La Vita É Un Paradiso di...Veritas?

[boccaderlupo]

In Canto XIII of Paradiso, Thomas Aquinas discusses the procession of all things from the First Cause (in this case, God). While the aim is to describe the resultant natures of Adam and Christ, and ultimately Solomon's relationship to them, the depiction is interesting in other ways. The various sources I use (Musa's commentary on his translation, Garzanti in italiano) attribute it to the Scholastic model, which would make sense, but in my view it shares much with the Neoplatonic model of procession from The One: Light issuing from the Triune God is refracted down through the orders of angels, and Nature takes on a kind of demiurgic role, transmitting these rays, albeit imperfectly, into the material realm. The attempt is to reconcile the perfection of the Most High with the (seeming) disorder we witness so here in the material realm, with the answer being the distortion of things becoming manifest. Natura é un'artista chi ha mano che trema.

It's also interesting to note that one could conceivably map the orders of angels (and the "planets") onto some versions of the Cabala (such as the one seen by Jean Dubois), with the assumption that Purgatorio and the rest of the Earth is "below" (Malkuth, 10).

Thus the first sphere is the Moon can be mapped (inverted) with Yesod (9); the second sphere, Mercury, with Hod (8); the third, Venus, with Netzach (7); the fourth, the Sun, with Tiphereth (6); the fifth, Mars, with Geburah (5); the sixth, Jupiter, with Chesed (4); the seventh sphere, Saturn, with Binah (3); after which we go to the either sphere of the fixed stars, which could conceivably be mapped to Chokmah (2); and the the Primum Mobile, that directly moved by God, with Kether (1).