Plotinus and Astronoesis

Plotinus lived and taught in Rome in the mid-third century ce and saw himself as inheriting an ancient tradition of wisdom that had passed through Parmenides, Pythagoras, and Plato. In the seven hundred years since Plato’s death in fifth-century Athens, a number of schools had developed that shared some elements in common with Plato but diverged in others: Aristotelianism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism. And there were newer schools, such as various sects of Gnosticism, as well as the rise of Christian thinkers, that were gaining influence among the students who came to Plotinus’s school. There Plotinus conducted seminars in which key texts of these schools were read, discussed, and criticized, and his own views explained. Although Plotinus saw himself as a defender and exegete of Plato, later historians of philosophy viewed Plotinus as both reinvigorating, and innovating upon, the Platonic tradition and designated Plotinus as the founder of a new tradition, Neoplatonism. 

Whereas Plato often wrote about the life of the soul using so-called myths, Plotinus wrote about the soul and its spiritual journey in a vital, immediate way—seemingly from personal experience. One comes away from reading Plotinus with the vivid impression that he knows firsthand what he is talking about. Yet the Enneads are not a series of descriptions of mystical experiences, although his writing is perfumed with their fragrance, since throughout he engages dialectically with competing views that were current at the time in order to answer the various profound questions he poses. 

Plotinus’s Writings as Revelation

Plotinus was such an important figure for Damiani for at least two reasons: First, Plotinus had firsthand experience of the Absolute, what he called “the One” or “The Good,” and he wrote evocatively about this “union” of the soul with the One as he stretched language and our commonsense ways of thinking to convey something of the One that is beyond any kind of dualistic approach. Second, he articulated clearly all the degrees of reality from the absolute perfection of the One, to its showing forth as the Divine Mind (Intellectual-Principle, Intellect, Nous), to the Soul, whose contemplation of the Divine Mind results in the ordered beauty of the sensible world, to the star souls and planetary gods who constitute the most sacred levels of the cosmos, down to the living creatures on our planet. Plotinus showed not only how each level includes in a paradigmatic way the contents that become manifest on a lower level, but also how a way of ascent to these higher degrees of being is possible for human beings here. 

Damiani regarded Plotinus’s writings as scripture, as revelations received by the soul in contemplation: “Only the man, or only that person—I hate to use the word ‘man’—who has had the experience of the One is what I would consider scripture. The rest I consider scribblers” (transcript, 11/30/1979). But to plumb the depths of an inspired text requires a different mode of approach than one used to read a secular text because an inspired text possesses meanings not available to the conscious mind: 

AD: Plotinus is a symbol. His writings are a symbol. Anyone thinks otherwise, he is absolutely deluded. Because it requires the development of an inward faculty. . . . So naturally when he would write, there would be on the one hand the language, the associations of language, all that we understand in terms of our mentality and rationality, and then there would be included in it this tremendous and treacherous depth, his understanding, let’s say, of the One, the Intellectual-Principle, and he would combine the two of them together and the production is a symbol. Now you want to call it a philosophic text, go right ahead. I call it a symbol. And in the process of working with that symbol, I’m extricating, or making available for myself, those depths of meanings, alright, which are not available to the conscious mind. (transcript, 01/09/1982)

The Composition of Astronoesis

Much of Damiani’s teaching and writing during the last seven years of his life focused on drawing out the depths of meaning he found in the Enneads, depths that opened to him only after prolonged meditation on selected passages. He contemplated not only these inspired passages but also various symbolic diagrams that used the language and symbolism of astrology to represent the intricate cosmology and metaphysics of Plotinus (see also the section “The Astrological Mandala and Astrology’s Transcendental Ground”). The results of these contemplations and meditations were a series of papers, many read and discussed in classes at Wisdom’s Goldenrod, that were intended to comprise a book. He wasn’t able to complete this book before he died, but a number of students, some of whom had worked closely with him in refining these papers, collaborated to produce a manuscript, which was then published by Larson Publications in 2000, replete with many of his diagrams, as Astronoesis: Philosophy’s Empirical Context, Astrology’s Transcendental Ground.

The book is divided into four chapters: chapter 1: “The One”; chapter 2: “The Intellectual-Principle”; chapter 3, “Soul”; chapter 4, “The System of Nature.” There is also a section called “Interlude: Number” that comes between chapters 1 and 2, and the book includes supplemental sections and notes by the editors, a glossary, a bibliography, and an index.

Because the study of Plotinus was so central to Damiani’s research in the latter part of his teaching career, it is difficult to summarize the central themes in Plotinus that occupied him. Please see the descriptions of the following class series for more details: 

“Astronoesis: The One and Intellectual-Principle, Series 1”

 “Astronoesis: The One and Intellectual-Principle, Series 2”

 “Plotinus: Soul, Series 1”

 “Plotinus: Soul, Series 2”

“The Idea of Man”