Not so in the formula of black Magic. Reuvens, speaking of the two rituals of Magic of the Anastasi collection, remarks that they
Undeniably form the most instructive commentary upon the Egyptian mysteriesattributed to Jamblichus, and the best pendant to that classical work, for understanding the thaumaturgy of the philosophical sects, thaumaturgy based on ancient Egyptian religion. According to Jamblichus, thaumaturgy was exercised by the ministry of secondary genii.[474]
Reuvens closes with a remark which is very suggestive and is very important to the Occultists who defend the antiquity and genuineness of their documents, for he says:
All that he [Jamblichus] gives out as theology we find as history in our papyri.
But then how deny the authenticity, the credibility, and, beyond all, the trustworthiness of those classical writers, who all wrote about Magic and its Mysteries in a most worshipful spirit of admiration and reverence? Listen to Pindarus, who exclaims:
Happy he who descends into the grave thus initiated, for he knows the end of his life and the kingdom[475] given by Jupiter.[476]
Or to Cicero:
Initiation not only teaches us to feel happy in this life, but also to die with better hope.[477]
Plato, Pausanias, Strabo, Diodorus and dozens of others bring their evidence as to the great boon of Initiation; all the great as well as the partially-initiated Adepts, share the enthusiasm of Cicero.
Does not Plutarch, thinking of what he had learned in his initiation, console himself for the loss of his wife? Had he not obtained the certitude at the Mysteries of Bacchus that “the soul [spirit] remains incorruptible, and that there is a hereafter”?... Aristophanes went even farther: “All those who participated in the Mysteries,” he says, “led an innocent, calm, and holy life; they died looking for the light of the Eleusinian Fields [Devachan], while the rest could never expect anything but eternal darkness [ignorance?].