Georgius Gemistus Plethon

Ross G Caldwell

Speaking of Zoroaster, there is a tradition that the Biblical Nimrod is the same as Zoroaster, and introduced idolatry, as the worship of fire, among men. I think the earliest description of it is in Clement (actually pseudo-Clement), Homilies (2nd-3rd century), bk. 9, 4-6 :

9.4 -- Zoroaster.

"Of this family there was born in due time a certain one, who took up with magical practices, by name Nebrod, who chose, giant-like, to devise things in opposition to God. Him the Greeks have called Zoroaster.

"He, after the deluge, being ambitious of sovereignty, and being a great magician, by magical arts compelled the world-guiding star of the wicked one who now rules, to the bestowal of the sovereignty as a gift from him. But he,3 being a prince, and having authority over him who compelled him,4 wrathfully poured out the fire of the kingdom, that he might both bring to allegiance, and might punish him who at first constrained him."

9.5 -- Hero-Worship.

"Therefore the magician Nebrod, being destroyed by this lightning falling on earth from heaven, for this circumstance had his name changed to Zoroaster, on account of the living (zosan) stream of the star (asteros) being poured upon him.

"But the unintelligent amongst the men who then were, thinking that through the love of God his soul had been sent for by lightning, buried the remains of his body, and honoured his burial-place with a temple among the Persians, where the descent of the fire occurred, and worshipped him as a god. By this example also, others there bury those who die by lightning as beloved of God, and honour them with temples, and erect statues of the dead in their own forms.

"Thence, in like manner, the rulers in different places were emulous of like honour, and very many of them honoured the tombs of those who were beloved of them, though not dying by lightning, with temples and statues, and lighted up altars, and ordered them to be adored as gods. And long after, by the lapse of time, they were thought by posterity to be really gods."

9.6 -- Fire-Worship.

"Thus, in this fashion, there ensued many partitions of the one original kingdom. The Persians, first taking coals from the lightning which fell from heaven, preserved them by ordinary fuel, and honouring the heavenly fire as a god, were honoured by the fire itself with the first kingdom, as its first worshippers.

"After them the Babylonians, stealing coals from the fire that was there, and conveying it safely to their own home, and worshipping it, they themselves also reigned in order.

"And the Egyptians, acting in like manner, and calling the fire in their own dialect Phthaë, which is translated Hephaistus or Osiris, he who first reigned amongst them is called by its name. Those also who reigned in different places, acting in this fashion, and making an image, and kindling altars in honour of fire, most of them were excluded from the kingdom."
http://www.compassionatespirit.com/Homilies/Book-9.htm

I obviously don't know if Plethon, Ficino and the rest knew or thought about this. But it is not hard to find a similar idea apparently inspiring a Tarot design, namely the Sola Busca Nembroto, where Nimrod is being destroyed by fire from heaven, just as he is described in the Homilies.
 

Huck

Extracted from the Stausberg text:
http://books.google.com/books?id=gBzyaezyN60C

In 1462 Cosimo di Medici gave a present to Ficino, some Greek manuscripts, out of his very rich collection. Between them was a codex, which contained all the works of Plato (Laurentius LXXXV 9; a little later Ficino got a second codex from Amerigo Benci, which contained only some of the dialogs; even the papal library had at this time no complete Platon text). Cosimo had gotten the allowance to copy all texts during the Florentine council from the Byzantine original in the possession of Plethon. The copyist likely had been Christopherus de Person, if - another possibility - Cosimo didn't got an already written copy.
Stausberg expresses the opinion, that Cosimo hadn't much interest in Platonism.
p.98
[my comment: the council had book fair atmosphere. Likely members of the Byzantine knew, that intellectual Italian circles were crazy about Byzantine books (and possible some hoped for some income; the Byzantine traveled with not very much money). So the council activities had a lot of copy work in the background. But not too much persons knew "really" the Greek language. Even when the copy work was done, somebody had to read and translate the book. Getting the gotten treasures revealed for the Italian market was a very long process.
Likely it was easy to get copies during the council, likely the Greek copied themselves for some salary (scribes, who didn't know Greek, likely had problems with Greek texts and made very much errors). But in the aftermath ... likely they had so much Greek texts, that for a longer time they didn't know what to do with them.
Cosimo, a wise man in political decisions, might have been less disinterested in Plato than careful, that he didn't make a mistake, if he engaged too enthusiastic in pro-Platonism. Actually literary topics were the field of Piero di Medici and especially of his wife Lucrezia Tornabuoni, who wrote herself and engaged in poetry and contemporary poets.
For the question of Plethon's Chaldean Oracles: What, if the text had been already in possession of Cosimo? Or had been part of the selection, which Ficino got for his personal use? Maybe, it's just, that Ficino didn't found time to have looked at it? Or perhaps Cosimo wasn't interested to point to the Plethon-text ?]

Zenubi Acciaiolis reports, that Ficino told him, that in his youth he went too far with Platonism and had gotten a heretical view about it. The archbishop of Florence, Sant'Antonino (a known opponent of humanism, died 1459), had then shown him the "right way" and had pointed to the writings of Thomas of Aquin, which had corrected him.
[so in this Florentine world had been something like "wrong Platonism", and perhaps Ficinos advisers thought Plethon just a little bit too early for the young Ficino.]
Lorenzo Pisano reported "hot disputes" between older theologians, semipagan scholastics and neopagan youth [Stausberg thinks, that the latter had been Ficino].
Antonio degli Agli in a dialog "De mystica statera" warns the adolescens Ficino ("Fecinus"), that pagan thinking leads to idleness and error. Fecinus gets the advice to leave Platon and other writers of similar direction.
P. 97

Ficino got (by the Medici) a house in Florence in December 1462, and some living possibility in Careggi in April 1463 in or near the Medici Villa.

Ficino used a person "Zautrastes" as a law giver in a letter "Lex and Iustitia" written between Jan. 1462 and Aug. 1464 in a series of law givers, in which Platon gets the most prominent position. "Zautrastes" gets the second place after Osiris in the order. p. 123

Ficino used the oracles c. 30 times, mainly in the Theologica platonica, in which 27 of the 60 Hexameter fragments (Plethon) and one unknown to Plethon are quoted. p.124

2 nearly identical codice - Laurentiana XXXVI, 35fol. 22, r-v (Florence), and Vaticana Ottoboniano lat. 2966 - contain beside other texts the Oracles of Plethon, of which Ficino had a copy. The Ottoboniano-manuscript had also a Latin translation of Plethon's Oracles commentary (it's suggested, that Ficino made this translation himself). p. 125
 

MikeH

Ross wrote:
Does Hankins really say that Filelfo attributes the Oracles to Zoroaster?

Well, not exactly, if I read him very closely. Here again is Hankins, p. 93, which I posted already:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tM_7GTGbyVA/TnmmmnQI6JI/AAAAAAAADis/LlgsrKQFYtw/s1600/hankins92and93.jpg

That one is pretty blurry, especially the footnotes, so here is p. 93 again:

Hankins93.jpg


Hankins is attributing an enunciation of the "ancient theology" to Filelfo in 1464, which Plato "borrowed from Pythagoras who was himself following Zoroaster and the Chaldean images." Hankins' wording does not precisely say that for Filelfo Zoroaster wrote the Chaldean Oracles; it just lumps the two together. Your citing of the letter, if I am deciphering the Latin properly, shows that Filelfo was only attributing the "ancient philosophy" (antiquissimum philosophorum, or something like that) to Zoroaster and not mentioning the Oracles. We don't know if Filelfo had Plethon's edition of the Oracles. But he must have gotten the idea that Zoroaster originated the "ancient theology" (I assume that's there) from Plethon, since no one else said that. And he wouldn't have just taken Plethon's word for it; he would have needed some Persian-sounding quotes. I doubt if Plethon told him to read Psellos, when Plethon had his own edition, somewhat different, easier to read, and with Plethon's own commentary. But Filelfo wouldn't have just read Plethon; he would have searched other sources for more data about Zoroaster or the Oracles.

