The Three Hypostases

The doctrine of three hypostases is the architecture of Plotinus's universe; the word, which means a 'standing under' or fundamental level of reality, was later borrowed by Christian theology for the persons of the Trinity. There are three: the One, Intellect, and Soul, in descending order of unity and ascending order of multiplicity.

The three levels

The One is the absolute source, beyond being and beyond thought. Intellect (Nous) proceeds from it as the realm of true being and the Forms, where thinker and thought coincide in a single timeless act. Soul proceeds from Intellect and gives life and order to the world of time and change, facing upward to contemplate Intellect and downward to govern body.

Each lower hypostasis arises by emanation from the one above and turns back to contemplate it, the rhythm later named procession and return. The human soul spans these levels: its higher part, Plotinus held, never wholly descends but remains in contemplation above, so that the ascent is in a sense a recovery of what we already are.

Later thinkers such as Iamblichus and Proclus multiplied the intermediate levels and inserted the henads beneath the One, but the threefold scheme remained the enduring backbone of the tradition.