A Child Of Gaia And The Starry Heavens

Preface

Summary Of The Philosophy Of Pathei-Mathos

Notes On War, Suffering, And Personal Judgement

Reflections On Conflict And Suffering

A Personal Remembering

Developing The Numinous Way Of Pathei-Mathos

Physis And Jesus Of Nazareth

Weltschmerz And The Conflict In Gaza

Exegesis And Pathei-Mathos

Questions Of Hermeneutics And Exegesis

Fifty-Five Years Ago

A Note Concerning Aristotle, Reason, And Virtue

Anaximander, Imbalance, And Opposites

ΞΞΞ

Γῆς παῖς εἰμι καὶ Οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντος

ΞΞΞ
 Preface

A collection, Debitum Naturæ, of some of my recent (2023-2024) writings which endeavour to express and explain my
weltanschauung of pathei-mathos and such personal rememberings, feelings, and intuitions of mine, as may be
relevant to understanding, and placing into context, my post-2011 wordful presencings of that weltanschauung. The
dual context being (i) my own personal experiences, including some forty years (1968-2009) of extremism as an
activist and as an ideologue, and (ii) supra-personal because the axioms of personal empathy and pathei-mathos that
form the foundations of that 'numinous way of pathei-mathos' could possibly be the basis for other individuals to
develope their own numinous weltanschauung free from the influence of the manufactured impersonal causal
abstractions that shaped the ancient world, some of which still influence the modern world, and the more recent
impersonal causal abstractions which since the Second World War are prevalent and now authoritative in the modern
world.

David Myatt
August 2024

ΞΞΞ

Image Credit:

Gold funerary tablet (c. 200 BCE) found at Eleutherna, Crete,

of the kind presumed to be associated with an aural ἱερός λόγος (esoteric mythos),
all of which funerary items have inscriptions similar to the following:
Γῆς παῖς εἰμι καὶ Οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντος
(I am a child of Gaia and the starry heavens)

qv. Tractate III

https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/eight-tractates-v2-print.pdf
 Summary Of The Philosophy Of Pathei-Mathos

§ Physis And Being

§ The Way Of Pathei-Mathos - A Précis
§ Glossary Of Terms
§ Appendix: Notes on Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 5, 1015α

Physis And Being

The numinous way - the philosophy - of pathei-mathos is based on four principles: (i) that it is empathy and pathei-
mathos which can wordlessly reveal the ontological reality both of our own physis [1] and of how we, as sentient
beings, relate to other living beings and to Being itself; (ii) that it is denotatum [2] – and thus the abstractions deriving
therefrom [3] – which, in respect of human beings, can and often do obscure our physis and our relation to other living
beings and to Being; (iii) that denotatum and abstractions imply a dialectic of contradictory opposites and thus for we
human beings a separation-of-otherness; and (iv) that this dialectic of opposites is, has been, and can be a cause of
suffering for both ourselves, as sentient beings, and – as a causal human presenced effect – for the other life with
which we share the planet named in English as Earth.

In respect of the term numinous, it

"derives from the classical Latin numen and denotes 'a reverence for the divine; a divinity; divine power' with
the word numen assimilated into English in the 15th century, with the English use of 'numinous' dating from
the middle of the 17th century and used to signify 'of or relating to a numen; revealing or indicating the
presence of a divinity; divine, spiritual.'

It thus has a wider meaning than that ascribed to it by Rudolf Otto in his Das Heilige. For him, it was manifest
in the written words - 'the revelation' - of the Old and New Testaments of Christianity (qv. Das Heilige,
chapters X, XI) as well as in Christian exegesis manifest in the preaching of individuals such as Martin Luther
(Das Heilige, chapter XII) and in religious terms it involved 'worship' (Das Heilige, chapter XIII ff) and in
philosophical terms was described by Kant's a priori (Das Heilige, chapter XVII). Yet Otto also wrote that is
was sui generis, a personal emotion or feeling.

The wider meaning of the numinous results from our faculty of empathy which provides or can provide an
individual intuition - a wordless-knowing or awareness - of the numinous, and as a personal human faculty
empathy has a personal horizon and thus cannot be extrapolated from such a personal knowing into some-
thing supra-personal be this some-thing denotata, including an ἰδέᾳ/εἶδος, or an axiom (ἀρχή) or a source
(αἴτιος) for some 'revelation' or ideology or similar manifestations constructed by and dependent on
appellation. In the case of a 'revelation' the source is often named as God or a god/the god (θεὸς, ὁ θεὸς)
who or which are often described by a myth or mythoi." Denotata, Empathy, And The Hermetic Tradition,
2022

In respect of empathy and pathei-mathos, they

"incline us to suggest that ipseity is an illusion of perspective: that there is, fundamentally, no division
between ‘us’ – as some individual sentient, mortal being – and what has hitherto been understood and
named as the Unity, The One, God, The Eternal. That ‘we’ are not ‘observers’ but rather Being existing as
Being exists and is presenced in the Cosmos. That thus all our striving, individually and collectively when
based on some ideal or on some form – some abstraction and what is derived therefrom, such as ideology
and dogma – always is or becomes sad/tragic, and which recurrence of sadness/tragedy, generation following
generation, is perhaps even inevitable unless and until we live according to the wordless knowing that
empathy and pathei-mathos reveal." [4]

In essence, empathy and pathei-mathos lead us away from the abstractions we have constructed and manufactured
and which abstractions we often tend to impose, or project, upon other human beings, upon ourselves, often in the
belief that such abstractions can aid our understanding of others and of ourselves, with a feature of all abstractions
being inclusion and exclusion; that is, certain individuals are considered as belonging to or as defined by a particular
category while others are not.

Over millennia we have manufactured certain abstractions and their assumed opposites and classified many of them
according to particular moral standards so that a particular abstraction is considered good and/or beneficial and/or as
necessary and/or as healthy, while its assumed dialectical opposite is considered bad (or evil), or unnecessary, or
unhealthy, and/or as unwarranted.

Thus in ancient Greece and Rome slavery was accepted by the majority, and considered by the ruling elite as natural
and necessary, with human beings assigned to or included in the category ‘slave’ a commodity who could be traded
with slaves regarded as necessary to the functioning of society. Over centuries, with the evolution of religions such as
Christianity and with the development in Western societies of humanist weltanschauungen, the moral values of this
particular abstraction, this particular category to which certain human beings assigned, changed such that for perhaps
a majority slavery came to be regarded as morally repugnant. Similarly in respect of the abstraction designated in
modern times by such terms as "the rôle of women in society" which rôle for millennia in the West was defined
according to various masculous criteria – deriving from a ruling and an accepted patriarchy – but which rôle in the past
century in Western societies has gradually been redefined.

Yet irrespective of such developments, such changes associated with certain abstractions, the abstractions themselves
and the dialectic of moral opposites associated with them remain because, for perhaps a majority, abstractions and
ipseity, as a criteria of judgment and/or as a human instinct, remain; as evident in the continuing violence against, the
killing of, and the manipulation, of women by men, and in what has become described by terms such as "modern
slavery" and "human trafficking".

In addition, we human beings have continued to manufacture abstractions and continue to assign individuals to them,
a useful example being the abstraction denoted by the terms The State and The Nation-State [5] and which
abstraction, with its government, its supra-personal authority, its laws, its economy, and its inclusion/exclusion
(citizenship or lack of it) has come to dominate and influence the life of the majority of people in the West.

Ontologically, abstractions – ancient and modern – usurp our connexion to Being and to other living beings so that
instead of using wordless empathy and pathei-mathos as a guide to Reality [6] we tend to define ourselves or are
defined by others according to an abstraction or according to various abstractions. In the matter of the abstraction that
is The State there is a tendency to define or to try to understand our relation to Reality by for example whether we
belong, are a citizen of a particular State; by whether or not we have an acceptable standard of living because of the
opportunities and employment and/or the assistance afforded by the economy and the policies of the State; by
whether or not we agree or disagree with the policies of the government in power, and often by whether or not we
have transgressed some State-made law or laws. Similarly, in the matter of belief in a revealed religion such as
Christianity or Islam we tend to define or understand our relation to Reality by means of such an abstraction: that is,
according to the revelation (or a particular interpretation of it) and its eschatology, and thus by how the promise of
Heaven/Jannah may be personally obtained.

Empathy and pathei-mathos, however, wordlessly – sans denotatum, sans abstractions, sans a dialectic of
contradictory opposites – uncover physis: our physis, that of other mortals, that of other living beings, and that of
Being/Reality itself. Which physis, howsoever presenced – in ourselves, in other living beings, in Being – is fluxive, a
balance between the being that it now is, that it was, and that it has the inherent (the acausal) quality to be. [7]

This uncovering, such a revealing, is of a knowing beyond ipseity and thus beyond the separation-of-otherness which
denotatum, abstractions, and a dialectic of opposites manufacture and presence. A knowing of ourselves as an
affective connexion [8] to other living beings and to Being itself, with Being revealed as fluxive (as a meson – μέσον [9]
– with the potentiality to change, to develope) and thus which (i) is not – as in the theology of revealed religions such
as Christianity and Islam – a God who is Eternal, Unchanging, Omnipotent [10], and (ii) is affected or can be affected (in
terms of physis) by what we do or do not do.

This awareness, this knowing, of such an affective connexion – our past, our current, our potentiality, to adversely
affect, to have adversely affected, to cause, to having caused, suffering or harm to other living beings – also inclines us
or can incline us toward benignity and humility, and thus incline us to live in a non-suffering causing way, appreciate of
our thousands of years old culture of pathei-mathos. [11]

In terms of understanding Being and the divine, it inclines us or can incline us, as sentient beings, to apprehend Being
as not only presenced in us but as capable of changing – unfolding, evolving – in a manner dependant on our physis
and on how our physis is presenced by us, and by others, in the future. Which seems to imply a new ontology and one
distinct from past and current theologies with their anthropomorphic θεὸς (god) and θεοὶ (gods).

An ontology of physis: of mortals, of livings beings, and of Being, as fluxive mesons. Of we mortals as a mortal
microcosm of Being – the cosmic order, the κόσμος – itself [12] with the balance, the meson, that empathy and pathei-
mathos incline us toward living presenced in the ancient Greek phrase καλὸς κἀγαθός,

"which means those who conduct themselves in a gentlemanly or lady-like manner and who thus manifest –
because of their innate physis or through pathei-mathos or through a certain type of education or learning –
nobility of character." [13]

Which personal conduct, in the modern world, might suggest a Ciceronian-inspired but new type of civitas, and one

"not based on some abstractive law but on a spiritual and interior (and thus not political) understanding and
appreciation of our own Ancestral Culture and that of others; on our ‘civic’ duty to personally presence καλὸς
κἀγαθός and thus to act and to live in a noble way. For the virtues of personal honour and manners, with
their responsibilities, presence the fairness, the avoidance of hubris, the natural harmonious balance, the
gender equality, the awareness and appreciation of the divine, that is the numinous." [14]

With καλὸς κἀγαθός, such personal conduct, and such a new civitas, summarising how such a philosophy based on
empathy and pathei-mathos might, in one way, be presenced in a practical manner in the world.

David Myatt
2019

This essay is a revised and edited version of a reply sent to an academic

who enquired about the philosophy of pathei-mathos

°°°°°
Notes

[1]I use the term physis – φύσις – ontologically, in the Aristotelian sense, to refer to the ‘natural’ and the fluxive being
(nature) of a being, which nature is often manifest, in we mortals, in our character (persona) and in our deeds. Qv. my
essay Towards Understanding Physis (2015) and my translation of and commentary on the Poemandres tractate in
Corpus Hermeticum: Eight Tractates (2017).

[2]As noted elsewhere, I generally use the term denotatum – from the Latin denotare – not only as meaning “to denote
or to describe by an expression or a word; to name some-thing; to refer that which is so named or so denoted," but
also as an Anglicized term implying, depending on context, singular or plural instances. As an Anglicized term there is
generally no need to use the inflected plural denotata.

[3]In the context of the philosophy of pathei-mathos the term abstraction signifies a particular named and defined
category or form (ἰδέᾳ, εἶδος) and which category or form is a manufactured generalization, a hypothesis, a posited
thing, an assumption or assumptions about, an extrapolation of or from some-thing, or some assumed or extrapolated
ideal ‘form’ of some-thing.

In respect of denotatum, in Kratylus 389d Plato has Socrates talk about ‘true, ideal’ naming (denotatum) – βλέποντα
πρὸς αὐτὸ ἐκεῖνο ὃ ἔστιν ὄνομα, qv. my essay Personal Reflexions On Some Metaphysical Questions, 2015.

[4] Personal Reflexions On Some Metaphysical Questions.

[5]Contrary to modern convention I tend to write The State instead of “the state" because I consider The State/The
Nation-State a particular abstraction; as an existent, an entity, which has been manufactured, by human beings, and
which entity, like many such manufactured ‘things’, has been, in its design and function, changed and which can still
be changed, and which has associated with it a presumption of a supra-personal (and often moral) authority.

In addition, written The State (or the State) it suggests some-thing which endures or which may endure beyond the
limited lifespan of a mortal human being.

[6]‘Reality’ in the philosophical sense of what (in terms of physis) is distinguished or distinguishable from what is
apparent or external. In terms of ancient Hellenic and Western Renaissance mysticism the distinction is between the
esoteric and the exoteric; between the physis of a being and some outer form (or appearance) including the outer form
that is a useful tool or implement which can be used to craft or to manufacture some-thing such as other
categories/abstractions. With the important ontological proviso that what is esoteric is not the ‘essence’ of something –
as for example Plato’s ἰδέᾳ/εἶδος – but instead the physis of the being itself as explicated for instance by Aristotle in
Metaphysics, Book 5, 1015α,

ἐκ δὴ τῶν εἰρημένων ἡ πρώτη φύσις καὶ κυρίως λεγομένη ἐστὶν ἡ οὐσία ἡ τῶν ἐχόντων ἀρχὴν κινήσεως ἐν
αὑτοῖς ᾗ αὐτά: ἡ γὰρ ὕλη τῷ ταύτης δεκτικὴ εἶναι λέγεται φύσις, καὶ αἱ γενέσεις καὶ τὸ φύεσθαι τῷ ἀπὸ
ταύτης εἶναι κινήσεις. καὶ ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως τῶν φύσει ὄντων αὕτη ἐστίν, ἐνυπάρχουσά πως ἢ δυνάμει ἢ
ἐντελεχείᾳ

Given the foregoing, then principally – and to be exact – physis denotes the quidditas of beings having
changement inherent within them; for substantia has been denoted by physis because it embodies this, as
have the becoming that is a coming-into-being, and a burgeoning, because they are changements predicated
on it. For physis is inherent changement either manifesting the potentiality of a being or as what a being,
complete of itself, is.

That is, as I noted in my essay Towards Understanding Physis, it is a meson (μέσον) balanced between the being that-
it-was and the being it has the potentiality to unfold to become.

In respect of “what is real" – τῶν ὄντων – cf. the Poemandres tractate of the Corpus Hermeticum and especially section
3,

φημὶ ἐγώ, Μαθεῖν θέλω τὰ ὄντα καὶ νοῆσαι τὴν τούτων φύσιν καὶ γνῶναι τὸν θεόν

I answered that I seek to learn what is real, to apprehend the physis of beings, and to have knowledge of
theos [qv. Corpus Hermeticum: Eight Tractates, 2017]

[7] Qv. Towards Understanding Physis, 2015.

[8]I use the term affective here, and in other writings, to mean “having the quality of affecting; tending to affect or
influence."

Qv. footnote [6]. In terms of ontology a meson is the balance, the median, existing between the being which-was
[9]
and the being which-can-be.

[10]This understanding of Being as fluxive – as a changement – was prefigured in the mythos of Ancient Greece with
the supreme deity – the chief of the gods – capable of being overthrown and replaced, as Zeus overthrew Kronos and
as Kronos himself overthrew his own father.

[11] As explained in my 2014 essay Education And The Culture of Pathei-Mathos, the term describes

"the accumulated pathei-mathos of individuals, world-wide, over thousands of years, as (i) described in
memoirs, aural stories, and historical accounts; as (ii) have inspired particular works of literature or poetry or
 drama; as (iii) expressed via non-verbal mediums such as music and Art, and as (iv) manifest in more recent
times by ‘art-forms’ such as films and documentaries."

This culture remembers the suffering and the beauty and the killing and the hubris and the love and the compassion
that we mortals have presenced and caused over millennia, and which culture

"thus includes not only traditional accounts of, or accounts inspired by, personal pathei-mathos, old and
modern – such as the With The Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene Sledge, One Day in the Life of
Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and the poetry of people as diverse as Sappho and Sylvia Plath –
but also works or art-forms inspired by such pathei-mathos, whether personal or otherwise, and whether
factually presented or fictionalized. Hence films such as Monsieur Lazhar and Etz Limon may poignantly
express something about our φύσις as human beings and thus form part of the culture of pathei-mathos."

[12]κόσμον δὲ θείου σώματος κατέπεμψε τὸν ἄνθρωπον, "a cosmos of the divine body sent down as human beings."
Tractate IV:2, Corpus Hermeticum.

Cf. Marsilii Ficini, De Vita Coelitus Comparanda, XXVI, published in 1489 CE,

Quomodo per inferiora superioribus exposita deducantur superiora, et per mundanas materias mundana
potissimum dona.

How, when what is lower is touched by what is higher, the higher is cosmically presenced therein and thus
gifted because cosmically aligned.

Which is a philosophical restatement of the phrase "quod est inferius est sicut quod est superius” (what is above is as
what is below) from the Latin version, published in 1541 CE, of the medieval Hermetic text known as Tabula
Smaragdina.

[13] The quotation is from my Classical Paganism And The Christian Ethos, 2017.

The quotation is from my Tu Es Diaboli Ianua: Christianity, The Johannine Weltanschauung, And Presencing The
[14]
Numinous, 2017.

The Way Of Pathei-Mathos - A Précis

Exordium

What I have previously described as the 'philosophy of pathei-mathos' and the 'way of pathei-mathos' is simply my
own weltanschauung, a weltanschauung developed over some years as a result of my own pathei-mathos. Thus, and
despite whatever veracity it may or may not possess, it is only the personal insight of one very fallible individual, a
fallibility proven by my decades of selfishness and by my decades of reprehensible extremism both political and
religious.

Furthermore, and according to my admittedly limited understanding and limited knowledge, this philosophy does not -
in essence - express anything new. For I feel (and I use the word 'feel' intentionally) that I have only re-expressed what
so many others, over millennia, have expressed as result of (i) their own pathei-mathos and/or (ii) their
experiences/insights and/or (iii) their particular philosophical musings.

Indeed, the more I reflect upon my (perhaps pretentiously entitled) 'philosophy of pathei-mathos' the more I reminded
of so many things, such as (i) what I intuitively (and possibly incorrectly) understood nearly half a century ago about
Taoism when I lived in the Far East and was taught that ancient philosophy by someone who was also trying to instruct
me in a particular Martial Art, and (ii) what I as a Catholic monk felt "singing Gregorian chant in choir and which singing
often connected me to what JS Bach so often so well expressed by his music; that is, connected me to what – in
essence – Christianity (the allegory of the life and crucifixion of Christ) and especially monasticism manifested: an
intimation of some-thing sacred causing us to know beyond words what 'the good' really means, and which knowing
touches us if only for an instant with a very personal humility and compassion", and (iii) what I learnt from "my first
few years as a Muslim, before I adhered to a harsh interpretation of Islam; a learning from being invited into the homes
of Muslim families; sharing meals with them; praying with them; learning Muslim Adab; attending Namaz at my local
Mosque, and feeling - understanding - what their faith meant to them and what Islam really meant, and manifested, as
a practical way of living", and (iv) of what I discovered from several years, as a teenager, at first in the Far East and
then in England, of practising Hatha Yoga according to the Pradipika and Patanjali, and (v) of what I intuited regarding
Buddhism from over a year of zazen (some in a zendo) and from months of discussions with Dom Aelred Graham who
had lived in a Zen monastery in Japan, and (vi) what I so painfully, so personally, discovered via my own pathei-
mathos.

As a weltanschauung derived from a personal pathei-mathos, my 'philosophy/way of pathei-mathos' is therefore

subject to revision. Thus this essay summarising my weltanschauung includes a few (2013-2014) slight revisions -
mentioned, or briefly described, in some of my more recent effusions - of what was expressed in previous works of
mine such as The Numinous Way of Pathei-Mathos [1] and Religion, Empathy, and Pathei-Mathos: Essays and Letters
Regarding Spirituality, Humility, and A Learning From Grief. [2]
David Myatt
September 2014
Revised 2022

[1] https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2022/10/numinous-way-pathei-mathos-v7.pdf

[2] https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/religion-and-empathy.pdf

°°°

The Way Of Pathei-Mathos

1. Ontology

The ontology is of causal and acausal being, with (i) causal being as revealed by phainómenon, by the five Aristotelian
essentials and thus by science with its observations and theories and principle of 'verifiability', and (ii) acausal being as
revealed by συμπάθεια - by the acausal knowing (of living beings) derived from faculty of empathy [1] - and thus of the
distinction between the 'time' (the change) of living-beings and the 'time' described via the measurement of the
observed or the assumed/posited/predicted movement of 'things' [2].

2. Epistemology

a. The primacy of pathei-mathos: of a personal pathei-mathos being one of the primary means whereby we can come
to know the true φύσις (physis) of Being, of beings, and of our own being; a knowing beyond 'abstractions', beyond the
concealment implicit in manufactured opposites, by ipseity (the separation-of-otherness), and by denotatum.

b. Adding the 'acausal knowing' revealed by the (muliebral) faculty of empathy to the conventional, and causal (and
somewhat masculous), knowing of science and logical philosophical speculation, with the proviso that what such
'acausal knowing' reveals is (i) of φύσις, the relation between beings, and between beings and Being, and thus of 'the
separation-of-otherness', and (ii) the personal and numinous nature of such knowing in the immediacy-of-the-moment,
and which empathic knowing thus cannot be abstracted out from that 'living moment' via denotatum: by (words
written or spoken), or be named or described or expressed (become fixed or 'known') by any dogma or any -ism or any
-ology, be such -isms or -ologies conventionally understood as political, religious, ideological, or social.

c. Describing a human, and world-wide and ancestral, 'culture of pathei-mathos' [3], and which culture of pathei-
mathos could form part of Studia Humanitatis and thus of that education that enables we human beings to better
understand our own φύσις [4].

3. Ethics

a. Of personal honour - which presences the virtues of fairness, tolerance, compassion, humility, and εὐταξία - as (i) a
natural intuitive (wordless) expression of the numinous ('the good', δίκη, συμπάθεια) and (ii) of both what the culture of
pathei-mathos and the acausal-knowing of empathy reveal we should do (or incline us toward doing) in the immediacy
of the personal moment when personally confronted by what is unfair, unjust, and extreme [5].

b. Of how such honour - by its and our φύσις - is and can only ever be personal, and thus cannot be extracted out from
the 'living moment' and our participation in the moment; for it is only through such things as a personal study of the
culture of pathei-mathos and the development of the faculty of empathy that a person who does not naturally possess
the instinct for δίκη can develope what is essentially 'the human faculty of honour', and which faculty is often
appreciated and/or discovered via our own personal pathei-mathos.

4. One fallible, personal, answer regarding the question of human existence.

Of understanding ourselves in that supra-personal, and cosmic, perspective that empathy, honour, and pathei-mathos
- and thus an awareness of the numinous and of the acausal - incline us toward, and which understanding is: (i) of
ourselves as a finite, fragile, causal, viatorial, microcosmic, affective effluvium [6] of Life (ψυχή) and thus connected to
all other living beings, human, terran, and non-terran, and (ii) of there being no supra-personal goal to strive toward
because all supra-personal goals are and have been just posited - assumed, abstracted - goals derived from the illusion
of ipseity, and/or from some illusive abstraction, and/or from that misapprehension of our φύσις that arises from a lack
of empathy, honour, and pathei-mathos.

For a living in the moment, in a balanced - an empathic, honourable - way, presences our φύσις as conscious beings
capable of discovering and understanding and living in accord with our connexion to other life; which understanding
inclines us to avoid the hubris that causes or contributes to the suffering of other life, with such avoidance a personal
choice not because it is conceived as a path toward some posited thing or goal - such as nirvana or Jannah or Heaven
or after-life - and not because we might be rewarded by God, by the gods, or by some supra-personal divinity, but
rather because it manifests the reality, the truth - the meaning - of our being. The truth that (i) we are (or we are
capable of being) one affective consciously-aware connexion to other life possessed of the capacity to cause
suffering/harm or not to cause suffering/harm, and (ii) we as an individual are but one viator manifesting the change -
the being, the φύσις - of the Cosmos/mundus toward (a) a conscious awareness (an aiding of ψυχή), or (b) stasis, or (c)
as a contributor toward a decline, toward a loss of ψυχή.

Thus, there is a perceiveration of our φύσις; of us as - and not separate from - the Cosmos: a knowledge of ourselves
as the Cosmos presenced (embodied, incarnated) in a particular time and place and in a particular way. Of how we
affect or can affect other effluvia, other livings beings, in either a harmful or a non-harming manner. An apprehension,
that is, of the genesis of suffering and of how we, as human beings possessed of the faculties of reason, of honour, and
of empathy, have the ability to cease to harm other living beings. Furthermore, and in respect of the genesis of
suffering, this particular perceiveration provides an important insight about ourselves, as conscious beings; which
insight is of the division we mistakenly but understandably make, and have made, consciously or unconsciously,
between our own being - our ipseity - and that of other living beings, whereas such a distinction is only an illusion -
appearance, hubris, a manufactured abstraction - and the genesis of such suffering as we have inflicted for millennia,
and continue to inflict, on other life, human and otherwise.

°°°

Notes

[1] Refer to: (i) The Way of Pathei-Mathos - A Philosophical Compendiary (Third Edition, 2012), and (ii) Towards
Understanding The Acausal, 2011.

[2] Refer to Time And The Separation Of Otherness - Part One, 2012.

[3] The culture of pathei-mathos is the accumulated pathei-mathos of individuals, world-wide, over thousands of years,
as (i) described in memoirs, aural stories, and historical accounts; as (ii) have inspired particular works of literature or
poetry or drama; as (iii) expressed via non-verbal mediums such as music and Art, and as (iv) manifest in more recent
times by 'art-forms' such as films and documentaries.

[4] Refer to Education and The Culture of Pathei-Mathos, 2014.

[5] By 'extreme' is meant 'to be harsh', unbalanced, intolerant, prejudiced, hubriatic.

[6] As mentioned elsewhere, I now prefer the term effluvium, in preference to emanation, in order to try and avoid any
potential misunderstanding. For although I have previously used the term 'emanation' in my philosophy of pathei-
mathos as a synonym of effluvium, 'emanation' is often understood in the sense of some-thing proceeding from, or
having, a source; as for example in theological use where the source is considered to be God or some aspect of a
divinity. Effluvium, however, has (so far as I am aware) no theological connotations and accurately describes the
perceiveration: a flowing of what-is, sans the assumption of a primal cause, and sans a division or a distinction
between 'us' - we mortals - and some-thing else, be this some-thing else God, a divinity, or some assumed, ideated,
cause, essence, origin, or form.

Glossary

Abstraction

An abstraction is a manufactured generalization, a hypothesis, a posited thing, an assumption or assumptions about,

an extrapolation of or from some-thing, or some assumed or extrapolated ideal 'form' of some-thing. Sometimes,
abstractions are generalization based on some sample(s), or on some median (average) value or sets of values,
observed, sampled, or assumed.

Abstractions can be of some-thing past, in the present, or described as a goal or an ideal which it is assumed could be
attained or achieved in the future.

All abstractions involve a causal perception, based as they are on the presumption of a linear cause-and-effect (and/or
a dialectic) and on a posited or an assumed category or classification which differs in some way from some other
assumed or posited categories/classifications, past, present or future. When applied to or used to describe/classify
/distinguish/motivate living beings, abstractions involve a causal separation-of-otherness; and when worth/value
/identity (and exclusion/inclusion) is or are assigned to such a causal separation-of-otherness then there is or there
arises hubris.

Abstractions are often assumed to provide some 'knowledge' or some 'understanding' of some-thing assigned to or
described by a particular abstraction. For example, in respect of the abstraction of 'race' applied to human beings, and
which categorization of human beings describes a median set of values said or assumed to exist 'now' or in some
recent historical past.

According to the philosophy of pathei-mathos, this presumption of knowledge and understanding by the application of
abstractions to beings - living and otherwise - is false, for abstractions are considered as a primary means by which the
nature of Being and beings are and have been concealed, requiring as abstractions do the positing and the
continuation of abstractive opposites in relation to Being and the separation of beings from Being by the process of
ideation and opposites.

Acausal

The acausal is not a generalization – a concept – deriving from a collocation of assumed, imagined, or causally
observed Phainómenon, but instead is that wordless, conceptless, a-temporal, knowing which empathy reveals and
which a personal πάθει μάθος and an appreciation of the numinous often inclines us toward. That is, the acausal is a
direct and personal (individual) revealing of beings and Being which does not depend on denoting or naming.
What is so revealed is the a-causal nature of some beings, the connexion which exists between living beings, and how
living beings are emanations of ψυχή.

Thus speculations and postulations regarding the acausal only serve to obscure the nature of the acausal or distance
us from that revealing of the acausal that empathy and πάθει μάθος and an appreciation of the numinous provide.

ἀρετή

Arête is the prized Hellenic virtue which can roughly be translated by the English word 'excellence' but which also
implies what is naturally distinguishable - what is pre-eminent - because it reveals or shows certain valued qualities
such as beauty, honour, valour, harmony.

