Theurgia
Notes to Chapter 1
1. Porphyry, it is well known, was a distinguished scholar, and the foremost writer in the later Platonic School. He was a native of Tyre, and his name Molech, or King, was rendered by Longinus into Porphurios, denoting the royal purple, as a proper equivalent. He was a disciple of Plotinus, who had broadened the field of philosophic study till it included the "Wisdom of the East." In personal habits he followed the Pythagorean discipline. He was a severe critic of the Gnostic beliefs then current, and he evidently included with them also the new Christian faith. His mysticism was spiritual and contemplative, and he regarded the ceremonial rites of the Egyptian theurgy with distrust. He favored Mithraism, which prevailed in Asia, while Iamblichus belonged rather to the cult of Serapis, which was the State religion of Egypt.
Of Anebo we know little. He is addressed as an Egyptian priest, and his name is that of Anabu or Anubis, the Egyptian psyxhopompos and patron of sacred literature. He was a "prophet" hen niter or servant of divinity, and expounder of the oracles: and Porphyry himself an "epoptes" or initiated person, asks him accordingly to explain the Egyptian theosophic doctrines respecting the divine beings, rites and religious faith.
2. The Theosophers were regarded as learned in the arcane
knowledge, and especially in Theurgy. Iamblichus appears to have adopted these
Rites and usages from the Egyptian worship, including with them a philosophic
groundwork from the Platonic doctrines.
3. The use of images and emblems of a sacred character to typify
divine power and energy is universal. Somewhat of the divine was supposed to
inhere in them. The "images" and asheras or "groves" mentioned in the
Bible were of this character. So was the "idol in a grove," made by Queen
Maachah, as well as the simulacrums which, as Herodotus states, the Egyptian
women carried at the festivals.
4. Compare Gospel according to Matthew, XI, 12. "From the days of John the Baptist till now, the kingdom of heaven is forced, and they who are violent seize it."
5. Xenokrates, who was a disciple of Plato, himself taught
these doctrines. He considered the heavens as divine and that the substance of
the divine nature was mind pure and absolute. He also described the stars as
"visible divinities." The dæmons were depicted as of a psychic nature,
subordinate to that of the gods, and therefore subject to emotion and
perturbation like human beings, while at the same time sharing in a degree in
the power and intelligence of the gods.
6. Greek, the mind or "rational soul," the essence or principle
of intelligence which transcends the understanding or reasoning faculty, and is
capable of knowing truth intuitively and instinctively from being itself of
divine origin.
7. Here Porphyry has given an ancient classification of
spiritual beings into four orders, the gods, dæmons or guardians, the
heroes or half-gods, and souls. There were other distinctions in the Eastern
countries, and we find Abammon, the Teacher, adding to these the archangels,
angels, and archons of both the higher and lower nature. These were named in
several of the Gnostic categories that were extant at that period. "We have no
conflict with blood and flesh," says the Christian apostle, "but with archonates,
authorities, the world-rulers of this dark region, and spiritual forces of evil
in the upper heavens."
8. By "essence" is signified the underlying principle of being;
by "power" the intermediate agency; and by "energy" the operative faculty which
enables actual results.
9. This inquiry in regard to the apparitions which the candidates beheld at the initiation is made plainer by Proclus: "In the most sacred stages of the Perfective Rites," says he, "before the gods come into view, there appear intrusive figures of dæmons of the Underworld, to draw away the attention of the candidate from the spotless Good to the gross and material." It may be pertinent to add that in the several Grottoes or Halls of Initiation there was machinery ingeniously constructed for the purpose of representing divine and other personages. See The Epicurean, by Thomas Moore, and The Great Dionysiak Myth, by Robert Brown, Jr., VI, 2, 3.
10. "I do not see any sin in the world," says George Sand, "But I see a great deal of ignorance."
12. Goeteia (goetia), or "black magic."
13. The agurtes or begging priest generally belonged to the worship of Rhea or Cybele, the Mother. He is frequently depicted in a most unfavorable light. Apuleius speaks of a company of these emasculate priests in the eighth book of the Metamorphoses. They are also described in the Republic of Plato: "Agurtæ and Mantics frequent the houses of the rich and persuade them that they possess a power granted by the gods to expiate, by sacrifices and chants any unjust act that has been committed and that they induce the gods by blandishments and magic rites to help them. They collected money in this way, and they also followed the selling of nostrums and telling of fortunes."
15. Greek, an epopt, seer, or beholder; a person admitted to the higher degree of initiation. "The Perfective Rite leads the way as the muesis or mystic initiation," says Proclus, "and after that is the epopteia or beholding." Theôn describes it as three degrees -- "the Purification, Initiation, and Beholding of the Divine Vision." Mr. Robert Brown, Jr., explains the last of these very fully. "This is the Autopsia or Personal Inspection, the Crown of Mysteries, the Epopteia or Divine Beholding, and he becomes an Epoptes or Contemplator." (Great Dionysiak Myth, VI, 2, 3.)
As the Autoptic Visions are the principal topic in this work, the term "Beholder" is adopted uniformly for several words of the same import.
17. Greek, hulé; a term first adopted by Aristotle to
signify the objective, negative or passive element upon which the Creative
energy operates. Plato named it the "receptacle," as containing the creative
energy and making it effective.
18. Plutarch comments somewhat severely upon this mode of
interpretation. In his treatise On Isis and Osiris he remarks that
some individuals do not scruple to say that Osiris is the Sun, Isis no other
than the Moon, and that Typhon is fire, or drouth, or the Ocean. But he adds in
rebuttal: "No one can rationally imagine that these objects can be gods in
themselves; for nothing can be a god that is either without soul, or under the
power of natural objects." He also remarks that "there is an excellent saying
among philosophers, that they who have not learned the true sense of words will
also mistake in the things that are meant."
19. Greek, oikoresmotys: Hebrew, Baal Zebul. In astrology a "house" is a twelfth part of the sky as marked out for the purpose of horoscopes. Every sign of the Zodiac thus had a "house," which a planet or planetary genius was considered as occupying, and thence ruling the days and events of the month to which it belonged.
20. Compare First Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians, V, 23: "Spirit and soul and body."
Notes to Chapter 2
1. Hermes is here the same as the Egyptian divinity, Thoth or Tahuti, the god
of learning and medicine. He was regarded as the Scribe or recorder who
registered the actions of the dead and living, so that they "were judged out of
those things which were written in the books." He was also the revealer of the
divine will to men. His name Tahuti signifies "thrice great" or "very
great," or Trismegistos, Greek.
2. The priests in Egypt consisted of many orders, including those who performed
the Rites, the learned profession which included prophets, philosophers, poets,
authors, physicians, artists, master mechanics, and also embalmers of the dead.
3. This form of expression extends through this entire book. Though hardly
familiar to us, it was formerly common in philosophic writings. The gods being
spiritual essences, it was very properly considered that their worshipers would
participate in their substance as we partake of the air that we inhale. In this
way their powers and virtues were supposed to be imparted to the recipients.
This treatise accordingly mentions the gifts received by the persons initiated
at the telestic or Theurgic Rites, as a participating of the gods. The fact that
they represent or personify qualities rather than individualities makes this
mode of speaking eminently proper.
4. In archaic periods, the worship and literature of every people was exclusive.
Every repast being accompanied by religious ceremonies, the Egyptians would not
eat with foreigners. Ashmes II broke through this restriction and made treaties
of friendship and commerce with several Grecian and Ionian States. By his
command, and at the instance of Polykrates of Samos, a tyrant-king, Pythagoras
was admitted to instruction at the temples, and formally initiated into the
sacerdotal caste. After the Persian conquest others resorted to Egypt for
similar purposes; among them Plato, Demokritos, Archimedes, Chrysippos,
Euripides.
5. It is evident that there was a Gnosis, or Sacred Doctrine common to the religions of the principal countries, and that its focus was at Babylon. Compare Jeremiah LI. 7 and Revelation XVII. Iamblichus lived chiefly at Khalkis In Syria, and was familiar with the magi and learned men of Persia and Assyria. Hence as Abammon he refers the Gnosis to that region.
6. The Stellae, Pillars or Tablets of Thoth, appear to be little else than a figurative expression for the sacred learning in possession of the Sacerdotal Caste in Egypt. When we call to mind that the Pyramids in that country, before their spoilation, were cased all over with tablets of stone on which hieroglyphic writing was engraved, we shall the better apprehend the significance of the allusion of Abammon.
7. Greek, ergatheia divine works or performances; the exhibitions at
the Mystic Rites. As these were dramatic representations to prefigure
experiences of a spiritual character, we substitute the term "drama" as
more likely to afford a clearer conception of the meaning. Element designated
the Eleusinic "drama."
8. Mr. Gale, editor of the Greek text of this work as published at Oxford, was
of the opinion that the reading of the original was corrupt, and suggested an
emendation which may be rendered as follows: "It is impossible to explain by
mere words." This would be in harmony with the statement in the Second Pauline
Epistle to the Corinthian believers: "He was carried suddenly to paradise and
heard things ineffable which it is not permitted to a human being to utter
familiarly."
9. Plato and his disciples employ the principle or being to denote the Absolute Divinity; also the phrase ontws on real being or that which really is or has being, as contrasted with the "genesis" or objective existence.
10. It was the practice of the philosophers to make use of abstract terms to represent the Supreme and Absolute. Of this character are to agaqon the Good; to alhqes the True, o eis the One.
11. Power and energy are thus distinguished from their result. Damaskios remarks that "where there is not otherness, there will be no knowing. A union on conjunction, as of one to another, is superior to knowledge." Plato taught, says Professor Cooker, that man longs for the good, and bears witness by his restlessness and disquietude; that he instinctively desires it, and that he can find no rest and satisfaction in anything apart from the knowledge and participation of the Supreme Absolute Good.
12. The Chaldaean Oracles quoted by Damaskios declare that "the prolific fountain of souls is encompassed by the two Minds." He adds that "the fiery signals which draw down the ripe ones are in God," which Simplikios explains: "The Unbodied ones are the supreme Mind and God being Source and Cause."
13. Damaskios described the "dæmons" as tutelary spirits of a nature essentially divine. They were said to have charge of the oracles and worldly affairs generally. The "heroes" or demigods were a lower race in the order of emanation. The term denotes the son of a divinity, with a human parent. Uncontaminated souls are such as are not impure from the attraction of the genesis or domain of phenomenal existence.
14. The Platonic philosophers before Iamblichus taught that the many gods are the "outshinings" or emanations of the one Superessential Deity and not substances complete of themselves. The Ancient Sadducees are said to have held a similar opinion, not denying the actual existence of angels and spirits, but that they existed permanently by inherent energy. The same sentiment appears in the ninety-fifth (ninety-sixth) Psalm. The Chaldaean Oracle, however, declared that "Not from the eternal source did anything run forth incomplete."
15. Plato defines essence as that which has "real being," and describes it as "colorless, formless, and intangible, visible only to the mind or higher reason that guides the soul."
16. Plato bases upon this fact the immortality of the soul. The soul originates its own action and receptivity by volition. This volition is self-motion, and is that quality of moral freedom which has placed human beings above and apart from the animal tribes.
17. In the Assyrian or Chaldaean Plan of Divine Orders, the following are instanced by Damaskios: 1. The Intellectible Gods. 2. The Hyparchs or superior archons. 3. The Archons. 4. The Archangels. 5. The Azoni or unclassified who belong to no defined jurisdiction. 6. Local Genii. This arrangement is hinted at in Part VIII, § 2.
18. This is the common dogma of every ancient faith. In the Hindu category, the Brahman is the Good which is beyond essence and absolute, while Brahmá is identical with essence. The Parsis [Zoroastrians] acknowledge Zurvan, the Unlimited, and Ahura Mazda, the Divine Creator. The Egyptian priests worshipped Amun, the hidden One, and Ptah, the Demiurgos or Architect of the Universe.
19. Iamblichus is generally regarded as here endeavoring to reconcile the apparent discrepancy between Plato and Aristotle—the latter described the soul as immovable, and Plato as self-moving, in which statement he refers to operation and not to essence. Syrianos explains that the soul is self-moving because it is set in motion from itself and certainly not by an agent inferior to itself. Proclus adds that the soul is self-moved in respect to the body and things of sense which plainly are set in motion from without themselves.
