the obligations of God, and Ibn Al-Sayrafi presented the praise in a literary and stylistic form in order to serve the meaning of it. The message is according to the Sunnahs of praise in correspondences of all kinds, which he has mastered.

Resurrection of the Self: A Comparative Thematic Study of Rumi’s Selected Poems and Hesse’s Siddhartha

This research aims to trace a journey towards spiritual development by underscoring different stages which are essential for a mystic to cover a long distance of spiritual development and reach his/her goal, i.e. self-fulfillment, a higher state of a man’s existence in which the Phenomenal Self immerses into the Divine Self. In order to chart out the stages of such a journey, this research does a thematic analysis of Hesse’s masterpiece, Siddhartha, and Rumi’s selected poems and draw parallels in the themes projected by both the writers. The objective of the study is to make inter-generic reading of the mystical texts and derive common features from them. The motive behind the selection of these texts is to highlight the phenomenon of resurrected self from two different perspectives i.e. Eastern Sufism and Western Mysticism and to merge them to propose a comprehensive perspective to understand the Divine. Taking inspiration from Fowler, we have categorized the spiritual journey into three stages which are labeled as The Childhood stage, The Adulthood stage and The Young stage.[1] At the first stage, a person remains focused on his/her selfish desires such as the desire to achieve reputation, honor and wealth which eventually leads him/her towards different recalcitrant feelings like jealousy, anger and hatred. At the second stage when a person becomes a little mature, s/he starts swimming against the current of naive attempts to attain happiness and struggles to find the eternal source of happiness and peace. At the third and the last stage, s/he achieves the ultimate source or truth of happiness and is considered as a divine source for others.

Sālimīyah Sect and its Doctrinal Opinions on the Divine Self in the Light of Islamic Doctrine

It is widely known that there are Islamic ideological sects and groups whose doctrinal opinions still exist to date, such as Asha’yrah, Maturidis, and Hanbalis, while we find other ideological groups that do not exist in our modern times. Chief among these ideological sects and groups is Sālimīyah sect, that belongs to its founder, Abul-Hassan Al-Basry Ahmad bin Mohammad bin Salem, who died in (297) AH / (909) AD. Sālimīyah sect is an Islamic ideological group that emerged in the middle of the third century AH / mid-tenth century AD. In fact, one of the most problematic issues of this study is that there are no ideological books for Sālimīyah sect available in our time. Few scholars mentioned the ideological views of Sālimīyah sect and we could hardly find any other academic studies that have considered these views. What really distinguishes this study is its ability to scrutinize for the first time the emergence of Sālimīyah sect from a historical point of view. Moreover, this research studies Sālimīyah sect's ideological views related to the Divine Self in particular. The scientific approaches used in the study are the extrapolative approach, the analytical approach and the comparative approach.

An Overview of Life and Works of Jami & His Perception of Love

Abd al-Rahman Jami (817/1414- 898/1492) is regarded as the last grand classical poet of Persian literature and a great Sufi of his time. Towards the end of his life, he compiled his <em>Divan</em> in which one can trace his life pattern that he has divide into three main phases. These include: 1) the period of his childhood and early phases of education, which is reported in <em>Fātiḥah al-Shabāb</em>; 2) his mid-life phase as elaborated in <em>Wāsiṭah al-‘Aqd; </em>and, 3)<em> </em>the last stage of his life, discussed in <em>Khātimah al-Ḥayāt. </em>In<em> </em>the latter, Jami tends to evaluate his life span in search of elixir of salvation. This search led him to an elevated stage of self-realization where he questioned his previous actions and all that which he was praised for, i.e. a prolific writer, an imaginative poet, and a distinguished commentator of Sufi thought. This spiritual self-assessment eventually directed him to the path of ‘love’ – the transforming power that reveals the essential meaning of life, realization of the inner divine self, and that which could bring about union with God. This paper intends to trace Jami’s transformation of thought, character and worldview. It begins with a bibliographical account followed by an elaboration of the three phases of Jami’s life, his status as a poet, a melting pot of Sufism, and, finally his perception of true love and its transforming and purifying effect on the seeker of truth.<strong></strong>

