Simone Weil (1909–1943),

a French philosopher.

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Today’s sharing from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA, is our sampler-Part V, dedicated to the French Philosopher Simone Weil, and it is about ‘Mediation, being the key to everything‘. Our text source is: ‘Intuitions Pré-Chrétiennes’, La Colombe, Editions du vieux Colombier, Paris 1951. From page 88 to 90 & from ‘La Source Grecque’, Editions Gallimard, Paris 1953, page 166 to 169. A Via-HYGEIA English translation from the original French. The essential subject of the Mediation is also the main theme of an article written by Henri Coton-Alvart: ‘Hermes, The Mediator’ we published some time ago.

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From ‘Intuitions Pré-Chrétiennes’

‘…In Plato’s ‘allegory of the cave’, the last object of contemplation, immediately before the sun is the moon. The moon being the reflection, the image of the sun. The sun being the Good, it is natural to guess then that the moon is Beauty. In saying that the person who has reached Beauty has in deed almost reached the ultimate goal, Plato suggests that supreme Beauty is the Son of God. In Greek mythology, absolute beauty is the represented by the celestial Aphrodite.

In passing, we could say that using the moon as the symbol of the Son works quite nicely and all the better because the moon bears a decrease, a vanishing and a rebirth-so fitting as symbol of the passion of Christ. Some details of the myth of Osiris are also pointing at this. A bull represents Osiris because of the horns of the crescent moon. His body is divided in 14 pieces and 14 is the number of days the separate full moon from new moon. Isis gathers 13 pieces, and 13 is the number of the lunar months in a year. As for Isis herself, she is identical to Demeter, the motherly divinity, whose symbol is earth.

Plutarch of Chaeronea says also that Osiris is the humid principle that inseminates nature, the sap of life, a role that the Ancients gave to the moon. Zagreus, on the other hand is called by Nonnus of Panopolis the ‘horned new born’ that rises towards Zeus’ throne and ceases lightning. The Titans trick him; the Titans are 12 and in comparing their names in the works of Hesiod with the zodiacal signs we can find some correspondences. Zagreus, in order to escape them shape-shifts, the last one being the form of a bull, which is again a horned form. Under this form the titans kill him.

This story can easily be applied to the phase of the moon. Sophocles calls Dionysos: ‘A fire, master of the stars that breathe, custodian of the nocturnal voices, distributor.’ All this of course, applies again to the moon, the last epithet is because of the months. We can notice, in stretching a little bit, that we can find again in the day, the month and the year, something about the mediating factor.

Euripides ‘Hippolytus‘ can not be understood but through the identification of Artemis and Dionysos, because Hippolytus is an orphic initiate, initiated to the mysteries of Eleusis. Artemis & Apollo’s bows, Apollo & Hermes’ lyres remind us by their shape of the lunar crescent. Pan also is a horned god. His name means ‘everything’. Plato, everywhere in his writings, call ‘the Soul of the World’ the ‘Everything’ and he says in the ‘Cratylus‘ that Pan is the Logos (λογος). Many thing find themselves making sense in Mythology if we suppose that everything that is linked with the moon has horns because it is an image of the moon-linked to the sap of plants-symbolizes actually the Logos. Also, divinities such as Athena, and perhaps Hephaistos, seem to correspond to the Holy Ghost. Athena was born from Zeus alone. Hephaistos is born from a legitimate union. All the other children of Zeus are, on the other hand, born out of wedlock, therefore an illegitimate union. Perhaps it is the symbol of a scandal, of a folly that is implied by the union of a God and his creature. In this very case, the children of Zeus would be the names of the Logos. Hestia, the central fire, being the Holy Ghost.’

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From ‘La Source Grecque’, excerpt from the study

‘Notes upon the writing of Philolaos.’

‘…Which means that geometry is the science of the search for proportional averages (note: similar, in Greek means proportional) through the immeasurable proportion   

and that it proceeds from a supernatural revelation. Which is to be linked with some passages in which Plato describes the mediation between God and Man through the image of the proportional average:

and of many passages in the New Testament in which Christ is using this very image to describe His mediating function (‘Alike my Father who sent me, similarly i send you, etc…‘), this makes the invention of geometry in Greece in the VI century BC, seem like a prophecy-in the strict aspect of the word…

A translation, THE LEAST INACCURATE,

of the prologue of Saint John’s Gospel would then be:

‘At the origin was Mediation, and Mediation was with God, and Mediation was God. It was from the beginning with God. Everything took its birth through it; nothing that was born, was without it. In it is life, and life was the light of Mankind; and light was manifested in the darkness; and darkness did not cease it. It was the true light illuminating Mankind, as it came into this world; it found itself in the world, and the world did not recognize it. It came towards what belongs to it and those who belonged to it did not welcome it. But, to those who did, it gave them the possibility to become children of God; those who had faith in His name, who were engendered, were not because of blood, not because of the flesh, not because of the will of mankind, but because of God. And Mediation, embodied with flesh, raised its tent among us, and we have contemplated the glow: such a glow, similar to the unique son of a father-in the fulness of Grace & Truth.’

Simone Weil’s original

French translation from the Greek

Because Intelligence is a degraded equivalent of the supernatural light, then the link or the relationship is as well, a proper object of the intelligence, for the Mediation.

The necessity that constitutes the mechanism of matter is nothing else than a weaving of relationships; and the reality of the world isn’t made by anything else than necessity, alike an analysis of perception (in the meaning Professor Jules Lagneau indicates us in his works) is able to demonstrate this easily.

(A Via-Hygeia Note: Jules Lagneau, born in Metz on August 8, 1851 and died in Paris on April 22, 1894, is a French professor of philosophy. Questioning perception and the conditions of knowledge, he developed the reflexive method in psychology.)

Therefore, divine Mediation, by analogical descent, penetrates everything. It unites God to God, God to the world, the world to Himself; it constitute in all domains Reality.

All this is being expressed in the unique word, Logos (λογος), as the name of the second person of the Christian Trinity.

This is exactly what Plato’s words express: ‘God is always a Geometer‘ (ο θεος αει γεωμετρει), we also link with the passage in the ‘Epinomis‘ I quoted earlier and another well known passage from the ‘Gorgias‘ (about geometrical equality).

Unity as represented by the Pythagoreans represents God (which shows that calling them polytheists is non-sense!). They were saying: ‘Justice is a number in power of 2‘ (in French: ‘La justice est un nombre à la deuxième puissance.)

In other words, Justice is what is between anything and God: therefore there is a natural mediation. (being itself a name of God).

On the other hand, between sinners and God, there is no natural mediation (they are numbers not naturally similar between them), and also, there is none between unity and non-square numbers.

But, because geometry provides, through the predestination (μοιρα, moira) of plane figures, a miraculous (θαυμα, thavma) mediation for those numbers, there is also a miraculous operation, against nature, that establish a mediation between the criminal Humanity and God (‘Make similar numbers that are not naturally similar.’

Therefore,  Logos (λογος), Arithmos (αριθμος, the number), Geometria  (γεωμετρια), Armonia (αρμονια), all these words designate the Mediation.

These linkings, these connections, I have made above may seem rather arbitrary, but they shed a clear light to a  perfect coherence &  intelligibility at the core of these ancient texts, which, unless I am mistaken, cannot find any other ways. There is no other criteria for the reconstruction of a mosaic scattered into fragments!

The other possible alternative to this interpretation is that we ought then to admit the Greek were writing a lot of incoherent and obscure things! This is what has been dome until today by western academia. But we were wrong. We were so wrong to judge them after ourselves…’

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