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(2) And a middle rank is the contemplative, which participates in certain Divine Offices in all purity, according to its capacity, which is assigned to the Priests for its enlightenment. For it is evident, in my opinion, that, that having been cleansed from all unholy impurity, and having acquired the pure and unmoved steadfastness of its own mind, is led back, ministerially, to the contemplative habit and power, and communicates the most Divine symbols, according to its capability, filled with every holy joy in their contemplations and communions, mounting gradually to the Divine love of their science, through their elevating powers. This, I affirm, is the rank of the holy people, as having passed through complete purification, and deemed worthy, as far as is lawful, both of the reverent vision, and participation of the most luminous Mystic Rites.

(93) And at its close shall be elected The elect righteous of the eternal plant of righteousness, To receive sevenfold instruction concerning all His creation. [11. For who is there of all the children of men that is able to hear the voice of the Holy One without being troubled? And who can think His thoughts? and who is there that can behold all the works of heaven?

(4) This, then, according to my science, is the first rank of the Heavenly Beings which encircle and stand immediately around God; and without symbol, and without interruption, dances round His eternal knowledge in the most exalted ever-moving stability as in Angels; viewing purely many and blessed contemplations, and illuminated with simple and immediate splendours, and filled with Divine nourishment,--many indeed by the first-given profusion, but one by the unvariegated and unifying oneness of the supremely Divine banquet, deemed worthy indeed of much participation and co-operation with God, by their assimilation to Him, as far as attainable, of their excellent habits and energies, and knowing many Divine things pre-eminently, and participating in supremely Divine science and knowledge, as is lawful. Wherefore the Word of God has transmitted its hymns to those on earth, in which are Divinely shewn the excellency of its most exalted illumination. For some of its members, to speak after sensible perception, proclaim as a "voice of many waters," "Blessed is the glory of the Lord from His place" and others cry aloud that frequent and most august hymn of God, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of Sabaoth, the whole earth is full of His glory." These most excellent hymnologies of the supercelestial Minds we have already unfolded to the best of our ability in the "Treatise concerning the Divine Hymns," and have spoken sufficiently concerning them in that Treatise, from which, by way of remembrance, it is enough to produce so much as is necessary to the present occasion, namely, "That the first Order, having been illuminated, from this the supremely Divine goodness, as permissible, in theological science, as a Hierarchy reflecting that Goodness transmitted to those next after it," teaching briefly this, "That it is just and right that the august Godhead -- Itself both above praise, and all-praiseworthy--should be known and extolled by the God-receptive minds, as is attainable; for they as images of God are, as the Oracles say, the Divine places of the supremely Divine repose; and further, that It is Monad and Unit tri-subsistent, sending forth His most kindly forethought to all things being, from the super-heavenly Minds to the lowest of the earth; as super-original Origin and Cause of every essence, and grasping all things super-essentially in a resistless embrace. Next: Caput VIII. Sacred Texts | Christianity « Previous: The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite: On the Heavenly Hi... Index Next: The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite: On the Heavenly Hi... » Sacred Texts | Christianity

(45) "Then, being naked of all the accumulations of the seven Rings, the soul comes to the Eighth Sphere, namely, the ring of the fixed stars. Here, freed of all illusion, it dwells in the Light and sings praises to the Father in a voice which only the pure of spirit may understand. Behold, O Hermes, there is a great mystery in the Eighth Sphere, for the Milky Way is the seed-ground of souls, and from it they drop into the Rings, and to the Milky Way they return again from the wheels of Saturn. But some cannot climb the seven-runged ladder of the Rings. So they wander in darkness below and are swept into eternity with the illusion of sense and earthiness.

