Greek Opinions Concerning Demons

THRAX. Do not be grieved, dearest of men; for God willing, if ever we happen to meet in the same place, whatever may seem to you to be lacking in this our discussion, we shall fulfill it abundantly and freely, as the Syracusans did with their tithes. ^A

GAULMINI NOTE. Certain things are presented in the last chapter, edited by Proclus and Porphyry, which may be seen to be taken from that second book, if such a book exists. What Ficinus has is taken from the following little book, which I am now the first to edit, but which, since it contains nothing—save for a word (No. 6)—about the foreknowledge of demons, is not the one that can answer Timothy's question. BOISSONADE. NOTE. Consult Strabo, book VI of his Geography. And these are the things which, hurrying toward Psellus' dialogue, I wrote down day by day as my allotted task. Thou, O God, who guidest the pen and the mind, wert and shalt be our leader. Keep, preserve, and defend me from those of whom I have discoursed and of whom I am conscious of speaking.

BY THE SAME PSELLUS

WHAT ARE THE OPINIONS OF THE GREEKS CONCERNING DEMONS

1. Our own doctrine, attributing will to the angels and pointing them toward a better inclination—though not believing them to be incapable of the worse—demonstrates that it is from here that the demons fell from the angelic order, and that they suffered ruin according to the measure of each one's merit and order. ^B The Greek doctrine, however, denying such an inclination in those natures that are devoid of bodies, supposes that there are orders of demons after the angelic world. It says that some are intelligent, others consist of mind and reason, others of reason alone; others again have received the irrational along with the rational; yet it casts the last of the demons into the irrational alone, whom it names material and punitory. It divides the world among them in such a way that it receives heat and vital air through them. And it sub- ^C jects the fire to some, the air to others, to others the water, and to others the earth; and it makes some of them presidents of the climates, and others guardians of bodies and protectors of matter. They say that these invade our souls, not out of any hatred or ill will toward us, but in order to punish them for committed sins. They add that they draw souls to matter, not for the purpose of harming them, but so that their foulness might be shaped through their relation with matter. They attribute anger and impudence to them, as to leopards and lions, and bind them to bodies that are light, airy, and less hard,

not only spherical but also elongated, participating less in light and more in earthly darkness. They further attest that they possess knowledge and foreknowledge of future events from many sources, but especially from the configurations of the stars. These things Porphyry and Iamblichus say.

^B 2. They used to sacrifice white or ruddy animals to the ethereal beings, due to their ethereal color and the purity of their nature, slitting the throat of a ram or a goat on high, as Homer says: "First they drew them back," he says, "and slaughtered and flayed them." To the aerial beings they offered varied and mixed-colored ones; but to the subterranean ones they offered animals of an opposite color, and, drawing the animal’s head toward the earth, they thus severed the neck tendons. For the beings in between, they laid the animals sideways and cut their throats; then, opening their bellies, they cut out the heart first, and dedicated the membrane of this to the ancestral gods. Of the entrails, they sacrificed the right one to the rising sun, the left to the setting sun, and the hollow part to the one just reaching mid-heaven. Likewise, having gently separated the membrane of the liver which lies under the peritoneum and [below the] entrails, they began by offering the head to those above the world and rendered the lobes to the five planets; and they sacrificed the carcass to Pluto and Proserpina. They then observed whether the carcasses of the victims fell to the right or to the left; and from that they conjectured, for themselves, auspicious or inauspicious things. They also measured the time of the convulsions after the slaughter; and if the victim expired at once, they inferred a quick end to the matters they were inquiring about; if not, a slower and more difficult one. They did not perform all these rites for everyone, but only for those to whom the chosen sacrifice pertained. And for the sober ones, they chopped oak and lit fires from it; for the Bacchae and Dionysus, they lit the pyre with vine-shoots; and all these were sprinkled with wine. Frankincense, myrrh, crocus, and resin were distributed to the gods to whom each of the sacrifices pertained.

