Thrice-Greatest Hermes

Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis

Being a Translation of the Extant Sermons and Fragments of the Trismegistic Literature, with Prolegomena, Commentaries, and Notes

By

G. R. S. Mead

Volume I.—Prolegomena

London and Benares

The Theosophical Publishing Society

[1906]

Prepared for sacred-texts.com, January 2009. This text is in the public domain because it was published prior to 1922.

Preface

These volumes, complete in themselves as a series of studies in a definite body of tradition, are intended to serve ultimately as a small contribution to the preparation of the way leading towards a solution of the vast problems involved in the scientific study of the Origins of the Christian Faith. They might thus perhaps be described as the preparation of materials to serve for the historic, mythic, and mystic consideration of the Origins of Christianity,—where the term “mythic” is used in its true sense of inner, typical, sacred and “logic,” as opposed to the external processioning of physical events known as “historic,” and where the term “mystic” is used as that which pertains to initiation and the mysteries.

The serious consideration of the matter contained in these pages will, I hope, enable the attentive reader to outline in his mind, however vaguely, some small portion of the environment of infant Christianity, and allow him to move a few steps round the cradle of Christendom.

Though the material that we have collected, has, as to its externals, been tested, as far as our hands are capable of the work, by the methods of scholarship and criticism, it has nevertheless at the same time been allowed ungrudgingly to show itself the outward

p. vi

expression of a truly vital endeavour of immense interest and value to all who are disposed to make friends with it. For along this ray of the Trismegistic tradition we may allow ourselves to be drawn backwards in time towards the holy of holies of the Wisdom of Ancient Egypt. The sympathetic study of this material may well prove an initiatory process towards an understanding of that Archaic Gnosis.

And, therefore, though these volumes are intended to show those competent to judge that all has been set forth in decency according to approved methods of modern research, they are also designed for those who are not qualified to give an opinion on such matters, but who are able to feel and think with the writers of these beautiful tractates.

The following abbreviations have been used for economy of space:

C. H. = Corpus Hermeticum.

D. J. L. = Mead (G. R. S.), Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.? An Enquiry into the Talmud Jesus Stories, the Toldoth Jeschu, and Some Curious Statements of Epiphanius: being a Contribution to the Study of Christian Origins (London, 1903).

F. F. F. = Mead (G. R. S.), Fragments of a Faith Forgotten. Some Short Sketches among the Gnostics, mainly of the First Two Centuries: a Contribution to the Study of Christian Origins based on the most recently recovered Materials (London, 1900; 2nd ed. 1906).

G. = Gaisford (T.), Joannis Stobæi Florilegium (Oxford, 1822), 4 vols.; Io. Stob. Ec. Phys. et Ethic. Libri Duo (Oxford, 1850), 2 vols.

H. = Hense (O.), I. Stob. Anth. Lib. Tert. (Berlin, 1894), 1 vol., incomplete.

K. K. = “The Virgin of the World” (Κόρη Κόσμου).

M. = Meineke (A.), Joh. Stob. Flor. (Leipzig, 1855, 1856), 3 vols.; Joh. Stob. Ec. Phys. et Ethic. Lib. Duo (Leipzig, 1860), 2 vols.

P. = Parthey (G.), Hermetis Trismegisti Pœmander ad Fidem Codicum Manu Scriptorum recognovit (Berlin, 1854).

Pat. = Patrizzi (F.), Nova de Universis Philosophia (Venice, 1593).

P. S. A. = “The Perfect Sermon, or Asclepius.”

p. vii

R. = Reitzenstein (R.), Poimandres: Studien zur griechisch-ägyptischen und früchristlichen Literatur (Leipzig, 1904). Ri. = Richter (M. C. E.), Philonis Judæi Opera Omnia, in Bibliotheca Sacra Patrum Ecclesiæ Græcorum (Leipzig, 1828-1830), 8 vols.

S. I. H. = “The Sermon of Isis to Horus.”

W. = Wachsmuth (C.), Io. Stob. Anthologii Lib. Duo Priores . . . Ec. Phys. et Ethic. (Berlin, 1884), 2 vols.

G. R. S. M.

Chelsea, 1906.

Contents

 

Preface	v
I. The Remains of the Trismegistic Literature	1–16
Writer and Reader	1
The Extant Trismegistic Literature	3
The Original MS. of our Corpus	6
Texts and Translations	8
II. The History of the Evolution of Opinion	17–46
The Chief Points of Interrogation	17
The Opinions of the Humanists	18
The First Doubt	20
The Launching of the Theory of Plagiarism	21
The Only Argument Adduced	22
The Theory of Hilgers	25
The German Theory of Neoplatonic “Syncretismus”	26
The French Theory of Egyptian Origin	27
The Views of Ménard	27
English Encyclopædism	33
Chambers’ Opinion	34
German Encyclopædism	35
A Recent Article by Granger	36
Reitzenstein and the Dawn of Right Views	40
A Key to Egypt’s Wisdom	44
The Answers to our Questions	44
III. Thoth the Master of Wisdom	47–81
Thoth-Teḥuti	47
Thoth according to Pietschmann	48
The Three Grades of the Egyptian Mysteries	50
Thoth according to Reitzenstein	51
Thoth according to Budge	52
His Deific Titles	53
His Symbols and Name	54
The Shrine of Thoth	56
Thoth and his Company of Eight	57
The “House of the Net”	58
Thoth the Logos	63
The Words of Thoth	63
Thoth and the Osirified	65
Thoth the Measurer	66
The Title “Thrice-greatest”	66
The Supremacy of Thoth	67
The Views of a Scholar-Mystic	68
The Spiritual Nature of the Inner Tradition of Egyptian Wisdom	69
The Holy Land of Egypt and its Initiates	70
Thoth the Initiator	71
Some of the Doctrines of Initiation	73
The Temples of Initiation	74
The Mystery of the Birth of Horus	75
“The Book of the Master”	77
The Steps of the Path	79
An Illuminative Study	80
IV. The Popular Theurgic Hermes-Cult in the Greek Magic Papyri	82–98
The “Religion of Hermes”	82
i. An Invocation to Hermes as the Good Mind	84
ii. An Invocation to Lord Hermes	86
iii. An Invocation to Lord Hermes	87
iv. An Invocation to Thoth as Logos	90
v. An Invocation to Hermes as the Spiritual Light	90
vi. The Mystic Rite of the Flame	93
vii. A Prayer of Consecration	97
V. The Main Source of the Trismegistic Literature according to Manetho High Priest of Egypt	99–127
Hermes at the Beginning of the Hellenistic Period	99
Petosiris and Nechepso	100
Manetho the Beloved of Thoth	102
The Letter of Manetho to Ptolemy Philadelphus	103
The Importance of Manetho’s Statement in his “Sothis”	105
Is “Sothis” a Forgery?	107
The Arguments of Encyclopædism refuted	108
The Seriadic Land	110
The Stelæ of Hermes	112
The Sons of Seth-Hermes	113
The Epithet “Thrice-greatest”	116
The Clue of Griffiths	118
The Earliest Trismegistic Literature	121
Philo Byblius	122
Are his “Phœnician Histories” a Forgery?	123
Sanchuniathon and the “Books of Hermes”	124
VI. An Egyptian Prototype of the Main Features of the Pœmandres’ Cosmogony	128–138
The Higher Criticism of the “Pœmandres”	128
A Prototype of its Cosmogenesis	129
A Praise-giving to Ptah	131
Ptah-Thoth the Wise One	132
Egyptian Syncretism 1000 B.C.	135
The Doctrine of “Pœmandres” Compared with that of its Prototype	136
The Man-Doctrine	138
VII. The Myth of Man in the Mysteries	139–198
The Gnostic Tradition	139
The “Philosophumena” of Hippolytus	140
The Naassenes	141
Analysis of Hippolytus’ Account of the Naassene Document	142
Hippolytus’ Introduction	146
The Material for the Recovery of the Original Hellenistic Document	148
Hippolytus’ Conclusion	186
Conclusion of Analysis	192
The Hellenist Commentator	193
The Jewish and Christian Overwriters	194
Zosimus and the Anthropos-Doctrine	196
Philo of Alexandria on the Man-Doctrine	197
VIII. Philo of Alexandria and the Hellenistic Theology	199–254
Concerning Philo and his Method	199
The Great Importance of his Writings	204
Concerning the Mysteries	205
Concerning the Sacred Marriage	216
Concerning the Logos	225
The Son of God	226
The True High Priest	227
The Elder and Younger Sons of God	229
Yet God is One	230
The Logos is Life and Light	231
The Divine Vision	233
The Sons of God on Earth	233
The City of God	235
God’s Shadow	236
The Mother-City of Refuge	237
The True Shepherd	238
The Apostles of God	239
The Ladder of the “Words”	239
The Logos the Spiritual Sun	241
The Disciples of the Logos	243
The River of the Divine Reason	244
Jerusalem Above	245
The Logos is as Manna and Coriander Seed	246
The Logos is the Pupil of God’s Eye	247
“Man shall not Live by Bread Alone”	248
The Logos-Mediator	249
The Yoga of Plotinus	251
The Race of God	253
IX. Plutarch: Concerning the Mysteries of Isis and Osiris	255–368
Foreword	255
Concerning Isis and Osiris	261–366
Address to Klea concerning Gnosis and the Search for Truth	261
The Art of Knowing and of Divinising	262
The True Initiates of Isis	263
Why the Priests are Shaven and wear Linen	265
Of the Refraining from Flesh and Salt and Superfluities	267
On the Drinking of Wine	268
On Fish Taboos	269
The Onion and Pig Taboos	271
The Kings, the Riddles of the Priests and the Meaning of Amoun	273
Of the Greek Disciples of Egyptians and of Pythagoras and his Symbols	274
Advice to Klea concerning the Hidden Meaning of the Myths	276
The Mystery-Myth	278
The Undermeaning, a Reflexion of a Certain Reason	291
Concerning the Tombs of Osiris	292
Concerning the Theory of Evemerus	295
The Theory of the Daimones	298
Concerning Sarapis	301
Concerning Typhon	304
The Theory of the Physicists	307
Concerning Osiris and Dionysus	310
The Theory of the Physicists Resumed	312
The Theory of the Mathematici	318
The Theory of the Dualists	328
The Proper Reason according to Plutarch	333
The Symbolism of the Sistrum	344
The True “Logos” again according to Plutarch	345
Against the Weather and Vegetation God Theories	346
Concerning the Worship of Animals and Totemism	353
Concerning the Sacred Robes	361
Concerning Incense	363
Afterword	367
X. “Hermas” and “Hermes”	369–386
An Anticipation	369
The Higher Criticism of “The Shepherd of Hermas”	370
The Introduction of the “Pastoral Hermas”	370
Comparison with our “Pœmandres”	371
The Popular Symbolic Representation of the Shepherd	372
The Name “Hermas”	374
An Early Form of the “Pœmandres”	374
The Holy Mount	375
“Gnostic” Elements	376
The Vices and Virtues	377
The Early Date of the Original “Hermas”	378
The Dependence Theory to be used with Caution	379
The Visions of Crates	380
The General Christian “Many” and the Gnostic “Few”	382
The Story of Abbot Olympius	384
A Final Word	385
XI. Concerning the Æon-Doctrine	387–412
The Scope of our Essay	387
The Orphic Tradition of the Genesis of the World Egg	388
Commentary	392
The Sethian Gnosis	393
The Mithriac Æon	399
Probable Date of Origin of the Hellenistic Æon-Doctrine	401
Abraxas	402
The Feast of the Æon	403
The Quintessence and the Monad	403
The Æon in Plato	404
Concerning the Hellenistic Origin of Æonology	405
The Æon the Logos	406
The Roman Sæculum Cult derived from Egypt	407
The Æonic Immensities of Egypt	407
A Song of Praise to the Æon	408
The Demiurgic Æon	410
The Æon in Theurgic Literature	410
XII. The Seven Zones and their Characteristics	413–428
Macrobius on “The Descent of the Soul from the Heights of Cosmos to the Depths of Earth”	413
The Tradition of Servius	418
Criticism of the Evidence	419
The “Ophite” Hebdomad	421
The Simpler Form of the Trismegistic Gnosis	423
Concerning Leviathan and Behemoth	423
The “Fence of Fire”	427
XIII. Plato: Concerning Metempsychosis	429–436
The Soul and her Mysteries in the “Phædrus”	429
Plotinus on Metempsychosis	434
Proclus on the Descent of Souls into Irrational Natures	435
XIV. The Vision of Er	437–449
Er Son of Armenius	437
From the Mysteries	438
The Cylinder	439
The Vision	440
Commentary	448
XV. Concerning the Crater or Cup	450–456
The Crater in Plato	450
In “Orpheus,” Macrobius, and Proclus	451
The Vision of Aridæus	452
The Origin of the Symbol to be sought in Orphic Tradition	456
XVI. The Disciples of Thrice-Greatest Hermes	457–481
Ptah, Sekhet and I-em-ḥetep (Asclepius)	457
Nefer-Tem	458
Imhotep-Imuth-Asclepius	459
Thāth-Tat	461
The Incarnations of Thoth	463
The Disciples of Lord Hermes in Petosiris and Nechepso	464
Tosothros-Asclepius	465
Imuth-Asclepius the Master-Mason and Poet	466
Æsculapius the Healer	467
Asclepius in Trismegistic Tradition	469
Concerning Ammon	471
Prophet and King	472
Amenhotep-Asclepius	473
The Sacred Group of Four	474
James, John and Peter	475
The Triad of Disciples	476
Chnum the Good Daimon	477
Osiris Disciple of Agathodaimon the Thrice-greatest	478
Logos-Mind the Good Daimon	478
Chnum Good Mind the Æon	480
Isis, Lady of Wisdom, Disciple of Thrice-greatest Hermes	481

---

Was he one or many, merging
Name and fame in one,
Like a stream, to which, converging,
Many streamlets run?

 . . . . . .

Who shall call his dreams fallacious?
Who has searched or sought
All the unexplored and spacious
Universe of thought?

Who in his own skill confiding,
Shall with rule and line
Mark the border-land dividing
Human and divine?

Trismegistus! Three times greatest!
How thy name sublime
Has descended to this latest
Progeny of time!

Longfellow, Hermes Trismegistus.1

---

Footnotes

xvi:1 This poem is dated January 1882. Chambers (p. 155, n.) says: “It is noteworthy that the last poem of Longfellow was a lyrical ode in celebration of Hermes Trismegistus.”

Thrice-Greatest Hermes

I

THE REMAINS OF THE TRISMEGISTIC LITERATURE

WRITER AND READER

Little did I think when, years ago, I began to translate some of the Trismegistic tractates, that the undertaking would finally grow into these volumes. My sole object then was to render the more important of these beautiful theosophic treatises into an English that might, perhaps, be thought in some small way worthy of the Greek originals. I was then more attracted by the sermons themselves than by the manifold problems to which they gave rise; I found greater pleasure in the spiritual atmosphere they created, than in the critical considerations which insistently imposed themselves upon my mind, as I strove to realise their importance for the history of the development of religious ideas in the Western world.

And now, too, when I take pen in hand to grapple with the difficulties of “introduction” for those who will be good enough to follow my all-insufficient labours, it is to the tractates themselves that I turn again and again for refreshment in the task; and every time I turn to them I am persuaded that the best of them are worthy of all the labour a man can bestow upon them.

p. 2

Though it is true that the form of these volumes, with their Prolegomena and Commentaries and numerous notes, is that of a technical treatise, it has nevertheless been my aim to make them throughout accessible to the general reader, even to the man of one language who, though no scholar himself, may yet be deeply interested in such studies. These volumes must, therefore, naturally fall short of the precision enjoyed by the works of technical specialists which are filled with direct quotations from a number of ancient and modern tongues; on the other hand, they have the advantage of appealing to a larger public, while at the same time the specialist is given every indication for controlling the statements and translations.

Nor should the general reader be deterred by an introductory volume under the imposing sub-title of Prolegomena, imagining that these chapters are necessarily of a dull, critical nature, for the subjects dealt with are of immense interest in themselves (at least they seem so to me), and are supplementary to the Trismegistic sermons, frequently adding material of a like nature to that in our tractates.

Some of these Prolegomena have grown out of the Commentaries, for I found that occasionally subjects lent themselves to such lengthy digressions that they could be removed to the Prolegomena to the great advantage of the Commentary. The arrangement of the material thus accumulated, however, has proved a very difficult task, and I have been able to preserve but little logical sequence in the chapters; but this is owing mainly to the fact that the extant Trismegistic literature itself is preserved to us in a most chaotic fashion, and I as yet see no means of inducing any sure order into this chaos.

p. 3

THE EXTANT TRISMEGISTIC LITERATURE

To distinguish our writings both from the Egyptian “Books of Thoth” and the Hermes Prayers of the popular Egyptian cult, as found in the Greek Magic Papyri, and also from the later Hermetic Alchemical literature, I have adopted the term Trismegistic literature in place of the usual designation Hermetic.

Of this Greek Trismegistic literature proper, much is lost; that which remains to us, of which I have endeavoured to gather together every fragment and scrap, falls under five heads:

A. The Corpus Hermeticum.
B. The Perfect Sermon, or the Asclepius.
C. Excerpts by Stobæus.
D. References and Fragments in the Fathers.
E. References and Fragments in the Philosophers.

A. The Corpus Hermeticum includes what has, previous to Reitzenstein, 1 been known as the “Poimandres” 2 collection of fourteen Sermons and the “Definitions of Asclepius.”

B. The Perfect Sermon, or the Asclepius, is no longer extant in Greek, but only in an Old Latin version.

C. There are twenty-seven Excerpts, from otherwise lost Sermons, by John Stobæus, a Pagan scholar of the

p. 4

end of the fifth or beginning of the sixth century, who was an immense reader and made a most valuable collection of extracts from Greek authors, though studiously avoiding every Christian writer. Some of these Excerpts are of great length, especially those from the Sermon entitled “The Virgin of the World”; these twenty-seven Excerpts are exclusive of extracts from Sermons still preserved in our Corpus.

D. From the Church Fathers we obtain many references and twenty-five short Fragments, otherwise unknown to us, and considerably widening our acquaintance with the scope of the literature.

E. From Zosimus and Fulgentius we obtain three Fragments, and from the former and Iamblichus, and Julian the Emperor-Philosopher, we obtain a number of valuable references.

Such are what at first sight may appear to be the comparatively scanty remains of what was once an exceedingly abundant literature. But when we remember that this literature was largely reserved and kept secret, we cannot but congratulate ourselves that so much has been preserved; indeed, as we shall see later on, but for the lucky chance of a Hermetic apologist selecting some of the sermons to exemplify the loyal nature of the Trismegistic teaching with respect to kings and rulers, we should be without any Hermetic Corpus at all, and dependent solely on our extracts and fragments.

But even with our Hermetic Corpus before us we should never forget that we have only a fraction of the Trismegistic literature—the flotsam and jetsam, so to say, of a once most noble vessel that sailed the seas of human endeavour, and was an ark of refuge to many a pious and cultured soul.

References to lost writings of the School will meet

p. 5

us abundantly in the course of our studies, and some attempt will be made later on to form a notion of the main types of the literature.

As for the rest of the so-called Hermetic works, medico-mathematical, astrological and medico-astrological, and alchemical, and for a list of the many inventions attributed to the Thrice-greatest—inventions as numerous as, and almost identical with, those attributed to Orpheus by fond posterity along the line of “pure” Hellenic tradition—I would refer the student to the Bibliotheca Græca of Joannes Albertus Fabricius. 1

For the Alchemical and Mediæval literature the two magnificent works of Berthelot (M. P. E.) are indispensable—namely, Collection des anciens Alchimistes grecs (Paris, 1888), and La Chimie au Moyen Âge (Paris, 1893).

In close connection with the development of this form of “Hermetic” tradition must be taken the Hermes writings and traditions among the Arabs. See Beausobre’s Histoire Critique de Manichée et du Manichéisme (Amsterdam, 1734), i. 326; also Fleischer (H. L.), Hermes Trismegislus an die menschliche Seele, Arabisch und Deutsch (Leipzig, 1870); Bardenhewer (O.), Hermetis Trismegisti qui apud Arabes fertur de Castigatione Animæ Liber (Bonn, 1873); and especially R. Pietschmann, the pupil of Georg Ebers, who devotes the fourth part of his treatise, entitled Hermes Trismegistus nach ägyptischen und orientalischen Überlieferungen (Leipzig, 1875), to a consideration of the Hermes tradition, “Bei Syrern und Araben.”

p. 6

Reitzenstein treats very briefly of the development of this later Hermetic literature on pp. 188-200 of his Poimandres. 1

THE ORIGINAL MS. OF OUR CORPUS

From the fragmentary nature of the remains of the Trismegistic literature that have come down to us, it will be at once seen that a critical text of them is a complicated undertaking; for, apart from the Corpus, the texts have to be collected from the works of many authors. This, however, has never yet been done in any critical fashion; so that a translator has first of all to find the best existing critical texts of these authors from which to make his version. This, I hope, I have succeeded in doing; but even so, numerous obscurities still remain in the texts of the excerpts, fragments, and quotations, and it is highly desirable that some scholar specially acquainted with our literature should collect all these together in one volume, and work over the labours of specialists on the texts of Stobæus and the Fathers, with the added equipment of his own special knowledge.

Even the text of our Corpus is still without a thoroughly critical edition; for though Reitzenstein has done this work most admirably for C. H., i., xiii. (xiv.), and (xvi.)-(xviii.), basing himself on five MSS. and the printed texts of the earlier editions, he has not thought fit to give us a complete text.

A list of the then known MSS. is given in Harles’ edition of Fabricius’ Bibliotheca Græca (pp. 51, 52); while Parthey gives notes on the only two MSS. he used in his edition of fourteen of the Sermons of

p. 7

our Corpus. It is, however, generally believed that there may be other MSS. hidden away in Continental libraries.

All prior work on the MSS., however, is entirely superseded by Reitzenstein in his illuminating “History of the Text” (pp. 319-327), in which we have the whole matter set forth with the thoroughness that characterises the best German scholarship.

From him we learn that we owe the preservation of our Hermetic Corpus to a single MS. that was found in the eleventh century in a sad condition. Whole quires and single leaves were missing, both at the beginning (after ch. i.) and the end (after ch. xvi.); even in the remaining pages, especially in the last third, the writing was in a number of places no longer legible.

In this condition the MS. came into the hands of Michael Psellus, the great reviver of Platonic studies at Byzantium, probably at the time when his orthodoxy was being called into question. Psellus thought he would put these writings into circulation again, but at the same time guard himself against the suspicion that their contents corresponded with his own conclusions. This accounts for the peculiar scholion to C. H., i. 18, which seems at first pure monkish denunciation of Pœmandres as the Devil in disguise to lead men from the truth, while the conclusion of it betrays so deep an interest in the contents that it must have been more than purely philological.

And that such an interest was aroused in the following centuries at Byzantium, may be concluded from the fact that the last three chapters, which directly justify polytheism or rather Heathendom, were omitted in a portion of the MSS., and only that part of the Corpus received a wider circulation which corresponded

p. 8

with what might be regarded at first sight as a Neoplatonism assimilated to Christianity. The text was reproduced with thoughtless exactitude, so that though its tradition is extraordinarily bad, it is uniform, and we can recover with certainty the copy of Psellus from the texts of the fourteenth century.

These Trismegistic Sermons obtained a larger field of operation with the growth of Humanism in the West. Georgius Gemistus Pletho, in the latter part of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century, brought Neoplatonism from Byzantium into Italy as a kind of religion and made a deep impression on Cosimo Medici; and Marsiglio Ficino, who was early selected by the latter as the head of the future Academy, must have made his Latin translation of our Corpus, which appeared in 1463, to serve as the first groundwork of this undertaking. Cosimo had the Greek text brought from Bulgaria (Macedonia) by a monk, Fra Lionardo of Pistoja, and it is still in the Medicean Library.

It was not, however, till the middle of the sixteenth century that the Greek text was printed; and meantime, with the great interest taken in these writings by the Humanists, a large number of MSS. arose which sought to make the text more understandable or more elegant; such MSS. are of no value for the tradition of the text.

TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS

We will now proceed to give some account of the texts and translations of the Trismegistic writings, a bibliographical labour which the general reader will most probably skip, but which the real student will appreciate at its proper value. 1

p. 9

The best account of the texts and translations up to 1790 is that of Harles, who has entirely rewritten the account of Fabricius (op. cit., pp. 52 ff.). 1

The editio princeps was not a text but a Latin translation by Marsiglio Ficino (Marsilius Ficinus), published in quarto in 1471. 2 Both the name of the publisher and place of publication are lacking, but the British Museum catalogue inserts them in parenthesis as “G. de Lisa, Treviso,” presumably on the authority of Harles. This translation consisted of the so-called “Pœmandres,” in fourteen chapters, that is to say fourteen treatises, under the general title, Mercurii Trismegisti Liber de Potestate et Sapientia Dei (or The Book of Mercury Trismegist concerning the Power and Wisdom of God). The enormous popularity of this work is seen by the fact of the very numerous editions (for a book of that time) through which it ran. No less than twenty-two editions have appeared, the first eight of them in the short space of a quarter of a century. 3

In 1548 there appeared an Italian translation of Ficinus’ Latin version of the “Pœmandres” collection, entitled Il Pimandro di Mercurio Trismegisto, done into Florentine by Tommaso Benci, printed at Florence in 12mo. A second edition was printed at Florence in 1549 in 8vo, with numerous improvements by Paitoni.

p. 10

The first Greek text was printed at Paris, in 1554, by Adr. Turnebus; it included the “Pœmandres” and “The Definitions of Asclepius,” to which the Latin version of Ficino was appended. The title is, Mercurii Trismegisti Pœmander seu de Potestate ac Sapientia Divina: Aesculapii Definitiones ad Ammonem Regem; the Greek was edited by P. Angelo da Barga (Angelus Vergecius).

In 1557 appeared the first French translation by Gabriel du Preau, at Paris, with a lengthy title, Deux Livres de Mercure Trismegiste Hermés tres ancien Theologien, et excellant Philozophe. L’un de la puissance et sapience de Dieu. L’autre de la volonte de Dieu. Auecq’un Dialogue de Loys Lazarel, poete Chrestien, intitulé le Bassin d’Hermés.

This seems to be simply a translation of an edition of Ficinus’ Latin version published at Paris by Henr. Stephanus in 1505, to which a certain worthy, Loys Lazarel, who further rejoiced in the agnomen of Septempedanus, appended a lucubration of his own of absolutely no value, 1 for the title of Estienne’s edition runs: Pimander Mercurii Liber de Sapientia et Potestate Dei. Asclepius, ejusdem Mercurii Liber de Voluntate Divina. Item Crater Hermetis a Lazarelo Septempedano.

In 1574 Franciscus Flussas Candalle reprinted at Bourdeaux, in 4to, Turnebus’ Greek text, which he emended, with the help of the younger Scaliger and other Humanists, together with a Latin translation, under the title, Mercurii Trismegisti Pimander sive Pœmander. This text is still of critical service to-day.

This he followed with a French translation, printed in 1579, also at Bourdeaux in folio, and bearing the title, Le Pimandre de Mercure Trismegiste de la Philosophie

p. 11

[paragraph continues]Chrestienne, Cognoissance du Verb Divin, et de l’Excellence des Œuvres de Dieu. This we are assured is translated “de l’exemplaire Grec, avec collation de très-amples commentaires,” 1 all of which is followed by the full name and titles of Flussas, to wit, “François Monsieur de Foix, de la famille de Candalle, Captal de Buchs, etc., Evesque d’Ayre, etc.,” the whole being dedicated to “Marguerite de France, Roine de Navarre.”

Twelve years later Franciscus Patricius (Cardinal Francesco Patrizzi) printed an edition of the text of the Sermons of the Corpus, of “The Asclepius,” and also of most of the Extracts and of some of the Fragments; he, however, has arranged them all in a quite arbitrary fashion, and has as arbitrarily altered the text, which generally followed that of Turnebus and Candalle, in innumerable places. To this he appended a Latin translation, in which he emended the versions of Ficino and de Foix, as he tells us, in no less than 1040 places. These were included in his Nova de Universis Philosophia, printed at Ferrara, in folio, 1591, and again at Venice by R. Meiettus, in 1593, as an appendix to his Nov. de Un. Phil., now increased to fifty books.

This Latin translation of Patrizzi was printed apart, together with the Chaldæan Oracles, at Hamburg in 12mo, also, in 1593, under the title Magia Philosophica. The latter edition bears the subscription on the title-page, “jam nunc primum ex Biblioteca Ranzoviana è tenebris eruta,” which Harles explains as a reprint by plain Henr. Ranzou, who is, however, described in the volume itself as “produx.” It seems to have been again reprinted at Hamburg in 1594 in 8vo.

Meantime the Carmelite, Hannibal Rossellus, 2 had

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been laboriously engaged for many years on an edition of the “Pœmandres” with most elaborate commentaries. This was printed at Cracow by Lazarus, in six volumes in folio, from 1585 to 1590. Rossel treats of philosophy, theology, the Pope, the scriptures, and all disciplines in his immanibus commentariis, inepte as some say, while others bestow on him great praise. His title is Pymander Mercurii Trismegisti. This was reprinted with the text and translation of de Foix in folio at Cologne in 1630, under the title Divinus Pimander Hermetis Mercurii Trismegisti.

Hitherto nothing had been done in England, but in 1611 an edition of Ficinus’ translation was printed in London. This was followed by what purports to be a translation of the “Pœmandres” from Arabic, 1 “by that learned Divine, Doctor Everard,” as the title-page sets forth. It was printed in London in 1650 in 8vo, with a preface by “J. F.,” and bears the title The Divine Pymander of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus, in xvii. Books. Translated formerly out of the Arabick into Greek [!] and thence into Latin, and Dutch, and now out of the Original into English. There was a second edition of Everard’s version printed at London in 1657, in 12mo. There are also reprints of the 1650 edition by Fryar of Bath, with an introduction by Hargrave Jennings, in 1884; 2 by P. B. Randolph, Toledo, Ohio, 1889; and by the Theosophical Publishing Society, in the Collectanea Hermetica, edited by W. Wynn Westcott, in 1893.

To what Dutch translation Everard refers I cannot discover, for the only one known to me is that printed

p. 13

at Amsterdam in 1652 in 12mo. It is a translation of Patrizzi’s text, and bears the title, Sestien Boecken van den Hermes Trismegistus. . . . uyt het Griecx ghebracht . . . met eene . . . Voorede uyt het Latijn von F. Patricius in de welcke hij bewijst dat desen . . . Philosoph heeft gebleoyt voor Moyses, etc. Harles says nothing of this edition, but speaks of one printed at Amsterdam in 1643 in 4to, by Nicholas van Rauenstein, but I can find no other trace of it.

The first German translation was by a certain Alethophilus, and was printed at Hamburg in 1706 (8vo) under the title Hermetis Trismegisti Erkäntnüss der Natur, etc., containing seventeen pieces; this was reprinted at Stuttgart in 1855, in a curious collection by J. Schieble, entitled Kleiner Wunder-Schauplatz. 1 The title reads Hermetis Trismegisti Einleitung in’s höchste Wissen von Erkentniss der Natur und der darin sich offenbarenden grossen Grottes, with an appendix concerning the person of Hermes, etc.

But why Schieble should have reprinted Alethophilus’ translation is not clear, when in 1781 a new translation into German, with critical notes and valuable suggestions for emending the text, had appeared by Dieterich Tiedemann (Berlin and Stettin, in 8vo), entitled Hermes Trismegists Pœmander, oder von der göttlichen Macht und Weisheit, a rare book which, already in 1827, Baumgarten-Crusius 2 laments

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as almost unfindable in the republic of letters, and of which the British Museum possesses no copy. 1

It is remarkable that of a work which exhausted so many editions in translation and was evidently received with such great enthusiasm, there have been so few editions of the text, and that for two centuries and a quarter 2 no attempt was made to collate the different MSS. and editions, until in 1854 Gustav Parthey printed a critical text of the fourteen pieces of “Pœmandres,” at Berlin, under the title Hermetis Trismegisti Pœmander, to which he appended a Latin translation based on the original version of Ficino successively revised by de Foix and Patrizzi. Parthey’s promise to edit reliqua Hermetis scripta has not been fulfilled, and no one else has so far attempted this most necessary task.

Reitzenstein’s (p. 322) opinion of Parthey’s text, however, is very unfavourable. In the first place, Parthey took Patrizzi’s arbitrary alterations as a true tradition of the text; in the second, he himself saw neither of the MSS. on which he says he relies. The first of these was very carelessly copied for him and carelessly used by him; while the second, which was copied by D. Hamm, is very corrupt owing to very numerous “corrections” and interpolations by a later hand—all of which Parthey has adopted as ancient readings. His text, therefore, concludes Reitzenstein, is doubly falsified—a very discouraging judgment for lovers of accuracy.

In 1866 there appeared at Paris, in 8vo, a complete translation in French of the Trismegistic treatises and

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fragments by Louis Ménard, entitled Hermès Trismégiste, preceded by an interesting study on the origin of the Hermetic books, of which a second edition was printed in 1867. This is beyond question the most sympathetic version that we at present possess.

Everard’s version of the “Pœmandres” being reprinted in 1884 by Fryar of Bath, the rest of the treatises were retranslated by Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland from Ménard’s French version (including his notes), and appeared in 1885 (in 4to), published by Fryar, but bearing a publisher’s name in India, under the general title The Hermetic Works: The Virgin of the World of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus. Meantime, in 1882, J. D. Chambers had published (at Edinburgh, in 8vo) a crabbed and slavishly literal translation of the “Pœmandres,” together with the Excerpts from Stobæus and the Notices of Hermes in the Fathers, with an introductory Preface, under the title, The Theological and Philosophical Works of Hermes Trismegistus, Christian Neoplatonist. Indeed, the loose and erroneous version of Everard is far more comprehensible than this fantastically literal translation.

For the last six years I have myself been publishing, in the pages of The Theosophical Review, translations of the Trismegistic Sermons and also a few of the studies now included in these Prolegomena; all of the former, however, have been now carefully revised, and the latter have for the most part been greatly enlarged and improved.

Finally, in 1904, E. Reitzenstein of Strassburg published at Leipzig his illuminating study, Poimandres, in which he gives the critical text of C. H., i., xiii. (xiv.), (xvi.)-(xviii.), based on five MSS. and the best early printed editions, with all that minute care, knowledge of palæography, and enthusiasm for philology which

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characterises the best textual-critical work of modern scholarship. Why, however, Reitzenstein has not done the same good service for the whole of the Corpus as he has done for the selected sermons, is a mystery. He is the very man for the task, and the service he could render would be highly appreciated by many.

So much, then, for the existing partial texts and translations of the extant Trismegistic literature. Of the translations with which I am acquainted, 1 Everard’s (1650), the favourite in England, because of its dignified English, is full of errors, mistranslations, and obscurities; it is hopeless to try to understand “Hermes” from this version. Chambers’s translation (1882, from the text of Parthey) is so slavishly literal that it ceases to be English in many places, in others goes wide of the sense, and, in general, is exasperating. Ménard’s French translation (1866, also from Parthey’s text) is elegant and sympathetic, but very free in many places; in fact, not infrequently quite emancipated from the text. The most literally accurate translation is Parthey’s Latin version (based on the Latin translation of Ficino, as emended by Candalle and Patrizzi); but even in such literal rendering he is at fault at times, while in general no one can fully understand the Latin without the Greek. To translate “Hermes” requires not only a good knowledge of Greek, but also a knowledge of that Gnosis which he has not infrequently so admirably handed on to us.

