plan for Aquinas bit

Thomas Aquinas is called the Angelic Doctor with good reason,
the Angel Treatise of Summa Theologiae and Disputed Questions on Spiritual Creatures represent a pinnacle of medieval scholastic angelology.

Pico cut his teeth on Thomas Aquinas' problems of angelology, which are largely drawn from Dionysius.

Pico devotes a significant number of Neoplatonic conclusions to the concept of participation, which has recently been discussed as a "key" to the metaphysics of Aquinas.

Influence of Dionysius on Aquinas is now well known.
Impact on divine attributes, angelology, innovative metaphysical doctrine of God as ipsum esse subsistens, pure act

In terms of problem of Pico--seems like we have a problem with "becoming angel" because Thomas Aquinas made sure to be clear that Dionysius isn't talking about about becoming angelic, hierarchy must be preserved, although there are Christian traditions of men being uplifted into angel orders.
Is Pico's "becoming angelic" a problem? Or would Pico have explained it the way Aquinas explains men being lifted up into the angelic orders? It's not clear from Oration that he meant what Bhaktin calls breaking the hierarchy, but later in the Conclusions and everywhere else in his texts Pico stresses that the hierarchy is preserved, although "all is in all but proper to each"

Heptaplus: Pico uses Aquinas principles of Aristotelian act/potency to read Biblical text, scholastic elements of his esoteric (Dionysian-Proclan) hermeneutic.

De Ente -- looking at Pico's reading of negative theology of Dionysius through Aristotelian scholastic lens of Aquinas helps us understand how angels fit into Pico's "supersubstantial and ineffable theology." Further studies of Neoplatonic encounter might profitably read them as a rereading in scholastic style, in light of Thomistic developments in metaphysics/Christian Platonism.

plan for subchapters

0a. intro - need to cover a few background things
0b. angel magic rundown
0c. Copenhaver's theurgy [Idel vs. but not yet KBL/CW]
0d. Dionysius - angel and theurgy
0e. Dionysian angel and Neoplatonic angel - needed context for Pico's angel/how he sees Kabbalah
0f. Influence of Dionysius on Aquinas - background for Pico's scholastic problems

1a. Oration. Angel Comparison, as biblical problem, Paul+Dionysius.
1b. Imitation of contemplative life of angels. Dionysian functions. Rival, go beyond. Seeds. - this is not the way Dionysius + Aquinas treated angels, but perhaps Pico isn't forgetting the distinction between man and angels. We'll see that he doesn't later.
1c. Moses and the problem of angelic knowledge.
1d. Conclusions - what are they and what did Pico mean? wasn't expounding, maybe trying to found a school of philosophical thought at level of opinion, but not trying to change theology at level of faith
1e. Scholastic problems of angelic substance, individuality, knowledge -- Pico leaves unsolved!
1f. Encounter with Kabbalistic Angel in conclusions - problem but here's how not to inflate
1g. Encounter with Neoplatonic Angel in conclusions - Pico's Iamblichus, Proclus, Syrianus, etc.
1h. Conclusion - Pico may discuss angel in unusual ways, drop hints of magic+kabbalah, but the evidence does not support an occultist reading. Philosophical interpretation can't yet deal with all this, but understanding philosophical contexts and motivations will help us do so in the future.
Even in the Oration magic doesn't seem to make much of an impact on Pico's angelology. In his later texts as we will see magic makes no impact at all on his angelology.

2a. Commento develops angel themes familiar from Oration+Conclusion more fully.
2b. Commento explicitly a philosophical experiment following Plotinus rather than PD
2c. Commento gives an original explanation of Angelic Mind, Love+Beauty, Forms
2d. We see Angel Comparison and Kabbalah, but here magic doesn't impact angelology. It won't later.
2e. Heptaplus claims to give angel metaphysics of Genesis, Dionysius, but we see Pico's new approaches to angels having been developed.
2f. We see Angel Comparison, Problem of Angelic Knowledge, again as biblical problems.
2g. Moses and problem of man being represented by angels in Scripture. Has comparison been mitigated from Oration since limits of man and inferiority to angels emphasized? Man is still macrocosm, Pico is still celebrating his central place in cosmos which depends on Jesus+angels connection.
2h. Heptaplus: Angel as Number. This discussion leads us directly to use of angel in De Ente.
2i. Imperfection of angel in Heptaplus and De Ente -- explanation of negative theology
2j. Presence of metaphysics of Aquinas in De Ente. Pico accepts PD of Aquinas. Should whole angel project be seen as rereading Neoplatonic angelology in the light of Aquinas developments on Dionysius?
2k. Even in Pico's last mostly-finished Disputations against Astrology, Pico emphasized importance of angels.

