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Storytime: A cavern pleasant, though involv’d in night. Reading Porphyry’s On the Cave of the Nymphs, Part II
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We conclude the pleasant, though involv’d in night, task of reading through Porphyry’s On the Cave of the Nymphs in Homer’s Odyssey. Delights abound.
Works Cited in this Episode:
- Odysseus as image of the humans soul’s return to its true homeland: cf. Plot. Enn. I.6[1]8.16, quoting Homer Il. 2.140, then moving on to reminiscences of Od. 2.29 ff. and 10.483-4.
- Pherecydes of Syros on the recesses, caves, hollows, and so forth : B 6 D-K.
- Plato on the two ‘openings’ (pace Porphyry, these are actually four in the Myth of Er, each set of openings having an ‘in’ and an ‘out’ opening): Republic 614c1-3; d4-5; 615d4-e4. The soul as wine-jar: Gorg. 493d6-494a5.
- Proclus on the solstitial gates: In R . 2.128.26-129.21 Kroll = Numenius F 35 des Places = Test. 42 Leemans.
Recommended Reading:
See the previous episode for generally-relevant bibliography. For a detailed discussion of the solstitial gates in relation to the ecliptic and the torchbearers, see R. L. Beck. The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire: Mysteries of the Unconquered Sun. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006, 209–14.
Stephen Rego
December 5, 2021
Regarding the physical “celestial gates” for the soul in the “heavens” (in various guises from Plato to the Chaldæan Oracles) George Latura’s work is both useful and interesting, e.g.,
– ‘Plato’s Cosmic X: Heavenly Gates at the Celestial Crossroads’ (2013)
– ‘Plato’s X & Hekate’s Crossroads: Astronomical Links to the Mysteries of Eleusis’ (2014)
– ‘Plato’s Lost Cosmos’ (2020).
These papers and others are available on his academia.edu page.
Fotis Panagoulias
December 15, 2021
The comment on internal and behavioral purifying processes as a prerequisite to one’s spiritual ascent, with regard to comparative theology is spot on!
Lb Behrendt
August 10, 2023
I wouldn’t normally ask, but since Porphyry was on the record as a fan of the Jews… have you talked to any scholars of Judaism about this essay?
I may have not been the most attentive kid at shul, but it seems like there’s a lot of tasty stuff here, from the Bereishis he cites (such a beautiful verse with even more beautiful imagery in commentary and oral tradition: at the moment of creation, God’s ruach, or pneuma, hovers over the deep waters of dark, primordial chaos like a bird over her young, sometimes described as close as just three fingers’ distance from touching) and a mention of water flowing from rock (don’t get me started!) in the previous episode to milk and honey (the Earthly sweetness promised to the Jews over and over again but denied to Moses because of that water and rock incident, the wetness held under a lover’s tongue in the Song of Songs, and esoterically speaking according to the rabbis, the Torah itself) in this episode…
I mean… I at least would like to hear what someone smarter than me about this thinks! especially in terms of weird antique Jewish magical practice and Porphyry’s mysterious mixture of milk and honey to call on departed souls.
if you’ll allow me to do some massively irresponsible hypothesizing: maybe the good old Jewish tradition of eating milk and honey for Shavuot to celebrate the gift of the Torah has an older, less kosher place of origin. Shavuot marks the end of counting the Omer, which is a period associated with both grieving the dead (mortal ascent) and thanking God for the Torah (a form of divine descent). I risk spinning out into some kind of frenzied apophenia even mentioning this, but the Christian version of Shavuot, Pentecost (they even stole the Greek name for Shavuot! so unoriginal), *definitely* has themes of spiritual descent. maybe Porphyry knew about a related ritual practice that involved more literal spiritual descent.
ok! I’m done! I’m sorry Earl. please don’t call the being responsible about scholarship police to send me to philosophy jail! I really do think a scholar of antique Judaism would have neat things to say about this essay, and their things would have the benefit of actually being responsible and informed, unlike my crimes! if you ever get any good answers, can you bake them into a cake and send it to me in philosophy jail? thanks a million.
