The 'Æons' are often referred to in 'Club Jaguar', and previously in 'The Story of Gracchus'. Although various definitions are given by certain characters in both stories - this article aims to provide a more detailed and historically accurate account of the subject that was a fundamental belief throughout the later period of the civilisation and culture of the Ancient World - not only in Greece but also throughout Ptolemaic Egypt, the later Roman Empire.
CLASSICAL MONOTHEISM
While Ancient and Classical religion is usually thought to be polytheistic (many 'gods'), this is, in most cases a misunderstanding.
There is, in nearly all early religion, and underlying monotheism (one 'god').
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| Πλωτῖνος - Plotinus |
Πλωτῖνος - Plotinus - born c. 204 – died c. 270 - was a major Hellenistic philosopher who lived in Roman Egypt.
His teacher was Ammonius Saccas, who followed the Platonic tradition.
Historians of the 19th century invented the term Neoplatonism and applied it to Plotinus and his philosophy, which was influential during Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and even modern times.
Much of the biographical information about Plotinus comes from Porphyry's preface to his edition of Plotinus' 'Enneads'.
Ἐννεάδες - The 'Enneads' is the collection of writings of Plotinus, edited and compiled by his student Porphyry (c. AD 270). Plotinus' work has greatly influenced Western and Near-Eastern thought. Porphyry edited the writings of Plotinus in fifty-four treatises. He then proceeded to set the fifty-four treatises in groups of nine (Greek: ennea - nine) or 'Enneads'.
Plotinus' metaphysical writings have inspired centuries of Pagan, Jewish, Christian, Gnostic, and Islamic metaphysicians and mystics, including developing precepts that influence mainstream theological concepts within religions.
THE ONE
For Plotinus, the first principle of reality is the 'ONE', an utterly simple, ineffable, unknowable subsistence which is both the creative source of the Universe, and the teleological end of all existing things.
Although, properly speaking, there is no name appropriate for the first principle, the most adequate name is the 'ONE'.
The 'ONE' is so simple that it cannot even be said to exist or to be a being.
Rather, the creative principle of all things is beyond 'being', a notion which is derived from Book VI of the Plato's 'Republic', when, in the course of his famous analogy of the sun, Plato says that the 'ONE' is beyond 'being' (ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας) in power and dignity.
In Plotinus' model of reality, the 'ONE' is the cause of all other of realities.
Although Neoplatonists after Plotinus adhered to his cosmological scheme in its most general outline, later developments in the tradition also departed substantively from Plotinus' teachings in regards to significant philosophical issues, such as the nature of evil.
Neoplatonists did not believe in an independent existence of evil. They compared it to darkness, which does not exist in itself but only as the absence of light. So, too, evil is simply the absence of good. Things are good insofar as they exist; they are evil only insofar as they are imperfect, lacking some good which they should have.
Plotinus taught that the supreme, totally transcendent 'ONE', contains no division, multiplicity, or distinction; ad is beyond all categories of being and non-being.
The 'ONE' cannot be any existing 'thing', nor is it merely the sum of all things, but is prior to all existents - essentially outside time, space and dimensionality...
However, paradoxically, Plotinus identified the 'ONE' with the concept of the 'Good', and the principle of 'Beauty'.
His concept of the 'ONE' also encompassed thinker and object, suggesting that even the self-contemplating intelligence must contain duality.
"Once you have uttered 'The Good,' add no further thought: by any addition, and in proportion to that addition, you introduce a deficiency."
Plotinus denied sentience, self-awareness or any other action to the 'ONE', but rather, if we insist on describing it further, we must call the 'ONE' a sheer potentiality (dynamis), without which nothing could exist.
As Plotinus explains, it is impossible for the 'ONE' to be 'Being', or a self-aware 'creator god'.
However, Plotinus did compare the 'ONE' to 'light', and from the 'ONE' emanated all possible universes and realities as a sequence of lesser entities.
It is suggested, therefore, that Plotinus offers an alternative to the orthodox Christian notion of creation 'ex nihilo' (out of nothing), although Plotinus never mentions christianity in any of his works.
The metaphysics of 'emanation' (ἀπορροή - aporrhoe or ἀπόρροια aporrhoia), however, just like the metaphysics of creation, confirms the absolute transcendence of the 'ONE' as the source of the 'Being' of all existing realities, and yet remains transcendent of them in its own nature.
