The Fall in Abred, the Unattainable God

The Journey Through Abred

In Barddas, we read the following dialogue:
 

Q. How often may one fall in Abred?

A. No one will fall once of necessity, after it has been once traversed, but through negligence, from cleaving to ungodliness, until it preponderates over godliness, a man will fall in Abred. He will then return to the state of man, through every form of existence that will be necessary for the removal of the evil, which was the cause of his fall in Abred. And he will fall only once in Abred on account of the same ungodliness, since it will be overcome by that fall; nevertheless, because of many other impieties he may fall in Abred, even numberless times, until every opposition and Cythraul, that is, all ungodliness, shall have been vanquished, when there will be an end to the Abred of necessity.

 

Q. How many have fallen in Abred? and for what cause have they fallen?

 

A. All living beings below the circle of Gwynvyd have fallen in Abred, and are now on their return to Gwynvyd. The migration of most of them will be long, owing to the frequent times they have fallen, from having attached themselves to evil and ungodliness; and the reason why they fell was, that they desired to traverse the circle of Ceugant, which God alone could endure and traverse. Hence, they fell even unto Annwn, and it was from pride, which would ally itself with. God, that they fell, and there is no necessary fall as far as Annwn, except from pride.

The One and the Many

Here are the second, third, and fourth propositions from Proclus's Elements of Theology:

 

Proposition 2. Every thing which partakes of The One is alike one and not one.

For though it is not The One itself — since it partic­ipates of The One and is therefore other than it is — it experiences [2] The One through participation, and is thus able to become one. If therefore it is nothing besides The One, it is one alone, and will not participate of The One but will be The One itself. But if it is something other than The One, which is not The One but a par­ticipant of it, it is alike one and non-one, — one being, indeed, since it partakes of oneness, but not oneness it­self. This therefore is neither The One itself, nor that which The One is. But, since it is one and at the same time a participant of The One, and on this account not one per se, it is alike one and not one, because it is something other than The One. And so far as it is multiplied it is not one; and so far as it experiences a privation of number or multitude it is one. Every thing, therefore, which participates of The One is alike one and not one.

 

Proposition 3. Every thing which becomes one, becomes so by the partici­pation of The One, and is one so far as it experi­ences the participation of The One.

For if the things which are not one become one, they doubtless become so by a harmonious alliance and association with each other, and experience the presence of The One, though they are not that which The One is. Hence they participate of The One, so far as they allow themselves to become one. But if they are already one, they will not become one: for that which is, does not become that which it already is. But if they become one from that which was previously not one, they will possess The One, since a certain one was ingenerated in their nature. [And this ingenerated one must be de­rived from The One itself. Everything, therefore, which becomes one, becomes so by the participation of The One, etc.]

 

 

Proposition 4. Every thing which is united is different from The One itself.

For if it is united it will participate in a certain re­spect of The One, so far as it is rightly said to be united. That, however, which is a participant of The One is both one and not one. But The One itself is not both one and not one: for if this was so, again the one which is in it would have both of these, and this would take place ad infinitum, if there was no One itself at which it is possible to stop; but every thing being one and not one, there will be something united, which is different from The One. For if The One is the same as the united, it will be infinite multitude. And in a similar manner each of the things of which the united consists will be infinite multitude. Every thing, there­fore, which is united is different from The One itself.

Transmigration

Finally, here is a selection from Plato's Phaedo on the fate of the unjust soul after death:

Socrates: The soul which has been polluted, and is impure at the time of her departure, and is the companion and servant of the body always, and is in love with and fascinated by the body and by the desires and pleasures of the body, until she is led to believe that the truth only exists in a bodily form, which a man may touch and see and taste, and use for the purposes of his lusts,—the soul, I mean, accustomed to hate and fear and avoid the intellectual principle, which to the bodily eye is dark and invisible, and can be attained only by philosophy;—do you suppose that such a soul will depart pure and unalloyed?

 

Cebes: Impossible.

 

Socrates: She is held fast by the corporeal, which the continual association and constant care of the body have wrought into her nature.

 

Cebes: Very true.

