Theological Triads
Sep. 1st, 2023 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readoldthingsSection II of the Barddas of Iolo Morganwg is entitled "Theology," and opens with a long series of triads, largely concerning hte nature of God. As an ongoing project, I want to share some of these triads and provide a brief commentary based on the Platonic-Druidic philosophy I've been developing here.
The First Triad
Naturally, the first triad is one of the most difficult. I would rather have started with any of the succeeding five or ten. This raises the question, of course, of why this one comes first? Set before all that follows, it acts as a kind of roadblock, or, in esoteric terms, a Watcher Upon the Threshold. We can either work with this first Triad, or give up and turn back.
Let's break it down, piece by piece.
One God
The Druidic tradition is repleat with deities. We have Hu the Mighty, and Ced the Earth Mother, and Ceridwen the Moon-Goddess who is also a form of Ced. We have Esus and Hesus, Taranis, Toutatis and Cernunnos. If Morganwg is teaching monotheism, should his writings be discarded as non-Druidic? Or if we would preserve them, must we discard the gods, and submit to monotheism?
The answer to both is "No." The One God is the One Itself, the First Cause which precedes all things, and even precedes existence. Proclus, the last great pagan philosopher of antiquity, wrote of the One that nothing at all can be said of it. It was not even to be understood-- for Proclus-- as the leader of a triad, which makes it utterly unique in his thought.
I have written before that we can use the term "Awen" for the One in Druidry. And, of course, those who see the First Cause as triadic (or Trinitarian) are perfectly free to disagree with Proclus.
The realm of being which can only be traversed by the unitary God is called Ceugant in the Druid tradition.
One Truth
Let's turn to Proclus again. Criticizing another philosopher named Origen (not, apparently, the Christian Church Father, but another Origen), he writes
Origen ends in intellect and the first being, but omits the One which is beyond every intellect and every being. And if indeed he omits it, as something which is better than all knowledge, language, and intellectual perception, we must say that he is neither discordant with Plato, nor with the nature of things.
What Proclus is saying here is that the One is prior to knowledge, language, and intellectual perception. In what follows he will discuss that which immediately follows upon the One, which are the very highest of the Gods. These Gods are called "Intelligible," because they can be known by the highest faculty of the Mind-- and only by the highest faculty of the mind. They are beyond the material world entirely; they cannot be encountered via the senses. And yet-- this is critical-- they are more real than the things of the material world, and they determine everything which is found in the material world. What is true about them is eternally true, while truth has no fixed existence in the material world, which is the world of becoming.
This, then, is the meaning of One Truth. The One Truth is that which immediately proceeds from the One Itself, which is God or the First God. This is the highest of hte gods, starting with the First Triad and unfolding from there. Gathered into a unity, these are also One God, and One Truth.
This Truth is also Gwynfydd in the Druid, the Intellectual Realm of luminous life.
One Point of Liberty
...and this is where all opposites equiponderate. This is the hardest of the three to understand. But if we follow the preceding method of interpretation, it will become easier. The Point of Liberty is the third level of being, which is called Abred. Abred is the realm of material existence as it is encountered by the soul. That is to say, it isn't Matter Itself, which is a lower thing, called Cythraul ("Devil"), but matter encountered by mind. It is a paradox that it is here, in this realm of limitation and imprisonment, that the soul is able to free itself. This is because it is only by working against limitation that anything is able to be created, and only by experiencing suffering that suffering may be overcome. And it is also because it is only here that there can be found those beings who are in need of liberation, and have begun to work towards it. In Abred, Good and Evil are balanced, these "opposites equiponderate," and thus either may be chosen. God abides alone in Ceugant, and Gwynfydd is the realm of liberated beings. At the bottom of Abred is Annwn, the realm of the Dead; its inhabitants have not yet begun the journey.
The First Triad
There are three primeval Unities, and more than one of each cannot exist: one God; one truth; and one point of liberty, and this is where all opposites equiponderate.
