Neoplatonism and Theurgy: Plotinus, Iamblichus and Proclus

Neoplatonism is the name modern scholars give to the last great school of ancient Greek philosophy, founded by Plotinus in the third century CE, which taught that all reality flows from an ineffable One and that the soul can return to it. Theurgy ("divine work") is the ritual practice that later Neoplatonists, above all Iamblichus and Proclus, embraced as the means of that return, using sacred symbols, hymns and rites believed to have been given by the gods themselves.

Plotinus and the One§

Plotinus (204/5–270), probably born in Egypt and trained in Alexandria under Ammonius Saccas, taught in Rome from 244. His treatises were edited after his death by his student Porphyry, who arranged them into six groups of nine, the Enneads.

Plotinus described reality as a hierarchy flowing from a first principle, the One or the Good, which is absolutely simple and beyond being and thought. From the One emanates Intellect (Nous), the realm of Platonic Forms in which thinking and being coincide; from Intellect comes Soul, which animates and orders the material world. Matter lies at the furthest remove, close to non-being. This procession is not a temporal creation but an eternal overflowing, like light from the sun.

The human soul belongs to this hierarchy and has never wholly left the intelligible realm. Through philosophy, virtue and contemplation it can turn inward, ascend to Intellect and finally attain a union with the One beyond words. Porphyry reports that Plotinus reached this union four times while he knew him. Plotinus regarded magic as working through natural sympathy and believed the true sage was not bound by it.

Porphyry and the debate over ritual§

Porphyry (c. 234–c. 305), born in Tyre, was a prolific scholar and polemicist. He wrote an introduction to Aristotle's logic, the Isagoge, that became a school text for a thousand years, a treatise against animal sacrifice, On Abstinence, and a now fragmentary work against the Christians. He was interested in oracles and religious rites but questioned how far they could benefit the philosopher.

In his Letter to Anebo, addressed to an Egyptian priest, Porphyry raised pointed questions about divination, sacrifice and the invocation of gods: how could material rites compel incorporeal beings? His questions provoked the most important defence of theurgy in antiquity.

The Chaldean Oracles§

The Chaldean Oracles are a collection of hexameter verses composed, according to tradition, in the second century CE by Julian the Chaldean and his son Julian the Theurgist, the latter credited with first using the word theourgos. They survive only in fragments quoted by later Neoplatonists, who treated them as divine revelation alongside Plato's Timaeus.

The Oracles describe a supreme Father, a second Intellect, the goddess Hecate as cosmic soul, and the soul's descent and return through fiery realms. They allude to ritual instruments and symbols and urge the soul to ascend by divine means rather than by reasoning alone. Hans Lewy's Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy (1956) remains a basic study, and older English versions are available in the catalogue as the Chaldean Oracles.

Iamblichus and the defence of theurgy§

Iamblichus of Chalcis (c. 245–c. 325), a Syrian who studied with Porphyry, founded his own school and answered the Letter to Anebo in a work known since the Renaissance as On the Mysteries of the Egyptians (On the Mysteries), written in the persona of the priest Abammon.

Iamblichus argued, against Plotinus, that the human soul has descended entirely into the body and cannot lift itself by thought alone. Union with the gods is achieved through theurgy: rites performed with "ineffable symbols" (synthēmata or symbola) that the gods themselves have sown throughout nature, in stones, plants, animals, sounds and names. Theurgy does not compel the gods, he insisted; it is the gods' own work, which purifies and elevates the soul and allows it to receive divine illumination. Different rites suited different souls: material rites for most people, more immaterial ones for the few.

Iamblichus also systematised the hierarchy of divine beings, setting gods, archangels, angels, daimons, heroes and souls in ranks, a scheme with long echoes in later angelology. He made theurgy central to late pagan philosophy.

Proclus and the Athenian school§

Proclus (412–485), head of the Platonic school in Athens for nearly fifty years, gave Neoplatonism its most systematic form. His Elements of Theology sets out 211 propositions deducing the structure of reality from the One, through divine unities called henads, to Intellect, Soul and bodies (The Elements of Theology). His massive commentaries on Plato and his Platonic Theology integrated the gods of Greek religion into this system.

