With respect however to the sacred vestments, those of Isis are of various hues; for her power is about matter, which becomes and receives all things, as light and darkness, day and night, fire and water, life and death, beginning and end; but those of Osiris are without a shade and have no variety of colours, but have one only which is simple and luciform. Hence when the latter have been once used, they are laid aside and preserved; for the intelligible is invisible and intangible. But the vestments of Isis are used frequently. For sensible things being in daily use and at hand, present us with many developements and views of their different mutations: but the intellectual perception of that which is intelligible, genuine, and holy, luminously darting through the soul like a coruscation, is attended with a simultaneous contact and vision of its object. Hence Plato and Aristotle call this part of philosophy epoptic or intuitive, indicating that those who have through the exercise of the reasoning power soared beyond these doxastic, mingled and all-various natures, raise themselves to that first, simple, and immaterial principle, and passing into contact with the pure truth which subsists about it, they consider themselves as having at length obtained the end of philosophy.[1] And that which the present devoted and veiled priests obscurely manifest with great reverence and caution is that this God is the ruler and prince of the dead, and is not different from that divinity who is called by the Greeks Hades and Pluto, the truth of which assertion not being understood, disturbs the multitude, who suspect that the truly sacred and holy Osiris dwells in and under the earth, where the bodies of those are concealed who appear to have obtained an end of their being. But he indeed himself is at the remotest distance from the earth, unstained, unpolluted, and pure from every essence that receives corruption and death. The souls of men however, being here encompassed with bodies and passions, cannot participate of divinity except as of an obscure dream by intellectual contact through philosophy. But when they are liberated from the body, and pass into the invisible, impassive, and pure region, this God is then their leader and king, from whom they depend, insatiably beholding him, and desiring to survey that beauty which cannot be expressed or uttered by men; and which Isis, as the ancient discourse evinces, always loving, pursuing, and enjoying fills such things in these lower regions as participate of generation with every thing beautiful and good.”
And lastly, the Emperor Julian, in a fragment of an Oration or Epistle on the duties of a priest, has the following remarks on religiously venerating statues: “Statues and altars, and the preservation of unextinguished fire, and in short, all such particulars, have been established by our fathers as symbols of the presence of the Gods; not that we should believe that these symbols are Gods, but that through these we should worship the Gods. For since we are connected with body,
- ↑ For τελος εχειν φιλοσοφιαν, it is necessary to read as in the translation, τελος εχειν φιλοσοφιας.
