Anyone that dreads its falling may take heart; the CIRCUIT of the Soul provides against any declination, embracing, sustaining; and since fire has of itself no downward tendency it accepts that guiding without resistance. Ennead II, 1, 3
Does it consist of fire only, or is it mainly of fire with the other elements, as well, taken up and carried in the CIRCUIT by the dominant Principle? Ennead II, 1, 4
We have authority for this where we read: “At the second CIRCUIT from the earth, God kindled a light”: he is speaking of the sun which, elsewhere, he calls the all-glowing and, again, the all-gleaming: thus he prevents us imagining it to be anything else but fire, though of a peculiar kind; in other words it is light, which he distinguishes from flame as being only modestly warm: this light is a corporeal substance but from it there shines forth that other “light” which, though it carries the same name, we pronounce incorporeal, given forth from the first as its flower and radiance, the veritable “incandescent body.” Ennead II, 1, 7
If, on the other hand, the Kosmic CIRCUIT is due to the Soul, we are not to think of a painful driving [wearing it down at last]; the soul does not use violence or in any way thwart nature, for “Nature” is no other than the custom the All-Soul has established. Ennead II, 2, 1
That the CIRCUIT of the stars indicates definite events to come but without being the cause direct of all that happens, has been elsewhere affirmed, and proved by some modicum of argument: but the subject demands more precise and detailed investigation for to take the one view rather than the other is of no small moment. Ennead II, 3, 1
To Plato the Spindle represents the co-operation of the moving and the stable elements of the kosmic CIRCUIT: the Fates with Necessity, Mother of the Fates, manipulate it and spin at the birth of every being, so that all comes into existence through Necessity. Ennead II, 3, 9
We must admit that the Soul before entering into birth presents itself bearing with it something of its own, for it could never touch body except under stress of a powerful inner impulse; we must admit some element of chance around it from its very entry, since the moment and conditions are determined by the kosmic CIRCUIT: and we must admit some effective power in that CIRCUIT itself; it is co-operative, and completes of its own act the task that belongs to the All of which everything in the CIRCUIT takes the rank and function of a part. Ennead II, 3, 10
Of phenomena of this sphere some derive from the Kosmic CIRCUIT and some not: we must take them singly and mark them off, assigning to each its origin. Ennead II, 3, 13
Yet another school fastens on the universal CIRCUIT as embracing all things and producing all by its motion and by the positions and mutual aspect of the planets and fixed stars in whose power of foretelling they find warrant for the belief that this CIRCUIT is the universal determinant. Ennead III, 1, 2
Thus the universal CIRCUIT would seem to be the monarch of the All. Ennead III, 1, 5
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? Ennead III, 1, 6
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. Ennead III, 1, 6
Given all the causes, all must happen beyond aye or nay that is, all the external and whatever may be due to the sidereal CIRCUIT therefore when the Soul has been modified by outer forces and acts under that pressure so that what it does is no more than an unreflecting acceptance of stimulus, neither the act nor the state can be described as voluntary: so, too, when even from within itself, it falls at times below its best and ignores the true, the highest, laws of action. Ennead III, 1, 9
And do not think that, while earth is ornate with all its growths and with living things of every race, and while the very sea has answered to the power of Soul, do not think that the great air and the ether and the far-spread heavens remain void of it: there it is that all good Souls dwell, infusing life into the stars and into that orderly eternal CIRCUIT of the heavens which in its conscious movement ever about the one Centre, seeking nothing beyond, is a faithful copy of the divine Mind. Ennead III, 2, 3
The predictions of the seers are based on observation of the Universal CIRCUIT: how can this indicate the evil with the good? Ennead III, 3, 6
The Universal CIRCUIT is like a breeze, and the voyager, still or stirring, is carried forward by it. Ennead III, 4, 6
And here we have, incidentally, lighted upon the cause of the CIRCUIT of the All; it is a movement which seeks perpetuity by way of futurity. Ennead III, 7, 4
But, if the reference is to the CIRCUIT of the heavenly system [it is not strictly continuous, or equable, since] the time taken in the return path is not that of the outgoing movement; the one is twice as long as the other: this Movement of the All proceeds, therefore, by two different degrees; the rate of the entire journey is not that of the first half. Ennead III, 7, 8
The Celestial CIRCUIT may, no doubt, be thought of in terms of quantity. Ennead III, 7, 8
Secondly, the CIRCUIT, considered apart from distance traversed, has the extent of its continuity, of its tendency not to stop but to proceed indefinitely: but this is merely amplitude of Movement; search it, tell its vastness, and, still, Time has no more appeared, no more enters into the matter, than when one certifies a high pitch of heat; all we have discovered is Motion in ceaseless succession, like water flowing ceaselessly, motion and extent of motion. Ennead III, 7, 8
This brings us to the fact that, in a certain sense, the Movement, the orbit of the universe, may legitimately be said to measure Time in so far as that is possible at all since any definite stretch of that CIRCUIT occupies a certain quantity of Time, and this is the only grasp we have of Time, our only understanding of it: what that CIRCUIT measures by indication, that is will be Time, manifested by the Movement but not brought into being by it. Ennead III, 7, 12
The Spheral CIRCUIT, then, performed in Time, indicates it: but when we come to Time itself there is no question of its being “within” something else: it must be primary, a thing “within itself.” Ennead III, 7, 13
