On the Witch of Endor, against Origen 26–30

But Origen, who thought he had interpreted all the Scriptures, does not pretend to know these testimonies, nor does he set them down, as he ought; but while he calls in those that contribute nothing at all to the question, he passes over those that belong to it by their very nature; for he seems either to do this foolishly out of ignorance, or to contrive it boldly out of ill will. But, as though playing both sides, having said, “What, then, does the ventriloquist do here? What does the ventriloquist do with the bringing up of the soul of the righteous man?”, for want of an argument he fled aloft, he who ascribes to others what he himself did; and attributing the whole to Scripture itself, he insists that Samuel was brought up, but no longer dares to repeat: “Who brought him up?” I think that afterwards too, being always refuted by those who think most rightly, and defending himself again in a second exposition, he said that the passage about the ventriloquist had been carefully kept; then he says also that it is written that the ventriloquist brought someone up, and that it is recorded that Saul spoke to Samuel. And after repeating many such things with much chatter, he adds again: “But it did not say,” he says, “whether he came up willingly; for you do not have it set down,” he said, “whether the ventriloquist brought him up; let anyone who has read the Scripture refute me.” So, refuted to his face, he plainly denied what he had before held from ill counsel; for there he laid down that it was Scripture itself, rather than the woman, that said “Whom shall I bring up for you?”; but here, being plainly caught, he hastened to escape the charge by forgetting it. So everywhere he sets out openly opinions that fight with themselves, just as here too, fighting against his own judgment, he was caught hastening to escape the trial on the charge. Since, then, dragged against his will, he has admitted that the woman did not bring up the prophet's soul, let him say who it was that brought it up; for he persisted unmovably in laying down only that it had been brought up. This pythoness was alone, and Saul, who begged her to bring up the prophet. But Saul would not be the doer of the drama; for he would not have needed the ventriloquist, coming to her by night. And if the deed was done, what was done must not be ascribed to anyone else; so one of two things must be said: either this never happened at all, or the upright man was brought up through the ventriloquist and the demon. So, while seeming to disown his own words, does he not deceitfully introduce the same vainglorious opinion by another method? Through the very things by which he seems to defend himself, he introduces the lie as truth. So many prophetic testimonies do not shame him, nor the rest of the narrative; … the words of the ventriloquist, prescribing newer instruments of idolatry, and … by the impious divination of demons. Nor does the compound name persuade him what meaning it bears. For “ventriloquist” (engastrimythos) is interpreted from showing a myth fashioned in the belly; and the composition of the myth, plausibly pitched like a tent within the belly, utters plainly not the truth but the lie. Those who have dealt with the various references of words know much better what its kind is; and, above all, feverish with Greek superstition, he secretly introduces divination.

Nevertheless I think we should not refuse to refute his lack of understanding from this point too, briefly, as is fitting. For the rhetorical handbooks show clearly that a myth is a fiction composed with charm for some purpose useful in life; and it is called a fiction, they say, by general agreement, from its having been fashioned; for it would no longer be thought a myth if it had happened in truth. And if myth-making is the composition of an improvised fiction, it is shown in fact to be far from the truth, and in word it depicts the materials of things while falling short in action; for it seems to make things that do not exist plausible as existing, and so gives form to things with no foundation underneath, as firmly as possible. The fashioning of a myth seems to me no different from a lifeless shadow-painting; for, like a picture, it is drawn with the line itself, and with a similar likeness it personifies a subject, observing in each case the proportions as far as possible. It paints the onsets and the end of war, figures that seem to walk, lips speaking, peculiarities of voices, laughter and weeping, or the harangues of magistrates, or banquets and revels, or Bacchic frenzies, or initiations, or unbridled drunkenness, or the excesses of love, or the plunder of robbers, or incurable ruin, or indiscriminate slaughter, or poverty feigned, or wealth flowing in. With verisimilitude it characterizes everything and portrays men's deeds; for myth-makers, picking out flowery words, produce varied kinds of colours and weave them into the personification; then, seasoning them with sweet words, they put together the whole narrative of the myth; and, like painters of living figures hastening to render the appearance with words and shapes, they fall short in fact of the material features of truth itself. These men, then, embroider the images of myths in this way; and from this a musical harmony arises, and of poetic …

