You see somethings going to happen.
What What's gonna happen?
What a.
Welcome to the occult Rejects. This episode we got a turning our returning guest. I'm very excited to get on to be talking about this topic. We'll be talking about the inny ads again from Platony's and on gnarcissism. But before we get to arrows up, we will introduce the other rejects on the show with us today. And I got my man Ethan Indigo. What is going on? Sir? How are you?
Thank you Nick for putting this together. Jules, great to see you and speak with you always. Maros excited for this learn learn a lot from you and easy to find on the social media Ethan Indigo Smith. And you've been written a couple of books and definitely appreciate people's support and checking them out.
And yeah, thank you, so I appreciate it. Glad you made it. And we got my main jewels. What is going on? So the Mississippi Mystic, Yeah, that's even them. Did you play that with the m M with them? For Mason's the whole MM thing? Did you play that with the m M two for Masons.
Maybe I played that.
Sometimes I try to use the triple M to go with like the ot.
Oh yeah, well, we'll never know what is going on.
I am Jeweles, host of the Gray Pill Podcast, and I am the only, the only mystic for Mississippi. I won't find any other ones down here. Nick, thank you for having me on Ethan's good seeing you eris is good.
Meeting you guys.
Y'all can follow me on x that Great Pill Pod, Great put Underscore podcast on Instagram, even though I barely post on there. I need to work on that and uh over on Rumble YouTube, Spotify, uh and Patreon, Patreon if you want to support the show, Patreon dot com, slash Great Pill Podcast. We just did an esoteric book review. We discussed the Pisto Sophia, So it's funny. We're talking gnosticism right now, and so yeah, it's probably u.
Nick won't be.
There for the next couple of weeks, so I know we may not do it live. We may just do it on Patreon. But it's every Saturday morning. We're doing twin Peaks watch parties. A few few more of those left, so I'll probably stream those live as well. But you can go over there, support the show. That's the best way, and uh yeah, happy to be here.
If you see me on the show next Saturday. From an event, you know it's fucking it sucks and I'm not bored, and I jumped onto the live yeah yeah right because if it is that bad, and I have my shit set up because you know, the one at arkisas I didn't want me to try to podcast. It's like, well, if I ain't doing anything, I'm alse just jump on with you anyway. I'm just being an event looking like a loser. But uh, real quick before we introduce arrows too.
And first of all, I do want to repeat people who listen to uh you know Jewels on here or whatever, or the people on this YouTube channel that tend to come here. If I'm not streaming it out on my end, he's still doing that stuff on his end, So like, go check out his YouTube channel and his rumble. I'm not always going to be sharing it, but I will be there when I can. So I'm just trying to get people to move over. You know what I'm saying. I go over to his shit and check out the
book review. I love doing it. I think it's a good time and I think it's worth listening to. And yeah, and then before we get to Aros, I just do want to plug again. December, and I just keep fucking saying that October eighteenth, I will be at Fort Myers with Brook from Dark Florida will be there. She's a speaker at Charlie's Beyond Believe shall have a booth as well. There'll be if some of us there. It should be
a good time. And then on the twenty fifth and twenty sixth that will be in Arkansas, a little rock, Arkansas, there is a paranormal event that is two days and it's at a museum and it's like two floors and there'll be tons of vendors and all sorts of crazy shit. Come check that out. They're all like cheap, like fifteen or ten dollars apiece. So if you're interest, there's links in the bottom for those events and they'll hopefully see you that. And now finally we're gonna shut up, and
Arrows please let everybody know what your deal is. What's up?
Sure? Oh, I'm arrows Up. You can find me on YouTube where I post some studies of the Naiads at Arrows Up and then I'm on Twitter as arrows to Ethos and Diane returning. So if you are so inclined after watching this one, you might want to go look at the go watch the other podcasts that we did on the niads. We talked about are the Stars, causes and multiplicity and chaos and all sorts of things.
Definitely, I really enjoyed that one one. So again, you know what, if you don't mind too, that's reader yourself with like repeat kind of like from the first one. But again, like, how did you get into, like I'm going to cover Platinis in the Enneads? You even found out what fu Platinus was, however you say his name.
I guess just so a long journey of just exploring different schools of thought, and I guess the most direct path to neo Platonism was probably like looking into Christian mysticism, like Saint Augustine, stuff like that, and then just following those ideas back to Platinus.
See, that is something that I've really I'm glad you kind of said that Christian mysticism. And again, I'm not not knocking the religion at all, but I don't think Christians realize how many certain basic ideas that they have about maybe the afterlife or even their religion actually come from this dupe. Like I've I could be wrong, but I think like the whole idea of like oh I might say my family and friends afterwards, like came from
kind of him. I could be wrong, but it was just like, you know, that's that's a deep belief that a lot of Christians hold that don't realize who gave them that fucking idea, you know what I'm saying, Like there's occultist out there and stuff that I've influenced Christianity too in ways that I guess you wouldn't consume it assume is bad because it sounds nice and it's sweet and it is, but it's coming from people who aren't necessarily looking at the religion the same way Christians are nowadays.
I guess That's what I'm trying to get at.
Yeah, Yeah, especially Platinis is a pagan, and so that's kind of funny that the whole like monotheistic uh metaphysics kind of comes from a pagan.
Yeah. And then like Basilio Ficino, basically you know, he was the one who put his shit out and he was he was the one who really helped cement kind of using uh I guess, correlating pagan beliefs and other religions and like you know, like Crawly seven seven seven is with kind of like putting everything like this is how that these all are the same character, it's just
different pantheons. That was kind of Facino who we even did that too, and that brought a lot of like stuff into Christianity, and I don't think people realize it's very interesting.
Right, Yeah, Christianity also started out as a pantheon, so.
