I was rereading Divine Iamblichusâ De Mysteriis for a completely unrelated reason, when I paid closer attention to two questions asked by Porphyry than I had in previous readings. Quoting the first paragraph of Book IX:
âI consider you, therefore, as asking, for it is your inquiry, âWhy, since the Gods dwell in the heavens alone, there are invocations by theurgists of terrestrial and subterranean Gods?â For what you assert in the beginning is not true, that the Gods circumvolve in the heavens alone: since all things are full of them. You also inquire, âHow some of the Gods are said to be aerial, and different Gods are allotted different places, and circumscribed portions of bodies, though they possess infinite, impartible, and incomprehensible power? And how, likewise, there will be a union of them with each other, as they are separated by divisible circumscriptions of parts, and by difference of places and subject bodies?â Of all these, therefore, and an infinite number of other similar questions, one and the best solution will be obtained by surveying the mode of divine allotment.â
Intriguingly, instead of launching into a discussion of ÏÎčÎŒÎ±ÎŻ, Iamblichus begins to give account for an astrological theory, that he then uses as an analogy for his short discussion of honors.
(Petrus Apianus, Cosmographia Petri Apiani, Per Gemmam Frisivm apud Louanienses Medicum & Mathematicu[m] insignem, iam demum ab omnibus vindicata mendis, ac nonnullis quoque locis aucta. Additis eiusdem argumenti libellis ipsius GemmĂŠ Frisij, 'Aegidius Coppenius Diesth', 'Reiner Gemma Frisitus', 'Birckmannica Officina', 3r, Latin, 1564, Jagiellonian Library, BJ Cam. L. V. 26, Antwerpia)
As an aside, and at the risk of sounding mystical, these questions stood out to me as I have recently had a dream in which Gods appeared in different portions of my body and the varying landscape around me morphed into images of the Gods. And upon awaking, the dream felt significant to me, though it was not entirely clear why.
I was aware of traditional associations between the Gods and certain animals, plants, stones, herbs and geographical features. I knew that these traditions were significant to the formation of rituals and served as ritual components. And I was also aware of the complex theological imagery of nektar-ikhor found in the writings of the inspired poets, which provided some measure of unity to the dynamic systems of correspondences at play in Greek religious life.
(The Death of Talos, 425-400 BCE, Attic Red-Figured Volute Krater, ΀erracotta, Height: 75 cm, Archaeological Museum Jatta, Ruvo di Puglia, Italy)
(âThe Punishment of Prometheusâ, Salvator Rosa, Oil on canvas, 344 x 212 cm, 1648-1650, Galeria Nazionale d ÌArte Antica Palazzo Corsini)
However the logic of these correspondences in Late Antique religiosity, particularly in the case of Theurgic Platonism, was lost to me, until I read Book IX more closely.
If one was to take Divine Iamblichusâ initial responses to Porphyry at face value, then one might be tempted to conclude that the Theurgic Platonists hold to a strict and ultimately incoherent division of the Gods into the categories of ouranic, khthonic and katakhthonic. However, such a reading would immediately come into conflict with Divine Iamblichusâ immediate turn to celestial light.
It would seem that when Divine Iamblichus says, âthat the Gods [do not] circumvolve in the heavens alone,â that, âalone,â is doing a lot of work in that statement. As we see elsewhere in De Mysteriis (despite Iamblichusâ critiques of astrology), the heavens remain a primary site for divine revelation. Even as Iamblichus says, in his paraphrase of Thales, that the Gods permeate all thingsâa logical consequence of their hypostatic relationship to Being.
In other words, if the Gods permeate all things, then their revelation is not limited to the heavens alone. This is true even if the Gods are revealed more perfectly (within the Late Antique understanding shared by Divine Iamblichus and Porphyry) through the intelligible and mathematical movements and arrangements of the heavenly bodies.
Going beyond this and given the point that the Divine Iamblichus was trying to make concerning ÏÎčÎŒÎ±ÎŻ, in many ways astrology would seem to make for the most obvious analogy available to the philosopher, as astrologyâno matter its theoretical explanationâis an art of sympathies, i.e. an art that demonstrates the interpenetrating and interrelating nature of all things.
However, it becomes apparent as the book begins to draw to a close that Divine Iamblichusâ reference to astrology is not merely an analogy. On the contrary, Iamblichus argues that the heavens should be understood as a mean term in the unfolding of the cosmos by way of divine providence. To provide an extended quote:
âAfter the same manner, therefore, the whole world being partible, is divided about the one and impartible light of the Gods. But this light is every where one and the same whole, and is impartibly present with all things that are able to participate of it; through an all perfect power fills all things, and by a certain causal comprehension, incloses and terminates the whole of things in itself, and is every where united to itself, and conjoins ends to beginnings. This too, all heaven and the earth imitating, revolve with a circular motion, are united to themselves, and lead the elements which are carried round in a circle. Hence the cosmos causes all things to be in each other, and to tend to each other, makes the end of one thing to coalesce with the beginning of another, as, for instance, earth with heaven, and produces one connexion and concord of wholes with wholes.â
With this in mind, one can now begin to read Book IX against the grain and begin to discern various potential logics at play in determining correspondences for ritual. Given theurgyâs privileging of the ancient and the traditional, we must first assume that traditional offerings and correspondences which we can find in myth and the historical and archeological records would be favored. However, with the growth in cities and colonies, in the number of cults (not all having myths to draw on), and in the spread of cults across varying ecological and geological regions in the Hellenistic and Late Antique eras, prohibitions of ignorance of the land and the availability and cost of items likely created problems for civic and household worship, much as they do for polytheists today. And this is likely where oracular and technical divination would play a major role.