(2) This, then, is the revelation of their names, so far as we can give it; and we ought to say what we think their Hierarchy is. For I suppose we have sufficiently shewn above, that the purpose of every Hierarchy is an unswerving devotion to the divine imitation of the Divine Likeness, and that every Hierarchical function is set apart for the sacred reception and distribution of an undefiled purification, and Divine Light, and perfecting science. And now I pray that I may speak worthily of the most exalted Minds--how the Hierarchy amongst them is exhibited through the Oracles. One must consider, then, that the Hierarchy is akin, and in every respect like, to the first Beings, who are established after the Godhead, who gave them Being, and who are marshalled, as it were, in Its very vestibule, who surpass every unseen and seen created power. We must then regard them as pure, not as though they had been freed from unholy stains and blemishes, nor yet as though they were unreceptive of earthly fancies, but as far exalted above every stain of remissness and every inferior holiness, as befits the highest degree of purity--established above the most Godlike powers, and clinging unflinchingly to their own self-moved and same-moved rank in their invariable love of God, conscious in no respect whatever of any declivity to a worse condition, but having the unsullied fixity of their own Godlike identity--never liable to fall, and always unmoved; and again, as "contemplative," not contemplators of intellectual symbols as sensible, nor as being led to the Divine Being by the varied texture of holy representations written for meditation, but as being filled with all kinds of immaterial knowledge of higher light, and satiated, as permissible, with the beautifying and original beauty of super-essential and thrice manifested contemplation, and thus, being deemed worthy of the Communion with Jesus, they do not stamp pictorially the deifying similitude in divinely-formed images, but, as being really near to Him, in first participation of the knowledge of His deifying illuminations; nay more, that the imitation of God is given to them in the highest possible degree, and they participate, so far as is allowable to them, in His deifying and philanthropic virtues, in the power of a first manifestation; and, likewise as "perfected," not as being illuminated with an analytic science of sacred variety, but as being filled with a first and pre-eminent deification, as beseems the most exalted science of the works of God, possible in Angels. For, not through other holy Beings, but being ministered from the very Godhead, by the immediate elevation to It, by their power, and rank, surpassing all, they are both established near the All-Holy without any shadow of turning, and are conducted for contemplation to the immaterial and intelligible comeliness, as far as permissible, and are initiated into the scientific methods of the works of God, as being first and around God, being ministered, in the highest degree, from the very source of consecration.

(26) And then, with all the energisings of the harmony stript from him, clothed in his proper Power, he cometh to that Nature which belongs unto the Eighth, and there with those-that-are hymneth the Father. They who are there welcome his coming there with joy; and he, made like to them that sojourn there, doth further hear the Powers who are above the Nature that belongs unto the Eighth, singing their songs of praise to God in language of their own. And then they, in a band, go to the Father home; of their own selves they make surrender of themselves to Powers, and [thus] becoming Powers they are in God. This the good end for those who have gained Gnosis - to be made one with God. Why shouldst thou then delay? Must it not be, since thou hast all received, that thou shouldst to the worthy point the way, in order that through thee the race of mortal kind may by [thy] God be saved?

(8) Then the Divine Hierarch, advancing, offers a holy prayer over the man fallen asleep. After the prayer, both the Hierarch himself salutes him, and next all who are present. Now the prayer beseeches the supremely Divine Goodness to remit to the man fallen asleep all the failings committed by reason of human infirmity, and to transfer him in light and land of living, into the bosom of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob: in a place where grief and sorrow and sighing are no more. It is evident, then, as I think, that these, the rewards of the pious, are most blessed. For what can be equal to an immortality entirely without grief and luminous with light. Especially if all the promises which pass man's understanding, and which are signified to us by signs adapted to our capacity, fall short, in their description, of their actual truth. For we must remember that the Logion is true, that "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man to conceive, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him." "Bosoms" of the blessed Patriarchs, and of all the other pious men, are, in my judgment, the most divine and blessed inheritances, which await all godly men, in that consummation which grows not old, and is full of blessedness.

