5 week online class via Zoom

Dates: Tuesdays, February 20 - March 19, 2024
Time: 7-9 pm Eastern (NYC) time
Admission $175.00 (Patreon Members) / $190.00 (Regular Admission)
* PDFs of readings will be sent to enrolled students before class.

PLEASE NOTE: All classes will be recorded for those who cannot attend live

The Greek philosophical tradition, to which we trace so much of our Western intellectual heritage, is presented as if it were an entirely rational enterprise. But this is not the case. Evidence paints a portrait of Socrates, the great thinker who stands at the origins of our intellectual tradition, as a man more mystic than a rationalist, one who credited his exercise of reason to divine revelation and the promptings of his daimon, or guiding spirit. Those who knew Socrates claimed that it was not his words but his presence that transformed them, remarkably similar to the experience of devotees who receive darshan in the presence of an enlightened guru. Platonists were mystical existentialists whose deep understanding of our mortality and our divinity is as vital for us today as it was in the ancient world.

We have almost no knowledge about this aspect of the Platonic tradition or how it was practiced. Between 200 and 600 of the Common Era, a deeply spiritual form of Platonism developed under the name of Neoplatonism. It was not only a philosophy but a way of life with ritual practices that were known as theurgy, or “divine action” (theion ergon). Theurgy was the culmination of the later Platonic tradition, but it is unknown to us it because it was suppressed by the Church. To perform a theurgic ritual during the time of emperor Theodosius (356 CE) was punishable by death, so Platonic theurgy had to go underground. In this course, Professor Gregory Shaw Ph.D. will bring Platonic wisdom and its theurgy into the fresh air of our time, helping us recover a Platonic inheritance that has been hidden from us.

Week One – The Divinity of the Soul

In Plato’s dialogue, Timaeus, he lays out the Pythagorean framework for the divinity of the cosmos and the human soul. Based on Plato’s scheme, each human soul is a microcosm (a small world) that mirrors the macrocosm (the entire cosmos). We will read how these Platonic principles were developed in the school of Iamblichus.

Reading: “Living Light: Divine Embodiment in Western Philosophy.”

Week Two – Embodying the Stars

Following the themes of our initial class, we will read this brief essay that explains how the later Platonists imagined their deification. It was a process that included aligning one’s soul with the heavenly bodies. In effect, embodying heaven on earth. Our initial class opened questions that needed more time to discuss and clarify, so this class, with a shorter reading, will allow us to return to some of the themes from week one and to make sure we have a clear sense of the intellectual frame for deification along with the soul’s erotic transformation addressed in week one.

Reading: “Embodying the Stars: Iamblichus and the Transformation of Platonic Paideia.”

Week Three – The Supernatural Philosophers of Neoplatonism

In this session we will explore the miraculous. Many are familiar with Eastern yogis who are said to possess superhuman powers. Such yogis are called siddhas, so named for their exercise of supernatural powers, siddhis. Telepathy, levitation, and even control of the weather are powers attributed to such yogis. What we do not know is that supernatural yogis existed in the West and were known as theurgists, divine men and woman whose supernatural power signified their status as divine human beings. We will discuss specific historical figures who exemplified this supernatural state and examine the energetic mechanisms for how this condition was achieved. Specifically, we will discuss the astral body and the induction of divine light, called phōtagōgia, that transformed our subtle body and imagination into a vehicle of divine powers.

Reading: “Platonic Siddhas: Supernatural Philosophers of Neoplatonism.”

Week Four – The Receptacle of the Soul and Giving Birth to the Cosmos

What was the ultimate purpose of Platonic theurgists, and how did their goal fulfill the purpose of Platonic philosophy? The key to understanding this question is by finding how theurgic rites give ritual expression to Plato’s great myth of creation in the Timaeus. Plato says the world comes into existence through a material receptacle or space (chōra) that functions like the mother of the Forms, allowing them to exist and inform the cosmos. Yet, he says, this receptive principle is conceptually unknowable; more like dreaming than thinking. In theurgy Iamblichus explains that the key element in every theurgic rite and what allows the soul to enter divine activity (theurgy) is the receptacle or space (chōra) that allows the gods to become enter the soul. In effect, each theurgic ritual allows the soul to share in the creation of the world, called demiurgy by Platonists. The soul becomes the receptacle or chōra for the gods. Such rituals cannot be grasped conceptually but must be enacted in dreamlike awareness.

Reading: The Chōra of the Timaeus and Iamblichean Theurgy.”

 Week Five – Honoring the Daemonic as a Path to Divinity

We have examined how Platonists imagined the divinity of the soul by aligning with the heavens, embodying the stars. We have also seen how philosophers attained supernatural power through their intellectual and imaginative disciplines and, finally, how they found their ultimate purpose by sharing in the creation of the cosmos. Their theurgy was demiurgy. But this all sounds just a bit too exalted to be true. A nice fantasy, but we know that life is full of irritations and even philosophers have emotional problems. We know that this exalted itinerary sounds more like spiritual escapism than a grounded realization. Precisely. Without understanding that Platonic theurgists see that we are fundamentally self-alienated and flawed, that we are entirely mortal, we would misunderstand them. Platonic theurgists insist that it is only by accepting our mortality and our flaws that the soul can become immortal. It is a kind of Neoplatonic kōan, yet without understanding this fundamental paradox, we would miss what made the later Platonists so compelling as teachers and divine men and women. In this session we will explore this Platonic kōan by discussing the role of daimons and how they pull us, like the demons of Christianity, into our darkest places, and that it is precisely from these dark places that we discover our divinity.

Reading: “Demon est Deus Inversus: Honoring the Daemonic in Iamblichean Theurgy.”

Image: Nicholas Roerich, Beda the Preacher (1945)