[illuminationuniverse]

We do not know what God is. God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being.

Johannes Scotus Eriugena (via illuminationuniverse)

[krodhavighnantaka]

Noetic worship was useless without [a ritual] foundation. Yet, in the view of Iamblichus, such premature noetic worship was being encouraged in Platonic schools, and Porphyry, his chief rival, was a prime example of one who attempted to short-circuit the material gods and daimons. Although Porphyry had spoken of his henosis with the One, he was subject to severe bouts of depression, even to the point of suicide. Such emotions would suggest that Porphyry neglected to honor the god and daimons associated with his depression and thus failed to homologize himself to the material gods, gatekeepers of the immaterial gods and true union with the One. From a theurgical perspective, Porphyry lacked a foundation, the security (asphales) and infallibility (aptaistos; DM 229, 5–6), that came from properly completing the “receptacle” of the divine choir. From Iamblichus’s perspective Porphyry’s henosis had to have been false: if someone were still dominated by worldly passions (e.g., suicidal depression), he could not presume to pass beyond the material gods.

“Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus” (via krodhavighnantaka)

[servus-immaculatae]

Plotinus — God-like and lifting himself often, by the ways of meditation and by the methods Plato teaches in the Banquet [Symposium], to the first and all-transcendent God — that God appeared, the God who has neither shape nor form but sits enthroned above the Intellectual-Principle and all the Intellectual-Sphere. There was shown to Plotinus the Term [i.e., goal] ever near: for the Term, the one end, of his life was to become Uniate [i.e., united with God], to approach to the God over all: and four times, during the period I passed with him, he achieved this Term, by no mere latent fitness but by the ineffable Act. To this God, I also declare, I Porphyry, that in my sixty-eighth year I too was once admitted and entered into Union.

Porphyry of Tyre, On the Life of Plotinus and the Arrangement of his Work (via servus-immaculatae)

[cefalinhopravcs]

O que é Neoplatonismo?

O Neoplatonismo foi uma corrente filosófica, metafísica e epistemológica de alento platônico, que se desenvolveu durante a crise Império Romano do século III e IV e abordou questões filosóficas e religiosas.

Com efeito, esta ponderação teológica caracterizou "Deus" enquanto plenitude, estabelecendo um monismo idealista que influenciou tanto as religiões pagãs quanto as monoteístas, sobretudo o Cristianismo.

Por outro lado, devemos notar que a definição “Neoplatonismo” é tardia e surge para diferenciar o monismo neoplatônico daquele dualismo visto em Platão.

Principais Características

De partida, vale ressaltar que o Neoplatonismo não retoma o Platonismo, pois evita o dualismo de Platão em favor de um princípio único para todas as coisas. Por outro lado, é interessante notar que nessa vertente, os aspectos cosmológicos e espirituais do platonismo são mais valorizados.

Os primeiros filósofos a argumentarem em prol do neoplatonismo foram Plutarco (45d.C.-120d.C.), Maximus (100d.C.-160d.C) e Enesidemo (150-70a.C), contudo, foi Plotino (204d.C.-270d.C.) quem sintetizou o pensamento daqueles filósofos em sua obra “Enéadas”, onde divide o mundo entre o invisível e o fenomenal, donde o primeiro conteria os aspectos do “Uno” responsável por emanar a essência eterna e perfeita (Nous) para produzir a alma do mundo.

De tal modo, neste monismo de um só Deus, tudo é emanação desse ser, o qual nunca teremos conhecimento absoluto, mas que podemos nos aproximar ao nos afastarmos dos aspectos materiais da existência, onde imperam os vícios.

Assim, deste Deus (Uno) irradia a luz de toda a criação da qual todas as formas naturais são um reflexo. Por sua vez, os seres da criação, imperfeitos, estão hierarquizados conforme se afastam da origem, mas possuem em si a essência do Uno.

Com efeito, esta teleologia coloca Deus como sendo inefável, indefinível e, portanto, podemos apenas definir o “Uno” pelo que ele não é (teologia negativa). A despeito disso, esta concepção não acredita na existência do mal, pois este seria a carência do bem.

