readoldthings

For today, a passage from Paradise Lost. The scene is just before the creation of the Earth. Satan and a third of the angels have rebelled against God, and been defeated. Now the rebel angels, having been cast into Hell, are debating what they should do next. Should they go back to Heaven and beg God for forgiveness?

No, says Satan:

Farewell happy Fields

Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrors, hail

Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell

Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings

A mind not to be changed by Place or Time.

The mind is its own place, and in it self

Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

I find that when I am at my worst, my mind is at the root of it; my mind, and the cluttered tangle of emotions and resentments that so often fill it. If I can pause and still myself, I can change my perspective and look at my situation again with fresh eyes. I often then find things aren't as bad as I thought; a little food or water and some fresh air are often enough to turn everything around. But if I insist on clinging to emotion and refusing to change, then I, too, can make a Hell of Heaven. I sometimes even manage the same level of drama-queenliness which Lucifer demonstrates in this passage. "Profoundest Hell, receive thy possessor!"

Today, a brief passage from the medieval Taoist meditation manual, The Secret of the Golden Flower. I'm using Thomas Cleary's translation; Wilhelm's translation is not as good, but it is in the public domain and can be read here.

Chapter 8, Verse 27:

As long as the mind has not reached supreme quiet, it cannot act. Action caused by momentum is random action, not essential action. Therefore it is said that action influenced by things is human desire, while action uninfluenced by things is the action of Heaven.

This is a simple idea, but, to my mind, it is extremely important. In fact, I sometimes think of it is as the key to all spiritual practice.

Why?

Well, consider what our unknown author is saying. It is a universal experience of everyone who begins meditation that thoughts arise on their own. If you watch them long enough, you notice that you have no control over them, and that their causes have as much to do with the time of day, the contents of your stomach, how much coffee you've had (or failed to have), and the last thing you saw on television as anything else. And yet, before we discover this through the process of meditation, we live our lives identifying with our thoughts and-- what is even worse-- acting on them.

It is only once we still our mind that we can begin to choose our actions, without having our thoughts choose them for us.

When St. Thomas Aquinas sought to prove the existence of God, he made use of the idea of the "unmoved mover." The argument goes something like this: Everything that is currently in motion (or in existence) was put into motion (or existence) by something else. But that chain of one thing causing another can't go on to infinity, otherwise nothing would ever have begun. Something must exist which is not in motion and is not caused by anything else, but is capable of causing things and putting other things into motion. That something must be able to choose to cause motion, or else it is also simply a random movement, and we're no closer to the beginning than before. Therefore, God exists, as the unmoved something that causes other things to be.

Meditate every day, by a method that works for you. Keep going even when it becomes difficult, as it will, because the payoff is worth it. To become able to choose our own actions, rather than having them chosen for us by the random workings of our minds, is to begin to attain likeness to God.

More from Epictetus:

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things. Thus death is nothing terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death, that it is terrible. When, therefore, we are hindered or disturbed, or grieved, let us never impute it to others, but to ourselves—that is, to our own views. It is the action of an uninstructed person to reproach others for his own misfortunes; of one entering upon instruction, to reproach himself; and one perfectly instructed, to reproach neither others nor himself.

As recently as a year ago, if you had told me about the events of 2020 I would have seen it as an imaginative parody of the modern American's cowardice and germophobia. But here we are.

If we have any wisdom remaining in us, we will take a moment to listen to the voices of our ancestors, who faced a far harsher world than we with a level of grace and courage that we cannot begin to approach. Death is coming for all of us, without exception.

A reminder from Epictetus:

There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power. Within our power are opinion, aim, desire, aversion, and, in one word, whatever affairs are our own. Beyond our power are body, property, reputation, office, and, in one word, whatever are not properly our own affairs.

Now the things within our power are by nature free, unrestricted, unhindered; but those beyond our power are weak, dependent, restricted, alien. Remember, then, that if you attribute freedom to things by nature dependent and take what belongs to others for your own, you will be hindered, you will lament, you will be disturbed, you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you take for your own only that which is your own and view what belongs to others just as it really is, then no one will ever compel you, no one will restrict you; you will find fault with no one, you will accuse no one, you will do nothing against your will; no one will hurt you, you will not have an enemy, nor will you suffer any harm.

Aiming, therefore, at such great things, remember that you must not allow yourself any inclination, however slight, toward the attainment of the others; but that you must entirely quit some of them, and for the present postpone the rest. But if you would have these, and possess power and wealth likewise, you may miss the latter in seeking the former; and you will certainly fail of that by which alone happiness and freedom are procured.

Seek at once, therefore, to be able to say to every unpleasing semblance, “You are but a semblance and by no means the real thing.” And then examine it by those rules which you have; and first and chiefly by this: whether it concerns the things which are within our own power or those which are not; and if it concerns anything beyond our power, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you.

From St. Louis de Montfort:

Often, actually very often, God allows his greatest servants, those who are far advanced in grace, to make the most humiliating mistakes. This humbles them in their own eyes and in the eyes of their fellow men.

Through failure we can learn wisdom and grow in virtue.

