THEOCRASIA. - From the Greek θεός, god, and κρᾶσις, fusion, in its first meaning the term (used by Iamblichus, Vita Pythagorae, 33, 240, and by Damascius, Vita Isidori, 5, in Photius, Bibl., CCXLII 526) denotes that intimate union (ἔνωσις παντελῆς) of the soul with God, which was, in Neoplatonic and theurgic thought, the supreme goal of philosophical speculation. The term belongs to the late Neoplatonists and never appears in Plotinus, who was nevertheless, in the ancient classical world, one of the first theorists of mystical experience (Enn., V, 8, 11; VI, 9, 9-10).
Its second meaning, of purely modern use, falls within the sphere of the historical-religious sciences and is intended to signify the tendency to fuse several divinities into one. This tendency seems to have been peculiar to the Hellenic genius, unlike the Semitic stock, led by its very monotheism to a decided intransigence. Already to Herodotus it seemed natural to find in Egypt his own gods, in Bubastis Artemis (II, 137), in Horus Apollo, in Osiris Dionysus (II, 144): if these divinities exist, they must surely be worshiped, under different names, among the various peoples of the earth. But theocrasy was not only the symptom of an attitude of religious tolerance: it was above all the expression of a profound unitary exigency, which operated in a particular way in Orphism (v. ORFICI MISTER). A fragment, probably very ancient, fuses together into a single divinity Zeus, Hades, Helios and Dionysus: εἰς Ζεύς, εἰς Λάθης, εἰς Ἠλίας, εἰς Διόνυσας, εἰς θεὸς ἐν πάντεσαι (Macrobius, Saturn., I, 18, 17; ps. Justin, Cohort, ad Gent., 15; Julian the Apostate [Orat., IV, 136], cites it in this form: εἰς Ζεύς, εἰς Λάθης, εἰς Ἠλίας ἕστι Σάραπις. Cf. W. Kroll, in Rhein. Mus., 71 [1916], p. 315; E. Peterson, Εἰς θεός, diss., Göttingen 1920). In Zeus Orphism fused and identified all the gods: «Orpheus non solum deos omnes in uno Iove collocat, sed etiam in quolibet deo saepe numina cuncta commemorat» (M. Ficino, Comm. in Platonis Phaedr., 10). In reality, the theocrasy of Orphism surpassed the polytheistic tradition and led toward a unitary conception of the divine which, while being unequivocally immanentistic and pantheistic, could seem outright monotheistic. Of undoubted pantheistic flavor are in fact the hymn to Zeus (in Eusebius, Praep. ev., III, 9; Stobaeus, Ecl., I, 23) and the ἱερός λόγος (in Clement of Alexandria, Protr., VII, 74, 4; ps. Justin, Cohort., 15; Eusebius, op. cit., XIII, 12), which had a vast resonance down to our Renaissance; Christian writers (cf. ps. Justin, Monarch., 3; Theophilus, Ad Antolyc., III, 117 c) saw in it instead an open profession of monotheism: especially in the ἱερός λόγος, in which Orpheus, after having disavowed the old polytheistic faith, would have declared the existence of a single God (cf. especially v. 8: εἰς ἕστ., αὐτογενής, ἑνὸς ἔγγανα πάντα τένυκται). But theocrasy, besides representing in earlier Orphism an exigency of the spirit, was also, in the later Orphism of the 1st-2nd centuries B.C., the expression of the syncretism of the age. Above all the Orphic hymns (of which see the recent selection, edited by G. Faggin, Florence 1949), although they seem to confirm the polytheistic tradition by the great number of gods to whom they are dedicated, in reality obey the theocrastic criterion and testify to a fusion already accomplished. It will suffice to cite, by way of example, the complex and in certain respects mysterious identifications of Eros-Helios-Zeus-Aeon and of Dionysus-Adonis-Pan-Ap (cf. ed. cit., pp. 155 and 163). Also the so-called "liturgies of Isis" (published by B. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, Oxyrh. Pap., XI, London, no. 1380), which go back to the same period as the Orphic hymns, are one of the most conspicuous testimonies of theocrasy: Isis is invoked in turn with the names of Aphrodite, Hestia, Hera, Dictynna, Themis, Atargatis, Astarte, etc. «En adsum... (thus speaks Isis in Apuleius, Met., XI, 5) rerum naturam parens : ... summa numinum... prima coelitum, deorum dearumque facies uniformis : ... me primigenii Phryges nominant Pessinuntiam deum matrem, ... Cyprii Paphiam Venerem, Cretes... Dictynnam; Siculi... Proserpinam».
One could arrive at theocrasy also by another road: philosophical thought, in possession of a unitary and organic cosmological conception, was naturally led to a naturalistic interpretation of myths and to a fusion of the divinities. This is the position of Stoicism (v.): «Stoici autem dicunt non esse nisi deum unum et unam potestatem, quae pro ratione officiorum nostrorum variis nominibus appellatur : unde eundem Liberum eundem Apollinem appellant, item Lunam eandem Proserpinam dicunt» (Servius, Ad Georg., V, 1; cf. Macrobius, Saturn., I, 18). Stoic exegesis thus becomes the definitive philosophical justification of theocrasy, furnishing the credentials for Orphism and syncretism and at the same time attempting to save the naturalistic creed of the declining pagan conception: no wonder, therefore, that the Orphic hymns betray evident Stoic influences (cf. C. Petersen, Über den Ursprung der unter Orpheus Namee vorhandenes Hymnen, in Philologia, 27 [1868]), p. 385 ff.
It is clear, then, what the historical function of theocrasy was: expression of a spiritual exigency of a people and of a cultural climate and at the same time of a speculative interest, it marks the effort of the ancient world to emerge from the tangles of traditional polytheism without violently disowning it; but it also denotes the more or less conscious need to recognize, under the sign of Zeus, a single fatherland of men, a single civitas humana.