[6] The planetary spheres.
[7] The ninth sphere.
[8] Of the angelic hierarchy.
[9] The greater heaven corresponds to the angelic circle of the Intelligences which love God most and know most of Him; the smaller to that of those which love and know least.
As the hemisphere of the air remains splendid and serene when Boreas blows from that cheek wherewith he is mildest,[1] whereby the mist which first troubled it is cleared and dissolved, so that the heaven smiles to us with the beauties of all its flock, so I became after my Lady had provided me with her clear answer, and, like a star in heaven, the truth was seen.
[1] When Boreas blows the north wind more from the west than from the east.
And after her words had stopped, not otherwise does molten iron throw out sparks than the circles sparkled. Every scintillation followed its flame,[1] and they were so many that their number, was of more thousands than the doubling of the chess. I heard Hosaimah sung from choir to choir to the fixed Point that holds them, and will forever hold them, at the Ubi[2] in which they have ever been. And she, who saw the dubious thoughts within my mind, said, “The first circles have shown to thee the Seraphim and the Cherubim. Thus swiftly they follow their own bonds,[3] in order to liken themselves to the Point so far as they can, and they can so far as they are exalted to see. Those other loves, which go round about them, are called Thrones of the divine aspect, because they terminated the first triad.[4] And thou shouldst know that all have delight in proportion as their vision penetrates into the True in which every understanding is at rest. Hence may be seen how beatitude is founded on the act which sees, not on that which loves, which follows after. And merit, which grace and good will bring forth, is the measure of this seeing; thus is the progress from grade to grade.
[1] The innumerable sparks each moved in accord with the gyration of its flaming circle. The doubling of the chess alludes to the story that the inventor of the game asked, as his reward from the King of Persia, a grain of wheat for the first square of the board, two for the second, and so on to the last or sixty-fourth square. The number reached by this process of duplication extends to twenty figures.
[2] The WHERE, the appointed place.
[3] The course of their respective circles to which they are bound.