NEO-PLATONISM AND ITS RELATIONS TO ASTROLOGY AND THEURGY
Neo-Platonism and the occult—Plotinus on magic—The life of reason is
alone free from magic—Plotinus unharmed by magic—Invoking the demon of
Plotinus—Rite of strangling birds—Plotinus and astrology—The stars as
signs—The divine star-souls—How do the stars cause and signify?—Other
causes and signs than the stars—Stars not the cause of evil—Against
the astrology of the Gnostics—Fate and free-will—Summary of the
attitude of Plotinus to astrology—Porphyry’s _Letter to Anebo_—Its
main argument—Questions concerning divine natures—Orders of spiritual
beings—Nature of demons—The art of theurgy—Invocations and the power
of words—Magic a human art: theurgy divine—Magic’s abuse of nature’s
forces—Its evil character—Its deceit and unreality—Porphyry on modes
of divination—Iamblichus on divination—Are the stars gods?—Is there an
art of astrology?—Porphyry and astrology—Astrological images—Number
mysticism—Porphyry as reported by Eusebius—The emperor Julian on
theurgy and astrology—Julian and divination—Scientific divination
according to Ammianus Marcellinus—Proclus on theurgy—Neo-Platonic
account of magic borrowed by Christians—Neo-Platonists and alchemy.
[Sidenote: Neo-Platonism and the occult.]
That the Neo-Platonists were much given to the occult has been a
common impression among those who have written upon the period of the
decline of the Roman Empire, of the end of paganism, and the passing
of classical philosophy. This is perhaps in some measure the result
of Christian viewpoint and hostility; probably the Christians of the
period would seem equally superstitious to a modern Neo-Platonist. If
the lives of the philosophers by Eunapius sound like fairy tales,[1326]
what do the lives of the saints of the same period sound like? If
the Neo-Platonists were like our mediums, what were the Christian
exorcists like? But let us turn to the writings of the leading
Neo-Platonists themselves, the only accurate mirror of their views.
[Sidenote: Plotinus on magic.]
Plotinus,[1327] who lived from about 204 to 270 A. D. and is generally
regarded as the founder of Neo-Platonism, was apparently less given to
occult sciences than some of his successors.[1328] One of his charges
against the Gnostics[1329] is that they believe that they can move the
higher and incorporeal powers by writing incantations and by spoken
words and various other vocal utterances, all which he censures as
mere magic and sorcery. He also attacks their belief that diseases
are demons and can be expelled by words. This wins them a following
among the crowd who are wont to marvel at the powers of magicians, but
Plotinus insists that diseases are due to natural causes.[1330] Even
he, however, accepted incantations and the charms of sorcerers and
magicians as valid, and accounted for their potency by the sympathy
or love and hatred which he said existed between different objects in
nature, which operates even at a distance, and which is an expression
of one world-soul animating the universe.[1331]
[Sidenote: The life of reason is alone free from magic.]
Plotinus held further, however, that only the physical and irrational
side of man’s nature was affected by drugs and sorcery, just as “even
demons are not impassive in their irrational part,”[1332] and so
are to some extent subject to magic. But the rational soul may free
itself from all influence of magic.[1333] Moreover, remorselessly adds
the clear-headed Plotinus with a burst of insight that may well be
attributed to Hellenic genius, he who yields to the charms of love and
family affection or seeks political power or aught else than Truth and
true beauty, or even he who searches for beauty in inferior things; he
who is deceived by appearances, he who follows irrational inclinations,
is as truly bewitched as if he were the victim of magic and _goetia_
so-called. The life of reason is alone free from magic.[1334] Whereat
one is tempted to paraphrase a remark of Aelian[1335] and exclaim,
“What do you think of that definition of magic, my dear anthropologists
and sociologists and modern students of folk-lore?”
[Sidenote: Plotinus unharmed by magic.]
This immunity of the true philosopher and sincere follower of truth
from magic received illustration, according to Porphyry,[1336] in the
case of Plotinus himself, who suffered no harm from the magic arts
which his enemy, Alexandrinus Olympius, directed against him. Instead
the baleful defluxions from the stars which Olympius had tried to draw
down upon Plotinus were turned upon himself. Porphyry also states[1337]
that Plotinus was aware at the time of the “sidereal enchantments” of
Olympius against him. Incidentally the episode provides one more proof
of the essential unity of astrology and magic.
[Sidenote: Invoking the demon of Plotinus.]
Plotinus, indeed, was regarded by his admirers as divinely inspired,
as another incident from the _Life_ by Porphyry will illustrate.[1338]
An Egyptian priest had little difficulty in persuading Plotinus, who
although of Roman parentage had been born in Egypt, to allow him to try
to invoke his familiar demon. Plotinus was then teaching in Rome where
he resided for twenty-six years, and the temple of Isis was the only
pure place in the city which the priest could find for the ceremony.
