the great mystery of the scarab, revived through the twenty-five living birds; use it once a month, instead of three times a year, at the full moon.'

The scarab is now called, in full, tò méga mystḗrion — 'the great mystery' — the same word used for the ointment, for the whole rite, for the sacred knowledge itself. In this book mystḗrion stretches to cover everything charged, from an idea to an object to a beetle; the sacred is not a category apart but a quality a thing can be given. The cryptic phrase is anazōpyrēthéntos dià tôn kе zṓōn ornéōn — the scarab 'rekindled through the twenty-five living birds.' Anazōpyréō means to fan a dying fire back to life, to re-light; the dead beetle is 'brought back to life' by way of twenty-five birds, some lost avian sacrifice the manual does not spell out. Once more the logic is resurrection: the sun-creature dies, is preserved, and is re-kindled. And the god's revision resets the calendar of the whole rite — from three times a year to once a month, and from the moon's dark (where the recipe began) to the moon full. The working that opened at the vanished moon now turns on the full one: the arc from emptiness to fullness written into the ritual year.