The Golden Chain Read online

  It is the great Beauty with which the entire Cosmos seems to be in Love. It is the Great Light and cause of enlightenment for the mind of the true philosopher in the triple Socratic manifestation: as lover of Hellenic mousike (that is, practitioner of the art of poetic rhythm, harmonious sound, and all audibly appreciated beauty); as lover of Hellenic eidike (that is, practitioner of the art of visible patterns, symmetrical forms, and all optically appreciated beauty); and as lover of Hellenic dialektike (that is, practitioner of the art of logic, ordered form, principled life, rational discourse, intuitive grasp of principles, and noetically appreciated truth).7

  Of course, Hellenic philosophy in general differed from the earlier traditions of wisdom precisely by its developed set of formal logic and dialectic, along with its abstract technical vocabulary, as well as a new type of rationality of a more or less “scientific” character. But this additional edifice was built on the ancient metaphysical superstructure itself—supported by certain divine revelations, cosmogonical myths, and rituals aimed at the establishment of cosmic order and justice, as well as the transformation and elevation of the soul by a restoration of her true identity. By the time of Plato the soul was no longer regarded as the phantom (eidolon) of the body. On the contrary, the body had become a simple appearance and transitory image of the soul, which, by reminiscence (anamnesis), purification, concentration, separation and philosophical askesis was able to restore the memory of her divine abode. Thus, to be a philosopher in this sense was to turn away from the realm of seeming and to transcend the simulacrum-like body, thereby elevating the soul to the intelligible world of the stars. This reawakened soul, regarded as an image of the divine Intellect, is actually the same as the winged Egyptian ba which was to be turned into the spiritual light, akh, in the same way as Osiris was transformed into Ra. It meant that finally the soul was assimilated to that God who is the All.

  In some respects a one-sided philosophical discourse, instead of being a love of wisdom, was indeed turned into the passion for merely speaking about wisdom, and in some cases developed into skepticism. However, in most cases the goal of ancient philosophy remained the same. Thus, by “philosophizing” was meant both noetic activity and spiritual practice; and this was attributed not only to various Hellenic philosophers who belonged to different haireseis (schools or theoretically founded ways of life), but also to the Egyptian priests, Chaldeans, and Indian Gymnosophists. As to the sources of truth and wisdom, many haireseis and traditions were agreed in tracing their origins back to the gods themselves.

  According to Isocrates, the Egyptians, who were famous for their piety and practical wisdom (eusebeia kai phronesis), introduced for the soul the practice (askesis) of philosophy as a means to strengthen the laws and to investigate the nature of the cosmos. Pythagoras was the first to have brought to Hellas the philosophy of the Egyptians (Busiris 21–22). Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle developed theories of the world in the light of the distinctions between opinion (doxa) and knowledge (episteme), which repeat the distinction between the outer surface of myths, rites, and statues, and their inner meaning— the shining power of spiritual archetypes, akhu—revealed by the anagogical hermeneutics practiced already by the Egyptian priests of the 18th dynasty (1551–1292 B.C.E.) and earlier.

  Both Plato and Aristotle traced the origin of philosophy to wonder; by “philosophy” they meant the contemplation (theoria) of the manifested cosmic order, or of the truth and beauty of the divine principles (be they visible stars or invisible noetic archetypes). Therefore Aristotle asserts:

  That philosophy is not a science of production is clear even from the history of the earliest philosophers. For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize .... And a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders) (Metaph. 982b, 11–19).

  But if human wonder is the true origin of philosophy, then Christos Evangeliou is correct in his claim that the beginnings of philosophical speculation go back as far as the appearance of Anthropos.8 In fact, Adam himself was the first prophet, according to the Islamic tradition. To put the matter in other terms: the Egyptian Thoth (regarded as both the Intellect and the creative Word of Ra), or Hermes (who became identified with the mythical prophet Idris, called “the Father of philosophers” [Abu’l-hukama]), was the first philosopher in the archetypal sense. This primordial philosophy was originally a form of revealed truth and intellectual hymns sung by those who kept an image of Hermes in their hearts and belonged to the “Hermaic chain” (Hermaike seira). This chain symbolized irradiations from the divine Intellect. Thus, the true philosopher was theios aner, the divine man, who contemplated the light of the noetic gods and tried to live philosophically, i.e., in accord with the divine wisdom. At the highest grade of philosophy, learning, instruction, and purification came to an end, and the pure vision— analogous to the epopteia of the mysteries—was granted to the sage. Finally, he was able to return to his “starry Heaven”—the original inner abode of the unbearable glory reached through recollection and spiritual exercises, including intellectual training (dialectics) and theurgy.