Yep. But uh on gnosticism, Now, this is a topic why, I mean the reason why I wanted to have you cover this topic too. I think you both we both wanted to talk about it at some point, but I was a little bit more excited to talk about this is because kind of like what I skim through, I will save my opinion. Uh, I'm very much pro or for what he's saying. I think I've said over and over again since I've started covering you know, occultists or oldest stuff, that a lot of stuff is getting human.
There's a lot of characters that aren't supposed to be characters at all. And then they get stuck in that and you kind of like lose, lose the whole thing because now you're personifying energies and you're actually like thinking it's a real deity. That's kind of what I got out of it, and it was refreshing to see. I was like, oh, Okay, I'm not the only answer who thinks of that. You know, somebody thousands of years ago
was saying the same fucking shit. But uh yeah, I guess you know, again not knocking agnosticism or gnostics, but uh, you know, they're just a certain thing. I don't know, So yeah, I guess, Erros, I don't know where you want to start off with the whole a gnosticism and why you like that chapter or pick that one?
Well first time, do you mean deities as opposed to like uh archetypes or patterns?
Well, I know, like he was even saying that, I think, like the whole idea of like Sophia, it was just like kind of like fucking silly, you know, how like an aon comes into existence and then like fucking decays. It's just like God doesn't create shit like God's and everything like he was and how the Gnostics would be like, oh, this is evil, Like he's like, no, there's God in you, it's not. You know. He really looked at it a lot differently and didn't didn't agree with agree with a
lot of their beliefs. Honestly, he thought it was from when I got out and when I read in my thing, like he kind of thought it was like bad, like it really wasn't good to go down that road, right.
And I feel like a lot of people are gnostic, like there are oh yeah.
I called myself for it to it extent, gnosticgamistic, and that's because I call myself a nastic because I would say, I look at Christianity in a coldland.
Yeah, it's the probably the biggest like heretic group. But I just don't think that when people talk about gnosticism, they talk about like play and where these ideas kind of come from. And so I think that if you don't understand like uh, Timaeus and like the original concept of the demi urge and stuff, then uh, I don't know, it's it's just weird that we've kind of lost those
ideas and so many people are are gnostic. So I think it is kind of important to at least talk about it and the argument against it.
I would almost say, it's like you can kind of look at like I've always uh, well me and I can't even say I've said this myself. My friend Jordan Barber said this, dude in the Oto. They used to be in the Oto with uh like Wika to Thlima, you know, like Thelma's like Wicka is like you know,
Thelma l like you know what I'm saying. And I feel like like if you were lik into like play it over some of the older people, Platinus gnosticism would be a way of like I'm trying to say this right way, dumb it down and that actually looked too deep and just have a story that kind of tells you the tale and then unfortunately you just fall in love with the characters and don't even realize that there are archetypes. Something to that extent. I feel like that that kind.
Of happens, yeah, potentially or a purposeful like divergence. I don't know.
But the reason I think say Thelema is, I mean, wick is the leam a light is you know, for some people that may not know. Gerald Gardner was a student of Alice da Crowley, and he was allowed to open up an Oto lodge. He chose Wicked instead. It was probably much more profitable.
Hmm.
So I guess I'm not sure how to pull up the power point. I have a power point here, just kind of going through the differences between Neoplatonism and Gnosticism and Plato's arguments against it. And I tried to retain a lot of his original sass in there.
Yo. He did have some sass.
Right, so so sassy yo.
When I was covering a shit, I was like, Yo, I like this fucking dude. I was like, kind of talk shit like, but in a good way. I was like, I gotta learn how to talk like s throw shade like this guy.
Yeah, it's pretty funny, especially towards.
The end, but it's like he'll use big words to like call people stupid. Almost.
Yeah, I'm trying to think, I don't know. Lots of
sass in there. You'll definitely see it. So basically, the reason that Platinists really even wrote this is because in Alexandria and Rome at the time, and in his own philosophical circles, there were a lot of people who considered themselves Christians and Gnostics specifically influenced by like the Scythian and Valentinian schools, and so they were influenced by like Plato and Platinis's philosophy, but they kind of reinterpreted it in a more dualistic and mythological way, right, so I
guess they if we were to kind of summarize, they claimed the material world was evil and created by an ignorant and malevolent demiurge, which is a lot different than Plato's Timeeus's version of the demiurge. They despised the cosmos and its ruler, seeing like the earth as a prison, and they thought only us, this special spiritual elite, could ascend to the divine realm. And uh, yeah, that was one of the things.
I ever brought up. Sorry, did I remember that specifically? I totally forgot to mention that earlier. That was like another thing. He was like, what are these people? I think they're fucking special, basically like come.
On, Yeah, And I think he was pretty upset that they corrupted his like terminology and language of like emanation intellect in the one and turned it into arrogance and world hatred. So he's just trying to set the record
straight and then also defend Platonism from these distortions. So, in contrast, Platinists believes that the universe is a living organism filled with intelligence and beauty, that every level of reality, even matter, participates in the good in its own way, and that evil is privation of good, like it is like a weaker form of the good, yes, but not evil, it's not uh its own principle.
That that kind of goes along with when you read about black magic, it talks about how there's an original state of this blackness that's not evil, right, It's like this, It's like they kind of messed up the definition of it and the only it can only be considered evil if or uh, you know, if we create it through through black magic.
That the original blackness isn't evil kind of reminds me of that.
Hmmm, they continue.
Let me see see. Yeah.
Basically, he believes that true assent involve and involves love and purification, not disdain for creation, and that the return to the One should come from harm you with the cosmic order, not rejection of it. Because the Gnostics also believe in this return to the One, but just like in a different way. As a rejection. So the Gnostic creation story, there's this process that takes place in the
pleroma or the divine realm, which leads to creation. In this process is it involves this figure Sophia, which is like their version of the of Wisdom, I guess, and they believe that.
