Event-Ontological Reading of the Asclepius

Overview

The Event-Ontological Reading of the Asclepius is a contemporary philosophical interpretation of the Hermetic text Asclepius (also known as the Logos Teleios or "Perfect Discourse") that positions it as articulating an event-based participatory ontology rather than the emanationist consciousness monism often attributed to Hermetic literature. This reading, developed within Fourth Way Philosophy, argues that the Asclepius preserves a triadic metaphysical structure—Light (noetic presence), Life (vital embodiment), and Love (agential participation)—coordinated through an apophatic fourth dimension that prevents systematic closure.

Historical Context

The Text

The Asclepius is a Hermetic dialogue between Hermes Trismegistus and his disciples Asclepius, Tat, and Ammon. While the original Greek version is lost, a complete Latin translation survives, along with Coptic fragments (Nag Hammadi Codex VI, 8). The text dates to the 2nd or 3rd century CE and represents Egyptian religious-philosophical traditions during the Roman imperial period.

Traditional Interpretations

Scholarship has typically read the Asclepius through one of several frameworks:

Neoplatonic Emanation: Interpreting the text as derivative of Plotinian metaphysics, with reality flowing from a transcendent One through hierarchical stages
Gnostic Dualism: Emphasizing passages that distinguish spiritual from material realms
Practical Magic: Focusing on theurgical statue-animation practices as superstitious ritualism
Christian Appropriation: Reading Hermetic wisdom as proto-Christian natural theology

The event-ontological reading challenges these interpretations by showing how the text's deeper structure resists both emanationist hierarchy and dualistic splitting while articulating a sophisticated participatory metaphysics.

Core Philosophical Framework

The Triadic Structure

The event-ontological reading identifies a consistent three-dimensional structure throughout the Asclepius:

Light (Noesis, Noetic Presence)

The intelligible dimension of reality
Patterns, forms, and possibilities that can manifest
Future-oriented: what could be
Associated with the divine, the "first god," eternal patterns
Not transcendent Forms existing separately but patterns operative within temporal events

Life (Alchemy, Vital Embodiment)

The material-vital dimension of reality
Embodied process, evolutionary creativity, biological generation
Past-oriented: accumulated conditions, what has been
Explicitly described as autonomous and uncreated: "The whole of matter's quality, then, is to be creative, even though it was not created" (Asc. 15)
Not privation or illusion but genuine creative power equal to Light

Love (Theurgy, Agential Participation)

The coordinative dimension of reality
Agency, participation, relational mediation
Present-oriented: the active coordination happening now
Humanity as "the third" (Asc. 10), the middle position where Light and Life unite
Not derivative or instrumental but constitutive of reality

The Apophatic Fourth

Beyond the triad, the text preserves an apophatic opening:

God described as neither "one" nor "many," with both claims marked as "absurd" (atopon, Asc. 11-12)
The creative mystery that "is done in secret" (Asc. 21)
Prevention of systematic closure—reality remains more than any framework captures
Enables genuine novelty and temporal creativity

Temporal Event-Ontology

The reading emphasizes temporal process as constitutive rather than derivative:

Time as Receptacle (Asc. 30): Time is described as the "receptacle" of the world, echoing Plato's chora but reinterpreted as the coordinative capacity enabling participation. Time is not external parameter but the medium through which Light and Life interpenetrate.

Time's Eternity (Asc. 31): "Time is eternal, eternity is stirred through time." This paradox resolves through event-ontology: temporal process is not degradation from timeless being but constitutive of Reality itself. Each event has duration (temporal passage) while the pattern of triadic coordination remains constant across events.

Death as Dissolution (Asc. 15): "Death is not the destruction of things that have been combined but the dissolution of their union." Events arise through coordination and dissolve when coordination ceases—no enduring substances require destruction, only shifting patterns of participation.

Key Textual Moments

The Closing Prayer (Asc. 41)

The text's concluding prayer explicitly names the triadic structure:

"We have known you, the vast light" (Light/Noesis)
"We have understood you, true life of life" (Life/Alchemy)
"We have known you, who persists eternally by conceiving all coming-to-be in its perfect..." (Love/Theurgy—the creative union)

This represents the three dimensions coordinating through temporal creative acts.

Humanity as Middle (Asc. 6, 10, 23-24)

Section 6: "Human being is a great wonder for he changes his nature into a god's as if he were a god... he is two, divine and earthly, a happier place of middle."

The "middle" position is not compromise between extremes but the generative third where Light (divine) and Life (earthly) coordinate. This challenges hierarchical readings where humanity is lowest level of emanation.