Hinduistische Weltbilder

In Hinduism, animals are generally given great importance, which extends to religious worship; humans and animals have a special relationship to one another according to Hindu ideas, which is the subject of this treatise. To explain these in more detail, the author first offers an exemplary look into the understanding of the essence of humans and animals by explaining some important theological-philosophical foundations and terms of the Hindu religion and describing how the eternal divine, called brahman, relates to the world of matter, to humans and to animals. According to the idea, the divine self is the epitome of all living beings, so that the animals also have a soul which, out of respect for the divine, is to be treated with respect and dignity like humans. With this, Hinduism formulates a special animal ethic which, as the second chapter illustrates, considers humans and animals together, since both are, as it were, integrated into the rebirth cycle and subject to the principle of karma. Another aspect of the relationship between humans and animals is shown in the religious cult of the Hindus, which is the subject of the third and final chapter. Here the author goes into the numerous mythological and iconographic depictions of animals that are worshiped as symbols of the divine and that can ultimately also be understood as signs of the substantial bond between humans and animals.

Selected Bibliography of PhD Theses Abstracts on Ibn ʿArabī

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 46, 4, 2021 © The Maghreb Review 2021 This publication is printed on FSC Mix paper from responsible sources SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PHD THESES ABSTRACTS ON IBN ʿARABĪ COMPILED AND EDITED BY MOHAMED BEN-MADANI INTRODUCTION The following selected PhD theses abstracts in English language on Ibn ʿArabī presented in the United Kingdom and the United States, Universities covering all fields of research, are published here for the benefit of interested scholars, students and librarians who wish to discover what has been done on Ibn ʿArabī in recent times in these Universities. These abstracts have not been included in any bibliographical work in the past and are arranged in Alphabetical order. A few of these theses have subsequently been published in book form. Abdelkhalek, Saliha Osama Farid, Being, reification and ritual: the esoteric paradigm of Ibn ʿArabī, PhD, University of Exeter, 2018 Despite being a key notion in the examination of the process of human objectification, reification has not received sufficient attention in recent years, especially in the study of religion. Building on Axel Honneth’s analysis, I examine the concept of reification within a Sūfi context, more precisely, within the esoteric paradigm of Ibn‘Arabī’ soneness of being (waḥdat al-wujūd). I contend that the root of reification, not only lies in the forgetfulness of the origin of cognition in recognition, as Honneth argued, but also in the forgetfulness of the origin of recognition in pure consciousness, i.e. the oneness of being. I argue that since the problem of reification consists of the loss of the primacy of our non-discursive dimension over the discursive one, the solution must lie in the rectification of that order. This can only be brought about through mystical experience, in which a momentary suspension of thought occurs, and our identity as part and parcel of the continuum of consciousness is disclosed. Hence, I argue for the necessity of the preparation for mystical experience through ritual practice, as it moves us from discursive to nondiscursive states of being. Through physical activity, our sense of embodiment is increased, shifting us from a ‘thinking’ to a ‘sensory’ mode, which paradoxically detaches us from our identification with the physical body. Using phenomenological methods and knowledge by presence theories, I examine Ibn ‘Arabī’sesoteric approach to the ritual practice of purification, prayer and fasting. I maintain that the essence of ritual is the disclosure of one’s ontological poverty, which within the paradigm of the oneness of being (waḥdat 522 COMPILED AND EDITED BY MOHAMED BEN-MADANI al-wujūd), must also amount to the phenomenal self-differentiation of the divine. Thus, I conclude that the root of the problem of reification essentially lies in accounts of selfhood. Alsamaani, Nader Ahmed M, An analytic philosophical approach to Ibn ʿArabī’s conception of ultimate reality, PhD, University of Birmingham, 2017 In my thesis, I aim to develop a systematic and philosophically coherent thesis of ultimate reality for IbnʿArabī. In this pursuit, I adopt the style of analytic philosophy, seeking to employ and utilise some of its methods and theories. The philosophical aspects of IbnʿArabī’s doctrine are in dire need of conceptual clarification and systematic analysis with a closer focus on argumentation. The analytic tradition will prove most helpful in this regard. In my thesis, I begin by tracing IbnʿArabī’s related views and concepts as they are dispersed throughout his writings. I then clarify, sharpen and, in many cases, develop these views and concepts into fully constructed forms. Finally, I weave the developed concepts and views into a systematic thesis or set of sub-theses. Where necessary, I provide my own (or borrowed) arguments and concepts to help substantiate and strengthen the structure of Ibn ʿArabī’s thesis. I propose that IbnʿArabī’s various, and sometimes apparently inconsistent, views are best presented in terms of three main concepts: the concept of ultimate reality as existence (wujud), which has long been known as IbnʿArabī’s thesis of the oneness of existence (wahdat al-wujud); the concept of ultimate reality as the Divine Self (dhat); and the concept of ultimate reality as God (ilah). The three concepts...

