Heptaplus: Üç Dünya Öğretisi

Antiquity figures three worlds. The highest of all is the ultra-mundane, which theologians call the Angelic and philosophers call the Intellectual; Plato says in the Phaedrus that no one has sufficiently celebrated this realm according to its dignity. Next to this is the Celestial world; the last of all is this sublunary world which we inhabit. This is the world of darkness, while that other is the world of light; the heavens are tempered from both light and darkness. This world is characterized by water, because of its flowing and unstable substance; that higher world by fire, because of the brightness of its light and the sublimity of its place. The heavens, being of a middle nature, are therefore called by the Hebrews shamayim, as if composed of fire and water, as we have said. Here there is the alternation of life and death; there, perpetual life and stable operation; in the heavens, there is stability of life but an alternation of positions and operations. This world is made of the decaying substance of bodies; that higher world is of the nature of the divine mind; the heavens are constituted of bodies, but incorruptible ones—of mind, but a mind bound to a body. The third world is moved by the second; the second is ruled by the first.