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I also place here those things which have been said concerning silence, although it is not entirely clear whether they should be referred to the Father alone or to the entire superior world. Proclus, in his Commentary on the Cratylus (68, 8): "namely the supra-celestial place and all those things of the fathers which are encompassed by the god-nourishing silence" original: "θεοθρέμμονι σιγῇ" — a poetic term for a silence that sustains the divine (cf. Commentary on the Alcibiades 364, 2; Commentary on the Timaeus 167e); in the same work, 63, 15, concerning Saturn: "and having established himself in the paternal silence, he is hymned as the father of fathers." In the Commentary on the Parmenides (1171, 4): "whether there is some intellectual calm hymned among the wise, or a mystical harbor, or a paternal silence." Damascius I, 56, 9. It is greatly to be lamented that a passage of Proclus in Platonic Theology (320, end) is shrouded in darkness: "for the union of the first father (Saturn) and the first of the undefiled gods is unsurpassable; and because of this, he is called the silenced one by the gods, and is said to harmonize with the Mind, and is known by souls through the Mind alone": these words should perhaps be understood as referring to that mental power which exists with the father. 1)

Before we enumerate the fragments that introduce the Father as an active agent, it is necessary to settle a question which I may have wrongly delayed for so long. For the Platonists distribute the verses regarding the Father (the paternal mind) and the "second mind" among several gods: the Father and the intelligible mind, and the Father and the intellectual mind. The "intelligible" (noetos) refers to the object of thought, while "intellectual" (noeros) refers to the act of thinking itself. For since they assign Plato's Demiurge The divine craftsman of the universe to the intellectual world, they are often forced to bring the gods of the Chaldaeans, formed after his image, to that same place. For the intellectual world proper, according to Proclus, consists of a heptad a group of seven comprising two trinities and a monad. 2) And indeed the first trinity, which alone we are now contemplating, embraces Saturn, Rhea, and Jupiter; in the Oracles, they say the names of these are Once Beyond, Hecate, and Twice Beyond. original: "Ἅπαξ ἐπέκεινα" (Hapax epekeina) and "Δὶς ἐπέκεινα" (Dis epekeina) Cf. the anonymous Oxford manuscript 182, 8: "of which (the intellectual sources) the first are the three world-leaders who have proceeded in a certain order: the Once Beyond, and after these the Twice Beyond, and the middle between both is Hecate . . . and the Once Beyond is the paternal mind and the father of all intellectual beings." They hymn Hecate as a certain ineffable power:

Having given yourselves over to sleep and to ignorance of God, wake up, cease your carousing, you who are charmed by a mindless sleep.

1) Cf. the anonymous Turin manuscript II, 20: "towards the ineffable thought of the father which images him through silence, nor knowing him except by silence." The Silence (Sige) of the Valentinians A Gnostic sect will come to everyone's mind.

2) Zeller (V³ 691) incorrectly concluded that this heptad was Iamblichean, having falsely interpreted this passage in Proclus' Commentary on the Timaeus (94c) (cf. 694¹). For "after" is not "in"; Proclus wrongly follows his own terminology and theology; nothing is more certain than Taylor's conjecture. Refers to Thomas Taylor, the English Platonist.