On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians (De Mysteriis)
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~100,000 words · 486 passages
Cite this work
- APAIamblichus. (n.d.). On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians (De Mysteriis). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/iamblichus/on-the-mysteries-of-the-egyptians-chaldeans-and-assyrians-de-mysteriis
- MLAIamblichus. On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians (De Mysteriis). Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/iamblichus/on-the-mysteries-of-the-egyptians-chaldeans-and-assyrians-de-mysteriis.
- ChicagoIamblichus. On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians (De Mysteriis). Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/iamblichus/on-the-mysteries-of-the-egyptians-chaldeans-and-assyrians-de-mysteriis.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Iamblichus's answer to a letter from Porphyry asking, sceptically, why a philosopher should perform rites: the fullest defence of theurgy that survives.
Context and history
Porphyry had raised reasonable objections: if the gods are impassible, how does a prayer move them? If they are good, how does a rite oblige them? Iamblichus replies that the trouble is the premise: theurgy does not work because the philosopher understands anything, but because the rites are signs set in place by the gods themselves, and they act even when the performer does not know why. With this he separates salvation from intelligence, and opens Neoplatonism to religious practice. It is the text that determined later Neoplatonism, Proclus included, and which Julian the Apostate used as the ground of his attempt to restore paganism. The title is a Renaissance editor's; Iamblichus did not give it.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
all bodies proceed from the vital and luminous body of the world. And, lastly, all these great monads are comprehended in the first one, from which both they and all their depending series are unfolded into light. Hence this first one is truly the unity of unities, the monad of monads, the principle of principles, the God of Gods, one and all things, and yet one prior to all. No objections of any weight, no arguments but such as are sophistical, can be urged against this most sublime theory, which is so congenial to the unperverted conceptions of the human mind, that it can only be treated with ridicule and contempt in degraded, barren, and barbarous ages. Ignorance and impious fraud, however, have hitherto conspired to defame those inestimable works in which this and many other grand and important dogmas can * Viz. The Philosophical Works of Proclus, together with those of Plotinus, Porphyry, lamblichus, Syrianus, Ammonius, Damascius, Olympiodorus, and Simplicius. XIV alone be found ; and the theology of the ancients has been attacked with all the insane fury of ecclesiastical zeal, and all the imbecile flashes of mistaken wit, by men whose conceptions on the subject, like those of a man between sleeping and waking, have been turbid and wild, phantastic and confused, preposterous and vain. Indeed, that after the great incomprehensible cause of all, a divine multitude subsists, cooperating with this cause in the production and government of the universe, has always been, and is still, admitted by all nations and all religions, however much they may differ in their opinions respecting the nature of the subordinate deities, and the veneration which is to be paid to them by man; and however barbarous the conceptions of some nations on this subject may be, when compared with those of others.…