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istence of a vital power, prior to the heavens, and subsisting in the heavens. They also establish a pure intellect above the world, and one impartible intellect in the whole world, and another which is distributed into all the spheres. And these things they do not survey by mere reason alone, but through the sacerdotal theurgy, they announce that they are able to ascend to more elevated and universal essences, and to those that are established above Fate, viz. to God and the Demiurgus; neither employing matter, nor assuming any other thing besides, except the observation of a suitable time.
This deific and anagogic path Hermes, indeed, narrated, but Bitys, the prophet of King Ammon,[1] explained it, having found it in the adyta of Saïs[2] in Egypt, written in hieroglyphics;
- ↑ This was the ninth king in the twenty-sixth dynasty of the Saitan kings.
- ↑ This city is mentioned by Plato in the Timæus, who represents Critias as saying "that there is a certain region of Egypt, called Delta, about the summit of which the streams of the Nile are divided, and in which there is a province called Saitical." He adds, "of this province the
