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On Gê/Earth
Jun. 28th, 2013 06:06 pmA recent email exchange with a colleague elicited some reflections on the status of the Earth in polycentric polytheistic thought. Specifically, the issue arose of whether the relationship between the henads and a certain monadic (i.e. formal or functional) position might be more problematic at the further reaches of the procession.
In general, I do not think that issues of the relationship between the henadic and monadic spheres are any more pregnant at one point in the procession than at any other. Being further on in the procession (further ‘out’, further ‘down’, these metaphors do not really matter) does not make anything different in this respect, because one could at any point in the procession demand that the formal account be cashed out in terms of actual theology, just as at any point of a theological account one could demand some degree of rational accountability.
The polycentric viewpoint is far easier to appreciate for those who have some experience of theologies where the disposition of the pantheon according to functions is less emphasized than it is in our received image of Hellenic theology—which is, I must stress, far from what the reality of Hellenismos as a living cultic tradition was like. Long before I learned that it had been articulated in Proclus, I was familiar through Egyptian theology with the absolute polycentric perspective, because one does not have to read very many Egyptian hymns before one realizes that it is possible to hymn each and every God, not only as “sole one”, and this is in many ways the foundational divine epithet in Egyptian, but also, with a great deal of subtlety, in terms of the recognition of their peculiar, discriminated function as itself the fulcrum upon which the whole system of the cosmos shifts. Later, I learned that Hinduism was similarly suffused with this perspective, and once one is sensitized to it, it becomes easy to find evidence of it in every polytheistic practice, even where complex theological expressions are not extant.
But as an example of how these issues might be discussed in a case that does lie at a certain limit, so to speak of the procession, one may consider the case of Gê. Now, ‘limit’ has no absolute sense here, because Gê can be considered as pretty far ‘down’ in the hierarchical structure of the divine procession or as very near the ‘top’ if we are talking about the order of deployment of Gods in the cosmos. With Gê we have the same ambiguity as with Ouranos, being at once the name of a particular Hellenic deity and a term with a conceptual value in Greek discourse. That is, ‘Gê’ is at once a particular Goddess and the word for ‘Earth’, as ‘Ouranos’ is the name of a unique deity and the word for ‘Sky’ or ‘Heaven’.
If we look at some places where Proclus deals with Gê, we see that he treats her in strict complementarity with Ouranos, such that we really might say that the account of the intelligible-intellective order, in which Ouranos presides, and which is the highest true class of the Gods, the ‘intelligible order’ being a pseudo-class, is not complete without this infra-intellective supplement. And, just as it was possible, reading the fourth book of the Platonic Theology to find a good deal of material that passes through the conceptual screen, so to speak, and belongs to the asymptotic rational framework account, as it were, relatively little of the account arising, e.g., from the exegesis of Hesiod, though a bit more comes from the inspired portions of Socrates’ speech in the Phaedrus, so too, in the case of Proclus’s account of Gê, there is much that belongs to the dialectical, scientific account rather than to the exegesis of the Hellenic theophany.
So strict is the correlation Proclus emphasizes between Gê and Ouranos that he is quite comfortable in treating her as “most ancient and first of the Gods”, simpliciter (IT 3, 134), even while acknowledging that one may also consider her instead as “most ancient and first of the Gods in Heaven” (141). Proclus explains that “Gê [i.e., our Earth] proceeds primarily from the intelligible Gê who unitarily comprehends all the intelligible orders of the Gods, and is eternally established in the father,” viz., as a primordially active existential agency, “but also from the intellective Gê coordinate with Ouranos, all the productions of whom she receives” (135). We see from this that Gê is on the one hand receptive of all the other Gods, as any henad is, but on the other hand, doubles this receptive function within the peculiar pantheon.
We see a similar duality in the account of Gê’s operations on our own level. The Earth is an animal with a divine soul and a living body in its own right, and also “a pleroma of intellective and psychical substances and of immaterial powers” (136), and as such the nurse of our bodies, souls, and intellects (ibid.). But Proclus’ account of Gê proceeds largely in the spirit of the ‘probable’, i.e., scientific, account in the Timaeus, with the result that the primary determinations of the Earth are those that would in fact apply to whatever planet one happened to live on, for he treats the physical earth as the physical (i.e., as opposed to ideal) center of apparent celestial motion.
