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

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-celestial minds and their most holy perfections, unless perhaps one might say all that the Thearchy has mystically taught us through them, as those who know their own things well. Therefore, we for our part will say nothing on our own initiative; but whatever of the angelic visions was contemplated by the sacred theologians, having been initiated into these things, we will set them forth as we are able. <2> Theology has called all the celestial substances by nine revealing appellations; these our divine initiator separates into three triadic arrangements. And he says the first is the one that is always around God and is transmitted as being immediately united to Him before all others. For the revealing tradition of the sacred oracles declares, he says, that the most holy Thrones and the many-eyed and many-winged orders, named Cherubim and Seraphim in the Hebrew tongue, are established immediately around God, according to a proximity surpassing all others. Therefore, our renowned leader has called this triadic arrangement a single and like-ranked and truly first hierarchy, than which there is no other more godlike and more immediately proximate to the first-working illuminations of the Thearchy, and he says the second is that which is filled by the Authorities and Dominions and Powers, and the third, at the end of the celestial hierarchies, is the arrangement of the Angels and Archangels and Principalities. <VII.> <1> We, accepting this order of the holy hierarchies, say that every appellation of the celestial minds contains a declaration of the godlike property of each. And those who know Hebrew say that the holy name of the Seraphim signifies either "the kindlers" or "the warming ones," and that of the Cherubim, "fullness of knowledge" or "outpouring of wisdom." Fittingly, therefore, the first of the celestial hierarchies is ministered by the most exalted substances, having the highest rank of all because it is established immediately around God and because the primary theophanies and perfections are transmitted to it in a more originative way, as being nearest. Accordingly, they are called "warming ones" and "thrones" and "outpouring of wisdom" by a name that reveals their godlike characteristics. For their perpetual motion around the divine things and their ceaselessness, and the heat and keenness and super-boiling quality of their immediate and unremitting and unswerving perpetual movement, and their power of uplifting and actively assimilating their inferiors, by making them boil up and rekindling them to the same heat, and their purifying quality which is like a burning wind and a holocaust, and their unveiled and unquenchable property which is likewise always light-like and illuminating, being the banisher and destroyer of all lightless obscurity, the appellation of the Seraphim revealingly teaches, while that of the Cherubim [teaches of] their knowing and God-seeing power, and their receptivity to the highest light-giving, and their contemplative power, in the first-working faculty of the Thearchic comeliness, and their being filled with the wisdom-making impartation and their sharing it ungrudgingly with those of the second rank by the outpouring of the wisdom given them, and that of the most high and exalted Thrones [teaches of] their being unmixedly removed from all groveling lowliness and their supermundane bearing upwards toward the heights and their being firmly removed from all that is lowest and their being unshakably with all their powers around Him who is truly highest

