The Staff Of Plotinos (Η Ράβδος του Πλωτίνου)

-From The Meletic Tales.

The air of Alexandria was laced with salt and sun, its streets buzzing with the hum of traders, scholars and the restless tides of thought. Amongst the throng moved a young man named Menandros, a youth of good looks and greater ego, whose robes were always pressed, whose sandals shone with oil, and whose mirror was oft held closer than his books.

‘Wisdom is what men cling to when they have lost the pleasures of youth', he once scoffed to a merchant.

Menandros desired admiration. He frequented the Stoas not to learn but to be seen. He performed the words of Platon and mimicked the gestures of orators, yet cared little for their meaning. His father, a statesman, had gifted him leisure and coins; with it, Menandros purchased applause.

It was one morning, beneath the golden hue of dawn, when fate turned its gaze upon him.

Wandering near the ruins of an old Alexandrian library, now mostly rubble and seaweed, Menandros saw something lodged beneath a fallen marble slab. A thin shaft of light had struck it, causing it to glimmer. Curious, he approached and pulled away a vine-covered stone.

There it lay—a wooden staff, smooth and dark, tipped with a fragment of malachite, as though touched by verdant flame.

He lifted it. The staff felt oddly warm, as if it had not long ago been in another’s grasp. Inscribed near the top in faint Greek were the words: 'Plotinos of Lycopolis'.

‘Plotinos?’ whispered Menandros. ‘The philosopher?’

Even though his pride scoffed at ancient mystics, the name stirred something dormant within him. He had heard tales: Plotinos, who sought To Ena—the One, the origin of all, the pure source beyond being and knowing.

Menandros carried the staff home. At first, it was a novelty—an object to display. He brought it to the agora, where he boasted:

‘This was once held by Plotinos himself, although now, it aids me in navigating the complexities of life and fashion’.

Within days, something curious began. The mirror he so adored lost its power. When he looked into it, he saw not his well-curled locks or charming grin, but his eyes—tired, anxious and hollow. The applause he craved from strangers rang empty in his ears.

One evening, as the sea wind battered his chamber shutters, Menandros sat beside the staff and stared. ‘What are you?’ ‘A relic? A dream? A joke of the gods?’ He murmured.

No answer came, yet his thoughts turned inwards.

The next day, as though pulled by the air itself, he wandered to the edge of the city where a simple garden enclosed a stone courtyard. There, upon a flat rock, sat an elderly man, cross-legged, with a reed-bound book upon his lap.

His name was Seleukos.

‘You seem lost, young one’, the man said without turning.

‘I followed no path but arrived here nonetheless’.

‘Then perhaps the path followed you in its course’.

Intrigued and unsettled, Menandros stayed. Day after day, he returned, asking questions, at first with jest, later with sincerity.

‘Do you believe in To Ena, the One?’ Menandros asked one morning.

Seleukos smiled. ‘The One is not a mere belief. It is a truth beyond the mind’s grasp, but not beyond the soul’s longing’.

‘What that truth then?’

‘To Ena is the absolute source. Not a god, not a force, not a thing—but that from which all things emanate. Plotinos taught that from the One flows the Nous. Each soul seeks to return’.

‘Return?’

‘To unity. To simplicity. To essence’.

Menandros found himself pondering these words late into the night. He began leaving behind his fine robes. He spoke less. He listened more.

One morning, as he walked with Seleukos by the harbourside, he asked, ‘Why do I feel as if the staff is watching me?’

‘Because perhaps it is not just a staff. It may be the extension of a will—not conscious, but conscious enough to call forth what is hidden in you’, replied the old philosopher.

‘Why now? Why me?’

Seleukos stopped and gazed at the sea. ‘Because the soul awakens when it is ready, not when the mind wishes it. The vanity in you was never strong enough to silence your deeper hunger. Perhaps Plotinos’ staff seeks not to teach you, but to remind you’.

