SCHOOL OF OUR DIVINE
INFINITE BEING
Polytheistic Monism - Divine Theurgy - Oracle to the Gods
Iamblichean vs Astrological Theurgy
At the School of our Divine Infinite Being, our work unfolds from a firm philosophical and ritual foundation rooted in the tradition of Iamblichus, the great Neoplatonic theurgist and defender of the divine hierarchy. Among all the ancient philosophers, it is Iamblichus whose metaphysical vision, ritual rigor, and cosmic theology have most directly shaped the contours of our path. His teachings on theurgy, divine procession and return, purification of the soul, hieratic ritual, and the living reality of the gods are not merely intellectual influences for us—they form the very heart of our operative metaphysics.
We have studied, honored, and implemented the Iamblichean system more comprehensively and directly than any other ancient framework. His emphasis on divine hierarchy, the necessity of ritual performance, the role of the soul as a microcosmic reflection of the cosmic order, and the sacred function of symbols and images are fully integrated into our theurgical curriculum. His insistence that theurgy is not merely symbolic or psychological, but ontological—that it transforms the soul's very substance through real divine contact—is a cornerstone of our view.
Indeed, our practice of theurgy mirrors his in nearly every respect. We employ ritual purification, sacred invocations, and the symbolic alignment of soul and cosmos in order to ascend toward the divine, participating in the celestial and supercelestial orders. We affirm that divine union is not achieved through discursive reasoning alone, but through the embodied and transrational acts of theurgy, as Iamblichus so clearly taught:
“For the theurgic art does not consist in making something intelligible to us by reasoning, but in bringing about divine effects by the power of acts, of which no human is the cause, but only the divine ones who act through us.”
- (De Mysteriis, II.11)
However, it is precisely in our approach to astrology—specifically, the integration of natal charts and planetary transits into theurgical practice—that we meaningfully extend Iamblichus’ vision into new territory. To scholars well-versed in Iamblichean theurgy, this integration may initially appear counterintuitive, perhaps even contrary to his explicit cautions. We acknowledge this tension without reservation. Yet in the depth of our contemplative and ritual development, we have come to see this extension not as a departure from Iamblichus, but as a faithful unfolding of his principles within a more cosmologically informed age. In the living practice of our School, this evolution honors the spirit of his theurgy while expanding its reach.
Where Iamblichus, like his Hermetic predecessors, emphasized the transcendence of the divine beyond the astral realm, and warned against simplistic or superstitious interpretations of horoscopes as determining fate or signaling divine malevolence, we take a different interpretive approach. While we absolutely reject the idea that the gods could ever be the cause of evil—a point on which Iamblichus was emphatic—we do not hold that the astrological currents must be overcome or bypassed in order to commune with the divine.
Rather, we affirm that the celestial movements—planetary positions, transits, retrogrades, aspects, and all the dynamic structures of astrology—are not deterministic forces separate from divine providence. They are rhythmic invitations toward conscious participation in the eternal dance of cosmos and soul. They are not chains of fate for the uninitiated to endure, but the very pulse of divine order unfolding through time, space and relationship. We embrace them not as limits to be transcended, but as expressions of unconscious fate awaiting the light of conscious providence to be understood, engaged, and ritually harmonized with.
This is the central divergence between our system and that of Iamblichus. While he placed astrological determinism beneath the purview of divine intellect and dismissed overly literal horoscopic fatalism, we have found in astrology not an obstacle to divine ascent, but a vehicle for it. We hold that the fate written in the stars becomes transformed into divine providence when consciously engaged through theurgical means.
Thus, while we remain faithful to Iamblichus’ teachings in nearly every respect—more than to any other ancient philosopher—we have evolved the relationship between fate and freedom in light of contemporary cosmological knowledge and the lived phenomenology of astrological engagement. The planetary influences in the terrestrial dimension are not prisons, but presences; the zodiac is not a map of limits, but of invitations.
Our theurgy is not an escape from the celestial into the hypercosmic. It is a conscious return to the divine through the very medium of the celestial—a microcosmic dance with the macrocosmic rhythm, where freedom arises not from severing fate, but from illuminating it.
In this way, Astrological Theurgy as we practice it is not a deviation from Iamblichus’ core principles, but a development: one that continues the sacred trajectory he set forth, while embracing the living sky not as something to overcome, but as something to harmonize with—an eternal language of divine order written in light.