3a. Conclusion: Angel is central for Pico, he makes creative and original use of it without threatening Christian angelology in ways that have been suspected/claimed in scholarship.
3b. Understanding philosophical motivations behind angelology should help us understand what he's doing with the more unusual and difficult Kabbalistic and magical materials.
3c. This helps clarify Pico's position as founder of "Christian Cabala" and "Magical Theology"
3d. Future study of Pico should focus on solving problems concerning ways he uses metaphysics of Dionysius and Aquinas before moving on to problems of ways he uses Kabbalah, Magic, Neoplatonism.

Boland on Aquinas, Dionysius, Proclus

130bot Proclus was the first to produce a systematic treatise on the divine attributes, seeking the essential constitutive qualities of divinity. Among Christians the first example of this kind of theology is CA.

131 The important Proclean term henad occurs seven times in CA but is used only once in the plural and then to refer to the angels. Otherwise it refers to the divine unity. The terms monad and henad seem to be synonymous to Dionysius which they are not for Proclus. Texts of Proclus on the modalisation of the henads and texts of Dionysius on the hierarchies reveal greater differences than similarities since Dionysius always allows for direct and unmediated access from all levels of the hierarchy to the unique Godhead.

Triads are as fundamental for Dionysius as they are for Proclus.

133top Dionysius uses the Proclean invention ai noetai kai noerai in speaking of the angels (DN IV.1 (693B-696A) and p.104n.56 Proclus p.128 n.194 above); each of them understands divine providence in terms of self-knowledge and bestowal of being; Proclus speaks of higher causes reaching more effects and Dionysius says that divine causality reaches to the outermost limits of creation and they both relate "the good" and "being" in speaking of the primary henad, gift or participation.

Further similarities and differences are found in what Dionysius says about the divine liturgy and what neoplatonism says about theurgy.

134top The divine procession is an ontological bestowal of being in which the angels too owe their being to God [CH VII.2 (208A)].

Hankey on Thomas and Dionysius (Denys)

Thomas has a good sense for the Procline developments reaching from Denys, that is from Greek Christianity, on the one hand, and from the Liber de causis, that is from Arabic Islam, on the other. His knowledge of these developments became more and more exact as his life went on and the texts available to him increased. He recognizes that these Platonists name God being, not absolutely, but in respect to creation, insofar as the first and most proper effect of God in things is their substantial esse. By this, God gives created things a participation in Himself. They imitate God in having an existence of their own. (cxxii)

In differing from Denys, Aquinas recognised how much he owed him. If Rudi te Velde's treatment of the relations between Thomas and Denys be correct, the key to how Thomas will relate participation and substantiality may well have come to him from Denys. [cxxiv]

In Thomas' treatment of the divine intelligence, God is called truth. God is named truth because of an act of comparison or self-reflection. God compares the divine ideas with creatures totally existing by a caused imitation of the divine being as idea.[cxxvii] God is the truth of things so far as their substantial being in its particular grade and character is a participation in divine being, not absolutely, but as thus imitable and imitated.

Underlying is the Iamblichan - Procline notion that, between the unparticipated and the participating, a middle must occur. This becomes, for Denys in this context, the idea that creatures cannot participate the divine being directly, but instead participate its likeness. In Thomas a divine self-reflexive activity is involved to a degree Denys would have found difficult and a pagan Platonist impossible. Thus, Thomas can far more resolutely predicate being of God than Denys or Porphyry can.

-Denys and Aquinas: Antimodern Cold and Postmodern Hot

God, angels, Jesus do theurgy in Dionysius... Wear on angelncontemplation as initiation

EH 429CD "[the theologians] teach that God himself thus gives substance and arrangement to everything that exists, including the legal hierarchy and society... they praise the divine works of Jesus the man ... and [they engage in] sacred writing about the divine songs, which have as an aim to praise all the divine words [theologiai] and divine works [theourgiai] and to celebrate the sacred words [hierologiai] and operations [hierourgiai] of sacred men, forms a universal song and exposition of divine things, granting to those chanting the sacred words sacredly the ability to receive and distribute the entire rite of the hierarchy."