20. The gods above and the souls below, angels, dæmons and demigods.
21. This distinction of principles is noted in the Chaldaean Oracles. Pythagoras indicates the same by the terms monad, duad, triad; Plato by peras, apeiron, and mikton; Damaskios by the One, the many, and the union. Another version of the Oracles in place of "Substance" has Father, and for "energy" Mind or Reason.
Notes to Chapter 3
1. The Chaldaean Oracles also recognize this twofold mind. The one, the Pure Reason or Intelligence, was placed over the first Triad. "The Mind of the Father named all things in threes, and governed them all by Mind." This mind they considered as sole, unparticipating, and essential. The other was described as participant and divisible into parts or qualities.
2. The Prytanis of Athens were fifty in number, and were selected from the
Boulé or Senate. Socrates, at the age of sixty, was chosen to that dignity.
3. The Chaldaean Theology did not unequivocally describe all the gods as
"unbound." The seven cosmokrators, or rulers of the world, the lords of the
zodiacal houses and the cosmic gods assigned to regions of the world, were bound
to their respective jurisdictions.
4. The pre-existence of the soul in the eternal world, before becoming involved in the genesis and conditions of the earth-life, was generally believed. Even after being set free at death, it was supposed to be, after a period of less or greater length, again attracted back to the mundane sphere. Plato illustrates this by the Vision of Eros in the Republic. The choice of the earthly condition is made by the soul itself, and very generally it differs from what it had been in the preceding term of life in the world. "The cause is in him who makes the choice, and the divinity is without blame in the matter." Eros adds that after the souls had chosen their new lives according as they drew the lots, they all went in their order to Lachesis, and she gave to every one the dæmon that he had chosen, and sent the dæmon along with him to be the guardian genius of his life, and the accomplisher of the fate which he had chosen. Then he was born anew into the earth.
5. The cause or incentive for the coming of the soul into generated life is variously explained by different writers. According to Plotinus, the universal soul does not come to a body as the body may come to it, nor does the body contain the soul, but is contained by it. Simplikios accepted the statement of Iamblichus, that "the soul projects certain lives for itself."
6. The stars and planets were regarded as abodes or receptacles of souls.
7. Plato affirms this in the Epinomis. "It is Heaven that we should
honor," says he; "it is the cause of all benefits to us." Abammon, doubtless,
alludes to Ra, of the Egyptian Pantheon, who was regarded as the source of
light, and also as being the whole heaven united as one eikon and personality.
8. Proclus reiterates this declaration, so often insisted upon, that the
superior nature and essence can receive nothing from one that is inferior.
9. Intelligent readers will understand from what has been said, that as the gods
are spiritual essences, the partaking of them, or, in other words, of their
irradiation, is analogous to the partaking of light. The luminance itself is in
no way affected, but the partaker is filled and pervaded by it.
10. This is the Theurgic Rite. "This Theurgy," says Thomas Taylor, "is,
doubtless, the same as the 'Magic of Zoroaster,' which was no 'Black art,' but a
peculiar mode of worship."
11. The soul was called by Damaskios, our last echo of Divinity. In the mundane region it was considered as not a whole and united essence, but as divided into qualities and traits of character.
12. Plotinus, using the comparison that the workman does not contract the
imperfections of his tools, remarks that it is not necessary that the soul shall
be itself affected by the conditions of the body. It simply uses the body as its
instrument: It is incorporeal, and hence the passions and susceptibilities of
the body do not penetrate into its substance, but only into its powers and
energies.
13. Proclus illustrates this by the analogy of a man viewing his own image in a
stream of water. He is unchanged in his own person and individuality, but the
image exhibits great perturbation. So the soul contemplates its own image as
reflected in the body, and though it is itself impassible and unaffected, it may
be perplexed by the incidental disturbances.
14. Greek, ulg, wood, rubbish; the negative or inert
quality called matter, from which natural objects proceed. Aristotle first
adopted the term. Plato, unable to conceive of matter as substance per se,
made use of terms signifying the "nurse" and the "receptacle" or passive force.
The term "matter" is from materia, the mother-principle. The phrase
"realm of matter" is adopted here, as the term implies a department in the
universe, and not simply matter itself.
Notes to Chapter 4
1. Symbols constituted a prominent feature in the ancient religious worship.
They were undoubtedly to a large extent fetishes, there being a measure of the
essence and operation of the deity supposed to exist in them. The Egyptian, and
indeed the whole Oriental worship consisted of them, and even at the present
time, there is no ritual that is without them. But then, human language is made
up of symbols and representative sounds.
2. This is distinctly denied in Part V, Chapter VI.
3. See Part V, Chapters II and IV.
4. The custom here described was universal in ancient times, and it is still found in parts of India. Its remains also exist in architecture and ornamentation. In the worship of the Ashera and Venus of Eryx, and of the Great Mother in Syria and Western Asia, the observances were carried to greater extremes. King Asa of Judea is said to have deposed his mother, Maacha, from royal dignity for her participation—"because she made a phallos to an Ashera," I Kings XV: XIII. It has been generally believed that the Festivals and Initiatory, or Perfective Rites, of the different countries, included the same feature, as indeed, is here admitted. It should be borne in mind, however, before any hasty judgment, that the different faiths had their two sides, like the right or the left, and that worshippers regarded them and took part in them according to their inherent disposition. Thus, in India, there are the Asceticsiva-worshippers, and the Saktas, to this day. In this way the Mysteries presented themes for the highest veneration, as well as phases that are esteemed as gross and lascivious. Every curious person, therefore, sees in them what he has eyes to see, and is often blind to the rest.
5. Greek, kalwn from kalon, good, beauty, moral virtue, excellence. Mr. M. W. Hazeltine, in the New York Sun, remarks upon this apparent confounding of moral with physical beauty, which this word exhibits, that "the ancients had not that conception which forms the basis and aim of Æsthetics in our time. To a Greek, if a thing was beautiful it was good, and if it was good it was beautiful; that, at least, was the prevailing attitude of the Hellenic mind."
6. These opinions were anciently entertained, the universe itself being regarded not as a fabric but as a birth, a creation or genesis, and evolution. But the philosophers generally disapproved of the doleful rites and immodest speech. Plutarch enumerates the various practices, such as the eating of raw flesh, the days of fasting and mourning for the slain divinity, (Matthew XI, 16; Amos VIII, 10) and the uttering of filthy and unseemly language. He explains that they were "not in honor of the gods, but rather to avert, mollify and appease the wrath of evil dæmons." The Emperor Julian, however, forbade the using of words that should not be spoken or heard.
7. "This doctrine is so rational," says Mr. Thomas Taylor, "that it can never be objected to by any but quacks in philosophy and religion. For as he is nothing more than a quack in medicine who endeavours to remove a latent bodily disease before he has called it forth externally, and by this means diminished its fury, so he is nothing more than a pretender in philosophy, who attempts to remove the passions by violent repression, instead of moderate compliance and gentle persuasion."
8. By the genesis or generation, Plutarch explains Plato to mean "only that
substance or underlying principle which is subject to change and motion, placed
between the forming cause and the thing formed, transmitting hither those shapes
and figures which have been contrived and modelled" in the eternal world. Hence
it means more than mere procreating, it is no less than transition from eternity
where the soul is native, into the region of time and space, where it is only a
sojourner.
9. The Library of Alexandria bore the inscription of "Remedies for the Soul."
A similar term is said to have been placed over the collection of Papyri in the
"House of Seti" at Thebes, in Egypt.
10. Plato describes this chorus in the Phaidros. "Divine beauty was
then splendid to the view," says he, "when we, in company with Zeus, and others
with other gods, beheld together with the Blessed Chorus, the divine Spectacle
and were initiated into the Perfective Rites, which are rightly called most
happy. Being ourselves entire and unaffected by the evils which await us in the
Aftertime, we took part in the Orgiac Drama, and having become both Mystics and
Beholders (mystæ and epoptæ) we beheld in the pure light, apparitions that were
complete, unique, calm, and felicitous -- being ourselves pure from earthly
contamination and not encompassed in this investiture which we now call 'Body'
and by which we are carried about, fastened like an oyster to his shell."
11. Socrates in his last discourse remarks that "While we live we shall approach
nearest to the superior knowledge if we hold no partnership with the body,
except what absolute necessity requires, and do not permit ourselves to be
tainted by its nature, but keep ourselves uncontaminated by it till God himself
shall release us." This is what a later poet has portrayed as living above while
in the world.
12. The dramas or performances of the Mystic or Theurgic
Rites and their ulterior significance are here denoted—the experiences of
the Soul and its return to the Eternal World, as it enters into the
conditions of worldly existence. The Egyptian "Book of the Dead" treats of
the same matters.
13. The histrionic scenes and ceremonies which were exhibited to the
Beholders of the Rites.
14. The Chaldaean Oracles reiterate this sentiment.
"The soul of articulate-speaking men will in some way bring God into itself.
"holding fellowship with nothing mortal, it is all intoxicated with God."
15. This is explained by the hierophant in Moore's romance, The Epicurean. The aim of the initiation and "blessed spectacle" is thus set forth; "to retrieve the ruin of the blessed soul, to clear away from around her the clouds of earth, and, restoring her lost wings, facilitate her return to Heaven—such is the great task of our religion, and such the triumph of those Divine Mysteries, in whose inmost depths the life and essence of our holy religion is treasured."
16. The names of the gods in the ancient Skythic and Euphratean languages were believed to possess some inherent virtue as well as charm. Hence the Oracle gives the injunction:
"Never change the barbarous names;
For among them are terms God-given,
That have ineffable virtue in Sacred Rites."
17. Epistle of Peter II, 1, 4, "That by these ye might be partakers or communicants of the divine nature."
18. Plato, Theaetetus. "It is necessary that there should be always something opposed to God; and it cannot be seated among the gods, but of necessity hovers around this mortal nature and this region of earth."
19. It was held that the vital emanation from the blood of the sacrificed animals was invigorating to spiritual beings (Odyssey, Book XI). But Plutarch is severe about it. He affirms that the murderous and lascivious customs at the festivals only served "to avert and appease the malice of certain evil spirits, or to satisfy the violent and raging lusts of some that either could not, or would not, enjoy with their bodies or by their bodies." Such, he declared, bring plagues and famine into towns, raise wars and dissensions, till such time as they obtain and enjoy that which they love.
20. Proclus affirms that the Divine Necessity was always coincident with the Divine Will and Purpose. Plato explains it as a habitude of the Efficient Cause or Author of Existence and Matter. Thus, also, there is a necessity in the thoughts and actions of human beings, yet the soul is self-moving, and so is its own "Cause."
21. Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, and the Stoics generally held that the dæmons were beings of a psychic, rather than of an actual divine nature. Plutarch ascribed to them only a limited term of existence.
22. It may be observed in this treatise that the divine personalities are
very commonly indicated by terms in the neuter gender. The same is true in other
instances. Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson was once in conversation with the Rev. Cyrus Bartol, the Transcendentalist clergyman of Boston. The latter mentioned the
Supreme Being, using the masculine pronoun. "Why not say 'It,'" Mr. Emerson
asked?
23. Whatever we keep most closely in thought, whether with
favour or aversion, we
gradually become like in character. Paul wrote like a philosopher to the
Corinthian disciples. After referring to Moses with a veil, he adds "We all with
face unvailed, looking on the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, are transformed
from glory to glory into the same image from his spirit."
24. In the Theurgic discipline of neophytes, there were several stages to be surmounted before arriving at the degree denominated "Perfection" or purity. We may trace them in the chapter, as follows: 1. The coming to the divinity who is supplicated. 2. The assimilation into the likeness of the divinity, and 3. Perfection. In the first of these degrees the candidate was styled Most Excellent; in the second, Divine; and in the third, Theopator; as now being fully identified with Deity itself.
25. Origen affirmed that the angels have bodies, and that God alone is a spiritual essence, without body. Hence the clause in the Confession, "without body, parts, or passions."
26. Plato has explained this very similarity in the
Timaeus. "When each
of the stars necessary for the constitution of Time had obtained a motion
adapted to its condition, and their bodies bound or encompassed by living
chains, had become beings possessing life, and had learned their prescribed
duty, they pursued their course."
