by the gods; and they tread on fire unharmed; they walk across
rivers. . . . They are not themselves, they live a diviner life,
with which they are inspired, and by which they are possessed.'
Some are convulsed in one way, some in another, some are still.
Harmonies are heard (as in Home's case and that of Mr. Stainton
Moses). Their bodies are elongated (like Home's), or broadened, or
float in mid-air, as in a hundred tales of mediums and saints.
Sometimes the medium sees a light when the spirit takes possession
of him, sometimes all present see it (iii. 6). Thus Wodrow says (as
we have already shown), that Mrs. Carlyle's ancestor, Mr. Welsh,
shone in a light as he meditated; and Patrick Walker tells the same
tale about two of the fanatics called 'Sweet Singers'.

From all this it follows, Iamblichus holds, that spiritual
possession is a genuine objective fact and that the mediums act
under real spiritual control. Omitting local oracles, and practices
apparently analogous to the use of planchette, Iamblichus regards
the heavenly _light_ as the great source of and evidence for the
_external_ and spiritual character and cause of divination (iii.
14). Iamblichus entirely rejects all Porphyry's psychological
theories of hallucinations, of the demon or 'genius' as 'subliminal
self,' and asserts the actual, objective, sensible action of
spirits, divine or daemonic. What effect Iamblichus produced on the
inquiring Porphyry is uncertain. In his De Abstinentia (ii. 39) he
gives in to the notion of deceitful spirits.

In addition to the evidence of Porphyry, Iamblichus, Eusebius and
other authors of the fourth century, some recently published papyri
of the same period throw a little light on the late Greek
thaumaturgy. {73} Thus Papyrus cxxv. verso (about the fifth