Freethought & Rationalism Archive

neilgodfrey · 10-17-2010, 05:38 AM

For what it's worth I've posted a few articles along these lines citing in some detail the views found in sources limted to the first century c.e. and the decades earlier -- Plutarch and Philo, of course, but also Antiochus and Apuleius. "Demonology - the basics of Middle Platonic beliefs" looks at some and contains links to others.

My posts are not as wide-ranging as Kapyong's survey, but elaborate a little on a few narrow areas that are related to this survey.

Neil

Kapyong · 10-17-2010, 03:32 PM

Gday Neil,

Quote:

Originally Posted by neilgodfrey

For what it's worth I've posted a few articles along these lines citing in some detail the views found in sources limted to the first century c.e. and the decades earlier -- Plutarch and Philo, of course, but also Antiochus and Apuleius. "Demonology - the basics of Middle Platonic beliefs" looks at some and contains links to others.
My posts are not as wide-ranging as Kapyong's survey, but elaborate a little on a few narrow areas that are related to this survey.
Neil

Your blog is great, thanks :-)
I read it often.

I also pointed Earl there - hope that works out better than Rational Sceptics...

K.

Elijah · 10-17-2010, 03:38 PM

My opinion about the demons in the air is that they should be understood as we understand memes. Gods are like the laws of the universe broken up to their particular duty. And you get questions about what is which like with Plato and what is Love? a demon or immortal? They go with demon saying it’s not a constant law/god in the universe but an intellectual force(meme) in the world.

Now how we understand the transfer of ideas today is different, still probably difficult to articulate but then air was sometimes seen as the medium which the ideas traveled and existed, since it wasn’t like any of the other elements were present. This is why you get talk about demons floating around statues because you were exposing yourself to new memes when you are introduced to new interpretations of a god or statue of a deceased philosopher/poet/hero.

It looks like you are taking the divide between spirit/matter heaven/earth as being spacial and I’m not sure if that’s correct. Form and matter work in conjunction in platonic thought, where matter is perceptible by the senses and form by the intellect.

On a side note; not sure if you already know this one but there was a good passage of a sacrifice in the intellectual realm/heaven that Philo was interpreting Moses as going up to, where he said that was the only place a sacrifice could be made.

Quote:

XI "I have seen the place in which the God of Israel Stood, in which alone he permitted his prophet to perform sacrifice to him, forbidding him to do so in other places.” On Dreams

Kapyong · 10-17-2010, 03:39 PM

Gday,

Quote:

Originally Posted by maryhelena

So what was he supposedly contributing to Middle Platonism? Incarnation within the sub-lunar sphere? Hardly a contribution - that would be an outright rejection of it's basic premises. (ie. a sub-lunar sphere above the earth where incarnation can take place....)

Paul rejected all sorts of ideas and beliefs of his time and argued new ideas of his own.

He mixed and matched all sorts of ideas.

I don't think he'd have any problem with mixing and rejecting and adding all sorts of religious and philosophical ideas into his new way.

After all, HE had personally been to the 3rd heaven, he was like Enoch, Ezra, Aridaeus, etc.

People who have travelled the heavens or been out-of-body, or met angels or faeries or hidden masters etc. have this strange need to tell people how they think it really is.

K.

Kapyong · 10-17-2010, 06:27 PM

Gday,

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

By "Paul's time" I take it you are referring to sometime in the 1st or 2nd centuries if we accept the current scattering of dates for "Paul". I imagine you could use this data to be representative of any of the centuries 1, 2, 3 or 4, perhaps even later - is this correct?

No.
I have placed Paul firmly in the 1st C.

And my references have been ordered by date so that I can show keys ideas were expressed before or around the time of Paul in the 1st C.

Later, ideas grew wildly in the 1st through 4th.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Further data from Pythagoras

The following has been sourced from Page 272 of "A History of Greek Philosophy", Volume I: The Earlier PreSocratics and the Pythagoreans (or via: amazon.co.uk)
- by W.K.C. GUTHRIE (Published 1962) .

Although this may not be directly relevant, I thought I'd mention that Pythagoras makes reference to the "Counter-Earth" and to a hierarchy of elements associated with the "earth, water, air" -- the "fire" which they held to be as the "Central Hearth" and also to a 5th element, called the "aether" which they associated with the heavenly realms - the cosmic element. (Referenced from writings by Aristotle on the Pythagoreans ... Aetius III,II,3 (DK,44a,17)) This 5th element is sometimes seen as similar to the Indian "akasha" or space.

Pythagoras derived the world from the fire and the fifth element"

The Pythagoreans held that the cosmos "Breathed in" from the Infinite Breath outside it: the "aither"

The "counter-earth" is associated with the moon. I think that they realised we live in a binary earth/moon system

Quote:

Originally Posted by Simplicius: DeCaelo 512.9

"They call the earth a star as being itself an instrument of time, for it is the cause of day and night. Day it creates by being lit up on the side which turned toward the sun, and night through the cone of its shadow.

