Celestial Hierarchy 1 part 1/3

For “from him are all things, and unto him,” as the sacred word has said.

Therefore, calling upon Jesus—the Father’s light, the true light “which enlightens every man that comes into the world,” through whom we have obtained access to the Father, the Source of light—let us lift up our eyes, so far as is possible, to the illuminations of the most sacred Scriptures handed down by the Fathers; and let us, as far as we are able, contemplate the hierarchies of the heavenly intelligences which they have revealed to us symbolically and anagogically. And having received with immaterial and unwavering eyes of the mind the originating and supra-original gift of light from the divine Father—the gift which makes manifest to us in figurative symbols the most blessed hierarchies of the angels—let us once again be stretched up from it toward its simple ray.

For it never departs from its own unitary oneness; rather, in a manner befitting its goodness, it multiplies and proceeds for the anagogic and unifying blending of those for whom it provides, while it yet remains firmly within itself, fixed unmovably in unchanging selfsameness. And it stretches upward those who lawfully look up to it, in proportion to themselves, and unifies them in accordance with its own simplifying union.

For it is not possible for the divine ray to shine upon us otherwise than by being anagogically veiled round about with the variety of the sacred coverings, and fitted, by the Father’s providence, in a manner connatural and proper to us.

…it inscribed [these] intelligences in the sacred compositions of the Scriptures, that it might lead us up through things perceptible to things intelligible, and from the sacredly fashioned symbols to the simple summits of the heavenly hierarchies.

It is therefore necessary, as I think, first to set forth what we hold to be the aim of every hierarchy, and how each one benefits its own initiates; next, to hymn the heavenly hierarchies according to their disclosure in the Scriptures; then, following upon this, to say with what sacred forms the sacred writings of the Scriptures figure the heavenly orders, and to what simplicity one must be led up through these fashionings—so that we, like the multitude, may not impiously suppose that the heavenly and godlike intelligences are some many-footed and many-faced beings, or formed after the brutishness of oxen or the bestial shape of lions, or fashioned after the hooked beak of eagles or the feathered plumage of birds; nor imagine certain fiery wheels above the heaven, or material thrones suitable for the Godhead to recline upon, or certain many-colored horses, and spear-bearing commanders-in-chief, and whatever else the Scriptures have sacredly fashioned and handed down to us in the variety of revelatory symbols.

For indeed theology has artlessly employed poetic sacred fashionings for the sake of the figureless intelligences, considering, as has been said, our intelligence, providing for its own proper and connatural elevation, and fashioning for it the anagogic sacred writings.

But if someone thinks that the sacred compositions are to be accepted (since the simple things, in themselves, are unknown and uncontemplated by us), yet supposes the depictions of the holy intelligences in the Scriptures to be unfitting, and that the whole, so to speak, of this rough stage-setting of angelic names is improper; and asserts that the theologians, in coming at all to the corporeal portrayal of the incorporeal beings, ought to have fashioned and revealed them by forms proper to them and, so far as possible, kindred—drawn from the most honored and somewhat immaterial and supereminent beings among us—and not to have clothed the heavenly and godlike simplicities with the lowest, earthly multiformities (for the one course would have been more anagogic for us and would not have dragged down the supercosmic revelations into unfitting dissimilarities, whereas the other both does outrage to the divine powers unlawfully and perhaps leads our intelligence astray, settling it into unholy compositions; and perhaps such a one will even suppose that the supraheavenly regions are filled with certain swarms of lions and horses, and with bellowing hymnody and flocks of birds and other animals and yet baser materials—whatever, inclining toward the absurd, the bastard, and the passion-ridden, those wholly dissimilar likenesses of the supposedly revelatory Scriptures depict): yet the search for truth, as I think, demonstrates that the most sacred wisdom of the Scriptures, in the formings of the heavenly intelligences, took thoughtful care of each of these things, so as neither, as one might say, to do outrage to the divine powers, nor to fix us, passion-bound, in the lowliness of base images.

…of anagogies, which set before us the formings, attainable by us, of the formless and supernatural visions; but also because this too is most fitting to the mystical Scriptures: to conceal, through ineffable and sacred enigmas, and to set beyond the reach of the multitude, the sacred and hidden truth of the supercosmic intelligences.

For not everyone is sacred, nor is knowledge for all, as the Scriptures say.

But if someone should find fault with the unfitting depictions, saying that he is ashamed to ascribe such shameful forms to the godlike and most holy orderings, it suffices to say to him that the mode of sacred revelation is twofold: the one proceeding, as is fitting, through likenesses by means of sacredly figured similar images; the other fashioned through dissimilar formings into what is utterly unlike and unfitting.

