Mnemonics

Thoughts and notes on ancient philosophy and the esoteric.

Alchemy

Empedocles, an older contemporary of Socrates, made a fundamental contribution to the formation of the alchemical theory of matter. This philosopher is said to have been the first to explain that the natural world was composed of four primordial substances: fire, earth, water, and air, associated respectively with the properties: hot, cold, moist, and dry.

Empedocles referred to the four fundamental substances as roots (he never used the term elements, which seems to have been first used by Plato), borrowing a botanical metaphor to describe the basic constituents of matter.

Platonic Solids

It was Plato who proposed underlying structure to the elements. According to the theory of the Platonic solids, the structures of the four elements must be geometric: polyhedra with well-defined shapes. Fire consists of tetrahedra, earth of hexahedra, water of icosahedra, and air of octahedra.

Plato was already considering what his student Aristotle ultimately proposed, that there was a fifth element: aether, the material from which the heavens were made (which medieval alchemists later reinterpreted as quintessence, the most refined and potent distillation of matter, a cosmic substance they believed could reveal the hidden architecture of the universe).

These Platonic solids offered a mathematical model for representing the building blocks of the cosmos. Euclid later made it possible to visually calculate and artistically represent the surfaces of the material world, hence the name of his best known work: Elements.

Aristotle’s Influence

But how did the elements themselves combine to form physical matter? The elements are composed of four primary physical contraries: hot, cold, moist, and dry. According to Aristotle, the first two are active causes, and the latter two are the underlying matter. For example: fire is hot and dry, earth is cold and dry, water is cold and moist, and air is hot and moist. The elements are these contraries in the sense that it’s precisely the physical contraries themselves that we perceive in earth or water.

Here lies the core of the alchemical theory of matter. Manipulating the compositions is the key to mastering a substance and its form, and thus the transmutation of matter. However, alchemists weren’t trying to violate nature, they believed they were assisting or accelerating natural processes. They were collaborating with nature inside their laboratories: speeding its workings up, slowing them down, or guiding them along a more perfect path.

Deep Breathing

These exercises are personally curated and tested by me. They’re designed to help release tension from both mind and body, whether you’re looking for a daily grounding ritual or a quick way to ease panic or stress.

One

Sit comfortably in a chair. Rest your hands on your belly, cupped together like a bowl. Inhale for five seconds, letting your belly expand and fill the bowl. Exhale for five seconds, letting your belly deflate. Repeat ten times.

Two

Sit with your hands on your knees. Inhale as you arch your back and gently lean backward. Exhale as you round your spine and lean forward. Repeat ten times.

Three

Sit with your hands on your knees. Inhale and shift your weight to your right sit bone. Exhale and shift your weight to your left sit bone. Repeat ten times.

Four

Sit on your right hand. With your left hand, gently guide your head toward your left shoulder. Hold for ten seconds. Switch sides, sit on your left hand and stretch to the right. Repeat five times per side.

Five

On hands and knees, inhale as you arch your back. Exhale as you round your spine. Repeat ten times.

Six

Sit in a chair. Shift your weight fully to your right sit bone. Inhale as you move your weight to the left, making a forward semicircle with your upper body. Exhale as you return to the right, completing the circle by moving backward. Repeat ten times.

Seven

Stand with feet hip-width apart. Shift your weight to your right leg, bend the knee slightly, and exhale. Shift to your left leg, straightening the right knee, and inhale. Repeat ten times.

Eight

Stand with feet slightly apart. Exhale as you rock forward onto your toes. Inhale as you rock back onto your heels. Repeat ten times.

Nine

Imagine picking apples from a tree above you. Reach up with alternating arms. Stretch tall with each reach. Repeat ten times.

Ten

Cross your arms over your chest. Look over your left shoulder and gently twist your torso to the left. Hold for ten seconds. Repeat on the right side. Do five rounds.

Eleven

Place your hands, fingers interlaced, behind your head. Gently press your head back into your hands while resisting with your arms. Hold for ten seconds. Repeat ten times.

Gnosticism

Probably the best-known book from Plotinus’ Enneads is: Against Those That Affirm the Creator of the Cosmos and the Cosmos Itself to Be Evil, better known today as Against the Gnostics. It’s a book in which Plotinus attempts to distance his philosophy from the philosophy that we now retrospectively call Gnosticism, which he found incompatible with Plato’s thought.

