Re: Divine Hierarchies - A Comparative Study Group
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2022 9:20 pm
For the sake of clarity, today I will simply break down the two extremely long sentences of Section III. The third one I will leave for another day.
Caput I.
Section III.
The 1st Sentence
The 2nd Sentence
Caput I.
Section III.
The 1st Sentence
The Divine Institution of sacred Rites could well be interpreted as part of the hierarchies and thus the meaning here would further on depict how the initiations and forms of the immaterial spirits are laid out in nature, and how the archetypes project themselves into all forms out of which they can be recognized. But I will now take a side step out of this interpretation and read this in more literal sense, as an introduction in to the source where the formal representation of the hierarchies came from and how they were approved by a religious authority.Wherefore, the Divine Institution of sacred Rites, having deemed it worthy of the supermundane imitation of the Heavenly Hierarchies, and having depicted the aforesaid immaterial Hierarchies in material figures and bodily compositions
Whether the material figures, symbols and type mean planetary bodies and other forms or names on a paper approved by a religious institution, the meaning is the same: we are to use these formal representations as aids that are later to be discarded in order to know the immaterial Hierarchies behind the formal representations. This is the idea of the heuristic ladder. The aim of finding similitude with the celestial beings is to embody the inherent initiations and become a worker with higher - truly alive beings, and eventually reach nirvana.in order that we might be borne, as far as our capacity permits, from the most sacred pictures to the instructions and similitudes without symbol and without type, transmitted to us our most Holy Hierarchy.
The 2nd Sentence
This is repeating the above and the tantric idea of approaching things from the ground up, which I already happened to touch upon. This justifies the usual magic of correspondences used in natural magic of the ancients as well as Catholic and Orthodox churches with their elaborate use of specific materials and ritual paraphernalia from frankincense and myrh to gilded altars and various sorts of iconography etc.For it is not possible for our mind to be raised to that immaterial representation and contemplation of the Heavenly Hierarchies, without using the material guidance suitable to itself, accounting the visible beauties as reflections of the invisible comeliness; and the sweet odours of the senses as emblems of the spiritual distribution; and the material lights as a likeness of the gift of the immaterial enlightenment;
This list as a whole reveals quite a vast range of areas and it could be seen breaking through the preconceptions of where one might automaticly draw their associative limits of formal things when imagining the immaterial above the material and form. In addition it draws out areas where spiritual practice can take place and how the immaterial hierarchies can be seen present behind all those forms of practice. Thus the text can be seen fighting against the dead letter and ritual without meaning. In this spirit, there is also a brief presentation of a general key in to the inner mechanics of the Eucharist.and the detailed sacred instructions, of the feast of contemplation within the mind; and the ranks of the orders here, of the harmonious and regulated habit, with regard to Divine things; and the reception of the most Divine Eucharist, of the partaking of Jesus, and whatever other things were transmitted to Heavenly Beings supermundanely, but to us symbolically.