27. That the Supreme Being is One and Absolute is the leading principle of every
ancient faith, however bizarre and polytheistic it may be esteemed. Amon, the
tutelar god of Thebes in Egypt who may have been in the mind of Abammon when
writing was denominated: "The One, the Maker of all that have being." The
Mysteries of Ser-Apis (Serapis) were favoured by Iamblichus, and the Rites of
Mithras by Porphyry.
28. Plato makes use or an expression signifying "not subject to decay or disease;" Aristotle, "not being increased or changed."
29. These are the astral globes which these divinities, being themselves in
reality spiritual essences, were supposed to encompass and permeate.
30. In this sentence the feminine and masculine relation, as typifying the
procedure of the divine operation, is very distinctly set forth. The phusis
and genesis actually signify as much. In this treatise, as in other
philosophic works, genesis signifies the descending of the creative
energy from the sempersistent world into the sphere and condition of created
existence, and phusis, or nature, is the female or productive agency, by
which the transition is accomplished. The sentence admits accordingly to be also
rendered as follows: "Others go forth from them into the womb of the world (Kosmos),
even the world itself, and likewise descend in due order through the whole
generative process, continuing, without hindrance, as far as the incomplete
races."
31. Abammon follows the Egyptian category and adopts the Grecian names for divinities supposed to be nearest in character and quality. In this description, Kronos or Saturn represents the centripetal and Aries or Mars the centrifugal force.
32. It would be easy to imagine this as happening in the case or the hundred and more asteroids, that exist in the space between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter, or of the comets that so often come rushing through space.
33. See Chapter VIII.
34. Damaskios remarks that "the Divine Intelligence which encompasses all
things after the manner of models, brings them forth from itself as likenesses."
35. That is, all are brought back to their source and rooted in their cause.
36. In other words, this atman, or self, is at once all-receptive and all-procreative, as having the joint powers of procreation and production.
37. We are thus brought to the central principle of the ancient philosophy and worship; that the many divinities are in essence the One Sole Deity, and comprised in the Paternal Cause of the Universe. The Orphic Carmen in the same way inculcated that all the gods and both the sexes are included in the same Zeus. They are attributes, or qualities, of the One, personalities rather than individuals.
38. The older laws of the Athenians were called thesmá as being ordained by the gods, or rather the priests. The laws of Drako were thesmoi, those of Solon nomoi or regulations.
39. Damaskios remarks, that "we discourse after the manner of men respecting principles that are extolled as divine."
Notes to Chapter 5
1. Plato, Republic, X, Ch. 15. "This is the beginning of another period for men of mortal race. The dæmon will not receive you as having been allotted to him, but you will choose the dæmon; the cause is in him who makes the choice."
2. Scutellius enumerates nine classes of spiritual beings, namely: 1. Invisible Gods; 2. Visible Gods of the Sky; 3. Archangels; 4. Angels; 5. Dæmons; 6. Leaders; 7. Princes; 8. Heroes or Demi-gods; 9. Souls. Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians enumerates the following: 1. Princes; 2. Authorities; 3. Kosmokrators or princes of the Cosmos; 4. Spiritual essences in the super-celestial spheres. Damaskios enumerates six orders in the Chaldaean Categories as follows: 1. God that are purely mind; 2. The Gods subsisting before all subordinate dominion; 3. Rulers; 4. Archangels; 5. Divinities that are confined to no specific place or service; 6. Divinities or geniuses with specific duties.
3. These, the Kosmokrators, are supposed by Thomas Taylor to be the rulers of the planets. The Assyrians and Chaldaeans enumerated nine distinct orders—three Triads of three classes each. The Archangels correspond to the seven Amshaspands of the Zoroastrian category; and the archons of the sphere of Matter appear to have been often regarded as evil potencies. The ancients, however, did not always distinguish good and evil quite as the moderns with their ethical standards.
4. Proclus following Iamblichus gives this description: "In all the
Perfective Rites and Mysteries, the gods project many shapes of themselves, and
display many changing figures; there will be a formless luminance radiating from
them; then again it will be represented in a human form, and again it will go
into some different shape." Some of the figures were empousæ and not gods, and
excited alarm; others were attractive, and others encouraged.
5. The "Beholders," epopæ or seers, were the individuals engaged in being
initiated, or "perfected." We have preserved this term uniformly to avoid
confusing readers.
6. The Greek term "autoptic spirits," meaning those which appear at the "Autopsia," or Perfective Rite. Mr. Robert Brown, Jr., ably describes it. The candidates, or Beholders, having passed the preliminary discipline as Mystæ, are ushered into the Sekos, or chamber of Initiation. "Here, deeply excited and agitated by all they have gone through, ready to believe anything and everything, in that state of abstinence, which is, or is supposed to be, most favourable to the reception of supernatural displays, with their minds more or less affected by drugs and their whole being permeated with the impression and expectation of a revelation of the more than mortal, they were allowed to see. This is the Autopsia, or Personal inspection, the Crown of Mysteries, the Etopteia, or Divine Beholding, which was used as a synonym to express the highest earthly happiness, and he who enjoyed it became an Epoptes, or Contemplator, beyond which this world could afford him nothing."—Great Dionysiak Myth, VI, ii, 3. Compare also Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, XII, 2-4.
7. Greek, Tó apotelestikon, the perfective rite. The Romans termed the ceremonies "Initiations," as signifying the beginning of a new life, while the Greeks regarded it as denoting a completing of the Herculean labors of the Soul. The services were conducted after the form of a dramatic representation, and Clement styled them accordingly, "the Drama of the Mysteries." The ancient Theatre took its rise from these rites, as the Modern Theatre had its origin in the Mystery-Plays of the Monks in the Middle Ages. The Athenian Theatre was a Temple of Bacchus.
8. The Chaldaean Oracles describe these scenic displays in very similar terms:
"If thou invoked me often, thou wouldst behold what thou desirest:
For then the concave vault of heaven does not appear,
The stars shine not, the moonlight wastes away,
The earth no more stands still;
All things are to be seen by the flashes of the lightnings."
9. The Chaldaean Oracles disapprove of invoking those manifestations "Thou shalt not invoke the Autoptic Image of Being, for it is not proper for thee to see these things before the body is perfected, or initiated."
10. The divine essence was anciently described in every religion as fire, and so the "eternal fire" was preserved in temples and on altars, as its symbol. Hence, the Chaldaean Oracle commands: "When thou shalt behold the Very Holy Fire without form, shining in flashes down into the depths of the world, then listen to the Voice of the Fire." Zoroaster at the Altar and Moses on Mount Sinai (Deuteronomy IV, 4) are described as hearing the Voice of the Supreme Being from such a source.
11. Minutius Felix remarks that "the dæmons bear downward by heavy weight, and turn from God to material conditions." The Chaldaean Oracle also says: "When bewitching (magnetizing) souls they always draw them away from the Sacred Rites." Much that is considered spiritual, and even divine influence, is of this character.
12. The Chaldaean Oracles have this declaration: "From those descending from the Empyreal regions the soul obtains the soul-nourishing flower."
Notes to Chapter 6
1. "Sometimes," says Potter, "terrible apparitions astonished the trembling spectators" at the Perfective Rites. This was the case everywhere. In the Chaldaean Oracles mention is made of these direful creatures. They are called "dogs of the earth." "Thy vessel (the body) the chthonian beasts shall make their home." This implies obsession and evil influences from the spiritual world.
2. The Supreme elements, ákra stoixeía, are the signs of the Zodiac, which constituted an important feature in theurgy as allied to astrology.
3. Damaskios also declares that "a general distribution takes place from the One Origin of all things, and Plato calls this, the Truth."
4. Emanuel Swedenborg, in his Memoirs and Spiritual Diary, describes spirits of this character.
5. Greek, antofanaus deixews. Perhaps this refers to the fact also that fit the final vision witnessed at the Perfective Rite, or Autopsia, the Beholder was revealed to himself in the impression which it gave him. Certainly Plato and Alkibiades regarded it with different sentiments.
6. Professor Taylor Lewis defines phantasma as signifying an apparition. Chrysippos, the philosopher, gives the following meanings: phantasia, imagination which leads to contemplation of the Cause or origin; phantaston, something to impress the imagination; phantastikon, a fancy or vain impulse from the mind proceeding from nothing truly imaginable; phantasma, a phantom to which we are drawn by fanciful attraction. Liddell and Scott would define a phantasia as an opinion presented from sensation; phantaston, as something leading to such opinion; phantastikon, as the faculty of such presentation; and phantasma, as an image presented to the mind by an object.
7. Here Abammon makes a new departure in the New Platonic philosophy. Plotinus and Porphyry had taught a system of doctrine analogous to the later Persian scheme, with the Absolute One at the summit from whom proceeded by emanation, the Over-Mind, the Universal Soul, and Nature. To this Absolute, there might, by philosophic discipline, contemplation and ecstasy, be attained for brief periods, the enosis or intimate union. Iamblichus, however, seems to discard this doctrine with its theory of impassiveness, and to make theurgic or sacerdotal virtues the condition of excellence by which the divine part of the Soul exalts itself even above the Over-Mind, and becomes at one with the Absolute. Hence he inculcated the utility of religious rites and initiations as explained in the reply of Abammon. He was followed in this path by Eunapios, Syrianos, and by Proclus, the great light of the later philosophy.
Notes to Chapter 7
1. The Causes are to be understood to be divine beings. Plato and the Stoic philosophers regarded the art or faculty of divination as incited by a divine rapture or enthusiasm, and an imparting of divine knowledge to human beings. They also believed that there were divine dreams. Xenophanes, however, was a disbeliever, and Pythagoras rejected all forms of divination by sacrifices. Strato taught that the noëtic faculties are active in sleep. Plutarch explains that when the imaginative part of the soul and the divine efflux are in accord, there is a mantic inspiration. The body, he insists, is sometimes naturally endued with the faculty of divining; and in other cases, this faculty may he set in operation by external and artificial means.
Abammon, as will be noted, denies that the sex of the seer or ecstatic is an
essential in the technique of divination. The oracle at Delphi was served by
virgin attendants, and the shrines in other places by persons of some particular
age, and in a peculiar state of alienation produced by fasting, mesmeric
applications, anesthesia or other artificial means.
2. Aristotle imputed the divining faculty to a melancholic
temperament; others to an inhaling of certain vapors or gases, and others to a
variety of causes. Abammon in subsequent chapters treats of these. Plato
describes priests skilled in divining as "the interpreters of the divinity to
men."
3. We are reminded of Campbell's verse:
"Coming events cast their shadows before." The person whose faculties are acute thus perceives them. Plutarch defines the matter as follows: "The divining faculty when it has drawn itself farthest from the present, touches on that which is to come; and it withdraws itself from this by a certain disposition of body, by which that state is produced which we call Inspiration or Enthusiasm."
4. This is similar in many respects to the vision of the prophet Balaam (Numbers, XXIV, 15, 16) "Balaam the son of Beor saith—the man beholding what is good and true, saith: Hearing the oracular utterances of God, apprehending superior knowledge from the Most High—Beholding the vision of God in sleep, having his eyes unsealed."
5. Greek, noeros, the pure reason; spiritual; from noos, or Mind. It is the term usually rendered so in this treatise.
6. Nothing resembles death more than sleep," says
Xenophon. "In sleep the soul reveals her divine quality, and being then set free
from the body she beholds the future."
7. Physicians and others having the care of the sick have
been indebted to dreams for the discovery of many remedies. Such is the
testimony of Cicero, Diodorus, Plutarch and others. Intuitive suggestion also
prompts to the employing of the proper remedial measures.
8. Asclepius (or Asklepios or Æsculapius), the patron god of
the medical art, was called Oneiropompos or sender of dreams. There were
sleep-houses at his various temples, in which "incubation" or mesmerism was
employed. The dreams which were thus procured were interpreted by the prophets
or mantic priests, and the remedies suggested if found valuable became a part of
the pharmacopoeia. The names of Cheiron, Jason, Medeia, seem to refer to this
practice. Aristeides, in the reign of the Antonines, gives a very full account
of this matter.
9. Plutarch and Arrian state that when Alexander on his
return from India passed through Gedrosia, his army suffered from famine and
disease; The mortality was prodigious and it required all the energy of the king
to bring forward the survivors out of the trackless desert. We have no account
of the interposition of the divinity, but, after arriving in Karamania, an orgy
or festival of seven days was celebrated in his honour.
