Aeschylus, Plutarch, Apuleius, and
other Greek authors, bear ample testimony of this persuasion, and tell
us that by uncommon and irregular motions of the body intoxicating
vapours, or certain holy ejaculations, men might be thrown into an
enchanted trance; in which, being in a state between sleeping and
waking, they were unsusceptible of external impressions and obtaining a
glimpse of futurity, were gifted with the power of prophecy. Here their
allusion, however, only concerns the celebrated divinations of the
Pythia.[89] We must therefore, probe somewhat deeper, in order to
illustrate that species of divination which was the result of dreams,
and a source of divination on the nature of diseases and their remedies.
This kind of superstition was in no less acceptation than the former
among the ancients, whose temples were constantly crowded with the sick,
and reverberated with their supplications for divinatory dreams, which
were regarded as an immediate gift from the gods. Indeed, the celestial
origin of dreams was universally admitted by the nations of antiquity,
and thence also their efficacy as oracles.
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