Neoplatonic Demons And Angels

Neoplatonic Demons and Angels is a collection of studies which examine the place reserved for angels and demons not only by the main Neoplatonic philosophers, but also in Gnosticism, the Chaldaean Oracles and Christian Neoplatonism.

A new explanation of the beginnings of Jewish angelology and demonology, drawing on non-canonical writings and Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls.

"A collection of essays examining medieval and early modern texts aimed at performing magic or receiving illumination via the mediation of angels. Includes discussion of Jewish, Christian and Muslim texts"--Provided by publisher.

This book examines the role of angels in medieval and Renaissance art and religion from Dante to the Counter-Reformation.

This is the first modern study of Agrippa's occult philosophy, revealing it to be a coherent part of his intellectual work. It analyzes the text of "De occulta philosophia," explicating the sophisticated structure and argument of the work.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Introduction -- PART I Demons in Christianity -- 1 Augustine and Aquinas on the Demonic -- 2 The Demonic Body: Demonic Ontology and the Domicile of the Demons in Apuleius and Augustine -- 3 Christian Demonology: A New Philosophical Perspective -- 4 Women as "the Devil's Gateway": A Feminist Critique of Christian Demonology -- PART II Non-Christian Conceptions of Demons -- 5 Socrates's Demonic Sign (Daimonion Sēmeion) -- 6 The Ecological Demon: Silent Running and Interstellar -- 7 Demons of Seduction in Early Jewish Literature -- 8 The Jinn and the Shayātīn -- 9 Māra: Devā and Demon -- PART III Demons and Epistemological Issues -- 10 Justified Belief in the Existence of Demons Is Impossible -- 11 Esoteric Spirituality, Devils, and Demons: Introducing the Gnostic Vision of Modernity -- 12 Re-Enchantment and Contemporary Demonology -- PART IV Demons in Moral and Social Philosophy -- 13 Whedon's Demons: The Immorality of Moral Clarity and the Ethics of Moral Complexity -- 14 Modern Representations of Evil: Kant, Arendt, and the Devil in Goethe's Faust and Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita -- 15 The Politics of Possession: Reading King James's Daemonologie through the Lens of Mimetic Realism -- Notes on Contributors -- Bibliography -- Index

This study explains how the myths of Greece and Rome were transmitted from antiquity to the Renaissance. Luc Brisson argues that philosophy was ironically responsible for saving myth from historical annihilation. Although philosophy was initially critical of myth because it could not be declared true or false and because it was inferior to argumentation, mythology was progressively reincorporated into philosophy through allegorical exegesis. Brisson shows to what degree allegory was employed among philosophers and how it enabled myth to take on a number of different interpretive systems throughout the centuries: moral, physical, psychological, political, and even metaphysical. How Philosophers Saved Myths also describes how, during the first years of the modern era, allegory followed a more religious path, which was to assume a larger role in Neoplatonism. Ultimately, Brisson explains how this embrace of myth was carried forward by Byzantine thinkers and artists throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance; after the triumph of Chistianity, Brisson argues, myths no longer had to agree with just history and philosophy but the dogmas of the Church as well.

Platonic Theories of Prayer is a collection of ten essays on the topic of prayer in the later Platonic tradition. The volume originates from a panel on the topic held at the 2013 ISNS meeting in Cardiff, but is supplemented by a number of invited papers. Together they offer a comprehensive view of the various roles and levels of prayer characteristic of this period. The concept of prayer is shown to include not just formal petitionary or encomiastic prayer, but also theurgical practices and various states of meditation and ecstasy practised by such major figures as Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, Damascius or Dionysius the Areopagite.

Byzantine intellectuals not only had direct access to Neoplatonic sources in the original language but also, at times, showed a particular interest in them. During the Early Byzantine period Platonism significantly contributed to the development of Christian doctrines and, paradoxically, remained a rival world view that was perceived by many Christian thinkers as a serious threat to their own intellectual identity. This problematic relationship was to become even more complex during the following centuries. Byzantine authors made numerous attempts to harmonize Neoplatonic doctrines with Christianity as well as to criticize, refute and even condemn them. The papers assembled in this volume discuss a number of specific questions and concerns that drew the interest of Byzantine scholars in different periods towards Neoplatonic sources in an attempt to identify and explore the central issues in the reception of Neoplatonic texts during the Byzantine era. This is the first volume of the sub-series "Byzantinisches Archiv - Series Philosophica", which will be dedicated to the rapidly growing field of research in Byzantine philosophical texts.

This sumptuously illustrated volume analyzes artists' representations of angels and demons and heaven and hell from the Judeo-Christian tradition and describes how these artistic portrayals evolved over time. As with other books in the Guide to Imagery series, the goal of this volume is to help contemporary art enthusiasts decode the symbolic meanings in the great masterworks of Western Art. The first chapter traces the development of images of the Creation and the Afterworld from descriptions of them in the Scriptures through their evolution in later literary and philosophical works. The following two chapters examine artists' depictions of the two paths that humans may take, the path of evil or the path of salvation, and the punishments or rewards found on each. A chapter on the Judgment Day and the end of the world explores portrayals of the mysterious worlds between life and death and in the afterlife. Finally, the author looks at images of angelic and demonic beings themselves and how they came to be portrayed with the physical attributes--wings, halos, horns, and cloven hooves--with which we are now so familiar. Thoroughly researched by and expert in the field of iconography, Angels and Demons in Art will delight readers with an interest in art or religious symbolism.