10. Aphutis or Aphytis was a city of the peninsula of
Pallene or Phlegra on the gulf of Saloniki. Pausanias and Plutarch tell the
story that Lysander, the King of Sparta, was warned by a dream to abandon his
purpose of investing the city and a temple to the god Amun was built and
dedicated.
11. This is probably an allusion to the mutilations
practiced at Rites like the orgies of the Great Mother. Similar suspensions of
sensibility are reported in cases of burning alive and the tortures inflicted
upon religious devotees. The enthusiasm or mental ecstasy overcomes the
corporeal sensation.
12. Greek, parakolonthéw to follow a subject. It
implies an understanding, together with a fixing of the attention till external
consciousness is lost sight of.
13. Kastabalis was a city in Kappadokia. In it was a temple
of Artemis or Anahita, whose priestesses or holy maids, it was affirmed, walked
with bare feet upon the snow and upon burning coals without harm.
14. M. Eugene Salverte in his work on the "Philosophy of Magic" remarks that in spite of their master's assertions to the contrary, "the enthusiastic disciples of Iamblichus affirmed that when he prayed he was raised to the height of ten cubits from the ground; and dupes to the same metaphor, although Christians, have had the simplicity to attribute a similar miracle to St. Clare and St. Francis of Assisi."
Calmet mentions "several instances of persons full of religion and piety, who, in the fervour of their visions, have been taken up into the air and remained there some time." He adds that he personally knew a man to whom this occurred. Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, it is said; "was raised up from the ground to the height of two feet, while his body shone like light." Savonarola, who was burned at the stake, one person declares, was seen to remain suspended at a considerable height from the floor of his dungeon. Superintendent Moeller of Freiburg testified that Anna Maria Fleischer was "raised in bed, with her whole body, head and feet to the height of nine ells and a half, so that it appeared as if she would have flown through the windows."
If the polarity of the body can be changed by the will, this would be a physical possibility.
15. This description presents a striking analogy to that given by John the Baptist in the Gospels, "He shall baptize or envelop you in a holy spirit and fire." (The words, "and fire," are interpolated.) "I have beheld the holy spirit descending as a dove from the sky, and it remained upon him."
16. Theophrastos, who became the teacher in the Lyceum at Athens after Aristotle, regarded enthusiasm as a disease.
17. Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno concur in the
statement that the soul is itself of a several-fold nature. The "immortal
principle" which proceeds from the Creator consists of the faculty of
intelligence, the epistêmê or overmind, and sound judgment. The "mortal part"
comprises the thumos or passionate, aggressive quality, and the epithumetic,
appetitive, or receptive nature.
18. Plato declares in the Timaeus that the faculty
of divining is active only when the understanding or reasoning faculty is in
abeyance, fettered by sleep or aliened by disease or the entheastic rapture.
Plutarch imputes its activity to a certain crasis or condition of body through
which it becomes separated from the consciousness of objects and matters that
are immediately present.
19. Abammon seems to clash with the modern dogma of
evolution except as associated with the hypothesis of the Rev. Dr. James
Martineau, that whatever is evolved or unwombed has been before involved.
20. Greek, mania, rage, madness, entheasm, religious excitement, or rapture. The term is used here to denote the rapture incident upon being possessed by a superior power. Plato remarks in the Phaedros: "There are two kinds: one arising from human diseases and the other by a digression from fixed habits." He subdivides the divine mania or entheasm into four kinds, and assigns the mantic or prophetic inspiration to Apollo, mystic inspiration to Dionysos, poetic inspiration to the Muses, and the passion of love to Aphrodite. This last, he declares to be the best of all enthusiasms and of the best origin, describing it as "the right hand of the divine mania, and the source of greatest blessing to us."
21. Some exhibition of this kind is described by the Apostle Paul in the first Epistle to the Corinthians. "If," says he, "the whole assembly come together to the same place and all prattle in tongues, and common men should come in, or unbelievers, will they not say that you are raving?" Hence he counsels that only two or three should speak in turn, and one interpret; but if nobody present is capable of this, they should keep silence, and speak only to themselves and to God: "for not of tumult is he a god, but of tranquillity." (Ovid; Fasti IV, "The attendants beat the brass, and the hoarse-sounding hides. Cymbals they strike in place of helmets, tambourines for the shields; the pipe yielded its Phrygian notes.")
There is evidently a deeper meaning in all this than is commonly apprehended.
22. The Korybantes are variously described. Their cult was
identified or closely allied to that of the Kabeirian divinities, and that of
the Great Mother. It was celebrated in the islands of the Aegean Sea and in
Phygia. Music, dancing, processions, and ecstatic frenzy were characteristics.
23. Sabazios, Sabaoth, or Sabbat, the god of the Planet
Saturn, was better known as Bacchus or Dionysos, and was also styled in Semitic
countries, Iao or Yava. His worship was more or less associated and identified
with that of the Great Mother, under various designations, and it was
characterized by phallephoric processions, dances, mourning for the slain
divinity, and the Watch Night. It came from Assyria as its peculiar symbols, the
ivy or kissos, the spotted robe or Nimr, and the Thyrso, indicate. The name
Zagreus the Kissos and nimr remind us of Kissaia or Asiatic Ethiopia, and the
Zagros mountains occupied by the Nimr. Assyria was called "the land of Nimrod."—Amos VIII.
24. Proclus declared that the choral songs of Olympus were adapted to produce ecstasy. Plato describes an audience in Ion, comparing it to a series of iron rings connected by a chain and moved by the lodestone: "Some hand from one Muse and some from another," he remarks, "some, for example, from Orpheus, others from Mussios, but the greater part are inspired by Homer and are held fast by him."
25. In these rites the worshippers danced, forming a
circle around the altar. See also I Kings, XVIII, 26. With the Korghantians,
this represented a guard about the Demiurgos or Creator; with the Kuretes, it
denoted a protecting of the divine maid Kora.
26. Servius remarks that the Sacred observances of Father
Liber, the Roman Bacchus, related to the purification of souls. This cleansing,
as here declared, was considered to be not only from contamination acquired by
coming into the conditions of physical existence, but also from guilt actually
incurred.
27. Mr. Thomas Taylor refers us to the treatise accredited to Plutarch, on the "Failure of the Oracles" in which this matter is explained at length. The faculty of divining, this author declares, is farthest withdrawn from this present condition by that idiosyncrasy of body which favours the development of the entheast condition. "The soul does not acquire the faculty of divining when clear of the body," he says, "for it has the same before, but is blinded by the commixture and confusion which it has with the body." Hence be argues, "we do not divest divination either of divine origin or of rationality, seeing that we allow it for its subject, the Human Soul, and for its instrument an aura or exhalation productive of the entheastic rapture."
28. Modern writers have conjectured that this exhalation was of the nature of nitrous protoxide. Such a deriving of prophetic inspiration from "laughing gas" has a resemblance to the concept that Emanuel Swedenborg acquired his illumination by drinking coffee, and is equally absurd.
29. Apollo and Dionysos Zagreus his hearth-mate were the divinities at Delphi.
30. The staff, rod, wand, sceptre, or baton, as the
symbol or authority, possesses the greatest antiquity. It appears in mythology
as the sceptre of Zeus charged with lightning, the caduceus of Hermes that
lulled to sleep, the staff of Asclepius with healing virtue, the narthex or
thyrsos of Bacchus, and the club of Heracles. Every Roman Senator carried a
wand. The rods of Moses and Aaron, the staff of the prophet, the wand of Kirkê
[Circe], the magic divining staff and the bishop's crosier belong in the same
category.
31. Branchidia or Didymea was situated near Milletus in
Ionia. The temple was very ancient. It was twice burned by the Persians. The
structure was of the Ionic order, but a straight road, which led from it to the
sea, was bordered on each side with statues on charis of a single block of stone
with the feet close together and the hands on the knees precisely as at the
avenues of the temples of Egypt. There was an Egyptian influence in Asia Minor
and the islands of the Levant in very ancient times.
32. The divinity here indicated belonged to the pantheon of Egypt. He was probably Imopht or Emeph the Asclepius of the Egyptians.
Notes to Chapter 8
1. Goethe indicates a magic power in certain marks or characters when he describes Mephistopheles as fastened inside the chamber by the pentagram:
"I must confess, my stepping o'er
Thy threshold a slight hindrance doth impede:
The Wizard's Foot doth me restrain."
2. Proclus explains that when initiatory ceremonies are taking place, as in spiritual manifestations generally, baser spirits will often assume the guise of the superior genii, and draw away souls that are not pure. Hence the Chaldean Oracles declare that it is not proper to participate in them till purity is attained. "They enchant the souls and lead them away." Proclus says again, "In the most sacred of the Perfective Rites, they say that the candidates first encounter the multiformed and many-shaped races which come to view before the gods are to be seen; but they go on to the Mystic Cave unswerving, and having been made secure by the Rites they receive the divine illumination without alloy into their bosoms, and being stripped, so to speak, they partake of the divine nature. This, I think," he adds, "is what takes place in the spectacular manifestations."
3. In all initiatory rites a probation takes place to test the fidelity and endurance of the candidates. The "Tortures" of the Mithraic initiations consisted of long fasting, exposure to the severity of the climate, and terrors of wild beasts and the execution of a capital sentence.
4. Greek, fantastikon (Phantasia, or imagination) is defined by Chrysippos and Plutarch as the faculty which reveals itself and its causes; phantastikon or fancy, the term here used, as a vain impulse of the mind with no real cause; phantaston as the imaginable, anything that may make an impression; phantasma, a phantom, an apparition.
5. The vehicle is called the "astral aura" by Paracelsus, and Kamarupa by Hindu sages.
6. Damaskios explains this operation: "There was a sacred woman who had a nature divinely endowed in a wonderful degree. Pouring pure water into a glass cup, she saw in the water in the cup the ideal appearance of things about to take place, and foretold from the view things that would occur. But," adds he, "of such an experiment, we ourselves are not ignorant."
7. When Julius Caesar was assassinated it was affirmed by the Augurs, that the event was foreshadowed by the absence of a head to the liver of the animal sacrificed that day; and on the morning of the murder of the Emperor Pertinax the victims were said one of them to lack a heart, and the other, a liver.
8. There are three modes of forecasting: prophecy, divination and guessing; and they are referred respectively to divinity, daemons and observation of the course of things. Daemons appear to he the same as the "angels" of the Judaean and Christian theology. "Both gods and daemons have a certain and unerring knowledge of things to come," says Proclus.
9. Various modes of divining were employed. We read that the patriarch Joseph divined with his cup (Genesis, xiv, 5): the Syrian ambassadors took the mode of reply from Ahab as a token (I Kings, xx, 33). The Skyths and other ancient peoples divined with rods of tamarisk. Laurel leaves were also used. The King of Babylon decided to lead his army against Jerusalem, after a divination with arrows (Ezekiel xxi, 21, 22). The lot was common; indeed it was supposed that the conditions of life in the earth were established by such allotment.
10. See chapter on Deceptive Divination.
11. Mr. Thomas Taylor adds this note: "God is all things causally, and is able to effect all things. He likewise does produce all things, yet not by himself alone, but in conjunction with those divine powers which continually germinate, as it were, from him, as from a perennial root. Not that he is in want of these powers to the efficacy of his productive energy, but the universe requires their cooperation, in order to the distinct subsistence of its various parts and different forms. For as the essence of the first cause, if it be lawful so to speak. is full of deity, his immediate energy must be deific, and his first progeny must be gods. But as he is ineffable and superessential, all things proceed from him ineffably and superessentially. For progressions are conformable to the characteristics of the natures from which they proceed. Hence the cooperative energy of his first progeny (the minor gods) is necessary to the evolution of things into effable, essential, and distinct subsistence. The supreme God, therefore, is alone worthy; but this is not to the exclusion of paying appropriate attention and honour to other powers that are subordinate to him, who largely participate of his divinity, and are more or less allied to him. For in reverencing and paying attention to these appropriately, we also attend to and reverence him. For that which we attend to, honour and esteem in them, is that alone which is of a deified nature, and is therefore a portion, as it were, of the ineffable principle of all things.
Mighty study and labour about these intermediate powers is necessary in order to our union with their ineffable cause. For as we are but the dregs of the rational nature, and the first principle of things is something so transcendent as to be even beyond essence, it is impossible that we should be united to him without media: viz., without the gods and their perpetual attendants, who are on this account, true saviours of souls. For in a union with the supreme deity our true salvation consists."