When the invocation had been duly performed, there appeared not a
mere demon but a god. The apparition was not long enduring, however,
nor would the priest permit them to question it, on the ground that
one of the friends of Plotinus present had marred the success of the
operation. This man had feared he might suffer some injury when the
demon appeared and as a counter-charm had brought some birds which he
held in his hands, apparently by the necks, for at the critical moment
when the apparition appeared he suffocated them, whether from fright or
from envy of Plotinus Porphyry declares himself unable to state.
[Sidenote: The rite of strangling birds.]
This practice of grasping birds by the necks in both hands is shown
by a number of works of art to have been a custom of great antiquity.
We may see a winged Gorgon strangling a goose in either hand upon
a plate of the seventh century B.C. from Rhodes now in the British
Museum.[1339] A gold pendant of the ninth century B.C. from Aegina, now
also in the British Museum, consists of a figure holding a water-bird
by the neck in either hand, while from its thighs pairs of serpents
issue on whose folds the birds stand with their bills touching the
fangs of the snakes.[1340] There also is a figure of a winged goddess
grasping two water-birds by the necks upon an ivory fibula excavated at
Sparta.[1341]
[Sidenote: Plotinus and astrology.]
Porphyry also tells us in the _Life_ that Plotinus devoted considerable
attention to the stars and refuted in his writings the unwarrantable
claims of the casters of horoscopes.[1342] Such passages are found
in the treatises on fate and on the soul, while one of his treatises
is devoted entirely to the question, “Whether the stars effect
anything?”[1343] This was one of four treatises which Plotinus a little
before his death sent to Porphyry, and which are regarded as rather
inferior to those composed by him when in the prime of life. In the
next century the astrologer, Julius Firmicus Maternus, regards Plotinus
as an enemy of astrology and represents him as dying a horrible and
loathsome death from gangrene.[1344]
[Sidenote: The stars as signs.]
As a matter of fact the criticisms made by Plotinus were not
necessarily destructive to the art of astrology, but rather suggested a
series of amendments by which it might be made more compatible with a
Platonic view of the universe, deity, and human soul. These amendments
also tended to meet Christian objections to the art. His criticisms
were not new; Philo Judaeus had made similar ones over two centuries
before.[1345] But the great influence of Plotinus gave added emphasis
to these criticisms. For instance, the point made by him several times
that the motion of the stars “does not cause everything but signifies
the future concerning each”[1346] man and thing, is noted by Macrobius
both in the _Saturnalia_[1347] and the _Dream of Scipio_;[1348] while
in the twelfth century John of Salisbury, arguing against astrology,
fears that its devotees will take refuge in the authority of Plotinus
and say that they detract nothing from the Creator’s power, since
He established once for all an unalterable natural law and disposed
all future events as He foresaw them. Thus the stars are merely His
instruments.[1349]
[Sidenote: The divine star-souls.]
But let us see what Plotinus says himself rather than what others took
to be his meaning. Like Plato, who regarded the stars as happy, divine,
and eternal animals, Plotinus not only believes that the stars have
souls but that their intellectual processes are far above the frailties
of the human mind and nearer the omniscience of the world-soul. Memory,
for example, is of no use to them,[1350] nor do they hear the prayers
which men address to them.[1351] Plotinus often calls them gods. They
are, however, parts of the universe, subordinate to the world-soul,
and they cannot alter the fundamental principles of the universe, nor
deprive other beings of their individuality, although they are able to
make other beings better or worse.[1352]
[Sidenote: How do the stars cause and signify?]
In his discussion of problems concerning the soul Plotinus says that
“it is abundantly evident ... that the motion of the heavens affects
things on earth and not only in bodies but also the dispositions of
the soul,”[1353] and that each part of the heavens affects terrestrial
and inferior objects. He does not, however, think that all this
influence can be accounted for “exclusively by heat or cold,”—perhaps
a dig at Ptolemy’s _Tetrabiblos_.[1354] He also objects to ascribing
the crimes of men to the will of the stars or every human act to a
sidereal decision,[1355] and to speaking of friendships and enmities
as existing between the planets according as they are in this or that
aspect towards one another.[1356] If then the admittedly vast influence
of the stars cannot be satisfactorily accounted for either as material
effects caused by them as bodies or as voluntary action taken by them,
how is it to be explained? Plotinus accounts for it by the relation of
sympathy which exists between all parts of the universe, that single
living animal, and by the fact that the universe expresses itself in
the figures formed by the movements of the celestial bodies, which
“exert what influence they do exert on things here below through
contemplation of the intelligible world.”[1357] These figures, or
constellations in the astrological sense, have other powers than those
of the bodies which participate in them, just as many plants and
stones “among us” have marvelous occult powers for which heat and cold
will not account.[1358] They both exert influence effectively and are
signs of the future through their relation to the universal whole. In
many things they are both causes and signs, in others they are signs
only.[1359]
[Sidenote: Other causes and signs than the stars.]