Sorry, Roma, weren't we talking about the early jewels or something?
I was just saying this is it's crazy that because we didn't plan to talk about that book.
All right, yeah, yeah that book. Actually we spun a wheel on the screen to pick that book. Yeah.
It was a kids and they like to open the garage door sometimes. But no, we definitely talked about the How is it like this? These different dimensions? Uh, that are all They all have their own angels and stuff. It's fits. It's very uh, very interesting.
The this divine figure, I guess, moves from a state of like repose or like rest peacefulness to action, and that this movement creates the material world. And the cause of this movement from resting to an active state that created this creation or resulted in the creation, was from Sophia experiencing a desire or stirring to know the unknowable
or to emulate creation. And the divine, and that this disrupted the perfect harmony of the Pleroma, which introduced imperfection and the creation of the demiurge.
The painting is bugged out. I was stuck on that for a moment.
I was gonna say, you can always share, like share the screen if if the whole PDF thing doesn't work and stream, but it's up to you.
Oh you can't see the image very well?
No, no, we Yeah, it just sometimes like if you bring it up as an image, you can blow it up bigger. It's one thing that sucks about slides sliders on your mousepad. Do you have a Mac? It's too much fun to do. Okay, Yeah, it's just bugged out. I was just like, I feel like there's like a lot of ship in there. It's weird problem, Like I feel like this part of the art is like to look like different ship looks like a wheel spoken like one of the legs.
Yeah.
Like, I was like, is there sigils in there that I get all that weirdy?
Someone in the chad just mentioned Samsara and and it made me think of how Samsara is like the imperfected world that we live in, which is from nirvana, which is like the.
If you will right right, right, yeah, just a different name for it, right.
A lot of a lot of correspondence. There, certainly excuse me, arrows, Oh no, yeah.
I don't apologize. Please jump in at any time, So I guess. He kind of starts out his argument with some important quotes.
So he.
Explains that the good is primal, the most absolutely simplex and integral unity. The secondary can never be simplex. It contains nothing, and that the good is self sufficing in the sense that it is not of that compound nature which would make it dependent upon any constituent. So it's self contained, deriving from nothing alien, entering into nothing alien in no way a made up thing. There can be nothing above it, because there's this idea that that there is like no beginning and end to it.
And so.
He begins his argument against the Gnostics and their creation story with the following quote, They will scarcely urge upon us the doubling of the principle and act by a principle and potentiality. It is absurd to seek such plurality by distinguishing between potentiality and actuality. In the case of immaterial beings whose existence is an act. Even in lower forms,
no such division can be made. And we cannot conceive a duality in the intellectual principle, one phase in some vague claim another all uster Under what form can we think of repose in the intellectual principle as contrasted with its movement or utterance? What would the quiescence of the one phase be as against the energy of the other.
So what he's really saying there is that the creation story holds this belief that the divine exists in those two states in potential, in that reposed state, the wanting or desiring something state, and then another state, which would be act, doing something, creating, falling right, Because that's how they believe that creation came to be, is from Sophia
stirring from that repose to movement by that desire. So Platinus argues, potentiality only makes sense for things that can change immaterial intelligence, such as you know what Sophia would be because this is before her descent, before she came to have a body. They have no potential. They are pure act and the divine is pure actuality or pure activity, and that there can't be two phases in intellect. It is that unified activity rest in motion are material metaphors.
The divine is timeless and always fully itself. It never stops and starts. So it's like he's pointing out that Sophia is like a very for a divine being without a body. It exists like a human and that just does not make sense for the higher realms.
I think that's kind of what I was getting at earlier. It was like how people would like take something that really can't be put into human form, that it's not meant to be, and it kind of will screw it up, you know, and it's unfortunate. I mean, we do it in me myself, I'm sure in our own ways. I mean, we do find ways to come not in love, but been dazzled by like characters. You know what I'm saying. I don't know. So do you think that can screw stuff up?
All right?
Let's see, there's this quote. To ask why the soul has created the cosmos is to ask why there is a soul and why a creator creates. The question also implies a beginning in the eternal and further represents creation as the act of a changeable being who turns from this to that and then this is kind of a
sassy little thing. Those that so think must be instructed if they would but bear with correction in the nature of the sopernals, and brought to desist from that blasphemy of majestic powers which comes so easily to them, where all should be reverenced gruple. It's kind of like making fun of them for thinking that they are like elite
and even above the demiurge. Okay, this is hilarious to me, the contrary's supposition, and would give us two beings, one that merely knows, in another a separate being.
That knows of the act of knowing.
If we are answered that the distinction is merely a process of our thought, then at once the theory of a further hyposthesis is abandoned. Further, the question is opened whether our thought can entertain and knowing principle so narrowed to its knowing as to not know that it knows, a limitation which would be charged as imbecility even in ourselves, who if but a very ordinary moral forces are always
master of our emotions and mental processes. The absurdity becomes still more blatant if we introduce yet a further distinction after that, which affirms the knowledge of the knowing, a third distinction affirming the knowing of the knowledge.
Of the knowing.
Yet there is no reason against carrying on the division forever and ever. So you can know and not know that you're knowing, but you can't know that you know and not know of the knowing.
That you know.
It'd be totally honest. I think that word no knowing and knowledge is totally fucking misused constantly.
Yeah, it means completely different.
