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The
Celestial Hierarchy of
Pseudo-Dionysius
the Areopagite (Pseudo-)Dionysus is an unknown 5th century theologian and mystic who was named for the Dionysus the Areopagite, the first century follower of Paul the Apostle. His neo-Platonic mystical works were deeply influential on medieval Christianity., including The Celestial Hierarchy, a work which sets out an angelology of hierarchal triads, each one closer to the divine nature in its purpose and what it communicates to lower levels. This hierarchy is described at some length in chapters 6-9. Chapter
VI (What is the first order of the celestial essences, what is
the middle order and what is the inferior order.) The
angelic hierarchies divided into three triads: First
--Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones |
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Chapter
VII (Of the Seraphim, the Cherubim and the Thrones and of the
first hierarchy that they constitute.)
Chapter
VIII (Of the Dominions, the Virtues and the Powers and the
middle hierarchy that they constitute.)
Chapter
IX (Of the Principalities, the Archangels and the Angels
and of the last hierarchy that they constitute.)
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selections from Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, The
Celestial Hierarchy. VI. Which is the first Order of the Heavenly Beings? which the middle?
and which the last? How many, and of what sort,
are the Orders of the super-celestial Beings, and how the Hierarchies are
classified amongst themselves, I affirm, the deifying Author of their
consecration alone distinctly knows; and further, that they know their own
proper powers and illuminations, and their sacred and super-mundane
regularity. For it is impossible that we should know the mysteries of the
super-celestial Minds and their most holy perfections, except, some one
might say, so far as the Godhead has revealed to us, through them, as
knowing perfectly their own condition. We, then, will utter nothing as
from ourselves, but whatever angelic visions have been gazed upon by the
holy Prophets of God, we, as initiated in these, will set forth as best we
can. The Word of God has designated the whole Heavenly Beings as nine, by
appellations, which show their functions. These our Divine Initiator
divides into three threefold Orders. He also says that that which is
always around God is first and is declared by tradition to be united
closely and immediately, to Him, before all the rest. For he says that the
teaching of the Holy Oracles declares, that the most Holy Thrones, and the
many-eyed and many-winged hosts, named in the Hebrew tongue
Cherubim and Seraphim, are established immediately around God, with a
nearness superior to all. This threefold order, then, our illustrious
Guide spoke of as one, and of equal rank, and really first Hierarchy, than
which there is not another more Godlike or immediately nearer to the
earliest illuminations of the Godhead. But he says, that which is composed
of the Authorities, and Lordships, and Powers is second; and, as respects
the lowest of the Heavenly Hierarchies, the Order of the Angels and
Archangels and Principalities is third. VII. Concerning the Seraphim and Cherubim and Thrones, and concerning
their first Hierarchy. Section I. We, whilst admitting this
as the arrangement of the holy Hierarchies, affirm, that every appellation
of the celestial Minds denotes the Godlike characteristic of each; and
those who know Hebrew affirm, that the holy designation of the Seraphim
denotes either that they are kindling or burning; and that of Cherubim, a
fullness of knowledge or stream of wisdom. Naturally, then, the first
(order) of the Heavenly Hierarchies is ministered by the most exalted
Beings, holding, as it does, a rank which is higher than all, from the
fact, that it is established immediately around God, and that the
first-wrought Divine manifestations and perfections pass earlier to it, as
being nearest. They are called, then, "Burning," and Thrones,
and Stream of Wisdom----by a name which sets forth their Godlike
conditions. The appellation of Seraphim plainly teaches their ever moving
around things Divine, and constancy, and warmth, and keenness, and the
seething of that persistent, indomitable, and inflexible perpetual motion,
and the vigorous assimilation and elevation of the subordinate, as giving
new life and rekindling them to the same heat; and purifying through fire
and burnt-offering, and the light-like and light-shedding characteristic
which can never be concealed or consumed, and remains always the same,
which destroys and dispels every kind of obscure darkness. But the
appellation of the Cherubim denotes their knowledge and their vision of
God, and their readiness to receive the highest gift of light, and their
power of contemplating the super-Divine comeliness in its first revealed
power, and their being filled anew with the impartation which makes wise,
and their ungrudging communication to those next to them, by the stream of
the given wisdom. The appellation of the most exalted and pre-eminent
Thrones denotes their manifest exaltation above every groveling
inferiority, and their super-mundane tendency towards higher things; and
their unswerving separation from all remoteness; and their invariable and
firmly-fixed settlement around the veritable Highest, with the whole force
of their powers; and their receptivity of the supremely Divine approach,
in the absence of all passion and earthly tendency, and their bearing God;
