(6) Then they said to them: "Because it has not been possible for you to talk, you shall be changed. We have changed our minds: Your food, your pasture, your homes. and your nests you shall have; they shall be the ravines and the woods, because it has not been possible for you to adore us or invoke us. There shall be those who adore us, we shall make other [beings] who shall be obedient. Accept your destiny: your flesh shall be tom to pieces. So shall it be. This shall be your lot." So they said, when they made known their will to the large and small animals which are on the face of the earth. They wished to give them another trial; they, wished to make another attempt; they wished to make [all living things] adore them. But they could not understand each other's speech; they could succeed in nothing, and could do nothing. For this reason they were sacrificed and the animals which were on earth were condemned to be killed and eaten. For this reason another attempt had to be made to create and make men by the Creator, the Maker, and the Forefathers.

(5) And Menander writes: "The end of the loin, The bile, the bones uneatable, they set Before the gods; the rest themselves consume." For is not the savour of the holocausts avoided by the beasts? And if in reality the savour is the guerdon of the gods of the Greeks, should they not first deify the cooks, who are dignified with equal happiness, and worship the chimney itself, which is closer still to the much-prized savour?

(1) As, then, God is not circumscribed by place, neither is ever represented by the form of a living creature; so neither has He similar passions, nor has He wants like the creatures, so as to desire sacrifice, from hunger, by way of food. Those creatures which are affected by passion are all mortal. And it is useless to bring food to one who is not nourished.

(1) The same things also may be learned from the distribution of the Gods according to places; and from this, and the partible dominion over each particular thing, it may be seen how many allotments, greater or less, superior beings are assigned according to their different orders. For it is evident, that to the Gods who preside over certain places, the things produced by them are most appropriately offered in sacrifice; and that what pertains to the governed is most adapted to be sacrificed to the governors. For always to makers their own works are particularly grateful; and to those who primarily produce certain things, such things are primarily acceptable. Whether, therefore, certain animals, or plants, or any other productions of the earth, are governed by superior beings, at one and the same time, they participate of their inspective care, and impart to us an indivisible communion with the Gods. Some things, therefore, of this kind, if they are carefully preserved, increase the familiarity of those that retain them with the Gods; and these are such as by remaining entire, preserve the communion between Gods and men. Of this kind are some of the animals in Egypt, and man, who is everywhere sacred. But some things, when consecrated, produce a more manifest familiarity; and these are such as by an analysis into the principle of the first elements, effect an alliance more sacredly adapted to superior causes. For the more perfect this alliance is, the more perfect always is the good which is imparted by it.

(10) And the circle of gods said, who were with him when Horus came to light in his own children: “Let the sacrificial victims for him be of his oxen, of his goats, and of his swine.”

(3) Nourished by sacrifice, the Gods, give you desirable enjoyments. He who enjoys objects given by the Gods without offering them is verily a thief.

(2) He, therefore, who wishes to worship these theurgically, in a manner adapted to them, and to the dominion which they are allotted, should, as they are material, employ a material mode of worship. For thus we shall be wholly led to a familiarity with them, and worship them in an allied and appropriate manner. Dead bodies, therefore, and things deprived of life, the slaying of animals, and the consumption of victims, and, in short, the mutation of the matter which is offered, pertain to these Gods, not by themselves, but on account of the matter over which they preside. For though they are in the most eminent degree separate from it, yet at the same time they are present with it. And though they comprehend matter in an immaterial power, yet they are coexistent with it. Things that are governed, also, are not foreign from their governors; and things which are subservient as instruments, are not unadapted to those that use them. Hence, it is foreign to the immaterial Gods, to offer matter to them through sacrifices, but this is most adapted to all the material Gods.