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Footnotes

3:1 Reitzenstein (R.), Poimandres: Studien zur griechisch-ägyptischen und frühchristlichen Literatur (Leipzig; 1904).

3:2 Variously translated, or metamorphosed, as Pœmandres, Pœmander, Poemandre, Pymandar, Pimander, Pimandre, Pimandro. Already Patrizzi, in 1591, pointed out that only one treatise could be called by this title; but, in spite of this, the bad habit inaugurated by the editio princeps (in Latin translation) of Marsiglio Ficino has persisted to the last edition of the text by Parthey (1854) and the last translation by Chambers (1882).

5:1 Vol. i., lib. i., cap. vii. See the fourth and last edition (Leipzig, 1790), with up to that time unedited supplements by Fabricius and G. C. Heumann, and very numerous and important additions by G. C. Harles.

6:1 For the Hermetic writing in Pitra, Analecta Sacra et Classica, pt. ii., see R., pp. 16, n. 4, and 259, n. 1; and for reference to the Arabic literature, pp. 23, n. 5, and 172, n. 3.

8:1 This study was published in the Theosophical Review, May 1899, and is independent of Reitzenstein’s work.

9:1 S. F. W. Hoffmann’s Bibliographisches Lexicon der gesammten Litteratur der Griechen (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1839) simply copies Harles, while his appendix of “Erläuterungsschriften” is of no value.

9:2 R. (p. 320), as we have seen, gives the date as 1463, but I have found no trace of this edition.

9:3 The dates of these editions are as follows, though doubtless there were other editions of which we have lost record: 1471, ’72, ’81, ’83, ’91, ’93, ’94, ’97; 1503, ’05, ’16, ’22, ’32, ’49, ’52, ’54, ’61, ’70, ’76, ’77; 1611, ’41. They were printed at Venice, Paris, Basle, Lyons, and London.

10:1 The writer has painfully perused it, for, more fortunate than the British Museum, he possesses a copy of this rare work.

11:1 These on perusal prove of little value.

11:2 R. 322 calls him a Minorite.

12:1 It is clear, however, that Everard translated from Ficinus’ Latin version, and that the “Arabick” is a myth.

12:2 Of which only 200 copies were issued to subscribers, as though, forsooth, they were to come into great “occult” secrets thereby.

13:1 Part of the full title runs: K. W.-S. d. Wissenschaften, Mysterien, Theosophie, göttlichen und morgenländischen Magie, Naturkräfte, hermet. u. magnet. Phil., Kabbala, u. and. höhern Kentnissen, and much more in the same strain, but I have no doubt the reader has already had enough of it. From 1855 to 1857 fourteen parts appeared, mostly taken up with German translations of Hermes, of Agrippa’s Philosophia Occulta from the Latin, and of The Telescope of Zoroaster from the French.

13:2Op. inf. cit., p. 10.

14:1 I have, therefore, not been able to avail myself of Tiedemann’s labours. R. 322 speaks highly of them.

14:2 The last edition prior to Parthey’s was the reprint of Flussas’ text, at Cologne in 1630, appended to Rossel’s lucubrations.

16:1 As already remarked, I have not been able to see a copy of the German of Tiedemann.

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II

THE HISTORY OF THE EVOLUTION OF OPINION

THE CHIEF POINTS OF INTERROGATION

We have now to consider the following interesting points:

The early Church Fathers in general accepted the Trismegistic writings as exceedingly ancient and authoritative, and in their apologetic writings quote them in support of the main general positions of Christianity.

In the revival of learning, for upwards of a century and a half, all the Humanists welcomed them with open arms as a most valuable adjunct to Christianity, and as being in accord with its doctrines; so much so that they laboured to substitute Trismegistus for Aristotle in the schools.

During the last two centuries and a half, however, a body of opinion was gradually evolved, infinitesimal in its beginnings but finally well-nigh shutting out every other view, that these writings were Neoplatonic forgeries and plagiarisms of Christianity.

Finally, with the dawn of the twentieth century, the subject has been rescued from the hands of opinion, and has begun to be established on the firm ground of historical and critical research, opening up problems of the greatest interest and importance for the history of Christian origins and their connection with Hellenistic

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theology and theosophy, and throwing a brilliant light on the development of Gnosticism.

The first point will be brought out in detail in the volume in which a translation of all the passages and references to Thrice-greatest Hermes in the writings of the Church Fathers will be given; while the last will be made abundantly apparent, we hope, in the general course of our studies. The second and third points will now demand our immediate attention, especially the third, for we have endeavoured with great labour to become acquainted with all the “arguments” which have tended to build up this opinion; and unless we have to change all our ideas as to the time-frame of so-called Neoplatonism, we are entirely unconvinced; for we find that it has been evolved from unsupported assertions, and that not one single work exists which ventures in any satisfactory fashion to argue the question (most writers merely reasserting or echoing prior opinions), or in which the statements made may not as easily prove the priority of the Trismegistic school to the Neoplatonic as the reverse.

We will then proceed to give some account of this chaos of contradictory opinions, picking out the most salient points.

THE OPINIONS OF THE HUMANISTS

That the early scholars of the revival of learning were all unanimously delighted with the Trismegistic writings, is manifest from the bibliography we have already given, and that they should follow the judgment of the ancient Fathers in the matter is but natural to expect; for them not only were the books prior to Christianity, but they were ever assured that Hermes

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had been a really existent personality, like any of the Biblical worthies, such as Enoch and Noah (as was unquestionably believed in those days), and further, that he was prior to, or a contemporary of, Moses. 1

Thus in the editio princeps of Ficino we read: “Whoever thou art who readest these things, whether grammarian, or rhetorician, or philosopher, or theologian, know thou that I am Hermes the Thrice-greatest, at whom wondered first the Egyptians and the other nations, and subsequently the ancient Christian theologians, in utter stupefaction at my doctrine rare of things divine.”

The opinion of Ficino, that the “writer” of the “Pœmandres” tractates was one who had a knowledge both of Egyptian and Greek, is of interest as being that of a man uncontaminated by the infinite doubts with which the atmosphere of modern criticism is filled, and thus able to get a clean contact with his subject.

Of the same mind were Loys Lazarel and du Preau, the first French translator; while the Italian Cardinal Patrizzi appends to his labours the following beautiful words (attributed by some to Chalcidius 2), which he puts in the mouth of Hermes:

“Till now, my son, I, banished from my home, have lived expatriate in exile. Now safe and sound I seek my home once more. And when but yet a little while I shall have left thee, freed from these bonds of body, see that thou dost not mourn me as one dead. For I return to that supreme and happy state to which the universe’s citizens will come when in the after-state.

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[paragraph continues]For there the Only God is supreme lord, and He will fill His citizens with wondrous joy, compared to which the state down here which is regarded by the multitude as life, should rather be called death.” 1

Patrizzi believed that Hermes was contemporary with Moses, basing himself upon the opinion of Eusebius in his Chronicum, 2 and thought that it would be to the greatest advantage of the Christian world, if such admirable and pious philosophy as was contained in the Trismegistic writings were substituted in the public schools for Aristotle, whom he regarded as overflowing with impiety.

THE FIRST DOUBT

And that such opinions were the only ones as late as 1630, is evident from the favour still shown to the voluminous commentaries of de Foix and Rossel. Nevertheless some fifty years previously, a hardy pioneer of scepticism had sturdily attacked the validity of the then universal Hermes tradition on one point at least—and that a fundamental one. For Patrizzi (p. 1a) declares that a certain Jo. Goropius Becanus was the first after so many centuries to dare to say that Hermes (as a single individual) never existed! But the worthy Goropius, who appears to have flourished about 1580, judging by an antiquarian treatise of his on the race and language of the “Cimbri or Germani” published at Amsterdam, had no followers as yet in a belief that is now universally accepted by all critical scholarship. But this has to do with the Hermes-saga and not directly with the question of the Trismegistic works,

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and so we may omit for the present any reference to the host of contradictory opinions on “Hermes” which are found in all the writers to whom we are referring, and none of which, prior to the decipherment of the hieroglyphics, are of any particular value.

THE LAUNCHING OF THE THEORY OF PLAGIARISM

It was about the middle of the seventeenth century that the theory of plagiarism and forgery was started. Ursin (Joh. Henr. Ursinus), a pastor of the Evangelical Church at Ratisbon, published at Nürnberg in 1661, a work, in the second part of which he treated of “Hermes Trismegistus and his Writings,” 1 and endeavoured to show that they were wholesale plagiarisms from Christianity, but his arguments were subjected to a severe criticism by Brucker some hundred years later. 2

This extreme view of Ursin was subsequently modified into the subsidiary opinions that the Trismegistic works were composed by a half-Christian (semi-christiano) or interpolated by Christian overworking.

The most distinguished name among the early holders of the former opinion is that of Isaac Casaubon, 3 who dates these writings at the beginning of the second

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century; Casaubon’s opinions, however, were promptly refuted by Cudworth in his famous work The True Intellectual System of the Universe, the first edition of which was printed at London, in folio, 1678. 1 Cudworth would have it, however, that Casaubon was right as far as the treatises entitled “The Shepherd of Men” and “The Secret Sermon on the Mountain” are concerned, and that these treatises were counterfeited by Christians since the time of Iamblichus—a very curious position to assume, since a number of the treatises themselves look back to this very “Shepherd” as the original document of the whole “Pœmandres” cycle.

But, indeed, so far we have no arguments, no really critical investigation, 2 so that we need not detain the reader among these warring opinions, on which the cap was set by the violent outburst of Colberg in defence of orthodoxy against the Alchemists, Rosicrucians, Quakers, Anabaptists, Quietists, etc., of which fanatici, as he calls them, Hermes, he declares, was the Patriarch. 3

THE ONLY ARGUMENT ADDUCED

One might almost believe that Colberg was an incarnation of a Church Father continuing his ancient polemic against heresy; in any case the whole question of heresy

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was now revived, and the eighteenth and nineteenth century criticism of the Trismegistic works almost invariably starts with this prejudice in mind and seeks (almost without exception) to father the Trismegistic writings on Neoplatonism, which it regards as the most powerful opponent of orthodoxy from the third century onwards. Harles (1790) gives the references to all the main factors in the evolution of this opinion during the eighteenth century; 1 but the only argument that the century produced—indeed, the only argument that has ever been adduced—is that the doctrines of the Trismegistic writings are clearly Platonic, and that too of that type of mystical Platonism which was especially the characteristic of the teaching of Iamblichus at the end of the third century A.D., and which is generally called Neoplatonism; therefore, these writings were forged by the Neoplatonists to prop up dying Paganism against the ever more and more vigorous Christianity. We admit the premisses, but we absolutely deny the conclusion. But before pointing out the weakness of this conclusion of apologetic scholarship, we must deal with the literature on the subject in the last century. The eighteenth century produced no arguments in support of this conclusion beyond the main premisses which we have admitted. 2 Has the nineteenth century

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produced any others so as to justify the position taken up by the echoes of opinion in all the popular encyclopædias with regard to these most valuable and beautiful treatises? 1

If our encyclopædias deign to rest their assertions on authority, they refer us to Fabricius (Harles) and Baumgarten-Crusius. We have already seen that Harles will not help us much; will the latter authority throw any more light on the subject? We are afraid not; for, instead of a bulky volume, we have before us a thin academical exercise of only 19 pp., 2 in which the author puts forward the bare opinion that these books were invented by Porphyry and his school, and this mainly because he thinks that Orelli 3 had proved the year before that the Cosmogony of Sanchoniathon was invented by the “Platonici.” Moreover, was not Porphyry an enemy of Christ, for did he not write XV. Books against the Christians? All of which can scarcely be dignified with the name of argument, far less with that of proof.

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THE THEORY OF HILGERS

The same may be said of the short academical thesis of Hilgers, 1 who first shows the weakness of Möhler’s strange opinion 2 that the author was a Christian who pretended to be a Pagan and inserted “errors” on purpose. Hilgers finally ends up with the lame conclusion that Christian doctrine was known to the author of the “Pœmandres” cycle, especially the Gospel of “John” and Letters of Paul; but how it is possible to conjecture anything besides, he does not know. Of the possibility of the priority of the “Pœmandres” to the writings of “John” and Paul, Hilgers does not seem to dream; nevertheless this is as logical a deduction as the one he draws from the points of contact between the two groups of literature. But Hilgers has got an axe of his own to grind, and a very blunt one at that; he thinks that “The Shepherd of Men” was written at the same time as “The Shepherd of Hermas,” that simple product of what is called the sub-apostolic age—a document held in great respect by the early outer communities of General Christianity, and used for purposes of edification. Our “Shepherd,” Hilgers thinks, was written in opposition to the Hermas document, but he can do nothing but point to the similarity of name as a proof of his hypothesis. This topsyturvy opinion we shall seek to reverse in a subsequent chapter on “‘Hermes’ and ‘Hermas.’”

As to the author of our “Shepherd,” Hilgers thinks he has shown that “he was not a follower of the

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doctrines of the Christ, but of the so-called Neoplatonists, and among these especially of Philo Judæus”; in fact he seems, says Hilgers, to have been a Therapeut. 1

THE GERMAN THEORY OF NEOPLATONIC “SYNCRETISMUS”

Here we have the first appearance of another tendency; the more attention is bestowed upon the Trismegistic writings, the more it is apparent that they cannot be ascribed to Neoplatonism, if, as generally held, Neoplatonism begins with Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, and Porphyry in the third century. Therefore, in this subject, and in this subject alone, we find a tendency in later writers to push back the Neoplatonists so as to include Philo Judæus, who flourished in the first half of the first century! On these lines we should soon get Neo-platonism back to Plato and Pythagoras, and so be forced to drop the “Neo” and return to the old honoured name of simple “Platonici.”

But already by this time in Germany the theory of Neoplatonic Syncretismus to prop up sinking Heathendom against rising Christianity had become crystallised, as may be seen from the article on “Hermes, Hermetische Schriften” in Pauly’s famous Real Encyclopädie der classischen Alterthumswissenshaft (Stuttgart, 1844), where this position is assumed from the start.

Parthey, however, in 1854, in his preface, ventures on no such opinion, but expresses a belief that we may even yet discover in Egypt a demotic text of the “Pœmandres,” which shows that he considered the original to have been written in Egyptian, and therefore not by a Neoplatonist.

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THE FRENCH THEORY OF EGYPTIAN ORIGIN

In France, moreover, the Egyptian paternity of the Trismegistic writings, and that too on very sensible lines, was asserted about the same time, namely, in 1858, by Artaud in his article on “Hermès Trismégiste,” in Hoeffer’s Nouvelle Biographie Générale, published at Paris by Messrs Firmin Didot. Artaud writes:

“In the mystic sense Thoth or the Egyptian Hermes was the symbol of the Divine Mind; he was the incarnated Thought, the living Word—the primitive type of the Logos of Plato and the Word of the Christians. . . .

“We have heard Champollion, the younger, giving expression to the formal opinion that the books of Hermes Trismegistus really contained the ancient Egyptian doctrine of which traces can be discovered from the hieroglyphics which cover the monuments of Egypt. Moreover, if these fragments themselves are examined, we find in them a theology sufficiently in accord with the doctrines set forth by Plato in his Timaeus—doctrines which are entirely apart from those of the other schools of Greece, and which were therefore held to have been derived by Plato from the temples of Egypt, when he went thither to hold converse with its priests.” 1

Artaud is also of the opinion that these Trismegistic treatises are translations from the Egyptian.

THE VIEWS OF MÉNARD

Nowadays, with our improved knowledge of Egyptology, this hypothesis has to be stated in far more

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careful terms before it can find acceptance among the learned; nevertheless it was evidently the conviction of Dévéria, who in a work of which he only succeeded in writing the first two pages, proposed to comment on the entire text of the Trismegistic Books from the point of view of an Egyptologist. For these Books, he declared, offered an almost complete exposition of the esoteric philosophy of ancient Egypt. 1

But by far the most sympathetic and really intelligent account of the subject is that of Ménard, 2 who gives us a pleasant respite from the chorus of the German Neoplatonic syncretism theory. And though we do not by any means agree with all that he writes, it will be a relief to let in a breath of fresh air upon the general stuffiness of our present summary of opinions.

The fragments of the Trismegistic literature which have reached us are the sole surviving remains of that “Egyptian philosophy” which arose from the congress of the religious doctrines of Egypt with the philosophical doctrines of Greece. In other words, what the works of Philo were to the sacred literature of the Jews, the Hermaica were to the Egyptian sacred writings. Legend and myth were allegorised and philosophised and replaced by vision and instruction. But who were the authors of this theosophic method? This question is of the greatest interest to us, for it is one of the factors in the solution of the problem of the literary evolution of Christianity, seeing that there are intimate points of contact of ideas between several of the Hermetic documents and certain Jewish and Christian writings, especially the opening verses of Genesis, the treatises of Philo, the fourth Gospel

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[paragraph continues](especially the Prologue), and beyond all the writings of the great Gnostic doctors Basilides and Valentinus.

Such and similar considerations lead Ménard to glance at the environment of infant Christianity and the various phenomena connected with its growth, and this he does from the point of view of an enlightened independent historical scholar.

“Christianity,” he writes, “did not fall like a thunderbolt into the midst of a surprised and startled world. It had its period of incubation, and while it was engaged in evolving the positive form of its dogmas, the problems of which it was seeking the solution were the subject of thought in Greece, Asia, and Egypt. Similar ideas were in the air and shaped themselves into all sorts of propositions.

“The multiplicity of sects which have arisen in our own times under the name of socialism, can give but a faint idea of the marvellous intellectual chemistry which had established its principal laboratory at Alexandria. Humanity had set in the arena mighty philosophical and moral problems: the origin of evil, the destiny of the soul, its fall and redemption; the prize to be given was the government of the conscience. The Christian solution 1 won, and caused the rest to be forgotten, sunk for the most part in the shipwreck of the past. Let us then, when we come across a scrap of the flotsam and jetsam, recognise in it the work of a beaten competitor and not of a plagiarist. Indeed, the triumph of Christianity was prepared by those very men who thought themselves its rivals, but who were only its forerunners. The title suits them, though many were contemporaries of the Christian era, while others were a little later; for the succession of a religion only dates from the day when it is accepted by the

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nations, just as the reign of a claimant to the throne dates from his victory” (pp. ix., x.).

Ménard distinguishes three principal groups in the Trismegistic treatises, which he assigns to Jewish, Greek, and Egyptian influences. In them also he finds a link between Philo and the Gnostics.

“Between the first Gnostic sects and the Hellenic Jews represented by Philo, a link is missing; this can be found in several of the Hermetic works, especially ‘The Shepherd of Men’ and ‘The Sermon on the Mountain.’ In them also will perhaps be found the reason of the differences, so often remarked upon, between the first three Gospels and the fourth” (p. xliv.).

Next, the direction in which that “link” is to be looked for is more clearly shown, though here Ménard is, I think, too precise when writing:

“It seems certain that ‘The Shepherd’ came from that school of Therapeuts of Egypt, who have been often erroneously confounded with the Essenians of Syria and Palestine” (p. lvi).

But “instead of the physical discipline of the Essenians, who, according to Philo, practised manual labour, put the product of their toil into the common fund, and reduced philosophy to ethics, and ethics to charity, the ‘monasteries’ of the Therapeuts contributed to Christian propaganda a far more Hellenised population, trained in abstract speculations and mystic allegories. From these tendencies, combined with the dogma of the incarnation, arose the Gnostic sects. ‘The Shepherd’ should be earlier than these schools” (p. lviii.).

As to “The Sermon on the Mountain,” “it can be placed, in order of ideas and date, between ‘The Shepherd’ and the first Gnostic schools; it should be

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a little earlier than the founders of Gnosticism, Basilides, and Valentinus” (p. lxv.).

If Gnosticism be taken with Ménard to mean the Christianised theosophy of Basilides and Valentinus from the first quarter of the second century onwards, the oldest Trismegistic treatises are demonstrably earlier, for their Gnosticism is plainly a far simpler form; in fact, so much more simple that, if we could proceed on so crude an hypothesis as that of a straight-lined evolution, we should be forced to find room for intermediate forms of Gnosticism between them and the Basilidian and the Valentinian Gnosis. And of this Ménard seems to be partly conscious when writing: “We can follow in the Hermetic books the destiny of this Judæo-Egyptian Gnosis, which, during the first century, existed side by side with Christianity without allowing itself to be absorbed by it, passing insensibly from the Jewish school of Philo to the Greek school of Plotinus” (p. lxvii.).

Ménard here used the term Christianity for that tendency which afterwards was called Catholic or General Christianity, the body to which these very same Gnostics gave the principal dogmas of its subsequent theology.

But if the Gnostics were Therapeuts, and the Trismegistic writers Therapeuts, why should Ménard call them Jews, as he appears to do in his interesting question, “Where are the Jewish Therapeuts at the end of the second century?” Certainly Philo laboured to give his readers the impression that the Therapeuts were principally Jews, perhaps to win respect for his compatriots in his apology for his nation; but the Therapeuts were, evidently, on his own showing, drawn from all the nations and scattered abroad in very numerous communities, though many Jews were doubtless in

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their ranks—indeed, Philo probably knew little about their communities other than the Mareotic. If, then, the term “Therapeut” will explain some of the phenomena presented by these writings, the combination “Jewish Therapeuts” will certainly not do so. The very answer of Ménard himself to his question shows that even these Mareotic Therapeuts could not have been orthodox Jews, for the French scholar proceeds to surmise not only that, “some, converted to Christianity, became monks or Gnostics of the Basilidian or Valentinian school,” but that “others more and more assimilated themselves to Paganism.”

And by “Paganism” our author says he does not mean “polytheism,” for “at this period all admitted into the divine order of things a well-defined hierarchy with a supreme God at the head; only for some this supreme Deity was in the world, for others outside it” (p. lxxiv.).

Ménard’s introduction meets with the general approval of Reitzenstein (p. 1), who characterises it as feinsinnige, and agrees that he has rightly appreciated many of the factors, especially from the theological side; he, however (p. 116, n. 2), dissents, and rightly dissents, from Ménard as to any direct Jewish influence on the Trismegistic literature, and refuses to admit that the “Pœmandres” can in any way be characterised as a Jewish-Gnostic writing.

But the sensible views of Ménard were impotent to check the crystallisation of the German theory, which was practically repeated by Zeller, 1 and once more by

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[paragraph continues]Pietschmann in his learned essay, 1 based in part on A. G. Hoffmann’s article “Hermes” in Ersch and Grüber’s Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste. 2

An exception to this tendency, however, is to be found in the opinion of Aall; 3 who, though he adduces no proof, would on general grounds place the composition of the Hermetic literature (though whether or not by this he means our extant Trismegistic sermons is not clear) as far back as the second century B.C., and would see in it an offshoot from the same stem which later on supplied the ground-conceptions of the Johannine theology. 4

ENGLISH ENCYCLOPÆDISM

In England, as we have seen, the subject, like so many others of a similar nature, has been almost entirely neglected, but with the encyclopædic activity of the past generation we find it touched upon, and in the usual encyclopædic fashion. The German position is assumed, without one word of proof or reference to any, as an “acquired fact of science”! The “last effort of expiring Heathendom” theory is trotted out with complacency and with that impressive air of official knowledge which makes the pronouncements of the family physician a law unto all its members, from baby to father—until the specialist is called in. And

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unfortunately these ex cathedrâ encyclopædic pronouncements are all the general reader will ever hear. This is the case with all those three indifferent articles in our current dictionaries of reference. 1 We are assured that, “as all are generally agreed,” the writings are Neoplatonic, and this without any qualification or definition of the term, and that too in dictionaries where the term “Neoplatonic,” in articles on the subject, is applied solely to the “Chain” from Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus onwards. The presumption is plain that by Neoplatonic forgeries we are to understand a date of at earliest from the middle of the third century onwards.

CHAMBERS’S OPINION

And this although Justin Martyr (cir. 150 A.D.) bestows emphatic praise on these very same writings and classes their writer, “Hermes,” among the “most ancient philosophers,” a point which the German theorists and their English copiers have all discreetly shirked, but which, together with other considerations, has forced Chambers, in the preface to his translation (London, 1882), to give quite a new meaning to the term Neoplatonist, which he uses of Hermes in his title, 2 and to declare that our Hermes is entitled “to

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be considered the real founder of Neoplatonism.” 1 Chambers would still, in spite of Justin’s clear testimony, wedge in the earliest deposit of Trismegistic literature immediately between the time of composition of the new canonical books and Justin, and devotes nearly all his notes to fishing out every verse of the New Testament he can which bears the slightest resemblance to the Trismegistic text. 2 But if we closely compare these so-called parallels, we are compelled to acknowledge that if there be any plagiarism it is not on the side of Hermes; nay, more, it is as plain as it can be that there is no verbal plagiarism at all, and that the similarity of ideas therefore pertains to quite another problem, for the distinctive dogmas of Common Christianity are entirely wanting; there is not a single word breathed of the historical Jesus, not a syllable concerning the nativity, the crucifixion, resurrection, ascension or coming of Christ to judgment, as Chambers admits.

GERMAN ENCYCLOPÆDISM

Let us now turn to the pronouncements of German encyclopædism on the subject. F. A. Brockhaus’ Conversations-Lexikon (Leipzig, 1884) does but repeat the old hypothesis. The Trismegistic writings are “the last monuments of Heathendom”; the writer, however, grudgingly takes in the date of Justin Martyr in the sentence, “presumably the majority of these writings belong to the second century,” but not a word is breathed of how this conclusion is arrived at.

A most valuable article, in fact far and away the

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very best that has yet been done, containing innumerable references to all the articles in the most recent transactions of learned societies and to the papers in scientific periodicals, is that of Chr. Scherer on “Hermes,” in W. H. Roscher’s Auführliches Lexikon der griechischen u. römischen Mythologie (Leipzig, 1884, etc.). Unfortunately this article deals solely with the Hermes of the Greeks, while for “Hermes Trismegistos” we are referred to “Thoth,” an article which has not yet appeared. This brings our summary of opinions down to the close of the last century; we have probably omitted reference to some minor opinions, for no up-to-date bibliography exists on the subject, but we doubt that any work of importance has escaped our notice.

A RECENT ARTICLE BY GRANGER

The most recent work done in England on the subject, in the present century, is an article by Frank Granger, 1 who, in spite of some useful criticisms and suggestions on some points, is nevertheless in the main reactionary, and contends for a Christian origin of our most important tractates. The scope of his enquiry may be seen from his preliminary statement when he writes:

“We shall have little difficulty in showing, as against Zeller, that the book [? our Corpus, or the first Sermon only] is in the main homogeneous and of Christian origin. Not only so, our discussion will bring us into contact with the later Greek culture as it developed amid Egyptian surroundings, and will raise several problems of considerable importance. Among other

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things we shall have to trace the way in which Hermes passes over into Christian tradition, and how the Greek representations of Hermes furnished Christian art with one of its earliest motives. 1 We shall further find in it a bridge by which we may pass over from Greek philosophy and science to modes of thought which are properly Christian. And yet the writer retains so much of the antique spirit that he can hardly be mistaken for an apologist of Paganism.”

When, however, Granger attempts to prove his case, he breaks down utterly, being able to point to little besides the popular phrase “increase and multiply.” Towards the end of his enquiry, however, he sees that the traditional values of many factors will have to be altered by a study of our literature, as, for instance, when he writes:

“The traditional estimate of Gnosticism, then, requires to be reconsidered, in the light of the Poemandres. It belongs to a time when religious definitions were still in the making—a time, therefore, when the limits of free discussion were not yet straitly drawn. Hence the various permutations of religious belief which we find in Irenæus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, would not be admitted by their exponents to be in conflict with the Christian faith, but would rather be regarded as exhibiting new and fruitful applications of principles common to all. Ecclesiastical opinion ultimately settled down in one direction rather than another. But until this process was complete, each living system of belief might count upon a possible victory, 2 and so, among others, the system which may be traced in the Poemandres. And the Poemandres is so far from being a merely heretical production, that

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its relation to orthodox belief may fairly be indicated by saying that it answers to the earlier intellectual position of Clement of Alexandria.” 1

We should say rather that the difficulties in which our essayist is evidently involved by his hypothesis of Christian origin, would be considerably lessened by accepting the evidence on all hands which a more extended study of the Trismegistic and allied literatures affords, and by treating what he refers to as Gnosticism without qualification as the Christianised Gnosis, and not as Gnosticised Christianity.

We thus find Granger compelled, in keeping with the above, to guess the date of the “Pœmandres” as towards the end of the second century; but even so, he feels dissatisfied with himself, for he has to add: “Nor does this date preclude us from finding occasional traces of even earlier material.”

However we may dissent from Granger’s conclusions as to the “Pœmandres,” we agree with him in the importance he ascribes to the Gospel according to the Egyptians, in connection with which he writes 2:

“It is instructive to note that Salome, who plays so prominent a part in the Gospel according to the Egyptians, is the mother of St John, 3 and that the same Gnostic circles in which this gospel is current were also those in which we hear for the first time of the Fourth Gospel. That is to say, the Fourth Gospel comes to us from the hands of the Alexandrine Gnostics. The system of Valentinus is really a somewhat fanciful

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commentary upon the opening chapters of St John’s Gospel. 1 Heracleon, the first great commentator 2 upon St John, was both a Gnostic and at the same time was really the master of Origen, and through him helped to determine the development of the orthodox theology. Now, the key to the interpretation of the Fourth Gospel is to be found in the Gnostic ideas which underlie the Poemandres, ideas to which Heracleon furnishes the clue. But the commentators have refused the help which the Gnostics could give, and the Fourth Gospel has been consistently misunderstood owing to the exaggerated stress which has been laid upon the doctrine of the λόγος.”

I am not quite clear what the last sentence is intended to mean. Too great stress cannot be laid upon the doctrine of the Logos, for it is, as we shall show, the fundamental concept of Hellenistic theology; but too great stress can and has been laid upon the illegitimate claim that the Proem of the Fourth Gospel embodies a peculiarly Christian doctrine.

Moreover, if the Fourth Gospel emerges in Alexandrine circles and is so essentially Gnostic, how can it be ascribed, as Granger appears to ascribe it, to “St John”? A very different conclusion seems to follow from Granger’s premisses.

The conclusion of the most recent study by English scholarship on our “Pœmandres” is as follows:

“The Poemandres, then, is a very striking exponent of the religious and philosophical ideas amid which

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[paragraph continues]Alexandrine theology arose. On the one hand it is in touch with Greek mythology and science; on the other, with Jewish and Christian literature. The author is more sober than most of his Gnostic contemporaries; he is a more consistent reasoner than Clement.” 1

But if, as we shall show, the date of the “Pœmandres” must be pushed back demonstrably at least a hundred years, and if, as is exceedingly probable, it must go back still further, the whole problem is changed, and the relationship of all the factors alters proportionately.

REITZENSTEIN AND THE DAWN OF RIGHT VIEWS

But in the present century, by the publication of Reitzenstein’s Poimandres, the whole subject has been placed on a different footing and brought into a clearer light. Reitzenstein attacks the problem of the Trismegistic writings from an entirely objective, historical, philological, and literary standpoint. Being entirely emancipated from any theological preconceptions, he is always careful to point out that his conclusions are based solely on critical research in the domain of philology proper; he cannot, however, refrain at times from adding (somewhat slily) that these results are of the deepest interest to the theologian—indeed, we might say highly embarrassing if the theologian happens to be a traditionalist.

The general scope of Reitzenstein’s essay may be gathered from his sub-title, “Studies in Greek-Egyptian and Early Christian Literature.” Our Trismegistic writings form part of a large number of Greek written texts, the remains of a once exceedingly extensive Hellenistic theological literature; and by Hellenistic

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theology is meant the blending of Greek and Oriental religious thought and experience. This Hellenistic theology was most strongly influenced by Egyptian conceptions and traditions. The Egyptian religion is known to have spread itself over the Hellenistic world, and every scholar will at once recall to mind how many Greek writers have treated expressly of the Egyptian religion, and how many passages in Greek literature refer to Egyptian beliefs, as compared with the very few which treat of Babylonian, Persian, or even Syrian.

Nevertheless, the remains of this Hellenistic theological literature have never been treated as a whole from the point of view of philology; the cause of this has been the entire disregard of the subject by Christian theologians, coupled with the grotesque grounds on which the consideration of the Hellenistic-Egyptian religion is usually set aside—one famous theologian lately going so far as to assert that the Egyptian worship was despised on all sides, both by Jews and Greeks, as the lowest depth of human superstition.

As then Egypt had a provably dominant position in Hellenistic literature, so also must she have had in some sort a correspondingly strong influence on Hellenistic culture, and consequently on the development of Hellenistic religious experience. The evidence of this is afforded by the Early Christian literature.

We have, therefore, here in these Greek-Egyptian and Early Christian documents the possibility of methodical work, seeing that it is a question of the comparative study of two contemporaneous literatures; moreover, the language and typology of the Christian literature is bound to betray traces of the general Hellenistic theology of the time (pp. v., vi.).

The study of Reitzenstein is thus a consideration of

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our Trismegistic literature as a whole, and the analysis and comparison of two of the most typical sermons with other Hellenistic documents and with Early Christian writings.

This he does with praiseworthy and painstaking industry, with great acumen and admirable scholarly equipment; but his work is of no service to any but scholars, and that, too, to scholars who are specialists. It is a work bristling with technicalities of every description, and crammed with untranslated texts. Indeed, Reitzenstein belongs to that school of philological purists who think it a loss of dignity to translate anything; this is a very convenient convention, and I myself have often wished that I could have availed myself of it when face to face with innumerable difficulties of translation.

Reitzenstein, then, translates nothing, but busies himself with texts and the higher criticism of the subject. He, however, does not give us the text of our literature as a whole, or even of the Corpus Hermeticum, but only of four chapters and the fragments of a fifth. Moreover, the results of his investigations are very difficult to summarise; indeed, he nowhere summarises them himself in any certain fashion, his chapters being on the whole of the nature of studies in the Trismegistic literature rather than a complete exposition.

Nevertheless these studies are, beyond comparison, the most important and suggestive work that has yet been done on the subject; and as I shall avail myself of his labours on so many occasions in the sequel, I cannot refrain from acknowledging here the special debt of gratitude which all lovers of our sermons must feel to him, for compelling the attention of scholars to the first importance of the Trismegistic literature in the

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domain of the history of the development of religious thought in the first centuries.

The general scope of his studies will be seen from the titles of the main chapters:—I. Age of the “Poimandres”; by “Poimandres” R. means C. H., i. only. II. Analysis of the “Poimandres”; III. Fundamental Conception of the “Poimandres”; IV. “Poimandres” and the Egyptian Apocalyptic Literature; V. Expansion of the Hermetic Literature; VI. The Hermetic Corpus; VII. The Later “Poimandres” Document (The Prophet-Initiation).

