Porphyry on modes of divination.
How is divination to be placed in reference to magic and theurgy? Porphyry had inquired concerning various methods of divination: in sleep, in trances, and when fully conscious; in ecstasy, in disease, and in states of mental aberration or enchantment. He mentioned divination on hearing drums and cymbals, by drinking water and other potions, by inhaling vapor; divination in darkness, in a wall, in the open air or in the sunlight; by observing entrails or the flight of birds or the motion of the stars, or even by means of meal. Yet other modes of determining the future which he lists are by characters, images, incantations, and invocations, with which the use of stones and herbs is often combined. These details make it evident how impossible it is to draw any dividing line between the methods of magic and divination, and Porphyry himself states that those who invoke the gods concerning the future not only “have about them stones and herbs,” but are able to bind and to free from bonds, to open closed doors, and to change men’s intentions. Among the virtues of parts of animals mentioned in his treatise upon abstinence from animal food are the powers of divination which may be obtained by eating the heart of a hawk or crow.[1403]
Iamblichus on divination.
Porphyry states that all diviners attribute their predictions to gods or demons, but that he wonders if foreknowledge may not be a power of the human soul or perhaps accountable for by the sympathy which exists between different parts of the universe. Iamblichus holds, however, that divination is neither a human art nor the work of nature but of divine origin.[1404] He perhaps regards it as little more than a branch of theurgy. He distinguishes between human dreams which are sometimes true, sometimes false, and dreams and visions divinely sent.[1405] If one is able to predict the future by drinking water, it is because the water has been divinely illuminated.[1406] That we can predict when the mind is diseased and disordered, and that stupid or simple-minded men are often better able to prophesy than the wise and learned, are for him but further proofs that foreknowledge is a divine gift and not a human science, while divination by such means as rods, pebbles, grains of corn and wheat simply excites the more his pious admiration at the greatness of divine power.[1407] He disapproves of divination by standing on characters,[1408] but sees no reason why divination in darkness, in a wall, or in sunlight, or by potions and incantations, may not be divinely directed. He will not, however, connect the disordered imaginations excited by disease with divine presentiments.[1409] From true divination he also separates the “natural prescience” of certain animals whose acuteness of sense or occult sympathy with other parts and forces of nature enables them to perceive some coming events before men do. Their power resembles prophecy, “yet falls short of it in stability and truth.”[1410] Augury is an art whose conjectures have great probability, but they are based upon divine signs or portents effected in nature by the agency of demons.[1411]
Are the stars gods?
The stars are on a totally different plane from the other substances employed in divination. To Porphyry’s question whether they are not gods Iamblichus is not content to reply that the celestial divinities comprehend these heavenly bodies and that the bodies in no way impede “their intellectual and incorporeal perfection.”[1412] He must needs go on to argue that the stars themselves, as simple indivisible bodies, unchanging in quality and uniform in movement, closely approach to “the incorporeal essence of the gods.” He then triumphantly if illogically concludes, “Thus therefore the visible celestials are all of them gods and after a certain manner incorporeal.” We may add the opinion of Chaeremon and others, noted by Porphyry, that the only gods were the physical ones of the Egyptians and the planets, signs of the zodiac, decans, and horoscope; all religious myths were explained by Chaeremon as astrological allegories.
Is there an art of astrology?
Porphyry objected that those who thus reduce religion to astrology submit everything to fate and leave the human soul no freedom, and furthermore that in any case astrology is an unattainable science. Iamblichus defends it against these objections, insisting that the universe is divided under the rule of planets, signs, and decans;[1413] that the Egyptians do not make everything physical but ascribe two souls to man, one of which obeys the revolutions of the stars, while the other is intellectual and free;[1414] and that there is a systematic art of astrology based on divine revelation and the long observations of the Chaldeans, although like any other science it may at times degenerate and become contaminated by error.[1415] Iamblichus further regards as ridiculous the contention of those “who ascribe depravity to the celestial bodies because their participants sometimes produce evil.”[1416] In the brief separate treatise, De fato,[1417] he again holds that all things are bound by the indissoluble chain of necessity which men call fate, but that the gods can loose the bonds of fate, and that the human mind, too, has power to rise above nature, unite with the gods, and enjoy eternal life.
Porphyry and astrology.
Whether Porphyry in his other extant works evidences a belief in astrology or not, and whether he wrote an Introduction to the Tetrabiblos or astrological handbook of Ptolemy, has been disputed.[1418] This Introduction ascribed to Porphyry was much cited by subsequent astrologers[1419] and was printed in 1559 together with a much longer anonymous commentary on the Tetrabiblos which some ascribe to Proclus.[1420]