133 Crystal Addey This Is an Important, Richly Textured and Profoundly

Book Reviews 133 Crystal Addey Divination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism: Oracles of the Gods. Pp. xvi+335. Ashgate Studies in Philosophy and Theology in Late Antiquity, Farnham UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate 2014. ISBN 978 1 4094 5152 5, 5153 2 and 97814724 04022 (ebk—ePUB), 9781409451532 (ebk—PDF). Hardback $134.95. This is an important, richly textured and profoundly illuminating book that builds upon other significant works of the past twenty to thirty years, espe- cially—but not exclusively—those of John Dillon, Greg Shaw and others. A typical modern view of early Greek philosophy is that, with the emergence of philosophy, human beings gave up mythological and religious conceptions for rational—and even scientific—explanations. But of course anyone who reads the fragments and testimonies of the Presocratic philosophers will see imme- diately that this is not true. An analogous view has often prevailed about late antiquity. Once the con- temporary study of Plotinus had—for the most part—established him as a philosopher who provides arguments and good or bad reasons for what he believes to be true, the contrast between so-called earlier Neoplatonic philosophical thinking and later Neoplatonic religious thinking, with its empha- sis upon theurgy (“god-work”) as opposed to theology (“god-talk”), and upon divination and ritual, frequently led to the characterization of some later Neoplatonists, such as Porphyry and Iamblichus, as “religious” practitioners rather than rational philosophers. However, as Crystal Addey shows in this original and powerful work, reli- gion and philosophy, theurgy and theology, cannot be compartmentalized in these ways. Divination in many different forms was, of course, an important practice throughout antiquity, but Addey shows conclusively its crucial sig- nificance for philosophy and theology as practice and thought as she explores the role of oracles and other kinds of divination (dream, invocation, anima- tion of telestic statues etc.) in the third and fourth centuries of our era. She focuses primarily upon Porphyry’s Philosophy from Oracles (a work in only 48 fragments preserved primarily in Augustine and Eusebius) and Iamblichus’ De Mysteriis, and secondarily upon Porphyry’s Letter to Anebo and Eusebius’ Preparatio Evangelica, providing new appraisals of their work, reading fragments quoted by Augustine and Eusebius critically in the light of Christian pre- occupations, and arguing, principally, that Porphyry’s Philosophy from Oracles does not represent an earlier superstitious phase but rather was a constant concern throughout his life, that it is at root a theurgic text compatible with Iamblichean theurgy, and that the Letter to Anebo is not a skeptical attack on religious practices but a philosophical work that draws principally upon two © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��16 | doi 10.1163/187�5473-1�34134� 134 Book Reviews genres, the “problems and solutions” and the “Platonic dialogue” genres. More generally, Addey argues that modern (post-Enlightenment) notions of ratio- nality are too narrow to do justice to the meaning of ritual in late antiquity and that for these later thinkers, reason and revelation, more broadly understood, are complementary rather than mutually exclusive. For Porphyry, in particular, philosophy, poetry and religious ritual are “intrinsically linked” (p. 16). The book has acknowledgments, lists of abbreviations, eight chapters, exten- sive bibliography and index. It starts with an appraisal of the relation between oracles and philosophy. Oracles refer, first, to oracular sanctuaries (such as Delphi, Didyma, Claros, the oracular seat of Trophonius in Lebedea, Boeotia, etc.); second, to oracular responses (as in the story about a certain Sosipatra, from Iamblichus’ philosophical circle in Apamea, who actually becomes an oracle herself, because of her learning, philosophical training, and initiation into Chaldean, i.e., theurgic, mystical rites); and, third, to collections of oracles (such as the Chaldean Oracles, 226 fragments of which have survived in which theurgy is first mentioned and which is clearly imbued with a metaphysical and cosmological framework together with ethical and ritual instructions for the salvation of the soul). Addey makes the connection in each case between religious practice and philosophical wisdom and goes on to define theurgy as including divination (pp. 24–6) and to set out its major elements (pp. 26–42, e.g., receptivity, cosmology, including Divine Love—the prime mover of all theurgy, sympathy (on the horizontal level), friendship, symbols in ritual (on the vertical level), its distinction from magic, and the disputed possibility of there being higher and lower forms of theurgy). Chapter 2 examines oracles, allegory and mystery cults in relation to Porphyry’s Philosophy from Oracles and the oracle on Plotinus in Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus, chapter 22 (but also within the broader late ancient context of the Oracles of Homer [Homeromanteia] and the view of Homer as an inspired prophet) and, argues that oracles are framed as “enigmas” that need to be decoded allegorically and that they thus function as a kind of philosophical initiation, like a mystery rite, on the one hand, and as theophanies or symbola of the gods, on the other. Chapters 3 and 4 then examine theurgy as a contested space, first, between pagans and Christians (namely, the pagan-Christian debate manifest in Eusebius’ Preparatio Evangelica which argues against Porphyry’s Philosophy from Oracles) and, second, between Neoplatonic philosophers themselves (namely, the debate evident in Porphyry’s Letter to Anebo and Iamblichus’ De Mysteriis). All of this is fascinating material (and some of its overarching theses I have indicated above), but of particular interest to me is the persuasive The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 10 (�016) 109-150.

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