Porphyry and astrology.
Whether Porphyry in his other extant works evidences a belief in astrology or not, and whether he wrote anIntroduction to the Tetrabiblosor astrological handbook of Ptolemy, has been disputed.[1418]ThisIntroductionascribed to Porphyry was much cited by subsequent astrologers[1419]and was printed in 1559 together with a much longer anonymous commentary on theTetrabibloswhich some ascribe to Proclus.[1420]
Astrological images.
Towards astrological images at least, Porphyry shows himself in theLetter to Anebomore favorable than Iamblichus, saying, “Nor are the artificers of efficacious images to be despised, for they observe the motion of celestial bodies.” Iamblichus, on the other hand, rather grudgingly admits that “the image-making art attracts a certain very obscure genesiurgic portion from the celestial effluxions.”[1421]He seems to have the same feeling against images as againstcharacters, perhaps regarding both as bordering upon idolatry.[1422]
Number mysticism.
Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus were all given to number mysticism. The sixth book of the sixthEnneadis entirely devoted to this subject, while Porphyry and Iamblichus both wroteLivesof Pythagoras and treatises upon his doctrine of number.
Porphyry as reported by Eusebius.
Other works by Porphyry than theLetter to Aneboare cited or quoted a good deal by Eusebius inPraeparatio evangelica, especially his Περὶ τῆς ἐκ λογίων φιλοσοφίας, but the extracts are made for Eusebius’s own purposes, which are to discredit pagan religion, and neither express Porphyry’s complete thought nor probably even tend to prove his original point. Besides showing that Porphyry was inconsistent in distinguishing the different victims to be sacrificed to terrestrial and subterranean, aerial, celestial, and sea gods in the above-mentioned work, when in hisDe abstinentia a rebus animatishe held that beings who delighted in animal sacrifice were no gods but mere demons, Eusebius quotes him a good deal to show that the pagan gods were nothing but demons, that they themselves might be called magicians and astrologers, that they loved characters, and that they made their predictions of the future not from their own foreknowledge but from the stars by the art of astrology, and that like men they could not even always read the decrees of the stars aright. The belief is also mentioned that the fate foretold from the stars may be avoided by resort to magic.[1423]
The Emperor Julian on theurgy and astrology.
The Emperor Julian was an enthusiastic follower of Iamblichus whom he praises[1424]in hisHymn to the Sovereign Sundelivered at the Saturnalia of 361 A. D. He also describes “the blessed theurgists” as able to comprehend unspeakable mysteries which are hidden from the crowd, such as Julian the Chaldean prophesied concerning the godof the seven rays.[1425]The emperor tells us that from his youth he was regarded as over-curious (περιεργότερον, a word which almost implies the practice of magic) and as a diviner by the stars (ἀστρόμαντιν). HisHymn to the Suncontains a good deal of astrological detail, speaks of the universe as eternal and divine, and regards planets, signs, and decans as “the visible gods.” In short, “there is in the heavens a great multitude of gods.”[1426]The Sun, however, is superior to the other planets, and as Aristotle has pointed out “makes the simplest movement of all the heavenly bodies that travel in a direction opposite to the whole.”[1427]The Sun is also the link between the visible universe and the intelligible world, and Julian infers from his middle station among the planets that he is also king among the intellectual gods.[1428]For behind his visible self is the great Invisible. He frees our souls entirely from the power of “Genesis,” or the force of the stars exercised at nativity, and lifts them to the world of the pure intellect.[1429]
Julian and divination.
Julian believed in almost every form of pagan divination as well as in astrology. To the oracles of Apollo he ascribed the civilizing of the greater part of the world through the foundation of Greek colonies and the revelation of religious and political law.[1430]The historian Ammianus Marcellinus[1431]tells us that Julian was continually inspecting entrails of victims and interpreting dreams and omens, and that he even proposed to re-open a prophetic fountain whose predictions were supposed to have enabled Hadrian to become emperor, after which that emperor blocked it up from fear that someone else might supplant him through its instrumentality. In another passage[1432]he defends Julian from the charge of magic, saying, “Inasmuch as malicious persons have attributed the use of evil arts to learn the future to this ruler who was a learned inquirer into all branches of knowledge, we shall briefly indicate how a wise man is ableto acquire this by no means trivial variety of learning. The spirit behind all the elements, seeing that it is incessantly and everywhere active in the prophetic movement of perennial bodies, bestows upon us the gift of divination by the different arts which we employ; and the forces of nature, propitiated by varied rites, as from exhaustless springs provide mankind with prophetic utterances.”
