(45) The hands signify God's omnipotence; for as God in nature can change all things, and make of them what he pleaseth, so man also can with his hands change all things which grow in or proceed from nature, and can make with his hands out of them what he pleaseth: He ruleth with his hands the work and being of the whole nature, and so they very well signify the omnipotence of God. Now observe here further,

(8) I suppose that this obscure sentence means that since everything in him is divine the design or colour of his fingers (?) was taken from the books of Thoth

(7) These things show that that wisdom can be acquired through instruction, to which Abraham attained, passing from the contemplation of heavenly things to the faith and righteousness which are according to God. And Isaac is shown to mean "self-taught;" wherefore also he is discovered to be a type of Christ. He was the husband of one wife Rebecca, which they translate "Patience." And Jacob is said to have consorted with several, his name being interpreted" Exerciser." And exercises are engaged in by means of many and various dogmas. Whence, also, he who is really "endowed with the power of seeing" is called Israel, having much experience, and being fit for exercise.

(104) 10. When the Patriarch Abraham had comprehended the great truths, meditated upon them, and understood them perfectly, the Lord of the Universe (the Tetragrammaton) appeared to him, called him His friend, kissed him upon the head, and made with him a covenant. First, the covenant was between the ten fingers of his hands, which is the covenant of the tongue (spiritual); second, the covenant was between the ten toes of his feet, which is the covenant of circumcision (material); and God said of him, "Before Abraham bound the spirit of the twenty-two letters (the Thora) upon his tongue and God disclosed to him their secrets. God permitted the letters to be immersed in water, He burned them in the fire and imprinted them upon the winds. He distributed them among the seven planets and gave them to the twelve zodiacal signs.

When Abraham [was able] to see what he was to see, [he] circumcised the flesh of the foreskin, thus teaching us that it is necessary to destroy the flesh.

(82) And again, respecting God, saying that He was invisible, and that He was known to but one, a Chaldean by race - meaning either by this Abraham or his son - he speaks as follows: "But one a scion of Chaldean race; For he the sun's path knew right well, And how the motion of the sphere about The earth proceeds, in circle moving Equally around its axis, how the winds Their chariot guide o'er air and sea."

(507) I do indeed wish, I replied, that I could pay, and you receive, the account of the parent, and not, as now, of the offspring only; take, however, this latter by way of interest 11 , and at the same time have a care that I do not render a false account, although I have no intention of deceiving you. Yes, we will take all the care that we can: proceed. Yes, I said, but I must first come to an understanding with you, and remind you of what I have mentioned in the course of this discussion, and at many other times. What? The old story, that there is a many beautiful and a many good, and so of other things which we describe and define; to all of them the term ‘many’ is applied. True, he said. And there is an absolute beauty and an absolute good, and of other things to which the term ‘many’ is applied there is an absolute; for they may be brought under a single idea, which is called the essence of each. Very true. The many, as we say, are seen but not known, and the ideas are known but not seen. Exactly. And what is the organ with which we see the visible things? The sight, he said. And with the hearing, I said, we hear, and with the other senses perceive the other objects of sense? True. But have you remarked that sight is by far the most costly and complex piece of workmanship which the artificer of the senses ever contrived? No, I never have, he said. Then reflect; has the ear or voice need of any third or

(6) Now that voice, or that WORD which the Father speaketh, goeth forth from the Father's Salitter or powers, and from the Father's Mercurius, sound or tune: This the Father speaketh forth in himself, and that WORD is the very splendour or glance proceeding from all his powers.

(21) But if voice and expression are given us, for the sake of understanding, how can God not hear the soul itself, and the mind, since assuredly soul hears soul, and mind, mind? Whence God does not walt for loquacious tongues, as interpreters among men, but knows absolutely the thoughts of all; and what the voice intimates to us, that our thought, which even before the creation He knew would come into our mind, speaks to God. Prayer, then, may be uttered without the voice, by concentrating the whole spiritual nature within on expression by the mind, in un-distracted turning towards God.

(17) And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: for this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them, and their sins should be forgiven them.

(4) After that our father Abraham had seen, and pondered over, investigated, and understood these things, he designed, engraved, and composed them, and received them into his power (hands). Then the Lord of all appeared unto him, made a covenant with him, and kissed his head, and naming him after his own name, called him his friend; and as it is written, completed a covenant with him and with his seed forever, who then believed on God, the Tetragrammaton, and it was imputed to him for righteousness. God ordained a covenant between the toes of his feet, that of circumcision; and a covenant between the fingers of his hands, that of the Tongue. He bound the essences of the twenty-two letters on his tongue, and God disclosed to him the secrets of them. God has carried these through waters, He has borne them aloft through fire, and He has stamped them in the storms of the air; He has distributed them among the seven stars, and has assigned them to twelve celestial constellations. Amen.

