THEURGY 4 - Theurgy

Metaphysical Magic

Arguably, theurgy as metaphysical magic is the most controversial and significant aspect of philosophy. Metaphysical levels are also psychological states. Plato gave us a place in the cosmos, the one Self. Aristotle explained methods of absorption. Subsequently, the Stoics gradually built the bridge that linked universal pneuma with individual pneuma and health. Iamblichus, however, called the highest virtue ‘theurgic’ and was followed in this by his successors.
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Theurgy is a highly eclectic system of spiritual development rooted in Platonic philosophy, using contemplation, ritual, and the employment of an elaborate cosmology. It is a wedding of Platonic mysticism and philosophy, Chaldean occultism, and the Near-Eastern magic of the time, ensoulment or “animation,” of sacred images.

It is not simply mediumistic. It has an aspirational ideal of self perfection (nondual), a dubious goal today if pursued as obsession. Perhaps we can call it using free creative acts to realize our god-given potential. Orphic theology was highly regarded by the late Platonists in the line of Iamblichus, who defended theurgy, based on the validity of the distinction between religion and magic.

Iamblichus thought invocation of the gods was the culmination of Platonic philosophy. Plato himself contended when you play, the noblest game is consecration to the divine. We must play philosophy as if we had no boundaries in searching for our own ignorance (synoptic vision).

Theodosius I encouraged and allowed the wide-scale massacre of philosophers and magicians, the ruin of Hellenic and Roman temples (which functioned as libraries), and the destruction of the famous Temple of Apollo at Delphi. In 393 CE, all pagan rituals were banned. The final banishment of the philosophers came under Emperor Justinian, when an extraordinary part of the western spiritual heritage was destroyed.

The paradigm of theurgy is activation of divine potencies in matter. Theurgy was retrieved with hermetics, Plato, and the Alexandrian mystics in the Renaissance by Ficino, Bruno, and Pico. These greatest thinkers of their era had humanistic and magical concerns. The pinnacle of the human condition is to be exalted and consumed in divinity.

Pico was a both a Neoplatonist and a humanist who synthesizes all the strains of Renaissance and late medieval thinking. He thought magic was a means, not an end, a way of purifying the soul and enlightening it before it sinks into the divine abyss at the peak of its non-dual experience. The soul’s perfection or teleiosis was still imagined as the climax of a rite of initiation. The ultimate was a loss of self, absorption into the divine by becoming one (henosis) with God.

The project that Dionysius defines at the start of the Mystical Theology is to move inward as well as upward to the divine “darkness of unknowing,” a voyage that demands “unqualified and unconditional withdrawal” from the world and finally from the self. The aim of this experiential theology is to be something, not to know something.

Bruno both criticized and endorsed astrological concepts. Bruno and Pico used kabbalah as an alternative method to contemplate nature. Their curriculum included grammar, rhetoric, moral philosophy, poetry, and history from Latin and Greek literary authors. Ficino's theurgy significantly influenced John Dee's magical practices.

Bruno adopted Kabbalistic elements in his cosmological system because of the mystical efficiency of the theosophical and theurgic Kabbalistic approach. He also accepted the magical Egyptian religion of Asclepius and saw the Egyptian magical religion as Neoplatonic theurgy and ecstasy, the ascent to the One. The creation and application of magical images is integral to Bruno's philosophy. Theurgy means "acting on god" as opposed to Theology.

First and foremost, theurgy is about the soul, with the aim of incarnating a divine force. The ingredients were the same in all of these cultures: the simultaneous existence of a spiritual philosophy which united humanity with the heavens, of a detailed paradigm for medicine, and of a sophisticated cosmology. In all three, an invisible life force or cosmic breath played a central role in the Renaissance rediscovery of Neoplatonic theurgy.

Though neither Iamblichus or Ficino were outspoken supporters of ritual magic and magical images or talismans that the Picatrix instructs how to create, they both use the same tools in their theurgy. Likewise, the two systems are not mutually exclusive as all three sources use the same techniques for similar effects. Theurgic invocation and rituals accessing the divine mind were the antecedents of Christian sacraments.

Natural philosophy included what we now call science. They believed that the liberal arts should be practiced by all levels of "richness." Plotinus held you don't need wealth, status, or even grace to discover your true self, the immaterial nature of pure thought. They also approved of self, human worth, and individual dignity. They believed that everything in life has a determinate nature, but our privilege is to be able to choose our own path.

The hieratic rites synchronize mind and soul with divine truths and exposes them to transcendent essences. The theurgist’s voice fills with the power of invocations and sacred words. Movements are synchronized with cosmic forms and inner transformations. Intent and focus are placed upon images that are connected to a higher essence, connecting an apparent diversity with a transcendent unity, renewing our relationship with the numinous.

The archetype of that energy finally steps forward to touch the ceremony with its energy. Proclus tells us, its power travels through all components of the ritual like lightning travels through all objects without losing its own essential nature. All the senses and energies of the theurgist fill with an overarching unity.

The divine essence of the soul raises itself above intellect to absolute being. Iamblichus says the aspirant becomes “filled from above with transcendent gods." Iamblichus thought that theurgy changed the character of sensation and imagination in order that the soul's vehicle might be filled with the good -- divine light, the fire of truth.

Archetypal Psychology

Archetypal psychology revived the Renaissance perspective in the 1970s with works like Hillman's Revisioning Psychology and Facing the Gods, and Miller's The New Polytheism. It isn't about animating statues and making personalistic talismans, but animating ourselves and the world, again. The symbol is not a material object, but an internal 'likeness,' the images of the gods in our souls. The divine names are regarded as “vocal images.”

