Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
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4. For some going entirely astray have stepped into superstitions, while others, shunning superstition as a quagmire, have unwittingly fallen into atheism1 as down a precipice.
LXVIII. 1. Wherefore especially with regard to such things, should we, taking with us Reason (Logos) as our mystic guide out of philosophy, reverently meditate upon each of the things said and done ; in order that, [we may avoid what] Theodorus said, [namely] that when he offered his words with his right hand some of his hearers took them with their left, — and so not miss the mark by taking in another sense what laws on offerings and feasts have well ordained.
2. For that all [these things] must be referred to the
Reason (Logos), we may learn from themselves also.
For on the nineteenth of the first month,2 when they keep a feast to Hermes, they eat honey and figs, saying when so doing, " Truth is sweet." And the amulet of Isis which the myth says she put round her [neck] l is, when interpreted, " True Voice."
1 King again, erroneously in my opinion, refers this to the Christians.
2 Copt. Thoth — corr. roughly with September.
3. And we should not consider Harpocrates either as an imperfect or infant god, or a [god] of pulse,2 but as protector and chastener of the babyish and imperfect and inarticulate reason that men have about Gods. For which cause he has his finger laid upon his lips as a symbol of reticence and silence.
4. And in the month of Mesore3 when they make offerings of pulse, they say : " Tongue [is] fortune ; tongue is daimon."
5. And they say that of the trees in Egypt the persea especially has been made sacred to the Goddess, because its fruit resembles a heart and its leaf a tongue.
6. For of all man's natural possessions nothing is more godlike than logos [word or reason], and especially that concerning the Gods, nor is there anything that decides more weightily for happiness.
7. Wherefore we commend him who goes down to consult the Oracle here 4 to think religiously and speak reverently. But the many act ridiculously when, after they have in the processions and feasts made proclamation to speak reverently, they subsequently speak and think the most irreverent things about the Gods themselves.
LXIX. 1. What use, then, must one make of those melancholy and laughterless and mournful sacrifices, if it is not right either to omit the rites of custom, or to confound our views about Gods and throw them into confusion with absurd suspicions ?
1 Cf. Ixv. 2. 2 Cf. ibid.t 3.
8 Copt. Mesore — corr. roughly with August. * Sc. at Delphi.
2. Yea, among Greeks, too, many things are done,
just about the same time also, similar to those which
Egyptians perform in the sacred [rites].
3. For instance, at Athens, the women fast at the Thesmophoria, sitting on the ground. While Boeotians move the palace of Achsea,1 giving that festival the name of Epachthe [the Grief-bringing], as though Demeter were in grief (a'x^et) on account of the Descent 2 of Kore.
4. And this month is the one for sowing when the Pleiades rise, which Egyptians call Athyr,3 Greeks Pyanepsion, and Boeotians Damatrios.4
5. Moreover, Theopompus 6 tells us that the Western peoples6 consider and name the winter Kronos, the summer Aphrodite, and the spring Persephone; and [say] that all things are born from Kronos and Aphrodite.
6. While the Phrygians, thinking that the God sleeps in winter, and wakes in summer, celebrate in his honour the Orgies of his " Going to sleep " at one time, and at another of his " Waking up " ; while the Paphlagonians pretend that he is bound hand and foot and imprisoned in winter, and in spring is set in motion and freed from his bonds.
LXX. 1. And the season of the year suggests that the appearance of mourning is assumed at the hiding away of grains [in the earth], — which the ancients did not
1 A surname of Demeter, by which she was worshipped at Athens by the Gephyrseans who had emigrated thither from Bo3otia (Herod., v. 61).
2 Sc. into Hades.
3 Copt. Hathor — corr. roughly to November, or rather last half of October and first of November. Cf. also Ivi. 10.
4 That is, the month of Demeter.