The One — absolutely simple, beyond being and thought, the source of all things through overflow rather than intention, knowable only through mystical union.
Intellect (Nous) — the first emanation from the One, the realm of the Platonic Forms, self-thinking thought, eternal and perfect.
Soul — the second emanation, mediating between Intellect and matter, generating time as the moving image of eternity, present in all living things.
Matter — the lowest point of emanation, privation of form and light, the principle of evil as absence rather than positive force.
The return — the soul's ascent through philosophy and contemplation back toward the One, the experience of mystical union (henosis).
Beauty — the soul's recognition of its own divine nature reflected in beautiful things, the path of beauty as an ascent toward the One.
Providence — how the One governs without deliberating, the harmony of the whole including apparent evil.
“The soul is a divine being and dwells in more heavenly places, but has entered body. The soul is a minor god, a derivative aspect of the divine: but, compelled by its powers and due to its tendency to bring order to whatever is beneath it, it penetrates to this lower sphere (the material world) in a voluntary plunge. If it turns back quickly, all is well: it will not be injured by acquiring the knowledge of evil and coming to understand sin. (But the soul may dive too deep into matter, and linger too long, and get stuck.)” - Plotinus, Enneads
"This is the Heaven where all is transparent, and there is nothing dark or impenetrable, and all is clear and visible both within and from all sides. For light meets light, and each thing contains and sees everything in the other. And everything is everywhere, and everything is everything, and each thing is everything. And the radiance is infinite, because all is great, and even that which is small is also great. And the sun contains all the stars, and each star is the sun and all stars. In each, however, a special quality predominates, yet all things are visible in each. And the essence of each thing is reason, and it itself is reason. And each part always comes from the whole, and is at once both part and whole. For it truly is a part, but one with keen vision will see it as the whole."
— Plotinus
"That which resumes all under a unity is a Principle in which all things exist together and the single thing is All. From this Principle, which remains internally unmoved, particular things push forth as from a single root which never itself emerges. They are a branching into part, into multiplicity, each single outgrowth bearing its trace of the common source. Thus, phase by phase, there in finally the production into this world; some things close still to the root, others widely separate in the continuous progression until we have, in our metaphor, bough and crest, foliage and fruit. At the one side all is one point of unbroken rest, on the other is the ceaseless process, leaf and fruit, all the things of process carrying ever within themselves the Reason-Principles of the Upper Sphere, and striving to become trees in their own minor order and producing, if at all, only what is in strict gradation from themselves. As for the abandoned spaces in what corresponds to the branches these two draw upon the root, from which, despite all their variance, they also derive; and the branches again operate upon their own furthest extremities: operation is to be traced only from point to next point, but, in the fact, there has been both inflow and outgo [of creative or modifying force] at the very root which, itself again, has its priors. The things that act upon each other are branchings from a far-off beginning and so stand distinct; but they derive initially from the one source: all interaction is like that of brothers, resemblant as drawing life from the same parents." — The Enneads by Plotinus
"Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smooths there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, and never cease chiselling your statue, until there shall shine out on you the godlike splendor of virtue." - Plotinus, Enneads I.6.9