Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I

27Dionysius the Areopagite bears witness to this when he says that there are more separate species of intellectual beings than of corporeal beings. Fittingly, the most powerful creator of the universe was able, knew how, and willed to make his work as like himself as possible. He produced its greatest likeness especially in this very respect: he extended absolute minds, which of all things are most like him, beyond the forms joined to matter across an immense expanse, so to speak. Hence the saying of the prophet Daniel: ‘Thousands of thousands ministered to him, and ten times a hundred thousand stood before him.’ In distinguishing the orders of angels, Dionysius chiefly uses the numbers three and nine, and sometimes also seven. We find twelve as well in the mysteries of Christians. Iamblichus and Proclus, Platonists after Dionysius, observed the same: they divide the highest angels by three and the middle angels by nine, the succeeding angels by seven, and the last into a number of twelve orders.

28Since, among the Platonists, the ranks of bodies are shadows of rational souls, while the ranks of souls are images of angels, some therefore distinguish the orders of angels according to the orders of bodies and of souls together. But of these matters elsewhere.