Aristotelian Essentials

The essentials which Aristotle enumerated are: (i) Reality (existence) exists independently of us and our
consciousness, and thus independent of our senses; (ii) our limited understanding of this independent 'external world'
depends for the most part upon our senses, our faculties – that is, on what we can see, hear or touch; on what we can
observe or come to know via our senses; (iii) logical argument, or reason, is perhaps the most important means to
knowledge and understanding of and about this 'external world'; (iv) the cosmos (existence) is, of itself, a reasoned
order subject to rational laws.

In addition such essentials now include Isaac Newton's first Rules of Reasoning which is that

"We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their
appearances. To this purpose the philosophers say that Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain
when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes."

Hence why it is often considered that there are five Aristotelian Essentials

Experimental science seeks to explain the natural world – the phenomenal world – by means of direct, personal
observation of it, and by making deductions, and formulating hypothesis, based on such direct observation.

The philosophy of pathei-mathos adds the faculty of empathy - and the knowing so provided by empathy - to these
essentials. Part of the knowing that empathy reveals, or can reveal, concerns the nature of Being, of beings, and of
Time.

ἁρμονίη

ἁρμονίη (harmony) is or can be manifest/discovered by an individual cultivating wu-wei and σωφρονεῖν (a fair and
balanced personal, individual, judgement).

Compassion

The English word compassion dates from around 1340 CE and the word in its original sense (and as used in this work)
means benignity, which word derives from the Latin benignitatem, the sense imputed being of a kind, compassionate,
well-mannered character, disposition, or deed. Benignity came into English usage around the same time as
compassion; for example, the word occurs in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde [ ii. 483 ] written around 1374 CE.

Hence, compassion is understood as meaning being kindly disposed toward and/or feeling a sympathy with someone
(or some living being) affected by pain/suffering/grief or who is enduring vicissitudes.

The word compassion itself is derived from com, meaning together-with, combined with pati, meaning to-suffer/to-
endure and derived from the classical Latin passiō. Thus useful synonyms for compassion, in this original sense, are
compassivity and benignity.

Cosmic Perspective

The Cosmic Perspective refers to our place in the Cosmos, to the fact that we human beings are simply one fragile
fallible mortal biological life-form on one planet orbiting one star in one galaxy in a Cosmos of billions of galaxies. Thus
in terms of this perspective all our theories, our ideas, our beliefs, our abstractions are merely the opinionated product
of our limited fallible Earth-bound so-called ‘intelligence’, an ‘intelligence’, an understanding, we foolishly, arrogantly,
pridefully have a tendency to believe in and exalt as if we are somehow ‘the centre of the Universe’ and cosmically
important.

The Cosmic Perspective inclines us – or can incline us – toward wu-wei, toward avoiding the error of hubris, toward
humility, and thus toward an appreciation of the numinous.

δαίμων

A δαίμων is not one of the pantheon of major Greek gods – θεοί - but rather a lesser type of divinity who might be
assigned by those gods to bring good fortune or misfortune to human beings and/or watch over certain human beings
and especially particular numinous (sacred) places.
Denotatum

The term denotatum - from the Latin, denotare - is used in accord with its general meaning which is "to denote or to
describe by an expression or a word; to name some-thing; to refer that which is so named or so denoted."

Thus understood, and used as an Anglicized term, denotatum is applicable to both singular and plural instances and
thus obviates the need to employ the Latin plural denotata.

Descriptor

A descriptor is a word, a term, used to describe some-thing which exists and which is personally observed, or is
discovered, by means of our senses (including the faculty of empathy).

A descriptor differs from an ideation, category, or abstraction, in that a descriptor describes what-is as 'it' is observed,
according to its physis (its nature) whereas an abstraction, for example, denotes what is presumed/assumed/idealized,
past or present or future. A descriptor relies on, is derived from, describes, individual knowing and individual
judgement; an abstraction relies on something abstract, impersonal, such as some opinion/knowing/judgement of
others or some assumptions, theory, or hypothesis made by others.

An example of a descriptor is the term 'violent' [using physical force sufficient to cause bodily harm or injury to a
person or persons] to describe the observed behaviour of an individual. Another example would be the term 'extremist'
to describe - to denote - a person who treats or who has been observed to treat others harshly/violently in pursuit of
some supra-personal objective of a political or of a religious nature.

δίκη

Depending on context, δίκη could be the judgement of an individual (or Judgement personified), or the natural and the
necessary balance, or the correct/customary/ancestral way, or what is expected due to custom, or what is considered
correct and natural, and so on.

A personified Judgement - the Δίκην of Hesiod - is the goddess of the natural balance, evident in the ancestral
customs, the ways, the way of life, the ethos, of a community, whose judgement, δίκη, is "in accord with", has the
nature or the character of, what tends to restore such balance after some deed or deeds by an individual or individuals
have upset or disrupted that balance. This sense of δίκη as one's ancestral customs is evident, for example, in Homer
(Odyssey, III, 244).

In the philosophy of pathei-mathos, the term Δίκα - spelt thus in a modern way with a capital Δ - is sometimes used to
intimate a new, a particular and numinous, philosophical principle, and differentiate Δίκα from the more general δίκη.
As a numinous principle, or axiom, Δίκα thus suggests what lies beyond and what was the genesis of δίκη personified
as the goddess, Judgement – the goddess of natural balance, of the ancestral way and ancestral customs.

Empathy

Etymologically, this fairly recent English word, used to translate the German Einfühlung, derives, via the late Latin
sympathia, from the Greek συμπάθεια - συμπαθής - and is thus formed from the prefix σύν (sym) together with παθ-
[root of πάθος] meaning enduring/suffering, feeling: πάσχειν, to endure/suffer.

As used and defined by the philosophy of pathei-mathos, empathy - ἐμπάθεια - is a natural human faculty: that is, a
noble intuition about (a revealing of) another human being or another living being. When empathy is developed and
used, as envisaged by that way of life, then it is a specific and extended type of συμπάθεια. That is, it is a type of and a
means to knowing and understanding another human being and/or other living beings - and thus differs in nature from
compassion.

Empathic knowing is different from, but supplementary and complimentary to, that knowing which may be acquired by
means of the Aristotelian essentials of conventional philosophy and experimental science.

Empathy reveals or can reveal the nature, the ontology (the physis) - sans abstractions/ideations/words - of Being, of
beings, and of Time. This revealing is of the the a-causal nature of Being, and of how beings have their genesis in the
separation-of-otherness; and thus how we human beings are but causal, mortal, fallible, microcosmic emanations of
ψυχή.

Enantiodromia

The unusual compound Greek word ἐναντιοδρομίας occurs in a summary of the philosophy of Heraclitus by Diogenes
Laërtius.

Enantiodromia is the term used, in the philosophy of pathei-mathos, to describe the revealing, the process, of
perceiving, feeling, knowing, beyond causal appearance and the separation-of-otherness, and thus when what has
become separated – or has been incorrectly perceived as separated – returns to the wholeness, the unity, from whence
it came forth. When, that is, beings are understood in their correct relation to Being, beyond the causal abstraction of
different/conflicting ideated opposites, and when as a result, a reformation of the individual, occurs. A relation, an
appreciation of the numinous, that empathy and pathei-mathos provide, and which relation and which appreciation the
accumulated pathei-mathos of individuals over millennia have made us aware of or tried to inform us or teach us
about.

An important and a necessary part of enantiodromia involves a discovery, a knowing, an acceptance, and - as prelude -
an interior balancing within individuals, of what has hitherto been perceived and designated as the apparent opposites
described by terms (descriptors) such as 'muliebral' and 'masculous'.

The balance attained by - which is - enantiodromia is that of simply feeling, accepting, discovering, the empathic, the
human, the personal, scale of things and thus understanding our own fallibility-of-knowing, our limitations as a human
being

ἔρις

Strife; discord; disruption; a quarrel between friends or kin. As in the Odyssey:

ἥ τ᾽ ἔριν Ἀτρεΐδῃσι μετ᾽ ἀμφοτέροισιν ἔθηκε.

Who placed strife between those two sons of Atreus

Odyssey, 3, 136

According to the recounted tales of Greek mythology attributed to Aesop, ἔρις was caused by, or was a consequence
of, the marriage between a personified πόλεμος (as the δαίμων of kindred strife) and a personified ὕβρις (as the
δαίμων of arrogant pride) with Polemos rather forlornly following Hubris around rather than vice versa. Eris is thus the
child of Polemos and Hubris.

Extremism

By extreme is meant to be harsh, so that an extremist is a person who tends toward harshness, or who is harsh, or who
supports/incites harshness, in pursuit of some objective, usually of a political or a religious nature. Here, harsh is:
rough, severe, a tendency to be unfeeling, unempathic.

Hence extremism is considered to be: (a) the result of such harshness, and (b) the principles, the causes, the
characteristics, that promote, incite, or describe the harsh action of extremists. In addition, a fanatic is considered to
be someone with a surfeit of zeal or whose enthusiasm for some objective, or for some cause, is intemperate.

In the terms of the philosophy/way of pathei-mathos, an extremist is someone who commits the error of hubris; and
error which enantiodromia - following from πάθει μάθος - can sometimes correct or forestall. The genesis of extremism
- be such extremism personal, or described as political or religious - is when the separation-of-otherness is used as a
means of personal and collective identity and pride, with some 'others' - or 'the others' - assigned to a category
considered less worthy than the category we assign ourselves and 'our kind/type' to.

Extremist ideologies manifest an unbalanced, an excessive, masculous nature.

εὐταξία

The quality, the virtue, of self-restraint, of a balanced, well-mannered conduct especially under adversity or duress, of
which Cicero wrote:

Haec autem scientia continentur ea, quam Graeci εὐταξίαν nominant, non hanc, quam interpretamur
modestiam, quo in verbo modus inest, sed illa est εὐταξία, in qua intellegitur ordinis conservatio

Those two qualities are evident in that way described by the Greeks as εὐταξίαν although what is meant by εὐταξία is not what we
mean by the moderation of the moderate, but rather what we consider is restrained behaviour... [My translation]

De Officiis, Liber Primus, 142

Honour

The English word honour dates from around 1200 CE, deriving from the Latin honorem (meaning refined, grace, beauty)
via the Old French (and thence Anglo-Norman) onor/onur. As used by The Way of Pathei-Mathos, honour means an
instinct for and an adherence to what is fair, dignified, and valourous. An honourable person is thus someone of
manners, fairness, natural dignity, and valour.

In respect of early usage of the term, two quotes may be of interest. The first, from c. 1393 CE, is taken from a poem, in
Middle English, by John Gower:

And riht in such a maner wise

Sche bad thei scholde hire don servise,
So that Achilles underfongeth
 As to a yong ladi belongeth
Honour, servise and reverence.

John Gower, Confessio Amantis. Liber Quintus vv. 2997-3001 [Macaulay, G.C., ed. The Works of John Gower. Oxford: Clarendon
Press. 1901]

The second is from several centuries later:

" Honour - as something distinct from mere probity, and which supposes in gentlemen a stronger abhorrence
of perfidy, falsehood, or cowardice, and a more elevated and delicate sense of the dignity of virtue, than are
usually found in vulgar minds."

George Lyttelton. History of the Life of Henry the Second. London, Printed for J. Dodsley. M DCC LXXV II [1777] (A new ed., cor.) vol
3, p.178

In the philosophy of pathei-mathos, the personal virtue of honour is considered to be a presencing, a grounding, an
expression, of ψυχή - of Life, of our φύσις - occurring when the insight (the knowing) of a developed empathy inclines
us toward a compassion that is, of necessity, balanced by σωφρονεῖν and in accord with δίκη. That is, as a means to
live, to behave, as empathy intimates we can or should in order to avoid committing the folly, the error, of ὕβρις, in
order not to cause suffering, and in order to re-present, to acquire, ἁρμονίη.

Humility

Humility is used, in a spiritual context, to refer to that gentleness, that modest demeanour, that understanding, which
derives from an appreciation of the numinous and also from one's own admitted uncertainty of knowing and one's
acknowledgement of past mistakes. An uncertainty of knowing, an acknowledgement of mistakes, that often derive
from πάθει μάθος.

Humility is thus the natural human balance that offsets the unbalance of hubris (ὕβρις) - the balance that offsets the
unbalance of pride and arrogance, and the balance that offsets the unbalance of that certainty of knowing which is one
basis for extremism, for extremist beliefs, for fanaticism and intolerance. That is, humility is a manifestation of the
natural balance of Life; a restoration of ἁρμονίη, of δίκη, of σωφρονεῖν - of those qualities and virtues - that hubris and
extremism, that ἔρις and πόλεμος, undermine, distance us from, and replace.

Ideation

To posit or to construct an ideated form - an assumed perfect (ideal) form or category or abstraction - of some-thing,
based on the belief or the assumption that what is observed by the senses, or revealed by observation, is either an
'imperfect copy' or an approximation of that thing, which the additional assumption that such an ideated form contains
or in some way expresses (or can express) 'the essence' or 'the ethos' of that thing and of similar things.

Ideation also implies that the ideated form is or can be or should be contrasted with what it considered or assumed to
be its 'opposite'.

Immediacy-of-the-Moment

The term the 'immediacy-of-the-moment' describes both (i) the nature and the extent of the acausal knowing that
empathy and pathei-mathos provide, and (ii) the nature and extent of the morality of the philosophy of pathei-mathos.

Empathy, for example, being a natural and an individual faculty, is limited in range and application, just as our
faculties of sight and hearing are limited in range and application. These limits extend to only what is direct,
immediate, and involve personal interactions with other humans or with other living beings. There is therefore, for the
philosophy of pathei-mathos, an 'empathic scale of things' and an acceptance of our limitations of personal knowing
and personal understanding. An acceptance of (i) the unwisdom, the hubris, of arrogantly making assumptions about
who and what are beyond the range of our empathy and outside of our personal experience/beyond the scope of our
pathei-mathos.

Morality, for the philosophy of pathei-mathos, is a result of individuals using the faculty of empathy; a consequence of
the insight and the understanding (the acausal knowing) that empathy provides for individuals in the immediacy-of-
the-moment. Thus, morality is considered to reside not in some abstract theory or some moralistic schemata presented
in some written text which individuals have to accept and try and conform or aspire to, but rather in personal virtues -
such as such as compassion and fairness, and εὐταξία - that arise or which can arise naturally through empathy, πάθει
μάθος, and thus from an awareness and appreciation of the numinous.

Innocence

Innocence is regarded as an attribute of those who, being personally unknown to us, are therefore unjudged us by and
who thus are given the benefit of the doubt. For this presumption of innocence of others – until direct personal
experience, and individual and empathic knowing of them, prove otherwise – is the fair, the reasoned, the numinous,
the human, thing to do.

Empathy and πάθει μάθος incline us toward treating other human beings as we ourselves would wish to be treated;
that is they incline us toward fairness, toward self-restraint, toward being well-mannered, and toward an appreciation
and understanding of innocence.

Masculous

Masculous is a term, a descriptor, used to refer to certain traits, abilities, and qualities that are conventionally and
historically associated with men, such as competitiveness, aggression, a certain harshness, the desire to
organize/control, and a desire for adventure and/or for conflict/war/violence/competition over and above personal love
and culture. Extremist ideologies manifest an unbalanced, an excessive, masculous nature.

Masculous is from the Latin masculus and occurs, for example, in some seventeenth century works such as one by
William Struther: "This is not only the language of Canaan, but also the masculous Schiboleth." True Happines, or, King
Davids Choice: Begunne In Sermons, And Now Digested Into A Treatise. Edinbvrgh, 1633

Muliebral

The term muliebral derives from the classical Latin word muliebris, and in the context the philosophy of Pathei-Mathos
refers to those positive traits, abilities, and qualities that are conventionally and historically associated with women,
such as empathy, sensitivity, gentleness, compassion, and a desire to love and be loved over and above a desire for
conflict/adventure/war.

Numinous

The numinous is what manifests or can manifest or remind us of (what can reveal) the natural balance of ψυχή; a
balance which ὕβρις upsets. This natural balance - our being as human beings - is or can be manifest to us in or by
what is harmonious, or what reminds us of what is harmonious and beautiful. In a practical way, it is what predisposes
us not to commit ὕβρις, and thus what we regard or come to appreciate as 'sacred' and dignified; what expresses our
developed humanity and thus places us, as individuals, in our correct relation to ψυχή, and which relation is that we are
but one mortal emanation of ψυχή.

Pathei-Mathos

The Greek term πάθει μάθος derives from The Agamemnon of Aeschylus (written c. 458 BCE), and can be interpreted,
or translated, as meaning learning from adversary, or wisdom arises from (personal) suffering; or personal experience
is the genesis of true learning.

When understood in its Aeschylean context, it implies that for we human beings pathei-mathos possesses a numinous,
a living, authority. That is, the understanding that arises from one's own personal experience - from formative
experiences that involve some hardship, some grief, some personal suffering - is often or could be more valuable to us
(more alive, more relevant, more meaningful) than any doctrine, than any religious faith, than any words/advice one
might hear from someone else or read in some book.

Thus, pathei-mathos, like empathy, offers we human beings a certain conscious understanding, a knowing; and, when
combined, pathei-mathos and empathy are or can be a guide to wisdom, to a particular conscious knowledge
concerning our own nature (our physis), our relation to Nature, and our relation to other human beings, leading to an
appreciation of the numinous and an appreciation of virtues such as humility and εὐταξία.

Politics

By the term politics is meant both of the following, according to context. (i) The theory and practice of governance,
with governance itself founded on two fundamental assumptions; that of some minority - a government (elected or
unelected), some military authority, some oligarchy, some ruling elite, some tyrannos, or some leader - having or
assuming authority (and thus power and influence) over others, and with that authority being exercised over a specific
geographic area or territory. (ii) The activities of those individuals or groups whose aim or whose intent is to obtain and
exercise some authority or some control over - or to influence - a society or sections of a society by means which are
organized and directed toward changing/reforming that society or sections of a society in accordance with a particular
ideology.

Πόλεμος

Heraclitus fragment 80

Πόλεμος is not some abstract 'war' or strife or kampf, but rather that which is or becomes the genesis of beings from
Being (the separation of beings from Being), and thus not only that which manifests as δίκη but also accompanies
ἔρις because it is the nature of Πόλεμος that beings, born because of and by ἔρις, can be returned to Being, become
bound together - be whole - again by enantiodromia.

According to the recounted tales of Greek mythology attributed to Aesop, ἔρις was caused by, or was a consequence
of, the marriage between a personified πόλεμος (as the δαίμων of kindred strife) and a personified ὕβρις (as the
δαίμων of arrogant pride) with Polemos rather forlornly following Hubris around rather than vice versa. Thus Eris is the
child of Polemos and Hubris.

Furthermore, Polemos was originally the δαίμων (not the god) of kindred strife, whether familial, of friends, or of one’s
πόλις (one’s clan and their places of dwelling). Thus, to describe Polemos, as is sometimes done, as the god of war, is
doubly incorrect.

Physis (φύσις)

The term physis - φύσις - was used by Heraclitus, Aristotle, and others, and occurs in texts such as the Pœmandres and
Ιερός Λόγος tractates of the Corpus Hermeticum.

Physis is usually translated as either 'Nature' (as if 'the natural world', and the physical cosmos beyond, are meant) or
as the character (the nature) of a person. However, while the context - of the original Greek text - may suggest (as
often, for example, in Homer and Herodotus) such a meaning as such English words impute, physis philosophically (as,
for example, in Heraclitus and Aristotle and the Corpus Hermeticum) has specific ontological meanings. Meanings
which are lost, or glossed over, when physis is simply translated either as 'Nature' or - in terms of mortals - as
(personal) character.

Ontologically, as Aristotle makes clear [1], physis denotes the being of those beings who or which have the potentiality
(the being) to change, be changed, or to develope. That is, to become, or to move or be moved; as for example in the
motion (of 'things') and the 'natural unfolding' or growth, sans an external cause, that living beings demonstrate.

However, and crucially, physis is not - for human beings - some abstract 'essence' (qv. Plato's ἰδέᾳ/εἶδος) but rather a
balance between the being that it is, it was, and potentially might yet be. That is, in Aristotelian terms, it is a meson -
μέσον - of being and 'not being'; and 'not being' in the sense of not yet having become what it could be, and not now
being what it used to be. Hence why, for Aristotle, a manifestation of physis - in terms of the being of mortals - such as
arête (ἀρετή) is a meson, a balance of things, and not, as it is for Plato, some fixed 'form' - some idea, ideal - which as
Plato wrote "always exists, and has no genesis. It does not die, does not grow, does not decay." [2]

[1] Refer to the Appendix: Notes on Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 5, 1015α

[2] πρῶτον μὲν ἀεὶ ὂν καὶ οὔτε γιγνόμενον οὔτε ἀπολλύμενον οὔτε αὐξανόμενον οὔτε φθίνον (Symposium 210e - 211a)

Religion

By religion is meant organized worship, devotion, and faith, where there is: (i) a belief in some deity/deities, or in some
supreme Being or in some supra-personal power who/which can reward or punish the individual, and (ii) a distinction
made between the realm of the sacred/the-gods/God/the-revered and the realm of the ordinary or the human.

The term organized here implies an established institution, body or group - or a plurality of these - who or which has at
least to some degree codified the faith and/or the acts of worship and devotion, and which is accepted as having some
authority or has established some authority among the adherents. This codification can relate to accepting as
authoritative certain writings and/or a certain book or books.

Separation-of-Otherness

The separation-of-otherness is a term used to describe the implied or assumed causal separateness of living beings, a
part of which is the distinction we make (instinctive or otherwise) between our self and the others. Another part is
assigning our self, and the-others, to (or describing them and us by) some category/categories, and to which
category/categories we ascribe (or to which category/categories has/have been ascribed) certain qualities or
attributes.

Given that a part of such ascription/denoting is an assumption or assumptions of worth/value/difference and of

inclusion/exclusion, the separation-of-otherness is the genesis of hubris; causes and perpetuates conflict and suffering;
and is a path away from ἁρμονίη, δίκη, and thus from wisdom.

The separation-of-otherness conceals the nature of Beings and beings; a nature which empathy and pathei-mathos can
reveal.

Society

By the term society is meant a collection of people who live in a specific geographic area or areas and whose
association or interaction is mostly determined by a shared set of guidelines or principles or beliefs, irrespective of
whether these are written or unwritten, and irrespective of whether such guidelines/principles/beliefs are willingly
accepted or accepted on the basis of acquiescence. These shared guidelines or principles or beliefs often tend to form
an ethos and a culture and become the basis for what is considered moral (and good) and thence become the
inspiration for laws and/or constitutions.

As used here, the term refers to 'modern societies' (especially those of the modern West).

σωφρονεῖν

I use σωφρονεῖν (sophronein) in preference to σωφροσύνη (sophrosyne) since sophrosyne has acquired an English
interpretation – "soundness of mind, moderation" – which in my view distorts the meaning of the original Greek. As
with my use of the term πάθει μάθος (pathei-mathos) I use σωφρονεῖν in an Anglicized manner with there thus being
no necessity to employ inflective forms.
State

By the term The State is meant:

The concept of both (1) organizing and controlling – over a particular and large geographical area – land (and
resources); and (2) organizing and controlling individuals over that same geographical particular and large
geographical area by: (a) the use of physical force or the threat of force and/or by influencing or persuading or
manipulating a sufficient number of people to accept some leader/clique/minority/representatives as the legitimate
authority; (b) by means of the central administration and centralization of resources (especially fiscal and military);
and (c) by the mandatory taxation of personal income.

The Good

For the philosophy of Pathei-Mathos, 'the good' is considered to be what is fair; what alleviates or does not cause
suffering; what is compassionate; what is honourable; what is reasoned and balanced. This knowing of the good arises
from the (currently underused and undeveloped) natural human faculty of empathy, and which empathic knowing is
different from, supplementary and complimentary to, that knowing which may be acquired by means of the Aristotelian
essentials of conventional philosophy and experimental science.

Time

In the philosophy of pathei-mathos, Time is considered to be an expression of the nature - the φύσις - of beings, and
thus, for living beings, is a variable emanation of ψυχή, differing from being to being, and representing how that living
being can change (is a fluxion) or may change or has changed, which such change (such fluxions) being a-causal.

Time - as conventionally understood and as measured/represented by a terran-calendar with durations marked days,
weeks, and years - is therefore regarded as an abstraction, and an abstraction which tends to conceal the nature of
living beings.

ὕβρις

ὕβρις (hubris) is the error of personal insolence, of going beyond the proper limits set by: (a) reasoned (balanced)
judgement – σωφρονεῖν – and by (b) an awareness, a personal knowing, of the numinous, and which knowing of the
numinous can arise from empathy and πάθει μάθος.

Hubris upsets the natural balance – is contrary to ἁρμονίη [harmony] – and often results from a person or persons
striving for or clinging to some causal abstraction.

According to The Way of Pathei-Mathos, ὕβρις disrupts - and conceals - our appreciation of what is numinous and thus
of what/whom we should respect, classically understood as ψυχή and θεοί and Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες
and δαιμόνων and those sacred places guarded or watched over by δαιμόνων.

Way

The philosophy of pathei-mathos makes a distinction between a religion and a spiritual Way of Life. One of the
differences being that a religion requires and manifests a codified ritual and doctrine and a certain expectation of
conformity in terms of doctrine and ritual, as well as a certain organization beyond the local community level resulting
in particular individuals assuming or being appointed to positions of authority in matters relating to that religion. In
contrast, Ways are more diverse and more an expression of a spiritual ethos, of a customary, and often localized, way
of doing certain spiritual things, with there generally being little or no organization beyond the community level and no
individuals assuming - or being appointed by some organization - to positions of authority in matters relating to that
ethos.

Religions thus tend to develope an organized regulatory and supra-local hierarchy which oversees and appoints those,
such as priests or religious teachers, regarded as proficient in spiritual matters and in matters of doctrine and ritual,
whereas adherents of Ways tend to locally and informally and communally, and out of respect and a personal knowing,
accept certain individuals as having a detailed knowledge and an understanding of the ethos and the practices of that
Way.

Many spiritual Ways have evolved into religions.

Wisdom

Wisdom is both the ability of reasoned - a balanced - judgement, σωφρονεῖν, a discernment; and a particular conscious
knowledge concerning our own nature, and our relation to Nature, to other life and other human beings: rerum
divinarum et humanarum. Part of this knowledge is of how we human beings are often balanced between honour and
dishonour; balanced between ὕβρις and ἀρετή; between our animalistic desires, our passions, and our human ability to
be noble, to morally develope ourselves; a balance manifest in our known ability to be able to control, to restrain,
ourselves, and thus find and follow a middle way, of ἁρμονίη.
Wu-wei

Wu-wei is a Taoist term used in The Way of Pathei-Mathos/The Numinous Way to refer to a personal 'letting-be' deriving
from a feeling, a knowing, that an essential part of wisdom is cultivation of an interior personal balance and which
cultivation requires acceptance that one must work with, or employ, things according to their nature, their φύσις, for to
do otherwise is incorrect, and inclines us toward, or is, being excessive – that is, toward the error, the unbalance, that
is hubris, an error often manifest in personal arrogance, excessive personal pride, and insolence - that is, a disrespect
for the numinous.

In practice, the knowledge, the understanding, the intuition, the insight that is wu-wei is a knowledge, an
understanding, that can be acquired from empathy, πάθει μάθος, and by a knowing of and an appreciation of the
numinous. This knowledge and understanding is of wholeness, and that life, things/beings, change, flow, exist, in
certain natural ways which we human beings cannot change however hard we might try; that such a hardness of
human trying, a belief in such hardness, is unwise, un-natural, upsets the natural balance and can cause
misfortune/suffering for us and/or for others, now or in the future. Thus success lies in discovering the inner nature (the
physis) of things/beings/ourselves and gently, naturally, slowly, working with this inner nature, not striving against it.

ψυχή

Life qua being. Our being as a living existent is considered an emanation of ψυχή. Thus ψυχή is what 'animates' us and
what gives us our nature, φύσις, as human beings. Our nature is that of a mortal fallible being veering between
σωφρονεῖν (thoughtful reasoning, and thus fairness) and ὕβρις.

Appendix

Notes on Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 5, 1015α

Text

ἐκ δὴ τῶν εἰρημένων ἡ πρώτη φύσις καὶ κυρίως λεγομένη ἐστὶν ἡ οὐσία ἡ τῶν ἐχόντων ἀρχὴν κινήσεως ἐν αὑτοῖς ᾗ
αὐτά: ἡ γὰρ ὕλη τῷ ταύτης δεκτικὴ εἶναι λέγεται φύσις, καὶ αἱ γενέσεις καὶ τὸ φύεσθαι τῷ ἀπὸ ταύτης εἶναι κινήσεις.
καὶ ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως τῶν φύσει ὄντων αὕτη ἐστίν, ἐνυπάρχουσά πως ἢ δυνάμει ἢ ἐντελεχείᾳ.

Translation

Given the foregoing, then principally - and to be exact - physis denotes the quidditas of beings having changement
inherent within them; for substantia has been denoted by physis because it embodies this, as have the becoming that
is a coming-into-being, and a burgeoning, because they are changements predicated on it. For physis is inherent
changement either manifesting the potentiality of a being or as what a being, complete of itself, is.

