Gaze at the air, and you will see lightnings coming down, and gleaming lights, and the earth quaking, and a god descending, vast beyond measure, having a shining face, young, golden-haired, in a white tunic and a golden crown,

Everything the rite has built climbs to this sentence. After the elements, the sun-doors, the seven Fortunes and the seven Pole-lords, the sky itself splits and he comes down — and the description is pure epiphany: astrapaí falling, lights marmaíronta (a word that means the glitter of metal in sun), the ground shaking, and then the god, hypermegéthēs, 'vast beyond measure.' Ancient gods are known by size; to see truly is to see how large. And he is young. The god at the summit is neṓteros and chrysokómēs, 'golden-haired' — the standing epithet of Apollo and the Sun. In a face 'full of light,' robed in white and crowned in gold, the reader is meant to recognize a solar deity: the Helios the rite met earlier, now arriving in person. The whole ascent has been toward this youthful, radiant, golden figure — and the next line will put a Persian garment on him and change everything about who he is.