MV. 2. "I, 9; VI, 6; II, II.

XI NEO-PLATONISM 311
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 hid- den reason "which is more excellent than reason." ^ Occult virtues indeed! We have already heard lamblichus 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, aro- matics, and sacred animals.^ By employing such potent sym- bols mere man takes on such a sacred character himself that he is able to command many spiritual powers.^
Invocations and prayers are also much used in theurgical Invoca- operations. But such invocations do not draw down the ^^e power impassive and pure gods to this world; rather they purify °f words, those who employ them from their passions and impurity and exalt them to union with the pure and the divine.* 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 in- voke." ^ In another passage ^ lamblichus replies to Por- phyry's objection that such prayers are often composed of meaningless words and names without signification by de- claring— somewhat inconsistently with his previous asser- tion 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 lam- blichus. lamblichus concludes that "it is necessary that
'I, II. "I, 12.
ay 2^ *I, 15; III, 24 (Taylor's trans-
^' ^^- lation). "IV. 2. "VII, 4.
312
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Magic a
human
art:
theurgy
divine.
Magic's abuse of nature's forces.
ancient prayers . . . should be preserved invariably the same." ^
Neither Porphyry nor lamblichus, I believe, employs the word, "magic," but they both often allude to its practitioners and methods by such expressions as "jugglers" and "enchant- ers" 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." ^ Christian writers drew a like distinc- tion between prophecy or miracle and divination or magic. Sometimes, however, lamblichus 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 there- by reduces it to the level of magic.^
Another distinction is that theurgy aims at communion with the gods while magic has to do rather with "the physi- cal or corporeal powers of the universe." ^ Both Porphyry and lamblichus believed that harmony, sympathy, and mutual attraction existed between the various objects in the uni- verse, which lamblichus asserted was one animal.^ Thus it is possible for man to draw distant things to himself or to unite them to, or separate them from, one another.^ But art may also use this force of sympathy between objects in an extreme and unseemly manner, and this disorderly forc- ing of nature, we are left to infer, constitutes an essential feature of m.agic, whose procedure is not truly natural or scientific.
Magic not only disorders the law and harmony, and makes a perverse and contrary use of natural forces. Its practi- tioners are also represented as aiming at evil ends and as
VII, 5. ' III, 29. •II. 10.
*IV, 10.
'IV, 12.
'IV, 3.
XI NEO-PLATONISM 313
themselves of evil character.^ 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 de- praved 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. ^ 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 di- vinely inspired.^
Finally magic is unstable and fantastic. "The imagina- Its deceit tions artificially produced by enchantment" are not real ob- ^ijj.y_ jects. Those who foretell the future by "standing on char- acters" are no theurgists, but employ a superficial, false, and deceptive procedure which can attract only evil demons.* These demons are themselves deceitful and produce "fic- titious images." ^ Porphyry in the Letter to Aneho also al- luded to the frauds of "jugglers." Although the attitude both of Porphyry and lamblichus is thus professedly unfa- vorable to the magic arts, we find that one of lamblichus's disciples, named Sopater, was executed under Constantine on a charge of having charmed the winds.®
How is divination to be placed in reference to magic and Porphyry theurgy ? Porphyry had inquired concerning various meth- "" divina- ods of divination: in sleep, in trances, and when fully con- tion. scious; in ecstasy, in disease, and in states of mental aber- ration or enchantment. He mentioned divination on hear- ing 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
'IV, 10; III, 31. 'II, 10.
^ IV, 7. * E. S. Bouchier, Syria as a
' II, 10. Roman Province, Oxford, 1916,
*VI, 5; III, 25; III, 13. p. 231.
314 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
of meal. Yet other modes of determining the future which he hsts are by characters, images, incantations, and invoca- tions, with which the use of stones and herbs is often com- bined. 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 in- voke 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 in- tentions. 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.-"- lamblichus Porphyry states that all diviners attribute their predic- tion.^^*^^' tions to gods or demons, but that he wonders if foreknowl- edge may not be a power of the human soul or perhaps accountable for by the sympathy which exists between differ- ent parts of the universe. lamblichus holds, however, that divination is neither a human art nor the work of nature but of divine origin.^ 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.^ If one is able to predict the future by drinking water, it is because the water has been divinely illuminated.* 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 great- ness of divine power.^ He disapproves of divination by standing on characters,^ but sees no reason why divination in darkness, in a wall, or in sunlight, or by potions and in- cantations, may not be divinely directed. He will not, how-
^De absHnentia, II, 48. *III, 11.
