Rupert: Since vast numbers are usually called astronomical, it brings to mind the obvious connection with the stars. We now recognize a cosmos full of innumerable galaxies, each containing billions of stars. When we look at the night sky we see only the stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way being the main part of it. Insofar as angels are connected with the stars, then this would, literally, give us an astronomical number of angels.
Matthew: Astronomical numbers and astronomical beings.
Rupert: Yes. And if we also think of angels being connected with all the different kinds of being in nature, then we have to consider the millions of biological species on this earth, and probably on billions of other planets around other stars and in other galaxies. And then these planets themselves are organisms, as is our planet, Gaia. The vast numbers of forms of organization in nature dwarf our imagination, just as Dionysius says the numbers of angels do.
Matthew: It seems appropriate in that context to turn to one of Dionysius’s favorite themes, hierarchy. In fact, he seems to have invented the word itself in his book with the title The Celestial Hierarchies.
Hierachies, Fields, And Light
Hierarchy is, in my opinion, a holy order and knowledge and activity which, so far as is attainable, participates in the divine likeness, and is lifted up to the illuminations given it from God, and correspondingly towards the imitation of God.
Now the beauty of God, being unific, good, and the source of all perfection, is wholly free from dissimilarity, and bestows its own light upon each according to his merit; and in the most divine mysteries perfects them in accordance with the unchangeable fashioning of those who are being perfected harmoniously to itself.
The aim of hierarchy is the greatest possible assimilation to and union with God, and by taking him as leader in all holy wisdom, to become like him, so far as is permitted, by contemplating intently his most divine beauty. Also it moulds and perfects its participants in the holy image of God like bright and spotless mirrors which receive the ray of the supreme Deity which is the source of light; and being mystically filled with the gift of light, it pours it forth again abundantly, according to the divine law, upon those below itself. For it is not lawful for those who impart or participate in the holy mysteries to overpass the bounds of its sacred laws; nor must they deviate from them if they seek to behold, as far as is allowed, that deific splendour, and to be transformed into the likeness of those divine intelligences.
Therefore he who speaks of hierarchy implies a certain perfectly holy order in the likeness of the first divine beauty, ministering the sacred mystery of its own illuminations in hierarchical order and wisdom, being in due measure conformed to its own principle.
For each of those who is allotted a place in the divine order finds his perfection in being uplifted, according to his capacity, towards the divine likeness; and what is still more divine, he becomes, as the scriptures say, a fellow-worker with God, and shows forth the divine activity revealed as far as possible in himself. For the holy constitution of the hierarchy ordains that some are purified, others purify; some are enlightened, others enlighten; some are perfected, others make perfect; for in this way the divine imitation will fit each one.2
Rupert: What Dionysius says here is related to the Neoplatonic conception of emanations from the One, the source from which things flow out. The idea of a chain of being was very important in the ancient world and remained a common theme in literature right up until modern times. There is a source of being and then every grade of being below that, becoming more and more dimmed the farther the descent into matter. That seems to me the Neoplatonic background of Dionysius’s thinking. Would you agree?
Matthew: Yes. And I find that difficult to deal with today. The idea of everything emanating from a source is fine; that’s certainly the image I get from the creation story today—everything beginning with a tiny pinprick of a fireball. But the idea that beings have to be distant from matter to be spiritual is, I think, one of the great mistakes made by Hellenistic thinking, and it’s set us up for all kinds of dualism.
Also I think there’s another implication in his language, for example, in his very first sentence, the language of “being lifted up.” The idea of pouring out from the top down sets us up to disparage what is below, whether that is the earth we stand on or the lower chakras of our own nature. There are inherent problems in Neoplatonism that I’m uncomfortable with. The coming together of energy in matter and spirit in matter in our century has managed to dispel these misconceptions based on dualism of matter versus spirit.
But the way Dionysius describes hierarchy is interesting—a holy order and knowledge and activity participating in the divine likeness and of course responding toward an imitation of God. That kind of understanding is useful.
It’s interesting that his next definition of hierarchy is about the beauty of God. The very first gift that he’s alluding to as flowing out from the source is beauty and light. For him beauty is light. And I think that’s very wonderful. I think the recovery of the sense of beauty as being another name for the divine is very important today. It’s behind the passion for eco-justice, for example. Beauty is one of the great energy sources that we have as individuals, and our experience of beauty is what we share as a species.
Rupert: But isn’t there a problem with the image of God as the source of light? It implies that you’ve got the brightest source at the top, and farther away you get more mixing in with darkness, and the darkness then becomes another Neoplatonic way of conceiving of matter.
Matthew: Exactly.
Rupert: Darkness in this view is not part of the divine; it’s a negative principle. If we see darkness and light as polar principles within the divine, then we get a different view. We get a bottom-up as well as a top-down view. We see that the intermingling of light and matter, the flowing down from a bright source, is not entirely negative or a dilution of some primary divine principle.
Matthew: I had that experience when I stayed awake all night in the woods and I realized that the night is not just the absence of the sun; it has its own energy. The darkness moves in. And it has its own energy and its own power, and this is lost in the Neoplatonic view of things. They put down matter, and they put down darkness, and they put down down.
Meister Eckhart says, “Up is down and down is up,” and that’s much more contemporary. Buckminster Fuller says anyone using the words up and down is four hundred years out of date because in a curved universe things go in and out but they don’t go up and down.
So I think that the notion of climbing Jacob’s ladder, the whole archetype of climbing up, can be an escape from materia—mater, mother, matter, the earth. This is part of the hierarchical worldview that Neo-platonism takes for granted, and we can’t be at home with that today.
It also has profound political implications. For example, in this text itself there’s a statement, a footnote, that is quite troubling. It’s a quote from Proclus, who was one of the influential Neoplatonic philosophers: “The peculiarity of purity is to keep more excellent natures exempt from such as are subordinate.”
That definition of purity is: keep your hands clean from those who are below you. It would certainly feed any temptations to caste consciousness. It endorses the untouchable mentality, and that’s again what distinguishes this Neoplatonic philosophy of Proclus, Plotinus, and Dionysius from the biblical tradition that honors the poorer things of life as being pure in their own right, welcome in the circle of beings in which we all live. Aboriginal people think in terms of the circle of being, not the ladder. So the question arises: Can we shift this archetype of the chain of being to see it more as a circle or a spiral and not as a ladder?
Rupert: I think so. But I also think there is value in the up-and-down imagery. When we look up, we see the sky. Looking up to the heavens is very important. I think that most of us in the modern