For Plotinus, however, the universe is not a mechanical one where
but one force prevails, namely, that produced by or represented by
the constellations. The universe is full of variety with countless
different powers, and the whole would not be a living animal unless
each living thing in it lived its own life, and unless life were
latent even in inanimate objects. It is true that some powers are more
effective than others, and that those of the sky are more so than those
of earth, and that many things lie under their power. Nevertheless
Plotinus sees in the reproduction of life and species in the universe a
force independent of the stars. In the generation of any animal, for
example, the stars contribute something, but the species must follow
that of its forebears.[1360] And after they have been produced or
begotten, terrestrial beings add something of their own. Nor are the
stars the sole signs of the future. Plotinus holds that “all things are
full of signs,” and that the sage can not merely predict from stars or
birds, but infer one thing from another by virtue of the harmony and
sympathy existing between all parts of the universe.[1361]
[Sidenote: Stars not the cause of evil.]
Nor can the gods or stars be said to cause evil on earth, since their
influence is affected by other forces which mingle with it. Like the
earlier Jewish Platonist, Philo, Plotinus denies that the planets are
the cause of evil or change their own natures from good to evil as
they enter new signs of the zodiac or take up different positions in
relation to one another. He argues that they are not changeable beings,
that they would not willingly injure men, or, if it is contended that
they are mere bodies and have no wills, he replies that then they can
produce only corporeal effects. He then solves the problem of evil in
the usual manner by ascribing it to matter, in which reason and the
celestial force are received unevenly, as light is broken and refracted
in passing through water.[1362]
[Sidenote: Against the astrology of the Gnostics.]
Plotinus repeats much the same line of argument in his book against the
Gnostics, where he protests against “the tragedy of terrors which they
think exists in the spheres of the universe,”[1363] and the tyranny
they ascribe to the heavenly bodies. His belief is that the celestial
spheres are in perfect harmony both with the universe as a whole and
with our globe, completing the whole and constituting a great part of
it, supplying beauty and order. And often they are to be regarded as
signs rather than causes of the future. Their natures are constant,
but the sequence of events may be varied by chance circumstances,
such as different hours of nativities, place of residence, and the
dispositions of individual souls. Amid all this diversity one must also
expect both good and evil, but not on that account call nature or the
stars either evil themselves or the cause of evil.
[Sidenote: Fate and free-will.]
As the allusion just made in the preceding paragraph to “the
dispositions of individual souls” shows, Plotinus made a distinction
between the extent of the control exercised by the stars over
inanimate, animate, and rational beings. The stars signify all things
in the sensible world but the soul is free unless it slips and is
stained by the body and so comes under their control. Fate or the force
of the stars is like a wind which shakes and tosses the ship of the
body in which the soul makes its passage. Man as a part of the world
does some things and suffers many things in accordance with destiny.
Some men become slaves to this world and to external influences, as
if they were bewitched. Others look to their inner souls and strive
to free themselves from the sensible world and to rise above demonic
nature and all fate of nativities and all necessity of this world, and
to live in the intelligible world above[1364].
[Sidenote: Summary of the attitude of Plotinus to astrology.]
Thus Plotinus arrives at practically what was to be the usual Christian
position in the middle ages regarding the influence of the stars,
maintaining the freedom of the human will and yet allowing a large
field to astrological prediction. He is evidently more concerned to
combat the notion that the stars cause evil or are to be feared as
evil powers than he is to combat the belief in their influence and
significations. His speaking of the stars both as signs and causes in
a way doubles the possibility of prediction from them. If he attacked
the language used by astrologers of the planets, and perhaps to a
certain extent the technique of their art, he supported astrology by
reconciling the existence of evil and of human freedom with a great
influence of the stars and by his emphasis upon the importance of
the figures made by the movements of the heavenly bodies above any
purely physical effects of their bodies as such. Thus he reinforced
the conception of occult virtue, always one of the chief pillars, if
not the chief support, of occult science and magic. On the other hand,
men were not likely to reform a language and technique sanctioned
by as great an astronomer as Ptolemy merely because a Neo-Platonist
questioned its propriety.
[Sidenote: Porphyry’s _Letter to Anebo_.]
Although Plotinus denied that diseases were due to demons, we once
heard him speak of “demonic nature,” and one of the _Enneads_ discusses
_Each man’s own demon_. Here, however, the discussion is limited to
the power presiding in each human soul, and nothing is said of magic.
