Magic and Religion in

Augustine and

Iamblichus Olivier Dufault

Rubbish is value denied. It is rendered universally meaningless, but

since this is impossible, its meaning returns in an inverted or repressed

form to haunt us in disguise, in the form of daydreams, faint odours,

noxious pollution.

Ben Watson on the music of Frank Zappa

One Easter morning, a few years after the destruction of the Serapeum (c. 392

A.D.), a group of lay Christians interrogated Augustine about the pagan

divination which predicted the temples demise. Augustine deemed the

discussion important enough to record it in a treatise called On the Divination of

Daemons. The Christian brothers seemed at first surprised by the validity of the

oracle. Augustine, however, objected that there was nothing special about Gods

allowing demons the ability to know the future. Augustine's interlocutors replied

that God could tolerate evil actions perpetrated between humans, but that he

could not be indifferent to what pertained to religion. Therefore, if God

permitted divination, it had to be good. But, Augustine answered, if God

allows it because he considers it good, how come he also permits the Christian

legal repression of these pagan cults? The Christians argued that God was

pleased with these religious acts in the past. For an unknown reason, this time

had passed, and repression of the ancient cults was now justified by the fact that

he no longer tolerated them. In fact, according to Augustines brothers, the cults

of the ancient books of the pontiffs were not practiced anymore. Thus,

Augustines companions concluded that pagan religion was no longer performed

and that what was taking place in their day was formerly rejected by the pontiffs

themselves: they were the things that are done in the night.1

This discussion simply summarizes Augustines complex conception of magic

and religion. If, as many were ready to do in Antiquity,2 we take those illegal

things done in the night as a synonym of magic, we can see how his argument

managed to harmonize two contradictory facts: first, that Christians did not

consider the existence of potent non-Christian miracles possible; second, that the

ancient cults of the pagans were still in use and still considered potent. As many

others probably did, these Christians understood all non-Christian cults as

magic, sparing them the problem of thinking about two mutually exclusive

cosmologies at the same time. As we will see, Augustine would do the same, but

in a slightly more elaborate way.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the political and cultural

implications of magic definition in Late Antiquity. Augustines sacramental

theology and theory of magic shared a lot of similarities with Iamblichus, a

student of Porphyry who criticized his former master as well as Plotinus on

many issues and who was an important inspiration for later Neoplatonism. I

argue that Iamblichus and Augustines theories on magic suggests that both

thinkers tried to create an exclusive religious identity for the Roman polity. In

order to show the similarities between Iamblichus and Augustines theories, we

will first look at the Neoplatonic conception of magic and religious practice. A

comparison of Augustines and Origens definition of magic will then show that

Augustine, like Iamblichus, was more sensitive than his predecessors to the

problem of keeping the boundary between magic and religion clear. Rather than

looking at a cultural separation between pagan and Christian thinkers, I want to

focus on a theoretical differentiation. The first group of thinkers (Plotinus,

Porphyry) were not interested in making a philosophical distinction between the

popular concepts of magic and religion. On the contrary, the second group

1 Augustine, On the Divination of Demons, 1-6. 2 Benko, S. (1984) Pagan Rome and the early Christians, Bloomington, pp.

125-127.

(Iamblichus and Augustine) believed that a theoretical distinction between

good and bad religious practices had to be made. My goal is not to prove

that Iamblichus was the source for Augustines conception of magic and

religion, nor is it to establish a systematic definition of magic good for all of

Late Antiquitys social groups. By studying how Late Antique thinkers

construedand socially discriminated magicI rather want to show that the act

of defining magic was not only motivated by philosophical inquiry but also by

political action.

Magic as a boundary

The study of magic as a boundary-making concept could be compared to what

Michel Foucault called a history of limits.3 In Histoire de la folie lge

classique, Foucault retraced the manner in which Europeans slowly medicalized

madness until it reached modern psychiatry. He argued that during the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries our own conception of mental illnesses was

the rag-bag of the Enlightenments misfits. Madness was addressed, but such

problems were not medicalized as with 21st century medicine. Institutions such

as La Salptrire and lHpital gnral, while caring for the sick and the

poor, also served as prisons for those disillusioned by the positivist new world

order. Accordingly, among real madmen, sorcerers, alchemists and

astrologers also found their way into Paris prison-hospitals.4 For Foucault, the

medicalization of impiety in general represented a precise moment in the

evolution of social paradigms, a moment where magic gradually lost its

credibility, stopped being blasphemous and started being a mental illness: Tous

ces signes [i.e. signs of magic] qui allaient devenir, partir de la psychiatrie du

XIXe sicle, les symptmes non quivoques de la maladie, sont rests, pendant

prs de deux sicles, partags entre limpit et lextravagance, mi-chemin du

profanatoire et du pathologiquel o la draison prend ses dimensions

propres.5

3 Foucault, M. (1972) Histoire de la folie lge classique, Paris, cited by

Braudel, F. (1993), Grammaire des Civilisations, Paris , pp. 63-64. 4 Foucault (1972), pp. 130-134. 5 Foucault (1972), pp. 133-134. In many intellectual milieus right now, the

concept of magic does not seem to have evolved beyond what Foucault

Like magic in Late Antiquity, magic in eighteenth-century France was

extravagant(i.e. false and delusive), as well as impious. For both periods,

however, impiety and magic were shape-changing categories.6 This, I argue, is

the function of such categories. By being ill-defined, but nonetheless evil, magic

could be manipulated by individuals to fit certain targets, such as rivals,

theories, or incomprehensible events; magic was a protean category that

incorporated incomprehensiblebut nonetheless evilthings in the accusers

social space. In fact, magic rationalized the irrational by connoting the unknown

with evil. Christians, for example, did not know more about pagan practices

after they called them magic, but at least they could say that they were eviland

not incomprehensible. Similarly, Peter Brown used Mary Douglas definition of

magic to analyze the charge of magic in Late Antiquity.7 For Brown, magic

described for the eighteenth century. Magic is no longer bad to practice

because it is impious, it is bad because it is deceptive: dgage de ses

pouvoirs sacrs, elle ne porte plus que des intentions malfiques: une

illusion de l'esprit au service des dsordres du cur. On ne la juge plus

selon ses prestiges de profanation, mais d'aprs ce qu'elle rvle de draison.