Iamblichus on Fate and the Gods of
In his seminal work De Mysteriis, Iamblichus articulates a sophisticated vision of the cosmos in which the planets are sacred vehicles of divine powers, and astrology is a legitimate, though limited, tool for discerning the harmonies of the divine order. He does not dismiss astrology as false—far from it. He credits it as a revelatory science, capable of indicating the structured procession of the cosmos and the unfolding of divine timing. He affirms that the gods preside over the celestial bodies and that their motions express a meaningful order. However, he insists that the gods are not bound by their vehicles, nor are they altered by association with matter:
“The planetary gods, though they occupy the heavenly bodies as their vehicles, are not limited by them. The divine is neither altered nor defiled by mixture with the physical world.”
- (De Mysteriis, I.8)
Here, Iamblichus emphasizes the metaphysical transcendence of the divine—its utter purity and invulnerability to material conditions. He follows the Hermetic tradition in seeing the stars as expressions of the divine will, but not its totality. Astrology is not rejected, but placed in its proper hierarchy. It can point to divine rhythms, but it cannot account for the fullness of providence. It may indicate the conditions into which a soul is born, but it cannot comprehend the soul’s capacity for transformation through divine union.
In this context, fate (heimarmene) is real but subordinate—it binds only those who remain unaware of their higher origin. The path of the theurgist, in contrast, is one of ascent and liberation, wherein the soul passes through the spheres not to escape them per se, but to awaken to what is beyond their influence:
“Fate is a slave to Providence, and Providence is the servant of God.”
- (Corpus Hermeticum, XII.14)
Iamblichus does, however, strongly caution against what he considered to be distorted uses of astrology—particularly when it veers into fatalism or frames the celestial gods as causes of evil. He sharply criticizes astrologers who read retrogrades, oppositions, or other difficult configurations as signs of divine punishment or malevolent influence. His position is that this not only misunderstands the role of the gods, but constitutes a theological error of the highest order:
“For it is utterly untrue that the gods ever become the cause of evils to men.”
- (De Mysteriis, I.8)
For Iamblichus, the divine is always benevolent, and the gods, even as they act through the planets, never dispense harm. To attribute suffering directly to them through astrological interpretation is to misunderstand both the gods and the sacred function of the heavens.
It is on this careful distinction—between astrology as a meaningful, divinely ordered system and astrology misused as a deterministic or fear-based practice—that our School of Divine Infinite Being builds its respectful extension of Iamblichus’ work. We agree fully with his condemnation of fatalism and his insistence that divine causes cannot be evil. We affirm that the heavens reflect divine order, and that astrology, when rightly approached, serves not to trap the soul but to mirror its context within a larger cosmic harmony.
However, while Iamblichus regarded astrology as useful only to a certain extent—placing it well beneath the unitive aims of theurgy—we maintain that astrology, particularly through natal analysis and the timing of transits, can be consciously integrated into the very structure of theurgical ascent. If the ritual act de-couples and unbinds the soul from the currents of fate, then astrology, infused with the principles of divine participation, reveals the very trajectory of that becoming within the terrestrial sphere. This distinction will be more fully developed in the sections to follow. For now, it is enough to affirm that we uphold Iamblichus’ theological and metaphysical priorities with the highest fidelity, even as we extend the role of astrology—not as a force to be transcended, but as a divine rhythm to be ritually and consciously engaged.
A Personal Journey from Iamblichean to Astrological Theurgy
In my earlier years of ritual praxis starting in my late teens—whether through the Kabbalistic path, the ceremonial magic of the Golden Dawn and Thelema, or the more austere purity of classical theurgy—I was deeply aligned with the Iamblichean vision of ascent. My practices were built on the paradigm of transcendence: to rise beyond the bonds of the mundane, to unbind the soul from terrestrial influences, and to attain union with the transconscious intelligences that dwell beyond the planetary spheres. The planets, in my view, were sacred gateways—divine presences to be encountered in their perfected forms—not forces to be interpreted through their mundane manifestations.
Like many other practitioners in the arts of theurgy in its various forms, astrology was always present—near at hand but not occupying a central role. I was familiar with my natal chart, occasionally watched videos discussing my transits, and often engaged in casual conversations with friends about their Sun, Moon, and rising signs, frequently looking up their planetary placements to offer a brief but pointed reflection on its relevance. I had practiced tarot for years, and the archetypal resonances of the signs and planets were ever present in my readings.