Now probably you know, well, like listen, well, like I'm just gonna keep it real. Let me put it this way, like people listening to the show, you can only take our stuff as a faith of belief until you've actually had an experience with it. Then, once you've had that experience and whatever we said might fucking fit your experience, then it might be knowledge or knowing. But until then it's actually not. You know, I could I could read
a book. I could pick up Crowley right now and spend ten hours reading a book and literally put it down and polace say, I really don't understand half of the shit I read in there. Just because I fucking read it doesn't mean it equals up. Yeah, I have to comprehend what the fun I'm reading first.
I don't know anything, dude, Right, that you know something is to know nothing.
So no, But I just like, even like how we use words nowadays, it's like it's not even fucking correct, you know, especially when we're going to our own heads off.
I think it changes more than just the word, right, It changes the meaning behind it.
It changes, you know, stuff that's happening in our world.
That goes back to how all this stuff is connected, you know, spiritually. But I digress.
Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.
Well, the polarity of the known and unknowns and the response of knowing it reminds me of I think it was Aristotle who put forth the idea of the move the unmoved, and the unmoved, mover and the moved, and it has this kind of sense about that. And there is also kind of a way to look at information as known knowns and unknown knownes and so forth, and it can get a bit redundant and kind of confusing.
But essentially, there's things that we know that we don't know, and there's things that we know that we know, and then the unknown uh nones that gets to be kind of level of intuition too, writ like from where did we know this unknown? So it gets a little bit redundant and hard to definitely hard to put forth, and and someone just deaf Knoxter, I like your name just put forth. That is very Rumsfeldian for Rumsfeld to point it out this one time in a really crude notion.
And but he only pointed out three. There was actually a fourth type if you really get into it. But interesting that that whole series, that whole couple of paragraphs is very interesting. And the two beings reminds me of I maybe even in in this chapter Eros you might know about the the house and the two brothers, I do not know, Okay, No, it made me think of that, which I think it was essentially one way to look
at the divergence of the Gnostics and the Neoplatonists. Was two brothers in a house and one is just totally disappointed in the flaws of the structure and can't really get past that. And the other brother is totally aware that the house is flawed and there's things that need to be fixed, but he also wants to go forth and I live, you know, without being held back.
By that.
Okay, yeah, actually yes he does mention that in this chapter now that you're refreshing my memory, gosh, he says that it's a matter of necessity, like accepting necessity. That you know, the one that's always unhappy with the architecture just can't accept necessity the other, does.
You know? It was another thing I just wanted to add in with. I think his the whole thing with the elite and stuff. I haven't want to like, you know, if you want to start playing again on the word nosis or knowing and all that stuff. I also do think like Plotinus was big on I think you called it hernosis. I could be wrong, and that to me, to me, the way he explained it, that was crossing the Abyss, and I think he had even claimed that he had did it like four times, you know for
a cult. This for myself is that that's when I have a knowing because now I've actually experienced both sides, and there's certain things that you know now because if you've experienced it, the people who have that experience can well.
The reason where all this fucking humanity is fucked up is because people who have that experience take you know, take advantage of the people the massive you know, again, like ninety three percent of the population will never have that fucking experience, probably so that that little bit percent can manipulate everybody else if they want to. So I could see like maybe like that whole idea of like,
you know, those people thinking they're they're the elite. I mean, technically they are more elite amongst the population because of their understanding of the human psyche and reality. So I'm even wondering if you even like kind of looked at it that way, is that he understood that, like some of these people do understand what the fuck's going on, and they're actually just being pieces of shit about it. You know, they're selling people fucking bullshit they're taking advantage of.
You know, I've wondered because you know, of knowing how big he was on her nosis and that equaling like kind of knowing as well I think are understanding just I think the same.
Yeah, that is interesting. I wonder if he goes into that and like any of his tractates sound like the evil or the problem of the soul or something.
I mean, it'd be no different than like me and a few other people, like even the guy that we had on last night with Annie. I mean, both of us are both saying that a lot of this UFO alien shit is a bunch of bulls ship, you know, it's it's all, it's all occult stuff being wrapped up
into some fairy tale to sell people. It's the same ship with narcissism, probably coming from people who actually understood ocultism, because he's like, you should know better, you shouldn't be putting it out this way because people are taking it the wrong way.
Very true.
Yeah, maybe it's something like that too. Who knows, We'll never know, so.
I guess Platinus how he sees the knowing and the known.
He believes that.
The knowing, the knower, and the known are one in the same reality.
That what would you consider that? Would that be like the one and a new I don't know, is that father down anything. I feel like that's almost like an idea. Yeah. I feel like it's almost like an idea that he uses, or like I forgot how there's like a couple of things like I forgot this phrases that he uses. I could be completely wrong.
What are you doing about the now snick? Yeah?
Yeah, like like that the same thing as the Christ. It's like the same spirit.
I believe it's similar, very similar.
Could be getting confused with somebody else that I covered where it's like they had like these phrases like the person thinking and the thought and then the thinking of the thought. I would have to explain ship like that.
Yeah, I mean he believes that the one is pure knowing.
And that new right.
It doesn't first know something and then turn to reflect to itself like you can't.
Yeah, yeah, that's yeah, like that that's so choke my like in fucking in a kabbala. Oh my god, I feel like that is so choked face to face with God, you know.
I think it's just like like that last slide, like you can't know and know that you know, Like that's just one knowing. It's like they handshake each other, if that makes sense. Can't really be distinct.
Maybe Kashdar a little riddle about knowing or the kind of maybe like knowing and more intuiting or knowing deeply. Would if you need to get to the place that you've never been before, and you're in no country you've never been before, would you rather go with the person who knows the way or the person who has been
there before. And at first it might appear like knowing the way, Well, that's great, like let him take me, but has he he hasn't been there before, right, and so you might want to go with the person who he can't explain he doesn't know it in a way that he could tell you, but he knows it in a way that he could get there bodily wise. Excuse me that, I just thought that was worth kind of sharing the two different knowledge there.