Fonte: Toda Matéria

[survivethejive]

As we’ve already said a number of times, there are three kinds of soul lodged within us. …whichever of them passes its time in idleness, with its own movements stilled, is bound to be the weakest of them, while the one that constantly exercises is bound to be the strongest. And from this it follows that we should take care to ensure that they keep their movements in proportion with one another. As far as the most important type of soul we possess is concerned, we are bound to identify it with the personal deity that was a gift of the god to each of us. This, of course, is the kind of soul that dwells, as we said, in the summit of our body, and it raises us up from the earth towards the heavenly region to which we are naturally akin, since we are not soil bound plants but, properly speaking, creatures rooted in heaven. For it is from heaven, where our souls originally came into existence, that the gods suspended our heads, which are our roots, and set our bodies upright.

Plato - Timaeus (via survivethejive)

[fierysword]

Eriugena conceives of the act of creation as a kind of self-manifestation wherein the hidden transcendent God creates himself by manifesting himself in divine outpourings or theophanies (I.446d). He moves from darkness into the light, from self-ignorance into self-knowledge. The divine self-creation or self-manifestation (I.455b) is, at the same time (or rather timelessly), the expression of the Word (Logos) and hence the creation of all other things, since all things are contained in the Word. The Word enfolds in itself the Ideas or Primary Causes of all things and in that sense all things are always already in God:

'…the Creative nature permits nothing outside itself because outside it nothing can be, yet everything which it has created and creates it contains within itself, but in such a way that it itself is other, because it is superessential, than what it creates within itself.' (Periphyseon, III.675c)

God’s transcendent otherness above creatures is precisely that which allows creatures to be within God and yet other than God. Eriugena stresses both the divine transcendence above and immanence in creation. The immanence of God in the world is at the same time the immanence of creatures within God. Creatures however, as fallen, do not yet know that they reside in God.

[detailedart]

A sample of haunting and troubling gifs of famous paintings. (Via giphy.com) From the artwork Beauty, by Rino Stefano Tagliafierro.

[deathandmysticism]

Memento mori, 19th century

[blackflameswithin13]

Kryžių kalnas (The Hill of Crosses), Northern Lithuania

[brigantias-isles]

The Masque of the Four Seasons

by Walter Crane

[jarl-seraphim-blog]

[the-lady-of-camelot]

We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his names. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (via the-lady-of-camelot)

[autumnhobbit]

Joan of Arc was not stuck at the cross-roads, either by rejecting all the paths like Tolstoy, or by accepting them all like Nietzsche. She chose a path, and went down it like a thunderbolt. Yet Joan, when I came to think of her, had in her all that was true either in Tolstoy or Nietzsche, all that was even tolerable in either of them. I thought of all that is noble in Tolstoy, the pleasure in plain things, especially in plain pity, the actualities of the earth, the reverence for the poor, the dignity of the bowed back. Joan of Arc had all that and with this great addition, that she endured poverty as well as admiring it; whereas Tolstoy is only a typical aristocrat trying to find out its secret. And then I thought of all that was brave and proud and pathetic in poor Nietzsche, and his mutiny against the emptiness and timidity of our time. I thought of his cry for the ecstatic equilibrium of danger, his hunger for the rush of great horses, his cry to arms. Well, Joan of Arc had all that, and again with this difference, that she did not praise fighting, but fought. We KNOW that she was not afraid of an army, while Nietzsche, for all we know, was afraid of a cow. Tolstoy only praised the peasant; she was the peasant. Nietzsche only praised the warrior; she was the warrior. She beat them both at their own antagonistic ideals; she was more gentle than the one, more violent than the other. Yet she was a perfectly practical person who did something, while they are wild speculators who do nothing. It was impossible that the thought should not cross my mind that she and her faith had perhaps some secret of moral unity and utility that has been lost. And with that thought came a larger one, and the colossal figure of her Master had also crossed the theatre of my thoughts.

GK Chesterton, Ortodoxia (via autumnhobbit )

[n-e-x-u-s]

The Tower at Aratta

[1sistersr4ever]

“Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.” -Acts. 2:2 #Pentecost

[orthodoxthoughts]

Jonah stretched out his hands in the form of a cross within the belly of the sea monster, plainly prefiguring the redeeming Passion. Cast out from thence after three days, he foreshadowed the marvelous Resurrection of Christ our God, who was crucified in the flesh and enlightened the world by His Rising on the third day.

Ode 6 Irmos of the Canon of the Cross

[bast38]

The monk is the same as a corpse lying at home. People see him, they kiss him, and bustle about him, but he does not sense any of this–for him the world does not exist. But a schemamonk is like a corpse that is already in the grave, who has broken all connections with the world, even the most purely outward ones… Archimamdrite Seraphim Zvezdinsky