(p.1 32). Examples of this modern attitude in regards to magic can be

found in De Libera, A. (2003) La face cache du monde, Critique 59

(2003), pp. 430-448 and Papas, X. (2003) Trois formules sur la magie,

Critique 59 (2003), pp. 413-429. 6 R. Gordon appropriately called his article Imagining Greek and Roman

Magic, in Ankarloo, B. & Clark, S. (1999) Witchcraft and Magic in

Europe : Ancient Greece and Rome, London, p. 163: The notion of magic,

at any rate in what I shall call a strong sense, was formed in the ancient

world discontinuously and, as it were, with everybody talking at once. 7 Brown, P. (1970) Sorcery, Demons, and the Rise of Christianity, in

Douglas, M. (ed.), Witchcraft, Confessions & Accusations, London, 1970,

pp. 25-26. cf. M. Douglas, (2002) Purity and Danger, London, p. 127

[structurally defined, magic would be] the anti-social psychic power with

which persons in relatively unstructured areas of society are credited. The

accusation being a mean of exerting control where practical forms of control

are difficult. Witchcraft, then, is found in the non-structure. Witches are

social equivalent of beetles and spiders who live in the cracks of the walls

accusations occurred when a group with no socially-approved power

(inarticulate) clashed with another established group, holding articulate power.

He convincingly argued that the two social groups fought in demi-mondes (like

the circus, the Emperors court, or the church), where people of different

cultural backgrounds met in a shared social space. These demi-mondes were

social buffer-zones between rigid systems of articulate power, in which the

norms of society were suspended.8 Peter Brown explained Late Antique magic

accusations as the result of a malaise in the structure of the governing classes

of the Roman Empire.9 Brown imaginatively compares sorcery beliefs with

radio-active traces in a x-ray. Where these assemble, he writes, we have a

hint of pockets of uncertainty and competition in a society increasingly

committed to a vested hierarchy in church and state.10

For the largest part of Late Antique society, which lived from the land, magic

probably looked like what Jeanne Favret-Saada described for the late 1970s

Bocage, a rural region of Northern France. Lencrouillage (Bocages slang for

bewitching) was a secret system which drew on hatred and evil to explain and

resolve unfortunate events. In the Bocage, magic explained crop failures, the

illnesses of cattle, or the impotence of a family man.11 Similarly, in the

Emperors entourage, magic could be used to explain the incomprehensible (and

undesirable) rise of a rival.12 As we will see in this study, in theology, magic

fixed the boundary between orthodox and unorthodox cults, by grouping

together undesirable religious evidence which confronted ones cosmology.

By religious evidence, I understand the experiences of the divine which were

and wainscoting. They attract the fears and dislikes which other ambiguities

and contradictions attract in other thought structures, and the kind of powers

attributed to them symbolize their ambiguous, unarticulated status. 8 Brown (1970), p. 21-22. 9 Brown (1970), p. 20. 10 Brown (1970), p. 25. 11 Favret-Saada, J. (1977) Les mots, la mort, les sorts, Paris, pp. 16-24. 12 On the accusation of magic leveled against Athanasius, cf. Amm. Mar.,

15.7.7, cited by Brown (1970), p. 26. On the example of Libanius, cf.

Brown (1970), p. 24, n. 32.

taken for granted in Antiquity. For example, oracular sayings (or sacred texts)

were meaningful data for most Romans, even if they sometimes could not

understand what they meant. Likewise, most Occidentals now take Einsteins

theory of relativity for granted, even if they generally cannot explain why they

think it is true. In a similar way, sacrifices and prayers were religious evidence

as well because they were seen as holding truth or power. Being the source of all

knowledge and all power, Late Antique intellectuals and politicians vied for the

control of religious evidencei.e. to impose a cultural system on society which

included good evidence, and excluded bad evidence.

By being an ethical category, it appears that magic was a political category as

well. The validity of this statement, however, depends on what one defines as

being politics and culture. In this study, I understand politics as being the

protection and the advertisement of ones ideal culture. Moreover, I understand

culture as the shifting extension of ones identity, which stops where one

considers that something alien begins. Thus, if, as for most inhabitants of the

Roman Empire, religion was a crucial aspect of culture, an attempt to distinguish

the good and the bad in religion becomes a highly political gesture.

Goeteia and magic

The Greek terms goeteia and magia, translated as magic, seem to have been

used to accuse somebody else, the sorcerer (goes, magos) of practicing a

mysteriousand impiousart.13 Being a goes was not like being a carpenter or

a consul, two businesses which were socially marked by strict characteristics.

We should thus be cautious of the actual words used in sources to describe

activities that we think are magic. Calling the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM)14

13 Plato, lg., 10.909b; Plato, Men., 80b; Gorgias, Hel., frag. B11.10 (Dielz-

Kranz); frag. A3 (Diels-Kranz) = D.L., 8.56; Morb. Sacr., 1.10-12; Plotinus,

Enn., 2.9.14; Augustine, C.D., 10.9; cf. Braarvig, J. (1999) Magic :

Reconsidering the Grand Dichotomy, in Jordan, D. R., Montgomery, H. &

Thomassen, E. (eds.), The world of ancient magic, Athens, 1999, pp. 31-51;

Graf, F. (1994) La magie dans l'Antiquit grco-romaine : idologie et

pratique, Paris, pp. 35-37. 14 The Papyri Graecae Magicae, were first collected, edited and translated by

Karl Preisendanz in 1928. In the 1986 edition, Hans Dieter Betz added new

magic (even if its content almost never refers to itself as such) is a bit like

calling Michel Foucaults or Eric Doddss works demagogy, and not what

they claim to be. The difference between demagogues and historians is not how

they accomplish their work; for historians and (good) demagogues both use

logical argumentation. Likewise, holy men and sorcerers in Antiquity also

shared similar techniques and thus cannot be differentiated by the way they

accomplished their miracles. In the early twentieth century, J. G. Frazer

considered magic to be different from religion because it was mechanical and

aimed toward material interests; it was not religion but sciences bastard

sister.15 Many critiques have shown, however, that Frazers characteristics

(sympathy, god-coercion and material interests) could not establish an absolute

definition of magic, because they were often present in official religion too.16

Like many anthropologists who realized many decades ago that what seemed

like magic and what was actually called magic by their subject was two different

things, historians now begin to reappraise the distance needed for such studies.

In his study of the Greek Magical Papyri, Hans Dieter Betz realized that the

writers of the so-called magical papyri referred to themselves with the

Greek material as well as bilingual (Demotic/Greek) papyri not included by

Preisendanz: Betz, H. D., The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation,

Including the Demotic Spells, vol.1 texts, Chicago, 1986, hereafter PGM.

