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98 q Chapter 4 Schism in the Ammonian Community Porphyry v. Iamblichus The split that developed among third-century Hellenes who could trace their lineage to Ammonius concerned the value of rituals. As far as the sources indicate, this disagreement, centered around Porphyry and Iamblichus, first focused on the role that rituals played for members of the philosophical community. As the schism developed, however , they came to debate also the value of rituals for the souls of ordinary persons. After issues of common ground and terminology among Platonists are addressed, Plotinus’s view of rituals will be discussed, since both Iamblichus and Porphyry claimed to draw their positions from his. Amelius, Plotinus’s disciple of twenty-four years, is often blamed for first breaking with this circle over the value of rituals for the philosopher. But, I argue, another Plotinian, Castricius, was actually the first to do so. Castricius came to accept Iamblichus’s perspective on the merits of blood sacrifice for the philosopher, a position that Porphyry strenuously opposed in his treatise On Abstinence. A heated exchange with Iamblichus, preserved in the latter’s On Mysteries, resulted in Porphyry’s further rejection of the Syrian philosopher’s claim that material rituals were a path along which the souls of all people must travel to return to their source. I conclude by showing how Porphyry, in several treatises, formulated his own theology for the return of the soul in a system that stipulated different practices for different types of souls. PorPhyry v. IamblIchus 99 Although the rift between Porphyrians and Iamblichaeans filtered into priestly and political circles by the end of the third century, these Hellenes broadly agreed about two categories of rituals:the most elevated form, appropriate only for philosophers, and the basest form, or magic. At one extreme was the abstract form of ritual that Plotinus described as a method or exercise, the purpose of which was to facilitate henosis theoi, contact with Nous or the One.1 Iamblichus claimed to differ with Porphyry over how to achieve such contact, but both agreed that it was an important goal for people like them. The Platonist community also agreed that certain practices were “magic.”2 Plotinus used the term to apply to the manipulation of the ties of sympatheia for what E. R. Dodds called “mean personal ends.”3 An example of such activity and Plotinus’s belief in its potency comes from Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus (10). Olympius, a fellow Ammonian who “claimed to be a philosopher,” apparently saw Plotinus as an undesirable rival—so much so that he attempted “to bring a star-stroke upon him by magic.”4 Plotinus’s soul,however,in Porphyry’s account,was “able to throw” these attacks back at “those who were seeking to do him harm.” Plotinus “said that his limbs on that occasion were squeezed together and his body contracted‘like a money-bag pulled tight.’”5 Whatever rituals Olympius had performed, thus, were “magic” because they were intended to advance his career and not his soul. Although he acknowledged that ritual use of powers inherent in certain substances, gestures, potions, and incantations might be used to such ends,6 Plotinus argued that magic cannot harm the good man, 1. Gregory Shaw, “Eros and Arithmos: Pythagorean Theurgy in Iamblichus and Plotinus,” AncPhil 19, no. 1 (1999): 135–37. 2. In order clearly to delineate the tensions in the Platonist community, one must use their terminology . Some scholars (e.g., S. Eitrem, “La théurgie chez les néo-platoniciens et dans les papyrus magiques,” SO 22 [1942]: 49; E. R. Dodds, “Theurgy and Its Relationship to Neoplatonism,” JRS 37 [1947]: 57, 58) equate magic and theurgy, a habit that confuses rather than explicates these intraschool tensions. 3. Dodds, “Theurgy,” 57. See also A. H. Armstrong, “Was Plotinus a Magician?” Phronesis 1 (1955): 73. Plotinus discusses magic throughout Enn. 4.4, “On Difficulties about the Soul II.” See 4.4.37f., but especially 4.4.35 (in that choices should not be self-directed, but toward the Good) and 4.4.40 (on the magical manipulation of what Plotinus has defined as sympatheia in 4.4.26.4). See also Mark J. Edwards, “Two Episodes in Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus,” Historia 40 (1991): 459–60. 4. Porph. Plot. 10:      . According to LSJ, the term means to be “sun-scorched.” The other reference in the dictionary (besides this passage ) is Thphr. HP 4.14.2. 5. Armstrong, “Was Plotinus...

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