Iamblichus on the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians / translated from the Greek by Thomas Taylor.

  • Iamblichus, approximately 250-approximately 330.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Iamblichus on the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians / translated from the Greek by Thomas Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    does not, therefore, think fit to enumerate it with any triad* or order of beings. In- deed it even apologizes for giving the ap- pellation of the most simple of our concep- tions to that which is beyond all knowledge and all conception. It denominates this principle however, the one and the good; by the former of these names indicating its transcendent simplicity, and by the latter * According to this theology, as I have elsewhere shown, in every order of things, a triad is the immediate progeny of a monad. Hence the intelligible triad proceeds immediately from the ineffable principle of things. Phanes, or intelli- gible intellect, who is the last of the intelligible order, is the monad, leader, and producing cause of a triad, which is de- nominated vorjTos Kai voepos, i. e. intelligible, and at the same time intellectual. In like manner the extremity of this order produces immediately from itself the intellectual triad, Saturn, Rhea, and Jupiter. Again, Jupiter, who is also the Demiurgus, is the monad of the supermundane triad. Apollo, who subsists at the extremity of the supermundane order, produces a triad of liberated Gods. (0eot a7roA,vTot.) And the extremity of the liberated order becomes the monad of a triad of mundane Gods. This theory, too, which is the progeny of the most consummate science, is in perfect con- formity with the Chaldean theology. And hence it is said in one of the Chaldean oracles, ‘‘In every world a triad shines forth, of which a monad is the 'ruling principle.” (IlavTi yap cv Koa-pcp XapTrec rpias rjs pova<s ap^6i). I refer the reader, who is desirous of being fully convinced of all this, to my translation of Proclus on the Theology of Plato.