  Contrary to the prevalent view of modern historians of science and philosophy, the ancient Hellenes considered themselves to be students of the much older Oriental civilizations. It seems that Plato was substantially indebted to the so-called Orphic tradition (Orpheos paradosis, partly based on Indian and Egyptian influences) and the Pythagorean oral teaching. Though the strong Neoplatonic conviction that the philosophy of Plato was a prolongation of the Orphic theology is disregarded by some modern scholars, Olympiodorus may be partly correct in asserting that “Plato paraphrases Orpheus everywhere” (“pantachou gar ho Platon paroidei ta Orpheos,” [Olympiodorus, In Phaed. 10.3.13]). To summarize the matter briefly: Platonists believed in a revelation given to the ancient sages and theologians, i.e., to divinely inspired poets and hierophants. This primordial revelation was viewed as unchangeable; there could be nothing “new” regarding metaphysics and divine truths. According to Celsus, Plato never claimed to have discovered anything new. Plotinus, too, plainly rejected the idea that he taught anything new—though changing historical conditions, the personal characteristics of philosophers and their audiences, as well as concrete philosophical problems to be solved, inevitably determined certain logical forms and the style of any particular philosophical discourse. One ought also to remember that the curious figure who since the time of Pythagoras was called a philosophos (though the equivalent ancient Egyptian term mer reh was already attested) was practically analogous to the figure of the specialized expert in purificatory rites and words of power; this figure was an initiate craftsman, magician, and healer, as well as legislator, poet, and inspired interpreter (hermeneus) of divine tokens, signs, and symbols. The philosophos wandered across the Mediterranean Sea, Assyria, and Egypt, and their practical wisdom (sophia or hikmah)— applied at every level of existence—was based on the ancient cosmological, theurgical, medical, and mythological traditions of the Near East. They were true forerunners of the later Pythagorean brotherhoods.

  Various branches of the Egyptian scientia sacra (including the science of an alchemical transformation and theurgical ascent to the realm of the divine light; a theory of hieratic symbols and hermeneutics; as well as the principles of mathematics, music, medicine and politics) contributed to the purifying of the entire state, regarded as tantamount to the temple; in addition to transforming different levels of the statue-like human being. By establishing cosmic equilibrium and keeping to the truth (maat) they led the soul (ba and other vital principles) back to the stars, or spiritual archetypes. The same goal of “philosophizing” was attested within the later Hellenic traditions. The schools of Pythagoreanism and Platonism founded the chain of transmission which was partly rooted in ancient Egyptian wisdom. According to Porphyry, such doctrines as that the soul is immortal; that it changes into
other kinds of living beings; that all living things are akin; that events recur in certain cycles, Pythagoras imported from the Egyptian and Mesopotamian sources. The Pythagorean number theory and the Platonic theory of Ideas, as well as the Orphic and Socratic conception of the immortal soul, and the image of the philosopher as a semi-divine figure, or as an ideal ruler in the theocratic body-like state, also have their deep Egyptian and Mesopotamian roots.

  Due to this ancient metaphysical and cultic legacy, followers of Orpheus, Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Plato regarded their philosophical tradition as a mystery into which one might be initiated. Thus, the mathematician Theon of Smyrna, who belonged to the so-called Middle Platonic period, distinguished five stages of this initiation: (1) purification; (2) communication of the ritual; (3) vision (epopteia); (4) “adornment with garlands”; (5) “the joy that comes from unity and converse with the gods.” In the context of such philosophical mystagogy, Plato himself can be viewed as a hierophant of the truest rites (teletai).

