The Wisdom of Hypatia: Ancient Spiritual Practices for a More Meaningful Life (28 page)

As the practices of the Porch build on those of the Garden, so also the Grove builds on the Porch, and Stoic ethics is taken for granted by Neoplatonists. This does not mean that you can forget the first two degrees. If you are like me, you cannot devote all your time to spiritual pursuits; you have a day job and other obligations. The practices of the Garden and the Porch will help you to live your everyday, active life in peace and happiness, so that you have a firm emotional and spiritual foundation for the more advanced practices of the Third Degree.

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If you have not succeeded yet in making the Garden and the Porch your way of life,

then come into the Grove anyway so you can see where you are headed. Remember, phi-

losophy—the love and desire for wisdom—is a process, not an achievement, and the image of the ideal Sage leads us and draws us onward. I know that you are anxious to learn the advanced spiritual practices of Hypatia, and you probably haven’t spent the time to make the first two degrees habitual, to reprogram your mind. That is natural, but don’t forget that to succeed in the more advanced practices you will need to acquire the necessary skills (remember, magic is the art of changing consciousness at will).

The philosophers of the Garden and the Porch talk of God, the gods, Providence, Des-

tiny, Universal Reason and so forth, but their focus in on living well in
this
world. The philosophers of the Grove also teach a way of living on earth, but they do this by paying much greater attention to the spiritual dimensions of reality. Sometimes this is called Socrates’

“second voyage” in search of wisdom after he failed to find it in the naturalistic philosophies of his “first voyage.”200 This will be our quest too. While it is often the voyage of the second half of life, it need not be so.

Before embarking, it will be helpful to recall the philosophers of the Grove from whom we’ll be learning; we already met them in chapter 3, where you’ll also find a timeline. Plato (fourth century BCE) is of course central, but he was working in the tradition of Pythagoras (sixth century BCE) and was a student of Socrates (fifth century BCE). For comparison, Epicurus was born a few years after Plato’s death and was a contemporary of Zeno the Stoic. Plotinus (third century CE) took Platonic philosophy in a new direction, which modern scholars call Neoplatonism. Plotinus is a key source for us, because contemporaries of Hypatia, who was murdered in 415 CE, tell us she “taught the philosophy of Plato and Plotinus.” Other sources are the surviving works of her disciple Synesius (c.373 – c.414) and the Neoplatonist Hierocles of Alexandria (fl. 400–450 CE), a younger contemporary of Hypatia.

Neoplatonic spiritual practices are based on a systematic understanding of the cosmos, including psychological and spiritual phenomena as well as physical phenomena. Therefore, an overview of this system is a prerequisite to understanding the practices. In fact, we are proceeding through the stages of the ancient mysteries (such as the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries). As I will explain in more detail later, the first stage is
purification
, which is accomplished by progress through the first two degrees of wisdom, which teach virtue through
philosophy
. The second stage is
instruction
, which explains the psychospiritual world through
theology
; it is the topic of this chapter and the next. The third stage is
revelation
through the practices of
theurgy
(“god work”), the advanced spiritual practices of the macrocosm 141

Neoplatonism; it is the topic of the last three chapters. However, as in the Mysteries, these practices depend on the spiritual transformations of the first two stages.

In this chapter you will learn about the four planes of reality charted by ancient Platonists, but I will explain them out order, because that is the easiest way to understand them. First, we’ll look briefly at the World Body, which is the familiar physical universe, before turning to the World Mind, which is central to Platonic theology. As Plato did, we will approach it first from the perspective of mathematical forms, such as triangles and circles, and then look at the Platonic Forms or Ideas more generally. This will help you understand the difference between Becoming in the World Body and Being in the World

Mind. After considering the reality of such Platonic Ideas as Truth, Beauty, and Justice, we will turn to the World Soul, which connects the Mind and Body. It is crucial for theurgical practice, for it is the bridge connecting the everyday world to the realm of the gods. Therefore, you’ll also learn a little about Nature, Wisdom, and mediating spirits as helpers on the path. Finally we come to The Inexpressible One, the first principle of the Platonic system, and discuss the ways in which it is similar and dissimilar to “God.” Having completed this tour through the Platonic Cosmos, I will teach you several visualization exercises that will help you to imprint this map of reality on your mind, which will be valuable as you learn to navigate the higher spiritual realms.

I will present the Platonic system first from the perspective of Pagan polytheism, which is the historical and cultural context in which it developed. This will be familiar if you are Pagan or Wiccan, but may seem a little unusual if you are not. Nevertheless, it’s not hard to understand, and in the next chapter I will explain how the Neoplatonic worldview is compatible with monotheistic beliefs (as in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and indeed with non-theistic beliefs. With appropriate translations between terminologies, all these systems are describing fundamentally similar psychospiritual structures. But we’ll come to that later.

