Iamblichus

The teaching

Taught from his own books, above all On the Mysteries, with what Proclus records of his teaching on the soul.

The soul that comes down whole

Iamblichus begins with the soul's place. When it comes into a body, he teaches, it comes down whole: no part of it stays above in untroubled contemplation, as Plotinus had held. The soul in the body is truly in the body, turned outward toward the world of birth and bound by it. So it cannot lift itself back by thinking alone. Its return needs help from above, and that help is given through the rites the gods themselves established.

Contact before reasoning

Porphyry had begun by granting, for the sake of argument, that the gods exist, and Iamblichus answers that this is wrongly put. An inborn knowledge of the gods is present in our very being, before any judgement or choice, before reasoning and proof. It is not knowledge in the ordinary sense, of one thing by another, but a contact, a oneness with the gods that the soul has always had. Argument cannot reach it, and argument cannot take it away.

What the rite does

It is not thought that joins the theurgist to the gods, he teaches; if it were, philosophers would be joined to them by thinking alone. What joins him is the right performance of acts beyond telling, done as is worthy of the gods, and the power of silent tokens understood by the gods alone. The gods have sown their tokens through nature, in stones, plants and animals, in scents, sounds and names, and the rite gathers what belongs to a god and so becomes fit to receive it. The line between this god-work and sorcery is taught on the page of White and black magic, under Magic and protection.

Nothing in the rite forces the gods. They are not drawn down or swayed by passion; their light is always present, and the rite only turns the soul toward it so that the soul is lit. What changes in a rite is the worshipper, who is made like the gods and fit to share in them.

Prayer in three steps

Prayer has three steps. The first brings the soul together with the gods and gives it contact with them and knowledge of them. The second joins the soul's will to theirs, so that their gifts come down even before anything is asked. The third, the union beyond telling, rests the soul wholly in the gods. Prayer kept up long and often, he says, nourishes the mind, widens the soul to receive the gods, opens to people the things of the gods, accustoms their eyes to the brightness of the divine light, and little by little makes those who pray like the gods themselves.

Worship for two kinds of soul

Not every soul stands in the same place, and so worship has two forms. Most people live bound to the body and to nature, and for them there are rites with matter in them, offerings, sacrifices and holy places, which suit the gods who govern matter and the powers of the world. A few, and rarely, live by the mind alone, and their worship is without matter. Whoever has not yet risen to the second should not despise the first: the rites with matter are where the ascent begins, and nothing in the world, matter included, is cut off from the gods.

The sacred names are to be kept as they were handed down, in the tongues of the Egyptians and the Assyrians, and never translated. Those peoples were the first to receive the names of the gods, their languages are old and steady, and a name turned into Greek loses its power even when its meaning is kept. What sounds meaningless to us has its meaning for the gods.

Passions given their measure

Porphyry asked why some rites use obscene words and images if the gods are free of passion. Iamblichus answers that the images are tokens of the power that brings things to birth, and that the rites give the human passions a measured outlet. Passion held down grows stronger; let out briefly and in measure, it is satisfied and set at rest, as people are cleansed of their own feelings when they watch the feelings of others in comedy and tragedy. Such rites purify the worshipper; they do not move the gods.

True divination

Divination, rightly understood, is not a human skill but a gift of the gods. When a god takes hold of a prophet, the prophet's own life is set aside: the possessed do not know where they are, feel neither fire nor blows, and speak what is not theirs. At Claros the prophet drinks from the sacred spring; at Delphi the prophetess sits over the opening in the earth; at Branchidae the prophetess holds the rod or bathes her feet in the water; and in each the god comes.

The dreams the gods send are not ordinary dreams. They come when sleep is leaving the soul and waking has not yet begun: a voice tells briefly what must be done, or a light shines, or a spirit is felt passing unseen. Human divination by signs, by entrails, birds and stars, is a lower art that conjectures from the signs the gods have placed in the world, and it can err where the gift cannot.

Above fate

The soul has, as it were, two lives. One comes from the circling of the heavens and goes with their motions, and this is the soul that fate governs. The other comes from the first things known by the mind, shares in the power of the maker, and stands above the turning of the stars. Through that higher soul a person can be freed from fate, and the rites lead the soul upward and loosen fate's hold on it. The personal daimon, which he holds is given by the whole order of the world and not by a single star, is taught on the page of Daimons and intelligences, under The spirit realm.

The order of the dialogues

For his school Iamblichus fixed the road through Plato, and the order is itself a teaching. The student begins with the Alcibiades, on knowing oneself, since everything starts from that. Then come the Gorgias, on the virtues of the citizen, and the Phaedo, on the virtues that cleanse the soul from the body; the Cratylus and the Theaetetus, on words and on knowing; the Sophist and the Statesman, on nature; the Phaedrus and the Symposium, on beauty, love and the gods; and last of the first ten the Philebus, on the good, the end of them all. Two more crown the course: the Timaeus, which holds all of nature, and the Parmenides, which holds all of theology.

Number belongs on the same road. In his Pythagorean books mathematics stands between the things of sense and the things of the mind, and it is the soul's own ground: the study of number and figure draws the soul away from the senses and accustoms it to what does not change, so that it is ready for higher things. The sayings of the Pythagoreans he explains in the same spirit, as riddles that teach a way of life.