Apophysis

“ One day he turned upon Phaeton and spoke in fierce scorn:
"Dost say thou art son of a god? A shameless boaster and a liar art thou! Hast ever spoken to thy divine sire? Give us some proof of thy sonship! No more child of the glorious Apollo art thou than are the vermin his children, that the sun breeds in the dust at my feet."
For a moment, before the cruel taunt, the lad was stricken into silence, and then, his pride aflame, his young voice shaking with rage and with bitter shame, he cried aloud: "Thou, Epaphos, art the liar. ”

“ No strength of the flesh can win her, Orpheus, but the strength of a faith unfaltering. I will send for her, and when thou seest her stand within the hall, holding out her hands towards thee, thou must harden thy heart, and turn and flee before her by the way thou camest. For the love of thee she will follow, and she will entreat thee to look at her and give her thy hand over the stony way. ”

“ The spirit of destruction is divine, when it breaks the ego and opens the soul to the wide heavens. In corruption there is divinity. Aphrodite is, on one side, the great goddess of destruction in sex, Dionysus in the spirit. Moloch and some gods of Egypt are gods also of the knowledge of death. In the soft and shiny voluptuousness of decay, in the marshy chill heat of reptiles, there is the sign of the Godhead. It is the activity of departure. And departure is the opposite equivalent of coming together; decay, corruption, destruction, breaking down is the opposite equivalent of creation. ”

“ Such was the course of my own opium career. Such is the history of human errors every day. Such was the original sin of the Greek theories on Deity, which could not have been healed but by putting off their own nature, and kindling into a new principle—absolutely undiscoverable, as I contend, for the Grecian intellect.
Oftentimes an echo goes as it were to sleep: the series of reverberations has died away. Suddenly a second series awakens: this subsides, then a third wakens up. So of actions done in youth. After great tumults all is quieted. You dream that they are over. ”

“ Wherefore, to omit other things, and confine our attention to that which he says is common to the demons with us, let us ask this question: If all the four elements are full of their own animals, the fire and the air of immortal, and the water and the [Pg 331] earth of mortal ones, why are the souls of demons agitated by the whirlwinds and tempests of passions?—for the Greek word πάθος means perturbation, whence he chose to call the demons "passive in soul," because the word passion, which is derived from πάθος, signified a commotion of the mind contrary to reason. ”

“ When the Greeks built altars to Force, Beauty, Victory, and other abstract ideas, they were doing an original thing. When the French do it, they imitate the Greeks. Apotheosis and hero worship in the old times had a freshness to it; it was one of the picturesque effects of the dim and purple shadows of an early dawning, when objects imperfectly seen are magnified in their dimensions; but the apotheosis, in modern times, of a man who has worn a dress coat, wig, and shoes is quite another affair. ”

“ The convulsions, the unearthly voice in which the possessed priest answers in the name of the deity within, and his falling into stupor when his god departs, all fit together, and in all quarters of the world the oracle-priests and diviners by familiar spirits seem really diseased in body and mind, and deluded by their own feelings, as well as skilled in cheating their votaries with sham symptoms and cunning answers. The inspiration or breathing-in of a spirit into the body of a priest or seer appears to such people a mechanical action, like pouring water into a jug. ”

“ Take up thy pyx; to Aphrodite go,
And claim the promise of thy mighty foe;
Maybe that she will grant it to thee now.
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‘If she should yet refuse, despair not yet!’
Then Psyche, when she felt his arms restore
Their old embrace, and as their bodies met,
Knew the great joy that grief is pardon’d for;
And how it doth first ecstasy excel,
When love well-known, long-lost, and mournèd well
In long days of no hope, comes home once more. ”

“ You and I and every man and woman in this world whom sin has known—alas! that there should be so many—have looked into his marble face, have felt the touch of his pitiless hands, and the cold despair of his unloving embrace. For there is Death spiritual and Death physical, and many of us who bear no traces of our past in the present of to-day, have fought our grim battle with the death—the—death——”
And then my father’s words died away upon his lips, and the whole congregation knew what had already thrown me into an agony of terror. ”

