gods

The poet, too, in the story of Hercules, seems to give this image separate existence; he puts the shade of Hercules in the lower world and Hercules himself among the GODS: treating the hero as existing in the two realms at once, he gives us a twofold Hercules. Enneads I,1,

If, then, the perfect life is within human reach, the man attaining it attains happiness: if not, happiness must be made over to the GODS, for the perfect life is for them alone. Enneads I,4,

Evil is not alone: by virtue of the nature of Good, the power of Good, it is not Evil only: it appears, necessarily, bound around with bonds of Beauty, like some captive bound in fetters of gold; and beneath these it is hidden so that, while it must exist, it may not be seen by the GODS, and that men need not always have evil before their eyes, but that when it comes before them they may still be not destitute of Images of the Good and Beautiful for their Remembrance. Enneads I,8,

But how explain the permanence There, while the content of this sphere – its elements and its living things alike – are passing? The reason is given by Plato: the celestial order is from God, the living things of earth from the GODS sprung from God; and it is law that the offspring of God endures. Enneads: II I

This earth of ours is full of varied life-forms and of immortal beings; to the very heavens it is crowded. And the stars, those of the upper and the under spheres, moving in their ordered path, fellow-travellers with the universe, how can they be less than GODS? Surely they must be morally good: what could prevent them? All that occasions vice here below is unknown there evil of body, perturbed and perturbing. Enneads: II VIII.

Our adversaries do not deny that even here there is a system of law and penalty: and surely we cannot in justice blame a dominion which awards to every one his due, where virtue has its honour, and vice comes to its fitting shame, in which there are not merely representations of the GODS, but the GODS themselves, watchers from above, and – as we read – easily rebutting human reproaches, since they lead all things in order from a beginning to an end, allotting to each human being, as life follows life, a fortune shaped to all that has preceded – the destiny which, to those that do not penetrate it, becomes the matter of boorish insolence upon things divine. Enneads: II VIII.

We must recognize that other men have attained the heights of goodness; we must admit the goodness of the celestial spirits, and above all of the GODS – those whose presence is here but their contemplation in the Supreme, and loftiest of them, the lord of this All, the most blessed Soul. Rising still higher, we hymn the divinities of the Intellectual Sphere, and, above all these, the mighty King of that dominion, whose majesty is made patent in the very multitude of the GODS. Enneads: II VIII.

Yet imbeciles are found to accept such teaching at the mere sound of the words “You, yourself, are to be nobler than all else, nobler than men, nobler than even GODS.” Human audacity is very great: a man once modest, restrained and simple hears, “You, yourself, are the child of God; those men whom you used to venerate, those beings whose worship they inherit from antiquity, none of these are His children; you without lifting a hand are nobler than the very heavens”; others take up the cry: the issue will be much as if in a crowd all equally ignorant of figures, one man were told that he stands a thousand cubic feet; he will naturally accept his thousand cubits even though the others present are said to measure only five cubits; he will merely tell himself that the thousand indicates a considerable figure. Enneads: II VIII.

Besides, in this slighting of the Mundane Gods and the world, the honour they profess for the GODS of the Intellectual Sphere becomes an inconsistency; Where we love, our hearts are warm also to the Kin of the beloved; we are not indifferent to the children of our friend. Now every Soul is a child of that Father; but in the heavenly bodies there are Souls, intellective, holy, much closer to the Supernal Beings than are ours; for how can this Kosmos be a thing cut off from That and how imagine the GODS in it to stand apart? But of this matter we have treated elsewhere: here we urge that where there is contempt for the Kin of the Supreme the knowledge of the Supreme itself is merely verbal. Enneads: II VIII.