Indeed, the mystical traditions of the revelatory Scriptures sometimes hymn the venerable blessedness of the superessential Godhead as Word and Mind and Being, manifesting its God-befitting reason and wisdom, and its truly real existence, and its being the true cause of the existence of beings; and they portray it as light, and call it life. Such sacred fashionings, though more venerable and seeming somehow to surpass the material formings, yet even so fall short of the divine likeness to the truth (for it is beyond all being and life, since no light characterizes it, and every word and mind fall incomparably short of its likeness). At other times it is hymned supercosmically by the same Scriptures with negative revelations, when they call it invisible and infinite and uncontainable, and the rest, by which is signified not what it is, but what it is not.

For this, as I think, is even more proper to it; since, as the hidden and priestly tradition has taught, we speak truly when we say that it is not anything of beings, but we are ignorant of its superessential and inconceivable and unutterable infinitude.

If, then, negations concerning divine things are true, while affirmations are inharmonious with the hiddenness of the ineffable, the revelation through dissimilar formings is more proper for the invisible things.

Therefore the sacred writings of the Scriptures honor, and do not disgrace, the heavenly orderings when they reveal them by dissimilar formings, and through these demonstrate them to have gone forth supercosmically beyond all material things.

And that the unfitting likenesses lead up our intelligence rather more than the fitting ones do—I do not think any of the right-minded would contradict.

For with regard to the more honorable sacred fashionings, it is likely even to be led astray, supposing the heavenly beings to be certain gold-like and light-like men, radiantly flashing, fair, clothed in shining raiment, harmlessly shimmering with fire, and adorned with whatever other similar-figured beauties theology has used to figure the heavenly intelligences.

Lest those who have conceived nothing higher than the apparent beauties should suffer this, the uplifting wisdom of the holy theologians sacredly descends even to the unfitting dissimilarities, not permitting our material part to remain at rest in the base images, but rousing the upward-tending part of the soul, and goading it by the misshapenness of the symbols, so that it should seem neither lawful nor true—even to those who are very material—that the supraheavenly and divine visions are in truth resemblant to such base things.

…[nothing] is wholly deprived of participation in the beautiful, since, as the truth of the Scriptures says, “All things are very good.”

It is possible, then, from all things to conceive beautiful contemplations, and to fashion for the intelligible and intellectual realities, out of material things, what are called the dissimilar similarities, since intellectual things possess in another mode what has been assigned otherwise to perceptible things.

For anger arises in irrational creatures from a passionate impulse, and their incensive movement is full of all unreason; but in intellectual beings the incensive faculty must be conceived in another way, indicating, as I think, their manly rationality and their inexorable steadfastness in their godlike and unchanging establishments.

Likewise, we say that in irrational creatures desire is a certain unreflecting and material passionate inclination, arising uncontrollably from an inborn movement or from habit in changeable things, and the irrational dominance of bodily appetite that drives every animal toward what it desires by sense; but when, ascribing dissimilar similarities to intellectual beings, we fashion for them desire, we must conceive it as a divine love of the immateriality that is beyond reason and mind, and as the unswerving and unyielding aspiration toward the superessentially pure and impassible contemplation, and toward that pure and most lofty clarity, and toward the unseen and beauty-making comeliness of the truly eternal and intelligible communion.

And we may understand “uncontrollableness” as referring to that intense, unturning love—which can be hindered by nothing—owing to the unmixed and unchanging love of the divine beauty, and to the total inclination toward what is truly to be desired.

But even irrationality and insensibility, in the case of irrational animals or inanimate materials, we properly call a privation of reason and sense; whereas in the case of immaterial and intellectual beings, we confess, in a manner befitting holiness, their supereminence—as supercosmic beings—over our transitive and bodily reason and over the material sense, which is alien to the incorporeal intelligences.

It is possible, therefore, to fashion forms for the heavenly beings not unsuitably even from the basest parts of matter, since matter too, having received its existence from the truly Beautiful, possesses throughout all its material ordering certain echoes of the intellectual comeliness, and it is possible through these to be led up to the immaterial archetypes—the similarities being taken, as has been said, dissimilarly, and the same things being defined not identically but harmoniously and properly with respect to the intellectual and the perceptible properties.

We shall find that the mystical theologians sacredly invest with these things not only the manifestations of the heavenly orders, but also, at times, the divine revelations themselves.

