Enneads III.5: Of Love, or "Eros."
Interpretation of the Platonic Myth
To explain if Love be born of Venus, or if he were only born contemporaneously with his mother, we shall have to study something about Venus. What is Venus? Is she the mother of Love, or only his contemporary? As answer hereto we shall observe that there are two Venuses. The second (or Popular Venus) is daughter of Jupiter and Dione, and she presides over earthly marriages. The first Venus, the celestial one, daughter of Uranus (by Plato, in his Cratylus, interpreted to mean “contemplation of things above”), has no mother, and does not preside over marriages, for the reason that there are none in heaven. The Celestial Venus, therefore, daughter of Kronos, that is, of Intelligence, is the divine Soul, which is born pure of pure Intelligence, and which dwells above. As her nature does not admit of inclining earthward, she neither can nor will descend here below. She is, therefore, a form of existence (or, an hypostasis), separated from matter, not participating in its nature. This is the significance of the allegory that she had no mother. Rather than a guardian, therefore, she should be considered a deity, as she is pure Being unmingled (with matter), and abiding within herself.
LOVE, LIKE HIGHER SOUL, OR LIGHT, IS INSEPARABLE FROM ITS SOURCE.
In fact, that which is immediately born of Intelligence is pure in itself, because, by its very proximity to Intelligence, it has more innate force, desiring to unite itself firmly to the principle that begat it, and which can retain it there on high. The soul which is thus suspended to Intelligence could not fall down, any more than the light which shines around the sun could separate from the body from which it radiates, and to which it is attached.