The Soul of men will in a manner clasp God to herself.
Having nothing mortal she is wholly inebriated from God,
For she glories in the harmony under which the mortal body exists.

Direct not thy mind to the vast measures of the earth;
For the plant of truth is not upon ground.
Nor measure the measures of the sun, collecting rules,
For he is carried by the eternal will , not for your sake.
Dismiss the impetuous course of the moon; for she runs always by the work of necessity.
The progression of the stars was not generated for your sake.
The wide aerial flight of birds is not true,
Nor the dissections of the entrails of victims: they are all mere toys,
The basis of mercenary fraud: flee from these

If you would open the sacred paradise of piety
Where virtue, wisdom, and equity, are assembled.

Stoop not down to the darkly-splendid world;
In which continually lies a faithless depth,
Cloudy, squalid, delighting in images unintelligible,
Precipitous, winding, a blind profundity always rolling,
Always espousing an opacous, idle, breathless body.

Let fiery hope nourish you in the angelic region.

The fire-glowing conception has the first rank,
For the mortal who approaches the fire shall have light from God,
For to the persevering mortal, the blessed immortals are swift.

The Gods exhort us
To understand the preceding form of light.

It becomes you to hasten to the light and the rays of the Father,
From whence was sent to you a soul endued with much mind.

Seek paradise.

Learn the Intelligible, for it subsists beyond the mind.

There is a certain Intelligible which it becomes you to understand with the flower of Mind.

But the paternal mind receives not her will

Until she has gone out of oblivion, and pronounce the word,

Assuming the memory of the pure paternal symbol.

To these he gave the ability of receiving the knowledge of light;

Those that were asleep he made fruitful from his own strength.

It is not proper to understand that Intelligible with vehemence,

But with the extended flame of an extended mind measuring all things

Except that Intelligible.

But it is requisite to understand this:

For if you incline your mind you will understand it

Not earnestly, but it becomes you to bring with you a pure and inquiring eye,

To extend the void mind of your soul to the Intelligible,

That you may learn the Intelligible,

Because it subsists beyond mind.

The Mind made a jarring noise,
Omniform ideas:  flying out from one fountain
They sprung forth:  will and the end;
By which they are connected
According to alternate life from several vehicles,
But they were divided, being by intellectual fire distributed
Into other Intellectuals

For the king previously placed before the multiform world
An intellectual, incorruptible pattern, the print of whose form
Is promoted through the world, according to which things the world appeared
Beautified with all-various Ideas; of which there is one fountain,
From this the others rush forth distributed,
And separated about the bodies of the world, and are borne
Through its vast recesses like swarms
Turning themselves on all sides in every direction,
They are Intellectual conceptions from the paternal fountain,
Partaking abundantly the flower of Fire in the point of restless time,
But the primary self-perfect fountain
Poured forth these primogenial ideas.

                                     chaldea

                                     second  Century