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Hellenic Tantra: The Theurgic Platonism of Iamblichus
Hellenic Tantra argues that scholarship on later Platonism has been misled by a dualist worldview. The theurgic Platonists in the school of Iamblichus (4th century CE) did not ascend out of their bodies to be united with the gods-as is the common belief-but allowed the gods to descend into their bodies. By comparing embodied deification in theurgy to Tantric traditions of embodied deification, Gregory Shaw allows us to understand the power and charisma of the last Platonic teachers. Hellenic Tantra reveals a living Platonism that has been hidden from us.
278 pages, Hardcover
Published February 13, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 29, 2024
Overall, it was a good book. Shaw is an excellent and perhaps the most preeminent scholar of Iamblichus. His takes on theurgy are enlightening, and his writing style is very readable and interesting.
On episode 140 of the SHWEP, Shaw was a guest. Here, the host disagrees with Shaw's portrayal of Plotinus as a dualist, stating correctly that many other scholars consider him to be equally as non-dual as Iamblichus. Shaw concedes that this is true and that he used the (false) characterization of Plotinus for a purely literary effect to emphasize his points. (This all started at about the 19:30 mark onwards of you want to listen to it yourself.)
Much to my dismay, this book did not rectify this admitted mischaracterization but rather doubled down on it. It was a repeated theme throughout and ended up being a huge detracting factor for an otherwise good book. It almost comes across as a personal prejudice with accusations of narcissism and using dualism as a pejorative. Why do this to an otherwise elucidating book?
If you're interested in the intersection of Tantra and Theurgy and a strikingly non-dual interpretation of Iamblichus, this is a great book to check out (just don't use it as a basis to form an opinion about Plotinus.)
On episode 140 of the SHWEP, Shaw was a guest. Here, the host disagrees with Shaw's portrayal of Plotinus as a dualist, stating correctly that many other scholars consider him to be equally as non-dual as Iamblichus. Shaw concedes that this is true and that he used the (false) characterization of Plotinus for a purely literary effect to emphasize his points. (This all started at about the 19:30 mark onwards of you want to listen to it yourself.)
Much to my dismay, this book did not rectify this admitted mischaracterization but rather doubled down on it. It was a repeated theme throughout and ended up being a huge detracting factor for an otherwise good book. It almost comes across as a personal prejudice with accusations of narcissism and using dualism as a pejorative. Why do this to an otherwise elucidating book?
If you're interested in the intersection of Tantra and Theurgy and a strikingly non-dual interpretation of Iamblichus, this is a great book to check out (just don't use it as a basis to form an opinion about Plotinus.)
October 26, 2025
Gregory Shaw knows what he is talking about. I love that he brought Neoplatonism and Tantra together and explained/ compared them side by side so beautifully! It was terrific thinking food, and I’ll definitely keep this book on hand to keep referring back to these ancient teachings.
April 13, 2024
I was excited to pick this up, as I have a memory of Shaw’s book about Iamblichus being very good when I read it in its second edition. Unfortunately, while the book does say some interesting things about Shaw’s interpretation of Iamblichus, there were a few elements of this book that made me dock some stars.
1. There is this overly repetitive thing about “Us Moderns” and how we can never know what is going on with theurgy. I am not sure who Shaw is talking to. Maybe I am not the audience for this book? He brings this up every chapter, repeatedly, using very similar sentences.
2. Why doesn’t Shaw bring up terminology related to unique individuals and analyze it? Some of the deficiencies that I saw here were in how Shaw is characterizing theurgy and what theurgists are doing, and he is quoting passages from Iamblichus that are clearly showing an intimate encounter. Related: I do not recall the Phaedrus ever coming up. What Shaw was trying to do here could have benefitted a lot from revisiting that plus some Hermias. The difference between theurgists and people doing sorcery is actually that theurgists are actually extending divine pronoia and moving in tune with the unfolding of all things through their reversion to their causes. Sorcerers are not.