“ Intoxication, rancour, anger, all the passions together, even the instinct of cruelty which lurks in a woman’s heart, animated the soul of Bacchis at the moment she struck, and she uttered a shriek almost as piercing as that of Aphrodisia when the nail bent in the open palm. ”

“ But these are not the sentiments of the many; but, casting off shame and fear, they depict in their houses the unnatural passions of the demons. Accordingly, wedded to impurity, they adorn their bed-chambers with painted tablets hung up in them, regarding licentiousness as religion; and lying in bed, in the midst of their embraces, they look on that Aphrodite locked in the embrace of her paramour. ”

“ For pitying humane chance and Pisoes end
There will be some too that will pitie mine.
Poppaea. O what a dauntlesse looke, what sparkling eyes, (aside.) Threating in suffering! sure some noble blood Is hid in ragges; feares argues a base spirit; In him what courage and contempt of death! And shall I suffer one I love to die? He shall not die.—Hands of this man! Away! Nero, thou shalt not kill this guiltlesse man. ”

“ The Emperor Julian, at the close of his seventh Oration, represents the gods of Olympus addressing him in this strain: "Remember that your soul is immortal, and that if you follow us you will be a god and with us will behold our Father." Several learned writers have strenuously labored to prove that the ground secret of the Mysteries, the grand thing revealed in them, was the doctrine of apotheosis, shaking the established theology by unmasking the historic fact that all the gods were merely deified men. ”

“ And they say that Fate is, and that some things are due to free-will and some to Fate, so that some [come] by ourselves and some by Fate. But that God is the cause of all, and that nothing is arranged or happens without His will. And they confess the Resurrection of the Flesh and that the p. 468. soul is immortal, and [admit] a judgment to come and a future conflagration, and that the wicked will be punished in unquenchable fire.
29. But the Sadducees eliminate Fate, and confess that God neither does nor contemplates anything evil; but that man has the power to choose the good or evil. ”

“ But Empedocles, born after these men, also said many things about the nature of demons, and how they being very many go about managing things upon the earth. He said that the beginning of the universe was Strife and Friendship and that the intellectual fire of the monad is God, and that all things were constructed from fire and will be resolved into fire. ”

“ They might join their risen god in his course through the hours of light, and assist him in combating Apophis and his accomplices, plunging again at night into Hades without having even for a moment quitted his side. ”

“ Without some strange new birth of the old smart,
From her old love of the brief days could part
For ever; though the dead meet, ne’er shall they
Meet, and be glad by Aphrodite’s art,
Whose souls have wander’d each its several way. ”

“ And the chosen servants [46] of God, priests and faithful men, I excite unto desires for wicked sins, and evil heresies [47] , and lawless deeds; and they obey me, and I bear them on to destruction. And I inspire men with envy, and [desire for] murder, and for wars and sodomy, and other evil things. And I will destroy the world."
28. So I said to him: "Bring to me thy child, who is, as thou sayest, in the Red Sea." But he said to me: "I will not bring him to thee. But there shall come to me another demon, called Ephippas. Him will I bind, and he will bring him up from the deep unto me." ”

“ But if any one says that it is not of all the demons, but only of the wicked, that the poets, not without truth, say that they violently love or hate certain men,—for it was of them Apuleius said that they were driven about by strong currents of emotion,—how can we accept this interpretation, when Apuleius, in the very same connection, represents all the demons, and not only the wicked, as intermediate between gods and men by their aerial bodies? ”

“ Belief in the existence of the antipodes was considered by ecclesiastical authority as a sure proof of heresy, the philosopher's stone had been found, astrology was an infallible science, and the air was filled with demons who were ever waiting for an opportunity to steal away man's immortal soul. ”