The theory of plagiarism from Christianity must for ever be abandoned. The whole literature is based on the “Pœmandres” as its original gospel, and the original form of this scripture must be placed at least prior to the second century A.D. How much earlier it goes back we cannot at present say with any exactitude; before the beginning of the second century is the terminus ad quem—that is to say it cannot possibly be later than this; to seek, therefore, for traditional Christian thoughts in this document is henceforth deprived of any prospect of success (p. 36).

Reitzenstein tells us (p. 2) that these writings in the first place interested him solely through their literary form, but that this interest became deepened as he gradually learned to value them as important records of that powerful religious movement which, like a flood, overflowed the West from the East, and, after preparing the way for Christianity, subsequently bore it along with it; the best and surest evidence of this religious revival is to be found in the literary form of Hellenistic theology.

This in itself is of interest enough and to spare; and at a time when every scrap of contemporary literature is being so eagerly scanned for the smallest side-light it

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can throw on the environment and development of Christian origins, it is amazing that the Trismegistic writings should have been hitherto so studiously neglected.

A KEY TO EGYPT’S WISDOM

But there is another and still more profoundly interesting side of the subject which we cannot expect to find treated in a purely philological, technical, and critical treatise. The more one studies the best of these mystical sermons, casting aside all prejudice, and trying to feel and think with the writers, the nearer one is conscious of approaching the threshold of what may well be believed to have been the true Adytum of the best in the mystery-traditions of antiquity. Innumerable are the hints of the greatnesses and immensities lying beyond that threshold—among other precious things the vision of the key to Egypt’s wisdom, the interpretation of apocalypsis by the light of the sun-clear epopteia of the intelligible cosmos.

Such greatnesses and such mysteries have a power and beauty which the most disreputable tradition of the texts through unknowing hands cannot wholly disguise, and they are still recognisable, even though thus clad in the rags of their once fair garments, by those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.

But to return to the points we raised in the opening of this chapter.

THE SUGGESTED ANSWERS TO OUR QUESTIONS

If we now re-state the problems we are considering in the interrogative form, we shall have to find answers to the following questions:

Why did the early Church Fathers accept the

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Trismegistic writings as exceedingly ancient and authoritative, and in their apologetic writings quote them in support of the main impersonal dogmas of Christianity?

Why, in the revival of learning, for upwards of a century and a half did all the Humanists welcome them with open arms as a most valuable adjunct to Christianity, and as being in accord with its main doctrines, so much so that they laboured to substitute Trismegistus for Aristotle in the schools?

Finally, why during the last two centuries and a half has a body of opinion been gradually evolved, infinitesimal in its beginnings, but well-nigh shutting out every other view, that these writings are Neoplatonic forgeries?

The answers to these questions are simple:—The Church Fathers appealed to the authority of antiquity and to a tradition that had never been called in question, in order to show that they taught nothing fundamentally new—that, in brief, they taught on main points what Hermes had taught. They lived in days too proximate to that tradition to have ventured on bringing any charge of plagiarism and forgery against it without exposing themselves to a crushing rejoinder from men who were still the hearers of its “living voice” and possessors of its “written word.”

The scholars of the Renaissance naturally followed the unvarying tradition of antiquity, confirmed by the Fathers of the Church.

Gradually, however, it was perceived that, if the old tradition were accepted, the fundamental originality of general Christian doctrines—that is to say, the philosophical basis of the Faith, as apart from the historical dogmas peculiar to it—could no longer be maintained. It, therefore, became imperatively necessary to discredit the ancient tradition by every possible

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means. With what success this policy has been attended we have already seen; we have also reviewed this growth of opinion, and shown its baseless character and the straits to which its defenders have been put.

From the clouds of this obscurantism the sun of Thrice-greatest Hermes and the radiance of his Gnosis have once more shone forth in the skies of humanistic enquiry and unprejudiced research. He is no longer to be called bastard, and plagiarist, and thief of other people’s property, but must be regarded as a genuine teacher of men, handing on his own, and giving freely of his substance to all who will receive the gift.

---

Footnotes

19:1 For a list of those who thought Hermes was prior to Moses, and even identical with Joseph, or even Adam, see Harles, p. 49 ff. and notes.

19:2 A Platonic philosopher who lived probably in the 4th century A.D.

20:1 Op. cit., p. 3a.

20:2 In which Patrizzi did but echo the opinion of his predecessors, such as Vergecius, the editor of the first edition of the Greek text, Candalle and many more.

21:1 De Zoroastre Bactriano Hermete Trismegisto Sanchoniathone Phœnicio eorumque Scriptis, et Aliis contra Mosaicæ Scripturæ Antiquitatem; Exercitationes Familiares, pp. 73-180—a book now very scarce.

21:2 Jacobi Bruckeri, Historia Critica Philosophiæ (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1767), i. 252 ff. Lib. ii., cap. vii., “De Philosophia Ægyptiorum.” See also Meiners’ Versuch über die Religionsgeschichte der ältesten Völker besonders der Egyptier (Göttingen, 1775).

21:3 De Rebus Sacris . . . Exercitationes ad Card. Baronii Prolegomena, i., n. 10 (London, 1614). Casaubon concludes that the whole book, i.e. the “Pœmandres,” is a pseudepigraph, the pure invention of some Christian or other, or perhaps better, of some semi-Christian (p. 56).

22:1 See his dissertation on Hermes and the Hermetic writings in the edition of 1820, vol. ii., pp. 128-155.

22:2 Though Reitzenstein (p. 1) speaks of the”schneidende Kritik“ of Casaubon.

22:3 Vol. i., p. 89, of the following amply entitled work, Das Platonisch-Hermetisches [sic] Christenthum, begriffend die historische Erzehlung vom Ursprung und vielerley Secten der heutigen Fanatischen Theologie, unterm Namen der Paracelsisten, Weigelianer, Rosencreutzer, Quäker, Bohmisten, Wiedertäuffer, Bourignisten, Labadisten und Quietisten, by M. Ehre Gott Daniel Colberg, 2 vols. (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1690, 1691).

23:1 Op. supr. cit.; the most “advanced” writer on the subject being Tiedemann, to whose work we have already referred; but unfortunately we have not been able to procure a copy, and the British Museum is without it. Tiedemann thinks that none of the Trismegistic writings existed before the fourth century, while Fabricius himself, whose summary of prior opinion is overworked by Harles, assigns them to the time of Porphyry and Iamblichus, though Harles dates the earliest of them from the end of the first to the middle of the second century (p. 48, n.).

23:2 It may be worth while here to record the opinion of Gibbon, who would ascribe a Christian origin to some of the Trismegistic writings, and impatiently dismisses the subject by classing Hermes with Orpheus and the Sibyls as a cloak for Christian forgery (vol. ii. p. 69, Bury’s ed.).

24:1 How the public is catered for may be seen from any popular “knowledge”-digest. The following will serve as a specimen, taken from the article “Hermes Trismegistus,” in The American Encyclopædia: a Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge, edited by Ripley and Dana (New York, 1874): “In the conflict between Neoplatonism and Christianity, the former sought to give a profounder and more spiritual meaning to the pagan philosophy, by combining the wisdom of the Egyptians and the Greeks, and representing it as a very ancient, divine revelation.”

24:2 Delivered before the University of Jena at Pentecost, 1827, by Lud. Frid. Otto Baumgarten-Crusius.

24:3 Orelli (J. C.), Sanchoniathonis Fragmenta de Cosmogonia et Theologia Phœnicorum (Leipzig, 1826).

25:1 Hilgers (B. J.), De Hermetis Trismegisti Poimandro Commentatio (Bonn, 1855), suggested by the appearance of Parthey’s text in 1854.

25:2 Möhler (J. A.), Patrologie, pp. 950-951—a brief note on Hermes. Ed. by F. X. Reithmayr (Regensberg, 1840).

26:1 Op. cit., pp. 16-17.

27:1 The whole of this article has been lifted, without acknowledgment, by M‘Clintock and Strong in their Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (New York, 1872).

28:1 Pierret, Mélanges d’Archéologie égyptienne et assyrienne, i. (1873), p. 112; R. 1, n. 1.

28:2 Op. sup. cit., 1866.

29:1 The popular Christian solution, Ménard should have said.

32:1 Gesch. d. griech. Philos., III., ii., 225 ff. Zeller, while recognising the Gnostic nature of C. H. i. and C. H. xiii. (xiv.), treats the rest of our Corpus as an expression of declining Paganism. So also Erdmann (Hist. Philos., i. 113, 2, Tr.), who deals with our Corpus only, and assigns its sermons to different authors and times. He contends that C. H. xiii. (xiv.) shows a Neo-pythagorean tendency, a term far vaguer than Neo-platonic even.

33:1 Hermes Trismegistos n. ägyp., griech. u. oriental. Überlieferungen (Leipzig, 1875).

33:2 A laborious article replete with references, but dealing solely with the Hermes-saga and not with our writings.

33:3 Aall (A.), Geschichte der Logosidee in der Philosophie (Leipzig, vol. i. 1896, vol. ii. 1899), ii. 78, n. 4.

33:4 Cf. Reitzenstein, Zwei religionsgeschichtliche Fragen (Strassburg, 1901), p. 93, n. 3.

34:1 Art. “Hermes and Hermes Trismegistus,” by L. Schmitz, in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (London, 1870), a work which is now entirely out of date; Jowett’s art., “Hermes Trismegistus,” in the Encyclopædia Britannica (9th ed., London, 1880), repeated in the recent reprint without alteration; and Mozley’s art., “Hermes Trismegistus,” in Smith and Wace’s Dictionary of Christian Biography (London, 1882); to both of which articles, if not to the works themselves, the above remark also applies.

34:2 The Theological and Philosophical Works of Hermes Trismegistus, Christian Neoplatonist.

35:1 Op. cit., p. xii.

35:2 In this repeating de Foix, who attempted the same task more than three hundred years before.

36:1 “The Poemandres of Hermes Trismegistus,” in The Journal of Theological Studies, vol. v. No. 19, April 1904 (London).

37:1 Namely, that of the Good Shepherd.

37:2 This is a reflection of Ménard’s sensible view.

38:1 Ibid., p. 406.

38:2 Ibid., p. 411.

38:3 I have never come across this statement before, and so regret that G. has not given his authority. If such were the tradition, it would be exceedingly instructive. Salome, however, in the fragments of this Gospel preserved to us, says categorically that she has never “brought forth.”

39:1 It is not, even if the “opening chapters” be reduced to the Proem. Heracleon, one of the disciples of Valentinus, comments directly on this Proem, but from the point of view of a quite independent tradition.

39:2 The first commentator of any kind of which we have any knowledge, rather.

40:1 Ibid., p. 412.

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III

THOTH THE MASTER OF WISDOM

THOTH (TEḤUTI)

The present chapter will be devoted to a brief consideration of the nature, powers, and attributes of the divine personification Thoth (Teḥuti), the Master of Wisdom and Truth, on the ground of pure Egyptian tradition. As I have unfortunately no sufficient knowledge of Egyptian, I am not in a position to control by the texts the information which will be set before the reader; it will, however, be derived from the works of specialists, and mainly from the most recent study on the subject, the two sumptuous volumes of Dr E. A. Wallis Budge, the keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities in the British Museum.

First of all, however, let us see what the German scholar Pietschmann has had to say on Thoth in his monograph specially devoted to Thrice-greatest Hermes according to Egyptian, Greek, and Oriental traditions. 1

The first part of Pietschmann’s treatise, in which he seems to be content, as far as his own taste and feeling are concerned, to trace the original of the grandiose concept of the Thrice-greatest to the naïve conception of an “ibis-headed moon-god,” is devoted to the consideration of what he calls the god Teχ-Ṭeḥuti among

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the Egyptians. Why Pietschmann should have chosen this double form of the name for his sub-title is not very clear. The variants appear to be Teḥ, Teḥu, Teḥut, and Teḥuti—of which it would seem that the Greek form Thoth is an attempt to transliterate Teḥut. There are, however, it may be remarked, no less than eighteen variants of the name found in Greek and Latin. I should thus myself be inclined to use the form Teḥut if it were permissible; but of this I am not quite sure, as the weak-sounding though undoubtedly more common form Teḥuti, is usually employed by scholars. As, however, Teḥuti, to my ears at any rate, is not a very dignified sounding cognomen, I shall use the Greek form Thoth as being the more familiar to English readers.

THOTH ACCORDING TO PIETSCHMANN

Horapollo tells us that the ibis was the symbol of Thoth as the “master of the heart and reason in all men,” 1 though why this was so must remain hidden in the mystery of the “sacred animals,” which has not yet to my knowledge been in any way explained.

And as Thoth, the Logos, was in the hearts of all, so was he the heart of the world whose life directed and permeated all things. 2

Thus the temple, as the dwelling of the God, was regarded as a model of the world, and its building as a copy of the world-building. And just as Thoth had ordained measure, number, and order in the universe, so was he the master-architect of temple-building and of all the mystic monuments. Thus, as the ordering world-mind, a text addresses Thoth as follows:

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“Thou art the great, the only God, the Soul of the Becoming.” 1

To aid him in the world Thoth has a spouse, or syzygy, Nehe-māut. She is, among the Gnostics, the Sophia-aspect of the Logos. She is presumably the Nature of our Trismegistic treatises. Together Thoth and Nehe-māut are the initiators of all order, rule, and law in the universe.

Thus Thoth is especially the representative of the Spirit, the Inner Reason of all things; he is the Protector of all earthly laws, and every regulation of human society. 2 Says a text:

“His law is firmly established, like that of Thoth.” 3

As representative of the Reason immanent in the world, Thoth is the mediator through whom the world is brought into manifestation. He is the Tongue of Rā, the Herald of the Will of Rā, 4 and the Lord of Sacred Speech. 5

“What emanates from the opening of his mouth, that cometh to pass; he speaks, and it is his command; he is the Source of Speech, the Vehicle of Knowledge, the Revealer of the Hidden.” 6

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Thoth is thus the God of writing and all the arts and sciences. On a monument of Seti I. he is called “Scribe of the nine Gods.” He writes “the truth of the nine Gods,” and is called “Scribe of the King of Gods and men.”

Hence he is naturally inventor of the hieroglyphics, and patron and protector of all temple-archives and libraries, and of all scribes. At the entrance of one of the halls of the Memnonium at Thebes, the famous “Library of Osymandias,” called “The great House of Life,” we find Thoth as “Lord in the Hall of Books.” 1

In the Ebers papyrus we read: “His guide is Thoth, who bestows on him the gifts of his speech, who makes the books, and illumines those who are learned therein, and the physicians who follow him, that they may work cures.”

We shall see that one of the classes of priests was devoted to the healing of the body, just as another was devoted to the healing of the soul.

These books are also called “The Great Gnoses of Thoth.” 2 Thoth was thus God of medicine, but not so much by drugs as by means of mesmeric methods and certain “magic formulæ.” Thus he is addressed as “Thoth, Lord of Heaven, who givest all life, all health.” 3

THE THREE GRADES OF THE EGYPTIAN MYSTERIES

Moreover, Thoth was also Lord of Rebirth: 4 “Thou hast given life in the Land of the Living; Thou hast

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made them live in the Region of Flames; Thou hast given respect of thy counsels in the breasts and in the hearts of men—mortals, intelligences, creatures of light.”

The Land of the Living was the Invisible World, a glorious Land of Light and Life for the seers of ancient Egypt. Mortals, Intelligences, Creatures of Light, were, says Pietschmann, the “three grades of the Egyptian mysteries.” 1 These grades were, one may assume from our treatises: (1) Mortals—probationary pupils who were instructed in the doctrine, but who had not yet realised the inner vision; (2) Intelligences—those who had done so and had become “men,” that is to say who had received the “Mind”; (3) Beings (or Sons) of Light—those who had become one with the Light, that is to say those who had reached the nirvāṇic consciousness.

So much for what Pietschmann can be made to tell us of Thoth as Wisdom-God among the Egyptians.

THOTH ACCORDING TO REITZENSTEIN

To the information in Pietschmann may be added that which is given by Reitzenstein in the second of his two important studies, Zwei religionsgeschichtliche Fragen nach ungedruckten Texten der Strassburger Bibliothek (Strassburg, 1901). This second study deals with “Creation-myths and the Logos-doctrine,” the special Creation-myths treated of being found in a hitherto unpublished Greek text, which hands on purely Egyptian ideas in Greek dress and with Greek god-names, and which is of great interest and importance for the general subject of which our present studies form part.

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The writer of this cosmogonical fragment was a priest or prophet of Hermes, and Hermes plays the most important part in the creation-story. Reitzenstein then proceeds to show that in the oldest Egyptian cosmogony the cosmos is brought into being through the Divine Word, which Thoth, who seems to have originally been equated with the Sun-god, speaks forth. This gives him the opportunity of setting down the attributes ascribed to Thoth in Egypt in pre-Greek times. 1 As, however, the same ground is covered more fully by Budge, we will now turn to his Gods of the Egyptians, or Studies in Egyptian Mythology (London, 1904), vol. i. pp. 400 ff., and lay under contribution the chapter entitled “Thoth (Teḥuti) and Maāt, and the other Goddesses who were associated with him,” as the most recent work on the subject by a specialist in Egyptological studies, whose opinions, it is true, may doubtless on many points be called into question by other specialists, but whose data must be accepted by the layman as based on prolonged first-hand study of the original texts. In using the material supplied by Dr Budge, however, I shall venture on setting it forth as it appears to me—that is to say, with the ideas awakened in my own mind by the study of his facts.

THOTH ACCORDING TO BUDGE

In the Hymns to Rā in the Ritual or Book of the Dead, and in works of a similar nature, we find that Thoth and Maāt stand one on either side of the Great God in his Boat, and that their existence was believed to be coeval with his own. Maāt is thus seen to be the feminine counterpart, syzygy or shakti, of Thoth, and her name is associated with the idea of Truth and

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[paragraph continues]Righteousness—that which is right, true, real, genuine, upright, righteous, just, steadfast, unalterable.

HIS DEIFIC TITLES

From the inscriptions of the later dynastic period, moreover, we learn that Thoth was called “Lord of Khemennu (Hermopolis), Self-created, to whom none hath given birth, God One.” He is the great Measurer, the Logos, “He who reckons in Heaven, the Counter of the Stars, the Enumerator of the Earth and of what is therein, and the Measurer of the Earth.”

He is the “Heart of Rā which cometh forth in the form of the God Thoth.”

As Lord of Hermopolis, where was his chief shrine, and of his temples in other cities, he was called “Lord of Divine Words,” “Lord of Maāt,” “Judge of the two Combatant Gods”—that is, of Horus and Set. Among other titles we find him called “Twice-great,” and “Thrice-great.” “From this last,” says Budge, “were derived the epithets ‘Trismegistus’ and ‘Termaximus’ of the classical writers.” We, however, doubt if this is so, and prefer the explanation of Griffith, as we shall see later on.

In addition to these deific titles, which identify him with the Logos in the highest meaning of the term, he was also regarded as the Inventor and God of all arts and sciences; he was “Lord of Books,” “Scribe of the Gods,” and “Mighty in speech”—that is to say, “his words took effect,” says Budge; his was the power of the “Spoken Word,” the Word whose language is action and realisation. He was said to be the author of many of the so-called “funeral works” by means of which the “deceased” gained everlasting life. These books were, however, rather in their origin sermons of

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initiation for living men, setting forth the “death unto sin and the new birth unto righteousness.” Thus in the Book of the Dead he plays a part to which are assigned powers greater than those of Osiris or even of Rā himself.

HIS SYMBOLS AND NAME

He is usually depicted in human form with the head of an ibis, or sometimes as an ibis; but why he is so symbolised remains a mystery even unto this day. It is also of little purpose to set down the emblems he carries, or the various crowns he wears, without some notion of what these hidden symbols of a lost wisdom may purport. The meanings of these sacred signs were clear enough, we may believe, to those who were initiated into the “Language of the Word”; to them they revealed the mystery, while for the profane they veiled and still veil their true significance.

Teḥuti, the Egyptian name of Thoth, it has been suggested, is to be derived from teḥu, the supposed oldest name of the ibis in Egypt; the termination ti thus signifying that he who was thus called possessed the powers and qualities of the ibis.

But if this is the true derivation, seeing that Teḥuti in his highest aspect is a synonym for the Logos of our system at the very least, I would suggest that we should rather exalt the “ibis” to the heavens than drag down the sublime concept of that Logos to considerations connected with a degenerate fowl of earth, and believe that the Egyptians chose it in wisdom rather than folly, as being some far-off reflection of a certain Great Bird of the Cosmic Depths, a member of that circle of Sacred Animals of which the now conventional Signs of the Zodiac are but faint sky-glyphs.

But the derivation of the name Teḥuti which seems

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to have been favoured by the Egyptians themselves was from tekh, which usually means a “weight,” but is also found as the name of Thoth himself. Now the determinative for the word tekh is the sign for the “heart”; moreover, Horapollo (i. 36) tells us that when the Egyptians wish to write “heart” they draw an ibis, adding, “for this bird was dedicated to Hermes (Thoth) as Lord of all Knowledge and Understanding.” Is it possible, however, that in this Horapollo was either mistaken or has said less than he knew; and that the Egyptians once wrote simply “heart” for Thoth, who presided over the “weighing of the heart,” but subsequently, in their love of mystery, and owing to the name-play, substituted the bird tekh or teknu, which we know closely resembled the ibis, for the more sacred symbol?

The now commonest name for Thoth, however, is Egy. hab, Copt, hibōi, Gk. ibis; and it is the white ibis (Abû Hannes) which is the Ibis religiosa, so say Liddell and Scott. Another of the commonest symbolic forms of Thoth is the dog-headed ape. Thus among birds he is glyphed as the ibis, among animals as the cynocephalus. The main apparent reason for this, as we shall see later on, is because the ibis was regarded as the wisest of birds, and the ape of animals. 1

In the Judgment Scene of the Book of the Dead the dog-headed ape (Āān) is seated on the top of the beam of the Balance in which the heart of the deceased is weighed; his duty apparently is to watch the pointer and tell his master Thoth when the beam is level. Brugsch has suggested that this ape is a form of Thoth

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as God of “equilibrium,” and that it elsewhere symbolises the equinoxes; but this does not explain the ape. Thoth is indeed, as we have seen, the Balancer—“Judge of the two Combatant Gods,” 1 Horus and Set; he it is who stands at the meeting of the Two Ways, at the junction of Order and Chaos; but this by no means explains the puzzling cynocephalus. It was in one sense presumably connected with a certain state of consciousness, a reflection of the true Mind, just as were the lion and the eagle (or hawk); it “mimicked” that Mind better than the rest of the “animals.”

Horapollo (i. 16), basing himself on some Hellenistic sources, tells us that the Egyptians symbolised the equinoxes by a sitting cynocephalus. One of the reasons which he gives for this is delightfully “Physiologic”; he tells us that at the equinoxes once every two hours, or twelve times a day, the cynocephalus micturates. 2 From this as from so many of such tales we learn what the “sacred animal” did in heaven, rather than what the physical ape performed on earth. (Cf. R. 265, n. 3.)

THE SHRINE OF THOTH

“The principal seat of the Thoth-cult was Khemennu, or Hermopolis, a city famous in Egyptian mythology as the place containing the “high ground on which Rā rested when he rose for the first time.”

Dare I here speculate that in this we have the mountain of our “Secret Sermon on the Mountain,”

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and that it was in the Thoth mystery-tradition of Hermopolis that the candidates for initiation were taught to ascend the mountain of their own inner natures, on the top of which the Spiritual Sun would rise and rest upon their heads “for the first time,” as Isis says in our “Virgin of the World” treatise?

THOTH AND HIS COMPANY OF EIGHT

At Khemennu 1 Thoth was regarded as the head of a Company of Eight—four pairs of divinities or divine powers, each a syzygy of male and female powers, positive and negative, active and passive, the oldest example of the Gnostic Ogdoad.

This was long ago the view of Brugsch, and it is now strongly supported by Budge, on the evidence of the texts, as against the opinion of Maspero, who would make the Hermopolitan a copy of the Heliopolitan Paut, or Company, which included Osiris and Isis. Budge, however, squarely declares that “the four pairs of gods of Hermopolis belong to a far older conception of the theogony than that of the company of gods of Heliopolis.”

If this judgment is well founded, we have here a most interesting parallel in the Osirian type of our Trismegistic literature, in which Osiris and Isis look to Hermes (Thoth) as their teacher, as being far older and wiser than themselves.

The great struggle between Light and Darkness, of the God of Light and the God of Darkness, goes back to the earliest Egyptian tradition, and the fights of Rā and Āpep, Ḥeru-Behuṭet and Set, and Horus, son of Isis, and Set, are “in reality only different versions of one and the same story, though belonging

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to different periods.” The Horus and Set version is apparently the most recent. The names of the Light God and Dark God thus change, but what does not change is the name of the Arbiter, the Mediator, “whose duty it was to prevent either God from gaining a decisive victory, and from destroying one another.” This Balancer was Thoth, who had to keep the opposites in equilibrium.

THE HOUSE OF THE NET

The name of the Temple of Thoth at Khemennu, or the City of Eight, was Ḥet Ȧbtit, or “House of the Net”—a very curious expression. From Ch. cliii. of the Ritual, however, we learn that there was a mysterious Net which, as Budge says, “was supposed to exist in the Under World and that the deceased regarded it with horror and detestation. Every part of it—its poles, and ropes, and weights, and small cords, and hooks—had names which he was obliged to learn if he wished to escape from it, and make use of it to catch food for himself, instead of being caught by ‘those who laid snares.’”

Interpreting this from the mystical standpoint of the doctrine of Rebirth, or the rising from the dead—that is to say, of the spiritual resurrection of those who had died to the darkness of their lower natures and had become alive to the light of the spiritual life, and this too while alive in the body and not after the death of this physical frame—I would venture to suggest that this Net was the symbol of a certain condition of the inner nature which shut in the man into the limitations of the conventional life of the world, and shut him off from the memory of his true self. The poles, ropes, weights, small cords, and hooks

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were symbols of the anatomy and physiology, so to say, of the invisible “body” or “carapace” or “egg” or “envelope” of the soul. The normal man was emeshed in this engine of Fate; the man who received the Mind inverted this Net, so to speak, transmuted and transformed it, so that he could catch food for himself. “Come ye after me and I will make you fishers of men.” The food with which the “Christ” nourishes his “body” is supplied by men.

Thus in a prayer in this chapter of the Ritual we read: “Hail, thou ‘God who lookest behind thee,’ 1 thou ‘God who hast gained the mastery over thine heart,’ 2 I go a-fishing with the cordage [? net] of the ‘Uniter of the earth,’ and of him that maketh a way through the earth. 3 Hail ye Fishers who have given birth to your own fathers, 4 who lay snares with your nets, and who go round about in the chambers of the waters, take ye not me in the net wherewith ye ensnare the helpless fiends, and rope me not in with the rope wherewith ye roped in the abominable fiends of earth, which had a frame which reached unto heaven, and weighted parts that rested upon earth.” 5

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And in another chapter (cxxxiii.) the little man says to the Great Man within him: “Lift thyself up, O thou Rā, who dwellest in this divine shrine; draw thou unto thyself the winds, inhale the North wind, and swallow thou the beqesu of thy net on the day wherein thou breathest Maāt.”

“On the day wherein thou breathest Maāt” suggests the inbreathing or inspiration of Truth and Righteousness, the Holy Ghost, or Holy Breath or Life, the Spouse of the Ordering Mind or Logos. The winds are presumably the four great cosmic currents of the Divine Breath, the North wind being the “down-breath” of the Great Sphere.

The term beqesu has not yet been deciphered (can it mean knots?); but the swallowing of the Net seems to suggest the transformation of it, inwardly digesting of it, in such a fashion that the lower is set free and becomes one with the higher.

And that this idea of a net is very ancient, especially in its macrocosmic significance, is evidenced by the parallel of the Assyrian and Babylonian versions of the great fight between the Sun-god Marduk and the Chaotic Mother Tiamat and her titanic and daimonic powers of disordered motion and instability—both Egyptian and Babylonian traditions probably being derived from some primitive common source.

“He (Marduk) set lightning in front of him, with burning fire he filled his body. He made a net to enclose the inward parts of Tiamat, the Four Winds he set so that nothing of her might escape; the South wind and the North wind, and the East wind and the West

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wind, he brought near to the net which his father Anu had given him.” 1

Now in the Hymns of the popular Hermes-cult found in the Greek Magic Papyri, one of the most favourite forms of address to Hermes is “O thou of the four winds.” Moreover, we may compare with the rope with which the Fishers “rope the abominable fiends of earth,” the passage of Athenagoras to which we have already referred, and in which he tells us concerning the Mysteries that the mythos ran that Zeus, after dismembering his father, and taking the kingdom, pursued his mother Rhea who refused his nuptials. “But she having assumed a serpent form, he also assumed the same form, and having bound her with what is called the ‘Noose of Hercules’ (τῷ καλουμένῳ Ἡρακλειωτικῷ ἄμματι), was joined with her. And the symbol of this transformation is the Rod of Hermes.”

Here again it is the symbolic Caduceus that represents the equilibrium between the opposed forces; it is the power of Thoth that binds and loosens; he holds the keys of heaven and hell, of life and death. It is further quite evident that Athenagoras is referring to a Hellenistic form of the Mysteries, in which the influence of Egypt is dominant. The “Noose of Hercules” is thus presumably the “Noose of Ptah.” Now Ptah is the creator and generator, and his “Noose” or “Tie” is probably the Ankh-tie or symbol of life, the familiar crux ansata, of which the older form is a twisted rope, probably representing the binding together of male and female life in generation. Ptah is also the God of Fire, and we should not forget that it is Hephaistos in Greek myth who catches Aphrodite and Ares in a Net which he has cunningly contrived—at which the gods laughed in High Olympus.

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In the list of titles of the numerous works belonging to the cycle of Orphic literature, one is called The Veil (Πέπλος) and another The Net (Δίκτυον). 1

In the Panathenæa the famous Peplum, Veil, Web, or Robe of Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom, was borne aloft like the sail of a galley; but this was the symbol only of the Mysteries. Mystically it signified the Veil of the Universe, studded with stars, the many-coloured Veil of Nature, 2 the famous Veil or Robe of Isis, that no “mortal” or “dead man” has raised, for that Veil was the spiritual nature of the man himself, and to raise it he had to transcend the limits of individuality, break the bonds of death, and so become consciously immortal.

Eschenbach 3 is thus quite correct when, in another of its aspects, he refers this Veil to the famous Net of Vulcan. Moreover Aristotle, quoting the Orphic writings, speaks of the “living creature born in the webs of the Net”; 4 while Photius tells us that the book of Dionysius Ægeensis, entitled Netting, or Concerning Nets (Δικτυακά), treated of the generation of mortals. 5 And Plato himself likens the intertwining of the nerves, veins, and arteries to the “network of a basket” or a bird-cage. 6

All of which, I think, shows that Thoth’s Temple of the Net must have had some more profound significance in its name than that it was a building in which “the emblem of a net, or perhaps a net itself, was venerated,” as Budge lamely surmises.

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THOTH THE LOGOS

But to resume. We have seen that Thoth was considered to be the “heart” and “tongue” of Rā the Supreme—that is, not only the reason and mental powers of the god Rā, and the means whereby they were translated into speech, but rather the Controller of the life and Instrument of the utterance of the Supreme Will; He was the Logos in the fullest sense of that mysterious name, the Creative Word. He it is who utters the “words” whereby the Will of the Supreme is carried into effect, and his utterance is that of Necessity and Law; his “words” are not the words of feeble human speech, but the compelling orders of the Creative Will.

“He spoke the words which resulted in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and he taught Isis the words which enabled her to revivify the dead body of Osiris, in suchwise that Osiris could beget a child by her; and he gave her the formulæ which brought back her son Horus to life after he had been stung to death by a scorpion.”

All of which, I believe, refers microcosmically to the mystery of the resurrection from the dead, by the power of the Logos. “Osiris” must die before he can be raised, and beget a son, who is himself, by immaculate conception within his own spiritual nature. “Horus” must be poisoned to death by the scorpion of “Typhon” before he can be raised by the baptism of the pure waters of Life.

THE WORDS OF THOTH

Thoth’s “knowledge and powers of calculation measured out the heavens and planned the earth, and

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everything which is in them; his will and power kept the forces in heaven and earth in equilibrium; it was his skill in celestial mathematics which made proper use of the laws (maāt) upon which the foundation and maintenance of the universe rested; it was he who directed the motions of the heavenly bodies and their times and seasons; and without his words the gods, whose existence depended upon them, could not have kept their place among the followers of Rā”—but would presumably have disappeared into another universe.

Thoth is the Judge of the dead, the Recorder and Balancer of all “words,” the Recording Angel; for the testing of the soul in the Balance of the Hall of Osiris is called the “weighing of words” and not of “actions.” But these “words” were not the words a man uttered, nor even the “reasons” he thought he had for his deeds, but the innermost intentions of his soul, the ways of the will of his being.

This doctrine of “words” as expressions of will, however, had, in addition to its moral significance, a magical application. “The whole efficacy of prayer appears to have depended upon the manner and tone of voice in which the words were spoken.”

It was Thoth who taught these words-of-power and how to utter them; he was the Master of what the Hindus would call mantra-vidyā, or the science of invocation or sacred chanting. These mantrāḥ were held in ancient Egypt, as they were and are to-day in India, and elsewhere among knowers of such matters, of special efficacy in affecting the “bodies” and conditions of that fluid nature which exists midway between the comparative solidity of normal physical nature and the fixed nature of the mind.

These “words” were connected with vital “breath” and the knowing use of it; that is to say, they were

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only really efficacious when the spoken words of physical sound corresponded naturally in their vowels and consonants, or their fluid and fixed elements, with the permutations and combinations of the inner elements of Nature; they then and only then were maā or true or authentic or real—that is to say, they were “words-of -power” in that they compelled matter to shape itself according to true cosmic notions.

Thus in a book called The Book of Breathings, it is said: “Thoth, the most mighty God, the Lord of Khemennu, cometh to thee, and he writeth for thee The Book of Breathings with his own fingers. 1 Thus thy soul shall breathe for ever and ever, and thy form shall be endowed with life upon earth, and thou shalt be made a God, along with the souls of the Gods, and they shall be the heart of Rā [for thee], and thy members shall be the members of the Great God.”

THOTH AND THE OSIRIFIED

In the Ritual we learn of the services which Thoth performs for “Osiris,” that is for the Osirified, for he repeats them for every man who has been acquitted in the Judgment. Of three striking passages quoted by Budge, we will give the following as the most comprehensible, and therefore the seemingly most important for us. It is to be found in Ch. clxxxiii. and runs as follows, in the words placed in the mouth of the one who is being resurrected into an Osiris.

“I have come unto thee, O son of Nut, Osiris, Prince of everlastingness; I am in the following of God Thoth, and I have rejoiced at everything which he hath done for thee. He hath brought unto thee sweet air for thy nose, and life and strength for thy beautiful face, and

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the North wind which cometh forth from Tem for thy nostrils. . . . He hath made God Shu to shine upon thy body; he hath illumined thy path with rays of splendour; he hath destroyed for thee [all] the evil defects which belong to thy members by the magical power of the words of his utterance. He hath made the two Horus brethren to be at peace for thee; 1 he hath destroyed the storm wind and the hurricane; he hath made the Two Combatants to be gracious unto thee, and the two lands 2 to be at peace before thee; he hath put away the wrath which was in their hearts, and each hath become reconciled unto his brother.”

