DIONYSIUS THE PRESBYTER TO TIMOTHY THE FELLOW-PRESBYTER

 ...ous Intelligences he described in the sacredly-written compositions of the Oracles, so that he might lead us up through the sensible to the intelli

 anagogical interpretations, which propose to us the formations possible for us of the formless and supernatural visions, but that this also is most fi

 to be entirely deprived of participation in the beautiful, if indeed, as the truth of the oracles says, All things are very good. <4> It is possible

 they veil the “Holy of Holies” and honor the dissimilar sacred representations, so that neither are the divine things easily accessible to the profane

 to be led up by analogy to the imitation of God and, what is the most divine thing of all, as the oracles say, to become a “fellow worker with God” an

 beings and irrationally living things and we rational beings have come to be in participation of the divine bestowal. For, intelligibly impressing the

 The things divinely promised to the forefather David have been fulfilled, while another announced the good news to the shepherds as those who had been

 their own powers and illuminations and their own sacred and supermundane good order. For it is impossible for us to know the mysteries of the super-ce

 and stably established and receptive of the visitation of the Godhead in all passionlessness and immateriality, and God-bearing, and servingly opened

 that Jesus himself initiates them immediately and first-givingly reveals to them his philanthropic good-working. For “I,” he says, “speak righteousnes

 below the earth extending its most good providence over all beings, as the super-princely principle and cause of every essence, and embracing all thin

 being led up to the super-essential principle of all things, and becoming partakers of the initiating purifications and illuminations and perfections,

 to lead principially and to be formed as much as possible in the likeness of that very principle-making principle and to reveal its super-essential or

 from which we also have looked up to the infinite and ungrudging sea of the divine light, opened readily to all for participation, over which no forei

 is led up. <2> And all are revealers and messengers of those before them, the most senior ones of God the Mover, and correspondingly the rest of those

 <ΧII.> <1> This also is inquired into by those who love to contemplate the intelligible oracles: for if the last ranks are unparticipant in the entire

 he has assigned the primary hierarchy. And is this statement perhaps true? For he who said this said that the Thearchic power, proceeding to all thing

 they do participate, but in a subordinate manner, looking to the first orders and through them, as those primarily deemed worthy of imitating God, are

 has reasonably ascribed the property to the Seraphim, after God. It is not at all strange, therefore, if the Seraph is said to purify the theologian.

 it having been previously understood that the clarifications of the sacredly-formed images sometimes show the same orders of the celestial essences hi

 of operations. Indeed, the divinely wise, knowing this, form the celestial substances out of fire, showing their God-like and, as far as possible, God

 and that which is dedicated to the whole of life, and the girdles, the guarding of their generative powers and that their unifying disposition is turn

 strong and indomitable, and that which assimilates itself, as far as possible, to the hiddenness of the ineffable Thearchy by the covering of its inte

 Let this much be said by me also concerning the sacred formations, falling short of their precise manifestation, but contributing, as I think, so that

