The Celestial Hierarchy

Come, then, let us examine this also, according to our ability: why the Seraphim is said by the theologians to have been sent. For someone might object that it was not one of the lower angels, but one of the highest and innumerable essences, who purged the priest.

Some, therefore, say that, according to the definition already given concerning the common fellowship of all intellects, Scripture does not mean that one of the first minds around God came for the purification of the theologian. Rather, they say that one of the angels who preside over us, sanctifying the prophet’s purification, was called Seraphim by equivocation, because of the fiery and heavenly removal of the sins spoken of, and because of the raising up of the purified man into divine obedience. And they say that Scripture simply says “one of the Seraphim,” not meaning one of those placed around God, but one of the purifying powers that preside over us.

But another has given me an explanation of this matter which is not at all unsuitable. He says that the great angel who formed that vision, in order to teach the theologian divine things, referred his own purifying consecration back to God, and, after God, to the first-working hierarchy.

And is this account perhaps true? The one who said this argues as follows.

The divine power, coming into all things, fills all things and passes immeasurably through all things; yet it remains invisible to all, not only because it is superessentially removed from all, but also because it secretly permits its providential operations to enter all things. Nevertheless, it shines upon all intellectual beings proportionately, and, bestowing its own illumination upon the most precious essences, it distributes itself through them, as through the first, in good order to those beneath, according to the contemplative measure of each rank.

To speak more clearly, though by examples proper to us and necessarily deficient in comparison with God, who is removed from all things: the distributions of the solar ray, when well distributed into the first matter, fill what is most luminous of all, and through it more clearly display their own splendors. But when the ray approaches thicker materials, its distributive appearance becomes more obscure, because the materials to be illuminated are less suited to receive the distribution of the illumination; and after a little, from this cause, it is contracted almost into complete non-distribution.

Again, the heat of fire distributes itself more fully into things more receptive, and into things well suited and well led toward its likeness. But in essences contrary to its transforming power, it manifests no trace, or only a hidden trace, of its primary operation. And more than this, it first enters things not akin to it through things that are suitably disposed to it; for instance, it first makes things easily moved by fire become fiery, and through these it proportionately heats water or something else that is not easily enkindled.

According to this principle of natural order, then, that supernatural ordering-power of every good order, visible and invisible, first manifests the brightness of its fitting illumination, in most abundant outpourings, to the most excellent essences; and through them the essences that follow participate in the divine ray. For these first essences, knowing God first and desiring the divine virtue most excellently, are made worthy, as far as possible, to become first-workers in Godlike power and activity. And they deiformly extend the essences after them toward a similar power, abundantly handing on to them from the brightness that comes upon themselves; and those others again hand it on to those beneath them. Thus, through each rank, the first hands on to the one after it.

Does not the same light also pass proportionately into all? Therefore God is the principle of illumination for all who are illuminated: by nature, truly and properly, as the essence of light, and as the causal source of both being and seeing. But, in a deiform and Godlike manner, each higher rank after Him remains fixed in this: to carry the divine lights through itself into the rank beneath it.

Therefore all the remaining essences of the heavenly minds contemplate the most excellent rank, after God, as the principle of all sacred and divine knowledge and of divine imitation, insofar as is fitting; since through that rank the divine illumination is distributed to all, and even to us.

For this reason they refer every sacred and Godlike operation to God as cause, and then to the first deiform intellects as the first ministers and teachers of divine things.

Therefore, does not the first rank of the holy angels possess, more than all the rest together, the fiery property, the outpoured tradition of divine wisdom, the mystical knowledge of the highest divine illuminations, and the thronelike property signifying divine receptivity? But the ranks of essences beneath them participate in fiery, wise, knowing, and God-receiving power in a lower manner, looking toward the first ranks, and through them being led back, as far as possible, into deiformity, since those first ranks have been made worthy of first-working divine imitation.

Accordingly, the sacred properties mentioned, whose participation comes to the lower ranks through the first ranks after God, are attributed to those first ranks themselves as hierarchies after God.

