On the Drinking of Wine

Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 1, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906], at sacred-texts.com

ON THE DRINKING OF WINE

VI. 1. And as for wine, the servants of the God in Sun-city ² do not at all bring it into the sacred place, as ’tis not right [for them] to drink by day while He, their Lord and King, looks on.

2. The rest [of them ³] use it indeed, but sparingly.

They have, however, many times of abstinence at which they drink no wine, but spend them in the search for wisdom, learning and teaching the [truth] about the Gods.

3. The kings used to drink it, though in certain measure according to the sacred writings, as Hecatæus has narrated, ⁴ for they were priests [as well].

4. They began to drink it, however, only from the time of Psammetichus; ⁵ but before that they used not to drink wine.

Nor did they make libation of it as a thing dear to the Gods, but as the blood of those who fought against the Gods, ⁶—from whom, when they fell and mingled with

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the earth, they think the vines came, and that because of this wine-drenching makes men to be out of their minds and struck aside, ¹ in that, forsooth, they are full-filled with the forefathers of its ² blood. ³

5. These things, at any rate Eudoxus says, in Book II. of his Circuit, ⁴ are thus stated by the priests.

Footnotes

268:2 Heliopolis—the God being the “Sun.”

268:3 Sc. the priests.

268:4 Müller, ii. 389. H. flourished last quarter of 6th and first 5th century B.C.

268:5 Reigned 671-617 B.C.

268:6 Sc. the Titans or Daimones as opposed to the Gods.

269:1 Or “de-ranged”—παραπλῆγας. Paraplēx is the first of the daimonian rulers in The Books of the Saviour (Pistis Sophia, 367).

269:2 Sc. the vine’s.

269:3 Or “with the blood of its forefathers.”

269:4 Or Orbit. Eudoxus flourished about the middle of the 4th century B.C.; he was initiated into the Egyptian mysteries, and a great astronomer, obtaining his knowledge of the art from the priests of Isis.