And sometimes they hymn it from the apparent honorable things, as “Sun of righteousness,” as “Morning Star” sacredly rising in the mind, and as light shining unveiled and intelligibly; sometimes from middle things, as fire harmlessly illuminating, as water bestowing the fullness of life and, to speak symbolically, slipping into the belly and gushing forth rivers that flow unrestrained; sometimes from the lowest things, as fragrant ointment, as cornerstone.

But they also clothe it with bestial form, ascribing to it the property of a lion and of a leopard, and they say that it shall be a panther, and a bear bereft of her cubs.

I will add even what seems baser than all and more unfitting: that those skilled in divine things have handed down that it fashions for itself even the form of a worm.

…they conceal the Holy of Holies and venerate the dissimilar sacred fashioning, so that neither may divine things be easily handled by the profane, nor may the lovers of the divine images remain fixed upon the figures as though they were true; and so that divine things may be honored by the true negations and by the dissimilar likenesses drawn from the lowest of their proper echoes.

There is nothing absurd, then, if they also fashion the heavenly beings from the unfitting, dissimilar similarities, according to the causes stated.

For perhaps not even we would have come—out of perplexity, to inquiry, and through the careful searching of sacred things, to elevation—had not the unseemliness of the revelatory fashioning of the angels disturbed us, not allowing our intelligence to remain among the unfitting formings, but provoking it to reject the material inclinations, and habituating it sacredly to be stretched up through the apparent things toward the supercosmic ascents.

Let so much, then, be said by us concerning the material and unfitting angel-like depictions of the sacred Scriptures. Next we must determine what we hold the hierarchy itself to be, and what benefit those allotted to a hierarchy gain from the hierarchy itself.

And may Christ—my Christ, if it is lawful for me to say so—the inspiration of all hierarchic revelation, lead the discourse.

But you, O child, according to the holy ordinance of our hierarchic tradition, both listen reverently to the things sacredly spoken, becoming, in the initiation, inspired among the inspired; and, having veiled the holy things in the hiddenness of your mind, guard them as unitary from the unholy multitude.

For it is not lawful, as the Scriptures say, to cast before swine the unmixed and light-like and beauty-making good order of the intelligible pearls.

Hierarchy is, in my view, a sacred order and knowledge and activity, being assimilated as far as possible to the godlike, and led up, in proportion to the illuminations divinely given to it, toward the imitation of God. But the God-befitting beauty, as simple, as good, as the source of all consecration, is wholly unmixed with all dissimilarity, yet it imparts to each, according to worth, of its own light, and perfects them in a most divine consecration, in accordance with the harmoniously unvarying conformation of those being perfected to itself.

The aim of hierarchy, then, is assimilation to God and union with him, so far as is possible, having him as the guide of all sacred knowledge and activity; and gazing unswervingly toward his most divine comeliness, and being stamped after it so far as possible, and rendering its own initiates divine images, mirrors most translucent and unstained, receptive of the originating-light and divine ray, sacredly filled with the splendor given to them, and again shining this forth ungrudgingly upon the things that follow, according to the divine ordinances.

For it is not lawful for those who perform the sacred rites, or for those sacredly being perfected, to do anything whatever contrary to the sacred orderings of their own consecrating source; nor indeed can it be otherwise, if they aspire to the deifying splendor of that source, and look toward it in a manner befitting the sacred, and are stamped after it according to the proportion of each of the sacred intelligences.

Therefore, whoever speaks of hierarchy indicates, generally, a certain sacred ordering, an image of the divine loveliness, which in hierarchic orders and knowledges sacredly performs the mysteries of its own illumination, and is assimilated, so far as is lawful, to its own principle.

…[each, according to its] proportion, to be led up to the imitation of God, and—what is indeed most divine of all—as the Scriptures say, to become “a fellow-worker with God,” and to display the divine activity manifesting itself in oneself so far as possible.

For example, since it is an order of hierarchy that some be purified and others purify, some be illumined and others illumine, some be perfected and others perform the perfecting, the imitation of God will be fitting to each in the following manner.

The divine blessedness—to speak in human terms—is unmixed with all dissimilarity, full of eternal light, perfect and lacking in no perfection; purifying and illumining and perfecting; or rather, it is itself purification and illumination and perfection, beyond purification, beyond light, the pre-perfect Source of all consecration, the cause of all hierarchy, and exalted above every sacred thing in surpassing transcendence.

