The animated statue and the ascension of the soul: Ritual and the divine image in late Platonism

Divine images play an important role in Late Platonic theurgic praxis by serving as a conduit through which divinity meets the material world. No longer content to allow ritual images to merely represent the gods or to be symbolic of hidden theological truths, philosophers like Iamblichus, Proclus and Hermeias, by combining "divine matter," fabricate images that allow the gods to manifest themselves in the physical world. This study examines more closely the phenomenon of the "ensouling" or animation of statues and focuses on two disparate aspects of the practice: Iamblichean statue animation, its methods and sources, and Athenian rites, their mechanics and salvific value. The Iamblichean investigation compares and contrasts the Apamean philosopher's statue ritual with the type(s) found in contemporaneous contexts such as the Papyri Graecae Magicae and the Corpus Hermeticum. I conclude that although Iamblichean praxis is similar to that found in these "Egyptian" texts, it differs in one significant aspect: the role of divination. Iamblichus' adherence to proscriptions against "technical" divination in the Chaldaean Oracles finds him firmly opposed to any ties between agalmata and improper divinatory forms; theurgic images are strictly receptacles for the manifestation of divinity. The second aspect considered is the place of statue animation in the fifth-century C.E. Athenian school. For Proclus and Hermeias, the combination of animation and divination is not problematic and they find in the vivified statue analogies to greater truths. The fertile capacity for comparison possessed by these statues partially accounts for the relative frequency of their appearance in the Athenians' writings, but I argue that this also reflects the importance of the rite in their theurgic praxis. My research suggests that the visitation of a deity to the statue is an important component in psychic emancipation that provides both external aid in the form of oracles that ease the daily burdens upon body and soul and internal benefits that help the soul to escape the natural realm into that of the transcendent gods.