It is worth while reminding the reader that Iamblichus was not merely a mathematician and a philosopher, in the idealistic fashion: he was of a princely line, and well-educated, and his caste seems to have been that of Brahmin.
Iamblichus wrote a life of Pythagoras, an autobiography of his great master and teacher.
For those who claim the Unity, experience the double oath of Heaven to Earth in the Dyad, reaffirm that Unity in the Three, and move into the realm of Creative affects with the Tetrad, they find the Pentad ready to aid their Will.
Venus traces a Pentagram in the sky with her motion through the celestial heavens. The Pentagram is the sign of the Satanists, but then, they only pay attention to one symbol, and ignore the rest, for the Pentagram is integrally related to the Monad and all that comes prior to it. Unlike the Dyad, whose movement is Divinely Feminine (another Monad) but also ambivalent (in that it duplicates the One : for what purpose? – one asks at first), the Pentad is half of the Decad, and is equivalent to the final Completion. The Pentad is 2+3, the first even number (Female) added to the first male number (Male: odd). As such, it is emblematic of Life itself, the pattern of symbiosis and resulting energies from the union of 2 and 3 (which are also, in Christian tradition, the Son and the Spirit, in the Father). 5 mediates the interplay of Life.
5 follows Creation (4), and manifests Justice, which always splits things into an equal and unequal portion (one side 2, one side 3) in order to determine which side requires re-balance. Life results when the rational side of our nature (the smaller, or 2) is given priority or balance as against the appetitive side of our nature (represented in 3). Life is the restoration of balance, or the Circle, in which no value exceeds its place or any other value. Instead of Equality in the modern sense, perhaps modern men should study the Justice and Balance of the Number 5, whose inequality is manifested precisely in order to redress Balance and indicate which is lower, which is higher.
The five pointed star is also (and I add this) quite obviously a picture of man, who has 2 legs, 2 arms, and a head which decides the balance between them as what to do. The proportions of the pentad are based on the Divine Ratio, and generate the number PHI. (I should mention here that there is some additional symbolism related to man as having an extra appendage, and being symbolized in 666: Man has to seek his polar angel and find salvation in his “lady”, the one who represents the Divine Feminine to him, and mediates Life, since the particular feminine for him is more complete).
The pentad’s symbolism can be directly related to the Divine Proportion. And the regeneration of the pentad is related to the value of phi (?). The image of the pentad is found in nature in leaves and flowers. The Greeks believed each point of the pentad to represent an element: water, earth, air, fire, and idea. Early Christians used the pentad to represent the five wounds of Christ. The symbol, when the point is directed downwards, was later used as a sign for Satan and the Devil.
We will see that the Pentad is in some sense a total completion, as the perfect number (Decad) is simply a repetition of Pentad, just as the Dyad is a repetition of the Monad. 1:2::5:10. Also, 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9= 45, divided by 9 = 5. 5×5=25, x5 again = 125. The third square encompasses itself. It also encompasses two previous squares: 16+9=25. The Pentad is a mediator and balance : it is abundant Life, the Star upon the Cross.
So many esotericisms degenerate into chaos because they ignore the Tetrakys, the sequence of all Ten Numbers, 1 through 10, and their inter-relationships. Some emphasize the Monad at the expense of the Upper Waters, Sophia, and the Divine Feminine or the birth of the Logos. Others situate themselves within the Dyad, and ignore how the Dyad can only exist because of primal Unity. The Satanists, as noted, delight in inverting the power of Life in the Pentagram. On the contrary, the true initiate is aware of All Things and All Number, simply because they are fully aware. They do not fixate on one manifestation, but penetrate to the Divine Principles which animate created matter.
For example, the medievals noted that there are five ordinary senses and five wits. The ancients knew that there were five perfect 3-D shapes: 4 elements, and one called the aether, which was the “air within the air” (and all the other elements). Could one say that elemental Light is the aether? That the Middle Ages strove to embody the Light of Dionysius in their cathedrals, to begin the ascent from real matter up into the higher worlds?
“The Pentad is alteration, light, lack of strife; alteration because it changes three dimensionality into the sameness of the sphere, by moving cyclically and engendering light – hence it is light too; and it is lack of strife because it combines everything which was formerly discordant and brings together and reconciles the two kinds of number.” – Megillus
Bob, I have a post on Ficino entitled “Jupiter, Wine, and Gold” on this site. Your questions are cogent from a certain point of view, but speak abstractly while situating yourself in a historical timeline: this is a dead end (I tried it). One can either embrace a historical tradition (in which case, say a Catholic one) one is obligated to work through the theological reservations, or one can simply regard the Ideas as living entities, which are not bound by the fact that the Church had difficulty assimilating or making sense of portions of what it inherited (and I am not suggesting this second approach without some working practice in a historical tradition and its prudential and contingent limitations, which are governed Providentially). But Cologero is correct: the Church Fathers took Platonism as an indubitable starting point for doing theology at all. This is the guiding spirit behind resurrecting portions of text from Iamblichus or even Celsus (one can learn from heretics as well). Hermeticism is open to whomever wants to avail themselves of it, and doesn’t depend upon the imprimatur of anything but the Truth, although I think the adversarial relationship between the Church and it to be overstated in many regards. Cologero’s work on Tomberg as linked are a great starting point. After some digging, the conflicts acquire a different dimension outside of historical narratives.
Bob, Hermetism is much older than the Renaissance, and we are not saying it is necessary. As for neo-Platonism, it is not really a “fusing”, and there is no denying that the Fathers simply regarded the worldview of platonism as basically true. Please refer to The Church of John as a starting point for discussion.
I’m not sure if this is the best place to post this, but…
How do you reconcile the fact that the Church has a long history of rejecting Iamblichus and the Neoplatonic school in general (even though they crib from it extensively) with the fact that this site seems to want to fuse Neoplatonic and Hermetic teachings with Catholicism and Orthodoxy?
There seems to be a point in the Renaissance when the Church was on the verge of fusing the Hermetic tradition into its theology, but somehow that attempt fizzled into nothing. From that point on, there seems to be an open hostility to Hermeticism.
What does Gornahoor think of such people like Ficino, Mirandola, Bruno, etc? Were these men forces of anti-tradition? These men define the Renaissance in many ways, yet I thought the Renaissance was seen as anti-traditional in nature.
It seems to me that the Church, by rejecting the revival of Hermetic philsophy, made an enemy out of a movement that could have enriched the Church.
The Nominalist/Realist debate is seen as an important point in the decline of the West. But I wonder if the hostility to Hermeticism, thereby turning it into an anti-Catholic force when it might not have been, should be seen as another key point in Western decline.