Divine and Demonic in the Poetic Mythology of the Zohar: The "Other Side" of Kabbalah by Nathaniel Berman (review)

Reviewed by: Divine and Demonic in the Poetic Mythology of the Zohar: The "Other Side" of Kabbalah by Nathaniel Berman Joel Hecker Nathaniel Berman. Divine and Demonic in the Poetic Mythology of the Zohar: The "Other Side" of Kabbalah. Leiden: Brill, 2018. xiv + 312 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009420000240 Evil is the theological scandal that won't go away. In Zohar scholarship, Isaiah Tishby's twofold approach to the problem of evil has largely been a settled matter. Tishby proffered two options—the Neoplatonic and the dualistic (so-called gnostic) approaches—and argued that these two paths existed in tension on account of unresolved inclinations in the kabbalistic tradition. With literary verve, fresh readings, and compelling argumentation, Nathaniel Berman unsettles this familiar territory in his groundbreaking new book. The effectiveness of Berman's approach, in the first book-length treatment of evil in Zoharic Kabbalah, derives from his operating on both the microlevel of literary style and the macrolevel of the Zohar's mythical dualism. Berman applies two different methodological tacks that force a reconsideration of the Zohar's thinking about evil. First, using the psychoanalytic framework of the constitution of subjectivity as articulated by Julia Kristeva, he reexamines the nature of the Divine Self. Second, he analyzes the distinctive rhetorical tropes that construct the Zohar's descriptions of the binary dominions of holy and demonic. Wielding these two methods, Berman demonstrates how the iotas of indicatives, conjunctions, and prepositions problematize the erstwhile hoped-for perfection of Divinity. In reconsidering divine subjectivity in chapter 1, Berman employs Kristeva's psychoanalytic conception of the processes of "ambivalence, splitting, and abjection" in the development of a child's subjectivity. To construct her or his identity, a child must undertake the painful task of identifying the mother as an external entity and, ultimately, cast her as an Other that must be rejected on the path to identifying a coherent self. Applying this approach to the Godhead, Berman argues that in order for the bounded identity of the Holy Ancient One itself to emerge, a similar process of splitting of Self from Self occurs first: identifying and crystallizing the bounded Self that is holy and the bounded Self that is demonic. [End Page 437] Lower reaches of Divinity can then emanate from the contours of a stable, now-perfected Deity. In chapter 2, using the tools of rhetorical analysis, Berman shows how the Zoharic authorship expresses ambivalence about the realms of the holy even before the texts settle into the binaries that allow for more clearly demarcated identities of the holy and demonic domains. As a result, the literary expressions of the text itself construct the Zohar's dialectical vision of demonic and holy realms. One key device that Berman exposes is "anaphora," namely, "the production of a textual effect through repetition of the first word or phrase in contiguous sentences or clauses" (76). Throughout the Zohar this device appears as the viral meme "There is x … and there is x." Berman trains our gaze upon the rhetorical parallelism, and thus the near identity of the two terms—holy and demonic—under comparison. To be sure, another reader might contend that these orderly patterns communicate a message to its pious audience; every step is fraught with the potential for holy or wicked behavior. Thus, where Berman emphasizes the epistemological potential for confusion, one might also see the pietistic concern with moral and religious slippage. Where Tishby had used the descriptor "catharsis" to describe Divinity's first acts of expelling dross, Berman contends that the Zohar denies the presupposition of a demarcated subject performing the expulsion, and that indeed, the unnamed subject is nameless precisely because it is still in formation. This is his explanation of Divinity's self-creating narratives that begin with actions that have no subjects. Berman views the dualistic ontology constructed through techniques of rhetorical parallelism as an act of "splitting," in which a protosubject that has traits from both sides of the nascent divide produces a demonic Other through the "crystallization of elements that the subject finds incompatible with a coherent self and that become dissociated from, and antagonistic to, that self" (39). In chapter 3, Berman explores the ways...