Section 10: "The master of eternity is the first god [Light], the world the second [Life], mankind is the third [Love]."

Rather than hierarchy, this describes three necessary positions in event-structure. Humanity "governs what is composite"—the coordinations themselves, the events arising from triadic participation.

Sections 23-24: "You must recognize mankind's power and strength... [he] is the maker of heavenly gods... mankind glorified; he glorifies as well."

Humanity stands on "level playing field" with divinity because agency is constitutive, not derivative. Theurgy demonstrates genuine co-creation.

Life's Autonomy (Asc. 14-15, 21)

Sections 14-15: "There was god and hulē [matter], light and life... life has its own autonomy, it does not require light... The whole of matter's quality, then, is to be creative, even though it was not created."

This directly contradicts consciousness-only emanationism where matter is passive potentiality awaiting form from above. Life possesses autonomous creative power equal to Light.

Section 21: "God is both sexes... for each sex is full of fecundity."

Sexual differentiation and union function as ontological principles. Light (often masculine-coded) and Life (often feminine-coded) are equally primordial, each "full of fecundity." Their union through Love generates reality: "devised and granted to all things this mystery of procreation unto eternity, in which arose the greatest affection... love divine."

Theurgy and Statue Animation (Asc. 23-24, 37-38)

The controversial "god-making" passages describe Egyptian theurgical practice:

Section 37-38: "As our ancestors were very much confused as to what the gods were all about... they invented a procedure for manifesting the gods. ... They are entertained by frequent sacrifices, hymns, praises, and lovely sounds... so that the part in them that is celestial... may be content to endure the presence of humanity."

Event-ontological reading interprets this not as primitive superstition but as philosophical demonstration: coordinating Light (divine pattern), Life (material embodiment through herbs, stones, aromatics), and Love (skilled ritual practice) creates actual divine presence. The statue becomes location where triadic coordination intensifies, making the sacred palpable.

Wouter Hanegraaff's scholarship supports this: Egyptian priests understood themselves not as manipulating gods from outside but as participating in the same creative activity through which divine reality manifests.

The Temporal Triad (Asc. 39-40)

Sections 39-40 introduce another triadic formulation: Heimarmenē (fate/destiny), Anankē (necessity), and Taxis (order). The event-ontological reading interprets these as temporal aspects of the Light-Life-Love structure:

Heimarmenē (εἱμαρμένη): Future-oriented Light

Etymology: from heimai (to be allotted, destined)
Represents available possibilities, patterns that could manifest
The "when" of temporal becoming
Noetic presence operating futurely

Anankē (ἀνάγκη): Past-oriented Life

Etymology: from anankē (necessity, constraint)
Represents given conditions, embodied constraints, what must be
The "where" of material situation
Vital embodiment operating as accumulated past

Taxis (τάξις): Present-oriented Love

Etymology: from tassō (to arrange, order, coordinate)
Not static order but active ordering, the deed of coordination
The "why" and "how" of agential participation
Love operating as present coordination

This reading temporalizes the triad explicitly: each dimension has its temporal orientation (past-present-future) while coordinating in every event.

Challenging Hierarchical Readings

Surface vs. Depth Structure

The text contains apparent hierarchical language (gods superior to humans, spiritual superior to material) reflecting its cultural context in Roman Egypt's stratified society and Greco-Roman philosophical conventions. However, the event-ontological reading demonstrates how the text's deeper structure systematically subverts these hierarchies:

Life's Equal Status: Matter is creative, autonomous, uncreated—not privation or degradation Humanity's Middle as "Happier": The coordinative position is privileged, not inferior Gods Require Human Care: Divine beings need sustaining through ritual—not self-sufficient Time's Own Eternity: Temporality is not derivative from timeless eternity but constitutive Forms in Events: Patterns manifest within temporal coordinations, not separately "on high"

Against Three Philosophical Traps

The reading positions the Asclepius as resisting three dominant Western metaphysical frameworks:

Against Substance Ontology (Aristotle, Spinoza):

Reality consists of temporal events, not enduring substances
Death is dissolution of coordination, not destruction of substrate
Relations are constitutive, not external accidents of independent substances

Against Consciousness Monism (Plotinus, Proclus):

Life and Love are autonomous, not emanations from Nous
Consciousness emerges from triadic coordination, not vice versa
Material embodiment is genuine creative dimension, not appearance or privation

Against Dualism (Descartes, Augustine):

No split between mind and matter, spiritual and physical
Light and Life interpenetrate through Love's mediation
Humanity as middle demonstrates their inseparability

The Practice Spectrum

The event-ontological reading reinterprets passages about different levels of spiritual realization as describing degrees of agential participation rather than metaphysical hierarchy:

Contraction: Events attempting to maintain existence beyond natural dissolution, generating desperate grasping. References to those "not turned toward the light" (Asc. 7, 18) describe contracted states.