For the connection of demons with magic and for the art of theurgy we
must turn to the writings of Porphyry and Iamblichus, and especially
to _The Letter to Anebo_ of Porphyry, who lived from about 233 to 305,
and the reply thereto of the master Abammon, a work which is otherwise
known as _Liber de mysteriis_[1365]. The attribution of the latter
work to Iamblichus, who died about 330, is based upon an anonymous
assertion prefixed to an ancient manuscript of Proclus and upon the
fact that Proclus himself quotes a passage from the _De mysteriis_ as
the words of Iamblichus. This attribution has been questioned, but if
not by Iamblichus, the work seems to be at least by some disciple of
his with similar views[1366]. Other works of Iamblichus are largely
philosophical and mathematical; among the chief works of Porphyry,
apart from his literary work in connection with Plotinus, were his
commentaries on Aristotle and fifteen books against the Christians.
[Sidenote: Its main argument.]
The _Letter to Anebo_ inquires concerning the nature of the gods,
the demons, and the stars; asks for an explanation of divination and
astrology, of the power of names and incantations; and questions the
employment of invocations and sacrifice. Other topics brought up are
the rule of spirits over the world of nature, partitioned out among
them for this purpose; the divine inspiration or demoniacal possession
of human beings; and the occult sympathy between different things in
the material universe. In especial the art of theurgy, a word said to
be used now for the first time by Porphyry,[1367] is discussed. It
may be roughly defined for the moment as a sort of pious necromancy
or magical cult of the gods. Porphyry raises various objections to
the procedure and logic of the theurgists, diviners, enchanters, and
astrologers, which Iamblichus, as we shall henceforth call the author
of the _De mysteriis_ as a matter of convenience if not of certainty,
endeavors to answer, and to justify the art of theurgy.
[Sidenote: Questions concerning divine natures.]
We may first note the theory of demons which is elicited from
Iamblichus in response to Porphyry’s trenchant and searching questions.
The latter, declaring that ignorance and disingenuousness concerning
divine natures are no less reprehensible than impiety and impurity,
demands a scientific discussion of the gods as a holy and beneficial
act. He asks why, if the divine power is infinite, indivisible, and
incomprehensible, different places and different parts of the body
are allotted to different gods. Why, if the gods are pure intellects,
they are represented as having passions, are worshiped with phallic
ritual, and are tempted with invocations and sacred offerings? Why
boastful speech and fantastic action are taken as indications of the
divine presence; and why, if the gods dwell in the heavens, theurgists
invoke only terrestrial and subterranean deities? How superior beings
can be invoked with commands by their inferiors, why the Sun and Moon
are threatened, why the man must be just and chaste who invokes spirits
in order to secure unjust ends or gratify lust, and why the worshiper
must abstain from animal food and not touch a corpse when sacrifices
to the gods consist of the bodies of dead victims? Porphyry wishes
further an explanation of the various _genera_ of gods, visible and
invisible, corporeal and incorporeal, beneficent and malicious, aquatic
and aerial. He wants to know whether the stars are not gods, how gods
differ from demons, and what the distinction is between souls and
heroes.
[Sidenote: Orders of spiritual beings.]
Iamblichus in reply states that as heroes are elevated above souls,
so demons are inferior and subservient to the gods and translate
the infinite, ineffable, and invisible divine transcendent goodness
into terms of visible forms, energy, and reason.[1368] He further
distinguishes “the etherial, empyrean, and celestial gods,” and angels,
archangels, and archons.[1369] As for corporeal, visible, aerial, and
aquatic gods, he affirms that the gods have no bodies and no particular
allotments of space, but that natural objects participate in or are
related to the gods etherially or aerially or aquatically, each
according to its nature.[1370] “The celestial divinities,” for example,
“are not comprehended by bodies but contain bodies in their divine
lives and energies. They are not themselves converted to body, but
they have a body which is converted to its divine cause, and that body
does not impede their intellectual and incorporeal perfection.”[1371]
Iamblichus denies that there are any maleficent gods, saying that “it
is much better to acknowledge our inability to explain the occurrence
of evil than to admit anything impossible and false concerning the
gods.”[1372] But he admits the existence of both good and evil demons
and makes of the latter a convenient scapegoat upon whom to saddle any
inconsistencies or impurities in religious rites and magical ceremony.
[Sidenote: Nature of demons.]
Iamblichus does not, however, hold the view of Apuleius that demons
are subject to passions. They are impassive and incapable of
suffering.[1373] He scorns the notion that even the worst demons can
be allured by the vapors of animal sacrifice or that petty mortals can
supply such beings with anything;[1374] it is rather in the consumption
of foul matter by pure fire in the act of sacrifice that they take
delight. Demons are not, however, like the gods entirely separated
from bodies. The world is divided up into prefectures among them and
they are more or less inseparable from and identified with the natural
objects which they govern.[1375] Thus they may serve to enmesh the
soul in the bonds of matter and of fate, and to afflict the body with
disease.[1376] Also the evil demons “are surrounded by certain noxious,
blood-devouring, and fierce wild beasts,” probably of the type of
vampires and _empousas_.[1377] Iamblichus further holds that there is
a class of demons who are without judgment and reason, each of whom
has some one function to perform and is not adapted to do anything
else.[1378] Such demons or forces in nature men may well address as
superiors in invoking them, since they are superior to men in their
one special function; but when they have once been invoked, man as a
rational being may also well issue commands to them as his irrational
inferiors.[1379]
[Sidenote: The art of theurgy.]
