For the Love of the Gods: The History and Modern Practice of Theurgy - Brandy Williams 2016

Psellos
Stories from the Ancestors

In the time of the Ikhwan al-Safa, Constantinople was one of the largest cities in the world. The terminus of the Silk Road leading from China through Baghdad and Harran, it carried both material wealth and the knowledge of the world into the city. The Byzantine intellectual tradition added these new sources to its deep store of Greek philosophy, with its debt to Egyptian/Kemetic knowledge in addition to newly developed Christian thought.

Michael Psellos was born in 1018. The son of an elite family, he was named Constantine at birth. He was groomed to serve the masters of the empire, studying with teacher John Mauropos alongside men who would eventually become emperors and patriarchs.

In 1047 the emperor Constantine IX appointed Constantine Psellos head of philosophy at his new University of Constantinople. Stephen Skinner notes Psellos was given the title Hypatos, or Consul of Philosophers. Psellos succeeded in centering the curriculum of the new university on the paideia, the Hellenic cultural classics. In 1050 he came into possession of an important manuscript.

A PRECIOUS TEXT

“Constantine, he is here.”

Psellos turned away from his desk and strode across the floor to greet his visitor. “Welcome, well met,” he said, placing the man’s outstretched hand between his palms, a visible sign of his pleasure and an offer of protection. He waved his hand at his youthful slave. “Wine, Milosh.” The young man backed away and left quickly.

“Milosh?” his visitor said.

“He’s a Scyth, a Slav,” Psellos said shortly. “Please, come sit by the fire.” His visitor eyed the elaborately carved chairs inlaid with gold and ivory. When Psellos carelessly dropped onto the cane seat, his visitor gingerly followed suit.

“Now then,” Psellos said, “what shall we call you?”

The man fiddled with his Arabic robe. “Idris Khaldun, as I have signed my letters, of course.” When Psellos didn’t speak, he went on, “Khaldun is of my family. Idris—”

“Is a form of Hermes, of course,” Psellos said. “I thought you might call yourself Ibrahim al-Andalus, a scholar from one of the Spanish courts.”

“Ah,” Idris said, light dawning. “You think I should pass as Jewish. You think this will hide the fact that I am a refugee from Harran, that I will be taken for Muslim. Of course you know that I am not Muslim either. You would think of me as Pagan, like Milosh.”

As if he had heard his name, the young man reappeared, balancing a tray of goblets and wine. Idris smiled at him, but Milosh avoided his eyes, carefully sat the tray on a low table, and left the room. Idris raised his eyebrow at the golden cups. “You drink well here,” he commented.

Psellos filled a goblet and passed it to him. “You’re in Byzantium now, my friend. All the comforts of empire are at your fingertips.” He grimaced. “For as long as we can retain them.”

Idris took a gulp of wine as if to give himself courage to speak. “Your people are no kinder to Jews than to Muslims. I don’t speak Hebrew, and I have no idea what to do in a synagogue.”

“You’ll be a Jew converting to Christianity. No need to enter a synagogue, and it accounts for your accent,” Psellos said. “As a Christian I can find you a position. You’ll enjoy your work here at the university.”

“I am ungrateful,” Idris said suddenly. “It is more than I could have hoped to find refuge in a place of learning.”

“As for that,” Psellos said, “if a love of philosophy is Pagan … ” He glanced at the door where Milosh hovered half out of sight.

Idris said, “I understand this new university has an old curriculum. I expected to find a great deal of Aristotle and Christian apologetics. Instead I hear that you are teaching Homer, Plotinus, and Iamblichus.”

Psellos nodded. “Back to the wellspring of the early Church,” he said piously. He leaned forward. “I’m an idealist. I have so looked forward to discussing Plato with you,” he said intensely. “As a scholar from Harran you will have new insights. I hope to share many dinners with you.” He laughed and shook himself. “Once you’ve settled in. Is that the whole of your luggage?” He gestured at the bag Idris had laid beside the chair.

Idris roused himself. “This? No, it’s a gift. For you,” he said, holding out the bag.

Psellos waved it off. “It isn’t necessary. You can see we have everything we need here.”

“I don’t believe your gold will buy you this,” Idris said, smiling slightly. “Please.”

Taking the bag, somewhat grimy from its journey but fundamentally sturdy, Psellos lifted the flap and pulled out the scrolls tucked inside. Curious now, he unrolled one of the scrolls and sat reading for a long minute, then turned wide eyes to Idris. “What is this?”

“The Hermetica.”

Psellos stopped breathing for a moment. Then he cleared his throat. “Did you say the Hermetica?”

“With my own annotations, I’m afraid. I hope you don’t mind—”

Idris stopped as Psellos was crushing his ribs in a fierce embrace. “The Hermetica!” Psellos said. “I thought never to see it in my lifetime! This is a more precious gift than you can possibly know.”

