Mystical Teachings of Dionysius the Areopagite

Dionysius was a learned and well-studied man, the first Bishop of the Athenian Christian church. He could have probably debated with the most scholarly Rabbi of his day. Dionysius writes about the 'mysteries' of the Christian religion, BEFORE the disciples of Jesus had all passed away. He was well acquainted with Saint Paul and Saint John

From the Publisher

It would appear from his writings that the mysteries were accepted as matter of fact in the early Christian movement, that now condemns students of the higher mysteries as heretics. One can see the evidence of philosophies of Kabbalah, Rosicrucians, Deists, Theosophy, New Agers, etc., embedded in these writings of early Christianity.

We have chosen this collection from several sources, and used different translations for the different books... selecting those we thought sounded best.

Many, for the first time, will be able to read the thoughts, teachings, and writings of this early Christian scholar and discover that the 'new-modern' Christianity is woefully lacking in ethical truth. Today the path of chosen ignorance is the path of the Christian leaders, whose knowledge of the religion would be put to shame by Dionysius.

Even if you only lightly read these writings, you will most likely, then know more about Christianity than your own preacher.

In this book you find original source work for Christian Mysticism, that has been quashed by the ignorant modern Christian pundits.

Enjoy your journey through Dionysius teachings---

Includes:
      The Mystical Theology
      The Divine Names
      Celestial Hierarchies
      Ecclesiastical Hierarchy
      Letters of Dionysius
      Liturgy of Dionysius

From the Introduction

The writings of this master mind early became the form and type of mystical religion within the Church, and their influence is discernible in every mystical sect of Christendom.

This anonymous, mysterious, monastic genius taught the foremost Christians for ten centuries both in the East and West, for nearly every great mediaeval scholar made use of his writings, and his authority came to be almost final. A modern writer says that even the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas - the Angelic Doctor - is but 'a hive in whose varied cells he duly stored the honey which he gathered' from the writings of Dionysius, and he became the bee-bread on which all the great mystics fed. He kindled in multitudes of souls a pure passion for God, and taught very dark ages that that which is pre-eminently worth seeking with the entire being was God.

He iterated and reiterated that God himself was the ground of the soul, and that there was an inward way to Him open to all men. He insisted on personal experience as the primary thing in religion, and so became the father of a great family of devout and saintly mystics who advanced true religion. And he did well in maintaining that there was an experience of Reality which transcended mere head-knowledge - a finding of God in which the whole being, heart, will and mind were expanded and satisfied, even though language could not formulate what was being experienced.

Excerpt:

What is the Divine Darkness?

Supernal Triad, Deity above all essence, knowledge and goodness; Guide of Christians to Divine Wisdom; direct our path to the ultimate summit of Thy mystical Lore, most incomprehensible, most luminous and most exalted, where the pure, absolute and immutable mysteries of theology are veiled in the dazzling obscurity of the secret Silence, outshining all brilliance with the intensity of their Darkness, and surcharging our blinded intellects with the utterly impalpable and invisible fairness of glories surpassing all beauty.

Let this be my prayer; but do thou, dear Timothy, in the diligent exercise of mystical contemplation, leave behind the senses and the operations of the intellect, and all things sensible and intellectual, and all things in the world of being and non-being, that thou mayest arise by unknowing towards the union, as far as is attainable, "with Him who transcends all being and all knowledge. For by the unceasing and absolute renunqatiop of thyself and of all things thou mayest be borne on high, through pure and entire self-abnegation, into the superessential Radiance of the Divine Darkness.

But these things are not to be disclosed to the uninitiated, by whom I mean those attached to the objects of human thought, and who believe there is no superessential Reality beyond, and who imagine that by their own understanding they know Him who has made Darkness His secret place. And if the principles of the divine Mysteries are beyond the understanding of these, what is to be said of others still more incapable thereof, who describe the transcendental First Cause of all by characteristics drawn from the lowest order of beings, while they deny that He is in any way above the images which they fashion after various designs; whereas they should affirm that, while He possesses all the positive attributes of the universe (being the Universal Cause) yet, in a more strict sense, He does not possess them, since He transcends them all; wherefore there is no contradiction between the affirmations and the negations, inasmuch as He infinitely precedes all conceptions of deprivation, being beyond all positive and negative distinctions.