(6) The Chaldæans call the God Dionysos (or Bacchus), Iao in the Phoenician tongue (instead of the Intelligible Light), and he is also called Sabaoth, [1] signifying that he is above the Seven poles, that is the Demiurgos.

(3) These things say, if occasion serves, and if possible, O Apollophanes, refute them, and to me, who was then both present with thee, and saw and judged and wondered with thee at them all. And in truth Apollophanes begins prophesying at that time, I know not whence, and to me he said, as if conjecturing the things taking place, "these things, O excellent Dionysius, are requitals of Divine deeds." Let so much be said by us by letter; but you are capable, both to supply the deficiency, and to bring eventually to God that distinguished man, who is wise in many things, and who perhaps will not disdain to meekly learn the truth, which is above wisdom, of our religion.

(3) But you will find that the Word of God calls gods, both the Heavenly Beings above us, and the most beloved of God, and holy men amongst us, although the Divine Hiddenness is transcendently elevated and established above all, and no created Being can. properly and wholly be said to be like unto It, except those intellectual and rational Beings who are entirely and wholly turned to Its Oneness as far as possible, and who elevate themselves incessantly to Its Divine illuminations, as far as attainable, by their imitation of God, if I may so speak, according to their power, and are deemed worthy of the same divine name. Next: Caput XIII. 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

(12) The souls of men, seeing their images in the mirror of Dionysus as it were, have entered into that realm in a leap downward from the Supreme: yet even they are not cut off from their origin, from the divine Intellect; it is not that they have come bringing the Intellectual Principle down in their fall; it is that though they have descended even to earth, yet their higher part holds for ever above the heavens.

Their initial descent is deepened since that mid-part of theirs is compelled to labour in care of the care-needing thing into which they have entered. But Zeus, the father, takes pity on their toils and makes the bonds in which they labour soluble by death and gives respite in due time, freeing them from the body, that they too may come to dwell there where the Universal Soul, unconcerned with earthly needs, has ever dwelt.

For the container of the total of things must be a self-sufficing entity and remain so: in its periods it is wrought out to purpose under its Reason-Principles which are perdurably valid; by these periods it reverts unfailingly, in the measured stages of defined life-duration, to its established character; it is leading the things of this realm to be of one voice and plan with the Supreme. And thus the kosmic content is carried forward to its purpose, everything in its co-ordinate place, under one only Reason-Principle operating alike in the descent and return of souls and to every purpose of the system.

We may know this also by the concordance of the Souls with the ordered scheme of the kosmos; they are not independent, but, by their descent, they have put themselves in contact, and they stand henceforth in harmonious association with kosmic circuit- to the extent that their fortunes, their life experiences, their choosing and refusing, are announced by the patterns of the stars- and out of this concordance rises as it were one musical utterance: the music, the harmony, by which all is described is the best witness to this truth.

Such a consonance can have been procured in one only way:

The All must, in every detail of act and experience, be an expression of the Supreme, which must dominate alike its periods and its stable ordering and the life-careers varying with the movement of the souls as they are sometimes absorbed in that highest, sometimes in the heavens, sometimes turned to the things and places of our earth. All that is Divine Intellect will rest eternally above, and could never fall from its sphere but, poised entire in its own high place, will communicate to things here through the channel of Soul. Soul in virtue of neighbourhood is more closely modelled upon the Idea uttered by the Divine Intellect, and thus is able to produce order in the movement of the lower realm, one phase maintaining the unvarying march the other adopting itself to times and season.

The depth of the descent, also, will differ- sometimes lower, sometimes less low- and this even in its entry into any given Kind: all that is fixed is that each several soul descends to a recipient indicated by affinity of condition; it moves towards the thing which it There resembled, and enters, accordingly, into the body of man or animal.

