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

contact of anything dead, and yet many of the rites employed to bring the gods hither are made effective through dead animals.

What, then, is more preposterous than these things—that a human being, inferior in dignity, should make use of threats, not against a spirit or the soul of some dead person, but against the Sun-King himself, or the Moon, or some one of the divine ones in the sky, while uttering falsehoods so that they may be forced to speak the truth? For the declaration that he will assail the sky, that he will reveal the Arcana of Isis, that he will expose to public gaze the ineffable symbol in the innermost sanctuary, that he will stop the Baris; or that, like Typhon, he will scatter the limbs of Osiris, or do something similar—what is this but an extravagant absurdity, threatening what he neither knows how nor is able to perform? What dejection of spirit does it not produce in those who, like children destitute of intelligence, are dismayed by groundless fear and terrified by these false alarms?

And yet Chairemon, the Scribe of the Temple, records these things as current discourse among the Egyptian priests (As the term "Egyptian" is applied only in this work to individuals of sacerdotal rank, the designation of "priest" is added. The Hierogrammateus, or Scribe of the Temple, was a priest of the lower class, and his duty was to keep the records, teach students the religious observances, and take care that they were duly obedient. The prophets were superior to the Scribes. The Temples of Egypt, like those of Babylonia, were seminaries for instruction, and all departments of science and philosophy were included in their teachings as being Sacred Learning.). It is also said that these threats, and others of like tenor, are very violent.

VII

SACRED NAMES AND SYMBOLIC EXPRESSIONS

The Prayers also: What do they mean when they speak of one coming forth into the light from the slime, sitting on the Lotus-blossom, sailing in a boat, or changing forms according to...