The Celestial Hierarchy

Accepting this order of the sacred hierarchies, we say that all the names of the heavenly intellects contain a declaration of the deiform property of each one.

Those who know Hebrew have explained the holy name Seraphim as meaning either “those who burn” or “those who heat”; and Cherubim as meaning “abundance of knowledge” or “outpouring of wisdom.”

Therefore the first of the heavenly hierarchies is fittingly sanctified by the most excellent essences, since it has an order higher than all the rest: namely, to be placed immediately around God, and to receive into itself, as being nearest, the first-working theophanies and perfections in a more principal manner.

The name Seraphim, then, teaches and manifests their deiform habit: for it signifies their perpetual motion around divine things, their unceasing, fervent, sharp, and super-heated intensity; their ever-moving, never-failing, and inflexible motion; their power of reductively and actively assimilating those beneath them, as though reheating them and reviving them into a similar heat; their fiery, heavenly, and holocaust-like purifying power; and their unveiled and inextinguishable property, ever light-like and illuminating, driving away and making manifest every dark obscurity.

The name Cherubim, however, signifies their knowing and God-seeing power: their receptivity of the highest gift of lights; their contemplation of the divine Beauty in its first-operative power; their being filled with the wisdom-giving tradition; and their copious communication to those below them of the outpoured wisdom granted to them.

The name Thrones signifies that they are most high and firmly established seats, utterly exalted above every ignoble subjection; that they are borne upward, supermundanely, toward the highest; that they are inflexibly removed from every extreme, and are immutably and steadfastly placed with all their powers in the most sublime realm around Him who is truly exalted; that they are receptive of the divine super-advent in all impassibility and immateriality; that they bear God, and are servilely open to divine receptions.

This, then, is the explanation of the names themselves, so far as concerns us. But we must now say what we understand their hierarchy to be.

I think we have already said sufficiently that the contemplation of every hierarchy depends inflexibly upon a God-imitating deiformity, and that every hierarchical activity is divided into a sacred participation and transmission of pure purification, divine light, and perfective knowledge. Now, however, let us fittingly pursue the account of the most exalted intellects, and consider how hierarchy is manifested in them by Scripture.

It must be understood that the first essences, which are placed after their substance-making Thearchy, and are ordered, as it were, in its vestibules, surpass every created power, whether invisible or visible. Their hierarchy must be judged proper to them and altogether of one form.

Therefore they must be understood as pure, not as though they had been freed from unclean stains and defilements, nor as though they had not received material phantasies, but as being pure of every subjection, higher than all inferiority, and set above every more firmly established temple according to the most exalted chastity, above all the most deiform powers. By their own self-moving and ever-identical motion, according to the unchangeable order of their love for God, they are inflexibly received; they know no fall into what is beneath them, but possess the most pure establishment of their own deiform speciality, incapable of fall or change.

They must again be understood as contemplative, not as though they were led back to God by sensible symbols or by intellectual contemplations through the variety of sacred Scriptural theory, but as being filled with every immaterial knowledge of a higher light; as being filled, so far as is lawful, with the contemplation of the form-giving, principal, superessential, and thrice-radiant Beauty; and as being made worthy of communion with Jesus in like manner.

They do not receive a deifying likeness in images sacredly fashioned into forms; rather, they truly draw near to Him in the first participation of the knowledge of His deifying lights. Because likeness to God has been granted to them in the most immediate way, they communicate, as far as possible, in the first-operative power of His deifying and human virtues.

They must likewise be understood as perfect, not as though they were illuminated by an analytic knowledge through sacred variety, but as being filled with the first and supereminent deification, according to the most exalted knowledge of divine works possible among angels. For they are not sanctified through other holy essences, but by the Thearchy itself. They are immediately extended toward it above all others by their supereminent power and order; they are established in the most pure strength altogether; they are brought, as far as is lawful, to the contemplation of immaterial and invisible Beauty; and, as the first essences around God, they are drawn toward the knowable principles of the divine works. They have been sanctified in the most exalted manner by the very Principle of perfection.

The theologians openly declare this: that the lower ranks of the heavenly essences are fittingly instructed in deifying knowledge by the higher ranks, while the highest of all are illuminated, as far as is lawful, by teachings from the Thearchy itself. For they introduce certain heavenly beings as being sacredly instructed by those before them that the Lord of the heavenly powers and the King of glory has been received humanly into the heavens. They introduce others as questioning Jesus Himself and learning from Him the knowledge of His divine action on our behalf; and they show Jesus Himself immediately teaching them and, by His first generosity, revealing to them His human benignity. For He says: “I speak justice and the judgment of salvation.”

But I marvel that even the first of the heavenly essences, though so far surpassing all the rest in the thearchic illuminations, still reverently desire mediate questioning. For they do not at once ask, “Why are Thy garments red?” Rather, they first deliberate among themselves before asking, showing that they learn and desire deifying knowledge, but do not leap ahead of the illumination given according to the divine procession.

Therefore the first hierarchy of the heavenly intellects, sanctified by the very Principle of perfection, because it is immediately extended toward it, is purified, illuminated, and perfected by the most holy purification, being filled proportionately with the abundant light of a pre-perfect consummation: pure of every diminution, full of the first light, and perfect through participation in the first-given knowledge and science.

And perhaps I may not improperly add this also: that purification, illumination, and perfection are the assumption of divine knowledge. Purification removes ignorance by the knowledge, bestowed according to order, of more perfect teachings. Illumination is by that divine knowledge itself, through which it also purifies the one who previously did not contemplate what it now manifests through a higher illumination. And perfection is again by that same light, as a habitual knowledge of the most lucid teachings.

This, then, so far as our knowledge reaches, is the first rank of the heavenly essences: standing around God and immediately about God, circling His eternal knowledge simply and unceasingly, according to the most exalted, ever-moving stability possible among angels; seeing many blessed contemplations purely; illuminated by a simple and immediate radiance; and filled with divine nourishment. It receives many things through the first-given outpouring, yet one thing through the domestic and unifying unity of the divine refreshment. It has been made worthy of much communion with God and cooperation with Him, according to the possible likeness of good habits and actions. It knows many divine things in a superior way, and has been made a participant, as far as is lawful, in divine knowledge and understanding.

For this reason theology has handed down its praises to those who dwell on earth, and in these praises the eminence of its most exalted illumination is wondrously manifested.

Some of them, speaking sensibly, roar like the voice of many waters:

“Blessed is the glory of the Lord from His place.”

Others cry aloud that most praiseworthy and most pious theology:

“Holy, holy, holy, Lord Sabaoth; the whole earth is full of His glory.”

These most exalted hymnologies of the heavenly minds we have already opened, as far as possible, in the treatise concerning the Divine Praises, and enough has been said about them there, so far as concerns us.

From those things it is enough for the present to recall only this: that the first rank, having been illuminated, as far as is lawful, in theological knowledge by the thearchic Goodness, as a deiform hierarchy, then handed down the same knowledge to the others. In brief, it teaches this: that it is lawful for the most pious, super-praiseworthy, and most laudable Thearchy to be blessed, known, and praised by the God-receiving intellects as far as possible. For these intellects, being deiform, are, as Scripture says, the divine places of the thearchic repose.

And they teach that the Monad is also Unity, substantially threefold; and that, from the supercelestial essences down to the last things of the earth, it extends its goodness into all things by providence, as the super-principal principle and cause of every essence, and as embracing all things superessentially in immeasurable containment.