On the Mysteries of the Egyptians

...of intelligence, and of an exceedingly efficacious and perpetual will. And therefore they rule without labor, which is evidently apparent from the always constant order. Thus, since the gods are affected in this way, they are joined to the separate gods rather than to bodies. Governance around the heavens cannot distract the gods from the intention of the intellect, since they rule more powerfully and easily the more attentively they speculate there. For from this, that also proceeds. The same would also happen to our own living beingsoriginal: "animalibus." In this context, it refers to all animate creatures, including humans, who possess a soul and a body., if they contemplated their own cause, from which the faculty of growth original: "uegetandi facultas," the vegetative power of the soul. also comes.

Confirmation of the Above.

MindThe divine Mind original: "Mens diuina." In Neoplatonism, the Mind or Nous is the realm of eternal truths and forms. produces the souls of the celestial gods through its ideas, and through those souls, the celestial bodies; it keeps both perpetually joined to itself. The worldly gods original: "Dii mundani," also called encosmic gods, who reside within the physical universe., who are also named intellectual species, are united among themselves, both because they all gaze upon the same exemplar in which the intelligible speciesThe eternal, non-physical forms or "blueprints" of all things. exist, and because that exemplar flourishes everywhere as a whole in every worldly god. Neither space nor diverse subjects prevent any incorporeal essences from being present within each other everywhere. The worldly gods are within one another and within their own ideas, both because they are from the One and are referred back to the One, and because the divine unity prevailing everywhere unites them, and because they proceed among themselves and are turned back toward each other, and mutually receive from one another. In natural composites, unity is adventitiousoriginal: "aduētitiā." Something that comes from the outside and is not an inherent or essential part of the object's nature., depending on higher things, and is overcome by multiplicity. In separable forms, unity surpasses multiplicity, and in the gods it surpasses it so much that their very being is a certain unity—I say "a certain," however, because the first principle is itself simply Unity. Since, therefore, unity so prevails intrinsically within the gods, it rightfully overflows from the higher into the lower. Thus these lower ones stand in the unity of those higher ones, by which unity—as if it were common to all—they are all one in a certain act, just as bodies are one among themselves by a certain material potentiality. The celestial gods are completely united to the invisible gods, both because celestial souls are outside of bodies, and because the superior gods—that is, the IdeasThe highest forms of reality in the divine Mind.—possess an infinite unity, insofar as all are in each, through which unity they unite the following gods to themselves and among each other. For since all gods are defined by unity, one common unity extends into all, through which they are one by the act of all [tending] toward one single object, and principle, and end, all in the same point and moment at once.

On providence, and on the gods and daemons.

Of the godsThe providence of the gods is universal, but that of daemons original: "dæmonum." In ancient philosophy, daemons were intermediary spirits between the gods and humanity, serving as messengers or guardians. is particular. The first God gives all things to all; the following gods bestow some things on all. Daemons and souls give only to some, and only some things. There are invisible gods, and there are visible gods in the heaven, and there are also daemons. Indeed, the gods visible in the heaven exist in that very union with the hidden gods. But daemons are distant far from them, just as they are from pure contemplators...