Hence from wherever one is, the Heaven is “the pole extended through the universe” (139), which, shades of Cusanus, he remarks is a circle because it has no angle, around which the Earth “is condensed [illesthai], not locally [topikôs], but through desire of assimilation to it converging [sunneuousa] toward the middle …” (ibid., 10-12). A similar remark establishes a formal generality to the axis relative to which the Earth is established: “The axis is that one godhead [theotêta] collecting [sunagôgon] the centers”—note the plural–“of the universe [tou pantos], connective of the whole/universal [holos] cosmos, motive [kinêtikên] of the divine circulations, around which wholes/universals dance, around which they revolve, sustaining the whole/universal Heaven…” (138.24-28). Again, at 141 he stresses that the “stability, generativity, concord with Heaven, and its position at the center of the All”, that is, its relative determinations, are constitutive of the Earth’s theological dignity, rather than its materiality. Note also, near the bottom of 142, the reference to something quite like the ‘phenomenological’ divine orders of the Elements of Theology. So Proclus is quite aware that with Gê we are at a point where the henadic and monadic dimensions cross rather explicitly; but it produces no paradox, because the scientific perspective is taking a larger role as the procession extends itself to its furthest point.
Therefore, if one asks how this Earth, as the particular Earth on whom we live, this divine animal, is known to us, the answer, just as would be the case if one asked about the knowledge of myself as an ensouled animal, would be that there is a complete account in the scientific investigation of the relevant phenomena, while the theological picture, for its part, is complete in itself, and has naturally single referents for all its terms, but the distinction between fixing a referent scientifically and existentially, respectively, never vanishes. Similarly, in Egyptian theology, in speaking of Osiris, one is speaking either of the God in relation to the other Gods, or designating by ‘Osiris’ a particular mortal soul, but not both at once. Or in Chinese theology, the ‘Earth God’ is always some local deity, sometimes even a divinized mortal inhabitant of the village, for example.
In general, I do not think that issues of the relationship between the henadic and monadic spheres are any more pregnant at one point in the procession than at any other. Being further on in the procession (further ‘out’, further ‘down’, these metaphors do not really matter) does not make anything different in this respect, because one could at any point in the procession demand that the formal account be cashed out in terms of actual theology, just as at any point of a theological account one could demand some degree of rational accountability.
The polycentric viewpoint is far easier to appreciate for those who have some experience of theologies where the disposition of the pantheon according to functions is less emphasized than it is in our received image of Hellenic theology—which is, I must stress, far from what the reality of Hellenismos as a living cultic tradition was like. Long before I learned that it had been articulated in Proclus, I was familiar through Egyptian theology with the absolute polycentric perspective, because one does not have to read very many Egyptian hymns before one realizes that it is possible to hymn each and every God, not only as “sole one”, and this is in many ways the foundational divine epithet in Egyptian, but also, with a great deal of subtlety, in terms of the recognition of their peculiar, discriminated function as itself the fulcrum upon which the whole system of the cosmos shifts. Later, I learned that Hinduism was similarly suffused with this perspective, and once one is sensitized to it, it becomes easy to find evidence of it in every polytheistic practice, even where complex theological expressions are not extant.
But as an example of how these issues might be discussed in a case that does lie at a certain limit, so to speak of the procession, one may consider the case of Gê. Now, ‘limit’ has no absolute sense here, because Gê can be considered as pretty far ‘down’ in the hierarchical structure of the divine procession or as very near the ‘top’ if we are talking about the order of deployment of Gods in the cosmos. With Gê we have the same ambiguity as with Ouranos, being at once the name of a particular Hellenic deity and a term with a conceptual value in Greek discourse. That is, ‘Gê’ is at once a particular Goddess and the word for ‘Earth’, as ‘Ouranos’ is the name of a unique deity and the word for ‘Sky’ or ‘Heaven’.
