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Chapter I
in Plethon’s time. Perhaps it was because Proclus was so closely associated with theurgy, which was not so important for Plethon. This brings us to the end of the Golden Chain along which Plethon traced his philosophical lineage. It is his version of the ancient theology or perennial philosophy.
The Magical Oracles Another important source for Plethon’s theology—and also for other Neoplatonists— was the Magical Oracles, which were inspired (or channeled) verses treated almost as sacred scripture; it has been called the “Bible of the Neoplatonists.” 64 Nowadays they are most commonly known as the Chaldean Oracles, but Plethon attributed them to the Zoroastrian Magi and therefore called them the Magical Oracles (Μαγικὰ Λόγια, Magika Logia).65 There is nothing particularly “Chaldean” (Babylonian) about them, except that Neoplatonists attributed them to Julian the Chaldean and his son Julian the Theurgist (second century CE). They were not called “Chaldean Oracles” before Ficino did so in his fifteen-century Latin translation, but that name spread in Christian circles; the Pagan Neoplatonists usually called them simply “the oracles” (τὰ λόγια, ta logia). Today the oracles survive only in fragments; the biggest is a dozen lines long, but many are only a word or two. Plethon’s text includes thirty-six distinct oracles comprising a total of sixty lines. Most of these had been collected already in the eleventh century CE by Michael Psellos, a Byzantine scholar, who was Christian but accused of Paganism for his interest in Platonism. Plethon did not include six of the oracles that Psellos listed, perhaps because they were too magical for his taste, and he corrected the text of several others. The Magical Oracles are quite obscure and they must be interpreted allegorically and symbolically to discern their meaning, which is why most of the Neoplatonists wrote commentaries on them; Plethon wrote two. The longer Commentary on the Magical Oracles of the Magi of Zoroaster presents the text of the oracles and discusses them line by line (see appendix C). Since the oracles have been recovered from many different sources, their original order is unknown, but Plethon arranges them systematically, beginning with those dealing with the human soul and ascending the scale of being 64. Majercik, Chaldean Oracles, 2. 65. Plethon, Commentary, epilogue.