The PGM are hardly datable and range from the first century to the seventh

century AD. Still, if they were read as sheet music for religious

performances, we can assume that, in essence, their format did not change a

lot over the ages. For a good history of the transmission and editions of the

PGM, see Brashear, W. M. (1995) The Greek Magical Papyri: an

Introduction and Survey; Annotated Bibliography (1928-1994), in ANRW

2.18.5, pp. 3380-3684. 15 Frazer, J. G. (1981) Le Rameau d'Or, edited by N. Belmont et M. Izard,

Paris, p.14. 16 Braarvig (1999), p. 21-31. For other criticisms, see also Douglas (2002),

pp. 27-30; Sharot, S. (1989) Magic, Religion, Science, and Secularization

in Neusner, J., Frerichs, E. S., Flesher, P. V. M. (eds.), Religion, Science,

and Magic, in Concert and in Conflict, New York, 1989, pp. 261-266.

vocabulary of the mysteriesand not that of magic.17 Accordingly, Betz judged

that the authors of the PGM rituals considered their work to be religion, and

not magic.18 Moreover, Betz noted that the PGM never refers to a practitioner

as goes, and only rarely as magos.19 On the contrary, the practitioner was an

initiate;20 Pnouthis, a famous Egyptian sorcerer, was a holy scribe.21

Nevertheless, Betz tended to magicalize the texts. For example, he called the

rituals authors mystagogue-magicians and rendered ousia (a very vague term

denoting the materials used in the rites) as magical material.22 Although

Preizandanz edition of the eighty-odd magical papyri probably contains some

secret rituals which were commonly considered to be magic by Greek

speakers,23 many of the PGMs holy scribes, however, would probably have

been insulted if someone had called their rituals magic. The PGM are a

modern collection, that includes many descriptions of ritual under the modern

17 According to H. D. Betz, in the PGM, Holy magic (hiera mageia) is a

positive term. [] There are, however, different levels of cultural

sophistication in the papyri, and it is in sections representing a higher

cultural level that we find descriptive terms such as mageia (magic),

magikos (magical), and magos (magician). Betz, H. D. (1991) Magic and

Mystery in the Greek Magical Papyri, in C. A. Faraone & D. Obbink,

Oxford, p. 248. One could wonder what Betz means by a higher cultural

level (probably means Greek cultural milieu). Nevertheless, mageia and its

cognate terms could be understood in Greco-Roman literature as meaning

the purest religion as well as its diametrical opposite, goeteia. cf. Plato, Alc.,

1.121e, and Apuleius (Apo., 25-26), who cites Platos passage to his own

profit. 18 Betz (1991), p. 254. 19 Betz (1991), p. 248. 20 mustes : PGM 1.127; 4.474, 744. 21 hierogrammateos : PGM 1.42. 22 Betz (1986), p. 336. 23 Some of the rituals found in the PGM either involves the

coercion/persuasion of divinities or the restraining of humans, cf. PGM

4.555-582; 7.394-404, 417-22, 429-58, etc.

label of magic.24 Accordingly, the definition of these papyri is probably worth

reconsidering.

Magic is not an easy category, and it is clear that, as with other social taboos like

adultery and assassination, people rarely described themselves as practicing it.

Given the mostly public character of the texts copied down from Antiquity until

now, it is not surprising that few would have seriously defined themselves as

socially deviant individuals. When the term magic is used, then, it invariably

occurs in negative, second-party accounts. In the face of such a context, two

options are conceivable: 1-Studying the social processes surrounding the

accusation of magici.e. who accused, and what for. Or: 2-Studying the

practice of what other people called magic. This study deals with the first kind

of methodology and places accusation of magic in a social structure. For some,

it seems that the definition of magic is a futile endeavor.25 This might be true if

one only considers the second type of magic study, i.e. the classification of

sources (like the PGM) or literary descriptions of magical procedures. For this

study, however, defining magic is essential because philosophers and bishops

repeatedly appropriated its meaning to fit their own cosmology, which, by

repercussion, informed their political visions.

Plato and Neoplatonists on magic

Neoplatonists had two different attitudes toward magic (goeteia, mageia), both

of which can be traced back to Plato:

1. Magic was a group of rituals which claimed coercive power over

divinities. Neoplatonists understood such a claim to be impious, but

explained its potential truthfulness by a pervasive world-view (in

philosophy as elsewhere), which saw the world as an intricate web of

microcosms and macrocosms physically related by an invisible power

24 Betz (1986), p. xli-xliv. The collection dAnastasi, which now forms the

core of the PGM was described as a fromage mystique by the auction

catalogue that sold the papyri to European museums and universities. 25 Ogden, D. (1999) Gendering Magic (review), Classical Review 50.2

(2000), pp. 85-86 and Gager, J. G, (1992) Curse Tablets and Binding Spells

from the Ancient World, Oxford, p. 12.

called sympathy (sumpatheia). This theory explained invisible relations

of attractions or repulsion, and seemingly incredible events.26

2. Magic was delusive. It was a metaphor for the ensnarement of the

world over the soul, i.e. the fact that souls forget their true divinity and

fall prey to bodily impulses.27

In the Banquet, Plato presented an exceptionally amoral conception of magic

and religion by grouping the magical art with other religious activities. Eros was

said to supervise the interactions between the human and the divine spheres.

Being the link between humanity and divinity, this god controlled what we now

would call the supernatural as well as the spiritual experiences of the divine:

the art of the priests for what concerns the sacrifices and the initiations,

likewise for the incantations, the prophecies in general and magic (goeteia).28 It

seems, then, that the Banquet associated magic with socially acceptable cults.

Far from chastising the practice of magic, the Socrates of the Banquet

considered Eros, or Love, as being the power behind what later philosophers

would call cosmic sympathy. We should not assume, however, that the

inclusion of magic in the realm of divine communications implied that magic

was politically correct, for the Socrates of the Sophist had quite different things

to say. In this text, Plato associated the sophists demagogy with magic.29

According to Xavier Papas, Plato used the analogy of magic for two reasons.

