Sonntag, 16. Juni 2019

Damascius on Hieratic #5: Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles

Excerpts (more or less tenuously related to ritual and "theurgy") from the translation by Sara Ahbel-Rappe. In this case, I did not check Ahbel-Rappe's translation, which contains many errors, against the Greek, so take these excerpts with some caution.

II 23 (Chapter 49 Ahbel-Rappe)

"... if someone wishes to apply a name to that which by nature has no name, or if someone wishes to speak about what is completely ineffable, or to give a sign for what is signless, nothing prevents him from assigning the highest of designations and of intellections to the unique and ineffable principle as if invoking the most sacred symbols, and so to call that principle, 'One,' in accord with the well-known common conception, which holds that the principle of all things is one, but [one should] know in a more accurate way that this name for the transcendent is not suitable, but rather is appropriate for the elder of the two principles [Limit and Unlimited/Infinitude], if indeed it is appropriate for this ..."

II 98 (Chapter 69 Ahbel-Rappe)
"... we have dedicated the most sacred of our thoughts to the intelligible and to the completely Unified which is sewn about the One ..."

II 104-106 (Chapter 70 Ahbel-Rappe)
"... the Oracles also clearly reveal that the intelligible is capable of being known, and do not confine themselves to the statement that the intelligible is both the object and subject of intellectual activity. The philosophers sometimes explain these words differently, saying that the object is prior to intellect, but not as the knowable, but as the desirable, and they say that intellect is filled from this, not with knowledge, but with substance and with the whole and with intelligible perfection. And this is also the view of Iamblichus as well as his followers. But this view is not always consistent, since in other places they leave open the possibility that knowledge is in the intelligible and around the (II 105) intelligible, as Iamblichus agrees in his Chaldean Theology. And the Oracles also testify to this position, in the verses where they address the Theurgist:
There is an intelligible, which you should contemplate with the flower of your mind. For if you incline your mind toward it and contemplate it as something, you will not contemplate that. It is the power of strength, shining from all sides, flashing with the intellectual rays. You should not use force to contemplate that intelligible, but rather the subtle flame of subtle mind that measures all things, except that intelligible. And I ask you to contemplate this not with intensity, but carrying the sacred backward turning eye of your mind extend an empty mind to that intelligible, until you learn the intelligible, since it is fundamentally beyond mind.
These verses clearly concern this intelligible as well as the knowledge that will be capable of knowing it. [...]

(II 106) This is knowledge in the absolute sense, primary and most authoritative, because it most shares the same nature as the knowable, but it is not of the same nature as the intellectual, but knowledge that one can revere as truly intelligible, and as concentrating itself into the undifferentiated nature of the intelligible.
Once you have donned the garb of all-covering strength of the crashing light,
arm intellect and mind with triple pronged strength,
then cast the entire token of the triad into your imagination, nor
wander with distraction into the empyrean channels, but be concentrated 
the oracular god says, nad things like this, concerning this kind of knowledge. Whence one should take care not to circumscribe this knowledge, as if one could apply the notion of formal knowledge to the Unified. For this kind of knowledge is not the kind that circumscribes the intelligible, but is rather circumscribed by it and defined by it, to the extent that it fully offers itself to the vision."

III 140f (Chapter 118 Ahbel-Rappe)
"They [the triad of the One (if that's the best way of putting it)] therefore must no longer be called three when their being three is added to them, since no otherness is manifest in that realm. Yet unless we speak in a human dialect concerning the most divine principles, we are otherwise not able to conceive them or to name them, except as we are compelled to use reason on behalf of the realities that turn out to be beyond every intellect, life, and substance. Indeed, even the gods thus instruct some of us occasionally concerning these and other realities, [though] not in the way that reveals the nature of the realities that the god themselves contemplate. Just as they speak to Egyptians, Syrians, or Greeks using the language appropriate to them, else it would be fruitless to speak to them, so they are eager to transmit to human beings that which belongs [to the divine] and they will use a human dialect, as is right. Yet this dialect is not only composed of verbs and nouns, (III 141) but it is also composed from conceptions that are suitable and adjusted to human beings. If, therefore, we also get off the track of that truth as we attempt to chart the intelligible abyss, to see how great and what its nature is, and we are carried toward the lower and divided realitites, as we are by necessity dragged along with or dragged down by our own meager nothingness, nevertheless it is necessary to endure missing and drifting [from the goal]. Otherwise, it is not possible, in our present state, to have any conception concerning these things, and we must be content even if only with a far-off and obscure glance or glimpse or trace suddenly flashing before our eyes, however small and not very luminous, but nevertheless a signpost for us that is an analogue of that superluminous and vast nautre. But this much we can accept in our discourse, that it castigates itself and agrees that it is not capable of looking at that unified and intelligible light."

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