Speaker 1: You see, something's going to happen.
Speaker 2: What What's going to happen?
Speaker 3: Heine? What help?
Speaker 2: What is?
Speaker 4: What is Plato? But Moses speaking Attic Greek right right,
Speaker 4: and he's he's he's Numinius is subtle like he's making
Speaker 4: a point there and what and and that point speaks
Speaker 4: to what American conclusions are that that rabbis in exile
Speaker 4: encountered the writings of Plato, probably at the library of Alexandria,
Speaker 4: and those writings particularly were the Tamaeis and the laws,
Speaker 4: and whether or not the Torah existed in some form
Speaker 4: prior to that. He demonstrates it argues very very well
Speaker 4: that if it did exist, it was rewritten after the
Speaker 4: encounter with Plato. Plato's work after their encounter with Hellenism,
Speaker 4: which explains why we get like a mercaba, you know,
Speaker 4: a soul, the sole chariot that has no precedent other
Speaker 4: than the okeema that which means chariot. And it's this
Speaker 4: sole vehicle, right, So lots of problems there, if you
Speaker 4: know what I mean.
Speaker 5: That plays into the the you know, the whole origin
Speaker 5: of the septuagen translation, which took place in right and
Speaker 5: right there in Alexandria at that time, and it's it
Speaker 5: really points to Okay, so like why is it called Genesis?
Speaker 6: Why is it called exo Thos? Why is it called.
Speaker 5: You know, du These are Greek words.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the titles of the books are Greek.
Speaker 7: And the substugen number as itself, I think beckons to
Speaker 7: the harmony of the spheres and the sevenfold celebration of that.
Speaker 7: The Alexandria really the average person would have known about
Speaker 7: and you know, realized that title might have beckoned to.
Speaker 7: I wonder, and even the allegory of the cave too,
Speaker 7: I feel like is similar to, if not influential on
Speaker 7: the Genesis Garden of Eden, right, And I wonder too,
Speaker 7: what does it say the relationship of the influence, But
Speaker 7: also that it would seem that there's different expressions and
Speaker 7: sayings in the Bible from Paul that beckoned directly to Plato.
Speaker 7: And I wonder, I wonder if you guys have looked
Speaker 7: into that or just seen seeing that and what that
Speaker 7: might say.
Speaker 6: That Well, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 5: Paul Is is very much associated with uh, not not
Speaker 5: necessarily Greek philosophy, but certainly with with a place like Athens, right,
Speaker 5: because he goes there to the ari Opagas rock and
Speaker 5: he makes that which if you're standing on the ari
Speaker 5: O Pagas, you can see the acropolis directly across, and
Speaker 5: it would would have been just above the the the Uh,
Speaker 5: the Placauy and the Agora where everybody met in central
Speaker 5: Athens converting people. And if you if you go there today,
Speaker 5: there's still there's a plaque with with you know that
Speaker 5: famous speech about telling people like you don't know what
Speaker 5: you worship. But in Christianity it's different. We understand these
Speaker 5: and so on and so forth.
Speaker 6: To me, it it.
Speaker 5: I think that he was part of a deeper tradition,
Speaker 5: a more profound tradition having to do with a platonic worldview.
Speaker 5: And here's the thing. If you were educated your science
Speaker 5: in that time, your science was basically platonic, this whole
Speaker 5: idea of the cosmos and the nested spheres and stuff
Speaker 5: like that. The first time we understand the harmony of
Speaker 5: the spheres, really that is later. It's in neo Pythagoreanism
Speaker 5: and the fragments of the early Pythagoreans like Philo Lais,
Speaker 5: and they're they're more interested in politics and community living
Speaker 5: and what you shouldn't eat and what you should eat,
Speaker 5: and that kind of stuff is really all the number
Speaker 5: and harmony stuff comes around this time that we're talking about,
Speaker 5: you know, Hellenistic period, maybe three hundred years before the
Speaker 5: first Entry, so on and so forth.
Speaker 6: But all of that stuff.
Speaker 5: You get this, this this cosmology of nested spheres and
Speaker 5: things like this, these eight spheres. The first time that
Speaker 5: we see that it's positive almost contemporaneous.
Speaker 6: These two things. You have Eudoxus who gives us that model.
Speaker 5: He puts that forth into the UH, into the you know,
Speaker 5: the the learned society of that time. And right around
Speaker 5: that same time, like within a year or two, you know,
Speaker 5: most scholars agree, is when Plato writes or finishes the Republic.
Speaker 5: And at the end of book ten of the Republic,
Speaker 5: there's this little section called the myth of Earth that
Speaker 5: gives us that whole kind of nested sphere cosmology. And
Speaker 5: you'll see in the writings of Paul, which kind of
Speaker 5: tie into what pt was saying about the Mrkova tradition.
Speaker 6: He talks about how.
Speaker 5: You know, he most uh, you know, biblical scholars and
Speaker 5: you know, people engaging in hermanutics, they'll say that he
Speaker 5: was talking about himself. I don't know, but sure he's
Speaker 5: talking about I once knew a brother who was assumed,
Speaker 5: who was taken up into the Third Heaven. So he's
Speaker 5: using Platonic verbiage to discuss this is But I don't
Speaker 5: I don't necessarily know that he's like specifically part of
Speaker 5: a of a Platonic I don't know, a Neil, you know,
Speaker 5: you know, a Hellenistic sort of like mystery cult.
Speaker 6: So much as it's like if you just.
Speaker 5: Look around at the knowledge of the world at that time,
Speaker 5: the ancient Mediterranean's all based on Plato already, you know.
Speaker 5: So it's like that's like me coming and talking about gravity,
Speaker 5: and then like you know, in a thousand years people
Speaker 5: are like, well, maybe this guy.
Speaker 6: Was in like you know, the cult of Newton, you know.
Speaker 6: It's like, no, it's just everybody fucking knew it. Every
Speaker 6: everybody knows that guy.
Speaker 5: Everybody knows it's taught widely so and that's how we
Speaker 5: orient like think of that. That's weird, right, the entire
Speaker 5: globe almost or orients. There were, at least in the
Speaker 5: in the educated aspects. They already they know the concept
Speaker 5: of gravity.
Speaker 1: And stuff like that.
Speaker 6: So I think it's a similar concept there where Paul is.
Speaker 5: It's just the vernacular that he's using, uh, is so
Speaker 5: embedded in any kind of learned society. And we know
Speaker 5: he you know, he had to have been somewhat learned
Speaker 5: because he wrote you know, people people Again, you know
Speaker 5: p D pointed out earlier, like the ancient worldview and
Speaker 5: that experience. We've been completely abstracted from that, so we
Speaker 5: don't think about like, oh, not everybody could read and write.
Speaker 5: As a matter of fact, most people couldn't read or write,
Speaker 5: you know. So if he's if he's dealing in these circles,
Speaker 5: he likely has some grounding in the quote unquote science
Speaker 5: of his time, which was which was very much so platonic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just my thought.
Speaker 4: The entire tradition of a sacred book, Yeah, incredibly new idea.
Speaker 4: And in the ancient world, religion was something that was practiced,
Speaker 4: it was physical, it was you were completely immersed in it.
Speaker 4: There wasn't a sacred text that those kinds of things
Speaker 4: entered with these mystery traditions when you would get the
Speaker 4: symbolon the password to get into whatever tradition it is
Speaker 4: you're exploring, and in regard to Paul. You know, I
Speaker 4: think it's there's great. What I said is spot on
Speaker 4: about him ascending into the third heaven. Again, this is
Speaker 4: another confirmation of a Greek cosmo conception. It doesn't exist
Speaker 4: in a vacuum. But as as far as what he
Speaker 4: might have been involved with, I can't remember the author's name.
Speaker 4: There's a book on Paul in the Mysteries of Baptism.
Speaker 4: I've got it in the other room, but I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't want to leave you guys and go dig
Speaker 4: it up. But I can.
Speaker 2: I can.
Speaker 4: If anybody's interested, reach out to me later. I'll give
Speaker 4: you the title of the book. But it's looking at
Speaker 4: Paul's very likely involvement with non Christian mystery traditions prior
Speaker 4: to his conversion. And he is a soldier type figure,
Speaker 4: which really makes the cult of Methras of very possible.
Speaker 4: And and they have that same model of assent of
Speaker 4: of traveling up through the through the heavens, right to
Speaker 4: get to the final grade of Pater of Father, to
Speaker 4: meet with the Father, become one with the Father, and
Speaker 4: then embody the Father as a as a higher event
Speaker 4: on earth. So it's been argued that he was involved
Speaker 4: with them. But as to whether he was and whether
Speaker 4: he's even talking about him self, like I said, we
Speaker 4: we don't know that, but the but we can be
Speaker 4: certain that he's drawing on Greek tradition when he says that.
