With Chalcidius as translator.

When all this was perfected, that which is perceived by the mind as a living being original: "animali"; referring to the "Cosmic Animal" or the Living World-Soul, and equal in its nature to eternity, might obtain an image as a companion to time.

Aa

9

And now almost all things had come forth up to the birth of time, composed according to the twin likeness of their model and truth, except that this world did not yet contain all living creatures, just as the intelligible world The realm of Forms or Ideas which the Creator uses as a blueprint does: in whose emulation it was being made. Therefore, that which was lacking, God the Craftsman The Demiurge added; and just as a mind whose sight and contemplation is understanding beholds the kinds of Ideas in the intelligible world—which Ideas are living beings there—so God determined that there ought to be diverse kinds of living beings in this his sensible work: and he established four. First, the celestial kind full of divinity The stars and gods. Then another, the winged creature wandering through the air. Third, that suited to the waters of the sea. Fourth, that which the solidity of the earth might sustain. And indeed, he polished the appearance of the divine kind for the most part with the serene clarity of fire: so that on account of its extraordinary splendor and brightness, it might be venerable to those seeing it and those about to see it. Furthermore, adapting its shape to the shape of the intelligible world, he beautified it unchangeably. And he placed it all in the lap of the wisdom of heaven, crowding it on all sides with ornaments of ineffable beauty and binding it together toward eternity: and he devised its motion to be suitable to its circles and according to the nature of each. One [motion] always going around itself through the same orbit and always deliberating the same things and reasoning about the same things. But the other such that, always desiring to proceed further, it might be held rotating within the obstacle of the same and immutable nature by constraint: those five wandering [stars] The planets being prohibited from motions contrary to one another: so that each circle might be in the best and most blessed state of agitation. For which cause they were made endowed with the highest divinity, all those starry fires which suffer no errors or deviations: and for that reason, they are turned into themselves in an eternal circuit. But indeed, the other wandering and straying fires have a cause for their error: that of which mention was made in the preceding sections. ¶ But the Earth, the mother and nourisher of all
Bb

earthly living things, bound by the limits of the pole that goes through all things and contains all, he located as the most ancient guardian of day and night: and a goddess of extraordinary dignity from the number of those gods who are contained within the circuit of the world. ¶ But the dances of the stars and the applications of one to another, and the various gyrations which they perform with admirable beauty according to the circuits of their circles, and their returns and windings to those seats from which they set out: their approaches also and retreats: and when they become contiguous to one
Cc

another: what conditions they receive from their contact: and what sort of quality they obtain from their various designations: and when, as usually happens at some interval of time, certain stars are covered, submerged and hidden: what they signify: and what they portend soon, or after some time in the future: or when they emerge and appear again at unusual hours and cycles of time, how great the movements they announce to those who can understand the reason for their motion: to pursue all such things with reason and orations is the work of one doing nothing and laboring in vain: especially since the description of their motion is far removed from the sight and eyes of the one disputing the matter. Wherefore, let those things which have been said concerning the stars and the visible divine powers have their end, as they have been said sufficiently and more than sufficiently.
Dd

2

¶ But indeed, to provide an account of the invisible and divine powers, which are called spirits original: "demones"; in the Platonic sense of intermediary spirits, not modern "demons": is a greater work than the genius of man is able to bear. Therefore...