Mystical Theology

Dionysi dei numen Theologi veteres et Platonici separatarum mentium extasin et excessum esse putant, quando partim amore nativo, partim instigante Deo naturales intelligentiæ limites supergresse, in amatum Deum mirabiliter transformantur. Ubi novo quodam nectatis haustu et inestimabili gaudio velut ebriæ (ut ita dixerim) debacchantur. Hoc igitur dionysiaco mero Dionysius noster ebrius exultat passim: effundit enigmata, concinit dithyrambos. Itaque quam arduum est profundos illius sensus incelligentia penetrare, tam difficile miras verborum compositiones; et quasi Orphicum dicendi characterem imitari, ac Latinis præsertim verbis exprimere. Idem profecto ad id facile consequendum, necessarius omnino nobis divinus est furor. Eadem prorsus oratione Trinitas obsecranda, ut quod Dionysio piæ petenti lumen ad penetranda prophetarum apostolorumque mysteria quondam Deus infudit, idem nobis similiter supplicantibus ad illius sensum eloquiumque consequendum et exprimendum fœliciter nunc infundat.

The ancient theologians and the Platonists believe that the spirit of the god Dionysus dwells in the ecstasy, the ecstatic departure, of separated minds, when, partly out of inborn love and partly with the god prompting them, they have surpassed the natural limits of understanding, and are wondrously transformed into the beloved god. Then with a new draft of nectar and with unconscionable joy they reel as though they were intoxicated bacchantes. With this Dionysian wine, therefore, our inebriated Dionysius runs riot everywhere: he pours forth enigmas, he sings in dithyrambs, Hence, as taxing as it is to penetrate with the understanding the profound meanings of our Dionysius, so is it equally difficult to penetrate the marvelous texture of his words, and to imitate the Orphic manner as it were of his speaking and especially to render it into Latin. Certainly, to achieve this with ease we must be possessed by an utterly divine frenzy. We must beseech the Trinity in one and the same prayer that, as God once poured into Dionysius the light of piously seeking in order that he might penetrate the mysteries of the prophets and apostles, so God may now pour the same light into us, who likewise ask in supplication that we may grasp Dionysius’ meaning and eloquence, and express them felicitously here.
— Translated by Michael J. B. Allen: Marsilio Ficino. On Dionysius the Areopagite. Cambridge: HUP, 2015. pp. 3-5.

Dionysius Areopagita, a mystical theologian, was so named in the belief, which generally prevailed until the last century, that a body of writings in Greek was produced by Dionysius of Athens, the convert of the Apostle Paul (Acts 17:16-34). In fact, the writings were produced ca. 500 A.D. and probably in Syria. Scholars are not agreed on their author; one possibility is Peter Fuller, Patriarch of Antioch (471-488). The surviving corpus includes four treatises (Celestial Hierarchy, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, Divine Names and Mystical Theology) and ten letters. Written in a lofty tone with a rich vocabulary and cosmic in scope, they largely represent a fusion of Christian angelology with the neoplatonism of Proclus († 485) and others. Hierarchy is defined in the Celestial Hierarchy III.1 as ‘sacred order, knowledge and activity assimilating itself, as far as it can, to the likeness of God (deiformity), and raising itself to its utmost, by means of the illuminations granted by God, to the imitation of God’. The object of hierarchy is assimilation and union of the soul with God. Parallels have been suggested by modern scholars between Dionysius’s writing about divinisation through sacred knowledge and enlightenment and Hermetism, but even if not strictly paralleled in or by “hermetic” literature per se, Dionysius believed that supradiscursive knowledge is capable of effecting an ontological transformation in man. For Dionysius, nine orders of angels in heaven and six orders of ministers in the church on earth are like mirrors which receive illumination from God and in turn mediate this illumination to the beings who come below them, with a view to purifying, enlightening, perfecting and thus uniting them with God. In Divine Names Dionysius proposes two types of theology: one affirmative, which arises from God’s revelation of Himself to creatures but which entails the metaphorical use of names (such as Light or Beauty or Being) for the transcendent Thearchy; the other negative, which arises from the unknowability of God. In seeking deification or union with God, Dionysius starts with the sensible, created world and the material sacraments which provide symbols. But the inadequacies of human concepts and symbols when applied to God render the affirmative way inferior to the negative one, in which the human soul dispenses with the knowledge provided by the senses and by human reason, defines God by negatives (e.g. not light, not beauty, not being but beyond all these), and arrives through not knowing and not understanding at an ineffable union with Him. Because the negative way is superior, Dionysius also preferred dissimilar images of sacred realities (e.g. wild animals) to apparently similar ones (e.g. winged angels with human bodies and perfect faces), in order to highlight the illusory nature of the latter.

His writings, in Greek but translated into other languages (including Latin in the 9th century), have had a profound influence in both the eastern and western churches and were the subject of repeated commentaries in both. One direction to which they pointed was to debate about hierarchy and its role in society, both heavenly and human. But another direction was mysticism within the traditions of the Catholic church. Mystical theology is the secret knowledge and incommunicable experience of God, non-intellectual and distinct from both natural theology and revealed theology. Two phrases of Dionysius enjoyed great fortune: the ‘ray of darkness’ and the ‘cloud of unknowing’ (Mystical Theology, chapter 1). His short treatise on Mystical Theology was especially influential during the late Middle Ages and in Spain and France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Thomas Gallus (d. 1246), Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-c. 1328), John Tauler († 1361), Ruysbroeck (1293-1381) and the Carthusian Denis Ryckel (1402-1471) drew generously from the Mystical Theology as did, in England in the mid-14th century, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing who, in addition, translated Dionysius’s work into English under the title Denis Hid Divinity. St John of the Cross (1542-1591) analysed the successive stages through which the soul passes, of purgation, illumination, and union with God; similarities have been found between The Cloud of Unknowing (a work which John probably did not know) and his Dark Night of the Soul. Unlike the medieval commentators, many Renaissance humanists understood that Dionysius was a neoplatonist. They also found connections between divinisation according to Dionysian teaching and traditions of secret magic deriving from the kabbalah [Jewish Influences] and from Hermetism. Ficino, who re-translated some of Dionysius’s works, is highly important in this context. He drew out more fully the similarities between Dionysius’s negative theology and the teaching in the Asclepius that God has no name but also has all names, as well as the associations between the Sun’s light and the Trinity and between the celestial spheres and the angelic powers. The connection between angelic intelligences and astrology had long been familiar to the medieval scholastics, influenced as they were from the 13th century by Avicenna. But Ficino, followed by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Cornelius Agrippa, Hannibal Rosseli (fl. c. 1590) and Giordano Bruno, fostered the association between astral powers, sun magic and the Dionisian hierarchies by turning also to Hermetic and kabbalistic sources.

