(346) Say with your mind that the body is the garment of your soul: keep it, therefore, pure since it is innocent.

(141) Not nakedness, not platted hair, not dirt, not fasting, or lying on the earth, not rubbing with dust, not sitting motionless, can purify a mortal who has not overcome desires.

(40) Through purity a withdrawal from one’s own bodily life, a ceasing from infatuation with the bodily life of others.

(1) Farther still, therefore, we must not disdain to add what follows; that we frequently perform something to the Gods who are the inspective guardians of body, and to good dæmons, for the sake of the necessary use of the body; as, for instance, when [by sacrifices] we purify it from ancient stains, or liberate it from diseases, and fill it with health, or remove from it heaviness and torpor, or procure for it any other good. In this case, therefore, we evidently must not busy ourselves with the body in an intellectual and incorporeal manner. For the body is not adapted to participate of modes of this kind; but, obtaining things which are allied to itself, it is meliorated and purified by bodies. The rites of sacrifices, therefore, will necessarily, for a purpose of this kind, be corporeal-formed; partly cutting off what is superfluous in us; partly supplying us with that of which we are in want; and partly leading into symmetry and order such things in us as are immoderately disturbed. We also frequently engage in sacred operations, entreating superior beings to grant us such things as are adapted to the wants of human life. And these are such as preserve the body in health, or pertain to those things which we procure for the sake of the body.

(2) While man is in this world, two things are necessary for him: first, the protection and nurture of his soul; secondly, the care and nurture of his body. The proper nourishment of the soul, as above shown, is the knowledge and love of God, and to be absorbed in the love of anything but God is the ruin of the soul. The body, so to speak, is simply the riding animal of the soul and perishes while the soul endures. The soul should take care of the body, just as a pilgrim on his way to Mecca takes care of his camel; but if the pilgrim spends his whole time in feeding and adorning his camel, the caravan will leave him behind; and he will perish in the desert.

(1) After another manner, also, this doubt may be dissolved. For in men, indeed, who are detained in matter, bodies deprived of life produce a certain stain; because that which is not alive inserts a certain defilement in that which is living, in the same manner as the impure in that which is pure, and that which is in privation in that which is in habit; and also because that which is dead produces a certain pollution, through a physical aptitude to a worse condition, in consequence of having possessed the power of dying. But a dead body cannot produce any defilement in a dæmon who is perfectly incorporeal, and does not receive any corruption. For it is necessary that he should transcend a corruptible body, and not participate of any representation of corruption from it. And thus much in answer to the contrariety of the doubt.

(7) So it is said that we ought to go washed to sacrifices and prayers, clean and bright; and that this external adornment and purification are practised for a sign. Now purity is to think holy thoughts. Further, there is the image of baptism, which also was handed down to the poets from Moses as follows: "And she having drawn water, and wearing on her body clean clothes."

(87) The Souls of those who quit the body violently are most pure.

(43) The perfection of the powers of the bodily vesture comes through the wearing away of impurities, and through fervent aspiration.

(18) The initiates of old warned their disciples that an image is not a reality but merely the objectification of a subjective idea. The image, of the gods were nor designed to be objects of worship but were to be regarded merely as emblems or reminders of invisible powers and principles. Similarly, the body of man must not be considered as the individual but only as the house of the individual, in the same manner that the temple was the House of God. In a state of grossness and perversion man's body is the tomb or prison of a divine

(178) The Oracles of the Gods declare, that through purifying ceremonies, not the Soul only, but bodies themselves become Worth) of receiving much assistance and health, for, say they, the mortal vestment of coarse Matter will by these means be purified." And this, the Gods, in an exhortatory manner, announce to the moat holy of Theurgists.

(3) Man's bodily needs are simple, being comprised under three heads: food, clothing, and a dwelling place; but the bodily desires which were implanted in him with a view to procuring these are apt to rebel against reason, which is of later growth than they. Accordingly, as we saw above, they require to be curbed and restrained by the divine laws promulgated by the prophets.

(231) Beware of bodily anger, and control thy body! Leave the sins of the body, and with thy body practise virtue!

(4) Thou art pure, thou art pure, thy forepart is purified, thy hindpart is cleansed with bet and natron, and cooled with incense

(20) If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.

(21) And do not eat any blood, for it is the soul ; eat no blood whatever.

(28) But the gross Body cannot see into it, because it belongs not to [Paradise,] it belongs to the Earth, and must putrify, or rot, and rise in a new Virtue [or Power,] (which is like Paradise) in Christ, at the End of Days; and then it also may dwell in Paradise, and not before: It must lay off the third Principle; [viz.] this Skin, [Fleece or Covering,] which Father Adam and Mother Eve are got into, in which they supposed they should be wise when they should wear all the three Principles manifested in them; if they had rather worn two hidden in them, and had stayed in the cone, it had been good for us, of which further about the Fall.

(6) On the authority of Al-Numan bin Basheer, who said: I heared the messenger of Allah say:

"That which is lawful is plain and that which is unlawful is plain and between the two of them are doubtful matters about which not many people know. Thus he who avoids doubtful matters clears himself in regard to his religion and his honor, but he who falls into doubtful matters falls into that which is unlawful, like the shepherd who pastures around a sanctuary, all but grazing therein. Truly every king has a sanctuary, and truly Allah's sanctuary is His prohibitions. Truly in the body there is a morsel of flesh which, if it be whole, all the body is whole and which, if it be diseased, all of it is diseased. Truly it is the heart."

narrated by Bukhari and Muslim

(17) Worship of the gods, of the twice-born, of teachers, and of the wise; cleanliness, uprightness, continence, and non-violence— these are said to be the austerity of the body.

(176) If thou extendeth the Fiery Mind to the work of piety, thou wilt preserve the fluxible body.