(12) But, inasmuch as the Divine Being is source of sacred order, within which the holy Minds regulate themselves, he, who recurs to the proper view of Nature, will see his proper self in what he was originally, and will acquire this, as the first holy gift, from his recovery to the light. Now he, who has well looked upon his own proper condition with unbiassed eyes, will depart from the gloomy recesses of ignorance, but being imperfect he will not, of his own accord, at once desire the most perfect union and participation of God, but little by little will be carried orderly and reverently through things present to things more forward, and through these to things foremost, and when perfected, to the supremely Divine summit. An illustration of this decorous and sacred order is the modesty of the proselyte, and his prudence in his own affairs in having the sponsor as leader of the way to the Hierarch. The Divine Blessedness receives the man, thus conducted, into communion with Itself, and imparts to him the proper light as a kind of sign, making him godly and sharer of the inheritance of the godly, and sacred ordering; of which things the Hierarch's seal, given to the proselyte, and the saving enrolment of the priests are a sacred symbol, registering him amongst those who are being saved, and placing in the sacred memorials, beside himself also his sponsor,--the one indeed, as a true lover of the life-giving way to truth and a companion of a godly guide, and the other, as an unerring conductor of his follower by the Divinely-taught directions.

(3) It is necessary then, as I think, that those who are being purified should be entirely perfected, without stain, and be freed from all dissimilar confusion; that those who are being illuminated should be filled with the Divine Light, conducted to the habit and faculty of contemplation in all purity of mind; that those who are being initiated should be separated from the imperfect, and become recipients of that perfecting science of the sacred things contemplated. Further, that those who purify should impart, from their own abundance of purity, their own proper holiness; that those who illuminate, as being more luminous intelligences, whose function it is to- receive and to impart light, and who are joyfully filled with holy gladness, that these should overflow, in proportion to their own overflowing light, towards those who are worthy of enlightenment; and that those who make perfect, as being skilled in the impartation of perfection, should perfect those being perfected, through the holy instruction, in the science of the holy things contemplated. Thus each rank of the Hierarchical Order is led, in its own degree, to the Divine co-operation, by performing, through grace and God-given power, those things which are naturally and supernaturally in the Godhead, and accomplished by It superessentially, and manifested hierarchically, for the attainable imitation of the God-loving Minds.

(5) We shall find the Mystic Theologians enfolding these things not only around the illustrations of the Heavenly Orders, but also, sometimes, around the supremely Divine Revelations Themselves. At one time, indeed, they extol It under exalted imagery as Sun of Righteousness, as Morning Star rising divinely in the mind, and as Light illuming without veil and for contemplation; and at other times, through things in our midst, as Fire, shedding its innocuous light; as Water, furnishing a fulness of life, and, to speak symbolically, flowing into a belly, and bubbling forth rivers flowing irresistibly; and at other times, from things most remote, as sweet-smelling ointment, as Head Corner-stone. But they also clothe It in forms of wild beasts, and attach to It identity with a Lion, and Panther, and say that it shall be a Leopard, and a rushing Bear. But, I will also add, that which seems to be more dishonourable than all, and the most incongruous, viz. that distinguished theologians have shewn it to us as representing Itself under the form of a worm. Thus do all the godly-wise, and interpreters of the secret inspiration, separate the holy of holies from the uninitiated and the unholy, to keep them undefined, and prefer the dissimilar description of holy things, so that Divine things should neither be easily reached by the profane, nor those who diligently contemplate the Divine imagery rest in the types as though they were true; and so Divine things should be honoured by the true negations, and by comparisons with the lowest things, which are diverse from their proper resemblance. There is then nothing absurd if they depict even the Heavenly Beings under incongruous dissimilar similitudes, for causes aforesaid. For probably not even we should have come to an investigation, from not seeing our way,--not to say to mystic meaning through an accurate enquiry into Divine things,--unless the deformity of the descriptions representing the Angels had shocked us, not permitting our mind to linger in the discordant representations, but rousing us utterly to reject the earthly proclivities, and accustoming us to elevate ourselves through things that are seen, to their supermundane mystical meanings. Let these things suffice to have been said on account of the material and incongruous descriptions of the holy Angels in the Holy Oracles. And next, it is necessary to define what we think the Hierarchy is in itself, and what benefit those who possess a Hierarchy derive; from the same. But let Christ lead the discourse--if it be lawful to me to say--He Who is mine,--the Inspiration of all Hierarchical revelation. And thou, my son, after the pious rule of our Hierarchical tradition, do thou religiously listen to things religiously uttered, becoming inspired through instruction in inspired things; and when thou hast enfolded the Divine things in the secret recesses of thy mind, guard them closely from the profane multitude as being uniform, for it is not lawful, as the Oracles say, to cast to swine the unsullied and bright and beautifying comeliness of the intelligible pearls.

