43.3 · Sudden cessation without gradual decay

But if soul departs from the body at death as a power of an underlying subject, like a lyre’s attunement or a perfection, it does not perish beforehand at all, for it does not advance into non-being through a process of change. Instead, it passes suddenly into non-being, unaffected and without corruption, just as it also sometimes comes to be all at once, like a flash of lightning.¹⁵⁰⁵

43.4 · Possessing or lacking the form of life

Living beings will therefore live because they possess the form of life; what is called dying will result from its not being present or not being possessed. This is the view championed by the early Peripatetics.¹⁵⁰⁶

43.5 · Departure and dispersal

But if soul is scattered through and present in the body like breath in a skin bag, enclosed in it or mingled with it and moving within it like the motes in the air visible through windows, then this much is surely clear: it leaves the body, but in leaving it is dispersed and scattered, as Democritus and Epicurus declare.¹⁵⁰⁷

43.6 · A broken report about irrational powers

* * the followers of Plotinus, who champion that position which separates them from reason, or releases them into becoming, or removes them from thought. From this position there arises a further twofold distinction of opinion.¹⁵⁰⁸

43.7 · Dissolution, persistence, and preservation

For either each irrational power is dissolved into the universal life of the whole from which it was divided off, or it remains as unchanged as possible, as Porphyry thinks; or again, after being separated from thought, the entire irrational life itself remains, preserved within the cosmos, as the most ancient of the priests declare.¹⁵⁰⁹

43.8 · Intermediate substances

In the same way, then, they also give widely differing accounts of the substances intermediate between soul and body. Some place soul itself directly within the organic body itself, as most Platonists do;¹⁵¹⁰

43.9 · Coverings and vehicles

others place ethereal, heavenly, and pneumatic coverings between the incorporeal soul and the angelic soul. Enveloping intellectual life, these coverings have been projected for its protection, serve it as vehicles, and also bring it into a proportionate association with the solid body, joining it by certain intermediate bonds shared with both.¹⁵¹¹

44.1 · Isis begins the sacred account

From Hermes Trismegistus, from the sacred book, ⟨the one⟩ called Korē kosmou.

Having said this, Isis first pours Horus a sweet drink of ambrosia, which souls are accustomed to receive ⟨from⟩ gods. In this way [Isis] begins the most sacred account:¹⁵¹²

44.2 · The order above and the world below

“My child Horus, since the many-crowned heaven stands over the whole nature of things below and nowhere lacks anything that the entire cosmos now possesses, it is altogether necessary that the whole nature below should have been ordered and filled by the things above. Surely the things below cannot order the arrangement above them. The lesser mysteries must therefore yield to the greater. The ordering of things aloft is superior to what lies below, wholly secure, and beyond the grasp of mortal understanding.¹⁵¹³

44.3 · Wonder and fear before heaven

Hence the things below groaned, fearful before the surpassingly beautiful and everlasting endurance of the things above. For it was a sight calling for contemplation and anguish alike: the beauty of heaven made manifest by the god still unknown; the rich majesty of night, presented in a light weaker than the sun’s, yet keen; and the other mysteries, moving individually in heaven, which through ordered movements and cycles of time, by certain hidden outflows, helped order and increase the things below.¹⁵¹⁴

44.4 · The creator awakens the desire to know

There was fear upon fear, and searching without end. As long as the craftsman of all things did not will otherwise, ignorance held everything in its grasp. But when he decided to reveal who he was, he inspired the gods with longings and bestowed more fully upon their minds the radiance he held within his breast, so that they might first wish to seek, then desire to find, and finally be able to succeed.¹⁵¹⁵

44.5 · Hermes records and conceals his knowledge

This, my wondrous child Horus, could not have happened among mortal offspring, for they did not yet exist, but in a soul having sympathy with heaven’s mysteries. Such was Hermes, who knew all things. He saw everything, understood what he saw, and through understanding gained the power to make it known and show it. What he understood he also engraved; and after engraving it he hid most of it, keeping secure silence and also speaking, so that every later age of the cosmos might search for these things. Thus, ⟨having told⟩ the gods of his own kin to stand guard, he ascended to the stars.¹⁵¹⁶

44.6 · Successors and knowledge withheld

But he had a successor in Tat, both his son and the recipient of his teachings; before long there were also Asclepius Imouthes, son of Pan and Hephaestoboule, and all the others destined to learn the trustworthy exactness of heavenly contemplation, by the will of Providence, queen of all. Hermes, then, explained to the encompassing heaven that he had not even imparted the complete vision to his son, because of the boy’s still youthful age;¹⁵¹⁷