#241 | The Monad, Neoplatonic Philosophy, & The SECRET Teachings of Plato with Professor Longo - Juan on Juan

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Speaker 5 (01:33):
Welcome to the one on one Podcast with your host
one a Yala.

Speaker 4 (02:07):
Welcome back to another episode of the horn on one Podcast.
I'm your host. As always, make sure to check out
the show on social media at the hon on one
podcast on pretty much all social media platforms, Juan on,
Juan on YouTube, Brumble Everywhere, www dot TJOJP dot com,
Patreon dot com, slash, the hon on one Podcast, all

(02:28):
that good stuff, and joining us today is a scholar,
a publisher, a book owner, somebody who is one of
my favorite guests have on the show because he's he
knows a lot. Welcome back to the show, Professor Longo.

Speaker 6 (02:41):
Do what's up in of course, not much, Thanks for
having me, Glad to.

Speaker 4 (02:45):
Be here, Glad to have you. And we're gonna be
talking a little bit about some of the things in
your book Monad that you just published through your publishing company,
and beautiful cover, beautiful art on the inside as well,
and we're gonna be talking about Thomas Taylor are gonna
be talking about Neil, platonism, platonism, whatever else comes up.

(03:06):
But before we get started, where can people get a
copy of this tone and where can they look for
other projects that are coming up that you were sharing
with me. I'm very excited.

Speaker 6 (03:17):
Yeah, you can get a copy of Monad at Gallowglass
Books Dot shop. We're on Instagram and everything like that,
or you could look up The Dancing Elephant, which is
the bookstore I own in South Florida, and that'll lead
you to Monad. We have the link everywhere. There's less

(03:38):
than four hundred copies left and it is limited to
two thousand copies. Well, we printed two thousand in July.
It's sold really well. They're going fast, so there's only
a few hundred and they'll probably be sold out in
the next month or two. And then we're moving on

(03:58):
to the next book and Monad will never be republished.
It could be republished in paperback, but we have no
commitment to that, but the hardcover is limited either. Their treasures,
you know, if you're in the Neoplatonism, it's kind of
the book to have. And then our next book in March,
hopefully in March. If we stay on track, is going

(04:20):
to be Giordano Bruno in the Hermetic Tradition by Francis Yates,
fully restored with the commission cover and it'll be really
cool awesome.

Speaker 4 (04:30):
Yeah, I make sure to check that out links down
in the description. And I was telling you that i'd
done a couple episodes of of Yates because she is
she was just so ahead of her time and a
lot of the things right, the Yates narrative, as they
call it, this this idea that she presents, this grand
narrative that you're able to, which a lot of scholars call,
you know, imagination going wild type of thing.

Speaker 6 (04:53):
But she gets she gets heckled by some more like
I guess cold scholars. Yeah, like you said, for using
a little imagination, you know, something like that.

Speaker 4 (05:07):
Yeah, which I appreciate Yates because she goes where I
think people when they're reading her work want to go
right in a sort of way like, oh that's really crazy. Well,
it just so might be that crazy, And she presents
it against She's a scholar, so she's presenting in a
way that makes a lot of sense. Not a lot

(05:27):
of the stuff that she does claim is it's crazy.
But history is crazy. Alchemy is crazy, right, her Meticism
is crazy. And I wanted to ask you, a gallow glass,
what is all this about? I'm reading it here. I
never knew about this.

Speaker 6 (05:43):
So I actually graduated college about two three years ago.
I'm pretty young, and I started a hedge fund, started
in an investment partnership. I went through all the hoops
like and saying all of that, and I was trying
to think of a name for it. And I'm Irish

(06:08):
and I love knights, like I like Arthurian stuff and
all that, and so I looked up like Irish knights
and it came up the gallow glass, and I was like, well,
that's that's a cool word. And then I looked into
what it was all about. And basically, the galla Glass
were a mercenary class. They were a class of people

(06:29):
very similar to like the samurai. It was like a
class that you lived in. And what they were is
they were foreigners, typically Scandinavian or Scottish men, who were
huge warriors and were hired as mercenaries to fight for

(06:53):
lords and dukes in Ireland, in Britain. And you know, basically,
back then it was a feudal system. So you had serfs,
you had peasants that rented, you know, their land from you,
and a lord or a duke you know, had his

(07:14):
plot of land and that was all you really had.
I mean, so basically you had all these land disputes
between lords and dukes, and when they would get in
these little battles, they would need a standing army. And look,
you're not going to be hiring your peasants and your
serfs to be fighting for you. They're malnourished, they don't

(07:36):
like you, they're illiterate, you know, like they're not a
very good army, and they have political you know, they
want to kill you if anything, not killed the other guy.
So they would have to hire, yeah, the galloglass, and yeah,
they're really interesting. You see things like the Varangian Guard,

(07:57):
the Byzantine Empire similar where they would hire Scandinavian vikings
to be like this sort of secret service for the
Roman emperor because again they didn't have local political allegiances
or like ideas, so like, you know, you hire somebody
from the other side of the world, like they don't

(08:18):
really care what's going on in your town or your country.
You know, they're like you're paying me, Okay, I'll listen.
You know, they don't have an agenda so to speak. Yeah,
I just thought I love the name, and after I
started the Hedgephon, I bought a bookstore and went down

(08:39):
that route because I couldn't turn that opportunity down. And
then so the name was still available, and when we
started publishing last year, I was like, oh, let's just
keep that name. And that's a cool name.

Speaker 4 (08:51):
So yeah, the Knights Templar and them ever go to battle,
I mean they were kind of around the same time, right,
So good question.

Speaker 6 (08:57):
Yeah, I don't I don't know what the crossover was there.
I know what the collab was, Yeah, what the collab was?
I know the Ninth Templar more centered in like France
and England. Where's the Galaglass for primarily in Ireland. I'm
sure there was collab. I'm sure there was crossover. I'm like,
I would bet that Galloglass were sent to the Crusades

(09:22):
and things like that probably joined the Templar. I'd only
be speculating the Well.

Speaker 4 (09:28):
It's interesting here. The Irish call them gall or Gael
foreign Gaels, and it's almost like the Holy Grail. You
know it sounds it's like right along those lines.

Speaker 6 (09:36):
Yeah, I think that the the Anglicized version is Gallo glass,
but the original gay like is something like gall o
glas and gall is like foreign. It means like, you know,
like gall like outside of Rome.

Speaker 4 (09:51):
It's like the got the gal to tell me? Is
that where that comes from?

Speaker 7 (09:56):
Right?

Speaker 6 (09:57):
Probably does, But like portug goal is ports to gall.
So gall kind of just meant like a foreign land
or the territory outside of outside of Rome, and so
that's that's where the word comes from. It means foreign
warrior basically.

Speaker 4 (10:14):
Interesting. Yeah, I've never heard until you said that. You
said it just I was like, it's got to have
some significance and then I looked it up and it's
like some mercenary warriors. What. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (10:25):
Yeah, we didn't pick a random name. That, thank gosh
makes sense, so always picking names.

Speaker 4 (10:32):
Is that glass behind you, real, dude? Is that like
some tiffing Tiffany glass or anything.

Speaker 6 (10:36):
It's a stained glass, but not not Tiffany man.

Speaker 4 (10:39):
Or you wouldn't know. Did you ever see that article
where they had where I think it was like a
church or something had some glass and then it turned
out to be crazy expensive I.

Speaker 6 (10:50):
Didn't see that, but I'm familiar with Tiffany glass. Yeah,
I've been to people's houses. You had it. I went
to a book collector and he collected it and I
was like, oh my god, like a private collection. He
invited me to go see and he had Tiffany lamps
and stuff. Is crazy?

Speaker 4 (11:07):
Is it? This one sold that rare Tiffany. I think
they sold it as regular and then they ended up
finding out that it was like super super expensive.

Speaker 6 (11:20):
Oh yeah, it was sizable.

Speaker 4 (11:22):
I'm sure it was crazy cuz right, these guys right
speaking of Gallo glass and all this stuff, like glass
is part of alchemy, right, like the furnace and the heat,
and the thing about Tiffany glass, I believe it was
that they couldn't figure out how they got the color,
for how they got it so vibrant. He had like
a specific certain process that was able to make it

(11:44):
look the way it looked. And that that's I guess
soteric right there. That's a cult where only a certain
class of people know the certain trade. Like if you
look at like the the Freemasons or something like, are
they actually do they actually hold some seacts of the occult?
Or is it some secrets of the trade or like
what is And I imagine that it starts off like that,

(12:05):
like a secret of the trade, sure, and then from
there it kind of sort of evolves into something more
secret society ish, yeah, to where they keep getting.

Speaker 6 (12:16):
I've heard, at least from various people that at one point,
you know, freemasonry kind of won out and stuck around.
But I've heard that at one point in time, basically
every craft had had its own guild or its own
society that used the language or vocabulary of that craft

(12:38):
as analogy for spiritual matters. You know, so like painters
would be talking about you know, instead of compasses and things,
they'd be talking about paint brushes and canvases, you.

Speaker 4 (12:51):
Know, yeah, what have you to?

Speaker 6 (12:53):
Almost every craft or a blacksmith, you know, their guild
would be using blacksmithing jargon, yeah, for spiritual metaphor. But
that freemasonry is the one that's stuck around, you know.

Speaker 4 (13:07):
Yeah, that and that would make sense. No, that definitely
where it's like again, and that's what alchemy is all about.
Where it's like, is it the actual work, is it
the magnum opus or is it how you're saying this
spiritual movement of how to transcend reality with the soul
or become more pure or whatever it is. And this
is the thing I was talking about is twenty twenty
three bought for six thousand dollars. Grime covered windows are

(13:30):
actually tiffany and worth up to two hundred and fifty
thousand each of the Philadelphia Church. They sold it to
a collector and nobody knew how so he probably suddled.
He's like, I know how much these are worth. I'm
going to get him for super cheap. And yeah, so
check that out. I mean, that's insane, that's.

Speaker 6 (13:48):
Crazy looking bright I've heard about that.

Speaker 4 (13:50):
Looks like a nebula and stuff in here. You see that? Yeah?
Whoa And again right speaking about Yates and the Knight's
temp blar and everything and the idea of you know,
folk and elly in the Mystery of the Cathedrals, which
would be another good book too, the to do uh

(14:12):
this concept of did they hide the secrets of the
magnum opus within the walls of these cathedrals? Why were
they so magnificent, why were they so beautiful? Why were
they so intricate? And more importantly, who the hell funded
all these buildings? And all the ones that we lost
throughout time because a lot of them were destroyed. And

(14:33):
what are our paces? You know?

Speaker 6 (14:35):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (14:36):
So he paid six undred to purchase the pair, as
well as some wooden pews and doors, and there he
brought him to window Freeman's windows, to Freeman's Philadelphia and
auction house for appraisal. There Brown learned that they were
worth much more than he had originally paid one hundred
and fifty thousand to two fifty each. Yikes, bro, wow,

(14:59):
talk about what a great fine. I mean, what would
you do in that?

Speaker 5 (15:04):
So?

Speaker 4 (15:04):
I think they this is where they sold them. I
wonder how much they sold Thursday for hundred?

Speaker 6 (15:10):
Crazy?

Speaker 4 (15:12):
So how much they should they sell for? Do they know?
Do they know? Here see the transcripts. So they actually
sold them, and they sold Let's see here the pair
went up for auction ninety five thousand, looking for one
hundred is next the window sold for one hundred thousand

(15:33):
dollars each and you got them for six grand.

