Zeus went up onto a golden mountain holding a calf and a silver knife; to all he gave a portion, but to Amara alone he gave nothing, and said: 'Let go what you hold, and then you will receive: psinōther nōpsither thernōpsi' (a common formula).

A miniature myth is used as a spell. Zeus climbs a golden mountain with a calf and a silver knife — the tools of sacrifice, gold sun and silver moon in his hands — and portions everything out to everyone, except Amara, who gets nothing, and is told the paradox at the heart of the charm: éxaphes, ho écheis, kai tóte lḗpsei — 'let go of what you hold, and then you will receive.' The one who clutches gets nothing; the one who opens his hand is filled. It is a piece of genuine wisdom lodged in a magical formula — you must release to be given — and it rhymes, deliberately, with the rite's own great paradox: 'being born again, I pass away.' You gain by loss; you receive by letting go; you live by dying. Then the name to be received: psinōther nōpsither thernōpsi. Say it slowly and you hear what it is — one set of syllables (psi-nō-ther) rotated three times, each version starting one step further along. This is a real magical form, the 'rotating' or wing-shaped name, where a power-word is turned like a wheel to display all its faces. The last magical name in the whole book enacts the lesson beside it: it is a thing that gives you more the more it turns, holding nothing back. And the terse marginal note — koinón, 'common' — is the copyist again, flagging this as a standard, shared formula the reader will recognize. Even at the end, the scribe is doing his quiet philology.