i. e. “ Goeteia, or witchcraft, is a certain art respecting material and terrestrial daemons, whose images it causes to become visible to the spectators of this art. And some of these daemons it leads up, as it were from Hades, but others it draws down from on high; and these, too, such as are of an evil species. This art, therefore, causes certain phantastic images to appear before the spectators. And before the eyes of some, indeed, it pours exuberant streams; but to others it promises freedom from bonds, delicacies, and favours. They draw down, too, powers of this kind by songs and incantations. But magic, according to the Greeks, is a thing of a very powerful nature. For they say that this forms the last part of the sacerdotal science. Magic, indeed, investigates the nature, power, and quality of every thing sublunary; viz. of the elements, and their parts, of animals, all various plants and their fruits, of stones, and herbs: and (art itself also being multiformly distributed about nature), variously attracts and derives it as through a channel. Hence it transfers that which in itself is orderly and arranged into the privation of order, and fills that which is beautiful and commensurate with deformity. But the venerable end in each particular thing, which is connascent with union, it transfers to another indecorous plenitude, which is an in short, it explores the essence and power of every thing. From hence, therefore, it produces its effects. And it forms statues which procure health, makes all various figures, and things which become the instruments of disease. It asserts, too, that eagles and dragons contribute to health; but that cats, dogs, and crows are symbols of vigilance, to which, therefore, they contribute. But for the fashioning of certain parts wax and clay are used. Often, too, celestial fire is made to appear through magic; and then statues laugh, and -lamps are spontaneously enkindled.”
This curious passage throws light on the following extract from the first book of the Metaphorsis of Apuleius: " Magico susurranime, amnes agiles reverti, mare pigrum coUigari, ventos inanimes expirare, solem inhiberi, lunam despumari, Stellas evelli, diem tolli, noctem teneri.” i. e. “ By magical incantation rapid rivers may be made to run back to their fountains, the sea be congealed, winds become destitute ot spirit, the sun be held back in his course, the moon be forced to scatter her foam, the stars be torn from their orbits, the day be taken away, and the night be detained.” For it may be inferred from Psellus, that witches formerly were able to cause the appearance of all this to take place. It must also be observed, that this MS. of Psellus On Dcemons forms no part of his treatise On the Energy of Dcemons, published by Gaulminus; for it never was published.
assemblage of different things according to a common passion. It likewise imparts a matter from itself, which is unadapted to the whole veneration of what is beautful, either because it does not entirely receive it, or because it transfers it to other things. It also mingles many different physical powers, which it manages as it pleases for the purposes of generation. Hence we have universally shown, that the apparatus of a venereal connexion of this kind proceeds from a certain human art, and not from a certain dsemoniacal or divine necessity.
Consider, therefore, also another genus of causes; how a stone or a herb frequently possess from themselves a nature corruptive, or again collective of generated natures. For this is not only the case with these, but this physical power is also in greater natures and greater things, which those who are not able to infer by a reasoning process, will perhaps transfer the works and energies of nature to more excellent beings \i. e. to Gods, angels, and dsemons]. Now, therefore, it is acknowledged that the tribe of evil daemons has a very extended power in generation, in human affairs, and in such things as subsist about the earth. Hence, why is it wonderful that a tribe of this kind should ejffect such works as these? For every man is not able to distinguish a good from an evil daemon, or by what peculiarities the one is separated from the other. Hence those, who are not able to perceive the difference between the two, absurdly reason concerning the cause of them, and refer this cause to genera superior to nature and the daemoniacal order. If, also, certain powers of a partial soul are assumed in order to effect these things, whether such a soul is detained in body, or has left the testaceous and terrestrial body, but wanders about the places of generation in a turbid and humid spirit; this, indeed, will be a true opinion, but separates the cause of these things at the greatest distance from more excellent natures. By no means, therefore, is that which is divine, or any good daemon, subservient to the illegal desires of men in venereal concerns. For of these things there are many other causes.