The Soul is the bearer of its precise form of consciousness. As Raffaele Floro says: "Soul consciousness is Knowledge, but knowledge of the objective psyche, which means on the one hand to go beyond the personalistic vision of Soul and on the other not to consider in a literal sense the relationship with the interior. ...life events only as personal occasions that escape any meaning except the utilitarian one, while the impersonal attitude [we could also say transpersonal] towards Soul allows to cross the moments of life as experiences lived on an archetypal level and illuminated by a sense that is present in the depths of the soul, but of a soul that is not simply "within me" but rather "I am within the soul." ("In Search of Soul, The Return")

This reflection is amplified by Hillman, who says: "The more we concentrate [the soul] inside and interpret the interiority in a literal sense as something that is within our person, the more we lose the sense of the soul as a psychic reality existing in all things."

The soul is the seat of psychological experience. Partial revelation is revealed by reason. Archetypal psychology conceptualizes from the point of view of the soul, or more accurately, from what the ego imagines to be the point of view of the soul. It claims to be Neoplatonic but is selective about which methods it adopts from that philosophy, perhaps both unconsciously and deliberately so.

Experiencing the archetypes as personified gods and goddesses active in our lives reveals the great powers shaping our moods, choices, and actions. But theurgy is the road less taken in this pursuit. It has a history of academic disrespect and religious misunderstanding and persecution.

Figures of the Greek mythological imagination still inhabit the contemporary psyche. We can find mythical backgrounds for personal experiences and how the Gods & Goddesses influence symptoms, ideas, attitudes, relationships, & dream imagery.

They also effect our beliefs and worldview, whether or not we are aware of it. Philosophy helps us wake up from false thoughts about the self through breaking through via discourse and dialogue about the Self. Socratic method questions with critical thinking to draw out ideas and underlying presumptions. Platonic methods and their fundamental dialogues

Mind is a symbol for the conception function. Philosophy is mind distilled to a very high degree. We look at the roots of our thoughts, and see the grounds of our belief are inadequate, and no longer believe our own fictions.

Plato is a psychologically profound spiritual discipline for eliciting and revealing our deepest assumptions. Ideas help us to separate ourselves from physical "facts." It purifies the mind by using the mind itself, seeing the nature of the mind. The only difference is whether you want to understand it or not.

Philosophically, the worst thing of all is to have a false idea of the nature of self and soul. Soul is not about forming conceptions, receiving sense perceptions, or the private mental, physical, or psychoid worlds either.

Soul is a 'root metaphor.' There is no escaping soul. There is psychological meaning in everything. Any psychical state then can be input to a psychological experience. For Hillman, even death is a metaphor, perhaps akin to the ego death of spontaneous regeneration or rebirth. Soul doesn't understand things the way our egos do. "The soul is less an object of knowledge than it is a way of knowing the object, a way of knowing knowledge itself." (Hillman, Revisioning Psychology, 130-131.)

Hillman sought to shift "the focus of Jung's psychology from individuation to 'soul-making.''' It's not as if we can stop the natural process of individuation, even if we actively change our perspective. Beliefs are conceptual not phenomenological. Do we have to negate philosophical insight and illumination brought about by rational understanding and analysis? Analogy and allegory is central to Plato's thought and its application.

How can we retrieve Plato and Neoplatonic roots (16th c. revival), and tetrads (Platonic tetrologies)? Jung tried with alchemy, Hermetic thought, and quaternities to describe Light and images seen, and image thinking whose source is belief having nothing to do with the visible world. The language of our problem has to fit the predicament.

Natural things and their source include the soul which emerges from nature. But Jung always avoids Plato and his philosophical spirituality, sudden metaphysical enlightenment as a gift of god -- the Divine Luminosity. (Grimes). To have that vision, Plato says you have to 'become' the One itself, inwardly in one's self, completely one out of many. Plato says to 'study the words of the [nondual] philosophers,' and they are quoted in alchemy.

Jung echoed Platonic notions when he said we need imagination, meditation (repeated dialogue with the self), and devoted connection to source. The Anima corporalis sustains the life force of the inner dialogue process over a long period of time, including amplified attention to dreams to awaken the Nous, the intuitive part of the soul, akin to the divine.

Ultimately, soul and mind are not ontological realities, but invented terms that fill a logical need. Soul is not as transcendental, nor as biological, as either metaphysics or science would have us believe.

"On the one hand it is about life, about how people think, feel, behave, their problems and their ways, not about the organs and functions with which they do this. On the other hand, it is also about spirit and the meaning of life to people and the meanings are not exhausted by a history of ideas." (Christou, The Logos of the Soul, 30)

The philosophers work by making themselves One and turning the mind upon the soul. The secret of enlightenment is hidden in the unconscious mind. Where the philosophers agree, the truth lies hidden. Alchemists used their arcane language to avoid the inquisition so they could study the philosophers as more than a dead system. Philosophy as taught in academia remains dead, because misunderstood and not applied.

Ego oppress the inner multiplicity and also is a symbol for the one unified, consistent point of view that arises when the inner multiple voices are squelched. The problem is the basic drive in seeking spiritual freedom is a drive for [ego] security. The ego can't attain it.

We can grasp that insecurity, become vividly aware of own state of separation from divine, and focus on the desire to reach the supreme. The solution is becoming vividly aware of that out-going process. It uses the self to grasp the nature of the self.