But humanity, in reality, is poised midway between GODS and beasts, and inclines now to the one order, now to the other; some men grow like to the divine, others to the brute, the greater number stand neutral. But those that are corrupted to the point of approximating to irrational animals and wild beasts pull the mid-folk about and inflict wrong upon them; the victims are no doubt better than the wrongdoers, but are at the mercy of their inferiors in the field in which they themselves are inferior, where, that is, they cannot be classed among the good since they have not trained themselves in self-defence. Enneads III,2,

And that law enjoins that those who have made themselves good shall know the best of life, here and later, the bad the reverse. But the law does not warrant the wicked in expecting that their prayers should bring others to sacrifice themselves for their sakes; or that the GODS should lay aside the divine life in order to direct their daily concerns; or that good men, who have chosen a path nobler than all earthly rule, should become their rulers. The perverse have never made a single effort to bring the good into authority, nor do they take any steps to improve themselves; they are all spite against anyone that becomes good of his own motion, though if good men were placed in authority the total of goodness would be increased. Enneads III,2,

Nor is the force of the celestial Movement such as to leave us powerless: if the universe were something outside and apart from us it would stand as its makers willed so that, once the GODS had done their part, no man, however impious, could introduce anything contrary to their intention. But, as things are, efficient act does come from men: given the starting Principle, the secondary line, no doubt, is inevitably completed; but each and every principle contributes towards the sequence. Now Men are Principles, or, at least, they are moved by their characteristic nature towards all that is good, and that nature is a Principle, a freely acting cause. Enneads III,2,

But what is the cause of this initial personality? This question resolves itself into two: are we to make the Creator, if Creator there is, the cause of the moral quality of the individual or does the responsibility lie with the creature? Or is there, perhaps, no responsibility? After all, none is charged in the case of plants brought into being without the perceptive faculties; no one is blamed because animals are not all that men are – which would be like complaining that men are not all that GODS are. Reason acquits plant and animal and, their maker; how can it complain because men do not stand above humanity? If the reproach simply means that Man might improve by bringing from his own stock something towards his betterment we must allow that the man failing in this is answerable for his own inferiority: but if the betterment must come not from within the man but from without, from his Author, it is folly to ask more than has been given, as foolish in the case of man as in plant and animal. Enneads III,3,

This Reason-Principle comes as a thing of unequal parts, and therefore its creations are unequal, as, for example, the several members of one Living Being. But after this allotment of rank and function, all act consonant with the will of the GODS keeps the sequence and is included under the providential government, for the Reason-Principle of providence is god-serving. Enneads III,3,

And if we take the male GODS to represent the Intellectual Powers and the female GODS to be their souls – to every Intellectual Principle its companion Soul – we are forced, thus also, to make Aphrodite the Soul of Zeus; and the identification is confirmed by Priests and Theologians who consider Aphrodite and Hera one and the same and call Aphrodite’s star the star of Hera. Enneads III,5,

A garden is a place of beauty and a glory of wealth: all the loveliness that Zeus maintains takes its splendour from the Reason-Principle within him; for all this beauty is the radiation of the Divine Intellect upon the Divine Soul, which it has penetrated. What could the Garden of Zeus indicate but the images of his Being and the splendours of his glory? And what could these divine splendours and beauties be but the Ideas streaming from him? These Reason-Principles – this Poros who is the lavishness, the abundance of Beauty – are at one and are made manifest; this is the Nectar-drunkenness. For the Nectar of the GODS can be no other than what the god-nature essentially demands; and this is the Reason pouring down from the divine Mind. Enneads III,5,

On this principle we have, here, Soul dwelling with the divine Intelligence, breaking away from it, and yet again being filled to satiety with the divine Ideas – the beautiful abounding in all plenty, so that every splendour become manifest in it with the images of whatever is lovely – Soul which, taken as one all, is Aphrodite, while in it may be distinguished the Reason-Principles summed under the names of Plenty and Possession, produced by the downflow of the Nectar of the over realm. The splendours contained in Soul are thought of as the garden of Zeus with reference to their existing within Life; and Poros sleeps in this garden in the sense of being sated and heavy with its produce. Life is eternally manifest, an eternal existent among the existences, and the banqueting of the GODS means no more than that they have their Being in that vital blessedness. And Love – “born at the banquet of the GODS” – has of necessity been eternally in existence, for it springs from the intention of the Soul towards its Best, towards the Good; as long as Soul has been, Love has been. Enneads III,5,

