Elements of Theology, Proposition 33: The Secret Wisdom of the Western World

Every thing which proceeds from another and returns to it has a circular energy.

For if it returns to that from which it proceeds, it con­joins the end to the beginning, and the motion is one and continuous — emanating from the abiding cause and re­turning to it. Hence all things proceed in a circle from causes to causes: but there are greater and less circles of conversions (returns), some of which are to the na­tures immediately above the things which are converted, but others are to still higher natures, and so on to the Principle of all things. For all things proceed from this Principle, and return to it.

COMMENTARY

Everything which proceeds from another has a circular motion. Does this idea sound familiar? We encounter it frequently enough, but we always find it attributed to some foreign culture or to some sufficiently remote place. 
 

Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round . . . The sky is round and I have heard the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind in its greatest power whirls, birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. Our teepees were round like the nests of birds. And they were always set in a circle, the nation’s hoop.

If you encounter this quotation from Chief Black Elk, it is invariably accompanied by a certain feeling which I think might be unique to the Western mind. It's a sense of encounter with wisdom, and with people who were wise; a sense of loss, nostalgia, regret; an admiration for a wisdom which has passed from the world; a certainty that we are not wise in this way, but only knowledgeable, only powerful; and yet, hidden beneath this, a re-affirmation of our own power. 

One frequently encounters this combination of feeling. Sometimes other American Indians play the role that Chief Black Elk does here; sometimes, white writers masquerading as Indians; sometimes the wisdom is attributed to some other, sufficiently far away, people, such as the Tibetans or the Chinese Taoists or the Ancient Celts. 

But here is Proclus, teaching us that all things move in a circle, proceeding in endless circles from the First Principle of All Things. 

It must be so. All things abide in their cause; and proceed from it; and if they did not continuously return to it, they would be all together cut off from it. The three movements, abiding, proceeding, and returning, all happen together.

The Power of the World always works in circles. This is the sacred tradition of the Western world. Never fail to see this. Proclus is no outlier and his ideas were never lost. He himself is not an originator but a synthesizer of a tradition rooted in the ancients, in Pythagoras and Parmenides; Euclid and Empedocles; Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. His pagan faith may have faded-- it never really died-- but his philosophy endured in Dionysius the Areopagite, whose writings were treated nearly as scripture. In the West, these ideas were carried on by Eriugena, Aquinas, Bonaventure and Nicholas of Cusa; in the East, by Maximos the Confessor and many others. 

And what of America, the child of the heretical and Protestant branch of the West, the limb that cut itself off from the tree that birthed it? Didn't we, at least, lose the tradition? 

We never did. American culture was shot through with the old tradition from the beginning, or near enough. Look into the ideas of the early Quakers, who founded Pennsylvania and governed Delaware and Southern New Jersey. In their doctrine of the Inner Light and in their beliefs around reincarnation you see the echo of Plotinus. Pennsylvania became a refuge for Rosicrucians, occultists whose ideas were entirely rooted in Neoplatonism. In the 1700s, the Druid Revival itself was rooted in Neoplatonism, and Druids were found on both sides of the Atlantic. After the Revolution, the translations of Platonic and Neoplatonic texts by Thomas Taylor swept through the English-speaking world. The very words we read here were read also by Ralph Waldo Emerson-- Emerson, who was one of the founders not only of American letters but of American culture generally. This is our sacred wisdom.

Yes, there are fools who reject these ideas, and the worst by far are the supposed "Christians" who seek to purify their faith of "pagan" influence; and the worst by far of these, among our contemporaries, are adherents to the Catholic or the Orthodox churches. One well-known Orthodox convert YouTuber is found of regular panic attacks about the influence of Neoplatonism and the related Hermetic tradition in Holywood, apparently unaware of its influence on his own faith. One author on the "traditionalist" Catholic fringe spends his time railing about how the Church has been captured by the "Neoplatonic-Hermetic Gnosis," with this supposed to have happened in the Renaissance, seemingly unaware that the very text we are reading was also in the possession of Thomas Aquinas. A young convert to the Orthodox Church (an "Orthobro," as the current parlance has it) once told me that I ought to reject Platonism and instead look to such Orthodox thinkers as Maximos the Confessor. I ignored him until I'd finished reading through Plato's works, then took a look at Maximos, out of fairness. And found the ideas of Plato and Aristotle on every single page. 

All things move in a circle, proceeding from the One Principle of All, and returning to it. This is our sacred wisdom.