Sunday, January 23, 2011

Proclus and Dionysius




For Proclus, theurgy as a liberation of the soul is a "power higher than all human wisdom, embracing the blessings of divination, the purifying powers of initiation and, in one word, all the operations of divine possession." Platonic Theology 1.26.63

"The intelligible divinities reveal the ineffable principle of all beings and that admirable superiority... these divinities are according to union itself beyond all partible separation... they will have their progression from the One." Proclus, Platonic Theology

Rist: The Christian doctrine of the Incarnation frees Dionysius from a charge of imposing mere magic+theurgy upon his philosophical schema. For a Christian the gap between the immaterial and the material which Proclus has to fill by his own theurgical efforts has been filled by God in his Revelation.

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