SECTION V.
SECTION V.
The doubt mentioned by you in the next place, is, as I may say, an inquiry which is made in common both by the learned and the unlearned, I mean concerning sacrifices, “ what utility or power they possess in the 'universe, and ivith the Gods, and on what account they are performed, appropriately indeed to the powers ivho are honoured hy them, hut usefully to those hy ivhom the gifts are offered^’ In the same place, also, another objection occurs, viz. ^^that the interpreters of prophecies and oracles ought to abstain from animals, lest the Gods should he polluted hy the vapours arising from them. For this is contrary to the assertion, that the Gods are especially allured hy the vapours of animals'' The hostile opposition, therefore, in the things that are now proposed, may be easily dissolved by demonstrating the dignity of wholes with Q respect to parts, and by recalling to your recollection the exempt transcendency of the Gods above men. But what I mean is this, that the soul, which ranks as a whole, presides over all the mundane body,* and that the * Hence lamblichus (apud Stob. Eclog. Phys. p. 114), says, rj avTi^ e«^t Tracrajv \pvyoiv KOtvovLa Trpo? ra cruifxaTa. (xX.\ T] fiev oX.7j oxTTTep ITA.cotiv'w 8o/cet, irpocriov eavTrj to (roijxa, e)(€L ev (avTrj, aXX ovk avTt] TTpoareicri T(j) o-to/xart, ov8e rrepLexerat vtt’ avTOv. ai Se pepif^ai Trpo(T€pyovTa.L roi<; croipmTL, Kai Twv (Tiaparuiv yiyvovrai. i. e. ” There is not the same communion of all souls with bodies; but the soul which ranks as a whole (as it also appeared to Plotinus), approaching to itself, contains body in itself, but does not itself approach to body, nor is comprehended by it. Partible souls, however, accede to bodies, and give themselves up to them.”
Conformably to this Porphyry also, in his A^op/xat Trpo? ra vor]Ta, No. 30, says, No whole and perfect essence is converted to its own progeny; but all perfect natures are led ' back to the causes by which they were generated, even as far as to the mundane body. For this body, being perfect, is elevated to the mundane soul which is intellectual, and through this is circularly moved. But the soul of this body is elevated to intellect, and intellect to that which is first. All things, therefore, extend themselves to this, beginning from that which is last, according to the peculiar ability of each. But the reduction to that which is first is either proximate or remote. Hence these are not only said to aspire after divinity, but also to enjoy him as far as they are able. But in partial natures, and which are able to verge to many things, a conversion to their progeny belongs. Hence in these guilt, in these disgraceful perfidy, is found. Matter, therefore, defiles these, because they decline to it, at the same time that they possess the power of converting themselves to a divine nature.”
celestial Gods ascend, as into a vehicle, into a celestial body, neither receiving any injury from thence, nor any impediment in their intellections. But to a partial soul, the communion with body is noxious in both these respects. If, therefore, some one perceiving this, should nevertheless introduce such a doubt as the following, that if the body is a bond to our soul, it will also be a bond to the soul of the universe, and that if a partial soul is converted to the body on account of generation, in a similar manner the power of the Gods is converted to generation; in answer to this every one may reply, that he who thus doubts does not know how much superior beings transcend men, and wholes parts. Since, therefore, the objections pertain to things different from each other, they do not produce any ambiguity.
Here, therefore, the same reasoning is likewise sufficient. Bor with us the enjoyment of bodies which once were united to soul, impresses in us heaviness and defilement, ingenerates in us voluptuousness, and produces many other diseases in the soul. But with the Gods, and with mundane and total causes, this is by no means the case. For the exhalation which ascends after a divine manner from animals that are sacrificed, as it is comprehended by, and does not comprehend, the Gods, and as it is also connected with the universe, but does not conjoin wholes and the Gods to itself, is in consequence of this coadapted to superior beings and to total causes, but does not restrain them and coadapt them to itself.
