By the end of the third century, Christianity had suddenly flooded the pagan world with its own claims to authorization and began to dissolve into itself many of the then existing pagan practices. The idea of possession was one of those. But it was absorbed in a transcendental way. At almost the same time that Iamblichus was teaching the induction of gods into statues, or young illiterate katochoi to 'participate' in divinity and have 'a common energy' with a god, Athanasius, the competitive Bishop of Alexandria, began claiming the same thing for the illiterate 9 It is safe to suggest that many feats of present-day stage magicians have their origin in duplicating these 'proofs' of divine intervention. Jesus. The Christian Messiah had heretofore been regarded as like Yahweh, a demigod perhaps, half human, half divine, reflecting his supposed parentage. But Athanasius persuaded Constantine, his Council of Nicaea, and most of Christianity thereafter, that Jesus participated in Yahweh, was the same substance, the Bicameral Word made Flesh. I think we can say then that the growing church, in danger of shattering into sects, exaggerated the subjective phenomenon of possession into an objective theological dogma. It did so to assert an even greater claim to an absolute authorization. For Athanasian Christians the actual gods had indeed returned to earth and would return again.

• god
• time
• christianity
• danger
• dogma
• flesh
• energy
• jesus
• authorization
• gods