Hellenic Tantra: The Theurgic Platonism of Iamblichus

How do we understand our humanity? How do we rise above the daily particular issues in our lives? Is the experience of God here, and embodied? If you have ever been interested in the fundamental questions of the human experience, the nature of the divine, and how to relate to God--this book is for you. This book is also for anyone interested in religions of late antiquity, Platonism, and those interested in the study of the Western philosophical tradition. This work hits at core issues such as, "How do we understand Western thought, and in what ways have modern scholars misunderstood the works of the ancients?" This is a must-read for anyone interested in the reception of ancient knowledge and its continued importance to the modern age.You could not find a more trusted source on these issues. Gregory Shaw is a world-renowned scholar of Iamblichus whose work helped redefine the study of Neoplatonism. In this work, Shaw takes the reader through the experience of Theurgy, the practice of Platonism expounded by Iamblichus, and demonstrates the fundamentally embodied and esoteric principles underlying Platonism and our Western philosophical tradition. Shaw challenges our preconceived notions of what constitutes philosophy, the centrality of the mystical experience in it, and the limits of rationality. By comparing Theurgy to Tantra, Shaw opens the door for deeper conversations regarding the mystical experience across cultures. He highlights experiential similarities and differences in understanding the embodiment of the soul, the experience of divine light, and the importance of catharsis.For educators at the graduate and undergraduate levels, this is a fantastic book to include in academic curriculums and assign to students. This book would be useful in historiography and methodology classes to demonstrate how a scholar can approach two distinct traditions without conflating them and still drawing interesting conclusions from the comparative framework. I would use this as an example of how to properly write a comparative religious history if I were to teach a methods course. Furthermore, Shaw is very explicit about his method and structures the book in a way that would make it ideal for a class directly discussing the method and structure of religious and historical scholarship. I could not imagine teaching a course on Neoplatonic philosophy or late antique religions without including experts from his work here.Furthermore, Shaw is a clear and readable author. If other philosophy books have felt too dense or too abstract, give Shaw's book a try. He distills the ideas of these two traditions into understandable sentences without relying on jargon or complicated metaphysics. This book could be read and understood by anyone, and in that lies its highest value. As a scholar in this field, I can confidently attest that this is one of the best academic works published in recent history, and as a human, I can attest that this is one of the most meaningful reads of my lifetime. Approach this book with an open heart and open mind, and it very well may change your life. At the very least, you will leave infinitely more informed on two fascinating traditions worth further investigation.

Over the years of reading occult works and studying gnosis, The Body of Light, theurgy and ritual I must say this book weaved all the salient points and historical touch points. It gives the reader a ton of workable, useful insights as well as directions for further study. Bravo Mr. Shaw!

“Iamblichus is the true and proper philosopher of astrology.” This quote from Robert Hand, probably the Western world’s foremost scholar and practitioner of astrology, points us toward the possibility of recovering divinatory practice as something more than a “head trip.” For centuries the Church proscribed any discussion of “soul matters,” limiting astrological practice to physical matters, “temperament,” and circumstances. This forced a redirection of astrology’s original methods and intent. HELLENIC TANTRA is, among other things, a window on to this suppressed body of soul teachings. Professor Shaw’s clear and elegant style, unencumbered by too much scholarly apparatus, makes this exposition of ancient spirituality read as smoothly as contemporary works like Dan Brown’s or Umberto Eco’s, but this is not fiction, and packs a genuine transformative spiritual punch. At issue is our fundamental attitude about embodiment. Many religions, spiritual “technologies,” etc. start with an assumption that the world, and our presence in it is a “fall,” a spiritual disaster from which we must ascend, up, up and away. The theurgic path denies there is a “way out,” but affirms there is a WAY THROUGH. It starts with “aporia,” “beginner’s mind” in familiar terms. Reading Professor Shaw’s previous work, Theurgy and the Soul, gave me conceptual language that matched and “drew out” (“educated”) my vague notion that our life here is neither random & purposeless nor a curse or punishment to be transcended or escaped. Iamblichus said our task here is to “fill the measures” of our “allotment.” Carl Jung echoes Iamblichus when he says freedom consists of doing what one must. “May the inward and the outward man be at one.” Plato, PhaedrusProfessor Shaw generously posts his many articles at academia. edu so if you want to put your toe in before you jump in the pond, you could…but you’re going to jump in the end.

