The Minor Works of Marsilio Ficino

its size, the sun seems to have brought something greater with it from the beginning. Truly, besides that proper and native light—which is, so to speak, obscure—another light, most manifest to the eyes, was immediately applied by divine power. This light acts as a more distinct image of divine intelligence and most abundant goodness. God, as our theologians Likely a reference to the Christian Neoplatonic tradition, particularly Dionysius the Areopagite, who influenced the author’s view of divine light. teach, granted a twin light to minds. The first is naturally kindled within them. The second, however, is added from above, as if by merit or through grace, making them blessed with a wonderful generosity.

Since, therefore, the stars are images of minds, it is fitting that they have received two lights in a similar way. Just as God wonderfully added this immense light in the sun to the sun's first light, so the sun—immediately acting as God's deputy in this duty—adds this light bestowed upon itself to the native lights of the stars. In fact, just as we are accustomed to saying that the light appearing in the moon is not the moon's own, but the sun’s light sent down to us through the moon, so by the most secret reasoning of the Platonists The "Platonists" refers to the school of Plotinus and Proclus, who argued that all physical beauty is a reflection of a higher, divine reality. we shall say that the great splendor manifest in the sun proceeds not from the sun itself, but from God through the sun to all things. It is as if it were not the light of that physical sphere, but the light of God Himself made manifest to our eyes.

God certainly, when He filled the solar globe (though it is but a small particle of the heavens) with such splendor that its brilliance overflows from a single source into all things, declared without doubt that the sun’s small body received such an incomparable gift not from itself but from above. He also showed that from the one God—the Sun of the sun (solis sol)—all good things are propagated through all things.

Just as this sensible light in the sun illuminates, enlivens, forms, and turns all sensible things and the senses toward higher things, so does a certain intelligible light (lux intelligibilis) within the sun’s own soul In Neoplatonism, the sun is not merely a rock, but a living being with a soul that mediates between the material world and the Divine Mind. illuminate, kindle, and recall the innermost eyes of human souls. For this reason, I believe, the sun was called Apollo among the ancient theologians original: "theologos ueteres." This refers to the Prisca Theologia (Ancient Theology), a lineage of wisdom-seekers including Orpheus, Hermes Trismegistus, and Zoroaster....