It was in the Hellenistic era that astrologers began to write about the planetary natures of a wide variety of plants, stones and geological features found throughout the Roman Empire, building upon older regional sources. And while one might think that this could only lead to the cultic expansion of the traditional seven Gods ruling the visible planets (i.e., Selene, Hermes, Aphrodite, Helios, Ares, Zeus, and Kronos), for the ancient mind, so inundated with a Stoic logic of cosmic sympathy, this could not be further from the case. As Sallustius says in On the Gods and the Cosmos when relating the Olympians to the Ptolemaic cosmos:
âWhile these Gods possess the cosmos in a primary way, the other Gods must be supposed to be contained in them, as for instance Dionysos in Zeus, Asklepios in Apollo, and the Kharites in Aphrodite. Further, we can see their spheres, earth as Hestiaâs, water as Poseidonâs, air as Heraâs, fire as that of Hephaistos, and six spheres, those higher, belonging to the Gods to whom they are usually assigned; for we must regard Apollo and Artemis as Sun and Moon. We must give the sphere of Kronos to Demeter, the ether again to Athena, while the firmament is common to them all.â
(Giulio Romano, Ceiling of the Room of the Giants, c. 1532-1534, fresco, Palazzo del Te, Mantua, Italy)
In this intersection of Sallustiusâ theology and astrology, the differences between the two discourses are mediated by the Platonic grounding of sympathy in the Gods, by way of their hypercosmic banquet. As Sallustius says, âthe other Gods must be supposed to be contained in [the Olympians],â or as Proclus would later express it, âall the Gods are in each of the Gods.â To apply this to the discussion at hand, the supplicant must understand the nature of each planet in order to discern the providences at play in each in that moment. From there, stones, plants and animal-shaped cakes or animal images can be incorporated into rituals in accordance with their planetary natures and rituals and temples could also be placed in appropriate geographical locals.
Such an approach could even be further refined by more modern systems of planetary correspondences for plants in creating contemporary theurgic rituals, where each of a plantâs parts are provided with planetary correspondences, such that a traditionally Jovian plant could have Venusian flowers and Saturnian roots. Something which can figure into the timing and nature of its use.
As for parts of the body, Hellenistic astrology spoke of this as well. However, not through planetary correspondences but through zodiacal and decanic correspondences. Having grown up in a family of farmers and ranchers, this method of zodiacal correspondences is a practice that I am very familiar with, as many farms and ranches still use these correspondences, today, in order to time certain aspects of animal husbandry.
As the decans and their relationship to parts of the body and their rulership by the Hellenic Gods would require its own essay, I will stick to the zodiacal correspondences. The discussion of the Homo Signorum, or Zodiacal Man, has its first dated appearance in Maniliusâ Astronomica in c. 30-40 CE. In the Astronomica, Manilius relates the head to Aries, the neck to Taurus, the shoulders to Gemini, the chest to Cancer, the sides to Leo, the belly to Virgo, the butt to Libra, the genitals to Scorpio, the thighs to Sagittarius, the knees to Capricorn, the lower leg to Aquarius, and the feet to Pisces.
Zodiacal signs, too, would have traditional rulerships by Gods. In this same text, Manilius also provides us with these rulershipsâAthena rules Aries, Aphrodite rules Taurus, Apollo rules Gemini, Hermes rules Cancer, Zeus and Kybele rule Leo, Demeter rules Virgo, Hephaistos rules Libra, Ares rules Scorpio, Artemis rules Sagittarius, Hestia rules Capricorn, Hera rules Aquarius, Poseidon rules Pisces.
There are conceivably two uses of this zodiacal system in theurgy, given the usage of this system in medicine and animal husbandry. On the one hand, it provides another God to pray to on behalf of a sick or ailing individual beyond yours or their leader God and the patrons of healing and medicine, whether local or Panhellenic. On the other, it can provide greater specificity in the parts of animals to depict in cakes and votive offerings. Though there are perhaps other possibilities that I have not considered.
(Limbourgh Brothers, Anatomical Man from Les TrÚs Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, c. 1411-1416, tempura on vellum, Condé Museum, Ms.65, f.14v)
However, there are other potential means presented by the Divine Iamblichus which could be explored by the contemporary theurgist. To quote Iamblichus:
âWill not, therefore, he who surveys this conspicuous statue of the Gods, thus united to itself, be ashamed to have a different opinion of the Gods, who are the causes of it, so as to introduce among them sections, and separations, and corporeal-formed circumscriptions? I, indeed, should think, that every one would be thus disposed. [âŠ] I think, therefore, that the several participants of the divinities are of such a nature, that some partake of them etherially, others aerially, and others aquatically; which also, the art of divine works perceiving, employs adaptations and invocations, conformable to such a division. And thus much concerning the distribution of the more excellent genera into the world.â
To the Divine Iamblichusâ point, the celestial system is not the only natural system with a mathematical and intelligible structure. There are many natural divisions of nature, such as the aerial and aquatic, mentioned by Iamblichus, but also those elucidated by contemporary sciences such as niches, biomes, among others. The role that each element plays reflects a certain nature which is, of course, indicative of divine providence, and through the understanding of these interrelations we have the potential to discover an even greater number of ways to relate to the Gods and render ourselves intelligible to them through our rituals.
In a certain sense, this post might be redundant. After all, most theurgists already use tables of correspondences or divination to form rituals. However, I have yet to see these tendencies fully grounded in tradition or logic, and this post is a first small step in that direction.
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