Re: Divine Hierarchies - A Comparative Study Group
Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2023 11:13 pm
Caput VI.
"Which is the first Order of the Heavenly Beings? which the middle? and which the last?"
I like how Dionysius is really down-to-earth and inspects things from such well rooted perspective, placing us (hopefully) in a surprisingly similar position as he was almost two thousand years ago. When I think of these ancient times the individuals and cultures are easilly generalized for example in to imbalancedly religious emphasis, which is positively broken by Dionysius attitude. How he puts things out here avoids many snares of religious sentiments, but still in a balanced way keeps a portion of that sentiment together with philosophy with him to open the doors of mystery in to the prophecies and the entities of the Hierarchy themselves. He lays down our conditioned foundation where we can not know, portray or describe (by the limited rational mind) the Hierarchies and their divisions as they are for it is only the one who grants the orders their powers and illumination, besides the orders themselves who receive parts of the illumination, that know th Hierarchies or parts of them as they are. But we human beings can still inspect them through the reflection of the prophets and what we know by what portions of these powers have come through to us. I claim that by meditating on the Hieroglyphic Key and its different points, and their correspondences, we may begin to understand the whole and get a bit more clear climpses on these beings of the Hierarchies as they reflect each others, but they remain alive and escape limited definitions.
The main purpose of the chapter seems to be that of defining the hierarchies which are divided in to three larger groups that are in turn divided in to three. The higher ones being closer to the divine source of illumination. I’m not sure how accurately the names are given in this chapter regarding the position in the hierarchy of the smaller groups, because I seem to recall the last group presented elsewhere in completely opposite way around where Angels were the last group. Even the last chapter might have hinted something towards such an order.
According to Dionysius’ (partly?) Hebrew sources (thus positioning the text at hand on the crossroads of Judeo-Christian tradition) there are:
Holy Thrones
Cherubim
Seraphim
Authorities
Lordships
Powers
Angels
Archangels
Principalities
Now, what can we take from this group of 9 (3+3+3)? It is one short of 10, the consummation of the whole where the binary digits symbolize the sexual opposites completing each others – the Masculine Bolt of Lightning flashing in the womb of the Divine Feminine. Without the 10 we are looking at everything else than this consummation where things click and spark. The Hierarchies do click and spark thourougly in the consummation event of the 10, but on their own, they could be perhaps seen as rather cold structures of different dimensions, entities embodying laws of nature and having a sort of guarding and ruling role to these laws. This could be easily linked to the Gnostic idea of Archons, but as they are to my knowledge keenly attached to the sevenfold divisions I wouldn't make that connection so fast. Instead we could possibly think of the sort of impotence and even partly the dead world of the materialist to the nine (strictly in their "wait" for the spark to hit) as some Thelemites seemed to understand the meaning of 333 as we saw in a discussion linked to the Finnish side today. In such a wait they could be possibly seen as the entities that must be faced and overcome in order to turn all of their powers in the human being to a right position for the lightning to hit through them.
I wonder how the division by 9 relates to the division by 7? In Kabbala, the Tree of Life is often divided in to 3+7, where the three is on a plane of its own (let’s say the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit to make a comparison to Christian symbolism), which the seven is then a division of. There the 3 is that which completes the ”missing union” where as here with the 9 it is 1. With Seven we have a metaphysically higher stage with its own drama of sorts where the high beings can be still seen ”operating” in a way. This sevenfold division could be therefor seen emphasising immanent approaches where we seek to imitate the high in the low in order to find the divine from the mundane. The division by nine on the other hand doesn’t seem to detect anything in the missing piece, it being absolute, the union cancelling each others out of existence and this whole order of the Nine working as the counter part for that absolute (or Logos as its representative), the bride and the bridegroom, creating a more immanent emphasis to the process. I guess these can be also thought the other way around, but my main aim with this is trying to point how from the human perspective these different divisions of 7 and 9 by themselves present certain dimensions of reality, reflected from our own abilities, and how we can possibly see to their meanings through the different numbers creating different kind of dynamics.
