II. 1. Wherefore the longing for the Godly state ii

a desire for Truth, and specially the [truth] about the Gods, in so much as it doth embrace reception cl the sacred [things] — instruction and research;^ a work more holy than is all and every purging rite and temple-service, and not least pleasing to that Goddess whom thou servest, in that she is particularly wise and wisdom-loving, seeing her very name doth seem to indicate that knowing and that gnosis^ is more suitable to her than any other title.
2. For that " Isis" is Greek,^ and [so is] "* Typhdn"— in that he's foe unto the Groddess, and is ** puffed up"* through [his] unknowing and deceit, and tears the Holy Reason (Logos) into pieces and makes away with it; thd which the Groddess gathers up again and recompoees, and transmits to those perfected in the art of divinis- ing,^— which by the means of a continually sober life
1 riip fiiBuffip . . . Kol (^rnifftp. Mathesis wsb the t^ftchnicil Pythagorean term for gnosis.
' rh •li'4vmi ical r^v iir-t^-rifinw — word-plays on ftf'it.
' (y. Ix. 8. The Egyptian of lais is Ast.
^ TfTir^M^irtff — a play on rv^r — lit, ** wrapped in smoke (rv^t)^** and because one so wrapped in smoke or clouds has hia intelligence darkened, hence ** puflfed up with conceit," craiy and demented. Typhon is the dark or hidden side of the Father.
^ #f ii^f«f (not in L. and S. or Soph.) ; it presnmably oomet from the stem of ## i^, which means : (i) to smoke with sulphur and so purify ; (ii) to make divine (9uot)j and so transmute into godship. The sentence may thus also mean "those initiated into the sulphur rite"— a not impossible rendering when we
THE MYSTERIES OF ISIS AND OSIRIS 263
and by [their] abstinence from many foods and sexual indulgences, tempers intemperate pleasure-love, and doth accustom [them] to undergo, without being broken down, the rigorous tasks of service in the sacred [rites], the end of which is gnosis of the First and Lordly One, the One whom mind alone can know,^ for whom the Goddess calls on [them] to seek, though He is by her side and one with her.
3. Nay more, the very appellation of the holy [place] doth plainly promise gnosis, that is eicUsis, of That- which-is; for it is named Iseian, as though "of them who shall know"* That-which-is, if that with reason (logos) and with purity* we enter in the holy [places] of the Goddess.
Thb Tkub Initiates of Isis