Commentary And Notes

physis. φύσις. A transliteration, since (i) this is a fundamental philosophical principle/term that requires contextual
interpretation, and (ii) the English words 'nature' and Nature not only do not adequately describe this principle but also
lead to and have led to certain misunderstandings of Aristotle in particular and of classical Greek culture in general.

quidditas. οὐσία. Quidditas - post-classical Latin, from whence the English word 'quiddity' - is more appropriate here
than 'essence', given the metaphysical (ontological) context and given that 'essence' now has so many non-
philosophical connotations. An interesting alternative would be the scholastic term haeceitty. As with physis, quidditas
is a philosophical term which requires contextual interpretation.

changement inherent. The expression ἀρχὴν κινήσεως is crucial to understanding what Aristotle means in respect of
physis. In regard to κίνησις, since Aristotle here does not mean 'motion' or 'movement' in the sense of Newtonian
physics (with its causal concepts of force, mass, velocity, kinetic energy), and since such physical movement is what
the English words 'motion' and 'movement' now most usually denote, then alternatives must be found. Hence the
translation 'changement'.

For what Aristotle is describing here is 'change', as for example in the natural development, the unfolding, the growth,
of some-thing living that occurs because it is living; because it is possessed of Life and which Life is the ἀρχή of the
changement, the 'original being' (the φύσις) from whence being-becomes to be often perceived and classified by us in
orderly ways.

What is described is an a-causal change, of being-becoming - of being unfolding - and thus fulfilling the potentiality of
being within it. Hence why here Aristotle writes ἀρχὴν κινήσεως, which describes the potential changement inherent
in certain beings. 1 That is, the a-causal origin of beings-becoming, or having become, and which beings (having
changed, developed, unfolded) we then perceive and classify in orderly ways 2, such as by shape or usefulness to us,
or by a notion such as causality: in terms of physical- 'movement'. Which is why, in Aristotle, there is a relation
between φύσις, μορφή, and εἶδος - εἶδος in the sense of 'perceiveration' and not, as in Plato, denoting an abstract
'form' or an 'ideal' - διὸ καὶ ὅσα φύσει ἔστιν ἢ γίγνεται, ἤδη ὑπάρχοντος ἐξ οὗ πέφυκε γίγνεσθαι ἢ εἶναι, οὔπω φαμὲν
τὴν φύσιν ἔχειν ἐὰν μὴ ἔχῃ τὸ εἶδος καὶ τὴν μορφήν.
Thus φύσις is what is a-causal in beings and which acausality is the origin of the 'natural' order that unfolds because of
the potentiality of being to become, to presence in the causal, whence to be perceived by us in various orderly
arrangements and/or arranged in terms of usefulness, and which arrangements/usefulness include τὸ καλόν - and thus
schemata, τάξις 3 - and ἀρετή.

substantia. ὕλη. I have chosen to use the etymon of the English word 'substance' - qv. substantia in Thomas Aquinas,
Sententia libri Metaphysicae - to again (i) emphasize the need for contextual interpretation in respect of a specific
philosophical term, and (ii) to avoid whatever misunderstandings may arise from the modern (non-ontological)
connotations of words such as 'matter' and 'substance'.

as have the becoming that is a coming-into-being, and a burgeoning, because they are changements predicated on it.
καὶ αἱ γενέσεις καὶ τὸ φύεσθαι τῷ ἀπὸ ταύτης εἶναι κινήσεις. The sense of γένεσις here implies a 'coming-into-being'
rather than just 'generation', just as φύω implies a being 'burgeoning' - unfolding, revealing itself (its physis) - rather
than just 'growing'.

the potentiality of a being or as what a being, complete of itself, is. The Greek word ἐντελεχείᾳ is compounded from ἐν
ελει ἔχει and the sense here - in relation to ἐνυπάρχουσά - seems to be twofold: of a being as an unchanged being, and
of what a being has become (or is becoming) as a result of a change, for both types of being actually exist, are real.
One exists as a being as it is and has remained, and one exists as the being it has become (or is in the process of
becoming) through the potential for changement inherent within it. Thus, for Aristotle, physis denotes the being of both
types of being.

°°°

[1] In respect of ἀρχὴ as implying what is primarily inherent, qv. 1012b-1013a.

[2] As Thomas Aquinas wrote: "Sciendum est autem, quod principium et causa licet sint idem subiecto, differunt tamen
ratione. Nam hoc nomen principium ordinem quemdam importat; hoc vero nomen causa, importat influxum quemdam
ad esse causati." Sententia libri Metaphysicae, liber 5, lectio 1, n 3.

[3] Regarding 1078a, τοῦ δὲ καλοῦ μέγιστα εἴδη τάξις καὶ συμμετρία καὶ τὸ ὡρισμένον (the most noticeable
expressions of kalos are schemata and harmony and consonancy), my view - given the context - is that τάξις here is
best translated as "schemata", rather than "order" or "arrangement" both of which are vague, open to mis-
interpretation, and unrelated to the context, which context is mathematical beauty. Similarly, ὁρίζω (to me) suggests
consonancy, echoing as that (now somewhat obscure) English word does both by its use by, among others,
Shakespeare (Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2, 286) and also by its relation to the almost 'mathematical beauty' of some music
(as evident for example in the counterpoint of JS Bach).

Furthermore, just because the Greek has συμμετρία it does not necessarily follow that the English word 'symmetry' is
an appropriate translation, considering how the word symmetry is now used and has been used, in the West for many
centuries, and especially in relation to art (in terms, for example, of objects and the human body).

Given that Aristotle in 1078a is referring to geometry in particular and mathematics in general, then an appropriate
translation is 'harmony' - as in "a collation of representative signs or marks, so arranged that they exhibit their
agreement and account for their discrepancies or errors." A harmony, in other words, that is most evident (as I
mentioned in my essay) in Euclid's Elements, as schemata and consonancy are therein evident, most of the contents
(theorems) of which book - deriving from people such as Pythagoras - were known to Aristotle.

Thus, a translation such as "the chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness" can in my opinion
lead to projecting onto Aristotle what he may not necessarily have meant; and projecting onto in respect of how we
now, over two thousand years after Aristotle, understand and use such common English terms. Hence, also, why I
sometimes use obscure English words (which may suggest a relevant meaning) or transliterations (as in physis).

David Myatt
March 2015

Bibliography

§ The Numinous Way Of Pathei-Mathos, Seventh Edition, 2022, https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2022/10

/numinous-way-pathei-mathos-v7.pdf

Prefatory Note.
1 Conspectus.
2 The Way of Pathei-Mathos – A Philosophical Compendium.
3 Some Personal Musings On Empathy.
4 Enantiodromia and The Reformation of The Individual.
5 Society, Politics, Social Reform, and Pathei-Mathos.
6 The Change of Enantiodromia.
7 The Abstraction of Change as Opposites and Dialectic.
Appendix I – The Principle of Dika.
Appendix II – From Mythoi To Empathy: A New Appreciation Of The Numinous.
Appendix III – Towards Understanding Ancestral Culture.
Appendix IV – The Concept of Physis.
Appendix V – Notes on Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 5, 1015α.
 Appendix VI – Notes on Heraclitus Fragment 1.
Appendix VII – Glossary of Terms and Greek Words.
Footnotes.

§ Corpus Hermeticum: Eight Tractates, 2017. (i) Printed version, ISBN-13: 978-1976452369 (ii) Gratis pdf,
https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2023/08/eight-tractates-v2-print.pdf

§ Classical Paganism And The Christian Ethos, 2017, https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/classical-

paganism-v2-print.pdf

§ Tu Es Diaboli Ianua: Christianity, The Johannine Weltanschauung, And Presencing The Numinous, 2017,
https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/tua-es-diaboli-ianua.pdf

§ Denotata, Empathy, And The Hermetic Tradition, 2022, https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/dwm-

denotata-empathy-v1b.pdf

§ The Mystic Philosophy Of David Myatt, Third Edition, 2021, https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2021/08/myatt-

philosophy-third-edition.pdf

I. A Modern Mystic: David Myatt And The Way of Pathei-Mathos.

II. A Modern Pagan Philosophy.
III. Honour In The Philosophy Of Pathei-Mathos.
IV. An Overview of The Philosophy of Pathei-Mathos
Part One: Anti-Racism, Extremism, Honour, and Culture.
Part Two: Humility, Empathy, and Pathei-Mathos.
Appendix. A Note On Greek Terms In The Philosophy Of Pathei-Mathos.

All translations by David Myatt

cc David Myatt 2023
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 4.0 license
 Notes On War, Suffering, And Personal Judgement

Since around 2011 one recurrent theme of my writings has been the question of war and suffering, with the early
writings, such as War and Violence in the Philosophy of The Numinous Way 1 and A Slowful Learning, Perhaps 2
concentrating on my 'numinous way' of pathei-mathos, 3 and later ones, such as The Way Of Jesus of Nazareth: A
Question Of Hermeneutics? 4 and the 2018 Persecution And War, 5 in addition considering a particular Christian view
expressed in 1682 by William Penn in Some Fruits of Solitude: "Let us then try what love can do." 6

Texts which were helpful regarding this question of war and suffering included the 1759 essay Thoughts on the Nature
of War, And Its Repugnancy To The Christian Life by Anthony Benezet, 7 William Penn's Essay Towards The Present And
Future Peace of Europe 1693, 8 Discourses on War by William Ellery Channing, 9 and various reports by the American
Congressional Research Service (CRS) such as their 2007 Declarations of War and Authorizations for the Use of Military
Force: Historical Background and Legal Implications, the 2007 Private Security Contractors in Iraq: Background, Legal
Status, and Other Issues, and the 2006 The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since
9/11.

Supra-Personal Authority

In my 2024 essay Reflections On Conflict And Suffering 10 the vexatious question of a recent, and as of the date of
writing ongoing, armed conflict was considered in a philosophical context of denotata and in particular in regard to the
manufactured category named 'the nation-State' 11 which by its nature involves:

"principles similar to those of the Ancient Roman Leges Regiae – qv. the Jus Papirianum attributed to Sextus
Papirius – where someone or some many possess or have acquired (through for example force of arms) or
have assumed authority over others, and who by the use of violence and/or by the threat of punishment
and/or by oratory or propaganda, are able to force or persuade others to accept such authority and obey the
commands of such authority.

This acceptance by individuals of a supra-personal authority – or, more often, the demand by some supra-
personal authority that individuals accept such a supra-personal authority – was manifest in the Christian
writings of Augustine (b.354 CE, d.430 CE), such as his De Civitate Dei contra Paganos where in Book XIX,
chapter xiii, he wrote of the necessity of a hierarchy in which God is the supreme authority, with peace
between human beings and God requiring obedience to that authority; with peace between human beings,
and civil peace, also of necessity requiring obedience to an order in which each person has their allotted
place, Ordo est parium dispariumque rerum sua cuique loca tribuens dispositio." 5

Most modern Western nation-States, which nation-States now dominate our lives, have simply replaced kings,
emperors, potentates and oligarchs, with Prime Ministers, Presidents, and by what are described as "representatives of
the people", and in regard to the violence and the threat of punishment, domestic and foreign, former brute honesty
has been replaced by rhetoric and propaganda, political and social, about 'law and order', about 'national defence and
security' and 'in the national/public interest'. But the demand, often unstated, that individuals should or must accept
some supra-personal authority remains as does the threat or the use of violence or punishment, against dissenting
individuals, by officials appointed and approved by such supra-personal authorities. That is, that individuals must or
are expected to forsake their own judgement, their conscience, and rely instead on the judgement of Prime
Ministers/Presidents, 'representatives of the people', government ministers and officials, with – as it was for the Roman
kings and Caesars – the individual required to obey the laws and decrees they manufacture and which laws and
decrees such modern types regard, or claim to regard, as necessary, 'just', and moral with declared enemies, domestic
and foreign, often said to be 'evil' or a threat to 'our' way of life, our nation, or our society. As often in former times
there thus is a hierarchy of judgement involved, whatever political 'flavour' a modern government is assigned to, is
assumed to represent, or claims it represents.

In practice, therefore, the personal suffering, domestic and foreign, that modern nation-States cause or have caused
not only continues the periodical pain, trauma, injury, grief, and death inflicted on individuals over the past four
thousand years or more, but increased the multitudes affected as evident for instance in the West (i) by the First and
Second World wars with their millions upon millions upon millions of causalities and dead and the associated
destruction inflicted nationally and supra-nationally, and (ii) by the poverty, despair, homelessness, robbery, theft,
murder, and violent offences against the person, which still exist in so many Western societies.

Even religions such as Christianity, with its millions of adherents past and present which has been claimed by many of
its adherents to be the way of peace and equality, 12 have not prevented such wide-spread and continuing suffering.
Primarily, according to my understanding, 13 because such religions derive from and depend upon a written text or
texts which invite indeed depend upon exegesis and thence on the interpretation or exposition of one particular
individual or on a collective, often hierarchical, exposition codified in a particular doctrine.

Examples being (i) a vernacular interpretation of meaning of the Christian Gospels and/or of the Christian Bible and (ii)
a particular doctrine derived from a particular interpretation of some or parts of those texts, either in the vernacular or
in their original language, by a particular individual or by a group, both of which can result and has resulted in schisms,
such as the Nestorians, the Lollards, and the Protestant reformation, and thence to accusations of heresy and even of
blasphemy by a particular and established religious hierarchy or by some authority who or which claim to rule 'in the
name of or by the grace of God'.
Empathy And Pathei-Mathos As A Guide

It is my contention that the wordless knowing which personal empathy provides or can provide together with the
wordless knowing arising from a personal pathei-mathos is a moral alternative to the abrogation of personal judgement
and of personal conscience required by a nation-State and by established religions in the particular matters of war and
the violence involved in supra-personal conflicts where there is an assumed 'us' and a 'them'.

A moral alternative because there is a personal, individual, horizon to both empathy and pathei-mathos so that what is
beyond this horizon is something we rationally, we humbly, we morally, accept we do not yet know and have not
personally experienced and so cannot judge or form a reasonable, a fair, a balanced, opinion about. For empathy and
pathei-mathos live within us manifesting the always limited nature, the horizon, of our own knowledge and
understanding. That it is a failure to appreciate and understand this which continues the periodical pain, trauma,
injury, grief, and death inflicted on individuals.

Basically, this is

"an alternative way that compliments and is respectful of other answers, other choices, and of other ways of
dealing with issues such as the suffering that afflicts others, the harm that humans do so often inflict and
have for so long inflicted upon others.

The personal non-judgemental way, of presumption of innocence and of wu-wei, balanced by, if required, a
personal valourous, an honourable, intervention in a personal situation in the immediacy of the moment.
There is, in this alternative, no guidance required; and no-thing - such as an afterlife, or enlightenment, or
liberty or happiness - to be attained. No need for dogma or too many words; no need for comparisons; no
'just cause' to excuse our behaviour. No mechanisms and no techniques to enable us to progress toward
some-thing because there is no need or requirement to progress toward what is not there to be attained.
There is only a personal living in such a way that we try to be compassionate, empathic, loving, honourable,
kind, tolerant, gentle, and humble. And this is essentially the wisdom, the insight, the way of living - sans
denotatum - that thousands upon thousands of people over millennia have contributed to the culture of
pathei-mathos, as well as the essence of the message which many if not all spiritual ways and religions, in
their genesis, perhaps saught to reveal: the message of the health of love and of our need, as fallible beings
often inclined toward the unbalance of hubris, for humility." 14

As it says in Matthew 5 v.7:

μακάριοι οἱ ἐλεήμονες, ὅτι αὐτοὶ ἐλεηθήσονται

"Fortunate, the compassionate, for they shall receive compassion." 15

As it says in the Rule of Saint Benedict:

"The peak of our endeavour is to achieve profound humility…" Chapter 7, The Value of Humility

As it says in the Quran:

"The 'Ibaad of Ar-Rahman [Allah] are those who walk on earth in humility." 25:63

As it says in the Dhammapada:

Yo bâlo maññati bâlyaè paúóitovâpi tena so bâlo ca paúóitamânî sa ve bâloti vuccati.

"Accepting of themselves, the simple person in their simplicity is wise, [although] if they pride themselves
they are wise, they are simply full of pride."

Which interpretations of mine, in English, of the original texts return us to the question of exegesis, and to empathy
and pathei-mathos and why I personally find in them a more reliable, because wordless, guide to wisdom understood
as an appreciation of, and of our relation to, the other mortal beings, Hominid and otherwise, with which we share this
planet, and of our relation to Being itself: that is, to The Numinous, The Acausal, The One-The-Only (τὸ ἓν), the Monas
(μονάς) and The-Unity.

The numinous is θειότης, divinity-presenced, as in tractate XI v. 11 of the Corpus Hermeticum, θειότητα μίαν, and as
in Plutarch, De Pythiae Oraculis, 407a, 398a-f. The numinous is essentially what is, or what manifests or can manifest
or remind us of (what can reveal) that which is felt, experienced, or understood as sacred, numinal, sublime, divine,
awe-inspiring, beautiful, and beyond our ability, as mortals, to control or meaningfully express through the medium of
words. For Christians, it is considered to be God; for Muslims, Allah; for the Romans, divinitas; for others ancient and
modern, it was and is considered to be expressible, or intimated, by mythoi and presenced in ὁ θεὸς, the deity, and/or
by θεοί, the gods.

David Myatt
June 2024
 ΞΞΞ

1. Included in War, Persecution, and Violence, https://archive.org/download/war-violence-davidmyatt/war-violence-

dwmyatt.pdf

2. https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/dwm-slowful-learning.pdf

3. qv. The Numinous Way of Pathei-Mathos, https://perceiverations.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10

/numinous-way-pathei-mathos-v7.pdf

4. Included in Selected Essays And Effusions, https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/essays-

and-effusions.pdf

5. Included in War, Persecution, and Violence, ttps://archive.org/download/war-violence-davidmyatt/war-violence-

dwmyatt.pdf

6. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t5r78692x&seq=9

7. http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/library/benezet_thanksgiving.pdf

8. http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/library/penn.pdf

9. http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/library/channing.pdf

10. Reflections On Conflict And Suffering, https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/conflict-and-

suffering-dwmyatt.pdf

11. By the term the State/nation-State is here meant the concept of both (i) organizing and controlling – over a
particular and large geographical area – land (and resources); and (ii) organizing and controlling individuals over that
same geographical particular and large geographical area by: (a) the use of physical force or the threat of force and/or
by influencing or persuading or manipulating a sufficient number of people to accept some leader/clique/minority
/representatives as the legitimate authority; (b) by means of the central administration and centralization of resources
(especially fiscal and military); and (c) by the mandatory taxation of personal income.

12. "If the Christian, however, recollects himself, he will find war to be a sad consequence of the apostasy and fall of
man; when he was abandoned to the fury of his own lusts and passions, as the natural and penal effect of breaking
loose from the Divine Government, the fundamental law of which is Love: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength; and thy Fellow-Creature, as thyself." Thoughts on
the Nature of War, And Its Repugnancy To The Christian Life, Anthony Benezet, 1759, http://www.fredsakademiet.dk
/library/benezet_thanksgiving.pdf

13. qv. (i) Exegesis and Translation: Some Personal Reflexions, https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads
/2013/04/exegesis-and-translation-partsone-two.pdf (ii) Questions Of Hermeneutics And Exegesis,
https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/questions-hermeneutics.pdf (iii) The Way Of Jesus of
Nazareth: A Question Of Hermeneutics, included in Selected Essays And Effusions, https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com
/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/essays-and-effusions.pdf (iv) Questions of Good, Evil, Honour, and God in Religion,
Empathy, and Pathei-Mathos, https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/religion-and-empathy.pdf (v) Numinosity,
Denotata, Empathy, And The Hermetic Tradition, https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/dwm-
denotata-empathy-v1b.pdf

14. Religion, Empathy, and Pathei-Mathos, https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/religion-and-empathy.pdf

In regard to some terms and expressions used in that quotation:

innocence. Innocence is regarded as an attribute of those who, being personally unknown to us and beyond the purvue
of our empathy, are therefore unjudged us by and who thus are given the benefit of the doubt. For this presumption of
innocence of others – until direct personal experience, and individual and empathic knowing of them, prove otherwise –
is the fair, the reasoned, thing to do.

wu-wei. The cultivation of an inner balance arising from an appreciation of the natural change (the flux) of living beings
and how it is unbalanced, and harsh, of us to interfere in ways which conflict with the natural character of such beings
and with that natural change. Part of this appreciation is of the numinous; another is of our own limits and limitations
because we ourselves are only a small part of such natural change, an aspect of which is Nature; and which
appreciation of the numinous and of our limits incline us toward a certain humility. Regarding 'the numinous', qv. the
end of the Empathy And Pathei-Mathos As A Guide section:

The numinous is θειότης, divinity-presenced, as in tractate XI v. 11 of the Corpus Hermeticum, θειότητα μίαν, and as in Plutarch, De
Pythiae Oraculis, 407a, 398a-f. The numinous is essentially what is, or what manifests or can manifest or remind us of (what can
reveal) that which is felt, experienced, or understood as sacred, numinal, sublime, divine, awe-inspiring, beautiful, and beyond our
ability, as mortals, to control or meaningfully express through the medium of words. For Christians, it is considered to be God; for
 Muslims, Allah; for the Romans, divinitas; for others ancient and modern, it was and is considered to be expressible, or intimated, by
mythoi and presenced in ὁ θεὸς, the deity, and/or by θεοί, the gods.

a personal valourous, an honourable, intervention. That is, an honourable self-defence. For it is, in my experience, part
of our reasoned, fair, just, human nature to defend ourselves when attacked and (in the immediacy of the personal
moment) to valorously, with chivalry, act in defence of someone or others close-by who are unfairly attacked or
dishonourably threatened or being bullied by others, and to thus employ, if our personal judgement of the
circumstances deem it necessary, force sufficient to cause injury or injuries to the attacker or attackers.

15. The Beatitudes, https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/the-beatitudes-v1.pdf

Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 4.0 license

 Reflections On Conflict And Suffering

Preamble

Since the publication of my short 2023 essay Weltschmerz And The Conflict In Gaza 1 a philosophical question I have
once again considered is the nature of resistance, retaliation, and armed conflict, given the number of civilian,
Palestinian, deaths, resulting from the use, by the professional military forces of one State-entity of modern and
advanced weaponry, supplied by other State-entities, against what the government of that State-entity, and their
allies, have declared to be an armed terrorist group albeit one that is quite small and poorly-armed in comparison to
the attacking professional military forces.

Since an analytical consideration of this question of necessity involves a lengthy often abstruse digression about
aspects of my weltanschauung of pathei-mathos, some may regard this essay as replete with "inscrutably dense
arguments" although and hopefully a few others will see such a framing as placing such a recent conflict into a
necessary and wider perspective and thus far beyond politics and religiosity.

David Myatt
May 30th 2024

ΞΞΞ

Three Related Issues

According to my weltanschauung (or way) of pathei-mathos 2 the matter resolves into three related issues: (i) the
question of suffering and what empathy and our human culture of pathei-mathos 3 inform us about suffering; (ii) the
temporal nature of all human manufactured abstractions; and (iii) the question of authority.

In regard to authority, individual empathy and a personal pathei-mathos inlines us to consider authority as personal
because they not only engender a certain humility, a knowing or awareness of our past errors and mistakes and thus of
our fallibility, but also because both have a 'local horizon' so that what is

"beyond our personal empathic knowing of others, beyond our knowledge and our experience [our pathei-
mathos], beyond the limited (local) range of our empathy and that personal (local) knowledge of ourselves
which pathei-mathos reveals – is something we rationally, we humbly, accept we do not know and so cannot
judge or form a reasonable, a fair, a balanced, opinion about. For empathy, like pathei-mathos, lives within
us; manifesting, as both empathy and pathei-mathos do, the always limited nature, the horizon, of our own
knowledge and understanding." 4

"In practical terms this means trying to cultivate within ourselves the virtues mentioned by Cicero – self-
restraint, dignity, fairness, honesty – and implies we have no concern for or we seek to cultivate no concern
for supra-personal hierarchies and supra-personal authority – whether political, religious, or otherwise – and
thus move away from, try to distance ourselves from, the consequences of such supra-personal hierarchies
and supra-personal authority manifest as the consequences are and have been, throughout our history, in
war, prejudice, intolerance, unfairness, extremism, and persecution in the name of some ideology, some
religion, or because someone has commanded us to persecute those that they and others have declared are
'our' enemies, and which war and persecutions are often, especially in modern times, accompanied by
propaganda and lies." 5

In regard to suffering, the understanding is from what is individually known or intuited to be 'good' (honourable) and
what is individually known or intuited to be 'bad' (dishonourable) both of which knowing and intuition result from
empathy, from a personal pathei-mathos, and/or from a study or the culture of pathei-mathos; 6 with this knowing and
intuition extending to all biological life on our planet be such life hominid or otherwise.

"For empathy enables us to directly perceive, to sense, the φύσις (the physis) of human beings and other
living beings, involving as empathy does a translocation of ourselves and thus a knowing-of another living-
being as that living-being is, without presumptions and sans all ideations, all projections, all assumed or
believed categories or categorizations. For empathy involves a numinous sympathy with another living-
being; a becoming – for a causal moment or moments – of that other-being, so that we know, can feel, can
understand, the suffering or the joy of that living-being. In such moments, there is no distinction made
between them and us – there is only the flow of life; only the presencing and the ultimate unity of Life, of
ψυχή, with our individuals self understood as just one fallible, fragile, microcosmic, mortal emanation of Life,
and which emanation can affect other life in a good way or a bad way. In addition, empathy and pathei-
mathos, provide us with the understanding that we human beings have the ability - the character - (or can
develope the ability, the character) to understand and to restrain ourselves, to decide to do what is good and
not do what is wrong. This ability of reason, this choice, and this ability to develope our character, are the
genesis of culture and express our natural potential as human beings.

The numinous sympathy - συμπάθεια (sympatheia, benignity) - with another living being that empathy
 provides naturally inclines us to treat other living beings as we ourselves would wish to be treated: with
fairness, compassion, honour, and dignity. It also inclines us not to judge those whom we do not know; those
beyond the purveu - beyond the range of - our faculty of empathy." 7

In regard to the temporal nature of all human manufactured abstractions, this understanding results from both our
personal pathei-mathos, and the culture of pathei-mathos, which provides us with a supra-personal, 'cosmic
perspective', of for example not only nations, Empires, war, conquest, revolutions, invasions but also of every idea
ἰδέᾳ/εἶδος) and all -isms and -ologies. For every human manufactured construct, such as a nation-State, not only has a
limited life-span but is also subject to change, to revisions, to ameliorations, reformation, and re-interpretation. Thus,
in the example of a nation-State, the boundaries may change though war or invasion or conquest, as the peoples
within the entity change though emigration and immigration and assimilation, and as the authority or authorities
governing or ruling the entity can and do change over decades and centuries sometimes through internal revolution or
invasion. A pertinent example being England before and after the Roman conquest, after the arrival of the Vikings and
then after the Norman conquest followed centuries later by civil war and culminating in the immigration that occurred
after the Second World War and which is continuing.

In regard to every idea (ἰδέᾳ/εἶδος) and all -isms and -ologies, their change is inherent in the reality of them being
dependent on denotatum or denotata which are by their physis the genesis of an opposite and hence of the resulting
dialectic, of opposition. As I mentioned in Numinosity, Denotata, Empathy, And The Hermetic Tradition, 8

[begin quotation]

the nature of - the causality inherent in - denotata results in eris [ἔρις], a discord of opposites: for every
denotatum has or developes an opposite and thus can cleave physis, as Heraclitus poetically and somewhat
enigmatically expressed:

τοῦ δὲ λόγου τοῦδ᾽ ἐόντος ἀεὶ ἀξύνετοι γίνονται ἄνθρωποι καὶ πρόσθεν ἢ ἀκοῦσαι καὶ ἀκούσαντες
τὸ πρῶτον· γινομένων γὰρ πάντων κατὰ τὸν λόγον τόνδε ἀπείροισιν ἐοίκασι, πειρώμενοι καὶ
ἐπέων καὶ ἔργων τοιούτων, ὁκοίων ἐγὼ διηγεῦμαι κατὰ φύσιν διαιρέων ἕκαστον καὶ φράζων ὅκως
ἔχει· τοὺς δὲ ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους λανθάνει ὁκόσα ἐγερθέντες ποιοῦσιν, ὅκωσπερ ὁκόσα εὕδοντες
ἐπιλανθάνονται. (a)

Although this naming and expression [which I explain] exists, human beings tend to ignore it, both
before and after they have become aware of it. Yet even though, regarding such naming and
expression, I have revealed details of how Physis has been cleaved asunder, some human beings
are inexperienced concerning it, fumbling about with words and deeds, just as other human beings,
be they interested or just forgetful, are unaware of what they have done. (b)

εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ τὸν πόλεμον ἐόντα ξυνόν, καὶ δίκην ἔριν, καὶ γινόμενα πάντα κατ ́ ἔριν καὶ
χρεώμενα <χρεών> (c)

One should be aware that Polemos pervades, with discord δίκη, and that beings are naturally born
bydiscord. (d)

Notes:

(a) Fragment 1, Diels-Krantz.

