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