Drawing Down the Moon posted:

Iamblichus and his predecessors Porphyry and Plotinus represent the first set of Platonic thinkers who show an interest in what Iamblichus calls ‘theurgy.’ While the ideas of Middle Platonists such as Plutarch of Charoneia (46–120 CE), Apuleius of Madauros (c. 124–170 CE), and Numenius of Apamea (end of second century CE) provide parallels with the Chaldaean Oracles, the philosophy of Plotinus (205–269/270 CE) is generally taken to represent the shift from the understanding of Plato that characterized Middle Platonism to the complex systems of Neoplatonic thought. Plotinus shows an interest in ideas and techniques that resemble those of theurgy, although he never mentions the term, and modern scholars have debated whether he knew of the Chaldaean Oracles and theurgic practices.9 Plotinus’s pupil Porphyry (232–305 CE) wrote his master’s biography and arranged his works, but he also wrote a large number of treatises himself, including a study of Philosophy Drawn from Oracles, in which he apparently argued that (his brand of) Platonic philosophy was embedded in oracles that provide revelations from the gods themselves. This lost work survives in copious quotations by the Christian apologist Eusebius, who attacks the revelations from pagan gods and the whole system Porphyry derives from them. Another work of Porphyry’s, an attack on Christianity in fifteen books, was burned in 448 CE by order of Christian emperors, and almost nothing survives. Porphyry is said to have been the teacher of his younger contemporary Iamblichus (250–325 CE), and Iamblichus frames his de Mysteriis, the most important work on the theory of theurgy, as a response to Porphyry’s questions about theurgy.10