THOTH THE MEASURER

Budge then proceeds to give the attributes of Thoth as connected with time-periods and the instruments of time, the sun and moon. As Ȧāh-Teḥuti, he is the Measurer and Regulator of times and seasons, and is clearly not the Moon-god simply—though Budge says that he clearly is—for Thoth as Ȧāh is the “Great Lord, the Lord of Heaven, the King of the Gods”; he is the “Maker of Eternity and Creator of Everlastingness.” He is, therefore, not only the Æon, but its creator; and that is something vastly different from the Moon-god.

THE TITLE “THRICE-GREATEST”

On p. 401 our authority has already told us that one of the titles of Thoth is “Thrice-great,” and that the Greeks derived the honorific title Trismegistus from this; but on p. 415 he adds: “The title given to him in some inscriptions, ‘three times great, great’

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[paragraph continues][that is, greatest], from which the Greeks derived their appellation of the god ὁ τρισμέγιστος, or ‘ter maximus,’ has not yet been satisfactorily explained, and at present the exact meaning which the Egyptians assigned to it is unknown.”

If this title is found in the texts, it will settle a point of long controversy, for it has been strenuously denied that it ever occurs in the hieroglyphics; unfortunately, however, Dr Budge gives us no references. To the above sentence our distinguished Egyptologist appends a note to the effect that a number of valuable facts on the subject have been collected by Pietschmann in the book we have already made known to our readers. We have, however, not been able to find any valuable facts in Pietschmann which are in any way an elucidation of the term Thrice-greatest; but to this point we will return in another chapter.

THE SUPREMACY OF THOTH

The peculiar supremacy ascribed to Thoth by the Egyptians, however, has been amply demonstrated, and, as the great authority to whom we are so deeply indebted, says in his concluding words: “It is quite clear that Thoth held in their minds a position which was quite different from that of any other god, and that the attributes which they ascribed to him were unlike the greater number of those of any member of their companies of gods. The character of Thoth is a lofty and a beautiful conception, and is, perhaps, the highest idea of deity ever fashioned in the Egyptian mind, which, as we have already seen, was somewhat prone to dwell on the material side of divine matters. Thoth, however, as the personification of the Mind of God, and as the all-pervading, and governing, and directing power

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of heaven and earth, forms a feature of the Egyptian religion which is as sublime as the belief in the resurrection of the dead in a spiritual body, and as the doctrine of everlasting life.”

Thoth is then the Logos of God, who in his relation to mankind becomes the Supreme Master of Wisdom, 1 the Mind of all masterhood.

We will now turn to one whose views are considered heterodox by conservative and unimaginative critics, 2 who confine themselves solely to externals, and to the lowest and most physical meanings of the hieroglyphics—to one who has, I believe, come nearer to the truth than any of his critics, and whose labours are most highly appreciated by all lovers of Egyptian mystic lore.

THE VIEWS OF A SCHOLAR-MYSTIC

The last work of W. Marsham Adams 3 deserves the closest attention of every theosophical student. Not, however, that we think the author’s views with regard to a number of points of detail, and especially with regard to the make-up of the Great Pyramid, are to be accepted in any but the most provisional manner, for as yet we in all probability do not know what the full contents of that pyramid are, only a portion of them being known to us according to some seers. The chief merit of the book before us is the intuitional grasp of

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its author on the general nature of the mystery-cultus, as derived from the texts, and especially those of the Ritual or the so-called Book of the Dead, as Lepsius named it, setting a bad fashion which is not yet out of fashion. The Egyptian priests themselves, according to our author, called it The Book of the Master of the Secret House, the Secret House being, according to Adams, the Great Pyramid, otherwise called the “Light.”

THE SPIRITUAL NATURE OF THE INNER TRADITION OF EGYPTIAN WISDOM

In his Preface the author gives us clearly to understand that he regards the Wisdom of Egypt as forming the main background of some of the principal teachings of Early Christianity; and that this view is strongly confirmed by a careful study of the Trismegistic literature and its sources, will be made apparent in the course of our own labours. But before we proceed to quote from the former Fellow of New College, Oxford, whose recent death is regretted by all lovers of Egypt’s Wisdom, we must enter a protest.

Mr Adams has severely handicapped his work; indeed, he has destroyed nine-tenths of its value for scholars, by neglecting to append the necessary references to the texts which he cites. Such an omission is suicidal, and, indeed, it would be impossible for us to quote Mr Adams were it not that our Trismegistic literature permits us—we might almost say compels us—to take his view of the spiritual nature of the inner tradition of Egyptian Wisdom. Not, however, by any means that our author has traversed the same ground; he has not even mentioned the name of the Thrice-greatest one, and seems to have been ignorant of our treatises. Mr Adams claims to have arrived at his

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conclusions solely from the Egyptian texts themselves, and to have been confirmed in his ideas by personal inspection of the monuments. In fact, he considers it a waste of time to pay attention to anything written in Greek about Egyptian ideas, and speaks of “the distortion and misrepresentation wherein those ideas were involved, when filtered through the highly imaginative but singularly unobservant intellect of Greece.” 1 Thus we have a writer attacking the same problem from a totally different standpoint—for we ourselves regard the Greek tradition of the Egyptian Gnosis as a most valuable adjunct to our means of knowledge of the Mind of Egypt—and yet reaching very similar conclusions.

THE HOLY LAND OF EGYPT AND ITS INITIATES

The Holy Land of those who had gone out from the body, watered by the Celestial Nile, the River of Heaven, of which the earthly river was a symbol and parallel, was divided into three regions, or states: (1) Rusta, the Territory of Initiation; (2) Aahlu, the Territory of Illumination; and (3) Amenti, the Place of Union with the Unseen Father. 2

“In the religion of Egypt, the deepest and most fascinating mystery of antiquity, the visible creation, was conceived as the counterpart of the unseen world. 3 And the substance consisted not of a mere vague belief in the life beyond the grave, but in tracing out the Path whereby the Just, when the portal of the tomb is lifted up, 4 passes through the successive stages of

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[paragraph continues]Initiation, of Illumination, and of Perfection, necessary to fit him for an endless union with Light, the Great Creator.” 1

Thus we are told that at a certain point in Aahlu, the Territory of Illumination, the Osirified, the purified soul, has achieved the “Passage of the Sun”—that is to say, has passed beyond the mortal mind-plane; he opens the Gates of the Celestial Nile and receives the Atf-crown of Illumination, “fashioned after the form of the Zodiacal light, the glory of the supreme heaven.” This is presumably the “crown of lives” referred to in our sermons, which he receives in the sphere called “Eight,” and with which he goes to the Father.

The Guide and Conductor through all these grades was Thoth the Eternal Wisdom; 2 and we are told that:

THOTH THE INITIATOR

“Thoth the Divine Wisdom, clothes the spirit of the Justified 3 a million times in a garment of true linen, 4 of

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that substance, that is to say, which by its purity and its brilliancy reminds us of the mantles, woven out of rays of light, wherewith the sun enwraps the earth afresh each day as she rotates before him; just as the soul of man is invested with new radiance each time that he turns to the presence of his Creator.” Again, “in the harmonious proportion of the universe,” the Egyptians saw “the Eternal Wisdom, Thoth, ‘the Mind and Will of God.’” 1

We have seen that Pietschmann considers the original of Thoth, the God of Wisdom, to be nothing more than the ibis-headed moon-god, thus intentionally deriving the origin of the Great Initiator from what he considers to be the crude beginnings of primitive ideas. But Thoth was the Great Reckoner, the Recorder of the Balance of Justice, the Teller of the Kārmic Scales. Now the mortal time-recorder for the Egyptians was the moon, “for if we consider the motion of the moon relatively to the sun, we shall find that the time that it takes in covering a space equal to its own disc is just an hour. . . . Now, that measure of the ‘Hour’ was peculiarly sacred in Egypt; each of the twenty-four which elapse during a single rotation of the earth being consecrated to its own particular deity, twelve of light and twelve of darkness. ‘Explain the God in the hour,’ is the demand made of the adept in the Ritual when standing in the Hall of Truth. And that God in the hour, we learn, was Thoth, the ‘Lord of the Moon and the Reckoner of the Universe.’” 2

Again, with regard to the moon-phases, the first day of the lunar month was called “the conception of the moon,” the second its “birth,” and so on step by step till it was full. Now the time of all lower initiations was the full moon. Thus “in the lunar representations

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on the walls of the temple of Denderah we have fourteen steps leading up to the fifteenth or highest, whereon was enthroned Thoth, the Lord of the Moon.” 1

For some such reasons was Thoth called Lord of the Moon, not that the moon gave birth to the idea of Thoth. We must not seek for the origin of the Wisdom-tradition in its lower symbols. For in the inscription on the coffin of Ankhnes-Ra-Neferab—that is of her “whose life was the Sacred Heart of Ra”—we read: “Thy name is the Moon, the Heart of Silence, the Lord of the Unseen World” 2—of the space “as far as the moon,” or the “sublunary region,” as the old books say, the first after-death state, where souls are purified from earthly stains.

SOME OF THE DOCTRINES OF INITIATION

The end set before the neophyte was illumination, and the whole cult and discipline and doctrines insisted on this one way to Wisdom. The religion of Egypt was essentially the Religion of the Light.

But “most characteristic of all was the omnipotent and all-dominating sense of the fatherhood of God, producing the familiar and in some respects even joyous aspect which the Egyptians imparted to the idea of death.” And “to the sense which the priests at least possessed, both of the divine personality and of their own ultimate union with the personal deity [the Logos], far more probably than to any artificial pretension to a supposed exclusiveness, may be ascribed the mystery enshrouding their religion.” 3

And as Light was the Father of the Religion of Illumination, so was Life, his consort or syzygy, the Mother of the Religion of Joy. “Life was the centre,

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the circumference, the totality of Good. Life was the sceptre in the hand of Amen; life was the richest ‘gift of Osiris.’ ‘Be not ungrateful to thy Creator,’ says the sage Ptah-Hotep, in what is perhaps the oldest document in existence, ‘for he has given thee life.’ ‘I am the Fount of Light,’ says the Creator in the Ritual. ‘I pierce the Darkness. I make clear the Path for all; the Lord of Joy.’” 1 Or again, as the postulant prays to the setting sun: “O height of Love, thou openest the double gate of the Horizon.” 2

Here we have the full doctrine of the Light and Life which is the keynote of our treatises. Again, the doctrine of the endless turning of the spheres, which “end where they begin,” in the words of “The Shepherd,” is shown in the great fourth year festival of Hep-Tep or “Completion-Beginning,” when “the revolution and the rotation of our planet were simultaneously completed and begun afresh.” 3

THE TEMPLES OF INITIATION

That the ancient temples of initiation in Egypt were models of the Sophia Above, or of the “Heavenly Jerusalem,” to use a Jewish Gnostic term, or, in other words, of the Type of the world-building, we may well believe. Thus it is with interest that we read the remarks of Adams on the temple of Denderah (or Annu), rebuilt several times according to the ancient plans, and an important centre of the mystery-cultus. The temple was dedicated to Hat-Hor, whose ancient title was the Virgin-Mother.

“In the centre of the temple is the Hall of the Altar, with entrances opening east and west; and beyond it lies the great hall of the temple entitled the Hall of

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the Child in his Cradle, from whence access is obtained to the secret and sealed shrine entered once a year by the high priest, on the night of mid-summer.” 1

There were also various other halls and chambers each having a distinctive name, “bearing reference, for the most part, to the Mysteries of the light and of a divine Birth.” We have such names as: Hall of the Golden Rays, Chamber of Gold, Chamber of Birth, Dwelling of the Golden One, Chamber of Flames.

Now as the famous planisphere of Denderah—a wall-painting transferred bodily from the temple to Paris, early in the last century—“contains the northern and southern points, we are enabled to correlate the parts of that picture with the various parts of the temple, and thereby to discover a striking correspondence between the different parts of the inscription and the titles of the chambers and halls occupying relative positions.” 2

Thus we have in the planisphere corresponding to the halls and chambers such names as: Horus, the Entrance of the Golden Heavens, the Golden Heaven of Isis, Horizon of Light, Palace Chamber of Supreme Light, Heavenly Flame of Burning Gold. “And as the chief hall of the temple was the Hall of the Child in his Cradle, so the chief representation on the planisphere is the holy Mother with the divine Child in her arms.”

THE MYSTERY OF THE BIRTH OF HORUS.

Now the great mystery of Egypt was the second birth, the “Birth of Horus.” In “The Virgin of the World,” a long fragment of the lost Trismegistic treatise, “The Sacred Book,” preserved by Stobæus, Isis says to Horus: I will not tell of this birth; I

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must not, mighty Horus, reveal the origin of thy race, lest men should in the future know the generation of the Gods. Of the nature of this rebirth we are familiar from our treatises. But in spite of such clear indications the mystery of the Golden Horus has not yet been revealed.

In another passage from the same book Isis declares that the sovereignty or kingship of philosophy is in the hands of Harnebeschenis. This transliterated Egyptian name is given by Pietschmann 1 as originally either Hor neb en χennu (Horus the Lord of Xennu), or as Hor nub en χennu (the Golden Horus of Xennu). His hieroglyph was the golden hawk, who flies nearest the sun, and gazes upon it with unwinking eyes, a fit symbol for the new-born, the “man” illuminate.

Indeed, says Adams, “throughout the sacred writings of Egypt, there is no doctrine of which more frequent mention is made than that of a divine birth.” 2

In what circle of ideas to place the Birth of Horus the theosophical student may perhaps glean by reversing the stages given in the following interesting passage of our author:

“In the Teaching of Egypt, around the radiant being, which in its regenerate life could assimilate itself to the glory of the Godhead, was formed the ‘khaibit,’ or luminous atmosphere, consisting of a series of ethereal envelopes, at once shading and diffusing its flaming lustre, as the earth’s atmosphere shades and diffuses the solar rays. And at each successive transformation (Ritual, lxxvii-lxxxvii.) it descended nearer to the moral [? normal] conditions of humanity. From the form of the golden hawk, the semblance of the absolute divine substance of the one eternal self-existent being, it passes to the ‘Lord of Time,’ the image of the Creator,

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since with the creation time began. Presently it assumes the form of a lily, the vignette in the Ritual representing the head of Osiris enshrined in that flower; the Godhead manifested in the flesh coming forth from immaculate purity. ‘I am the pure lily,’ we read, ‘coming forth from the lily of light. I am the source of illumination and the channel of the breath of immortal beauty. I bring the messages; Horus accomplishes them.’ Later the soul passes into the form of the uræus, ‘the soul of the earth.’ . . . And finally it assumes the semblance of a crocodile; becoming subject, that is, to the passions of humanity. For the human passions, being part of the nature wherein man was originally created, are not intrinsically evil but only become evil when insubordinate to the soul.” 1

“THE BOOK OF THE MASTER”

And not only was the Deity worshipped as the Source of Light and Life, but also as the Fount of Love. “I am the Fount of Joy,” says the Creator in the Ritual, and when the Atf-crown of illumination is set upon the head of the triumphant candidate after accomplishing the “Passage of the Sun,” as referred to above, the hymn proclaims that “north and south of that crown is Love.” 2 Into this Love the catechumen was initiated from the Secret Scroll, whose name is thus given in one of the copies: “This Book is the Greatest of Mysteries. Do not let the eye of anyone look upon it—that were an abomination. ‘The Book of the Master of the Secret House’ is its name.” 3

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The whole conception of the doctrine exposed in its chapters is instruction in Light and Life.

But are we to suppose that the majority were really instructed in this wisdom?—for we find it customary to wrap up some chapters of this Secret Scroll with almost every mummy. By no means. It seems to me that there are at least three phases in the use of this scripture, and in the process of degeneration from knowledge to superstition which can be so clearly traced in the history of Egypt. First there was the real instruction, followed by initiation while living; secondly, there was the recitation of the instruction over the uninitiated dead to aid the soul of the departed in the middle passage; and thirdly, there was the burying a chapter or series of chapters of the Book of the Master as a talisman to protect the defunct, when in far later times the true meaning of the words written in the sacred characters had been lost, though they were still “superstitiously” regarded as magical “words of power.”

The recitation of some of the chapters over the dead body of the uninitiated, however, is not to be set down as a useless “superstition,” but was a very efficacious form of “prayers for the dead.” After a man’s decease he was in conscious contact with the unseen world, even though he may have been sceptical of its existence, or at any rate unfit to be taught its real nature, prior to his decease. But after the soul was freed from the prison of the body, even the uninitiated was in a condition to be instructed on the nature of the path he then perforce must travel. But as he could not even then properly pronounce the “words” of the sacred tongue, the initiated priest recited or chanted the passages.

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THE STEPS OF THE PATH

“For the doctrine contained in those mystic writings was nothing else than an account of the Path pursued by the Just when, the bonds of the flesh being loosed, he passed through stage after stage of spiritual growth—the Entrance on Light, the Instruction in Wisdom, the Second Birth of the Soul, the Instruction in the Well of Life, the Ordeal of Fire, and the Justification in Judgment; until, illumined in the secret Truth and adorned with the jewels of Immortality, he became indissolubly united with Him whose name, says the Egyptian Ritual, is Light, Great Creator.” 1

It should, however, be remembered that this must not be taken in its absolute sense even for the initiate, much less for the uninitiated. For even in the mystic schools themselves, as we may see from our treatises, there were three modes in which knowledge could be communicated—“By simple instruction, by distant vision, or by personal participation.” 2 For indeed there were many phases of being, many steps of the great ladder, each in ever greater fullness embracing the stages mentioned, each a reflection or copy of a higher phase.

Thus, for example, “the solemn address, described in the Sai-an-Sinsin, of the ‘Gods in the House of Osiris,’ followed by the response of the ‘Gods in the House of Glory’—the joyous song of the holy departed who stand victorious before the judgment-seat, echoed triumphantly by the inner chorus of their beloved who have gone before them into the fullness of life” 3—must be taken as indicative of several stages. Such, for instance, as the normal union of the man’s consciousness with that

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of his higher ego, after exhausting his spiritual aspirations in the intermediate heaven-world—this is the joining the “those-that-are” of “The Shepherd” treatise, in other words, the harvest of those past lives of his that are worthy of immortality; or again the still higher union of the initiated with the “pure mind”; or again the still sublimer union of the Master with the nirvāṇic consciousness; and so on perchance to still greater Glories.

Thus we are told that the new twice-born, on his initiation, “clothed in power and crowned with light, traverses the abodes or scenes of his former weakness, there to discern, by his own enlightened perception, how it is ‘Osiris who satisfies the balance of Him who rules the heavens’; to exert in its supernal freedom his creative will, now the lord, not the slave of the senses; and to rejoice in the just suffering which wrought his Illumination and Mastery.” 1

But higher and still higher he has yet to soar beyond earth and planets and even beyond the sun, “across the awful chasms of the unfathomable depths to far-off Sothis, the Land of Eternal Dawn, to the Ante-chamber of the Infinite Morning.” 2

AN ILLUMINATIVE STUDY

Many other passages of great beauty and deep interest could we quote from the pages of Marsham Adams’ illuminative study, but enough has been said for our purpose. The Wisdom of Egypt was the main source of our treatises without a doubt. Even if only one-hundredth part of what our author writes were the truth, our case would be established; and if Egypt did not teach this Wisdom, then we must perforce bow

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down before Mr Adams as the inventor of one of the most grandiose religions of the universe. But the student of inner nature knows that it is not an invention, and though, if he be a scholar at the same time, he cannot but regret that Mr Adams has omitted his references, he must leave the critics to one or other of the horns of the dilemma; they must either declare that our author has invented it all and pay homage to what in that case would be his sublime genius, or admit that the ancient texts themselves have inspired Mr Adams with these ideas. And if this be a foretaste of what Egypt has preserved for us, what may not the future reveal to continued study and sympathetic interpretation!

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Footnotes

47:1 Hermes Trismegistos, nach ägyptischen, griechischen und orientalischen Überlieferungen (Leipzig, 1875).

48:1 πάσης καρδίας καί λογισμοῦ δεσπότης, p. 40, ed. Leemans.

48:2 Der Gott, “der in pantheistischer Anschauungsweise die ganze Welt belehrend durchdrang,” writes Pietschmann, p. 14.

49:1 Pleyte, Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde, 1867, 10. The text is taken from a papyrus in the Leyden Museum.

49:2 See Pietschmann, p. 15.

49:3 From an ostrakon in the Louvre, De Horrack, Zeitschrift für ä S. u. A., 1868, 2. And again at Denderah, the King is said to “establish the laws like Thoth the twice-great one.” See Dümichen, ibid., 1867, 74.

49:4 Lepsius, Erster Götterkreis, Taf. 1, 2. Text S. 181.

49:5 Brugsch, Wörterbuch, 803, and many other references.

49:6 For a long list of references, see Pietschmann in loco. I have so far cited some of these references to show that the statements of Pietschmann are based upon very ample authority. In what follows, however, these references may be omitted as they are not owing to my own industry, and the scholar can obtain them from Pietschmann’s book for himself.

50:1 Op. cit., p. 16.

50:2 Compare this title, die grossen Erkentnisse des Teḥuti, with the Coptic Codex Brucianus—Voici le livre des gnoses de l’Invisible divin.” Amélineau, Notice sur le Papyrus gnostique Bruce, p. 83 (Paris, 1891). See also Carl Schmidt, Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache aus dem Codex Brucianus (Leipzig, 1892).

50:3 Op. cit., p. 20.

50:4 Herr der Metempsychose (Lord of Palingenesis), says Pietschmann, p. 23.

51:1 Op. cit., p. 24 n.

52:1 Op. cit., pp. 71 ff.

55:1 And this is the case with the latter even to-day, where in the Sudan the natives “believe that its intelligence is of the highest order, and that its cunning is far superior to that of man.” (Op. cit., i. 21.)

56:1 This is one of the most interesting of his titles: “Judge of the Reḥeḥui, the Pacifier of the Gods, who dwelleth in Unnu” (Hermopolis). (Op. cit., i. 405.)

56:2 This must have been the mystery folk-tale circulated by the priests, for Marius Victorinus repeats it (Halm, Rhet. Lat. Min., p. 223), and it is preserved in the Physiologos (xlv. p. 275—Lauchert).

57:1 Which means “City of the Eight [Gods].” (Op. cit., i. 113.)

59:1 Perhaps suggesting two-faced or Janus-like—before and behind, without and within. With this, however, may be compared the symbolic headdress or mask worn by the virgin Korē (Proserpina) in the Eleusinian Mysteries; she had, Athenagoras (xx. 292) tells us, “two ordinary eyes, and two in her forehead, with her face at the back of her neck.”

59:2 Suggesting Thoth.

59:3 Suggesting the power of him who can either wrap the Net round the man or open it in a new direction, so that the man can “pass right through his body,” as Hermes says to Tat in one of our Sermons.

59:4 Suggesting “Christs” who have given birth to their Father, the Mind, in their hearts.

59:5 The fiends of a once mighty frame suggest beings of a daimonic nature. Perhaps there is a formal distinction intended by the epithet “helpless” and “abominable,” corresponding with the rational and irrational aspects of the soul as set forth in our sermons.

61:1 King (L. W.), Babylonian Religion, p. 71.

62:1 See my Orpheus (London, 1896), pp. 39 and 44 ff.

62:2 Cf. Philo, De Som., i. (v. 92—Pfeiff)—τὸ παμποίκιλον ὔφασμα τουτονὶ τὸν κόσμον.

62:3 Eschenbach (A. C.), Epigenes de Poesi Orphica (Nürnberg, 1702), p. 51.

62:4 De Gen. Anim., II. i. 613C.

62:5 Bibl, clxxxv.

62:6 Tim., 1079F.

65:1 The symbol of his actualising power.

66:1 Showing that Set is Horus in his form of darkness.

66:2 Mystically, the upper and lower kingdoms in man.

68:1 “Thoth the Wise” of the “Inscription of London” § 4 (R. 64), to which we shall refer later on.

68:2 See the reviews on the below-mentioned work in The Athenæum of 31st December 1898, and The Academy of 31st December 1898 and 7th January 1899.

68:3 The Book of the Master, or The Egyptian Doctrine of the Light born of the Virgin Mother (London, 1898)—a sequel to his study entitled The House of the Hidden Places, a Clue to the Creed of Early Egypt from Egyptian Sources (London, 1895).

70:1 Op. cit., pref. v.

70:2 Op. cit., 13. Compare with this the three grades of Initiation given by Pietschmann (p. 24 n.), as cited above, p. 51.

70:3 The image-doctrine of our treatises.

70:4 This is an error; true initiation consisted in the fact that cosmic consciousness was realised in the body, while a man still lived. This consciousness naturally included the after-death consciousness as part of its content.

71:1 Op. cit., p. 24.

71:2 Op. cit., pp. 14, 15.

71:3 That is, he who has the “balanced” nature.

71:4 In my Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.?—in treating of the Elxai tradition and the wild statements of the puzzled and puzzling Epiphanius, I asked: “May there not have been a mystery-teaching behind the beautiful historicised story of the sisters Mary and Martha, and of Lazarus, their brother, who was ‘raised from the dead’ after being ‘three days’ in the grave? Was not Lazarus raised as a ‘mummy’ swathed in grave-clothes?” In this connection it is interesting to find Tertullian (De Corona, viii.; Oehler, i. 436) referring to the “linen cloth” with which Jesus girt himself in John xiii. 4, 5, as the “proper garment of Osiris.” The proper garment of Osiris at one stage consisted most probably of the symbolic linen wrappings of the “mummy.”

72:1 Op. cit., p. 23.

72:2 Op. cit., p. 30.

73:1 Op. cit., p. 194.

73:2 Op. cit., p. 161.

73:3 Op. cit., pp. 18, 20.

74:1 Op. cit., p. 36.

74:2 Op. cit., p. 153.

74:3 Op. cit., p. 37.

75:1 Op. cit., p. 71.

75:2 Op. cit., p. 75.

76:1 Op. cit., p. 44.

76:2 Op. cit., p. 89.

77:1 Op. cit., pp. 163, 164.

77:2 Op. cit., p. 95.

77:3 Op. cit., p. 96. The title seems to be found only in the latest recension of the twenty-sixth Saite dynasty—the time of our King Ammon—but certainly no better one can be suggested.

79:1 Op. cit., pp. 103, 104.

79:2 Op. cit., p. 148.

79:3 Op. cit., p. 120.

80:1 Op. cit., p. 185.

80:2 Op. cit., p. 186.

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IV

THE POPULAR THEURGIC HERMES-CULT IN THE GREEK MAGIC PAPYRI

THE “RELIGION OF HERMES”

That at one period the “Religion of Hermes” was not only widely spread, but practically supreme, in popular Hellenistic circles, may be seen from a study of the texts of the numerous magic papyri which have been preserved, and made accessible to us by the industry of such immensely laborious scholars as Leemans, Dieterich, Wessely, and Kenyon.

The Greek Hermes prayers, as with many others of a similar nature, are manifestly overworkings of more ancient types, and, as we might expect, are of a strongly syncretistic nature. In them we can distinguish in popular forms, based on the ancient traditions of Egyptian magic, most interesting shadows of the philosophic and theosophic ideas which our Trismegistic literature has set forth for us in the clear light of dignified simplicity.

But just as we now know that the once so-called “Gnostic,” Abraxas and Abraxoid amulets, gems, and rings pertained to the general popular magical religion and had nothing to do with the Gnosis proper, so we may be sure that the circles of high mysticism, who refused to offer to God even so pure a sacrifice as

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the burnt offering of incense, and deemed naught worthy of Him, short of the “prayers and praises of the mind,” had nothing directly to do with the popular Hermes prayers, least of all with the invocatory rites of popular theurgy, and phylactery or amulet consecration.

Nevertheless, there is much of interest for us in these invocations, and much that can throw side-lights on the higher teaching and practice which transformed all external rites into the discipline of inner spiritual experience.

The following prayers, which, as far as I know, have not been previously translated, are rendered from the most recently revised texts of Reitzenstein, who has omitted the magic names, and emended the previous editions. I cannot but think, however, that these texts might be submitted to a more searching analysis than has yet been accorded them. They seem to present somewhat similar phenomena to the recensions of the Book of the Dead; that is to say, fragments of material from the tradition of a greater past have been adapted and overworked for the needs of a lesser age. Indeed, the whole effort of the Trismegistic schools seems to have been to restore the memory of that greater past; it had been forgotten, and its dim record had become a superstition instead of a living faith, a degenerate magic instead of a potent theurgy. The theurgy of our prayers is that of dwarfs; the theurgy of the past was believed to have been that of giants.

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I. AN INVOCATION TO HERMES AS THE GOOD MIND 1

[Revised text, R. 15-18; Leemans (C.), Papyri Græc. Mus. Ant. Pub. Lug. Bat. (Leyden, 1885), II. 141, 14 ff., and V. 27, 27 ff.; Dieterich (A.), Abraxas (Leipzig, 1891), 195, 4 ff.; and Jahrbücher f. class. Phil., Suppl. XVI. 808 ff. (Papyrus Mag. Mus. Lug. Bat.).]

1. Come unto me, O thou of the four winds, 2 almighty one, 3 who breathest spirit into men to give them life;

2. Whose name is hidden, and beyond the power of men to speak; 4 no prophet [even] can pronounce it; yea, even daimons, when they hear thy name, are fearful!

3. O thou, whose tireless eyes are sun and moon, 5—[eyes] that shine in the pupils 6 of the eyes of men!

4. O thou, who hast the heaven for head, æther for body, [and] earth for feet, and for the water round thee ocean’s deep! 7 Thou the Good Daimon art, who art the sire of all things good, and nurse of the whole world. 8

5. Thy everlasting revelling-place 9 is set above.

6. Thine the good emanations 10 of the stars,—those daimons, fortunes, and those fates by whom are given

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wealth, good blend [of nature], 1 and good children, good fortune, and good burial. For thou art lord of life,—

7. Thou who art king of heavens and earth and all that dwell in them;

8. Whose Righteousness is never put away; whose Muses hymn thy glorious name; whom the eight Wardens guard,—thou the possessor of the Truth 2 pure of all lie!

9. Thy Name and Spirit rest upon the good. 3

10. O mayst thou come into my mind and heart for all the length of my life’s days, and bring unto accomplishment all things my soul desires!

11. For thou art I, and I am thou. 4 Whate’er I speak, may it for ever be; for that I have thy Name 5 to guard me in my heart. 6

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12. And every serpent 1 roused shall have no power o’er me, nor shall I be opposed by any spirit, or daimonial power, or any plague, or any of the evils in the Unseen World; 2 for that I have thy Name within my soul.

13. Thee I invoke; come unto me, Good, altogether good, [come] to the good, 3—thou whom no magic can enchant, no magic can control, 4 who givest me good health, security, 5 good store, good fame, victory, [and] strength, and cheerful countenance! 6

14. Cast down the eyes of all who are against me, and give me grace on all my deeds! 7

II. AN INVOCATION TO LORD HERMES

[Revised and restored text, stripped of later overworkings, R. 20, 21. Wessely (C.), Denkschriften der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, “Neue griechische Zauberpapyri” (Vienna, 1893), vol. xlii. p. 55; Kenyon (F. G.), Greek Papyri in the British Museum (London, 1893), i. 116.]

1. Come unto me, Lord Hermes, even as into women’s wombs [come] babes! 8

2. Come unto me, Lord Hermes, who dost collect the food of gods and men! 9

3. Lord Hermes, come to me, and give me grace,

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[and] food, [and] victory, [and] health and happiness, and cheerful countenance, 1 beauty and powers in sight of all!

4. I know thy Name that shineth forth in heaven; I know thy forms 2 as well; I know thy tree; 3 I know thy wood 4 as well.

5. I know thee, Hermes, who thou art, and whence thou art, and what thy city is.

6. I know thy names in the Egyptian tongue, 5 and thy true name as it is written on the holy tablet in the holy place at Hermes’ city, where thou dost have thy birth.

7. I know thee, Hermes, and thou [knowest] me; [and] I am thou, and thou art I. 6

8. Come unto me; fulfil all that I crave; be favourable to me together with good fortune and the blessing of the Good. 7

III. AN INVOCATION TO LORD HERMES

[Revised and restored text, R. 21. It is worked in with the preceding, but is of later date.]

1. Come unto me, Lord Hermes, O thou of many names, who know’st the secrets hidden both beneath the poles [of heaven] and underneath the earth!

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2. Come unto me, Lord Hermes, thou benefactor, who doest good to all the world!

3. Give ear to me, [and] give me grace with all that are on earth; open for me the hands of all that give like thee; 1 [and] make them give me what their hands contain!

4. Even as Horus, 2 if e’er he called on thee, O greatest of all gods, in every trial, in every space, ’gainst gods, and men, and daimones, and things that live in water and on earth,—had grace and riches with gods, and men, and every living thing beneath the earth;—so let me, too, who call on thee! So give me grace, form, beauty!

6. Hear me, O Hermes, doer of good deeds, thou the inventor of [all] incantations, 3 speak me good words! 4

7. Hear me, O Hermes, for I have done all things [that I should do] for thy black dog-ape, 5 lord of the nether ones!

8. O, soften all [towards me], and give me might

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[and] form, 1 and let them give me gold, and silver [too], and food of every kind continually.

9. Preserve me evermore for the eternity from spells, deceits, and witchery of every kind, from evil tongues, from every check and every enmity of gods and men!

10. Give unto me grace, victory, success, and satisfaction!

11. For thou art I, and I am thou; thy Name is mine, and mine is thine; for that I am thy likeness. 2

12. Whatever shall befall me in this year, or month, or day, or hour,—it shall befall the Mighty God, whose symbol is upon the holy vessel’s prow. 3

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IV. AN INVOCATION TO THOTH AS LOGOS

[Revised text, R. 22. Leemans, op. cit., II. 103, 7; Dieterich, op. cit., 189.]

1. Thee I invoke alone, thou who alone in all the world imposest order upon gods and men, 1 who dost transform thyself in holy forms, 2 making to be from things that are not, and from the things that are making the not to be.

2. O holy Thoth, 3 the true sight of whose face none of the gods endures!

3. Make me to be in every creature’s name 4—wolf, dog, [or] lion, fire, tree, [or] vulture, 5 wall, 6 [or] water, 7 or what thou will’st, for thou art able [so to do].

V. AN INVOCATION TO HERMES AS THE SPIRITUAL LIGHT

[Revised text R. 22, 23. Leemans, ibid., II. 87, 24; Dieterich, ibid., 176, 1.]

1. Thee I invoke who hast created all, who dost transcend the whole, the self-begotten God, who seest all and hearest all, but who art seen by none.

2. For thou didst give the sun his glory and all might, the moon her increase and her decrease, and [unto both] their ordained course. Though thou didst not diminish aught the [powers of] darkness, the still

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more ancient [than the sun and moon], thou mad’st them equal [with it]. 1

3. For when thou didst shine forth, Cosmos came into being, and light appeared, and all things were dispensed through thee; wherefore they all are under thee.