3. On the Mysteries

3. Now the mysteries of these, such as the Eleusinian, enact the myth of Jupiter consorting with Deo, that is, Ceres, and with her daughter Proserpina, who is also called the Virgin. And because it was necessary that sexual unions take place at the initiation, Venus somehow emerges from a certain concocted apparatus [out of the] deep sea. Then a nuptial song is recited in honor of the Virgin, and the initiates sing: "I have eaten from the drum, I have drunk from the cymbal, I have entered the bridal chamber." They also enact the labor pains of Deo. Hence, there follow immediately the supplications of Deo, the drinking of gall, and heart pains. Following these, a goat-footed imitation is performed, suffering in the testicles, because Jupiter, paying the penalty for the violence brought upon Ceres, cut off the testicles of a goat and placed them in her bosom as also his own. In honor of Dionysus, they expended above all the chest and the cakes having many bosses, and those initiated into Sabazius and those seeking the alms of the mother of the gods,

^A Bacchic revelers and Mimallones, and a certain resonant Thesprotian kettle and a Dodonean bronze; and another Corybas, and a different Cure, ^B imitations of demons. After these, Baubo, exposing her thighs and female private parts—for thus they name the pudenda, being affected with indecency—and thus they dissolve the mystery in shame.

4. Enchantment, moreover, is a certain art concerning material and earthly demons, preoccupied with the imaginations of those who behold them, bringing up their phantoms—some as if from Hades, others bringing them down from on high—and these, too, are low-dwelling. And it substantiates phantom-like apparitions for those who gaze upon such things. And to some it sends forth certain billowing currents from there, while to others it promises the loosening of bonds, pleasures, and favors. Such powers are summoned by repeated songs and incantations.

5. Now magic, indeed, seemed to the Greeks to be a thing of great power. ^C They say, therefore, that this is the final part of the priestly science. For it investigates the essence, nature, power, and quality of all things under the moon—I refer to the elements and their parts, animals of every kind, plants and the fruits derived therefrom, stones, herbs, and, to speak simply, the substance and power of every object—and from this source it accomplishes its own ends. It sets up statues for the procurement of health, and creates shapes of every kind, and other structures that cause disease. Eagles and dragons were to them an efficacious premise for health, while cats, dogs, and crows are symbols of vigilance. Wax and clay were taken for the composition of members. ^D It often also presents manifestations of celestial fire. Statues smile of their own accord, and lamps are ignited by spontaneous fire. It also embraces the whole of astronomy, and through it, it both is able to do and performs many things.

6. Omen, as the name itself indicates, is an invocation of evil demons. It is performed when the sun has recently turned toward the south, diminishing the day and increasing the night. For it is a Greek belief that none of the material demons can bear the rays of the sun. Hence they lay snares for us by night, being unable to do so by day. When, therefore, the light is further north, they are unable to work their own effects, but when it turns toward the south and the air around us becomes, as it were, more dejected, then they show certain outbursts and, so to speak, circumambulations of their own malice, and when summoned, they obey those who call upon them. But those who initiate these mysteries today do not know the incantation of the invocation—would that they had never learned it!—but they leap out from the flame, tracing many fires in a circle. This was also a part of the old bacchic, not to say frantic, behavior. For the Greeks said that then the powers descend and converse clearly with those who invoke them, when the air above the head is misty and possesses a thick substance. A circle, however, has the power of containment. The invoked demon, moreover, appears as though circumscribed and is contained, insofar...

^A as the mind of the one who invokes him desires. Regarding such a turning of the sun, or rather, regarding the malice of demons in such a state, they think that the sea also indicates something; for it snatches away some of those swimming, not because the water itself causes the destruction, but because the demons inhabiting the water exert their malice.

Just as there is divination by air and by leaves, so too is there lecanomancy (divination by a basin), which has been established among the Assyrians, who are most extraordinary in their wisdom, by means of a basin placed underneath and filled with prophetic water, which marks by its own shape the inclination [of the demons] toward hollow things. The water poured into it does not differ in substance from ordinary water; but the rite performed over it and the incantations operate in such a way as is necessary to draw in the divining spirit. This demon is earthly and particular; and when it falls into the water, it first produces a certain sound, confused to those standing nearby, upon its arrival; then, settling upon the water, it softly mutters certain faint sounds representing the prediction of future events. However, this spirit is utterly deceitful because it belongs to the material order, and this kind [of spirit] deliberately takes care to emit a faint sound so that, through the indistinctness of the voice, it may escape the charge of lying.

^B Regarding the pact which the Chaldeans had, I shall now summarize its power for you. First, they prepared a pure sacrifice for them—aromatic substances, plants, and stones, saffron, myrrh, and laurel, mystically purified. A certain space was marked out around the things planted and buried there. Then, the man who was making the pact—being a person skilled in sorcery—having named the matter for which he was offering the sacrifice, would appear the next day at the site of the mystery. And uncovering the roots of the plants and the consecrated materials, and taking them up with his left hand, all at once and suddenly, he invoked certain hidden powers. These powers were the leader of the sacrifice offered, the lords of the whole, the guardian of the day, the ruler of the time, [and] the tetrarch demon.