Habituation: Healthy ongoing participation in event-ecology without excessive clinging. Normal embodied existence coordinating appropriately.

Agency: Conscious turning from contraction toward Light-Life-Love. Developing "nous-like body" or "new sensory suite" (Asc. 7) means cultivating agential orientation.

Liberation: Creative novel agency through intensified participation. Theurgical practice as conscious coordination.

Diaphaneity: Transparent participation where all three dimensions become luminous while apophatic fourth remains open. "Becoming the aiōn" in related Hermetic texts (CH XI).

This spectrum applies universally—every event, from subatomic to cosmic, manifests some degree of coordination. Consciousness appears when coordination becomes sufficiently complex and self-reflexive.

The Historical Arc: From Locative to Evental

Stage 1: Locative Egyptian Religion

The Asclepius emerges from Egyptian temple-based practice where:

Gods dwell in specific statues in specific temples
Sacred power is geographically rooted
Ritual effectiveness depends on proper materials local to Egypt
Priests maintain localized divine presences

Sections 23-25 describe this world's collapse: "There will come a time when it will seem that the Egyptians paid reverence to divinity... in vain"—the gods will abandon their temples.

Stage 2: Communal Hermetic Practice

The text itself represents transition from locative to communal:

Dialogue form enables textual transmission beyond Egypt
Theurgy becomes portable—applicable wherever proper materials and ritual create "perfect receptacle"
Focus shifts to humanity as nexus of participation rather than specific geography
"Body of the people" (scattered Hermetic communities) replaces "body of the land"

This is not yet individualization but communal expansion—from one sacred land to potential sacred communities anywhere.

Stage 3: Modern Hyper-Individuality

Post-Reformation and Enlightenment readers misread Hermetic practice as:

Private mystical experience
Interior psychological states
Individual soul's journey toward God
Consciousness without participation

This hyper-individuality generates "ontological loneliness"—the isolated subject "sovereign but severed," unable to genuinely participate. The triadic coordination collapses into consciousness-only monism or materialist mechanism.

Stage 4: Event-Ontological Recovery

Fourth Way Philosophy completes the trajectory:

The event as locus: Not place, people, or person, but coordination itself
Embodied but not localized: Events occur in particular situations but the pattern is universal
Participatory but not collective: Avoids both isolated individualism and subsuming collectivism
Inter-agential: "The cosmos acts through every act"

The Asclepius's lament about Egypt becomes liberating: those specific temples fall, but what they demonstrated—coordinating Light-Life-Love through skilled agency creates divine presence—remains available wherever events arise.

Methodological Considerations

Constructive Interpretation

The event-ontological reading practices constructive interpretation:

Not claiming ancient authors consciously taught full event-ontology
Showing they preserved alternatives to dominant Western metaphysics
Drawing out implications their texts gesture toward
Developing fragmentary insights into systematic philosophy

The Asclepius is understood as "opening doors" to Fourth Way Philosophy, not already articulating it completely.

Engagement with Scholarship

The reading engages contemporary Hermetic scholarship, particularly:

Wouter Hanegraaff (Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination, 2022):

Theurgical practice as genuine participation, not manipulation
Egyptian context and theophanic light phenomena
Transition from locative to cosmopolitan practice

Christian Bull (The Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus, 2018):

Hermetic texts as hybrid Egyptian-Greek synthesis
Ritual materiality and embodied practice

Garth Fowden (The Egyptian Hermes, 1986):

Historical development from temple religion to philosophical schools

The event-ontological reading builds on this scholarship while offering novel philosophical interpretation.

Comparative Philosophy

Relations to Other Traditions

Process Philosophy (Whitehead, Bergson): The event-ontological reading of Asclepius anticipates process metaphysics by making temporal becoming primary. However, it offers resources Whitehead lacks—explicit articulation of triadic structure and apophatic fourth dimension.