4. O thou, whose actual form none of the gods can see, who dost transform thyself into them all in visions [that men see], O thou Eternity of the eternity. 2

5. Thee I invoke, O Lord, that thy true form may manifest to me, for that I am in servitude below thy world, 3 slave to thy angel and unto thy fear. 4

6. Through thee the pole and earth are fixed.

7. Thee I invoke, O Lord, e’en as the gods whom thou hast made to shine, that they may have their power.

The above prayers afford us some striking examples of the popular Hellenistic form of the Hermes religion, 5

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in its theurgic phase. In it Hermes is regarded as the Mind 1 or Logos. The Mind is invoked to enter the mind and heart (I. 10). 2 With the shining out of the Mind, the Spiritual or Intelligible Light shines forth in the world and man (v. 3). The Mind is thus the guide of souls. 3 He is also identified with the Good Daimon (of whom Chnuphis or Horus are variants), with the Great Ocean, the Heaven-Space or Celestial Nile, the Great Green, the Light, the Æon.

In connection with the above invocations Reitzenstein gives the text of a very interesting ritual of lower theurgy, or rite of the sacred flame, which he characterises by the term “mystery of lychnomancy or lamp-magic.” This is the lower side of such high vision as is referred to in “The Shepherd of Men” treatise and in the rite described in the following passage of the Pistis Sophia, 272, 373:

“Jesus said unto his disciples: Come unto me! And

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they came unto him. He turned to the four quarters of the world, and spake the Great Name over their heads, and blessed them, and breathed on their eyes.

“Jesus said unto them: Look, see what ye may see!

“And lifting up their eyes they saw a great Light, exceeding vast, which no dweller on earth could describe.

“He said to them again: Gaze into the Light, and see what ye may see!

“They said: We see fire and water, and wine and blood.”

VI. THE MYSTIC RITE OF THE FLAME

[Revised text, R. 25-27. Wessely, op. cit., “Griechische zauberpapyrus von Paris und London” (Vienna, 1888), 68, 930 ff.]

(a) Invocation to the Light 1

1. I invoke thee, O God, the living one, 2 who dost show forth thy splendour in the fire, thou unseen Father of the Light! 3 Pour forth thy strength; awake thy daimon, and come down into this fire; inspire it with [thy] holy spirit; show me thy might, and let the house of the almighty God, which is within this light, be opened for me! Let there be light,—

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[thy] breadth-depth-length-height-ray; 1 and let the Lord, the [God] within, shine forth!

(b) A Stronger Form to be used if the Flame dies down

2. I adjure thee, O Light, holy ray, breadth-depth-length-height-ray, by the holy names which I have uttered, 2 and am now about to speak . . . abide with me in this same hour, until I have besought thy God, and learnt about the things that I desire!

(c) The Theagogy or Invocation of the God proper

3. Thee I invoke, thou mightiest God and Master . . . thou who enlightenest all and pour’st thy rays by means of thine own power on all the world, O God of gods!

4. O Word (Logos) that orderest night and day, who guid’st the ship, 3 and hold’st the helm, thou dragon-slayer, 4 Good Holy Daimon . . . !

5. To whom the East and West give praise as thou dost rise and set, thou who art blest by all the gods, angels, and daimones!

6. Come, show thyself to me, O God of gods . . . !

7. Enter, make manifest thyself to me, O Lord; for I invoke as the three apes invoke thee—who symbol-wise name forth thy holy Name.

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8. In thy ape-form 1 enter, appear to me, O Lord; for I name forth thy mightiest names!

9. O thou who hast thy throne about the height of cosmos, 2 and judgest all, encircled with the sphere of Surety and Truth! 3

10. Enter, appear to me, O Lord, for that I was before the fire and snow, and shall be after [them];

11. I am the one who has been born from heaven. 4

12. Enter, appear to me, O Lord of mighty names, whom all have in their hearts, 5 who dost burst open rocks, 6 and mak’st the names of gods to move!

13. Enter, appear to me, O Lord, who hast thy power and strength in tire, who hast thy throne within the seven poles. 7

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14. And on thy head a golden crown, and in thy hand a staff . . . 1 by which thou sendest forth the gods!

15. Enter, O Lord, and give me answer with thy holy voice, that I may clearly hear and truthfully about this thing!

(d) A Stronger Form of Adjuration if (c) fails

16. He doth enjoin thee, He the great living God, who is for the eternities of the eternities, the shaker and the thunderer, who doth create each soul and every birth. Enter, appear to me, O Lord, joyous, benignant, gentle, glorious, free from all wrath; for I adjure thee by the Lord [of all]!

(e) The Greeting when the Presence of the God is manifested

17. Hail Lord, O God of gods, thou benefactor . . . ! Hail to thy glories 2 ever more, O Lord!

(f) The Farewell to the God

18. I give thee thanks, O Lord. Depart, O Lord, to thine own heavens, thine own realms, and thine own

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course, preserving me in health, free from all harm, free from all fear of any ka, 1 free from all stripes, and all dismay, hearkening to me for all the days of [all] my life!

(g) The Farewell to the Flame

19. Depart, O holy ray; depart, O fair and holy light of highest God!

In connection with the above, we may also take the following ritual-prayer used in the consecration of an amulet ring.

VII. A PRAYER OF CONSECRATION

[Revised text, R. 28, 29. Wessely, ibid., 84, 1598 ff.]

1. Thee I invoke, O greatest God, Lord everlasting, thou world-ruler, above the world, beneath the world, mighty sea-ruler;

2. Who shinest forth at dawn, out from the East rising for all the world, and setting in the West!

3. Come unto me, thou who dost rise from the four winds, joyous Good Daimon, for whom the heaven is thy revelling-place! 2

4. I call upon thy holy, mighty, hidden names which thou dost joy to hear.

5. When thou dost shine the earth doth sprout afresh, the trees bear fruit when thou dost laugh, the animals bring forth when thou dost turn to them.

6. Give glory, honour, grace, fortune and power . . . !

7. Thee I invoke, the great in heaven . . . , O dazzling Sun, who shed’st thy beams on all the world!

8. Thou art the mighty serpent, the chief of all the

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gods, 1 O thou who dost possess Egypt’s beginning, 2 and the end of all the world!

9. Thou art the [God] who saileth o’er the ocean; thou art the [God] who doth come into sight each day.

10. O thou who art above the world, and art beneath the world, O mighty ruler of the sea, give ear unto my voice this day, this night, these holy hours [of thine], and through this amulet let that be done for which I consecrate it!

---

Footnotes

84:1 I have supplied the titles.

84:2 Perhaps originally spirits or breaths.

84:3 παντοκράτωρ, used of Hermes, Anth. P., append., 282.

84:4 Compare Lactantius, i. 6 (Frag. II.); and especially iv. 7 (Frag. VI.).

84:5 The “eyes and light of Horus,” according to Plutarch, De Is. et Os., lii.; mystically, the higher and lower “ego” and much else.

84:6 ἐν ταῖς κόραις—compare the dissertation on the meaning of the title of our treatise generally translated “Virgin (κόρη) of the World,” in the commentary thereto.

84:7 Sc. the Ocean of Space, the “Great Green” of the Ritual.

84:8 That is, father-mother of the universe.

84:9 κωμαστήριον—that is, heaven. See VII. 3 below.

84:10 ἀπόρροιαι—or personified influences. See Plutarch, De Is. et Os., xxxviii., liii., lviii.; and especially Pistis Sophia, where it occurs over and over again. Compare also K. K., 1; Stob., p. 405, 17 (W.).

85:1 εὐκερασία—referring apparently to the composition of “body” and “soul.”

85:2 That is, the Pleroma or Æon (see VI. 9 below). Reitzenstein (p. 18) says rightly, as we have seen, that Egyptologists have long recognised that the God here identified with Agathodaimon was originally the Hermes or Thoth of Hermopolis Magna, Lord of the Eight Wardens (the Ogdoad), symbolised by apes, hymned by the Muses (? the Nine or Ennead), and spouse of Isis-Righteousness (cf. Plut., De Is. et Os., iii.).

85:3 See 13 below.

85:4 Compare the extra-canonical logos: “I stood on a lofty mountain and saw a gigantic man, and another, a dwarf; and I heard as it were a voice of thunder, and drew nigh for to hear; and He spake unto me and said: I am thou, and thou art I; and wheresoever thou mayest be I am there. In all am I scattered [that is, the Logos as seed or “members”], and whencesoever thou wiliest, thou gatherest Me; and gathering Me, thou gatherest Thyself.” (From the Gospel of Eve, quoted by Epiphanius, Hæres., xxvi. 3.) Cf. II. 7.

85:5 In the Egyptian sense—that is, thy true “person” or “presence.” See R. 17, n. 6, for many references to this fundamental concept of Egyptian religion.

85:6 φυλακτήριον—lit., as a phylactery or amulet. See R. 18, n. 8, for Egyptian origin of Jewish phylacteries.

86:1 δράξ—here the symbol of any hostile elemental force. Compare K. K.,—Stob., 402, 22 (W.).

86:2 καθ’ Ἅιδου.

86:3 See 9 above.

86:4 ἀβάσκαντος, ἀβάσκαντος.

86:5 σωτηρίαν, or salvation.

86:6 See II. 2 below.

86:7 Compare with this prayer for the descent of the Mind into the heart, the ascent of the man into the Mind of C. H., xiii. (xiii.) 3.

86:8 This is an echo of spiritual rebirth or regeneration.

86:9 In its highest sense the heavenly food, or wisdom, the “supersubstantial bread,” or “bread of life.”

87:1 ἐπαφροδισίαν προσώπου. See I. 13 above.

87:2 The symbols of which are: the ibis in the east, ape in the west, the serpent in the north, the wolf (or jackal) in the south. So says the overworking of the text; but perhaps wolf should rather be dog.

87:3 The terebinth, or turpentine palm. Compare this with the story of Terebinthus, from whose four Books Manes is said, in the Acta Archelai, to have derived his system.

87:4 The ebony; perhaps symbolic of the “dark” wisdom, the initiation “in the black” of the K. K. Fragments.

87:5 τὰ βαρβαρικὰ ὀνόματα—lit., barbarous, that is, non-Greek.

87:6 Cf. I. 11.

87:7 Lit., with Agathodaimon; compare σὺν θεῷ—“with God’s blessing.”

88:1 συνδωκόντων—a ἅπαξ λεγόμενον—δώκω (δίδωμι) may be compared with στήκω (ἵστημι). The image may be taken from the well-known symbolical representation of the sun sending forth rays, each furnished with a hand for giving and blessing, especially in the frescoes of the Atem-cult period. Cf. K. K., 11 and 31.

88:2 In the mystery-myth.

88:3 Orig., medicines or philtres.

88:4 εὐδιάλεκτος γενοῦ—a unique and inelegant expression in Greek, and of uncertain translation into English.

88:5 This appears here to refer to Anubis, the “dog” of Hades, or the “death-genius,” the attendant on Thoth. “Black” is lit. “Ethiopian.” But compare in Pistis Sophia, 367, “Æthiopic Ariouth,” a ruler among the infernal daimonials, who is “entirely black.” The Ethiopians were famous for their sorcery and black magic. They were the traditional opponents of the “white magicians” of Egypt. Compare “Hor, son of the Negress” in the “Second Story of Khamuas,” in Griffith’s (F. Ll.) Stories of the High Priests of Memphis (Oxford, 1900), pp. 51 ff.

89:1 This is not necessarily a prayer for physical form and the rest, but a prayer that the subtle ka of the man, the plastic soul-substance, may take a form of power and beauty, in the unseen world.

89:2 εἴδωλον, or image or double. The theurgist is endeavouring to identify his ka with that of the god. It was with his ka also, presumably, that the consecrated statue of the god was “animated.” Compare the exposition of this theory as given in P. S. A., and the “image” or “likeness of God” in Lactantius, ii. 10. According to the Egyptians, man possessed: (1) a physical body (khat); (2) a soul (ba); (3) a heart (ȧb); (4) a double (ka); (5) an intelligence (khu); (6) a power (sekhem); (7) a shadow (khaibit) (8) a spiritual body (sȧḥ [sic]); (9) a name (ren). See Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 299, 300. These are, of course, not arranged in any natural order or in a scientific distribution. The precise meaning of most of these terms is not known. Budge (op. cit., i. 163, 164), however, writes: “Related intimately to the body, but with undefined functions, as far as we can discover, was the sekhem, a word which has been translated ‘power,’ and ‘form,’ and even ‘vital force’; finally the glorified body, to which had been united the soul, and spirit and power, and name of the deceased, had its abode in heaven. This new body of the deceased in heaven was called sāḥu.”

89:3 Thoth and Maāt are represented as sitting on either side of Rā in his boat.

90:1 That is, Hermes as the cosmic Logos.

90:2 Thoth changes his form in every heaven-space or sphere. Compare C. H., i. 13; and also the same idea in the descent of the Christos in a number of Gnostic systems, where the Saviour and King conceals himself in the forms of his servants in every phase of his descent. Cf. also C. H., xi. (xii.) 16.

90:3 θαύθ.

90:4 That is, essence, or may be type.

90:5 Presumably a symbol for air.

90:6 Presumably a symbol for earth.

90:7 Compare C. H., xi. (xii.) 20; and P. S. A., vi.

91:1 With the Egyptians, Darkness was the mystery of all mysteries. As Damascius (On First Principles) says: “Of the first principle the Egyptians said nothing; but characterised it as a darkness beyond all intellectual conception, a thrice unknown Darkness” (σκότος ἄγνωστον τρὶς τοῦτο ἐπιφημίζοντες). See my Orpheus (London, 1896), p. 93, and for “Night,” pp. 154 and 170 ff. Perhaps this may again give some clue to the initiation “in the black” of the K. K. excerpt. The “dark wisdom” was the hidden of the hidden.

91:2 αἰὼν αἰῶνος. In another hymn, Hermes, as Logos, is called “Cosmos of cosmos” (R. 23, n. 1)—that is, the spiritual world or order.

91:3 That is the spiritual cosmos, or cosmos of Mind.

91:4 Compare Isaiah xlv. 7: “I form the light and create darkness: I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” Cf. C. H., i. 23, “the avenging daimon”; and ibid., 15, “Within the Harmony he hath become a slave.”

91:5 Called in the Trismegistic literature the “Religion of the Mind” (Mentis religio). See P. S. A., xxv.

92:1 Compare the cosmogony in Dieterich, Abraxas, 17, 43: “Through the Bitterness of God, there appeared Mind . . . that restrains the heart, and was called Hermes.” With this peculiar phrase “Bitterness of God” compare the “Bitter Chaos” of the hymn at the end of the J. source of the Naassene Document in “The Myth of Man” chapter; also the “Bitter Water” or Chaos of the Sethian System (Hipp., Philos., v. 19); so also Julian, in Oration V., who writes: “The oracles of the gods declare that through purification not only our soul but also our bodies are judged worthy of being greatly helped and preserved, for it is said in them that ‘the mortal vesture of bitter matter is preserved.’” Is it thus possible that the “Bitterness” of Jacob Böhme may be a reminiscence of the ancient Gnosis?

92:2 For pure Egyptian parallels see R. 24, n. 1.

92:3 See the theogony in Dieterich, op. cit., 18, 75: “And the soul came into being. And God said: ‘Thou shalt move all things . . . Hermes guiding thee.’” Compare C. H., x. (xi.) 21: “But on the pious soul the Mind doth mount, and guide it to the Gnosis’ light;” also xii. (xiii.) 12, ix. (x.) 10, iv. (v.) 11, vii. (viii.) 2.

93:1 These rubrics I have added, following the example of Reitzenstein, but not his wording.

93:2 Compare the expression “Jesus the living [one]” found frequently in the Introduction to the “First Book of Ieou” (Carl Schmidt, Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache aus dem Codex Brucianus (Leipzig, 1892), 142-145—reprinted with his recent translation of the Pistis Sophia in Band I. of his Koptisch gnostische Schriften (Leipzig, 1905); and also the Preface to the newest found logoi: “These are the . . . words which Jesus, the living [one], spake” (Grenfell and Hunt, New Sayings of Jesus, London, 1904).

93:3 Compare in the same writings the oft-repeated “Father of all fatherhood, Boundless Light.”

94:1 See Dieterich, Jahrb. f. Phil., Suppl., xvi. 802, 171, and 706. Compare also Ephes. iii. 18, and the Valentinian interpretation of the terms in this text as given by Hippolytus, Philos., vi. 34 (Dunker and Schneidewin, p. 248); also the interpretation of the Light Hymn in Pistis Sophia, 146, where the “height” is identified with the “home” of the Light.

94:2 The magic names of power are omitted, as in the other prayers.

94:3 Horus is often represented as pilot of the sun-ship in its voyage across the ocean of space, the “Great Green.”

94:4 The dragon here undoubtedly meaning darkness. Cf. C. H., i. 4.

95:1 ὡς κυνοκέφαλος. Can it be possible that behind this strange symbolism there may once have been some such idea as this—that as the ape is to man, so was this great elemental to the God?

95:2 Lit., art seated on the head of cosmos.

95:3 That is the Eternity or Æon, called elsewhere the Pleroma or “fullness of grace,” and identified with Agathodaimon (see prayer, R. 30). See also Wessely, op. cit., 185 (R. 362); and compare John i. 14, “full of grace and truth”; and 16, “Of his fullness have we received, and grace for grace.”

95:4 The regenerate, or spirit-born—that is of “virgin-birth” or the “birth of Horus.” But compare the declaration of the soul on its entrance into the unseen world after death, as given on an inscription found in the tomb of an Orphic or Pythagorean initiate, at Petilia, in what was once Magna Græcia: “Of Earth and starry Heaven child am I; my race is of the Heavens!” (See Inscr. Gr. Siciliæ et Italiæ, 638; and my “Notes on the Eleusinian Mysteries,” Theosophical Review, xxii. 317.)

95:5 These are the logoi hidden in the hearts of all.

95:6 This may be merely a figurative expression in praise of the might that can not only dissolve the most stable things on earth, but also set in motion the centre of stability of spiritual essences; or it may refer to the idea of the “God born from the rock,” which is most familiar to us from the Mithriac mystery-tradition, where the rock is said to symbolise in physics the “firmament,” which was thought of as solid or rigid by the ancients.

95:7 That is, the seven cosmic spheres.

96:1 μεμνοινην—an untranslatable reading. Is it Egyptian?—or is it intended for μεμνόνειαν? If the latter, it would presumably be connected with the Egyptian myth and cult of Memnon (see Roscher’s Lexikon, coll. 2661 ff.). The Memnon cult was somehow connected with Hermes, for in the ruins of the temple were still (at the beginning of the third century) to be seen “statues of Hermes,” according to Philostratus (Vit. Apoll., vi. 4), who also (Imag., i. 7) tells us that the Memnon statue was as a lyre which was struck by the rod (πλῆκτρον), that is the ray (ἡ ἀκτίς), of the sun. If so, “the rod [of power], by which thou sendest forth the gods,” that is thy rays, each god being a ray of the spiritual sun, might have the epithet Memnonian applied to it. But in our present lack of information, this interpretation seems very strained.

96:2 δόξαι—here meaning powers.

97:1 ἀνειδωλόπληκτον.

97:2 κωμαστήριον. Cf. I. 5 above.

98:1 The serpent was a symbol of the Logos, and this is the idea underlying the so-called Ophite systems of the Gnosis.

98:2 This refers to the first nome of Upper Egypt, whose metropolis, Elephantine, was once the chief seat of the popular Agathodaimon cult (R. 29, n. 4). The “world” was thus the Egyptian civilised world, beyond which was the darkness of Ethiopia.

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V

THE MAIN SOURCE OF THE TRISMEGISTIC LITERATURE ACCORDING TO MANETHO, HIGH PRIEST OF EGYPT

HERMES AT THE BEGINNING OF THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD

The more intimate contact of Greek thought and philosophy with Egyptian lore and mystic tradition began immediately with the brilliant era of the Lagides, who gradually made Alexandria the intellectual and religious, philosophic and scientific, centre of the Hellenistic world.

Thoth-Hermes, as we have seen, had been for the Egyptians from the earliest times the teacher of all ancient and hidden wisdom; he was par excellence the writer of all sacred scripture and the scribe of the gods. We should then naturally expect that his dominating influence would play a leading part in the new development; and this, indeed, is amply demonstrated by the evidence of the religious art of the time, which presents us with specimens of statues of the Greek type of Hermes, bearing at the same time either the feather of truth (the special symbol of Maāt) on the head, or the papyrus-roll in the hand 1—both symbols of Thoth in his dual character as revealer and scribe.

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Of the complex nature of the mystic and apocalyptic literature that thus came into existence we have very distinct testimony. 1 In keeping with its Egyptian prototype it was all cast in a theological and theosophical mould, whether it treated of physics, or medicine, or astrology. Thus we learn that Pamphilus, the grammarian, 2 was intimately acquainted with a Greek-Egyptian literature dealing with “sacred plants” and their virtues as determined by the influences of the thirty-six Decans; this lore, he tells us, was derived from the “Books ascribed to the Egyptian Hermes.” 3

PETOSIRIS AND NECHEPSO

Of still greater interest are the Greek fragments of Petosiris and Nechepso which have come down to us. 4 These Greek fragments are to be dated at least before the end of the second century B.C., 5 and afford us striking parallels with our extant Trismegistic literature.

In them we find the Prophet Petosiris represented as the teacher and counsellor of King Nechepso, as Asclepius of Ammon in one type of our literature; while it is Hermes who reveals the secret wisdom to two younger gods, Asclepius and Anubis, as in our sermons he does to Asclepius and Tat.

As to Petosiris himself, Suidas (s.v.) tells us that he was an Egyptian philosopher who wrote on comparative

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[paragraph continues]Greek and Egyptian theology, making selections from the “Holy Books,” and treating of astrology and the Egyptian Mysteries. Moreover, Proclus 1 tells us that Petosiris had an intimate knowledge of every order of the Gods and Angels, and refers to a hieratic formula of theurgic invocation to the greatest of the goddesses (Necessity), for inducing the vision of this Power, and the ritual of the manner of addressing her when she appeared, as handed on by the same Petosiris.

The mystical nature of this literature is still more clearly shown in what Vettius Valens 2 tells us of Nechepso, who surpassed the Ammon of our literature and attained to direct knowledge of the Inner Way.

Vettius, in the first half of the first century A.D., laments that he did not live in those days of initiate kings and rulers and sages who occupied themselves with the Sacred Science, when the clear Æther spake face to face with them without disguise, or holding back aught, in answer to their deep scrutiny of holy things. In those days so great was their love of the holy mysteries, so high their virtue, that they left the earth below them, and in their deathless souls became “heaven-walkers” 3 and knowers of things divine.

Vettius then quotes from a Greek apocalyptic treatise of Nechepso, where the King tells us that he had remained in contemplation all night gazing into the æther; and so in ecstasy he had left his body, 4 and had then heard a heavenly Voice 5 addressing him. This Voice was not merely a sound, but appeared as a

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substantial presence, who guided Nechepso on his way through the heaven-space.

It is, moreover, exceedingly probable that the magnificent spectacle of the star-spheres 1 to which Vettius refers, speaking of it as “the most transcendent and most blessed vision (θεωρία) of all,” was taken directly from the same source.

With this we may compare the wish of Trismegistus that Tat might get him the wings of the soul and enjoy that fair sight, 2 and the seeing of it by Hermes himself through the Mind. 3

All of which proves the existence of books in Greek in middle Ptolemaic times treating in the same manner of identical subjects with those contained in our Trismegistic literature.

MANETHO THE BELOVED OF THOTH

When, then, the sovereignty of Egypt passed into the hands of the Diadochi of Alexander, and the Ptolemies made Alexandria the centre of learning in the Greek world, by the foundation of the ever-famous Museum and Library and Schools in their capital, there arose an extraordinary enthusiasm for translating, paraphrasing, and summarising into Greek of the old scriptures and records of the nations. The most famous name of such translators and compilers and comparative theologians is that of Manetho, 4 who introduced the

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treasures of Egyptian mysticism, theology, mythology, history, and chronology to the Grecian world. Moreover, seeing that the veracity and reliability of Manetho as a historian is with every day more and more accepted as we become better acquainted with the monuments, he seems to have done his work loyally enough.

Manetho was contemporary with the first two Ptolemies; that is to say, he lived in the last years of the fourth and the first half of the third century B.C. He was a priest of Heliopolis (On), 1 and was thoroughly trained in all Greek culture 2 as well as being most learned in the ancient Wisdom of Egypt. 3 Manetho not only wrote on historical subjects, but also on the mystic philosophy and religion of his country, and it is from his books in all probability that Plutarch and others drew their information on things Egyptian. Manetho derived his information from the hieroglyphic inscriptions in the temples 4 and from the rest of the priestly records; but unfortunately his books are almost entirely lost, and we only possess fragments quoted by later writers.

THE LETTER OF MANETHO TO PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS

One of these quotations is of great importance for our present enquiry. It is preserved by Georgius

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[paragraph continues]Syncellus, 1 and is stated to be taken from a work of Manetho called Sothis 2 a work that has otherwise entirely disappeared. The passage with the introductory sentence of the monk Syncellus runs as follows:

“It is proposed then to make a few extracts concerning the Egyptian dynasties from the Books of Manetho. [This Manetho,] being high priest of the Heathen temples in Egypt, based his replies [to King Ptolemy] on the monuments 3 which lay in the Seriadic country. [These monuments,] he tells us, were engraved in the sacred language and in the characters of the sacred writing by Thoth, the first Hermes; after the flood they were translated from the sacred language into the then common tongue, 4 but [still written] in hieroglyphic characters, and stored away in books by the Good Daimon’s son and the second Hermes, father of Tat—in the inner chambers of the temples of Egypt.

‘“In the Book of Sothis Manetho addresses King Philadelphus, the second Ptolemy, personally, writing as follows word for word:

“‘The Letter of Manetho, the Sebennyte, to Ptolemy Philadelphus.

“‘To the great King Ptolemy Philadelphus, the venerable: I, Manetho, high priest and scribe of the holy fanes in Egypt, citizen of Heliopolis but by birth a Sebennyte, 5 to my master Ptolemy send greeting.

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“‘We 1 must make calculations concerning all the points which you may wish us to examine into, to answer your questions 2 concerning what will happen to the world. According to your commands, the sacred books, written by our forefather Thrice-greatest Hermes, which I study, shall be shown to you. My lord and king, farewell.’”

THE IMPORTANCE OF MANETHO’S STATEMENT IN HIS “SOTHIS”

Here we have a verbal quotation from a document purporting to be written prior to 250 B.C. It is evidently one of a number of letters exchanged between Manetho and Ptolemy II. Ptolemy has heard of the past according to the records of Egypt; can the priests tell him anything of the future? They can, replies Manetho; but it will be necessary to make a number of calculations. Ptolemy has also expressed a strong desire to see the documents from which Manetho derived his information, and the high priest promises to let him see them.

These books are ascribed to Hermes, the Thrice-greatest, and this is the first time that the title is used in extant Greek literature. This Hermes was the second, the father of Tat, we are told elsewhere by Manetho, and son of the Good Spirit (Agathodaimon), who was the first Hermes. Here we have the precise grading of the degrees in our treatises: (i.) The Shepherd of Men, or The Mind; (ii.) Thrice-greatest; (iii.) Tat. This refers to the ever-present distinction of pupil and master, and the Master of masters.

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If, however, we seek for historical allusions, we may perhaps be permitted to conclude that the first Hermes, that is to say the first priesthood among the Egyptians, used a sacred language, or in other words a language which in the time of the second Hermes, or second priesthood, was no longer spoken. It was presumably archaic Egyptian. The two successions of priests and prophets were separated by a “flood.” This “flood” was presumably connected with, if not the origin of, the flood of which Solon heard from the priest of Saïs, which happened some nine thousand years before his time, and of which we have considerable information given us in the Timæus and Critias of Plato. 1 The Good Angel is the same as the Mind, as we learn from the Trismegistic literature, and was regarded as the father of Hermes Trismegistus. This seems to be a figurative way of saying that the archaic civilisation of Egypt before the flood, which presumably swept over the country when the Atlantic Island went down, was regarded as one of great excellence. It was the time of the Gods or Divine Kings or Demi-Gods, whose wisdom was handed on in mystic tradition, or revived into some semblance of its former greatness, by the lesser descendants of that race who returned from exile, or reincarnated on earth, to take charge of the new populations who had gradually returned to the lower Nile plains after the flood had subsided.

Thus we have three epochs of tradition of the Egyptian mystery-cultus: (i.) The first Thoth or Agathodaimon, the original tradition preserved in the sacred language and character in the stone monuments of the

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[paragraph continues]Seriadic land, presumably the Egypt prior to the Atlantic flood; (ii.) the second Thoth, the Thrice-greatest, the mystery-school after the period of the great inundation, whose records and doctrines were preserved not only in inscriptions but also in MSS., still written in the sacred character, but in the Egyptian tongue as it was spoken after the people reoccupied the country; and (iii.) Tat, the priesthood of Manetho’s day, and presumably of some centuries prior to his time, who spoke a yet later form of Egyptian, and from whose demotic translations further translations or paraphrases were made in Greek.

IS “SOTHIS” A FORGERY?

This natural line of descent of the fundamental doctrines in the tradition of the Trismegistic literature, however, is scouted by encyclopædism, which would have our sermons to be Neoplatonic forgeries, though on what slender grounds it bases its view we have already seen. It will now be interesting to see how the testimony of Manetho is disposed of. Our encyclopædias tell us that the book Sothis is obviously a late forgery; parrot-like they repeat this statement; but nowhere in them do we find a single word of proof brought forward. Let us then see whether any scholars have dealt with the problem outside of encyclopædism. Very little work has been done on the subject. The fullest summary of the position is given by C. Müller. 1 Müller bases his assertion on Böckh, 2 and Böckh on Letronne. 3

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The arguments are as follows: (i.) That the term “venerable” (σεβαστός) is not used prior to the time of the Roman emperors; (ii.) that Egypt knows no flood; (iii.) that the ancient mythology of Egypt knows no first and second Hermes; (iv.) that Egypt has no Seriadic land; (v.) that the term “Trismegistus” is of late use.

THE ARGUMENTS OF ENCYCLOPÆDISM REFUTED

Let us take these arguments in order and examine them, bearing in mind, however, that the whole question has been prejudiced from the start, and that encyclopædism, in order to maintain its hypothesis of the spuriousness of our Trismegistic writings, is bound to argue the spuriousness of Manetho’s Sothis. The categorical statements of Manetho are exceedingly distressing to the former hypothesis; in fact, they give it the lie direct. As to the arguments, then:

(i.) The term σεβαστός is in later times equated with “Augustus,” the honorific title of the Roman emperors. Therefore, it is argued, it could not have been used prior to their times. But why not? The king to an Egyptian was divine—every inscription proves it—and the term “venerable” was in early times always applied to the Gods. Why not then apply it to the “Great King”? Indeed, what could be more natural than to do so?

(ii.) We have already shown that, according to Plato, Egypt knew most accurately of a Flood; Plato further tells us that Solon got his information from the priests of Saïs, who told him that all the records were preserved in the temple of Neïth.

It is not here the place to discuss the Atlanticum of Plato and the long history of opinion connected with

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it, for that would require a volume in itself. I have, however, acquainted myself with all the arguments for and against the authenticity of at least the germ of this tradition, and with the problems of comparative mythology and folklore involved in it, and also with the recent literature of the subject which seeks to corroborate the main conceptions of Plato by the researches of seership. All this, taken in conjunction with the general subject of the “myths” of Plato, and the latest views on this subject, has convinced me that the greatest of Greek philosophers did not jest when, his dialectic having gone as far as it could, he sought refuge in the mystery-traditions for corroboration of those intuitions which his unaided intellect could not demonstrate.

It can of course be argued that every reference to a flood in Egyptian Hellenistic literature is but a repetition of what the incredulous must regard as Plato’s brilliant romance; but in this connection, as in many others, it is equally arguable that all such references—Plato’s included—are derivable from one and the same source—namely, Egypt herself.

And, indeed, on 9th November 1904, at a meeting of the Society of Biblical Archæology, a paper by Professor Naville was read by Mr F. Legge on “A Mention of a Flood in the Book of the Dead.” The flood in question is that described in the Leyden version as Ch. clxxv. 1

(iii.) Cicero (106-44 B.C.) speaks of five Mercurii, the last two of whom were Egyptian. 2 One was the “son of Father Nile,” whose name the Egyptians considered it impiety to pronounce—and for whom, presumably, they substituted the term Agathodaimon; and the

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second was the later Thoyth, the-founder of Hermopolis. 1 Cicero could hardly have invented this; it must have been a commonplace of his day, most probably derived in the first instance from the writings of Manetho, from which generally the Greeks, and those imbued with Greek culture, derived all their information about Egypt.

And, indeed, Reitzenstein (p. 139), though he refers the information given by Syncellus to a Pseudo-Manetho (without a word of explanation, however), admits that the genealogy of Hermes there given is in its main features old. 2

THE SERIADIC LAND

(iv.) The statement that Egypt knew no Seriadic land or country seems to be a confident assertion, but the following considerations may perhaps throw a different light on the matter.

In the astronomical science of the Egyptians the most conspicuous solar system near our own, represented in the heavens by the brilliant Sirius, was of supreme interest. Cycles of immense importance were determined by it, and it entered into the highest mysticism of Egyptian initiation. Sirius was, as it were, the guardian star of Egypt. Now ancient Egypt was a sacred land, laid out in its nomes or provinces according to the heavens, having centres in its body corresponding to the centres or ganglia of the heavens. As the Hindus had a Heavenly Ganges (Ākāsha-Gangā) and an earthly Ganges, so had the heavens a Celestial

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[paragraph continues]Nile, and Egypt a physical Nile, the life-giver of the land. The yearly inundation, which meant and means everything for ancient and modern Khem, was observed with great minuteness, and recorded with immense pains, the basis of its cycle being the Sothiac or Siriadic; Sirius (Seirios) being called in Greek transliteration Sothis and Seth (Eg. Sepṭ). What more natural name, then, to give to the country than the Seriadic Land?

The Nile records in ancient times were self-registered by pyramids, obelisks, and temples, and in later times nearly all monuments were built according to the type of the masonic instruments of the Egyptian astrogeological science. This science has been studied in our own times by an Egyptian, and the results of his researches have been printed “for private circulation,” and a copy of them is to be found in the British Museum. In his Preface the author writes as follows: 1

“The astrogeological science gave birth to a monumental system, by means of which the fruits of the accumulated observations and experience of the human race have been preserved, outliving writings, inscriptions, traditions, and nationalities. The principal monuments had imparted to them the essential property of being autochronous landmarks of a geochronological nature. Many of them recorded, hydromathematically, the knowledge in astronomy, in geography, and in the dimension and figure of the earth obtained in their respective epochs. They were Siriadic monuments, because their magistral lines were projected to the scale

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of the revolutions of the cycles of the star Surios (sic) in terms of the standard astrogeological cubit.”

Doubtless our author flogs his theory too severely, as all such writers do; but nilometry and the rest was certainly one of the most important branches of the priestly science.

THE STELÆ OF HERMES

But before we deal with the last objection urged against the authenticity of Manetho’s Sothis, we will add a few words more concerning these Seriadic monuments known in antiquity as the Stelae of Hermes or of Seth, and erroneously spoken of in Latin and English as the “Columns” or “Pillars” of Hermes.