J. P. Migne, Patrologia graeca 3 and 4 (Greek and Latin) ♦ Dionysiaca: Recueil donnant l’ensemble des traductions latines des ouvrages attribués au Denys de l’Aréopage (ed. P. Chevallier, OSB), 2 vols., Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1937-50 (This also contains the Greek text and a French translation) ♦ Denys L’Aréopagite, La Hiérarchie céleste (intr. by René Roques, study and critical edition by Gunther Heil, French trans. and notes by Maurice de Gandillac) (Sources chrétiennes 58 bis), 2nd ed., Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1970; French trans. with intr. and bibliography by Maurice de Gandillac (Bibliothèque Philosophique), 1945 ♦ English translation, The Complete Works (by C. Luibheid and P. Rorem) (Classics of Western Spirituality), New York: Paulist Press, 1987 ♦ Critical ed. by B. R. Suchla, G. Heil, A. M. Ritter, Corpus Dionysiacum, 2 vols. (Patristische Texte und Studien 33 and 36), Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990-1.

Lit.: Y. de Andia (ed.), Denys l’Aréopagite et sa postérité en Orient et en Occident, Paris: Institut d’Etudes Augustiniennes, 1997 ♦ A. Louth, Denys the Areopagite, London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1989 ♦ D. Luscombe, “Denys the Pseudo-Areopagite in the Writings of Nicholas of Cusa, Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola”, Néoplatonisme et philosophie médiévale (L. G. Benakis, ed.), Turnhout: Brepols, 1997, 93-107 ♦ René Roques, L’Univers dionysien: Structure hiérarchique du monde selon le Pseudo-Denys (Théologie 29), Paris: Aubier, Editions Montaigne, 1954 ♦ René Roques, Maiul Cappuyns and Roger Aubert, “Denys (14) le Pseudo-Aréopagite”, Dictionnaire d’Histoire et de Géographie Ecclésiastiques 14 (1960), cols. 265-310 ♦ René Roques, Structures théologiques de la gnose à Richard de Saint-Victor (Bibliotheque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Section des Sciences Religieuses 72), Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962 ♦ P. Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to their Influence, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993 ♦ S. Toussaint, “L’influence de Marsile Ficin à Paris et le Pseudo-Denys des Humanistes: Traversari, Cusa, Lefèvre d’Etaples”, Bruniana et Campanelliana 5:2 (1999), 381-414 ♦ C. Vasoli, “L’ ‘Un-Bien’ dans le commentaire de Ficin à la mystica theologia du pseudo-Denys”, in: Marsile Ficin: Les platonismes à la Renaissance (P. Magnard, ed.), Paris: Vrin, 2001, 181-93 ♦ P. M. Watts, “Pseudo-Dyonisius the Areopagite and three Renaissance Platonists: Cusanus, Ficino and Pico on Mind and Cosmos”, in: Supplementum Festivum: Studies in honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller (J. Hankins, J. Monfasani & F. Purnell, Jr), Binghampton (N.Y.): Suny Press, 1987, 279-98 ♦ Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964.
— In: Wouter J. Hanegraaff: Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism. Leiden: Brill, 2006. pp. 312-313.

Dionysius, or Pseudo-Dionysius, as he has come to be known in the contemporary world, was a Christian Neoplatonist who wrote in the late fifth or early sixth century CE and who transposed in a thoroughly original way the whole of Pagan Neoplatonism from Plotinus to Proclus, but especially that of Proclus and the Platonic Academy in Athens, into a distinctively new Christian context. (...)

All of this looks so alien to the spirit of modern philosophy that we may well ask if there is anything really philosophical in Dionysius’ practice? The answer has to be affirmative, for there is a perfectly reasonable pattern to the whole of Dionysius’ works. In addition, Dionysius regards his own task as a kind of demonstration (apodeixis) or showing (deixai). In the Divine Names, such demonstration is given a Pauline resonance when Dionysius states that we should hold to the scriptural revelation of divine names “not in the persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the power granted by the Spirit” (DN 585b; cf. Paul 1 Cor 2–4). In other words, Dionysius here sees scripture as providing the basis for a deeper understanding of attribution or predication that will lead us beyond our own merely human capacities. That such a demonstration involves the unpacking of the symbolic, contemplative, and mystical significances of ordinary things by the aid of scriptural testimony is clear in the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, which again starts from Dionysius’ purpose of demonstrating what the hierarchy comprises; and that this includes arguments, reasons, the possibility of debate and even improvement upon Dionysius’ demonstrations by his interlocutor becomes clear too at the end of the work, when the literary humility that is characteristic of his writing (cf. EH 568a ff.; DN 981c–984a; CH 340b) shows itself to be philosophically justified by Dionysius’ ability to set out both sides of the case for and against infant baptism in the understanding that he may not fully be in possession of the most complete view of the situation and that his interlocutor should “use” what he has said “as steps (epanabathmois) to a higher ray of light” (EH 568d–569a). This is a thought couched in terms very reminiscent of Socrates’ wish in the Republic to subvert or destroy hypotheses and use them as stepping stones to something better, and it is also a thought not unworthy of Wittgenstein’s similar view at the end of the Tractatus. The words immediately following make clear the connection between charity of interpretation, open-endedness and demonstration: “Be generous with me then, my dear friend,… and show (deixon) to my eyes that more beautiful and unified beauty which you may be able to see”. Demonstration in this sense, then, includes much of what we might consider to be properly philosophical, but at root it is also a form of “divine reading” (lectio divina, or meditative, prayerful reading) of nature and word, a receptive recognition as a kind of method or making one’s way “to hear the sacred words as receptively as possible, to be open to the divine workings of God, to clear an uplifting path (hodopoiesis) toward that inheritance that awaits us in heaven, and to accept our most divine and sacred regeneration” (EH 392a).
— The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Das „überlichthafte Dunkel“ kann von da aus weiter bestimmt werden. Es ist natürlich nicht falsch, es als „paradox“ zu bezeichnen, nur fuhrt der rhetorische Terminus technicus hier keineswegs zur Sache, sondern deckt sie eher zu59. Entscheidend ist, daß das „Überlicht“ der apophatischen Theologie mit der Dunkelheit der Henosis zusammenfällt. Nicht als coincidentia oppositorum, weil es die Gegensätze Licht-Dunkelheit bei Dionysius weder auf der ontologischen noch der gnoseologischen Ebene gibt, sondern als eine schon immer vorhandene Koinzidenz. Das „überlichthafte Dunkel“ ist bis zu Meister Eckhart der äußerste Versuch, Gottes absolute Transzendenz anzudeuten, und diesem Versuch gilt überhaupt die Aufgipfelung der dionysischen Theologie in der „Mystica theologia“. Mit Recht hat sie in der abendländischen Rezeption allergrößte Beachtung gefunden.
— München: Verlag der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1987. p. 42.