Yeah, thank you, So yeah, I guess that's the argument is that news is just the act of knowing, so it can't be two separate things, and you can't break it up into like a reposed state and an active state because it is pure activity.
It's pure actuality.
And then you know, another argument coming from that is that this movement implies like temporal development something, you know, going from a potential to actuality, and they like linear developmental fashion. But these higher realms they don't they don't have time. Everything just exists. They're all at once, the patterns all exist.
Matter is.
Developed uh literally like that through time, but it matter has potentiality. But that's just you know, what is necessary for things to come into form. So yeah, basically he believes that potentiality doesn't exist in us or the one. It belongs to the soul and to matter. And so how could Sophia.
You know, have.
Kind of like actualized or desired or uh.
Any of those things.
Yeah, can you go back real quick. I hate to like drag this throng, but it's just like this stuff right here football Titus uh news uh. I mean that's for real. It's like so choke muf for me again. Like you know, the experience is supposed to be face to face the God, and it's like the knower knowing
the knower and the knower won. I mean, if you look at how the tree works, I mean obviously that was the situation before you became sphere two like but so but then like again you even have here something else then then turned to reflect on itself. I think that's how you actually know what the fuck is even going on is because now you're able to look back and see what you were. You know, that whole thing is when the knowing comes in and it just to me,
it's so very much Chokoma right there in Kabala. Just to me, it's exact same.
I was thinking a similar thing Mick about it keeps on beckoning the four dimensions, so, uh, creation, in formation and of course the first one. Why am I spacing it right now? But it's all, It all just kind of beckons to those four worlds.
Yeah, it's very cabalistic to me vice versa, which everyone can people want to argue that.
Yeah, I feel like metaphysics really translates to very similarly in so many different schools of thought. It's kind of interesting how it works and how they differ. Okay, So I guess here's a little sass on Sophia.
He says, to those who.
Assert that creation is the work of the soul, after the fall of its wings, we answered that no such disgrace could overtake the soul of the all. If they tell us of its falling, they must tell us also what caused the fall and when did it take place? If from eternity, then the soul must be essentially a fallen thing. If at some one moment, why not before that? We assert its creative act.
To be proof not of decline, but rather of its.
Steadfasthold, its decline could consist only in its forgetting the divine But if it forgot, how could it create?
Once?
Does it create but from things it knew in the divine? If it creates from the memory of that vision, it never fell. Even supposing it to be in some dim intermediate state, it need not be supposed more likely to decline. Any inclination would be towards its prior and an effort to the clearer vision. If any memory it all remained, what other desire could it have than to retrace the way? What could it have been planning to gain by world creating glory? That would be absurd, a motive borrowed from
the sculptors of our earth. Finally, if the soul created by policy and not by sheer need of its nature, by being characteristically the creative power, how explain the making of this universe? And when will it destroy the work? If it repents of its work, what is it waiting for? If it has not yet repented, then it will never repent. It must be already accustomed to the world, must be growing more tender towards it with the passing of time.
I do agree with to be your well us, it's explained that the whole material world being evil. But I do agree with a lot of that stuff. The way he looks at it with God being you know, everything has the I guess the potential.
It's very interesting to see it from this point of view.
Definitely.
I think the big part of this is, you know, he has this idea that we are that you know, there are the pure forms and news, and that we are always kind of striving upwards towards the more pure forms.
And so it's like this idea that like, how could the I at it?
But yeah, but basically like we we retrace the way back up and like what really could a creator get from creating all of this? And how could it forget what it knew and all of those things? Oh shooting, okay, And so this is him defending the good. He says, it is the essence of things that each gives of its being to another. Without this communication, the good would not be good, nor the intellectual principle and intellective principle, nor.
Would soul itself be what it is. The law is some life.
After the primal life, a secondary where there is a first all linked in one unbroken chain, all eternal divergent types being engendered only in the sense of being secondary. In other words, things commonly described as generated have never known a beginning. All has been and will be. Nor can anything disappear unless where a later form is possible. Without such a future, there can be no dissolution. So basically, the divine can't fall. It's perfect. It lacks nothing. No
ignorance or error can occur to cause a fall. All things flow naturally from the good, like light from the sun, not through accident or sin. This outflow is eternal, not a one time event in history or time. The material world isn't evil, but the dimmest reflection of divine light. Reality forms one continuous chain. So nothing truly separates or falls from the divine source. And I think it gets explained even better further, and so I'll just keep going.
Sounds good, okay, Im.
Yeah, I know my powerpoints are so boring. It's all just text and like two pictures.
But.
People, it's okay.
Yep.
So this is.
Again just trying to.
Defend like the good and that everything is made from the good, and everything is a mirror reflection of the good or orchestrated from things that are higher.
So all right.
He furthers his argument by saying, nor may we grant that this world is of unhappy origin because there are many jarring things in it. Such a judgment would rate it too high, treating it as the same with the intelligible realm and not merely its reflection. And even further in the tractate, he says that you know, to call the world evil because it is a less perfect reflection, you know, like you could use that argument against even like noos because news isn't as perfect as the one either,
So that's just not a great argument. And then yeah, I added this image because I'm a very visual learner of just.
Like how reflection really works. Right, Like if.
Glass reflecting something, some of that light is going to be absorbed, some of it is transmitted where it just kind of like keeps going kind of past, and then only some of that is reflected. And then even more, if that surface isn't like perfectly level, it's.
Gonna reflect.
Sometimes like dispersed and just not a perfec reflection, you know.
Okay, And.
Now he's kind of going into how the gnostics kind of.
Have this.
Idea that kind of makes no sense, where they believe that they'll ascend when they die to a more heavenly version.
Of the world.