We are not to think that the Soul acts upon the object by conformity to any external judgement; there is no pause for willing or planning: any such procedure would not be an act of sheer nature, but one of applied art: but art is of later origin than soul; it is an imitator, producing dim and feeble copies – toys, things of no great worth – and it is dependent upon all sorts of mechanism by which alone its images can be produced. The soul, on the contrary, is sovereign over material things by might of Real-Being; their quality is determined by its lead, and those elementary things cannot stand against its will. On the later level, things are hindered one by the other, and thus often fall short of the characteristic shape at which their unextended Reason-Principle must be aiming; in that other world (under the soul but above the material) the entire shape (as well as the idea) comes from soul, and all that is produced takes and keeps its appointed place in a unity, so that the engendered thing, without labour as without clash, becomes all that it should be. In that world the soul has elaborated its creation, the images of the GODS, dwellings for men, each existing to some peculiar purpose. Enneads IV,3,

The content of the creative soul includes the Ideal shapes of GODS and of all else: and hence it is that the kosmos contains all. Enneads IV,3,

Thus it comes about that this kosmos, lit with many lights, gleaming in its souls, receives still further graces, gifts from here and from there, from the GODS of the Supreme, and from those other Intellectual-Principles whose nature it is to ensoul. This is probably the secret of the myth in which, after Prometheus had moulded woman, the other GODS heaped gifts upon her, Hephaistos “blending the clay with moisture and bestowing the human voice and the form of a goddess”; Aphrodite bringing her gifts, and the Graces theirs, and other GODS other gifts, and finally calling her by the name (Pandora) which tells of gift and of all giving – for all have added something to this formation brought to being by a Promethean, a fore-thinking power. As for the rejection of Prometheus’ gift by after-thought, Epimetheus, what can this signify but that the wiser choice is to remain in the Intellectual realm? Pandora’s creator is fettered, to signify that he is in some sense held by his own creation; such a fettering is external and the release by Hercules tells that there is power in Prometheus, so that he need not remain in bonds. Enneads IV,3,

Is it one coming from the sphere of the All, a radiation upon earth from that which Plato seems to represent as the only thing possessing soul primarily? Or are we to go by that other passage where he describes earth as the first and oldest of all the GODS within the scope of the heavens, and assigns to it, as to the other stars, a soul peculiar to itself? It is difficult to see how earth could be a god if it did not possess a soul thus distinct: but the whole matter is obscure since Plato’s statements increase or at least do not lessen the perplexity. It is best to begin by facing the question as a matter of reasoned investigation. Enneads IV,4,

We have, then, to attempt to show: firstly, how acts implying memory in the heavenly bodies are to be reconciled with our system as distinguished from those others which allow them memory as a matter of course; secondly, what vindication of those GODS of the heavenly spheres is possible in the matter of seemingly anomalous acts – a question which philosophy cannot ignore – then too, since the charge goes so far, we must ask whether credence is to be given to those who hold that the entire heavenly system can be put under spell by man’s skill and audacity: our discussion will also deal with the spirit-beings and how they may be thought to minister to these ends – unless indeed the part played by the Celestials prove to be settled by the decision upon the first questions. Enneads IV,4,

Such explanations do not account for the differences of things, and there are many phenomena which cannot be referred to any of these causes. Suppose we allow them to be the occasion of moral differences – determined, thus, by bodily composition and constitution under a reigning heat or cold – does that give us a reasonable explanation of envy, jealously, acts of violence? Or, if it does, what, at any rate, are we to think of good and bad fortune, rich men and poor, gentle blood, treasure-trove? An immensity of such examples might be adduced, all leading far from any corporeal quality that could enter the body and soul of a living thing from the elements: and it is equally impossible that the will of the stars, a doom from the All, any deliberation among them, should be held responsible for the fate of each and all of their inferiors. It is not to be thought that such beings engage themselves in human affairs in the sense of making men thieves, slave-dealers, burglars, temple-strippers, or debased effeminates practising and lending themselves to disgusting actions: that is not merely unlike GODS; it is unlike mediocre men; it is, perhaps, beneath the level of any existing being where there is not the least personal advantage to be gained. Enneads IV,4,

If all this is sound, at once our doubts fall and we need no longer ask whether the transmission of any evil is due to the GODS. Enneads IV,4,