Speaker 6 (15:36):
That's crazy.

Speaker 4 (15:38):
But look how beautiful that is? Dude?

Speaker 6 (15:40):
Yeah, they are awesome. They probably belong in a better,
better venue, honestly then just that little gallery.

Speaker 4 (15:48):
Yeah, but if you get something like this. How would
you even know what to like? How did that?

Speaker 6 (15:54):
I agree?

Speaker 4 (15:54):
You know what I'm saying, Like, where where would you
even put this unless you are part of that industry
where you're able to look at their like held together
by like.

Speaker 6 (16:03):
These little no way little ties.

Speaker 4 (16:07):
Yeah, this is crazy. So yeah, the concept of this
occulted knowledge being kind of sort of hidden within these buildings.
Can we talk about Thomas Taylor? This guy, he's really interesting.
I told you I had heard about a Thomas Taylor,
another Thomas Taylor, because when I had I've always known

(16:29):
about Thomas Taylor, but I never really knew anything about him.
I knew he had translated a bunch of works, and
when I had stumbled across the other book A World
of a Voyage to the World of Cartisius, I thought
it was this guy. But I was like, the timelines
aren't matching up. You know, this guy's eighteenth century out
of the book of seventeenth century, Like, it doesn't It

(16:51):
didn't line up. And when you look up the other
tom or t Taylor, t Taylor, you don't get anything
like It's like it it's a work of satire. The
author's name was like some Jesuit monk or something who
was he contributed to, like the lexicon of Descartes. He

(17:11):
was like a descarteso terrosis. And when you look him up,
it's literally just that he wrote that one book on
descar and like contributed to like some lexicon or some
other thing. And there's nothing else. Gabriel Daniel, very biblical name,
nothing else. Work of sattire was it? Does it have
some hidden meaning? And it was by translated by t. Taylor.

(17:35):
But obviously this whole thing, there's a lot of works.
He was a pagan, and I like, can we talk
a little bit about this Thomas Taylor?

Speaker 6 (17:43):
Sure, yes, so Thomas Taylor. He was a Taurus by
the way, Oh well, like like yourself, I believe, yep.
He was born in the late seventeen hundreds. He was
a savant, meaning he was not just good at what
he did. He was like the Jimi Hendrix of what

(18:05):
he did, you know, Like he was a translator of
ancient Greek into English. He was the first translator to
go from ancient Greek directly to English, at least of
anyone doing anything important. So all of the works of
Plato and Aristotle in the Neoplatonists, Emperor Julian. All of

(18:30):
these important works of Greece and Rome that were written
in ancient Greek had never been translated directly into English.
They had been translated into Latin, so from Greek to
Latin to English. But in that triangle, in that triangulation,
you get a lot of you know, tom foolery going on.

(18:54):
And also people would be taking Facina's translations from the
Renaissance from Greek to Latin, and then they'd be translating
off of his Latin. So basically anytime up until him,
that ancient Greek was making its way into English, it
was kind of a disaster. And he came along and

(19:14):
was able to create the infrastructure to translate from ancient
Greek directly into English, and then he just went off.
He translated the complete works of Aristotle, complete works of Plato,
complete works of Platinus, porphry Proclus, Julian, all of these people.

(19:35):
I mean, if you see his complete works of what
he translated in one lifetime, it's disgusting. Like you could
just line up books for like, you know, it's it's
totally ridiculous. So you fill up a room, and these
are not easy things to translate. There's some of the
most complex things. Whoa, yeah, yeah, it's like unbelievable. Oh

(19:58):
yea Amplicius of course, Well yeah, totally wild. I mean,
look at what he's doing just in one year.

Speaker 4 (20:06):
You know, how are you finding enough time for this?
Is my question.

Speaker 6 (20:11):
So he was obsessed. All he cared about was ancient
Greek in Platonism. He was a Platonist. That's the important distinction.
Other people translate. He was a you know, master translator
as well as a philosopher, and so when he's translating
from you know, Plato into English, he will tweak things

(20:34):
as a philosopher because he is such a deep understanding
the stuff. Studying in the classical Greek with his Platonic education,
he understands the metaphysics and the logic, the cosmology, all
of it down to t I mean, he could write
the stuff himself. And so when he goes to translate,
like what comes out the other end is just the

(20:57):
only thing worth reading as far as Platonism goes. If
you're reading other translators, I mean it's probably okay. I'm
not saying that they're mistranslating, but they might not actually
understand what this material is, and so they're translating it
on a literal basis, and that's not always the best
way to be translating because a lot of words of

(21:20):
different connotations in our language, and philosophy is ultimately a
game of language, you know, of of describing things. So
the translation is very important. These things are not you know,
it's not what translation of Warren Peace are you reading?
You know, these these are important, Like if Platinis or
Plato is saying something you want to you want to

(21:41):
make sure that you understand it and that the translator
understood it too. So he's a huge deal. He he
caused a Platonic revival in England in the early eighteen hundreds.
He was friends with William Blake, friends with a lot
of other you know, movers and shakers in the world
the philosophy. And you see after him that it was

(22:05):
like a drop of LSD into the culture. All these
people in the Victorian era and then into the late
eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, all the way up to
people like Manly P. Hall are still reading Thomas Taylor
and you know a lot of times too, like if
you read Mona and it'll be a chapter and it

(22:26):
has his footnotes, so you're reading his footnotes and then
which are treasures, trust me. And then after the chapter
it'll be notes on you know, the chapter before and
their notes from him. It's almost like a little commentary
at the end. So you know what you're getting with

(22:46):
Taylor is just you know. And I will say, yes,
we sell books, but all of Tom's Taylor's translations are
public domain. Please go read them online. They're all free.
I mean, yes, if you want them in a beautiful
book by our book, but regardless, people should be reading them.
He's extremely important. He was rumored to have spoken Greek

(23:10):
in the kitchen with his ancient sorry ancient Greek with
his wife, Like him and his wife would be talking
about people in ancient Greek, so they couldn't.

Speaker 4 (23:20):
Her dad one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence,
John Morton, Is that the same one?

Speaker 6 (23:25):
I don't know. That'd be interesting.

Speaker 4 (23:27):
Because it says here in nineteen so he married his
childhood sweetheart, Mary Morton, daughter of John Morton. Yeah, could be,
and John Morton A John Morton signed it signed it.

Speaker 6 (23:42):
Yeah, yeah, I don't I'd be speculating, but it could
be definitely. I mean, if his name was worthy of
being mentioned and Wikipedia, that's possible. But he's a big deal.
Growing up. I would watch Santos Binacci when I was
like in late high school and in college. You know, he

(24:04):
was big back then. And Santos Bonacci is a neoplatonist.
That is his that is his worldview is like syncretism, neoplatonism.
So I was always hearing about neoplatonism in Plato. My
older brother read the complete works of Plato and was
always talking about Plato. I studied him in school too,

(24:27):
and uh, you know, that's one of the best places
to start with philosophy. And Santos would always be mentioning
Thomas Taylor. He would say, like, hey, if you're reading
Plato or the Neoplatonists, make sure you're reading Thomas Taylor's translations.
I know this isn't your thing, but the Greek philosophers

(24:49):
were all vegetarian and Thomas Taylor was also a vegetarian,
so he totally walked the walk like everything about he
he lived as if he was an ancient Greek philosopher,
So like, this is the guy that you want to
be reading. Is that anyway? Santos would talk about him
all the time, and I kind of just shelved it

(25:11):
in the back of my mind. But I went into
the bookstore that we ended up buying when I was
a customer there. The guy had run it for fifty
years and I remember being in there one time, so yeah,
he knew a lot. I remember being in there one time.

Speaker 4 (25:27):
He's still around.

Speaker 6 (25:28):
Yep. Yeah, he's retired, but he's still around.

Speaker 4 (25:31):
Podcast with him.

Speaker 6 (25:32):
Bro, that'd be crazy. He's eighty five and he's been
doing this stuff his entire life. And he one time
I was in there and he said, if you're reading
the Platonists, like the Amblicus who has a book on
Pythagoras called The Life of Pythagoras, it's really good.

Speaker 4 (25:53):
From your store.

Speaker 6 (25:54):
It's translated by Tom Taylor, that the one you have. Yeah,
so that he had that book in his store and
he said like, hey, this is translated by this guy,
Thomas Taylor. You know, if you're reading the Playtis, make
sure you're reading from this these translations. And so then
I had this kind of confirmation between Santos and this

(26:17):
guy Tamash who I bought the bookstore from independently of
each other. And in my head I remember thinking like, oh, wow,
like this must be some translator, because I keep hearing
his name, you know, from people who clearly know what
they're talking about, and it's not often you hear a translator,
you know of that notoriety.

Speaker 4 (26:38):
Yeah, and I think it is the Mary because I
looked up here American politician had five daughters, and down
here it talks about his daughters. Uh wow, three sons,
five daughters, Aaron Sketchly, John, Mary, Sarah, Lydia, and Elizabeth Nice.

Speaker 6 (26:59):
So yeah, that's interesting connection.

Speaker 4 (27:02):
I think it's the same the same people, but it
is interesting. Right, one of the signers of the Declaration
of Independence. Let me confirm that as a delegate to
the Continent of the Congression in the American Revolution, he
was a signatory to the Continental Association and Decroit Declaration
of Independence. Right, Thomas, here's a father in law. Seems

(27:22):
like yeah, I mean right. So Morton provided the swing
vote that Pennsylvania to vote in the favor of the declaration.
So this guy was like pivotal to that whole thing,
or else they'd literally be hung and we probably wouldn't
be here right now, because I'd be on my trash
island in the Caribbean.

Speaker 6 (27:46):
One thing that you mentioned was oftentimes Thomas Taylor is
seen as being a sort of I wouldn't say martyr
because it's not like he was killed, but kind of
like a hero for neo paganism or paganism in general,
because he was living obviously in that time at a
very Christian using England, a very Christian time. It was

(28:10):
not cool or interesting or even really acceptable to you know,
be taking Greek philosophy as primary over Christianity, and so
he kind of went against the grain because that's what

(28:30):
he loved. And so he is seen as being kind
of part of the revival of paganism, you know, and
paganism gets the term gets thrown around a lot. I'm
not talking about like wearing goat horns and whatever. I'm
talking about like just you know, classical religion and spirituality
from the ancient world, which the Greek tradition is very

(28:54):
much at the forefront of. So he does get lumped
in as a pagan quite often. Then people label him
like that, which is not bad.

Speaker 4 (29:04):
Yeah, that's definitely a sympathizer, right like he was. He
said he was kind of sort of practicing it, and
he called did he call i Amblicus the most divine?
Is that him? Or do they call Amblicus?

Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (29:17):
A lot of times Taylor probably did call him that.
But I know that Emperor Julian. I don't know if
you're familiar with Julian, but really interesting figure. He was
actually Byzantine emperor, Roman emperor who famously said that he
would give up, like the whole empire for for a

(29:39):
few letters back and forth with the Amblicus. Really yeah,
like the Amblicus is unreal. His book on the Mysteries
we will be publishing eventually in his well worth reading,
especially the tailor translation the Amblicus, I Amblicus is h interesting.

