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It was a better tone which Porphyry adopted in his letter to Anebo
the Egyptian, in which, assuming the character of an inquirer
consulting him, he unmasks and explodes these sacrilegious arts. In
that letter, indeed, he repudiates all demons, whom he maintains to
be so foolish as to be attracted by the sacrificial vapors, and
therefore residing not in the ether, but in the air beneath the moon,
and indeed in the moon itself. Yet he has not the boldness to
attribute to all the demons all the deceptions and malicious and foolish
practices which justly move his indignation. For, though he
acknowledges that as a race demons are foolish, he so far accommodates
himself to popular ideas as to call some of them benignant demons. He
expresses surprise that sacrifices not only incline the gods, but also
compel and force them to do what men wish; and he is at a loss to
understand how the sun and moon, and other visible celestial bodies,
for bodies he does not doubt that they are, are considered gods, if
the gods are distinguished from the demons by their incorporeality;
also, if they are gods, how some are called beneficent and others
hurtful, and how they, being corporeal, are numbered with the gods,
who are incorporeal. He inquires further, and still as one in doubt,
whether diviners and wonderworkers are men of unusually powerful souls,
or whether the power to do these things is communicated by spirits from
without. He inclines to the latter opinion, on the ground that it is
by the use of stones and herbs that they lay spells on people, and open
closed doors, and do similar wonders. And on this account, he says,
some suppose that there is a race of beings whose property it is to
listen to men, a race deceitful, full of contrivances, capable of
assuming all forms, simulating gods, demons, and dead men, and that
it is this race which bring about all these things which have the
appearance of good or evil, but that what is really good they never
help us in, and are indeed unacquainted with, for they make wickedness
easy, but throw obstacles in the path of those who eagerly follow
virtue; and that they are filled with pride and rashness, delight in
sacrificial odors, are taken with flattery. These and the other
characteristics of this race of deceitful and malicious spirits, who
come into the souls of men and delude their senses, both in sleep and
waking, he describes not as things of which he is himself convinced,
but only with so much suspicion and doubt as to cause him to speak of
them as commonly received opinions. We should sympathize with this
great philosopher in the difficulty he experienced in acquainting
himself with and confidently assailing the whole fraternity of devils,
which any Christian old woman would unhesitatingly describe and most
unreservedly detest. Perhaps, however, he shrank from offending
Anebo, to whom he was writing, himself the most eminent patron of
these mysteries, or the others who marvelled at these magical feats as
divine works, and closely allied to the worship of the gods.
However, he pursues this subject, and, still in the character of an
inquirer, mentions some things which no sober judgment could attribute
to any but malicious and deceitful powers. He asks why, after the
better class of spirits have been invoked, the worse should be
commanded to perform the wicked desires of men; why they do not hear a
man who has just left a woman's embrace, while they themselves make no
scruple of tempting, men to incest and adultery; why their priests are
commanded to abstain from animal food for fear of being polluted by the
corporeal exhalations, while they themselves are attracted by the fumes
of sacrifices and other exhalations; why the initiated are forbidden to
touch a dead body, while their mysteries are celebrated almost entirely
by means of dead bodies; why it is that a man addicted to any vice
should utter threats, not to a demon or to the soul of a dead man, but
to the sun and moon, or some of the heavenly bodies, which he
intimidates by imaginary terrors, that he may wring from them a real
boon, for he threatens that he will demolish the sky, and such like
impossibilities, that those gods, being alarmed, like silly
children, with imaginary and absurd threats, may do what they are
ordered. Porphyry further relates that a man, Chaeremon, profoundly
versed in these sacred or rather sacrilegious mysteries, had written
that the famous Egyptian mysteries of Isis and her husband Osiris had
very great influence with the gods to compel them to do what they were
ordered, when he who used the spells threatened to divulge or do away
with these mysteries, and cried with a threatening voice that he would
scatter the members of Osiris if they neglected his orders. Not
without reason is Porphyry surprised that a man should utter such wild
and empty threats against the gods, not against gods of no account,
but against the heavenly gods, and those that shine with sidereal
light, and that these threats should be effectual to constrain them
with resistless power, and alarm them so that they fulfill his wishes.
Not without reason does he, in the character of an inquirer into the
reasons of these surprising things, give it to be understood that they
are done by that race of spirits which he previously described as if
quoting other people's opinions, spirits who deceive not, as he
said, by nature, but by their own corruption, and who simulate gods
and dead men, but not, as he said, demons for demons they really
are. As to his idea that by means of herbs, and stones, and
animals, and certain incantations and noises, and drawings, sometimes
fanciful, and sometimes copied from the motions of the heavenly
bodies, men create upon earth powers capable of bringing about various
results, all that is only the mystification which these demons practise
on those who are subject to them, for the sake of furnishing themselves
with merriment at the expense of their dupes. Either, then,
Porphyry was sincere in his doubts and inquiries, and mentioned these
things to demonstrate and put beyond question that they were the work,
not of powers which aid us in obtaining life, but of deceitful demons;
or, to take a more favorable view of the philosopher, he adopted this
method with the Egyptian who was wedded to these errors, and was proud
of them, that he might not offend him by assuming the attitude of a
teacher, nor discompose his mind by the altercation of a professed
assailant, but, by assuming the character of an inquirer, and the
humble attitude of one who was anxious to learn, might turn his
attention to these matters, and show how worthy they are to be despised
and relinquished. Towards the conclusion of his letter, he requests
Anebo to inform him what the Egyptian wisdom indicates as the way to
blessedness. But as to those who hold intercourse with the gods, and
pester them only for the sake of finding a runaway slave, or acquiring
property, or making a bargain of a marriage, or such things, he
declares that their pretensions to wisdom are vain. He adds that these
same gods, even granting that on other points their utterances were
true, were yet so ill-advised and unsatisfactory in their disclosures
about blessedness, that they cannot be either gods or good demons, but
are either that spirit who is called the deceiver, or mere fictions of
the imagination.
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