Demons work through wild animals

In our view, however, certain wicked demons, Titan-like or Giant-like, if I may so name them, who have become impious toward what is truly divine and toward the angels in heaven, and have fallen from heaven, and wallow among the grosser and unclean bodies on earth, have some power of discerning the future, since they are bare of earthly bodies. Occupied with this kind of work and wishing to lead the human race away from the true God, they slip into the more rapacious and wilder animals, and others more cunning, and move them to whatever they wish, whenever they wish; or they turn the imaginations of such animals toward flights and movements of this sort. Their aim is that men, caught by the divination found in irrational animals, may not seek the God who encompasses the universe, nor inquire into the pure worship of God, but may sink in their thinking down to the earth, and to birds and serpents, and besides to foxes and wolves.

For those skilled in these matters have observed that the clearer forecasts come through animals of this kind. The reason is that the demons cannot do as much in the tamer animals as they can work in these, because of the close likeness between wickedness and what is found in such animals, which is not wickedness, but something like wickedness.