Augustine, De divinatione daemonum

Record summary

Augustine’s treatise examines how demons might appear to know or predict events, distinguishing divine revelation, human inference and deceptive supernatural claims. It is relevant to psi research because it preserves a late antique framework for discussing apparent foreknowledge, nonhuman agency and anomalous information while rejecting many pagan interpretations. The work is an apologetic theological argument, not neutral fieldwork. Its value lies in documenting conceptual boundaries around divination and altered experience in Christian intellectual history, not in confirming demonic or precognitive abilities.