Anagogy's purpose is transcendental and aesthetic: for the reader, it presents letters to be deciphered within a designated space, and if there is a likeness of God among the possibilities, the activity becomes a prayer, or perhaps a hymn, and merits grace.
This paper explains the medieval writing process known as palindromic structure, a face of anagogy that, as far as we can determine, has largely been ignored in literary criticism.
The
anagogy suggests the dawn of a new age in which
Above all, there are features of history, the
anagogy of this discussion.
One of the ways in which Marcel's dramas effect the communication of his Catholic anagogy is through catharsis.
(3) Ralph McInerny offers this description of anagogy in his "Preface" to The Catholic Writer, 10.
The dynamic in creation that brings about a return to God is experienced by humans as an uplifting or
anagogy. This concept expresses both God's benevolence and love seeking to draw creatures to him, and the utter reliance of lowly creatures on divine power to raise them beyond their own capacities.
(94) In terms of symbolic theology, the Church needs to be unveiled or interpreted by allegory,
anagogy, and tropology.
These are: history, which speaks of things done; allegory, in which one thing is interpreted by means of another; tropology, that is, moral utterance, in which one treats of the development and ordering of morals;
anagogy, which is the spiritual understanding, by which we are led to higher things through discussion of the highest and celestial.