PHonetcs

In this manuscript, I tried to prove that there is a relationship a many sound , phonetic semantic and the origin of the language is endowment from Allah almighty , so language has the in imitability of the Quran and the phonetic semantic using verses of the Quran . of which is attributed to the divine self with the angles and then to Adam's sons .This language is taught by Allah almighty to his creatures in a high level in sound phonetic semantic and eloquence He taught something that is at the top of the ranks of science and not as the mechanism of some of our scientists to . And the man is the one who puts them. Then I addressed the qualities of the voice and dividing them according to scientists for its semantic relationship to the phonetic semantic for letters.

Caught in the Net of the Divine

ABSTRACTThe drama of King Pentheus, ritual adversary and victim of the god Dionysos in Euripides’s Bacchae, bears striking resemblance to the drama of the alcoholic-addict in the progression of his or her disease. The chorus of the Bacchae sings of the holy rites and ancient wisdom that could cure the “madness” of Pentheus, in which resonances with the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous can be found. In a larger context, the Bacchae is also the nightmare of the end of what the Greeks called the Age of Zeus, our present age, characterized by the increasing hemispheric lateralization of our cerebral cortex and the hyperdevelopment and dominance of our left-hemispheric powers of abstract reasoning. This neurological evolution transformed human consciousness and reality according to its logos, rejecting and banishing to the unconscious the mythos of the knowing body: the heart, the gut, and all our embodied, direct, holistic powers of perceiving. This transformation of consciousness is described archetypally in three myths of the god Dionysos’s birth. These depict how the god of life was dismembered to become an abstract, deathless Olympian; the soot and ashes of the Titans from which humans were made; and the literal form of the god, that is, wine. In our Western psychohistorical and cultural history, these myths depict the rescue of the idealized, masculine, impenetrable hero/ego from the vicissitudes of mortal life. Over time, the archaic meaning of initiation and of “hero” as initiated human embedded in community and the lineage of ancestors, was lost in the glorification of the ideal Apollonian hero’s power to escape the limitations of embodiment by making others (or the unconscious/body) suffer and die for him. This article explores the necessity to re-member the dismembered incarnate god from the shadows of the abandoned body of need and desire for communion. AA offers a template for the acceptance of essential limitation and personal suffering as initiation into experience of the embodied divine in and through community as well as in individual relationship with a greater reality. Such initiatory practices constitute rebirth in a divine self and world, described by Jung as the inauguration of the Age of the Holy Spirit.