I have since noticed that the lines in the Oracles about the boy and the horse are not from either Plethon or Psellos, but from Proclus. I wrote, in a post that I probably put up after you had written yours:
The fragment about the boy and the horse, which I quoted in relation to the Sun card and which is not in Plethon’s version, is also not one of Psellos’s 42. It comes from Proclus’s In Rem Publicam, 1.111.3-11 of Kroll’s 1899 Leipzig edition. I get this information from the book Hecate Soteira: A Study of Hekata’s Roles in the Chaldean Oracles and Related Literature, by Sarah Iles Johnston, 1990, p. 111. That’s the only book on the Oracles I have been able to find locally, although I have other books on request from interlibrary loan. I think her source is Lewy, The Chaldean Oracles and Theurgy. The fragment is his 146 = Kroll’s fragment 57.

I have no idea when Proclus’s In Rem Publicam was first available to humanists. Looking at Kroll’s Latin introduction to Vol. 1, in Google Books, I see a date of 1538, probably when it was first published. In the introduction to Vol. 2, in the Free Library online version, I see a date of 1492, Laurentian, i.e. from the Medici Library. But that might just be for that copy. I haven’t tried to decipher the Latin and am not sure I can.
It would be nice if we knew a little more about the availability of In Rem Publicam to Ficino and Filelfo. Perhaps your skills in Latin could help.
 

MikeH

Ross wrote,
Speaking of Zoroaster, there is a tradition that the Biblical Nimrod is the same as Zoroaster, and introduced idolatry, as the worship of fire, among men. I think the earliest description of it is in Clement (actually pseudo-Clement), Homilies (2nd-3rd century), bk. 9, 4-6 :
...
I obviously don't know if Plethon, Ficino and the rest knew or thought about this. But it is not hard to find a similar idea apparently inspiring a Tarot design, namely the Sola Busca Nembroto, where Nimrod is being destroyed by fire from heaven, just as he is described in the Homilies.
Moshe Idel, in the article I previously cited ("Prisca Theologia in Marsilio Ficino and in Some Jewish Treatments,” pp. 137-158 of Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, http://books.google.com/books?id=CX...&resnum=1&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false, says on p. 153f:
In his [Ficino's] De Christiana religione ch 26, he quotes Alexander and Eupolemus, who both suppose that Abraham taught Zoroaster the astrology which he had learnt from the successors of Enoch. (47)
...In the same chapter, just three lines earlier, in what is so far as I know the only other instance where a definite relationship between Zoroaster and the biblical tradition is mentioned, Ficino identifies Zoroaster, following Didymus's Commentary on "Genesis, with Ham, the son of Noah, and notes that he is also called by the Hebrew Chanaan. (48) ..In the above two texts, he is only quoting the views of other authors.

(47) Ficino De Chstiana religione, Opera omnia p. 29. See Allen Synopptic Art p. 39, n. 81.

(48) Ibid., pp. 31, n. 56, and 33-34.
It would seem that if Ficino wanted to cite pseudo-Clement, he would have done so. Also, he views Zoroaster positively, as do the authors that he is citing, unlike pseudo-Clement, who is apparently best left ignored.

P. S. (added a few hours later): Perhaps your point is that pseudo-Clement's description of Zoroastrian fire-worship correlates with what is found in Plethon's edition of the Chaldean Oracles. Hence Pseudo-Clement tends to confirm Plethon's attribution, as support from an unfriendly source. If that is your suggestion, I agree.
 

MikeH

Huck wrote
the council had book fair atmosphere. Likely members of the Byzantine knew, that intellectual Italian circles were crazy about Byzantine books (and possible some hoped for some income; the Byzantine traveled with not very much money). So the council activities had a lot of copy work in the background. But not too much persons knew "really" the Greek language. Even when the copy work was done, somebody had to read and translate the book. Getting the gotten treasures revealed for the Italian market was a very long process.
Likely it was easy to get copies during the council, likely the Greek copied themselves for some salary (scribes, who didn't know Greek, likely had problems with Greek texts and made very much errors). But in the aftermath ... likely they had so much Greek texts, that for a longer time they didn't know what to do with them.
Cosimo, a wise man in political decisions, might have been less disinterested in Plato than careful, that he didn't make a mistake, if he engaged too enthusiastic in pro-Platonism. Actually literary topics were the field of Piero di Medici and especially of his wife Lucrezia Tornabuoni, who wrote herself and engaged in poetry and contemporary poets.
For the question of Plethon's Chaldean Oracles: What, if the text had been already in possession of Cosimo? Or had been part of the selection, which Ficino got for his personal use? Maybe, it's just, that Ficino didn't found time to have looked at it? Or perhaps Cosimo wasn't interested to point to the Plethon-text ?]
Or Cosimo was waiting for the right translator. Plethon's Chaldean Oracles was dangerous stuff, more dangerous than Plato. It had to be done right, and discreetly. I'm not sure when Ficino's translation was published, perhaps not until the Opera omnia, if then. The Greek wasn't printed until 1538 Paris, according to Woodhouse. As for Plethon's Commentary (in full, Commentary on the Magian texts of Zoroaster), Woodhouse says only, of Ficino, "he probably also used, but did not translate" that work. Kristeller, on the other hand, says (Renaissance thought and its sources p. 161),
We have recently learned that Ficino owned and partly copied in his own hand the Greek text of some of Plethon's writings (67), I also found in a manuscript an anonymous Latin translation of Plethon's commentary on the Chaldean oracles and have some reason for attributing this translation to Ficino (68).

(67)Eugenio Garin, "Per la storia della cultura filosofica del Riniscimento," Revista critica di storia della filosofia 12 (1957): 3-21); ie., "Platonici bizanti e platonici italiani," Studi sul platonismo medievale (Florence, 1958), pp. 153-219. A. Keller, 'Two Byzantine Scholars and Their Reception in Italy," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 20 (1957): 363-370. Cf. Kristeller, Iter Italicum, 1:184.

(68) Vat. Ottob. lat. 2955.

I suppose I should read the article that is written in English.

But really, Piero could have gotten the manuscript, too, or Cosimo later. When did he get the Corpus Hermeticum, for example? Not at the "book fair." (1460, according to http://www.alchemylab.com/AJ3-4.htm). All the Medici would have been on the lookout for anything smacking of the oldest philosophy, even Ficino himself once he had a good income. Italians were visiting Mistra regularly, even after Plethon's death.
 

MikeH

Huck wrote,
* In my early studies maybe 25 years ago I'd had a German text about the Chaldean oracles ... I don't remember the name and author and much of the content, but then I had the impression, that the concept of soul descend and ascend in these Oracles reminded me on the book of death from Tibet.

* I had worked in the past years occasionally about lot books, naturally more of the renaissance lot books than others. Well, these have in common, that a mathematical scheme is used and you're guided mostly to a poetical answer. The used mathematical scheme usually had a sort of cosmological model, somehow presenting "life" or aspects of it. In many cases the model was rather cheap constructed, but there are also models of high complexity (especially Fanti 1526).
Why not just see the Chaldean Oracles as a lot book?

Well, yes, the Oracles are indeed about the soul’s descent and ascent, mostly about the ascent. That was a common theme in Platonism, Christian and pagan. This theme is especially evident in Plethon’s edition. As far as being a lot book, I don’t think it says too much about “life,” except in the sense of religious life, life dedicated to the ascent toward God. In this way, it is very much like the tarot sequence, which I think, at least in its second half, is about such an ascent.