Thus this universe of ours is a wonder of power and wisdom, everything by a noiseless road coming to pass according to a law which none may elude – which the base man never conceives though it is leading him, all unknowingly, to that place in the All where his lot must be cast – which the just man knows, and, knowing, sets out to the place he must, understanding, even as he begins the journey, where he is to be housed at the end, and having the good hope that he will be with GODS. Enneads IV,4,

This, by which the GODS are divine, must be the oldest God of them all: and our own soul is of that same Ideal nature, so that to consider it, purified, freed from all accruement, is to recognise in ourselves that same value which we have found soul to be, honourable above all that is bodily. For what is body but earth, and, taking fire itself, what (but soul) is its burning power? So it is with all the compounds of earth and fire, even with water and air added to them? If, then, it is the presence of soul that brings worth, how can a man slight himself and run after other things? You honour the Soul elsewhere; honour then yourself. Enneads: V I

But there is yet another way to this knowledge: Admiring the world of sense as we look out upon its vastness and beauty and the order of its eternal march, thinking of the GODS within it, seen and hidden, and the celestial spirits and all the life of animal and plant, let us mount to its archetype, to the yet more authentic sphere: there we are to contemplate all things as members of the Intellectual – eternal in their own right, vested with a self-springing consciousness and life – and, presiding over all these, the unsoiled Intelligence and the unapproachable wisdom. Enneads: V I

A being of this quality, like the Intellectual-Principle, must be felt to be worthy of the all-pure: it could not derive from any other than from the firsfirst prinprinciple of all; as it comes into existence, all other beings must be simultaneously engendered – all the beauty of the Ideas, all the Gods of the Intellectual realm. And it still remains pregnant with this offspring; for it has, so to speak, drawn all within itself again, holding them lest they fall away towards Matter to be “brought up in the House of Rhea” (in the realm of flux). This is the meaning hidden in the Mysteries, and in the Myths of the GODS: Kronos, as the wisest, exists before Zeus; he must absorb his offspring that, full within himself, he may be also an Intellectual-Principle manifest in some product of his plenty; afterwards, the myth proceeds, Kronos engenders Zeus, who already exists as the (necessary and eternal) outcome of the plenty there; in other words the offspring of the Divine Intellect, perfect within itself, is Soul (the life-principle carrying forward the Ideas in the Divine Mind). Enneads: V I

Thus we have here one identical Principle, the Intellect, which is the universe of authentic beings, the Truth: as such it is a great god or, better, not a god among GODS but the Godhead entire. It is a god, a secondary god manifesting before there is any vision of that other, the Supreme which rests over all, enthroned in transcendence upon that splendid pediment, the Nature following close upon it. Enneads V,5,

You must turn appearances about or you will be left void of God. You will be like those at the festivals who in their gluttony cram themselves with things which none going to the GODS may touch; they hold these goods to be more real than the vision of the God who is to be honoured and they go away having had no share in the sanctities of the shrine. Enneads V,5,

Whence shone forth the beauty of Helen, battle-sought; or of all those women like in loveliness to Aphrodite; or of Aphrodite herself; or of any human being that has been perfect in beauty; or of any of these GODS manifest to sight, or unseen but carrying what would be beauty if we saw? In all these is it not the Idea, something of that realm but communicated to the produced from within the producer just as in works of art, we held, it is communicated from the arts to their creations? Now we can surely not believe that, while the made thing and the Idea thus impressed upon Matter are beautiful, yet the Idea not so alloyed but resting still with the creator – the Idea primal, immaterial, firmly a unity – is not Beauty. Enneads V,8,

For assuredly all the Gods are august and beautiful in a beauty beyond our speech. And what makes them so? Intellect; and especially Intellect operating within them (the divine sun and stars) to visibility. It is not through the loveliness of their corporeal forms: even those that have body are not GODS by that beauty; it is in virtue of Intellect that they, too, are GODS, and as GODS beautiful. They do not veer between wisdom and folly: in the immunity of Intellect unmoving and pure, they are wise always, all-knowing, taking cognisance not of the human but of their own being and of all that lies within the contemplation of Intellect. Those of them whose dwelling is in the heavens, are ever in this meditation – what task prevents them? – and from afar they look, too, into that further heaven by a lifting of the head. The Gods belonging to that higher Heaven itself, they whose station is upon it and in it, see and know in virtue of their omnipresence to it. For all There is heaven; earth is heaven, and sea heaven; and animal and plant and man; all is the heavenly content of that heaven: and the Gods in it, despising neither men nor anything else that is there where all is of the heavenly order, traverse all that country and all space in peace. Enneads V,8,

