The word pneuma (“breath” or “spirit”) had a wide variety of meanings in antiquity.26 In the context of Porphyry’s discussion, it refers to “an intermediary between the incorporeal soul and the material world.”27 According to Gillian Clark, in the Timean tradition, this pneuma, or ochēma (ὄχημα: “vehicle” or “chariot”), 28 is acquired by emanating or descending souls in the celestial realm and “is envisaged as air or fire,” but this vehicle “becomes thicker and heavier as it descends through the ‘regions below the moon,’ where damp air, water and earth predominate.”29 The kinds of air or fire that make up this vehicle are not strictly commensurate with these elements as they are found in their sublunary form, but they are all elemental matter of one sort or another.30
Porphyry locates all daemons in the sublunary region, whether good or evil. Their pneuma, although of a more celestial substance than ordinary air and fire, because it mediates between soul and matter and binds the former to the latter in some way, gives rise to passions and desires. The difference between good and evil daemons, then, seems to arise from the degree to which these souls identify with this pneumatic vessel and its attendant passions. In the case of malign spirits, they have become entangled in or riveted to this material aspect.
Good daemons, on the other hand, “do everything for the benefit of those they rule, whether they are in charge of certain animals, or crops which have been assigned to them, or of what happens for the sake of these—showers of rain, moderate winds, fine weather, and the other things which work with them, and the balance of seasons within the year.”31 These good daemons are also in charge of “skills, and of all kinds of education in the liberal arts, or of medicine and physical training and other such things.”32 In other words, they work with matter and mediate between the corporeal and incorporeal in ways that maintain the proper order and well-being of those creatures, plants, animals, and humans who inhabit the sublunary sphere and whose souls are bound to material bodies in a more complex and complete way.33 They also serve as “transmitters” (ὁι πορθμεύοντες) or messengers between gods and humans.34 Evil daemons, on the other hand, no longer minister to their subjects, but to their own desire to feed their pneumatic vessel. They do so by means of moist vapor and blood.
Christian Precedents and Parallels for the Association of Evil Daemons and Blood Sacrifice
This idea that animal sacrifices actually propitiate evil daemons and are not appropriate offerings for true divinity is prefigured in earlier Christian writings. Origen, in Contra Celsum, writes that these spirits occupy images and temples either because they have been invoked by certain magical spells or because they have taken over the place through their own efforts in order to “greedily partake of the portions of the sacrifices and seek for illicit pleasure.”35 In his Exhortation to Martyrdom, Origen notes that if demons are to remain in the lower parts of the sublunary realm, in the “thick atmosphere of earth,” they need to feed on the blood, smoke, and incense of sacrifices, presumably because it keeps their “bodies” sufficiently damp and heavy to remain here.36 As mentioned earlier, these ideas had a long history in Christian apologetic by the time Origen began to write on the topic. In what follows, we will see the ways in which Porphyry’s ideas reflect those of both Origen and his predecessors.
In certain fragments Andrew Smith classifies as belonging to the work On Philosophy from Oracles, namely those preserved in Preparation for the Gospel (Smith 314–15), Porphyry further elaborates the reasons why handling and ingestion of meat were more universally problematic. His discussion begins very generally by emphasizing the ubiquity of malign spirits. He embarks in this manner in order to highlight the constant danger these spirits pose to the unsuspecting and nonvigilant. This view accords well with ideas about the ubiquity of evil, or at least capricious, spirits in more general currency in late antique society. For instance, Porphyry claims that every house is full of evil daemons. So too are human bodies, and this possession takes place, predictably, through the ingestion of meat. He writes: “For when we are eating, they approach and sit near the body, and the purifications [rituals associated with meals] are because of this, not because of the gods, so that those ones [the evil daemons] might depart. But they especially delight in blood and impurities and they take enjoyment of these entering into those who use them.”37
Minucius Felix comes very close to this sort of explanation for demonic possession in his Octavius.38 There he writes that these evil daemons seek to gorge themselves “on the reek of altars and the sacrifice of beasts.”39 Indeed, they go to great lengths to be propitiated in this way: “being subtle spirits, they secretly creep into our bodies, contriving diseases, terrifying our minds, and wrenching our limbs.”40 Minucius Felix calls their disturbed victims “soothsayers … though they are in no temple.”41 On receiving what they desire, namely the fumes and blood of sacrifices, the evil spirits affect a cure by leaving their victims.42
Porphyry also held these beings accountable for human illness and plague.43 Significantly, the idea that evil daemons are responsible for disease runs counter to the contentions of Plotinus, Porphyry’s teacher. In Enneads 2.9.14, Plotinus critiques those members of his circle whom Porphyry called “Gnostics” for believing that diseases are caused by daemons.44 Plotinus contrasts this “invasion” model of the origin of disease with the medical one, in which disease is the result of excess, deficiency, strain, or decay. Plotinus mocks the “Gnostic” view by inquiring as to how various cures work on these spirits. He asks, “Does the [daemon] starve, and does the drug make it waste away, and does it sometimes come out all at once or stay inside?”45 The view that Plotinus mocks seems to be the one Porphyry adopted, namely that evil daemons do enter the body through ingestion and linger there, causing various ailments and digestive complaints. It is also a view represented in many Christian authors. As Dale Martin points out in The Corinthian Body, Christian communities, such as the one in Corinth, had a number of different disease aetiologies they could draw on to explain human suffering, pollution, and illness. He argues that the tensions in the Corinthian community over whether or not one could eat food sacrificed to idols was the result of a misunderstanding between elite and nonelite members of the group over the causes of disease. The model Martin associates with elite members of the Corinthian community reflects the understanding that the human being is hierarchically ordered in a way that reflects cosmic order, and that health is a function of maintaining proper balance. The model he associates with lower-class Christians at Corinth is based on an understanding that the body is permeable and vulnerable, and that its boundaries are in need of protection from pollution, which causes disease and suffering. This pollution was primarily understood to be spiritual. In other words, the body could be possessed by other spirits.46
In another fragment from On Philosophy from Oracles, Porphyry suggests something similar, namely that the body is permeable to evil daemons who affect it by inciting the human being to partake even more enthusiastically of gustatory pleasures. The presence of these spirits is manifest in terms of the consequences of this indulgence in the form of grunting and breaking wind. Porphyry writes:
For universally, the vehemence of the desire towards anything, and the impulse of the lust of the spirit,