Endor: demonic idol of Samuel; God may unveil woes even thus

earth, and worshiped him. And Samuel said: Why have you troubled me to lead me up? And Saul said: I am afflicted very much, and the foreigners are warring against me, and God has stood away from me, and has not still heard me, both in hand of the prophets, and in the dreams; and now I have called you to make known to me what I shall do. And Samuel said: Why do you ask me, and the Lord has stood away from you, and has come to be with your neighbor? and the Lord has done to you as the Lord spoke in my hand; and the Lord will tear your kingdom from your hand, and will give it to your neighbor David; because you did not hear the Lord’s voice, and did not fill his wrath’s anger in Amalek, on account of this the Lord has done the word to you on this day; and the Lord will hand over Israel with you into foreigners’ hands, and tomorrow you and your sons with you will fall, and the Lord will give Israel’s camp into foreigners’ hands.’ Is it then still lawful for you to hesitate, that Saul has melted away condemned by his own votes? For since he was fearing the weakness unto battle of those gathered against him, he was claiming to learn the things about to be from God. And when that one was silent, and unveiling nothing, he turns toward grieving the one who has chosen to be silent. And he arrives unto necromancy, although he had wiped out, it says, the knowers—I mean those thinking to know the things about to be. Then he says: ‘Lead up Samuel for me,’ not as if the charm or the magicians’ art were able to bring the holy one’s soul, but as those divinizing always using such a voice; and I have learned that with certain unspeakable words bewitching the demons, and charming water, they look down upon idols and shadows, and as in a mirror shapes of some, the demons perhaps fashionably molding the figures of those said to be brought up. And indeed the little woman said at the beginnings: I see gods going up from the earth. Then after this: ‘And the woman,’ it says, ‘saw Samuel.’ And nothing hard, that in equal and like shape of blessed Samuel a shadow and idol was seen, formed from demonic working. If then someone should think the prophet’s soul was truly called up, and will vote the true for the little woman’s words, since she says she has also seen gods going up from the earth, then let him also gift the lie to the customs of the divination, yet let him think according to truth that there are also some gods of such a rank who have risen from the earth—although God by nature is one and alone.

Palladius: You have spoken rightly. Yet someone, I think, will say: And yet he has spoken true things about to be when Saul was curious. And no small word has been spent by us proving that the truth is not in unclean spirits.

Cyril: For not then. For some unfitting and uncongenial matter is light and darkness, Christ and Belial; yet to those who provoke and are accustomed to grieve, God unveils, and through those by whom one must least sometimes, the things about to be, holy ange