Life of Pythagoras — Iamblichus, trans. Thomas Taylor (1818)

This in the Protreptics is the 33rd Symbol, and which Iamblichus thus explains: “This Symbol seems to be merely referred to the etymology of the name. Receive not an unblushing and impudent man; nor on the contrary one stupidly astonished, and who in every thing blushes, and is humble in the extreme, through the imbecility of his intellect and reasoning power. Hence this also is understood, Be not yourself such a one.”

P. 59. He ltkewtse exhorted them to abstain from beans,

In the Protreptics this is the 37th Symbol; and Iamblichus has not developed for us the more mystical signification of this symbol. For he only says that “ it admonishes us to beware of every thing which is corruptive of our converse with the Gods and divine prophecy.” But Aristotle appears to have assigned the true mystical reason why the Pythagoreans abstained from beans. For he says, (apud Laert.) ‘‘that Pythagoras considered beans as a symbol of generation [i.e. of the whole of a visible and corporeal nature,] which subsists according to a right line, and is without inflection; because a bean alone of almost all spermatic plants, is perforated through the whole of it, and is not obstructed by any intervening joints.” Wence he adds, “it resembles the gates of Hades.” For these are perpetually open without any impediment to souls descending into generation. The exhortation, therefore, to abstain from beans, is equivalent to admonishing us to

1 viz. Those Gods that are characterized by the intelligible, and intellect. See my translation of Proclus, On the Theology of Plato.

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beware of a continued and perpetual descent into the realms of generation. Hence the true meaning of the following celebrated lines in Virgil:

facilis descensus Averno. Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis: Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras, Hoc opus, hic labor est.

1.€. The gates of Hell are open night and day, Smooth the descent, and easy is the way; But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this, the mighty task and labor lies. DryDeENn.

P. 72. Such as infallible predictions of earthquakes, rapid expulsions of pestilence, Fc. Fe.

Since Pythagoras, as Iamblichus informs us, p. 7, was initiated in all the mysteries of Byblus and ‘Tyre, in the sacred operations of the Syrians, and in the mysteries of the Pheenicians, and also (p. 9) that he spent two and twenty years in the adyta of temples in Egypt, associated with the Magi in Babylon, and was instructed by them in their venerable knowledge ;—it is not at all wonderful that he was skilled in magic or theurgy, and was therefore able to perform things which surpass merely human power, and which appear to be perfectly incredible to the vulgar. For “magic,” (as we learn from Psellus in his MS. treatise on Demons) “formed the last part of the sacerdotal science.” He farther likewise informs us, “that magic investigates the nature, power, and quality of every thing sublunary; viz. of the elements and their parts, of animals, all-various plants, and their fruits, of stones, and herbs: and in short, it explores the essence and power of every thing. From hence, therefore, it produces its effects. And it

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forms statues which procure health, makes all-various figures, and things which become the instruments of disease. It asserts too, that eagles and dragons contribute to health; but that cats, dogs, and crows, are symbols of vigilance, to which therefore they contribute. But for the fashioning of certain parts, wax and clay are used. Often, too, celestial fire is made to appear through magic; and then statues laugh, and lamps are spontaneously enkindled.” See the original in the Notes to my Pausanias, p. 325. And that theurgy was employed by the ancients in their mysteries, I have fully proved in my treatise On the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries.+

Conformably to this, Plato also in the First Alcibiades says, that the magic of Zoroaster consisted in the worship of the Gods, on which passage, I shall present the reader with what I have said, in the first volume of my Plato, p. 63, as it will enable him to see that the theurgy of the ancients is founded in a theory equally scientific and sublime.

“The following account of magic by Proclus, originally formed, as it appears to me, a part of the Commentary written by him on the present passage. For the MS. Commentary of Proclus, which is extant on this dialogue, does not extend to more than a third part of it; and this Dissertation on Magic, which is only extant in Latin, was published by Ficinus the translator, immediately after his: Excerpta from this Commentary. So that it seems highly probable, that the manuscript from which Ficinus translated his Excerpta, was much more perfect, than that which has been preserved to us, in consequence of containing this account of the magic of the ancients.