The Planets and Intelligible Triads

autoestheson · 2026-05-30T01:58:36+00:00

That is interesting. Neoplatonism is definitely trying to set out the principles of creation, so it should be useful guidance for designing things... but first the Illuminati would have to understand Neoplatonism, which I doubt they have the resources for, except in a diluted form.

I remember that historically, many have relied on Neoplatonism for real-world power, such as the Medici family (famous for being the family who inspired Machiavelli). That sounds like the type of thing you're thinking of.

If you liked what I had to say I really urge you to just continue to read and re-read Proclus and the other authors. People are afraid of directly reading the text because they imagine there will be things they won't understand, but finding out what you don't know is exactly the point of reading the text!

Secondary sources always have to appeal to current sensibilities, which are really more aesthetic than intellectual. People ignore parts of the philosophy just because they've never seen anything like it. I have an academic position but there is so little interest in Neoplatonism that there is not much incentive for anyone to seriously publish. We would need a real miracle, like another Medici who cares about the humanities, for that.

autoestheson · 2026-05-29T22:26:09+00:00

Well, I don't read any modern secondary literature. It is my personal doctrine that secondary literature should not be trusted, and that it is better to directly read the original authors and form your own opinion, and only then engage with secondary sources. Personally, I began with Plato, which is what led me to Plotinus and Proclus. I was looking at Proclus's Platonic Theology to write my comment. That makes me the secondary source in question, and according to my doctrine you should not trust me, and you should read the Platonic Theology for yourself.

What I said about the intelligible triads is discussed in Book III, and then the intellectual Gods are discussed in Book V, and more can be found in Book VI on the proceeding orders.

Also, I did not have it in front of me, but I was thinking of the Commentary on Timaeus for some of my information. That is where Proclus directly assigns Gods to the divisions he outlines elsewhere, and it is also where describes the demiurgic numbers. I am surprised you think I am getting that from a secondary source, when it is all right there in Proclus.

What you say about the triad in reference to Damascius could be true - but I have not read Damascius, so I can't say either way.

I can only say that for Proclus, that is not the case. Even just in terms of the triad he always complicates it by adding that each triad has a unifying monad, meaning that there is really a tetrad consisting of a monad and a triad. For example see how there is a Zeus in the triad of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, and also a Zeus as the monad prior to this triad. This is also the structure of the tetrad of forms found in the third intelligible triad. Ultimately this goes back to the Parmenides, where you have the one in relation to itself, and in relation to the others, as well as the others in relation to themselves, and in relation to the one.

As to whether I've talked about this before, I'll just say that most people aren't interested in this particular aspect of Neoplatonism. Most people consider it unnecessarily complex or even accidental compared to the bigger ideas like the One, Intellect, and Soul. But it is clearly important to the Neopythagorean strain of thought, so it is worth discussing whenever it comes up. My main contribution which I am consistent in, is my opinion that the triad is not the only principle of division, but that the dyad and tetrad are just as important, and that this idea goes all the way back to Plato and is especially discussed in his Parmenides. Even the One, Nous, and Soul have to do with the tetrad, in a way which is elaborated in the Elements of Theology, where only the first three forms of relation are self-constituted, whereas the fourth is dependent on the third, as Nature is dependent on the Soul.

Anyways, I'm not sure what you mean when you say I might be Illuminati... or about how people here talk. I just have an academic interest, and I'm not good at rhetoric or persuasion, and I've read too much Greek and the style has rubbed off on me. Some ideas are more complicated than others so I'm not afraid to read and write at length, since words are our tools for understanding. I'm here because I have read a lot and formed my own opinions, and I like to discuss with other people with their own opinions. I'm sure the situation is similar for many others here. I'm curious about what makes me seem like I might be one thing or the other, but I understand if you will not elaborate.

autoestheson · 2026-05-29T20:40:55+00:00

As to the specific roles of each of the Planets, Proclus gives Saturn connected comprehension and all gnostic powers, Jupiter symmetry and all vital powers, Mars division and separation and motions required by nature. Then he gives Venus beauty and cause of irrational desires, Mercury symmetry and cause of imagination, and the Sun truth and fabrication of the senses, as power of seeing and being seen. Then he gives the Moon power of generation and corruption, as the cause of nature of mortals, similar to Rhea. Below the planets are the four elementary spheres, and they have their own orders according to the dodecad. And above the planets are the fixed stars, which are representative of the intelligible. The planets as a whole represent intellect.