(b) A short commentary on my translation is available at https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/heraclitus-
fragment-1/
(c) Fragment B80.
(d) I have transliterated πόλεμος, and left δίκη as δίκη because both πόλεμος and δίκη should be regarded,
like ψυχή (psyche/Psyche) as terms or as principles in their own right (hence the capitalization), and thus
imply, suggest, and require, interpretation and explanation. To render them blandly by English terms such as
'war' and 'justice' – which have their own now particular meaning(s) – is in my view erroneous and somewhat
lackadaisical, since δίκη for instance could be, depending on context: the custom(s) of a folk, judgement (or
Judgement personified), the natural and the necessary balance, the correct/customary/ancestral way, and so
on.[

[end quotation]

Discord And Denotata

The notion of discord so being born by denotata sundering physis is also and perhaps better expressed by
Anaximander who like Heraclitus has been much misunderstood. As I noted in Anaximander, Imbalance, And
Opposites, 9

[begin quotation]

ἀρχὴ <...> τῶν ὄντων τὸ ἄπειρον <...>

ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι τοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τὴν φθορὰν εἰς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι κατὰ τὸ χρεών· διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ
δίκην καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν [Theophrastus/Simplicius]
 My interpretation of meaning:

< [the] source ... of beings is the un-definitive a ...>

Where beings have their origin there also they cease to exist: offering payment b to balance, c one
to another, their unbalance for such is the arrangement of what is passing. d

Notes:

a. Because the beginning is fragmentary it is difficult to provide a satisfactory explanation of what is meant,
although many explanations have been suggested over many centuries including the speculation that
'apeiron' is the first principle, the ἀρχὴ, of beings, with ἄπειρον almost invariably translated by words such as
the boundless, infinity, the limit-less.

However, ἄπειρον is a privation of πεῖραρ, a lack of completion; a lack of a verdict; or, often overlooked, a
lack of a means, a method, an instrument, to reach a particular conclusion or of a tool do a particular task,
qv. Odyssey: 3.431-435, and my translation:

ὣς ἔφαθ᾽, οἱ δ᾽ ἄρα πάντες ἐποίπνυον. ἦλθε μὲν ἂρ βοῦς

ἐκ πεδίου, ἦλθον δὲ θοῆς παρὰ νηὸς ἐίσης
Τηλεμάχου ἕταροι μεγαλήτορος, ἦλθε δὲ χαλκεὺς
ὅπλ᾽ ἐν χερσὶν ἔχων χαλκήια, πείρατα τέχνης,
ἄκμονά τε σφῦραν τ᾽ ἐυποίητόν τε πυράγρην,
οἷσίν τε χρυσὸν εἰργάξετο

Such were his words, and all of his sons occupied themselves with those things
So that an ox arrived from the fields; the comrades of the vigourous Telemachus
Arrived from their well-balanced ship; the goldsmith arrived bearing in his arms
Those bronze tools with which he accomplished his art:
A hammer, anvil and well-made fire-tongs
Which he used to work gold.

Hence my suggestion here that what Anaximander might have implied is that the source of beings is 'un-
definitive', incapable of resolution because we do not posses the tools, such as words, to resolve it. Which
explains why he goes on to contrast δίκη with ἀδικία, which balance and unbalance I explain below.

b. Payment as in a debt owed or because of some personal need or mistake, as in our relatively recent
phrase 'debt of honour'. The debt may be to a person or persons or as in ancient times to a deity either in
expiation or in the hope of avoiding a misfortune wrought by some deity, for example by the "Trimorphed
Moirai with their ever-heedful Furies" of the gods, Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες.

The suggestion therefore might be that the offer of payment relates to those who, despite the fact that
source of beings is 'un-definitive', having tried to define it and in the process constructed a dialectic of
opposites, and thus brought conflict, realize their error. As Heraclitus noted:

εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ τὸν πόλεμον ἐόντα ξυνόν, καὶ δίκην ἔριν, καὶ γινόμενα πάντα κατ΄ ἔριν καὶ
χρεώμενα [χρεών]

One should be aware that Polemos pervades, with discord δίκη, and that beings are naturally born
by discord.

c. In respect of δίκη it here simply implies balance in contrast to the unbalance, the privation of balance, that
is ἀδικία. The translations 'order' or justice or 'fitting' - like 'disorder' or injustice or 'unfitting' for ἀδικία - are
too redolent of some modern or ancient morality designed to manifest 'order' or justice or what is considered
fitting in contrast to their assumed dialectical opposites.

d. In respect of χρόνος, it is not here a modern abstract measurable 'time' (in ancient times by a sundial; in
later times by a mechanical clock) but 'the passing' of living or of events as evident in the Agamemnon:

ποίου χρόνου δὲ καὶ πεπόρθηται πόλις 278

Then - how long has it been since the citadel was ravaged?

τίς δὲ πλὴν θεῶν ἅπαντ᾽ ἀπήμων τὸν δι᾽ αἰῶνος χρόνον 554-5

Who - except for the gods - passes their entire life without any injury at all?

[end quotation]

Appellation, Abstractions, And Empathy

The meaning of the appellations inherent in causal abstraction can and does change over periods causal time through
common usage 10 and through the changes of interpretation (exegesis) wrought through political ideology, social
change, and religious dogma and reforms. The interpretation of an appellation, a denotatum, in another language can
also vary or distort the original meaning, a classic example being Hellenistic Greek words, occurring the Corpus
Hermeticum, such as λόγος and νοῦς conventionally interpreted as 'word' and 'intellect/mind' neither of which
interpretations are satisfactory. 11

What is important about all this is that empathy and pathei-mathos are directly personal and wordless perceiverations
and experiences and therefore are not dependant on denotata, on any ἰδέᾳ/εἶδος, and by the nature of empathy and
pathei-mathos cannot be extrapolated beyond such a personal experiencing. That is, they are mystical in the sense of
being contemplative in providing not only a personal apprehension of the numinous but an awareness which
transcends the temporal and the denotata used and which have been used to describe Reality understood as in
tractate III:1 of the Corpus Hermeticum:

Δόξα πάντων ὁ θεὸς καὶ θεῖον καὶ φύσις θεία. ἀρχὴ τῶν ὄντων ὁ θεός, καὶ νοῦς καὶ φύσις καὶ ὕλη, σοφία εἰς
δεῖξιν ἁπάντων ὤν

The numen of all beings is The Theos: numinal, and of numinal physis. The origin of what exists is The Theos,
who is Perceiveration and Physis and Substance: the sapientia which is a revealing of all beings. 12

In respect of which I incline toward the view that The Theos (ὁ θεὸς) of this and several other tractates of the Corpus
Hermeticum is not equivalent to the God of the Christian tradition and that to render both ὁ θεὸς and θεὸς of such
tractates by the term God (a patriarchal male) is a mistake, especially as verse 9 of the Poemandres tractate states
'the theos' is both male-and-female:

ὁ δὲ Νοῦς ὁ θεός, ἀρρενόθηλυς ὤν, ζωὴ καὶ φῶς ὑπάρχων, ἀπεκύησε λόγωι ἕτερον Νοῦν δημιουργόν, ὃς
θεὸς τοῦ πυρὸς καὶ πνεύματος ὤν, ἐδημιούργησε διοικητάς τινας ἑπτά, ἐν κύκλοις περιέχοντας τὸν
αἰσθητὸν κόσμον, καὶ ἡ διοίκησις αὐτῶν εἱμαρμένη καλεῖται.

The Theos, the perceiveration, male-and-female [ἀρρενόθηλυς] being Life and phaos, whose logos brought
forth another perceiveration, an artisan, who - the theos of Fire and pnuema - fashioned seven viziers to
surround the perceptible cosmic order in spheres and whose administration is described as fate.

Which recalls the dispute voiced by the Alexandrian Christian priest Arius (born c.250, died 336 AD) regarding the
theological difference, for instance in the Gospel of John, between ὁ θεὸς and θεὸς with the disputants who said there
was a difference being denounced as heretics by the Church authorities of the time.

In The Real World

The societies of today are dependant on causal abstractions just as many ancient societies were, with abstractions
used to classify individuals and judge individuals. Thus in ancient Greece and Rome slavery was accepted by perhaps
a majority in a community, as well as considered by the ruling elite as natural and necessary, with human beings
assigned to or included in the category 'slave' a commodity who could be traded with slaves regarded as necessary to
the functioning of society. Over centuries, with the evolution of religions such as Christianity and with the development
in Western societies of humanist weltanschauungen, the moral values of this particular abstraction, this particular
category to which certain human beings were assigned, changed such that for perhaps a majority slavery gradually
came to be regarded as morally repugnant. Similarly in respect of the abstraction designated in modern times by such
terms as "the rôle of women in society" which rôle for millennia in the West was defined according to various criteria
mostly deriving from a ruling and an accepted patriarchy but which rôle in the past century in Western societies has
gradually been redefined.

We have continued to manufacture causal abstractions and continue to assign individuals to them, as in the
abstraction denoted by the term nation-State and which abstraction, with its government, its supra-personal authority,
its laws, its economy, its perceived or declared enemies often in the form of another nation-State, and its
inclusion/exclusion (citizenship or lack of it) has come to dominate and influence the life of the majority of people in
the West.

In the real world, abstractions conceal our connexion to Being and to other living beings so that instead of using
wordless empathy and pathei-mathos as a guide to Reality and to living we tend to define ourselves or are defined by
others according to an abstraction or according to various abstractions, all of which are defined and/or explained by
denotata and thus open to interpretation, involve a dialectic of opposites and all of which lead to or will lead to over
durations of causal time to ἔρις, to discord. According to the recounted tales of Greek mythology attributed to Aesop,
ἔρις was caused by, or was a consequence of, the marriage between a personified πόλεμος (as the δαίμων of kindred
strife) and a personified ὕβρις (as the δαίμων of arrogant pride) with Polemos following Hubris around rather than vice
versa, with Eris thus considered the child of Polemos and Hubris. 13

In the matter of the abstraction that is the nation-State there is a tendency to define or to try to understand our
relation to Reality by for example whether we belong, are a citizen of a particular State; by whether or not we have an
acceptable standard of living because of the opportunities and employment and/or the assistance afforded by the
economy and the policies of the nation-State; by whether or not we agree or disagree with the policies of the
government in power, and often by whether or not we have accepted the social norms of the society or societies that
the State governs. Similarly, in the matter of belief in a revealed religion such as Christianity or Islam we tend to define
or understand our relation to Reality by means of such an abstraction: that is, according to the revelation (or a
particular interpretation of it) and its eschatology, and thus by how the promise of Heaven/Jannah may be personally
obtained.

A Philosophical Question Answered

The denotatum nation-State and the denotata of its - or of our - perceived or declared enemies often in the form of
another nation-State but sometimes and latterly in the form of some organized group, is an example of ἔρις already
existing or waiting to be presenced or agitated for often by propaganda.

Which is and was the case with the current conflict in Gaza. There is, as our human culture of pathei-mathos reveals,
an 'us' and a 'them'; we, the vengeful or we the righteous representing what is 'good', and there are 'the others' who
have wronged or harmed us or transgressed against us usually in some heinous way and who we often regard as 'evil'.
There is or there will be killing, destruction, civilian casualties, suffering, and often an invasion, until the enemy has
been declared defeated or has been subjugated.

In regard to armed resistance to an occupying power the same criteria apply for it is empathy and a personal pathei-
mathos or a learning from our human culture of pathei-mathos that betake us as individuals away from this recurrent
suffering-causing dialectic -which in our modern times is often manifest in political and ideological dogma or as in the
conflict in Gaza underlying and seemingly opposed religious views - toward compassion, wu-wei, 14, and thus to what
was described in the Poemandres tractate of the Corpus Hermeticum as the renunciations involved in an ἄνοδος, the
journey toward personal wisdom:

καὶ οὕτως ὁρμᾶι λοιπὸν ἄνω διὰ τῆς ἁρμονίας, καὶ τῆι πρώτηι ζώνηι δίδωσι τὴν αὐξητικὴν ἐνέργειαν καὶ
τὴν μειωτικήν, καὶ τῆι δευτέραι τὴν μηχανὴν τῶν κακῶν, δόλον ἀνενέργητον, καὶ τῆι τρίτηι τὴν
ἐπιθυμητικὴν ἀπάτην ἀνενέργητον, καὶ τῆι τετάρτηι τὴν ἀρχοντικὴν προφανίαν ἀπλεονέκτητον, καὶ τῆι
πέμπτηι τὸ θράσος τὸ ἀνόσιον καὶ τῆς τόλμης τὴν προπέτειαν, καὶ τῆι ἕκτηι τὰς ἀφορμὰς τὰς κακὰς τοῦ
πλούτου ἀνενεργήτους, καὶ τῆι ἑβδόμηι ζώνηι τὸ ἐνεδρεῦον ψεῦδος.

Thus does the mortal hasten through the harmonious structure, offering up, in the first realm, that vigour
which grows and which fades, and - in the second one - those dishonourable machinations, no longer
functioning. In the third, that eagerness which deceives, no longer functioning; in the fourth, the arrogance of
command, no longer insatiable; in the fifth, profane insolence and reckless haste; in the sixth, the bad
inclinations occasioned by riches, no longer functioning; and in the seventh realm, the lies that lie in wait. 15

As described in tractate XIII,

ἕτοιμος ἐγενόμην καὶ ἀπηλλοτρίωσα τὸ ἐν ἐμοὶ φρόνημα ἀπὸ τῆς τοῦ κόσμου ἀπάτης

Thus I prepared myself, distancing my ethos from the treachery in the world 16

This is indeed mystical in the sense of being contemplative and perhaps in withdrawing internally or externally from
society, alone, with a partner, or with one's family. It is possibly, at the very least, a modern manifestation of The
Beatitudes 17 and to personally act and to live with an awareness and appreciation of the numinous and thus with self-
restraint, dignity, fairness, honesty and avoidance of hubris.

ΞΞΞ

Notes

1. https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/dwm-gaza.pdf

2. The Numinous Way Of Pathei-Mathos, seventh edition, 2022. https://perceiverations.wordpress.com/wp-content

/uploads/2022/10/numinous-way-pathei-mathos-v7.pdf

The axioms of the Way are given in Appendix One.

3. The human culture of pathei-mathos is the accumulated pathei-mathos of individuals, world-wide, over thousands of
years, as (i) described in memoirs, aural stories, and historical accounts; as (ii) have inspired particular works of
literature or poetry or drama; as (iii) expressed via non-verbal mediums such as music and Art, and as (iv) manifest in
more recent times by certain newer art-forms including certain films and documentaries. This culture recounts the
suffering and the beauty and the killing and the hubris and the love and the compassion that we mortals have
presenced and caused over millennia.

4. Personal Reflexions On Some Metaphysical Questions, 2015. https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads

/2015/03/dwm-some-metaphysical-questions-v5b.pdf

5. Persecution And War, 2018. https://archive.org/download/persecution-and-war/Persecution_And_War.pdf

6. In regard to 'good' and 'bad' as honour and dishonour, qv. Good and Evil - The Perspective of Pathei-Mathos in
Religion, Empathy, and Pathei-Mathos, https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/religion-and-empathy.pdf
7. Morality, Virtues, and Way of Life in The Numinous Way Of Pathei-Mathos, op.cit.

8. Numinosity, Denotata, Empathy, And The Hermetic Tradition, included in Hermetica And Alchemy,
https://perceiverations.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/hermetica-alchemy-dwmyatt.pdf

9. Inclued in Hermetica And Alchemy, https://perceiverations.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/hermetica-

alchemy-dwmyatt.pdf

10. An obvious modern example is the English word 'gay' which originally, of persons, meant "disposed to joy and
mirth; merry", or as in the Provençal phrase "gai saber" which referred to the art of poetry and was assimilated into
English as "the gay science".

11. In regard to νοῦς as 'mind',

This conventional interpretation is in my view incorrect, being another example of not only retrospective
reinterpretation but of using a word which has acquired, over the past thousand years or more, certain
meanings which detract from an understanding of the original text. Retrospective reinterpretation because
the assumption is that what is being described is an axiomatic, reasoned, philosophy centred on ideations
such as Thought, Mind, and Logos, rather than what it is: an attempt to describe, in fallible words, a personal
intuition about our existence, our human nature, and which intuition is said to emanate from a supernatural
being named Pœmandres.

In addition, one should ask what does a translation such as 'I am Poimandres, mind of sovereignty' [vide
Copenhaver] actually mean? That there is a disembodied 'mind' which calls itself Pœmandres? That this
disembodied 'mind' is also some gargantuan supernatural shapeshifting being possessed of the faculty of
human speech? That some-thing called 'sovereignty' has a mind? I incline toward the view that the sense of
the word νοῦς here, as often in classical literature, is perceiverance; that is, a particular type of astute
awareness, as of one's surroundings, of one's self, and as in understanding ('reading') a situation often in an
instinctive way. Thus, what is not meant is some-thing termed 'mind' (or some faculty thereof), distinguished
as this abstract 'thing' termed 'mind' has often been from another entity termed 'the body'.

Perceiverance thus describes the ability to sense, to perceive, when something may be amiss; and hence
also of the Greek word implying resolve, purpose, because one had decided on a particular course of action,
or because one's awareness of a situation impels or directs one to a particular course of action. Hence why,
in the Oedipus Tyrannus, Sophocles has Creon voice his understanding of the incipient hubris of Oedipus, of
his pride without a purpose, of his apparent inability to understand, to correctly perceive, the situation:

εἴ τοι νομίζεις κτῆμα τὴν αὐθαδίαν

εἶναί τι τοῦ νοῦ χωρίς, οὐκ ὀρθῶς φρονεῖς.

If you believe that what is valuable is pride, by itself,

Without a purpose, then your judgement is not right.

vv. 549-550

Translating νοῦς as perceiverance/perceiveration thus places it into the correct context, given
αὐθεντίας - authority. For "I am Pœmandres, the perceiveration of authority" implies "What
[knowledge] I reveal (or am about to reveal) is authentic," so that an alternative translation, in
keeping with the hermeticism of the text, would be "I am Pœmandres, the authentic
perceiveration." [ The English word authentic means 'of authority, authoritative' and is derived, via
Latin, from the Greek αὐθεντία ]

Source:
Commentary on v.2 of the Poemandres tractate, Corpus Hermeticum: Eight Tractates, included in
Hermetica And Alchemy, https://perceiverations.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05
/hermetica-alchemy-dwmyatt.pdf

12.

(i) Δόξα πάντων ὁ θεὸς. The sense of δόξα here, especially given the following mention of θεῖος and φύσις, is of
immanence and of transcendent sublimity, and thus of what is considered to be - that is, is outwardly manifest as -
glorious; cf. Boethius: Unde non iniuria tragicus exclamat: ῏Ω δόξα, δόξα, μυρίοισι δὴ βροτῶν οὐδὲν γεγῶσι βίοτον
ὤγκωσας μέγαν (Book III, vi).

Hence my interpretation as 'numen', instead of the usual 'splendour' or 'glory' which do not, given their modern
connotations and common usage, express the original sense of the Greek.

(ii) By numinal - in this ἱερός λόγος - is meant divine not in the specific sense of a monotheistic and Biblical (and male)
God but in the more general sense of pertaining to a deity or deities, male or female, as in a paganus (and not
necessarily patriarchal) polytheism.
13. A δαίμων is not one of the pantheon of major Greek gods - θεοί - but rather a lesser type of divinity who might be
assigned by those gods to bring good fortune or misfortune to human beings and/or watch over certain human beings
and especially particular numinous (sacred) places. Furthermore, Polemos was originally the δαίμων of kindred strife,
whether familial, or of one's πόλις (one's folk and their places of dwelling). Thus, to describe Polemos, as is sometimes
done, as the god of conflict (or war), is doubly incorrect with the alternative being to transliterate it.

14. Wu-wei is a Taoist term used in the way of Pathei-Mathos to refer to a personal 'letting-be' deriving from a feeling, a
knowing, that an essential part of wisdom is cultivation of an interior personal balance and which cultivation requires
acceptance that one must work with, or employ, things according to their nature, their φύσις, for to do otherwise is
incorrect, and inclines us toward, or is, being excessive – that is, toward the error, the unbalance, that is hubris, an
error often manifest in personal arrogance, excessive personal pride, and insolence - that is, a disrespect for the
numinous.

15. Corpus Hermeticum: Eight Tractates, included in Hermetica And Alchemy, https://perceiverations.wordpress.com
/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/hermetica-alchemy-dwmyatt.pdf

16. From my commentary on that tractate:

separated from the world. In respect of ἀπαλλοτριόω what is implied is not 'alienated' from (which has too
many modern connotations) the world (κόσμος), but rather 'separate' - distanced - from the world, from
worldly things, as a mystic is often 'otherworldly' and may seem to be - to others, and to themselves - a
stranger in the world.

distancing my ethos. Reading ἀπηλλοτρίωσα (with Parthey, et al) not the emendation of Nock (ἀπηνδρείωσα)
with φρόνημα here suggestive of one's character and especially of one's "way of thinking", one's
weltanschauung: that is, the 'spirit' or ethos which guides one's way of life.

treachery. ἀπάτης. Personified in Hesiod's Theogony as a child of Night (Nὺξ) along with "darksome Kir and
Death" - Κῆρα μέλαιναν καὶ Θάνατον - and Nemesis, Νέμεσις.

Corpus Hermeticum: Eight Tractates, included in

Hermetica And Alchemy, https://perceiverations.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/hermetica-alchemy-dwmyatt.pdf

17. The Greek text, and my translation, are included in Appendix Three.

Appendix One

Axioms Of The Way Of Pathei-Mathos

i) That human beings possess a mostly latent perceptive faculty, the faculty of empathy - ἐμπάθεια - which when used,
or when developed and used, can provide us with a particular type of knowing, a particular type of knowledge, and
especially a certain knowledge concerning the φύσις (the physis, the nature or character) of human beings and other
living beings.

ii) This type of knowing, this perception, is different from and supplementary to that acquired by means of the
Aristotelian essentials of conventional philosophy and experimental science [1], and thus enables us to better
understand Phainómenon, ourselves, and other living beings.

iii) That because of or following πάθει μάθος there is or there can be a change in, a development of, the nature, the
character - the φύσις - of the person because of that revealing and that appreciation (or re-appreciation) of the
numinous whose genesis is this πάθει μάθος, and which appreciation of the numinous includes an awareness of why
ὕβρις is an error (often the error) of unbalance, of disrespect or ignorance (of the numinous), of a going beyond the
due limits, and which ὕβρις itself is the genesis both of the τύραννος [2] and of the modern error of extremism. For
the tyrannos and the modern extremist (and their extremisms) embody and give rise to and perpetuate ἔρις [3] and
thus are a cause of, or contribute to and aid, suffering.

iv) This change, this development of the individual, is or can be the result of enantiodromia [4] and reveals the nature
of, and restores in individuals, the natural balance necessary for ψυχή [5] to flourish - which natural balance is δίκη as
Δίκα [6] and which restoration of balance within the individual results in ἁρμονίη [7], manifest as ἁρμονίη (harmony) is
in the cultivation, in the individual, of wu-wei [8] and σωφρονεῖν (a fair and balanced personal, individual, judgement)
[9].

v) The development and use of empathy, the cultivation of wu-wei and σωφρονεῖν, are thus a means, a way, whereby
individuals can cease to cause suffering or cease to contribute to, or cease to aid, suffering.

vi) The reason as to why an individual might so seek to avoid causing suffering is the reason, the knowledge - the
appreciation of the numinous - that empathy and πάθει μάθος provide.
vii) This appreciation of the numinous inclines or can incline an individual to living in a certain way and which way of
life naturally inclines the individual toward developing, in a natural way - sans any methodology, praxis, theory,
dogma, or faith - certain attributes of character, and which attributes of character include compassion, self-restraint,
fairness, and a reasoned, a personal, judgement.

Footnotes

[1] The essentials which Aristotle enumerated are: (i) Reality (existence) exists independently of us and our
consciousness, and thus independent of our senses; (ii) our limited understanding of this independent 'external world'
depends for the most part upon our senses - that is, on what we can see, hear or touch; that is, on what we can
observe or come to know via our senses; (iii) logical argument, or reason, is perhaps the most important means to
knowledge and understanding of and about this 'external world'; (iv) the cosmos (existence) is, of itself, a reasoned
order subject to rational laws.

Experimental science seeks to explain the natural world – the phenomenal world – by means of direct, personal
observation of it, and by making deductions, and formulating hypothesis, based on such direct observation, with the
important and necessary proviso, expressed by Isaac Newton in his Principia, that

"We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their
appearance….. for Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes."

[2] The sense of τύραννος is not exactly what our fairly modern term tyrant is commonly regarded as imputing. Rather,
it refers to the intemperate person of excess who is so subsumed with some passion or some aim or a lust for power
that they go far beyond the due, the accepted, bounds of behaviour and thus exceed the limits of or misuse whatever
authority they have been entrusted with. Thus do they, by their excess, by their disrespect for the customs of their
ancestors, by their lack of reasoned, well-balanced, judgement [σωφρονεῖν] offend the gods, and thus, to restore the
balance, do the Ἐρινύες take revenge. For it is in the nature of the τύραννος that they forget, or they scorn, the truth,
the ancient wisdom, that their lives are subject to, guided by, Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες -

τίς οὖν ἀνάγκης ἐστὶν οἰακοστρόφος.

Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες

Who then compels to steer us?

Trimorphed Moirai with their ever-heedful Furies!

Aeschylus (attributed), Prometheus Bound, 515-6

[3] Heraclitus, fragment 80:

εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ τὸν πόλεμον ἐόντα ξυνόν, καὶ δίκην ἔριν, καὶ γινόμενα πάντα κατ΄ ἔριν καὶ χρεώμενα
[χρεών]

One should be aware that Polemos pervades, with discord δίκη, and that beings are naturally born by discord.

See Heraclitus - Some Translations and Notes. https://perceiverations.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/dwm-heraclitus-

translations-notes.pdf

In respect of the modern error of ὕβρις that is extremism, an error manifest in extremists, my understanding of an
extremist is a person who tends toward harshness, or who is harsh, or who supports/incites harshness, in pursuit of
some objective, usually of a political or a religious.

[4] See The Change of Enantiodromia, which is included here as Appendix Two.

[5] The meaning here of ψυχή is derived from the usage of Homer, Aeschylus, Aristotle, etcetera, and implies Life qua
being. Or, expressed another way, living beings are emanations of, and thus manifest, ψυχή. This sense of ψυχή is
beautifully expressed in a, in my view, rather mis-understood fragment attributed to Heraclitus:

ψυχῆισιν θάνατος ὕδωρ γενέσθαι, ὕδατι δὲ θάνατος γῆν γενέσθαι, ἐκ γῆς δὲ ὕδωρ γίνεται, ἐξ ὕδατος δὲ
ψυχή. Fragment 36

Where the water begins our living ends and where earth begins water ends, and yet earth nurtures water
and from that water, Life.

[6] In respect of the numinous principle of Δίκα, refer to The Principle of Δίκα.

[7] Although φύσις has a natural tendency to become covered up (Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ - concealment accompanies
Physis) it can be uncovered through λόγος and πάθει μάθος.

[8] Wu-wei is a Taoist term used in The Way of Pathei-Mathos to refer to a personal 'letting-be' deriving from a feeling,
a knowing, that an essential part of wisdom is cultivation of an interior personal balance and which cultivation requires
acceptance that one must work with, or employ, things according to their nature, their φύσις, for to do otherwise is
incorrect, and inclines us toward, or is, being excessive – that is, toward the error, the unbalance, that is hubris, an
error often manifest in personal arrogance, excessive personal pride, and insolence - that is, a disrespect for the
numinous.

In practice, the knowledge, the understanding, the intuition, the insight that is wu-wei is a knowledge, an
understanding, that can be acquired from empathy, πάθει μάθος, and by a knowing of and an appreciation of the
numinous. This knowledge and understanding is of wholeness and that life, things/beings, change, flow, exist, in
certain natural ways which we human beings cannot change however hard we might try; that such a hardness of
human trying, a belief in such hardness, is unwise, un-natural, upsets the natural balance and can cause
misfortune/suffering for us and/or for others, now or in the future. Thus success lies in discovering the inner nature (the
physis) of things/beings/ourselves and gently, naturally, slowly, working with this inner nature, not striving against it.

[9] Heraclitus, fragment 112:

σωφρονεῖν ἀρετὴ μεγίστη, καὶ σοφίη ἀληθέα λέγειν καὶ ποιεῖν κατὰ φύσιν ἐπαίοντας

Most excellent is balanced reasoning, for that skill can tell inner character from outer.

ΞΞΞ

Source:
https://perceiverations.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/numinous-way-pathei-mathos-v7.pdf

Appendix Two

The Change of Enantiodromia

The Meaning of Enantiodromia

The unusual compound Greek word ἐναντιοδρομίας occurs in a summary of the philosophy of Heraclitus by Diogenes
Laërtius:

πάντα δὲ γίνεσθαι καθ᾽ εἱμαρμένην καὶ διὰ τῆς ἐναντιοδρομίας ἡρμόσθαι τὰ ὄντα (ix. 7)

This unusual word is usually translated as something like 'conflict of opposites' or 'opposing forces' which I consider are
incorrect for several reasons.

Firstly, in my view, a transliteration should be used instead of some translation, for the Greek expression suggests
something unique, something which exists in its own right as a principle or 'thing' and which uniqueness of meaning
has a context, with both context and uniqueness lost if a bland translation is attempted. Lost, as the uniqueness, and
context, of for example, δαιμόνων becomes lost if simply translated as 'spirits' (or worse, as 'gods'), or as the meaning
of κακός in Hellenic culture is lost if mistranslated as 'evil'.

Second, the context seems to me to hint at something far more important than 'conflict of opposites', the context
being the interesting description of the philosophy of Heraclitus before and after the word occurs, as given by
Diogenes Laërtius:

1) ἐκ πυρὸς τὰ πάντα συνεστάναι

2) εἰς τοῦτο ἀναλύεσθαι

3) πάντα δὲ γίνεσθαι καθ᾽ εἱμαρμένην καὶ διὰ τῆς ἐναντιοδρομίας ἡρμόσθαι τὰ ὄντα

4) καὶ πάντα ψυχῶν εἶναι καὶ δαιμόνων πλήρη

The foundation/base/essence of all beings [ 'things' ] is pyros to which they return, with all [of them] by
genesis appropriately apportioned [separated into portions] to be bound together again by enantiodromia,
and all filled/suffused/vivified with/by ψυχή and Dæmons.

