Proclus, Theologia Platonica; Michael Psellos

The truth concerning the gods, and his will even as far as friendly goodwill, is manifested to the most genuine of his hearers. What he intends to devise through the instruction of mathematical studies is a treatment concerning the gods derived from ethical and physical discourses. Such things can be observed in part: many in the Timaeus, many in the Statesman, and many in other dialogues; these discourses, indeed, for those who have begun to read them through their own images, are thus manifest. For through these, the powers of the gods are modeled. The Statesman’s examination [models] the life-generating demiurgy. The easily calculated shapes of numbers represent, appropriately to those who receive them, the properties of the gods who are most profound within the parts of the universe. The pure essences of the soul [represent] the total arrangements of the gods, each of which, being a whole, also establishes the varieties; and all these, together with the divine beings and the whole world and the powers within it, [the soul] arranges. All these things, therefore, through the similarity of things here to the divine things, indicate to us their processions and produce them justly, as even now.

Such, then, are the modes of theological instruction in Plato. It is necessary from what has been said that they are also so many in number. For those who speak about the gods through indication do so either symbolically and mythically, or through images. But those who announce their thoughts about them without concealment produce their discourses either according to science or according to inspiration from the gods. The mode, therefore, which attempts to signal divine matters through symbols is Orphic, and is generally appropriate to those who write divine myths. But the mode through images is Pythagorean; for mathematical studies were invented by the Pythagoreans for the purpose of the recollection of the gods, and through these as images they endeavored to ascend to those divine things. For they also dedicated numbers and shapes to the gods, as those who claim to record their traditions say.

Note: how the discourse concerning the gods is spoken either symbolically, or iconically, or enthusiastically, or scientifically. And this [method] of Plato holds the divine scientifically.