It is necessary, therefore, as I think, that those being purified be rendered wholly unmixed and freed from all dissimilar commingling; that those being illumined be filled with the divine light, led up to the contemplative habit and power with the wholly pure eyes of the mind; that those being perfected, transferred from the imperfect, become partakers of the perfecting knowledge of the sacred things contemplated; that the purifiers, in superabundance of purification, impart to others their own purity; that the illuminators, as more translucent intelligences, fitted for the reception and the imparting of light, and most blessedly filled with the sacred radiance, channel the light overflowing upon them in every way unto those worthy of light; and that the perfecters, as knowledgeable in the imparting of perfection, perfect those being perfected by the all-sacred initiation of the knowledge of the sacred things contemplated.

Therefore each order of the hierarchic ordering is led up, according to its own proportion, toward the divine cooperation, accomplishing by grace and God-given power those things that are present to the Godhead naturally and supernaturally, and are wrought by it superessentially, and are revealed hierarchically for the attainable imitation of the God-loving intelligences.

Now that the hierarchy itself, whatever it may be, has, as I think, been well defined by us, we must next hymn the angelic hierarchy and contemplate with supercosmic eyes its sacred formings in the Scriptures, so that we may be led up to their most godlike simplicity through the mystical fashionings, and may hymn the source of all hierarchic knowledge with God-befitting reverence and with thanksgivings befitting the source of consecration.

First of all, this must be said truly: that by goodness the superessential Godhead, having established all the substances of beings, brought them forth into being.

For this is proper to the cause of all and to the goodness that is beyond all: to call beings into communion with itself, as is determined for each of beings according to its own proportion.

All beings, then, participate in providence, which wells forth from the superessential and all-causing Godhead.

For they would not be, had they not partaken of the substance and principle of beings.

All inanimate things, then, participate in it by being (for being is of all things the Godhead that is beyond being); living things participate in its life-giving power that is beyond all life; rational and intellectual things participate in its self-perfect and pre-perfect wisdom that is beyond all reason and mind.

…[things that are simply] in being, and things living irrationally, and the rational beings like ourselves, have come to be in participation of the divine imparting.

For [the heavenly beings], intelligibly stamping themselves toward the imitation of God, and looking supercosmically toward the divine resemblance, and desiring to form their intellectual aspect, reasonably possess more ungrudging communions with it; being ever-proximate and ever stretched up toward what is above, as is lawful, in the intensity of divine and unswerving love, and receiving the originating illuminations immaterially and unmixedly, and being ranged toward them, and having their whole life intellectual.

These, then, are the ones who first and in manifold ways come to be in participation of the divine, and who first and in manifold ways are revelatory of the divine hiddenness; wherefore also, beyond all, they have been deemed worthy, in a select manner, of the angelic appellation, because the divine illumination comes to be in them first, and through them are conveyed to us the revelations that are above us.

Thus, then, the Law, as theology says, was given to us through angels; and angels led up to the divine our renowned fathers both before the Law and after the Law—either by introducing to them what should be done, and leading them over from error and unholy life to the straight way of truth, or by prophetically revealing sacred orderings, or the hidden visions of supercosmic mysteries, or certain divine foretellings.

But if anyone should say that theophanies have also been granted immediately and directly to certain of the saints, let him learn this too clearly from the most sacred Scriptures: that what the hidden thing of God itself is, no one has ever seen nor shall see; but theophanies have come to the holy ones in a manner befitting God, through certain sacred visions proportionate to those who behold them.

And all-wise theology rightly calls that vision—which displayed in itself, as inscribed therein, the divine likeness in the forming of the formless—a theophany, by reason of the leading up of the beholders toward the divine; since through it a divine illumination comes to be in those who behold, and they are sacredly initiated into something of the divine things themselves.

And our renowned fathers were initiated into these divine visions through the mediation of the heavenly powers.

Or does not the tradition of the Scriptures say that the sacred legislation of the Law was indeed granted directly from God to Moses, that it might truly instruct us that it is a representation of the divine and sacred ordering—and yet theology also clearly teaches this, that it came forth to us through angels, as though the God-ordained order legislated this very thing: that the second things should be led up to the divine through the first?

For not only in the case of the higher and lower intelligences, but also among those of equal rank, has this law been ordained by the superessential ordering-principle of all things: that in each hierarchy there be first and middle and last orders and powers, and that the more divine be initiators and hand-leaders of the lesser toward the divine approach and illumination and communion.

And I see that even the divine mystery of Jesus’ love for mankind was first revealed to angels, and then through them the grace of this knowledge passed over to us.

Thus the most divine Gabriel led Zacharias the priest into the mystery that the child to be born to him, against hope, by divine grace, should become a prophet of the manly divine work of Jesus, which was to appear to the world in a manner befitting goodness and salvation; and led Mary into the mystery how the divine mystery of the ineffable God-forming should come to be in her.