Scientific divination.
Ammianus thus regards the arts of divination as serious sciences based upon natural forces, although of course in the characteristic Neo-Platonic way of thinking he confuses the spiritual and physical and substitutes propitiatory rites for scientific experiments. His phrase, “the prophetic movement of perennial bodies” almost certainly means the stars and shows his belief in astrology. In another passage[1433]he indicates the widespread trust in astrology among the Roman nobles of his time, the later fourth century, by saying that even those “who deny that there are superior powers in the sky,” nevertheless think it imprudent to appear in public or dine or bathe without having first consulted an almanac as to the whereabouts of Mercury or the exact position of the moon in Cancer. The passage is satirical, no doubt, but Ammianus probably objects quite as much to their disbelief in superior powers in the sky as he does to the excess of their superstition. That astrology and divination may be studied scientifically he again indicates in a description of learning at Alexandria. Besides praising the medical training to be had there, and mentioning the study of geometry, music, astronomy, and arithmetic, he says, “In addition to these subjects they cultivate the science which reveals the ways of the fates.”[1434]
Proclus on theurgy.
Iamblichus’s account of theurgy is repeated in more condensed form by Proclus (412-485) in a brief treatise or fragment which is extant only in its Latin translation by the Florentine humanist Ficinus, entitledDe sacrificio et magia.[1435]Neither magic nor theurgy, however, is mentionedby name in the Latin text. Proclus states that the priests of old built up their sacred science by observing the sympathy existing between natural objects and by arguing from manifest to occult powers. They saw how things on earth were associated with things in the heavens and further discovered how to bring down divine virtue to this lower world by the force of likeness which binds things together. Proclus gives several examples of plants, stones, and animals which evidence such association. The cock, for instance, is reverenced by the lion because both are under the same planet, the sun, but the cock even more so than the lion. Therefore demons who appear with the heads of lions (leonina fronte) vanish suddenly at the sight of a cock unless they chance to be demons of the solar order. After thus indicating the importance of astrology as well as occult virtue in theurgy or magic, Proclus tells how demons are invoked. Sometimes a single herb or stone “suffices for the divine work”; sometimes several substances and rites must be combined “to summon that divinity.” When they had secured the presence of the demons, the priests proceeded, partly under the instruction of the demons and partly by their own industrious interpretation of symbols, to a study of the gods. “Finally, leaving behind natural objects and forces and even to a great extent the demons, they won communion with the gods.”
Neo-Platonic account of magic borrowed by Christians.
Despite the writings of Porphyry and other Neo-Platonists against Christianity, much use was made by Christian theologians of the fourth and fifth centuries of the Neo-Platonic accounts of magic, astrology, and divination, especially of Porphyry’sLetter to Anebo. Eusebius in hisPraeparatio Evangelica[1436]made large extracts from it on these themes and also from Porphyry’s work on the Chaldean oracles. Augustine inThe City of God[1437]accepted Porphyry as an authority on the subjects of theurgy and magic. On the other hand, we do not find the Christian writers repeating the attitude of Plotinus that the life of reason is alone free from magic, except as they substitute the word “Christianity” for “the life of reason.”
Neo-Platonists and alchemy.
The Neo-Platonists showed some interest in alchemy as well as in theurgy and astrology. Berthelot published in hisCollection des Alchimistes Grecs“a little tract of positive chemistry” which is extant under the name of Iamblichus; and Proclus treated of the relations between the metals and planets and the generation of the metals under the influence of the stars.[1438]Of Synesius, who was both a Neo-Platonist and a Christian bishop, and who seems to have written works of alchemy, we shall treat in a later chapter.