Iamblichus also undertakes the defense of theurgy and carefully
distinguishes it from magic, as we shall soon see. It is also different
from science, since it does not merely employ the physical forces of
the natural universe,[1380] and from philosophy, since its ineffable
works are beyond the reach of mere intelligence, and those who
merely philosophize theoretically cannot hope for a theurgic union
or communion with the gods.[1381] Even theurgists cannot as a rule
endure the light of spiritual beings higher than heroes, demons, and
angels,[1382] and it is an exceedingly rare occurrence for one of them
to be united with the supramundane gods.[1383] This theurgy, or “the
art of divine works,” operates by means of “arcane signatures” and
“the power of inexplicable symbols.”[1384] It is thus that Iamblichus
explains away most of the details in sacred rites and sacrifices to
which Porphyry had objected as obscene or material and as implying
that the gods themselves were passive and passionate. They are mystic
symbols, “consecrated from eternity” for some hidden reason “which
is more excellent than reason.”[1385] Occult virtues indeed! We have
already heard Iamblichus state that natural objects participate in
or are related to the gods etherially or aerially or aquatically;
theurgists therefore quite properly employ in their art certain stones,
herbs, aromatics, and sacred animals.[1386] By employing such potent
symbols mere man takes on such a sacred character himself that he is
able to command many spiritual powers.[1387]
[Sidenote: Invocations and the power of words.]
Invocations and prayers are also much used in theurgical operations.
But such invocations do not draw down the impassive and pure gods
to this world; rather they purify those who employ them from their
passions and impurity and exalt them to union with the pure and the
divine.[1388] These prayers are symbolic, too. They do not appeal to
human passions or reason, “for they are perfectly unknown and arcane
and are alone known to the God whom they invoke.”[1389] In another
passage[1390] Iamblichus replies to Porphyry’s objection that such
prayers are often composed of meaningless words and names without
signification by declaring—somewhat inconsistently with his previous
assertion that these invocations are “perfectly unknown”—that some of
the names “which we can scientifically analyze” comprehend “the whole
divine essence, power and order.” Moreover, if translated into another
language, they do not have exactly the same meaning, and even if they
do, they no longer retain the same power as in the original tongue.
We shall meet a similar passage concerning the power of words and
divine names in the church father Origen who lived earlier in the third
century than Porphyry and Iamblichus. Iamblichus concludes that “it is
necessary that ancient prayers ... should be preserved invariably the
same.”[1391]
[Sidenote: Magic a human art: theurgy divine.]
Neither Porphyry nor Iamblichus, I believe, employs the word, “magic,”
but they both often allude to its practitioners and methods by such
expressions as “jugglers” and “enchanters” or by contrasting what is
done “artificially” or by means of art with theurgical operations.
In the last case the distinction is between what on the one hand is
regarded as a divine mystery or revelation and what on the other hand
is looked upon as a mere human art and contrivance. And “nothing ...
which is fashioned by human art is genuine and pure.”[1392] Christian
writers drew a like distinction between prophecy or miracle and
divination or magic. Sometimes, however, Iamblichus speaks of theurgy
itself as an art, an involuntary admission of the close resemblance
between its methods and those of magic. We are also told that if the
theurgist makes a slip in his procedure, he thereby reduces it to the
level of magic.[1393]
[Sidenote: Magic’s abuse of nature’s forces.]
Another distinction is that theurgy aims at communion with the
gods while magic has to do rather with “the physical or corporeal
powers of the universe.”[1394] Both Porphyry and Iamblichus believed
that harmony, sympathy, and mutual attraction existed between the
various objects in the universe, which Iamblichus asserted was one
animal.[1395] Thus it is possible for man to draw distant things to
himself or to unite them to, or separate them from, one another.[1396]
But art may also use this force of sympathy between objects in an
extreme and unseemly manner, and this disorderly forcing of nature, we
are left to infer, constitutes an essential feature of magic, whose
procedure is not truly natural or scientific.
[Sidenote: Its evil character.]
