Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. III — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

45. And how do souls become intelligent, 0 mother mine?

And Isis answered :

The organ of the sight, my son, is swathed in wrappings. When these are dense and thick, the eye is dim ; but when they're thin and light, then is the sight most keen. So is it also for the soul. For it as well has envelopes incorporal appropriate to it, just as it is itself incorporal.

1 Cf. 45 below.

These envelopes are "airs" which are in us. When these are light and thin and clear, then is the soul intelligent ; but, on the contrary, when they are dense and thick and turbid, then [the soul], as in bad weather, sees not at distance but only things which lie about its feet.

46. And Horus said :

What is the reason, mother, that the men outside our holiest land are not so wise of mind as our compatriots ?

And Isis said :

The Earth lies in the middle of the universe upon her back, like to a human being, with eyes turned up to heaven, and portioned out into as many regions as there are limbs in man.

She turns her eyes to Heaven as though to her own Sire,1 that with his changes she may also bring about her own.

She hath her head set to the south of all, right shoulder to south-east, left shoulder to south-west ; her feet below the Bear, right foot beneath its tail, left under its head ; her thighs beneath those that succeed the Bear ; her waist beneath the middle [Stars].

47. A sign of this is that men in the south, who dwell upon her head, are fine about the head and have good hair.

1 Cf. P. S. A., xxiv. 1.

Those in the east are ready for a fight and archer folk — for this pertains to the right hand.

Those in the west are steadier and for the most part fight with the left hand, and what is done by others with the right, they for their part attribute to the left.

Those underneath the Bear excel in feet and have especially good legs.

Those who come after them a little way, about the zone which is our present Italy and Greece, they all have well-made thighs and backs. . . .

Moreover, all these [northern] parts being whiter than the rest bear whiter men upon them.

But since the holiest land of our forebears lies in the midst of Earth, and that the midst of a man's body serves as the precinct of the heart alone, and heart's the spot from which the soul doth start, the men of it not only have no less the other things which all the rest possess, but as a special thing are gifted with intelligence beyond all men and filled with wisdom, in that they are begotten and brought up above her heart.

48. Further, my son, the south being the receiver of the clouds which mass themselves together from the atmosphere . . .*

1 Something has evidently fallen out here, as the sentence is nowhere completed.

For instance, it is just because there is this concentration of them in the south, that it is said our river doth flow thence, upon the breaking up of the frost there.

For whensoe'er a cloud1 descends, it turns the air about it into mist, and sends it downward in a kind of fog ; and fog or mist is an impediment not only to the eyes, but also to the mind.

Whereas the east, 0 Horus, great in glory, in that 'tis thrown into confusion and made overhot by the continual risings of the sun, and in like fashion too, the west, its opposite, in that it suffers the same things through its descents,2 afford the men born in them no conditions for clear observation. And Boreas with his concordant cold, together with their bodies doth congeal the minds of men as well.

Whereas the centre of all these being pure and undisturbed, foreknows both for itself and all that are in it. For, free from trouble, ever it brings forth, adorns and educates, and only with such weapons wars [on men], and wins the victory, and with consummate skill, like a good satrap,1 bestows the fruit of its own victory upon the vanquished.

1 Reading vs<t>e\n for v*<t>4\ri. The text is very faulty.

2 These ideas of course spring from the conception of a flat earth and moving sun. The sun was thus thought to be nearer the earth at its rising and setting, and consequently those at the extremes of east and west were thought to be in danger of being burnt up by its heat.

49. This too expound, 0 lady, mother mine ! For what cause is it that when men still keep alive in long disease, their rational part — their very reason and their very soul — at times becomes disabled ?

And Isis answer made :