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The Mystical Hymns of Orpheus - Platonic Philosophy

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ADDITIONAL NOTES, 203<br />

For an all-perfect intellect is all things, and energizes<br />

according to all things with invariable sameness; but a<br />

partial and participated intellect is indeed all things, but this<br />

according to one form, such as a solar, lunar, or mercurial<br />

form. This therefore, the peculiarity <strong>of</strong> which is to be<br />

separated from the rest, wine indicates, signifying an intel-<br />

lect such as and particular (crqparvwv ~ov<br />

oiov ~ a i<br />

rwa vovv).<br />

Since therefore every partial fabrication is suspended from<br />

the Dionysiacal monad, which distributes participated mun-<br />

dane intellects from total intellect [or the intellect which<br />

ranks as a whole], many souls from one soul, and all<br />

sensible forms from their proper totalities ; on this account<br />

theologists call both this God and all his fabrications wifie.<br />

For all these are the progeny <strong>of</strong> intellect ; and some things<br />

participate <strong>of</strong> the partial distribution <strong>of</strong> intellect in a more<br />

distant, but others in a nearer degree. Wine therefore<br />

energizes in things analogously to its subsistence in them ;<br />

in body, indeed, after the manner <strong>of</strong> an image, according to<br />

a false opinion and imagination ; but in intellectual natures<br />

according to an intellectual energy and fabrication ; since<br />

in the laceration <strong>of</strong> Bacchus by the Titans, the heart <strong>of</strong> the<br />

God [i. e. the indivisible essence <strong>of</strong> intellect] is said to have<br />

alone remained undistributed.<br />

Again, theologists especially celebrate two powers <strong>of</strong><br />

our sovereign mistress Minerva, the defensive and the per-<br />

fective; the former preserving the order <strong>of</strong> wholes unde-<br />

filed, and unvanquished by matter, and the latter filling all<br />

things with intellectual light, and converting them to their<br />

cause. And on this account, Plato also in the Timaeus,<br />

analogously celebrates Minerva as philopolernic and philo-<br />

sophic. But three orders <strong>of</strong> this Goddess are delivered by<br />

theologists ; the one fontal and intellectual, according to .<br />

which she establishes herself in her father Jupiter, and<br />

subsists in unproceeding union with him; but the second<br />

ranks among the supermundane Gods, according to which<br />

she is present with Core, and bounds and converts all the pro-<br />

gression <strong>of</strong> that Goddess to herself. And the third is Eibe-<br />

rated, according to which she perfects and guards the whole

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