Right, So he says, furthermore, these teachers and their contempt for this creation and this earth, proclaimed that another earth has been made for them, into which they are to enter when they depart. Now, this new earth is the reason form of our world. Why should they desire to live in the archetype of a world abhorrent to them?
Right?
You know, why would you want to live in and like a more like a closer archetype or the archetype. I mean, it's still if you're if you live there, it's still going to have form, so it wouldn't be perfect.
And if you think that the.
World is evil, and then like it's really just a mirror of that archetype.
How can that archetype be good but the mirror reflection of it be evil?
And so then uh, I guess he talks about that as being like a midworld, right, And I guess is that kind of like what you guys were talking about the pleroma and like these midworlds?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, kind of like these certain levels that have these hierarchies of these entities that live there some you know, some people call them angels or you know, the archons, the AONs whatever.
But you see it in a lot of.
Ancient culture, you know, the same idea, right, So I don't know if there may be something to it, but it's just not you know, it's probably not exactly what it is, you know.
I don't know if if anyone has it at one hundred percent.
But yeah, I think it's an interesting idea. I think Platinus believes definitely and like us hierarchy and immortal beings and all of those things. But he does think that the midworld idea is kind of dumb.
I got.
Yeah, Hey, I mean his argument makes sense, to be honest with you, Like I said, I hadn't really looked at it from that perspective before.
Yeah. He explains that more here.
Actually, he says, let us suppose the maker craving to construct such an intermediate world, though, what motive could he have in addition to the intellectual world, which he eternally possesses. If he made the midworld first, what end was it to serve to be a dwelling place for souls? How
then did they ever fall from it? It exists in vain if he made it later than this world abstracting the formal Sorry, if he made it later than this world, abstracting the formal idea of this world and leaving the matter out. The souls that have come to know that intermediate sphere would have experienced enough to keep them from entering this. If the meaning is simply that souls exhibit the idea form of the universe, what is there distinctive
in the teaching? So basically, if the divine already possesses the perfect intellectual realm, a separate midworld would serve no purpose. If souls have already experienced this midworld and are naturally drawn to higher reality, why would they descend into matter at all? They would have already reached full understanding. If the archetypes already exist in noos, What is the point of this midworld at all?
I think I think angels is like a good example of like doing something human form that isn't that might be, you know, m I think that's why they don't even a lot of times they see androgenous, because they're not supposed to actually be in the flush well.
And I'm sure, yeah right, I'm I'm I'm sure it's it's probably just their light.
Bodies, right, So I think they all yeah, that's actually, yeah, seeing that.
Ind the astral realm, that would just give off color, right, color in a shape a form maybe, so they interpret that with wings in a halo and.
All that stuff, when really that's all symbolic later on.
You know, I think a lot of the wings uh wings sometimes is my theory, well my theory with a lot of angels actually, I mean, they're always considered messengers. I do actually think the nervous system might fit some angelic stories. I mean, because there are traveling messages and they are of electricity on.
Link from this dimension to the next. You know, people look at it so black and white, like they just come down, you know. It's like, no, it's it's a lot more.
Yeah, it's a little different than like what dogmin when they were like, you know, actually in human form and they got wings. All right, sorry interrupted, No, It's.
So interesting though, like uh to try to conceptualize those things and like how how they would be different, how would you even really categorize them? And so now he starts accusing uh the Gnostics of like not giving Plato proper recognition and of like inventing jargon to try to make their uh metaphors work.
And to.
Oh that part of their doctrine comes from Plato and the rest from outside the truth. He says, from Plato come their punishments, their rivers of the underworld, and the changing from body to body. As for the plurality they assert in their intellectual realm, the authentic existence, the intellectual principle, the second Creator, and the soul, all this is taken over from the time Aus. It's kind of saying like you got all of your metaphysics from Timeus and you
give no credit. And then even further, he says that the Gnostics dishonor Plato and misrepresent his theory in every way possible, and this is like one of the sassiar full passages.
He says.
They hope to get the credit of minute and exact identification by setting up a plurality of intellectual essences, but in reality this multiplication lowers the intellectual nature to the
level of the sense kind. Their true course is to seek to reduce number to the least possible in the supreme simply referring things to the second hyposthesis, which is all that exists as it is primal intellect and reality and is the only thing that is good except for the first nature, and to recognize soul as the third principle, accounting for the difference among souls merely by a diversity
of experience and character. Instead of insulting those venerable teachers, they should receive their doctrine with the respect due to the older thought and honor at that noble system and immortal soul, and intellectual and intelligible realm, the Supreme God, the soul's need of emancipation from all intercourse with the body, the fact of separation from it, to escape from the
world of process to the world of essential being. These doctrines all emphatically asserted by Plato, they do well to adopt. Where they differ. They are at full liberty to speak their minds, but not to procure a cent for their own theories by flaying and flouting the Greeks. Where they have a divergent theory to maintain, they must establish it by its own merits, declaring their own opinions with courtesy and with philosophical method, and stating the controverted opinion fairly.
They must point their minds towards the truth, and not hunt fame by insult, reviling, and seeking in their own persons to replace men honored by the fine intelligences.
Of ages past.
As a matter of fact, the ancient doctrine of the divine essences was far the sounder and more instructed, and must be accepted by all not caught in the delusions that beset humanity. It is easy also to identify what has been conveyed in those later times from the ancients with incongruous novelties. How for example, when they must set up contradictory doctrine, they introduce a medley of generation and destruction.
How they travel at the universe, how they make the soul blameable for the association with the body, how they reviled the administrator of this all. How they ascribed to the creator identified with the soul, the character and experiences appropriate to partial beings.
WHOA, yeah, yeah, he didn't like him.
