Be gracious to me, Providence and Soul, as I write down these mysteries that are not for sale but handed down; yet for my only child I ask the gift of immortality, O initiates of this power of ours.

The rite opens not with a spell but with a scruple. Before a single name of power is spoken, the writer sets a condition on the whole secret: these are áprata, “not for sale.” The mysteries may be handed down (parádota) but never trafficked — the same ethic the Hermetica presses on Hermes and his son, and the same seal the word mystḗrion already carries, from myō, to close the lips. The magician who will later sell his services pauses here to insist that this thing, at least, is given. The undercurrent is the “only child.” The Greek mystḗria are plural and public-facing, but the gift asked is singular: for one child alone, athanasía. The word is the noun behind this rite's technical name, apathanatismós, “immortalization” — and the tenderness of a parent asking deathlessness for a child, not for himself, colours the grand machinery that follows. Providence and Soul are named as goddesses here, not faculties; the ascent begins by asking two powers to look kindly on an act of love.