master of water, hail, founder of earth, hail, ruler of spirit, [lamprophengê proprophengê emethiri artentepi thēth · mimeō yenarō phyrchechō psēri dariō Phrē Phrēlba] · give response, lord, concerning such-and-such a matter.

The god is hailed by his provinces, and they are the elements the rite began with: déspota hýdatos, master of water; katárcha gês, founder of earth; dynásta pneúmatos, ruler of spirit/air. The initiate who was built out of the elements now greets the one who owns them — the ladder folds back on itself. Then the language becomes almost pure sound. A long chain pours out — lamprophengê, proprophengê ('bright-shining,' 'shining-before'), then names that mean nothing in Greek and everything as utterance, and near the end a name that does mean something: Phrē, the Egyptian sun-god Ra. The mask slips for a syllable: the golden-haired Persian-trousered figure at the pole is also, plainly, the Egyptian Sun. This is how these texts thought about the divine — not one god wearing costumes, but every high god turning out to be the same god under different names, and the names themselves the real currency. And only after all of it, the small human point of the whole apparatus: chrēmátison, kýrie — 'give me your answer, Lord, about my problem.' The cosmos has been summoned so a person can ask a question.