Iamblichus: On the Mysteries · 49 of 218 · tr. Thomas Taylor
Chapter IV
Afterwards, also, you say, “ that many, through enthusiasm and divine inspiration, predict future events, and that they are then in so wakeful a state, as even to energize according to sense, and yet they are not conscious of the state they are in, or at least, not so much as they were before .” I wish, therefore, here to point out to you the signs by which those who are rightly possessed by the Gods may be known. For they either subject the whole of their life, as a vehicle or instrument to the inspiring Gods; or they exchange the human for the divine life; or they energize with their own proper life about divinity. But they neither energize according to sense, nor are in such a vigilant state as those who have their senses excited from sleep (for neither do they apprehend future events); nor are they moved as those are who energize according to impulse. Nor, again, are they conscious of the state they are in, neither as they were before, nor in any 122 other way; nor, in short, do they convert to themselves their own intelligence, or exert any knowledge which is peculiarly their own. The greatest indication, however, of the truth of this is the following. Many, through divine inspiration, are not burned when fire is introduced to them, the inspiring influence preventing the fire from touching them. Many, also, though burned, do not apprehend that they are so, because they do not then live an animal life. And some, indeed, though transfixed with spits, do not perceive it; but others that are struck on the shoulders with axes, and others that have their arms cut with knives, are by no means conscious of what is done to them. Their energies, likewise, are not at all human. For inaccessible places become accessible to those that are divinely inspired; they are thrown into fire, and pass through fire, and over rivers, like the priest in Castabalis, without being injured. But from these things it is demonstrated, that those who energize enthusiastically are not conscious of the state they are in, and that they neither live a human nor an animal life, according to sense or impulse, but that they exchange this for a certain more divine life, by which they are inspired and perfectly possessed. 123
Themes
◆Divine Madnesssoteriology
Ecstatic irrational rapture — Plato's mania, Bruno's furore — by which the soul transcends ordinary reason and attains direct contact with divine reality; madness reframed as higher knowledge.
The passage explicitly defines the state as 'enthusiasm' and 'divine inspiration,' describing it as a rapture that transcends ordinary reason.
Salvation through direct experiential knowledge of the divine nature, not through faith, ritual, or moral works alone.
The text emphasizes that those possessed do not convert their own intelligence to knowledge peculiarly their own, indicating a direct divine knowing rather than personal acquisition.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The text explicitly states that those who are divinely inspired exchange the human for the divine life and energize about divinity.