From: slider@anashram.com

THEURGY (from the Greek theourgia ) means literally something like
"actuating the divine" and refers to actions that induce or bring about
the presence of a divine or supernatural being, whether in an artifact or
a person. It was a practice closely related to magic—not least in its
ritual use of material things, sacrifices, and verbal formulas to effect
the believer's fellowship with the god, demon, or departed spirit. It is distinguished from ordinary magical practice less by its techniques than
by its aim, which was religious (union with the divine) rather than
secular. Use of the term theourgia —as well as of the related theourgos, referring to a practitioner of the art—arose in the second century ce in Hellenistic circles closely associated with the birth of Neoplatonism. The practice was commended and followed, in the third and later centuries, by certain Neoplatonist philosophers and their disciples.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/philosophy-and-religion/other-religious-beliefs-and-general-terms/miscellaneous-religion/theurgy

The origins of this movement can be traced, in all probability, to a work called the Chaldean Oracles, plausibly attributed to the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161–180). A collection of obscure and pretentious oracular utterances written in Homeric hexameters, this work, now known only in fragments, was apparently assembled (if not composed) by one Julian the Chaldean or (perhaps more likely) by his son Julian the Theurge. Much of
its content is quasi-philosophical, and its account of the first
principles shows affinities with the thought of the Pythagorean
philosopher Numenius, who was teaching around the middle of the second
century. It also contained, however, prescriptions for theurgic rites and indications of the "sights" that they produce, for example, "a formless
fire whence a voice proceeds" (frag. 146).

Concerning the value of such practices, there was significant disagreement among Neoplatonist thinkers. Plotinus himself, it is now agreed, either
knew or thought nothing of the Chaldean Oracles. His way to human
fulfillment in the divine was the way of theoria ("contemplation"), not
that of theourgia. It was his disciple Porphyry who was the first among philosophers to give some status to the practice of theurgy. In spite of
the severe criticisms of it that he had leveled in his Letter to Anebo, Porphyry came, according to Augustine (City of God 10.9f.), to acknowledge
a theurgy whose aim was purification of the soul and that produced
"appearances of angels or of gods."

At the same time Porphyry insisted that the value of such practices was strictly limited. What they purified was not the intellectual soul, but
only its lower, pneumatic adjunct, which is adapted to visions of spirits, angels, and inferior deities; they had no power to bring people into the presence of Truth itself. Presumably Porphyry continued to believe, with Plotinus, that it is only the practice of virtue and of philosophical contemplation that raises the soul to fellowship with the supreme God.

This conviction was not shared, however, by Porphyry's own disciple, the
Syrian Iamblichus (d. 325), who, in his long treatise On the Mysteries,
replied to the strictures expressed by his teacher in the Letter to Anebo. According to Iamblichus, there exists, in theurgy, a mode of fellowship
with the divine that is independent of philosophical thought and that
"those who philosophize theoretically" do not achieve. "What effects
theurgic union is the carrying through of reverently accomplished actions
which are unspeakable and transcend any intellectual grasp, as well as the power of mute symbols which only the gods understand" (On the Mysteries
2.11).

This debate, however, did not end with the exchange between Iamblichus and
his teacher. In his youth the emperor Julian was a disciple of the
philosopher Eusebius, who taught that "the important thing is purification
[of the soul] through reason" and who condemned wonder-working. Julian, however, was more impressed in the end by the teaching of one Maximus,
who, by burning incense and reciting a formula in the temple of Hecate,
caused the statue of the goddess to smile and the torches in her hands to blaze; the emperor-to-be accordingly adopted Maximus as his teacher
(Eunapius, Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists 474).

What the practice of theurgy involved becomes plain from the text of Iamblichus's treatise itself. There he defends and interprets a variety of rites and practices that involve either the use of offerings or tokens of
some sort or the various phenomena that accompany divine possession. It is plain, however, that in his mind the practices he explains can be
understood and entered into—and indeed function—at more than one level. True theurgy, he suggests, is, "the summit of the priestly art" and is
reserved "to a very few"—those, indeed, who "share in the theurgic gods in
a way which transcends the cosmos," because they "go beyond bodies and
matter in service of the gods, being made one with the gods by a power
which transcends the cosmos" (On the Mysteries 5.20–5.22).

For all this, however, there is little new or unfamiliar in the phenomena
he alludes to, from the "enthusiasm" of the Corybantes to the sacrifice of animals. He refers, for example, to levitation as one manifestation of possession by a god. He is also familiar with situations in which the
theurgist makes use of a medium (ho dechomenos ), and both he and the medium—and sometimes the assembled spectators—see the "spirit [pneuma ] which comes down and enters" the one who is possessed (3.6). In another
vein, he refers to theurgic use of hollow statues that are filled with
"stones, herbs, animals, spices, [and] other such holy, perfect, and
godlike things," so as to create a receptacle in which the god will be at
home (5.23). Though this practice seems to have been especially favored by
late classical practitioners of theurgy, it clearly draws on widespread
and ancient practices of sympathetic magic.

What is interesting and new, then, in Iamblichus's account of theourgia,
as over against theoria, is precisely the terms in which he understands
and defends it. For one thing, it is plainly his conviction that theurgy
is not a matter of manipulating the gods. Over and over again he denies
that material objects or circumstances, or psychological states of human subjects, can supply the explanation of theurgic phenomena, which by their nature transcend the capacity of such causes. Similarly, he denies that
the power of the gods is compelled by human agency. The presence of the
human soul with the gods is effected through a gift of divine agencies—through their universal self-bestowal.

