you wish; and strewing, purely, sacred sand, set the vessel on it, and say the name over the vessel for seven days, the sun at mid-heaven: 'I have consecrated you, so that your substance may become useful for me, to me N.N. alone (i-e i-a ē e-ē o-u e-i-a); to me alone

The address to the dead beetle is the theological heart of the recipe, and it turns on one verb: egṓ se etélesa, 'I have telesed you.' Teléō means both 'to complete' and 'to initiate into the mysteries' — the same word used for making a human an initiate. The magician is not merely 'consecrating' an ingredient; he is putting the scarab through an initiation, completing it as he himself was completed, so that its ousía — its 'substance,' its very being — becomes charged and usable. The rite makes an initiate of a bug. Everything is timed and pure: seven days (the planetary week), the sun at mesouranoûn, the exact meridian of noon, sacred sand strewn as a clean bed. And the refrain is jealous and repeated — emoì mónōi, 'to me alone,' 'to me alone' — the substance is being bound to one owner and no other, the way the immortality itself was for an 'only child.' Then the sentence dissolves, as everything charged in this book does, into vowels: i-e i-a ē e-ē o-u e-i-a, the name that is not spoken but sung over the jar at noon for a week, until the beetle's being belongs to the one who names it.