These things suffice for a purified tongue and a wise ear. ^C

PSELLUS ON THE VIRTUES OF STONES

To the most noble and most learned Arthur Freeman, greetings. J. Steph. Bernard.

That I have not hesitated to choose you, most noble man, to whose name I might dedicate this book, is brought about both by your singular love toward me, with which you have always pursued me, and the stable and firm familiarity that has existed between us; and also by your wonderful and truly rare enthusiasm for polite letters, so that I may not vainly conclude that this testimony of my regard for you will be far from unwelcome. I would appear utterly inhuman if I were to allow any occasion to slip by in which I might declare to you my grateful mind, especially since this slight and modest opusculum will derive no small splendor from your own distinguished gifts. Therefore, I pray, receive this Psellus with a cheerful countenance; it will in some way soothe that pain I perceive when I reflect that I am soon to be deprived of that pleasure which I derive from your most learned and wonderfully sweet conversations. I ask you most earnestly that you might wish to cherish the same love toward me, even when absent, as you have testified to me while present; I, for my part, will not suffer it to appear that anything has been diminished from our friendship. Farewell. Written at Leiden, the day before the Kalends of June, 1745.

To the most illustrious Gilbert Gaulmin, quaestor of Moulins, Phil. Jac. Maussac sends greetings.

Here for you, Gaulmin, most excellent man, is your Psellus, which I had recently destined to be dedicated to your name while we were together in Paris. I say "your" Psellus, not so much because it is owed to you by promise, as because no one knows its dignity and excellence better than you, a fact that your briefly scribbled and learned notes—which, as all your friends know, you delivered in a few days rather than studied—upon the very obscure booklet of this same author concerning the operations of demons, would sufficiently prove, even if I were not the perpetual herald of your praises and virtues. Our friendship could rightly claim this for itself, not just for a time: but your erudition, which is not vulgar, and your talent, placed beyond the trial of all others, could extort it from a reluctant one. This author, as you are not unaware, is an eminent Platonist, one who by profession not only imitates Plato in his eloquence but also in his philosophizing. This book on the virtues of stones, however, has remained hidden until now; and—that I may not seem to have spoken for the sake of adulation—it is most excellent, and deserves to obtain the place of honor among his chief labors and fruits. For my sake, Jacques Sirmond of the Society of Jesus, a man most friendly to me and not slightly tinctured with these letters which make us human, transcribed it from an ancient codex and liberally communicated it to me; but that codex was so teeming with errors that a mouse-eaten ballad would be more understandable. I found this copy so filled with confusions that, although the author deals with stones widely different from one another, nevertheless, because things sometimes contradictory to each other had coalesced into one, no obvious signs of contradiction appeared. It is a great thing, I confess, to purge and liberate from errors those who preoccupy the books of the ancients, but to tame the confusions by which the mind of the author is obscured, the order and series of the work perturbed, and similar monsters—that is a greater task. Which you well know, my Gaulmin, who are so much a "scrutinizer" in these matters that, among the very few who stir the same vat in this dregs of letters, I would not fear to declare you a leader, even if you have not yet reached that age commonly called "older." For you possess such keenness of intellect that, what others scarcely dare hope to achieve for themselves in the curriculum of many years, you, in the shortest span, in a mere point and moment of time, not only touch upon, but reach even greater and more difficult things. Today, all who apply themselves to letters as is fitting, and who cultivate that humanity which few have known, either yearn to arrive at the knowledge of many languages, so that they may be able to make every kind of author of good note familiar to themselves, and to possess history most perfectly from the "egg," as it is said, all the way to the "apples," which should be the final goal of a studious and wise man; or they pursue the sciences—I mean philosophy, theology, medicine, or mathematical disciplines, or the art of law. A good part of those who linger in the knowledge of the sciences,