I took this book while taking a course with Dr. Shaw. It is an excellent exploration into the theurgic Platonists and the school of Iamblichus.

Gregory Shaw restores the obscured immanence of Neoplatonic practice through a nuanced investigation of Iamblichus' "On The Mysteries." Essential reading in the history of philosophy, mysticism, and religious practice. I took on online class taught by Professor Shaw; his knowledge is only equaled by his enthusiasm. There is a lifetime of rich possibilities of thought in this volume.

Excelente livro de Filosofia e História - com excelente contextualização histórica do Pensamento Antigo (séculos V e IV a.C.) e Helênico (aquele momento que vai da invasão de Alexandre a, mais ou menos, 400/410 A.D.). Gosto muito dessa questão acerca dos "platonismos" e penso que Jamblico (em português vamos melhor - embora meu teclado não seja ABNT-2) foi a lata de lixo de Platão e penso mais: talvez, e talvez, a questão seja: do que Platão se desviou ou melhor, por que Filosofia em detrimento da Erosofia? Não que, necessariamente, essa seja a tônica do livro. Vale a pena comprar, ler e ter sempre por perto.

Dr. Shaw’s new book ‘Hellenic Tantra; The Theurgic Platonism of Iamblichus’ is the sequel to his ‘Theurgy and the Soul: The Teachings of Iamblichus,’ published in 1995. The latter book (along with Peter Kingsley’s ‘Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition’, published the following year) revolutionized the study of ancient Mediterranean spirituality by highlighting the centrality of direct experience in the roots of Western wisdom. The wait has been well worth it. In the new book Dr. Shaw again shows that the form of Neoplatonism championed by the Syrian philosopher Iamblichus, known as theurgy, was far from a game of intellectual speculation, but was rather an intense engagement of the human being with the aim of deification while still embodied in this physical world. Not only thinking, but perception, imagination, feeling, and social engagement, are all vital in the theurgic quest. The author cleverly brings out these features by comparing the theurgy of Iamblichus with a form of Hindu tantra called Kashmir Shaivism, particularly as expressed by the tenth-eleventh century mystic Abhinavagupta. For me, this doubling of perspective had a similar effect to viewing something with two eyes rather than one – I glimpsed an extra dimension in the material. Also, this approach sharpens the question of contemporary relevance: if these two spiritual currents, so remote from each other in time and space, have such similar visions, what might they teach twenty-first century seekers who are remote from both?

