Orientalism in Iamblichus' The Mysteries
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pome.v15i1-2.202Keywords:
Egyptian religion, Neoplatonism, Orientalism, secrecy, theurgy.Abstract
Iamblichus' On the Mysteries of the Egyptians is part of a larger Neoplatonic debate over the soundness of theurgical practices and Eastern ritual. The discussion of Egyptian practices in The Mysteries reveals the legitimating structures which underlie Iamblichus' argument, specifically, an Orientalizing discourse which contributes to a larger esoteric market of knowledge. This is figured both through stereotypes of Egypt as a site of ancient mysteries, but also from a very real inaccessibility of Egyptian religion to the Greeks. This emphasis on timeless, secret knowledge converts Iamblichan theurgy, a disputed new system of Platonic thought, into a unit of social currency which confers worth, prestige and power upon its creator and sets it apart from the dominant mode of philosophical rationalism.References
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Berger, Peter L. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Anchor Books, 1990.
Burkert, Walter. Ancient Mystery Cults. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Burns, Dylan M. “Ancient Esoteric Traditions: Mystery, Revelation, Gnosis.” In The Occult World, edited by Christopher Partridge. New York: Routledge, forthcoming, 2014.
Clarke, Emma C., John M. Dillon, and Jackson P. Hershbell. Introduction to On the Mysteries, by Iamblichus, xiii–lii. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003.
de Romilly, Jacqueline. Magic and Rhetoric in Ancient Greece. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975. http://dx.doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674331457
Dickie, Matthew W. Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World. London: Routledge, 2003.
Fowden, Garth. The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Frankfurter, David. Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.
Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320992.001.0001
Hall, Jonathan M. Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Harland, Philip A. Dynamics of Identity in the World of the Early Christians. New York: T&T Clark, 2009.
Hornung, Erik. The Secret Lore of Egypt: Its Impact on the West. Translated by David Lorton. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001.
Iamblichus. On the Mysteries. Translated by Emma C. Clarke, John M. Dillon, and Jackson P. Hershbell. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003.
Luhrmann, Tanya M. “The Magic of Secrecy.” Ethos 17, no. 2 (June 1989): 131–65. http://www.jstor.org/stable/640319. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/eth.1989.17.2.02a00010
Momigliano, Arnaldo. Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.
Moyer, Ian S. Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511894992
Plato. Timaeus and Critias. Translated by Robin Waterfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Porphyry. “The Epistle of Porphyry to the Egyptian Anebo.” In Iamblichus on the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians. Translated by Thomas Taylor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Remes, Paulina. Neoplatonism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
Rudolph, Kurt. Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism. Translated by Robert McLachlan Wilson. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1984.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
Shaw, Gregory. Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003.
Tully, Caroline. “Walk Like an Egyptian: Egypt as Authority in Aleister Crowley’s Reception of The Book of the Law.” The Pomegranate 12, no. 1 (July 2010): 20–47.
Urban, Hugh B. “The Torment of Secrecy: Ethical and Epistemological Problems in the Study of Esoteric Traditions.” History of Religions 37, no. 3 (1998): 209–48. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3176606. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/463503
Vasunia, Phiroze. The Gift of the Nile: Hellenizing Egypt from Aeschylus to Alexander. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
Willard, Thomas. “What is Mystical Language?” In Papers in the History of Linguistics: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on the History of Language Sciences (ICHoLS III), Princeton, 19-23 August 1984, ed. Hans Aarsleff, Louis G. Kelly and Hans-Josef Niederehe, 201–209. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 1987.
Williams, Stephen. Tourism Geography: A New Synthesis. New York: Routledge, 2009
Published
2014-08-12
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Veale, S. L. (2014). Orientalism in Iamblichus’ The Mysteries. Pomegranate, 15(1-2), 202-222. https://doi.org/10.1558/pome.v15i1-2.202
