| Bert VAN DEN BERG Timaeus , the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Chaldaean Oracles Timaeus . For Proclus, this takes the form of a return to the divine demiurgical Intellect in which the soul finds rest and is able to contemplate the Forms. He finds himself in disagreement, though, about the question how exactly this return is to be achieved. It is commonly understood that Plato summons us in the Timaeus to engage in the study of the eternal and unchanging truths of mathematical astronomy and thus become participants in the eternal, i.e. the divine. Proclus denies this. He follows Iamblichus who had argued in the De Mysteriis that only ritual acts, not intellectual efforts, can make us truly divine, as well as the Chaldaean Oracles , the holy scriptures of the Athenian Neoplatonists, that warn people to flee the scientific study of the universe, if they want "to enter the sacred paradise of piety". Proclus puts his trust in mystery rites that include ritual purifications, like the Eleusinian Mysteries and the rites connected with the Chaldaean Oracles of the Timaeus , not with the World Soul as is commonly assumed, especially in the case of Hecate. The fact that Proclus is able to read back the theology of the | |
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