Ez schrîbet sanctus Lucas in dem ewangeliô „ein engel wart gesant von gote in ein lant, hiez Galylêâ, in ein stat, hiez Nazareth, zuo einer juncvrouwen, hiez Mariâ, diu was von dem ingesinde Dâvîdes“. Bêdâ, ein meister, sprichet: „diz was ein begin unsers heiles“. Ich hân etwenne gesprochen unde sprich ez noch: allez daz unser herre ie getet, daz tet er niwan umbe diu, daz got mit uns sî und wir ein mit ime werden, und dar umbe ist got mensche worden. Die meister sprechent, daz got è was geborn in unser vrouwen geistlichen ê er liplich von ir geborn würde, unde von der überflüzzikeit der gebürte, dô der himelsche vater gebar sînen eingeborenen sun in der sêle, dannen abe enpfienc daz ewige wort menschlîche nâtûre in ir unde si wart liplich berhaftic.

Nû sprichet er „ein engel wart gesant von gote“. Ez versmâhte der sêle zenpfâhende des engels lieht, ez würde ir denne von gole gesant, unde då enklebte inne daz götlîche lieht verborgen, daz irsmachaftic mahte des engels lieht, anders si enwolde sîn niht.

Nů sprichet er „ein engel“. Waz ist ein engel? Ez sprechent drie meister drigerleie rede, waz ein engel sî. Dionysius sprichet: ein engel ist ein spiegel âne flecken, geliuteret ûf daz hœhste, der in sich enpfâhet den widerslac gotlîches liehtes. Augustinus sprichet: der engel ist nâhen bî gote unde diu materie ist nâhen bî ime. Johannes Damascênus sprichet: ein engel ist ein bilde gotes und ist durchbrehende allez, daz sîn ist, mit dem bilde gotes. Diu sêle hât daz bilde an irm obersten zwîge, dâ gotlich lieht âne underlâz an liuhtet. Daz ist daz êrste stüke, daz er sprichet, waz ein engel sî. Dar nâch sprichet er, daz er sî ein durchsnidendiu scherpfe, infiuric von götlicher begirde, unde sprichet, daz der engel ist vrî, daz er vînt ist der materien.

Nû sprichet er „ein engel wart gesant von gote“. War zuo? Dionysius sprichet, daz der engel habe drîgerleige werc. Daz êrste: er veget, daz ander: er liuhtet, daz dritte: er vollebringet. Er veget die sêle von den flecken, daz ist, er veget sî von materie unde sament sî zuo ir selber unde veget sî von unwassentheit, als ouch ein engel den andern tuot. Zem andern mâle: er erliuhtet sî in zweigerhande wîse. Gotlich lieht daz ist sô überswenkic, daz ez diu sêle niht gelîden mac, ez enwerde getempert in des engels liehte und alsô getragen in die sêle. Dar nâch erliuhtet er sî mit glîchnüsse. Der engel lât sîn verstentnisse an die sêle unde kreftiget sî, daz si lîden mac götlich lieht.

Wère ich in einer wüestenunge aleine, dâ mich grüwelte, hiete ich dâ bî mir ein kint, sô vergienge mir der grûwel unde würde gekreftiget; sô edel unde sô lustic ist daz leben. Unde möhte ich niht ein kint haben, hête ich ein tier, ich würde getrœstet. Dar umbe die in den swarzen buochen vil wunders würkent, die nement ein tier, einen hunt, unde daz leben an dem tiere sterket sie. Berlicheit sterket an allen dingen. Dar umbe leitet sî der engel an die sêle unde bereitet sî, daz si enpfâhen mac götlich lieht.

Nù sprichet er „ein engel wart gesant von gote“. Diu sèle muoz gelîch sîn dem engel an disen stüken, diu ich gesprochen hån, sol ir der sun gesant werden und in ir geborn werden. Nû blîbet daz stüke underwegen, wie si der engel vollebringet. Daz uns got sinen engel sende, des helfe uns got. Âmen.
— Franz Pfeiffer: Deutsche Mystiker des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts:. Leipzig; Göschen, 1857. II, pp. 103-104.

The mysterious Christian theologian who created the corpus of Dionysius the Areopagite is one of the most intriguing, puzzling and influential individuals in the history of Western theology. Areopagitic negative theology is the expression of an evolution over centuries: with Dionysius, apophatic tradition reaches its culmination and finds its most refined formulations. It seems that Dionysius writes from knowledge of the discussions on negation, which had taken place in the Athenian School. He shows particular sensitivity towards a series of issues debated over by Neoplatonic authors: the nature of negation, the relevance of privation, the positive character of negative statements, etc. It is not out of the question that Dionysius had been a careful reader of Plotinus, some specialists even framing the idea that “Dionysius, while composing his Mystical theology, must have had an open copy of Plotinus’ treatise VI.9 on his desk.” Of the Neoplatonic repertoire, Dionysius prefers, in some cases, Proclus’ vocabulary and distinctions, hence balancing Plotinian borrowings. (...)

Here is a list of the major divergent accents between Dionysius and the Neoplatonists (Riordan 2008: 71-112):

1. The unity of God in Dionysius versus the Neoplatonic vision on the succession of the Hypostases emanating from the One: while the Dionysian thearchy is the sole cause of all, in Plotinus, there is a chain of Hypostases: the Intellect emanates from the One, and the Soul – from the Intellect, from a certain necessity.

2. The cosmos created by God is good. The Neoplatonic position, with the series of emanations of the Hypostases from one another, confers upon matter an evil character or, at most, negligible value. In Dionysius, God creates everything from love, including sensible things, by a direct act. Dionysius takes over the Neoplatonic próodos, but he resignifies it, giving it a Christian character. God is the source of all creatures and His intention is to bring His cosmos – by the work of salvation – to the perfection He intended for it from “the very beginning.” The God of Dionysius is providential, in the sense that He knows and loves those whom He creates. It is difficult to say if the absolutely Neoplatonic One has any “direct” knowledge of particular beings.

3. The love of God for His cosmos. God’s intimate involvement in His cosmos is the imprint of Dionysian theology. In full contrast with the Neoplatonic One – bearing the label of “the Alone” – the thearchy of the Areopagite is characterized by an “erotic” attraction to His creatures. In Dionysius, unlike Proclus, the eros includes all the providential acts of God.

4. The ascent of the mystic. Unlike the Neoplatonists, for Dionysius “the soul is an existence created in the uncreated God’s image,” and not as an emanation from the eternal Soul. The body in Dionysius is good and belongs to the soul. Despite the separation of the two in death, they will be reunited. Regarding the ascent towards the One, Neoplatonism has no intention to outline some personal relation of souls with the One. The soul achieves its condition as part of an enormous symphony of existences, arranged in a hierarchical form.
— Creativity 1(1), 2018. pp. 123-124, 127-128.

