The act of anagogy is, literally, the “ascent upward.” It designates the movement of the spirit which, starting from a visible, intelligible, or symbolic reality, rises toward its transcendent principle. The symbol, by the very distinction it reveals between the image and its Model, manifests a genuine anagogical power: it is both bridge and passage, a sign of that which surpasses all representation. Through it, thought discovers that the world is not only what it appears to be, but that, in its transparency, it participates in a higher order of meaning. Anagogy is thus the art of reading reality in superimposition — discerning the invisible through the visible, the eternal through the temporal.
Following the example of the symbol, defined as a “dissimilar likeness” (René Roques), likeness is the static link of analogy that binds the image to its archetype, while dissimilarity marks the dynamic and ascending power of anagogy, which leads from the image to the Model (Jean Borella). This double relation — similarity and distance — preserves both continuity and transcendence: without likeness, no revelation; without unlikeness, no transcendence. Anagogy is that interior movement which transforms knowledge into contemplation and contemplation into participation.
In this sense, all true theology is anagogical: it does not merely describe God but leads toward Him. Anagogy fulfills intelligence by surpassing it — as the flame that consumes the wick illuminates at the very moment it destroys itself. It is the higher sense of every spiritual reading: that which, starting from the sign, brings us back to the source, and, starting from the multiple, restores us to the One.
For further reading: Dionysius the Areopagite, The Divine Names, I, 4; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 1 a. 10; Jean Borella, The Crisis of Religious Symbolism, II; Bruno Bérard, Metaphysics for Everyone — English edition of Métaphysique pour tous (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2021; also translated into Italian, Spanish, and German).