C. ** He who seeketh shall find me in children from the age

of seven years' ; for in them at the fourteenth year ^ [lit. aeon] I hidden ^t» made manifest."
H. But this is not Christ^s Saying but that of EUppocrates :
** A boy of seven years [is] half a father.*' ^
Hence as they place the Original Nature of the universals in the Original Seed, having learned the Hippocratian dictum that a child of seven is half a father, they say at fourteen years, according to Thomas, it is manifested. This" is their indObble and mysterious Logos.'
(8 ®) S. (H. — ^At anyrate they say that) the Egyptians — ^wbo are the most ancient of men after the Phrygians, who at the same time were confessedly the first to communicate to mankind the Mystery-rites and Orgies of all the Gk)ds, and to declare their Forms and Energies —have the mysteries of Isis, holy, venerable, and not to be disclosed to the uninitiated.
^ Completion of R.
' Picking up *' Blessed Nature" from the first paragraph of§6.
* Cf. Ex. viii 6, note.
* At fourteen a boy took his first initiation into the Egyptian priesthood.
* Cf. Littr^, Tradiut. des (Euvres d^Hippocrate^ tom. L p. 386.
* Presumably referring to Seed*
' Perhaps, however, they meant something very different, and perhaps even their analogies are not so foolish as they seemed toH.
> The material here seems to follow directly on § 6. It is a summary by H. ; but seeing that there is more in it of S. than of H., we will print it as S., indicating H. when possible.
156 THRICB-ORRATRST HERMK
H« Aiid tbeae are nothing elat than the robbing of the member of Osiris, and its being sought for by the seven-robed and black- mantled > [Goddess].
And (they [the Egyptians] say) Osiris is Water.* And Seven-robed Nature —
H. — having round her, nay, robing henelf in seven »theric restores— for thus they* allegorically designate the planet-stars, calling [their spheres] setheric vestures —
S. — being metamorphosed, as ever-changing Greneeis, by the Ineffable and Uncopiable and Incomprehensible and Formless, is shown forth as creation.
J. And this is what (H. he says) is said in the Scripture:
" Seven times the Just shall fall and rise again." ^
For these "fallings^ (H. he says) are the changes of the stars,^ set in motion by the Mover of all things.
(9) S. Accordingly they^ declare concerning the Essence of the Seed which is the cause of all things in
' Isis, or Nature, as the seven spheres and the eighth sphere (? the "black "earth).
' That is the Celestial Nile or Heaven-Ocean, which fructifies Mother Nature. ** The Alexandrians honoured the same God as being both Osiris and Adonis, according to their mystical god- blending {iyncnuidy* Damascius, '^Life of Isidorus" (Phot, BibL, 242 ; p 342 a. 21, ed. Bek.).
^ Sc. the Egyptians.
^ Prov. xxiv. 16 — same reading as LXX. Qf, Luke xvii 4. : ** If he trespass against thee seven times in a day and turn again to thee, saying, ' I repent ' ; thou shalt forgive.^ This saying is apparently from the *' Lpgia " source ; cf. Matt xviii. 21, and compare the idea with the scheme of the ''repentance'' of the Pittis Sitphiia,
^ The seven planetary spheres ; but it may also connect with the idea of the falling ''stars'* as the souls descending into matter, according to the Platonic and Hermetic doctrine.
* Probably the Egyptians in their Mysteries, connecting with what is summarised by H. at end of § 6 and beginning
THB MYTH OF MAN IN THB BCY8TERIES 157
Greeds, that it is none of these things, but that it begets and makes all generated things, saying: " I become what I will, and am what I am." ^ Therefore (H. he says) That which moves all is unmoved ; for It remains what It is, making all things, and becomes no one of the things produced. (H. He says that) This is the Only Good—