Yet astrology, as a living matrix of timing and embodiment, remained peripheral—a symbolic language, of which held the transformative power of the gods through ritual acts, rather than a fully realized sacred science. Among the ritualist communities I frequented, this was the norm: planetary invocations were conducted without reference to real-time transits or natal configurations, except perhaps in the occasional selection of an astrologically auspicious date for ceremonial work. Our rituals were cosmic, but disconnected from the sky’s living rhythm.
That orientation deepened when I first encountered the writings of Iamblichus through references in the works of Israel Regardie, which led me to purchase a copy of De Mysteriis in my late twenties. There, I found a thinker who acknowledged the legitimacy of natal astrology, yet clearly held it at a distance, subordinating it to the higher aims of theurgical ascent. His call to invoke the divine beyond the material, to engage the gods through ritually purified symbols and hieratic ascent, resonated deeply with me. Across thousands of ritual performances over the years, I encountered the planetary deities as radiant, ecstatic presences—guiding, transforming, and transfiguring the soul. My worldview was firmly Platonic: theurgic practice was a flight of the alone to the Alone—beyond the dance of fate, into the stillness of Providence—and, through theurgic means, “taking the shape of the gods,” as Iamblichus taught, by drawing these perfecting forces into the waking world of experience.
Then, in 2020, while speaking at a spiritual convention in Salt Lake City called SpiritCon, I met an astrologer named Tabatha Adams. I sat with her for a reading—more out of curiosity than expectation—and what she revealed shook the very foundations of my assumptions. She spoke into my life with a precision, depth, and multidimensional insight that I had never before encountered. It was as if she were not simply reading symbols, but listening to the voice of the cosmos itself as it was uniquely articulated through me.
Up to that point, I had always honored the planets in essence. I revered them as vast divine intelligences, woven into the fabric of the world-soul—beings whose rhythms mirrored eternal principles, whose motions reflected archetypal truth. Yet here, through her, I was being shown that they were not only grand symbols or metaphysical presences, but intimately involved agents in the unfolding pattern of my every joy, struggle, turning point, and initiation. She was showing me the living script—where each planetary movement was not just a general influence, but a precise marker, detailing the when, where, and how of my lived experience. What I had once approached philosophically or liturgically, she approached technically, intuitively, and personally—without losing an ounce of sacredness. It was a revelation: astrology could be both a cosmic science and an immediate, intimate conversation with the divine.
Impressed by her insight, I invited her to collaborate and began considering how astrology might be integrated into the divinatory curriculum I was developing for my mystery school. Alongside the Mystery tradition of theurgical ritual praxis and the training in Tarot divination, I envisioned Tabby as a colleague who could lead the astrology component. But she gave me one non-negotiable instruction: “If you're going to teach this, you must know it as deeply as I do.”
So I surrendered to the path. I immersed myself in the works of Chris Brennan, Demetra George, Richard Tarnas, Alexander Boxer, Keiron Le Grice, Liz Greene and many others. I studied the vast history of astrology and its civilizational influence, uncovering layers I had never imagined. I began reading charts—my own, those of my students, clients, friends, family, and even many of the employees in my traditional business.
At first, it was overwhelming. Even as a seasoned student of esoteric systems, astrology’s complexity—the sheer breadth of its techniques, symbols, mathematical structures, timing methods, and archetypal interplay—was staggering. This was not a single system, but a universe of systems, layered and interconnected, requiring both rigorous intellectual engagement and intuitive attunement. It took nearly five years of relentless study and disciplined practice—reading charts for myself, friends, family, and even employees in my traditional business—before I began to feel any solid ground beneath my feet. During that time, I poured myself into the craft—chart after chart, transit after transit, pattern after pattern—allowing the logic of the heavens to gradually rewire my inner vision. I spent hundreds of hours developing course material for the students who would eventually join our Academy, translating the vastness of astrological wisdom into a form that could be taught without diminishing its sacred intricacy.
But as I did, something extraordinary began to happen. The techniques I had once struggled to comprehend began to reveal their deeper coherence, speaking with the same hieratic clarity I had once only encountered in theurgic rites. The natal chart became more than a map—it became a mirror of the soul's incarnation, a divine glyph detailing the soul’s descent, trials, and return. Astrology, rather than sitting adjacent to my theurgical work, began to interpenetrate it, illuminating how fate, spirit, and will move together in a cosmic rhythm that can be read, anticipated, and—through sacred engagement—entered into consciously.
