Philosophy as a part of the Golden Chain

Introduction to The Golden Chain

by Algis Uzdavinys

The essential aspect of the ancient philosophical tradition was its oral transmission and living praxis. Theory, therefore, was never regarded as an end in itself, but was put in the service of practice, often understood in terms of an “alchemical” transformation and an elevation of the soul through the rites of purification and the cul­tivation of the virtues. In most cases this cultivation was so all-encompassing as to make the philosopher—as a “lover of wisdom”—strange to the world of mortals and close to the immor­tal gods, or archetypal principles (archai) of cosmic manifestation. Since putting oneself in accord with the divine principles allowed one to experience the eternal irradiation of the Good, Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy was not simply a discourse about the gods and the world, but an anagogic path leading the soul to a concrete union with the divine Intellect and the ineffable One. All comple­mentary sciences and arts served as the direct or indirect means to this goal and provided meaningful symbols and icons for contem­plation. In a sense, there was a lived logic, a lived hermeneutics, physics, and ethics. Hence, as Pierre Hadot has pointed out, the practice of philosophy did not ultimately consist in “producing the theory of logic, that is the theory of speaking well and thinking well, nor in producing the theory of physics, that is of the cosmos, nor in producing the theory of acting well, but it concerned actually speaking well, thinking well, acting well, being truly conscious of one’s place in the cosmos.”

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...

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.

Breaking with centuries of philosophical and spiritual tradition, the Syrian philosopher Iamblichus put forward a theory of salvation in which religious devotion and reverence, rather than an intellectual inward turn to 'know thyself,' was the sole means by which to achieve "henosis," or union with the divine. Break with Plato and Plotinus, Iamblichus argued that the soul could ascend to the One, the Good and the Beautiful by becoming co-creators with the demiurgic Gods of the Cosmos through the ancient rituals of the Egyptians, Chaldeans and Greeks and their sacred scriptures. By contrasting intellectual 'theory' and 'theology' for theurgy - 'God-Doing,' Iamblichus paves a radical new path in ancient pagan spirituality, ironically bringing it closer to early Christian Sacramentalism.