kleid

The highest entities mentioned in the Oracles are a First Paternal Intellect, absolutely transcendent; a Second Demiurgic Intellect, who proceeds from the Father and knows the cosmos as well as himself; and, within the First Intellect, a female Power, called Hecate, who produces or is the World Soul. Hecate is a conduit for influences traveling between the intelligible and sensible realms. At the nether end of the All lies Matter, made by the Demiurge. The physical world is a foul tomb and a jail from which the higher human soul must escape, shedding the lower soul's ochema ("vehicle") or chiton ("garment") acquired during its descent through the satrs and planets. Ascetic conduct and correct ritual will free the soul from the astrological bonds of Fate and defend it against the demonic powers who fill the ontological space between gods and mortals.[70] In their theology and theurgy, the Oracles testify to the desire that the gods talk about themselves, a wish that still ran strong among pagans in the first Christian centuries. Late in the first century, Plutarch of Chaeroneia seems to have thought for a while that the old oracles had waned. Ammonius, the Athenian Platonist who taught Plutarch and studied with Alexandrian philosophers, traveled to Delphi to quiz Apollo on his place in the divine hierarchies. A century later, when Plotinus died, his student Porphyry sent a questioner there to ask Apollo about the fate of his master's soul, and the god's reassuring reply showed a good thorough understanding of Plotinian terminology. Oracles of theological context answering large questions about the soul and divinity came not just from Delphi but from Cleros, Didyma and other sites across the eastern Mediterranean, where civic delegations and private persons traveled in the first three centuries of the new era to query the god and then return home to inscribe what they had heard on public monuments. As of the early second century, over three hundred such civic inscriptions are to be found just from Claros alone; displays of religious commitment so conspicuous and expensive were not the simple annals of the poor. Moreover, some of them show that Apollo had studied his philosophy.[71]