"Which is the first Order of the Heavenly Beings? which the middle? and which the last?"
I like how Dionysius is really down-to-earth and inspects things from such well rooted perspective, placing us (hopefully) in a surprisingly similar position as he was almost two thousand years ago. When I think of these ancient times the individuals and cultures are easilly generalized for example in to imbalancedly religious emphasis, which is positively broken by Dionysius attitude. How he puts things out here avoids many snares of religious sentiments, but still in a balanced way keeps a portion of that sentiment together with philosophy with him to open the doors of mystery in to the prophecies and the entities of the Hierarchy themselves. He lays down our conditioned foundation where we can not know, portray or describe (by the limited rational mind) the Hierarchies and their divisions as they are for it is only the one who grants the orders their powers and illumination, besides the orders themselves who receive parts of the illumination, that know th Hierarchies or parts of them as they are. But we human beings can still inspect them through the reflection of the prophets and what we know by what portions of these powers have come through to us. I claim that by meditating on the Hieroglyphic Key and its different points, and their correspondences, we may begin to understand the whole and get a bit more clear climpses on these beings of the Hierarchies as they reflect each others, but they remain alive and escape limited definitions.
The main purpose of the chapter seems to be that of defining the hierarchies which are divided in to three larger groups that are in turn divided in to three. The higher ones being closer to the divine source of illumination. I’m not sure how accurately the names are given in this chapter regarding the position in the hierarchy of the smaller groups, because I seem to recall the last group presented elsewhere in completely opposite way around where Angels were the last group. Even the last chapter might have hinted something towards such an order.
According to Dionysius’ (partly?) Hebrew sources (thus positioning the text at hand on the crossroads of Judeo-Christian tradition) there are:
Holy Thrones
Cherubim
Seraphim
Authorities
Lordships
Powers
Angels
Archangels
Principalities
Now, what can we take from this group of 9 (3+3+3)? It is one short of 10, the consummation of the whole where the binary digits symbolize the sexual opposites completing each others – the Masculine Bolt of Lightning flashing in the womb of the Divine Feminine. Without the 10 we are looking at everything else than this consummation where things click and spark. The Hierarchies do click and spark thourougly in the consummation event of the 10, but on their own, they could be perhaps seen as rather cold structures of different dimensions, entities embodying laws of nature and having a sort of guarding and ruling role to these laws. This could be easily linked to the Gnostic idea of Archons, but as they are to my knowledge keenly attached to the sevenfold divisions I wouldn't make that connection so fast. Instead we could possibly think of the sort of impotence and even partly the dead world of the materialist to the nine (strictly in their "wait" for the spark to hit) as some Thelemites seemed to understand the meaning of 333 as we saw in a discussion linked to the Finnish side today. In such a wait they could be possibly seen as the entities that must be faced and overcome in order to turn all of their powers in the human being to a right position for the lightning to hit through them.
I wonder how the division by 9 relates to the division by 7? In Kabbala, the Tree of Life is often divided in to 3+7, where the three is on a plane of its own (let’s say the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit to make a comparison to Christian symbolism), which the seven is then a division of. There the 3 is that which completes the ”missing union” where as here with the 9 it is 1. With Seven we have a metaphysically higher stage with its own drama of sorts where the high beings can be still seen ”operating” in a way. This sevenfold division could be therefor seen emphasising immanent approaches where we seek to imitate the high in the low in order to find the divine from the mundane. The division by nine on the other hand doesn’t seem to detect anything in the missing piece, it being absolute, the union cancelling each others out of existence and this whole order of the Nine working as the counter part for that absolute (or Logos as its representative), the bride and the bridegroom, creating a more immanent emphasis to the process. I guess these can be also thought the other way around, but my main aim with this is trying to point how from the human perspective these different divisions of 7 and 9 by themselves present certain dimensions of reality, reflected from our own abilities, and how we can possibly see to their meanings through the different numbers creating different kind of dynamics.