The doctrine that Pan is hidden in Proteus, that mutability is the secret gate through which the universal invades the particular, deserves credit for a peculiar philosophic achievement: it supplied a cogent mystical justification for an eminently sensible state of mind. ‘It is written’, Cusanus said, ‘that God is hidden from the eyes of all sages.’ But because the ultimate One is thus invisible, His visible manifestations must be manifold. Poetic pluralism is the necessary corollary to the radical mysticism of the One. To Renaissance Platonists, as to Plato himself, a generous and varied use of metaphor was essential to the proper worship of the ineffable god. ‘All these names’, wrote Cusanus about the many names given to the deity by the pagans, ‘are but the unfolding of the one ineffable name, and in so far as the name truly belonging to God is infinite, it embraces innumerable such names derived from particular perfections. Hence the unfolding of the divine name is multiple, and always capable of increase, and each single name is related to the true and ineffable name as the finite is related to the infinite.’

Although stated in the terminology of the Docta ignorantia, the argument echoes a view current among ancient Neoplatonists: ‘I have been initiated into many sacred mysteries in Greece,’ said Apuleius, ‘I learned worship on worship, rites beyond number, and various ceremonies in my zeal for truth and in my dutifulness to the gods.’ The same praise was bestowed on Proclus by Marinus, on Julian by Libanius; and before them Philo had extended the same principle to a multiple Hebrew revelation: ‘If ye meet with any of the initiated, press him closely and cling to him lest he conceal from you some newer Mystery. Cling to him until ye have mastered it clearly. For I myself have been initiated by the God-beloved Moses into the Greater Mysteries. Yet when I saw the prophet Jeremiah and recognized that he was not only an initiate but a capable hierophant, I did not shrink from his company.’

The charge has been made that these philosophers were illogical in their desire ‘to be initiated into as many mysteries as possible’, because ‘logically, on the theory that the various divine names belonged to one unity, one mystery might suffice.’ But exactly the opposite premise was assumed, logically, by the Neoplatonists; namely, that multiple revelation is the necessary counterpart to ‘the One beyond Being’. With some justice they argued that a belief in the unique revelation of the One would be contrary to Plato’s teaching. The Symposium had warned against worshipping transcendent Beauty in one embodiment only; and in the Parmenides (also in the Seventh Letter) Plato fought the danger, of confusing the One with one of its exemplars, by introducing the method of διαγωγή, the running through of all the possible alternatives of asserting and denying the One in the Many. The pathos of the Platonic position was expressed with remarkable force by Maximus of Tyre when he concluded his defence of idols by an invocation of the hidden God:

‘God Himself, the father and fashioner of all that is, older than the Sun or the Sky, greater than time and eternity and all the flow of being, is unnameable by any lawgiver, unutterable by any voice, not to be seen by any eye. But we, being unable to apprehend His essence, use the help of sounds and names and pictures, of beaten gold and ivory and silver, of plants and rivers, mountain-peaks and torrents, yearning for the knowledge of Him, and in our weakness naming all that is beautiful in this world after His nature — just as happens to earthly lovers. To them the most beautiful sight will be the actual lineaments of the beloved, but for remembrance’ sake they will be happy in the sight of a lyre, a little spear, a chair, perhaps, or a running-ground, or anything in the world that wakens the memory of the beloved. Why should I further examine and pass judgment about Images? Let men know what is divine (τὸ ϑεῖον γένος), let them know; that is all. If a Greek is stirred to the remembrance of God by the art of Pheidias, an Egyptian by paying worship to animals, another man by a river, another by fire — I have no anger for their divergences; only let them know, let them love, let them remember.

Very much the same reasoning pervades Cusanus’s De pace seu concordantia fidei. Although indispensable to a finite mind, no finite image or ritual, he argued, can be adequate to represent the infinite. But the recognition that ‘between the finite and the infinite there is no middle’, should not only humble the believer but also supply him with a key to religious peace; for while all religions agree in acknowledging the infinite, it is only in the finite that their differences arise. Una religio in rituum varietate. The finite perfections of each rite, which are the cause of its collision with other rites, conceal and imply an infinite perfection, of which they are limited symbols. ‘The signs vary, but not the signified.’

In meditating on the ‘face of God’ (De visione Dei) Cusanus marvelled, without distress, at the many different faces ascribed to God by his votaries. ‘If the lion were to ascribe thee a face, he would imagine the face of a lion, the ox would imagine that of an ox, the eagle, of an eagle. Oh Lord, how marvellous is thy face, which youths cannot conceive but as youthful, men but as manly, and the aged as aged! ... Oh marvellous face, whose beauty all those who see it are insufficient to admire! The face of faces is veiled in all faces and seen in a riddle. Unveiled it is not found until one has entered, beyond all visions, into a state of secret and hidden silence, in which nothing is left of knowing or imagining a face. For so long as this obscurity is not reached, this cloud, this darkness — that is, the ignorance into which he who seeks thy face enters when he transcends all knowledge and understanding — so long can thy face be encountered only veiled. This darkness itself, however, reveals that it is here, in the transcending of all veils, that the face is present. ... And the more densely the darkness is felt, the truer and closer is the approach, by virtue of this darkness, to the invisible light.’

The union of contraries in the ‘absconded God’, whose blinding light is impenetrable darkness, is repeated by the multifarious ‘visions of God’ in minor and more imperfect degrees. Hence Cusanus did not object to polytheism, or to the polymorphic views of the deity. Like Proclus he regarded them as preparatory stages of initiation. ‘Those who are introduced into the mysteries,’ wrote Proclus, ‘at first meet with manifold and multiform gods, but being entered and thoroughly initiated, ... they participate the very Deity.’🞯 In De ludo globi Cusanus compared this law of regression, from many outward images to the inward One, with a law of nature observed by Aristotle. ‘Elemental forces, according to Aristotle, have the smallest extension and the greatest power. ... The force inherent in a spark is that of the whole fire. ... A small seed has the strength of many grains. ... The core of the apparent is in the occult, the outward depends on the inward. The skin and crust are there because of the muscles and marrow, and these because of the invisible force that is concealed in them.’

Erasmus repeated the argument in the Adagia, under the heading Sileni Alcibiadis: ‘Thus the most important is always the least conspicuous. A tree flatters the eye with flowers and foliage, and exhibits the massiveness of its trunk: but the seed, from which these have their strength, what a small thing it is, and how hidden. ... Gold and gems have been concealed by Nature in the recesses of the earth. ... What is most divine and immortal in man is inaccessible to perception. ... And also in the temperament of the physical body, while phlegm and blood are familiar to the senses and tangible, that which contributes most to life is least patent, namely the spirit. And in the Universe the greatest things are invisible, like the so-called separate substances. And the supreme among these is furthest removed. ... God, unintelligible and unthinkable because He is the unique source of all.’
— Edgar Wind: Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance. New and enlarged edition. London: Faber and Faber, 1968. pp. 218-222. [Die anderen Fußnoten sind hier fortgelassen.]