Thus the one who says this maintains that the vision was received by the theologian through one of the holy and blessed angels who rule over us, and that by the illuminating guidance of that angel he was led up into that holy contemplation. And he saw the most exalted essences seated, so far as one may speak in symbols, after God and around God, with the super-principal summit placed above the highest powers in the midst of them.

Therefore the theologian learned through the visions that the Divine, according to every superessential eminence, is incomparably placed above every visible and invisible power together; and that, as universal cause, it is remote from all even the most remote things, and is not like even the first essences of created things. He learned further that it is the principle of all things and the substance-making cause of all things, and the immutable foundation, in secret singularity, of all things that are; from it even the most firmly established powers have both their being and their well-being.

Then he was instructed concerning the deiform powers of the most holy Seraphim themselves. By their sacred name, which means “fiery,” they lead us, as far as possible, into the anagogies of deiform fiery power, concerning which we shall soon speak. By the sacred formation of their expanded wings, they signify their free and most exalted extension toward the Divine in the first, middle, and last intellects.

But when the intellectual theologian saw their many-footed and many-faced form, and saw that the vision was distinguished by wings beneath the feet and beneath the faces, and by their perpetual motion with the middle wings, he was led back from what was seen to the invisible knowledge of the things seen. There was manifested to him the many-wayed and many-seeing power of the highest intellects; their sacred fear, which they possess supermundanely, against the proud, rash, and impossible scrutiny of higher and weightier things; and their ceaseless and high-flying motion in the measured order of their God-imitating actions.

He was also instructed in that divine and most precious hymnody, the angel forming the vision according to the prophet’s power and handing on to him his own sacred knowledge.

The angel taught him this also: that purification, for those who are purified in any degree, is a participation, as far as possible, in the unknown divine brightness. This brightness, from the remote causes of the Divinity itself, by which it perfects all sacred intellects in superessential hiddenness, is somehow more manifest to the highest powers around it, and manifests and distributes itself more fully to them. Then, from the second or last orders, or from our intellectual powers, according as each exists at a distance from it in deiform measure, it conducts its manifest illumination toward the praiseworthy unknownness of its own hiddenness.

It shines upon the second ranks through the first; and, to say it briefly, it is first brought out from hiddenness into manifestation through the first powers.

This, therefore, the theologian learned from the angel who led him into light: namely, that purification and all divine operations, shining first through the first essences, are distributed to all the rest according to each one’s proportion for deifying participation.

For this reason he consequently attributed the fiery purifying property, after God, to the Seraphim themselves.

Therefore there is nothing disordered if a Seraphim is said to purify the theologian. For in this way God purifies all those whose purification He wholly causes. Or rather, to use an example closer to us: just as our high priest, when purifying or illuminating through his ministers or priests, is himself said to purify and illuminate, because the orders purified through him refer their own sacred operations back to him; so also the angel who accomplished the theologian’s purification refers his own purifying knowledge and power first to God as cause, and then to the Seraphim as the first-acting high priest.

It is as though, with angelic reverence, he instructed the one purified in this way:

“The principle of the purification to be accomplished in you through me is, before me, the most high Essence, Creator, and Cause, who brings the first essences into being, holds them around Himself by their placement near Him, preserves them unchangeable and free from fall, and moves them first into participation in His own providential operations. For the one who taught me these things said that this is what the mission of the Seraphim manifests.

But the high priest and leader after God is the order of the presiding essences, from whom I have been deiformly instructed to purify. Therefore that order purifies you through me; and through it the very Cause and Maker of all purification has brought His own providential actions out from hiddenness and down to us.”

These things that man taught me, and I hand them on to you.

But I leave it to your intellectual and discerning knowledge either to resolve the difficulty by one of the explanations already given, and to honor that explanation above the other as having consistency, reasonableness, and equal truth; or else to discover for yourself what is nearer to the true truth, or to learn it from another—God, of course, granting it, the angels first receiving it, and the friends of the angels revealing to us a more lovable contemplation of it.