This raises several interesting questions, not least concerning ψυχή and δαιμόνων, but also regarding the sense of
πυρὸς. Is pyros here a philosophical principle - such as ψυχή - or used as in fragment 43, the source of which is also
Diogenes Laërtius:

ὕβριν χρὴ σβεννύναι μᾶλλον ἢ πυρκαϊὴν (ix 2)

Better to deal with your hubris before you confront that fire

Personally, I incline toward the former, of some principle being meant, given the context, and the generalization - ἐκ
πυρὸς τὰ πάντα. In respect of ψυχῶν καὶ δαιμόνων I would suggest that what is implied is the numinous, our
apprehension of The Numen, and which numen is the source of ψυχή and the origin of Dæmons. For a δαίμων is not
one of the pantheon of major Greek gods – θεοί - but another type of divinity (that is, another emanation of the
numen; another manifestation of the numinous) who might be assigned by those numinous gods to bring good fortune
or misfortune to human beings and/or who watch over certain human beings and especially over particular numinous
(sacred) places.

Thus the above summary of the philosophy of Heraclitus might be paraphrased as:

The foundation of all beings is Pyros to which they return, with all by genesis appropriately apportioned to be
bound together again by enantiodromia, with all beings suffused with [are emanations of] the numen.

Furthermore, hubris disrupts - and conceals - our appreciation of the numen, our appreciation of ψυχή and of Dæmons:
of what is numinous and what/whom we should respect. A disruption that makes us unbalanced, makes us disrespect
the numinous and that of the numinous (such as δαιμόνων and θεοί and sacred places), and which unbalance
enantiodromia can correct, with enantiodromia suggesting a confrontation - that expected dealing with our hubris
necessary in order to return to Pyros, the source of beings. Here, Pyros is understood not as we understand 'fire' - and
not even as some sort of basic physical element among other elements such as water - but rather as akin to both the
constant 'warmth and the light of the Sun' (that brings life) and the sudden lightning that, as from Zeus, can serve as
warning (omen) and retribution, and which can destroy and be a cause of devastating fire and thus also of the
regeneration/rebuilding that often follows from such fires and from the learning, the respect, that arises from
appreciating warnings (omens) from the gods. All of which perhaps explains fragment 64:

τὰ δὲ πάντα οἰακίζει Κεραυνός

All beings are guided by Lightning

Enantiodromia in the Philosophy of Pathei-Mathos

In the philosophy of pathei-mathos, enantiodromia is understood as the process - the natural change - that occurs or
which can occur in a human being because of or following πάθει μάθος. For part of πάθει μάθος is a 'confrontational
contest' - an interior battle - and an acceptance of the need to take part in this battle and 'face the consequences', one
of which is learning the (often uncomfortable) truth about one's own unbalanced, strife-causing, nature.

If successful in this confrontation, there is or there can be a positive, moral, development of the nature, the character -
the φύσις (physis) - of the person because of that revealing and that appreciation (or re-appreciation) of the numinous
whose genesis is this pathei-mathos, and which appreciation includes an awareness of why ὕβρις is an error (often the
error) of unbalance, of disrespect, of a going beyond the due limits, and which ὕβρις is the genesis of the τύραννος
and of the modern error of extremism. For the tyrannos and the extremist (and their extremisms) embody and give rise
to and perpetuate ἔρις [28].

Thus enantiodromia reveals the nature of, and restores in individuals, the natural balance necessary for ψυχή to
flourish - which natural balance is δίκη as Δίκα [29] and which restoration of balance within the individual results in
ἁρμονίη [30], manifest as ἁρμονίη is in the cultivation, in the individual, of wu-wei and σωφρονεῖν (a fair and balanced
personal, individual, judgement).

Footnotes

[1] Heraclitus, fragment 80:

εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ τὸν πόλεμον ἐόντα ξυνόν, καὶ δίκην ἔριν, καὶ γινόμενα πάντα κατ΄ ἔριν καὶ χρεώμενα [χρεών]

One should be aware that Polemos pervades, with discord δίκη, and that beings are naturally born by
discord.

See my Heraclitus - Some Translations and Notes. (Fifth Edition, 2012)

[2] In respect of the numinous principle of Δίκα, refer to Appendix I of https://perceiverations.wordpress.com/wp-

content/uploads/2022/10/numinous-way-pathei-mathos-v7.pdf

[3] Although φύσις has a natural tendency to become covered up (Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ - concealment accompanies
Physis ) it can be uncovered through λόγος and πάθει μάθος.

ΞΞΞ

Source:
https://perceiverations.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/numinous-way-pathei-mathos-v7.pdf
 Appendix Three

The Beatitudes

The Learning On The Hillside

Τὸ κατὰ Ματθαῖον εὐαγγέλιον

The Gospel According To Matthew

5:1–10

Text

1 Ἰδὼν δὲ τοὺς ὄχλους ἀνέβη εἰς τὸ ὄρος, καὶ καθίσαντος αὐτοῦ προσῆλθαν αὐτῷ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ·

2 καὶ ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ ἐδίδασκεν αὐτοὺς λέγων·

3 Μακάριοι οἱ πτωχοὶ τῷ πνεύματι, ὅτι αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν.

4 μακάριοι οἱ πενθοῦντες, ὅτι αὐτοὶ παρακληθήσονται.

5 μακάριοι οἱ πραεῖς, ὅτι αὐτοὶ κληρονομήσουσιν τὴν γῆν.

6 μακάριοι οἱ πεινῶντες καὶ διψῶντες τὴν δικαιοσύνην, ὅτι αὐτοὶ χορτασθήσονται.

7 μακάριοι οἱ ἐλεήμονες, ὅτι αὐτοὶ ἐλεηθήσονται.

8 μακάριοι οἱ καθαροὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ, ὅτι αὐτοὶ τὸν θεὸν ὄψονται.

9 μακάριοι οἱ εἰρηνοποιοί, ὅτι αὐτοὶ υἱοὶ θεοῦ κληθήσονται.

10 μακάριοι οἱ δεδιωγμένοι ἕνεκεν δικαιοσύνης, ὅτι αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν.

Translation

1 Observing the multitudes, he ascended the hill and, having sat down, his disciples approached him.

2 Then, a revelation, for he instructed those there by saying this:

3 Fortunate, those humble with spiritus, for theirs is the Kingdom of Empyrean.

4 Fortunate, those who grieve, for they shall have solace.

5 Fortunate, the gentle, for they shall acquire the Earth.

6 Fortunate, those who hunger and thirst for fairness, for they shall be replete.

7 Fortunate, the compassionate, for they shall receive compassion.

8 Fortunate, the refined of heart, for they shall perceive Theos.

9 Fortunate, the peaceable, for they shall be called children of Theos.

10 Fortunate, those harassed due to their fairness, for theirs is the Kingdom of Empyrean.

Commentary

1. ὄρος. Here a hill, rather than a mountain.

2.

ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ. I take this metaphorically as in a disclosing or a revealing, not literally as in "opening his
mouth."

those there. Although the Greek text does not explicitly state the fact, the context suggests that Jesus addressed both
the multitude and his disciples.

3.

μακάριος. A difficult word to translate since "blessed" has acquired particular (sometimes moralistic) meanings as a
result of nearly two thousand years of exegesis, while "happy" is rather prosaic. The context - as in ὅτι αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ
βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν - suggests "fortunate".

πτωχός. Usually translated as "poor" which however has too many exegetical and modern connotations, and does not
express the metaphorical sense here which implies being "humble" in respect of τὸ πνεῦμα.

τῷ πνεύματι [...] τῶν οὐρανῶν. In respect of τὸ πνεῦμα as the spiritus (rather than as the Spirit) and οὐρανός as
Empyrean (rather than Heaven), qv. my commentary on John 1:32, [1] from which this an extract:

οὐρανός here is always translated as 'heaven' although the term 'heaven' - used in the context of the
Gospels - now has rather different connotations than the Greek οὐρανός, with the word 'heaven' now often
implying something explained by almost two thousand years of exegesis and as depicted, for example, in
medieval and Renaissance Christian art. However, those hearing or reading this particular Greek gospel for
the first time in the formative years of Christianity would most probably have assumed the usual Greek
usage of "the heavens" in the sense of the "the star-filled firmament above" or in the sense of "the sky" or as
the abode of theos and/or of the gods, ἐν οὐρανῷ θεοί

[...]

It therefore seems apposite to suggest a more neutral word than'heaven' as a translation of οὐρανός and one
which might not only be understood in various 'classical' ways by an audience of Greek speakers (such as the
ways described above) but also be open to a new, and Christian, interpretation consistent with the milieu
that existed when the Gospel of John was written and first heard. That is, before the exegesis of later
centuries and long before post-Roman Christian iconography. Hence my suggestion of the post-classical Latin
term Empyrean, which can bear the interpretation of the abode of theos and/or of the gods, of "the sky", of
the "the star-filled firmament above"; and a Christian one suggested by Genesis 2.8 - παράδεισον ἐν Εδεμ
(the Paradise of Eden) - and also by shamayim.

5. πρᾶος. Gentle - in the sense of mild, balanced, temperament - rather than "meek".

6. δικαιοσύνη. Fairness. Not some abstract, legalistic, "justice", and not "righteousness" which word has over centuries
acquired sometimes strident and disputable moralistic meanings as well as implying a certain conformity to accepted
(and disputable or dogmatic) standards.

7. ἐλεήμων. The classical Latin term misericordia - used by Jerome, and the origin of the English word misericordious -
expresses the sense well, which is of συμπάθεια (sympatheia, benignity) resulting in compassion. Cf. Luke 11.41 (πλὴν
τὰ ἐνόντα δότε ἐλεημοσύνην, καὶ ἰδοὺ πάντα καθαρὰ ὑμῖν ἐστιν), Acts 10:2, κτλ.

8.

οἱ καθαροὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ. Literally, those whose hearts are clean, in the physical sense, as in having undertaken a ritual
cleansing of the body. Cf. Corpus Hermeticum, Poemandres 22, [2] where as in Luke 11.41 - qv. ἐλεήμων in v. 7 here - it
occurs in relation to compassion, the compassionate:

παραγίνομαι αὐτὸς ἐγὼ ὁ Νοῦς τοῖς ὁσίοις καὶ ἀγαθοῖς καὶ καθαροῖς καὶ ἐλεήμοσι, τοῖς εὐσεβοῦσι, καὶ ἡ
παρουσία μου γίνεται βοήθεια, καὶ εὐθὺς τὰ πάντα γνωρίζουσι καὶ τὸν πατέρα ἱλάσκονται ἀγαπητικῶς καὶ
εὐχαριστοῦσιν εὐλογοῦντες καὶ ὑμνοῦντες τεταγμένως πρὸς αὐτὸν τῇ στοργῇ

I, perceiveration, attend to those of respectful deeds, the honourable, the refined, the compassionate, those
aware of the numinous; to whom my being is a help so that they soon acquire knowledge of the whole and
are affectionately gracious toward the father, fondly celebrating in song his position.

In respect of καθαροῖς, I prefer refined here - as in the Corpus Hermeticum - rather than 'pure' given the disputable
nature of the term 'pure' and the connotations acquired over centuries be they religious, sanctimonious, political, or
otherwise.

θεὸς. For reasons explained in my commentary on verse I of chapter one of The Gospel According To John - and in my
commentaries on tractates from the Corpus Hermeticum [2] - I transliterate θεὸς.

9. οἱ εἰρηνοποιοί. The peaceable ones, which includes pacificators - those who are pacificatory, and thus who are
conciliatory and who actively seek peace - and those who have a peaceable disposition.

10. διώκω. Harass, rather than "persecuted" which has acquired too many modern and especially political
connotations. Cf. John 5:16, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἐδίωκον οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι τὸν Ἰησοῦν, ὅτι ταῦτα ἐποίει ἐν σαββάτῳ, "and thus did
the Judaeans harass Jesus because he was doing such things on the Sabbath."

My interpretation, based on John 5:16, is that those who are harassed are so on account of (ἕνεκα) their fairness, not
because those who are harassing them disparage or hate fairness in general.

David Myatt
30.iii.18

Notes

[1] My translation and commentary - of chapters 1-5 - is available at https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/gospel-

according-to-john/
[2] D. Myatt. Corpus Hermeticum: Eight Tractates. Included in Hermetica And Alchemy,
https://perceiverations.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/hermetica-alchemy-dwmyatt.pdf

ΞΞΞ

Greek Bible text from:

Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th revised edition, Edited by Barbara Aland and others, 2012, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.

Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) License

 A Personal Remembering

Listening again for the first time in nearly two decades to Beethoven's Piano Concerto number five (in a live
performance by Yunchan Lim) reminds me of how during my three decades (1968-1998) as a political extremist I often
veered from the Apollonian to the Dionysian and back again and again; only seemingly in balance, between them, for
short periods as when as a vagabond 1 or as a Catholic monk I saught to find and live that balance and what I
intuitively felt might be beyond it. Always, always, in my hubris veering back to and living the Dionysian and in
retrospect learning very little of personal value and thus continuing to cause and contribute to the suffering of others.

Which returns me to some words written centuries ago by William Penn which I only began to appreciate a decade ago:

"They overturn the Christian Religion: 1. In the Nature of it, which is Meekness; 2. In the Practice of it, which
is Suffering." 2

Part of which appreciation I attempted to express in my translation of and commentary on The Beatitudes 3 while the
They mentioned by William Penn are, according to my admittedly fallible understanding, those who interpret that
religion in various other ways given that such a religion is based on written texts which require exegesis, as I have
endeavoured to explain in various texts. 4

Hence one of the reasons why I developed what is the weltanschauungen of pathei-mathos where individual empathy
and personal pathei-mathos are a guide, a moral alternative, not written texts which require interpretation, for those
weltanschauungen 5 seemed to me to be:

"a moral alternative because there is a personal, individual, horizon to both empathy and pathei-mathos so
that what is beyond this horizon is something we rationally, we humbly, we morally, accept we do not yet
know and have not personally experienced and so cannot judge or form a reasonable, a fair, a balanced,
opinion about. For empathy and pathei-mathos live within us manifesting the always limited nature, the
horizon, of our own knowledge and understanding. That it is a failure to appreciate and understand this
which continues the periodical pain, trauma, injury, grief, and death inflicted on individuals." 6

In effect this is a return to personal judgement based on one's direct experience and on an acceptance of our fallibility
manifest in a certain humility, in an uncertitude of knowing, rather than on a hubriatic certitude of knowing we
personally assume or accept because we have accepted the authority, the exegesis or the interpretation, of some
other person, or of some hierarchical collocation of others, or because we have accepted that some causal abstraction
is more important, a better guide to behaviour and Reality, than our personal empathy and pathei-mathos. A causal
abstraction such as 'the nation-State', 7 and the government thereof, or what a particular religious hierarchy or
preacher, or demagogue, deems we should accept or believe in order to achieve some posited goal such as, in the
case of religion Heaven or Jannah or Nirvana, and, in the case of some government, some posited 'peace' or prosperity
or freedom which 'they' our declared and accepted national or ideological enemies are alleged to be determined or
threatening to deny us.

Hence the cycle of suffering over decades and millennia, where individuals and families become part of the maelstrom
of some supra-personal conflict or other, be it religious or born of some causal abstraction such as the nation-State.

Of course, I may be mistaken in all of this, but it is all I now seem to have, perhaps and hopefully in expiation, for
personally causing suffering during my fanatical, hubriatic, extremist, years: first as a political activist and ideologue
(1968-1998) and then as a religious zealot (2000-2009) who accepted a particular interpretation of a particular
religion.

David Myatt
July 31st 2024
v.1.4

1. Some Poems Of A Vagabond, https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/some-old-poetry.pdf

2. The Great Case of Liberty of Conscience Once More Briefly Debated and Defended, 1670 CE
3. https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/the-beatitudes-v1.pdf
4. For example, Exegesis And Pathei-Mathos, https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/exegesis-
pathei-mathos-v1.pdf
5. Plural, because while the philosophy as I have attempted to describe it through the medium of words represents my
pathei-mathos, the empathy and pathei-mathos that is its basis could be and possibly should be the basis for others to
develope their own weltanschauung.
6. Notes On War, Suffering, And Personal Judgement, https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06
/dwmyatt-notes-war-suffering.pdf
7. Abstractions, The Way Of Pathei-Mathos, And The Modern World, https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content
/uploads/2024/06/dmyatt-and-abstractions.pdf

Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) License

 Developing The Numinous Way Of Pathei-Mathos

Impersonal Abstractions, The Modern World, And The Axioms Of Empathy And Pathei-Mathos

ΞΞΞ

Précis

It is my contention that my personal 'numinous way of pathei-mathos', [1] or at least the foundations of that Way,
which are personal empathy and pathei-mathos, could possibly be the basis for other individuals to develope their own
numinous weltanschauung free from the influence of the manufactured impersonal causal abstractions that shaped the
ancient world, some of which still influence the modern world, and the more recent impersonal causal abstractions
which since the Second World War are prevalent and now authoritative in the modern world because supported by
many if not most governments and Institutions in the Western world, and often now used by governments as the basis
for criminal laws.

Defining Causal Abstractions

As described in the Numinous Way of Pathei-Mathos, an abstraction is

"a manufactured generalization, a hypothesis, a posited thing, an assumption or assumptions about, an

extrapolation of or from some-thing, or some assumed or extrapolated ideal 'form' of some-thing.
Sometimes, abstractions are generalization based on some sample(s), or on some median (average) value or
sets of values, observed, sampled, or assumed.

Abstractions can be of some-thing past, in the present, or described as a goal or an ideal which it is assumed
could be attained or achieved in the future.

All abstractions involve a causal perception, based as they are on the presumption of a linear cause-and-
effect (and/or a dialectic) and on a posited or an assumed category or classification which differs in some
way from some other assumed or posited categories/classifications, past, present or future. When applied to
or used to describe/classify/distinguish/motivate living beings, abstractions involve a causal separation-of-
otherness; and when worth/value/identity (and exclusion/inclusion) is or are assigned to such a causal
separation-of-otherness then there is or there arises hubris.

Abstractions are often assumed to provide some 'knowledge' or some 'understanding' of some-thing
assigned to or described by a particular abstraction. For example, in respect of the abstraction of 'race'
applied to human beings, and which categorization of human beings describes a median set of values said or
assumed to exist 'now' or in some recent historical past." [1]

In philosophical terms, a causal abstraction is an ideation, an idea (ἰδέᾳ/εἶδος), which is explained and/or defined by
words and terms (denotata) and which invariably is used to form or describe a particular category of 'things'. [2] Thus
a particular living tree is assigned to the category Oak, or a sub-category thereof, such as a Holm Oak, and which
category is believed to be a means to 'know' and 'understand' that particular living being. Hence, that particular living
tree is not considered to be an individual, separate, living entity with its own 'being' but is instead treated as one of a
'particular kind' and thus judged and treated according to what, at a particular time, is considered to be appropriate for
the particular category it has been assigned to. This, in effect, is a stereotyping of a living, individual entity; and a
stereotyping almost completely ignored in modern societies abrogating as those societies do certain ancestral, and
world-wide, ancestral traditions where such a living entity was considered, even respected, as a living, individual
entity; as for example in the ancient tradition in certain Britannic lands of venerating a particular Oak or a particular
woodland.

In both ancient and modern times causal abstractions and the categories developed from them have been and are
used to categorize human beings, as for example in regard to the supra-personal abstraction, the entity, termed 'the
nation-State' where individual human beings and families are considered to be, or not to be, 'citizens' of that entity and
often treated accordingly, with citizens having certain privileges and freedoms often denied to non-citizens.

More recently, causal abstractions and the categories developed from them have been deployed to describe individual
human beings and their behaviour both personal and social. Thus, a human being categorized, and judged, by
whomsoever for whatever reason, as 'depressive' is treated as the society of the time requires such a category to be
treated, which is often by means of pharmaceutical medication and/or by a prescribed regime of therapy.

In another, perhaps more relevant example which I personally have some practical experience of, human beings are
often categorized, and judged, by the political beliefs they publicly adhere to, or may be alleged to adhere to, at a
particular time of their lives, especially if their political views do not align with, or contradict, the zeitgeist of the
society of their time. Thus, in my own case, the judgement is "once a nazi always a nazi" and that such nazis should
"never be forgiven" and treated according to whatever persecutional and dehumanizing treatment the judgemental
ones deem such "nazis" deserve.

For such dehumanizing, or more precisely such hubriatic, impersonal, judgment and consequential treatment, is
implicit in applying abstract, causal, abstractions to individual living beings, human and otherwise.

That this is not understood in the societies of our time, except by a few, is in my opinion somewhat indicative of how
prevalent hubris still is among us.

Hence, despite our thousands of years old culture of pathei-mathos [3] we do not seem to have learned from what
others tried to explain to us:

σὺ δ᾽ ἄκουε δίκης, μηδ᾽ ὕβριν ὄφελλε:

ὕβρις γάρ τε κακὴ δειλῷ βροτῷ: οὐδὲ μὲν ἐσθλὸς
ῥηιδίως φερέμεν δύναται, βαρύθει δέ θ᾽ ὑπ᾽ αὐτῆς
ἐγκύρσας ἄτῃσιν: ὁδὸς δ᾽ ἑτέρηφι παρελθεῖν
κρείσσων ἐς τὰ δίκαια: Δίκη δ᾽ ὑπὲρ Ὕβριος ἴσχει
ἐς τέλος ἐξελθοῦσα: παθὼν δέ τε νήπιος ἔγνω

You should listen to [the goddess] Fairness and not oblige Hubris
Since Hubris harms unfortunate mortals while even the more fortunate
Are not equal to carrying that heavy a burden, meeting as they do with Mischief.
The best path to take is the opposite one: that of honour
For, in the end, Fairness is above Hubris
Which is something the young come to learn from adversity. [4]

The Axioms Of Empathy And Pathei-Mathos

The axioms are:

(i) That human beings possess a still mostly latent perceptive faculty, the faculty of empathy - ἐμπάθεια - which when
used, or when developed and used, can provide us with a particular type of knowing, a particular type of knowledge,
and especially a certain wordless knowledge concerning or awareness of the φύσις (the physis, the nature or
character) of human beings and other living beings.

This type of knowing, this perception, is different from and supplementary to that acquired by means of the Aristotelian
essentials of conventional philosophy and experimental science [5], and thus enables us to better understand
Phainómenon, ourselves, and other living beings.

ii) That πάθει μάθος, a personal learning from adversity, from difficult, or harsh, or life threatening experiences,
provides us or can provide us, like empathy, with a particular wordless knowledge concerning, or an awareness of, the
φύσις (physis) of ourselves, of other human beings and of other living beings.

Thus, according to the numinous way of pathei-mathos it is personal empathy and pathei-mathos which enable us to
circumvent causal abstractions because what is

"beyond our personal empathic knowing of others, beyond our knowledge and our experience [our pathei-
mathos], beyond the limited (local) range of our empathy and that personal (local) knowledge of ourselves
which pathei-mathos reveals – is something we rationally, we humbly, accept we do not know and so cannot
judge or form a reasonable, a fair, a balanced, opinion about. For empathy, like pathei-mathos, lives within
us; manifesting, as both empathy and pathei-mathos do, the always limited nature, the horizon, of our own
knowledge and understanding." [6]

For a weltanschauung such as the numinous way of pathei-mathos betakes us or can betake us as individuals beyond
the acceptance of a supra-personal authority, and thus beyond the demand by some supra-personal authority that we
individuals accept or have to accepted such a supra-personal authority, and which authority, in the Western world was
described in the Christian writings of Augustine (b.354 CE, d.430 CE), as for example in his De Civitate Dei contra
Paganos where in Book XIX, chapter xiii, he wrote of the necessity of a hierarchy in which God is the supreme
authority, with peace between human beings and God requiring obedience to that authority; and with peace between
human beings, and civil peace, also of necessity requiring obedience to an order in which each person has their
allotted place, Ordo est parium dispariumque rerum sua cuique loca tribuens dispositio.

Modern nation-States have simply replaced God as the supreme authority with Prime Ministers, Presidents, and those
who are described as elected "representatives of the people", or in case of some nation-States with some individual or
individuals or some unelected representatives who or which have assumed authority by means such as a coup d'état
or similar means, but all of whom expect the people they rule to obey whatever decisions or laws or diktats they make.
Both types if necessary enforce their authority by means such as Courts of Law or through the use of civil or military
organizations such as the Police and the armed forces, all of who or all of which accept and indeed are based upon a
supra-personal chain-of-command with statuary laws made by some government (past and present) or imposed by
some assumed authority regarded as necessary for what they deem to be the 'correct' functioning of society.
Furthermore, in practical terms a weltanschauung such as the numinous way of pathei-mathos

"means trying to cultivate within ourselves the virtues mentioned by Cicero – self-restraint, dignity, fairness,
honesty – and implies we have no concern for or we seek to cultivate no concern for supra-personal
hierarchies and supra-personal authority – whether political, religious, or otherwise – and thus move away
from, try to distance ourselves from, the consequences of such supra-personal hierarchies and supra-
personal authority manifest as the consequences are and have been, throughout our [human] history, in war,
prejudice, intolerance, unfairness, extremism, and persecution in the name of some ideology, some religion,
or because someone has commanded us to persecute those that they and others have declared are 'our'
enemies, and which war and persecutions are often, especially in modern times, accompanied by
propaganda and lies." [7]

Developing The Numinous Way Of Pathei-Mathos

Since the numinous way of pathei-mathos is based on personal empathy and personal pathei-mathos which develope
an appreciation of the limitation, the infortunity, of words, and of the categories derived from them, and thus
engenders in an individual a knowing of the limited nature of their understanding and of their fallibility, the numinous
way of pathei-mathos is apolitical since politics is derived from and dependant on words, spoken and written, and on
supra-personal often ideological categories as well as on supra-personal organizations or movements with a particular
agenda or particular aims.

For an appreciation of the infortunity of words is a wordless-knowing, born of empathy and pathei-mathos, of the cycle
of suffering; of how we humans continue to repeat the errors of the past caused as such errors often are by some
suffering-causing causal abstractions championed by some supra-personal authority such as government or some
President or Prime Minister or Caesar or Emperor or King or some tyrant or some religious potentate or preacher or
political demagogue or political organization, urging us as individuals to go to war or partake in some invasion or
crusade or armed conflict, or some campaign, or revolution, or whatever.

Thus it seems logical to suggest that if other individuals develope their own numinous weltanschauung it would be a
personal and thus non-political one and, similar to the numinous way of pathei-mathos, involve a mystical living, a life-
style choice, involving the individual and/or their partner or family if they have one; where the appellation 'mystical'
suggests a personal intuitive insight about and a personal awareness of the nature of Reality, with Reality wordlessly
known through their empathy and pathei-mathos.

There is also in the numinous way of pathei-mathos an appreciation of the fact that the nature of - the causality
inherent in - denotata results in eris (ἔρις), and thus in a discord of opposites: for every denotatum has or developes
an opposite and thus can cleave physis, as Heraclitus enigmatically expressed:

τοῦ δὲ λόγου τοῦδ᾽ ἐόντος ἀεὶ ἀξύνετοι γίνονται ἄνθρωποι καὶ πρόσθεν ἢ ἀκοῦσαι καὶ ἀκούσαντες τὸ
πρῶτον· γινομένων γὰρ πάντων κατὰ τὸν λόγον τόνδε ἀπείροισιν ἐοίκασι, πειρώμενοι καὶ ἐπέων καὶ ἔργων
τοιούτων, ὁκοίων ἐγὼ διηγεῦμαι κατὰ φύσιν διαιρέων ἕκαστον καὶ φράζων ὅκως ἔχει· τοὺς δὲ ἄλλους
ἀνθρώπους λανθάνει ὁκόσα ἐγερθέντες ποιοῦσιν, ὅκωσπερ ὁκόσα εὕδοντες ἐπιλανθάνονται. [8]

Although this naming and expression [which I explain] exists, human beings tend to ignore it, both before
and after they have become aware of it. Yet even though, regarding such naming and expression, I have
revealed details of how Physis has been cleaved asunder, some human beings are inexperienced concerning
it, fumbling about with words and deeds, just as other human beings, be they interested or just forgetful, are
unaware of what they have done. [9]

εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ τὸν πόλεμον ἐόντα ξυνόν, καὶ δίκην ἔριν, καὶ γινόμενα πάντα κατ ́ ἔριν καὶ χρεώμενα
<χρεών> [10]

One should be aware that Polemos pervades, with discord δίκη, and that beings are naturally born by
discord.

In addition,

"the meaning of the appellations inherent in causal abstraction can and does change over periods causal
time through common usage and through the changes of interpretation (exegesis) wrought through political
ideology, social change, and religious dogma and reforms. The interpretation of an appellation, a denotatum,
in another language can also vary or distort the original meaning, a classic example being Hellenistic Greek
words, occurring the Corpus Hermeticum, such as λόγος and νοῦς conventionally interpreted as 'word' and
'intellect/mind' neither of which interpretations are satisfactory.

What is important about all this is that empathy and pathei-mathos are directly personal and wordless
perceiverations and experiences and therefore are not dependant on denotata, on any ἰδέᾳ/εἶδος, and by the
nature of empathy and pathei-mathos cannot be extrapolated beyond such a personal experiencing." [11]

David Myatt
August 2024
 ΞΞΞ

[1] https://perceiverations.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/numinous-way-pathei-mathos-v7.pdf

[2] Philosophically, 'a thing' is an entity which exists independently of another 'thing', and which is a particular object
of human perception. It is also or can be distinguishable from the word or the idea which attempts to describe it; that
is, it is the actual 'being' behind or beyond such a causal apprehension or appellation.

