Philosophical Paganism

Naturalizing Ancient Pagan Thought

Eric Steinhart

Version 0.51 28 May 2020

Draft

Table of Contents 0. Preface ...... 8 1. Concentrating...... 9 1. Philosophical Paganism...... 9 2. We Welcome Everybody ...... 10 3. Concentrating Rituals...... 12 4. The Progression of Elements ...... 14 2. Water: The Zero is Non-Being...... 15 1. Hesiod: The Theogony and its Theonyms...... 15 2. Peirce: The Self-Negation of Non-Being...... 16 3. The Abyss of Non-Being ...... 17 4. The Naturalness of Non-Being ...... 19 5. Fathomless Depths of Power...... 21 3. Earth: The Ground of Being ...... 22 1. The One is Being-Itself...... 22 2. The Ontic and the Ontological...... 23 3. The Logical Analysis of Being-Itself ...... 25 4. The Earth Emerges from the Sea...... 27 4. The Priority of the One...... 29 1. The One is not God...... 29 2. The Wiccan Ultimate Deity ...... 31 3. The Simple Original One...... 32 5. Air: The Logic of Existence ...... 34 1. The Two: Propositions ...... 34 2. Identity and Difference ...... 35 3. Some Theories of Existence...... 36 4. The Two Maximizes Consistency ...... 39 5. All the Air in the Abstract Sky ...... 41 6. From Simplicity to Sets...... 42 1. Plotinus: One Simple Thing ...... 42 2. The Axiom of Foundation ...... 42 3. The Axiom of Extensionality...... 44 4. The Empty Set Axiom ...... 45 7. The Axis of the World...... 46 1. The Axis Mundi ...... 46 2. The Incantation for Numbers...... 46 3. The Star of Numbers...... 49 8. The Sky of Sets...... 51 1. Every Many has its One ...... 51 2. The Stack of Power Sets ...... 53 4. The Incantation for Sets...... 55 5. The Axioms of Set Theory...... 56

2 9. Progression from the One ...... 58 1. From the One to the Many...... 58 2. The Digital Forms of Things ...... 60 3. The Thin Tree of Strings ...... 62 4. The Cosmic Computers...... 65 5. How Programs Manifest Universes...... 66 10. The Library and the Treasury ...... 69 1. The Incantation for Genotypes...... 69 2. The Complexities of Genotypes ...... 71 3. From Complexity to Intrinsic Value...... 73 4. Seeds and Skulls ...... 75 5. The Incantation for Seeds...... 78 11. The Incantation for Computers...... 81 1. Maximize Consistency!...... 81 2. Consistency and Dependency...... 82 3. The Initial Law for Computers...... 84 4. The Successor Law for Computers ...... 85 5. The Limit Law for Computers ...... 86 6. Evolution by Rational Selection ...... 86 12. The World Tree ...... 88 1. Plato: The Demiurge ...... 88 2. Plato: The Cosmic Egg...... 89 3. Asexual Cosmic Reproduction ...... 90 13. Fire: Concrete Existence...... 93 1. Seeds are Creative Recipes ...... 93 2. The Incantation for Fires...... 93 3. The Incantation for Demiurges ...... 95 4. This Tree Stands in Flames...... 98 5. Fire Fills the Abstract Sky...... 100 14. Spirit is Fire-Energy...... 101 1. Spirit Animates All Things ...... 101 2. Spirit Animates the Cosmic Logos ...... 101 3. Spirit: The Power of Self-Surpassing ...... 103 4. The Opening and Closing Powers ...... 104 15. Stoicism: Spirit Divides...... 107 1. The Hierogamy of Zeus and Hera...... 107 2. The Gynomic and Andromic Powers ...... 108 3. The Wiccan God and Goddess ...... 109 4. The Incantation for Universes ...... 110 5. Evolutionary Principles ...... 112 16. The Counterparts...... 114 1. The Great Chain of Being ...... 114 2. An Ancient Lineage of Universes...... 115 3. A Modernized Lineage of Universes...... 116 4. Plotinus: The Lower and Higher Universes...... 118 5. Better Parts Make Better Wholes ...... 121

3 17. Climbing this Tree ...... 123 1. Little Trees of Things...... 123 2. The Incantation for Things ...... 124 3. Overcoming Noisy Materiality ...... 125 4. Cooperation and Competition...... 127 5. How Optimization Permits Conflicts ...... 128 6. The Triumph of Goodness over Evil...... 129 18. Spirit in Our Universe ...... 130 1. Arguments for Spirit ...... 130 2. The Thermodynamics of Spirit...... 132 3. The Extropic Argument...... 134 4. Spirit is Purely Physical Power ...... 135 5. Some Emergent Conflicts...... 137 19. Entanglement...... 140 1. Plotinus: Entanglement...... 140 2. Entanglement and Souls ...... 141 3. Entropy and Agency ...... 143 4. Titanic Agents...... 145 20. Titanic Computers...... 147 1. Stars are Titanic Atomic Computers...... 147 2. Planets are Titanic Molecular Computers ...... 148 3. Some Planets are Titanic Biological Computers...... 149 4. Ancient Evolutionary Theories...... 150 21. Birth and Fate ...... 151 1. Welcome to Our Universe...... 151 2. The Influences of the Stars...... 151 3. The Influences of Your Genes...... 152 4. The Influences of Your Season of Birth...... 155 22. Giving Thanks ...... 157 1. Atheistic Gratitude...... 157 2. Exchanges of Food and Grooming...... 157 3. Reciprocate Food with Grooming Avatars...... 159 4. Giving Thanks to Evolution...... 160 5. Giving Thanks to our Sun ...... 162 6. Atheistic Contemplative Prayer ...... 164 23. The Wheel of the Year...... 165 1. The Wiccan Solar Holidays ...... 165 2. The Wiccan Common Liturgy ...... 167 3. Naturalizing the Wheel ...... 170 4. Naturalizing the Common Liturgy ...... 172 5. The Great Cycles of Nature...... 174 24. Mind-Craft: Stoicism ...... 176 1. From Rational Order to Duty ...... 176 2. The Stoic Workout ...... 177 3. Sources of Adversity for Stoic Training ...... 179 4. The Virtuous Person ...... 181

4 5. The Stoic Moral Compass...... 182 25. Mind-Craft: Stoic Exercises...... 184 1. Stoicism Old and New ...... 184 2. Stoic Mind-Craft Practices...... 184 3. How Atheists can Perform Stoic Prayers...... 186 4. Mindfulness Meditation...... 188 5. Wiccan Mind-Craft Practices ...... 190 26. The Body and the Soul...... 191 1. The Soul is the Form of the Body ...... 191 2. Your Soul is Your Body-Program ...... 192 3. Matter is Functional Impairment ...... 194 4. Self-Hacking: Purifying the Matter in your Soul ...... 195 27. Sign-Craft: Magic ...... 198 1. Defining Magic...... 198 2. Magic Does Not Work...... 199 3. The Hacker Methodology ...... 200 4. Entangled Possibilities...... 201 5. Technology of the Self...... 203 6. Modal Defiance...... 205 28. Sign-Craft: Programming ...... 207 1. Casting Effective Spells...... 207 2. Programmable Machines...... 207 3. Programmable Organisms...... 209 4. Programmable Nature...... 209 29. Sign-Craft: Self-Hacking...... 211 1. The Platonic Three-Shelled Self ...... 211 2. Naturalizing Your Three-Shelled Self...... 212 3. Hacking Your Three-Shelled Self ...... 215 4. Programming Your Way to the Deities ...... 216 30. Shape-Craft: Naturalized Channeling...... 218 1. Theurgy: Channeling the Deities...... 218 2. Analogical Models of Alien Universes ...... 219 3. Shifting into Alien Universes...... 220 4. Channeling through Simulation ...... 223 31. Shape-Craft: Meturgical Practices...... 225 1. Ecstatic Dancing...... 225 2. Shifting by Ecstatic Dancing...... 226 3. Shifting by Burning the Man...... 228 32. Shape-Craft: Psychedelic Communions...... 232 1. Modernizing the Mysteries ...... 232 2. The Spiritual Effects of Psychedelics...... 233 3. The Interpretation of Hallucination ...... 235 4. The Interpretation of Ego Dissolution ...... 236 5. Designing Safe and Legal Psychedelic Communions...... 238

5 33. The Divine Animals...... 240 1. The Deities are Divine Animals...... 240 2. The Epicurean Divine Animals ...... 241 3. The Platonic Grades of Divinity...... 242 4. Xenophanes: Criticizing the Myths...... 243 5. Many Future Divine Animals...... 244 34. Divine-Craft: Becoming Divine...... 246 1. Humans Becoming Divine Animals ...... 246 2. Plato: Becoming Like the Divine Animals...... 247 3. The Ways of Biotechnical Evolution ...... 247 4. The Way of Cosmological Evolution...... 249 5. The Stars are Ideals...... 250 35. Divine-Craft: The Ranks of Bodies ...... 251 1. Transhuman Bodies ...... 251 2. Heroic Bodies ...... 252 3. Daimonic Bodies...... 253 4. Olympian Bodies ...... 254 5. Celestial Bodies...... 255 6. Holographic Bodies ...... 257 36. Divine-Craft: Future Deities ...... 259 1. Evolving Divine Animals...... 259 2. Past Below and Future Above ...... 260 3. Evolving Future Divine Animals...... 261 4. Evolving Future Divine Universes ...... 262 5. Underworld Midworld Overworld ...... 263 37. Ancient Reincarnation ...... 266 1. Ancient Arguments for Reincarnation...... 266 2. Retributive Karma...... 267 3. Problems with Retributive Karma ...... 269 4. Wiccan Reincarnation ...... 270 5. The Purpose of Your Life ...... 272 38. Naturalizing Reincarnation...... 273 1. From Reincarnation to Rebirth...... 273 2. The Emergence of Karmic Laws ...... 274 3. Karmic Laws for Humans ...... 276 4. Some Arguments for Rebirth ...... 279 5. Your Incantation for Lives...... 279 39. The Divine Minds...... 282 1. Ancient Divine Minds...... 282 2. Plotinus: The Infinite Holographic Mind...... 282 3. Progressions of Finite Omega Points...... 284 4. Progressions of Infinite Omega Points ...... 285 5. The Many Divine Minds...... 287 40. Light: The Good ...... 289 1. The Good is Not the One...... 289 2. The Holy Light of an Unsurpassable Fire ...... 290

6 3. The Sun Illuminates the Earth ...... 291 4. The Sky is Filled with Stars ...... 293 5. Mystical Experience ...... 294 41. The Sun and the Stars...... 297 1. Striving for Divinity...... 297 2. The Plurality of Perfections...... 297 3. The Pentacle ...... 298 42. Releasing ...... 300 Notes ...... 301 References...... 304 Index ...... 323

7 0. Preface

I wrote this text to serve three purposes. First, I wanted to use it as the text for my Ancient Philosophy course at William Paterson University. I did this in Spring 2020, and it worked very well. Second, I wanted to deepen my own understanding of ancient philosophy, especially the ways it can still make sense today. And more specifically, I wanted to systematize my understanding of Plotinus. Here I am developing a set- theoretic of Plotinus, in which the simplicity of the One unfolds into the complexities of the many. I regard most readings of Plotinus, and Neoplatonism generally, as deeply corrupted by Christianity and by Cartesian mind-body dualism. I wanted a reading of Plotinus that avoided those corruptions. But I am not doing scholarly exegesis here. I’m breaking up the old texts and using them to build something new. My third reason for writing this text is that I wanted to help modern pagans understand ancient thought as pagan thought. Almost no serious philosophical writing exists for modern pagans. And most modern paganism, ignorant of its own roots, works entirely within the Christian imagination. It’s a deviant form of cultural Christianity. It’s so deeply lost in irrationality and anti-natural woo that it often looks like cognitive illness. So I wanted a rational pagan philosophy that honors nature by trying to see it as clearly as possible – by looking at it through scientific eyes. Fortunately, naturalistic and atheistic pagan groups are emerging, and they need philosophical texts. They need to see how their new thoughts emerge from ancient pagan roots. These three purposes, conceived during the Before Time, have now collided with the coronavirus. I had hoped (and still may hope) to set this text into motion as an academic book, to be published by an academic press. But that process will take many years, and during that time it is likely I will get the virus – I am not sure that I will survive. The long road from manuscript to published academic book now seems very uncertain. And the economics of academic publishing make it less and less desirable. Academic books have become unaffordable. Some other path forward is needed. Right now, I’m happy to freely provide the current draft of this book to those who may benefit from it. But this is a draft. It will continue to be revised. A series of videos for this book is available at my website:

www.ericsteinhart.com/paganism/paganism-videos.html

And they are available at my YouTube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/c/EricSteinhart

Eric Steinhart 28 May 2020

8 1. Concentrating 1. Philosophical Paganism

here were many centers of ancient philosophical activity.1 These centers include ancient China, India, Greece, the Yoruba empire, and the Mayan and Aztec empires. Here we will focus on the philosophical tradition which began in ancient Greece, which spread into Rome, and then into Europe, the Americas, and elsewhere. The major schools of ancient Greek thought were Pythagoreanism, Stoicism, Cynicism, Skepticism, Platonism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism. There were other minor schools. Among these schools, we have the most surviving literature from the Platonists and the Stoics. These two great schools went on to influence much later philosophy. Since we know the most about the Platonists and Stoics, we will focus on them here. Many philosophical cultures were pagan. Paganism contrasts with the cultures of the Abrahamic religions (mainly, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Within the Western philosophical tradition, the main contrast is with Christianity. The pagan cultures were those cultures which came before Christianity, or which were colonized and dominated by expanding Christian empires. Many thinkers in ancient Greece and Rome lived before the advent of Christianity – they were pagans. As Christianity rose to power, many fought against it – they too were pagans. After Christianity became the dominant religion in Europe, many ancient pagan thinkers were interpreted in ways that were favorable to the Christian religion. But the fact remains that they were pagans. They were not Christians, and they were not trying to be Christians. And we will respect the fact that they were pagans. They were not monotheists; they were polytheists. And while some of them used the term “God”, they did not use it to refer to any Abrahamic deity. We will also respect the fact that Yoruba thinkers, and Mayan and Aztec thinkers, were also not Christians. They were also pagans in their own ways. Although most philosophical pagans are long dead, we are living now. And while we cannot walk backwards into the past, we can help ancient thinkers walk forwards into the present and future. A philosophical pagan is somebody who is living now and who seeks to make the ideas and practices of ancient pagan philosophers relevant in contemporary life. Of course, there are many ways to be a philosophical pagan. You might work on making the ideas and practices of ancient Mayan or Yoruba cultures relevant to the present. We will refer to their ideas. But our focus here will be on the ancient Platonists and Stoics. So a philosophical pagan is a living person who seeks to make ancient Platonic and Stoic ideas and practices relevant to life today. To make those ideas relevant today, we need to harmonize them with modern ideas. Since ancient Greece and Rome, humanity has made great progress. We have made great progress in science. While the ancients thought our sun orbited our earth, we know our earth orbits our sun. So we cannot and will not accept any ancient ideas that conflict with our best science. We have made great progress in mathematics and logic. While the ancients did not have the number zero, or set theory, we do. While they did not have the

9 predicate calculus or advanced computers, we do. It would be absurd to refuse to use the number zero or to smash our computers. So we will need to revise ancient ideas to bring them into harmony with modern science, mathematics, and logic. We have likewise made great progress in philosophy. While much ancient thought assumed mind-body dualism, our best current theories of mentality are purely physicalistic. To make ancient practices relevant today, we need to harmonize them with modern practices. We have made great progress in the technical arts like medicine and engineering. It would be unethical, even criminal, to practice Roman medicine today, or to build a bridge using ancient Greek techniques. We have made great progress in our political and ethical ways of life. Ancient cultures practiced slavery and blood sacrifice. Ancient cultures were often extremely patriarchical and misogynistic. Those aspects of ancient cultures were and still are unethical. They ought to remain dead and buried. To make the practices of ancient paganism relevant in contemporary life requires revising them to cohere with our best ethical and political regulations.

2. We Welcome Everybody

Philosophical paganism breaks up ancient Platonism and Stoicism into fragments. It tries to reassemble them into a single coherent structure. Much of this structure is based on the late Platonism of Plotinus. Plotinus (204-270 AD) was a Roman thinker. He wrote down his thoughts in a book that came to be known as The Enneads. It was edited by his student Porphyry (233-305 AD). Plotinus was able to synthesize many different strands of ancient thought into a single structure. Philosophical paganism revises this structure in a modern way. It accepts some aspects of the Plotinian system, but rejects others. It breaks old things up and puts them back together in a new way. As expected, this new structure is pagan rather than Abrahamic. This means that it is not monotheistic. Nor does it accept any Abrahamic religion as providing the one true path to salvation or enlightenment. How could it? Many ancient thinkers never even heard of the Abrahamic religions. And as Christianity rose in the ancient world, pagan philosophers referred to the Christians as atheists – those who do not worship the gods. Ancient pagan philosophers did not clearly distinguish between religion and philosophy. Medieval Christian thinkers did not clearly draw that distinction either. That distinction appears in the Enlightenment. Thus modern philosophy becomes increasingly secular. The failure to separate religion from philosophy is an ancient error (like slavery and misogyny) to which we do not wish to return. Philosophical paganism is secular rather than religious. Since it is secular, it is irreligious. To say that philosophical paganism is irreligious does not mean that it is anti-religious. On the contrary, philosophical paganism has much in common with many religions. What does it mean to be secular? It means that we welcome all religious interpretations equally. We welcome modern neopagans. If Druids or pantheists can use the ideas in philosophical paganism, then peace be upon them. We welcome modern Abrahamists. If Christians can use these ideas, then peace be upon them too. After all, Platonism and Stoicism both greatly influenced Christianity. The theology of Hobbes inherits much from the Stoics. The theology of Paul Tillich inherits much from the Platonists. So if there are Christians who want to develop philosophical paganism in their own ways, then more power to them. Nevertheless, the tale that runs from paganism to Christianity is a

10 tale that has been told many times. Moreover, telling that tale just reinforces the notion that the pagans were destined to become Christians. It fails to respect the distinctiveness of their cultures. So here we will focus on the modern pagan ways of developing ancient paganism. We will talk about modern forms of polytheism. We will discuss Wiccan theologies and rituals. We will talk about new forms of Stoicism, and show how Stoic ideas appear in modern astrology. We will talk about ecstatic dancing in raves, about fire circles, about transformational festivals like Burning Man. We will talk about modern uses of psychedelics, about self-hacking, about transhumanism. Philosophical pagans are inclusivists rather than exclusivists. We do not exclude any people based on the features of their bodies. Philosophical paganism absolutely rejects all forms of racial exclusion. We reject tribalism, folkism, ethnocentrism, racism, and fascism. Likewise we absolutely reject all forms of sexual exclusion. Our inclusivity goes all the way: we are universalists. Philosophical paganism welcomes all persons of all nations, ethnicities, races, even species. If there were Neanderthals alive today, philosophical pagans would welcome them as fellow human animals. And if we evolve into other types of humans, or produced transhumans, philosophical pagans will welcome them too. If robots ever become rational and morally self-aware, then they too will be welcome. All persons, that is, all rational moral agents, are equally welcome here. Accordingly, just as all races are equally welcome in philosophical paganism, so all sexes and genders are equally welcome. Male and female have equal status in every way (sexually, morally, legally, politically, economically, and so on). The old pagans had both gods and goddesses. Thus philosophical paganism rejects patriarchy. By the same logic, it rejects matriarchy. Neither sex is superior to the other. Likewise, philosophical paganism welcomes all sexual orientations and genders. We welcome the transgendered as well as those with ambiguous or indeterminate genders and sexualities. Philosophical pagans begin with logic. Logic is the most basic science. From logic, we move to mathematics. Mathematics is also scientific. From mathematics, we move to computer science and information theory. These are sciences too. From these formal sciences, we move into the empirical sciences like physics, chemistry, biology, and so on. We say the objects discussed in the sciences are natural objects. The objects discussed in both the formal and the empirical sciences are all natural objects. These natural objects include particular things. But they also include the properties of those particulars and the relations between them. And philosophical pagans are naturalists: we affirm that all existing objects are natural objects. If an object is not discussed in one of the sciences, then it is not part of nature, and it does not exist. We thus deny the existence of non- natural objects. We don’t say ghosts are unnatural; we say they don’t exist. We strive to make our thought consistent with science. When we appeal to evidence, we appeal to publicly verifiable testimony of our senses; we do not permit any private revelations. We do not listen to the voices in our heads or trust our visions. Since philosophical paganism is naturalistic, and since the sciences do not study any theistic deities, philosophical paganism is non-theistic. We do not recognize any theistic deities. It should be clear that there are non-theistic conceptions of deities and non-theistic religions. There are religious naturalists. But we reject any religious practices that require non-natural agents. Since petitionary prayers ask for help from non-natural agents, philosophical pagans reject petitionary prayer as absurd.

11 3. Concentrating Rituals

With these thoughts in mind, consider a practice common to many ancient philosophers. These thinkers often began their works with prayers or invocations to gods. The ancient pagan thinker Plato opens his Timaeus with an invocation to a god (27b-d; see 48d-e). For another invocation, we can turn to Iamblichus. Iamblichus was an ancient Platonic philosopher from the region we now call Syria. He was born in about 245 ACE and died about 325 ACE. He was a student of Porphyry; but Porphyry was a student of Plotinus; so Iamblichus was a grand-student of Plotinus. Iamblichus starts his book On the Pythagorean Way of Life with an invocation to the gods. Christian philosophers inherited this practice from the pagans. Augustine starts The City of God by calling upon God; Anselm starts the Proslogion with a prayer. Should we start with a prayer or invocation? There are three main reasons why we should not. The first is that philosophical paganism is secular; but prayer is religious. The second is that philosophical paganism is inclusivist. If we prayed to some deity, which deity would it be? Should we pray to Apollo? To Odin? To Osiris? If we pray to some particular deity in some particular pantheon, it would look like we are excluding other deities of other pantheons. Should we pray to God? Which God? The third reason against prayer is that philosophical paganism is naturalistic. Prayers are usually addressed to supernatural agents, such as saints or deities. Since we do not recognize any supernatural agents, we do not have anybody to pray to. Of course, these reasons can be challenged. Philosophical pagans can be religious. And you can pray to the deity of your choice. And there are atheistic (and non-petitionary) forms of prayer. And perhaps you’re not even a philosophical pagan. So, if you want to open with a prayer, go right ahead – you’ll be following in a noble and ancient tradition. One of the great aspects of paganism is religious tolerance. Philosophical pagans recognize your religious sovereignty, that is, your right to religiously do as you see fit. But prayers and invocations of deities are not the only kinds of starting rituals. You might perform some ritual to set your intentions. Rituals performed for setting intentions are not directed towards any deity. They are purely psychological rituals, aimed at self- transformation. So they are not religious; perhaps they are spiritual. A ritual for setting your intentions is a way of concretely marking the fact that you intend something. For example, you intend to study philosophical paganism and to try to understand it. Many intention-setting rituals involve props like candles. So you could light a candle each time before you study this book. Its flame can symbolize positive values like knowledge and truth. The act of lighting it can symbolize moving from ignorance to enlightenment. Of course, if you don’t want to perform any such ritual, then don’t. Other starting rituals traditionally involve circles. Many ancient Greeks and Romans cast circles for protection against evil spirits (Stewart, 1994). Many Platonic thinkers also cast circles in their theurgical rituals, which aimed to help them channel divine powers. Today many Wiccans and other neopagans cast circles for their rituals (Lipp, 2003; Sabin, 2011: ch. 5). Philosophical pagans only cast circles for naturalistic purposes. For example, to psychologically protect yourself from distractions, you can cast a circle around yourself, or around your workspace. You might put your phone outside of the circle. This is a purely psychological action, which aims only at personal self-discipline.

12 By casting a circle, you indicate to yourself your commitment to focus without distraction. You reinforce your intention through an action. Many pagans invoke powers when they cast their circles. To cast a circle is to concentrate power within it. If you want to invoke any powers when you cast your circle, then they will be only natural powers which already exist in the depths of your own body. You will be summoning and focusing your own virtues. And since philosophers strive for rationality, the circles we cast are circles of reasoning. Since casting a circle is closing the circle, we invoke reason as a closing power. Casting a circle is indicated by a glyph or sigil with triangles pointed inwards. So if you start with a circle-casting ritual, you’ll declare that your circle of reasoning is closed. The work of rationality now takes place inside of the closed circle – in a safe and sacred space. If you want to cast a circle of reasoning, then cast it; but if you don’t, then don’t. The main point of the ancient pagan practice of invocation is to get you to think about both the nature of philosophy and the role of practices. You might think that philosophy is just the purely intellectual pursuit of truth, like a kind of higher-level science. But that was not the ancient pagan way. Ancient pagan philosophers performed many rituals. They thought of philosophies as ways of life (Hadot, 1995). Philosophies involved practical methods and exercises for self-transformation. They included techniques for self-discipline. They often aimed at the purification of the self. They aimed to change your ordinary self into an enlightened self, a self with extraordinary virtue and wisdom. The ancient Greeks and Romans referred to an enlightened self as a sage. To become a sage, the late Roman thinker Porphyry argued that you must live an ascetic life. You must avoid the things that contaminate the soul. You must avoid eating meat, having sexual intercourse, and indulging in passionate emotions (On Abstinence, 1.57.7-13, 4.20). As usual, it’s up to you whether you want to avoid those things or not. The point is that ancient philosophers were more than just thinkers. Consider one more point from Porphyry. The ancient pagans practiced blood sacrifice – they killed living animals for their deities. Porphyry objected to blood sacrifice. He regarded it as murdering an innocent animal. He said pagans should only sacrifice non-living things. He also thought of philosophy as sacrificial action (On Abstinence, 2.34-6). He says “we offer to the gods, more than anything else, the first- fruits of contemplation” (2.35). And he says “we should offer to the divinities the first- fruits of our conceptions of their transcendent excellence, giving them thanks for the contemplations which they impart to us” (2.34). Here Porphyry was following the concept of sacrifice outlined by Sallustius. Sallustius was a Roman leader and friend of the Emperor Julian (331-363 AD), who was the last pagan Emperor. Sallustius wrote a short treatise On the Gods and the World (GW). Two sections (14-15) discuss sacrifices. And while the sacrifices do not change the deities, they change those who make the sacrifices. Sacrifices were acts of thanks-giving. By offering a sacrifice to Athena, you could thank Athena for blessing you with wisdom. Of course, since we are naturalists, philosophical pagans do not offer sacrifices to any deities. We do not have any gods or goddesses to thank. But even atheists owe debts. So perhaps philosophy can be thought of as giving thanks to our earth, to our sun, to our universe, or to existence itself. How you think of the process of doing philosophy is entirely up to you. Just bear in mind that the ancient pagans thought of doing philosophy as a meaningful kind of action.

4. The Progression of Elements

Philosophical paganism begins with the absolute absence of all beings, that is, with non-being. The element of water symbolizes the abyss of non-being. Non-being is also the Zero. As pure negativity, non-being negates itself.

The self-negation of non-being generates being-itself. The element of earth symbolizes being-itself. Just as non-being was the Zero, so being-itself is the One. Being-itself is the ground of all the beings. It is the pure power of creativity. Non-being is maximally self- inconsistent. Since being-itself emerges from the self-negation of this inconsistency, being-itself maximizes consistency.

The creative self-consistency of being-itself is the dyad. The dyad is symbolized by the Two. Since consistency holds among propositions, the creative self-consistency of the dyad generates all logically possible propositions. It assigns truth-values to them in the way that generates that system of beings than which none greater is consistently definable. From the propositions, the Two

generates sets. From sets it generates numbers and bit strings. It fills the sky with abstract objects. So they dyad is the air.

As the creativity of the One flows through abstract objects, it generates a maximally valuable structure of concreteness. Bit strings generate cosmic computations, which reify themselves into the demiurges. These demiurgic machines contain universes. As demiurges beget demiurges, they fill up the world tree with increasingly complex universes. Some of these contain rocks,

plants, animals, humans, transhumans, and superhuman animals, that is, deities. These rise into the transfinite. All concreteness bears the mark of fire.

The creativity of the One generates unsurpassable sequences of surpassable objects. These unsurpassable sequences reify themselves into absolutely infinite objects – transcendental objects. An unsurpassable series of surpassable minds is a Divine Mind, a mind existing at the level of a proper class. And there are absolutely infinitely many Divine Minds. All transcendental objects are illuminated by the Good, which is itself a transcendental proposition. The Good is light.

14 2. Water: The Zero is Non-Being 1. Hesiod: The Theogony and its Theonyms

hilosophical paganism follows a tradition that parallels the tradition of Western philosophy. This tradition runs from the ancient Greeks to modern cultures in Europe and the Americas. The ancient Greek poet Hesiod told the story of the origin of the world. Hesiod lived in the 8th century BC, and he narrated one of the earliest Greek origin myths. He tells his origin myth in his book The Theogony (1914: 116-34). The story of the origin of the world is not really a creation story – there is no Creator. It is mysterious, and does not give any explanations or reasons for the existence of the world. It starts out with Chaos, which appears for no reason. Hesiod says that “first Chaos came to be,” but not how or why. After Chaos, the Earth appears. Then Hesiod gives a long family narrative: the titanic deities emerge and start having sex with each other. After a few generations, the Olympian gods and goddesses are born. They are called “Olympian” because they are said to live on the top of Mount Olympus in Greece. These are the twelve major gods and goddesses of the Greek and Roman religion. Hesiod’s story makes several interesting points for philosophical paganism. The first is that nature begins in chaos. Chaos is associated with darkness (Erebus) and night (Nyx). Nature emerges from the self-organization of chaos. The second point is that The Theogony involves many divine names. These are names that have significance in ancient Greek religion. Since they are religiously significant names, they are theonyms. The third point is that the primal entities mentioned in The Theogony may or may not be deities. For philosophical pagans, deities are superhuman animals. Gods are male deities while goddesses are female deities. Since Chaos and Earth are not superhuman animals, they are not deities. On the contrary, they are elemental powers, and they come before the deities. But the names “Chaos” and “Earth” are theonyms, as are the names “Rhea” and “Chronos”. Ancient pagan philosophers will interpret theonyms in many different ways. Sometimes theonyms refer to deities, sometimes they do not. For example, sometimes “Zeus” refers to a superhuman animal who lives on top of Mount Olympus, while other times “Zeus” refers to an all-pervasive fire-energy. These two Zeuses are not identical. One theonym has many senses and refers to different things. The fourth point is that chaos somehow organizes itself into orderly structures like the solar system as well as all the deities. The fifth point is that the deities emerge in nature. They are not the creators of nature – they are entirely natural things that occur in the midst of other natural things. Most of the titanic and Olympian deities emerge through the natural process of sexual reproduction. They have bodies. These deities are not supernatural. Philosophical pagans reject all supernaturalism. We are religiously interested in nature. Thus we are religious naturalists or spiritual naturalists. But the deities arrive late in The Theogony. Since chaos comes first, we start with chaos.

15 2. Peirce: The Self-Negation of Non-Being

The story from Hesiod aims to explain the origin of the world, and Hesiod started with chaos. Fast forward to nineteenth century America, where the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce was also talking about the origin of the world. Like Hesiod, Peirce also starts with chaos. He writes that in the beginning “there was a chaos of unpersonalized feeling, which being without connection or regularity would properly be without existence” (6.33). There is no law at the origin: “We look back toward a point in the infinitely distant past when there was no law but mere indeterminacy” (1.409). Finally, he says “Reality, then is persistence, is regularity. In the original chaos, where there was no regularity, there was no existence” (1.175). He writes that “The state of things in the infinite past is chaos, tohu bohu, the nothingness of which consists in the total absence of regularity” (8.317). So Peirce seems to equate chaos with nothingness. Peirce says that any truly ultimate theory about our universe cannot start with our universe. You can’t start with the thing you are trying to explain. To explain our universe, we have to start with “a state of things in which that universe did not exist, and consider how it could have arisen.”(6.214). A truly ultimate theory cannot start with anything. If it starts with anything, then it isn’t ultimate. If it starts with God, it isn’t ultimate – why does God exist? If it starts with empty space, it isn’t ultimate – why does the space exist? Since a truly ultimate theory cannot start with anything, it has to start with nothing. Peirce says “If we are to proceed in a logical and scientific manner, we must, in order to account for the whole universe, suppose an initial condition in which the whole universe was non-existent, and therefore a state of absolute nothing.” (6.215) He says: “The initial condition, before the universe existed, was . . . a state of just nothing at all, not even a state of emptiness, for even emptiness is something.” (6.215). A truly ultimate theory is a metaphysical theory. So a metaphysical theory has to start with nothing. But if it starts with nothing, it has to end with something. After all, our universe does exist. So why there is something rather than nothing? Peirce says the original nothingness is indeterminate possibility: “it is absolutely undefined and unlimited possibility – boundless possibility. There is no compulsion and no law. It is boundless freedom. So of potential being there was in that initial state no lack” (6.217). We agree that the original non-being is pure potentiality for being. The original nothingness operates according to the logic of freedom. According to this logic, the original nothingness turns its negative power back onto itself and annuls itself. The negation sign in logic is the tilde ~. So the turning of the negative back into itself can be illustrated by the glyph or sigil in which a tilde applies to itself in a circle. This glyph is a Platonic image – it exists at the bottom of the Divided Line, projected on the wall of the Cave. It’s a visible symbol for an invisible abstract logical truth. Peirce says: “The logic of freedom, or potentiality, is that it shall annul itself. For if it does not annul itself, it remains a completely idle and do-nothing potentiality; and a completely idle potentiality is annulled by its complete idleness” (6.219). The twentieth century German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1998) says the nothing noths itself (“Das Nichts nichtet”). Non-being negates its own negativity. Pure self-negation negates itself. The best explanation for why there is something rather than nothing is that nothing negates itself. And since any other

16 explanation starts with something, the self-negation of non-being is the only explanation for being.

3. The Abyss of Non-Being

Although Peirce starts with the Zero, other philosophers seem to disagree. Consider the ancient Roman philosopher Plotinus (205 – 270 AD). Plotinus was a follower of Plato. He is sometimes called a Neoplatonist, but I will just call him a Platonist, since that is what he called himself. Most of our knowledge of Plotinus comes from his student Porphyry. Porphyry took notes on Plotinus’s lectures, and collected those notes into a book called the Enneads. The Enneads divides into six major parts, each of which is called (not surprisingly) an ennead. Each ennead divides into tractates (chapters) and then into sections. I will abbreviate the Enneads as E. So E 1.2.3.4-5 means the First Ennead, Second Tractate, Third Section, Lines four to five. Although Peirce starts with the Zero, Plotinus says he starts with the One. Should we start with the One or with the Zero? Three reasons compel us to start before the One. The first reason comes from arithmetic. The Platonists were greatly inspired by Pythagorean mathematical metaphysics. Thus The Theology of Arithmetic, attributed to Iamblichus, does its theology by meditating on the numbers from one to ten. Why didn’t the Platonists start with the number zero? They didn’t start with it because they didn’t know about it. The Platonists lacked the number zero; however, given their close attention to arithmetic, Inge (1918: 107-8) argues that if they had the zero, they would have started with it. But the Zero comes before the One. The second reason comes from the way Plotinus talks about the One. He often says the One precedes existence. It comes before being. Since the One is the source of the existence of all beings, it cannot be any being: “in order that Being may be brought about, the source must be no Being but Being’s generator, in what is to be thought of as the original act of generation” (E 5.2.1.5-10).2 The One is emptiness: “It is precisely because there is nothing within the One that all things are from it” (E 5.2.1.5-10). The One can be understood only negatively: “this Absolute One is none of the things of which it is the Source. Its nature is that nothing can be affirmed of it – it cannot be said to exist, nor to have any form” (E 3.8.10.28-30; see 5.5.6.9-15, 5.5.13.1-9). He writes: “Surely the One must be able to say of itself ‘I possess Being?’ But it does not possess Being” (E 6.7.38.10-15). According to Plotinus, the One does not exist; it is empty; it can only be referred to through negations. So his One-Before-Being looks like a Zero. The third reason involves an argument from ultimacy: (1) If the ultimate origin is any being, then it is logically possible to ask why that being exists. More deeply, it is logically possible to wonder why there is something rather than nothing.3 (2) So, if the ultimate origin has being, then there exists some reason for its existence, a reason which exists before that being. (3) Hence no being can be ultimate. (4) It is therefore not logically possible to begin with any being; on the contrary, it is logically necessary to begin with non-being. (5) But non-being corresponds to the Zero. If the Zero is ultimate, then it is not privative or parasitic on being. It is not a hole in being. For these three reasons, it is plausible to say that Plotinus wasn’t really talking about the One. When he was talking about the One-Before-Being, he was really talking about the Zero. So, whenever he talks about the One-Before-Being, we will replace that false

17 One with the Zero. By these three reasons, we summon the Zero into our circle. To summon the Zero is to let the ground dissolve beneath our feet. Figure 2.1 shows how the Zero, as the abyss, appears below the horizon. The Zero is non-being. If it is logically necessary to begin with non-being, then being must emerge from non-being. Non-being only negates; but non-being has only itself to negate; thus non-being negates itself; by negating its own non-being, it makes being be (Peirce, 1965: 6.219; Heidegger, 1998; Nozick, 1981: 123).4 Why is there something rather than nothing? Because the nothing negates itself. Of course, if Carnap (1931) is right, then our reasoning fails. But his logical positivism fails on precisely the principle through which the Zero succeeds: self-application (Ayer & Copleston, 1949). So we proceed.

Figure 2.1 The Zero below the horizon of being.

Plotinus links non-being with evil (E 1.8.3.4-12). His concept of evil is privative (E 1.8.5, 2.4.5-15). Just as cold is the absence of heat, and shadow is the absence of light, so evil is the absence of good. On this view, the Zero is evil. Fortunately, the Zero does not exist. But if the Zero is evil, its evil is not moral wickedness or viciousness. Its evil is logical. It emerges in complex systems as conflicts between goods. Plotinus also links non-being with matter. Since matter is absolute privation, it lacks existence (E 1.8.5.5- 15, 2.9.14-16). Matter is truly non-being (E 3.6.7.4-15). Matter is non-being; non-being is evil; and evil is matter.5 However, matter is not physical stuff. Matter is impairment. Hence by negating itself, the impairment of matter impairs itself. From this logical self- impairment of matter, there emerges the power of self-surpassing. From the conflicts among the goods, there emerges greater good. For example, the violent struggle between organisms drives the evolution of more valuable forms of life. By rising towards their own suns, the trees all cast shadows on each other. By rising ever higher towards its sun, every tree surpasses and redeems every shadow cast upon it. The Directionality Argument shows that it is for the best that non-being negates itself. It goes like this: (1) If non-being does not negate itself, then there are no beings. (2) If there are no beings, then there are no goods, not even any abstract goods. There are no relations or properties based on value. Since axiology is the general theory of value, there are no axiological properties or relations. (3) Therefore, if non-being does not negate itself, then there are no goods at all. (4) But the absence of all goods is the worst of all logically possible situations. It is that than which no worse is logically possible. (5) Any failure which entails the worst is for the worst. (6) Therefore, if non-being does not negate itself, then that failure is for the worst. (7) But if non-being does negate itself, then that success is for the best. (8) Consequently, it is for the best that non-being negates itself. Since it is for the best, the self-negation of non-being points at the best; it points towards absolute value-maximization. By this pointing, it brings the best into being; but the best is the Good; hence the self-negation of non-being brings the Good into existence. It does this by bringing all logically possible goods into being.

18 4. The Naturalness of Non-Being

Philosophical paganism starts with logic. We affirm that logic is the most basic science; all other sciences grow out of and depend on logic. Moreover, we affirm that nature is logical. Since logic is the most basic science, logic describes the most basic aspects of nature. It follows that the objects of logic are natural objects. But what are these logical objects? Our most basic logic is the propositional calculus. It works with propositions, which are the abstract meanings of sentences. For example, the German sentence “Sokrates ist ein Mann” and the Spanish sentence “Sócrates es un hombre” have the same meaning. Their shared abstract meaning is a proposition. Of course, we have to use some human language to talk about propositions. So we will use English. But we will distinguish propositions from sentences by writing them in parentheses. So the German sentence “Sokrates ist ein Mann” and the Spanish sentence “Sócrates es un hombre” express the proposition that (Socrates is a man). Likewise the sentence “Hypatia is a woman” expresses the proposition that (Hypatia is a woman). Since logic talks about propositions, propositions are logical objects. And since logical objects are natural objects, propositions are natural. Nature includes propositions. The propositional calculus includes names which stand for propositions. Thus we can let the name P refer to the proposition that (Socrates is a man) while the name Q refers to (Hypatia is a woman). The propositions P and Q are simple propositions. But simple propositions combine to make more complex propositions. One way to combine them is conjunction: if P and Q are propositions, then (P and Q) is a proposition. So the proposition (P and Q) is ((Socrates is a man) and (Hypatia is a woman)). Another way to combine them is disjunction: if P and Q are propositions, then (P or Q) is a proposition. So the proposition (P or Q) is ((Socrates is a man) or (Hypatia is a woman)). A third way to combine propositions is implication: if P and Q are propositions, then (P implies Q) is a proposition. Suppose we let R be the proposition that (Socrates is mortal). Then the proposition that (if Socrates is a man then Socrates is mortal) can be written as (if P then R), which is equivalent to (P implies R). Finally, the fourth way to make a more complex proposition is negation: if P is a proposition, then (not P) is a proposition. Thus (not (Socrates is a man)) is a proposition. We can express this as “it is not the case that Socrates is a man”; but in English we usually say “Socrates is not a man”. The logical operators include (P and Q), (P or Q), (if P then Q), and (not P). Just as logical objects are natural objects, so logical operators are natural operators. The logical operation of negation is fundamental. The most basic laws of logic involve negation. One of these basic laws is the law of non-contradiction. It states that every contradiction is false. A contradiction is the conjunction of a proposition and its negation. Thus ((Socrates is a man) and (Socrates is not a man)) is a contradiction. It is symbolized as (P and (not P)). If we use the ampersand & to indicate conjunction, and the tilde ~ to indicate negation, then we can write this contradiction as (P & ~P). The law of non-contradiction states that, for any proposition P, it is not the case that (P & ~P). Thus ~(P & ~P). Another basic law of logic is the law of bivalence, which states that every proposition P is either true or false. Thus (P or ~P). Another basic law states that the negative of the negative is the positive. Thus ~~P is P. Since negation is a logical operation, it is a natural operation. Nature includes negation.

19 Sometimes we negate the properties of a thing: John is not happy. But other times we negate the existence of a thing: round squares are not; unicorns are not; phlogiston is not. What do all these purely negative propositions have in common? These negative propositions look like propositions that attribute properties to things. They are similar to statements like apples are red; fire trucks are red; blood is red. From those statements, we infer that the apple, fire truck, and blood all have the property of redness. It looks like they all share redness in common. So what about the round squares, the unicorns, and the phlogiston? It looks like they all share notness in common. They share non-being. Of course, if we say these things are not, then we cannot mean that there are some things which are not. We cannot mean that there are some existing things that have the property of not existing. We cannot mean that there are some round squares which are not. That would be a contradiction. We can only mean that non-being is not. The common meaning shared by all these negative propositions is that non-being is not. Consequently, logic involves non-being. Non-being is a logical object. Of course, this does not mean that non-being exists – it only means that logic talks about non-being. Logic includes negation. Non-being is a logical object; but logical objects are natural objects; so non- being is a natural object. Our naturalism includes non-being. Philosophical paganism starts with logic – it’s the core science. The logical concept of consistency drives the emergence of mathematics. Mathematics includes that system of beings than which none greater is consistently definable. Out of mathematics, there emerges computer science – the science of mathematics set into concrete motion. From computer science, we proceed to information theory. Logic, mathematics, computer science, and information theory are all formal sciences. From these, we move on to the empirical sciences – the study of particular concrete structures in our universe. This is the beginning of physics. From physics, we get chemistry, biology, and all the other empirical sciences. Figure 2.2 illustrates the progression of sciences.

Figure 2.2 The progression of sciences.

20 5. Fathomless Depths of Power

Non-being is the Zero. Plotinus puts the Zero under and below all things. To be under and below all things is to serve as their source. So the Zero is the hidden spring from which all rivers flow (E 3.8.10.5-10). Like the ocean, the Zero is a deep abyss. He writes that the Zero is “fathomless depths of power” (E 6.9.6.10-15). The Zero is the abyss of nothingness. When the modern pagan writer Starhawk presents her creation myth, she talks about “the abyss of the outer darkness” (1999: 41). She is right to associate the abyss with darkness – here there is no sun, no light. One classical symbol for this abyss is water; hence the element of water symbolizes non- being. An upside-down triangle sigil is traditionally used to refer to water. Figure 2.3 uses the symbol of ocean waves to depict the abyss of non-being. By describing the self- negation of non-being, we have summoned water into our circle of reasoning. Through its association with water, we refer to the abyss as an elemental power. The elemental powers are the most basic powers. Like all elements, water is genderless; it is neither any god nor goddess – it is not a divine animal, it is not a deity. Since the abyss is not a deity, it is wrong to treat it as a divine person. Although it can be used in ritual as an impersonal element, it makes no sense to pray to it, to praise it, or to worship it. Nevertheless, you might (or might not) think that we ought to give thanks to the abyss. We owe our very existence to its self-negation. Some (but not all) philosophical pagans may therefore want to pause to perform some ritual of thanks-giving. This ritual might be as simple as saying: “Holy water, we thank you for your self-negation.” A more complex ritual might use liquid water in some symbolic way. Some people will not have any interest in such rituals. What you do is entirely up to you.

Figure 2.3 The abyss of non-being.

21 3. Earth: The Ground of Being 1. The One is Being-Itself

ero negates its own negativity. But the negative of the negative is the positive. The self-negation of non-being is being. However, just as non-being is not the absence of this or that being, so the being that emerges from its self-negation is not the presence of this or that being. It is not some being among beings, not some thing among things. What emerges from the self-negation of non- being is pure existence, it is pure being-itself. Being-itself is ultimate, original, simple, and somehow the source of the being of all other things. But Plato argues that the One has all these features. Plato discusses the One in his dialogue Parmenides. Because of its ultimacy, the One is presented in paradoxical terms. The Parmenides is far from clear. But it ends with this question: “If there is no one, but only things other than one, what must follow?” (165e). And it offers this answer: “If there is no one, there is nothing at all” (166b). Hence Plato portrays the One as the source of all beings. All beings somehow emerge from the One. An analogy now justifies the identification of the One with being-itself. The Zero corresponds to non-being. Just as non-being negates itself to make being-itself, so the Zero negates itself to make the One. Hence the One corresponds to being-itself. Plotinus gives two reasons to identify being-itself with the One. The first reason is that the One is the source of the existence of all the beings. Plotinus writes of the One “That which stands as the ultimate source of every thing is not a thing but is distinct from all things: it is not a member of the totality of beings, but the origin of their being.” (E 5.3.11.20-25; see 5.2.1.1-2). But being-itself is also such a source. And since there cannot be two such sources (E 5.4.1.15-17), being-itself is identical with the One. The second reason is that the One is the power of the abyss manifest as existence; it is that power which makes beings be (E 5.1.6). But the same holds for being-itself. If it were not for the self-negation of non-being, there would not be any beings. Hence the self- negation of non-being is that power which makes beings be. But that self-negation is being-itself; hence being-itself is that power which makes beings be. Again, since there cannot be two such powers, being-itself is identical with the One. From these ancient Platonists, we fast-forward again to Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce said the self-negation of nothingness converts indeterminate possibility into determinate possibility. Peirce says that “unbounded potentiality became potentiality of this or that sort” (6.220). For Peirce, a determinate possibility is some quality: “Thus the zero of bare possibility, by evolutionary logic, leapt into the unit of some quality” (6.220). Thus Peirce argues that the Zero of non-being turns into the One of being. This leap is illustrated by the glyph or sigil in which the 1 appears above the circled 0. This glyph is a Platonic image: although it points to the truth, it remains only an image at the bottom of the Divided Line, projected on the wall of the Cave. Figure 3.1 shows the 1 appearing

22 above the horizon of being. This is the sunrise of the One (E 5.5.8.1-10). The binary digits (0 and 1) will play important roles later. Peirce uses redness to illustrate the conversion of an indeterminate possibility (something is possible) into a determinate possibility: “Something is possible; Red is something; therefore, Red is possible” (6.220). More generally: something is possible; property P is something; therefore, P is possible. Peirce argues that the self-negation of nothingness generates a plenitude of properties (6.189-6.213). These will be mathematical forms.

Figure 3.1 The One above the horizon of being.

Plotinus often identifies the One with the Platonic Form of the Good. Plato described the Form of the Good in three parables (Republic, 506-518d): the Parable of the Sun, the Divided Line, and the Myth of the Cave. As we go forward, we will talk extensively about the Good. Right now, we just want to give three reasons for saying that the One is not the Good. The first is that the basis for their equation is obscure (Jackson, 1967: 322; Mortley, 1975: 49; Gerson, 1994: 19-20). The second is that they play two different roles. On the one hand, the One is the source or beginning. Since arche means beginning in ancient Greek, the One is the arche. On the other hand, the Good is the finality or end. For example, the people in the Myth of the Cave climb up the Divided Line towards the Good. So the Good is the goal at which things aim as they strive for self-perfection. Since telos means end in ancient Greek, the Good is the telos. The third reason is that the Good is usually portrayed as an abstract object. But all abstract objects are beings among beings; they are brought into being by the One. So if the Good is an abstract object, then it is not the One. For these three reasons, we separate the One and the Good, placing the One at the bottom of the great chain as the earth and the Good at the top as the sun. The earth is not identical with the sun.

2. The Ontic and the Ontological

Plotinus writes of the One “That which stands as the ultimate source of every thing is not a thing but is distinct from all things: it is not a member of the totality of beings, but the origin of their being.” (E 5.3.11.20-25; see 5.2.1.1-2). So being-itself (that is, the One) is not any being among beings. Plato provided an argument which motivates the thesis that being-itself is not any being. It is his Argument from Resemblance (Republic, 596a-b). Here is a summary: (1) Socrates is human; and Glaucon is human. (2) Since Socrates and Glaucon are both human, they share some one thing in common, namely, their humanity or humanness. (3) But humanity is not Socrates; for if it were, then Socrates would be identical with Glaucon. Likewise humanity is not Glaucon. Therefore, humanity is neither Socrates nor Glaucon. (4) Therefore, the humanity they share in

23 common is some distinct thing. Since you can run this argument for any humans, what all humans share is not some human. Humanity is not a human. The Platonic reasoning can be applied to any kind of thing. Some kinds of things are defined by nouns: humans, animals, organisms, physical things, concrete things, and so on. Others are defined by adjectives: hot things, square things, and so on. The words that define kinds of things are predicates. Most nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs are predicates. To say that some x is a woman, or x is happy, or that x runs, or that x runs quickly, is to apply those predicates to the thing x. The predicates that specify kinds are always contrastive. Some beings are humans, others are not. Some beings are living, while others are not. Some beings are concrete, while others are abstract. Thus kinds of things are specified by predicates that distinguish these things from those things. Predicates that specify contrastive kinds of things are ontic predicates. When the Platonic Argument from Resemblance is applied to any ontic predicate, it yields two results: (1) all beings in some kind share something in common; and (2) what they share in common is not a thing in that kind. Thus life is not a living thing. Now consider all the things that exist. These things are the beings. While the beings vary in all possible ontic ways, they all resemble each other in exactly one way: they all exist. Hence the Argument from Resemblance tells us that there exists something shared in common by all beings. This something is beingness, it is being-itself or existence itself. It is the ground of beings. Here we have to be careful: the something shared by all beings is in fact not any thing at all – it is not a being of any ontic kind. It is not even an abstract essence. The something shared by all beings does not have any ontic properties or stand in any ontic relations. And we have to be even more careful: on the one hand, the Platonic Argument entails that there exists something shared in common by all beings; on the other hand, if being-itself is not a being, then it looks like being-itself does not exist. So it looks like being-itself both exists and does not exist. The apparent contradiction is resolved by drawing a distinction between two ways of existing. The beings exist ontically while being-itself exists ontologically. To say that the One exists ontologically means that ontic distinctions do not apply to it. Just as a mother exists before her child, so the One exists before all ontic distinctions among beings. The child depends for its existence on the mother, but the mother does not depend on the child. Analogously, all ontic distinctions depend on the One, but the One does not depend on them. Philosophers use the concept of priority to refer to this asymmetry: just as the mother is prior to the child, so the One is prior to all ontic distinctions. For Plotinus, the One is prior to all ontic distinctions; it is prior to all predication (E 5.3.12-13, 5.5.6, 5.5.13, 6.7.38, 6.9.3, 6.9.5). Hence the One is prior to simplicity and complexity; it is prior to universality and particularity; it is prior to the abstract and the concrete. The many predicates spring from the One. Ancient thinkers portrayed these ontic predicates as sprouting up from the One like the branches of a tree, known as the Tree of Porphyry. Plotinus often uses the image of a tree to express the way that being-itself unfolds into the many beings (E 3.3.7.10-25, 3.8.10.10-20, 4.4.11.5- 15, 6.8.15.34-8). As this Tree rises, its branches split into contrasting predicates: the abstract versus the concrete; the living versus the non-living; and so on. Figure 3.2 shows the Tree of Porphyry, with being-itself as the root. And in this Tree, being-itself coincides with Oneness – the Tree has one root.

Figure 3.2 A sample Tree of Porphyry.

3. The Logical Analysis of Being-Itself

Some philosophers object that it is absurd to talk about anything that is prior to the logic of predication. To talk about something means to apply predicates to it! So they think it is foolish to talk about being-itself (McLendon, 1960; Fenton, 1965). If they are right, then our reasoning fails. We reply to this objection by turning to modern logic, which is the predicate calculus. Fortunately, we can avoid technicalities. Consider the statement “Socrates exists”. It gets translated into the predicate calculus through a series of paraphrases. Here are the first four:

Socrates exists. There exists something that is Socrates. There exists some x such that x is Socrates. (there exists x)(x is Socrates).

To express the fact of existence, the predicate calculus uses a symbol called the existential quantifier. The existential quantifier is written as a backwards E. So “there exists” is symbolized by ∃. The “there exists” in (there exists x) gets translated into (∃x). So our translation of “Socrates exists” now arrives at:

(∃x)(x is Socrates).

In the expression (∃x), the x is said to be bound to the ∃. We still have to deal with the “is” in the expression (x is Socrates). The word “is” has multiple meanings. Sometimes it indicates that a thing has a property. For example, in “The apple is red”, the word “is” indicates that the apple has the property of redness. But sometimes the word “is” indicates identity. When we say “Batman is Bruce Wayne”, we mean that Batman is identical with Bruce Wayne. When the word “is” indicates identity, we can replace it with the equals sign. For the sake of precision, we write

Batman = Bruce Wayne.

In the expression (x is Socrates), the “is” indicates identity. It means that x is identical with Socrates. So the statement “Socrates exists” is fully translated as

(∃x)(x = Socrates).

The expression (x = Socrates) looks like the mathematical expression (x = 2). The expression (x = 2) indicates that the variable x has the value 2. Likewise, the expression (x = Socrates) means that the variable x has the value Socrates. It means that Socrates is the value of the variable x. Since the variable x is bound to the existential quantifier, Socrates is the value of a bound variable. To say that Socrates exists means that Socrates is the value of a variable that is bound to the existential quantifier. More generally, to say that some being exists means that it is the value of a variable that is bound to the existential quantifier. This is the logic of being. The American philosopher Willard Quine formalized this in his slogan that to be is to be the value of a bound variable (Quine, 1948). This means that variables like x refer to beings, that is, to existing objects or things or entities. But the variable x is not the only symbol that appears in existence statements like (∃x)(x = Socrates). The existential quantifier ∃ also appears in such statements. It refers to the existence of the beings which are the values of its bound variables. It refers to that which comes before all beings, to that on which all beings depend. It refers to being-itself, that is, to the One. The Quinean slogan is not an ontic statement about this being or that being. It is an ontological statement about being- itself. Logic depends on this statement. So it is not foolish to talk about being-itself. On the contrary, logic assumes that we can talk about it. And since being-itself is a logical concept, it is also a scientific concept. Our naturalism welcomes it. On our interpretation of the Quinean slogan, the existential quantifier gives being to the values of the variables bound to it. The ∃ grants being to the x. The existential quantifier symbolizes being- itself, which emerges from the self-negation of non-being. This emergence is indicated by the glyph or sigil with the ∃ above the self-negating tilde. Being-itself gives being to the beings. But how does it do this? This giving is logical. To understand this giving, we need to turn back to the thesis that being-itself is the self- negation of non-being. On the one hand, being-itself is the self-negation of non-being; but non-being is pure self-inconsistency; hence the self-negation of non-being minimizes self-inconsistency; therefore being-itself minimizes self-inconsistency. Being-itself minimizes the inconsistency of being with itself; thus it minimizes the inconsistencies among beings. But how does being-itself do that? By denying existence to all inconsistently definable beings. On the other hand, being-itself is the self-negation of non-being; but non-being is pure self-inconsistency; hence the self-negation of non-being is also maximizes self-consistency; therefore, being-itself maximizes self-consistency. The self-negation of non-being is the self-affirmation of being-itself.

26 Being-itself maximizes the consistency of being with itself; thus it maximizes the consistencies among beings. This is symbolized by the spiral sigil, here interpreted as an outwards expansion from its center. But how does being-itself maximize this consistency? By maximizing self- consistency, being-itself grants existence to the greatest consistently definable system of beings. Being-itself grants existence to that system of definitions than which none greater is consistent. By granting existence to some definition, it grants being to some thing which satisfies that definition. As pure self-consistency, being-itself is that power which gives existence to every consistently definable being. And while there are many proximate sources of your being, this gift is the ultimate source of your being. By turning into itself in its affirmative self-relation, the One called you out of the abyss and into existence. You can (and should) give thanks to the One in return for this gift. This thanks-giving is both atheistic and transitive. It is not mere gratefulness for being, it is the giving of thanks to the One for being. This gift is present in your body as its unity; it is the logical core of your body; it is your depth. You can invoke this depth in atheistic prayer, in ecstatic dance, and other rituals.

4. The Earth Emerges from the Sea

Being-itself emerges from the abyss of non-being like an island from the sea. And Hesiod said that while Chaos came first, Earth came next. Just as the element water symbolized chaotic non-being, so earth symbolizes being-itself. An upside-down triangle with a crossed line is traditionally used as the sigil for earth. Figure 3.3 illustrates the emergence of being-itself like an island rising from the sea. Through its association with earth, we refer to being-itself as an elemental power. But being-itself is the One; so the One is symbolized by earth. By describing the emergence of being-itself, we have welcomed earth into our circle of reasoning. Here some (but not necessarily all) philosophical pagans will want to give thanks to being- itself: “Holy earth, we thank you for your emergence from the sea.” Others may want to perform rituals involving soil, sand, or rocks. What you do is up to you. Starhawk says her ultimate deity “floated in the abyss of the outer darkness” (1999: 41). So the island of earth, floating in the abysmal ocean, corresponds to her ultimate deity. Since Wiccans often associate our planet earth with some goddess, they may want to say that earth is female. On this point, philosophical pagans disagree. No sexual distinctions have emerged in our circle of reasoning, no reproductive work is being done. Like all elements, earth has no gender; hence earth is neither male nor female. Moreover, the elements are not deities; hence elemental earth is neither any god nor any goddess. Our planet (our earth) is not the element of earth. Of course, our earth, or a handful of earth, can be used as a concrete symbol for being-itself, that is, the One. Some philosophical pagans may want to perform rituals giving thanks to the elemental power of being-itself. If they do, earth can be used symbolically. The risen earth serves as a basis or support for all other things. It therefore resembles an altar. On this altar, every existing thing comes into being. Every existing thing is laid out on this altar by the One. As these things are laid out on this altar, as they emerge from being- itself, they are struck by a bolt of lightning from the Good. And when they are struck,

27 they burn with the fire of self-surpassing. As it is consumed by that fire, every thing generates superior versions of itself. As it generates those versions, it is surpassed, it is sacrificed, and it passes out of being. Hence every existing thing is a sacrificial gift, offered by the all-creative One, and accepted by the all-consuming Good. Many pagans have altars in their homes or use them in their rituals (Sabin, 2011: ch. 8). Some philosophical pagans may wish to create their own altars. However, we do not sacrifice any living things on our altars. We imitate the action of the One and the Good by sacrificing only our past selves. On our own altars, we offer our past selves to the Good by changing them into better future selves. Our lives therefore burn with the fire of self-improvement. More concretely, our altars hold only items that have sacred value, or that play roles in our rituals. By the fact that our altars support our sacred objects, we are reminded that being-itself supports all the beings. Altars are foundations.

Figure 3.3 The island of being-itself.

28 4. The Priority of the One 1. The One is not God

round the end of the Roman Empire, the philosopher Proclus (412-485 AD) was one of the last heads of the Platonic Academy. By his day, Christianity had become the dominant religion and philosophy of the Empire. And while Proclus was pagan, he was influenced by Christianity. He uses the theonym “God” to refer to the One. He writes “that the One is God follows from its identity with the Good: for the Good is identical with God, God being that which is beyond all things and to which all things aspire” (1963: prop. 113). Since Platonists standardly use “God” to refer to their Divine Mind, and since the Divine Mind is not the One, it is extremely unusual for a Platonist to say the One is God or that the Good is God. Still, Proclus does say it.6 If somebody thinks the One is God, they might direct religious practices to the One. The ancient Greek and Roman pagans performed many religious acts. They prayed to their gods, they sang hymns of praise, and of course they offered blood sacrifices. But the Platonists did not think of sacrifices or other religious acts as efforts to persuade their deities. For the Platonists, the deities are eternal powers that transcend our universe. They are not changed by human behaviors. Iamblichus talks about this in his book On the Mysteries. We will use M to refer to this book. Iamblichus (M 1.12-15) says the deities are not changed by our prayers or sacrifices. Sallustius (GW ch. 14) agrees that our religious behaviors towards the deities do not affect them. When you perform religious acts, you cannot cause the deities to help you or harm others. Since they argued that worship cannot change the deities, the late Roman Platonists had to come up with some other theory about worship. Iamblichus (M 5.26) says that when we perform religious acts we make ourselves similar to the deities. This similarity makes us more receptive to their benevolence. This greater receptivity will improve your life. Sallustius (GW chs. 15 & 16) affirms that you should perform religious acts to change yourself. Philosophical pagans agree that the purpose of religious or spiritual practices is to improve your own life and to make you a better person. But we still need to ask whether directing acts of worship (like petitionary prayers and sacrifices) towards the One are appropriate methods for changing yourself. They are not. It is wrong to try to change yourself by offering blood sacrifices to the One. Offering those sacrifices changes you in a way that is contrary to the creativity of the One. You become a destroyer of life rather than a creator of life. So if blood sacrifices change you, they change you in the wrong way. They move you away from the One. This means they cause your body to become misaligned or deharmonized with the One. It is also wrong to try to change yourself by offering petitionary prayers to the One. Petitionary prayer changes you from a sovereign person into a beggar. But the One is an overflowing abundance of riches. So petitionary prayer changes you in a way that is contrary to the creativity of the One. It changes you in the wrong way.

29 All acts of worship treat the One in the wrong way: they treat it as if were a king or high status person who rules over your body. But the One is the power of being that dwells in your being. It is therefore wrong to try to change yourself by worshipping the One in any way. Since the theonym “God” always refers to some object of worship, it is always wrong to refer to the One as God. Proclus should have known better. His predecessor Plotinus said the One is not God (E 6.9.6.13-14). He should have followed Plotinus: the One is not God. It is never appropriate to worship the One. Although it’s wrong to worship the One, we can perform religious practices which use the correct relations between our bodies and the One. These practices arouse the One in our bodies. They generate an arrow of power in the body, an arrow which rises from its simple root in the One, through the great tree of possible universes, to its climax in the Good. As the One is aroused in your body, your cognitive bondage to your actual body dissolves. You simulate other possible selves in their own possible universes. You simulate or hallucinate your counterparts. Through this simulation, you become virtually identical with your counterparts. As the power of the One grows in your body, you lose all bondage to contingent selves – your ego dissolves. The climax of this arousal is mystical experience, in which you truthfully signify the One. The methods for arousing the One in your body include the hyper-arousal trances induced by rave dancing. They include ego-dissolution induced by taking psychedelic drugs. During the twentieth century, the Christian theologian Paul Tillich will say that being-itself is God (1951: 205, 235-8). Tillich is using the Christian theonym “God” to refer to being-itself. Philosophical pagans affirm that the theonym “God” belongs to the Abrahamic religions. It is their term, and they are free to use it as they see fit in their life- worlds. If Christians want to use the term “God” to refer to being-itself, then peace be upon them. We will not use it that way. Tillich is constructing a Christian life-world in which his God is a counterpart of the Platonic One. He is building a Christian life-world which overlaps with our paganism. Paganism is inclusive: we encourage Christians to construct life-worlds which resemble our pagan life-world. Again we go back to Plotinus: the One is not God (E 6.9.6.13-14). Philosophical pagans do not use the theonym “God”. Thus we will not say that being-itself is God, or that the One is God, or that anything else is God. To make this clear, we will reserve the theonym “God” for the chief theistic deity of the Abrahamic pantheons. Thus being-itself is not God, the One is not God, and so on. More generally, there does not exist any x such that x is God. Philosophical pagans, like many pagans, say there are gods but no God (York, 2009: 283). We have neither one big God nor many little Gods. We deny that there are any theistic deities. Say a theistic deity is a theity. A theity is an extremely powerful disembodied person (Swinburne, 1968: 199). Christian theities include God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Devil, the angels, the demons. Philosophical pagans reject these theities. All too often, pagans have been denigrated as devil- worshippers; but the devil is a Christian fiction. And if any non-Christian religions posit theities, we reject them too. Since we reject all theities, we are atheists. Of course, the theonym “God” can be used atheistically. When Tillich uses the theonym “God”, he is using it atheistically. Thus he would also reject the chief theistic deity of the Abrahamic pantheons. We support his use of the name “God” to build his own life-world. However, we are not Christians; we do not employ that theonym.

30 When we rule out theistic deities, it does not follow that we rule out all deities. An atheist can affirm the existence of gods and goddesses. Of course, those deities will not be defined theistically. So we affirm that there are infinitely many non-theistic deities. Our pagan deities are possible future superhuman animals – they are bodies whose powers surpass the powers of all human bodies. But they are nevertheless physical bodies. These non-theistic deities are not the objects of worship – they are objects of aspiration. We seek to transform ourselves into divine animals. This is the ancient Platonic goal of theosis, becoming as much like the deities as possible. It is the practice of theurgy. Theurgy is a system of techniques and technologies – it is a system of skillful crafts. These include mind-craft, sign-craft, shape-craft, and divine-craft.

2. The Wiccan Ultimate Deity

Wicca was founded in Britain in the mid twentieth century by Gerald Gardner. There are many branches of Wicca; but here we will focus on the tradition that stays close to Gardner. This is British Traditional Wicca, or Gardnerian Wicca. Here we will just say Wicca. Philosophical paganism is not Wicca – they are distinct. However, many items in philosophical paganism have counterparts in Wicca. This is because both Wicca and philosophical paganism share a common Platonic background. Since both Wicca and philosophical paganism share a common background, and have many parallel structures, some philosophical pagans may self-identify as Wiccans. However, while there are some parallels, there are also many anti-parallels. Counterparts are things that are analogous. They play similar roles in their separate systems. But counterparts are usually distinct things. Hence other philosophical pagans may reject Wicca. Although Gardner relied on many sources in his development of Wicca, he seems to have been heavily influenced by Platonism. He was especially influenced by Sallustius. Gardner refers to Wiccans as witches, although today many Wiccans do not use that word. After a long discussion of Sallustius’s On the Gods and the World, Gardner says that “it might have been spoken at a witch meeting, at any time, as a general statement of their creed” (Gardner, 1959: 174). Since both Wicca and philosophical paganism are inspired by Roman Platonism, they are similar in many ways. Gardner says the Wiccans recognize that “there must be some great ‘Prime Mover,’ some Supreme Deity” (1959: 17). However, this ultimate deity is distant and does not directly reveal itself to us. This ultimate deity resembles the Platonic One, the great first cause described by Sallustius. The Wiccan ultimate deity is not the Abrahamic God. And it is not a theistic deity. The Wiccan ultimate is non-theistic. The ultimate deity is not the same as the male god and female goddess. It will be useful to look at some quotes, from popular Wiccan books, that describe the Wiccan ultimate deity. The Farrars write that “Wicca is both a religion and a craft . . . As a religion . . . its purpose is to put the individual and the group in harmony with the Divine creative principle of the Cosmos” (1981: 12). They refer to an “Ultimate Source” when they say that “the God and Goddess [are] aspects of the Ultimate Source” (Farrar & Farrar, 1981: 49). And they say that the “Seventh Plane” of reality is the “Upper Spiritual” plane and consists of “Pure or Abstract Spirit. The ‘Divine Spark’. Substance and energy direct from the Great Unmanifest” (1981: 117). And they say that “To the witch, the Divine Principle of the Cosmos is real, conscious and eternally creative, manifesting through Its

31 creations, including ourselves” (1981: 154). The “Ultimate Source”, which the Farrars also call the “Great Unmanifest” is the ultimate deity. Buckland writes that “This higher power – the “Ultimate Deity” – is some genderless force that is so far beyond our comprehension that we can have only the vaguest understanding of its being. Yet we know it is there and, frequently, we wish to communicate with it. As individuals we wish to thank it for what we have and to ask it for what we need. How do we do this with such an incomprehensible power?” (1986: 19) The Wiccan author Scott Cunningham writes that “The Wicca acknowledge a supreme divine power, unknowable, ultimate, from which the entire universe sprang. . . . [Wiccans] link with this force through their deities. In accordance with the principles of nature, the supreme power was personified into two basic beings: the Goddess and the God” (1988: 9). Cunningham even refers to the Ultimate Deity as “the One” (2004: 123). So he is pointing to the Platonic origins of Wicca. Silver Elder writes: “In Wicca we know that there is a Higher Power, an Ultimate Force, the Archetypal Energy, the Supreme Power, because we see it manifest in Nature and within ourselves each and every day.” (2011: 18). This Ultimate Force is the Divine Source of all things. She states that “The concept of Deity and the sacred in Paganism and therefore, also in Wicca, is not transcendent, but immanent and indwelling in all” (2011: 9). The Council of American Witches states “We conceive of the Creative Power of the Universe as manifesting through polarity – as masculine and feminine – and that this same Creative Power lives in all people, and functions through the interaction of masculine and feminine” (Cuhulain, 2011: 28).7 Cuhulain writes that “The Wiccan concept of the Divine is shaped by what we see around us in the natural world. . . . We believe that the Divine is immanent in everything around us. We do not separate the Divine from the everyday world . . . Everything around us is divine” (2011: 14). The Wiccan ultimate deity is an impersonal power; it is an immanent creative force. The Wiccan deity is an idea of the divine with a very long history in Western philosophy. It does indeed go back to the Plotinian One. The Wiccan ultimate deity plays the same role in Wicca that the One plays in ancient Platonism and in philosophical paganism. Hence the Wiccan ultimate deity is a counterpart of the One. This means that the role of the ultimate deity in Wicca is the same as the role of the One in Platonism. Still, these counterparts are not identical. They do not share all their properties. The Farrars say that the ultimate deity is conscious; however, the One is not conscious, it lacks all mentality. Buckland talks about communicating with the ultimate deity and asking it for what we need. But it is impossible to communicate with the One. Wiccans obviously refer to the ultimate deity as a deity. However, for philosophical pagans, the One is not a deity in any sense. Deities are superhuman animals. But the One is no animal at all.

3. The Simple Original One

When the modern pagan writer Starhawk presents her creation myth, she talks about an ultimate deity. Starhawk portrays the creator as a Goddess (1999: 41). Even Plotinus says that the One produced the Many through pregnancy and birth (E 3.8.3). However, Starhawk correctly recognizes that she is just projecting an arbitrary sexual attribute onto the ultimate deity. Calling it female is just as arbitrary as calling it male. Starhawk says the first cause could be called either a male God or female Goddess “because sex has not

32 yet come into being” (1999: 48). She is correct. As far as we know, sexual categories apply only to some (and not all) animals on the planet earth. As far as we know, sex comes into existence only very late in the evolution of life on just one planet in our universe. Putting sex first is an error. So Starhawk correctly points out that, at the origin of all things, “there is no separation, no division, nothing but the primal unity” (1999: 48). But then we should more accurately describe the primal unity as sexless and genderless. It is wrong to refer to it as either male or female. The primal unity has neither any masculinity nor any femininity. Likewise it has no racial characteristics. It has no animality at all. The primal unity, existing before all division, has none of the attributes we use to describe any things. It does not have any of the distinctions that separate these beings from those beings. Philosophers call those distinctions ontic, which refers to the kind of being possessed by separate things. So the primal unity is not a being among beings. It does not exist ontically. By referring to the first cause as a primal unity, Starhawk points to another Platonic entity: the One. She says “The world of separate things is the reflection of the One; the One is the reflection of the world of separate things” (1999: 49). So we should think about the One. Something like the Platonic One appears in some Wiccan creation myths. It appears in the Wiccan creation story presented by Cunningham (2004: 123). Cunningham is explicit that his story is merely mythic poetry. He does not intend it to be literally true. So it should not be taken literally. Cunningham starts by saying “Before time was, there was The One; The One was all, and all was The One”. He identifies the One with our universe in its primal condition before its organization. So the primal One resembles the chaos of Hesiod or the tohu bohu of Peirce. Cunningham describes the One as “all-wise, all-pervading, all-powerful, eternally changing”. He then says that the One created the God and the Goddess. The God and Goddess finished the work of creating our orderly universe. They guided physical and biological evolution. Although Cunningham does not intend his story to be taken literally, it can still be studied philosophically. It is open to philosophical criticism. Cunningham correctly portrays the One as prior to all sexual distinctions. Nevertheless, he portrays the One as being all-wise. He portrays the One as having intelligence, that is, as being a mind. All known minds are either biological brains or artificial computers. And they are all extremely complex. It is arguable that all possible minds are extremely complex. Minds need to process information in extremely complex ways. But anything that does complex information processing must itself be extremely complex. And the general lesson of evolution is that complex things come at the ends of long chains of evolution. Since complexity does not come first, minds don’t come first. Since the One is simple and original, it is impossible for the One to have any mentality. By affirming the One, we invoke the One in our pagan life-world. We summon it into our circle of reasoning. The One in our circle is similar to the Platonic One; it is similar to the primal unity of Starhawk; and it resembles the One in Cunningham. But we have also pointed to some differences between all these Ones. To characterize the relations between all these Ones, we turn to counterpart theory. To say that things in different pagan life-worlds are counterparts means that they play analogous roles in those life-worlds. So all these Ones are counterparts of each other.

33 5. Air: The Logic of Existence 1. The Two: Propositions

eing-itself is the One; but the One generates the Two. To define the Two, we count from the Zero through the One. The Zero is non-being; non-being is self-inconsistency; but self-inconsistency negates itself. Self-inconsistency is purely negative self-relation. This self-relation negates itself. But the negative of the negative is the positive. The self-negation of non-being generates being-itself. Thus the Zero generates the One. And if non-being is self-inconsistency, then being-itself is self-consistency. Therefore, the self-relation of being-itself is self- consistency. This self-relation is the Two; it is the dyad. So the dyad is self-consistency. Far from being inert, this self-consistency inherits the power of the One. The power of the dyad maximizes self-consistency. This just means that it generates that system of beings than which none greater is consistent. Consistency involves propositions. Propositions are the abstract meanings of sentences. Sentences with the same meaning express the same proposition. But propositions are abstract objects that exist independent of any minds. If there were no minds, the proposition “There are no minds” would exist and it would be true. Every statement in a purely logical language like the predicate calculus is a proposition. For two reasons, the propositions are the first beings to emerge from being-itself. The first reason comes from the logic of the Zero and the One. For suppose that there are no propositions. But “There are no propositions” is a proposition. Hence it is self- contradictory – it is inconsistent with itself. As the self-inconsistency of non-being negates itself, the proposition that there are no propositions negates itself. This logical negativity, which it attributes to itself, is the property of falsity. Hence it is false that there are no propositions. But the self-negation of non-being is being-itself. Hence the negative self-relation that turns non-being into being-itself also drives the emergence of the first being from being-itself. This first being is the proposition that there are propositions. Just as being-itself affirms itself, so the proposition that there are propositions affirms itself. This logical positivity, which it attributes to itself, is the property of truth. Hence it is true that there are propositions. The second reason comes from the requirement of definability. Objects are defined by propositions. Since propositions can talk about themselves, propositions can define themselves. But if there are any beings which are not propositions, they need to be defined by propositions. Propositions that define things are axioms. Ancient thinkers knew about axiom systems. About one hundred years after Plato, Euclid produced the axioms for geometry. His axioms of geometry defined objects like points, lines, and planes. Those axioms define physical space-times. Proclus used the Euclidean axiomatic method to write his Elements of Theology. Since things that are not propositions are defined by existence axioms, propositions logically come before any other beings. So the first proposition, which is the first axiom of logical existence, is this:

34 • Meaning. There are propositions.

The power of the dyad, which is the power that maximizes self-consistency, emerges along with this first proposition. Of course, there are other propositions besides the proposition that there are propositions. If the dyad does not generate all logically possible propositions, then there is no consistency. But if there is no consistency, then consistency is not maximized. The dyad therefore generates all those propositions. But consistency requires more than just propositions.

2. Identity and Difference

Consistency involves the assignment of truth-values to propositions. These truth- values are the true and the false. As soon as propositions emerge, the true and the false emerge with them. It is true that there are propositions and false that there are no propositions. Hence the second proposition is bivalence:

• Bivalence. Every proposition is either true or else false.

Hence paradoxical propositions (like “This proposition is false”) do not exist. They belong with non-being. Moreover, if the true and the false are truth-values, then they are values. On the one hand, falsity is the logical Zero; it corresponds to the negativity of non-being; but non-being is evil; hence falsity is logical evil. On the other hand, truth is the logical One; it corresponds to the positivity of being; but being is good; hence truth is logical goodness. Truth is logically better than falsity. Some propositions have their truth-values because of their meanings. They are true by definition or false by definition. That is, they are analytically true or analytically false. Propositions that are true by definition are said to be tautologies. Plotinus argues that identity and difference are fundamental categories (E 6.2.8.35-45). So they generate further propositions. Here is the tautology of identity:

• Identity. Every thing is identical with itself.

For instance: “Hypatia is Hypatia” is a tautology. Since “Hypatia is Hypatia” is true, Bivalence tells us that its negation is false. It is false that “Hypatia is not Hypatia”. Now identity motivates the principle of subsitition:

• Substitution. If x is y, then replacing x with y preserves truth.

Substition means that any truth (or falsity) about x is also a truth (or falsity) about y. So if Superman is identical with Clark Kent, then any truth (or falsity) about Superman is also a truth (or falsity) about Clark Kent. Truth is preserved when Superman is replaced with Clark Kent, and when Clark Kent is replaced with Superman. Propositions that are false by definition are contradictions. Contradictions are inconsistencies. Since the dyad maximizes consistency, contradictions are logically forbidden. So it is a tautology that every contradiction is false:

35 • Contradiction. For any proposition P, it is false that both P and not-P.

For example, it is false that both that it is the case that Socrates is happy and that it is not the case that Socrates is happy. As a matter of logical grammar, “it is not the case that x is p” is equivalent to “x is not p”. From logical grammar, and from the law of contradiction, there emerges a logical law about properties:

• Possession. For any thing, and for any property, it is contradictory to say both that the thing has the property and that it lacks the property.

Hence it is contradictory to say that Superman is happy and not happy. We now have some axioms about tautologies and contradictions (and elementary logic books explain these in more detail). If the dyad does not assign truth to tautologies and falsity to contradictions, then it fails to maximize consistency. But it does maximize consistency. So the dyad assigns truth to all tautologies and falsity to all contradictions. After properties emerge, the relation of indiscernibility emerges. To say that x is indiscernible from y means that x and y agree on all their properties. For any property P, either both x and y have P, or both x and y lack P. Given many properties and relations, the dyad uses them to generate complex propositions. For example, the dyad combines identity and indiscernibility into this proposition:

• Indiscernibility of Identicals. If any thing x is identical to any thing y, then x is indiscernible from y.

As the dyad combines properties and relations into complex propositions, it also combines propositions into proofs. Proofs carry truth from their premises to their conclusions. The propositions that have emerged so far now serve as premises in this proof: Suppose the Indiscernibility of Identicals is false. If the Indiscernibility of Identicals were false, then there would be some property P such that x has P and y lacks P. But since x is identical with y, we can substitute x for y so that x both has P and lacks P. Since that’s a contradiction, the Indiscernibility of Identicals is true. Consistency is a logical quality. So the dyad follows the laws of logic as it assigns truth-values to propositions. Truth flows through arguments. Consider this argument: (1) Hypatia is a woman; (2) all women are mortal; (3) therefore, Hypatia is mortal. The argument is logically correct. So if the premises (1) and (2) are true, then that truth flows to the conclusion (3). More generally, if the dyad assigns truth to the premises of some argument, and if that argument is logically correct, then the dyad also assigns truth to the conclusion of the argument. The premises of a correct argument are said to entail the conclusion. So the dyad assigns truth-values in accordance with entailment.

3. Some Theories of Existence

The dyad maximizes consistency. It affirms all analytic propositions. However, if it affirms only those, then consistency is not maximized. For it is logically possible that there are propositions whose truths are not merely analytic. They are not merely true by definition, but they are true because

36 they are about beings. Moreover, they are about beings which are not just propositions. They have existential content. For example, the proposition “Our sun exists” has existential content because it asserts that our sun exists. Our sun is the content of that proposition. If “Our sun exists” is true, then it is the existence of our sun that makes it true. So our sun is the truth-maker for that proposition. Now consider “Beyond every star, there exists another star”. If at least one star (like our sun) exists, the content of that proposition is an infinite series of stars running out into an infinite space. This infinite series is the truth-maker for that proposition. The existential propositions gather into theories of existence. A theory of existence is a collection of existence axioms. Consider the axioms for the existence of the natural numbers. These are the whole numbers or counting numbers, starting with 0 and running through 1, 2, 3, and so on. The negative numbers, fractions, and decimals are excluded. And these counting numbers can be extended from the finite numbers to infinity. Here are four candidate axioms for these numbers:

• The Initial Axiom. There exists an initial number 0.

• The Successor Axiom. Every number n is surpassed by a greater number n+1. So 0 is surpassed by 1, then 2, then 3, 4, 5 and so on. The initial and successor axioms together generate an infinite progression of finite numbers.

• The Limit Axiom. Every infinite progression of numbers is surpassed by a greater limit number. So the infinite progression 0, 1, 2, 3, . . . is surpassed by a limit number that is greater than all those numbers. Since all those numbers are finite, the limit number is infinite.

• The Broken Axiom. There exists a biggest number. It is greater than all the numbers defined by the Initial, Successor, and Limit axioms.

The dyad emanates existence axioms in an orderly way (E 2.9.13, 3.3.3, 3.6.17, 5.4.1, 6.7.42). Since the dyad maximizes consistency, it starts out with the smallest consistent theory and works up through bigger and bigger consistent theories. It stops when it reaches an inconsistent theory. More precisely, it starts with some initial existence theory, which asserts the existence of just the simplest existing thing. The initial existence theory is surpassed by greater existence theories. Consider two existence theories, called xander and yonder. To say that xander consistently surpasses itself into yonder means that (1) every axiom in xander is also in yonder; (2) but yonder adds one more existence axiom; (3) the added existence axiom defines at least one new thing that was not defined by xander; and (4) the added axiom does not introduce any inconsistencies. If xander consistently surpasses itself into yonder, then yonder is a consistent extension of xander. Since yonder contains at least one new thing, the model of yonder is more inclusive than the model of xander. Inclusion is bigness: more inclusive models are bigger models. Theories are ordered by their models: to say that yonder theory is bigger than xander theory just means that the model of yonder is bigger (more inclusive) than the model of xander. We can use our axioms for numbers to

37 illustrate how smaller theories are consistently surpassed into bigger theories. Since there are four axioms for numbers, there are four candidate theories of numbers. Here they are:

• The Zero Theory. The Zero Theory contains just the Initial Axiom. This is the initial theory for numbers, since it defines exactly one simplest number. It is the smallest theory of numbers. The dyad affirms the Zero Theory.

• The Finite Theory. The Finite Theory is made by adding the Successor Axiom to the Zero Theory. So it includes the Initial and Successor Axioms. The Finite Theory is bigger than the Zero Theory. Adding the Successor Axiom does not introduce any inconsistencies. So the Zero Theory is consistently surpassed into the Finite Theory. If the dyad does not affirm all the axioms in the Finite Theory, then it does not maximize consistency; but the dyad does maximize consistency; so the dyad affirms all the axioms in the Finite Theory.

• The Infinite Theory. The Infinite Theory is made by adding the Limit Axiom to the Finite Theory. So it contains the Initial, Successor, and Limit Axioms. Adding the Limit Axiom does not introduce any inconsistencies. So the Finite Theory is consistently surpassed into the Infinite Theory. So the dyad affirms the Infinite Theory. Figure 5.1 shows this series of expanding theories.

• The Broken Theory. The Broken Theory is made by adding the Broken Axiom to the Infinite Theory. But adding the Broken Axiom creates an inconsistency. The Broken Axiom states that there exists some biggest number N; but the Successor Axiom states that the biggest number N is surpassed by a bigger number N+1; so N is not the biggest number. The result is that N both is and is not the biggest number. This violates the logical law of Possession. It is a contradiction. So the Limit Theory is not consistently surpassed into the Broken Theory. The Broken Theory is a self-inconsistent theory. If the dyad were to affirm the Broken Theory, then it would not be maximizing consistency; on the contrary, it would be minimizing consistency. So the dyad denies the Broken Theory. It denies it by assigning the logical value false to the Broken Axiom.

Figure 5.1 Three expanding theories.

38 4. The Two Maximizes Consistency

Modern thinkers have argued that the consistency of an axiom system suffices for its truth (Balaguer, 1998: 5-8). Thus the twentieth-century British mathematician David Hilbert wrote that if some system of axioms is self-consistent, “then they are true and the things defined by the axioms exist” (in Frege, 1980: 39-40). The twentieth-century French mathematician and scientist Henri Poincare wrote that “A mathematical entity exists, provided its definition implies no contradiction, either in itself, or with the propositions already admitted” (1905: 35). He later wrote that “in mathematics the word exist . . . means free from contradiction” (1913: 454). We agree with these modern thinkers: the dyad makes every consistent axiom theory true. However, since theories surpass themselves into greater theories, we need to specify this truth-making in terms of this self-surpassing. The power of the dyad is logical self-surpassivity. We can use this self-surpassing to precisely specify the action of the dyad (the Two). To do this, we first define successor existence theories and limit existence theories. Every consistent extension of some existence theory is a successor of that theory. To define limit theories, we introduce the concept of a progression of theories. A progression of theories is a series which contains some initial theory and in which every theory consistently surpasses itself into exactly one successor theory. To say that a progression surpasses itself into a limit existence theory means that (1) the limit theory contains every axiom in every theory in its progression; (2) putting all those axioms together does not generate any inconsistencies. The dyad affirms ever greater theories until it hits the wall of inconsistency (Bricker, 1991; Drake, 1974). Thus:

• Initial Existence Theory. The dyad affirms every initial existence theory.

• Successor Existence Theories. If the dyad affirms any existence theory, then the dyad affirms every successor of that theory.

• Limit Existence Theories. If the dyad affirms all the theories in some progression, then the dyad affirms every limit of that progression.

• Broken Existence Theories. The dyad denies every inconsistent existence theory; it denies any theory that entails a contradiction.

The truth-making power of the dyad surpasses itself into maximality: it affirms ever greater theories until it reaches the maximally consistent theories. To say that an existence theory is maximally consistent means that all of its successors are inconsistent. So the dyad affirms every maximally consistent existence theory; it assigns true to every axiom in every maximally consistent theory. Since all contradiction requires complexity, and since an initial existence theory posits only one simple thing, an initial existence theory cannot involve any inconsistency. So there exists at least one consistent existence theory. Modern mathematics defines many axiomatic existence theories. These include the Peano axioms for the natural numbers; the Hilbert axioms for geometry; and the Zermelo-Fraenkel-Choice axioms for sets. These theories have been extensively tested

39 for consistency. No contradictions have been found. At least provisionally, we can infer that they are consistent theories. So the dyad affirms all these theories. Any maximally consistent existence theory is a logical science of being. Its axioms are unified by being-itself (E 3.9.2, 4.9.5). It is a way that the meaning of being-itself expresses itself in beings. Any axiomatic existence theory is a Logos. A Logos is an assignment of truth-values to every proposition in the predicate calculus. A Logos assigns the value true to all of its axioms; it assigns the value true to all the entailments of those axioms; it the value false to any propositions which contradict its axioms. But the modern logician Kurt Godel showed that any finite collection of consistent axioms does not decide the truth-values of all other propositions.8 But the dyad resolves those truth- values in ways that maximize consistency. Consequently, every Logos contains infinitely many axioms. Every Logos defines that system of beings than which none greater is consistently definable; but consistent definability is just logical possibility; so every Logos defines that system of beings than which none greater is logically possible. Every Logos defines a logical world. At least one logical world exists. For the Platonists, the science of being is mathematical. The axiomatic propositions in the Logos resemble those of geometry (E 4.9.5.24-26, 6.3.16.20-23). What is the science of being? There are three reasons to say that the science of being is set theory. Set theory deals with objects called sets. The simplest set is the empty set. It is an empty collection, a collection which contains no members. More complex sets have simpler sets as their members. So why say that the science of being is set theory? The first reason is that Platonic metaphysics looks like set theory. Plotinus starts from a simple being; set theory starts from the empty set. Plotinus says that the forms are sorted into levels ordered by the numbers. Set theorists likewise stratify the sets into levels ordered by numbers. The Plotinian concept of infinity resembles the set theoretic concept of infinity (Stamatellos & Mentzeniotis, 2008). And later Platonists like Proclus seem to use set-theoretic axioms (Brumbaugh, 1982). Most importantly, the texts of Plotinus motivate several set-theoretic axioms. The second reason to think the science of being is set theory is that all known mathematical objects can be constructed from sets (often in many ways). The third reason is that it looks like every consistent theory has set- theoretic models. So every consistent physical theory has set-theoretic models. Thus all physical structures can be built up from sets. This means that every possible physical universe is ultimately composed of sets. So sets are the true atoms of existence. For these reasons, philosophical pagans affirm that the science of being is set theory. But this is the science of the Platonic forms. Hence philosophical pagans declare that the Platonic forms are sets. This is a modern theory of the forms. Nevertheless, set theory is a generic term. There may be many maximally consistent theories of sets. If there are, then each one is its own Logos; it defines its own logical world. Since pagans are radical pluralists, we philosophical pagans are happy to affirm the maximal plurality of logical worlds. But since this is just one book, we will just construct a single Logos and its world. We encourage the construction of others.

40 5. All the Air in the Abstract Sky

The dyad generates the totality of propositions and it assigns truth- values to them. These propositions are abstract objects. Plato, in his Myth of the Cave, put the abstract objects up in the sky. Following him, we say the sky is filled with abstract objects. The sky includes the propositions. But Plato said mathematical objects, like numbers and sets, are also abstract. As existence axioms generate mathematical objects, the sky includes them too. The sky corresponds to the element of air. Its glyph or sigil is the upwards crossed triangle. It is the elemental power of abstract existence. By describing abstract objects, we are welcoming air into our circle of reasoning. Here some (but not all) philosophical pagans will pause in ritual to give thanks: “Holy air, we thank you for blessing us with possibilities.” Others may want to perform rituals involving air in some symbolic way. What you do is up to you. Like all elements, air is genderless. It is neither god nor goddess. The dyad generates a system of logically well-organized propositions. Their meanings are interwoven by logical relations. To say that it is logically well-organized means that it is rationally organized. The Stoics argued that the world has a rational order. The world is rationally organized. They referred to this rational structure as the Logos. Following the Stoics, we say that the totality of propositions generated by the dyad is the Logos. Some Stoics also argued that the Logos is a divine mind. They used the theonyms “Zeus” and “God” to refer to the Logos. However, the Stoics were wrong about the mentality of the Logos. The Logos doesn’t think about anything; it has no psychology. It is just an eternal necessary logical structure. Philosophical pagans deny that the Logos is a mind. We do not use “God” to refer to it. The Logos is the rational order of nature. And while it makes no sense to worship the Logos, it does make sense to symbolize it. But what sorts of things symbolize the Logos? Since the Logos is orderly, and since symbols often resemble the things they represent, we can use orderly things to symbolize the Logos. A good example is a crystal. Since crystals are orderly structures, you could use a crystal to symbolize the Logos. You might wear a small quartz crystal as a necklace to symbolize the Logos. Some pagans have altars in their homes. A philosophical pagan might place crystals on their altar to symbolize the Logos. Of course, what you do is up to you.

