Back to A Different Lens

Angelic Choirs carries 27 debated or debunked facts of 249 total, ten point eight percent, against an atlas wide baseline under one percent. All nine of the type's Western choir ranks, Seraphim through Angels, carry the identical debunked claim, in three parts, about the one book their names and ranking come from.

A Name, a Correction, and a New Name

Every choir carries the same three sentences, word for word: "Traditionally ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite (Acts 17:34)." "Ascription recognized as false since the Renaissance." "Author unknown; now called Pseudo-Dionysius." Bernard McGinn's The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century (Crossroad, 1991) is the cited source for the category of the mystic that this authorship question sits inside. All nine of the choirs, Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels and Angels, take their names and their nine-rank ordering from the same single treatise, The Celestial Hierarchy, so a question about that one book's authorship is a fact about every rank it names at once, not nine separate questions that happen to agree.

Nine Ranks, One Book, One Argument

What changes from choir to choir is the rank, Seraphim above, Angels closest to the world below. The claim about their shared source text's authorship does not change at all, checksummed identical across all nine. The type's other ten ranks, a separate Kabbalistic scheme of choir names, Aralim, Auphanim, Beni Elohim and others, carry no contested fact of any kind; the finding is complete among every rank that carries one.

Where To Read More

• SeraphimDionysian ChoirsSeraphim, one of nine choirs carrying the identical three-part debunked authorship note word for word
• CherubimDionysian ChoirsCherubim, one of nine choirs carrying the identical debunked authorship note word for word
• ThronesDionysian ChoirsThrones, one of nine choirs carrying the identical debunked authorship note word for word
• DominionsDionysian ChoirsDominions, one of nine choirs carrying the identical debunked authorship note word for word
• VirtuesDionysian ChoirsVirtues, one of nine choirs carrying the identical debunked authorship note word for word
• PowersDionysian ChoirsPowers, one of nine choirs carrying the identical debunked authorship note word for word
• PrincipalitiesDionysian ChoirsPrincipalities, one of nine choirs carrying the identical debunked authorship note word for word
• ArchangelsDionysian ChoirsArchangels, one of nine choirs carrying the identical debunked authorship note word for word
• AngelsDionysian ChoirsAngels, one of nine choirs carrying the identical debunked authorship note word for word