Criamonic Illuminationism as intellectual symbiosis, Empedocles the Pythagorean, and some weird/cool diagrams
Been a while since I posted a new installment and, true to form, it's more just a series of ideas I had while doing some reading for the next post. I was looking through some of the articles collected in the most recent Apeiron publication (lots of good papers!) for ideas when I realized that one paper from the same journal that I had read a good while back actually provides a really useful frame for understanding the possible project of our Criamon Illuminationists.
I think it's probably clear already that what I hope to construct with an Illuminationist Path of Walking Backwards is a House Criamon that engages with the remarkable Islamicate revival of late antiquity's Pythagorizing Neoplatonist project pioneered by Suhrawardi - a House Criamon that is in conversation with Illuminationist ideas which position figures like Thales, Parmenides, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Socrates, and Plato (Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Plato being the most important) as part of a broadly continuous set of wisdom traditions (the sophia perennis, as it were) that had from the outset been in contact with/share roots with ones which grew from Egypt and Persia. Our favorite democracy-loving veggie-eating Hermetic mystics have never shied away from adopting any knowledge that seems to help further understanding of the Enigma but I think Illuminationism via the Path of Walking Backwards is quite different - it changes how the House may approach their very founding ideas and opens up the "House orthodoxy" itself to source-diversity.
Engagement with House Criamon is also going to change Illuminationism - while the Illuminationists are, according to current studies of Empedocles, broadly right in the way they approach him and his work (closely tied to "the East" and Pythagoras, three-level cosmic-eschatological scheme, philosophy as lived practice/intellectual rite of rebirth) they are totally outstripped by House Criamon in ability to engage with the texts to find these resonances. It isn't actively brought up, but from their reconstruction of Empedoclean thought - including features not described by doxographical texts that modern scholars had to glean from careful readings of Empedocles' poetry - they are likely Mythic Europe's greatest living scholars of early Greek thought with highly developed methods of source criticism and philology. Ofc, the OOC explanation is that Ars writers were using what we know about Empedocles, but the idea that the Criamon came to the same conclusions isn't at all an impossibility - Theban Criamon have access to those manuscripts...they'd just have to be terrifyingly smart (and without the condescending Bonisagi air no less.) The Illuminationists, relying on the few patchwork translations of important doxographical texts and missing most of the vital texts required for deep analysis of Pythagoras or Empedocles alike, would benefit immensely - just as the Criamon would benefit from the Illuminationist paradigm shift shaking off their brand of focus on Empedocles to read his connections to wider intellectual streams. Indeed, the Illuminationist synthesizing scope of vision and Criamon pre-Socratic research toolbox could unironically land the 1270s-1300s House Criamon near 2021 levels of sophistication as far as pre-Socratic studies.
For examples of the sort of scholarship this new breed of Criamon philosophers could produce, From Hades to the Stars: Empedocles on the Cosmic Habitats of Soul from Dr. Simon TrĂ©panier (discussed in earlier posts) proves the Illuminationists' inherited Neoplatonic assertion about the nature of the Empedoclean afterlife correct by close reading of Empedocles' writing itself. Kingsley and Uzdavinys both use the same techniques of textual analysis to connect the Pythagorian project to "Eastern" thought in wide currency in the scholarly world the early Pythagorians knew. One I haven't discussed before is 2018's Empedoclesâ Emulation of Anaxagoras and Pythagoras by Dr. Dmitri Panchenko which interested me by simply using the main doxographical texts to prove the point.
Diogenes Laertius cites Alcidamas for the statement that Empedocles emulatedï»ż Anaxagoras and Pythagoras in his dignity of bearing and the philosophy ofï»ż nature. Contrary to the standard view, I shall argue that Alcidamas madeï»ż Empedocles imitate Anaxagoras in is manners and Pythagoras in his teaching...Nonetheless, the majority of the experts in Greek philosophy take for granted the alternative understanding of Diogenesâ statement. They are apparently impressed by the facts that, on the one hand, Plato, a contemporary of Alcidamas, speaks of the Pythagorean way of life, while, on the other hand, the same Plato (Apol. 26 d; 59 A 35 DK) and other authors present Anaxagoras as a person famous for his doctrines concerning the sun and moon. But such general considerations will not work since also Pythagoras is credited in ancient tradition with a number of physical doctrines, and we shall see that our sources are in fact in a perfect agreement with the interpretation we defend.
One that really struck me was 2016's Empedoclesâ Cosmic Cycle and the Pythagorean Tetractys by Dr. Oliver Primavesi. I'll let the abstract speak for itself:
Empedocles posits six fundamental principles of the world: Love, Strife and the four elements (rhizĆmata). On the cosmic level, he describes the interaction of the principles as an eternal recurrence of the same, i.e. as a cosmic cycle. The cycle is subject to a time-table the evidence for which was discovered by Marwan Rashed and has been edited by him in 2001 and 2014. The purpose of the present paper is to show that this timetable is based on the numerical ratios of the Pythagorean tetractys.
The paper is wonderfully complex and I wouldn't do it justice here, but core is above - the very cosmic cycle that defines Empedoclean cosmology is built on Pythagorean number philosophy.
Not only is the thesis pretty conclusively proven in the paper, the author suggests that some elements of Empedoclean theory are only made understandable by placing them in the framework of Pythagoras:
It seems even possible to take one further step and to show that the assumption of the Pythagorizing timetable is not only compatible with the structure of the cosmic cycle, but that it is even a necessary condition for making sense of the one extant reference to the cosmic timetable by Empedocles himself. After the formation of the Sphairos and for the duration of its reign, both Love, which fills the Sphairos, and Strife, which surrounds it as an external covering, enjoy a period of rest. The rest period of Love and Strifeâthe dominion of the Sphairosâcomes to an end when Strife, the strength of whose limbs has been restored during the period of rest, invades the Sphairos from without and destroys it. The period of rest, i.e. the life-span of the Sphairos, is characterized as having been fixed âin exchangeâ by an oath sworn by Love and by Strife. The obvious question is: âin exchange for what?â One should expect that two gifts exchanged by Love and Strife are each of equal value. Yet it seems quite implausible to assume that Strife has granted the Sphairos to Love in return for the rest of the cosmic cycle (so that the duration of the Sphairos would have to match the duration of all other periods of the cycle), as suggested by OâBrien. For this would imply, as OâBrien himself admits, that not only Strifeâs invasion but also Loveâs expansion belongs, âin a senseâ, to Strife. A far more convincing solution becomes available as soon as we assume that the cosmic cycle is structured along the lines of a double tetractys. Both Love and Strife have sworn to each other to observe faithfully the timetable of their respective tetractys (which shows, by the way, that even the Pythagorean link between âoathâ and tetractys seems to be inspired by Empedocles, although the function of the Pythagorean oath is totally different from that of the divine oath in Empedocles). Now on our Pythagorizing reconstruction of the timetable, the life time of the Sphairos belongs to both the tetractys of Love and the tetractys of Strife, so that the Empedoclean oath implies, in particular, that Love and Strife have granted each other to cease fire during a common period of rest, i.e. during the life span of the Sphairos.
Incredible work! Just imagining what our loveable mystic-wizards would start to dream up if they were presented with these conclusions is a trip - and the best part is that with an Illuminationist turn in the Path of Walking Backwards, a brave new world of Criamonic philosophy is entirely within reach.
