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These things also admit of another explanation of the following kind. The theurgist, through the power of arcane signatures, commands mundane natures, no longer as man, nor as employing a human soul; but as existing superior to them in the order of the Gods, he makes use of greater mandates than pertain to himself, so far as he is human. This, however, does not take place as if he effected every thing which he vehemently threatens to accomplish; but he teaches us by such a use of words the magnitude and quality of the power which he possesses through a union with the Gods, and which he obtains from the knowledge of arcane symbols. This, likewise, may be said, that the dæmons who are distributed according to parts, and who guard the parts of the universe, pay so much attention to the parts over which they preside, that they cannot endure a word contrary [to the safety of these], but they preserve the permanency of mundane natures immutable. They preserve this permanency, therefore, in an unchanged condition, because the order of the Gods remains invariably the same. Hence they cannot endure even to hear that threatened in which the aerial and terrestrial dæmons have their existence.