The planetary deities I had once invoked only in their transcendent, eternal forms began to move. They no longer stood apart as distant archetypes dwelling in still perfection—they became dynamic, breathing forces, unfolding through the actualities of time and experience. Their influence ceased to be abstract. It became visceral, immediate, unmistakably alive. What had once been a one-way gesture—me, in ritual space, drawing the gods into the world through symbol and invocation—evolved into something far more intimate: a full-scale, psychodynamic relationship with these divine intelligences, woven into the very currents of my fate.
Transits were no longer mere configurations in the sky; they became living conversations—god speaking to god—within the microcosm of my being. Each planetary movement was a gesture, a voice, a summons or a challenge from a familiar divine presence, echoing not just in celestial rhythms but in the texture of my thoughts, the turning of events, the timing of initiations. They emerged as divine actors in the sacred drama of becoming, their tensions and harmonies unfolding across the stage of my psyche, my relationships, and the mythic arc of my life. The stars no longer pointed to the gods—they were the gods, stepping into form, playing their parts in the holy unfolding of destiny.
Because of my decades of theurgical practice—years spent in ritual union with the planetary gods, invoking their higher intelligences, and ascending through their spheres in ceremonial devotion—I found myself uniquely and immediately attuned to the living language of astrology. I could feel and interpret it from within. The planetary forces were not distant abstractions; they were presences I had already encountered, conversed with, and called down in sacred space. As I studied the symbols of the natal chart, I wasn’t just learning meanings—I was recognizing old companions, divine intelligences whose rhythms and resonances I had already traced in ritual and vision. My training had not only familiarized me with these beings—it had carved a pathway of freedom through their forces, allowing me to engage their earthly expressions without being bound by them. Astrology became a continuation of the relationship, a renewed dialog with gods I already knew intimately, now speaking again through the mirrored geometry of the stars.
I began to witness their mighty presence in the heavens not as distant celestial dramas, but as ongoing revelations—living transmissions unfolding within the intimate fabric of my daily experience. The planets no longer spoke in abstraction; they moved through me, shaping the contours of thought, mood, circumstance, and soul-development with undeniable precision.
When Venus squared Saturn, the weight of love’s delay pressed into my life—not merely as emotional difficulty, but as a rite of temperance, a refining fire sculpting structure into the realm of affection. It was a lesson in discipline, maturity, and the sacred value of timing. When Jupiter conjoined my Moon, an inner expansiveness opened like dawn across previously hidden chambers of the heart, illuminating long-neglected emotional terrain with a quiet grace that felt both revelatory and nourishing.
Eclipses no longer came and went unnoticed—they tore open the veils of certainty, shattered familiar frameworks, and thrust me across thresholds I had only glimpsed in ritual vision. Each one felt like a cosmic initiation: destabilizing, yes, but also deeply aligning, revealing the next octave of becoming. Even retrogrades ceased to appear as astrological disruptions. They became sacred spiral descents—invocations inward—where reflection deepened, self-concept unraveled, and the inessential was cast off like dead skin.
In time, the movements of the heavens revealed themselves as precise ritual gestures of the divine, shaping not just fate, but the soul’s very unfolding. Astrology became the art of reading these gestures, and living in conscious response—a continuous act of sacred participation.
I no longer saw fate as something to transcend. Instead, I turned to meet it directly—face to face, eye to eye—like a god addressing another god. I entered the temple of the planetary cycles, not as a slave to time, but as its initiate, its lover, its priest. And in doing so, I discovered that fate was not a prison, but a passage. The gods were not there to bind me—they were there to become me. I was not only called to ascend to their summits and embody their highest natures, but also to engage the world of becoming: to navigate the terrestrial multiplicity, to enter fully into the clash and convergence of their movements. I was to labor through their retrogrades, glide in harmony through their trines, and stand unwavering as they moved into opposition—not merely observing, but participating in their divine interplay.
It was as if the Homeric gods had risen anew in all their grandeur and pageantry—and I, a kind of demi-god forged by ritual and devotion, stood among them. Even when overwhelmed by the weight of their relationships, I knew I belonged to their company. Their dramas were no longer distant myth—they were alive within me, shaping my becoming.
