LXXVIII. 1. The fact, moreover, which the present

priests cautiously hint at by expiatory sacrifices and covering their faces — [namely] that this God is ruler and king of the dead, being no other than him who is called Hades and Pluto among Oreeks — ^in that thej do not know how it is true, confuses the multitude, who suppose that the truly sacred and holy Osiris lives on earth and under earth, where the bodies of those who seem to have [reached their] end are hidden [away].
2. But He Himself is far, far from the earth, un- spotted and unstained, and pure of every essence that is susceptible of death and of decay. Nor can the souls of men here [on the earth], swathed as they are with bodies and enwrapped in passions, commune with Grod, except so far as they can reach some dim sort of a dream [of Him], with the perception of a mind trained in philosophy.
3. But when [their souls] freed [from these bonds] pass to the Formless and Invisible and Passionless and Pure, this Ood becomes their guide and king, as though they hung on Him, and gazed insatiate upon His Beauty,
1 Symp., 210 A.
* In its highest sense — that is, intelligible or spiritiial ** seenliip^* not the symbolic ** sight '^ in the formal Qreater Mysteriea.
THE MYSTERIES OF ISIS AND OSIRIS 363
and longed after it — [Beauty] that no man can declare or speak about.
4. It is with this the ancient tale (logos) makes Isis e'er in love, and, by pursuit [of it], and consort [with it], makes [her] full-fill all things down here witii all things fair and good, whatever things have part in genesis.
6. Thus, then, these things contain the reason (logos) that's more suitable to Ood.
CiONCEBNING InCENSB