A certain section of criticism has ascribed to Synesius those remarkable works which appear under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite; in any case, these are regarded as apocryphal and belonging to the brilliant period of the school of Alexandria. They are monuments of the conquest of higher Kabalism by Christianity, and they are intelligible only for those who have been initiated therein. The chief treatises of Dionysius are on Divine Names and the Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies. The first explains and simplifies all mysteries of rabbinical theology. According to the author, God is the infinite and indefinable principle; in Himself He is one and inexpressible, but we ascribe to Him names which formulate our own aspirations towards His divine perfection.[149] The sum of these names and their relation with numbers constitute that which is highest in human thought; theology is less the science of God than that of our most sublime yearnings. The degrees of the spiritual hierarchy are afterwards established on the primitive scale of numbers, governed by the triad. The angelical orders are three, and each order contains three choirs. It is on this model that the hierarchy should be established on earth, and the Church is its most perfect type: therein are princes, bishops and lastly simple ministers. Among the princes are cardinal-bishops, cardinal-priests and cardinal-deacons. Among prelates there are archbishops, simple bishops and suffragans. Among ministers there are rectors or vicars, simple priests and those who hold the diaconate. The progression to this holy hierarchy is by three preparatory degrees, being the subdiaconate, minor orders and clerkship. The functions of all correspond to the angels and the saints; they are to glorify the threefold Divine Names, in each of the Three Persons, because the Undivided Trinity is adored in its fulness in each of the Divine Hypostases. This transcendental theology was that of the primitive church, and possibly it is attributed to St. Dionysius only in virtue of a tradition which goes back to his and the apostolic times, much as the rabbinical editors of the _Sepher Yetzirah_ attributed that text to the patriarch Abraham, because it embodies the tradition perpetuated from father to son in the family of this patriarch. However it may be, the books of St. Dionysius are precious for science; they consecrate the mystical marriage of antique initiation with the gospel of Christianity, uniting a perfect understanding of supreme philosophy with a theology which is absolutely complete and in all things above reproach. BOOK IV _MAGIC AND CIVILISATION_ ד—DALETH CHAPTER I MAGIC AMONG BARBARIANS