Speaker 8: I do recall reading about Paul as far as Saul
Speaker 8: of Tarsus and Tarsus there was a figure called Z's
Speaker 8: that was a dead and as sinded god that actually
Speaker 8: rose to become Osdi's, which is light. So there was
Speaker 8: a tradition in that region of these this ascended form
Speaker 8: that kind of and you see this, that's this development
Speaker 8: of transcendentalism from going to you know, Shoal, you know
Speaker 8: this place, or with the Zoroastrians, the idea of burning
Speaker 8: off the bad parts so that you could return to
Speaker 8: the to the monad. It kind of you just see
Speaker 8: this evolving and like you said, as far traveling out
Speaker 8: and then you have the various night journeys that begin
Speaker 8: of all the different profits and how they're taken into
Speaker 8: the heavens and showing the workings of the cosmos. So
Speaker 8: you're seeing this evolution of these transcendental forms of people
Speaker 8: realizing that there are you know, higher realms of understanding,
Speaker 8: you know, in time and space.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you get a perfect example of that in the
Speaker 4: Greek magical PAPYRII if you look at the the Methrist liturgy.
Speaker 4: In the ritual, they call it a ritual apothenitismos, which
Speaker 4: means of not dying, of becoming a mortal. But it's
Speaker 4: it's interesting because this applethitismos isn't permanent. When you come
Speaker 4: down from the ascent, you are thanitismos again. You can die,
Speaker 4: You're no longer mortal, you know. So immortality is this
Speaker 4: glimpse into eternity. And and yeah, and like the language
Speaker 4: is so problematic because if if you say to someone, well,
Speaker 4: I experienced eternity, logically, know the fuck you didn't. You're
Speaker 4: you you weren't at the beginning, there is no end,
Speaker 4: You're right here. How can you say that you participated
Speaker 4: in eternity. But that's that's how we know that. It's
Speaker 4: it's not about a duration of time. It's it's it's
Speaker 4: that methraic, aon that transcends time, something more like the pleroma. Right,
Speaker 4: it's it's outside of time, which young would say that
Speaker 4: means it's it's a it's a quality of a quality
Speaker 4: of consciousness, not a quanta that we can count and
Speaker 4: say there's the beginning, there's the end. So in the
Speaker 4: in that assent ritual really I think the best example
Speaker 4: of one uh from from that era. It's wrapped up
Speaker 4: with the same expansion of vision, expansion of consciousness. But
Speaker 4: we always have to come back down, and I think
Speaker 4: that's important because we're useless as a hermit on top
Speaker 4: of a mountain praying for the world somewhere like Zarathustra
Speaker 4: in Nietzsche, you have to come back down the mountain.
Speaker 4: Enlightenment isn't climbing the top of the mountain staying there.
Speaker 4: Enlightenment is is summiting the mountain, coming back down and
Speaker 4: then allowing what you saw from that perspective to inform
Speaker 4: your behavior. When you're late for work, right or when
Speaker 4: you're trying to check out at the grocery store, or
Speaker 4: you're beginning to have road rage. You know, that's the
Speaker 4: real enlightenment experience. If we don't come back down, we
Speaker 4: don't complete the cycle. And that's what I was mentioning
Speaker 4: moment A of these cycles that Proclust talks so much about,
Speaker 4: we have the Pruodos, the descent, into a body that
Speaker 4: coming down from the mountain. But then we have that epistrophae,
Speaker 4: the return, that anagogic ascent, and it's this cyclic process
Speaker 4: that maintains a connection between the to you know, to
Speaker 4: use a spatial category, which is really fallacious, but we
Speaker 4: have to think about it. Somehow maintains that connection between
Speaker 4: the gods and man at the bottom of the chain.
Speaker 4: We have to go up and come back down over
Speaker 4: and over and over, even to the point of death
Speaker 4: and rebirth.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: But but really there's no motion, there's no movement. It's
Speaker 4: happening every second. Genesis is happening constantly, is what the
Speaker 4: Kabbala is saying, and I believe that. And then there's
Speaker 4: a there's an article that came out a few years
Speaker 4: ago in Esquire about this guy who went to a
Speaker 4: ten deboot retreat and they're practicing vipisana and he goes psychotic,
Speaker 4: ends up being carried away in handcuffs and taken to
Speaker 4: a mental institution because he enters that space where the
Speaker 4: world is simultaneously dying and being reborn every second, you know,
Speaker 4: every second, right, So the idea of going up and
Speaker 4: going down, it's just a convenient way to articulate something
Speaker 4: that is really ineffable, but is so close and so
Speaker 4: present that it's like the fish asking what is water?
Speaker 4: You know, it's it's you can't put your finger on it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and it's it's.
Speaker 5: We have this is This is an issue I find
Speaker 5: with people that come to magic and learn things like
Speaker 5: the kabbala and and or at least the hermatic kabala, right,
Speaker 5: the magical kabala, but especially also in taking students through
Speaker 5: the Platonic dialogue is something that I that I I
Speaker 5: kind of have to combat where it's like, you know,
Speaker 5: this stuff should be a scaffolding to to the project
Speaker 5: of what should be an internal experience, a nosis.
Speaker 6: Somebody asked me.
Speaker 5: I spoke at the Sacred Space between the World's Conference
Speaker 5: yesterday in Maryland, and I gave a whole thing on theorgy, right,
Speaker 5: but magic and myth in it. And I got a
Speaker 5: question that was as a valid question. It's like, would
Speaker 5: you consider theurgy mystical? I said no, because it's ceremonial,
Speaker 5: But theorgy should make you a mystic because the experiences
Speaker 5: that we are having are here in the in the
Speaker 5: eye of the soul, you know, type of thing, and
Speaker 5: again in the active imagination that's being seized by the
Speaker 5: divine and divinized.
Speaker 6: This is a big, big thing. When we say catharsis right.
Speaker 5: Purification, A lot of people think it's it's this moral
Speaker 5: things like.
Speaker 6: My soul feels pure, I don't feel like any you know.
Speaker 5: It's purification is the removal of obstructions to write view.
Speaker 5: A lot of people think insight is the accumulation of
Speaker 5: information in reality. To PD's point, the top of that
Speaker 5: mountain is you divesting yourself of things that you that
Speaker 5: you accumulated from that perspective, and so insight is clarity.
Speaker 5: It's not, you know, it's not about how much of
Speaker 5: this stuff you can pack into your brain if you're
Speaker 5: gonna like put the cart before the horse, you know.
Speaker 5: So it's every all this stuff has to remain a
Speaker 5: scaffolding for us to approach and talk about. And this
Speaker 5: is very big in the Platonic Dialogue, particularly in the
Speaker 5: time Aus. When the chief interlocutor of that dialogue, Timius,
Speaker 5: is about to start talking about time and eternity, that's
Speaker 5: how he starts his discussion of cosmogony. He distinguishes, Okay,
Speaker 5: there's an eternal component that the demiurge some for some
Speaker 5: reason looks at and sees perfection in eternity and decides
Speaker 5: to make a copy of it. And that copy he
Speaker 5: calls the moving image of Eternity. And it's based on
Speaker 5: space and therefore time. And if you notice, there's a
Speaker 5: threefold nature to it, right, And this might be a
Speaker 5: little lesoteric for people, but I'm assuming if you're if
Speaker 5: you're into me and what PD do, you're kind of.
Speaker 6: Familiar with this stuff.
Speaker 5: He takes the circuit of the same in the circuit
Speaker 5: of the different comprised of this kind of even an
Speaker 5: odd quality. They're two dimensional, the circles two dimensional. Now
Speaker 5: how do you create three dimensions from two dimensional figures?
Speaker 5: Insert them into each other, and now you've created a sphere.
Speaker 5: You've created three dimensions beginning middle an end. That is,
Speaker 5: he's creating the paradigm of time. Right, Because then he says,
Speaker 5: this isn't the cosmos. This is the blueprint of the cosmos, right,
Speaker 5: time cyclical nature? But what time ason talking about all this?
Speaker 5: He says, listen, there's really no way that we're going
Speaker 5: to be able to actually put this shit into words.
Speaker 5: So I'm going to do my best to talk about
Speaker 5: it mythopoetically, I like to say, rather than mythologically, because there's.
Speaker 6: A stigma to that.
Speaker 5: Mythopoetically we we only have recourse to mythology to really
Speaker 5: really show this to us. And as Socrates says, I think,
Speaker 5: I think at the end of the myth of Er
Speaker 5: in book ten, he does a brief digression where he says,
Speaker 5: I if the myth had convinced us, it would save.
Speaker 8: Us well with tim Ais in that cosmology. You also
Speaker 8: see a very similar aspect in Zoraster in regard to
Speaker 8: the beginning, the middle, and the end and bringing about
Speaker 8: the end Time's philosophy through Judaism into modern Christianity and is.
Speaker 4: Law and these these these the necessity of these myths,
Speaker 4: Like I said, it's what allows us to discuss this.
