Proclus.
Met him for the first time this morning.
Like others before him, he wanted to construct a cosmological schema which would separate God from The Material World. In my A History of Philosophy reading this morning, I read this bit:
"Not content with these divisions Proclus introduces further subdivisions in each of the three spheres of Nous, the first two being sub-divided into three triads, the third into seven hebdomads, and so on."
I had a hard time picturing that. For one thing, I didn't know if three triads was redundant or was referring to nine divisions. For another thing, I'd never seen the word hebdomad before. So I Googled. And I found a rather lovely illustration (which, by the way, is Public Domain, but I Deep Arted it up anyway, because I liked the look of it. Looks of it, actually.)
Met him for the first time this morning.
Like others before him, he wanted to construct a cosmological schema which would separate God from The Material World. In my A History of Philosophy reading this morning, I read this bit:
"Not content with these divisions Proclus introduces further subdivisions in each of the three spheres of Nous, the first two being sub-divided into three triads, the third into seven hebdomads, and so on."
I had a hard time picturing that. For one thing, I didn't know if three triads was redundant or was referring to nine divisions. For another thing, I'd never seen the word hebdomad before. So I Googled. And I found a rather lovely illustration (which, by the way, is Public Domain, but I Deep Arted it up anyway, because I liked the look of it. Looks of it, actually.)
Which didn't bring me complete clarity on the three triad thing, actually, since there are four interlocking triangle thingies here, but I'm supposing that's indicative that Proclus meant three groupings of threes. As for the hebdomad, as you and I both suspected it's a group of seven.
Mmm-hmm.
Pretty pictures though, huh?
No comments:
Post a Comment