On Beauty and Love.

The triadic communion of All is 1) the emanation of Beauty, 2) the reception of Light, and 3) the impartation of Love.

The Good of Theos resounds in All, imbuing everything with their goodness. But Theos is not Beauty as He is even greater, yet by Beauty He is known and seen.

But Theos is not wholly known nor seen, thus Beauty cannot be Him – and yet it is Him in that sense of Beauty being none other than what is Him. So Beauty is a hypostasis, a Real-Being conjoined to Him by one essence. Beauty demarcates by Being, wherefore Theos is beyond-Being.

So first Theos, then Beauty?

No: Beauty adorns the Beauty-Being; that which is adorned must be prior to that which adorns it. And Theos is not Beauty-Being; Beauty-Being needs adorn himself in Beauty whereas Theos is needless.

Thus: first Theos, then Beauty-Being, then Beauty. And what of their natures?

Beauty-Being is none other than Nous: ever-fixated, stable, and conjoined to Theos. Motionless and good, his likeness to Theos only suffers limit in him not being Theos, but in all else they are united.

Beauty after him, however, is the ‘outgoing light’. Beauty-Light is the shine of Beauty-Being filling all she touches with likeness to Theos. She is pure and unmingled, the ever-shining illumination to All.

Though her Act is in outward motion, she does not depart: she is among us but only so by her extension to us. So knowing Beauty-Being to be Nous, we find now Beauty-Light to be Soul, and All-Nous and All-Soul are bound by essence with Theos, the Hypatos.

Soul takes from Nous his image of Theos and casts her light into the dark of Matter, generating all encosmic beauty by her presence. Only by her, Beauty-Light or Soul, can we say in all things there lives Theos. She is the eternal communiqué of god to cosmos, the fixative binding bodies to divinity.

Without her there’d be no colour, no light, no life: nothing but barren and black chaos. But with her light chaos has been eternally broken. The beauty she engendered within all things remains, everything to their degree a glimmering reflection of divinity. In all the world surrounding us we find reminders of our origin, we ourselves one shaft of her great light. And hence after Beauty-Light, there is Love.

So powerful is her beauty that Matter could no longer be itself. Driven by love, it abandoned all emptiness and filled itself with as much of her light as it could. Striving for perfect union, it exploded into many different forms.

Hence cosmos is endless struggle and motion: in each thing is the primordial Love, driving all towards achievement of the perfect union, ever-yearning to become one with goodness itself. But as Beauty-Light shines in All, we often find love in these many things about us instead.

Much can be said on Love, but let’s end with focus on the first Love. A being or a state?

It is both: first being, then state. Love-Being emerges out of Chaos. He exists by cause of Beauty-Light but first draws himself from Matter. He is all of Cosmos’ love of gods in one. Hence Plato: “From the Love of the beautiful has sprung every good in heaven and earth.”

All the stars and life exists in Love-Being as he led Matter from itself to Beauty, and so while they are not Love himself, they are all bound in likeness to Love. Hence, the state of love. As such the circle of communion is completed: Love is who draws all the things of Cosmos into their union with divinity, urging them ever forwards to the perfect end. By him we are receptive of Beauty-Light and tells us to reach and take hold of her, driving us upwards to heaven.

Lastly, we find the poets of Hellenism knew:

Aphrodite Ourania is born pure from Ouranos by act of Kronos, Plotinus describes her “Soul at its divinest: unmingled as the immediate emanation of the unmingled”. She is goddess of divine beauty, the “source of light to the heavens.”

Then, by two traditions: Eros is born from Chaos, and Eros is born from Aphrodite and Ares. They are same for chaotic conflict is ruled by Ares, a mundane uncertainty like Chaos. This double tradition emphasises two things: Eros emerges from Chaos but Aphrodite is cause to Eros.

Further, per Aristophanes:

“[Eros] mated in the deep Abyss with dark Chaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race, which was the first to see the light.”

And Parmenides:

“First of all the gods she contrived Eros.”

And too the myth of Eros (Love) and Psyche (human soul):

Psyche betrays the trust of Eros and is driven to search the world for him. She seeks the help of Aphrodite who trials her through several tasks. Her final trial has her descend to Hades with a box of Persephone’s beauty. Though she completed her tasks in Hades, she gives into temptation and opens the box in hope of advancing her beauty. Inside was nothing but Stygian sleep; in other words, death.

But Eros comes to her, draws her from sleep and takes her to Olympus where she is made immortal.

Our soul is Psyche wandering the earth in search of Eros, the Absolute Love, and we find all the goods of the world fail to give the union we desire. Often, failing this, we begin to neglect the good we hold and drag ourselves to the depths, lusting for goods leading to death.

Psyche, whose beauty already was the envy of all women, gave herself to the pursuit of more beauty, showing she lost her vision of Eros and turned back in on herself, leading to her death. But Eros gives Psyche salvation, retrieving her from the cosmic depths and not only restores her to life but has her attain immortality.

It is by this conjunction with Love that our souls are restored and raised to the gods. By this, we shall overcome death and become immortal.