(6) Let two hands from the Earth open my mouth: Let Seb, the Erpā of the gods, part my two jaws; let him open my two eyes which are closed, and give motion to my two hands which are powerless: and let Anubis give vigour to my legs, that I may raise myself up upon them

(17) An important part of our knowledge of God arises from the study and contemplation of our own bodies, which reveal to us the power, wisdom, and love of the Creator. His power, in that from a mere drop He has built up the wonderful frame of man; His wisdom is revealed in its intricacies and the mutual adaptability of its parts; and His love is shown by His not only supplying such organs as are absolutely necessary for existence, as the liver, the heart, and the brain, but those which are not absolutely necessary, as the hand, the foot, the tongue, and the eye. To these He has added, as ornaments, the blackness of the hair, the redness of lips, and the curve of the eyebrows.

(3) But they also depict them under the likeness of men, on account of the intellectual faculty, and their having powers of looking upwards, and their straight and erect form, and their innate faculty of ruling and guiding, and whilst being least, in physical strength as compared with the other powers of irrational creatures, yet ruling over all by their superior power of mind, and by their dominion in consequence of rational science, and their innate unslavishness and indomitableness of soul. It is possible, then, I think, to find within each of the many parts of our body harmonious images of the Heavenly Powers, by affirming that the powers of vision denote the most transparent elevation towards the Divine lights, and again, the tender, and liquid, and not repellent, but sensitive, and pure, and unfolded, reception, free from all passion, of the supremely Divine illuminations. Now the discriminating powers of the nostrils denote the being able to receive, as far as attainable, the sweet-smelling largess beyond conception, and to distinguish accurately things which are not such, and to entirely reject. The powers of the ears denote the participation and conscious reception of the supremely Divine inspiration. The powers of taste denote the fulness of the intelligible nourishments, and the reception of the Divine and nourishing streams. The powers of touch denote the skilful discrimination of that which is suitable or injurious. The eyelids and eyebrows denote the guarding of the conceptions which see God. The figures of manhood and youth denote the perpetual bloom and vigour of life. The teeth denote the dividing of the nourishing perfection given to us; for each intellectual Being divides and multiplies, by a provident faculty, the unified conception given to it by the more Divine for the proportionate elevation of the inferior. The shoulders and elbows, and further, the hands, denote the power of making, and operating, and accomplishing. The heart again is a symbol of the Godlike life, dispersing its own life-giving power to the objects of its forethought, as beseems the good. The chest again denotes the invincible and protective faculty of the life-giving distribution, as being placed above the heart. The back, the holding together the whole productive powers of life. The feet denote the moving and quickness, and skilfulness of the perpetual movement advancing towards Divine things. Wherefore also the Word of God arranged the feet of the holy Minds under their wings; for the wing displays the elevating quickness and the heavenly progress towards higher things, and the superiority to every grovelling thing by reason of the ascending, and the lightness of the wings denotes their being in no respect earthly, but undefiledly and lightly raised to the sublime; and the naked and unshod denotes the unfettered, agile, and unrestrained, and free from all external superfluity, and assimilation to the Divine simplicity, as far as attainable.