Magic not only disorders the law and harmony, and makes a perverse and
contrary use of natural forces. Its practitioners are also represented
as aiming at evil ends and as themselves of evil character.[1397]
They may try by their illicit and impure procedure to have intercourse
with the gods or with pure spirits, but they are unable to accomplish
this. All that they succeed in doing is to secure the alliance of
evil demons by associating with whom they become more depraved than
ever. Such wicked demons may pose as angels of light by requiring that
those who invoke them should be just or chaste, but afterwards they
show their true colors by assisting in crimes and the gratification
of lusts.[1398] It is they, too, who assuming the guise of superior
spirits are responsible for the boastful and arrogant utterances
of which Porphyry complained in persons supposed to be divinely
inspired.[1399]
[Sidenote: Its deceit and unreality.]
Finally magic is unstable and fantastic. “The imaginations artificially
produced by enchantment” are not real objects. Those who foretell the
future by “standing on characters” are no theurgists, but employ a
superficial, false, and deceptive procedure which can attract only
evil demons.[1400] These demons are themselves deceitful and produce
“fictitious images.”[1401] Porphyry in the _Letter to Anebo_ also
alluded to the frauds of “jugglers.” Although the attitude both of
Porphyry and Iamblichus is thus professedly unfavorable to the magic
arts, we find that one of Iamblichus’s disciples, named Sopater,
was executed under Constantine on a charge of having charmed the
winds.[1402]
[Sidenote: Porphyry on modes of divination.]
How is divination to be placed in reference to magic and theurgy?
Porphyry had inquired concerning various methods of divination: in
sleep, in trances, and when fully conscious; in ecstasy, in disease,
and in states of mental aberration or enchantment. He mentioned
divination on hearing drums and cymbals, by drinking water and other
potions, by inhaling vapor; divination in darkness, in a wall, in the
open air or in the sunlight; by observing entrails or the flight of
birds or the motion of the stars, or even by means of meal. Yet other
modes of determining the future which he lists are by characters,
images, incantations, and invocations, with which the use of stones and
herbs is often combined. These details make it evident how impossible
it is to draw any dividing line between the methods of magic and
divination, and Porphyry himself states that those who invoke the gods
concerning the future not only “have about them stones and herbs,”
but are able to bind and to free from bonds, to open closed doors,
and to change men’s intentions. Among the virtues of parts of animals
mentioned in his treatise upon abstinence from animal food are the
powers of divination which may be obtained by eating the heart of a
hawk or crow.[1403]
[Sidenote: Iamblichus on divination.]
Porphyry states that all diviners attribute their predictions to gods
or demons, but that he wonders if foreknowledge may not be a power of
the human soul or perhaps accountable for by the sympathy which exists
between different parts of the universe. Iamblichus holds, however,
that divination is neither a human art nor the work of nature but
of divine origin.[1404] He perhaps regards it as little more than a
branch of theurgy. He distinguishes between human dreams which are
sometimes true, sometimes false, and dreams and visions divinely
sent.[1405] If one is able to predict the future by drinking water,
it is because the water has been divinely illuminated.[1406] That
we can predict when the mind is diseased and disordered, and that
stupid or simple-minded men are often better able to prophesy than the
wise and learned, are for him but further proofs that foreknowledge
is a divine gift and not a human science, while divination by such
means as rods, pebbles, grains of corn and wheat simply excites the
more his pious admiration at the greatness of divine power.[1407] He
disapproves of divination by standing on characters,[1408] but sees no
reason why divination in darkness, in a wall, or in sunlight, or by
potions and incantations, may not be divinely directed. He will not,
however, connect the disordered imaginations excited by disease with
divine presentiments.[1409] From true divination he also separates
the “natural prescience” of certain animals whose acuteness of sense
or occult sympathy with other parts and forces of nature enables them
to perceive some coming events before men do. Their power resembles
prophecy, “yet falls short of it in stability and truth.”[1410] Augury
is an art whose conjectures have great probability, but they are based
upon divine signs or portents effected in nature by the agency of
demons.[1411]
[Sidenote: Are the stars gods?]
The stars are on a totally different plane from the other substances
employed in divination. To Porphyry’s question whether they are not
gods Iamblichus is not content to reply that the celestial divinities
comprehend these heavenly bodies and that the bodies in no way impede
“their intellectual and incorporeal perfection.”[1412] He must needs go
on to argue that the stars themselves, as simple indivisible bodies,
unchanging in quality and uniform in movement, closely approach to “the
incorporeal essence of the gods.” He then triumphantly if illogically
concludes, “Thus therefore the visible celestials are all of them gods
and after a certain manner incorporeal.” We may add the opinion of
Chaeremon and others, noted by Porphyry, that the only gods were the
physical ones of the Egyptians and the planets, signs of the zodiac,
decans, and horoscope; all religious myths were explained by Chaeremon
as astrological allegories.
[Sidenote: Is there an art of astrology?]
Porphyry objected that those who thus reduce religion to astrology
submit everything to fate and leave the human soul no freedom, and
furthermore that in any case astrology is an unattainable science.