The FUMIGATION from STORAX. CADMEAN Goddess, universal queen, Thee, Semele I call, of beauteous mien; Deep-bosom'd, lovely flowing locks are thine, Mother of Bacchus, joyful and divine, The mighty offspring, whom love's thunder bright, Forc'd immature, and fright'ned into light: Born from the deathless counsels, secret, high, Of Jove Saturnian, regent of the sky Whom Proserpine permits to view the light, And visit mortals from the realms of night: Constant attending on the sacred rites, And feast triennial, which thy soul delights; When thy son's wond'rous birth mankind relate, And secrets deep, and holy celebrate. Now I invoke thee, great Cadmean queen, To bless these rites with countenance serene. Next: XLIV: To Dionysius Bassareus Triennalis Sacred Texts | Classics « Previous: The Initiations of Orpheus: XLII: To the Seasons Index Next: The Initiations of Orpheus: XLIV: To Dionysius Bassareus ... » Sacred Texts | Classics

(6) The three Divine are in this hierarchy, First the Dominions, and the Virtues next; And the third order is that of the Powers. Then in the dances twain penultimate The Principalities and Archangels wheel; The last is wholly of angelic sports. These orders upward all of them are gazing, And downward so prevail, that unto God They all attracted are and all attract. And Dionysius with so great desire To contemplate these Orders set himself, He named them and distinguished them as I do. But Gregory afterwards dissented from him; Wherefore, as soon as he unclosed his eyes Within this heaven, he at himself did smile. And if so much of secret truth a mortal Proffered on earth, I would not have thee marvel, For he who saw it here revealed it to him, With much more of the truth about these circles."

(3) I might add this not inappropriately, that each heavenly and human mind has within itself its own special first, and middle, and last ranks, and powers, manifested severally in due degree, for the aforesaid particular mystical meanings of the Hierarchical illuminations, according to which, each one participates-, so far as is lawful and attainable to him, in the most spotless purification, the most copious light, the pre-eminent perfection. For there is nothing that is self-perfect, or absolutely without need of perfecting, except the really Self-perfect and preeminently Perfect. Next: Caput XI. 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

(4) And Eubulus, also a comic poet, thus writes respecting sacrifices: "But to the gods the tail alone And thigh, as if to paederasts you sacrifice." And introducing Dionysus in Semele, he represents him disputing: "First if they offer aught to me, there are Who offer blood, the bladder, not the heart Or caul. For I no flesh do ever eat That's sweeter than the thigh."

(2) But we affirm that, whilst often using the appellation, Heavenly Powers, for all in common, we do not introduce a sort of. confusion of the characteristics of each Order. But, inasmuch as all the Divine Minds, by the supermundane description given of them, are distributed into three,--into essence, and power, and energy,--when we speak of them all, or some of them, indiscriminately, as Heavenly Beings or Heavenly Powers, we must consider that we manifest those about whom we speak in a general way, from their essence or power severally. For we must not apply the superior characteristic of those holy Powers, whom we have already sufficiently distinguished, to the Beings which are entirely inferior to them, so as to overthrow the unconfused order of the Angelic ranks. For according to the correct account which we have already frequently given, the superior Orders possess abundantly the sacred characteristics of the inferior, but the lowest do not possess the superior completeness of the more reverend, since the first-manifested illuminations are revealed to them, through the first Order, in proportion to their capacity. Next: Caput XII. 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

(1) The world used in its peril to believe That the fair Cypria delirious love Rayed out, in the third epicycle turning; Wherefore not only unto her paid honour Of sacrifices and of votive cry The ancient nations in the ancient error, But both Dione honoured they and Cupid, That as her mother, this one as her son, And said that he had sat in Dido's lap; And they from her, whence I beginning take, Took the denomination of the star That woos the sun, now following, now in front. I was not ware of our ascending to it; But of our being in it gave full faith My Lady whom I saw more beauteous grow. And as within a flame a spark is seen, And as within a voice a voice discerned, When one is steadfast, and one comes and goes, Within that light beheld I other lamps Move in a circle, speeding more and less, Methinks in measure of their inward vision. From a cold cloud descended never winds, Or visible or not, so rapidly They would not laggard and impeded seem

(1) [Asclepius] Thou dost not mean their statues, dost thou, O Thrice-greatest one?

