What modern people call "mysticism" is just vague, feminine spirituality. What in the past gets identified with "mysticism" is just Platonism. Sometimes the former is just a vaguer restatement of the latter.
It's taken from Plotinus' second Ennead. But I agree with you on Dionysius simply restating Proclus and Iamblichus, however his removal of the theurgical aspect of Proclus (which is not entirely self-evident) was decisive for his reception as a major theologian
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But it wasn't removed, it was just limited to the Christian sacraments. And Augustine said in a sermon that what the Platonists called theurgy the Christians called sacraments.
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Actually it's from the first Ennead, 6. I feel there is a deep rift between theurgy as conceived of in Proclus (the Hieratikè) and that in Plotinus and thence Porphyry. Also, mystics wouldn't derive their union with God from the sacraments, Theresa didn't even attend communion.
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(Communion isn't a sacrament, but it gives the idea of one whose approach to the religious experience is silent, as in contemplative theurgy, opposed to the symbolic one of Proclus who danced with an asparagus in each hand to meet Fire Demons and ask them for exegesis of Plato)
End of conversation
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