An Instance of alchemical Initiation : the « Letter of Isis to Horus » In keeping with the practices customary in occult sciences during the first centuries AD, the short alchemical Greek treatise known as the "Letter of Isis to Horus" presents the secret recipe for the preparation of gold and silver as the result of an act of revelation. A number of themes characterizing late minor literature can be detected in it : initiation in exchange for a sexual favour, the oath of the initiate, the law of silence, and transmission of the secret to one's son only. In the present article, these themes are examined in the light of their connections with the "Corpus Hermeticum", astrology, Gnosis and, particularly, magical papyri.
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Michèle Mertens (1988) studied this question.
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