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THE "LITTLE MILL" AND KRONOS'S ORACLES
An obsidian gem, previously bought in Aleppo, Syria, by Henry Seyrig and now at the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris, shows a very peculiar iconography (Figure 2.1). The mummified Osiris is represented on a bed, at whose feet the donkey-headed Seth is standing. There is no doubt that he is Seth, who cut Osiris into pieces, and to whom magicians often resorted so as to threaten Osiris and force him to do things in the realm of the dead.1 This disquieting image is accompanied by the inscription: .... "Hail, Osiris!" On the reverse side there are charakteres and two magical words: ... and .... The bevel is also inscribed, but the stone is broken in many areas of the border and therefore it is impossible to read clearly.
To understand this iconography it is beneficial to adduce the secret doctrines of Kronos, rather than the Egyptian myth of Osiris. In fact we know that Osiris and Kronos were often linked during the Imperial Age.2 In the great magical papyrus of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris3 we find the following recipe:
Oracle of Kronos in great demand, called "little mill": Take two measures of salt and grind with a handmill while saying the formula many times until the god appears to you. Do it at night in a place where grass grows. If while you are speaking you hear the heavy step of (someone] and a clatter of iron, the god is coming bound with chains, holding a sickle. But do not be frightened since you are protected by the phylactery that will be revealed to you. Be clothed with clean linen in the garb of a priest of Isis. Offer to the god moss of a tree together with a heart of a cat and horse manure.
The formula to be spoken while you are mixing is this: Formula: "I call you, the great, holy, the one who created the whole inhabited world, against whom the transgression was committed by your own son, you whom Helios bound with adamantine fetters lest the universe be mixed together, you hermaphrodite, father of the thunderbolt, you who hold down those under the earth, aie ?...