and the ardent expansion of themselves for the Divine receptions. Section II. . . . . One must consider,
then, that the Hierarchy is akin, and in every respect like, to the first
Beings, who are established after the Godhead, who gave them Being, and
who are marshaled, as it were, in Its very vestibule, who surpass every
unseen and seen created power. We must then regard them as pure, not as
though they had been freed from unholy stains and blemishes, nor yet as
though they were unreceptive of earthly fancies, but as far exalted above
every stain of remissness and every inferior holiness, as befits the
highest degree of purity----established above the most Godlike powers, and
clinging unflinchingly to their own self-moved and same-moved rank in
their invariable love of God, conscious in no respect whatever of any
declivity to a worse condition, but having the unsullied fixity of their
own Godlike identity----never liable to fall, and always unmoved; and
again, as "contemplative," not contemplators of intellectual
symbols as sensible, nor as being led to the Divine Being by the varied
texture of holy representations written for meditation, but as being
filled with all kinds of immaterial knowledge of higher light, and
satiated, as permissible, with the beautifying and original beauty of
super-essential and thrice manifested contemplation, and thus, being
deemed worthy of the Communion with Jesus, they do not stamp pictorially
the deifying similitude in divinely-formed images, but, as being really
near to Him, in first participation of the knowledge of His deifying
illuminations; nay more, that the imitation of God is given to them in the
highest possible degree, and they participate, so far as is allowable to
them, in His deifying and philanthropic virtues, in the power of a first
manifestation; and, likewise as "perfected," not as being
illuminated with an analytic science of sacred variety, but as being
filled with a first and pre-eminent deification, as beseems the most
exalted science of the works of God, possible in Angels. . . . Section IV. . . . . Wherefore
the Word of God has transmitted its hymns to those on earth, in which are
Divinely shown the Excellency of its most exalted illumination. For some
of its members, to speak after sensible perception, proclaim as a
"voice of many waters," "Blessed is the glory of the Lord
from His place" and others cry aloud that frequent and most august
hymn of God, " Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of Sabbath, the whole earth is
full of His glory." These most excellent hymnologies of the super-celestial
Minds we have already unfolded to the best of our ability in the
"Treatise concerning the Divine Hymns," and have spoken
sufficiently concerning them in that Treatise, from which, by way of
remembrance, it is enough to produce so much as is necessary to the
present occasion, namely, "That the first Order, having been
illuminated, from this the supremely Divine goodness, as permissible, in
theological science, as a Hierarchy reflecting that Goodness transmitted
to those next after it," teaching briefly this, "That it is just
and right that the august Godhead ---- Itself both above praise, and
all-praiseworthy----should be known and extolled by the God-receptive
minds, as is attainable; for they as images of God are, as the Oracles
say, the Divine places of the supremely Divine repose; VIII. Concerning Lordships and Powers and Authorities, and concerning
their middle Hierarchy. Section I. Let us now pass to the
middle Order of the Heavenly Minds, gazing, as far as we may, with super-mundane
eyes upon those Lordships, and the truly terrible visions of the Divine
Authorities and Powers. For each appellation of the Beings above us
manifests their God-imitating characteristics of the Divine Likeness. I
think, then, that the explanatory name of the Holy Lordships denotes a
certain unslavish elevation, free from all groveling subservience, as
becomes the free, not submitting itself in any way whatever to one of the
tyrannical dissimilarities, as a cruel Lordship; superior to every kind of
cringing slavery, indomitable to every subservience, and elevated above
every dissimilarity, ever aspiring to the
true Lordship, and source of Lordship; and molding, as an image of
goodness, itself, and those after it, to its Lordly bearing, as
attainable, turning itself wholly to none of the things that vainly seem,
but to the Lordly Being, and ever sharing in the Lordly Likeness of God,
to its utmost ability; and the appellation of the Holy Powers denotes a
certain courageous and unflinching virility, for all those Godlike
energies within them----not feebly weak for the reception of any of the
Divine illuminations vouchsafed to it----vigorously conducted to the
Divine imitation, not forsaking the Godlike movement through its own
unmanliness, but unflinchingly looking to the super-essential and
powerful-making power, and becoming a powerful image of this, as far as is
attainable, and powerfully turned to this, as Source of Power, and issuing
forth to those next in degree, in gift of Power, and in likeness to God;
and that the appellation of the Holy Authorities, of the same rank as the
Divine Lordships and Powers, (denotes) the beautiful and unconfused good
order, with regard to the Divine receptions, and the discipline of the
super-mundane and intellectual authority, not using the authoritative
powers imperiously for base purposes, but conducted indomitably, with good
order, towards Divine things, and conducting those after it benignly, and
