The Wisdom of Hypatia: Ancient Spiritual Practices for a More Meaningful Life (35 page)

And the vast world hangs trembling in my sight!

For such I reign, unbounded and above;

And such are men, and gods, compared to Jove.221

Here Zeus the supreme god may be identified with The One (with all the caveats about anthropomorphic images of The One that I made earlier). With his unbreakable chains of causation God binds the cosmos, which
depends
—literally hangs—on him.

Besides chains or chords, Pagan Neoplatonists also spoke of lineages (it’s actually the same word in Greek). Thus all the gods and goddesses (in the realm of Beings) are born of The One, who is then called the Father (and Zeus had the title “Father of Gods and Humans”). The daimons, angels, and other souls in the Cosmic Soul are likewise descended from one or another god or goddess. Finally, everything in the material world, including nonliving things, is in the lineage of angels, gods, and The One. Thus we are all children of God.

All these images may be helpful and inspiring, but keep in mind they are just models or metaphors to help the understanding; they can also mislead. The higher levels are not literally higher than the lower ones (in the geocentric image) or deeper than the others (in the central light image); this is just a spatial mapping or representation of their logical rela-the macrocosm 171

tionships, to make them easier to think about. Furthermore, you should avoid thinking of these relationships temporally; for example, that The One creates the World Mind, which
then
creates the World Soul, which
then
creates the World Body. First of all, this makes no sense, for The One and the World Mind are timeless, that is, outside of time altogether.

Second, when we say that The One is
prior
to everything else, we do not mean earlier in time, but logically and ontologically prior, which means that The One implies and causes the rest. Higher/lower, prior/posterior, and so forth are not spatial or temporal relationships, but logical and ontological relationships.

and the Archetypes

Microcosm: The Tripartite Soul

In the previous chapter you learned how Hypatia and the Neoplatonists of her time understood the structure of the world at large, and I explained some ways to understand it in more contemporary terms. Now we must turn inward, for the structure of the psyche is especially important for understanding Neoplatonic spiritual practices. First you will learn how the embodied mind—the microcosm—mirrors the macrocosm, which you learned

about in the preceding chapter. Next I will explain how the Neoplatonic map of inner and outer reality can illuminate the beliefs of both polytheistic Pagans and monotheists. It is also valuable, however, for agnostics and non-believers, for it is an accurate map of the psyche irrespective of the transcendent existence of deities. Therefore the remainder of the chapter explains the connection between Neoplatonism and contemporary evolutionary Jungian psychology. You will learn about the archetypes and how they evolve, about complexes and their relation to daimons, about your Shadow and why you should befriend it, and about your highest or true self—the deity within—and how you can discover it. So let’s begin by imagining how Hypatia might have explained the microcosm in one of her public lectures, which is already in progress.

“Democritus, the founder of atomic theory, said, ‘A person is a small cosmos’. That

is, since humans are emanations of The Inexpressible One through the levels of the

173

174 the microcosm and the archetypes

Cosmic Mind and the Cosmic Soul into the Cosmic Body, we too have all the same lev-

els, and so we are microcosms, images of the Macrocosm. I will go through the levels in order and describe their connections to the Macrocosm on one hand, and to the

individual person on the other. It is clearest to use the Central Light Image, since that places the body on the outside, which is how we normally see each other.”

Hypatia sets up a drawing of the Central Light Image, such as you saw in the pre-

vious chapter. She explains that corresponding to the World Body, each of us has an

individual body, located in space and existing for a finite period of time. Our bodies consist of formed or organized matter and energy. Hypatia would have described it in terms of the four elements, but we describe it in terms of proteins and other organic chemical compounds, as well as in terms of electricity and other physical forces.

Pointing to the diagram, Hypatia says, “Within your body is your own soul, which

is an image of the World Soul adapted to an individual body. It permeates your entire body, like a second, subtle body, since it must regulate the processes in every part of your body. The soul governs the movement and transformation of matter and energy

in your body; that is, it includes all the processes that make a
body
from a mass of disorganized matter and energy. In this sense all living things have souls, for it is their souls that make them
organisms
.”

From a contemporary standpoint we might add to the list of things with souls those self-organizing
nonliving
processes, such as hurricanes and ecosystems, that gather free energy from the environment and create order by dissipating this energy in a degraded form.

As a concession to the general audience, Hypatia provides some background: “The

soul can be divided into various faculties or parts; for our purposes, two will do. The
lower soul
, which humans share with other animals, has two subparts. First, the
vegetative soul
, which all living things have, organizes the basic processes of nutrition, respiration, growth, reproduction, and metabolism. Second, the
animate soul
, which all animals possess, organizes the processes of perception, memory, emotion, intention

(or will), and movement. The lower soul is distributed throughout the body, but takes on specialized forms and purposes in the various organs.

“The
upper soul
may be visualized as localized in the head, or even in the brain, which is approximately true. The upper soul is the
rational soul
, which is the faculty of discursive reason, that is, our capacity to talk internally to ourselves in order to analyze the microcosm and the archetypes 175

situations, reason to conclusions, and express thoughts in verbal form. The rational soul seems to be unique to humans, because it depends on a level of linguistic capacity that other animals apparently do not have. Notice that the rational soul deals with abstract ideas, but the process of thinking is sequential, taking place in time, which is why it is part of the soul.”

Pointing to the diagram, Hypatia continues, “You may think that the true you is

your soul, but deep within the soul is another faculty, which corresponds to a kind of mind that is an image of the World Mind: the
nous
. For the divine Plotinus says,
Each of us is a Noetic Cosmos.”222

Here, for the sake of clarity and accuracy it is necessary to use the ancient Greek word:
nous
(pronounced “noose”). It is often translated “mind” or “intellect,” but these translations are vague and may be misleading. “Nous” is in fact the word I translated previously as “Mind” in “World Mind.” Here, however, we have to be more careful. In a Neoplatonic context, the nous is not the reasoning mind, which thinks sequentially in time. Rather, the nous is the
intuiting mind
, which grasps the Ideas and their eternal (timeless) connections.