languages, without which we desire in vain to have knowledge, are ignorant and destitute of good and liberal letters, so that to imitate that race of men and to follow in their footsteps is to always wish to be blind and to struggle with barbarism. Of the rest, whose number is small—for few are endowed with a good mind in letters, such is the sloth of our age—I have known you, Gaulmin, who speak many tongues and diligently apply yourself daily to their knowledge. Once, the golden and most cultured age of Athens marveled at men who were bilingual; pray, see what our iron age is, which has not only a bilingual man, but offers one who is pentalingual to set against that former age. I speak of you, Gaulmin, whom all who have known you by sight know to be most learned in Arabic and Hebrew and Turkish; and what need is there to speak of Greek and Latin? For you have already made such progress in them that there are few left who can be compared with you in the knowledge of them, and no one who surpasses you. The Parisian Senate knew this well long ago, when, while you were seeking your prefecture, you were so laden with praises that, contrary to what the laws of this empire forbid, they co-opted you into the number of magistrates without an examination. There is, moreover, none of those Oriental languages—and this is most wonderful—that you cannot learn within a few months, provided you are allowed to have a trusted instructor, such is the tenacious memory you enjoy, and such your appetite for learning and handling letters. May God, who governs us and all our affairs, grant that you exceed the years of Nestor for the increase of literary matters, and may that day be slow in coming which will snatch you from us. Farewell, my Gaulmin, live forever, and accept this most certain pledge of our friendship for you. Protect us from the tongues of the envious, and by your most refined wit cultivate, perfect, and adorn this tumultuous work of ours; for the things we wrote as they progressed look to the amendment and interpretation of the author rather than to illustration. Farewell again. From our study, Toulouse, the Kalends of September, in the year MDCXV.

To the benevolent reader, S. D. J. Steph. Bernardus.

Concerning the life of our Psellus and his writings, there is no need for me to state anything, benevolent reader, since those matters which look to this can be abundantly known from the *Diatribe on Psellus* by the most learned Leo Allatius, published again by the most celebrated Johann Albert Fabricius, in volume V of his *Bibliotheca Graeca*. I shall only briefly review the things that I have to mention concerning this little book on the virtues of stones; then I shall also explain what I myself have contributed to this new edition.

Claudius Ancantherus was the first to bring this little book to light, as Lindenius testifies in his *De scriptis Med.*, p. 546. *A Nomenclator of Gems, which are most in use, with the medicines of the same*, never before edited so far as could be known, was issued by the physician and imperial historian Claudius Ancantherus from the Greek. There were added to this little book short and not unprofitable notes by the same Ancantherus. Printed at the Oukomarian press, 1594, in 8vo.

It was published subsequently together with Plutarch’s *De fluminibus* under the care of Philippus Jacobus Maussacus, who first edited it in Greek, with a translation and notes added, at Toulouse, 1615, in 8vo. The most skillful anatomist Adrianus Spigelius also translated this little book of Psellus into Latin and Italian, as Leo Allatius reports in *Diatribe*, chapter 47, p. 31. Philippus Jacobus Maussacus first published this same *Little Book on the Virtues of Stones* by Psellus, translated and amended in Latin, edited at Toulouse in Greek and Latin in the year 1615, 8vo. However, Jacobus Philippus Thomasinus indicated to me in his letter—a great friend of both—that this little book, before Maussacus had rendered it into Latin and Italian, was preserved to this day by the liberal Cremas, a philosopher and most outstanding physician of Treviso.

Casaubon also mentions the little book in his notes on Aelius Spartianus’s *Antoninus Caracalla*. And Justus Rycquius, in *Epist. Centuria nova Epist. 29*, reports that he had seen it in the Saragica library among other manuscript works. These are what Leo Allatius states in the aforementioned location. Yet, so far as I know, Spigelius’s version never saw the light of day. Maussacus confesses in his dedicatory letter to Gilbert Gaulmin that he published this book from a copy of Jacobus Sirmondus. But whether Psellus was the author, or who indeed that person was, or whether another must be established as the author of this little book, Leo Allatius discusses in the aforementioned location, chapter 10, p. 8.

As I meditated upon publishing this little book anew, only the edition of Maussacus offered itself to me, which presented the Greek text, which I therefore had to follow alone; nor was I even able to cast my eyes upon the version of the illustrious Ancantherus, although I had greatly desired it, especially since Maussacus used a codex that was very torn and mutilated, a fact which imposed upon that most learned man, so that he explained certain passages quite strangely. However, although there was nothing at hand besides the edition of Maussacus that could have been of help to me, I nevertheless hoped that I might be able to wash away the stains, if not all, at least most of them, if I consulted and compared writers who had been occupied with the same subject, the value of which to me, you, reader, shall judge. In the notes, I strove above all to wipe away the blemishes that might hinder the sense of the words and the mind of the author, and wherever it did not seem entirely *inappropriate*, I strove to shed some light with other authors as well. But you, B. L. (benevolent reader), take these efforts in good part; thus my spirit will be inclined to attempt greater things. Farewell.