Oracles are statements uttered by a participant in an ecstatic rite, like a trance-induction—either in it or right afterwards. Sometimes these statements are prophetic about this life in its material or moral aspect, but other times more prophetic about the life beyond this one, or the spiritual dimension of this life.

In this post I want to draw comparisons between the imagery of the Oracles, mostly in Plethon’s edition, and the imagery of the tarot cards. In many cases, I will be proposing an esoteric interpretation of the card as suggested by the verses; in other cases, I will be finding particular details that may have been added under the influence of these verses.

Here is the whole thing, in Plethon’s version. (Since I will be going on quite a while about it, jumping often from one part to another, it might be good to have these lines available in a separate window.):

Oracles1.jpg


Oracles2.jpg


Oracles3.jpg


The first three lines are about the descent and ascent, that the ascent is in the same order as the descent, the same "channel," provided you have "the sacred word" (l. 3)--the Logos, in Greek--"the holy watch-word" (l. 12), of which you can find "symbols" in your own soul (l. 49), I suspect that the word for "symbols" is the same as that applied to Pythagoras's obscure sayings. symbola. These representatives of the Ideas have thoughts and life, all from the Father, moved voicelessly (l. 56). The theurgist has tools by which to send the soul in the right direction, using the iynx, English "jinx," translated by Woodhouse "spell," actually a rotating wheel used by witches, but here a metaphor for the whirling outpouring of Ideas as they reach our souls (references and quotations to follow later in this post). In the tarot, the cards are such tools and tokens; if it is magic, its goal is not magical influence over material circumstances, but rather reunion with the divine.

In life one spiritual danger is of descending even further, past the "sevenfold steps" (l. 5) of the planetary spheres, through which one passed in coming to this world, entering the world of Fate, yet going still further, to the “throne of dread Necessity,” (l. 6) here I think meaning Hades, complete captivity, no free will. It is here that one is dominated by the “beasts of the earth” (l. 7). Among others, these are the “dogs of the underworld” of line 32. In advising, “Do not enlarge your Fate” (l. 8) the Oracles caution not to become captured still further by the world of matter, thus enlarging Fate's power.

In the tarot, Fate is represented by the woman with a distaff of yarn, on the Charles VI Sun card and the Vieville Moon card. She is one of the three fates, as Vitali points out (http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=130&lng=eng), Clotho in fact. The sevenfold steps could be seen as the seven smaller stars on the Marseille card, or the five small stars (including the one on the jar-person’s sleeve) on the Cary Sheet card, representing the five star-like planets. The large star represents the transcending of Fate, accomplished in the ascent.

In this framework of ascent, the Hanged Man can be seen as someone in a trance, induced by hanging upside down. Bosch’s Garden of Heavenly Delights, middle panel, shows a number of such tranced-out individuals, e.g. below.

12BoschupsideNoblet.jpg


Plethon says in his Commentary (Woodhouse p. 57):
What men see in religious rituals, such as fire and lightning, are only symbols, not the nature of God (l. 44). Draw towards yourself in simplicity and purity the ‘reins of the fire’ (l. 45), which you see in religious rituals. When you see the ‘formless fire of God’ (l. 46) leaping about everywhere, hear its voice,, ‘which carries the truest foreknowledge'.
Rituals are one way of inducing the trances that produce such visions. Hanging upside down, perhaps hyperventilating at the same time, is another, perhaps also a ritual. In today’s world, there is a branch of yoga exercises dedicated to hanging upside down, like the Hanged Man, called “aerial yoga”; Googling that phrase will bring up many images.

What must first be achieved is the "loosing" of the soul from the body, a voluntary Death which is also a kind of birth. And so the Oracles say:
Those who thrust out the soul and inhale are easy to loose” (l. 16).
This suggests the separation of soul from body, a symbolic death, the soul inhaling the divine fire and ascending “towards the light.” The Death card in this perspective initiates the ecstatic visions being recorded (or simulated) in the Chaldean Oracles. In the the Marseille Death card, there is also the suggestion of rebirth, such as the sprout-like heads from which Death is clearing the weeds.

In what follows, we may expect to find descriptions of ecstatic visions from beyond this world. But first a few words about the body, lest we hold it in too much contempt. So we see lines 28-31:
Do not leave behind the dung of matter for the precipice.
Do not draw it forth, that it may not suffer in going out.
By extending the fiery intellect
To the act of piety, you shall also save the liquescent body.
Here the word “precipice” might be significant. It occurs also in line 4. The PMB second artist’s cards all, except for Fortitude, have precipices at the bottom, extending a practice that the first artist also engaged in, but less prominently. In illuminated manuscripts, it was already a conventional sign of death or danger; its appearance in the PMB 2nd artist’s cards merely emphasizes the theme, but given the precipice in the Oracles, now not of death merely but of a particular destination, Hades or perhaps dissolution into soulless matter.

The general theme of the lines I just quoted is that of treating the body respectfully, as Plethon says in his “Brief Explanation” (p. 54):
By the ‘dung of matter’ they [the Oracles] mean this mortal body. They bid us not to neglect it, though perishable, but to preserve it so far as possible.
In other words, the lines advocate Temperance (and perhaps something more, actually saving it in some form). Of course the imagery of the tarot card is totally conventional; but it is nice to know that Temperance was part of Zoroaster’s ancient teachings. In the PMB, it is this card that has the biggest and most obvious precipice, as Huck once observed (in the "Precipice" thread on THF).

Now lines 32-36.
Then from the depths of the earth leap forth the dogs of the underworld
Showing no true sign to mortal man.
Nature gives proof that there exist pure daemons
And that the fruits even of evil matter are worthy and good.
The penalties are constrainers of men.
Plethon says of the dogs, in the “Brief Explanation” (Woodhouse p. 54):
By the ‘dogs of the underworld’ (l. 32) they mean certain insubstantial visions arising from the passions of our mortal nature, which are seen during rituals by those who have not yet rightly ordered their soul, signifying nothing true.
I think we have here an interpretation of the dogs that were added to the Moon card at some point after the Cary Sheet. To be sure, dogs are associated with the Moon anyway: they bay at the moon, and Diana has her hounds. But the Cary Sheet Moon card has distinctly Middle Platonic features: the two towers are the two gates on the Moon that Plutarch said admitted people to different destinations, depending on how they had conducted their lives: to Hades, which Plutarch located between the earth and the moon, or toward a kind of lunar Paradise. Vitali applies Plutarch (On the Face in the Orb of the Moon) in his essay on the card:
In this constant coming and goings, the two towers define the space that divides the kingdom of the Moon governed by Persephone from the one of the earth ruled by Demeter. A limit that cannot be crossed by no one but by the renewed souls or by those who leave their body, except demons who descend from the Moon to earth “to take care of oracles, to assist and participate to supreme mysteries, being guardians and to revenge injustices and shine as savers in battles and on the sea” (Plutarch, op. cit., page 112). Therefore, the two towers become, as Porfirius writes, the doors of the descending and the ascent of the souls towards and from the generation: Cancer is the way from which the souls descend and Capricorn the one from which they go up again.
On the moon is also a big area, says Plutarch, called "the Gulf of Hecate." It is where daemons give and receive punishment; the name suggests a body of water such as we see on the card (the Loeb Library translation, 944c, has ”recess of Hecate”; I get the translation as "gulf" from Johnstone p. 36). Since the Chaldean Oracles are nothing if not Middle Platonic (despite their allegedly ancient pedigree), it makes sense for the dogs to be part of that Middle Platonic moonscape. Vitali suggests that the dogs on the card are Plutarch's "guardians" as daemons descended from the moon to help us. I see no reason to think that daemons incarnating as dogs is what Plutarch meant by their becoming "guardians," but it is possible. From the perspective of the Oracles, the dogs are false images, illusions "arising from the passions of our mortal nature" as Plethon says, or worse, evil daemons. The Oracles caution against seeing the dogs as helpful. (On some Moon cards, one dog is dark and one light; by such coloration, perhaps one could be a helpful guardian and the other a phantom.)