Iamblichus defends it against these objections, insisting that the
universe is divided under the rule of planets, signs, and decans;[1413]
that the Egyptians do not make everything physical but ascribe
two souls to man, one of which obeys the revolutions of the stars,
while the other is intellectual and free;[1414] and that there is a
systematic art of astrology based on divine revelation and the long
observations of the Chaldeans, although like any other science it may
at times degenerate and become contaminated by error.[1415] Iamblichus
further regards as ridiculous the contention of those “who ascribe
depravity to the celestial bodies because their participants sometimes
produce evil.”[1416] In the brief separate treatise, _De fato_,[1417]
he again holds that all things are bound by the indissoluble chain of
necessity which men call fate, but that the gods can loose the bonds
of fate, and that the human mind, too, has power to rise above nature,
unite with the gods, and enjoy eternal life.
[Sidenote: Porphyry and astrology.]
Whether Porphyry in his other extant works evidences a belief
in astrology or not, and whether he wrote an _Introduction to
the Tetrabiblos_ or astrological handbook of Ptolemy, has been
disputed.[1418] This _Introduction_ ascribed to Porphyry was much cited
by subsequent astrologers[1419] and was printed in 1559 together with
a much longer anonymous commentary on the _Tetrabiblos_ which some
ascribe to Proclus.[1420]
[Sidenote: Astrological images.]
Towards astrological images at least, Porphyry shows himself in the
_Letter to Anebo_ more favorable than Iamblichus, saying, “Nor are the
artificers of efficacious images to be despised, for they observe the
motion of celestial bodies.” Iamblichus, on the other hand, rather
grudgingly admits that “the image-making art attracts a certain very
obscure genesiurgic portion from the celestial effluxions.”[1421] He
seems to have the same feeling against images as against characters,
perhaps regarding both as bordering upon idolatry.[1422]
[Sidenote: Number mysticism.]
Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus were all given to number mysticism.
The sixth book of the sixth _Ennead_ is entirely devoted to this
subject, while Porphyry and Iamblichus both wrote _Lives_ of Pythagoras
and treatises upon his doctrine of number.
[Sidenote: Porphyry as reported by Eusebius.]
Other works by Porphyry than the _Letter to Anebo_ are cited or quoted
a good deal by Eusebius in _Praeparatio evangelica_, especially
his Περὶ τῆς ἐκ λογίων φιλοσοφίας, but the extracts are made for
Eusebius’s own purposes, which are to discredit pagan religion,
and neither express Porphyry’s complete thought nor probably even
tend to prove his original point. Besides showing that Porphyry was
inconsistent in distinguishing the different victims to be sacrificed
to terrestrial and subterranean, aerial, celestial, and sea gods in the
above-mentioned work, when in his _De abstinentia a rebus animatis_ he
held that beings who delighted in animal sacrifice were no gods but
mere demons, Eusebius quotes him a good deal to show that the pagan
gods were nothing but demons, that they themselves might be called
magicians and astrologers, that they loved characters, and that they
made their predictions of the future not from their own foreknowledge
but from the stars by the art of astrology, and that like men they
could not even always read the decrees of the stars aright. The belief
is also mentioned that the fate foretold from the stars may be avoided
by resort to magic.[1423]
[Sidenote: The Emperor Julian on theurgy and astrology.]
The Emperor Julian was an enthusiastic follower of Iamblichus whom
he praises[1424] in his _Hymn to the Sovereign Sun_ delivered at the
Saturnalia of 361 A. D. He also describes “the blessed theurgists” as
able to comprehend unspeakable mysteries which are hidden from the
crowd, such as Julian the Chaldean prophesied concerning the god of
the seven rays.[1425] The emperor tells us that from his youth he was
regarded as over-curious (περιεργότερον, a word which almost implies
the practice of magic) and as a diviner by the stars (ἀστρόμαντιν). His
_Hymn to the Sun_ contains a good deal of astrological detail, speaks
of the universe as eternal and divine, and regards planets, signs, and
decans as “the visible gods.” In short, “there is in the heavens a
great multitude of gods.”[1426] The Sun, however, is superior to the
other planets, and as Aristotle has pointed out “makes the simplest
movement of all the heavenly bodies that travel in a direction opposite
to the whole.”[1427] The Sun is also the link between the visible
universe and the intelligible world, and Julian infers from his middle
station among the planets that he is also king among the intellectual
gods.[1428] For behind his visible self is the great Invisible. He
frees our souls entirely from the power of “Genesis,” or the force of
the stars exercised at nativity, and lifts them to the world of the
pure intellect.[1429]
[Sidenote: Julian and divination.]