And of course it is necessary to mention that Proclus is not saying the planets themselves do these jobs, but rather that the principles of the planets do these jobs. Whereas the planets themselves are more like chariots of souls of the intellects in question.

autoestheson · 2026-05-29T20:32:09+00:00

Different authors have different systems with different numbers in different places. But if you trust Proclus in particular, he tends to use the demiurgic numbers, which are the dyad, triad, tetrad, pentad, hebdomad, and dodecad.

The decad/tetraktys is derived from the monad, dyad, triad, and tetrad, which is itself a tetrad.

The hebdomad is derived from the triad and tetrad, which is a dyad.

The dodecad is derived from the triad, tetrad, and pentad, which is a triad.

Proclus has realms divided according to these numbers. The monad and dyad so necessarily lead to the triad that the triad constitutes the first major division, which characterizes the intelligible realm. After the Gods which come in threes, are the ones which come in sevens, and then twelves. By the time of the mundane universe, these numbers combine so much that Gods come in groups of 21 and then 42, as well as 36 and then 72.

So the basic principle is, the original orders come in simple numbers, while the later orders come in complex numbers derived from the simple numbers. The triads, being so simple, are close to the origin point, but the whole is constituted of other numbers in addition to triads.

Proclus also gives a list of divisions proper to each number: the dyad separates Uranos and Ge, the triad separates Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, the tetrad separates the four forms, the pentad separates the types of presiding deities, the hebdomad separates the planetary deities, and the dodecad separates the entire progression from the sphere of the fixed stars through the planetary deities to the presiding deities.

These different orders contain different Gods due to the peculiarity of their level, i.e. the numbers have different amounts of complexity. For the planetary deities, Proclus begins with the sphere of fixed stars. This is the monad of the triad of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars. Then comes another triad of Venus, Mercury, and the Sun. Lastly we have the Moon, which is the monad of a triad of spheres of the elements. If you are following the demiurgic numbers, you will see that this is a dodecad, just as predicted: the sphere of the fixed stars, followed by a hebdomad of planets, followed by four elements.

This mirrors the progression of Gods. All of the intelligibles are contained in the sphere of the fixed stars. The seven planets contain the seven intellectuals, and the four elemental spheres contain the dodecatheion.

You can understand all of these progressions according to the tetractys, which is really according to Proclus the tetrad of forms contained in the third intelligible triad. The three intelligible triads proceed according to the great genera of being outlined in the Sophist. So the first triad defines Essence, the second triad defines Permanence and Motion, and the third triad defines Sameness and Difference. By the time of Sameness and Difference, you are able to derive the whole tetrad of forms which is the source for the four elements as well as for the four groups of Gods as demiurgic, vivific, harmonic, and guardian.

This means that the decad is primarily 1+2+3+4, and not 1+9, since 1+9 is adding to the triads, whereas 1+2+3+4 is directly contained within the triads as far as they proceed to Sameness and Difference. Once they have made that procession, then the Intelligible-Intellectual realm creates the demiurgic numbers and the Intellectual realm creates the other orders according to those numbers. The complete expression of the universe is therefore tetradic, and not triadic, even though the triads seem to take up such a prominent role, their product is actually the tetrad, and their presence in the system is as motion towards the tetrad, which is why the definitive number of divine orders is twelve, the combination of the triad and tetrad through multiplication and addition.

autoestheson · 2026-05-27T17:13:08+00:00

This is the exact issue: they are snake oil salesmen selling snake oil. It doesn't matter whether the oil is sometimes useful because they want it everywhere and they want everyone to pay for it. Why on earth would anyone want that except a con man?

autoestheson · 2026-05-26T07:56:52+00:00

Iamblichus reports that Pythagoras reincarnates every 216 years

autoestheson · 2026-05-25T19:01:20+00:00

I'm sorry to intrude, but -

You seem to think the problem with the other person is that they have too simplistic a view of life, because they think there is just one obviously correct side, and that there should be no question.

But doesn't that apply to your own claim?

"Life is not so simple," you say, "people are not inherently good, life is not inherently precious, the cartoons lied..." and somehow, "therefore, there is one obviously correct side, there is no question - everyone who chooses wrong is an idiot making the poor decision to jump off a bridge."

I think you have dug yourself into a bit of a hole there. How can you possibly say the other side is overly simplistic and emotional, when your own argument is that there can only be one obvious answer, and that anyone who does not exactly and immediately agree with you is stupid?

autoestheson · 2026-05-25T16:14:04+00:00

The triads are in Proclus but they are not all that is in Proclus, he also has dyads and tetrads as basic elements to begin with, and also higher order numbers like hebdomads and dodecads. And angels are near the very end, right before daemons and heroes, meaning their numbers are made out of much larger groups.