“ But that which destroys is either a sword, or a wheel, or the sea, or a tile, or a tyrant. Why do you care about the way of going down to Hades? All ways are equal. But if you will listen to the truth, the way which the tyrant sends you is shorter. A tyrant never killed a man in six months: but a fever is often a year about it. All these things are only sound and the noise of empty names.
HOW WE OUGHT TO USE DIVINATION.—Through an unreasonable regard to divination many of us omit many duties. For what more can the diviner see than death or danger or disease, or generally things of that kind? ”

“ I thought I had been seized with asphyxia, and that I should experience no more, as death would come unless we speedily descended. Other thoughts were actively entering my mind when I suddenly became unconscious, as though going to sleep. ”

“ According to the Platonists, then, the gods, who occupy the highest place, enjoy eternal blessedness, or blessed eternity; men, who occupy the lowest, a mortal misery, or a miserable mortality; and the demons, who occupy the mean, a miserable eternity, or an eternal misery. As to those five things which Apuleius included in his definition of demons, he did not show, as he promised, that the demons are mediate. For three of them, that their nature is animal, their mind rational, their soul subject to passions, he said that they have in common with men ”

“ A quotation from the Apology by Methodius in his work on the Resurrection of the Body, is preserved by Epiphanius (5) and Photius, (6) and this, the mention by Philip Sidetes, and the inscription by an unknown hand, just quoted, are all the evidence we possess regarding the Apology. We have no evidence at all regarding the treatise on the Resurrection, beyond the inscription. The authenticity of neither, therefore, stands on very sure grounds. ”

“ When a person has suddenly lost his powers Hippocrates directs that he should be bled. (Aphor.) Apoplexy, he says, occurs most frequently between the age of forty and sixty. (Ibid.) He says, in allusion to apoplexy (as his commentator Theophilus remarks) , that when persons in good health are suddenly seized with pains in the head, with loss of speech, and stertorous breathing, they die in seven days, unless fever supervene. (Ibid.)
Galen states that apoplexy arises from a cold, thick, and viscid humour obstructing the ventricles of the brain. ”

“ And what a mass of harm may have come of not believing in Apollo? Does it never strike you that doubt can be a madness, as well be faith? That asking questions may be a disease, as well as proclaiming doctrines? ”

“ The soul’s return is to be accomplished by an asceticism with which we are now familiar. This the leaders illustrated in their own lives. Porphyry tells us that his master remained unmarried, abstained from animal food, lived in the simplest fashion, and so despised his body that he seemed ashamed of its possession. [254] The pupil laid even more stress on the subjugation of the flesh that the soul might be free and return toward God. ”

“ There a protracted agony of remorse in life and anticipated damnation—that damnation, if not distinctly declared, made dubious or averted only by a special miracle:—here an apotheosis—a claim, at least, to canonization. ”

“ The apoplexy is a disease, wherein the patient falls down motionless, void of sense and sensation, and is, in fact, a temporary death. It will scarce however admit of a strict definition; for there are not only various degrees of this disorder, but even different disorders under the same denomination, that have quite distinct different causes for their effect. Many indeed may be accounted for, but many more cannot. ”

“ Where the soul resides during the suspension of the mental powers by asphyxia, I know not, any more than I know where it resided before it was united with that specific compound of bones, muscles, and nerve. ”

“ His predictions resemble in form the representations found in the Book of Daniel and the Book of Enoch; and the understanding of them is involved in difficulties like those which beset such apocalyptic writings. In general, apocalypses were written in times of great distress for God's people, and represented the deliverance which should usher in God's kingdom as near at hand. One feature of them is a complete lack of perspective in the picture of the future. It may be that this fact will in part account for one great perplexity in the apocalyptic sayings of Jesus. ”

“ Of such character will I show myself to you—faithful, reverent, noble, unperturbed. You do not mean, therefore, immortal, or ageless, or exempt from disease? No, but one who dies like a god, who bears disease like a god. ”