Speaker 4: Our minds need a picture, it needs something to hang
Speaker 4: on to. Without that, what we're left with is what's
Speaker 4: called apo faticism, apophatic mysticism, which is is a mysticism
Speaker 4: of negation. Anything we say about the divine is wrong
Speaker 4: because it's limiting it to that thing. Anything we could
Speaker 4: possibly say. So we deconstruct our picture of the transcendent
Speaker 4: step by step until we face what Deonysius the Areopagit
Speaker 4: called the bright darkness, you know. But he doesn't leave
Speaker 4: us with that. He goes on to say, but we
Speaker 4: need cataphatic mysticism and cataphatic meaning to bring it down,
Speaker 4: to bring that high, lofty transcended something down into something
Speaker 4: we can discuss and talk about, like a crucifix or
Speaker 4: a tree of life, you know, something that can give
Speaker 4: us a picture, because the human mind needs a picture
Speaker 4: to hang onto. Even if that picture is completely superfluous, fallacious,
Speaker 4: it'll never do justice to what we're talking about. But
Speaker 4: without that picture, without that myth, there's nothing to talk about,
Speaker 4: you know. And then you fall into that that zen
Speaker 4: that zen trap. And you know, a zen master they're
Speaker 4: fine in that trap. But trying to take a novice
Speaker 4: into that territory without something like a cone or something
Speaker 4: they can hold onto, h it's an insurmountable gap.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So the myths, I agree with you. It's they're essential,
Speaker 4: but really cannot get us there. But if anything's going
Speaker 4: to they will.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's a good way to put it. If
Speaker 5: anything can I get us there, that will. My myths
Speaker 5: will or because it's it's really I kind of characterize
Speaker 5: it as a symbolic vocabulary. You know, that's almost like algebraic.
Speaker 5: It's trying to break right, like the Pythagorean theorem. You're
Speaker 5: taking two knowns to find an unknown. And that's that's
Speaker 5: we know these images, We understand these relationships between a
Speaker 5: hawk and the sun, you know, Horus and raw and
Speaker 5: so on and so forth, and we're using two known
Speaker 5: things to find an unknown. The one thing I would
Speaker 5: recommend people who are interested in studying Plato first start
Speaker 5: with the first Alcibiety's and you, I would say, move
Speaker 5: through the twelve dialogues of the Iamblikian curriculum.
Speaker 4: But in editing those right now, so maybe in six
Speaker 4: months I'll have it published.
Speaker 6: That's incredible, that's incredible.
Speaker 5: And I would say when you when you do dive
Speaker 5: into these dialogues, keep this mythopoetic structure in mind. There's
Speaker 5: a lot that you will extract from the for instance,
Speaker 5: in the cratalysts, right the sort of prologue to the
Speaker 5: epistemological tetrad. For anybody who's caught up on that term,
Speaker 5: it's just you know, epistemology is what can and cannot
Speaker 5: be known?
Speaker 6: Why or why not?
Speaker 5: And and there's a series of dialogues where it's it's
Speaker 5: it becomes very mercurial. Now in the Cratalysts, he's talking
Speaker 5: about the suitability of names and things of the person
Speaker 5: that Socrates is talking to. His name is Hermogeny's right,
Speaker 5: her born of Hermes, right.
Speaker 6: So it's there's little there's.
Speaker 5: Tons of stuff like that all over the dialogues. There's
Speaker 5: completely saturated with little things like that, little tells, little layers,
Speaker 5: little tiny things. I mean, you look at there's the
Speaker 5: there's the divided line. There's the allegory of the cave.
Speaker 5: There's the myth of er, there's the myth of the
Speaker 5: afterlife in in in Fato uh. You know, there's that
Speaker 5: cosmogon or cosmological uh, a scent caravan of the feedris
Speaker 5: up in the the the celestial vault. He's constantly using myths,
Speaker 5: he's constantly creating myths. So it's if you look at
Speaker 5: those dialogues like that, I think that you're going to
Speaker 5: extract much more. And like what was ancient Greece famous
Speaker 5: for mythology, you know, Orpheus, even pythography, Pythagoras or Pythagoras
Speaker 5: is quote unquote teacher, especially Pherisiites, they were mythographers. If
Speaker 5: you look at the Dervani Papyrus, which is the oldest
Speaker 5: actual primary source in Europe in terms of that literature,
Speaker 5: it's the oldest document. It's it appears to be this
Speaker 5: pedagogical commentary on philosophically and ontologically interpreting mythology through through
Speaker 5: the lens of Orpheus. So so this was kind of
Speaker 5: like what ped was saying before they would have known
Speaker 5: this stuff, especially people in the academy. And the final
Speaker 5: point I want to put on that and I'm interested
Speaker 5: to say what what Pedia has to say about this.
Speaker 5: I've had a couple of confirmations from others that I
Speaker 5: really really respect. But when I started taking I take
Speaker 5: students through this this curriculum, we do the the the
Speaker 5: Eamblikian curriculum plus porphyrish Isago gay uh, the organ On
Speaker 5: of Aristotlin. Of course the Republic. You can't not do
Speaker 5: the Republic. And then from there we move into we
Speaker 5: go into uh like uh uh introductions to arithmetic, start
Speaker 5: getting into the quadrivium sort of thing like Nicomachus Theano Smyrna.
Speaker 6: All these guys.
Speaker 5: But then you get into the geometric stuff. Okay, the
Speaker 5: geometry and what was over you know, the fabled uh
Speaker 5: inscription over the gate to Platonic Academy. Let no one
Speaker 5: enter here who is ignorant of geometry. And I always
Speaker 5: wondered why that was the case, And I said, Okay,
Speaker 5: the divided line is geometric. There's a whole way to
Speaker 5: geometrically kind of recreate that line and show the golden ratio.
Speaker 5: You've got things like the moving image of Eternity and
Speaker 5: the time. It's very geometric, the geometric proof in the Mino.
Speaker 5: But here's the interesting thing. When you begin to actually
Speaker 5: practice geometry. I use starting out, I use Lawlor, not Euclid,
Speaker 5: because Euclid is tough for people.
Speaker 6: That don't understand this stuff.
Speaker 5: And it's all about proofs, it's all about logic. There's
Speaker 5: nothing there's no spiritual commentary, there's no metaphysical commentary. So
Speaker 5: in using the first couple of books of Lawler, who
Speaker 5: translated through the Ono Smyrna, so it's nice, it fits
Speaker 5: in nicely where there's a gap in the literature, because
Speaker 5: there is there's a tremendous gap in the in the
Speaker 5: ancient neopythagorea and geometric stuff. What you realize is that
Speaker 5: in just silence of practicing that geometry and understanding it,
Speaker 5: you realize this, I am learning literally the coding for
Speaker 5: the universe. Now, what the Platonists and Neoplatonists say is
Speaker 5: you are assimilating yourself to the way that the divine thinks.
Speaker 5: And I personally believe that the reason why you couldn't
Speaker 5: be ignorant of geometry to enter into Plato's academy, even
Speaker 5: if it's just a fable, is because it isn't was
Speaker 5: in the practice of geometry that taught these people how
Speaker 5: to think philosophically, not.
Speaker 6: The other way around. The practice.
Speaker 5: What geometry does, the practice of geometry does to your
Speaker 5: fucking mind is teaches you how to think philosophically. It's
Speaker 5: like going to the gym for like, you know, noetic assent.
Speaker 5: You know, it's just practicing geometry. It's unbelievable, But I'm
Speaker 5: I'm interested to hear if that sounds just like batshit
Speaker 5: crazy off the rails to.
Speaker 4: You, No, I don't at all. I don't at all.
Speaker 4: I think another aspect of why it's so important has
Speaker 4: to do with with beauty, right, we get we get
Speaker 4: these when the forms are discussed directly, the ones that
Speaker 4: are confirmed. We hear about the form of the good,
Speaker 4: the form of the beautiful, and the form of the
Speaker 4: true right and and the truth and the beauty are
Speaker 4: hallmarks of the good. If we see that, we know
Speaker 4: it's close to and participating in the form of the good.
Speaker 4: And I think the beauty and the truth of it
Speaker 4: I have a lot to do with why it's so
Speaker 4: effective in that regard. We know it's true because true
Speaker 4: we're talking about when that word is used in in freemasonry,
Speaker 4: we're talking about something that's square right, that's that that
Speaker 4: works mathematically, it's going to fit together perfectly. So when
Speaker 4: we're talking about is something true, we're really saying is
Speaker 4: does it fit together in a harmonious manner. But the
Speaker 4: beauty aspect geometry is is arguably arguably the most beautiful
Speaker 4: thing about existing on on this planet in this domain.
Speaker 4: But there is word play that Socrates uses that proclus
Speaker 4: unpacks where he he uses the word against claytor because
Speaker 4: the word for beauty in claytor, which means to call
Speaker 4: to call out, are almost identical. And you know how
Speaker 4: how Plato is with his wordplay, it's almost if you
Speaker 4: if you don't know the Greek, you miss it. But
Speaker 4: it's it's all through the dialogues. But what he's getting
Speaker 4: at is like, where does a rose.
Speaker 3: End?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 4: Is it just at the rose itself? Or is it
Speaker 4: as far as I can smell that rose? And that
Speaker 4: smell is what Socrates is likening to a call. It's
Speaker 4: calling us, and that call is the mean that exists
Speaker 4: between the observer and the observed. And remember what Proclus
Speaker 4: says about the soul. The soul is a mean. It's
Speaker 4: a mean. It's a ratio between the physical and the
Speaker 4: non physical. Between suke and physicis like between noose and
Speaker 4: physicis is what suke is. So when we see something
Speaker 4: and are attracted to its beauty, that's a physical, a
Speaker 4: visual call, and it tells us something about the radio
Speaker 4: between us. Where do I end and where does that begin?
