Cause Principle Unity

On magic
Thus, someone who is less well-known can bind people more easily.
Given a good general impression and a disposition to be believed, he can
somehow use the power of his soul to arrange, disclose and explain things
for them, as if windows which had been closed are opened to receive the
light of the sun. This opens the door to those other impressions which the
art of binding seeks in order to establish further bonds, namely, hope, compassion,
fear, love, hate, indignation, anger, joy, patience, disdain for life,
for death, for fate, and all of the powers which cross over from the soul to
change the body.
There is no need for a more detailed investigation and consideration of
the changes which occur to the types of bondings which follow upon faith
and a good impression, and which were just listed above. Further, it is not
our business at present to examine the more spiritual powers of the soul
which follow next: namely, memory, reason, experience, intellect and mind,
because the acts of these powers do not flow over into the body and change
it. Rather, all physical changes originate from the powers which are prior
to thought and which are its principal and efficient causes.
As a result, all magical powers, active and passive, and their species are
dependent upon magical bondings. As Plotinus has asserted, both the wise
man and the fool can be bound by the natural principles residing in them,
unless the subject also contains some principle which can reject and dismiss
magical influences. For as was said above, not everything enters into
everything else, and not everything mixes with everything else, as, for
example, water and oil do not mix. As Plotinus himself has stated, and as
Porphyry confirms in his Vita Plotini [Life of Plotinus], the evil spells with
which a certain Egyptian tried to bind and injure Plotinus were turned
back against him. 32 These things are discussed in our De vinculis in genere
[A General Account of Bonding].
32 The incident related here can be found in Porphyry’s On the Life of Plotinus and the Arrangement of
his Work, §10, in Plotinus, The Enneads, translated by Stephen MacKenna, Third Edition (London:
Faber and Faber Ltd., 1962) 8.
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