οἰκείας δυνάμεις τε καὶ ἐλλάμψεις καὶ τὴν ἑαυτῶν ἱερὰν καὶ ὑπερκόσμιον εὐταξίαν. Ἀδύνατον γὰρ ἡμᾶς εἰδέναι τὰ τῶν ὑπερουρανίων νοῶν μυστή ρια καὶ τὰς ἁγιωτάτας αὐτῶν τελειώσεις, εἰ μή που φαίη τις ὅσα δι' αὐτῶν ἡμᾶς ὡς τὰ οἰκεῖα καλῶς εἰδότων ἡ θεαρχία μεμυσταγώγηκεν. Oὐκοῦν ἡμεῖς μὲν οὐδὲν αὐτοκινήτως ἐροῦμεν· ὅσα δὲ τῶν ἀγγελικῶν θεαμάτων ὑπὸ τῶν ἱερῶν θεολόγων ἐθεωρήθη, ταῦτα μυηθέντες ἡμεῖς ὡς οἷοί τέ ἐσμεν ἐκθησόμεθα. <2> Πάσας ἡ θεολογία τὰς οὐρανίας οὐσίας ἐννέα κέκληκεν ἐκφαντο ρικαῖς ἐπωνυμίαις· ταύτας ὁ θεῖος ἡμῶν ἱεροτελεστὴς εἰς τρεῖς ἀφορίζει τριαδικὰς διακοσμήσεις. Καὶ πρώτην μὲν εἶναί φησι τὴν περὶ θεὸν οὖσαν ἀεὶ καὶ προσεχῶς αὐτῷ καὶ πρὸ τῶν ἄλλων ἀμέσως ἡνῶσθαι παραδε δομένην. Τούς τε γὰρ ἁγιωτάτους θρόνους καὶ τὰ πολυόμματα καὶ πολύπτερα τάγματα Χερουβὶμ Ἑβραίων φωνῇ καὶ Σεραφὶμ ὠνομασμένα κατὰ τὴν πάντων ὑπερκειμένην ἐγγύτητα περὶ θεὸν ἀμέσως ἱδρῦσθαί φησι παραδιδόναι τὴν τῶν ἱερῶν λογίων ἐκφαντορίαν. Τὸν τριαδικὸν οὖν τοῦτον διάκοσμον ὡς ἕνα καὶ ὁμοταγῆ καὶ ὄντως πρώτην ἱεραρχίαν ὁ κλεινὸς ἡμῶν ἔφη καθηγεμών, ἧς οὐκ ἔστιν ἑτέρα θεοειδεστέρα καὶ ταῖς πρωτουργοῖς τῆς θεαρχίας ἐλλάμψεσιν ἀμέσως προσεχεστέρα, δευτέραν δ' εἶναί φησιν τὴν ὑπὸ τῶν ἐξουσιῶν καὶ κυριοτήτων καὶ δυνάμεων συμπληρουμένην καὶ τρίτην ἐπ' ἐσχάτων τῶν οὐρανίων ἱεραρχιῶν τὴν τῶν ἀγγέλων τε καὶ ἀρχαγγέλων καὶ ἀρχῶν διακόσμησιν. <VII.> <1> Ταύτην ἡμεῖς ἀποδεχόμενοι τὴν τῶν ἁγίων ἱεραρχιῶν τάξιν φαμὲν ὅτι πᾶσα τῶν οὐρανίων νοῶν ἐπωνυμία δήλωσιν ἔχει τῆς ἑκάστου θεοειδοῦς ἰδιότητος. Καὶ τὴν μὲν ἁγίαν τῶν Σεραφὶμ ὀνομασίαν φασὶν οἱ τὰ Ἑβραίων εἰδότες ἢ τὸ ἐμπρηστὰς ἐμφαίνειν ἢ τὸ θερμαίνοντας, τὴν δὲ τῶν Χερουβὶμ πλῆθος γνώσεως ἢ χύσιν σοφίας. Eἰκότως οὖν ἡ πρώτη τῶν οὐρανίων ἱεραρχιῶν πρὸς τῶν ὑπερτάτων οὐσιῶν ἱερουργεῖται τάξιν ἔχουσα τὴν πασῶν ὑψηλοτέραν τῷ περὶ θεὸν ἀμέσως ἱδρῦσθαι καὶ τὰς πρωτουργοὺς θεοφανείας καὶ τελειώσεις εἰς αὐτὴν ὡς ἐγγυτάτην ἀρχικωτέρως διαπορθμεύεσθαι. Θερμαίνοντες γοῦν ὀνομάζονται καὶ θρό νοι καὶ χύσις σοφίας ἐκφαντορικῷ τῶν θεοειδῶν αὐτῶν ἕξεων ὀνόματι. Τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἀεικίνητον αὐτῶν περὶ τὰ θεῖα καὶ ἀκατάληκτον καὶ τὸ θερμὸν καὶ ὀξὺ καὶ ὑπερζέον τῆς προσεχοῦς καὶ ἀνενδότου καὶ ἀκλινοῦς ἀεικινη σίας καὶ τὸ τῶν ὑποβεβηκότων ἀναγωγικῶς καὶ δραστηρίως ἀφομοιω τικὸν ὡς ἀναζέον ἐκεῖνα καὶ ἀναζωπυροῦν ἐπὶ τὴν ὁμοίαν θερμότητα, καὶ τὸ πρηστηρίως καὶ ὁλοκαύτως καθαρτικὸν καὶ τὴν ἀπερικάλυπτον καὶ ἄσβεστον ἔχουσαν ὡσαύτως ἀεὶ φωτοειδῆ καὶ φωτιστικὴν ἰδιότητα, πάσης ἀλαμποῦς σκοτοποιίας ἐλάτειραν οὖσαν καὶ ἀφανιστικὴν ἡ τῶν Σεραφὶμ ἐπωνυμία ἐκφαντορικῶς διδάσκει, ἡ δὲ τῶν Χερουβὶμ τὸ γνωστι κὸν αὐτῶν καὶ θεοπτικὸν καὶ τῆς ὑπερτάτης φωτοδοσίας δεκτικὸν καὶ θεωρητικὸν ἐν πρωτουργῷ δυνάμει τῆς θεαρχικῆς εὐπρεπείας καὶ τῆς σοφοποιοῦ μεταδόσεως ἀναπεπλησμένον καὶ κοινωνικὸν ἀφθόνως πρὸς τὰ δεύτερα τῇ χύσει τῆς δωρηθείσης σοφίας, ἡ δὲ τῶν ὑψηλοτάτων καὶ ἐπηρμένων θρόνων τὸ πάσης ἀμιγῶς ἐξῃρῆσθαι περιπεζίας ὑφέσεως καὶ τὸ πρὸς τὸ ἄναντες ὑπερκοσμίως ἀνωφερὲς καὶ πάσης ἐσχατιᾶς ἀρρεπῶς ἀνῳκισμένον καὶ περὶ τὸν ὄντως ὕψιστον ὁλικαῖς δυνάμεσιν ἀκατασείστως