assimilated, as far as permissible, to the Authoritative Source of
authority, and making this visible, as is possible to Angels, in the
well-ordered ranks of the authoritative power within it. The middle Order
of the Heavenly Minds having these Godlike characteristics, is purified
and illuminated and perfected in the manner described, by the Divine
illuminations vouchsafed to it at second hand, through the first
Hierarchical Order, and passing through this middle as a secondary
manifestation. Section II. No doubt, as regards that
message, which is said to pass through one angel to another, we may take
it as a symbol of a perfecting completed from afar, and obscured by reason
of its passage to the second rank. For, as men skilled in our sacred
initiations say, the fullness of Divine things manifested directly to
ourselves is more perfecting than the Divine contemplations imparted
through others. Thus, I think, the immediate participation of the Angelic
ranks elevated in first degree to God, is more clear than those perfected
through the instrumentality of others. Wherefore by our sacerdotal
tradition, the first Minds are named perfecting, and illuminating, and
purifying Powers of the subordinate, who are conducted, through them, to
the super-essential Origin of all things, and participate, as far as is
permissible to them, in the consecrating purifications, and illuminations,
and perfections. IX. Concerning the Principalities, Archangels, and Angels, and
concerning their last Hierarchy. Section II. The (Order) of the Holy
Archangels is of the same rank with the heavenly Principalities. For there
is one Hierarchy and Division, as I said, of them and the Angels. But
since there is not a Hierarchy which does not possess first and middle and
last powers, the holy order of Archangels occupies the middle position in
the Hierarchy between the extremes, for it belongs alike to the most holy
Principalities and to the holy Angels; to the Principalities because it is
turned in a princely fashion to the super-essential Princedom, and is
molded to It as far as attainable, and unites the Angels after the fashion
of its own well-regulated and marshaled and invisible leadings; and it
belongs to the Angels, because it is of the messenger Order, receiving
hierarchically the Divine illuminations from the
first powers, and announcing the same to the Angels in a godly manner,
and, through Angels, manifesting to us, in proportion to the religious
aptitude of each of the godly persons illuminated. For the Angels, as we
have already said, complete the whole series of Heavenly Minds, as being
the last Order of the Heavenly Beings who possess the Angelic
characteristic; yea, rather, they are more properly named Angels by us
than those of higher degree, because their Hierarchy is occupied with the
more manifest, and is more particularly concerned with the things of the
world. For the very highest Order, as being placed in the first rank near
the Hidden One, we must consider as directing in spiritual things the
second, hidden; and that the second, which is composed of the holy
Lordships and Powers and Authorities, leads the Hierarchy of the
Principalities and Archangels and Angels, more clearly indeed than the
first Hierarchy, but more hidden than the Order after it, and the
revealing order of the Principalities, Archangels, and Angels, presides,
through each other, over the Hierarchies amongst men, in order that the
elevation, and conversion, and communion, and union with God may be in due
order; and, further, also that the procession from God vouchsafed benignly
to all the Hierarchies, and passing to all in common, may be also with
most sacred regularity. Hence, the Word of God has assigned our Hierarchy
to Angels, by naming Michael as Ruler of the Jewish people, and others
over other nations. For the Most High established borders of nations
according to number of Angels of God. Section III. But if any one should say,
"How then were the people of the Hebrews alone conducted to the
supremely Divine illuminations?" we must answer, that we ought not to
throw the blame of the other nations wandering after those which are no
gods upon the direct guidance of the Angels, but that they themselves, by
their own declension, fell away from the direct leading towards the Divine
Being, through self-conceit and self-will, and through their irrational
veneration for things which appeared to them worthy of God. Even the
Hebrew people are said to have suffered the same thing; for He says,
"Thou I hast cast away knowledge of God, and hast gone after thine
own heart." For neither have we a life governed by necessity, nor on
account of the free will of those who are objects of providential care,
are the Divine rays of the providential illumination blunted; but the
inaptitude of the mental visions makes the overflowing light-gift of the
paternal goodness, either altogether unparticipated or impenetrable to
their resistance, or makes the participations of the one fontal ray,
diverse, small, or great, obscure, or brilliant, although that ray is one
and simple, and always the same and ever overflowing; for even if, over
the other nations (from whom we also have emerged to that boundless and
bounteous sea of Divine Light, which is readily-expanded for the ready
reception of all), certain not-alien gods were wont to preside; yet there
is one Head of all, and to this, the Angels, who religiously direct each
nation, conduct those who follow them. . . . |
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