I have to confess to you, as I write this, I am watching the Star Trek: TNG episode Emergence, episode #175, apparently first aired on (or around?) May 9, 1994.
Anyways, at the beginning of the show, Data is performing a scene from Shakespeare’s Tempest, Act V, Scene 1. And Data tells Captain Picard that he is doing a ‘Neoplatonic magic rite’.
What on earth is a ‘Neoplatonic magic rite’? Yes, I looked up Neoplatonism in Wikipedia. And I certainly know what magic is. But what was Data specifically referring to? Before I saw the show, I never even heard of a ‘Neoplatonic magic rite’.
Oh, and we studied the play in high school. And I can assure you Shakespeare never used the term in the play. So what does it mean?
I put this question in GQ, because I assume that the term has some meaning independent of the Star Trek: the Next Generation series.
Thank you in advance for your helpful and civil replies .
You might have been better off looking up Theurgy.
A “neoplatonic magic rite” would be a magical ritual along neo-Platonic lines. It would generally involve intense meditation and contemplation to bring oneself closer to the Divine. Some forms might include recapitulating the Divine with invocations that would affect the material world. In this case, though, I suspect the episode writer was just throwing out the dramaturgical equivalent of technobabble.
In Act V, Scene 1, Prospero and Ariel discuss Prospero’s magical workings, but Prospero doesn’t actually perform a rite. And Prospero’s magical workings don’t seem neo-Platonic, anyway. Using staff and book to summon a storm seems a lot more like classic Hermetic magic than neo-Platonism.
At a stretch, Data could be saying that performing the play is in and of itself a neo-Platonic magic rite, a dramaturgical working. There are definitely modern occultists who follow this line. I kinda doubt the episode writer had that in mind, though. It would be really out of character for Data, and out of genre for the show.
Again, I strongly suspect the line is just technobabble, with no deeper meaning than “reversing the polarity”.
Picard surely would have, though. And for that matter so would soon-to-be-Sir Patrick Stewart of the Royal Shakespeare Company. I wonder if he had anything to say about the line.
“Neo-Platonic magic rite” isn’t a Shakespearean term. It’s not a term that would have been used contemporaneously. There’s no reason for Picard, or Sir Patrick Stewart of the Royal Shakespeare Company, to know what the term would mean, or that Data seems to be using it incorrectly.
Picard, and Patrick Stewart, might well know that Prospero is discussing magical rites in Act V, Scene 1, not performing them, but there’s no reason to think he would have any idea of the differences between neo-Platonism and Hermeticism.
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