Ensoulment

by Porphyry, Sara Beth Brooks (Editor), Andrea L. Gehrz (Translation)

Gehrz breathes delicate new life into this ancient text, unfolding the threads of Porphyry's thoughts anew. Fundamental questions for astrology -- When does the soul move into the body? Where does the soul come from? -- are considered methodically from myriad angles and potentials. This text is an enlivening read for anyone exploring the roots of astrology from historical, philosophical, and ontological perspectives." -Jenn Zahrt, PhD

Genres: Philosophy

108 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Porphyry's parents were Phoenician, and he was born in Tyre. His parents named him Malchus ("king") but his teacher in Athens, Cassius Longinus, gave him the name Porphyrius ("clad in purple"), possibly a reference to his Phoenician heritage, or a punning allusion to his name and the color of royal robes.

Porphyry of Tyre (Greek: Πορφύριος, Porphyrios, AD c. 234–c. 305) was a Neoplatonic philosopher who was born in Tyre. He edited and published the Enneads, the only collection of the work of his teacher Plotinus. He also wrote many works himself on a wide variety of topics. His Isagoge, or Introduction, is an introduction to logic and philosophy,and in Latin translation it was the standard textbook on logic throughout the Middle Ages. In addition, through several of his works, most notably Philosophy from Oracles and Against the Christians, he was involved in a controversy with a number of early Christians, and his commentary on Euclid's Elements was used as a source by Pappus of Alexandria. (Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Erick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting work to some degree. It does contain the usual obsolete biological knowledge (I don't detract from ancient works for that), but it also has some ideas that are still relevant for philosophical discussion.

It isn't absolutely certain that this work is Porphyry's. There is little in terms of manuscript support (it only existing complete in one manuscript). There is an accumulation of evidence that makes the Porphyrean attribution highly favorable, but all that can be said for certain is that it was written by a Neo-Platonist with strong Porphyrean tendencies. For the sake of the review, I will accept the work as Porphyry's. As it stands, if the text really was composed by Porphyry, it's the closest thing we have to a complete treatise on the soul by him. Sadly, Theophrastus' and Iamblichus' treatises are rather fragmentary on this subject.

The thing that caught my attention the most was the discussion of the role of phantasia and prothumia/epithumia. The Greek term "phantasia" I usually read as "imagination", although the translator doesn't render it that way here. Epithumia is often translated in English as lust or desire. The latter term can either be used in positive or negative senses in philosophy. Porphyry uses the terms prothumia and epithumia in relation to what is given and what is possessed by the embryo. What I thought was interesting is that Porphyry sees prothumia as being transferred through seed and is important for the development of the embryo. He also accords a pretty significant role to phantasia in the process of embryonic development. The embryo receives desire for life and consciousness from the dual roles of father and mother (the mother adding something to the paternal prothumia) and to some extent from outside influences like the realm of phantasia. When the embryo is in the womb and removed from the realm of sense, the realm of phantasia is particularly strong and exerts a strong influence. I thought this part of the work ironic because I have been involved in a discussion on the bottom of my last review regarding the notion of archetypes and the collective unconscious. It often happens that I will pick up a book that will relate to something I've been thinking about or to a book I just read. This is rarely intentional, so I find it ironic (if not downright synchronous). Maybe when dealing with Jungian topics one shouldn't be surprised when they accumulate spontaneously. Anyway, one can discern here that, whatever the empirical merits of archetypes and the collective unconscious are in terms of Psychiatry, the idea itself has it's roots in Greek idealist philosophy. It isn't hard to make the connection between Jungian archetypes and Porphyry's realm of images (phantasmata).

There is a critical edition of this work that includes "On What Is In Our Power" and also includes further textual support from Psellus. The critical edition is entitled "Porphyry: To Gaurus on How Embryos are Ensouled and On What Is In Our Power." I'm not so taken with Porphyry that I was willing to dish out 40$ for the critical edition. I bought this copy used at a far better price. From what I can tell, the translator did a good job rendering the text. One doesn't have access to the Greek here, but she does leave key Greek terms untranslated and provides a glossary in footnotes and as an appendix. I have no complaints about the readability of the rendering. The translator uses the word "breathe" a handful of times when she apparently meant "breath." None of that really affects the overall merits of the book and doesn't detract from the translator's competence in rendering a rather obscure text.

The only text of Porphyry's I still have yet to read and that I plan to eventually is his Life of Plotinus. There is a fragmentary text available online called "On The Faculties of the Soul" that is relevant to this work and should be consulted if one wants an even more substantive look at Porphyry's views related to the topic of the Soul. That text is from Stobaeus and was translated by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie. It discusses the difference between "sensation" and "intelligence" and the difference between faculties and partition.