And if we aspire to greatness, humility is the first of the virtues we should cultivate. As the greatest of initiates said,

Quia respéxit humilitátem ancíllae suae: Ecce enim ex hoc beátam me dicent omnes generatiónes.

No, I'm not very good at it either.

Today's advice comes from a more recent Old Thing, a study of American POWs returned from the Korean war in 1956 by an American sociologist named Albert Biderman. Biderman's work focused on brainwashing techniques and attempts to elicit false confessions of war crimes by the Chinese. Nearly every word of it is relevant to our present-day situation.

The full report may be read here (warning: pdf link).

Biderman writes:

I would like to discuss first the measures used by the Communists to induce compliance: to undermine the resistance of the prisoner. The experiences of American Air Force prisoners of war in Korea who were pressured for false confessions, enabled us to compile an outline of methods of eliciting compliance, not much different, it turned out, from those reported by persons held by Communists of other nations. I have prepared a chart showing a condensed version of this outline. It shows our analysis of these techniques into eight general measures (...)

Here is a partial reproduction of the chart:

General Method Effects

1. Isolation Deprives Victim of Social Support of His ability to resist
Develops an Intense Concern with Self
Makes Victim Dependent On Interrogator

2. Monopolization of Perception   Fixes Attention upon Immediate Predicament; Fosters Introspection
Eliminates Stimuli Competing with those Controlled by Captor
  Frustrates all Actions not Consistent with Compliance

3. Induced Debilitation; Weakens Mental and Physical Ability to Resist
Exhaustion

4. Threats   Cultivates Anxiety and Despair

5. Occasional Indulgences Provides Positive Motivation for Compliance
Hinders Adjustment to Deprivation

6. Demonstrating "Omnipotence  Suggests Futility of Resistance
and "Omniscience"

7. Degradation Makes Costs of Resistance Appear more Damaging to Self Esteem than Capitulation

8. Enforcing Trivial Demands Develops Habit of Compliance

Biderman goes on to discuss the specific methods used to elicit false confessions of guilt. Pay close attention:

The kind of "confession" we are discussing consists of considerably more than the signing of a piece of paper which says: "On such and such a date I committed such and such a crime-signed John Jones." It consists of considerably more than making an equivalent oral statement in a court. These "confession"-extortion efforts involve the attempt to manipulate the individual so that he behaves over an extended period as if:

(a) he actually committed certain concrete acts which he can "describe" with meticulous detail;

(b) these acts were "criminal", in the sense of being violations of the most fundamental standards of human decency;

(c) these acts were not isolated transgressions but manifestations of a "criminal" pattern in his thought and action;

(d) his "crimes" were part and parcel of a larger nefarious political Conspiracy;

(e) his "criminal" role was motivated by a self-seeking alignment with this political conspiracy, of which he was only a pawn;

(f) he is now remorseful and repentant;

(g) his changed attitude is due to new-found political conviction for which he is indebted to his patient captors.

In this extreme form of "confession"-elicitation, as encountered by our men, the objective was not merely having the prisoner "confirm" that certain acts were committed, but rather to have his behavior confirm the entire world-view of the Communists relevant to those acts.

Finally, Biderman concludes by discussing those elements of Communist brainwashing that were mysterious to his audience and that remain mysterious to us to this day. It would have been far easier to simply put a gun to the American soldiers' heads and say "Confess to war crimes or you will be shot." But the Communists never did this. Instead, they followed elaborate procedures designed to force the soldiers to figure out what they were supposed to be guilty of, to confess their guilt, and to do so in a way that confirmed their own interrogators' worldviews.

The one remaining question is why the Communists proceeded in this strange way. It is not, I am convinced because they were guided by some esoteric knowledge and rationale which give them unprecedented ability to bend people to their will. Insofar as "confessions" for propaganda use arc concerned, these could have been elicited much more quickly and easily by coupling the standard measures for inducing compliance with explicit demands for the false statements they required. False confessions were in fact extorted from Air Force personnel more quickly and economically by North Koreans who apparently had not yet learned the Communist way of doing things. The self-castigation and ideological ranting which the Communists sought, and at which almost all of our people balked, I would think, detracts rather than adds to whatever propaganda value "confessions" might have. All this assumes that some purpose as rational as propaganda is always the major reason for extorting "confessions," and this appears quite definitely not the case.

The mystery associated with the things I have discussed stems not from their rationality but from their irrationality. Unlike the cynical Nazis who merely perpetrated the Big Lie, the Chinese Communist personnel whom our prisoners encountered in Korea were required to to live the Big Lie.

I suggest that we keep Biderman's work in mind when considering three interlocking contemporary phenomena:

1. The Coronavirus lockdown;

2. The Black Lives Matter movement;

3. "Racial Sensitivity" trainings that rely on Critical Race Theory and that have been mandated by governments, schools and private employers around the country;

4. Our current media environment, considering news, social media, and entertainment, as it relates to the foregoing;

5. The plans for a "Great Reset" being touted by the World Economic Forum, a condensed version of which may be seen here.

I furthermore suggest that, considering all of the foregoing, we keep in mind the advice from Emperor Marcus Aurelius, King Solomon, Odin and Manly Hall that I posted over the last week.