Proclus was also a practising theurgist and hymn-writer. His biographer Marinus describes him performing rites, observing Egyptian and other festivals and receiving visions. His theory of divine "series" linking each god to its animals, plants and stones underlies later doctrines of correspondences.

The end of the ancient schools§

Neoplatonism flourished as Christianity became dominant, and many of its figures defended traditional religion. The emperor Julian (r. 361–363) was an admirer of Iamblichus and tried to revive paganism. In Alexandria the philosopher and mathematician Hypatia, killed by a Christian mob in 415, taught a Platonism that attracted Christian as well as pagan students. In 529 the emperor Justinian issued legislation restricting pagan teaching, which is traditionally linked to the closure of the Athenian school; its last head, Damascius, and several colleagues travelled to Persia before returning to the Roman world. The exact consequences of the edict remain debated.

Influence on Christian, Islamic and Renaissance thought§

Neoplatonism did not end with the schools. Christian thinkers from Augustine onward absorbed much of it, and around 500 an anonymous Christian author writing as Dionysius the Areopagite adapted Proclus' system to Christian theology, giving the West its nine choirs of angels and its apophatic mysticism (see Pseudo-Dionysius and Christian mysticism). In the Islamic world, paraphrases of Plotinus circulated as the Theology of Aristotle, and a work based on Proclus became the Latin Book of Causes.

In Byzantium, Michael Psellos (eleventh century) and Gemistos Plethon (fifteenth century) studied the Chaldean Oracles. In Florence, Marsilio Ficino translated Plotinus (printed 1492), as well as Iamblichus, Proclus and the Hermetica, and fused Neoplatonism with Hermeticism and astral magic. Through Ficino, Neoplatonic theurgy became a model for Renaissance and modern ceremonial magic.

Modern assessments of theurgy§

Twentieth-century scholars long viewed theurgy with suspicion. E. R. Dodds, in The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), described it as a decline from rational philosophy into magic. Since the 1990s historians such as Gregory Shaw have argued that, for Iamblichus, theurgy was a coherent religious practice grounded in a sophisticated theory of the soul and its embodiment, and work on Proclus, divination and ritual has continued this re-evaluation.

Frequently asked questions§

What is theurgy?§

Theurgy, from Greek words meaning "divine work", is the ritual practice through which later Neoplatonists sought union with the gods. Using symbols, hymns, invocations and consecrated objects believed to carry divine power, it aimed to purify and elevate the soul rather than to achieve worldly ends.

What is the difference between theurgy and magic?§

Iamblichus and his successors insisted that theurgy, unlike common magic, did not compel the gods but allowed them to act through their own symbols. Critics, ancient and modern, have often seen the boundary as blurry, and many techniques overlap with those of the Greek magical papyri.

What did Plotinus mean by the One?§

The One is the first principle of all reality, absolutely simple and beyond being, thought and description. Everything flows from it, and the highest goal of the soul is to return to it in a union that transcends ordinary knowledge.

Was Hypatia a Neoplatonist?§

Yes. Hypatia of Alexandria taught Platonic philosophy as well as mathematics and astronomy, and her pupil Synesius of Cyrene shows the Neoplatonic character of her teaching. Her murder in 415 made her a symbol of the conflicts of late antiquity.

Sources and further reading§

• The Enneads — Plotinus, c. 270
• On the Mysteries — Iamblichus, 2003
• Proclus: The Elements of Theology — Proclus, 1933
• Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy: Mysticism, Magic and Platonism in the Later Roman Empire — Hans Lewy, 1956
• Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus — Gregory Shaw, 1995
• The Greeks and the Irrational — E. R. Dodds, 1951
• Proclus: An Introduction — Radek Chlup, 2012
• Divination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism: Oracles of the Gods — Crystal Addey, 2014