Thrower definitely thrown shade at the gnostics. Man, it was kind of like I said, from even a little bit I looked at I was like, this was kind of funny that he said.
It is kind of making sense.
So now I had I had, I had my thing, because you had two different I think, like two different academics. You know, doesn't mean they know everything. That were like looking at it, and uh one said that they thought he had like almost like a total hatred for him. But then there was another one who said that there's proof of him allowing him allowing them to even come and debate, that he was cool with them. You want to show up and you want a debate on this,
let's let's do it. So I think he was even open and he even had some friends that he still kept in touch with that was cool with that did actually become gnostics. So uh, you know what I'm getting at is that I don't know if it happened or not, but you know, maybe he even let let them come over and they even debated. That would have been pretty fucking wild. I wonder if like the ship talking, then.
That's definitely.
Yeah.
I mean he was a nice guy, but oh yeah, there was a throng in his opinions.
Yeah. They said he even took in like like kids are people that like, uh like families will like help them like if they were fucked up, and ship they actually so like the way he lived was like he actually was like a really good guy.
Yeah, I'm trying to remember for how many orphans he took in. I think it's like.
Somewhere between five and like twelve, which is which means like no one really knows, I guess, but yeah, I think that they were mostly though his like friends' kids, like.
Some of the.
More like nobles, like when.
Their parents passed away, they took them on and and they gave him actually, like they're like a lot of wealth to take care of these kids, and yet he basically just took care of that wealth for them and like set them up like for when they were ready to take that on. But he like lived in like very modestly. He never took any of that money for himself.
It's kind of.
Oh, okay, we're almost nearing the end here, and this is this is like the pretty funny okay, he says, admitting that human souls have descended under constraint of the all soul? Are we to think the constrain the nobler among souls? What commands must be higher than what obeys? And if the coming was unconstrained, why find fault with the world you have chosen and can quit if you dislike it. It's like a hilarious, like polite way to say, why don't you kill yourself?
So jeez.
Yeah, So if you guys ever need a polite way to say that, just say why find fault with the world you have chosen and can quit if you dislike it.
I don't know if you guys have ever seen this.
Meme, but turning, yeah, he seems pretty base.
I like him.
I'm gonna look into this guy.
Yo.
There's a two hours show on the Occult Rejects. You could listen to such a dick hey, And honestly, if you listen to arrowsis ship, you'll hear exactly what he was talking about. So she covers a lot of his actual like the any ads of Porphyry took down.
Yep. Yeah, it's definitely worth looking into. It's so influential, especially like on Western culture.
For real, if you're still looking at yeah, like his and a few other people like, you'll be like, holy shit. Just you'll see within a few dudes in some women how much they impacted like religion the way we look at it now. And it's not like this is the interesting thing in the way I try to even attribute it to it. It's almost as if like people who
are in AA, they'll understand this. They'll have the big book, and then they'll have all these slogans that actually aren't in the book at all that you start going by. It's like, well, that's not actually in the material. That's just sound some cute little shit you made up. That's actually not part of the formula, you know what I'm saying. And then you actually have like fuck, I totally forgot what was going with fuck just oh my god, I fucking had a brain for it.
Like the stuff that comes later may be useful, but it's not the original doctrine.
Then yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly, I mean that's that happens, you know. Actually yeah, I feel like AA does.
That with that, And that can happen, and then sometimes those you know, become really popular, then they get more notoriety, and then usually things with more notoriety people are like, that must be the truth, that must be like, you know, people rarely dig deeper to understand where ideas come from.
Yeah yeah, and then like all right, that is now what reminded me and what I was even getting at. Again, I could be wrong about Plutonis, but it was like somebody who had the idea that you might actually meet your famis friends and family when you go out to fucking heaven, or the way they describe that, people took it that way. Again, that is something that Christians will believe, but it's not actually in the fucking Bible. You know
what I'm saying. Again, it's like a slogan that goes along with it, but where does it actually say that.
Well, yeah, and I mean we me and Headless talked about how Hell is not mentioned in the Bible. You know, it's mentioned as Bihinnah and so, which is also referring to a valley, you know. So, I mean it could be metaphysical. I don't know, but you know in Norse mythology, hell is freezing cold or Hellheim. Right, Hell is the goddess of Hellheim. But Helheim is freezing cold, it's not hot. So it's a complete inversion of just history. It seems that's what religion does.
Yes, Yeah, that was awesome presentation.
Then, yeah, that was great errors. Oh thinks I actually learned a lot. I always learn on the show. That's why I love doing it exactly.
I'll try to close it out with a good summary here, all right, So to summarize Gnostic cosmology, is incoherent. It assumes error and desire and the divine where there can be none, and creates multiple unnecessary worlds. Higher realities give rise to lower realities. What commands is higher than what obeys, right, like the demiurge would be higher than us. So it's kind of silly to think of yourself above them. Higher
realities are timeless, eternal, and fully actualized. There is no potential, knowing, only known. Everything inherents the perfection.
And order of the good. A mirrored image of the good is good, even if imperfect.
And then.
Here news is fully actualized.
In it.
Multiplicity is structured. All forms exist eternally infinite but coherent, and the soul it's partially actualized. It can change, develop, learn, differentiation emerges in time, and then for matter it's fully potential and mutable. That's where chaos and in completedness exists and differentiation arises through actualization.
Very well, very well said that was good. Thank you so much. Ers. Uh, yeah, we definitely have to have to keep putting pressure on you, but it definitely you talk about more of it. But yeah, this was fucking awesome.
I really like this stuff. I was really big into Platini's when I covered him like that one actually for me was like, yeah, it sound like corny, but I was like, I really was like proud of putting that one out because I do think he's a very influential person and somebody you should look into, you know what I mean. It's almost like you could look at the stuff like there's in Dixon demons in there. Let's put
it that way. You know what I'm saying, You're actually just looking at like how the fuck do you get your head straight and having a contact with God. There's all this other fucking bullshit thrown in there.