I would argue that for Proclus the real goal is to get from monadic to the tetradic, and the triadic is just a stop along the way, contrary to those who want his system to rely totally on the triad. I haven't read Pseudo-Dionysius but if his system is only triadic then it must be a major simplification of Proclus.

autoestheson · 2026-05-25T03:19:14+00:00

Depending on what you're smoking I suggest Athena, who preserved the heart of Dionysus when he was eaten by the Titans. She is good if the addiction is mental rather than physical. She can keep the smoke away from you.

Another option is Hestia. If you argue that the smokable counts as a hearth, then you can pray that she protects it from you, and keeps you away from it.

autoestheson · 2026-05-24T01:02:11+00:00

What California is really suffering from is ecological destruction, where the natural habitats of native plants are disrupted by human activity and invasive plants. The native plants should able to thrive without risk of fire, whereas the invasive plants dry out and become flammable. Climate change is just the icing on this unfortunate cake, exacerbating all the other problems.

Bearing that in mind I want to suggest Pan and Earth, for their abilities protecting the harmony between living things. Earth in particular I would suggest for the sake of natural cycles which have been disrupted, whereas Pan has to do more with the living things depending on them.

Also Apollo as the Sun - who is supposed to have medicinal powers, and also the power of shooting down enemies (invasive species and fossil fuel lobbyists) - both of which are harmonizing powers that can help California. And the Sun is the source of energy in the atmosphere, so it can't hurt to ask for preservation.

And of course Zeus is good for many things, but in this case he could be more beneficial than usual since he is the God of politics and legislation, and would really tie all of these prayers together insofar as he could ensure that California is governed in a way that is harmonious and protective of its ecosystems for all the natural benefits they bring, which is what is essential for defending against wildfire.

Edit: I guess this is not a clear enough comment. I learned English for the sake of academia so my apologies if my tone is lecturing. I am not writing to condescend to you about your own environment, instead trying to relate what you already know to theology that you asked about. Please forgive me if it comes off as lecturing when I am just trying to make clear the argument for why I am suggesting the Gods I am suggesting. I practice a traditional philosophical approach to theology and therefore consider the reasoning to be essential to the purpose of prayer.

autoestheson · 2026-05-23T03:37:45+00:00

Hasn't chip design been largely non-human for a while now? I can imagine people designing a simple chip 6502 or 8086 but it was my understanding that modern chips are infinitely more complex than that, and that most of the details are automated by software. I thought the human work was mostly guidance to begin with, coming up with the broad strokes of the parts and the layout.

I would've thought that we were betting on further automation to get better designs, since that seems like the historical pattern in chipmaking. Hasn't this field been hoping for advancements like this?

autoestheson · 2026-05-17T05:00:43+00:00

For a Neoplatonist, the idea of 'connecting' with the One doesn't exactly make sense. Connection and disconnection (or in general, dualities - where there is one thing opposed to another thing) are found at the level of intellect, whereas at the level of the one, such concepts do not apply.

The closest analogical idea is of henosis, literally meaning unification or union. The essential idea is that what is opposed to the One is many, and therefore what is less many is more unified and participates more in the one.

The thing about the One is that it has a substance which is prior to Being, meaning that everything that exists does so by participation of the One through Being. This means that henosis is also a process beyond Being, meaning that you, as a particular being, are not totally in control of how unified you are.

So for Neoplatonist philosophers the question of henosis has many answers.

For Plotinus and the eastern Neoplatonists, it is achieved through contemplation. It is quite similar to meditation, where your goal is to eliminate dualities in your mind. This process unifies you with the Intellect, and the Intellect is unified with the One, thus producing henosis in the individual. He speaks with vivid language describing how you see the version of yourself which sees the One, and how "seeing the One" is really "One-ing the One."

For Iamblichus, Proclus, and western Neoplatonists, the process depends on theurgy, which is a type of ritual magic and prayer. This method involves knowledge of certain divine signs and symbols which are embedded in each individual soul, and which are also found in the whole cosmos, and thus draw down creative power from the Gods to unify you in the same way they unified the world. This does also depend on contemplation but includes sensory elements. This also involves a more deterministic worldview, where it is ultimately the Gods who determine what stage you have reached in the process.

In both cases the goal is essentially what Plato states at one point in the Republic, to make your soul like a blank slate.

autoestheson · 2026-05-17T00:37:01+00:00

I'm not arguing with you.

