Plotinus said that our task is not to be good, but to be god. In this interview we explore what that meant to later Platonists, from Iamblichus to Olympiodorus and taking in a host of thinkers in-between. The answer given is apophatic, but we also learn that divinisation may be closer than we suspect.
We discuss three of the most important thinkers from the final generations of philosophical teaching at Alexandria. One is an upstart Christian. Two are esoteric Platonists of the Golden Chain. One may or may not have been an alchemist.
We discuss how Platonist philosophical teaching played out at Alexandria before Justinian's edict of 529 and in its aftermath. Featuring cameo appearances from the fall of the western Roman empire and Horapollo's Hieroglyphika.
We follow Damascius' tale from the final flowering of the Golden Chain at Athens in the 470's through a decline and fall of philosophic teaching at Alexandria, and chaos at Athens following the death of Proclus. Our book ends in disjointed fragments, which is weirdly appropriate.
We discuss Justinian's great church, Hagia Sophia, the gem of Constantinople and of Orthodox Christianity. We then look at a number of theories out there which read Hagia Sophia as encoding esoteric messages beneath her Orthodox exterior, and use this case-study as a springboard for discussing the thorny problems involved in interpreting architecture, especially esoteric architecture.
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