Music was seen as a crucial tool for the elevation and transformation of the human soul in ancient esoteric philosophy from Pythagoras to Olympiodorus, and beyond into the western esoteric traditions of later eras. We discuss the theory and practice of anagogic music in the ancient Pythagorean/Platonist tradition with Sebastián Moro Tornese.
In the first of a short series of synoptic episodes looking at the esoteric in ancient Platonism as a whole, we approach the scale of virtues, the ladder by which the Platonist sage, following in the footsteps of Socrates, was to practice ascent to likeness with the gods, while still engaging in daily life.
We discuss the translation, adaptation, and evolution of Proclus' Elements of Theology into and through the Arabic and Latin thought-worlds with Peter Adamson. Come for the monotheist Proclus who is Aristotle, stay for the digression on Plethon.
Is ‘free will’ a given, a constant of the human condition? It might seem that way, but as Dylan Burns argues in this interview, the idea that humans possess a faculty of un-coerced decision-making actually arises at a specific time – late antiquity – and in a specific context – early Christian philosophy.
Professor Dillon returns to the SHWEP to talk about the life and times of Stephen MacKenna – Irish radical, Modernist literateur, amateur of the concertina, and the first and greatest translator of Plotinus into English.
We continue our interview with Michael Noble, exploring magical, exegetical, soteriological, prophetological, and other aspects of Rāzī's thought. Things get seriously esoteric, and you know that we do not say things like that lightly.
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