Two selections from Manly P. Hall's book Self Unfoldment by Disciplines of Realization. No link, because it's out of print and hard to find.

There are many metaphysicians who can look a fact in the face and then deny it with a series of affirmations. Many of us have seen an individual sneezing violently whose philosophy of life taught that bodily ills were an illusion; but he had not learned not to sit in a draft. Also to be remembered is the elderly lady suffering from caffeine poisoning who persisted in trying to “deny” the caffeine right out of the several cups of coffee that she drank for breakfast every morning. There was also “God’s perfect child” who had been brought up in an environment of platitudes, and yet was the pest of the neighborhood.

A philosophy of evasion is just as bad as running away yourself. There are many pseudo-metaphysicians who could live a thousand years without experiencing anything because their philosophy has taken away the privilege of experience. When metaphysics teaches you that divine law pervades all things, you must be extremely careful not to resolve this fact into a platitude. Do not start affirming that everything is all right when it evidently is not. Such a process is autohypnosis. When a small mind takes hold of a big idea, chaos is inevitable. Philosophy does not make wrong right, but it helps you to see the universal reality that circumscribes and orders all existence.

But:

The philosopher is attempting to attain an eternal existence. He is striving for release from impermanent attitudes, beliefs, and habits. It is very necessary, therefore, that he achieve a detachment from all transitory matters such as politics, customs, and most of all, fads. This does not mean taking no interest in social progress, for all great philosophers have been sociologists. But he must stop fuming and fussing over this candidate and that party, and get to the place where he can perceive that all the varied and often contradictory procedures of mankind are contributing to an eternal pattern. Growth, integrity, and ultimate perfection are inevitable. There is nothing more disheartening to see than a group fretting itself into a frenzy determining whether a certain political party is going to overthrow civilization.

That which is real can never be destroyed, and that which is unreal can never be preserved. The wise man detaches himself from inconsequential controversies.

These two ideas seem to contradict one another. They occur in the same chapter of the same book, so we should probably assume that any contradiction is only apparent, and see what we can make of them. Let us not fret that a certain political party is going to overthrow civilization (it can't, since this has already been accomplished.) But let us not affirm that everything is all right, when it manifestly is not-- and in the America of BLM riots, mask mandates, lockdowns, contact tracing, suppression of free speech by technologists, suppression of information by the news media, and mandatory "critical race theory" trainings, everything is manifestly not all right. But that's no reason to give in to despair. "That which is real can never be destroyed, and that which is unreal can never be preserved." Now we have the chance to test ourselves, our courage, our commitment to the path, under conditions we have never seen before. Don't worry, it's only the end of the world.

Odin's words, from the Havamal:

A coward believes he will ever live

if he keep him safe from strife:

but old age leaves him not long in peace

though spears may spare his life.

Words for today, words to remember.

From the Book of Ecclesiastes:

Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the Sun. But if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness, for they shall be many.

I found a Bible lying open and face-down on the sidewalk one morning, a few minutes after I had faced the Sun and said a prayer of gratitude for his light. When I turned it over to look at it, I found that it was open to this verse.

(Another strange thing happened next, but that's a story for another day.)

While I wait for myself to start talking about Plotinus again, which may be a while, I'm going to start something different here: A bit of daily advice from one of the old sages. Today, we have Marcus Aurelius. From the Meditations, Book 9, Meditation 3:

Do not despise death, but be well content with it, since this too is one of those things which nature wills. For such as it is to be young and to grow old, and to increase and to reach maturity, and to have teeth and beard and grey hairs, and to beget, and to be pregnant and to bring forth, and all the other natural operations which the seasons of thy life bring, such also is dissolution.

This, then, is consistent with the character of a reflecting man: to be neither careless, nor impatient, nor contemptuous with respect to death, but to wait for it as one of the operations of nature.

As thou now waitest for the time when the child shall come out of thy wife's womb, so be ready for the time when thy soul shall fall out of this envelope. But if thou requirest also a vulgar kind of comfort which shall reach thy heart, thou wilt be made best reconciled to death by observing the objects from which thou art going to be removed, and the morals of those with whom thy soul will no longer be mingled. For it is no way right to be offended with men, but it is thy duty to care for them and to bear them gently; and yet to remember that thy departure will not be from men who have the same principles as thyself.

For this is the only thing, if there be any, which could draw us the contrary way and attach us to life, to be permitted to live with those who have the same principles as ourselves. But now thou seest how great is the trouble arising from the discordance of those who live together, so that thou mayest say, Come quick, O death, lest perchance I, too, should forget myself.

Death comes in its season, just as winter follows Autumn. It isn't our job to hurry it along, but we should also not fear it, nor despise it. We should simply be aware that our sojourn in this world will end, just as it began.

But if you need a good reason not to be afraid of death-- the Emperor says-- consider this: After death, you'll be free of everyone who currently annoys you!

Welcome back to the Plotinus read-through!

Today we're going to look at Ennead 1, Tractate 2, Chapter 5. You can read along here. The previous post in this series is here.

In this chapter, Plotinus is going to continue to discuss purification. And this, if I may be forgiven the vulgarity, is where shit gets real.