First, he wanted to oppose the sophist to the sage by claiming that the former

was a forger, an imitator, and the latter, a searcher of truth. Secondly, by this

26 This principle was explained by Plotinus, Enn., 4.4.30-45. A similar view

can be seen in the fragments of Celsus True Discourse as found in Origen,

Cels., 4.86. Origen himself seems to had a similar conception of magic

(Cels., 1.24-25). For a similar discovery of sympathy by modern physicists,

cf. Caltech Media Relation: Caltech physicists achieve first bona fide

quantum teleportation:

http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR11935.html. 27 cf. Plotinus, Enn., 2.9.14-15; 4.3.17; Porphyry, Abst., 1.28; 1.43; 2.41;

Iamblichus, De Myst., 3.25.160.15. 28 Plato, Symp., 202e. 29 The Republic (599a) shows a similar attitude to magic and was used to

discredit poets who claimed false things about the gods.

polarization, Plato implied the existence of non-being, a dark space where the

philosopher could relegate all the puissances du faux. 30 For Papas, affirming

the existence of non-being was a definitive break from Parmenides ontology,

and was necessary if one wanted to classify the sophists in a distinct category:

Pour que la raison philosophique puisse juger les sophistes et les mages, les

rendre discernables et sen dissocier son tour, il faut alors postuler une

certaine existence du non-tre : supposer, avec Parmnide, une plnitude de

ltre, cest rendre indiscernables raison et magie, vrit et illusion.

Papas analysis of Platos Sophist argues that magic could be used to stigmatize

the irrational and absurd as non-being. In other words, any apparently

unclassified and absurd event could be categorized as magic.

The separation of truth and lie, however, leads to another question: if Plato

introduced the category of non-being to find a suitable place for sophists, why

did he also include magic in this group? The answer can be found in the political

vision of the Laws, where the image of the sorcerer and the sophist seem to

coincide. Because of its impiety, magic was forbidden in this ideal city.31

According to Plato, for his demagogy and disrespectful attitude toward the other

citizens, the sorcerer had to be incarcerated. Moreover, because he claimed to be

able to manipulate divinities, he was considered as a pollution. Even dead, the

sorcerer was a nuisance since his corpse had to be thrown out of the limits of the

citywithout any sepulchreand whoever was found caring for his remains

had to be prosecuted. The sorcerer was the ultimate outcast; for his demagogy,

he was rejected from the human polity, and for his impiety, he was a pollution,

and thus rejected from the divine community as well. The comparison of the

Laws and the Sophist suggests that sophist and sorcerer were related terms

for Plato. Calling sophists sorcerers, however, did more than cast their

teachings in the realm of non-being. Because magic was considered evil,32

30 Papas (2003), pp. 415-416. 31 Leg., 10.909b. On the political function of religion, cf. OMeara, D. J.

(2003) Platonopolis, Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity,

Oxford, pp. 116-119. 32 cf. Graf (1994), pp. 31-38.

Platos accusation that sophists were sorcerers shows that magic was not only

vilifying demagogical discourses, but beings as well.33 Seven centuries before

Iamblichus and Augustine, magic was already a powerful political weapon.

Like Plato in the Banquet, Plotinus also grouped religious activities under the

principle of Eros. Plotinus discussion of the influence of stars, and ultimately,

of magic, is part of a great work which Porphyry, his foremost student,

subdivided in three treatises in his edition of the Enneads: On Difficulties about

the Soul I, II, and III (Enn. 4.3-5). In this long work, Plotinus tried to solve the

problem of the relation between the embodied condition of the individual soul,

and paradoxically, of our souls participation in an immaterial principle, the

world-soul. On Difficulties about the Soul II (Enneads 4.4) starts in the middle

of a discussion on memory, and shows that stars, gods and perfect entities

cannot have memory because they cannot lack any form of knowledge.34

Knowing everything, and for ever, makes memory useless for the gods, who will

then, not even have designs and devices concerned with human affairs, by

which they will manage our business and that of the earth in general: the right

order which comes from them to the All is of another kind.35 Plotinus meant

that the gods influence could not be understood in a historical and locative way,

but in a spatially as well as temporally unified way.

Probably drawing on Platos passage of the Banquet on the powers of Eros,36

Plotinus subscribed to a naturalistic conception of the universe in which alli.e.

good and evilactivities could be explained according to the powers of cosmic

sympathy (sympatheia), a

harmony of action and experience and an order which arranged things together,

adapting them and bringing them into due relation with each other, so that

33 A passage of the Meno shows that Greek cities often got rid of undesirable

political character (like Socrates) through accusations of magic: Plato, Men.,

80b. 34 Plotinus, Enn., 4.4.6. 35 Plotinus, Enn., 4.4.6. 36 Plato, Symp., 202e, which itself is a further elaboration of the old principle

of Love and Strife (philia and neikos), mentioned by Empedocles, frag.

17.19-20b (Diels-Kranz).

according to every figure of the heavenly circuit there is a different disposition

of the things which it governs, as if they were performing a single ballet in a

rich variety of dance-movements [] But the parts of the dancers body, too,

cannot possibly keep the same position in every figure: as his body follows the

pattern of the dance and bends with it, one of his limbs is pressed hard down,

another relaxed, one works hard and painfully, another is given rest as the

figuring changes.37

Magic, for Plotinus, is the cosmic dance.38 Moreover, Plotinus described the

Love and Strife of the All, i.e. cosmic sympathy, as the first wizard and

apothecary.39 As the conclusion to the Ennead demonstrates, Plotinus used the

concept of magic (goeteia) to show that correct, practical activity should not be

considered good in itself but reflecting a higher Good.40 In fact, Plotinus even

said that practical activity in general was magic: For everything which is

directed to something else is enchanted (goeteuetai) by something else; for that

to which it is directed enchants (goeteuei) and draws it; but only that which is

self-directed is free from enchantment (agoeteuton). That Plotinus used magic

(goeteia) as a metaphor becomes very clear when he finishes his explanation of

magic by writing that the practical man is drawn not by the arts of wizards but

of nature, which brings illusion and links one thing to another not spatially but

by the magic draughts (philtrois) which it gives.41

Plotinus conception of magic is fairly original and, pushed to its farthest extent,

could even be considered impious. Indeed, if any external action became magic,

why would one continue to practice religion? And, on a more political tone, why

one would sacrifice to the emperor or the community if civic religion was a

hoax? Plotinus probably did not want to finish as Socrates had, and finished his

excursus on magic with a discreet rehabilitation of traditional piety: As Plotinus

37 Plotinus, Enn., 4.4.33.3-8; 12-17. 38 Plotinus, Enn., 4.4.40. 39 Plotinus, Enn., 4.4.40.5-8 : kai he alethine mageia kai he en toi panti

philia kai to neikos au. Goes ho protos kai pharmakeus houtos estin. 40 Plotinus, Enn., 4.4.44-45. 41 Plotinus, Enn., 4.4.43.

was ready to acknowledge, some involvement in the worldand some

enchantmentwas essential for the survival of individuals and communities.42

Origens position was similar to that of Plotinus, and it is not surprising to read

that an anonymous critic cited by Photius (late ninth century A.D.) said that

Origen did not consider magic as evil.43 Although it is clear that Origen as well

as Plotinus severely condemned magic,44 their conception of piety was probably

too philosophical for their respective communities.

