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

hold that there is nothing else prior to the visible worlds. At the beginning of their discourses, they adopt the divinities of the Egyptians, but no other gods except those called Planets, those that make up the Zodiac, those that rise with these, those divided into decans Groups of ten degrees in the zodiacal belt., those that indicate nativities, and those called the "Mighty Leaders." The names of these are preserved in the Almanacs, along with their routine of changes, their risings and settings, and their predictions of future events. For these men perceived that the things said about the Sun-God as the Demiurgos (Creator of the Universe), and about Osiris and Isis, and all the Sacred Legends, could be interpreted as relating to the stars, their phases, occultations, and revolutions in their orbits. They explain them as relating to the increase and decrease of the Moon, the course of the Sun, the vault of the sky as seen by night or by day, or the river Nile. In short, they explain everything as relating to natural objects, and nothing as having reference to incorporeal and living essences original: "No one can rationally imagine that these objects can be gods in themselves; for nothing can be a god that is either without soul, or under the power of natural objects.".

Many of them likewise attribute whatever relates to us to the motion of the stars. They bind everything, I know not how, in the indissoluble bonds of necessity, which they term Fate or allotment; and they also connect everything with those gods whom they worship in temples, with carved images and other objects, as being the only ones who can unbind Fate.

IX

NATIVITIES AND GUARDIAN DEMONS

The next thing to be learned relates to the peculiar demon