Nor is that which so greatly disturbs you, and for which you so strenuously contend, attended with any difficulty, I mean abstinence from animals,* if it is rightly understood. For those who worship the Gods do not abstain from animals, lest the Gods should be defiled by the vapours arising from them. For what exhalation from bodies can approach those who, before any thing material can come into contact with their power, intangibly amputate matter? Nor is it the power of the Gods only that abolishes all bodies, and causes them to vanish, * lamblichus here alludes to the excellent treatise of Porphyry, Trept rr]s rcov en\pv)(jjiv aTro)(^q, On Abstinence from Animal Food, from which work the English reader will find several admirable extracts in one of the Introductory Dissertations prefixed to my translation of Proclus on Euclid.
without any approximation to them; but a celestial body, also, is unmingled with all the material elements; * nor does it receive into itself any thing extraneous, nor impart any portion of itself to things of a foreign nature. How, therefore, can any terrestrial vapour, which is not elevated five stadia from the earth before it again flows down to the earth, either nourish a circulating and immaterial body, or, in short, produce in it a certain defilement, or any other passion? For it is acknowledged that an etherial body is void of all contrariety, is liberated from all mutation, is entirely pure from the possibility of being transmuted into any thing else, and is perfectly free from a tendency to, and from the middle, because it is either without any tendency, or is convolved in a circle. Hence, it is not possible that bodies, which consist of different powers and motions, which are all-variously changed, and are moved either upwards or downwards, should have any communion of nature or power with celestial bodies, or that any exhalation of the former should be mingled with the latter. As the former, therefore, are entirely separated * A celestial body, as is beautifully shown by Proclus in Tim. lib. iii. contains the summits of all the elements, but is characterized by vivific unbuming fire; so that, in short, it is vitalized extension.
from the latter, they will not effect any thing in them. For celestial bodies being unbegotten, are not capable of receiving any mutation from generated natures. Flow, therefore, can the Gods be defiled by such like vapours, who suddenly, as I may say, at one stroke, amputate the vapours ascending from all matter and material bodies?
This, therefore, it is not fit to suspect of the Gods [vis. that they can be defiled by vapours]; but it is much more requisite to think that things of this kind are foreign to us and to our nature. For things which are divided, and also material and kindred natures, are able to have a certain communion with each other in acting and suffering; but things which are -essentially different, and such as are entirely transcendent, and which employ other natui’es and powers, these cannot act on or receive any thing from each other. The defilement, therefore, produced by material natures, falls on things which are detained by a material body; and from these it is necessary those should be purified who are capable of being defiled by matter. But how can those beings be defiled by material essences who neither have a divisible nature nor possess the power of receiving in themselves the passions of matter? How, likewise, can divinity, who has nothing in comraon with us, in consequence of antecedently existing superior to human imbecility, be polluted by my passions, or by those of any other man?
Neither of these, therefore, at all pertains to the Gods; neither our being filled with material bodies; (for there is nothing, in short, of this kind with them, nor are they defiled by our stains, since they are entirely pure and incorruptible), nor if there are certain material vapours of bodies which are emitted about the earth; for these vapours are most remote from the essence and power of the Gods. Hence the whole hypothesis of contrariety is subverted if no part of it pertains to the Gods. For how, in short, can that which is not possess in itself a certain contest [with any thing]? You in vain, therefore, suspect things of this kind to be absurd, and you adduce doubts unworthy of the Gods, since they cannot be reasonably applied even to good men. For no man who possesses intellect, and is free from passion, would ever permit himself to be allured by the exhalation of vapours, and much less would any one of the beings more excellent than man suffer himself to be thus allured. These things, however, will be discussed shortly after. But now, since this contrariety is, through many solutions, subverted, we shall here finish what we have to say about the first doubt.
