 This pattern also explains the relations among the different causal series: as is the case in the Neo-Platonic tradition Avicenna divides the four Aristotelian causes into internal and external as regards the thing of which they are causes (Jolivet 1991; Bertolacci 2002; Wisnovsky 2003b); thus he inserts them in a hierarchy (cause-intermediate-caused) that places the intermediate term above the last effect, but below the absolute cause. In the sublunary world, for example, the form is part of the cause of matter and is superior to it, because it is an intermediate in the causal relation that binds matter (the last caused thing) to the intelligence—the dator formarum— from which both form and matter result (Ilāhiyyāt, II, 4, 87, 13–89, 15; VI, 1, 259, 7–10). Moreover, the effects that are caused without mediation are absolutely created (or “instaured”) and immaterial and consequently defined only by the ontological composition of the possibility of their essence and the necessity of their existence; those that are caused by virtue of a mediation are defined by virtue of their ontological composition (possibility and necessity; existence distinct from essence), but also by virtue of the composition that is consequent to the mediation: they are material entities, composed of matter and form. In this sense the whole of the cosmos is explained: the intelligences (al-ʿuqūl) that are caused directly by the Necessarily Existent (properly speaking only the first of them); the entities originated by virtue of the intellection of the first intelligences: the souls (al-nufūs) and the heavenly bodies (al-aǧrām al-samāwiyya). Both of these have an influence on the sublunary world and—like the celestial intelligences—are sometimes called “angels” in religious terms (Ilāhiyyāt, X, 1); they are followed by the world of simple effects: the beings of the sublunary world. 