What once had been a path of ascent now became a dance—a sacred participation in the celestial liturgy. I rewrote my rituals. My theurgy became astrological and interwoven with the celestial imprint of my nativity. The timing of transits became the timing of invocation. My rites, once fixed in symbolic order, began to breathe in rhythm with the sky. The microcosm and macrocosm began to move together in ways I had never imagined. The result was not only greater power, but deeper presence—an immersion in the full spectrum of divine manifestation.
I felt as though I had stepped backward in time to the ancient world, when the gods still walked among us, when every shift in the heavens echoed into the generative moments of my existence. Yet I was also moving forward—into a new paradigm, one that weds the rigor of Iamblichean theurgy with the living, cosmic intelligence of astrology. This was not a synthesis of convenience, but of revelation. Iamblichus teaches that the world is saturated with divine symbols, that “everything in the world is full of signs,” each reflecting the eternal and intelligible realm. This principle came alive for me in ways I had never before imagined. The sunthemata—those divine tokens that tether the material to the eternal—did not merely fill the earth; they began to shape the very becoming of my being.
Through astrology, I did not replace my vision of embodied divinities with distant abstractions—I saw their presence extended, intensified, brought into fuller terrestrial visibility. The gods I once encountered in ritual space now revealed themselves in the intricate choreography of planetary cycles, threading their intelligences through every moment of time and experience. What I beheld was not a pantheon of archetypes, nor even solely their luminous forms in the heavens, but the very weaving of soul and cosmos itself—a sacred tapestry calling me ever deeper into conscious participation with the divine unfolding of reality.
Vastness Made Visible: On the Living Divinity of the Planets
Iamblichus operated within the cosmological framework available in his time, and while his metaphysical vision was remarkably advanced, his astronomical knowledge was naturally constrained by the limits of ancient observation. He could not have known the planets as we do now—as vast, gravitating bodies orbiting the sun, their physical characteristics bearing uncanny resonance with their archetypal meanings. He could not have seen the great red storm of Jupiter swirling like the very emblem of expansive force, nor the exquisite architecture of Saturn’s rings, echoing discipline, structure, and the slow beauty of refinement. The sheer scale of these planetary bodies—many of them vastly larger than Earth—would have exceeded anything imaginable within his geocentric worldview. Just imagine the awe-inspiring, and certainly almost terrifying, presence of Saturn sitting in our solar system at the same distance as the moon—a vision we can appreciate today but that would have been utterly unknown to the ancients.
The Sun—an incandescent god of ungraspable magnitude—holds 99.8% of the entire mass of the solar system. Its gravitational will governs the orbits of every planet, while its electromagnetic breath bathes the Earth in waves that shape weather, biology, and consciousness alike. This is not metaphor—this is physical revelation. The Sun does not merely symbolize the One—it enacts its centrality with terrifying grace.
Iamblichus could not have conceived the intricate web of electromagnetic relationships between the sun, the planets, and Earth’s biosphere. Today, we know that solar flares and geomagnetic storms impact brainwave activity, influence the migrations of animals, and correlate with collective emotional and psychological shifts. We understand that the planetary positions subtly modulate Earth’s geomagnetic field, shaping ambient energetic conditions with measurable effects on biological and cognitive rhythms.
These celestial gods—when understood as bearers of transconscious meaning and relational potency—are more real to us today than ever before. Their presence is not limited to faint wandering stars, small and distant points of light in the night sky, but instead, they stand as terrifyingly actual and awe-inspiring beings—radiant in magnitude and undeniable in measurable influence. The Sun is not merely a glowing orb but a colossal burning sphere, over 100 times larger in diameter than the Earth, capable of containing roughly 1,300,000 Earths within its vast, fiery body. These planetary bodies do not merely fit within the boundaries of astrological theory; they transcend it, proving their reality through the profound impact they exert upon our world and our very existence. In their immense scale and transcendent intelligence, they embody higher divine intelligences within the great chain of being—far beyond the human realm, yet intimately entangled with our process of becoming, shaping and guiding the unfolding of our lives.
From Fate to Freedom: Theurgic Astrology and the Awakening of the Microcosm
Fate (heimarmene) is not the enemy of freedom—it is its womb. It is the scaffolding of experience, the raw clay from which the divine image of the soul is shaped. As Iamblichus affirms, in line with the deepest insights of both Platonic and Hermetic traditions:
“Even if the soul is, in some manner, bound by fate, it is through theurgy that she transcends this binding—not by violating nature, but by aligning with its higher cause.”