The weeks turned into months. Menandros began to study not for glory, but for truth. He abandoned the flattery of the city and devoted his time to the garden. He read not to quote, but to understand. When he spoke now, he measured his words like a sculptor shaping stone.

One evening, Seleukos shared the tale of Plotinos. ‘He was born in Lycopolis in Roman Egypt, under a sky similar to ours. He longed not for wealth, nor rhetoric, but the truth. He studied under Ammonios Sakkas, and for eleven years, asked no question aloud. He listened with the whole of his being’, he said.

‘Why so silent?’

‘Because he believed that speech disturbs what the soul already knows. In silence, the Nous speaks. And in the Nous, we glimpse the One’.

‘Did he find it?’

‘He tasted it. There are records from his student Porphyry—how Plotinos would fall into meditative ecstasy. Four times, Porphyry wrote, he ascended to the One. Not by climbing, but by shedding. To reach the One, one must release all’, Seleukos responded.

Menandros looked at the staff. It now seemed lighter than before. It no longer glowed, but pulsed—quietly, like breath.

‘Why did he return?’

‘To teach. To guide. He left behind no temple, no monument—only his writings, transcribed reluctantly and a life that reflected simplicity’.

‘And the staff?’

‘No one knows. Perhaps he left it here to find someone. Perhaps you’.

As the seasons passed, so too did Menandros' nature. Those who had known him as vain now barely recognised him. He became thoughtful, reflective, even kind. He helped the poor without witness. He fed stray animals in the streets. He answered questions with care and remained silent when silence taught more.

He no longer needed the staff, yet carried it not as a symbol of pride, but as a reminder of his journey.

On the eve of his thirtieth year, Seleukos fell ill. Menandros stayed by his side, holding his frail hand beneath a canopy of olive leaves.

‘You taught me more than I can ever repay’, Menandros whispered.

‘No, young man. I only reminded you. The soul already knows the path—it merely forgets’, Seulokos replied, smiling faintly.

‘And now?’

‘Now you must teach others. Not with the staff. With your life’.

Seleukos passed before sunrise. The garden was silent. The birds sang more solemnly that morning.

Menandros buried the old man beneath the stone where they had first met. He marked it with no name, only a carved circle—symbol of unity.

In time, Menandros became a teacher. Not a sophist, not a priest, but a Meletic philosopher.

He spoke of To Ena, the One. Of the Nous. Of the importance of balance between body, mind and soul to pagans, Christians and Meletics. He reminded his students that humility is the root of wisdom, and that virtue is cultivated through conscious living.

When asked about the staff, he would smile and say, ‘It is not the staff that transformed me. It was what the staff awakened’.

Many years later, when Menandros had become old and grey, a young girl named Thekla in tattered robes approached him beneath the same garden tree.

‘Master, may I ask—did you truly see To Ena?’

Menandros looked into the child’s eyes and said, ‘I did not see it as one sees a bird or a star, but I felt it—once, when I let go of all that I was, and became all that I am’.

She blinked, puzzled. ‘And what are you?’

He placed the staff gently in her hands.

‘A soul returning’.

The staff of Plotinos was never seen again in Alexandria.

Some say it dissolved into dust beneath the olive tree. Others claim it vanished into the sea, but those individuals who studied under Menandros never forgot his presence.

He left behind no statue, no scrolls in gold. Only words—whispered in gardens, echoed in hearts, carved into the soul of a city that once knew vanity, and through one man, came to understand unity.

The Meletic tradition held Menandros as a living example that true change begins not in the heavens, but in the hidden corridors of the self.

The staff passed not into history, but into memory.

Where the One begins, there ends the need for names.

Menandros grew into a calm presence and warm voice, known not for oration but for listening. People came from Rhodes, Pergamon, and even Rome to study beneath the olive trees in the garden once kept by Seleukos. The staff, now held by the young girl who had grown into a young woman Thekla, remained in the corner of the garden’s small stone hall—a relic that none dared touch but her.

