so that, after the present and sharply pressing need upon me, I may behold the immortal beginning — with the immortal spirit, anchrephrenesouphirinx; with the immortal water, eronoui parakounēth; with the most solid air, eioaē psenabōth; that I may be reborn in mind, kraochrax r oim enarchomai;

The word for what the initiate hopes to do is exact: epopteúsō, “that I may behold.” It is the technical verb of the Eleusinian mysteries — the epopteia was the highest grade, the moment the initiate was shown the thing words could not carry. He asks to be made an epoptes not of a shrine but of “the immortal beginning” itself, the archḗ. What carries him there is the elements again — spirit, water, air — but now each is called immortal, and each is handed a long name of power. The prayer's logic is that the mortal cannot climb by mortal means: only the immortal spirit, water, and air in him can behold the immortal source, and only a mind (noēma) can be reborn — metagennēthô, born-again, the same hope the Hermetica names palingenesia. The names between the phrases are not glossed because they were never meant to mean; they are the sound the rite makes as it changes gears from earth to fire.