...ous Intelligences he described in the sacredly-written compositions of the Oracles, so that he might lead us up through the sensible to the intelligible, and from the sacredly-formed symbols to the simple summits of the celestial hierarchies. <II.> <1> It is necessary, therefore, I think, first to set forth what we consider to be the purpose of all hierarchy and what benefit each confers on its own votaries; next, to celebrate the celestial hierarchies according to their manifestation in the Oracles; and then, following these things, to say with what sacred forms the holy writings of the Oracles figure the celestial orders, and to what simplicity we must be led up through the fashioned shapes, so that we too, like the multitude, may not impiously suppose the celestial and godlike Intelligences to be certain many-footed and many-faced beings, formed after the brutishness of oxen or the wild-beast shape of lions, and fashioned after the hooked-beak form of eagles or the feathery down of birds, and that we may not imagine certain wheels of fire above the heavens, and material thrones suitable for the Deity to recline upon, and certain many-colored horses, and spear-bearing commanders, and whatever else has been transmitted to us by the Oracles in the varied diversity of the revealing symbols. For theology has, in fact, used poetic, sacred figures in the case of the formless Intelligences, having regard, as has been said, to our own mind, and providing for its proper and connatural uplifting, and fashioning for it the uplifting sacred writings. <2> But if anyone thinks it acceptable to receive the sacred compositions on the grounds that simple things are in themselves unknown and unseeable by us, but considers that the iconographies of the holy Intelligences in the Oracles are incongruous, and so to speak this whole startling array of angelic names, and says that the theologians, having come to a complete corporealization of the incorporeal, ought to fashion and reveal them by means of their own and, as far as possible, cognate figurations from the most honorable and somewhat immaterial and superior essences among us, and not by applying the lowest multiformities of earth to the celestial and godlike simplicities (for the one way was destined to be both more uplifting for us and would not have brought the super-cosmic manifestations down to incongruous dissimilarities, while the other might both lawlessly outrage the divine powers and perhaps lead our own mind astray, settling it in the profane compositions, and perhaps he will even suppose the super-celestial regions to be filled with certain swarms of lions and horses, and a bellowing hymnology, and flocks of birds, and other animals and more dishonorable materials, such as the utterly dissimilar similitudes of the supposedly revealing Oracles, deviating towards the absurd and spurious and passible, delineate), yet the search for truth, I think, demonstrates that the most holy wisdom of the Oracles in the figurations of the celestial Intelligences has provided completely for both, so as neither to outrage the divine powers, as one might say, nor to have us passionately stuck in the base lowliness of the images. For that types of the typeless and shapes of the shapeless have been set forth with good reason, one might say the cause is not only our own analogy, being unable to strain immediately to the intelligible contemplations and needing its own and connatural