Thekla had a keen mind and a tender heart, and although she was but ten summers when she arrived, by fifteen she had memorised the fragments of Plotinos’ Enneads, and by seventeen, she meditated daily at dawn, eyes closed, lips still, soul reaching. As a young woman, her knowledge had increase.

One day, Thekla asked Menandros, ‘Why do so few pursue To Ena, the One?’

He gazed across the low garden wall where the city bustled and said, ‘Because the world prefers noise over silence, and image over essence. To pursue the One is to shed identity, and many fear what lies beneath their masks. The pagans seek their gods in fear, whilst the Christians seek their Christ in fear'.

‘Did you have fears?’

‘Yes. But I learnt to overcome my fears. As a Meletic, we are taught to embrace our fate'.

Thekla often walked the marble paths of the old Alexandrian ruins where Menandros had once discovered the staff. One evening, as twilight melted into indigo, she stood atop a broken column and whispered, ‘To Ena, I seek not to own you, only to be drawn towards you’.

That night, as the stars ignited the sky, she dreamt of Plotinos—not as a man, but as a light moving through a corridor of shifting veils. She awoke with tears on her cheeks, even though she could not say why.

Menandros, now silver-haired and slow in step, summoned her to his side more often. ‘I shall soon walk the path that no foot treads’, he said one morning.

‘Shall you go as Plotinos did?’

‘Yes. Not in sadness. In return', he replied.

She took his hand and said, ‘Then you must leave behind what was left to you’.

Menandros understood. The following week, he held a final gathering in the garden. The sun was gentle, the air perfumed with laurel and crushed fig leaves. His students—some scholars, others farmers, artists or former cynics—sat quietly as he spoke.

‘I have no commandments, no doctrines, no temple. I have only a way of being. The One cannot be grasped by the clever, only received by the still. Seek not power in knowledge, but clarity in silence. Above all, walk with humility, for it is the only true companion on the way to wisdom’.

Then he handed Thekla the staff, wrapped in a linen cloth. 'Let it serve no ego, but let it remind you of the self’, he said.

That night, he meditated beneath the stars and passed away before dawn, with a faint smile on his face.

Thekla buried Menandros beside Seleukos, carving beneath the unity circle a single line:

‘Returned’.

The years became decades. Alexandria changed. Empires rose, temples fell, yet the garden remained, hidden behind olive branches and time. Thekla became a philosopher of quiet renown. She wrote no books, only letters. She turned no pupil away, not even those people who came in scepticism or scorn.

Amongst her students was a Roman tribune named Caius, who had come seeking rhetoric but stayed in silence. ‘Why do I become humble when you speak of the One?’ He asked her once.

‘Because your soul remembers what your mind forgot’, she replied.

Another was a widow named Xenia, who had lost three children and came seeking comfort.

‘Where are they now?’ She whispered in grief.

Thekla looked at the olive branches and answered, ‘Where they always were—in the soul of the world. You need not reach upwards. Close your eyes, and you will find them in stillness and awareness’.

One day, the staff had suddenly broken into small fragments. Thekla gathered the fragments.

She smiled and said, ‘Let it be. The staff was never the source. Its purpose is fulfilled’.

She burnt the broken pieces with frankincense and lavender. The smoke rose like a final breath.

Years later, Thekla passed away under the same tree where Menandros and Seleukos once taught. She left no heir, no written will, only a whisper given to a boy named Nikandros, the last pupil she had accepted.

‘Do not teach what you have learnt. Teach what you have become’.

Nikandros tended the garden. He taught as she had, using questions rather than answers, gestures rather than proclamations.

Thus, the tradition endured—not through institutions or parchment, but through lived example.

There is a tale in later Meletic circles—told beneath quiet stars—that the garden still exists, even though no map can find its location. Some people say it shifts places like the horizon. Others believe it exists not in space but in the soul.

Visitors walk not towards it, but within themselves.