A quick disclaimer: Gnosticism is a somewhat loaded term, encompassing a multitude of movements that sometimes have less in common than they do. However, a common thread in Gnosticism is the belief in Gnosis (direct translation: knowledge) as a way to transcend (or escape) the current plane of existence to a higher plane of existence.

What makes Gnosticism so unique is that Gnostics generally saw our current plane of existence as flawed, created by a being who, rather than being good, is actually ignorant at best and downright evil at worst. Therefore, they argued, we must try to escape and circumvent the ways in which it holds us captive. This was a point of contention for Plotinus, who viewed the universe as inherently good.

The Problem of Evil

Gnostics attempted to solve a philosophical problem arising from the religions from which these movements emerged, Judaism and Christianity. That is: if the world was created by an omniscient and inherently good creator, how can evil exist? They reframed the problem of evil not as a question of why evil exists, but who’s responsible for it. They weren’t just offering a different answer, they were redefining the entire question.

This is precisely why the fate of Gnosticism was set in stone shortly after its inception: it clashed aggressively with virtually every philosophy and, much more importantly, every religion at the time.

Destruction and Revival

Gnostic writings flourished among certain early Christian groups until they were condemned as heresy by the Church Fathers. Attempts to destroy these texts proved largely successful, resulting in the survival of very few Gnostic texts. At least, until shortly after the Second World War, when a collection of Gnostic manuscripts was found near Nag Hammadi in Egypt.

The discovery and translation of these ancient works coincided with new philosophical movements in Europe. These, in turn, were inspired by these new findings and eventually radiated their influence into the general zeitgeist, reviving Gnostic thought among the general public.

Platonic Idealism

A relatively well-known idea of Plato is his allegory of the cave, which appears in his work Republic. In this allegory, Plato describes people who have spent their entire lives chained by their necks and ankles to an inner wall, facing the empty outer wall of the cave.

They observe the shadows projected onto the outer wall by objects carried behind the inner wall by people invisible to the chained prisoners, who walk along the inner wall with a fire behind them, creating the shadows on the inner wall for the prisoners. The object bearers speak the names of the objects, the sounds of which are echoed near the shadows and are understood by the prisoners as if they were coming from the shadows themselves.

Only the shadows and sounds are the prisoners’ reality, which aren’t accurate representations of the true reality. The shadows represent distorted and blurred copies of the reality that we can perceive with our senses. The goal, then, is to free oneself from the cave by realizing that the shadows on the wall aren’t the true reality, but merely a reflection or interpretation.

What Hides Beyond the Veil

The allegory is related to Plato’s theory of Ideas, according to which Ideas (and not the sensible realm we know through sensation) possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. According to this theory, Ideas are the nonphysical, timeless, absolute, and unchangeable essences of all things, which objects and matter in the sensible realm merely imitate, resemble, or participate in.

The Ideas are perfect and unchanging representations of objects and qualities. For example: the Idea of plant-being. We can all picture in our minds a plant. However, this picture is far from perfect. It’s only through the intelligibility of the Idea that we know that this picture is a plant, because this Idea is perfect and unchanging.

These Ideas are the essence of various objects. They’re that without which a thing wouldn’t be the kind of thing it is. For example: there are innumerable plants in the world, but the Idea of plant-being is the core. It’s the essence of them all. Plato claimed that the realm of Ideas (or: intelligible realm) is the essential basis of reality and transcendent of our world, the sensible realm.

Furthermore, he believed that true knowledge and intelligence is the ability to grasp the realm of Ideas with one’s mind. Thus, studying reality itself is like peering through the bars of a prison.

Plotinus

There are questions we’ll never be able to answer. Where do we come from? Where are we going? How did it all begin? And how will it all end? There will never be any definitive answers, let alone a scientific consensus. Nevertheless, if one looks deeply within oneself, there are universal truths to be found. The details will vary from person to person and especially from one doctrine to another, but in general terms, they’ll be correct.

Plotinus, a student of the mysterious Ammonius Saccas, expanded on the works of Platonists before him to redefine Platonism, developing a metaphysical system that influenced almost all Platonists after him.

The One

According to Plotinus, it all began with what he called the One. Totally transcendent, containing no division, multiplicity, or distinction. Beyond all categories of being and non-being. The One is the source of the universe, but not through any act of creation, but through emanation.

