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Liber XII · Hermeticism

Liber XII · Hermeticism · Chapter V: Neoplatonism & Theurgy

Plotinus: The One, Intellect, Soul and the Birth of Neoplatonism

Plotinus explained: the founder of Neoplatonism, his school in Rome (244–270), the One, Intellect and Soul, the return of the soul, and his lasting legacy.

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Plotinus (c. 204/5–270 CE) was a Greek-speaking philosopher, probably from Egypt, who taught in Rome from 244 until shortly before his death and is regarded as the founder of Neoplatonism. He described reality as flowing from an utterly simple first principle, the One, through Intellect and Soul down to the physical world, and he taught that the soul can return to its source by purification and contemplation. His treatises, edited by his pupil Porphyry as the Enneads, shaped pagan, Christian, Jewish and Islamic mysticism and the whole later Western esoteric tradition.

Life of Plotinus: From Alexandria to Rome§

Almost everything known about Plotinus comes from the Life of Plotinus that Porphyry placed at the head of his edition of the master's writings around 301. Porphyry tells us that Plotinus seemed ashamed of being in a body and would not speak of his parents, his birthplace or his birthday, so even these basic facts are uncertain. Later sources name Lycopolis in Upper Egypt as his home town, but this is not confirmed by Porphyry. From the age at death that Porphyry records, his birth is placed in 204 or 205.

At about twenty-eight Plotinus turned to philosophy in Alexandria, where he was dissatisfied with the famous teachers until a friend brought him to Ammonius Saccas. "This is the man I was looking for," he is said to have exclaimed, and he stayed with Ammonius for eleven years. Ammonius wrote nothing, and his teaching remains one of the mysteries of ancient philosophy; Origen the Platonist and, according to some, the Christian Origen were also his pupils.

Wishing to learn the philosophy of the Persians and Indians, Plotinus joined the eastern campaign of the emperor Gordian III in 242–243. When Gordian was killed in Mesopotamia, Plotinus escaped with difficulty to Antioch and then went to Rome, where he settled in 244 at about forty years of age. Whether he would have encountered Indian thought had the campaign succeeded is unknowable, and modern parallels drawn between Plotinus and Vedanta rest on resemblance rather than demonstrated contact.

The School in Rome and Its Circle§

In Rome Plotinus taught for twenty-six years, from 244 to about 270. His school was not a formal institution but a circle meeting in the house of a wealthy widow, Gemina, open to anyone who wished to attend. Porphyry describes the classes as discussions rather than lectures: a text of Plato, Aristotle or a later commentator would be read, and Plotinus would develop his own interpretation, answering objections at length. Porphyry himself once questioned him for three days about how the soul is joined to the body.

The circle included senators, physicians, a poet, a rhetorician and several women devoted to philosophy. Amelius, a disciple of long standing, made extensive notes; Porphyry joined in 263. Plotinus acted as guardian for orphaned children of noble families, managed their property carefully and was trusted to settle disputes. The emperor Gallienus and his wife Salonina honoured him, and he once asked them to refound a ruined town in Campania as "Platonopolis", to be governed by Plato's laws, a plan that came to nothing.

Plotinus began to write only around 253, at about fifty, and he wrote as he spoke: rapidly, without revising, and with poor eyesight that made him reluctant to reread. The resulting fifty-four treatises are compressed and difficult, often responses to problems raised in class. His health failed in the late 260s, and he withdrew to an estate in Campania, where he died in 270. Porphyry, then in Sicily, records his last words through the physician Eustochius as an exhortation to bring the divine in us back up to the divine in the All, a phrase whose exact wording is debated.

The One, Intellect and Soul: Plotinus's Three Hypostases§

The heart of Plotinus's thought is the doctrine of three hypostases, or fundamental levels of reality, discussed most fully in his treatment of the three primary realities (Enneads V.1). He presented it as an interpretation of Plato, especially the Parmenides, the Republic's Form of the Good and the Timaeus, and did not regard himself as an innovator.

The One§

The first principle is the One, also called the Good. It is absolutely simple, without parts, qualities or even thought, since thinking would introduce a distinction between thinker and thought. Strictly speaking nothing can be said of it: it is "beyond being". Plotinus's language here, a careful negation of every attribute, became the root of the negative theology later developed by Christian authors such as Pseudo-Dionysius.

Intellect§

From the One proceeds Intellect (Nous), which contains all the Platonic Forms and thinks them in a single timeless act. Intellect is the realm of true being, where knower and known are one. Plotinus explains this procession with images of overflowing: as the sun gives light or a fire gives heat without being diminished, the One produces what comes after it without effort, choice or loss. Later writers called this process emanation, a term that fits the images though Plotinus also insisted that the One does not literally pour itself out.

