Greco-Christian stream·Dionysius the Areopagite·On the Heavenly Hierarchy·On the Heavenly Hierarchy — Caput XIV
XIV. The traditional number of the Angels
Daniel 7:10 — 'thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.' On the inexhaustible multiplicity of angelic beings; the number that exceeds counting; the great host of the heavenly liturgy.
Source context
- Theme
- Symbolic numerology of angelic multitudes as expression of divine superabundance
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Hebrew prophetic literature (Daniel 7:10; Revelation 5:11)The apocalyptic formula 'thousand thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand' — cited by Pseudo-Dionysius in this chapter — functions in Hebrew prophetic literature as an apophatic gesture: the enumeration of angelic hosts exceeds calculable number, signaling the incomprehensibility of heavenly order.
- Neoplatonic emanationism (Proclus, Iamblichus)Cross-tradition congruence exists between Pseudo-Dionysius's treatment of angelic multitude as overflow of the One's goodness and Proclus's doctrine that each henadic level of the hierarchy proliferates subordinate beings in proportion to the generative power of its source.
On the Heavenly Hierarchy — Caput XIV
CAPUT XIV.
What the traditional number of the Angels signifies.
This also is worthy, in my opinion, of intellectual attention, that the tradition of the Oracles concerning the Angels affirms that they are thousand thousands, and myriad myriads, accumulating and multiplying, to themselves, the supreme limits of our numbers, and, through these, shewing clearly, that the ranks of the Heavenly Beings cannot be numbered by us. For many are the blessed hosts of the supermundane minds, surpassing the weak and contracted measurement of our material number, and being definitely known by their own supermundane and heavenly intelligence and science alone, which is given to them in profusion by the supremely Divine and Omniscient Framer of Wisdom, and essentiating p. 54 Cause and connecting Force, and encompassing Term of all created things together.
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