If we look at some places where Proclus deals with Gê, we see that he treats her in strict complementarity with Ouranos, such that we really might say that the account of the intelligible-intellective order, in which Ouranos presides, and which is the highest true class of the Gods, the ‘intelligible order’ being a pseudo-class, is not complete without this infra-intellective supplement. And, just as it was possible, reading the fourth book of the Platonic Theology to find a good deal of material that passes through the conceptual screen, so to speak, and belongs to the asymptotic rational framework account, as it were, relatively little of the account arising, e.g., from the exegesis of Hesiod, though a bit more comes from the inspired portions of Socrates’ speech in the Phaedrus, so too, in the case of Proclus’s account of Gê, there is much that belongs to the dialectical, scientific account rather than to the exegesis of the Hellenic theophany.
So strict is the correlation Proclus emphasizes between Gê and Ouranos that he is quite comfortable in treating her as “most ancient and first of the Gods”, simpliciter (IT 3, 134), even while acknowledging that one may also consider her instead as “most ancient and first of the Gods in Heaven” (141). Proclus explains that “Gê [i.e., our Earth] proceeds primarily from the intelligible Gê who unitarily comprehends all the intelligible orders of the Gods, and is eternally established in the father,” viz., as a primordially active existential agency, “but also from the intellective Gê coordinate with Ouranos, all the productions of whom she receives” (135). We see from this that Gê is on the one hand receptive of all the other Gods, as any henad is, but on the other hand, doubles this receptive function within the peculiar pantheon.
We see a similar duality in the account of Gê’s operations on our own level. The Earth is an animal with a divine soul and a living body in its own right, and also “a pleroma of intellective and psychical substances and of immaterial powers” (136), and as such the nurse of our bodies, souls, and intellects (ibid.). But Proclus’ account of Gê proceeds largely in the spirit of the ‘probable’, i.e., scientific, account in the Timaeus, with the result that the primary determinations of the Earth are those that would in fact apply to whatever planet one happened to live on, for he treats the physical earth as the physical (i.e., as opposed to ideal) center of apparent celestial motion.
Hence from wherever one is, the Heaven is “the pole extended through the universe” (139), which, shades of Cusanus, he remarks is a circle because it has no angle, around which the Earth “is condensed [illesthai], not locally [topikôs], but through desire of assimilation to it converging [sunneuousa] toward the middle …” (ibid., 10-12). A similar remark establishes a formal generality to the axis relative to which the Earth is established: “The axis is that one godhead [theotêta] collecting [sunagôgon] the centers”—note the plural–“of the universe [tou pantos], connective of the whole/universal [holos] cosmos, motive [kinêtikên] of the divine circulations, around which wholes/universals dance, around which they revolve, sustaining the whole/universal Heaven…” (138.24-28). Again, at 141 he stresses that the “stability, generativity, concord with Heaven, and its position at the center of the All”, that is, its relative determinations, are constitutive of the Earth’s theological dignity, rather than its materiality. Note also, near the bottom of 142, the reference to something quite like the ‘phenomenological’ divine orders of the Elements of Theology. So Proclus is quite aware that with Gê we are at a point where the henadic and monadic dimensions cross rather explicitly; but it produces no paradox, because the scientific perspective is taking a larger role as the procession extends itself to its furthest point.
Therefore, if one asks how this Earth, as the particular Earth on whom we live, this divine animal, is known to us, the answer, just as would be the case if one asked about the knowledge of myself as an ensouled animal, would be that there is a complete account in the scientific investigation of the relevant phenomena, while the theological picture, for its part, is complete in itself, and has naturally single referents for all its terms, but the distinction between fixing a referent scientifically and existentially, respectively, never vanishes. Similarly, in Egyptian theology, in speaking of Osiris, one is speaking either of the God in relation to the other Gods, or designating by ‘Osiris’ a particular mortal soul, but not both at once. Or in Chinese theology, the ‘Earth God’ is always some local deity, sometimes even a divinized mortal inhabitant of the village, for example.