Egoistic concerns block the pursuit. Continually focus on that and what the motives are to become more knowledgeable. This is the beginning of the way of realization, which helps us separate from and and focus on ego and its functions. This insight, the innate failure to understand, is the beginning of the spiritual path, a shift in consciousness.

We can only resort to finding the Presence in our way of realization, what is watching and what does the action. Let the self exist and function as it will, no discipline but love toward the supreme. Psychological phenomenon of the soul can only be observed by attachment and involvement. Plato would say everywhere we are blocked is ignorance; we are caught in an [unconscious] belief web we do not know, subject to the dialectic.

Soul is really not a concept, but a symbolic source for a point of view. The only true observer of a psychological phenomenon can be the experiencer. Subjectivity is so implicit in the psychological experience that the experience is its own description. It cannot be adequately described in any so-called objective language.

Our basic interest is selfless love for the Mystery of Life, directed toward realization as its proper end, to which we can awaken. The divine performs in and through us and there is no 'us.' It becomes the natural goal of nondual reflection, relaxing into it. You don't identify with what is going on or interfere in it. Watch it take place. What you will you experience; you have just those experiences you will. That perception of a moment in eternity awakens realization of the self.

Soul is a unifying principle. The inherent value of theurgy is becoming clearer, as a Neoplatonic practice. "In other words, only when imagination is recognized as an engagement at the borders of the human and a work in relationships with mythic dominants can this articulation of images be considered a psycho-poesis (David Miller) or soul-making." (Hillman, Archetypal Psychology, 27.)

Intellectual grasp, the exercise of intellect and understanding of the state of numinosity and Beauty itself is always accompanied by bliss. The intelligible world becomes an object of cognitive experience. What makes it possible is divine luminosity, the good, the One, which is the self -- an unfolding of the vision of Beauty in itself.

We have to establish the themes and actors behind our dramas, even without actively changing anything with discipline, but understanding in our own minds. Mind builds its notion of reality via conceptual formulation — the creation of ideas and reasoning power, inherent power of the word and discourse. Ideas are the unspoken word.

The ideas that the universe is in constant change and that there is an underlying order or reason to this change—the Logos—form the essential foundation of the European world view.
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Mythos and logos naturally co-exist in theurgy. Logos (word, thought, principle, or speech; utterance, logic, or reason) is used by philosophers and theologians. Philosophy deals with human reason (the rationality in the human mind which seeks to attain universal understanding and harmony). Logos is revealed in the kind of thought that accesses unchanging self-same Being, real and true, not through sense experience, which is unstable and untrue.

For Plato, Logos was the rational activity of the world soul created by the demiurge. It could be revealed through Ideas accessed by an intelligence stimulated by the dialectic of philosophical discourse. Aristotle thought the Logos was the inherent formula determining the nature, life and activity of the body, as well as, more narrowly, ‘significant utterance.’

These ideas inspired the Stoics to see dynamic Logos as a supreme directive principle, the source of all the activity and rationality of an ordered world, both intelligible and intelligent. The rational underlying structure of the universe is a concept which later underpinned the practice of ancient Stoicism. It was the ‘seminal reason’ or underlying principle of the world, manifest in all the phenomena of nature.

Theology deals with universal intelligence (the universal ruling force governing and revealing through the cosmos to humankind, i.e., the Divine). The Greek philosopher Heraclitus appears to be the first to have used the word logos to refer to a rational divine intelligence.

Philo of Alexandria interprets the Logos, which is the Divine Mind, as the Form of Forms (Platonic), the Idea of Ideas or the sum total of Forms or Ideas. Logos is the indestructible Form of wisdom comprehensible only by the intellect -- Anima rationalis, an exaltation of the soul into the highest vision - clear light.

Can we cherry-pick Neoplatonism for concepts while ignoring the apex of its spiritual methodology and practice in theurgy and magic? What is Neoplatonism without theurgy? How does one "make soul"? Mind is a different order of reality. The third order of reality created by the soul is equal to neither that of the body nor that of the mind, nor to the sum of the two. The soul does not construct its reality out of literal sense impressions.

If psychology as a science must emerge from the point of view of its subject-- soul -- how do we make soul without logos, the contrast of noumenal and phenomenal, what we think is real? How do we 'see' psychologically without logos, a logic or set of first principles by which the soul operates?

What is the logos of the soul in the philosophical, not theological sense? How can we imagine genuineness and depth tied to life in all its particulars, rather than the false self? Hillman uses some theological insights that help bolster his own ideas about soul. He does not consider the soul of theology to be wholly equivalent or wholly dissimilar to the soul of psychology.

Neoplatonic spiritual practices, and in particular theurgy, are at the root of Jungian and Archetypal psychology, a comprehensive understanding of the universe and our place in it, acknowledging and unifying both material and spiritual phenomena, the exterior and interior perspectives. Practice is the ladder of theory. It begins with a magical act of consecration which connects the aspirant to unique power sources through initiation.

The telos — the end — of these practices is integration of all components of the psyche, transpersonal as well as personal. The result is a psychologically undivided person, homo individuus, who understands —experientially as well as intellectually — their role in the life of the universe and in particular in the evolution of humankind — their “phylogenetic destiny” — and can engage the spiritual dimension to fulfill that destiny better.

Symbols are used to invoke a divine being into the theurgist’s presence to facilitate communication. In analytical psychology the corresponding process is called active imagination and is often used to engage dream figures or complexes, which are autonomous sub-personalities in our psyches.

The contemporary practice tends to depend more on immaterial symbols than on material symbols, but some psychologists recommend the use of special clothing or a regular temenos for the operation. Gods and daimons — that is, archetypes and complexes — are invoked, for example, by calling their appearance to mind along with the dream context in which they appeared.