3. There is some carelessness in this work, which will be read by people into spirituality (both those who have read widely and those who have not) as well as the primary scholar audience. Shaw only mentions the gross abuses of power of some gurus in passing, people who have spiritually scarred their former devotees. One of the big issues in the way Shaw characterizes a nondualistic approach is that he does not spend enough time talking about the preliminary purifications or the necessity of actually getting one’s own sh•t together during this process. This would have also required talking about different kinds of daimons, especially the ones that a soul falls in with mistakenly when it makes really bad decisions. Perhaps, had some of the “us moderns” language been cut out for redundancy, this could have been explored more. The reason I call this careless is that people nowadays, due to following appetition to its end point, have created a throwaway culture with heinous inequalities and have irrevocably altered the Earth’s climate such that we are all going to suffer much more from severe weather in the foreseeable future + are killing off entire ecosystems. There is a moral imperative here to be clear about how living out our embodiment is not a free license to take dispersion beyond what is lawful, and indeed, we see many post-Iamblichean Platonists enforcing strict behavior codes at the Academy, such as Proclus. Knowing this requires having read a lot of other Platonic texts.
4. Generation is both a field of action and a place where we won’t be forever, at least according to the myths Plato teaches and Socrates’ comportment in the Phaedo. It’s not dualistic to recognize this. Proclus even uses a battlefield as a metaphor for generation, where we are all, in a sense, called to stations in order to be here for a time until we fulfill our service, until the next cycle.
5. The book ended by declaring that we are our bodies and that we are material. This is not accurate, and it is not dualistic to say that.
Other than those five points, it was an interesting read, and I found some things in the bibliography that I might want to read later on. I can’t speak to its characterization of Tantra.
1. There is this overly repetitive thing about “Us Moderns” and how we can never know what is going on with theurgy. I am not sure who Shaw is talking to. Maybe I am not the audience for this book? He brings this up every chapter, repeatedly, using very similar sentences.
2. Why doesn’t Shaw bring up terminology related to unique individuals and analyze it? Some of the deficiencies that I saw here were in how Shaw is characterizing theurgy and what theurgists are doing, and he is quoting passages from Iamblichus that are clearly showing an intimate encounter. Related: I do not recall the Phaedrus ever coming up. What Shaw was trying to do here could have benefitted a lot from revisiting that plus some Hermias. The difference between theurgists and people doing sorcery is actually that theurgists are actually extending divine pronoia and moving in tune with the unfolding of all things through their reversion to their causes. Sorcerers are not.
3. There is some carelessness in this work, which will be read by people into spirituality (both those who have read widely and those who have not) as well as the primary scholar audience. Shaw only mentions the gross abuses of power of some gurus in passing, people who have spiritually scarred their former devotees. One of the big issues in the way Shaw characterizes a nondualistic approach is that he does not spend enough time talking about the preliminary purifications or the necessity of actually getting one’s own sh•t together during this process. This would have also required talking about different kinds of daimons, especially the ones that a soul falls in with mistakenly when it makes really bad decisions. Perhaps, had some of the “us moderns” language been cut out for redundancy, this could have been explored more. The reason I call this careless is that people nowadays, due to following appetition to its end point, have created a throwaway culture with heinous inequalities and have irrevocably altered the Earth’s climate such that we are all going to suffer much more from severe weather in the foreseeable future + are killing off entire ecosystems. There is a moral imperative here to be clear about how living out our embodiment is not a free license to take dispersion beyond what is lawful, and indeed, we see many post-Iamblichean Platonists enforcing strict behavior codes at the Academy, such as Proclus. Knowing this requires having read a lot of other Platonic texts.
4. Generation is both a field of action and a place where we won’t be forever, at least according to the myths Plato teaches and Socrates’ comportment in the Phaedo. It’s not dualistic to recognize this. Proclus even uses a battlefield as a metaphor for generation, where we are all, in a sense, called to stations in order to be here for a time until we fulfill our service, until the next cycle.
5. The book ended by declaring that we are our bodies and that we are material. This is not accurate, and it is not dualistic to say that.
Other than those five points, it was an interesting read, and I found some things in the bibliography that I might want to read later on. I can’t speak to its characterization of Tantra.
June 18, 2024
Despite the Llewellyn publishing-sounding title, this is a great scholarly work on Iamblichus' theurgic philosophy and practices. Prof. Shaw compelling shows the non-dualistic and embodied practices that Iamblichus taught and uses comparative religious techniques with Kashimre Shiavism to help the reader understand how Iamblichus' approach differs from our popular understanding that Neoplatonists were dualists who wanted to transcend the material world.
I don't think the book is perfect, as I believe that Shaw oversimplifies terminology and concepts that could misinform the general audience. For example, there are many schools of Tantra throughout the history of Indian religion but Shaw is drawing on the Kashimre form of Utpaladeva, Abhinavagupta and Kshemaraja; however, the way he talks about Tantra it often comes across that that specific branch is blanketed across all the tantras in general. There have also been some critiques leveled at the book that he overly states Porphyry's dualism to make him more of a foil for Iamblichus.
