(24) For I pass over Plato; he plainly, in the Epistle to Erastus and Coriscus, is seen to exhibit the Father and Son somehow or other from the Hebrew Scriptures, exhorting in these words: "In invoking by oath, with not illiterate gravity, and with culture, the sister of gravity, God the author of all, and invoking Him by oath as the Lord, the Father of the Leader, and author; whom if ye study with a truly philosophical spirit, ye shall know." And the address in the Timoeus calls the creator, Father, speaking thus: "Ye gods of gods, of whom I am Father; and the Creator of your works." So that when he says, "Around the king of all, all things are, and because of Him are all things; and he [or that] is the cause of all good things; and around the second are the things second in order; and around the third, the third," I understand nothing else than the Holy Trinity to be meant; for the third is the Holy Spirit, and the Son is the second, by whom all things were made according to the will of the Father.

(23) Him ever first, Him last too, they adore: Hail Father, marvel great - great boon to men." And before him, Homer, framing the world in accordance with Moses on the Vulcan-wrought shield, says: "On it he fashioned earth, and sky, and sea, And all the signs with which the heaven is crowned." For the Zeus celebrated in poems and prose compositions leads the mind up to God. And already, so to speak, Democritus writes, "that a few men are in the light, who stretch out their hands to that place which we Greeks now call the air. Zeus speaks all, and he hears all, and distributes and takes away, and he is king of all." And more mystically the Boeotian Pindar, being a Pythagorean, says: "One is the race of gods and men, And of one mother both have breath;" that is, of matter: and names the one creator of these things, whom he calls Father, chief artificer, who furnishes the means of advancement on to divinity, according to merit.

(95) And Sophocles the tragedian says: "Not even the gods have all things as they choose, Excepting Zeus; for he beginning is and end." And Orpheus: - "One Might, the great, the flaming heaven, was One Deity. All things one Being were; in whom All these revolve fire, water, and the earth." And so forth. Pindar, the lyric poet, as if in Bacchic frenzy, plainly says: "What is God?

(1) [Asclepius] What dost thou call, Thrice-greatest one, the heads of things, or sources of beginnings?

[Trismegistus] Great are the mysteries which I reveal to thee, divine the secrets I disclose; and so I make beginning of this thing with prayers for Heaven’s favour. The hierarchies of Gods are numerous; and of them all one class is called the Noumenal, the other [class] the Sensible. The former are called Noumenal, not for the reason that they’re thought to lie beyond our senses; for these are just the Gods we sense more truly than the ones we call the visible,—just as our argument will prove, and thou, if thou attend, wilt be made fit to see. For that a lofty reasoning, and much more one that is too godlike for the mental grasp of [average] men, if that the speaker’s words are not received with more attentive service of the ears,—will fly and flow beyond them; or rather will flow back [again], and mingle with the streams of its own source.

(43) Thy son Horus is seated upon thy throne, and all that liveth is subject to him. Endless generations are at his service, endless generations are in fear of him; the cycle of the gods is in fear of him, the cycle of the gods is at his service. So saith Tmu, the Sole Force of the gods; not to be altered is that which he hath spoken

(383) Your thoughts, he said, are the reflection of my own. You agree with me then, I said, that this is the second type or form in which we should write and speak about divine things. The gods are not magicians who transform themselves, neither do they deceive mankind in any way. I grant that. Then, although we are admirers of Homer, we do not admire the lying dream which Zeus sends to Agamemnon; neither will we praise the verses of Aeschylus in which Thetis says that Apollo at her nuptials ‘Was celebrating in song her fair progeny whose days were to be long, and to know no sickness. And when he had spoken of my lot as in all things blessed of heaven he raised a note of triumph and cheered my soul. And I thought that the word of Phoebus, being divine and full of prophecy, would not fail. And now he himself who uttered the strain, he who was present at the banquet, and who said this—he it is who has slain my son 15 .’ These are the kind of sentiments about the gods which will arouse our anger; and he who utters them shall be refused a chorus; neither shall we allow teachers to make use of them in the instruction of the young, meaning, as we do, that our guardians, as far as men can be, should be true worshippers of the gods and like them. I entirely agree, he said, in these principles, and promise to make them my laws.

