Father of Lies, Part II

Arawn, Lord of Annwn

The above is a stylized image intended as a depiction of Arawn, Lord of Annwn. The source is a Google image search; the image is also used by a Druid order hitherto unknown to me, apparently based in Washington. Annwn is, as we have seen, the realm of the Dead, and according to the Mabinogion, Arawn is its ruler. 

The First Branch of the Mabinogion concerns the adventures of Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed. At the beginning of the story, Pwyll finds that he has offended Arawn, and agrees to do whatever the latter asks in order to make amends. Arawn asks Pwyll to change places with him. For a year and a day, Pwyll will wear his semblance, rule his castle, and sleep in his bed. At the end of this time, he will meet with Arawn's enemy, who contends with him for rulership of Annwn. Pwyll must give him a single blow, but not more than this. 

Now, the Mabinogion is a literary and very much a medieval work, not ancient mythology, but traditional Celtic lore is woven into it, sometimes in a garbled fashion, and there is much we can learn from this story.

Pwyll's name means mind, perception or wisdom. During his time in Annwn, he lives in Arawn's home and sleeps in Arawn's bed, wearing Arawn's form. And Arawn's wife is the most beautiful in the world. Despite having every opportunity to have access to the lady, Pwyll declines, and does not lay a hand on her at night. At the end of his time, he delivers a single blow to Hafgan, Arawn's opponent, but refrains from striking again. Hafgan is defeated, the kingdom of Annwn is united under Arawn, and when Pwyll returns to his own realm of Dyfed he finds that it has prospered in his absence.

The Prince of Dyfedd and the Descent of the Soul

Let's look at this story in terms of the ideas we've been exploring. 

Pwyll's name means intelligence or mind; he thus symbolizes the incorporeal part of man. His name is significant in another way too, which we'll come to. By descending into Annwn, he descends into the World of the Dead. This world, as we have seen, is the world of Matter. Thus Pwyll's descent into Annwn is the soul's descent into the body. 

But it doesn't end there. 

By agreeing to Arawn's terms, Pwyll has accepted Justice. During his sojourn in Annwn, Pwyll demonstrates self-mastery or Temperance, especially in his refusal of intimacy with Arawn's wife. Facing Hafgan, he demonstrates Courage; administering but a single blow, he demonstrates Wisdom. Having done these things, he is able to return to his own realm, and to discover that it has been well-governed in his absence. He faces the temptations of both sex and violence, and responds with virtue. His soul is now rightly ordered, with strength acting in service to reason, and the desires no longer given free reign. 

Now it is clear that Pwyll and Arawn are mirrors of one another, and their respective kingdoms are also themselves. Pwyll's government of Annwn is also his government of Dyfed, and his transcendence of the limitations of the material world is his government over himself. His descent into Annwn is his incarnation in a physical body. His refusal of the temptations of the flesh allows him to unite his body under himself as ruler, and to begin the process of ascent from incarnation. He has, we may suppose, have faced Arawn in the forest hundreds of times before this in prior incarnations. Was his name "Pwyll," intelligence, before?

The Lord of Annwn and the Father of Lies

The Sophist is a dialogue of Plato whose subject seems straightforward, but may not be so.

One of Plato's concerns in his dialogues is the distinction of the real from its imitations. In the Gorgias, for example, he suggests that there is an art of health and strength, but also an art which imitates this. The first is the art of the doctor and the physical trainer, but the second is the art of the fashion artist the aesthetician. The first produces healthy bodies, but the second only creates a semblance of it. Or to give another example, the baker produces sweet foods which we love to eat; the doctor produces medicines, which are often foul but produce health. (At that time a doctor's job was to produce health, as odd as it may seem to us). Most of us prefer the semblance to the real thing, and this is our problem, but it doesn't say anything about the reality of the situation. If you were to set a doctor and an ice cream man before a jury of children, they'll obviously prefer the latter. Our souls, in their unpurified state, are those children. 

According to Plato, the Sophist imitates the Philosopher in just this same way. 

After a long discussion of the sophist's nature and how, exactly, he may be defined, the two characters in teh dialogue-- Theaetetus and the Elean Guest-- tell us the following:

Guest: Then we may class him as a wizard and an imitator of some sort. 