The practitioner may invoke the spirit out loud or in their mind. Subsequent meetings can be arranged through the use of agreed upon symbols, tokens, invocations, ritual actions, and so forth. The next step is a kind of surrender, waiting for some signs of animation in the
surroundings, some evidence of the presence of an autonomous spirit.

Then the negotiation begins. Analytical psychologists stress the importance of treating the
spirit with respect while retaining your moral autonomy. This is the way we
negotiate an accommodation between contemporary life and our animated paleolithic god.

Epiphanic Encounter

Theurgy has universal potential for epiphany and is the forerunner of western occultism. We are speaking about what it means to take on the shape of the gods in a ritual or ceremonial setting. We engage through the human body, its interactions, feelings, emotions, and postures. The aesthetics of religion focuses on sensory perception or embodied consciousness of the receiver and producer of signs and how signs are perceived subjectively through non-linguistic phenomena.

Theurgy is the root system of the Mystery tradition. Philosophical or psychological theurgy doesn't rely on diluted relics from the Golden Dawn movement, Crowley, and subsequent sects with idiosyncratic practices, Jewish Kabbalah, or Christian Qabalah derivatives, or reinvention of Freemasonry. It doesn't require the stock arsenal of the modern hermetic school of aspiring magicians, gnostic countercultures, or their competing schools.

The history of magic came to include elements as diverse as Pythagoras and Orpheus, the Hermetica and the Neoplatonists, amulets and hieroglyphics, sacrifices and dream interpretation, the magic of herbs and healing, the history of astrology, the lore of curses and spells, folk customs, and ceremonies, Christian magic, Jewish mysticism. This is the pleroma of western esotericism.

All that remains is to choose how we bring this wisdom into life once its traces have been found and its symptoms confirmed. The wisdom of the theurgist, the sufi, the shaman, the yogi, the Taoist, and the Buddhist is not different.The ornamentation of this unitive wisdom with Platonic-Hermetic philosophy and practical magic is what we call Theurgy.

How can we revision theurgy and hermetic philosophy beyond the Greco-Egyptian form of mysticism or today's personalistic occult, new age, or eclectic practice? Highly emblematic “hieratic” art is woven with philosophical, mythological, and cosmological symbolism.

Can archetypal psychology weave a cosmogenesis and whole fabric of reality, rather than parsing out practices such as astrology and alchemy? Is it trying to avoid the accusation of mysticism that plagued Jung?

How can we make it 'real' and relevant for ourselves, embedded and enhanced by the Neoplatonic roots of Archetypal Psychology? Can it help us avoid the pitfalls and pratfalls of misguided inner authority when Orders are out of order?

How do we bring the understanding of this energy to a more transcendent level? We can't just wave our magic wands and make it so, or 'go to Kabbalah', weekly, or consult the local mage for the secrets of the universe, though some try. We have to do the rigorous work, the Great Work.

The post-Jungian school of thought has already embraced the archetypal methodology of alchemy and astrology, poetics and aesthetics as symbolic specialties. Such disciplines each have and extend our own repertoire of nuanced languages for psychic experience. But what is the status of a Self-directed process in a therapy that declares the notion of Self obsolete to retrieve polytheism?

Tetrad

Theurgy and magic are among the oldest of human endeavors. Marshall McLuhan adopts a revealing frame he called his Tetrad: “…we learned that they applied to more than what is conventionally called ‘media’; they were applicable to all the products of human endeavor, and also to the endeavor itself!"

A medium is any human technology, including magical, philosophical, or spiritual. The medium retrieves in a new form for amplification what has been obsolesced earlier, reminiscent of the framework described by McLuhan -- a compressed vision of history, language, metaphor, and technology. In this case, the retrieval is recasting, a means for direct experience of a soulful connection with the cosmos.

McLuhan's Four Effects (laws of media) compliment Aristotle’s Four Causes: Material, Efficient, Formal, and Final. The Four Effects are Retrieval, Reversal, Obsolescence, and Amplification or Enhancement. They apply simultaneously, not linearly or sequentially, mirroring the Four Causes. If applied properly and inventively, their perceptual impact is aural/visual, discontinuous, resonant interplay, as they reveal already present or future features of media, culture and technology, including spiritual technology.

Magic As Media

In retrieving ancient gnosis, people often look, consciously or unconsciously, to failed worldviews of by-gone eras. Usually, the best of the practice is adopted and recontextualized to modern views. So, our question becomes “what statements can we make about theurgy that anyone can test — prove or disprove — for oneself?"

If theurgy is retrieved as a spiritual technology, its reversal potential makes materialism and superstition both obsolete with direct imaginal experience and re-enchantment through the World Soul.

What does the artifact 'theurgy' Enhance or intensify or make possible, or accelerate? One answer is self-initiation, which by-passes objections to cultic practice with informed self-direction in an experiential / experimental mode. Theurgy retrieves the old gods and ancestors.

The method is what matters. It is applicable to any form and content of media, theory or human artifact. “We found that everything man makes and does, every process, every style, every artifact, every poem, song, painting, gimmick, gadget, theory, technology — every product of human effort — manifested the same four dimensions.” [Laws of Media: The New Science, Marshall and Eric McLuhan, University of Toronto Press, 1988]

Every new medium enhances some human faculty or function, or builds upon an existing medium. As McLuhan notes and we can apply to theurgy, "every technology extends or amplifies some organ or faculty of the user."

