  Other names directly refer to visible things, whose multiplicity and accessibility to sensation make them easy for us to understand. The difficulty with these names, referred to by Dionysius and the Neoplatonic tradition generally as “symbols,” is that they have no inherent relation to the godhead at all. Their literal signification is restricted to the realm of the sensuous, and so they must be turned into metaphors if they are to become useful for theology. This is the task of Dionysius’ Symbolic Theology. Though the work itself is not extant, we find him undertaking the same project in each of his extant works.