The ‘Divine Names’ and the ‘Attributes of Deity’: On the (Infinite) Analogical Interval in Forty‐Six Aphorisms

AbstractFor the modern tradition of analytic philosophy of religion (that this article rejects), goodness, beauty, wisdom, and so on are divine attributes, whereas, for the classical tradition of Christian theology, they are divine names. This crucial distinction between attributes and names helps to explain why feminist philosopher Grace Jantzen’s charge of an identification of the male self with the divine self in Anglo‐American philosophy of religion leads on, directly, to a critique of the ‘doctrine’ of analogy. Jantzen’s critique of ‘classical theism’ is directed against the (largely modern) reduction of God to a (male) superbeing. Here, God’s ‘attributes’ are merely human ones, even if extended to a superlative degree. I distinguish the analogical reflections of Aquinas (following Dionysius) and his heirs from the anthropomorphic dissolutions of the divine in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. Theology’s analogical speech, I argue, has the potential to answer – at least partially – the feminist critique of God as a ‘pure projection’ of ‘man’. For Aquinas, God’s perfections must be qualitatively different and not merely quantitative maximisations of our own. I contend that feminist philosophy of religion cannot afford to dismiss the potential of the way of analogy, especially in its negative or apophatic dimensions.

The aesthetics of vision in the poem of supplication in the models of the poetry of Asir region

This study is based on the hypothesis that the vision of the poem (the evangelism)- the transfer of the self- confessed mysteries to the divine self- is its aesthetic peculiarity, which distinguishes it from the vision of other poetic models such as the poem of the spinning, the praise and the lamentation for mere representation. The choice was made to test this hypothesis on the poetry of the Asir region; to clarify the specificity of the vision of the poem in the fabric of its texts; interacting with a striking intimacy with the values ​​of the poet's spiritual surroundings, which leads poets to speak to the divine; Thus, the study reduced its problem with the question: What is the aesthetic peculiarity of a poem in the poetry of Asir? The nature of the subject dictated to the researcher to adopt the mechanism of discourse- according to the theories of critic Henry Mishonic- whose task is to clarify the relationship between the structures of poetic discourse, and the specificity of the self- poet involved. The study plan consists of an introduction, a preface, two papers, and a conclusion. The second is the world of the divine self, which is characterized by the absolute ability to resolve the rift, and the second is the world of the divine self, Serenity, support for the defeated, and the relief of the Mujahedeen.

Divine self and selves: Religious practices and orientations toward religion among adolescents in globalizing northern Thailand.

Divine self and selves: Religious practices and orientations toward religion among adolescents in globalizing northern Thailand.

Supplemental Material for Divine Self and Selves: Religious Practices and Orientations Toward Religion Among Adolescents in Globalizing Northern Thailand

Supplemental Material for Divine Self and Selves: Religious Practices and Orientations Toward Religion Among Adolescents in Globalizing Northern Thailand

Introduction: “Deboxing” the Ecumenical Box

Introduction: “Deboxing” the Ecumenical Box

Gnostic Self-Deification: The Case of Simon of Samaria

This essay argues that gnostic deification can be redescribed as self-deification. Self-deification, it is argued, is realized in three “moments”: (1) the intuition of one’s own divine core, (2) deeply reflexive practices of self-knowledge, and (3) identification with a higher divine self. These three moments are contextualized with the help of ancient philosophy and several gnostic texts. Finally, a case study on Simon of Samaria illustrates how the three moments of self-deification play out.

The Celestial Imagination: Proclus the Philosopher on Theurgy

This paper focuses on Proclus’s On the hieratic art of the Greeks – considered as a contemporary philosophical problem – exploring some of its fundamental concepts and images, thus delineating Proclus’s notion of theurgy, which he primarily conceived as divine action manifesting in the union between a god and the theurgist, and only secondarily as a technique. These aesthetic experiments of thought or philosophical performances, by means of which a divine self is created, had deep metaphysical, cosmological, psychological, ethical, linguistic and even political and religious implications for Late Antiquity Platonism, and had a profound impact on the development of Renaissance philosophy and magic. Such practices are meant to be understood in the context of the philosophical paideia of which it represents its final stage and consummation; they are developed by intricate hermeneutics of a poetic theology operated by very sophisticated conceptions of symbol, analogy and the imagination, all of which are at the base of the celestial-terrestrial correspondences used by theurgists in their hymn singing.