- (De Mysteriis I.3)
This alignment is not an escape from the cosmos, but a conscious harmonization with its divine origin. Fate is not annulled—it is illumined, transformed from blind compulsion into luminous participation. In this light, the School of our Divine Infinite Being extends Iamblichus’ insight into a fully astrological theurgy: we do not merely contemplate the stars—we engage them ritually, consciously, as the living organs of a divine macrocosm in whose image we are formed.
The natal chart is not a sentence passed down by celestial bureaucracy—it is a divine encryption, a karmic score awaiting the soul’s performance. The planets do not dictate—they reveal. They are not external powers imposing upon us, but cosmic intelligences resonating through the very structure of our becoming.
A Saturn square is not a punishment—it is the laying of a temple’s foundation. A Pluto transit is not destruction—it is chthonic initiation, the descent into deeper layers of the soul. A Venus retrograde is not confusion—it is the sacred reweaving of relational karma in the loom of time.
These transits are not accidents of mechanics; they are chapters in the mythopoetic unfolding of the self. Each planetary motion is a ripple in the divine conversation between soul and cosmos. To ignore them is to ignore the speaking of the gods.
Astrological Theurgy takes this conversation seriously. It is not mere reaction, nor passive observation—it is conscious participation. Through sacred timing, mantra, image, invocation, and embodied ritual, we approach the stars not as distant influencers but as divine kin. We do not worship them—we awaken with them, becoming co-agents in the celestial liturgy of unfolding being.
This is where fate transforms into pronoia—divine providence. As the Hermetic tradition teaches, providence is the eternal will of the divine, and fate is its temporal shadow. Yet even that shadow is holy. It is through its tensions that freedom emerges. Every planetary square, opposition, or retrograde is not a trap, but a test—a sacred interval calling the soul to skill, presence, and harmony.
The chart, then, is not a chain but a challenge. It is a structured field of potential, where karmic forces converge not to condemn, but to catalyze. Each difficulty is a dharmic pressure-point—an invitation to refine, clarify, and align.
This is not naïve optimism, but metaphysical realism rooted in a relational cosmos. The stars do not move in isolation. Every planetary force is part of a symphonic interweaving in which we, too, are instruments. What appears as affliction may conceal an initiatory blessing. What appears as limitation may be the secret gate to divine strength.
Through ritually synchronized acts—performed under resonant skies, with sacred precision—we shift from suffering fate to co-creating with it. We cease being subject to the cosmic order and instead become conscious expressions of it. We become microcosmic vessels of providence, not because the stars have changed, but because we have awakened to their divine intention.
In this way, Astrological Theurgy restores the sacred dignity of the human being—not merely as a reflection of the cosmos, but as its living center. Each individual becomes a conscious axis of the divine order, a radiant node through which the entire celestial harmony expresses itself. In the music of the spheres, we do not simply listen—we resound, participating with will, wonder, and reverence in the unfolding of the infinite.
A Friendly Critique of an Unintended Iamblichean Dualism
While our school reveres Iamblichus above all other ancient philosophers, we offer one gentle divergence—not a rejection, but an evolution of a specific aspect of his metaphysical cosmology. Iamblichus, as we explore in our Central Doctrine, was perhaps the only truly non-dual Platonist of antiquity. He affirmed that the visible, generative world is not a degradation or illusion, but a direct and radiant flowering of the One. For him, the entire ontological hierarchy—from the highest intelligibles to the lowest material forms—was an unbroken, inseparable continuum of divine being. The sensible cosmos was not merely a symbol of the divine but its full manifestation.
His greatest innovation was the assertion that only through theurgy—sacred rites that embody rather than escape the divine—could the soul truly ascend. He did not advocate transcendence away from the world, but transcendence through it. The gods were to be invoked not abstractly but ritually, through their manifest forms and cosmic expressions.
But although Iamblichus’s entire enterprise pointed toward a non-dual metaphysical vision, he nevertheless maintained a sharp and deliberate distinction between the divine intelligences and their material vehicles. He was adamant that the gods—though present and active within the planets—are never changed, limited, or affected by them.
“They do not mix with matter, nor are they defiled by the physical.”
- (De Mysteriis, II.11)
This metaphysical safeguard was necessary in Iamblichus’ time to protect against two corrosive currents: the encroachment of Stoic materialism, which reduced all things to corporeal causality, and the nihilistic drift of Gnostic pessimism, which rejected the material world as corrupt. His framework restored a vision of divine order that affirmed the sanctity of embodiment while preserving the transcendence of the gods.
