Every now and then, prayer reveals a pattern that I simply cannot unsee. This was my experience while contemplating the Iynges and the Seraphim, two symbolic traditions that gradually began speaking the same language in my prayer life.
It isn’t something I arrive at through logic alone, nor is it something I expect anyone else to accept as objectively true. It emerges gradually through contemplation when symbols from different traditions begin to illuminate one another in unexpected ways.
This article is one such reflection.
It is offered as UPG (Unverified Personal Gnosis): a personal account of what unfolded for me while meditating on Sarah Iles Johnston’s Hekate Soteira alongside the wider Western mystical tradition.
Meeting the Iynges
The deeper I ventured into Iles Johnston’s exegesis of the Chaldean Oracles, the more fascinated I became by the Iynges (Ἴυγγες, plural of iynx).
The Neoplatonists regarded them as among the highest divine powers. They are described as the first movements of the Father’s intellect, transmitting divine Ideas into the ordered cosmos. Rather than static beings, they are living currents of divine activity, able to think for themselves but always expressing the will of the first Father. They perpetually move between the intelligible and manifest worlds through the agency of Hekate.
The Oracles themselves are filled with the language of fire.
Fire is not merely an element but the living substance of divine reality. It purifies, awakens, creates and unites.
As I meditated on these texts, I found myself seeing fiery angelic beings in my mind’s eye.
Spirals of Living Fire
These beings were not like angels with feathered wings.
Instead, they appeared as immense celestial serpentine or draconic spirals of conscious fire.
They are endlessly whirring and revolving around an invisible centre while radiating intelligence, love and creative power.
Their movement felt musical.
Everything about them suggested ordered motion rather than chaotic energy, as though creation itself unfolded through their ceaseless dance.
Almost immediately, another image surfaced from Scripture.
The Seraphim.
The Burning Ones
Isaiah describes the Seraphim surrounding the throne of God, crying,
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” (Isaiah 6:3)
The Hebrew word śərāfîm literally means “the burning ones.”
Traditionally, they are depicted as fiery heavenly beings whose entire existence is praise.
As I sat with that image, something unexpected happened.
The fiery spirals I associated with the Iynges and the biblical Seraphim no longer felt unrelated.
What struck me was the almost perfect resonance. Both traditions speak of fiery celestial beings whose movement is inseparable from their nature. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was looking at the same mystery through two different symbolic languages.
The Serpent of Healing
Then another biblical image entered the conversation.
When the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, Moses was instructed to raise a bronze serpent upon a pole so that those bitten by venomous serpents might look upon it and live (Numbers 21:4–9).
Centuries later, Yeshua deliberately identified himself with this symbol:
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.” (John 3:14)
That verse has always fascinated me.
Much of Christianity has inherited an almost exclusively negative understanding of the serpent.
Yet Christ himself chose the bronze serpent as a symbol of his own redemptive work.
During contemplation, I found myself asking whether we have forgotten an older symbolism.
Not the serpent as deception, but as ascent, healing, and living divine fire.
Suddenly, the fiery, serpent-like Iynges made even more sense to me.
Hekate at the Centre
Throughout this journey, one figure remained constant.
Hekate.
Not merely the torch-bearing goddess of Greek religion, but Hekate as she appears in the Chaldean Oracles: the great mediating power through whom the first Father’s Fire pours into creation.
In the Chaldean vision, she stands at the mysterious boundary between the intelligible and the manifest.
She is neither separate from the divine nor identical with the transcendent Father, but the living matrix through which divine life continually becomes cosmos.
Reading Proclus, I was particularly struck by his descriptions of divine fire and by his account of Hekate’s epiphany as a radiant, fiery presence. For him, this was not a poetic metaphor but a lived philosophical experience.
The more I contemplated this, the more another figure quietly emerged.
Sophia
For years, Holy Sophia has been one of the central figures in my spiritual life.
Wisdom.
The ordering principle of creation.
The living Wisdom who delights in the inhabited world.
When I meditated on the Chaldean Hekate, I found myself recognising that same current of living Wisdom.
Not because the texts explicitly identify them.
Because they awakened the same interior recognition.
It was less a conclusion than a remembrance.
The Queen of Heaven
Eventually, the pattern widened once again.
Mother Mary entered the contemplation.
Not the historical Miriam of Nazareth alone, but Mary as Queen of Heaven.
As someone walking an esoteric Christian path, I have long prayed with Mary as the compassionate mother who continually points souls towards Christ.
As these meditations continued, I found myself no longer experiencing Sophia, Mary and Hekate as separate spiritual presences.
Their names remained distinct.
Their histories remained distinct.
Yet in prayer they appeared as one Queen.
One Mother.
One luminous feminine presence expressing herself through different symbolic languages and different sacred histories.
I cannot prove that.
Nor do I wish to.
It is simply how grace unfolded.
One Fire, Many Languages
Perhaps this is why the Chaldean Oracles have affected me so deeply.
They have not replaced my esoteric Christian gnosis.
Nor have they replaced my devotion to Hekate.
Instead, they have become a bridge.
When I contemplate the Iynges, I recognise the Seraphim.
In Hekate, I recognise Sophia.
Looking upon Sophia, I recognise the Queen of Heaven.
And in Christ, lifted up like the bronze serpent, I recognise the embodied healing power of divine Fire.
For me, that same current is present within every human soul.
When we walk the Christed path, we allow the Iynx within to attune us to our path of service, so that we, too, can be lifted up as an offering to others.
None of these recognitions diminishes the uniqueness of their respective traditions.
Instead, they invite me to listen more carefully.
Perhaps heaven speaks many symbolic languages while remaining one reality.
Perhaps the same divine Light has always found different ways of revealing itself to receptive hearts.
This is where my own contemplative journey has led me.
I offer it, not as doctrine, but as an invitation.
If it resonates with your own experience, perhaps the pattern is larger than either of us can yet see.
Lisa Eddy — Tanit Iris LeFay
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