(2) There are, then, [certain] Gods who are the principals of all the species. Of Heaven,—or of whatsoe’er it be that is embraced within the term,—the essence-chief is Zeus; for ’tis through Heaven that Zeus gives life to all. Sun’s essence-chief is light; for the good gift of light is poured on us through the Sun’s disk.

(5) Since, however, the order of all the Gods is profoundly united, and the first and second genera of them, and all the multitude which is spontaneously produced about them, are consubsistent in unity, and also every thing which is in them is one,—hence the beginning, middles, and ends in them are consubsistent according to the one itself ; so that in these, it is not proper to inquire, whence the one accedes to all of them. For the very existence in them, whatever it may be, is this one of their nature. And secondary genera, indeed, remain with invariable sameness in the one of such as are primary; but the primary impart from themselves union to the secondary genera, and all of them possess in each other the communion of an indissoluble connexion.

(10) "He bound eighteen-hundred rulers in every æon, and set three-hundred-and-sixty over them, and he set five other great rulers as lords over the three-hundred-and-sixty and over all the bound rulers, who in the whole world of mankind are called with these names: the first is called Kronos, the second Arēs, the third Hermēs, the fourth Aphroditē, the fifth Zeus."

(10) This is why Zeus, although the oldest of the gods and their sovereign, advances first towards that vision, followed by gods and demigods and such souls as are of strength to see. That Being appears before them from some unseen place and rising loftily over them pours its light upon all things, so that all gleams in its radiance; it upholds some beings, and they see; the lower are dazzled and turn away, unfit to gaze upon that sun, the trouble falling the more heavily on those most remote.

Of those looking upon that Being and its content, and able to see, all take something but not all the same vision always: intently gazing, one sees the fount and principle of Justice, another is filled with the sight of Moral Wisdom, the original of that quality as found, sometimes at least, among men, copied by them in their degree from the divine virtue which, covering all the expanse, so to speak, of the Intellectual Realm is seen, last attainment of all, by those who have known already many splendid visions.

The gods see, each singly and all as one. So, too, the souls; they see all There in right of being sprung, themselves, of that universe and therefore including all from beginning to end and having their existence There if only by that phase which belongs inherently to the Divine, though often too they are There entire, those of them that have not incurred separation.

This vision Zeus takes, and it is for such of us, also, as share his love and appropriate our part in the Beauty There, the final object of all seeing, the entire beauty upon all things; for all There sheds radiance, and floods those that have found their way thither so that they too become beautiful; thus it will often happen that men climbing heights where the soil has taken a yellow glow will themselves appear so, borrowing colour from the place on which they move. The colour flowering on that other height we speak of is Beauty; or rather all There is light and beauty, through and through, for the beauty is no mere bloom upon the surface.

To those that do not see entire, the immediate impression is alone taken into account; but those drunken with this wine, filled with the nectar, all their soul penetrated by this beauty, cannot remain mere gazers: no longer is there a spectator outside gazing on an outside spectacle; the clear-eyed hold the vision within themselves, though, for the most part, they have no idea that it is within but look towards it as to something beyond them and see it as an object of vision caught by a direction of the will.

All that one sees as a spectacle is still external; one must bring the vision within and see no longer in that mode of separation but as we know ourselves; thus a man filled with a god- possessed by Apollo or by one of the Muses- need no longer look outside for his vision of the divine being; it is but finding the strength to see divinity within.

(7) Thou hast handed over to thy son Horus all the gods of Heaven and the gods of earth, they are his servants at his gates, and all that he has commanded is before them; they fulfil it at once; thy heart is satisfied, thy heart, lord of the gods, is overjoyed because of it

(57) And before him Orpheus said, speaking of the in hand: "Son of great Zeus, Father of Aegis-bearing Zeus." And Xenocrates the Chalcedonian, who mentions the supreme Zeus and the inferior Zeus, leaves an indication of the Father and the Son. Homer, while representing the gods as subject to human passions, appears to know the Divine Being, whom Epicurus does not so revere. He says accordingly: "Why, son of Peleus, mortal as thou art, With swift feet me pursuest, a god Immortal? Hast thou not yet known That I am a god?"

(80) Now when we speak or write of the three Persons in the Deity, you must not conceive that therefore there are three Gods, each reigning and ruling by himself, like temporal kings on the earth.