12. The sentiment here enforced is that no prayer or rite has any efficacy to attract a divine being, and so bring down God, but rather it exalts the worshipper to the Divinity. Proclus also says: "In the invocations and at the Autopsia, the divine essence seems after a manner to come down to us, when really we are extending ourselves to it instead."
13. PLUTARCH: Why the Oracles Cease to Give Answers. 39.—"The soul does not have the faculty of divining when clear of the body as from a cloud; but it is blinded by its commingling and confusion with the mortal nature."
14. Rev. JAMES MARTINEAU: Place of Mind in Nature.—"Surely nothing can be evolved that is not first involved. Evolution and prospection are inseparable conceptions. Go back as you will, and try to propel the movement from behind instead of drawing it from before, development in a definite direction toward the realization of a dominant scheme of ascending relations, is the sway of an over-ruling end."
15. "Amaletê" signifies carelessness, negligence; "Lethê" means the extinction of remembrances; ignorance is inability for real knowing. Plato in the "Republic," Book X, describes a vision in which the souls are seen in the act of selecting for themselves the quality of a new life in the earth. By the choice they make, their guardian daemon is allotted to them. Then they drink the water of Lethê "which no vessel contains" and forget all the past.
Irenaeus, cavilling at Plato, demanded how he knew all this; adding that if he knew part he ought to know all. He seems to have overlooked the fact of a mantic or supraconscious condition in which such things may be known as they are perceived, to an extent commensurate with the development of the intuitive faculty.
Notes to Chapter 9
1. Plutarch in his treatise on "Oracles" speaks of Hesiod limiting the soul of a daemon and the life of a demigod, and also represents Xenokrates as saying that the nature of daemons is endued with the passions and perturbations of the mortal nature and the force and power of the divine.
2. The goetic art or "black magic."
3. Ancient literature has preserved several incidents of this character. The tenth chapter of the book of "Daniel" throws considerable light upon the subject; and in the fifth chapter of the second book of the "Maccabees," an apparition of an army maneuvering in the sky is described. The newspapers abound with accounts of dreams in which events were represented as they afterward actually occurred. This would seem to indicate that there is a world of reality about us, other than the spectacular region that we contemplate, and that scenes taking, place here are copies of what has been enacted there already.
4. This process has again appeared in what is known as "materializing." It is explained as the producing of tile figure of an individual by surrounding it with material elements procured from the body of another person who is, during tile time, in a dormant and inanimate condition.
5. Pythagoras and the philosophers who adopted his views describe matter as the source of evil. This is an Oriental doctrine, and was doubtless carried to the West by teachers sent out for the purpose. The same notions have more or less pervaded opinion ever since, and given rise to the impression that so many seem to entertain that everything physical is intrinsically vile and therefore to be repressed so far as possible. But the sentiment given by Plato in "Theaetetus" would seem a more rational conception. "It is not possible that evil shall be destroyed," says Socrates, "for it is necessary that there should always be something contrary to good. Nor can it be seated among the gods, but of necessity moves round this mortal nature and this region. Wherefore we ought to endeavour to fly hence as quickly as possible. But this flying consists in resembling God as much as possible, and this resembling is the becoming just and holy with wisdom."
6. Both Galen and Hippocrates insisted that astral knowledge is essential for physicians; and Galen derided those physicians who denied the necessity for such knowledge. He went so far as to declare medical men who were ignorant of astral learning, homicides. All the medical schools of Christendom and the "Moslem" world formerly taught astrology, and Nicholas Culpepper, in his Herbal, is careful to assign to each medicinal plant its astral relations.
7. Origen treated of these idola or spectral figures as things in motion, but not beings really alive; apparitions approaching the nature, of phantoms.
8. It may perhaps be well to remark that the prince of daemons here named is probably not the same personification as Beel Zebul of the Gospels. That personage is styled in the Greek Testament, Baal Zeboul, the lord of the house; and in astrology it will be borne in mind that every one of the planetary houses had its own chief.
9. It was usual at the Eleusinian Initiations, and others, to have a minor observance for those who did not reach the temple soon enough for the regular proceedings. Probably irregularities might occur on such occasions, but had to be guarded against.
Notes to Chapter 10
1. Proclus enumerates three classes of the daemons: the more spiritual, the more rational, and the more unreasoning. The guides of Socrates and Plotinus were of the second of these. They are here described.
2. Charoneia is a district in Asia Minor, bordering on the river Meander. The name is from Charon, the supposed ferryman of disbodied souls across the river Styx in the Underworld. The caves, or, rather, little openings in the ground, emitted a sulphurous vapour, sometimes destructive to life. Pliny also mentions similar cavities at Italy, near Puteoli. They were supposed to lead to the realm of Hades.
3. These irrational spirits, so far as they contribute to perfecting individuals, are superior to us, though because of their irrationality they are inferior.
4. Real being, only is simple and unique; evil is always complex.
5. The fusis (phusis), or nature, is here
indicated as the maternal function of the world, by which the multiplicity of
created things are brought forth into existence.
6. The Anima Mundi, or Soul of the world.
7. Greek, filia, efws, neikos. The ancient verse
repeated this statement as follows:
"The race of Immortals was not till Eros mingled all together:
But when the elements were mixed with one another,
Heaven was produced, the ocean and earth and the imperishable race of the blessed gods."
8. "Wholes" being complete are undivided into parts, but complete in every respect.
9. The "archons" of the lower earthly class.
10. Plotinus: Ennead IV, iv, 32 "This all is one and as a single living being. Being a living being and completely one, there is nothing in it so distant in space as not to be near to the peculiar nature of the one living being through common sympathy."
11. "The Magic Art (white magic) is regarded by the Greeks as an agency of great power. They declare it to be actually the very extreme of the Sacred Knowledge. For it searches out everything under the moon, its nature, virtue and quality: I mean the elements and their component parts, being animals, plants of all kinds and their fruits, stones, and herbs: and in short, everything with its substance and power. Hence, therefore, it works out results of itself: it employs schemes of every kind, images promotive of health."
12. The human soul is particled, divided not only by
qualities but also by being partly included in the category and influence of the
body while the nobler part is still in a manner a denizen of the Eternal Region.
Hence the declaration of Paul to the Corinthian believers "We know that though
our earthly house of this tabernacle should be dissolved, we have a divine
building, a house not made by hands, eternal in the heavens."
13. Plato: Phaedros—"This which we now carry
with us and call 'the body,' fastened to it like an oyster to its shell."
Notes to Chapter 11
1. Stobaeos has preserved the following fragment by Iamblichus, setting forth the same concept: "All souls do not have the same common relation to bodies, but the Universal Soul, as it seemed to Plotinus, issues forth by itself and comprises the body in itself, but it does not couple with the body nor is it encompassed by it. Imperfect souls (such as human beings are endowed with), however, come to the bodies and are born with them."
2. Androkydes, the Pythagorean, says: "Wine and the enjoyments of flesh make the body vigorous, but the soul more sluggish."
3. Proclus describes a celestial body or planet as containing the highest principles of the elements and as characterized by vivific unburning fire; in other words, a vitalized principle extended.
4. The Magians and Theurgic priests entertained 'the notion that it was not in reason for the soul to be made pure by corporeal sacrifices, but Porphyry is said to have conceded that the inferior part of the soul, the "mortal soul," might be thereby purified to a certain degree, though not sufficiently for it to attain immortality. The "teleôsis" here spoken of was understood by Proclus to consist in the union of the soul to the Divine Father, by means of the "perfective rite" or initiation: but Porphyry affirmed, as Augustine declared, that those who were thus purified, did not return to the Father or Supreme Divinity, but dwelt above the aerial region among the gods of the æther.
Notes to Chapter 12
1. The Pythagoreans, who are supposed to have adopted
their principal philosophic notions from Egypt, attached special honor to
certain numbers and geometric figures. Plutarch affirms that they designated
these as divinities, calling the equilateral triangle Athena or Wisdom; the
unit, Apollo, as denoting "not many" (a-pollôn); the duad or two, courage and
conflict; the triad, justice; and the four, the universe; and also thirty-six as
being the sum of the first four odd and the first four even numbers (36) The
crocodile was described as producing sixty eggs and occupying sixty days in
their hatching It was venerated anciently in the country of the Fayum in Middle
Egypt, and was the Symbol of Ra, the Sun-God, and also of Osiris, as the Sun-God
of Amenti, the region of the dead.
2. The goddess Isis, the sister and consort of Osiris, the
Egyptian Bacchus, was sometimes considered to represent the Moon. When seeking
for the body of her murdered husband, a dog was said to have accompanied her. A
dog is also included in the Parsi ceremonies. Anubis, who was symbolized by the
dog and the dog-headed baboon, was always commemorated in the Secret Rites. The
male baboon is melancholy when the moon is hidden, and the female exhibits
peculiarities common to women.
3. Sacred animals were numerous in Egypt, every nome or
district having its own. The bulls Apis and Men were selected for their colour
and peculiarities of body. There were also the sacred bat, ram, cat,
river-horse, wolf, serpent, hawk, ibis, etc. They were considered as
representing qualities indicative of soul, emotion and moral sense, qualities
produced by nature and Divinity. "We worship God through them," says Plutarch.
4. The cock was anciently venerated in many countries as
sacred to the Sun and at the sacrifices it was customary for the divines to
inspect his heart for auguries Porphyry has recorded similar facts in relation
to the heart of the crow, the mole and the hawk. Indeed, every ancient people
had its sacred bird. The eagle and the cock seem to have continued to modern
time, and even with peoples where the primitive mystic purport is not known.
5. This appears to be a conceding that the Supreme Divinity is influenced by these sacrifices and similarly by the Magian Rites. This, however, many of the Platonists, as well as the Aristotelians, Stoics and Epicureans, strenuously denied.
6. The term "powers" is used by Abammon in the Aristotelian sense, denoting inherent faculties as prior to the exercise of force, and the producing of effects.
7. Our author here refers, as will be observed, to the declarations of Porphyry, which are quoted in the First Chapter, but are not found in the present text of the Letter to the Expounder Anebo. Porphyry had questioned the utility and actual effect of the sacrificial rites upon the general order of the universe and the purposes of the gods, and likewise whether they were performed in a proper manner as related to the gods, or really procured any advantage to the worshipers themselves.
8. It was held that these sacrifices to the daemons were more acceptable than exhalations from other things, because that in the fumes there were more vivid traces of the living soul, and so a greater relationship. Hence in invocations to the daemons and to the manes or shades of the dead, victims were immolated in order that a nourishing exhalation might be obtained from the flowing blood. See Odyssey, Book XI.
9. Plato, in the Timaeus, treats of junior divinities, whose bodies were derived from the elements, and were to be dissolved. Proclus also describes the gods of the cosmian universe as both of indissoluble nature and such as are to he dissolved. Plutarch and Hesiod describes daemons as a distant race from the gods, and as the inspirers of oracles, but as actually moral. If they commit any fault they are thrust down to earth, fall into the sphere of generated existence, and are fastened to human bodies.
10. Marsilio Ficino, the Italian Platonist, remarks that the fire which is kindled by us is more like heaven than like what is left behind. It is made participant of light, which is a something incorporeal, the most powerful of all things, and as if alive, perpetually moving, dividing everything, yet not itself divisible, absorbing all things into itself, yet evading every alien mixture; and suddenly, when it is fully set free, flying back to the celestial fire which is latent everywhere.
11. The daemons may be described as having vehicles of
a substance different from that of bodies, and accorded to the different orders.
The daemons of the sky are described as having such vehicles composed not of
elementary and natural principles, but those of the water and earth were so
endowed, and to these the sacrifices were offered. The former were of the number
not nourished from the fumes of the sacrifices, but the latter acquire growth
from external sources. Yet as the vehicles were not derived from the elements,
nor from bodies known to us, our author would have done a favor by telling
whence they came. This, however, was no easy thing to do, if modern
"materialization" of spiritual beings seems not to have been imagined. Plato, in
the Timaeus, seems to regard the vehicle as self-created, or the
production of the "junior gods."
12. Proclus remarks of the Perfective Discipline, "that,
as the Oracles teach, it obliterates, through the divine fire, all the stains
derived from generated existence." The Chaldean Oracle also says: "The
mortal drawing near the sacrificial fire will have light from Divinity."
