The Platonic ‘Hieros Gamos’

In this session Professor Danielle Layne will explore the Platonic hieros gamos or holy marriage of the Demiurgic Father and Khoratic Mother.

From within the Platonic tradition to ‘become like God’ (Tht. 176b) has often been associated at best with the possibility of Demiurgic mimesis or less optimistically with the seeming demand that philosophers escape or ‘flee’ from sensible, embodied world.

This latter option, however, seems contradictory to the spirit of Plato’s Timaeus insofar as the ‘sensible living thing’ is explicitly divinized, i.e. this world is already divine, already like the Intelligible Living Being insofar as it is both the product and progeny of a Demiurgic Father as well as a Khoratic Mother. Consequently, it is the contention of this talk to explore this divine coupling or hieros gamos which unites seemingly opposing principles, i.e. knowledge and ignorance, reason and madness, the divine masculine and feminine powers constitutive of the soul’s theosis.

Danielle A. Layne, Professor of Philosophy at Gonzaga University, has published widely on Plato and the Platonic tradition, including the recent ‘Divine Names and the Mystery of Diotima’ in the Routledge Companion to Women in Ancient Philosophy (2024). Founder of Palinode Productions, a Deep Learning Philosophy Platform, Professor Layne eagerly embraces novel approaches to the study of antiquity that reanimate and vivify the uniqueness of the Platonic tradition.

This session is being given in association with Numinous Threads, https://numinousthreads.org founded by Adina Bezerita to research and develop projects in ancient wisdom oriented on meaningful global social progress.

Tickets: £25 for an invitation on Zoom. Book using the link below.