Wear126 ...for even with this higher brand of theoria, ritual is still necessary for eliciting henosis. This is seen both in the angelic ranks, where primary contemplation is described as an 'initiation' by Jesus, and in the human realm, where the hierarch enters into mystical contemplation by the angels when he is fully initiated into the sacraments. Moral excellence is necessary for proper theoria--but this excellence is only part of the structure of initiation. The need to perform liturgies that are experienced is the mandate of henosis. This section will show that theoria as mystical contemplation is performative in function, very much as in the Neoplatonic theurgical tradition. Because the mystical contemplation of the hierarchs mimics angelic contemplation, this section will begin with an examination of angelic theoria. First and foremost, angelic ranks (the angelic hierachies) partake of a pure enlightenment because of their proximity to the One. Although all the angels are so called because they share a superior capacity to conform to the divine, ranks vary considerably in this power of divine conformity. This distinction in power means that those angels farther away from God rely on the first hierarchy of angelic beings for initiation into pure unification. We in the EH also receive light mediated through the connective angels. Our theoria, however, differs from that of lower angelic orders in that it begins with material symbols and has a limited performative function: primarily, theoria serves to purify us for higher unification which is hyper-noetic and non-discursive.

The Divine Names, as indeed the whole Dionysian corpus, has also the obsession with explicit structural order which we associate with Proclus.
-Wayne Hankey, "Three Procline Logics"

one paragraph summary blurb

The Angelology of Pico della Mirandola

I wrote my MA thesis to argue for the philosophical importance of the Angelology
of Pico della Mirandola, which has been subject to controversy due to his use of
"Magic and Kabbalah" in some of his writings. Most of the accusations of heresy
or "angel magic" have not held up in scholarly discussion, but Pico's angelology is
still regarded dubiously. My strategy in the paper is to look the ways that Pico uses
angels in his text, showing that his motivations are philosophical rather than magical
or heretical at each point, although he's making creative and original use of some of
the traditions he touches upon. I focus on Pico's controversial rhetorical strategy of
comparing angels to men, which Pico introduces as a Biblical problem, supported by
the authority of the apostle Paul via the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite. Rather
than see this "Angel Comparison" as angel magic, I will show that Pico explores this
idea consistently through his texts as part of the philosophical-theological problem of
angelic knowledge. This problem is one of the main themes of his Kabbalah because
he follows Dionysius in understanding Moses as having gotten his Law from angels.
While I admit that "magic and kabbalah" is still a problem in Pico studies, I conclude that
our best strategy is to come to a better understanding of the philosophical problems of
angelology that Pico is dealing with before we can speculate about any implications or
hints of angel magic that might be present in his texts.

notes on gods/angels in Iamblichus de mysteriies

Crucial difference between gods and angels -- gods are above being, angels are beings

Iamblichus On the Mysteries Clark et al
13 Indeed, to tell the truth, the contact that we have with the divinity is not to be taken as knowledge. Knowledge, after all, is separated (from its object) by some degree of otherness.
... we are enveloped by divine presence and filled ... same with superior beings
15 knowledge of divine is not at same level as knowledge of everything else [problem of angelic knowledge takes a cue from this Iamblichean problematic construction of supernatural knowledge]
19 if you take each of them to be a unity, then the whole structure of scientific theology is thrown into conclusion [Gilson on Aquinas: need angel for perfection of universe]

there is no single essential definition common to all of them, but the prior among them are separate from the inferior [precursor of "each angel its own species" in Aquinas, who is still dealing with problem of individuality of superior beings]
apply analogical principle of identity
23 receiving that degree of participation in beauty innate to them [recalls PD capacity]
29 soul participates in a partial and multiform intellect... it belongs to the soul to participate continuously in intelligible order and divine beauty (DM I.6)
29 I.7 soul is defined by the divine principle of limit
[man in a weird way not limited for Pico because he can self-divinize using free will given as image of God, but doesn't really do this by his own power, just as passive as Iamblichean theurgist]

