“The lover carves into his soul the model of the beloved. In that way, the soul of the lover becomes the mirror in which the image of the loved one is reflected” — Marsilio Ficino from De amore Neptune was not known to Marsilio Ficino during the Renaissance in which he was translating ancient texts […]
via On Venus and Neptune in Pisces — Gray Crawford
Couliano plus Ficino so I had to re-post
In his Theologia platonica, Marsilio Ficino sought to defend the immortality of the soul and inherent dignity of humanity. Ficino argues that the soul rests in the middle of a great chain of being, with the Christian god and angels above and animals below. His great chain of being consists of five basic levels: God, angelic mind, rational soul, quality, and body. Humanity occupies a central position between mortal and immortal — the body being mortal and the soul immortal. Ficino was deeply influenced by arguments for the immortality of the soul presented by Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo as well as the works of Plotinus.
For the Sun signifies all these things, and simply all essential truth and prophecy and kingship. It follows from this, that as the Sun ascends to the midheaven it fosters the vital and animal spirits in us in a miraculous way, and as it descends, each spirit is debilitated. This is why David, the trumpet of Almighty God, rising to his lyre at daybreak broke forth into song and exclamation. It is vain for us to get up before dawn, for it is clear that the rising Sun brings us every benefit and revives our spirits, which wonderfully aroused and illumined, are called to sublime things.
-Marsilio Ficino, The Book of the Sun
In the midst of these things, if you want to assign all the reasons which led Moses to command the Hebrews to be at leisure on the Sabbath, perhaps you will discover behind it a more sublime and secret allegory: the day of Saturn unfit for action in peace and war but fit for contemplation and for beseeching divine patronage on that same day against dangers. Abraham and Samuel and most of the Hebrew astrologers testified that they were able to acheive this aid against the menace of Mars and Saturn by elevating their minds to God and by vows and sacrifices, thus confirming that rule of the Chaldeans: “If you lift up your ardent mind to a work of piety, you will preserve your weak body”… It would be very worthwhile to explore that Hebrew notion, namely that in ritual slaughter of animals and in the scattering of our possesions as a sacrifice, the evils menacing us from the heavens are deflected from us to our possesions.
...[M]any dwellers in the East and South, especially Indians, are said to have an admirable power in their words, as these people are for the most part Solar. I say that they are the most powerful of all, not in their natural, but in their vital and animal forces…
-Marsilio Ficino, De Vita Coelitus Comparanda
Above: a scene from the Balanchine ballet, Apollo
Indeed in the same way that this sensible light is experienced by the senses, illuminating, invigorating and forming all sensible things and faculties of sense and converting them to higher planes, so a certain intelligible light in the soul of the Sun illuminates, kindles and recalls the inner spiritual eye. I think for this reason the Sun was called Apollo by the ancient Theologians, and creator of all harmony, and leader of the Muses, since he releases minds from a certain confused turmoil, not so much by visible but by hidden influxes of rays, and he tempers them proportionately, and finally leads them to understanding.
-Marsilio Ficino, The Book of the Sun
But this single truth, embodied in many different virtues, cannot be the first truth of all, since it is distributed among many virtues, it is in something else. And whatever lies in another certainly derives from another. However, a single truth is not derived from a multitude of concepts. For what is one must derive from one. Therefore, above the soul of man there must be a single wisdom which is not divided among various concepts, but is a single wisdom, from whose single truth the manifold truth of men derives.
-Marsilio Ficino, Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love