Speaker 4: Is there a line where we can say it begins
Speaker 4: or ends? And to take the next step and say, well,
Speaker 4: that call, that beauty, that mean, that ratio, that's our soul.
Speaker 4: I think really speaks to the efficacy of geometry. Even
Speaker 4: working at what we might call an unconscious level. It
Speaker 4: forces the harmonies of the universe, including ourselves and our
Speaker 4: interaction with the world, to be put right in our face.
Speaker 8: And to that point when you look in what is
Speaker 8: it Piedeo where he talks about harmony in essence, when
Speaker 8: you create an instrument and you play that instrument and
Speaker 8: you bring these beautiful sounds out of it, that those
Speaker 8: aren't like you're talking about the line between where a
Speaker 8: thing ends and where thing begins. If you take that
Speaker 8: instrument and destroy it, you're in no way, you know,
Speaker 8: destroying the harmony, because you can build another instrument to
Speaker 8: recreate it's it's always existing, It's always there. It's just
Speaker 8: a matter of how we're able to draw it.
Speaker 5: Out yea, which requires skill and requires knowledge right to
Speaker 5: tune an instrument.
Speaker 6: Particularly.
Speaker 5: The one thing I want to add on to there
Speaker 5: is that in the ancient conception of harmonics, there were
Speaker 5: effectively three three ratios sesqui alters, sesquitertiin, and sesqui. Okay,
Speaker 5: so that's the root and octave, which are you know,
Speaker 5: basically the same thing. There's the fourth and the fifth,
Speaker 5: so there's there's three perfect ratios right there now in
Speaker 5: the in the uh Platonic Uh, the dialogue, the Fato
Speaker 5: that you were just mentioning talks about the three the
Speaker 5: tripartite soul. This actually is an extension from the Pythagorean
Speaker 5: so where they thought there were three types of people. Okay,
Speaker 5: you know, the curious was the rational, the ambitious was
Speaker 5: the spirited, and the covetous was the appetitive, and Plato
Speaker 5: puts those into the tripartite nature of the soul.
Speaker 6: Now, think of it this way.
Speaker 5: These three ratios that have to have relationship to each other,
Speaker 5: the appetites, the emotions, and then.
Speaker 6: The the rational. They have to be this they have
Speaker 6: to the same way. Think of it this way.
Speaker 5: If you, if you understand the piano and music theory,
Speaker 5: a chord, a proper chord consists of three tones.
Speaker 6: Okay, now if.
Speaker 5: You if one tone is playing a blue note, it's
Speaker 5: off by a half step. We don't have harmony anymore.
Speaker 5: We have dissonance. Classically, classically, you know, the modern mind
Speaker 5: delights in ugly things. It's just what we've done. We've
Speaker 5: created a new paradigm of inversion, and it's one of
Speaker 5: the reasons why everything is fucked everybody looking out at
Speaker 5: this and that's like you like ugly shit, you love
Speaker 5: the disharmonious. What the fuck do you think you're gonna get?
Speaker 5: You can get the harmony out of disarmony, you know.
Speaker 5: So It's the thing is now, if you if you
Speaker 5: orient that chord, that chordal structure, and it's right relationships
Speaker 5: to each other, and then you think about that as
Speaker 5: the three the tripartite nature of the soul. Everybody knows
Speaker 5: the discomfort automatically when you when you play a blue note,
Speaker 5: when you play something that's in accidental, something that's inharmonious,
Speaker 5: it's ooh. Now can you imagine the existence discomfort, the
Speaker 5: existential discomfort of having one of those three parts of
Speaker 5: the soul not where it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: So, and now his his his medicine, his philosophical medicine
Speaker 5: for us, is the application of the four virtues. You
Speaker 5: see it in the Alcibiades, you see it in the
Speaker 5: Gorgeous you see it's fucking everywhere. A lot of people
Speaker 5: love to talk about it. In the context of the Republic.
Speaker 6: He literally takes.
Speaker 5: You through all four, all four of those cardinal virtues
Speaker 5: in almost every single dialogue in the in the.
Speaker 6: Exactly why, because like this is the medicine.
Speaker 5: These four things make it so that you will always
Speaker 5: be harmonious. If you conform yourself to these things, you
Speaker 5: will always be you will always be creating harmony.
Speaker 8: And and to that point, in regard to the creation
Speaker 8: of the state, Plato even at one point talks about
Speaker 8: doing gymnastics in the womb in order to train. And
Speaker 8: basically you have to learn these things from the earliest
Speaker 8: ages and be edified in these things as you come up.
Speaker 8: And the building of that whole individual person is what
Speaker 8: creates the solidity of what is the macro to the
Speaker 8: micro the larger state, you know, in essence, So it's
Speaker 8: a matter of this this system of again like the
Speaker 8: transcendent aspect of moving up towards the monad. You know,
Speaker 8: it's it's the same idea with the state in the
Speaker 8: individual within the state, and it's it's always in larger ideas,
Speaker 8: uh than then, you know, like it's it's the multi entendres.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 6: I like to I like to cut your jib sailor.
Speaker 4: I like what you said, like about about tritones and
Speaker 4: about you know, flattening the third and entering these these
Speaker 4: these you know, sustained to chords that that that they're
Speaker 4: they they do not qualify as beauty. You'll hear people
Speaker 4: say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Plato
Speaker 4: would say, get the fuck out of here with that bullshit.
Speaker 4: The the the weirdness of an off chord is interesting, right,
Speaker 4: it's curious, it's fascinating. It's not beautiful. And this is
Speaker 4: coming from somebody that listens to Orni Coleman and John Zorn.
Speaker 4: You know, I love love chaotic, dissonant music, but I
Speaker 4: would never call it beautiful. Beauty is a specific form,
Speaker 4: and learning to recognize that is really the first step
Speaker 4: to getting anywhere in Platonism.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 8: I think there's one point, and this is just recently
Speaker 8: in what I've been looking into in regard to the laws.
Speaker 8: I think it's four or five where they're talking about
Speaker 8: comedy and then he goes into the tragedyans and he
Speaker 8: says of a group of trail you know, a troop
Speaker 8: of tragedians showed up at the city and wanted to
Speaker 8: set up in the town square. It's like, first off, no,
Speaker 8: that's not gonna happen. You need to check what their
Speaker 8: material is. You need to check like what the philosophy
Speaker 8: is and whether it's in accordance, in resonance with the
Speaker 8: structure of the state itself, and if it's not, then
Speaker 8: you run them off. So it's and you see this
Speaker 8: symbolically from lower levels to higher levels, talking about children,
Speaker 8: talking about comedy talking. It's in every aspect. What one
Speaker 8: does in their younger life, they'll do less than their
Speaker 8: older life. It's aschotomy between the play between the existence
Speaker 8: and the non exist. In simlitude, I have I.
Speaker 4: Have a question for for anyone who wants.
Speaker 1: To answer.
Speaker 4: And I and this is, you know, a legitimate, honest question.
Speaker 4: How how do you distinguish beyond beyond the understanding that
Speaker 4: republic is very much talking about the proper constitution of
Speaker 4: the of the soul of an individual, of the mind,
Speaker 4: of the of the body, because that that is acceptable
Speaker 4: to most people. But how do you defend, if you
Speaker 4: would even want to, the objection that what's being described
Speaker 4: as a totalitarian or.
Speaker 8: Fascist it is one percent of fascist, totalitarian monarchical dictator state.
Speaker 5: Well, here's the thing, though, here's here's where it differs.
Speaker 5: And this is the key to what you said before
Speaker 5: about the tragedians in the laws. He talks about that
Speaker 5: in the Republic. He basically says, look, we're not gonna
Speaker 5: have poets. That's not what's gonna happen. And he says
Speaker 5: it is much lamentable, very lamentable. But the thing is
Speaker 5: they can say things that are pleasant and convincing and
Speaker 5: not have the truth in them. In the same way
Speaker 5: there's no beauty in a susscord. There's novelty and interest,
Speaker 5: you know, piquing your interest in the same way in
Speaker 5: poetry could sound you know, it could fill you with
Speaker 5: this sense of righteousness or what have you, but doesn't
Speaker 5: mean anything they're saying has any truth in it, even
Speaker 5: though it sounds good. Okay, that's something we all got
Speaker 5: to keep in mind today. Okay, Now, what's interesting is
Speaker 5: he says, he basically makes a caveat unless we know
Speaker 5: we can definitively know that they have become philosophers. And
Speaker 5: it's the same thing with the philosopher regent, is that
Speaker 5: the only person who's fit to rule is the person
Speaker 5: who understands this shit and applies it to themselves. So
Speaker 5: here's the thing. If the ruler applies this system to themselves.
Speaker 5: It's not tyrannical, right, and therefore it's not tyrannical to
Speaker 5: apply it.
Speaker 6: To a civilization.
Speaker 5: Why because the definition Plato gives us a tyranny, he says.
Speaker 5: First of all, he says democracy inevitably leads to tyranny
Speaker 5: because it allows us too many liberties. Every time he says,
Speaker 5: the democratic man is the father of the tyrant. Why
Speaker 5: because the tyrant is not just somebody who has control.
