The Art of Knowing and of Divinising

THE ART OF KNOWING AND OF DIVINISING

II. 1. Wherefore the longing for the Godly state is a desire for Truth, and specially the [truth] about the Gods, in so much as it doth embrace reception of the sacred [things]—instruction and research; 1 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 2 is more suitable to her than any other title.

2. For that “Isis” is Greek, 3 and [so is] “Typhōn”—in that he’s foe unto the Goddess, and is “puffed up” 4 through [his] unknowing and deceit, and tears the Holy Reason (Logos) into pieces and makes away with it; the which the Goddess gathers up again and recomposes, and transmits to those perfected in the art of divinising, 5—which by the means of a continually sober life

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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, 1 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 eidēsis, of That-which-is; for it is named Iseion, as though “of them who shall know” 2 That-which-is, if that with reason (logos) and with purity 3 we enter in the holy [places] of the Goddess.

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