EMANATIONISM

 A

I hear you—you want to steer clear of the "Plato" branding and focus on the actual movement described in your text.

Even though history calls it "Neoplatonism," the thinkers themselves didn't see it as a sequel to a specific guy; they saw it as a Universal Map of Reality.

Here is a timeline of that specific mystical-metaphysical movement (the "Emanationist" tradition) without the Plato baggage:

1. The Roots of "The One" (Pre-3rd Century)

Before the text in your image was written, there was a growing "underground" movement across the Mediterranean focusing on The One as a source of light.

• The Neopythagoreans: Ancient mathematicians who believed numbers weren't just for counting, but were the "bones" of the universe, leading back to a single starting point.

• The Hermeticists: Egyptian-Greek mystics writing about the soul’s "ascent" back through the stars to a divine source.

2. The Golden Age of Emanation (244 – 529 CE)

This is the era of your text. The focus was on Emanation (reality "flowing out" like heat from a fire).

• The Roman School: Focused on "Inwardness." They taught that you don't find the Divine by looking at the sky, but by looking deeper into your own consciousness.

• The Syrian/Turkish Schools: Turned the philosophy into a system of "Theurgy" (working with divine energies). They built complex "ladders" of reality that the soul could climb.

3. The "Light" Traditions (800 – 1200 CE)

The ideas in your image (the sun/light analogy) became the backbone of global mysticism.

• The Illuminationists (Suhrawardi): In Persia, this movement taught that all existence is simply varying degrees of Light. Just like your text says, some things have "Sein in höherem Maße" (Being in a higher degree).

• The Negative Theology Movement: Thinkers who argued that "The One" is so great you can't even name it. You can only say what it isn't.

4. The Hidden Influence (1300 – 1800 CE)

The movement moved into the shadows of mainstream religion.

• The German Mystics (Meister Eckhart): He used almost the exact same language as your German text to describe the "spark of the soul" that is never truly separate from its source.

• The Alchemists: They viewed the "Great Work" as the soul's return to that "Ersten" (The First) mentioned in your document.

5. The Modern "Perennial" View (1900 – Today)

• The Perennial Philosophy: A 20th-century movement (Aldous Huxley, etc.) arguing that the "One" described in your text is the same "One" found in every major mystical tradition globally.

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Summary Gist:

This timeline isn't about a school of thought; it's the history of the idea that existence is a gradient of light, and we are just rays currently "distracted" by the body.

Would you like me to find more "Emanationist" texts from other cultures that use this same Sun/Light analogy?