[3] The culture of pathei-mathos is the accumulated pathei-mathos of individuals, world-wide, over thousands of years,
as may be (i) described in memoirs, aural stories, and historical accounts; as may have (ii) have inspired particular
works of literature or poetry or drama; as (iii) expressed via non-verbal mediums such as music and Art, and as (iv)
may be manifest in more recent times by 'art-forms such as certain films and documentaries.

This thus includes not only traditional accounts of, or accounts inspired by, personal pathei-mathos, old and modern –
such as With The Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene Sledge, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and the poetry of people as diverse as Sappho and Sylvia Plath; and also works or art-forms
inspired by such pathei-mathos, whether personal or otherwise, and whether factually presented or fictionalized.
Hence films such as Monsieur Lazhar and Etz Limon may poignantly express something about our φύσις as human
beings and thus form part of the culture of pathei-mathos.

[4] Hesiod,Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι [Works and Days], vv 213-218.

Notes on my translation:

a. δίκη. The goddess of Fairness/Justice/Judgement, and – importantly – of Tradition (Ancestral Custom). In Ἔργα καὶ
Ἡμέραι, as in Θεογονία (Theogony), Hesiod is recounting and explaining part of that tradition, one important aspect of
which tradition is understanding the relation between the gods and mortals. Given both the antiquity of the text and
the context, 'Fairness' – as the name of the goddess – is, in my view, more appropriate than the now common
appellation 'Justice', considering the modern (oft times impersonal) connotations of the word 'justice'.

b. Mischief. The sense of ἄτῃσιν here is not of 'delusion' nor of 'calamities', per se, but rather of encountering that
which or those whom (such as the goddess of mischief, Ἄτη) can bring mischief or misfortune into the 'fortunate life' of
a 'fortunate mortal', and which encounters are, according to classical tradition, considered as having been instigated
by the gods. Hence, of course, why Sophocles [Antigone, 1337-8] wrote ὡς πεπρωμένης οὐκ ἔστι θνητοῖς συμφορᾶς
ἀπαλλαγή (mortals cannot be delivered from the misfortunes of their fate).

c. δίκαιος. Honour expresses the sense that is meant: of being fair; capable of doing the decent thing; of dutifully
observing ancestral customs. A reasonable alternative for 'honour' would thus be 'decency', both preferable to words
such as 'just' and 'justice' which are not only too impersonal but have too many inappropriate modern connotations.

d. νήπιος. Literal – 'young', 'uncultured' (i.e. un-schooled, un-educated in the ways of ancestral custom) – rather than
metaphorical ('foolish', ignorant).

[5] The essentials which Aristotle enumerated are:

i) Reality (existence) exists independently of us and our consciousness, and thus independent of our senses;
(ii) our limited understanding of this independent 'external world' depends for the most part upon our senses, our
faculties – that is, on what we can see, hear or touch; on what we can observe or come to know via our senses;
(iii) logical argument, or reason, is perhaps the most important means to knowledge and understanding of and about
this 'external world';
(iv) the cosmos (existence) is, of itself, a reasoned order subject to rational laws.

In addition such essentials now include Isaac Newton's first Rules of Reasoning which is that

"We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their
appearances. To this purpose the philosophers say that Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain
when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity, and aspects not the pomp of superfluous causes."

Hence why it is often considered that there are five Aristotelian Essentials. Experimental science seeks to explain the
natural world – the phenomenal world – by means of direct, personal observation of it, and by making deductions, and
formulating hypothesis, based on such direct observation.

[6] Personal Reflexions On Some Metaphysical Questions, 2015. https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads

/2015/03/dwm-some-metaphysical-questions-v5b.pdf

[7] Persecution And War, 2018. https://archive.org/download/persecution-and-war/Persecution_And_War.pdf

[8] Fragment 1, Diels-Krantz.

[9] A short commentary on my translation is available at https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/heraclitus-fragment-1/

[10] Fragment B80.

[11] Reflections On Conflict And Suffering, https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/conflict-

and-suffering-dwmyatt.pdf

Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 4.0 license

 Physis And Jesus Of Nazareth

A recent (2024) article in The Telegraph newspaper by Christopher Howse, in his weekly column Sacred Mysteries, and
titled Time to celebrate things too hard to understand, mentioned physis in connection with Jesus of Nazareth noting
that if Jesus is not both human and God then 'mankind' (human beings) has/have not through him been reconciled to
God. He also quotes, in a vernacular translation, from the beginning of John 10:18, with the Greek of John:18:

καὶ ἐξουσίαν ἔχω πάλιν λαβεῖν αὐτήν· ταύτην τὴν ἐντολὴν ἔλαβον παρὰ τοῦ πατρός μου. [1]

The Historical And Metaphysical Context

In regard to physis, the author of that newspaper article noted that it is a problematic term, used "in different senses
by opposing factions." and that "we translate as nature". In my 2017 text The Concept Of Physis, [2] I provided the
historical context:

"The term physis - φύσις - was used by Heraclitus, Aristotle, and others, and occurs in texts such as the
Pœmandres and Ιερός Λόγος tractates of the Corpus Hermeticum.

Physis is usually translated as either 'Nature' (as if 'the natural world', and the physical cosmos beyond, are
meant) or as the character (the nature) of a person. However, while the context - of the original Greek text -
may suggest (as often, for example, in Homer and Herodotus) such a meaning as such English words impute,
physis philosophically (as, for example, in Heraclitus and Aristotle and the Corpus Hermeticum) has specific
ontological meanings. Meanings which are lost, or glossed over, when physis is simply translated either as
'Nature' or - in terms of mortals - as (personal) character.

Ontologically, as Aristotle makes clear, physis denotes the being of those beings who or which have the
potentiality (the being) to change, be changed, or to develope. That is, to become, or to move or be moved;
as for example in the motion (of 'things') and the 'natural unfolding' or growth, sans an external cause, that
living beings demonstrate.

However, and crucially, physis is not - for human beings - some abstract 'essence' (qv. Plato's ἰδέᾳ/εἶδος) but
rather a balance between the being that it is, it was, and potentially might yet be. That is, in Aristotelian
terms, it is a meson - μέσον - of being and 'not being'; and 'not being' in the sense of not yet having become
what it could be, and not now being what it used to be. Hence why, for Aristotle, a manifestation of physis -
in terms of the being of mortals - such as arête (ἀρετή) is a meson, a balance of things, and not, as it is for
Plato, some fixed 'form' - some idea, ideal - which as Plato wrote "always exists, and has no genesis. It does
not die, does not grow, does not decay."

According to my understanding of Heraclitus, physis also suggests - as in Fragment 1 - the 'natural' being of
a being which we mortals have a tendency to cover-up or conceal."

In regard to Jesus of Nazareth, his natural being has most certainly been covered-up or concealed by mortals. Similarly,
as portrayed in the Gospels and particularly in the Gospel of John, he is a balance (an Aristotelian μέσον) - qv. Appendix
Two: Notes on Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 5, 1015α - between the being that he is as a mortal, that he was before the
Incarnation, and potentially will be (and became) after the Passion and his mortal death,

As also noted in The Concept Of Physis, in the Ιερός Λόγος tractate of the Corpus Hermeticum Physis is personified in
the following way:

τὸ γὰρ θεῖον ἡ πᾶσα κοσμικὴ σύγκρασις φύσει ἀνανεουμένη·

ἐν γὰρ τῶι θείωι καὶ ἡ φύσις καθέστηκεν.

"The divine is all of that mixion: renewance of the cosmic order through Physis
For Physis is presenced in the divine." [3]

That is, the divine is presenced on Earth through Jesus, who renews or can renew our life on Earth, bringing an
awareness that our mortal death is not the end of our life.

According to chapter five of the Gospel of John:

33 ὑμεῖς ἀπεστάλκατε πρὸς Ἰωάννην, καὶ μεμαρτύρηκεν τῇ ἀληθείᾳ·

34 ἐγὼ δὲ οὐ παρὰ ἀνθρώπου τὴν μαρτυρίαν λαμβάνω, ἀλλὰ ταῦτα λέγω ἵνα ὑμεῖς σωθῆτε.
35 ἐκεῖνος ἦν ὁ λύχνος ὁ καιόμενος καὶ φαίνων, ὑμεῖς δὲ ἠθελήσατε ἀγαλλιαθῆναι πρὸς ὥραν ἐν τῷ φωτὶ
αὐτοῦ.
36 Ἐγὼ δὲ ἔχω τὴν μαρτυρίαν μείζω τοῦ Ἰωάννου· τὰ γὰρ ἔργα ἃ δέδωκέν μοι ὁ πατὴρ ἵνα τελειώσω αὐτά,
αὐτὰ τὰ ἔργα ἃ ποιῶ μαρτυρεῖ περὶ ἐμοῦ ὅτι ὁ πατήρ με ἀπέσταλκεν.
37 καὶ ὁ πέμψας με πατὴρ ἐκεῖνος μεμαρτύρηκεν περὶ ἐμοῦ. οὔτε φωνὴν αὐτοῦ πώποτε ἀκηκόατε οὔτε εἶδος
αὐτοῦ ἑωράκατε,
38 καὶ τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ οὐκ ἔχετε ἐν ὑμῖν μένοντα, ὅτι ὃν ἀπέστειλεν ἐκεῖνος, τούτῳ ὑμεῖς οὐ πιστεύετε.
39 ἐραυνᾶτε τὰς γραφάς, ὅτι ὑμεῖς δοκεῖτε ἐν αὐταῖς ζωὴν αἰώνιον ἔχειν· καὶ ἐκεῖναί εἰσιν αἱ μαρτυροῦσαι
περὶ ἐμοῦ·
40 καὶ οὐ θέλετε ἐλθεῖν πρός με ἵνα ζωὴν ἔχητε. [4]

33 You inquired after John, and he was evidential to the veritas.

34 And, although the testimony I receive is not from people, I say these things that you may be rescued.
35 He: a lantern, firefull and revealing; you: desirous to seasonably exult in his phaos.
36 I however have a testimony beyond that of John, for the deeds the father gifted me that I should
accomplish them - the deeds which I do - are witness that the father sent me,
37 With the father - he who sent me - a witness about me: he whose voice you have never heard, whose
likeness you have never observed,
38 With his Logos not remaining within you for you do not trust the one he sent.
39 You search the writings because you suppose that there is within them life everlasting and that they are a
witness about me.
40 And yet have no desire to go to me so that you might have Life. [5]

Such a presencing and renewance has often been considered as the central mysterium of Christianity and one
'esoteric' to this very day as manifest in the Eucharist of the Mass where we mortals can according to Christian
doctrine partake of the numinosity of theos as presenced in The Last Supper and which return and re-presentation is
the real aim of our mortal lives. This is θέωσις in the sense of being mystically (re)united with theos while still being
mortal, human, because there is and cannot be any partaking of, any participation in, the essence, the quidditas -
οὐσία - of theos, a sense expressed by Maximus of Constantinople,

τῆς ἐπὶ τῷ θεωθῆναι τὸν ἄνθρωπον μυστικῆς ἐνεργείας λήψεται πέρας κατὰ πάντα τρόπον χωρὶς μόνης
δηλονότι τῆς πρὸς αὐτὸν κατ οὐσίαν ταυτότητος. [Quæstiones ad Thalassium de Scriptura Sacra, XXII
[Patrologiae Graeca, 90, c.0318]

the end of the opus mysterium of human beings becoming of Theos can be in all ways except one, namely
that of having the identity of His Essence.

This becoming, this wordless awareness of the numinous through the Eucharist of the mystery of the life and death of
Jesus of Nazareth, is well expressed by the Greek word θειότης which occurs in Paul's Epistle to the Romans, 1.20
where it led to some theological discussions regarding how and in what God is manifest, since some commentators
apparently mistakenly equated θειότης with θεότης. The Latin of Jerome is:

invisibilia enim ipsius a creatura mundi per ea quae facta sunt intellecta conspiciuntur sempiterna quoque
eius virtus et divinitas

which translates the Greek θειότης by the Latin divinitas, a word used by Cicero, with the Greek text of Romans, 1.20,
as in NA28, [1]

τὰ γὰρ ἀόρατα αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ κτίσεως κόσμου τοῖς ποιήμασιν νοούμενα καθορᾶται, ἥ τε ἀΐδιος αὐτοῦ δύναμις
καὶ θειότης

The Wycliffe translation:

For the invisible things of him, that be understood, be beheld of the creature of the world, by those
things that be made, yea, and the everlasting virtue of him and the Godhead.
 King James Bible:

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by
the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.

Douay-Rheims:

For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by
the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity.

Were I to temerariously venture my own 'interpretation of meaning' of the Greek – that is, my non-literal translation – it
would be along the following lines:

Through the foundation of the Kosmos, those unseen beings of that Being were visible, apprehensible by the
beings which that Being produced, as also the sempiternal influence of that Being, and divinity-presenced.

In which interpretation I have endeavoured to express the metaphysical – the ontological – meaning, and have taken
αὐτοῦ – literally, "of him/his" – as "of that Being". In addition, Also, δύναμις is – at least in my fallible opinion – more
subtle than the strident "might" or "power" translations impute, suggesting instead "influence" as in tractate III:1 of the
Corpus Hermeticum, where it interestingly occurs in relation to θεῖος - δυνάμει θείαι ὄντα ἐν χάει, by the influence of
the numen - and where the term physis also occurs.

My translation of tractate III:1 is as follows:

The numen of all beings is theos: numinal, and of numinal physis. The origin of what exists is theos, who is
Perceiveration and Physis and Substance: the sapientia which is a revealing of all beings. For the numinal is
the origin: physis, vigour, incumbency, accomplishment, renewance. In the Abyss, an unmeasurable
darkness, and, by the influence of the numen, Water and delicate apprehending Pnuema, there, in Kaos.
Then, a numinous phaos arose and, from beneath the sandy ground, Parsements coagulated from fluidic
essence. And all of the deities <particularize> seedful physis. [6]

Δόξα πάντων ὁ θεὸς καὶ θεῖον καὶ φύσις θεία. ἀρχὴ τῶν ὄντων ὁ θεός, καὶ νοῦς καὶ φύσις καὶ ὕλη, σοφία εἰς
δεῖξιν ἁπάντων ὤν· ἀρχὴ τὸ θεῖον καὶ φύσις καὶ ἐνέργεια καὶ ἀνάγκη καὶ τέλος καὶ ἀνανέωσις. ἧν γὰρ
σκότος ἄπειρον ἐν ἀβύσσωι καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ πνεῦμα λεπτὸν νοερόν, δυνάμει θείαι ὄντα ἐν χάει. ἀνείθη δὴ φῶς
ἅγιον καὶ ἐπάγη †ὑφ' ἅμμωι† ἐξ ὑγρᾶς οὐσίας στοιχεῖα καὶ θεοὶ πάντες †καταδιερῶσι† φύσεως ἐνσπόρου.

Summa

It is my understanding that not only is the Greek term physis (φύσις) approrpiate in describing the metaphysical and
the human nature of Jesus of Nazareth but also that the earlier, and sometimes paganus metaphysical context of that
and other terms such as θειότης (divinitas) are approrpiate in describing the mysterium that is the Eucharist where
divinity is wordlessly presenced, with there thus being an historical thread to the new apprehension of the divine that
the life Jesus of Nazareth, as recounted in the Gospels, and in his mortal and divine nature, in his Passion and
crucifixtion, presenced on Earth over two millennia ago.

David Myatt
June 2024

Image credit:
Icon of Jesus Pantocrator, Δέησις Mosaic
Hagia Sophia, c. 1260 CE

ΞΞΞ

[1] NA28. Nestle-Aland. Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th revised edition. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
2012

My interpretation of meaning: "No one plucks this [life] from me for I have the authority to bring that to pass for myself
and the authority to bring it back. For that is the command I received from my Father."

Douay-Rheims: "No man taketh it away from me: but I lay it down of myself, and I have power to lay it down: and I
have power to take it up again. This commandment have I received of my Father."

[2] In this extract I have not included the footnotes which accompany the text which is here provided as Appendix One.

[3] Appendix One.

[4] Greek text from NA28, op.cit

[5] My interpretation of meaning, qv. The Gospel According to John: Translation And Commentary, Volume I,
https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/myatt-gospel-john-1-5.pdf

My commentary, in that text, on these verses:

33.
a) you inquired after John. ὑμεῖς ἀπεστάλκατε πρὸς Ἰωάννην. Literally, "you dispatched unto John," referring
to 1:19, the priests and Levites dispatched from Jerusalem.
b) and he was evidential to the veritas. καὶ μεμαρτύρηκεν τῇ ἀληθείᾳ. That is, he attested - gave evidence
concerning - the veritas. Regarding veritas, qv. the comment on πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθεία, 1:14.

35.
a) lantern. λύχνος. The term 'lamp' is inappropriate given its modern connotations.
b) firefull and revealing. καιόμενος καὶ φαίνων. I take this metaphorically - the burning fire of the lantern
shines a bright revealing light - rather than the literal "burning and bright".
c) In regard to phaos, qv. 1:4-5. Cf. Poemandres, 32, ζωὴν καὶ φῶς; Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, I:2, τό τε
φῶς τὸ προκόσμιον καὶ τὴν πρὸ αἰώνων νοερὰν καὶ οὐσιώδη σοφίαν τόν τε ζῶντα.

36. beyond that of John. μείζω τοῦ Ἰωάννου. Not the rather strident 'greater than' - with its implication of
'better than' - but the comparative 'beyond that' as in an elder or someone fully-grown who is years beyond
the age of someone younger, qv. Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 358,

ὡς μήτε μέγαν μήτ᾽ οὖν νεαρῶν τιν᾽ ὑπερτελέσαι μέγα δουλείας γάγγαμον ἄτης παναλώτου
Such that neither the full-grown nor any young were beyond the limits of Misfortune's all-taking
enslaving vast trawl.

37. whose likeness you have never observed. οὔτε εἶδος αὐτοῦ ἑωράκατε. An interesting question of
interpretation here is the meaning of εἶδος. Whether to translate as 'form' - with a possible implied reference
to Plato's 'theory of forms' - or as the literal 'shape' or 'appearance'. Given the context - and 6:46, οὐχ ὅτι
τὸν πατέρα ἑώρακέν τις εἰ μὴ ὁ ὢν παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ, οὗτος ἑώρακεν τὸν πατέρα - I take the literal meaning;
hence likeness, as in Wycliffe.

39. you search the writings. ἐραυνᾶτε τὰς γραφάς. qv. 2:22 regarding γραφῇ not as the post-Hellenic
exegetical 'scripture' but as having the usual Hellenistic meaning of 'that which is written', a writing. The ASV
[Anglo-Saxon version] has Smeageað halige gewritu.

The Gospel According to John: Translation And Commentary, Volume I, op. cit.

[6] In respect of the translation:

The numen of all beings is theos. Δόξα πάντων ὁ θεὸς. The sense of δόξα here, especially given the following mention
of θεῖος and φύσις, is of immanence and of transcendent sublimity, encompassing both (i) the interpretation given to
the word in LXX and the New Testament, of a divine glory (qv. Exodus 16:10, Matthew 25:31, and Luke 2:9) and thus of
what is considered to be - that is, is outwardly manifest as - glorious, or splendid, as in Matthew 4:8, a sense well-
expressed in the Latin of Jerome: iterum adsumit eum diabolus in montem excelsum valde et ostendit ei omnia regna
mundi et gloriam eorum, and (ii) the classical, more personal sense, of honour, and reputation or repute, the latter as
for example referenced by Boethius: Unde non iniuria tragicus exclamat: ῏Ω δόξα, δόξα, μυρίοισι δὴ βροτῶν οὐδὲν
γεγῶσι βίοτον ὤγκωσας μέγαν (Book III, vi).

Hence I have opted for 'numen', rather than the usual 'splendour' or 'glory' which do not, in my view given their
modern connotations and common usage, express the sense of the Greek; with the meaning of 'numen' here being
expressed by what follows: "numinal and of numinal physis", where by numinal - in this ἱερός λόγος - is meant divine
not necessarily in the specific sense of a monotheistic and Biblical God but in the more general sense of pertaining to
divinity in general.

τῶν ὄντων. What is real/what exists (Reality/Existence) - qv. the beginning of the Pœmandres tractate, and my
commentary thereon, in Corpus Hermeticum: Eight Tractates, https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads
/2018/03/eight-tractates-v2-print.pdf

νοῦς. Perceiveration, not 'mind', qv. Pœmandres 2.

substance. ὕλη, the materia of 'things' and living beings - contrasted with οὐσία, essence. qv. Pœmandres 10.

sapientia. σοφία. qv. Pœmandres 29.

vigour. ἐνέργεια. In the sense of vitality and vigorous activity. See my note on ἡ εἱμαρμένη, Pœmandres 15.

Abyss. ἄβυσσος.

A delicate apprehending pneuma. πνεῦµα λεπτὸν νοερόν. In respect of νοερός, the sense here is not
'intelligent'/'intelligence' - as in "quickness or superiority of understanding, sagacity", etcetera - but rather of self-
awareness; that is, of possessing a faculty to perceive, comprehend, and to rationally understand the
external world. Which is why I have opted for 'apprehending'. influence. δύναμις. Not here 'force' or 'power' per se but
rather the influence arising from, inherent in, the numen by virtue of the numinosity of theos. The kind of influence
which can nurture a 'delicate apprehending pneuma'.

Kaos. χάος.

numinous phaos. φῶς ἅγιον. Regarding the transliteration of φῶς - using the Homeric φάος (phaos) - see my
commentary on Pœmandres 4; and regarding ἅγιος as 'numinous', rather than the conventional 'holy' or 'sacred', refer
to the commentary on Δόξα πάντων ὁ θεὸς above, and especially the note on the duality of the numinous in pagan
weltanschauungen in my commentary on Pœmandres 5.

Appendix One

The Concept Of Physis

The term physis - φύσις - was used by Heraclitus, Aristotle, and others, and occurs in texts such as the Pœmandres and
Ιερός Λόγος tractates of the Corpus Hermeticum.

Physis is usually translated as either 'Nature' (as if 'the natural world', and the physical cosmos beyond, are meant) or
as the character (the nature) of a person. However, while the context - of the original Greek text - may suggest (as
often, for example, in Homer and Herodotus) such a meaning as such English words impute, physis philosophically (as,
for example, in Heraclitus and Aristotle and the Corpus Hermeticum) has specific ontological meanings. Meanings
which are lost, or glossed over, when physis is simply translated either as 'Nature' or - in terms of mortals - as
(personal) character.

Ontologically, as Aristotle makes clear [1], physis denotes the being of those beings who or which have the potentiality
(the being) to change, be changed, or to develope. That is, to become, or to move or be moved; as for example in the
motion (of 'things') and the 'natural unfolding' or growth, sans an external cause, that living beings demonstrate.

However, and crucially, physis is not - for human beings - some abstract 'essence' (qv. Plato's ἰδέᾳ/εἶδος) but rather a
balance between the being that it is, it was, and potentially might yet be. That is, in Aristotelian terms, it is a meson -
μέσον - of being and 'not being'; and 'not being' in the sense of not yet having become what it could be, and not now
being what it used to be. Hence why, for Aristotle, a manifestation of physis - in terms of the being of mortals - such as
arête (ἀρετή) is a meson, a balance of things, and not, as it is for Plato, some fixed 'form' - some idea, ideal - which as
Plato wrote "always exists, and has no genesis. It does not die, does not grow, does not decay." [2]

According to my understanding of Heraclitus, physis also suggests - as in Fragment 1 - the 'natural' being of a being
which we mortals have a tendency to cover-up or conceal [3].

Furthermore, physis is one of the main themes in the Pœmandres tractate of the Corpus Hermeticum, for the author
seeks "to apprehend the physis of beings" [4] with physis often mystically personified:

"This is a mysterium esoteric even to this day. For Physis, having intimately joined with the human, produced
a most wondrous wonder possessed of the physis of the harmonious seven I mentioned before, of Fire and
pneuma. Physis did not tarry, giving birth to seven male-and-female humans with the physis of those viziers,
and ætherean [...]

[For] those seven came into being in this way. Earth was muliebral, Water was lustful, and Fire maturing.
From Æther, the pnuema, and with Physis bringing forth human-shaped bodies. Of Life and phaos, the human
came to be of psyche and perceiveration; from Life - psyche; from phaos - perceiveration; and with
everything in the observable cosmic order cyclic until its completion...

When the cycle was fulfilled, the connexions between all things were, by the deliberations of theos,
unfastened. Living beings - all male-and-female then - were, including humans, rent asunder thus bringing
into being portions that were masculous with the others muliebral." [5]

Physis is also personified in the Ιερός Λόγος tractate:

"The divine is all of that mixion: renewance of the cosmic order through Physis
For Physis is presenced in the divine." [6]

The Numinous Way Of Pathei-Mathos

In the philosophy of pathei-mathos, physis is used contextually to refer to:

(i) the ontology of beings, an ontology - a reality, a 'true nature '- that is often obscured by denotatum [7]
and by abstractions, [8] both of which conceal physis;
(ii) the relationship between beings, and between beings and Being, which is of us - we mortals - as a nexion,
 an affective effluvium (or emanation) of Life (ψυχή) and thus of why 'the separation-of-otherness' [9] is a
concealment of that relationship;
(iii) the character, or persona, of human beings, and which character - sans denotatum - can be discovered
(revealed, known) by the faculty of empathy;
(iv) the unity - the being - beyond the division of our physis, as individual mortals, into masculous and
muliebral;
(v) that manifestation denoted by the concept Time, with Time considered to be an expression/manifestation
of the physis of beings. [10]

My concept of physis is therefore primarily ontological.

Notes

[1] Refer to Appendix Two below.

[2] πρῶτον μὲν ἀεὶ ὂν καὶ οὔτε γιγνόμενον οὔτε ἀπολλύμενον οὔτε αὐξανόμενον οὔτε φθίνον (Symposium 210e -
211a).

[3] Refer to Appendix VI, Some Notes on Heraclitus Fragment 1, of The Numinous Way of Pathei-Mathos, op.cit.

[4] Pœmandres 3. Corpus Hermeticum: Eight Tractates, https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads

/2018/03/eight-tractates-v2-print.pdf

[5] Pœmandres 16-18. Corpus Hermeticum: Eight Tractates, op.cit.

[6] Ιερός Λόγος 3; qv. Corpus Hermeticum: Eight Tractates, op.cit.

[7] In my philosophy of pathei-mathos, I use the term denotatum - from the Latin, denotare - in accord with its general
meaning which is "to denote or to describe by an expression or a word; to name some-thing; to refer that which is so
named or so denoted."

Thus understood, and used as an Anglicized term, denotatum is applicable to both singular and plural instances and
thus obviates the need to employ the Latin plural denotata.

[8] An abstraction is a manufactured generalization, a hypothesis, a posited thing, an assumption or assumptions

about, an extrapolation of or from some-thing, or some assumed or extrapolated ideal 'form' of some-thing.
Sometimes, abstractions are generalization based on some sample(s), or on some median (average) value or sets of
values, observed, sampled, or assumed.

Abstractions can be of some-thing past, in the present, or described as a goal or an ideal which it is assumed could be
attained or achieved in the future. Abstractions are often assumed to provide some 'knowledge' or some
'understanding' of some-thing assigned to or described by a particular abstraction.

[9] Refer, for example, to my The Error of The-Separation-of-Otherness in The Numinous Way of Pathei-Mathos,
https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/numinous-way-pathei-mathos-v7.pdf

[10] Time And The Separation Of Otherness - Part One. 2012.

Appendix Two

Notes on Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 5, 1015α

Text

ἐκ δὴ τῶν εἰρημένων ἡ πρώτη φύσις καὶ κυρίως λεγομένη ἐστὶν ἡ οὐσία ἡ τῶν ἐχόντων ἀρχὴν κινήσεως ἐν αὑτοῖς ᾗ
αὐτά: ἡ γὰρ ὕλη τῷ ταύτης δεκτικὴ εἶναι λέγεται φύσις, καὶ αἱ γενέσεις καὶ τὸ φύεσθαι τῷ ἀπὸ ταύτης εἶναι κινήσεις.
καὶ ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως τῶν φύσει ὄντων αὕτη ἐστίν, ἐνυπάρχουσά πως ἢ δυνάμει ἢ ἐντελεχείᾳ.

Translation

Given the foregoing, then principally - and to be exact - physis denotes the quidditas of beings having changement
inherent within them; for substantia has been denoted by physis because it embodies this, as have the becoming that
is a coming-into-being, and a burgeoning, because they are changements predicated on it. For physis is inherent
changement either manifesting the potentiality of a being or as what a being, complete of itself, is.
Commentary And Notes

physis. φύσις. A transliteration, since (i) this is a fundamental philosophical principle/term that requires contextual
interpretation, and (ii) the English words 'nature' and Nature not only do not adequately describe this principle but also
lead to and have led to certain misunderstandings of Aristotle in particular and of classical Greek culture in general.

quidditas. οὐσία. Quidditas - post-classical Latin, from whence the English word 'quiddity' - is more appropriate here
than 'essence', given the metaphysical (ontological) context and given that 'essence' now has so many non-
philosophical connotations. An interesting alternative would be the scholastic term haeceitty. As with physis, quidditas
is a philosophical term which requires contextual interpretation.

changement inherent. The expression ἀρχὴν κινήσεως is crucial to understanding what Aristotle means in respect of
physis. In regard to κίνησις, since Aristotle here does not mean 'motion' or 'movement' in the sense of Newtonian
physics (with its causal concepts of force, mass, velocity, kinetic energy), and since such physical movement is what
the English words 'motion' and 'movement' now most usually denote, then alternatives must be found. Hence the
translation 'changement'.

