Iamblichus On the Mysteries and Life of Pythagoras (TTS Vol.17)

Volume XVII of the Thomas Taylor Series

This edition of Iamblichus' On the Mysteries (De Mysteriis) will be of interest to all those who value the ancients' wisdom of theurgy, divination, and true worship.

This volume also includes Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras, together with more than 40 fragments from the writings of the Pythagoreans of antiquity. With pagination added from Pathay/des Place and many extra cross-references.

Iamblichus (245-325 A.D.), was a Syrian Neoplatonist philosopher of Arab origin. He determined the direction that would later be taken by Neoplatonic philosophy. He was also the biographer of the Greek mystic, philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras.

He initially studied under Anatolius of Laodicea, and later went on to study under Porphyry, a pupil of Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism. He disagreed with Porphyry over the practice of theurgy; Iamblichus responds to Porphyry's criticisms of theurgy in a book attributed to him, De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum (On the Egyptian Mysteries). Only a fraction of Iamblichus' books have survived.

Thomas Taylor (1758-1835), was an 18th century translator whose writings influenced the likes of William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Wordsworth, G. R. S. Mead, & Mme. Helena Blavatsky. Manly P. Hall deeply admired Taylor for the Herculean and often thankless task of translating previously untranslated Greek philosophy.