Your next inquiry is of greater consequence, and is concerning things of a greater nature. How, therefore, shall I be able, briefly and sufficiently, to give you an answer to a question which is extremely difficult, and requires a long explanation? Nevertheless I will answer it, and without failing in alacrity. I will also endeavour to follow what you have concisely indicated and tacitly signified. But I will unfold to you my dogma concerning sacrifices [which is as follows]. It is by no means requisite that sacrifices should be oflfered for the sake of honour alone, in the same manner as. we honour benefactors; nor for the sake of returning thanks for the goods imparted to us by the Gods; nor yet for the sake of first fruits, or as a remuneration by certain gifts of more venerable goods bestowed on us by the Gods. For these things are also common to men, and are assumed from the common polity of mankind, but by no means preserve the transcendency of the Gods and the order of them as exempt causes.
CHAP. YL CHAP. YL But the greatest thing in sacrifices, viz. their eificacious power, and why especially they are so very beneficial that without them we are neither liberated from pestilence, nor famine, nor sterility of fruits, nor obtain seasonable showers of rain, nor things of much greater consequence than these, I mean such as contribute to the purification of the soul, or an emancipation from generation; these are not at all indicated by such modes of sacrifices as you adduce. Hence no one can justly approve of them, because they assign a cause of the works performed in sacrifices unadapted to their dignity. And if some one should approve of them it will be only in a secondary way, and as suspended from primary, more ancient, and venerable causes.
CHAP. YII.
The discussion therefore requires that we should show what it is through which sacrifices are effective of things, and are suspended from the Gods, the precedaneous causes of effects. If then we say that the communion of similar powers, or the dissension of contraries, or a certain aptitude of the agent to the patient in the universe, as in one animal, every where possessing one and the same life, coexcites adapted similars, pervading with invariable sameness according to one sympathy, and existing most near in things most remote: if we should say this, we should thus assert something of what is true, and which necessarily accompanies sacrifices, yet we should not demonstrate the true mode of their subsistence. For the essence of the Gods is not placed in nature and in physical necessities, so as to be coexcited by physical passions, or by the powers which extend through all nature;. but independently of these, it is defined by itself, having nothing in common with them, neither according to essence, nor according to power, nor any thing else.
CHAP. YIIL The same absurdities likewise happen from assigning, as the causes of what is effected by sacrifices, either certain numbers that are with us, such, for instance, as assuming the number sixty in the crocodile,'* as adapted to the sun; or physical reasons, as the powers and energies of animals, for instance, of the dogt, the The number sixty is no less manifest in the crocodile than in the sun. For according to Aristotle (in Hist. Anim. lib. V.) the crocodile brings forth sixty eggs of a white colour and sits on them for sixty days.
t Isis,” says Gale, " is the moon. And a dog attended Isis when she was diligently seeking her husband Osiris. But the moon perpetually seeks the sun, and therefore that sagacious animal, the dog, accords with Isis. In the solemnities, also, of Isis, dogs preceded the procession.” After this manner others besides Gale} who have not penetrated the depths of the philosophy and theology of Plato, would doubtless explain what is fabulously said of Isis. In reality, however, Isis is not the moon, but one of the divinities that revolve in the lunar sphere as an attendant on the moon, and who, in modern language, is one of the satellites of that planet. For, as I have shown from Proclus, in the Introduction to my translation of the Timaeus of Plato, every planetary sphere is an oAorr^s, or a part of the universe having a total subsistence, i. e. ranking as a whole, and is surrounded with a number of satellites analogous to the choir of the fixed stars. Of these satellites, likewise, the leaders of which are the planets, the first in order are Gods; after these, daemons revolve in lucid orbicular bodies; and these are followed by partial souls, such as ours. See Proclus in Tim. p. 275 and p. 279* This theory, as I have elsewhere observed, is the grand key to the theology and mythology of the ancients, as it shows at one view why the same God is so often celebrated with the names of other Gods; which induced Macrobius to think that all the Gods were nothing more than different powers of the sun. The English reader will find an abundant confirmation of what is here said in the fourth book of my translation of the above mentioned admirable work of Proclus.
