The Celestial Hierarchy

It is necessary, therefore, as I judge, first to explain what we understand the contemplation of every hierarchy to be, and what benefit each hierarchy gives to those who praise the Divinity. Then we must praise the heavenly hierarchies according to their manifestation in the sacred Scriptures. After this, we must say by what divine forms the sacred descriptions of Scripture figure the heavenly orders, and to what truth it is necessary to ascend through those forms, so that we do not, like the multitude, think impurely that the heavenly and deiform minds are actually many-footed beings, or beings of many faces, or formed according to the brutishness of oxen, or according to the savage image of lions, or shaped after the curved beak of eagles, or represented by the threefold motion of birds’ wings; nor that we should imagine fiery wheels above the heavens, material thrones necessary for the Divinity to recline upon, multicolored horses, armed chief-commanders, or whatever else has been handed down to us from Scripture in a sacred and figurative way, through a variety of manifesting symbols.

For theology has most artfully used sacredly fashioned forms for the sake of non-figurative intelligences, unveiling our mind, as has been said, and providing for it by a reduction proper and connatural to it, and shaping the anagogical sacred Scriptures in a manner suited to it.

But if someone admits the sacred compositions, since they concern simple beings which in themselves are unknown to us and cannot be contemplated, yet judges the sacred descriptions of the holy intelligences in Scripture to be unsuitable, and, so to speak, calls this whole dramatic display of angelic names harsh, and says that theologians, when they came to give bodily form to things altogether incorporeal, ought to have represented and manifested them by forms proper to them, and, as far as possible, akin to them—drawn from the most precious things among us, and from immaterial, somehow supereminent essences—and not to have clothed heavenly and deiform simplicities with earthly, lowly, and manifold shapes: this, indeed, he might say, would have been more sublime for us, and would not have lowered supermundane manifestations into unsuitable dissimilarities. Nor would this have done unlawful injury to the divine powers, and likewise it would not have misled our mind by inserting it into impure compositions.

And perhaps it might even be supposed that the supercelestial regions are filled with certain leonine and equine multitudes, with lowing hymns of praise, with a winged principality of angels, with other animals, and with baser materials, since the Scriptures describe them through outwardly manifest likenesses that are wholly deformed, leading to what is incongruous, ignoble, and passible.

But the investigation of truth, as I judge, shows that the most sacred wisdom of Scripture has provided for both matters in its formations of the heavenly minds: so that, perhaps one might say, it neither does injury to the divine powers, nor fixes us passibly in the vile lowliness of images.

For if one asks why forms have been beautifully provided for the formless, and figures for those who lack figure, one might say that there is not only one cause, namely our own analogy, which cannot be stretched immediately into invisible contemplations and therefore desires reductions proper and connatural to itself, presenting to us possible forms of formless and supernatural contemplations. Rather, there is also this: that it is most fitting for the mystical Scriptures to conceal the sacred and hidden truth of supermundane intelligences by incomprehensible and divine enigmas, and to make it inaccessible to the many. For not everyone is sacred, nor, as the Scriptures say, is knowledge for all.

But if someone thinks that the causes described by deformed images are dishonored, saying that such ugly forms are applied to deiform and most holy dispositions, it is enough to say to him that the mode of sacred manifestation is twofold. One mode proceeds, as it were, by likeness, through sacred figures that resemble the things manifested. The other proceeds through dissimilar forms, shaped into what is entirely unlike and unbecoming.

Thus the mystical traditions of the manifesting Scriptures sometimes praise the adorable blessedness of the superessential Thearchy as Word, Intellect, and Essence, declaring its divine rationality and wisdom, its truly existing subsistence, and the true cause of the subsistence of all beings. They also represent it as Light, and call it Life. These wondrous representations are indeed more glorious, and are shown in some way to surpass material forms; yet even so they fall short of likeness to the thearchic truth. For the Thearchy is above every essence and life; no light characterizes it, and every reason and intellect is left incomparably behind by its likeness.

At other times, however, it is praised supermundanely by the same Scriptures through dissimilar manifestations, when they call it invisible, infinite, and incomprehensible; and through these terms they signify not what it is, but what it is not. This, as I judge, is more powerful concerning it, because, as the hidden and sacerdotal tradition has taught, we truly say that it is not according to any of the things that are; but we do not know its superessential, invisible, ineffable, and infinite transcendence.

Therefore, if negations in divine matters are true, while affirmations are unfitted and incomplete, then manifestation through dissimilar representations is more suitable to the obscurity of hidden mysteries.

And so the sacred descriptions of Scripture do not dishonor the heavenly orders when they manifest them by dissimilar forms. Through these forms they show that the supermundane excellences transcend all material things together. Nor do I think that anyone of sound wisdom will deny that dissimilar likenesses raise our mind more effectively. For with the more precious sacred forms, it is likely that one may be deceived into thinking that the heavenly essences are golden beings, or certain flashing men, clothed in beautiful garments, shining white, fiery, and harmlessly resplendent, or anything else similar among the imagined forms by which theology has figured the heavenly intelligences.

