Theurgia, or The Egyptian Mysteries (includes Letter to Anebo)

Some are of the opinion that the soul itself utters and imagines these things, and that these conditions are merely sparks produced by the soul. Others believe there is a mingled form of substance produced from our own soul and a divine inspiration. Still others argue that the soul, through such activities, generates its own faculty of Imagination regarding the future, or that emanations from the material realm bring spirits into existence through their inherent forces, especially when these emanations are derived from animals.

These conjectures are proposed to support the following claims:

1. That during sleep, when we are otherwise unoccupied, we sometimes happen to perceive the future.
2. That the fact that the senses are held in check—often aided by fumes and invocations—suggests that a condition of the soul is the primary source of the art of divination. Furthermore, not everyone is suitable for this; only the more simple-minded or young persons are effective.
3. That ecstasy or a state of mental alienation is a chief origin of the divining art; this includes the mania that occurs during disease, mental aberration, abstinence from wine, bodily suffusions, and fancies stirred up by morbid conditions or altered states of mind (such as those occurring during fasting or ecstasy), or apparitions created by technical magic (original: Goeteia, or "black magic.").
4. That the realm of Nature, Art, and the shared feelings throughout the universe—as if all parts belonged to one living creature—contain foreshadowings of certain things in relation to others. Moreover, some bodies are so constituted as to serve as warnings from one to another. This is evident in practice: those who perform the invocations (at the Rites) carry stones and herbs, tie...