Speaker 5: The tyrant is somebody who abuses that control because they
Speaker 5: are a slave. What are they a slave to their
Speaker 5: own appetites? The tyrant is actually the fucking slave in
Speaker 5: the Platonic system. This is a system of liberation through philosophy. Okay,
Speaker 5: So I don't consider that fascistic.
Speaker 8: It well, and that's the whole thing. You can call
Speaker 8: it these things. But at the same time, because it's
Speaker 8: based on this idea of ascendance and the higher thought forms,
Speaker 8: it's an alternate way to look at the monarchy or
Speaker 8: a system that becomes fascist in essence, but you know,
Speaker 8: in accordance with the higher realms. That's one thing. This
Speaker 8: is very utopian in essence as far as philosophy. But
Speaker 8: when you sink into the more crystallized, you know, realm
Speaker 8: of doggy dog and greed and everyone out for their
Speaker 8: own it turns into this corrupted every you know, everything's corrupted.
Speaker 8: So it's it's this idea of in this realm. It's like,
Speaker 8: you know, communism works on a small level, but once
Speaker 8: it gets so big, you know, it creates a cast system.
Speaker 8: Whereas with this, because you know, we're in the physical realm,
Speaker 8: this utopian idea, this mindset of higher forms, unfortunately, because
Speaker 8: of the corrupted state of man, has a tendency to
Speaker 8: eat itself.
Speaker 10: I I also have an idea to answer your question, PD,
Speaker 10: and that idea is that I think we forget not
Speaker 10: maybe anyone here, but that this is a dialogue and
Speaker 10: that this is a drama. And the idea of this
Speaker 10: being a drama would mean that there are outrageous things
Speaker 10: that are going to be stated, like the ideals of eugenics,
Speaker 10: the ideals of you know, different ideas of like only
Speaker 10: the philosopher kings now know whose children are parented to who,
Speaker 10: and all these strange things that we today in a
Speaker 10: modern society would deem to be a totalitarian or be
Speaker 10: fascist or see murderous and really it is what it's
Speaker 10: meant to do. And I think this is a really
Speaker 10: important distinction, is that it's meant to show the contradictory
Speaker 10: nature of not only the human soul and not only
Speaker 10: the police, but that when we are taken outside of
Speaker 10: our normal, everyday nois we can start to understand the
Speaker 10: true nature of what Plato through Socrates, was trying to do.
Speaker 9: And he's trying to teach us how to philosophize.
Speaker 4: And we we don't know what Plato thought. That's what
Speaker 4: That's what you're getting at as well, is that as
Speaker 4: a dialogue.
Speaker 10: That's exactly that is exactly.
Speaker 6: Says that too. And well, again we don't.
Speaker 1: We don't.
Speaker 5: Scholars are are It's a coin toss whether or not
Speaker 5: they it's authentic. But in his second letter, Plato says,
Speaker 5: the thoughts of the the beliefs of Plato will never
Speaker 5: be written down. The dialogues are Socrates made beautiful?
Speaker 8: Yeah, And I wanted to bring up one more thing
Speaker 8: in regard to the Abrahamic religion. I find it interesting.
Speaker 8: I've been going through the Talmood lately, and I'm about
Speaker 8: a tenth of the way through it, and I find
Speaker 8: it's very much set up in the same methodology of
Speaker 8: the Platonic philosophies in regard to the rabbi is coming
Speaker 8: together and basically having a dialogue about a subject matter
Speaker 8: that oftentimes has never resolved. So I think there you
Speaker 8: may also have kind of a carry because that wasn't
Speaker 8: written until what four to six hundred AD, So I
Speaker 8: think there you may also have some carryover with kind
Speaker 8: of these ideas and how the philosophy has kind of
Speaker 8: played into the growing strands of the different religions as well.
Speaker 5: And I want to just point out one thing that
Speaker 5: was that was pointed out to me by David kim Smith.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: You know, he had studied with he's you know, one
Speaker 5: of my kabala teachers, but he had studied with with
Speaker 5: some Hasidics, right, And there's a very richly preserved tradition
Speaker 5: of Hebrew kabbala in there. And also there's a rich
Speaker 5: preservation within their Cabalistic vernacular of Greek words like, for instance,
Speaker 5: there's the name for them of like matter, or the
Speaker 5: first principle of of of formation is huli. That's you know,
Speaker 5: the the el or the the hula of the Greeks.
Speaker 5: There's all sorts of ship like that all over there capitalism.
Speaker 5: But what he said is when he went in and
Speaker 5: he and to to engage in this pedagogical kind of
Speaker 5: discourse at a long table like banquet style, and at
Speaker 5: either end there was a rabbi on one side and
Speaker 5: an acolyte on the other.
Speaker 6: They were only working with each other.
Speaker 5: Similar way you'd see people playing chess and they would
Speaker 5: have their the text open in front of them, and
Speaker 5: the idea was not that the text has the answers,
Speaker 5: but that the text is a prompting for further insight.
Speaker 5: And so this is having understood that, I see the
Speaker 5: influence of the dialectic of the Platonic school the Deocratic school,
Speaker 5: and now I apply that to the dialogues with students saying,
Speaker 5: we're not this is not our Bible, it's not gospel.
Speaker 5: But what it is is we're going to use this
Speaker 5: to do what they're doing about about what they're doing
Speaker 5: in dialectic.
Speaker 8: Of elevating the spirit and finding the wholeness of the
Speaker 8: self and the soul.
Speaker 11: And yes, yes, well, I think it just to reiterate
Speaker 11: the idea that Socrates is bringing upon the precarious and
Speaker 11: the subversive position of the philosopher and how the philosopher
Speaker 11: is the true rebel in the Republic and in Athens
Speaker 11: at that time, due to obviously Socrates trying to prove
Speaker 11: the point.
Speaker 9: And I would think, and I think Leo.
Speaker 10: Strauss and a few other philosophers in that timeframe, Alan
Speaker 10: Bloom being one of them in our time frame, is
Speaker 10: saying how important it is to know that the apology,
Speaker 10: the actual true apology, was the Republic.
Speaker 9: And I think that's really fascinating to think about.
Speaker 1: Hm.
Speaker 5: Well, I just want to say, man, Danny pd every
Speaker 5: time I learned so much, every time I talk to you, dude,
Speaker 5: I really you know, I love you.
Speaker 6: I miss you. I got to come out and see you.
Speaker 4: Definitely, definitely we need you out here.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you need to go.
Speaker 4: I need to come to I need to come to you. Next,
Speaker 4: we're supposed to do some some crystal digging.
Speaker 6: Oh that's right. Yeah, yeah at the gem minds over.
Speaker 4: Here, Yeah, yeah, your place next.
Speaker 12: Yes, I really wanted to ask a question. You were
Speaker 12: talking about purification, right, It made me think of Platinus
Speaker 12: and he reiterates over and over this stripping of what's
Speaker 12: alien to yourself, and I think that's like Marx was saying,
Speaker 12: I think like you were all saying, like that is
Speaker 12: the process of dialectic to an extent, at least dialectic
Speaker 12: of yourself. But it made me think of this other
Speaker 12: concept of Plato's that is very unique to Plato, which
Speaker 12: is the idea of the intelligibles and of them as
Speaker 12: like these divine beings, right, and the further that you
Speaker 12: kind of ascend and strip yourself of those alien things,
Speaker 12: you know, you kind of assent and and if you
Speaker 12: compare those intelligibles to humans, right, a big difference is
Speaker 12: that those intelligibles, I mean obviously, not only do they
Speaker 12: not have the sensory faculties, but they are not necessarily human.
Speaker 12: You know, they're almost mechanical. They have they don't have
Speaker 12: like perhaps changing will. But a big question that I
Speaker 12: always have is, you know, when when we're looking at
Speaker 12: these hierarchies, when we're looking at these intelligences, how I
Speaker 12: know this is kind of off base, perhaps, but how
Speaker 12: do you differentiate the planetary forces or intelligences and the
Speaker 12: angelic ones.
Speaker 4: That's that's a good question. I'll take a quick stab
Speaker 4: and I think Ike, I know, Ike has a good
Speaker 4: answer for this because We've talked about something similar at
Speaker 4: New Hermopolis. When we're talking about the hierarchy of being,
Speaker 4: let's refer back to the principles the limit and the limitless.
Speaker 4: At the top is pure limit, at the bottom is
Speaker 4: pure limitlessness, the indefinite diad. As we progress from the
Speaker 4: top to the bottom, towards the middle, these become mixed.
Speaker 4: So there's there's When you say they're mechanical, I don't
Speaker 4: take you to mean robotic, but rather they have more
Speaker 4: limit than they do limitlessness. They don't they can't swerve,
Speaker 4: for instance, from the orbit for which they exist. If
Speaker 4: I understood you properly there.
Speaker 12: Yes, exactly like they they are more restricted. They have
Speaker 12: like a certain role, or they're maybe closer to the forms,
Speaker 12: and so they they have more distinct and consolidated properties
Speaker 12: or identifiers about themselves, their way of behaving, maybe even
Speaker 12: metaphysical properties of you know, the further up that you go,
Speaker 12: like I would say that the planetary intelligences are also
Speaker 12: metaphysical properties of the universe.
