DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43363#0327
ISIS and OSIRIS. 109
ever might relate to their health; so that even their
religious rites, their purifications, and the rules which
they are obliged to go by in their ordinary method of
living, are not more adapted to promote devotion, than
they are to preserve the conilitution sound and healthy.
For they always looked upon it as a very unseemly
thing, to approach to worihip that Being, who is puri-
ty it self, and in whom there is not the least ilain or
blemiih, either with souls or even with bodies sick and
distempered — as therefore the Air, which we find so
necessary to all our uses, and in which we live, has
not always the same disposition and temperament, but
by becoming in the night more foggy and dense, com-
presses and weighs down the body, and reduces the
soul it self, by that means rendered cloudy as it were
and heavy, into a languid and melancholly ilate—for
this reason, as soon as they rise in the morning, they
offer Refm for incense, intending by the subtlety os its
vapour to rarify and refine the air, and thereby to rouse
the drooping spirits, now depressed and sunk as it were
into the body; for this sort of scent is observed to be of
great force, and very penetrating——So again at
at what time the force of the Sun has filled the air with
a great quantity of gross exhalations drawn up srom the
earth, they burn Myrrh for incense; the heat of which
is designed to destroy and disiipate that thick and mud-
dy vapour, which is collected in the circum-ambient
element: for even Physicians prescribe it, as of excel-
lent use in pestilential diseases, the making large fires
in order to thin and rarify the air; (but this may
be done still more effectually, if these fires are made of
some of the strong-fcented woods, inch as are the Cy-
ever might relate to their health; so that even their
religious rites, their purifications, and the rules which
they are obliged to go by in their ordinary method of
living, are not more adapted to promote devotion, than
they are to preserve the conilitution sound and healthy.
For they always looked upon it as a very unseemly
thing, to approach to worihip that Being, who is puri-
ty it self, and in whom there is not the least ilain or
blemiih, either with souls or even with bodies sick and
distempered — as therefore the Air, which we find so
necessary to all our uses, and in which we live, has
not always the same disposition and temperament, but
by becoming in the night more foggy and dense, com-
presses and weighs down the body, and reduces the
soul it self, by that means rendered cloudy as it were
and heavy, into a languid and melancholly ilate—for
this reason, as soon as they rise in the morning, they
offer Refm for incense, intending by the subtlety os its
vapour to rarify and refine the air, and thereby to rouse
the drooping spirits, now depressed and sunk as it were
into the body; for this sort of scent is observed to be of
great force, and very penetrating——So again at
at what time the force of the Sun has filled the air with
a great quantity of gross exhalations drawn up srom the
earth, they burn Myrrh for incense; the heat of which
is designed to destroy and disiipate that thick and mud-
dy vapour, which is collected in the circum-ambient
element: for even Physicians prescribe it, as of excel-
lent use in pestilential diseases, the making large fires
in order to thin and rarify the air; (but this may
be done still more effectually, if these fires are made of
some of the strong-fcented woods, inch as are the Cy-