So we come to the scope of the purification: that understood, the nature of Likeness becomes clear. Likeness to what Principle? Identity with what God?

The question is substantially this: how far does purification dispel the two orders of passion- anger, desire and the like, with grief and its kin- and in what degree the disengagement from the body is possible.

Our goal in Purification is to totally liberate ourselves from the passions. The passions, now, are all the involuntary movements of the soul by the body. Some are fiery, like anger and lust, others watery, like grief and sorrow. We seek, on this account, to transcend all of them.

As a note to myself, I feel certain that all of this can be profitably compared with the notion of "separating yang from yin" in the internal alchemy and meditative methods of the Quan Zhen (Complete Reality) school of Chinese Taoism. That comparison is going to have to wait until I can get the rest of my library out of storage, though!

Let's go on and see just how far, for Plotinus, this all goes.

Disengagement means simply that the soul withdraws to its own place.

That sounds simple enough. Plotinus now describes what it looks like in practice, and this is important enough that I'm going to break it up into sections.

It will hold itself above all passions and affections.

Necessary pleasures and all the activity of the senses it will employ only for medicament and assuagement lets its work be impeded.

Pain it may combat, but, failing the cure, it will bear meekly and ease it by refusing assent to it.

All passionate action it will check: the suppression will be complete if that is possible, but at worst the Soul will never itself take fire but will keep the involuntary and uncontrolled outside its own precincts and rare and weak at that.

The Soul has nothing to dread, though no doubt the involuntary has some power here too: fear therefore must cease, except insofar as it is purely monitory.

What desire there may be can never be for the vile; even the food and drink necessary for restoration will lie outside of the Soul's attention, and not less the sexual appetite;

or if such desire there must be, it will turn upon the actual needs of nature and be entirely under control; or if any uncontrolled motion takes place, it will reach no further than the imagination, be no more than a fleeting fancy.

Are you following all of this?

The follower of Plotinus is entirely unmoved by any of the ordinary affairs of human life. He eats and drinks only to calm his body. He is unmoved by fear, grief, or desire. He is either unaffected by pain or, if this is impossible, he refuses to allow it to have any power over him. He indulges his sexual desires only insofar as they pass fleetingly through his imagination. He is entirely free from "uncontrolled motion," but instead is a man entirely self-possessed:

The Soul itself will be inviolately free and will be working to set the irrational part of the nature above all attack, or if that may not be, then at least to preserve it from violent assault, so that any wound it takes may be slight and be healed at once by virtue of the Soul's presence, just as a man living next door to a Sage would profit by the neighbourhood, either in becoming wise and good himself or, for sheer shame, never venturing any act which the nobler mind would disapprove.

Nor is it correct, though, to see this as a constant battle between the Intellect and the passions. Instead,

There will be no battling in the Soul: the mere intervention of Reason is enough: the lower nature will stand in such awe of Reason that for any slightest movement it has made it will grieve, and censure its own weakness, in not having kept low and still in the presence of its lord.

Welcome back to the Plotinus read-through! Today we'll continue to learn about virtue, and just how it is that (according to Plotinus) we're going to get out of this prison of matter. The prior post in this series is here. You can follow along with today's chapter here.

We come, so, to the question whether Purification is the whole of this human quality, virtue, or merely the forerunner upon which virtue follows? Does virtue imply the achieved state of purification or does the mere process suffice to it, Virtue being something of less perfection than the accomplished pureness which is almost the Term?

You really gotta love these translations.

Does virtue follow purification, or does virtue consist of purification? That's what the first sentence asks.

The second seems to reverse the order, suggesting that virtue is something of "less perfection" than "accomplished pureness."

I think the point is that, IF Virtue consists of the PROCESS of Purification, then the achieved state of Purity follows virtue.

On the other hand, purification might be a process which precedes the attainment of virtue.

Make sense? Let's read on.

To have been purified is to have cleansed away everything alien: but Goodness is something more.

If before the impurity entered there was Goodness, the Goodness suffices; but even so, not the act of cleansing but the cleansed thing that emerges will be The Good. And it remains to establish what this emergent is.

It can scarcely prove to be The Good: The Absolute Good cannot be thought to have taken up its abode with Evil. We can think of it only as something of the nature of good but paying a double allegiance and unable to rest in the Authentic Good.

We start with impurity. This, as we have seen, is the Soul's involvement with the Body, and with the passions that arise from material existence.

We must first cleans away this impurity. But, once we do so, are we left with Goodness?

Not exactly, says Plotinus. Because The Good Itself cannot have become involved with evil-- that is, matter-- otherwise it would not be the Good! And yet, having been purified of evil, we have to be left with something LIKE the Good. Plotinus calls this "something of the nature of the good but paying a double allegiance" to both Good and Evil, Spirit and Matter.

The Soul's true Good is in devotion to the Intellectual-Principle, its kin; evil to the Soul lies in frequenting strangers. There is no other way for it than to purify itself and so enter into relation with its own; the new phase begins by a new orientation.

After the Purification, then, there is still this orientation to be made? No: by the purification the true alignment stands accomplished.

The Soul's virtue, then, is this alignment? No: it is what the alignment brings about within.

