before now have regarded Kronos as Time,
and calling the divisions of Time his sons say that the sons are
swallowed by the father.

The psychic way is to regard the activities of the Soul itself: the
Soul's acts of thought, though they pass on to other objects,
nevertheless remain inside their begetters.

The material and last is that which the Egyptians have mostly used,
owing to their ignorance, believing material objects actually to be
Gods, and so calling them: e. g. they call the Earth Isis, moisture
Osiris, heat Typhon, or again, water Kronos, the fruits of the earth
Adonis, and wine Dionysus.

To say that these objects are sacred to the Gods, like various herbs and
stones and animals, is possible to sensible men, but to say that they
are gods is the notion of madmen--except, perhaps, in the sense in which
both the orb of the sun and the ray which comes from the orb are
colloquially called 'the Sun'.[203:1]

The mixed kind of myth may be seen in many instances: for example they
say that in a banquet of the Gods Discord threw down a golden apple; the
goddesses contended for it, and were sent by Zeus to Paris to be judged;
Paris saw Aphrodite to be beautiful and gave her the apple. Here the
banquet signifies the hyper-cosmic powers of the Gods; that is why they
are all together. The golden apple is the world, which, being formed out
of opposites, is naturally said to be 'thrown by Discord'. The different
Gods bestow different gifts upon the world and are thus said to 'contend
for the apple'. And the soul which lives according to sense--for that
is what Paris is--not seeing the other powers in the world but only
beauty, declares that the apple belongs to Aphrodite.

Theological myths suit philosophers, physical and psychic suit poets,
mixed suit religious initiations, since every initiation aims at uniting
us with the World and the Gods.

To take another myth, they say that the Mother of the Gods seeing Attis
lying by the river Gallus fell in love with him, took him, crowned him
with her cap of stars, and thereafter kept him with her. He fell in love
with a nymph and left the Mother to live with her. For this the Mother
of the Gods made Attis go mad and cut off his genital organs and leave
them with the Nymph, and then return and dwell with her.

Now the Mother of the Gods is the principle that generates life; that is
why she is called Mother. Attis is the creator of all things which are
born and die; that i