Upon the point of the means by which it is known, he remarks that the CIRCUIT advances an infinitesimal distance for every infinitesimal segment of Time so that from that observation it is possible to estimate what the Time is, how much it amounts to: but when his purpose is to explain its essential nature he tells us that it sprang into Being simultaneously with the Heavenly system, a reproduction of Eternity, its image in motion, Time necessarily unresting as the Life with which it must keep pace: and “coeval with the Heavens” because it is this same Life [of the Divine Soul] which brings the Heavens also into being; Time and the Heavens are the Ennead III, 7, 13
Action, thus, is set towards contemplation and an object of contemplation, so that even those whose life is in doing have seeing as their object; what they have not been able to achieve by the direct path, they hope to come at by the CIRCUIT. Ennead III, 8, 6
It is admitted on clear evidence that we are borne along by the CIRCUIT of the All; we will be told that taking character and destiny from it, strictly inbound with it we must derive our souls, also, from what thus bears us up, and that as within ourselves every part absorbs from our soul so, analogically, we, standing as parts to the universe, absorb from the Soul of the All as parts of it. Ennead IV, 3, 1
As for our souls being entrained in the kosmic CIRCUIT, and taking character and condition thence; this is no indication that they are parts: soul-nature may very well take some tincture from even the qualities of place, from water and from air; residence in this city or in that, and the varying make-up of the body may have their influence [upon our human souls which, yet, are no parts of place or of body]. Ennead IV, 3, 7
We have always admitted that as members of the universe we take over something from the All-Soul; we do not deny the influence of the Kosmic CIRCUIT; but against all this we oppose another soul in us [the Intellectual as distinguished from the merely vitalizing] proven to be distinct by that power of opposition. Ennead IV, 3, 7
We may know this also by the concordance of the Souls with the ordered scheme of the kosmos; they are not independent, but, by their descent, they have put themselves in contact, and they stand henceforth in harmonious association with kosmic CIRCUIT to the extent that their fortunes, their life experiences, their choosing and refusing, are announced by the patterns of the stars and out of this concordance rises as it were one musical utterance: the music, the harmony, by which all is described is the best witness to this truth. Ennead IV, 3, 12
Soul in virtue of neighbourhood is more closely modelled upon the Idea uttered by the Divine Intellect, and thus is able to produce order in the movement of the lower realm, one phase [the World-Soul] maintaining the unvarying march [of the kosmic CIRCUIT] the other [the soul of the Individual] adopting itself to times and season. Ennead IV, 3, 12
an unmoving circle, the Soul as a circle in motion, its moving being its aspiration: the Intellectual-Principle possesses and has ever embraced that which is beyond being; the soul must seek it still: the sphere of the universe, by its possession of the soul thus aspirant, is moved to the aspiration which falls within its own nature; this is no more than such power as body may have, the mode of pursuit possible where the object pursued is debarred from entrance; it is the motion of coiling about, with ceaseless return upon the same path in other words, it is CIRCUIT. Ennead IV, 4, 16
When I speak of the act and experience of the All I mean the total effect of the entire kosmic CIRCUIT upon itself and upon its members: for by its motion it sets up certain states both within itself and upon its parts, upon the bodies that move within it and upon all that it communicates to those other parts of it, the things of our earth. Ennead IV, 4, 31
It is abundantly evident that the CIRCUIT is a cause; it modifies, firstly, itself and its own content, and undoubtedly also it tells on the terrestrial, not merely in accordance with bodily conditions but also by the states of the soul it sets up; and each of its members has an operation upon the terrestrial and in general upon all the lower. Ennead IV, 4, 31
It cannot be admitted that either heat or cold and the like what are known as the primal qualities of the elements or any admixture of these qualities, should be the first causes we are seeking; equally inacceptable, that while the sun’s action is all by heat, there is another member of the CIRCUIT operating wholly by cold incongruous in the heavens and in a fiery body nor can we think of some other star operating by liquid fire. Ennead IV, 4, 31
The CIRCUIT does not go by chance but under the Reason-Principle of the living whole; therefore there must be a harmony between cause and caused; there must be some order ranging things to each other’s purpose, or in due relation to each other: every several configuration within the CIRCUIT must be accompanied by a change in the position and condition of things subordinate to it, which thus by their varied rhythmic movement make up one total dance-play. Ennead IV, 4, 33
If it be a thing requiring to be caught and kept, domiciled within a recipient, we might think of it finally passing out of existence: if it be an Act not flowing out and away but in CIRCUIT, with more of it within than is in outward progress from the luminary of which it is the Act then it will not cease to exist as long as that centre is in being. Ennead IV, 5, 7
Where we read that the souls or stars stand to their bodily forms as the All to the material forms within it for these starry bodies are declared to be members of the soul’s CIRCUIT we are given to understand that the star-souls also enjoy the blissful condition of transcendence and immunity that becomes them. Ennead IV, 8, 2
For this sphere, no; but to lift clay into the heavens is against nature, contrary to the laws of her ordaining: it is difficult, too, to think of that swiftest of circuits bearing along earthly bodies in its course nor could such material conduce to the splendour and white glint of the celestial fire. Ennead II, 1, 6
The world Soul is distributed so as to produce the fixed sphere and the planetary circuits corresponding to its graded powers: so with our Souls; they must have their provinces according to their different powers, parallel to those of the World Soul: each must give out its own special act; released, each will inhabit there a star consonant with the temperament and faculty in act within and constituting the principle of the life; and this star or the next highest power will stand to them as God or more exactly as tutelary spirit. Ennead III, 4, 6