P r o c l u s

    T H E   T H E O L O G Y   O F   P L A T O

    OVERVIEW
       
    • 0.1 - The Golden Chain of which deity is the one extreme, and body the other
    • 0.2 - This theology produces the most pure, holy, venerable, and exalted conceptions of the great cause of all
    • 0.3 - The supreme is the principle of all principles
    • 0.4 - It is necessary that the progression of beings should be continued, and that no vacuum should intervene either in incorporeal or corporeal natures
    • 0.5 - Each of these deities too, is the leader of a series which extends from itself to the last of things
    • 0.6 - This most sublime theory is congenial to the unperverted conceptions of the human mind


    THE DIVINE NATURE

       
    • 1.1 - Concerning the truth which is in the Gods
    • 1.2 - The knowledge and truth of the Gods is alone known to the Gods themselves
    • 1.3 - Truth is the leader to the Gods of every good
    • 1.4 - What is the goodness, what the wisdom, and what the beauty of the Gods?


    THE FIRST PRINCIPLE

    • 2.1 - The twofold division to all things
    • 2.2 - What is sensible is splendid because it imitates the primogenial cause of itself
    • 2.3 - Some things are intelligibles and others are sensibles, but the summits of them are uniformly established in intelligibles
    • 2.4 - The first good is not only the cause of what is good, but similarly of things beautiful
    • 2.5 - The Good prior to forms is beyond beings, and is established above all knowledge
    • 2.6 - The first light proceeds from The Good as the fountain of every intelligible, or intellectual, or mundane deity
    • 2.7 - The first principle gives subsistence to the boniform essence of the Gods
    • 2.8 - The Good is the most final of all ends and the centre of all desirable natures
    • 2.9 - Let us now in perfect quiet approach near to the cause of all things


    THE INTELLIGIBLE GODS

       
    • 3.1 - Let The One be honoured by us in silence, and prior to silence by union
    • 3.2 - There are two principles after The One: bound and infinity
    • 3.3 - All beings are from bound and infinity
    • 3.4 - The first of things mingled, is the first of beings
    • 3.5 - The first of beings is triple
    • 3.6 - The first of beings is intelligible essence
    • 3.7 - Essence subsists from bound and infinity


    THE INTELLIGIBLE
    AND
    INTELLECTUAL GODS

       
    • 4.1 - The Gods who connectedly contain life, being the middle of the intelligible and intellectual Gods are called intelligible and at the same time intellectual
    • 4.2 - The intelligible and at the same time intellectual Gods subsist triadically
    • 4.3 - Life is primarily in intelligibles; but secondarily in intelligibles and intellectuals; and in a third degree in intellectuals
    • 4.4 - The intelligible and intellectual Gods are partly intelligible and partly intellectual
    • 4.5 - They are likewise divided triply, because in these all things, viz. essence, life, and intellect, are vitally, in the same manner as they are intelligibly in the Gods prior to them, and intellectually in the Gods that derive their subsistence from these
    • 4.6 - The intelligible and at the same time intellectual Gods are triply divided
    • 4.7 - In the intelligible and at the same time intellectual order, each triad has essence, life and intellect
    • 4.8 - There are twelve leaders who preside over the whole [of mundane concerns,] and who conduct all the mundane Gods, and all the herds of daemons, and convert them to the intelligible nature


