PROLOGUE

...if we ever wish to ascend. For all things correspond to each other in turn and through mutual harmonies, though with different and varying numbers. This is what Orpheus sang, after Pythagoras taught him, and which the Stoics likewise agree upon when they say the world was made by applying a certain "arranging art." Plato proposes this; Porphyry asserts it with many reasons; and Iamblichus, Chalcidius, Proclus, and his teacher Syrianus declare it. Indeed, as many as belong to the Pythagorean and Academic The "Academic family" refers to the followers of Plato's Academy. families interpret and affirm it with all their might, believing that nature possesses nothing older or more fitting, whether in things already produced or those yet to be produced, than harmony—by which all parts of this world-machine are made harmonious. But the divine prophets, leaving inferior numbers far behind and introduced into the divine and more secret inner chambers, contemplated many things not to be disclosed. Hiding the better parts in their hearts so as not to stumble, they provided some few things for us to contemplate, as much as was permitted to them.

Among these, Isaiah says: I saw the Lord sitting upon a high and lofty throne Isaiah 6:1, above this entire worldly house, whose seat is heaven, and which is full of the glory of its Maker. This glory shines harmoniously in the distributed series of ranks alongside the divine patterns of the Maker himself. Hence, between the Craftsman and the creation, concord and mutual love are sung by two Seraphim calling to one another in alternating voices: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of Hosts; all the earth is full of His glory, shared with each thing in a fitting proportion through related numbers by which all things are arranged. Absorbed by these measures and most harmonious concerts, the celestial prophets, leaving vocal numbers original: "numeros uocales"; likely referring to spoken language or audible music as opposed to the "silent" mathematical music of the spheres. and their reasonings in the vestibules, philosophized in better and divine numbers, in the types and forms of nature—indeed, in the patterns themselves—proceeding through all classes of Ideas in a certain supreme order known to those who have seen them. Ezekiel, Isaiah’s colleague, applied himself to this as well, when

he beheld the divine tribunal, which the Hebrews call the Merkabah: the "Chariot" of God, a central concept in Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah) involving the vision of the divine throne., composed of divine ministers—Seraphim, Ophanim The Ophanim are a class of celestial beings described as "wheels" in Ezekiel's vision., and holy living creatures—leading into the harmony of all things. Concluding the whole matter, he said: And their appearance was as it were a wheel within a wheel ha-ophan be-tok ha-ophan, that is, a wheel in the middle of a wheel. To follow our own translation for now: this worldly house is spherical "in the middle of a wheel," and of that intelligible and supreme sphere—that is, in the Word, which holds the center in that super-mundane wheel, as John says: That which was made was life in him John 1:3-4.

In that Word, I say, by which the Father carries and sustains all things, and which John, the true prophet, saw on the twin-peaked Parnassus Parnassus is a mountain in Greece sacred to the Muses; here used metaphorically for the height of spiritual vision.—namely, the breast of Christ—where the twin summits of divine and human nature stand out. Moses, the first revealer of these secrets, saw this same thing on the twin-peaked Sinai, from which that region achieved not just the name of "Arabia Felix" original: "Arabia fœlicis"; meaning "Happy" or "Fertile" Arabia. but the reality of it. There, he contemplated the summits of the Divine Face—before whom he spoke often—and the outcome of subsequent effects. But he enclosed these things in most hidden enigmas within his heavy and most fruitful description of the world's fabric, deeming the unrefined and unskilled common people unworthy of the secrets of both worlds. For the most sublime light was not to be placed before the dim eyes of a people so weak they could not endure...