The World Body

We can imagine Hypatia in one of her public lectures.201 On benches sit several doz-

ens of eager listeners, including her private students, who have the best seats. Hypatia arrives, dressed in the simple but dignified white woolen robe of a philosopher. She ascends the dais, sits in a chair, and, with little ado, begins her exposition of the Neoplatonic worldview. “The cosmos can be understood in terms of four
levels
or
planes
of reality
.202 The lowest level is the one we are ordinarily involved with: the material 142 the macrocosm

plane of physical objects and processes, the sort of things that we can experience with our senses. This is our everyday world of matter and energy. In a sense this material world is hard to understand, because everything is in a state of change, as Heraclitus pointed out when he said, ‘You cannot step in the same river twice’. Nothing stays the same; everything is coming to be and passing away. Nevertheless, the change is not

totally chaotic, because it’s obvious there are patterns. Heraclitus also said, ‘All things come into being in accordance with the Logos.’ Things of the same or of related kinds change in similar ways, and Nature exhibits orderly processes.”

Pythagoras is supposed to have coined the word “cosmos” to refer to the well-ordered universe. It refers to orderliness and harmony, and is also the root of the word “cosmet-ics”! It is often translated “world,” but we must understand that it includes everything, not just the physical world. That is, it includes not only the physical universe charted by cosmologists and other astronomers, but also the worlds of the human body and mind,

and of whatever other things we think exist in the universe. (I use “cosmos,” “world,” and

“universe” interchangeably.)

As we will see, ancient philosophers drew an analogy between the
macrocosm
(“big cosmos”) of the universe and the
microcosm
(“little cosmos”) of the individual person, taken as a whole (that is, including mind, soul, spirit, etc., as well as body). This view is expressed in the well-known Hermetic saying, “As above, so below; as within, so without.” Since we have some intimate acquaintance and understanding of ourselves (the microcosm), we can transfer this knowledge and use it as a basis for understanding the macrocosm.

According to this analogy, the physical world corresponds to the human body; both are organized physical objects with systematic physical processes. As a consequence, in Neoplatonic philosophy physical reality may be termed the “Cosmic Body,” “World Body,” or

“Universal Body” that is, the physical body of the universe. The World Body is the lowest level in the Neoplatonic map of reality. Our next stop is the realm of the gods.

The World Mind

Some of the students scratch notes on their wax tablets, while Hypatia continues:

“A higher level of the cosmos is the Cosmic Mind, which is a realm of Ideas or Forms.

The easiest way to understand them is by thinking about geometrical objects, such

as triangles, squares, and pentagons. This is why Plato posted ‘Let no non-geometer

enter’ over the entry of the Academy: an understanding of geometry is a prerequisite to spiritual progress. Let me explain.

the macrocosm 143

“We have a clear and simple idea of a perfect equilateral triangle, but no physical

triangle can be perfect. A perfect equilateral triangle has all its sides of exactly the same length, but no triangle that we draw, carve, or construct can be so exact; there will always be errors.

“Nevertheless, in a very important sense a geometrically perfect equilateral trian-

gle is real. We can prove things about the equilateral triangle, such as that all its angles are equal, and, less obviously, that all triangles’ angles add to two right angles (180

degrees). We can prove things about other triangles as well. An example is the famous Pythagorean Theorem, which says that in a right triangle the square on the hypotenuse (the diagonal side) is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two side.”

Example of Pythagorean Theorem

In our times Platonism is still the working philosophy of mathematics, because mathematicians are continually confronted with the fact that mathematical objects have a reality independent of human wishes or desires; the existence of objects and the relationships

144 the macrocosm

among them are possible or impossible, true or false, independent of peoples’ subjective beliefs and desires. Thus all mathematicians, no matter what their cultural background or beliefs, come to the same mathematical truths. For example, the Pythagorean theorem

was discovered by many cultures before Pythagoras lived (but he might have been the first to prove it). All mathematicians are investigating the same nonmaterial, but objective reality, the same world of abstract
forms
.

Some readers may object that there are disagreements about the philosophy of mathe-

matics, and that is true. You may know that there are non-Euclidean geometries (essentially geometries of curved space) in which a triangle’s angles might not sum to 180 degrees.

In the Platonic realm of modern mathematics, any non-contradictory mathematical object exists, and that object has objective relations to other mathematical objects.203 Later, when we have explored further the realm of Ideas and Forms, I will say a little more about the psychospiritual reality of mathematical objects