But I will lift up my eyes also to the most exalted light-manifestations of the Scriptures.

For I see that even Jesus himself, the superessential cause of the supraheavenly beings, having come unchangeably to our condition, does not draw back from the human-befitting good order appointed and chosen by him, but obediently submits himself to the dispositions of the Father and God made through angels; and through their mediation there is announced to Joseph the withdrawal of the Son into Egypt as ordered by the Father, and again the return from Egypt into Judaea; and through angels we see him being set under the Father’s ordinances.

For I forbear to speak—to you who know the things made known in our priestly traditions—both concerning the angel who strengthened Jesus, and that Jesus himself, according to our saving good work, having come into the revelatory order, was proclaimed “Angel [Messenger] of great counsel.”

For, as he himself says in a manner befitting an angel-messenger, “Whatever I have heard from the Father, I have announced to you.”

This, then, is, in our view, the reason for the angelic appellation in the Scriptures. But we must, I think, inquire for what cause the theologians call all the heavenly beings together “angels,” yet, when they come to the revelation of their supercosmic orderings, name properly “angelic” the order that completes, as a finishing rank, the divine and heavenly hosts.

Before this they rank, in a higher position, the archangelic orderings, and the principalities and the authorities and the powers, and all those beings surpassing these which the revelatory traditions of the Scriptures recognize.

And we say that, in every sacred ordering, the higher orders possess also the illuminations and powers of the lower orderings, but the last do not possess those of the ones above them.

The most holy orders of the highest beings, then, the theologians also call “angels.”

For these too are revelatory of the divine illumination.

But there is no reason to name the last order of the heavenly intelligences “principalities” or “thrones” or “Seraphim.”

For it does not participate in the highest powers; but just as this last order leads up our inspired hierarchs toward the radiances of the Godhead known to it, so too the all-sacred powers of the beings before it are anagogic toward the divine—I mean the powers of that ordering which completes the angelic hierarchies—unless indeed one should also say this: that all the angelic appellations are common, according to the communion of all the heavenly powers in the godlike and in the gift of light from God, a communion that is at once subordinate and preeminent.

But that our discourse may be the more clearly distinguished, let us sacredly behold the holiness-befitting properties revealed in the Scriptures of each heavenly ordering.

…[each ordering’s] own powers and illuminations, and their own sacred and supercosmic good order.

For it is impossible for us to know the mysteries of the supraheavenly intelligences and their most holy perfectings, except insofar as someone might say [we know] what the Godhead has initiated us into through them, as those who well know their own affairs.

Therefore we shall say nothing of our own motion.

But whatever of the angelic visions has been contemplated by the sacred theologians, this, having been initiated, we shall set forth as far as we are able.

Theology has called all the heavenly beings by nine revelatory appellations.

These our divine hierarch (initiator) divides into three triadic orderings.

And he says that the first is that which is ever around God, and immediately proximate to him, and which is handed down as having been united to him directly, before the others.

For the revelation of the sacred Scriptures, he says, hands down that the most holy Thrones and the many-eyed and many-winged orders—named in the Hebrew tongue Cherubim and Seraphim—are established immediately around God, by reason of their nearness, which surpasses all.

This triadic ordering, then, our renowned guide called one and of equal rank and truly the first hierarchy, than which there is no other more godlike, nor any more immediately proximate to the first-working illuminations of the Godhead; and he says that the second is that completed by the Authorities and Dominions and Powers, and the third, at the lowest of the heavenly hierarchies, the ordering of the Angels and Archangels and Principalities.

Accepting this ordering of the holy hierarchies, we say that every appellation of the heavenly intelligences indicates the godlike property of each.

And the holy appellation of the Seraphim, those who know Hebrew say, signifies either “the enkindlers” or “the warmers”; and that of the Cherubim, “fullness of knowledge” or “outpouring of wisdom.”

Reasonably, then, the first of the heavenly hierarchies is consecrated by the highest beings, having the order more exalted than all, by being established immediately around God, and by the first-working theophanies and perfectings being conveyed to it, as the nearest, in a more originating manner.

They are named, accordingly, “Warmers,” and “Thrones,” and “Outpouring of wisdom,” by a name revelatory of their godlike states.

…both firmly established, and receptive of the divine visitation in all impassibility and immateriality, and God-bearing, and ministerially open toward the divine receptions.

This, then, is the revelation, as in our view, of their names.

But we must say what we hold their hierarchy to be.