Naturally, the first triad is one of the most difficult. I would rather have started with any of the succeeding five or ten. This raises the question, of course, of why this one comes first? Set before all that follows, it acts as a kind of roadblock, or, in esoteric terms, a Watcher Upon the Threshold. We can either work with this first Triad, or give up and turn back.
Let's break it down, piece by piece.
One God
The Druidic tradition is repleat with deities. We have Hu the Mighty, and Ced the Earth Mother, and Ceridwen the Moon-Goddess who is also a form of Ced. We have Esus and Hesus, Taranis, Toutatis and Cernunnos. If Morganwg is teaching monotheism, should his writings be discarded as non-Druidic? Or if we would preserve them, must we discard the gods, and submit to monotheism?
The answer to both is "No." The One God is the One Itself, the First Cause which precedes all things, and even precedes existence. Proclus, the last great pagan philosopher of antiquity, wrote of the One that nothing at all can be said of it. It was not even to be understood-- for Proclus-- as the leader of a triad, which makes it utterly unique in his thought.
I have written before that we can use the term "Awen" for the One in Druidry. And, of course, those who see the First Cause as triadic (or Trinitarian) are perfectly free to disagree with Proclus.
The realm of being which can only be traversed by the unitary God is called Ceugant in the Druid tradition.
One Truth
Let's turn to Proclus again. Criticizing another philosopher named Origen (not, apparently, the Christian Church Father, but another Origen), he writes
Origen ends in intellect and the first being, but omits the One which is beyond every intellect and every being. And if indeed he omits it, as something which is better than all knowledge, language, and intellectual perception, we must say that he is neither discordant with Plato, nor with the nature of things.
What Proclus is saying here is that the One is prior to knowledge, language, and intellectual perception. In what follows he will discuss that which immediately follows upon the One, which are the very highest of the Gods. These Gods are called "Intelligible," because they can be known by the highest faculty of the Mind-- and only by the highest faculty of the mind. They are beyond the material world entirely; they cannot be encountered via the senses. And yet-- this is critical-- they are more real than the things of the material world, and they determine everything which is found in the material world. What is true about them is eternally true, while truth has no fixed existence in the material world, which is the world of becoming.
This, then, is the meaning of One Truth. The One Truth is that which immediately proceeds from the One Itself, which is God or the First God. This is the highest of hte gods, starting with the First Triad and unfolding from there. Gathered into a unity, these are also One God, and One Truth.
This Truth is also Gwynfydd in the Druid, the Intellectual Realm of luminous life.
One Point of Liberty
...and this is where all opposites equiponderate. This is the hardest of the three to understand. But if we follow the preceding method of interpretation, it will become easier. The Point of Liberty is the third level of being, which is called Abred. Abred is the realm of material existence as it is encountered by the soul. That is to say, it isn't Matter Itself, which is a lower thing, called Cythraul ("Devil"), but matter encountered by mind. It is a paradox that it is here, in this realm of limitation and imprisonment, that the soul is able to free itself. This is because it is only by working against limitation that anything is able to be created, and only by experiencing suffering that suffering may be overcome. And it is also because it is only here that there can be found those beings who are in need of liberation, and have begun to work towards it. In Abred, Good and Evil are balanced, these "opposites equiponderate," and thus either may be chosen. God abides alone in Ceugant, and Gwynfydd is the realm of liberated beings. At the bottom of Abred is Annwn, the realm of the Dead; its inhabitants have not yet begun the journey.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-03 02:12 pm (UTC)I have not spent much time on the Barddas of Iolo Morganwg, but have saved your essay for when I do.
Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-06 01:22 pm (UTC)As for Cabala...if you get around to reading through some of the Platonic and Neoplatonic material, you'll find it very familiar from your Cabalistic studies. Among many other things, the four levels of being in Neoplatonism, the henadic (unitive, divine), noetic (intellectual), psychic (astral), and physical are precisely Atziluth, Briah, Yetzirah and Assia.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-06 10:17 pm (UTC)