Speaker 4: That's a great way. And if you look at Proclus's
Speaker 4: breakdown with the hierarchy of being, and you see it
Speaker 4: earlier and Iamblicus.
Speaker 13: But there's the when he talks about the n cosm gods,
Speaker 13: he also refers to as the visible gods, and we're like,
Speaker 13: what do you mean visible gods where you're seeing them?
Speaker 4: He's talking about the planets, you know, these are these
Speaker 4: are in cosmic gods that we can see visibly, but
Speaker 4: in cosmic meaning, they're in matter, so they have more
Speaker 4: connection with the limitless than they do with limit Whereas
Speaker 4: the further we go up the chain beyond the sun
Speaker 4: is Helios, right, which has even more limit less limitlessness.
Speaker 4: So we're really talking about the tension, like Ike said earlier,
Speaker 4: between these two extreme opposites. And I think it is
Speaker 4: at Heraclitis that talks about the tension of the bowstring
Speaker 4: that that is necessary that produces the music that shoots
Speaker 4: the arrow. It's it's that same tension. But when you say,
Speaker 4: how do you distinguish an angelic being from a planetary being,
Speaker 4: the real criteria is how much or how much less
Speaker 4: of limit or limitlessness do they participate in?
Speaker 5: That's a great answer, yeah, I And of course I
Speaker 5: look at it in the same way where we're looking
Speaker 5: at like ontological chains. Again, this is an analogy the
Speaker 5: verticality of it like the tree of life. We're not
Speaker 5: saying that it's literally like a beam of consciousness being
Speaker 5: projected downward, but it's you're meeting the same consciousness at
Speaker 5: different you know, I have to be a little new
Speaker 5: agy about it, at a different frequency level.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: It's it's kind of like, here's a good example, like
Speaker 5: a cladney plate, right, So the cladney plate is people
Speaker 5: associate with heart with simatics. I made one and did
Speaker 5: a demo for the Institute of Hermetic Studies a couple
Speaker 5: of years ago. And you you you you connect a
Speaker 5: a piece of metal sheet piece of sheet metal to
Speaker 5: a speaker. There's a sophisticated way to do this because
Speaker 5: you don't want to deaden it. You just want the
Speaker 5: vibrations to go into it. And then I have like
Speaker 5: a frequency generator that's hooked up to the to this
Speaker 5: to this speaker, and I'm moving up and down these
Speaker 5: frequency lines. Okay, you pour a little bit of very
Speaker 5: very very fine sand or very very fine salt on it,
Speaker 5: and once you hit a certain frequency, that will the
Speaker 5: sand will begin to generate a geometric shape. That's not
Speaker 5: the shape of the frequency. That's the shape of the
Speaker 5: piece of metal. It's geometry that's holding it together. It's
Speaker 5: geometric signature. Now you move a little bit further, and
Speaker 5: the frequent the sand doesn't do anything.
Speaker 6: You keep going, you keep going boom.
Speaker 5: Okay, look now there's another frequency and for some reason
Speaker 5: the sands moving again. Maybe it's kind of like quadrupled.
Speaker 5: And it's what's the reason for that, The relationships that
Speaker 5: these frequencies have to each other. There's frequencies all throughout.
Speaker 6: You could move all the way down that line, you know,
Speaker 6: just do this weird thing.
Speaker 5: But for a specific phenomenal object, there's just there's a
Speaker 5: specific frequency that reveals its inherent patterns. Is geometric patterns.
Speaker 5: To me, this is evidence of the synthema though. Okay,
Speaker 5: this is like what they were intuiting. You know, it's
Speaker 5: like there's the God in there and it has different
Speaker 5: levels or expressions on that specific frequency line, like a
Speaker 5: musical scale, like a diatonic musical scale.
Speaker 6: So when you're.
Speaker 5: Tuning into these different beings, I think of it in
Speaker 5: that way. I'm working this frequency, working the I'm playing
Speaker 5: I'm playing the scale of Mars. I'm you know, I'm
Speaker 5: I'm working the scale of the sun and pd makes
Speaker 5: a very very good point which is at the core
Speaker 5: of Platonism, neo Platonism, uh and early Christianity.
Speaker 6: Free will.
Speaker 5: That's what that unlimit is free well, he said, you know,
Speaker 5: if there's more limit, they can't like turn it there, right.
Speaker 6: Free will is really really important.
Speaker 5: So a lot of times in working with them practically,
Speaker 5: which is kind of outside of the scope of this
Speaker 5: particular conversation, but in say saying something of you know,
Speaker 5: we work with the pseudo a derivative of the pseudo
Speaker 5: Deanesian hierarchies in the Golden Dawn, because that's what Agrippa's
Speaker 5: mostly using, and that's where we get our our things.
Speaker 5: The the type of and let's not forget these images
Speaker 5: of the of the deities, of the of the angels
Speaker 5: of the.
Speaker 6: That's not what they are.
Speaker 5: Okay, we have to create an image in order to interact.
Speaker 5: This is what what he what Pete was saying before.
Speaker 5: Our mind needs an image, right, otherwise just things start
Speaker 5: talking to you.
Speaker 6: What happens you go to the mental hospital. Oh yeah,
Speaker 6: like you need you need to set this.
Speaker 5: Up so that I'm intentionally this is you. I want
Speaker 5: you to talk to me through this. It's an agreed
Speaker 5: upon image that is ultimately relying on your available imagery.
Speaker 5: The type of the Amlicus talks about this, he's he
Speaker 5: he delineates what he calls theurgic appearance, he says, and
Speaker 5: it all has to do with how much light they
Speaker 5: give off and what quality it is. So gods will
Speaker 5: give off this pure white, overwhelming light, whereas like daimone
Speaker 5: is or they're a little darker, little murkier, a little ruddier.
Speaker 5: And I write light is also synonymous with intelligence in
Speaker 5: these these traditions as as uh, you know, the great
Speaker 5: professor Valter Honograph has pointed out many times there's an
Speaker 5: etymological connection between the word noose and light, particularly in
Speaker 5: the Hermetica. So there's that quality of consciousness. But I
Speaker 5: want to just sum it up by also kind of
Speaker 5: bringing it full circle to what we've spoken about in
Speaker 5: terms of Platonism. In the Platonic Paedia by the right
Speaker 5: means education.
Speaker 6: What is that?
Speaker 5: It's because what do you think education was not the
Speaker 5: learning of new information but the recollection of things your
Speaker 5: soul already knows. An omnisis okay, the word the Greek
Speaker 5: word for truth is alithia. That means not forgotten. It's
Speaker 5: all about remembering, and it ties into this free will. Okay,
Speaker 5: the ethical training in the beginning of the Platonic padia
Speaker 5: allows you more free will. You can you have a
Speaker 5: greater ability to make choices based on what you know
Speaker 5: is best, which is allowing the rational part of the
Speaker 5: soul to govern the other two. Okay, that's the beginning
Speaker 5: of you gain more free will.
Speaker 14: Right.
Speaker 5: As Jocko Willink, very very philosophically puts it, discipline is freedom.
Speaker 6: Discipline is freedom.
Speaker 5: And they there's this word for discipline, self control, and
Speaker 5: temperance that gets translated across the board, and depending on
Speaker 5: which translation you're using a Plato Sofrosini, it can mean balance,
Speaker 5: but it also gets translated as self control or discipline,
Speaker 5: and it is appropriate in all those contexts. Now, that's
Speaker 5: a little bit lower down the ontological line. As you
Speaker 5: go through the theurgic theophania and the the anosis, right,
Speaker 5: the revelation of deities, and then the the eventual union,
Speaker 5: you gain more free will higher up the line. Okay,
Speaker 5: why because you're constantly identifying with what you actually are
Speaker 5: and not having this this not the the the rational soul,
Speaker 5: not being impelled to the the imperatives and the pulses
Speaker 5: of physical matter, because they're they're they're fundamentally different, the
Speaker 5: soul and the and the body in terms of their natures.
Speaker 5: The soul is effervescent, it rises up, It is immortal,
Speaker 5: It is not spatially specific.
Speaker 6: The body is different.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 6: The soul has no needs.
Speaker 5: Plato says, the only time the soul needs anything is
Speaker 5: when it's in a body and it has to get
Speaker 5: into the noetic realm to be nourished by the beauty there.
Speaker 6: Okay, but it.
Speaker 5: Inherently has no needs. The body is different. The body
Speaker 5: has needs. I gotta pee, I gotta eat, I gotta sleep.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: The body is spatially specific. The body is not immortal.
Speaker 5: It will die. So there's this constant like we're confounded,
Speaker 5: which direction do we orient our our intelligence? Which which
Speaker 5: which direction are we are we working in? And it
Speaker 5: all has to do with with with with free will.
Speaker 5: So I think, believe it or not, as you get
Speaker 5: higher up the line, these things have less free will.
Speaker 5: In my experience, they have great power and less free will.