Such is the conception of magic usually espoused by Plotinus.45 The only

exception to this rather exceptional view occurs in Ennead 2.9., Against the

Gnostics, where he accused Gnostics of practicing magic. It is interesting to note

that, contrary to Ennead 4.4. where only goeteia was used, he used here mageia

and goeteia interchangeably, which implies that both words held the same

pejorative meaning. According to Plotinus, these Gnostics claimed that they

could dominate higher powers by magic (goeteias), soothing actions (thelxeis)

and persuasive actions (peiseis). Plotinus considered the Gnostics rituals to be

magic because, by professing that they manipulated gods, they fooled people by

giving an appearance of majesty to their own words.46 This is also why he

thought that Gnostics were wrong when they said that they could remove

illnesses by casting away the daemons that caused them; for Plotinus, the

problem was not that daemons could be manipulated,47 the problem was that

illnesses were not caused by daemons. It appears that this passage does not

contradict Ennead 4.4. Indeed, Plotinus called the Gnostics practices mageia or

goeteia because they were the worst aspect of the goeteia he had described

earlier: they were the enchantment of the world, this something else which

42 Plotinus, Enn., 4.4.44.17-25. On Plotinus relation with civic religion, see

Van den Berg, R. M. (1999) Plotinus Attitude to Traditional Cult: A Note

on Porphyry VP 10, Ancient Philosophy 19 (1999), p. 345-360 43 Photius, Bibl., 117 (=PG 103.396.A), cited by Bardy, G., (1926) Origne

et la magie, Recherches de Science Religieuse 18 (1926), p.127. 44 Origen, Cels., 6.80; Plotinus, Enn., 2.9.14. 45 Plotinus, Enn., 2.3.15.14; 4.4.40-43; 4.3.17; 4.9.3 5.1.2.13. 46 Plotinus, Enn., 2.9.14. 47 Plotinus, Enn., 4.4.43.12.

comes about48 when the parts of the world move according to the cosmic dance

and humans, so to speak, cherish not the beauty of the dance, but the limbs of

the dancer.49 The magic of the Gnostics was like the magic of the sophists art

according to Plato: it was not dangerous because it was inherently powerful, it

was dangerous because it was deceptive.50

Late Antique views on magic can also be found in a debate between two

prominent philosophers, Porphyry of Tyre and Iamblichus of Chalcis. Probably

after having met an Egyptian priest called Anebo, Porphyry wrote a letter on

religious issues, now called the Letter to Anebo. The letter was subsequently

answered by Iamblichus, under the guise of an Egyptian high priest named

Abammon. Drawing on his Egyptian lore, Abammon resolved the problems

presented in Porphyrys Letter to Anebo, in another letter, now called the De

Mysteriis.51 Both Iamblichus and Porphyry came from native Syrian families,

and although Iamblichus studied under Porphyry, they were roughly about the

same age.52 Unfortunately, the epistolary exchange is impossible to date

accurately.53 Both letters, however, addressed issues of divination and theology

48 Plotinus, Enn., 4.4.39. 49 Plotinus, Enn., 4.4.44. 50 Plato, Lg., 10.909b. 51 Iamblichus letter was originally called Reply of the Master Abamon to the

Letter of Porphyry to Anebo, and the Solutions to the Questions it Contains.

Fortunately, scholars now call this work De Mysteriis, cf. Saffrey, H.-D.

(1993) Les livres IV VII du De Mysteriis de Jamblique relus avec la

Lettre de Porphyre Anbon, in Blumenthal, H., J. & Clark, G., The

Divine Iamblichus, London, 1993, pp.144-158. For a complete assessment

of the De Mysteriis textual history, cf. Sicherl, M. (1957), Die

Handschriften, Ausgaben und Uebersetzungen von Iamblichos De Mysteriis.

Eine kritish-historische Studie, Berlin. 52 Dillon, J. (1974) Iamblichus of Chalcis, ANRW 2.36.2 (1974), p. 866. cf.

pp. 863-875 for a good biography of Iamblichus. 53 Blumenthal, Clark and Dillon give the De Mysteriis a composition date

between 280 and 350 AD, cf. Clarke, E. C. (2001) Iamblichus' De Mysteriis,

a manifesto of the miraculous, Aldershot, p. xxvii). We cannot assume that

which were relevant to the late third century AD; a period when, more and more

Christian statesmen and intellectuals, such as Lactantius began to criticize the

religious procedures of the Empire.54 Porphyry had a different approach than

Iamblichus to the ethical dichotomy of magic and religion. Since Plotinus did

not consider the use of matter relevant to the divinization of self, in that regard,

the distinction between evil and good religious practices was not even a

problem. Similarly, it seems that Porphyry did not put faith in material rites but

preferred an intellectual religion.

Iamblichus position in the De Mysteriis turned Porphyrys position upside-

down by arguing that intellect alone could not unite ones soul with the divine.

Iamblichus rationalized cultic practices by rallying all good religious evidence

under one system which he called theurgy. In short, the religious debate

between these two eminent philosophers revolved around a political question:

what should and what should not be considered religious evidence? Plotinus and

Porphyry both thought that a part of the soul was still undescended, meaning it

was still divine, and that the divinization of self consisted in realizing this. For

Iamblichus, however, since the soul was descended, external help was necessary

for its return. Reacting to Plotinus theory of magic Iamblichus adapted his

naturalistic cosmology in a way that announced Augustine's. As Emma Clarke

the De Mysteriis was written during Porphyrys lifetime only because it was

a response to Porphyrys letter. Many published texts in Antiquity took the

form of a letter, or a note, but that does not mean that the audience was

restricted to the addressee. Aristotles Ethics to Nichomachus and Epicurus

Letters are early examples of the genre used for ethical concerns. The Letter

to Marcella and the De Abstinentia, two of Porphyrys most polemical

works, were letters as well. Augustines City of God was also presented as a

letter, and is probably the best example of a work combining religious,

ethical and political issues. If a study of the genre cannot date the exchange,

neither is the content of the De Mysteriis of any help. If dating is considered

as useful for interpretation, and not an end in itself, it is not helpful to date a

text by its interpretation. If dating must be of any use to interpretation, it

must established by independent methods. 54 De Palma Digeser, E. (2000) The Making of A Christian Empire,

Lactantius and Rome, Ithaca, pp. 32-45.

demonstrated, for Iamblichus, miracles and true rituals came from outside

nature, and were thus not unnatural, or exceptional, but supernatural.55 For

Iamblichus, improper ritual was the practice of the image-creating man.56

These men used only physical laws57 and, in the worst of cases, attracted evil

demons because of their inexperience and lack of power.58 Consequently,

Iamblichus discriminated magic from religion by calling it encosmic, meaning

that it had nothing to do with the One and that it was only a human technique.