  By now it should be clear that the Neoplatonic promotion of theurgy as both the transcendent and immanent background of “philosophizing,” and the very summit of philosophy itself, was simply an attempt to revitalize the ancient transformative wisdom (“the Assyrian dogmas,” as Proclus was wont to say) against the degenerated form of one-sided rationalism, sentimental hedonism and the Academic skepticism of Arcesilaus and Carneades.

  Antiochus of Ascalon broke away from the skeptical tradition, and Numenius of Apamea, the Pythagorean and Middle Platonic forerunner of Plotinus, urged the rediscovery of the sacred paths of Platonism and early Pythagoreanism, which he traced back to the doctrines and rituals of the ancient Near East. Through a Pythagoreanizing allegorical exegesis he tried to reestablish a sort of primordial philosophia perennis, regarded as the common wisdom of the Chaldean, Egyptian, Phoenician, Jewish, and Indian sages. The semi-mythical Pythagoras himself, to whom the origin of the Greek term philosophia is credited by some traditional Hellenic authors, was eager to build up a great philosophical and scientific synthesis of various ancient metaphysical doctrines, mythical accounts and practices. He undoubtedly used mathematical and astrological materials from Babylonia and practiced an incubation rite related to the esoteric conception of the immortal soul. The Pythagorean table of opposites was close to the Akkadian and Babylonian rules for interpreting auspices and tokens in divination. Even the imagery of Parmenides, who is counted among the fathers of Western philosophy, was rooted in the Assyrian and Babylonian cosmic mythology and related religious cults.

  Since the time of Plato, genuine lovers of wisdom and truth considered the tree of the Orphic (Apollonian and Dionysiac) tradition, and Hellenic philosophy in general, to have grown out of Oriental seeds. So, for Porphyry, the famous student of Plotinus, the entire Hellenic philosophy is a relatively modern and in many respects corrupted version of the divinely inspired Egyptian and Chaldean wisdoms. Searching for the universal way of salvation, Porphyry understood that only a few were capable of following the way of philosophy and escaping from the cycle of existences. In thus dismissing philosophy as a universal means of salvation, he looked towards the Chaldean theurgy and Indian disciplina, regarding the Indian Gymnosophists (the Brahmans and Samanaeans) as true philosophers concerned with divine wisdom who lived a life of righteousness, with “the whole day and greater part of the night set apart for hymns and prayers to the gods” (De abst. IV.16–18). According to such a universalist and perennialist perspective, the teachings of Neoplatonism were not a sort of regrettable innovation (as modern classicists would have it), but the faithful perpetuation of pre-Platonic metaphysics put into a new dress. Plato himself was merely a link (albeit crucial) in the Golden Chain of the Pythagorean, Orphic and different Oriental traditions.

  Another crafty fable invented by modern historians of philosophy, along with the label “Neoplatonism,” is the artificial division between early (and therefore “true”) Pythagoreanism and later (hence “false”) Neopythagoreanism, despite the undoubted similarity and underlying continuity between them. But, as Peter Kingsley has pointed out:

  To portray the Platonizing reinterpretation of Pythagoreanism as an aberrant departure from the “true,” “pure” pre-Platonic Pythagoreanism is to overlook the essential fact that—before Plato’s time as well—Pythagoreanism was perpetually changing, reformulating itself, consciously adapting to incorporate new developments.9

  There was no rigidly established “orthodoxy” or official certification in the realm of Platonic tradition, which maintained itself by a process of oral transmission from master to pupil. Thus, philosophers might provide quite different solutions to a common set of problems whilst, nevertheless, belonging to the same Golden Chain. They might, for example, differ on such questions as the basic tenets of cosmology and the creation of the world, or the definition of virtue and the best system of logic; however, all would agree as regards the transcendence of God, the theory of Platonic Ideas, or eternal divine archetypes, and the immortality of the soul, which required that it be purified, elevated and reestablished in its original union (henosis) with the divine source.

