“I, Cyprian, servant of our Lord Jesus Christ, have prayed unto God the Father Almighty, saying: Thou art the strong God, my God omnipotent, dwelling in the great light. Thou art holy and worthy of praise, and Thou hast beheld in the old days the malice of Thy servant and the iniquities into which I was plunged by the wiles of the demon. I was ignorant of Thy true name; I passed in the midst of the sheep and they were without a shepherd. The clouds shed no dew on earth; trees bare no fruit and women in labour could not be delivered. I bound and did not loose; I bound the fishes of the sea, and they were captive; I bound the pathways of the sea, and many evils did I encompass. But now, Lord Jesus Christ, I have known Thy Holy Name, I have loved Thee, I am converted with my whole heart, my whole soul and all my inward being. I have turned from the multitude of my sins, that I may walk in Thy love and follow Thy commandments, which are henceforth my faith and my prayer. Thou art the Word of truth, the sole Word of the Father, and I conjure Thee now to break the chain of clouds and send down on Thy children Thy goodly rain like milk, to set free the rivers and liberate those who swim, as also those which fly. I conjure Thee to break all the chains and remove all the obstacles by the virtue of Thy Holy Name.” The antiquity of this prayer is evident and it embodies most remarkable reminiscences of primitive types belonging to Christian esotericism during the first centuries of this era. The qualification of Golden given to the fabulous legend of allegorical saints is a sufficient indication of its character. Gold, in the eyes of initiates, is condensed light; the sacred numbers of the Kabalah were called golden; the moral instructions of Pythagoras were contained in _Golden Verses_; and for the same reason that mysterious work of Apuleius in which an ass has an important _rôle_, is called the _Golden Ass_.