ON THE MYSTERIES.

In the first and superior things, they lead the inferior ones as models original: exemplaria; these are the Platonic Archetypes or Forms that provide the "blueprint" for reality. Certainly, the inferior is produced by the superior; essence and species species: the formal nature or "look" of a thing that defines what it is are present in the inferior things from the superior, and in every way, the subsequent things are first produced in the better ones. Therefore, the order and measure in the subsequent things depend on those higher ones, and not the other way around. Consequently, the properties of the higher things are not to be assigned based on the lower; thus, an incorporeal essence cannot be distinguished by corporeal qualities, with which it has nothing in common.

Divine principles grant to their works not only essence but their entire distinction and formal order. An essence that is present in bodies, but not in a local way meaning it does not occupy space the way a physical object does, like water in a cup, is not distinguished by corporeal locations. And that which is not confined by the particular boundaries of its subjects is by no means contained particularly by parts of the world. An incorporeal nature is suddenly present wherever it wishes, with nothing anywhere to hinder it.

Much more so is divinity; because it is not "made," it is restrained by no limit and is everywhere. Likewise, those things which exist among us cannot come to be or be formed unless a certain single creative power virtus opifex: the "craftsman-like" power or energy that shapes the material world and a participation in the forms original: specierū participatio; the way material things "take part" in the perfect reality of the divine Forms is diffused through all things. Finally, unless divine things were everywhere, the power of sacrifice original: sacrificij virtus; Iamblichus is here defending the practical efficacy of religious ritual and theurgy against Porphyry's intellectual skepticism would be abolished—a power which consists in a certain communion of the gods with humans. The gods, from