Storytime: Reading Hierocles on the Golden Verses, Part II
We continue our read-through of Hierocles' Commentary, focusing in detail on the treasure-trove that is Chapter XXVI. The telestic was never so initiatory (or is it civic?)!
We continue our read-through of Hierocles' Commentary, focusing in detail on the treasure-trove that is Chapter XXVI. The telestic was never so initiatory (or is it civic?)!
We discuss Martianus Capella and his extraordinary and vexing philological ascent-account, the Marriage of Philology and Mercury. Ↄ. Martiana guides us through a geocentric kosmos where liberal arts are planetary spheres, gods are physical elements, the planets are daimones, but absolutely nothing is as it seems.
We continue our read-through of Macrobius through a major section on arithmology, a palate-cleansing taxonomy of the virtues, and a detail-rich discussion of the descent of the soul, her acquisition of planetary subtle bodies, and a host of astrological lore both eschatological and indeed psychological.
We explore the rich seam of late-antique esoteric lore that is Macrobius' Commentary on the Dream of Scipio. We discuss who Macrobius was, what he wrote, what he wrote about, and introduce who read him later on. He emerges as a crucial transmitter of astrologised, arithmologically-informed Platonism to the Latin west in the middle ages.
We explore the Dream of Scipio, Cicero's cryptic work in which one Scipio appears to another Scipio in a dream and instructs him in astral religion, numerical/astrological cosmology, the fate of just souls in the astral afterlife, and much more. Not bad for a lawyer.
We discuss Poseidonius of Rhodes, perhaps the most influential Stoic teacher on certain later-esoteric currents of thought. Was the esoteric Poseidonius historically-real, or is he a mirage conjured up by scholarship? We look at the evidence.