To prevent this from happening to those who understand nothing higher than visible beauties, the restorative wisdom of the holy theologians wonderfully descended even to unbecoming dissimilarities. It does not permit our material element to remain and rest in base images. Rather, it purifies the soul upward, and by the deformity of the compositions suggests that it is neither just nor true to suppose that the supercelestial and divine sights are truly like very material and base things merely because they are thus represented.

But it is also necessary to understand this: nothing among existing things is altogether deprived of participation in the good. For, as the truth of Scripture says, all things are very good. Therefore, from all things it is possible to understand good contemplations, and from material things to form, for invisible and intelligible realities, those dissimilar likenesses already mentioned—though intelligible things possess in one way what sensible things possess in another.

For example, rage exists in irrational animals through passible movement, and their furious motion is filled with every irrationality. But in intellectual beings, the irascible power must be understood in another way: it signifies, as I judge, their manly rationality and their unyielding stability in divine and immutable foundations.

In the same way, we say that desire in irrational beings is a kind of unreasoning and material passibility, born incontinentally in changeable things from natural movement or habit, and an irrational continuity of bodily pleasure which compels the whole animal toward what is desirable according to sense. But when, by dissimilar likenesses, we attribute desire to intellectual beings, we must understand it as divine love beyond reason and intellect: an immaterial, inflexible, and need-free longing for superessentially pure and impassible contemplation; a longing for that pure and most sublime brightness, and for the invisible, form-giving beauty of eternal, true, and invisible communion. It must be understood as a power which receives sufficiency and return, which cannot be oppressed by anything, because of its unconfused and immutable love of divine beauty, and its universal return toward that which is truly desirable.

Likewise, irrationality and insensibility, in irrational animals or inanimate materials, we properly call a defect of reason and sense. But in immaterial and intellectual essences, we reverently and fittingly confess these terms to signify their supereminent transcendence, as supermundane beings, over our passing and bodily reason, and over material sense, which is alien to incorporeal minds.

Therefore it is not discordant to form representations of heavenly beings even from lowly parts of matter. For matter itself, since it possesses its subsistence from the truly Good, has throughout its whole material disposition certain echoes of intellectual beauty. Through these it is possible to be led back to the immaterial archetypes, receiving, as has been said, the likenesses dissimilarly, and defining the same things not in the same way, but harmoniously and beautifully, according to the properties of intelligible and sensible things.

We shall find that the mystical theologians wonderfully use these forms not only in declarations of the heavenly orders, but sometimes even in the thearchic manifestations themselves. Sometimes they praise the Thearchy by precious lights, as the Sun of justice, as the morning Star rising sacredly in the soul, and as Light shining unveiled and intelligibly. Sometimes they use middle images: as fire shining without harm, as water bestowing the fullness of life, and, to speak symbolically, as entering into the belly and overflowing in rivers that flow back immeasurably. Sometimes they use the lowest images: as fragrant ointment, as the cornerstone. They even clothe it with beastly form, applying to it the appearance of a lion and a panther, clothing it with the likeness of a leopard and of a raging bear. I will add what seems lowest of all and most striking: the divine sages have handed down that it even forms itself under the image of a worm.

Thus all the theosophers, and the prophets by hidden inspiration, distinguish the holy of holies from things holy but undefiled, and they honor the sacred dissimilar figuration, so that divine things may not be handled by the impure, and so that zealous contemplators of the wonderful sacred images may not remain in the figures as though they were the truth itself. Therefore divine things are honored both by true negations and by diverse likenesses drawn from the lowest echoes of composite things.

There is nothing incongruous, then, if the heavenly essences are represented through unsuitable and dissimilar likenesses, for the reasons already stated. For perhaps we would not have come equally into inquiry because of our need, nor into anagogy through diligent search of divine things, unless the deformity of the manifesting representation of angels forced us to it: not allowing our mind to remain in the dissimilar forms, but compelling it to deny material passibilities, and training it to be extended purely through visible things into supermundane heights.

So much has been said by us concerning the material and unsuitable descriptions of angelic images in the divine Scriptures.

Next, however, it is necessary to distinguish what we judge hierarchy itself to be, and what benefit hierarchy gives to those who receive a share in hierarchy. Let Christ be the guide of this discourse—if it is lawful for me to say this—my Christ, the inspiration of every hierarchical manifestation.

But you, child, according to the holy ordinance of our sacerdotal tradition, listen reverently and fittingly to these things wondrously spoken. Become divine in God and in doctrine, and with the secrecy of your mind veil holy things from the impure multitude, guarding them as things uniform. For it is not lawful, as the Scriptures say, to cast before swine the clear, light-like, and beneficent adornment of the invisible pearls.