It is this self-bestowal that empowers the invocations and actions of the theurgist, which reach out to the transcendent by reason of "assimilation
and appropriation" to their object (3.18). Behind this conception there
lies, of course, a rationalized concept of universal sympathy, which
emphasizes not merely the interconnectedness of things at the level of the visible cosmos but also the presence and participation of all finite
realities in their immaterial ground, the divine order.

At the same time, however—and somewhat paradoxically, in view of this insistence on the mutual indwelling of the various levels of reality—Iamblichus insists that "the human race is weak and puny … possessed of a congenital nothingness," and that the only remedy for its
error and perpetually disturbed state is to "share as far as possible in
the divine Light" (3.18). Thus the practice of theurgy, through which the
gods themselves bestow their light and presence, is the one hope of
humanity. Iamblichus had lost not the philosophy so much as the faith of a Plotinus.

In Christian circles, the term theourgia and its derivatives came into use
in the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite (Pseudo-Dionysius), himself a student of the Neoplatonist Proclus, who, after Iamblichus, was the
weightiest philosophical advocate of theurgic practice. In Dionysius,
however, the term is employed in the sense required by the Christian
doctrine of grace: theurgy is not the effect of a natural and universal sympathy between different orders of being, but the self-communicating
work of the divine. For Dionysius, Jesus is "the Principal [archē ] of all hierarchy, holiness, and divine operation [theourgia ]." The priesthood,
by imitating and contemplating the light of the higher beings—who are, in their turn, assimilated to Christ—comes to be in the form of light, and
its members are thus able to be "workers of divine works [theourgikoi ]."
The operative sense of Dionysius's use of the term is captured later by
Maximus the Confessor, for whom the (new) verb theourgein means "to
divinize"; he uses it in the passive voice to denote the effect of divine
grace conferred through Christ.

### - the above being a potted history of the obscure practice of
'theurgy' and the various philosophical attempts (of different schools) at
some kind of explanation of it/for it...

a seemingly 'mystical' + ancient practice that became quite common in
various forms down the ages amongst so-called men of learning skilled in philosophy, astronomy/astrology and/or other various sciences in those
ancient days (plato for example studied & used some diluted form of
theurgy too) people later such as Nostradamus for example, who often ate
nutmeg (a known mildly psychoactive compound) and then gazed for hours at
a bowl of black ink by candlelight, until all these 'visions' began
appearing: is definitely using some kinda version of that, he then
obviously entering into some kind of trance state which allowed all this 'hypnagogia' to appear that he then contemplated and experimented with, possibly even to him (and others too) inadvertently going-off on what we
NOW know/recognise as being a waking dream, or WILD, albeit they all
called it something else altogether back then...

down the ages they perforce all tried to describe & explain just what was happening to them via these 'visions and trances', often making the same
newbie mistakes we see happening today; of people thinking they're
actually meeting with angels and/or some kinda trans-dimensional or divine beings, when, in reality, they're really all only projections of that
person's mind based entirely on their current beliefs & customs alone! christians might thus think they're seeing/meeting-with angels, hindu's
with some kinda hindu-spirit (as Srinivasa Ramanujan the indian
mathematician did) rationalists & scientists otoh will certainly find more rational answers! it all depends on what you believe in, or, better yet:
how 'objective' (or not) one can remain throughout any such experience so
as to understand exactly what it 'actually' is instead of what we're wont
to turn it all INTO because of our ingrained beliefs!

fortunately, such erroneous misinterpretations are only temporary for us
today, having the benefit of hindsight we can easily look back and see
many examples of just exactly how all these people in the past happened
upon + perhaps used hypnagogic states, even full WILDs, albeit without
ever realising what was really happening to them beyond the teachings &
beliefs of their time, all of which suggested it was all of divine origin
& nature, or the devil or whatever... coz that's what they believed/were
taught to believe! (socrates said he had a demon that he spoke to in his
trance states, for example)

leonardo di vinci apparently used a very similar device, and would lay on
his bed staring at the shadows cast on the ceiling by a single candle
until he too fell into some kind of trance/hypagogic state wherein he
imagined all these inventions which he quickly drew, as did einstein via
his 'thought-experiments' (i.e., einstein (and tesla) were, for example, interested in physics so they got answers strictly along those lines
instead! many chemists having done something very similar!)

iow: it all depends on what YOU like to think about and/or believe in as
to just what kinds of questions & answers you'll likely make & receive
when WILDing! and while it's admittedly fairly difficult at first to
remain completely objective about the whole experience, it doesn't usually
take too long before an increasing need for objectivity begins to arise
and expand, newbies being keen to lucid dream typically jumping right in
and trying everything out just as soon as it occurs to them suffering from
this the most, their 'desire' to have lucid dreams at all completely overwhelming their otherwise good sense, which is fairly understandable
really heh, i myself certainly had some glorious + very indulgent lucid dreaming once i realised i could :D

repeated experiences of WILDing, however, also begins to expand one's awareness... similar perhaps, to travel reputedly broadening the mind? be
that as it may, such an expansion of awareness automatically begins to
create a mood of objectivity all by itself, that in that sense one 'could'
say that one's objectivity and resulting detachment grows AS one's
awareness expands!

So whereas one may indeed start-off being a bit of an indulgent jerk in dreaming, this in fact only marks another stage of development along the
way: the moment, for example, when ones search changes from that of having
any old lucid dreams just for the sheer sake of it to something a little
more refined, such as a perhaps more objective search into the nature of
all this and what it all really is and means!

Such indulgent lucid dreaming for entertainment purposes only, is
apparently available to everyone & sundry, but imho the full/complete
control of it ONLY comes to those that deliberately + objectively
probe/examine it ;)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)