The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite

mind and essence—being such as embraces, unites, comprehends, and anticipates all things, while Itself is altogether incomprehensible to all—and of It there is neither perception, nor imagination, nor surmise, nor name, nor expression, nor contact, nor science—in what way can our treatise thoroughly investigate the meaning of the Divine Names, when the superessential Deity is shown to be without name and above name?

But, as we said when we put forth the Theological Outlines, it is not possible to express or to conceive what the One, the Unknown, the Superessential self-existing Good is—I mean the threefold Unity, the alike God, and the alike Good. Even the unions of the holy Powers, such as befit angels, whether we must call them efforts toward or receptions from the super-Unknown and surpassing Goodness, are both unutterable and unknown, and exist in those angels alone who, above angelic knowledge, are deemed worthy of them. The godlike minds (men) made one by these unions—through imitation of angels as far as attainable, since it is during the cessation of every mental energy that such an union as this of the deified minds towards the super-divine light takes place—celebrate It most appropriately through the abstraction apophasis or the "way of negation" of all created things. Enlightened in this matter, truly and supernaturally, from the most blessed union toward It, they recognize that It is indeed the Cause of all existing things, but Itself is none of them, as being superessentially elevated above all. To none, indeed, who are lovers of the Truth above all truth, is it permitted to celebrate