CHAPTER XXII.. These, Therefore, Being Arranged According to Triads, As We Have

These, therefore, being arranged according to triads, as we have said, of the demiurgic triad, indeed, Jupiter is allotted the highest order, supernally from intellect governing souls and bodies, and as Socrates says, taking care of all things. But Neptune here also gives completion to the middle of the demiurgic [triad], and especially governs the psychical order. For this God is the cause of motion, and of all generation. But soul is the first of generated natures, and is essentially motion. And Vulcan inspires the nature of bodies, and fabricates all the mundane seats of the Gods. Again, of the guardian and immutable triad, the first indeed is Vesta, because she preserves the very being of things, and an undefiled essence. For Socrates in the Cratylus gives to her the highest order, as connectedly containing the summits of wholes. But Minerva preserves middle lives inflexible, through intellection, and a self-energizing life, sustaining them from [the incursions of] matter. And Mars illuminates corporeal-formed natures with power, and an infrangible strength, as Socrates says in the Cratylus. Hence he is perfected by Minerva, and participates of a more intellectual inspiration, as the poetry [of Orpheus] says, and of a life separate from generated natures.

Moreover, of the vivific triad, Ceres is the chief, entirely generating all mundane life, viz. the intellectual, the psychical, and that which is inseparable from body. But Juno contains the middle of the triad, and imparts the generation of soul. For the intellectual goddess emits from herself all the progressions of the other psychical genera. And Diana is allotted the end of the triad, moving all natural reasons into energy, and perfecting the imperfection of matter. Hence theologists, and Socrates in the Theætetus, call her Lochia, (or the power that presides over births) as being the inspective guardian of psychical progression and generation. Of the remaining triad, therefore, the anagogic, or elevating, Hermes indeed is the supplier of philosophy, and through this elevates souls, and by the dialectic powers, sends upward both total and partial souls to the good itself. But Venus is the first-effective cause of the amatory inspiration which pervades through wholes, and familiarizes to the beautiful the lives that are elevated by her. And Apollo perfects and converts all things through music, convolving, as Socrates says [in the Cratylus], and through harmony and rhythm attracting to intellectual truth, and the light which is there.

We say, however, in common respecting all of them, that establishing themselves above the mundane Gods, they contain all the choir of the liberated Gods. And souls indeed are suspended from them, but intellectual souls, and such as are as it were powers generative of souls. Hence Socrates also gives to them chariots. For Jupiter is said to drive a winged chariot, and the other Gods after the same manner as Jupiter use secondary vehicles. But what else can we say these are than supermundane souls, on which they ride, and which are intellectual indeed, but the sources of partibility and division, from which mundane souls are allotted their hypostasis; a more abundant separation, and a greater number of parts appearing in them, in consequence of their being adapted to be bound through analogy? In the liberated Gods, therefore, the psychical peculiarity unites itself to intellect. Hence also, Jupiter is said to drive a winged chariot, without division, in consequence of this chariot being intellectual, and not departing from an immaterial and divine intellect. But in the mundane Gods, divisions of horses and charioteers are delivered. [For Socrates says in the Phædrus], “All the horses, therefore, and chariots of the Gods are good, and consist of such things as are good.” Hence an energy according to time first shines forth in the mundane Gods, where there is a more abundant separation of powers. But in the liberated Gods, time is always with eternity, and partibility with union. For they are the principles of souls, and the causes of mundane natures, and are as it were intellectual seeds abiding in the intellectual comprehensions of themselves. And thus much concerning these things.