cynocephaliis,''' and the weasel t, these being common to the moon; or material forms, such as are seen in sacred animals J; according to * "The Egyptians/’ says Horapollo, lib. i. "wishing to signify the moon, paint a cynocephalus, because this animal is variously affected by the course of the moon.”
t In the original fivyaXr]. " This word,” says Gale, " is written variously, viz. as [j.vyaX^, and p.vya\yj. It is also variously translated, for it is either rallus, or mus araneus.” Plutarch, in the fourth book of his Symposiacs, Quest. 5, says, "that the Egyptians were of opinion that darkness was prior to light, and that the latter was produced from mice in the fifth generation, at the time of the new moon. And further still, they assert that the liver of the weasel diminishes in the wane of the moon.”
I With the Egyptians many animals were sacred; for the worship of which the following admirable apology is made by Plutarch in his treatise of Isis and Osiris: " It now remains that we should speak of the utility of these animals to man, and of their symbolical meaning; some of them partaking of one of these only, but many of them of both. It is evident, therefore, that the Egyptians worshiped the ox, the sheep, and the ichneumon, on account of their use and benefit, as the Lemnians did larks, for discovering the eggs of caterpillars and breaking them; and the Thessalians storks, because, as their land produced abundance of serpents, the storks destroyed all of them as soon as they appeared. Hence, also, they enacted a law, that whoever killed a stork should be banished. But the Egyptians honoured the asp, the weasel, and the beetle, in consequence of observing in them certain dark resemblances of the power of the Gods, like that of the sun in drops of water. For at present, many believe and assert that the weasel engenders by the ear, and brings forth by the mouth, being thus an image of the generation of reason [or the productive principle of things]. But the genus of beetles has no female; the colours, and^ all the forms of the body; and all the males emit their sperm into a sphericle piece of earth, which they roll about, thrusting it backwards with their hind feet, while they themselves move forward; just as the sun appears to revolve in a direction contrary to that of the heavens, in consequence of moving from west to east.
They also assimilated the asp to a star, as being exempt from old age, and performing its motions, unassisted by organs, with agility and ease. Nor was the crocodile honoured by them without a probable cause; but is said to have been considered by them as a resemblance of divinity, as being the only animal that is without a tongue. For the divine reason is unindigent of voice, and proceeding through a silent path, and accompanied with* justice, conducts mortal affairs according to it. They also say it is the only animal living in water that has the sight of its eyes covered with a thin and transparent film, which descends from his forehead, so that he sees without being seen, which is likewise the case with the first God. But in whatever place the female crocodile may lay her eggs, this may with certainty be concluded to be the boundary of the increase of the Nile. For not being able to lay their eggs in the water, and fearing to lay them far from it, they have such an accurate presensation of futurity, that though they enjoy the benefit of the river in its access, during the time of their laying and hatching, yet they preserve their eggs dry and untouched by the water. They also lay sixty eggs, are the same number of days in hatching them, and those that are the longest lived among them live just so many years, which number is the first of the measures employed by those who are conversant with the heavenly bodies.
“ Moreover, of those animals that were honoured for both reasons, we have before spoken of the dog. But the ibis, killing indeed all deadly reptiles, was the first that taught men the use ot medical evacuation, in consequence of obseiwing that she is after this manner washed and purified by * Instead of /cai Siktjs, I read Kai /xera diKTjs.
or any thing else pertaining to the bodies of herself. Those priests^ also, that are most attentive to the laws of sacred rites, when they consecrate water for lustration, fetch it from that place where the ibis had been drinking; for she will neither drink nor come near unwholesome or infected water; but with the distance of her feet from each other and her bill she makes an equilateral triangle. Farther still, the variety and mixture of her black wings about the white represents the moon when she is gibbous.
