THE ATLAS OF THE ONE AND THE MANY

The Enneads

the Enneads

nature

Fifty-four treatises in six sets of nine, on beauty, on the descent of the soul, on the nature of evil, on the One. Plotinus wrote them as occasional essays and never revised; his eyesight was poor and he would not read a draft back. The order in which we read them is his editor's.

The source text of the whole channel — and every later station on it, Arabic, Hebrew or Latin, is reading some version of this.

Withdraw into yourself and look… cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, until there shall shine out on you the godlike splendour of virtue.

rhymes with

sephirahketer

whyThe book that spends fifty-four treatises pointing at what it says cannot be said.