For what Aristotle is describing here is 'change', as for example in the natural development, the unfolding, the growth,
of some-thing living that occurs because it is living; because it is possessed of Life and which Life is the ἀρχή of the
changement, the 'original being' (the φύσις) from whence being-becomes to be often perceived and classified by us in
orderly ways.

What is described is an a-causal change, of being-becoming - of being unfolding - and thus fulfilling the potentiality of
being within it. Hence why here Aristotle writes ἀρχὴν κινήσεως, which describes the potential changement inherent
in certain beings. 1 That is, the a-causal origin of beings-becoming, or having become, and which beings (having
changed, developed, unfolded) we then perceive and classify in orderly ways 2, such as by shape or usefulness to us,
or by a notion such as causality: in terms of physical- 'movement'. Which is why, in Aristotle, there is a relation
between φύσις, μορφή, and εἶδος - εἶδος in the sense of 'perceiveration' and not, as in Plato, denoting an abstract
'form' or an 'ideal' - διὸ καὶ ὅσα φύσει ἔστιν ἢ γίγνεται, ἤδη ὑπάρχοντος ἐξ οὗ πέφυκε γίγνεσθαι ἢ εἶναι, οὔπω φαμὲν
τὴν φύσιν ἔχειν ἐὰν μὴ ἔχῃ τὸ εἶδος καὶ τὴν μορφήν.

Thus φύσις is what is a-causal in beings and which acausality is the origin of the 'natural' order that unfolds because of
the potentiality of being to become, to presence in the causal, whence to be perceived by us in various orderly
arrangements and/or arranged in terms of usefulness, and which arrangements/usefulness include τὸ καλόν - and thus
schemata, τάξις 3 - and ἀρετή.

substantia. ὕλη. I have chosen to use the etymon of the English word 'substance' - qv. substantia in Thomas Aquinas,
Sententia libri Metaphysicae - to again (i) emphasize the need for contextual interpretation in respect of a specific
philosophical term, and (ii) to avoid whatever misunderstandings may arise from the modern (non-ontological)
connotations of words such as 'matter' and 'substance'.

as have the becoming that is a coming-into-being, and a burgeoning, because they are changements predicated on it.
καὶ αἱ γενέσεις καὶ τὸ φύεσθαι τῷ ἀπὸ ταύτης εἶναι κινήσεις. The sense of γένεσις here implies a 'coming-into-being'
rather than just 'generation', just as φύω implies a being 'burgeoning' - unfolding, revealing itself (its physis) - rather
than just 'growing'.

the potentiality of a being or as what a being, complete of itself, is. The Greek word ἐντελεχείᾳ is compounded from ἐν
ελει ἔχει and the sense here - in relation to ἐνυπάρχουσά - seems to be twofold: of a being as an unchanged being, and
of what a being has become (or is becoming) as a result of a change, for both types of being actually exist, are real.
One exists as a being as it is and has remained, and one exists as the being it has become (or is in the process of
becoming) through the potential for changement inherent within it. Thus, for Aristotle, physis denotes the being of both
types of being.

°°°

[1] In respect of ἀρχὴ as implying what is primarily inherent, qv. 1012b-1013a.

[2] As Thomas Aquinas wrote: "Sciendum est autem, quod principium et causa licet sint idem subiecto, differunt tamen
ratione. Nam hoc nomen principium ordinem quemdam importat; hoc vero nomen causa, importat influxum quemdam
ad esse causati." Sententia libri Metaphysicae, liber 5, lectio 1, n 3.

[3] Regarding 1078a, τοῦ δὲ καλοῦ μέγιστα εἴδη τάξις καὶ συμμετρία καὶ τὸ ὡρισμένον (the most noticeable
expressions of kalos are schemata and harmony and consonancy), my view - given the context - is that τάξις here is
best translated as "schemata", rather than "order" or "arrangement" both of which are vague, open to mis-
interpretation, and unrelated to the context, which context is mathematical beauty. Similarly, ὁρίζω (to me) suggests
consonancy, echoing as that (now somewhat obscure) English word does both by its use by, among others,
Shakespeare (Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2, 286) and also by its relation to the almost 'mathematical beauty' of some music
(as evident for example in the counterpoint of JS Bach).
Furthermore, just because the Greek has συμμετρία it does not necessarily follow that the English word 'symmetry' is
an appropriate translation, considering how the word symmetry is now used and has been used, in the West for many
centuries, and especially in relation to art (in terms, for example, of objects and the human body).

Given that Aristotle in 1078a is referring to geometry in particular and mathematics in general, then an appropriate
translation is 'harmony' - as in "a collation of representative signs or marks, so arranged that they exhibit their
agreement and account for their discrepancies or errors." A harmony, in other words, that is most evident (as I
mentioned in my essay) in Euclid's Elements, as schemata and consonancy are therein evident, most of the contents
(theorems) of which book - deriving from people such as Pythagoras - were known to Aristotle.

Thus, a translation such as "the chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness" can in my opinion
lead to projecting onto Aristotle what he may not necessarily have meant; and projecting onto in respect of how we
now, over two thousand years after Aristotle, understand and use such common English terms. Hence, also, why I
sometimes use obscure English words (which may suggest a relevant meaning) or transliterations (as in physis).

Bibliography

§ The Gospel According to John: Translation And Commentary, Volume I, https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content

/uploads/2023/08/myatt-gospel-john-1-5.pdf

§ Corpus Hermeticum: Eight Tractates, https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/eight-tractates-

v2-print.pdf

Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) License

 Weltschmerz And The Conflict In Gaza

Question: Given your past, which included anti-Zionist tirades when you were a neo-nazi and then when you were a
supporter of al-Qaeda, I would be interested in your view of recent events in Palestine.

Reply: Does the term Weltschmerz express what I feel after decades of experiencing and inciting extremism and a
decade of reflexion on and rejection of such extremism? Possibly, at least in some ways; [1] for in respect of the
current (2023) conflict in Gaza I feel sadness, and am not surprised that such a conflict has arisen with the subsequent
destruction of infrastructure, of homes, and the injuries, the deaths, including of women and children.

Not surprised, given what I understand is our human physis and our seemingly inability to avoid the error of hubris and
our obvious ability to favour our own certitude-of-knowing. Will we, can we, as a species learn to develope empathy
and thus be compassionate and appreciative of the numinous breeding as such empathy and appreciation of the
numinous do a certain personal humility and thus an uncertitude-of-knowing? Will we, can we, as a species learn from
our thousands of years old human culture of pathei-mathos?

It would seem not since we in the West, en masse, apparently have not learned from the horrors of the First and
Second World wars; from the Vietnam war; from the invasions and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. Instead, hatred
and certitude-of-knowing have triumphed again over personal empathy aided as in all those previous conflicts by
propaganda both emotive and cunning.

Contra the bellum iustum of Augustine, since adopted as a principle by modern nation-States and others, where some
elected or unelected official or President or Prime Minister or Congress or Parliament or potentate or whatever assumes
or believe they have the authority to declare war, my understanding is that impersonal war, whenever wherever,
whatever the alleged or assumed justification by whomsoever, is contrary to empathy, compassion, awareness of the
numinous, and the personal learning that pathei-mathos engenders.

For such impersonal war with its necessary obedience to a chain-of-command abrogates personal judgement and what
I have described as 'personal honour in the immediacy of the moment'. As I wrote in One Vagabond In Exile From The
Gods, personal honour

"presences the virtues of fairness, tolerance, compassion, humility, and εὐταξία - as (i) a natural intuitive
(wordless) expression of the numinous ('the good', δίκη, συμπάθεια) and (ii) of both what the culture of
pathei-mathos and the acausal-knowing of empathy reveal we should do (or incline us toward doing) in the
immediacy of the personal moment when personally confronted by what is unfair, unjust, and extreme.

Of how such honour - by its and our φύσις - is and can only ever be personal, and thus cannot be extracted
out from the 'living moment' and our participation in the moment; for it [is] only through such things as a
personal study of the culture of pathei-mathos and the development of the faculty of empathy that a person
who does not naturally possess the instinct for δίκη can develope what is essentially 'the human faculty of
honour', and which faculty is often appreciated and/or discovered via our own personal pathei-mathos." [2]

Hence, my fallible understanding now is that honour cannot be abstracted out from a personal moment and enshrined
in some supra-personal written or aural code. Which, of course, is the exact opposite of what I believed during my
thirty years as a neo-nazi extremist. Such a change of view was a painful, sorrowful, learning from experience:

"There are no excuses for my extremist past, for the suffering I caused [...] No excuses because the
extremism, the intolerance, the hatred, the violence, the inhumanity, the prejudice were mine; my
responsibility, born from and expressive of my character; and because the discovery of, the learning of, the
need to live, to regain, my humanity arose because of and from others and not because of me.

Thus what exposed my hubris - what for me broke down that certitude-of-knowing which extremism breeds
and re-presents - was not something I did; not something I achieved; not something related to my character,
my nature, at all. Instead, it was a gift offered to me by others..." [3]

A gift, a Phoenix, from the deaths of Sue and Francis who

"died - thirteen years apart - leaving me bereft of love, replete with sorrow, and somewhat perplexed [...] A
debt somehow and in some way - beyond a simple remembrance of them - to especially make the life and
death of Sue and Fran worthwhile and full of meaning, as if their tragic early dying meant something to both
me, and through my words, my deeds, to others. A debt of change, of learning - in me, so that from my
pathei-mathos I might be, should be, a better person; presencing through words, living, thought, and deeds,
that simple purity of life felt, touched, known, in those stark moments of the immediacy of their loss." [4]

In further explanation all I have now are the words of TS Eliot in his poem Little Gidding:

And what you thought you came for

Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment.
In respect of wars and supra-personal conflicts, are we then, as a species, doomed to repeat the errors, the hubris, of
the past? Almost a decade ago I asked myself a rhetorical question: what opinion would a hypothetical visiting alien
from another star-system form about us? [5] My answer then was that the alien would probably consider us an
aggressive, still rather primitive and very violent, species best avoided until such time as we might outwardly
demonstrate otherwise.

Have we, since the outbreak of World War One in 1914 to the 2023 conflict in Gaza, demonstrated otherwise?

David Myatt
17th December 2023
Extract from a letter to a personal correspondent.

[1] Postscriptum: "in some ways" as Weltschmerz might be applied to some of the poems and letters of TS Eliot.
[2] One Vagabond In Exile From The Gods. https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/viator.pdf
[3] Pathei-Mathos, Genesis of My Unknowing. The essay is included in https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2019/09
/reformation-extremism-v3b.pdf
[4] Myngath. https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/david-myatt-myngath.pdf
[5] https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/non-terrestrial-view.pdf

Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) License

 Exegesis And Pathei-Mathos

In my recent (2023) essay A Sacramental Link? I mentioned that my interpretation of the Gospel of John inclined me to
suggest that Johannine Christianity was "the way of humility, of forgiveness, of love, of a personal appreciation of the
divine, of the numinous; and a spiritual, interior, way somewhat different from past moralistic interpretations." [1]

My interpenetration of that text is however just one of thousands over centuries with many of those other
interpretations, of that and the other Gospels and the Scriptures in general, causing schisms, conflicts, and accusations
of heresy as in the case of the Alexandrian priest Arius (born c.250, died 336 AD) who voiced an interpretation of the
difference between the denotatum θεὸς and the denotatum ὁ θεὸς in, for instance the Gospel of John, leading to that
interpretation being denounced as heretical.

Which returns us to the problems of exegesis and denotata, and the axioms of my weltanschauung of pathei-mathos
which are:

(i) that it is empathy and pathei-mathos which can wordlessly reveal the ontological reality both of our own physis
and of how we, as sentient beings, relate to other living beings and to Being itself;
(ii) that it is denotata - and thus the abstractions deriving therefrom - which, in respect of human beings, can and
often do obscure our physis and our relation to other living beings and to Being;
(iii) that denotata and abstractions imply a dialectic of contradictory opposites and thus for we human beings a
separation-of-otherness; and
(iv) that this dialectic of opposites is, has been, and can be a cause of suffering for both ourselves, as sentient
beings, and - as a causal human presenced effect - for the other life with which we share our planet.

What is important about empathy and pathei-mathos is that they are directly personal perceiverations and
experiences, and therefore have what I termed a 'personal horizon' meaning that they

"cannot be extrapolated from such a personal knowing into some-thing supra-personal be this some-thing
denotata, including an ἰδέᾳ/εἶδος, or an axiom (ἀρχή) or a source (αἴτιος) for some 'revelation' or ideology or
similar manifestations constructed by and dependent on appellation." [2]

The knowing so revealed is only and always our personal fallible answer or answers, and which knowing is invariably a
wordless empathic knowing that cannot be adequately expressed by words and terms (by denotata) without in some
manner distorting it because words and terms depend on exegesis, which exegesis can and often does vary from
century to century.

In practical terms this knowing implies a certain humility since empathy and pathei-mathos inform us that we are
fallible beings, arising as this personal knowledge does from the intimations of the numinous that empathy and pathei-
mathos almost invariably provide: of our connexion to other beings, human and otherwise; of our minute place in the
Cosmos as one mortal, short-lived, being on one planet orbiting one star in one Galaxy in a Cosmos of billions of
Galaxies; and of the suffering of so many human beings, century after century, often caused by wars and conflicts
often based on some certitude of belief in some cause, or on some passion, or on some interpretation of some religion,
or some ideology or notion or 'destiny' with such wars and conflicts generationally replaced by others based on other
certitudes of belief or on the same old passions.

A forgetting of this humility, will-fully or otherwise, has however frequently occurred and still occurs with the individual
seeking to make their pathei-mathos the basis for some -ism or -ology or more often some interpretation of some
existing -ism or -ology. However, a remembering of such humility can often lead to the life of the reclusive mystic or to
a life of compassionately seeking to alleviate in some non-confrontational and practical way at least some of the
suffering of other life, human and otherwise.

As I noted in Soli Deo Gloria,

"all the diverse manifestations of the Numen, all the diverse answers, of the various numinous Ways and
religions, have or may have their place, and all perhaps may serve the same ultimate purpose – that of
bringing us closer to the ineffable beauty, the ineffable goodness, of life; that of transforming us, reminding
us; that of giving us as individuals the chance to cease to cause suffering, to presence the good, to be part of
the Numen itself. For what distinguishes a valuable, a good, a numinous Way or religion, is firstly this
commitment, however expressed, to the cessation of suffering through means which do not cause more
suffering; secondly, having some practical means whereby individuals can transform themselves for the
better, and thirdly, possessing some way of presenting, manifesting, presencing what is sacred, what is
numinous, thus reconnecting the individual to the source of their being, to their humanity.

In my fallible view, any Way or religion which manifests, which expresses, which guides individuals toward,
the numinous humility we human beings need is good, and should not be stridently condemned. For such
personal humility – that which prevents us from committing hubris, whatever the raison d’être, the theology,
the philosophy – is a presencing of the numinous. Indeed, one might write and say that it is a personal
humility – whatever the source – that expresses our true developed (that is, rational and empathic) human
nature and which nature such Ways or religions or mythological allegories remind us of. Hence the formulae,
the expression, Soli Deo Gloria being one Western cultural manifestation of a necessary truth, manifesting as
it does one particular numinous allegory among many such historical and cultural and mythological
 allegories. Just as, for example, the sight of King Louis IX walking barefoot to Sainte Chapelle was a symbol of
the humility which the Christian faith, correctly understood, saught to cultivate in individuals. " [3]

A Personal View

While I appreciate how various Ways of living and codified religions can presence and often have presenced the
numinous and thus have been and are for many a conduit toward a personal humility and compassion, my personal
perceiveration has been for over a decade and remains my weltanschauung of pathei-mathos, which is just some
recollections of my experiences and contemplations regarding the loss of loved ones, of working and living on farms in
England, and of solitary walks along a sea-shore and in the hills and deciduous woods of rural English Shires.

Given the 'personal horizon' of these recollections and contemplations they cannot not, without removing from them
their essence of a personal wordless experiencing of the numinous, form the basis for anything supra-personal be it a
philosophy or a Way to guide others, just as the recollections and contemplations of others ancient and modern, and
the authors themselves, should not be or become or be seen as a guide or even as a meritorious example.

As it says in Ayat 63 of Surah 25 of the Quran:

"The 'Ibaad of Ar-Rahmaan are those who walk on earth in humility and, when the arrogant speak to them,
they reply Salaam." [4]

As the poetess Sappho wrote:

ἔγω δὲ φίλημμ᾽ ἀβροσύναν [...] τοῦτο καί μοι

τὸ λάμπρον ἔρως ἀελίω καὶ τὸ κάλον λέλογχε [5]

I love delicate softness:

For me, love has brought the brightness
And the beauty of the Sun

As it says in the Beatitudes:

Μακάριοι οἱ πτωχοὶ τῷ πνεύματι, ὅτι αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν.

μακάριοι οἱ πενθοῦντες, ὅτι αὐτοὶ παρακληθήσονται.
μακάριοι οἱ πραεῖς, ὅτι αὐτοὶ κληρονομήσουσιν τὴν γῆν.
μακάριοι οἱ πεινῶντες καὶ διψῶντες τὴν δικαιοσύνην, ὅτι αὐτοὶ χορτασθήσονται.
μακάριοι οἱ ἐλεήμονες, ὅτι αὐτοὶ ἐλεηθήσονται.
μακάριοι οἱ καθαροὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ, ὅτι αὐτοὶ τὸν θεὸν ὄψονται.
μακάριοι οἱ εἰρηνοποιοί, ὅτι αὐτοὶ υἱοὶ θεοῦ κληθήσονται.
μακάριοι οἱ δεδιωγμένοι ἕνεκεν δικαιοσύνης, ὅτι αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν.

Fortunate, those humble with spiritus, for theirs is the Kingdom of Empyrean.
Fortunate, those who grieve, for they shall have solace.
Fortunate, the gentle, for they shall acquire the Earth.
Fortunate, those who hunger and thirst for fairness, for they shall be replete.
Fortunate, the compassionate, for they shall receive compassion.
Fortunate, the refined of heart, for they shall perceive Theos.
Fortunate, the peaceable, for they shall be called children of Theos.
Fortunate, those harassed due to their fairness, for theirs is the Kingdom of Empyrean. [6]

Which interpretations of mine illustrate the problems of exegesis, and why my preference, now and for over a decade,
is and has been for the wordless perceiverations of empathy and of a personal pathei-mathos.

David Myatt
October 24th, 2023

An archive of my www.davidmyatt.info website, which incorporates the items cited below, is available at
https://archive.org/download/www.davidmyatt.info/www.davidmyatt.info.zip
(Accessed October 2023)
[1] The essay is included in www.davidmyatt.info/dwm-compilation-religion.pdf

[2] Numinosity, Denotata, Empathy, And The Hermetic Tradition, 2022. www.davidmyatt.info/dwm-denotata-empathy-
v1b.pdf

[3] Soli Deo Gloria, 2011. Included in www.davidmyatt.info/dwm-compilation-religion.pdf

[4] Ar-Rahmaan is one of the names of Allah, signifying The Most Merciful. The 'Ibaad of Ar-Rahmaan are the Believers
who follow the Word of Allah in the Quran and as manifest in the example of the Prophet Muhammad.

[5] P. Oxyrhynchus. XV (1922) nr. 1787 fr. 1 et 2

[6] The Gospel According To Matthew 5: 3–10. My translation and commentary of The Beatitudes is included in
www.davidmyatt.info/dwm-compilation-religion.pdf

Since I have used unusual words - for example, the spiritus instead of the conventional 'the spirit', and Empyrean
instead of 'heaven' - I append here extracts from my commentary.

μακάριος. A difficult word to translate since "blessed" has acquired particular (sometimes moralistic)
meanings as a result of nearly two thousand years of exegesis, while "happy" is rather prosaic. The context -
as in ὅτι αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν - suggests "fortunate" [...]

πτωχός. Usually translated as "poor" which however has too many exegetical and modern connotations, and
does not express the metaphorical sense here which implies being "humble" in respect of τὸ πνεῦμα.

τῷ πνεύματι [...] τῶν οὐρανῶν. In respect of τὸ πνεῦμα as the spiritus (rather than as the Spirit) and οὐρανός
as Empyrean (rather than Heaven), qv. my commentary on John 1:32 from which this an extract:

οὐρανός here is always translated as 'heaven' although the term 'heaven' - used in the context of the
Gospels - now has rather different connotations than the Greek οὐρανός, with the word 'heaven' now often
implying something explained by almost two thousand years of exegesis and as depicted, for example, in
medieval and Renaissance Christian art. However, those hearing or reading this particular Greek gospel for
the first time in the formative years of Christianity would most probably have assumed the usual Greek
usage of "the heavens" in the sense of the "the star-filled firmament above" or in the sense of "the sky" or as
the abode of theos and/or of the gods, ἐν οὐρανῷ θεοί [...]

It therefore seems apposite to suggest a more neutral word than 'heaven' as a translation of οὐρανός and
one which might not only be understood in various 'classical' ways by an audience of Greek speakers (such
as the ways described above) but also be open to a new, and Christian, interpretation consistent with the
milieu that existed when the Gospel of John was written and first heard. That is, before the exegesis of later
centuries and long before post-Roman Christian iconography. Hence my suggestion of the post-classical Latin
term Empyrean, which can bear the interpretation of the abode of theos and/or of the gods, of "the sky", of
the "the star-filled firmament above"; and a Christian one suggested by Genesis 2.8 - παράδεισον ἐν Εδεμ
(the Paradise of Eden) - and also by shamayim.

This work is published under the Creative Commons

Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) License
and can be copied, distributed, and republished,
according to the terms of that license.
 Questions Of Hermeneutics And Exegesis

For over twenty years questions of hermeneutics and exegesis in relation to religions, ideologies, and philosophies
have interested and concerned me, leading to my conjecture that the use of denotata to express a revelation, a
spirituality, an idea, an ideal, or a philosophy, results in not only a dialectic of opposites - for example in the Gospels of
Christianity ἁμαρτία (conventionally interpreted in Gospel translations as sin) contrasted with 'righteousness' (and
being saved, rewarded by God with everlasting life in Heaven) and φαῦλος (conventionally in interpreted in Gospel
translations as evil) contrasted with 'good' - but also in problems of exegesis: as in how Hellenistic Greek is expounded
in terms of a modern language such as English. Thus, is the interpretation of 'sin' from the Hellenistic Greek ἁμαρτία
imposing a meaning that may not have been germane to the milieu of such an ancient period in all or certain
instances? [1]

In the matter of the Gospels of John did the author use ἁμαρτία to express, to expound, something - 'sin' - which might
well have been a foreign concept to speakers of the Greek of that time when there was a common belief among many
of them in a hierarchy of pagan deities and of propitiation (such as offering gifts or a sacrifice to the gods) for
misdeeds or for 'offending' a god or gods or to ask for their help?

Consider the tractates of the Corpus Hermeticum some arguably written around the time or not long after that Gospel,
with the Poemandres tractate centred around θεός as in this from v.3:

φημὶ ἐγώ, Μαθεῖν θέλω τὰ ὄντα καὶ νοῆσαι τὴν τούτων φύσιν καὶ γνῶναι τὸν θεόν·

"I answered that I seek to learn what is real, to apprehend the physis of beings, and to have knowledge of
theos." [2]

Is theos here the Jehovah of the Hebrews and the God of Christianity? Or is it better to understand theos in a non-
anthropomorphic way as Being, the source of beings, mortal and otherwise? If the interpretation is 'God' then this
tractate, and many of the others, arguable express early Christian weltanschauungen with an implicit dialectic of
opposites, unlike the neutral, non-anthropomorphic Being which can metaphysically be understood as 'the divine', the
numinous. [3]

Such a dialectic, as I have previously endeavoured to explain, [4] invariably leads to conflict both internal, within some
individuals, and external between individuals and entities, such as religious or political groups or factions who or which
claim to have the correct or a better interpretation or understanding of their beliefs or ideology. Hence extremism [5]
and the suffering that such extremism causes.

My personal experiences, over some four decades, and my subsequent reflexion on that experience, have led me to
conclude that, rather than denotata, the personal experiencing of the numinous through empathy and pathei-mathos is
of fundamental importance in understanding both our physis (φύσις) - and thus our relation to Being and to beings -
and Being, the numinous, itself. [6]

To illustrate the dialectic of denotata and the subsequent suffering caused there is the National Socialism of Germany
between 1933 and 1945. This was a way of life centred around denotata such as kampf, nation, and ethnic identity,
with individuals judged by, and expected to judge others by, the primary criterion of ethnicity, with particular
ethnicities assigned a certain value (high or low), and each individual judged by how well they adhered to the duty
they were expected to do in respect of their nation (their land) and the ethnicity they were said to belong to or
believed they belonged to. In addition, kampf between individuals, ethnicities, and nations was considered healthy and
necessary, with such struggle revealing the worth of individuals and thus those considered fit to lead and assume
positions of authority.

This German National Socialist way of life was therefore a collective, supra-personal, one with the empathy and pathei-
mathos of individuals, and the personal judgement and compassion derived from them, ignored or suppressed in
favour of obedience to the 'will of the collective' (the folk, the nation) embodied by Der Führer and through the
führerprinzip and with disobedience not only disapproved of but liable to be punished. This dialectic of opposites - of
certain types of individuals or ways of behaviour being better than others and with The Third Reich having a particular
destiny achievable through kampf - naturally led to the impersonal harshness of the Nürnberger Gesetze, as well as to
the invasion of Poland and thence to the Second World War with the attendant deaths and suffering of millions of
human beings. German National Socialism was thus from its beginnings to its ending in 1945 an extremism whose
principles, causes, and characteristics promoted and incited harsh, uncompassionate, actions.

In contrast, the personal empathy and pathei-mathos of individuals provides a natural balance devoid of denotata,
expressed or implied, and can only promote individual actions consistent with compassion. It cannot be extrapolated
from the individual lexeriencing to form anything supra-personal expressed by a denotatum or by some denotata such
as an -ism or an -ology be such religious, ideological, or political or otherwise, since in doing so its individual physis, its
natural nameless balance, is replaced sooner or later by a dialectic of opposites.

In practical terms this implies the mortal individual could, at best, be a fallible example or inspiration for some others,
since to claim or to be perceived by others as other than fallible and mortal, and other than a possible and personal
inspiration, is ὕβρις (hubris) and a contradiction of the nameless balance that for centuries we have, according to my
understanding, erroneously denoted by appellations such as θεός, ὁ θεός, and God with the inevitable dialectic of
exegesis and conflict and of suffering.

In relation to hubris,

σὺ δ᾽ ἄκουε δίκης, μηδ᾽ ὕβριν ὄφελλε:

ὕβρις γάρ τε κακὴ δειλῷ βροτῷ: οὐδὲ μὲν ἐσθλὸς
ῥηιδίως φερέμεν δύναται, βαρύθει δέ θ᾽ ὑπ᾽ αὐτῆς
ἐγκύρσας ἄτῃσιν: ὁδὸς δ᾽ ἑτέρηφι παρελθεῖν
κρείσσων ἐς τὰ δίκαια: Δίκη δ᾽ ὑπὲρ Ὕβριος ἴσχει
ἐς τέλος ἐξελθοῦσα: παθὼν δέ τε νήπιος ἔγνω

Hesiod, Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι, vv 213-218

You should listen to [the goddess] Fairness and not oblige Hubris
Since Hubris harms unfortunate mortals while even the more fortunate
Are not equal to carrying that heavy a burden, meeting as they do with Mischief.
The best path to take is the opposite one: that of honour
For, in the end, Fairness is above Hubris
Which is something the young come to learn from adversity. [7]

ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι τοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τὴν φθορὰν εἰς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι κατὰ τὸ χρεών· διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ
δίκην καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν. Anaximander [8]

Where beings have their origin there also they cease to exist: offering payment to balance, one to another,
their unbalance for such is the arrangement of what is passing. [9]

David Myatt
July 2023

[1] I expounded on the matter of the word sin in Interpretation and The Question of Sin which forms part of my 2013
essay Exegesis and Translation, Some Personal Reflexions. https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/exegesis-
and-translation-partsone-two.pdf

[2] My translation, from Corpus Hermeticum: Eight Tractates, https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/eight-

tractates-v2-print.pdf

[3] From Mythoi To Empathy: A New Appreciation Of The Numinous, appendix II of The Numinous Way Of Pathei-
Mathos, https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2022/10/numinous-way-pathei-mathos-v7.pdf

[4] In Part Seven, The Abstraction of Change as Opposites and Dialectic, of The Numinous Way Of Pathei-Mathos,
https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2022/10/numinous-way-pathei-mathos-v7.pdf; and in the essay Numinosity,
Denotata, Empathy, And The Hermetic Tradition, https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/dwm-denotata-
empathy-v1b.pdf

[5] In Understanding and Rejecting Extremism I defined extremism and an extremist thus:

"By extreme I mean to be harsh, so that my understanding of an extremist is a person who tends toward
harshness, or who is harsh, or who supports/incites harshness, in pursuit of some objective, usually of a
political or a religious nature. Here, harsh is: rough, severe, a tendency to be unfeeling, unempathic.

Hence extremism is considered to be: (1) the result of such harshness, and (2) the principles, the causes, the
characteristics, that promote, incite, or describe the harsh action of extremists. In addition, a fanatic is
considered to be someone with a surfeit of zeal or whose enthusiasm for some objective, or for some cause,
is intemperate.