Imagine a ray radiating from a light source, heat spreading from fire, cold issuing from snow, or a scent wafting from an odorous substance. The One is like a spring from which water eternally gushes out. The One remains in itself, in its perfection. Yet, from it, from this overflowing perfection, something else proceeds. The One overflows, and its superabundance makes something other than itself. Just like a fire, for instance, from whose inner activity (burning), the activity of warming the surrounding environment necessarily derives.

This procession finds its counterpart in a movement of return towards the source and cause. According to Plotinus, the true cause is always the final one. It’s by reuniting with its cause that that which issues from it, and which is, as it is, deficient, can truly realize its own nature. And it’s this desire to realize one’s own nature that leads to this reuniting.

Given that this movement of return springs from a desire and sense of deficiency, the thing generated must somehow be aware of its separation and acknowledge itself as distinct from its source. And at the moment of return, the thing generated thus produces its own interpretation of the generating cause. It’s at this stage that a new order of reality is produced.

The Nous

Out of the overflowing potential of the One comes something, which becomes the Nous (direct translation: intellect). The One doesn’t generate the Nous. The One gives birth to something undifferentiated, which therefore isn’t the Nous yet, but will become it. Not by virtue or arbitrary activity, but because it constitutes itself as the Nous through a movement of return to its own origin.

The Nous fragments the original simplicity into the multiplicity of Ideas. The multiplicity of Ideas that constitute the Nous, and which forms the model for physical reality, isn’t something inherent in the One, but something that is produced by the act of the Nous to return to its source.

The Psyche

In relation to the Nous, the hypostasis of the Psyche (direct translation: soul) marks a further descent into multiplicity and fragmentation. As something intelligible, the Psyche remains immaterial, unextended, and free from spatial conditioning. However, its activity unfolds in the realm of matter.

The Psyche therefore forms the link between the intelligible realm of Ideas and the sensible realm. It’s the expression of the intelligible realm that brings the sensible realm into being and holds it together in unity. Therefore, we shouldn’t think that the soul is locked up in bodies, for it’s the bodies that are locked up in the soul.

The Sensible Realm

After the Psyche comes the sensible realm, the lowest point in the Plotinian system. The physical universe, however, is still produced by the Psyche. And its agency makes the universe something harmonious and partaker of a higher beauty. However imperfect, the physical universe is still an image of the divine realm. It remains a reflection of higher realities.

Stress Management

When explaining stress or hyperventilation, the well-known comparison of the lion standing in front of the caveman is often used. Once the caveman notices the lion, his body will do everything it can to make him more alert, and to give him the physical ability to do what is necessary to survive: to either kill the lion, or to run away. His heart rate increases and his breathing quickens. In other words: he’s hyperventilating, and the stressor, the cause, is the lion.

This comparison is used to explain why the body does what it does during stress or hyperventilation. After the incident with the lion, the caveman will need to rest and de-stress. He returns home and waits until the hyperventilation process subsides.

Modern-Day Lions

But what happens to a body when the lion doesn’t go away, but continues to chase the caveman and keeps him in constant tension? Resting is no longer an option and the stress becomes constant. Although the body is built to tolerate short periods of stress between long periods of rest, it’s not built to do the opposite.

This is what contemporary life consists of. Stress in modern life rarely stems from a single dramatic event, but rather from a continuous accumulation of responsibilities and expectations. Professional demands, academic pressure, financial insecurity, and the constant need to meet the standards of others create a tension that never entirely disappears. For many people, the only meaningful break from this cycle is a short annual vacation.

The body no longer has the chance to rest. At least, until the body forces one to rest, and that happens via a hyperventilation attack or a burnout. The art of surviving contemporary life is to prevent this accumulation of stress: to find peace, avoid the stressors, or simply remove them from daily life. Reducing chronic stress begins with making choices that protect one’s mental and physical health.

This can involve leaving an unhealthy work environment, stepping out of a relationship that no longer contributes positively, or limiting contact with people who consistently deplete one’s energy. Equally important is creating intentional moments of rest: time spent walking, sleeping, reading, or simply being still. These moments aren’t luxuries, but necessities, allowing the body to recover from the constant demands of modern life.

Theurgy

Since the days of Plato, Platonists have considered matter to be imperfect in some way, and that humans exist at the intersection of the intelligible realm (the good, accessible through the soul), and the sensible realm (the inferior, accessible through the body).

