Ficino on the Sight of the Beloved

Hence it always happens that lovers fear and worship in some way the sight of the beloved. Let me even say, although I fear that some of you will blush when you hear these things, that even brave and wise men, I say, have been accustomed to suffer in the presence of the beloved, however inferior. Certainly it is not anything human that frightens them, which breaks them, which seizes them. For a human power is always stronger in braver and wiser men. But that splendor of divinity, shining in the beautiful like a statue of God, compels lovers to marvel, to be afraid, and to worship.

-Marsilio Ficino, Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love
(found on Arturo Vasquez's excellent blog

Hymn-Singing from Plethon to Ficino (subjective to theurgic?)

“Gemisto Pletho recurs as an important but shadowy figure in the handing down of this tradition. He does not in his surviving works mention either Orpheus or the Orphic writings. But we know that hymn-singing played a large part in his reconstructed paganism, and that he devoted a chapter of his Nomoi to ‘Hymns to the Gods’ and another to ‘The Arrangement of the Hymns.’ We have evidence also that he copied out fourteen of the Orphic Hymns. It may be that it was Pletho's appearance at the Council of Florence in 1438 that awakened in the West an interest in this ritual practice. There are, however, significant differences in the motives underlying the hymn-singing of Pletho and that of Ficino. As Walker tells us Pletho saw the effect of the hymn-singing as subjective rather than objective. It did not actually reach the gods, but prepared or ‘moulded’ our imaginations. Ficino's motives are more direct and straightforward, and closer to the theurgic tradition of Iamblichus and Proclus. The singing of hymns can prepare man's spiritus to receive the influx of spiritus from a particular astral body. Music recovers its powers of magic, its ability to exploit and turn to advantage the forces of the phenomenal world. ‘Nothing is more effective in natural magic,’ says Pico, ‘than the hymns of Orpheus, if the proper music, mental concentration and other circumstances which the wise are aware of be applied.’ “
John Warden: from Orpheus, the Metamorphosis of a Myth, University of Toronto Press, 1985.

thanks to Lily Beard for dropping this excerpt on the Phoenix Rising Facebook forum

St Denis as Cephalophore

(St. Denis has been conflated with Pseudo-Dionysius)

Proclus on Cognition

"Every cognition through similitude binds the knower to that which is known: to the sensible or object of sense-perception the perceptive cognition, to cognizable objects discursive reason, to intelligible objects intelligible cognition, and therefore also to that which is prior to intellect the flower of the intellect is correspondent. "(Proclus, Commentary on the Chaldaean Oracles cited in Johnson 1988: 125)

Proclus on power (snippets from a google books search)

Rosan But for Proclus, "power" has a much more tangible character, particularly external power, although it corresponds to the Plotinian "power," while potential power corresponds to the Aristotelian "power." Internal power corresponds to ...

Siorvanes p.100 But for Proclus, "power" has a much more tangible character, particularly external power, although it corresponds to the Plotinian "power," while potential power corresponds to the Aristotelian "power." Internal power corresponds to ... http://goo.gl/0ngpz

Van Den Berg Proclus' hymns p.268
This interpretation of hands as anagogic powers fits well in the context of this hymn, for vss. 6-12 are a request for the elevation of Proclus' soul to the divine realm. The image is recurrent in Neoplatonic circles, see eg Hermeias In ...

Helen S. Lang, Anthony David Macro
As Proclus' argument proceeds, since being is a power and the being of the pattern is eternal, the pattern exercises the power of being a pattern, ie, produces a copy, eternally.

The philosophical and mathematical commentaries of Proclus v.2p.367
Every being in capacity, emanates from- that which is energy ; and that which is in capacity proceeds into energy. ... All power or capacity i* either persect, or impersect. J* OR- that which produces energy is a persect power : for it ...

Berg, Proclus' commentary on the Cratylus in context p.97
Cf., eg, Proclus In Parm. IV 864, 23–28: the human soul may be divided into various powers of apprehension. How we apprehend reality depends on the power that is active ( μ, μ ). If this power happens to be sense-perception we shall ...

Allegory in the "Homeric Problems" of the Stoic Heraclitus

All this is not useless erudition: these data are essential in order to assess the "Sitz im Leben" of Heraclitus' "Homeric Questions" and to understand that this work, though perhaps not a masterpiece, does not stand isolated in the panorama of imperial literature but entertains complicated relations with other writings and probably belongs to a class of "halbphilosophische Schriften" that enjoyed wide popularity in that period. The bulk of K.'s introduction (pp. xiv-xxvii) is devoted to a brief and very stimulating survey of ancient allegory. K. clings to the traditional idea that allegory was first created as a defensive instrument against Homer's critics, but he also allows a place for the role of allegory in cultic contexts, at least from Derveni onwards (pp. xviii-xix). K. believes that allegorical meaning and response were in fact coaeval with and deliberately attached to the Homeric epic in the first place (pp. xiv-xv). This is certainly right, as many ancient commentators had already grasped; G. W. Most has even shown one instance (Il. 16, 33-35) in which Homer not only "speaks" allegorically, but solves -- through the words of Patroclus - - his own allegorical riddle.5 More generally, Heraclitus regards Homer as a "strong allegorist", namely a poet who consciously and deliberately concealed allegorical meanings in his poem, much in the same way as Alcaeus and Anacreon, quoted in ch. 5; this was essential in order to defend him from the charge of impiety. K.'s definition of allegory as a metonymy involving at a minimum two terms and a bond (generally an activity) between them (pp. xvii-xviii), is interesting because it provides a very broad basis for defining which interpretations can be called "allegorical" and which cannot. Yet Heraclitus is a peculiar case: as an author who openly speaks of allegory, employs a variety of exegetical practices (physical, moral, historical-rationalizing allegory etc.), and sometimes assents to plainly non-Stoic philosophical doctrines, Heraclitus offers a good starting-point for those who deal with the problem of the boundaries and scope of ancient allegory, and particularly of the Stoic theories in this field.

