Porphyry
232/233 - 304/306
Porphyry
(Πορφύριος, настоящее имя Малх, или Мелех)
Also: • Porphyrius •
(232/233 - 304/306)
A Neo‐Platonist and a most distinguished writer, only second to Plotinus as a teacher and philosopher. He was born before the middle of the third century A.D., at Tyre, since he called himself a Tyrian and is supposed to have belonged to a Jewish family. Though himself thoroughly Hellenized and a Pagan, his name Melek (a king) does seem to indicate that he had Semitic blood in his veins. Modern critics very justly consider him the most practically philosophical, and the soberest, of all the Neo‐Platonists. A distinguished writer, he was specially famous for his controversy with Iamblichus regarding the evils attendant upon the practice of Theurgy. He was, however, finally converted to the views of his opponent. A natural‐born mystic, he followed, as did his master Plotinus, the pure Indian Râj‐Yoga training, which leads to the union of the Soul with the Over‐Soul or Higher Self (Buddhi‐Manas). He complains, however, that, all his efforts notwithstanding, he did not reach this state of ecstacy before he was sixty, while Plotinus was a proficient in it. This was so, probably because while his teacher held physical life and body in the greatest contempt, limiting philosophical research to those regions where life and thought become eternal and divine, Porphyry devoted his whole time to considerations of the hearing of philosophy on practical life. “The end of philosophy is with him morality”, says a biographer, “we might almost say, holiness — the healing of man’s infirmities, the imparting to him a purer and more vigorous life. Mere knowledge, however true, is not of itself sufficient ; knowledge has for its object life in accordance with Nous” — “reason”, translates the biographer. As we interpret Nous, however, not as Reason, but mind (Manas) or the divine eternal Ego in man, we would translate the idea esoterically, and make it read “the occult or secret knowledge has for its object terrestrial life in accordance with Nous, or our everlasting reincarnating Ego”, which would be more consonant with Porphyry’s idea, as it is with esoteric philosophy. (See Porphyry’s De Abstinentia ., 29.) Of all the Neo‐Platonists, Porphyry approached the nearest to real Theosophy as now taught by the Eastern secret school. This is shown by all our modern critics and writers on the Alexandrian school, for “he held that the Soul should be as far as possible freed from the bonds of matter, . . . be ready . . . to cut off the whole body”. (Ad Marcellam, 34.) He recommends the practice of abstinence, saying that “we should be like the gods if we could abstain from vegetable as well as animal food”. He accepts with reluctance theurgy and mystic incantation as those are “powerless to purify the noëtic (manasic) principle of the soul”: theurgy can “but cleanse the lower or psychic portion, and make it capable of perceiving lower beings, such as spirits, angels and gods” (Aug. De Civ. Dei. X., 9), just as Theosophy teaches. “Do not defile the divinity”, he adds, with the vain imaginings of men you will not injure that which is for ever blessed (Buddhi‐Manas) but you will blind yourself to the perception of the greatest and most vital truths”. (Ad Marcellam,18.) “If we would he free from the assaults of evil spirits, we must keep ourselves clear of those things over which evil spirits have power, for they attack not the pure soul which has no affinity with them”. (De Abstin. ii., 43.) This is again our teaching. The Church Fathers held Porphyry as the bitterest enemy, the most irreconcilable to Christianity. Finally, and once more as in modern Theosophy, Porphyry — as all the Neo‐ Platonists, according to St. Augustine — “praised Christ while they disparaged Christianity”; Jesus, they contended, as we contend, “said nothing himself against the pagan deities, but wrought wonders by their help”. “They could not call him as his disciples did, God, but they honoured him as one of the best and wisest of men”. (De Civ. Dei., X1X., 23.) Yet, “even in the storm of controversy, scarcely a word seems to have been uttered against the private life of Porphyry. His system prescribed purity and . . . he practised it”. (See A Dict. of Christian Biography, Vol. IV., “Porphyry”.) (TG).
De Zirkoff lists Greek-Latin editions of his Life of Pythagoras, Amsterdam, 1707, and Kiessling's edition, Leipzig, 1816. (BCW 3:518).
The bibliography cites On Abstinence from Animal Food through Thomas Taylor’s Select Works of Porphyry (1823), and discusses references concerning sacrifice and magic. (BCW 7:388-389).
Some links:
- Quotes: H. P. Blavatsky, Zirkoff, Boris
- CTD article in Russian: Порфирий
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Lifetime: 232/233 - 304/306
Shortly: A Neo‐Platonist and a most distinguished writer, only second to Plotinus as a teacher and philosophe...