Proclus

The teaching

Taught from his own books, above all the Elements of Theology, the Platonic Theology and his hymns.

Every many shares in one

The Elements of Theology begins as a book of geometry begins, with a first proposition: every many in some way shares in unity. A many with no unity at all would be made of parts each of which was itself endlessly many, which is impossible. So before every many there is the One, which is also the Good, for to be one and to be good are the same: each thing is held together and kept in being by the unity it shares, and loses its good as it loses its unity. From this first principle Proclus derives all the rest, proposition by proposition, each with its proof.

Remaining, going forth, returning

Every cause that produces remains in itself while it produces, giving without being lessened. What it produces is lower than it and yet like it, for causes make things like themselves. And every effect does three things at once: it remains in its cause, it goes forth from it, and it turns back to it. It remains by what it shares with the cause, goes forth by what makes it other, and turns back by its desire for the good from which it came.

So all reality moves in a circle. What goes forth from the One returns to it; the last of things is joined to the first through the middle, by likeness at every step, so that the order of the world is an unbroken chain, and every link of it is an image of what is above it and a pattern for what is below.

Gods, being, life and mind

Next below the One are the henads, the gods, each a unity beyond being, and through them every level is held in the One. Then come being, life and intellect, three in one: all things are in all, but in each after its own manner, so that in being, life and mind are present as being, in life as life, and in intellect as mind. Then comes soul, and every soul has as its first vehicle a body of light, lasting and never born. Here Proclus parts from Plotinus: when a particular soul comes down into birth, it comes down whole, with no part of it left above.

The chains that run from each god

From every god a chain runs down through all the levels of the world: angels, daimons and heroes, then souls, animals, plants and stones that belong to it. The sun has its chain. The cock greets its rising with a hymn, and before the cock, Proclus says, even the lion draws back, for the cock stands higher in the sun's order. The heliotrope turns with the sun and, if one could hear it, sings to its king; the lotus closes before sunrise and opens with the light; the sunstone shines with golden rays. The moon has its chain too, and the moonstone that changes with her. The priests of old, knowing these sympathies, gathered what belongs to a god and so made a place where its power could be present: that is the priestly art.

All things pray except the First

All things pray except the First. Each by its nature turns back to its cause, and that turning is a prayer: the heliotrope's moving with the sun is its prayer, and the soul's hymn is the same movement made knowingly. Proclus gives prayer five stages: knowledge of the divine orders to which one prays; becoming akin to them by purity and likeness; contact, touching the divine with the highest part of the soul; drawing near; and union, when the soul rests in the god as one.

Three powers join the soul to the gods, as the Chaldean Oracles teach: faith, truth and love. Love leads it to the divine beauty, truth fills it with the divine wisdom, and faith settles it in the Good, beyond knowing, in a silent rest.

Mathematics between thought and sense

Mathematics stands in the middle, above the things of sense, which are divided and changing, and below the forms, which are undivided and always the same. Its objects are the soul's own reasons, which it carries within; when it does geometry it projects them onto the imagination as onto a mirror and studies there the figures it has unfolded from itself. So learning geometry is the soul's waking to what it already holds, and its use is to lift the eye of the soul from the senses towards pure thought, as a road to theology.

Fate and providence

Fate is the order of nature that governs bodies, and the soul so far as it lives in the body; providence is the goodness of the gods, above fate, from which fate itself hangs. The soul that lives by its body falls under fate; the soul that lives by reason rises above it and lives under providence. Nothing, then, is ruled by blind necessity, since even the chain of fate is held from above.

The hymns

His hymns pray for what his philosophy teaches. He asks the Sun, king of the fire of mind, who holds the key to the spring of life, to cleanse him of every fault and lead him up into the light. He asks the Muses, who lift souls out of the depths by the holy books, to lead him up to the pure light. And in the hymn to all the gods he calls on those who hold the rudder of holy wisdom, who kindle in souls the fire that draws them upward and leads them, out of the dark cave, to the immortals. Each ends in the same request: that the soul be turned back, freed and brought home.

The silence beyond the One

The highest is reached by denial. The Platonic Theology takes from the One every name and every attribute, even that it is one, and then lets go of the denials too, for they also are words. What remains is silence, and Proclus asks that the One be honoured by silence, the last and best of hymns.