Indeed Plato, when asked, defines that discourses belong to music, saying: “They are of two kinds,” he said, “the one true, the other false; and we must educate in both, but first in the false.” For he said that children are first enrolled through the charm of myths. “So the beginning of every work is the most important, especially for anyone young and tender; for it is then above all that it is moulded and takes on the stamp that one wishes to impress on each.” Through such sayings he tries to show that one should not pour unmixed falsehoods into the ears of newcomers, since the stamps of wrong belief impressed on boys at an early age tend to become fixed and hard to wash out; and so he consistently goes on: “Shall we then so easily allow the children to hear any chance myths made up by any chance people, and to take into their souls opinions for the most part contrary to those we shall think they ought to have when they are grown up?” “By no means,” he said, “shall we allow it.” “First, then, it seems, we must supervise the myth-makers; whatever fine myth they make, we must accept, and whatever not, reject; and we shall have the nurses and mothers tell the accepted ones to the children, and mould their souls with myths far more than their bodies with their hands; but most of those they tell now must be thrown out.” Then, when asked about the proportionate difference between them, he said that the lesser myths are recognized in the greater; and when Adeimantus asked again, showing that he did not know these either, he answered in turn: “Those which Hesiod and Homer told us; for these, I suppose, composing false myths for men, told …”

If, then, Plato declares the epics of Homer and Hesiod to be false myths, though they charm their hearers especially for the sake of education and moreover rouse the mind by beauty of diction to perfect eloquence, how much more will one define as false myth-making the words the demon-possessed old woman uttered, since the very name “ventriloquist” (engastrimythos) dictates this sense? For the sons of the Greeks, who also examine precisely the naming of each thing in the Greek tongue, call myths false fictions; and it follows that from the name one may see the thing to which it is properly assigned. The fables of Aesop know such fictions of myths, as boys too play them in many ways, jesting in their games, and old crones sing them with chattering words, sometimes doing so while soaking their throats with much wine and attending immoderately to the drink of the cup; but those who think to honour the ways of philosophy rightly discredited even the poems of the Muses as false kinds of myth.

If, then, the name itself is rightly assigned to the thing, the ventriloquist seems to fashion a belly-myth. For she does not speak soberly from her natural mind; but the demon, lurking in her inmost parts, feeds on her and damages her understanding, and from the belly he sounds out, putting together mythical fictions; and, transformed into various forms, he leads the soul astray with various phantoms. And since, being many-faced, he changes into all kinds of shapes, no less does he pretend to come up from the earth and to speak; then, exchanging his roles on either side together with his forms, he seems to present the one coming up as other than the one who calls; but the same one, running about here and there, changes his forms, so as to show by deeds and words that he is a liar. He pretends, then, to bring up the very persons of the dead, as one may reasonably suppose from such a drama: with a joyless look, artfully bringing in sullen apparitions, presenting them all downcast and full of the smell of the dead, he makes a terrible show of them as recalled from Hades, and as released for a little from a prison or from bonds, and then passing back again from here to there. So he astounds the soul with terrors from what it sees, fashioning pale forms and a grim or downcast eye, as of the dead who have just breathed again and promise to return. For the forger is accustomed by pretence to shape himself to terrors. And sometimes he uses as helpers the demons of like character to himself; but he does not summon from Hades the souls of prophets, nor the spirits of the righteous, nor the angelic ranks; on the contrary, he came to be crushed by the angels and was handed over to the best of men, so as to be … thrown headlong to the ground, broken. He, borne down from the highest places with a violent rush, had his back laid low; but to God almighty alone, and to his most divine Son, it belongs to bring up souls from Hades and to have choirs of angels standing by in order, which is the choice property of the …