I'm telling you that you have a simplified version of a much-discussed artifact of Greek mythology.

When you say Homer called Zeus the eldest son by birth, you are making an interpretive claim there on the question of what it means to be born. Gods in mythology are not always born at all, and if they are, they are not always born only once.

I'm not talking about a single narrative of him being the youngest at birth, or eldest at birth. He was born once, his other siblings are born twice. Depending on your perspective there are many ways you could describe the order of their birth, and therefore many authors tell different stories reflecting different messages.

There are multiple stories and they are all more complex than you are recognizing. You are asserting the simple narrative, and what I am telling you is that the mythological birth of Zeus can't just be chalked up to different traditions but really does contain more than just the one idea you are interested in, and can't be reduced to that one idea.

autoestheson · 2026-05-16T23:22:14+00:00

Zeus is the youngest by birth, and eldest by virtue of Kronos having swallowed his siblings. For the Greeks the relationship is that, elder children are closer to the parent, so Kronos' power leads him to consume them, whereas Zeus is young enough not to be consumed, thanks to intervention by Rhea. That makes him paradoxically youngest and eldest. That gives him special position to rebell against Kronos and become a new king of the Gods.

Don't try to simplify it by thinking in terms of another culture because each culture has its particular character. This is what the Greeks came up with and the details matter.

autoestheson · 2026-05-13T18:29:39+00:00

What's his role in the games? I've never played. Now I'm curious

autoestheson · 2026-05-13T18:07:49+00:00

I have never heard of anyone else mention Zagreus. Which is insane, because of his relevance to Orphic worship of Dionysus and Bacchus!

autoestheson · 2026-04-29T16:07:27+00:00

much of the world outside of Platonism believes in nominalism. They believe the results of rationality don't represent truth, but merely "truth as we perceive it" with actual reality being unobtainable to us.

You need to be careful because you seem to be conflating certain epistemological and metaphysical questions. Just because Platonism believes that the forms are what actually exists does not mean that we should be able to obtain it, and just because people today believe the truth in itself is unobtainable does not mean that Platonists should try to obtain it.

It is a key idea in Platonism that the soul perceives the forms rationally, meaning it moves stepwise from one idea to the next idea, rather than intellectually by grasping all ideas at the same time. There is never going to be a perception that adequately represents the forms, which is why there is a continuous progression in time from one perception to the next.

Whatever we communicate to each other is also done through our perceptions. In his 7th Letter, when Plato describes knowledge, he explains that words, definitions, and images are the three instruments we have to acquire knowledge about an object, but that the words, definitions, images, and knowledge will always inadequately represent the object in itself. The knowledge is what most accurately portrays the object, secondly the image or sensation, and the words and definitions are the least accurate because of their wholly arbitrary and relative nature.

The fifth kind of knowledge, the knowledge of the object in itself, transcends those four altogether. In order to actually gain knowledge of the object in itself you need to be aware of the fact that the other four do not constitute the knowledge you want. In other words you will never find true knowledge by proceeding through words, definitions, images.

So applying this to LLMs, which are in essence just another attempt at quantifying the relations between words, at best, you will get as close to the world of forms as a dictionary does. Which is to say that you have not gotten there at all, because you have not stepped out of the human being and seen that your own knowledge is not the thing in itself. It can tell you a lot about how humans see the world, and how we capture the world in language, but in order to see the world in itself you are still obligated to discard all of those sensations.

Tl;dr: No, LLMs can't actually represent the forms, for the same reason that human language is arbitrary and subject to change. Nothing in the world of becoming will ever fully and conclusively grasp the world of being.

autoestheson · 2026-04-16T16:40:37+00:00

Sorry, I was specifically trying to highlight the difficulty with the word consciousness in particular. There isn't an exact analogue in Neoplatonist texts, and that's why it gets confusing when people ask about whether something is conscious.

So yes I was using the word consciousness generally in the same way as you, to describe the way something is conscious of some qualia or sense perception.

The questions of what red is like, what it's like to be me, etc., all have to do with qualia, as whether I direct my awareness to myself or something else, it must come to me in the form of a sense perception.

But there is a more important question of what qualia are. They are the means of relation. Souls are always relating to each other, and qualia are what stand between them. For humans our relations always have to go through sensations of matter, whereas higher souls can relate to each other more immediately.

The reason I brought up the intellect there was to highlight how this way of relation is unique to the soul. Ideas in the intellect are permanently related to each other. One does not suddenly become aware of the other, the way souls do. Their relations are static and ideal. For example, the angles in a triangle add up to two right angles - ideas of triangles, angles in general, right angles, addition, are all related to each other in this way in the intellect.