As a matter of fact, the traditional view of "Stoic allegory" has recently been severely challenged by Anthony Long, who maintains a) that Heraclitus was in fact no orthodox Stoic, the few undoubtedly Stoic elements in his work belonging to a "Gemeingut" devoid of any peculiar philosophical connotation, and b) that the etymological practice of the Stoics did not give shape to an allegorical system suo iure but was intended to illuminate single linguistic elements of mankind's original language, without proposing any organic interpretation of literary works, without acquiring any narrative dimension.6 K. refrains from addressing this issue openly, but he seems to seek a compromise: for him, the Stoics used etymology in order to find justification of their theories in Homer, but they were also interested in the anti-Platonic defense of Homer per se (pp. xix-xxi). In order to grasp how many problems the very concept of ancient allegory poses, and how contradictory the Stoic appropriation of Homer often appears, the reader will consult the recent, sober essay by Richard Goulet.7 What is at stake here is not only Heraclitus' philosophical definition, but also his problematic relationship with Annaeus Cornutus, which cannot be resolved as "allegory vs. etymology", but unveils two very different -- albeit sometimes parallel -- exegetical approaches.

My final remark concerns Heraclitus' frequent references to initiation and mystery cults. K. (p. xii and xxiv) detects here a hint of the "diaeretic" allegorical method, which was typical of Neoplatonic and Pythagorean exegesis from Porphyry to Proclus and beyond. In fact, Heraclitus not only implies that φιλομαθεῖς will understand Homer correctly and ἀμαθεῖς will not (see also for this Ps.-Plut. de Hom. 92, 3), but he openly states that good readers will have to explore the penetralia of Homeric wisdom (3, 2 and 70, 12), he speaks of Homer's "secret truth" (53, 2), he stresses that only an οὐρανία ψυχή will be able to celebrate Homer's Olympic mysteries (64, 4; the text should by no means be altered, as R-K suggest in the app. crit.; cp. Philo, quod deus sit imm. 151), and he presents Homer himself as a hierophant (76, 1) and a "theologian" (22, 1; 40, 2; 58, 4 etc.).8 The system of these numerous references should be compared with the "Mysterienterminologie" that occurs so often in Philo of Alexandria,9 rather than with the tenets of later Neoplatonic allegory: despite Dawson's and Long's recent studies, the profound relationship of Heraclitus with Philo and Biblical allegory is still underestimated by scholars. But what is more important, Heraclitus evidently inherits this tradition without being able to reconcile it with his anti-Platonic defense. Plato's main criticism of Homer (resp. 2, 378d-e) consisted precisely in the observation that his ὑπόνοιαι are not easy to understand for children and young students and become clear only to those who dedicate long and qualified efforts to their study. By depicting Homer's wisdom as a secret knowledge accessible only to the initiates, Heraclitus follows an established topos of ancient (esp. Philonic) allegory but on the other hand paradoxically justifies the main core of Platonic criticism.
http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2006/2006-11-22.html

Proclus and Allegory

"The alternative approaches to Homer, literal and "allegorical" interpretation, based respectively on views of the literary artifact as a simple system of meaning and as a polysemous structure, are at least as old as Plato. Nowhere before Proclus, though, do we see the two interact in such a way that conclusions may be drawn about their relative importance and uses. If we were to judge by the relative levels of attention to the two poems in the Homeric Allegories of Heraclitus, we would have to conclude that the efforts of the physical and moral allegorists were concentrated on the Iliad, but what we are seeing there is probably no more than a relection of the traditional assessment of the Iliad as the superior poem. Proclus seems to give an indication (though by no means a proof) that our modern understanding of the differences between the two poems was anticipated in late antiquity by a general tendency to read the Iliad _______ and the Odyssey as a polysemous structure--a tendency against which Proclus reacts on both counts in his defense of Homer, though he does so in his characteristically gentle way. There is, further, the implication that, given the choice between an acceptable interpretation ______ and an unnecessary allegory, Proclus will choose the former: looking through the screen of the fictive surface is required only when the surface itself does not yield a satisfactory meaning."
Homer the Theologian, p224
(blanks are greek text see google books preview)