Zoroaster on Virtue, Wisdom, and Equity

Zoroaster · Mystic Verse and Insights Series · 2 pages

Two pages presenting a logion preserved by Psellus among the "Magical and Philosophical Precepts," from I.P. Cory's Ancient Fragments, in *two translations set side by side* — the first edition of 1828 in the left column and the second of 1832 in the right — so the wording of each can be compared line by line. The full text of the second edition is in the site's Theosophy and Theosophists Series.

The oracle is a series of prohibitions, each naming somewhere truth is not to be sought. Do not subject your mind to the vast measures of the earth, for the plant of truth is not upon the earth. Do not measure the measures of the sun by gathering canons or collecting rules, since he is moved by the eternal will of the Father and not for your sake. Let alone the swift course of the moon, which runs always by the impulse of necessity, and the progression of the stars, which was not brought forth for your sake either. The tone sharpens as it goes on. The wide aerial flight of birds is called not veracious, and the dissection of the entrails of victims is dismissed along with it — all of these described as mere toys and as the supports of gainful cheats, from which the hearer is told to flee. Having the two translations side by side shows how little the sense shifts between them and how much the force does: where the 1828 version says the plant of truth is not upon the earth, the 1832 has it not upon ground, and the differences of that order run through the whole.

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