As I said, I'm not that into Porphyry, but if one wants to be well-versed in Neo-Platonism, this work is probably worth reading. If one wants just a basic rundown of Porphyry's Neo-Platonism, one can just read the "Auxiliaries to the Perception of Intelligible Natures" (aka "the Sentences/Sententiae).

[Mateusz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Porphyry’s To Gaurus On How Embryos Are Ensouled and On What Is in Our Power read, at first glance, like tightly controlled metaphysical treatises, but when placed alongside a more experimental, bio-magickal framework of the soul that I synthetically conjured, they begin to look like the underlying operating system of a much larger architecture. Where my pneumatological model maps the soul in terms of layered inheritance, i.e. biological, psychic, daimonic, and transmigratory, Porphyry provides the classical mechanics that explain when and how those layers can legitimately interface. He sharply distinguishes between the vegetative processes that generate the embryo and the rational soul that descends at birth, rejecting any idea that intellect is biologically produced, but naturally - might I add - is a notion reflected and shaped later given the openness to its reception. In my terms, the embryonic field, what I call “Embryonic Ectoplasm”, may be real, but it remains an open vessel awaiting a precise, externally sourced “injection” governed by harmonic fit rather than lineage.

This tension becomes productive when comparing Egyptian-inspired soul economy with Porphyry’s psychology. The tripartite structure: Ka, Ba, and Akh, maps almost seamlessly onto his vegetative, self-moving, and intellectual principles. The key convergence lies in the status of the highest faculty: both systems deny that divine intellect is automatic, virtue and intellect belong to none, we may near them be demonstration, understanding and incorporation. Notion of Meś-tree “Khephalization” as a magickal technology of intellectual immortalization finds a philosophical counterpart in Porphyry’s insistence that Nous only descends into a prepared soul. In both views, the human being is not born complete but must undergo a process of alignment, initiation, or refinement to receive higher consciousness. What I usually frame as activation or upgrading, Porphyry frames as attunement to a pre-existing cosmic order.

The synthesis becomes even more striking in the domain of destiny and migration. My mint schema of multiple inheritances: biological; astrological; daimonic, and transmigratory is an expanded version of Porphyry’s doctrine of the “two lives.” His first life fixes the biological parameters; his second overlays the individual with fate through astrological timing and sociohistorical placement. What I call transmigratory residue, he describes as the moral and psychic “staining” carried over from prior embodiments, shaping what kinds of lives the soul is capable of entering. Even the idea of daimons aligns closely, to my surprise: both systems recognize a guiding or governing intelligence attached to the soul’s descent, though where I allow for manipulation or reprogramming of the transmigratory soul, a bit of magickal/occult engineering, Porphyry emphasizes lawful assignment within a just cosmic structure.

My framework treats the soul as something like a programmable system—open to intervention, modification, and magickal engineering—while Porphyry insists on fixed metaphysical boundaries: timing matters, hierarchy matters, and not all interfaces are available at all stages. All in all Porphyry’s view is naturalistic, mine is a bit violating the structures of the pristine idea of souls (plural, as in the Egyptian model). Porphyry defines the rules of the cosmic game, the constraints of embodiment, the laws of fate, the conditions of intellectual ascent, my personal system explores the player’s possible moves within those constraints. Read this way, Porphyry is not diminished by esoteric expansion; he is clarified by it, emerging as a rigorously precise cosmologist of the very processes my framework seeks to operationalize in praxis.

[Peter J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was very short, but I enjoyed the distinction made between the sensible and intelligent/intuitive soul. I will likely reread this short work again later.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting read and interpretation of an ancient text.

[John Cairns · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last part is really about to what extent is there freedom of will, seeing as we're by and large determined, in terms of souls and these match up at birth with the animal. We have a different way of going about the same problem. Porphyry's second soul would be our consciousness which of necessity believes its will, self-moving soul, free - yeah, to choose one toothpaste over another. That it determines anything is the illusion and conceit of consciousness. If the unconscious is at all engaged and that has to be emotionally and consciousness is getting in its way in the last resort it'd just take over, consciousness would be where it is but, since it is, without conscious memory, thus able to deny conveniently but truly that whatever was done was done by it. Is the unconscious will itself free? Sunk inside? It can't assume that. It's free to exercise power over the person it's in and through that over others as maybe with whatever comes to its hand but it can be checked, suborned even, by a superior will whose own freedom is limited by the limitations of the wills it is superior to and has to work with and through the minds they inform. It makes you think.