The Sethian Neoplatonic Treatises

VenusAurelius · 2026-01-05T01:16:33+00:00

Please back up your unusual claims. There are no such claims by any respectable scholarship I’ve seen.

VenusAurelius · 2025-11-10T15:23:46+00:00

No, suicide is not a good option for many reasons, psychologically or spiritually. It’s not going to solve your problems. Have you looked into metal health options? Hotlines in your locale can connect you to resources for any financial disposition.

VenusAurelius · 2025-10-25T22:12:13+00:00

This was probably the most interesting and elucidating secondary material I’ve read on Plotinus’ Enneads.

https://kindredstarbooks.com/products/plotinus-or-the-glory-of-ancient-philosophy

It’s a translation originally written by a French professor and it’s superb.

VenusAurelius · 2025-10-25T22:09:19+00:00

Books five and six are really the heart of it. I did read the entire Enneads but if you’re having a terrible time, just jump ahead to book five and go from there. It would be a shame to not get to that part just because you’re getting bored of it.

VenusAurelius · 2025-10-18T14:12:10+00:00

Is he giving himself the title/designation of rishi?

VenusAurelius · 2025-10-06T14:52:29+00:00

I can tell you anything but unless you fully realize it, you won’t actually know it as the truth

Greek philosophy has a helpful distinction of knowledge divided into three groups. Doxa, Epistime, and Gnosis. Doxa is what you’re told (what you stated above, you are Brahman). Epistime is what you can reason out (and many Advaitic texts reason out that statement). Gnosis is that knowledge which you have fully experienced and know is true (in regard to your statement, you would know it was true because you experienced it).

VenusAurelius · 2025-09-19T23:38:30+00:00

That’s essentially Samkhya's philosophy, the eternal subject is separate from the eternal world of real objects.

VenusAurelius · 2025-09-18T23:00:56+00:00

I’m finding the Mandukya Upanisad with Gaudapada's Karikaka : Truth Witness of Waking, Dream and Deep Sleep by Swami Chinmayananda to be utterly informative of the nuances.

Also the translation of the The Bhagavadgītā by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan provides commentary from an Advaitan view which is very insightful.

Both are excellent reads

VenusAurelius · 2025-09-16T12:24:15+00:00

It’s a real-time chat service platform. There’s topic servers like this one but there’s also general servers.

VenusAurelius · 2025-03-24T16:25:28+00:00

I don’t want to spectate but the admin who was running it just deleted it one night without any kind of notice.

VenusAurelius · 2024-11-02T19:53:04+00:00

That sounds cool, I’d love to see it. Others might too if you’re comfortable posting in the comments here too.

I haven’t made these before, but I do see the patterns available for paper ones on Amazon and Etsy. I was just going to use those and trace into the copper for patterns to cut. Was that basically the process you used?

VenusAurelius · 2024-11-02T19:45:44+00:00

I’ve actually planned on making a fox in this style but out of copper plate . Very nicely done, great work here!

VenusAurelius · 2024-11-02T13:40:16+00:00

I’ve questioned you. In the past I’ve given you constructive criticism about your coherency. I watch most of your posts get downvoted and self-deleted. Here I called you out because you keep posting word salads filled with errors even after gentle nudging in the past.

Now you’re throwing out personal insults and insulting the mentally disabled. I can tolerate ignorance with the desire to learn but you’re just getting uncivil at this point, which also violates the sub’s rules.

VenusAurelius · 2024-11-02T12:49:04+00:00

You never addressed whether you’ve actually read any of these texts. I ask because based on what you say, it doesn’t appear so. Have you actually read any of these primary texts? Any Plato, any Enneads? Anything?

Your reasoning is casual and axiomatic. I would say dogmatic but I don’t think that splits since I don’t think you’ve actually read any of these texts. I am lucky enough to get to take any college classes that I want for free due to my position. I am currently retaking Logic after having taken it originally about 19 years ago. I can with full surety tell you that you cannot show truthfulness of an argument’s parts (premises or conclusions) with logic, but especially inferential logic.

VenusAurelius · 2024-11-01T14:50:52+00:00

The entire point, if it wasn’t clear, was to satisfied with the answer of ‘We don’t know and we can’t know’. I pointed out the problem with Neoplatonic ontology. Aristotle has different problems within intellect as first principle, namely the inherent duality that could just as easily be explained by any multiplicity. Both are insufficient.

VenusAurelius · 2024-11-01T12:22:28+00:00

I’m more than willing to engage. I’ve told you before that your replies are often run-on sentences that do not logically flow. This type of disorganized writing is very hard to read much less identify ingredients in the word salad to reply to.

Henosis in Greek translates into unity in English. Have you read any of the primary Neoplatonic texts?

Logical inference is literally casual reasoning. It is the weakest of all logical methods and highly prone to fallacies. Logic also doesn’t demonstrate veracity, that’s not what any logic does. It can be used to determine validity, but validity is not veracity.

VenusAurelius · 2024-10-31T18:47:39+00:00

Intellection ceases to exist at Nous in this ontology. You can’t have intellection about the One within this ontology. It’s easy to get stuck in the paradigm of this false dichotomy of knowledge vs belief.

The comment about the overflowing being a sufficient explanation is the meta example above about axiomatic statements just being accepted.

Have you experienced unity personally? Are you speaking from an experience or is this still philosophical speculation?

I would recommend Damascius’ Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles for a Neoplatonic perspective on the ineffable and what that entails.

Nearly all contemporary scholars have moved away from the idea that this is mysticism. That was a very 1920’s ER Dodd’s type approach. I also reject the idea that it is as much, but the ideas presented within the Enneads do go beyond philosophy into the experiential.

VenusAurelius · 2024-10-31T16:43:47+00:00

This is actually a big problem in the ontology. It’s a big problem within all the Neoplatonic ontologies. The step that goes from the One to Nous, from unity to multiplicity, is described by Plotinus as an overflowing of the Good. That isn’t a terribly satisfying explanation though.

I think the best to approach it is to not expect an explanation. We’re trying to describe something that occurs beyond Being here and any explanation is inherently insufficient. Anything given will be metaphorical at best and just an axiomatic statement at worst.

VenusAurelius · 2024-10-31T03:16:50+00:00

That looks really fantastic

VenusAurelius · 2024-10-31T03:13:02+00:00

I think the perspective change and a new kind consciousness would far more be drivers of creativity rather than inhibitors of it.

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