Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names · 6 of 39 · tr. C.E. Rolt
Chapter 4, Section 1f
But these things are dealt with in the “Symbolic Divinity.” Here I desire to declare what is the spiritual meaning of the name “Light” as belonging to the Good.
267 267 Two worlds: (1) Nature, (2) Grace.
God is revealed in both; the former was apparently the subject of the Symbolic Divinity; the latter is that of the present treatise.
The Good God is called Spiritual Light because He fills every heavenly mind with spiritual light, and drives all ignorance and error from all souls where they have gained a lodgment, and giveth them all a share of holy light and purges their spiritual eyes from the mist of ignorance that surrounds them, and stirs and opens the eyes which are fast shut and weighed down with darkness, and gives them first a moderate illumination, then (when they taste the Light and desire It more) He giveth Himself in greater measure and shineth in more abundance on them “because they have loved much,” and ever He constraineth them according to their powers of looking upwards.
6.
And so that Good which is above all light is called a Spiritual Light because It is an Originating Beam and an Overflowing Radiance, illuminating with its fullness every Mind above the world, around it, or within it, 268 268 i.e.
Men and different orders of angels.
and renewing all their spiritual powers, embracing them all by Its transcendent compass and exceeding them all by Its transcendent elevation.
And It contains within Itself, in a simple form, the entire ultimate principle of light; 269 269 Material light is diffused in space and hence is divisible.
The Spiritual Light is indivisible, being totally present to each illuminated mind.
Hence the Spiritual Light is simple in a way that the material light is not.
and is 95 the Transcendent Archetype of Light; and, while bearing the light in its womb, It exceeds it in quality and precedes it in time; and so conjoineth together all spiritual and rational beings, uniting them in one.
270 270 All our spiritual and mental powers are due to the same Spiritual Light working in each one of us.
Cf.
Wordsworth: “Those mysteries of Being which have made and shall continue evermore to make of the whole human race one brotherhood.” For as ignorance leadeth wanderers astray from one another, so doth the presence of Spiritual Light join and unite together those that are being illuminated, and perfects them and converts them toward that which truly Is—yea, converts them from their manifold false opinions and unites their different perceptions, or rather fancies, into one true, pure and coherent knowledge, and filleth them with one unifying light.
7.
This Good is described by the Sacred Writers as Beautiful and as Beauty, as Love or Beloved, and by all other Divine titles which befit Its beautifying and gracious fairness.
Now there is a distinction between the titles “Beautiful” and “Beauty” applied to the all-embracing Cause.
For we universally distinguish these two titles as meaning respectively the qualities shared and the objects which share therein.
We give the name of “Beautiful” to that which shares in the quality of beauty, and we give the name of “Beauty” to that common quality by which all beautiful things are beautiful.
But the Super-Essential Beautiful is called “Beauty” because of that quality which It imparts to all things severally according to their nature, 271 271 Cf.
ii.
8.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The text mentions 'heavenly mind' and 'orders of angels' illuminated by the Good, implying a structured hierarchy.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
Ignorance and error are described as mist and darkness that obscure the soul's true nature.
The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.
Souls are described as being weighed down with darkness and ignorance before receiving light.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
Souls are transformed by the light, gaining a share of holy light and perfecting them toward what truly Is.