(3) Now, as for the things which came forth from the of the Hebrews, things which are written by the hylics who speak in the fashion of the Greeks, the powers of those who think about all of them, so to speak, the "right ones," the powers which move them all to think of words and a representation, they them, and they grasped so as to attain the truth and used the confused powers which act in them. Afterwards they attained to the order of the unmixed ones, the one which is established, the unity which exists as a representation of the representation of the Father. It is not invisible in its nature, but a wisdom envelops it, so that it might preserve the form of the truly invisible one. Therefore, many angels have not been able to see it. Also, other men of the Hebrew race, of whom we already spoke, namely the righteous ones and the prophets, did not think of anything and did not say anything from imagination or through a likeness or from esoteric thinking, but each one by the power which was at work in him, and while listening to the things which he saw and heard, spoke of them in [...]. They have a unified harmony with one another after the manner of those who worked in them, since they preserve the connection and the mutual harmony primarily by the confession of the one more exalted than they. And there is one who is greater than they, who was appointed since they have need of him, and whom the spiritual Logos begot along with them as one who needs the exalted one, in hope and expectation in accord with the thought which is the seed of salvation. And he is an illuminating word, which consists of the thought and his offspring and his emanations. Since the righteous ones and the prophets, whom we have previously mentioned, preserve the confession and the testimony concerning the one who is great, made by their fathers who were looking for the hope and the hearing, in them is sown the seed of prayer and the searching, which is sown in many who have searched for strengthening. It appears and draws them to love the exalted one, to proclaim these things as pertaining to a unity. And it was a unity which worked in them when they spoke. Their vision and their words do not differ because of the multitude of those who have given them the vision and the word. Therefore, those who have listened to what they have said concerning this do not reject any of it, but have accepted the scriptures in an altered way. By interpreting them, they established many heresies which exist to the present among the Jews. Some say that God is one, who made a proclamation in the ancient scriptures. Others say that he is many. Some say that God is simple and was a single mind in nature. Others say that his activity is linked with the establishment of good and evil. Still others say that he is the creator of that which has come into being. Still others say that it was by the angels that he created.

(50) "For," he says in the Theages, "I am attended by a supernatural intimation, which has been assigned me from a child by divine appointment. This is a voice which, when it comes, prevents What I am about to do, but exhorts never."

(1) HENRIE STEPHEN, in A World of Wonders, published in 1607, mentions a monk of St. Anthony who declared that while in Jerusalem the patriarch of that city had shown him not only one of the ribs of the Word made flesh and some rays from the Star of Bethlehem, but also the snout of a seraph, a finger nail of a cherub, the horns of Moses, and a casket containing the breath of Christ! To a people believing implicitly in a seraph sufficiently tangible to have its proboscis preserved, the more profound issues of Judaistic philosophy must necessarily be incomprehensible. Nor is it difficult to imagine the reaction taking place in the mind of some ancient sage should he hear that a cherub--which, according to St. Augustine, signifies the Evangelists; according to Philo Judæus, the outermost circumference of the entire heavens, and according to several of the Church Fathers, the wisdom of God--had sprouted finger nails. The hopeless confusion of divine principles with the allegorical figures created to represent them to the limited faculties of the uninitiated has resulted in the most atrocious misconceptions of spiritual truths. Concepts well-nigh as preposterous as these, however, still stand as adamantine barriers to a true understanding of Old and New Testament symbolism; for, until man disentangles his reasoning powers from the web of venerated absurdities in which his mind has lain ensnared for centuries, how can Truth ever be discovered?

(6) Nor yet any of the angels: for in the way that angels, in virtue of being angels, speak, men do not hear; nor, as we have ears, have they a tongue to correspond; nor would any one attribute to the angels organs of speech, lips I mean, and the parts contiguous, throat, and windpipe, and chest, breath and air to vibrate, And God is far from calling aloud in the unapproachable sanctity, separated as He is from even the archangels.

(61) The Son seeth, tasteth, heareth, feeleth, smelleth and comprehendeth all, as the Father does; in his power all liveth and is, whatsoever is good, as in the Father; but that which is bad or evil is not in him. Of GOD the HOLY GHOST.

(38) Further, Esaias the prophet is ordered to take "a new book, and write in it" certain things: the Spirit prophesying that through the exposition of the Scriptures there would come afterwards the sacred knowledge, which at that period was still unwritten, because not yet known. For it was spoken from the beginning to those only who understand. Now that the Saviour has taught the apostles, the unwritten rendering' of the written [Scripture] has been handed down also to us, inscribed by the power of God on hearts new, according to the renovation of the book. Thus those of highest repute among the Greeks, dedicate the fruit of the pomegranate to Hermes, who they say is speech, on account of its interpretation. For speech conceals much. Rightly, therefore, Jesus the son of Nave saw Moses, when taken up [to heaven], double, - one Moses with the angels, and one on the mountains, honoured with burial in their ravines. And Jesus saw this spectacle below, being elevated by the Spirit, along also with Caleb. But both do not see similarly But the one descended with greater speed, as if the weight he carried was great; while the other, on descending after him, subsequently related the glory which he beheld, being able to perceive more than the other as having grown purer; the narrative, in my opinion, showing that knowledge is not the privilege of all. Since some look at the body of the Scriptures, the expressions and the names as to the body of Moses; while others see through to the thoughts and what it is signified by the names, seeking the Moses that is with the angels.