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

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, therefore, from all of them to devise beautiful contemplations and to form for the intelligibles and the intellectuals, from material things, the so-called dissimilar similarities, since the intellectuals possess in one way what has been assigned in another way to the sensibles. For indeed, in irrational beings, anger arises from passionate impulse, and their spirited motion is full of all irrationality; but in the case of the intellectuals, one must understand the spirited element in another way, signifying, as I think, their masculine rationality and their unyielding state in their godlike and unchangeable foundations. Likewise, we say that desire in irrational beings is a certain unreasoning and material impulse, arising unrestrainedly from an innate motion or habit in alterable things, and the irrational dominion of bodily appetite, pushing the whole animal toward the desirable according to sense-perception, but when, bestowing dissimilar similarities upon the intellectuals, we fashion for them desire, one must understand it as a divine love for the immateriality beyond reason and mind, and the unswerving and relentless longing for the supersubstantially pure and impassible contemplation, and for the communion, truly eternal and intelligible, with that pure and supreme lucidity and the unseen and beautifying comeliness. And we may take "unrestrained" in the sense of intense and irreversible and able to be checked by nothing on account of the unmixed and unchangeable love of the divine beauty and the total inclination toward that which is truly desired. But also irrationality itself and insensibility, in the case of irrational animals or inanimate matter we fittingly call a privation of reason and sense, but in the case of immaterial and intellectual substances we piously acknowledge their superiority, as being supracelestial, to our discursive and bodily reason and to the material sense-perception which is foreign to incorporeal minds. It is therefore possible to form not-unfitting shapes for the celestial beings even from the most dishonorable parts of matter, since even matter itself, having received its existence from the truly beautiful, possesses throughout its whole material order certain echoes of intellectual comeliness, and it is possible through them to be led up to the immaterial archetypes, the similarities being taken dissimilarly, as has been said, and the same things not in the same way, but being defined harmoniously and fittingly according to the properties of both intellectual and sensible things. <5> We shall find that the mystical theologians sacredly fashion these things not only in the manifestations of the celestial orders, but sometimes also in the thearchic manifestations themselves. And at times they praise it from things that appear honorable as a sun of justice, as the morning star rising sacredly in the mind, and as a light shining unveiledly and intelligibly, and at other times from intermediate things as a fire that illuminates without harming, as water that bestows a life-giving fulfillment and, to speak symbolically, entering into the belly and causing rivers to gush forth flowing irrepressibly, and at other times from the lowest things as a fragrant ointment, as a cornerstone. But they also attribute to it the form of a beast and assign to it the property of a lion and a panther, and they say it will be a leopard and a bear at a loss. And I will add what seems to be the most dishonorable and discordant of all: that those skilled in divine things have handed down that it even fashions for itself the form of a worm. Thus all the theosophists and interpreters of the secret inspiration from the uninitiated and the unholy unpollutedly separate