(39) Here mine eyes saw their dwellings with His righteous angels, And their resting-places with the holy. And they petitioned and interceded and prayed for the children of men, And righteousness flowed before them as water, And mercy like dew upon the earth: Thus it is amongst them for ever and ever.

(1) We must, then, most pious of pious sons, demonstrate from the supermundane and most sacred Oracles and traditions, that ours is a Hierarchy of the inspired and Divine and Deifying science, and of operation, and of consecration, for those who have been initiated with the initiation of the sacred revelation derived from the hierarchical mysteries. See, however, that you do not put to scorn things most holy (Holy of Holies); but rather treat them reverently, and you will honour the things of the hidden God by intellectual and obscure researches, carefully guarding them from the participation and defilement of the uninitiated, and reverently sharing holy things with the holy alone, by a holy enlightenment. For thus, as the Word of God has taught us who feast at His Banquet, even Jesus Himself--the most supremely Divine Mind and superessential, the Source and Essence, and most supremely Divine Power of every Hierarchy and Sanctification and Divine operation--illuminates the blessed Beings who are superior to us, in a manner more clear, and at the same time more intellectual, and assimilates them to His own Light, as far as possible; and by our love of things beautiful elevated to Him, and which elevates us, folds together our many diversities, and after perfecting into a uniform and Divine life and habit and operation, holily bequeaths the power of the Divine Priesthood; from which by approaching to the holy exercise of the priestly office, we ourselves become nearer to the Beings above us, by assimilation, according to our power, to their abiding and: unchangeable holy steadfastness; and thus by looking upwards to the blessed and supremely Divine self of Jesus, and reverently gazing upon whatever. we are permitted to see, and illuminated with the knowledge of the visions, we shall be able to become, as regards the science of Divine mysteries, purified and purifiers; images of Light, and workers, with God, perfected and perfecting.

(9) But thou wilt say that the Ranks undergoing purification utterly fall short of the Heavenly Hierarchies (for it is neither permitted nor true to say that any heavenly Ordering is defiled), yea, I would altogether affirm myself, that they are entirely without blemish, and possess a perfect purity above this world, unless I had completely fallen away from a religious mind. For if any of them should have become captive to evil, and have fallen from the heavenly and undefiled harmony of the divine Minds, he would be brought to the gloomy fall of the rebellious multitudes. But one may reverently say with regard to the Heavenly Hierarchy, that the illuminating from God in things hitherto unknown is a purification to the subordinate Beings, leading them to a more perfect science of the supremely Divine kinds of knowledge, and purifying them as far as possible from the ignorance of those things of which they had not hitherto the science, conducted, as they are, by the first and more Divine Beings to the higher and more luminous splendours of the visions of God: and so there are Ranks being illuminated and perfected, and purifying and illuminating and perfecting, after the example of the Heavenly Hierarchy; since the highest and more Divine Beings purify the subordinate, holy, and reverent Orders, from all ignorance (in ranks and proportions of the Heavenly Hierarchies), and filling them with the most Divine illuminatings, and perfecting in the most pure science of the supremely Divine conceptions. For we have already said, and the Oracles divinely demonstrate, that all the heavenly Orders are not the same, in all the sacred sciences of the God-contemplating visions; but the first, from G.od immediately, and, through these, again from God, the subordinate are illuminated, in proportion to their powers, with the most luminous glories of the supremely Divine ray. Next: Caput VII. Sacred Texts | Christianity « Previous: The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite: Ecclesiastical Hie... Index Next: The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite: Ecclesiastical Hie... » Sacred Texts | Christianity

(39) And in that place mine eyes saw the Elect One of righteousness and of faith, 7a. And I saw his dwelling-place under the wings of the Lord of Spirits. 6b. And righteousness shall prevail in his days, And the righteous and elect shall be without number before Him for ever and ever. 7b. And all the righteous and elect before Him shall be †strong† as fiery lights, And their mouth shall be full of blessing, And their lips extol the name of the Lord of Spirits, And righteousness before Him shall never fail, [And uprightness shall never fail before Him.]