    THE INTELLECTUAL GODS

       
    • 5.1 - The intellectual Gods proceed from all the Gods prior to them
    • 5.2 - We may call the Gods in this order fathers and fabricators
    • 5.3 - The three intellectual fathers
    • 5.4 - The three undefiled Gods
    • 5.5 - The separative deity
    • 5.6 - Each monad is the leader of an intellectual hebdomad and extends this hebdomad from on high, from the summit of Olympus, as far as to the last, and terrestrial orders
    • 5.7 - The intellectual powers proceed according to the intelligible orders
    • 5.8 - Saturn is the summit of a divine intellect reigning over all the intellectual Gods
    • 5.9 - Saturn and Jupiter are two intellects, and intellectual fathers; the one, indeed, being intellectual; but the other intelligible, in intellectuals
    • 5.10 - Plato following Orpheus, calls the inflexible and undefiled triad of the intellectual Gods Curetic
    • 5.11 - The separative deity is who accomplishes the divisions
    • 5.12 - The demiurgus fabricates the soul of the universe an image of all the divine orders, in the same manner as he fabricates this sensible world an image of intelligibles
    • 5.13 - After the division of the circles, the demiurgus assumes some things which are symbols of the assimilative, and others which are symbols of the liberated Gods, and through these, he refers the soul to these orders of the Gods
    • 5.14 - Saturn illuminates the pure and incorruptible nature of intellect, and establishing his own all-perfect power in his own summit of intellectuals, abides in, and at the same time proceeds from his father [Heaven]
    • 5.15 - Jupiter is said to bind his father, and in placing bonds about his father, he at the same time binds himself [to him]
    • 5.16 - Each of the divine natures is unconverted to that which is inferior to itself, but is converted to itself, and through itself reverts to that which is more excellent
    • 5.17 - The demiurgic intellect is at the same time intelligible and intellect, but has the intelligible of his father, which he binds as the fable says
    • 5.18 - Saturn leads forth the prolific powers of his father Heaven as far as to the last of things


    THE RULING GODS
    AND
    THE LIBERATED GODS

       
    • 6.1 - All the orders of the principles or rulers are suspended from the demiurgus
    • 6.2 - The ruling Gods are perfectly exempt from generated natures
    • 6.3 - The ruling principles proceed from the Gods prior to them
    • 6.4 - These Gods, shining forth the first of the intellectuals, express the Gods from whom they derive their subsistence
    • 6.5 - The government of the liberated Gods is allotted the middle bond of the extremes, possessing sovereign authority over all mundane natures
    • 6.6 - The order of the ruling Gods is in continuity with the kingdom of the intellectual Gods
    • 6.7 - The ruling Gods are allotted the first and highest rank among the partial orders
    • 6.8 - The liberated Gods are the media between the supermundane and mundane Gods
    • 6.9 - We are accustomed to celebrate the liberated genus of Gods as supercelestial
    • 6.10 - The demiurgus and father produces from himself three orders of Gods
    • 6.11 - In the mundane Gods themselves, we may perceive a twofold energy
    • 6.12 - Our souls, at one time live according to the elevating progression, and at another according to the mundane
    • 6.13 - The soul which is perfect and winged, revolves on high, and obtains this end, and this true blessedness, through the Gods


    THE MUNDANE GODS

       
    • 7.1 - The mundane Gods, or those divinities who give completion to the sensible world, are assigned the last order of deific progression
    • 7.2 - The world is throughout filled with deity
    • 7.3 - Of the mundane Gods, some are the causes of the existence of the world; others animate it; others again harmonize it thus composed of different natures; and others, lastly, guard and preserve it when harmonically arranged
    • 7.4 - The division of the mundane Gods is into the celestial and sublunar
    • 7.5 - The allotments of the mundane Gods are conformable to the divisions of the universe
    • 7.6 - The allotments of angels and daemons is co-suspended from the divine allotments
    • 7.7 - The natures that are in generation and generation itself, have also something immutable, and which is naturally adapted to remain perpetually the same
    • 7.8 - The allotments of the Gods do not change, nor do they subsist differently at different times
    • 7.9 - Partial souls such as ours, which at different times embrace different lives, some of them indeed, choose lives accommodated to their appropriate Gods, but others foreign lives, through oblivion of the divinities to whom they belong
    • 7.10 - The allotments of the Gods remain perpetually unchanged, but that the participants of them, at one time indeed enjoy the beneficent influence of the presiding powers, but at another are deprived of it



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  • Prometheus Trust: with the edition of The Theology of Plato by Proclus, translated by Thomas Taylor.


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     Copyright ©1999 Roy George