The Elements of Theology

The Elements of Theology is the most architectonic statement of late Neoplatonism, a chain of 211 propositions with deductive proofs laying out the entire structure of reality. Its central claim is that all things descend from and return to a single ineffable source, the One, through a graded hierarchy of being.

The method is rigorously deductive, each proposition resting on those before it. Proclus refines the emanation scheme of Plotinus and Iamblichus by way of his signature triadic law of remaining, procession, and reversion: every effect abides in its cause, proceeds from it, and returns to it. Between the One and Intellect he places the henads, supreme unities through which transcendent unity is distributed throughout the cosmos.

As the last great systematizer of the Platonic Academy at Athens, Proclus bequeathed a layered cosmos of mind and a doctrine of return that became a direct ancestor of later esoteric and magical thought, including correspondence and the principle of as above, so below.