Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/371

 crated their followers to a Religious silence; Orpheus also, which a certain terrible authority of Religion did exact an oath of silence, and from those he did initiate to the Ceremonies of holy things: Whence in the verses concerning the holy word he sings,

"You, that Admirers are of vertue, stay, Consider well what I to you shall say. But you, that sacred laws contemn, prophane? Away from hence, return no more again. But thou O Museus whose mind is high, Observe my words, and read them with thine eye, And them within thy sacred breast repone, And in thy journey, think of God alone The Author of all things, that cannot dye, Of whom we shall not treate ---"

So in Virgil we read of the Sybill

"The goddess comes, hence, hence, all ye prophane, The Prophet cries, and from her grove refrain."

Hence also in celebrating the holy mysteries of Ceres Eleusine, they only were admitted to be initiated, the cryer proclaiming the prophane vulgar to depart; and in Esdras we read this precept concerning the Cabalisticall secret of the Hebrews, declared in these verses, Thou shalt deliver those books to the wise men of the people, whose hearts thou knowest can comprehend them, and keep those secrets. Therefore the Religious volumes of the Egyptians & those belonging to the secrets of their ceremonies, were made of consecrated paper; in these they did write down leters which might not easily be known, which they call holy. Macrobius Marcellinus and others say, they were called Hieroglyphics, least perchance the writings of this kind should be known to the prophane, which also Apuleius testifies in these words, saying, The sacrifice being ended, from a secret retyred closet