Excerpts from “The Six Enneads” by Plotinus (vegetarian) – The Heavenly Circuit, Part 2 of 2

“[…] The Spirit which dwells with the Soul does thus circle about the Divinity. For since God is omnipresent the Soul desiring perfect union must take the circular course: God is not stationed. Similarly Plato attributes to the stars not only the spheric movement belonging to the universe as a whole but also to each a revolution around their common centre; each – not by way of thought but by links of natural necessity – has in its own place taken hold of God and exults.”

Section 3

“The truth may be resumed in this way: There is a lowest power of the Soul, a nearest to Earth, and this is interwoven throughout the entire universe: another phase possesses sensation, while yet another includes the Reason which is concerned with the objects of sensation: this higher phase holds itself to the spheres, poised towards the Above but hovering over the lesser Soul and giving forth to it an effluence which makes it more intensely vital. The lower Soul is moved by the higher which, besides encircling and supporting it, actually resides in whatsoever part of it has thrust upwards and attained the spheres. The lower then, ringed round by the higher and answering its call, turns and tends towards it; and this upward tension communicates motion to the material frame in which it is involved: for if a single point in a spheric mass is in any degree moved, without being drawn away from the rest, it moves the whole, and the sphere is set in motion. Something of the same kind happens in the case of our bodies: the unspatial movement of the Soul – in happiness, for instance, or at the idea of some pleasant event – sets up a spatial movement in the body: the Soul, attaining in its own region some good which increases its sense of life, moves towards what pleases it; and so, by force of the union established in the order of nature, it moves the body, in the body’s region, that is in space. As for that phase of the Soul in which sensation is vested, it, too, takes its good from the Supreme above itself and moves, rejoicingly, in quest of it: and since the object of its desire is everywhere, it too ranges always through the entire scope of the universe. The Intellectual-Principle has no such progress in any region; its movement is a stationary act, for it turns upon itself. And this is why the All, circling as it does, is at the same time at rest.”