"Though angels assume bodies, they do not have full bodily function, so that their bodies are somewhat lifeless. They do not eat, even occasionally they seem to. They appear to speak, but it is a fashioning of sounds in the air rather than proper organs of speech being used; and they do not perceive with the senses, but directly with intellect. Though they appear to move, their movement belongs to the bodies and therefore only 'accidental'. Real movement for them would be more like the heavenly bodies, but these do not altogether change their places, since they move only partially in relation to one another. Their relationship to space and place is therefore tenuous, and they may be very large or very small according to the body taken. It is, however, finite. An angel cannot be everywhere. Two angels cannot occupy the same place at the same time, not because they would fill it in some bodily sense, but because the application of one angel's power to the place in question sufficiently fills it so that there's no need for a further angel in that place."
...
"This idea was interpreted by subsequent thinkers, East and West, to suggest that the more one can empty the mind of its natural preoccupation with the sensory world, and still it from its natural perturbations, the more light it will be able to receive and to reflect. We find this not only in the mystics of Judaism, Christianity and Islam but also more widely. For example, in Ficino: when a person's mind is clear, level and at rest, in the very moment of reflecting back the divine ray, the living should is itself carried upwards to union with the divine."
Probably one of the most favourite photographs of me, produced by mom, on my 23rd birthday (during lockdown) in Lithuania.