(1) If, therefore, these things were human customs alone, and derived their authority through our legal institutions, it might be said that the worship of the Gods was the invention of our conceptions. Now, however, divinity is the leader of it, who is thus invoked by sacrifices, and who is surrounded by a numerous multitude of Gods and angels. Under him, likewise, a certain common presiding power, is allotted dominion according to each nation of the earth. And a peculiar presiding power is allotted to each temple. Of the sacrifices, also, which are performed to the Gods, the inspective guardian is a God; but an angel, of those which are performed to angels; and a dæmon, of such as are performed to dæmons. After the same manner, also, in other sacred operations, the presiding power is allotted dominion over each, in a way allied to his proper genus. When, therefore, we offer sacrifices to the Gods, accompanied by the presiding Gods, who give completion to sacred operations, then at the same time, it is necessary in sacrifices to venerate the sacred law of divine sanctity; and at the same time, also, we ought to be confident, as sacrificing under the Gods who are the rulers of such works. We ought, likewise, to be very cautious, lest we should offer any gift unworthy of, or foreign from, the Gods. And, as the last admonition, we should in a manner entirely perfect, pay attention to all that surrounds us, and to the Gods, angels, and dæmons that are distributed according to genera in the universe. And to all these, in a similar manner, an acceptable sacrifice should be offered; for thus alone sanctity can be preserved in a way worthy of the Gods who preside over it.

(1) We shall begin, however, the elucidation of this subject in the best possible manner, if we demonstrate that the sacred law of sacrifices is connected with the order of the Gods. In the first place, therefore, we say, that of the Gods some are material, but others immaterial. And the material, indeed, are those that comprehend matter in themselves, and adorn it; but the immaterial are those that are perfectly exempt from, and transcend, matter. But, according to the sacrific art, it is requisite to begin sacred operations from the material Gods for the ascent to the immaterial Gods will not otherwise be effected. The material Gods, therefore, have a certain communion with matter, so far as they preside over it. Hence they have dominion over things which happen about matter, such as the division, percussion, repercussion, mutation, generation, and corruption of all material bodies.

(22) Like the earth or like a fetus I devour blood, If that 'Faithful Spirit' should shed my blood, At night I boil on the fire like a cooking-pot, It repents me that I planned a stratagem, Tell him to sate his wrath on my poor life, He is the 'Feast of Sacrifice,' and I his loving cow. The cow, whether it eats or sleeps, Know me to be that cow of Moses which gave its life, That cow of Moses was made a sacrifice, That murdered man leapt up from his deadness

(8) But they will by no means say that the Deity, enfeebled through the desire that springs from want, is nourished. Accordingly, they will represent Him as nourished without desire like a plant, and like beasts that burrow. They say that these grow innoxiously, nourished either by the density in the air, or from the exhalations proceeding from their own body. Though if the Deity, though needing nothing, is according to them nourished, what necessity has He for food, wanting nothing? But if, by nature needing nothing, He delights to be honoured, it is not without reason that we honour God in prayer; and thus the best and holiest sacrifice with righteousness we bring, presenting it as an offering to the most righteous Word, by whom we receive knowledge, giving glory by Him for what we have learned.

(103) And this now is the earthly god of blind men, which they love and honour, and leave the living God, who stands hidden in the centre, sitting in his seat. For the dead flesh comprehendeth only a dead god, and longeth also only after such a dead god. But it is such a god as has thrown many men headlong into hell.

(2) For these assertions are much more true, and more characteristic of the essence and power of the Gods, than what you suspect to be the case, viz. “ that the Gods are especially allured by the vapours produced in the sacrifices of animals .” For if dæmons are invested with a certain body, which some think is nourished by sacrifices, yet this body is immutable and impassive, luciform and unindigent; so that neither does any thing flow from it, nor is it in want of any influx externally introduced. And if some one should admit that there is this influx, yet since the world and the air contained in it have a never failing abundance of exhalations from terrene places, an efflux of this kind being equally diffused on all sides, what use can there be of sacrifices to dæmons? But neither do the influxions equally and commensurately fill the place of the effluxions, so as that neither excess should at any time predominate, nor deficiency be produced, but that there should be a perfect equality and similitude of the bodies of dæmons, and this invariably the same.

