Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority. Heidi Marx-Wolf
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uses fire to explain how sacrifices symbolize the way in which these spirits help human souls to become free: “The offering of sacrifice by means of fire is actually such as to consume and annihilate matter, assimilate it to itself rather than assimilating itself to matter, and elevating it towards the divine and heavenly and immaterial fire.”119 The burning of matter pleases the gods and daemons because it symbolizes the procedures by which souls are liberated from the bonds of generation and become more like the gods.120 One sacrifices and burns animals, their flesh and blood, in order to become free from flesh and body. Instead of being a polluting practice, animal sacrifice was a purifying one.
Given the transformative nature of sacrifice, Iamblichus insists that the order in which sacrifices are to be performed could be neither altered nor circumvented. Even the individual dedicating his or her life to philosophical pursuits and theological speculation, if he or she wished to be healed of the suffering associated with embodiment and generation, must perform the proper sacrifices in the correct order and manner.121 This position runs counter to the one Iamblichus presents as Porphyry’s, namely that one can think one’s way out of the bonds of nature, regardless of one’s ritual participation. Porphyry was of the opinion that the philosopher did not need theurgy or ritual practices involving matter, but could reach God by virtue of the intellect. Iamblichus, however, denied that philosophers could escape such practices in this way.
Sacrifice and Soteriology: Porphyry and Iamblichus on the Via Universalis
Porphyry’s position raised another concern for Iamblichus. Although he fully recognized that not all human beings could become completely purified or free from the grip of matter and return to the soul’s source, and although he reserved this end for the true philosopher, Iamblichus did not wish to consign ordinary people to a polluted existence, laboring under the delusion that the sacrifices they performed benefited them, when in fact the sacrifices contributed to their spiritual demise. He writes: “So if one does not grant some such mode of worship to cities and peoples not freed from the fated processes of generation and from a society dependent on the body, one will continue to fail of both types of good, both the immaterial and the material; for they are not capable of receiving the former, and for the latter they are not making the right offering.”122 In other words, Iamblichus objected to what he understood to be Porphyry’s denial of universal salvation, a path of participation in the gifts of the gods common to both ordinary people and philosophers or theurgists.
Augustine has been a source of confusion when it comes to Porphyry’s soteriology. In his City of God, Augustine claimed that Porphyry was searching for a universal way, a way to salvation for all souls, not just the souls of a few elite philosophers.123 On Augustine’s account, Porphyry failed in his endeavor because he could not overcome his pride and accept that Christianity constituted the answer to his search. It is impossible to determine whether Porphyry ever earnestly sought to find some via universalis. But it is obvious from On Abstinence that he felt that the salvific regimen he proposed to Firmus Castricianus was one that very few people could attain.124 Hence, Porphyry was making an argument for a form of ritual purity that he openly recognized could be achieved by only a small elite group of specially trained, spiritually devout philosophers. By upbraiding his friend for incontinence where animal food was concerned, he was not prescribing a way of life for everyone. Rather, he highlighted precisely what set him and his peers apart from the ordinary person, namely, his theological knowledge and his ascetic purity.
Despite the fact that Iamblichus expressed a more general concern about the spiritual well-being of people other than members of the philosophical elite and his own theurgic caste, he was equally invested in establishing his own authority as one who could lead others on the path to salvation, as we shall see in Chapter 4. However, elaborating the universal scope of his soteriological message was precisely the way in which he sought to do this. In this way, Iamblichus placed his own theological and theurgical expertise in a larger context than did Porphyry. He saw himself as providing a means for the salvation of more than just the philosopher. This salvation may have been only partial or truncated. But at the very least, he set the average practitioner of traditional religion on the path to salvation through the latter’s participation in rituals that honored different orders of good spirits. Furthermore, the theurgist or priestly philosopher was the one who could broker this salvation effectively for others. So although both Porphyry and Iamblichus admitted that few souls could become completely purified and freed from embodiment, Iamblichus saw purification as a process in which all souls could participate. He disagreed with the idea that most souls were constrained to live a polluted existence, a pollution that afflicted them not only because they were prone to enjoy a good meal and participate enthusiastically in carnal pleasure now and then, but, even more tragically, because they worshipped what they believed were gods, with harmful sacrifices.
Although Iamblichus sought to remedy some of the difficult implications of Porphyry’s views on popular religion, and although he sought to put all participants in traditional ritual on the path to purification, he still maintained with Porphyry that it was not possible for everyone to be a philosopher and to achieve complete release from corporeality and generation. One aspect of Christianity that was so offensive to many intellectual elites in the late ancient world was the view that all believers were like philosophers, not only saved and purified, but also in possession of true wisdom.125 This was, for those living the philosophical life, an impossibility and an affront. Without rigorous ascetic training and intense contemplation, there was no way that the ordinary person could be on a par with a Plotinus or a Sosipatra. What was equally offensive to some Hellenes was the way in which many average, everyday Christians did take up ascetic practices, and at times, with embarrassing zeal. For Porphyry, the idea that the average person who enjoyed sex or food was at risk of becoming possessed was not troubling in the same way it was for Origen. Because Porphyry followed the Platonic belief in the reincarnation of souls, the average human being who had regular congress with evil daemons in this life, and who lived in a state of pollution, was not eternally doomed as he or she might be in some Christian schemes of things. Rather, although the soul of such an individual might descend into Hades at the end of this life, being too moist and heavy to rise above the earth and ascend to the supralunary sphere, it might well have a chance in the next life to live a relatively unpolluted existence. This soul could dry out, so to speak, through ascetic and contemplative practices.126 It could be strengthened and purified. Furthermore, most Platonists believed that the world was eternal and objected to the Christian view that God would act in the cosmos in a historical way.127 Origen was one of the most innovative of early Christian writers in creating a linear, historical narrative for the soul’s descent and eventual salvation, one that fundamentally undercut the cyclicality of the Platonic framework. Hence, although Origen and Porphyry shared similar views regarding the polluting effects of blood sacrifices, Origen, like most other Christian thinkers, believed that this demonic pollution should and could be avoided by everyone. The principal means for doing so was to avoid participating in traditional cult.
On the other hand, although Porphyry and Iamblichus believed that ordinary people who participated in polluting practices or those who failed to live as philosophers and theurgists had multiple opportunities to get it right, so to speak, they disagreed violently about the place of ritual in the salvation of human souls.
Conclusion
This chapter has reviewed the positions of a number of third-century Platonists on the ontological status of evil daemons, a first step in exploring their more comprehensive spiritual taxonomies. It has demonstrated that it would be difficult to predict the precise positions of thinkers such as Origen, Porphyry, and Iamblichus based solely on what we might assume are their religious or ideological affiliations. Reflection on daemons and other spirits in the late ancient cosmic hierarchy results in strange bedfellows, as we have seen. For instance, Porphyry is more akin to Origen and other Christian apologists in his genealogical account of evil daemons and in his estimation of the cosmic damage and destruction wrought by these creatures. Further instances of this phenomenon emerge when we explore the more global taxonomic discourses of these philosophers, their comprehensive efforts to locate and fix spirits in universal taxonomies. These totalizing discourses are the subject