Theurgia, or The Egyptian Mysteries (includes Letter to Anebo)

inferiors. It is also puzzling that they require the worshiper to be just, yet when entreated, they themselves consent to perform unjust acts. They will not listen to the person invoking them if he is not pure from sexual contamination, yet they themselves do not hesitate to lead random individuals into unlawful sexual relations.

V

SACRIFICES AND PRAYERS

(I am likewise in doubt regarding sacrifices: what utility or power they possess in the world and with the gods, and for what reason they are performed, both as appropriate for the beings honored and as advantageous for the persons who present the gifts.)

The gods also require that the interpreters of the oracles observe strict abstinence from animal substances, so that they might not be made impure by the fumes from such bodies; yet the gods themselves seem most allured by the fumes of animal sacrifices.

VI

CONDITIONS FOR SUCCESSFUL RESULTS

It is also required that the Beholder (Greek, ἐποπτής (epopt), seer, or beholder; a person admitted to the higher degree of initiation. "The Perfective Rite leads the way as the muesis or mystic initiation," says Proclus, "and after that is the epopteia or beholding." Theôn describes it as three degrees—"the Purification, Initiation and Beholding of the Divine Vision." Mr. Robert Brown, Jr., explains the last of these very fully: "This is the Autopsia or Personal Inspection, the Crown of Mysteries, the Epoptia or Divine Beholding, and he becomes an Epoptes or Contemplator." (Great Dionysiak Myth, VI, 2, 3.)) must be pure from the...