And this is...?

That it sees; that, like sight affected by the thing seen, the soul admits the imprint, graven upon it and working within it, of the vision it has come to.

The Soul's Good is devotion to the Intellectual-Principle.

Why is that?

The Soul is suspended between Intellect and Matter.

Intellect, remember, is not the thinking mind. Intellect is the realm of the Forms, those eternal powers which generate the world we experience. In Intellect, there is no discursive reasoning, because there is no separation. You don't have to think your way through a proof to understand something Intellectually. Instead, by Intellection, you immediately possess the object of knowledge-- becuase, in fact, there is no distinction between the subject and the object.

Does that make sense? If not, just let it be for now. Think of Intellect as the highest faculty of the soul, while the passions are the lowest. By purification we turn toward Intellect and away from Matter, toward the higher and eternal, rather than the lower and changeable, exactly as Plotinus told us to way back when.

When we turn toward Intellect, toward the highest part of our being, we are changed "like sight affected by the thing seen." Having seen it, we can't un-see it.

Plotinus asks the important question:

But was not the Soul possessed of all this always, or had it forgotten?

What it now sees, it certainly always possessed, but as lying away in the dark, not as acting within it: to dispel the darkness, and thus come to knowledge of its inner content, it must thrust towards the light.

In the Phaedrus, Plato suggests that we all once abided in the heavenly realms, with the Gods, but have since fallen, and forgotten. The process of spiritual awakening is, on this view, a process of REMEMBERING what we truly are. Plotinus seems to be building on this idea, suggesting that the vision of the Intellectual realm was always latent within us.

He concludes:

Besides, it possessed not the originals but images, pictures; and these it must bring into closer accord with the verities they represent. And, further, if the Intellectual-Principle is said to be a possession of the Soul, this is only in the sense that It is not alien and that the link becomes very close when the Soul's sight is turned towards It: otherwise, ever-present though It be, It remains foreign, just as our knowledge, if it does not determine action, is dead to us.

The Highest is always present and available to us. But it is up to us to turn towards it, and then to let it govern our actions. Otherwise, it means nothing.

Welcome back to the Plotinus read through!

One of the issues with taking any kind of break with this stuff is that of diving back in. The Platonic way of thinking is quite simply not the same as the modern. Learning to think as Plotinus and his predecessesors and successors do is challenging, and the tendency is to slip back into more familiar mental habits. I've found that I had to re-read my own earlier posts in this series in order to write this, and I kept saying, "Wow, that's a good point... I have no memory of writing it."

With that said, let's dive right back in. The preceding post in this series can be read here. You can follow along here.

We come now to that other mode of Likeness which, we read, is the fruit of the loftier virtues: discussing this we shall penetrate more deeply into the essence of the Civic Virtue and be able to define the nature of the higher kind whose existence we shall establish beyond doubt.

And so we are going to learn more about attaining Likeness with the divinity. There are, we are going to discover, two types of virtues, one of which is higher than the civic virtues of Courage, Justice, Prudence, and Temperance, we discussed previously.

Let's read on.

To Plato, unmistakably, there are two distinct orders of virtue, and the civic does not suffice for Likeness: "Likeness to God," he says, "is a flight from this world's ways and things": in dealing with the qualities of good citizenship he does not use the simple term Virtue but adds the distinguishing word civic: and elsewhere he declares all the virtues without exception to be purifications.

The civic virtues, it seems, are too bound up in the things of this world to lead to total Likeness.

But in what sense can we call the virtues purifications, and how does purification issue in Likeness?

A fine question.

As the Soul is evil by being interfused with the body, and by coming to share the body's states and to think the body's thoughts, so it would be good, it would be possessed of virtue, if it threw off the body's moods and devoted itself to its own Act- the state of Intellection and Wisdom- never allowed the passions of the body to affect it- the virtue of Sophrosyne- knew no fear at the parting from the body- the virtue of Fortitude- and if reason and the Intellectual-Principle ruled- in which state is Righteousness. Such a disposition in the Soul, become thus intellective and immune to passion, it would not be wrong to call Likeness to God; for the Divine, too, is pure and the Divine-Act is such that Likeness to it is Wisdom.

Okay, now we're getting into the meat of it.

As Plotinus told us at the beginning of this tractate, our first problem is that evil exists in this world, and therefore we must escape. Evil is rooted in matter, and not in soul, but our soul becomes evil by being intertwined with the body. Stuck here, we share the bodies urges and passions, and think the body's thoughts.

In order to become good and to attain virtue, the soul needs to rid itself of the thoughts and moods that are rooted in the body, and attend to its own proper acts.

And what is that proper act?

"Intellection and Wisdom."

Now, that word "Intellection" is an important one. It means the action of the Intellect. The word that is being rendered in English as "Intellect" is Nous, which is not translatable. The Intellectual, or Noetic, world is the world of Forms. The Forms, as we've seen already, are the eternal causal principles of the cosmos. Moreover, the Forms are always plural-- we can talk about this Form or that Form, but in practice, in the Intellectual Level, there is no separation. (And this is that much more true of the Gods, who have their existence at a level even higher than that of the Forms.) Intellection, thus, is a kind of automatic knowledge in which there is no distinction between the knower and the known.