Magic, like medicine, music and gymnastics, worked with matter but did not

transcend it. Theurgy, on the contrary, was an act of god and could not depend

on human will.59

Like Iamblichus De Mysteriis, Porphyrys Letter to Anebo, tried to fix the

boundaries of religious activity. Moreover, it seems that for Porphyry and

Iamblichus, the definition of orthodox cult was accomplished by referring, even

implicitly, to an antithetical activity. Put simply, if the Neoplatonists goal was

to find the one road to happiness for all (i.e. an Empire-wide religious

system),60 it seems that it could only be found by considering the existence of

magica system in diametrical opposition with religion. The political

implications of the opposition of magic and religion becomes even clearer with

Augustine, where the creation of a solid religious identity is effectuated by the

elimination of a magicali.e. paganreligiosity.

Magic, Matter and the Return of the Soul

In On the Difficulties about the Soul II, Plotinus definition of magic seems to

entail the same amoral approach as found in Platos Banquet. But as with Plato,

magic was not innocently defined in a theoretical way but also served political

goals. It is only with Iamblichus, however, that magic was clearly used as a

political and cosmological concept.

55 Clarke (2001), p.19-21 and chapter 2 in general. 56 Iamblichus, De Myst., 3.28. 57 Iamblichus, De Myst., 3.28. 58 Iamblichus, De Myst., 3.31. 59 Iamblichus, De Myst., 2.11. 60 Porphyry, The Return of the Soul, 302F [Smith] = Augustine, C. D., 10.32.

If, for Plotinus, only what is self-directed is free from enchantment, any

material offering would be grouped with magic. Plotinus position was

awkwardly poised between an elitist philosophical religiosity and a popular

experience of the divine. His stance opposed two different experiences of the

divine which, in theory, were mutually exclusive: the philosophical

contemplation of the divine and the material performance of rituals, which he

did not think could bring the salvation of the soul. As Gregory Shaw, John

Finnamore, and R. Berchman realized, the issue of whether rites are useful or

not for the souls unification with the One depended on the philosophers

conception of soul.61 If Porphyry conceived soul as detached from its origin (the

One), then the physical world was the necessary terrain on which its return

had to be instigatedbased on their great antiquity, material rites would

probably be useful for the practice of salvation. But if, as Plotinus thought, the

soul was undescended, she could short-circuit the material world in its return to

the One. This revolutionary psychology, which, I argue, was also Porphyrys,

claimed that salvation was achieved by a withdrawal of the self to the highest

part of the soul, which was still in contact with the divine.62 Conversely, since

61 Shaw, G. (1995) Theurgy and the Soul, University Park, PA, pp.10-16;

Finnamore, J. (1999) Plotinus and Iamblichus on Magic and Theurgy,

Dionysius 17 (1999), pp. 87; Berchman, R. (1989) Arcana Mundi between

Balaam and Hecate: Prophecy, Divination and Magic in Later Platonism,

in Lull, D. (ed.), SBL 1989 Seminar Papers, Missoula, Scholars Press, 1989,

p. 147. 62 Porphyrys position on that issue was debated in Antiquity and still is.

Citing the same passage, Andrew Smith (Porphyrys Place in the

Neoplatonic Tradition, The Hague, 1974, pp. 40-45) argued that Porphyry

held Plotinus theory of the undescended Soul, while Berchman (1989, p.

147), wrote that Porphyry sadly dismissed Plotinus surprising theory.

Porphyrys statement in question, that who has deviated from Intellect is in

the very place where he turned aside (Abst. 1.39.2.115.9ff : Nou de ho

parkbas ekei estin hopou kai parexelthen), was interpreted by Berchman as

meaning that part of the soul does not enjoy perpetual intellection and

passivity. However, that Soul is not perpetually united with Intellect or the

One is a fact for Plotinus (Enn., 4.8.7.1-15), and it did not stop him thinking

the lower spiritual part of the soul (which is descended) could only perceive

the material world, material rites could not bring salvation.

In practice, however, both Porphyry and Plotinus were cautious when criticizing

popular religion because they were probably afraid that a radical application of

their philosophy could alienate them from the Roman polity. In reaction to this

philosophy, Iamblichus recuperated cult practices by elaborating a theory of

ritual which divided the performance of the sacred into two opposed groups:

magic and religion (i.e. theurgy). In a nutshell, Iamblichus and Augustine

constructed religious theories which saved religious practice from an accusation

of magic by placing ritual agency in the hands of the divine.

That is not to say that Plotinus and Porphyry did not recognize bad religious

practices. The distinction I am making, however, rather lies in the new

theoretical grounds supporting Iamblichus and Augustines position. Since

Plotinus considered the soul as more undescended than separated from its

divine origin, the souls divinization, or return,63 was not something that had

to be performed since it was already actualized. One just had to remind

himself of his divine origins. On the contrary, for Iamblichus, the soul was not

undescended, it was upside-down, i.e. relegated to the world of matter and

that Soul was undescended (Enn., 4.8.8). Contrary to what Berchman

concluded from his quote of De Abstientia, Porphyrys preceding sentence

(The Intellect is with itself, even when we are not with it: Nous men gar

esti pros hautoi, kan estin hemeis me omen pros autoi) rather implies that

we can be with the Intellectnot that we are shut off from it. As Gillian

Clark remarked in her translation of De Abstinentia (2000; n. 138), this last

statement probably points to the theory of the undescended soul (Enn.,

4.8.8). It might be encouraging to point out that scholars in Antiquity also

had difficulties with Porphyrys works. Augustine and Eusebius were not

the only one who noted Porphyrys ambiguity, Iamblichus did too. In the De

Anima, he wrote that Porphyry seemed to be in doubt about Plotinus and

Numenius conception of the soul, but that he sometimes follow[ed] it

completely as having been handed down from on high. (in Stobaeus,

Anthology, 1. p. 365.7-21.). 63 On the souls return as a divination of the soul, cf. OMeara (2003), pp. 31-

