rough the aid of an Underworld god) an
interview with his dead friend Eabani in order to learn the nature of
the life below;[1693] this story points, perhaps, to necromantic
usages, but in the extant literature there are no details of such
usages. Application to the dead is certified for the old Hebrews not
only by the story of Saul's consultation of Samuel (which, though a
folk-story, may be taken to prove a popular custom) but by a prophetic
passage condemning the practice.[1694] Teraphim were employed, probably,
for divination, but there is no proof that they were connected with
necromancy.[1695] After the sixth century B.C. we hear nothing of
consultation of the dead by the pre-Christian Jews. Among the Greeks
also such consultation seems not to have enjoyed a high degree of favor.
There were oracles of the dead (of heroes and others), but these were
inferior in importance to the oracles of the great gods[1696] and
gradually ceased to be resorted to. Where the practice of incubation
existed, answers to inquiries were sometimes, doubtless, held to come
from the dead, but more commonly it was a god that supplied the desired
information.

The stages in the history of necromantic practice follow the lines of
growth of psychical and theistic beliefs. There was first the era of
spirits when men were doubtful of the friendliness of ghosts, and held
it safer in general to trust to soothsayers for guidance in life. Then,
when the gods took distinct shape, they largely displaced ghosts as
dispensers of knowledge of the future, and these latter, standing
outside of and in rivalry with the circle of State deities, could be
approached only in secret--necromancy became illicit and its influence
was crippled. And when, finally, in the earlier centuries of our era,
the old gods disappeared, the rise of monotheistic belief was
accompanied by a transformation of the conception of the future of the
soul; it was to be no longer the inert earthly thing of the old theories
but instinct with a high life that fitted it to be the companion of
divine beings and the sharer of their knowledge and their ideals.[1697]
This conception led to the belief in the possibility of a nonmagical
friendly intercourse with the departed, who, it was assumed, would be
willing to impart their knowledge to their brethren on earth. Saints
have thus been appealed to, and it has been attempted in recent times to
enter into communication with departed kin and other