13. Proclus, in the Commentary upon the Alkibiades, sets forth this classification, calling the divinities, the absolute and the cosmian gods. The Chaldean Oracles denominate the latter, the Synoches or Associated divinities. Plato has also called them Lesser or Junior Gods. Other writers declare that these divinities, whose ministry is about the earth and human affairs, actually belong to the order of daemons. The gods of the Mystic Rites are accordingly so included.
14. Porphyry and others of the philosophers of that period declared distinctly that the sacrifices of living creatures were not for the gods at all, but for daemons and the lower orders of spiritual essences. Indeed, their sentiments were considered as evidence of a hostility to Judaism. In archaic times, and even in many centuries of the historical period, human victims were immolated, and the Hebrew writings seem to recognize the custom (Leviticus xxvii, 28, 29; Judges xi, 30-40; Micah, vi, 7). Plutarch denounced this practice, and declared his belief that there was never a god that required it, but it was only intended to avert and appease the malice and rancour of evil spirits. The slaughter of hogs at the festivals of Adonis, Osiris and Demites seems to have been of the latter character, as swine were abhorred in Oriental countries.
15. Here may be perceived the distinction between different teachers. One school adopted the notion that the body being constituted of matter, was to be macerated and held in low esteem. Plato, however, in Theaetetus, taught that we escaped from evil in the body by becoming as much as possible like a god. This was to be accomplished by a life of purity and justice, not by bodily worship, but by mental and moral excellence.
16. This figure is borrowed from Plato, and we find it
eloquently depicted in the Phaedros.
17. This twofold phase of religions customs, the religion
of the right hand and that of the left, still exists with the worshiper of Shiva
and the Shakti in India It was exhibited in the Orphic and Dionysiac worships of
Greece, and in several Oriental Rites. So the ascetic and the freer religionist
were alike treated according to their respective dispositions.
18. In other words, holding to no stable purpose, and exhibiting some new energy at every new phase of opinion or experience.
19. They were considered as more or less infested by evil daemon whom it was necessary to placate.
20. In the Egyptian System the human body was apportioned into thirty-six regions, each of which was supposed to be in charge of its own over-lord or presiding divinity, and had its class of physicians at the different temples.
21. This including of the Superior divinities under the designation of One First Cause, will seem to imply that they were considered as substantially one godhead. The late Prof. Taylor Lewis, of Union College, so viewed the matter. It will be observed that in the Hebrew text of the Bible, the Supreme Being is often designated by a plural term: "The Lord (Yava) our Eloim (Gods) is one." There is abundant evidence that the ancient religious systems generally recognized but one Supreme Divinity, in which all minor powers and essences were included as qualities or attributes. Yet they seem also to have been often regarded as distinct personalities.
22. Plotinus has also described these classes with equal distinctness. All from their birth, he declares, make use of the senses before they have acquired any superior perception. He adds that, "Some proceed no further, but pass through life considering the things of sense to be the first and last of all; and as they apprehend that what is painful is evil, and that whatever is pleasant is good, they think it sufficient to pursue the one and to avoid the other. Others have a greater share of intelligence, but do not rise above the earth. Some of these exhibit greater perception, but not superior moral excellence. In the third class are the divine ones who acutely perceive supernal light, rise superior to sense, and live above the world.
23. By "Nature" some understood the Great Goddess, others simply a daemon, others the Superior Mind.
24. Mr. Thomas Taylor classes the intermediary divinities as archai or rulers (principalities, Ephesians vi, 12), and apolutoi or liberated; the one being supercosmic and the other supercelestial, or superior to the visible gods in the sky.
25. Iamblichus, in the "Life of Pythagoras," remarks that "He who pours clean water into a muddy well does but disturb the mud." In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus charges the disciples not to give the holy truth to dogs, nor cast pearls before the swine; for the latter will tread the jewels under their feet, and the dogs will rend the uncautious givers.
Notes to Chapter 13
1. The spectacular representations exhibited at the
Sacred Rites to candidates for initiation and others participating in the
worship.
2. The "powers" are here distinctly set forth as spiritual
essences. Proclus recognizes them as belonging to the order of daemons, and
informs us that there is an innumerable company of them about every god, and
that they are named by his appellations, as though they were themselves the
divinity. "In the most holy scenes of the Initiatory Rites," says he, "prior to
the manifestations of the divinity as present, troops of chthonian daemons make
their appearance, calling the attention of the candidates from things pure and
good to the realm of Matter."
I am reminded of the "subject-spirits" described by Emanuel Swedenborg. If one
of them is imagined by the individual with whom it is communicating, to he some
particular person, then the spirit, as if mesmerized, immediately supposes
itself to he that person.—A.W.
3. The primitive conception of sacrifices was that they
afforded refreshment to spiritual beings; as for example, the deceased member of
a family. Such offerings are made at stated periods in China and India and were
once universal. Daemons and embodied souls were also considered as thus
receiving service and delight, and it was to them that the sacrifices were
actually devoted. (I Corinthians x, 20.) Hence, sacrifices became
festivals to which friends were invited, and the principal viands were
consecrated by invoking the divinities. See I Samuel ix, 12, 13-21, 23,
and Malachi i, 12.
4. "In the Divine Dramas or Discourses," says Simplikios, "if anything is omitted, or is displaced, or comes up afterward, the divine illumination does not take place, but the remissness of the one who is doing this makes vapid the power of what has been accomplished."
5. Aeneus, the king of Kalydon, it was fabled, once celebrated a sacrifice at which he omitted to honor the goddess Artemis. She by way of punishment sent a boar to ravage his dominions.
6. This declaration is sustained by the Apostle Paul.
"If you are led by the spirit of noetic faculty," says he, "you are not under
law." The Greek term here used by both writers is nomos, an enactment,
and not thesmos, a sacred decree. Plotinus has explained this mental
exaltation here affirmed. "We receive the Infinite by a faculty superior to the
understanding," he inculcates; "we enter into a condition of mind ill which we
are no longer our own selves, but become partakers of the divine nature." The
philosopher, it is recorded, has attained this mental and moral exaltation. Its
similarity to the state of Yogi or consecration, described by Indian
sages, is evident.
7. Syrianos, and Taylor following him, have substituted
thesmos for thumos in the Greek text. The phrase otherwise would have
read: "for those who are bound by passion."
8. "Religion is the imitating of what you worship."
9. Expositors interpret these statements as setting forth that the Sacrifices were expiatory or purifying in the way of averting diseases and other impurities, as seems to be signified by the establishing in harmony and order. In the sixteenth chapter the benefits of the Initiatory Rites are substantially classed under three heads, which have been denominated astrologic, iatric or curative, and telestic or perfective. The initiatory or Perfect Rite, it was considered, exalted the candidate beyond the sphere of generated existence, as in the maksha or nirvana of the Buddhists.
10. Plato in the Timaeus denominates matter, the materia or maternal principle of the universe, the tithoné or nurse, and the upodoché or receptacle, the womb of created things. Professor Butler remarks accordingly that "it is the transition-element between the real and the apparent, the eternal and the contingent."
11. The ancient Egyptians were famed for their veneration of sacred animals, plants and other objects, and many absurd and ridiculous jests have been made on this account. Plutarch carefully explains the matter. "Nothing can be a god to men," says he, "that is either without soul or is under their power." But language is often mistaken in its purport, and symbolic language in particular. What the teacher utters as from his right hand, the hearer receives as with his left. "Those who have not learned the true sense of the words will also mistake in the things." In this way statues and emblems have been spoken of as actual objects of worship, and animals that were only symbolic personifications of divinity have been asserted to be the real divinities that were worshipped. The intelligent worshipper had no difficulty in perceiving the real truth.
12. In other words, likely to be a victim at the altar. "As Manetho related, they were used in archaic times to burn living men in the city of Ilithyia, styling them Typhonian." Ashmes, who expelled the Hyksos rulers, put an end to the custom. It existed in Asiatic countries, where Semitic worships existed, and even the Hebrews seem not to have been an exception. As late as the period of the Persian wars with the Greeks, Themistokles is said to have sacrificed three Persian prisoners to the daemons or chthonian gods, and Amestris, the Queen of Xerxes, to have buried fourteen Persians alive. Even at a later period Caius Marius immolated his daughter to propitiate the gods; and some tribes still keep up the custom. There is a formula for human sacrifice among the Shiva-worshippers of India.. The putting of prisoners to death and cannibalism are vestiges of the same practice.
13. The angels are not a common constituent in the
Egyptian and Hellenic categories. They were adopted evidently from Judaea or
Assyria about the same time.
14. See Daniel x, 13, 21; xii, 1.
15. "Prayer is by no means an insignificant part of the upward path of souls," says Proclus. Sacrifices and Holy Rites were considered as the body of the prayers, and prayer as the animating principle of sacrifices. The Chaldean Oracle also declares: "The mortal approaching the fire will receive illumination from the divine ones."
16. The edition of Scutellius has this fuller reading: "Prayer not only assures to us the friendship of the gods, but brings to our hand three fruits, which are, so to speak, golden apples from the Hesperidean gardens."
Proclus designates these three stages of prayer sunafh, ekpelasis, and
enwsis, the contact, the approach, the perfect union. These are preceded by
two conditions: to know the different ranks of the divine beings to which they
belong, and the oikeiwsis or family alliance by which we become adopted
by the gods. We are then without contact or any thing of matter made ready for
the illumination.
17. The Chaldean Oracles describe the Supreme
Divinity as Fire, creative-life-bringing and intellectible. "A whirlwind drew
forth the bloom of the shadowy fire and impregnated the wombs of the universe."
(Compare Genesis i, 2.) "She is the producer of the work, because she is
the giver of life-bringing fire." The fire as a symbol in the shrine if the
temple, and the employment of sacred fire to consume the consecrated parts of
the sacrifices, thus represent the Supreme Fire by which all things subsist and
are made complete.
18. Proclus adds the following in the way of comment: "It
fills the entheast soul to its full measure."
19. The representation of the Divine essence as a supernal
luminance is universal. The passage in the proem of the Johannean Gospel has
been the philosophic dogma of all periods: "In the Logos or divine mason, was
life, and the life was the light of mankind." The Chaldean Oracle also
says: "When thou shalt see a very holy fire without definable shape, leaping as
it shines, hearken to the voice of the Fire." Moses and Zoroaster both professed
to hear the words of the Deity spoken out of fire. (Deut. v.)
Pure fire unmingled with material particles is not visible to the human faculty
of sight. This explains satisfactorily the apparent contradiction, in which the
Supreme Being is depicted as light, and likewise as enveloped in clouds and
thick darkness.
20. "Through Prayer," says Proclus, "the summit of moral
excellence, the holiness which pertains to the gods, is attained."
21. This is an allusion upon which Plato throws light in the Timaeus. He (the Demiurgos or Creator) charged the junior gods with the work of constructing mortal bodies, as well as everything additional that was required for the human soul. He gave them dominion over these and all things consequent thereto, and bade them rule over the mortal creation as nobly and honorably as they could, in order that it might not become the cause of evil to itself." The "Junior Gods" are those so generally mentioned by our author. They are also classed under the head of aitia—causes or categories—and as we here observe, are the demiurgic or organizing causes.
Notes to Chapter 14
1. The epoptes, ephoros, Theôros or candidate
undergoing initiation, and so contemplating the views presented for his
instruction.
2. Porphyry himself, and Plotinus before him, it may be
remarked, did not approve of the killing of animals for food or sacrifice. They
also regarded the touch of a dead body as polluting to the person touched.
3. The hawk was held in special esteem in Ancient Egypt.
Ra the Sun-God was represented in the hieroglyphics with a hawk's head holding
the solar circle in its beak; and Thoth was also depicted having the same
emblem, to show that he was the genius of intelligence. The bird was regarded as
having the faculty of divining. Its body after death was embalmed and deposited
in the shrine at Buto, and whoever killed one, even by accident, was punished by
death. In Greece, likewise, the hawk was a symbol of the sun, and sacred to
Apollo, the god of oracles.
4. It was held that souls, when separated from the bodies
by violence, continue to abide around the bodies, and hence that the theurgic
priests were able through their agency to draw the guardian daemons to them.
5. Augustin of Hippo berated Porphyry in regard to this
distinction between "divine" or "angelic" and the other communications.
"Behold," says he, "Iamblichus, the patron of the Egyptian priests, deserts his
clients."