In the philosophical terms of my weltanschauung, an extremist is someone who commits the error of hubris."
https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2022/10/david-myatt-rejecting-extremism.pdf

[6] My conclusions are outlined in two works: The Numinous Way Of Pathei-Mathos,
https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2022/10/numinous-way-pathei-mathos-v7.pdf, and Understanding and
Rejecting Extremism, https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2022/10/david-myatt-rejecting-extremism.pdf

[7] Notes on my translation:

a. δίκη. The goddess of Fairness/Justice/Judgement, and – importantly – of Tradition (Ancestral Custom). In Ἔργα καὶ
Ἡμέραι, as in Θεογονία (Theogony), Hesiod is recounting and explaining part of that tradition, one important aspect of
which tradition is understanding the relation between the gods and mortals. Given both the antiquity of the text and
the context, 'Fairness' – as the name of the goddess – is, in my view, more appropriate than the now common
appellation 'Justice', considering the modern (oft times impersonal) connotations of the word 'justice'.

b. Mischief. The sense of ἄτῃσιν here is not of 'delusion' nor of 'calamities', per se, but rather of encountering that
which or those whom (such as the goddess of mischief, Ἄτη) can bring mischief or misfortune into the 'fortunate life' of
a 'fortunate mortal', and which encounters are, according to classical tradition, considered as having been instigated
by the gods. Hence, of course, why Sophocles [Antigone, 1337-8] wrote ὡς πεπρωμένης οὐκ ἔστι θνητοῖς συμφορᾶς
ἀπαλλαγή (mortals cannot be delivered from the misfortunes of their fate).

c. δίκαιος. Honour expresses the sense that is meant: of being fair; capable of doing the decent thing; of dutifully
observing ancestral customs. A reasonable alternative for 'honour' would thus be 'decency', both preferable to words
such as 'just' and 'justice' which are not only too impersonal but have too many inappropriate modern connotations.

d. νήπιος. Literal – 'young', 'uncultured' (i.e. un-schooled, un-educated in the ways of ancestral custom) – rather than
metaphorical ('foolish', ignorant).

[8] Diels-Kranz, 12A9, B1

[9] In respect of χρόνος, it is not here a modern abstract measurable 'time' but 'the passing' of living or events as
evident in the Agamemnon:

ποίου χρόνου δὲ καὶ πεπόρθηται πόλις 278

Then - how long has it been since the citadel was ravaged?

τίς δὲ πλὴν θεῶν ἅπαντ᾽ ἀπήμων τὸν δι᾽ αἰῶνος χρόνον 554-5

Who - except for the gods - passes their entire life without any injury at all?

In respect of ἀδικία, here it simply implies unbalance in contrast to the balance that is δίκη. The translation 'disorder' -
like 'order' for δίκη - is too redolent of some modern or ancient morality designed to manifest 'order' in contrast to its
dialectical opposite 'disorder'.

This work is published under the Creative Commons

Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) License
and can be copied, distributed, and published,
according to the terms of that license.

All translations by DW Myatt

 Fifty-Five Years Ago

On July 20th, 1969, during the Summer Vacation, I among millions of others around the world watched live
transmissions from the surface of the Moon as an American astronaut became the first human being to step onto the
surface on an extra-terrestrial object. In common with many people then I believed it was a momentous event that
heralded a new human era when we, placing aside divisions and differences internal and external, would together as a
species co-operate and venture forth toward the common goal of exploring and having settlements on extra-terrestrial
worlds thus having a supra-national goal that would inspire our peoples and possibly help us move toward solving at
least some of our internal problems.

How naive I was. Fifty-five years later we as a species are as divided, internally and externally, as we were, perhaps
more so, with America for instance spending far more on defence and supplying military and other aid to their 'allies' in
conflict zones and elsewhere than they do on funding NASA and the exploration of Outer Space. We also have failed to
solve many if not most of our internal problems, such as in the case of America and Britain, poverty, homelessness, the
drug-addiction that engenders crime, and the social misbehaviour, the disrespect, born of a lack of personal honour.

I also, for decades, naively believed I had found some answers to such internal problems, first in National Socialism
and then in a particular interpretation of Islam. But hard-learned lessons, often occurring against my will tempered as it
was by an inner fanaticism, slowly, very slowly, engendered a learning. Of how all I and similar arrogant others were
doing was contributing to divisions, engendering suffering, and committing the error of hubris. A learning I have, and
perhaps out of a still-lingering vanity, strived to express through my Numinous Way Of Pathei-Mathos. [1]

Not that I now expect it to make any difference whatsoever. But it is all I seem to have to offer in expiation. As Hesiod
wrote over two and a half thousand years ago:

σὺ δ᾽ ἄκουε δίκης, μηδ᾽ ὕβριν ὄφελλε:

ὕβρις γάρ τε κακὴ δειλῷ βροτῷ: οὐδὲ μὲν ἐσθλὸς
215 ῥηιδίως φερέμεν δύναται, βαρύθει δέ θ᾽ ὑπ᾽ αὐτῆς
ἐγκύρσας ἄτῃσιν: ὁδὸς δ᾽ ἑτέρηφι παρελθεῖν
κρείσσων ἐς τὰ δίκαια: Δίκη δ᾽ ὑπὲρ Ὕβριος ἴσχει
ἐς τέλος ἐξελθοῦσα: παθὼν δέ τε νήπιος ἔγνω

You should listen to [the goddess] Fairness and not oblige Hubris
Since Hubris harms unfortunate mortals while even the more fortunate
Are not equal to carrying that heavy a burden, meeting as they do with Mischief.
The best path to take is the opposite one: that of honour
For, in the end, Fairness is above Hubris
Which is something the young come to learn from adversity. [2]

David Myatt
July 20th, 2024

[1] https://perceiverations.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/numinous-way-pathei-mathos-v7.pdf

[2] Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι, vv 213-218. Some notes on my translation:

a. δίκη. The goddess of Fairness/Justice/Judgement, and - importantly - of Tradition (Ancestral Custom). In this work, as
in Θεογονία (Theogony), Hesiod is recounting and explaining part of that tradition, one important aspect of which
tradition is understanding the relation between the gods and mortals. Given both the antiquity of the text and the
context, 'Fairness' - as the name of the goddess - is, in my view, more appropriate than the now common appellation
'Justice', considering the modern (oft times impersonal) connotations of the word 'justice'.

b. Mischief. The sense of ἄτῃσιν here is not of 'delusion' nor of 'calamities', per se, but rather of encountering that
which or those whom (such as the goddess of mischief, Ἄτη) can bring mischief or misfortune into the 'fortunate life' of
a 'fortunate mortal', and which encounters are, according to classical tradition, considered as having been instigated
by the gods. Hence, of course, why Sophocles [Antigone, 1337-8] wrote

ὡς πεπρωμένης οὐκ ἔστι θνητοῖς συμφορᾶς ἀπαλλαγή

mortals cannot be delivered from the misfortunes of their fate

c. δίκαιος. My reading of the text suggests that 'honour' expresses the sense that is meant: of being fair; capable of
doing the decent thing; of dutifully observing ancestral customs. A reasonable alternative for 'honour' would thus be
'decency', both preferable to words such as 'just' and 'justice' which are not only too impersonal but have too many
inappropriate modern connotations.

d. νήπιος. Literal - 'young', 'uncultured' (i.e. un-schooled, un-educated in the ways of ancestral custom) - rather than
metaphorical ('foolish', ignorant).

Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 4.0 license

 A Note Concerning Aristotle, Reason, And Virtue

It was after recently reading a passage from Sententia libri Ethicorum by Thomas Aquinas 1 that I returned to Aristotle's
Nicomachean Ethics and found the appropriate section:

εἰ δ' ἐστὶν ἔργον ἀνθρώπου ψυχῆς ἐνέργεια κατὰ λόγον ἢ μὴ ἄνευ λόγου, τὸ δ' αὐτό φαμεν ἔργον εἶναι τῷ
γένει τοῦδε καὶ τοῦδε σπουδαίου, ὥσπερ κιθαριστοῦ καὶ σπουδαίου κιθαριστοῦ, καὶ ἁπλῶς δὴ τοῦτ' ἐπὶ
πάντων, προστιθεμένης τῆς κατὰ τὴν ἀρετὴν ὑπεροχῆς πρὸς τὸ ἔργον· κιθαριστοῦ μὲν γὰρ κιθαρίζειν,
σπουδαίου δὲ τὸ εὖ· εἰ δ' οὕτως, ἀνθρώπου δὲ τίθεμεν ἔργον ζωήν τινα, ταύτην δὲ ψυχῆς ἐνέργειαν καὶ
πράξεις μετὰ λόγου, σπουδαίου δ' ἀνδρὸς εὖ ταῦτα καὶ καλῶς, ἕκαστον δ' εὖ κατὰ τὴν οἰκείαν ἀρετὴν
ἀποτελεῖται· εἰ δ' οὕτω, τὸ ἀνθρώπινον ἀγαθὸν ψυχῆς ἐνέργεια γίνεται κατ' ἀρετήν, εἰ δὲ πλείους αἱ ἀρεταί,
κατὰ τὴν ἀρίστην καὶ τελειοτάτην. 1.7 1098a7-18 2

In the context of the comments by Aquinas, and later translations of the Nicomachean Ethics, it was interesting how
certain English words had and have been used to translate particular Greek terms and thus imbue the text with
particular meanings not necessarily relevant to an understanding of Aristotle's philosophy. Such as, in the above lines,
ψυχή as 'soul', ἀρετή as 'virtue', and ἔργον as 'work' or 'activity', with words such as 'soul' and 'virtue' now often
associated with Christianity.

My interpretation of meaning of those lines from Aristotle is somewhat different:

Thus if the goal of humans is to actualize the Quidditas through reason or at least not disconnected from
reason, and if we also say that regarding the goal of an artist and of a skilled artist of the same genre - of a
Kithara player and one more skilful, and to all genres - the goal of humans with a certain type of living, of a
goal to actualize the Quidditas through reason, then according to such premises it would be proper for a
skilled human to act excellently in accord with reason, and if there be several such human excellences, in
accord with the most meritable and accomplished of them.

Where and for example there is 'merit' in place of 'virtue' and Quidditas in place of 'soul', with Quidditas (scholastic
Latin) used by Thomas Aquinas and still a somewhat neutral world which can suggest several philosophical, non-
religious, meanings according to context, such as the physis - character; nature; noumenon; intangibility - of a being or
existent, as in Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 5, 1015α:

ἐκ δὴ τῶν εἰρημένων ἡ πρώτη φύσις καὶ κυρίως λεγομένη ἐστὶν ἡ οὐσία ἡ τῶν ἐχόντων ἀρχὴν κινήσεως ἐν
αὑτοῖς ᾗ αὐτά: ἡ γὰρ ὕλη τῷ ταύτης δεκτικὴ εἶναι λέγεται φύσις, καὶ αἱ γενέσεις καὶ τὸ φύεσθαι τῷ ἀπὸ
ταύτης εἶναι κινήσεις. καὶ ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως τῶν φύσει ὄντων αὕτη ἐστίν, ἐνυπάρχουσά πως ἢ δυνάμει ἢ
ἐντελεχείᾳ.

Given the foregoing, then principally – and to be exact – physis denotes the quidditas of beings having
changement inherent within them; for substantia [materies, ὕλη] has been denoted by physis because it
embodies this, as have the becoming that is a coming-into-being, and a burgeoning, because they are
changements predicated on it. For physis is inherent changement either manifesting the potentiality of a
being or as what a being, complete of itself, is.

For me, the above example from Nicomachean Ethics relates to what I still find to be the vexatious issues of exegesis,
of intangibility, of naming or of not naming, since what a name, a denotata, denotes, not only can and does change
from century to century, from one no longer existing society to another newer one, but also has a tendency to
separate and divide one being or existent from others leading to the development of categories.

According to my understanding an enigmatic quotation attributed to Anaximander expresses this:

ἀρχὴ <...> τῶν ὄντων τὸ ἄπειρον <...>

ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι τοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τὴν φθορὰν εἰς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι κατὰ τὸ χρεών· διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ
δίκην καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν [Theophrastus/Simplicius]

As described in my essay Anaximander, Imbalance, And Opposites 3 I interpreted this as:

< [the] source ... of beings is the un-definitive 4 ...>

Where beings have their origin there also they cease to exist: offering payment 5 to balance, 6 one to
another, their unbalance for such is the arrangement of what is passing. 7

Which understanding is that once what was or appeared to be intangible is denoted by a name it is considered to be a
particular being, a 'thing', or existent, and thus becomes distinguishable from other beings, we have concealed,
covered-up, its physis, and as Heraclitus described Polemos is pervasive bringing-into-being discord because the
process of naming is the genesis of what is perceived to be the opposite of that now named 'thing' or existent, which
as Anaximander implied it ceases, for us, to be what it was, something of an intangible mystery. 8

Something, perhaps, that is numinous or which presences the numinous. Hence why, in the weltanschauung of pathei-
mathos, 9 the wordless human faculty of empathy is considered to be a way to know and understand the physis of
human beings sans denotata, for it is:

"our faculty of empathy which provides or can provide an individual intuition - a wordless-knowing or
awareness - of the numinous, and as a personal human faculty empathy has a personal horizon and thus
cannot be extrapolated from such a personal knowing into some-thing supra-personal be this some-thing
denotata, including an ἰδέᾳ/εἶδος, or an axiom (ἀρχή) or a source (αἴτιος) for some 'revelation' or ideology or
similar manifestations constructed by and dependent on appellation. In the case of a 'revelation' the source
is often named as God or a god/the god (θεὸς, ὁ θεὸς) who or which are often described by a myth or
mythoi. 10

But such extrapolation, by an δέᾳ/εἶδος or by an axiom or by a or the source of a 'revelation', by the very nature of -
the causality inherent in - denotata results in ἔρις, a discord of opposites: for every denotatum has or developes an
opposite and thus can cleave physis, as a fragment attributed to Heraclitus poetically expressed.

εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ τὸν πόλεμον ἐόντα ξυνόν, καὶ δίκην ἔριν, καὶ γινόμενα πάντα κατ ́ ἔριν καὶ χρεώμενα
<χρεών>

One should be aware that Polemos pervades, with discord δίκη, and that beings are naturally born by
discord. 10

David Myatt
March 10th, 2024

===

1. Primo igitur accipit ex praemissis quod proprium opus hominis sit operatio animae, quae est secundum ipsam
rationem, vel non sine ratione. Liber 1, Lectio 10.

2.

3 https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/dwmyatt-anaxmander.pdf

4. Because the beginning is fragmentary it is difficult to provide a satisfactory explanation of what is meant, although
many explanations have been suggested over many centuries including the speculation that 'apeiron' is the first
principle, the ἀρχὴ, of beings, with ἄπειρον almost invariably translated by words such as the boundless, infinity, the
limit-less.

However, ἄπειρον is a privation of πεῖραρ, a lack of completion; a lack of a verdict; or, often overlooked, a lack of a
means, a method, an instrument, to reach a particular conclusion or of a tool do a particular task, qv. Odyssey:
3.431-435, and my translation:

ὣς ἔφαθ᾽, οἱ δ᾽ ἄρα πάντες ἐποίπνυον. ἦλθε μὲν ἂρ βοῦς

ἐκ πεδίου, ἦλθον δὲ θοῆς παρὰ νηὸς ἐίσης
Τηλεμάχου ἕταροι μεγαλήτορος, ἦλθε δὲ χαλκεὺς
ὅπλ᾽ ἐν χερσὶν ἔχων χαλκήια, πείρατα τέχνης,
ἄκμονά τε σφῦραν τ᾽ ἐυποίητόν τε πυράγρην,
οἷσίν τε χρυσὸν εἰργάξετο
 Such were his words, and all of his sons occupied themselves with those things
So that an ox arrived from the fields; the comrades of the vigourous Telemachus
Arrived from their well-balanced ship; the goldsmith arrived bearing in his arms
Those bronze tools with which he accomplished his art:
A hammer, anvil and well-made fire-tongs
Which he used to work gold.

Hence my suggestion here that what Anaximander might have implied is that the source of beings is 'un-definitive',
incapable of resolution because we do not posses the tools, such as words, to resolve it. Which explains why he goes
on to contrast δίκη with ἀδικία, which balance and unbalance I explain below.

5. Payment as in a debt owed or because of some personal need or mistake, as in our relatively recent phrase 'debt of
honour'. The debt may be to a person or persons or as in ancient times to a deity either in expiation or in the hope of
avoiding a misfortune wrought by some deity, for example by the "Trimorphed Moirai with their ever-heedful Furies" of
the gods, Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες.

The suggestion therefore might be that the offer of payment relates to those who, despite the fact that source of
beings is 'un-definitive', having tried to define it and in the process constructed a dialectic of opposites, and thus
brought conflict, realize their error. As Heraclitus noted:

εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ τὸν πόλεμον ἐόντα ξυνόν, καὶ δίκην ἔριν, καὶ γινόμενα πάντα κατ΄ ἔριν καὶ χρεώμενα [χρεών]

One should be aware that Polemos pervades, with discord δίκη, and that beings are naturally born by
discord.

6. In respect of δίκη it here simply implies balance in contrast to the unbalance, the privation of balance, that is ἀδικία.
The translations 'order' or justice or 'fitting' - like 'disorder' or injustice or 'unfitting' for ἀδικία - are too redolent of
some modern or ancient morality designed to manifest 'order' or justice or what is considered fitting in contrast to their
assumed dialectical opposites.

7. In respect of χρόνος, it is not here a modern abstract measurable 'time' (in ancient times by a sundial; in later times
by a mechanical clock) but 'the passing' of living or of events as evident in the Agamemnon:

ποίου χρόνου δὲ καὶ πεπόρθηται πόλις 278

Then - how long has it been since the citadel was ravaged?

τίς δὲ πλὴν θεῶν ἅπαντ᾽ ἀπήμων τὸν δι᾽ αἰῶνος χρόνον 554-5

Who - except for the gods - passes their entire life without any injury at all?

8. Compare the expression κεκρυμμένον μυστήριον from tractate One, v.16 of the Corpus Hermeticum, and Φύσις
κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ from Heraclitus fragment 123. The former suggesting "a mysterium esoteric" even to this day -
https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/eight-tractates-v2-print.pdf - and the latter suggesting
that the natural companion of Physis is concealment, https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03
/heraclitus-fragment-123.pdf

9. qv. Introduction: Physis And Being in The Numinous Way Of Pathei-Mathos, 2022,
https://davidmyatt.files.wordpress.com/2022/10/numinous-way-pathei-mathos-v7.pdf

10. Numinosity, Denotata, Empathy, And The Hermetic Tradition, https://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/wp-content

/uploads/2022/03/dwm-denotata-empathy-v1b.pdf

Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) License

 Anaximander, Imbalance, And Opposites

Three quotations attributed to the Greek philosopher Anaximander (c. 610 – c. 546 BCE) one quotation in Greek and
two in Latin, have been much debated over the centuries with all three suggesting an ancient weltanschauung which
resonated with later weltanschauungen such as hermeticism and alchemy, which is possibly why the two Latin
quotations were included in a 1572 CE compendium on alchemy in the section titled Turba Philosophorum itself a Latin
translation of an earlier Arabic text by Muḥammad ibn Umayl al-Tamimi (c.900–960 CE).

My methodology in interpreting these quotations derives from my understanding that certain Latin and Greek words as
originally used by their authors represent philosophical, or hermetic or alchemical, principles or substances or what we
now term 'archetypes', and that it is therefore erroneous to translate them by English words which over centuries may
and often have acquired ordinary meanings, such as air', 'water', 'fire'.

The question of such principles is, as Aristotle wrote in his Metaphysics, (3.996a) an interesting and complex question
answered by many in certain ways with others proposing as first principles Fire, Water, and Air - ἄλλος δέ τις πῦρ ὁ δὲ
ὕδωρ ἢ ἀέρα - which leads him to the question of whether or not such principles are universal or individual.

The Latin Texts

The Latin of the first quotation in Turba Philosophorum is:

ignis ergo et aqua sunt inimici, inter quos nulla est consanguinitas, eo quod ignis est calidus et siccus, aqua
vero frigida et humida

Auriferae artis, quam chemiam vocant, antiquissimi authores, sive turba philosophorum
Basileae, 1572
My interpretation of meaning:

Ignis 1 and Acua 2 are not friendly for there are no ties of kindred among them: Ignis is fiery and resolute
while Acua is cool and moistening. 3

1. Retaining the Latin rather than simply translating here as 'fire' because Ignis (πυρὸς) is a philosophical, hermetic and
alchemical, principle (or substance or archetype) as in the Corpus Hermeticum. For example:

σὺ εἶ ὁ θεός. ὁ σὸς ἄνθρωπος ταῦτα βοᾷ διὰ πυρός͵ δι΄ ἀέρος͵ διὰ γῆς͵ διὰ ὕδατος͵ διὰ πνεύματος͵ διὰ τῶν
κτισμάτων σου

You are theos. Your mortal loudly calls out: through Ignis [Fire, πυρός], through Air, through Earth, through
Water, through Pneuma, through your created beings.

Logos Δ. The Esoteric Song, Tractate XIII, 20. Myatt, Corpus Hermeticum, 2017. ISBN
9781976452369

Compare also a fragment attributed to Heraclitus:

ἐκ πυρὸς τὰ πάντα συνεστάναι εἰς τοῦτο ἀναλύεσθαι πάντα δὲ γίνεσθαι καθ᾽ εἱμαρμένην καὶ διὰ τῆς
ἐναντιοδρομίας ἡρμόσθαι τὰ ὄντα καὶ πάντα ψυχῶν εἶναι καὶ δαιμόνων πλήρη [Diogenes Laertius, 11:7]

The foundation/base/essence of all beings [ 'things' ] is pyros to which they return, with all [of them] by
genesis appropriately apportioned [separated into portions] to be bound together again by enantiodromia,
and all filed/suffused/vivified with/by ψυχή and Dæmons.

2. Acua. I have opted for a somewhat obscure regional (Sardinian) variant of aqua rather than simply retaining the
Latin or translating as 'water' because aqua is now a somewhat commercialized word with the Greek ὕδωρ, like Pyros,
a hermetic and alchemical principle, qv. Corpus Hermeticum, Tractate IV, 1:

τοῦτο γάρ ἐστι τὸ σῶμα ἐκείνου, οὐχ ἁπτόν, οὐδὲ ὁρατόν, οὐδὲ μετρητόν, οὐδὲ διαστατόν, οὐδὲ ἄλλωι τινὶ
σώματι ὅμοιον· οὔτε γὰρ πῦρ ἐστιν οὔτε ὕδωρ οὔτε ἀὴρ οὔτε πνεῦμα, ἀλλὰ πάντα ἀπ' αὐτοῦ. ἀγαθὸς γὰρ ὢν,
μόνωι ἑαυτῶι τοῦτο ἀναθεῖναι ἠθέλησε καὶ τὴν γῆν κοσμῆσαι,

That Being has no body that can be touched or seen or measured or which is separable or which is similar to
any other body: not of Fire [pyros] or Water [ὕδωρ] or of Pneuma even though all such things are from that
Being. (Myatt, op.cit.)

3. (i) qv. "moistness and consistency" in the second quotation, below. (ii) cf. William Caxton: "one somer is softe and
moyste, and another is drye and wyndy." Myrrour of the Worlde, 1481 CE.

°°°

The Latin of the second quotation in Turba Philosophorum is:

doceo autem vos stellas esse igneas et aera ipsas continere et quod si aeris humiditas et spissitudo non
esset, quae solis flammam separaret a creaturis, omnia subsistentia sol combureret.

The Arabic of Muḥammad ibn Umayl al-Tamimi (c.900–960 CE) from Kitab al-ma 'al-waraqi containing the quotation is:

My interpretation of meaning:

I inform you that stars are Igneous, that Aeros 1 bounds them, and it is the moistness and consistency 2 of
Aeros which keeps the flames of the Sun separate from created beings for otherwise the Sun would consume
them.

1. Aeros. Here as in hermeticism and alchemy, ἀὴρ is a particular philosophical principle, substance, or archetype. As
in Poemandres tractate of the Corpus Hermeticum, for example v.5:
 καὶ ὁ ἀὴρ ἐλαφρὸς ὢν ἠκολούθησε τῶι πνεύματι, ἀναβαίνοντος αὐτοῦ μέχρι τοῦ πυρὸς ἀπὸ γῆς καὶ ὕδατος,
ὡς δοκεῖν κρέμασθαι αὐτὸν ἀπ' αὐτοῦ

Since Air [ἀέρος, Aeros] is agile, it followed the pnuema, up and above Earth and Water [Acua] and as far as
Fire [Pyros], to be as if it were hanging from that, there.

2. spissitudo from spissus, qv. σπιδής and cf. πυκνός. Here 'consistency' rather than 'broad' or 'dense'.

The Greek Text

ἀρχὴ <...> τῶν ὄντων τὸ ἄπειρον <...>

ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι τοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τὴν φθορὰν εἰς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι κατὰ τὸ χρεών· διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ
δίκην καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν [Theophrastus/Simplicius]

My interpretation of meaning:

< [the] source ... of beings is the un-definitive 1 ...>

Where beings have their origin there also they cease to exist: offering payment 2 to balance, 3 one to
another, their unbalance for such is the arrangement of what is passing. 4

1. Because the beginning is fragmentary it is difficult to provide a satisfactory explanation of what is meant, although
many explanations have been suggested over many centuries including the speculation that 'apeiron' is the first
principle, the ἀρχὴ, of beings, with ἄπειρον almost invariably translated by words such as the boundless, infinity, the
limit-less.

However, ἄπειρον is a privation of πεῖραρ, a lack of completion; a lack of a verdict; or, often overlooked, a lack of a
means, a method, an instrument, to reach a particular conclusion or of a tool do a particular task, qv. Odyssey:
3.431-435, and my translation:

ὣς ἔφαθ᾽, οἱ δ᾽ ἄρα πάντες ἐποίπνυον. ἦλθε μὲν ἂρ βοῦς

ἐκ πεδίου, ἦλθον δὲ θοῆς παρὰ νηὸς ἐίσης
Τηλεμάχου ἕταροι μεγαλήτορος, ἦλθε δὲ χαλκεὺς
ὅπλ᾽ ἐν χερσὶν ἔχων χαλκήια, πείρατα τέχνης,
ἄκμονά τε σφῦραν τ᾽ ἐυποίητόν τε πυράγρην,
οἷσίν τε χρυσὸν εἰργάξετο

Such were his words, and all of his sons occupied themselves with those things
So that an ox arrived from the fields; the comrades of the vigourous Telemachus
Arrived from their well-balanced ship; the goldsmith arrived bearing in his arms
Those bronze tools with which he accomplished his art:
A hammer, anvil and well-made fire-tongs
Which he used to work gold.

Hence my suggestion here that what Anaximander might have implied is that the source of beings is 'un-definitive',
incapable of resolution because we do not posses the tools, such as words, to resolve it. Which explains why he goes
on to contrast δίκη with ἀδικία, which balance and unbalance I explain below.

2. Payment as in a debt owed or because of some personal need or mistake, as in our relatively recent phrase 'debt of
honour'. The debt may be to a person or persons or as in ancient times to a deity either in expiation or in the hope of
avoiding a misfortune wrought by some deity, for example by the "Trimorphed Moirai with their ever-heedful Furies" of
the gods, Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες.

The suggestion therefore might be that the offer of payment relates to those who, despite the fact that source of
beings is 'un-definitive', having tried to define it and in the process constructed a dialectic of opposites, and thus
brought conflict, realize their error. As Heraclitus noted:

εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ τὸν πόλεμον ἐόντα ξυνόν, καὶ δίκην ἔριν, καὶ γινόμενα πάντα κατ΄ ἔριν καὶ χρεώμενα [χρεών]

One should be aware that Polemos pervades, with discord δίκη, and that beings are naturally born by
discord.

3. In respect of δίκη it here simply implies balance in contrast to the unbalance, the privation of balance, that is ἀδικία.
The translations 'order' or justice or 'fitting' - like 'disorder' or injustice or 'unfitting' for ἀδικία - are too redolent of
some modern or ancient morality designed to manifest 'order' or justice or what is considered fitting in contrast to their
assumed dialectical opposites.

4. In respect of χρόνος, it is not here a modern abstract measurable 'time' (in ancient times by a sundial; in later times
by a mechanical clock) but 'the passing' of living or of events as evident in the Agamemnon:
 ποίου χρόνου δὲ καὶ πεπόρθηται πόλις 278

Then - how long has it been since the citadel was ravaged?

τίς δὲ πλὴν θεῶν ἅπαντ᾽ ἀπήμων τὸν δι᾽ αἰῶνος χρόνον 554-5

Who - except for the gods - passes their entire life without any injury at all?

Imbalance And Opposites

What I find in these fragments attributed to Anaximander is germane to our perception of our human physis and of
how we have tried to understand it through words - denotata - and thus by certain named 'principles', and that
ultimately we have to accept that we cannot, should not, attempt to understand it through words which bring-into-
being a named opposite and thus a conflict between those perceived, believed in, and conflicting dialectical opposites
with their attendant strife, discord, enmity, hatred, and suffering. That such a wordful perception is un-definitive
because the tools we have hitherto manufactured and rely on are useless.

Thus, my own fallible answer to Aristotle's question of whether or not such principles are universal or individual is that
they are ineluctably personal, with all we can presently hope do is use the wordless knowing of our empathy, and of
our own pathei-mathos, as a guide.

David Myatt
21st February 2024

All translations by DW Myatt

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