The two lines following extend the positive evaluation of the body to the daemons as well: Plethon explains them in his Commentary (paraphrased by Woodhouse p. 57):
If even the fruits of evil matter are good, how much more so must be the daemons, since they possess rational nature unmixed with mortal nature. Even their terrible aspect is beneficent. ‘Penalties’ (l. 36) are the avenging daemons who restrain men and divert them from evil, compelling them towards virtue.
Plethon does not explain what the “fruits of evil matter” are. Perhaps they include the dogs of the preceding line, products of our attachments to the ephemera of this world. The "vengeful daemons" could then be the daemons who "revenge injustices" in Plutarch, like the Furies of Greek myth. They also "restrain" evildoers, as in the work of devils in the Christian Hell. They "constrain" those who do evil and thereby also "constrain" those who wish to avoid their fate. Fittingly, the devil on the Devil card is often shown restraining human souls, putting them in his basket on the Cary Sheet and holding them fast by ropes or chains around the neck in the Marseille-style cards. The platform on which the Devil is standing, in these cards, is then the “throne of dread Necessity” of line 6.

Let us go to the epiphany that is the object of the theurgist’s practice, the vision of things beyond, lines 37-48:
For then the curved mass of heaven is not visible.
The stars do not shine, the light of the moon is veiled.
The earth stands not firm. All things appear as lightning.
Earthquakes and lightning are typically the sign of the presence of a god, e.g. in Euripides’ Bacchae, (http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/euripides/euripides.htm, lines 4, 724, 728, etc.). They are also usual features of the Tower card, then called “Fire,” probably meaning Lightning. If the stars do not shine and the moon is veiled, that is because the Sun has risen, overshadowing all else. Perhaps that is why the lady on the PMB Moon card looks unhappy: she is being superseded. There is more (lines 44-48):
Do not call upon the self-revealed image of Nature.
Draw tight from all sides the reins of the fire with an untouched soul.
When you behold the most holy fire without form
Flashing with quivering flames through the recesses of the whole world,
Then hearken to the voice of the fire.
By the “self-revealed image of Nature” the human body might be meant, or even the Moon, but I think it is more likely the Sun itself, which is only an image of the true, formless fire, which has a voice. In the Judgment card, trumpets sound. That is not speech, but their tone comes from the mouths of the angels on top of the card. Well, the imagery of the card was already fixed before anyone knew of the Oracles.

I have mentioned the castle or city on the PMB World card as an image of the archetypal world of the Father, with the two children as good daemons pointing the way. In other versions of the card, there is a lady, either holding the world or inside an oval, surrounded by images of the four elements. Who would she be?

In the Platonic tradition, as others have pointed out in relation to the tarot, there was a feminine-imaged goddess called the Cosmic Soul, also translated as "World-Soul." Plutarch and Macrobius identified her with Isis. In the Oracles, she is Hekate. When the Oracles speak of the “soul,” they are sometimes referring to that great Soul, sometimes to the little souls of humans, and sometimes to both at once. She is an unspoken presence throughout the poem, mediating between human souls and the Father.

Hekate is only called by name once in the verses that Plethon includes (although five times counting all of them), in a word mutilated either by Plethon or some scholar who edited a text he inherited. Line 17 says
In the left flanks of the couch is the source of virtue.
What is this "couch"? Plethon seems not to know. In Psellos, the word is “Hekate,” as opposed to the similar word koites, meaning “couch” (http://ku-dk.academia.edu/DylanBurn...d_Platonic_Orientalism_in_Psellos_and_Plethon, p. 171f).

Psellos’ version was perhaps known to Ficino. Kristeller refers to it in footnote 29 of p. 155 of Renaissance Thought and its Sources. I give the entire context, including the text footnoted:
The Corpus Hermeticum, as it has come down to us in Greek, is perhaps an edition or anthology due to Psellos, who added a commentary to it. (28) This commentary was known to Ficino, who also translated part of Psellos' treatise On Demons, and to Francesco Patrizi, and it was printed in the sixteenth century. (29)

(28) Hermes Trismegiste, ed Nock and Festugiere, vol. 1, pp. xlix-li (where Psellos' editorship is discussed but doubted).

(29) Oracula magica Zoroastris cum scholiis Plethonis et Pselli, ed. Johannes Opsopoeus (Paris, 1599, first printed in 1589). For Ficino's translation, see his Opera vol. 2, pp. 1939-45.)
If Ficino also had the title, “Oracula magica Zoroastris cum scholiis Plethonis et Pselli[/i]," it would appear that he translated Psellos. In any case, the text was certainly known by the time of Patrizi’s version, 1591.

So at some point Renaissance humanists knew that it was Hekate, not a couch, who was the passive (left-hand) source of virtue, providing the archetypes, those “inflexible intellectual upholders” (l. 57), of virtue, which are then imprinted on our souls. Even without the word “Hekate,” anyone versed in Middle Platonism (such as Ficino or Filelfo) or Plato's Timaeus and Philebus, would have recognized the dual significance of “soul” in Plethon’s Chaldean Oracles: the Cosmic Soul was part of the system, holding up the archetypal virtues. In that role we see her also on the tarot Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance cards. She is then the one speaking through the angel on the Temperance card when the poem says “Do not leave behind the dung of matter” (l. 25, 28). The angel is a daemon in a symbol.

For Plethon, ascent is not simply a matter of recognizing divine archetypes. There is also action, the “right side” of the soul (Woodhouse’s paraphrase, p. 55, of Plethon’s Commentary): descent is into “sins”, and ascent is out of “iniquity." This ascent requires “daring” (l. 39). Plethon explains (Woodhouse’s paraphrase, p. 57), that
Man is called the ‘contrivance of all-prevailing nature’ because of his capacity for daring ventures (l. 39).
Woodhouse adds that
In this case Gemistos departs slightly from the text, which calls nature, not man, ‘most daring.’
If nature is said to be daring, that perhaps is a reference to Physis in the Poimandres, which daringly entices Anthropos into her arms, or to the “audacious” Dyad in Neopythagoreanism (Theology of Arithmetic, attributed to Iamblicus but actually from the same era as the Oracles, Waterfield translation p. 42); she daringly separates from the One and becomes the principle of matter. So humans inherit daring from their material origin. In the cards, it is the virtue of Fortitude, shown as a lady putting her hands on or in a lion’s mouth; the lion is associated with the element of fire.

It is also the Cosmic Soul who is the “mistress of life” (l. 23; Johnstone p. 64), corresponding to the Empress in tarot; it from her that all other soul derives, as Plato taught. As mediator between worlds, she is Popess (or the deity whom the Popess serves), while the Pope is a representative of “the second intellect, which the race of men call the first” (l. 54) i.e. the biblical creator-god. The Cosmic Soul also turns the Wheel of Fortune; in Middle Platonic theurgy, the wheel is the “iynx” (English “jinx”) which Woodhouse awkwardly translates as “spell” (l. 55 and footnote 41). It is actually a wheel spun by the theurgist, representing the Ideas being spun out by the Father (Johnstone chapter VII, “Hekate’s top and the Iynx-Wheel”; also p. 161 of the Dylan Burns link above). In Alexandrian/Persian magic, the Magus would have one of these tools, for the purpose of love-spells, seeing into the future, etc.. But in Middle Platonism Hekate has been recruited for a higher purpose, in which the goal is ascent to the divine.

