Recognition of Boethius’ Philosophia as allegorical personification is critical for understanding the positive portrayal given her in the Consolatio. It explains the elaborate identifying markers given in metaphorical reference to the lady as nurse, physician, and teacher. It also helps to explain her ontological status as a source of inspiration for “the prisoner.” This chapter notes her pedagogical strategy in consolation for a patient and compassionate approach, demonstrating feminine qualities that effectively balance the rigorous argument by which she finally moves the prisoner from despair to renewed hope and dignity.

The oldest cave paintings yet discovered are in a cave in Sulawesi, Indonesia. The paintings depict other animals in symbolic forms as participant agents, alongside early humans. Such conceptions of co-agency endured throughout human history in indigenous religions, particularly culturally isolated groups dwelling in deserts, forests, islands, and mountains. This ‘original’ ontology was taken up from indigenous religions into world religious traditions first in the Vedas and then in ‘axial age’ traditions including those of classical Greece, Judaism and, under their influence, Christianity. However in Latin Christianity the cultural imaginary of participation in a shared realm of being declined in favour of a new religious narrative focused on human souls. The subsequent rise of Enlightenment rationalism and personalism conferred on modern humans a sense of control and dominance in their agency of Earthly habitats in which they have progressively sought to eradicate the agency, and diversity, of the other beings. In this chapter I outline the original participative ontology in indigenous and world religious traditions; I examine the reasons for and impacts of its decline; and I discuss ways in which it may be recovered.

Ancient Greek philosophy has often been dismissed as irrelevant to contemporary environmental thought or part of the problem in environmental terms because of its apparent dualism and anthropocentrism; Plato is often seen as emblematic of this philosophical stance. Following the research of Timothy Mahoney, this chapter calls into question this characterisation of Plato’s philosophy. Additionally, it examines the environmental perspectives of several philosophers within the later Platonic tradition, whose philosophy was closely connected with ancient Mediterranean religions and has been largely marginalised and excluded from the canon of western philosophy. This chapter argues that there is an important strand in ancient philosophy which is participatory, relational and ecocentric, depicting the philosopher as rooted in place and landscape, and necessitating the philosopher’s recognition of the interconnectedness and sacredness of the natural world and the kinship and ensouled nature of all beings and natural entities. As such, this chapter suggests that ecocentric environmental perspectives can be discerned within Platonism (especially within late antique theurgy) and that, consequently, this strand of ancient philosophy has a great deal to offer to environmental ethics and contemporary environmental thinking on nature and the natural world.

Discussion of the only Hermetic practitioners still known to us by name: Zosimos of Panopolis, Theosebeia, and Iamblichus of Chalcis. They shared a strong emphasis on the embodiment of spirit, in the contexts of alchemy and theurgy.

Hermetic spirituality must be seen in the context of visionary experiences in Roman Egypt. The story of Thessalos and the Mithras Liturgy are discussed as examples of spiritual practices for inducing powerful alterations of consciousness and luminous visions.

Introduction to the basis worldview of the Hermetica at the example of the Asclepius, with special attention to the double nature of human beings as entities that participate simultaneously in matter and spirit, the practice of animating temple statues, and the Hermetic prophecy of apocalyptic decline.

In this essay I argue that there is an Iamblichean and Neoplatonic theory of ethics. By examining the seven grades of virtue recognised by Iamblichus, I show that there is associated with each grade a specific kind of cognition or knowledge. The hierarchy of kinds of knowledge is parallel not only to the grades of virtue but also to the various stages of the soul’s theurgical ascent. The higher that we ascend in the ritual, the better and more secure the knowledge we possess. Examining and interpreting a series of passages in book V of the De mysteriis, I argue that Iamblichus associates various classes of humanity with the grades of virtue and the kinds of knowledge that they possess. Putting these various criteria together, I show that Iamblichus believed that all humanity at all levels has a kind of virtue and that the philosopher-theurgists themselves have a duty to descend with their higher knowledge and work for the benefit of all humanity.