(30:01):
He's the bad boy of Neoplatonism, so kind of how
Aristotle was to Plato. Where you know, in ancient Greece
you have Socrates and then Platos student, and an Aristotle
is Plato student. So there's a lineage. But Aristotle sort
of is the bad boy as well, where he turns

(30:24):
on a lot of what Plato was into, like his
theory of forms now becomes this very much material materialist
philosophy of Aristotle. Things like that that he basically completely
flipped on a lot of Platonic ideas, and the same
thing happens in the Neoplatonists. I guess a little bit

(30:47):
of background. The Neoplatonists are Roman philosophers. They spoke Greek,
so a lot of people will call them Greek philosophers,
and that's fine. They're in the Greco Roman tradition. They
lived primarily in Alexandria Egypt, which at the time was
occupied by Rome the Roman Empire, or they lived in

(31:10):
Rome itself. And the godfather of Neoplatonism, the founder was Platinus.
And Platinus starts up in Alexandria and in Rome. I
think he traveled back and forth a little bit, and
he starts up his own school. He had a very

(31:33):
famous teacher named Ammonius Sakus, who's it's pulled up right
there actually, and he's important. He's kind of like a
sage that we don't know much about, but he taught
some really important people, like Origin. He's an early Christian theologian,
and obviously Platinus and others, and so Platinus restarts this

(31:58):
movement of Playton. Aristotle's philosophy had ruled over philosophy for
a few hundred years and Platinus wants to return to
the pure philosophy of Plato, just just Platonic philosophy. He
does work in Aristol, so it's not like he totally
ignores him, but he wants to get back more to Plato.

(32:22):
And then Platinus's student was Porphyry, who's also in Monad
and porphy is really important. He writes a bunch of books,
and then later on.

Speaker 4 (32:33):
He writes a bunch of books. That's why he's important.

Speaker 6 (32:35):
Yeah, well we'll get we'll get into more details. But
just some people have a kind of general layout. And
then you have Iamblicuss, who we're just talking about who's
the bad boy because he so Platinus and Porphyry kind
of have their ideas and they think very similarly. They
don't really disagree on much. But then Iamblicus is the

(32:56):
third in line, just like Aristotle was, and rebels on
a lot of things, a lot of important ideas, like
he thinks that the soul is fully descended into the body.
He thinks that matter in the material world plays a
much larger role in his cosmology and in the ascent

(33:18):
back the divine. Then Platonis would so he does disagree
with a lot, but he's yeah, he is razor sharp,
like totally, I mean he is. All these guys were
just un you know, they were being raised from the
time there were little kids to be philosophers, and they

(33:39):
would attend the Platonic Academy or be tutored by, you know,
these great minds. And you know they were not learning
about whatever you know, zoology or you know, geography or something.
They were learning about philosophy. And if they were learning
about things like math or science or whatever it was,

(34:01):
it was all as it relates to Platonic philosophy. And
so if you throw up a big question, you have
the biggest questions like what is justice? What is the soul?
You know, how does the world come into being out
of nothing? Like you could think of the big the
big questions, and these guys just are like chat ept
they just fireback, you know, like their minds were so

(34:24):
sharp that I say it in Monad, I wrote the
little flaps on the book and I say it in there.
I don't think, and I've done a lot of reading.
I don't think anybody since the Neoplatonists has tackled these
topics with as sharp of a mind. There's been a

(34:44):
lot of really smart people and a lot of really interesting ideas,
but I don't read anyone where I'm like wow, like
these the intellect on these guys are is like ferocious,
you know, it's almost they're like gladiators, like they were
just born to do this mm hm. And so reading
them's a pleasure. But you do see that that weird

(35:07):
archetypal almost like family aspect where the third in line
rebels against the previous two. Uh So you have Socrates
plat out and then Aristol's the third and he rebels
against a lot of what they taught, and then you
have Platinus Porphrey, and then the Amblicus rebels against what

(35:27):
the previous two it taught. And you see this played
out in myth So it's an archetypal pattern. You see
it in Star Wars you have with the Qui gungin
Obi wan Kenobi and then Anakin is a bad boy.
It's always the third one, you know. You have, yeah,
you have the Master and then you have his like

(35:50):
you know, sort of loyal star student who takes his teachings,
doesn't ask any questions, and then the third in line
is like wait a minute, what are we doing here?
You know, they start to question and they start to
break away, and you see that play out in philosophy too,
which is funny.

Speaker 4 (36:06):
And what would you say, So, right, they believe in
the One, which is right, the Monad, the Source.

Speaker 6 (36:12):
Right. So neoplatonism the basics are that it's a hierarchical cosmology.
What that means is they want to start with the
source and then work their way back, you know, down
to right now. They don't want to start with right

(36:35):
here and then sort of reverse engineer back to the source, which.

Speaker 4 (36:38):
Which is religion nowadays you're working in this life for
the afterlife.

Speaker 6 (36:42):
Yeah. Yeah. They want to start with the biggest possible question,
which is what is God? What is the absolute? What
is the source of the universe, the source of all things?
For them, they call it the Monad, the One. And
then from the air you get this top down model,
a cascading great chain of being that comes from the Neoplatonists,

(37:07):
or a hierarchy of things, things that are higher levels
of being or higher levels of order, which work their
way down to the material world, which is of course
at the bottom. So that's where you get neoplatonism. Or
the Platonic cosmology is. They start with the one, which

(37:31):
is two things. It is beyond being itself, meaning it's
entirely transcendent. That's what it's mystical neoplatonism. It's entirely beyond being.
So even being, like existence is a thing, a concept,
or an experience that is within it, you know, it's

(37:52):
not even subject to that. It's beyond that, and so
it in some sense doesn't exist at all. It's entirely
beyond any words. But yet at the same time, because
it's everything, like God would be, because it's also everything,

(38:13):
it's entirely imminent, meaning it's also here at all times.
Everything is a part of it. And you know, these
are kind of strange ideas to get used to, but
once you get I kind of call it being. Once
you get initiated into the Platonic way of thinking, you
never go back. Whether you agree or not, it doesn't matter.

(38:35):
It's just a different way of looking at things. They're
always trying to reconcile dualities, so that's sort of their
method for going up climbing the ladder up to the
one is to identify contradictions or dualities and solve them

(38:58):
with what they call a dialectic, So they'll use a
dialectic to sort of reconcile two opposites into one sort
of solution or unity that contains those two opposites within it.
A good example is beauty, one of Platinus's most famous
essays in Enads, which is in monad Is, and you

(39:22):
can actually hear Manly p Hall has a good lecture
on this. It's called on Beauty by Platinus, and in
that he is trying to get to the bottom of
what beauty is and that's a big question, and you know,
sort of reiterate. Their method is this dialectical method. So

(39:44):
what he'll start with is saying, okay, what is beauty?
And someone might say, oh, beauty is symmetry, and he'll say, well,
you know, beauty is not symmetry, but symmetry is beautiful.
You see what I'm saying. And then you know, someone'll

(40:05):
he'll kind of come back, because he's always kind of
just talking with himself. I'll say, well, can asymmetry be beautiful?
And of course answers yes, right. You can look at
a beautiful home, like a house that's asymmetrical, you know,
one side's tall, one side's short or whatever it is.
You could look at a beautiful face that's asymmetrical. You
could look at you know, Japanese artwork tends to be asymmetrical,

(40:30):
so asymmetry can always, of course be beautiful. And so
by taking these two opposites of symmetry and asymmetry, he's
looking for what is the unifying principle, the form of
beauty that is being found in these two opposites, And
by pitting them against each other, he can it's almost

(40:52):
like alchemy. By pitting to these two opposites against each other,
he can extract with the essence that's contained in them.
And and he's doing this all mentally. It's these are
these are contemplative processes. It's like a meditation part of there.
He'll sit there and just think and think and think, well, okay,
if symmetry is beautiful, asymmetry is beautiful, what the hell

(41:15):
is beauty? Because it's in both of these, uh, and
it's not either one. And you know, the answer that
you sort of get get to is it is a
transcendent principle. Transcendent meaning it's not here, it's not you
can't look at beauty itself. But the capital B. You know,
like the actual idea of beauty is not just like

(41:35):
out here walking around. The things that are out here
walking around or on walls as paintings, are participating in
a higher order idea that's called that is beauty with
a capital B, and that's called a form. And these
these are platonic forms, and things participate in them. And

(41:59):
so by using that dialectic he can now have an
awareness or realization of forms, which are a very high
order of things of intellect. And by climbing this ladder,
so to speak, upwards, using the dialectical method and reasoning,

(42:21):
you can get to these states of being where you
can sort of be comprehending, understanding the forms themselves. And
once you're doing that, I mean you're really you're really
a smart, a smart cookie. You know, you understand how
things work, so to speak. And that really is Platonism

(42:41):
is the assent back to the one, back to the
source through reason for the most part, through thinking. So
it's almost like anti Buddhism or something. You're not trying
to annihilate the mind. You're trying to use your God
give an intellect. Because the Greeks think of intellect, you

(43:03):
oftentimes you hear intellect untranslated as just noos. This is
a Greek word. And they thought that the noos in
your mind right is a is a connection to the
divine mind. It's a little piece of the divine mind
that you have. And so they thought, wow, like annihilate

(43:25):
your mind. That's the craziest thing I've ever heard, you know,
Like these meditation people, you're like, just turn it off.
You know, They're like, what the hell? Like this is
like it is like the way out, This is like
the this is like what we've been given. You know,
when you hear people like in the Bible say that
we're made in God's image, it's like that, you know,
like the the intellect in your mind is our rope

(43:49):
up to the the Great, to the divine intellect that
is the whole world. And so they would, you know,
their form of contemplation or meditation was like a supercharged mind.
They were like, wow, like, if this is my my
connection to the divine, my intellect, I need to purify myself.

(44:12):
I need to be moral and ethical, and I need
to make sure that this intellect is sharp as close
to the divine intellect as possible. And then we can
start working upwards to sort of realize the source, realize
where everything comes from, you know, the absolutes to see
the whole world as it is. And one of the

(44:36):
things I really liked about the Neoplatonists was when you
reach that state of total awareness of the one, it's
so you know, it's kind of an enlightenment state. I
guess you would say we're a Nirvana type of thing.
You don't stay there, so you don't just check out.

(44:58):
You're you actually now in the neoplatonic tradition, have a
duty to responsibility to come back down like a lightning bolt,
back into your body and view the world almost like
a superhero who sees the world supercharged, where you see

(45:18):
the source of everything. You know, so if you see
a computer, you see the form of computer, you know,
the idea of a computer from which that particular computer
is emanating from. So you almost see, like x ray vision,
where things are coming from and their sources are, where
their power comes from. So to speak, they are almost

(45:42):
symbols for you know, these concepts of these pure concepts,
they are diluted material versions of the pure idea of something,
and you have realized those ideas those forms and now
you see things in completely different way. And that was
sort of the path, so to speak, of the Neoplatonists.

Speaker 4 (46:08):
Whoa dude, Yeah, I've always kind of their their emanationists
try where everything that we're observing now is an emanation
of the source of the One.

Speaker 6 (46:17):
Yeah, so the One their cosmology more or less is
the One, or the monad or the absolute is. Like
I said, it is a completely transcendent thing. It's not
a thing at all, it's not a being, it's you know,
all it's a big circle that every single thing I'm

(46:40):
speaking metaphorically obviously, that every single thing or idea or
form of being is inside of And so you have
the One, and then you have the News, which is
the divine mind, it is the intellect. It is where
the forms are located, obviously not spatially located, because they're

(47:05):
not like floating around. And then you have the world soul,
you have the Anima Mundi, and then you have the
material world.

Speaker 4 (47:14):
Now, this makes a lot more sense to me what
Flood was trying to get at.

Speaker 6 (47:19):
Yeah, so you know, we can get into that. But
basically all of the Renaissance were Neoplatonists. All of them
the Renaissance painters were painting Neoplatonic ideas, people like Michelangelo.
It's been said that you can't even understand Michelangelo or

(47:40):
Renaissance painting without understanding Neoplatonism. It was so much a
part of the time because basically what happened was and
I've talked about this on your show before, but either
when the Roman Empire falls in like five hundred ish,
and we're talking about the Western Roman Empire, the capital

(48:03):
of the Roman Empire has moved to Constantinople, which we
now call the Byzantine Empire. And after the Roman Empire
falls in Western Europe, so France, Germany and England, Spain,
all those countries, they are left in what's called the
Dark Ages or the Middle Ages for almost a thousand years.

(48:26):
The reason that they're called the Dark Ages or the
Middle Ages is they lost their connection to the classical world,
to the ancient world. So when the Roman Empire fell
in the Western Europe with them, all the knowledge was
lost temporarily. They didn't know how to build domes, they

(48:49):
didn't know how to build arches, they didn't read Plato,
they didn't have Plato in the Middle Ages at all
in Western Europe, so people like Saint Thomas Aquinas, there
are people people who were big philosophers in the Middle
Ages did not have the Platonists, and so there are Aristotelians,
their materialists, which is kind of leads to a Dark

(49:11):
Age materialism. And you know, of course there's like economic
factors too, that they had a feudal system and all
of that. This is kind of a disaster overall. But
in the East, in Turkey, uh in Constantinople, you had
the Byzantine Empire. They were the remnants of the Roman Empire,

(49:32):
and they still had everything. They still had Plato, they
still had the Neoplate Platonists, they had Latinas, all these people,
they still had the writings, and they were bawling out
and they were were They were building domes and arches,
and they had they had all the classical knowledge of
sculpture and perspective and whatever, and they were doing great.

(49:55):
And what happens is the Byzantine Empire fall to the
Turks at Muslim invaders, and that's in the fourteen hundreds.
And what happens is all of the Romans they spoke
Greek from the Byzantine Empire come back to Western Europe

(50:15):
to Italy and bring with them all of the classical knowledge.
They bring back Plato, they bring back Platinis, they bring
back the architecture, all of that, and this causes the
Renaissance in Italy. And one of the first things the
Medicis did, I believe is the Medici's was higher Marsilio

(50:40):
Ficino to translate the Hermetic corpus, all of the Hermetic
texts coming back from Constantinople, which again had been absent
from Western Europe, and translate Plato, translate Platinis, translate all
of these amazing Platonists philosophers, and also had Ficino start

(51:04):
a Platonic academy in Rome, or maybe it was in Florence.
I'm not sure.

Speaker 4 (51:09):
He was the first one before Taylor, right, that had
like kickstarted the Bible.

Speaker 6 (51:16):
You're right, he translated everything into Latin. And that causes
a revival of Platonism that fuels the Renaissance, fuels all
the mysticism of the Renaissance. And many people believe, by
the way that the advent of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry in

(51:37):
the late fifteen hundreds early sixteen hundreds was a way
of codifying this Platonic knowledge that had been lost. So
because it had been lost in the Middle Ages, the
elite or the educated in Europe didn't ever want to
lose it again, and they said, how can we codify it?

(51:58):
How can we make this into a system, systematize it,
you know, and preserve it forever. And people do suspect
that Freemasonry and Resecrutionism were ways to take Platonic classical
education or worldview and systematize it in a way that

(52:22):
everyone can be not everyone, but could be initiated into
in successive states so that it would not that Western
Europe would not fall into a dark age again. And
I believe that it's probably true. It's probably a big
reason behind it. At least.

Speaker 4 (52:42):
What do you say, because I've always said that the
Platinus and the neo Platinists and all these guys, they
paved the way for Christianity because right like they were
very right, or the Gnostics at least in from there
you have everything else. Is that accurate to say? Because
I'm sure I can think of a few people or
scholars that would disagree and be like, you know, Christians

(53:02):
were their own thing, and then they did their own thing,
and they evolved, you know, on their own. It's like
they didn't pick up any pagan traditions or anything like that.

Speaker 6 (53:11):
Yeah, I I you know, I'm not I'm not gonna
like downplay Christianity in any way, of course, but you know,
Christianity evolved in a context. It did not evolve in
a vacuum. And the context of Christianity is a Roman
occupied Middle East and North Africa and Europe. And so

(53:36):
Christianity evolved in Rome, and it evolved in a Greek
most primarily in Greek speaking parts of Rome. So the
idea that it could escape without being influenced by Roman
and Greek philosophy is is obviously silly and absolutely early Christianity,

(54:00):
particularly the theology. So it's not I wouldn't say anything like, oh,
you know, it was being like written into the Bible
or anything like that. It was more that although the
Gospel of John could be neo Platonic, it was more
that the theologians, the philosophers of early Christianity had to

(54:20):
fall back on something, some kind of you know, a
way of orienting the world that they could work their
biblical knowledge onto some kind of framework and neoplatons with
absolutely the framework for early Christian theology, and the Orthodox
Greek Orthodox Church or the Eastern Orthodox Church maintains a

(54:44):
lot more neoplatonic ideas, like particularly about the Trinity and
things like that than like the Catholic Protestant churches. But
what you see is that these theologians, I mean to
be perfectly honest, if you read the Bible, there's not
that much theology in it.

Speaker 4 (55:06):
Well, I think about this, not that.

Speaker 6 (55:09):
It's not there, but it's it's symbolic or it's in
kind of blanket statements. It's not like the Bible is
going deep diving into particulars of theology. And so these
issues had to be worked out, and the environment that
they're being worked out in is a neoplatonic environment. You know,

(55:30):
like people like Origin, who's really important early Christian theologian,
or Saint Augustine. These people like Augustine was reading Platinis.
Augustine was a Neoplatonist there, I say, and you know,
obviously one of the most important Christian theologians ever. Origin

(55:53):
was sort of one of the earliest and was the
Origin was in the same class as Platinists. Like they
had the same teacher, you know, they were like classmates.
And so yes, we we definitely know thation, right, yeah, yeah,
so we definitely know that Christian theology was influenced by Neoplatonism.

(56:16):
And there's nothing wrong with that. It's not like saying
that takes away from it or anything. They just were using.
And I think that you know, Neoplatonism is often termed
like syncretism because it's Neoplatonism or Plato, all all the Platonists.
It's not there's not a lot of symbolism, meaning like

(56:38):
the One or the Monad is an idea. It's not
a god, it's not a person, angels, they have levels
of ideas there, their concepts, they're not things that you
can get attached to. And I think that that makes
it the perfect sort of skill Elton to put something

(57:02):
else on. So you can take Christian symbolism like the God,
the you know, God, the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit and apply that to Neoplatonism. You can sort
of project these things onto it, and if anything, it's
at least an interesting thought experiment, you know, it gives

(57:24):
you at least something to chew on. And that's absolutely
what was going on and again in the Renaissance, Platonism was,
you know, giving a lot of a lot of these
philosophical ideas don't contradict anything biblically biblically or contradict anything Christianity,

(57:46):
and therefore could coexist with it. People like Kant would
use platonic ideas to offer proofs of God, you know,
things like a cons transcendental argument for God. You often
hear it called tag a thag that's a argument formal

(58:12):
like logical argument, where he offers it's a platonic cosmology,
which he says necessitates a divine mind, necessitates a God.
So he says, you know, we have these things that
are categories or numbers or ideas which are transcendental, meaning

(58:37):
they are not like we said earlier. You know, the
number one is not out here in the world. It's
an idea. It's a pure principle. And when you see
one of something, it's participating in that idea in that
form you know of oneness and you know, and there's

(58:57):
various versions of this. But these categories, these things which
unify things. You know, when you say, oh, that's you know,
that's a horse, and that's a horse, and that's a horse,
but none of them are the same horse. But there's
something there that unifies all horses, you know. And these
these transcendentals, these categories by which we view the world,

(59:22):
have to be held in some mind. You know. They
can't just be things we extract out of nature, you know,
because it's it's the other way around. Nature is sort
of being extracted out of them, and they we sort
of presuppose these categories or these transcendental ideas in our

(59:43):
experience of the world. And therefore there has to be
some kind of God or divine mind that these things,
these ideas, concepts, categories are all held in metaphorically, and
so he basically says that proves the existence of God.

(01:00:05):
So even in the seventh Account was a Christian too,
But even in the seventeen hundreds you have people using
Platonism ideas that are almost two thousand years old or
more for their own Christian ideas or their own philosophical ideas. Yeah,
so Christianity is absolutely a platonic religion.

Speaker 4 (01:00:27):
And it would make sense that they would take something
and kind of right. And on the mysteries, it's where
they talk about like theorgy and like rituals and all
that stuff and calling upon something higher, right to enact
to change in reality, and that's prayer like that, and
how you're saying, you put it really really well, where

(01:00:48):
you know they're focused on elevating the mind, you know,
to transcend the mind. Then once you transcend, you don't
stay up there. You come back and you see the
world with new eyes. Right, you're enlightened if you were
at the enlightened ones, And it would make sense.

Speaker 6 (01:01:06):
That not only are you enlightened, but the world is enlightened,
meaning the world you look at is now vibrant, it's
radiating with something.

Speaker 4 (01:01:18):
You came out of Plato's cave and now you see
everything behind your life. Yeah, it would make sense that
they would take that and they would invert it to
where you're saying. You know, the Orthodox Church, they they
practice I think like more ritual, more meditation, they practice that,
right like that. I know maybe one or two people
who are or Greek Orthodox or whatever it's called. And

(01:01:40):
and that would make sense that they would get away
from that because you don't you don't want people who
are gonna be thinking. You're gonna want people who are
gonna do what they're told. So that's where you get
today's religion where I always say, you know, fuck religion,
it's I believe in God. Where today's religion is a

(01:02:02):
broken experience. So it's like, hey, we'll hold the gates
down for you. Go out there, do your thing, and
we'll let you know when the pope or whoever it
is talks to God and we'll let you know what
he says.

Speaker 6 (01:02:15):
You know, I think Carl Jung said that organized religion
is there to protect against the religious experience.

Speaker 4 (01:02:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:02:24):
I always like that, you know, absolutely audience religion it's.

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Speaker 4 (01:04:01):
I just want to remind everyone make sure to check
out the show on Patreon, Patreon dot com Slash the
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(01:04:26):
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(01:04:48):
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(01:05:09):
your copies there or go over to the cofi. I'm
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know where to find it and enjoy this episode turning
money out and back then I was like, no, no, no,
think bro sit there and analyze and think. And it
seems like more people today don't think. I mean, that's

(01:05:32):
what you see a majority.

Speaker 6 (01:05:33):
Of Honestly, that was a big reason why we published
the book. Because I own a metaphysical bookstore. I'm on
the front lines. I'm talking to people. I'm selling people
books that are spiritual, that are philosophical, and I see
a lot of people and their truth seekers. Is nothing

(01:05:54):
wrong with them or anything. But a lot of the
New Age sought to, you know, starting in the sixties,
sought to overcorrect for intellectualism. They thought religion had become
too intellectualized and too far from the religious experience, excuse me.

