On the Mysteries

Porphyry showed better judgment when he wrote to the Egyptian Anebo; where, appearing to consult and inquire, he both reveals and overturns their sacrilegious arts. And there, indeed, he rejects all daemons, whom he says drag down damp vapors because of their imprudence, and for that reason are not in the aether, but in the air beneath the Moon, and indeed under the lunar globe itself. Nevertheless, he does not dare to attribute all the fallacies and foolishness by which he is deservedly moved to all daemons. For he calls some daemons "benevolent," in the manner of others, although he confesses that they are all generally imprudent. He wonders, however, why not only the Gods are enticed by victims, but also why they are compelled and forced to do what humans wish; and if Gods are distinguished from daemons by body and incorporeality, how are the Sun and Moon, and other visible things in the sky, which he does not doubt are bodies, to be considered Gods? And if they are Gods, how are some said to be beneficial and others malevolent, and how are they joined to incorporeal things, when they are themselves corporeal? He also asks, as if in doubt, whether souls are more powerful in those who divine and perform certain miracles, or whether some spirits come from outside, through whom these things are able to be done. And he conjectures that they come from outside, because by using stones and herbs, they bind some things, and open closed doors, or perform some such thing in a miraculous way. Hence he says that others opine there is a certain genus, whose nature it is to listen, which is deceptive, all-shaped, multi-form, imitating Gods and daemons and souls of the dead, and that this is what causes all these things that are seen to be either good or wicked. Furthermore, he says that they do not help at all regarding those things that are truly good; indeed, they do not even know them, but rather they give bad advice, and calumniate, and sometimes hinder the diligent followers of virtue, and are full of rashness and pride, delighting in burnt offerings and being captured by flatteries. And the rest of the things which he mentions regarding this kind of fallacious and malignant spirits, who come from outside into the soul and delude human senses—whether sleeping or waking—he does not confirm as if he were convinced of them himself, but suggests or doubts so tenuously that he attributes these to the opinions of others. It was indeed difficult for such a great philosopher to either know or confidently refute the entire diabolical society, which any old Christian woman does not hesitate to know and most freely detests. Perhaps he is ashamed to offend Anebo, to whom he writes as a most excellent priest of such rites, and others who admire such works as if they were divine and pertain to the worship of the Gods. However, he follows and mentions those things, as if by inquiring, which, when soberly considered, cannot be attributed to anything but malignant and fallacious powers. For he asks why, when the better ones are invoked, it is as if the worse ones are commanded to carry out the unjust precepts of a man: why, when they are attracted by sexual matters, they do not hear the petitioner, yet they do not hesitate to lead them into all sorts of incestuous unions: why they warn their priests to abstain from living creatures, lest they be polluted by the vapors of the body, yet they themselves are enticed by the vapors of animal sacrifices: and when an inspector is forbidden from touching a corpse, why these things are generally performed with corpses: why it is that a human, subject to every vice, directs threats not to a daemon or some soul of the dead, but to the Sun and Moon themselves, or any of the celestial beings, and terrifies them with lies so that he may extort the truth from them. For he threatens to shatter the heavens, and other similar things impossible for a human, so that those Gods, like the most foolish children, terrified by false and ridiculous threats, might effect what is commanded. For he says that a certain Chæremon, skilled in such sacred rites, or rather sacrileges, wrote about these things that were celebrated in rumors among the Egyptians, whether concerning Isis or...