Plethon himself is clear about the "iynx" (Woodhouse's paraphrase, p. 58):
The 'mental spells' (l. 55) are the intelligible Forms, 'conceived by the Father and themselves conceiving and moved toward conceptions by unspoken and voiceless wills'.
In this context, Hekate, the Cosmic Soul, is also the force leading Love to shoot the arrow of the Word into the human soul, casting a spell on the one whom the arrow has pierced. Plethon says, in his 'Brief Explanation" (Woodhouse p. 53):
They [the Oracles] call "spells" (iynx) (l. 55) the intellects linked to him and the separated Forms, which they also cll the 'inflexible upholders of the world' (l. 57). They call them "spells" because of the erotic attachment of things in this world to themselves which the name of the iynx (spell) indicates.
Woodhouse says that "iynx" was the name of a bird that was attached to a rotating wheel, often as a magic charm to control men's hearts. A ldevice for working love-magic now stimulates Platonic Eros.

This Cosmic Soul is “fire...luminous through the power of the Father” (l. 22), like the Moon by the Sun; so when the Old Man’s hourglass is changed to a lantern, perhaps he is holding an image of her and the Father’s light; some Marseille versions of the Hermit card inscribe the arc of the sun on the folds of his robe. And when the soul is enjoined to “draw tight...the reins” (l. 45), we might think of the Charioteer, who normally would have reins, except that in the CY and PMB she was made feminine, for whom it would be undignified for her to manage the horses.

I think I have covered all the cards except the Bateleur, the Emperor. and the Fool. The Bateleur would seem to be the Magus himself, the Zoroastrian theurgist, who, like the Chaldean Second Intellect, creates a world from the raw materials of his cosmos, in his case the four-element-like objects that are the tools of his trade. If a dealer of cards, including the four suits, he would create an imaginary play-world--or perhaps an intelligible pattern of archetypal images, to guide the soul.

[Note: this paragraph was rewritten Oct. 3] For the Fool, all I see is the line near the end of the Oracles, "The Father has snatched himself away" (l. 58). The unnumbered Fool is outside the sequence, just as the Father is removed from the Cosmos. If the Fool's number is 0, that puts him before the Cosmos, just like the Father. The Fool doesn't think logically; the Father doesn't think discursively, i.e. in logically ordered sequences in time. The “fool for Christ” was a Renaissance commonplace (e.g. Erasmus In Praise of Folly, who ironically calls Jesus a fool, taking his cue from St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 4:10). The d'Este and Charles VI Fool suggest Renaissance portrayals of Saturn, who was "snatched away" by his son Jupiter and put in the Elysian Fields, away from the Cosmos, and who as Jupiter's father might qualify as "first intellect." As for the Emperor, I don't see anything in Plethon's Oracles that corresponds. In Zoroastrianism, Pythagoreanism, and Plato, the religious head is also the governmental head. So the Pope and the Emperor are the same. The most we could have is more than one, as in some decks there in fact were (the "four papi" in Bologna).

So that is how, I hypothesize, Plethon might have influenced the tarot as seen by devotees of his Chaldean Oracles in the later 15th century and after. The Oracles could well have been the stuff of lot-books, too, ancient and otherwise; but that would be a degeneration into lower magic from what was meant as theurgy or higher magic. As theurgy, the cards would serve as images to stimulate the archetypes latent in the human soul, to lead one forward to salvation and the divine. The Chaldean Oracles are in that way, I propose, one text among many to which the cards might have been associated.
 

Ross G Caldwell

P. S. (added a few hours later): Perhaps your point is that pseudo-Clement's description of Zoroastrian fire-worship correlates with what is found in Plethon's edition of the Chaldean Oracles. Hence Pseudo-Clement tends to confirm Plethon's attribution, as support from an unfriendly source. If that is your suggestion, I agree.

I was just taking the opportunity, in talking about Zoroaster, to bring up the Sola Busca depiction of Nimrod being destroyed by fire from heaven. It is an extra-biblical tradition, perhaps first attested in the Homilies. The Bible itself (Genesis 11: 1-9) doesn't even say that the Tower was destroyed, just that they stopped building it when they couldn't understand one another anymore. In fact, the Bible doesn't even say that Nimrod built the Tower of Babel; but traditionally, Nimrod built it, and it was destroyed.

T20_Sola_Busca.jpg


Botticelli's image of the Tower of Babel (illustrating Purgatory XII) shows a scene strikingly similar to the standard Tarot image, but also has Nimrod looking on and shielding himself (as in the Sola Busca) from the unseen source of the tower's destruction (lines 34-36) - see the figure standing to the left of the Tower.

botticellidante1.jpg


botticellidante2.jpg


Further discussion here:
http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=464&p=5947&hilit=+nimrod#p5947
 

Huck

Huck wrote
Or Cosimo was waiting for the right translator. Plethon's Chaldean Oracles was dangerous stuff, more dangerous than Plato. It had to be done right, and discreetly.
...

But really, Piero could have gotten the manuscript, too, or Cosimo later. When did he get the Corpus Hermeticum, for example? Not at the "book fair." (1460, according to http://www.alchemylab.com/AJ3-4.htm). All the Medici would have been on the lookout for anything smacking of the oldest philosophy, even Ficino himself once he had a good income. Italians were visiting Mistra regularly, even after Plethon's death.

Plethon was in Florence and gave texts to Cosimo. It would have been the easiest way, that he not only gave the Plato texts ... On the other hand Plethon was already old. Why should he had developed this text in the last ten years his life?

In context of Plethon's commentary and explanations to the oracles (inclusive notes to Zoroaster) Stausberg gives the commentary (p. 43), "die vermutlich aus Plethons früher Schaffensperiode stammen und möglicherweise den Charakter von Vorlesungsnotizen haben" ("which possibly have their origin in an early period [of Plethon's work] and possibly have the character of notes used for teaching"). Stausberg thinks, that these are very early.

From Plethon, said to have been born 1355 in Constantinople, it's said, that he studied in Adrianople.
Wikipedia, Plethon-biography:
George Gemistos was born some time after 1355, probably in Constantinople.[2] As a young man he went to study at Adrianopolis, by now the Turkish capital following its capture by the Ottoman Sultan Murad I in 1365. Adrianopolis was now a centre of learning modelled by Murat on the caliphates of Cairo and Baghdad.[2] Here he began to study Plato, and admired the philosopher so much that late in life he took the similar-meaning name Plethon.[3] In c1407 Gemistos left Adrianopolis and travelled through Cyprus, Palestine and other places,[2] finally settling in Mistra,[4] in the Despotate of Morea.
Footnote 2: Merry, Bruce (2002) "George Gemistos Plethon (c. 1355/60–1452)" in Amoia, Alba & Knapp, Bettina L., Multicultural Writers from Antiquity to 1945: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook. Greenwood Publishing Group.

Merry Bruce's article ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=3X...&resnum=1&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Stausberg, writing earlier than Merry Bruce, knows this Adrianople-theory. If I understand this correctly, he looks with some skeptical eyes on it, at least, he doesn't confirm it. He seems to know it from Michel Tardieu, "Plethon lecteur des oracles".

I made my best to get my own view about it.

******************

Adrianopolis is nowadays Edirne and this became capital of the expanding Osmanic Empire (c. 1365 - 1453; then Constantinople became capital). Before Bursa (near Constantinople, but inside Minor Asia.