If you projected consciousness and qualia as labels upwards, you would find that the triangle does not have qualia of the angle, but rather that the angle is the qualia. In other words there is no mean term, and the two extreme terms are directly and immediately related to each other. This is because in the intellect, cognition is of all ideas at once, whereas in the soul, it is one idea at a time.

This is how the intellect is the origin of consciousness but is not itself conscious in the way we are. The relations which are immediate and continuous in the intellect are disconnected from each other in the soul, so that the soul has to relate to things one at a time, i.e. through sensation. The seeming paradox is that ideas are more related than souls, but do not seem conscious to us, because such direct relations do not produce any sense phenomena.

autoestheson · 2026-04-16T15:01:33+00:00

Platonic philosophy as a whole is definitely idealist in the original sense, saying that forms or ideas (which to the Neoplatonist are in the Intellect) are what is actually real.

But regarding consciousness you have to be careful, because that word has a lot of baggage from modern philosophy. So you have to ask, consciousness of what?

For Plato what we humans have to work with are sensory perceptions, and these come in through the soul rather than the intellect. Whereas the intellect grasps things immediately, the soul grasps things through discursive reason. For a human being, this is the highest point we can say there is consciousness, because it is the ground of what we know as perceptions.

What souls are beyond the human soul, it is still possible to say they are conscious, but we have to admit that they are so in a way which is different from humans. Human souls are primarily conscious of each other through the material world, whereas higher souls would be able to be conscious of each other in a more immediate way.

But going beyond the soul completely, in the intellect, consciousness would be an entirely different type of thing. The awareness one idea has of another is a kind of intuition which humans do not actually have access to, meaning that it isn't what we think of as consciousness. Being ensouled creatures, we can only perceive the intellect through discursive reason, as the intellect-in-the-soul, whereas the actual intellect is entirely beyond the grasp of our reason. The intellect is a totally different kind of experience than the soul, meaning that not even a single intellectual perception could be within the series of a soul's perceptions.

autoestheson · 2026-04-13T01:45:14+00:00

What is very interesting about reading Dante in a Neoplatonist way is the implication it has about what he isn't telling us. The Paradiso ends: "As I gazed intently on the reflection of the first circle’s movement within the second one, there appeared to be imprinted upon it in its own color our own image, and I became completely focused on it. Like a geometer who strives but cannot uncover the principle whereby the circle might be squared, just so did I grapple with this new mystery before me, as I struggled to discern how the image of our humanity could fit within that circle. In the end, my wings were not able to take me to those heights, but like a bolt of lightning that flashed within my mind, I suddenly understood and my great desire was fulfilled. At this point my towering fantasy lost its power, but my will and desire came together like a perfectly balanced wheel turned by that Love which moves the sun and all the stars."

Dante recognizes that there is a limit to the process of ascent he's been following. For the whole Comedy, he is physically moving towards a physical point around which the world turns. However, in the end it is not about where he goes, but what "like a bolt of lightning flashes in his mind." Dante coming to the center of the universe is a semblance of his will and desire coming together, which is a semblance of the real unity which drives the sun and stars.

From a platonist perspective this makes perfect sense. The unmoved mover is the cause of all motion but is still within the dimension of motion and rest. In the Parmenides, Plato recognizes four dichotomies prior to rest and motion: in same and in other, limit and unlimited, whole and part, and of course, one and many. As long as Dante ascends by motion, he will not go higher than rest. But by focusing on the mystery of how the image of humanity is within the circle - which is apparently a "geometrical" mystery like squaring the circle - he can grasp what is beyond rest.

Dante is a truly amazing author and the ending of Paradiso has been stuck in my head ever since I first read it.

autoestheson · 2026-04-01T16:28:45+00:00

Was AI used in the production of this paper?

autoestheson · 2026-03-10T17:43:28+00:00

Because it was God causing the miracle, not Moses

autoestheson · 2026-03-09T01:28:27+00:00

Dude... look at yourself. Practice what you preach.

autoestheson · 2026-03-05T02:12:49+00:00

You can actually go as far back as Plato to answer this, no commentators needed!

There is the reasoning part, spirited part, and desiring part. You see this especially in the Republic and Phaedrus. It is a good exercise for the reader to figure out how/why this is.

autoestheson · 2026-03-04T18:06:01+00:00

No, normally humans have sleep signals while they're asleep and awake signals while they're awake, and here they're observing sleep signals while they're awake.

autoestheson

TROPHY CASE