Despite these types of flaws, this is going to be one of the best books I've read all year. It has challenged my assumptions on neopaltonic thought and has showed me a better way in how to understand and engage with the Western Hermetic tradition.
I don't think the book is perfect, as I believe that Shaw oversimplifies terminology and concepts that could misinform the general audience. For example, there are many schools of Tantra throughout the history of Indian religion but Shaw is drawing on the Kashimre form of Utpaladeva, Abhinavagupta and Kshemaraja; however, the way he talks about Tantra it often comes across that that specific branch is blanketed across all the tantras in general. There have also been some critiques leveled at the book that he overly states Porphyry's dualism to make him more of a foil for Iamblichus.
Despite these types of flaws, this is going to be one of the best books I've read all year. It has challenged my assumptions on neopaltonic thought and has showed me a better way in how to understand and engage with the Western Hermetic tradition.
September 23, 2025
Wonderful articulation of Neoplatonic nondualism. I'll be referring back to passages from this book for a good long time.
It's obvious that this is Shaw's kind of personal take on Platonic nondualism, but I think that is fine -- I don't think we should treat this as a dead tradition but one that is slowly waking up as hellenic polytheism and neoplatonism does.
It's obvious that this is Shaw's kind of personal take on Platonic nondualism, but I think that is fine -- I don't think we should treat this as a dead tradition but one that is slowly waking up as hellenic polytheism and neoplatonism does.
July 13, 2024
This book loses a few stars unfortunately.
- as other reviewers have pointed out, he misunderstands Plotinus. While he is correct in drawing similarities to Vedanta, he mislabels Plotinus as a dualist. I'd love to see someone like Strozynski respond.
- there's a whole lot of Iamblichus, and not a lot of Tantra. I was kinda hoping for a little more depth on tantric tradition, and while I understand his comparative approach, I was left a little unsatisfied. But that's more of a me problem.
- I really wish he would have gone over examples of tantric and theurgic ritual. He says he's going to do this in the Ficino chapter....and proceeds to kinda just mention talismanic magic and Renaissance theurgy in passing.
*** Update ****
I had previously said that he claimed objectivity, and that this was my biggest issue with the book. Shaw responded below, and he is correct, he doesn't claim objectivity, he does make himself clear on page 14. So that's my bad, and that's on me. I do feel however that there's a tone of academic rigor throughout the book...that confuses me (which is probably why I made that comment in the first place..though I can't remember just where exactly I thought he had said it, so it's not fair of me to even have it in the review and really just speaks to my lack of attention) Does he claim pure objectivity? No. But this book sits in a weird liminal space, where I can't tell if it belongs in the "spirituality" section of the bookstore or the "religious studies" section. That can be a compliment or a criticism depending on what you're expecting, what you're looking for, and what you like. And I'm not sure where I fall on that. I think I'm going to have to give this one another chance, and a closer read.
- as other reviewers have pointed out, he misunderstands Plotinus. While he is correct in drawing similarities to Vedanta, he mislabels Plotinus as a dualist. I'd love to see someone like Strozynski respond.
- there's a whole lot of Iamblichus, and not a lot of Tantra. I was kinda hoping for a little more depth on tantric tradition, and while I understand his comparative approach, I was left a little unsatisfied. But that's more of a me problem.
- I really wish he would have gone over examples of tantric and theurgic ritual. He says he's going to do this in the Ficino chapter....and proceeds to kinda just mention talismanic magic and Renaissance theurgy in passing.
*** Update ****
I had previously said that he claimed objectivity, and that this was my biggest issue with the book. Shaw responded below, and he is correct, he doesn't claim objectivity, he does make himself clear on page 14. So that's my bad, and that's on me. I do feel however that there's a tone of academic rigor throughout the book...that confuses me (which is probably why I made that comment in the first place..though I can't remember just where exactly I thought he had said it, so it's not fair of me to even have it in the review and really just speaks to my lack of attention) Does he claim pure objectivity? No. But this book sits in a weird liminal space, where I can't tell if it belongs in the "spirituality" section of the bookstore or the "religious studies" section. That can be a compliment or a criticism depending on what you're expecting, what you're looking for, and what you like. And I'm not sure where I fall on that. I think I'm going to have to give this one another chance, and a closer read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews