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The City of God

Chapter 9.--Of the Illicit Arts Connected with Demonolatry, and of Which the Platonist Porphyry Adopts Some, and Discards Others.

These miracles, and many others of the same nature, which it were tedious to mention, were wrought for the purpose of commending the worship of the one true God, and prohibiting the worship of a multitude of false gods. Moreover, they were wrought by simple faith and godly confidence, not by the incantations and charms composed under the influence of a criminal tampering with the unseen world, of an art which they call either magic, or by the more abominable title necromancy, ¹ or the more honorable designation theurgy; for they wish to discriminate between those whom the people call magicians, who practise necromancy, and are addicted to illicit arts and condemned, and those others who seem to them to be worthy of praise for their practice of theurgy,--the truth, however, being that both classes are the slaves of the deceitful rites of the demons whom they invoke under the names of angels.

For even Porphyry promises some kind of purgation of the soul by the help of theurgy, though he does so with some hesitation and shame, and denies that this art can secure to any one a return to God; so that you can detect his opinion vacillating between the profession of philosophy and an art which he feels to be presumptuous and sacrilegious. For at one time he warns us to avoid it as deceitful, and prohibited by law, and dangerous to those who practise it; then again, as if in deference to its advocates, he declares it useful for cleansing one part of the soul, not, indeed, the intellectual part, by which the truth of things intelligible, which have no sensible images, is recognized, but the spiritual part, which takes cognizance of the images of things material. This part, he says, is prepared and fitted for intercourse with spirits and angels, and for the vision of the gods, by the help of certain theurgic consecrations, or, as they call them, mysteries. He acknowledges, however, that these theurgic mysteries impart to the intellectual soul no such purity as fits it to see its God, and recognize the things that truly exist. And from this acknowledgment we may infer what kind of gods these are, and what kind of vision of them is imparted by theurgic consecrations, if by it one cannot see the things which truly exist. He says, further, that the rational, or, as he prefers calling it, the intellectual soul, can pass into the heavens without the spiritual part being cleansed by theurgic art, and that this art cannot so purify the spiritual part as to give it entrance to immortality and eternity. And therefore, although he distinguishes angels from demons, asserting that the habitation of the latter is in the air, while the former dwell in the ether and empyrean, and although he advises us to cultivate the friendship of some demon, who may be able after our death to assist us, and elevate us at least a little above the earth,--for he owns that it is by another way we must reach the heavenly society of the angels,--he at the same time distinctly warns us to avoid the society of demons, saying that the soul, expiating its sin after death, execrates the worship of demons by whom it was entangled. And of theurgy itself, though he recommends it as reconciling angels and demons, he cannot deny that it treats with powers which either themselves envy the soul its purity, or serve the arts of those who do envy it. He complains of this through the mouth of some Chaldaean or other: "A good man in Chaldaea complains," he says, "that his most strenuous efforts to cleanse his soul were frustrated, because another man, who had influence in these matters, and who envied him purity, had prayed to the powers, and bound them by his conjuring not to listen to his request. Therefore," adds Porphyry, "what the one man bound, the other could not loose." And from this he concludes that theurgy is a craft which accomplishes not only good but evil among gods and men; and that the gods also have passions, and are perturbed and agitated by the emotions which Apuleius attributed to demons and men, but from which he preserved the gods by that sublimity of residence, which, in common with Plato, he accorded to them.

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De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput IX: De inlicitis artibus erga daemonum cultum, in quibus Porphyrius Platonicus quaedam probando, quaedam quasi inprobando uersatur.

Haec et alia multa huiuscemodi, quae omnia commemorare nimis longum est, fiebant ad commendandum unius dei ueri cultum et multorum falsorumque prohibendum. fiebant autem simplici fide atque fiducia pietatis, non incantationibus et carminibus nefariae curiositatis arte conpositis, quam uel magian uel detestabiliori nomine goetian uel honorabiliori theurgian uocant, qui quasi conantur ista discernere et inlicitis artibus deditos alios damnabiles, quos et maleficos uulgus appellat - hos enim ad goetian pertinere dicunt - , alios autem laudabiles uideri uolunt, quibus theurgian deputant; cum sint utrique ritibus fallacibus daemonum obstricti sub nominibus angelorum. nam et Porphyrius quandam quasi purgationem animae per theurgian, cunctanter tamen et pudibunda quodammodo disputatione promittit; reuersionem uero ad deum hanc artem praestare cuiquam negat; ut uideas eum inter uitium sacrilegae curiositatis et philosophiae professionem sententiis alternantibus fluctuare. nunc enim hanc artem tamquam fallacem et in ipsa actione periculosam et legibus prohibitam cauendam monet; nunc autem uelut eius laudatoribus cedens utilem dicit esse mundandae parti animae, non quidem intellectuali, qua rerum intellegibilium percipitur ueritas, nullas habentium similitudines corporum; sed spiritali, qua corporalium rerum capiuntur imagines. hanc enim dicit per quasdam consecrationes theurgicas, quas teletas uocant, idoneam fieri atque aptam susceptioni spirituum et angelorum et ad uidendos deos. ex quibus tamen theurgicis teletis fateretur intellectuali animae nihil purgationis accedere, quod eam faciat idoneam ad uidendum deum suum et perspicienda ea, quae uere sunt. ex quo intellegi potest, qualium deorum uel qualem uisionem fieri dicat theurgicis consecrationibus, in qua non ea uidentur, quae uere sunt. denique animam rationalem siue, quod magis amat dicere, intellectualem, in sua posse dicit euadere, etiamsi quod eius spiritale est nulla theurgica fuerit arte purgatum; porro autem a theurgo spiritalem purgari hactenus, ut non ex hoc ad inmortalitatem aeternitatemque perueniat. quamquam itaque discernat a daemonibus angelos, aeria loca esse daemonum, aetheria uel empyrea disserens angelorum, et admoneat utendum alicuius daemonis amicitia, quo subuectante uel paululum a terra possit eleuari quisque post mortem, aliam uero uiam esse perhibeat ad angelorum superna consortia: cauendam tamen daemonum societatem expressa quodammodo confessione testatur, ubi dicit animam post mortem luendo poenas cultum daemonum a quibus circumueniebatur horrescere: ipsamque theurgian, quam uelut conciliatricem angelorum deorumque commendat, apud tales agere potestates negare non potuit, quae uel ipsae inuideant purgationi animae, uel artibus seruiant inuidorum, querelam de hac re Chaldaei nescio cuius expromens: conqueritur, inquit, uir in Chaldaea bonus, purgandae animae magno in molimine frustratos sibi esse successus, cum uir ad eadem potens tactus inuidia adiuratas sacris precibus potentias adligasset, ne postulata concederent. ergo et ligauit ille, inquit, et iste non soluit. quo indicio dixit apparere theurgian esse tam boni conficiendi quam mali et apud deos et apud homines disciplinam; pati etiam deos et ad illas perturbationes passionesque deduci, quas communiter daemonibus et hominibus Apuleius adtribuit; deos tamen ab eis aetheriae sedis altitudine separans et Platonis adserens in illa discretione sententiam.