Theaetetus: Certainly.

Guest: Come then, it is now for us to see that we do not again relax the pursuit of our quarry. We may asay that we have him enveloped in such a net as argument provides for hunting of this sort. He cannot shuffle out of this.

Theaetetus: Out of what?

Guest: Out of being somewhere within the class of illusionists. 

Theaetetus: So far I quite agree with you. 

Guest: Agreed then that we should at once quarter the ground by dividing the art of image making...

And so the sophist is explicitly declared to a magician or wonder-worker. The guest then divides the art of image-making into two forms, which will be very familiar to those who know anythign about the iconographic tradition in the Orthodox Church. There are images which are intended to resemble forms; these are called "icons." And then there are illusionary images, which are called "phantasms." 

The dialogue then makes a metaphysical point about the existence of non-being. 

The truth is, my friend, that we are faced with an extremely difficult question. This "appearing" or "seeming" without really "being," and the saying of something which yet is not true-- all these expressions have always been and still are deeply involved in perpelexity. It is very hard, Theaetetus, to find correct terms in which one may say or think that falsehoods have real existence...

And so the sophist imitates the philosopher in the same way that the baker imitates the doctor or the aesthetician the physical trainer. Where the philosopher leads the mind to truth, the sophist produces lies. In this way he is a kind of magician or wonder-worker, seducing the minds of wealthy young men. But-- critically-- the images themselves have a kind of reality, a being of non-being. 

The Sophist and the Sublunar Demiurge

The Sophist appears to discuss a particular class of people in Plato's day, viz. phony philosophers who sold their teachings to the parents of rich kids for money. According to Iamblichus, this is only a surface meaning. The Sophist is not a mere pedant for hire. Rather, he is an image of a particular feature of Iamblichus's cosmology, the Sublunar Demiurge. 

Now the word "demiurge," you probably know, refers to the creator of the material world. The work of the Demiurge is discussed at length in Plato's Timaeus. But to the later Platonists, there were three demiurgi. The first is the Father of the Demirurgi. The Second is the Heavenly Demiurge. And the third is the Sublunar Demiurge. 

Remember that, on the cosmology of both the ancient and the medieval worlds, our physical world begins at the Moon. Above the Moon there is order and stability. The super-lunar cosmos-- that is, the spheres of the planets, the Sun, and the visible stars-- is thus an image of eternity. Beyond this is the eternal Heaven of God. Below the changeable Moon, we have the realm of change, process, division, and decay. We thus have three realms, which we can call the Sublunar, the Astral, and the Celestial. Or in our terms, Abred, the depth of which is Annwn, which is the realm of change and death; Gwynfydd, the starry realm of luminous life; and the invisible Ceugant.

Now each of these three realms has its ruling Power, who is an image of the ruler of the next realm up. This is its creator or Demiurge. 

Were Iamblichus and the later Platonists correct in their beliefs regarding the Sophist? Well, we don't "really" know, but it would make sense. We know that Plato's inner teachings were not written down, but were kept secret. We know that in one of his letters, he tells us the following:

 

I must expound it to you in a riddling way in order that, should the tablet come to any harm “in folds of ocean or of earth,” he that readeth may not understand.

 

The matter stands thus: Related to  the King of All are all things, and for his sake they are, and of all things fair He is the cause. And related to the Second are the second things and related to the Third the third. About these, then, the human soul strives to learn, looking to the things that are akin to itself, whereof none is fully perfect.

And we know that the Sophist was the first in a trilogy of dialogues, of which the first concerns the Sophist, the second, the Statesman, and the third was to have concerned the Philosopher. This would seem like an image of the three kings, the three demiurgi. (The Philosopher was either never written, was lost, or was kept secret.) 

In any case, we have the image of a creator-god of this material world. We have a material world which is a world of illusions, and also a world of death. And consider the following, from the Chaldaean Oracles: 

Stoop not down unto the Darkly-Splendid World; wherein continually lieth a faithless Depth, and Hades wrapped in clouds, delighting in unintellible images, precipitous, winding, a black ever-rolling Abyss; ever espousing a Body unluminous, formless and void.

That passage was used by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn specifically as an invocation of the element of Earth. 
 

To be continued...