(26) that a candidate, when first entering the precincts of sanctuary, must offer upon the brazen altar not a poor unoffending bull or ram but its correspondence within his own nature. The bull, being symbolic of earthiness, represented his own gross constitution which must be burned up by the fire of his Divinity. (The sacrificing of beasts, and in some cases human beings, upon the altars of the pagans was the result of their ignorance concerning the fundamental principle underlying sacrifice. They did not realize that their offerings must come from within their own natures in order to be acceptable.)

(1) It is better, therefore, to assign as the cause of the efficacy of sacrifices friendship and familiarity, and a habitude which binds fabricators to the things fabricated, and generators to the things generated. Hence when, this common principle preceding, we take a certain animal, or any thing which germinates in the earth, and which genuinely and purely preserves the will of its maker; then, through a thing of this kind, we appropriately move the demiurgic cause, which presides over it in an undefiled manner. But these causes being many, and some, as the dæmoniacal causes, having a proximate arrangement; but others, as divine causes, being arranged above these; and farther still, one most ancient and venerable cause being the leader of these; all the causes are moved in conjunction by a perfect sacrifice. Each thing, likewise, is in a kindred manner adapted to the sacrifice, according to the order which it is allotted. But if any sacrifice is imperfect, it proceeds to a certain extent, but is not capable of proceeding any further. Hence many are of opinion that sacrifices are to be offered to good dæmons, many to the last powers of the Gods, and many to the mundane or terrestrial powers of dæmons or Gods. These things, therefore, as being a part of sacrifices, are not falsely asserted; but they do not comprehend the whole of the power of sacrifice, and all the goods it contains, which extend to every thing divine.

(1) The same absurdities likewise happen from assigning, as the causes of what is effected by sacrifices, either certain numbers that are with us, such, for instance, as assuming the number sixty in the crocodile, as adapted to the sun; or physical reasons, as the powers and energies of animals, for instance, of the dog , the cynocephalus, and the weasel , these being common to the moon; or material forms, such as are seen in sacred animals according to the colours, and all the forms of the body; or any thing else pertaining to the bodies of animals, or of other things which are offered; or a certain member, as the heart of a cock; or other things of the like kind which are surveyed about nature, if they are considered as the causes of the efficacy in sacrifices. For from these things the Gods are not demonstrated to be supernatural causes; nor, as such, to be excited by sacrifices. But they are considered as physical causes detained by matter, and as physically involved in bodies, and coexcited and becoming quiescent together with them, these things also existing about nature. If, therefore, any thing of this kind takes place in sacrifices, it follows as a concause, and as having the relation of that without which a thing is not effected; and thus it is suspended from precedaneous causes.

(3) The righteous who offer food to the Gods in sacrifice and eat the remnants are freed from all sins. But those who cook food to satisfy their own needs, are sinners and verily eat sin.

(3) "When to the gods you sacrifice, Selecting what our portion is, 'Tis shame to tell, do ye not take, And both the thighs, clean to the groins, The loins quite bare, the backbone, too, Clean scrape as with a file, Them swallow, and the remnant give To us as if to dogs? And then, As if of one another 'shamed, With heaps of salted barley hide."

(2) Hence, to cities and people not yet liberated from genesiurgic fate and the impeding communion of bodies, if such a mode of sacrifice as this latter is not permitted, they will wander both from immaterial and material good. For they will not be able to receive the former, and to the latter they will not offer what is appropriate. At the same time, likewise, every one in sacrificing performs the sacrifice with reference to what he is, and not with reference to what he is not. It is not proper, therefore, that the sacrifice should transcend the proper measure of him by whom it is offered. The same thing will also be said by me concerning the connexion which appropriately coadapts the men who worship and the powers that are worshiped. For this connexion requires that a mode of worship should be chosen adapted to itself; viz. an immaterial connexion, a mode of worship immaterially mingled, and purely conjoining by pure incorporeal powers, incorporeal natures to themselves; but a corporeal-formed connexion, a corporeal-formed mode which depends on bodies, and is mingled with the essences that preside over bodies.

(9) I am the sacrifice, I am the worship, I am the oblation to the manes, and I am cereal. I am the hymn, I am the melted butter, I am the fire, and I am the offering.