6. This accounts also for the enthusiasm characteristic of
the Bacchic festivals, and kindred exhibitions at public assemblies, where some
powerful influence predominates. Such nervous affections as hysteria and
epilepsy are sometimes occasioned in such ways. In the old languages the same
terms are used to denote mental derangement and prophetic inspiration.
7. In the Greek text of the Letter of Porphyry this term is "adyton," the inner shrine of the temple, but here it is Abydos, a city in Middle Egypt, where was the most ancient temple to Isis and Osiris, and also a "tomb." Some writers insist that only the adytum was meant; others that reference is made to the shrine at Abydos. This was the oldest metropolis in Egypt.
The theologic myths of Egypt contain an explanation of these expressions. Osiris and Isis, or Uasar and Uasi, were the two principal divinities commemorated in the Egyptian Sacred Rites. They were doubtless of Asiatic origin, and the legend seems to be a representation of the contest with the Shepards. Seth, Sutekh, or Typhon was the tutelary god of Northern Egypt of the Hyksos, and of the Kheti or Hittites of Asia. He is described as the brother of Osiris and as having treacherously murdered him, and afterward dismembering the body. The widowed Isis wanders over Egypt and to Phoenicia in quest of his remains. They are finally transported in the boat Bans to their final resting-place. The simulacrum of one part is placed in every shrine as a sacred relic. These things were commemorated in the Sacred Rites.
8. See Part IV, Chapter 10. "In all theurgic rites there is a double character put forward: the one as a human being, the other as participating of a superior nature and exalted to the order of divinities. In the former the priest makes the invocation as a man and supplicates the superior beings; in the other, he commands the powers of the universe, because through the ineffable symbols, he is in some manner invested with the sacred character of the gods."
9. The powers having as their vahan or vehicle the sun, moon, and stars, were the daemons thus threatened.
10. In the ancient philosophy, creation was identical with generation. Hence the universe is styled "seigenes" or ever generated, as being constantly replenished and renewed. Creation is a work always taking place.
Notes to Chapter 15
1. See Herodotus: II, 60. Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 18, and throughout.
2. This definition of ilus or slime applies also to hulê, the foundation-principle of everything denominated "material." It is a concept of the mind, and not a something that can be weighed, measured, or perceived by the senses: and if the term has any intelligible meaning, it may be designated as passive, negative or objectified force.
3. The representation of the winged disk, so common in Egyptian symbolism, is here denoted. The description also applies to the figures of Assur and Ahuramazda of the Assyrian and Persian temples floating in the air above the Sacred Tree and the adoring King and priests.
4. The lotos or Nymphæ was anciently esteemed as the queen of the world of blossoms. Each of its numerous species seems to have been regarded as sacred in some of the ancient nations, and the same veneration is still maintained in China and India. The American pond-lily is of the same family. It has been conjectured to have received its distinction from the analogy of its seeds, which sprout in the capsule of the plant and begin to grow till they burst the pericarp and float away to take root in the slime by themselves.
The Egyptian priests were accustomed to exhibit simulacra of the gods in circles and globes as symbols of the uniform principle of life. Hermes Trismegistus compared Divinity to a circle, and the sublime description will be remembered, that its centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere. The Pythagoreans regarded the circle as sacred, and considered it as the symbol of the highest spiritual truth. It also represents very aptly all human progress, which is never in straight lines, but in circles returning on themselves as if advancing in ascending spirals or retrograding in vortexes tending downward.
5. Horus as Harpocrates was depicted as sitting on the cup of the lotus-blossom, with a finger on his mouth, contemplating the circle, and was the divinity here signified.
6. Porphyry, Cave of the Nymphs: "The Egyptians represented the Sun and all the daemons as not connected with anything solid or stable, but as elevated on a sailing vessel."
7. In this way, the Sun and Moon, though always of the same dimension, vary in apparent size and colour, owing to accidents of the position of the earth, and the conditions of the spectator's eyesight.
8. Porphyry in his letter to Anebo, interrogated him directly about these matters. "For this is said to be seen at the Autopsias," says he, "and they unwittingly attribute to that divinity a peculiar incident of their own imagination. If, however, these expressions are uttered figuratively, and are symbolic representations of his forces, let them tell the interpretation of the symbols. For it is plain that if they denote the condition of the Sun, as in eclipses, they would be seen by every one who looked toward it intently."
The Autopsia was the final experience at the Initiatory Rite, when the candidate became an epoptes or Beholder. It was at once a view of one's own interior self and a vision of the Divinity. "Such a one," says Pindar, "knows the end of life and its sources from God." Paul the apostle is a little more explicit. "Such a man," says he, "was rapt into Paradise and heard ineffable things which it is not permitted a man to repeat." Hence Abammon declines to grant Porphyry's demand.
9. The terms to which this reference is supposed to be made, are such as were enumerated by Alexander Trallianus: "Men, Thren, Mor, Phor, Teux, Za, Zôn, The, Lou, Khri, Gr, Ze, On." By these words, Trallianus declared, the sun becomes fixed in the heavens. He adds also others: "Iax, Azuph, Zuôn, Threux, Ban, Khôk." Very likely these as well as the famous Ephesian "spells," belong to an archaic language, which remained as a dialect of priests after having passed out of common use. The Latin language used in the Roman worship, the Hebrew in the Jewish, and the Sanskrit in the Brahman are analogous examples. Diodoros affirms that a barbarous or foreign dialect was used in the Samothrakian arcane rites. The expression, "Konx om pax," at the Eleusinia has perplexed scholars for centuries. Mr. Robert Brown, Jr. however, has traced it to the Akkad origin, and shows it to be a profession of the Supreme Truth of existence.
There has always been a "language of priests:" the ancients called it "speech of the gods." Homer gives us names in that dialect as well as those given by "men." The monarchs of Egypt and Assyria took divine names in addition to their family designations, and the practice has been followed for many centuries by the Popes of Rome, when taking office, to adopt a saint's name for their official title.
The Mystic Rites were accompaniments of the Sacred language. They were observed in every ancient nation that had a literature, and seem to have been derived from the country of the Euphrates. It was esteemed sacrilegious to divulge them, and the holy name of a divinity was not permitted to be uttered outside the temple. See Exodus xx: 7.
10. In other words, we comprehend first principles by
simple intuition.
11. This was called a visible manifestation of divinity. A
philosopher remarks: "From the clearness of the mind and the refulgence of
divine splendour, the presence of Divinity is perceived at once.
12. As Assyria is the chief Semitic country, the languages of Chaldea and the Israelites are included under the designation. But whatever his dialect Abammon declares that Man is sacred everywhere. V, xxiv. There is a change of terms, however, in the question from those found in the Letter of Porphyry to Anebo, as will he seen by comparing.
13. Proclus considered that there were three classes of divine terms: the principal of which was for the gods themselves: the second was devised for the daemons, and the third was employed by sagacious men in relation to matters of their own devising. The former of these were considered as possessing energy and power.
14. The extraordinary antiquity of the Egyptians and their modes of worship is everywhere recognized. They were an archaic people and were highly civilized when they first became known to other nations.
15. Proclus speaks of these prayers as follows: "The purifying petition is the one which is offered for the purpose of averting diseases of the character of plague, and other contagious: we have such inscribed in the temples." Porphyry has preserved a petition somewhat like one in the Gospel according to Luke. "O Lord, the Sun and you other divinities, the dispensers of life to human beings, accept me and commend me to the immortal gods as your servant. So long as I have lived I have always worshipped the gods whom my parents taught me should be venerated."
After the adoption of the Bacchic rites from Asia into Greece, the prayers or hymns to the new divinity were as numerous and almost as diverse as the States. The worshippers were principally women and the Eleans had a shout of which this is a translation:
"Come Lord Dionysos, Lord Most High,
Into thy holy shrine, the shrine ready for thee
Frenzied, and with feet of ox,
Bull worthy of our praise, worthy Bull."
"Hero," here rendered Lord, and Alioun, Most High, are archaic terms.
16. The term barbarous, used in Greek for alien and foreign, seems to have been formed from the Egyptian term Barbara, the archaic designation of the Egyptian peasantry.
Notes to Chapter 16
1. Seleukos is mentioned by Porphyry as a theologist and
by Suidas as having written two hundred books in relation to the gods. By
"scrolls" it is probable that only single discourses were meant, such as would
now be given in a pamphlet.
2. An Egyptian, Man-e-Thoth, or beloved Thoth. He was a
priest at Sebennytus in the province of Sâis, in the reign of Ptolemy
Philadelphos, and compiled a history of ancient Egypt. This Number 36,525 is
enigmatic, as it indicates by its analogy to the 365.25 days in a year.
3. The Hindu purana gives a similar statement:
"He whom mind alone can perceive, whose essence eludes the external organs, who
has no visible parts, who is of eternity—even He, the Soul of all beings,
whom no being can comprehend, shone forth in personality. He willed to produce
the various beings from his own divine substance."
4. "Under two Minds," says Damaskios, "the Life-imparting
fountain of souls is comprehended." One, the Immovable First Cause, the Second,
the Demiurgos or Creator.
5. See PART I,
Chapter II. Hermes the superlatively Great, was the titular author of
numerous philosophic treatises, from the forty-two mentioned by Clement to the
innumerable multitude mentioned by others.
6. The Greek term empurion, signifies "the region of
fire." In the ancient cosmology, there was a fifth element, the sether, more
pure and divine than the common atmosphere. It was an akasha, a pure fire
and diviner matter: and of it the celestial bodies were composed. In the
Babylonian and other theories there were three heavens, as here designated: the
æther-heaven, the Empyrial or fire-region, and the supracelestial above all.
There were divinities of the second order peculiar to each.
7. Several have conjectured that this name should have
been "Kneph"—Neph or Num, the "Good Daemon." This was the name of the Creator
in Nubia and also in Elephantina, and he was considered to be the same as Amun,
the Supreme God at Thebes. The name Neph, almost identical with the
Semitic term "nephesh" or soul, reminds us that this god was considered
as the "Soul of the World." It should also be remembered, however, that the name
"Emeph" seems to be the same as Imoph, Motph or Imhetep, which signifies the
"son of Phtha." In fact, this divinity was one of the triad of tutelaries of
Memphis, which consisted of Phtha, his consort Pakht, or Bast, and their son
Imhetep. Marietta-Bey considered him as the same as Thoth or Hermes, the god of
learning. The Greeks, however, identified him with Asclepius and the Orientals
with Esmun, of the Kabeirian Rites.
8. Ficino substitutes the term paradeima, or
exemplar in the text, for mageuma, or magic power.
9. This term is Greek, and its meaning is "the Likeness,"
and so the Ideal of the Universe.
10. Damaskios relates that the Babylonians recognized the
one First Cause, passing it over in silence. But it is probable that instead of
Sigé or Silence, the divine intermediary, Siku, was the being actually named.
11. Plato, Timaeus, XII, v, "The Deity himself
formed the divine part in man, and delivered over to his celestial offspring the
task of forming the mortal. These subordinate divinities, copying the example of
their parent, and receiving from his hands the immortal principle of the human
soul, fashioned subsequently to this the mortal body, which they consigned to
the soul as a vehicle, and in which they placed another kind of soul, the seat
of violent and fatal affections."
12. The Semitic name P'T'H, Phtha, signifies the opener,
the revealer, the Creator. Perhaps Semitic influence in Northern Egypt, which
was of remote antiquity, accounts for the selection of the designation. When the
early sovereignty of Egypt was at Memphis, Pth'ch was the chief divinity. After
the expulsion of the Hyksos dynasty, the seat of power was transferred to Thebes
in the South, and Amun or Amur-Ra (the Mystic Sun) was exalted to the supremacy.
He was often figured like Kneph, with the head of a ram, indicating that the two
were the same. Indeed, the Egyptian religion was actually at its core
monotheistic. The various divinities were only aspects or personifications of
different attributes.
13. This name in the Egyptian dialect is variously
spelled, as different readers supply the letters from the hieroglyphics.
Plutarch states that the Egyptians pronounced it Husiris, and it is
sometimes rendered Asar and Ussar. One Egyptian dogma makes it out Hes-iri,
which would mean the Seat of Isis. It seems in its form to resemble Assur the
God of Nineveh and Iswara, the Siva [Shiva] of India.
