The Enneads — trans. Stephen MacKenna

common.

We must, therefore, lay down the grounds on which we distinguish the Gods from the Celestials — that is, when we emphasise the separate nature of the two orders and are not, as often in practice, including these Spirits under the common name of Gods.

It is our teaching and conviction that the Gods are immune to all passion while we attribute experience and emotion to the Celestials which, though eternal Beings and directly next to the Gods, are already a step towards ourselves and stand between the divine and the human.

But by what process (of degeneration) was the immunity lost ?
What in their nature led them downwards to the inferior ?

And other questions present themselves.

Does the Intellectual Realm include no member of this spirit order, not even one ? And does the Kosmos contain only these spirits, God being confined to the Intellectual ? Or are there Gods in the sub-celestial too, the Kosmos itself being a God, the third, as is commonly said, and the Powers down to the Moon being all Gods as well ?

It is best not to use the word “ Celestial ” of any Being of that Realm ; the word “ God ” may be applied to the Essential-Celestial — the auto-daimon — and even to the Visible Powers of the Universe of Sense down to the Moon ; Gods, these too, visible, secondary, sequent upon

111.5.6]

LOVE

6i the Gods of the Intellectual Realm, consonant with Them, held about Them, as the radiance about the star.

What, then, are these spirits ?

A Celestial is the representative generated by each Soul when it enters the Kosmos.

And why, by a Soul entering the Kosmos ?

Because Soul pure of the Kosmos generates not a Celestial Spirit but a God ; hence it is that we have spoken of Love, offspring of Aphrodite the Pure Soul, as a God,

But, first what prevents every one of the Celestials from being an Eros, a Love ? And why are they not untouched by Matter like the Gods ?

On the first question : — Every Celestial bom in the striving of the Soul towards the good and beautiful is an Eros ; and all the Souls within the Kosmos do engender this Celestial ; but other Spirit-Beings, equally bom from the Soul of the All, but by other faculties of that Soul, have other functions : they are for the direct service of the All, and administer particular things to the purpose of the Universe entire. The Soul of the All must be adequate to all that is and therefore must bring into being spirit powers serviceable not merely in one function but to its entire charge.

service of the All, and administer particular things to the purpose of the Universe entire. The Soul of the All must be adequate to all that is and therefore must bring into being spirit powers serviceable not merely in one function but to its entire charge.

But what participation can the Celestials have in Matter, and in what Matter ?

Certainly none in bodily Matter ; that would make them simply living things of the order of sense. And if, even, they are to invest themselves in bodies of air or of fire, the nature must have already been altered before they could have any contact with the corporeal. The Pure does not mix, unmediated, with body — though many think that the Celestial-Kind, of its very essence, comports a body aerial or of fire.

But (since this is not so) why should one order of Celestial descend to body and another not ? The difference implies the existence of some cause or medium working upon such as thus descend. What would constitute such a medium ?

We are forced to assume that there is a Matter of the Intellectual

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PLOTINUS

Order, and that Beings partaking of it are thereby enabled to enter into the lower Matter, the corporeal.

7-

This is the significance of Plato’s account of the birth of Love.

The drunkenness of the father Poros or Possession is caused by Nectar, “ wine yet not existing ” ; Love is bom before the realm of sense has come into being : Penia (Poverty) had participation in the Intellectual before the lower image of that divine Realm had appeared ; she dwelt in that Sphere, but as a mingled being consisting partly of Form but partly also of that indetermination which belongs to the Soul before she attains the Good and when aU her knowledge of Reality is a foreintimation veiled by the indeterminate and unordered ; in this state (of fore-feeling and desiring The Good) Poverty brings forth the Hypostasis, Love.

This, then, is a union of Reason with something that is not Reason but a mere indeterminate striving in a being not yet illuminated : the offspring Love, therefore, is not perfect, not self-sufficient, but unfinished, bearing the signs of its parentage, the undirected striving and the self-sufficient Reason. This offspring is a Reason-Principle but not purely so ; for it includes within itself an aspiration ill-defined, unreasoned, unlimited — it can never be sated as long as it contains within itself that element of the Indeterminate.

and the self-sufficient Reason. This offspring is a Reason-Principle but not purely so ; for it includes within itself an aspiration ill-defined, unreasoned, unlimited — it can never be sated as long as it contains within itself that element of the Indeterminate. Love, then, clings to the Soul, from which it sprung as from the principle of its Being, but it is lessened by including an element of the Reason-Principle which did not remain self-concentrated but blended with the indeterminate, not, it is true, by immediate contact but through its emanation. Love, therefore, is like a goad ; it is without resource in itself ; even winning its end, it is poor again.

It cannot be satisfied because a thing of mixture never can be so : true satisfaction is only for what has its plenitude in its own being ; where craving is due to an inborn deficiency, there may be satisfaction at some given moment but it does not last. Love, then, has on the one side the powerlessness of its native inadequacy, on the other the resource inherited from the Reason-Kind.

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p. 63

Such must be the nature and such the origin of the entire Spirit Order, each — like its fellow. Love — has its appointed sphere, is powerful there, and wholly devoted to it, and, like Love, none is ever complete of itself but always straining towards some good which it sees in things of the partial sphere.

We understand, now, why good men have no other Love — no other Eros of life — than that for the Absolute and Authentic Good, and never follow the random attractions known to those ranged under the lower Spirit Kind.

Each human being is set under his own Spirit-Guides, but this is mere blank possession when they ignore their own and live by some other spirit adopted by them as more closely attuned to the operative part of the Soul in them. Those that go after evil are natures that have merged all the Love-Principles within them in the evil desires springing in their hearts and allowed the right reason, which belongs to our kind, to fall under the spell of false ideas from another source.

All the natural Loves, all that serve the ends of Nature, are good ; in a lesser Soul, inferior in rank and in scope ; in the greater Soul, superior ; but all belong to the order of Being.