Enhance means Amplify. Extend. Speed up. Intensify. Increase. Upgrade. Improve the quality, value, reach of… For example, even standing becomes more than standing, breathing more than breathing, walking more than walking, speaking more than talk.

Transitional states of consciousness and liminality, body cultivation, sensual reconception, even animal mimesis, and mirroring are increased in ceremonial rites. Ritualistic behavior, hieratic gestures, enhances commonplace behavior -- walking, sitting, standing, lying. The transition is between physiological functional body posture, acting attitude, ritual creativity, and religiously meaningful aesthetic form from standing prayer to walking meditation.

Subtle senses are aroused of the Divine, of dreaming, of the mythic and imaginal, of desire, of memory, of synchrony, of presence, of exchange. Theurgy enhances or amplifies aesthetic ideologies, hieratic images, rhythm, balance, tension, and energy that generate awe and experiences of holiness, including kinesthetic postures, dynamic motions, and stillness different from common behavior. Even sitting and standing become symbolic, stylized corporeality.

Obsolete doesn’t mean dead — just no longer in charge, like the ego, materialism, or literalisms, in service to soul -- "when one area of experience is heightened or intensified, another is diminished or numbed.” [LoM, viii]. It might include monotheism, self-containment of the body, semiotic over-writing in religious contexts, and perhaps, human hierarchy, for example.

Reversal means "every form, pushed to the limit of its potential, reverses its characteristics.” [LoM, viii] Every medium also retrieves, reclaims, brings back, revives some previous medium like theurgy, but not in a retro but a more psychological way.

The invitation is to try them out on your own terms and topics and see what effects you can discover in the emergence of new (or old) media. What does it enhance? What does it make obsolete? What does it retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier? What does it flip into when pushed to extremes?” There is not one single answer to the questions. There are usually many. Answering the questions can be playful, a game. Treat it like brainstorming.

A medium is any human technology, including magical, philosophical, or spiritual. The medium retrieves in a new form for amplification what has been obsolesced earlier, reminiscent of the framework described by McLuhan -- a compressed vision of history, language, metaphor, and technology.

The aesthetic dimension and focus is most fecund for those phenomena that are not conservative or over-determined in a religious way. We cannot separate the spiritual dimension from the aesthetic and sensory. The retrieval of Theurgy is recasting, a means for direct experience of a soulful connection with the cosmos.

McLuhan's Four Effects (laws of media) compliment Aristotle’s Four Causes: Material, Efficient, Formal, and Final. The Four Effects are Retrieval, Reversal, Obsolescence and Amplification or Enhancement. They apply simultaneously, and not linearly or sequentially, mirroring the Four Causes. If applied properly and inventively, their perceptual impact is aural/visual, discontinuous, resonant interplay, as they reveal already present or future features of media, culture and technology, including spiritual technology.

Divine Self-Remembrance

Sacred ceremonial rites facilitate the Neoplatonic goal of soul's ascent to its divine source. For soul to co-create the cosmos it must remain in contact with its own source in noetic being. Theurgy stands alone as an exemplar of direct mystical experience between the soul and the divine. We can take an aspirational view toward it, whether we choose to practice this elegant and ancient method, or not. Direct experience is an entwining of the visible tangible sense-perceptual surface with its invisible imaginal depth.

It can still inform our practice with perceptual immediacy, sympathic magic, prayer, astrology and divination. From Plato, Plotinus recognized that the stars were ensouled, and he accepted the role of planetary gods in steering the souls for their descent to embodiment.

Plotinus treats “all soul” and the World Soul as one. He affirms the highest part of the soul is undescended, and that our soul has a common origin with the World Soul in Soul-Hypostasis. Hypostasis (Greek: ὑπόστασις) is the underlying state or underlying substance -- the fundamental reality that supports all else. In Neoplatonism the hypostasis of the soul, the intellect (nous) and "the one" was addressed by Plotinus.

Theurgic rites were seen to imitate the life of the gods. When we dive down into the nature of reality, we find it is all consciousness. Theurgy arises freely in the soul from a great attraction to the Gods. This great attracting power, is called Eros, Ǽrohs (Gr. Ἔρως).

The power of Love and Desire (Erôs), directed toward Beauty, raises the soul toward the Beauty of The One through an attempt to ritually realign the human soul with the cosmos. Every object within this grand vision appears clearly as a ripple on the ocean of Eros, a wave of yearning for the deep Source it will shortly return to. The self-concept of the advanced theurgist is also transfigured.

Plotinus discussed magic in a broader context of the effects of music, divination, the arts of love, astrology, prayer or healing. In Hermetics, the three parts of wisdom are alchemy, astrology and theurgy, holding everything together on the macrocosmic level as a World Soul. Plotinus accepted a transcendent source and cause of sympathy in the one immaterial soul, the source of both the soul of the world and our souls, and the final explanation of unity in the cosmos.

Theurgy means "God-working," magic used for personal growth, spiritual evolution, and for becoming closer to the Divine, and relies on an alliance with divine spirits (i.e. angels, archangels, Gods). Alchemy is the key to theurgy. The disciplines illuminate and potentiate one another. Astrology provides the timing.

The Archetypal Vision

Neoplatonism and archetypal psychology share major themes and approaches. Archetypal psychology is inspired by Neoplatonism. According to James Hillman, archetypal psychology is inspired by and rooted in the Neoplatonic tradition of Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus.

Theurgy has been ignored or largely under-reported in both Jungian and Archetypal psychologies, though it is the core of the magical traditions that emerged in the Middle East in archaic times. It is a heartful way we come to know and embody the gods, and the gods come to know us. This mutual engagement with presence is through direct experience, tending to them, and our inner and outer life with soulful devotion.