νίους ἀνεγράψατο νόας ἐν ταῖς ἱερογραφικαῖς τῶν λογίων συνθέσεσιν, ὅπως ἂν ἡμᾶς ἀναγάγοι διὰ τῶν αἰσθητῶν ἐπὶ τὰ νοητὰ κἀκ τῶν ἱεροπλάστων συμβόλων ἐπὶ τὰς ἁπλᾶς τῶν οὐρανίων ἱεραρχιῶν ἀκρότη τας. <II.> <1> Χρὴ τοιγαροῦν ὡς οἶμαι πρῶτον ἐκθέσθαι τίνα μὲν εἶναι σκοπὸν ἁπάσης ἱεραρχίας οἰόμεθα καὶ τί τοὺς αὑτῆς ἑκάστη θιασώτας ὀνίνησιν, ἑξῆς δὲ τὰς οὐρανίας ἱεραρχίας ὑμνῆσαι κατὰ τὴν αὐτῶν ἐν τοῖς λογίοις ἐκφαντορίαν, ἑπομένως τε τούτοις εἰπεῖν ὁποίαις ἱεραῖς μορφώσεσι τὰς οὐρανίας σχηματίζουσι διακοσμήσεις αἱ τῶν λογίων ἱερογραφίαι, καὶ πρὸς ποίαν ἀναχθῆναι χρὴ διὰ τῶν πλασμάτων ἁπλότητα, ὅπως μὴ καὶ ἡμεῖς ὡσαύτως τοῖς πολλοῖς ἀνιέρως οἰώμεθα τοὺς οὐρανίους καὶ θεοειδεῖς νόας πολύποδας εἶναί τινας καὶ πολυπροσώπους καὶ πρὸς βοῶν κτηνωδίαν ἢ πρὸς λεόντων θηριομορφίαν τετυπωμένους καὶ πρὸς ἀετῶν ἀγκυλόχειλον εἶδος ἢ πρὸς πτηνῶν τριχώδη πτεροφυίαν διαπεπλασμέ νους καὶ τροχούς τινας πυρώδεις ὑπὲρ τὸν οὐρανὸν φανταζώμεθα καὶ θρόνους ὑλαίους τῇ θεαρχίᾳ πρὸς ἀνάκλισιν ἐπιτηδείους καὶ ἵππους τινὰς πολυχρωμάτους καὶ δορυφόρους ἀρχιστρατήγους καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα πρὸς τῶν λογίων ἡμῖν ἱεροπλάστως ἐν ποικιλίᾳ τῶν ἐκφαντορικῶν συμβόλων παραδέδοται. Καὶ γὰρ ἀτεχνῶς ἡ θεολογία ταῖς ποιητικαῖς ἱεροπλαστίαις ἐπὶ τῶν ἀσχηματίστων νοῶν ἐχρήσατο τὸν καθ' ἡμᾶς ὡς εἴρηται νοῦν ἀνασκεψαμένη καὶ τῆς οἰκείας αὐτῷ καὶ συμφυοῦς ἀναγωγῆς προνοή σασα καὶ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀναπλάσασα τὰς ἀναγωγικὰς ἱερογραφίας. <2> Eἰ δέ τῳ δοκεῖ τὰς μὲν ἱερὰς ἀποδέχεσθαι συνθέσεις ὡς τῶν ἁπλῶν ἐφ' ἑαυτῶν ἀγνώστων τε καὶ ἀθεωρήτων ἡμῖν ὑπαρχόντων, ἀπεμφαι νούσας δὲ οἴεται τὰς τῶν ἁγίων νοῶν ἐν τοῖς λογίοις εἰκονογραφίας καὶ πᾶσαν ὡς εἰπεῖν τὴν ἀπότομον ταύτην τῶν ἀγγελικῶν ὀνομάτων σκηνὴν καὶ χρῆναί φησι τοὺς θεολόγους ἐπὶ σωματοποιΐαν ὅλως τῶν ἀσωμάτων ἐληλυθότας οἰκείοις αὐτὰ καὶ ὡς δυνατὸν συγγενέσιν ἀναπλάττειν τε καὶ ἐκφαίνειν σχηματισμοῖς ἐκ τῶν παρ' ἡμῖν τιμιωτάτων καὶ ἀΰλων ποσῶς καὶ ὑπερκειμένων οὐσιῶν καὶ μὴ ταῖς οὐρανίαις καὶ θεοειδέσιν ἁπλότησι τὰς ἐπὶ γῆς ἐσχάτας περιτιθέντας πολυμορφίας (τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἡμῶν τε ἀναγωγικώτερον ἔμελλεν εἶναι καὶ τὰς ὑπερκοσμίους ἐκφαντορίας οὐ κατῆγεν εἰς τὰς ἀπεμφαινούσας ἀνομοιότητας, τὸ δὲ καὶ εἰς τὰς θείας ἀθέσμως ἐξυβρίζειν δυνάμεις καὶ τὸν ἡμέτερον ἴσως ἀποπλανᾶν νοῦν εἰς τὰς ἀνιέρους αὐτὸν ἐνιζάνον συνθέσεις, καὶ τάχα καὶ οἰ»σεται τὰ ὑπερ ουράνια λεοντείων τινῶν καὶ ἱππείων ἑσμῶν ἀποπεπληρῶσθαι καὶ μυκη τικῆς ὑμνολογίας καὶ ὀρνιθείας ἀγελαρχίας καὶ ζῴων ἄλλων καὶ ὑλῶν ἀτιμοτέρων, ὅσα πρὸς τὸ ἄτοπον καὶ νόθον καὶ ἐμπαθὲς ἀποκλιθεῖσαι διαγράφουσιν αἱ κατὰ πᾶν ἀνόμοιοι τῶν δῆθεν ἐκφαντορικῶν λογίων ὁμοιότητες), ἀλλ' ἡ τῆς ἀληθείας ὡς οἶμαι ζήτησις ἀποδείκνυσι τὴν τῶν λογίων ἱερωτάτην σοφίαν ἐν ταῖς τῶν οὐρανίων νοῶν μορφώσεσιν ἑκα τέρου κομιδῇ προνοήσασαν ὡς μήτε εἰς τὰς θείας, ὡς ἂν φαίη τις, ἐξυβρίσαι δυνάμεις μήτε μὴν εἰς τὰς χαμαιζήλους ἡμᾶς ἐμπαθῶς ἐμπαγῆ ναι τῶν εἰκόνων ταπεινότητας. Ὅτι μὲν γὰρ εἰκότως προβέβληνται τῶν ἀτυπώτων οἱ τύποι καὶ τὰ σχήματα τῶν ἀσχηματίστων, οὐ μόνην αἰτίαν φαίη τις εἶναι τὴν καθ' ἡμᾶς ἀναλογίαν ἀδυνατοῦσαν ἀμέσως ἐπὶ τὰς νοητὰς ἀνατείνεσθαι θεωρίας καὶ δεομένην οἰκείων καὶ συμφυῶν