polycentric polytheism and julian's hymn to king helios

(I wrote this at the request of a friend, and decided to post it here so that others can
see it, since it doesn't quite rise to the level of a paper that I might use in a formal
setting.)

Julian's hymn needs to be understood within the framework of polycentric

polytheism. Julian is attempting to articulate the ways in which the deity to whom he
is devoted, Helios, is ultimate, even though he’s doing it within a conceptual structure
(Iamblichean Platonism) in which Helios is actually situated quite far down in the
hierarchy that expresses the procession of Being. Assuming that the hypostatic
hierarchy in Iamblichus is the same as that which we see expressed more fully in
Proclus, Helios is active on the hypercosmic plane, just below the intellective plane
where, e.g., Zeus and Hera have their primary activity. As such, Julian has to think
about ways in which an intermediate status—or even one somewhat lower—can be
understood to actually be supreme. Another part of his strategy is also to elevate
Helios' position as much as possible by having Helios displace Zeus to some extent as
primary demiurge of the cosmos and focal point of the intellective order of Gods,
effectively promoting Helios from his hypercosmic position. Julian does this very
intelligently, however, by arguing not for a different role for Helios, but rather that if
we properly understand the role Helios is presently understood to have, we will see
that it is really the crucial role.

In this, Julian follows in the footsteps of earlier polytheistic theologians in Egypt and
in India, to name two especially notable examples, who use hymns to a given deity to
demonstrate how that deity's functions can be understood as the ultimate ground of
reality. Hence, in a hymn to Ptah, Ptah's special province, the function of speech, is
seen as the nature of reality, and Ptah thus as the ultimate God, while in a hymn to
Khnum, Khnum's primary field of action, corporeal form, is argued to be the essence
of things, in particular, of the statues of all the other Gods, and Khnum therefore as
the supreme God. The Rig Veda speaks of Agni as supreme in the sense that the
sacrifices to all the other Gods pass through the fire, which is his, while treating Vac
as supreme in the sense that the hymns to all the other Gods depend upon voice,
which is hers. The Bhagavadgītā sees in the nature of Kṛṣṇa the nature of reality,
while the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad sees reality in the nature of Śiva. The fact that such
texts rarely affirm the reciprocal potential for affirming the ultimacy of the other
Gods is a problem for modern polytheist polemics, but it was not a problem for
ancient authors working within an environment in which this reciprocal polycentricity
was natural and largely unthought.

(It should also be noted the degree to which this sort of effort of thinking about the
ultimate nature of reality in diverse different ways fostered the development of
philosophical thought in these cultures.)

The other major element that needs to be understood with respect to Julian’s work is
his tendency, though not entirely consistently, to conflate the One with Being, which
can make his thought appear somewhat more monotheistic to us than he, I think,
intends. This may be due to shortcomings in Julian’s philosophical instruction, or
because Platonic doctrine on the One was not so comprehensively articulated as it
came to be in the subsequent generations, or Julian may have been attempting to
make his pagan system look more like Christianity, or to streamline polytheism into a
more top-down structure that could compete more effectively with Christianity on an
institutional level.

I’ll proceed now to some comments on individual passages. (Translations by W.C.

Wright.)

132d: "whether it is right to call him the supra-intelligible, or the Idea of Being … or
the One, since the One seems somehow to be prior to all the rest"—we see here, as
elsewhere in the piece, that Julian is uncertain of how to draw these philosophical
distinctions, or finds them not too important.

135c: "the fact that he is established as king among the intellectual Gods, from his
middle station among the planets"—here Julian seeks to use the centrality of the
visible sun to argue for a higher position for Helios on the invisible plane of the
higher principles than Helios has in the 'orthodox' Platonic system.

136a: Regarding the slogan Julian quotes about Zeus, Hades, Helios and Serapis,
variations on this acclamation with one, two, and three members, or varying
members, are well known and have been discussed especially by Versnel in Ter Unus.
He argues that

"The essential meaning of the heis theos formula … is not a syncretistic confession of
the unity or identity of the gods mentioned: on the contrary, it is an acclamation
emphasizing the exceptional character and the greatness of the god or gods invoked.
In other words, it represents the elative, not the unifying force of the word heis," (p.
235).

Given this, Wright's translation of "three gods in one godhead" is extremely

misleading. At most, we could translate the slogan as "Sarapis is Zeus, Hades, and
Helios in one," with no strong sense of identity at all, but the sense more that "Sarapis
is as good as Zeus, Hades, and Helios put together." Julian uses the slogan for his
own purposes, chief of which, again, is to elevate Helios however he can.

137a-c: Julian uses a subtle exegesis of the Odyssey and the Iliad to argue that Helios
is not subordinate to Zeus or to Hera.

138d-139a: A lengthy discussion of "middleness", mesotês, in order to explain how a

God who is "midway between the visible Gods who surround the universe and the
immaterial and intelligible Gods who surround the Good" is nevertheless the supreme
God. Again, at 141b, Helios is admitted to be "midway between the intelligible and
the encosmic Gods," but this is, Julian has argued, actually the supreme position. At
156c, Helios is "midmost of the midmost intellectual Gods".
139c: Positing "a sort of binding force in the intelligible world of the Gods, which
orders all things into one" permits Julian to see an analogy with what Helios does on
the lower, cosmic plane, but also demonstrates that the unity of the intelligible Gods
is not simply given for him.

141d: "King Helios is one and proceeds from one God, <that is,> from the
intelligible cosmos, which is one"—Julian's awkward phrasing here seems like an
attempt to convey that the unity of the Gods lies in their being all in each one; but all
that matters for the purposes of this hymn, of course, is that they are all in Helios.