Mm hmm, like intermediaries and stuff.
Yeah, like the whole Like it's just like, really, I just like the way he explains it. He doesn't give you much of a dark aspect to try to like grift with or fall in love with or go too far with.
Not everything's a demon.
Yeah, well not even that. It's just like you know, even dealing with your dark at self. I guess like sometimes when it gets like we you know, with the OTO, I feel like the image that gives us some of the people there, they will oh, I'm doing shadow work, Well you've been doing it for the last fucking year on the same problem. Obviously you're feeding it, you're not dealing with it. You're actually getting worse.
Right, Yeah, because it's always gonna be there.
Yeah.
Yeah, I just feel like his was like a little bit more conservative. It's just a little bit more cleaner, more you know, just straight to a god or a good I don't know.
Well, the mention of demons automatically and still fear into people, right, and we talked about how you have fear is one of the strongest emotions, emotions being the highest of the planes of the elementals, right and and and so well, not emotions, I'd say that's the mental plan the emotions you actually come from the etheric.
But but yeah, this is even another interesting thing. I'm glad he even brought up demons and then they'll shut up, uh, Erros, you might.
Even demon erasers on naar, so we get to talk about demons.
I guess, yes, good to Erros might even know this. I I could be wrong, but I think I think he they called it then as well. I would even say that their idea of demons was different, because Plutinus at one point proved himself to some like I think Egyptian priest at some temple of iis that he was of I guess something because this guy brought out his damon. Plutinus's damon appeared and was of like some higher angelic order, and that's how this priest was able to say, this
guy is that full shit? Wow, dude, But yeah, I'm almost again the terminology damon was being used, but now we're talking about an angel, so it's like, you know, where the fuck we're even going with this word? How we how was it even originally used? No idea. I'm still confused on that now, trying to charge it out, but I just say, I just think there's misunderstandings.
And the.
Reason there's different spellings is because it's a different energy or a different thing, you know that could.
It's different than a demon man. People think it's a different just a different way to say it. But I think it's it's a different thing all the exactly.
Yeah, thank you.
Something that comes from a higher nature, not our lower nature.
Yes, something probably right, something like that, Yeah, all right, yeah, thank you very much, Erros. Yeah, if you want, let everybody know what way they can finally work out again, and please remind them with the other episode that you did.
Yep, so just reiterate.
You can find me on YouTube at Arrows Up where I do some studies on the tractates in the inneads kind of like this one, and then you can find me on Twitter at Arrows to Ethos and then yeah, if you liked this episode, please go watch the episode that Nick did Platinus or the episode that we did last which was on again are the Stars Causes and really going into Platinus's idea of this differentiation scheme of multiplicity that everything emerges out of.
Yes, thank you so much yet and people haven't checked out. I let this an episode that she did. Go check it out. It was like a month ago maybe something like that. Definitely was fun. And again I really really appreciate you coming on, especially with the slide show. I mean that's uh, I myself know that that takes time to.
Work very professional era.
Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that because again, like I mean, just if you listen to my stuff that I do on my own, it's like very much. I understand the time it takes a good ship.
Your stuff's fun.
No, No, I'm just saying I understand, like it takes time to do that ship like solo work and all that ship.
Like, fuck.
Yo, you should know Jewels, you do solo shit yourself too. Yeah.
Yeah, I have like ten shows I do and then I don't have. I'm the only I'm like the progenitor of the show. So I do all the stuff I try.
I know.
But it was like all the topics that you did, you sold that ship, didn't you. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
That shit.
You understand what I'm getting at. That's that's what I mean. So I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, all right, Yeah, let's Jules, let everybody know what the fu's up with you like find out you guys.
Earlier as you heard.
You can follow me on Twitter at Great Pill Pod, Great Piled, Underscore Podcast on Instagram and Rumble YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Patreon, dot com, Slash, Great pul Podcast if you want to support the show.
We got three episodes of Twin Peaks left, so we may do it tomorrow night. My wife may be hanging out with us too, so yeah, yeah, I'll just keep you updated.
But tomorrow around noon, maybe a little afternoon, I gotta get the time down.
As Brian from Demon Racers is coming on, so it's gonna be a fun show.
Yeah.
This, this is a great conversation. And uh, I'm about to go out to the country to a pig gross.
Oh man, you suck for you. That's at My.
Wife's going to record a couple of episodes, so y'all look out for that this week.
Oh yeah.
Reposting the Babel on podcast. Yeah yeah, episode three.
Oh, thank you very much, Josie. I appreciate it.
And it's great to see you, Ethan. It's good to be yeah, it's good. Yeah, it's good to be here.
Oh yeah, yeah, and this this was fun. I really enjoy these shows, this topic too. Ethan. Please let everybody know what's up with you, and they can find all your books as well. Please.
Yeah, thank you so much Nick for getting this together.
Ros.
That was awesome. Look forward to your next presentation. And yeah, I got I'm easy to find on all the social media, Ethan Indigo Smith and check out my books on Global com or Amazon as they call it.
And yeah, appreciate you guys, Ethan.
I appreciate you making it. I know it's a little bit earlier if it's for YouTube as well, because of the time difference, but that's what's up man, and thank everybody in the chat as well. That's what's up. There was a lot of people here from the beginning to the end. There's a lot of the same same faces, and I saw all the names. I'm sure that's probably on other people's channels. That's what's up. Thank you for coming, buying, checking it out, and again Arrows and everybody else on
the panel, please again, thank you for coming on. And I had a really good time. And that's what's up. And until the next one, everybody be well.
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