(3) "I have told you for the first time the names of these five great rulers with which the men of the world are wont to call them. Hearken now then that I may tell you also their incorruptible names, which are: Ōrimouth correspondeth to Kronos; Mounichounaphōr correspondeth to Arēs; Tarpetanouph correspondeth to Hermēs; Chōsi correspondeth to Aphroditē; Chōnbal correspondeth to Zeus. These are their incorruptible names."

(108) The Father, then, and Maker of all things is apprehended by all things, agreeably to all, by innate power and without teaching, - things inanimate, sympathizing with the animate creation; and of living beings some are. already immoral, working in the light of day. But of those that are still mortal, some are in fear, and carried still in their mother's womb; and others regulate themselves by their own independent reason. And of men all are Greeks and Barbarians. But no race anywhere of tillers of the soil, or nomads, and not even of dwellers in cities, can live, without being imbued with the faith of a superior being. Wherefore every eastern nation, and every nation touching the western shore; or the north, and each one towards the south, - all have one and the same preconception respecting Him who hath appointed government; since the most universal of His operations equally pervade all. Much more did the philosophers among the Greeks, devoted to investigation, starting from the Barbarian philosophy, attribute providence to the "Invisible, and sole, and most powerful, and most skilful and supreme cause of all things most beautiful; " -not knowing the inferences from these truths, unless instructed by us, and not even how God is to be known naturally; but only, as we have already often said, by a true periphrasis." Rightly therefore the apostle says, "Is He the God of the Jews only, and not also of the Greeks? " - not only saying prophetically that of the Greeks believing Greeks would know God; but also intimating that in power the Lord is the God of all, and truly Universal King. For they know neither what He is, nor how He is Lord, and Father, and Maker, nor the rest of the system of the truth, without being taught by it. Thus also the prophetic utterances have the same force as the apostolic word. For Isaiah says, "If ye say, We trust in the Lord our God: now make an alliance with my Lord the king of the Assyrians." And he adds: "And now, was it without the Lord that we came up to this land to make war against it?" And Jonah, himself a prophet, intimates the same thing in what he says: "And the shipmaster came to him, and said to him, Why dost thou snore? Rise, call on thy God, that He may save us, and that we may not perish."' For the expression "thy God" he makes as if to one who knew Him by way of knowledge; and the expression, "that God may save us," revealed the consciousness in the minds of heathens who had applied their mind to the Ruler of all, but had not yet believed. And again the same: "And he said to them, I am the servant of the Lord; and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven." And again the same: "And he said, Let us by no means perish for the life of this man." And Malachi the prophet plainly exhibits God saying, "I will not accept sacrifice at your hands. For from the rising of the sun to its going down, My name is glorified among the Gentiles; and in every place sacrifice is offered to Me." And again: "Because I am a great King, saith the Lord omnipotent; and My name is manifest among the nations." What name? The Son declaring the Father among the Greeks who have believed.

(4) The god has said this: thy words are those of the father of the gods, thy name will be triumphant before the gods; they exalt thee and the cycle of the gods give thee their hands

(30) Jesus said, "Where there are three gods, they are gods. Where there are two or one, I am with him."

(1) [Asclepius] And of what nature, O Thrice-greatest one, may be the quality of those who are considered terrene Gods?

[Trismegistus] It doth consist, Asclepius, of plants, and stones, and spices, which contain the nature of [their own] divinity. And for this cause they are delighted with repeated sacrifice, with hymns, and lauds, and sweetest sounds, tuned to the key of Heaven’s harmonious song.

(3) ' Which are the three gods? ' 'They, verily, are the three worlds, for in them all these gods exist.' s Which are the two gods? J

(60) Before a proper appreciation of the deeper scientific aspects of Greek mythology is possible, it is necessary to organize the Greek pantheon and arrange its gods, goddesses, and various superhuman hierarchies in concatenated order. Proclus, the great Neo-Platonist, in his commentaries on the theology of Plato, gives an invaluable key to the sequence of the various deities in relation to the First Cause and the inferior powers emanating from themselves. When thus arranged, the divine hierarchies may be likened to the branches of a great tree. The roots of this tree are firmly imbedded in Unknowable Being. The trunk and larger branches of the tree symbolize the superior gods; the twigs and leaves, the innumerable existences dependent upon the first and unchanging Power.