Reading once again Thomas Taylor’s 1821 translation from the Greek of Iamblichus’ work “On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians,” written around 300 AD. This work never ceases to inspire and focus my mind on those things which are most important. The following caught my eye this time.
“For on this account, because we fall short of the Gods in power, purity, and every thing else, we shall act in the most opportune manner, by invoking them with the most vehement supplications. For the consciousness of our own nothingness, when we compare ourselves to the Gods, causes us to betake ourselves spontaneously to suppliant prayer. But from supplication, we are in a short time led to the object of supplication, acquire its similitude from intimate converse, and gradually obtain divine perfection, instead of our own imbecility and imperfection.”
and…
“For that in us which is divine, intellectual, and one, or intelligible, if you are willing so to call it, is most clearly excited in prayer; and, when excited, vehemently seeks that which is similar to itself, and becomes copulated to perfection itself.”
and finally…
“For there is not any thing which in the smallest degree is adapted to the Gods, to which the Gods are not immediately present, and with which they are not conjoined.”
Efficacious prayer in not exclusive to the Judeo-Christian tradition, or a Judeo-Christian invention. Our Heavenly Father, out of a great love for all His children, spread the practice far and wide.