Pseudo-Dionysius argues that God, as the Supreme Cause and Being itself, is ultimately incomprehensible and ineffable, beyond human language and cognitive abilities. Knowledge of God is limited to experiencing his manifestations in the world through theophanies. Apophatic theology, which denies any positive attributes of God, is inseparable from cataphatic theology, which affirms them. Negation does not simply eliminate possibilities but can lead to affirmations of super-abundance or the recognition that nothing can be affirmed or denied of God. The negative approach moves beyond knowledge about God toward union with God, though it risks inconsistency if one must know something to negate it.
Personifications of abstract concepts were common in ancient culture, yet the god Hypnos (Sleep) never developed a firmly established or widely disseminated cult despite his liminal position between life and death, consciousness and unconsciousness, health and illness. The text examines Hypnos's relation to Asclepius within incubation practices and notes the general lack of philosophical interest in sleep from Presocratic to systematic philosophy. An epidemiological approach to cultural transmission suggests Hypnos should have been ideally positioned for integration into other cults or to develop his own, but theoretical analysis of personification, cultural conceptions of sleep, and Hypnos's nature—including his connection to death and healing—fails to explain why this did not occur.