Iamblichus Quotes

All things in the world of Nature are not controlled by Fate for the soul has a principle of its own.

Consider the roots of a simple and mundane action, for instance, buying bread for your breakfast. A farmer has grown the grain in a field carved from wilderness by his ancestors; in the ancient city a miller has ground the flour and a baker prepared the loaf; the vendor has transported it to your house in a cart built by a cartwright and his apprentices. Even the donkey that draws the cart, what stories could she not tell if you could decipher her braying? And then you yourself hand over a coin of copper dug from the very heart of the earth, you who have risen from a bed of dreams and darkness to stand in the light of the vast and terrifying sun. Are there not a thousand strands woven together into this tapestry of a morning meal? How then can you expect that the omens of great events should be easy to unravel? The Pseudo-Iamblichus Scroll

In the original Orphico-Pythagorean sense, philosophy meant wisdom (sophia) and love (eros) combined in a moral and intellectual purification in order to reach the “likeness to God” (homoiosis theo, [Plato, Theaet. 176b]). This likeness was to be attained by gno-sis, knowledge. The same Greek word nous (“intellect,” understood in a macrocosmic and microcosmic sense) covers all that is meant both by “spirit” (spiritus, ruh) and “intellect” (intellectus, ‘aql) in the Medieval Christian and Islamic lexicon. Thus Platonic philosophy (and especially Neoplatonism) was a spiritual and contemplative way of life leading to enlightenment; a way which was properly and intrinsically intellectual; a way that was ultimately based on intellection or noetic vision (noesis), which transcends the realm of sense perception and discursive reasoning. Through an immediate grasp of first principles, the non-discursive intelligence lead to a union (henosis) with the divine Forms. “Knowledge of the gods,” says Iamblichus, “is virtue and wisdom and perfect happiness, and makes us like to the gods” (Protr.

Plato compared the whole self to a chariot in which reason was the driver and two irrational parts, the biological appetites and the social reactions, were two very unruly horses. The challenge that had to be solved, to him and to the Neoplatonists, was how to train these horses so that they would accept the guidance of the reins and take the chariot the way the charioteer wanted to go. Several centuries of work went into finding the best ways to meet that challenge, and the toolkit that became central to Neoplatonism from the third century CE on – well, that’s where magic comes in.7 In the writings of Neoplatonist philosophers such as Iamblichus and Proclus, the word used was theurgy or divine work, which they distinguished from thaumaturgy, working wonders, the common or garden variety magical practice that went on in classical society in much the same way that it goes on in ours. The practice of theurgy was exactly the unpopular kind of magic I introduced in the previous chapter; in the technical language of the time, it was practiced to purify the vehicles of consciousness; in the terms I have been using, it was intended to see to it that the baboonery of biological drives and social reactions didn’t interfere with the reason and the will.

Apollonius and Iamblichus held that it was not "in the knowledge of things without, but in the perfection of the soul within, that lies the empire of man, aspiring to be more than men.

18B. (Iamblichus, Theol. Arith. 61). The Decad is also named Faith, because, according to Philolaus, it is by the Decad and its elements, if utilized energetically and without negligence, that we arrive at a solidly grounded faith about beings. It is also the source of memory, and that is why the Monad has been called Mnemosyne.

In later Platonists like Iamblichus, Proclus and Damascius, there is a set of prime units, called ‘henads’—a term that originates in the Philebus—who are unique, proper-named entities, namely the Gods themselves. These henads are ‘in’ the First Hypothesis of the Parmenides insofar as they are each a perfectly unique individual, while the classifications of them according to their properties yield the primary common terms for all of Being, which lies for its part in the Second Hypothesis.

There is a principle of the soul, superior to all nature, through     which we are capable of surpassing the order and systems of the     world.  When the soul is elevated to natures better than itself,     THEN it is entirely separated from subordinate natures, exchanges     this for another life, and, deserting the order of things with     which it was connected, links and mingles itself with another.   — Iamblichus.

You have a bad habit of quoting," said Anne. "As I never know the context or author, I find it humiliating." Denis apologized. "It's the fault of one's education. Things somehow seem more real and vivid when one can apply somebody else's ready-made phrase about them. And then there are lots of lovely names and words—Monophysite, Iamblichus, Pomponazzi; you bring them out triumphantly, and feel you've clinched the argument with the mere magical sound of them. That's what comes of the higher education." "You may regret your education," said Anne; "I'm ashamed of my lack of it. Look at those sunflowers! Aren't they magnificent?