[Trismegistus] [I mean their] statues, O Asclepius,—dost thou not see how much thou even, doubtest?—statues, ensouled with sense, and filled with spirit, which work such mighty and such [strange] results,—statues which can foresee what is to come, and which perchance can prophesy, foretelling things by dreams and many other ways,—[statues] that take their strength away from men, or cure their sorrow, if they do so deserve. Dost thou not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is the image of the Heaven ; or, what is truer still, the transference, or the descent, of all that are in governance or exercise in Heaven? And if more truly [still] it must be said,—this land of ours is Shrine of all the World.

(5) Wishing to express Sun in writing, they make a circle; and Moon, a figure like the Moon, like its proper shape. But in using the figurative style, by transposing and transferring, by changing and by transforming in many ways as suits them, they draw characters. In relating the praises of the kings in theological myths, they write in anaglyphs. Let the following stand as a specimen of the third species - the Enigmatic. For the rest of the stars, on account of their oblique course, they have figured like the bodies of serpents; but the sun, like that of a beetle, because it makes a round figure of ox-dung, and rolls it before its face. And they say that this creature lives six months under ground, and the other division of the year above ground, and emits its seed into the ball, and brings forth; and that there is not a female beetle. All then, in a word, who have spoken of divine things, both Barbarians and Greeks, have veiled the first principles of things, and delivered the truth in enigmas, and symbols, and allegories, and metaphors, and such like tropes. Such also are the oracles among the Greeks. And the Pythian Apollo is called Loxias. Also the maxims of those among the Greeks called wise men, in a few sayings indicate the unfolding of matter of considerable importance. Such certainly is that maxim, "Spare Time:" either because life is short, and we ought not to expend this time in vain; or, on the other hand, it bids you spare your personal expenses; so that, though you live many years, necessaries may not fail you. Similarly also the maxim "Know thyself" shows many things; both that thou art mortal, and that thou wast born a human being; and also that, in comparison with the other excellences of life, thou art of no account, because thou sayest that thou art rich or renowned; or, on the other hand, that, being rich or renowned, you are not honoured on account of your advantages alone. And it says, Know for what thou wert born, and whose image thou art; and what is thy essence, and what thy creation, and what thy relation to God, and the like. And the Spirit says by Isaiah the prophet, "I will give thee treasures, hidden, dark." Now wisdom, hard to hunt, is the treasures of God and unfailing riches. But those, taught in theology by those prophets, the poets, philosophize much by way of a hidden sense. I mean Orpheus, Linus, Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiod, and those in this fashion wise. The persuasive style of poetry is for them a veil for the many.

(6) First of all, idols are to be rejected. Such, then, being the case, the Greeks ought by the Law and the Prophets to learn to worship one God only, the only Sovereign; then to be taught by the apostle, "but to us an idol is no, thing in the world," since nothing among created things can be a likeness of God; and further, to be taught that none of those images which they worship can be similitudes: for the race of souls is not in form such as the Greeks fashion their idols. For souls are invisible; not only those that are rational, but those also of the other animals. And their bodies never become parts of the souls themselves, but organs - partly as seats, partly as vehicles - and in other cases possessions in various ways. But it is not possible to copy accurately even the likenesses of the organs; since, were it so, one might model the sun, as it is seen, and take the likeness of the rainbow in colours.

(9) And, in short, it is said that Pythagoras was emulous of the Orphic mode of writing and [piety of] disposition; and that he honored the Gods in a way similar to that of Orpheus, placing them in images and in brass, not conjoined to our forms, but to divine receptacles; because they comprehend and provide for all things; and have a nature and morphe similar to the universe. He also promulgated purifications, and initiations as they are called, which contain the most accurate knowledge of the Gods. And farther still, it is said, that he was the author of a compound divine philosophy and worship of the Gods; having learnt indeed some things from the followers of Orpheus, but others from the Egyptian priests; some from the Chaldæans and Magi; some from the mysteries performed in Eleusis, in Imbrus, Samothracia, and Delos; and some also from those which are performed by the Celtæ, and in Iberia.

