Neoplatonism & Kabbalah for Gerald Gardner’s Birthday Bash 2019
An Outline by Sam Webster, 6/8/2019, 1 hour

What is Neoplatonism
Relationships with Kabbalah, Grimoire, GD, Wicca

5 min self Intro, who am I and why I know this stuff
Been teaching magick since 1984, I teach to learn
OTO init 1982, GD 5=6 1988, 1st Degree x 3 1986-89
MDiv 1993, seminary education
Crescent Hellions, OSOGD, Pantheon Foundation, PaganCurrents.com
Local history, Friends in the audience
PhD History of Theurgy, Iamblichus to the Golden Dawn

20 min history and why you should care
Origins of all we do
When the lights go on…to Socrates
Plato 1, Middle, Neo} Church, Renaissance, Oxford-German, Modern (Whitehead)
Come back more to Neo in T&P, but our history starts with the Renaissance
Ficino, Pico {K/C/Qabala}
The main contribution of Kabbalah to Gentile magic is the cosmological model of the Tree.

30 min Theory (Philosophy) & Practice (Theurgy)

Cosmology
From Plotinus, written by Porphyry, used by Iamblichus, developed by Proclus

Classical Ptolemaic Cosmology
Terrestrial earth at center (Tartarus somewhere, somehow below),
4 Elements and the surface world with ocean and atmosphere extending up to the moon.
Celestial Moon & up to Saturn, Fixed Stars are Aether,
Divine Empyrium Everything outward Fire, Light, Aether?

Coming back the other ways since it is easier to explain….

One OO programming, Systems theory, Whitehead Envisionment of the Paradigm

Noos/Noetic & the Forms = the Gods
Psyche/Noeric: Gods of Culture, Myth, and History

Prohodos & Epistrophy
The Divine spectrum: One Deities, Archangels, Angels, Heros, (sort of) Deamons down, Angels up.

Path
After a bit of training, intellectual and moral development
Iamblichus & De Mysteriis

Invocation & Sacrifice
To Everybody, working up the chain of beings
Ever refining ones offerings in accord with one’s fitness.

Invocation resulted in possession/union at range of intensities
‘Purifying’ the soul, elevating, rising up the chain of abstraction in keeping with offerings/deities
integrating with cosmos {magical powers}
joining the Administration
Augoides soma/ochoima,
Pnuma between soma and psyche
Photogogia
Arcane rites and Barbarous tongues
HGA, Noesis, Henosis,
Divine mimesis

5 min Q&A