According to Dante (Convivium, II, 1), ” texts can be understood and expounded according to four senses”: the literal sense; the allegorical sense, which Dante says, “is a truth concealed behind a beautiful lie’; the moral sense; and the anagogical sense. The anagogical sense occurs when “reading in a spiritual way a scriptural passage, which in its literal meaning and in the things being signified points toward the things of eternal glory”; in other words, it is the innermost meaning of a text that, even when it has a literal sense, deals with topics of a spiritual nature. (…) Dante calls this anagogical sense “super-sense.” An-agogy means “to lead” or “to carry upwards,” or “to elevate.” Moreover, when employed as a technical naval term, it designates the act of weighing anchor and sailing away. Metaphorically speaking, when it is referred to spiritual topics, anagogy therefore indicates spiritual elevation or a rising up from the earth. In the symbolism of “navigators,” it designates leaving that “earth” or terra firma to which human beings are tenaciously anchored, in order to hoist the sails and to find a strong current, heading toward the open sea.
Dante was referring to the writing of “poets,” although the distinction of the four senses may undoubtedly be applied to sacred and initiatic writings and to any means of expression and representation of spiritual facts and doctrines. According to this distinction, the “super-sense” in every type of symbolism is always the anagogical sense. The full understanding of symbols consists in the perception of the anagogical sense concealed in them; if anagogically understood and employed, they may even contribute to spiritual elevation. In this sense, symbols are endowed with an anagogic virtue.
The Fundamental Principles of the Universe and the Origin of Physical Laws by Attila Grandpierre
In the Chaldean Magic the first realities are the primal principles: “ILU, the First Principle, the universal and mysterious source of all things, which is manifested in the trinity of ANU, the god of Time and and the World; HEA, the intelligence, which animated matter; and BEL, the demiurgus and ruler of the organized universe”. In the ancient Hungarian world-system the basic categories were the first principle of the Universe, ÉLET (the life-principle), and ILLAT (the principle of plant life), ÁLLAT (the principle of animal life) and ÉRTELEM (the principle of human life, reason). Later on, ancient Greeks preserved the more ancient notion of primal principles in the concept of “archi”. Chrysippus, the Stoic (possibly influenced by Scythian and Chaldean teachers) expressed the fundamental realities as: exis (the principle driving existence), physis (the principle driving plant life), psyche (the principle driving animal life), and nous (the principle driving human reason). In the Chinese universism the sky-earth-man, moral-spiritual-physical, natural-historical-national categories are the fundamental ones. In the Rig Veda the spirit-life-matter, sky-living beings-earth divisions are made. The Egyptian history of Creation starts with the appearance of the earth (matter), light (energy), life and consciousness. The Indian Sankhya-system regards the universal principle of Spirit and Matter as fundamental. In the Western culture Thomas Aquinas applies three fundamental categories: that of God, spirit and matter; the material reality shows again a threefold structure of animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. Wolff (1730), after Goclenius (1613) and Micraelius (1652) who were the first using the term ontology, regarded that the three main class of existents are the psychic, cosmic and theos; this division was held also by Kant.