14. This, it will be noticed, relates directly to
astrology and the casting of nativities, which was a constituent part of former
sciences and religions, and is apparent in some of the modern customs.
15. "When we treat of matter," says Plutarch, "we need not
conceive in our minds a body void of soul and of all quality and of itself
wholly idle and inactive. We ought to conceive that this goddess (or divine
entity) which always participates of the First God and is ever taken up with the
love of those excellences and charms that are about him is not by nature
opposite to him: that like a good-natured woman that is married to a man and
constantly enjoys his embraces, yet hath a fond kind of longing after him, so
hath she always a strong inclination to the God, though she he present and round
about him, and though she be impregnated with his most prime and pure
particles."
16. Chæremôn was the Scribe or literary man of a
Temple. Suidas mentions him as belonging in Alexandria, and both Martial and
Porphyry speak of him as a Stoic philosopher. He is quoted in Josephus, as
giving the account of the Expulsion of the Lepers or alien people from Egypt,
whom Manetho conjectured to have been the Israelites.
17. The twelve mouths were divided by astrologers into
thirty-six decans, and over each was a decanus or episcopus, whose office
was to protect against calamity. The "horoscopos" was the caster of a nativity,
one who forecasted a career from the conditions of the planets and zodiacal
constellations at the time of birth.
18. The Twelve Gods who preside over the months of the
year are thus designated. "While," says S. F. Dunlap, "the Babylonians offered
sacrifices to the spirits of the dead, and the Twelve Gods presided over the
months, and the thirty-six gods over the decani of the calendar; while Gods
innumerable, portents, prophets, soothsayers and astrologers perplexed the
people, the Chaldeans philosophized in their schools on the causes of things
and the modus operandi of Nature and Creation."
19. Chæremôn declared the Sun to be the Creator or
Demiurgos. The vivific influences emanating from it, and the fact that the
planetary world issued from it in the unknown periods of geologic antiquity,
lend an air of plausibility to the hypothesis.
20. It was taught by Anaximander that the earth was in the
centre of a series of concentric spheres in which the sun, moon and stars were
placed. The Pythagoreans held that the heavenly bodies were in these spheres
revolving round a central fire.
21. In astrologic and other magic displays It is considered necessary to select carefully a proper time for consultation and ceremonies.
22. Amasis or Ashmes II, was the successor of Apries or
Pharaoh-Hophra, of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, whom he drove from power. He
belonged at Sâis and bore the title of "Son of Neith." He obliged the priests of
Egypt to admit Pythagoras and Solon to the temples to be instructed in the
Egyptian learning. Bitys is conjectured to have been the priest Utaharpenses,
who made public the names of the planets, which had been a sacerdotal secret, as
was also the heliocentric theory.
23. Sâis was the metropolis of a nome or principality in
Northern Egypt, and a rival of Memphis in wealth and importance. Its prince,
Tafnekht, famous for having cursed the memory of Menes, raised the standard of
revolt against the Ethiopian Overlord, and his lineal descendant Psametikhos
finally succeeded in delivering Egypt from the Assyrians and establishing the
Twenty-sixth Dynasty with Sâis as his capital. Neitha was the chief divinity,
and in her temple were recorded many of the maxims of Bokkoris the Wise. Here
was the inscription so commonly referred to Isis,— doubtless the same goddess:
"I am the All that was, that is and will be, and no mortal hath revealed me."
24. The tutelary gods had secret names which it was
regarded as sacrilege to divulge. (See Exodus xx, 7; Judges xiii, 18.)
"The arcane names fill the whole world" was a theurgic maxim. Proclus also
remarks: "There is a sacred name which, with sleepless, dart-like motion, runs
through the worlds, through the swift menace of the Father." Whether the name
which Bitys revealed was occult like the mystic designation of Yava in the
Semitic nations, is worth enquiry. The designation, Amun, for example, only
means arcane or concealed, implying that it was not regarded as the real name of
the divinity.
25. These were the propositions and theories put forth by various authors whose writings were indicated in the collection known as "Books of Hermes," or Tablets of Thoth.
26. Plutarch says: "They who imagine the mind to be part of the soul err no less than they who make the soul a part of the body: for the mind is as far superior to the soul as the soul is better and diviner than the body. The combination of the soul with the mind makes the logos or reasoning faculty, and with the body, passion, of which the latter is the principle of pleasure and pain, and the former of virtue and vice. Of these three, the earth has given the body, the moon the Soul, and the Sun, the mind. Every one of us is neither courage, nor fear, nor desire, no more than flesh or fluids, but the part by which we think and perceive. The soul, being moulded and formed by the mind and itself moulding and forming the body, by encompassing it on every side, receives from it impression and form."
Plato in the Timaeus likewise treats of the two souls or parts of the soul, the one mortal and the other immortal.
27. This phrase which translated literally would read "genesiurgic motion," relates to those matters of the world of sense, which are under control of fate and circumstance, and come within the province of chance and fortune.
28. This phrase, "that which is," is very significant. It transcends the concept of existing and denotes real being, eternity itself. This shows the true meaning of Pope's declaration: "Whatever IS is right." The Sanskrit term Satya, often rendered "truth," has exactly the sense of Being, that which is enduring and permanent, absolute fact. Hence the maxim: "There is no dharma or supreme law superior to that which is."
29. This work is lost. It was an explanation of the
Pythagorean Symbology, and is quoted by Damaskios and Olympiodoros. Proclus
restores some of the passages in his treatise upon the Platonic Theology,
and also adopts the arguments. At the change of the Imperial Religion in the
Fourth Century the books of the Philosophers were ordered to be destroyed on
pain of death, and doubtless this work perished at that period.
30. In the divine world, nöesis is poiesis—thinking is doing. What "God says" God is doing. All things are subject to
mind, and to its behests. Mind, therefore, is the king of all things.
It was a theurgic saying, that by chants and sacrifices it was possible to
revolutionize the realms of nature and generation.
31. There has been a great variety of opinion in regard to
the descent of the soul. The book of Ecclesiastes has the sentence, "and
the spirit to the God who gave it." Nobody has said that it had been sent into
perpetual exile. The Chaldean Oracle declared "The Father placed symbols
in the souls," by which their identification is assured. When the Creator sends
out a soul, he also calls it to himself again. The circle of necessity will
return upon the Infinite. Such is the teaching of all philosophy.
Notes to Chapter 17
1. Greek, phusis. This term has a wide
signification. It strictly means the passive or material principle, the
originating power of the universe: but from that it has been used to denote the
constitution of things, the peculiarity of sex, the bent of disposition, etc.
Our author here employs the term as the female agency in production, contrasting
it with the genesis. It thus signifies "birth" and has been rendered
accordingly.
2. It has been remarked as an argument against the
genuineness of this sentence, if not of the entire book, that the Egyptian
astrologists did not have the Great and Little Bear in their planisphere.
Iamblichus, however, was a Syrian and conversant with Chaldean and Grecian
learning. Herodotus names the Bear as a northern constellation. See I, 148: V,
10.
3. This term has a somewhat indefinite signification. It is
supposed accordingly by some to denote in this connection the planets, and by
others, the signs in the zodiac.
4. Every sign of the zodiac was considered to have a
"house" for its "lord," or ruling planet. In the Gospel according to Matthew
a pun seems to he made on the term. "If they call the lord of the house Beel
Zebul." This last name signifies "lord of the house."
5. Ficino renders this term "divine inspiration" in this place where it is contrasted with the art of casting nativities.
6. Greek, mathematical episteme, literally, skill
in mathematics. But at the time when this work was written the term
"mathematics" was employed to denote astrology, and accordingly it is so
rendered.
7. Greek, epistemai. This term properly denotes
knowledges of a superior character, which are comprehended by the noetic
intelligence, instead of the dianoetic reasoning faculty. Hence it signifies
what is above the common arts which are learned and classified, and so
constitute what is in modern times designated "science" and "exact science."
8. The Aeon, or period, was reckoned as three hundred
thousand years. Proclus, in his Commentary on the Timaeus, states that
the Chaldeans had records of observations of the stars which embraced entire
cosmic cycles of time. Cicero, in his treatise on Divination, declares
that they had records of the stars for the space of 370,000 years; and Diodorus
the Sicilian asserts that their observation comprehended 470,000 years. As great
antiquity was also claimed for the Egyptians. Kallisthenes when in Babylon sent
the computations of the Chaldeans to his uncle Aristotle.
9. "We say," says Hephæstion of Alexandria, "that a star which has five conditions anywhere in sight is a Lord of the House: in other words, if that star received the luminaries in their own boundaries, their own altitude, and their own triangle." He adds this condition: "if besides it has contiguity, emanation and configuration."
10. According to the Egyptian notion, every person received his guardian daemon at the hour of birth, and they looked no further. They regarded only the horoscope.
11. Greek, stoicheion. In later centuries of the Roman Empire, this term was used to signify planets and signs of the zodiac.
12. In other words the ideal or divine model after
which the soul takes earthly form.
13. PLATO, Republic, X. Plato has outlined no
distinction beyond choosing a mode of living, but here it is affirmed that the
soul chooses a daemon of a superior order by its own intelligent volition.
14. One writer remarks: "A daemon is placed with every
human being to be his initiator into the mysteries of life."
15. Menander says: "The mind is our daemon." The term was used with a variety of meanings at different times.
16. This seems to be at variance with Plato, who says:
"The daemon will not receive you as his allotment, but you shall choose the
daemon: the cause is in him who makes the choice, and the Deity is blameless."
17. Rulers of the cosmic world: the daemons allotted to
the several regions of the universe. The term occurs in the Pauline Epistle
to the Ephesians, vi, 12.
Notes to Chapter 18
1. Greek, eudaimonia. This term was employed by Plato and Aristotle to denote true and complete happiness. Its derivation from eu or well, and daimôn, a divinity, a good genius, good fortune, indicates its true signification, as the condition favoured by the good genius; hence, it denotes felicity, good fortune, prosperity, success-as being in favour with God and man.
2. Porphyry here refers to the gods that were invoked in
the theurgic rites.
3. The Oracle had, before the time of Porphyry, assigned to
the Egyptian priests the finding of the path to felicity. Hence Herodotus
declared them the first to institute the Sacred Rites.
4. Greek, mantike, the art of divining: prophecy, inspiration. This is the term which has been generally translated as divination. But divination as described by Grecian writers was the same as prophecy, and implied intimate communion with divinity.
5. This is a similar account of that given by Plato in
the Phaedros. The souls while in the eternal region are described as
beholding the thea or vision of the gods, and accompanying them in their
journey in their planetary orbits in the sky, having been initiated and become
epoptai or Beholders of the Mysteries of that world. This, the
philosopher explains, was "while we possessed our nature in its entirety and did
not suffer the molestations of evil which were awaiting us in the future time,
when we were free and not invested with the body to which we are bound as an
oyster to the shell." After this came the "descent into the realm of generated
existence," and investiture with the "mortal soul" and its conditions. See
Timaeus and Plutarch's treatise on The Face in the Orb of the Moon,
28.
6. PLATO, Theatetus 84, Socrates. "It is not
possible that evil should be destroyed; for it is necessary that there should be
always something contrary to good; nor can it be seated among the gods, but of
necessity moves around this mortal nature and this region. Wherefore we ought to
fly hence as quickly as possible; and this flight consists in being assimilated
to God as much as possible, and this assimilating is the becoming just and holy
with wisdom."
7. By the Sacred or hieratic paths, Abammon evidently means
the theurgic discipline. The ancient Oriental faiths all made the service of the
guru, or spiritual teacher, an essential in the matter of knowing the
truth.
8. Compare Gospel according to John, xvii, 3: "This
is the eternal life (the life of the eternal world), namely: that they know thee
the God only true."
9. The philosopher Herakleitos held that "change" is the
"only persisting" condition of things. He taught that the Supreme Being is fire—not mere physical heat, but an aetherial principle; and that it acted on
matter producing motion and creative activity.
10. In the former years of the nineteenth century there
arose a teacher in Persia, who was designated the "Bab"—gate or
door. He
promulgated a mystic doctrine somewhat in analogy to that of the Sufis, with
many features of the later Platonism and Gnosticism and Parsism
[Zoroastrianism]. He was afterward executed, but his disciples still constitute
a numerous body.
11. Greek thea, a vision, contemplation. The term
is used to signify the Spectacle exhibited at Initiatory Rites.