Saint Dionysius the Areopagite was, for Ficino, both oilmen of Platonism, and the saint whom St. Paul had met at Athens, and whose vision of the nine angelic hierarchies, unquestioningly accepted by Thomas Aquinas and all the doctors of the Church, had become an integral part of orthodox Christian theology. Saint Dionysius is constantly referred to in Ficino’s Theologia Platonica and De Christiana Religione, the two works in which he set out his synthesis of Platonism with Christianity, and indeed, not only for Ficino but also for all later Christian Neoplatonists, Dionysius was one of the main Christian allies.

The author of the Celestial Hierarchies was, of course, not really the Areopagite with whom St. Paul spoke but an unknown writer who composed under strong Neoplatonic influence his work on nine orders of angels which he grouped into triads, each group of three representing one of the Persons of the Trinity. These nine angelic orders have their abode far above, or beyond the spheres of the universe, being orders of a purely spiritual or divine nature. Nevertheless, though the Dionysian orders are not, strictly speaking, a cosmological religion, there is something in the whole idea of orders set out in this fashion which recalls the gnostic religion of the world, or religious experience in the setting of the cosmic orders. R. Roques has drawn attention to the parallels between the Dionysian mysticism and gnosticism, particularly of the Hermetic type, and has suggested a possible influence of Hermetism on the hierarchies.

Thus, once again the phenomenon of misdating comes into play in the Renaissance synthesis, and the great Christian apologist who is believed to have been contemporary with St. Paul really belonged to nearly the same period as the misdated prisci theologi, and came within the range of gnostic ways of thinking. In the fourteenth chapter of the De Christiana religione, Ficino sets out the cosmic order completed by the nine spiritual orders, as follows:

The four elements, which are mutable in substance and quality.
The seven planets, which are not mutable in substance, but are so in quality and disposition.
The eighth sphere, whose movement is opposite to that of the planets and which has the qualities of candor and splendor.
The Chrystalline sphere, which has simple motion and the quality of candor.
The Empyrean, where all is stable and the lumen of which is a quality of light superior to candor.

In the stable and lucens Empyrean is accommodated the Trinity expressed in the nine orders of angels of Dionysius. There are legions of angels in the orders and their number exceeds the faculty of human computation. The nine orders are:

Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones; the hierarchy of the Father.
Dominions, Virtues, Powers; the hierarchy of the Son.
Principalities, Archangels, Angels; the hierarchy of the Spirit.

Ficino interprets Dionysius as having said that the first order drinks its liquor from the Trinity direct (liquorem suum a sola haurit Trinitate), the second gets it through the first, and the third through the second and first. There is also a division of activities among the hierarchies, as follows:

Seraphim speculate on the order and providence of God.
Cherubim speculate on the essence and form of God.
Thrones also speculate, though some descend to works.
Dominions, like architects, design what the rest execute.
Virtues execute, and move the heavens, and concur for the working of miracles as God’s instruments.
Powers watch that the order of divine governance is not interrupted and some of them descend to human things.
Principalities care for public affairs, nations, princes, magistrates.
Archangels direct the divine cult and look after sacred things.
Angels look after smaller affairs and take charge of individuals as their guardian angels.

Ficino’s notions on the celestial hierarchies have been modified by two intermediaries, namely Thomas Aquinas and Dante, and he has also introduced new modifications of his own. The differing activities of the hierarchies, which are not so specifically defined in Pseudo-Dionysius, he got from Thomas Aquinas. The linking of the hierarchies with the spheres of the cosmos he got from Dante who, in his Convivio correlates the hierarchies with the spheres and, above all, in the Paradiso, sets out the souls of the blest on the spheres of the seven planets; places the Apostles and the Church Triumphant in the eighth sphere; in the ninth sphere ranges the nine angelic hierarchies; and crowns all with the Trinity in the Empyrean.

Ficino was a great student of Dante, and was certainly thinking of the Paradiso in the passage on the hierarchies analysed above for he makes a reference to Dante’s poem in it. The analysis of the varying quality of the light, expressed by different words for light, in Ficino’s exposition may possibly be due to the influence of Dante. The notion that the supernal light is reflected down the angelic hierarchies, flashing as in mirrors from one to another, is a characteristically Dionysian conception, to which Dante had given a somewhat new turn by describing how, as he and Beatrice mount through the spheres of the planets, the light changes in quality at each ascent, reaching ever more dazzhng degrees of intensity in the eighth sphere, the ninth sphere and the Empyrean. Ficino, in the passage analysed above, seems to be definitely using, splendor of light in the eighth sphere, candor of a more intense light in the chrystalline sphere, and lumen of the supreme light in the Empyrean (beyond which there is perhaps an even higher lux in the divine mind). He also uses such many varying terms for light in his De sole and De lumine, though I am not sure that the terms are always used consistently with the same degrees of meaning.

Ficino has intensified the continuity between hierarchies and spheres by introducing an almost astrological suggestion into the relationships between the hierarchies, which are said to “drink” the influences from the Trinity, a word wrhich recalls the expression used in the De vita coelitus comparanda where the spiritus of the world is thought of as poured out through the stars and drunk by its recipients here below. And if we add one more term to the light series, the term “Sol” for the planet Sol or the Sun, the drinking in of spiritus from the Sun would connect with the higher series, the higher “liquor” drunk by the hierarchies, and the higher forms of light flashed down from the light supernal. Thus Ficino’s natural or spiritus magic, aiming no higher than the planets and particularly at the Sun, would yet have an angelic continuation stretching out beyond and above it. Though Ficino, or so I believe, would make no attempt to “operate” with angels, beyond the normal Christian prayers and supplications, nor try to reach the Virtues which move the heavens in order to become a worker of miracles. (...)

As Pseudo-Dionysius was immensely important to Ficino for the synthesis of Neoplatonism with Christianity so, too, he helped Pico to build the bridge between Jewish Cabala and Christianity. Pico’s Heptaplus, which is a commentary on Genesis in the Cabalistic manner, is full of references to Dionysius.

In this work, Pico frequently has occasion to mention the “three worlds” as understood by the Cabalists, who divided the universe into the elemental world or terrestrial world, the celestial world or the world of the stars, and the supercelestial world. Between all these worlds there was continuity of influences. Pico found no difficulty in linking this concept both with Neoplatonism and with the Christian or Pseudo-Dionysian mysticism.

He makes the link with Neoplatonism by identifying (as Ficino had also done) the angelic world with what the philosophers call the intelligible world. The highest of the three worlds is called “by the theologians angelic, and by the philosophers, intelligible”; then comes the celestial world, and last the sublunar world which we inhabit. He then goes on to draw the parallel with the three worlds of the Cabalists, which Moses represented symbolically when he divided the tabernacle into three parts. Particularly in the third book of the Heptaplus Pico devotes himself to assimilating the doctrines of the “ancient Hebrews” to those of Dionysius. Here he repeats the Thomistic definitions of the functions of the hierarchies and relates their three triadic groups to the three worlds (...)

