Choir of angels,

detail from the 15th century

‘Assumption of the Virgin’

by Francesco Botticini.

*

Today’s sharing from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA, is an hymn shared by Porphyry- here in Hans Yohanan Lewy’s English translation found in his ‘must have’ posthumous publication of classical philologist Professor Hans Yohanan Lewy’s ‘Chaldaean Oracles And Theurgy, Mystic Magic and Platonism in the Later Roman Empire’, published in 2011 by professor Michel Tardieu at the ‘Institut d’Études Augustiniennes’ in Paris-pages 9 & 10. It is also paragraph 27, book I of the ‘Tübingen Theosophia’. Following paragraphs 29 and 29 are provided in our Via-HYGEIA English translation from the French version found as an appendix to the excellent ‘Oracles et Prophétie’, edited by Hans van Kasteel & others for Beya Editions in 2011.

**

From The ‘Tübingen Theosophia’, I-27, 28 and 29

27.In the second book of his ‘Philosophy of the Oracles’, Porphyry shares an oracle that says regarding the immortal God:

“Ineffable Father of the Immortals, Eternal, Mystes, O Lord, Thou who ridest on the ethereal back of the revolving worlds where the Vigour of Thy Strength is fixed; to Thee, who seest, and with Thy beauteous ears hearest everything (we pray). Hear Thy children whom Thou hast begotten in the times. For thy Golden, abundant, eternal Strength abides above the world and the stary heaven. Above Her (Strength), Thou art exalted, moving thyself through Light, and suckling, through eternally flowing channels, the equipoised Intellect; who brings forth this all by shaping the imperishable matter, of which the creation was resolved upon when Thou boundest it by forms. Therefrom flow the procreations of the Holy Rulers, who are about Thee, most kingly All Father and only Father of all mortals and of the happy immortals. The others are separated, through descending from Thee, and transmit everything in messages to Thy first-born Intellect, and to Thy Might. Beside these, Thou hast also created a third class of Rulers, who constantly bear Thee and praise Thee in their songs, in accordance with their will and with Thine, they sing till-today.”

*

28. This oracle describes three categories of angels: Those who are always by the side of God; those who are separating from him and are sent on missions and ministries; and finally those who always carry His throne. Here are ‘those who elevate  You everyday‘, meaning those who carry Him continuously. The words: ‘Their songs reach even until here’, meaning that they still sing up to now.

29. Then the oracles add this:

“You are, the father, the Mother’s radiant Form, and the children’s sweet Flower, being formed among the forms, spirit, breath, harmony and number.”

*

The Beya Editions

French version

*

*

*

To order the book

press here

**

The original Greek

for the Hymn

*

To order the Book

press here   

***