Mil, I, 10. "Ill, 24; III, 17.
•Ill, 2-3. "Ill, 14.
XI NEO-PLATONISM 315
ever, connect the disordered imaginations excited by dis- ease with divine presentiments.^ From true divination he also separates the "natural prescience" of certain animals M^hose acuteness of sense or occult sympathy with other parts and forces of nature enables them to perceive some com- ing events before men do. Their power resembles proph- ecy, "yet falls short of it in stability and truth." ^ 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.^
The stars are on a totally different plane from the other Are substances employed in divination. To Porphyry's ques- lods?^^^ tion whether they are not gods lamblichus is not content to reply that the celestial divinities comprehend these heav- enly bodies and that the bodies in no way impede "their in- tellectual and incorporeal perfection." ^ 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 there- fore 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 alle- gories.
Porphyry objected that those who thus reduce religion is there to astrology submit everything to fate and leave the human ^^^"^l °^ ; soul no freedom, and furthermore that in any case astrology is an unattainable science. lamblichus defends it against these objections, insisting that the universe is divided under the rule of planets, signs, and decans ; ^ that the Egyptians
*III, 25. Although, as stated Mil, 26.
above, one may be divinely in- ' III, 15.
spired while diseased. But there ' I, 17.
is no causal connection between "VIII, 4. the two.
3i6
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Porphyry
and
astrology.
Astrologi- cal images.
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 ; ^ and that there is a sys- tematic 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.^ lamblichus further regards as ridiculous the con- tention of those "who ascribe depravity to the celestial bodies because their participants sometimes produce evil." ^ In the brief separate treatise, De fato,'^ 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 na- ture, unite with the gods, and enjoy eternal life.
Whether Porphyry in his other extant works evidences a belief in astrology or not, and whether he wrote an Intro- duction to the Tetrabiblos or astrological handbook of Ptol- emy, has been disputed.^ This Introduction ascribed to Porphyry was much cited by subsequent astrologers ® and was printed in 1559 together with a much longer anonymous commentary on the Tetrabiblos which some ascribe to Proc- lus."^
Towards astrological images at least. Porphyry shows himself in the Letter to Anebo more favorable than lam- blichus, saying, "Nor are the artificers of efficacious images to be despised, for they observe the motion of celestial bodies." lamblichus, on the other hand, rather grudgingly admits that "the image-making art attracts a certain very obscure genesiurgic portion from the celestial effluxions." ^ He seems to have the same feeling against images as against
'VIII, 6. 'IX, 3-4. •I, 18.
* lamblichus. In Nicomachi Geraseni arithmeticam introduc- tionem et De fato, published by Tennulius, Deventer and Arnheim, 1668.
"Zeller, Philos. d. Gr., Ill, 2, 2, p. 608. cites passages to show
Porphyry's leanings towards as- trology; but F. Boll, Studien ilber Claudius Ptolemaeus, 1 15-17, and Bouche-L e c 1 e r c q , L'Astrologie grccque, 601-602, are inclined to the opposite view.
" CCAG, passim.
' Ed. Hieronymus Wolf, Basel, 1559, Greek and Latin.
« III. 28.
XI
NEO-PLATONISM
317
characters, perhaps regarding both as bordering upon idol- atry.^
Plotinus, Porphyry, and lambHchus were all given to number mysticism. The sixth book of the sixth Ennead is entirely devoted to this subject, while Porphyry and lam- blichus both wrote Lives of Pythagoras and treatises upon his doctrine of number.
Other works by Porphyry than the Letter to Anebo axe cited or quoted a good deal by Eusebius in Praeparatio evangeiica, especially his Hept r^s e/c \o'yloiv 4)Ckoao4)las , but the extracts are made for Eusebius's own purposes, which are to discredit pagan religion, and neither express Por- phyry's complete thought nor probably even tend to prove his original point. Besides showing that Porphyry was in- consistent in distinguishing the different victims to be sac- rificed to terrestrial and subterranean, aerial, celestial, and sea gods in the above-mentioned work, when in his De ab- stinentia 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 as- trology, and that like men they could not even always read the decrees of the stars aright. The belief is also men- tioned that the fate foretold from the stars may be avoided by resort to magic.^
The Emperor Julian was an enthusiastic follower of lam- blichus whom he praises ^ in his Hymn to the Sovereign Sun delivered at the Saturnalia of 361 A. D. He also de- scribes "the blessed theurgists" as able to comprehend un- speakable mysteries which are hidden from the crowd, such as Julian the Chaldean prophesied concerning the god
Number mysticism.
