Later on the chief of the Indian sages has a disquisition on Æsculapius and the healing art put into his mouth (iii. 44), where the whole of medicine is said to be dependent upon psychic diagnosis and prescience (μαντεία).
Finally it may be noticed that it was the invariable custom of patients on their recovery to record the fact on an _ex-voto_ tablet in the temple, precisely as is done to-day in Roman Catholic countries.[96]
On his way to India Apollonius saw a good deal of the Magi at Babylon. He used to visit them at mid-day and mid-night, but of what transpired Damis knew nothing, for Apollonius would not permit him to accompany him, and in answer to his direct questions would only answer: “They are wise, but not in all things” (i. 26).
The description of a certain hall, however, to which Apollonius had access, seems to be a garbled version of the interior of the temple. The roof was dome-shaped, and the ceiling was covered with “sapphire”; in this blue heaven were models of the heavenly bodies (“those whom they regard as Gods”) fashioned in gold, as though moving in the ether. Moreover from the roof were suspended four golden “Iygges” which the Magi call the “Tongues of the Gods.” These were winged-wheels or spheres connected with the idea of Adrasteia (or Fate). Their prototypes are described imperfectly in the Vision of Ezekiel, and the so-called Hecatine _strophali_ or _spherulæ_ used in magical practices may have been degenerate descendants of these “living wheels” or spheres of the vital elements. The subject is one of intense interest, but hopelessly incapable of treatment in our present age of scepticism and profound ignorance of the past. The “Gods” who taught our infant humanity were, according to occult tradition, from a humanity higher than that at present evolving on our earth. They gave the impulse, and, when the earth-children were old enough to stand on their own feet, they withdrew. But the memory of their deeds and a corrupt and degenerate form of the mysteries they established has ever lingered in the memory of myth and legend. Seers have caught obscure glimpses of what they taught and how they taught it, and the tradition of the Mysteries preserved some memory of it in its symbols and instruments or engines. The Iygges of the Magi are said to be a relic of this memory.