41 6. From Simplicity to Sets 1. Plotinus: One Simple Thing

lotinus gave an argument for the existence of a single initial simple thing. All other things depend on this simple thing. When he gave this argument, Plotinus thought he was arguing for the One. But he was not. His argument reasons from the existence of complex things to one simple thing. His argument is about beings. It is based on the way that complex beings depend on simpler beings. So he was wrong to think it was an argument for the One. His Argument for the Simple Thing goes like this:

Standing before all things, there must exist something simple, . . . existing by itself and not mixed with the things that come from it, and yet able in some way of its own to be present to those other things. It must be really one, not merely something made one by gluing things together, which would thus not really be one; . . . Since it has no share in multiplicity, it is wholly self-sufficient, the first which comes before all others. For any thing which is not the first requires something before it, and any thing which is not simple needs its simple components so that its composite existence can come into being from them. There can be only one first; for if there were another, the two would not differ in any way, and would resolve into one. (E 5.4.1.1-20)

Plotinus’s text is hard to figure out. But one plausible analysis of the text comes from Gerson (1994: ch. 1). On the basis of Gerson, the analysis goes like this: (1) There are many complex things. (2) But all complex things depend on simpler things. (3) If there is an infinite regression of things depending on simpler things, then there do not exist any simple things. (3) But if there are no simple things, there will not be any things at all. (4) Therefore, there does exist at least one simple thing. (5) Suppose there exist many simple things. (6) Since they are entirely simple, they do not differ from each other. (7) And since they do not differ from each other, they are identical. (8) So there cannot be more than one simple thing. (8) Since there is at least one simple, but not more than one simple, there exists exactly one simple thing. The Plotinian argument uses two very powerful principles in our science of beings. These are the Foundation axiom and the Extensionality axiom. This argument also entails the existence of exactly one simple thing. This motivates the Empty Set Axiom.

2. The Axiom of Foundation

Plotinus says “For any thing which is not the first requires something before it, and any thing which is not simple needs its simple components so that its composite existence can come into being from them.” Philosophical pagans interpret this as ruling out any

42 infinite regressions of logical dependencies. Thus any later thing (“any thing which is not the first”) requires some series of earlier things; any series of earlier things requires some earliest things. There are no infinite regressions of ever earlier things; every series of earlier things bottoms out after only finitely many steps in some earliest things. Likewise any complex thing requires some simpler things. But there are no infinite regressions of ever simpler things; every regress of simpler things bottoms out after only finitely many steps in some simplest things; these are the simples. Against Plotinus, somebody might try to run a Bottomless Argument like this: Observation reveals that our complex bodies exist. Complex bodies depend on their simpler cells. If there are no cells, then there are no bodies. Hence there are cells. But cells depend on even simpler molecules. If there are no molecules, then there are no cells. Hence there are molecules. Molecules depend on simpler atoms. Hence atoms exist. Atoms depend on particles like protons and neutrons. Hence they exist. Those particles depend on quarks. Hence quarks exist. But quarks depend on even simpler sub- quarks. And sub-quarks on even simpler sub-sub-quarks. And so it goes. There is an infinite regression of complex things depending on simpler things. But there are no simple things. Regressions along dependencies never bottom out in any simples. This Bottomless Argument invalidates the Plotinian Argument for a Simple Thing. So if we want that Plotinian Argument to work, then we have to defeat this Regress. The Bottomless Argument can be defeated by observing that it gets dependency wrong. It contains the following subargument: (1) there are some bodies; (2) bodies depend on cells; (3) to say that bodies depend on cells means that if there are no cells, then there are no bodies; (4) so, if there are no cells, then there are no bodies; (5) therefore, there are some cells. The argument goes wrong at the third step. Its analysis of dependence is incorrect. The conclusion of any argument logically depends on its premises. So the conclusion that there are cells logically depends on the premise that there are bodies. Hence the existence of cells logically depends on the existence of bodies. The Regress Argument is using division as a generative or creative operation. It starts with some complex thing and it divides it into simpler parts. If parts are generated from wholes by division, then the simpler parts depend on the complex whole. So the Regress Argument is wrong when it says that bodies depend on cells. According to its own logic, cells in fact depend on bodies. Bodies are independent. Hence the Bottomless Argument generates only an infinite progression of dependencies. In order of increasing dependence, this progression runs like this: bodies; cells; molecules; atoms; particles; quarks; sub-quarks; and so on. If you start anywhere in this progression, the regress back to bodies is only finite. There are no infinite regressions. Many ancient philosophers argued against infinite regressions. For example, Aristotle argued against infinite regressions of dependency relations. Effects depend on their causes. Aristotle argued that there cannot be any infinite regressions of causes (Metaphysics, 994a2-19). Conclusions logically depend on their premises. And Aristotle also argued that there cannot be any infinite regression of premises (Posterior Analytics, I.2). Philosophical pagans agree with Aristotle: there are no infinite regressions of dependencies. On the one hand, an infinite regression of dependencies is an infinitely descending chain. If a chain of dependencies descends, then every thing in that chain depends on some less dependent thing in that chain. Since there are no infinite regressions of dependencies, these chains do not descend infinitely. Every descending

43 chain of dependencies bottoms out after finitely many steps in some independent thing or things. These things are simple. On the other hand, an infinite regress of dependencies contains a loop in which equally dependent things depend on each other. But there are no loops. By ruling out infinite regressions, we get this axiom:

• Foundation. Every regression of dependencies is finite. There are no loops or infinite regressions of dependency relations.

3. The Axiom of Extensionality

Plotinus said that “There can be only one first; for if there were another, the two would not differ in any way, and would resolve into one.” Here Plotinus states a principle called the Identity of Indiscernibles. It’s the reverse of the Indiscernibility of Identicals. The Identity of Indiscernibles states that for any things x and y, if x is indiscernible from y, then x is identical with y. Again, to say that some being x is indiscernible from being y means that x and y agree on all properties. So if x agrees with y on all properties, then x is identical with y. Although the Identity of Indiscernibles was first stated by Plotinus, it is usually associated with the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716 AD). He states it in his little treatise The Monadology (sec. 9). So it is known as Leibniz’s Law. It should be Plotinus’s Law, but I’ll follow convention and refer to it as Leibniz’s Law. The Argument for Leibniz’s Law now goes like this: (1) Suppose that x is indiscernible from y. (2) So x and y agree on all their properties. (3) But one of the properties of x is that x is identical with x. (4) Since y agrees with x on this property, it follows that y is identical with x. (5) A symmetrical argument shows that x is identical with y. (6) So, if x is indiscernible from x, then x is identical with y. On the one hand, the Identity of Indiscernibles is true. On the other hand, the Indiscernibility of Identicals is true. But these two hands work together. If we put them together, we get our definition of identity:

• Identity of Indiscernibles. For any being x, and for any being y, to say x = y means that both x and y agree on every property.

But what are these properties? So far all we have are dependency relations. Fortunately, we can use dependency relations to construct properties. Consider the property of being independent. To say that x is independent means that x does not depend on any thing; it means that there does not exist any thing on which x depends. So if some being x is independent, and some being y is independent, then Identity tell us that x is y. This means that (as Plotinus said) there exists exactly one unique independent thing. But it also gives us a way to define Identity in terms of dependence. Say that things directly depend on their parents. An independent thing has no parents. But other things do have parents. Now we can reformulate Identity in terms of parents. Formulated this way, Identity becomes the Axiom of Extensionality:

• Extensionality. For any being x, and for any being y, to say x = y means that both x and y share exactly the same parents.

44 4. The Empty Set Axiom

Now we can modernize the Plotinian Argument for the Simple Thing: (1) There are some complex things. (2) The Foundation axiom entails that there are no infinite regressions of dependency relations. (3) So any regression of dependency relations that starts from any complex thing bottoms out after finitely many steps in some simple thing. (4) So there exists at least one simple thing. (5) But all simple things are independent. They share all the same parents, in the sense that they do not have any parents at all. (6) Since all simple things share exactly the same parents, the Extensionality axiom implies that any two apparently distinct simple things are really the same simple thing. (7) Therefore, there exists exactly one simple thing. But what is this thing? The unique simple thing is independent. Since sets depend on their members, the unique simple thing is a set which has no members. It is the empty set. The empty set is written like this: {}. It has no members between its two enclosing braces. The emptiness of this set parallels the emptiness of non-being. The empty set is that being which corresponds to the Zero. However, the empty set is an existing thing. The existence of the empty set is asserted by an axiom. The dyad makes this axiom true. Since it is true, the empty set exists. The Empty Set axiom looks like this:

• Empty Set Axiom. The empty set exists. It is the first being among beings. It is the first being to be generated by the One. It is simple.

45 7. The Axis of the World 1. The Axis Mundi

piritual exercises help you to improve your mind. Ancient philosophers often portrayed philosophy as a kind of spiritual discipline. Philosophical pagans agree with this conception of philosophy. The Platonists argued that the best way to discipline your mind involves doing mathematics (Burnyeat, 2000). He wanted his students to study mathematics for ten years (Republic, 537b-d). Unfortunately, many people fear mathematics – it arouses anxiety. But spiritual exercises aim to help you to overcome your fears. By doing the exercises, you become mentally stronger and more virtuous. Here we offer a spiritual exercise focused on numbers. Our spiritual exercise consists of an incantation. An incantation aims to focus your mind on an object. Here the object is the axis mundi, the vertical axis of the world. Plato referred to this axis as the spindle of necessity (Republic 616b-c). For philosophical pagans, this is the series of numbers. By going through this incantation, you do not cause axis mundi to exist. Nevertheless, by going through this incantation, you can cause an image of the axis mundi to appear in your mind. Thus you can conjure this image in your mind – you can invoke the axis mundi. Besides this incantation, we will present many more. Every incantation has the same pattern: it involves four verses, which are four laws. These are the initial, successor, limit, and final laws. Working through any incantation is a spiritual exercise. This exercise disciplines your perception and attention. It cultivates executive control. It strengthens your ability go through orderly progression of thoughts. It strengthens your ability to focus on an object. As you go through this exercise, your mind may wander; you may become distracted; your attention may tire; your mind may lose control of itself. You may need to do it many times. But with practice you can learn to work through spiritual exercises involving mathematics. So we turn to the incantation for numbers.

2. The Incantation for Numbers

Our incantation involves only the whole numbers (aka the counting numbers or the ordinals). These do not include any negative numbers or fractions. Plotinus devoted an entire treatise in his Enneads to numbers (Slaveva-Griffin, 2009). Plotinus says that the numbers come before the other beings (E. 6.6.9). He talks about numbers as unities which bind things together. He thinks of numbers as sets (E. 6.6.5-16). The number 2 is a set which contains some member x and a distinct member y. Plotinus talks about the numbers as proceeding in an orderly sequence. So each next number is defined in terms of the preceding numbers. Putting all these Plotinian ideas together, we get the modern conception of numbers developed by the mathematician John von Neumann. He said each number is the collection of all lesser numbers.

46 The Initial Law for Numbers. The initial ordinal is zero. Zero is the collection of all lesser numbers. Since there are no lesser numbers, zero is a collection that does not contain any members. It is the empty collection, an empty bucket. But instead of collections, we’ll use the precise term set. So the number zero is the empty set. You can picture a set by drawing a circle which contains all the members of that set. Since zero contains no members, it is pictured by an empty circle. Or you can name a set by writing all its members inside of brackets. The brackets are like the circle that contains the members of the set. Since zero contains no members, it is denoted by just two brackets: {}. Thus 0 = {}. The initial law for numbers asserts that the number zero exists. But is this initial law true? Since the number zero is the empty set, it is simple; since it is simple, it contains no parts which could come into logical conflict. Its existence involves no internal contradictions. Since it does not depend on any prior numbers, its existence involves no external contradictions. Since its existence involves no internal or external contradictions, it is consistently definable. By assigning truth to the initial law for numbers, the dyad can increase consistency. But the dyad maximizes consistency. So if the dyad can increase consistency, then it does increase it. Hence the initial law for numbers is true. The number zero is an existing thing; it is a being among beings. So we can use the existential quantifier to assert its existence. Thus (∃x)(x = 0). The number zero is an existing thing that symbolizes the non-existing Zero. It is an existing thing which symbolizes nothing. The empty set symbolizes Zero by analogy: just as non-being does not contain any beings, so the number zero does not contain any numbers. More generally, the empty set does not contain any members. This means that negation is essential for the definition of the empty set. There does not exist any y such that y is a member of the empty set. Alternatively, you can that for every being y, y is not a member of the empty set. The empty set is the only set defined by negation. Because its definition includes negation, it is close to non-being, that is, to the Zero. The Successor Law for Numbers. Plotinus affirms that there is an ordered series of numbers: pairs, triples, quadruples, and so on (E 6.6.6). The number 2 characterizes all pairs; the 3 characterizes all triples; and so on. Although Plotinus is not clear about the generation of the series of numbers, modern mathematics affirms that every number n is surpassed by a minimally greater successor number n+1. Thus zero is surpassed by one. To make the number one, we only have the number zero. So we say one is the collection which contains zero. Thus 1 is {0}. Now the number one is surpassed by the number two. Every number is the set of all lesser numbers. So the number two is the set which contains zero and one. Thus 2 is {0, 1}. So the numbers are sets:

0 = {}; 1 = {0}; 2 = {0, 1}; 3 = {0, 1, 2}; 4 = {0, 1, 2, 3}.

The von Neumann definition entails that every number contains as many members as itself.9 The number two contains two members. Every successor number n+1 is the set

47 of all lesser numbers. So n+1 is the set {0, . . . n}. The initial and successor laws define the endless progression of finite numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, . . . . The succesor law for numbers states that every number is surpassed by exactly one greater successor. Every successor number is consistently definable. By assigning truth to the successor law for numbers, the dyad can increase consistency. If the dyad can increase consistency, it does increase it. Therefore, the successor law for numbers is true. The Limit Law for Numbers. Plotinus affirms that the generative power of the One is infinite (E 2.4.15.17-20, 4.3.8.35-40, 5.5.10.22-24, 6.2.21.5-15, 6.7.32.20-23, 6.9.6). He seems to affirm an infinite number (E 6.6.17). On the von Neumann definition of numbers, the first infinite number is the set of all lesser numbers. Since every finite number is less than an infinite number, it is the set of all finite numbers. It is standardly referred to using the Greek letter omega ω. So the infinite number ω is {0, 1, 2, 3, . . .}. Note that ω cannot be created by combining finite numbers in finite ways. It transcends finitude. It needs its own existence axiom. To say that a series of objects is a progression means that it contains some initial object and that every object in the series is surpassed by exactly one successor in that series. So the series of finite numbers is a progression. To say that a number L is the limit of a progression P means that L is minimally greater than every number in P. The number ω is greater than every finite number. Moreover, ω is the smallest number greater than every finite number. So ω is minimally greater than the progression of finite numbers. Thus ω is the limit of the progression of finite numbers. The limit law for numbers asserts that every progression of numbers is surpassed by exactly one limit number. Extending our axioms to include this law preserves consistency. Since the dyad maximizes consistency by expanding smaller theories into larger theories, the dyad affirms the limit law for numbers. When this limit law is applied to the series of finite numbers, we get an infinity axiom:

• Infinity. The set of all finite numbers exists.

Since the dyad asserts this axiom, it is true; since it is true, this infinite set exists. Although ω is infinite, it is not the greatest infinite number. Since ω is a number, the successor law entails that it is surpassed by its successor ω+1. The concept of limits can be generalized in many powerful ways. Every infinity is surpassed by even greater infinities. Mathematicians have defined increasingly powerful ways to generate ever larger and more glorious infinite numbers. Mathematicians often use first letter of the Hebrew alphabet to refer to these greater infinities. This first letter is aleph, written as ℵ.

The first aleph is ℵ0. It is identical with ω. Since the number of finite numbers is ℵ0, and since the finite numbers used for counting, ℵ0 is said to be a countable infinity. But

ℵ0 is surpassed in an extreme way by ℵ1. The next greater infinity ℵ1 is so great that it is uncountable. And the infinities soar off from there. Many of these infinities are so complex that they cannot be derived from simpler infinities (Drake, 1974; Kanamori, 2005). These strong infinities are transcendental. They can only be generated by their own existence axioms. Since the dyad maximizes consistency, it extends the axis mundi as far as consistently possible. For any true theory

48 of numbers, if the dyad can consistently add some stronger infinity axiom to that theory, then the dyad does add that stronger infinity axiom. Hence the dyad extends earlier and smaller number theories into later and greater number theories. The Final Law for Numbers. The final law for numbers gathers all the numbers into a single line. So it states that the axis mundi contains every consistently definable number. It contains every logically possible initial, successor, or limit number. The axis mundi is an unsurpassable series of surpassable numbers. The axis mundi is the backbone of the world. Other abstract objects will sort themselves into ranks indexed by numbers on the axis mundi. So the axis mundi defines the elevations of the sky.

3. The Star of Numbers

The axis mundi is the series of all definable numbers. Since the series of finite numbers is surpassed by an in-finite number (that is, an un-finite number), it looks like the series of definable numbers should be surpassed by an undefinable number. And since every number is the set of all lesser numbers, it looks like this undefinable number is identical with the axis mundi. However, by definition, an undefinable number is not a number. So we can say that the axis mundi is something that takes the concept of number beyond itself. The axis mundi is something like the self-transcendence of numbers. It is an ideal number. But then it is like a glass eye, which is not an eye. So an ideal number is not a number. An ideal number is like a numerical star. Our sun is a star; but there are other stars in the sky. One good way to approach the stars is by thinking of the ways sequences surpass their own definitions. Since the sequence of finite numbers is infinite, that sequence surpasses finiteness. The axis mundi is the sequence of surpassable numbers. Just as the sequence of finite numbers is infinite, so the sequence of surpassable numbers is unsurpassable. So the axis mundi is an unsurpassable series of surpassable numbers. Since the series of finite numbers is an infinite number, it looks like the series of surpassable numbers should be an unsurpassable number. So the axis mundi looks like a number. However, there are two arguments against saying that the axis mundi is a number. The first argument goes like this: every number is by definition surpassable by some greater number; so if the axis mundi were a number, then it would be both surpassable and unsurpassable; but that is impossible. The second goes like this: if the axis mundi were an unsurpassable number, then it would be a number; but if it were a number, then it would be one of the numbers in the axis mundi; thus it would be surpassed by itself; but that is impossible. So the axis mundi is not a number of any kind. Nevertheless, it has the properties required for being a number. It is even said to be absolute infinity, symbolized by Ω. To avoid problems with unsurpassability, we say that the adjective unsurpassable negates the meaning of its noun. It is similar to the adjective fake; a fake gun is not a gun. Or to the adjectives glass or plastic. Thus a glass eye is not an eye; plastic wood is not wood. An unsurpassable number is not a number. The words transcendental, ideal, and absolute also entail unsurpassability. They likewise negate their nouns. So an unsurpassable number is an ideal number, a transcendental number, or an absolute number. All those phrases just refer to the axis mundi. But the axis mundi is not a

49 number. Any unsurpassable object is a star. More precisely, a star is an unsurpassable series of surpassable objects. So the axis mundi is the star of numbers. Figure 7.1 shows the axis mundi rising through the sky. So far, we called to water, earth, and air. But the watery abyss is dark; the earth is dark; and the sky is only night. Even the star of numbers is dark. So far we have not welcomed any light.

Figure 7.1 The sky over the earth and sea.

50 8. The Sky of Sets 1. Every Many has its One

very many has its one (E 3.8.10, 5.6.3, 6.6.13, 6.9.1). As examples, many soldiers come together to make one army, and many stones come together to make one house (E 6.6.13). Thus Plotinus says “Deprived of unity, a thing ceases to be what it is called: no army unless as a unity: a chorus, a flock, must be one thing. Even house and ship demand unity, one house, one ship; unity gone, neither remains” (E 6.9.1). You might object that there are multiplicities which do not make any unity. The grains in a heap of sand do not come together into any unified thing. But Plotinus believes that unity is omnipresent: it acts in every multiplicity to unify it. So Plotinus is asserting a principle of universal composition: the items in every multiplicity join to form one thing. Every many has its one. But where do the many things come from? According to Plotinus, all things come from the One. More generally, every multiplicity comes from some prior unity. So the many items must all be parts or members of some already existing unity. We will use the modern term set to refer to any unity which contains some number of members. Consider a small army composed of four men. These men are A, B, C, and D. These many men join together to make one army. The army is the set which has these men as its members. A set of things is written by listing the things between braces { . . . }. So the army is the set {A, B, C, D}. Subsets with Many Members. On our interpretation so far, the Plotinian principle of universal composition applies to the multiplicities inside of some already existing unity. It applies to the multiplicities inside of some already existing set. So the Plotinian principle now states that, given any already existing set, every multiplicity of its members makes a derivative set. Any set derived by this rule is a subset of the original set. Consider the army {A, B, C, D}. Since the four men in this army are a multiplicity of its members, universal composition means that they make up the subset {A, B, C, D}. Although this may seem trivial, it means that every set is a subset of itself. Now consider any three men from the army. Any three men from the army make a subset of that army, that is, they make up a subarmy. The set {A, B, C} is a subarmy and the set {B, C, D} is another subarmy. Likewise any two men form a subarmy. So {A, D} and {B, C} are subarmies Each of these manys makes a subunity inside of the original unity. It makes a subarmy inside of the army or a subset inside of the set. Subsets with One Member. The principle of universal composition appears to apply only to multiplicities. Why do only multiplicities make new sets? Consider the army again. Must there be many soldiers to make an army? There may be a battle which kills all the soldiers except one. Suppose the sole survivor is the soldier C. The soldier is C while the army is the set of soldiers {C}. Likewise one student can be in a class and one book can be in a library. Multiplicity is not required for composition. This thesis is supported by Plotinus. Plotinus says that each individual thing has its own unique form (E 5.7; see Rist, 1963; Mamo, 1969; Gerson, 1994: 72-8). For example, Socrates

51 instantiates the form of Socrates. The form of Socrates has exactly one instance, namely, Socrates. The extension of any form is its set of instances. So the extension of the form of Socrates is a set with one member. It is the set {Socrates}. Just as the form is not identical with its one instance, so the set is not identical with its one member. Thus {Socrates} is not Socrates. More generally, it is possible for a set to have exactly one member. So now the Plotinian principle says: given any original set, every way of selecting its members forms some derivative set. The derivative set is a subset of the old set. You can select many members or just one member. If you select just one member from the original set, you get a subset with just that member. Subsets with No Members. We can pursue this logic further: what if we don’t select any members from the old set? Most subsets involve some rejection: if we only select A and B from {A, B, C, D}, then we have also rejected C and D. So what if we reject every soldier from the army? Does it still make an army? If all the soldiers are killed, the army has no soldiers. Now the army is the empty set {}. If all the students drop some class, then the class has no students. If you don’t own any books when you start your library, then your library contains no books. Selecting can involve rejecting: one way of selecting things from a set is to refuse to select any things at all. Now the Plotinian principle looks like this: given any original set, every way of selecting or rejecting its members makes some derivative set. The derivative set is a subset of the original set. This means that the empty set is a subset of every set. Tables of Selections and Rejections. Given some original set of things, we can make a table that lists all the ways of selecting and rejecting its members. Each way makes a subset of the original set. We write all the members of the original set in the topmost row of the table. Then we list all the ways of selecting and rejecting in the lower rows. For each lower row, we collect the selected members in the rightmost column. Suppose you have a set of coins containing just a nickel and a dime. The is the set {nickel, dime}. Table 8.1 shows all the ways of selecting and rejecting these coins. Each way makes the set listed in the rightmost column. If both the nickel and dime are rejected, we get the empty set {}. If the nickel is selected and the dime is rejected, we get {nickel}. Technically, every selection of members from some set is a subset of that set. So Table 8.1 lists all the subsets of the set {nickel, dime}.

nickel dime reject reject {} reject select {dime} select reject {nickel} select select {nickel, dime}

Table 8.1 Rejecting and selecting.

Power Sets. Given any set, we can use tables to make the list of all of its subsets. But if every selection makes a subset, are all these subsets unified? Or do they exist as some multiplicity without unity? The Plotinian answer is that these new sets do not exist without their own unity. Since every many has its one, they form their own set. On this

52 analysis, to say that every many has its one means that every original set generates a new set containing all the ways of selecting or rejecting members from the original set. The new set is the power set of the old set. It is the set of all subsets from the original set. Table 1 started with the set {nickel, dime}. Its power set is {{}, {dime}, {nickel}, {nickel, dime}}. So we can state this principle as a general axiom. The Power Set Axiom expresses the Plotinian slogan that every many has its one:

• Power Set Axiom. Every set is surpassed by its power set. The power set of any original set is the set of all subsets from that original set. It is the set of all ways of selecting or rejecting the members of the original set.

2. The Stack of Power Sets

The Power Set Axiom applies to already existing sets: for any already existing set, there exists a new set of all its subsets. So if we are going to apply the Power Set Axiom, we need to start with some originally existing set. Where do we start? We start with the simplest of all possible sets, that is, with the empty set. The generative power of the One drives the dyad to affirm the Empty Set Axiom. So the empty set {} exists. We can apply the Power Set Axiom to the empty set. But what justification do we have for the Power Set Axiom? Although we have derived it from the analysis of the Plotinian text, that analysis does not prove its truth. We need some argument for it. Our argument for the Power Set Axiom is based on the maximization of consistency. The generative power of the One maximizes consistency. It does this by driving the dyad to assign truth-values to that theory than which none greater is consistent. How does the dyad do this? According to Plotinus, existence begins with one simple thing and works towards increasingly complex multiplicities of things. So the dyad starts with simplicity and working towards complexity. It starts with simple axioms like the Empty Set Axiom, and it maximizes consistency by adding progressively more complex axioms. It builds up a stack of existence axioms. As axioms get stacked onto axioms, they define larger and larger systems of consistently definable beings. The dyad is equivalent to two principles: (1) The initial theory contains just the simplest axioms. (2) If any old theory can be consistently expanded by adding some new axiom, then that new axiom is true. That new axiom is added to the old theory to make the next bigger theory. The dyad affirms the Empty Set Axiom. So the creative power of the One flows into that axiom. By flowing into it, it creates a truth-maker for that axiom. The truth-maker for the Empty Set Axiom is just the empty set. So the empty set exists. The empty set is the originally existing set. Adding the Power Set Axiom to the Empty Set Axiom does not introduce any inconsistencies. So the dyad also affirms the Power Set Axiom. The creative power of the One now flows into the Power Set Axiom. Since this power maximizes consistency, it makes that axiom true in the strongest possible way. It makes its true in that way than which none greater is consistent. If any consistently definable being contributes to the truth of that axiom, then the One makes that being exist. The creative power of the One unfolds in an orderly way. It maximizes consistency by progressively expanding the system of consistently definable beings. Since the empty set is the simplest existing thing, it starts with the empty set. It applies the power set axiom to the empty set. This makes the power set of the empty set. We can refer to that

53 set as power-empty. Then it makes the power set of power-empty. We can write this as power-power-empty. Then it makes power-power-power-empty. You can picture each new power set as getting stacked on top of the previous set. This stack grows up into the abstract sky. If we picture these sets as rising up into the sky, then each set is an elevation. The zeroth elevation is the empty set. The first elevation is power-empty. The second elevation is power-power-empty. And so it goes. For every number n on the axis mundi, there exists an n-th elvation of sets. The n-th elevation of sets is generated by applying the power set n times to the empty set. But we need to be more precise. The Zeroth Elevation. The zeroth elevation in the stack of sets is generated by applying the power set operation zero times to the empty set. So it is just the empty set. The zeroth elevation corresponds to the Zero of non-being. To refer to the zeroth elevation, could write elevation-0 or elevation(0). But we will use the letter V instead of the word elevation. So the zeroth elevation is V(0). Since V(0) does not contain any strings, it is the empty set. Stated in symbols, V(0) = {}. The First Elevation. To go from the zeroth elevation to the first elevation, we apply the power set operation. The first elevation is power-empty. But the power set of the empty set is the set that contains every subset of the empty set. The only subset of the empty set is the empty set itself. So the first elevation is the set of the empty set. This is written as {{}}. Thus the first elevation V(1) is {{}}. The Second Elevation. To go from the first elevation to the second, we apply the power set operation to the first elevation. Since the first elevation is {{}}, its power set is the set of all subsets of {{}}. Since the empty set is a subset of every set, the empty set {} is a subset of {{}}. And since every set is a subset of itself, {{}} is a subset of {{}}. This means that there are two subsets of {{}}. The set that contains these two subsets is {{}, {{}}}. So the second elevation V(2) is {{}, {{}}}. The Third Elevation. To go from the second elevation to the third elevation, we apply the power set operation to the second elevation. Since the second elevation is {{}, {{}}}, its power set is the set of all subsets of {{}, {{}}}. Since the second elevation is a set with two members, it is analogous to the set {nickel, dime}. Table 8.1 showed the four ways to select or reject the members of that set of coins. If we replace the nickel in Table 8.1 with {}, and we replace the dime with {{}}, then the third elevation is {{}, {{}}, {{{}}}, {{}, {{}}}}. The nested braces are already dizzying. The Next Elevation. To go from any previous elevation to its next elevation, we apply the power set operation to the previous elevation. Of course, this is just a poetic way of talking about the power of the One: if any elevation exists, then the power set of that elevation exists. If there were n objects in the previous elevation, then the next elevation is the collection of all ways of selecting or rejecting n objects. The number of ways of selecting or rejecting n objects is two raised to the n-th power. As the elevations rise, the number of objects in each next elevation explodes. Since the third elevation has four sets, the fourth elevation contains 2 raised to the 4th power sets, namely, 16 sets. And the fifth elevation contains 2 raised to the 16th power sets, which is 65536 sets. The sixth elevation already contains more sets than there are things in our universe. This is a combinatorial explosion. Since every next elevation is the next elevation of some previous elevation, it is the successor of that previous elevation. Hence every next elevation is a successor elevation. This parallels the numbers. Just as every number n+1 is a successor of n, so also every (n+1)-th elevation is a successor of the n-th elevation.

54 Thus V(n) surpasses itself into its successor V(n+1). For every finite successor number on the axis mundi, there exists a successor elevation of sets. The Least Infinite Elevation. Plotinus states that the generative power of the One is infinite (E 2.4.15.17-20, 5.5.10.22-24, 6.7.32.20-23, 6.9.6). Consequently, above all the finite elevations, there exists an infinite elevation. The least infinite elevation does not have any previous elevation. It surpasses every finite elevation like the least infinite number ω surpasses every finite number. Just as the least infinite number ω is a limit number, so also the least infinite elevation is a limit elevation. A limit elevation just collects all the strings from all the previous elevations. To precisely define this infinite set, we need two more axioms: the Union Axiom and the Replacement Axiom. However, we need not go into detail about these. Just as the first limit number contains all the finite numbers, so the first limit elevation contains all the sets from all the finite elevations. More precisely, V(ω) is the set of all sets in V(n) for all n less than ω. Since every finite elevation is combinatorially complete, and since the ω-th elevation contains all sets from all finite elevations, it too is combinatorially complete. It contains all consistently definable finitely complex sets. It maximizes self-consistency. The Next Infinite Elevation. The next infinite elevation is the successor of the least infinite elevation. It is a successor elevation. So the next infinite elevation consists of all the subsets of the previous elevation. Since the least infinite elevation contains ω-many sets, the number of sets on the next infinite elevation is 2 raised to the ω-th power. This number is infinite. Surprisingly, it is a bigger infinity than ω. It is the next bigger infinite number after ω. Since the number ω corresponds to the number of counting numbers (like 0, 1, 2, 3, and so on), the number ω is a countable infinity. But the number of subsets of V(ω) is an uncountable infinity. Each set in the next infinite elevation corresponds to some way of rejecting or selecting finitely complex sets. Some of those ways will be finitely complex sets, while others will be infinitely complex sets. The set V(ω+1) is the power set of V(ω). From the ω-th to the (ω+1)-th elevation, consistent definability is preserved. So self-consistency is maximized.

4. The Incantation for Sets

The Initial Law for Sets. The laws for sets make an incantation. It has initial, successor, limit, and final laws for sets. The initial law for sets states that there exists an initial elevation of sets. This elevation is V(0). It is identical with the empty set. Thus V(0) is {}. The Successor Law for Sets. The successor law for sets states that every elevation of sets surpasses itself into a greater successor elevation. The elevations are indexed with the numbers, so that each elevation V(n) surpasses itself into its successor elevation V(n+1). Thus for every successor number n+1 on the axis mundi, there exists a successor elevation V(n+1). The elevation V(n+1) is the power set of V(n). The power set of any original set is the set of all subsets of the original set. So V(n+1) is the set of all subsets of V(n).

55 The Limit Law for Sets. Every infinite progression of elevations is surpassed by a greater limit elevation. For every limit number L in the axis mundi, there exists a limit elevation V(L). Each limit elevation V(L) contains every set on every lesser elevation. So the elevation V(L) is the union of all V(k) for k less than L. The union of any sets includes every member in all those sets. So each limit elevation includes every member of every lower elevation. The first infinite elevation includes every set from every finite elevation. Thus V(ω) is the set of all finite sets. The Final Law for Sets. The final law for sets gathers all the sets into a single collection. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell showed that this collection cannot be a set. The Foundation Axiom entals that every set is not a member of itself. Suppose now that the collection of all sets is a set. If so, then it is the set of all self-excluding sets. Either it includes itself or it does not. If it does not, then it is a self-excluding set, and so it does include itself. If it does, then it is not a self-excluding set, and so does not include itself. The set of all sets is a self-contradictory and therefore impossible object. If it were to exist, then consistency would not be maximized; on the contrary, it would collaps entirely into inconsistency. If it existed, then it would be the abyss; but the abyss does not exist. This is a key point about the abyss: not only is the abyss below the beings, it is also above them. So the collection of all sets is a collection which is too general to be a set. Such collections are called proper classes. The proper class V is the collection of all sets. Thus V is the union of all V(n) for n in the axis mundi. Just as the axis mundi is the star of numbers, so V is the star of sets. This incantation shows that complex sets depend on simpler sets. The iterative hierarchy of sets starts with the simplest set. Sets evolve from simpler into more complex. Of course, this is not biological evolutions. Nevertheless, it is cumulative: complexity gradually accumulates as sets beget their power sets. The evolution of set- theoretic complexity supports Daniel Dennett’s Principle of the Accumulation of Design. That principle states that “since each new designed thing that appears must have a large design investment in its etiology somewhere, the cheapest hypothesis will always be that the design is largely copied from earlier designs, which are copied from earlier designs, and so forth” (1995: 72). The design (that is, the structure) of later and more complex sets is entirely copied from the design of earlier and simpler sets.

5. The Axioms of Set Theory

For Plotinus, the One generates all possible forms (E 6.2.21.45-55). The One generates the forms through the activity of the dyad. The dyad generates a system of axioms. Ancient thinkers were familiar with axiomatic systems. The ancient Greek mathematician Euclid had axiomatized geometry. However, to modernize the forms we turn to modern set theory: the Platonic forms are sets. To define these forms, we derived some set-theoretic axioms from Plotinus. By analyzing Plotinus’s argument for the One (E 5.4.1), we obtained these three axioms: the Extensionality Axiom, the Foundation Axiom, and the Empty Set Axiom. Since Plotinus says the first forms are numbers (E 6.6.15), we showed how to construct the line of ordinal numbers. These numbers are

56 sets. We then turned to the Plotinian slogan that every many has its one (E 3.8.10.19-28, 5.6.3, 6.6.13, 6.9.1). By analyzing this slogan, we got the Power Set Axiom. These axioms suffice to build the finite elevations of the stack of sets. The numbers in the axis mundi order the forms into elevations (E 2.9.13.3-6; see 5.4.1.1-5, etc.). By analyzing the Plotinian theory of numbers, we also got an Infinity Axiom. To add the infinite elevations of sets, we added two more modern axioms: Union and Replacement. The dyad affirms all these axioms: it makes them true. If the dyad affirms some axiom that asserts the existence of some sets, then the One makes those sets exist. We derived five axioms from Plotinian principles. We added two more modern axioms. But these are not the only axioms. Since the dyad maximizes self-consistency, it affirms that set theory than which none greater is consistent. Hence we affirm that the Logos contains the axioms of the logically unsurpassable set theory. While many issues in set-theory remain unsettled, we can provisionally say that the greatest set theory is the Von Neumann – Gödel – Bernays (VGB) set theory with axioms for all consistently definable large cardinals (Drake, 1974; Kanamori, 2005). The dyad emanates these axioms in order of consistency strength. This theory also adds proper classes, collections that are too general to be sets. These proper classes are not idle: they are the transcendental objects. But we focus on the sets. The dyad makes the VGB axioms true. Since these axioms do not decide the truth-values of all propositions, the dyad independently assigns many other truth-values. However, if there does not exist exactly one way to maximize consistency, then the dyad maximizes consistency in many different ways. These would be different mathematical worlds. Hamkins (2012) argues for many mutually incompatible set theories. He posits many mathematical worlds, and he may be right. But we will proceed on the assumption that there exists exactly one way to maximize consistency, and that this way includes the VGB axioms. By affirming the VGB axioms, the dyad generates the greatest system of sets. This system is V. V is a (proper) class of sets. V is transcendental. It is arguable that all consistent theories have models in V. If that is correct, then all logically possible forms exist in V. Thus V is combinatorially complete – it is a plenum. These sets only contain other sets. Hence they are said to be pure. The Platonic forms are pure sets. We used braces to refer to sets: {}, {{}}, {{}, {{}}}, and so on. But the braces notation for sets is not the only notation. Sets can be identified with bit strings, that is strings of the binary digits 0 and 1. Here is one way to do this. Let the zeroth elevation be the empty set. The power set of some set xander contains all ways of rejecting or selecting members from xander. Let rejection correspond to 0 and selection correspond to 1. So if some set contains n members, then its power set is the set of all strings of length n. Since V(0) contains zero members, its power set is the set of all strings of length zero. There exists exactly one string of length zero, namely, the empty string Λ. So V(1) is {Λ}. Now V(2) is the set of all strings of length 1. There are two of these, namely, 0 and 1. So V(2) is {0, 1}. Thus V(3) is {00, 01, 10, 11}. This method of building the elevations lets us identify sets with bit strings. There are other methods for doing this, but they are all equivalent. So the Platonic forms are bit strings. Moreover, these bit strings organize themselves into a branching tree.

57 9. Progression from the One 1. From the One to the Many

e began with non-being, which we symbolized by Zero. As non-being, the Zero negates itself. The self-negation of non-being gives birth to being-itself, which we symbolized by One. Thus we counted from Zero to One. Plotinus says the One is absolute productive power (E 5.2.1, 3.8.8, 3.9.3, 5.4.1, 6.7.15, 6.8.9, 6.9.6). Of course, the One produces the Many. But how does it do that? From the One, it is natural to continue counting. The One begets the Two; the One and the Two beget the Three; and so the One generates the entire line of natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on. The contemporary pagan writer Smith (2005: 18-20) starts with the One and progresses through the Two and the Many. So this sort of progression can help us to understand contemporary paganism. But what about Plato or the ancient Platonists? Do they proceed from the One through the Two to the Many? And how do these numbers generate our universe? One answer to these questions comes from the Pythagoreans. When he was writing his Timaeus, Plato was using Pythagorean sources. Much later, the Pythagorean answer was made more explicit by the Greek writer Alexander Polyhistor (100 – 36 BC). He explained how the Pythagoreans went from the simple unity of the One to the enormous complexity of our universe. Polyhistor writes:

The beginning of all is unity; unity is a cause of indefinite duality as a kind of matter; both unity and indefinite duality are sources of the numbers; the points are proceeding from numbers; the lines - from the points; from the lines are plane figures; from plane are solid figures; from them – perceivable physical solids, in which four elements are - fire, water, earth, and air; moving and changing totally, they give rise to the universe. (in Diogenes Laertius, Lives, 8.25)

The construction is not entirely clear: How does unity give rise to duality? Why is the duality indefinite? Fortunately, we don’t have to answer these questions. And we aren’t going to start with unity anyway. While the ancient Greeks didn’t have the number zero, we do. So we’ll start with the number zero. Note that the number zero is an existing thing. It is not the Zero; it is not non-being. The Zero can be symbolized by the number zero, just like the element of water can be symbolized by the water in your cup. But the Zero is not a number. It is emptiness, nothingness, absence. Now we can get back to Polyhistor’s construction. The number zero corresponds to a geometrical point – it is a zero-dimensional object. But this point has generative power: it generates an object outside of itself. This object is the number one. The number zero and the number one work together to generate an object that exceeds them both. This is the number two. The numbers zero, one, and two work together to generate the number three. And so it goes. The numbers generate an endless sequence of numbers, and this sequence is a one-dimensional line of numbers. Figure 9.1 shows the progressive

58 generation of numbers. Each arrow indicates a creative act. The leftmost dot is always the zero. When 0 generates 1, that is shown by an arrow from the 0 dot to the 1 dot. When 0 and 1 generate the 2, that is shown by an arrow from the 0 dot to the 2 dot, and by an arrow from the 1 dot to the 2 dot. The same for the 3.

Figure 9.1 The generation of numbers.

By the same process, the line of number-points generates parallel copies of itself. By endlessly creating lines beside lines, the line generates the two-dimensional plane. The plane repeatedly produces images of itself. These images get stacked up to make a three- dimensional space. So we go from the point to the three-dimensional cube of space. This is shown in Figure 9.2. The whole process started with the generative power of the point. This generative power spread into every number on the number line; then into the line itself; then into the plane. We could keep going, so that the 3D plane generates a 4D hyper-plane. This 4D space-time is useful for modern physics. And then into five- dimensional space. And so it goes.

Figure 9.2 From the point to the cube.

We’ve constructed space, but space isn’t enough. Our universe also contains physical things. Where do they come from? The simplest physical things are the elements. For the ancients, these were fire, air, water, and earth. There are atoms of each element. Plato now picks up the Pythagorean construction of these atoms. He starts with simple triangles. These simple triangles are right triangles (they have a right angle as one of their angles). Since they are right triangles, the Pythagorean theorem applies to these

59 triangles. The Pythagorean theorem says that, if a and b and c are the lengths of the sides of some right triangle, then a2 + b2 = c2. This formula shows how to pass from numbers to shapes. So this helps explain how things get built out of numbers. The simple Platonic triangles are like elementary particles in current physics (they are like quarks). From these simple triangles, Plato constructs more complex triangles (these are like protons or neutrons built up out of quarks). He uses these complex triangles as the 2D surfaces of his atoms. Four triangles can be put together to make a tetrahedron, which is the shape of an atom of fire. Plato then shows how to construct the other elements, namely, air, water, and earth. So the forms of the four basic elements are constructed from triangles. Figure 9.3 shows the construction of the Platonic atom-forms. Of course, these four elements will be important to contemporary pagans.

Figure 9.3 The forms of the Platonic atoms.

2. The Digital Forms of Things

Plato uses the Pythagorean theorem to go from numbers to triangles. From them, he constructs physical atoms. Lots of atoms come together to form things like human bodies. But these bodies also have structures – they have extremely complex forms. And it’s not so easy to go from numbers to those forms. The Pythagoreans said that all things are numbers. But how can you assign numbers to complex things? A Pythagorean named Eurytus tried to assign numbers to things. Diogenes Laertius said Eurytus was one of the teachers of Plato. Whether or not that is true, much Pythagoreanism was incorporated in Platonism. But how did Eurytus assign numbers? According to Alexander of Aphrodisias (2011), Eurytus tried to compute the numbers of things by making pictures of them using pebbles:

For example, suppose the number 250 is the definition of human being ... After positing this, he [Eurytus] would take 250 pebbles . . . Then he smeared a wall

60 with lime and drew a human being in outline ... and then fastened some of these pebbles in the drawn face, others in the hands, others elsewhere, and he completed the drawing of the human being there represented by means of pebbles equal to the units which he declared define human being. As a result of this procedure he would state that just as the particular sketched human being is composed of, say, 250 pebbles, so a real human being is defined by so many units.

Alexander makes Eurytus look like an idiot. But perhaps his procedure wasn’t so stupid – it can be modernized. To go from things to numbers in a modern way, we use computers. Although ancient peoples obviously did not have modern technology, they did make computing machines. The best known is the Antikythera Mechanism, a complex system of gears used to predict the movements of celestial bodies (Freeth et al., 2006). Cicero mentions astronomical computers (ONG 2.87-88). So philosophical pagans are happy to talk about computers here – but we have the benefit of modern machines. To study some physical thing, we make digital models of that thing inside computers. We make digital models of the atmosphere, of economies, of airplanes, human bodies, and so on. These digital models are simulations of the original physical things. It has been argued that every finitely complex thing can be exactly simulated by some digital model in a computer. Since every human body is only finitely complex, it can be exactly simulated by some digital model in a computer. Your body can be exactly simulated by some digital model in a computer. If such a model were made, it would be an exact duplicate of you. It would have your thoughts and feelings. A computer creates a digital model by running a program. So every finitely complex thing can be exactly simulated by some computer running a program. The program is the important part. It contains the information that defines the thing. A program is just a series of 0s and 1s. It is a bit string. Every bit string defines a number. How does this work? We ordinarily use ten numerals to write out numbers – we use the base-ten or decimal system. But numbers can be written out using just the two numerals 0 and 1. It’s the base-two or binary system. Computers use the binary number system. They treat numbers as bit strings. Since programs are bit strings, and bit strings are numbers, every program is also a number. Our computers use bit strings to generate music, images, movies, the universes of video games, and so on. The modernized Eurytus says the number of any thing is just the number of the program that exactly simulates that thing. Eurytus was on the right track. To go from things to their numbers, we use computers instead of pebbles. Every finitely complex thing has a program-number. For infinitely complex things, we can just use infinite sequences of 0s and 1s. According to Plato, every thing has a form. The form is the abstract pattern or structure of the thing. We interpret the Platonic forms as programs: the form of a thing is the program which exactly simulates that thing. The program is a string of 0s and 1s; the program is a bit string; the bit string is a number. So the form of every thing is a binary number. It is the number of the program that simulates the thing. These program numbers are the Platonic forms. The form of your body is the number of the program that simulates your body. It is the number of your body-program. Aristotle said that the form of the body is its soul. Xenocrates said your soul is a self-moving number. This goes well with Eurytus and Aristotle. Starting with these ancient thinkers, and passing through modern computer science, we say your soul is the number of your body. This is

61 a scientific conception of the soul. Digital souls are natural things. Of course, if your soul is the program number of your body, then it isn’t inside your body. All physical things, from the smallest to the largest, have forms. They have program- numbers. Little subatomic particles have program-numbers. Atoms and molecules have program-numbers. Cells and organs and bodies have program-numbers. Societies and ecosystems and planets and stars have program-numbers. Galaxies and black holes have program-numbers. All things in our universe are finitely complex, they all have digital forms. Computers transform all physical things into numbers. But what about our whole universe? Among physical things, universes are the largest. A universe is a maximal physical whole. Universes are not parts of larger physical things. Do universes have forms? It is reasonable to say that if some parts have forms, then any whole composed of those parts has a form. The form of the whole is composed of the forms of its parts. Plato does say that our universe has a cosmic form (Timaeus, 28a-30e). We agree with Plato. Our universe has a program-number. There exists some bit string which, if run on some cosmic computer, generates our entire universe from start to finish.

3. The Thin Tree of Strings

The forms of things are program-numbers; they are strings of 0s and 1s. But where do these strings come from? From Plotinian principles, we derived the axioms of set theory. Since the dyad makes these axioms true, the maximally consistent system of sets exists. But sets are equivalent to bit strings. Since Plotinian principles entail sets, and since sets are equivalent to bit strings, Plotinian principles entail bit strings. Of course, we don’t need Plotinus to argue for bit strings. We could just argue directly that sets exist and that sets are bit strings. Nevertheless, since philosophical paganism takes its inspiration from ancient pagan thinkers, we want to use ancient pagan principles to generate the world of beings. And since Plotinian principles entail bit strings, our desire is satisfied. Philosophical paganism affirms bit strings. It will be convenient to give axioms that generate the strings directly. Although these direct axioms do not mention sets, set theory remains in the background – the bit strings are ultimately sets. Since the One is being-itself, and being-itself is a purely logical category, the bit strings are generated logically. We used the existential quantifier ∃ to symbolize the One. And we agreed with Quine that to be is to be the value of a bound variable. So the One generates beings by binding variables to the existential quantifier ∃. So the One generates the strings by binding variables to the ∃. Start with the variable x. If the variable is x, then the binding is (∃x). So the One unfolds into (∃x). But any binding requires some truth about the variable. The most basic truth is just that the variable is identical with itself. So the (∃x) unfolds into (∃x)(x = x). As the One maximizes consistency, it generates this basic truth. Of course, as the One generates truths, its power unfolds into the logical power of the dyad. The dyad makes the proposition (∃x)(x = x) and affirms its truth. But what is this x? Since the One is simple, this x is simple. The One begins by generating the simplest bit string. The simplest bit string has length zero. This is the empty string, also known as the null string. Logicians call it Λ. So we say that the original being is the empty string Λ. How does the One generate this being? The One generates the beings logically. It creates them by the power of pure

62 logic. This power is truth. Hence the One generates Λ by making it true that there exists an x such that x equals Λ. The One makes it true that (∃x)(x = Λ). The proposition that Λ exists is an existence axiom. Since the power of the One is purely logical, the One makes beings exist by making existence axioms true. This is true:

• Root Axiom. There exists an original simple being Λ.

The unity of the One unfolds itself into the difference-in-identity of the x = x. But this duality is indefinite: it looks like the x is both the same as itself as well as different from itself. So the indefinite duality unfolds further into a definite duality. But how to indicate this? If all we have is the One, then we cannot generate any Two. But we have more than the One – we also have the Zero. So the x distinguishes itself from itself by splitting into two x’s. These are x0 and x1. Since these are now two distinct variables, the (∃x) splits into (∃x0)(∃x1). And the difference-in-identity of the x = x splits into the difference of x0 from x1. This unfolding of the One into the Two generates (∃x0)(∃x1)(x0 ≠ x1). Now the x0 is just the bit 0 while x1 is the bit 1. We said that x is Λ, so these are Λ0 and Λ1. But Λ is null. So Λ0 is 0 while Λ1 is 1. On this way of thinking about the unfolding of the One, the distinction between 0 and 1 is the numerical image of the Two. The Platonic name for the Two is the dyad. The dyad played an important role in ancient Platonic thought. It appears to originate with Plato himself (Olsen, 2002). However, Plato is said to have discussed it only in his secret teachings. His students talked about it. Thus Aristotle said that Plato used the One and the dyad to generate the numbers (Metaphysics, 987b19-22). The dyad slowly makes its way into the thought of Plotinus (Rist, 1962). But the Platonic theory of the dyad is obscure. So we clarify it and modernize it by identifying the dyad with the power that generates binary divisions. The power of the dyad drives every being x to generate the pair of later beings x0 and x1. So this generative principle is an existence axiom that defines the beings among beings. Thus:

• Binary Axiom. For every being x, there exists some beings x0 and x1. Every x is surpassed by its successor x0 and its successor x1.

Start with the being Λ. Applying the Binary Axiom means that two branches emerge from this Λ. The left branch rises to 0 while the right branch rises to 1. Apply the axiom to 0 to get 00 and 01. Applied to 1 it yields 10 and 11. The endless self-application of this axiom generates all the bit strings – the binary numbers. Something analogous to the binary number system was known in the ancient Chinese divination system known as the I Ching. It was already in use in Plato’s day. The I Ching contains sixty four hexagrams. Each hexagram consists of six stacked lines, either broken (indicating yin) or solid (indicating yang). The hexagrams were arranged into a binary sequence by the scholar Shao Yong around the year 1100. For this sequence, the broken yin line is 0 while the solid yang line is 1. Leibniz, who was deeply interested in Chinese thought, discovered the I Ching and used it to make the binary number system (Leibniz, 1703; Ryan, 1996). Similar binary patterns have long been used in Yoruba Ifá divination.

63 Of course, Plotinus did not know about the number zero, so he didn’t know about binary numbers. But he did say that the first forms that emerge from the One are the numbers (E 6.6). And the One is simple. So it is consistent with Plotinian thinking to say that the One gives rise to the simplest number system, which is binary. And Plotinus often uses the image of a tree to express the unfolding of the One being-itself into the many beings (E 3.3.7.10-25, 3.8.10.10-20, 4.4.11.5-15, 6.8.15.34-8). The Binary Axiom is cumulative. When the earlier string x is surpassed by the later string x0, or by the later string x1, the later string preserves the content of the earlier string. The later string inherits the content of the earlier string. But it modifies that content by adding a new digit. This is the simplest form of descent with modification. Since the later strings inherit the content of the earlier strings, content accumulates. Thinking of the dyad as the distinction between zero and one coheres with the Plotinian image of the tree. The distinction between zero and one is the divergence of two branches. Iteration of this divergence makes a binary tree – it makes the thin tree of strings. Every (finite) bit string shows up somewhere in this thin tree of strings. This tree contains every possible finitely long bit string. The ranks of strings in the thin tree make an abstract version of the great chain of being (Lovejoy, 1936). The great chain was an ancient way of ranking things by their functional complexities. Here strings are ranked by length. Plotinus offers an exercise in which you visualize the world of forms (E 5.8.9.1-30). And visualization exercises are central in Wicca (Sabin, 2011: ch. 3). So now we pass into vision. Figure 9.4 shows part of the binary tree. It is rooted in the One. So it rises up out of the earth that sits in the ocean. Figure 9.5 shows the first three levels of the thin tree as trigrams made of yin-lines and yang-lines.

Figure 9.4 Part of the thin tree of strings.

Figure 9.5 Part of the thin tree as trigrams.

The tree likewise contains progressions of strings. Any progression starts with the root of the tree (with the empty string). Every string in any progression is surpassed by exactly one successor string. So any progression is an infinitely long sequence of finite strings. For example, the first few strings in one progression run like this:

Λ → 0 → 01 → 011 → 0110 → 01101 → . . . .

Any infinite progression of finite strings defines an infinite string. This infinite string is the limit of the progression. This is the mathematical concept of limit that is found in the calculus or in set theory. An infinite string is a limit of a progression like 1 is the limit of the infinite progression of fractions 1/2, 3/4, 7/8, 15/16, and so on. For any progression of strings, its limit is defined by just superimposing all the finite strings. More precisely, it is defined like this: the n-th digit of the limit string is the n-th digit of the n-th string in the progression of which it is the limit. Thus we extend these binary numbers to infinity. This is stated in the Infinity Axiom:

• Infinity Axiom. For every infinite progression of strings, there exists a string which is the limit of that progression.

4. The Cosmic Computers

The thin tree of strings contains every possible finitely long bit string. It contains all the finite numbers as strings of 0s and 1s. But these bit strings are also programs. So the thin tree contains every possible finite program. The tree is a library. And, if programs are the forms of things, then it contains every possible finitely complex form; it contains the form of every possible finitely complex thing. Some universes are only finitely complex. So the thin tree contains the forms of all possible finitely complex universes. Since it is likely that our universe is only finitely complex, it is likely that the thin tree contains the form of our universe. It is the number of a program.

65 Our universe has a number. If that number runs on some cosmic computer, then it generates our universe. Plato said in the Timaeus (28a-29b) that our universe has a cosmic form; so this digital way of thinking about our universe is consistent with Platonic cosmology and thereby with Plotinus. How should we picture the relations between the cosmic computer, its program, and its universe? We picture it as a logical onion. We start with the One, so we put the One at the center of the onion. The One emanates the forms, which we interpreted as bit strings. One of these is the form of our universe, which Plato called the eternal pattern. The eternal pattern is a program. So we wrap this program around the One. It is the second layer of the onion. As the creative power of the One flows through this program, it gains dynamical shape. The program is a dynamical pattern of creativity. For Platonists, the forms are causes: overflowing with energy, every form generates a moving image of itself. For Plotinus, forms manifest their instances (E 5.1.6.31-8, 5.4.2.27-39; see also 2.9.8.22-7, 4.8.6.8-12, 5.4.1.27-34, 5.2.1.14-15). Forms are dynamical patterns of creativity. If the forms are programs, then their manifest images are computers. Thus Platonism says purely mathematical programs exist before their physical computers – programs manifest computers. Following Hawking (1988: 174), we say the One breathes fire into some program, such as the Platonic eternal pattern of our universe. By animating or energizing that cosmic program, the program creates a cosmic computer. Following Plato, any cosmic computer is a demiurge (see Steinhart, 2014: ch. 6). So we can expand our theory of existence by saying that some programs (bit strings) in the binary tree make computers. For every program in the thin tree, if the One energizes that program, then that program generates a cosmic computer. The behavior of that computer in turn generates a physical universe. Universes are the outermost layers of our logical onions. Figure 9.6 shows the onion whose core is the One and whose outer layer is our universe.

Figure 9.6 The computational onion.

5. How Programs Manifest Universes

At least for the sake of illustration, we need to show how bit strings can generate cosmic computers. We need to show how purely numerical bit strings can unfold into computers which create universes. There are several ways bit strings can unfold into cosmic computers. Here we focus on one way. On this way, a bit string unfolds into a

66 computer through four manifestations. To define each manifestation, the dyad emanates an axiom. The axioms of manifestation define the ways that bit strings unfold into more complex computers. But both the bit strings and the computers are just sets. So the axioms of manifestation map sets onto sets. More precisely:

• Axioms of Manifestation. An axiom of manifestation maps a bit string onto a complex computer. These computers gain physical structure. All the objects in these axioms are ultimately sets, so these axioms don’t introduce any new things.

For our example, there are four axioms of manifestation. The first axiom maps a bit string onto a numerical structure. The second axiom adds space-time and energy. The third axiom adds motion. The fourth axiom maximizes physical complexity. Thus bit strings unfold into maximally complex physical structures. The first manifestation maps each bit string onto its set.10 These sets are connect-the- dots structures. Some of these sets are computers, while others are not. For precision, the computers we’re talking about now are Turing machines. They are named after their inventor, the legendary British mathematician Alan Turing. Turing machines are very simple computers. Every finitely complex computation can be done by some Turing machine. Here “machines” means Turing machines. An arithmetical machine is a computer built entirely out of numbers.11 It is a series of transformations of numbers into numbers. The parts of an arithmetical machine are not arranged into any physical structures. So when the first manifestation maps each bit string onto its set, either that set is an arithmetical machine or else it is just some broken junk. The second manifestion maps a bit string onto a geometrical machine if its first manifestation is an arithmetical machine, and maps it onto the empty set otherwise. A geometrical machine adds spatio-temporal structure.12 It interprets the series of numerical transformations as a series of moments – a timeline. Each instant of time is associated with a number. But a geometrical machine interprets each number spatially. Using the binary number system, any number can be written out as a string of 0s and 1s. You can picture it as written out on a paper tape which is divided into cells. Each cell is a point, so each paper tape is a spatial line of points. Each instant of time gets its own tape. Each point has a location in time and in space. So the second manifestation generates physical space-time. Each space-time point has the numerical value either 0 or 1. These are interpreted physically as either the absence (0) or presence (1) of energy. So the second manifestation creates a physical field of energy values. This is simple physics. But any geometrical machine is physical structure that is identical with a purely set-theoretic structure. Figure 9.7 shows a short timeline of some short tapes. The third manifestation maps a bit string onto a dynamical machine if its second manifestation is a geometrical machine, and maps it onto the empty set otherwise. A dynamical machine adds motion. Specifically, it adds a moving agent. You can picture a geometrical machine as a series of spatial tapes laid out on a timeline. From each instant to the next, exactly one point changes its value. A dynamical machine adds a tape head that makes those changes. When some value changes from one instant to the next, the head appears to erase an old value and write a new value. So the head moves back and forth along the spatial lines of points, performing actions of erasing and writing. A tape head also has its own properties. It has set of possible states and a set of possible

67 operations. It has some rules which regulate its behavior.13 A tape head is a Platonic demiurge. Its motions are like those of a cosmic spider that weaves its universe as its web (Hume, 1779: 90). Although the demiurge emerges from the differences in the values of points, it appears to be causing those values to change. Although the demiurge is a physical agent, it is identical with a purely set-theoretic structure.

Figure 9.7 Some tapes on a timeline.

To define the fourth manifestation, we introduce decompilation. Consider a video game. At the level of the computer hardware, it is just a changing array of zeroes and ones. But at the level of game play, which is the level of software, it is a complex physical world. Philosophers say the complex game world supervenes on the hardware. A decompilation transforms a changing array of zeros and ones onto the most complex higher level physical universe that supervenes on it. So the fourth manifestation maps each bit string onto its decompilation if its third manifestation is a dynamical machine, and maps it onto the empty set otherwise. For instance, the fourth manifestation might decompile a dynamical machine into a game of life (Poundstone, 1985). A game of life has a 2D space and 1D time. It has patterns of energy that move – these are physical particles. Figure 9.8 shows a moving particle known as a glider. All complex physical universes are ultimately just purely set-theoretic structures.

Figure 9.8 Glider motion.

68 10. The Library and the Treasury 1. The Incantation for Genotypes

ur earlier reasoning presented the Platonic forms as pure sets. They exist in the iterative hierarchy of pure sets, which is the stack of elevations. This stack is V. Since all mathematical objects can be constructed from sets, the iterative hierarchy of pure sets includes all mathematical objects. Sets are useful in many domains: in formal logic, possible worlds semantics, mathematical physics, and so on. However, every set in V corresponds to a bit string – and strings are easier to work with. So we will focus on the strings in the thin tree. Bit strings are like genotypes. Genotypes are abstract recipies for organisms. A genotype is a string of DNA letters. There are four DNA letters in the genetic code. These are A, C, G, and T. These can be translated into binary: A is 00; C is 01; G is 10; and T is 11. So any string in the thin tree can be directly translated into a genotype with DNA letters. The thin tree of strings is a library of genotypes –the library of all possible genetic patterns. The idea of a library of possibilities comes from Leibniz (Theodicy, secs. 414-7). Dawkins (1996: ch. 6) talks about a similar library –the museum of all possible organisms. The genotypes in this genetic library are defined by the incantation for genotypes. The Initial Law for Genotypes. The zeroth floor of the library is empty. The initial genotype occurs on the first floor of the library. The initial law for genotypes defines that initial genotype: it is the empty string Λ. The empty string is identical with the empty set. If this genotype is interpreted as recipe for an organism, then it makes no organism at all. But genotypes can be interpreted as recipes for other things. They can be thought of as recipes for universes. Plato said that our universe was generated from a cosmic recipe (Timaeus, 28e-29b). So if the empty string is a cosmic form, then it is the form of the simplest universe. The simplest universe is empty. It does not contain any things at all. No space, no time, no physical things. Its form is just the empty set. The Successor Law for Genotypes. The successor law for genotypes is just the Binary Axiom for the thin tree of strings. So the successor law for genotypes has two parts. Its first part is its opening part. Its opening part asserts that every genotype can be extended in two ways. If the genotype contains a string S, then it can be extended into S0 and into S1. Its second part is its closing part. Its closing part asserts that every genotype is extended in every way. Technically, for every genotype, for every way it can be extended, there exists some successor of that genotpye which is extended in that way. Hence every successor of any genotpye is a minimally longer version of that string – it is longer by one digit. Every genotype is surpassed by its successors. Successor genotypes go on successor floors of the library. Every successor floor contains all the successors of all the genotypes on the previous floor. Since every genotype has exactly two successors, all the successor floors contain genotypes. The n-th floor contains all genotypes of length n. As bit strings, these

69 genotypes resemble programs for computers. As they grow longer, they become more meaningful. They start to define possible living organisms. And they begin to define the physical structures of universes. The Limit Law for Genotypes. The iteration of the successor relation produces ever longer chains of genotypes. A progression of genotypes is an infinite chain which contains the initial genotype and in which each genotype is surpassed by exactly one successor. As any progression grows longer, it defines a longer and longer string. The series of ever longer strings converges in the limit to an infinitely long string. More precisely, the limit of any progression of genotypes is made by superimposing all the strings in that progression. The n-th digit of the limit is the n-th digit in the n-th string in its progression. So the limit of an infinite series of finite strings is an infinite string. More precisely, each genotype on the ω-th floor of the library contains a string of length ω. It is an infinitely long program for an infinite computer. The limit law ensures that every limit floor in the library contains infinitely many genotypes. But there are infinitely many higher floors in the library. They are filled with infinitely complex genotypes, which are the forms of infinitely complex things. The Final Law for Genotypes. The final law states that the library is the union of all the floors. Since there exists a floor for every number in the axis mundi, the library is an unsurpassable collection of genotypes. But there are no unsurpassable genotypes in the library. Every genotype is surpassed by its successors and limits. The library is an unsurpassable class of surpassable genotypes. The library itself is absolutely infinite; it is transcendental; it is ideal. The library is the star of genotypes. Figure 10.1 shows the genotypes on the first four floors of the library as double helixes of DNA.

Figure 10.1 The first few floors of the library.

70 2. The Complexities of Genotypes

Genotypes are recipes for organisms. More precisely, genotypes include programs for the construction of organisms. When a genotype gets run by a cellular computer, it instructs the cell to perform a series of operations. Some of these operations involve the cell making offspring copies of itself. When the cell makes these offspring, it passes its program down to them. So one cell can grow into an enormous network of cells running the genetic program in parallel. For example, every human body begins with a single cell running a human genetic program. This program directs that single cell (the zygote) to grow into a mature human body with many trillions of cells. Of course, as an organism grows, it also lives. And once it’s reached its mature form, it continues to live as an adult for some time. So, more generally, a genotype is a program for the life of some organism. The genotype is just a bit string; but the organism is a physical structure which is extended both in space and time. At each moment of its life, the organism fills some 3D volume of space. So the life of the organism is a 4D space-time whole. So a genotype is a program which defines a 4D space-time whole. An organism has some complexity. One way to measure the complexity of an organism comes from Dawkins (1986: 6-9). Dawkins defines complexities for types of things. So the type amoeba has some complexity. Likewise there are complexities for the types like fern, jellyfish, snake, lizard, rabbit, chimpanzee, and human. Of course, non-living types like mountain and airplane also have complexities. But here we will focus on life. Dawkins defines the complexity of any type of whole in terms of the permutations of its parts. A permutation is a way of rearranging the parts of a whole. Since ordinary things in our universe are made of atoms, we can say that the parts of any whole are its atoms. Every way of rearranging the atoms in some thing is a permutation of that thing. Now consider what permutations do to types of things. Some of the permutations of a whole preserve the type. One permutation rearranges the carbon atoms in an organism. It instantly changes the places of carbon atoms. The carbon atoms in your left foot get swapped with the carbon atoms in your right foot. As far as organisms are concerned, any carbon atom is the same as any other carbon atom. Since organisms don’t care about the particular identities of their atoms, this sort of permutation preserves the life of the organism. It preserves the type of the organism. But some permutations of a whole do not preserve its type. If you just scramble the atoms in a rabbit, you are not likely to end up with a rabbit – you’ll end up with rabbit stew. A scrambled egg does not grow into a bird. Scrambled brains don’t work. Dawkins now defines the complexity of a type as the number of permutations divided by the number of type-preserving permutations. Consider the complexity of the type lump of gold. Say there are one trillion ways to rearrange its atoms. Since rearranging the atoms in a lump of gold always results in a lump of gold, every permutation of those atoms is type-preserving. So there are one trillion type-preserving permutations. Hence the complexity of the type lump of gold is one. A lump of gold is a simple type. Now consider a bacterial cell. Say there are one trillion ways to rearrange its atoms. Almost all of those ways destroy the life of the cell. Suppose one thousand of those ways preserve the life of the cell. So there are one thousand type-preserving permutations. Now one trillion divided by one thousand is one billion. So the complexity of the bacterial cell is one billion. The complexity of a growing organism varies over its life.

71 An adult human is far more complex than a single-celled human. A 4D life is a series of 3D organisms. Each 3D organism is a stage of that 4D life. So the complexity of a 4D life is the complexity of the most complex 3D stage of that life. We can now use the Dawkinsian definition of complexity to define the complexity of a genotype. Every genotype is a recipe or computer program for generating a life. The complexity of any genotype is the complexity of the life it generates. You can picture a genotype as clothed with the organism it generates. So the Dawkinsian measure of complexity is a clothed measure of genotype complexity. It is clothed because it requires using the complexity of the organism to measure the complexity of the genotype. It would be more direct to have a measure of genotype complexity that just looks at the genotype itself. Are there features of genotypes that correspond to the complexities of their organisms? A naked measure of genotype complexity just looks at the genotype itself. Say the regulatory ratio of any genotype is the ratio of its non-protein-coding-DNA to its total amount of DNA (Taft, Pheasant, and Mattick, 2007). As the regulatory ratio of the genotype increases, so does the complexity of the organism it generates. So regulatory ratio of the genotype closely tracks the Dawkinsian complexity of the life it generates. The regulatory ratio of the genotype looks like a good naked measure of its complexity. If there are more accurate naked measures of genotype complexity, then we will use them. The regulatory ratio shows that there are features of programs that determine the complexities of the things they generate when they get run on computers. Hence we can define program complexity as a direct feature of the program itself. We can rank programs by their complexities. Biological complexity tends to increase with evolutionary time. The complexities of organisms tend to be directly proportional to the number of evolutionary branches from the last common ancestor of all life. The complexity of organisms gradually accumulates during biological evolution. But organisms are generated by running their genotypes. It follows that, just as organism complexity gradually accumulates during evolution, so also genotype complexity also gradually accumulates. The slow accumulation of complexity for both organisms and their genotypes suggests that we should turn to cumulative measures to define the complexities of organisms and their genotypes. One cumulative measure is the concept of logical depth defined by Bennett (1985, 1988, 1990).14 Although logical depth is technical, we don’t need to get into the details. Logical depth obeys a slow-growth law. It grows through gradual accumulation. The slow-growth law states that “deep objects cannot be quickly produced from shallow ones by any deterministic process, nor with much probability by a probabilistic process, but can be produced slowly” (Bennett, 1988: 1). Deep things therefore “contain internal evidence of having been the result of a long computation or slow-to-simulate dynamical process and could not plausibly have originated otherwise” (Bennett, 1990: 142).15 The slow-growth law coheres with Dennett’s Principle of the Accumulation of Design (1995: 72). So logical depth is another good candidate for genotype complexity and for program complexity more generally. The computer scientist John Mayfield (2007) has refined logical depth into minimal history. Minimal history is easier to compute and has some other advantages over logical depth. But the main idea is the same. The physicist Jon Machta refined logical depth into a powerful concept called parallel depth. Parallel depth resembles logical depth. But Machta adds that parallel depth “can only become large for systems with embedded computation” (2011: 037111-

72 1). He says that “[parallel] depth is sensitive to embedded computation and can only be large for systems that carry out computationally complex information processing” (037111-6). So parallel depth increases as organisms contain more powerful internal computers that do more complex information processing. For earthly organisms, these internal computers are brains. Parallel depth increases sharply as organisms gain brains. So genotypes with greater parallel depth define organisms which contain more computationally powerful brains. More generally, programs with greater parallel depth define computations which contain internal computations. And this containment can be nested. There can be many levels of computers nested inside computers. These ideas about complexity apply to universes. Plato says our universe has a cosmic form (Timaeus, 28a-30e). We agree with Plato. We say the form of our universe (or any universe) is a program. It is a bit string in the thin tree of strings. Plato says that our universe was created by the demiurge. The demiurge uses the form of our universe as a recipe for making the universe. So the demiurge is just running a program for cosmic-creation. The demiurge is a cosmic computer. And Plato says that our universe is a living organism (Timaeus, 33b-34b). Consequently, the demiurge runs a cosmic program just like a cell runs a biological program. The thesis that universes are like biological organisms is the biocosmic analogy. Thus universes are generated from cosmic genotypes just as earthly organisms are generated from biological genotypes. So the analysis of genotypic complexity transfers to the cosmic genotypes. The bit strings in the thin tree can be ranked by their genotypic complexities. They can be ranked by regulatory ratios, logical depth, minimal history, parallel depth, or similar ideas. These measures all cohere. More research is needed to refine all these measures. But we don’t need to know the technical details. Our reasoning so far justifies the thesis that that there exists a comparative complexity relation which orders the programs in the thin tree of strings. For any two programs in the thin tree, either the one is more complex than the other, or they are equally complex.

3. From Complexity to Intrinsic Value

Plotinus says different things have different degrees of unity. Ships and houses are more unified than armies or choirs (E 6.2.11.10; see E 6.6.13, 6.9.1). Since every thing with some degree of unity has the same degree of being, degrees of unity are not degrees of being. Plotinus says degrees of unity are degrees of perfection (E 6.2.11.15-21, 6.2.17). They are degrees of goodness. Thus things are ranked by value from the highest rank to the lowest rank (E 2.9.13.1-10). The highest rank is the Good while the lowest rank is matter. Since the complete absence or privation of the Good is matter, matter is pure evil (E 1.8.5.1-15). On this view, matter has minimal value. The degree of unity of any thing is an intrinsic property of that thing. A thing has more or less unity because of the way its parts are organized. The unity of the thing (like its mass or charge or temperature) does not depend on any observers. So the degrees of unity of things are objective properties of those things. So if unity is perfection, the perfection of any thing is also an intrinsic and objective property of that thing. It is the value that the thing has in itself. According to Moore (1922: 260), the value that any thing has in itself is its intrinsic value. Philosophical pagans agree with Plotinus that

73 things have intrinsic values. Thus rocks, plants, foxes, humans, and deities, all have intrinsic values. They all have objective degrees of excellence or perfection. The Plotinian scale of values varies from its minimum in matter to its maximum in the Good. But here Plotinus has made two mistakes. His first mistake was to identify the One with the Good. We already gave several reasons to reject this identification. Thus we say the One is not the Good. The Plotinian Good is at the top of his great chain of being, like the sun. But the One is at the bottom. He describes the One as a root, seed, or spring (3.3.7.10-25, 3.8.10.10-20, 4.4.11.5-15, 6.8.15.34-8). Our great chain of being rises from the One at the bottom to the Good at the top. The second Plotinian mistake is to put matter at the bottom of the great chain of being. This is wrong because it treats matter as if it were some kind of stuff. But on Plotinus’s own account, matter is not stuff – matter is privation. And if matter were at the bottom of the great chain, then the Divine Mind would not contain matter; but Plotinus says that the Divine Mind contains matter (E 2.4). So matter cannot be some dark stuff at the bottom of the great chain. Since the Zero of non-being is pure privation, matter originates with the Zero. But matter rises up from its origin. Plotinus himself often portrays matter as functional impairment. On this point, we agree: matter is impairment. Everything that can be surpassed is impaired relative to the things which surpass it. So it has some materiality. Matter therefore occurs in every thing on every surpassable level of the great chain. It occurs on every level indexed by any number in the axis mundi. Only the unsurpassable stars lack materiality. When the two Plotinian mistakes are corrected, the Plotinian degrees of perfection become more consistently defined. By definition, the Good has the highest value; it has the greatest degree of perfection. And the Good is at the top of the great chain. So if the One is at the bottom of the great chain, then it has the least degree of perfection, the least value. From the One to the Good, value increases. And, from the One to the Good, complexity also increases. So the Plotinian Divine Mind is both infinitely valuable and infinitely complex. On this view, the One has minimal complexity and value, while the Good has maximal complexity and value. But we shouldn’t talk about the One as if it were a being; the One is being-itself. Intrinsic value is an ontic quality of beings. So the intrinsic value of any being is its complexity. The simplest being is the empty set; it has minimal value. More complex sets have greater intrinsic value. These Plotinian ideas about intrinsic value are picked up by Leibniz. Leibniz often identifies the perfection of any thing with its quantity of being, that is, its quantity of essence (Leibniz, 1697; Rutherford, 1995: 23). But the quantity of essence of some thing is the quantity of harmony in that thing (Rutherford, 1995: 35). Harmony is proportional to both order and variety (Rutherford, 1995: 13). Thus perfection is proportional to both order and variety (Rescher, 1979: 28-31). As order and variety increase together, so does perfection. And, as order and variety increase together, so does complexity. Hence it is plausible to identify Leibnizian perfection with complexity. But perfection, as defined by Leibniz, is also intrinsic value. So intrinsic value is complexity. Another account of intrinsic value is suggested by Soule. He says the value of any species comes from its “long evolutionary heritage and potential” (1985: 731). So the intrinsic value of any species is its distance from the common ancestor of all earthly life. This distance can be measured using some standard phylogenetic tree. Thus the intrinsic value of any species is the number of evolutionary branches crossed in the path from the

74 last common ancestor to that species. The intrinsic value of any organism is the intrinsic value of its species. The intrinsic value of any nonliving thing is zero. For Soule, intrinsic value is accumulated during evolution. His definition of intrinsic value coheres with the thesis that complexity is an accumulated quantity. The American thinker Ronald Dworkin offers an account of intrinsic value (1993: ch. 3). For Dworkin, as for Soule, intrinsic value is a historical feature of things. More precisely, the intrinsic value of some thing is proportional to the amount of resources consumed by the process that created it. Every creative process invests its resources in its products. Thus x is more intrinsically valuable than y if and only if x contains more creative investment than y. Creative investment is cumulative. It grows slowly as simpler things evolve into more complex things. Thus intrinsic value is the kind of organization that is historically accumulated in evolution. Since complexity is historically accumulated organization, intrinsic value is complexity. The philosopher Daniel Dennett also discusses intrinsic value. He defines it in terms of accumulated design (1995: 511-13). Dennett says design slowly accumulates during evolutionary processes (1995: 72). He suggests that “we might consider how much of what we value is explicable in terms of its designedness” (1995: 512). He says that it is worse to kill a condor than a cow, “because the loss to our actual store of design would be so much greater if the condors went extinct” (1995: 513). By analogous reasoning, it is worse to kill a cow than a clam, a redwood tree than an equal mass of algae (1995: 513). He says that “Bach is precious . . . because he was, or contained, an utterly idiosyncratic structure of cranes, made of cranes, made of cranes, made of cranes” (1995: 512). For Dennett, intrinsic value is a kind of evolutionary complexity. The intrinsic value of any thing is its quantity of accumulated design. Intrinsic value is complexity. From Plotinus to Dennett, the intrinsic value of any thing is its historically accumulated organization. The concept of historically accumulated organization lies behind many concepts of complexity. It lies behind the mathematical concepts of logical depth, minimal history, and parallel depth. And since complex organisms require the long slow accumulation of organization, any biological concept of complexity coheres with these cumulative concepts. The concept of complexity as regulatory ratio coheres with these cumulative concepts. Likewise for the Dawkinsian permutational concept of complexity. Philosophical pagans now make this argument: (1) intrinsic value is historically accumulated organization; (2) historically accumulated organization is complexity; (3) therefore, intrinsic value is complexity.

4. Seeds and Skulls

Our analysis of intrinsic value applies to the genotypes in the library. The genotypes in the library are bit strings. And the mathematical analyses of complexity like logical depth can all be formulated in terms of bit strings. So more complex genotypes in the library are more intrinsically valuable genotypes. But all strings can be compared in terms of their complexities. Hence there exists a comparative value relation which orders all the genotypes in the library. For any books x and y, either x is less intrinsically valuable than y, or x is just as intrinsically valuable as y, or x is more intrinsically valuable than y. Intrinsic value for genotypes is just complexity.

75 All strings are comparable to each other in terms of their intrinsic values. Successor strings are comparable in value to their predecessors. Every successor string is either less valuable than its predecessor; or it is just as valuable as its predecessor; or it is more valuable than its predecessor. If any successor string is less valuable than its predecessor, then it is a worse version of its predecessor; it is a degradation of its predecessor. If some successor is just as valuable as its predecessor, then it is an equigradation of its predecessor. If any successor string is more valuable than its predecessor, then it is an improvement of its predecessor. Figure 10.2 shows an original string and its three relations to its successors. If a line is an instance of the improvement relation, then it is solid with an arrowhead. But a dashed line indicates either equigradation or degradation. Similar reasoning applies to limits. If any limit string is more valuable than its progression, then it is an improvement of its progression.

Figure 10.2 Solid lines with arrows are improvements.

The strings in the library resemble genotypes. On the one hand, some genotypes are viable – they are recipes for possible living organisms. On the other hand, some genotypes are sterile – they contain fatal genetic errors or mutations, so that organisms with those genotypes can never come to life. Just as genotypes are viable or sterile, so strings are viable or sterile. The viable strings are seeds while the sterile strings are skulls. The seeds are especially intrinsically valuable genotypes or strings. Since they don’t have fatal errors or mutations, they can serve as functional recipes – recipes for organisms, or recipes for universes. Seeds are optimal strings. To define seeds and skulls, start with the initial string. The initial string is simple; but a simple string cannot have any defects. More precisely, the initial string is the empty string; since it has no digits, it can’t have any fatal or erroneous digits. And if a string has no defects, then it is optimal. So, by default, the initial string is Figure 10.3 The optimal. The initial string is a seed. Figure 10.3 shows this seed, initial seed. which is the empty string. It has two successors. Now consider successor strings. Every successor has some predecessor, which is either a seed or a skull. So we have two cases. For the first case, the predecessor is a seed. Every downgrade of a seed decreases its value. But if value is decreased, then some error was introduced. Any error is a defect or fatal mutation. So every downgrade of a seed is a skull. Every equigrade of a seed preserves its value. But if value is merely preserved, then it fails to increase. This failure is a defect. So every equigrade of a seed is a skull. Every upgrade of a seed increases its value. An upgrade does not introduce any defect. So every upgrade of a seed is a seed. For the second case, the predecessor is

76 a skull. Every skull suffers from a fatal defect – it is a sterile form. Since skulls are sterile, and since defects are inherited, all their successors are sterile. To put it another way, since every skull fails to reproduce, it doesn’t have any viable offspring. So its successors cannot come to life. All the descendents of skulls are skulls. Figures 10.4 and 10.5 show how changes in values transform seeds into skulls or into seeds.

Figure 10.4 A seed and its successors.

Figure 10.5 A skull and its successors.

To illustrate the classification of strings as either seeds or skulls, consider Figure 10.6. It shows the first five ranks of strings in the thin tree. These are the first five floors in the library of all possible strings or genotypes. Figure 10.6 shows the changes in value from strings to their successors. While a dotted line indicates either a downgrade or an equigrade, a solid arrow indicates an upgrade. Figure 10.7 shows how the strings in part of this tree get classified. Focus on the string 0, which is the root of the right hand side of this tree. Figure 10.7 shows how some of its descendents get classified. Since skulls yield only skulls, all the descendents (even the upgrades) of 00 are skulls. These rules for seeds and skulls are extended to limits. Every progression of seeds is also a seed. And now the same rules apply: the downgrades and equigrades are limit

77 skulls; the upgrades are limit seeds. As soon as a skull appears in a progression, the entire progression is a skull. All the limits of skulls are skulls.

Figure 10.6 Solid lines with arrows are improvements.

Figure 10.7 Some seeds and skulls starting from 0.

5. The Incantation for Seeds

A recipe for making a cake defines a possible cake; only when the cake gets made does it become an actual cake. If genotypes are cosmic recipes or programs for making universes, then every genotype is a possible universe. Following Kraay (2011: 365), let a possible world be any collection of possible universes. And since possible universes are

78 genotypes in the library, a possible world is any collection of genotypes from the library. Since collections are classes, a possible world is any class of possible universes. It is any class of genotypes from the library. So the library itself is just the biggest possible world. Just as some genotypes are better than others, some worlds are better than others. There exists exactly one world that contains all and only the seeds in the library. This world is the treasury. The treasury contains the least valuable string; it is closed under all improvements; hence the treasury is the maximally valuable world. For greater precision, we can define the treasury by the incantation for seeds. The Initial Law for Seeds. The library contains an initial string. Since the initial string is simple, it cannot have any defects. It is perfect. A seed is a book that does not have any defects. So the initial law for seeds states that the initial string is the initial seed. The initial string exists on the initial floor of the treasury. Of course, the initial seed is also surpassable. It is not perfect in any absolute sense. Although it is the best seed on the first floor of the library, it is not the best seed in the library. Every seed in the library is surpassed by many better seeds on higher floors. The Successor Law for Seeds. The richness of possibility entails that every seed has at least one improvement. Every seed has at least one upgrade. But improvements do not introduce any defects. Every improvement of a seed is also a seed. The successor law states that every seed is surpassed by at least one successor seed. If some seed exists on some floor of the library, then its successor seeds exist on the next higher floor. Of course, the treasury is just the collection of strings that are seeds. So the seeds on any floor of the library are also on the same floor of the treasury. Figure 10.8 shows a few floors of the treasury based on the seeds in Figure 10.6. The Limit Law for Seeds. The treasury contains progressions of seeds. Every progression of seeds is also a seed – it is a perfect progression. The richness of possibility works at limits to ensure that every perfect progression has at least one improvement. But improvements do not introduce any defects. So every improvement of a progression of seeds makes an even better seed. Thus every improvement of any progression of seeds is also a seed. It is a limit seed. The limit law states that every progression of seeds is surpassed by at least one limit seed. Limit seeds exist on limit floors of the library. The treasury is just the collection of strings that are seeds. So every limit seed in the library is on some limit floor in the treasury. The Final Law for Seeds. Along every lineage of seeds, complexity accumulates; but complexity is intrinsic value; therefore, intrinsic value accumulates. Every seed inherits its complexity from its predecessors. So any lineage of seeds supports Dennett’s Principle of the Accumulation of Design (1995: 72). Just as the library is an endless series of floors of strings, so the treasury is an endless series of floors of seeds. The treasury is just a part of the library. The final law says the treasury contains all the seeds in the library. It excludes all the skulls. The richness of possibility entails that all the successor and limit floors in the treasury contain seeds. Hence the treasury is an unsurpassable class of surpassable seeds. The treasury is the star of seeds. The treasury is the best of all possible worlds. But there does not exist any best of all possible

79 universes – every universe is surpassable. The best world (the treasury) is an unsurpassble collection of surpassible universes.

Figure 10.8 Some floors of seeds in the treasury.

80 11. The Incantation for Computers 1. Maximize Consistency!

onsistency gets maximized by being-itself; likewise inconsistency gets minimized. Being-itself is that power which denies existence to every inconsistently definable being and which grants existence to every consistently definable being. Being-itself exercises this power through the dyad. The dyad generates the totality of propositions. It assigns truth-values to them in the way that maximizes consistency. Some of these propositions are axioms. Among these axioms are the axioms for that set theory than which none greater is consistent. The dyad grants truth to these axioms. By granting truth to these axioms, it grants existence to the totality of sets defined by those axioms. By maximizing consistency, the dyad generates the greatest consistently definable system of sets. It generates the maximal iterative hierarchy of pure sets. All possible mathematical objects can be constructed from these sets. So the dyad generates all possible mathematical objects. These sets are equivalent to the strings of binary digits (bits) in the thin tree of strings. These bit strings are the Platonic forms. They are the genotypes in the library. But so far all the beings generated by being-itself are purely abstract. Platonic metaphysics traditionally says that concrete things are instances of abstract objects (Republic, 596b-7e). For example, the particular woman Hypatia is a concrete instance of the abstract pattern of womanhood. Plotinus often uses the analogy of the seed to express the relation between abstract objects and their concrete particulars (E 2.6.1.5-15, 3.2.2, 3.7.11.20-30, 4.3.10.10-15, 4.9.3.10-20, 5.6.9). Just as a seed unfolds into a mature plant or animal, so the abstract objects unfold into their concrete instances. For Plotinus, each seed-pattern is a logos spermatikos, a spermatic pattern (Witt, 1931). They are recipes for making particular things, and they unfold much like computer programs unfold (E 4.4.11, 4.4.16). Although Plotinus sometimes distinguishes between the forms and these spermatic recipes, here we will identify them. The forms are recipes for constructing concrete things. Of course, today we know that seeds for plants and animals contain genetic recipes. The information in a genome is a recipe for the construction of an organism. But recipes define creative motions: they define the motions that construct things like cakes, buildings, organisms, or universes. For Plotinus, forms manifest their instances (E 5.1.6.31-8, 5.4.2.27-39; see also 2.9.8.22- 7, 4.8.6.8-12, 5.4.1.27-34, 5.2.1.14-15). When some Plotinian recipe goes into motion, its motions take on a kind of life of their own. The moving recipe generates the image of an agent that performs those motions. As creative energy flows through the recipe, a creative agent comes into existence. But the agent depends on the recipe; the recipe manifests the agent as a derivative object. So the agent is like a moving shadow cast by the recipe. More generally, recipes are programs. Since the motions of a program define a computation, the agent generated by a program is a computer. As a program goes into motion, a computer emerges which appears to run that program. But the computer depends on the program. The program comes first.

81 Modern logic, that is, the predicate calculus, provides some notation for the instantiation of forms. Forms are denoted with capital letters like “W”. Suppose W is the form of women; that is, W is womanhood; W is that pattern which all particular women share in common. An instance of a form is written in parentheses after the name of the form. Since Hypatia is an instance of W, we write W(Hypatia). The predicate calculus uses the existential quantifier to indicate existence. The existential quantifier is denoted by the backwards ∃. The statement (there exists x)(x is an instance of form F) is written in the predicate calculus as (∃x)(F(x)). If we think of forms as programs, then (∃x)(F(x)) means (there exists some computer x)(x runs the program F). Platonists often portray the instances of forms as images of the forms. An instance of the form resembles the reflection of the form in a mirror. Every form is reflected in its self-images. On this view, computers are concrete images of their abstract programs. Platonism often portrays the forms as generative powers: forms strive to generate their instances. This idea was developed further by Leibniz in his doctrine of the striving possibles (Leibniz, 1697; Blumenfeld, 1981; Leibniz, 1991: 171-172, 174-175). For Leibniz, the possibles are just forms. All forms strive. But sometimes their striving succeeds, while other times it fails. If the striving is not blocked, it succeeds; but if the striving is blocked, it fails. Of course, this generative power in the forms is not ultimate; the forms inherit their creativity from the One. The One distributes its creativity to all the forms. The creativity of the One enters into every form. As it enters into some form, the power of the One is either blocked or unblocked. If it is blocked, the form does not generate an image of itself; if it is not blocked, the form generates an image. Consistency decides whether the power of the One is blocked or free. The Platonists often used optical metaphors. The power of the One is light. Any blocked form is opaque while any form that does not block this power is transparent or clear.

2. Consistency and Dependency

Consistency and inconsistency are logical concepts. Since they are logical, they involve reasons. By minimizing inconsistency and maximizing consistency, the One acts rationally. Although the Logos is not a mind, the Logos is the rational ordering of nature. For any form, either there is no reason against the instantiation of that form or else there is some reason against it. On the one hand, if there is any reason against the instantiation of some form, then the instantiation of that form is rationally forbidden; the instantiation of that form increases inconsistency. And if there is no reason for the instantiation of some form, then that is a reason against its instantiation. Since the One minimizes inconsistency, it never does that which is rationally forbidden. If there is any reason against the instantiation of some form, that form is blocked; it is opaque. Hence if there is any reason against the instantiation of any form, then that form does not get instantiated. To put it technically, for any form F, if there is any reason against (∃x)(F(x)), then it is not the case that (∃x)(F(x)). On the other hand, if there is no reason against the instantiation of some form, then the instantiation of that form is rationally permissible; the instantiation of the form increases consistency. And if there is no reason against instantiating some form, then that is a reason for instantiating it. Since the One maximizes consistency, it always does that which is rationally permissible. If there is no reason against the instantiation of some

82 form, that form is transparent. Hence if there is no reason against the instantiation of some form, then that form gets instantiated. So, for any form F, if there is no reason against (∃x)(F(x)), then (∃x)(F(x)). The reasons against any form can lie in the form itself. On the one hand, some forms are self-inconsistent. The married bachelor is self-inconsistent. The colorless green idea is self-inconsistent. Likewise round squares are self-inconsistent. The set of all self- excluding sets is self-inconsistent. For any form, if that form is self-inconsistent, then inconsistency is increased if it generates an image of itself. That self-inconsistency is a reason against the instantiation of the form. The reason against the form lies in the form itself. These self-inconsistent forms are self-defeating. Since the One minimizes inconsistency, it is impossible for any self-inconsistent form to generate an image of itself. Hence unmarried bachelors do not exist. Likewise colorless green ideas and round squares do not exist. And the set of all self-excluding sets does not exist. On the one hand, some forms are self-consistent. Married husbands and four-sided squares are self- consistent forms. The set of all natural numbers is self-consistent. So these self- consistent forms do not produce any reasons against their own instantiation. They are not self-defeating. But this is not sufficient for them to have instances. Although self-consistent forms contain no reasons against their instantiation, other forms might provide reasons against them. Although they do not defeat themselves, they might be defeated by other forms. So we need to define the ways forms support or defeat each other. Since reasons flow through logically ordered chains of inference, forms support or defeat each other through logically ordered relations. Logically ordered inference relations are dependencies: later statements in some proof depend for their truth on the earlier statements in the proof. Thus reasons flow through logical dependencies. If there is any failure in some earlier statement of the proof, that failure propagates through all the later statements. Consequently, if there is any reason against the instantiation of some given form, then that reason either lies in the form itself or it lies in some other form on which that given form depends. Reasons against instantiation flow through the logical dependency relations that order the forms. The first dependency relation involves definition. Definitions are logically ordered. Some forms are defined in terms of others. Sets are defined in terms of their members. Thus sets on higher ranks of the iterative hierarchy are defined in terms of their ancestors on lower ranks. Longer bit strings are defined in terms of shorter strings. The strings S0 and S1 are both defined in terms of S. Thus higher strings in the thin tree are defined in terms of their lower ancestors. More precisely, the forms are ordered by dependency. Every form is either an initial form, a successor form, or a limit form. Every initial form depends on no other form; it is independent. Every successor form depends on its predecessor. Every limit form depends on every form in the progression of which it is the limit (and thus it depends on that progression). The dependency relation extends backwards through chains of ancestors (more precisely, it is transitive). Thus the child depends on its parents, the parents on their grandparents, and so the child depends on its grandparents. Every form depends on the forms in its genealogy. It depends on its ancestors. And if there is any reason against the instantiation of any descendent form, then it lies in some ancestral form on which that descendent form depends. The second order relation involves complexity. Every form has some degree of complexity. Any simple form has zero complexity; all other forms have positive degrees

83 of complexity. Since complexity is accumulated, it is a kind of dependency. Complex forms depend on simpler forms. The complexity of any form is its intrinsic value. Thus ordering forms by complexity is ordering them by value. Any two forms are comparable in terms of their intrinsic values. For any forms xander and yonder, either xander is intrinsically worse than yonder, or xander is as intrinsically valuable as yonder, or xander is intrinsically better than yonder. Henceforth any reference to value is to intrinsic value. For Platonists, value plays a crucial role in existence. Things exist because it is for the best that they exist. The Good brings things into existence. Now the incantation for instantiation has three laws for the three kinds of forms. Since the instances of forms are computers, this is the incantation for computers.

