The chief genera of this are two: oracle, or demon-mancy, and mangany.
Oracles, vaticinia, chresmoi, manteumata, and demonomancy can all be taken for the same things. It is common to all of them that by them the Devil tried to imitate true theomancy or prophecy, by giving responses to petitioners either from caves, or from statues, or from human beings. Such were the oracles of Jupiter of Dodona, instituted by descendants of Dodanim, who were magi and consecrated the oaks, and instituted the striking of bowls, a species of divining which indeed flourished for a long time. Such also was the oracle of Jupiter Ammon, a term which, according to one etymology, signifies “truthful” in Hebrew. According to another, however, you can interpret it with Josephus as “strong.” For the doubling of the middle letter pertains rather to pronunciation than to meaning. To the Greeks ammos is sand; to the Egyptians Hammon is the sun, than which, according to the Gentiles, nothing is more clear-sighted and nothing stronger.
There was also the oracle of Jupiter Trophonius, concerning which there is an accurate dialogue of Niccolo Leoniceno; and the oracles of Apollo at Delphi, Claros, Delos, Smynthos, and countless other places, and that of Venus of Gaza, known to a few. Many have thought that a physical cause could be given for these, not only the ancients, but also recent learned men. Most have thought that there was a certain peculiar exhalation of that place which made people frantic for prophesying. They use a likeness taken from those whom black bile agitates: such persons, they say, are accustomed not only to speak things unknown to themselves, but even to speak languages which they did not know at all while sane.
[margin: Oracles: dialogue on Trophonius; Caelius Calcagnini, Fagninus, Sirenius, On Fate, book 9, and Le Loyer, On Specters, book 4, on oracles; Josephus on Ammon; Niccolo Leoniceno’s dialogue on Trophonius; Plutarch, On the Cessation of Oracles, Pomponazzi, On Incantations, and Levinus Lemnius on prophetic exhalations]
But what they add about speaking languages cannot be ascribed to black bile as an efficient cause, because it depends upon reflection. Moreover, sounder philosophy, that is, Christian philosophy, agrees in this matter with Psellus, whom they unjustly criticize. Psellus, and with him Codronchus and Fernelius, an outstanding physician, judged that such effects should be attributed to a demon assisting or possessing a human being, a cave, or a statue. It happens only incidentally that a demon chooses these places rather than those, where such an exhalation does not exist, as more suitable to his purpose, just as he more willingly possesses the bodies of melancholic persons. Therefore, when prophecy ceases after the body has been purged by medicines, this happens because the demon leaves bodies in which he no longer finds dispositions friendly to himself.
As for the fact that the ancient oracles ceased, this should not be attributed so much to the failure of that vapor or exhalation as to the power of our Savior Jesus. The stronger one, coming upon the strong armed one, wrested away these vessels of deception. Iamblichus, contradicting himself, judged that prophecies come neither from art, nor from nature, nor from reason, nor from any other cause, but only by divine grant, that is, from demons.
[margin: Demonic cause of oracles: Psellus; Fernelius, On Hidden Causes of Things, book 1; Codronchus, On Magical Diseases, book 2, chapter 8; Iamblichus, On Mysteries, chapters 21 and 26, on vaticination not from art, nature, or reason but from divinity, that is, demons]
The demon poured out most of these oracles through women who were practitioners of magic. Such were those women called Dodonides doves, as Pausanias taught in the Arcadica; they were so called because the Thessalians, according to Servius on the Bucolics, call both prophetesses and doves peleiai. Such were the Gallicenae, women priestesses of a Gallic deity on Sena, an island of the Breton sea, who by force of a magical song stirred up storms, seemed to transform themselves into whatever animals they wished, predicted future things, and healed things incurable to others. Such was the Pythia at Delphi, as is clear from the description of the oracle handed down by many. Such was the prophetic woman of the Branchidae, whose oracle was described by Iamblichus. The magi of Colophon, Trophonius, and Soracte were also seers, about whom Pausanias in the Achaica and Strabo in the Geography should be read.
