The precepts of Zoroaster were differently modified among ancient people. Moses, who wished the glory of being the great prophet of Israel, wrote the law of Jehovah and abjured the Magi, by whom he had been initiated. The Hebrews meantime preserved the Mazadean religion in memory; they created magic. Ahriman became Astaroth, Beelzebub, Asmodeus and other demons, who had for interpreters the Pythonesses and Prophetesses (_mediums_). Ormazd was transferred into a legion of angels and archangels, who appeared to men to make prophecies. Presently the Jewish magicians invented the _Kabbala_, occult science, by which, in pronouncing certain words, they performed miracles and submitted supernatural powers to the caprices of the human will; they were above all necromancers. The occult sciences of the ancients, necromancy and magic, had, as will be observed, more or less connection with the phenomena of magnetism of the present day. Meantime necromancy resembled modern spiritualism, toward which the researches of present day magnetizers tend. The necromancers invoked the souls of the dead to know the future and the secrets of the present. The Jews pursued this study with much ardor, notwithstanding the prohibition of Moses, who wished them not _to speak to wood_. We know that the Pythoness (_witch_) of Endor evoked the spirit of Samuel before Saul on the eve of battle and predicted the King’s death. The grotto where this celebrated medium lived still exists, and she receives, it is said, the travelers who visit her from far and wide near Mount Tabor. Magic was also known by the High Priests in Pharaoh’s court. Like the Magi of Medea and Chaldea they invoked the spirits and supernatural powers by methods and ceremonies consisting principally of gestures and songs. Hermes Trismegistus, whom the Alchemists regard as their master, spread the science of occult magic. Following him we see the mystical doctrines of the Orient flourish at Alexandria with the founders of neoplatonism. These taught that the _Goetie_ was the supernatural art which is practiced by the aid of wicked spirits, that the _Magie_ produced mysterious manifestations with the assistance of material demons and superior spirits; that the _Pharmacists_ controlled spirits by means of philters and elixirs. In Greece and in Italy the celestial genii were believed in, and they multiplied to infinity, peopling the Olympus of Polytheism. Priests profited by the superstitious idea of the people who invoked the aid of the witches and sibyls who derived their wisdom from the Magi of the Orient. Following the example, the historians, philosophers and poets were apparently led to the belief in all the Genii, in the power of spirits and their intimate relations with men through the medium of seers, in a condition of frenzy or somnambulism (trance).