Another way in which Pseudo-Dionysius was immensely important in the Renaissance synthesis was through his negative theology. Besides his positive adumbration of aspects of the Godhead, in the nine hierarchies of angels in their relation to the Trinity, Dionysius also sets forth a “negative way”. There are no words for God in His actual essence; no names for Him as He really is; therefore He is at the last best defined by negatives, by a kind of darkness, by saying that He is not goodness, not beauty, not truth, meaning by this that He is nothing that we can understand by those names. The mysticism of the Dionysian negative way brought forth some very beautiful spiritual fruits in the course of the ages, for example the English fourteenth-century Cloud of Unknowing, in which the unknown author, following the Hid Divinity of Denis, puts himself under a cloud of unknowing within which, with a blind stirring of love, he reaches forth towards the Deus Absconditus. And the learned philosopher Nicholas of Cusa found in the “learned ignorance” of Dionysius the only final solution, or mode of approach to the divine, as he expounds in his famous work the De docta ignorantia. The negative theology or the idea of the negative way reached Ficino not only through Dionysius but also through Cusanus, of whom he was a great admirer, and whom he regarded as an important link in the great chain of Platonists. (...)

There is a negative theology also in the Hebrew Cabalistic mysticism, for the Ensoph, out of which the ten Sephiroth emerge, is the Nothing, the unnameable, unknown Deus Absconditus, and the highest and most remote of the Sephiroth, Keter or the Crown, disappears into the Nothing. So that here, too, though there are as it were Ten Names in the Sephiroth, the highest is the Nothing or the No Name.

We have seen that Bruno always puts the Hermetic or Egyptian revelation first, but this does not mean that the other ingredient of the personality of the Renaissance Magus, Cabala, does not come in. In the Eroici furori, too, the element of Hebrew mysticism is not lacking. The dedication states, as we have seen, that the loves are to be likened to the mysticism of the Song of Songs, and in the text, Bruno twice alludes to the mystical "death of the kiss" of the Cabalists as an experience comparable to those which he is describing. The Eroici furori is thus still, in a manner, within hail of Pico della Mirandola’s synthesis, though the balance has been radically altered.

Moreover the Christian, or at least the Pseudo-Dionysian, element in the Renaissance Magus, is also not lacking in Bruno’s work. There is a Christian influence in his mysticism when he speaks, as he often does, of the divine influences as “divine love”. This, with his frequent quotations from the Psalms, lends an accent to his mysticism which is not to be found in the pagan gnosis of the Hermetica. And he compares his ineffable experiences to the negative teaching, not only of Pythagoras, but also of Dionysius (the Areopagite):

“... the most profound and divine theologians say, that God is more honoured and loved by silence than by words; as one sees more by shutting the eyes to the species represented, than by opening them, therefore the negative theology of Pythagoras and of Dionysius is more celebrated than the demonstrative theology of Aristode and the scholastic doctors.”

Thus the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius, which was so important to Ficino and to Pico in their efforts to achieve a Christian synthesis in their outlook, is not absent from the mysticism of the Eroici furori, though used with a difference (as a “negative” attitude to the divine revelation in the species or in nature). And the mention of the Areopagite comes within the curious episode of the “nine blind men” which is the conclusion and the culmination of the whole work. These nine blind men bewail their blindness in nine poems, and then, when a sacred urn is opened by nymphs, they receive their sight, and as nine illuminati, sing nine songs to the accompaniment of nine different instruments of music. Beyond the obvious allusion to the nine spheres, there is in the nine illuminati, so Bruno explains in the dedication to Sidney, a reference to the “nine orders of spirits” of the Christian theologians, that is, to the Pseudo-Dionysian celestial hierarchies. Thus Bruno’s work builds up at its close to the angelic harmonies as the apex of the edifice, reflecting the scheme of the Christian Magus, in which Magia and Cabala are included within the Pseudo-Dionysian angelic hierarchies. Nevertheless, as usual, Bruno is not using the scheme in the normal way. The nine blind men who become the illuminati seem to be, not a system of external “metaphysics”, like the angelic hierarchies, but all ingredients of one personality who becomes illumined with their illumination. Bruno, however, makes his concession to the normal scheme by putting the highest and final illumination of the heroic enthusiast in this form.
— Frances A. Yates: Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964. pp. 117-125 and 284-285.

Eriugena’s thought is best understood as a sustained attempt to create a consistent, systematic, Christian Neoplatonism from diverse but primarily Christian sources. Eriugena had a unique gift for identifying the underlying intellectual framework, broadly Neoplatonic but also deeply Christian, assumed by the writers of the Christian East. Drawing especially on Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus Confessor, as well as on the more familiar authorities (auctores) of the Latin West (e.g., Cicero, Augustine, Macrobius, Martianus Capella, Boethius), he developed a highly original cosmology, where the highest principle, “the immovable self-identical one” (unum et idipsum immobile, Periphyseon, Patrologia Latina 122: 476b), engenders all things and retrieves them back into itself. Contrary to what some earlier commentators supposed, it is most unlikely that Eriugena had direct knowledge of the original texts of Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, or other pagan Neoplatonists, but he did have some direct knowledge of Plato (a portion of Timaeus in the translation of Calcidius) as well as familiarity with the pseudo-Augustinian Categoriae decem.

Overall, Eriugena develops a Neoplatonic cosmology according to which the infinite, transcendent, and “unknown” God, who is beyond being and non-being, through a process of self-articulation, procession, or “self-creation”, proceeds from his divine “darkness” or “non-being” into the light of being, speaking the Word who is understood as Christ, and at the same timeless moment bringing forth the Primary Causes of all creation. These causes in turn proceed into their Created Effects and as such are creatures entirely dependent on, and will ultimately return to, their sources, which are the Causes or Ideas in God. These Causes, considered as diverse and infinite in themselves, are actually one single principle in the divine One. The whole of reality or nature, is involved in a dynamic process of outgoing (exitus) from and return (reditus) to the One. God is the One or the Good or the highest principle, which transcends all, and which therefore may be said to be “the non-being that transcends being”. In an original departure from traditional Neoplatonism, in his dialogue Periphyseon, this first and highest cosmic principle is called “nature” (natura) and is said to include both God and creation.
— The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
 

Eriugena was — following the Neoplatonist tradition — a believer in a transcendent first principle which is the source of everything. He thought of this highest principle as the “divine One” and identified with the Christian Creator God. He also called this One “Nothingness” or “Non-Being” and this was most unusual — and followed the radical Greek Christian thinking of Dionysius the Areopagite. The central thought here is that God’s transcendence, uniqueness and infinite nature are so different from everything in the created universe of being, that God is better thought of as “non-being” or “nothingness” (Latin: nihil, nihilum). Eriugena’s theology centers on the notion of an infinite, incomprehensible, transcendent God--‘the immovable self-identical one’ (unum et idipsum immobile, Periphyseon I. 476b) — whose freely willed theophanies (Greek: “theophaniai”, divine manifestations) alone can be apprehended by created intellects such as angels and humans. The One, as highest principle, engenders all things timelessly, allows them to proceed into their genera and species in space and time and then retrieves them back into itself.