Neoplatonism (Plotinus, Proclus, Iamblichus): While Hermetic texts often get classified as "Neoplatonic," the event-ontological reading emphasizes divergences:

Hermetic Life is autonomous (not emanated privation)
Hermetic humanity is constitutive middle (not lower level aspiring upward)
Hermetic time is eternal (not inferior to timeless eternity)

Daoist Philosophy: Parallels exist with wu-wei (non-action/spontaneous action), qi (vital energy), and Dao as both source and process. The triadic structure resembles some Daoist cosmologies without exact equivalence.

Panentheism (Hartshorne, McFague): The view that God requires temporal process (Asc. 17) and that reality consists of divine participation at every level aligns with panentheistic themes while avoiding reduction to consciousness.

Implications

For Metaphysics

The event-ontological reading of Asclepius contributes to contemporary metaphysics by:

Offering alternative to substance ontology, consciousness monism, and dualism
Articulating triadic event-structure as fundamental
Showing how consciousness emerges from coordination rather than grounding it
Preserving apophatic opening against systematic closure

For Philosophy of Religion

The reading challenges standard narratives:

Ritual is not primitive pre-philosophy but sophisticated participatory practice
Theurgy demonstrates ontological principles rather than manipulating external powers
Sacred mediation shifts from place → community → individual → event
"Making gods" reveals co-creative agency constitutive of reality

For Environmental Philosophy

By affirming Life's autonomous creativity and rejecting matter as privation, the reading offers resources for ecological thought:

Nature as genuine creative power, not passive resource
Embodiment as primordial dimension, not inferior to consciousness
Participation in material ecologies as ontologically primary

For Political Philosophy

The "middle" position of humanity—neither purely individual nor purely collective—suggests:

Agency without isolation
Participation without subsumption
Inter-agential networks rather than atomistic subjects or totalizing collectives

Criticisms and Responses

Anachronism

Objection: The event-ontological reading imposes modern (Whiteheadian, process-oriented) categories onto ancient texts.

Response: The reading acknowledges constructive interpretation. The goal is not historical reconstruction of authorial intent but philosophical recovery of suppressed alternatives within the Western tradition. The Asclepius preserves resources that, when fully developed, yield event-ontology. This is hermeneutically legitimate if textually grounded.

Over-Interpretation

Objection: The triadic structure is imposed rather than present in the text. The Asclepius uses different vocabularies and doesn't systematically employ Light-Life-Love terminology.

Response: The reading identifies patterns across multiple formulations (Light-Life-Love, God-World-Humanity, Heimarmenē-Anankē-Taxis, divine-earthly-middle, male-female-union). The text doesn't use single vocabulary consistently, but the triadic + apophatic structure appears repeatedly. Multiple vocabularies expressing the same pattern strengthen rather than weaken the interpretation.

Privileging Certain Passages

Objection: The reading emphasizes passages supporting event-ontology while downplaying hierarchical and emanationist language throughout the text.

Response: The reading distinguishes surface language (reflecting cultural context) from deep structure (philosophical commitments). Hierarchical formulations get subverted by Life's autonomy, humanity's middle position, time's eternity, etc. This is not cherry-picking but identifying tensions within the text that point toward deeper metaphysics.

Contemporary Developments

The event-ontological reading of the Asclepius continues to develop within Fourth Way Philosophy as part of a larger project recovering participatory alternatives to dominant Western metaphysics. Current work includes:

Detailed comparison with Corpus Hermeticum I, XI, and XIII
Integration with Presocratic fragments (Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaximander)
Dialogue with process philosophy and new materialism
Application to contemporary science (quantum mechanics, ecology, complexity theory)
Development of practice-based implications (ritual, contemplation, embodied disciplines)

References

Primary Sources

Asclepius (Latin text with Coptic parallels from Nag Hammadi Codex VI, 8)
Corpus Hermeticum (Greek Hermetic texts, especially I, XI, XIII)

Secondary Literature

Bull, Christian H. (2018). The Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus: The Egyptian Priestly Figure as a Teacher of Hellenized Wisdom. Brill.
Copenhaver, Brian P. (1992). Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius. Cambridge University Press.
Fowden, Garth (1986). The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind. Cambridge University Press.
Hanegraaff, Wouter J. (2022). Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination: Altered States of Knowledge in Late Antiquity. Cambridge University Press.
Shaw, Gregory (1995). Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus. Penn State Press.
Smith, Jonathan Z. (1978). Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions. University of Chicago Press.

Philosophical Context

Whitehead, Alfred North (1929). Process and Reality. Macmillan.
Deleuze, Gilles (1994). Difference and Repetition. Columbia University Press.
Levinson, Stephen C. (2003). Space in Language and Cognition. Cambridge University Press.

Asclepius