(4) He who said this, used to affirm, that this vision was shewn to the Theologian, through one of the holy and blessed Angels set over us, and that from his illuminating direction, he was elevated to that intellectual contemplation in which he saw the most exalted Beings seated (to speak symbolically) under God, and with God, and around God, and the super-princely Eminence elevated unspeakably above them and all, seated on high in the midst of the superior Powers. The Theologian then learned, from the things seen, that, as compared with every super-essential pre-eminence, the Divine Being was seated incomparably above every visible and invisible power, yea, even that It is exalted above all, as the Reality of all things, as Absolute--not even like to the first of created Beings;--further also, that It is source and essentiating Cause, and unalterable Fixity of the undissolved continuance of all things, from, Which is both the being and the well-being of the most exalted Powers themselves. Then he revealed that the Godlike powers of the most holy Seraphim, themselves, whose sacred appellation signifies the Fiery, concerning which we shall shortly speak as best we can, conducted the elevations of the empyrean power to the Divine likeness. And, the holy Theologian, by viewing the description of free and most exalted elevation of the sixfold wings to the Divine Being in first, middle, and last conceptions, and further, their endless feet and many faces, and their extended wings--one under their feet, and the other over their faces, as seen in vision, and the perpetual movement of their middle wings--was brought to the intelligible knowledge of the things seen, since there was manifested to him the power of the most exalted minds for deep penetration and contemplation, and the sacred reverence which they have, supermundanely, for the bold and courageous and unattainable scrutiny into higher and deeper mysteries; and of the incessant and high-flying perpetual movement of their Godlike energies in due proportion. But he was also taught the hidden mysteries of that supremely Divine and much esteemed Hymn of Praise--whilst the Angel who formed the vision imparts, as far as possible, his own sacred knowledge to the Theologian. He also taught him this, that the participation, as far as attainable, in the supremely Divine and radiant purity, is a purification to the pure however pure; and it being accomplished from the very Godhead by most exalted causes, for all the sacred Minds by a superessential hiddenness, is in a manner more clear, and exhibits and distributes itself, in a higher degree, to the highest powers around It; but with regard to the second, or us, the lowest mental powers, as each is distant from, as regards the Divine likeness, so It contracts its brilliant illumination to the single unknowable of its own hiddenness. And it illuminates the second, severally, through the first; and, if one must speak briefly, it is firstly brought from hiddenness to manifestation through the first powers. This, then, the Theologian was taught by the Angel who was leading him to Light--that purification, and all the supremely Divine operations, illuminating through the first Beings, are distributed to all the rest, according to the relation of each for the deifying participations. Wherefore he reasonably attributed to the Seraphim, after God, the characteristic of purification by fire. There is nothing, then, absurd, if the Seraphim is said to purify the Prophet. For, as God purifies all, by being cause of every purification, yea, rather (for I use a familiar illustration) just as our Hierarch, when purifying or enlightening through his Leitourgoi or Priests, is said himself to purify and enlighten, since the Orders consecrated through him attribute to him their own proper sacred operations; so also the Angel who effected the purification of the Theologian attributes his own purifying science and power to God, indeed, as Cause, but to the Seraphim as first-operating Hierarch; as any one might say with Angelic reverence, whilst teaching one who was being purified by him, "There is a preeminent Source, and Essence, and Worker, and Cause of the cleansing wrought upon you from me, He Who brings both the first Beings into Being, and holds them together by their fixity around Himself, and keeps them without change and without fall, moving them to the first participations of His own Providential energies (for this, He Who taught me these things used to say, shews the mission of the Seraphim), but as Hierarch and Leader after God, the Marshal of the most exalted Beings, from whom I was taught to purify after the example of God -- this is he, who cleanses thee through me, through whom the Cause and Creator of all cleansing brought forth His own provident energies from the Hidden even to us." These things, then, he taught me, and I impart them to thee. Let it be a part of thy intellectual and discriminating skill, either, to acquit each of the causes assigned from objection, and to honour this before the other as having likelihood and good reason, and perhaps, the truth; or, to find out from yourself something more allied to the real truth, or to learn from another; (God, of course, giving expression, and Angels supplying it;) and to reveal to us, the friends of Angels, a view more luminous if it should be so, and to me specially welcome.