As a Christian Eriugena accepts the creation from nothingness of the entire universe. But he regarded all creation, all being, as having come forth not from some inferior nothingness (such as matter without form) but as coming from this divine nothingness. For Eriugena, the Christian conception of creation from nothing (creatio ex nihilo) had to be understood as creation from out of God (creatio ex Deo), understood as the infinite nothingness that transcends all things. Therefore ex nihilo really means ex deo, out of God. There is no other source or principle of all things except the infinite transcendent One.

Eriugena’s analysis of divine creation was also very much based on his understanding of Neoplatonism. In all Neoplatonists, the lower levels of the universe flow out from or emanate from the One and depend on the One and seek to return to it again (become one with the One). Eriugena therefore thought of the creation of all things as the emanation (emanatio, exitus) of the divine Goodness. All things are what they are as manifestations (theophaniae) of the divine. All things are “divine willings” (diuinae uoluntates) or divine appearances. There is no external principle needed. The One seeks to spread itself everywhere. It is an overflowing of goodness.

Eriugena thought that ultimately all things come together and are unified in the divine nothingness. However, he did not think of the infinite divine One as simply equal to nothingness. He has a sense of the divine as involved in a dialectic of self-affirmation and self-negation, manifestation and hiddenness. The divine One unfolds from nothingness into being, from divine darkness into light, from hiddenness to manifestation. There the divine One has to be understood not simply as nothingness or as being but as nothingness that manifests itself as being and that returns again to nothingness. Eriugena distinguishes many different kinds of nothingness. Things can be said not to be in many senses. Something that is in the future or the past, or is in some sense possible or potential, can be said not to be. But Eriugena also thinks that something that out of its infinite richness transcends all the categories of being (basically the Aristotelian categories: substance, accident, time, place, etc.) can also be said not to be. This is what he calls “nothingness through excellence” (nihil per excellentiam) rather than “nothingess through privation” (nihil per privationem). All things, including human nature, are eternal ideas or causes in the mind of God. Humans fail to understand their true nature as image of God, because they are distracted by created, fleeting temporal appearances (phantasiai), which entrap the intellect in the clouded spatio-temporal realm of sense. However, through intellectual contemplation (theoria, intellectus) and divine illumination (which is the receiving of a divine self-manifestation, theophania), humans may achieve unification (henosis) with God, and the select few will even undergo deification (deificatio, theosis). Salvation, or return to the One, involves the corporeal body being resolved into its original incorporeal essence. Both heaven and hell are maintained to be states of mind not actual places (loci). Paradise is nothing other than perfect human nature. Eriugena often quotes Augustine to the effect that God became man (inhumanatio) so that humans can become God (deificatio). In this cosmological process, there is a dialectic of outgoing and return, of affirmation and negation, of non-being and being. (...)

To understand the Eriugenian conception of “nothingness” or non-being it is useful to have something to compare it with. Normally, the concept of “nothingness” found in Buddhism is invoked. According to TU Weiming, Confucianism as a tradition lacks the idea of radical transcendence. This is something that perhaps is better understood in Taoism and Buddhism. Eriugena has a conception of the divine as infinite — and as radically transcendent — to the point of best being understood as nothingness.
— Dermot Moran: A Western Thinker of Nothingness: John Scottus Eriugena. World Congress of Sinology, Renmin University, Beijing 5-7 Sept 2014. pp. 4-5 & 15.

„οὐϰ ἂν γένοιτο χωϱὶς ἐσϑλὰ ϰαὶ ϰαϰά,
ἀλλ᾽ ἔστι τις σύγϰϱασις ὥστ᾽ ἔχειν ϰαλῶς.“ _{[Euripides: Aeolus]}

„Gutes und Übles können nicht getrennt bestehn.
Sie sind gleichsam verschmolzen — und so ist es gut.“