Such was the Frankish Pythoness who deceived Merovech, concerning whom Gregory of Tours writes in the History of the Franks, book 5, chapter 14. Such are all Pythonic persons, also called ventriloquists and engastrimythoi or engastrimanteis, because a voice seemed to come forth from the lower belly, as Origen and others explain; and sternomanteis, because sometimes the demon displays himself under the breast beneath the skin and seems to speak through the breast. Caelius Rhodiginus writes that he saw such a person. They are also called Pythons from asking, pynthanesthai, and Euryclei from a certain Eurycles possessed in this way, according to Suidas and Aristophanes, or from the demon himself who possessed him, whom Plutarch calls Eurycles.
[margin: Oracle-women, Pythons, and ventriloquists: Pausanias in Arcadia and Natalis Comes, Mythology, book 6, chapter 10, on Dodonian women as doves; Servius on the Eclogues; Pomponius Mela, book 1, and Caelius Rhodiginus, Antiquities, book 13, chapter 33, on the Gallicenae; Iamblichus on the Branchidae; Pausanias in Achaia and Strabo, Geography, book 8, on Colophon, Trophonius, and Sora; Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, book 5, chapter 14, on the French Pythoness; Origen, Against Celsus, book 7, Chrysostom and Oecumenius on 1 Corinthians 12 and Acts 16, Caelius Rhodiginus, Suidas, Aristophanes, and Plutarch on ventriloquists and Eurycles]
Here belong those to whom a demon responds from a chest. I think it worthwhile to write down what two recent German writers have recorded about this matter. There was a farmer in Meissen. He brought home money enclosed in a bladder and placed it on a bench. When he had gone elsewhere, a domestic sow, a greedy and omnivorous animal, came upon the bladder, and, seeing it, devoured it. When the farmer returned, he did not find it and demanded it from his wife. The woman denied that she had seen it. What should he do? The foolish man went to an old woman living nearby, whom they considered a truth-teller. The little old woman ordered the man to stand in the light of the house and not to move a hair’s breadth from a line which she had marked with chalk. Then, entering the bedroom and looking into a chest, she asked the demon about the thief in these words: “A certain N., having returned home, lost his money on such and such a day. Whom do you say stole it?” The cheat answered from the chest, his new tripod: “The domestic sow ate it. But you, say that his wife, so that she might gobble it down with the priest, her lover, secretly took it.”
She reported to the farmer what the demon had ordered, but said nothing about the sow. The farmer, however, knew everything. For, fearing nothing from the old woman’s prohibition, he had followed her step by step and very quietly, had stopped before the bedroom door, and had carefully observed through a crack what the sorceress was doing. Returning home, he told everything to his wife and friends. By their advice he slaughtered the sow and recovered the purse. He delivered the prophetess to justice as a slanderer and accomplice of the demon. The magistrate expiated the portent with flames.
[margin: German writers on the Meissen chest-response and the false accusation of theft]
Persons inspired by a demon are also called fanatics by the jurists; by the Greeks they are called entheoi, enthousiastikoi, and enthousiastai. They differ from the snatched and the possessed only in prophecy. Of this kind were Orpheus, Musaeus, Atticus, Tiresias, Sosipatra in Eunapius in the Life of Aedesius, the Montanists in Epiphanius, and others in Lactantius, Rufinus, and Oecumenius. By common consent the Sibyls too belong here, and it is not improbable that the name Sibyl is derived from kibel, “he received” or “accepted”; hence kabbalah signifies doctrine handed down from heaven by tradition. Certainly the most ancient of the Sibyls was Sambethe, daughter of Noah.
Such too are the ecstatics, who, snatched by a demon outside themselves, deprived of motion and sense, and thinking marvelous things, meanwhile claim to behold those things which they later proclaim as future. All fanatics of this kind, whether seers of idols, ventriloquists, ecstatics, and the rest whom I have named, are condemned in Sacred Scripture; and against these Saul had established the death penalty, or rather had executed the one established by Moses.
[margin: Fanatics and inspired persons: jurists on fanatics in Digest, De aedilitio edicto; Greek terms for inspired persons; Eunapius, Life of Aedesius, on Sosipatra; Epiphanius, heresy 85, on Montanists; Lactantius, Institutes, book 4, chapter 25; Rufinus, Ecclesiastical History, book 2, chapter 4; Oecumenius on Acts 12; Sibyls and the Hebrew root qbl/kabbalah; Leviticus 20, Deuteronomy 18, and 1 Samuel 28 against seers of idols, ventriloquists, and ecstatics]