The first place to start this review is with the obviously provocative title. Shaw tells us that it originated in an insult thrown at him by a detractor, but far from being insulted, Shaw decided to own the epithet and run with it. Shaw argues that our understanding of ancient Greek philosophy and religion is way of the mark. We read the philosophical traditions of Platonism, Stoicism, Neoplatonism etc. as 'proto-sciences', as the writings of big thinkers asking how the world works. Our misunderstanding of Hellenic religion is worse. We either don't attempt to understand it or we obsess over folk tales about how 'Zeus made the sky'. The problem is that we live in a world formerly dominated by Abrahamic religions, for us 'religion' still means a Big Book that tells you how things started and where their going. While our modern replacement for Philosophy, Science, is another 'One Big Story', that tells you who is right and who is wrong and what to believe about everything. Shaw, instead, contends that ancient Religion wasn't a set of beliefs, but a set of spiritual exercises, meant to bring about a personal transformation. To the Greeks, philosophy wasn't separate from religion but they were woven together into a whole cloth. Philosophy was one of these spiritual exercise, which was used alongside others in one of the ancient schools. Sadly these ancient schools of philosophy have long since died out. We have no idea what students actually did in Plato's academy nor in the various Neoplatonic groups. We know that they were supposedly practising 'magic', according to Plato's letters, we know at least, that they weren't doing the kind of philosophy you'd get on campus today. Happily the ancient way did not die out everywhere. Even in Christianity, in Catholic and Orthodox rites, some submerged memory of religion as a spiritual practice lives on. And Abrahamic religions did not succeed in proselytizing the people of India at all. There in the East, the old way of doing religion carried on unhindered. In Hinduism, and predominantly in its offshoot Tantra, religion is a living spiritual practice intended to develop a person's higher nature. And the comparison is not forced, after all Hinduism has a direct continuity of worship back to the classical period, and they shared numerous contacts with the Greco-Roman world: not only did Alexander carry Greek ideas directly into India, Plotinus was inspired to create Neoplatonism after travelling to India to study with the Gurus or 'Gymnosophists'. Furthermore, Hinduism shares a common Indo-European cultural heritage of the Ancient Greeks, both having split off from a shared common culture in prehistory. Finally, Hinduism retains the 'pagan' world view, and never accepted the seismic 'reshifiting' of reality that happened under the new religions. Shaw's contention is that we might understand the ancient Greek Philosophers a hell of a lot better, if we tried looking at them through the same lens that practitioners of Eastern religions use, rather than that of an Abrahamic faith or a rationalist scientism. And this book is his rexamination of Greek Philosophy, especially the Neoplatonic school, as a spiritual practice, in the light of comparison with an actual living spiritual system of Tantra, which he contends shares the same word-view as Greek Philosophy. Shaw admits that Tantra has become 'something of a New Age industry', but that is rather to his point. He observes that our world-view has grown so narrow and sectarian these days, that anything outside the acceptable bounds of what is a 'religion' or a 'philosophy' is either dismissed out of hand or becomes a lurid fixation (especially on supposed sexual rights, which are a fringe of a fringe of Tantric practice). We know (we imagine) what a religion is supposed to look like: like the Book of Genesis (or for the more up-to-date, the Book of Darwin), its the book that tells you were everything comes from and how everything works, and all you have to do is agree. Anything outside of those bounds is primitive superstition. And anything that comes from an obviously ancient and elevated culture which doesn't fit our model of what is superior, enlightened people believe ... well it's bloody well made to fit, even if we have to take a hammer and a blow-torch to it. So traditionally, Western scholars were wary of regarding anything of consequence in Hinduism outside of the Vedas. The Vedas were (supposedly) the austere productions of a rationalistic master-race. Modern Hinduism was (supposedly) the abysmal, degenerate superstition of a polyglot people. While Tantra was (supposedly) the most primitive, idolatrous superstition of primitive savages. Shaw wryly notes that exactly the same intellectual hatchet-job is done on Greek philosophy to make it fit in the Procrustian Bed of 'rational' thought: Plato was (supposedly) an enlightened rationalist. The Neoplatonism was (supposedly) the abysmal superstition of a degenerate, polyglot age. And the philosophy of Iamblichus in particular was (supposedly) a dark, oriental idolatry of a misguided Assyrian, ungratefully turning his back on his Greek education. But for Shaw, Iamblichus is the stand-out hero of Greek philosophy. Iamblichus is the guy who tells us what ancient Greek philosophy actually was about, not what modern, rational academics would prefer to pretend that it was about. He shows us how it was actually practised by those who called themselves Philosophers, what it meant to those people, and how it operated in their lives. He explains what Plato was actually saying, and what he meant in those passages that modern philosophers either wilfully misconstrue or piously skip over. With Iamblichus as our 'man on the inside' and Tantra as our living map of a comparable tradition, and with a little help from Gregory Shaw (and Ficino). We might even be able to practice ancient Greek philosophy the way that Plato and Iamblichus were actually doing it. Who knows, we might even find the divine within us.

Building on earlier investigations from "Theurgy and the Soul", Dr. Gregory Shaw delves deeper into Iamblichean theurgy and highlights the many parallels with Shaivism. Rather than abandoning the senses as untrustworthy and viewing matter as inherently evil, mystics like Iamblichus and Abhinavagupta sought to accept our materiality and embodied state and to use our senses along with the Imaginatio to purify the vehicle of our soul (ochema). Highly recommended for anyone who yearns to understand and embody theurgic practice as understood by the ancients by the foremost expert in the field.

Fantastic book that really helps clarifies the Neoplatonist position - particularly Iamblichus, in a way that anyone can follow regardless of past experience. Hands down one of the best books on the topic - fun to read with short punchy chapters on philosophically engaging topics.