Iamblichus is clear about distinction between souls and superior classes, as Pico will be clear about superiority of angel
Like PD+T Pico reluctant to speak about nature of angels themselves, like Iamblichus 39 "best solution is to examine closely the mode of allotment of roles among the gods [DM 1.9]
39 sunlight metaphor for illumination and participation
41 beholding the visible image of the gods (1.9)
43 assignment of superior classes of being to the various parts of the cosmos [Pico's Heptaplus as iangelized cosmos hearkens back to this without necessarily being a magical cosmos--in other places Pico criticizes magical cosmos]
47 passion disordered and defective, never being its own master

59 DM 1.15 it is not the way of one person addressing another that it participates in the thought expressed by the prayers
Iamblichus speaks of the importance of "consciousness of our own nothingness" in relation to the gods.
59 "joins itself to the archetype of perfection" [compare seraphic closeness to God in PD]
61 hieratic prayer-formulae given to men by gods [I see this as similar to problem of angelic knowledge in PD--similar reasons for being worried, needing to account theurgically]

69 It is participation, then, which becomes the cause of the proliferation of otherness in secondary entities, and also the intermingling of material elements with immaterial emanations, and further, the fact that what is bestowed in one way is received by the things of this realm in another way. DM 1.18

73 the more we ascend to the heights... the more we discover the eternal union that exist there

83 II.1 daemons/heroes II.2 one must also define their activities

85 And though the soul has to a lesser degree the eternity of unchanging life and full actuality, by means of the gods good will and the illumination bestowed by their light, it often goes higher and is elevated to a greater rank, even to that of the angelic order. When it no longer abides in the confines of the soul, this totality is perfected in an angelic soul and an immaculate life. Hence, the soul seems to have in itself all kinds of being and activity, all kinds of principles, and forms in their entirety. Indeed, to tell the truth, while the soul is always limited to a single, definite body, it is, in associating itself with the superior guiding principles, variously allied to different ones. (DM II.2)

87 II.3 their manifestations are in accordance with their true natures, their potentialities and activities... those of the angels are simpler than those of daemons, but inferior to those of gods

89 with the angels, orderly arrangement and calmness are no longer exempt from motion

89 a beauty almost irresistible

91 II.4 movements of the angels are involved with some motion (vs. gods who are more rapid than the intellect itself)

95 souls produce a fitfully visible light, soiled by the many compounds in the realm of generation

95 I.5 Again, the purification of souls attains a perfect degree among the gods, while the characteristic of the archangels is anagogic. Angels do no more than loosen the bonds of matter, whereas daemons draw the soul towards nature.
(Cf. VIII.8.271.11 on the theoi anagogoi)

97 in the case of the archangels there is consumption of [matter] over a short period, while in the case of angels there is a process of dissolution and absorption of it.

99 II.6 The advent of the archangels produces the same effects as that of the gods, except that it gives good things neither always nor in all cases--neither sufficient, complete, nor inalienable; and it illuminates us in a manner proportionate to their appearance. The advent of angels confers separately goods still more particular, and the activity by which it is manifested is far short of the perfect light that embraces it in itself.

191 in the divine visions we get a display of the order maintained by the objects of vision, the gods having gods or archangels about themselves; archangels calling up about themselves angels as escorts, either arrayed with themselves or following after them, or, in some other way, being accompanied by a copious bodyguard of angels; that of angels revealing at the same time the works proper to the rank which they have attained...

105 II.9 in the case of archangels, [souls illuminated] gain a pure settled state, intellectual contemplation and stable power; in the case of the angels, they obtain a rational wisdom, truth, pure virtue, a firm knowledge, and a proportional order.''
107 The epiphany of angels provides even more than the archangels and, with progressively lesser limitations, is the giver of good things.

DM III.20 171 if we seem actually able to act by participating in, and being enlightened by the gods, it is to this extent alone that they have the benefit of the divine energy.


265 V.22 is it not the highest purpose of the hieratic art to ascend to the One, which is supreme master of the whole multiplicity[of gods]?

it is in accordance with their nature and with the sphere of authority which they have been allotted that one should render them worship.249

IV.2 the whole of theurgy presents a double aspect... performed by men but controls divine symbols...raised to union with the higher powers

199 they who associate with daemons who are deceitful and causes of licentiousness are obviously in conflict with the theurgists. DM III.31

193 DM II.29 Why, then, should this useless conjuring be so desired by a man who is a lover of the truth?

189 the skill of producing images is, indeed, far removed from the creative workmanship of things genuine

183 clear visions of the gods vs. images artificially produced by magic