The origin of the Osmans is in a small Western part of the Sultanate of Rum, which started to suffer, when at the Eastern part the Mongols arrived ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultanate_of_Rûm
... and the territory had been 1500 square kilometers.
Osman I. (- 1324) enlarged this to 18000 square kilometers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osman_I
His son Orhan till 1361 made further progress and reached 95000 square kilometers. Especially he was able to cross the sea to Europe and to take Gallipoli in 1352 (or a little later, the information has contradictions), after an earthquake had damaged the fortifications. The great plague - another factor - might have been partly the reason, why it was so easy for the Osmans to enlarge their territory.
With the possession of Gallipoli it was possible to attack the traffic between Black Sea/Constantinople and Mediterranean Sea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orhan_I
Edirne (Adrianople) was taken 1360

800px-Culture_of_the_Second_Bulgarian_Empire.png


... and quickly made capital of the Osman Sultanate by Murad (as which it was declared in 1383). Edirne earlier belonged to the Bulgarian Empire, which had it gotten 1230 in the battle of
Klokotnitsa:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Klokotnitsa

... but the second Bulgarian Empire turned in a long decline, first attacked by the Mongols and then under attack from Serbs, Hungary etc. and finally the Osmans. At least I saw it reported, that still a lot of Bulgars lived in Edirne in the early time of the Osman empire.

Adrianople became the Osman capital, and the whole Balkan suffered. Constantinople's position became hopeless during the rest of 14th century, with Byzanz as a tribute paying factor, who soon would be taken, but already long under Turkish control.
Some resistance, the great battle of Nicopolis 1396 ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nicopolis
... went very wrong.

Then, as a surprise of heaven, in 1402 Timur Lenk, the Mongolian leader of Persia, appeared at the Eastern part of the Osman Empire, the feared Bayezid, Osman Sultan since 1389, was captured 1402) and died as prisoner (1403). The Osman Empire fell into chaos, the European part of the Osman Empire departed from the other part in Minor Asia ... and now paid tribute to Byzanz. Constantinople was saved ... for 50 years only.

*************

So - according wikipedia, Tardieu and Bruce - Plethon (* 1355-1360) went as a young man to this most interesting new capital. Maybe he was there about 1475 or even earlier. I think I've read somewhere at the begin of the 1380's they started to build a sort of academy there, with the plan to compete with similar institutions in Cairo and ???? ... I don't find this passage.

Murad I (in his time till 1389) definitely started the Janissary system.

The origins of the Janissaries are shrouded in myth though traditional accounts credit Orhan I – an early Ottoman bey, who reigned from 1326 to 1359 – as the founder. Modern historians, such as Patrick Kinross, put the date slightly later, around 1365, under Orhan's son, Murad I, the first sultan of the Ottoman Empire.
...
The Janissaries were kapıkulları (sing. kapıkulu), "door servants" or "slaves of the Porte", neither free men nor ordinary slaves (Turkish: köle). They were subject to strict discipline, but they were paid salaries and pensions on retirement, and were free to marry; those conscripted through devşirme formed a distinctive social class, which quickly became the ruling class of the Ottoman Empire, rivaling the Turkish aristocracy in one of the four royal institutions: the Palace, the Scribes, the Religious and the Military. The brightest of the Janissaries were sent to the Palace institution (Enderun), where the possibility of a glittering career beckoned.

If Plethon really was taken to study in Adrianople, the probability might be high, that he participated in a sort of early (likely less developed than in later times) Janissary system. The Janissary-system wasn't so unusual ... It was common practice to take hostages from conquered and tribute-paying people. If we think about Armin the Cherusker in the Roman army, we've an example of Roman times. If we compare specific "guests" in Italian 15th century (for instance the young brothers of Leonello d'Este in Naples 1445-1460), then it's rather objective, that they (also) served as a guarantee for Ferrarese political behavior in the interest of Naples ... and it (also) served as a possibility to educate young rulers of the future in a style, which wasn't negative for the host-country.

When Bayezid went down (1402) and the early Osmanic Sultanate broke soon to pieces for some time, naturally the Janissary-system should have broken down, too. As far I got it, Plethon appeared 1407 (well educated, in excellent health) in Byzanz as a man, who was already 47-52 years old (the Janissary boys were selected from the best and naturally "good health" was also one condition) and as a man with "no trace and past" ... shouldn't we assume, that such a forceful man had lived earlier with another name ? ... about 35 years later in Florence-Ferrara we see, that the old Gemisthos took another "new" name, perhaps, cause Plethon knew this new-name-process from his earlier life. And we have Plethon as a man, who never talked of his past ... cause some personal reasons?

Plethon wasn't then loved in Byzanz, when he arrived and seems to have been observed with suspicion ... in Germany we had in younger history similar situations. Persons well trained either in the Nazi-system or in the DDR were after the broke of their systems similar "checked for their involvements in the past" and nonetheless often enough taken for just their capabilities, if not in Germany, then often enough in other countries. Wernher of Braun for instance ... If the Janissary system really ended for some time, then Plethon wasn't alone, there should have been a complex series of such talented men with doubtful past.

With Plethon we have a man, who finally searched for the unity of the religions. Wouldn't his way of life have some inner logic, if Plethon was born as a Christian, then became indoctrinated for Islam as a young Janissary, and returned (only half) back to Christian believe and then found to a mid between the contrasts in his time in the "old religion" and then in Zoroaster?
Zoroaster stood for Persia. And the Persian king Timur Lenk (1402) had freed Plethon of his earlier bondage. Not only Plethon, of course, Timur Lenk had given the whole Byzanz 50 more years to exist. And the whole Europe 50 years more to prepare the future attacks.

Timur Lenk - a lover of chess, not to forget. For Timur Lenk the battle against the Osmans had been only a minor point between many others.
Timur Lenks great aim had been to recover the Mongolian China. But the weather was bad ... Timur Lenk alias Tamerlane died about it (1405).

**************

The whole story with Plethon and Adrianople seems only based on the few information, that was given by Plethons opponent Georgius Scholarius at two occasions. (Stausberg p. 37). The second occasion is a letter to the Exarch Joseph estimated to be written 1456/57, the other occasion I don't know (missing page). According this a Jew Elisaios or Elisha was the teacher of Plethon, in reality a polytheist. From him Plethon had gotten his information about Zoroaster, who had been unknown to him before. Finally this Jew had
found the same death as Zoroaster, the death by fire.

When I heard this story, my mind immediately connected the enlightenment story of 3 kabbalists in the Provence, c. 1170. These 3 persons are considered by Gershom Scholem as very important for the later development of Jewish Kabbala in Spain. The enlightenment had something to do with the Prophet Elias or Elijah and his Fire-Chariot (the death by fire in the Scholarios-document).

The specific Jewish enlightenment story appeared in historical context with the appearance of Cathars in the Provence (Scholem suspected a connection). The Cathars had their roots in Bogomilism, and Thracia was the hotbed for the origin of Bogomilism. The location Adrianople alias Edirne, where Plethon is believed to have been educated, belongs to Thracia. Bogomilism isn't cosidered to have been totally dead in late 14th century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah
According to the Books of Kings, Elijah defended the worship of Yahweh over that of the more popular Baal, he raised the dead, brought fire down from the sky, and ascended into heaven in a whirlwind (either accompanied by a chariot and horses of flame or riding in it). In the Book of Malachi, Elijah's return is prophesied "before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord," making him a harbinger of the Messiah and the eschaton in various faiths that revere the Hebrew Bible. Derivative references to Elijah appear in the Talmud, Mishnah, the New Testament, and the Qur'an.

In Judaism, Elijah's name is invoked at the weekly Havdalah ritual that marks the end of Shabbat, and Elijah is invoked in other Jewish customs, among them the Passover seder and the Brit milah (ritual circumcision). He appears in numerous stories and references in the Haggadah and rabbinic literature, including the Babylonian Talmud.