(01:06:18):
And they sought to bring spirituality back to the heart,
back to direct experience, and all. That's fine, there's nothing
wrong with that, but I think that it went too far.
I think that in a lot of the New Age
spirituality of today, it's very dumb down. It's very animalistic,

(01:06:38):
so to speak, where it's like, you know, it's just
love and live from the heart and all the stuff,
and it's like, oh, yeah, that stuff's great. Of course,
that's part of spirituality. But that's only half the story.
You know. The gnosis or the knowledge, the intellect is
the whole, is the other half. And you, like you said,

(01:07:01):
you have to think things through. You have to come
to an understanding of the world.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:07:05):
The idea of raising consciousness or expanding consciousness literally means
expanding your awareness. It means knowing more, you know, experiencing more,
but in a way where you understand it, you know,
And I yeah that, And that was a big part

(01:07:25):
of the appeal of Platonism to me. The reason we
publish it was I read it and I thought, wow, like,
this is an education. If you read Plato, you read Platinists,
you read the Amblicus, like these people teach you how
to think. Not on the Republic, I mean, yeah, right,
just the Republic exactly, or just one Platonic dialogue, you know,

(01:07:49):
and you start realizing, holy shit, like I make a
lot of assumptions in my day to day. You know.
When you say soul and I say soul, we're just
assuming you mean the same thing. When you say justice
and I say justice, or you say virtue and I
say virtue or whatever it is. Or you say evil

(01:08:10):
and I say evil. You know, we we're making these
assumptions that we're on the same page. The Platonists make
no such assumptions. They define everything. They recognize that philosophy
is a language game. And you know, therefore, if it's
a language game, then the necessary conclusion is to get

(01:08:32):
your terms straight, get your vocabulary defined. Well, you know,
before they even hop on a podcast. I'm obviously joking.

Speaker 4 (01:08:42):
They were doing the podcast, or they even.

Speaker 6 (01:08:44):
Hop on to a talk, they're like, okay, what do
you mean by soul? Before we even get started, you know,
forget about where the soul comes from or whatever, Like,
what the hell do you even mean by soul? And
those are the questions that nobody in the New Age
is asking.

Speaker 4 (01:09:01):
So you're telling me, you're telling me that the Ashtar
galactic command is not beaming down consciousness, expanding blue rays,
project bluebeam to expand our consciousness. Bro, the White Brotherhood
isn't to to hold accountable for this. Is that what
you're saying.

Speaker 6 (01:09:18):
That's exactly what I'm saying. It does take a little thinking,
you know. Not Again, it's not the whole story. The
intellect is not the whole story either. You still have
to be a good person. You still have to want
direct experience and live from the heart, all those sorts
of things that I think the New Age did a
good job of popularizing. I think that's all very good,

(01:09:43):
but I think we over corrected. We went a little
too far, and we need to get back to center
with intellect. People need to be reading play there people
need to be reading philosophy. They need to you know, fine,
you want to manifest, you want to yoga, whatever, that's great,
but like, let's also go read.

Speaker 4 (01:09:59):
I want to touch the rocks and the crystals.

Speaker 6 (01:10:01):
And to read the greatest minds that have ever been there.
And you will realize really quickly that your language is
so vague. That's like one of the biggest realizations. Like
if you read their public and they're talking about what
justice is, what it means to be just or fair,

(01:10:24):
I mean, it's like fifty pages of just back and forth,
you know, Oh, well, is it just if somebody more powerful,
you know, overpowers somebody you know, is that the the
natural order? And therefore it's just you know, and on
and on and on about why I know, and it's not.

Speaker 4 (01:10:40):
Just well, well it was Crawley. He'd be like, sometimes
other people's will no means yes right right.

Speaker 6 (01:10:51):
Well, And I think that you know, reading these people
getting a metaphysical education and education on logic, on on cosmology,
on how to analyze forms and ideas, and just a
general philosophical education prepares you to It gives you an

(01:11:12):
element of discernment. It sharpens your mind for when you're
going into Oh, I'm reading Crow or I'm reading the Upanishads,
or I'm reading whatever. Francis big and doesn't matter. You
now have a new found faculty for analysis, for thinking,
you know, real contemplative thinking where you honestly you can

(01:11:35):
throw stuff out really fast. You can read stuff and
be like, Okay, this guy has doesn't know anything about metaphysics,
doesn't know anything about philosophy, like this is all like
low hanging fruit stuff, and just toss it. You know,
you can can really quickly start to identify people who
can think and people who are grifters or pandering or

(01:11:56):
trying to sell something or just like wacky, and you
start to collect thinkers, you know, people who are really sharp.
At least that's what I find, and.

Speaker 4 (01:12:07):
It would make sense as to why mathematics is so
important to them. You mentioned earlier beauty symmetry, asymmetry, and
you know, part of the whole Platonic thing was learning
about math, wasn't it. Who's whose academy? Was that at
the top of it you needed.

Speaker 6 (01:12:24):
To yeah about geometry. I forget the exact phrase, but
something like.

Speaker 4 (01:12:32):
Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here.

Speaker 6 (01:12:36):
Yeah, and you know, they were obsessed and this kind
of comes back to it. Well, we said earlier they
were obsessed with the geometry because there's a few things there,
but primarily because geometry offers perfect definitions. It's like I

(01:12:58):
said earlier, the Platonists or obsessed with definitions. They want
to know what is this thing? You know, what is virtue?
What is you know, the soul? What is the mind?
Blah blah blah whatever. They want to know what things
are and be able to put it into a sentence.
This is what it is, and in geometry you can

(01:13:18):
do that better than in any other science or any
other art. A triangle is a three sided object that
adds up where the three angles add up to one
hundred eighty degrees period. Always doesn't matter what the angles
are or what the side lengths are. It is has
three sides, three angles to add up to one hundred

(01:13:40):
eighty degrees period. There are my.

Speaker 4 (01:13:42):
Dogs, but you're familiar.

Speaker 6 (01:13:45):
Yes, my familiar is bothering me. And that is why
they loved it. That's that's like the ultimate for Platonists.
They're like, oh, oh, mama, you know I can define
something in one sentence and it's exact, it never changes.
That's what a triangle is and always will be. And

(01:14:05):
that was the ultimate for them because they said, what
if we can you know, what if our idea of
a soul was as exactly defined as a triangle is.
And so that's why it was this found it was
of such a high level of order or of being
things like geometry, because it had this exactness this you know,

(01:14:32):
they it participates in eternity geometry because these things are unchanging,
they're sort of laws of nature or a being. And
they were sort of a glimpse in the divine mind too.
And you know there's things like proportion and mikuld go
and geometry forever.

Speaker 4 (01:14:48):
And if we go even further back, Pythagoras, right, who
influence played. Oh, it's like the Pythagoreans saw divinity as number,
right all his number like that, That to me is
the Pathagorians are really interesting to me because in my opinion,

(01:15:09):
I think that they believe that it would contribute to
the cosmology of us being in a sort of simulation,
which if you really go back to like for example,
like the Gnostics and all that, that's what it was, like,
this false reality that the demi Urge or the demi Urgo,
so whatever they called him, cast it upon everyone in reality,

(01:15:29):
and you're partaking in this, and you have to learn
how to break free from that. You have to learn
to transcend the AONs to go to be reunited with
the one. Right.

Speaker 6 (01:15:42):
Yeah, the Platinus hated the Gnostics, by the way, did
he really?

Speaker 4 (01:15:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (01:15:47):
The Neoplatonists and the Gnostics, but heads big time. They
existed at the same time in roughly the same areas.
You had Gnostic sex or cults or whatever you want
to call them in North Africa, in Egypt, in Alexandria,
at the same time as the Neoplatonists movement with Platinas

(01:16:11):
and Poor Frey and Platinus and poor Free both. If
you look this up, there's one of them is in
Monad have essays against the Gnostics literally titled against the
Gnostics or on the you know, on the Gnostics.

Speaker 4 (01:16:25):
In this one in the Monad.

Speaker 6 (01:16:26):
Yeah, there's one in Monad.

Speaker 4 (01:16:28):
That one.

Speaker 6 (01:16:29):
Yeah, it's on the Gnostic hypostasies Shaze final with page
is on on.

Speaker 4 (01:16:40):
Into the three hypostases, the ranks as the principal Oh,
the Gnostic Yeah, here we go, and that which is
beyond them two seventy eight.

Speaker 6 (01:16:50):
Right, so yeah, pH two seventy eight on the Gnostic
hypostases and that which is beyond them. He also has
one that's called against the Gnostics, where he they were
trying to debunk the Gnostic movement, saying, look, this is
a low level philosophy, like this demiired dualism stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:17:09):
This is the philosophy we have at home.

Speaker 6 (01:17:12):
Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, the philosophy at home is nacissism
and neoplatonism just thought, in my opinion, is just like
a way more complete system, whereas nacissism's like fragments of stuff,
and there's really interesting ideas in there, there's things to
be gained. But in the platonist's mind, narcissism was totally

(01:17:37):
ridiculous because it was dualistic. And to them, everything is
ultimately unified into a one. There has to be an
end and absolute at the top or the bottom or
wherever the hell it is, the center from which everything
emanates from or is created by. And so if everything
is ultimately reconciled into one which is good, good, and

(01:18:01):
unified and all of these things, then things like a
demiurge are just silly, you know. To them, they thought
that the material world, yes, was not good, but it
was still participating and there came from the source, from
the One, and therefore was good. Ultimately, it was just

(01:18:22):
less good than a higher realm. And so they thought
that the material world was very far from source from
the One and therefore had its issues. You know, it's
traps and decaying and all that kind of stuff, but
it was not actually evil, which I find to be

(01:18:44):
probably closer to the truth. The Gnostics are definitely overreacting,
I would say.

Speaker 4 (01:18:52):
And.

Speaker 6 (01:18:55):
Yeah, they just thought that. You know, basically, there's no
such thing as the world split in two. At the top.
It's always unified into one. It's always reconciled into one.
And if there's two opposites, like the spiritual material or
the demiurge and God, at some level, at the highest

(01:19:15):
possible level, it's always reconciled. The two opposites reconcile into
one that contains them both. And so if you're not
looking at things from that ultimate perspective, then you're still
just like lost in a sort of mental trap. You know,
you haven't climbed the lateral to the top, so to speak.

(01:19:35):
So they kind of laughed off Nasissm. They're like, this
is just this is just like a bad philosophical education.

Speaker 4 (01:19:42):
Yeah, but again, like I said, for the for the
people who don't want to think and just want everything
kind of sort of hand it to them, it would
make sense where it's like, Okay, I'm here because I
have to participate in this trial of sorts, you know
that is me constructed by this demon, right, and as

(01:20:05):
long as I can do you know, the right steps,
I can transcend and then it's all over and now
I fail, then you come back again. So I got
to make sure. And where do the Platonists and write
the Neoplatinists and everything, where do they stand as far
as like the mysteries, the Lucinian mysteries and all that.

(01:20:25):
Did they participate in all that? Like? Did they?

Speaker 6 (01:20:28):
Yeah? Absolutely? So there's two things there. One you mentioned reincarnation.
The Platonists absolutely and Neoplatonists absolutely believed in reincarnation. In
Greek philosophy, it's referred to as metum psychosis, that's like
the Greek term for reincarnation. They absolutely believed in souls

(01:20:50):
coming back into human bodies. They did not think a
soul could be split up and.

Speaker 4 (01:20:55):
An animals, right, that's why they were vegetarian.

Speaker 6 (01:20:58):
It's a big part of it. Yeah, they believe that
they were conscious agents, and that they did have souls.
By the way, that the word animal means has a soul,
anima like anima mundi world soul. Anima is soul the word. So, yeah,
they thought animals had had.

Speaker 4 (01:21:17):
Who do you think your dog was in a past life?

