The Physics of Angels. Rupert Sheldrake

      Wherefore all things share in that providence which streams forth from the superessential deific source of all; for they would not be unless they had come into existence through participation in the essential principle of all things.

      All inanimate things participate in It through their being; for the “to be” of all things is the divinity above Being itself, the true life. Living things participate in Its life-giving power above all life; rational things participate in Its self-perfect and preeminent perfect wisdom above all reason and intellect.

      It is manifest, therefore, that those natures which are around the Godhead have participated of It in manifold ways. On this account the holy ranks of the celestial beings are present with and participate in the divine principle in a degree far surpassing all those things which merely exist, and irrational living creatures, and rational human beings. For moulding themselves intelligibly to the imitation of God, and looking in a supermundane way to the likeness of the supreme deity, and longing to form the intellectual appearance of It, they naturally have more abundant communion with him, and with unremitting activity they tend eternally up the steep, as far as is permitted, through the ardour of their unwearying divine love, and they receive the primal radiance in a pure and immaterial manner, adapting themselves to this in a life wholly intellectual.

      Such, therefore, are they who participate first, and in an all-various manner, in Deity, and reveal first, and in many ways, the divine mysteries. Wherefore they, above all, are pre-eminently worthy of the name angel because they first receive the divine light, and through them are transmitted to us the revelations which are above us. …

      Now, if anyone should say that God has shown himself without intermediary to certain holy men, let him know beyond doubt, from the most holy scriptures, that no man has ever seen, nor shall see, the hidden Being of God; but God has shown himself, according to revelations which are fitting to God, to his faithful servants in holy visions adapted to the nature of the seer.

      The divine theology, in the fullness of its wisdom, very rightly applies the name theophany to that beholding of God which shows the divine likeness, figured in itself as a likeness in form of that which is formless, through the uplifting of those who contemplate to the Divine; inasmuch as a divine light is shed upon the seers through it, and they are initiated into some participation of divine things.

      By such divine visions our venerable forefathers were instructed through the mediation of the celestial powers. Is it not told in the holy scriptures that the sacred law was given to Moses by God himself in order to teach us that in it is mirrored the divine and holy law? Furthermore, theology wisely teaches that it was communicated to us by angels, as though the authority of the divine law decreed that the second should be guided to the divine majesty by the first.… Within each hierarchy there are first, middle, and last ranks and powers, and the higher are initiators and guides of the lower to the divine approach and illumination and union.