εἶναι καθόλου τῆς τοῦ καλοῦ μετουσίας ἐστερημένον, εἴπερ ὡς ἡ τῶν λογίων ἀλήθειά φησι «Πάντα καλὰ λίαν». <4> Ἔστιν οὖν ἐκ πάντων αὐτῶν ἐπινοῆσαι καλὰς θεωρίας καὶ τοῖς νοητοῖς τε καὶ νοεροῖς ἐκ τῶν ὑλαίων ἀναπλάσαι τὰς λεγομένας ἀνομοίους ὁμοιότητας, ἑτέρῳ τρόπῳ τῶν νοερῶν ἐχόντων ἃ τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς ἑτεροίως ἀπονενέμηται. Καὶ γὰρ ὁ θυμὸς τοῖς μὲν ἀλόγοις ἐξ ἐμπαθοῦς ὁρμῆς ἐγγίνεται καὶ πάσης ἀλογίας ἐστὶν ἀνάπλεως ἡ θυμοειδὴς αὐτῶν κίνησις, ἀλλ' ἐπὶ τῶν νοερῶν ἑτέρῳ τρόπῳ χρὴ τὸ θυμικὸν ἐννοῆσαι, δηλοῦν ὡς οἶμαι τὴν ἀρρενωπὸν αὐτῶν λογιότητα καὶ τὴν ἀμείλικτον ἕξιν ἐν ταῖς θεοειδέσι καὶ ἀμεταβόλοις ἱδρύσεσιν. Ὡσαύτως ἐπιθυμίαν μὲν εἶναί φαμεν ἐπὶ τῶν ἀλόγων ἀπερίσκεπτόν τινα καὶ πρόσυλον ἐξ ἐμφύτου κινήσεως ἢ συνηθείας ἐν τοῖς ἀλλοιωτοῖς ἀκρατῶς ἐγγινομένην προσπάθειαν καὶ τὴν ἄλογον τῆς σωματικῆς ὀρέξεως ἐπικράτειαν ἅπαν τὸ ζῷον ὠθούσης ἐπὶ τὸ κατ' αἴσθησιν ἐπιθυμητόν, ὅταν δὲ τὰς ἀνομοίους ὁμοιότητας τοῖς νοεροῖς περιτιθέντες ἐπιθυμίαν αὐτοῖς περιπλάσωμεν, ἔρωτα θεῖον αὐτὴν ἐννοῆσαι χρὴ τῆς ὑπὲρ λόγον καὶ νοῦν ἀϋλίας καὶ τὴν ἀκλινῆ καὶ ἀνένδοτον ἔφεσιν τῆς ὑπερουσίως ἁγνῆς καὶ ἀπαθοῦς θεωρίας καὶ τῆς πρὸς ἐκείνην τὴν καθαρὰν καὶ ἀκροτάτην διαύγειαν καὶ τὴν ἀφανῆ καὶ καλλοποιὸν εὐπρέπειαν αἰωνίας ὄντως καὶ νοητῆς κοινωνίας. Καὶ τὸ ἀκρατὲς ἐκλάβοιμεν ἐπὶ τοῦ συντόνου καὶ ἀνεπιστρόφου καὶ πρὸς μηδενὸς ἐγκόπτεσθαι δυναμένου διὰ τὸν ἀμιγῆ καὶ ἀναλλοίωτον τῆς θείας καλ λονῆς ἔρωτα καὶ τὴν ὁλικὴν ἀπόκλισιν ἐπὶ τὸ ὄντως ἐφετόν. Ἀλλὰ καὶ αὐτὴν τὴν ἀλογίαν τε καὶ ἀναισθησίαν ἐπὶ μὲν τῶν ἀλόγων ζῴων ἢ τῶν ἀψύχων ὑλῶν στέρησιν λόγου καὶ αἰσθήσεως οἰκείως ἀποκαλοῦμεν, ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν ἀΰλων καὶ νοερῶν οὐσιῶν ἁγιοπρεπῶς τὸ ὑπερέχον αὐτῶν ὡς ὑπερκοσμίων ὁμολογοῦμεν τοῦ καθ' ἡμᾶς μεταβατικοῦ καὶ σωματικοῦ λόγου καὶ τῆς ὑλαίας καὶ ἀλλοτρίας τῶν ἀσωμάτων νοῶν αἰσθήσεως. Ἔστι τοιγαροῦν οὐκ ἀπᾳδούσας ἀναπλάσαι τοῖς οὐρανίοις μορφὰς κἀκ τῶν ἀτιμωτάτων τῆς ὕλης μερῶν, ἐπεὶ καὶ αὐτὴ πρὸς τοῦ ὄντως καλοῦ τὴν ὕπαρξιν ἐσχηκυῖα κατὰ πᾶσαν αὐτῆς τὴν ὑλαίαν διακόσμησιν ἀπηχήματά τινα τῆς νοερᾶς εὐπρεπείας ἔχει καὶ δυνατόν ἐστι δι' αὐτῶν ἀνάγεσθαι πρὸς τὰς ἀΰλους ἀρχετυπίας, ἀνομοίως ὡς εἴρηται τῶν ὁμοιο τήτων ἐκλαμβανομένων καὶ τῶν αὐτῶν οὐ ταὐτῶς, ἐναρμονίως δὲ καὶ οἰκείως ἐπὶ τῶν νοερῶν τε καὶ αἰσθητῶν ἰδιοτήτων ὁριζομένων. <5> Ταῦτα τοὺς μυστικοὺς θεολόγους εὑρήσομεν οὐ μόναις ταῖς τῶν οὐρανίων διακόσμων ἐκφάνσεσιν ἱερῶς περιπλάττοντας, ἀλλὰ καὶ αὐταῖς ἔσθ' ὅτε ταῖς θεαρχικαῖς ἐκφαντορίαις. Καὶ ποτὲ μὲν αὐτὴν ἀπὸ τῶν φαινομένων τιμίων ὑμνοῦσιν ὡς ἥλιον δικαιοσύνης, ὡς ἀστέρα τὸν ἑῷον εἰς νοῦν ἱερῶς ἀνατέλλοντα καὶ ὡς φῶς ἀπερικαλύπτως καὶ νοητῶς καταυγάζον, ποτὲ δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν μέσων ὡς πῦρ ἀβλαβῶς φωτίζον ὡς ὕδωρ ζωτικῆς ἀποπληρώσεως χορηγὸν καὶ συμβολικῶς εἰπεῖν εἰς γαστέρα διαδυόμενον καὶ ποταμοὺς ἀναβλύζον ἀσχέτως ἀπορρέοντας, ποτὲ δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν ἐσχάτων ὡς μύρον εὐῶδες ὡς λίθον ἀκρογωνιαῖον. Ἀλλὰ καὶ θηριομορφίαν αὐτῇ περιτιθέασι καὶ λέοντος αὐτῇ καὶ πάνθηρος ἰδιότητα περιάπτουσι καὶ πάρδαλιν αὐτὴν ἔσεσθαί φασι καὶ ἄρκον ἀπορουμένην. Προσθήσω δὲ καὶ τὸ πάντων ἀτιμότερον εἶναι καὶ μᾶλλον ἀπεμφαίνειν δοκοῦν ὅτι καὶ σκώληκος εἶδος αὐτὴν ἑαυτῇ περιπλάττουσαν οἱ τὰ θεῖα δεινοὶ παραδεδώκασιν. Oὕτω πάντες οἱ θεόσοφοι καὶ τῆς κρυφίας ἐπι πνοίας ὑποφῆται τῶν ἀτελέστων καὶ τῶν ἀνιέρων ἀχράντως ἀποδια