De Mysteriis

Porphyry to the Prophet Anebo greeting.

I commence my friendship towards you from the Gods and good dæmons, and from those philosophic disquisitions, which have an affinity to these powers. And concerning these particulars indeed, much has been said by the Grecian philosophers; but, for the most part, the principles of their belief are derived from conjecture.

In the first place, therefore, it is granted that there are Gods. But I inquire what the peculiarities are of each of the more excellent genera, by which they are separated from each other; and whether we must say that the cause of the distinction between them is from their energies, or their passive motions, or from things that are consequent, or from their different arrangement with respect to bodies; as, for instance, from the arrangement of the Gods with reference to etherial, but of dæmons to aerial, and of souls to terrestrial, bodies?