In antiquity, the God was quite simply that, with or without multiple attributes. But there has never been a single theology. As they say, "the gods always appear together." Much like modern Hindus insist their religion is not “polytheistic,” the ancient Greeks believed in Deity without a particular identification with one god among a pantheon of others. The poetic formulation of a pantheon had little to do with the actual elements of worship, theology and social culture which dominated life.

Such philosophies, now called Neoplatonism, were resurrected in the Renaissance. Ancient theology is the doctrine that a single, true theology exists, which weaves through all religions, and was given by God to man. Our notions of ancient theology come from the Florentine Renaissance scholar who revived Platonism, Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499).

Working for Cosimo di Giovanni de’ Medici (1389–1464), Ficino translated books and manuscripts, such as Greek texts, into Latin. He was about to translate the works of Plato, when about 1460 a Greek manuscript from Macedonia was brought to Florence by a monk. It was an almost complete copy of the Corpus Hermeticum.

Cosimo demanded that Ficino translate the Hermetica even before Plato. He presumed it was the wisdom and knowledge of the legendary Hermes Trismegistus. The the aging Cosimo wanted to read these 'more ancient' original sources before he died. Ficino did finish the translation just before Cosimo passed away in 1464. However, though attributed to antiquity, the Hermetica actually dates to the second and third centuries CE, though older surviving wisdom was likely woven into it.

Unity in diversity is the core of the Hermetic theme. The human form and soul is a reflection of the entire universe, and vice versa, so we carry a divine spark. Mind, consciousness, soul, and spirit permeate the universe and the material world. It is a manifestation of the universal soul and consciousness, which we experience directly through our imagination.

Egyptian philosophy, alchemical death/rebirth rites, dealt with transformation, elevation, and immortalization of the soul, for the dead and initiates. This Hermetic wisdom included the Asclepius (sometimes called The Perfect Word), a text known as the Emerald Tablet (or Smaragdine Tablet/Table) and the Corpus Hermeticum. The core of the Corpus Hermeticum consists of fifteen dialogues, the first fourteen of which were included in the manuscript that Ficino initially translated.

The first dialogue is known as the Pymander (Poimandres, Poemandres, Poemander). Pimander is sometimes translated as “Man-Shepherd,” but recently it has been suggested that it actually means “Knowledge of Re” (or “Ra”, the solar deity of ancient Egypt). Hermeticism transcends both Monotheism and Polytheism as well as Deism and Pantheism within its belief system, which teaches that there is a transcendent God, The All, or The One.

Ficino used the Pimander title for the entire Corpus Hermeticum whose reputed followers were Orpheus, Aglaophemus, Pythagoras, Philolaus, and Plato. In later works Ficino stated that Hermes Trismegistus introduced theurgy to the Egyptians while Zoroaster (Zarathustra) preached it among the Persians as a very ancient font of wisdom and divine knowledge (Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, 1964, pp. 14–15).

From Egypt, Plotinus had a special reputation for astrology, magic and the occult, so
we can assume familiarity with magic on his part. His desire to pursue ancient wisdom would have reinforced respect for high magic. His work reflects familiarity with magic in Gnostic and Hermetic writings.

Animate Mind

Iamblicus in De Mysteriis suggests, it is not by discursive reasoning or through philosophic thinking alone that we come to know the gods. It is through awakening the higher spiritual powers by the rite of magic. The wisdom and knowledge of the secrets of the universe of the long ages is consummated through this natural magic. We seek them not for power, but for self-knowledge, to comprehend reality as it is, rather than its distortions and projections.

"Gods and goddesses appear as the very structure of reality. "The Gods and Goddesses are not cute allegories and analogies, figures of speech for evangelizing and moralistic orators, just as they are neither psychological nor social roles. Rather, they are worlds of our existence; the deepest structures of reality." (D.L. Miller)

In Chaldean and Egyptian initiation, the soul travels the theurgic path; it flies upward, carried by sacred chanting of mantric names (simran) accompanied with inner visualizations (dhyan) and divine epiphanies (radiant form). For Proclus, the theurgic ascent is also comparable to the rite of hieratic invocation.

The ascent is conducted by initiation, contemplation, esoteric knowledge (gnosis), or by invocation of the Holy Name. Proclus compares theurgic ascent to the process of invocation, implying that each name recited or invoked lead the initiate to the supercelestial realm described in Plato’s Phaedrus, and even to the ineffable One.

Divine names are vocal images. To know the language of the gods means to be transfigured already during one’s lifetime. At the level of divine Intellect to which the Neoplatonic philosopher aspires, creation and the act of naming are identical. The ascent to the noetic realm (the all-transcending Silence) is conducted by certain dialectical, contemplative, and theurgic use of names, appropriate for each level of theophany and equated to the divine images.

The soul moves back from images to their noetic archetypes. The Mesopotamian incantation-priest (ashipu), for example, imagined himself able to journey to both the noetic realm and the netherworld in the guise of a star, to be incorporated into the court of these gods, the heavenly retinue.

Like depth psychologies, perennialism describes the essential bond between the material world and the mind, between the mundane and the spiritual, between the external and internal worlds. Our approach is not literal or 'magical thinking,' or spiritual improvement, per se, but a practical means of engaging in the unconscious in its full range of potential expressions, whether we call that world mind, soul, or use some other label.

