The Celestial Hierarchy — Chapter Xv

St. Dionysius the Areopagite

What is the meaning of the formal semblances of the Angelic Powers?

What of the fiery and the anthropomorphic? What is meant by their yes,

nostrils, ears, mouths, touch, eyelids eyebrows their manhood, teeth,

shoulders, arms, hands, heart, breasts, backs, feet and wings? What are

the nakedness and the vesture, the shining raiment, the priestly

insignia, the girdles? What are the rods, spears, battle-axes and

measuring-lines? What are the winds and clouds? What is meant by their

brass and electron? What are the choirs and the clapping of bands? What

are the colours of the various jewels? What is the form of the lion,

the ox, the eagle? What are the horses, and their various colours? What

are the rivers, the chariots, the wheels? What is the so-called joy of

the Angels?

Let us, if you are so disposed, now relax our mental vision from the

effort of the contemplation of the sublimity of the Angels, and descend

to the particularized, all-various expanse of the manifold diversity of

forms in angelic images; and then return analytically from them, as

from symbols, ascending again to the simplicity of the Celestial

Intelligences. But first let me point out clearly to you that the

explanations of the sacred likenesses represent the same Orders of

Celestial Beings sometimes as leading, and again being led, and the

last leading and the first being led, and the same ones, as has been

said, having first, middle and last powers. But there is nothing

unreasonable in the account, according to the following method of

unfoldment.

If, indeed, we said that some are first governed by those above them,

and afterwards govern those Orders, and that the highest, whilst

leading the lowest ranks, are at the same time being led by those whom

they are leading, the statement would be obviously absurd and wholly

confused. But if we say that these holy Orders both lead and are led,

but not the same ones, nor by the same ones, but that each is led by

those above itself, and in turn leads those below it, we may reasonably

say that the Scripture in its sacred symbolic presentation sometimes

rightly and truly assigns the same powers to the first, middle and last

ranks.

Wherefore the eager upward tending to those above them, and the

constancy of their revolution around them, being guardians of their own

powers, and their participation in the providential power of proceeding

forth to those below them through their own inter-relations, will truly

befit all the Celestial Beings, although some pre-eminently and

universally, others in a partial and lower degree.

But we must begin to deal with the remaining part of our discourse, and

must ask, in first explanation of the forms, why the Word of God

prefers the sacred symbol of fire almost above all others. For you will

find that it is used not only under the figure of fiery wheels, but

also of living creatures of fire, and of men flashing like lightning

who heap live coals of fire about the Heav