COUNTER EARTH was the name given by the Pythagoreans to the MOON (as also "heavenly earth"), both because it blocks the sun's light, which is a peculiarity of the earth, and because it marks the limit of the heavenly regions as does the earth of the sublunary."

Hmmm - sublunary does NOT include the Underworld?

But I'm gunna try and focus on :
1st C.
the Lower Heaven.

K.

Littlejohn · 10-17-2010, 11:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kapyong

Of course the authors quoted generally don't support a sub-lunar incarnation of Jesus - because it was Paul who crafted this original conception from that matrix of ideas.
.

"..because it was Paul who crafted this original conception from that matrix of ideas. "

I strongly doubt that 'Paul' has been the author of all that ... There was no correlation between Paul and Catholic Christianity. Only when will be revealed the true profile of the historic character, now known as 'Paul of Tarsus', the scholars will realize about the coarse error in which they are incurred whole generations of scholars

The apparent name 'Paul' is derived from a latin attribute, 'paulus', whose meaning is 'small' (referring to a person, it means 'small of statura').

Anyone who has been the character pointed out by the counterfeiters fathers with such an attribute, rather that with his real name, the fact remains that he was genuinely gnostic and that, also, at the time when he lived, there was no any christianism to which convert you, since Catholic Christianity saw the light between years 140-150

Finally, there has to be underlined that this character, thus as it is proposed by the New Testament literature, is anything but 'univocal', since it is the resulted of a syncretic-literary 'merging' of two historical and distinct figures...

Greetings

Littlejohn

.

Kapyong · 10-21-2010, 03:06 PM

Gday,

Guess I'll be posting back here now :-)

Origen's Homily 1 on Genesis refers to the Waters Above and Below :

Quote:

Let each of you, therefore, be zealous to become a divider of that water which is above and that which is below. The purpose, of course, is that, attaining an understanding and participation in that spiritual water which is above the firmament one may draw forth "from within himself rivers of living water springing up into life eternal," removed without doubt and separated from that water which is below, that is, the water of the abyss in which darkness is said to be, in which "the prince of this world" and the adversary, "the dragon and his angels" dwell, as was indicated above.

Therefore, by participation in that celestial water which is said to be above the heavens, each of the faithful becomes heavenly, that is, when he applies his mind to lofty and exalted things, thinking nothing about the earth but totally about heavenly things, "seeking the things which are above, where Christ is at the right hand of the Father." For then he also will be considered worthy of that praise from God which is written here when the text says: "And God saw that it was good."

And then also those things which are described in the following statements about the third day signify this same meaning. For the text says: "And God said, 'Let the water which is under heaven be gathered into one gathering, and let the dry land appear.' And it was so done."

Let us labor, therefore, to gather "the water which is under heaven" and cast it from us that "the dry land," which is our deeds done in the flesh, might appear when this has been done so that, of course, "men seeing our good works may glorify our Father who is in heaven." For if we have not separated from us those waters which are under heaven, that is, the sins and vices of our body, our dry land will not be able to appear nor have the courage to advance to the light.

Also note his comments about the firmament being corporeal, and the 1st heaven being spiritual, which is our mind :

Quote:

Although God had already previously made heaven, now he makes the firmament. For he made heaven first, about which he says, "heaven is my throne." But after that he makes the firmament, that is, the corporeal heaven. For every corporeal object is, without doubt, firm and solid; and it is this which "divides the water which is above heaven from the water which is below heaven." For since everything which God was to make would consist of spirit and body, for that reason heaven, that is, all spiritual substance upon which God rests as on a kind of throne or seat, is said to be made "in the beginning" and before everything. But this heaven, that is, the firmament, is corporeal. And, therefore, that first heaven indeed, which we said is spiritual, is our mind, which is also itself spirit, that is, our spiritual man which sees and perceives God. But that corporeal heaven, which is called the firmament, is our outer man which looks at things in a corporeal way.

Corporeal way = kata sarka ?

Here is my picture of all that :

Kapyong

WilliamRS · 10-22-2010, 08:16 AM

Are any of you aware of the idea of the Ray of Creation expressed by Gurdjieff in The Fourth Way and by Boris Mouravieff in Gnosis? Mouravieff claims that he is espousing the Esoteric Tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church in his three book series Gnosis.

The description of the Cosmos as a Ray of Creation and composed of different elements called Hydrogens seems to me, very correlated to these ideas. In fact, the different Cosmos are all based on laws that form the basis for the Cosmos beneath them and from which the subsequent Cosmos forms new laws. In this formulation the moon is found at the farthest end of the Ray of Creation and is considered to be outer darkness. We as humans are considered food for the moon which I believe is not a good thing to be.

The other thing that I find a parallel with the beings that inhabit the Air is in the Archons as well as the Flyers/Predators discussed in Carlos Castaneda's works. In each case these are beings without intent but who inhabit our world as non-organic beings and who directly affect our thought process.