39.

cut off from its divine origin. The psychology elaborated by Iamblichus in the

De Mysteriis and the De Anima was a conservative attempt to steer philosophy

back in the tracks laid down by Plato, and away from Plotinus.64 But more

importantly, Iamblichus tried to justify ritual activity philosophically by proving

that theurgy never coerced the godsa charge of impiety strongly associated

with the practice of magic. Similarly, since being Christian also involved the

practice of sacraments, Augustine also had to find a philosophical system which

could make sense of Christian rituals. The naturalistic approach of Plotinus65

could not help Iamblichus or Augustine because it presented no theoretical

system which could differentiate magical and religious rituals. As John

Finnamore demonstrated, part of Iamblichus De Mysteriis was a reaction to the

place Plotinus accorded to magic in his cosmology.66 But, more importantly, by

separating magic from religion, Iamblichus De Mysteriis betrayed political

preoccupations. As we will see shortly, in the City of God, a self-evidently

political work, Augustine similarly distinguished magic (i.e. paganism) from

religion (Christianity).

Augustines symbolic theory of ritual: Holy Signs and Demonic Contracts

A contemporary of Plotinus, Origen was one of the first to tackle the

cosmological problems arising from the concept of words of power. Origen

thought that, by nature, specific words had certain powers when spoken.67

Answering Celsus claim that Christians got their powers from incantation

(meletei epoidon), Origen said that Christians exorcised with the name of Jesus

only.68 The name of Jesus was so powerful, he attested, that even bad men could

use it effectively.69 For Origen, if certain words inherently had powers (and he

64 This is Shaws major thesis. cf. Shaw (1995), pp. 10-17. 65 Plotinus, Enn., 4.4.30-45. 66 Finnamore (1999), pp. 87-88. 67 Origen, Cels., 5.45. 68 Origen, Cels., 1.6. 69 Origen, Cels., 1.6.

clearly thought that some had), this was proof that these words were not the

creation of humans but of God.70

Contrary to that of Iamblichus and Augustine, Origens conception of ritual, like

Plotinus, did not explicitly separate magic from religion. In fact, by proposing

that Sabaoth, Adonai and Jesus had powers when pronounced (even by evil

persons), all rituals seemed to become a neutral magic, neither good nor bad,

working mechanically through nature. This naturalistic conception, shared with

Plotinus, was completely opposed to Augustines and Iamblichus. The latter

two men clearly contrasted magic and religion by ascribing a worldly origin to

magic and a supernatural one to religion. Augustine, however, innovated by

introducing the concept of community and intention.

In 1994, Robert Markus wrote the first and only study on Augustine and

magic.71 Markus showed that Augustine saw magic as a pact mysteriously

formulated between humans and demons. He rightly argued that Augustine did

not conceive magic as preceding thinkers did and that his originality came from

his semiotic approach. Markus showed how the use of quasi-legal terminology

revolving around the concept of pact, or contract, was important for Augustine.72

This particular approach, based on conventions and agreements, influenced

Augustines conception of language, which successively inspired his theory of

magic. Following his definition of language as a convention of signs, Markus

explained how Augustine considered magic as a demonic convention rather than

a mechanical ritual procedure. In Augustine's view, since conventional

agreements were arbitrary, one did not choose the signs of the agreed

community; rather, one chose the community and then followed the established

conventions.73 This meant that the precise actions of a ritual did not matter as

much as the intentions involved during the performance. As Augustine wrote

concerning superstition in De Doctrina Christiana: People did not agree to use

[signs] because they were already meaningful; rather they became meaningful

70 Origen, Cels., 1.24. 71 Markus, R. A. (1994) Augustine on magic : A neglected semiotic theory,

Revue des tudes Augustiennes 40 (1994), pp.375-388. 72 Markus (1994), pp. 382-383. 73 Markus (1994), p. 383.

because people agreed to use them.74 Since Augustine was more interested in

the agreed community behind rituals than in the rites themselves, he

discriminated magic from religion by the demonic community symbolized in

certain rituals. For example, when writing about the superstitious use of

medicine, Augustine thought that it is often doubtful whether tying a charm on

someone worked naturally or by virtue of a meaningful (demonic) agreement.75

If it did not worked naturally or was not due to an agreement involving God (as

in exorcism), the remedy would necessarily be magic.

Like Iamblichus, Augustine also managed to bypass a mechanical and automatic

description of miracles or ritual effect because such a definition would make

religion and magic indistinguishable. While Iamblichus appealed to the high

antiquity of certain practices, Augustine could not use the same argument for the

Christian rituals and sought another foundation for his sacramental theology. For

Augustine, pragmatic action did not matter, it was rather the agreement that gave

words their power, not the sounding words themselves.76 The only difference

between religion and magic was that spells were the sign of an agreement with

demons while sacraments established an agreement with God. This conclusion

shows a radical shift from Origen's theory since Augustine viewed the source of

power as extra-cosmic while in Origen's mind it remained an encosmic

phenomenon, meaning that God is not involved in the process. It seems that

Origen was ready to accept that sacraments were tapping in mechanical powers,

established by God during the creation of the world. Augustine's distinction had

a clear parallel in the theurgy of Iamblichus, as explained in his De Mysteriis.

Both Iamblichus and Augustine explained their own official religious practices

by opposing the ineffable knowledge of a transcendent principle to the

mechanical art of magic. Augustine, however, did not share Iamblichus' view of

the pagan cult; indeed, for the bishop, magic and pagan religion were one and

the same.

74 Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana., 2.94. 75 Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana., 2.75. 76 As Robert Markus remarked, Augustines conception of baptism confuses

this issue since it seemed to concede a mechanical efficacy to the rite, cf.

Markus (1994), p. 386.

If Augustine's theory of magic was conceived in the De Doctrina Christiana, its

practical application was set out in the City of God. It is no wonder that magic

came to the fore when Augustine attacked the pagan cults. To convince pagans

that their religion was evil, Augustine had to fight on common ground and cater

to a common sense of impiety. Since magic was almost universally condemned,

an appropriate way of smearing the others religion was to level accusations of

magic against it. The City of Gods first seven books attacked the popular pagan

religion and ultimately demonstrated his belief that the gods of the pagan were

demons.77 Augustine clearly stated in his Retractationes78 that the first ten books

of the City of God were a refutation of pagan practices, first against those who

sacrificed for this world and then for those who did it for the afterlife.

