Iamblichus: On the Mysteries · 27 of 218 · tr. Thomas Taylor
Chapter XIX-a
In the next place, therefore, we shall answer your question, “ What it is which conjoins the Gods that have a body in the heavens with the incorporeal Gods.
” What this is, therefore, is evident from what has been before said.
For 72 if these Gods, as incorporeal, intelligible, and united, ride in the celestial spheres, they have their principles in the intelligible world, and intellectually perceiving the divine forms of themselves, they govern all heaven according to one infinite energy.
And if they are present with the heavens in a separate manner, and lead the perpetual circulations of them by their will alone, they are themselves unmingled with a sensible nature, and exist together with the intelligible Gods.
It will be better, however, to answer you more particularly, as follows: I say, therefore, that the visible statues of the Gods originate from divine intelligible paradigms, and are generated about them.
But being thus generated, they are entirely established in them, and being also extended to, they possess an image which derives its completion from them.
These images likewise fabricate another order; sublunary natures are in continuity with them, according to one union; and the divine intellectual forms, which are present with the visible bodies of the Gods, exist prior to them in a separate manner.
But the unmingled and supercelestial intelligible paradigms of them, abide by themselves in unity, and are at once 73 all things, according to the eternal transcendency of themselves.
There is, therefore, one common indivisible bond of them according to intellectual energies; and there is also this bond according to the common participations of forms, since there is nothing which intercepts these, nor any thing which comes between them.
For indeed, an immaterial and incorporeal essence itself, being neither separated by places, nor by subjects, nor defined by the divisible circumscriptions of parts, immediately concurs, and is connascent with sameness.
The progression also, from, and the regression of all things to, the one , and the entire domination of the one , congregates the communion of the mundane Gods with the Gods that preexist in the intelligible world.
Farther still, the intellectual conversion of secondary to primary natures, and the gift of the same essence and power imparted by the primary to the secondary Gods, connects the synod of them in indissoluble union.
For in things of different essences, such as soul and body, and also in those of a dissimilar species, such as material forms, and those which are in any other way separated from each other, the connascent adventitious union is derived from supernal causes, and is lost in 74 certain definite periods of time.
But by how much the higher we ascend, and elevate ourselves to the sameness both in form and essence, of first natures, and proceed from parts to wholes, by so much the more shall we discover the union which has an eternal existence, and survey the essence, which has a precedaneous and more principal subsistence, and possesses about, and in itself, difference and multitude.
Since, however, the order of all the Gods is profoundly united, and the first and second genera of them, and all the multitude which is spontaneously produced about them, are consubsistent in unity, and also every thing which is in them is one,—hence the beginning, middles, and ends in them are consubsistent according to the one itself ; so that in these, it is not proper to inquire, whence the one accedes to all of them.
For the very existence in them, whatever it may be, is this one of their 75 nature.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The text states that sublunary natures are in continuity with intelligible Gods according to one union.
The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.
The passage notes that the Gods lead the perpetual circulations of heaven by their will alone.
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 passage outlines a hierarchy from primary natures to secondary Gods and sublunary natures.
The doctrine of the universe as boundless and without center or circumference, populated by innumerable worlds — Bruno's rejection of the closed Aristotelian sphere; the divine and the cosmos as ontologically infinite.
The Gods are described as governing heaven according to one infinite energy.