Speaker 6 (01:21:20):
Who my dog was a mass life? That's a good question.

Speaker 4 (01:21:24):
Have you ever called out a name to see if
she responds like.

Speaker 6 (01:21:28):
No, definitely, really, I don't know, maybe some kind of
mime or comedian.

Speaker 4 (01:21:33):
Yeah, pugs are funny dogs already though, like they're like dogs. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:21:39):
But so they absolutely had reincarnation and they absolutely were
participating in the mysteries. Plato went to Lusis, at least
from what we know, Emperor Julian, who was a Neoplatonists
emperor Roman emperor, he went to Lusis, so we know that,

(01:22:02):
and others. A lot of them performed orphic rites or
other mysteries. They absolutely were involved in these things. And
then finally when you get the Amblicusts, who I've just
called the bad boy because he's the most occult. He
is a magician. He is not a meditator, a contemplator
like Platinists and Porphyry and the rest.

Speaker 4 (01:22:23):
Let's dots and ceremonies.

Speaker 6 (01:22:25):
Baby is as sharp as they come, but he is
a ceremonial magician. He calls it theurgy. When Patina says theogy,
he means contemplation. He means what I described earlier, dialectical
process of enlightenment. When the Amblicus says theorgy, he means
drawing the circle, you know, putting out the proper stones

(01:22:47):
to the proper planets, the sense, the aromas, whatever it is.
He's performing sympathetic magic. That's the implicats. That's why I
said he's the bad boy. He becomes full with material
materialist and when you adopt the materialist paradigm, you are

(01:23:08):
left with the idea that spirituality or enlightenment is must
go through matter. You know, if the world is made
of matter, well then you have to sort of align
it in harmonious ways to achieve higher orders of things,
you know, to achieve your goals, or to be in harmony.

(01:23:33):
Gregory Shaw, who read a really good book called Theogy
and the Soul, highly recommend people read that on the Amblicus,
he describes it as in the platonic or plutonium tradition,
the person is trying to how would I describe this,

(01:23:59):
They're trying to to put themselves into harmony, like in
their own mind, Like through this contemplation, they're trying to
create harmony or align themselves with their true self harmony
in their own mind. Whereas in the the Amblican tradition,

(01:24:20):
the material of tradition, the heat. The amblicus is trying
to put himself in harmony with the world, with the cosmos,
and so that's how he sees success or a higher
order of being being achieved, is putting himself into harmony
and sort of knowing his place and connecting himself to

(01:24:43):
the world in the best way possible. And that leads
to magic. It's ceremonial magic, they call it theorgy. It's
sympathetic magic, it's you know, it's geomancy, it's astrology, it's divination,
it's all of the above, like you said, invocations of
dan means and things of the like. So the Amblicus

(01:25:03):
is absolutely participating in all the mysteries. He wants it all.
The Amblicus thought. You know, his book is called on
the Mysteries literally, and he talks about Eleusis by the
Way and Bachic writes and things like that. So you
can read the Amblicus's thoughts on Leusis translated by Thomas Taylor.

(01:25:24):
I mean, this is as good as he gets. And
he the reason that he wrote on the mysteries, and
he wrote about a lot of different mysteries, including like
Toureaux defination not literally.

Speaker 4 (01:25:38):
Do you think he was spilling the beans like for
his time.

Speaker 6 (01:25:42):
Yes, but I'll get to that. What the reason that
he wrote about mysteries instead of just like, oh, what
is justice or whatever? What is virtue? Is he believed
that the Platonic cosmology was most evident when the ail
was thinnest, so during these mysteries or during the study

(01:26:04):
of astrology or whatever, all these weird occult things. He
believed that was when you could see the Platonic cosmology
at play and in your just day to day life. Yeah,
I mean you could have an understanding of that's how
things work. But he believed that you know, if you
were at a lesis, or you were in a seance,

(01:26:27):
or you were you know, performing magic for something for
some kind of goal that that's when you can see
how things work. And so that he made it a
study and wrote a book called On the Mysteries and
the outlines. You know that how all these things work basically,

(01:26:48):
you know how things come into being, how you know
things like tarot cards can have, can be imbued with intellect,
you know for a brief moment, things like that. He
details how that all works in a platonic worldview, and

(01:27:08):
it's fascinating, absolutely a huge, huge deal. Like you talked
about spilling the beans. When the Amlicus writes these books
On the Mysteries becomes a must read for everyone sense
that's interested in the esoteric, because it's one of the
only books that really tries to say what the hell

(01:27:30):
is going on here, like from philosophical point of view
or cosmology and all these weird things. And he lays
the groundwork for ceremonial magic, for alchemy up until today.
He lays the foundation of why do these things? You know,

(01:27:50):
if you don't believe that matter is divine, or that sympathy,
that sympathy between things between a planet and a color
or whatever, that that's important, then you wouldn't be doing
alchemy or ceremonial magic or anything like that. And up
until him, we didn't have anyone saying, yeah, it was

(01:28:10):
being taught in mystery schools for sure, and it was
esoteric knowledge, but we didn't have anyone actually coming out
and saying, this is why, this is how sympathetic magic works.
You know, the reason that a planet and a certain
color are connected is because of this in our world,
in our cosmology, this is how it works, and that

(01:28:33):
is fascinating, and that is you know, one of the
essential texts for all of occultism, all the Western esoteric
tradition is Platonic in that view, more of a materialist Platonism.
But you know a lot of people do call the

(01:28:53):
Neoplatonists the secret teachings of Plato. So there's two idea.
Some people think the Neoplatonists took the Thagoras and Plato
and Aristotle and they added on, and what they added
on happened to be a lot of mystical stuff. And

(01:29:14):
you know, the more scholarly people think, well, you know,
that's because they were in Egypt and they have these
influences coming from the Middle East, maybe from India, from
Egypt itself, and you know, Rome is very cosmopolitan. There's
all these ideas flowing around, especially in Alexandria. And so
they got Platonism, the traditional Platonism, and then added a

(01:29:36):
lot of mystical stuff. That's one school. The other school
believes that these teachings were not new, that the Neoplatonists
were not coming up with anything. They were simply revealing
what were previously in a time of Plato, the secret teachings, the.

Speaker 4 (01:29:57):
Ralpha dogmata, the unwritten doctrines.

Speaker 6 (01:30:00):
Exactly these were this, these spoken secret teachings of the
Platonic academies of Pythagoras, even all the way back to Pythagoras,
the Pythagoraean brotherhoods. That these were what we're taught esoterically
or in the occult, and that they were to the initiates,
and they were not revealed to the public or to

(01:30:21):
just philosophers or whatever, and that the Neoplatonists simply wrote
them down and conveyed the secret teachings of Plato. I
tend to believe that's probably the case, that these were
not new new ideas, that it's not like Plato didn't
know about you know this or that, But simply that
we didn't know that Plato knew about that, yeah, which

(01:30:44):
wasn't written down, it wasn't preserved, it wasn't exoteric.

Speaker 4 (01:30:48):
Yeah, and that's where you get, you said, right, aligning
yourself with the material and that gnosis and this higher
sense of being is linked to the material, and that's it.
Like Hermestris, Magestus and all these guys came out. They
were like, okay, alchemy, we're gonna do the work in
purifying material to its nice form of being. So they

(01:31:13):
took that's amazing because they took something that because if
you think about it's almost like this evolution. That's why
I love history, like reading and learning about it because
you see the evolution of it. So these alchemists took
this how you're saying, this philosophical thought experiment s type
of ideas and they brought it down into a lab

(01:31:34):
where they could do all of that. Yeah, but tinkering
with it like here, stare into this vessel for x
amount of time and you might start to halloten it
is that a dragon? And then they're forming all these
different symbols that convey a higher meaning. But hey, we're
gonna we're also gonna keep the secret. So make sure

(01:31:54):
that you do the signs how you're supposed to. All
the other guys in the group and in the club,
we're going to know what you're talking about. But for
those that can't have this knowledge's sacred knowledge, they're going
to stay out sure, and they're going to think, well,
what beautiful art. And in reality they're telling you the
secrets of reality, right, you know, drawn on this notebook

(01:32:16):
or whatever it is.

Speaker 6 (01:32:18):
Yeah, they I guess with with Plato, you know, we
don't exactly know about how these things are written down.
We don't have records about how who was writing it down,
or how it was preserved anything like that. There were

(01:32:39):
absolutely tons of Platonic materials that were older than Plato.
Like people suggest that the Parmenites is older than Plato.
It's attributed as a work of Plato. But people suspect
that some of these things are Pythagorea and they're from
hundreds of years before Plato. And then we sent say

(01:33:00):
that their by Plata. And so there's things that you know,
probably weren't by him and are even older. And there's
things that we're lost, you know, or or were preserved esoterically,
I mean, without a doubt. Yeah, it's I love this
stuff too, because I agree with you. You can see

(01:33:21):
things unfold in history. You can see these ideas moving
across boundaries and inspiring things, and yeah, it's fascinating. I mean,
like I said, if you don't have a certain philosophy
about life, or about spirituality or about you know, meaning,

(01:33:43):
then you just aren't going to end up at alchemy.
You're not going that. You're gonna be like what do
you mean? You know, who cares about rock?

Speaker 4 (01:33:51):
Because you have to know, how you said earlier about
like the translations, you have to know the context, and
the context is very important. And that's why religion to me,
right we're speaking of translations and how important they are.
That's why a lot of religion to me is probably
bullshit because how do we truly know that, for example, right,

(01:34:11):
King James didn't do something with a bacon and all
these other guys, right, like the first Freemason or something
or other, how do we how can we truly trust
and people will go to like the end of the world, like, no,
the King James is the word of God and it's like, so,
then what about the other copies that had to switch

(01:34:34):
things up because they didn't want to combat the copyright
of the original. Is that also the word of God?
I mean it's still changed up a little bit, but
you know, and a lot of this stuff wasn't translated
to hundreds of years later, you know, That's one of
the things. And one time I heard you, I forgot
what it was that you said where it kind of

(01:34:54):
felt it kind of fell in line with Philip K.
Dick in a sort of way where a lot of
the stuff that was like the Nagamadi and like the
Dead Sea Scrolls was stuff that these symbols that had
already been translated before, and almost like finding the Nagamadi
and releasing these things into the world kind of set

(01:35:14):
forth this chain reaction that was already known in the
esoteric and the occult. Right almost as if right, a
lot of those texts are Gnostic and that it plays
en roll with Philip K. Dick or he's like, yeah,
the Gnostics, they were actually the Gnostics because they were
they were infected with this intradimensional disease that needs needs

(01:35:39):
you to help it keep going, and then it uses you.
And then when you look into like information at being
a sort of you know, informational parasite where information and
language uses you to keep going, and you're a vessel
for that said thing. What do you think that because

(01:35:59):
you're pretty passionate about conserving this sort of knowledge and
it being lost to today's society. Because I'm sure you
could go to the superstore right now or any you know,
supermarket or any Walmart and ask somebody about Plato and
they probably don't even know who he is or never
even interacted with any of his works. How where do

(01:36:19):
you see us in a thousand years dude, with Chad
GPT and all this stuff. Do you think that we're
going to go into a dark ages? No?