“We ought not, however, to wonder if the Egyptians love such slender similitudes, since the Greeks also, both in their pictures and statues, employ many such like resemblances of the Gods. Thus in Crete there was a statue of Jupiter without ears. For it is fit that he who is the ruler and lord of all things should hear no one.* Phidias also placed a dragon by the statue of Minerva, and a snail by that of Venus at Ehs, to show that virgins require a guard, and that keeping at home and silence become married women. But the trident of Neptune is a symbol of the third region of the world, which the sea possesses, having an arrangement after the heavens and the air. Hence, also, they thus denominated Amphitrite and the Tritons. The Pythagoreans, likewise, adorned numbers and figures with the appellations of the Gods. For they called the equilateral triangle, Minerva Coryphagenes, or begotten from the summit, and Tritogeneia because it is divided by three perpendiculars drawn from the three angles. But they called the one Apollo, being persuaded to this by the obvious meaning of the word Apollo [which signifies a privation of multitude] and by the simplicity of the monad f- The duad they denominated strife and audacity, and the triad justice. For since injuring and being injured are two extremes subsisting according to excess and defect, j ustice, through equality, has a situation in the middle. But what is called the tetractys, * i. c. Should be perfectly impartial.
t Instead of SiTrXoraTOiy fiovaSo^, as in the original, which is nonsense, it is necessary to read, as in the above translation, airXoTrjTi Ti]i fiopaSos.
animals, or of other things which are ofifered; being the number S6, Wcas, as is reported, their greatest oath, and was denominated the world. For this number is formed from the composition of the four first even and the four first odd numbers, collected into one sum.* If, therefore, the most approved of the philosophers did not think it proper to neglect or despise any occult signification of a divine nature when they perceived it even in things which are inanimate and incorporeal, it appears to me that they, in a still greater degree, venerated those peculiarities depending on manners which they saw in such natures as had sense, and were endued with soul, with passion, and ethical habits. We must embrace, therefore, not those who honour these things, but those who reverence divinity through these, as through most clear mirrors, and which are produced by nature, in a becoming manner, conceiving them tobe the instruments orthe art of the God by whom all things are perpetually adorned.
But we ought to think that no inanimate being canbemore excellentthan one that is animated, noran insensible than a sensitive being, not even though some one should collect together all the gold and emeralds in the universe. For the divinity is not ingenerated either in colours, or figures, or smoothness; but such things as neither ever did, nor are naturally adapted to participate of life, have an allotment more ignoble than that of dead bodies. But the nature which lives and sees, and has the principle of motion from itself, and a knowledge of things appropriate and foreign to its being, has certainly derived an efflux and portion of that wisdom which, as Heraclitus says, considers how both itself and the universe is governed. Hence the divinity is not worse represented in these animals than in the workmanships of copper and stone, which in a similar manner suffer corruption and decay, but are naturally deprived of all sense and consciousness. This then I consider as the best defence that can be given of the adoration of animals by the Egyptians.”
/ or a certain member, as the heart of a cock; * ' or other things of the like kind which are sur- ^ veyed about nature, if they are considered as the causes of the efficacy in sacrifices. For ^ ' from these things the Gods are not demonstrated to be supernatural causes; nor, as such, to be excited by sacrifices. But they are considered as physical causes detained by matter, and as physically involved in bodies, and co-* excited and becoming quiescent together with ; them, these things also existing about nature.
If, therefore, any thing of this kind takes place in sacrifices, it follows as a concause, and as I having the relation of that without which a I thing is not effected; and thus it is suspended :, from precedaneous causes.
It is better, therefore, to assign as the cause of the efficacy of sacrifices friendship and familiarity, and a habitude which binds fabricators to the things fabricated, and generators to the * The cock was sacred to Apollo, and therefore its heart was believed to be the instrument of divination in sacrifices. The chemic Olympiodorus says, ‘‘ that the cock obscurely signifies the essence of the sun and moon.” See, in the additional notes, what is said by Proclus concerning the cock, in his treatise On Magic.