Speaker 5: Why because there and an the Amblicus says this, when
Speaker 5: deities appear in theretic appearance, they're accompanied by their diamones,
Speaker 5: they're accompanied by the there they're entourage. Why because it's
Speaker 5: those things that that that like execute its divine will there,
Speaker 5: which yeah, which is which is kind of interesting, but
Speaker 5: but I know it's interesting to me also how like
Speaker 5: the soul is really the only thing that gains more
Speaker 5: free will as it as it rises, which in that
Speaker 5: and that's just my personal anecdotal experience of these things.
Speaker 5: Is nothing like definitively tying anything I said to Platonism.
Speaker 4: No, that's that's it does You're you're absolutely right. We see.
Speaker 4: There's a great quote in Usta Vinis where he says,
Speaker 4: he says, philophy in the ancient world entailed trials and
Speaker 4: ordeals and modes of initiation, you know, And he said,
Speaker 4: and most importantly, it consolidated all of one's ethics, politics,
Speaker 4: economy into one thing, he said. So to philosophize is
Speaker 4: essentially to orientate yourself properly to the world. And he
Speaker 4: describes as he illustrates this by saying, it's like moving
Speaker 4: through a sacred calendar like the liturgical cycle, and following
Speaker 4: the natural patterns that the demi urge has laid forth
Speaker 4: because the urgy, first and foremost is demi urgy, participating
Speaker 4: in the demi urge by Mathexis through Mesis, by mimicking him.
Speaker 4: So he says, to to philosophize, then it's not to
Speaker 4: be a radical exception to the rule to have some
Speaker 4: new idea, to try and make your mark. To philosophize
Speaker 4: is to do exactly what you came here to do,
Speaker 4: which is the most liberating thing, because it's the most
Speaker 4: limiting thing. And we see echoes of that, and Mike
Speaker 4: Alister Crowley, do find your true will, do only that
Speaker 4: nothing else. That's a very Platonic idea, which speaks again
Speaker 4: to where do we see Plato in these modern traditions.
Speaker 4: Crowley is a great example when you look at his text,
Speaker 4: it's very obscure these days. But and the Oto we
Speaker 4: received a copy of Atlantis, a text called Atlantis which
Speaker 4: is completely based around the Republic, Crowley's picture of the
Speaker 4: republic for a thelemic for thlymic group of people. But
Speaker 4: that idea that that you're talking about, the further you
Speaker 4: get and in the in progress, the less free will
Speaker 4: we have. And uh cast but Bernardo Castrom, you familiar
Speaker 4: with him, Now Philosophy recently wrote a book on the Damon,
Speaker 4: but one of the points he makes is that really
Speaker 4: the closer we get to embodying our damon, the less
Speaker 4: free will we really have, because it's it's all about
Speaker 4: a surrender to the daemon. And we could say, well,
Speaker 4: I'm not going to do what the Damon has set
Speaker 4: forth for me. I'm going to pretend that I have
Speaker 4: free will and do something else. You still do what
Speaker 4: the Daman has set forth for you. The question is
Speaker 4: do I surrend under and surf on this title wave
Speaker 4: or do I get crushed by the tidal wave and
Speaker 4: still go that fucking direction, because that's where the chips fall.
Speaker 4: Where the daemons say they fall, and the daemons say
Speaker 4: where they fall based on what the gods have already
Speaker 4: decreed is the nature of reality. This is truth, right.
Speaker 4: So the further we get in the direction of of
Speaker 4: our daemon, and especially of the head of our chain,
Speaker 4: of our of our Syrah, free will is non existent.
Speaker 9: M yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The only free will that we that we attain here
Speaker 5: is freedom from the illusion that we are the body.
Speaker 5: And then we move up and dedicate ourselves. And that's
Speaker 5: interesting too because the Amlicus talks about the punishing di daemon,
Speaker 5: you know, which is like there there are yeah, this
Speaker 5: is these these are are to These are spirits that
Speaker 5: are meant to sort of smack your hand or smack
Speaker 5: your face if you know, like he give you a
Speaker 5: little bit of punishment.
Speaker 4: They also contain, like he mentions that their job is
Speaker 4: to keep us from spilling out of ourselves. Right, and
Speaker 4: if if man has to occupy this segment in the
Speaker 4: hierarchy of being, or there's a gap, there's no continuation
Speaker 4: of the flow.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: So if I want to ascend, like i Amboa says,
Speaker 4: first I need to be making offerings to my damon,
Speaker 4: you know, and then hopefully eventually to the god. But
Speaker 4: that punishing damon, it's punishing because it won't take its
Speaker 4: hand off of us saying you're going to be contained
Speaker 4: in this form in this you know, it's like a
Speaker 4: parent holding a kid down that you know, it's it's punishing,
Speaker 4: and but it's also containing so that the universe doesn't
Speaker 4: fall apart because there's a gaping black hole where I
Speaker 4: should be you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, And that's an important point I think for
Speaker 5: a lot of people that are interested in some of
Speaker 5: the things that we're interested in, because that idea of
Speaker 5: punishment slash containment to to our society feels oppressive, you know.
Speaker 5: And really it's like some in my in my life's experience,
Speaker 5: I mean a lot of times, punishment and containment was
Speaker 5: an ultimate mercy. It was an ultimate benevolence, right, because
Speaker 5: it gets you to sort of you know, uh, straightened
Speaker 5: out and fly right type of situation.
Speaker 8: There is no love without correction. It's an old baddage.
Speaker 4: I like that, that's true. Ye, when you have kids,
Speaker 4: you definitely definitely know the importance of containment.
Speaker 12: Yes, what could really be better than living aligned anyway?
Speaker 4: I agree?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, every anything else is basically that existential dissonance, right,
Speaker 5: that's right, which is not comfortable at all. But we
Speaker 5: you know, we've I think and this is just me,
Speaker 5: you know, right, because I'm always I'm a little outspoken
Speaker 5: about things, but I think we've normalized that that dissonance.
Speaker 6: That's that's existential state.
Speaker 8: Of music and art and media. You just see it consistently.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you guys are beautiful.
Speaker 8: Everybody here is beautiful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree. This has been a great grill.
Speaker 15: Yeah, Unfortunately, we do have people that need to leave too,
Speaker 15: so probably just gonna have a wrapping here.
Speaker 8: We didn't even get to talk about Atlantis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, and.
Speaker 15: You know what, our buddy, you know what, At first
Speaker 15: I was actually going to be like but I was like,
Speaker 15: you know, I don't want to be a fascist censor.
Speaker 15: But I did won't even say I didn't even want
Speaker 15: to touch Atlantis because you're gonna get people fucking bitching
Speaker 15: and arguing about stuff that's stupid in my opinion.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, that's that's the best way to get people
Speaker 5: in the peanut gallery start ringing their bellies.
Speaker 12: Is defeated Atlantis. And that's the end.
Speaker 2: Of it, right, That's what.
Speaker 5: Well, the thing is to a lot of and I'll
Speaker 5: just say this orienting it a platonic context. The the
Speaker 5: time ass which is where it's mentioned, is Socrates has
Speaker 5: traveled to the Pures, which is the port for these
Speaker 5: uh Athenian games. The other dialogue where that happens is
Speaker 5: the Republic. So it is typically thought, even though we
Speaker 5: don't have the definitive connective tissue, historically typically thought that
Speaker 5: the timeus is the next day. It's a con and
Speaker 5: you even have the same interlock. Hue tears with one missing, right,
Speaker 5: Socrates says, I see the three, where's the fourth? Uh,
Speaker 5: one of one of the guys is missing. So he
Speaker 5: just talked about the right way to govern, the police
Speaker 5: and the internal police, and now we're looking at Atlantis,
Speaker 5: which is the dark twin of the Republic, which is
Speaker 5: like this is how you fuck.
Speaker 8: Up destroy society or yourself.
Speaker 5: And also aliens and Bigfoot and all that they were.
Speaker 5: They were all there with the muppets. They were all yeah,
Speaker 5: synthetic Mercabas and Cimerassen.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Bob, both of you guys.
Speaker 15: Uh, let me start off with Brandon real quick, because
Speaker 15: I know he's going to leave it in sort of Brandon,
Speaker 15: please let everybody know what's up with you and where
Speaker 15: they can find all your amazing words.
Speaker 10: Thank you, Nick, Cardinal electric Head, Thank you Ike, and
Speaker 10: thank you P. D.
Speaker 1: Newman.
Speaker 9: Thank you. It's wonderful to meet you.
Speaker 2: PD.
Speaker 10: This is fantastic. I've been reading through your book. It's
Speaker 10: on my nightstand. It's amazing and I tell everybody to
Speaker 10: read it. I've posted it on my Instagram as well.
Speaker 10: An X so I am an avid pusher of your documentation.
Speaker 10: So again, thank you for showing up and I'd love
Speaker 10: to chat with you more another day. Everyone, like I
Speaker 10: always say thank you to the occult rejects for all things,
Speaker 10: head over to Magas in the media, where we break
Speaker 10: down myth, magic and meaning in the stories that we love.
Speaker 10: The world is wild, aliens are real, and reality is
Speaker 10: bending in its Epstein strings. Let's make sure we understand
Speaker 10: the meaning within the soul with stories like this and
Speaker 10: the media that is breaking, it's breaking its stranglehold on
Speaker 10: our conscious. Please like, subscribe and share not only to
Speaker 10: my channel, but everyone here, buy all their things, and
Speaker 10: make sure you know that no matter what happens out
Speaker 10: in reality, it's not the true reality we stem from
Speaker 10: the mind. Thank you again, Nick and everyone, have a
Speaker 10: wonderful evening.