Speaker 6 (01:36:27):
I don't. I don't think we'll go into a dark age.
Is because you know, a dark age, like we've specified before,
is typically characterized by ignorance. Yes, I do. I get
what you're saying that you know, you're a common person
might not be aware of these things, but that's kind
of always been the case. The scary part is when
the intellectual elite are not aware of these things, like

(01:36:52):
in the Middle Ages, where they it's not that they
weren't educated on Plato, they didn't even have Plato. You know,
it's not that they weren't educated on how to build
domes and architecture. They didn't even know, you know, they
didn't even have it anymore. And I think with things
like CHAT, GPT and the rest, that we have an
overload of information. So I think we'll be all right

(01:37:14):
on knowledge, but I think that we'll run into some
issues on other you know, sort of like ethics and things.

Speaker 4 (01:37:21):
But it can't chat GBD can't tell you and explain
to you the essence of being, what is justice? What
is x y Z like it's it's pulling that information
from the internet. It's a you know, it's a large
language model.

Speaker 6 (01:37:34):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, we'll see what happens with it.
It definitely is not a bad resource for you know,
if you want to look up Latinus's ideas or Plato. Yeah,
you know, it's not the most trustworthy, but it could
give you some kind of primer, you know what, you know,
Plato's Republic Summary or something, and you could get somewhat
of an education, but you know, it'll be integrated. I

(01:37:56):
guess I'm no futurist at all. A few things that
you touch earlier that are interesting though, is with the
material Like you mentioned, Hermi's traced me Gast this in alchemy.
The Amblicus uses a proof for the divinity of matter.

(01:38:17):
So he's saying matter is divine, it comes from God,
and I'm going to prove that it's important. And the
way that he does this is he says, there's something
called platonic recollection. You know, the Platonists always say you
don't learn anything, you just remember it. Yeah, you remember it, right,
that that intellect or that noos that we talked about earlier,

(01:38:37):
and that's connected to the divine mind to God. Because
it's connected to the divine mind, it knows everything, you
know where it came from. It knows everything at least. Therefore,
when you're learning something or when you're uncovering something in
your intellect, you're simply remembering it. It's called recollection and platonism.

(01:38:58):
And the Amblicus said, well, well, in order to recollect
something or to learn something, you have to see it
played out in front of you. You know, you learned
something by seeing it, and therefore matter is the vehicle

(01:39:20):
for recollection for learning. So he said that the material
world is necessary for learning things or remembering things. We
you know, we learn by seeing things played out in
front of us, or drawn out in front of us,
or acted out, you know, and we wouldn't have any
understanding or knowledge without that sort of experience. And he said, therefore,

(01:39:45):
matter is divine. It's a bridge to where our soul
came from, you know, to to the divine mind, to
the intellect, the news, and so that that things like that, right,
that proved of the divinity of matter, and through platonic
recollection lays a groundwork for all of esoteric materialism, all

(01:40:11):
of magic, all, like you said, alchemy, the hermetic tradition,
all of that is founded on these philosophical ideas, and
nobody laid it out like the Neoplatonists. Another thing you
touched on was actually you met you just randomly brought
up the Naghammadi Library. I forgot to bring that up
when we're talking about early Christianity, that if you google

(01:40:35):
the Nagamadi Library and look at the books that were
found there, A lot of them are Early Gospels or
whatever Old Testament books you know, I'm not too familiar
with it, but dead Sea scrolls, what have you guess
what else was found on the same shelf. In one
of these little caves was the Republic. They played out. Yeah,

(01:41:02):
so you'll see all these biblical books and religious books
and then you see the Republic, and that just tells
you these things were existing side by side. Plato was
held in the utmost regard.

Speaker 4 (01:41:15):
He is, yeah, wow, didn't know that.

Speaker 6 (01:41:19):
And you just see you look, you you go down
the list and everything else is like gospel or whatever,
and then their public, you know, just square in the middle.

Speaker 4 (01:41:28):
Crazy.

Speaker 6 (01:41:33):
So yeah, they're a big deal worth worth reading. And
when you're talking about translations. By the way, it also
brought something up in my mind, which was that in
the Islamic world, the Arab Islamic world, they had uh

(01:41:55):
a text and you could look this up to the era.
Islamic world had a text which was titled in Arab
the Complete Works of Aristotle, and they used this for
it was like central to the Islamic education of philosophy.

(01:42:16):
They were all studying it Complete Works of Aristotle. Ah,
we're all reading Aristotle. And guess what we found out
on hundreds of years later, we find out that the
book that they had titled the Complete Works of Aristotle
was actually the Anyads of Platinus under a false title.

(01:42:37):
Someone had titled it Aristotle, and it was Platinus. And
so Islamic philosophy, especially Sufism, but a lot of the
more mystical aspects and even just the theology of Islam
is neoplatonic. Neoplatonism had a massive role in Islam. You know,

(01:42:59):
for example, they don't have a trinity mm hmm, they
have one God. They have a unity that's a very
neo platonic already to get rid of any division, you know,
there's ultimate unity, things like that. But it was it's
kind of a funny story though. They thought they were
studying Aristotle and they were studying Platina like like a

(01:43:20):
few hundred years and had no idea and it would
make a big difference. Yeah, So it's funny they were
studying Platinists while the and having their Golden Age while
you know, science and alchemy and learning and math, while

(01:43:40):
the while Europe was studying Aristotle and they were in
their dark age, which is kind of funny. He was
a materialist, so it doesn't again doesn't lead to a
lot of beauty and things like that. It's kind of a.

Speaker 4 (01:43:54):
Which we're probably living in a Universtilian era now where.

Speaker 6 (01:43:59):
Absolutely yes, science and reason.

Speaker 4 (01:44:01):
And literally up until Aristelian biology wasn't changed up until
like the eighteenth century, you know, very late eighteenth century,
which is wild, dude.

Speaker 6 (01:44:12):
Absolutely, yeah, Aristotle is dominant right now. We don't we
have too much Aristotle. Non with Plato. I think Plato
is very mystical, very transcendent, spiritual. Aristotle believes that the
forms in sort of the spiritual world was in matter.
That matter was a you know, a primary substance, the

(01:44:36):
prima materia, things like that, that it was like a
source from which almost like a background like material that
everything is like coming out of, like an ether kind
of deal. Things like that. Yeah, these people are you know,
and there's modern day Platonists right now. It's not like

(01:44:59):
the tradition is dead. The guy who wrote the introduction,
Ken Wheeler, is a modern day Platonist. He's a translator
of ancient Greek, of ancient poly ancient Sanskrit. He's a
strange character, for sure. He's a big I think he
has like three hundred thousand something subscribers on YouTube. He's
pretty popular. But he is a savant. He understands metaphysics.

(01:45:23):
And these big questions of philosophy. Yeah, as well as anyone.
He wrote the introduction to Mona.

Speaker 4 (01:45:30):
Yeah. Yeah, but I didn't know his face and now
I saw him on YouTube and now I've seen.

Speaker 6 (01:45:37):
This super super smart. He's hard to crack because I'll
be honest, in his videos he kind of assumes that
you know a lot of stuff, and if you're a beginner,
it can be really tough. But once you get initiated
into this platonic way of thinking, he is just delivering gold.

(01:45:58):
And again he'll give you kind of edge too. He's
really great. In the twenty twentieth century, you had people
like Alfred North Whitehead, who was a Platonist. He famously
said that all of Western philosophy is a series of
footnotes to Plato, which is a great quote. You have

(01:46:21):
people like Rupert Sheldrake today that I would say are
Platonists and many others. It's it's it's still a living tradition. Yeah,
it's a rich tradition too, goes back, you know, if
you're including Pythagoras twenty five hundred years. Yeah, as far

(01:46:43):
as Western philosophy goes, that is absolutely ancient.

Speaker 4 (01:46:48):
Yeah, that's why i'd be interested again to see where
we're at in a thousand years, if things have changed,
if the things have been you know, kept we keep
a record or not. And how you said there is
overabundance of information, but it feels like no one does
anything with that information, and that can be overwhelming for some.
You know, this informational and ideological soup that you're in,

(01:47:10):
Where do you go? How do you find it? And
not saying that these all these dudes were right, but
they had a strong foundation, and how you're saying it's
important for people to at least read some of Plato's works,
even if it is you know, read whatever, read tomatoes.
Read the Republic, that's my favorite. Republic.

Speaker 6 (01:47:27):
Republic is like a hundred something paid is It's pretty small.

Speaker 4 (01:47:31):
Yeah, and it's bro it's wild. I mean that that
when I first read that, I have I think I
have like a Penguin Press copy of it or something
like this paperback. I bought it in Miami. Actually, you know,
you just read it and and I don't know, we'll
see where we're at. And that's why it's important for
people to go check out the book. The Moon ad that.

Speaker 6 (01:47:54):
Yeah, we're going to publish The Republic Tom's Taylor translation
of The Republic in probably a year. Yeah, definitely read
read Monad. It It's also a great book because you
can open up to any page. Is not a book,
it's not a novel that has to be read front
to back. You can open up to a random page
and start reading on the Platinis section, which is half

(01:48:18):
the first half of the book. Those are what that's
his book his works called the any Ads. The any
Ads are a series of essays, so every chapter is
a separate thing that it can be read completely on
its own, and he covers topics like the existence of evil, virtue, happiness, beauty,

(01:48:45):
nature and origin of evil, suicide, even matter, on eternity
and time. Like these are huge topics. You know. These
are not like a you know, stoicism or something like
my day to day life. This is these are these
are the big things. They want to start big and

(01:49:07):
then work down to the small and be like, Okay,
if you have an understanding of the source of all
things and how the world is strong together, and you
know what matter is like and time is like, well
then it's to them. It's like almost the things are
in day to day life or how to arrange your
mind or whatever fall into place. You know, it's like, well,

(01:49:27):
it's almost obvious from there, whereas a lot of other
people would take the you know, be like, Okay, once
I have my life figured out, then I can worry
about you know, matter and happiness and you know whatever else.

Speaker 4 (01:49:41):
Stoics were just like I just want to chill. Yeah, yeah,
be alone.

Speaker 6 (01:49:48):
The on the Immortality of soul. These are all chapters.
You know, that chapter is fifteen pages on the immortality
of the soul. So you can pick up this book. Yes,
it's eight hundred eighteen pages. You can read the pick
up this book and read fifteen to twenty page chapter
and take notes, and you're gonna be getting like prime
time education on metaphysics. Again, are there things I disagree with? Yes,

(01:50:13):
I will read the chapter on happiness or on whatever
and be like, nah, you know, their conclusion is not
my conclusion. But seeing them work through the dialectic and
their reasoning to get to that conclusion is a master
course of thinking.

Speaker 4 (01:50:31):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:50:31):
Then you're like, oh shit, like, you know, yeah, whatever
their conclusion was in mine. And sometimes, you know, Platinus
is such a freak mind that he'll even give you
both sides of the answer. So, like, here's a good
example on the nature and origin of evil. In neoplatonism,

(01:50:54):
there is no evil. There's no absolute evil, meaning evil
is not a thing like good is a thing. Evil
is just a lack of good. It's like a shadow, right,
a shadow is not a thing. It's just lack of life.
That's their view of evil. They say, they're at least
Platinus that evil is either caused by free will by humans,

(01:51:19):
you know, human misdoings, or a lack of goodness. It's just,
you know, whatever it was, it's far from the source.
It's in the shadow, and that's evil. And to me,
that's not really a satisfactory answer, to be totally honest,
because if you watch you know, if you study evil,

(01:51:40):
you study Stalin or serial killers or Epstein or these
horrible things, you're like, I don't know, man. You know,
of course that can fall under the free will too,
but you see things where you're like, I don't know,
there's something absolute about this, you know, and young straight
up in I think an Aon directly calls out the

(01:52:04):
neoplatonists for this because it's called what do they call it?