  In the Athenian school of Syrianus and Proclus, the Homeric image of the Golden Chain (seire chruseie, Iliad VIII.18), stretching from Heaven to Earth, was used to describe both the unbroken vertical connection with the first principles (noetic sources of the demiurgic descent, as well as paradigms of the revealed wisdom), and the horizontal, or historical, succession of the qualified masters and interpreters—a succession which was not always based exclusively on direct physical relations. In fact, the Golden Chain is the same as the Hermaic Chain. This chain was both the chain of theophany, manifestation, or descent (demiourgike seira), and the ladder of ascent. This imagery of the Golden Chain was inseparable from the metaphysics of light and solar symbolism. Socrates also regarded the Homeric Golden Rope as referring to the Sun. It signified that “so long as the Heavens and the Sun continue to move round, all things in Heaven and Earth are kept going, whereas if they were bound down and brought to a stand, all things would be destroyed and the world, as they say, turned upside down” (Plato, Theaet. 153c8–d5). Thus, the Emperor Julian’s claimed descent from the Sun (Helios) meant his vertical (or inner) relationship with the divine Intellect which was the source of illumination and manifestation of the logos, or logismos—including the power of reasoning in general. According to Marinus’ testimony, Proclus was convinced that he belonged to the Hermaic tradition: he believed, following a dream he once had, that he possessed the soul of the Pythagorean philosopher Nichomachus of Gerasa. And so he used to say that the philosopher must be the hierophant of the entire cosmos (“koine hierophantes tou holou kosmou,” [Vita Procli 19.28]). Marinus also attests that the young Hegias, an attendant of the Athenian school, “showed clear signs from childhood of possessing all the virtues of his ancestors and of belonging to the Golden Chain of philosophers that started with Solon” (ibid., 26).

  Since the Golden Age was the Age of Kronos, and the rule of Kronos, as a blissful time, meant the rule of Intellect (nous), the Golden Race of Platonic philosophers can be understood as an idealized succession of god-like sages. Their mythical status in the hierarchy of being and knowledge is akin to that of the Egyptian Horus—the golden philosopher-king, who was son of Ra (Sun, or Intellect) and the manifested wisdom of Thoth—the Hindu avatara and the Sufi qutb or al-insan al-kamil (the axial and perfect man). In Egypt, gold was a symbol of the perfect god-like state. The same was true for the Orphic and Pythagorean tradition. According to Empedocles, exiled gods had to wander for thrice ten thousand seasons far from the company of the blessed (fr. 115). At last they were able to restore their original perfection through purificatory rites (teletai), regained virtues and a knowledge that implied the recollection of their own god-like-nature. Thus for Proclus, Platonism was the divine philosophy which shone forth through the grace of the gods. The philosophers who belonged to the Golden Chain were “true priests and hiero
phants of the divine Plato” (Plat. Theol. 1.1). They (e.g. Plotinus the Egyptian and his pupils) were regarded as the exegetes of the Platonic vision and the promoters of the true interpretation of the divine mysteries.

  Philosophy, as understood by Proclus and other Neoplatonists, was not just a rational training and a sport of mind merged in doubts. To put the matter in later Islamic terms, the Platonic philosophy was tantamount to hikmah (wisdom) derived from “the niche of prophecy” (mishkat al-nubuwwah). It combined discursive philosophy and spiritual practice in order to attain illumination, direct vision (epopteia) of truth, and union (henosis) with the divine principles. In his Gifford Lectures, S.H. Nasr significantly remarked that:

  The rediscovery of the sacred character of knowledge today would lead, almost before anything else, to a rediscovery of Greek wisdom, of Plato, Plotinus, and other Graeco-Alexandrian sages and writings such as Hermeticism, not as simply human philosophy but as sacred doctrines of divine inspiration to be compared much more with the Hindu darsanas than with philosophical schools as they are currently understood.10

  Plato’s “Orphic” conception of the philosopher seeking release from the wheel of cyclical time and return to his native Star is analogous to the Hindu doctrine of the path of escape developed by the Ajivika teacher Gosala, the Jain master Mahavira and the Upanishadic philosophers Yajnavalkya and Uddalaka, who promoted the so-called Tripartite Doctrine11 of philosophical monism, itself perhaps influenced by the Egyptian Osiris cult at some early stages of formation. Alain Daniélou has suggested (though at first sight his claim sounds unlikely) that even Orphism was derived from the influence of Jainism;12 and according to Giovanni Reale,13 “without Orphism we cannot explain Pythagoras, nor Heraclitus, nor Empedocles and naturally not Plato and whatever was derived from him.” Thomas McEvilley goes much further in his statement that: