Obviously we would much prefer a spell for turning an old woman into a goddess.  The document is headed, [Greek], ’the old serving woman of Apollonius of Tyana,’ and it ends, [Grrek], ’it is proved by practice’.

You take the head of an ibis, and write certain characters on it in the blood of a black ram, and go to a cross-road, or the sea-shore, or a river-bank at midnight:  there you recite gibberish and then see a pretty lady riding a donkey, and she will put off her beauty like a mask and assume the appearance of old age, and will promise to obey you:  and so forth.

Here is a ‘constraint put on a god’ as Porphyry complains.  Reginald Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft (1584), has a very similar spell for alluring an airy sylph, and making her serve and be the mistress of the wizard!  There is another papyrus (xlvi.), of the fourth century, with directions for divination by aid of a boy looking into a bowl, says the editor (p. 64).  There is a long invocation full of ‘barbarous words,’ like the mediaeval nonsense rhymes used in magic.  There is a dubious reading, [Grrek] or [Greek]; it is suggested that the boy is put into a pit, as it seems was occasionally done. {74} It is clear that a spirit is supposed to show the boy his visions.  A spell follows for summoning a visible deity.  Then we have a recipe for making a ring which will enable the owner to know the thoughts of men.  The god is threatened if he does not serve the magicians.  All manner of fumigations, plants, and stones are used in these idiotic ceremonies, and to these Porphyry refers.  The papyri do not illustrate the phenomena described by Iamblichus, such as the ‘light,’ levitation, music of unknown origin, the resistance of the medium to fire and sword points, and all the rest of his list of prodigies.  Iamblichus probably looked down on the believers in these spells written on papyri with extreme disdain.  They are only interesting as folklore, like the rhymes of incantation preserved in Reginald Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft.

There were other analogies between modern, ancient, and savage spiritualism.  The medium was swathed, or tied up, like the Davenport Brothers, like Eskimo and Australian conjurers, like the Highland seer in the bull’s hide. {75a} The medium was understood to be a mere instrument like a flute, through which the ‘control,’ the god or spirit, spoke. {75b} This is still the spiritualistic explanation of automatic speech.  Eusebius goes so far as to believe that ‘earthbound spirits’ do speak through the medium, but a much simpler theory is obvious. {75c} Indeed where automatic performances of any sort—­by writing, by the kind of ‘Ouija’ or table pointing to letters, as described by Ammianus Marcellinus (xxix. 29)—­or by speaking, are concerned, we have the aid of psychology, and the theory of ‘unconscious cerebration’ to help us.  But when we are told the old tales of whirring noises, of ‘bilocation,’ of ‘levitation,’ of a mystic light, we are in contact with more difficult questions.