“I have come to the right place,” Idris said with relief, relaxing for the first time since he had walked into the room.

“You were welcome as a scholar,” Psellos said. “This gift makes you a friend of knowledge.”

Jewish Neo-Platonists in Spain

Jews lived and studied in Alexandria, in the Islamic world, and throughout the Roman and Byzantine empires. The Jewish religious and intellectual traditions absorbed some Hellenistic thought; for example, in the first century of the Common Era the Alexandrian Jewish scholar Philo sought to reconcile the teachings of Hebrew texts with Plato and Pythagoras.

During the Golden Age of Islam, Jews were respected as “people of the book.” This was especially true in Moorish Spain. At the time of the destruction of the moon temple in Harran, Islamic Spain was arguably the site of the most enlightened culture in Western Europe. Islamic leaders permitted Christians and Jews not only to practice their faiths but also enter the professions, becoming doctors, architects, and teachers. In this culture upper-class women could be literate and sometimes served as scribes in the courts.

When Harran fell, Neo-Platonists, Muslim mystics, and Jewish intellectuals fled to other parts of the world. Some may have ended up in the Spanish courts, others in Constantinople. They may have brought texts with them. We do know that from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, from the fall of Harran to the fall of Constantinople, Hermetic literature seeped back into the West.

In “Hermeticism in the Alfonsine Tradition,” Henry and Renee Kahane trace Jewish translators who worked in the Spanish courts, translating Hebrew and Arabic texts into Latin and Spanish. In the thirteenth century, Arabic texts appeared in Latin, teaching Hermetic ideas such as the four elements and the ascent to the stars.

Avicebron exemplifies the Jewish intellectual in this decidedly mixed tradition. Sarah Pessin outlines his life: Solomon ben Judah Ibn Gabirol, Latinized as Avicebron, was born in Spain in the eleventh century, three years after Michael Psellos was born in Constantinople. In contrast to Psellos’s patrician upbringing, Avicebron lived a brief and apparently somewhat miserable life. He described himself as an orphan with a disfiguring skin ailment. Although he did move in Jewish intellectual circles, he had difficulty procuring patrons, friends, and even servants. Pessin notes the legend that he created a golem to do his housework!

While he alienated his contemporaries in person, Avicebron impressed others with his poetry and philosophical writings. His work was influenced by Neo-Platonic and Pythagorean thought as well as Jewish, Islamic, and Christian sources. His Fons Vitae, “Fountain of Life,” was written in Arabic and translated into Hebrew and Latin. The book takes the form of a dialogue between student and teacher similar to the form of Hermetic texts.

He died when he was only thirty-six, the year Psellos entered the monastery at Bithynia. There is no particular evidence that Psellos and Avicebron met, corresponded, or read each other’s works. Their lives form separate but adjacent threads in the Neo-Platonic tapestry.

THE PHILOSOPHER POLITICIAN

Psellos had handpicked John Italos to succeed him as Hypatos. A visit from his successor provided an excuse to escape the monastery for a private conversation. Psellos walked quickly, climbing the green hill rapidly. “Every time I mention Plato those crabbed little monks bless themselves against the ’Hellenic Satan.’ We must move out of earshot.”

His somewhat shorter friend panted beside him. “Let us walk a little less urgently,” he begged. “Remember, still the mind, calm the body.”

Slowing, Psellos blew out a breath, calming himself. “It’s so good to get out of there, even for an afternoon.” He turned to his friend with his trademark intensity. “Now, you must tell me all about everything. How is Constantinople?”

John was used to his friend in this mood. “Well, Xiphilinos continues to rise in the church hierarchy.”

“The monks approve of him,” Psellos said flatly.

“He abandoned you!” Italos said. “After you defended him when he was accused of heresy. You said he had no equal in grammar and poetry.”

“It was not a successful defense,” Psellos said mildly. “Both of us were forced to take the tonsure. Although he took it better than I did.”

“He has taken to it far too well,” Italos muttered into his beard. “He has accused you of abandoning Christ to follow Plato. Constantine, he accused you of heresy!”

“Michael,” Psellos corrected. “It’s Michael now. I took the name when I came to this place.”

Diverted, Italos said, “Will you become Constantine again when you go back to the city?”

“No. I mean to keep it,” Psellos said. “After all, it’s the archangel Michael who controls the demons.” He waved his hand. “I’ve spoken with him, John. I knelt in the church, the one with a piece of the true cross, and the whole place was filled with his presence.” He cut his friend a glance. “Surely that’s Christian of me.”

“You don’t have to defend yourself to me,” Italos said. They crested the hill and stopped, looking out over green fields and little houses. “It’s a pretty countryside.”

