According to Plato, there were four kinds of altered state or ecstasy, each presided over by a specific entity:
The oracular state was employed primarily to divine information and was the province of Apollo. The telestic state was a ritual or initiatory trance whose purpose was transformation or development of the self, prseided over by the ever-ambivalent Dionysus. The Muses presided over ecstatic possession whose goal is the creative expressions familiar to us from momentous oratory, music, art, and performance. And Aprodite (and Eros) presided over the erotic ecstasies, from which many benefits (and misfortunes) not easily described may arise.