Bring this vision actually before your sight, so that there shall be in your mind the gleaming representation of a sphere, a picture holding sprung, themselves, of that universe and repose or some at rest, some in motion. Keep this sphere before you, and from it imagine another, a sphere stripped of magnitude and of spatial differences; cast out your inborn sense of Matter, taking care not merely to attenuate it: call on God, maker of the sphere whose image you now hold, and pray Him to enter. And may He come bringing His own Universe with all the Gods that dwell in it – He who is the one God and all the GODS, where each is all, blending into a unity, distinct in powers but all one god in virtue of that one divine power of many facets. Enneads V,8,

More truly, this is the one God who is all the GODS; for, in the coming to be of all those, this, the one, has suffered no diminishing. He and all have one existence while each again is distinct. It is distinction by state without interval: there is no outward form to set one here and another there and to prevent any from being an entire identity; yet there is no sharing of parts from one to another. Nor is each of those divine wholes a power in fragment, a power totalling to the sum of the measurable segments: the divine is one all-power, reaching out to infinity, powerful to infinity; and so great is God that his very members are infinites. What place can be named to which He does not reach? Great, too, is this firmament of ours and all the powers constellated within it, but it would be greater still, unspeakably, but that there is inbound in it something of the petty power of body; no doubt the powers of fire and other bodily substances might themselves be thought very great, but in fact, it is through their failure in the true power that we see them burning, destroying, wearing things away, and slaving towards the production of life; they destroy because they are themselves in process of destruction, and they produce because they belong to the realm of the produced. Enneads V,8,

This is why Zeus, although the oldest of the GODS and their sovereign, advances first (in the Phaidros myth) towards that vision, followed by GODS and demiGODS and such souls as are of strength to see. That Being appears before them from some unseen place and rising loftily over them pours its light upon all things, so that all gleams in its radiance; it upholds some beings, and they see; the lower are dazzled and turn away, unfit to gaze upon that sun, the trouble falling the more heavily on those most remote. Enneads V,8,

The GODS see, each singly and all as one. So, too, the souls; they see all There in right of being sprung, themselves, of that universe and therefore including all from beginning to end and having their existence There if only by that phase which belongs inherently to the Divine, though often too they are There entire, those of them that have not incurred separation. Enneads V,8,

Again, why is not beauty classed as a relative? Beauty, unlike greatness, we regard as absolute and as a quality; “more beautiful” is the relative. Yet even the term “beautiful” may be attached to something which in a given relation may appear ugly: the beauty of man, for example, is ugliness when compared with that of the GODS; “the most beautiful of monkeys,” we may quote, “is ugly in comparison with any other type.” Nonetheless, a thing is beautiful in itself; as related to something else it is either more or less beautiful. Enneads VI,3,

But we ourselves, what are We? Are we that higher or the participant newcomer, the thing of beginnings in time? Before we had our becoming Here we existed There, men other than now, some of us GODS: we were pure souls, Intelligence inbound with the entire of reality, members of the Intellectual, not fenced off, not cut away, integral to that All. Even now, it is true, we are not put apart; but upon that primal Man there has intruded another, a man seeking to come into being and finding us there, for we were not outside of the universe. This other has wound himself about us, foisting himself upon the Man that each of us was at first. Then it was as if one voice sounded, one word was uttered, and from every side an ear attended and received and there was an effective hearing, possessed through and through of what was present and active upon it: now we have lost that first simplicity; we are become the dual thing, sometimes indeed no more than that later foisting, with the primal nature dormant and in a sense no longer present. Enneads VI,4,

Then consider this god (in man) whom we cannot think to be absent at some point and present at another. All that have insight into the nature of the divine beings hold the omnipresence of this god and of all the GODS, and reason assures us that so it must be. Enneads VI,5,

