Collier's New Encyclopedia

A complete general encyclopedia of 1921 — the world as it was understood just after the Great War, from Aachen to Zwingli, across twelve volumes and six thousand pages.

HomeT › Theurgy

Theurgy

the working of some divine or supernatural agency in human affairs; a working or producing effect by supernatural means; effect of phenomena brought about among men by spiritual agency; specifically: (1) Divine agency or direct interference of the gods in human affairs, or the government of the world. (2) The act or art of invoking deities or spirits, or by their intervention conjuring up visions, interpreting dreams, receiving or extaining from the gods, by means of certain observances, words, symbols, or the like a knowledge of the secrets which surpass the power of reason, to lay open the future, etc. (3) That species of magic which more modern professors of the art allege to produce its effects ts by by supernatural agency, as contradistinguished from natural magic. (4) A system of supernatural knowledge or power believed by the Egyptian Platonists to have been divinely communicated to a hierarchy, and by them handed down from generation to generation.

← ThetisTheuriet →