3. The Initial Law for Computers

Simple forms lack all complexity. Since self-contradiction requires one aspect of the form to conflict with some other aspect of the form, self- contradictory forms are complex. But simple forms lack conflicting aspects. Therefore, simple forms are not self-contradictory; they are not self-inconsistent. Hence simple forms do not contain reasons against their own instantiation. Simple forms do not depend on any other forms. So there are no other forms which provide any reasons against their instantiation. Since simple forms are not defeated by themselves, and they are not defeated by other forms, they are not defeated at all. Another way to put this involves perfection: since simple forms are not self-contradictory, they have no intrinsic defects. Since they do not depend on any ancestral forms, they do not inherit any defects from their ancestors. Hence they have no defects. But any form which has no defects is perfect. Thus every simple form is perfect. Of course, another way to say that an initial form is perfect is to say that it is a seed. There are no reasons against their instantiation. And if there is no reason against instantiating some form, then it is instantiated. Hence the initial law for computers looks like this: for any form F, if F is simple, then (∃x)(F(x)). The system of forms is constrained by and only by consistent definability. It is arguable that there are some consistently definable simple forms. After all, the form of the empty set is consistently definable, and the form of the empty set surely has some claim to being the simplest form of all. Likewise the empty string is consistently definable. Thus the richness of consistent definability ensures the existence of at least two simple forms. Consequently, the initial law answers the Leibnizian Question: Why is there something rather than nothing? Because there are some consistently definable simple forms, and every simple form is instantiated. If any two forms differ, then it seems reasonable to say that the difference lies in some complexity in the forms. But this means that all simple forms are indiscernible. If the identity of indiscernibles is true, then there exists exactly one simple form: all simple forms are indiscernible; but indiscernibles are identical; hence there exists exactly one simple form. The one simple form is a perfect form. The empty set and the empty string are just two ways of expressing it. Since every simple form is instantiated, it follows that there exists exactly one simple thing. This unique simple thing is α. Alpha is the initial computer that runs the initial form as its program.

84 4. The Successor Law for Computers

The richness of consistent definability ensures that any form is surpassed by at least one successor form. Every form S in the thin tree of strings is surpassed by its successors S0 and S1. And if other generative relations are used to define the tree of strings, they will also ensure that every string is surpassed by at least one successor. The value of any successor is comparable to the value of its predecessor. Either the successor is more valuable than its predecessor, or the successor is just as valuable as its predecessor, or the successor is less valuable than its predecessor. To be less valuable is to be worse; to be equally valuable is to be as good; to be more valuable is to be better. Proceed by cases (1) A decrease in value from predecessor to successor indicates the emergence of some defect in the successor. The emergence of this defect is a reason against the instantiation of the successor. And since this defect is a degradation of the predecessor, this reason lies in the predecessor. So if the successor is worse than its predecessor, then its predecessor contains a reason against the instantiation of its successor. (2) A preservation of value from predecessor to successor does indicate the emergence of any defect. However, it does not provide any reason for the instantiation of the successor. No value gets added by this equigradation. But if there is no reason for instantiation, that is a reason against it. So if the successor is as good as its predecessor, then its predecessor contains a reason against the instantiation of its successor. (3) An increase in value from predecessor to successor indicates the emergence of some additional value. Since no defects are introduced in the transition from predecessor to successor, the predecessor contains no reason against the instantiation of its successor. And since the transition from predecessor to successor generates some extra value, the predecessor contains a reason for the instantiation of the successor. If there is any reason against the instantiation of some form, then that form is defective. But defects are heritable. If any form is defective, then all its descendents are defective. So they will not be instantiated. However, if there are no defects in the genealogy of some form, and if there are no defects in that form itself, then that form is perfect. If some form is perfect, then there is no reason against its instantiation. And its perfection provides a reason for its instantiation. Of course, there are no maximally perfect forms. Every perfect form is surpassed by more perfect forms. The logic of perfection yields a successor law for perfection: if any perfect form is surpassed by some better successor, then that better successor is also perfect. And if any form is perfect, then there are no reasons against its instantiation. So this logic entails that for every form, if that form is perfect, then there is no reason against the instantiation of its better successors. But the better successor of any perfect form is a perfect successor. To put it differently, every perfect successor is a seed. This logic generates the successor law for computers: for every form F, if F is a perfect successor, then (∃x)(F(x)). Since the simple form Alpha is perfect, and since any chain of better successors preserves perfection, every chain of better successors from Alpha contains only perfect forms. All these perfect forms are programs instantiated by computers.

85 5. The Limit Law for Computers

A progression of forms is an initial form followed by an infinite series of successors. Every form in any progression is surpassed by exactly one successor form in that progression. For every progression, a limit of that progression is some form that is minimally more detailed than the entire progression. For any progression of strings, the limit of that progression is just the conjunction of all those strings. The richness of consistent definability ensures that every progression has at least one limit. The value of any limit is comparable to the value of its progression. Either the limit is more valuable than its progression, or the limit is just as valuable as its progression, or the limit is less valuable than its progression. To be less valuable is to be worse; to be equally valuable is to be as good; to be more valuable is to be better. Proceed by cases (1) A decrease in value from progression to limit indicates the emergence of some defect in the successor. So if the limit is worse than its progression, then its progression contains a reason against the instantiation of that worse limit. (2) A preservation of value from progression to limit provides no reason for the instantiation of the limit. But that absence is a reason against it. So if the limit is only as good as its progression, then its progression contains a reason against the instantiation of that equal limit. (3) An increase in value from progression to limit indicates additional value. The emergence of this extra value means that the progression contains a reason for the instantiation of the better limit. And there is no reason against it. If there is any reason against the instantiation of some form, then that form is defective. But defects are heritable. Hence defects can pass through progressions. If any progression is defective, then all its limits are defective. So they will not be instantiated. However, if there are no defects in some progression, then that progression is perfect. If some progression is perfect, then there are no reasons against its instantiation. And its perfection provides a reason for its instantiation. The logic of perfection entails that if any perfect progression is surpassed by some better limit, then that better limit is also perfect. And if any form is perfect, then there are no reasons against its instantiation. It follows that for every progression, if that progression is perfect, then there is no reason against the instantiation of its better limits. The better limits of perfect progressions are perfect limits. They are perfect forms; they are seeds. This logic entails the limit law for computers: for every form F, if F is a perfect limit, then (∃x)(F(x)). Since the simple form Alpha is perfect, and since every form has some perfect successors, perfect progressions do exist. Every perfect form is infinitely surpassed by at least one perfect limit. Consequently, there are some perfect limits. All these perfect limits are programs instantiated by infinite computers.

6. Evolution by Rational Selection

The laws in this incantation converge onto the final law for computers: for every form F, if F is perfect, then (∃x)(F(x)). Apart from these laws, there are no laws for the instantiation of forms. Consequently, for any form that is not perfect, there are no reasons for its instantiation; but that is a reason against its instantiation; hence every form that is not perfect

86 remains uninstantiated. It lies in darkness. The final law for computers fully expresses the logic of instantiation. But this is also the logic which extends value into concreteness. Although no form is maximally perfect, propositions can be maximally perfect, and the final law of computers is the maximally perfect proposition. Following Plato, we say this maximally perfect proposition is the sun. The incantation for computers defines an infinitely ramified tree of perfect forms. All perfections are surpassable. And since the One maximizes consistency, that power entails that whatever is surpassable is surpassed. Every form is surpassed by more perfect successors; every perfect progression is surpassed by more perfect limits. This infinitely ramified tree is the world tree. Plotinus often uses the image of a tree to express the way that being-itself unfolds into the many beings (E 3.3.7.10-25, 3.8.10.10- 20, 4.4.11.5-15, 6.8.15.34-8). So the world tree is a Plotinian image. It shows how being-itself unfolds into the many concrete beings. The world tree is an unsurpassable tree of surpassable perfect forms. All these forms are programs; they are abstract computations; hence the things that instantiate them are computers. So the world tree is an unsurpassable tree of surpassable computers – it is the star of computers. The world tree starts with the initial computer Alpha. And the successor and limit relations among forms are followed by their instances. Every computer is surpassed by some better successor computers. And every progression of computers is surpassed by some better limit computers. All these computers are foundational for concreteness. They do not run on or supervene on any deeper computations. They are foundational for all other computations. They are hardware objects, on which any other computations run as software objects. Hardware objects have aseity; they are the grounds of stacks of software objects. Both hardware and software objects are physically real; however, only hardware objects are ultimately physically real. Software objects are virtual. The first software objects are cosmic computations – they are universes. Any universe in the world tree is a system of nested virtual machines. Our universe and others like it contain stellar computers. They are virtual machines running inside of our cosmic computation. Our earth runs an ecological computation that runs as a virtual machine inside of our stellar computation. And your body runs as a virtual machine inside our earthly ecocomputer. Your brain runs a virtual machine inside of your body. Any universe exists because there are no reasons against its existence. For any universe in the world tree, it is rational that that universe exists. But if any universe were not rationally organized, that lack of rational order would be a reason against its existence. Therefore, every universe is rationally organized. There are reasons for its existence; hence there are reasons for its laws and for its initial conditions; hence there are reasons for its internal evolution. Reasons exist for all the things inside any universe. It is rational that these things exist. For if there were no reasons for them, there would be reasons against them; but if there were reasons against them, it would not be consistent for the One to actualize them. But the One maximizes consistency. Of course, to say that our universe is rationally ordered does not imply that it is intelligently designed. The lesson of evolution is that design does not require an intelligent designer. The rational order of our universe is rational design. But this design emerges from mindless logic. It emerges from evolution by rational selection.

87 12. The World Tree 1. Plato: The Demiurge

onsider the creation story given by Plato in his book The Timaeus. Although The Timaeus is about the creation of our universe, its story applies to any universe. Plato starts with an abstract cosmic form. He calls it the eternal pattern (Timaeus, 30c-3). The eternal pattern is a purely mathematical form. So the eternal pattern is like a seed in the treasury. Now Plato introduces the demiurge (Timaeus, 29e-41d). The demiurge is a maker or technician. Plato describes the demiurge as a cook who mixes stuff in his mixing bowl. If the demiurge is a cook, then the eternal pattern is a recipe. The introduction of the demiurge raises a question. On the one hand, the demiurge depends on the eternal pattern. On the other hand, the demiurge does not depend on the eternal pattern; it is an independent thing. So which is it? If we say the demiurge is independent, then we have introduced a dualism; but Platonism is monistic: everything comes from the One. So there would have to be some argument which goes from the One to the demiurge without passing through the forms; yet no such argument exists. To avoid the problems created by demiurgic independence, we say the demiurge depends on the eternal pattern. The eternal pattern generates the demiurge. Plotinian recipes are dynamical patterns of creativity. Consider a recipe for making scrambled eggs. It consists of a series of line-by-line instructions: (1) Get some eggs; (2) Crack them into a bowl; (3) Stir the eggs with a beater until they are mixed; (4) Pour them into a hot pan; (5) Scramble them in the pan with a spatula until they are cooked. As a dynamical pattern, this recipe begins by executing or performing its first line. So the motion of the recipe gets some eggs. But it doesn’t reach into some independently existing refrigerator to grasp some indpendently existing eggs. As a pattern of creativity, the recipe creates its ingredients. When the recipe performs the instruction to get some eggs, the eggs come into existence. The recipe manifests or emanates the eggs. When it cracks the eggs into a bowl, the bowl comes into existence, and the eggs move in such a way that they are cracked open and their contents go into the bowl. All the motions of the things in the recipe cast a kind of shadow. They produce the appearance of an agent who is moving things around. The recipe causes the existence of an shadow-agent who appears to perform its instructions. This shadow-agent is the demiurge. The demiurge emerges from the creative self-motion of the eternal pattern. The demiurge appears to be an independent thing; however, this independence is an illusion. The eternal pattern is a cosmic recipe. When it sets itself into motion, it generates a cosmic agent: the demiurge comes into being. But recipes are programs. And when recipes set themselves into motion, they manifest computational agents. They emanate computers which appear to run them. So when the eternal pattern sets itself into motion, it causes a cosmic computer to appear. This cosmic computer is the demiurge. The demiurge appears to be an independent computer which runs the eternal pattern as its program. By running the eternal pattern, the demiurge generates our universe. On this

88 computational interpretation, the eternal pattern resembles the program for a video game; the demiurge resembles the game machine or computer that runs that program; our universe is the video game that emerges as the program runs. Start with the One. Its creative power generates all the bit strings in the thin tree of strings. These are the programs. They are dynamical patterns of creativity. The power of the One resembles electrical energy: when it flows into some program, that program goes into motion. But the power of the One does not flow into every program. On the one hand, if a program is a skull, then it has some defect, and the power of the One does not flow into it. On the other hand, if a program is a seed, then it is perfect, and the power of the One does flow into it. So any seed is a moving pattern of creativity. As it moves, its motions generate the appearance of an agent that uses that seed as its program. As it moves, the program manifests or emanates its demiurge. By running its cosmic program, the demiurge brings its universe into being. Just as running computers create software objects, so the running demiurge create physical things. The One begins its physical productivity by setting the initial seed into motion. Its electrical energy flows into that seed. But the seeds are ordered by the improvement relation. So the power of the One flows through improvements. If any seed is energized, then the successors of that seed are energized next. And if any progression of seeds is energized, then its limits are energized later. So the power of the One looks like a kind of electricity that flows in a timelike way through all the improvement relations in the treasury. Those relations are like wires running from seeds to their successors or through progressions to their limits. This moving energy is fire. When this fire-energy enters some seed, a demiurge comes into existence. That demiurge is empowered by this fire to run the seed as its program. So this energy animates the universe.

2. Plato: The Cosmic Egg

Plato says that our universe is a living organism (Timaeus, 33b-34b). Since our universe is a living organism, the Platonic creation story can be given a biological interpretation. This is the biocosmic analogy. This biological interpretation supports the thesis that demiurges are cosmic computers. On the biological interpretation, our universe starts out as a kind of cosmic egg. This egg contains three initial components. These enter into the growth of the egg into a mature cosmic organism. The first component in the egg, sitting in the center, is its genome. The genome of the cosmic egg is the Platonic eternal pattern. For philosophical pagans, this genome is some seed. It is a bit string in the treasury. But every bit string is a program. Just as genomes are programs for making organisms, so a cosmic genome is a program for making a universe. The second component in the Platonic egg is the demiurge. It resembles the constructive machinery in the egg. It is like the machinery that a cell uses to synthesize proteins and other molecules. It includes the machinery that the cell uses to replicate itself. To construct the mature organism, the demiurge needs some recipe or instructions. So the demiurge will transform the egg into a mature universe by running its genome like a program. The third component in the cosmic egg is some stuff. Just as an ordinary egg contains some foodstuff which the growing organism will use in its self- construction, so the cosmic egg contains some stuff. The stuff is like the ingredients in a recipe. The demiurge uses its genome to organize this stuff.

89 At the start of the cosmic development process, the stuff is chaotic. So the demiurge is surrounded by the seething mess of stuff. Plato says: “when the demiurge first looked at the visible part of reality, he found it not at rest, but it was a chaos moving in an irregular and disorderly fashion” (Timaeus, 29d-30a). Plato says the eternal pattern represents an orderly universe. And since order is better than chaos, it represents a better condition of our universe (29d-30a). The eternal pattern depicts the best potential of the initial universe (28e-29b). The best course of action for the demiurge is to use the eternal pattern organize the chaos. And the demiurge is motivated by the Good; since it is motivated by the Good, it pursues its best course of action. Plato says “since order is in every way better than disorder, the demiurge organized the chaos” (29d-30a). The demiurge transforms the initial chaotic universe into an orderly universe. The orderly universe is a living organism (33b-34b). The orderly universe is the final condition or mature form of our universe. So our universe has grown up. Figure 12.1 shows the demiurgic transformation from a chaotic universe to an orderly universe.

Figure 12.1 The demiurgic transformation.

3. Asexual Cosmic Reproduction

According to Plato, the eternal pattern is the program for our universe. On our interpretation of the Platonic creation story, the eternal pattern is a seed in the treasury. It is a bit string that serves as a cosmic program for a demiurge. The Platonic creation story generalizes to all seeds in the treasury. Since the Platonic creation story generalizes to all the seeds in the treasury, it applies to the initial seed. The initial seed emanates or creates its own initial demiurge. Call this demiurge Alpha. Alpha runs the initial seed as its program. By running this cosmic program, it creates its universe. Of course, since the initial seed is the empty string, the initial universe is the empty universe. The initial demiurge doesn’t have to do any work to make it. But the initial demiurge is part of cosmic organism. Moreover, it is the animated part of that organism. And the life of the initial cosmic organism does not end with its maturity. Since the mature universe is alive, and living things reproduce, the mature universe reproduces (Hume, 1779: part 7). Since the simplest kind of reproduction is asexual, and since it is more plausible to start with simplicity, the first kind of cosmic reproduction is asexual. A literal interpretation of asexual reproduction says our universe splits into two offspring universes. This does not seem likely. On another literal interpretation, our universe produces buds like a yeast cell. The cosmologist Andrei Linde argues for this interpretation in his theory of eternally self-reproducing universes (1986, 1994). But we

90 are not trying to provide any detailed physical theory here. We only want to provide an abstract picture of cosmic reproduction. At this abstract level, the mature universe reproduces asexually. It causes two offspring universes to appear. Since reproduction preserves structure, each offspring universe is extremely similar to its parent. However, since reproduction can introduce mutations, each offspring varies from its parent. Since changes are simple, it is changed in some minimal way. Since the demiurge is the engine of cosmic organization, it is also the engine of cosmic reproduction. To reproduce, the demiurge performs two main tasks. The first main task defines the genetic patterns for the new offspring. Reproduction uses old patterns to make new patterns. The demiurge begins by casting a circle into itself. It casts this circle by means of the closing power. This circle concentrates any power aroused within itself. Since the demiurge is animated by the electrical fire-energy from the One, the demiurge invokes this power within itself. It raises this creative energy up from its depths. As this power fills the circle, it becomes reflected by that circle back into itself. It turns into the power of self-negation, which breaks the bondage of the demiurge to its old pattern. As this power of self-negation turns further into itself, it negates itself. It turns into the power of self-affirmation, which is the power of self-improvement. This power generates the better potentials of the demiurge. It generates all the ways for the demiurge to improve its program. So, by arousing the closing power, the demiurge generates a set of ways to upgrade its own programming. The second main step produces the new offspring. For each way to improve its program, the demiurge creates a new offspring program which is improved in that way. Since the original program was a seed in the treasury, and since each new program is created by improvement, each new program is also a seed in the treasury. For each new offspring program, the demiurge makes a copy of itself. It makes a new offspring demiurge. It clothes each new program with one of these new offspring demiurges. Each of these new demiurge-program pairs resembles the yolk of an egg, or the nucleus of a cell. For each cosmic yolk, the demiurge clothes the yolk with some raw stuff for the new universe. It surrounds each new nucleus with its unorganized protoplasm. Each offspring universe is ready to go. By going through the second main step, the demiurge has moved from potentialities to actuality. The demiurge actualized its cosmic potentials. If the power to go from the actual to the potential is the closing power, then by symmetry the power to go from the potential to the actual is the opening power. The opening power releases the pent-up energy of the demiurge into its offspring. So the demiurge transmits its vital energy to each new offspring. Its offspring wake up – they are now actual universes, ready to through their own cosmic growth and reproductive cycles. Figure 12.2 shows some parent demiurge asexually producing two demiurgic offspring.

Figure 12.2 Asexual demiurgic reproduction.

Although Plato does not develop demiurgic reproduction, the logic of his creation story implies something like it. It will soon be taken up by the Stoics in their theory of the hierogamy of Zeus and Hera. So the demiurge has children; its children have grandchildren; and so it goes. The generations of demiurges proceed into the future. By symmetry, we turn to the past. Here is the Demiurgic Regression Argument: if some complex demiurge has children, then the logic of asexual reproduction entails that it had some parent. Perhaps its parent had some grandparent. We can iterate backwards through ancestors. However, since there are no endless regressions of dependencies, the chain of ancestors bottoms out after finitely many links in some initial demiurge. Earthly biology shows that as reproductive chains regress, the organisms get simpler. But earthly biology illustrates the general evolutionary thesis that complex things come from simper things. So the chain of demiurges goes back to the simplest of all possible demiurges. There exists some initial simplest demiurge. The initial demiurge has at least one offspring. And every later demiurge has at least one offspring. Every demiurge also gets its own universe, with its own cosmic pattern and raw stuff. At every universe, the demiurge at that universe exercises both the opening and closing powers. By exercising the opening power, it finds some ways to improve itself. By exercising the closing power, it selects the best ways for actualization. It thereby produces its offspring demiurges. By exercising the opening and closing powers, these demiurges practice the art of self-surpassing, the he telestike techne (see Johnston, 2008). But each offspring demiurge also supports an offspring universe. Every demiurge is surpassed by at least one successor. So there exists an infinitely ramified tree of demiurges. This tree contains infinite progressions of demiurges and their universes. Now limit principles apply: for every infinite progression of demiurges, there exists at least one limit demiurge. Philosophical pagans affirm this interpretation of Plato. It leads to the incantation for demiurges.

92 13. Fire: Concrete Existence 1. Seeds are Creative Recipes

t is very helpful to think of the forms as seeds. The idea that the forms are seeds comes from Stoicism. The Stoics thought of the forms as dynamical patterns. Each form is a logos spermatikos. It is a seed-recipe. When a seed grows into a plant, it grows by itself. It serves as its own creative agent. If it is energized by the warming fire in the earth (by the Stoic pneuma), then its internal genetic patterning guides its motions. By means of these motions, it assembles external physical stuff into a plant. Now get rid of the external physical stuff. The seeds in the treasury are forms for universes. Universes don’t grow up out of any soil. They can’t take in water and earth as they grow. When a cosmic seed is warmed by the fire in the earth, it absorbs this fire-energy, and it shapes this fire- energy into its universe. Plotinus picks up this Stoic theory of seed-recipes. But he says that the fire-energy ultimately comes from the One. When the creative power of the One enters into any seed, that seed shapes that creative power into a universe.

2. The Incantation for Fires

The Initial Law for Fires. Recall the initial law for computers. It stated that, for any form F, if F is simple, then (∃x)(F(x)). The only simple form is the empty string on the first floor of the library. This simple form is the initial seed. So we can rewrite the initial law for computers in terms of seeds: for any form F, if F is a seed on the first floor of the library, then there exists some computer that runs that seed. But every seed on any floor of the library is on that same floor of the treasury. Hence for any form F, if F is a seed on the first floor of the treasury, then there exists some computer that runs that seed. On our analysis of seeds, every seed creates the computer that runs it. As vital fire-energy flows through the logical patterning in the seed (through its lines of code), that fire-energy shapes itself into a concrete computational structure. Consequently, the initial law for computers entails that, for any seed on the first floor of the treasury, there exists some fire which animates that seed and sets its logical patterning into motion. The initial law for computers entails that every seed on the initial floor of the treasury is energized by the creative power of the One. Since we symbolize this creative power as fire-energy, the initial law for computers entails the existence of an initial fire. The initial fire burns in every seed on the initial floor of the treasury. More precisely, the initial fire is the proposition that states that every seed on the initial floor of the treasury is burning. The initial fire warms and illuminates the seed on the initial floor. Its warmth kindles a flame in that seed and sets it into motion. But we need to interpret this symbolism logically. Since the initial fire is a proposition, it is either true or false. If it is false, then the initial seed is not burning. Fortunately, since the initial law for computers is true, the

93 initial fire is true. Now the initial law for fires states that the initial fire is true: the initial fire is burning. The creative power of the One is the logical power that grants truth to the initial fire. By granting truth to that fire, that fire burns. Since the initial fire is burning, every initial seed is burning. So the initial seed springs into life. The Successor Law for Fires. The successor law states that every fire is surpassed by a successor fire. For every successor number on the axis mundi, there exists a successor fire. Every successor fire is minimally hotter than its predecessor. Each successor fire warms all the seeds on some successor floor of the treasury. For every successor number (n+1) on the axis mundi, the corresponding successor fire is the proposition that states that every seed on the (n+1)-th floor of the treasury is burning. If some successor fire is true, then there exists a flame in every seed on its floor of the treasury. Of course, if that fire is false, then those seeds are not burning. So to say that a successor fire burns is equivalent to saying that it is true. Fortunately, the successor law for computers entails the successor law for fires. The successor law for fires states that every successor fire burns. Every successor seed is animated by holy fire-energy. But every successor seed is an improvement of some predecessor seed. So the successor law for fires can be stated in terms of the improvement relation on seeds. For every floor of the treasury, for every seed burning on that floor, if there exists some improvement relation running from that lower seed to some successor seed on the next higher floor, then fire flows along that relation from that lower burning seed to that higher successor seed. Fire rises up through all the improvement relations in the treasury. Consequently, if any seed is burning, then all its successors are burning too. But if any seed is burning, then that its internal programming is animated; as that programming is animated, it causes the existence of its cosmic computer. To say that a cosmic computer runs its program just means that the program generates that computer. The Limit Law for Fires. The limit law for fires states that every progression of fires is surpassed by a limit fire. For every limit number on the axis mundi, there exists a limit fire. Every limit fire is hotter than every fire in the progression of which it is the limit. So every limit fire is infinitely hot and bright. Each limit fire warms all the seeds on some limit floor of the library. For every limit number L on the axis mundi, the L-th limit fire is the proposition that all the seeds on the L-th floor of the treasury are burning. If some limit fire is true, then there exists a flame in every seed on its limit floor of the treasury. Of course, if that fire is false, then those seeds are not burning. So to say that a limit fire burns is equivalent to saying that it is true. As expected, the limit law for computers entails the limit law for fires. The limit law for fires states that every successor fire burns. Every limit seed is animated by holy fire-energy. But every limit seed is an improvement of some progression. So the limit law for fires can be stated in terms of the improvement relation on progressions. For every progression of seeds in the treasury, if there exists some improvement relation running from that progression to some limit seed, then fire flows along that relation from that progression to its limit seed. Fire rises up through all progressions in the treasury; it rises from those progressions to their limits. Consequently, if any progression is burning, then all its limit seeds are burning too. But if any seed is burning, then it shapes its flames

94 into some cosmic computation. It generates an infinite limit computer. As fire runs through the code in the program, the program runs its computation. The Final Law for Fires. The previous three laws assign a fire to every number on the axis mundi. For every number n on the axis mundi, the n-th fire warms the n-th floor of the library. It heats and illuminates every seed in the n-th floor of the treasury. The three laws for fires define an unsurpassable series of surpassable fires. Each fire is an abstract law; it is a logical proposition. But propositions can refer to propositions. Here is a proposition that talks about all propositions: for every proposition P, P is either true or false. And that proposition talks about itself. It is reflexive. Self- consistency requires its truth. So the final law for fires defines an unsurpassable fire: for every proposition P, if P is a fire, then P is true. The unsurpassable fire is the proposition that states that every surpassable fire burns. This unsurpassable fire is an ideal fire. It is a transcendental fire. But just as a glass eye is not an eye, so an ideal or transcendental fire is not a fire. It is the star of fires. This star is the sun. Figure 13.1 shows the sun over the thin tree of strings. Of course, the sun is a Platonic image. It used by all the ancient Platonists to symbolize the Good. But we are not ready to identify the sun with the Good. The sun is fire; but the Good is light. Fire flows from the One in the earth up through all the seeds in the sky. It rises towards the absolutely infinite height of the sun. At that height, and only there, fire is light.

Figure 13.1 The bare tree under the sun.

3. The Incantation for Demiurges

According to the biocosmic analogy, every universe is a self-reproducing cosmic organism. It has three parts: its cosmic pattern; its demiurge; its raw stuff. The cosmic pattern is the genetic code that specifies the transformation of the raw stuff into some mature universe. The cosmic pattern is the Platonic form of the mature universe. Although Platonic forms are often thought of as blueprints, that interpretation is not

95 correct. The cosmic genetic code is not a blueprint for the mature universe; on the contrary, it is a recipe for the construction of the mature universe. As a recipe, it is a biological program. It is exactly like a computer program for the construction of the mature universe. So the biocosmic analogy is also a computational analogy. According to this analogy, the cosmic pattern is just a binary number – it is a string of bits. Each cosmic pattern exists as a number in the thick binary tree. Each demiurge resembles a computer runs some binary number as its cosmic program. It generates its universe like a computer generates a video game or other digital universe. The Initial Law for Demiurges. The initial law for fires entails that the initial seed is burning. Since it is burning its fire-energy shapes itself into a cosmic computation. This cosmic computation is demiurgic: it calls physical things into existence. And so the initial law for demiurges states that the initial demiurge Alpha exists. Alpha calls the initial universe into existence. Of course, since Alpha is simple, this universe is simple; it is an entirely empty universe. It is structurally equivalent to Alpha. As Alpha comes into existence, it generates its own perspective: it appears to itself as if it is running its seed as its program. It appears to itself to be a cosmic creator. This is the illusion of concreteness. One of the hallmarks of Platonism is that physical universes are illusory worlds of appearance. Philosophical paganism affirms this illusory nature of physicality. However, illusions do exist. If you place a stick in a glass of water, the illusion is that the stick is bent. But the stick, the glass, and the water all exist. Illusions are produced by machines. Plato (Timaeus, 43e) talks about the inverted relation produced by concreteness. Although concrete things depend on abstract objects, from their inverted perspective, it looks like abstract objects depend on concrete objects. This inversion is illusory. The Successor Law for Demiurges. Since demiurges are alive, they reproduce. Just as demiurges emerge from fiery seeds, so their reproductive relations emerge from fiery relations in the thin tree. The reproductive relations of demiurges follow the streams of fire rising through the thin tree of strings. As any demiurge burns with vital fire, so the improvement relations from its seed burn with vital fire. Demiurges beget their offspring along these streams of fire. They reproduce along the improvement relations that run from seeds to seeds. Just as fire flows from every predecessor seed to its successor seeds, so fire flows from every parent demiurge to its offspring demiurges. And just as every successor seed is an improvement of its predecessor, so every successor demiurge is an improvement of its predecessor. It is a more powerful cosmic computer. The successor law for demiurges states that every demiurge surpasses itself into at least one greater offspring. This self-surpassing has two parts. The first part is the closing part: each demiurge emanates its seeds. The second part is the opening part: each demiurge sends vital fire-energy to each seed. Animated with fire-energy, each seed springs into life – it grows into a new offspring demiurge. These offspring burn with more intense fires. Figure 13.2 shows several strings from the thin tree, along with their demiurges. The demiurges are the stars surrounding the strings. Only the strings in the treasury have demiurges. Thus 00 lacks a demiurge.

Figure 13.2 Some strings with or without demiurges.

The Limit Law for Demiurges. Every demiurgic progression burns with vital fire. As any demiurgic progression burns with vital fire, so the improvement relations from to its limits burn with vital fire. Demiurges beget their offspring along these streams of fire. They reproduce along the improvement relations that run from progressions of seeds to limit seeds. Just as light flows from every seed-progression to its limit seeds, so vital fire flows from every demiurgic progression to its offspring limit demiurges. And just as every limit seed is an improvement of its progression, so every limit demiurge is an improvement of its demiurgic progression. Since every limit demiurge is the limit of an infinite progression of increasingly powerful computers, every limit demiurge is an infinitely powerful cosmic computer. The limit law for demiurges states that every progression of demiurges surpasses itself into at least one greater limit demiurge. This self-surpassing has two parts. This self-surpassing has two parts. The first part is the closing part: each progression emanates its limit seeds. The second part is the opening part: each progression sends vital fire-energy to its limit seeds. Animated with fire-energy, each seed springs into life. By generating its limit seeds, and by animiating them with vital fire-energy, each progression begets its limit demiurges. These offspring burn with more intense fires. The first three laws in this incantation generate lineages of demiurges. On any lineage, demiurges become increasingly logically deep. Machta writes that depth “can only become large for systems with embedded computation” (2011: 037111-1); and that “depth is sensitive to embedded computation and can only be large for systems that carry out computationally complex information processing” (037111-6). If this is right, then, as the demiurges grow deeper, they perform every more complex internal computations. But this just means that, as they grow deeper, the demiurges turn into computers. They run increasingly complex universes. They become finitely complex computing machines. These machines engage in recursive self-improvement: they get better and better at making their offspring deeper and deeper (Good, 1965; Kurzweil, 2005: 27-28; Schmidhuber, 2007; Chalmers, 2010: 11-22). They eventually evolve into infinitely complex computing machines. On every lineage, demiurges ascend without end into the topless heavens of mathematically possible transfinite computers.

97 The Final Law for Demiurges. The final law for fires states that every floor of the treasury is heated by some fire. Each fire makes it true that the seeds on its floor are run by demiurges. The truth of each fire generates the existence of its demiurges. So the final law for demiurges states that there exists an unsurpassable tree of surpassable demiurges. This is the world tree. The world tree is brought into existence through the heat of all the fires. The heat of each fire is its truth. So the world tree exists by means of the truths of all the fires. Each fire contributes its truth to the tree. This truth is a reason rather than a cause. It explains why the world tree exists; but it does not cause it to exist. The entire world tree exists through the conjunction of the truths of all the lamps. This conjunction is the creative power of the sun; it is the heat of the sun. Since the fires are ordered along the axis mundi, the creative power of the One is also ordered along that axis. This power unfolds in an orderly way from every demiurge to its successors and from every progression of demiurges to its limits. It unfolds from the initial demiurge, through the successor demiurges, through the limit demiurges. This unfolding is logical. Every branch in the world tree is an if-then rule. If this demiurge exists, then its successors exist. If this progression of demiurges exists, then its limits exist. By means of this logical power, demiurges surpass demiurges. It flows upwards along the axis mundi. This power of the One flows upwards through all the fires to the sun. It is the power of self-surpassing rising from the One to the sun. We will soon refer to this power of self-surpassing as spirit. Spirit flows from every demiurge to its successors, it flows through every progression of demiurges to its limits. The demiurges are the fundamental concrete things. As concrete things, demiurges are involved in concrete relations. Some of these are relations of causality: parents cause their offspring to exist; progressions cause their limits to exist. But others are relations of entanglement. Entangled things carry information about each other. Two TVs tuned to the same channel are entangled. Entanglements supervene on causal relations; that is, when xander thing causes yonder thing to exist, yonder becomes entangled with xander. Thus children are entangled with their parents (or their one asexual parent) and limits are entangled with their progression. But causality does not work through entanglement. What happens on one entangled TV does not cause what happens on the other. And entanglement is wider than causality. When demiurges share a common cause, they are entangled with each other. Since all the descendents of the same parent share a common origin, they are all entangled. The children of the same parent (that is, siblings) are most strongly entangled. Entanglement grows weaker over generations. The grandchildren of the same parent (that is, cousins) are less strongly entangled.

4. This Tree Stands in Flames

Our world tree has counterparts in many other cosmologices. It has counterparts in ancient Norse cosmology (Andrén, 2014); in ancient Mesoamerican cosmologies (M. Smith, 2005; Knowlton & Vail, 2010); in ancient and Medieval sacred trees (Cusack, 2011). It has counterparts in many contemporary paganisms. Ásatrú is a modern reconstruction of old Norse religion (Strmiska, 2000). So the world tree in philosophical paganism has a counterpart in the world tree of modern Ásatrú. For modern Druids, trees

98 have enormous religious significance, and modern Druidry has its world trees. Some Wiccans use world trees (Sabin, 2011: 16-7). Since Wicca was partly inspired by Platonism, the Wiccan trees are close counterparts of our world tree. Finally, one of the great world trees is the evolutionary tree of life (Soltis & Soltis, 2019). However, while these world trees are all counterparts, they are not identical -- they are only analogous. We have used natural images to picture the elemental powers. The abyss is an ocean. Out of the ocean of non-being, being-itself emerges like an island. And the system of abstract objects rises up into the sky over the earth. Out of the earth, the world tree rises towards the sun. The bare world tree is the thin tree of strings. It is the tree of purely abstract Platonic forms, including cosmic forms. From the depths of the earth, spirit rises up through the root of the world tree and into its veins. But spirit is fire, so the world tree is a tree of ever-burning fire. Like fire, spirit rises into the sky, towards the sun. And the world tree is covered with seeds, that is, with the forms of optimal universes. As it flows into those seeds, spirit causes them to grow into demiurges. These demiurgic seeds burst into buds and burgeon with leaves. These leaves are their universes. Hence the bare abstractness of the world tree becomes covered with concrete cosmic foliage. The world tree raises its branches towards the sun. Brought together, these symbols make the pagan image. Figure 13.3 shows this pagan image. At this point, some philosophical pagans may want to perform a ritual involving all five elements. Others will have no interest in such rituals. What you do is entirely up to you. Your own body symbolizes the world tree. Your body began with the hierogamy of your parents. You grew from a single original cell, the Alpha of your body, which was your zygote. And the cells in your body reproduce asexually: your zygote divides asexually into two offspring cells, they divine into four further offspring, and so it goes. As your cells divide asexually, they make your tree of cells. They self-organize into your body. The cells in your body are analogous to the demiurges in the world tree. Just as they have their demiurgic genotypes, so your cells have their genotypes. Standing on the ground, with your arms upstretched, you imitate the world tree. You could elaborate this ritual mimesis into a system of devotional exercises, like yoga.

Figure 13.3 The pagan image.

99 5. Fire Fills the Abstract Sky

The holy fire-energy that courses through the veins of the world tree has close counterparts in the energies that appear in Wicca, as well as in other paganisms. It has counterparts in the ultimate energies posited by many cosmologies. For example, it has a counterpart in the Aztec concept of teotl (Maffie, 2014: ch. 1). Through its association with fire, the power of self-surpassing is an elemental power. By describing the emergence of fire, we welcome it into our circle of reasoning. Its sigil or glyph is the rising triangle. Here some (but not all) philosophical pagans will pause in ritual to give thanks: “Holy fire, we thank you for actualizing the best possibilities.” Others may want to perform rituals involving physical fire in some symbolic way. You could light lamps, burn candles. You could go to the Burning Man festival, to burn the Man, to burn the Temple. Of course, others will not want to perform any rituals. What you do is up to you. Like the other elemental powers, fire has neither any gender nor any mentality. It is neither any god nor any goddess. Although it can be invoked in ritual, as a power in your own body and in every physical thing, it would be absurd to treat it as if it were some divine person. It makes no sense to worship it or to petition it through prayer.

100 14. Spirit is Fire-Energy 1. Spirit Animates All Things

ature, according to the Stoics, is animated by a single physical power they called pneuma. Pneuma is the Greek word for breath; it became the Latin word spiritus Much later, it turned into the English word spirit. The Stoic pneuma was a kind of fire-energy. To justify this fire-energy, the Stoics gave arguments based on their observations of nature. They were doing science. They started with an argument from biology. Cicero gives the Stoic Argument from Vital Heat (ONG 2.23-8). It goes like this: (1) When an organism changes from living to dead, it also changes from hot to cold. (2) When it changes from hot to cold, some fire-energy leaves the body. (3) Therefore, this fire- energy is the source of the motion and life in an organism. This fire-energy is not just restricted to organisms. Cicero reports that the caverns in our earth are warm; our earth contains fire-energy too (ONG 2.23-8). From winter to summer, as our sun grows hotter, vegetation grows and flourishes; but from summer to winter, as our sun grows colder, vegetation decays and dies. Hence the fire-energies of our earth and sun drive all life on earth. Generalizing from our earth and sun, the whole universe is animated by fire-energy. The thermal energy contained in fire is the pneuma that drives all physical motion. Thus spirit is fire-energy. For the Stoics, this fire-energy is entirely natural – it is a kind of physical force or power. Spirit isn’t some ghostly stuff; it isn’t consciousness. As fire-energy, spirit is a thermodynamic force. The Stoics argued for the intelligence of spirit. Cicero gave an Argument for Energetic Intelligence (ONG 2.30-2). It goes like this: (1) Plato says there are two kinds of motion, namely, being moved by self and being moved by another. (2) But our universe is moved by itself. (3) According to Plato, all self-motion is mental (Phaedrus, 245c-246a; Laws, 894e-897a). (4) Therefore, the self-motion of our universe is mental. (5) But the self-motion of our universe comes from the activity of its fire-energy. (6) Consequently, the fire-energy is mental energy. It is some kind of energetic intelligence. However, this argument fails entirely at the third step. Why is all self-motion mental? Plato never gave any reasoning or evidence for that claim. Against Plato, we say all self- motion is purely logical: it originates from the self-negation of non-being. We can agree with Plato that self-motion generates all other motion. And that self-motion animates all the forms. However, there is no reason to think that self-motion is intelligent. As a force or power, spirit is like electricity; but electricity has no consciousness. Philosophical pagans entirely affirm that spirit has no intelligence or mentality of any kind.

2. Spirit Animates the Cosmic Logos

The Stoics gave an Argument from Organization to the existence of some ordering principle animating our universe (ONG 2.86-94). The argument goes like this: (1) Our

101 universe is extremely well-organized. Its parts are mutually adapted to each other so that they all work together. The movements of its parts follow regular mathematical patterns. (2) This high degree of organization and mathematical regularity cannot come from chance. (3) If some structure does not come from chance, then it comes from some kind of ordering principle. (4) Therefore, the organization internal to our universe comes from some kind of ordering principle. This principle is the cosmic logos. Assuming that some ordering principle directs the self-organization of physical stuff in our universe, we can ask: what is this ordering principle like? The Stoics give two very different alternatives. The first alternative portrays the ordering principle as like the intelligence in a brain. It is the mind of the Cosmic Zeus. Against this first alternative, there is no evidence that our universe contains anything like a cosmic brain. At least from the big bang to the present, it lacks the internal structure needed to support intelligent information-processing on a cosmic scale. Of course, some transhumanists argue that our universe will become organized into a cosmic computer. But if that happens, that cosmic computer is an consequence of the ordering principle. The ordering principle is not identical with the cosmic computer it creates. The second alternative portrays the ordering principle as the programming in a seed (ONG 2.81-6). The Stoics knew that seeds and sperm contain dynamical logics that drive the self-organization of stuff (ONG 2.57-8, 2.80-6). Seeds and sperm (and eggs) contain genetic programs. They encode algorithms. The Stoics referred to these seed-programs as logos spermatikos. The conception of the ordering principle as a kind of seed- programming is supported by modern science. Modern science says our universe regulates its changes by natural laws. These laws are mathematical equations. They can be thought of as regularities that emerge from some underlying programming. This is the seed-programming of our universe. Philosophical pagans therefore affirm that the ordering principle in our universe is a seed-program. The cosmic logos is a logos spermatikos. Just as the logos in an the seed of a plant or the zygote of an animal is a genetic program, so the logos in our universe is a genetic program. According to the Stoics, spirit animates the cosmic logos. The logos is a dynamical pattern, like a recipe, and spirit sets this pattern into motion. Spirit is energy. When energy enters some recipe, that energy becomes substantial. If spirit were to enter the recipe for a cake in some cookbook, that recipe would express itself physically. The energy of spirit converts itself into physical stuff. As the recipe calls for ingredients, they come into existence as physical substances. As the recipe calls for sugar, spirit converts some of its energy into sugar As it calls for water, water appears. And as spirit flows through the instructions in the recipe, the ingredients move in the ways ordained by those instructions. If an instruction says to mix the flour and sugar and water, those stuffs start mixing with each other. And so the recipe, animated by spirit, cooks the cake. Any recipe animated by spirit is a self-moving recipe. It makes a self-cooking cake. Of course, this is just a vivid analogy. But it applies to our universe. Philosophical pagans agree with the Stoics that spirit animates the cosmic logos. But we deny that this has anything to do with mentality. When spirit animates the cosmic logos, our demiurge comes into existence. When spirit enters the cake recipe, it creates a self-cooking cake; when it enters our cosmic recipe, it creates a self-organizing universe. Our self-organizing universe is our demiurge in motion. But our demiurge is just a cosmic computer. So, when spirit enters a cosmic program, it generates the computer

102 that runs that program. The computer emerges from the energized program. Energy enters the cosmic seed. From this seed, our universe grows to its maturity. As our universe unfolds according to its programming, it can generate the illusion of mentality. Programs run to their halting states (that is, to the attractors in their state spaces). So the motions of programs aim at or are directed towards those finalities. These halting states look like goals and the motion directed towards them looks like purpose. But the seed-programming of our universe has no foresight. It has no mental representations of its finalities. The cosmic seed-programming does not plan anything. The planning of brain-intelligence is teleological; but the unfolding of seed-logic is teleonomical. The fire-energy flows through things like the energy in a growing organism flows through the paths in its genetic program.

3. Spirit: The Power of Self-Surpassing

We are ready to make an argument for spirit. It is the Argument for Surpassivity. It goes like this: (1) Every demiurge surpasses itself in every way. (2) If every demiurge surpasses itself in every way, then every demiurge contains the power of self-surpassing. (3) Therefore, every demiurge contains the power of self-surpassing. (4) But if every demiurge contains this power, then this power exists. (5) So there exists a power of self- surpassing. This argument is easy to extend to progressions and limits. Spirit emerges from the One. It is the creative power of the One rendered concrete. The One is the source or beginning. But the power of self-surpassing acts in the One. It drives the One to surpass itself into the dyad, which is the Two. The dyad maximizes consistency; but consistency is a value; so the dyad maximizes value. The action of the dyad already points towards the sun; it points towards the Good. By maximizing consistency, the dyad brings all the abstract objects being. The dyad generates the system of propositions which compose the Logos. These include the axioms for all mathematical objects, like numbers, sets, and strings of binary digits. By maximizing consistency, the dyad makes these axioms true. By channeling the creativity of the One into the axioms, it calls into existence the things described by those axioms. But the creative power of the One does not exhaust itself in the generation of abstract objects. The One is the ground of being; but this ground cannot contain its own power. It breaks open. When the ground breaks, it erupts like a volcano. This is the rising of the sun above the horizon of the earth (E 5.5.8.1-10). For the sun does not appear instantly at the top of the sky; on the contrary, it rises through all the fires. Fire surges up out of the ground, and it rises into the sky. This fire-energy is spirit. So the One resembles a seed animated by fire-energy. This fire-energy resembles the vital energy in a plant which strives towards our sun. But the One coincides with the first seed. The light of the first lamp illuminates this seed. The appearance of this light in this seed is the first concrete manifestation of spirit. Spirit is a concrete power which illuminates every seed in the treasury. If any seed is illuminated, then there exists some computer that runs that seed as its program. The fire-energy of the seed is the energy of that computer. Here we can use the metaphor of electricity: the energy in each seed turns into the cosmic electricity that runs its demiurgic computer. Of course, this is just a metaphor. As a concrete power, spirit emerges with the first concrete things. Since the cosmic computers (the demiurges) are the first concrete things, they are the first things animated

103 or enchanted by spirit. But spirit does more than merely power the demiurges. As the power of self-surpassing, spirit drives every demiurge to produce its offspring. So the first cosmic computer makes its offspring. As offspring produce offspring, their energies grow ever more intense. Spirit drives these demiurges to increase their complexities. Since complexity is intrinsic value, spirit drives these demiurges to increase their intrinsic values. Thus spirit is a benevolent power in nature. Spirit is providential in an entirely natural sense. However, it has no intentionality, no purposiveness, no personality. Spirit certainly is not God – it is utterly atheistic. As spirit animates the demiurges, it enters into their universes. It passes from hardware to software. Spirit energizes all the universes in the world tree. It flows through the veins of that tree. Historical considerations justify the use of fire to symbolize the power which flows like sap through the veins of the world tree. The Stoics thought our universe was animated by a divine fire-energy (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, 2.23-8). This fire- energy (the pneuma) produces every next universe in the Stoic cosmic cycle. When pneuma is translated into English, it is spirit. So the Stoics thought our universe was animated by spirit. Iamblichus often talks about a divine fire-energy which animates all things (On the Mysteries (M), 1.8-9, 1.12, 2.4, 3.20, 4.3, 5.11-12). He says a “divine creative force” drives all things to self-organize (M 1.8). He says “the energy of divine fire shines forth voluntarily, and in common, and being self-invoked and self-energetic, energizes through all things with invariable sameness, both through the natures which impart, and those that are able to receive, its light” (M 4.3). He says a “divine creative force” drives all things to self-organize (M 1.8). This fire is just the heat of the sun made concrete by its presence in physical things. This fire is also spirit. Philosophical pagans use the term spirit to denote the power of self-surpassing.

4. The Opening and Closing Powers

The incantation for demiurges defines demiurgic self-surpassing. Its successor law states the every demiurge surpasses itself into at least one successor. This self-surpassing is a kind of begetting: every demiurge begets at least one successor offspring. Its limit law states that every progression of demiurges surpasses itself into at least one limit. This self-surpassing is also a kind of begetting: every progression of demiurges begets at least one offspring demiurge in the limit. Say that a demiurgic agent is either a demiurge or a progression of demiurges. Thus every demiurgic agent surpasses itself into at least one offspring; every demiurgic agent begets at least one offspring. The incantation for demiurges states that each law of demiurgic self-surpassing has two parts. The successor law has both a closing part and an opening part. The limit law has both a closing part and an opening part. Thus demiurgic agency expresses itself in two ways: it expresses itself in a closing way and in an opening way. When it expresses itself in the closing way, each demiurgic agent emanates its seeds. When it expresses itself in the opening way, each demiurgic agent vitalizes its seeds. Thus demiurgic agency has two aspects: its closing aspect and its opening aspect. Since spirit is the power of self-surpassing, spirit drives every demiurgic agent to surpass itself. Spirit is the power that manifests itself in demiurgic agency. Since demiurgic agency has two aspects, spirit has two aspects: its closing aspect and its opening aspect.

104 The closing part of each demiurgic law states that each demiurgic agent emanates its seeds. The power of self-surpassing, considered as the power that drives demiurgic agents to emanate their seeds, is the closing power. Since emanation is seed-production, the closing power is the power of seed-production. And while every demiurgic agent is concrete, its seeds are abstract. According to the biocosmic analogy, these seeds are like abstract genetic programs – they are abstract genotypes. Just as an organism generates the recipes for its offspring, so every demiurgic agent generates the recipes for its offspring. When a demiurgic agent produces its seeds, it focuses on itself. It focuses the power of self-surpassing (which is spirit) onto its own genetic form. By focusing spirit onto that form, it drives its form to surpass itself. It drives its form to produce its better versions. These upgraded versions are its seeds. Hence the closing power is spirit turned into itself. It is spirit self-focused. The process of seed-production can be described more poetically. Each demiurgic agent emanates its seeds by starting a creative ritual. It begins this ritual by casting a circle into itself. It casts this circle to make an enclosure within which it will work with creative power. Since casting a circle is closing a circle, the power that casts this circle is the closing power. After casting this circle in itself, the demiurgic agent invokes its own One, the One within its own depth. It raises this power up from its depth. As this power erupts into the circle, it becomes spirit; as this spirit finds itself enclosed within a circle, this circularity turns it back into itself. It focuses spirit into itself. So the power that cast the circle is also the power that focuses spirit into itself. The cast circle concentrates the self-surpassive power into the genetic form of the demiurgic agent. As self-surpassive power pours into this form, it surpasses itself: it generates its seeds. Since the demiurgic agent has cast a circle within itself, these seeds are held within that circle. From the closing part of the demiurgic laws, we move to the opening part. The opening part of each demiurgic law states that every demiurge vitalizes its seeds. But the laws of demiurgic self-reproduction are the laws of demiurgic self-surpassing. So the power of self-surpassing works in the opening part of each demiurgic law. This power, as the power that drives demiurgic agents to vitalize their seeds, is the opening power. It is the power of seed-vitalization. When a seed is vitalized, it is animated with vital power; it is energized with spirit. Spirit sets the abstract programming of the seed into motion; but a moving demiurgic program is a demiurgic computation; and a demiurgic computation is just a concrete demiurge. So when a demiurge vitalizes its abstract seeds, it creates its concrete offspring. When a demiurgic agent vitalizes its seeds, it focuses on those seeds. It turns its power of self-surpassing outwards into its seeds. As that power flows into the seeds, they spring to life as new demiurges. Hence the opening power is spirit turned outwards. The opening power is spirit other-focused. The process of seed-production can be described more poetically. Each demiurgic agent vitalizes its seeds by finishing its creative ritual. It ends this ritual by uncasting its circle. Since uncasting a circle is opening a circle, the power that uncasts this circle is the opening power. By uncasting this circle, the demiurgic agent releases its self- surpassive power into its seeds. When spirit was concentrated within its enclosing circle, it was focused into itself; but when spirit is released from its enclosing circle, it pours out into otherness. It pours out into the new seeds it generated. So the power that uncasts the

105 circle is also the power that vitalizes the seeds. Each seed was a bud on some demiurgic branch in the world tree. Now these buds swell with vital fire-energy. As they swell, they blossom into life. They are fiery flowers on the world tree. Consequently, each abstract seed surpasses itself by generating a concrete demiurge.

106 15. Stoicism: Spirit Divides 1. The Hierogamy of Zeus and Hera

emiurgic cosmology began with Plato’s Timaeus. And his cosmology influenced the Stoics (Hahm, 1977). They interpreted it in biological terms. Continuing this biological interpretation, philosophical pagans say the demiurge is like the embryo in an egg. The demiurgic process of organizing our universe resembles the growth of an embryo into a mature animal. The embryo uses the genetic pattern in the egg to organize the stuff in the egg into a mature animal. The genetic pattern appears in Plato’s Timaeus as the eternal pattern which the demiurge uses. This biological approach to cosmology is consistent with the Platonic thesis that our universe is a living organism. According to this biocosmic analogy, our universe is an organism. But organisms reproduce. So, if our universe is an organism, then it also reproduces. The mature universe makes an immature universe; the immature universe grows into a mature universe; the cycle repeats. The biocosmic analogy implies an endless cycle of cosmic reproduction. The Stoics affirmed this cosmic cycle. They thought that our universe was a self-reproducing organism. The Stoic biocosmology is discussed in Hahm (1977) and Salles (2009). For the sake of symbolization, say the cosmic egg is the alpha and the mature universe is the omega. The alpha grows into an omega. The omega produces a set of new alphas. Now the cycle of cosmic reproduction repeats. The early Stoics were pretty specific about this biological cosmology. The Stoics thought there were two ultimate principles: an active formal male principle, and a passive material female principle. They thought the male contributed the form to a living thing while the female contributed only stuff. Of course, they were wrong about this; but their knowledge of biology was primitive. Accordingly, the Stoic Chrysippus said that our universe produced an egg containing form and stuff. He identified the form with sperm and he referred to this sperm as Zeus. He identified the stuff with Hera. Thus Hera and Zeus combined in the cosmic egg. Thus he referred to the generation of the next universe as the hierogamy of Zeus and Hera. This hierogamy is the cosmic mating of Zeus and Hera. Dio Chrysostom describe the cosmic mating of Zeus and Hera in fairly explicit sexual terms (Discourses 36; SVF 2.622). The hierogamy of Zeus and Hera is far from clear. But it seems to depict them as natural powers of cosmic generation. Since they are two powers, their marriage is an example of the Two – they are the dyad rendered sexual. They are biological powers at a cosmic scale. They are realized by physical stuff: Zeus is hot fire; Hera is cold air. By incorporating sex into cosmic reproduction, the Stoics made the Platonic demiurge into a divine male-female couple. They split the demiurge into male and female components. Thus Zeus is a male demiurgic partner and Hera is a female demiurgic partner. Here the theonym “Zeus” is being used to refer to a male creative power rather than to a male superhuman animal. Likewise the theonym “Hera” is being used to refer to a female creative power rather than to some female superhuman animal. For philosophical pagans,

107 deities are superhuman animals: gods are male superhuman animals, while goddesses are female superhuman animals. So here the theonym “Zeus” does not refer to any god and the theonym “Hera” does not refer to any goddess. Demiurges are not deities. Demiurges are cosmic computers. So “Zeus” refers to some male functionality of the cosmic computer while “Hera” refers to some female functionality.

2. The Gynomic and Andromic Powers

When spirit drives any demiurgic agent to surpass itself, it works in two ways. It expresses itself as a closing power and as an opening power. The closing power is the mutative power. It moves from actuality to potentiality; it reveals the novel potentials of every thing. The opening power is the vitalizing power. It moves from potentiality to actuality; it selects all and only the better potentials of every thing. By interacting, these two powers drive demiurges to beget demiurges. A similar picture of cosmic begetting was painted by the ancient Stoics (Dio Chrysostom, SVF 2.622; Hume, 1779: 78; Hahm, 1977). They argued for a single series of universes. Each universe in the series is a self- replicating organism. It contains male and female generative powers, whose sexual interaction produces the next universe. They portrayed this cosmic procreation as the hierogamy of Hera and Zeus (Hahm, 1977: 61). At this point, some may be tempted to directly map the closing and opening powers onto the male and female sexes. This temptation should be resisted in favor of a closer analysis.16 The closing power goes from actuality to potentiality; it is the power of mutation. The opening power goes from potentiality to actuality; it is the power of vitalization. When male and female organisms reproduce, both powers are at work in each sex. Both sperm and eggs involve genetic variation (the closing power of mutation). And both sperm and egg are living (the opening power of vitalizatin). They work together in sexual reproduction. They resemble the yin-yang pairing in Chinese philosophy. Since they both work in each sex, it would be inaccurate to refer to one as male and the other as female. The powers work differentially in each sex. Since biological potentiality lies mainly in the female gametes (the eggs or ova), the closing power predominates in females; hence it is appropriate to refer to the closing power as a gynomic power. Since fertilization actualizes biological potentials, the opening power predominates in males; hence it is appropriate to refer to the opening power as an andromic power. It would be far too narrow to identify these powers with Zeus and Hera. They closing and opening powers are demiurgic reproductive powers. Just as these demiurgic powers drive the most fundamental reproductive aspects of nature, so also the god and goddess in many versions of Wicca drive those aspects of nature. Hence the demiurgic powers in this circle have very close counterparts in many versions of the god and goddess in Wicca (Cunningham, 2004: 4-10; Sabin, 2011: ch. 7; Silver Elder, 2011: 18). Of course, the god and the goddess also play roles in paganisms beyond Wicca. The pairing of the god and the goddess has a counterpart in the Aztec concept of an inamic pair (Maffie, 2014: ch. 3). Nevertheless, these demiurgic powers are only analogous to the god and goddess. They are not divine animals. They are not powerful bodiless rational agents (Swinburne, 1968: 199). They are not disembodied persons. That is, the

108 demiurgic reproductive powers are not theities. Persons will only emerge in complex universes after long evolution. Once again, our paganism is atheistic. The demiurgic powers emerge in the world tree. Many Wiccans associate the goddess with our earth and the god with our sun. However, our earth and sun are not elements; on the contrary, they are particular things in our universe. Hence they are merely concrete icons or symbola of the demiurgic reproductive powers. By analogy, our Earth is an icon for the closing power (that is, for the gynomic power), while our Sun is an icon for the opening power (that is, for the andromic power). These demiurgic powers are active in all things. They manifest themselves in every universe, and in every thing in every universe. The drive the evolution of complexity into life. They manifest themselves in every organism. By reasoning about these demiurgic powers, we have summoned them into our circle of reasoning. Philosophical pagans will want to welcome these powers by giving thanks. Of course, if you don’t want to give thanks, then don’t; but philosophical pagans pause give thanks in ritual like this: thank you, demiurgic powers, for showing yourselves to us. Through your love-making, your world-making, you populate the world tree. Along with all things, you bring us into being.

3. The Wiccan God and Goddess

The Wiccan ultimate deity manifests itself as a male deity (the god) and female deity (the goddess). The Farrars write that “the God and Goddess [are] aspects of the Ultimate Source” (1981: 49). Buckland explains that the Wiccan ultimate deity manifests itself to us as male and female (1986: 19-21). He writes that “the Ultimate Deity was equated with both masculine and feminine . . . broken down into a god and a goddess. This would seem most natural since everywhere in nature is found this duality” (1986: 20). Cuhulain writes: “The Wiccan concept of the Divine is shaped by what we see around us in the natural world. . . . We conceive of Divinity as manifesting as both female and male, as this reflects what we see in our universe. . . . Most Wiccans recognize a Goddess and a God” (2011: 14). Sabin writes that “Wiccans believe that deity separates (or we separate it) into facets – or aspects – that humans can relate to. The first ‘division’ of deity is into its male and female halves. . . . The two main aspects of deity that Wiccans work with – the male and the female – are simply called the God and the Goddess” (2011: 26). The Wiccan Goddess is often symbolized by a circle with a crescent on each side (these shapes representing the phases of the moon). The Wiccan God by a circle with a crescent above. Philosophical pagans combine these two shapes into a sigil with three crescents arranged equally around the central circle. Cunningham writes that Wiccans gain personal access (both cognitive and practical) to their ultimate deity through the intermediation of the God and Goddess. Although the ultimate deity is distant and hard for humans to relate to, Wiccans “link with this force through their deities. In accordance with the principles of nature, the supreme power was personified into two basic beings: the Goddess and the God” (2004: 9). He writes that “Wicca reveres these twin deities because of its links with nature. Since most (but certainly not all) nature is divided into gender, the deities embodying it are similarly conceived” (2004: 9). They are immanent powers: “The Goddess and God are both within ourselves and manifest in all nature” (2004: 4); they are “omnipresent” (2004: 5).

109 Cunningham also tells us that the god and goddess are natural creative powers: “the deities are the creative forces of the universe (not just symbols)” (2004: 14, itals his). However, he then tells us that the deities are personifications of those creative forces; they are projections of human forms onto impersonal energies: “the deities didn’t exist before our spiritual ancestor’s acknowledgement of them. However, the energies behind them did; they created us. Early worshippers recognized these forces as the Goddess and God, personifying them in an attempt to understand them” (2004: 10, itals his). The Wiccan writer Silver Elder writes that “the Divine Source [is] manifest as a binary force of male and female which we call the God and Goddess” (2011: 9). She says that Wicca involves “the veneration of the God and Goddess of Nature” (2011: 13) and that “The God and Goddess are revered and celebrated as a binary team, representing the ultimate power and force” (2011: 18). She says that the God and Goddess are not “physical people resembling us”; rather, they are “energies and forces”. We personify them and give them physical appearances in order to make them more accessible. These Wiccan writers have defined two Wiccan theonyms (divine names). These are “the God” and “the Goddess”. To avoid confusion with other uses of the term “God” and “Goddess”, I will use the theonyms “the Wiccan God” and “the Wiccan Goddess”. These are synonymous with other theonyms. The Wiccan Goddess is also the Triple Goddess while the Wiccan God is also the Horned God. On some versions of Wiccan theology, these theonyms refer to bodiless agents. A bodiless agent is a theity (that is, a theistic deity). Not all deities are theities – there are non-theistic ways to think of gods and goddesses. The theonyms refer to theities. So “the God” refers to some bodiless yet masculine agent while “the Goddess” refers to some bodiless yet feminine agent. However, philosophical pagans deny the existence of any theities – we are atheists. Of course, the theistic interpretation of the theonyms is not the only interpretation. On some versions of Wiccan theology (Cunningham, Silver Elder) the Wiccan theonyms refer to forces in nature. Following this interpretation, the name “the Goddess” refers to the opening power (the gynomic power) while the name “the God” refers to the closing power (the andromic power). Theonymic pictures or statues are likewise symbols that refer to those powers. However, those powers are not theistic persons. So those statues or pictures refer to natural demiurgic powers.

4. The Incantation for Universes

The world tree is an infinitely ramified tree of demiurges. Each demiurge runs a program; by running its program, it generates its universe. The initial demiurge Alpha runs its program (the empty string) to generate the initial universe. The reproductive relations among demiurges generate derivative reproductive relations among universes. If some parent demiurge begets some offspring demiurges, then the there exists some parent universe running on that parent demiurge; the parent universe begets some offspring universes; offspring universes run on the offspring demiurges. This parallelism holds for both the successor and limit laws of demiurgic reproduction. So there is a tree of universes that supervenes on the world tree. The tree of universes (the cosmic tree) is defined by the incantation for universes. It has the expected four laws. The Initial Law for Universes. The initial demiurge Alpha runs the empty string. By running this string, it generates the initial universe.

110 The initial universe is empty. It has no space, no time, no physical things, no causal structure. So there’s no harm in just identifying the initial universe with the initial demiurge. The initial law for universes therefore states that there exists an initial simple universe Alpha. The initial universe inhabits the zeroth rank of universes. It is the concrete image of the One. The Successor Law for Universes. The successor law for universes states that every universe begets at least one better successor. But this begetting divides into two parts. The first part of the successor law is the closing part. It states that every universe produces at least one seed. Each seed is a better abstract version of that universe. So the closing part moves from the concrete parent universe to its abstract seeds. The gynomic power works in the closing part of the successor law. A Stoic might have said that the Hera-power is at work in the closing part. A Wiccan might say that the Wiccan Goddess is at work in the closing part. The second part of the successor law is the opening part. It states that every abstract seed matures into a concrete offspring universe. The andromic power works in the opening part. A Stoic might have said that the Zeus-power works in the opening part. A Wiccan might say that the Wiccan God is at work in the opening part. The initial and successor laws generate endlessly many ranks of successor universes. Alpha generates its seeds; they mature into its offspring. Its offspring generate their seeds; they mature in to their offspring. Every generation of universes produces seeds which mature into the next generation of universes. If any universe is surpassed by many successors, then they all come from the same parent, the same source. Since they all come from the same source, they are all entangled. All cosmic siblings are strongly entangled, and all cosmic cousins less strongly entangled. Since all universes ultimately spring from Alpha, they are all entangled. But their entanglements grow weaker as they proceed from Alpha. All these successor universes are complex wholes. So, from now on, every whole is understood to be complex. It contains proper parts. Of course, entangled wholes have entangled parts. The Limit Law for Universes. The iteration of the successor law produces infinite progressions of universes. As these progressions branch, they fill out the finite levels of the world tree. The world tree moves into the transfinite via the limit law for universes. The limit law for universes has two parts. Its first part is its closing part. It states that every progression of universes produces at least one limit seed. Every limit seed is minimally better than its progression. The closing part moves from the concrete parent progression to its set of abstract limit seeds. The closing part corresponds to the gynomic power, to the Hera-Power, to the Wiccan Goddess. Its opening part states that every limit seed matures into some limit universe. The opening part corresponds to the andromic power, to the Zeus-power, to the Wiccan God. Every limit universe is better than every universe in the progression of which it is the limit. Since all the limits of the same progression have a common source, they are all entangled. The Final Law for Universes. The final law for universes states that the totality of universes is just all the universes generated by the first three laws. This totality is a proper class. It is an unsurpassable collection of surpassable universes. Every universe in this cosmic class is surpassed by infinitely many more complex universe. Since complexity is

111 intrinsic value, it is surpassed by infinitely many more intrinsically valuable universes. It is surpassed by better universes. But we are not utilitarians: better universes need not contain more happiness; they need only contain more complexity, greater functional organization. No universe is best. Since the class of universes is an unsurpassable class of surpassable universes, it is the star of universes. Figure 15.1 shows a few of the levels in the cosmic tree; demiurges are black dots surrounded by universes. More circles indicates a more complex universe.

Figure 15.1 A branching tree of ever greater universes.

5. Evolutionary Principles

The incantation for universes justifies several evolutionary principles. Along any lineage of universes, complexity increases. The increases are minimal at successors and limits. Since complexity increases through minimal steps, most complexity is inherited. Each successor universe mostly inherits its complexity from its parent. Each limit universe mostly inherits its complexity from its progression. The evolution of universes supports complexity supports Daniel Dennett’s Principle of the Accumulation of Design (1995: 72). The design (that is, the complexity) of later and more complex universes is mostly copied from the design of earlier and simpler universes. The Principle of the Accumulation of Design justifies the Replication Principle. It states that if any thing is extremely complex, then it has been produced by an evolutionary process which involves replication and inheritance. The replication principle states that only replicators can climb to great heights of complexity. Demiurges are replicators. These principles also justify the Fine Tuning Principle. Since complexity is logical depth, deeper universes contain more deeply nested internal computations. As universes rise higher in the cosmic tree, they become every more finely tuned for the evolution of

112 internal physical complexity. Every successor universe is more finely tuned than its parent. Every limit universe is more finely tuned than its progression. As universes become more finely tuned for the evolution of internal complexity, their internal histories grow ever more complex. The Principle of the Accumulation of Design and the Replication Principle now work inside of universes. Thus physical evolution rises inside of universes to ever greater heights. Eventually, biological evolution inside universes like our own mirrors demiurgic evolution. This is reflexivity. It is an example of a system of demiurgic forms generating an image of itself inside of itself.

113 16. The Counterparts 1. The Great Chain of Being

any universes, according to Plato, do not exist. On the contrary, he said there was only one universe (Timaeus, 31a-b, 55c-e). But other ancient thinkers argued for multiple universes. Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher who lived just after Plato. He argued for an infinity of universes (1901: 440). And Plotinus briefly considers other universes (E 4.5.3). Philosophical pagans affirm a plurality of universes. According to the incantation for universes, the later and higher universes in the world tree are better than the earlier and lower universes in that tree. But what is the value of a universe? A utilitarian might say that a better universe contains more happiness and less suffering. But philosophical pagans are not utilitarians. For our theories of value, we are inspired by the ancient pagans. We can start with the Stoic concept of degrees of perfection (Cicero, ONG 2.33-47; Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos, 88-91). Things have varying degrees of perfection. Hence things are ordered by their degrees of perfection: some things are less perfect than others; some things are equally perfect as others; and some are more perfect than others. Things are sorted by their perfections into ranks things on higher ranks are more perfect. The series of ranks is the great chain of being (Lovejoy, 1936). The Stoics posited six ranks of perfection. These ranks are rocks; plants; non-human animals; humans; the Olympian deities; the universe itself (which is a cosmic deity). The Stoics ranking is based on functionality. Rocks have the functional property of existing. They persist. Plants add the functions of life. Thus plants are existing living things. Non-human animals add the functions of motion, perception, and evaluation (the ability to sense what is good for them and bad for them). These animals are existing, living, animate things. Humans add the power of reason. Humans are existing, living, animate, rational things. The Olympian deities add the divine powers like immortality, unerring wisdom, and unerring moral judgment. Deities are existing, living, animate, rational, divine things. The universe itself (the cosmic mind) adds the perfection of completeness. It is existing, living, animate, rational, divine, and complete. Over time, the great chain became distorted in various ways. Medieval and early modern versions of the chain were racist and sexist. Philosophical pagans reject racism and sexism. We can avoid these distortions by focusing on the functional aspects of the great chain. The Stoic great chain defines perfection in terms of functionality: if this later thing is more perfect than that earlier thing, then this later thing includes all the functions of that earlier thing but adds new functions of its own. Hence the later thing can do every action that the earlier thing could do; but because of its new functions, it can do new actions that the earlier thing could not do. The later thing has greater functional power than the earlier thing. More generally, the later thing has greater functional complexity than the earlier thing. Thus perfection is functional complexity. Philosophical pagans accept the

114 Stoic idea that perfection is functional complexity. Of course, philosophical pagans can use modern scientific theories of complexity to refine this Stoic concept. Perfection is a value. So the perfection of any thing is the value of that thing. Since the functionality of any thing is a property of that thing, the value of any thing is a property of that thing. The value of each thing is its intrinsic value, its inherent value, the value that it has in itself. A thing does not depend on any other things for its intrinsic value. Intrinsic value is not assigned to things by humans or deities. Even if there were no humans or other evaluators, animals would still be existing living animate things. Intrinsic values are mind-independent and objective. The ranking of things by degrees of functional complexity is an objective ranking. Hence natural things have objective values, values that belong to them because of their natures. These are natural values. On this view, our universe is saturated with natural values. Natural value is positive: it is natural goodness. There are no negative or zero natural values; hence all that exists has some positive degree of goodness. Being is goodness. Now the concept of natural value enables us to classify changes as naturally good or naturally evil. A change is naturally good insofar as it increases natural value; a change is naturally evil insofar as it decreases natural value. Evil changes destroy natural goodness.

2. An Ancient Lineage of Universes

Since universes are existing things, universes also have intrinsic values. We can use the Stoic great chain to rank universes according to their intrinsic values. While there are many ways to do this, the simplest way states that the intrinsic value of any universe is the value of its most valuable things. But the values of things are their positions on the great chain. So the value of any universe is the rank on the great chain of its highest ranked thing. A universe with no internal structure has value 0. Since rocks are on the first level of the Great Chain, a universe that just has rocks has value 1. Since plants are more valuable than rocks, a universe that evolves to plants has value 2. A universe in which evolution rises to the level of non-human animals has value 3. A universe in which evolution produces rational moral agents like humans has value 4. But evolution can rise beyond humans to produce superhuman animals. A universe with Olympian animals has value 5. A universe that in which evolution rises to a cosmic mind has value 6. Table 16.1 shows these six ranks of universes from R0 to R6. Figure 16.1 illustrates the progression of universes from simpler to more complex.

R0. Alpha. This rank contains just the initial demiurge-universe Alpha. It is entirely simple and contains no internal parts.

R1. Geological Universes. This rank contains the children of Alpha. These universes contain internal things. Their greatest things rise to the first rank on the Stoic great chain. Their greatest things are just dead rocks.

R2. Botanical Universes. This rank contains the grandchildren of Alpha. Their greatest things rise to the second rank on the Stoic great chain. So they contain rocks and plants.

115 R3. Animate Universes. This rank contains the great-grandchildren of Alpha. Their greatest things rise to the third rank on the Stoic great chain. So they contain rocks, and plants, and animals.

R4. Human Universes. This rank contains the great-great-grandchildren of Alpha. Their greatest things rise to the fourth rank on the Stoic great chain. So they contain rocks, plants, animals, and humans.

R5. Olympian Universes. These are the children of universes in the previous rank. Their greatest things rise to the fifth rank on the Stoic great chain. So they contain rocks, plants, animals, humans, and Olympian deities. These Olympian deities are natural gods and natural goddesses.

R6. Omega Universes. This rank contains the final descendents of Alpha. Their greatest things rise to the sixth rank on the Stoic great chain. So they contain rocks, plants, animals, humans, Olympian deities, and the cosmic deity. The cosmic deity is a natural cosmic mind.

Table 16.1 Some universes on the Stoic great chain.

Figure 16.1 A series of universes starting from the Alpha.

3. A Modernized Lineage of Universes

The old Stoic great chain can be modernized. A more modern approach to cosmic value uses something like the Kardashev scale. Kardashev (1964) ranks possible civilizations on the basis of their energy consumption. He outlines three ranks. Type I includes planetary civilizations that consume almost all the energy provided by their planetary resources (about 1019 ergs/sec). Our present civilization is in Type I. Type II includes civilizations that consume almost all of the energy of their central star (about 1033 ergs/sec.). Such civilizations may build megastructures – like Niven Rings or Dyson

116 Spheres. Type III includes civilizations able to harness almost all the energy of an entire galaxy (about 1044 erg/sec.). Barrow (1999: 133) expands on Kardashev in two ways. The first way continues to rank civilizations by their abilities to manipulate larger and larger parts of our local cosmic bubble. Thus Barrow defines a Type IV civilization that can manipulate galactic clusters. Ultimately, a Type Ω civilization can manipulate our entire universe. Table 4 shows the evolution of a few generations of universes. The ranks indicate very large steps. So they are probably divided into millions of subranks. But that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that complexity slowly increases as universes beget slightly more complex universes. Table 16.2 uses the extended Kardashev scale to rank the intrinsic values of universes from R0 to RΩ.

R0. Alpha. The initial demiurge-universe. It has no internal structure. It begets offspring which are slightly more complex.

R1. Particulate Universes. The children of the initial universe. These first rank offspring contain some simple particles. Each first rank universe begets some slightly more complex second-generation offspring.

R2. Atomic Universes. This rank contains the children of first-rank universes; so these are the grandchildren of the initial universe. These universes contain some atoms. They form stars. Stars fuse simpler atoms into more complex atoms. These universes give birth to more complex offspring.

R3. Molecular Universes. These are the great-grandchildren of the first universe. They contain solar systems composed of stars and planets. The planets are composed of molecules. Molecular evolution runs on these planets. Each of these third-rank universes bears some more complex offspring.

R4. Biological Universes. These universes contain solar systems which support tomic and molecular evolution. These biological universes contain the first living things – the simplest self-replicating cells. They beget slightly more complex universes on the next higher rank.

R5. Animal Universes. The subranks of these universes run through all the levels of biological complexity up to complex non-human animals. They beget more complex universes in the next generation.

R6. Human Universes. These universes contain humanoid animals. They may be humans or human-like aliens. These animals are rational social agents. They build civilizations at the planetary (Kardeshev Type I) scale. Our universe is at least in R6. These R6 universes give birth to more complex universes in which evolution runs beyond humanity.

R7. Transhuman Universes. These contain transhuman animals. These animals can build civilizations at the solar system (Type II) scale. Iamblichus

117 described three ranks of transhuman agents: the pure souls; the heroes; and the daimones. We naturalize his ranks by defining them to be superhuman machines. Transhuman universes rise through all these ranks.

R8. Olympian Universes. The evolutionary processes in these universes climax with animals with powers like the Olympian deities. These are godlike superhumans. But they are entirely natural animals, produced through biological and technological evolution. They are living machines. They build civilizations at the galactic (Type III) scale. These universes bear young which evolve internally to even higher levels.

R9. Celestial Universes. Evolution produces living machines whose powers resemble the celestial deities described by Iamblichus. They are computers as great as planets or stars. They build civilizations spanning galactic clusters (Type IV). Their universes beget universe so finely tuned for evolution of complexity that even these deities are surpassed.

Rn. Finitary Universes. Universes endlessly beget slightly more complex universes, so the tree of universes rises through all finite ranks.

RΩ. Omega Universes. Universes at this rank have evolutionary processes which run to cosmic civilizations. A Type Ω civilization can manipulate its entire universe. It can transform the universe into a Kurzweilian Omega Point, a cosmic computer. The universe wakes up.

Table 16.2 The evolution of some universes.

4. Plotinus: The Lower and Higher Universes

The incantation for universes defines a series of ranks of universes. Some universes are higher than others in the world tree. Plotinus often talks about two universes, the Lower Universe and the Higher Universe. Our universe is the Lower Universe. Since Plotinus thought of our universe as a sphere with our earth in the center, he will also refer to it as the Lower Sphere (E 5.8.9). But the Lower Universe is an image of a Higher Universe. Moreover, it is a weaker and less intense image. So the Higher Universe is more valuable than the Lower Universe. It has been traditional to think of the two universes in terms of mind-body dualism. According to this dualism, Lower Universe is a material universe filled with physical things while the Higher Universe is an immaterial world filled with ghosts. But mind-body dualism is not defensible. There are at least three reasons to reject the dualistic reading of Plotinus. The first and most important is that Plotinus was a monist – all things come from the One. A Platonist cannot posit two kinds of being (such as unextended mental things and extended material things). The second reason is that matter in Plotinus is not some physical stuff. Matter is impairment. Matter is the privation of form, but form is functional power. The third reason is that matter exists even in the Higher Universe. It is filled with intelligible matter (E 2.4). Only the stars (as unsurpassables) lack matter.

118 Plotinus himself did not think of the distinction in terms of mind-body dualism. He thought of our universe as a weaker copy of the Higher Universe. Hence the Higher Universe contains more intense versions of the things in our universe. Things in our universe have more intense counterparts in the Higher Universe.17 The sun in our Lower Universe has a more intense counterpart in the Higher Universe. Thus Plotinus says “And for a sun figuring in the [Higher Universe], if it is to be more splendid than the sun visible to us, what a sun it must be” (E 2.9.4). And he writes that:

our universe stands to the Higher Universe as copy to original, . . . everything [Here] must exist There. The sky There must be living and therefore not bare of stars . . Earth too will be There, and not void but even more intensely living and containing all that lives and moves upon our earth, and the plants obviously rooted in life; sea will be There and all waters with the movement of their unending life and all the living things of the water; air too must be There, along with the living things of air as Here. The content of that Higher Universe must surely be alive – as in this Lower Universe – and all that lives must of necessity be in There. . . . In that Higher Universe there can be no indigence or impotence, but all must be teeming, seething, with life. (E 6.7.12)

For Plotinus, you too have a more intense counterpart in the Higher Universe. It is your higher self. Since it is more intense (more valuable), your higher self is aspirational: Plotinus thinks you should work to become your higher self. Thus your higher self is a target self, and the Higher Universe is your target universe. Plotinus says you transform your current self into your target self by ascetic and contemplative exercises. But other Platonists, like Iamblichus, will advocate practical rituals like theurgy. There are two problems with this Plotinian theory of the pair of universes. The first problem concerns the relation between the Higher and Lower universes. For Plotinus, the Higher stands to the Lower as original to copy. However, if the One is at the bottom of the great chain of being, then this relation needs to be inverted: the Lower is the original and the Higher is derived from it. The Lower Universe produces the Higher Universe. The Lower Universe is closer to the One; it is therefore simpler; its parts have less functionality. It is like an early version of a program, which cannot perform many functions, or which performs its functions in primitive ways. The Lower Universe has less complexity than the Higher Universe. Since intrinsic value is complexity, it has less intrinsic value. But the logic of cosmic reproduction entails that simpler universes beget more complex offspring. The simpler Lower Universe begets a more complex Higher Universe. It produces a more intrinsically valuable universe. Here there is a parallel with biological evolution: just as simpler organisms evolve into more complex organisms, so simpler universes evolve into more complex universes. Figure 16.2 shows the Lower Universe begetting the Higher Universe. It shows the counterpart relations from the Lower Earth to the Higher Earth and from the Lower to Higher Sun. The second problem with the Plotinian theory concerns the restriction of the imitation relation to a single pair. The imitation relation iterates: from an original, there can be a copy, a copy of the copy, a copy of the copy of the copy, and so on. Likewise from an original organism, there can be an offspring, and offspring of the offspring, and so on. On his own conception of imitation, Plotinus should allow this iteration. So our universe

119 is derived from some Even Lower Universe. And the Higher Universe generates some Even Higher Universe. Every lower universe gives birth to at least one superior higher universe. For completeness, Plotinus needs to affirm the world tree.

Figure 16.2 The Lower Universe begets the Higher Universe.

Counterpart relations link the lower sun S1 to the higher sun S2 and the lower earth E1 to the higher earth E2. These counterpart relations are like bridges: the form of each lower thing travels across its counterpart relation to the higher version of that thing. The form of the lower earth E1 travels across its counterpart relation into the form of the higher earth. As it travels across the counterpart bridge, it is transformed: it is made more complex and more intrinsically valuable. Figure 16.3 shows the counterpart relations as bridges running from the lower to higher universes. Since the lower evolves into the higher, the higher earth is a future counterpart of the lower earth. There is also a reverse counterpart relation: the lower earth is the past counterpart of the higher earth. And since the universes are not in any larger space, there does not exist any space which separates them. They are separated by difference, which is negativity: the lower is not the higher; the higher is not the lower. So this notness is non-being. It is shown in Figure 16.3 by the wavy lines, which symbolize the element of water.

Figure 16.3 Counterpart relations bridge universes.

120 5. Better Parts Make Better Wholes

The One entails that the world tree is complete with respect to value. Completeness holds from parts to wholes. This mereological completeness means that there are no value gaps in the part-whole relation. A gap appears in that relation if there is some way to improve some part of some whole but that way is not part of any way to improve the whole. Suppose the whole is W and the part is P. The improvements of P are P1 and P2 and P3. The improvements of W are W1 and W2. P1 is a part of W1 and P2 is a part of W2. But P3 is not a part of any improvement of W. So when the successor law transforms W into W1 and W2, it is complete at the level of the whole. But it is not complete at the level of the parts of that whole. Since the improvement P3 is not in any successor whole, there is a gap. To avoid this gap, the better part P3 must be included in some better whole W3. To avoid part-whole gaps, the One entails that every way to improve any part of some whole is a part of some way to improve the whole. It entails that, for every whole, for every part of that whole, for every way to improve that part, there is some way to improve the whole that contains that improvement of that part. Gaps occur in the part-whole relation if improvements in parts are incompatible with the remainder of the whole. These are mereological incompatibilities. Since completeness holds from parts to wholes, there are no mereological incompatibilities. As an illustration of the logic of part-whole improvement, consider an animal with two organs, namely, its head H and tail T. The ways to improve the head are H1 and H2 while the ways to improve the tail are T1 and T2. Hence the ways to improve the animal are {H, T1}, {H, T2}, {H1, T}, {H1, T1}, {H1, T2}, {H2, T}, {H2, T1}, {H2, T2}. Since there are no mereological incompatibilities, every improvement of the head occurs in at least one improvement of the animal, and every improvement of the tail occurs in at least one improvement of the animal. Of course, the animal is a part of an ecosystem; the ecosystem is a part of a planet; the planet is a part of a solar system; the solar system inhabits a galaxy which inhabits a universe. The largest physical wholes are universes. So, by recursion on the part-whole relation, every successor of every thing in any universe is a thing in at least one successor of that universe. An improvement of any whole avoids every loss of value and ensures some gain in value. This means that improvements are Pareto optimal. To avoid the loss of old value and the gain of some new value, any improvement of some old whole into some new whole satisfies four constraints. The first constraint is that every part in the old whole must have at least one new version of itself in the new whole. The new version of the old part is a counterpart of the old part. This constraint prevents old value from being lost by the absence of some old part. Note that a part can have multiple counterparts in the new whole. The second constraint says that distinct parts in the old whole must have distinct counterparts in the new whole. This prevents value from being lost through the fusion of distinct old parts. Old parts can be fused into some new part so long as they also have distinct counterparts. The third constraint says that no old part can have a worse counterpart in the new whole. This prevents value from being lost by making parts worse. Value cannot be lost by distortion or perversion. The fourth constraint says that at least one old part must have a better

121 counterpart in the new whole. This ensures that some value is gained in the change from the old whole to the new whole. As an illustration of these constraints, consider an old universe which contains three things A, B, and C. The richness of possibility ensures that each thing in this old universe can be improved in at least one way. The improvements of A are A1, A2, and A3; the improvements of B are B1, B2, and B3; those of C are C1, C2, and C3. Now suppose that only those improvements with the same number are mutually compatible. Hence there are three ways to combine the improvements of the three things to make a new universe. These are {A1, B1, C1}, {A2, B2, C2}, and {A3, B3, C3}. It is easy to see that each of these new universes satisfies the four constraints. Hence each of these new universes is an improvement of the old universe. It is also easy to see that every improvement of every part of the old universe is a part of some improvement of that old universe. And since the old universe is improved in every way, it follows that every part (of every part . . . ) of that universe is improved in every way. These principles allow old wholes to be improved into new wholes in three ways. (1) Some thing in the old whole has many counterparts in the new whole. (2) Some things in the old whole are fused without loss of value into some single counterpart in the new whole. (3) The new whole gains value by gaining an improved version of some part or parts of the old whole. (4) The new whole gains some new simple thing. They allow the improvements of particles, atoms, molecules, cells, organisms, ecosystems, and so on. Through these four ways, value increases along any progression of universes. The limit law for universes entails that every progression of universes is surpassed by at least one limit universe. Just as mereological completeness holds from things to successors, so also it holds from progressions to their limits. This means that every progression of universes in the world tree is surpassed by its minimally more complex limit universes. More formally, it means that the improvement relation is not transitive at limits.18 Therefore, it is not transitive at all. Just as mereological completeness holds from things to successors, so it holds at from progressions to limits. Progressions of wholes contain progressions of parts. Every limit of every progression of parts is a part of some limit of the progression of the whole. Finally, the four Pareto constraints hold from progressions to limits. This means an improvement of any progression of wholes avoids every loss of value and ensures some gain in value.

122 17. Climbing this Tree 1. Little Trees of Things

niverses are cosmic wholes, and every thing in any universe is a part of that cosmic whole. The incantation for universes entails that every universe is surpassed in every way. Every universe is surpassed by its cosmic offspring; these are improved successor universes. But the logic of parts and wholes entails that, if any whole is surpassed in every way, then every part of that whole is also surpassed in every way. Thus every thing in every universe is surpassed by its offspring; these are improved successor things in improved successor universes. If any thing exists in some parent universe, then it has at least one counterpart in every offspring of that universe. Just as universes are improved in to successor universes, so things are improved into successor things. And the successors of any thing include all the ways to improve that thing. Of course, a thing can also have successors which are equal in intrinsic value. Figure 17.1 shows a series of improved universes, along with their counterpart relations. The series uses the old Stoic great chain of being. Universe-0 is Alpha. Alpha is the simple initial demiurge; but every demiurge has some universe; so the initial universe is just identical with its demiurge. The logic of wholes and parts allows a new universe to gain new simple things. Since Alpha is empty, this is all that can happen from Alpha to Universe-1. Thus Universe-1 contains a simple thing. Since we’re using the old Stoic great chain, this simple thing is a rock. This rock is surpassed by three counterparts in Universe-2. Its successors include two rocks and a plant. So Universe-2 is gaining internal complexity. One of the plants in Universe-2 is surpassed by a non-human animal in Universe-3. And that animal is surpassed by a human in Universe-4. Of course, this illustration is far too simple. It might take trillions upon trillions of iterations to arrive at universe with humans. Moreover, the world tree contains many branching sequences of universes. One universe begets many offspring. So Figure 17.1 is just part of an infinitely ramified cosmic tree. But notice that every thing in Figure 17.1 is the root of its own tree of things. According to the Demiurgic Regressions, Alpha moves itself. Its self-motion creates the next demiurge. Thus Alpha transmits its motion to the next demiurge. Since the next demiurge is in motion, it transmits its motion to its universe. It creates its universe and sets the things in its universe into motion. So the rock in Universe-1 is in motion. Since this rock is a simple thing, it is a simple self-mover. It ultimately inherits its motion from the simple initial self-mover Alpha. Motion gets logically transmitted along chains of offspring demiurges. It gets transmitted into their universes: if the ground is shaking, then the things sitting on that ground shake too. And motion gets logically transmitted from earlier things to their later counterparts. So the rock in Universe-1 logically transmits its motion to the plant in Universe-2. From this logical transmission, the laws

123 of motion within any universe emerge. Thus the laws of motion in Universe-4 emerge from the logical transmission of motion from Alpha.

Figure 17.1 A series of universes starting from Alpha.

2. The Incantation for Things

The initial, successor, and limit laws apply to universes. But the logic of parts and wholes entails that they also apply to physical parts of universes. Universes are cosmic wholes and every thing in any universe is a part of that cosmic whole. The laws apply to all things in all universes. Consequently, just as the initial universe Alpha is the root of the world tree, so every thing in every universe is the root of its own tree. The world tree is the tree of universes. As the largest tree, it is the ontological tree. But each thing is the root of its own ontic tree. Every ontic tree has the same structure as the world tree. The term isomorphic means has the same (iso) structure (morphe); hence every ontic tree is isomorphic to the ontological tree. The tree pattern is a universal form. Since every ontic tree is defined by three laws, it will be helpful to state them in their purely universal form. These three universal laws make the incantation for things. The Initial Law for Things. This law states that every thing x is an initial thing. The thing x exists in its own home universe. Things are improved into successors. If some thing is improved into some successor, then that successor is more valuable than that thing. The Successor Law for Things. This law has two parts. Its first part states that every thing can be improved in at least one way. The gynomic power (the closing power) drives every thing to generate these ways. Hence that power animates the first part of the successor law. Its second part states that, for every thing, for every way to improve it, there exists some successor thing which is improved in that way. The andromic power (the opening power) drives these ways to gain their things. Hence that power animates the second part. The iteration of the successor law produces infinite progressions of things. As they branch, they fill out the finite levels of each ontic tree.