In Christianity, the New Testament describes how both Jesus and John the Baptist are compared with Elijah, and on some occasions, thought by some to be manifestations of Elijah, and Elijah appears with Moses during the Transfiguration of Jesus.

In Islam, the Qur'an describes Elijah as a great and righteous prophet of God, and one who powerfully preached against the worship of Ba'al.

Elijah is also a figure in various folkloric traditions. In Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania, he is known as "Elijah the Thunderer" and in folklore is held responsible for summer storms, hail, rain, thunder, and dew.

From Adrianople alias Edirne we find ...

... there were lots of Jews in Edirne in the early Ottoman time. These mostly came from Hungary very early, and welcomed the new Osmans immediately.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=860&letter=A

At least two other religions are somehow closely connected to Edirne
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edirne
Under Ottoman rule Adrianople was the principal city of a vilayet (province) of the same name, both of which were later renamed as Edirne. Sultan Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, was born in Adrianople. It was here that he fell under the influence of some Hurufis known as "Certain accursed ones of no significance", who were burnt as heretics by Mahmut Paşa.
...
Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, lived in Edirne from 1863 to 1868. He was exiled there by the Ottoman Empire before being banished further to the Ottoman penal colony in Akka. He referred to Edirne in his writings as the "Land of Mystery".

I found the Sultan Mehmed story here ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=PP...0CBsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=mehmed hurufi&f=false

For the terminus Hurufi ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurufi

There was a Sufi religion active in Adrianople rather contemporary. This had its origin in Persia.

Further we have a rather modern Baha'i religion (19th century). In this religion, Elias also has a special function (from Elias article):
In the Bahá'í Faith, the Báb, founder of The Bábí Faith, is believed to be the return of Elijah and John the Baptist.[80] Both Elijah and John the Baptist are considered to be Lesser Prophets, whose stations are below that of a Manifestation of God such as Jesus Christ, Buddha, Muhammad, the Báb or Bahá'u'lláh. The Báb is buried on Mount Carmel, where Elijah had his confrontation with the prophets of Baal.

And in Eastern Europe:
In Eastern European

This common depiction of the prophet Elijah riding a flaming chariot across the sky resulted in syncretistic folklore among the Slavs incorporating pre-Christian motifs in the beliefs and rites regarding him in Slavic culture.

As Elijah was described as ascending into heaven in a fiery chariot, the Christian missionaries who converted Slavic tribes likely found him an ideal analogy for Perun, the supreme Slavic god of storms, thunder and lightning bolts. In many Slavic countries Elijah is known as Elijah the Thunderer (Ilija Gromovnik), who drives the heavens in a chariot and administers rain and snow, thus actually taking the place of Perun in popular beliefs.

In one Eastern-European folklore tale, Elijah is portrayed in his "Thunderer" persona:

...
In Greece, churches dedicated to the Prophet Elijah are often built on mountain tops, where they often succeed shrines dedicated to Zeus.

My (humble) idea: Plethon might have told Scholarios once "something of the horse" (a joke, a metaphor). Plethon's teacher was Elias, in other words, something like Zeus or another higher being. Plethon had himsel an enlightenment experience, likely induced cause the interesting religious climate of many religious opinions at one place: Adrianople.
Scholarios might have taken this verbally serious. And was fooled.

Generally Plethon might have generally avoided to talk about his private past and he possibly had a way to fool stupid questions.

**********

I wrote earlier about Bogomilism, when I made the attempt to understand its walk from some sort of Manichaeism in the post-Christ time till the Cathars time in France. These texts are hidden in the monster thread
http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=147249
"reconsidering a cathar connection"

The region of Armenia (and of Thracia) played a role and the region of Armenia plays also a role for the origin of the Chaldean oracles. This easily might be "no accident" in the current theme, which also somehow connects Armenia with Thracia.

Btw. I've read, that Armenia had been the first Christian state ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenia
Armenia was historically Mazdean Zoroastrian (as opposed to the Persia's Zurvanite Sassanid dynasty), particularly focused on the worship of Mihr (Avestan Mithra), and Christianity spread into the country as early as AD 40. King Tiridates III (AD 238–314) made Christianity the state religion in AD 301, becoming the first officially Christian state, ten years before the Roman Empire granted Christianity an official toleration under Galerius, and 36 years before Constantine the Great was baptized.

An older name of Armenia had been "Mazdean Zoroastrian" (as opposed to the Persia's Zurvanite Sassanid dynasty).
Armenia in its greatest extension, which was in the 1st century BC ...

800px-Armenian_Empire.png


... included also the region of Apameia, where likely the Chaldean Oracles originated.

Btw ...

633px-Eastern_Mediterranean_1450_.svg.png


The distance Adrianople - Constantinople is about 240 km, the distance Constantinople - Bursa (old Ottoman capital before Adrianople) is the same (on the country - it's shorter with ship).
 

MikeH

Huck wrote,
The whole story with Plethon and Adrianople seems only based on the few information, that was given by Plethons opponent Georgius Scholarius at two occasions. (Stausberg p. 37). The second occasion is a letter to the Exarch Joseph estimated to be written 1456/57, the other occasion I don't know (missing page). According this a Jew Elisaios or Elisha was the teacher of Plethon, in reality a polytheist. From him Plethon had gotten his information about Zoroaster, who had been unknown to him before. Finally this Jew had found the same death as Zoroaster, the death by fire.
Woodhouse wrote about this "Elissaeus" as Plethon's source for the Chaldean Oracles.
It has also been remarked that all the other works in which Gemistos cited Zoroaster belong to his last period, after 1439, and with this argument has been linked the theory that Scholarios' story of Gemistos' introduction to Zoroastrianism was fictitious. [Footnote: Nikolaou 1971, 305, 335-7.]
...It seems reasonable in any case to treat the Commentary and the Brief Explanation as relatively early works, since they evidently reflect an interest which Gemistos owed to Elissaeus.
I have already quoted, in an earlier post, the part I omitted, which doesn't deal with Elissaeus. I am not sure what the work by Nikolau is. I don't have Woodhouse's book at hand, and it isn't named in the pages I copied. I can get it if needed. It is probably in Greek.

Moshe Idel discusses this "Elisha" at some length, and with extensive references, in his "Prisca Theologia and Marsilio Ficino," an article I have already referred to. Idel entertains the idea of possible Sufi influence. The discussion of "Elisha" is on pp. 143-145. Since it is so long, and all of it is online, I won't quote it here. See http://books.google.com/books?id=CX06dsbZ_JIC&pg=PA137&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

Huck wrote
My (humble) idea: Plethon might have told Scholarios once "something of the horse" (a joke, a metaphor). Plethon's teacher was Elias, in other words, something like Zeus or another higher being. Plethon had himsel an enlightenment experience, likely induced cause the interesting religious climate of many religious opinions at one place: Adrianople.
Scholarios might have taken this verbally serious. And was fooled.
I don't know the expression "something of the horse". I assume that you are saying that Elissaeus/Elisha/Elisaios is Plethon's joke about being taught by revelation (like Elijah's lightning). That is possible.

Huck wrote
The Cathars had their roots in Bogomilism, and Thracia was the hotbed for the origin of Bogomilism. The location Adrianople alias Edirne, where Plethon is believed to have been educated, belongs to Thracia. Bogomilism isn't considered to have been totally dead in late 14th century.
Your suggestion of Bogomil influence also makes sense, as a general milieu rather than a organized force. The Bogomils are said to have come in part from the Paulicians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogomilism), named for Paul of Samosata, a heretic (but not a Gnostic one) Bishop of Antioch, 3rd century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_of_Samosata). In Armenia, the Paulicians then borrowed ideas from Gnostic groups living there, especially the Manicheans, whose founder, Mani, was Persian and influenced by Zoroastrianism. Since it wouldn't do to be a professed Bogomil, the Chaldean system is a close approximation.