As for "Wisdom," what he means by it depends upon what Greek word Plotinus is actually using. Often enough, that word is "dianoia," which means "through nous," and thus again refers to the Intellectual level of being.

He then adds that the soul free of the body's influence would possess the virtue of Sophrosyne or Temperance, in which it would be unmoved by the passions of the body. It would also possess Courage, by being unafraid to be parted from the body, and Justice ("Righteousness"), by being ruled by the highest part of itself-- the Nous.

This condition, Plotinus tells us, would make the Soul like unto God, because the divine is Intellective and immune to passion.

I may have missed something, but I'm not clear on where the second order of virtues we were promised comes in. Or is it simply that the virtues, when they condition a man to be a good citizen, are civic virtues, but when they condition his soul to Likeness with God, are something higher?

But would not this make virtue a state of the Divine also?

No: the Divine has no states; the state is in the Soul. The Act of Intellection in the Soul is not the same as in the Divine: of things in the Supreme, Soul grasps some after a mode of its own, some not at all.

One of the ideas we see in Platonic thinkers, that is found in later Christian theology also (though not its Protestant deviation), is that of Divine Simplicity. For Plotinus, there are no states, or changes in the condition, of God. "Divine wrath" is a metaphor whereby we humans can understand what naturally happens to us when we turn away from the Gods, but the Gods themselves don't literally get mad and huff about and fling thunderbolts. They don't have passions and do not need anything.

As for Intellection, I think it's right to say that Soul grasps the Intellectual World-- as it were-- from below, while the Gods grasp it from above. As we said before, the Gods don't need to be virtuous, because there is nothing for the virtues to save them from. They have nothing to fear, and so don't need courage, for example. But we could fear-- which is a bodily state, since it is our body that is harmed if what we are afraid of comes to pass. Courage allows us to become more like the Gods, who naturally know no fear, and thus to overcome the moods and thoughts of the body. Thus, there are two orders of virtue: Civic virtue, which makes us more useful citizens, and Virtue as purification.

This leads to a bit of a dilemma:

Then yet again, the one word Intellection covers two distinct Acts?

Rather there is primal Intellection and there is Intellection deriving from the Primal and of other scope.

And now Plotinus gives us one of the most interesting images we've had so far:

As speech is the echo of the thought in the Soul, so thought in the Soul is an echo from elsewhere: that is to say, as the uttered thought is an image of the soul-thought, so the soul-thought images a thought above itself and is the interpreter of the higher sphere.Virtue, in the same way, is a thing of the Soul: it does not belong to the Intellectual-Principle or to the Transcendence.

Speech is an echo of thought in the physical world. But thought itself, an action of the Soul, is also an echo of something higher. Intellection, as we said before, is automatic-- no separation between the knower and known, and thus no separation between, say, the parts of a sentence, or of a thought-act. Virtue is a thing of the Soul. It is thus an unfoldment of a simpler Something which is of the Intellectual World.

So: By the practice of the Virtues we purify ourselves, and shake off the power of the body. But the Virtues themselves aren't of the Intellectual world, or the Divine which is beyond it; instead they are like ladders, which unite our soul to its own highest principle, and that which is beyond.

The following is the beginning of an analysis of the classical Chinese text The Art of War, reconsidered as a manual of practical magic.

Now, this is not-- or not primarily-- an attempt at discussing magical warfare. The focus, instead, is magical strategy as a whole. "The Enemy," in this case, will be the magician's goal, whatever that may be: a new job, a new lover, or a closer relationship with a deity, or anything else.

I've assumed that the reader either is, or considers themself to be, a practitioner of magic. But that need not be the case. A mystic who does not do practical magic (intended to achieve specific changes in the world), an ordinary religious believer, or even someone who thinks of themself as "spiritual but not religious"-- provided the "spiritual" part consists of an actual relationship with the divine-- will be able to apply the advice given here.

With all that said, let's get started!

Sun Tzu opens by giving us 5 considerations which determine victory in war. These are as follows:

1. The Tao

2. Heaven

3. Earth

4. The General

5. Organization and Discipline

Let's look at each of these one at a time, considering first what Sun Tzu has to say, and then reconsidering it from the perspective of magic and magical combat.

1. The Tao.

Sun Tzu tells us that the Tao "causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger."

Now, the great majority of magical workings are carried out, not by a group with a leader, but by an individual. Nevertheless, I view this verse as the sine qua non of effective magic. How does it apply to individuals? In three ways:

First, for the "Tao" or (as it is often rendered) "The Moral Law," substitute "God" or "the Divine." In other words, before undertaking a magical working, always invoke the Divine, and make sure that your will is in accordance with-- or, more appropriately, subordinate to-- the Divine Will. This suggests that, prior to any magical working, you need a spiritual practice which puts you in touch with the divine world. This is essential, and I'll talk more about it later.

If you want to accomplish something, first pray about it. Talk to God or the Gods, and to those saints and angels with whom you have relationships about it. Use divination to make sure that your goal and your approach are appropriate. Then act.