Yet, when taken too strictly, this protective measure risks introducing a subtle dualism—one in which, for the theurgist, the One and the gods are indeed drawn into the world in a non-dual blossoming of eternal presence, but for the gods themselves, the material realm becomes merely a passive vessel or symbolic shell rather than an extension of their divine being.
Elsewhere, Iamblichus clearly affirms that the incarnate soul and physical body are not lower traps but radiant expressions of the highest order—manifestations of divine beauty rendered through relational form. However, his position appears more reserved when addressing the planetary gods. In these instances, he draws a sharper metaphysical distinction, insisting that the divine intelligences “encircle and penetrate” their celestial bodies, yet stops short of affirming that those visible spheres are themselves the gods’ true forms.
It is precisely here that our school offers a respectful and evolutionary divergence.
“They are not encompassed by the bodies, but on the contrary, they encompass the bodies with their own divine lives and energies… the body does not interfere with their spiritual and incorporeal completeness.”
“The visible gods also are external to bodies … the intelligible gods, through their infinite union, comprehend in themselves the visible gods; and both are established according to a common union and one energy.”
- Iamblichus, De Mysteriis
Influenced in part by Hermetic doctrines, as explained, Iamblichus maintained that the divine intelligences “encircle and penetrate” the visible stars and planets, but that these luminous bodies were not themselves the gods—who remain part of a transcendent hierarchy of divine wholes beyond full comprehension. Here, we gently part ways.
For us, the planets are not merely symbolic vessels or temporary vehicles. Their vast forms and radiant presences are themselves manifestations of divine intelligence. Just as our physical being is not disconnected from the total state of our inner infinite nature, so too the planetary spheres—their bodies—are the gods. At the very least, they are in the same way our physical bodies are us: not a shell but an expression, an incarnation. Their visible forms are a flowering of the divine into existence, no less sacred than their invisible intelligences.
We affirm that the physical majesty of the celestial spheres is not separate from their divinity, but is their visible body—an extension, not a container. It is holistically their real, true form within the generative world. This brings an incredible inference, just as Kali-Krishna is the instantiation of the Singularity of the Multiverse, and Nuit, the Egyptian Sky Goddess’s physical being is the entire Milky Way Galaxy (see Central doctrine), the planetary gods, and especially the solar center, are the actual bodies of the transconscious mind of the Solar system, blazing in the night sky. The gods are among us as physical beings, instantiated from the One in our region of the cosmos.
Only in this view can astrology—through the dynamic relationships of planetary bodies with each other, the Sun, and the Earth—be rightly understood as a sacred science. Their influence is not symbolic alone but fully cosmogenic: a divine choreography that manifests meaning, order, and transformation. In this, we believe we remain faithful to the heart of Iamblichus’s metaphysics, which affirms that the divine is not apart from the world, but is ever-unfolding within it.
Iamblichus’s view of astrology in his lifetime aligns more closely with how I described it at the beginning of this article. In De Mysteriis, his response to Porphyry is pointed. He declares:
“It is not the astrologer who discovers the personal daemon by the lord of the geniture… Sacred divination offers great facilities for its identification… Such human and fallible sciences as astrology are useless in this important matter.”
He goes further, stating:
“Astrologers at this time were often strongly fatalistic, seeing the stars as causes rather than as signs or indicators… Contemporary astrologers operate within the bounds of nature… They often fall into fatalism, seeing the stars as causes rather than as signs or indicators.”
Here, he clearly classifies astrology as a “human and fallible” science. His critique of seeing the stars as causal—rather than as symbolic indicators—implies that, while he was familiar with astrology, he saw it as a limited human framework. To give astrology a causative power, rather than understanding it as symbolic participation in divine patterns, was to fall into error.
And while we wholeheartedly agree that the personal daimon cannot be mechanically extracted from a birth chart (see our Central Doctrine), we also recognize that Iamblichus—the greatest of our teachers in divine theurgy—did not assign to astrology the same centrality that we do in our school. Hence the divergence.
We remain structurally Iamblichean in our ritual praxis, yet through our understanding of cosmic purpose and relationship, astrology becomes essential. This is the foundation of what we call Astrological Theurgy—an evolved synthesis, not a rejection, of the Iamblichean path.
