In recent weeks I’ve had the pleasure of reading and discussing Iamblichus’ De Mysteriis over on Twitter with SolomonicVik, and I just wanted to share some of my thoughts on the text.

Many of my readers are coming from an analytic, non-pagan background, and so are in all honesty unlikely to have any familiarity with this work. So before getting into Iamblichian thought, allow me to just share some quick context first.

The text is referred to as “De Mysteriis” (or “On the Mysteries”) because Ficino’s late 15th century Latin translation of the work gave it the rather long title of De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum, Chaldaeorum, Assyriorum, or “On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians.” The text itself doesn’t really have a title, save the introduction: “The Reply of the Master Abamon to the Letter of Porphyry to Anebo, and the Solutions to the Questions it Contains.”

You’ll note that the addressee of this letter is Porphyry, the renowned 3rd century Platonist and student of Plotinus who compiled and edited his works into the Enneads. Porphyry had written an epistle to a probably fictional Egyptian priest named “Anebo,” in which Porphyry deploys a variety of inquiries and objections against the more ‘mystery’ like cults of his time. In particular, he finds inconsistencies with “Egyptian” beliefs about the Gods and how to relate to them.

Porphyry’s student, Iamblichus, wrote a rebuttal under the guise of another Egyptian priest named “Abamon,” and this is the text we have reconstructed and now know as “De Mysteriis.”

Iamblichus was a prominent 3rd century Platonist philosopher, and champion of the old pagan ways. Eunapius records Iamblichus as being sought out as a teacher with large followings, and also as a magnificent wonder worker. He’s even been called the second founder of Neoplatonism as his impact on subsequent generations rivaled Plotinus’. Indeed, Iamblichus changed the course of history through his influence on late antique Platonists like Proclus and Damascius.

The text itself is beyond rich with references, symbolism and insights, and I don’t want anyone to think I’m even attempting a commentary on it here. Rather, I simply want to highlight some of the more interesting topics in the sections that we’ve covered so far over on Twitter, especially in relation to my normal MO for this blog.

I have not placed these in any particular order, but I trust that if you are reading this, then the following selections will be of interest to you. All references will be to Dillon & Clark’s translation.

To begin, then, let’s take a look at what might be called Iamblichian religious epistemology. Iamblichus says in De Mysteriis I.3 that “to tell the truth, the contact we have with the divinity is not to be taken as knowledge. Knowledge, after all, is separated (from its object) by some degree of otherness.” The very first issue he takes up with Porphyry is that Porphyry dared to say we “concede” the existence of the Gods. On the contrary, Iamblichus insists,

“We should not accept, then, that [the existence of the Gods] is something that we can either grant or not grant, nor admit to it as ambiguous (for it remains always uniformly in actuality), nor should we examine the question as though we were in a position either to assent to it or to reject it; for it is rather the case that we are enveloped by the divine presence, and we are filled with it, and we possess our very essence by virtue of our knowledge that there are gods.”

What we have with the Gods is like knowledge in some respect, but it is crucially unlike knowledge in others. In particular, it is part of us; constitutive of our very being. In this way it is not something an already individuated being does, but rather that by which the being is individuated as such in the first place. Whatever it is called, whether a “contact,” or a “unitary connection” in his terms, it is not a relation between terms.

I wonder if, in knowing a God, it is that instead of knowing an object, the Gods are rather that by which objects are known or knowable. The idea here is then more “ontic” than epistemic. On this view, Gods must already be in place, so to speak, in order for anything else to sort of get off the ground. I am reminded here of Kant’s transcendental argumentation.

Iamblichus extends his religious epistemology beyond Gods, though, and suggests we have the same innate cognition of other “superior kinds,” namely, the daemons and heroes. However, Iamblichus later says that the existence and or characteristics of these latter classes are “deducible,” so I wonder if the same is perhaps true of the Gods?

Whatever the case, all of this talk of “superior kinds” between Porphyry and Iamblichus unwittingly anticipates much, much later high metaphysical inquiries into the matter of polytheism vs monotheism. Porphyry wants the Egyptian theologians to explain what differentiates all these higher kinds from each other, and throws out some presumably sincere candidates. But Iamblichus blasts back that superior kinds do not have specific differences between each other, as if they belonged to a common genus within which to be distinguished. They are not differentiated by their activities, powers, or essences, for their distinctness precedes even these, such that their possession of any of these is already individuated.

