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Passages similar to: On the Mysteries — I, Chapter XV

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Neoplatonic

On the Mysteries

I, Chapter XV (4)

If, indeed, it is considered that sacred prayers are sent to men from the Gods themselves, that they are certain symbols of the divinities, and that they are only known to the Gods, with whom, in a certain respect, they possess the same power,—how can it any longer be justly apprehended, that a supplication of this kind is sensible, and not divine and intellectual? Or what passion can accede to a thing of this kind, the purity of which the most worthy human manners cannot easily equal? You say, however, “ that the things which are offered in supplications are offered as to sensitive and psychical natures .” And, indeed, if the offerings consisted of corporeal and composite powers alone, or of such things as are merely subservient to corporeal organs, your assertion would be true. But as the offerings participate of incorporeal forms, of certain reasons, and more simple measures, the aptitude of them is to be surveyed according to this alone. And if a certain alliance, or similitude, is present, which is either proximate or remote, it is sufficient to effect the contact of which we are now speaking. For there is not any thing which in the smallest degree is adapted to the Gods, to which the Gods are not immediately present, and with which they are not conjoined. The connexion, therefore, of supplications with the Gods, is not as with sensitive or psychical natures, but as with divine forms, and with the Gods themselves [as Gods, i. e. as superessential hyparxes]. So that we have sufficiently spoken in opposition to this division.

Christian Mysticism

The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite

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The Celestial Hierarchy, Caput II (2)

For any one might say that the cause why forms are naturally attributed to the formless, and shapes to the shapeless, is not alone our capacity which ...

(2) But if any one think well to accept the sacred compositions as of things simple and unknown in their own nature, and beyond our contemplation, but thinks the imagery of the holy minds in the Oracles is incongruous, and that all this is, so to speak, a rude scenic representation of the angelic names; and further says that the theologians ought, when they have come to the bodily representation of creatures altogether without body, to represent and display them by appropriate and, as far as possible, cognate figures, taken, at any rate, from our most honoured and immaterial and exalted beings, and ought not to clothe the heavenly and Godlike simple essences with the many forms of the lowest creatures to be found on the earth (for the one would perhaps be more adapted to our instruction, and would not degrade the celestial explanations to incongruous dissimilitudes; but the other both does violence without authority to the Divine powers, and likewise leads astray our minds, through dwelling upon these irreverent descriptions); and perhaps he will also think that the super-heavenly places are filled with certain herds of lions, and troops of horses, and bellowing songs of praise, and flocks of birds, and other living creatures, and material and less honourable things, and whatever else the similitudes of the Oracles, in every respect dissimilar, describe, for a so-called explanation, but which verge towards the absurd, and pernicious, and impassioned; now, in my opinion, the investigation of the truth demonstrates the most sacred wisdom of the Oracles, in the descriptions of the Heavenly Minds, taking forethought, as that wisdom does, wholly for each, so as neither, as one may say, to do violence to the Divine Powers, nor at the same time to enthral us in the grovelling passions of the debased imagery. For any one might say that the cause why forms are naturally attributed to the formless, and shapes to the shapeless, is not alone our capacity which is unable immediately to elevate itself to the intelligible contemplations, and that it needs appropriate and cognate instructions which present images, suitable to us, of the formless and supernatural objects of contemplation; but further, that it is most agreeable to the revealing Oracles to conceal, through mystical and sacred enigmas, and to keep the holy and secret truth respecting the supermundane minds inaccessible to the multitude. For it is not every one that is holy, nor, as the Oracles affirm, does knowledge belong to all.

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