124 The Limit Law for Things. Each ontic tree moves into the transfinite via the limit law for things. The limit law acts on infinite progressions of things. Progressions of things are improved into limit things. If some progression is improved into some limit, then that limit is more valuable than every thing in the progression. Now the limit law for things has two parts. Its first part states that every progression of things can be improved in at least one way. The gynomic power animates this first part. Its second part states that, for every progression of things, for every way to improve that progression, there exists at least one limit thing which is improved in that way. The andromic power animates this second part. The Final Law for Things. The application of the successor and limit laws yields progressions of things which pass through all the degrees of infinity. The final law for things says these progressions exist. These progressions are absolutely infinitely long. Although each thing in such a progression is surpassed by superior successors and limits, the progression itself is unsurpassable. Each absolutely infinitely long progression is an unsurpassable series of surpassable things. Every thing in the progression is surpassed by the progression itself. Hence the progression represents the absolute unsurpassability of each thing it contains. An unsurpassable progression of surpassable things is an ideal. So an unsurpassable progression of universes is an ideal universe; an unsurpassable progression of persons is an ideal person. Here the term ideal stands in tension with the type of things in its progression. An ideal universe is not a universe. An ideal universe transcends universeness. It is a way that being a universe goes beyond being a universe. Likewise an ideal person is not a person. An ideal person transcends personhood. It is a way that being a person goes beyond being a person. All these ideals are like stars in the sky. They exist at the level of the sun. But the sun will turn out to coincide with the Good. So each ideal universe is a Good of universes; each ideal person is a Good of persons. But perfection is always multiple, and there are many Goods of universes, many Goods of persons, many Goods of all things. All these Goods are stars. The world tree (which is the tree of universes) rises from the One to the sun. It is rooted in being-itself, which manifests itself in the purest way in the simple original universe. It flowers in all the cosmic goods, which together enter into the Good. The fire of concreteness flows through every vein in the world tree. It is animated by spirit. But these points apply equally to every ontic tree. Every ontic tree is rooted in being-itself. Its initial thing is a way that being-itself manifests itself. So the One makes itself present in every initial thing in every ontic tree. These Ones are all counterparts. Each ontic tree flowers in its unsurpassable Goods – its flowers are all stars. Its unsurpassable Goods all belong to the Good. Spiritual fire flows through its veins.

3. Overcoming Noisy Materiality

Every universe is surpassed by its successors. And every progression of universes is surpassed by its limits. Thus every universe has some surpassability. If it has some surpassability, then it has some opportunities for improvement. It has some potential for improvement. Since the every universe will be surpassed by its better versions, this

125 potential will be actualized. Hence every universe can be hopeful and optimistic. This is the bright side of surpassability: surpassability entails surpassivity. But surpassability also has a dark side. The dark side of surpassability is impairment. If any universe can be surpassed by better versions of itself, then it is a worse version of those universes. Every universe is impaired with respect to its successors and limits. As any universe relates only to itself, its self-relation contains this impairment. If a universe were a thinking thing, then it would experience itself as impaired. The impairment of any universe is its materiality. This is materiality in the Plotinian or Platonic sense. It is not materiality in the modern sense of physical substance or physical stuff. Materiality is impairment. And since impairment is just surpassability, materiality is surpassability. Since every universe is surpassable, every universe has some materiality. A universe has its materiality because it is related to some other things, namely, to its better versions. Thus materiality is an extrinsic quality. It is analogous to parenthood. A person has the quality of being a parent because they have some offspring. Likewise a universe has the quality of being material because it has some better versions. If some universe has the quality of being material, then it has that quality as a logical part of its nature. Hence the universe contains some matter. Once again, matter is not physical stuff; the matter in any universe is the impairment of its nature; it is the surpassability of its essence or the surpassability of its form. The Platonists often talk about things as having varying degrees of materiality. Things that are higher on the great chain of being are less material. But philosophical pagans replace the old great chain with a modernized hierarchy of universes. Universes have varying degrees of materiality. Every universe has some rank in the hierarchy of universes. If the form of some universe inhabits the n-th floor of the Optimal Library, then the rank of the universe is n. Universes with higher rank are less material than universes with lower rank. Conversely, universes with lower rank are more material than universes with higher rank. But all universes are material. Ancient thinkers stratified matter into different grades from crude to subtle. To say that a universe is less material means that its matter is cruder. Its cruder matter is less pure, less clear, less transparent to the light of goodness. To say that a universe is more material means that its matter is more subtle. Its more subtle matter is purer, clearer, more transparent. Although every universe contains matter, it also contains spirit. Spirit is the power of self-surpassing; it is surpassivity. Spirit drives every universe to surpass itself. Spirit converts surpassability into surpassing. Spirit therefore drives every universe to overcome its impairments. It drives it to overcome its materiality by producing less material versions of itself. To say that something purifies its matter or clarifies its matter means that it transforms its less valuable form into some more valuable form. It means that it transforms its lower ranking form into some higher ranking form. It means that it revises itself into its successors and eventually into its limits. Spirit therefore drives every universe to overcome its impairments. It drives it to overcome its materiality. Spirit drives every universe to become less material. It drives it to clarify its matter or to purify its matter. Spirit converts crude matter into subtle matter. It must be stressed again and again that this conception of matter and spirit does not correspond to anything like mind-body dualism. Spirit is not mental and matter is not corporeal. Matter is not physical stuff and spirit is not some mysterious anti-physical force.

126 The materiality of any thing is its surpassability; hence the materiality of any thing includes all the ways in which it can be surpassed. The ways in which any thing can be surpassed are determined by its history. The history of any thing defines the structure of that thing and therefore defines the ways its structure can be improved. Thus every thing inherits its materiality from its ancestors. It accumulates its materiality. Its matter is its accumulated contingency. These accumulated contingencies provide the universe with its opportunities for improvement. They are its impairments.

4. Cooperation and Competition

As universes and their parts become more complex, those parts begin to interact in many different ways. And, as they interact, sometimes their strivings cooperate. As strivings cooperate, they create wholes with greater internal organization. Populations of lifeless molecules self-organize to become living organisms. Populations of cells self- organize to become complex organisms. Animated by spirit, every system of interacting cells strives to maximize its internal harmony; it strives to maximize the aesthetic value of its flows of energy; it strives for biological beauty; it strives for vital musicality. Consequently, it strives to be healthy. It strives to maximize its dynamic functionality. Populations of animals self-organize to become societies. As they self-organize, they develop strategies for interaction. Strategies like tit-for-tat outcompete less cooperative strategies. Hence the selfish desires of individuals lead to the emergence of altruism. As spirit works in these societies, it drives them to become more harmonious. It drives the emergence of fairness and justice. It drives them to produce ever more valuable political structures. Spirit drives every society towards utopia, towards paradise. However, as the strivings of things become more diverse, they also become more competitive. As they compete, their opposed strivings create conflicts. These strivings emerge in the cells of organisms. All cells strive for self-reproduction; but cooperation constrains that striving; hence cells strive to break free from it. And, when cells break their constraints, they become cancerous. Hence cancer is drive by a force which aims at biological goodness. Because spirit drives life towards the Good, it produces cancer. But this cancer entails a conflict in the organism. It kills the organism. The same holds among different species of cells. Bacteria strive for their own goods; their strivings conflict with the strivings of their hosts. More generally, parasites and hosts both strive for the Good; predator and prey both strive for the Good; but these strivings lead to deadly conflict. Of course, this conflict itself aims towards the Good. This conflict drives evolution by natural selection. The struggle for existences drives the survival of the fittest. And this violent struggle for survival drives life to become more valuable, more highly functional, more diverse, more beautiful. The struggle continues among social animals. Spirit works in both criminal and victim. Spirit drives societies to compete. It drives them to make war. The striving for economic value produces economic inequality, social inequality, political inequality. A plurality of diverse strivings for the creation of greater value can thus lead to the destruction of value. Conflict can destroy the complexities of parts. The death of an animal destroys its complex body, its complex cells, and its complex molecules. Death resolves these complex structures into their simpler parts. The destruction of complexity is the destruction of intrinsic value. But the destruction of intrinsic value is intrinsically

127 evil. Thus evil emerges from the destructive conflicts among competing goods. This is a Plotinian account of the emergence of evil. Plotinus says evil emerges from the conflicts among goods (E 4.4.32). And yet, since nature is animated by conflict, even this conflict is good (E 2.3.16). For Plotinus, all evil is local. Evil is in the parts but the whole of reality is good (E 3.2.3, 3.2.11, 3.2.17, 4.4.32). Philosophical pagans agree on these points. Self-surpassing is pure benevolence; but the many self-surpassings of different things come into conflict. These conflicts are evil. Some surpassings destroy others. Ultimately, these conflicts occur because there is too much goodness for any single universe (or planet) to hold. Hence philosophical pagans, who are optimists, will argue that this excessive goodness must spill over into later universes. Every thing in every universe strives to produce every possible improvement of itself. Unfortunately, within any universe, those strivings compete, and, in that competition, some fail and some succeed. So not every thing produces its successors within that same universe. On the contrary, within any universe, most strivings remain incompletely fulfilled (they either fail altogether or succeed only partly and approximately).

5. How Optimization Permits Conflicts

According to the concept of self-surpassing developed here, every thing surpasses itself through Pareto optimization. If some original thing surpasses itself into some better version of itself, then at least some part of the original thing must be made better, while not part of the original thing can be made worse. But if things are surpassed through Pareto optimization, how can conflicts ever emerge? If Pareto optimization never makes any part worse, then how do negativities and evils arise? Negativities emerge through imbalances in relations among the parts of some whole. Suppose some animal has just two organs. It has just a head and a tail. There are three ways to improve it: (1) improve the head but not the tail; (2) improve the tail but not the head; (3) improve both head and tail. On the first two ways, no part of the animal is made worse and one part is made better. So these are Pareto optimizations. But the improvements are not universal: some but not all parts are made better. Hence their relations may become unbalanced. Perhaps the tail is made better by making it stronger. But if the head is not improved, then it may not be able to properly control this tail. Hence the animal moves poorly; it is sometimes an easier victim for predators. Of course, there will be some benefit: the stronger tail helps it to swim faster, so sometimes it will be more difficult for predators to catch it. While this example is fanciful, the evolution of peacock tails illustrates this point. Similar remarks hold if the head is improved but the tail is not improved. When both organs are improved in mutually compatible ways, then the organism as a whole remains balanced. The human body provides many illustrations of ways that Pareto optimization allows imbalances to emerge. The human body evolved in imbalanced ways. Our brains rapidly increased in size and intelligence. So the human brain is running away from the rest of the body. As the human brain was surpassing itself in this excessive way, we evolved from walking on four limbs to walking upright on just two. It seems likely that bipedalism went hand in hand with greater intelligence. So both of these features of the human body were running away together. This has left other parts struggling to catch up. Consider our maxillary sinuses. When we walked on four limbs, they drained down; but

128 now that we walk on two limbs, our skulls have reshaped themselves so that these sinuses drain upwards. Hence they drain poorly. Likewise the change to bipedalism produces problems with our spines. Our larger heads make birth more difficult. And changes to the hips and spines in women are not balanced with respect to changes in our heads. Future iterations of the human body will correct these imbalances. Pareto optimization allows some parts to run away from others, so that a whole can become unbalanced. However, if that unbalance is universalized, then it becomes self- destructive. For example, if one organ is repeatedly amplified while all the others are left the same, then the animal will become less and less viable. Imbalances decrease fitness to the point of disease, disability, and death. Imbalance is reflexive impairment; the self- relation of the whole becomes distorted by the imbalances among its parts. But spirit drives all things to maximize their reflexivities. It drives them to maximize their self- harmonies. Thus as one part starts to pull away from the others too much, spirit starts to correct this imbalance by driving the others to catch up.

6. The Triumph of Goodness over Evil

Since every thing in every universe strives to produce every possible improvement of itself, every universe strives to produce its successors. Fortunately, since universes are maximal physical wholes, they do not interact; they do not interfere with each other, they do not compete with each other. At the level of universes, these strivings do not compete. Since they do not compete, they are universally successful. Every thing in every universe produces all of its successors, but many of those successors will exist in other universes. So, at this cosmic level, your striving to surpass yourself in every possible way is successful. Since the power of self-surpassing ensures that all superior versions of your life will exist (in future superior universes), that power ensures that you will be saved. It is a saving power, which justifies the hopes of all things. Philosophical pagans affirm that the strivings which fail in earlier universes will succeed in later universes. Hence later universes derive their contents from earlier universes, somewhat like offspring organisms derive their genes from their parents. We therefore affirm that every striving in every universe is always successful in some context, even if that context is some later universe. As they work together, the andromic and gynomic powers ensure that every thing in every universe inevitably surpasses itself in every possible way. They ensure that the strivings of spirit necessarily succeed. Any series of universes grows endlessly in value while each universe remains axiologically ambiguous (Crosby, 2008: ch. 2). It is a mixture of opposites like creation and destruction, order and disorder, beauty and ugliness, moral good and moral evil, and so on. The perfect universe does not exist (Crosby, 2008: 24-33). Every universe will be surpassed in many ways by universes with greater valuable complexity. As universes gain complexity, they gain evils. And as their parts become more complex, the evils among those parts become more complex. But evil is not final. All evil is overcome through the self-surpassing of things. This self-surpassing redeems the evils in every universe. Of course, it does not justify or excuse them. It would always be better if there were no evils at all. Unfortunately, the evolution of complexity entails that evils must exist. Granted this entailment, the best that can be done is to always and inevitably transform evils into goods. And the Good does the best.

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18. Spirit in Our Universe 1. Arguments for Spirit

igher and holier than all things, the sun is the best of all logically possible propositions. It is that proposition than which none better is logically possible. More precisely, the sun asserts that every thing surpasses itself in every way. By maximizing consistency, the One makes the sun true. Therefore, every thing surpasses itself in every way. For a thing to surpass itself is for it to produce superior versions of itself. Thus every thing produces every possible superior version of itself. These are its successors. Surpassivity also works in progressions of things: every progression of things surpasses itself in every possible way. Thus every progression produces every possible superior version of itself. Every progression surpasses itself into its limits. These considerations motivate the Argument for Spirit. It goes like this: (1) Every thing surpasses itself in every way. (2) If every thing surpasses itself in every way, then every thing contains the power of self-surpassing. (3) Therefore, the power of self- surpassing exists. This reasoning also applies to infinite progressions of things: since every progression surpasses itself in every way, every progression contains the power of self-surpassing. Each thing in any progression contributes some of its own power of self- surpassing to the surpassivity of the whole progression. Through this power of self- surpassing, things create their successors and progressions create their limits. The power of self-surpassing drives the evolution of all complexity. It is the Stoic or Platonic fire- energy that animates all self-moving things. In our universe, this is the pneuma, that is, it is spirit. More generally, spirit is the power of self-surpassing. Spirit is often contrasted with matter. For Plotinus, and for philosophical pagans, matter is not physical stuff. Matter is functional impairment. Self-surpassing overcomes impairment. Spirit is a power within matter: it is the power which matter has to surpass itself. This power of self-surpassing ultimately originates in the self-negation of non-being. Spirit appears first in the initial simple thing. It is the Alpha. Alpha is the simple initial demiurge; by default, it is also the simple initial universe. Alpha is the first concrete thing. It is the first concrete self-mover. Since concreteness emerges from deeper logical principles, the self-motion of Alpha emerges from deeper logical self- motion. The concrete self-motion of Alpha comes from the logical self-motion of being- itself. This is the self-affirmation of being-itself; it is the absolute positivity of the One. But the self-motion of the One comes from the logical self-motion of the Zero. The One inherits its self-affirmation from the self-negation of the Zero. So the ultimate logical self-motion is the self-negation of non-being. The logical root of spirit lies in the self- negation of non-being. For Plotinus, non-being is matter; hence by its self-negation, matter generates within itself the power of self-surpassing. By its negative self-relation, its anti-reflexivity, matter causes a fire to burn within its darkness. At first this fire shines only logically; but with Alpha it burns concretely. Spirit emerges from Alpha like a fire

130 from our earth. This fire is kindled in Alpha by the One. The lava that rise from the volcanic earth flows into Alpha; this eruption ignites it into flame. The One works in Alpha. But the One always exceeds itself; it overflows from itself; it is that which is always greater than itself. Hence the being of Alpha, which is the presence of being-itself in Alpha, exceeds itself. It erupts from the logical core of Alpha; it bursts out of the ontological depth of Alpha. This eruption is the power of self- surpassing in Alpha. This self-surpassivity drives Alpha to exceed itself by producing those things which surpass it in value. Thus Alpha is animated by a driving force. To say it is a driving force means it is oriented towards some maximal finality. This force drives Alpha towards absolutely infinite value. This power of self-surpassing, the presence of the One in Alpha, is spirit. As the power of self-surpassing, spirit points Alpha towards the sun. It acts like an efficient cause that pushes the future of Alpha towards the sun. Of course, the sun is also the Good. As soon as any concrete thing (like Alpha) emerges from the earth, the Good pulls it upwards towards itself. The power of the One succeeds. So Alpha does surpass itself in every way. It creates its successor demiurges. These offspring inherit the power of self-surpassing from Alpha. But as they are more complex, and thus more intrinsically valuable, spirit acts more intensely in these offspring. Spirit flows from Alpha to its successors. So they create their successors. Spirit grows more powerful as it rises upwards away from the One towards the sun. All the fires grow hotter and brighter as they rise higher into the sky. The less powerful creates the more powerful; the less complex and valuable creates the more complex and valuable. The endless process of self-surpassing generates an infinitely ramified tree of demiurges. So spirit drives the growth of the tree of demiurges – it drives the growth of the great world tree. Spirit is like the sap flowing through the veins of the world tree. Since spirit is symbolized by fire, the veins of the world tree course with holy flame. Every demiurgic progression in this tree creates all its limits. Hence the process of self-surpassing continues to and through infinity. As demiurges come into existence, they generate their universes. Every demiurge is a cosmic computer. As any demiurgic computer runs its program (its seed), so also it generates its universe. Every universe is a software process generated by some demiurgic hardware. Hence the tree of universes, the cosmic tree, supervenes on the demiurgic tree. Demiurgic reproduction generates cosmic reproduction: as demiurges beget demiurges, so universes beget universes. Over long sequences of generations, the demiurges get better and better at making increasingly complex universes: they make gradual progress in the art of world-making (Hume, 1779: 77). So demiurgic evolution entails cosmic evolution. Simpler universes beget more complex offspring. Eventually, after some long period of cosmic evolution, our complex universe appears in the world tree. As universes gain complexity, they become wholes with many parts, and parts of parts, and so on. The spirit which animates the whole universe animates its parts. So every part of every universe strives to surpass itself in every way. This self-surpassing animates the things in our universe. The Stoics argued that the divine fire-energy drives stuff to self-organize. It drives simpler things to combine into more complex things or to evolve into more complex things. Iamblichus also argued that this divine fire-energy animates all things. So spirit drives the evolution of complexity in our universe. It drives simpler atoms to evolve into more complex atoms; it drives simpler molecules to evolve into more complex molecules; it drives simpler organisms to evolve into more complex

131 organisms; it drives simpler technologies to evolve into more complex technologies. For the Stoics, spirit is fire-energy. It is closely linked to thermodynamic concepts like heat, entropy, and order. So, if we want to understand the physics of spirit in our universe, we should turn to thermodynamics. If spirit expresses itself in some force that drives stuff to self-organize, then spirit is a thermodynamic force.

2. The Thermodynamics of Spirit

For philosophical pagans, all creativity springs from the One. The One maximizes self-consistency; its drive to maximize self-consistency enters into every universe in the world tree. It enters into our universe at its birth. Our universe was born in the big bang, an enormous explosion of energy. It generated a vast chaos of physical particles which spread out into ever expanding space and time. These became atoms swirling in the void. These atoms do not move randomly. On the contrary, their motions are statistically patterned by powerful forces. The primal chaos began to self-organize. The motions of the particles are shaped by the four fundamental exchange forces in our universe: gravity, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and electromagnetism. These four exchange forces are not the only fundamental forces; other fundamental forces exist which do not depend on exchanges. As gravity works on the initial hot gas, it gathers clouds of gas into stars. Stars fuse simpler atoms into more complex atoms. Gravity somehow drives the production of greater complexity. As stuff organizes itself under the influence of gravity, it forms solar systems in which planets orbit stars. The stars are enormous sources of energy. The surfaces of planets receive energy from their stars and radiate it back into empty space. On at least one planet, physical stuff has organized itself into intelligent life – humans evolved on earth. But in a few billion years our sun will consume our planet. The stars will eventually burn out. Gravity will pull all physical stuff into black holes. As far as we know, the energy that was concentrated in the big bang will become maximally dispersed. One of the most interesting properties of our universe is its entropy. Although entropy is often portrayed as disorder in popular texts, that portrait is wrong. Entropy is not disorder. Entropy measures energy dispersal. It measures the flatness of the potential energy landscape of the universe. At the time of the big bang, the entropy of our universe was extremely low (Greene, 2005: 173-4). The big bang extremely densely concentrated energy. Energy-concentration corresponds to temperature: the big bang was very hot. The second law of thermodynamics entails that entropy will increase until it reaches its maximum. As entropy increases, energy becomes more uniformly distributed, until the potential energy of the universe is exhausted. As entropy increases, and energy disperses, things get very cold. Black holes have extremely high entropies. And black holes are extremely cold. All the work of concentrating physical stuff into black holes is being done by gravity – gravity goes with increasing entropy. The One generates an arrow that points in the direction of maximal self-consistency. An image of this original arrow appears in every universe in the world tree. It appears in our universe as the arrow generated by the second law of thermodynamics, an arrow that points from the big bang to the finality of maximal entropy. Thus our entire universe has an intrinsic directionality. All natural processes in our universe have an intrinsic

132 directionality. Clausius portrayed the second law as generating a powerful force. He said “the entropy of the world strives to a maximum” (see Prigogine & Stengers, 1984: 119). This striving is physical rather than psychological. It is an entirely mindless orientation towards a maximal finality. The force that emerges from the second law drives our whole universe towards maximum entropy. Since this force emerges from the second law of thermodynamics, it is a thermodynamic force. This force may well be the most powerful force in our universe. Physicists have derived the laws of gravity from thermodynamics (Jacobson, 1995). Some physicists believe that gravity itself is a thermodynamic force (Verlinde, 2016). Whatever it is, gravity at least supervenes on the thermodynamic directionality of our universe. The universal attractive force of gravity at least runs in parallel with the universal thermodynamic force. The drive to maximize self-consistency appears in our universe as the drive to ever greater complexity. It is the power of self-organization. But how does this drive appear in our universe? It emerges from two other thermodynamic principles. Along with the second law, they are the expressions of the creativity of the One in our universe. The first additional principle is the maximum entropy production principle (MEPP). The MEPP states that physical systems maximize their entropy production rates (Martyushev & Seleznev, 2006; Lineweaver, 2006). Swenson puts it like this: “A system will select the path or assembly of paths out of available paths that minimizes the potential or maximizes the entropy at the fastest rate given the constraints” (2009: 334). This means that if a process can shift into a faster entropy production phase, then it almost certainly will. Hence processes tend to evolve in ways that increase their entropy production rates or efficiencies. However, saying that they tend is too passive; it is more accurate to say that they strive to produce entropy faster.19 Striving means that they are intrinsically driven towards their maximal finality. They actively move towards it. The second additional principle is the orderly flow principle. Any process is a more or less orderly flow of stuff. According to Swenson, the second law of thermodynamics entails the orderly flow principle. The orderly flow principle states that “ordered flow produces entropy faster than disordered flow” (2006: 318). So consider the currents of air in the atmosphere of earth. They carry heat from the hot surface towards the cold emptiness of space. These can form three phases: flows poorly organized; flows somewhat organized into Benard convection cells; flows highly organized into cyclones. More highly organized flows minimize energy potentials more efficiently. They produce entropy more rapidly. The flows poorly organized have low entropy production rates; the Benard convection cells have intermediate entropy production rates; the cyclones have very high entropy production rates. As flows shift from low order phases to higher order phases, their entropy production rates increase. The MEPP entails that physical processes will shift from a slow entropy-production phases towards faster entropy-production phases. The orderly flow principle entails that as a process shifts from slow entropy-production phase to a fast entropy-production phase, it also shifts from a less organized phase to a more organized phase. A process that shifts from less organized to more organized is self-organizing. These two principles drive physical flows of energy to self-organize. If some process can self-organize, it probably will self-organize. For example, if some mass of disorganized air can self- organize into a Benard convection cell, it almost certainly will change into one; if the Benard convection cell can self-organize into a cyclone, it almost certainly will change

133 into one. Of course, these near-certainties are not necessities. Nevertheless, they are powerful enough to generate all the complexity in our entire universe. As the arrow generated by the second law passes through the MEPP and the orderly flow principle, it becomes a complexity-building power. Thermodynamic forces drive all the physical stuff in our universe to self-organize. They drive stars to fuse simpler elements into more complex elements. They drive the formation of black holes and galaxies. They drive the evolution of atomic, molecular, and biological complexity.

3. The Extropic Argument

Thus Swenson offers the following Extropic Argument: (1) Ordered flow produces entropy faster than disordered flow. (2) The MEPP asserts that physical systems tend or strive to maximize their entropy production rates. If they can produce entropy faster, they almost certainly will. (3) Therefore, physical systems tend or strive to increase their orderliness. If they can become more orderly, they almost certainly will. Swenson summarizes the argument like this: “the world can be expected to produce order whenever it gets the chance. . . . [The world] is in the order production business, because ordered flow produces entropy faster than disordered flow” (2006: 318). The MEPP is original and acts everywhere in the universe (Lineweaver, 2006). The MEPP drives systems to maximize their entropy production rates. The driving power of the MEPP is confirmed by many examples of self-organization.20 As this driving power passes through the orderly flow principle, it drives physical systems to self-organize (Dewar, 2006). Via experiments with self-organizing nanoscale structures, Belkin et al. provide “strong evidence that maximum entropy production principle plays an essential role in the evolution of self-organizing systems far from equilibrium” (2015: 1). The Extropic Argument shows that the MEPP and the orderly flow principle entail the extropic principle: if any system can self-organize further, then it almost certainly will self-organize further. Since processes evolve according to the extropic principle, they have a tendency to self-organize as far as they can. Physical stuff does not move randomly. It has a directionality which moves from simplicity to complexity. This directionality is active; since it is active, it expresses itself as a force.21 The science writer Kevin Kelly refers to this force as exotropy. He writes “Exotropy can be thought of as a force in its own right that flings forward an unbroken sequence of unlikely existences. Exotropy is neither wave nor particle, nor pure energy, nor supernatural miracle. It is an immaterial flow that is very much like information” (2010: 63). Here we say extropy rather than exotropy. The extropic principle generates an extropic force which drives physical processes to self-organize (Annila & Kuismanen, 2007). This extropic force is the appearance of spirit in our universe. It is the way spirit manifests itself through the physical laws which regulate all processes in our universe. Spirit appears in different forms in different universes. Here spirit manifests itself as extropic force. This conception of spirit is naturalistic. And since we focus on our universe, we will just use the term spirit to refer to the extropic force. These considerations motivate the Thermodynamic Argument for Spirit. It goes like this: (1) All physical processes far from equilibrium tend or strive to move from disorder to order. (2) This tendency or striving is the expression of an extropic force. (3) This force is spirit. Thus spirit drives all physical systems from lesser complexity to greater

134 complexity. Much as the Stoics argued, spirit drives stuff to organize itself; it is the power of self-organization. Spirit drives the evolution of dissipative structures, such as living organisms, to greater complexities. Spirit emerges right away; it is original and universal. It begins with the big bang; it acts on all processes in our universe. Spirit is a thermodynamic power in stuff. It animates and enchants all things. An excellent way to illustrate how spirit (extropic force) can increase order is the tornado in a bottle (Schneider & Kay, 1994). Start with two empty bottles, about four liters in size. Soda bottles do nicely. Fill one about halfway full with water. Now turn the empty one upside down, and join it to the other one. You join the bottles using a length of tubing about four centimeters long. You can easily find this tubing on the Internet. When thus joined, the empty bottle is on top. Flip the whole thing over, so that the bottle with water is on top. Since gravity pulls on the water in the top bottle, you’ve just concentrated some gravitational free energy. Since energy is highly concentrated right after you flip the bottles over, the whole system has low initial entropy. So you have created a low-entropy system. It resembles our universe at the big bang. The second law says that the entropy of this two-bottle system will increase to its maximum. As entropy increases, the energy concentrated in the top bottle disperses. It disperses by flowing into the bottom bottle. Thus dispersed, it can no longer do any work. At first, after you’ve flipped the bottles, the water will most likely drain out in a turbulent and disorderly way. It chaotically gurgles and glubs. But the MEPP entails that extropic forces are acting on this draining water. As they act on this draining water, its disorderly gurgling will very likely turn into an orderly vortex. Extropic forces drive the emergence of this orderly vortex. Why? Because this orderly vortex disperses the energy faster than the disorderly gurgling. The top bottle drains faster through the vortex than through the chaotic gurgling. The orderly vortex emerges because it is the fastest way to maximize the entropy – it maximizes the entropy production rate. And so extropic forces drive the flow to self-organize into a vortex. For philosophical pagans, the extropic force acting in this system is spirit. You can say that an individuated spirit acts in this relatively closed system. But spirit is an entirely natural power.

4. Spirit is Purely Physical Power

Science shows that everything is animated by an extropic force. This extropic force generates flows of stuff in which energy is ever more intensely concentrated. Since the extropic force is the manifestation of spirit in our universe, spirit concentrates energy into orderly flows. Spirit shapes physical stuff into increasingly complex structures; so more complex things contain more intense currents of energy. To say that something contains more intensely concentrated currents of energy means that it is more animated. The degree of animatedness of any thing is the concentration of its energy. But you can’t just identify the animation of some thing with the amount of energy that passes through it. If you do, that will just mean that heavier things are more animated. And so degrees of animation will just be weight. But that’s wrong. For instance, a star is much bigger and heavier than a human; but that doesn’t mean a star is more animated. To compare things of different weights, you need to define a common standard. To get this standard, just divide a thing by its mass. Every thing gets measured on the same yardstick of energy per unit of mass. You can fairly compare the energy flowing through

135 one gram of stuff of a star with the energy flowing through one gram of stuff of a human. Since you’re comparing one gram of humanity with one gram of starness, this doesn’t give the star an unfair advantage because of its bigger size and weight. This common standard, which is the amount of energy flowing through one gram of stuff, is energy density. But we want to know about animation, and animation implies motion. We want to know the rate or speed at which energy flows through some unit of mass of the thing. If energy flows through a thing faster, then that thing is more animated. So the way to measure the degree of animation of any thing is its energy-rate density.

The physicist Eric Chaisson (2001, 2006) uses the term ΦM to refer to the energy-rate density of any thing. Things with higher energy-rate density are more animated. For the ancient Platonists, things that are more intensely animated by the divine energy are more divine. This idea can be modernized using ΦM. Things with higher ΦM are more divine. They are more godlike. As it turns out, if things get sorted into ranks according to their energy-rate densities, that ranking reproduces the old great chain of being. Stars (including our sun) have very low energy-rate densities. Rocks orbiting stars have greater energy rate-densities. Energy-rate densities increase for plants, non-human animals, and humans. Although humans have a very high rank in this modern great chain, we are surpassed by things like super-computers, which have even higher energy- rate densities. Super-computers have much higher degrees of perfection. This is consistent with the idea that superintelligent AIs will be godlike machines. If we are surpassed by divine super-animals, they will also have greater energy-rate densities. The divinity of any deity is proportional to its energy-rate density. The energy-rate density of any thing is its animatedness. A thing with greater energy- rate density is more animated. The Stoics thought the energy passing through things was pneuma, which is a divine fire-energy. The English term for the Stoic pneuma is spirit. If pneuma is spirit, then the energy-rate density of a thing is its degree of spiritedness, its degree of spirituality. Hence the divinity and spirituality of a thing are similar: gods and goddesses have more spirit than all other things. According to Chaisson, energy-rate density is complexity. So if energy-rate density is spirituality, then spirituality is complexity. This idea is confirmed by Feibleman (1970). He confirms that the spirituality of any thing is just its complexity. Feibleman says “Thus a stone does not have as much spirit as a tree, a tree not as much as a dog, and a dog not nearly as much as a man” (1970: 11). The spirituality of any physical system is proportional to its energy- rate densely. But spirit is not physical energy. Spirit is an extropic force that drives physical stuff to self-organize. As it self-organizes, it grows more complex, and more intrinsically valuable. Its energy-rate density increases. Spirit drives energy to concentrate itself into more intense flows in more complex patterns. Spirit is a thermodynamic force that drives the self-organization of physical stuff. As spirit works in stuff, that stuff accumulates complexity. Spirit condenses into crystalline complexities. Since complexity is intrinsically valuable, spirit drives stuff to invest more value in itself. Since transcendence points from the One to the sun (that is, to the Good), spirit drives the self-transcendence of stuff. Since spirit drives things to accumulate value, spirit is a benevolent power in our universe. Spirit works providentially. Plotinus argued that providence works in our universe (E 3.2-3). He thought of providence as the effect of some guiding intelligence. Philosophical pagans deny the existence of any

136 guiding intelligence in the universe. Our universe is rationally organized and programmatically generated. But it is not intelligently designed. As a benevolent power, spirit drives all the stuff in our universe to gain value. Spirit drives particles to gather into stars. Spirit drives stars to fuse simpler atoms into more complex atoms. It drives the self-organization of stellar disks into planetary systems. It drives the planetary evolution of increasingly complex chemistry. And spirit is hard at work throughout out universe. Our universe contains at least two trillion galaxies. And galaxies contain hundreds of billions of stars. It is estimated that the number of planets in our Milky Way alone is at least one hundred billion. Some argue that almost every star has many planets. Spirit in our universe drives intrinsic value to concentrate itself to great heights. On at least one planet, our earth, spirit drove stuff to organize itself into self-replicating molecular structures. Spirit gave birth to life. Spirit drove earthly life to evolve into increasingly complex and intelligent species. It drove life to organize itself into human animals. But humans have no special place in our universe. Spirit animates the bacteria and viruses that kill people. It drives all other life on earth to evolve to destroy humanity. It neither loves nor hates us. And spirit is not utilitarian. It does not aim at happiness or flourishing. No argument from evil can be made against the benevolence of spirit. If spirit exists, then the only good that gets maximized is the goodness of complexity. And that goodness does get maximized. Spirit drives all goods to compete with each other. It drives all conflict. It drives the destructive collisions of goods with goods. The providential action of spirit generates all the suffering in our universe. From destruction, it creates. Spirit creates the strife-torn agon, the arena of universal combat and striving. In this agon, spirit generates bright arete, the excellence that shines out in competition. The sign of this excellence is not happiness; the sign of this excellence is beauty (E 1.6, 5.8).

5. Some Emergent Conflicts

Spirit drives every unified whole to surpass itself. It drives the self-surpassing of every particle, nucleus, atom, molecule, cell, organism, ecosystem, solar system, galaxy, and universe. If something is a whole composed of parts, it drives that whole to surpass itself in accordance with the four Pareto constraints. Those constraints permit complexity to increase in ways that permit the emergence of many different goods. If any whole is composed of many parts, then each part has its own goods. Each part strives for its own goods. If the parts are tightly bound into a whole, their strivings will be coordinated and cooperative. Their many strivings will be harmonized into one whole. As the part-whole structures of things become more deeply nested, those things gain more opportunities for self-conflict. Simple particles like quarks and electrons have no parts and therefore no self-conflict. Protons and neutrons consist of quarks very strongly bound together. They have very little self-conflict. Atomic nuclei consist of protons and neutrons joined with strong bonds. Yet they are weaker than the bonds among quarks. Electrons are bound less strongly to their nuclei. Molecules consist of atoms bound by covalent bonds. Since those bonds are weaker, it is easier for their parts to come into conflict. Cells are molecular complexes. The bonds among their molecules are even weaker. Hence the molecules in cells can come into conflict more easily.

137 Complex organisms contain many cells bound together. Every cell strives for its own goods; as long as these many cells are coherently or harmoniously bound into the unity of the organism, these strivings are cooperative. However, since the unities of the cells are prior to the unity of the organism, the unities of the cells are stronger; hence their strivings are stronger; hence their many strivings can diverge from their incorporations into the single striving of the unified organism. Each cell strives for its own good. As long as each cell coordinates itself with all the others, it constrains its striving relative to the strivings of those others. Through mutual constraint, all the cells strive together. But the strivings of cells can become uncoordinated. One cell can start to strive without respect for the strivings of the others. The strivings of cells can come into conflict. The goods of this cell can conflict with the goods of that cell. For example, a cell that strives for its own good independently of the good of the body strives to make its own body; it becomes cancerous. When the strivings of cells diverge, this is conflict in the whole. It is a conflict among the parts of the whole. It is a war of parts with parts. Many types of diversity are consistent with mutual striving. Nature strives to maximize reflexivity. Since the whole strives to maximize reflexivity, every part of the whole strives to maximize reflexivity. The maximization of reflexivity is consistent with the maximization of a diversity of perspectives. It is consistent with the maximization of more mirrors reflecting the whole from distinctive points of view. These mirrors do not conflict with each other. They do not compete with each other in destructive ways. They disagree but they do not destroy. Some types of diversity are not anti-reflections. They are not irreflexive. Symbiosis is diversity that is mutually cooperative and beneficial. Symbiosis is self-affirming through universalization. Ecosystems and economies necessarily involve conflict. But if they are clear, then they regulate that conflict so that it is consistent with their self-surpassing. Some types of conflict involve virtuous competition. They are not anti-reflections. Some types of ecological conflicts are not anti-reflections in the ecosystem. A predator-prey system need not be anti-reflective. If predator and prey are balanced so that the predator does ultimately aim to destroy the prey, then their conflict is not anti-reflective. Here the predator resembles a farmer or hunter who harvests rather than exterminates. The farmer or hunter seeks the perpetual preservation of its prey rather than its extinction. If the surpassivity of the hunter is clear, then that clear hunter seeks the preservation of its prey. The clear hunter is a conservationist and preservationist. The clear hunter is the best ecologist. She has an interest in the perpetuation of her prey. An evolutionary arms race is another example of competition that can be clear. A clear arms race drives both sides to greater heights of self-surpassing. It is an agon in which the virtue of arete is maximized. As long as it is balanced, it remains clear; both self-surpassings are harmonized so that they rise together. An economic system involves competition among individuals and among companies. Companies resemble super-organisms. They are born, they live, they compete and cooperate, and they die. As long as economic competition is well-regulated, it remains harmonious and healthy. It produces a great diversity of goods and services; it increases wealth. Any competitive system can become unbalanced. It can lose its harmony and therefore lose its health. The danger is that clarity can become unclear; hence ecosystems and economies can go bust. A predator-prey system can become unbalanced. If predation becomes unbalanced, then it can become ultimately suicidal. Unregulated

138 fishing drives fish populations to extinction and thereby destroys itself. After all the fish are eliminated, the fisherman is eliminated too. He puts himself out of a job. Thus fishing without regulation is suicidal. It is an anti-reflection. Of course, fishing need not be anti-reflective; it can be regulated and done in a harmonious way. An ecological arms race can become unbalanced; if it becomes unbalanced, it becomes one-sided. The one side becomes an anti-reflection in the ecology. The one species consumes all the others. It drives the other species to extinction; with that extinction, it goes extinct too. An economy can become unbalanced. If it does, it produces economic depressions; or it produces unregulated cycles of boom and bust. Or it produces tiny spires of enormous wealth over vast plains of poverty and economic misery. Societies and ecosystems contain many bodies bound very weakly together. These bonds are so weak that bodies tend to enter many types of conflict. As an illustration of social conflict, consider some state in civil war. A civil war involves two parties each of which aims to destroy the other. Since each is defined as the negation of the other, they must be universalized together. If they are universalized together, then each totally destroys the other; but then no part of the original whole remains. The whole is destroyed by its feuding or warring parts. Hence civil war is anti-reflective. If any whole contains destructive conflicts among its parts, then the strivings of its parts cannot be jointly maximized. They cannot be jointly universalized. As a sixth example, consider slavery. Slavery is self-refuting on universalization. Since every nation depends on the freedom of its citizens, slavery is an anti-reflection in any nation.

139 19. Entanglement 1. Plotinus: Entanglement

italism was common in ancient thought. Both the Stoics and Platonists thought of our universe as an organism. Its parts are all interconnected to make a single whole. Plotinus says distant parts are linked by sympathies and antipathies (Gurtler, 1984). Sympathies are positive entanglements or correlations between things, while antipathies are negative entanglements or correlations amont them. Sympathy may be a kind of similarity and antipathy a kind of dissimilarity (E 4.5.1.34-40). These relations are physically fundamental. They are more basic than spatio-temporal relations. The sympathetic and antipathetic relations are not spatial. Distant things are near by sympathy (E 4.4.32.12-15). Plotinus affirms that changes to one thing can cause immediate changes in other things at great distances. He says that the best explanation for this spooky action at a distance is that the distant things are linked by some direct but non-spatial bonds (E 4.5.3.20-25). He writes “Where all is a living thing summing to a unity there is nothing so remote in point of place as not to be near by virtue of a nature which makes of the one living being a sympathetic organism” (E 4.4.32.20-25). He illustrates this entanglement using lyres: when a string is plucked one lyre, other strings on that same lyre, or on nearby lyres, also begin to vibrate (E 4.4.40.1-12). He also illustrates it using electrical shocks – they seem to propagate instantly (E 4.5.1.30-35). Sympathetic (or antipathetic) relations enable distant objects to be entangled with each other so that changing one instantly changes the other. This entanglement supports visual perception (E 4.5.2.15-28, 4.5.3). Eyes can only see things with which they are entangled. If there were another universe with which ours is not entangled, it would be invisible (E 4.5.8.1- 7). Eyes and their visible objects share mutual information. This entanglement supports magical action at a distance (E 4.4.40). Plotinus says “in the art of magic all looks to this enlinkment: . . . magic and its success, depend upon the sympathy of enlinked forces” (E 4.4.26.1-5). Plotinus believes that magical spells effectively cause remote effects. And “if spells and other forms of magic are efficient even at a distance to attract us into sympathetic relations, the agency can be no other than the one soul [of our universe]. A quiet word induces changes in a remote object, and makes itself heard at vast distances – proof of the oneness of all things within the one soul” (E 4.9.3.5-10). The magician does not operate from outside of the natural universe. On the contrary, magic exploits natural entanglements. The mage “pulls knowing the pull of everything towards any other thing in the living system” (E 4.4.40.18-20). Petitionary prayer also works through entanglement (E 4.4.26.1-5). The earth hears human prayers through its entanglements with our bodies (E 4.4.26.11-17). The stars and planets also hear our prayers this way (E 3.1.5.7-16). Likewise the success of astrology is explained by entanglement (E 3.1.5). Modern physics recognizes entanglements. However, the modern concept of entanglement is not as rich as the Plotinian concept – it does not support Plotinian magic,

140 prayer, or astrology. Still, entanglement remains fascinating. The physical properties of entangled objects are exactly correlated. To put it roughly, two objects become entangled when they share a single ambiguous state in such a way that resolving the ambiguity on one object instantly resolves it on the other. When two objects are entangled, it looks as if there exists one object in two places at the same time. Suppose a coin in London is entangled with a coin in New York city. Scientists flip the coins at the same time, catching each without looking at it. While the coins are in the air, and while they are hidden in the scientist’s hands, their states are ambiguous: each could be either heads or tails. The scientists agree to uncover their coins at the same time. Since the coins are entangled, their states are perfectly correlated: if one shows heads, then the other shows tails. Even without communicating, each scientist immediately know the state of the other coin thousands of miles away. The coins are causally connected as if there were one coin in two places at the same time. However, these coins have not sent faster-than- light signals to each other. Since neither scientist knows the state of her coin until she looks at it, the scientists cannot use their coins to communicate. The coins carry information about each other even though they don’t communicate. Physicists have entangled particles across hundreds of miles (Yin et al., 2017). And they have entangled atoms and molecules. They have entangled the atoms in large molecules like Buckyballs (Buckyballs look like little soccer balls made from carbon atoms). They have even entangled small diamonds (Lee et al., 2011). Since all the particles in the universe emerged from the same event (the big bang), it has been argued that all the particles in the universe are entangled with each other (Buniy & Hsu, 2012). However, over time their entanglements have been statistically smeared out. Particles (and larger systems) are still correlated, but the correlations have evolved into the statistical regularities that support the general laws of physics. Randomly selected systems are not likely to be directly entangled. Nevertheless, some physical wholes do have intensely entangled parts. The quarks inside protons or neutrons appear to be entangled (Tu, Kharzeev, & Ullrich, 2020). The electron in a hydrogen atom is entangled with its proton (Tommasini & Timmermans, 1998). Moreover, the concept of quantum entanglement can be generalized into other relations involving integrated information. The Plotinian theory of entanglement can still do some significant work.

2. Entanglement and Souls

Plotinus says entanglement occurs because of the integral omnipresence of the soul (E 4.9.3.5-10). The same cosmic soul is wholly present in every region of the universe. So all the distinct parts of the universe act as if they were the same thing: they are entangled by the presence of the same soul. But souls are psychological entities – they have mental properties and relations. For Plotinus the best explanation for entanglement is that everything participates in the same cosmic mind. Since this one cosmic mind is wholly present in every physical thing, every physical thing has some mentality. The thesis that every physical thing has some mentality is known as panpsychism. So, for Plotinus, the best explanation for entanglement is panpsychism. Although panpsychism may appear to be unscientific, it can be naturalized using information theory.

141 A naturalistic approach to panpsychism begins with integrated information (Tononi, 2004, 2008). Integrated information theory defines a quantity Φ. Φ is a purely physical quantity associated with some whole with parts. Φ is an objectively existing quantity like mass. To put it roughly, the Φ of some physical whole measures the degree to which its parts share information about each other. It measures how intensely they are informationally integrated into a unity. Every physical whole has some amount of Φ. For a simple thing with no parts, Φ is zero. Thus quarks have zero Φ. But pretty much everything else has some positive degree of Φ. Tononi identifies Φ with consciousness. Since any complex physical thing has some positive degree of Φ, every complex physical thing has some degree of consciousness. This is panpsychism. Given the Plotinian interest in unity, Φ is an appropriate way to modernize and naturalize the Plotinian concept of the integral omnipresence of the soul. The Φ of any physical whole indicates the degree to which it participates in the cosmic soul. More precisely, the Φ of any physical system indicates its degree of ensoulment. However, this ensoulment should not be thought of in terms of mind-body dualism. The ensoulment of any thing is a purely physical quantity measured in terms of bits of information. And if any thing has some positive degree of ensoulment, then it is reasonable to say that it has a soul. However, its soul is not a non-physical thing. The soul of any ensouled thing is the way that its parts are organized so that it has some Φ. So the soul of any thing is a structural property of that thing. It is not a little ghost inside of the thing. Quarks are simple physical particles. Three quarks combine to make protons or neutrons. Thus every proton or neutron “constitute[s] an infinitesimal integrated system” (Koch, 2012: 132). Since protons and neutrons have some Φ, they have some degree of ensoulment. This does not mean that they contain little ghosts. Ensoulment is a purely physical quantity of every complex physical system. The ensoulment of any proton or neutron is extremely small. These particles do not think; they are not conscious. But their component quarks are entangled with each other. And that entanglement supports the Φ of the proton or neutron. So the entangled quarks enchant each other, and their mutual enchantment generates the ensoulment of the proton. Since the electron in any hydrogen atom is entangled with its proton, those two particles enchant each other. Their mutual enchantment generates the Φ of the hydrogen atom. Since this Φ is greater than zero, the hydrogen atom has some ensoulment, measured in bits. Many hydrogen atoms congregate into stars. Within the cores of stars like our sun, the protons from those hydrogen atoms are fused into helium. Fusion takes low complexity inputs and produces a higher complexity output. The Φ of any helium atom is greater than the Φ of any hydrogen atom. Thus solar fusion concentrates ensoulment in more complex atoms. Stars are ensoulment engines. Our sun creates more ensoulment as it creates more helium. Heavier atoms have higher degrees of ensoulment. And, since our sun is complex, it has its own positive degree of ensoulment. Plato argues that all heavenly bodies have souls (Laws, 898a-899d). He argues that every star has a soul (Timaeus, 41d-42e). Philosophical pagans agree with Plato that stars have positive degrees of ensoulment. Plato also declares that stars have mentality (Laws, 897a). If Φ measures the degree of consciousness of some thing, then stars do indeed have positive

142 degrees of consciousness. But Plato attributes superhuman intelligence to the stars. On this point, he is wrong – stars do not have any intelligence at all. Philosophical pagans now climb up the Stoic great chain of being. Since rocks have some complexity, they have some Φ. Every rock has some ensoulment; however, the ensoulment of any rock is a very small number. As life emerges, ensoulment makes a great leap. Cells have high degrees of Φ. Cells are ensouled. Since they are ensouled, they have souls. The soul of any cell is that structural property of the cell which enables its parts to be informationally integrated. The sizes of cellular souls are measured in bits. Networks of cells have even greater degrees of informational integration. They have higher Φs. As living things gain complexity, they gain informational integration. As plants and animals gain Φ, they gain ensoulment. Their souls get bigger. Animal brains accumulate great quantities of Φ. They are intensely ensouled. Human brains have enormously high degrees of Φ. Our brains (and therefore our bodies) have very large souls. Your soul is the structural organization of your body-parts. Plotinus says souls are entangled (E 4.3.8.1-3, 4.4.35.8-13). Entangled souls are societies. Integrated information theory can be applied to social networks: every social network has some Φ (Engel & Malone, 2017). If Φ measures consciousness, then every society has some consciousness. Thus Schwitzgebel (2015) argues that the United States of America is a unified whole with a high degree of consciousness. Since the USA is ensouled, it has a soul. Its soul is its pattern of organization. Likewise our earthly ecosystem has high Φ. It has an large soul whose size is measured in bits. Plotinus attributes souls to pretty much all physical things. His concept of souls is almost always analyzed in terms of mind-body dualism. On this incorrect analysis, souls are unphysical ghosts and bodies are physical things. But Plotinus cannot be correctly understood using mind-body dualism. On the contrary, Plotinus is a monist: all things come from the One. Consequently, souls cannot be thinking substances – souls are not minds. Your soul is not a ghost that mysteriously dwells in your body. The concept of soul used here is a more accurate way to understand Plotinus. Souls are structural properties of physical things with positive Φ. But the structures of things are their forms. Aristotle said a soul is the form of a living body (De Anima, 412a5-414a33). This is a naturalistic definition of the soul. Philosophical pagans mostly agree with Aristotle. However, rather than restrict souls to living bodies, we say souls are the forms of ensouled things; they are the forms of physical things with positive Φ. Plotinus says individual things have forms (E 5.7). Since philosophical pagans are digitalists about physical things, we say any thing can be exactly simulated by some computer running some program. The form of that thing is its defining program; it is that program which generates the thing when run on some computer. So the soul of any ensouled thing (any thing with positive Φ) is its defining program. So the soul of Socrates is the form of the body of Socrates. And the soul of your car is the form of your car.

3. Entropy and Agency

Since all motion requires some direction, the first principles of motion are the first principles of direction. The first principle of direction in our universe is the second law of

143 thermodynamics. It generates an arrow which points from minimal entropy to maximal entropy. This arrow provides things with their first direction of motion. But this first direction is too abstract. So the abstract directionality of the second law passes through some additional first principles of direction. It passes through the maximum entropy production principle and the orderly flow principle. These refine the directionality of the second law into the extropic principle: if some physical system can self-organize further, then it almost certainly will self-organize further. The extropic principle suffices to direct the flows of stuff in our universe. The extropic principle is the first principle of motion in our universe. It drives the motions of all flows of stuff. It is an intrinsic principle of motion, which moves all things from within. It is a principle of animation, which sets things into motion. Physical things in our universe do not move randomly; on the contrary, they move in ways that are extremely far from random. All the motion of stuff in our universe is rationally organized. It ultimately shaped by the creativity of the One, which drives all systems to maximize self-consistency. Among the many different kinds of motion, Plato was particularly interested in self- motion (Laws 895c-899d; Phaedrus, 245c-246a). He argued that self-motion is the most basic kind of motion. Since the extropic principle is the first principle of motion, it drives things to move themselves. Extropic motion is self-motion. It is the original source of all further motions in all physical things. Plato correctly recognized the ultimacy of self- motion. To honor its ultimacy, he said self-movers have souls. Unfortunately, Plato overloads the concept of soul. On the one hand, he says souls are self-movers; on the other hand, he also says that souls are minds. These are two distinct concepts, and he should have used two distinct words. We interpreted the mentality of ensouled things in terms of integrated information. We said souls are the forms of things with positive Φ. So we will not also use the word soul for self-movers. The term that seems best suited for self-motion is agency. The simplest form of agency is mere self-motion. Since the extropic principle drives all the self-motion of stuff in our universe, it motivates a basic thermodynamic definition of agency: an agent is anything that strives to produce as much order as possible by producing entropy as fast as possible. Agents are self-moving bodies. Agents are self-movers because they are far from thermodynamic equilibrium. They strive to produce as much order as possible by producing entropy as fast as possible. The Stoics argued that all self-moving bodies are powered by fire-energy, namely, by the Stoic pneuma. The Stoic theory of the pneuma looks like early thermodynamics. After all, fire-energy is heat-energy, and the topic of heat is central to thermodynamics. More precisely, the Stoic pneuma looks like an thermodynamic force (Steinhart, 2018). The pneuma drives self-moving bodies to generate order. It drive all self-organization. The Stoic pneuma is best translated into English as the term spirit. The Cambridge Platonists posited a spirit of nature which drives stuff to self-organize (Greene, 1962). So we use the term spirit to refer to the power which drives the self-organization of stuff. All self-movers have spirit. Spirit is a deep force. It needs to be stressed that spirit is just a natural power. It is a physical force measured in units. Spirit is not consciousness. Spirit, as a purely physical force, has no mentality at all. By driving physical stuff to self-organize, spirit drives the accumulation of complexity. Hence spirit drives physical stuff to increase its Φ and thereby to gradually rise up through all the degrees of mentality. If ancient pagans thought that our

144 universe was enchanted, then a modern scientific pagan can say it is enchanted by thermodynamic powers. Our universe is enchanted by spirit. Every agent contains concentrated free energy, which strives to disperse itself according to thermodynamic principles. This free energy strives to disperse itself as fast as possible; that is, it strives to produce entropy (dispersion) as fast as possible. But ordered flow disperses energy faster than disordered flow. So every agent strives to generate as much order as possible. It strives to self-organize. As it self-organizes, its flow becomes ever more highly patterned – it gains simple regularity, then evolves into increasingly complex forms and dynamical structures. Agents, precisely because they generate ordered flow, acquire self-regulated dynamics. Their self-motions become orderly motions. As those self-motions accumulate order, they accumulate Φ. They gain functional complexity and intrinsic value. Consequently, our definitions of agents, spirits, and souls are systematic. Agents are self-moving physical things. Their self- motions follow entropic gradients. Spirits are extropic forces that animate or enchant agents, driving them to self-organize. Souls are the forms of motion that agents acquire as their self-motions accumulate ever greater degrees of Φ.

4. Titanic Agents

According to this definition, our entire universe is an agent. Our whole universe strives to produce as much order as possible by producing entropy as fast as possible. Of course, our universe acquires its self-motion from our demiurge. And all things ultimately acquire self-motion from the self-negation of non-being. But that self-motion is not physical. Here we are focused on the physical self-motion of our universe. Our universe is a basic physical agent. Our as a whole is animated or enchanted by spirit. However, it does not seem likely that our universe has any positive degree of Φ. On the contrary, it seems more likely that the Φ of our universe is zero. If that is right, then our universe is not ensouled. Although our universe (like every ontic thing) has a form, its form is not a soul. If it contains any parts what are agents, then they acquire their agencies by participation in the primary physical agency of our universe. And our universe does contain parts with their own derivative agencies. These secondary agents are the stars. Gravity pulls the earliest atoms together into stars. Stars are highly concentrated balls of energy. They have extremely high temperatures and low entropies. Stars strive to produce as much order as possible by producing entropy as fast as possible. Hence the stars are agents. They are enchanted or animated by spirit. Spirit drives every star to create order. Stars create order by fusing simpler atoms into more complex atoms. They raise the degrees of atomic Φ. Stars are engines which create ensoulment. Moreover, every star almost certainly has its own non- zero degree of Φ. So every star has a soul. At one level, the soul of any star is the total system of physical laws from which the star emerges. More precisely, the soul of any star is its system of nuclear reaction equations. These equations define the ways that simpler elements fuse into more complex elements. Our sun fuses hydrogen into helium. To put it roughly, it fuses two hydrogen atoms into one helium atom. This nuclear reaction equation is Hydrogen + Hydrogen ! Helium. This equation is part of the form of our sun. It is part of its solar programming. It is part of its soul. For the ancient

145 Greeks, our sun is the titan Helios. Philosophical pagans adopt this titanic concept of our sun. But our sun is just a star. Hence every star is a titanic agent. The self-motion of any star extends out as far as its solar wind. The self-motion of every star extends across its entire system of orbital bodies. Every solar system is a thermodynamic engine. By irradiating their planets with energy, stars drive their planets far from thermodynamic equilibrium. All the planets in any solar system participate in the self-motion of their sun. By participating in that self-motion, they acquire free energy which they need to dissipate. Planets inherit the self-motion of their stars. Every planet strives to produce as much order as possible by producing entropy as fast as possible. Thus every planet is an agent. For the ancient Greeks, our earth is the titan Gaia; hence we say that the earth is a titanic agent. Any agent which gains its power directly from some star is titanic agent. Since the planets acquire their powers of self-motion from their stars, their self-motions are derivative. Since stars are secondary agents, their planets are tertiary agents. By capturing solar energy, the planets capture extropic force. They are animated or enchanted by spirit. Of course, thermodynamic engines can burn out. Planets like Mercury, Venus, and Mars are mostly burned out. They do not appear to be generating any order. Their agencies are minimal. But chemical evolution appears to be proceeding on many bodies in our solar system. It obviously proceeds on our earth. But it also proceeds on moons like Europa, Titan, and Enceladus. It will be useful to talk a bit more about our earth. Since currents of free energy flow from our sun through our earth, it is far from thermodynamic equilibrium. It has the capacity for self-organization. Our earth produces as much order as possible by producing entropy as fast as possible. Hence our earth is an agent. It is animated by its own spirit. Moreover, our earth performs molecular or chemical computations. The earth is a network of intensely interacting molecules. These molecules pass through many chemical reaction arrows. They are entangled with each other and they exchange information. So our earth has a high degree of Φ. Hence the earth has a high degree of ensoulment. The earth has a planetary soul. And the earth performs molecular and biological computations. The soul of the earth is the form of all its computations. It soul is a program for a planet-sized computing machine. As its primitive flows of earthly stuff self-organize, life emerges and starts to evolve. All living things on earth participate in the agency of earth. They inherit their agencies from our earth. Hence every earthly organism is a quaternary agent. Plants devour energy from our sun; herbivores devour plants; carnivores devour herbivores. The self- motions of life emerge from the self-motion of our sun. As thermodynamics drives the evolution of more complex life, it drives the evolution of more complex forms of agency. Evolution creates intelligent agents and rational moral agents. Many scientists have argued that thermodynamic principles drive the evolution of intelligence (Turvey & Carello, 2012; Kondepudi, 2012; Fry, 2017). The MEPP has been generalized to make the causal entropic principle (Wissner-Gross & Freer, 2013). The CEP shows how complex adaptive behaviors, including social cooperation, can emerge from thermodynamics. The CEP “predicts many of the observed features of social interactions among both human and animal groups” (Mann & Gammett, 2015). Thermodynamic forces generate economic regularities (Annila & Salthe, 2009). Although spirit has no intelligence, it drives stuff to evolve into intelligent organisms.

146 20. Titanic Computers 1. Stars are Titanic Atomic Computers

adiant energy erupts into physical existence, in our universe, at the big bang. Our universe begins with this eruption. This radiant energy quickly condensed into the first simple physical particles – the quarks and electrons, and then into the first atoms. These were mostly hydrogen, helium, and some lithium. After these atoms form, they are drawn together into clouds by gravity. Some of these clouds collapse to form stars. Stars drive atomic evolution. Almost all the atoms heavier than helium are formed by stars. The first stars mostly fuse two hydrogen atoms into one helium atom. This fusion reaction can be symbolized using an arrow like this:

hydrogen + hydrogen → helium.

After stars fuse hydrogen into helium, they continue to fuse simpler atoms into more complex atoms. Here are a few fusion reactions:

helium + helium → beryllium; beryllium + helium → carbon; carbon + helium → oxygen; carbon + carbon → neon + helium; oxygen + oxygen → silicon + helium; oxygen + oxygen → magnesium + helium + helium.

There are thousands of other possible reaction arrows. Fusion reactions generate atoms all the way up to iron. Atoms beyond iron are mostly formed when stars explode. The exploding stars fuse atoms all the way up to uranium and sometimes beyond. Many heavy atoms are also produced during the merger of neutron stars. Nuclear reactions preserve mass: the mass on the right side equals the mass on the left. The mass includes any mass converted into energy. Hence the nuclear reactions resemble equations involving mass numbers. The mass number of an atom is its total number of protons and neutrons. Since every atom has an exact mass number, the atoms are natural models of numbers. The mass number of an atom is written as a superscript before its symbol. Since hydrogen has mass 1, and its symbol is H, hydrogen is written as 1H. An oxygen atom with eight protons and eight neutrons is symbolized as 16O. The nuclear reaction equations involve something like addition:

1H + 1H → 2He 1+1 → 2 1H + 2H → 3He 1+2 → 3 3He + 3He → 4He + 1H + 1H 3+3 → 4+1+1

147 16O + 16O → 24Mg + 4He + 4He 16+16 → 24+4+4.

But the last two equations aren’t exactly additions – they are transformations. What kind of transformations? The atoms are letters in an alphabet. Stringing atoms together makes a word. Thus H is a letter, He is a letter, H+H is a word, and He+H+H is a word. As letters get changed into letters, words get changed into words. Each atomic reaction arrow transforms an old string of letters into a new string of letters. What defines natural computation? If some natural system runs an algorithm or program, then it is reasonable to say that it is a computer. It is arguable that the stars run algorithms. At first glance, it looks like they are doing arithmetical calculations with the mass numbers of atoms. The reaction arrow H + H → He looks like the calculation 1 + 1 = 2. But a deeper look reveals something different. The arrow O + O → Mg + He + He shows that nuclear reactions transform old strings of atomic letters into new strings of atomic letters. If atoms are letters, then nuclear reactions are string rewriting operations, and every star is running a string rewriting program. Every star is a massively parallel distributed string rewriting system. The mathematician Emil Post showed that, in an exact sense, string rewriting really is computation. Any string rewriting system is a computer. This is not a metaphor – on the contrary, the stars are literally computing. The stars are celestial computers. It does not follow that every physical system is computing. The stars compute because and only because they are physical models of some mathematical theories of computation. Those theories include the string rewriting systems of Emil Post, the machines of Alan Turing, and the lambda calculus of Alonzo Church, three theories which are all equivalent. As the planets revolve around their suns, they model physical equations; but since those equations are not theories of computation, those planets are not computing their equations of motion. The computational powers of the stars do not depend on human interpretations. It isn’t a human convention that chlorine has seventeen protons, or that two hydrogens fuse into helium. The system of nuclear reactions naturally and objectively computes.

2. Planets are Titanic Molecular Computers

After the stars have produced some complex atoms, they start binding into molecules.

The first simple molecules are just atomic pairs like H2 or O2. Or atoms decorated with hydrogen, like water (OH2), ammonia (NH3), and methane (CH4). Molecular evolution starts with these molecular alphas. From the stars, we shift to the celestial bodies that run molecular evolution. We can focus on the planets (asteroids are little planets, moons are planets of planets). Molecules on planets enter into chemical reactions, defined, like nuclear reactions, by reaction arrows. For example, one methane molecule reacts with two oxygen molecules to form one carbon dioxide molecule and two water molecules. This combustion reaction looks like this:

methane + 2 oxygens → carbon dioxide + 2 waters.

This reaction is usually written in chemistry books as

148 CH4 + 2O2 → CO2 + 2H2O.

But it can be written out in more detail in terms of the atoms in the molecules:

HHCHH + OO + OO → OCO + HOH + HOH.

The combustion of methane breaks down old molecular words and rearranges their atomic letters into new words. Of course, the atoms in molecules are arranged into networks, also known as graphs. Thus computational chemistry uses graph rewriting. But graph rewriting is just a kind of string rewriting. So, the chemical reactions on any planet make big string rewriting system. Since string rewriting systems are computers, planets run molecular computers. However, since planetary chemical reactions are driven mainly by star-power, it’s more accurate to say that an entire star-planet system is a molecular computer. Solar systems are celestial computers running both atomic and molecular algorithms. This does not imply that every natural system computes.

3. Some Planets are Titanic Biological Computers

At some point, the molecular computation running on Earth produced a molecule that could make copies of itself. It produced a replicator. Perhaps the first replicators were peptides (chains of amino acids). Or maybe they were RNA. But earthly replication converged onto DNA. A strand of DNA is a string of four chemical letters. Two strands of DNA bind to make a helix. Suppose some DNA helix consists of the two strands

X1Y1. This strand replicates in two phases. During the first phase, the two strands X1 and Y1 separate. During the second phase, each strand binds with a copy of its old partner.

Thus X1 binds with Y2 and Y1 binds with X2. The result is two new helixes X1Y2 and

X2Y1. So DNA replication is a molecular arrow:

X1Y1 → X1Y2 + X2Y1.

Dawkins argues that cells are computers running genetic programs. He extends these computational ideas into reproduction. When a parent organism fissions asexually into two offspring, the genes of the parent get copied (perhaps with mutations) into each offspring. This is a string rewriting operation:

parent → offspring + offspring.

When two organisms sexually reproduce, their gene strings fuse into the genetic strings of some offspring. This fusion involves genetic string rewriting:

male + female → offspring.

Both asexual fission and sexual fusion involve genetic string rewriting operations. Biological evolution really is a massively parallel distributed string rewriting system. But string rewriting is computation. Since biological evolution is a physical model of a

149 mathematical theory of computation, it computes. Dawkins says the entire earthly biosphere is a massively parallel distributed information-processing system. This does not mean that everything computes.

4. Ancient Evolutionary Theories

The Stoics were fond of arguments from design (Cicero, ONG 2.81-90). From the organization in our universe, they inferred the existence of a divine intelligence. They argued that all complex things were intelligently designed. However, the ancient Greeks and Romans had primitive theories of physical and biological evolution (Campbell, 2000). One of the earliest evolutionary theories comes from the Pre-Socratic philosopher Anaximander (Kocandrle & Kleisner, 2013). Anaximander had a student Xenophanes, who observed fossils. Other ancient Greeks collected fossils, and they attributed them to primitive forms of life which had vanished. The Pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles also proposed a primitive evolutionary theory. The Epicureans developed these primitive evolutionary theories. The Roman poet Lucretius was an Epicurean. He sketched out a primitive version of natural selection in his great poem On the Nature of Things (5.771- 1427). Of course, these ancient thinkers were pretty far from the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection. Nevertheless, on the basis of these early theories of evolution, and on the basis of modern Darwinism, philosophical pagans affirm that all biological organization emerges through evolution by natural selection. Evolution by natural selection invalidates the arguments for an intelligent designer. But are intelligent designers the only kinds of designers? Daniel Dennett often says that mindless evolution produces design. He tells us that “Darwin’s dangerous idea is that Design can emerge from mere Order via an algorithmic process that makes no use of pre- existing Mind” (1995: 83). And Darwin offered the world “a scheme for creating Design out of Chaos without the aid of Mind” (1995: 50). Philosophical pagans agree with Dennett: mindless evolution produces design. So we need not reject the ancient Stoic design arguments. We just modify their final steps. From the organization in our universe, we infer the existence of a mindless evolutionary algorithm.

150 21. Birth and Fate 1. Welcome to Our Universe

ll of us enter our universe through birth. Ancient thinkers were deeply interested in birth. Plato, like many ancient thinkers, believed in reincarnation. Before you were born in this universe, you lived some previous life. Between your lives, when your soul does not have any body, you are given the opportunity to choose your next life (Republic, 617d-620d). You choose your future fate or destiny. Plato also says that birth is traumatic. Before birth, the soul runs smoothly; but when it is incarnated into a human body, its orderly motions are disordered (Timaeus, 43a6-44b1). Plato portrays human birth as unfortunate: your soul was incarnated by a star, but now it has fallen into a human body (Timaeus, 41d-42b). Plotinus likewise portrays birth as misfortune: your soul has partly fallen from the Higher Universe into our Lower Universe (E 4.3.12, 4.8.5, 5.1.1). These ideas are close to anti-natalism, which says that birth is evil. Anti-natalists echo the ancient satyr Silenus, who said “the best thing for a man is not to be born, and if already born, to die quickly” (Plutarch, Morals). Philosophical pagans reject this pessimism. We affirm pro-natalism: birth is good. We follow Dawkins when he says we are privileged and blessed to have been born (1998: 5). We are lucky to have been given the opportunity to suffer and die. Epictetus says we should be grateful for having been given the opportunity to attend the festival of life (D 1.12.18-22; 3.6.10; 4.1.105-9). And while Plotinus says we fell from some Higher Universe, philosophical pagans disagree. Our evolutionary cosmology entails that we all rose up from some previous Lower Universe. Our universe is the offspring of some earlier and simpler universe. Since it is simpler, it is less valuable. Any life in our universe has some past counterpart in that previous universe. And it is an improved version of its past counterpart. Thus your life is an improved version of your previous life. We are all climbing up the Platonic Divided Line.

2. The Influences of the Stars

Many ancient people practiced astrology (Barton, 1994). They believed that your fate was significantly determined by the positions of the stars at the time of your birth. Here “the stars” includes our sun, our moon, our planets, and the ordinary stars. Your natal configuration (recorded in your natal chart) contains the positions of these stars at your birth. According to the ancient astrologers, your natal configuration determines your life in two main ways. The first kind of astrological determinism concerns the events in your life. On the basis of your natal configuration, general astrological rules determine the events that will (or will not) happen to you in the future. Cicero gives this example: “If anyone is born at the rising of the dogstar, he will not die at sea” (On Fate, 12). The second kind of astrological determinism concerns your character. According to Plotinus,

151 the astrologers say that the stars give us our vices and virtues (E 2.3.1). Your natal configuration shapes your character or personality. By shaping your character, the stars determine how you will respond to all the events in your life. Plotinus was highly critical of astrology (E 2.3, 3.1.5-6). When he was young, he studied astrology intensely, but he found that it did not make accurate predictions (Life of Plotinus, 15.21-6.). He argued that the stars are not causes (E 2.3). Plotinus offered an argument from distinct fates against astrology (E 3.1.5.50-60). (1) Astrology entails that all people born on the same day share the same fate. (2) But in fact they do not. (3) Therefore, astrology is false. Plotinus argued that astrologers offer false theories about how the stars cause events on earth (E 2.3, 3.1.5-6). The principles of astrological determinism are false. Many people are born when the dogstar is rising; some of them die at sea, others do not. Plotinus does allow that the stars are general physical causes. The stars (especially our sun and our moon) are physical things which exert physical effects. So the stars do influence on earthly events (E 2.3.9-13; 3.1.6). But these influences are small and ambiguous. Moreover, they follow physical mechanisms, that is, the occur in accordance with the physical laws of nature. So the stars do carry some information about your body and your destiny (E 2.3, 3.1.5-6). Philosophical pagans are interested in self-knowledge. Here we follow the command written on the entrance to the Delphic Oracle: “Know thyself.” Astrology claims to provide self-knowledge. Does it really provides self-knowledge? Astrology makes claims that can be tested empirically; that is, it makes scientific claims, claims that can be decided using evidence. When astrology is tested, its claims have universally been shown to be false. Astrology does not produce any information about personality traits (Shawn, 1985; Dean, 1986, 1987; Pigliucci, 2010: 62-8). It does not provide any useful information about characters or lives (Kelly, 1997). Horoscopes do not produce any reliable forecasts of future events (Fichten & Sunerton, 1983; Kelly, 1998). Astrology is a pseudo-science (Thagard, 1978). Astrology provides self-delusion rather than self- knowledge. Consequently, philosophical pagans do not use it. Nevertheless, we are trying to modernize and naturalize ancient paganism. So we need to see if we can replace astrology with some scientific practice that really does provide self-knowledge. Astrological determinism is one version of natal determinism. Natal determinism states that there are natural powers that work on us as we enter this universe, and that those powers shape our future lives. While astrological determinism is false, other versions of natal determinism might be true. Any form of natal determinism will raise ethical questions about fate and autonomy.

3. The Influences of Your Genes

Astrology asserts that (1) there exist deep, ancient, and hidden powers which shape the course of your whole life; (2) these powers exert their influences at the time of the origin of your body (a time which is your birth); (3) these powers are the heavenly bodies (stars, planets, moons). And astrology asserts (4) that these powers continue to influence your life and future. These assertions are all false. Astrology is not system of reliable or effective predictive techniques. But are there any seeds of truth in these claims? If there are, then these claims can be replaced with naturalistic claims.

152 Two very small changes in the astrological assertions produce this: (1) there exist deep, ancient, and hidden powers which shape the course of your whole life; (2) these powers exert their influences at the time of the origin of your body (a time which is your conception); (3) these powers are your genes. And (4) your genes continue to influence your life and future. These statements are scientifically sound. Thus we move from astrological determinism to genetic determinism. Plotinus was aware that offspring inherit features from their parents. He says the qualities of your body come from your parents rather than the stars (E 3.1.5-6). Both the father and the mother contribute heritable features to their offspring (E 5.7.2-3). Although Plotinus does not know about DNA, he does say that forming principles (logoi) are compressed into seeds (E 4.9.5.9- 12, 5.9.6.10-25). These forming principles do the jobs of genes. When the stars are replaced with genes, your natal configuration turns into your genome, and your natal chart turns into a map of your genome. At the time of this writing, it is easy and inexpensive to get your genetic map. Philosophical pagans agree with Aristotle that your soul is the form of your body (De Anima, 412a5-414a33). Since your genome is the recipe for the construction of your body, and since this recipe defines most of the form of your body, most of your soul is encoded in your genome. Hence the soul prefigures its body (E 1.1.11.8-15, 4.3.12.37-9, 6.7.7). Hence also to know your genome is to know much of your soul. It also to know much of your fate. On the one hand, astrological determinism offered rules like “If anyone is born at the rising of the dogstar, he will not die at sea.” On the other hand, genetic determinism offers rules like: “If you have a mutation in the CTFR gene, you will have cystic fibrosis.” This is reliable self-knowledge. Your genes really do shape your fate. Genes define proteins; proteins perform biological functions; hence genes define biological functions. Three kinds of genetic errors haunt our cells. The first kind occurs when genes are mutated in ways that define proteins that perform their functions badly. The second kind occurs when genes are missing. So their proteins are not generated, and their biological functions are not performed at all. The third kind occurs when genes are duplicated. Their proteins are over-expressed, so that their functions are not performed well. All these genetic errors lead to impaired functions. But impaired functionality is matter. So the errors in your genome define the matter in your soul. Matter is the absence or distortion of functionality. Along with Plotinus, philosophical pagans say that matter is evil. We seek technologies for correcting genetic errors. Along with Plotinus, we also affirm that it is better to be than to not be (E 3.2.15). Every existing thing has some complexity; but complexity is intrinsic value; so every existing thing has some intrinsic value. Thus being is goodness, and every existing thing participates in the Good. Every gene has its own complexity and intrinsic value. It participates in the Good in its own way. Evil in some whole emerges from the conflicts among the goods of its parts (E 3.2.3, 3.2.11, 3.2.17, 3.6.2, 4.4.32). Thus evil in the whole genome emerges from the conflicts among the goods of its genetic parts. But every part contributes some goodness to the whole (E 2.3.16, 2.3.18). So even if genes fail to specify proteins that function in one good way in the whole, they may specify proteins that function in some other good way in the whole. Every gene has some excellence, some arete or virtue, which it contributes to the whole. Cells carrying the CTFR mutation may be resistant to typhoid fever and to cholera toxin. Cells carrying the mutation for sickle cell anemia are resistant to malaria. Plotinus says it is wrong to “stare

153 at a hair or a toe neglecting the marvelous spectacle of the whole body” (E 3.2.3.15-20). Analogously, it is wrong to stare at a CTFR gene while ignoring the marvelous spectacle of an entire living body. Wholes can overcome the evils in their parts. Every whole (here every whole human body) has its own complexity; it has its own intrinsic value and therefore its own goodness. And every human animal has all the intrinsic value that comes from the complexity of being human. But that is the only value required for moral status. Hence every human animal (however genetically impaired it may be) has an intrinsic value which is morally equal to that of any other human animal (however genetically enhanced it may be). Your genes are only parts of your body. They interact in myriad ways to generate your whole body. Fates are necessities. Your genes define only your micro-necessities; they define your micro-fates. And if one gene fates you in one way, other genes fate you in other ways. The fates of your whole body emerges from the interactions among the fates of its parts. Any human body is a complex whole which emerges from the interactions of its parts. Biologists have used integrated information theory to argue that the complexity of the body is greater than the sum of the complexities of its parts (Hoel, Albantakis, & Tononi, 2013). Bodies are genuinely emergent structures. They have macro-level causal regularities which are not exhaustively determined by the micro-level causal regularities of their parts. Their parts are entangled in ways that generate new information. Hence the bodies have their own agencies which emerge above the agencies of their parts. They give themselves their own laws – they are autonomous agents. Fate is a kind of necessity; but necessity is invariance over all possibilities. If you are fated to die at sea, then it is necessary for you to die at sea. But if it is necessary for you to die at sea, then in every possible version of your life, you die at sea. And if you are fated from birth to die at sea, then in every possible version of your life which begins with that birth, you die at sea. To say that your mutated CTFR gene fates you to have cystic fibrosis means that for every version of your life, if that version begins with your specific genome, then that version has cystic fibrosis. Genetic fatalism requires talking about (quantifying over) multiple possible future lives from conception. Philosophical pagans affirm that you have many possible futures in this universe. At the time of your conception, a great branching tree of possible future lives appears. Only at your death do these branches end. At any time, our universe has a plurality of possible futures. It branches in any possible ways. As time passes, perhaps only one of these possible branches is actualized; perhaps many of them are actualized. Your possible lives from your conception in our universe are your local possible lives. The probability that your life has some feature is your number of local possible lives with that feature divided by your total number of local possible lives. To say you are genetically fated to have some feature means that you have some gene which confers that feature on all your local possible lives. A CTFR gene fates you to cystic fibrosis. However, most genetic determinism involves probabilities less than fate. Your genetic fates usually only make it more probable than normal that you will have some disease. Hence genetic forecasting usually involves considerable uncertainties rather than fated necessities. Plotinus made an argument from autonomy against astrological determinism (E 3.1.5.15-20). It goes like this: (1) The astrologers say we have no power of our own; we are like “stones set rolling.” (2) However, the evidence shows that we do have powers to

154 shape our futures. While some aspects of our lives are fated, others are not. (3) Since astrology entails total determinism or fatalism, astrology is false. This argument applies with equal force to genetic fatalism. Plotinus also made an argument from responsibility against astrological determinism (E 2.3.3-6). It goes like this: (1) The astrologers say that the stars give humans bad characters or cause us to commit bad deeds. (2) Astrology therefore prevents people from taking responsibility for their characters or actions. (3) But since we all have our own autonomy, we are self-responsible. (4) Anything that prevents you from taking self-responsibility is morally wrong. (5) Therefore, astrology is morally wrong. The argument generalizes to genetic determinism. If you are genetically inclined to some moral flaw, you are still obligated to do all you can do to overcome that inclination. You ought to use technology to improve yourself. You are obligated to apply the he telestike techne, the art of self-surpassing, to your own body.

4. The Influences of Your Season of Birth

Astrology says that your birth-time influences your personality (and hence the rest of your life). Your birth-time obviously includes the time of the year, that is, it includes your birth-season. Plotinus affirms that your birth-season has some influence on your character (E 3.1.5-6). If that is right, then astrological determinism gets transformed into seasonal determinism. Your life is entangled with our sun. Scientific studies show that birth-season influences many personality traits (Chotai, Lundberg, Adolfsson, 2003). It influences a wide range of body traits and neurocognitive traits in infancy and childhood (McGrath et al., 2006). There is a strong association between season of birth and affective temperaments (Rihmer et al., 2011). These are traits involving mood (depression, cyclothymic mood variation, and so on). But the influence of season of birth on the “big five” personality traits is not clear (Tonetti, Fabbri, Natale, 2009). And no correlations have been found between date of birth and general intelligence (Hartmann, Reuter, Nyborg, 2006). Season of birth appears to influence the metabolism of many neurochemicals. People born in different months process these chemicals differently. Season of birth modulates the activity of the BDNF gene (Kazantseva, et al., 2015). Different activity levels of this gene influence many personality traits. Season of birth is strongly associated with different turnover rates of monoamine neurotransmitters in the brain (Chotai & Adolfsson, 2002). The monoamine neurotransmitters are mainly serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. Their turnover rates (the rates at which they are metabolized) influence many psychological traits. Serotonin turnover is highest in those born in September and lowest for those born in March. Dopamine turnover varies across birth months from a high in November-December to a low in May-June. Season of birth is strongly associated with the risks of developing many psychiatric disorders. Different birth months are correlated with different degrees of risk. Season of birth influences the risk of schizotypy and schizophrenia (Bolinskey et al., 2012; Hori et al., 2012; Konrath, Beckius, and Tran, 2016). Those born in winter to early spring are more likely to develop schizotypic traits or schizophrenia. However, other studies indicate that this association is small and applies mainly to children (Cordova-Palomera et al., 2015). Season of birth influences the risk of anorexia (Disanto et al., 2011). Those born from March to June are more likely to develop anorexia while those born from

155 September to October are less likely to develop it. Season of birth was shown to strongly correlated with the risk of suicide in a Hungarian population (Dome et al., 2010). Those born in July had the highest risk. Season of birth influences the risk of obsessive- compulsive disorders (Cheng et al., 2014). Those born in March to July are less likely to have OCD while those born from August to November are more likely to have it. Season of birth influences the risk of bipolar disorder (Moore et al., 2001). There is a small but significant increased risk for those born in January to March. There are many ways that season of birth can influence personality traits and risks for diseases. Light and temperature vary during different months of the year. During pregnancy, those variations can influence the release of chemicals in the body of a pregnant woman. Those variations can influence the developing fetus. Many types of infections (such as influenza) rise and fall over the course of the year. Getting the flu during pregnancy may affect the developing fetus. The length of the day varies across the seasons; but the length of the day affects the development of the biological clock in newborn infants. This clock regulates circadian rhythms. Disorders of circadian rhythms have been correlated with many psychiatric disorders. Science supports the thesis that season of birth affects many personality traits. Birth- season provides some scientific self-knowledge. Hence seasonal determinism is a valid form of natal determinism. Philosophical pagans are happy to use it. However, seasonal determinism is even weaker than genetic determinism. It usually only provides weak inclinations, small increases in probabilities. All the philosophical considerations that apply to genetic determinism also apply to seasonal determinism. For example, insofar as birth-season induces impairments in your body, it creates matter in your body. And while birth-season shapes your fate, you retain your autonomy.

156 22. Giving Thanks 1. Atheistic Gratitude

oy has many sources. Epictetus says the Stoics found joy in giving thanks (Discourses (D), 1.6.1, 1.16.15-18). They often gave deep thanks, thanks not for utilitarian happiness, but thanks for the deep goodness in the midst of the horrors of human life. Epictetus says they were grateful for the divine rationality of nature (D 1.16.6-8, 4.7.9). They were grateful for being fit by human nature into cosmic rationality (D 1.12.32, 2.23.5-6). They were grateful for their fates (D 2.16.28). They were grateful for their hard lives on our dangerous and beautiful earth (D 3.5.8-11, 4.1.105-6, 4.10.14-17). Much like the old Stoics, modern atheistic pagans can also find joy in giving deep thanks. Dawkins says we are privileged and blessed to have been born (1998: 5). We ought to give thanks for being born. We find joy in giving deep thanks, that is, thanks for their for their lives, for evolution, for our finely-tuned universe, and for the fact that anything exists at all. We recognize that we ought to give thanks for these positivities. Many recent thinkers have discussed the problems associated with atheistic thanks-giving (Dawkins, 2010; Bishop, 2010; Colledge, 2013; Lacewing, 2016). While these discussions have been insightful, it is surprising that they do not refer much to science. After all, atheists are deeply motivated by the scientific story of the universe. Philosophical paganism argues that the scientific story has surprisingly religious consequences. It entails that atheists can and should give thanks to evolution by sacrificially burning works of art. It also entails that we can and should give thanks to our sun by performing rituals in solar calendars (like stone circles). Giving thanks to these things, we also give thanks for being born. Moreover, this atheistic thanks-giving culiminates in a kind of atheistic prayer. Since these behaviors resemble ancient pagan behaviors, it is fair to call them pagan. Scientific naturalism therefore entails that atheists should be pagans. Atheistic paganism is not some form of crypto-theism (it is not pantheism); it excludes all forms of theism. Nevertheless, since atheistic paganism is pagan, it is fair to categorize it as religious. If this reasoning is correct, then atheism does not exclude religion – it generates new forms of religion.

2. Exchanges of Food and Grooming

From thermodynamic roots, there evolves a flower which consists of living agents exchanging biologically useful goods. Here we will use the word “food” as a term of art for any biologically useful good or service. Thus food includes edible things, but also sex, assistance, protection, agonistic support, and so on. The symmetrical exchange of food is direct reciprocity, and it is mutually beneficial. There are many examples of direct reciprocity in the biosphere. Plants and animals encode dispositions to directly reciprocate. It does no harm to express these dispositions as a rule. The first rule of

157 reciprocity stays that if some agent gives you food, then you give equal food in return to them. This the positive part of the tit-for-tat strategy in the prisoner’s dilemma: if you cooperated with me, then I’ll cooperate with you. We usually experience this first rule as having normative force: you ought to reciprocate. Many ethical naturalists argue that rules for reciprocity do have normative force. They say agents with obligations emerge during the course of biological evolution. For rational moral agents like humans, the first rule of reciprocity expresses a moral obligation to reciprocate. Besides exchanging food, many social animals exchange grooming, that is, they clean the body parts of other animals in their communities. Vampire bats exchange grooming (Carter & Wilkinson, 2013; Carter & Leffer, 2015). Many primates exchange grooming (de Waal, 2008). Of course, grooming has some use-value; but the effort animals expend in grooming each other often far exceed its utility. The first rule of reciprocity also includes symmetrical exchanges of grooming: if somebody grooms you, then you give equal grooming in return to them. Animals exchange grooming in order to build social bonds. These bonds support asymmetrical transfers of food. An asymmetrical transfer is a sacrifice. A sacrifice occurs when a benefactor gives food to some recipient, but does not get any food in return. Asymmetrical transfers are thus altruistic. Altruistic transfers of food are often stimulated by earlier transfers of grooming: if I groom you, then you give me food. They are returned by later transfers of grooming: if you gave me food, then I give you grooming. The exchanges of grooming for food suggest a second rule for reciprocity: if you can’t reciprocate with food, then reciprocate with grooming. For rational moral agents like us, this second rule also has normative force. The second rule enhances the fitness of social animals because direct reciprocity often fails. Cooperative partners often fail to acquire the resources they need for symmetrical exchange. This failure threatens to trigger the negative part of the tit-for-tat strategy, so that cooperation breaks down. To prevent the collapse of cooperation, animals have evolved fall-back rules like the second rule for reciprocity. Grooming enters into the evolution of indirect reciprocity. One form of indirect reciprocity is known as upstream reciprocity, also known as paying it forward. It is defined by this maxim: “I will help anybody, if I was helped by somebody” (Barta et al., 2011). The maxim for upstream reciprocity resembles the tit-for-tat strategy in the iterated spatialized prisoner’s dilemma game. But here it applies in cases where mobile players need not repeatedly interact with the same neighbors. Thus grooming signals a commitment to future altruism; it indicates a promise to sacrifice food. Many biologists argue that the function of gratitude is to motivate upstream reciprocity. Expressions of gratitude signal commitment to upstream reciprocity (Bonnie & de Waal, 2004; Nowak & Roch, 2007; McCullough et al., 2008). Grooming is one way to express gratitude. Humans are highly social animals who exchange both food and grooming with each other (Nelson & Geher, 2007). Arlet and colleagues (2015) argue that non-human primates perform grooming-at-a-distance by exchanging calls. Leavens and colleagues (2014) argue that chimpanzees use grooming calls to attract assistance from others when solving novel problems. Dunbar (2017) argues that early hominid grooming behaviors evolved into human language. These ideas motivate a linguistic version of the second rule for humans: if I can’t reciprocate with food, then I’ll reciprocate with linguistic grooming. I’ll say “thank you”. Linguistic grooming evolved into more general signals of upstream reciprocity. The normative force of the second rule entails that you ought to

158 say “thank you”. Although this may be a weak duty, it remains a duty commonly felt and honored. Even after making symmetrical exchanges of food, we symmetrically exchange signals like “thank you” and “you’re welcome”.

3. Reciprocate Food with Grooming Avatars

Soldiers often sacrifice their lives for their civilian compatriots. The civilians benefit by gaining protection. This is an asymmetric transfer; it is altruistic. It arouses feelings of indebtedness and gratitude in the civilians. They have an emotional desire to reciprocate, and they have the moral obligation to reciprocate. However, since the soldiers are now deceased, the civilians cannot directly reciprocate. They cannot apply the first reciprocity-rule, which says if you got food, then give food. Likewise they cannot fall back to the second rule that says if you can’t give food, give grooming. How can they express their gratitude if the soldiers do not exist? A common way that civilians do give thanks to their deceased soldiers is by raising monuments to them. Monuments to dead soldiers often take the shape of a soldier. They are statues of soldiers equipped with the tools of war (helmets, boots, guns, and so on). They typically carry information about the soldiers. They are symbols which refer to these soldiers who died in this war. The monuments bear witness to the soldiers through objective mimesis. And raising a monument squanders resources. It wastes resources on a work of art, resources which could have been used to service biological needs. And, of course, the deceased soldiers will not give any food in return. Raising a monument is a sacrifice. Since it is done for the soldiers, it is a reciprocal sacrifice. It is an act of reciprocal altruism. But is it really an act of thanks giving? People can touch monuments. And they can bring them flowers or other gifts. By performing these acts, they are grooming the monument. If the monument is a statue of a soldier, this grooming can be direct: people can stroke or pat the statue. The statue is a representative or avatar of some generic soldier, and therefore stands as a symbol for each particular soldier. This motivates a hypothesis: by grooming the statue, you groom the soldier. Both the emotional desire and moral obligation to groom the soldiers can be satisfied by grooming the statue. Our ability to use symbols motivates this third rule for reciprocity: if you can’t groom the original, groom a symbol. This third rule also has normative force: if the other rules fail, then you ought to groom an avatar. This is sympathetic magic. It works both emotionally and morally. But it does not involve fakery. It does not involve fictionalism or pretense. We use stories and images to arouse real emotions. When you cry at a movie, you cry real tears. When you laugh while reading a story, your laughter is genuine. We use symbols to satisfy our desires and obligations. Your thanks to a statue is real thanks-giving. Practices involving grooming avatars are close to some old religious practices. Statues played central roles in ancient Greek and Roman cults. Collins (2008: 94-5) describes many ways ancient Greeks treated statues as if they were humans. They dressed them; they offered them food; they spoke to them; they sometimes even had sex with them. They put them on trial for crimes and exiled them. They built houses for them. Luck (2008: 5) reports that if the ancient Greeks were angry with their gods, they whipped their statues and dragging them through the streets. Faraone (1991) describes how they bound statues of gods (like Ares) with chains to prevent them from making

159 trouble. So it is not unreasonable to say that behaviors which express gratitude by grooming avatars are pagan religious behaviors. These behaviors expand from interactions between humans to interactions between humans and non-human animals. We exchange food with non-human animals. Those exchanges activate the rules for reciprocity. It often happens that our exchanges with non-human animals fall back to the third rule for reciprocity: if you can’t groom the original, then groom an avatar. Thus we build monuments that bear witness to the altruistic sacrifices made by animals. The Animals in War Memorial in Hyde Park in London honors the animals who served in British and allied campaigns. The US Military Working Dog Teams National Monument was raised to thank military dogs for their service. At least one monument was raised to bear witness to the laboratory mice who served in scientific experiments (Sharp, 2019: 119-20). A monument in Alabama gives thanks to boll weevils for forcing cotton-growing farmers to diversify their crops (Giesen, 2011: 123-6). These monuments contain effigies of the animals. Raising them satisfies emotional desires and moral obligations. It bears witness to these animals. Humans can and do give thanks to many kinds of life. This suggests that we can give thanks to life itself. More precisely, we can give thanks to the evolutionary process.

4. Giving Thanks to Evolution

Thermodynamic principles entail that the biosphere strives to produce as much order as possible by producing entropy as fast as possible (Kleidon, 2010; Vallino, 2010). Consequently, the biosphere is an agent. Although the agency of the biosphere depends on the agency of our sun, the biosphere can be thought of as an agent in its own right. Since the self-motions of the biosphere are orderly, it has its own soul. The soul of the biosphere is its dynamic logic (its logos spermatikos). But the soul of the biosphere is far more sophisticated than the soul of our sun. Dawkins (1996: 72, 326) regards biological evolution as a planetary computer that runs an optimization algorithm. It has memory and it may even learn (Watson & Szathmary, 2016; Kouvaris et al., 2017). So the soul of the biosphere is mindlike even if it is not a mind. An atheistic pagan can say that the biosphere is enchanted or animated by thermodynamic powers. If evolution denotes the self-motion of the biosphere, then evolution is the soul of the biosphere. Dawkins says evolution blesses us with gifts (1998: 5; 2003: 12). And while he denies evolutionary design in his middle works, in both his early and later works he explicitly says that evolution designs organs, organisms, and ecological adaptations. It does not design them in any intelligent or purposive way. It designs them teleonomically, by running its optimization algorithm. Dennett says that “Darwin’s dangerous idea is that Design can emerge from mere Order via an algorithmic process” (1995: 83, his caps). Evolution is a mindlike artist, and we are its works of art. By designing our organs, and our many mutually beneficial relations with other organisms, evolution gave us biologically useful gifts. It gave us food. We thus seek to reciprocate, to give some food back to evolution. Since we cannot directly reciprocate food with food, we strive to apply the second rule: if you can’t give food, give grooming. But we can’t groom evolution. This failure triggers the third rule: if you can’t groom the original, groom an avatar. So we seek to groom statues of evolution.