I am reminded of recent literature among analytic thinkers like Joe Schmid, and even Graham Oppy over how many First Principles there can be. The monotheist side objects, since the time of Aquinas, that more than one God would have to be differentiated by some property or perfection, and so not be utterly simple after all–per the requirements of classical metaphysics, as we’ll touch on.

But, Iamblichus insists that any such property or perfection would already be individuated if it were possessed by a God, so that we must relocate their individuation from such externalities somewhere upstream and perhaps more befitting of a God.

Oddly, Iamblichus insists that the superior kinds do not have any common genus, and yet refers to them all as “superior kinds.” Moreover, he places them on a common spectrum: the Gods are on the one extreme, with daemons and heroes as intermediaries on the descent to us at the other extreme.

How can the Gods have nothing in common with anything, and yet be extremes on a spectrum? A spectrum of what? Beings?

This brings to mind what I once considered to be the strongest objection to polytheism: deep equivocity.

Aquinas articulates the objection masterfully between two texts. The first, in his case for God’s unicity in Summa Theologiae I.11.3; the second amidst his barrage against polytheism in his Summa Contra Gentiles I.42.12.

You can get a feel for the problem by considering that for Aquinas, to be divine is to be utterly simple: you must be identical with all of your “properties,” and these must in turn be identical with each other. As such, whatever makes one to be divine is also the same thing as whatever makes her to be the particular God that she is. In other words, having a divine nature is the exact same thing (in reality) as being a specific individual.

When we speak of “other” Gods, then, we are incorrectly suggesting that divinity can be predicated of multiple things at the same time without thereby making them all to be the same individual; which means these properties are not identical after all, which means that these beings are not utterly simple, and therefore are not divine. Q.E.D.

This objection pushes us to explain why we are calling two things “divine.” Is it because they both have the same thing in common? Say, a divine nature or divine making property? But, then, they must both be the same individual, since simplicity collapses divinity into identity. On the other hand, if they do not have the same thing in common, in virtue of which they are both called “divine,” then there is no reason for calling them both by the same name, and nothing prevents us from calling anything divine.

As I said, I once considered this to be the strongest objection to polytheism. But it is little more than a semantic trick, and Iamblichus touches on why.

See, in a world with divine simplicity, there is no divinity as such. “Divinity” becomes an empty variable, bereft of any content of its own. It just stands for the identity of whoever it is predicated of–since the two are identical. To say that, say, only YHWH is divine is as trivial as to say only YHWH is YHWH. It is a semantic trick, then, to hold “divinity” out as if it were a carrot, when really it means nothing other than the stick of the deity being argued for.

In other words, it is no loss that we are unable to attribute this “divinity” to another because it doesn’t even mean “divinity” in the first place: it’s just a nickname for a specific deity.

Just as only YHWH is YHWH, so too is only Poseidon Poseidon. Now, you might wonder why I mention Poseidon at all unless I thought he and YHWH were both the same thing — divine. But the only “thing” they both are is not a “thing” at all: as a consequence of divine simplicity, they’re both utterly unique and so ineffably, purely themselves. There are no other terms than themselves to understand them by.

As I argue in my forthcoming book, they are both totalizing centers from which all things look uniquely.

This seems to accord well with Iamblichus. He says in De Mysteriis I.5 that we should attribute to the Gods not only the characteristic of “unity in all its extensions and all its forms” but also “a superiority over all beings which precludes having anything in common with them.” How can the Gods have nothing in common with the all the extensions and forms of unity that are their characteristic? Because the Gods are all things, and one cannot have something in common with oneself.

This is not to propose some crass pantheism: a God is not a sum, but the unity in all things; the unity of being, of life, of intellect, of soul, and body, etc. That in us which makes us to be us.

This may also be why we cannot have “knowledge” of the Gods, as we touched on earlier, because they are us, in a profound sense. Indeed, this may also be why we have “innate cognition” of other superior kinds: because they too are manifestations of the Unity of which we are.

As Iamblichus suggested in his response to Porphyry, the Gods are not differentiated by their properties, activities or “essences,” they are intrinsically individuated, and so they differ by their identities, full stop. They are the form of Unity that units come in rather than more units that also come in some form of Unity.

Stay tuned for future installments, where I’ll try among other things to deduce as Iamblichus says we can the intermediate kinds between the summit which is perfect, ineffable, and all things; and the edge which is imperfect, effable, and almost a flicker.