Porphyry as reported by Euse- bius.
The
Emperor
Julian on
theurgy
and
astrology.
' III, 29.
* Eusebius, Praep. evang., IV, 6- 15i 23; V, 6, II, 14-15; VI, I, 4-5;
etc., in Migne, PG, XXI. _
^ Loeb Library edition Julian's works, I, 398, 412, 433.
of
3i8 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
of the seven rays.^ The emperor tells us that from his youth he was regarded as over-curious {irepLepyoTepov, a word which almost implies the practice of magic) and as a di- viner by the stars {aaTpbuavTiv). His Hymn to the Sun con- tains a good deal of astrological detail, speaks of the uni- verse 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." - 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." ^ The Sun is also the link between the visible universe and the intel- ligible world, and Julian infers from his middle station among the planets that he is also king among the intellec- tual gods.* 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.^
Julian believed in almost every form of pagan divina- tion as well as in astrology. To the oracles of Apollo he as- cribed the civilizing of the greater part of the world through the foundation of Greek colonies and the revelation of re- ligious and political law.^ The historian Ammianus Mar- cellinus '^ tells us that Julian was continually inspecting en- trails 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 be- come emperor, after which that emperor blocked it up from fear that someone else might supplant him through its instru- mentality. In another passage ^ 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
* I, 482, 498. '1,368.
' I, 405. I' 419. .. „
=•1:374-75. ;?$"'.^"' ^•
M, 366-67. "XXI, 1. 7.
XI NEO-PLATONISM 319
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 peren- nial 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 pro- vide mankind with prophetic utterances."
Ammianus thus regards the arts of divination as serious Scientific sciences based upon natural forces, although of course in divmation. the characteristic Neo-Platonic way of thinking he confuses the spiritual and physical and substitutes propitiatory rites for scientific experiments. His phrase, "the prophetic move- ment of perennial bodies" almost certainly means the stars and shows his belief in astrology. In another passage ^ he indicates the widespread trust in astrology among the Ro- man 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 posi- tion 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 divin- ation 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." ^
lamblichus's account of theurgy is repeated in more con- Proclus on densed form by Proclus (412-485) in a brief treatise or ^ ^"^sy- fragment which is extant only in its Latin translation by the Florentine humanist Ficinus, entitled De sacrificio et inagiaJ Neither magic nor theurgy, however, is mentioned
* XXVIII, iv, 24. 1497, along with the De mysteriis,
^XXII, xvi, 17-18. and other works edited or com-
' Published at Venice (Aldine), posed by Marsilius Ficinus. See
320
MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Neo
Platonic account of magic bor- rowed by Christians.
by name in the Latin text. Proclus states that the priests of old built up their sacred science by observing the sym- pathy 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 dis- covered how to bring down divine virtue to this lower world by the force of likeness which binds things together. Pro- clus 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 front e) vanish suddenly at the sight of a cock un- less 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 in- voked. 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."
Despite the writings of Porphyry and other Neo-Platon- ists 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, es- pecially of Porphyry's Letter to Anebo. Eusebius in his Praeparatio Evangelica -^ made large extracts from it on these themes and also from Porphyry's work on the Chal- dean oracles. Augustine in The City of God ^ accepted Por-
Pars II, Apologetica, Praep. Evang., IV, 22; V, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14; VI, I, 4; XIV, 10 (Migne, Patro- logia Gracca, vol. 21).
also Prodi Opera, ed. Cousin, Paris, 1820-1827, III, 278; and Kroll, Analecta Graeca, Greiss- wald, 1901, where a Greek trans- lation accompanies the Latin text. ^ Euscbii Caesariemis Opera,
*X, 9-10.
XI NEO-PLATONISM 321
phyry as an authority on the subjects of theurgy and magic. On the other hand, we do not find the Christian writers re- peating the attitude of Plotinus that the Hfe of reason is alone free from magic, except as they substitute the word "Christianity" for "the Hfe of reason."
The Neo-Platonists showed some interest in alchemy Neo- as well as in theurgy and astrology. Berthelot published in ^^^j his Collection dcs Alchimistes Grecs "a little tract of posi- alchemy, tive chemistry" which is extant under the name of lam- blichus ; and Proclus treated of the relations between the metals and planets and the generation of the metals under the influence of the stars. ^ 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.
* Berthelot (1889), p. ix.