(14) As the Tabernacle was the dwelling place of God among men, likewise the soul body in man is the dwelling place of his divine nature, round which gathers a twelvefold material constitution in the same manner that the tribes of Israel camped about the enclosure sacred to Jehovah. The idea that the Tabernacle was really symbolic of an invisible spiritual truth outside the comprehension of the Israelites is substantiated by a statement made in the eighth chapter of Hebrews: "Who serve unto the paterne and shadowe of heavenly things, as Moses was warned by God, when he was about to finish the Tabernacle." Here we find the material physical place of worship called a "shadow" or symbol of a spiritual institution, invisible but omnipotent.

(11) This is the purport of that rule of our Mysteries: Nothing Divulged to the Uninitiate: the Supreme is not to be made a common story, the holy things may not be uncovered to the stranger, to any that has not himself attained to see. There were not two; beholder was one with beheld; it was not a vision compassed but a unity apprehended. The man formed by this mingling with the Supreme must- if he only remember- carry its image impressed upon him: he is become the Unity, nothing within him or without inducing any diversity; no movement now, no passion, no outlooking desire, once this ascent is achieved; reasoning is in abeyance and all Intellection and even, to dare the word, the very self; caught away, filled with God, he has in perfect stillness attained isolation; all the being calmed, he turns neither to this side nor to that, not even inwards to himself; utterly resting he has become very rest. He belongs no longer to the order of the beautiful; he has risen beyond beauty; he has overpassed even the choir of the virtues; he is like one who, having penetrated the inner sanctuary, leaves the temple images behind him- though these become once more first objects of regard when he leaves the holies; for There his converse was not with image, not with trace, but with the very Truth in the view of which all the rest is but of secondary concern.

There, indeed, it was scarcely vision, unless of a mode unknown; it was a going forth from the self, a simplifying, a renunciation, a reach towards contact and at the same time a repose, a meditation towards adjustment. This is the only seeing of what lies within the holies: to look otherwise is to fail.

Things here are signs; they show therefore to the wiser teachers how the supreme God is known; the instructed priest reading the sign may enter the holy place and make real the vision of the inaccessible.

Even those that have never found entry must admit the existence of that invisible; they will know their source and Principle since by principle they see principle and are linked with it, by like they have contact with like and so they grasp all of the divine that lies within the scope of mind. Until the seeing comes they are still craving something, that which only the vision can give; this Term, attained only by those that have overpassed all, is the All-Transcending.

It is not in the soul's nature to touch utter nothingness; the lowest descent is into evil and, so far, into non-being: but to utter nothing, never. When the soul begins again to mount, it comes not to something alien but to its very self; thus detached, it is not in nothingness but in itself; self-gathered it is no longer in the order of being; it is in the Supreme.

There is thus a converse in virtue of which the essential man outgrows Being, becomes identical with the Transcendent of Being. The self thus lifted, we are in the likeness of the Supreme: if from that heightened self we pass still higher- image to archetype- we have won the Term of all our journeying. Fallen back again, we awaken the virtue within until we know ourselves all order once more; once more we are lightened of the burden and move by virtue towards Intellectual-Principle and through the Wisdom in That to the Supreme.

This is the life of gods and of the godlike and blessed among men, liberation from the alien that besets us here, a life taking no pleasure in the things of earth, the passing of solitary to solitary.