In this manner the 'ONE' is in no way affected or diminished by these emanations, and is in no way affected by some sort of exterior 'nothingness'.
Plotinus, uses a venerable analogy that would become crucial for the largely Neoplatonic later Western metaphysical thought, and likens the 'ONE' to the sun which emanates light indiscriminately without thereby diminishing itself (now known to be not strictly the case), or reflection in a mirror, which in no way diminishes, or otherwise alters the object being reflected.
In this manner, the 'ONE' initially emanates a perfect image of the archetypes of all existing things.It is simultaneously both 'being' and 'thought', 'idea' and 'ideal world'.
This image corresponds perfectly to the 'ONE', but as derivative, and is fundamentally different.
What Plotinus understands by the 'archetype of all existing things' is the highest sphere accessible to the human mind.
This emanation is therefore the most critical component of idealism - Neoplatonism being a pure form of idealism, and the emanated Æon that is referred to as the 'Demiurge', is the 'energy', or 'ergon' that 'does the work' in manifesting or organising the material realities into perceivability.
THE ÆONS
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| Homer |
It is a Latin transliteration from the Koine Greek word ὁ αἰών (ho aion), from the archaic αἰϝών (aiwon).
In the writings of Homer the word Æon typically referred to a 'life' or 'lifespan'.
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| Plato |
An Æon is also viewed as a manifestation, in the causal, of a particular type of acausal energy.
This energy re-orders, or changes, the causal.
These changes have certain limits – in both causal space and causal time.
That is, they have a specific beginning and a specific end.
A civilization (or rather, a higher or æonic-civilization) is how this energy becomes ordered or manifests itself in the causal: how this energy is revealed.
A civilization represents the practical changes which this energy causes in the causal -in terms of the effect such energy has on individuals and this planet. A civilization is tied to, is born from, a particular æon.
By the nature of this energy, a civilization is an evolution of life – a move toward a more complex, and thus more conscious existence.
More precisely, an Æon is an archaic name for certain omnipotent beings, often described (inaccurately) as 'gods'.
THE ORIGIN OF THE ÆONS
With regard to the origin of the Æons, this is to be found in the 'projecting forth' (probole) or 'out-raying' of qualities from the the 'ONE' (the divine unity).
This process is commonly referred to as 'emanation'.
Emanation generates or causes existence, not through the intermediary of another, or an opposite: not by creation, reproduction or evolution, but by a unique manifestation that brings into existence a complex chain of being, forming a descending hierarchy of spiritual entities.
The divine attributes of the ONE, that is, the virtues, powers, abstract qualities, mental states, spiritual concepts and metaphysical ideas lay hidden until the process of emanation.
Emanation allowed them to flow forth from the divine source.
At first these abstract qualities were unconscious, like unborn children, but when they became manifest they assumed identity, passed into separate existence, and were personified (hypostatized) as independent entities.
In late Classical philosophy and religion, the externalization of the divine attributes in this manner constitutes the first stage of a long process resulting from the overflow or outpouring of the fullness (pleroma) of the ONE.
The entities that emerge from this process are known as Æons, a class of entities of varying attributes and powers.
Their own qualities, the regions they occupy, the dimensions in which they function all likewise become actualized, take on independent existence, and form links in the chain of emanation
Æons have no perceptible form to sentient material beings, but when they are able take on 'docetic' or apparent physical bodies, so that they might be thought human.
THE 'INEFFABLE' & 'EVER-LIVING' ÆONS
The Æons are properly described as 'ineffable' and 'ever-living'.
Ineffability is concerned with ideas that cannot or should not be expressed in spoken words (or language in general).
This property is commonly associated with philosophy, aspects of existence, and similar concepts that are inherently 'too profound', complex or abstract to be communicated adequately.
In addition, illogical statements, principles, reasons and arguments may be considered intrinsically ineffable along with impossibilities, contradictions and paradoxes.
Terminology describing the nature of experience cannot be conveyed properly in dualistic symbolic language; it is believed that this knowledge is only held by the individual from which it originates.
One method of describing something that is ineffable is by using 'apophasis', i.e. describing what it is not, rather than what it is.
