Page:Iamblichus on the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians (IA b24884170).pdf/197

165 ledged, "that they affect these things, in consequence of being drawn through us by the necessities with which invocation is attended." For divinity is superior to necessity, and this is likewise the case with all the choir of more excellent natures that is suspended from him. Nor is he alone exempt from the necessity which is introduced by men, but also from that which comprehends in itself the world; because it is not the province of an immaterial nature, and which does not receive any adventitious order, to be subservient to any necessity introduced from any thing else. And in the next place, invocation, and the things performed by a scientific operator, accede and are conjoined to more excellent natures through similitude and alliance, and do not accomplish their energies through violence. Hence, the effects which are seen to take place in diviners, do not happen as you think, from the scientific theurgist being passively affected; nor is divination thus effected through necessity, passion preoccupying the predictor; for these things are foreign from, and incongruous to, the essence of more excellent natures.