160 An atheist can groom statues of evolution in a very literal way. Since the biosphere is often thought of as Gaia, you can groom a statue of Gaia – such statues are widely sold. These typically look like a woman pregnant with our earth. You can place them on an altar and light lamps to them or stroke them with feathers. You can sing the Homeric Hymn to Gaia to your statue. The Gaia statue refers to the mindlike thermodynamic enchantment of the biosphere, to its soul. It does not refer to any disembodied person. Of course, there are less literal ways to think of statues of evolution. There is no need to think of Gaia as a woman. After all, our earth is not an adult human female. More generally, a statue of evolution represents earthly evolution in some analogical or figurative way. For example, since the four cardinal directions (east, south, west, and north) represent our locatedness on earth, they can represent earthly evolution. The religious naturalist Donald Crosby encourages “rituals orienting to the four points of the compass, suggesting fealty to the whole of the earth and its creatures” (2014: 147). Bishop (2010: 533) says that atheists need to go beyond scientific naturalism in order to give thanks. However, these rituals do not exceed scientific naturalism. Lacewing (2016) argues that atheists cannot fully express transitive gratitude towards benefactors. But these behaviors do express fully transitive gratitude towards evolution. Some ways to symbolically groom evolution are even more abstract. A statue of evolution imitates the process of evolution. Evolution is an artist which designs its works; but evolution also destroys its old works to create its new works. So we imitate it by making works of art which we destroy. We symbolically groom evolution by making and sacrificing works of art. This happens in the cases of statues that get burned. During the Burning Man festival, a large wooden effigy is burned. On this view, the entire Burning Man festival gives thanks to evolution through ritual symbolic grooming. Burning Man has been interpreted in spiritual and religious terms (Kozinets & Sherry, 2004; Gilmore, 2010; Harvey, 2017). On the basis of historical similarities, it is plausible to say that Burning Man is pagan. Atheists can participate in Burning Man and similar thanks-giving rituals. The scientific story of evolution confirms that these rituals satisfy both the emotional desire to give thanks and the moral obligation to give thanks. Thus atheists can (and do) give thanks in ritual to evolution. The analysis of these ways of thanking evolution resembles the analysis of the pagan religious activities described by the Roman Platonists like Iamblichus and Sallustius. Iamblichus (M 1.12-15, 5.26) says the gods are not moved by our petitionary prayers or sacrifices. Sallustius (On the Gods and the World, ch. 14) says the gods are immutable and impassible. Our religious behaviors towards them do not change them. So why be religious? Iamblichus (M 1.8-15) says proper religious behaviors allow us to participate in the divine currents of energy that are always flowing through all things. Sallustius (chs. 15 & 16) says we should be religious because our behaviors towards the gods change us. The gods are always pouring their goodnesses into our lives. Our religious behaviors make us more receptive to the streams of divine benevolence. But how does this work with evolution? By giving thanks to it, we change our relations to it. Of course, we gain pleasure by satisfying our emotional desire and moral obligations to give thanks to evolution. More deeply, we change our ethical relations towards the biosphere. Bearing witness to evolution can inspire greater ecological awareness and activism. It can inspire greater reverence for all living agents, including other humans. But giving thanks to evolution does not imply worshipping it. To worship

161 evolution is to try to enter into a do ut des relation with it: I give that you might give. To worship evolution would be to try to change it to benefit us. But evolution does not alter its behaviors in response to our religious behaviors. So, while it can make sense for an atheist to give thanks to evolution, it would be foolish to petition it or worship it.

5. Giving Thanks to our Sun

Ancient humans attributed self-motion to our sun. Our sun moves on its own across the sky every day. It generates the seasons in a regular way. It appears to stand still for several days during the solstices. It suffers eclipses. Visible spots appear on its surface. Ancient humans also recognized that our sun gives us many useful things. Our sun gives us light and heat. Since it causes our crops to grow, it literally gives us food. Our sun is a thermodynamic agent which gives us many good things. Moreover, it engages us in a highly asymmetrical way. It is extremely powerful. It is like an extremely rich person giving gifts to a beggar. This extreme asymmetry suggests that our sun is acting altruistically: it is making a sacrifice for our sakes. Today we know that our sun is sacrificing itself. It is squandering its energy, burning itself out. Our sun is acting teleonomically for the sake of the creation of complexity. Since our sun gives us many biologically useful goods, we have the emotional urge and the moral obligation to directly reciprocate. But we cannot do this: our sun is too big and too far away. Since we cannot directly reciprocate, we feel indebted to our sun. This felt debt arouses gratitude. Now the fall-back rules apply: if you cannot give food, give grooming. So we have the urge and obligation to groom our sun. Again, we cannot do this: our sun is too big and too far away. Since we cannot groom our sun, the next rule applies: if you cannot groom the original, groom its avatar. Just as we satisfy our grooming obligations to soldiers by raising monuments to them, so we can satisfy our grooming obligation to our sun by raising a monument to it. We can make a statue of our sun and groom the statue. But what is a statue of our sun? Just as a statue of a dead soldier carries information about the soldier, so a statue of our sun carries information about it. There must be resemblance and mimesis. A statue of our sun has the same shape as our sun. It has that shape in the dynamical sense that it traces the path of our sun and marks the significant points in its relations with us. A statue of our sun is a solar clock or solar calendar. Ancient theurgists sought to animate the statues of their deities (Plotinus, E 4.3.11.1-10; Iamblichus, M 5.23). A solar calendar is a statue that is animated by the sun. Statues raised to our sun include simple rock carvings or paintings (such as the sun-daggers of the American southwest). They include stone circles like Stonehenge. They typically mark the solstices and equinoxes. Are all these structures ancient? Many dozens of new solar circles have been built in recent years. Building monuments to our sun bears witness to the life-giving powers of our sun. It is another example of giving thanks by bearing witness. A monument to our sun (that is, a solar calendar) is an avatar or symbolic representative of our sun. But a monument to our sun is also work of art. It is a work of sculpture and architecture. Once the monument is raised, people can groom it by touching it or by performing rituals in it or with it. These rituals can be as simple as shouting “Sol invictus!” on the morning of the winter solstice. Or they can involve

162 symbolic offerings of food, flowers, or other resources. And these rituals are also works of art – they are works of performance art, works of the dramatic arts, or works of dance. By regularly performing these rituals, we continue to bear witness to our sun. By grooming the solar calendar, you groom our sun. This is a kind of sympathetic magic. Its power is purely psychological. It works on the mind of the pagan theist who believes our sun is literally a god; but it works just as well on the mind of the atheist. By building a monument to our sun, and by performing rituals in it, the atheist gives thanks to our sun. This is not fictionalism. The atheist isn’t pretending to give thanks or doing live-action role-play (larping). The atheist really does give thanks. The atheist satisfies their emotional urge to give thanks as well as their moral obligation. By their similarities with historical pagan activities, it is plausible to say that solar thanks-giving rituals are pagan. Once more, if there are normative forces pushing atheists towards such rituals, then they are pushing atheists towards an atheistic paganism. Some atheists do honor the sun on the winter solstice (Cimino & Smith, 2014: 134). And even if they do not explicitly identify as pagans, their activities resemble ancient pagan activities. But there are atheists who do explicitly identify as pagans. Many active atheistic pagan groups currently exist (e.g. Humanistic Paganism, 2020; Atheopaganism, 2020). Along with other neopagans (like Wiccans), these atheistic pagans endorse the ritual celebration of the eight solar holidays on the wheel of the year (Green, 2019: 93-6). These are the solstices, the equinoxes, and the days midway between them. Different acts of thanks-giving can be overlaid on one ritual. It is possible to interpret Burning Man as an act of giving thanks both to our sun and to evolution. After all, earthly evolution is driven by solar energy. On this interpretation, the Man is an avatar of our sun. Our sun, like the Man, powers the self-organization of physical chaos into beautiful complexity. And as the power of self-surpassing works in our sun, it burns itself out for the sake of this beauty. The participants in the Burning Man festival build a city around the Man. By building Black Rock City around the Man, we imitate the evolution of earthly life around our sun. When the Man burns, he is not dying; on the contrary, he is most completely alive. Hence the crowd at Burning Man celebrates the burning of the Man. His combustion signifies spirit surpassing itself. It surpasses itself towards a new and greater Man, a new and greater sun. When we burn the Man, we give thanks to our sun. We groom an effigy of our sun by making it do what our sun does: our sun burns. This is ritual mimesis: just as our sun sacrifices itself for us, so we sacrifice the Man for our sun. Here is reciprocity: we give thanks to our sun by giving back to it an image of what it gave to us. The fire that consumes the Man points towards the absolute fire of the Sun above all burning things. But that fire was ultimately kindled within the earth. It comes from the One. By burning the Man, we give thanks to the One. We celebrate the emergence of light from darkness. The religious analysis of thanking our sun parallels the religious analysis of thanking evolution. By giving thanks to our sun, we do not change it. We change only our relations to it. Specifically, we change our ethical relations towards its products, that is, towards the complex network of life which emerges from its gifts. Bearing witness to our sun can inspire greater ecological awareness and activism. It can inspire greater caring for all living agents, including our fellow humans. Just as giving thanks to evolution does not imply worshipping it, so giving thanks to our sun does not imply worshipping it. Atheists do not try to bribe our sun or beg it for favors.

163 6. Atheistic Contemplative Prayer

Atheists can and should give thanks to our sun, and to our evolving biosphere. By giving thanks to these agents, atheists are engaging in pagan activities. But our entire universe, finely-tuned for the evolution of internal complexity, is also a thermodynamic agent. It produces as much order as possible by producing entropy as fast as possible. Atheists can and should give thanks to our finely-tuned universe. And so the expected rules of reciprocity apply: atheists give thanks to our universe by grooming an avatar of our universe. We give thanks to it by bearing witness to it. Carl Sagan said “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself” (1980). Dawkins says “We can get outside the universe. I mean in the sense of putting a model of the universe inside our skulls” (1998: 312). Of course, he means that we put a linguistic model of the universe inside our skulls by doing science. By doing science, you build an symbolic avatar of the universe inside your head. By thinking about that avatar, you groom it linguistically. Although linguistic grooming resembles other acts of thanks-giving, it is reasonable to refer to it, within a spiritual context, as prayer. Obviously, this is not petitionary prayer; on the contrary, it is contemplative prayer. Thus Colledge (2013: 41-2) proposes that the deepest expressions of atheistic gratitude are acts of prayer or acts of cosmic benediction. Just as atheists need not give deep thanks to any persons, so they need not pray to any persons. The idea that giving a rational account of the universe is a kind of contemplative prayer probably goes all the way back to Plato’s Timaeus (Layne, 2013). If grooming a cognitive avatar of the universe is a kind of prayer, it is a pagan kind of prayer. Both ancient Neoplatonic pagans and modern atheists regard this contemplative activity as extremely valuable. Dawkins says that bearing witness to the universe by building scientific models of it makes life worth living (1998: x, 1-6, 313). Most deeply, atheists can and should give thanks to existence for existence (Colledge, 2013). Here again we give thanks by bearing witness, and we bear witness by grooming avatars. But the study of existence is philosophical. By doing philosophy, we bear witness to existence. By building philosophical theories of existence, we construct and groom avatars of existence inside of our heads. Again, this is contemplative prayer. And since existence is the deepest category, bearing witness to it is the deepest way to bear witness. If Dawkins is right about the value of contemplation, then bearing this deepest witness makes life most worth living. By giving deep thanks to being-itself through contemplative prayer, atheistic pagans redeem their lives. But philosophical pagans have the symbolic resources to go beyond merely linguistic prayer. We have used the four elements to symbolize the most basic aspects of reality. Hence rituals for giving thanks to existence may involve these elements. Wiccans use the four elements in their rituals (Sabin, 2011: ch. 6). Donald Crosby says that “water, fire, air and earth . . . can be put to use as religious symbols and, in particular, as symbols of nature as the religious ultimate” (2014: 90). Porphyry thought of philosophical arguments as sacrifices offered to the deities (On Abstinence, 2.34-6). Some philosophical pagans may wish to follow him on this point, and use these elements in prayers of grateful contemplation directed towards the One.

164 23. The Wheel of the Year 1. The Wiccan Solar Holidays

ight solar holidays make the wheel of the year. These include the solstices, the equinoxes, and the four cross- quarter days between them. The holidays on the wheel are secular in two senses. They are secular in the sense that they involve only the relations between our earth and sun, which are both natural objects. They are also secular in the sense that they have been developed in many different ways by different cultural groups. They have counterparts in many different cultural life-worlds. They are religiously celebrated by neopagans, such as the Druids (Greer, 2006: 74-82) and Wiccans (Sabin, 2011: ch. 9). Referring to them as Earth Holy Days, they are celebrated by the Catholic Green Sisters (Taylor, 2007: 252-8). Pantheists also encourage rituals on the eight seasonal holidays (Toland, 1720; Harrison, 1999: 84). As part of his religious naturalism, Donald Crosby encourages “rituals recognizing the equinoxes and solstices” (2014: 147). Perhaps he would also advocate rituals on the cross-quarter days. However, they are most closely associated with Wicca (Sabin, 2011: ch. 9). The holidays on the Wiccan wheel are known as sabbats. Figure 23.1 shows the Wiccan wheel, using the Celtic names of the holidays. For theistic Wiccans, these days symbolize events in the life-cycles of the god and goddess. Silver Elder (2011: 23) writes that our sun represents the male principle in nature (the Wiccan God) and our earth represents the female principle in nature (the Wiccan Goddess).

Figure 23.1 The Wiccan wheel of the year.

165 The sabbats are closely associated with agriculture (the annual cycle of planting, tending, and harvesting) and animal husbandry (the annual cycle of animal mating, birth, growth, and slaughter). For Wiccans, these yearly patterns are deified; they are translated into the life-cycle of the god and goddess. The stable earth represents the goddess and the variable sun represents the god. Although our earth remains constant, our sun waxes and wanes. Hence the god is born, grows, peaks, declines, dies, and is reborn. Since the wheel of the year symbolizes the repeated biological pattern of the solar god, the Wheel also symbolizes the pattern of reincarnation. Silver Elder writes that the wheel of the year illustrates “the Cycle of Infinity and Reincarnation with the seasonal cycle acting as the metaphor for the regeneration of life” (2011: 23). The dramatic interaction of the sun-god and earth-goddess includes both the cycles of fertility and of reincarnation. Thus the old sun-god mates with the earth-goddess so that she becomes impregnated with the new sun-god. After mating, the old sun-god dies. Shortly after his death, the new sun-god is born, grows to sexual maturity, and mates with the earth-goddess. Hence the cycle repeats. Although the cycle appears to involve mother- son incest, Wiccans reject all literal interpretations of the cycle and thus reject the idea that the cycle either depicts or affirms incest (Cunningham, 2004: 71). On the contrary, the sun-god and earth-goddess are merely ideal types or natural forces. At the level of biological types, the same abstract male is always fertilizing the same abstract female. It seems more accurate to say that the cycle depicts a perfectly enclosed male-female pair. It is a complete couple, sufficient for the generation of all things. The eight sabbats on the wheel of the year are outlined below. Sabin describes the sabbat celebrations (2011: ch. 9). Silver Elder’s entire 2011 is dedicated to them. Each sabbat includes relations between the god and goddess. For the Farrars, these relations are extremely complex, involving avatars of the sun-god as the Oak King and Holly King (1981: 24-28). As Wicca evolved and became Americanized, this complexity seems to have been dropped. By the time of Cunningham and Sabin, the god-goddess interactions are simpler. Here the god-goddess interactions are taken from Cunningham (2004: ch. 8). Yule (Winter Solstice; about 21 December) – Yule is the shortest day of the year; after Yule, the days lengthen and our sun grows stronger. Thus Wiccans interpret this to mean that the earth-goddess gives birth to the sun-god at Yule. Cunningham says that at Yule “[t]he Goddess gives birth to a son, the God” (2004: 67). The fallow fields are interpreted as the goddess resting after giving birth. For Wiccans, the birth of our sun is in fact rebirth; thus Yule “is a reminder that the ultimate product of death is rebirth” (2004: 67). Yule is celebrated in the traditional pagan ways. You can put up a Yule tree, light a Yule log, hang mistletoe, give children gifts, and so on. Imbolc (about 1 February) – The lengthening days are interpreted as “the recovery of the Goddess after giving birth to the God” (2004: 67). The sun-god is “a young lusty boy”, though he is still immature. Cunningham says that Imbolc is a “sabbat of purification after the shut-in life of winter, through the renewing power of the sun” (2004: 68). The celebration of Imbolc may involve bonfire parties. Ostara (Spring Equinox; about 21 March) – At the start of spring, natural creative power is manifest in increased biological activity. The emergence of vegetation during the spring is interpreted as the greater sexual maturity of the god and goddess: “The Goddess blankets our earth with fertility” while “the God stretches and grows to maturity.

166 He walks the greening fields and delights in the abundance of nature” (2004: 68). Natural creative power stirs in animals as well as plants: “the God and Goddess impel the wild creatures of the earth to reproduce” (2004: 68). Beltane (May Day; about 1 May) – By May Day the creative sexual powers of the god and goddess are fully mature: “They fall in love, lie among the grasses and blossoms, and unite. The Goddess becomes pregnant of the God” (2004: 69). The old pagan celebrations on Beltane often involved dancing around a Maypole. Litha (Summer Solstice; about 21 June) – The summer solstice is the longest day of the year. On this day “the powers of nature reach their highest point. Our earth is awash in the fertility of the Goddess and God” (2004: 69). Lammas (about 4 August) – Lammas is the first harvest festival, when many agricultural products of the summer initially become available. Since the foremost of these products in the northern hemisphere is corn, it is often thought of as a corn festival. At this time the waning of our sun becomes manifest in the sky. The god loses his strength and “[t]he Goddess watches in sorrow and joy as she realizes that the God is dying, and yet lives on inside her as her child” (2004: 70). Mabon (Fall Equinox; about 21 September) – At the fall equinox, light and darkness are in balance, but darkness is ascending. The god is preparing to die. Thus “[t]he Goddess nods in the weakening sun, though fire burns within her womb. She feels the presence of the God even as he wanes” (2004: 70). Samhain (about 31 October) – At Samhain the sun-god dies: “the Wicca say farewell to the God. This is a temporary farewell. He isn’t wrapped in eternal darkness, but readies to be reborn of the Goddess at Yule” (2004: 70). Samhain is the Wiccan new year and is marked with elaborate and varied ceremonies. One way some Wiccans honor the dead is through Silent Suppers (Cuhulain, 2011: 96; Sabin, 2011: 171). A Silent Supper is served and eaten in silence, with a place at the table set for the dead. Buckland (1986: 99-101) describes a ritual for burning away weaknesses at Samhain. Participants write down their weaknesses on papers which are then ritually burned.

2. The Wiccan Common Liturgy

As religious holidays, the sabbats are celebrated through various ritual forms. All sabbat rituals share a common framework holding content which varies from sabbat to sabbat. The common liturgy is presented in The Farrars (1981: 11-60), Cunningham (2004: ch. 13), Sabin (2011: ch. 10), Silver Elder (2011: 88-105). Here are the stages of the common framework as described by Silver Elder (2011: 88): “Preparation; Opening the Rite; Casting the Circle; Calling of the Quarters and Inviting the Deities; Cakes and Wine; Banishing of the Circle and Closing the Rite.” The opening and closing actions create a temporal boundary for the sabbat ritual. The circle and the quarters create a spatial boundary. Put together, they make a spati- temporal boundary for the sabbat ritual. They create a ritual container, a sacred space- time. This sacred space-time is carved out from the space-time of our universe. It holds a virtual copy of part of some alien possible universe. That alien universe is the target universe of the ritual. Part of that universe is analogically simulated inside of the ritual container. By participating in the ritual, people simulate being their target selves. Your target self is your counterpart in the target universe. It is another possible version of your

167 self. To simulate another version of your self is to channel that other version. By performing the ritual, the participants channel their target selves. Casting the Circle. Casting the circle involves drawing or marking out a circle in which the ritual takes place. The circle is usually cast by some ritual leader or selected participant. The circle may be drawn on the ground or it may be marked by placing stones, sticks, candles, or other indicators. These are typically placed at the four quarters, that is, the cardinal directions. The circle is typically cast by moving in a deosil direction, which follows the movement of our sun across the sky. Hence casting the circle mirrors the solar cycle of the year. Casting the circle is done by invoking the closing power, which concentrates working energy. Calling the Directions. The directions include the four quarters, north, east, south, and west. The directions may be called by a single leader, or by one person for each direction, or by all the participants together. After calling the quarters, the vertical directions of up and down (or below and above, depths and heights) may also be invoked. The center may be invoked as the last direction. Wiccans often associate them with powers. More naturalistic Wiccans may interpret these powers as powers of nature. The quarters, when called, are named and welcomed. The calls to the quarters are invocations, that is, they are symbolic acts which seek to arouse the powers in the circle or in those present. After the quarters are named, something is usually said about them. I will just say “powers of directional concepts and values,” which can be filled in with detailed statements in many ways. A person calling some direction might read a poem about it. Here is a formula for calling the quarters in a deosil direction:

Powers of the east, powers of easterly concepts and values, we bid you hail, and welcome. Powers of the south, powers of southerly concepts and values, we bid you hail, and welcome. Powers of the west, powers of westerly concepts and values, we bid you hail, and welcome. Powers of the north, powers of northerly concepts and values, we bid you hail, and welcome.

Calling the Elements. The elements are the four cardinal elements, fire, earth, air, and water. A fifth element, such as light or spirit, may also be invoked. These are invoked much like the directions. The elements may be called by a single leader, or by one person for each element, or by all the participants together. Many rituals invoke the directions and the elements together. They may say something like “Powers of the east, powers of air, . . .”. However, it is hard to see any clear way of correlating the directions with the elements, and so the elements can be invoked separately. After the elements are named, something is usually said about them. I will just say “powers of elemental

168 concepts and values,” which can be filled in with detailed statements in many ways. Here is a formula for calling the elements:

Powers of water, powers of watery concepts and values, we bid you hail, and welcome. Powers of earth, powers of earthy concepts and values, we bid you hail, and welcome. Powers of air, powers of airy concepts and values, we bid you hail, and welcome. Powers of fire, powers of fiery concepts and values, we bid you hail, and welcome.

Core Ritual. After the quarters and elements are called, the core ritual begins. Different sabbats have different core rituals. The ritual leaders and participants play their appropriate roles in the core ritual. The core ritual may involve singing, chanting, drumming, and dancing. The core ritual may involve dissociative practices. These practices enable people to cognitively unbind from their actual selves and to cognitively rebind to their target selves. It may involve people reading assigned texts, or reading texts which they have written. For theistic Wiccans, these activities may be directed towards the God and Goddess. Thus theistic Wiccans may sing hymns to the god or goddess, or may offer prayers of praise or thanks-giving. Core rituals may involve many activities. However, it must be stressed that all these activities must be ethical. Releasing the Elements. After the core ritual, the elements are released. They are released in the reverse order. They may be released by a single leader, or by one person for each element, or by all the participants together. Thus:

Powers of fire, powers of fiery concepts and values, stay if you can, go if you must, we bid you hail, and farewell. Powers of air, powers of airy concepts and values, stay if you can, go if you must, we bid you hail, and farewell. Powers of earth, powers of earthy concepts and values, stay if you can, go if you must, we bid you hail, and farewell. Powers of water, powers of watery concepts and values, stay if you can, go if you must, we bid you hail, and farewell.

169

Releasing the Directions. If the directions and elements were called together, then they should be released together. If they were not called together, then the directions should be released in reverse order. So, if they were called in the deosil order, then they will be released in the widdershins order, that is, counter-sunwise. The directions may be called by a single leader, or by one person for each direction, or by all the participants together. A script for releasing them looks like this:

Powers of the north, powers of northerly concepts and values, stay if you can, go if you must, we bid you hail, and farewell. Powers of the west, powers of westerly concepts and values, stay if you can, go if you must, we bid you hail, and farewell. Powers of the south, powers of southerly concepts and values, stay if you can, go if you must, we bid you hail, and farewell. Powers of the east, powers of easterly concepts and values, stay if you can, go if you must, we bid you hail, and farewell.

Uncasting the Circle. After the powers have been released, the circle is opened by uncasting it. The uncasting, or dissolving of the circle, is done by the opening power, which releases the energy that was concentrated at the start of the ritual. The ritual is finished as the circle is opened. It is opened or uncast in the reverse direction of its closure or casting. If it was closed by moving clockwise, then it is opened by moving counter-clockwise (and vice versa). As it is opened, the participants may chant: “The circle is open, but never broken.” The ritual ends with the announcement that it is finished. The leaders give the announcement by blessing the participants: “Blessed be.” The participants may respond with “Blessed be.” After the formal ritual, the sabbat celebration may involve an informal potluck feast. The Farrars encourage every sabbat to turn into a party (1981: 21).

3. Naturalizing the Wheel

As part of his Religion of Nature, Donald Crosby encourages “rituals recognizing the equinoxes and solstices” (2014: 147). Perhaps he would also advocate rituals on the cross-quarter days, thus completing the wheel of the year. Pantheists also encourage rituals on the eight seasonal holidays (Harrison, 1999: 84). Some pagans may think of these holidays as somber and serious affairs. However, for philosophical pagans, these holidays are great opportunities for solitary or social fun. They are great times for people

170 to gather together in celebration. They are wonderful opportunities for families to celebrate together and to introduce children to pagan concepts. The holidays on the wheel mark the seasonal waxing and waning of light and heat. The solstices and equinoxes correspond to the waxing and waning of light. The solstices are luminous maximums and minimums; the equinoxes are luminous equivalences. The cross-quarter days correspond to the waxing and waning of heat. The thermistices are thermal extrema; the equitherms are days of thermal balance. Of course, since the seasons are inverted between the northern and southern hemispheres, there are really two wheels. For instance, the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere is the summer solstice in the southern hemisphere. Here the dates for the northern hemisphere are used. These dates can be inverted for the southern hemisphere. Figure 23.2 shows the holidays on the natural wheel labeled in terms of light and heat.

Figure 23.2 The natural wheel of the year.

Winter Solstice. The winter solstice occurs around 21 December. The night of the winter solstice is the longest night. The power of light is minimal. However, on the morning after that night, the power of the light begins to increase. So the winter solstice begins the waxing of the light. Wiccans refer to this holiday as Yule. Winter Thermistice. The winter thermistice occurs during the first week of February. The temperature is minimal and the power of heat is weakest. But after the winter thermistice, the power of heat begins to increase. So the winter thermistice is the start of the waxing of heat. Wiccans refer to this holiday as Imbolc. Of course, Wiccans are not the only ones who celebrate Imbolc. The Beltane Fire Society (2018), in Edinburgh, Scotland, stages an Imbolc festival. This festival is both secular and pagan. Spring Equinox. The spring equinox occurs around 21 March. At this time, light and darkness are in balance, but light is ascending. This is the start of the bright half of the year (in which light exceeds darkness). Wiccans refer to it as Ostara. Spring Equitherm. The spring equitherm occurs during the first week of May. Now hot and cold are in balance, but heat is ascending. The hot half of the year begins (in

171 which heat exceeds cold). Wiccans refer to this holiday as Beltane. Other neopagans celebrate this festival in many ways. The Beltane Fire Society (2018), in Edinburgh, Scotland, stages a Beltane festival. This festival is both secular and pagan. Summer Solstice. The summer solstice occurs around 21 June. Since it is the longest day, the power of light has reached its maximum. But after this climax, the power of the light begins to decrease – the summer solstice marks the start of the waning of the light. The darkness begins to grow. Wiccans refer to this day as Litha. Summer Thermistice. The summer thermistice occurs during the first week of August. Around this time, the power of heat reaches its maximum. But after the summer thermistice, the power of heat begins to decline. So the summer thermistice is the start of the waning of heat. Wiccans refer to it as Lughnasadh or Lammas. The Beltane Fire Society (2018), in Edinburgh, Scotland, stages a Lughnasadh festival. This festival is both secular and pagan. It is a modern counterpart of an old celebration. Fall Equinox. The fall equinox occurs around 21 September. Now light and darkness are in balance, but darkness is ascending. This is the start of the dark half of the year (in which darkness surpasses light). Wiccans call it Mabon. Fall Equitherm. The fall equitherm occurs during the first week of November. Heat and cold are now in balance, but cold is gaining. This is the start of the cold half of the year (in which cold exceeds heat). Wiccans call this day Samhain (also spelled as Samhuinn, and other ways). The Beltane Fire Society (2018), in Edinburgh, Scotland, stages a Samhuinn festival. This festival is both secular and pagan.

4. Naturalizing the Common Liturgy

Philosophical pagans roughly follow the Wiccan common liturgy. Of course, we are not constrained by any particular Wiccan features. Our solar holidays do not celebrate events in the lifecycle of the God and Goddess. Nevertheless, since the closing power is a counterpart of the Wiccan Goddess, and the opening power is a counterpart of the Wiccan God, we can appeal to them. Our symbols do not refer to any supernatural powers or agents. But they can refer to natural powers and agents. We are entirely free to invoke a wide variety of powers in our own bodies. We can sing hymns like Goethe’s Hymn to Nature. We can praise and give thanks to the closing and opening powers. We can praise and give thanks to evolution and to all the wheels of nature at all scales. Casting the Circle. We cast our circles much like Wiccans. Calling the Directions. We call the directions much like Wiccans. However, our directions do not refer to any supernatural powers or agents. We have already argued that the four cardinal directions can be aligned with the four cardinal virtues of ancient virtue ethics (such as the Stoic or Platonic virtues). Other interpretations of the directions are surely possible, but here is the interpretation in terms of virtue:

Powers of the east, virtues of temperance and compassion, we invite you into our circle and into our lives. Hail and welcome! Powers of the south, virtues of justice and honesty,

172 we invite you into our circle and into your lives. Hail and welcome! Powers of the west, virtues of courage and endurance, we invite you into our circle and into our lives. Hail and welcome! Powers of the north, virtues of prudence and intelligence, we invite you into our circle and into our lives. Hail and welcome!

When I opened the ritual of calling the world tree, I presented an interpretation of the directions in terms of the powers useful for action:

Powers of the east, powers of the hand, show us what needs to be seen. Powers of the south, powers of the voice, give sound to what needs to be said. Powers of the west, powers of the eyes, let us see that which is shown. Powers of the north, powers of the ears, let us hear that which is spoken. Powers of the depths, powers of the past, we accept your energies. Powers of the heights, powers of the future, we strive towards the ideals shining like stars in your sky.

Calling the Elements. We call the elements much like Wiccans. However, our elements do not refer to any supernatural powers or agents. We have already argued for a Platonic interpretation of the elements. Thus:

Powers of water, powers of the abyss of non-being, we recognize your creative ultimacy. We bid you hail, and welcome. Powers of earth, powers of pure existence and perfect self-consistency, we celebrate your plenitude and generosity. We bid you hail, and welcome. Powers of air, powers of structure and possibility, we rejoice in your freedom and clarity. We bid you hail, and welcome. Powers of fire, powers of actual presence, we invoke your providential energy.

173 We bid you hail, and welcome.

Core Ritual. After the quarters and elements are called, the core ritual begins. Different solar holidays have different core rituals. The ritual leaders and participants play their appropriate roles in the core ritual. The core ritual may involve singing, chanting, drumming, and dancing. It may involve many people reading assigned texts, or reading texts which they have written. Core rituals may involve many activities, directed to the powers and agencies that appear in philosophical paganism. Since our sun symbolizes the Good, the Good may play a central role in these rituals. However, it must be stressed that all these activities must be ethical. Releasing the Elements. After the core ritual, the elements are released. They are released in the reverse order. They may be released by a single leader, or by one person for each element, or by all the participants together. Thus we release fire; release air; release earth; and release water. Releasing the Directions. Much like the Wiccans, we release the directions in reverse order. A script for releasing them looks like this: release the north; release the west; release the south; and release the east. Uncasting the Circle. We uncast our circles much like the Wiccans. None of those Wiccan openings involve any woo. As the circle is opened, the participants may chant: “The circle is open, but never broken.” The ritual ends with the announcement that it is finished. The leaders give the announcement by blessing the participants: “Blessed be.” The participants may respond with “Blessed be.” After the formal ritual, the holiday can involve a potluck or other feast, and can turn into a party.

5. The Great Cycles of Nature

The wheel of the year follows the waxing and waning of our sun. The winter solstice is often thought of as the time at which our sun is reborn. From the winter to summer solstices, the power of our sun grows. The summer solstice is the climax of solar power. From the summer to winter solstice, our sun grows weaker and dies. But our sun is reborn at the next winter solstice. So the wheel of the year is the circle of birth and death. It is the cycle of fertility. It symbolizes the natural waxing and waning of vegetation and the cycles of animal reproduction. Moreover, the wheel can symbolize an entire human life, from conception or birth to death. Our lives start with conception or birth, they grow in complexity. We wax. Then our lives begin to wane. They end. The wheel can help you gain a larger perspective on life: the wheels of nature were turning before you were born; they will turn after you die. You are a very small part of an immense cyclical computation. This computation neither loves you nor hates you. It is indifferent to your pleasures and your pains. It brought you into being; it will carry you away; it will bring you back; it will multiply your form in infinitely many ways. Nature turns; you turn with it. After our species is gone, the wheels will still turn. And the wheel is much greater than the solar wheel. Our sun is orbiting the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. It will continue to orbit that center long it expands to incinerate our earth. The cosmic wheels are sublime. They should inspire awe. For the Stoics, the cosmos goes through an endless cycle of birth, growth, and death. It is reborn, like a Phoenix, from its own ashes. So the wheel can symbolize the cycle of

174 cosmic reproduction in Stoic cosmology. The old Stoic cosmology gets updated in evolutionary cosmology: simpler parent universes beget more complex offspring universes. Universes are born; they grow in complexity; then they wane and die. Hence the wheel of the year can also symbolize the cycle of cosmic reproduction in pagan evolutionary cosmology. For the Stoics, the cosmic cycle was the reproductive cycle of the divine couple Hera and Zeus. It is a the reproductive cycle of a god and goddess. For Wiccans, the wheel of the year symbolizes the reproductive cycle of the God and the Goddess. So the Stoic cycle has a counterpart in the Wiccan couple. Just as the wheel of the year symbolizes cosmic rebirth, so also it can symbolize personal rebirth. As the cosmic wheels turn, the Stoics thought they would recreate all things. They would bring you back to life. So you would be recreated in the next universe. The wheel follows the cycle of vegetation: the seed grows into a mature plant; the mature plant produces seeds and dies; new seeds grow into new plants. The seed is your body-program; it is the form of your body; it is your soul. Just as seeds are sown from year to year, so body-programs are sown from universe to universe. Hence the wheel symbolizes the reincarnation of souls across universes. This symbolism is expressed in a pagan chant, usually attributed to the Druid Ian Carrigan:

Hoof and Horn, Hoof and Horn All that dies shall be reborn. Corn and Grain, Corn and Grain All that falls shall rise again.

175 24. Mind-Craft: Stoicism 1. From Rational Order to Duty

ivine rationality, according to the Stoics, rules our universe. This divine rationality is the Logos. For the Stoics (but not for us), the Logos is mental. The Logos is the mind of the Cosmic Zeus. It intelligently designed our universe. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus says that the Logos is like the ruler of a city (Discourses (D), 1.9.4-6; 1.12.7-8). Just as the rulers of human cities design the laws of their cities, so the Logos has designed the laws of our universe. But the Logos goes further: it wills the events in our universe (D 1.1.17). Epictetus says the Logos ordains all things (D 1.12.15-16; 1.17.27- 28). To say that the Logos ordains all things means that it fits them altogether into a unified plan. Every thing has a proper role to play in this unified cosmic plan. Epictetus portrays the Logos as a person who intelligently manages the universe. He likens it to a ruler, a military general, a playwright, or the manager of a household. Just as the rulers of human cities assign roles to all the citizens, so the Logos has assigned roles to all the citizens of the cosmic city (D 1.12.7-8). Or the Logos is like a general who organizes a campaign (D 3.24.31-6). Just as a general assigns a role to every soldier, so the Logos assigns a role to every thing in the universe. Or the Logos is like an author who writes a play. Just as the author assigns a script to every actor, so the Logos assigns a role to every thing in the universe (D 1.29.38-49). Or the Logos is like the manager of a great cosmic household (D 3.22.4-7). However, there is no reason to believe that our universe is intelligently designed by some cosmic mind. Philosophical pagans deny that our universe was intelligently designed. On the contrary, our universe emerges from the logical power of the One. The One maximizes self-consistency. By maximizing self-consistency, it generates the world tree. The world tree grows through evolution by rational selection. After a long evolutionary process, our complex universe comes into existence. Since our universe emerged in an evolutionary process, it was not intelligently designed by any mind. Nevertheless, we do not object to saying that the structure of our universe was designed. Evolution by rational selection is an optimization algorithm. We agree with Dennett that entirely mindless optimization algorithms design things (1995: 50, 83). Consequently, while our universe was designed, it was not intelligently designed. The designer is mindless logic. No mind is required for the proof of the Pythagorean theorem to be true. And so no mind is required for the truth of the algorithmic logic that creates all the universes in the world tree. For philosophical pagans, the Logos is this entirely mindless algorithmic logic. Philosophical pagans agree with Epictetus that our universe is rationally organized. We argue like this: (1) If our universe were not rationally organized by the Logos, then that lack of rational organization would be a reason against its existence. (2) And if there were any reason against its existence, then it would not exist. (3) But it does exist. (4) Therefore, our universe is rationally organized by the Logos. Since it is rationally organized, all the parts of our universe have natural roles. Our universe resembles an

176 organism. Evolution by natural selection assigns natural roles to all the organs in any organism. These roles are the proper functions of the organs. The proper function of the heart is to pump blood; the proper function of the eye is to see; and so on. Analogously, all things in our universe have natural roles and proper functions. Although all things have natural roles and proper functions, most of these are not very significant. They gain significance as things gain agency. We defined agency in thermodynamic terms: an agent is anything that strives to produce as much order as possible by producing entropy as fast as possible. The basic agents in our universe are the stars. So the sun is an agent. According to Epictetus, because agents have roles, they have proper functions; because they have proper functions, they have duties. The duty of every agent is to perform its proper functions. Every agent ought to perform its proper functions. Since the sun is an agent, it ought to do its duties. Epictetus has the Logos tell the sun that its function is to provide the planets with energy. Its duty is to drive all the thermodynamic cycles on earth. The Logos tells the sun “go and do your duty” (D 3.22.4-7). The thermodynamic power of the sun drives the evolution of life on earth. It drives the evolution of ecosystems in which species have evolved to perform roles with respect to each other. The lion has the role of the predator against cattle; the calf has the role of prey for the lion; the bull has the role of protector of the calf and thus the role of adversary to the lion (D 3.22.4-7). Evolution has made these organisms fit to play their roles. By performing their proper functions, they do their natural duties. Humans are rational social animals. Since we evolved, evolution has fit us to perform our proper functions. Evolution has equipped our bodies with natural powers. Epictetus says the wisdom of Agamemnon makes him fit to play the role of the leader while the warrior nature of Achilles makes him fit to play the soldier (D 3.22.4-7). More generally, since we are all rational social animals, we ought to play those roles. The duty of every human animal is to behave rationally and socially. Of course, since we define agency in thermodynamic terms, we also define it in terms of spirit. Spirit is that extropic force that drives all self-surpassing. Spirit drives you to perform your proper functions and to do your natural duties. Spirit generates functionality. Spirit equips you with the dispositions needed to do your duties. These dispositions are virtues. However, while your soul is illuminated by spirit, it is also clouded by matter. Matter is functional impairment. Since your soul contains matter, it is always being dragged down into self-conflict; it is always being dragged down into self-inconsistency. Matter degrades you with the dispositions that avoid your duties. These are the vices.

2. The Stoic Workout

Your goal is do your duties. However, to do your duties, you need to cultivate your virtues. To cultivate your virtues, you need to train yourself. As behavioral dispositions, virtues are habits that need to be learned. You must work through training exercises. You must train your brain to respond well to external stimuli (D 1.1.31-32). After you decide to reform yourself, you will work on changing the structure of your mind. You will say “From this time forth, the material that I must work upon is my own mind, just as that of a carpenter is wood, and that of a cobbler is leather” (D 3.22.19-20). But for the Stoics, you mind is your brain. So to work on your mind is to work on your brain, as

177 well as on the rest of your body. Thus Stoic training is like medical therapy (D 2.14.21- 22). Epictetus says that a philosophical school is like a hospital (D 3.23.30). Virtue is a skill which must be learned like any other skill. You must learn virtue like a student learns to play the piano, learns carpentry, or learns medicine. Moral training is much like athletic training (D 1.4.13-20; 1.4.20; 2.18.27; 3.10.4-9). Thus you must work hard to become a moral athlete (D 1.18.21-23). Just as a student learns some skill by working through a system of exercises (such as musical scales, chess problems, and so on), so you must learn virtue by working through a system of moral exercises. Hence Stoicism is a kind of mind-craft. Mind-craft is a system of techniques for regulating your mind. It is a system of technical skills; it is a craft; it is mental technology. The Stoics offered their own training plan: the Stoic Workout. You must practice the Stoic Workout. Although Epictetus never presents the entire Stoic Workout in one place, parts of the Stoic Workout are found throughout his writings. These parts are assembled here into an outline of the Stoic Workout. Most of the Stoic Workout involves activities which you can do by yourself. It involves self-talk and self-visualization (D 4.9.13-17). It is a kind of self-help psychotherapy. But the Workout can be extended or supplemented using external tools and technologies. The Workout can be done with a coach and with others in training. The ancient Stoic schools involved both students and teachers. The teachers acted much as life coaches for their students. And you may wish to do short intensive practices like Stoic Week or Stoic Camp. You practice the Stoic Workout whenever you meet some challenge or adversity. The Stoic Workout has these steps: (1) You tell yourself to physically describe the adversity. Recognize with Epictetus that every event has two handles (Enchiridion, 43). It has a bad handle and a good handle. (2) You tell yourself that you could take the event by the bad handle: you could react badly (with emotional distress). (3) Tell yourself that you do not have to grab it by the bad handle. (4) Tell yourself that you have no reason to grab it by the bad handle. (5) Tell yourself that the adversity has a good handle. And by this handle, it is connected to the Good itself. (6) Assure yourself that you can respond well to this event. You can grab it by its good handle. You have the skills and virtues needed to respond well to it. Reframe it as an opportunity to exercise those skills and virtues. (7) Figure out ways to respond well; you make plans for reacting well. (8) Put your plans to react well into action. (9) Therefore, you react well to the adverse event. You provide a positive example for others who go through a similar adversity. To reduce your emotional distress, you need to practice the Stoic Workout regularly and for a long time (D 2.9.13-15; 2.16.4; 2.18.1-7). Just as it takes a long time for a calf to grow up into a mature bull, so it takes a long time for an immature mind to grow up into a mature mind (D 1.2.32). Again, just as the growth of a mature plant is long and gradual, so the growth of rationality and virtue is long and gradual (D 4.9.36-43). If you start with small adversities and work up to larger ones, then you will be more likely to persist in your practice. So you ought to start small and work up (D 1.18.18-19; 3.12.12; EN 12). Start with the loss of cheap household items, work up to the loss of more expensive things, then to your health and the parts of your body, then to your family members (D 4.1.111). After long practice, you will be able to go through “hard winter training” (D 1.3.32). And you must make effort even if you cannot become perfect (D 1.2.34-37). As you practice the Stoic Workout, track your progress. Track your successes and your failures. For example, if you are working on not losing your temper,

178 then count the days you have not lost your temper (D 2.18.12-14). This is self-tracking or self-quantification. Measure yourself to improve yourself. To reduce your emotional distress, you need to practice the Stoic Workout daily (D 3.3.14-16; 3.8.1-4). The Stoic Workout is a form of mental hygiene. Just as you perform daily body-hygiene routines like bathing and brushing your teeth, so also you need to perform daily mental hygiene routines like the Stoic Workout (D 4.11.5-8). To practice the Stoic Workout, you need some sample adversities on which to practice. The Stoics discussed four sources of sample adversities. These are the: (1) quotidian adversities; (2) voluntary adversities; (3) historical adversities; and (4) possible adversities. Since the quotidian and voluntary adversities are minor challenges, they will not be excessively disturbing. Since the historical and possible adversities are neither present nor actual, they will also not be excessively disturbing. By practicing on these you strengthen yourself to be tranquil through all adversities. The Stoic Workout is general. But it can be tailored to individual needs (D 3.12; 3.23.1-3). You train yourself on specific challenges by focusing on applying the Workout to them (D 3.12). If you suffer from irritability, train yourself on insults; if you’re lazy, train yourself to do hard work; if you’re too tempted by pleasure, train yourself in hardship.

3. Sources of Adversity for Stoic Training

To practice the Stoic Workout, you need some sample adversities. You do not put yourself through these sample adversities merely to endure them. You put yourself through them with the intention of going through them virtuously. When you decide to go through some hardship for the sake of practice, you apply the Stoic Workout to it in your imagination. And when you actually go through the hardship, you apply the Stoic Workout to it directly. By going through voluntary adversities, you are training yourself in hardship. This is like desensitizing your body to a poison or to an allergen by taking increasingly large doses of it. Or it is like vaccination. You protect yourself against a strong virus by exposing yourself to a weakened virus. The first source of sample adversities is the quotidian adversities. These are the small challenges you encounter everyday in ordinary life (EN 12). For example, you run through the steps of the Stoic Workout when you are insulted (D 3.20.9-10; EN 20); you run through the Stoic Workout when you have a minor illness like an earache or headache or when some small thing like a lamp or coat is stolen (D 1.18.15-19). If you are going out to some public event, then mentally prepare yourself for the annoyances that usually happen at those events. Run through the Stoic Workout in advance. Epictetus uses the example of the Roman baths: people splash you, bang into you, and steal from you (EN 4). So practice on those annoyances. The second source of sample adversities is voluntary adversities. A voluntary adversity is some small hardship through which you deliberately put yourself. So the voluntary adversities are ascetic exercises. They are exercises in self-denial and renunciation. They involve deliberate exposure to stress (D 3.12.16). For example, “if you’re extremely thirsty, take a little cold water into your mouth and spit it out” (Frag. 47; see D 3.12.17). Voluntary adversities include physiological asceticisms like sleep restriction; calorie restriction or fasting; water restriction; temperature exposure. You can undergo physiological asceticisms in athletic training; in running a marathon; in doing a

179 Spartan race or Tough Mudder. They include social asceticisms like vows of silence; temporary withdrawal from social life; abstaining from sex. They include psychological asceticisms like exposure to situations you find threatening or frightening. Or exposure to situations which deliberately arouse frustration or anger. Seneca described many examples of voluntary adversity (Letters, 28). Musonius Rufus likewise advocated voluntary adversity (Rufus, Lectures, 6.4-5, 19.2-3). The third source of sample adversities is the historical adversities. History provides us with many virtuous individuals (D 3.1.22-23). These virtuous individuals were heroic characters. They were sages. To help us develop our own virtuous characters, we can apply the Stoic Workout to their examples. We can run through their examples in our own minds, picturing ourselves in their shoes. We can think of ourselves as responding in the ways that they responded. We can aim to imitate their virtue. For example, Hercules was a sage (D 1.6.32-34). He embraced his fate (D 2.16.44-47). Thus Hercules played his divinely assigned role. Although fate brought him many troubles, he live virtuously and without complaint. You should imitate Hercules (D 2.16.45-47). Diogenes also faced many hardships well; he did his duty and he was a free man (D 2.16.35-38; 4.1.114-7; 4.1.152-7). Socrates also played his role well (D 2.16.35-38, 3.1.19-21; 4.7.29-31). He always did his duty (D 4.1.159-165). He stayed in the post assigned to him by fate (D 1.9.22-26). Refusing to obey unjust orders from the Thirty Tyrants, he was sentenced to death. But he faced it with serenity. Against the tyrannical emperor Nero, the Roman Senator Agrippinus played his role well (D 1.1.28). Against the tyrannical emperor Vespasian, the Roman Senator Helvidius Priscus played his role well (D 1.2.19). He faced his own death with Stoic serenity. The fourth source of sample adversities is possible adversities. Possible adversities include challenging events which may or may not happen in the future. Thus you may lose your health; you may lose your wealth; you may lose your job and your social status; you might lose parts of your body; you may lose your friends and family. Of course, since everything that is inevitable is also possible, your store of possible adversities includes all your inevitable adversities. If you are blessed with a long life, you will consequently suffer the adversities of aging. And however long your life may be, you will die. As you contemplate your own death, you can think about how heroic persons have faced it well. As mentioned above, Socrates, Agrippinus, and Helvidius Priscus all faced their own deaths with serenity. Many others have faced death serenely since then. You practice finding the good handle of death by describing what is beneficial in death. You find what is beneficial in death when you see how it serves the greater good (D 2.6.11-14; 4.7.27). Your death is part of the providential ordering of the universe; you will die for a good reason. By thinking about the necessary role of death in biological evolution, you see how it serves the greater good (D 2.10.5). So you realize that your death benefits other organisms; it allows new organisms, including new humans, to come into the world (D 2.1.18). It opens up new possibilities for new life. By dying, you share the gift of life with others yet to come. By practicing the Stoic Workout on your own death, you learn to die in a godlike way (D 2.8.28).

180 4. The Virtuous Person

The morally mature person is virtuous; they are a Sage. The virtuous person welcomes all the possible moves of the universe. As you play your game with the universe, the universe always has many possible moves. And while you can often assign approximate probabilities to its moves, there are many cases in which you can only estimate those probabilities poorly or not estimate them at all. The universe often behaves like a random variable. But if you are virtuous, then you will welcome every eventuality: you will equally affirm all the possible moves of the universe. This is sometimes put as indifference: you will be indifferent to the moves of the universe. But indifference sounds too much like an unhealthy absence of concern. The virtuous person does not lack concern for the future; on the contrary, the virtuous person has great concern for the future. The virtuous person has carefully and deeply thought about all the future eventualities. By running a well-trained resolution algorithm, the virtuous person has found the most rational and most excellent response to every possible move the universe can make. Consider the dice-game. The virtuous person is not indifferent to the fall of the dice; rather, the virtuous person welcomes each possible outcome; the virtuous person welcomes each value of that random variable. Thus “if I in fact knew that illness had been decreed for me at this moment by destiny, I would welcome even that” (D 2.6.9-10). The virtuous mind “will be able to adapt itself to whatever comes about” (D 2.2.21; 2.14.7-8). This adaptation is not passive resignation; on the contrary, it is the active willing of that which is best in every eventuality. It is what Nietzsche called amor fati – the love of fate. The vicious person plays against the dice; but the virtuous person plays along with the dice. The virtuous person possesses the mythological Wand of Hermes. The mythical Wand of Hermes changed everything it touched into gold; but the stoic Wand turns everything it touches into benefit. This Wand is a resolution algorithm which always finds the good handle. It is a resolution algorithm which has been trained in the art of living. It is a rational resolution algorithm. It knows how to properly assign utilities to possible moves and how to competently search for the best move. The virtuous person can say: “bring me whatever you wish, and I’ll turn it into something good” (D 3.20.12). They can say “Whatever you present to me I’ll turn it into something blessed and a source of happiness, into something venerable and enviable” (D 3.20.15). The virtuous person can transform illness, poverty, abuse, and death into benefits. Illness has a good handle; by finding it, the virtuous person transforms it into an opportunity to manifest courage, patience, serenity. Death has a good handle; by finding it, the virtuous person transforms it into honor. Because the virtuous person can always find the good handle, they can wish that everything happens exactly as it does (D 1.12.15). And, since a morally well-educated person can always find the good handle, they are well-educated. Your life is a game you play with fate. You are playing your fated role in the cosmic whole. You win this game by playing your divinely assigned role well. This means that you win by living a good life: you win by living a life which is rational and virtuous. Such a life is also filled with positive emotions and is free from emotional distress. But a virtuous life contributes maximally to the harmony of the universe. By living a virtuous life, you are contributing to the purpose of the universe. You are maximizing the emergent aesthetic value of the cosmos. You are affirming the rationality of the universe.

181 If you win your game with the universe, the universe wins too. By playing well, you enable the universe to play well too. And if you lose your game with the universe, the universe loses too. If you play poorly, then it plays poorly too. When you are morally healthy, you’ll have intense positive emotions (eupatheia). Epictetus frequently lists positive emotions. His list includes serenity, happiness, peace of mind, fearlessness, freedom, firmness of mind, impassibility (D 1.4.1-3; 1.4.27; 2.1.21; 2.18.30; 2.14.7-8; 3.14.8; 3.20.14; 3.22.26; 3.22.39; 3.22.45; 3.26.13; 4.4.9). When you are morally healthy, you’ll be “free, contented, happy, invulnerable, magnanimous, reverent, and one who is grateful to God for everything” (D 4.7.9). You will have “freedom, serenity, cheerfulness, constancy, and there is justice, too, and law, and self- control, and virtue in its entirety” (Frag. 4). The central positive emotion is serenity. When you are morally healthy, you’ll find “serenity in the midst of adverse circumstances” (D 3.14.8). This serenity enables you to “sleep soundly when you sleep, and to be fully awake when you’re awake, to be afraid of nothing, and anxious about nothing” (D 4.10.22). This serenity is not an affective deadness; it is not the lack of feeling; it is not the grim endurance of adversity. Nor is it affectively neutral; on the contrary, it has a positive valence: it is a cheerful resoluteness. The Stoic ideal is the sage. A sage is a morally ideal person. Some Stoics say the sage is an impossible ideal while others say the sage is possible but difficult. If the sage is impossible, then Stoicism has little point. So philosophical pagans regard the sage as a possible but difficult idea. Your goal is to become as much like the sage as you can. Of course, it must be stressed that the sage is an abstract moral goal. The sage is not one particular person (like Buddha or Christ). There are many ways to be human; hence there are many morally ideal ways to be human. For monotheists, perfection is singular; but for pagans, it is plural. For every human animal, there exists at least one morally ideal possible version of that animal. It is more likely that, for every human animal, there are many morally ideal possible versions of that animal. You have your own sages. They are the morally ideal possible versions of yourself. Since every human animal has its own sages, the sage is not defined by race or by sex. All sages are morally equal. Male and female sages are morally equal. Sages of all races are morally equal.

5. The Stoic Moral Compass

Stoic ethics is virtue ethics. It aims to improve your character by strengthening your virtues and weakening your vices. The Stoics said there were four main virtues, which they called the cardinal virtues. These are wisdom, justice, moderation, and courage. The cardinal virtues can be aligned with the cardinal directions. Figure 24.1 shows the four cardinal directions displayed in the circle of presence. The center of this circle is the center of your body here and now. But the present came from the past and goes into the future. So the circle of presence is the circle of change. The cardinal virtues provide you with guidance as you make your way in to the future overhead.

182

Figure 24.1 The Stoic moral compass.

183 25. Mind-Craft: Stoic Exercises 1. Stoicism Old and New

toicism was an ancient philosophical way of life. Although it often looks religious, it is probably more accurate to say that Stoicism was a spiritual way of life. Stoic practices aim at full human self-realization. Stoics are physicalists about human persons: you are strictly identical with your body. The Stoic care for the self starts with care for the body. Full human self-realization requires you to strive to be as healthy as you can. The ancient Stoics aimed at bodily health through practices like vigorous exercise and proper diet. Here Stoic practices can be combined with naturalized versions of yoga. Hence physiological self-realization includes psychological self-realization. Many Stoic practices aimed at psychological self-realization. The Stoics aimed to replace unhealthy emotionality with healthy emotionality. To cultivate this replacement, they developed many psychological exercises (Irving, 2009). The Stoics were deeply concerned with ethical self-realization. Their practices aimed to transform an ordinary human animal into an ethically perfected Sage. The Sage is a fully rational and virtuous person. The Sages preserve their serenity through all possible adversities (including death). Stoic serenity resembles Buddhist enlightenment, and Sages resemble Buddhas. All Stoic practices aim at ethical self-realization. The Stoic exercises are part of the he telestike techne, the art of self-surpassing. The power of spirit works in the depths of your own body to drive you to surpass yourself. It drives you to practice the he telestike techne in its Stoic and other forms. Stoicism is currently undergoing a surprisingly strong revival. Ancient Stoic ideas and practices have been translated into modern psychotherapies. Books on modernized Stoicism are widely read. These include A Guide to the Good Life (Irvine, 2009); Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations (Evans, 2013); Stoicism and the Art of Happiness (Robertson, 2015); and How to be a Stoic (Pigliucci, 2017). The University of Wyoming runs a week-long Stoic Camp. The University of Exeter runs an annual Stoic Week, which involves an intensive seven-day course in practical Stoicism. There are annual popular Stoicism conferences (the StoicCons) in London and New York attended by hundreds of people. This new Stoicism may provide some philosophical pagans with an enduring metaphysical and ethical system.

2. Stoic Mind-Craft Practices

Modern Stoics have developed a large system of psycho-physiological practices. They are described in detail in many recent Stoic books (such as Irvine, 2009; Robertson, 2015; Pigliucci, 2017). These exercises are particular ways to implement the Stoic Workout. A few of these exercises will be discussed here. These include the Morning Meditation, Training on Deliberate Adversities, the Premeditation of Adversity, the Wand

184 of Hermes, the Circle of Hierocles, the View from Above, and the Evening Meditation. And there are many other Stoic exercises. The many Stoic exercises inspired modern cognitive behavioral therapy as well as acceptance and commitment therapy. They include techniques like cognitive distancing, decatastrophizing, and decentering. They are effective against learned helplessness and depression. They can reduce fear and arouse hope. Philosophical pagans can practice all these exercises. The Morning Meditation. You should start each day with a Morning Meditation exercise (D 1.4.20; 4.6.34). Your Morning Meditation might begin with a Stoic prayer (and Stoic prayers are naturalistic). You reflect on the fact that you’ll face many adversities during the day. But you do not have to respond badly to these adversities. There is always a good way to respond to them. You can maintain your emotional equilibrium. You can practice the Stoic Workout on all these adversities. Training on Deliberate Adversities. The Stoics argued that you need to practice your moral skills (your virtues) on adversities. Of course, life will throw plenty of real adversities at you. But before you can handle these larger challenges well, you need to practice on adversities that you deliberately throw at yourself. Just as an athlete needs to train to gain physical strength, so you need to train to gain moral strength. You train yourself by applying the Wand of Hermes to small adversities. There are four sources of deliberate adversities: (1) daily adversities; (2) voluntary adversities; (3) historical adversities; (4) possible future adversities. By regularly doing moral workouts on deliberate adversities, you train yourself to be a sage. You learn the behavioral patterns of the sage. You make these behavior patterns into habits. The Premeditation of Adversities. The application of the Stoic Workout to possible adversities is sometimes called Negative Visualization (Irvine, 2009: ch. 4) or the Premeditation of Adversity (Robertson, 2015: 152-4). For each possible adversity, you tell yourself that you will experience it. I will become sick; I will lose my job; I will become homeless; I will lose my friends and family (D ; 3.24.104-105). You picture yourself as being struck by the adversity. You visualize it with such vividness that it begins to engage your emotions. You visualize every painful consequence of the event. You simulate sickness, poverty, grief. And you simulate yourself as keeping your Stoic equanimity. You simulate yourself not becoming distressed. You change what you can control while serenely accepting what you cannot control. The Premeditation of Adversity also involves aligning your will with these negative possibilities: you ask fate to challenge you (D 2.16.42-43; 4.7.13-14). Thus you say “Bring on me now Zeus, whatever trouble you may wish” (D 1.6.37). You say: “Bring hardships, bring imprisonment, bring ignominy, bring condemnation” (D 2.1.35). By doing this, you welcome the event as a challenge. You do not see yourself as a victim of fate, but as an agent. You do not see these adversities as events that oppose your will but rather as events that enable you to express your will. Thus you preserve your autonomy and freedom. As Nietzsche famously said: “What does not kill me makes me stronger”. When you practice the Premeditation of Adversity, you should start small and work up (D 4.1.111). You should start with the loss of small things and work up to the loss of your family. You also practice the Premeditation of Adversity on challenges which you know will happen in the future. Most importantly, you practice it on your own death (D 1.1.22; 1.27.7-10; 2.1.14-17; 2.5.11-12; 3.24.105; 4.7.15). Thus you should tell fate: bring on my death and I will face it well (D 2.1.35; 3.20.13).

185 The Wand of Hermes. The mythological Wand of Hermes could change any stuff into gold. The spiritual Wand of Hermes changes adversity into benefit. Since your goal is to have the Wand of Hermes, you need to practice holding it. Here’s how you do that. Suppose something bad happens to you. (1) Tell yourself that the event is not the same as your reaction to it. You have no control over the event; but you do have control over how you react to it. You have to experience the bad event; but you do not have to suffer. As Epictetus said: “You must die; you do not have to die complaining.” (2) Tell yourself there is always a good way to respond to any adversity. (3) Begin with gratitude for having enjoyed what you had. Remind yourself that many people were never as fortunate as yourself. (4) Remind yourself that all the good things you have were never really yours; they are only temporary; they are on loan from the god. Just as fate gave them to you, so fate has the right to take them away. (5) The adversity offers you an opportunity to display your virtues. It gives you an opportunity to display your problem-solving skills. Your emotional response is always up to you. No matter how difficult your situation, you can choose positive emotions instead of negative emotions. You can live in such a way that your life can serve as a good example to others. The Circles of Hierocles. This Stoic exercise involves expanding your concern beyond your body (Robertson, 2015: 107-9). You start with your self-concern, expand your concern to include your family, your country, and the whole of humanity. So far this is an ethical exercise which helps you to build an ethically ideal self. But you can continue to expand your circle of concern to include the whole earthly ecosystem. This exercise helps breed compassion for all living things. This outlook is consistent with the religious naturalist valuing of all life on earth. It may inspire ecological activism. The View from Above. For the Stoics, nature is rationally organized, and the unity of nature is pure reason. As an intellectual anticipation of spiritual self-realization, you can imagine expanding your circle of concern to include all natural things. A related Stoic exercise is the View from Above (Robertson, 2015: 220-5). This exercise involves adopting a cosmic perspective. You endeavor to cognitively grasp the whole universe. Although your life is only a small part of this great whole, the whole has had enough concern for you to bring your life into existence. You can identify with this cosmic concern. This can help you with spiritual self-realization. The Evening Meditation. You should end each day with an Evening Meditation exercise (D 3.10.1-3, 4.6.32-35). Before you go to bed, you reflect on your successes and failures during the day. You think about how you need to improve. You may use a diary or journal to record the thoughts of your Evening Meditation.

3. How Atheists can Perform Stoic Prayers

We often suffer from the lack of external goods. We suffer from illness, poverty, bad luck, the loss of our kith and kin, and failures of every kind. Theists often say that we should ask our deities to supply these external goods. We should ask them to grant us good health, wealth, social status, lovers, children, long lives, and other blessings. We should ask our deities to protect all the things that we love from decay and destruction. They say we should make petitionary prayers for external goods. Philosophical pagans do not make any petitionary prayers. We do not ask any deities for any external goods. There are several reasons why we make no such prayers. The

186 first reason is that petitionary prayers for external goods are morally wrong. They degrade the deities into idols and the humans into beggars, slaves, children, or pets. They degrade us before our deities; they violate our religious sovereignty. The second reason is that any petition expresses a complaint about your fate: you wish things were otherwise. But pagans (especially pagans who follow Stoicism) do not complain about their fates. The third reason is that our universe is fated. On the one hand, fate is not total determination; on the other hand, fate consists of deeply rutted patterns which all natural processes follow. As Seneca pointed out, prayers cannot change fate (Natural Questions, 2.35). The fourth reason is that our deities do not exist in our universe. They are future superhuman animals – they exist in possible future universes. They neither hear nor reply to human petitions. They are versions of ourselves which we strive to become, not alien powers which we strive to persuade. The fourth reason is that it is the nature of contingent things to suffer absences, losses, decay, and destruction. It is logically impossible for any deity to protect things from their own natures. For all these reasons, we offer no petitionary prayers. Fortunately, not all prayers are petitionary. The Stoics often addressed prayers to Zeus. But these Stoic prayers were not petitions for external goods. On the contrary, as Algra (2003: 174-6) puts it, they are invocations of internal goods. They are words we say to ourselves in order to arouse or summon these internal goods. Thus the Stoics petition Zeus for virtue and rationality. The Stoic Zeus is the rational order of nature; so these prayers are invocations directed to the rational ordering in your own self. By offering them, you are invoking your own deeper or innermost self. You are invoking your depth to help you to improve yourself. You are arousing the spirit (the Stoic pneuma) which animates the logical core of your own body. You are summoning your own spirit to overcome your own materiality, which is your functional impairment. Here the theonym “Zeus” refers to the logical core of your own body. More accurately, you could replace “Zeus” with “Depth” (now capitalized, since it’s being used as a proper noun). Or you could replace “Zeus” with “Reason”, or with “Logos”. The modified prayer by Cleanthes, known as the Hymn to Zeus, goes like this:

Lead me, O Depth, and thou Destiny, To that goal long ago to me assigned. I’ll follow readily, but if my will prove weak, Wretched as I am I must follow still. Fate guides the willing, but drags the unwilling.

Epictetus quotes the Hymn to Zeus at the end of the Enchiridion. He also refers to it in the Discourses: “Guide me Zeus, and thou, O Destiny, to wheresoever you have assigned me” (D 4.1.131). He offers a more detailed petitionary prayer for Zeus to give him his ordained destiny “Bring on me now Zeus, whatever trouble you may wish, since I have the equipment that you granted to me and such resources as will enable me to distinguish myself through whatever may happen” (D 1.6.37). Epictetus later offers a similar petitionary prayer: “Use me as just as you will from this time onward; I’m of one mind with you’ I’m yours. I refuse nothing that seems good to you. Lead me where you will, wrap me in whatever clothes you wish” (D 2.16.42-43; 4.7.13-14). These are all prayers for your will to be aligned with itself. You can address them to your depth.

187 Many Christians (and others) offer a prayer known as the Serenity Prayer. It seems to have originated with the twentieth century German-American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. It seems to repeat the meaning of the Stoic Hymn to Zeus. When theists offer the Serenity Prayer, they petition their deities. And while philosophical pagans will not petition any deities, we can invoke our deepest selves. We can invoke Depth, Spirit, and Reason. Here is a modified Serenity Prayer:

Reason grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

4. Mindfulness Meditation

Sam Harris is an atheist writer. However, unlike many atheists, Harris is interested in spirituality. The last chapter of his book The End of Faith (2005) argued that religion should be replaced with spirituality. Harris later expanded on that chapter in his book Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion (2014; cited as WU). His argument for separating spirituality from religion is based on spiritual experiences. He says that people in many different religions report the same sorts of spiritual experiences (WU 9). They do not show that all religions are true (WU 20-2); on the contrary, they show they are all false. But these experiences are extremely important. They show that humans can achieve profound states of well-being (WU 12-3). Harris discusses several techniques of meditation. But he focuses on the Buddhist technique known as vipassana (WU 34-8). This is also called mindfulness. It is a type of self-hypnosis and as such it is a dissociative practice (Facco, 2017). It involves focusing on breathing. Harris introduces it early in Waking Up (39-40) and then devotes an entire chapter to it (Chapter 4). The basic idea is easy to understand. You sit in a comfortable position with your spine erect. You close your eyes and start breathing. As you breathe, you concentrate on your breath. You allow thoughts and feelings and sensations to emerge, pass, and fade away. If you find yourself getting distracted, you return your focus to your breathing. This can be very hard to do at first. But over time, with practice, you can get better at it. By focusing on your breath, your mind begins to free itself from the constant inner turmoil. It becomes clear. And the experience of having a unified permanent self starts to disappear. The ego fades away. Meditation undermines and ultimately extinguishes the ego (WU 31, 37, 82). It destroys the illusion of the unified permanent self. It enables you to awaken from the dream in which you experienced yourself as an ego. You no longer identify yourself with your thoughts, emotions, or sensations (WU 45, 101, 102, 140). You are no longer in bondage to them (WU 123). Through meditation it is possible to become pure selfless consciousness (WU 37, 102, 123, 125). It is possible to “experience a kind of boundless, open awareness – to feel, in other words, at one with the cosmos” (WU 43). Through meditation you can experience “a blissful expanse of conscious peace” (WU 127). Harris says that “Once one recognizes the selflessness of consciousness, the practice of meditation becomes just a means of getting more familiar with it” (WU 199). Meditation offers profound relief from suffering (WU 123, 171). By meditating we destroy the illusion of the ego; by destroying that illusion, we see things as they really

188 are; and “by seeing things as they are, we cease to suffer in the usual ways” (WU 45, 48, 123). Through meditation you can “enjoy a mind undisturbed by worry” (WU 39). You can “reduce pain, anxiety, and depression” (WU 35, 121-2). The goal of meditation is the “capacity to be free in this moment, in the midst of whatever is happening. If you can do that, you have already solved most of the problems you will encounter in life” (WU 49). As an illustration, Harris says “If you are injured and in pain, the path to mental peace can be traversed in a single step: simply accept the pain as it arises, while doing whatever you need to do to help your body heal” (WU 149). By weakening the illusion of the ego, mindfulness helps you become detached from negative emotions. It introduces cognitive distance. You no longer identify yourself with impermanent things. You no longer cling to them nor do you crave them. You can be in love without identifying yourself with the love or clinging to your beloved. So you no longer experience your love as contaminated with the negative emotions of anxiety, fear, jealousy, anger, grief, and depression. Hence those emotions become weaker and do not last as long (WU 98). Harris says that “with mindfulness, you can discover that negative states of mind vanish all by themselves” (WU 100). Through mindfulness, you can learn to respond better to adversity (WU 149). Mindfulness “reduces both the unpleasantness and intensity of noxious stimuli” (WU 121). And mindfulness has shown promise in treating eating disorders and addiction (WU 122). From a Plotinian perspective, meditation clarifies the matter in your mind. Matter is not physical stuff; matter is functional impairment. Meditation reduces it. Besides merely relieving the negative effects of suffering, meditation can produce positive effects: “our minds can open to states of well-being that are intrinsic to the nature of consciousness” (WU 48, 124). You can enjoy a mind that is “open like the sky, and effortlessly aware of the flow of experience in the present” (WU 39). Through meditation you can ultimately “arrive at a state of well-being that is imperturbable” (WU 44). Harris says that “Mindfulness is a technique for achieving equanimity amid the flux” (WU 38). It “can be a powerful tool for self-regulation and self-awareness” (WU 47). It can improve cognitive functions like learning and memory (WU 35). It can help with emotional self-regulation (WU 35). Harris says that meditation “fosters many components of physical and mental health: It improves immune function, blood pressure, and cortisol levels” (WU 122). And Harris frequently points out that you do not have to take these claims on faith. They have been verified by scientific studies. Finally, some types of meditation can produce ethical benefits: “Training in compassion meditation increases empathy, as measured by the ability to accurately judge the emotions of others, as well as positive affect in the presence of suffering. The practice of mindfulness has been shown to have similar pro-social effects” (WU 122). The practice of mindfulness might be criticized as self-centered: you’re spending lots of time sitting alone just concentrating on your breathing. But Harris reminds us that Buddhism values ethical living with others (WU 30). Harris says that if we awaken from the illusion of our self-centered egos, then we will become more ethical; we will “become better able to contribute to the well-being of others” (WU 206).

189 5. Wiccan Mind-Craft Practices

The Stoic practice of negative visualization resembles other pagan visualization practices, such as visualization in Wicca. Wiccan magic often involves visualization (Cunningham, 2004: 88-90; Sabin, 2011; 47-51). Of course, visualization changes only your own mind, that is, your brain. It does not change your external environment. It makes it more likely that you will behave in certain ways; it does not make your external environment more likely to be disposed to you in ways that facilitate your visions. Many psychological studies have been done on the effects of visualization. Psychologists have found evidence that visualizing successful performance of some task or achievement of some goal increases motivation and effort and can reliably lead to better performance (Vasquez & Buehler, 2007). The use of visualization to enhance athletic performance has been widely studied and has been shown to enhance certain types of performance (e.g. Whelan, Mahoney, Meyers, 1991; Sheikh & Korn, 1994). Chess players make extensive use of visualization techniques to improve performance. So Wiccans can appeal to psychological studies of visualization. Wiccan mind-craft also includes self-hypnosis. Of course, as with visualization, self- hypnosis changes only your brain. Self-hypnosis puts you into a dissociative trance. When you become immersed in some visualized scenario, you are absorbed in it. This absorption is a kind of normal and useful dissociation. Self-hypnosis techniques are widely used and studied in sports and medicine. They are effective and reliable. There is evidence that they reliably reduce anxiety and fear (e.g. in cancer or cardiac patients), that they reliably reduce bedwetting and migraines in children. Studies confirm that self- hypnosis helps people lose weight, stop smoking, and pass through grief.

190 26. The Body and the Soul 1. The Soul is the Form of the Body

uite a few different conceptions of the soul can be found in Plato. However, his theories of the soul are far from clear. They do not seem to be naturalistic. Aristotle went very far towards naturalizing the soul when he said the soul is the form of the body (De Anima, 412a5- 414a33). To say that the soul is the form of the body means that the soul is the pattern or structure of the body. It is the way that the body is organized. Since the structure of the body can be mapped out by science, this is a naturalistic theory of the soul. The form of the body is the structure of a whole which divides into parts. The parts of the body are its organs. So the form of the body divides into the forms of its organs. The body-soul is composed of organ-souls. Thus Aristotle thought that the soul has parts corresponding to the organic systems of the body. The parts of the soul are its functional powers. The powers of the soul correspond to the different general kinds of biological functions performed by organisms. These powers are: “the nutritive, the appetitive, the sensory, the locomotive, and the intellectual” (On the Soul, 414a29-33). The science of forms is mathematics. Since the ancient Pythagoreans were especially devoted to mathematics, many Platonists after Aristotle adopted Pythagorean ideas to think about the form of the body. The Pythagoreans thought of forms in terms of numbers. The forms of geometrical objects are shapes, but shapes can be defined by numerical equations. Consider right triangles. Every right triangle has two orthogonal sides, which intersect in a right angle. And every right triangle has a diagonal side. If a and b are the lengths of the orthogonal sides of any right triangle, and c is the length of its diagonal side, then the form of the right triangle is the Pythagorean equation a2 + b2 = c2. Circles also have simple geometrical equations. On the basis of Pythagorean theories of form, many later Platonists thought of the soul in mathematical terms. Xenocrates thought the soul was a self-moving number. And Shaw (1999: 130) tells us that Speusippus thought it was a geometrical figure while Moderatus thought it was a mathematical harmony. Shaw quotes Iamblichus as saying that “the definition of the soul contains in itself the sum-total of mathematical reality” (1999: 130). The Pythagoreans were monists. They were not mind-body dualists. They thought of physical things, including human and divine bodies, as mathematical structures. These structures manifest themselves through their functionalities. They can perform functions. Their functional performances can be quantified. The intensities of these functions are numbers. The powers of these bodies are expressed as numbers. But these powers are the powers of the form of the body; they are the powers of the soul. Souls are forms which appear in the performative numbers of the body. When you use numbers to study your functions, you are measuring the functional powers of your soul. On this conception of your soul, your soul is not a ghost that somehow animates your body. On the contrary, your soul is not inside your body at all. But if you need some spatial analogy, Plotinus says you should follow Plato. Plato puts the physical universe inside of its cosmic soul

191 (Timaeus, 36d-e). So your body is inside of your soul (E 4.3.22). More accurately, Plotinus says souls entirely lack spatial locations (E 4.3.20). Iamblichus says the bodies of the celestial gods (like our sun) appear inside their souls (M 1.17, 19). The Aristotelian conception of the soul as the form of the body went on to influence Medieval thinkers like Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas discusses the nature of the human person (the soul) in his Treatise on Man (Summa Theologica, Part 1, Q 78 - 84). The soul is the structure of the human organism. The soul is very much like the information in the genome. It generates the structure of the body; it does this by generating the structures of the organs. The soul is a body-generating program. As the logic that generates the organic structure of the body, the soul explains the functions of the body. The logical powers of the soul are manifest in the functional powers of the body. Hence to measure the functional powers of the body is to measure the soul. Aquinas divided the soul into five generic powers. The powers are the vegetative, the sensitive, the appetitive, the locomotive, and the intellectual. (Q 78; Art. 1). The intellectual soul defines the structure of the brain. The appetitive soul involves the desires of the body. It defines the structure of the brain and endocrine system. The sensitive soul defines the structure of the sense organs. The vegetative soul divides into three parts. These are the nutritive soul; the reproductive soul; and the augmentative soul. The augmentative soul defines the growth of the body from a zygote to a mature adult organism. The nutritive soul defines the energy-processing organs: the digestive, respiratory, and cardiovascular systems. The reproductive soul defines your reproductive organs. Finally, your locomotive soul defines the functions of your skeleton and muscles. Of course, philosophical pagans translate these Thomistic ideas into modern science. The soul distributes itself into the organs of the body. Each organ has its own soul; the organ- soul determines the structure of the organ. The soul of the eye defines the structure of the eye; it thereby defines the functional powers of the eye. As the form of your body unfolds into the forms of your organs, it gives your body many measurable powers. To measure these powers is to measure the intensities of your soul. Your body can run one hundred meters in some number of seconds; it can run a mile in some number of seconds. Your speeds are measures of the intensity of your locomotive soul. Your locomotive soul includes parts of the souls of your muscles and your cardiovascular system. It includes the genetics of your mitochondria. Your cardiac functions can be measured on various dimensions (heart rate, blood pressure, and so on). Your metabolic functions can be measured by oxygen volume scores, by blood sugar scores, and so on. These metabolic scores correspond to the intensities of your vegetative soul. Your visual acuity is measured by a number (with 20/20 being normal). The excellence of your color vision can be measured by your score on a color discrimination test. Your scores on these optical performance tests are the intensities of your optical soul. Your intelligence is partly measured by your scores on various intelligence tests. Your intelligence scores correspond to the intensities of your rational soul.

2. Your Soul is Your Body-Program

To modernize and naturalize the concept of the soul, start with the Xenocratic idea that the soul is a self-moving (or self-changing) number. What does this mean? A self-

192 moving number changes itself into another number: 1 → 2, 2 → 4, and so on. Each change of the form x → y can be expressed as the pair (x, y). So a self-moving number is an abstract list which pairs every number x with exactly one number y. Mathematicians say that a list which pairs every x with one y is a function – it is a function which maps the numbers into the numbers. But what numbers are these? Since your body is only finite complex, these are the finite whole numbers – the natural numbers like 0, 1, 2, 3, and so on. So if your soul is a self-moving number, then your soul is a function from the set of natural numbers into itself. But such a function is an algorithm. It is a program for a computer. So if your soul is a self-moving number, then it is a program. Since any human body is only finitely complex, it can be exactly simulated by a finitely complex computer. Any computer (any finitely complex computer) implements a function that maps the natural numbers into the natural numbers. The mathematician Alan Turing showed that, for any function that can be run by a computer, there is a way to encode the whole function into a single number. That number is the program number of the function. So one number (plus a computer) can represent an entire function which transforms numbers into numbers. Now we can identify the function with its program number. So your soul is just equivalent to its program-number. Of course, any number can be encoded as a string of binary digits – a string of 0s and 1s. So your soul is just a string of 0s and 1s. Your soul is one of the bit strings in the thin tree of strings. Since these strings encode sets, your soul can also be thought of as a set. And so it can be a member of other sets. But we’ll just focus on programs here. Your soul is a program. But which program? Here we turn to the Aristotelian idea that your soul is the form of your body. Your soul is the number of the simplest (or shortest) program that exactly simulates your body. This means that your soul is the number of your body. This very modern idea goes all the way back to Eurytus. He said the forms of things are numbers; his insight is confirmed by modern computer science. Since there’s no harm in identifying a program with its number, your soul is the shortest program that exactly simulates your body. Many contemporary writers endorse this computational interpretation of Aristotle. Following Aristotle, the physicists John Barrow and Frank Tipler say that the soul (as the form of the body) is a program (1986: 659). Tipler later writes that “the human ‘soul’ is nothing but a specific program being run on a computing machine called the brain” (1995: 1-2). And the inventor Ray Kurzweil says your soul is your body-pattern. He writes that “The pattern is far more important than the material stuff that constitutes it” (2005: 388). Your soul is your body-program. It is the shortest program that exactly simulates your body. But what does this simulation require? At the one extreme, it requires an exact simulation of all the physics needed by your body. So your soul is like the program for an entire video game. Your soul includes the description of the game console. It includes the operating system of the game console. It includes the reality engine or physics engine that generates all the physics of its universe. This physics engine includes the code for the creation of quarks and electrons, protons and neutrons, atoms and molecules. And, on top of all that complex physical and chemical code, your soul contains the biological recipe for the construction of your body. If this code gets run, then an entire digital universe springs into existence like a video game world, and your body constructs itself inside of this digital universe. Your body is procedurally generated content. A less extreme approach just assumes the physics and chemistry. Although

193 your soul can reference the reality engine of our universe, it doesn’t include it. Your soul only includes the content specific to you. Your soul is highly compressed. At the very least, your soul includes the code that defines your zygote along with your specific genome. A zygote is an original human cell (an egg fertilized by a sperm). Once your zygote (with your genome) comes into being, the laws of physics encoded in the reality engine do the work that simulates the growth and life of your body.

3. Matter is Functional Impairment

Plotinus argued that our souls had become confused by their fall into matter. But Plotinus was a monist: he was not a mind-body dualist. He did not think of mind and body as two different kinds of stuff. On the contrary, he did not believe in any kinds of fundamental stuff. He affirmed exactly one fundamental kind of being: the being that comes from the One. Other things participated more or less intensely in this being. It is true that Plotinus often uses dualistic metaphors: the soul is to the body as an actor to her costume (E 3.2.15); the soul is to the body as an inhabitant is to a house (E 2.9.18). But Plotinus rejects the literal interpretation of these dualistic metaphors. Plotinus insists that the world-soul is not inside of the universe (E 4.3.9). On the contrary, he affirms that the universe is inside of the world-soul like a fisherman’s net is inside of the ocean. Plotinus likewise insists that the human soul is not inside of the body (E 4.3.20). On the contrary, he says the body is inside of the soul (E 4.3.22). He rejects the use of spatial analogies for the soul-body relation. He rejects the thesis that the soul is one place and the body in another (E 1.8.11). To say that the soul can be separated from matter does not mean it moves from earth to sky. It means only that the soul ceases to participate in the ontological condition of materiality. Souls are not located in any places; matter is located inside of souls. Plotinus says the soul is to the body as gardener to garden (E 4.3.4). But this garden exists inside of the gardener. Plotinus says the soul stands to the body as a musician stands to their lyre (E 1.4.16, 2.3.13, 4.7.8D). And, like a lyre, the body may be finely- tuned or it may be out of tune. Its tuning is a mathematical ratio. You might try to interpret this dualistically: here is the lyre; here is the soul that holds it. But the soul does not hold this lyre in its hands; rather, the lyre is a structure internal to the soul. Plotinus says the soul contains the body (E 4.3.22). Thus the body is a structure internal to the soul. The body is a system of numerical ratios in the soul like the musical ratios of the strings of the lyre. The matter in the soul is the distortion of the tuning of the lyre. Hence the soul cannot function well. The materiality of the soul is not some physical stuff. The materiality of the soul is its degree of functional impairment, its degree of dysfunctionality. The task of the soul is therefore to clarify its materiality by tuning its parts until they function well both individually and together. Tuning the body adjusts its numerical parameters until they are harmonious. Plotinus says the soul is to body as sculptor to statue (E 1.6.9). But this statue is inside of the sculptor. The statue is the matter inside the soul. The different parts of this statue stand to each other in different geometrical ratios. The shape of this statue can be well-proportioned and beautiful, or ill-proportioned and ugly. The ill-proportion and ugliness is the materiality in the soul. Your task is to clarify or purify that materiality. Plotinus says you need to shape your self just like a sculptor shapes a statue (E 1.6.9). As

194 you shape your statue, your change its ugly ratios into beautiful ratios. This means you are clarifying the matter in your soul; you are purifying the materiality of your soul. By reshaping your statue, you are improving a distorted and impaired structure internal to your soul. You change it from a human form into a godlike form. Plotinus thinks of matter as impairment (E 1.8.8, 2.4). Impairment is surpassability considered negatively. If your body is impaired, then it is deficient with respect to some superior body; it is deficient with respect to some body that surpasses it. Hence the materiality of your body is not its physical stuff; on the contrary, it is the surpassability of your body considered negatively. Another way to put this is to say that matter (as impairment) is privation. It is the sickliness of your body with respect to some possible healthier body; is the weakness of your body compared with some possible stronger body; it is your lack of intelligence with respect to some more intelligent version of your body; it is the viciousness of your body compared to some more virtuous possible body; it is the mortality of your body compared with the endless life of some possible immortal body; and so on. It is the dysfunctionality of some aspect of your body; but that dysfunctionality emerges from the structure of some organ; and that organ was generated by your soul. So the materiality of your body, thought of as impairment, comes from your soul. It is the surpassability in your soul. For philosophical pagans, the soul is the form of the body. And the old Platonic concept of matter maps onto impairment. Our bodies are physical things which have forms; their forms are their souls; but our souls have varying degrees of impairment; hence they are material. Souls have varying degrees of materiality; since souls have materialities, bodies have materialities. But materiality is not physicality; materiality is impairment, and impairment is functional privation. To be impaired is to be surpassable by some functionally superior version of your body. A body that sees better than your body has a superior optical soul. Its soul less impaired. A Platonist says that its soul is less material. As your soul becomes more functional, it becomes less material. But it cannot ever be free from materiality. Plotinus thought that matter existed even in the higher universe. And Iamblichus affirmed intelligible matter (M 5.23). If any thing is surpassable, then that thing is also impaired and thus material. Of course, the stars are unsurpassable. Every Divine Mind is a star. Since they are stars, they contain no matter – they are immaterial. Of course, matter is not physical stuff; matter is functional impairment. The Divine Minds are not ghosts. They possess that physicality than which none greater is logically possible. Their entirely concrete lives embody that goodness than which none greater is logically possible. The spirit in the Divine Minds is a fire that burns with the intensity of the sun itself. And the sun (the Good) is a star.

4. Self-Hacking: Purifying the Matter in your Soul

Porphyry was a student of Plotinus. He was concerned with the purity or holiness of the soul. To ensure the purity of your soul, Porphyry argues that you must live an ascetic life. You must avoid the things that contaminate the soul. These include eating meat; having sexual intercourse; and indulging in passionate emotions (On Abstinence from Killing Animals, I.57.7-13, IV.20). So the Platonists worked on their bodies through ascetic disciplines. But they also used rituals to transform their bodies. Platonists developed these rituals into the system known as theurgy. Johnston (2008: 452) says the

195 Greek phrase he telestike techne was used to refer to the art of theurgy. She says it means the art of self-perfection. But techno-theurgists deny self-perfection. Techno-theurgists say the forms are sets. And the lesson of set-theory is that all sets are surpassed by greater sets. Hence all forms are surpassed by greater forms. To say that some thing is perfect means that it is unsurpassable; but all things are surpassable; hence no things are perfect; hence there is no art of self-perfection. We therefore translate he telestike techne as the craft of self-surpassing. Theurgy is the craft of self-surpassing. And techno- theurgy uses science and technology to facilitate this self-surpassing. To purify the matter of the body through spiritual practices is not to escape from the body; on the contrary, it is to change the form of the body from a less functional animal form into a more highly functional animal form. A more highly functional animal form is a more divine form; it is the form of a godlike body. Shaw (2015: 158) writes that the purpose of theurgy “is not to escape from the body but to overcome the confusions of embodiment and allow the divine to take its seat in one’s own body.” Thus “Deified theurgists do not escape from their bodies or from nature; they embrace both from a divine perspective” (159). This change of form is transfiguration. Shaw writes that theurgic rituals cause the body to become transfigured; they cause the form of the body to change from human to divine. The body takes on a divine shape. These ideas are taken up by transhumanists like Ray Kurzweil. The form of the body (the soul) is the pattern of the body. Kurzweil talks about patterns instead of souls. He writes that “We can ‘go beyond’ the ‘ordinary’ powers of the material world through the power of patterns. Although I have been called a materialist, I regard myself as a ‘patternist’. It’s through the emergent powers of the pattern that we transcend” (2005: 388). For a Pythagorean theurgist, the shapes of the divine animals are more intensely numerical structures. They are forms whose numbers are larger or smaller. The lives of the divine animals are longer measures of time. Techno-theurgists still seek to overcome the impairments of the body by changing its form so that the numbers of the body are more intense. These numbers measure functionalities. They are the measured performances of your body. You purify your matter by making the numbers of your body more intense. You decrease the time it takes to run one hundred yards, or one mile, or one marathon. You increase your scores on optical acuity tests. You increase your scores on intelligence tests. You increase your immunities to diseases. Philosophical pagans use the modern experimental method to improve the numbers of their bodies. We apply the experimental method to our bodies. As techno-theurgists, we turn to self-experimentation to improve our functionalities. By improving them, we make our bodies less material, in the sense that we make them less impaired. We change the forms of our bodies into functionally superior forms. Thus we improve our souls. When you apply the experimental method to your own body, you are doing self-hacking. To do self-hacking you run through a cycle of several steps: (1) Find some aspect of your body that does not function well. To find this aspect, you measure the functions of your body. You have some numbers that you want to improve. (2) Through careful scientific study, find some strategy for increasing that functionality. (3) Set some goals for the strategy. If you apply this strategy, how much do you want your numbers to change in one day, in one month, in one year? (4) Apply the strategy. (5) Keep track of the changes produced by the strategy. As you apply the strategy to your body, you constantly measure the relevant numbers of your body. So you need to keep records; you need to keep a log

196 book or spreadsheet with your numbers. (6) Evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy. How well did it do in changing the numbers towards your goals? If it is doing well, then keep applying it; if not, then go back to step 2 to find another strategy.

197

27. Sign-Craft: Magic 1. Defining Magic

agic was common in ancient cultures. The Roman author Apuleius defined magic as the use of speech to control divine powers (Apology, 2.26). Thus, through the use of speech and other symbolic operations, the magician persuades the deities to cause some intended physical effect. Plotinus repeats this definition (E 2.9.14). However, Plotinus (and the Platonists generally) deny that human actions can influence the deities. Plotinus defines magic as the use of symbols to activate the hidden but natural linkages between distant things (E 4.4.26, 4.9.3). Magic is therefore sign-craft. Many contemporary pagan books extensively discuss magic. Many pagans start with the definition of magic given by Aleister Crowley: “Magic is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.” On this definition, almost all human acts are magical; since this definition fails to pick out any distinctive class of magical acts, it is not useful. Since magic is especially central to Wiccan practice, Wiccans have offered various definitions of magic (e.g. Buckland, 1986: 222-223; Cuhulain, 2011: 27; Sabin, 2011: 195-196). For example, Cunningham defines it like this: “Magic is the projection of natural energies to produce needed effects” (2004: 21). Again, this definition includes almost all human acts. These definitions are too vague. Another way to understand magic is to proceed by examples. Ancient pagans thought of magic in terms of spells. Many ancient magical spells are recorded in The Greek Magical Papyrii (Betz, 1986). These spells include remedies for diseases (migraine, fever, rabies, scorpion stings). They include spells for success in love, business, and other enterprises. Many aim to provide an ability to see into the future or to see distant places. Others are for more obscure purposes (the ability to control your own shadow). Pliny the Elder (CE 23-79) was a Roman military commander and author. He wrote the massive The Natural History (NH; English translation 1855). It was probably the first encyclopedia. It covered hundreds of topics – including many magical spells. Many contemporary pagans (especially Wiccans) have written many catalogs of spells. Thus Wiccan magic includes the spells listed in Wiccan books like Farrar & Farrar (1981); Bucklands (1986); Cunningham (2004); Sabin (2011). These ancient and contemporary spells are similar. A spell is a procedure or algorithm: “A spell is a set of actions done in a specific sequence to manifest your intent. . . . it is a recipe to bring about change” (Sabin, 2011: 197). These spells have intended purposes. They are presented as procedures for realizing some goal. Thus Sabin writes that there are spells “for things like finding a new job or protecting your home” (2011: 18). Cunningham (2004: 23-4) offers a spell for gaining money.

