As to the sacred vestments, that of Isis is party-colored and of different hues; for her power is about matter, which becomes every thing and receives every thing,
as light and darkness, day and night, fire and water, life
and death, beginning and ending. But that of Osiris has
no shade, no variety of colors, but one only simple one,
resembling light. For the first principle is untempered,
and that which is first and of an intelligible nature is
unmixed; which is the reason why, after they have once
made use of this garment, they lay it up and keep it close,
invisible and not to be touched. But those of Isis are
used often. For sensible things, when they are of daily
use and familiar to us, afford us many opportunities to display them and to see them in their various mutations; but
the apprehension of what is intelligible, sincere, and holy,
darting through the soul like a flash of lightning, attends
but to some one single glance or glimpse of its object.
For which reason both Plato and Aristotle call this part
of philosophy by the name of the epoptic or mysterious
part, intimating that those who by help of reason have got
beyond these fanciful, mixed, and various things mount up
to that first, simple, and immaterial being; and when they
have certainly reached the pure truth about it, they believe
they have at last attained to complete philosophy.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.