Speaker 4 (01:52:10):
By the way Hitler did read Plato.

Speaker 6 (01:52:12):
So, yeah, the things everyone read Plato before is I
assumed that you like had an education, you know, it
was like reading whatever, just like the classics. But anyways,
this sort of privation of good idea Young really hated
it because he studied the human mind. He said, oh, no, no, no,

(01:52:35):
there is absolute evil and I've seen it. You know,
there is something dark. And I was like underwhelmed by
Platinus's answer. I'll say that because he said, no, the
world is ultimately good. You know, the one, the monad
is goodness itself, and therefore you know there's no bookend

(01:52:57):
the other end. That's absolute evil. It's not absolutely good,
absolute evil on two sides of the universe, and they're
battling each other like a gnocissism. He said, there's good
at the top, and the further things get away from good,
you know that, I guess the more evil they get,
or human free will can also be evil. And I

(01:53:17):
read that, and but you know, his conclusion is the
world is good. There is evil, but it's good overall
because everything comes out of the one, and there's no
evil doesn't have sort of attributes of itself, just simply
privation of good, and I was underwhelmed. But then at
the end of the chapter he hits you with the

(01:53:40):
other side. He comes all the way back around. He says, oh,
you know what, maybe there is absolute evil. And I
was like, oh my god, this guy's like answering both
points of view, like it's totally crazy. He comes around,
he says, maybe there is absolute evil. He said, I'll
give you that. Okay, there's absolutely evil. There's a Satan

(01:54:02):
or there's whatever, this black anchor at the bottom of
the world. That's absolute evil itself, you know, just like
at the top there's absolute good. And he said, even then,
when there's absolute evil, the world is still good overall
because with absolute evil and absolute good, those two things,

(01:54:23):
like bookends give order to the world, and balance and
order an organization and balance are all good things. They're
all good aspects. Isn't that crazy.

Speaker 4 (01:54:36):
Because to compare it to it, it makes perfect sense.

Speaker 6 (01:54:39):
This orderliness is actually reconciled into a good even in
that worldview. So he gives you both cases. He gives
you his personal opinion that that there's no evil, it's
just a privation. But he said, even in you know,
the opposite idea when you have absolute evil, like Young argue, for,

(01:55:01):
even then the world is still good because the attributes
which absolute evil lends to the world as a counterforce,
it gives a finiteness to the world. You know, it's
no longer infinite, it's finite, and that finiteeness is good.

(01:55:21):
It's orderly, it's organized, it's balanced. All of these words
you could say about the overall aspects, not about evil self,
but that the overall condition in the world, given absolutely evil,
are good things. And so even then he's able to Again,
that's the dialect that he used these two opposites to

(01:55:44):
be reconciled into a higher unity of goodness. And I
was blown away, you know. I started off like read
that chapter and I was like getting through it, and
I was like, I don't know, man, I think there's
definitely evil, you know, it's there's some really bad stuff,
like really hard to even imagine stuff in history and

(01:56:06):
in the current day. And at the end he gave
me my answer. You know, it wasn't his answer, but
he knew that people would disagree, and he said he'll
he'll take that anyways and spin it around and show
you that it works. Towards his case in the end.

Speaker 4 (01:56:22):
Anyway, I want to get back together. Just so the
last time I got back together was over two years
ago or two years because the last episode I published
with you and I was December twenty fifthwenty three, no way,
So yeah, we got to get back together sooner than later.
And I want to do an episode on Iamblicus. I
want to talk about Iamblicus on the Mystery.

Speaker 6 (01:56:42):
Yea, and yeah, he has give it a read. I
can send you a copy if you want a copy.

Speaker 4 (01:56:48):
Yeah, I got the hardcover copy. I'll read that. We'll
get back together and then we'll talk more about the
mown Adam and the Iamblicus because that's super interesting to
me where it takes a turn because right we're talking
about these people who are very meditative, and then I
don't know where it's like after that, the occult is
just like rampant, you know, like because the Egyptians are

(01:57:11):
the first alchemists, right, I mean, that's that's where the
origins of yeah alchemy are. And I forgot who it was.
I think it was. I think it was By the.

Speaker 6 (01:57:22):
Way, his thesis is his book is called on the
egypt On the on the mysteries of the Egyptians, the Assyrians,
the Babylonians. I think he's too. I think right, Audians,
the Cardean Oracles, those books were really influential Indian Platonists.

(01:57:42):
But he has this thesis because Platinus and Porphyry were saying, oh,
you know, let's go back to the old stuff. You know,
forget Aristotle, forget like this kind of material of stuff,
Let's go back to Plato. Let's because Platinus is like
the two hundreds, so Plato is like four hundred years

(01:58:02):
before him, five hundred years. So the neo Platonists were
fairly late, you know, compared to Plato. Like they were
going back a few hundred years and reviving the tradition.
And by the time it gets to the Amblicus, he's like,
oh no, let's go back like way further.

Speaker 4 (01:58:19):
That's why he wrote about Pathagorist. Then, right, he's the biography.

Speaker 6 (01:58:22):
He wants to go to Pythagoras and back as far
as he can the Egyptians, you know, and that's why,
like you said, he revivesed all that. You know, people,
I'm sure we're interested in Egyptian stuff and Assyrian stuff
Babylonian called the end, but the Amblicus was like, no,
I'm bringing it back and like in a big way,
and I'm gonna make it part of our worldview and

(01:58:46):
unbelievably important. Like I said, if you read On the
Mysteries by Iamblicus translated by Thomas Taylor, and then go
read Theorgy in the Soul. Like Gregory Shaw, he's currently
alive and you could get him in the show probably,
he's really good. He does podcasts. If you go read

(01:59:08):
his book afterwards, which is about On the Mysteries, it's
about the Amblkiss, you will have like a full education
on that on that line of thinking, like I did it.
I read both and took notes and by the end
I was like, wow, I feel like an expert or
something in it.

Speaker 4 (01:59:26):
And I forgot what I think. It was either Bruno
or Facino, one of those two that I was talking about,
trist Magistus being a like he predicted Christianity. I don't
know if you've ever heard about that, like he was
like a Christian songs. Yeah it was Bruno, right, I
remember reading that with Yates. But you know, we'll we'll

(01:59:48):
get back together. Well, I'll read that and then we'll
chop it up with that, because I love this sort
of a line of thinking and I want to dig
more into the occult side of it, dude, and I
want like.

Speaker 6 (02:00:00):
Bruno, by the way, I thought that Jesus was crucified
on an unk really yeah, like that the cross he
was on had the yeah circle the top.

Speaker 4 (02:00:13):
He he wasn't burned at the steak for that. He
was burned at the steak for yeah, other thing, for
some other.

Speaker 6 (02:00:19):
But God bless him that. I mean, can you imagine. No,
you know, he was in captivity with the Inquisition for
seven years, Bruno, seven years, and he wouldn't concede.

Speaker 4 (02:00:33):
You know.

Speaker 6 (02:00:33):
They would come in and be like, hey, like just
drop it, you know, like just accept like Catholic dogma,
like stop talking, I.

Speaker 4 (02:00:40):
Just want you to recan't like what you said, or
they're just like take it back.

Speaker 6 (02:00:43):
He's like he's like no, and for seven years and
they're like torturing it. I mean, unreal and it's a
miss a.

Speaker 4 (02:00:52):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (02:00:53):
We're releasing a limited print of Giordano Bruno at the Stake.
We had an artist to a rendition of it out
of Portugal. It's really cool. I'll send it to you.
We're going to do a posters, like only one hundred
of them as like a promotional item for the book
that comes out March. And we included in it a

(02:01:15):
Masonic secret about Bruno, which a customer who's a master
Mason of a lodge in New Jersey who comes to
the bookstore, he told me about this. He said that
when they teach you about Bruno in Masonry, it's told

(02:01:36):
that or said that when they put him at the stake,
they put a necklace around him of gun bags of gunpowder,
so that he would almost literally explode when they let
him on fire. And I don't know why the Masons
teach that. That is not found anywhere else. I've googled it,

(02:01:57):
I've looked everywhere. It's like Mason mythology for some reason.
I'm not sure if it's symbolic or whatever. But we
did in our print to we included that little detail.

Speaker 4 (02:02:10):
I wonder what happened to They were fine, Oh, his
ashes were thrown into the Tiber River. YEA interesting. Well, dude,
I really enjoyed this conversation. Super enlightening, super super interesting.
Where can people go to find your work? Again, they

(02:02:32):
want to purchase a copy limited in copies. Hopefully IM
gonna be around for much longer. Where can they go? So?

Speaker 6 (02:02:40):
You can go to Gala Glassbooks Dot shop. You can
follow at Galla Glass Books on Instagram. I definitely wanted
to give a shout out to my business partner, Tony Ferry.
We are fifty to fifty partners, so it's not just me.
He's also a part owner of the books The Dancing

(02:03:00):
Elephant in South Florida. He's a huge force behind all this.
He is the one who got me to be passionate
about book design, to see that not all books are
created equal. You know that there are beautiful books, that
book design used to be an art form, that frontist

(02:03:22):
pieces used to be in art form, book covers, typesetting,
all these things were crafts that used to be in
demand and that great artists would put a lot of
work into. He got me to see all that and
kind of start collecting beautiful books. And I had the

(02:03:42):
idea to start a publishing company only a few months
after opening the bookstore. But he was really the creative
or artistic force behind it to get me, and you know,
I would have maybe just published things that are out
of print, you know, just in paperback or whatever. That
he he got me to kind of be a book
snob and the like, you know, really into the paper

(02:04:07):
and like having them be hardcover and like all these
little details to make them beautiful, beautiful books. So he's
a big, big part of this too. He could be
cool to have on some other time too. He's this
smart guy. I definitely had to acknowledge him for sure.

Speaker 4 (02:04:24):
Yeah, put me through to him and then we'll go
back together here. Not in two years twenty seven.

Speaker 6 (02:04:31):
I think I did something with you with on Rudolph
that was not that long ago. Maybe it's still like
a year and a half probably.

Speaker 4 (02:04:39):
I think it was that Life the Live that we did,
right Rudolph the I think the Alchemical Emperor April still, dude,
April fifteen, twenty twenty three. We streamed that live.

Speaker 6 (02:04:49):
Yeah, yeah, and Bruno was with Rudolph. So yeah, that
book comes out in March. That one's really cool, really exciting.

Speaker 4 (02:04:59):
Yeah, we'll keep a looking out for that, dude. I'll
post all the links in the description and there's always everyone.
If you enjoyed this, leave it a review, thumbs up,
five stars, whatever, make sure all the show on social
media at the one on one podcast. Make sure to
follow Professor Langa and his work over there. Go visit
the bookstore if you'd like, down in South Florida, the

(02:05:20):
Dancing Elephant. I've been there. It's great. It's a magical place.
You go in there and you feel smarter just from
being in there around all that knowledge and all those books.
It's an awesome place, dude. And hopefully I'll see you
soon here in person or something. I was supposed to
go down for the holidays. I didn't end up going,
but we'll link up here soon. And it's always everyone.
Make sure to love each other, to be good. We'll

(02:05:42):
catch you on the next one.

Speaker 7 (02:05:44):
Bye.

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#241 | The Monad, Neoplatonic Philosophy, & The SECRET Teachings of Plato with Professor Longo

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#241 | The Monad, Neoplatonic Philosophy, & The SECRET Teachings of Plato with Professor Longo