Lb Behrendt
August 10, 2023
the folks at the california department of corrections (historical responsibility division) say they’ll let me off with a warning if I add that it’s certainly more likely that my strong feeling of recognition that there’s something very Jewish going on in pieces of this essay is due to Porphyry’s large influence in later philosophic thought within the Arabic, Syriac, and Persian worlds, and in particular the Neo-Platonist influence on Rambam.
cool, they’re letting me go home now as long as I promise to stop leaving long, fanciful comments on podcast episodes. (but I still think the right kind of Judaism scholar would have fun things to say about Porphyry!)
Earl Fontainelle
August 11, 2023
Thanks for the superbly allusive ramble! No, I haven’t spoken with any specialists on Judaism about Porphyry, and I’ll see what I can do; but as for that I feel like you’ve given us a nice start here for thinking about parallels.
To be boring and dry for a moment, we do have the serious problem that, while the Tanakh itself can be confidently dated well before Porph, I think the state of play with all the rabbinic traditions is much more guesswork, so even deciding which traditions first appeared whenwill be tough.
But forget that boring stuff! On the one hand, we can’t rule out Jewish influence on Porphyry, on the other we can’t rule out Porphyryian influence on later Jewish thinkers (and Christians and Muslims, but that’s a whole series of discussions), and on the third hand (this is a very special person with three hands) there is also probably a common store of near-eastern lore to which our Tyrian Porphyry and , for example, the earliest talmudic compilers, both grew up in.
Lb Behrendt
August 11, 2023
lol, you are very kind. thanks for the thoughtful response! I’m a little embarrassed I hadn’t considered the simple possibility of shared regional culture and all of its accompanying *stuff*, but that sounds pretty solid to me. good call bringing your three handed friend along!
loved these episodes, by the way. I’ve really been enjoying my time with Porphyry.
Kell Drinkwater
March 12, 2026
Olive tree leaves facing up and down! Short version: I think this is based on a real behavior of dry-climate plants. Imagine an entire orchard doing this, but seasonally and more synchronized.
(I should emphasize that I am not from an olive-growing region and have not seen this behavior in person. But my Botanical Plausibility Radar immediately pinged when I heard it, unlike with the “bees don’t settle on beans” thing, which makes no sense and runs actively counter to what I know about bees and Fabaceae flowers.)
The speed of photosynthesis is limited by not only the amount of sunlight, but also by available water. So if you are a plant in a hot dry area, you will frequently have too much light, which threatens to evaporate your precious water and desiccate or UV-damage your precious leaves. Desert and Mediterranean plants have a variety of strategies to reduce that incoming sunlight: notably by growing a white hairy or powdery surface to reflect the light away, or by adopting a “vertical leaf posture” where the leaves sit edge-on to the sun, rather than face-on.
The third popular strategy is “be drought-deciduous”, which the evergreen olive tree has opted not to do. Thus it must have leaves capable of handling both sunny/dry summer and shady/wet winter, and be able to adapt them between those two conditions. So they have dark green upper surfaces and pale white undersides, and they change posture daily/seasonally.
So it’s not like the olive leaves are rotating 180° around their long axis. That would look ridiculous, and as I live in the capital of unnecessary ornamental olive trees, I can confirm they don’t do that. Rather, the leaves are daily and seasonally flapping up, down, and around to adjust the amount of sunlight they receive, depending on temperature, water, day-length, and other such cues. The effect might not be obvious on a single branch, but if you stand back and look at an entire olive orchard, I’d bet money that you see a significantly paler color in summer, the result of millions of leaves all tilted up to expose more of their pale underside and less of their dark green upper surface.
How exactly does this symbolize the vicissitudes of the soul moving through genesis? Maybe the idea is that the olive trees are paying close attention to the sun’s movements and the cardinal directions / tropics that were so significant for the directions of cave entrances and whatnot.