Second, and following from the first: Which spirits will you be working with? The truth is, unless you only plan on directing your personal life energy at the target, you will, in fact, NOT be acting alone, but as part of an army-- even if most of the participants are invisible. And, just as Sun Tzu says, you need complete accord between the members of that army. For the monotheist, God is God, but in magic there is an enormous difference between (say) Cassiel, the archangel of Saturn, and Hanael, the archangel of Venus! If you try to accomplish a love spell via Cassiel or a binding via Hanael, you can expect it to backfire. Your army does not have the Tao.

Now, there is a complicating factor here, which is this: Whether or not a spirit will work with you for a given purpose depends upon whether your purpose suits the spirit's nature, but also upon whether or not you have a relationship with that spirit. If you find yourself needing to do magic right away, it might be better to go to a general-purpose spirit with whom you have a relationship, rather than a being with a more specific focus with whom you do not.

The third consideration follows from the second. All magical workings gain strength through *unity of purpose.* You should be able to state, simply and clearly, what you are trying to accomplish via a given working. "This is a spell intended to get me ten thousand dollars while curing my aging mother of dementia and removing Donald Trump from office" is not going to work; you have too many different goals mixed into one. "This is a spell intended to bring peace and justice" is also not going to work; it's too vague for you to even know whether it has worked or not. ("Peace and justice" to whom, defined how, for what purpose?) "To get a job that pays at least $50,000/year and leaves me time for my family" is a clearly defined purpose. "To protect the president from hostile magic" is also an acceptable purpose.

To summarize: Begin by defining your purpose as clearly as possible. Make sure that your will is in alignment with the Divine Will, using divination to confirm. Then gather your spiritual army.

2. Heaven.

Sun Tzu writes that Heaven signifies "day and night, hot and cold, all times and seasons." This applies to magical workings in two ways: Magical and mundane.

The magical first. If you don't know anything about magical timing, now is the time to start learning. The very simplest method of magical timing relies on the phases of the Moon. Use a waxing moon for workings intended to increase something, and a waning moon for workings intended to decrease something.

More advanced and more useful are the planetary days and hours. These are also simple enough to learn. Every day is assigned to one of the seven classical planets; the one whose name it bears. Meanwhile, the days are divided into 12 day hours and 12 night hours, which are also assigned to the planets. A love spell will gain power from being performed on a Friday in the hour of Venus. A wealth spell will gain power from being performed on a Thursday in the hour of Jupiter. And so on.

The next level up is electional astrology. If all you're familiar with is the sort of sun-sign astrology that you see in newspapers, you may want to leave this alone for now; it's very complicated. At a minimum, if you're invoking the angel or god of a specific planet, you should learn whether that planet is in retrograde or in the sign of its detriment or fall; if so, wait until it moves into a better position to perform your working.

Now, there are other forms of magical timing beyond these. Christian magicians are likely to work with the saints, as well as, or rather than, the planetary angels. The simplest practice here, of course, is to pick a feast day or other day sacred to the saint in question to perform your working. For example, Wednesdays are sacred to St. Joseph, while Saturdays are sacred to the Blessed Mother. A working invoking them will gain power from being performed on their day. The months and the seasons of the liturgical year also have specific associations which should be taken into consideration

There is also mundane timing. Here, the consideration is more straightforward. If you are doing a working to find a job, you need to find out when the company is hiring. Do they have job fairs at a certain day of the month? If so-- this should go without saying-- that's when to do your working. If you're looking for an apartment, will it be easier in September (when all the college kids turn up) or May (when they leave)? And so on.

3. Earth.

Earth "comprises distances great and small; danger and security; open ground and narrow passes; the chances of life and death." In war, that is, Earth refers to the physical terrain in which your battle will be fought.

All magical operations also have a terrain in which they will be conducted, and your next task is to determine what that is. What is your goal? Where is it located in physical and social space? If your goal is to get a job at a bank, the terrain is the bank, the application process, and the job interview. If your goal is to protect your house from malefic spirits, the house-- and in particular, the house's reflection in the astral worlds-- is the terrain. If your goal is to win the heart of a young lady or gentleman, they, their emotions, needs and desires, are the terrain.

Also: What is the space in which you will be doing your magical work? This is also part of the terrain. You might have a whole room or even a separate building dedicated entirely to magic, with altars set aside to various spirits, or you might have the corner of a desk on which you keep a rosary, some incense and a bit of holy water. This is your base of operations, from which you will plan and conduct your magical campaign. Whatever the size of the space, it's your job to keep it in good working order.

Finally: Given that magical forces are channeled by and through the magician, YOU are also part of the terrain! Especially, but not only, in cases of actual magical warfare, you need to keep up your physical strength, your energy purified and your spirit attuned with the divine. If you have a tendency to not eat and to fill your consciousness with-- say-- irate Facebook posts, you are not going to be in good condition to withstand any type of protracted magical operation, nor to hold up against any kind of hostile magic.

4. The General.

Sun Tzu tells us that the General must possess 5 virtues: Wisdom, Sincerity, Benevolence, Courage, and Strictness.

Now, these five are a variation on the standard list of the 5 Confucian Virtues, which are translated into English under various names. For our purposes, this list of virtues can be considered in two ways: as given, and as an example.