Sacred Method

Myth is embodied in godforms, indigenous inhabitants of psyche. The entire panoply of symbolic correspondences, for which the god-form is the nexus, can be deployed interactively by the aspirant. We assume the task of 'form-giver' and careful observer of these evocative images and impulses 'from the deep.'

In the magical operation known as 'assumption of the god-form,' the participant identifies with the archetypal power and co-creatively enacts symbolic behaviors. The main thing is to find the archetype within ourselves. Such energy surfaces from within, transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Such archetypal figures are symbols, too. They become animated by our active imagination as intermediate power. We see through their eyes and such visionary apperception of reality is true theophanic vision, meaning "appearance of a god" which refers to the appearance of a deity to a human.

If we do not project it outward in personification, it remains embedded and embodied within us, a harmonious reintegration of parts (restoration of the scattered Osirian eidos in accordance with the whole truth, maat) and noetic satisfaction.

Symbolic expressions between the noetic archetypes and their existential images (the participating theurgist) complete the soul’s divine measures and reveal its re-assembled immortal body. The body is an index of the soul’s capacity to receive a divine presence. That soul engage the powers bestowed upon it, accelerating its emergence by means of theurgic rites.

In the Timaeus, Plato describes how the ratios of the soul are refined. Through the correct performance of measured theurgic rites the initiate imitates the activity of the Demiurge, conjoining parts to wholes and integrates the psychosomatic multiplicity into the presiding noetic unity.

We make sense of the noetic archetype or Platonic idea by assimilating it to our body, mind, and spirit, and a unity lying beyond. Henri Corbin spoke of “images in suspension”... "a concrete spiritual world of archetypal figures, apparitional forms and angels, an epiphanic space where the images of the archetypal world lie suspended." Like a votive statue awakening to life we become animated by the upwelling archetypal energy.

The theurgist creates an imaginal bridge between the archetype and the physical world, a powerful spiritual alignment between a magical persona and aspects of deity. We do not have to be or become 'gods,' except during ceremonial identification. This doesn't serve the ego's grandiosity, but soul. Basically, you invite the energy of the deity to be consciously present in you, accessing your innate godlike multidimensional power which remains impersonal.

Your consciousness does not leave, but becomes temporarily melded with the archetype. You assume the attributes of the deity, taking on its presence. The culmination of the rite is the assumption of the godform, where the aspirant is seized by the archetypal power called up. The creative power of this form subsumes the theurgist. This is the Opus of the Great Work, the process of Self-transformation.

By identifying ourselves with ancient idealized expressions in the form of 'gods,' we awaken similar potential within ourselves. We reflect the spiritual qualities of that deity which animates our being. We clothe our selves with their Astral form. Akasha simply means “space” in Sanskrit. Besides observable objects, another thing, which is not perceptible, must be looked upon as real. Absolute space as a continuous background fabric connects everything in the universe.

Structured Vacuum

We identify with that god, so that at the appropriate moment it is as if the god, not ourselves, is performing the ritual action in a fine body. Immortal divinity doesn't unite with the mortal, but with the divine in the mortal. It unites with itself, indifferent macrocosm with indifferent microcosm.

Whether we zoom out or zoom in, is it not possible that the same information processes engendering consciousness at one observable domain are occurring at smaller scales as well? We can extend our metaphor into engtanglement connecting the individual and universal.
https://ionamiller.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/consciousness-entanglement-and-reality/

An important goal of interdisciplinary dialogue on consciousness is to derive a general model that accommodates multi-level analysis of body-brain-environment. To have consciousness, a sense of separateness in the non-entangled state must exist as a precondition.

Therefore, in the entangled state, there also exists a kind of collective conscious (some would say collective unconscious), which acts as a kind of reference for the rest. Bell proved that reality is non-local. In other words, even though all the quantum facts are local, these facts cannot be simulated by an underlying local reality. Any reality that fits the facts must be non-local and entangled.

Whereas entangled states represent the unity in the cosmos, non-entanglement allows for individuality and apparent separateness and duality. We can examine the broad range of phenomena including quantum-level events, biological processes related to ‘ordinary states,’‘pathological’ states (e.g., mental illness) and so-called ‘non-ordinary’ states such as transpersonal experiences and claims of psychic functioning.

Cosmologists speculate the quantum vacuum is filled with entangled particles. Entanglement is the basis of quantum cosmology. Every particle in the universe is connected to every other particle, so that nanosecond to nanosecond they interact and are coupled across the vast distances of space. Entanglement has been suggested as an explanation of anomalous cognition and psi. Like cosmos, we behave in an entangled and in a quantized individualistic state.

Structuring the vacuum potential is an opportunity for rejuvenation at the fundamental creative level -- the negentropic source field. The missing 'structured' or archetypal part not described here must then be partly made up of virtual particles and photons. Because vacuum structures can be topologically stable only in three space dimensions time is irrelevant. This manifesting divinity communes with the nonmanifest divine in the cosmos.

Much like there are different ways a black hole can put energy out into the galaxy, such energy emerges from a 'black hole' of cosmic unconsciousness, resonating with the absolute space of our own primordial being, pervading everything, interacting with everything as quantum vacuum fluctuation. Your 'divine self' isn't 'yours', it is simply local. The structured vacuum is common to our immaterial and material being and archetypal structure.

This source of the material world reorganizes and energizes our psychophysical structure at the finest level. Space is not empty but a plenum of information as old or older than the creation, full of potential wisdom, knowledge and light. Manifestation is noetic and life-giving power, descending “soul,” imagining our potential forward because it has already experienced it, from cosmogenesis to our consciousness, our 'singularity.'

