The religious man sought to make contact with, or to stand before, this one, true god of the Beyond. The piety of the individual was directed either toward preparing himself to ascend up through the planetary spheres to the realm of the transcendent god or toward calling the transcendent god down that he might appear to him in an epiphany or vision. These techniques for achieving ascent or epiphany make up the bulk of material that has usually been termed magical, theurgic . . . or astrological and that represents the characteristic expression of Hellenistic religiosity.24
