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