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pervade through its participants in this manner, according to interval and division, but comprehends as it were externally, and illuminates the fountain,[1] and fills it from itself with a prophetic power. For the inspiration which the water affords is not the whole of that which proceeds from a divine power, but the water itself only prepares us, and purifies our luciform spirit,[2] so that we may be able to receive the divinity; while, in the mean time, there is a presence of divinity prior to this, and illuminating from on high. And this, indeed, is not absent from any one, who through aptitude is capable of being united to it. But this divine illumination is immediately present, and uses the prophetess as an instrument; she neither being any longer mistress of herself, nor capable of attending to what she says, nor perceiving where she is. Hence, after prediction, she is scarcely able to recover herself. And before she drinks the water, she abstains from food for a whole day and night; and retiring to certain sacred places, inaccessible to the
- ↑ See Plutarch in his treatise De Defectu Oraculorum.
- ↑ See Plutarch in the above mentioned treatise. Concerning this luciform spirit, or vehicle, which is immortal, and which is called by Olympiodorus αυγοειδες χιτων, a luciform vestment, see my Translation of the fifth book of Proclus on the Timæus.