142c: "We must assume that what has just been said about his substance applies
equally to his powers"—here and elsewhere in this piece (e.g., 145c) Julian seems to
analyze a God into three phases of substance (ousia), power, and activity, unlike later
Platonists like Proclus who speak instead of a God's existence (hyparxis), power, and
activity, with ousia being on the level of the God's activity. This could help to explain
Julian's tendency to conflate the One and Being, since ousia implies being. Julian
never seems to use in this piece the terminology of supra-essentiality (hyperousiotês),
which for Platonists like Proclus positions the Gods unambiguously prior to Being.

143b: Gods who are "akin to Helios" and "of like substance" serve to "sum up the …
nature of this God," in whom "they are one"—this is the basic procedure of the
polycentric hymn, i.e., since all the Gods are in each one, one may take all the other
Gods as unfolding or articulating the chosen deity's nature, especially ones whose
activity is related to hers narratively or that is similar to hers.

144a-b: Apollo "is the interpreter for us of the fairest purposes that are to be found
with our God," articulating the nature of Helios just as Helios, in a hymn to Apollo,
could be understood to articulate the nature of Apollo. Note also the argument here:
"Helios, since he comprehends in himself all the principles of the fairest intellectual
synthesis, is himself Apollo the leader of the Muses"—because Helios does what
Apollo is said to do, Helios is Apollo. This kind of reasoning only applies where we
are from treating the nature of all the other Gods purely as intelligible contents within
our chosen deity. We see the same thing in Egyptian hymns, when the names of other
Gods are taken semantically in order to treat them as "names" of the God being
hymned at the moment, e.g., "You [God X] are hidden in this your name of 'Amun',"
where the name of the God Amun is being used for its meaning, which is 'hidden'.
The sentence thus reads, literally, "You are hidden in this your name of Hidden." This
would be a meaningless tautology unless the independent identity of Amun is in fact
taken as given. Julian takes this exact approach at 148d, where he speaks of "the other
names of the Gods, which all belong to Helios".

144b: "though one should survey many other powers that belong to this god, never
could one investigate them all"—compare Proclus' statement in his commentary on
Plato's Cratylus, speaking of Apollo, that "the entire multitude of Apollo's powers is
incomprehensible to us and indescribable. Indeed, how could human reason ever
become able to grasp all the properties together, not only of Apollo, but of any God
at all?" (In Crat. 97, trans. Duvick).

144b-c: Helios has "an equal and identical dominion" as Zeus, "shares …
imperishableness and abiding sameness with Apollo," "shares … the dividing function
… with Dionysus"—we see that despite the ability to think of Helios, for the
purposes of the hymn, as expanding to encompass all the other Gods, Helios is also
for Julian still situated in an environment in which the Gods are irreducibly many.

145b: Helios "bestows … on all the intellectual Gods the faculty of thought and of
being comprehended by thought"—Julian often in this piece seems to draw
particularly on account in the Republic of the analogy between the sun, the cause both
of the being of mundane things and of their knowability, and the Idea of the Good, in
order to promote Helios to a higher position in the intellective order of Gods than do
other Platonists, who place more emphasis on the account of the demiurge in the
Timaeus, traditionally identified with Zeus.
147d: With respect to Okeanos, Julian does the same thing we have seen him do
earlier with other Gods, namely, use a definition of the God's principal activity as a
middle term to identify them with Helios. Here, because Helios girdles the poles, he
does what, on one definition, Okeanos does, and therefore Helios can also receive the
attribute Homer accords to Okeanos of "father of all things", even though this
attribute is actually only related to pole-girdling if we presuppose the individual
integrity of the God Okeanos.

149b-d: Julian's doctrine with respect to Athena is interesting and quite technical. She
comes forth "whole from the whole of him, being contained within him," but seems
more distinct from Helios than Zeus, who Julian says he believes to be "in no wise
different from Helios," or Apollo, who "differs in no way from Helios", because
Athena must "bind together the Gods who are assembled about Helios and bring
them without confusion into unity with Helios." Note that "without confusion" (dicha
synchuseôs), literally, "without mixture", entails that even in union with Helios, the
other Gods remain distinct. Proclus uses almost the same language to speak of the
unity of the henads with one another, in which they are "unmixed" (amigês,
asynchuta; In Parm. 1048), because all are in each, rather than all in one. Hence what
is said by Julian of Helios here could be said of any other God, in principle. The
special role of Athena in bringing the Gods in this fashion into unity with Helios
points again to the irreducible role of other Gods for Julian even in the midst of his
monolatrous meditation upon Helios.

150b: Aphrodite, like Helios himself, is "a synthesis [synkrasis] of the heavenly Gods",
and like Athena, an irreducible "joint cause [synaitios] with him".

151a: "Helios holds sway among the intellectual Gods in that he unites into one,
about his own undivided substance, a great multitude of the Gods"—Julian's claim for
Helios here is a bit less sweeping than at some other points in the piece.
156d-157a: Helios "fills the whole heavens with the same number of Gods as he
contains in himself in intellectual form"—that is, the presence of the other Gods in
Helios enables him to bring them to visible form in their diverse ways, enabling him
to express his own unique kind of ultimacy, which lies in the ubiquity of visible form
through the solar agency.

158a: Julian explains here his task: "to compose a hymn to express my gratitude to the
God … to tell, to the best of my power, of his essential nature [ousia]." The ousia or
'substance' of a God contains all things, and so what we can discern of that substance
will encompass as many other Gods as the activities of whom we can grasp through
that substance.