The head is the most divine part of the body and ruler of all other parts. The gods endowed the front of the head with organs informing the forethought of the soul. First they constructed light-bearing eyes so that the pure fire within us, which is akin to that of day, flows through the eyes in a smooth and dense stream — from within without. In daylight, a fire-stream issuing from the eye meets a fire-stream coming from the object of vision, i.e., it flows out like unto like and, coalescing therewith, it forms one kindred substance along the path of the eyes’ vision. And this substance, having all become similar in its properties because of its similar nature, distributes the motions of every object it touches, or is touched, throughout the body and informs the soul thus bringing about that sensation which we now term “seeing.” The soul when looking outwardly see the shadows and images of other souls. But when she looks inwardly, she evolves her own essence and the reasons which she contains. At first, she sees herself. When she penetrates deeper into the knowledge of herself, she finds within herself both intellect, and the orders of beings. When she proceeds even deeper, she perceives with eyes closed the celestial hierarchies and the essential unity of being. Love is its own act and harvests the spectacle of celestial beauty. Love is the eye of the desirer. By its power, the lover can see the beloved. Sight sees out of time, in an instant. The other senses function in time. My eye and God’s eye is one eye, one sight, one knowledge, one love. If the soul shall see with the right eye into eternity, then the left eye must be as though it were dead. Brahma moves about, becoming manifold within the heart, where the arteries meet, like the spokes fastened in the nave of a chariot wheel. Iris is the chariot wheel. The aperture of the eye is the axle hole.

Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) was one of the luminaries of the Florentine Renaissance and the scholar responsible for the revival of Platonism. The translator and interpreter of the works of both Plato and Plotinus as well as of various Hermetic and Neoplatonic texts, Ficino was also a musician, priest, magus and psychotherapist, an original philosopher and the author of a vast and important correspondence with the intellectual figures of his day including Lorenzo the Magnificent. Professor Allen has become the foremost interpreter of Ficino’s metaphysics and mythology, and the ancient sources they draw upon; and this collection of essays assembles his work on Ficino’s complex interrogation of Platonic 'theology’ as not only a preparation for Christianity but as an enduring medium for intellectuals to explore and to express Christian truths.

Plato held the eternity of matter. The material of which the world was formed was originally a shapeless mass existing from eternity. It was arranged in perfect and beautiful forms by God. Plato comments on the nature of the soul, the soul of the world, the origin of evil, and the four original elements of all created, corporeal things. But the soul is both created and uncreated. The subject is illustrated by geometry and the doctrine of ratios, and by the musical scale. The divisible and the indivisible are the Other and the Same. The opinion of those philosophers who make the soul a compound of both refuted. Two discordant principles rule the world: Fate or Necessity, and Intelligence or Wisdom. The soul is not altogether the workmanship of the Deity: Illustrations from geometry, the planetary system, and the science of music. The soul derives its beginning neither from time nor is the product of generation, but it is endowed with several faculties and virtues.