Thus, invocation becomes a genuine encounter with the divine presence, with the immanent “indwelling” of God’s transcendent energies. The information processes underlying life consciousness reside at a much deeper, intrinsic level of the universe. The gods do not literally dwell on earth in their cultic receptacles (statues, temples, human bodies, animals, plants), but rather install themselves through “animating” images and symbols, including ourselves, once we gain consciousness of the process, symbolically or otherwise.

“It is plain, indeed, from the rites themselves, that what we are speaking of just now is a method of salvation for the soul; for in the contemplation of the ‘blessed visions’ soul exchanges one life for another and exerts a different activity, and considers itself then to be no longer human – and quite rightly so: for often, having abandoned its own life, it has gained in exchange the most blessed activity of the gods. If, then, it is purified from passions and freedom from the toils of generation and unification with the divine first principle that the ascent through invocations procures for the priests, how on earth one can attach the notion of passions to this process?” (Iamblichus: De myster.41.9-42.1).

We taste their immortality as our own before returning to ordinary consciousness after temporarily incarnating deity, symbolically and perhaps more than metaphorically. They also speak and manifest archetypal realities. This presumes we are not arrogant, narcissistic, heroic, power mad, or otherwise possessed or driven by shadow or over-zealous ego in our practice.

Ancient godforms describe human behavior sets and transformational forces. To invoke a god through theurgy we clear and consecrate a working space and make it sacred. We arouse that superconscious potential within us and feel its dynamic force. Then we create a vivid and vibrant picture of the deity's characteristic appearance, attributes, attitudes, symbols and myths. The image is built detail by detail using concentration and visualization.

Perfumes and corresponding colors, numbers, metals, plants, animals, stones, etc. help complete the atmosphere of that universal force with excess correlation. This can be done physically or mentally once the process is internalized. Through mimesis, we can imitate the quality of those autonomous forces with an empathic connection which can expresses through us at that time.

David Miller explains that The New Polytheism “is the reality experienced by men and women when Truth with a capital 'T' cannot be articulated according to a single grammar, a single logic or a single symbol system."

"We enact many myths in the course of our lives. We feel deeply the configurations of many stories. We are the playground of a veritable theater full of Gods and Goddesses. What do the Gods and Goddesses want with us? Our task is to incarnate them, become aware of their presence, acknowledge and celebrate their forms, so that we may better be able to account for our polytheism."5

Consciousness ineffably and inherently permeates the mundane world. Psyche is different from matter. This is the ancient understanding. That consciousness appears in a diversity of forms that can be nurtured internally and in the world at large through an essentially polytheistic soul-making is the position of Archetypal Psychology.

Being 'called' to do so, we learn to differentiate the personalities of the gods and goddesses within our selves, a multi-centered god-image. Such is the powerful instinct, the destiny of some souls who are called to the artform of theurgy and to actively participate in the Mysteries. The soul seeks the underworld (descent) and the spirit seeks the stars (ascent).

We can acknowledge variousness, diverity, and many-sidedness in our creative imagination. It is inherent in our philosophical condition, when metaphors, stories, anecdotes, aphorisms, puns, dramas, and movies, with all their mysterious ambiguity, seem more compelling than the rhetoric of political, religious, and philosophical systems.

"Thus, that sense of weakness, inferiority, mortification, masochism, darkness, and failure is inherent to the mode of metaphor itself which defeats conscious understanding as a control over phenomena. Metaphor, as the soul’s mode of logos, ultimately results in that abandonment to the given which approximates mysticism.

"—The metaphorical transposition—this ‘death-dealing’ move that at the same time awakens consciousness to a sense of soul—is the heart of archetypal psychology’s mission, its world intention." (Hillman, "Senex and Puer" in *Puer Papers*, p. 22)

Multiple meanings exist with principles of relativism, irrationality, indeterminacy, and plural logic systems. Multiple centers mean polytheism. Everywhere we stand is a new center of meaning in the universe. Polytheism is not a historical or an academic matter. It is a feeling for the deep, abiding, urgent and exciting tension that arises when we experience the radical plurality of physical, social and psychological life.

We discover that a single story is not adequate to help in understanding the nature of real meaning. The beauty of stories is not only that they contain many elements all of which are moving in some process, but also that each element has many potential meanings, all at once. We are gripped by their stories, images, names, and rhythms. The narrative is the symbolic expression of a lively process, the plurality of life and meaning.

Proclus recognizes theurgic art as intellect (nous) acting by means of discoursive reason and imagination. All manifested realities, being just a plaything of the gods (as Plato explicitly states: Leg.VII.803) appear as the demiurgic dream of the Creator. The entire animated cosmos is like the miraculous ship constructed by the Egyptian initiate in the Duat, using the secret names and words of demiurgic (and, therefore, “magic”) power.

In this way both the Egyptian initiate, one who enters Duat before his physical death, and the Platonic philosopher follow the divine Intellect (the solar Atum-Ra) who produces all things and “in his bottomless thoughts” contains causally and in single simplicity the unified knowledge of all things and all divine works (theia erga) which are accomplished by the very fact of conceiving and noetically beholding them. It is, as Proclus says, “as if by the very fact of imagining all these things in this way, he were to produce the external existence of all the things which he possessed within himself in his imagination."

Therefore the soul is capable to see and to know all things, including figures of the gods who essentially are without any shape and figure, in this “Osirian” mode by entering into itself and awakening the inner powers which reveal the images and symbols of the universal reality. Neither the outward, nor the inward psychic seer is capable of seing without images. Thus, the nature of the things seen, in each case, corresponds to the nature and preparedness of the seer.