'Ever-living' is not to be confused with immortal.
Immortality is defined as living forever - or more simply: life without end.
An immortal being or entity, however, by definition, has a beginning in the normal course of events.
Æons are 'ever-living' as they have no temporal beginning, as their 'emanation' from the 'ONE' occurs outside of time itself.
Therefore, the Æons have no beginning and no end - and are thus 'ever-living' - in that they always have and always will exist.
The 'world' of the 'Æons' is transcendent to our own world (the world of substances) and also is the essential basis of reality. Super-ordinate to matter, 'Æons' are the most pure of all things. An 'Æon' is aspatial (transcendent to space), and atemporal (transcendent to time). Atemporal means that 'Æons' do not exist within any time period, rather 'Æons' provide the formal basis for time. 'Æons', therefore, formally ground beginning, persisting and ending. 'Æons' are neither eternal, in the sense of existing forever, nor mortal, of limited duration. 'Æons' exist transcendent to time altogether - 'ever-living'. 'Æons' are aspatial in that they have no spatial dimensions, and thus no orientation in space, nor do they even (like a point) have a location. They are non-physical, but they are not in the mind. 'Æons' are extra-mental (i.e. real in the strictest sense of the word). An 'Æon' is an objective 'blueprint' of perfection. The 'Æons' are perfect in themselves because they are essentially unchanging. 'Æons' are capable of certain forms of 'incarnation' - meaning they are capable of appearing to exist on the material plane - but do so only rarely.
from Teddy's data-base - for more information see: Chapter 25 'Leaving Aswan'
Later Neoplatonic philosophers, especially Iamblichus, proposed many intermediate beings as mediators between the 'ONE' and humanity.
Ἰάμβλιχος - Iamblichus (c. AD 245 – c. 325) was a Syrian Neoplatonist philosopher of Arab origin. He determined the direction that would later be taken by Neoplatonic philosophy. He was also the biographer of the Greek mystic, philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras.
Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570 – c. 495 BC) was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, Western philosophy.
The Neoplatonic 'gods' (Æons) are omni-perfect beings (see above), and so do not display the usual amoral behaviour associated with the representations of the 'gods' in the myths of the 'classical religions' - and may be listed as follows.
The 'ONE': - Transcendent and ineffable - the 'Demiurge': the emanated 'creator' - the 'hypercosmic gods': the creators of essence and sentience - the 'cosmic gods': those sustaining being, space, time and matter and nature- which includes the 'gods' known to us from classical religion.
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS
Neoplatonism in the Renaissance combined the ideas of Christianity and a new awareness of the writings of Plato. Ficino (1433–99) was chiefly responsible for presenting Plato to the Renaissance. In 1462, Cosimo I de' Medici, patron of arts, who had an interest in humanism and Platonism, provided Ficino with all thirty-six of Plato's dialogues in Greek for him to translate.
Marsilio Ficino
Pico della Mirandola Between 1462 and 1469, Marsilio Ficino translated these works into Latin, making them widely accessible, as only a minority of people could read Greek. And, between 1484 and 1492, he translated the works of Plotinus, making them available for the first time to the West. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94) was another Neoplatonist during the Italian Renaissance. He could speak and write Latin and Greek, and had knowledge on Hebrew and Arabic. The pope banned his works because they were viewed as heretical – unlike Ficino, who managed to stay on the right side of the church. The efforts of Ficino and Pico to introduce Neoplatonic and Hermetic doctrines into the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church has recently been evaluated in terms of an attempted 'Hermetic Reformation'.
Notable modern Neoplatonists include Thomas Taylor, (the English Platonist), who wrote extensively on Platonism and translated almost the entire Platonic and Plotinian corpora into English, and the Belgian writer Suzanne Lilar. The science fiction writer Philip K. Dick identified as a Neoplatonist and explored related mystical experiences and religious concepts in his theoretical work, compiled in 'The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick'.
Philip K Dick
Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American writer known for his work in science fiction. He wrote 44 published novels and approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. His fiction explored varied philosophical and social themes, and featured recurrent elements such as alternate realities, simulacra, altered states of consciousness. His work was concerned with questions surrounding the nature of reality, perception, human nature, and identity.
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