The general reader may perhaps be puzzled at the variety of spelling of the name of the star, but he should recollect that the difficulties of transliteration from one language to another are always great, and especially so when the two languages belong to different families. Thus we find the variants of Teḥuti, the Egyptian name of Hermes, transliterated in no less than nineteen various forms in Greek and two in Latin—such as Thoyth, Thath, Tat, etc. 1 Similarly we find the name of the famous Indian lawgiver transliterated into English as Manu, Menu, Menoo, etc.

With regard to these “Mercurii Columnæ,” it was the common tradition, as we have already pointed out, that Pythagoras, Plato, and others got their wisdom from these columns, that is to say, monuments. 2 The

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historian Ammianus Marcellinus, 1 the friend of the Emperor Julian, has preserved for us a peculiarity of the construction of some of these pyramids or temples which is of interest. The passage to which we refer runs as follows:

“There are certain underground galleries and passages full of windings, which, it is said, the adepts in the ancient rites (knowing that the flood was coming, and fearing that the memory of the sacred ceremonies would be obliterated) constructed in various places, distributed in the interior [of the buildings], which were mined out with great labour. And levelling the walls, 2 they engraved on them numerous kinds of birds and animals, and countless varieties [of creatures] of another world, which they called hieroglyphic characters.” 3

We are thus told of another peculiarity of some of the Seriadic monuments, and of the “Books preserved from the Flood” of which there were so many traditions. These are the records to which Sanchuniathon and Manetho make reference.

THE SONS OF SETH-HERMES

The Egyptian account is straightforward enough; but when Josephus, following the traditional practice of his race in exploiting the myths of more ancient nations for the purpose of building up Jewish history—for the

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[paragraph continues]Mosaic Books supply innumerable examples of the working-up of elements which the Jews found in the records of older nations—runs away with the idea that Seth (the Egyptian Sirius) was the Biblical patriarch Seth, the Jewish “antiquarian” enters on a path of romance and not of history. ’Tis thus he uses the Egyptian Seriadic tradition for his own purposes:

“All of these [the Sons of Seth] being of good disposition, dwelt happily together in the same country free from quarrels, without any misfortune happening to the end of their lives. The [great] subject of their studies was that wisdom which deals with the heavenly bodies and their orderly arrangement. In order that their discoveries should not be lost to mankind and perish before they became known (for Adam had foretold that there would be an alternate disappearance of all things 1 by the force of fire and owing to the strength and mass of water)—they made two monuments, 2 one of brick and the other of stone, and on each of them engraved their discoveries. In order that if it should happen that the brick one should be done away with by the heavy downpour, 3 the stone one might survive and let men know what was inscribed upon it, at the same time informing them that a brick one had also been made by them. And it remains even to the present day in the Siriad land.” 4

This passage is of great interest not only as affording a very good example of the method of inventing Jewish “antiquities,” but also as permitting us to recover the outlines of the original Egyptian account which Josephus purloined and adapted. The Sons of Seth were the initiates of the archaic priesthood of the First Hermes.

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[paragraph continues]Adam has been substituted for the First Man, in the sense of our “Shepherd” tradition; and the two kinds of monuments (which Josephus seems to regard as two single structures and not as relating to two classes of buildings) may refer to the brick structures and temples of that age, and to specially constructed and more lasting monuments of stone—perhaps rock-cut temples, or the most ancient pyramids. I have also asked myself the question as to whether there may not be some clue concealed in this “brick monument” reference to the puzzling statement in the Babylonian Talmud 1 that Jesus set up a “brick-bat” and worshipped it. Jesus is said in the Talmud Jeschu Stories to have “learned magic in Egypt,” and the magical wisdom of ancient Egypt is here said to have been recorded on monuments of brick. 2

Reitzenstein (p. 183), after pointing to the similarity of tradition as to the Seriadic Land contained in Josephus, and in what he characterises as Pseudo-Manetho, 3 adds the interesting information that the Seriadic Land is borne witness to by an inscription as being the home and native land of Isis; indeed, the Goddess herself is given the name of Neilotis or Seirias; she is the fertile earth and is Egypt. 4

To continue, then, with the consideration of the arguments urged against the authenticity of Manetho’s Sothis. With regard to objection (iv.), we have given very good reasons for concluding that so far from Egypt “knowing no Seriadic land,” Egypt was the Seriadic Land par excellence, and the Books of Hermes

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were the direct descendants of the archaic stone monuments of that land. And further, we have shown that our Trismegistic writings are a step or two further down in the same line of descent. The whole hangs together logically and naturally.

We have thus removed four of the five props which support the hypothesis of forgery with regard to the Sothis document. Let us now see whether the remaining prop will bear the weight of the structure.

THE EPITHET “THRICE-GREATEST”

(v.) We are told that the term “Trismegistus” is of late use. This assertion is based entirely on the hypothesis that all our extant Trismegistic writings are Neoplatonic forgeries of the third or at best the second century, before which time the name Thrice-greatest was never heard of. The term Trismegistus must go as far back as the earliest of these writings, at any rate, and where we must place that we shall see at the end of our investigations.

That the peculiar designation Trismegistus was known in the first century even among the Romans, however, is evident from the famous Latin epigrammatist Martial (v. 24), who in singing the praise of one Hermes, a famous gladiator, brings his pæan to a climax with the line:

Hermes omnia solus et ter unus. 1

A verse which an anonymous translator in 1695 freely renders as:

Hermes engrosses all men’s gifts in one,
And Trismegistus’ name deserves alone.

Such a popular reference shows that the name Trismegistus was a household word, and argues for

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many years of use before the days of Martial (A.D. 43-104?). But have we no other evidence?

In the trilingual inscription (hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek) on the famous Rosetta Stone, which sings the praises of Ptolemy Epiphanes (210-181 B.C.), Hermes is called the “Great-and-Great.” 1 Letronne renders this deux fois grand; 2 and in his notes 3 says that the term “Trismegistus” was not known at this date, thus contemptuously waving aside Manetho’s Sothis. Had it been known, he says, it would undoubtedly have been used instead of the feebler expression “great-and-great.” 4 But why undoubtedly? Let us enquire a little further into the matter. The Egyptian reduplicated form of this attribute of Hermes, ȧā ȧā, the “great-great,” is frequently elsewhere found with a prefixed sign which may be transliterated ur. 5 So that if the more simple form is translated by “great, great,” the intensive form would naturally be rendered “great, great, great,” or “three times great.” But we have to deal with the form “thrice-greatest,” a superlative intensive. We have many examples of adjectives intensified with the particle τρίς in Greek, 6

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but no early instances of their superlatives; therefore, what? Apparently that the term “Trismegistus” is a late invention.

But may we not legitimately suppose, in the absence of further information, that when the Egyptian had intensified his reduplicated form he had come to an end of his resources—it was the highest term of greatness that he could get out of his language? Not so when he used Greek. He could go a step further in the more plastic Hellenic tongue. Why, then, did he not use “thrice-greatest” instead of “great-and-great” on the Rosetta Stone?

Because he was translating ȧā ȧā and not its intensified form. But why did he not use the intensified form in the demotic inscription? Well, “whys” are endless; but may we not suppose that, as Ptolemy was being praised for his justice, which he is said to have exercised “as Hermes the great-and-great,” the reduplicated form was sufficient for this attribute of the idealised priesthood, while the still more honorific title was reserved for Hermes as the personified Wisdom? Or, again, may it not have been politic to refrain from adjectives which would have dimmed the greatness of Ptolemy?

THE CLUE OF GRIFFITHS

So I wrote in November 1899, when the major part of this chapter was first published in The Theosophical Review. Shortly afterwards, however, I came across an entirely new clue. In his Stories of the High Priests of Memphis: the Sethon of Herodotus and the Demotic Tales of Khamuas (Oxford, 1900), F. Ll. Griffiths presents us with the translation of an exceedingly interesting demotic text, found on the verso of two Greek

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documents, the contents of which prove them to be official land-registers of the seventh year of Claudius (A.D. 46-47). There is also “strong evidence for attributing the demotic text to some time within thirty years from that date” (p. 41). So much for the copy of the original; but what of its contents? As they belong to the most important cycle of folk-tates of Egypt, it is to be assumed that their form and substance is old.

In this papyrus we are told that on an occasion of great need when the Pharaoh of Egypt was being overcome at a distance by the sorceries of the Ethiopian enchanters, he was saved, and the magic of the Black Ones sent back upon them, by a certain Hor, son of Pa-neshe, most learned in the Books. Before his great trial of strength with the Ethiopian spells, we read of this Hor that:

“He entered the temple of Khmûn; he made his offerings and his libations before Thoth, the Eight-times-great, the Lord of Khmûn, the Great God” (p. 58).

To this Griffiths appends the following note:

“‘Thoth, eight times great’; the remains of the signs indicate this reading. The title, which here appears for the first time in Egyptian literature, is the equivalent of τρισμέγιστος [thrice-greatest], a late epithet first used about the date of this MS. 1 ὁ is μέγας [great], which we may represent algebraically by a; ὁ ὁ (2a), a common title of Thoth in late hieroglyphic, is μέγας καὶ μέγας [great and great] on the Rosetta Stone, but probably represents μέγιστος [greatest], and 8ὁ is therefore τρισμέγιστος [thrice-greatest], i.e. (2a)³. The famous epithet of Hermes which has puzzled commentators thus displays its mathematical formation. 6ὁ = 3(2a) would not fill the

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lacuna on the papyrus, nor would it give the obviously intended reference to the name of Thoth’s city, ‘the Eighth,’ and the mythological interpretation of that name.”

The mythological interpretation of that name, namely Khmun (Khemen-nw), which Budge transliterates Khemennu, Griffiths says is “the eighth city,” i.e. “the eighth in Upper Egypt going up the river.” 1

We are loth to deprive any one of a so fair adaptation to environment in the evolution of purely physical interpretation; but we are afraid that our readers will have already learned for themselves that Khemennu was the City of the Eight, the City of the Ogdoad, and will expect some less mundane explanation of the name; not that we altogether object to Khemennu being the “Eighth City up the River,” if that river is interpreted as the Celestial Nile on which the soul of the initiated sailed in the solar boat.

Reitzenstein then is wrong in supposing (p. 117, n. 6) that Griffiths connects the honorific title Trismegistus with the eight cynocephali who form the paut of Thoth; but we may do so.

The nature of this symbolic Ogdoad is most clearly seen in the inscription of Dêr-el-Bahari, of the time of the Twenty-second Dynasty which Maspero has lately published. 2

In it the Osirified says to the Supreme:

“I am One who becomes Two; I am Two who becomes Four; I am Four who becomes Eight; I am the One after that.”

So also in the first Hermes Prayer, quoted in a preceding chapter, addressed to Hermes as Agathodaimon,

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[paragraph continues]Thoth is he “whom the Eight Wardens guard.”

These Eight, we may perhaps be permitted to speculate, were generated Two from One, ȧā ȧā, Greatest; Four from Two, Twice-greatest; Eight from Four, Thrice-greatest.

Such a combination would specially commend itself to men trained in Pythagorean mathematical symbols, as were doubtless many who took part in compiling the Egyptian Hellenistic theosophical literature.

I, therefore, conclude that the honorific title Thrice-greatest can very well go back to early Ptolemaic times; and therefore, as far as I can see, the authenticity of Manetho’s Sothis stands unimpugned as far as any arguments so far brought against it are concerned. I therefore regard the quotation of Syncellus as a most valuable piece of information in tracing the genesis of the Trismegistic literature. Whether or not any of our extant sermons can be placed among these earlier forms of this literature will be discussed later on.

THE EARLIEST TRISMEGISTIC LITERATURE

That, however, literature of a similar nature existed in early and middle Ptolemaic times we have already seen from the material adduced at the beginning of this chapter; we may therefore fitly conclude it by pointing out that in later Ptolemaic times, and down to the first century A.D., we find in the same literature specimens of cosmogenesis closely resembling the main elements of the world-formation given in our “Shepherd” treatise.

An excellent example is that of the fragmentary cosmogonical poem, the text of which Reitzenstein has printed in his Zwei religionsgesch. Fragen, to which we

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have already referred. This poem Reitzenstein (p. 92) dates as belonging to the first century B.C., though it may probably be earlier; it declares itself to be of the Hermes tradition, both in its statement about itself and also in the fact that it is Hermes, the Beloved Son of Zeus, who is the Logos-Creator of the cosmos, and also the progenitor or “father” of the prophet-poet who writes the vision.

PHILO BYBLIUS

But not only did the tradition of Egyptian Hermes dominate the Greek forms of cosmogony which emanated from Alexandria and spread through the Hellenic world, but it also imposed itself upon the forms of cosmogony and the history-writing of other nations; the most striking example of this is to be found in the Phœnician Histories of Philo Byblius, who lived in the second half of the first century A.D.

The fragments of this work are of great interest to our present enquiry, as they tend to show that both Egypt and Phœnicia, the two most sacred nations, derived their cosmogonical knowledge and mystery-traditions from the same source; that source being traced to the most archaic Books of Thoth.

This is all, no doubt, an overwriting of Phœnician records in the light of Egyptian tradition; Philo, however, would have us regard his work as a Greek translation or paraphrase of a compilation made by an ancient and learned Phœnician priest, Sanchuniathon, based immediately upon archaic Phœnician records by one who was also learned in the oral tradition of his own mysteries.

The initial question as to whether Philo had a genuine Phœnician document before him or not, need

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not occupy us here, save in the most superficial fashion, as we are at present interested in the Egyptian elements of his account solely, and not in disentangling the native Phœnician substratum.

It must, however, in fairness be said that though the Byblian prefaces his account with an introduction and intersperses it with occasional remarks, all this is transparently his own, and is clearly distinguishable from what have every appearance of being translated passages.

ARE HIS “PHŒNICIAN HISTORIES” A FORGERY?

The general theory, however, since the time of Orelli 1 has been that Philo forged the whole of this cosmogony and history. On the contrary, it was made considerable use of by Porphyry in his criticism of Christianity, and Eusebius 2 quotes the passages used by Porphyry. 3 The whole work of Philo, moreover, is claimed to be recovered by Wagenfeld, who has elaborately defended its genuineness. 4 There indeed seems no reason to

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accept the forgery-hypothesis, which apparently rests on an even flimsier basis than the forgery-theory of the Trismegistic writings. The work, on the contrary, considered as a specimen of Phœnician story strongly influenced by Egyptian tradition, is a most interesting document for understanding the ancient Semitic mystery-tradition as distinguished from Jewish adaptations of general Semitic legend—in other words, the distinction of Semitismus and Israëlitismus. Porphyry was not only a Semite himself but also a good critic, and not likely to base his arguments on a forgery; nor would Philo have ventured to put forward a forgery when there were thousands of learned and fanatical Jews who would have been only too glad to expose it.

Philo tells us that the Phœnician public traditions being chaotic, “Sanchuniathon, a man of great learning and a busy searcher [after knowledge], who especially desired to know the first principles from which all things are derived, most carefully examined the Books of Taaut, for he knew that Taaut was the first of all under the sun who discovered the use of letters and the writing of records. So he started from him, making him as it were his foundation—from him the Logos whom the Egyptians called Thōuth, the Alexandrians Thōth, 1 but whom the Greeks have turned into Hermes.” 2

SANCHUNIATHON AND THE BOOKS OF HERMES

This evidently means that the source of Sanchuniathon’s information as to the mystic beginning of things was derived from the Books of Thoth, and

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that this was so may be seen from the following passage:

“He supposes the beginning of all things to consist of a Dark Mist of a spiritual nature, or as it were a Breath of dark mist, and of a turbid Chaos black as Erebus; 1 that these were boundless, and for many an age 2 remained without a bound. ‘But when,’ he 3 says, ‘the Spirit fell in love with his own principles, 4 and they were interblended, that interweaving was called Love; 5 and this Love was the origin of the creation of all things. But [Chaos] did not know its own creation. 6 From its embrace with Spirit Mōt was born. 7 From her [Mōt, the Great Mother] it was that every seed of the creation came, the birth of all the cosmic bodies.

“‘[First of all] there were [Great] Lives 8 devoid of sensation, and out of these came subsequently [Great]

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[paragraph continues]Lives possessed of intelligence. 1 The latter were called Zophasemin (that is to say, “Overseers of the Heavens”). The latter were fashioned in the form of eggs, and shone forth as Mōt, the Sun and Moon, the Stars and the great Planetary Spheres.

“‘Now as the [original] nebula began to lighten, through its heat mists and clouds of sea and earth 2 were produced, and gigantic downpours and torrents of the waters in the firmaments. Even after they were separated, 3 they were still carried from their proper places by the heat of the sun, and all the [watery and earthy elements] met together again in the nebula one with the other, and dashed together, amid thunder and lightning; and over the crash of the thunderings the [Great] Rational Lives before-mentioned watched, 4 while on the land and sea male and female cowered at their echo and were dismayed.’

“After this our author proceeds to say: ‘These things we found written in the Cosmogony of Taaut, and in his commentaries, based on his researches and the evidences which his intelligence saw and discovered, and so enlightened us.’” 5

There are many other points of interest in Philo’s translation, but we need not elaborate them here. One point, however, must not be omitted, because of its importance with regard to the Hermes-Æsculapius tradition, an important factor in the Trismegistic writings.

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“And Cronus [Ammon] going to the land of the South gave the whole of Egypt to the God Taaut to be his kingdom. All these things were first recorded by the Seven Sons of Sydyk, the Cabiri, and their eighth brother, Asclepius, as it was commanded them by the God Taaut.” 1

Æsculapius is here at once identified with the cult of the “Great Gods” (כבר, KBR, Kabirim), who were, according to the old Semitic tradition, the Sons of King Sydyk (? Melchizedec). The whole subject of the very ancient mysteries of these Great Gods is one of immense interest, but we must not be tempted to follow this alluring bye-path. 2 Enough has been said to show that both Sanchuniathon and the writer of “The Shepherd” drew their accounts of cosmogony from the same sources, namely, the “Books of Thoth,” or, in other words, the Egyptian mystery-tradition.

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Footnotes

99:1 R. 3, nn. 1, 2.

100:1 See R. 3-7, to whom I am indebted for the indications.

100:2 Of the school of Aristarchus (fl. 280-264). The great Lexicon of Pamphilus is supposed by some to have been the basis of that of Hesychius.

100:3 Apud, Galen, περὶ ἁπλῶν φαρμ., vi. Proœm. (tom. ix. p. 798 K).

100:4 See Riess, Philologus Supplem., Fragg. 27-29.

100:5 See Kroll, “Aus der Geschichte der Astrologie,” Neue Jahrbb. f. Phil. u. Päd., vii. 559 ff.

101:1 Kroll, ii. 344; Riess, Frag. 33.

101:2 Riess, Frag. 1.

101:3 οὐρανοβατεῖν.

101:4 So R. (5) completes a lacuna.

101:5 βοή—presumably a parallel with the Bath-kol of Talmudic Rabbinism.

102:1 The same rapturous vision of the soul after death is translated by Seneca (Cons. ad Marciam, 18, 2) from Poseidonius (135-(?)51 B.C.), who also clearly derived it from the same Egyptian Hellenistic literature.

102:2 C. H., v. (vi.) 5.

102:3 C. H., xi. (xii.) 6, 7; also Stob., Ecl., i. 49 (386, 3, W.).

102:4 There are some dozen variants in the spelling and accenting of this name in Greek transliteration; in Egyptian we are told it means “Beloved of Thoth” (Mai en Thoth).

103:1 Plutarch, De Is. et Osir., ix. and xxviii.

103:2 Josephus, C. Apion., i. 14.

103:3 Ælian, De Animalium Natura, x. 16.

103:4 Budge, op. sup. cit., i. 332, says: “A tradition says Solon, Thales, and Plato all visited the great college at Heliopolis, and that the last-named actually studied there, and that Manetho the priest of Sebennytus, who wrote a history of Egypt in Greek for Ptolemy II., collected his materials in the library of the priesthood of Rā.”

104:1 Chron., xl. See Cory (I. P.), Ancient Fragments, pp. 173, 174—mispaged as 169 (2nd ed.; London, 1832); and Mitller, Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum, pp. 511 ff. (Paris, 1848).

104:2 βίβλος Σώθεος.

104:3 στηλῶν, generally translated “columns”; but the term is quite a general one and denotes any monument bearing an inscription.

104:4 Syncellus has “into the Greek tongue,” an evident slip, as many have already pointed out.

104:5 Sebennytus was the chief city of the Sebennyte province, situated about the centre of the Delta. Heliopolis or On, the City of the Sun, was situated some thirty miles north of Memphis.

105:1 Presumably Manetho and his fellow priests.

105:2 Lit., “for you questioning.”

106:1 See my article on “The Sibyl and her Oracles,” in The Theosophical Review, vol. xxii. pp. 399 S. See also the passage preserved from the Ethiopian History of Marcellua by Proclus in his commentary on the Timæus of Plato; Cory, Ancient Fragments, p. 233.

107:1 Frag. Hist. Græc., ut sup. cit., p. 512.

107:2 A. Böckh, Manetho und die Hundsternperiode: em Beitrag zur Geschichte der Pharaonen, pp. 14-17 (Berlin, 1845).

107:3 M. Letronne, Recueil des Inscriptions grecques et latines de l’Égypte, tom, i., pp. 206, 280 ff. (Paris, 1842).

109:1 See The Athenæum, 12th November 1904.

109:2 De Nat. Deorum, iii. 22.

110:1 Ursin, De Zoroastre, etc., p. 73.

110:2 For a permutation of the elements in this genealogy, in the interests of Heliopolis, see Varro, De Genie Pop. Rom., as quoted by Augustine in De Civ. Dei, xviii. 3 and 8.

111:1 Hekekyan Bey, C. E., A Treatise on the Chronology of Siriadic Monuments, demonstrating that the Egyptian Dynasties of Manetho are Records of Astrogeological Nile Observations which have been continued to the Present Time—Preface, p. v. (London, 1863). The book deserves careful study, and cannot be hastily set aside with the impatience of prejudice.

112:1 See Pietschmann, op. cit., pp. 31, 32; also Spiegelberg, Recueil des Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes, xxiii. 199. R. 117, n. 1.

112:2 See the last chapter of the book from which the following passage is quoted. See also Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, cap. ii., who in a very clear statement of the sources of his information, and the method of treating the numerous points raised by Porphyry, says: “And if thou proposest any philosophical problem, we will resolve it for thee according to the ancient monuments of Hermes, on the thorough study of which Plato, and prior to him Pythagoras, founded their philosophy.”

113:1 Who flourished in the early second half of the fourth century A.D.

113:2 The passages and chambers being hewn out of the solid rock.

113:3 Ammiani Marcellini Rerum Gestarum Libri qui supersunt, xxii. xv. 30; ed. V. Gardthausen (Leipzig, 1874), p. 301.

114:1 τῶν ὅλων.

114:2 στήλας.

114:3 ἐπομβρίας, a downpour or flood of rain.

114:4 Josephus, Antt., I. ii.; Cory’s An. Fragg., pp. 171, 172.

115:1 Sanhedrin, 107 B; Sota, 47 A.

115:2 See my Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.?—pp. 137 ff. and 147 ff.

115:3 A similarity already pointed out by Plew, Jahrb. f. Phil. (1868), p. 839.

115:4 Drexler in Roscher’s Lex. d. Myth., ii. 388, 408, 445.

116:1 Pietschmann misquotes this line, giving “ter maximus” for “ter unus” (op. cit., p. 36).

117:1 καθάπερ Ἑρμῆς ὁ μέγας καὶ μέγας, line 19; the reading is perfectly clear, and I cannot understand the remark of Chambers (op. cit., Pref. vii.) that Hermes is called “μέγας, μέγας, μέγας” on the Rosetta Stone.

117:2 “Inscription grecque de Rosette,” p. 3, appended to Müller, Frag. Hist. Græc. (Paris, 1841).

117:3 Ibid., p. 20.

117:4 Recueil des Inscriptions grecques et latines de l’Égypte, i. 283 (Paris, 1842).

117:5 See Pietschmann, op. sup. cit., p. 35.

117:6 In Greek not only is the term τρίσμακαρ (thrice-blessed) applied to Hermes in the inscriptions of Pselcis (see Letronne’s Recueil, i. 206 n.), but also in a Magical Prayer (Wessely, 1893—p. 38, 11. 550 ff.; Kenyon, p. 102) he is addressed as τρισμέγας, or “thrice-great” simply.

119:1 Griffiths here refers to Pietschmann as his authority for this statement.

120:1 Cf. Proc. Soc. Bib. Arch. (1899), p. 279.

120:2 Recueil des Travaux relat. à la Phil, et à l’Archéol. égypt. et assyr., xxiii. 196. Cf. R. 54.

123:1 J. C. Orelli, Sanchoniathonis Berytii quæ feruntur Fragmenta (Leipzig, 1826).

123:2 Præparatio Evangelica, I. vi., vii.

123:3 These are collected by Cory in his Ancient Fragments, pp. 3 ff. (London, 1832); and they may also be found in C. Müller, Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum, “Philo Byblius,” iii. pp. 560 ff. (Paris, 1848).

123:4 F. Wagenfeld, Sanchuniathon’s Urgeschichte der Phönizier in einem Auszuge aus der wieder aufgefundenen Handschrift von Philo’ s vollständiger Übersetzung (Hanover, 1836). In the following year Wagenfeld published the Greek text with a Latin translation under the title Sanchoniathonis Historiarum Phœniciæ Libri IX. (Bremse, 1837). For the further consideration of the reliability of Sanchuniathon, see Count (Wolf Wilhelm) Baudissin’s Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte, Heft ii., “Über den religionsgeschichtlichen Werth der phönicischen Geschichte Sanchuniathon’s” (Leipzig, 1876).

124:1 Perhaps attempts at transliterating the dialectic variants of Upper and Lower Egypt of the name Teḥuti.

124:2 Wagenfeld’s text, Proœm., p. 2; Euseb., Præp. Ev., I. ix. 29.

125:1 This is the beginning of the out-breathing of the universe or of any system; it is the Great Breath or Spirit moving on the Waters of Chaos, the primal nebula. Erebus was fabled to be a region of nether darkness separating Earth and Hades (not Hell). It was the Dark Side of Heaven.

125:2 Lit., æon.

125:3 That is, Sanchuniathon; so that we may take this passage as a direct quotation, or rather translation.

125:4 Or sources; that is, the primal states of Matter or Chaos.

125:5 Pothos, πόθος; yearning, longing—love for all that lives and breathes. This union was symbolised not only among the Phœnicians but also among most of the other nations by an egg, round which a serpent twines. When the egg and serpent are represented apart they stand for “Chaos” and “Ether,” matter and spirit; but when united they represent the hermaphrodite or male-female first principle of the universe, spirit-matter, called in Greek translation Pothos or Erōs.

125:6 Cf. “The Darkness comprehended it not” of the Proem to the Fourth Gospel.

125:7 Here Philo, the translator, volunteers the information that some call this prime plasm of Chaos, “Slime,” others explain it as “Fermentation,” in a watery sort of medium.

125:8 The primal elements and their subdivisions.

126:1 The same distinction is made in the cosmogonic account in “The Shepherd,” but with more detail.

126:2 Presumably still mingled together, as in the account in “The Shepherd.”

126:3 That is to say, after the land and water were separated.

126:4 ἐγρηγόρησεν. The same expression is used in the Greek translation of The Book of Enoch, in speaking of the Watchers (Egrēgores).

126:5 Op. cit., i. ii., pp. 8 ff.

127:1 Op. cit., viii. p. 26.

127:2 The best source of information is the art. “Megaloi Theoi,” in Reseller’s Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen u. römischen Mythologie, II. ii. (Leipzig, 1894-97).

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VI

AN EGYPTIAN PROTOTYPE OF THE MAIN FEATURES OF THE PŒMANDRES’ COSMOGONY

THE HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE “PŒMANDRES”

One has only to read through the remains of the Trismegistic literature preserved to us to assure himself that the whole of it looked back to the Pœmandres instruction as the most primitive form of the tradition in the language of Greece. The extant form of our “Pœmandres” sermon is clearly not the most primitive form; but whatever that form was, it must have contained the cosmological part.

Now, if we regard this cosmogenesis as a purely literary compilation, the task of the higher criticism will be to try to sift out the various elements in it, and if possible to trace them to their sources.

But before making any attempt of this nature, it will be as well to consider the nature of the literary art of our document. It purports itself to be an apocalypse, or rather the record of an apocalyptic vision, and not a purely literary compilation from already existing literary sources. It declares itself to be the work of a seer and prophet and not of a scribe or commentator; it claims to be an inspired document, a scripture, and not the work of a schoolman.

Of this class of writing we have very many examples in other scriptures, and it will be as well to consider

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briefly the nature of such documents. In the original form of apocalypses we do not as a rule find that prior formal literary material is used—that is to say, we do not find that previously existing written sources are incorporated; what we do find is that in almost every case the seer uses the forms and terms of previously existing ideas to express what he sees. These forms and terms are found in already existing written and oral traditions, and the prophetical writer is compelled to use the thought-language of his own mind and of that of his age to express himself. This, however, does not negate the possibility of his having seen a true vision, of his having been inspired.

It is evident that whoever wrote the “Pœmandres” must have been saturated with the religious, mystical, philosophic, and scientific thought of his age, clothed in the forms of the thought-language of his day; and it is also clear that whatever “newness” there may have been in him, was owing to the nature of the “touch” of inspiration he had received. This striking of a new keynote, as it were, in his inner nature, enabled him to regroup and reconstruct the previous ideas he had imbibed from his studies.

A PROTOTYPE OF ITS COSMOGENESIS

Now as far as our cosmogenesis is concerned, it has not yet been found possible to trace the exact verbal forms of its elements to any precise literary sources, but it has been found possible to point to written sources which contain similar ideas; and not only so, but with regard to the main features of it, a distinct prototype has been found in Egypt itself. This discovery is due to Reitzenstein (pp. 59 ff.),and the prototype is to be found in an Egyptian inscription in the British

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[paragraph continues]Museum, which was first read correctly and interpreted by Dr J. H. Breasted. 1 Before using it, however, Reitzenstein got his colleague Professor Spiegelberg to go through it; and again when Maspero, in reviewing 2 Breasted’s work, had further confirmed the view of it which Reitzenstein had in his mind, Spiegelberg again revised certain points in the translation owing to Maspero’s suggestions.

The inscription itself is dated about the eighth century B.C., but it states that it is the reproduction of a then old written text from the temple of Ptah at Memphis.

The chief content has to do with the Osiris-myth, but into this is inserted the distinctive Ptah-doctrine. Ptah is supposed by some to have originally been simply the god of handicraft, seeing that he is equated by the Greek interpreters of god-names with Hephaistos. He was, however, rather the Demiurgus, for in very early times he is found in the closest connection with the Gods of Heaven and Gods of Light, and is conceived as the Dispenser of all life.

In our text Ptah is brought into the closest relations with the Supreme Deity (Atum). This “God the Father” emanates from himself eight deities (the Ogdoad). Each one of these is Ptah with a distinctive epithet. To the fourth 3 of them, “Ptah the Great,” a theological system is attached, which, though not entirely ignoring the former presentation, is but loosely interwoven with it.

Before, however, Reitzenstein proceeds to deal with this, he gives Professor Spiegelberg’s translation of a

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[paragraph continues]Prayer to Ptah, of the time of Ramses III. (c. 1233 B.C.), from the Papyrus Harris (I. 44, 3 ff.), in order to make clearer the circle of ideas into which we shall be introduced. This Prayer is as follows:

A PRAISE-GIVING TO PTAH

“Hail to thee! Thou art great, thou art old, Tatenen, 1 Father of the gods,
God ancient from the beginning;
Who fashioned men,
Who made the gods,
Who began with the creation as the first creator,
Who created for all who came after him,
Who made the heaven; as his heart 2 he created it;
Who hanged it up,
As God Shu raised himself; 3
Who founded the earth of thy own power,
Who circled in the primal water of the Great Green, 4
Who created the invisible world, which brings the dead bodies to rest;

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Who let Rā come to make them glad,
As Prince of Eternity,
Lord of Eternity,
Lord of Life;
Who fills the lungs with air,
Who gives breath to every nostril,
Who vivifies all beings with his gifts.
Length of life, fortune, and fate are subject unto him
They live by that which goeth forth out of his mouth. 1
Who made contentment for all the gods,
In his form of ancient primal water; 2
Lord of Eternity, to whom Eternity is subject,
Breath of Life for all beings.”

There are other hymns of an exactly similar nature in which other gods are praised, especially Thoth and Horus. And now to turn to our inscription, and to that part of the text assigned to the fourth of the Forms of Manifestation, or Aspects or Persons, of Ptah.

PTAH-THOTH THE WISE ONE

l. 52. Ptah the Great is the heart and tongue of the god-circle. 3

§ 1, l. 53. (Two gods) 4 are they, the one as heart, the other as tongue, emanations of Atum. Exceeding great is Ptah; if he . . . then are their ka’s in this heart and tongue [of his].

l. 54. When Horus arose in him (Atum) as Ptah, and when Thoth arose in him as Ptah, the power of heart

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and tongue came into being through him. (It is Atum) who brings forth his being out of every body and out of every mouth of all the gods. All men, all quadrupeds, all creeping things live through his thinking and uttering whatsoever he will.

§ 2, l. 55. His god-circle is before him; he is teeth [and] lips, vessels [and] hands. Atum (is in his) god-circle; Atum is in his vessels, in his hands; the god-circle is also teeth and lips in that mouth which hath uttered the name of everything, and out of which Shu and Tefnut have proceeded. 1

l. 56. Then the god-circle organised the seeing of the eye, the hearing of the ear, the smelling of the nose, wherewith they made the desire of the heart to arise. And this [heart] it is which accomplishes every desire, but it is the tongue which repeats 2 what the heart desires.

§ 3. He (Ptah) gives existence 3 unto all gods, to Atum and his god-circle, for every god-word 4 comes into existence through the desire of the heart and the command of the tongue.

l. 57. He makes the ka . . . ; he makes all nourishment and all offerings 5 with this word; he makes what

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is loved and what is hated. He gives life to the pious, death to the impious. He makes every fabric, and every fabrication.

l. 58. The doing of the arms, the going of the feet, the movement of all limbs, is accomplished by the utterance of the word, because of the desire of the heart, [the word] which comes from the tongue and effects the whole of all things. So arises the teaching: Atum has made the gods to become Ptah Tatenen 1 so soon as the gods come into existence. All things proceed from him: sacrifice and food as well as oblation and all fair things.

§ 4, l. 59. He is Thoth the Wise, whose power is greater than that of the other gods. He (Thoth) at-oned himself with Ptah, after he had brought forth all things and all god-words; 2 after that he had fashioned the gods, had made the cities, settled the nomes, established the gods in their shrines,

l. 60. When he had ordained their sacrifices, founded their shrines, and had made statues of [? for] their bodies for their contentment.

§ 5. If the gods enter into their body, so is he (Ptah) in every wood, in every jewel, in every metal. 3 All things thrive after him if they [the gods] are there. To him all gods and their ka’s make oblation, uniting and binding themselves together [for him who is] Lord of the Two Lands. 4

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With these words the special theological system attached to the fourth person of Ptah is concluded, and the text returns to the Osiris-myth.