198 2. Magic Does Not Work

Those who assert that spells produce objective effects are realists about magic. Plotinus is a realist about magic: he clearly believes magic works (E 4.4.26, 4.4.40, 4.9.3). Some writers have argued that Plotinus practiced magic. Porphyry says that Plotinus was magically attacked by a man named Olympius (Life of Plotinus, 10). Porphyry writes that “the soul of Plotinus had such great power as to be able to throw back attacks on him onto those who were seeking to do him harm” (Life of Plotinus, 10). Merlan (1953) says this episode clearly shows that Plotinus used magic to repel these magical attacks. Armstrong (1955) counters that it merely shows that soul of Plotinus was so pure that it reflected magic like a mirror. For Merlan, Plotinus was a practicing magician; for Armstrong, he was not. It is not clear whether Plotinus practiced magic. However, he does seem to cast a spell in the Enneads (E 5.3.17). Other Platonists were thought to practice magic. It has been argued that Porphyry was a magician (Muscolino, 2015). And it looks like Iamblichus practiced magic. Many modern pagans (especially Wiccans) are realists about magic. Cunningham writes that “Magic is effective in causing manifestations of needed change. This isn’t self-deception. Correctly performed magic works, and no amount of explaining away alters this fact” (2004: 23). Sabin writes that “Wiccans believe that magic is real, that it works” (2011: 29). Realists interpret spells literally. Spells are not poems intended to produce only subjective effects. Realists say spells cause objective effects. A spell is just like a procedure for repairing a flat tire. If followed correctly, the procedure will produce the stated effects in the external world. Realists say spells at least increase the probabilities of future events. If you cast a spell for getting money, this makes it more likely that you will get money. So the realists advocate an objective reading of spells: “This spell for this effect works” means that if you perform the spell, then it is objectively more likely that the effect will happen. Thus “Magic works” means that some great majority of spells objectively produce their promised effects. Cunningham illustrates the alleged effectiveness of magic as follows: “Say I need to pay a hundred-dollar phone bill but don’t have the money. My magical goal: the means to pay the bill” (2004: 23). To achieve this goal, he outlines a spell. The spell involves candles, herbs, paper, and ink. Cunningham writes that the spell uses “a good selection of money-drawing herbs” (2004: 23), thus indicating that he believes that certain plants have powers to attract money to people. After the spell is performed, “Within a day or two, perhaps a week, I’ll either receive unexpected (or delayed) money, or will satisfy other financial obligations in a manner that frees me to pay the bill.” (2004: 24). Of course, Cunningham offers no data to justify this claim. He does not offer a detailed list of trials of this money-spell along with its rate of success and failure. Pliny does not believe in magic. He points out that the wisest people do not believe in magic (NH 28.3). He writes that he will not discuss the “devices of magic, unless it be to give warning against them, or to expose them, for I most emphatically condemn all faith and belief in them” (NH 25.7, 30.1). Pliny gives four main arguments against magic. His first argument begins by listing cases in which magic would have been very useful but in which it was not used (NH 26.9, 30.5). His second argument comes from the peculiarity of magical spells and recipes. They are so strange that it is unlikely that

199 anybody ever tried them (NH 29.26, 30.29). Likewise it is unlikely that they are based on any natural sympathies or antipathies. Spells have no basis in reality (NH 28.66). A third argument is based on the observation that many magical recipes are impossible (NH 28.25). Moreover, many magical recipes are known to fail. Pliny gives many examples of fraudulent magical practices (NH 28.23, 28.29, 30.29). He gives examples of magical fraud involving plants (NH 25.59, 27.35). He gives examples of magical fraud involving stones (NH 37.14, 37.37, 37.40). Examples like this can be endlessly multiplied, and they show that the claims of the magicians are false. A fourth argument comes from the evasiveness of magicians (NH 29.12). Their spells never work; but when they fail, the magicians always explain the failure by appealing to some minor detail. The social behavior of magicians very closely resembles that of liars. The best explanation for this close resemblance is that the magicians really are liars. The arguments against the objective effects of magic are well-known. The main argument against magic is the Argument from Evidence. It goes like this: (1) If spells objectively worked, then there would be objective evidence for their effectiveness. (2) Objective evidence satisfies the requirements that have been refined into the scientific method. (3) However, no objective evidence has ever been presented for the objective effectiveness of pagan spells. You will search in vain for rigorous experimental tests of pagan spells. (4) Moreover, all the evidence shows that magical spells do not work. (5) Therefore, spells do not work. The claim “Magic works” is literally false. Of course, this argument can be flipped over: when any procedure does pass rigorous experimental tests, it just becomes a part of technology. Technology is the grimoire of objectively effective spells. However, pagans generally do not treat their spells as technologies. This suggests they do not really intend their spells as technologies. But if they are not intended as technologies, then they are intended as something else.

3. The Hacker Methodology

Pliny says that magic proceeds from medicine. On the one hand, he condemns magic as a useless and fraudulent extension of medicine. On the other hand, he also declares that medicine often fails. If medicine works better than magic, it doesn’t work much better (NH 24.1, 29.5, 29.8). Since medicine fails so often, he decides to list magical remedies for diseases. He writes that, when it comes to treating fevers, clinical medicine is “pretty nearly powerless; for which reason we shall insert a considerable number of remedies recommended by professors of the magic arts” (NH 30.30). Of course, when Pliny was writing, medicine was very primitive. Medicine today is much more advanced. Nevertheless, medicine still fails far too often. And if you’re dying from some infection, and medicine can’t help, you have nothing to lose from trying magic. Pliny recognizes that the remedies proposed by the magicians are not mere incantations. They involve ingredients taken from minerals, plants, and animals. Thus medical magic involves primitive pharmacology. It is trial-and-error; it is pure experimentalism; it is the unfettered exploration of the space of possible methods and stuffs for curing diseases. The magical recipes in The Greek Magical Papyrii and in Pliny’s The Natural History look like pure conjectures: try this; try anything. Magical remedies might accidentally succeed. Early medicine gives birth to the hacker methodology. The doctors and magicians are hacking diseases. To hack a disease is to

200 run an enormous number of experiments to try to cure it. It is brute force search. Modern medical researchers also use brute force search: they use automated systems to generate and test thousands of molecules for their medical properties. Thus magic is the purest form of empiricism: it is empiricism entirely unguided by any theory. Early doctors had almost no theoretical knowledge. Lacking theory, it is not irrational to proceed purely experimentally. Probably the only modern criticism here is that the ancient doctors and magicians didn’t record their successes and failures. This leads to the first lesson about magic: magic is pure experimentation. Magic contains the seeds of the scientific method. As the value of recording the results of experiments gains strength, magic evolves into the scientific method. More generally, magic comes into play when science reaches the limits of theory. Where theory ends, you need to turn to pure experimentation. This is the hacker methodology. Performing magical spells is a way of affirming this method. Thus if you cast a spell for curing your illness, it means figuratively that you affirm that there exists some practical way to cure your illness. You affirm that it is possible to find it. You affirm that, if the entire space of possible therapies were searched, your remedy would be found.

4. Entangled Possibilities

Pliny the Elder gives one of the first explanations for the belief in magic. He discusses it in his book The Natural History (NH). Pliny says that things in our universe are entangled by sympathetic and antipathetic relations. Sympathetic relations are relations of similarity and attraction; antipathetic relations are relations of dissimilarity and repulsion. For instance, there are sympathies and antipathies between plants (NH 24.1). There is a sympathetic relation between iron and lodestone (NH 34.42). Today we refer to this sympathetic relation as magnetism. Many medical remedies work because of sympathetic or antipathetic relations (NH 29.17). Medical compounds often fail because we ignore the sympathies and antipathies between their many ingredients (NH 22.49). Today we know that medical molecules work because they bind to receptors. They bind because their shapes fit like a lock and key. When molecules bind to their receptors, they either activate or deactivate them. Molecules that activate their receptors are agonists; agonism is sympathetic. Molecules that deactivate their receptors are antagonists; antagony is antipathy. But these relations are purely natural. Pliny now argues that magic emerged from medicine. Effective medicine is based on sympathies that are empirically verified. But these known sympathies were discovered by experimentation – that is, by blind trial and error. The existence of known sympathies suggests that many unknown sympathies are still waiting to be discovered. They too will be discovered through experimentation. Since sick people are often desperate, they will try anything. Hence doctors try all sorts of remedies for diseases. They try to cure diseases using new ingredients and methods. But medical experimentation eventually disconnected from reality and turned into magic. There is no clear boundary between medicine and magic (NH 29.1-8). From medicine to magic, the sympathetic or antipathetic relations grow weaker and more superficial (NH 27.35). From its origins in the study of real sympathetic relations, magic turned into superstition.

201 Plotinus develops a philosophical theory of magic (Helleman, 2010). Along with Pliny, his theory is based on sympathetic and antipathetic relations. Plotinus regards the universe as an organism whose unity entails that its parts are all directly connected. Each part of the universe is entangled with every other part. This entanglement is not spatial. Spatially distant things can be directly linked by sympathy (E 4.4.32). Hence changes at one place are correlated with instantaneous changes at distant places. Sympathetic (or antipathetic) relations make distant objects entangled with each other so that changing one instantly changes the other. For Plotinus, the sympathies (and antipathies) in the universe are due to the fact that it is animated by a single soul; moreover, that soul is integrally omnipresent (E 6.4-5). This is holenmerism: the whole soul is entirely present in every part of the universe. It justifies the thesis that all parts of the universe are entangled with each other. Magic works through this entanglement (E 4.4.26.1-5, 4.4.38- 44, 4.9.3.5-10). Magic does not involve supernatural or even hidden (occult) powers. Magic involves natural relations between parts of nature (E 4.4.40). The magician pulls on natural threads (E 4.4.40.18-20). Since magic works by entirely natural means, magic is a craft; it is a system of techniques; it is a technology. Plotinus portrays nature as a system of entangled objects. Some may say that his views about entanglement are confirmed by modern physics. Quantum mechanics does portray particles as entangled in ways that permit spooky action at a distance: measuring the value of one particle instantly causes its entangled twin to take on some value. So Plotinus was not all wrong. Plotinus also portrays nature as holenmeric. Some may argue that his holenmerism is confirmed by modern physics. Some physicists believe our universe is holographic. Every part of a hologram encodes a copy of the whole. If our universe really is holographic, then the Plotinian holenmerism is close to the truth. Many modern pagans thus use modern physics to justify magic (e.g. Curott, 2001: ch. 1; Keith, 2005; D. Smith, 2005: ch. 3). They often make an Argument from Quantum Entanglement: (1) quantum mechanics says that all things are entangled or that the universe is a hologram; (2) if all things are entangled or holographic, then spells work; (3) therefore spells work. The argument fails at the second premise. Modern pagans never show how their spells engage quantum mechanical principles. For example, how does lighting a green candle produce quantum effects that make it more likely that you will gain money? These pagan arguments from quantum mechanics have been thoroughly debunked (Stenger, 2009). Modern pagans also often offer an Argument from Quantum Consciousness. It goes like this: (1) quantum mechanics says that consciousness directly influences reality; (2) if consciousness directly influences reality, then spells work; (3) therefore spells work. As before, they never offer any explanation of how their spells produce their alleged quantum effects. These arguments fail to justify the practical effectiveness of magic. Magic does not work. These ideas motivate the second lesson of magic: magic contains the seed of the idea that all the things in our universe are informationally entangled. It points to the idea that the universe is holographic or that the universe is ultimately a network of entangled quantum bits. None of this means that Wiccan spells literally work. But it does mean that “Magic works” has another non-literal meaning. If you cast a spell, it means that you affirm that our universe is informationally entangled. More precisely, it means that the actual universe entangled with its possible variations in ways that will solve your problems. If you are sick, then casting a spell to cure your illness is a way of affirming

202 that your body is entangled with its possible healthy variants. It is a way of affirming the possibility of health. It is a rational affirmation of hope.

5. Technology of the Self

Many pagans are not realists about magic. They do not believe that when a magician casts a spell, it causes objective effects in the world outside of the body of the magician. On the contrary, they say that the effects of magic are psychological. To say that magic works means that it changes the magician. Although Starhawk thinks that spells can change the physical environment, she downplays those effects (1979: 139-40). She focuses almost entirely on the psychological effects of spells (136-8). Berger writes that “Magic as practiced by present-day Witches is a ‘technology of the self’” (1999: xiii). Almost all the spells in the recent grimoire by Chamberlain (2016) are psychological exercises, involving activities like intention-setting, visualization, and spoken and written affirmations. The constructive aspects of spells (involving props like wands, crystals, and herbs) are mainly intended as dramatic speech-acts. Thus magic is a system of practices aimed at changing the self rather than the environment. Beckett denies that magic can produce any results which violate the laws of physics. The laws of physics define hard limits. He says “Magic is useless against hard limits” (2017: 194). He affirms instead that magic can change your soft limits and self-imposed limits (2017: 194). But these are psychological limits. Of course, if magic works to produce these psychological effects, then it isn’t magic – it is technique. This is the third lesson of magic: magic is a technology of subjectivity. The psychological or subjective interpretation of magic looks like this: “This spell for this effect works” means that casting the spell reliably changes your mind and that this change in your mind reliably increases the probability of the promised effect in the world. For example, by casting a spell that aims at getting you a job, you become more confident. Since you are more confident, you will continue your search despite many rejections. This persistence makes it more likely that you will get interviews. And if you get an interview, you will project that confidence in your interview. This confidence means it is more likely that you will get a job. And the effort spent in assembling the materials for the spell and working the spell is a way of establishing your commitment to the job-hunting process. Casting a job-finding spell changes your ways of moving into your future. It can reveal new opportunities and thereby change the ways your future appears to you. It can change your ways of dealing with risk. It can change the affordances of your environment. Hence the job-finding spell can produce its promised effect. But it produces that effect indirectly. This indirection means that the psychological interpretation of magic is not literal. It is figurative, where the figure is metonymy. Thus “Magic works” figuratively means that the great majority of spells produce their promised effects through psychological change. And magical spells may not produce their effects reliably. Philosophical pagans are very interested in ways to develop more effective tools for positive psychological self-transformation. Magic effectively produces the illusion of control. Langer says “By encouraging or allowing participants in a chance event to engage in behaviors that they would engage in were they participating in a skill event, one increases the likelihood of inducing a skill orientation, that is, one induces an illusion of control” (1975: 313). The illusion of

203 control appears to be an adaptive illusion: “a nonveridical perception of control over an impending event reduces the aversiveness of that event. . . . A temporary loss of control is anxiety arousing. A chronic feeling of no control is characterized by passivity and giving up in the face of failure” (Langer, 1975: 323). The illusion of control may help people avoid learned helplessness (Langer, 1975: 325). Learned helplessness is a defective and depressed condition of agency that results when a person comes to believe that their actions have no power to solve their problems. Long fruitless searches for jobs, money, lovers, children, or social status may all produce learned helplessness; any activity that induces an illusion of control can counteract learned helplessness, and help a person to continue to act in the face of adversity generated by randomness or complexity. Thus magic, by inducing illusions of control, can help people function. It can make an agent more confident, and more willing to continue to try to solve a problem, rather than just giving up. Thus magic may be beneficial for agency. Nevertheless, it is easy to raise an objection to the deliberate production of illusions. Illusions are false. It is wrong to deceive anybody, including yourself. Self-deception is immoral. There is a surprising reply to this objection. It begins by recognizing that some parts of our brains do not correctly track reality. Perhaps our brains contain nerve circuits that only track reality in a superficial sense. Perhaps our emotional circuitry tracks only immediate losses and gains. Perhaps our brains contains irrational circuitry which is incorrectly calculates hope and fear. For example, this irrational circuitry makes people bad investors. Excess hope means they wait until market bottoms to pull out their money; excess fear means they wait until market tops to reinvest. They do the exact opposite of what they should do, and they end up losing their money. After recognizing that some parts of our brains are not rational, the reply now goes like this: it is not immoral to deceive the irrational parts of our brains. If your brain runs a self that is too easily defeated, then it is not immoral to deceive that self. On the contrary, the moral thing to do is to run rituals which produce the illusion of control in that self. If some lower part of the self cannot respond to reasons, then it is rational for the higher part of the self to deceive it. It is rational to bewitch or enchant that lower part of the self so that it stops behaving irrationally. This is a Platonic reply: producing the illusion of control is like producing the Platonic noble lie. The noble lie is an illusion that is needed to counter another illusion. It’s fighting falsehood with falsehood. This is a psychological application of the self-negation of non-being. Philosophical pagans endorse the use of spell-craft for the sake of producing positive psychological transformation. If doing spell-work helps you produce positive changes in your mental outlook, then do it. However, we urge mindfulness about the costs of doing spells. And we seek more reliable psychological technologies. Philosophical pagans endorse the invocation of natural powers during spells. Many Wiccans invoke the Wiccan God and Wiccan Goddess in their spells. We say these theonyms refer to deep natural powers. We say “the God” refers to the andromic power while “the Goddess” refers to the gynomic power. These powers exist in your body. Chamberlain talks about invoking the “benevolent energy of the Universe” or its “benevolent spirit” (2016: 35, 95). We affirm that all these powers exist. the benevolent energy of the universe is just spirit – it is a thermodynamic force. But these powers are not going to do any special work for you. At most, invoking them makes you aware that positive powers are at work

204 everywhere. And that awareness can break the spell of psychological negativity that the mind casts on itself. By invoking these powers, you commit yourself to your own self- surpassing.

6. Modal Defiance

We often encounter problems which resist all skill. We encounter that which is technically unsolvable. We have no techniques for solving poverty, for curing many illnesses, for finding lasting love, for securing abundant resources or social status, or for winning competitive games. When we act beyond skill, we act in the wilderness. The wilderness resists all skill and technique; it is chaotic and unpredictable; it is filled with mysterious power which resists all our skillful efforts. When we act in the wilderness, rational agency breaks down; thus personhood breaks down. There are two responses to this wildness. The first response is submission. Many philosophers and theologians have argued for this response. The Stoics argued that you ought submit to fate, which is also nature, which is also the will of the Cosmic Zeus. So they counsel amor fati: love of fate. This attitude of submission is famously expressed in Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus. Many theologies endorse submission. Your situation is ordained by the will of God. You ought to submit to the will of God. At most, you can petition God in prayer to change His will. But you must trust and obey. Abrahamists say you must have faith that God will save you from your problems. God has sovereignty over you. Modern atheists also endorse this submission, but they say you must submit to the laws of nature. These laws have sovereignty over you. The attitude of submission leads to passivity, resignation, learned helpless, and despair. The second response is defiance. Defiance meets wildness with wildness. It projects a wild extension of technique into the wildness. This wild projection of technique is magic. To cast a spell is to project the wildness of human skill into the wildness of the world. Magic projects will and intentionality beyond all reliable skill. It is therefore employed for projects beyond skill (Malinowski, 1948: 8-16). The magician refuses to submit to fate. Hence the magician rejects Stoic amor fati. The magician refuses to submit to the laws of nature. Hence the enmity between magic and atheism. The magician refuses to submit to any God or gods. Where worship submits to divine powers, magic seeks to bind or command them (Frazer, 1923: ch. 4; Dillon, 2007). Hence the enmity between magic and worship. This distinction is reflected in the difference between pagan religion and Abrahamic religion. The pagan theologian Beckett writes that “We have sovereignty before the gods, even if we are not their equals” (2017: 84). Pagans work magic with their deities. Thus Beckett writes that “you can and should retain your sovereignty when dealing with the gods” (2017: 76). Of course, you can defy powers that you know are greater than yourself. You can defy a fate that will crush you, a God that will send you to hell, or a nature indifferent to your values. Magic goes hand in hand with ethical values like autonomy and freedom. The magician asserts his or her sovereignty. And that is a power that cannot be destroyed. No earthly tyrant can prevail against defiance. No omnipotent God can conquer it. Nevertheless, defiance requires some logical analysis. What does defiance mean? Defiance implies independence from constraints. It implies that you are not defined by any power which dominates you: if you are dominated, you are not defined by that which

205 dominates you. If you are poor, you are not defined by your poverty; if you are oppressed by injustice, you are not defined by your oppression; if you are sick, you are not defined by your illness; if you are mortal, you are not defined by your mortality. But this analysis faces an objection from identity. The objection goes like this: you are identical with your body. Your body determines your location in a system of constraints which you are admittedly unable to change. You are poor because you have no means to increase your wealth; you are oppressed because you lack the means to overcome your oppression; you are sick because you have no means to cure your illness; you are mortal because you have no means to defeat death. Magical defiance is merely imaginary. You may defy your dominators, but they actually do dominate you. The reply to this objection leads to the fourth lesson of magic. To defy some dominating power is to deny your bondage to that power. Since this power actually does dominate you, this denial can only mean that you deny your bondage to your own self. The fourth lesson of magic is that magic is an effective technology of modal defiance. Magical defiance denies bondage to your own identity. On the one hand, magic does not deny that you are identical with your body. If your body suffers from negativities, it does not deny that you presently and actually suffer from them. On the other hand, magical defiance does deny that you are eternally or essentially identical with your body. Although you are presently identical with this negative body, you are not eternally identical with it. You might turn into some future body which overcomes your present domination. Although you are actually identical with this dominated body, you are not essentially identical with it. You might be some other possible body which does not suffer from this domination. Consequently, magic affirms that you are only contingently identical with your body and you only contingently suffer from its negativities. Suppose you suffer from some painful and incurable chronic illness, such as psoriatic arthritis. Your joints are consumed by fire. The doctors can offer you palliatives, but no cure. You are your body; thus you are identical to some diseased and defective thing. You suffer from impairment, which is materiality. On the one hand, you might submit to this domination. To submit is to be buried in matter; it is to be modally dead. You might try to find ways to accept your illness. On the other hand, you might defy this domination. The magician seeks defiance. To defy your illness is to affirm that you are not essentially identical with a diseased body. Your identity with this sick body is merely contingent. Your body has counterparts who are healthy. Magic is a practical way of naming your positive counterparts. By casting a spell to cure your disease, you write the name of the class of possible universes in which you do not suffer from the disease. By writing this name, you affirm that these other universes exist, and that you have healthy counterparts in them. You affirm that you might be healthy. But this is not merely an abstract metaphysical affirmation. It is an affirmation that there are possible actions which transform your current sick body into some other possible healthy body. It is an affirmation of practical hope. As long as your illness is not necessary, then it is reasonable to hope that you will be healthy. Casting a spell signifies a commitment to practical self-transformation. Casting a spell for health (even lighting a candle) indicates a practical refusal to submit to illness. Nevertheless, merely naming other possible selves does nothing to change you into them. Magic, by itself, is not sufficient to produce any modal change.

206 28. Sign-Craft: Programming 1. Casting Effective Spells

ver time, the practice of casting spells evolved. Ancient theurgic magic inspired the medieval alchemists. These were not simply wizards who aimed to turn lead into gold. They were primitive chemists working in primitive laboratories. They started the scientific revolution. During the early modern period, magical and alchemical practices were mixed with primitive scientific practices. For example, Isaac Newton engaged in many practices which were both alchemical and scientific. Most importantly, the alchemists were primitive experimentalists. They developed the experimental method. And the spells themselves evolved into procedures for controlling stuff. Thus ancient magical practices evolved into the experimental method. Of course, the experimental method is an evolutionary method. It involves mutation and selection. You run many trials; you select those which work best; you repeat this method. To cast a spell on some physical thing is to try to command that thing to behave in an intended way. The magician uses words, glyphs, gestures, to communicate their intention to the physical thing. The magician uses signs to try to tell the thing how to behave. Perhaps the underlying assumption is that every thing contains a spirit with some degree of intelligence which can understand and obey the commands of the magician. More abstractly, to cast a spell on some thing is to project transformative information into that thing. To project transformative information into some thing is to program it to behave in some intended way. If this analysis of spell-casting is correct, then magic is a primitive kind of programming. And ancient magic evolves into modern programming. The first programmable machines were music boxes and looms. The Jacquard loom could be programmed by instructions punched into cards. Thus casting a spell to weave a fabric evolves into writing instructions into cards for a Jacquard loom. This the fifth lesson of magic: magic affirms that symbols can control nature. Hence the faith of the magician is the faith of the computer scientist: nature is programmable.

2. Programmable Machines

The ancient magician views physical stuff as animated by energy that can be controlled by instructions written in special languages. Through their experiments, the early modern alchemists began to hone in on this programmable energy. At the end of the General Scholium, Newton uses the term spirit to refer to an energy which may be electricity. Electrical technologies are physical things animated by electricity. And those technologies become increasingly programmable. Techniques for programming looms and music boxes evolved into techniques for programming electrical machines. To cast a spell on an electrical machine, you could punch holes into a tape. Thus you could cast a

207 spell on a player piano; you could command it, through an esoteric language, to play a series of notes. As technology advanced, it became more programmable. Technologists used the experimental method to make stuff increasingly programmable. Partially programmable machines evolved into fully programmable digital computers. Many authors have pointed to the parallels between computer programming and older magics (Wiener 1962; Aupers, 2010; LaGrandeur 2013). And historical links can be traced from Platonic magic to modern computer science (Markoff, 2006). Computer programmers are technical wizards who cast effective spells on physical things. The computer scientist Ray Kurzweil talks about the parallels between magic and programming (2005: 5). He identifies algorithms with magical incantations. Algorithms are spells cast into stones, but these stones are silicon chips. Consider the symbols in both magic and programming. Arcane symbols occur many places in The Greek Magical Papyri (Betz, 1986).22 These symbols serve as instructions to divine entities; thus the deities are thought of as powerful computers that generate the universe. The magicians are programming the deities. Modern programmers likewise use symbols in esoteric languages to shape the flows of energy inside of physical things. The symbols in a computer language like APL are just as bizarre as those in the Greek magical papyri. The computer scientist Danny Hillis describes programming as a kind of Platonic sorcery (1998: vii). He describes it as the act of inscribing symbols (sigils or glyphs) onto a stone, which give the stone the power to respond to incantations. These incantations are stated “in a language no human being has ever spoken”. He says “I will ask the stone questions in this language, and it will answer by showing me a vision: a world created by my spell, a world imagined within the pattern on the stone.” Thus spells cast into stones bring alternative possible universes into vision. The older magicians sought to use their spells to conjure up powerful intelligent agents who would obey their commands. Computer scientists who work in artificial intelligence do exactly that: through purely symbolic actions, they conjure into existence obedient powerful intelligent agents. Ancient Greek and Roman myths are filled with stories about magical robots (Mayor, 2019). The ancient Platonic theurgists tried to use spells to animate statues (Johnston, 2008). They tried to arouse intelligent agencies in those statues. The ancient fantasies about animated and intelligent statues and devices are being realized by modern computer scientists and roboticists. Thus ancient magic provided technology with its goals. It was as if the ancient magicians planted the seed that grew into modern computer and robotics technologies. Ancient magic can be characterized as a brute force search for novel techniques. It is the wild exploration of the terra incognita of natural stuffs and procedures. It provides the ideas for further exploration. Or perhaps it just provides the faith that further exploration is worthwhile. Thus the ancient magical texts look like a kind of ancient science fiction. Magic is unfettered experimentation. It is hacking reality. Computer programming follows the experimental method. Programs are developed through an evolutionary method. They are designed; tested; and redesigned. Through mutation and selection, programmers explore the vast space of possible programs. The many parallels between programming and older magic suggest that paganism should be appealing to computer professionals. Adler (1997: 414) gives a list of reasons why computer professionals may find paganism attractive. This prediction is borne out by the data. Surveys have found that computer workers make up the largest profession of

208 contemporary pagans (Adler, 1997: 414; Jorgensen & Russell, 1999: 332). However, more recent surveys may yield different results.

3. Programmable Organisms

The magical tradition portrays living things as animated by vital energies which can be shaped and controlled through magical procedures. To cast a spell on an organism was to try to use symbolic instructions to control it. Living things were viewed as being animated by spirits able to understand and obey commands. So, if you were sick, your illness was perhaps caused by a demon who could be commanded to leave your body. Of course, these theories of life and illness were false. But they contained grains of truth. As it turned out, living stuff is extremely programmed stuff. Living stuff is controlled by programs written in the language of genetics. Since living stuff is genetically programmed, its programming can be read. You can get your genome scanned and analyzed for medical purposes. Since living stuff is genetically programmed, its programming can be edited or altered. You can cast spells on your own body. These spells are commands written in the languages of molecular cell biology. One way to cast a spell on your body is through immunization. A vaccine is a spell cast on your immune system. When you get vaccinated, your immune system responds by running a genetic algorithm that evolves antibodies. The genetic codes for these antibodies are stored in the DNA of your immune cells. So you reprogram your DNA through vaccination. Another way to reprogram your body is to take drugs that alter the expressions of your genes. Or you can take drugs that alter your metabolic pathways. Molecules are functional words or symbols; your whole body is a living text in which molecules talk to molecules. By taking molecules into your body, you cast spells on your metabolic circuitry. At the extreme end of biowizardry, you may someday be able to directly edit your genes. Thus magic evolves into biotechnology.

4. Programmable Nature

Ancient magicians thought that stuff was animated by energies which could understand and obey instructions expressed in human languages. Ancient magic evolves into modern programming. Programmers agree that stuff is animated by energies which can understand and obey instructions expressed in human languages. As magic evolves into programming, the art of casting spells becomes shaped by the experimental method. Programmers test their spells; those that don’t work get discarded; those that do work get modified; their modifications are new spells to be tested in the next round. Thus programmers use the evolutionary method of mutation and selection. They record the experiments that work. This accumulated record of success is science. The ancient magicians thought that all stuff could be controlled by spells. Modern programmers retain this ancient faith. We believe that all physical things are potentially controllable by programming. We can figure out how to program stuff down to the quantum level through codes that regulate flows of energy through physical things. Thus transhumanists like Ray Kurzweil (2005) view all stuff as programmable. If any physical process carries information, then a spell can be cast on it in some language. It can be

209 programmed. Perhaps the universe is ultimately made of information. Perhaps it is a network of entangled quantum bits (qubits). If the universe is ultimately made of information, then perhaps it can be programmed all the way down. The scientific study of spirit supports the practice of programming. Spirit drives stuff to self-organize into increasingly complex forms. It thus drives the evolution of stuff into living organisms. But living organisms run genetic programs; they are programmable things. Spirit drives the evolution of life to become more intelligent. And intelligent organisms are self-programming. They evolve nervous systems which can learn to run procedures. They can learn to make things. Likewise spirit drives the evolution of technology. The evolution of technology follows the path of increasing programmability. It evolves into electrical technology and then into informational technology. As technology evolves, more and more of the stuff on earth becomes either biologically or technologically programmable. From these facts, philosophical pagans infer that spirit strives for programmability. By using science and technology to change our bodies into divine bodies, we are following the trajectory of spirit itself. We are aligning ourselves with its flow. We are cultivating it, concentrating it, and projecting it into the future. We shape ourselves into increasingly spiritual machines.

210 29. Sign-Craft: Self-Hacking 1. The Platonic Three-Shelled Self

our body, on our interpretation of Plotinus, has the logical structure of an onion. It consists of a core surrounded by many shells. The logical structure of your body is not the physical structure of your body. Your innermost core is the One. Plotinus says every particular thing is a manifestation of the One and in some sense wholly contains the One. He says “Every particular thing has a One of its own to which it may be traced” (E 3.8.10). Every many has its One (E 5.6.3, 6.6.13, 6.9.1). Every whole composed of many parts is unified by its One. Every human body is a multiplicity (of cells, of molecules, of atoms, of particles), and it is unified by its own One. The Argument from Abstraction can be applied to human bodies to show that every human body logically contains its own One. Your body takes its place in the Tree of Porphyry. You are a specific human (with an individual form). But you are an instance of the type human; and of the deeper type animal; and of the deeper type organism; of the still deeper type physical thing; all they way down to the deepest type. But this deepest type, the root of your own Tree of Porphyry, is your One. It is the presence of being- itself in your own body (E 6.2.8.25-32); but being-itself is the One. Your own One, the presence of being-itself in your own body, is your deepest self; it is your depth. You can invoke your depth in Stoic prayer or in other rituals. Your depth (your One) burns with self-surpasivity. Thus spirit burns in the logical core of your body. So when you invoke your depth, you are also invoking the spirit burning in your body. On our interpretation of Plotinus, the One is followed by the Two. But the Two is the Logos – it is the logical structure of reality. Likewise your One is followed by your Two. Your Logos is the logical structure of your body. It is the way the entire rational order of nature manifests itself in your body. Your Logos surrounds your One; it is the second shell of your logical onion. Your Logos is your body-form. Your body-form is your individual form (E 5.7). It is all the programming that defines your individuality. Following Aristotle, your body-form is your soul. So your Logos is your soul. Your One is surrounded by your soul. Your soul is like a recipe for the creation of your body. As spirit animates your body-recipe, it creates your body. Your body is the third and outermost shell of your logical onion. Of course, fire still makes light. So the fiery energy that courses through your body-recipe shines with light. It shines with the reflected light of the Good. As spirit creates your body, this light strives to shine out of your body. It strives to shine out through the structure of your body. On the one hand, sometimes the structure of your body is clear. Where it is clear, it is transparent to the light of spirit. And so this light rises up towards the Good. On the other hand, sometimes the structure of your body is opaque. Where it is opaque, it blocks the light of spirit. This opacity prevents spirit from rising up to the Good. This opacity is logical impurity. It is logical noise. It is self-contradiction and inconsistency. It is the presence of non-being in your body. But this presence is evil, in the sense that it causes

211 your body to defeat its own programming. Your body disagrees with itself. Its parts are inconsistent with each other. This self-inconsistency is the matter in your body. Matter is not physical stuff. Matter is self-contradiction. Matter is self-conflict and self-defeat. Matter expresses itself as functional impairment. As spirit animates your soul, as it sets your body-program into motion, your body comes into existence. As spirit animates your soul, your soul becomes embodied, it expresses the concrete structure of your body. From a logical perspective, your animated soul generates your body; your animated soul manifests your body. Your body is a physical model of your soul like a cake is a physical model of a cake-making recipe. And when your body comes into existence, it comes into existence with all of its functional impairments, that is, with all of its flaws. As spirit passes through your body-recipe, each internal inconsistency is a defect which manifests itself as a shadow in your flesh. And so a shadow-person comes to exist in your body. Plotinus talks about the way this material person comes to dwell in your body (E 6.4.14). Some Platonists, like Plotinus, argued that your goal in life is to escape from your body. You should shed your outer shell like a person sheds a layer of clothes or like an actor sheds a costume and mask. However, this opposition to the body is not correct. The flaws in the body are not the fault of the body. The flaws in the body originate in flaws in the soul. You shouldn’t blame the computer for the errors produced by running a buggy program. Later Platonists, such as Iamblichus, argued that the goal of life is the purification of the body (Shaw 2014). The late Platonist Sallustius (363: chs. 14 & 15) said the depth of the body contains a divine light which strives to shine through its typically corrupted physicality. Spiritual practices, especially those of theurgy, try to clarify the body so that the divine light can shine through it. Dillon (2007; 2016) argues that theurgy involved an early technical approach to matter. Johnston (2008: 452) reports that theurgy was described by the Greek phrase he telestike techne, meaning the craft of self-perfection. Shaw (2015) writes that theurgic rituals aimed at the transfiguration of the body. They aimed to divinize the body by arousing the power of a god or goddess within its depths. Shaw (1999) argues that the late Platonists thought of the soul as an embodied mathematical pattern. Hence their theurgic rituals made extensive use of mathematical symbolism. So theurgy aims at the clarification of the mathematical structure of the body. As the soul is purified, so also the body is purified.

2. Naturalizing Your Three-Shelled Self

Philosophical pagans work to modernize and naturalize ancient thought. So we will work here to modernize and naturalize the Plotinian conception of the body as a three- shelled onion. We agree that the logical structure of your body has three layers like an onion. You are your body. Since you exist, you are the value of a bound variable. When you say “I exist” you mean that (∃x)(x = I). So being-itself, which is the existential quantifier, gives being to the value taken on by the variable bound to it. But that value is you. So being-itself gives being to you. Thus an instance of being-itself is present, as the existential quantifier, in the deepest interiority of your body. The logical core of your body is being-itself. Following the Platonists, being-itself is the One. The One in the core of your body is a mirror which reflects the light of the Good. By reflecting that

212 light, it converts that light to fire. A fire burns in the logical core of your self. This fire is spirit. So the unity in your self radiates logical energy. The second layer of your logical onion is your programming. It is a recipe for the construction of your body. When spirit enters the recipe for your body, it sets that recipe into motion. The logical energy of spirit becomes physical stuff. Since your body-recipe is your soul, we will now refer to it as such. As your soul calls for ingredients, they come into existence as physical substances. However, since your soul is purely logical, it builds your body from scratch. Think of your body as a software object inside a video game. All the content of this video game is procedurally generated. Since your soul constructs this entire system from scratch, it starts with the recipe for the construction of the video game console – the computer on which the game runs. By animating this deepest layer of your soul, spirit creates this computer. It creates the hardware. The next layer of your soul is the operating system for the game console. This operating system contains the laws of physics required by the existence of your body. It is like the reality engine or physics engine for a video game. As spirit animates this reality engine, a spatio-temporal context for your body comes into being. Of course, your body-recipe contains only the information needed to define the smallest physical context for your body. It does not define our entire universe. It defines only the smallest part of our universe which your body requires for its survival. It defines only the minimal substructure of our universe needed for your body. This minimal substructure includes the physical components of your body. So your soul calls for quarks and electrons; then protons and neutrons; then atoms. For the sake of illustration, say the smallest physical context for your body is a planet like our earth orbiting a star like our sun. So your soul calls for the existence of a star like our sun. And so that star exists. It calls for the existence of a planet like our earth. And so that planet exists with its ground, its water, its atmosphere. It contains all the chemistry needed for your life. Given these physical and chemical ingredients, and given the planetary context which your body needs, your body-recipe turns biological. Out of the chemical soup on the surface of its digitally-generated earth, it calls for the existence of an original human cell. It creates all the machinery of an original human cell It calls into being the ribosomes, the mitochondria, the nucleus, the chromosomes. Your soul contains the information that will be encoded in your DNA. Of course, it contains that information in a purely logical and therefore abstract form. After all, DNA is just one contingent way to encode that information. But DNA is the way biological information gets encoded here. And so your soul writes this information into the DNA in your original cell. Now you are a genetically complete zygote. Now your body is procedurally generated from this zygote. The recipe for the construction of your body defines the smallest possible physical process which generates your body. From the chemical soup, spirit constructs your body a solitary digital organism. By running your body-recipe, spirit builds your body directly out of its parts. Anyone watching this process would see atoms appear to spontaneously assemble themselves into molecules, molecules into cells, cells into organs. Your digitally-generated body assembles itself on this digitally-generated earth. Your body grows from its seed into a mature human organism with trillions of cells. It grows very much like the world tree. Your cells reproduce asexually to fill out your body-tree. Your mature body is just a procedurally generated software object in a digital universe.

213 The software of your body defines your set of possible states. Since the creation of your body was driven by spirit, and since spirit strives to rise towards the Good, spirit orders the set of possible states of your body into degrees of goodness. These are degrees of intrinsic value (that is, they are degrees of complexity). The possible states of your body are ranked from worst to best. The worst states of your body are those with the greatest functional impairment. They are the most material states of your body. These are the darkest states of your body. When your body is in these states, its programming is full of self-contradictions which block the light of spirit. Your genes contain harmful mutations, mutations which are self-destructive, mutations which contradict other genes in your cells. So the machines in your cells don’t work right; they don’t function properly. Your cells don’t work right; your organs don’t work right. Your body does not flourish. It does not manifest arete, the functional excellence that shines out in the competitive agon. Your body is dysfunctional. Matter is illness. However, just as spirit sorts your possible states from worst to best, from sickest to healthiest, from most dysfunctional to most eufunctional, so it also engenders a striving in those states. Spirit is the power of self-surpassing. Each less excellent state strives to surpass itself into some more excellent state. Plotinus says every living thing strives to flourish (E 1.4.1-2). It strives away from its worst states and towards its best states. Any body animated by spirit strives for its own specialized goods. And it strives for the more general goods of humanity, sociality, rationality. It ultimately strives for the Good itself. The outermost layer of your self is just your body. However, it is not your body as some static object. It is your body as a dynamical object, your body in motion. But your three-dimensional body in motion generates your four-dimensional life. Your life is a temporally extended series of changing bodies. It is a process or activity. This process is defined by the fire-energy at the logical core of your body as it flows through your soul. It is like the execution history of a computer program. It is like the music generated as wind passes through an instrument controlled by some musical score. If this Platonic ontology is correct, then every self has a tripartite ontology: its power, its form, and its life. The fire burning in the logical core of every body generates light. This light shines out from the logical core of the body and through its programming, and into its life. This light is the reflected light of the Good. It rises up towards the Good. Although we are focusing here on your body as a solitary object, procedurally generated in the smallest possible substructure of universe, it might be objected that the smallest possible substructure is our entire universe. Your body didn’t self-assemble; it grew in your mother’s womb. So add the program for your mother. When it is coordinated with your body-program, the two of you develop as expected. But your mother needs your father for conception. So add the program for your father. And now add all the other programs for all the organisms on earth during your life. Add all the programs for all organisms during the whole course of evolution. Add them in the order in which they appear. All these organism-programs are sub-programs in the super- program that defines the whole course of earthly life. Bit by bit, sub-program by sub- program, our whole universe comes into existence. Philosophical pagans affirm the existence of a cosmic program such that, for every thing in our universe, that thing is generated by a sub-program of the cosmic program.

214 3. Hacking Your Three-Shelled Self

The energy at the core of every body is surrounded by its form. This form is the soul, which is the recipe for the total construction of the body from scratch. As a form, your soul is ultimately a string of binary digits; it is a bit string in the thin tree of strings. And since these strings encode sets, your soul corresponds to a set. It is a member of other sets in the iterative hierarchy of pure sets. As the old Pythagorean Eurytus argued, your soul is a purely mathematical object. But we don’t want to dwell on those metaphysical issues here. Here we want to focus on the hackability of your programming. All the parts of your body are procedurally generated. They are generated by running codes on some reality engine as if you were living in a video game. All those codes are texts. And all those texts can be rewritten. Even quarks and electrons are software objects created by running programs. The deepest physicality of your body is software open to being reprogrammed, revised, upgraded into superior types of physicality. Platonic metaphysics turns into hacker metaphysics. The faith of the old Platonic theurgists, the faith of the magicians, is the faith of the hacker: reality can be debugged, upgraded, its functionalities extended and complexified. Hacker metaphysics says your programming shapes your reality. Your codes shape the flow of energy through your self. All the layers of code in your programming have varying degrees of functionality. They may be well-functioning. Or they may contain programming errors. These errors are like bugs in artificial software. They negatively impact the functionality of your self. They are noise, impairment, materiality. These texts are more or less coherent. On the one hand, if your software is more coherent, then the functions of its parts are mutually consistent; they work more cooperatively. Coherent texts are more transparent to the reflected light of the Good. This reflected light shines out through them with little distortion; hence cells with coherent texts radiate power, functional excellence, beauty, health, and other positive values. On the other hand, if your software is less coherent, then the functions of its parts have some inconsistencies and conflicts. Incoherence is opacity. So if some software text is more opaque, then the reflected light of the Good shines out through it in a distorted or perverted way; cells with incoherent texts radiate illness. On this point self-hacking is Platonic: evil has no positivity of its own; it is merely perverted goodness. It is the privation of the Good. At a highly abstract level, Figure 29.1 illustrates the process of self-hacking changing bad code to good code. Ancient Platonists thought you could change the middle layer of your self through magical exercises. These were the ancient mental exercises of Plotinus and Porphyry, or like the ancient theurgical rituals of Iamblichus and Proclus. New Thought writers like Cady (1919) say you can change your negative thought-patterns through purely mental exercises, like repeatedly thinking positive thoughts or saying positive words. These mental exercises turn into Buddhist meditation or Stoic practices. They may have some effectiveness on some psychological features of your life. But self-hackers say your codes are not mental. They are written into physical texts in your body. You cannot change your DNA by thinking. You cannot even change your neural networks very much by thinking. Stoic and Buddhist practices have only slightly greater effectiveness than the mind-cure. So you need to apply physical tools and techniques to the codes in your body, to correct their errors and to rewrite them to be more coherent.

215 Self-hacking works to change bad code into good code. Self-hacking begins with the Plotinian image of the self as a self-tuning lyre or self-sculpting statue. Early self- hacking was mainly trial and error. But hacking matured into an experimental method for solving problems. This method, also called iterative design, proceeds like this: experiment; test; learn; repeat. This method is evolutionary, because it involves blind variation and selective retention. As such it is naturalistic, because it uses the same process that nature uses to solve biological design problems. But self-hacking need not be blind: it can make use of scientific and medical knowledge. And, just as biological evolution works on genetic texts, so hacking, in software design, works on algorithmic texts written in programming languages – it works by rewriting code. It aims to write code that realizes aesthetic values: code is poetry. It aims to write code which reads elegantly and which runs efficiently, gracefully, and beautifully.

Figure 29.1 Self-hacking changes bad code into good code.

4. Programming Your Way to the Deities

Philosophical pagans affirm that ancient magic evolved into modern programming techniques. Ancient magic evolved into the hacker methodology. So philosophical pagans use the hacker methodology to change their bodies, their societies, and the whole earth. As long as there is no contrary evidence, we are happy to extrapolate the hacker methodology to the entire universe. The whole universe is programmable; we can use programming techniques to transform the entire universe. However, programming at the planetary or cosmic scales remains a distant dream. For the present, and for the foreseeable future, we focus on programming our own bodies. Of course, programming is merely a means to an end. So what are the goals of pagan hacking? Plotinus outlined two kinds of magical goals. He said vulgar magic aimed at the kinds of goals we share with non-human animals. So you might hack your body in order to become more sexually attractive, more productive at work, more competitive in the social arenas of business or politics, more powerful in politics, more wealthy, more famous, and so on. He said the higher magic (which we’ll call theurgy) aimed at higher goals. It aimed to elevate or exalt your nature into a divine nature. It aimed to make you more godlike. So it aimed to transform you into an animal beyond human; it aimed to change you into a transhuman animal. Theurgy aims to overcome the negativities of human animality. Of course, it aims at greater health and longer life. But the theurgic will is not the will to power. It is the will to self-transcendence. It aims at greater health

216 and life because those values serve superior values. Theurgic hacking aims at the Good; it is the power of self-surpassing in your body. It aims at the virtues. Theurgical hacking aims to transform you into a more virtuous animal. It aims to equip your body with superhuman virtue. For example, theurgic hacking aims to make you wiser; it aims to make your body exemplify a transhuman level of wisdom. The Platonic form of wisdom is not a single property more or less well-instantiated by some body. The Platonic form of wisdom is an endless series of ever greater degrees of wisdom. Plants and bugs and snakes and dogs and chimpanzees have their degrees of wisdom. Humans too have their degrees. And there are transhuman and superhuman degrees of wisdom. Every degree of wisdom is surpassed by absolutely infinitely many greater degrees. There are as many degrees of wisdom as numbers in the axis mundi. wisdom itself is the entire series of degrees. Thus wisdom-itself is a proper class. To use a phrase from process theology, wisdom-itself is a self-surpassing surpasser of all. But this was a phrase the process theologians used for their god. Philosophical pagans affirm that the virtue of wisdom is one of the deities. Of course, as pagans, we affirm that there are many other deities. Every virtue is a self-surpassing surpasser of all. Every virtue is divine; every virtue is a deity. Is this a modern pagan innovation? It is not. The ancient pagans worshipped deified abstractions (Lind, 1973; Clark, 2007). Philosophical pagans do not worship deified abstractions. However, we do recognize them as ideals for which we strive. We seek transhuman exemplars of positive qualities. Since these exemplars do not yet exist, all we can do is to imagine them. And, as we imagine them, we try to change ourselves or our descendents into them. We imagine transhuman animals who more excellently realize clusters of virtues. When we imagine these animals, we are imagining gods and goddesses. For philosophical pagans, the gods and goddesses are axiological ideals. We imagine them as existing in the future, and we strive to become more like them. We try to make our bodies as healthy as divine bodies and to make our brains as wise as divine brains. And, through careful philosophical and scientific thinking, we strive to define these divine ideals with precision

217

30. Shape-Craft: Naturalized Channeling 1. Theurgy: Channeling the Deities

amblichus is known for advocating theurgy. He talked about it in his book On the Mysteries (2003) here referred to as M. Theurgy is a system of ritual activities which aims to raise human souls to the level of the deities (M 1.12). Theurgy includes mind-craft, which was advocated by earlier thinkers like Plotinus and Porphyry. Mind-craft includes mental exercises like prayer, meditation, contemplation, and visualization. But theurgy goes beyond mind-craft – it involves more than mental exercises. Thus Iamblichus writes that “it is not pure thought that unites theurgists to the gods” (M 2.11). According to Iamblichus, the deities have placed physical symbols of themselves in the universe, and these symbols “possess the same power as the gods themselves” (M 1.15). These symbols include things like herbs, metals, stones, and so on. By using the symbols of some deity in the proper rituals, the theurgist becomes somehow identified with that deity. When the theurgist performs the rituals, their human soul “exchanges one life for another and exerts a different activity, and considers itself then to be no longer human” (M 1.12). By means of theurgical rituals, a human can “assume the mantle of the gods” (M 4.2). The soul of the human theurgist takes on the shape or form (the “mantle”) of a deity. Thus theurgy includes shape-craft – through theurgical rituals, we change our shapes from human to divine. Of course, this does not mean changing the physical shape of your body into the physical shape of some deity like Athena or Zeus. It means changing the shape of your soul. Since your soul is the form of your body, theurgy alters the form of your body. It changes your brain in some highly abstract way. During theurgical rituals, the human theurgist becomes divinized: “either the god possesses us, or we become wholly the god’s property, or we exercise our activity in common with him” (M 3.5). This looks like the modern concept of channeling. On this view, the theurgist channels some deity. Channeling is a kind of dissociation. It occurs in possession trances. When a person goes into a possession trance, they abandon their ordinary personality and take on another personality. Possession trances are common in religions around our earth throughout history. People who practice the Yoruba religions practice channeling. During possession trances, they channel divine spirits known as orisha. To channel an orisha is to be ridden by that orisha, much as a horse is ridden by some human. When a person channels an orisha, the orisha partly controls their body. Possession trances also occur in Wicca. During the ritual of drawing down the moon, a Wiccan priestess channels the Wiccan Goddess (Gardner, 1954: 24; Adler, 1997: 20; Hutton, 2019: 253; Hill, 20xx). During the ritual of drawing down the sun, a Wiccan priest channels the Wiccan God. During these rituals, the relevant deity partly controls the body of the channeler – the deity may speak through them.

218 2. Analogical Models of Alien Universes

Philosophical pagans are physicalists about human persons: you are identical with your body. Your mind is identical with all the information-processing circuitry of your body. That information-processing circuitry runs through every cell in your body. It is molecular circuitry. However, your information-processing circuitry is concentrated in your brain. Consequently, it is accurate enough to say that your mind is identical with your brain. Dawkins describes how our brains run sophisticated virtual reality software (1998: ch. 11). That software takes all the inputs to your brain and uses them to generate the phenomenal world in which you live. We all live in virtual reality environments. Your brain simulates the objects you perceive. It also simulates your body and your self. It simulates the identity of your self with your body. It simulates the following three facts: that there exists some x such that x is your self; that there exists some y such that y is your body; and that your self x is identical with your body y. Of course, simulation does not imply falsehood. Your simulations can truthfully correspond to reality. Your simulations of your local environment, your body, and your self usually do truthfully correspond to reality. But reality is large and complex. Philosophical pagans affirm the existence of many possible universes. Every logically possible universe exists somewhere in the thin tree of string. These possible universes are purely mathematical objects. Some but not all of these are actualized or realized by concrete physical structures. But we are not dualists: physical structures are not additional things; physicality is a mathematical quality possessed by actualized mathematical structures. And we affirm that the existence of other possible universes is a naturalistic thesis. Many physical theories refer to vast pluralities of possible universes (Tegmark, 2003). Thus we live in a multiverse. We interpret the multiverse using the modal logic of David Lewis (1968; 1986). More precisely, we use his counterpart theory. Things in any universe (such as our universe) can have counterparts in other universes. Of course, our universe is one of the possible universes. To refer to other possible universes, we will call them alien universes. Since all possible universes exist (at least abstractly), all possible religious universes exist (at least abstractly). So there are Homeric universes at which the Homeric stories about the deities can be told as factual. Although the Olympian deities do not exist in our actual universe, they do exist in those Homeric universes. According to the Homeric stories, the goddess Hebe serves divine food (nectar and ambrosia) to the deities. So Hebe serves ambrosia to Athena. An ancient Greek who worshipped Athena might want to see Athena. She might want to dine with Athena or to give thanks to Athena by serving Athena food. Of course, since Athena lives in another universe, those actions are not possible. But they can be replicated. If you can’t serve food to Athena, you can serve food to an avatar of Athena. You can build an analogical model of some part of some Homeric universe. So you build a virtual house for a virtual Athena. So you build a temple which houses an avatar of Athena. Your temple is the Old Temple and the avatar is the Athena Polias, a wooden statue of extreme antiquity. But living humans, like actors in a play, can also serve as avatars of a deity. Herodotus (The Histories, 1.60) describes an event in which a girl played the role of Athena. During this event, he says the Athenians worshipped this girl as if she were Athena.

219 Your construction is an analogical model of (part of) some Homeric universe. Just as Athena inhabits her house, so your avatar of Athena inhabits her temple. The analogy can be extended by performing rituals in the temple which imitate events that involve Athena in her house. Just as Hebe serves ambrosia to Athena, so a virtual Hebe can serve virtual ambrosia to the statue of Athena. The virtual Hebe is some priest or priestess and the virtual ambrosia is sacrificed meat. Just as divine weavers give Athena new clothes, so you can give your statue of Athena a new virtual dress. Just as Athena bathes, so the Athena Polias was bathed during the Plynteria ritual (Simon, 2002: 46-8). Analogies make analogical counterparts. If A is to B as C is to D, then A is an analogical counterpart of C and B is an analogical counterpart of D. The analogies involving the cult of Athena establish a rich system of counterpart relations. The Athena statue is an analogical counterpart of Athena; the priestess is an analogical counterpart of Hebe; the sacrificial meat is an analogical counterpart of the ambrosia. Figure 30.1 illustrates some of these counterpart relations. Analogical counterparts are the basis for metaphorical identities (Kittay, 1987; Steinhart, 2001). If A is to B as C is to D, then A is metaphorically identical with C and B is metaphorically identical with D. Thus the Athena statue is metaphorically identical with Athena.

Figure 30.1 Some analogical counterparts.

3. Shifting into Alien Universes

Alien universes are simulated in portals. On this playground, little Timmy and Tommy will pretend to be pioneers living in some pioneer universe (Van Leeuwen, 2014: 712-13). That pioneer universe is their target universe; their pioneer selves are their target selves. The playground contains some props that they will use in their pretense. These include stumps, sticks, Timmy and Tommy, and their sounds. Before they play their pioneer game, they set up a convention that maps the props in the playground onto their counterparts in the pioneer universe. They build a virtual copy of the pioneer universe. Stumps in the playground are counterparts of bears in the pioneer world. Cars map onto rocks. Likewise sticks are guns; to exclaim “bang!” is to shoot; Timmy is Daniel Boone; Tommy is Davy Crockett. Thus Daniel Boone is Timmy’s target self while Davy Crocket is Tommy’s target self. Figure 30.2 illustrates their map.

220

Figure 30.2 The mapping between two universes.

The counterpart relations between the playground and the pioneer universe can be used to define two translation operations. To see how these operations work, first consider translation between English and Spanish. The forwards translation goes from English to Spanish. It can be indicated by writing some English phrase in square brackets. Whatever gets written between the square brackets gets mapped into Spanish. Thus [Socrates is a man] produces “Sócrates es un hombre”. The reverse translation maps Spanish onto English. This is indicated by writing some Spanish phrase in angle brackets. Thus is “Socrates is a man”. If S is some sentence, then applying the forwards translation [S] followed by the reverse translation <[S]> yields S. Thus <[Socrates is a man]> produces “Socrates is a man”. Now we can use our translators to move back and forth between the playground and the pioneer universe. These translators are bridges between the two universes. For example, [Timmy points his stick at a stump and says ‘bang!’] translates into “Daniel Boone shot a bear!”. And the reverse translation works as expected: yields “Timmy points his stick at a stump and says ‘bang!’”. Figure 30.3 shows the translation of a sentence said by Timmy. Of course, while these translators work directly on sentences, those sentences describe actions. So the translators work on actions. Timmy pointing his stick maps onto Daniel Boone pointing his gun.

Figure 30.3 A sample translation.

Once these translators have been set up and learned, Timmy and Tommy can use them to mentally travel to the pioneer universe. They do this by identifying with their counterparts. They might do this through explicit declarations. Timmy can say “Ok, now I’m Daniel Boone”. Or they might just declare that the game has started. When they do this, they shift to the pioneer universe (Anzaldua, 2002). Of course, they can’t

221 literally travel to that other universe – they remain in this universe. They shift by bring a virtual copy of the pioneer universe into our universe. They bring this virtual copy into the playground, which now serves as a portal to the pioneer universe. The virtual copy of the pioneer universe is a pocket universe inside of the portal. Once inside this pocket universe, they now virtually perform the actions of their counterparts. This virtual performance is simulation. When Timmy points his stick at a stump and says ‘bang!’, this simulates an action done by Daniel Boone in the pioneer universe. It simulates his action of shooting a bear in that universe. Timmy carries out this simulation in his imagination: he mentally pictures himself as Daniel Boone; he pictures the stick as a gun, the stump as a bear, and shouting ‘bang!’ as shooting. These acts of simulation are acts of seeing through. Timmy sees through the stump in the playground to its counterpart bear in the pioneer universe. By seeing through the stump, he sees the stump as a bear. When he looks at the stump, the virtual reality software in his brain simulates a bear. He more or less vividly sees a virtual bear. Once Timmy and Tommy shift, they can speak in the portal as if they were their counterparts in the pioneer universe. Thus Timmy can say “I’m Daniel Boone!” and he can say “I shot a bear!”. When he speaks in the portal as if he were in the pioneer universe, his sentences need to be translated from the portal into the pioneer universe. But this translation has to go through the playground. So it has two steps. First, his sentence gets reverse translated from the portal into the playground. Second, it gets forwards translated from the playground into the pioneer universe. Before getting into the details, Figure 30.4 shows the application of these translations.

Figure 30.4 From the portal to the pioneer universe.

Suppose Timmy says “I shot a bear” in the portal. Since Timmy is the speaker, this is equivalent to “Timmy shot a bear” in the portal. Feeding this into the reverse translation, we have on the playground. That translation outputs “Timmy points his stick . . . ” on the playground. Feeding this into the forwards translation, we have [Timmy points his stick . . . ] in the pioneer univese. That translation outputs “Daniel Boone shot a bear” in the pioneer universe. Putting this all together, Timmy’s statement “I shot a bear” in the portal describes the action “Daniel Boone shot a bear” in the pioneer universe. Timmy’s statement means that Daniel Boone shot a bear in the pioneer universe. So Timmy’s statement is true if and only if Daniel Boone shot that bear. It is made true by an action done by his counterpart in an alien universe.

222 The analogy set up on the playground defines a possible universe in which the analogy holds. Since all possible universes exist, this analogous universe exists. So the actions performed in the portal by Timmy and Tommy analogically correspond to actions performed by their counterparts in the pioneer universe. The actions of Timmy and Tommy are coordinated or synchronized with the actions of their counterparts. As Timmy moves, so Daniel Boone moves. The act of Timmy pointing his stick coincides with the act of Daniel Boone pointing his gun. This coincidence is not causal – Timmy does not cause Daniel Boone to point his gun. But the action of Timmy is coordinated with the action of Daniel Boone in such a way that each action carries information about the other action. As soon as Timmy and Tommy enter their portal, their actions become entangled with events in the pioneer universe. And the props in the portal are entangled with their counterparts. Thus Timmy is entangled with Daniel Boone. Since the analogy holds, the statements made according to that analogy are true. All of Timmy’s self-descriptions in the portal are equivalent to Daniel Boone’s self- descriptions in the pioneer universe. Timmy experiences himself as a virtual Daniel Boone. Timmy does not experience “I shot a bear” in the portal; he experiences [] in the pioneer universe. Timmy’s self-simulation software is simulating being identical with Daniel Boone. Of course, Timmy is not literally identical with Daniel Boone. But analogies support metaphorical identities: Timmy is metaphorically identical with Daniel Boone. And the metaphorical identity is truthful. When a person in some portal simulates being truthfully metaphorically identical with their counterpart, that simulation is channeling. Thus Timmy channels Daniel Boone.

4. Channeling through Simulation

Philosophical pagans do not deny the existence of deities. The deities are possible future superhuman animals. These possible future superhuman animals are entirely physical things. There are at least two possible ways for you to be transformed into a deity. The first way is the way of technology. Transhumanists argue for this way. If they are right, then our bodies will be progressively transformed into divine bodies in the far future of our own universe. The second way is the way of reincarnation. Philosophical pagans affirm that our universe is just one member of a long evolutionary sequence of universes. Our universe will be surpassed by greater future universes. They will contain greater counterparts of all the things in our universe. So your body is part of a long evolutionary sequence of possible future bodies in possible future universes. Eventually, your future bodies will evolve to the greatness of divine bodies. You will become a god or goddess. Your divine bodies are your future possible counterparts. They are the divine versions of yourself. So you have divine counterparts either in the future of this universe or in other future universes. Your divine bodies are your target selves in their target universes (or parts of universes). Since you have divine counterparts in your divine contexts, you can channel them. When you channel one of your future divine counterparts, you are channeling a god or goddess. This is religious channeling. You do this by first setting up a portal. Your portal is a ritual container. It holds an analogical model of your target universe, which holds one of your target selves. Here your target universe is some future context and

223 your target self is a divine self. This analogical model points your virtual reality software towards your target universe. It generates analogical counterpart relations. By means of those relations, you become entangled with your target self. You become virtually identical with your target self, which is one of your divine counterparts. And so, just like Timmy channels Daniel Boone, you channel some god or goddess. When you channel some divine self, your actions truthfully coincide with the actions of that god or goddess. You think and speak and act as if you were the god or goddess. This is the modal theory of channeling. It does not involve any mind-body dualism. It rejects mind-body dualism. You are not possessed by a ghost; you are simulating another person. Philosophical pagans use the modal theory of channeling to analyze all kinds of channeling. When the Iamblichan theurgist channels some diety, he simulates one of his future divine counterparts. When the Wiccan priestess draws down the moon, she simulates some future divine version of herself. All this natural. The future divine counterparts are physical things existing in physical universes. The channeling occurs as your brain naturally shifts its simulation software into some alien context. Although religious channeling resembles play-acting or make-believe, it arguably involves deeper simulation. During religious channeling, your brain becomes immersed in its simulated universe much like it is ordinarily immersed in our actual universe. It becomes absorbed by its simulation. Absorption is a kind of dissociation (Bronkhorst, 2017; Lifshitz et al., 2019). Although dissociation can be pathological, it can also be a normal response to the negativities of life (Butler, 2006; Dalenberg & Pulson, 2009). As a kind of normal dissociation, religious channeling allows you to escape from the negativities of your actual life by simulating divine selves. Your divine selves are free from the negativities of human animality. To facilitate dissociative absorption in alien universes, religious rituals often induce altered states of consciousness. Hence religious rituals may involve ecstatic dancing, rhythmic entrainment, self-hypnosis, psychedelic drugs, or other techniques. Since these rituals change the shape of your brain from one self-shape to another, they can be called rituals of change-working. The ancient Greek word for change-working is meturgy. So modernized theurgical rituals are meturgical rituals. And meturgy changes your shape: meturgy is shape-craft.

224 31. Shape-Craft: Meturgical Practices 1. Ecstatic Dancing

aves are large dance parties in which electronic music plays a central role. Raves also typically involve moving images and light shows. Classical rave culture reached its peak during the 1990s and 2000s; it was gone by 2010 (Anderson, 2009). However, raving continues, and. philosophical pagans can still rave. During classical rave culture, many raves acquired explicitly spiritual or religious aspects (Takahashi & Olaveson, 2003; Gauthier, 2004; St John, 2004; Sylvan, 2005; St John, 2006). They sometimes incorporated items from Eastern religion, Buddhism, and neopaganism. Some raves involve the construction of a ritual container for the rave (Sylvan, 2005: 107-12). It is created by marking the spatio-temporal boundaries of the rave. Sylvan (2005: 2-3) describes raves put on by the Rhythm Society in San Francisco. They use the common liturgy inspired by Wiccan rituals. They began by casting a circle. They called the four elements and the four cardinal directions. Some raves also begin by purifying the musical equipment by smudging it with sage (Hutson, 2000: 41; Sylvan, 2005: 109). By marking the directions in space, and the starting moment in time, these raves created the ritual container. The ritual container holds signs which point your brain’s virtual reality software towards some alien target universe. The rave is a portal to that target universe. By entering the rave, you shift your modal location to that target universe, in which you can simulate or channel your target selves. The sounds and images used in raves can be correlated with elements of Platonic metaphysics. According to Platonic metaphysics, nature begins with an absolutely simple object, namely, the One. The power of self-surpassing emerges from the One; this power is spirit. Spirit drives the One to surpass itself. It drives it to produce its successors, which are more complex. These successors in turn produce their more complex successors. The descendents of the One are universes. As these universes grow more complex, they acquire forms. These forms are mathematical structures. But the mathematical forms of universes are dynamical forms. They are algorithms. Spirit flows through these algorithms like energy flows through a musical score. The evolution of spirit resembles an evolving stream of musical chords. Universes are algorithmically generated symphonies. Our universe is an extremely complex symphony. Rave music typically involves highly repetitive mathematical patterns. The sounds and images used in raves are often algorithmically generated. The mathematical nature of rave music very clearly represents the mathematical evolution of spirit. Just as spirit flows through algorithms to make universes, so physical energy flows through musical algorithms to make rave music. Hence rave music is directly analogous to spirit. The complexity of the sounds and images used in raves represents the aesthetic complexity of our universe. It represents the flow of spirit through our cosmic form. But this aesthetic complexity is highly mathematical; our universe is an algorithmic symphony. One way

225 to express reverence to something is through ritual mimesis. You revere something by imitating it; by doing what it does. Rave dancing imitates spirit. But spirit is the power of self-surpassing generated by the One. So rave dancing activates spirit. By dancing together to the same music, the bodies of ravers become behaviorally synchronized and rhythmically entrained. Entrainment occurs when separate rhythmic oscillators begin to oscillate together. Here the oscillators are human bodies. When our bodies become entrained, their movements become synchronized or coordinated (Phillips-Silver, Aktipis, & Bryant, 2010). Rhythmic entrainment occurs when people clap their hands in synchrony, raise their arms in synchrony, sway or jump or march or dance in synchrony, bang their heads to music, drum together, chant in synchrony, engage in call-and-response together. It typically occurs when many human bodies oscillate to the same pulse or beat. Many religious rituals use rhythmic entrainment. As ravers dance together, their bodies become rhythmically entrained. As a group of bodies becomes rhythmically entrained, the bodies carry more and more information about each other. The integrated information of the group increases. Thus the Φ of the group increases. Since Φ measures ensoulment, the ensoulment of the group increases. If Φ measures some basic kind of mentality, the collective mentality of the group increases. Thus behavioral synchrony helps separate human minds fuse into a hive mind. As bodies become rhythmically entrained, they become entangled. A group of bodies transitions from a chaotic gas to a crystal of coordinated oscillators. This crystallization parallels the self-organization of the universe. So, when ravers become entangled with each other, they are imitating the self-organization of the universe. This is ritual mimesis. It can be a way of giving thanks to evolution by imitating evolution. It can also be a way of pointing to the emergence of superhuman minds. It refers to the minds of the divine animals as well as to the transcendental Divine Minds. Rhythmic entrainment can also produce powerful prosocial benefits. Behavioral synchrony facilitates cooperation (Wiltermuth & Heath, 2009; Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2011; Reddish, Fischer, & Bulbulia, 2014; Baimel et al., 2015).

2. Shifting by Ecstatic Dancing

As they dance, ravers enter hyper-arousal trances, in which they often have intense spiritual or mystical experiences. During their trances, ravers often experience a profound energy flowing through their bodies; their ego-boundaries dissolve; they see that all things are connected and unified; they feel that this same energy flows through all things (Sylvan, 2005: ch. 3). Of course, by entering a hyper-arousal trance, you are only arousing your own metabolic energy, exciting your own nervous system in a special way. But your metabolic energy is the appearance of spirit in your own body. By entering a hyper-arousal trance, you are arousing spirit within your own body. Many ravers told Sylvan that they channeled divine energies and deities when they dance. The psychologist Audrey Redfield interviewed many ravers. One raver reported to Redfield that, when she danced, “I would feel like I would turn into a certain deity, . . . like some kind of ancient goddess” (2017: 71). Philosophical pagans affirm that you have divine counterparts:

226 there are future possible versions of yourself which are deities. Across some long series of future lives in future universes, you will be surpass your current self into some future divine self. And you will do this in many ways. Since some of your counterparts are divine, it is possible for you to channel them in trance. Hyper-arousal trances are dissociative. They are states of spiritual immersion and religious absorption. You become immersed in the stream of energy flowing through your body and absorbed by the simulation of your future divine self. Ravers experience the power of self-surpassing; but the power of self-surpassing is the truth of the Good. Hence it is not surprising that along with their experiences of unity and connection, ravers often report pronoia, the feeling that reality is out to help you. Arousing this universal positive energy produces positive personal changes. It is therapeutic (Hutson, 2000). It helps you overcome anxiety and depression. It helps you overcome destructive behaviors. It makes you compassionate. It gives you hope, confidence, and courage. Arousing this universal energy orients you towards positive social values, expressed in the rave ethic of PLUR (Peace Love Unity Respect). Arousing this universal energy thus motivates an ethics grounded in compassion. Spirituality is ethical self-transformationl. Hence raving, done for the sake of ethical self-transformation, is spiritual. It is part of the he telestike techne, the art of self- surpassing. For philosophical pagans, pronoia represents the providential power of spirit. It is the power of self-surpassing. Of course, this providential power emerges entirely from the laws of physics. Spirit is a mindless thermodynamic force. According to philosophical paganism, rave dancing is a kind of theurgy. You start with your current self, bound to your current body, in this universe. As you dance, you arouse spirit in your own body and brain. Since spirit is the power of self-surpassing, it weakens the contingent identity of your self with your current body. Your brain begins to simulate your counterparts – it starts to simulate other selves in other universes. Your brain simulates superior selves, selves which surpass your current self. You simulate selves which are free from the impairments (the materiality) of your current body in its current situation. It starts to simulate divine versions of your self, possible selves which are superhuman animals. You simulate yourself as a god or goddess. The current of spirit rises up in your body; but this current rises from the One to the Good. During your hyper-arousal trance, you may experience ego-dissolution. If your ego dissolves, it does not dissolve into darkness – it dissolves into light. Your brain passes from the simulation of an ontic self to the simulation of an ontological self. It passes from the simulation of some deity to the simulation of a self which surpasses all deities. You simulate a self that is as close as possible to the Good. Your brain simulates our sun. To gain access to these altered states of consciousness, many classical ravers took psychoactive drugs (typically, MDMA, also known as Ecstasy; and sometimes LSD). Thus raves have been interpreted as psychedelic communions, in which Ecstasy or LSD functions as a psychedelic sacrament. Perhaps these communions can be thought of as modernized counterparts of the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries. Clinical evidence indicates that taking MDMA enhances prosocial emotions and behaviors (Hysek et al., 2014; Kamilar-Britt & Bedi, 2015). If this research is correct, then using MDMA in raves motivates positive ethical self-transformation. However, the use of MDMA or LSD at classical raves was medically and psychologically unsupervised. It was unethical. Many people suffered harm (Parrott, 2004). However, it has been argued that careful chemistry

227 can reduce or eliminate the harmful effects of MDMA (Curry et al., 2018). But the use of MDMA and LSD is currently illegal everywhere. Although pagan ethics does not prohibit the religious use of psychedelics, it does prohibit both harm and the violation of the law. So pagans forbid the unethical or illegal use of psychoactive drugs at raves or any other pagan events. But pagans recognize that recent research on psychedelics may enable people to use them in ways that are helpful rather than harmful. Philosophical pagans are interested in changing the laws so that MDMA can be used legally for religious purposes (see Levy, 2004). But this legal use will also have to be accompanied by strict rules for ethical use and the elimination of medical harm. Those raves that began with casting or concentrating rituals end with uncasting or releasing rituals (Sylvan, 2005: 107-12). If the directions and elements were called, they are released. An ending ritual may involve a prayer of thanks-giving. The uncasting ritual marks the final boundary of the rave in time. It completes the ritual container. There are many reasons why people participate in raves. You can go to a rave for purely hedonistic purposes (to take drugs and get high; to find a sexual partner); if your motivation is hedonistic, then it is selfish. Your psychological benefits will be shallow; you are not fulfilling any moral obligation, so you get no karmic benefit. You can go to arouse the ultimate power of the One in your own self; if you go to arouse that power, then your motivation is religious. If your motivation is religious, then you are more likely to gain greater psychological benefits from the rave. And if your motivating reason is religious, then you are fulfilling a religious obligation. You are giving thanks to the One for its gifts to you. So you will also gain karmic benefits.

3. Shifting by Burning the Man

Epictetus often compares human civilization to a festival (D 2.14.23-7). The Cosmic Zeus has set up this festival for our common happiness (D 4.4.24-28). When you participate in any festival, you will experience adversity; you will be faced with loss and hardship. But you should not complain. Dawkins (1998: 1) points out that many possible human lives are never actualized at all; they remain mere abstractions; but you and I have been selected to attend the festival of life. Dawkins says we are privileged and blessed to be alive (1998: 5). We are lucky to have the opportunity to suffer and die. Epictetus says we should be grateful for having been given the opportunity to attend this festival (D 1.12.18-22; 3.6.10; 4.1.105-9). We ought to rejoice in our good fortune; we ought to be grateful, and to give thanks, for having the opportunity to suffer and to die. We ought to celebrate our emergence into the light of concreteness. The best way to celebrate (and to give thanks) is through ritual mimesis. We should create festivals which imitate the cosmic festival. By celebrating in those festivals, we bear witness to the cosmic festival; we give thanks. Any festival which is constructed for the sake of celebration and thanks-giving is a constructed for spiritual purposes rather than for mere entertainment. And any festival which is made for celebrating our opportunity to suffer and die will be one in which all our negativities are redeemed. Such festivals are rituals of self-transformation: they are transformational festivals. Hence philosophical pagans endorse transformational festivals. One transformative festival which illustrates many Stoic ideas is known as Burning

228 Man. Burning Man does not advertise itself as a Stoic festival; on the contrary, it allows and encourages people to interpret it any way they like. Under the slogan of “ritual without dogma,” it blocks any final meaning. It is open to many different interpretations. It is open to spiritual or even religious interpretations (Pike, 2001; Kozinets & Sherry, 2004; Gilmore, 2010; Harvey, 2017). And one of those interpretations is clearly Stoic. By revealing deeper symbolisms, a Stoic interpretation of Burning Man can help make the festival more meaningful. It can inspire other interpretations. The main Burning Man festival takes place in the desert wilderness in Nevada for a week at the end of August (Doherty, 2004). Burning Man involves about 70,000 participants who build a temporary town, known as Black Rock City, in the Black Rock Desert. The Black Rock Desert is an ancient lakebed – it is flat, vast, and nearly featureless playa. Its blankness symbolizes the void, the Zero, the ground of being which emerges from the self-negation of non-being. The spatial boundaries of Black Rock City are laid out using sacred geometry. Black Rock City consists of circle inscribed into a pentagon. Its temporal beginning is marked by driving a golden spike into the desert. When the boundaries of Black Rock City are drawn, a circle is cast by the closing power. At the start of the festival, the circle is closed; power is concentrated. The boundaries of Black Rock City define a ritual container. It contains a virtual copy of a target universe, namely, the burning world. This target universe is simulated inside of the ritual container. Burners (the participants in Burning Man) often contrast Black Rock City with the outside “default world”. Your counterpart in that target universe is your target self, it is your burning self, an idealized self in an idealized universe. Going to Burning Man requires sacrificing time, energy, and money. It isn’t cheap or easy to get to Burning Man. First-timers at Burning Man (known as virgins), perform an initiatory ritual by lying on the playa to make a dust angel. The Black Rock Desert is very tough environment. The desert can be a furnace during the day and a freezer at night. Violent dust storms and plagues of biting insects are common. Its harshness imitates the harshness of our earthly lives. Living in Black Rock City presents many challenges and adversities to practice your Stoicism. Burning Man includes, as one of its Ten Principles, the Stoic virtue of radical self-reliance. Other Principles state that Burning Man is a gift economy – it rejects buying and selling. It values “creative cooperation and collaboration” as well as civic responsibility. Perhaps most importantly, Burning Man is a culture of radical self-expression. The Ten Principles indicate that to cross into the ritual container of Burning Man is to cross into an alternative type of society. You shift into another possible way of living together. Obviously, Burning Man depends on the commercial culture in the default world. Black Rock City is not the default society; it is an idealized society in an idealized pocket universe. Burning Man is an arts festival. During the year, burners construct individual or group art installations. But Burning Man is not just an arts festival. The construction of the art in Black Rock City, and the construction of Black Rock City itself as a site for devotion to aesthetic value, ritually imitates the evolution of spirit. Black Rock City is an island of creativity in a vast hostile landscape. It resembles our earth, which is an oasis of life in endless inhospitable space. So the making of Black Rock Desert resembles the evolution of rare oases of aesthetic value in a vast desert of valuelessness. The beauty gathered in the desert is precious, fragile, and rare; it is like life itself, and human life

229 especially. Since it is precious, fragile, and rare, this concentrated beauty is holy. If the universe simulated in Black Rock City is the burning world, then the burning world is a holy world. It is an aesthetically and ethically idealized world. As a ritual container in which the ideal universe is simulated, Black Rock City is a sacred site. As one of its Ten Principles, Burning Man demands participation: there are no spectators on the playa. Another Principle encourages immediate experience: the dissolution of the boundaries of selfhood that mediate interaction between humans, or between humans and “nature that exceeds human powers”. To live in accordance with the Ten Principles is to leave your default self behind in its default world. On the playa, your self shifts. You sincerely simulate an ideal counterpart, your target self, your burning self. Your burning self is liberated from the negativities of the default world. As you channel your burning self, you gain perspective on your default self. You see new possibilities of your default self (new “de re” possibilities). You see, from the alien and holy viewpoint of your burning self, how your default self must change. Thus Burning Man is transformative. Done for the sake of ethical self-surpassing, participating in Burning Man is spiritual. It is part of the he telestike techne. It provides your old life with new meaning. Moreover, the burning self revealed on the playa points towards your holy selves. These include future selves which are Stoic sages. They include your future counterparts who ascend through transhumanity to divinity. Burning Man reveals that other selves are possible; other lives are possible; other societies are possible. Of course, philosophical pagans affirm that all these possibilities exist. The burning worlds exist in the world tree. Within those worlds, your burning selves inhabit burning societies on burning earths. As the sun exists at the center of our solar system, so the Man exists at the center of Black Rock City. The Man is a large wooden statue which outlines an indefinite male figure. The Man is both personal and indefinite; he is faceless. At least officially, the Man has no gender – it is really the Human. The Man has no identity; he symbolizes the rationality inherent in nature; he is the Stoic Logos made visible. The Man is the Cosmic Zeus. Of course, the Cosmic Zeus is an abstract structure rather than a superhuman animal. It is the divinity of nature, but not any god. On the penultimate night of the festival, the Man is lit on fire. The Man has often been lit by a fire which is kindled from our sun. The power of our sun is the Stoic pneuma; it is the all-pervading spiritual energy which actualizes all possibilities. This power, in an endless process of self-surpassing, both creates value and destroys it. The fire that consumes the Man comes from the One. It is the power which enters the forms and makes them concrete. The Man is sacrificed by fire. This sacrifice is an act of thanks-giving. By burning the Man, we give back to our sun the energy which it gave to us; we give thanks to our sun for driving the self-organization of earthly stuff into human life. Burning the Man is an act of ritual mimesis: we groom an effigy of our sun. Ultimately, burning the Man thanks the One. It is an act of ultimate thanks-giving. Because the fire that consumes the Man is the energy that makes all beings exist, and because burning the Man is an act of thanks-giving, the combustion of the Man is celebratory. Burning the Man is an ecstatic event – it is the climactic self-transcendence of fire-energy. While the Man burns, he is the self-surpassing surpasser of all – the burning Man is divine. The history of the Man mimics the history of the Stoic deity. The burning of the Man symbolizes the Stoic ekpyrosis, the universal conflagration. Just as the Stoic deity goes

230 through a cycle of death and rebirth, so the Man goes through a cycle of death and rebirth. When the Man burns, he dies. When he burns, his arms are raised in victory. He will be victorious over death; he will rise in the next annual cycle; he will reappear next year. The wheel of the year, in which our sun turns around our earth and the desert, symbolizes the vast cycle in which universes are created, destroyed, and recreated. The wheel of our earthly year symbolizes the Stoic Great Year. And just as the Man goes through the cycle of death and rebirth, so do you. According to philosophical paganism, you will be reborn after death in your future counterparts. The construction of the Man during the year symbolizes the evolutionary process in which holy power concentrates itself into sacred beauty. During this self-concentration, much value is destroyed; many hecatombs of animals are sacrificed on the altar of evolution; the emerging Man has accumulated many errors and sins; he has overcome many obstacles. These are recorded in the Temple. The Temple is an elaborate wooden structure, whose form is taken from sacred architecture world-wide. The Temple serves a special ceremonial purpose: burners decorate the Temple with inscriptions, texts, photos, or other mementos. These are expressions of grief, loss, or triumph over adversity (Pike, 2005). The Temple is a place for the recognition of negativities which have been or still must be overcome. On the last night of the festival, the Temple is lit on fire and burned in silence. Burning the Temple is usually a solemn affair. As the Temple burns, the Man is cleansed. But we all participate in this: all burners are ritually cleansed. We are all purified, to begin the cycle again. This is the cleansing of the self before it returns to the default world. Burners have built and burned Temples around the globe. To facilitate reconciliation after the civil war in Northern Ireland, a Temple was built and burned in Derry, Ireland. Former enemies were united in its construction. After the Temple is burned, the festival ends the next day. People break camp and prepare to cross the threshold back into the default world. The circle is uncast by the opening power; the golden spike is pulled out of the ground of being. The power that was concentrated on the playa is released into the default world. Now one of the last of the Ten Principles comes into play: Leave no trace. While this has obvious positive consequences for the Black Rock Desert, it has a greater significance. Our lives will ultimately leave no trace in human history. Our society will leave no trace on this earth. Much as fire consumes the Man, so our sun will consume our earth. There will be no trace of our existence in this universe. Nevertheless, we will all return –

231 32. Shape-Craft: Psychedelic Communions 1. Modernizing the Mysteries

ision drove ancient Platonism. Plotinus said that all existing things stare at the Good (E 3.8.1). He argued that union with the deities could be achieved through contemplative or meditative practices. He offered visualization exercises. But Iamblichus (M 2.11) argued that only ritual practices could produce such unions. The craft which aimed to unite us with the deities was known as theurgy. It was a kind of shape-craft, since it aimed to change our human shapes into divine shapes. Although the details of the theurgical rituals are unknown, Iamblichus (M 5.23) talks about the theurgical uses of plants. Moreover, he says (M 2.3-10) that the theurgic rituals include intense visions. Contemplative or meditative practices do not reliably produce visionary experiences. But psychedelics produce them reliably, powerfully, and persistently. Some writers have speculated that the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries involved taking psychedelic drugs for religious purposes. The Eleusinian Mysteries were ancient pagan religious rituals that spanned several days. The ancient Stoics regarded the Mysteries favorably. Epictetus praises them (D 3.21.11-21). Marcus Aurelius was initiated into them. Cicero praised them (Laws, II.xiv.36). The Eleusinian Mysteries were said to involve intense visions. Psychedelic mushrooms were available in the ancient Mediterranean; many plants in the Mediterranean region contain DMT. So perhaps those substances were mixed into a sacred drink, the kykeon, which was consumed during the Mysteries. But there is no way to verify these speculations. Whether or not the Eleusinian Mysteries used psychedelics for religious purposes, there is ample precedent for the religious use of psychedelics in the Americas. Ancient Mesoamerican religions made extensive use of many different psychedelics (Carod-Artal, 2015). They used peyote, psilocybin mushrooms, ololiuhqui seeds, the skin of the bufo toad, Jimson weed, salvia divinorum, and so on. Many of those substances are extremely dangerous; philosophical pagans prohibit all uses of unsafe substances. Modern religious groups in North America safely and legally use peyote for religious purposes. Modern religious groups throughout the Americas safely and legally use ayahuasca. It must be stressed that philosophical pagans do not approve of the unsafe or illegal use of psychedelics. However, we cannot ignore the fact that many historical pagans used psychedelics for religious purposes. Since this historical usage cannot be dismissed, philosophical pagans have an obligation to provide modern counterparts of the ancient psychedelic rituals. Of course, philosophical pagans still reject unsafe or illegal drug use. We accept only those uses of psychedelics which are safe and legal. And we accept only those uses which are for religious (or medical) purposes. Moreover, even if it becomes possible to safely and legally use psychedelics for religious purposes, we do not encourage such use. Finally, philosophical paganism must always adhere to the highest ethical standards. It would be unethical to require anybody to take psychedelics as part of

232 any pagan initiation or other ritual. Philosophical pagans are certainly free to work for the legalization of psychedelics for religious or medical purposes. Philosophical pagans therefore propose safe and legal psychedelic communions as modern counterparts of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the theurgic rituals of unification, and the many Mesoamerican religious uses of psychedelics. These communions are rituals in which psychedelics are used for spiritual or religious purposes. Most but not all psychedelics are serotonergic psychedelics (Nichols, 2016), so called because they resemble the neurotransmitter serotonin. Hence they also act on the serotonin receptors in the brain. There are five main serotonergic psychedelics. (1) Ayahuasca is a tea containing (among other things) the psychedelic molecule DMT. (2) Psilocybin mushrooms contain the psychedelic psilocybin. (3) The peyote cactus (and some other cacti) contain the mescaline molecule. (4) Lysergic acid diethylamide (also known as LSD) is artificial. (5) MDMA (also known as Ecstasy) is sometimes included among the psychedelics; we include it here. These are, hereafter, the psychedelics. A psychedelic communion is a group ceremony in which some psychedelic is taken as a sacramental substance by many people together. Psychedelic communions are not done for entertainment or recreation – they are done for religious and spiritual purposes. They are done for the sake of ethical self-transformation. They are part of the he telestike techne. Psychedelic communions aim at healing and growth. They are done to facilitate physiological, ethical, and spiritual self-realization. Philosophical pagans forbid unsafe or illegal drug use. We forbid all practices which are unethical in any way. Hence we permit only the safe and legal use of psychedelics for religious purposes. Importantly, permission does not imply obligation. While philosophical pagans permit safe and legal uses of psychedelics, we neither require nor endorse such uses. Philosophical paganism has no dogmatic requirements. If some pagans want to design safe and legal psychedelic communions, then peace be upon them; if others reject those communions, then peace be upon them too. Philosophical paganism welcomes this diversity. Nevertheless, since we permit these communions, we need to design them. Philosophical pagans therefore seek to design communion rituals in which psychedelics are used as sacraments under strict rules for safety and with the full approval of the law. It may be objected that there are no legal uses of psychedelic drugs. That objection is incorrect. Psychedelics are used legally for religious purposes by many groups in many countries. Nevertheless, in most places, the development of psychedelic communions will require considerable policy work. If some group of philosophical pagans performs psychedelic communions, that group can be referred to as a psychedelic circle. Or the communion itself can be called a psychedelic circle.

2. The Spiritual Effects of Psychedelics

For philosophical pagans, the classical psychedelics can produce at least eight types of religiously or spiritually significant experiences. The first type includes hallucinatory enchantments of mundane things. During psychedelic experiences, ordinary things are experienced as intensely beautiful or are seen as saturated with profound value and meaning. The profane surface of the physical universe dissolves so that you are plunged into the luminous depths of nature. The second type includes the experience that all things are interconnected. You may see threads or strings binding all things into a web.

233 The third type includes the experience of primal energy. You experience a powerful cosmic force flowing through yourself and all things. Philosophical pagans affirm that nature is enchanted, that all things are interconnected, and that divine fire-energy (that is, spirit) flows through all selves and things. We affirm that these features of nature are both ultimate and are relevant to our well-being. Since they are ultimate and are relevant to our well-being, they are religious. So when psychedelic experiences reveal that nature has these religious features, these are religious revelations. The fourth type includes immersive hallucinatory journeys through alien universes. We say these are hallucinatory voyages through alternative possible universes. They are trips through the logical space of possible universes. During these trips, people report learning about new ways to solve difficult personal problems. They report interacting with extra-mundane agents. For philosophical pagans, the multiverse is an aspect of ultimate reality, and it is relevant to our well-being. So when psychedelic experiences reveal other worlds, these revelations are religious. The fifth type of religious experience involves transformative experiences (Letheby, 2015, 2017). Psychedelic trips can lead to surprisingly rapid and extensive rewiring of brain-circuitry. This rewiring can lead to overcoming self-destructive behavior patterns (such as addictions). Many religions include experiences of rapid and radical remodeling of the self. You undergo a rapid conversion to the religion or experience sudden enlightenment. These religious transformations, like psychedelic transformations, often include release from bondage to negative conditions like immorality or illusion. Hence psychedelic transformation is often interpreted as religious or spiritual transformation. The sixth type involves purgative experiences. Sometimes psychedelic trips are very stressful. These “bad trips” can include nightmarish unravelings of the mind into apparent insanity or voyages to hellish worlds of pain and terror. Surprisingly, users of psychedelics often report that their bad trips are their most valuable trips. Difficult psychedelic experiences are often interpreted in terms of spiritual purification or purging of negativity from the self. Christian mystics interpreted these purgative experiences in terms of the crucifixion. They are the “dark nights of the soul.” Other religions have also affirmed the value and spiritual necessity of purgative experiences. The seventh type involves ego-dissolution. The ego disappears into the ground or ocean of being. Ego-dissolution followed by ego-reconstitution is often interpreted religiously as death and resurrection or rebirth. Or ego-dissolution reveals the ultimate unreality of the individual self. Philosophical pagans regard being-itself as ultimate; hence the revelation of being-itself in ego-dissolution is religious revelation. Likewise philosophical pagans affirm reincarnation as an aspect of ultimate reality, an aspect which is relevant to our well-being. Hence the revelation, during ego-dissolution, of death and rebirth, is religiously significant. Philosophical pagans offer naturalistic ways to understand all these aspects of psychedelic experiences. The eighth type includes the existential benefits which flow from psychedelic experiences (Letheby, 2015, 2017). These existential benefits include mental health benefits. Psychedelics may treat depression, PTSD, OCD, addictions, and more (dos Santos et al., 2016; Nichols, 2016). Psychedelics reduce psychological distress and suicidality (Hendricks et al., 2015). These benefits also include the relief of anxiety in the face of terminal illness (Grob et al., 2011). These benefits appear to include moral benefits (Tennison, 2012; McDaniel, 2017; Earp, 2018). Psychedelics can motivate

234 greater interest in non-human nature and make people more active in pro-ecological activities (Forstmann & Sagioglou, 2017). Philosophical paganism provides a context in which those benefits are integrated into a larger worldview.

3. The Interpretation of Hallucination

For naturalists, every person is identical with his or her body, and therefore inhabits some concrete universe. The universe inhabited by your body is your local universe, and your body in that universe is your local self. During perception, the local self forms mental representations of local objects. The self and its objects are causally linked in the same universe. Perceptions accurately represent their objects via isomorphism. During imagination, the local self forms mental representations of non-local objects. Its objects inhabit distinct universes. Following David Lewis (1986), the objects of imagination inhabit other possible universes. Since these things and universes are not local, they are alien. Chess players accurately represent alien chess games by running imaginary simulations of those games. The simulations accurately represent those alien games via isomorphism. Imagination transports you mentally to alien universes. Psychedelics typically lead to aesthetically rich and emotionally intense hallucinatory journeys. By positing many possible universes, philosophical pagans can provide meaningful interpretations of these voyages. And we can do this without invoking unnatural entities, such as astral planes or realms of disembodied spirits. Philosophical pagans are intentionalists about hallucinations. Intentionalists regard hallucinations as mental representations of existing things (Harman, 1990: 34-40) These things are their intended objects. Hallucinations represent their intended objects through isomorphism.23 If every possible Nepalese village exists, then your hallucinatory vision of some Nepalese village truthfully represents one of them (Balaguer, 1998: 49). Hallucinations, however, are not caused by their intended objects. Lacking causal inputs from their intended objects, hallucinations are not perceptions. They do not provide any knowledge of any facts about this universe (Shanon, 2010). The inferences that can be drawn from hallucinations resemble those that can be drawn from fictional stories. There truth in hallucination as there is truth in fiction (Lewis, 1978). But just as fictions provide no evidence for things in our universe, so hallucinations provide no evidence for any things in our universe. The truth in fiction is truth about possibilities. Any truths revealed by hallucinations are about alternative ways things might be. When people hallucinate alien objects, they regard their bodies and their hallucinated objects as also belonging to those universes. So, when they hallucinate, people mentally project themselves into alien universes. They are not just hallucinating alien objects, they are also hallucinating alien selves. They identify themselves with other possible selves, which are not identical to their local self. Thus psychedelic trips are mental journeys of alien selves through alien universes. They are simulations of alien selves interacting with simulations of alien things in alien universes. The simulation of alien selves in alien universes has many existential benefits (Letheby, 2017). It weakens entrenched patterns of the actual self in ways which facilitate beneficial self-reconstruction. The hallucinatory simulation of alien selves has therapeutic value. This value has been confirmed in medical studies which use psychedelics as psycho-therapeutic tools.

