BBB. Proclus On Prayer

Comte de Gabalis [1913], at sacred-texts.com

p. 304

PROCLUS ON PRAYER.

BBB"To a perfect and true prayer however, there is required a conformation of our life with that which is divine; and this accompanied with all purity, chastity, discipline, and order, through which our concerns being introduced to the Gods, we shall attract their benificence, and our souls will become subject to them. In the third place, contact is necessary, according to which we touch the divine essence with the summit of our soul, and verge to a union with it. But there is yet farther required, an approximating adhesion: for thus the oracle calls it, when it says, the mortal approximating to fire will possess a light from the Gods. ^* For this imparts to us a greater communion with, and a more manifest participation of the light of the Gods.

In the last place, union succeeds establishing the one of the soul in the one of the Gods, and causing our energy to become one with divine energy; according to which we are no longer ourselves, but are absorbed as it were in the Gods, abiding in divine light, and circularly comprehended by it. And this is the best end of true prayer, in order that the conversion of the soul may be conjoined with its permanency, and that everything which proceeds from the one of the Gods, may again be established in the one, and the light which is in us may be comprehended in the light of the Gods. Prayer therefore, is no small part of the

p. 305

whole ascent of souls. Nor is he who possesses virtue superior to the want of the good which proceeds from prayer. The perfedion however of prayer, beginning from more common goods, ends in divine union, and gradually accustoms the soul to divine light.

All nations likewise, that have excelled in wisdom, have diligently applied themselves to prayer."

PROCLUS ON THE TIMAEUS OF PLATO. EXTRACTS, BOOK II, PAGES 176, 175, 179.

Footnotes

304:* "For [according to the oracle] the rapid Gods perfect the mortal constantly employed in prayer." PROCLUS.