EGYPTIAN SYNCRETISM 1000 B.C.

From this most interesting inscription copied from an ancient written document, we learn in the first place that in Egypt already, a good thousand years before the date of our “Pœmandres,” we have what the critical mind would call a distinct specimen of syncretism; namely, an attempt to combine three God-myths, or traditions, into a single system. These, if we persist in taking a purely traditional view, are: (i.) The Hermopolitan myth of Thoth as the Logos-Demiurge, who also in it frequently appears as an aspect of the Supreme; (ii.) The doctrine of the Ptah-priests of Memphis, according to which Ptah as the Primal Deity creates himself and all gods and men, and fashions the world; and (iii.) The Heliopolitan theology, in which Atum as the first of an ennead of gods unites his eight fellow-gods in himself and is the Primal God and Primal Basis of all things.

In all this the scribe or prophet has employed very early conceptions: on the one hand, that the plurality of gods are but “members” of a One and Only God; and on the other, that a sharply-defined and in some respect special God is similar to another more-general God in some particular attribute of his. Thus Atum is really the Primal God; but the God-circle, his “Body” (or Pleroma), consists of Eight different Forms of Ptah. Atum has emanated them; he is therefore “he who himself creates himself”; but equally so has Ptah created Atum and himself. The most important Member of this universal Ptah-Being or Cosmic God is Ptah the Great,

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who is Heart and Tongue—the former as Horus, the latter as Thoth. Thoth proceeds into manifestation as Tongue or Word to accomplish the cosmic purpose; but the Word is only the thought which has proceeded, or in a certain fashion emanated, out of the Person. Thoth and Horus are inseparably united with Ptah.

Reitzenstein thinks that the occasion for introducing the whole of this system into an exposition which otherwise deals with the Osiris-myth, was afforded by the parts played by Horus and Thoth in that myth. But it is evidently in itself a special system in which Thoth was the One God, the Word by whom all things were made.

All of this must be quite manifest to any careful reader, and therefore there is no reason for its further elaboration. But though we have recovered one specimen of this kind of syncretism only, it is not to be supposed that it was unusual; indeed, it was a necessity in Egypt, where, beyond all other lands, the idea of a number of divinities united in one, each showing forth in separation some attribute dominantly, but in union possessing simultaneously the attributes of all the others, was the only key possible to a state of affairs where a plurality of gods existed side by side with the doctrines of the One and the All.

THE DOCTRINE OF “PŒMANDRES” COMPARED WITH THAT OF ITS PROTOTYPE

Nevertheless, our inscription is not only of general use, but of special use for an elucidation of the main elements in the “Pœmandres” cosmogony. Any attempt to translate the ideas of the Atum-Ptah-Thoth combination into Greek could have resulted in no other nomenclature than θέος (God)—δημιουργὸς or δημιουργὸς νοῦς (Demiurge or Demiurgic Mind)—νοῦς

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and λόγος (Mind and Word), as is the case in our treatise.

This argument is all the stronger if we reflect that if Thoth, after the ordering of the cosmos, at-oned himself again with Ptah, then he must have completed this ordering which was emanated from Ptah. It is thus that the writer has brought to clear expression the conception that the Word is the Proceeding Thought of Ptah, and that both are inseparably united with one another.

So, too, we find in the “Pœmandres” that the Logos, after the completion of the cosmic ordering, returns to the Demiurgic Mind and is at-oned with him.

This similarity of fundamental conception cannot be due to chance, and we must therefore conclude that a doctrine essentially corresponding with the theology of our inscription is the main source of the “Pœmandres” cosmogony. This fairly establishes the main content of our cosmogony on an Egyptian ground.

If to this we add the general Egyptian belief that a man’s soul, after being “purified” in the after-death state, goes back to God, to live for the eternity as a god with the gods, 1 then we have established the chief part of the “Pœmandres” treatise as the Hellenised doctrine of the Egyptian priests—the mystery-tradition.

With all of this agrees the thought that the God as Mind dwells in the pious, as we learn from the Hermes Prayers. So also it is Ptah in our inscription who gives life to the pious and death to the impious. In very early accounts we find Ptah, the Mind, is the

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imparter of the gnosis for the gods—that is, as a Greek would say, he was the inventor of philosophy, as indeed Diogenes Laërtius tells us (Proœm. 1): “The Egyptians declare that Hephaistos was the source of philosophy, the presidents of which are priests and prophets.” Ptah, the Mind, reveals himself to his own and gives them good counsel; “Ptah hath spoken to thee,” Suidas tells us (s.v.), was a Greek-Egyptian saying, which is best elucidated by the Stele of Intef, which tells us that the people say of the heart of Intef: “It is an oracle of the god which is in every body.” 1

All of this and much more of a like nature make it indubitably clear that the fundamental conceptions of the “Pœmandres” are Egyptian, and that the theory of Neoplatonic forgery must be for ever abandoned; so that even the dreams of Dévéria are nearer the truth than the confident assertions of many a great name in scholarship.

THE MAN-DOCTRINE

But what, says Reitzenstein (p. 69), is not Egyptian, is the doctrine of the Man, the Heavenly Man, the Son of God, who descends and becomes a slave of the Fate-Sphere; the Man who, though originally endowed with all power, descends into weakness and bondage, and has to win his own freedom and regain his original state.

This doctrine seems to have been in its origin part and parcel of the Chaldæan mystery-tradition; but it was widely spread in Hellenistic circles, and had analogies in all the great mystery-traditions, as we shall now proceed to see, and chiefly by the analysis of what has hitherto been regarded as one of the most chaotic and puzzling documents of Gnosticism.

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Footnotes

130:1 Zeitschr. f. äg. Sprache (1901), pp. 39 ff.

130:2 “Sur la Tout-puissance de la Parole,” Recueil des Travaux rel. à la Phil. . . . égypt., xxiv. 168 ff.

130:3 The God of Fire and Mind.

131:1 An epithet of Ptah. But compare the Hymn to Rā given by Budge (op. cit., i. 339): “Praise to thee O Rā, exalted Sekhem, Ta-thenen, Begetter of his Gods.” Sekhem is vital “power”; Tathenen is, therefore, presumably Creative Life, or the Demiurgic or Creative Power. On page 230 Budge tells us that Tathenen is elsewhere symbolised as a fire-spitting serpent armed with a knife.

131:2 The Heaven is the Great Heart of the Great Cosmos; in man the little cosmos, the heart, was the seat of the true understanding and will.

131:3 Shu generally represents the dry air between the earth and sky. Cf. the Hymn to Amen-Rā: “Thou art the One God, who did’st form thyself into two gods; thou art the creator of the egg, and thou did’st produce thy Twin-gods” (Budge, op. cit., ii. 89). Shu’s twin or syzygy is Tefnut, who in terrene physics represents the moist air; but Shu is elsewhere equated with the Light.

131:4 The Ocean of Heaven.

132:1 The life or breath of the Creator.

132:2 Sc. the water of the Great Green.

132:3 Paut, sphere, or group, or company, or hierarchy, or pleroma,—here an Ogdoad.

132:4 Namely, Thoth and Horus.

133:1 That is, the heart (Horus) rules action by fingers (and toes), by means of the ducts or vessels (arteries, veins, and nerves) leading to them, and all that these mean on the hidden side of things; while the tongue in the mouth (Thoth), by means of teeth and lips, is the organ of speech, or intelligent or meaning utterance.

133:2 This appears to be a mistranslation; it seems by what follows to mean “commands” or “gives expression to.”

133:3 Not being; that is, brings them into manifestation. He is the Demiurge.

133:4 R. glosses this as hieroglyph; but it should perhaps mean “word of the language of the gods”—the language shown by action in the world.

133:5 That is to say, apparently, the fruit of actions on which gods and men feed. Cf. Hermes-Prayer, II. 2, where Hermes is said to “collect the nourishment of gods and men.”

134:1 That is, as we have seen above, Ptah as the Demiurgic Power.

134:2 Hieroglyphics; showing that the oldest hieroglyphics were symbols of the words of action—that is to say, modes of expression of being in action.

134:3 Lit., copper.

134:4 That is, the worlds of gods, or immortals, and of men, or mortals. But Reitzenstein says: “Thus the God of Memphis [i.e. Ptah] is the divinity or ‘the God’ of all Egypt”—meaning thereby the physical upper and lower lands; but I prefer a wider sense.

137:1 This does not mean, I hold, that there was no “reincarnation,” that is, that the “being” of the man did not emanate other “souls,” but that the “soul” of a particular life did not return—that all of it deserving of immortality became a god with the gods, or “those-that-are,” and do not only ex-ist.

138:1 Cf. Breasted, Zeit. f. äg. Spr. (1901), p. 47.

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VII

THE MYTH OF MAN IN THE MYSTERIES

THE GNOSTIC TRADITION

“But All-Father Mind, being Life and Light, did bring forth Man (Ἄνθρωπον) co-equal to Himself.” 1

So runs the opening paragraph of what we may call the soteriological part of the “Pœmandres” treatise of our Trismegistic literature. This Man or Anthrōpos is the Spiritual Prototype of humanity and of every individual man, and is a technical term found in a number of the early Christianised Gnostic systems.

For instance, in a system some outlines of which are preserved in the polemical Refutation of Irenæus, 2 and which the Bishop of Lyons seems to associate with an Ophite tradition, while Theodoret 3 ascribes it to the Sethians, we are told that in the Unutterable Depth were two Great Lights,—the First Man, or Father, and His Son, the Second Man; and also the Holy Spirit, the First Woman, or Mother of all living.

In this tradition, moreover, the Son of the Mother—the chief Formative Power of the seven Demiurgic Potencies of the sensible cosmos—is called Ialdabaōth (? the Child of the Egg), who boasts himself to be

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supreme. But his mother, Wisdom, reproves his pride, saying unto him: “Lie not, Ialdabaōth, for above thee is the Father of All, First Man, and Man Son of Man.” 1

THE “PHILOSOPHUMENA” OF HIPPOLYTUS

But the main source of our information on this Anthrōpos tradition, in its Christianised Gnostic form, is to be found in Hippolytus’ Philosophumena; or, Refutation of all Heresies.

In 1842, Minoïdes Mynas, a learned Greek, sent on a literary mission by the French Government, discovered in one of the monasteries on Mount Athos the only MS. (generally ascribed to the fourteenth century) which we possess of this extremely valuable work. It was originally in ten books, but, unfortunately, the first three and the beginning of the fourth are missing from our MS. The first book, however, was already known, though previously erroneously ascribed to Origen, and was accordingly prefixed to the text of the editio princeps of our work by Emmanuel Miller (Oxford, 1851).

The missing Books II. and III. dealt respectively with the doctrines and mysteries of the Egyptians and with those of the Chaldæans. Hippolytus (Proœm.) boasts that he has divulged all their mysteries, as well as the secrets of those Christian mystics whom he stigmatises as heretics, and to whom he devotes Books V.-IX.

It is a curious fact that it is precisely those Books wherein this divulging of the Mysteries was attempted, which should be missing; not only have they disappeared, but in the Epitome at the beginning of Book X. the summary of their contents is also omitted. This seems almost to point to a deliberate removal of just

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that information which would be of priceless value to us to-day, not only for the general history of the evolution of religious ideas, but also for filling in an important part of the background of the environment of infant Christianity.

Why, then, were these books cut out? Were the subsequent Christian Orthodox deterred by religious scruples, or were they afraid to circulate this information? Hippolytus himself seems to have had no such hesitation; he is ever delightedly boasting that he is giving away to the multitude the most sacred secrets of others; it seems to have been his special métier to cry aloud on the house-tops what had been whispered in their secret chambers. It was for him a delicious triumph over “error” to boast, “I have your secret documents, and I am going to publish them!”

Why, then, should those who came after him hesitate? Surely they were like-minded with Hippolytus, and would have been as delighted as himself in humbling the pride of the hated Mystery-institutions in the dust? Can it possibly be that they saw far more clearly than he did that quite other deductions might be drawn from his “startling revelations”?

THE NAASSENES

That far other deductions could be drawn from the Mystery-rites and Mystery-myths was at anyrate the view of a tradition of early Jewish and Christian mystics whom Hippolytus calls Naassenes. The claim of these Gnostics was practically that Christianity, or rather the Good News of the Christ, was precisely the consummation of the inner doctrine of the Mystery-institutions of all the nations; the end of them all was the revelation of the Mystery of Man.

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It is further to be noticed that these Naassenes, “who call themselves Gnostics” (v. 2), are the very first school of Christian “heresy” with which Hippolytus deals; he puts them in the forefront of his Refutation, as being, presumably, in his opinion, the oldest, or, at anyrate, as representing the most ancient form of Christian “heresy.”

Although the name Naassene (Ναασσηνοί) is derived from the Hebrew Naḥash (Serpent), Hippolytus does not call them Ophites; indeed, he reserves the latter name to a body to which he also gives (viii. 20) the name Caïnites and Nochaïtæ (Νοχαϊταί)—? Nachaïtæ, again, from Nachash 1—and considers them of not sufficient importance for further mention.

These Naassenes possessed many secret books or apocrypha—that is, books kept back from general circulation—and also regarded as authoritative the following scriptures: The Gospel of Perfection, The Gospel of Eve, The Questions of Mary, 2 Concerning the Offspring of Mary, The Gospel of Philip, The Gospel according to Thomas, and The Gospel according to the Egyptians. All of which points somewhat to an Alexandrian or Egyptian circle.

ANALYSIS OF HIPPOLYTUS’ ACCOUNT OF THE NAASSENE DOCUMENT

One of their secret MSS. had fallen into the hands of Hippolytus. It is in the Bishop of Portus’ quotations

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from this document that Reitzenstein (pp. 81 ff.) seeks to discover what he calls the “Hellenistic Myth of the God Anthrōpos.” His theory is that, by eliminating the Christian citations and thoughts of the Naassene writer, we are face to face with a purely Heathen document.

The reproduction of their views, as given by Hippolytus, 1 falls according to Reitzenstein into three divisions.

(i.) The first begins with the explanation of the name “Naassene” (S. 131, 1; C. 139, 1 2), and, after giving a few brief headings, ends (S. 134, 8; C. 141, 2) with the statement that the writer of the MS. said they had their tradition from James, the Brother of the Lord, who had delivered it to Mariamnē.

(iii.) The third begins (S. 170, 64; C. 178, 1) with another explanation of the name. In both of these parts are found remains of hymns from some liturgical collection.

(ii.) Between i. and ii. lies a longer exposition in which Hippolytus tries to show that the Naassene doctrines are taken from the Mysteries, culminating in the assertion that the Naassenes, as a matter of fact, were nothing else than sectaries of the Mysteries of the Mother of the Gods, in proof of which he quotes at length from a secret document of their school.

Our interest in these quotations, however, is very different from that of Hippolytus, for, as Reitzenstein has now shown, it is manifest on inspection that the Christian quotations and thoughts in this document

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violently disrupt its underlying continuity, and that they are for the most part easily removable without damage to the sense.

With regard to the Old Testament quotations it is not always so easy to disentangle them from the Hellenistic source, much less from the New Testament quotations; the phenomena, however, presented by them are of such a nature that, in my opinion, there is ample evidence before us that there was a Jewish working-over of the matter before it came into the hands of the Christian overwriter. Reitzenstein, however, does not venture so far.

Even, then, if we were content with Reitzenstein’s analysis only, it is quite clear that the quotations from the Old Testament formed no part of the original; and that we have, therefore, before us what was once a purely Heathen text, with Gnostic Christian scholia, or rather overworked by a Christian Gnostic. The original Pagan text had, accordingly, been cut up by the Naassene overwriter before ever it came into the hands of Hippolytus.

Now, as the Christianised text must have been for some time in private circulation before it reached the library of the Bishop of Portus 1—even if we make no allowance for a Jewish Hellenistic stratum of overwriting, still seeing that Hippolytus’ own view was that, in the Naassene MS., he had before him a basic document of those whom he regarded as the earliest Christian “heretics”—it is quite evident that if we were to place the date of the original Hellenistic source in the first century, we should not be doing violence even to the ecclesiastical traditional absurdity that Gnosticism first sullied the orthodox purity of the Church only

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in the reign of Trajan (96-117 A.D.). But we will return to the question of date later on.

As the whole matter is not only one of considerable interest for the student of our treatises, but also of the greatest importance for the student of the history of Gnosticism, I shall give a translation of Hippolytus’ introductory and concluding sections, as well as of the intermediate section which specially concerns us, so that the reader may have a view of the whole medley as it comes to us from the hands of the heresy-hunting bishop.

I shall, moreover, proceed a stage further in the analysis of the material of Hippolytus than Reitzenstein has done, and hope, when the evidence has been laid before the reader, to win his assent to what appears to me to be the natural sifting out of the various elements, with resultant phenomena which are of the greatest importance for the history of Gnosticism, and, therefore, of the evolution of Christian dogmatics, and which lead to conclusions that are far too serious to be treated in the short space of a single chapter of our present essay.

In the following analysis H. stands for Hippolytus; C. for the Christian Gnostic final overwriter, the “Naassene” whose MS. lay before H.; J. for the Naassene Jewish mystic who preceded C. and overworked the original; S. for the original Heathen Hellenistic Source.

As H. and C. are of secondary importance for our immediate enquiry, though of themselves of the greatest value and interest, I shall print them in smaller type. J. I shall print in the same type as S., as nearer in contact with S. than C., and as being sometimes more difficult to detach from S. than from C.

The reader, to have the text of Hippolytus before him, must neglect all the critical indications and read straight on.

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With these brief preliminary indications we will, then, present the reader with a translation of the first section, or introductory part, 1 of Hippolytus’ exposure or exposition of the Naassene doctrines, begging him to remember throughout that it is a portrait painted by the hand of one of their bitterest foes.

HIPPOLYTUS’ INTRODUCTION

H. The priests and chiefs of [this] doctrine 2 were first of all those who were called Naasseni—so named in Hebrew, [in which] “serpent” is called naas. 3 But subsequently they called themselves Gnostics, pretending that they alone knew the Depths.

From these many separated themselves and [so] turned the school, which was originally a single one, into numerous sects, setting forth the same ideas in various doctrinal forms, as our argument will show as it advances.

These [Naassenes] honour as the Logos (Reason) of all universals 4 Man, and Son of Man. This Man is male-female, and is called by them Adamas. 5 And they have many intricate 6 hymns in his honour. These hymns—to dispose of them briefly—run somewhat as follows:

J. ‘“From Thee’ [is] Father, and ‘Through Thee’ 7 Mother—the two Immortal Names, 8 Parents of Æons, O Thou who hast the Heaven for Thy City, O Man of Mighty Names.” 9

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H. And they divide him into three, like Gēryōnēs; 1 for, they say, he has a mental, psychic, and choïc [aspect]; 2 and they think that the Gnosis of 3 this [Man] is the beginning of the possibility of knowing God, saying:

J. The beginning of Perfection [is] the Gnosis of Man, but the Gnosis of God is perfected Perfection. 4

H. All these, he says 5—mental, psychic, and earthy—descended together into one man—Jesus, born of Mary.

And these three Men, he says, spake each from their own special essences to their own special folk.

For of the universal principles there are three kinds [or races]—the angelic, psychic, and earthy; and three churches—angelic, psychic, and earthy named the Elect, Called, and Bound.

These are the chief heads from a very large number of doctrines, 6 which, he says, James, the Brother of the Lord, handed on to Mariamnē. 7

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But in order that we may put an end to the lying accounts of these impious [heretics] concerning Mariamnē, and James, and the Saviour Himself, 1 let us come to the Initiations from which they get this myth—if you like [to call it so]—to the non-Grecian and Grecian [Initiations]; and let us see how, by combining together the secret Mysteries of all the Gentiles which must not be spoken of, and by telling lies about the Christ, they take in those who do not know that these things are the Orgies of the Gentiles.

Now, since the foundation of their system is Man Adamas, and they say it has been written of him, “Who shall declare his generation?” 2—learn how they have taken the undiscoverable and contradictory generation of Man and plastered it on the Christ.

THE MATERIAL FOR THE RECOVERY OF THE ORIGINAL HELLENISTIC DOCUMENT

(1) S. “Earth (say the Greeks 3) first brought forth Man—bearing a fair gift, desiring to be mother not of plants without feeling, nor of brutes without reason, but of a tamed God-loving life.

“Difficult is it (H. he says 4) to discover whether it was among the Bœotians that Alalkomeneus rose from the Kephisian Lake as first of men; or whether

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it was the Idæan Kurētes, race divine, or the Phrygian Korybantes, whom Helios saw first sprouting forth tree-like; or whether Arkadia brought forth Pelasgos [first], older than the Moon; or Eleusis Diaulos, dweller in Raria; or Lēmnos Kabeiros, fair child of ineffable orgies; 1 or whether Pallēnē Phlegræan Alkyoneus, eldest of Giants.

“The Libyans say that Garamas, 2 rising from parched plains, first picked sweet date of Zeus; while Neilos, making fat the mud of Egypt to this day (H. he says), breeds living things, and renders from damp heat things clothed in flesh.” 3

The Assyrians say it was with them Ōannēs, the Fish-eater; while the Chaldæans [say that it was] Adam.

(2) J. And this Adam they [the Chaldæans] say was the man that Earth produced—a body only, and that he lay breathless, motionless, immovable, like a statue, being an image of that Man Above—

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H. —of whom they sing, and brought into existence by the many Powers, 1 concerning which there is much detailed teaching.

J. In order, then, that the Great Man from Above—

C. From whom, as is said, every fatherhood has its name on earth or in the heavens. 2

J. —might be completely brought low, there was given unto him 3 Soul also, in order that through the Soul the enclosed plasm of the Great, Most-fair, and Perfect Man might suffer and be chastened.

H. For thus they call Him. They seek to discover then further what is the Soul, and whence, and of what nature, that by entering into man and moving him, it should enslave and chasten the plasm of the Perfect Man; but they seek this also not from the Scriptures, but from the Mysteries.

(3) S. And they 4 say that Soul is very difficult to discover, and hard to understand; for it never remains of the same appearance, or form, or in the same state, so that one can describe it by a general type, 5 or comprehend it by an essential quality.

H. These variegated metamorphoses they 6 have laid down in the Gospel, superscribed “According to the Egyptians.” 7

S. They are accordingly in doubt—

H. —like all the rest of the Gentiles—

J. —whether it [sc. the Soul] is from the Pre-existing [One], or from the Self-begotten, or from the Streaming Chaos. 8

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H. And first of all, in considering the triple division of Man, they fly for help to the Initiations of the Assyrians; for the Assyrians were the first to consider the Soul triple and [yet] one.

(4) S. Now every nature (H. he says) yearns after Soul—one in one way and another in another.

For Soul is cause of all in Genesis. All things that are sustained and grow (H. he says) need Soul. Indeed, no sustenance (H. he says) or growth is possible without the presence of Soul.

Nay, even stones (H. he says) are ensouled; 1 for they have the power of increase [or growth]; and growth could not take place without sustenance; for it is by addition that things which increase grow; and addition is the sustenance of that which is sustained. 2

(5) Now the Assyrians call this [Mystery] Adōnis (or Endymiōn). And whenever it is called Adōnis (H. he says), it is Aphroditē who is in love with and desires Soul so-called.

H. And Aphroditē is Genesis according to them. 3

But when Persephonē (that is, Korē) is in love with Adōnis, Soul becomes subject to Death, separated from Aphrodite (that is, from Genesis).

But if Selēnē is impassioned of Endymiōn, and is in

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love with [formal] beauty, 1 it is the Nature of the higher [spaces 2] (H. he says) which desires Soul.

(6 3) But if (H. he says) the Mother of the Gods emasculate Attis—she, too, regarding him as the object of her love—it is the Blessed Nature Above of the supercosmic and æonian [spaces] which calls back the masculine power of Soul to herself. 4

H. For Man, he says, is male-female. According, then, to this theory of theirs, the intercourse between man and woman is exhibited as most mischievous, and is forbidden according to their teaching.

J. For Attis (H. he says) is emasculated—that is, [Soul is separated] from the earthy parts of the creation [tending] downwards, and ascends in quest of the Æonian Essence Above—

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C. —where (H. he says) is “neither male nor female,” 1 but a new creature, a new man, who is male-female.

H. What they call “Above” I will explain when I come to the proper place. And they say that this theory is supported not simply by [the myth] of Rhea, but also, to put it briefly, by universal creation.

Nay, they make out that this is [even] what was said by the Word (Logos): 2

C. “For the invisible 3 things of Him [God]—namely, His Eternal 4 Power and Godhead—are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by His things that are made; so that they [men] are without excuse. Because that, though knowing God, they glorified Him not as God, nor did they give [Him] thanks, but their non-understanding heart was made foolish. 5

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“Professing themselves to be wise, they convicted themselves of folly, and changed the Glory of the Incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and creeping things. 1 . . . 2

“Wherefore also God gave them up to passions of dishonour; for both their females did change their natural use to that which is against nature—

H. And what the natural use is, according to them, we will say later on.

C. —“and likewise also their males, leaving the natural use of the female, burned in their lust for one another, males with males working unseemliness 3—

H. And “unseemliness,” according to them, is the First and Blessed Formless Essence, the Cause of all forms for things enformed. 4

C. —“and receiving in themselves the recompense of their Error which was meet.”

H. For in these words which Paul spake is contained, they say, the whole of their hidden and ineffable Mystery of the Blessed Bliss.

For what is promised by the [rite of the] bath 5 is nothing else, according to them, than the introduction into Unfading Bliss of him who, according to them, is washed with Living Water, and anointed with the Chrism that no tongue can declare. 6

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(7) And they say that not only the Mysteries of the Assyrians and Phrygians substantiate this teaching (logos) concerning the Blessed Nature, which is at once hidden and manifest [but also those of the Egyptians 1].

C. 2 [The Nature] which (H. he says) is the Kingdom of the Heavens sought for within man—

H. —concerning which [Nature] they hand on a distinct tradition in the Gospel entitled According to Thomas, saying as follows:

C. “He who seeketh shall find me in children from the age of seven years 3; for in them at the fourteenth year 4 [lit. æon] I hidden am made manifest.”

H. But this is not Christ’s Saying but that of Hippocrates:

“A boy of seven years [is] half a father.” 5

Hence as they place the Original Nature of the universals in the Original Seed, having learned the Hippocratian dictum that a child of seven is half a father, they say at fourteen years, according to Thomas, it is manifested. This 6 is their ineffable and mysterious Logos. 7

(8 8) S. (H.—At anyrate they say that) the Egyptians—who are the most ancient of men after the Phrygians, who at the same time were confessedly the first to communicate to mankind the Mystery-rites and Orgies of all the Gods, and to declare their Forms and Energies—have the mysteries of Isis, holy, venerable, and not to be disclosed to the uninitiated.

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H. And these are nothing else than the robbing of the member of Osiris, and its being sought for by the seven-robed and black-mantled 1 [Goddess].

And (they [the Egyptians] say) Osiris is Water. 2 And Seven-robed Nature—

H. —having round her, nay, robing herself in seven ætheric vestures—for thus they 3 allegorically designate the planet-stars, calling [their spheres] ætheric vestures—

S. —being metamorphosed, as ever-changing Genesis, by the Ineffable and Uncopiable and Incomprehensible and Formless, is shown forth as creation.

J. And this is what (H. he says) is said in the Scripture:

“Seven times the Just shall fall and rise again.” 4

For these “fallings” (H. he says) are the changes of the stars, 5 set in motion by the Mover of all things.

(9) S. Accordingly they 6 declare concerning the Essence of the Seed which is the cause of all things in

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[paragraph continues]Genesis, that it is none of these things, but that it begets and makes all generated things, saying:

“I become what I will, and am what I am.” 1

Therefore (H. he says) That which moves all is unmoved; for It remains what It is, making all things, and becomes no one of the things produced.

(H. He says that) This is the Only Good—

C. And concerning this was spoken what was said by the Saviour:

“Why callest thou me Good? One is Good 2—my Father in the Heavens, who maketh His sun to rise on righteous and unrighteous, and sendeth rain on saints and sinners.” 3

H. And who are the saints on whom He sendeth rain and the sinners on whom He also sendeth rain—this also he tells subsequently with the rest.

S. —and (H. that) This is the Great, Hidden, and Unknown Mystery of the Egyptians, Hidden and [yet] Revealed.

For there is no temple (H. he says) before the

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entrance of which the Hidden [Mystery] does not stand naked, pointing from below above, and crowned with all its fruits of generation.

(10) And (H. they say) it stands so symbolised not only in the most sacred temples before the statues, but also set up for general knowledge—

C. —as it were “a light not under the bushel, but” set “on the candlestick” 1—a preaching “heralded forth on the house-tops.” 2

S. —on all the roads and in all the streets, and alongside the very houses as a boundary and limit of the dwelling; (H. that) This is the God spoken of by all, for they call Him Bringer-of-good, not knowing what they say.

H. And this mystery [-symbol] the Greeks got from the Egyptians, and have it [even] to this day.

At anyrate, he says, we see the “Hermes” 3 honoured by them in this form.

(11) S. And the Cyllenians, treating [this symbol] with special honour, [regard it as the] Logos. 4

For (H. he says) Hermes is [the] Logos, who, as being the Interpreter and Fabricator of all things that have been and are and shall be, was honoured by them under the symbolism of this figure, namely an ithyphallus.

And that he (H. that is Hermes, so symbolised) is

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[paragraph continues]Conductor and Reconductor of souls, 1 and Cause of souls, has not escaped the notice of the poets (H. of the Gentiles), when saying:

“But Cyllenian Hermes summoned forth the souls
Of men mindful” 2—

—not the “suitors” of Penelope (H. he says), hapless wights! but of those who are roused from sleep, and have their memory restored to them—

“From what honour and [how great] degree of blessedness.” 3

J. That is, from the Blessed Man Above—

H. —or Original Man, or Adamas, as they 4 think—

J. —they 5 have been thus brought down into the plasm of clay, in order that they may be enslaved to the Demiurge of this creation, Esaldaios 6—

H. —a fiery God, fourth in number, for thus they call the Demiurge and Father of this special cosmos. 7

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(13) S. “And he 1 holds a rod in his hands,
Beautiful, golden; and with it he spell-binds the eyes of men,
Whomsoever he would, and wakes them again too from sleep.” 2

This (H. he says) is He who alone hath the power of life and death. 3

J. Concerning Him it is written: “Thou shalt shepherd them with a rod of iron.” 4

But the poet (H. he says), wishing to embellish the incomprehensibility of the Blessed Nature of the Logos, bestowed upon Him a golden instead of an iron rod.

S. “He spell-binds the eyes” of the dead (H. he says), and “wakes them again too from sleep”—those who are waked from sleep and become “mindful.” 5

C. Concerning them the Scripture saith: “Awake thou that sleepest, and rise, and Christ will give thee light.” 6

This is the Christ, the Son of Man (H. he says), expressed in all who are born from the Logos, whom no expression can express.

S. This (H. he says) is the Great Ineffable Mystery of the Eleusinia: “Hye Kye.” 7

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J. And that (H. he says) all things have been put under Him, this too has been said: “Into all the earth hath gone forth their sound.” 1

(14) S. And “Hermes leads them, moving his rod, and they follow, squeaking” 2—the souls in a cluster, as the poet hath shown in the following image:

“But as when bats into some awesome cave’s recess
Fly squeaking—should one from out the cluster fall
Down from the rock, they cling to one another.” 3

J. The “rock” (H. he says) means Adamas. This (H. he says) is the “corner-stone”—

C. —“that hath become the head of the corner.” 4 For in the

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[paragraph continues]“Head” is the expressive Brain 1 of the Essence, from which [Brain] “every fatherhood” 2 has its expression—

J. —which “I insert in the foundation of Zion.” 3

[By this] (H. he says) he 4 means, allegorically, the plasm of man. For the Adamas who is “inserted” is [the inner man, and the “foundations of Zion” are 5] the “teeth”—the “fence of the teeth,” as Homer says—the Wall and Palisade 6 in which is the inner man, fallen into it from the Primal Man, the Adamas Above—[the Stone] “cut without hands” 7 cutting it, and brought down into the plasm of forgetfulness, the earthy, clayey [plasm].

(15) S. And (H. he says that) they followed Him squeaking 8—the souls, the Logos.

“Thus they went squeaking together; and he led them on,
Hermes, the guileless, down the dark ways.” 9

That is, (H. he says) [He led them] into the eternal lands free from all guile. For where (H. he says) went they?

(16) “They passed by the streams of Ocean, and by the White Rock,
By the Gates of the Sun, and the People of Dreams.” 10

For He (H. he says) is Ocean—“birth-causing of

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gods and birth-causing of men” 1—flowing and ebbing for ever, now up and now down.

J. When Ocean flows down (H. he says), it is the birth-causing of men; and when [it flows] up, towards the Wall and Palisade, and the “White Rock,” it is the birth-causing of gods.

This (H. he says) is what is written:

“‘I have said ye are Gods and all Sons of the Highest’ 2—if ye hasten to flee from Egypt and get you beyond the Red Sea into the Desert”; that is, from the intercourse below to the Jerusalem Above, who is the Mother of the Living. 3 “But if ye turn back again into Egypt”—that is, to the intercourse below—“‘ye shall die like men.’” 4

For (H. he says) all the generation below is subject to death, but the [birth] begotten above is superior to death.

C. For from water alone—that is, spirit—is begotten the spiritual [man], not the fleshly; the lower [man] is fleshly. That is (H. he says) what is written: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.” 5

H. This is their 6 spiritual birth.

J. This (H. he says) is the Great Jordan, which, flowing downwards and preventing the sons of Israel

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from going forth out of Egypt, or from the intercourse below—

H. —for Egypt is the body, according to them—

J. —was turned back by Jesus 1 and made to flow upwards.

H. Following after these and such like [follies], these most wonderful “Gnostics,” discoverers of a new grammatical art, imagine that their prophet Homer showed forth these things arcanely; and, introducing those who are not initiated into the Sacred Scriptures into such notions, they make a mock of them.

And they say that he who says that all things are from One, is in error, [but] he who says they are from Three is right, and will furnish proof of the first principles [of things]. 2

J. For one (H. he says) is the Blessed Nature of the Blessed Man Above, Adamas; and one is the [Nature] Below, which is subject to Death; and one is the Race without a king 3 which is born Above—where (H. he says) is Mariam the sought-for, and Jothōr the great sage, and Sepphōra the seeing, and Moses whose begetting is not in Egypt—for sons were born to him in Madiam. 4

S. And this (H. he says) also did not escape the notice of the poets:

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“All things were threefold divided, and each received his share of honour.” 1

C. For the Greatnesses (H. he says) needs must be spoken, but so spoken by all everywhere, “that hearing they may not hear, and seeing they may not see.” 2

J. For unless (H. he says) the Greatnesses 3 were spoken, the cosmos would not be able to hold together. These are the Three More-than-mighty Words (Logoi): Kaulakau, Saulasau, Zeēsar;—Kaulakau, the [Logos] Above, Adamas; Saulasau, the [Logos] Below; Zeēsar, the Jordan flowing upwards. 4

(17 5) S. He (H. he says) is the male-female Man

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in all, whom the ignorant call three-bodied Gēryonēs—Earth-flow-er, as though flowing from the earth; 1 while the Greek [theologi] generally call Him the “Heavenly Horn of Mēn,” 2 because He has mixed and mingled 3 all things with all.

