So when you see the upper world clear and whirling, and none of the gods or angels rushing, expect the crash of a great thunder to be heard, so as to startle you. Say again: 'Silence, silence — I am a star that wanders with you, shining up from the depth, oxy o xertheuth.'

The most beautiful line in the rite is a claim of kinship with the sky: egṓ eimi sýmplanos hymîn astḗr, “I am a star that wanders along with you.” The plánētes, the 'wanderers,' were the planets; the initiate declares himself one of them, a fellow-traveller of the moving lights, shining up from the depth as they do. The mortal who a few lines ago could not keep company with the immortal brightness now announces he belongs to it. And notice the psychology, written plainly into the instructions: expect the thunder, so that it will not un-make you. The rite pre-empts its own terror. It tells the practitioner exactly what overwhelming thing is coming — the great ktýpos that would otherwise strike him senseless (ekplagênai) — and hands him the words to say back to it before it comes. Even the ecstasy is stage-managed: fear named in advance, and answered with a claim of belonging.