Hellenic Tantra: The Theurgic Platonism of Iamblichus By Gregory Shaw

Hellenic tantrar rozhovor

This is going to be one of the best books I ve read all year It has challenged my assumptions on neopaltonic thought and has showed me a better way in how to understand and engage with the Western Hermetic tradition Hardcover

Hellenic Tantra: The Theurgic Platonism of Iamblichus By Gregory Shaw
9798892800013
English
278
Hardcover
what is hellenic religion
difference between hellenic and greek
what is hellenic philosophy
what is hellenic world
hellenic harehound
hellenic tankers
hellenic tantra book pdf
hellenic tantra book free
hellenic tantra book download
book hellenic tantra pdf
book hellenic tantra uk
difference between yoga and tantra
tantric kali pdf
epub hellenic tantra pdf
epub hellenic tantra free download
Hellenic Tantra argues that scholarship on later Platonism has been misled by a dualist worldview The theurgic Platonists in the school of Iamblichus 4th century CE did not ascend out of their bodies to be united with the gods as is the common belief but allowed the gods to descend into their bodies By comparing embodied deification in theurgy to Tantric traditions of embodied deification.

PDF Hellenic tantra

I was excited to pick this up as I have a memory of Shaw s book about Iamblichus being very good when I read it in its second edition Unfortunately while the book does say some interesting things about Shaw s interpretation of Iamblichus there were a few elements of this book that made me dock some stars 1 There is this overly repetitive thing about Us Moderns and how we can never know what is going on with theurgy I am not sure who Shaw is talking to Maybe I am not the audience for this book He brings this up every chapter repeatedly using very similar sentences. Hellenic tantra pdf 2 Why doesn t Shaw bring up terminology related to unique individuals and analyze it Some of the deficiencies that I saw here were in how Shaw is characterizing theurgy and what theurgists are doing and he is quoting passages from Iamblichus that are clearly showing an intimate encounter Related I do not recall the Phaedrus ever coming up What Shaw was trying to do here could have benefitted a lot from revisiting that plus some Hermias The difference between theurgists and people doing sorcery is actually that theurgists are actually extending divine pronoia and moving in tune with the unfolding of all things through their reversion to their causes Sorcerers are not 3 There is some carelessness in this work which will be read by people into spirituality both those who have read widely and those who have not as well as the primary scholar audience Shaw only mentions the gross abuses of power of some gurus in passing people who have spiritually scarred their former devotees One of the big issues in the way Shaw characterizes a nondualistic approach is that he does not spend enough time talking about the preliminary purifications or the necessity of actually getting one s own sh t together during this process This would have also required talking about different kinds of daimons especially the ones that a soul falls in with mistakenly when it makes really bad decisions Perhaps had some of the us moderns language been cut out for redundancy this could have been explored The reason I call this careless is that people nowadays due to following appetition to its end point have created a throwaway culture with heinous inequalities and have irrevocably altered the Earth s climate such that we are all going to suffer much from severe weather in the foreseeable future are killing off entire ecosystems There is a moral imperative here to be clear about how living out our embodiment is not a free license to take dispersion beyond what is lawful and indeed we see many post Iamblichean Platonists enforcing strict behavior codes at the Academy such as Proclus Knowing this requires having read a lot of other Platonic texts. Hellenic tantra book download 4 Generation is both a field of action and a place where we won t be forever at least according to the myths Plato teaches and Socrates comportment in the Phaedo It s not dualistic to recognize this Proclus even uses a battlefield as a metaphor for generation where we are all in a sense called to stations in order to be here for a time until we fulfill our service until the next cycle. Hellenic tantra gregory shaw Other than those five points it was an interesting read and I found some things in the bibliography that I might want to read later on I can t speak to its characterization of Tantra Hardcover This book loses a few stars unfortunately as other reviewers have pointed out he misunderstands Plotinus While he is correct in drawing similarities to Vedanta he mislabels Plotinus as a dualist I d love to see someone like Strozynski respond there s a whole lot of Iamblichus and not a lot of Tantra I was kinda hoping for a little depth on tantric tradition and while I understand his comparative approach I was left a little unsatisfied But that s of a me problem I really wish he would have gone over examples of tantric and theurgic ritual He says he s going to do this in the Ficino chapter. Hellenic tantrao opening hours and proceeds to kinda just mention talismanic magic and Renaissance theurgy in passing Update I had previously said that he claimed objectivity and that this was my biggest issue with the book Shaw responded below and he is correct he doesn t claim objectivity he does make himself clear on page 14 So that s my bad and that s on me I do feel however that there s a tone of academic rigor throughout the bookthat confuses me which is probably why I made that comment in the first place. PDF Hellenic tantra sexology though I can t remember just where exactly I thought he had said it so it s not fair of me to even have it in the review and really just speaks to my lack of attention Does he claim pure objectivity No But this book sits in a weird liminal space where I can t tell if it belongs in the spirituality section of the bookstore or the religious studies section That can be a compliment or a criticism depending on what you re expecting what you re looking for and what you like And I m not sure where I fall on that I think I m going to have to give this one another chance and a closer read Hardcover Despite the Llewellyn publishing sounding title this is a great scholarly work on Iamblichus theurgic philosophy and practices Prof Shaw compelling shows the non dualistic and embodied practices that Iamblichus taught and uses comparative religious techniques with Kashimre Shiavism to help the reader understand how Iamblichus approach differs from our popular understanding that Neoplatonists were dualists who wanted to transcend the material world I don t think the book is perfect as I believe that Shaw oversimplifies terminology and concepts that could misinform the general audience For example there are many schools of Tantra throughout the history of Indian religion but Shaw is drawing on the Kashimre form of Utpaladeva Abhinavagupta and Kshemaraja however the way he talks about Tantra it often comes across that that specific branch is blanketed across all the tantras in general There have also been some critiques leveled at the book that he overly states Porphyry s dualism to make him of a foil for Iamblichus. Hellenic tantra kindle download Despite these types of flaws Gregory Shaw allows us to understand the power and charisma of the last Platonic teachers Hellenic Tantra reveals a living Platonism that has been hidden from us Hellenic Tantra The Theurgic Platonism of IamblichusHellenic Tantra: The Theurgic Platonism of Iamblichus.

, What is hellenic religion 5 The book ended by declaring that we are our bodies and that we are material This is not accurate and it is not dualistic to say that