 

Socrates: And this corporeal element, my friend, is heavy and weighty and earthy, and is that element of sight by which a soul is depressed and dragged down again into the visible world, because she is afraid of the invisible and of the world below—prowling about tombs and sepulchres, near which, as they tell us, are seen certain ghostly apparitions of souls which have not departed pure, but are cloyed with sight and therefore visible.

 

Cebes: That is very likely, Socrates.

 

Socrates: Yes, that is very likely, Cebes; and these must be the souls, not of the good, but of the evil, which are compelled to wander about such places in payment of the penalty of their former evil way of life; and they continue to wander until through the craving after the corporeal which never leaves them, they are imprisoned finally in another body. And they may be supposed to find their prisons in the same natures which they have had in their former lives.

 

Cebes: What natures do you mean, Socrates?

 

Socrates: What I mean is that men who have followed after gluttony, and wantonness, and drunkenness, and have had no thought of avoiding them, would pass into asses and animals of that sort. What do you think?

 

Cebes: I think such an opinion to be exceedingly probable.

 

Socrates: And those who have chosen the portion of injustice, and tyranny, and violence, will pass into wolves, or into hawks and kites;—whither else can we suppose them to go?

 

Cebes: Yes, said Cebes; with such natures, beyond question.

Gathered Thoughts




A major focus of my work here is to take disparate elements of the world's spiritual traditions-- the fragmented Western tradition above all, but helped along by Eastern ideas from time to time-- and to set them alongside one another, and see what emerges.

Morganwg gives us an image of the soul attempting to rise to the Circle of Ceugant, which is the empty sphere traversed by God alone. We saw yesterday that God, or the One, is superessential, above all particularity.

Now the One must be one alone, and this is proved in the following way. Everything which exists that depends upon something else for its existence is called contingent. But if all beings were contingent, there could be no particular beings, because every thing, depending on something else for its existence, would never be able to come into existence. Therefore there must be something which is noncontingent, and by virtue of which all contingent beings have their existence. This something must be radically simple, and without qualities, otherwise it would be a compound, and the members of the compound would depend on a third thing for their existence. Even if that third thing was simply their shared unity, that unity would itself be the only noncontingent being. Therefore there is only one noncontingent being, and this being we call the One or God.

Because God is both radically simple and superessential, He (say She or It, none is actually accurate) remains forever out of reach. Ceugant is the empty sphere.

Now to become good means to become like God, because God is the Good and there is nothing Good which is not made Good by the participation in God. This is another way of saying, as Proclus above, nothing becomes One except by participation in the One. But, again, God is superessential and radically, permanently distinct from every form of ousia, even the most exalted.

It therefore follows that the journey of creatures to God is unending.

This, in turn, is the basis for two doctrines.

First, the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. If it is the case that God wills by his nature that every thing should become like him, which is to say, to become Good as He is Good; and if it is also the case that some beings are capable of a greater degree of participation in God than others; then it is necessarily the case that beings must evolve. Hence an animal, which is capable of limited forms of virtue trained by habit, may become a human, who is capable of higher forms of virtue, and a human a hero or saint, who is capable of transcending death and materiality. Evolution implies devolution-- given that it is possible to choose the Good, it is also possible to fail to choose it, or to choose Evil, which to say, nothingness and dissolution; this would then entail a descent into a lower state of being.

Second, the doctrine of permanent evolution. That is to say, it is not the case that, after death, our capacity to change or develop ceases, as is held by the Roman Catholic Church. This is the basis for their doctrine of eternal damnation-- Unrepented sin requires punishment; following death, change is impossible; repentance is a form of change; therefore, following death, unrepented sins must be punished and that punishment is incapable of ending, as the sin can no longer be expiated nor the punishment transformed into mercy. It is also the basis of the doctrine of eternal Paradise-- any pleasant state in the Afterlife, in Christian teaching, may be expected to endure forever; moreover, one's particular station in the hierarchy of Heaven is one's station for good. But the doctrine of the superessential nature of God suggests that even beings which have transcended the physical world and ascended to a better state still have an unending journey ahead of them, and may continue to unfold and to grow in wisdom, power and bliss, forever.