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Life after death: Hellenistic ascent of the soul through the celestial spheres
The Spiritual Bookstore Online World Religion Library
AFTER-LIFE EXISTENCE - AN OCCULT ANALYSIS
Chapter 4: The Hellenistic (Later Mediterranean) After-Life
The ascent of the soul through the celestial spheres
The Hellenistic-Roman Era
The military campaigns of the Macedonian king Alexander the Great
creating an empire that stretched from Italy and Libya in the West to
Northern India in the East. After his death in 323 the cultural and
religious melting pot remained, and became what we know as the
Hellenistic Civilisation. This civilisation survived and flourished
throughout the Roman era until the coming to power of political
Christianity with the conversion of the emperor Constantine in the early
fourth century.
Chaldean-Platonic Cosmology
This long period saw the coming together, and popular practice, of the
different religions, philosophies, and occult conceptions of Egypt,
Persia, Syria, Greece, and Asia Minor, into a single all-embracing
cosmology. This cosmology was basically an astrological one, and
appeared to originate from a synthesis of Platonic, Syrian/Babylonian/Chaldean,
and Mithraic Persian elements. It was based on the idea of the Earth as
the centre of the universe, around which were the successive celestial
or planetary spheres. Beyond these was the sphere of the fixed stars,
and beyond that, the pure spiritual-Divine world itself. It is from this
supracelestial world that the soul in its purity originates, and to
which it returns.
This cosmology tied in the person's pre-natal and post-mortem existence
to the cosmos as a whole; to a process of descent or involution of the
soul, the pure Divine essence, and its subsequent ascent. The "spheres"
the soul passes through are both physical and non-physical, and indeed,
pre-scientific man did not distinguish between the two. For on the one
hand, the celestial spheres are each identified with the physical
planets, but on the other hand they also represent psycho-spiritual
zones; "planes" of existence to use the modern Theosophical-occult term.
Each sphere is ruled by a god, and these gods exert their astrological
influence upon the terrestrial world; this being what we call "fate".
The descent through the spheres into the body is a kind of fall, which
traps the soul here; the subsequent ascent a purifying process; a return
to the true spiritual realm.
The concept of many levels of self
Central to this conception was the triad of Body, Soul (psuche), and
Divine Mind (nous); with sometimes a further element, vital spirit (pnuema),
added as an intermediary between the physical body and the soul. These
various individual principles have their cosmic correlates. As Walter
Willi explains:
"Man consists of spirit, soul, and body. The earth gave him his body,
the moon his soul, the sun his spirit (or Nous). When a man dies, that
is his first death...(which) separates soul and Nous from the
body....Every soul, after leaving the body, must wonder for a time
between earth and moon and finally, after vicissitudes (depending on its
spirit nature and its life on earth) reaches the moon...Here...the souls
finally die their second death; the Nous, yearning for the sun,
separates from the soul; sovereign and free from all passions, it seeks
the sun and unites with the primal spirit. The soul, parted from the
spirit, remains on the moon and ultimately dissolves into the moon."
Here we see, alongside the Platonic separation of soul and body, and
rational (here, "spirit") and irrational ("soul") psychic principles,
the distinct Chaldean (Babylonian) element of the return of the soul to
the sun, from which it is said to have arisen in the first place. [Franz
Cumont, Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, (Dover Publications, New
York, 1956 [original edition 1911]) p.133-4]
So, according to this Chaldean-Platonic cosmology, the various levels of
Self originate from the corresponding Cosmic levels ("The Earth gave man
his body, the Moon his soul, the Sun his Nous"), and it is to them that
they successively return. We have a sort of celestial expansion of human
nature. Man is not an isolated little being, but connected in subtle
ways to the entire cosmos. This was in fact a standard belief-system
during the Hellenistic period of the ancient mediterranean world (4th
century B.C.E. to 4th century C.E.).
The "second death"
Another interesting thing about this cosmology is the concept of the
"second death". After the normal physical death, there is followed
sometime later a second or psychic death, and the consequent release of
the Nous.
----------------------------------------------------
Sun/Spiritual world <---- Nous -----|
| .................................|...............
| Moon/Psychic World <----Soul -|
| | [Second Death]
| | |
| | Soul + Nous
| ......|..........................|...............
| | Earth/Physical <- Body -|
| | | [Death]
| | | |
\-------\=========\ ====> Body + Soul + Nous
----------------------------------------------------
The Cycle of Existence: Self and Cosmos according to Xenocrates and
Plutarch
Now, the idea that the psyche is mortal and can die, and indeed does die
in the normal course of things, is one which will doubtless be rather
disturbing for the dualist, who accepts only the simple dichotomy of
body and soul. But the esoteric-occult perspective replaces the simple
two-fold metaphysic with a multi-fold one. So just as the Psyche or
personality is the "soul" of the body, so there would be a further
"soul" within the personality, the Nous.
from: http://www.kheper.net/topics/bardo/hellenistic.htm
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