“It’s peaceful,” Psellos said. “I’ve thought if I could have my own cottage, I could live here for the rest of my life.” He took a deep breath. Psellos said, “John, this is all old news. Get to it. What have you come to tell me?” He laughed shakily. “Will I end up like Boethius, consoled by philosophy while I await my death?”

“You’re called back to court.” Psellos stood very still. Italos said uncertainly, “My friend?”

Suddenly Psellos whooped and crushed Italos in a quick embrace. “Called back to court?” he said. “Music, food, conversation—books!”

“The Empress Theodora finds she has need for your counsel,” Italos said, grinning now. “And, frankly, so do I. So much that I left the city for this provincial backwater to deliver the news myself.”

“Theodora … ” Psellos said with satisfaction. “Mark my words, John, and cultivate the women. They do have minds and they will appreciate you for knowing it.”

“That’s not all I’ve come to say,” Italos said. Even though they were out in the open with no one near, he leaned close to Psellos and said quietly, “Your work on the Chaldean Oracles—”

“—does not progress in this environment,” Psellos said shortly.

“It will in the city. You’ve talked about the use of the iynx wheel, using stones to purify the spirit, calling the gods into statues.”

“Don’t tell me—it’s all blasphemous?” Psellos teased. “You’ll call me a heretic like Xiphilinos did?”

Italos couldn’t help himself. “Teach me,” he cried. “That work has always passed one to one!”

“There is more,” Psellos said intensely. “There is a way to … become divine. But I’m not going to write about that.”

Italos’s face was growing red and his nostrils flared. “Constantine Michael Psellos, I swear—”

“Of course I’ll teach you,” Psellos said. “I’ll trust your discretion.” He turned his back on the countryside and flew back down the hillside, calling over his shoulder, “Come, we can be gone before dusk!”

Panting, John Italos followed behind.

The Lessons of Psellos

Psellos was banished to the monastery at Bithynia in 1054 and returned to court in 1055. He served Empress Theodora as her prime minister and kept the post under his former student, the Emperor Michael VII Ducas. Psellos retired from public life in 1078, and most biographers believe he died shortly afterwards, although some argue that he lived for another twenty years.

Psellos’s student John Italos fared less well. His Italian upbringing, his legendary temper, and his advocacy for Platonic philosophy led him in turn to face charges of “Hellenizing” and cost him his academic position. Even after losing the chair he continued to teach, educating women as well as men. The Empress Anna Comnena praised him as having bad grammar but prodigious knowledge. In Change in Byzantine Culture, Kazhdan and Petrovich note that Italos’s successor as Hypatos, Theodore of Smyrna, was the last to hold the position. Subsequent administrators abolished the position of philosophy chair and filled the university with teachers of the Gospel and the lives of the apostles.

Psellos wrote on numerous subjects and is hailed as a Renaissance man. His effect on the transmission of Hermetic knowledge from Alexandria to the present was mixed; his version of the Hermetica is thought to be the source for subsequent copies in Greek, but his work on demons shifted the popular understanding from the Greek belief that the spirits were both helpful and malicious to the idea that demons represented only evil. Only angels identified with Christianity were entirely good to Psellos despite the fact that the Latin angelus described the same class of being as the Greek daimones. We can see in this the privileging of Latin over Greek as well as Christianity over Paganism.

While the Greek Orthodox Church exercised considerable influence in Constantinople, Byzantine culture always rested on the base of the Greek paideia, which was Pagan in origin. In Psellos’s life we can see another iteration of the cycle of study of Neo-Platonism, resurgence of Pagan thought, and Christian suppression.

Notes on the Story

Like the Greek and Roman empires, the Byzantine Empire bought and sold people, trading with both Western Europe and the Islamic world. So many of these people were Slavic that they gave us the word “slave.” Sewter notes that Psellos used the word “scyths” to describe the Slavs. In Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade, Phillips points out that the Pagan Slavs were fair game for the slave trade, while regulations sought to keep Christians out of bondage.

The figure of Idris is a fiction, standing in for the anonymous scholars who fled Harran for Spain and Constantinople. Whatever its provenance, Psellos obtained a copy of the Hermetica and passed it forward in the chain of Hermetic transmission.

In The Argument of Psellos’ Chronographia, Anthony Kaldelis notes that Psellos’s “erstwhile” friend John Xiphilinos accused him of “forsaking Christ to follow Plato.” Psellos argued that he was a Platonic philosopher and that Platonism prepared the ground for Christianity. Both his contemporaries and ours view the argument as weak, calling into question his Christian convictions.

Psellos clearly resented the compulsion to take the tonsure. He championed Neo-Platonic philosophy and studied theurgic techniques. Even though he was an enormously accomplished politician, he faced charges of heresy. Psellos may have practiced the Chaldean ritual he studied; whether he did or not, he did pass on the knowledge to John Italos.