At the heart of Platonism is a system by which the soul can reorient itself to the intelligible realm, perhaps briefly in this life, but certainly after the separation of body and soul. However, Platonists themselves were divided on a crucial question: does the immortal soul remain in the intelligible realm, or had it fully descended into the sensible realm?

Most early Platonists maintained that the soul never truly left the intelligible realm, and that the task of the philosopher is simply to realize this fact through profound intellectual reflection, the primary activity of the soul itself.

Iamblichus

However, from Iamblichus onward, a new perspective emerged: he argued that the soul had fully descended into the sensible realm, and was therefore fully entangled in embodiment. This created a dilemma: one can’t simply think oneself out of this state.

The soul, fully immersed into the sensible realm, was incapable of achieving salvation through intellection, or any other purely philosophical means. Help from higher beings was necessary, beings whose nature lies closer to the intelligible realm. In short, the soul needed the help of the gods to lead it back to its divine origin.

But how does one attract the attention, grace, and assistance of the gods while immersed in the sensible realm? According to Iamblichus: one must turn to religious rituals. Through pious acts and sacred rites one may become able to invoke divine aid. Iamblichus therefore considered it necessary to unite Platonic philosophy with the religious practices of late antiquity.

Proclus

Proclus later developed this vision into a comprehensive metaphysical system. He argued that theurgy works because the gods are present at every level of reality, and that rituals align the soul with the divine order already within it.

For Proclus, theurgy wasn’t a supplement to philosophy but its consummation: the practical means by which the soul participates with the gods themselves. For him, the final achievement of the theurgist isn’t direct union with the One, but a participation with the divine realm.

Ultimately, the Platonists followed Iamblichus, even over Plotinus, and as a result, the mysteries and mystery-adjacent texts such as the Chaldean Oracles and the Orphic Hymns were incorporated into the curriculum.

Timaeus

Platonism is named after the Greek philosopher Plato and his philosophy. Plato was one of Socrates’ students and since Socrates himself never wrote anything down, we only know what others wrote about him. Plato wrote dialogues in which Socrates more often than not played the leading role.

In these dialogues he spoke to his students, or sometimes to complete strangers, about almost every conceivable subject. However, when people talk about Platonism, they’re usually referring to the metaphysical dialogues written by Plato and later expanded upon by others, including Plotinus.

The most complete description of Plato’s metaphysics is found in the Timaeus, a book that is the culmination of his life’s work.

The Elements and the World Soul

According to the Timaeus, the universe was created by a transcendent god called the Demiurge (direct translation: craftsman). He gave the universe a body in the form of a sphere by fashioning it from four elements: fire, air, water, and earth. The visible and tangible body of the universe was made possible by binding these elements together in the right proportions.

The Demiurge also created the world soul to provide movement for the universe. The world soul was created from three parts: sameness, difference, and existence, which were bound together in exact proportions. Two strips of the world soul’s substance were formed into rings that crossed each other in the shape of an ‘X’, representing the celestial equator and ecliptic.

The Planets and Human Souls

Within these rings, the Demiurge created seven planetary rings (or: spheres), whose distance from the Earth depended on their apparent speed of motion. The Moon was closest, followed by the Sun, Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. These planets became the heavenly gods, subordinate to the Demiurge.

In creating the planets, the Demiurge also created time itself, since the planets control the days, months, and seasons. The traditional gods of the Greeks, Plato supposed, were created by the planetary gods, whose existence is more certain since they could actually be seen.

The Demiurge also created the souls of men from the same ingredients used for the world soul (though in a diluted form), one for each star in the sky. These souls are implanted into bodies according to the dictates of necessity, and if a person lives a righteous life by controlling the passions that have been imposed upon him, his soul travels back to his consort star after death. Here we see the origin of the idea that souls could ascend to a celestial realm, rather than descend to the underworld.

Transcendence

Since the Demiurge could only create perfect, immortal things, the bodies of human mortals had to be made by the planetary deities, who were also tasked with governing and guiding humanity. The mortal body is then formed by the gods who borrow from the elements for this purpose. This loan must be repaid when the person dies.

Plato’s Demiurge is a benevolent being who made the cosmos good by endowing it with soul and reason. Thus the entire cosmos functions according to the Demiurge’s foresight, called providence. The only allowance for evil is that human souls are implanted in bodies that have to overcome various earthly influences in order to live righteously.