Philosophically, the Oracles are a very close parallel to the Valentinian Christian Gnosis, which arose in the same Hellenistic milieu as the Oracles at around the same time, as Tardieu has shown ("La Gnose Valentinienne et les Oracles Chaldaiques," in The Rediscovery of Gnosticism vol. 1). In Plethon's hands, the Oracles are closer to the Valentinian Gnosis than they are to Bogomilism (no doubt Plethon himself was no ascetic), since they tell us that "the fruits even of evil matter are worthy and good" (l. 35). The Valentinians were the Gnostics who didn't call the demiurge evil, just ignorant, as Irenaeus presents their system in 1.5.3 of Against Heresies (http://www.gnosis.org/library/advh1.htm).

Thanks for the link to the Merry article. I see that he agrees with me about when Ficino was exposed to Plethon: between 1463 and 1469. And I will definitely try to look at the works in his bibliography.
 

MikeH

Huck wrote
Plethon was in Florence and gave texts to Cosimo. It would have been the easiest way, that he not only gave the Plato texts ... On the other hand Plethon was already old. Why should he had developed this text in the last ten years his life?
I agree that the easiest way for Plethon's Chaldean Oracles and Commentary to get to Ficino was for Plethon to give them to Cosimo. But it seems strange to me that Cosimo would sit on them for 25 years. When he got the Corpus Hermeticum, he wanted it translated immediately. That is quite a lapse of attention and memory, if he filed away the manuscripts and forgot about them. Yes, it is the easiest explanation. But I for one will keep searching. Maybe something will turn up linking Ficino's copy with Filelfo.

Here is one possibility. Reading the article “Two Byzantine Scholars and their Reception in Italy,” by A. Keller, in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 20 (1957), pp. 363-370, I find a name hitherto unknown to me (the first "Byzantine Scholar" of the title, as expected, is Plethon).

Keller says that Demetrios Raoul Kavakes, of an exalted and ancient noble family, was one of Plethon’s many devoted students in Mistra in the 1440s. He made his living, some of the time, copying Greek manuscripts. In Legrand’s book of Filelfo’s letters, there are two letters to Kavakes, pp. 311ff. Neither is by Filelfo, and I don’t know why they are there. I did not see a translation of either one, just the Greek. Here is what Keller says:
We possess two letters from this period [the 1440s], written to Kavakes by two notable champions of orthodoxy, Georgios Scholarios, later first Patriarch of Constantinople under the Turks, and his friend Matthew Camariotes. They mention Plethon’s attack on the Latin dogma concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit, and his Treatise on the Virtues, copies of which had been sent to them by Kavakes, for they write partly to thank him.
Ross, if you could tell me what these letters are doing in a book of Filelfo’s letters, when they were written, and whether they say anything relevant to this thread, I’d be grateful. They are in the link you provided, in Greek.

The only dates Keller gives are for other letters, of around 1441. After that, Kavakes may have gone to court in Constantinople, may have worked at a monastic house, may have served as a mercenary soldier after the fall of the Despotate.

Then comes some definite information. Here is Keller, drawing mainly on a book in Greek by S. P. Lambros, 1907:
The only thing certain about his later career is that he arrived in Rome in 1466, and occupied all of his old age as a copyist, in order to earn a living, and perhaps also to assist in the preservation of Hellenic culture...All of his dated manuscripts are of the period 1480-87. He had some connection with Bessarion after his arrival, since he refers to a conversation with him...He definitely had some dealings with Ciriaco of Ancona, whose notes are found in two of Demetrios’s most important manuscripts. [Footnote: MSS. Est. T.8.12 and Vat.gr.173.]

Kavakes died at the age of ninety in Rome, and is buried in Bessarion’s Curch of SS. Apostoli. [Footnote: For his epitaph there, see E. Legrand, Bibliographie Hellenique...—Xve et XVIe siecles, Paris 1885-1906.] In one of his manuscripts he tells of a dream he had towards the end of his life, in which Plethon appeared to him, and said, [I omit the Greek] “You have spoken the truth.” If this means by expounding his master’s doctrines he was justified, for there is no doubt of his loyalty to what he had been taught...
Keller finds one manuscript, a Theorema, that is apparently Kavakes writing in his own voice. It is in praise of Julian’s Oration on the Sun King. Plethon had indeed “addressed the Sun King in his neo-polytheistic prayers, but in his scheme the Sun was always a subordinate part of the Pantheon. [Footnote: Plethon, Nomoi, ed. C. Alexandre, Paris, 1858, pp. 136, 154, 164.].” For Kavakes, Keller says, not only is the Sun “the highest revelation of ultimate truth,” but also “the whole universe must revolve round, and be moved by, the Sun.” Keller then quotes at length from Kavakes’ visionary description of the marching army of the King of the Sun, all hoping for a glimpse of his mantle. Then Keller finally gets to the heliocentric point:
The Theorema leaves the exact relation of the earth to the sun rather vague. But he apparently denies that the earth can be in the centre of the universe, in a note to the anonymous treatise On the Nature and Position of the Earth, sandwiched between Strabo, and Plethon’s Corrections to Strabo, in Vat. gr. 173, at the foot of fol. 95v:
This man says, like many others, that the earth holds the central position vis-a-vis the sphere of the sun. What Julian says about the sun’s disc in his Oration to the Sun King is correct: ‘The disc is borne to the starless sphere, much higher than the sphere of the fixed stars, so it is not in the midst of the planets’...” etc.
I am not exactly sure that Kavakes is advancing an astronomical hypothesis, but Keller compares his language to that of Copernicus, who says:
...It is not without reason that some have called the sun the world’s lantern, the soul, the ruler of the universe. Trismegistus calls it visible god, Sophocles’ Electra “he who sees all”. And so, as if seated on a royal throne, the Sun governs the family of planets as they circle round him.
I also don't see Kavakes locating the sun in the middle of the planets' orbits. But never mind. I am more interested in Kavakes' missionary zeal than his status as a scientist. Keller says:
Bidez [footnote: La tradition manuscrite et les Editions des Discourse de l’Empereur Julien, 1929, pp. 76f] has commented on the popularity of Julian’s Oration on the Sun King during this period, and on Kavakes’ not inconsiderable share in disseminating it. The texts suddenly multiply, with copious annotations. One might compare the expressions of Kavakes with Cusanus, for instance in his De Docta Ignorancia, and still more in VII and VIII of his Exercitationes (e.g. “Sine influentia solis, nihil vivit. Participant igitur omnia motum vitae, a motu Solis in zodiaco seu arculo vitae. Aliae stellae per suum motum non influunt motum motum vitae; Sed circa esse vitae, disponunt iuxta suam virtutem.” [Footnote: Opera, Basle, 1565, p. 589 and cf. p. 623.])
And Copernicus, of course.

My point is only that here is another person from whom Cosimo (earlier) or Ficino (later) could have obtained Plethon’s edition of the Chaldean Oracles, either directly or through traveling manuscript-hunters like Ciriaco. Maybe Filelfo, too, got it from him, although his mention of Zoroaster, and probably the Oracles, is 1464 (see my next post). Maybe Kavakes got to Italy before 1466, spending time in the north before arriving in Rome. And he pmight not have been the only one. Before and especially after the fall of Byzantium, there might have been other itinerant devotees of Plethon in Italy, happy to sell as many copies as they could of his precious works, spreading them like seeds on barren ground.