Don Juan refers to them as non-organic, energetic beings. They seem to be the source of much of the mind chatter that we are subject to in our existence and which is the basis of so much of our negative energy. The Christian tradition calls them Demons, the Hindu's call them Asuras, the gnostics call them Archons.

In my view these Archons have access to our thought process through the sarx and that renewing of our minds is what gives us power over them. That was very much the focus of the monks that wrote the Philokalia and it seems to me to be the main focus of meditation as expressed in both the Hindu and Buddhist traditions.

If you ask me, Romans 7&8 is the most powerful description of this process that is expressed in the Bible. It completely describes the nature of the attacks and only alludes to the solution in unclear terms. This is why I think the Orthodox Christian tradition is so abjectly powerless spiritually.

andrewcriddle · 10-23-2010, 05:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kapyong

Also note his comments about the firmament being corporeal, and the 1st heaven being spiritual, which is our mind :

Quote:

Although God had already previously made heaven, now he makes the firmament. For he made heaven first, about which he says, "heaven is my throne." But after that he makes the firmament, that is, the corporeal heaven. For every corporeal object is, without doubt, firm and solid; and it is this which "divides the water which is above heaven from the water which is below heaven." For since everything which God was to make would consist of spirit and body, for that reason heaven, that is, all spiritual substance upon which God rests as on a kind of throne or seat, is said to be made "in the beginning" and before everything. But this heaven, that is, the firmament, is corporeal. And, therefore, that first heaven indeed, which we said is spiritual, is our mind, which is also itself spirit, that is, our spiritual man which sees and perceives God. But that corporeal heaven, which is called the firmament, is our outer man which looks at things in a corporeal way.

Corporeal way = kata sarka ?

The homily only survives in Rufinus' Latin translation where which looks at things in a corporeal way is qui corporaliter intuetur. It is difficult to determine the original Greek behind Rufinus' free translation but corporaliter probably represents a word from the SWMA (body) group.

Andrew Criddle

Kapyong · 01-05-2011, 01:10 PM

Gday,

Quote:

Originally Posted by WilliamRS

The other thing that I find a parallel with the beings that inhabit the Air is in the Archons as well as the Flyers/Predators discussed in Carlos Castaneda's works. In each case these are beings without intent but who inhabit our world as non-organic beings and who directly affect our thought process.

Don Juan refers to them as non-organic, energetic beings. They seem to be the source of much of the mind chatter that we are subject to in our existence and which is the basis of so much of our negative energy. The Christian tradition calls them Demons, the Hindu's call them Asuras, the gnostics call them Archons.

Hmmm... thanks for that - yes, bad beings in the 'Air', yet below heaven does seem to be a common theme there.

K.

10-22-2010, 08:16 AM	#18
WilliamRS Regular Member Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Austin, Texas Posts: 388	Very interesting thread Are any of you aware of the idea of the Ray of Creation expressed by Gurdjieff in The Fourth Way and by Boris Mouravieff in Gnosis? Mouravieff claims that he is espousing the Esoteric Tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church in his three book series Gnosis. The description of the Cosmos as a Ray of Creation and composed of different elements called Hydrogens seems to me, very correlated to these ideas. In fact, the different Cosmos are all based on laws that form the basis for the Cosmos beneath them and from which the subsequent Cosmos forms new laws. In this formulation the moon is found at the farthest end of the Ray of Creation and is considered to be outer darkness. We as humans are considered food for the moon which I believe is not a good thing to be. The other thing that I find a parallel with the beings that inhabit the Air is in the Archons as well as the Flyers/Predators discussed in Carlos Castaneda's works. In each case these are beings without intent but who inhabit our world as non-organic beings and who directly affect our thought process. Don Juan refers to them as non-organic, energetic beings. They seem to be the source of much of the mind chatter that we are subject to in our existence and which is the basis of so much of our negative energy. The Christian tradition calls them Demons, the Hindu's call them Asuras, the gnostics call them Archons. In my view these Archons have access to our thought process through the sarx and that renewing of our minds is what gives us power over them. That was very much the focus of the monks that wrote the Philokalia and it seems to me to be the main focus of meditation as expressed in both the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. If you ask me, Romans 7&8 is the most powerful description of this process that is expressed in the Bible. It completely describes the nature of the attacks and only alludes to the solution in unclear terms. This is why I think the Orthodox Christian tradition is so abjectly powerless spiritually.

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

10-17-2010, 05:38 AM	#11
neilgodfrey Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Darwin, Australia Posts: 874	For what it's worth I've posted a few articles along these lines citing in some detail the views found in sources limted to the first century c.e. and the decades earlier -- Plutarch and Philo, of course, but also Antiochus and Apuleius. "Demonology - the basics of Middle Platonic beliefs" looks at some and contains links to others. My posts are not as wide-ranging as Kapyong's survey, but elaborate a little on a few narrow areas that are related to this survey. Neil

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.