It is also said that the Sacred Discourse of Pythagoras is extant among the Latins, and is read not to all, nor by all of them, but by those who are promptly disposed to learn what is excellent, and apply themselves to nothing base. He likewise ordained that men should make libations thrice, and observed that Apollo delivered oracles from the tripod, because the triad is the first number. That sacrifices also should be made to Venus on the sixth day, because this number is the first that partakes of every number , and, when divided in every possible way, receives the power of the numbers subtracted and of those that remain. But that it is necessary to sacrifice to Hercules on the eighth day of the month from the beginning, looking in so doing to his being born in the seventh month.

He further asserted, that it was necessary that he who entered a temple should be clothed with a pure garment, and in which no one had slept; because sleep in the same manner as the black and the brown, is an indication of sluggishness; but purity is a sign of equality and justice in reasoning. He also ordered, that if blood should be found involuntarily spilt in a temple, a lustration should be made, either in a golden vessel, or with the water of the sea; the former of these [i. e. gold] being the most beautiful of things, and a measure by which the price of all things is regulated; but the latter as he conceived being the progeny of a moist nature, and the nutriment of the first and more common matter.

He likewise said, that it was not proper to bring forth children in a temple; because it is not holy that in a temple the divine part of the soul should be bound to the body. He further ordained, that on a festive day neither the hair should be cut, nor the nails paired; not thinking it fit that we should leave the service of the Gods for the purpose of increasing our good. He also said, that a louse ought not to be killed in a temple; conceiving that a divine power ought not to participate of any thing superfluous and corruptible. But that the Gods should be honored with cedar, laurel, cypress, oak, and myrtle; and that the body should not be purified with these, nor should any of them be divided by the teeth.

He likewise ordained, that what is boiled should not be roasted; signifying by this that mildness is not in want of anger. But he would not suffer the bodies of the dead to be burned; following in this the Magi, being unwilling that any thing divine should communicate with a mortal nature. He likewise thought it was holy for the dead to be carried out in white garments; obscurely signifying by this the simple and first nature, according to number and the principle of all things. But above all things he ordained, that an oath should be taken religiously; since that which is behind is long. And he said, that it is much more holy to be injured than to kill a man: for judgment is deposited in Hades, where the soul and its essence, and the first nature of things are [properly] estimated.

Farther still, he ordered that sepulchral chests [i. e. biers] should not be made of cypress, because the sceptre of Jupiter was made of this wood, or for some other mystic reason. He likewise ordained that libations should be performed before the table of Jupiter the Saviour, and of Hercules and the Dioscuri; in so doing celebrating Jupiter as the presiding cause and leader of this nutriment; Hercules, as the power of nature; and the Dioscuri, as the symphony of all things. But he said, that libations should not be offered with closed eyes. For he did not think it fit, that any thing beautiful should be undertaken with shame and bashfulness. Moreover, when it thundered, he ordained that the earth should be touched, in remembrance of the generation of things.

But he ordered that temples should be entered from places on the right hand, and that they should be departed out of from the left hand. For he asserted that the right hand is the principle of what is called the odd number, and is divine; but that the left hand is a symbol of the even number, and of that which is dissolved. And such is the mode which he is said to have adopted in the cultivation of piety. But other particulars which we have omitted concerning it, may be conjectured from what has been said. So that I shall cease to speak further on this subject.

(17) The Great Circle of gods in Abydos is of Osiris, Isis and Apuat

(13) Lo, to thee I pour as a libation the sparkling gleam of Bromius."He signifies, as I think, the soul's first milk-like nutriment of the four-and-twenty elements, after which solidified milk comes as food. And last, he teaches of the blood of the vine of the Word, the sparkling wine, the perfecting gladness of instruction. And Drops is the operating Word, which, beginning with elementary training, and advancing to the growth of the man, inflames and illumines man up to the measure of maturity. The third is said to be a writing copy for children -marptes, sfigx klwy, zxnkqhdos. And it signifies, in my opinion, that by the arrangement of the elements and of the world, we must advance to the knowledge of what is more perfect, since eternal salvation is attained by force and toil; for maryai is to grasp. And the harmony of the world is meant by the Sphinx; and zunkqhdon means difficulty; and klwys means at once the secret knowledge of the Lord and day. Well! does not Epigenes, in his book on the Poetry of Orpheus, in exhibiting the peculiarities found in Orpheus, say that by " the curved rods" (keraisi) is meant "ploughs;"and by the warp (sthmosi), the furrows; and the woof (mitos) is a figurative expression for the seed; and that the tears of Zeus signify a shower; and that the "parts" (moirai) are, again, the phases of the moon, the thirtieth day, and the fifteenth, and the new moon, and that Orpheus accordingly calls them "white-robed," as being parts of the light?