Διὸ ϰαὶ παμπάλαιος αὕτη ϰάτεισιν ἐϰ ϑεολόγων ϰαὶ νομοϑετῶν εἴς τε ποιητὰς ϰαὶ φιλοσόφους δόξα, τὴν ἀϱχὴν ἀδέσποτον ἔχουσα, τὴν δὲ πίστιν ἰσχυϱὰν ϰαὶ δυσεξάλειπτον, οὐϰ ἐν λόγοις μόνον οὐδ᾽ ἐν φήμαις, ἀλλ᾽ ἔν τε τελεταῖς ἔν τε ϑυσίαις ϰαὶ βαϱβάϱοις ϰαὶ Ἕλλησι πολλαχοῦ πεϱιφεϱομένη, ὡς οὔτ᾽ ἄνουν ϰαὶ ἄλογον ϰαὶ ἀϰυβέϱνητον αἰωϱεῖται τῷ αὐτομάτῳ τὸ πᾶν, οὔϑ᾽ εἷς ἐστιν ὁ ϰϱατῶν ϰαὶ ϰατευϑύνων ὥσπεϱ οἴαξιν ἤ τισι πειϑηνίοις χαλινοῖς λόγος, ἀλλὰ πολλὰ ϰαὶ μεμιγμένα ϰαϰοῖς ϰαὶ ἀγαϑοῖς: μᾶλλον δὲ μηδὲν ὡς ἁπλῶς εἰπεῖν ἄϰϱατον ἐνταῦϑα τῆς φύσεως φεϱούσης, οὐ δυεῖν πίϑων εἷς ταμίας ὥσπεϱ νάματα τὰ πϱάγματα ϰαπηλιϰῶς διανέμων ἀναϰεϱάννυσιν ἡμῖν ἀλλ᾽ ἀπὸ δυεῖν ἐναντίων ἀϱχῶν ϰαὶ δυεῖν ἀντιπάλων δυνάμεων τῆς μὲν ἐπὶ τὰ δεξιὰ ϰαὶ ϰατ᾽ εὐϑεῖαν ὑφηγουμένης, τῆς δ᾽ ἔμπαλιν ἀναστϱεφούσης ϰαὶ ἀναϰλώσης, ὅ τε βίος μιϰτὸς ὅ τε ϰόσμος, εἰ ϰαὶ μὴ πᾶς, ἀλλ᾽ ὁ πεϱίγειος οὗτος ϰαὶ μετὰ σελήνην ἀνώμαλος ϰαὶ ποιϰίλος γέγονε ϰαὶ μεταβολὰς πάσας δεχόμενος;. εἰ γὰϱ οὐδὲν ἀναιτίως πέφυϰε γίγνεσϑαι, αἰτίαν δὲ ϰαϰοῦ τἀγαϑὸν οὐϰ ἂν παϱάσχοι, δεῖ γένεσιν ἰδίαν ϰαὶ ἀϱχὴν ὥσπεϱ ἀγαϑοῦ ϰαὶ ϰαϰοῦ τὴν φύσιν ἔχειν. [46] ϰαὶ δοϰεῖ τοῦτο τοῖς πλείστοις ϰαὶ σοφωτάτοις. νομίζουσι γὰϱ οἱ μὲν ϑεοὺς εἶναι δύο ϰαϑάπεϱ ἀντιτέχνους, τὸν μὲν ἀγαϑῶν, τὸν δὲ φαύλων δημιουϱγόν. οἱ δὲ τὸν μὲν ἀμείνονα ϑεόν, τὸν δὲ ἕτεϱον δαίμονα ϰαλοῦσιν: ὥσπεϱ Ζωϱοάστϱης ὁ μάγος, ὃν πενταϰισχιλίοις ἔτεσι τῶν Τϱωιϰῶν γεγονέναι πϱεσβύτεϱον ἱστοϱοῦσιν. οὗτος οὖν ἐϰάλει τὸν μὲν Ὡϱομάζην, τὸν δ᾽ Ἀϱειμάνιον ϰαὶ πϱοσαπεφαίνετο τὸν μὲν ἐοιϰέναι φωτὶ μάλιστα τῶν αἰσϑητῶν, τὸν δ᾽ ἔμπαλιν σϰότῳ ϰαὶ ἀγνοίᾳ, μέσον δ᾽ ἀμφοῖν τὸν Μίϑϱην εἶναι: διὸ ϰαὶ Μίϑϱην Πέϱσαι τὸν μεσίτην ὀνομάζουσιν. ἐδίδαξε δὲ τῷ μὲν εὐϰταῖα ϑύειν ϰαὶ χαϱιστήϱια, τῷ δ᾽ ἀποτϱόπαια ϰαὶ σϰυϑϱωπά. πόαν γάϱ τινα ϰόπτοντες Μῶλυ ϰαλουμένην ἐν ὅλμῳ, τὸν Ἅιδην ἀναϰαλοῦνται ϰαὶ τὸν σϰότον: εἶτα μίξαντες αἵματι λύϰου σφαγέντος; εἰς τόπον ἀνήλιον ἐϰφέϱουσι ϰαὶ ῥίπτουσι. ϰαὶ γὰϱ τῶν φυτῶν νομίζουσι τὰ μὲν τοῦ ἀγαϑοῦ ϑεοῦ, τὰ δὲ τοῦ ϰαϰοῦ δαίμονος εἶναι ϰαὶ τῶν ζῴων ὥσπεϱ ϰύνας ϰαὶ ὄϱνιϑας ϰαὶ χεϱσαίους ἐχίνους τοῦ ἀγαϑοῦ, τοῦ δὲ φαύλου τοὺς ἐνύδϱους μῦς εἶναι: διὸ ϰαὶ τὸν ϰτείναντα πλείστους εὐδαιμονίζουσιν.
— Πεϱὶ Ἴσιδος ϰαὶ Ὀσίϱιδος 45-46.

Darauf beruht auch jene uralte Lehre, die von religiösen Lehrern und Gesetzgebern her auf Dichter und Denker gekommen ist, eine Lehre, deren Beginn keinem Urheber zuzuschreiben ist, die aber einen festen und unaustilgbaren Glauben findet, der nicht nur in Reden und Sprüchen, sondern in Mysterienweihen und Opferriten bei Barbaren wie bei Griechen vielerorts im Umlauf ist. Sie besagt, daß weder das All ohne Vernunft, Denken und Lenkung dahintaumelt, seinen eigenen Impulsen überlassen, noch daß ein einziges Vernunftwesen herrscht und lenkt, gleichsam mit Steuerruder und einem »Gehorsam heischenden Zügel«, sondern daß die Natur hier bei uns vielerlei bringt, gemischt aus Gutem und Üblem, ja, mit einem Wort, schlechthin nichts Ungemischtes. So gibt es denn nicht einen einzigen Hausverwalter mit zwei Krügen, der uns die Schicksale, so wie ein Schankwirt ein Getränk, mischt und austeilt, sondern es gibt zwei gegensätzliche Prinzipien, zwei widerstreitende Mächte, deren eine nach rechts und in gerader Richtung den Weg weist, die andere in die Gegenrichtung umzulenken und abzubiegen sucht.🞯 Das Leben ist gemischt, und der Kosmos - wenn auch nicht ganz, so doch hier im irdischen Bereich, diesseits des Mondes - ist von Grund auf ungleichmäßig, vielgestaltig und allen möglichen Wechselfällen ausgesetzt. Denn wenn nach der Natur der Dinge nichts ohne Ursache geschieht, das Gute aber keinen ursächlichen Anlaß für Übles geben kann, muß es in der Natur ein eigenes Prinzip des Entstehens, wie für das Gute, so auch für das Übel geben. [46] Dieser Meinung sind die meisten und klügsten Denker. Sie glauben entweder, daß es zwei Götter gibt, die wie Handwerker in Konkurrenz zueinander stehen: der eine als Hersteller des Guten, der andere des Schlechten; oder sie nennen den Guten einen Gott, den anderen einen Daimon, wie Zoroaster der Magier‘, der 5000 Jahre älter sein soll als der Trojanische Krieg. Er nannte den einen Horomazes, den anderen Areimanios, und erklärte dazu, der erstere gleiche unter allen wahrnehmbaren Dingen am meisten dem Licht, der letztere umgekehrt der Dunkelheit und Unwissenheit; zwischen beiden stehe Mithres. Darum nennen die Perser Mithres auch »den Mittler«. Zoroaster lehrte, dem einen solle man Bitt- und Dankopfer darbringen, dem anderen düstere Abwehr-Opfer. Sie zerstoßen ein Kraut namens Omomi in einem Mörser und rufen dabei Hades und die Finsternis an; dann mischen sie Blut von einem geschlachteten Wolf dazu, bringen es hinaus an einen sonnenlosen Ort und schütten es fort. Sie glauben nämlich, die Pflanzen seien teils dem guten Gott, teils dem bösen Daimon zu eigen, und bei den Tieren seien, wie Hunde, Vögel und Land-Igel dem guten, so die Wassermäuse dem bösen zugeordnet; darum preisen sie einen Menschen, der möglichst viele von diesen tötet.
— Drei Religionsphilosophische Schriften: Über den Aberglauben. Über die späte Strafe der Gottheit. Über Isis und Osiris. Übersetzt von Herwig Görgemanns u. a. Düsseldorf: Artemis, 2003. pp. 213-215.