Dionysius the Areopagite: On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology.
THE MYSTICAL THEOLOGY
CHAPTER I
Wheat is the Divine Gloom.
Trinty, which exceedeth all Being, Deity, and Goodness!
Thou that instructeth Christians in Thy heavenly wisdom! Guide us to
that topmost height of mystic lore which
exceedeth light and more than exceedeth knowledge, where the simple,
absolute, and unchangeable mysteries of heavenly Truth lie hidden in the
dazzling obscurity of the secret Silence, outshining all brilliance
with the intensity of their darkness, and surcharging our blinded
intellects with the utterly impalpable and invisible
fairness of glories which exceed all beauty! Such be my prayer; and
thee, dear Timothy, I counsel that, in the earnest exercise of mystic
contemplation, thou leave the senses and the activities of the intellect
and all things that the senses or the intellect can perceive, and all
things in this world of nothingness, or in that world of being, and
that, thine understanding being laid to rest, thou strain (so far as
thou mayest) towards an union with Him whom neither being nor
understanding can contain.
For, by the unceasing and absolute
renunciation of thyself and all things, thou shalt in pureness cast all
things aside, and be released from all, and so shalt be led upwards to
the Ray of that divine Darkness which exceedeth all existence.
These things thou must not disclose to any of the uninitiated, by whom I mean those who cling to the objects of human thought, and imagine there is no super-essential reality beyond; and fancy that they know by human understanding Him that has made Darkness His secret place.
And, if the Divine Initiation is beyond such men as these, what can be said of others yet more incapable thereof, who describe the Transcendent Cause of all things by qualities drawn from the lowest order of being, while they deny that it is in any way superior to the various ungodly delusions which they fondly invent in ignorance of this truth?
That while it possesses all the positive attributes of the universe (being the universal Cause), yet in a stricter sense It does not possess them, since It transcends them all, wherefore there is no contradiction between affirming and denying that It has them inasmuch as It precedes and surpasses all deprivation, being beyond all positive and negative distinctions?
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