Sometimes we can translate “nous” as “intuition,” but intuition itself is not well defined.

Likewise, “Thoughts” here and elsewhere translates
Noêta
, that is, the “Intuitions” in the Nous.

These concepts will be clearer if you remember that the individual nous is an aspect of the World Mind (that is, the World Nous), and therefore that each individual nous comprehends, from its own perspective,
all
the Ideas. To extend my analogy from the previous chapter: if the World Nous is like the CD with the video game on it, then your individual nous is like the copy of that game installed on your computer. It is still static and inactive, until the computer executes it. Likewise, your individual nous is a static structure of Ideas until they come to life in your soul.

Hypatia continues, “In the innermost depths of the individual psyche is an image

of The Inexpressible One, which we may call the individual One, the individual Good, the God image, etc. We Platonists sometimes call it the
Inmost Flower of the Nous
; some other philosophers call it the
highest self
or
true self
. This is the divinity within us all. It is the source of light at our center. As in the Macrocosm The One is the source of eternal Being in the Cosmic Mind and is the providential governor of Becoming in the material world, so in the microcosm the highest self is the unified individual expression of all the 176 the microcosm and the archetypes

unconscious archetypal Ideas common to humankind and is therefore the regulator of

our individual destinies as humans. Thus, in this third degree of wisdom, your spiritual progress depends on coming to know, so far as possible, this God image, your individual source of psychological unity.” Hypatia is describing the process Jung later called
individuation
(becoming
individuus
—undivided), which I’ll discuss later in this chapter.

“Thus,” Hypatia continues, “beginning at the exterior of the body, we may pene-

trate into the inmost depths of the soul to reach the inner divinity. This is the basis for some spiritual exercises, which I teach to my advanced students.”

Polytheistic Pagan Interpretation

It is not my purpose in this book to explain the theology of any religion, past or present.

But it is my purpose to offer Hypatia’s philosophy as a contemporary spiritual practice and way of life. Since it arose in a time and culture very different from ours, it’s necessary to say a little about how it fits with contemporary worldviews.

Neoplatonism developed in regions where the dominant and official religions were

polytheistic and Pagan: ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, and the Middle East. Therefore the religious connections of Neoplatonism are most apparent in Pagan polytheism. This will be familiar ground if you are Pagan, Neopagan, or Wiccan, but Neoplatonic philosophy will give you additional insights into the nature of the gods that will be useful in the more advanced practices taught in the remaining chapters. Let’s hear what Hypatia has to say.

“The eternal Beings in the World Nous are themselves Minds of a sort and Beings

with a kind of life. (I will explain the qualifiers in a moment.) Therefore it is natural to identify these Beings with the gods that we Pagans worship. Although Platonists

make this identification, the Platonic understanding of the gods diverges from the

popular notion in several ways.

“First, the Beings in the World Nous are eternal, not in the sense of living forever, but in the sense of being
atemporal
, entirely out of time. (Recall the analogy of the ideal Equilateral Triangle.) Therefore Platonists agree with Epicureans and Stoics in saying that the gods are
impassive
; that is they are unaffected by occurrences in the material world, including our prayers and our behavior.”

In the audience a distinguished man raises his hand and asks, “Is that why Epicurus

says the gods are essentially irrelevant to human life? They might do us no good, but they also do us no harm, and so we have a nothing to fear from them.”

the microcosm and the archetypes 177

“That is correct,” the teacher answers, “but for Platonists the gods are not irrele-

vant, for they are real Beings in the World Nous, conveying an image of The One into the lower orders, into the World Soul, and even into the material world, where they

have real effects in space and time. Therefore, the Platonic gods are like laws of Nature, which are timeless, yet regulate processes in space and time.

“Furthermore, since they are eternal Minds, and Thoughts in timeless relation to

other Thoughts, the gods especially regulate psychological phenomena in the lower

orders. Thus, for example, Aphrodite (or Venus) is that goddess—that aspect of the

World Nous—who especially regulates human love and sexual desire. Ares (or Mars)

is the god who governs human courage and aggression, especially their psychologi-

cal aspects. Thus the gods are very much involved with our lives, but in ways that are common to the human species as a whole, rather than peculiar to individual persons.”

A woman in the audience raises her hand.

“Yes, Alexandra?”

“What about the daimons?” she asks.

“The gods are in the Cosmic Nous,” Hypatia replies, “but each god engenders in the

Cosmic Soul innumerable daimons that are images of that god. These are incorporeal

souls that nevertheless exist and behave in space and time, and are thus capable of interacting with us. On the one hand, looking ‘upward’, they are in contact with the gods from which they have descended; on the other, looking ‘downward’, they can interact

with the material world. Therefore daimons serve as mediators between our world

and the divine world. Like all souls, they can govern material processes, and thus have physical effects in the material world, but primarily in our minds.”

Various Neoplatonists divided the levels of the World Nous and the World Soul into multiple sublevels. Corresponding to the sublevels are ranks of gods in the World Nous and ranks of daimons in the World Soul. In some cases these subdivisions are based on dialectical analyses of these higher realms, in others they are based on direct experiences of the higher realms arising from spiritual exercises. Nevertheless, these “maps” of the immaterial world are not completely consistent with each other. Fortunately the detailed structure is not very important for spiritual practice, and so we do not need to be concerned with it. Plato and Plotinus did not seem to bother about it, and perhaps Hypatia didn’t either.