Speaker 2: Of course, thank you for joining us. Awesome, Liwesome and
Speaker 2: Judith the Loon. What is going on, guys?
Speaker 14: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 6: Thank you Ike and PD.
Speaker 14: You put a different perspective on Plato for me, which
Speaker 14: I didn't even fathom. So I thank you for that
Speaker 14: you could catch you could find me on YouTube and
Speaker 14: on X as the Loon. I almost said Twitter there
Speaker 14: as the Loon and just feel free to drop by
Speaker 14: and join our conversations there.
Speaker 6: Thank you again, of course, no, thank you.
Speaker 2: And Jules my man, what is going on? Oh?
Speaker 16: This was a great show. Uh learned a lot, maybe
Speaker 16: a little too much, man ah Man. I have a
Speaker 16: lot of questions myself, but I didn't feel the need
Speaker 16: to ask them right now. So maybe we can do it,
Speaker 16: you know, I'm sure I'll see you guys on another episode.
Speaker 1: It was really good.
Speaker 16: Meeting you all though. Great pilled Pod on Twitter.
Speaker 9: We we may be streaming later.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 16: Brandon will be on my show soon, hopefully this next
Speaker 16: week or so, Grey Horn, Pagan's coming on Fair Toss
Speaker 16: Road and a on Bite and a few other people
Speaker 16: I think I have getting scheduled. So this this this
Speaker 16: was a banger. And like I said, I didn't know
Speaker 16: anything about Plato, hardly anything before this. So it's good
Speaker 16: to know where a lot of these ideas come from.
Speaker 16: And I think it is important for people to focus
Speaker 16: on their spirit.
Speaker 9: You know, someone had mentioned earlier.
Speaker 16: People kind to focus on or maybe it was this morning,
Speaker 16: even they focus on the afterlife, you know, they kind
Speaker 16: of don't focus on here and now and doing the
Speaker 16: work that can help you ascend to that final level,
Speaker 16: and so I think it's important to have these conversations
Speaker 16: and to get that information out there. So thank you
Speaker 16: guys for coming on, and it's good to see all
Speaker 16: all my fellow rejects. Again, as always, thank.
Speaker 2: You, Guls and Robbie Boxx. What is up?
Speaker 8: Yeah, this was a great talk. It was great to
Speaker 8: meet you Ike and always good to hang out PD.
Speaker 8: It's just some beautiful stuff to get into these ideas,
Speaker 8: you know. As far as myself, I'm Robbie or R
Speaker 8: Marx and I'm an artist illustrator And if you want
Speaker 8: to check out my other stuff, I have my metamind
Speaker 8: Cast podcast as well as all my artwork, you can
Speaker 8: go to my website. All my links you can find
Speaker 8: at my link tree, which are link tree, R M
Speaker 8: A ar X and always a pleasure. Nick, thanks for
Speaker 8: for getting me out of the little hermit hole on me.
Speaker 2: Thank you for doing man, thank you appreciating it. And
Speaker 2: Arrows what is up? Arrows?
Speaker 12: Hello? This was great. I learned so much. I really
Speaker 12: especially liked all the biblical history, a lot of that
Speaker 12: I didn't know, so this was great. Thanks for coming
Speaker 12: on and having this discussion with us and it was
Speaker 12: great to hang out with all of you rejects again.
Speaker 12: You can find me on YouTube at arrows up. I
Speaker 12: post a lot about Platinus and chaos and order and
Speaker 12: multiplicity and all sorts of things, so definitely go check
Speaker 12: that out if you're interested, and then you can find
Speaker 12: me at arrows to Ethos on x as well.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. I was, and Ethan sir.
Speaker 7: Well, Thank you everyone. I PD that was awesome. Thank
Speaker 7: you so much for sharing all your knowledge and wisdom.
Speaker 7: And everyone always appreciate communicating with you guys. Ethan Indigo
Speaker 7: Smith on all the social media YouTube even and yeah,
Speaker 7: I'm easy to find and appreciate everyone's communication if they
Speaker 7: decide to reach out.
Speaker 15: Thank you very much, Ethan, appreciate it. And I please
Speaker 15: let everybody know where they can find all your amazing work.
Speaker 5: Ikebager dot com I K E b A k E R.
Speaker 5: I'll put that in the chat. You can check me
Speaker 5: out there. I've got my.
Speaker 6: The latest YouTube video.
Speaker 5: I do documentary style presentations on the history, theory, and
Speaker 5: practice of the Western esoteric traditions. A bunch of it's platonic.
Speaker 5: The last one I did actually was a while ago.
Speaker 5: But it's it's basically an introduction to theoretic neoplatonism. I've
Speaker 5: got the latest three episodes of my podcast that you
Speaker 5: can stream from there.
Speaker 6: You can read my.
Speaker 5: Blog find out a little bit more about what it
Speaker 5: is I do. I give quarterly group classes that are
Speaker 5: open to the public at an extremely somebody has said
Speaker 5: fair rate, but it's not really fair to me, but
Speaker 5: it's fair to everyone else. Yeah, so you can check
Speaker 5: that out if you're interested. I have a newsletter that
Speaker 5: goes out just about every Thursday, and it's completely free.
Speaker 5: You can sign up for it there and then also
Speaker 5: check out the Arcanem podcast that put that in the
Speaker 5: chat as well. And again, I cannot understate how much
Speaker 5: I respect you PD and how much I think you
Speaker 5: are contributing to the dialogue here in ways that are unprecedented,
Speaker 5: and I think we'll influence the way we go forward
Speaker 5: in the future with these subjects, which, as you know,
Speaker 5: they're close to my heart.
Speaker 6: So and therefore so are you well.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, I thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 4: I've had so much fun these past We've been doing
Speaker 4: this for two and a half hoursat Yeah, this is
Speaker 4: this has been this has been great, So thank you'
Speaker 4: all all for having me. What I've got coming up.
Speaker 4: My partner in crime, Alan Hawkins and I we are
Speaker 4: wrapping up a documentary that we've been working on for
Speaker 4: the last three years that traces the trajectory of a
Speaker 4: certain tradition of alchemy from late antiquity into the Enlightenment.
Speaker 4: Hopefully that we'll be done in April and we'll start
Speaker 4: putting it in some film festivals and then release it properly.
Speaker 4: We were in talks with a couple of different streamers,
Speaker 4: and beyond that, I will be speaking at the Anthropology
Speaker 4: of Consciousness conference. It's happening in Las Vegas from March
Speaker 4: twenty ninth to April first, and I will be asking
Speaker 4: the question is AI the new la uh? And you
Speaker 4: might be surprised by my answers, So if any of
Speaker 4: y'all are in the Las Vegas area, come see me.
Speaker 2: Awesome, very interesting on that idea.
Speaker 15: Thank you both very much, Ike PD that was an
Speaker 15: amazing episode. I thank you all to the Rejects again.
Speaker 15: You know, hopefully maybe one day in the future we
Speaker 15: can continue this talk on more of his other stuff,
Speaker 15: but I think that would be if you ever make
Speaker 15: your way up to Jackson.
Speaker 16: I'll I'll be sure to buy you a beer man, so.
Speaker 1: I'll be there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll be there.
Speaker 15: But uh yeah again, I thought this was amazing and
Speaker 15: I can't really you know, I don't want to kind
Speaker 15: of reiterate what Ike says, but I do think having
Speaker 15: these discussions and having you guys on and talk about
Speaker 15: this stuff really helps a lot for us to understand,
Speaker 15: like maybe you know where some of our ideas are
Speaker 15: coming from.
Speaker 2: This was an amazing show.
Speaker 15: I really can't thank you guys enough, and all the
Speaker 15: rejects and everybody in the chat that's what's up. I
Speaker 15: appreciate it. And until the next one, everybody be well,
Speaker 15: oh yeah, dog doll.
Speaker 16: Line four, there got eight up damn doll?
Speaker 3: Are doggy doll?
Speaker 1: Line four? There got eight up damn dolls? She are
Speaker 1: you sting? Laugh like at old lad? He's simple than
Speaker 1: laps and forty spar She like, I don't laugh, it's
Speaker 1: never don't lass and don't stom where forty knt?
Speaker 12: Uh?
Speaker 1: How are you stuck?
Speaker 3: All? Are you.
Speaker 1: Looking too? Miss dons?
Speaker 12: Alright?
Speaker 1: Fine like Lacy Stuno, alight, let it be come humble
Speaker 1: then you clips? Are you don't, don't.
Speaker 3: How are you.
Speaker 1: Fine? Like lacy stuff? Let it be coluble? Then you clips?
Speaker 1: Are you shto where forty can go? A?
Speaker 3: Sh alright?
Speaker 1: Are you wait? The change? So sweet? Are you? Are
Speaker 1: you beward the way? How must it become? The eclipse?
Speaker 2: Hor attention pastors like eighty eight
Speaker 1: To the optic nerve is now boarding Gate seventeen scheduled
Speaker 1: to depart at times thirty am.