It is so with the lesser GODS; of many standing in their presence it is often one alone that sees them; that one alone was alone in the power to see. These are the GODS who “in many guises seek our cities”; but there is That Other whom the cities seek, and all the earth and heaven, everywhere with God and in Him, possessing through Him their Being and the Real Beings about them, down to soul and life, all bound to Him and so moving to that unity which by its very lack of extension is infinite. Enneads VI,5,

God, or some one of the GODS, in sending the souls to their birth, placed eyes in the face to catch the light and allotted to each sense the appropriate organ, providing thus for the safety which comes by seeing and hearing in time and, seeking or avoiding under guidance of touch. Enneads VI,7,

But why are they not at man’s level of reason: why also the difference from man to man? We must reflect that, since the many forms of lives are movements – and so with the Intellections – they cannot be identical: there must be different lives, distinct intellections, degrees of lightsomeness and clarity: there must be firsts, seconds, thirds, determined by nearness to the Firsts. This is how some of the Intellections are GODS, others of a secondary order having what is here known as reason, while others again belong to the so-called unreasoning: but what we know here as unreasoning was There a Reason-Principle; the unintelligent was an Intellect; the Thinker of Horse was Intellect and the Thought, Horse, was an Intellect. Enneads VI,7,

Can there be question as to whether the GODS have voluntary action? Or are we to take it that, while we may well enquire in the case of men with their combination of powerlessness and hesitating power, the GODS must be declared omnipotent, not merely some things but all lying at their nod? Or is power entire, freedom of action in all things, to be reserved to one alone, of the rest some being powerful, others powerless, others again a blend of power and impotence? All this must come to the test: we must dare it even of the Firsts and of the All-Transcendent and, if we find omnipotence possible, work out how far freedom extends. The very notion of power must be scrutinized lest in this ascription we be really making power identical with Essential Act, and even with Act not yet achieved. Enneads VI,8,

To begin with, what must be intended when we assert that something is in our power; what is the conception here? To establish this will help to show whether we are to ascribe freedom to the GODS and still more to God, or to refuse it, or again, while asserting it, to question still, in regard both to the higher and lower – the mode of its presence. Enneads VI,8,

All this calls for examination; the enquiry must bring us close to the solution as regards the GODS. Enneads VI,8,

Taking it that the presentment of fancy is not a matter of our will and choice, how can we think those acting at its dictation to be free agents? Fancy strictly, in our use, takes it rise from conditions of the body; lack of food and drink sets up presentments, and so does the meeting of these needs; similarly with seminal abundance and other humours of the body. We refuse to range under the principle of freedom those whose conduct is directed by such fancy: the baser sort, therefore, mainly so guided, cannot be credited with self-disposal or voluntary act. Self-disposal, to us, belongs to those who, through the activities of the Intellectual-Principle, live above the states of the body. The spring of freedom is the activity of Intellectual-Principle, the highest in our being; the proposals emanating thence are freedom; such desires as are formed in the exercise of the Intellectual act cannot be classed as involuntary; the GODS, therefore, that live in this state, living by Intellectual-Principle and by desire conformed to it, possess freedom. Enneads VI,8,

Our being is the fuller for our turning Thither; this is our prosperity; to hold aloof is loneliness and lessening. Here is the soul’s peace, outside of evil, refuge taken in the place clean of wrong; here it has its Act, its true knowing; here it is immune. Here is living, the true; that of to-day, all living apart from Him, is but a shadow, a mimicry. Life in the Supreme is the native activity of Intellect; in virtue of that converse it brings forth GODS, brings forth beauty, brings forth righteousness, brings forth all moral good; for of all these the soul is pregnant when it has been filled with God. This state is its first and its final, because from God it comes, its good lies There, and, once turned to God again, it is what it was. Life here, with the things of earth, is a sinking, a defeat, a failing of the wing. Enneads VI,8,

This is the life of GODS and of the godlike and blessed among men, liberation from the alien that besets us here, a life taking no pleasure in the things of earth, the passing of solitary to solitary. Enneads VI,8,