Description
The Fiveash Legacy Lecture is intended to honor and keep vital the memory and teaching legacy of Dr. Michael Fiveash, a long time and much loved Lexington High School teacher. Dr. Fiveash taught Latin, Mythology and Classics for decades at LHS, and encouraged students in the love of literature and language; inspiring them to seek substance and depth by internalizing meaning found in the myths and wisdom storehouses of Classical literature. There are now two Lexington scholarships established in Michael’s name. The first is for students intending to study the Classics at the college level, and the second is for LHS teachers who inspire the hearts and minds of students in similar ways.
In his latest book Hellenic Tantra, Gregory Shaw argues that scholarship on later Platonism has been misled by a dualist worldview. The theurgic Platonists in the school of Iamblichus (4th century CE) did not ascend out of their bodies to be united with the gods—as is the common belief—but allowed the gods to descend into their bodies. By comparing embodied deification in theurgy to Tantric traditions of embodied deification, Gregory Shaw allows us to understand the power and charisma of the last Platonic teachers. Hellenic Tantra reveals a living Platonism that has been hidden from us.
Gregory Shaw is Professor of Religious Studies
at Stonehill College, Massachusetts. He is the author of Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus and several articles on the later Neoplatonists.