Soul and the Physical World§

From Intellect comes Soul, which is the principle of life and motion. The World Soul orders the physical cosmos, and individual souls animate bodies. Matter, at the lowest edge, is mere receptivity with no form of its own; Plotinus identified it with privation and, in some treatises, with evil, understood as the absence of good rather than a positive power. Because every level depends on the one above, the visible universe is an image of the intelligible world, beautiful and ordered. Plotinus wrote a sharp treatise against "those who say the cosmos is evil", aimed at Gnostic members of his own audience (II.9), insisting that the world and its maker are good.

The Return of the Soul and Mystical Union§

The movement that flows out from the One is answered by a movement of return. Plotinus taught that the higher part of every human soul never fully descends: it remains in the intelligible world, even when we are unaware of it. The philosopher's task is to turn inward, purify the soul of bodily passions through virtue, rise by dialectic to Intellect, and finally go beyond thought into a contact with the One that cannot be expressed.

His famous image is the sculptor: one should "never stop carving your own statue", removing what is excess until the inner beauty shines out (I.6, On Beauty). Beauty itself is a ladder. The soul loves beautiful bodies because they reflect form, but it should pass from these to beautiful activities, to virtues, to knowledge and at last to the Beautiful itself.

Porphyry reports that during the six years he was with him, Plotinus reached this union four times, and that Porphyry himself experienced it once, at the age of sixty-eight. The Enneads close with the phrase traditionally rendered "the flight of the alone to the Alone", which became a watchword of mystical writing. For Plotinus, however, the ascent required no rituals, sacrifices or special revelations. When Amelius invited him to temple festivals, he answered that the gods should come to him, not he to them, a remark Porphyry found puzzling.

Plotinus, Gnosticism and Theurgy§

Plotinus lived among the religious movements of the third century and responded to several of them. His treatise against the Gnostics (II.9) rejected their claim that the world was made by an ignorant or fallen power, their contempt for the visible cosmos and what he regarded as their arrogance in calling themselves children of God while despising the stars. Porphyry says that Gnostic apocalypses circulating in the circle, including books under the names of Zostrianos and Allogenes, were refuted by Plotinus and his students. Versions of texts with those titles were later found in the Nag Hammadi library, confirming Porphyry's report.

Plotinus was less interested in ritual magic than his successors. In one treatise (IV.4) he explains magic not as divine intervention but as an effect of the sympathy that binds the parts of the living cosmos together, like a plucked string that sets another vibrating. Only the irrational part of the soul is affected by spells, he argued; the contemplative sage is beyond their reach. Porphyry also tells how a rival, Olympius of Alexandria, tried to harm Plotinus by star-magic, and how the attack rebounded on its author. The next generation, especially Iamblichus, insisted that the soul descends entirely into the body and needs theurgic rites; this disagreement shaped the later history of Neoplatonism and theurgy.

Legacy: From Augustine to the Renaissance§

Plotinus's influence spread through his editor Porphyry, whose edition of the treatises is discussed in the Enneads of Plotinus. Augustine read "the books of the Platonists" in Latin translation, very probably including Plotinus, and describes in the Confessions how they helped him conceive of God as immaterial. Through Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius and Boethius, Plotinian themes of ascent, light and negative theology entered medieval Christian mysticism.

In the Islamic world, a paraphrase of parts of Enneads IV–VI circulated in Arabic as the Theology of Aristotle, wrongly attributed to Aristotle. It deeply influenced Islamic philosophy and, through it, Jewish thinkers; the idea of emanation passed into Isma'ili thought and, by complex routes, into Kabbalistic speculation. The last great pagan systematiser, Proclus, built his hierarchy of being on Plotinian foundations.

In the Renaissance, Marsilio Ficino translated the complete Enneads into Latin, publishing them in Florence in 1492 with a commentary. This made Plotinus available to scholars across Europe and joined him to the Hermetic writings as part of a supposed ancient theology. Later, the Cambridge Platonists, the German Romantics, Coleridge and Emerson all read him, and in the twentieth century philosophers and historians such as Pierre Hadot and A. H. Armstrong renewed scholarly interest in him as both a rigorous thinker and a spiritual guide.

Frequently asked questions§

What did Plotinus believe?§

Plotinus believed that all reality comes from a single, perfectly simple principle called the One or the Good, through Intellect and Soul, down to matter. Human souls belong to the higher world and can return to the One through virtue, philosophical reasoning and contemplation.

Was Plotinus a mystic?§

Most scholars describe him as both a philosopher and a mystic. He argued rigorously, but he also taught that the summit of philosophy is a union with the One beyond thought, and Porphyry records that Plotinus experienced this union several times.

Is Plotinus the same as Neoplatonism?§

He is considered its founder, but "Neoplatonism" is a modern label for a long tradition that includes Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus and others who often disagreed with him, especially about the value of ritual and theurgy. Plotinus thought of himself simply as an interpreter of Plato.

Did Plotinus practise magic?§

There is no evidence that he did. He explained magic as a natural effect of cosmic sympathy and held that the wise person is beyond its power, preferring inner contemplation to rituals.

Sources and further reading§