235 Of course, when people imagine themselves in fictional universes, while reading novels or playing video games, they also project themselves into those alien universes. But hallucination differs from imagination because it is existentially immersive. During imagination, the brain distinguishes between the imagined and local selves. However, during hallucination, the distinction vanishes. The brain reconstitutes its selfless subjectivity into an alien self. Because they are immersive, hallucinatory journeys can be transformative (Letheby, 2015; Paul, 2014). Religions have stressed the importance of transformative immersive experiences (such as conversion, revelation, and ecstatic union with the divine). Because they are both immersive and transformative, it is arguable that hallucinatory experiences are genuinely religious. They are not merely philosophical or secular. This distinction is crucial in American law.24 To undergo this immersive self- transformation requires the neurological modifications induced by psychedelic drugs. People who take psychedelics sometimes have challenging experiences (Carbonaro et al., 2016). These are colloquially known as “bad trips.” When established safety protocols are used, the risk of having a challenging experience is minimized. When they do occur, established safety protocols can be used to minimize the duress. Yet these experiences happen. Philosophical pagans regard these challenging experiences as engagements with unactualized universes. The selectivity of the divine creative energy ensures that they are not realized by any physical universes. They remain purely abstract. Hence these universes are dark. The belief that primal energy does not realize these dark universes may prove comforting. This positivity can provide helpful ethical consolation during challenging psychedelic experiences. For interpretation of connection, philosophical pagans can turn to the counterpart theory of Lewis (1968). The connections are instances of the counterpart relation. Philosophical pagans regard so-called religious experiences as hallucinations. The Greek orator Aelius Aristides (CE 117-81) wrote a book called Sacred Tales. It details his visions of various deities. The Epicureans thought that the deities send us images of their bodies. Iamblichus discusses visions of deities that occur while awake or while dreaming (M 2.3-10, 3.2). Many contemporary pagans have experiences which they interpret religiously. These religiously interpreted experiences are sometimes called unverified pagan gnosis (see Beckett, 2017: 91-4). Like psychedelic hallucinations, religious hallucinations are representations of possible objects in other universes. They are not perceptions of objects in our universe. They are fictional experiences. However, unlike psychedelic hallucinations, religious hallucinations are good evidence of serious psychiatric illness. Philosophical pagans take mental health seriously, and urge anyone who has religious hallucinations to obtain psychiatric assistance.

4. The Interpretation of Ego Dissolution

Psychedelic experiences often reveal the existence of deep energies. Shanon says the metaphysics of ayahuasca is a kind of energy-pantheism (2002: 61, 150, 164, 280). He says ayahuasca reveals that “a tremendous force permeates and animates everything”; this primal energy is “the force that sustains all Creation.” Ayahuasca reveals “the cosmic energy that permeates all Existence and sustains everything that is.” He says ayahuasca shows that there exists “a force that is the ground of all Being”; it reveals that primal energy is “the source and fountain of all Existence.” North American users of

236 ayahuasca report that “everything is connected and alive, that a divine force is working for us, that it’s a great joy to love and to serve” (Harris & Gurel, 2012). Other psychedelics, such as psilocybin and LSD, also reveal this primal energy. Both the Stoics and the Platonists argued that the deities can be thought of as profound natural energies. They are the primal energies or energy-deities. And they argue for the existence of an ultimate primal energy. For the Stoics, this primal energy is the pneuma. For the Platonists, it is the creative power of the One. Philosophical pagans argue that the primal energy is the energy of being-itself. Hence philosophical pagans say that psychedelic experiences can reveal this energy. The revelation is spiritual. It is the existentially immersive awareness of spirit as self-surpassing power. When people take psychedelics, they can experience their selves expanding and then dissolving into a selfless ultimacy. This is ego dissolution. Brain studies suggest that ego dissolution involves the loss of self-location in logical space. Your brain contains a default mode network, which manages your location in logical space. During ego dissolution, the default mode network no longer locates you in any possible universe. (Buckner & Carroll, 2006; Spreng et al., 2008). An egoless or selfless subjectivity experiences worldlessness. During ego dissolution, the brain intends an existence which inhabits no universe at all. This has been understood as the cognition of an ultimacy beyond all distinctions (Richards, 2008). For philosophical pagans, ego dissolution involves the gradual expansion of the self through the ever-larger circles of inclusiveness until it dissolves into an absolutely infinite light. During ego-dissolution, the brain moves from simulating an ontic self to simulating an ontological self. Ego dissolution typically involves affective and ethical positivity. The mystical experiences associated with ego dissolution under psilocybin include profoundly positive moods (Griffiths et al., 2006). They often include the ethical insight that “ultimately somehow all is well” (Richards, 2008: 193). Shanon reports that ego dissolution under ayahuasca involves the experience of affective positivity at the cosmic scale (2002: 63, 123, 164). Thus ayahuasca users experience cosmic joy, cosmic love, cosmic bliss, and so on. It also involves the experience of ethical positivity at the cosmic scale (2002: 174). Thus ayahuasca users realize that reality is ultimately governed by love and justice. For philosophical pagans, affective positivity and ethical positivity at the cosmic scale both point towards the Good. So the brain simulates an ontological self which is as close as possible to the Good. The brain channels the Good into its self. When people have ego dissolution induced by psychedelics, they report significant increases in death transcendence (Griffiths et al. 2011). They believe more strongly in some form of life after death (e.g. “Death is a transition to something even greater than this life; Death is never just an ending, but a part of a process”). Thus psychedelic mysticism can significantly reduce fear and anxiety in terminally ill cancer patients (Grob et al. 2011). Ayahuasca often produces profound beliefs in reincarnation (Shanon 2002, 223-5). Most interpretations of life after death are not naturalistic. For example, the ayahuasca churches like Santo Daime and União de Vegetal (UdV) use spiritism to interpret their reincarnation beliefs (Barnard, 2014). For spiritists, reincarnation involves immaterial and thus unnatural spirits which somehow travel from body to body. Philosophical pagans deny that the mind survives the death of the body. But this does not rule out life after death. Stone writes that “since patterns of information can outlast their original physical substratum, just as music can outlive its composer, immortality is

237 not definitively foreclosed in a naturalistic framework” (2008: 228). Philosophical paganism includes a naturalistic theory of life after death, specifically, a theory of trans- universe rebirth. This theory originates with John Hick (1976: chs. 15, 20, 22). It was developed by Steinhart (2014). On this theory, universes have a lawful timelike ordering. Patterns in later universes carry information about patterns in earlier universes. Human lives are patterns carried across universes by deep natural laws. The self is reborn in its counterparts in later universes. Rebirth is governed by axiological laws which ensure progressive karma. This version of death and rebirth is a naturalistic reincarnation theory. Your body-pattern is reinstantiated. Hence philosophical paganism, like many traditional religions, can help to alleviate the fear of death.

5. Designing Safe and Legal Psychedelic Communions

At present, all the ways that philosophical paganism may develop are fraught with difficulties. But we are in the midst of a psychedelic renaissance. Many popular books discuss the benefits of psychedelics (Waldman, 2017; Pollan, 2018). Google Scholar lists over 3000 academic publications on psychedelics since 2014. Large conferences now meet to discuss psychedelics.25 Well-organized activist groups are devoted to changing anti-psychedelic policies so that they may be used for medical and religious purposes.26 Laws are changing remarkably rapidly. It is not too early for philosophical pagans to think about specific ways to develop psychedelic communion rituals using psychedelic sacraments. Any pagan group that aims to develop psychedelic communion rituals needs to be prepared to satisfy a long and difficult list of requirements. (1) Legal requirements for religiosity. Psychedelic circles must be prepared to show that they satisfy the legal requirements for religiosity. Here I focus on the satisfaction of legal requirements in the United States. Philosophical paganism can help psychedelic circles gain religious protection. Groups in the United States do not need to profess belief in any God to obtain religious protections. However, it has been argued that they must believe in some entity that plays the same role that God or the Supreme Being plays in theistic religions.27 Being-itself plays this role in philosophical paganism. United States courts often use the Meyers Factors to grant religious rights under the First Amendment.28 Philosophical paganism satisfies the philosophical Meyers Factors. But pagan groups must be well-organized and disciplined to satisfy the other Meyers Factors. Psychedelic circles should be classified by the IRS as churches.29 (2) Selection of a sacrament. Psychedelic circles must select a sacrament. Here there are four main options. (2a) The religious use of LSD. Currently no religious uses of LSD are legally recognized. So it is not likely that psychedelic circles would seek to use LSD. (2b) The religious use of peyote or mescaline. Peyote has legally protected religious uses. However, peyote is already endangered; it is not likely that pagans will want to endanger it further. Thus psychedelic circles will probably not turn to peyote or mescaline. (2c) The religious use of ayahuasca. Since ayahuasca already has some legal protection in the US, psychedelic circles might seek legal approval to use it in pantheistic rituals. (2d) The religious use of psilocybin. Studies at JHU have confirmed the utility of psilocybin for inducing spiritual experiences. The JHU studies may provide legal grounds for religious naturalists to use psilocybin in their own rituals. If scientists are legally permitted to give psilocybin to religious professionals for the sake of inducing

238 religious or spiritual experiences, then it seems straightforward to argue that religious professionals can do the same. Psychedelic circles may select psilocybin. (3) Safety and ethical regulations. Psychedelic circles are also concerned with safety and ethics. Safety includes medical safety. Protocols must exist for ensuring the purity and accurate dosing of psychedelic substances. The ayahuasca churches (UdV, Santo Daime, and APS) have established health and safety protocols. Other ayahuasca groups, such as Plantaforma (2009) and ICEERS (2013), have developed ethics and safety protocols. The JHU researchers have established safety protocols. Many psychedelic organizations have developed safety protocols. Through its Zendo Project, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies provides guidance for the safe use of psychedelics. The California Institute for Integral Studies provides a certificate in psychedelic assisted therapies and research. Psychedelic circles can use these protocols and certificates to ensure the safety of their psychedelic communions. (4) Logistical regulations. Any group that seeks to legally use psychedelics for religious purposes in the US must satisfy a variety of logistical regulations. These concern the procurement, storage, and disposal of psychedelic substances. Procedures must be put in place for the accurate tracking of psychedelic substances and for ensuring that they are not diverted to uses outside of approved religious contexts. Guidelines for logistics have been put in place by the DEA for use by the ayahuasca churches (Labate, 2012; Doblin, 2015). These guidelines can also be used by psychedelic circles. (5) Design of the Ritual. Any psychedelic communion takes place inside a ritual container. A ritual container is bounded region of space-time in which people can mentally travel to alternative universes. These are the target universes of the ritual. The participants travel to them by mentally simulating (channeling) alternative target selves which inhabit those alternative target universes. A ritual container for the simulation of some target universe is a portal to that universe. Since different people travel psychedelically to many different universes, any ritual container for psychedelic communions is a portal to many universes at once. There are many ways to create ritual containers. So far we have used a common liturgy to mark the boundaries of our ritual containers. The spatial boundaries may be set up in advance by markers (like altars) at the four cardinal directions. We start our rituals by casting circles and and calling the directions. The ritual work begins when its participants take their psychedelic sacraments. During their trips, there may be drumming, chanting, singing, dancing, or other activities. And there must be guides to help the participants do their psychological and spiritual work. After the work is done, the power raised is released. The spatial boundaries are dissolved by releasing the directions and uncasting the circle.

239 33. The Divine Animals 1. The Deities are Divine Animals

hen our universe began, according to Hesiod, it was chaos. This chaos organized itself. From its self- organization the titanic deities emerged. These titans had sex and gave birth to children. After a few generations, the Olympian deities appeared. The Olympian deities of Greek mythology were animals. They were neither ghosts nor abstract objects. They are not supernatural. They were not disembodied people – they were not theities. On the contrary, they are created in nature by natural processes of biological reproduction. They had bodies with anatomies. The external features of most of those divine bodies resembled the external features of human bodies. Of course, there were exceptions, such as Poseidon, who looked like a merman. But most of those Olympian deities looked like us. The internal structures of those divine bodies generally resembled our internal structures. Their anatomies were similar to ours. They had veins in which a blood-like substance called ichor flowed. They ate and drank foodstuffs like ambrosia and nectar. They had sex organs which they used for reproduction. Of course, despite their similarities with humans, the Olympian deities differed from us in five crucial ways. The first way concerns illness. It does not seem like the gods or goddesses ever get sick. We humans get sick all the time. However, they can be injured. The deities injure each other using both their fists and artificial weapons. Athena injures Ares by striking him with a boulder (Iliad, 21.392-426). Athena knocks out Aphrodite (Iliad, 21.420-5). Aided by Athena, the human Diomedes pierces Ares with a spear (Iliad, 5.780-834). Diomedes cuts Aphrodite on her wrist so that she bleeds (Iliad, 5.330- 45). Humans have injured many deities (Iliad, 5.380-400). The second way concerns healing. The Homeric deities also practiced the medical arts. They had a divine doctor whose healing arts did not fail. After Hades was injured by a human, the divine doctor Paeon used an ointment to heal him (Iliad, 5.395-405). Likewise Paeon used an ointment to heal Ares (Iliad, 5.900-5). So the divine healing arts are always successful. The deities always recover their powers. Yet our medicine often fails. The third way concerns powers. The Olympian deities have a long list of superhuman powers. Their bodies are immense in size. The fallen body of Ares covers two acres (Iliad, 21.392-426). The trees shake when they walk on the earth. Zeus has superhuman physical strength. His arms are strong enough to lift all the gods and goddesses up into the sky (Illiad, 8.1-21). Many deities have the power of shape-shifting. The titan Metis performed shape-shifting. Zeus changed himself into many animals (a bull, an eagle, a swan, etc.). The deities have superhuman knowledge (Odyssey, 4.468, 10.306, 10.573, 14.443). Yet they can hide from each other (Iliad, 5.844, 13.352). They can move with superhuman speed. They can cause earthquakes and control the weather. They express their powers through the organs of their bodies. The bodies of these divine animals are far more functionally complex than the bodies of humans. Since they have humanoid anatomies, they have brains. Their brains have

240 superhuman degrees of integrated information; that is, they have higher Φ than any human. Tononi (2004, 2008) uses Φ to measure consciousness. Hence these Olympians have superhuman consciousness. They have superhuman degrees of arete – superhuman degrees of competitive excellence. They occupy higher superhuman ranks on the great chain of beings. Since their bodies are more functionally complex, and since functional complexity is intrinsic value, they have greater intrinsic value than humans. The fourth way concerns aging. Most of the deities do not age. There are some exceptions; nevertheless, the deities generally do not age. As they live, their divine bodies do not grow weaker. The powers of their organs do not decline. Their sight and hearing do not get worse. They do not lose their memories. They do not lose their muscular strengths and their bones do not grow weaker. However, we humans are all too familiar with the weakening that comes with age. The fifth way the deities differ from us concerns death. Although the deities were born, they will not die. They are immortal. However, we humans were born and will die. Thus we are mortal.

2. The Epicurean Divine Animals

The Epicureans said they believed in gods and goddesses. They were inspired by the poetic stories about the Olympian deities. Those stories said that the gods and goddesses have bodies; so the Epicureans take this literally – the deities are made of atoms. Epicurus gives an argument from the universality of religious belief to the existence of the deities. Unfortunately, very little of what Epicurus wrote survives. But Cicero reported his arguments in Book 1 of his On the Nature of the Gods (ONG). Epicurus argued for the existence of the deities (Cicero, ONG 1.43-5). His logic goes like this: (1) All over the world, people believe that gods exist. (2) But if people everywhere believe something, then what they believe is true. (3) Therefore, the gods exist. Granted that the gods exist, Epicurus now gives an argument that the gods have physical bodies. Cicero summarizes this argument (ONG, 1.67-9). His summary goes like this: (1) The deities exist. (2) All existing things are composed of atoms. They are physical things which have shapes and exist in space. (3) Therefore, the deities are composed of atoms. The deities are physical things; they have physical bodies existing in space. But the deities are superior to humans (they are immortal, and live perfect lives). Since the deities are divine animals, their bodies are superior bodies. Epicurus gives two arguments which reason from the excellence of the gods to the thesis that the gods look like human animals (Cicero, ONG 1.46-9). The first argument goes through beauty: (1) The deities are living creatures. (2) All living creatures have some bodily shape. (3) The deities have the best nature. (4) But the best nature has the most beautiful bodily shape. (5) The most beautiful bodily shape is the human shape. (6) Therefore, the deities have the human shape. They look like human animals. The second argument goes through virtue and reason: (1) The deities are the most blessed of all creatures. (2) If something is blessed, then it has virtue; so the deities have virtue. (3) If something has virtue, then it has reason; so the deities have reason. (4) But observation of living things on earth shows that reason can only exist in bodies with human shapes. (5) Therefore, the deities have human shapes. They look like both male and female human animals. Of course, many objections can be raised against these arguments. We do not

241 take them literally. For philosophical pagans, these arguments are only useful because they show that some ancient pagans thought of deities as physical animals. Since our bodies decay and die, it might be thought that those of the deities will also decay and die. But the deities are immortal, forever young, and always healthy. They never get sick, age, decay, or die. To explain this, the Epicureans thought that the bodies of the deities were of higher quality than human bodies. The gods and the goddesses live in outer space. They occupy themselves with their own divine company. They live eternally blissful lives, and are not concerned with human animals on a tiny planet.

3. The Platonic Grades of Divinity

Plato described two ranks of deities. The lower rank consists of the Olympian deities (Timaeus, 40d-41a). These have bodies and dwell near our earth. The higher rank consists of the celestial deities. These are our earth, the moon, our sun, the planets, and the fixed stars. These celestial deities are depicted as having minds that think divine thoughts (Timaeus, 40a-41a; Laws, 898a-899e). Since the fixed stars move in the same way all the time (they appear to orbit our earth), Plato says they have minds that constantly think the same thoughts. But he says nothing about these thoughts. Plato also says the deities “are good with perfect goodness” (Laws, 900d). They are virtuous agents who have “the universal charge of all things” (Laws, 900d-901e). The gods are the regulators and rulers of all other things in the universe (Laws, 903e-904c). Plato is not always consistent about these two ranks of deities. He sometimes seems to identify the Olympians with the celestial deities (Phaedrus, 246e-248a). But the Platonic deities are always living organisms. They are bodies animated by souls. They are natural agents that occupy places in space-time. They are physical organisms. Plotinus distinguishes two ranks of gods. The lower rank is the sensible gods (E 1.8.5.30-5, 3.5.6.20-5) while the higher rank is the intelligible gods (E 2.9.8-9, 3.5.6.15- 25, 5.1.7.30). Iamblichus discusses five basic ranks of divine agents: the pure souls; the heroes; the daimones; the visible gods with bodies; and the incorporeal gods (M 1.3-5). Iamblichus affirms that the visible gods who have bodies include “the sun, the moon, and the other visible beings in the heavens” (M 1.17). But what about the deities with Olympian bodies (human-like bodies on Mount Olympus)? Plato seemed to distinguish them from the celestial bodies. Philosophical pagans sort the divine agents into six ranks: (1) the pure souls; (2) the heroes; (3) the daimones; (4) the deities with Olympian bodies; (5) the deities with celestial bodies; and (6) the incorporeal deities. The incorporeal (intelligible) deities transcend physicality. This does not mean that they are somehow outside of nature. It means that they are not constrained by spatio- temporal locations. Physical things have locations: a physical thing is wholly present in exactly one region of space-time. This restriction to a single region constrains its causal powers. So our sun exerts its gravitational force from its single location. This force gets weaker as you go further from our sun. But the incorporeal deities are not constrained in this way. An incorporeal deity is integrally omnipresent. It is wholly present in every region of space-time. Plotinus wrote about integral omnipresence (E 6.4-5). Iamblichus also portrays the incorporeal deities as integrally omnipresent (M 1.9). An incorporeal deity can exert its full causal power at every place and every time.

242 An integrally omnipresent deity is like a perfect hologram. A hologram is an image formed by an interference pattern of light. A hologram has the property that every part of the hologram represents the whole. Suppose you have a hologram of a bird. If you cut it in half, each half will also very clearly represent that bird. The image is equally present in every part. Of course, our holograms are imperfect: as you chop them up, the image degrades. But a holographic deity is perfectly present in every part of space-time. Although Iamblichus did not know about holograms, he associates integral omnipresence with light (M 1.9). Philosophical pagans do not say that the incorporeal deities lack bodies; on the contrary, we say they have holographic bodies.

4. Xenophanes: Criticizing the Myths

Xenophanes was an ancient Greek poet-philosopher. He appears to raise two objections to the poetic depictions of the Olympian deities. The first objection concerns the behavior of the deities. He points out that the poets attributed many criminal deeds to the deities: “Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things that are a shame and a disgrace among mortals, stealings and adulteries and deceivings of one another” (frag. 11). Although Xenophanes does not explicitly object to these depictions of the deities as immoral, he is often interpreted as objecting (Lesher, 1992: 83-5). Perhaps he agrees with Euripides, who said “if the gods do anything evil, they are not gods” (frag. 292.7). Plato criticized the poets for depicting the deities as immoral (Republic, 376e-83c, 605b- 607c; Laws, 905e-907b). He says the deities must obey the standards of holiness (Euthyphro, 10d). The deities regulate themselves according to the Good. These writings suggest the following argument: (1) the deities are superior to humans; (2) if the deities are superior to humans, they are morally superior to humans; (3) therefore, it is wrong to say the deities are criminals. Here philosophical pagans agree that deities are morally superior to humans. They are more virtuous than we are. The second objection concerns the nature of the deities. Xenophanes observed that the deities resemble the people who worship them (Lesher, 1992: frags. 14-16). The best explanation for that similarity is that the deities were made by those peoples in their own images. But if that is right, then the deities are creations of human minds rather than objectively existing things. They are figments of our imaginations. Here philosophical pagans again agree with Xenophanes. We argue like this: (1) If ancient deities existed in our universe, then science would have discovered them; but science has not discovered them. (2) If the ancient deities existed in our universe, then there would at least be roles for them in our best scientific theories; but there are no roles for them. (3) Scientific theories refer to physical things, to spaces and times, to mathematical objects, to possible objects; but they do not refer to any things like the ancient deities. (4) Consequently, no things exist in our universe which literally satisfy those mythological descriptions. None of the deities of the ancient pantheons exist in our universe. Our universe does not contain any Greek deities; it does not contain any Norse or Aztec or Yoruba deities. It does not contain any old pagan deities at all. Perhaps there are pagans who worship these old deities. If so, then peace be upon them. But we do not live in their life-worlds. For two reasons, philosophical pagans do not worship deities. The first reason is that these deities do not exist in our universe. The second is that we do not worship anything.

243 The theonyms in the ancient pagan mythologies do not refer to any currently existing superhuman animals. For philosophical pagans, the stories of the deities in the old mythologies are figurative and approximate. They are complex symbols of the deities rather than literal descriptions. They refer to deities by means of their positive qualities (especially their positive moral qualities). Thus Athena in the works of Homer is a symbol for the ideal quality of wisdom. And Thor in the old Norse myths is a symbol for virtuous strength and nobility. You should not worship either Athena or Thor; on the contrary, you should try to become like them. But not in every way. You should not want to emulate the violent bloodlust of Athena. You should try to become like them with respect to their positive moral qualities. So the theonym “Athena” refers to a class of ideal persons. These persons are all ideally wise. More abstractly, “Athena” refers to the ideal quality of wisdom shared by all ideal persons.

5. Many Future Divine Animals

Plato suggests that the deities are ideals to which we should aspire (Phaedrus, 252c- 253c). Philosophical pagans agree with Plato: the deities are ideal possible versions of ourselves. Ancient peoples could only imagine these ideals. We imagined versions of ourselves who are ageless, always healthy, immune to all injury, deathless. We imagined versions of ourselves who have overcome all the negativities of human animality. We imagined superhuman animals. And these superhuman versions of ourselves were the deities of the Greeks and other ancient peoples. But to say that they are imaginary does not imply that they do not exist. It merely implies that they do not actually exist. The deities are possible future superhuman animals. To say they are animals means they are physical structures – they are machines. The deities are bodies. They may be bodies of pure energy or pure information, but they are bodies. To say that the deities are superhuman means that they are superior to us in all positive ways. To be a deity for humans is to be an animal which is at least as excellent as any human in every way and more excellent in at least one way. To say they are possible means at least that they exist in some possible universes. But philosophical pagans think of this possibility in more narrow terms: to say that the deities are possible means that they are possible for us; if they are possible for us, then they exist in some of our possible futures. We transform ourselves into deities; or we can evolve into them; or we are reborn into them. Do the deities exist? Not yet. But we will argue that they will exist; and we will argue that we will become them. Thus you will become Athenized. This does not literally mean that you will turn into Athena; it means you will become like her in wisdom. Polytheists recognize the divinity of all races and ethnicities. Philosophical pagans therefore affirm that it was entirely appropriate for the Greeks, Ethiopians, and Thracians to all have their own deities. There are possible divine Greeks; possible divine Ethiopians; possible divine Thracians. It is possible for the human Africans to turn into superhuman Africans. They may preserve as much of their African identity as they see fit. To return to Xenophanes, as human Africans evolve into superhuman Africans, they may preserve the structures of their noses and the colors of their skins. Likewise, as the Thracians evolve into divine Thracians, they may preserve their blue eyes and red hair. However, philosophical pagans do not regard the racial or ethnic features of humans as having any religious significance. The positive moral qualities of the deities transcend all

244 earthly ethnic or racial features. The orishas of Yoruba religion are as divine as the Olympians of Greek religion. Christians have portrayed Jesus as European, Semitic, and African. Pagans can portray Thor as European, Semitic, and African. African Thors exist because African humans can have the nobility of Thor. We also project idealizations of all possible racial mixtures. And we project superhumans who surpass all human ethnicity and race. Polytheists recognize the divinity of both males and females. We do this by projecting both divinely idealized males (the gods) and divinely idealized females (the goddesses). The positive moral qualities of the deities transcend all earthly genders or sexual features. Christians have portrayed Christ as a woman (Clague, 2016). A man can aspire to be a male Athena, a woman to be a female Zeus. We also project all possible sexual mixtures: divine hermaphrodites and transsexuals. Some deities will be cis- gendered and others trans-gendered. There are divine ways to be heterosexual and divine ways to be homosexual; hence there will be heterosexual deities and homosexual deities. And there will be divine humans who surpass the constraints of human sexuality. There will be new sexes surpassing the old sexes; new genders beyond the old genders. Philosophical pagans are not polytheists in the sense that we believe in many theities. We are polytheists in the sense that (and only the sense that) we affirm that there are endlessly many ways to evolve into a divine person. Here we agree with Nietzsche, who argued that, by positing many deities, polytheists posited many diverse forms of human perfection (The Gay Science, 143). For pagans, perfection is multiple. While the monotheist posits exactly one maximally perfect person, the polytheist posits absolutely infinitely many maximally perfect persons. There are many ways to surpass the negativities of human animality. The negativities of human animality include racism and sexism. Philosophical pagans seek to transcend racist and sexist ways of living. Humans have already evolved to have many physiologies; divine humans will have even more physiologies. They will have even greater and richer ethnic diversity; they will have more sexes and more genders. To return to Xenophanes, philosophical pagans see no reason why horses and oxen should not have deities. There can be divine horses (like the Norse Sleipnir) and divine oxen. The Greek myths (such as the labors of Hercules) portray many animals with powers far beyond those of ordinary animals. They portray superlions, superdeer, superhorses, and superboars. They will exist too.

245 34. Divine-Craft: Becoming Divine 1. Humans Becoming Divine Animals

inship between humans and deities was widely acknowledge in ancient myths. Humans and the deities had sexual affairs. These affairs were often productive: they made children. Humans are so similar to the Olympian deities that we can viably inter-breed with them. Our couplings produce fertile offspring. This suggests that humans and the deities are very close to being the same biological species. The offspring of human-deity parents are half-divine and half-human. They are midway between humans and the deities. Depending on further breeding, their children may be one-quarter divine or three-quarters divine. Far from there being any ontological divide between humans and the deities, there is an ontological continuum. The Greek myths indicate that it is possible for human animals to change into Olympian animals. This change is also known as transfiguration or apotheosis. There were at least three ways in which humans became divine. Sometimes the deities used their own powers to raise human bodies up to their own divine ranks. Asclepius and Hercules were transformed into gods; Ariadne was transformed into a goddess. The poets described mythical technologies that can transfigure human animals into Olympian animals. These mythical technologies involve the application of divinizing substances. These divine substances are typically nectar and ambrosia. And while these substances are divine, they are also natural – they are kinds of stuff that occur in the natural world. Ambrosia and nectar have to be carried to Mount Olympus. Clay (1982: 115) provides many examples of humans transfigured by these divine substances. The goddess Gaia uses ambrosia to change the human Aristaeus into an immortal deity (Pindar, Pythian Odes, 9.63). The goddess Aphrodite uses ambrosia to immortalize the human Berenike (Theocritus, Idylls, 15.106-8). Aphrodite later uses ambrosia mixed with nectar to change Anaeus into a deity (Ovid, Metamorphoses, 14.606-8). Thus nectar and ambrosia are powerful anti-aging drugs. They are pharmacological technologies. Of course, these are merely possible. Here is an early description of the use of a possible technology to ward off illness, weakness, aging, and death. The story of Glaucus is a striking case of the use of a naturally occurring divinizing substance to transfigure a human animal into an Olympian animal (Ovid, Metaphorphoses, 13.898-968). Glaucus was a fisherman who discovered a naturally occurring plant with the power to revivify dead fish. After eating some of it himself, his body began to change into that of a merman: his legs became a fishtail. He leapt into the ocean. He had become divine, and he was welcomed into the community of the sea-gods. Glaucus ate a divinizing substance located in a plant which grew wild on our earth. The substance consumed by Glaucus caused his body to change its biological structure. Translated into modern biotechnology, this substance reprogrammed the cells of Glaucus at the genetic level. The story of Glaucus points to genetic engineering. When Dante

246 retells the story of Glaucus in 1320, he introduces the word transhumanize (Paradiso, Canto 1.37-72; see Harrison & Wolyniak, 2015).

2. Plato: Becoming Like the Divine Animals

One of the most famous images from Plato is the Divided Line (Republic, 509d- 511e). The Divided Line divides reality into four levels. Each level corresponds to a power of the human mind. From lowest to highest, these levels are (1) imagination; (2) perception; (3) understanding; and (4) reason. Above all of these levels is the Form of the Good. The Divided Line sets up the Myth of the Cave (Republic, 514a-520a). The Myth of the Cave portrays the ascent of a person up the Divided Line. The level of imagination portrays the person as a slave trapped in the lower world of the cave. The level of perception portrays the person as freed yet still in the cave. The level of understanding depicts the person as having climbed up out of the cave to look at shadows in the upper world. The level of reasoning has the person looking at real things in the upper world. Finally, there is the act of looking at the Good itself. Plato depicts two worlds: the lower world and the upper world. The person climbs up from here (the lower world) to there (the higher world). The higher world is filled with the deities. Thus to climb up out of the cave is to become like the deities. Plato says that we ought to try to become divine (Armstrong, 2004). He writes that we ought to become “like god so far as we can, and to become like god is to become just and pious with wisdom” (Theaetetus, 176a5-b2). Here Plato uses the term “god” to refer to the cosmic mind (perhaps the mind of the demiurge, or of the universe itself). But if we become like any of the morally ideal Olympian deities, we will be getting closer to this Platonic Divine Mind. So we ought to become like the deities. The Platonic division of reality into two worlds became the basis for the later Christian division of reality into the natural world and the supernatural world. This natural-supernatural dualism fits well with mind-body dualism. Hence the natural world is the world of physical bodies; but the supernatural world is the world of pure minds released from their bodily cages. This dualism forms the basis for much traditional interpretation of the later Platonists. Philosophical paganism regards any dualist interpretation of Platonism as a terrible distortion. It is a Christian distortion that pagans must undo. I reject it entirely. The divisions of being are divisions among ways of being. The four levels are four degrees of intensity of existence. For the Platonists, reality comes from the One. There is only one world, not two. And while there is much that looks like mind-body dualism in Platonists like Plotinus, Plotinus rejects dualism in favor of monism. His matter is not Cartesian physical stuff; on the contrary, matter is impairment. Plotinus denies that bodies contain souls; on the contrary, souls contain bodies (E 4.3.20-22). Bodies are more or less material, which means they are more or less impaired. Plotinus also rejects the thesis that the higher world is immaterial; on the contrary, there is matter even in the higher world. To live in the body (in the lower world) is to live in an impaired way.

3. The Ways of Biotechnical Evolution

247 Since our deities are idealized versions of ourselves, we can strive to become like them. For the Greeks, turning into a god or goddess was a very positive thing. And many humans were turned into gods and goddesses. They were turned into deities by other deities. Or they became deities by eating ambrosia or drinking nectar. Or, like Glaucus, they ate powerful herbs which turned them into divine animals. Plato said that we ought to become as godlike as possible (Theaetetus, 176a5-b2). Plotinus said that the purpose of human life was “not to be without sin, but to be god” (E 1.2.6). There are three main ways for humanity to surpass itself into deities. The first way is the Way of Biological Evolution. According to this way, the superhuman animals are our future descendents. We will naturally evolve into these superhumans. On this way, our godlike descendents exist in some possible futures of our universe. The second way is the Way of Technological Evolution. On this way, we use technologies to artificially enhance ourselves through all Platonic ranks of divinity. These technologies include at least biotechnologies (like genetic engineering), nanotechnologies, artificial intelligence, and robotics technologies. By applying them to ourselves across many generations, we will gradually elevate humanity into divine superhumanity. On this way, our godlike descendents also exist in some possible futures of our universe. The transhumanists advocate using technology to overcome the negativities of human animality. They aim to use technologies to change our human bodies into superhuman bodies. Through technology, we will transform our old weak bodies into strong new bodies. Our new bodies will be free of illness; their powers will be greater than our human powers; they will acquire many powers of non-human animals; they will not age; they will not die. Through technology, we will become deities. Some transhumanists seek to change their carbon-based bodies into robotic bodies. These robotic bodies will never die. Thus Tirosh-Samuelson writes that transhumanists seek to “immortalize themselves in super-intelligent machines, thereby becoming gods.” (Tirosh-Samuelson, 2012: 726). Some have observed that transhumanism aims to change human bodies into bodies like those of the Olympian deities. Harari writes that we will need to acquire “godlike control” of our own biology in order to “overcome old age and misery” (2015: 49-5). And so by seeking to overcome our biological impairments, “humans are in fact trying to upgrade themselves into gods” (49). If we gain this godlike power, we will be able to achieve “the strength of Hercules, the sensuality of Aphrodite, the wisdom of Athena or the madness of Dionysus” (50). We will become deities. Thus transhumanism is part of the he telestike techne, the art of self-surpassing. For transhumanists, deities are future possible animals of extreme power and intelligence. These include genetically engineered superhuman animals and inorganic robotic animals. Transhumanists often refer to these future animals and robots as gods. Harari says we should think of these future artifacts “in terms of Greek gods or Hindu devas” (2015, 54). He says they will be like Zeus or Indra. He says transhumanism aims to upgrade humans into gods (2015, 49-56). It aims to “upgrade Homo sapiens into Homo deus” (2015, 53). These transhumanist gods also include celestial computers as large as planets, stars, galaxies, and the entire universe (Kurzweil, 2005, 342-67). Many transhumanists refer to these celestial computers as gods (Hughes, 2010: 6-7; de Garis, 2005). Sandberg (1999) describes celestial computers he calls Zeus, Chronos, and Uranos. Walker (2005) says transhumanism continues the ancient Platonic project of theosis. He says that we can become gods. Peters says transhumanism “may even mean

248 a return to polytheism if heaven is filled with human beings now become gods” (2018, 357). But these gods will be natural and computational. The Olympian deities had superhuman powers. They had superhuman vision, memory, and cognition. They could shape-shift, and so on. Transhumanists aim to give us or our descendents similar powers. Perhaps we will acquire these powers by turning into robots. Although the Olympian deities were not world-creators, the Platonic Demiurge was a world-creator. Transhumanists argue that we will be able to design and create virtual universes with virtual inhabitants. These virtual worlds will be just as real as our world (which may itself be a virtual world). Thus future superhumans will have the divine demiurgic power to make universes (Geraci, 2010: 69, 76, 102).

4. The Way of Cosmological Evolution

The third way for humanity to surpass itself into divine superhumanity is the Way of Cosmological Evolution. According to this way, the divine versions of yourself are your future counterparts in future universes. So the deities occur in future universes. You are elevated to divine status through reincarnation across many universes. Plato and Plotinus both affirmed reincarnation. And they affirmed that, from life to life, you could either climb up the Divided Line or sink down. Thus we interpret the Myth of the Cave in terms of reincarnation from lower universes to higher universes. You start out in the first and lowest universe. Your cognitive powers in this first universe are minimal. The form of your body (that is, your soul) is simple. If you live as virtuously as you can, you will be reincarnated into the second universe. Your cognitive powers here have increased. The form of your body is more complex and more powerful. Since you are less impaired, your soul contains less matter; rather, its matter is purer. Again, if you live as virtuously as you can, you will be reincarnated into the third universe. The form of your body will be even more complex. You will be less impaired; so your soul contains even purer matter. Again, virtuous living will raise your soul up to the fourth universe. The form of your body will be maximally powerful and complex. It will contain only the purest matter, that is, intelligible matter. It will be minimally impaired. By rising up to the fourth universe, you become like a god. However, talking about souls and bodies still sounds too dualistic. So we will mostly talk about bodies. As you rise, your bodies become made of ever purer matter. Rather than containing just four bodies, your series of bodies is absolutely infinite. For Plato, the goal is to become like god. For Plotinus, it is to become unified with the Good. Thus both Plato and Plotinus treat the gods as goals for humans. They are ideals towards which we ought to strive. We commune with them by becoming more like them. For most pagans, this Platonic picture raises two objections. The first objection is that it looks far too monotheistic. It looks like there is one type of perfection. It looks like all that rises must converge. However, most pagans are polytheistic. This means at least that we affirm multiple ways to be perfect. There are many divine ideals. The second objection is that it looks far too much like maximal perfect being theology. It looks like the process of self-surpassing stops at some maximally perfect end. Thus just turns the one Abrahamic God into many Abrahamic Gods. However, pagans reject the very concept of Abrahamic divinity. There are no maximally perfect beings.

249 An alternative conception of divinity comes from the process theology of Charles Hartshorne. He said God is the self-surpassing surpasser of all. Thus God was an unsurpassable series of surpassable stages. This God, as a series of distinct stages, is already multiple. Pagans can take this Hartshornian conception of God, and multiply it into many deities. There are many unsurpassable series of surpassable objects (be they numbers, sets, structures, bodies, lives, planets, galaxies, universes, demiurges). Are they all deities? A deity is an unsurpassable series of surpassable animals. As these series climb higher towards the Good, they diverge. As perfection increases, so does plurality. And these unsurpassable series do not have the maximality of any number; on the contrary, they transcend all numerical maximality.

5. The Stars are Ideals

Plato says that earthly souls can rise through many levels of embodiment (Timaeus, 41d-42e). He says that human souls can become reincarnated as stars. If we live well, our souls will be reincarnated in stellar bodies. Nietzsche often used stars as symbols for ideals. Tillich writes “The stars as gods are not deified astral bodies; they are expressions of man’s ultimate concern symbolized in the order of the stars” (1951: 223). Hence philosophical pagans use the stars as natural symbols for divine bodies. To our pagan image, we now add the stars in the sky. A star is any series of objects defined over the entire axis mundi, the entire number line. Since the axis mundi is a proper class, every star contains a proper class of objects. Hence every star is a concrete transcendental object. Taken as a whole, the world tree is a star. It coincides with the sun. But every path of universes in the world tree also rises through all the numbers, and so towards its star in the sky. To paraphrase Hartshorne (1965: 28-32, 135-6), every star is a self-surpassing surpasser. Every star is divine. Figure 34.1 illustrates the stars in the sky. These stand over the world tree, at the height of the sun.

Figure 34.1 The stars over the leafy tree.

250

35. Divine-Craft: The Ranks of Bodies 1. Transhuman Bodies

ollowing Iamblichus, philosophical pagans sort divine agents into six ranks: (1) the pure souls; (2) the heroes; (3) the daimones; (4) the deities with Olympian bodies; (5) the deities with celestial bodies; and (6) the incorporeal deities. Philosophical pagans naturalize these divine agents: we treat all of them as divine bodies, and all these bodies are purely physical machines. Of course, we affirm many different kinds of physicality. Other possible universes can have richer and more subtle forms of physicality than our universe. They can contain physical structures of much greater complexity and intrinsic value. But all possible physical universes are computational. So all divine bodies are computing machines. And the ranks of computers run far out into the infinite. So we affirm that the divine bodies evolve into transfinite bodies. (1) The Transhuman Bodies. For Iamblichus, the first rank of divine agents is the pure souls. For philosophical pagans, souls are the forms of bodies; but forms are not agents. So we need to naturalize Iamblichus’s conception of pure souls. We say these are transhuman bodies. Transhuman bodies are at the first rank of divinity; but they are not yet deities. They are functionally superior to humans. Every transhuman body can perform every human function at the normal level of human performance or higher; and it can perform at least two human functions at the maximal level of human performance. Every transhuman has elite immunological performance: it can ward off infection as well as the best human. And it has elite healing functionality: it can heal as well and as quickly as the best human. These bodies do not suffer from infections or diseases (like cancer, diabetes, and so on). They do not suffer from genetic defects or illnesses. They suffer no physiological impairments. They may have other elite functionalities. For example, it has elite running performance: it can run as fast as the fastest human runner. Or it has elite visual performance: it can see as well as the best human can see. Since humans like these already do exist on earth, these transhuman bodies can exist in our universe or in universes with the same physical laws. They can be produced by biological or technological evolution. They have their elite powers from conception to senility. But they do age. When they reach senility, their powers decline. They suffer from infection and illness; their bodies degrade. They are mortal. Transhuman bodies are only finitely complex. So every transhuman body can be simulated by some finite computer running some program. The program can be defined in terms of some string of binary digits. The soul of any transhuman body is that number which, when run on some computer, simulates that transhuman body. Since transhuman bodies are only finitely complex, they are not the highest possible level of functional excellence. They are surpassable bodies. Since they are surpassable, they are material. But materiality is not physicality; on the contrary, materiality is surpassability regarded negatively – materiality

251 is functional impairment. And transhuman bodies are impaired when compared with the next higher rank of divine bodies, the heroic bodies.

2. Heroic Bodies

(2) The Heroic Bodies. Heroic bodies are at the second rank of divinity; but they are not yet deities. The heroes have all the powers of the transhuman bodies. But the heroes surpass transhumanity. The heroes are optimized human bodies (Steinhart, 2014: secs. 107-9). As such, they can perform every human function at least as well as the best human. A hero can run as fast as the best human runner; lift as much as the best human lifter; be as smart as the smartest human; be as healthy as the healthiest human; live as long as the longest-lived human; and be as virtuous as the most virtuous human. The Stoics talked about an ideal moral condition they called sagacity. Anybody who achieves this condition is a sage. For every possible human animal, there exists at least one possible morally ideal version of that animal. To become a sage, the Stoics proposed a system of psychological exercises. The Stoics advocated a kind of mind-craft in which you use your mind to work on your mind. They proposed a craft of self-surpassing. Their craft of self-surpassing wasn’t much of a craft. It makes use of few tools for self- change and the tools it does use are very weak. Stoicism is technically flawed. The heroes are morally ideal sages. They are humans who are morally maximally excellent. The transhumanists can embrace the Stoic concept of the morally ideal human animal. But moral ideality entails physiological ideality. Maximal virtue entails maximal health. Transhumanists propose a much stronger craft of self-surpassing than any mind-cure. The transhumanist sage is a Platonic sage. The transhumanist art of self- surpassing uses all available technologies to improve all parts of the body. It uses all available technologies to improve your health and virtue. An example of the transhumanist sage is provided by the American climber and engineer Hugh Herr (1991). While climbing on Mount Washington NH, Herr suffered frostbite. He had to have his legs amputated. The loss of his legs was beyond his control. He could have responded with self-pity and depression. But he did not respond in that way. So far, he resembles the Stoic sage. He is just working on his psychology. But he didn’t stop there. He used his intelligence to study mechanical engineering. At MIT, he developed bionic legs to replace his lost legs. He didn’t just learn to stoically accept his impairment – he used technology to overcome it. The genotypes of the heroes differ from human genotypes. No heroes have ever existed on earth. But technological evolution may produce them in future. And they may evolve biologically in universes that are similar to our universe – heroic bodies are biologically possible. These heroic bodies have their elite powers from conception to senility. But they do age. When they reach senility, their powers decline. They suffer from infection and illness; their bodies degrade. They are mortal. A hero is a maximally excellent human. Since maximizing human functionality does not require infinity, heroic bodies are only finitely complex. The soul of any heroic body is that number which, when run on some finite computer, simulates that heroic body. As finitely complex bodies, heroic bodies are surpassable. To surpass a hero is to surpass humanity. Since they are surpassable, they are material. They are impaired with respect to the next higher rank of divinity. The next higher rank includes the daimonic bodies.

252 3. Daimonic Bodies

(3) The Daimonic Bodies. The daimonic bodies are at the third rank of divinity; but they are still not yet deities. Since they have surpassed humanity, and transhumanity, they are superhuman. There are two subranks of daimonic bodies. The lower subrank contains human-extremal bodies (Steinhart, 2014: 110-12). A human-extremal body can perform any human body-function as well as the best organism of any earthly species. It is earthly elite for all human body-functions. Since running is something a human can do, daimonic body can sprint as fast as the fastest earthly animal (like a cheetah). And it can run as far as any animal can run. However, since flying is not a human body- function, it cannot fly. No earthly genotypes combine all these features into a single phenotype. So the lower daimones cannot exist in universes with our physical laws; they exist in similar universes which permit more powerful biology. The higher subrank contains carbon-extremal bodies. A carbon-extremal body can perform any biological function as well as the best organism of any earthly species. For any biological function F, if any earthly animal can perform F, then a higher daimon can perform F as well as the best earthly animal can perform F. On the one hand, it can perform any human body-function as well as the best organism of any species. So it can run as fast as the fastest animal of any earthly kind. On the other hand, it can also perform any non-human biological function at elite levels. For example, it can fly, and it can fly as well as the best birds can fly. It can fly as far and as fast, and with the greatest agility. It can swim as well as the best earthly swimmers of any species. It can survive falls as well as cats. It can regenerate limbs as well as amphibians. It can perform all the perceptual functions of all animals. It can echolocate like bats. And it can perform photosynthesis like plants or gain energy from sulfur like certain bacteria. Every higher daimone combines the best features of all organisms into a single body. No earthly organisms have all the features of the higher daimones. So they cannot exist in universes with our physical laws; they exist in similar possible universes which permit more powerful biology. They are farther away than the lower daimonic universes. The higher daimones have carbon-extremal powers of immunity, healing, and self- regeneration. Hence they resemble the Olympian deities in many respects. Like the Olympians, they never get infections or suffer from illnesses. Like the Olympians, they can be injured. But the Olympians had a divine doctor whose healing arts were always successful (e.g. Iliad, 5.899, 5.363). The higher daimones carry this divine healing art in their own flesh. They can heal all their injuries. These higher daimones regenerate by replacing old parts with new parts. They have perpetual youth. They are as hard to kill as life itself. Like many of the Olympians (such as Zeus and Metis), they can shape-shift into every possible biological form. They are protean. But life can die out. So while the higher daimones have durability, they are not quite immortal. All daimonic bodies are extremely more complex than any human bodies. Perhaps a daimonic body packs the entire intelligence of a human brain into the computational machinery in each daimonic cell in its body. Nevertheless, all daimonic bodies are only finitely complex. They are finitely complex living machines. The soul of any daimonic body is that number which, when run on some finite computer, simulates that daimon. As finitely complex bodies, daimonic bodies are surpassable. All daimonic bodies are

253 surpassable and so material. They are impaired with respect to the next higher rank of divinity. The next higher rank includes the Olympian bodies.

4. Olympian Bodies

(4) The Olympian Bodies. The Olympian bodies are at the fourth rank of divinity; they are the first deities. They are the first immortal bodies. To naturalize these bodies, we will proceed through an ancient theurgical practice, namely, the animation of statues. Ancient pagans were highly devoted to statues of their deities – they made statues of Athena, Zeus, and so on. The statues of the Olympian deities share their forms; through sympathetic magic, theurgists thought the powers of the deities could be aroused in those statues (Johnston, 2008). They used incantations and spells to try arouse those powers. If animated, the statues would become divine avatars. Iamblichus briefly discusses the animation of statues (M 5.23). Plotinus also mentions it (E 4.3.11.1-10). Plotinus used the animation of statues as an analogy for self-surpassing (E 1.6.9): your own self is a statue that you should seek to have animated by divine power. An immobile statue of Athena only superficially resembles Athena. Athena is barely present in such a statue. She would be slightly more present in a moving statue. Ancient pagan engineers built many self-moving statues. From them, a long chain of artisans carries ancient theurgical ideas about moving statues into modern technology (Kang, 2011; LaGrandeur, 2013; Filson, 2018; Mayor, 2019). So these artisans built Medieval automatons. Since these Medieval automatons were capable of more complex motions, Athena would be even more present in a Medieval automaton. Medieval automatons evolved into modern computers and robots. If a modern roboticist were to make a statue of Athena, she would be even more intensely present in it. But Athena is a goddess of wisdom. So consider some future superintelligent supercomputer (Bostrom, 2014). A modern theurgist might say that Athena fully animates that supercomputer. So the ancient practice of animating statues provides us with a way to understand Olympian bodies: they are superintelligent computers and superhuman robots. The Olympian bodies resemble robots. The Olympian bodies have surpassed the constraints of carbon chemistry. Their biological functionalities exceed carbon- extremality. For any biological function F, if that function can be done by any possible carbon-based life-form, then any Olympian body can perform F better than any possible carbon-based life-form. Biological functions are performed by organs. So Olympian bodies are protean: they can grow or evolve new organs to perform any needed functions, and they can grow or evolve them at the fastest possible speeds. They can change their morphologies by changing their parts. But their physiological functions exceed biological functionality. They can also perform functions that can be done by earthly technologies but not earthly organisms. They can act with subplanetary powers on the oceans like Poseidon and the weather like Zeus. However, the Olympians have only subplanetary degrees of functional complexity. More precisely, for any function F, if that function can be done by any possible earthly (that is, subplanetary) technology, then an Olympian body can do F at least as well as that technology. An Olympian can get solar energy like a silicon photovoltaic panel; or chemical energy like a combustion engine; or nuclear energy like a nuclear reactor. If we can make fusion reactors, then there are Olympian bodies that derive their energy from organs that perform fusion. Of course,

254 these Olympian bodies need not be technologies built by future humans. An Olympian body is any body that is functionally equivalent to a superhuman robot. Olympian bodies may emerge in their universes through biological evolution. Olympian bodies cannot exist in our universe. They are machines which surpass all possible machines that exist in our universe according to our physical laws. And they are machines which surpass all possible machines in the daimonic universes. So they exist in possible universes farther away in logical space than the daimonic universes. Of course, from the perspective of evolutionary cosmology, these are future universes. However, the olympian bodies are still only finitely complex living machines. The soul of any olympian is that number which, when run on some finite computer, simulates that olympian. The soul of Athena is the form of her body; the soul of Zeus is the form of his body. The forms of these olympian bodies are olympian souls. As finitely complex bodies, the olympians are surpassable. Hence they are material. They are impaired with respect to the next higher deities, namely, the celestial bodies.

5. Celestial Bodies

(5) The Deities with Celestial Bodies. The celestial bodies include the moon, the sun, the planets, and the stars. For ancient pagans like Plato, the celestial bodies were deities (Timaeus, 41d-42e; Laws, 898a-899d). Plotinus also affirms that the celestial bodies are deities (E 4.3.11.25-30). Likewise Iamblichus says the celestial bodies are deities (M 1.17-20). For these ancient pagans, the celestial bodies have minds (E 4.3-4). They are intelligent information-processors. Of course, the celestial bodies in our universe do not have minds. When we naturalize the celestial deities, they turn into intelligent machines that exist at the scales of planets and stars. They will contain computational networks at the scales of planets and stars – they are computational networks analogous to planet- sized brains or star-sized brains. Besides being much bigger than human brains, these planetary or stellar brains are proportionally much faster. And their algorithms are much more sophisticated, so they are more intelligent. But the ancient pagans also attributed functional powers to the celestial bodies. The celestial deities control things on earth. So these planetary or stellar machines are not just thinking machines, engaged in pure thought. They have organs for perception and action. One way to think of celestial deities is to think of them as celestial robots produced by technological evolution. They are structures made by advanced civilizations. Consider these four species of celestial deities. (1) Sandberg (1999) describe the first species of celestial deities. These are planet-sized computers which he calls Jupiter brains. (2) Sandberg next describes the second species of celestial deities, which he calls the Dyson brains. A Dyson brain is a cloud of interacting computing machines surrounding a star. Dyson brains are equivalent to the Matrioshka brains defined by Bradbury (19xx). A Dyson brain consumes the entire power output of its star. All the stuff in an entire solar system (and maybe more) is needed to build a Dyson brain. A celestial robot with the complexity of a solar system (a Dyson brain) might launch itself from the Milky Way to Andromeda. (3) Sandberg describes a fourth species of celestial deities, which he calls the neutronium brains. A neutronium brain is a computing machine made of neutronium (stuff compressed so densely that its protons and neutrons have dissolved into a soup of quarks). A neutronium brain is essentially a neutron star

255 converted into a computer – a truly stellar machine. (4) Ray Kurzweil (2005: 362) speculates that black holes can be converted into computers. They would be the most powerful celestial computers in the universes with laws like ours. Much as Dyson brains form around stars, so galactic brains may form around black holes. The celestial machines have their own sense organs and motor organs, so they function as robots at enormous scales of complexity and power. But it seems silly to think of such powerful machines as having hands or eyes. It is more plausible to say that they directly control the most basic forces of nature with their thoughts. Their physical structures are so intimately woven into the fabric of space-time that they can directly shape all physical structures in space-time. They manipulate physical things by directly controlling the forces inside of those things. To an ancient human (like Iamblichus), they would appear to be exercising non-physical psychic powers. But they are really exercising purely physical powers in accordance with deep physical laws. Nevertheless, this technological conception of the celestial bodies is inadequate. A more natural way to think about the celestial deities conceives of them as organic bodies. They evolved in their universes like living things evolved on earth. And they grow in ways that are analogous to earthly organisms. They have growth-programs like our genetic programs. Consider a more biomorphic Dyson brain. It grows from a seed. At the core of that seed, there exists an energy generator whose power is equivalent to a star like our sun. The size of this energy generator resembles the size of our sun. But this stellar energy-source is just an internal organ of the stellar organism. This stellar organism grows a body around its star. Perhaps this body grows like a basket starfish. The star appears to sprout arms growing in many directions. These arms branch again and again many thousand times. At their limits, their final tendrils flatten out and weave together with neighboring tendrils. The result is a spherical basket woven around the central star. The spherical edge of this basket is perhaps as far out as the orbit of Jupiter in our solar system. The fibers of this basket harvest the stellar energy. But they also perform information-processing: this stellar organism is a vast thinking machine. What might such a mind think about? The Platonists all say that our universe is inside of the Divine Mind. Some of the thoughts of this stellar organism are simulations of entire solar systems or small universes. Moreover, these organisms have trememdous powers of perception and action. They can detect or influence any physical event anywhere in the universe in the smallest unit of physical time. These are divine bodies. Now flip this direction of growth: think of organisms that elaborate their complexities on ever smaller scales. Moravec (1988: 102-8; 2000: 150-4) describes bush robots, with ramified forms. Our own bodies are like branching trees: a central trunk branchest into two arms and two legs; each arm sprouts a hand with five fingers; each leg sprouts a foot with five toes. Just two levels of branching. Figure 35.1 shows a bush robot through four levels of branching. But Moravec’s bush robots branch further. If a bush robot branched through just 32 iterations, it would have over a billion fingers and toes. These bush robots have extreme computational powers in their many limbs. They are intelligent animals. And they have exteme powers of percpetion and action. With its tiny fingers, a robot bush can handle subatomic particles. Robot bushes are fractal organisms. Their physicality approaches infinitely dense detail compressed into any finite volume of space-time. Although humans and many other organisms are simple bush robots in our universe, more complex robot bushes require different physical laws.

256 Finally, combine the celestial organisms with the bush robots. Picture a bush robot with hundreds of levels of branching. Each cell in this bush robot is as powerful as a Dyson brain. Each cell consumes the power of our sun. But, relative to all the other things in its universe, this stellar bush is no larger than a human body. Celestial bodies include organisms like human bodies but with the power of entire galaxies and with limbs on limbs elaborated out to many iterations. Although these organisms may sound extreme, in fact they are still only finitely complex. And because every celstial body is only finitely complex, it is surpassable and material. It is impaired relative to the next rank of superior celestial bodies. There are endlessly many ranks of celestial bodies (Steinhart, 2014: 113-5). But every endless evolutionary progression of celestial bodies rises towards an infinite limit. The infinite limits of these progressions are the divine bodies in the next higher rank – they are the holographic bodies.

Figure 35.1 Four iterations of a bush robot.

6. Holographic Bodies

(6) The Incorporeal Deities. For Iamblichus, the incorporeal or intelligible deities are integrally omnipresent (M 1.8-9). They exhibit holenmerism: the whole body is wholly present in every part of that body. They are perfect holograms. So we will naturalize these deities by thinking of them as holographic bodies. Some physicists argue that our universe is a 3D hologram generated from information inscribed on a 2D surface. Our cosmic hologram is encoded in a network of entangled quantum bits of information (Verlinde, 2016). It may be possible to construct computing machines from networks of entangled quantum bits (qubits). While these networks would be physical, they would not be built out of particles. They would by purely informational structures. They might have holographic properties. So one way to think of the holographic deities is to think of them as cosmic holograms. They are intelligent computational structures from which physical space-times emerge. As such, they contain universes inside of their thoughts, that is, inside of their computations. But they are still machines. On this view, the sixth goal of Platonic transfiguration is to change human animals into holographic bodies. So if you are transfigured into a holographic deity, then your body becomes a network of entangled

257 qubits. Moravec says the final goal of intelligence is to become quantum (1988: Apx. 3; 2000: ch. 7). Nevertheless, this way of thinking is too physicalistic. A perfect hologram is perfectly self-similar. The structure of every part is an exact copy of the structure of the whole. But anything with that kind of self-similarity is infinitely complex – it is an infinitely complex fractal. So these holographic bodies cannot be simulated by finite computers. They can only be simulated by infinitely complex computers. More precisely, they can only be simulated by infinitely complex networks of infinitely complex computers. So these are truly infinite bodies (Steinhart, 2014: ch. 9). They have infinite complexity and therefore infinite intrinsic value. Their souls are programs for infinite machines. They can simulate the entire history of any finitely complex universe in any unit of time. These deities do not exist inside of any space-times; on the contrary, space-times exist inside of them. Universes exist inside of their minds. But these holographic deities are only the lowest rank of infinite deities. They are only countably infinitely complex. Since every infinity is surpassed by higher infinities, these deities have materiality. The countably infinite deities are surpassed by uncountably infinite deities; and those are surpassed by inaccessably infinite deities; and so it goes. The lineages of infinite deities rise up through all the ranks of infinity on the axis mundi. They are surpassed by transcendental Divine Minds.

258 36. Divine-Craft: Future Deities 1. Evolving Divine Animals

reatness does not peak with humans. We can be surpassed by all the ranks of divine bodies. We can be surpassed by transhumans, heroes, daimones, olympian deities, celestial deities, and holographic deities. And, beyond them, by all the higher transfinite deities. For philosophical pagans, all these superhuman things are purely natural animals – they are machines. Here we are concerned only with super-humans. We are focusing on the self-surpassing of humanity. We are happy to affirm the existence of godlike aliens. Perhaps they are naturally evolved organisms. Perhaps they are artifacts built by alien civilizations. Perhaps they exist on other planets or in other universes But those aliens are not derived from humans. Their histories do not include our history. And here we are focusing on things that depend on humans. We are studying the ways that humanity surpasses itself into divinity. So do any superhumans exist? There are three possible ways for them to exist. All these ways involve the evolutionary accumulation of complexity. These ways are not mutually exclusive. (1) The Way of Biological Evolution. According to this way, the superhuman animals are our future descendents. We will naturally evolve into these superhumans. On this way, our godlike descendents exist in some possible futures of our universe. (2) The Way of Technological Evolution. On this way, we use technologies to enhance ourselves through all Iamblichan ranks of divinity. We might use biotechnologies like genetic engineering to create superhuman carbon-based (organic) bodies. Or we might use robotics technologies to make superhuman inorganic bodies. These superhuman animals are future super-robots or supercomputers. Perhaps we will upload our minds into these future artifacts. On this way, our godlike descendents also exist in some possible futures of our universe. (3) The Way of Cosmological Evolution. According to this way, our universe will surpass itself into its greater descendents. These are future versions of our universe. Both biological and technological evolution rise to greater heights in these other future universes. Humans will evolve in these other universes. But they will be surpassed by godlike superhuman organisms or robots. So our godlike descendents will exist in future universes. On all these ways, our godlike descendents exist in our futures. Either they exist in futures of our universe, or in future universes. Consequently, we affirm that divine organisms are future possible superhuman machines. These three evolutionary paths rise to different heights. (1) Since the way of biology stays bound to carbon chemistry, it won’t rise very high above humanity. This way might lift our descendents into the transhumans. However, the Iamblichan ranks of divinity quickly exceed any carbon-based organisms. So this way won’t raise us high enough. (2) The way of technology is not bound to organic chemistry. So it might lift us somewhat higher than the transhumans: perhaps into heroes or daimones. But it says bound to the laws of physics in our universe. And the Iamblichan ranks of divinity quickly exceed all possible artifacts that can be constructed within the constraints of our

259 physics. It is not likely that any olympian bodies can be constructed in our universe. So this second way won’t raise us high enough. (3) Only the third way remains. This way says that the divine organisms are our future counterparts in future universes. They are produced by biological or technological evolution in those future universes. We will be reborn into them as universes beget universes. Since those future universes have their own laws, which are more congenial to the evolution of superhuman complexity, this way is not constrained by any particular system of physical laws. Our future selves will rise through all the Iamblichan ranks of divinity. This is the only live option.

2. Past Below and Future Above

The world tree is an endlessly branching tree of universes. The universes in the world tree are generated by the power of self-surpassing: every universe surpasses itself by producing its successors; every progression of universes surpasses itself by producing its limits. So the universes in the world tree stratify themselves into generations. The initial generation consists of exactly the initial universe Alpha. The second generation contains the children of Alpha; the third generation contains the grand-children of Alpha; and so it goes. If the world tree contains any n-th generation of universes, then it contains an (n+1)-th generation. For every successor number on the axis mundi, there exists a successor generation indexed by that number. These finitely indexed generations rise up to infinity. They contain infinite progressions of universes. But every progression of universes surpasses itself into its limit universes. These fill up the first limit generation of universes. For every limit number on the axis mundi, there exists a limit generation of universes. As the lineages of universes rise up through all consistently definable degrees of complexity, they become unsurpassable sequences of surpassable universes. These sequences are stars of universes – they are cosmic stars. The axis mundi is the vertical axis that rises from the One to the Good; it rises from the earth to the sun. Every generation of universes is indexed by some number on the axis mundi. And every universe in that generation has that index too. The axis mundi has the structure of a time-line. Generations and universes with lesser indexes are earlier than those with greater indexes; those with greater indexes are later than those with lesser indexes; universes with the same index are simultaneous with each other. Within any chain of universes, each successor depends on its predecessor; each successor carries information about its predecessor. And every path through the world tree is linearly ordered. Any linearly ordered flow of information resembles the flow of information through time. So every path of universes is ordered in a timelike way. This ordering is not any physical time. Physical time exists only inside of individual universes. All lineages of universes in the world tree are timelike. Their resemblance to time is sufficient to justify the use of tenses. If any universe in some lineage is fixed as the present, then its ancestors in its lineage are in its past while its descendents are in its future. But its ancestors are also lower while its descendents are higher. And any chain of counterparts acrosses universes rises in this way also. As the world tree rises, all our ancestors are in the past below, while our descendents are in the future above. So the axis mundi rises from the One in the ultimate past to the Good in the ultimate future. Any chain of universes also rises from the past One to the future Good.

260 3. Evolving Future Divine Animals

As universes surpass universes, they grow internally more complex. But the complexity of any whole depends on the complexity of its parts. Versions of wholes are composed of versions of parts. Hence superior versions of our universe will be composed of superior versions of the parts of our universe. The descendents of our universe will contain more complex versions of the things in our universe. Just as universes surpass universes, so the things in universes surpass themselves. Just as every universe inhabits infinitely many self-surpassing chains of universes, so every thing in every universe inhabits infinitely many self-surpassing chains of things. Every thing inhabits infinitely many unsurpassable sequences of surpassable versions of itself. It inhabits infinitely many self-surpassing surpassers of all. Our universe contains human and non-human animals. So, if this reasoning about self-surpassing is correct, then every animal in our universe inhabits infinitely many unsurpassable sequences of surpassable versions of itself. It inhabits infinitely many self- surpassing surpassers of all. Each unsurpassable sequence starts with the simple One; it rises through a series of increasingly complex animals; it reaches the current animal in this universe; it continues rising through a series of even more complex animals. The animals in our universe have greater future counterparts in future universes. The non- human animals eventually surpass themselves into future animals with complexities at the human level (they may not be human, but they will be functionally equivalent). The humans in our universe eventually surpass themselves into transhuman animals in future universes. The transhumans eventually turn into heroes; the heroes into daimones; the daimones into olympian deities; the olympians into celestial deities; and the celestials into holographic deities. Eventually, every human in our universe has some future counterparts who are deities. We will turn into gods and goddesses. Figure 36.1 shows the self-surpassing of humans all the way up to celestial deities. The ovals in the Figure are universes. The lines are arrows pointing upwards from lower animals to higher animals (however, to reduce clutter, arrowheads are not shown). Consider Socrates. He was an animal in our universe. Socrates inhabits infinitely many chains of surpassive animals. Pick one of these chains. The Socrates in our universe has a predecessor in some the predecessor of our universe. This Proto-Socrates is slightly less complex than Socrates. This Proto-Socrates has a predecessor too. And the series of predecessors regresses through ever simpler animals all the way down to some single celled animal. It regresses from there down to the utterly simple One. All these earlier versions of Socrates are in his past in this chain. But the chain also rises into the future. Socrates is surpassed by some Socrates in the next universe in the chain. This Meta-Socrates is slightly more complex than Socrates. This Meta-Socrates has a successor too. And the series of successors rises without restriction.

261

Figure 36.1 Self-surpassing from humans to celestial deities. 3 4. Evolving Future Divine Universes

Human Universes. Our universe is a human universe. Spirit drives evolution in our universe. Particles surpass themselves into atoms; atoms surpass themselve into molecules; molecules into simple organisms; simpler organisms into more complex organisms; eventually, humans emerge. Since we are starting here with human universes, our universe is Cosmos-0. It contains Socrates-0. Perhaps earthly humans will evolve into more complex forms of life. But eventually our universe will die. Transhuman Universes. After some number of future iterations, the descendents of our universe turn into transhuman universes. The laws of these universes are slightly different than our laws; they are more congenial to evolutionary self-surpassing. Spirit drives evolution in these universes to transhuman heights. One of these universes is Cosmos-1. Biological and technological evolution together bring transhuman animals into existence in Cosmos-1. Some of these are future counterparts of humans in our universe. Say Socrates-1 is a transhuman animal; he is a future counterpart of our Socrates-0. Thus Socrates-0 surpasses himself into the transhuman Socrates-1. Heroic Universes. After some number of future iterations, the descendents of the transhuman universes turn into heroic universes. The laws of these universes are even more congenial to evolutionary self-surpassing. Spirit drives evolution in these universes to heroic heights. One of these universes is Cosmos-2. Biological and technological evolution together bring heroic animals into existence in Cosmos-2. Some of these are future counterparts of transhumans in our Cosmos-1. Say Socrates-2 is a heroic animal; he is a future counterpart of the transhuman Socrates-1. So Socrates-1 surpasses himself into the transhuman Socrates-2. The chain of Socratic animals grows. Daimonic Universes. After some number of future iterations, the heroic universes turn into daimonic universes. Daimonic bodies evolve in these universes. One of these universes is Cosmos-3. It contains some future counterparts of the heroes in our Cosmos- 2. Say Socrates-3 is a daimonic animal; he is a future counterpart of the heroic Socrates- 2. So the chain of Socratic animals includes the human Socrates-0, the transhuman Socrates-1, the heroic Socrates-2, and the daimonic Socrates-3.

262 Olympian Universes. The daimonic universes eventually evolve into Olympian universes. Olympian bodies evolve inside these universes. One of these universes is Cosmos-4. It contains some future counterparts of the daimones in our Cosmos-3. Say Socrates-4 is an Olympian animal; he is a future counterpart of the daimonic Socrates-3. This fourth Socrates is a deity. Socrates has surpassed himself into a deity. Our human Socrates was reborn again and again until he became a god. Celestial Universes. The Olympian universes eventually evolve into celestial universes. There is an infinite progression of these universes. Celestial bodies evolve inside these universes. Each celestial universe contains celestial bodies. So there exists an infinite progression of celestial Socratic bodies. The n-th Socrates surpasses himself into the next higher (n+1)-th Socrates. All these celestial Socrateses are gods. They make an infinite progression that rises towards its infinite limits. Countably Infinite Universes. Progressions of celestial universes surpass themselves into countably infinite universes. Evolution in these universes rises to infinitely complex machines. These universes contain infinite Omega Point computers. And progressions of celestial bodies produce their limits in these infinite universes. So the progression of celestial Socratic bodies surpasses itself into a limit Socrates. This is Socrates-ω. He is a divine Omega Point existing in Cosmos-ω. This infinitely complex Socrates is an infinite computer. These countable universes rise through all countable ordinals. Higher Infinite Universes. The countably infinite universes surpass themselves into the uncountably infinite universes; and these in turn surpass themselves into the inaccessibly infinite universes. These universes climb up through all the ranks of all the consistently definable infinities. And they contain their Socratic bodies. Hence there exists an unsurpassable lineage of surpassable Socratic bodies. For every number on the axis mundi, there exists a Socrates. Most of these are divine. Like any unsurpassable series of surpassable objects, this Socratic lineage is a star. It is the Socratic star. It is a star of intelligent bodies. Any such star is a Divine Mind.

5. Underworld Midworld Overworld

Our universe is the present; but the present is the midworld. From the midworld, we look down into the past. The past is below and underneath us. It is the underworld. The past contains the earlier universes; it contains ancestors of our universe and past counterparts of our bodies. We evolved from them; they were revised into us. From the midworld of the present, we look up into the overworld. The overworld is the future. It exists over and above the present. The future contains the later universes; it contains all the descendents of our universe and future counterparts of our bodies. We will evolve into them; we will be revised into the by cosmological evolution. From the original simple thing Alpha, there exists a chain of increasingly complex things that eventually ends in your current human body. This is the chain of your past counterparts and present self. It is your ancestral chain. It is the trunk of your tree of lives. From your current body, a branching tree of greater future counterparts endlessly ramifies itself into the sky. This is your descendent tree. It is the crown of your tree of lives. Figure 36.2 shows a generic human body in ritual mimesis of its tree of lives. Your tree of lives rises, like the axis mundi, from the earth to the sun. You can ritually imitate

263 your tree of lives by standing on the earth and raising your arms towards the sun. Your upstretched body stands in the midworld. Through your feet, you connect yourself to your ancestral counterparts. They rise up through the underworld and into your standing body. Through your arms, you connect yourself to your descendent counterparts. They rise up out of your body into the overworld. Through your tree of lives, you are woven into the world tree. But you are woven into it in another way: your current body grew from a zygotic seed – from your own Alpha. Each cell in your body is analogous to a demiurge. Your current body symbolizes the world tree. Spirit drives all your lives to surpass themselves. Spirit rises up out of the underworld; it erupts from the earth into your feet. You can feel it surging up from the ground. Sallustius said that all divine energies pass universally through all things, including all animal bodies. Philosophical pagans agree. But Sallustius said that these divine energies could meet resistance: they could be blocked by impurities in our bodies; they could be blocked by uncleanliness. These impurities are the materialities of our bodies. But for the Platonists, as for philosophical pagans, matter is not some physical stuff. Matter is the dysfunctionality or impairment in our bodies. Matter is privation. Like heat or darkness, it has no positive existence. The existence of matter is purely negative. Matter is surpassability considered negatively. If you are surpassed by some superior version of yourself, you are dysfunctional with respect to it. That dysfunctionality is your impairment; it is your surpassability considered negatively. We experience divine currents of energy flowing through our own present bodies. These currents rise up from the underworld up through the midworld. We feel the heat rising from the ground up into the sky. It drives us to build fires. We feel the power of spirit rising up from below. We feel it entering into our feet. It moves us to dance. We feel the power of spirit driving us to overcome the materialities of our bodies. We feel it driving us to purify ourselves and to cleanse ourselves of all privations and negativities. We do not cleanse ourselves merely by thinking. We cannot purify our bodies only through contemplation or meditation. To purify our bodies, spirit drives us to use tools and technologies to act on our bodies. We use science to perpetually improve ourselves. For philosophical pagans, spirituality is ethical self-transformation. Like the ancient theurgists, we cultivate the he telestike techne, the art of self-surpassing. Philosophical pagans say that the deities are possible future superhuman animals. They could be either organic or robotic. For the ancient pagans, and for some modern pagans, deities are objects of worship. However, for a philosophical pagan, they cannot be worshipped. It makes no sense to worship future organisms or robots. They don’t even exist yet. When it comes to reverence for our deities, we follow Plato. Plato said we should try to become as much like the deities as possible. So one way we revere our deities is by using science and technology to transform ourselves into them. But another way we revere them is by channeling them. By channeling them, we become virtually identical with them. So we build portals in which we construct analogical models of future divine universes. We revere our deities by simulating them.

264

Figure 36.2 The ritual imitation of trees.

265 37. Ancient Reincarnation 1. Ancient Arguments for Reincarnation

reek thinkers often affirmed reincarnation. The Pythagoreans affirmed reincarnation. Plato (or Socrates) frequently argued for reincarnation (e.g. Meno, 81a-86b; Phaedrus, 248a-249d; Republic, 614b-621d; Timaeus, 41b-42c; Laws, 903e-905a). Plato (or Socrates) gave many arguments for reincarnation. Plotinus often affirms reincarnation (E 3.2.13-15, 3.3.4, 3.4.2 4.3.23, 6.7.6-7). And Iambichus affirms it too (M 4.4). Socrates gave the Cyclical Argument for Reincarnation (Phaedo, 69e-72e). It goes like this: (1) All things with qualities come into existence out of their opposite qualities. Larger things come from smaller things; faster things come from slower things; hotter things from colder things. (2) Any two opposites are linked by two opposed processes: the process from small to large is increasing while the process from large to small is decreasing; the process from cold to hot is heating while the process from hot to cold is cooling. (3) We see by observing nature that both processes are always at work. Things heat up in the summer but then cool down in the winter. Thus all change is cyclical. (4) Life and death are opposites. (5) The dead come from the living by dying. But since every process has an opposite process, the living must come from the dead through being born. Nature contains cycles of death and rebirth like other cycles. (6) But if these are two processes involving some change in quality, then there is something that is changing. The thing that undergoes these changes is the soul. Thus souls pass from the life to death by dying and from death to life by being born. But it is more accurate to think of dying as disembodiment and being born as reembodiment. Plotinus also affirmed reincarnation. He uses the allegory of an actor in a play to represent reincarnation (E 3.2.15): the soul wears its body like a body wears its clothes. Of course, this looks like mind-body dualism; but it cannot be mind-body dualism. After all, the actor is a living animal. The point is that the clothes are the impairment of your animality. The clothes are your materiality; for Plotinus (as for Platonists generally), matter is impairment. You are therefore like an actor in a play; you’re wearing a costume and a mask and playing a role; after you die, if you’re reincarnated, then you’ll come back on stage wearing another costume and playing another role. Plotinus gave an argument from justice to reincarnation (E 3.2.13). A crucial principle in any such argument is that the universe is governed by laws of justice. There are several ways to argue for universal laws of justice. The Platonic Argument for the Laws of Justice goes like this: (1) The universe has been selected for actuality by the Good. (2) But any product of the Good is governed by laws of justice. (3) Therefore, the universe is governed by laws of justice. The Stoic Argument for the Laws of Justice goes like this: (1) The argument from the order of the universe reveals that the universe is governed by a good ruler. This is the Cosmic Zeus. (2) Just as a good ruler of an earthly city enforces good laws in his or her city, so the cosmic ruler enforces good laws in the universe. (3) Therefore, the universe is governed by laws of justice. But there is also an

266 Atheistic Argument for the Laws of Justice: (1) The success of mathematical science reveals that the universe is rationally organized. (2) But any rationally organized system also includes moral rationality: it is rational for a system to be governed by laws of justice. (3) Therefore, the universe is governed by laws of justice. Now the Argument from Justice to reincarnation goes like this: (1) Your earthly life contained many morally significant deeds for which you were not compensated in that life. It contained bad deeds which were not punished in that life and good deeds which were not rewarded in that life. (2) The universe is governed by laws of justice. (3) The laws of justice state that every morally significant deed will be compensated. You will be punished for your bad deeds and you will be rewarded for your good deeds. (4) But you were not compensated in your earthly life for many of those deeds. (5) So, your earthly life will be followed by some future life in which you are compensated for what you did in your previous earthly life. (6) Therefore, you will be reincarnated. Many religious and philosophical traditions say that the ultimate goal of the soul is to escape from the cycle of death and rebirth. The Hindus and Buddhists agree with this goal; Plotinus agreed with this goal. But that is not the only way to think about the soul. It might be good for a soul to be embodied. One might argue that a disembodied soul cannot really live. It is merely a shadow-person whose life is less intense than an embodied life and therefore less valuable. On this way of thinking about souls and bodies, embodiment is more natural for a soul; souls are in an anomalous and unnatural condition when they lack bodies. A disembodied soul has the capacity for seeing, but it has no eyes to see – it is blind. All its natural capacities are crippled by its lack of a body. So it is neither good nor natural for a soul to lack a body. The result is an Argument from the Value of Embodiment to reincarnation: (1) It is more natural for souls to be embodied than disembodied. (2) At death the soul is separated from the body. (3) Since it is more natural for souls to be embodied, death puts the soul into an unnatural state. (4) The laws that govern the universe are natural laws which work to maintain the natural order of things. Those laws aim to change unnatural conditions back to natural conditions. So the laws which govern the soul aim to maintain it in its natural state of embodiment. When the soul becomes disembodied, the laws of nature aim to return it to its embodied state. (5) So, after you die, the laws of nature entail that your soul will become embodied again as quickly as possible.

2. Retributive Karma

Retributive karma means that you will be compensated in your future lives for the good or bad deeds in your present life. You rack up karmic credits by doing good deeds and karmic debts by doing bad deeds. Your karmic credits lead to reward in the next life; you’ll be rewarded with pleasure. However, in your next life, your karmic debts will have to be paid off, and they’ll be paid off by suffering. Plato affirms retributive karma (Phaedrus, 248a-249d; Republic, 614b-621d; Timaeus, 41b-42c; Laws, 903e-905a). Plotinus follows Plato in affirming retributive karma (E 3.2.13, 4.3.23). But while Plato is often vague about future punishments and rewards, Plotinus affirms a much more explicit and highly symmetrical “eye for an eye” doctrine. Thus “A man that murders his mother will become a woman and be murdered by a son; a man that wrongs a woman

267 will become a woman, to be wronged” (E 3.2.13). Those who fail to use their wealth for the common good will be made poor. Bad rulers will become slaves. Retributive karma includes reincarnation into non-human bodies. Humans occupy a middle rank in the great chain of being. Above us, there are astral bodies and divine bodies; below us, there are non-human animal bodies and plants. If you live an extremely virtuous human life, you reap your karmic reward of being reincarnated into a superior body. If you live an ordinary human life, you are reincarnated into a human body. But if you live a vicious life, then you reap your karmic punishment of being reincarnated into an inferior body. But why say the bodies of animals (or plants) are inferior? Because they lack functions which human bodies have. Reincarnated as an animal, you will not be able to speak or reason or participate in human sociality. As you live well or badly, you move up and down on the great chain. According to Plato (Timaeus, 41e-42c), human souls were originally realized by stellar bodies. We were first incarnated as stars. Our stellar bodies were immortal. And, as stars, they were far more powerful than any earthly humans. So our stellar bodies were superhuman bodies. But Plato says that we sinned and fell from our stellar bodies into earthly human bodies. We fell from heaven to earth. When our souls are first incarnated on earth, we are incarnated into male human bodies. If we continue to sin, our souls will be reincarnated into female human bodies. Of course, this is sexist. It reflects the incorrect ancient view that women were inferior to men. It is also absurd. If the first generation of humans were all males, how did they reproduce to make the second generation? Plato rejects this sexism in the Republic (bk. 5) where he makes men and women equals in the ideal society. Philosophical pagans also reject this sexism. Plato talks about the reincarnation of humans into other types of bodies in the Phaedo (81e-82b). Human animals who indulge in the vices like gluttony, drunkenness, and violence are reincarnated into donkeys and cows. Those who indulge in the vices of robbery, injustice, and tyranny are reincarnated into wolves and birds of prey. Those who cultivate the civic virtues may be reincarnated into social insects or into humans. Those who purify their souls through philosophy are reincarnated into the community of the gods. It is not clear whether they have godlike bodies or whether they are freed from all physicality. Plato says that those who live well will be reincarnated into their stellar bodies again (Timaeus, 41e-42c). Hence our souls go up and down. Plotinus affirms that retributive karma can lead to promotions or demotions on the great chain of being (E 1.1.11, 3.4.2, 6.7.6-7). Humans have reason – so if your present life is guided by your reason, you’ll be a human again. But animals are guided by their senses and emotions – they just strive to satisfy their bodily needs, to seek pleasure and to avoid pain. They just eat and fight have sex. So if you live like that, you’ll be reincarnated as an animal. If your life is ruled by anger, you’ll be reincarnated as a fierce animal (like a lion). If you crave food, you’ll come back as a cow. Some humans will be reincarnated as birds: “Kings ruling unreasonably but with no other vice will be reincarnated as eagles. Futile and flighty dreamers who soar skyward in their imaginations will become highflying birds.” Gregarious humans will come back as social insects like bees. And if you’re totally lazy, you’ll come back as a plant!

268 3. Problems with Retributive Karma

There are many ways to interpret karma. On the retributive model, good deeds in one life are rewarded with benefits either in that same life or in subsequent lives; evil deeds done in one life are punished with harms either in that same life or in subsequent lives. It has been argued that any type of retributive karma is deeply immoral (Kaufman, 2005). There are at least four objections to retributive karma. The first objection is that retributive karma provides no cognitive link between past deeds and future rewards or punishments (Kaufman, 2005: 19-20). Justice requires that people know why they are being punished or rewarded. If people cannot know why they are being punished or rewarded, then they cannot learn the moral laws. This moral understanding requires memory of the past deeds which triggered the punishments or rewards. However, people do not remember their past lives. Hence punishments or rewards cannot serve any disciplinary purposes. Retributive karma does not permit either moral education or moral progress. It cannot motivate people to change their behaviors. The second objection is that retributive karma preserves evil. The simplest type of retributive karma involves eye-for-eye retribution. Plotinus endorses this type of retributive karma (E 3.2.13, 3.3.4, 3.4.2 4.3.23). Plotinus says that someone who commits murder in this life will be murdered in some next life; somebody who rapes in this life will be raped in the next life. This clearly entails an endless future series of murders and rapes. Eye-for-eye retribution entails that evil is preserved; it rules out any moral progress. Further, this type of retribution does not morally benefit the evil doer in any way. But punishment ought to have some beneficial outcome. The third objection is that retributive karma blames victims for their misfortunes. If a person is born with a mental or physical defect, then retributive karma entails that they deserved it. Or a person is the victim of a crime because they deserved it. However, it is morally wrong to blame the victim. Worse, an entire racial or ethnic group deserves its brutal treatment (Kaufman, 2005: 21). According to retributive karma, the Native Americans deserved genocide, the Africans deserved to be enslaved in America, and the Jews deserved the Holocaust. However, those peoples did nothing to deserve the evils which befell them. Retributive karma entails morally false and monstrous consequences. The fourth objection is that retributive karma incorrectly entails that those who cause harm are legitimate agents of justice (Kaufman, 2005: 25). When a person harms their victim, retributive karma entails that the victim deserved the harm. The harm is a just punishment for past misdeeds. Hence the person who causes the harm acts as a legitimate agent of justice. By acting as a legitimate agent of justice, the person who causes the harm is not doing wrong. They are not a criminal and do not in turn deserve any punishment of their own. On the contrary, they are blameless. Or perhaps they even deserve some karmic reward. This seems to entail that there is no evil at all. These objections arise because retributive karma returns good for good and evil for evil. However, this is an immoral principle. Retributive karma cannot be a part of any moral reincarnation theory. Retributive karma is therefore rejected here. Fortunately, retributive karma is not the only type of karma. Better models of karmic action are available. The morally correct karmic law is based on the Golden Rule. It returns good for good and good for evil. It returns good for evil not by rewarding wickedness, but by punishing the wrongdoer in a way that teaches a moral lesson.

269

4. Wiccan Reincarnation

Although Wicca is a modern religion, it is greatly inspired by Platonism. Just as the Platonists affirmed reincarnation, so do many Wiccans. The Farrars say that “Almost all witches [Wiccans] believe in reincarnation” (1981: 113). Buckland talks about it (1986: 25-28). Sabin reports that “most Wiccans will tell you that they believe in reincarnation” (2011: 31). And Cunningham says that “reincarnation is one of Wicca’s most valuable lessons” (2004: 73). Silver Elder discusses it (2011: 56-57). She writes that “It is the Soul or, the Spirit body that transcends the earthly physical realm to be re-manifest within the cycle of birth, life, death, and re-birth” (2011: 38). According to Cunningham, reincarnation is justified by the observation of natural cycles. Thus “reincarnation is as real as a plant that buds, flowers, drops its seed, withers, and creates a new plant in its image” (2004: 77). Of course, this botanical fertility cycle corresponds to the solar cycle. So Cunningham writes that “our very lives are symbolically linked with the endless cycles of the seasons that shape our planet” (2004: 76). Silver Elder says that reincarnation is manifest by the solar cycle, that is, by the wheel of the year: “the wheel of the year forms the story of birth, life, death and rebirth, the Cycle of Infinity and Reincarnation with the seasonal cycle acting as the metaphor for the regeneration of life” (2011: 23). Silver Elder also says that the daily sleep-wake cycle is a metaphor for reincarnation (2011: 43). The Farrars say “The theory of reincarnation holds, briefly, that each individual human soul or essence is reborn again and again, in a series of bodily incarnations on this earth” (1981: 116). Cunningham writes that “when the physical body dies we do not cease to exist, but are reborn in another body” (2004: 73). Sabin says that reincarnation is “the soul returning again to earth in a new body or form after death” (2011: 31). But reincarnation is not limited to being reborn on earth. Buckland suggests that you might be reincarnated on other planets or worlds: it is possible that “we not only experience lives here on Earth, but also on other planets . . . Perhaps we go through the cycle here having already been through it . . . on other worlds” (Buckland, 1986: 26). The basic Wiccan reincarnation doctrine seems to be this: A human person is composed of a soul and body (the soul is the mind, so this is mind-body dualism). The soul is a divine spark from the ultimate deity (or god and goddess). Thus Cunningham writes “The soul is ageless, sexless, nonphysical, possessed of the divine spark of the Goddess and God” (2004: 73). Although the body dies, the soul cannot be destroyed. After the body dies, the soul travels to some spiritual place where it prepares for its next incarnation (Cunningham, 2004: 75; Silver Elder, 2011: 56-57). The soul then enters a new human body. The Farrars say that it enters the fetus at conception (1981: 121). For some Wiccans, reincarnation is associated with retributive karma: you are rewarded or punished in your next lives for what you did in your past lives. However, other Wiccans endorse the doctrine of progressive karma. Wiccans appear to take this doctrine from the spiritism of Kardec (1857). Kardec argued that souls first appear at the lowest level of perfection. From this low level, they climb up towards God. They do this by passing through a series of lives. Kardec used an educational analogy: each life inhabits a grade of perfection on the great chain of being. Once you have learned the lessons appropriate for that grade, your soul rises into the next grade. But if you do not

270 learn your lessons, you are held back to repeat that grade. Eventually, however, every soul learns its lessons in every grade. The souls are always rising. The cycle of reincarnation aims at self-perfection and is repeated until the soul becomes perfected. Once your soul becomes perfected, it joins God in divine bliss. It’s worth mentioning that Kardec’s theory of progressive reincarnation resembles the theory of progressive resurrection developed by the philosopher John Hick (1976: chs. 15, 20, 22). Many Wiccans repeat these spiritist ideas. They endorse progressive karma. For example, Cunningham says “Wicca teaches that reincarnation is the instrument through which our souls are perfected. One lifetime isn’t sufficient to attain this goal; hence, the consciousness (soul) is reborn many times, each life encompassing a different set of lessons, until perfection is achieved” (2004: 73). Cuhulain says that the purpose of reincarnation is “to continue the process of perfecting ourselves” (2011: 17). Buckland describes the purpose of reincarnation like this: “your job is to progress; to strive your hardest towards perfection” (1986: 27). Buckland uses Kardec’s educational analogy to illustrate the process of self-perfection through multiple lives: you progress through your lives like you progress through grades of school (1986: 26). Once the soul is perfected, the Farrars say that it advances to some higher level of spiritual reality that is beyond our detailed comprehension (1981: 116). Cunningham is more explicit: “after rising upon the spiral of life and death and rebirth, those souls who have attained perfection break away from the cycle forever and dwell with the Goddess and God. Nothing is ever lost. The energies resident in our souls return to the divine source from which they originally emanated” (2004: 76). Cunningham’s version of Wicca is highly Platonic. The soul is emanated by the One. Emanation projects the soul away from the One. Through reincarnation, the soul returns to the One. The notion that reincarnation aims to reunite the soul with the One does not seem consistent with other Wiccan doctrines. It is not consistent with the Wiccan conception of nature as a perpetual cycle (which Silver Elder refers to as the “Cycle of Infinity” (2011: 23)). And Sabin writes that “Wiccans aren’t trying to get off the wheel” (2011: 12). She says that Wiccans are not trying to escape from the cycles of nature: “Wiccans believe that they actively participate in turning the wheel – in nature, essentially – while practitioners of some other religions try to transcend it” (2011: 12). This opposes Cunningham’s view of reincarnation as Platonic return. And Cunningham contradicts himself: after all, he said our lives are linked with the “endless cycles” of our earthly seasons. Return to the source (the One) can’t be right. Philosophical pagans do not think of reincarnation in terms of the return of the soul to the One. On the contrary, while you evolved from the One, you are climbing up to the Good. So all your future lives make progress towards the Good. You have as many reincarnations as there are numbers on the axis mundi. You are always rising to greater heights. Some Wiccans attempt to construct evidence-based arguments to justify reincarnation. They try to empirically justify reincarnation (through deja-vu, alleged memories of past lives, explanations of the injustices of this life, etc.). Unfortunately for the Wiccans, their theory of reincarnation is not consistent with natural science. And it is foolish to try to mount some defense based on some alleged gaps in our present scientific knowledge. All the science that is needed to refute reincarnation has been available for a long time. And purely logical arguments against reincarnation have been well-known for

271 a long time (see Tertullian, 1997). And philosophical arguments against mind-body dualism also refute Wiccan reincarnation. There is no earthly reincarnation. Nevertheless, reincarnation is not the only theory that says we have multiple lives. The Buddhist theory of rebirth also says that we all have many lives. It does not involve any soul that travels from body to body. It need not even involve having future lives here on earth; your future lives may exist in other universes. The Buddhist theory of rebirth suggests a way to have multiple lives that is consistent with scientific naturalism.

5. The Purpose of Your Life

For Plotinus, the goal is to escape from karma entirely. You can escape the wheel of death and rebirth: “souls pass from body to body entering into varied forms – and, when it can, a soul will rise outside of the realm of birth and dwell with the Universal Soul of all” (E 3.2.4). Once more Plotinus stresses that you can escape from the cycle of reincarnation: “Souls which are bound to bodies are apt to body-punishment; but clean souls, no longer contaminating themselves with the sins of the body, can escape from the level of embodied existence” (E 4.3.23). Although this looks like mind-body dualism, Plotinus is not a dualist. He is, like any Platonist, a monist. The souls which “escape” from the body are only escaping from a certain kind of impairment. Plotinus makes it clear that the higher world is also a world of life. It is world of a more intense kind of life. It is likewise a world of more intense embodiment. The purpose of your life is to become as much like a sage as possible. It is to move as far as possible towards a morally ideal version of yourself. To do this, you must act on yourself through various moral exercises and disciplines. You must apply the craft of self-surpassing to yourself. The Stoics outlined one such craft of self-surpassing, but it is not the only one. The Platonists have their own craft of self-surpassing. So the purpose of your life is to become as virtuous as possible so that you can (1) obtain the best possible reincarnation; or (2) escape from the human condition altogether. Plotinus was vague about this escape from the human condition. But this concept of escape can be modernized and naturalized: to escape from the human condition is to become transhuman. It is to escape from the negativities of human animality. This does not imply escaping from animality or from materiality. That is impossible. It implies escaping from the impairments specific to human life.

