When you have said these things, he will come to the pole, and you will see him walking as on a road. And you, gazing fixedly, give a long bellow, horn-like, giving up all your breath and straining your flank; bellow, and kiss the amulets, and say, first to the right: 'guard me, prosymēri.'

The god arrives, and the direction he arrives in matters: he comes 'to the pole' — the still point of the turning sky, the axis Roman astronomers fixed near the Pole Star — and the initiate sees him walking there 'as on a road.' Heaven has become a floor the god can stroll across. It is one of the most cinematic sentences in the whole rite. Then the body is asked to do something extraordinary, and the Greek does not flinch from how physical it is. You give a mýkōma, a bellow — the word is used of cattle — 'long' and keratoeidôs, 'horn-like,' emptying your whole pneûma (the same breath the rite has been calling 'spirit' all along) and basanízōn tḕn lagóna, straining the flank until it aches. This is not metaphor; it is a vocal technique, the practitioner lowing like a bull to answer the bull-faced powers about to appear. Only then the tender gesture: kataphílei, kiss the amulets — the little written charms tied to your body — and speak a name to your right side to keep you safe. Terror and tenderness in one breath.