PAGANS AND GNOSTICSor soul."189 Dadhish6' Qa~raya speaks of "the holy angel who ac-
companies you and guards you by the order of God, during all the
time you are in your cell... and the demon that accompanies you
and troubles yoU."190 The angel transmitted the will of God to the
monk in his cell while the demon stood outside the cell. Elsewhere,
he says, "Look also in your mind at the angel who is at your right
hand and at the demon who is standing at your left hand."191 The
ability of a person to act and, therefore, to be responsible for his
actions in a way that would preserve the justice of God in rewarding
or punishing him for his actions was really confronted and compro-
mised by two different systems. One was the nontheistic, impersonal,
mechanistic fatalism associated with the Chaldaeans, Zurvanites, and
pre-Islamic dahr. The other was an array of personified forces-angels,
devils, and ultimately the divine power (qadar) of God-to determine
events.
CONCLUSIONSThus pagan beliefs and customs survived as an element in other
religious traditions. By the end of the Sasanian period, the pagan legacy
among Jews and Christians consisted mainly of therapeutic magic
based on the demonic theory of illness and concepts of redemptive
healing. The way these beliefs and practices were sanctioned by what
was already in the Bible should be recognized as an example of the
importance of reinforcement for continuity through transmission. Pa-
gan traditions also survived because a great many pagans became
Christians in the sixth and seventh centuries. This was one of the most
significant changes during this period, but the appropriation of the
sites of pagan temples and shrines for churches and monasteries en-
sured a continuity of sacred locations. The rapid conversion of pagans
to Christianity also meant that pagan concepts of demonology, re-
demptive healing, astrology, the use of amulets, secret sacrifice, liba-
tions, and incantations survived among cryptopagans who were nom-
inal Christians. In a different way, astral paganism continued to be a
powerful intellectual force because of the reactions it provoked.
The second major way paganism survived was by organizing sects
of its own under gnostic influences. Apart from the importance of
189 Isaac of Nineveh, "Mystic Treatises," p. 262.
190 Mingana, Woodbrooke Studies, VII, 126, 236-37.
191 Ibid., VII, 139,245.