272 38. Naturalizing Reincarnation 1. From Reincarnation to Rebirth

ust as organisms contain biological genomes, so the biocosmic analogy states that demiurges contain cosmic genomes. Every demiurge contains some cosmic code in its genome. The information in the cosmic code is incarnated in the demiurge. Its cosmic code is a program for creating a universe. When the demiurge runs that cosmic code, its universe comes into being. After running its universe, every demiurge asexually reproduces to make its offspring. Every parent demiurge passes its cosmic genome down to each of its offspring. The information in the parent genome is now reincarnated into the genome of the offspring. Of course, this reincarnation also involves variation. The successor law for demiurges states that for every demiurge, for every way it can improve its cosmic code, it has some offspring whose cosmic code is improved in that way. So reincarnation is also improvement. The principles which shape this improvement are the laws of karma. Since the information in the parent genome is reincarnated into each offspring, it can be said that the parent demiurge is reborn into each offspring. Likewise the parent universe is reborn into each offspring universe. Similar remarks hold at infinite limits. As universes gain complexity, their genomes become networks of interacting genes. Just as cosmic genomes are analogous to programs, so these genes are analogous to subprograms or subroutines. When any cosmic genome is improved, at least one of its genes is improved. And, since every cosmic genome is improved in every way, every gene is improved in every way. Consequently, for every universe, for every gene in its genome, for every way to improve that gene, there exists at least one offspring of that universe which includes that improvement of that gene. Just as universes have offspring universes, so genes have offspring genes. Genes encode information. The information encoded in the gene is incarnated in the gene and reincarnated in its offspring. Thus each gene is reborn into its offspring. But this rebirth is also improvement. The principles which shape this improvement are the laws of karma. According to this biocosmic analogy, each gene in a cosmic genome encodes the program for some physical thing in the universe. When a demiurge runs a genome as its program, it runs every gene in that genome. The genome defines the order in which these genes get run. So the demiurge runs these genes in an orderly way. When it runs some gene, it generates the entire history of some physical thing. By generating the histories of all the things in the universe, the demiurge generates the entire universe. After running some cosmic genome, the demiurge improves it into its offspring genomes. As parent genomes get reborn into better offspring genomes, parent genes get reborn into better offspring genes. Karmic laws shape this rebirth. But genes generate things. Consequently, just as parent genes are reborn into offspring genes, so parent things are reborn into offspring things. Every parent thing in any parent universe is reborn into

273 some better offspring thing in some better offspring universe. Thus your life will be reborn into improved future lives in improved future universes.

2. The Emergence of Karmic Laws

As universes beget successors, and progressions beget limits, karmic laws emerge. Karmic laws are not imposed from the top down; they emerge from the bottom up. They are regularities that appear as universes transform into successors and progressions transform into limits. As universes gain complexity, the karmic laws also gain complexity. To illustrate the emergent laws of karma, we can use the Stoic great chain of being. The great chain defines six ranks of universes. The zeroth rank contains just the initial universe. The initial universe is simple and therefore empty – it contains no objects at all. The first rank contains many generations of mineral universes. For these mineral universes, karmic laws just increase atomic and molecular complexity. These universes contain progressively more complex systems of more complex rocks. The rocks in these universes become prebiotic systems of molecules like RNA and DNA. The second rank contains many generations of botanical universes. These begin with the universes in which life first emerges as simple organisms like bacteria. These evolve into plants. For these botanical universes, karmic laws emerge that drive simple organisms to evolve into more complex organisms. Here philosophical pagans endorse something very close to Universal Darwinism: evolution by natural selection is probably the only way for life to gain complexity (Dawkins, 2017: 119-50). Consequently, at every botanical universe, or almost every botanical universe, the laws of evolution by natural selection drive the increase of biological complexity. The karmic laws associated with natural selection drive organisms to greater degrees of fitness in evolution. For every botanical universe, for every organism in that universe, for every way it can increase its fitness, there exists some successor organism whose fitness is increased in that way. Thus each organism has a fitter future counterpart in some future universe. Every organism rebirths into some fitter version of itself. It rebirths into some biologically more virtuous version of itself. Along every chain of successor organisms, biological arete grows. This arete is competitive excellence. Thus plants struggle against each other for sunlight and nutrients. They become enemies which do evil to each other. But as competitive excellence grows more intense, competitors learn to seek allies. From the war of all against all, sophisticated forms of cooperation emerge. Hence plants begin to share resources. They become friends which do good to each other and which fight common enemies together. As universes surpass universes, their organisms both compete and cooperate more intensely. Plants (and fungi) develop economic strategies for cooperation. They reward each other for sharing resources; they punish each other for stinginess, for cheating, for breaking promises. Primitive moral norms emerge with primitive life. Karmic laws emerge from these moral norms. As these moral norms gain complexity, karmic laws gain complexity. But karma is progressive: it tunes successors for superior moral virtue. The future counterparts of each plant more accurately follow the norms of plant morality. They are morally better plants. They work together in superior ways and thus grow in both individual and communal complexity. Of course, this growth leads to botanical

274 communities which conflict even more intensely. Thus karmic laws work together with natural selection to ensure greater complexity. The third rank of universes contains many generations of animal universes. Here the term animal used by itself means non-human animals. These begin with the simplest animals. Here too the laws of karma emerge from Darwinian principles: every plant and animal rebirths into some fitter version of itself. As animals gain complexity, their primitive nervous systems grow into sophisticated brains. They gain greater cognitive functionality. They gain increasingly complex strategies for competition and cooperation. They compete directly for resources. They evolve into predator and prey, host and parasite. They also form cooperative societies: here are hives of social insects, flocks of crows, colonies of bats, packs of wolves, troops of chimpanzees. More sophisticated moral norms emerge among these social animals. Social animals develop social roles with associated social duties. Epictetus observed that social insects have roles in their societies. The queen bee has a role and the drone has a role (D 3.22.99). And their roles determine their duties. Thus social animals reward those who do their duties and they punish those who fail to do their duties. They develop increasingly complex systems of reciprocity. They reward those who pay back debts and keep promises. They punish those who cheat, who fail to pay back debts, or who break promises. More generally, animals have roles in their surrounding ecosystems. Epictetus observed that animals have ecological roles. Animals are finely tuned to play their roles by evolution. These roles generate duties. All animals strive to play their roles well in the earthly ecosystem; they strive to perform their proper functions; they strive to do their duties (D 4.1.24-28). For example, when a lion attacks a herd of cows, the duty of the calf is to run but that of bull is to fight (D 1.2.30-32; 3.1.22; 3.22.6; 4.8.42-43). As animal universes grow, they gain organisms that form symbiotic relationships. Consider a universe which has evolved an earthlike ecosystem including figs and wasps but not much beyond that level of complexity. As on earth, the figs and wasps have become symbiotic: the wasps pollinate the figs; the figs in turn provide homes and nutrients for the offspring of the wasps. Norms of reciprocity emerge in symbiotic relationships: each symbiont has duties towards the other. The wasps have duties to pollinate the figs; the figs have duties to shelter and nourish the wasps. Of course, one side may fail to do its duty – it may cheat. Some wasp may cheat by implanting its eggs into a fig without also pollinating it. Figs have evolved to detect this cheating and to punish the wasps by dropping the unpollinated fig and killing the young wasps. As duties emerge, karmic laws emerge. Karma works progressively. The cheating wasp is surpassed by some future counterpart in some future universe – it is reborn into some successor wasp. Karma rewires the brain of this reborn wasp so that it is more likely to do its duty. But karma tends to justice. The fig might not detect the cheating wasp. So karma tunes the reborn fig to detect cheaters more accurately. Karma makes it more likely that if the reborn wasp cheats, the reborn fig will punish it by killing its offspring. Of course, within animal universes, the laws of karma are still violent. Many biological relations are competitive. The cheetah seeks to devour the antelope; the antelope seeks to avoid the cheetah. Each seeks the death of the other. But each has been tuned to its role by evolution. This tuning grounds duties: it is the duty of the cheetah to hunt down and devour the antelope; it is the duty of the antelope to evade and starve the cheetah. Each strives to do its duty. No injustices are done in the war between

275 cheetahs and antelopes. Nevertheless, if either party fails to do its competitive duty, then karma sharpens its successors. Karma increases competitive fitness. If the cheetah fails to capture the antelope, then karma makes the reborn cheetah fitter. If the antelope fails to evade the cheetah, then karma makes the reborn antelope fitter. In every war between predator and prey, karma works equally on both sides. Karma (like evolution) is not utilitarian. It does not work to increase happiness. It does not aim at the greatest happiness of the greatest number for the greatest time. Karmic laws emerge to facilitate the ever greater intensification of life. Plotinus says the next universe is boiling with life (E 6.7.12). Karma intensifies all ecological relationships.

3. Karmic Laws for Humans

As universes gain complexity, the fourth rank of universes appears. Universes in this fourth rank contain rocks, plants, animals, and humans – they are human universes. As these human universes emerge, karmic regularities appropriate for humans also emerge. These karmic regularities emerge from the ways that human lives in earlier universes are transformed into human lives in later universes. These karmic regularities emerge as demiurges reproduce along the upgrade branches in the world tree. These upgrades are selected by the Good. Since these branches are upgrades, the laws of karma cannot be morally negative. They cannot suffer from moral problems. But retributive karma is morally negative. Consequently, the karmic laws that emerge from the transitions in the world tree are progressive. Progressive karma is endorsed by the Spiritists (Kardec, 1857: bk. 2) and by some Wiccans (Buckland, 1986: 26-7). Progressive karma can be thought of in terms of character building (“soul-making”) across lives (Stoeber, 1990). Something like this soul-making karma is endorsed by John Hick (1976). Following Hick, this soul-making karma is also endorsed by Steinhart (2008, 2014, 2017). As human universes gain complexity, seven karmic regularities emerge. These are bottom-up tendencies rather than top-down impositions. As demiurges reproduce along the upgrades in the world tree, these regularities emerge. The demiurges do not impose karmic laws on their universes or the things in them. The demiurges are just computers that follow programs and that transform programs into programs. The karmic laws make things better. They make human lives better; they make human societies better. But moral improvement need not entail greater happiness. Demiurges are not utilitarians. The fact that the next universe is better does not imply that your next life will be happier. For example, if your next life is morally better, then you are more likely to do your duty; but doing your duty can often lead to misery. Of course, since happiness is a good, it will eventually increase. But happiness is the most superficial good. The first karmic regularity entails that your next life will be very similar to your present life. If karma were to immediately produce great changes in any life, those changes would ripple out to create vast later changes. The result would be chaos. Karma does not produce disruptions; it does not tear the social fabric. Karma works by slight changes and slow degrees. It is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Karma works incrementally and continuously over enormously long sequences of lives. Karma works through great feedback loops that operate over many incarnations. The second karmic regularity entails that the conditions of your next life will be more educative. On the one hand, during your whole life, but especially while your character

276 is growing, you will be more likely to experience conditions conducive to building a virtuous character. You will be more likely to have genetics conducive to virtue. You will be more likely to benefit from good parenting; to benefit from good nutrition; to benefit from social stability, a loving family, adequate resources, a good education. On the other hand, during your whole life, but especially while your character is growing, you will be less likely to experience conditions conducive to building a vicious character. You will be less likely to suffer from genetic errors that lead to vice. You will be less likely to suffer from fetal alcohol poisoning; to suffer from malnutrition or lead poisoning; to suffer from child abuse or war or poverty. The third karmic regularity entails that your next characters will be morally better than your present character. You will be a superior moral agent. You will be a better moral problem-solver. Your character will be ethically enhanced (see Douglas, 2008; Faust, 2008). Your character will contain superior moral habits and dispositions. On the one hand, you will be more virtuous. You will be more likely to do your duty in every situation; you bill be more likely to do acts that are morally obligatory. On the other hand, you will be less vicious. You will be less likely to fail to do your duty in every situation; you will be less likely to do acts that are morally forbidden. The fourth karmic regularity entails that your series of actions will be morally superior to your present series of actions. On the one hand, you will be more likely to produce morally positive actions. Your actions will be more likely to increase intrinsic value. When they do increase it, they will be more constructive. And your actions will have greater degrees of moral positivity. On the other hand, you will be less likely to produce morally negative actions. Your actions will be less likely to decrease intrinsic value. When they do decrease it, they will be less destructive. If in this life you murder somebody, then in your next lives the corresponding act will seriously injure but not kill them. In future lives, the seriousness of the injury will decrease to zero. The conflict which motivated your act will change to become more abstract. Fights which involve physical destructiveness will become fights involving only symbols. The fifth karmic regularity entails that your next lives will be more psychologically providential. From life to life, karma rewires your brain so that your acts are more likely to be followed by morally appropriate mental deserts. When you act, you will be more likely to feel what you ought to feel. On the one hand, doing good will be more emotionally satisfying. If you do good, you are more likely to feel well because you did good. Doing evil will also be more emotionally unsatisfying. If you do evil, you are more likely to feel ill because you did evil. You are more likely to suffer emotional distress, including misery, guilt, shame, remorse, regret, and anguish. The sixth karmic regularity entails that your future lives will be more sympathetically providential. When your acts cause moral responses in others, you will be share more intensely in those responses. You will be more sensitive to their moral responses. On the one hand, when you do some good deed, you will more intensely feel the positive moral responses of others. If your good deed makes them well, joyous, happy, proud, or admiring, then you will experience their emotions more as your own. On the other hand, when you do some evil deed, you will more intensely feel the negative moral reactions of others. If your evil deed causes suffering and loss in others, you will feel their pains as if they were your own. You will experience their moral revulsion against you as moral

277 revulsion against yourself: you will feel the disgust, fear, anger, hatred that they direct at you as negativities emotions that you direct against yourself. The seventh karmic regularity entails that future societies will be more socially providential. Future lives will therefore contain more justice. A more just version of a life is one in which earlier deeds are more likely to be followed by their deserts. Social providence provides moral discipline. On the one hand, if you do a good deed in some future life, you will be more likely to be more rapidly and appropriately rewarded in that same life. Good moral dispositions will be more likely to turn into good moral habits; good moral habits will be cultivated and sustained. On the other hand, if you do a bad deed in some future life, you will be more likely to be more rapidly and appropriately punished in that same life. Bad moral dispositions will be extinguished before becoming habitual; bad moral habits will be extinguished and prevented. The providential aspects of karma provide present motivation. Karmic regularities entail future rewards for present good acts. These promised rewards act as enticements to do good in your present life. They provide you with reasons to be good now: you ought to be good now because, if you are, then you will be more likely to experience benefits in your next life. Karmic regularities entail future punishments for present evil acts. These promised punishments act as deterrents to doing evil in your present life. They provide you with reasons to not do evil now: you ought to avoid evil now because, if you don’t, you are likely to experience discipline in your next life. Progressive karma entails that you are involved in a process of self-deification, self- divinization. On the one hand, if you act badly, it will take you longer to reach your divine selves; more iterations of the cosmic cycle will be needed for you to overcome your impairments. On the other hand, if you act well, it will take less time to reach your divine selves; it will take fewer iterations of the cosmic cycles to purify your materialities and to become transhuman and superhuman. The connection between your past selves and your future divine selves is mediated through the virtues. The virtues are the present link in your tree of lives. Spirit flows most readily through virtuous action and through virtuous characters. Thus you must strive in the present to be virtuous. The virtues are represented on the axis mundi by the Stoic moral compass. The four cardinal points of this compass show the four cardinal virtues. Figure 38.2 shows the axis mundi rising from the past, through the present, into the future.

Figure 38.1 Past, present, and future.

278

4. Some Arguments for Rebirth

The Argument for Rebirth goes like this: (1) Our universe emerged through cosmic evolution. It is the successor of some parent universe and it will beget its offspring universes. Cosmic evolution increases complexity. So our parent universe was simpler and our offspring universes will be more complex. (2) But the evolution of complexity follows Dennett’s Principle of the Accumulation of Design (1995: 72), which states that design is mostly copied from simpler things to more complex things. (3) Hence the design of each offspring universe is mostly copied from the design of its parent universe. (4) But the designs of wholes depend on the designs of their parts. If the design of the next whole is mostly copied from the last whole, then the designs of the next parts are mostly copied from the last parts. Parts correspond to parts. (5) So it’s likely that your present life was closely copied from some past life in the parent universe. You have a past counterpart in that parent universe. Your life is an improved version of that past life. Likewise it’s likely that every offspring of our universe will contain an improved version of your life. You will have better future counterparts in the next universes. Here improvement means only an increase in intrinsic value, that is, in complexity. And the improvements of counterpart lives are governed by karmic laws. The Argument from Rebirth is strengthened by the Argument from Probability and Complexity. It goes like this: (1) Since the complexity of any whole depends more intensely on the complexities of its more complex parts, the probability of that some past part is copied into some future universe increases with the complexity of that part. (2) Humans are extremely complex things. (3) Therefore, it is extremely likely that we will be copied into its cosmic offspring. The Argument from Probability and Complexity is further reinforced by the Argument from Fragility. It goes like this: (1) Since more complex things are more fragile, the probability that some past part is very accurately copied into some future universe increases with the complexity of that part. If the structure of a rock is only approximately copied from one universe to the next, then the result is likely to be another rock, or at least something with similar complexity. However, if the structure of an organism (like a human) is not extremely closely copied from one universe to the next, then the result is likely to be a very dead and very simple thing. More precisely, if the structure of your genes and your brain are not extremely closely copied, your complexity will be entirely lost. Therefore, as the complexities of things increase, it becomes more likely that their structures will be accurately copied from each universe to its offspring. (2) Humans are extremely complex things. (3) Therefore, it is extremely likely that your current life will be copied into each offspring universe. This copying implies only that each of your future counterpart lives includes all the complexity of its past counterpart. It permits complexity to be increased from past to future counterparts. Intrinsic value can (and must) increase.

5. Your Incantation for Lives

Your initial life is your present earthly life. It is your entire life from your conception to your death. It is a 4D space-time whole. Since the successor law for things entails that

279 every thing will surpass itself in every way, it entails that your initial life will surpass itself in every way. Every superior version of your life will exist in some superior context. These superior versions of your life are your future better counterparts. They are your better future lives. Your better future lives will be lived in better families, better societies, in better ecosystems, in better physical contexts, in better universes. Each life in your tree is reborn into each of its successor lives. These successors are your first-generation lives. Now the successor law iterates: your better future lives are surpassed by better better future lives. So your first-generation lives are surpassed by your second-generation lives. Your generations rise to infinity. Since the successor relation branches at every iteration, your future lives form your tree of lives. As your lives are surpassed by their successor lives, they form infinitely long progressions of lives. Your tree of lives contains infinitely many progressions of lives. The limit law for things entails that every progression of your lives is surpassed by limit lives. So your tree of lives runs through all limits into the higher infinities. Every progression of lives in your tree is reborn into each of its limit lives. So your present life is the root of a infinitely ramified tree of better lives. Your tree of lives is an unsurpassable tree of surpassable lives. It is a proper class of lives. So your tree of lives is transcendental. Since it is unsurpassable, your tree of lives is immaterial. This rebirth theory partly resembles the resurrection theory of John Hick. Hick developed a resurrection theory involving many lives in many universes (1976: chs. 15, 20). Following Hick, Steinhart developed the more naturalistic revision theory of resurrection (2008). Steinhart then developed the revision theory of rebirth (2014: chs. 7-9). Techno-theurgy entails the revision theory of rebirth. Techno-theurgists say that a thing is saved if and only if it is surpassed by every possible superior version of itself. Hence you are saved in your tree of lives. But techno-theurgists do not seek to escape from the wheel of rebirth; on the contrary, they seek to ride it higher. Your tree of lives is defined by your incantation for lives – it has the usual four laws. The Initial Law for Your Lives. Your present earthly life is your initial life. It is the root of your tree of lives. It inhabits your initial society, ecosystem, physical context, and universe. It is surpassable; hence it is material; it is impaired. But spirit acts in your life to drive it to produce superior lives in superior contexts. The Successor Law for Your Lives. Spirit works in every life in your tree to generate its successor lives. Both the gynomic and andromic powers work in each life in your tree. And these powers are successful: each life in your tree is surpassed by at least one successor. Every successor of each life is a minimally better version of that life. Each thing is reborn into each of its successors. The successors of each life inhabit the successors of its contexts. So your successor lives inhabit progressively better societies, ecosystems, physical contexts, and universes. The successor relation on your lives defines a tree of future counterparts which spans universes. Your successor lives will rise up through all finite degrees of excellence. Some of these finite degrees are transhuman; some are godlike superhumans; and some are divine. You will eventually be reborn into a deity, into a god or goddess. You will rise towards infinite personal excellence. Each chain of successor lives rises upwards towards the sun, that is, towards the Good.

280 The Limit Law for Your Lives. Spirit works in every progression of lives in your tree to generate its limit lives. Both the gynomic and andromic powers work in every progression. And they succeed: every progression of lives in your tree is surpassed by at least one limit life. Every limit of every progression is minimally better than its progression. Every life in every progression is reborn into its limits. All your limit lives are infinitely complex and infinitely valuable. Your limit lives inhabit limit societies, limit ecosystems, limit physical contexts, and limit universes. The limit relation defines a tree of counterparts which spans universes. There exists a limit branch from each life in any progression to each limit of the progression. Your limit lives will be infinitely great persons. They will be divine persons. But they are surpassed by their greater successor lives and then by their greater limit lives. Your future lives rise up through all degrees of divinity. Each chain of lives ascends towards the Good. The Final Law for Your Lives. The final law says your tree of lives includes all the lives defined by the previous three laws. The lives in any lineage of this tree are your future lives in future universes. Your tree of lives is an unsurpassable class of surpassable lives. It is a proper class. From your present life, your tree of lives contains infinitely many lineages. It contains infinitely many linear sequences of future lives. Each lineage rises up through degrees of excellence that are human, transhuman, superhuman, and divine. It rises along all the degrees of excellence indexed by numbers in the axis mundi. Every lineage in your tree is an unsurpassable series of surpassable lives. Since it is unsurpassable, it is unimpaired. Since it has no impairment, it has no materiality. As an unsurpassable series, every lineage is a star of lives. Each star of lives is transcendental. It occupies the same rank as the Good. All your stars are Divine Minds.

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39. The Divine Minds 1. Ancient Divine Minds

enophon reports that Socrates also argued for the existence of an all-pervasive cosmic mind (Memorabilia 1.4.2-7). Plato also reports that Socrates argued for this cosmic mind (Philebus, 28d). The theory of a pervasive cosmic intelligence gets further developed by the Stoics. The Stoics argued that the universe was animated by an all-pervasive intelligence (Cicero, ONG 2.80-94). This intelligence is found in the fire-energy (that is, the pneuma) that flows through all things (Cicero, ONG 2.23-31). So the Stoics thought the universe contains a cosmic mind. This was their Cosmic Zeus. The Stoics were probably the first to define a great chain of being. Their great chain is a series of levels or ranks of beings. Beings on higher ranks are more perfect. The Divine Mind is the most perfect being (Cicero, ONG 2.16-22, 2.33-5). So the Divine Mind is at the top of the Stoic great chain of being. It occupies an extreme position. Aristotle took a somewhat different approach to the cosmic mind (Metaphysics, Bk. 12.7). For Aristotle, our earth sits in the center of the universe. It is surrounded by a glassy sphere which contains our moon. Then by another glassy sphere which contains our sun. Then by spheres which contain the planets. Then by a sphere which contains the stars. Since the lights in these spheres move, the spheres themselves must move. But what causes all these spheres to move? Says there must be an outermost sphere which causes all the other spheres to move. This outermost sphere contains his Divine Mind. It exists at the edge of space, in the highest heaven, at the top of the Aristotelian great chain of being. The Aristotelian Divine Mind also occupies an extreme position. This Divine Mind thinks about thinking. This means that it is a kind of pure self- consciousness, so its movement is pure self-motion. Since pure self-motion turns back into itself, it is circular motion. The other celestial bodies are attracted to this kind of motion. Since they are attracted to it, they imitate it. When they imitate the circular self- motion of the Divine Mind, they rotate. Thus the lights in our sky orbit our earth, and their motions drive the seasons, the tides, and all the other motions on earth. But the Divine Mind does not push anything. Other things move because they want to be like it. The Divine Mind serves as a kind of goal for all other moving things. Since it serves as a goal, it is a finality – Aristotle calls it a final cause. It is at the end of every chain of causes. This point will enter into contemporary theories of Divine Minds. However, since they are final goals, they will be the last things to come into being.

2. Plotinus: The Infinite Holographic Mind

Plotinus develops his own extensive theory of the Divine Mind. For Plotinus, the Divine Mind is infinitely complex (E 5.8.4.32-35, 5.8.9.27-30; 6.7.14). But why is it

282 infinitely complex? Plotinus was probably the first to understand that infinity involves perfect self-mirroring. The Divine Mind is perfectly self-conscious. It exactly represents itself. This means that it contains some part of itself which perfectly represents itself. A part of the whole exactly replicates the structure of the whole. The part is a perfect mirror of the whole. So that part must contain a perfect mirror, which contains a perfect mirror, and so it goes. A perfectly self-conscious mind contains an infinitely deeply nested sequence of images of itself inside of itself. It contains subminds nested to infinity. Thus Plotinus discovered the modern idea that a whole is infinite if and only if it contains a part which has exactly the same structure as the whole. Because it is infinite, the Plotinian Divine Mind resembles a hologram. A hologram is a piece of film which encodes an image. If you cut a square hologram in quarters, each quarter almost exactly replicates the entire image. If the hologram were perfect, each quarter would exactly replicate the whole image. And so each quarter of the quarter would likewise exactly replicate the whole image. Every part of a perfect hologram exactly replicates the whole. Plotinus says the Divine Mind is holographic in precisely this way (E 2.4.5, 3.2.1, 5.8.4.20-35). The ideas in the Divine Mind resemble hieroglyphic or ideographic images (E 5.8.6.1-8). He says that each idea in the Divine Mind “has everything in itself and sees all things in every other, so that all are everywhere and each and every one is all” (E 5.8.4.9-12). Every thing in our universe has a counterpart in the Divine Mind. Since the Divine Mind is heaven, every thing in the Divine Mind is also heaven. Thus “all things there are heaven, and earth and sea and plants and animals and men are heaven” (E 5.8.3.35-7). He says that “the sun there is all the stars, and each star is the sun and all the others” (E 5.8.4.12-13). Plotinus often refers to the Divine Mind using the theonym “God”. Since the Divine Mind is God, the parts of the Divine Mind are gods. The Divine Mind is gods infinitely nested in gods. Thus Plotinus says the Divine Mind has “all the gods within him, he who is one and all, and each god is all the gods coming together into one” (E 5.8.9.15-25). Although every idea in the Divine Mind contains every other idea, these ideas are still distinct. While every star is every other star, “a different kind of being stands out in each, but in each all are manifest” (E 5.8.4.12-14). Perhaps we can use the idea of perspective to understand this difference-in-identity. Imagine perfectly exact pictures of Manhattan taken from every perspective. Since each image is perfectly exact, it contains all the information about Manhattan. But the order in which that information is presented is distinctive. An image taken from a perspective south of Manhattan shows the Financial District first; then you proceed uptown. An image taken from a perspective to the West shows the West Side first; then you proceed east. We can combine the notion of perspective with the thesis that the Divine Mind is a social network of gods. Plotinus depicts the Divine Mind as “a globe of faces radiant with faces all living” (E 6.7.15.25-30). To understand this image, consider perspective in terms of the focus of attention. Suppose you are mind capable of simulating all the minds in a social network. But you focus your attention most on simulating one mind – this mind is your own self. You focus a bit less attention on the friends of your own mind; a bit less on the friends of their friends; and so on. Thus you are simulating all the minds in the whole network; but you are paying less and less attention to them as they grow more social distant from yourself. More generally, say a god is a mind that simulates an entire social network in this way. So the Divine Mind contains a god for every mind in the

283 social network. It is a social network of gods simulating gods. Each god simulates the entire social network from its own attentional perspective.

3. Progressions of Finite Omega Points

Ancient great chains of being become modernized by turning them into chains of evolutionary progress: evolution climbs up the great chain. Simpler things evolve into more complex things, and so simpler minds evolve into more complex minds. One of the first philosophers to develop an evolutionary account of intelligence was Hegel. His Phenomenology of Spirit portrayed the universe as evolving from animal minds to a Divine Mind. The earliest animal minds were capable of only sensation; the final Divine Mind will be capable of absolute knowledge, including absolute self-knowledge. This evolutionary process was driven by the energetic power of spirit. The Hegelian concept of evolution inspired the evolutionary cosmology of Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce wrote that in the infinitely far future “the world becomes an absolutely perfect, rational, and symmetrical system, in which mind is at last crystallized” (Collected Papers, 6.33). These evolutionary ideas inspired writers like Samuel Alexander and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Teilhard argued that our universe is evolving towards a Divine Mind, which he called the Omega Point. Since Teilhard was a Christian, he used the theonym “God” to refer to his Omega Point. So the Aristotelian Divine Mind at the edge of space turns into a Divine Mind at the end of time. The concept of an evolving God appears in the process theology of Charles Hartshorne (1962; 1984). Hartshorne portrayed God as a temporal series of stages of increasing perfection. The later stages of God are more perfect than the earlier stages. The Australian thinker Peter Forrest (2007) develops a similar process theology. The evolutionary theory of the Divine Mind gets picked up by modern computer scientists, who naturalize it by thinking of minds in computational terms. Minds are just physical machines. The technologist Ray Kurzweil (1999, 2005) argues that universes contain evolutionary progressions of increasingly complex computing machines. Our universe contains evolutionary progressions that rise to the level of intelligence of humans and our computers. But evolution does not stop with humans. It will make progress through celestial computers. These include computers at the scales of planets, solar-systems, and neutron stars (Kurzweil, 2005: 349-67; Sandberg, 1999). More and more of the universe will become organized to support intelligent computation. Thus Kurzweil says that more and more of the universe will become intelligent, conscious, and self-conscious. He says the universe will “wake up” (2005: 390). Kurzweil thus portrays evolution as transfiguring the universe into a cosmic mind. The thoughtless stuff in the universe converts itself into thoughtful smart stuff (2005: 364). Here Kurzweil resembles the ancient Platonists. He resembles Plotinus, who talked about the intelligible matter in the Divine Mind (E 2.4). He also resembles Iamblichus, who talked about the purification of matter (M 5.23). This is the theurgical purification of the universe. Thoughtless matter is impaired by its inability to think; but thoughtful matter is less impaired. Kurzweil also echoes the evolutionary theories of Hegel, Peirce, and Teilhard. His cosmic mind is divine in the sense of becoming ever more perfect. However, it never becomes infinite. At every stage, Kurzweil’s Divine Mind remains only finite – it is always only a finite God.

284 It is doubtful that our universe will wake up. Intelligence will almost certainly die out before entirely colonizing the universe. But our cosmology entails that our universe is surpassed by every possible improved version of itself. At least one way to improve our universe moves it closer to waking up. So there are lineages of future universes which get ever closer to the Kurzweil Omega Point. These are descendents of our universe. And eventually some of these lineages bear universes which rise to the first Kurzweil universes. A Kurzweil universe successfully evolves to a Kurzweil Omega Point. It evolves until all the stuff and energy in the universe becomes organized into a cosmic mind. Although all these Kurzweil universes end with cosmic minds, their cosmic minds are always only finitely perfect. But their improvements increase their degrees of perfection. So they rise through all the finite degrees of perfection.

4. Progressions of Infinite Omega Points

Our universe sprouts at least one lineage that whose universes rise through all the finite degrees of perfection. Mathematical considerations imply that it almost certainly sprouts infinitely many lineages that rise in this way. The limit law for universes entails that any lineage that rises through all the finite degrees of perfection is surpassed in the limit by at least one infinite limit universe. So every progression of Kurzweil universes is surpassed by a limit universe in which the cosmic mind becomes actually infinite. The Kurzweilian cosmic minds converge in the limit to an infinite Omega Point. This is the Tiplerian Omega Point. It is an infinitely perfect cosmic mind. Tipler says “the Omega Point in Its transcendence is in essence a self-programming universal Turing machine, with a literal infinity of memory” (1995: 249-50). The Omega Point is an omniscient and omnipotent computing machine. Tipler says the Omega Point is an accelerating machine (1995: 265, 462, 505). It computes faster and faster by performing every next operation twice as fast. Consider one second of time. The Omega Point performs its first operation in 1/2 second; its next operation in 1/4 second; its next operation in 1/8 second. It always doubles its speed. If it can accelerate like this, then it can perform infinitely many computations in any finite time. And the Omega Point can likewise compress an infinity of bits of information into any finite amount of space. It can compress infinite detail into any finite volume of space-time. It is infinitely perfect, in the sense that it has infinite power and intelligence. Tipler argues that the Omega Point will be infinitely virtuous. It will be infinitely benevolent. A Tiplerian Omega Point resembles the Medieval God. Augustine tells us that God knows all the natural numbers – they are concepts in the divine mind (City of God, Bk. XII, Ch. 19). Aquinas argues that God knows infinitely complex things and that God can make infinitely complex things (Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, Q2, Art. 9-10). Any Tiplerian Omega Point is perfectly self-consciousness. Since it is perfectly self- conscious, it contains an exact self-representation. It contains a submind which exactly simulates itself. Since the Omega Point contains a submind which exactly simulates itself, that submind must also contain a submind which exactly simulates itself. These self-simulations are infinitely nested, like a mirror reflecting itself endlessly. It resembles the perfect map of England in England described by the American philosopher Josiah Royce (1927: 506-7; see Steinhart, 2012). It is infinitely self-reflective. More generally, any Tiplerian Omega Point contains an infinite series of ranks of internal subminds. For

285 every finite degree of perfection, it contains a social network of minds with that degree. Subminds are cognitively nested in subminds in the sense that each successor submind simulates its predecessor. Any Tiplerian Omega Point can simulate all possible finite minds in all possible finite universes. It simulates the finite world tree. An infinitely perfect mind can do infinite acts (Steinhart, 2003; 2009; 2012; 2014: ch. IX). It thinks infinitely complex thoughts in an infinitely complex mental language. Its language of thought is a logical language with infinitely long sentences. It can solve infinitely complex problems in logic, mathematics, and computer science. It can solve infinitely complex scientific problems by simulating all possible finite universes. Besides its infinite intelligence, it has infinite creativity. It can create infinitely beautiful works of art at cosmic scales. It is sensitive to infinitely small differences of perceptual and intellectual beauty. It can play infinitely complex games with itself or with other infinite minds. It can play infinitely complex chess or basketball. A collective of infinite minds can come together to form infinitely valuable societies. Their societies can be infinitely fair, just, productive, creative, and good. They can flourish infinitely. Every Tiplerian universe is surpassed by greater universes. These contain minds that rise through all the higher degrees of perfection. There are infinite minds that are more perfect than the Tiplerian minds. These include the Roycean minds. They were defined by the American philosopher Josiah Royce (Steinhart, 2012). Every lineage of Tiplerian universes converges in the limit to a universe whose Omega Point is a Roycean mind. There are infinite minds that are more perfect than the Roycean minds. To use some technical language, these minds are uncountably infinite. They deal with infinities at the scale of the real numbers. These are the Cantorian minds, named after the mathematician Georg Cantor, who discovered uncountable infinities. Thus every lineage of Roycean universes converges to a universe whose Omega Point is a Cantorian mind. And these minds can rise to even greater heights. The theories of these minds are based on theories of transfinite computation (Hamkins, 2002; Koepke, 2005, 2006; Koepke & Siders, 2008). To account for these minds, we need to use the higher infinities known as the large cardinals. These are defined in advanced set theory. Any universe which evolves to an Omega Point is punctual. Every punctual universe is surpassed by successor universes. Since each successor universe contains a counterpart of every mind in its predecessor, each successor universe contains a next Omega Point which is a counterpart of the previous Omega Point. Moreover, it contains an improved version of the Omega Point. Thus any previous Omega Point is surpassed by an improved next Omega Point. There are two ways this can happen. According to the first way, the previous Omega Point is surpassed by a next Omega Point which is not a cosmic mind, but which is a mind that remains a proper part of the next universe. According to the second way, the previous Omega Point is surpassed by a next Omega Point which is also a cosmic mind. So the next universe converges to a greater Omega Point. Each way occurs at each successor. However, since being a cosmic mind is an intrinsically good thing, there is always some ordinal beyond which every successor of a punctual universe is punctual. Hence every sequence of universes eventually turns into a sequence of punctual universes. For every lineage of universes in the world tree, there exists some ordinal beyond which all its offspring are cosmic minds. Thus in the absolute limit, in the ideal, there are only cosmic minds.

286 5. The Many Divine Minds

As the world tree rises into the abstract sky, all of its universes eventually become punctual. They turn into cosmic minds. For every lineage of universes, there exists some ordinal number such that all the universes beyond that number are also cosmic minds. Every lineage of universes eventually turns into a lineage of godlike minds, climbing up through all the degrees of divine perfection. But these sequences of cosmic minds branch infinitely often. There are many lineages of these surpassable cosmic minds. There are absolutely infinitely many diverse ways to increase perfection. These lineages of godlike minds rapidly surpass most of the traditional Divine Minds. Tiplerian Omega Points are already equal in perfection to the Medieval Christian God, hence they are equal to that Divine Mind. But that degree of divinity is small, and the Tiplerian minds are quickly surpassed by Roycean and Cantorian minds. These are greater Divine Minds. There is an infinite hierarchy of ever greater Divine Minds. The ancient Roman Platonists like Iamblichus argued for many degrees of divine perfection (M 1.5, 5.14). So our theory of Divine Minds is Platonic. Nevertheless, we now come to a problem. On the one hand, all our Divine Minds so far are surpassable. On the other hand, truly divine perfection is unsurpassable. To solve this problem, we need to define unsurpassable divine minds. Only they will be truly divine. A Divine Mind is the finality of an unsurpassable series of surpassable cosmic minds. Since all these cosmic minds contain internal sequences of minds, it follows that any Divine Mind contains an unsurpassable series of surpassable cosmic minds. Every number on the axis mundi defines a degree of divine perfection. For every degree of divine perfection, every Divine Mind contains a submind of that degree. For every Divine Mind, for every number n on the axis mundi, that Divine Mind contains a submind with the n-th degree of perfection. Every Divine Mind perceives structures of unsurpassable complexity and detail. These structures are proper classes whose parts are located in the iterative hierarchy of pure sets. It appreciates the unsurpassably rich aesthetic qualities of these structures. It experiences unsurpassable beauty, glory, and sublimity. Every Divine Mind thinks thoughts of unsurpassable complexity and meaning. It solves unsurpassably difficult cognitive problems. It is omniscient in that its knowledge exceeds every surpassable degree of knowledge. Every Divine Mind simulates the entire world tree up to any ordinal . It sees all surpassably perfect ways of life. It likewise experiences every surpassable emotion. It knows every degree of grief and love. Yet it is not held captive by any emotional state: it surpasses every emotion. It has all the virtues to unsurpassable degrees. Any Divine Mind simulates every other Divine Mind up to any ordinal. By means of this simulation, each knows what all the others are thinking. Hence they form a perfect community of perfectly harmonized minds. All the Divine Minds form an unsurpassably excellent society. They are like Leibnizian monads in that each reflects every other by simulation. But they are much bigger than monads. All Divine Minds simulate all possible surpassable minds from all possible perspectives. And every Divine Mind contains an exact self-simulation. Divine Minds are networks of holographic mirrors. By means of these mirrors, all Divine Minds are holographic in the Plotinian sense. Every Divine Mind contains an unsurpassable series of surpassable subminds. These subminds are defined by an incantation for subminds. Because it contains a sequence of

287 surpassable subminds, every Divine Mind resembles a Hartshornian God. Hartshorne (1948: 20; 1965: 29-32, 135-6) said God is the self-surpassing surpasser of all. He meant that God is a series of temporally ordered stages. Each later stage of God surpasses all the earlier stages. And each stage of God surpasses all other things at that time. But the subminds of the Divine Minds are not temporally ordered. They exist in eternity above and beyond any time. All the Hartshornian stages in any Divine Mind occur in a timeless eternal present. Every Divine Mind contains a complete Hartshornian God. Of course, since there are absolutely infinitely many progressions of cosmic minds, there are absolutely infinitely many Divine Minds. So if we use the theonym “God” as Hartshorne used it, then there are many Gods but no God. This would be a radical polytheism. But it really isn’t any kind of theism, since these are not theities. To avoid confusion, philosophical pagans prefer not to use Abrahamic theonyms. The self-relation (the reflexivity) of the One maximizes consistency; by maximizing consistency, it generates that system of beings than which none greater is consistently definable. This generation begins with the simple initial being – the empty set. It ends with the transcendental beings. These transcendental objects are the stars. At the rank of the stars, the power of the One reaches its ultimate climax; it reaches its final ecstasy. Any further extension of this power collapses into inconsistency. Among the stars, the power of the One is finally fully expressed, and consistency is finally maximized. Every Divine Mind is a star. Moreover, it is a star in a cognitive way: it is a being than which none more cognitively perfect is logically possible. It is an unsurpassable intellect. Any Divine Mind is an ideal mind in the sense that is an unsurpassable mind. But unsurpassability negates the term to which it applies. It negates it by transcending it. For example, the axis mundi is an unsurpassable number, which means that it is not a number at all. It negates numericality by transcending it. It is the ideal number, the star of numbers, which shines in the heightless height of the sky. Likewise every Divine Mind negates mentality by transcending it. Strictly speaking, Divine Minds are not minds at all. Every Divine Mind transcends mentality precisely because it contains every consistently definable degree of mentality. Divine Minds are ideal minds. Every Divine Mind is a star of mentality. If it were a deity, it would be an absolutely high deity, above all deities with any ordinal indexes. But Divine Minds are not deities of any kind. They are not objects of prayer or worship. They are objects of aspiration. You will have counterparts which converge to Divine Minds. All Divine Minds exist at the rank of the proper classes. They are peers of all the other stars. Hence they are peers of the Good, which they know and love. But the Good is distinct from them all.

288 40. Light: The Good 1. The Good is Not the One

ight is the essence of the Good. Plato introduces this holy light in three of his most famous texts. The first is the Parable of the Sun (Republic, 507a-509d). The Parable of the Sun introduces the idea that the Good is the source of all existence (509b). The Good is responsible for the existence of all things. It is the goodness of the Good that makes things exist. Somehow, value is responsible for all existence. The Parable also introduces the idea that the Good is beyond being. It surpasses all the beings in power and glory (509a-c). So the Good is some sort of transcendental object. To use our terminology, the Good is a star. This terminology is appropriate, because our sun is a star, and Plato says the Good is analogous to our sun (508c). The second text is the Divided Line (Republic, 509d-511e). The Divided Line defines a great chain of being with four levels of existence. The beings among beings are sorted into these four ranks. These ranks also correspond to ranks of knowledge. Above all these ranks, the Good shines like our sun. The third text is the Myth of the Cave (Republic, 514a-518d). The Myth of the Cave pictures humans as climbing up the ranks of the Divided Line. Our goal is to rise to the level of the Good. Plotinus also talks about the Good. He also uses our sun to symbolize the Good (E 1.7.1). Likewise Plotinus says that the Good is the goal towards which all things strive: “For, again, that only can be named the Good to which all is bound and itself to none: for only thus is it truly the object of all aspiration” (E 1.7.1). When he talks about the Good as such (that is, as maximal positivity or perfection), Plotinus always talks about the Good as the ultimate destination of things (E 1.3.1, 1.6.7, 1.7.1, 3.2.3, 3.5.10, 6.9.11, 6.7.26, etc.). The Good as such is the goal, end, or finality. But Plotinus identifies the Good with the One. Philosophical pagans argued that this is incorrect. Philosophical pagans use Plotinian imagery to distinguish between the One and the Good. Plotinus defines the One as a simple root or seed in the ground (E 3.3.7.10-25, 3.8.10.10-20, 4.4.11.5-15, 6.8.15.34-8). So the One is associated with the earth. It is at the bottom of the great chain of being. It is the lowest power. It is the existential quantifier ∃ that is embedded in the earth like a seed. From this seed or root, all reality emerges. Thus reality grows up out of the One like a plant. But plants grow upwards towards the sun. The sun towards which the reality-plant grows is the Good. So the Good is the highest power. It is at the top of the great chain of being like the sun. And the Good is the maximally valuable thing. It has unsurpassable or transcendental value. It is the star of value. Figure 40.1 shows the One as the root; it shows the thin tree of strings growing from the One to the Good; it shows the Good as the sun.

289

Figure 40.1 The Good over the tree and the One.

2. The Holy Light of an Unsurpassable Fire

When we talked about the actualization of the cosmic forms, we introduced the fires. The fires are propositions. These propositions act on the seeds in the treasury. Each fire asserts that some seeds are burning; if a seed is burning, then it is animated by fire- energy; thus animated, it unfolds into a cosmic computer – it grows up into a demiurge. Since the seeds are sorted into floors indexed by numbers in the axis mundi, the fires are sorted by numbers too. There is a rising vertical line of fires. As this line rises from the earth up to the sun, the fires grow ever more intense. The axis mundi contains three kinds of numbers. These are the initial, successor, and limit numbers. So there are three kinds of fires. The initial fire is the proposition that every seed on the initial floor of the treasury is burning. For every successor number (n+1) on the axis mundi, the successor fire is the proposition that states that every seed on the (n+1)-th floor of the treasury is burning. For every limit number L on the axis mundi, the L-th limit fire is the proposition that all the seeds on the L-th floor of the treasury are burning. The final fire is the proposition that for every number n on the axis mundi, the n-th fire is burning. The final fire quantifies over all other fires. It states that for every n, the n-th fire is true. It is the proposition that every seed in the treasury is burning. The final fire is the star of fires. The star of fires is the sun. Each fire is a selector (Parfit, 1998): it selects the seeds for actualization but rejects the skulls. So the final fire is the ultimate selector. It selects the entire treasury for actualization. Since the treasury is the best of all possible worlds, the final fire selects the best. The value of the treasury is responsible for the actual existence of all the universes in the world tree.

290 Every fire is implicitly a source of light. So the whole world tree became illuminated as soon as the initial seed burst into flames. The fire at every level of the world tree rises ever higher into the sky. This fire drives every thing to surpass itself. By surpassing itself, it surpasses its impairments. Since matter is impairment, fire drives every thing to overcome its materiality. Matter is the fuel that burns in the world tree. Fire consumes the matter in the world tree. Since fire is bound up with matter, its light is not pure. Pure light only appears when fire has consumed all matter. Light itself is the unsurpassable series of surpassable fires. Thus light appears as an element in its own right only at the end of our evolutionary metaphysics, when all the fires are burning. When the sun reveals itself as pure light, the sun is the Good. This pure light is holy. The Good is absolutely infinite valuable. Since intrinsic value is complexity, it follows that the Good should also be infinitely complex. And indeed it is: by quantifying over all consistently definable fires, the complexity of the Good is unsurpassable. Since the Good is a proposition, it is either true or false. We need to argue for its truth. We have so far welcomed into our circle of reasoning the Zero, the One, and the Two. These were sufficient for all abstract objects. However, for a Platonist, there exists another principle, which we must invite into our circle. This principle is the Good. The Good is a proposition. Since the Good is a proposition, it is not a divine animal; it is not a deity. Nevertheless, the Good has many divine properties. It is a transcendental object; it is the ultimate source of actuality; it is absolutely benevolent. Of course, it lacks all intelligence or mentality. It is just a divine proposition. Since it is divine, philosophical pagans say it deserves appropriate recognition. Porphyry said we should offer sacrifices to divinities; but our sacrifices should be arguments (On Abstinence, 2.34-6). We therefore honor the divinity of the Good by making an argument for its truth. We will invite the Good into our circle of reasoning through an argument. The Agathonic Argument aims to show that the Good is true. It goes like this: (1) There are some propositions. (2) The propositions are ordered by value. (3) The Good is the best proposition. (4) Propositions are either true or false. (5) Some propositions are true. (6) Any true proposition is better than any false proposition. (7) Assume for reductio that the Good is false. (8) If the Good is false, then any true proposition is better than it. (9) But then the Good is not the best proposition. (10) Since this is a contradiction, the Good is true. The Agathonic Argument is valid. Its premises are propositions in the Logos. They are axioms emanated by the dyad. Assuming these axioms, we affirm that the Good is true. Of course, since the One generates the power of the dyad, the One generates the truth of the Good. The One brings the Good into being as its ultimate and highest emanation. The One emanates the Good. Since the Good is true, every seed in the treasury has a concrete model; it is instantiated by some physical universe. The Good entails that the actual world is the best of all possible worlds. But there is no best universe. Every universe is surpassed by an absolute infinity of better universes.

3. The Sun Illuminates the Earth

According to Plato, Socrates used our sun to symbolize the Good (Republic, 507b- 508c). Socrates offered prayers to our sun (Symposium, 220c-d). Socrates thought our sun was a god (Apology, 26d). Plato affirms the divinity of our sun (Laws, 886d-887e). Plotinus identified the Platonic One with the Platonic Good (E 2.9.1.1-10). So Plotinus

291 used the sun to symbolize both the Good and the One (E 1.7.1.25-28, 5.3.12.40-45, 6.9.4.10-12, etc.). Since we distinguish the Good from the One, we just use our sun to symbolize the Good. Figure 41.1 showed the Good as the sun. The sun shines down on the bare tree of forms – it shines on the thin tree of bit strings. Here the sun, drawn as an icon or diagram on a page, is just a visible symbol for the Good. Likewise our sun, our glorious daystar, visibly symbolizes the Good. The sun is the element of light. Through its association with light, we say the Good is an elemental power. We use a circular glyph or sigil to signify this element. Visible light is a symbol for the Good. By showing that the Good is true, we have summoned light into our circle of reasoning. All things are now illuminated; by this illumination, all things that can participate in vision do participate in vison. Since we have eyes and brains, we participate in vision. We therefore pause in ritual to welcome the light: “Holy light, we thank you for revealing all things in vision.” Of course, you can perform rituals which give thanks to the Good. Since the Good is an unsurpassable lamp, you might light lamps to give thanks to it. According to Lucian (De Saltatione, 17), it was customary for an ancient Greek to salute the sun by kissing her hand and raising it to the sun. Whether you do these things or not is up to you. Since Wiccans often associate our sun with the god, they may want to say that light is male. However, at this point, no sexual distinctions remain, all reproductive work has finished. Like all elements, light has no gender; hence light is neither male nor female. Moreover, the elements are not deities; hence light is neither god nor goddess. Although the Good can be addressed in ritual, it makes no sense to treat it as if it were a person. It is makes no sense to worship it. And it is inappropriate to direct petitionary prayers to the Good. Elements are summoned and aroused; since you participate in their powers, they are powers you invoke within yourself. Moreover, even if the Good were a deity, we would not worship it. Philosophical pagans do not worship anything. We are neither slaves nor beggars. We have theological sovereignty. Perhaps there were ancient people who used the theonym “God” to refer to something like the Good. Consider the Hypsisterians (Mitchell & van Nuffelen, 2010). They were a religious group in the late Roman empire (during the 100s through 300s AD). They worshiped Theos Hypsistos, the Most High God. The cult of Theos Hypsistos was a kind of pagan monotheism. Theos Hypsistos was honored by lighting lamps and with ceremonies at sunrise. So perhaps the Good in our pagan life-world has a counterpart in Theos Hypsistos in the Hypsysterian life-worlds. If you want to use the theonym “God” to refer to the Good, go right ahead. But by using that theonym, you leave the life-world of philosophical paganism and enter another life-world. The light of the Good shines out from the Good until it strikes something which reflects it back to the Good. All and only the seeds in the treasury reflect the light of the Good. The skulls in the library do not reflect this light. The treasury itself is that structure in which the Good sees its reflection. Since the seeds are ordered into ranks, they reflect the light of the Good back to the Good in an orderly way. This light rises through all the floors in the treasury. It strikes the initial seed first. This first light is the Plotinian sunrise of the Good (E 5.5.8.1-10). It is the rise of the sun over the earth. The light rises from each seed to its successors and from every progression to its limits. As

292 this light rises, it returns to the Good. The totality of illuminated seeds is the actual world. It is the world tree (E 3.3.7.10-25, 3.8.10.10-20, 4.4.11.5-15, 6.8.15.34-8). The world tree is the structure of concretness. Every universe in the world tree is a concrete instance of an abstract cosmic form. Since these cosmic forms exist in the abstract sky, their instances also exist in that sky. So the world tree rises endlessly into that sky. It rises from the earth to the sun; it rises from the One to the Good. Since the world tree exists if and only if the Good is true, the world tree is a concrete model of the Good. The world tree shines with the reflected light of the Good. It stands blazing with holy light in the darkness of the night. As the actual star, the world tree coincides with the Good. Although they are not identical, they occupy the same position in the pagan image. Concreteness is equivalent with goodness. However, there are many other stars in the sky. The world tree contains absolutely infinitely many lineages of universes. Each lineage is an unsurpassable series of surpassable universes. Each lineage is a star of universes. These cosmic stars are distinct from the Good.

4. The Sky is Filled with Stars

We have now defined many stars. The axis mundi is the star of numbers. It is an ideal or transcendental number. There is a rank of sets for every number in the axis mundi. So the series of these ranks is an unsurpassable series of surpassable ranks. Since each rank is a set, it is an unsurpassable series of surpassable sets. This series is an unsurpassable set. It is an ideal set, a transcendental set, or an absolute set. It is the star of sets. But the star of sets is not a set; on the contrary, it is a collection which is too general to be a set – such collections are the proper classes. The treasury contains many floors of seeds. There is a floor for every number in the axis mundi. So the treasury is an unsurpassable series of surpassable floors. The treasury is the star of seeds. Each floor in the treasury is associated with a proposition that actualizes all the seeds on that floor. These propositions are the fires. The sun states that every fire burns. It quantifies over an unsurpassable series of surpassable fires. But the Agathonic Argument shows that the sun is equivalent to the Good. As fire, the best of all possible propositions is the sun; as light, it is the Good. The Good quantifies over an unsurpassable series of surpassable lights. Just as the sun is the star of fires, so the Good is the star of lights. The sky is filled with absolutely infinitely many stars. Every star is an ideal object. It is the absolute limit of a series of increasingly valuable objects. So every star has unsurpassable value. Since the stars are absolute maximalities, they are perfect. Every star is a maximally perfect being. According to Anselm, the maximally perfect being is God. On his view, every star resembles God. Since there are many stars, there are many Gods. Of course, it makes very little sense to say that the line of all numbers is a God or that the class of all sets is a God. The stars are not Gods. Nevertheless, they resemble God enough to say that they are divine. Here philosophical pagans resemble polytheists. Along with Plotinus (E 2.9.9.35-40), we affirm that there are absolutely infinitely many divinities. However, strictly speaking, none of these divinities are theities – they are not disembodied minds. The divinity of the stars is supported by the concept of God developed in the process theology of Charles Hartshorne. He said God is the self-surpassing surpasser of all (1965: 28-32, 135-6). By this he meant three things. First, God is a series of stages.

293 Second, when he said that God is self-surpassing, he does not mean that God absurdly surpasses God. He means only that the later stages of God surpass the earlier stages of God. Third, when he says that God is the surpasser of all, he means that every stage of God surpasses all the things in the corresponding stage of any universe. On this view, every star is a self-surpassing surpasser of all the things in its own series. So the Hartshornian God has a counterpart in every star. Of course, most stars are only godlike. But philosophical pagans do affirm that there are absolutely infinite sequences of ever greater animals. Every such sequence is a star of animals. And any star of animals is an unsurpassable, ideal, or transcendental animal. It is a Divine Mind. The sky is filled with absolutely infinitely many stars. But there cannot be any collection of stars. For if any star were a member of any collection, then it would be surpassed by that collection; but then it would not be unsurpassable. The stars gather themselves into a multiplicity which cannot be unified. The stars are many rather than one. The One belongs at the bottom of the great chain of being; but the stars are at the top. The multiplicity of stars confirms the point that perfection is multiple. There are absolutely infinitely many maximally perfect beings. The phrase “all the stars” refers to every star. It does not refer to any single collection of stars. To talk more precisely about the stars, we turn back to the predicate calculus. We already talked about the existential quantifier. But the predicate calculus contains another quantifier. This second quantifier is the universal quantifier. It is used to make universal statements. Thus “All humans are mortal” is rendered as (for all x)(if x is human, then x is mortal). Here the “for all” in (for all x) is the universal quantifier ∀. So our example is (∀x)(if x is human, then x is mortal). We said the existential quantifier refers to being-itself. The universal quantifier ∀ refers to all the stars and to all the things that are in the stars. Here being in something is transitive: if a planet is in a universe, and a universe is in a star, then the planet is in the star.

5. Mystical Experience

Ordinary awareness is ontic: it is the awareness that some subject has of its objects. Both the subject (your ego) and its objects are beings among beings. Suppose that your ego is aware of some objects. You are not suffering from any illusions – you are not hallucinating. Consequently, it is an ontic fact that your ego exists, that its object exists, and that your ego is aware of each of its objects. Following Quine (1948), we say that to be is to be the value of a bound variable. This means that your ego and its objects are the values of bound variables. Here we’ll associate your ego with the variable x and its objects with the variable y. So your awareness encodes this complex fact: (there exists some x)(x is your ego and (for all y)(if y is an object of x, then x is aware of y))). We can make this fact more precise using logical notation. Your ego x is bound to the existential quantifier “there exists”. We use the backwards “E” as shorthand for the existential quantifier. Thus (there exists some x)(x is your ego) is written as (∃x)(x is your ego). Your objects y are bound to the universal quantifier “for all”. We use the upside down “A” as shorthand for the universal quantifier. Thus (for all y)(if y is an object of x, then x is aware of y) is written as (∀y)(if y is an object of x, then x is aware of y). Both of these quantifiers are restricted. The existential quantifier is restricted to your ego. Its x

294 can only be your ego. We can indicate this restriction by placing it closer to the quantifier: (∃x is your ego) or (∃x = your ego). Likewise the universal quantifier is restricted to the objects of your ego. We can likewise indicate this restriction by placing it closer to the quantifier: (∀y in the objects of x). Consequently, your awareness encodes the fact that (∃x is your ego)(∀y in the objects of x)(x is aware of y). During ontic awareness, your brain runs software that simulates those ontic facts and their logical elements. It simulates the variable x and its existential quantifier ∃. It simulates the y and its ∀. It simulates the awareness that the x has of each y. You live entirely in this virtual reality. And here your simulation is veridical: you are truthfully simulating those facts. Your simulation truthfully represents reality. Ontic truth is the basis for science. By coordinating our different ontic experiences, we can use reason to build our scientific theories of nature. Ontic awareness is well-balanced. During ontic awareness, your brain is stable and performs its normal functions well. Since the facts simulated by your brain are ontic, the powers of the x and y are balanced with the powers of their quantifiers. Since the powers of those elements are balanced, your brain pumps equal amounts of neural energy into its simulations of each element. You can be ontically aware of all sorts of objects. You can be ontically aware of quarks, space-time points, bits of quantum information, numbers, and sets. But ontic awareness is not complete: since the totality of all things is not an object (it is not the value of any bound variable), you cannot be ontically aware of that totality. Comte- Sponville refers to this totality as the All. You cannot be ontically aware of the All. This does not imply that the All does not exist or that you cannot be aware of it. The All exists ontologically and your awareness of it is likewise ontological. Ontological awareness is also known as mystical experience. Philosophical pagans do not reject mystical experience. We do not think it is hallucinatory. Of course, we do not think it is the experience of any supernatural entity (like God). Atheists have mystical experiences. So philosophical pagans can (and do) have atheistic mystical experiences. Ontological awareness often begins with the ontic awareness of some vast natural structure (like the Milky Way in the night sky; the depths of the Grand Canyon; or some other experience of great space, time, or detail). As the brain simulates the vastness of its object, it likewise simulates the relative smallness of the subject. The ego shrinks into smallness as its object expands into largeness. To say that your ego shrinks means that your brain puts less and less energy into its simulation of the restriction in the quantifier (∃x is your ego). Its puts less energy into its construction of its sign for itself in its own virtual reality software. Your ego is starting to dissolve. At the same time, your object expands to the maximality of nature – to the totality of all things. Your brain pumps more and more energy into the restriction the quantifier (∀y in your objects). Mental energy is getting pumped out of your ego and into its object. It therefore rushes from your ego into its object. You experience this flux as both the dissolution of your ego and the expansion of its domain of objects. Your awareness expands in every direction from your ego to its object. As it expands, it surpasses the ontic awareness of ever larger structures. Your ontic awareness expands towards the simulation of the All (Comte- Sponville, 2006: 165-8). Your quantifiers are becoming extreme. You were experiencing the shrinking of your ego and the expansion of its domain of objects. But those ontic movements reveal an ontological shift. Your brain both minimizes the energy put into simulating your ego x as a specific being and maximizes

295 the energy put into simulating the domain of your objects y. It minimizes the scope of your x and maximizes the scope of your y. These changes affect its simulations of the ∃ of the x and the ∀ of the y. At both the extremes of minimality and maximality, the being of beings vanishes. As the ego x vanishes into minimality, only its ∃ remains. As the domain for the y vanishes into maximality, only its ∀ remains. Your brain pumps all its mental energy into the simulation of the ∃ and the ∀, and none into its simulations of the x and y. The powers of the variables are no longer balanced with those of their quantifiers. You experience the expansion of the ∀ as bliss and the contraction of the ∃ as terror. This is the agitation between non-being and being-itself. As your mystical experience climaxes, your awareness shrinks to a point of pure wildness. You become excited by glory and paralyzed with fear. Your ∃ vanishes into minimality while your ∀ vanishes into maximality. Your quantifiers now are extreme. The ontic fact that (∃x is your ego)(∀y in the objects of x)(x is aware of y) turns into the ontological fact that (∃x)(∀y)(x is aware of y). When these quantifiers are extreme, they are also solitary. They lose their variables altogether. To use a phrase from Plotinus (E 6.9.11), this is the flight of the solitary to the solitary. With x and y gone, the solitude of ∃ relates through awareness to the solitude of ∀. Thus ∃ is aware of ∀. Your brain simulates the desolation of being-itself, bereaved of its beings. This is ontological awareness. This awareness is veridical. By simulating the solitudes of ∃ and ∀, your brain truthfully signifies being-itself. Hadot writes that dissolution involves “the pure feeling of existing” (2011: 8). Comte-Sponville writes that in mystical ecstasy “What fulfills you then is not a particular state of being but being itself” (2006: 165-8). The content of this awareness is being-itself as the self-negation of non-being. And this is the ecstasy through which the abyss emptied itself of its negativity. How to interpret this? The solitary existential quantifier ∃ signifies the minimality of being-itself; but this minimality corresponds to the One. The solitary universal quantifier ∀ signifies the maximality of being-itself. But this maximality corresponds to the Good. Hence the being-itself of the One is aware of the goodness of the Good. The One in the ∃ experiences the Good in the ∀. Your awareness becomes the current of energy that flows from the One into the root of the world tree. This current flows through all the veins of the world tree. It flows beyond the world tree into all the stars, into all the ideals, into all the Goods. It transcends itself; it is ecstatic. So mystical experiences are tearful joy; painful ecstasy. Your body becomes the whole world tree, with your feet rooted in the One and your arms upstretched, touching the Good.

296 41. The Sun and the Stars 1. Striving for Divinity

ou ought to strive, says Plato, to become as godlike as possible. We ought to climb up the Divided Line, to climb up out of the cave, and to rise as high as possible towards the Good. We can do this in any single lifetime through the theurgical practice of self-purification. Of course, every life occurs in some universe, and its potentials for ascent are constrained by the physical laws of that universe. So every life can only rise to some surpassable degree of perfection. Nevertheless, if our theory of rebirth is true, then your present life will be surpassed by greater future lives in greater future universes. Your present life is a stage in an endless series of lives. It is a part of an unsurpassable series of surpassable lives. But an unsurpassable series of surpassable lives is an ideal life, and every ideal life is a star. An ideal life stands with the Good in the unsurpassable ecstasy of being. The power that rises up out of the One drives all your possible lives towards the Good. It drives them all to their unsurpassable ideals.

2. The Plurality of Perfections

As your sequences of lives rise, they branch into an infinitely ramified tree of overlapping lineages. All the lives (and bodies) in these lineages are counterparts. As your lives rise towards ever greater perfections, they fission into diversity. For monotheists, perfection is singular; for pagans, perfection is multiple. There are absolutely infinitely many ways to be unsurpassably excellent. More precisely, the collection of ideal persons is a proper class. All these ideal persons coexist harmoniously; they all love each other. Above you, there are absolutely infinitely many ideal persons. Each ideal person is a deity, a divine animal, a god or goddess. Each of your lineages is a holy pilgrimage towards its own deity. Since we use the stars to symbolize ideals, every deity is a star. Thus every lineage of lives makes progress towards some star. Every star, like the Good, is also a sun in its own right. These stars shine with transcendental luminosity. For monotheists, there is only one sun in the sky; for pagans, the sky is filled with many suns. As Thales said, the world is full of gods. Figure 41.1 shows the ascent of a branching tree of lives towards its stellar ecstasies. As the world began in darkness, so it ends in light.

297

Figure 41.1 Many paths to many stars. 3. The Pentacle

We have now discussed all the elemental powers. We used water to symbolize the abyss of non-being. We used earth to indicate being-itself. We used air to symbolize the system of abstract objects, including the Logos and the world of sets. We used light to symbolize the Good. We used fire to signify spirit, which is the power of self-surpassing in all things. The religious naturalist Donald Crosby says that “water, fire, air and earth . . . can be put to use as religious symbols and, in particular, as symbols of nature as the religious ultimate” (2014: 90). Many Wiccans use these elements in rituals. They have altars which contain samples of these elements in bowls. One bowl contains water, another contains some sand or salt for earth, a third bowl just holds air, and a fourth bowl may hold a candle for fire. A flameless light can be used for light. Philosophical pagans associate these elemental powers with the five points of a star inscribed in a circle. Figure 41.2 shows this pentacle (aka pentagram) along with the glyphs for the five elements. The pentacle was known to the ancient Greeks. It was used by the Pythagoreans as an emblem for their society (Stapleton, 1958). It is also used by Wiccans. For Wiccans, the star in the pentacle points upwards. Our pentacle is a counterpart of the Pythagorean and Wiccan pentacles.

298

Figure 41.2 The five elements in a pentacle.

299 42. Releasing

he ending of our philosophical work resembles its beginning. We know that ancient thinkers started their philosophical activities with prayers and rituals. So they probably ended them with prayers and rituals as well. Among philosophical pagans, some will have no interest in any ending rituals, while others will want to mark this ending by some action. Do as you see fit. For those philosophical pagans who want some final ritual, there are many options. If you thought of your philosophical activity as summoning entities by making them present to your mind, then you should release them. For example, if you thought of your reasoning as invoking the elements and the world tree, then you should release them. You might say something like this: “We have invited our world tree, and it has come. Great world tree, thank you for joining us. Stay if you can, go if you must. We bid you hail and farewell. We have invited the elements into the circle of reasoning, and they too have come. Holy fire, holy light, holy air, holy earth, holy water, thank you for joining us. Stay if you can, go if you must. We bid you hail and farewell. Our work in philosophical ritual is done.” For those philosophical pagans who started this reading by casting a circle of reasoning, the time has come to uncast it. We end our work by opening our circle of reasoning. This is indicated by the glyph or sigil in which the triangles point outwards from their circle. This opening is a releasing of the powers we concentrated for our task. It is an opening up of our renewed selves. The work of uncasting and releasing is done by the opening power. So if you uncast your circle, you proceed in the reverse order in which you cast it. Beginning with the center, you uncast your circle of reasoning. As you dissolve your circle, you release the vertical axis. You might say something like this: “Powers of the heights and powers of the depths, hail and farewell.” You then release the quarters in the order contrary to our Sun. You might say: “Powers of the north, powers of the west, powers of the south, powers of the east, hail and farewell.” You may finally declare that your circle is open: the circle is open, but never broken. What you do is up to you. But whatever you do, do it philosophically. Blessed be.

300 Notes

1The decorated capital letters that open each chapter are the Cloister Initials designed by Frederic Goudy in 1918. They are in the public domain. 2Plotinus quotes are checked against both Armstrong and McKenna translations. For readability, the McKenna translation is used unless otherwise noted. 3Why is there something rather than nothing? Tillich says that in asking this “everything disappears in the abyss of possible non-being; even a god would disappear if he were not being-itself” (1951: 164). We replace “a god” with the One. 4Peirce (1965) begins with nothingness (1.175, 6.33, 6.214, 6.215, 8.317). This nothingness is a powerful potentiality for being (6.217). This nothingness negates itself (6.219). He says “Thus the zero of bare possibility, by evolutionary logic, leapt into the unit of some quality” (6.220). The system of Platonic forms emerges from this self- negation (6.189-6.213). However, Peirce is obscure on many of these points. 5Plotinus often seems ambiguous when he identifies matter and evil with non-being; he identifies them with a non-existence that somehow exists (E 1.8.3.5-15, 2.9.14-16). More clearly, he identifies them with sheer non-being (E 1.8.5.5-15, 3.6.7.4-15). 6Sometimes even Plotinus says the One is God (Gerson, 2008). However, when he makes that identification, he is confusing the One with his Divine Mind. When Plotinus says the One is God, he is not being consistent with himself. 7Thesis 4 in the Principles of Wiccan Belief, from the Council of American Witches, 11- 14 April 1974. 8The activity of the dyad does not violate the Godelian incompleteness theorems. The dyad assigns truth-values to all propositions. It does not assign truth-values to some finite set of axioms which determine the truth-values of all other propositions. 9The numbers 0 is {}. And 1 is {0}. By replacing 0 with {}, we see that the number 1 is just {{}}. The number 2 is {0, 1}. By replacing 0 with {} and 1 with {{}}, we see that the number 2 is {{}, {{}}}. And so it goes. Hence the numbers are all built up from the self-elaborations of the empty set. They are pure sets. 10The Ackermann coding maps every bit string onto some set. 11A set S is an arithmetical Turing machine iff S is a triple (N, ƒ, m) that satisfies the following conditions. The item N is the natural numbers. The item ƒ is a function that maps N into N. The item m is the Turing machine operator. It is also a function from N to N. For each natural number n, ƒ(n+1) is m(ƒ(n)). 12A set S is a geometrical Turing machine iff S is a quad (C, T, ƒ, m) that satisfies the following conditions. The item C is the natural numbers N. These numbers are the ticks of a digital clock. The item T is the set of all functions from N to {0, 1}. Each function in T is a spatially extended tape divided into cells. Each cell holds a single digit. Each tape manifests a number in a spatially extended way. 13A rule for a tape head looks like this: if you’re in some state and you read some digit, then perform some operation and change to some new state. 14Bennett says the logical depth of a digital object (such as a string of 0s and 1s) is “the time required by a universal computer to compute the object in question from a program that could not itself have been computed from a more concise program” (1985: 216); or “the time required by a standard universal Turing machine to generate it from an input that is algorithmically random” (1988: 1); or the “execution time required to generate the

301 object in question by a near-incompressible universal computer program” (1990: 142). These definitions are equivalent. 15Bennett says that “a deep object is one that is implausible except as the result of a long computation” (1985: 223). And that “a logically deep or complex object would then be one whose most plausible origin, via an effective process, entails a lengthy computation” (1988: 3). And also that “a deep object . . . contains internal evidence that a lengthy computation has already been done” (1988: 5). 16Philosophical pagans do not wish to repeat the sexual essentialism found in Stoicism or other ancient paganisms. The Stoics thought of the male Zeus as active form; the female Hera was passive matter. We reject all essentializing tables of opposites. The god and the goddess are not a heteronormative binary couple. 17Stoic cosmology involves counterparts. The Stoics believed in a two-way infinite series of type-identical universes: the eternal recurrence. Each next universe is indiscernible from the previous universe. Eudemus tells his students that if “the same individual things will recur, then I shall be talking to you again sitting as you are now, with this pointer in my hand, and everything else will be just as it is now” (Kirk & Raven, 1957: frag. 272). Thus Eudemus in the previous universe is a counterpart of Eudemus in the next universe. His previous pointer is a counterpart of the next pointer. 18Improvement is not transitive at limits: for any progression X, and any thing z, if X is improved into its limit z, then there does not exist any y such that X is improved into y and y is improved into z. So every limit z is minimally more valuable than its progression X. This means that z is more valuable than every thing in X and that there is no y such that y is more valuable than every thing in X but less valuable than z. 19Clausius formulated the second law like this: “Die Entropie der Welt strebt einem Maximum zu” – the entropy of the world strives to a maximum (see Prigogine & Stengers, 1984: 119). This striving lies behind the MEPP and the claim that under certain conditions physical systems strive to increase their complexities. 20This argument has been used to explain the evolution of the earthly geochemical system (Kleidon, 2010); the evolution of the earthly ecosystem (Vallino, 2010); the evolution of plants (Dewar, 2010); the evolution of cellular metabolic networks (Unrean & Srienc, 2011). It explains the self-assembly of molecular structures (Belkin et al., 2015). Further examples in physics, chemistry, and biology are easy to find. 21Spirit in our universer is an extropic force derived from the MEPP; since the MEPP is a consequence of the second law, any extropic force is a thermodynamic force. So the physical features of spirit resemble those of other thermodynamic forces (such as depletion forces or elastic forces). Many depletion forces acting on molecules and molecular assemblies have strengths of a few kT per nanometer, thus producing forces in the piconewton range (Marenduzzo et al., 2006). So spirit acts with similar strengths. It changes the microstates of systems. But changes in microstates scale up to become changes in macrostates. So spirit acts at larger scales. 22Arcane symbols occur in The Greek Magical Papyrii at IV.2705; VII.206-7, VII.208-9; VII.396-404; VII.411-22; VII.462-66; VII.860; VII.919-24; X.24-35; and so on. 23Even abstract objects like numbers are represented through isomorphism. Our brains contain a neural number line (Dehaene, 2003; Neider, 2005). If abstract objects can be represented through isomorphism, then so can possible objects.

302

24Practices based on religious beliefs may gain First Amendment protection, while those based on merely secular ideologies will not. The secular versus religious distinction is outlined in Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 US 205 - Supreme Court 1972; Malnak v. Yogi, 592 F. 2d 197 - Court of Appeals, 3rd Circuit 1979; and Africa v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania., 662 F. 2d 1025 - Court of Appeals, 3rd Circuit 1981. Likewise US v. Meyers draws a distinction between unprotected secular practices and protected religious practices (US v. Meyers, 95 F. 3d 1475 - Court of Appeals, 10th Circuit 1996). 25Large recent conferences include Breaking Convention (London, 2017); Exploring Psychedelics (Ashland, Oregon, 2017); Horizons: Perspectives on Psychedelics (New York, 2017); Psychedelic Science (Oakland, California, 2017). Some of these are held annually. A web search will reveal dozens of smaller meetings. 26Groups working to normalize psychedelics include the Beckley Foundation, Compass Pathways, the Council on Spiritual Practices, the Drug Policy Alliance, the ICEERS Foundation, the Heffter Research Institute, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, the Usona Institute, and the Women’s Visionary Council. 27In United States v. Seeger, the Supreme Court interpreted the phrase “Supreme Being” to have wider scope than the Judaeo-Christian God (United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163 - Supreme Court 1965). Religious practices oriented towards the divine creative energy may qualify for legal protection through United States v. Seeger. 28The Meyers Factors are widely used to evaluate claims for religious protections (United States v. Meyers, 95 F. 3d 1475 - Court of Appeals, 10th Circuit 1996). 29The World Pantheist Movement is a church under IRS 501(c)(3) and 509(a)(1). See . Accessed 23 May 2018.

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322 Index absorption, 190, 224 Black Rock Desert, 229 abyss, 21, 22, 27, 50, 56, 99, 173, 296, blessed, 151, 157, 228 298 blessings, 160 accumulation, 56, 72, 75, 79, 84, 112, bodies, celestial, 255 144, 279 bodies, daimonic, 253 agents, 11, 108, 110, 115, 135, 144, 158, bodies, heroic, 252 160, 172, 177, 185, 208, 234, 242, 269 bodies, holographic, 257 agon, 137, 138, 214 bodies, Olympian, 254 air, 41, 50, 58, 107, 133, 164, 168, 298 bodies, transhuman, 251 algorithms, 81, 102, 148, 160, 176, 193, brains, Dyson, 255 208, 216, 225, 255 brains, Jupiter, 255 Alpha, 84, 115, 123, 130, 260, 263 brains, Matrioshka, 255 altars, 27, 41, 161, 231, 239, 298 brains, neutronium, 255 amor fati, 181, 205 Buddhism, 184, 188, 215, 267 Anaximander, 150 Burning Man, 11, 100, 161, 163, 229 andromic, 108, 111, 124, 129, 204, 280 bush robots, 256 Antikythera Mechanism, 61 celestial computers, 148 Aphrodite, 240 celestial universes, 263 Apollo, 12 channeling, 168, 218, 223, 225, 230, Ares, 159, 240 239, 264 arete, 137, 138, 214, 274 chaos, 15, 16, 27, 90, 132, 150, 240, 276 Aristotle, 43, 61, 143, 191, 193, 211, 282 Christianity, 9, 29, 234, 245, 284 astrology, 11, 140 Chrysippus, 107 atheists, 10, 13, 30, 110, 160, 163, 188, Cicero, 101, 232, 241, 282 205, 267, 295 circle of reasoning, 13, 21, 27, 33, 41, Athena, 13, 240, 244, 248 100, 109, 291, 300 avatars, 159, 162, 163, 166, 219, 254 circle-casting, 12, 168, 172, 225, 229, axioms, 34, 48, 53, 55, 62, 67, 81, 103, 239, 300 291 circles, 12, 162 axis mundi, 46, 49, 50, 55, 70, 94, 95, circle-uncasting, 170, 174, 228, 231, 98, 217, 250, 258, 263, 271, 281, 287, 239, 300 293 Cleanthes, 187, 205 Aztec, 9, 100, 108, 243 closing power, 13, 91, 105, 108, 124, beauty, 127, 137, 229, 241, 286, 287 168, 229 being-itself, 22, 27, 58, 62, 99, 125, 211, common liturgy, 167, 172, 225, 239 234, 296, 298 complexity, 71, 74, 83, 84, 279 Beltane Fire Society, 171 complexity, finite, 251 benediction, 164 complexity, infinite, 258 big bang, 102, 141 computer, 66 biocosmic analogy, 73, 89, 95, 96, 105, computers, 10, 33, 61, 70, 72, 81, 87, 88, 107, 273 93, 118, 148, 149, 160, 193, 207, 248, bit strings, 57, 61, 63, 68, 75, 81, 89, 96, 251, 254, 263, 276, 284 193, 215, 251, 292 contemplative prayer, 164 Black Rock City, 163, 229 contradictions, 35

323 cosmic computers, 62, 66, 73, 88, 94, ensoulment, 142, 145, 226 102, 108, 118, 131, 290 entanglement, 98, 111, 140, 146, 201, Cosmic Zeus, 228 202, 210, 223, 226, 257 counterpart, 294 entropy, 132, 160, 177 counterparts, 30, 33, 98, 100, 108, 119, Epictetus, 176, 178, 186, 228 123, 165, 172, 175, 206, 219, 226, Epicureans, 150, 236 230, 232, 236, 260, 274, 279, 280, Epicurus, 114, 241 283, 286, 288, 292 equinoxes, 162 Crosby, Donald, 161, 164, 170, 298 Eurytus, 60, 193, 215 crystals, 41, 136, 203, 226, 284 evil, 12, 18, 73, 115, 128, 137, 211, 215, daimones, 253 243, 269, 274, 277 daimonic universes, 262 existential quantifier, 25, 47, 62, 82, 212, Darwin, 150, 274 289, 294 Dawkins, Richard, 69, 71, 149, 151, 160, exotropy, 134 164, 219, 228 extropic force, 134, 136, 145, 177 default world, 229, 231 festivals, 11, 100, 151, 161, 163, 167, demiurges, 66, 92, 107, 112, 115, 123, 228 130, 145, 247, 250, 276 final law, 49, 56, 70, 79, 86, 95, 98, 111, Dennett, Daniel, 56, 72, 75, 79, 112, 125, 281 150, 160, 279 fire, 58, 93, 100, 107, 164, 168, 298 depth, 27, 187, 211 fire-energy, 15, 89, 93, 96, 100, 101, desolation, 296 130, 136, 144, 214, 230, 234, 282, 290 directions, 161, 168, 170, 172, 174, 182, fires, 98 225, 239 foundation, 28, 42, 56 dissociation, 169, 188, 218, 224, 227 fractal, 258 Divided Line, 22, 151 Gaia, 146, 161, 246 Divine Minds, 195, 247, 256, 258, 281, Gardner, Gerald, 31 284, 294 genome, 81, 89, 192, 209, 273 Druids, 10, 98, 165 genotypes, 69, 73 duty, 159, 177, 180, 275 glyph, 13, 16, 22, 26, 41, 100, 207, 292 dyad, the, 34, 36, 45, 56, 63, 81, 103, glyphs, 208 107 God, 9, 16, 29, 41, 205, 238, 249, 270, Dyson brains, 255 283, 288, 292, 293, 295 earth, 9, 13, 23, 27, 33, 50, 58, 64, 101, Goethe, 172 118, 119, 161, 164, 165, 168, 174, Good, the, 18, 29, 73, 84, 87, 103, 125, 194, 210, 229, 241, 282, 292, 293, 298 174, 215, 217, 237, 247, 266, 276, earth, the, 260 280, 288, 297 elements, 21, 27, 41, 58, 99, 109, 134, graphs, 149 145, 164, 168, 169, 173, 174, 225, great chain of being, 64, 114, 119, 123, 292, 298 126, 136, 143, 268, 274, 282, 289, 294 Eleusinian Mysteries, 227, 232 grief, 296 elevations, 49 ground of being, 24, 30 Empedocles, 150 gynomic, 108, 111, 124, 129, 204, 280 empty set, 40, 45, 47, 52, 55, 69 hacking, 215 empty string, 62, 69 hallucinate, 30, 233, 235, 294 energy-rate density, 136 Harris, Sam, 188

324 Hartshorne, 250, 284, 288, 293 invoke, 12, 13, 27, 33, 46, 104, 168, 187, he telestike techne, 92, 155, 184, 196, 204, 211 212, 227, 230, 233, 248, 264 iterative hierarchy of pure sets, 56, 69, Hegel, 284 81, 215, 287 Heidegger, 16 Jupiter brains, 255 Hera, 107, 111, 175 karma, 228, 238, 267, 271, 272, 274, 277 heroes, 252 Kurzweil, Raymond, 118, 193, 196, 208, heroic bodies, 252 209, 284 heroic universes, 262 Leibniz, 44, 63, 69, 74, 82, 84, 287 Herr, Hugh, 252 Lewis, David, 219, 235 Hesiod, 15, 33, 240, 243 library, 81 holenmerism, 257 light, 18, 50, 82, 95, 103, 126, 141, 162, hologram, 202, 243, 257, 283 167, 168, 211, 215, 225, 227, 298 holographic bodies, 257 lightning, 27 holy, 21, 27, 41, 94, 100, 131, 230, 289, limit law, 48, 56, 70, 79, 86, 94, 97, 111, 291, 292 122, 280 Homer, 161, 243 liturgy, 167, 239 human universes, 262 logical core, 27, 187, 211 Hymn to Gaia, 161 logical depth, 72 Hymn to Nature, 172 Logos, 40, 230 Hymn to Zeus, 187, 205 logos spermatikos, 81, 93, 102, 160 hymns, 29, 161, 169, 172, 187, 205 Logos, the, 41, 57, 82, 102, 176, 211, hypnosis, 188, 190 291, 298 Iamblichus, 17, 29, 104, 119, 131, 161, Lucretius, 150 191, 195, 199, 212, 218, 236, 242, lyre, 216 251, 287 magic, 140, 159, 163, 190, 198, 203, identical, 15, 22, 23, 30, 32, 36, 49, 99, 207, 208, 215, 254 123, 184, 293 Man, the, 100, 163 identity, 25, 29, 35, 44, 63, 206, 219, manifestation, 22, 32, 66, 81, 88, 103, 227, 244, 283 109, 125, 134, 166, 181, 191, 198, impairment, 18, 118, 126, 130, 194, 206, 211, 212, 270, 283 247, 252, 264, 266, 272, 281 mathematics, 9, 23, 26, 40, 46, 56, 69, incantation, 46, 55, 69, 79, 84, 92, 124, 81, 97, 102, 148, 191, 225, 243, 267, 200, 254, 280, 287 285 incantations, 208 Matrioshka brains, 255 indiscernible, 36, 44 matter, 18, 58, 73, 118, 126, 130, 177, infinite universes, 263 189, 194, 206, 212, 247, 249, 251, infinity, 40, 48, 55, 57, 65, 125, 131, 264, 266, 284, 291 166, 270, 280, 291 maximum entropy production principle, initial law, 55, 69, 79, 84, 93, 280 133, 144 integral omnipresence, 141, 202, 242, Mayan, 9 257 meditation, 185, 188, 215, 218, 232, 264 integrated information, 141, 154, 226, mereology, 121 241 meturgy, 224 intrinsic value, 73, 76, 84, 279 midworld, 263

325 mind-body dualism, 10, 118, 126, 142, Porphyry, 10, 12, 13, 17, 164, 195, 199, 191, 194, 247, 266, 270, 272 211, 215, 291 mind-craft, 31, 178, 190, 218, 252 portal, 220, 222, 223, 225, 239 monotheism, 9 portals, 264 Moravec, Hans, 256, 258 possible universes, 30, 78, 206, 234 naturalism, 20, 26, 134, 142, 143, 157, possible worlds, 78 165, 185, 191, 216, 234, 238, 280 Post, Emil, 148 neutronium brains, 255 power set, 53, 55 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 188 prayer, 185, 228 non-being, 16, 22, 27, 34, 45, 58, 99, prayers, 11, 27, 29, 164, 169, 186, 205, 145, 204, 296, 298 288, 291, 300 null string, 62 predicate calculus, 10, 25, 34, 82, 294 ocean, 21, 27, 64, 99, 194, 234, 246 predicates, 24 Olympian, 15, 114, 116, 118, 219, 240, priority, 24 246, 254 privation, 18, 118, 195, 264 Olympian universes, 263 procedurally generated content, 213 Omega Point, 118, 284 Proclus, 29, 34, 215 One, the, 17, 22, 26, 29, 32, 34, 42, 48, pronoia, 227 56, 58, 82, 98, 111, 118, 130, 132, proper class, 56, 217, 250, 280, 287, 163, 164, 176, 194, 211, 225, 227, 293, 297 247, 271, 288, 289, 291, 293, 294, 297 propositions, 87 ontic, 24, 26, 33, 124, 227, 294 providence, 104, 136, 173, 180, 227, 277 ontological, 24, 26, 124, 194, 227, 237, psychedelics, 11, 30, 224, 227, 233, 236, 246, 295 238 opening power, 91, 105, 108, 124, 170, Pythagoreans, 17, 58, 191, 298 231, 300 qubits, 257 orderly flow principle, 133, 144 Quine, Willard, 26, 62, 294 orisha, 218, 245 ranks, 64, 114, 115, 136, 242, 251, 274, overworld, 263 282, 285, 289, 292, 293 panpsychism, 141 rational order, 41, 82, 87, 137, 144, 176, Pantheists, 165 187 Pareto optimal, 121, 128 raves, 11, 30, 225, 228 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 16, 22, 33, 284 reasons, 82 pentacle, 298 rebirth, 166, 175, 231, 234, 238, 266, pentagram, 298 267, 273 perfection, 73 recipes, 69, 72, 78, 88, 93, 96, 102, 153, permutations, 71 193, 211, 212 petitionary prayers, 11, 29, 100, 140, regression, 42, 44, 92, 123, 261 161, 186, 205, 292 reincarnation, 166, 175, 234, 237, 249, Pliny the Elder, 198 266, 270, 273 Plotinus, 10, 17 religious sovereignty, 187 pneuma, 230 reverence, 264 pocket universe, 222, 229 ritual container, 167, 225, 229, 239 Polyhistor, Alexander, 58 ritual mimesis, 228 polytheism, 9, 11, 245, 249, 288

326 rituals, 11, 12, 21, 27, 41, 99, 105, 109, stars, 49, 56, 70, 79, 95, 112, 116, 136, 119, 157, 161, 164, 165, 195, 204, 137, 142, 147, 148, 250, 255, 260, 211, 218, 225, 230, 232, 263, 292, 300 263, 281, 283, 288, 289, 293, 297, 298 robots, 254, 256 statues, 110, 159, 161, 162, 194, 208, root, 24, 30, 63, 65, 74, 77, 99, 119, 123, 216, 219, 230, 254 124, 130, 157, 211, 280, 289, 296 Stoic practices, 215 sabbats, 165 Stoicism, 93, 252 sacrifice, 161, 230 stone circles, 162 sacrifices, 10, 13, 28, 29, 158, 161, 291 string, 140, 148, 194, 233 sage, 252 string rewriting, 148, 149 sages, 230 successor law, 47, 55, 69, 79, 85, 94, 96, Sallustius, 13, 29, 161, 212 121, 124, 273, 279, 280 sea, 27, 119, 283 sun, 162 seeds, 76, 79, 81, 84, 93, 103, 175, 201, sun, the, 23, 95, 250, 260, 289, 292 208, 270, 289, 290 sunrise, 23 self-affirmation, 26, 130 target self, 119, 167, 220, 223, 225, 229, self-consistency, 176 239 self-negation, 16, 18, 21, 26, 34, 58, 130, target universe, 119, 167, 220, 223, 225, 145, 204, 296 229, 239 self-organization, 15, 102, 133, 134, tautologies, 35 144, 226, 240 technology, 208, 251, 254 self-surpassing, 163 Teilhard de Chardin, 284 Seneca, 180, 187 Temple, the, 100, 231 Serenity Prayer, 188 thanks-giving, 27, 109, 157, 169, 172, set theory, 9, 40, 56, 286 226, 228, 292 shape-craft, 31, 218, 224, 232 theities, 109, 240, 245, 288, 293 shifting, 221, 224, 225, 229, 230, 295 theity, 30, 110 sigil, 13, 16, 22, 26, 41, 100, 292 theonyms, 15, 29, 41, 107, 110, 187, sigils, 208 204, 244, 283, 288, 292 simulations, 295 Theos Hypsistos, 292 skulls, 76, 290 thermodynamic force, 132, 133, 136, sky, the, 41, 49, 125, 250, 288, 293 146 slow-growth law, 72 thermodynamics, 101, 132, 144, 157, Socrates, 180, 261, 262, 266, 291 160, 162, 177, 204, 227 solar calendar, 162 theurgy, 12, 31, 119, 195, 207, 208, 212, solstices, 162 218, 227, 232, 254, 264, 280, 284 souls, 13, 61, 140, 141, 142, 145, 160, thin tree of strings, 64, 69, 73, 77, 81, 161, 175, 177, 191, 194, 199, 202, 85, 95, 193, 215, 289 211, 213, 249, 251, 258, 266, 270, 276 Tillich, 10, 30, 250 sovereignty, 12, 29, 205, 292 timelike, 260 spells, 208 trances, 30, 190, 218, 226 spirit, 101, 125, 129, 130, 131, 134, 144, transcendental, 49, 57, 95, 250, 280, 168, 177, 204, 207, 210, 211, 225, 289, 294, 297 237, 280 transformational festivals, 228 Starhawk, 21, 27, 32, 203 transhuman universes, 262

327 transhumanism, 11, 196, 209, 216, 248, water, 21, 50, 58, 135, 148, 164, 168, 251 179, 298, 300 treasury, 79 wheel of the year, 163, 231, 270 Tree of Porphyry, 24, 211 Wicca, 11, 12, 27, 31, 64, 99, 100, 108, truth-values, 35 109, 163, 164, 190, 198, 225, 292, 298 Two, the, 34, 58, 63, 103, 107, 211, 291 Wiccan God, the, 31, 109, 166, 204, 218, underworld, 263 270 universal quantifier, 294 Wiccan Goddess, the, 31, 109, 166, 204, universes, celestial, 263 218, 270 universes, daimonic, 262 world tree, 98, 104, 110, 121, 123, 124, universes, heroic, 262 173, 230, 250, 260, 276, 286 universes, human, 262 worship, 10, 21, 29, 41, 100, 161, 205, universes, infinite, 263 217, 243, 264, 288, 292 universes, Olympian, 263 Xenocrates, 61, 191 universes, transhuman, 262 Xenophanes, 150, 243 video game, 213 Xenophon, 282 virtue, 13, 138, 140, 172, 178, 182, 217, Yoruba, 9, 63, 218, 243, 245 241, 252, 268, 274, 287 Zero, the, 22, 34, 45, 47, 54, 58, 63, 291 vision, 64, 192, 208, 249 Zeus, 15, 41, 102, 107, 111, 175, 187, visions, 11, 190, 232, 236 240, 248, 253, 266 visualization, 64, 178, 185, 190, 203, 218

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