Julian believed in almost every form of pagan divination as well as
in astrology. To the oracles of Apollo he ascribed the civilizing of
the greater part of the world through the foundation of Greek colonies
and the revelation of religious and political law.[1430] The historian
Ammianus Marcellinus[1431] tells us that Julian was continually
inspecting entrails of victims and interpreting dreams and omens, and
that he even proposed to re-open a prophetic fountain whose predictions
were supposed to have enabled Hadrian to become emperor, after which
that emperor blocked it up from fear that someone else might supplant
him through its instrumentality. In another passage[1432] he defends
Julian from the charge of magic, saying, “Inasmuch as malicious persons
have attributed the use of evil arts to learn the future to this ruler
who was a learned inquirer into all branches of knowledge, we shall
briefly indicate how a wise man is able to acquire this by no means
trivial variety of learning. The spirit behind all the elements, seeing
that it is incessantly and everywhere active in the prophetic movement
of perennial bodies, bestows upon us the gift of divination by the
different arts which we employ; and the forces of nature, propitiated
by varied rites, as from exhaustless springs provide mankind with
prophetic utterances.”
[Sidenote: Scientific divination.]
Ammianus thus regards the arts of divination as serious sciences
based upon natural forces, although of course in the characteristic
Neo-Platonic way of thinking he confuses the spiritual and physical and
substitutes propitiatory rites for scientific experiments. His phrase,
“the prophetic movement of perennial bodies” almost certainly means
the stars and shows his belief in astrology. In another passage[1433]
he indicates the widespread trust in astrology among the Roman nobles
of his time, the later fourth century, by saying that even those “who
deny that there are superior powers in the sky,” nevertheless think it
imprudent to appear in public or dine or bathe without having first
consulted an almanac as to the whereabouts of Mercury or the exact
position of the moon in Cancer. The passage is satirical, no doubt, but
Ammianus probably objects quite as much to their disbelief in superior
powers in the sky as he does to the excess of their superstition.
That astrology and divination may be studied scientifically he again
indicates in a description of learning at Alexandria. Besides praising
the medical training to be had there, and mentioning the study of
geometry, music, astronomy, and arithmetic, he says, “In addition to
these subjects they cultivate the science which reveals the ways of the
fates.”[1434]
[Sidenote: Proclus on theurgy.]
Iamblichus’s account of theurgy is repeated in more condensed form by
Proclus (412-485) in a brief treatise or fragment which is extant only
in its Latin translation by the Florentine humanist Ficinus, entitled
_De sacrificio et magia_.[1435] Neither magic nor theurgy, however, is
mentioned by name in the Latin text. Proclus states that the priests
of old built up their sacred science by observing the sympathy existing
between natural objects and by arguing from manifest to occult powers.
They saw how things on earth were associated with things in the heavens
and further discovered how to bring down divine virtue to this lower
world by the force of likeness which binds things together. Proclus
gives several examples of plants, stones, and animals which evidence
such association. The cock, for instance, is reverenced by the lion
because both are under the same planet, the sun, but the cock even
more so than the lion. Therefore demons who appear with the heads of
lions (_leonina fronte_) vanish suddenly at the sight of a cock unless
they chance to be demons of the solar order. After thus indicating
the importance of astrology as well as occult virtue in theurgy or
magic, Proclus tells how demons are invoked. Sometimes a single herb
or stone “suffices for the divine work”; sometimes several substances
and rites must be combined “to summon that divinity.” When they had
secured the presence of the demons, the priests proceeded, partly under
the instruction of the demons and partly by their own industrious
interpretation of symbols, to a study of the gods. “Finally, leaving
behind natural objects and forces and even to a great extent the
demons, they won communion with the gods.”
[Sidenote: Neo-Platonic account of magic borrowed by Christians.]
Despite the writings of Porphyry and other Neo-Platonists against
Christianity, much use was made by Christian theologians of the fourth
and fifth centuries of the Neo-Platonic accounts of magic, astrology,
and divination, especially of Porphyry’s _Letter to Anebo_. Eusebius
in his _Praeparatio Evangelica_[1436] made large extracts from it on
these themes and also from Porphyry’s work on the Chaldean oracles.
Augustine in _The City of God_[1437] accepted Porphyry as an authority
on the subjects of theurgy and magic. On the other hand, we do not find
the Christian writers repeating the attitude of Plotinus that the life
of reason is alone free from magic, except as they substitute the word
“Christianity” for “the life of reason.”
[Sidenote: Neo-Platonists and alchemy.]
The Neo-Platonists showed some interest in alchemy as well as in
theurgy and astrology. Berthelot published in his _Collection des
Alchimistes Grecs_ “a little tract of positive chemistry” which is
extant under the name of Iamblichus; and Proclus treated of the
relations between the metals and planets and the generation of the
metals under the influence of the stars.[1438] Of Synesius, who was
both a Neo-Platonist and a Christian bishop, and who seems to have
written works of alchemy, we shall treat in a later chapter.