(91) This Animastic Spirit which blessed men have called the Pneumatic Soul, becometh a god, an all-various Dæmon, and an Image (disembodied), and in this form of Soul suffereth her punishments The Oracles, too, accord with this account; for they assimilate the employment of the Soul in Hades, to the delusive visions of a dream.

(8) Wherefore the wisest of the Egyptian priests decided that the temple of Athene should be hypaethral, just as the Hebrews constructed the temple without an image. And some, in worshipping God, make a representation of heaven containing the stars; and so worship, although Scripture says, "Let of Eurysus the Pythagorean, which is as follows, who in his book On Fortune, having said that the "Creator, on making man, took Himself as an exemplar," added, "And the body is like the other things, as being made of the same material, and fashioned by the best workman, who wrought it, taking Himself as the archetype." And, in fine, Pythagoras and his followers, with Plato also, and most of the other philosophers, were best acquainted with the Lawgiver, as may be concluded from their doctrine. And by a happy utterance of divination, not without divine help, concurring in certain prophetic declarations, and, seizing the truth in portions and aspects, in terms not obscure, and not going beyond the explanation of the things, they honoured it on as pertaining the appearance of relation with the truth. Whence the Hellenic philosophy is like the torch of wick which men kindle, artificially stealing the light from the sun. But on the proclamation of the Word all that holy light shone forth. Then in houses by night the stolen light is useful; but by day the fire blazes, and all the night is illuminated by such a sun of intellectual light.

(2) But if the soul connects its intellectual and divine part with more excellent natures, then its phantasms will be more pure, whether they are phantasms of the Gods, or of beings essentially incorporeal, or, in short, of things contributing to the truth of intelligibles. If, also, it elevates the reasons of generated natures, contained in it to the Gods, the causes of them, it receives power from them, and a knowledge which apprehends what has been, and what will be; it likewise surveys the whole of time, and the deeds which are accomplished in time, and is allotted the order of providentially attending to and correcting them in an appropriate manner. And bodies, indeed, that are diseased it heals; but properly disposes such things as subsist among men erroneously and disorderly. It likewise frequently delivers the discoveries of arts, the distributions of justice, and the establishment of legal institutions. Thus in the temple of Esculapius, diseases are healed through divine dreams; and, through the order of nocturnal appearances, the medical art is obtained from sacred dreams. Thus, too, the whole army of Alexander was preserved, which would otherwise have been entirely destroyed in the night, in consequence of Bacchus appearing in sleep, and pointing out a solution of the most grievous calamities. The city Aphutis, likewise, when besieged by King Lysander, was saved through a dream sent to him by Jupiter Ammon. For afterwards, he most rapidly withdrew his army from thence, and immediately raised the siege.

(1) Let us, however, now proceed to the appearances of the Gods and their perpetual attendants, and show what the difference is in their appearance. For you inquire, “ by what indication the presence of a God, or an angel, or an archangel, or a dæmon, or a certain archon [i. e. ruler ], or a soul, may be known .” In one word, therefore, I conclude that their appearances accord with their essences, powers, and energies. For such as they are, such also do they appear to those that invoke them, and they exhibit energies and ideas consentaneous to themselves, and proper indications of themselves. But that we may descend to particulars, the phasmata, or luminous appearances, of the Gods are uniform; those of dæmons are various; those of angels are more simple than those of dæmons, but are subordinate to those of the Gods; those of archangels approximate in a greater degree to divine causes; but those of archons, if these powers appear to you to be the cosmocrators, who govern the sublunary element, will be more various, but adorned in order; but if they are the powers that preside over matter, they will indeed be more various, and more imperfect, than those of the archons [properly so called]; and those of souls will appear to be all-various.