Page:Iamblichus on the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians (IA b24884170).pdf/275

243 things, producing this bond through a certain ineffable communion.

For these assertions are much more true, and more characteristic of the essence and power of the Gods, than what you suspect to be the case, viz. "that the Gods are especially allured by the vapours produced in the sacrifices of animals." For if dæmons are invested with a certain body, which some think is nourished by sacrifices, yet this body is immutable and impassive, luciform and unindigent; so that neither does any thing flow from it, nor is it in want of any influx externally introduced. And if some one should admit that there is this influx, yet since the world and the air contained in it have a never failing abundance of exhalations from terrene places, an efflux of this kind being equally diffused on all sides, what use can there be of sacrifices to dæmons? But neither do the influxions equally and commensurately fill the place of the effluxions, so as that neither excess should at any time predominate, nor deficiency be produced, but that there should be a perfect equality and similitude of the bodies of dæmons, and this invariably the same. For the Demiurgus of the universe has not provided abundant nutriment, and which may be easily obtained, for all the animals in the earth and the sea, but has made