“When the soul of an animal is separated violently from its body,” says Porphyry, “it does not depart, but, like that of human beings which have died in the same way, it remains in the neighbourhood of the body. It is so retained by sympathy and cannot be driven away. Such souls have been seen moaning by their bodies. It is the same with the souls of men whose bodies have not been interred. It is to these that the operations of magicians do outrage, by enforcing their obedience, so long as the operators are masters of the dead body in whole or in part. Theosophers who are familiar with these mysteries, with the sympathy of animal souls for the bodies from which they are separated, and with their pleasure in approaching these, have rightly forbidden the use of certain meats, so that we may not be infected by alien souls.” Porphyry adds that prophecy may be acquired by feeding on the hearts of ravens, moles and hawks; here the Alexandrian theurgist betakes himself to the processes of the _Little Albert_, but though he lapses so quickly into superstition it is by entering a wrong path, for his point of departure was science.[115] To indicate the secret properties of animals, the ancients said that at the epoch of the war of the giants, various forms were assumed by the gods with a view to concealment, and that they resumed these subsequently at pleasure. Thus, Diana changed into a she-wolf; the sun into a bull, lion, dragon and hawk; Hecate into a horse, lioness and bitch. The name of _Pherebates_ was, according to several theosophers, assigned to Proserpine because she lived upon turtle-doves, and these birds were the usual offering which the priestesses of Maia made to that goddess, who is the Proserpine of earth, daughter of the fair Ceres, and foster-mother of the human race. The initiates of Eleusis abstained from domestic birds, fish, beans, peaches and apples; they abstained also from intercourse with a woman in child-bed, as well as during her normal periods. Porphyry, from whom this information is derived, adds as follows: “Whosoever has studied the science of visions knows that one must abstain from all kinds of birds in order to be liberated from the bondage of terrestrial things and find a place among the celestial gods.” But the reason he does not give.