Separating his work again in two halves, he stated at the start of book eight that

a greater effort than was required in the preceding subject would now be needed.

Since book eight is the beginning of his refutation of pagan philosophers, it is

clear that philosophy, and more importantly, theurgy, was Augustines major

concern in his intellectual war against paganism. The tenth bookalmost

completely devoted to pagan theurgytried to show that theurgy was magic, i.e.

demon worship,79 and that it was thus radically forbidden by Exodus 22.20:

Sacrificans diis eradicabitur nisi Domino soli. Finally, he argued on a spiritual

level that only the sacraments80 brought eternal life, not theurgy.81 Theurgy not

only closed Augustines allotted books on the refutation of paganism but also

illustrated the failure of pagan philosophy in achieving salvation of the soul.

Theurgyand consequently, Iamblichean Neoplatonismwas thus no small

thing for Augustine and its refutation should be seen as the culmination of his

attack on paganism. On a political level we could say that, as the newest weapon

in the arsenal of pagans, theurgy had to be refuted by Augustine to ensure

Christianitys supremacy over the Roman empire.

77 Augustine, C. D., 7.33. 78 Augustine, Retractationes, 2.43(70).1. 79 Augustine, C. D., 8.18-19. 80 Augustine, C. D., 10.32.2-3; 21.25.2: Augustine seems here to show that

these rituals cannot work mechanically but necessitate an enduring faith,

enabling to remain in Jesus as the sacraments are performed. 81 Augustine, City of God, 10.9.; 10.32

In the last books of the City of God, Augustine explained how after the last

judgement, citizens of the city of God would live eternally and those of the

terrestrial city would burn eternally. Wishing to make these statements

believable, Augustine wrote a theory of miracles which, like Iamblichus

philosophy, built on Plotinus naturalistic interpretation while deepening the

divide between the divine and the world. Unlike Plotinus, Iamblichus and

Augustine were ready to acknowledge the presence of miracles, i.e.

supernatural events not bound by physical laws. For both thinkers, the creation

of a theological system making sense of miracles entailed a second sub-system

which regrouped undesired miracles. These anti-miracles rather called

magic by Augustine and Iamblichus, were associated with certain cultures,

whereby they could be taken care of politically. For Augustine, monstrum and

prodigia, did not only mean miracle, etymologically, he also understood them

as signs: a monstrum was something that shows (monstrare), a prodigio,

something that showed in advance (quid porro dicant).82 But a miracle was not

just something meaningful, it was more importantly a Christian sign. For

Augustine, healing miracles were messages sent by God to prove the possibility

of ever-burning flesh and ever-living bodiesbeing respectively what awaits

pagans and Christians after the Apocalypse.83 For Augustine, miraculous

events that did not hold a Christian message had to be explained differently. The

miraculous properties of Venus ever-burning lamp, for example, were

explained either mechanically or magically:

That lamp [] was either by some mechanical and human device fitted with

asbestos, or it was arranged by magical art in order that the worshippers might

be astonished, or some devil under the name of Venus so signally manifested

himself that this prodigy both began and became permanent. Now devils are

attracted to dwell in certain temples by means of the creatures (God's creatures,

not theirs), who present to them what suits their various tastes. They are

attracted not by food like animals, but, like spirits, by such symbols as suit their

taste, various kinds of stones, woods, plants, animals, songs, rites.84

82 Augustine, City of God, 21.8. 83 Augustine, City of God, 21.8. 84 Augustine, C. D., 21.6-7.

We can see that in Augustine's mind, a so-called pagan miracle could not be a

true miracle and so would either be technical or magical. Moreover, Augustine

realized that he had to admit the existence of pagan miracles if he wanted to

argue with pagans. He could not, after all, dismiss their miracles as unlikely

because he was arguing for the existence of incredible miracles as well.85 As this

excerpt shows, this thinking got Augustine on the same track as Iamblichus.

Like Iamblichus, Augustine differentiated magic and sacraments by the worldly

origin of magic. Nevertheless, Augustine constitutes a major shift from all

preceding thinkers by his emphasis on intention. Saying that demons were baited

by signs, Augustine also meant that sacraments were human signs as well. For

him, both systems of ritualssacraments and magicworked through human

technique. In the process of explaining what magic was, Augustine not only told

us what Christianity was, he also formulated a theory of religion.

It is through agreements that Augustine could separate religion and magic, and

in doing so, he could also distinguish the two cities. Setting the dualism of good

and evil at the very core of the City of God, Augustine also opposed magic and

religion, aligning them with the first pair. The magician was considered evil

because his participation in a demonic convention betrayed his intention of

belonging to an evil community, not because the magician physically signed a

contract with demons. Once Augustine deployed the traditional association of

magic and pure evil, the next logical step in his pagan-bashing enterprise was to

assimilate the magic/religion dichotomy to the new dichotomy: Christianity vs.

paganism.

May he who sacrifices to anyone except God be eradicated

The Christians who inspired Augustines treatise On the Divination of Demons

thought that God had decided that paganism would stop at a certain point in

time. We know from many passages of the City of God that Augustine agreed.

For example, in his analysis of the Hermetic writing Asclepius, Hermes

Trismegistus explained to Asclepius that the ancient art of doing good and evil

through the making of gods was now lost. Hermes differentiated these created

gods from the original gods and also said that a time would come when all the

85 Augustine, C. D., 21.1.

images of the gods would be swept away. Augustine read this as a proclamation

of a divine law annihilating paganism. His conclusion demonstrates that he

understood historically that God had put an end to the ancient religion.86

Seen through the light of the City of God and the De Doctrina Christiana,

Augustines somewhat trivial Easter discussion on demonic oracles reveals the

importance of magic in Late Antique thought. Augustine used the concept of

naturalized magic to separate visible manifestations of unknown powers into

two categories, one having God at their source and the other having the world.

In order to explain the experience of pagan marvels, Augustine understood

paganism as magic.

Perhaps more for Augustine than for Iamblichus, magic was a very open

category in which many different behaviors could be included. One of the most

influent Church Fathers appropriated the discriminating and inclusive power of

pagan magic. Through his vision, paganism would never be an absurd and

incomprehensible religion, it would now be that which is done in the night.

Augustine thus constitutes another example illustrating how people could do

philosophically what people already did naturally: subsume paganism under

magic, that is to say, rationalize an absurdity by considering it evil.

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