What do I mean by that?

First, as given. You can accomplish a great deal by taking Sun Tzu's list of virtues at face value and attempting to follow them to the best of your ability. In a moment, I will examine each of these five one by one, and discuss their meaning in a magical context.

Second, as an example. While the Five Virtues given here have a universal applicability, Sun Tzu is writing in a Chinese context, and his way of thinking is deeply rooted in traditional Chinese philosophy. If you are practicing magic in a different tradition, you may find that holding yourself to another set of virtues yields better results. The thing to keep in mind is the word "virtue"-- it means "excellence." A set of virtues is a set of excellences. If you practice them, you will shape your spirit in such a way as to excel in the particular field of which they are a part.

Merely by practicing a set of virtues, you will cultivate your Will, which is what will allow you to maintain the unity of purpose that translates, in Sun Tzu, to having the Tao. By practicing the virtues specific to your tradition, you will more deeply align yourself with that tradition.

So, if you are practicing Catholic magic, hoodoo, grimoire-purism, or any other type of Christian magic, you would be well to consider the Three Heavenly and Four Cardinal Virtues. That is: Faith, Hope, Charity; and Justice, Prudence, Wisdom and Temperance.

If you are working with the gods of the classical world, your list is Justice, Prudence, Wisdom and Temperance.

For a practitioner of any of the schools of modern magic that were influenced by Eliphas Levi, the four virtues are To Know, To Will, to Dare, and to Keep Silent.

For a heathen, Courage, Truth, Honor, Fidelity, Discipline, Hospitality, Self-Reliance, Industriousness and Perseverance.

Any spiritual path worth following will have a similar list.

Now, let's return to Sun Tzu's virtues, and look at them one at a time.

First, Wisdom. Wisdom means both knowledge and the ability to use knowledge. Whatever magical system you are working in, you should know it inside and out. Of course, this means you need to pick a magical system to work with-- and you will do well to pick one system, learn it inside and out, and then start learning others. Whether's it's the Golden Dawn or hoodoo, traditional Catholicism, Taoist magic or Renaissance astrological magic, your job is to learn everything you can about how your magic works, what options you have in various scenarios, what spirits or deities you can call upon (and what they expect from you in return), and everything else imaginable. The day you stop learning is the day you start getting stupid.

Sincerity. This goes back to the very first thing we discussed, which is your intention. What are you trying to accomplish, and are you really willing to devote all of your faculties to accomplish it?

Benevolence. What does this mean in a magical context? Here I am going to depart a bit from Sun Tzu. I'm more than aware of the current popularity of curses, black magic, and demonolatry. If you have half a brain, you will avoid these, and focus on healing, blessing, and working with angels, deities, saints, and God.

Why? Consider that magic is, in a very real sense, the ordinary processes of consciousness, but expanded, focused, and concentrated. If you focus your magical work on healing, wisdom, renewal and success, you can expect these things in your own life. If you focus on cursing, harm, and destruction, you can also expect to experience cursing, harm, and destruction. You will reap exactly as you sew.

Courage. This one is obvious. If you want something, you must have the courage to see it through, no matter what the cost-- whether it's a new job or an exorcism. It may be worth mentioning as an aside here that, in the Republic, Plato describes "courage" as the capacity to maintain the awareness of the goodness of God through any danger or any pleasure. What this may mean is left for the consideration of the reader.

Strictness. We will get into this more in a moment. As a magician, the one you need to be strict with is YOURSELF. Magic requires daily practice and daily commitment. It's very common, these days, to find people who think that they want to be magicians, but who aren't willing to put so much as twenty minutes every day into spiritual practice. Don't be one of those. Don't make excuses. You have the time.

5. Method and Discipline.

In The Art of War, this refers to the organization of the army into its various ranks and subdivisions, the maintenance of roads, and so forth. If you've been paying attention, you probably know what I'm going to say on this topic with respect to the art of magic.

Magic requires discipline-- and, by the way, it also teaches discipline. Every school of magic without exception will be found to have a daily practice-- and daily means daily.

If you are a Golden Dawner, this means the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram, followed by the middle pillar and meditation.

For a Taoist, a session of zuowang meditation and shengong followed by qigong and taichi.

For a Catholic, a rosary and other devotional prayers.

For all, daily prayer, divination, and the maintenance of altars and offerings.

This is true, by the way, even if your magic consists only of hoodoo and natural magic. A natural magician ought, at minimum, to have a garden and an apothecary, which will require daily maintenance. A hoodoo practitioner can take a hoodoo bath (cold water, vinegar, salt and hot pepper) followed by the Lord's Prayer and the psalms. And every practitioner of magic without exception should be practicing a form of meditation appropriate to their tradition.

If you've followed this blog at all, you'll have noticed that I suspended the Plotinus posts a few months back. The reasons for that are as follows:

1. I wanted to go back and make sure I understood Plato, and so spent some time meditating my way through the Republic, Timaeus and other dialogues.

2. Life got very, very busy.

I'll return to Plotinus in due time, but I want to use this Dreamwidth for other purposes for a bit.

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