Ancient Alchemy: on Love

School of Athens painted by Raphael 1509-1511

In our world it’s very easy for ideas about love to become skewed and steeped in assumptions. Which leads to a great deal of suffering. The only way to turn this tide is through awareness of one's own inner world.

One of my favorite pieces of literature is Plato’s Symposium on Love. It’s a glimpse into antiquity of some philosophical conversations on love. The focus here is on two different perspectives between Aristophanes and Socrates.

Aristophanes gives us his view about love by telling a mythical account on how human nature came to be. There were once three types of beings, male-male, female-female and male-female, which the later would be known as androgynous. They were each round with four arms, four legs, and two faces on opposite sides of their being and each pair had associated genitals. They could do anything they chose, walking or rolling. The gods thought that they were a bit too powerful but didn’t want to kill them because then the gods wouldn’t get their dutiful sacrifices. So Zeus said that cutting them in half would be a great solution. And after reworking some of the incompatible details of the parts, there was now just male and female. The problem was they now had a yearning to be whole again. Here is where Eros is conceived, within the desire to return to their original nature. In the same fashion they were created, male-male, female-female and male-female. And only their other half would fulfill this desire of love to be whole again.

Socrates account of love is relayed through Diotima, a woman he had met long ago who taught him everything he knew of the subject. Through a series of questions Diotima poses to Socrates he finds that the true ascent to love is born through creativity, being pregnant in mind, not the body. That an idea can become immortal through this kind of birth. That the seeker of knowledge is the one who gains wisdom opposed to the one who says they know. It is not to obtain of an object of love but of an ideal. In this way love cannot be taken away, it always abides. Diotima’s ladder of love leads us from the body, to the mind, to the abstract, to the Form of beauty itself. It is in this we see the essence of beauty, and by pursuing the essence of beauty it will produce true virtue, wisdom and happiness, rather than images of what we believe them to be and it is here that love resides.

There is a great contrast between what Aristophanes tells us regarding love and what Socrates tells us. Aristophanes definition of love is a physical connection that is looking to be made whole once again. Trying to heal a wound that can only be healed when we reunite with our other half. And if we never find this person or they reject us love does not exist. It is only a shadow of what it could have been. Left with the desire for love that can never be obtained. This kind of love is not love at all; it is suffering and bondage.

Socrates tells us love is not a physical obtainment that can come and go as all material things do but an intangible aspiration. Never leaving us hurt or betrayed. Socrates ideal of love is formed in the in-between that resides in beauty, wisdom and happiness, born of plenty and poverty. Given to the idea that it is better not to obtain something but to pursue it. The idea that if you never found your other half you would be able live in a place of wholeness through self-sufficiency, free from the bonds of dependency.

If what Aristophanes tells us were truth and not myth, we would live with a yearning and a desire that may never be fulfilled. Could you live with a second best? Knowing that your one true love is only a desire you will never have? And yet, if we were lucky enough to find our other half, would we then be happy after all? Would becoming one with our other half, be the wholeness we were searching for? Or is it only the idea of it we wanted?

Because if what Socrates tells us is true, wouldn’t it seem that not being dependent on someone else or something else to fulfill the longings of love be a more satisfying concept? Living in beauty, wisdom and happiness as a state of being. Never having love taken away, never at risk of being rejected, always abiding, always pregnant with inspiration. Isn’t this where love abides? What we wanted all along?

Embodying love itself. Reaching for a love that never fails without a yearning. Not relying on another to complete us but becoming whole through self-realization. Being able to share this love with others as we live in the physical realm.

Im D: The Finder

I can help you find YOUR Inner Alchemy of Love​

If you are somebody who is stuck in fairytale love.

I can help. Aside from finding the greatest love inward.

I also found my soulmate,

the person who loves me because of who I am, not what I do.

We see the core of love and wholeness reflected in each other.