It is said that those people who come to understand To Ena—not with the intellect, but with awareness—hear a silence more profound than sound, and within that silence, the echoes of Plotinos, Menandros, Seleukos and Thekla blend into one voice:

‘Observe life. Study what you see. Then think about what it means. And when meaning dissolves into presence, you are near’.

Thus the Meletic tale of the Staff of Plotinos ends not with a monument or myth, but with an invitation: to live fully, consciously, and humbly, knowing that the path to the One is not climbed—it is uncovered.

Not with effort, but with letting go.

In the years following Thekla's passing, Nikandros tended the garden not only with tools, but with thought. He saw each fallen leaf as a metaphor, each season as a teaching. To him, Meleticism was not a path to be walked in sandals—it was a cultivation of awareness, of seeing without distortion, and acting without ego.

Visitors still arrived, although fewer than in the time of Menandros. Some sought answers, others healing. A few came only to scoff, but left strangely altered.

One afternoon, a young philosopher from Athens arrived, dressed in fine wool and scented with imported resin. He was known as Xenokrates, proud and precise.

‘I have read Plotinos. I have debated the Stoics. I seek argument, not allegory,’ he told Nikandros.

Nikandros offered him tea and silence.

After an hour, Xenokrates broke and said, ‘Have you no defence of your teachings?’

Nikandros replied, ‘A teaching that requires defence is not yet rooted in essence’.

‘What is essence?’

Nikandros touched the earth and answered, ‘That which remains when all else is surrendered’.

Xenokrates returned the next day, and the next. Eventually, he stopped quoting others. He began walking the garden alone at sunrise. After a month, he said quietly, ‘I feel less proud and more whole. I do not know why’.

Nikandros nodded. ‘Because the One is not found in the mind. It is remembered in the soul’.

As the decades passed, Nikandros became known as the quiet torch, not for his words, but for the clarity others felt in his presence. He never wrote a treatise, yet his life became a lesson. Even though the garden aged, the unity circle carved by Menandros remained untouched by wind or moss.

It is said that on a spring morning, Nikandros left the garden barefoot, leaving only his sandals and a reed basket behind. No one saw where he went. Some say he disappeared into the desert. Others believe he merged with the stillness he had always served.

In the centre of the garden, there remains a stone, and upon it is carved a final line beneath the others: ‘He listened’.

To those visitors who come still and open-hearted, it is said the garden still whispers—not in actual words, but in lasting presence—the simple reminder: ‘You are already near.’

The staff of Plotinos was a revelation of a man's past and discovery of To Ena, the One.

And so, the tale of the Staff of Plotinos passed into silence—not forgotten, but folded gently into the fabric of those people who lived it. The garden, though no longer marked on any city map, was said to reappear to those who no longer searched outwardly, but inwardly. Those people who stumbled upon it by chance often found what they had not known they were missing: stillness, and the feeling of being gathered.

For Meleticism was never meant to conquer, convert, or cry out. It was meant to awaken—to call softly through experience, through presence, through the pauses between breath and thought.

From Seleukos to Menandros, from Thaleia to Nikandros, the torch had passed not as flame, but as awareness—a quiet continuity, as intimate as conscience, as wide as the sky.

Beneath the old olive tree where it all began, where feet had stood and minds had changed, the wind still moves gently through the leaves. If one listens closely—not with ears, but with being—one might hear what Plotinos once sought and Menandros once lived:

The return is not ahead. It is within. In that return, there is no ending—only presence. Only To Ena, the One.

Some people say the wind carries their voices still—not as echoes, but as impressions in the soul, like a memory that was never spoken yet always known. Those people who sit beneath that olive tree in true silence may come to feel it too—not as a lesson, but as a remembering.

Of what we are. Of what always was.

When the sun sets just right, casting long shadows across the garden floor, it is said that one can almost see them—figures in stillness, not spirits, but presences. Not gone, only returned. Not teachers, but reminders.

For the path to To Ena, the One leaves no footsteps, no monuments.

Only a stillness that waits. Only a presence that listens, and a truth that never needed to be spoken with words.

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