C. For “all things (H. he says) were made through Him, and without Him no one thing was made that was made. In Him is Life.” 4

This (H. he says) is “Life,” the ineffable Race of perfect men, which was unknown to former generations.

And the “nothing” 5 which hath been made “without Him,” is the special cosmos; 6 for the latter hath been made without Him by the third and fourth [? Ruler]. 7

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J. This 1 (H. he says) is the drinking-vessel—the Cup in which “the King drinketh and divineth.” 2

This (H. he says) was found hidden in the “fair seed” of Benjamin.

(18) S. The Greeks also speak of it (H. he says) with inspired tongue, as follows:

“Bring water, bring [me] wine, boy!
Give me to drink, and sink me in slumber! 3
My Cup tells me of what race I must be born,
[Speaking with silence unspeaking].” 4

C. This (H. he says) would be sufficient alone if men would understand—the Cup of Anacreon speaking forth speechlessly the Ineffable Mystery.

J. For (H. he says) Anacreon’s Cup is speechless—in as much as it tells him (says Anacreon) with speechless sound of what Race he must be born—

C. —that is, spiritual, not carnal—

J. —if he hear the Hidden Mystery in Silence.

C. And this is the Water at those Fair Nuptials which Jesus turned and made Wine.

“This (H. he says) is the great and true beginning of the signs which Jesus wrought in Cana of Galilee, and made manifest His Kingship [or Kingdom] of the Heavens.” 5

This (H. he says) is the Kingship [or Kingdom] of the Heavens within us, 6 stored up as a Treasure, 7 as “Leaven hid in three measures of Flour.” 8

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(19 1) S. This is (H. he says) the Great Ineffable Mystery of the Samothracians,—

C. —which it is lawful for the perfect alone to know—[that is] (H. he says) for us.

J. For the Samothracians, in the Mysteries which are solemnised among them, explicitly hand on the tradition that this Adam is the Man Original.

S. Moreover, 2 in the initiation temple of the Samothracians stand two statues of naked men, with both hands raised to heaven and ithyphallic, like the statue of Hermes in Cyllene. 3

J. The statues aforesaid are images of the Man Original. 4

C. And [also] of the regenerated 5 spiritual [man], in all things of like substance with that Man.

This (H. he says) is what was spoken by the Saviour:

“If ye do not drink My Blood and eat My Flesh, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of the Heavens. 6

“But even if ye drink (H. he says) the Cup which I drink, 7 where I go, there ye cannot come.” 8

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For He knew (H. he says) of which nature each of His disciples is, and that it needs must be that each of them should go to his own nature.

For from the twelve tribes (H. he says) He chose twelve disciples, and through them He spake to every tribe. 1

On this account (H. he says) all have not heard the preachings of the twelve disciples; and even if they hear, they cannot receive them. For the [preachings] which are not according to their nature are contrary to it.

(20) S. This [Man] (H. he says) the Thracians who dwell round Haimos call Korybas, 2 and the Phrygians in like manner with the Thracians; for taking the source of His descent from the Head Above 3—

J. —and from the expressive Brain 4—

S. —and passing through all the sources of all things beneath—how and in what manner He descends we do not understand.

J. This is (H. he says) what was spoken:

“His Voice we heard, but His Form we have not seen.” 5

For (H. he says) the Voice of Him, when He hath been delegated and expressed, is heard, but the Form that descended from Above, from the Inexpressible [Man]—what it is, no one knows. It is in the earthy plasm, but no one has knowledge of it.

This [Man] (H. he says) is He who “inhabiteth the

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[paragraph continues]Flood,” 1 according to the Psalter, who cries and calls from “many waters.” 2

The “many waters” (H. he says) are the manifold genesis of men subject to death, from which He shouts and calls to the Inexpressible Man, saying:

“Save my [? Thy] alone-begotten from the lions.” 3

To this [Man] (H. he says) it hath been spoken:

“Thou art my Son, O Israel, 4 fear not; should’st thou pass through rivers, they shall not engulph thee; should’st thou pass through fire, it shall not consume thee.” 5

By “rivers” (H. he says) he 6 means the Moist Essence of Genesis, and by “fire” the impulse and desire towards Genesis.

And: “Thou art mine; fear not.” 7

And again he 8 says:

“If a mother forget her children so as not to take pity on them or give them suck, [then] I too will forget you” 9—saith Adamas (H. he says) to his own men.

“Nay, even if a woman shall forget them, I will not forget you. Upon my hands have I graven you.” 10

And concerning His Ascent—

C. —that is, his regeneration in order that he may be born spiritual, not fleshly.

J. —the Scripture saith (H. he says):

“Lift up the gates, ye who are rulers of you, and be

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ye lift up ye everlasting gates, and the King of Glory shall come in.” 1

This is a wonder of wonders.

“For who (H. he says) is this King of Glory? 2 A worm 3 and no man, the scorn of men, and the contempt of the people. 4 He is the King of Glory, the Mighty in War.” 5

By “War” he 6 means the “[war] in the body,” for the plasm is compounded of warring elements, as it is written (H. he says):

“Remember the war that is [warred] in the body.” 7

This (H. he says) is the Entrance, and this is the Gate, which Jacob saw, when he journeyed into Mesopotamia. 8

C. Which is the passing from childhood to puberty and manhood; that is, it was made known to him who journeyed into Mesopotamia.

J. And Meso-potamia (H. he says) is the Stream of Great Ocean flowing from the middle of the Perfect Man.

And he 9 marvelled at the Heavenly Gate, saying:

“How terrible [is] this place! This is naught else than the House of God; yea, this [is] the Gate of Heaven.” 10

C. On this account (H. he says) Jesus saith:

“I am the True Door.” 11

J. And he 12 who says these things is (H. he says)

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the [one] from the Inexpressible Man, expressed from Above—

C. —as the perfect man. The not-perfect man, therefore, cannot be saved unless he be regenerated passing through this Gate.

(21) S. This same [Man] (H. he says) the Phrygians call also Papa; 1 for He calmed 2 all things which, prior to His own manifestation, were in disorderly and inharmonious movement.

For the name Papa (H. he says) is [the] Sound-of-all-things-together in Heaven, and on Earth, and beneath the Earth, saying: “Calm, calm” 3 the discord of the cosmos.

C. And: Make “peace for them that are far”—that is, the material and earthy—“and peace for them that are near” 4—that is, the spiritual and knowing and perfect men.

(22) S. The Phrygians call Him also Dead—when buried in the body as though in a tomb or sepulchre.

C. This (H. he says) is what is said:

“Ye are whited sepulchres, filled (H. he says) within with bones of the dead, 5 for Man, the Living [One] 6 is not in you.”

And again He says:

“The dead shall leap forth from their graves” 7—

—that is, from their earthy bodies, regenerated spiritual, not fleshly.

This (H. he says) is the Resurrection which takes place

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through the Gate of the Heavens, through which all those who do not pass (H. he says) remain Dead.

S. The same Phrygians again call this very same [Man], after the transformation, God [or a God]. 1

C. For he becomes (H. he says) God when, rising from the Dead, through such a Gate, he shall pass into Heaven.

This is the Gate (H. he says) which Paul, the Apostle, knew, setting it ajar in a mystery, and saying that he was caught up by an angel and came to the second, nay the third heaven, into Paradise itself, and saw what he saw, and heard ineffable words, which it is not lawful for man to utter. 2

These (H. he says) are the Mysteries, ineffable [yet] spoken of by all,—

“—which [also we speak, yet] not in words taught of human wisdom, but in [words] taught of Spirit, comparing things spiritual with spiritual things. But the psychic man receiveth not the things of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness unto him.” 3

And these (H. he says) are the Ineffable Mysteries of the Spirit which we alone know.

Concerning these (H. he says) the Saviour said:

“No one is able to come to Me, unless my Heavenly Father draw him.” 4

For it is exceedingly difficult (H. he says) to receive and accept this Great Ineffable Mystery.

And again (H. he says) the Saviour said:

“Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord! shall enter into the Kingdom of the Heavens, but he who doeth the Will of My Father who is in the Heavens” 5—

—which [Will] they must do, and not hear only, to enter into the Kingdom of the Heavens.

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And again He said (H. he says):

“The tax-gatherers and harlots go before you into the Kingdom of the Heavens.” 1

For by “tax-gatherers” (τελῶναι) are meant (H. he says) those who receive the consummations 2 (τέλη) of the universal [principles]; and we (H. he says) are the “tax-gatherers” 3 [upon whom the consummations of the æons have come” 4].

For the “consummations” (H. he says) are the Seeds disseminated into the cosmos from the Inexpressible [Man], by means of which the whole cosmos is consummated; for by means of these also it began to be.

And this (H. he says) is what is said:

“The Sower went forth to sow. And some [Seeds] fell by the way-side, and were trodden under foot; and others on stony places, and they sprang up (H. he says), but because they had no depth, they withered and died.

“Others (H. he says) fell on the fair and good ground, and brought forth fruit—one a hundred, another sixty, and another thirty.

“He who hath (H. he says) ears to hear, let him hear!” 5

That is (H. he says), no one has been a hearer of these Mysteries, save only the gnostic, perfect [man].

This (H. he says) is the “fair and good ground” of which Moses saith:

“I will bring you into a fair and good land, into a land flowing with milk and honey.” 6

This (H. he says) is the “honey and milk” by tasting which the perfect [men] become free from all rule, 7 and share in the Fullness.

This (H. he says) is the Fullness whereby all things that are generated both are and are full-filled from the Ingenerable [Man].

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(23) S. This same [Man] is called by the Phrygians Unfruitful.

C. For He is unfruitful as long as He is fleshly and works the work of the flesh.

This (H. he says) is what is said:

“Every tree that beareth not good fruit, is cut down and cast into the fire.” 1

For these “fruits” (H. he says) are the logic, 2 living men only who pass through the third Gate. 3

J. At anyrate they 4 say:

“If ye have eaten dead things and made living ones, what will ye make if ye eat living things?” 5

And by “living things” they mean logoi and minds and men—the “pearls” of that Inexpressible [Man] cast into the plasm below. 6

C. This is what He saith (H. he says):

“Cast not the holy thing to the dogs nor the pearls to the swine.” 7

H. For they say that the work of swine is the intercourse of man with woman.

(24 8) S. This same [Man] (H. he says) the Phrygians also call Ai-polos; 9 not because (H. he says) He feeds

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she-goats and he-goats, as the (C.—psychics 1) interpret the name, but because (H. he says) He is Aei-polos—that is, “Always-turning” (Aei-polōn), 2 revolving and driving round the whole cosmos in [its] revolution; for polein is to “turn” and change things.

Hence (H. he says) all call the two centres 3 of heaven poles. And the poet also (H. he says) when he says: “Hither there comes and there goes (pōleitai) Old Man of the Sea, whose words are e’er true—Egypt’s undying Prōteus.” 4

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[By pōleitai] he does not mean “he is put on sale,” 1 but “he turns about” [or comes and goes] there,—as though it were, [he spins] and goes round.

And the cities in which we live, in that we turn about and circulate in them, are called poleis.

Thus (H. he says) the Phrygians call Aipolos this [Man] who turns all things at all times all ways, and changes them into things kin.

(25) The Phrygians, moreover (H. he says), call Him Fruitful.

J. For (H. he says):

“Many more are the children of the desolate [woman] than of her who hath her husband.” 2

C. That is, the regenerated, deathless, and ever-continuing [children] are many, although few are they [thus] generated; but the fleshly (H. he says) all perish, though many are they [thus] generated.

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C. For this cause (H. he says):

“Rachel bewailed her children, and would not (H. he says) be comforted weeping over them; for she knew (H. he says) that they are not.” 1

J. And Jeremiah also laments the Jerusalem Below—not the city in Phœnicia, 2 but the generation below—which is subject to destruction.

C. For Jeremiah also (H. he says) knew the perfect man, regenerated from water and spirit, not fleshly.

J. At anyrate the same Jeremiah said:

“He is man, and who shall know him?” 3

C. Thus (H. he says) the knowledge of the perfect man is deep and hard to comprehend.

J. For “The beginning of Perfection (H. he says) is Gnosis of man, but Gnosis of God is perfect Perfection.” 4

(26) S. And the Phrygians (H. he says) call Him also “Plucked Green Wheat-ear”; and after the Phrygians the Athenians [so designate Him], when, in the secret rites at Eleusis, they show those who receive in silence the final initiation there into the Great—

C. —and marvellous and most perfect—

S. —Epoptic Mystery, a plucked wheat-ear. 5

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And this Wheat-ear is also with the Athenians the Light-giver 1—

C. —perfect [and] mighty—

J. —from the Inexpressible—

S. —as the hierophant himself—not emasculated like the “Attis,” 2 but made eunuch with hemlock juice—

C. —and divorced from all fleshly generation—

S. —in the night, at Eleusis, solemnising the Great Ineffable Mysteries, when the bright light streams forth, 3 shouts and cries aloud, saying:

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“[Our] Lady hath brought forth a Holy Son: Brimō [hath given birth] to Brimos”—

—that is, the Strong to the Strong.

(27) J. And “[Our] Lady” (H. he says) is the Genesis—

C. —the Spiritual, Heavenly [Genesis]—

J. —Above. And the Strong is he who is thus generated.

For it is the Mystery called “Eleusis” and “Anaktoreion”;—“Eleusis,” because we—

C. —the spiritual—

J. —come 2 from Above, streaming down from Adamas, for eleus-esthai (H. he says) is “to come”; and “Anaktoreion” [from anag-esthai, “leading back,” that is 3] from “returning” 4 Above. 5

This [Return] (H. he says) is that of which those who are initiated into the great Mysteries of the Eleusinia speak.

(28) S. And the law is that after they have been initiated into the Little Mysteries, they should be further initiated into the Great.

“For greater deaths do greater lots obtain.” 6

The Little (H. he says) are the Mysteries of

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[paragraph continues]Persephonē Below; concerning which Mysteries and the way leading there and—

C. —being broad and wide,—

—taking [men] to Persephonē, the poet also speaks:

“Beneath this there is another path death-cold,
Hollow and clayey. But this 1 is best to lead
To grove delightsome of far-honoured Aphroditē.” 2

These 3 are (H. he says) the Little Mysteries—

C. —those of the fleshly generation—

S. —and after men have been initiated into them, they should cease for a little, and become initiated in the Great—

C. —heavenly [Mysteries].

S. For they to whom the “deaths” in them 4 are appointed, “receive greater lots.”

J. For this [Mystery] (H. he says) is the Gate of Heaven, and this is the House of God, where the Good God dwells alone; into which [House] (H. he says) no impure [man] shall come—

C. —no psychic, no fleshly [man]—

J. —but it is kept under watch for the spiritual alone; where when they come, they must cast away their garments, and all become bridegrooms, obtaining their true manhood 5 through the Virginal Spirit.

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For this (H. he says) is the Virgin big with child, conceiving and bearing a Son 1—

C. —not psychic, not fleshly, but a blessed Æon of Æons. 2

Concerning these [Mysteries] (H. he says) the Saviour hath explicitly said that:

“Narrow and strait is the Way that leadeth to Life, and few are they who enter it; but broad and wide [is] the Way that leadeth to Destruction, and many are they who journey thereby.” 3

S. 4 Moreover, also, the Phrygians say that the Father of wholes 5 is Amygdalos 6—

J. —no [ordinary] tree 7 (H. he says); but that He is that Amygdalos the Pre-existing, who having in Himself the Perfect Fruit, as it were, throbbing 8 and moving in [His] Depth, He tore asunder 9 His Womb, and gave birth to His own Son 10—

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C. —the Invisible, Unnameable, and Ineffable [One] of whom we tell. 1

S. For “amyxai” 2 is, as it were, “to break” and “cut open”; just as (H. he says) in the case of inflamed bodies and those which have some internal tumour, when physicians lance them, they speak of “amychas.” 3

Thus (H. he says) the Phrygians call him Amygdalos.

C. From whom proceeded and was born the Invisible—

“Through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made.” 4

(30) S. The Phrygians also say that that which is generated from Him is Syriktēs. 5

J. For that which is generated is Spirit in harmony. 6

C. For “God (H. he says) is Spirit.” 7

Wherefore He says:

“Neither in this mountain do the true worshippers worship, nor in Jerusalem, but in Spirit.” 8

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For the worship of the perfect [men] (H. he says) is spiritual, not fleshly.

J. And “Spirit” (H. he says) is there where both Father and Son are named, generated there from Him 1 and the Father.

S. He 2 (H. he says) is the Many-named, Myriad-eyed, Incomprehensible, whom every nature desires, some one way, some another.

J. This (H. he says) is the Word 3 of God, which is:

“The Word of Announcement of the Great Power. Wherefore It shall be sealed, and hidden, and concealed, stored in the Habitation, where the Root of the Universals has its foundation—

“Of Æons, Powers, Intelligences, Gods, Angels, Spirits Delegate, Existing Non-existences, Generated Ingenerables, Comprehensible Incomprehensibles,—Years, Months, Days, Hours,—of [the] Boundless Point, from which the most minute begins to increase by parts. 4

“For (H. he says) the Point which is nothing and is composed of nothing, though partless, will become by

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means of its own Thought a Greatness 1 beyond our own comprehension.”

C. This [Point] (H. he says) is the Kingdom of the Heavens, the “grain of mustard seed,” 2 the partless point, the first existing for the body; which no one (H. he says) knows save the spiritual [men] alone.

J. This (H. he says) is what is said:

“They are neither words nor languages whereby their 3 sounds are heard.” 4

H. These things, [then,] which are said and done by all men, they thus interpret off-hand to their peculiar theory (νοῦν), pretending that they are all done with a spiritual meaning.

For which cause also they 5 say that the performers in the theatres—they, too, neither say nor do anything without Design. 6

S. For example (H. he says), when the people assemble in the theatres, and a man comes on the stage, clad in a robe different from all others, with lute 7 in hand on which he plays, and thus chants the Great Mysteries, not knowing what he says: 8

“Whether blest Child of Kronos,
or of Zeus, or of Great Rhea,—
Hail, Attis, thou mournful song 9 of Rhea!

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Assyrians call thee thrice-longed-for Adōnis;
all Egypt [calls thee] Osiris;
the Wisdom of Hellas [names thee] Mēn’s Heavenly Horn;
the Samothracians [call thee] august Adama;
the Hæmonians, Korybas;
the Phrygians [name thee] Papa sometimes,
at times again Dead, or God, 1 or Unfruitful,
or Aipolos, or Green Reaped 2 Wheat-ear,
or the Fruitful that Amygdalos brought forth,
Man, Piper . . . Attis!”

H. He [S.] says that this is the Attis of many forms of whom they [NN., in H.’s opinion] sing as follows:

S. “Of Attis will I sing, of Rhea’s [Belovèd];—
not with the boomings 3 of bells,
nor with the deep-toned 4 pipe of Idæan Kurētes;
but I will blend my song with Phoebus’ music of the lyre.
Evoï! Evan!—for [thou art] Pan, [thou] Bacchus [art],
and Shepherd of bright stars!”

HIPPOLYTUS’ CONCLUSION

H. For these and suchlike reasons these [Naassenes] frequent what are called the Mysteries of the Great Mother, believing that they obtain the clearest view of the Universal Mystery from the things done in them.

For they have nothing beyond the [mysteries] therein enacted except that they are not emasculated. Their sole “accomplishment,” [however,] is the business of the Eunuch, for they most severely and vigilantly enjoin to abstain, as though emasculated, from intercourse with women. And the rest of their business, as we have stated at length, they carry out just like the Eunuchs.

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And they honour nothing else but “Naas,” 1 being called Naasseni. And Naas is the Serpent—

J. 2—from whom (H. he says) are all those [things] called naous 3 under heaven, from naas.

To that Naas alone every shrine and every rite of initiation and every mystery (H. he says) is dedicated; and, in general, no initiation can be found under heaven in which a naos does not play a part, and [also] the Naas in it, from which it has got the name of naos.

(H. Moreover, they say that) the Serpent is the Moist Essence—

H. —just as [did] also Thales the Milesian 4—

J. —and (H. that) naught at all of existing things, immortal or mortal, animate or inanimate, can hold together without Him.

[And they say] (H. that) all things are subject to Him, and (H. that) He is Good, and has all things in Him as in “the horn of the one-horned bull”; 5 so that He distributes beauty and bloom to all that exist according to each one’s nature and peculiarity, as though permeating all, just as [the River] “proceeding forth out of Eden and dividing itself into four sources.” 6

H. And they say that Eden is His Brain, as though it were bound and constricted in its surrounding vestures like heavens; while Paradise they consider to be the Man as far as His Head only.

This River, then, coming forth out of Eden (H. that is, from His Brain), is divided into four streams.

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And the name of the first river is called Pheisōn. “This is that which encircles all the land of Evilat, there where is the gold, and the gold of that land is fair; there too is the ruby and the green stone.” 1

This (H. he says) is His Eye—by its dignity and colours bearing witness to what is said.

The name of the second river is Geōn. “This is that which encircles all the land of Æthiopia.” 2

This (H. he says) is [His organ of] Hearing; for it is labyrinth-like.

And the name of the third is Tigris. “This is that which flows the opposite way to the Assyrians.” 3

This (H. he says) is [His organ of] Smell, for the current of it is very rapid; and it “flows the opposite way to the Assyrians,” because after the breath is breathed out, on breathing in again, the breath that is drawn in from without, from the air, comes in more rapidly, and with greater force. For this (H. he says) is the nature of respiration.

“And the fourth river [is] Euphratēs.” 4

This (H. they say) [is] the mouth, through which by the utterance of prayer and entrance of food, the (? C.—spiritual, perfect) man is rejoiced, and nourished and expressed. 5

This [River] (H. he says) is the Water above the Firmament. 6

C. Concerning which (H. he says) the Saviour hath said:

“If thou hadst known Who it is Who asketh, thou wouldst have asked from Him [in return], and He would have given thee to drink of Living Water bubbling [forth].” 7

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J. To this Water (H. he says) every nature comes, each selecting its own essence, and from this Water there comes to each nature what is proper [to it] (H. he says), more surely than iron to magnet, 1 and gold to the bone 2 of the sea-hawk, and chaff to amber.

C. And if any man (H. he says) is “blind from birth,” 3 and hath not seen “the True Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” 4—let him see again through us, and let him see as it were through—

J. 5 —Paradise, planted with Trees and all kinds of seeds, the Water flowing amid all the Trees and Seeds, and [then] shall he see that from one and the same Water the Olive selects and draws Oil, and the Vine Wine, and each of the rest of the Trees according to its kind.

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But (H. he says) that Man is of no honour in the World, though of great honour [in Heaven, betrayed] 1 by those who know not to those who know Him not, being accounted “as a drop from a cask.” 2

But we (H. he says)—

C. —are the spiritual [men] who—

J. —choose for ourselves from—

C. —the Living Water—

J. —the Euphrates, that flows through the midst of Babylon, what is proper [to each of us]—journeying through the True Gate—

C. —which is Jesus the Blessed.

And of all men we alone are Christians, 3 accomplishing the Mystery at the third Gate—

J. —and being anointed with the Ineffable Chrism from the Horn, 4 like David [was], not from the flask 5 of clay, like Saul—

C. —who was fellow-citizen with an evil dæmon of fleshly desire.

H. These things, then, we have set down as a few out of many. For innumerable are the attempts of their folly, silly and crazy. But since we have, to the best of our ability, exposed their unknowable Gnosis, it seems best to set down the following also.

This is a Psalm which they have improvised; by means of which they fancy they thus sing the praises of all the mysteries of their Error. 6

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J. 1 “First [was there] Mind the Generative 2 Law of All; 3
Second to the Firstborn was Liquid Chaos;
Third Soul through toil received the Law.
Wherefore, with a deer’s 4 form surrounding her,
She labours at her task beneath Death’s rule.
Now, holding sway, 5 she sees the Light;
And now, cast into piteous plight, she weeps;
Now she weeps, and now rejoices;
Now she weeps, and now is judged;
Now is judged, and now she dieth;
Now is born, with no way out for her; in misery
She enters in her wandering the labyrinth of ills.
(? C.—And Jesus 6 said): O Father, see!
[Behold] the struggle still of ills on earth!

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Far from Thy Breath 1 away she 2 wanders!
She seeks to flee the bitter Chaos, 3
And knows not how she shall pass through.
Wherefore, send me, O Father!
Seals in my hands, I will descend;
Through Æons universal will I make a Path;
Through Mysteries all I’ll open up a Way!
And Forms of Gods will I display; 4
The secrets of the Holy Path I will hand on,
And call them Gnosis.” 5

CONCLUSION OF ANALYSIS

All this may have seemed, quite naturally, contemptible foolishness to the theological prejudices of our worthy Church Father; but it is difficult for me, even in the twentieth century, not to recognise the beauty of this fine Mystic Hymn, and I hope it may be equally difficult for at least some of my readers.

But to return to the consideration of our much overwritten Source.

This Source is plainly a commentary, or elaborate paraphrase, of the Recitation Ode, “Whether, blest Child of Kronos,” which comes at the end (§ 30) and not, as we should expect, at the beginning, and has probably been displaced by Hippolytus. It is an exegetical

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commentary written from the standpoint of the Anthrōpos-theory of the Mysteries (? originally Chaldæan), the Man-doctrine.

This commentary seems for the most part to run on so connectedly, that we can almost persuade ourselves that we have most of it before us, the lacunæ being practically insignificant. Paragraphs 6 and 7 S., however, are plainly misplaced, and §§ 17 and 18 S. also as evidently break the connection. 1

THE HELLENIST COMMENTATOR

The writer is transparently a man learned in the various Mystery-rites, and his information is of the greatest possible importance for a study of this exceedingly obscure subject from an historical standpoint.

With § 8 S., and the Egyptian Mystery-doctrine, we come to what is of peculiar interest for our present Trismegistic studies. Osiris is the Heavenly Man, the Logos; not only so, but in straitest connection with this tradition we have an exposition of the Hermes-doctrine, set forth by a system of allegorical interpretations of the Bible of Hellas—the Poems of the Homeric cycle. Here we have the evident syncrasia Thoth = Osiris = Hermes, a Hermes of the “Greek Wisdom,” as the Recitation Ode phrases it, and a doctrine which H., basing himself on the commentator (§ 10), squarely asserts the Greeks got from Egypt.

Nor is it without importance for us that in closest connection with Hermes there follow the apparently misplaced sections 17 and 18, dealing with the “Heavenly Horn,” or drinking-horn, of the Greek Wisdom, and the “Cup” of Anacreon; with which we may compare the Crater, Mixing-bowl or Cup, in which,

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according to Plato’s Timæus, the Creator mingled and mixed the elements and souls, and also the spiritual Cup of the Mind in our Trismegistic treatise, “The Crater or Monas,” C. H., iv. (v.).

But above all things is it astonishing that we should find the commentator in S. quoting (§ 9) a logos from a document which, as we have shown in the note appended to the passage, is in every probability a Trismegistic treatise of the Pœmandres type.

THE JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN OVERWRITERS

This commentary S. was worked over by a Jewish Hellenistic mystic J., whose general ideas and method of exegesis are exactly paralleled by those of Philo. In my opinion, he was a contemporary of that period and a member of one of those communities whom Philo classes generally as Therapeut. He was, moreover, not a worshipper of the serpent, but a worshipper of that Glorious Reality symbolised as the Serpent of Wisdom, and this connects him with initiation into Egypto-Chaldæan or Chaldæo-Egyptian Mysteries. These he finds set forth allegorically in the prophetical scriptures of his race. His quotations from the LXX. show him to be, like Philo, an Alexandrian Hellenistic Jew; the LXX. was his Targum.

J. again was overwritten by C., a Christian Gnostic, no enemy of either J. or S., but one who claimed that he and his were the true realisers of all that had gone before; he is somewhat boastful, but yet recognises that the Christ-doctrine is not an innovation but a consummation. The phenomena presented by the New Testament quotations of C. are, in my opinion, of extraordinary interest, especially his quotations from or parallels with the Fourth Gospel. His quotations from

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or parallels with the Synoptics are almost of the same nature as those of Justin; he is rather dealing with “Memoirs of the Apostles” than with verbatim quotations from our stereotyped Gospels. His parallels with the Fourth Gospel also seem to me to open up the question as to whether or no he is in touch with “Sources” of that “Johannine” document.

On top of all our strata and deposits, we have—to continue the metaphor of excavation, and if it be not thought somewhat uncharitable—the refutatory rubbish of Hippolytus, which need no longer detain us here.

I would, therefore, suggest that C. is to be placed somewhere about the middle of the second century A.D.; J. is contemporary with Philo—say the first quarter of the first century A.D.; the Pagan commentator of S. is prior to J.—say somewhere in the last half of the first century B.C.; while the Recitation Ode is still earlier, and can therefore be placed anywhere in the early Hellenistic period, the termini being thus 300-50 B.C. 1

And if the redactor or commentator in S. is to be placed somewhere in the last half of the first century B.C. (and this is, of course, taking only the minimum of liberty), then the Pœmandres type of our literature, which J. quotes as scripture, must, in its original Greek form, be placed back of that—say at least in the first half of the first century B.C., as a moderate estimate. 2 If those dates are not proved,

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[paragraph continues]I am at anyrate fairly confident they cannot be disproved.

ZOSIMUS AND THE ANTHROPOS-DOCTRINE

That, moreover, the Anthrōpos-doctrine, to the spirit of which the whole commentary of our S. exegete is accommodated, was also fundamental with the adherents of the Trismegistic tradition, may be clearly seen from the interesting passage (which we give in the Fragments at the end of the third Volume) of Zosimus, a member of what Reitzenstein calls the Pœmandres Community, who flourished somewhere at the end of the third and beginning of the fourth century A.D. 1

The sources of Zosimus for the Anthrōpos-doctrine, he tells us, are, in addition to the Books of Hermes, certain translations into Greek and Egyptian of books containing traditions (mystery-traditions, presumably) of the Chaldæans, Parthians, Medes, and Hebrews on the subject. This statement is of the very first importance for the history of Gnosticism as well as for appreciating certain elements in Trismegisticism. Though the indication of this literature is vague, it nevertheless mentions four factors as involved in the Hebrew tradition; the Gnostic Hebrews, as we should

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expect, were handing on elements from Chaldæan, Parthian, and Median traditions. Translations of these books were to be found scattered throughout Egypt, and especially in the great library at Alexandria.

There is, in my opinion, no necessity precisely, with Reitzenstein (p. 106, n. 6), to designate these books the “Ptolemaic Books,” and so to associate them with a notice found in the apocryphal “Eighth Book of Moses,” where, together with that of the Archangelic Book of Moses, there is mention of the Fifth Book of the “Ptolemaic Books,” described as a book of multifarious wisdom under the title “One and All,” and containing the account of the “Genesis of Fire and Darkness.” 1

Another source of Zosimus was the Pinax of Bitos or Bitys, of whom we shall treat in considering the information of Jamblichus.

From all of these indications we are assured that there was already in the first centuries B.C. a well-developed Hellenistic doctrine of the descent of man from the Man Above, and of his return to that heavenly state by his mastery of the powers of the cosmos.

PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA ON THE MAN-DOCTRINE

This date is further confirmed by the testimony of Philo (c. 30 B.C.-45 A.D.).

For, quoting the verse: “We are all sons of One Man,” 2 he addresses those who are “companions of wisdom and knowledge” as those who are “Sons of one and the same Father—no mortal father, but an immortal Sire, the Man of God, who being the Reason (Logos) of the Eternal, is of necessity himself eternal.” 3

And again, a little further on:

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“And if a man should not as yet have the good fortune to be worthy to be called Son of God, let him strive manfully to set himself in order 1 according to His First-born Reason (Logos), the Oldest Angel, who is as though it were the Angel-chief of many names; for he is called Dominion, and Name of God, and Reason, and Man-after-His-Likeness, and Seeing Israel.

“And for this reason I was induced a little before to praise the principles of those who say: ‘We are all sons of One Man.’ For even if we have not yet become fit to be judged Sons of God, we may at any rate be Sons of His Eternal Likeness, His Most Holy Reason (Logos); for Reason, the Eldest of all Angels, is God’s Likeness [or Image].” 2

Thus Philo gives us additional proof, if more were needed, for the full Anthrōpos-doctrine was evidently fundamental in his circle—that is to say, in the thought-atmosphere of the Hellenistic theology, or the religio-philosophy, or theosophy, of his day, the beginning of the first century A.D.

This date alone is sufficient for our purpose; but it is not too bold a statement even to say that the Man-Mystery was a fundamental concept of the brilliant period of the Hellenistic syncretism which succeeded to the founding of Alexandria—the period of the expansion of Hellas beyond her national borders; in other words, her birth into the greater world.

It is enough to know that the Mystery was hidden and yet revealed in the shadow-garments of Chaldæan, Babylonian, Magian, Phœnician, Hebrew, Egyptian, Phrygian, Thracian, and Greek mystery-traditions. It was, in brief, fundamental in all such wisdom-shows, and necessarily so, for it was the Christ-Mystery.

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Footnotes

139:1 C. H., i, 12.

139:2 Contra Om. Hær., I. xxx.; ed. A. Stieren (Leipzig, 1853), i. 263 ff.

139:3 Hær. Fab., I. xiv.

140:1 F. F. F., pp. 188 ff.

142:1 Both ḥ and ch being transliteration devices for the same Hebrew letter ח in the word נחש.

142:2 We know of the two titles, The Greater and The Lesser Questions of Mary; the general title is thought by some to be the proper designation of one of the sources of the composite document known as Pistis Sophia, and has been suggested as its more appropriate general epigraph.

143:1 Philos., v. 1-11, of which I published a preliminary translation, under the heading “Selections from the ‘Philosophumena,’” in The Theosophical Review (August and September 1893), xii. 559-569, xiii. 42-52, and a summary in F. F. F., pp. 198-206.

143:2 Ed. L. Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin (Göttingen, 1859); and ed. P. Cruice (Paris, 1860).

144:1 The date of the writing of the Philosophumena is placed somewhere about 222 A.D.

146:1 S. 132, 1—134, 80; C. 139, 1—141, 2.

146:2 The worship of the serpent, according to H.

146:3 Cf. the strange logos, preserved in Matt. x. 16 alone: “Be ye therefore wise as serpents.”

146:4 The reading can be slightly emended by H.’s epitome in x. 9; but the phrase παρὰ τὸν αὐτῶν λόγον still remains an enigma.

146:5 The Celestial Adam, the Adam Kadmon of Kabalistic tradition, or the Intelligible Cosmos of Hellenistic theology. See Cruice, note in loc.

146:6 Or hymns of subtle meaning.

146:7 That is, Man as Cause and Substance of all things.

146:8 Sc. Powers.

146:9 That is, presumably, “names of power” (Egyptice); the Adam who gave their “names” to all the “animals.”

147:1 Geryon, the triple-headed or triple-bodied Giant, who plays a prominent part in the myth of Hercules.

147:2 Or spiritual, psychic, and earthy.

147:3 That is, the learning to know.

147:4 Cf. § 25, J.

147:5 That is, as we shall see later, C.

147:6 λόγων.

147:7 Celsus (c. 150-175 A.D.) knows of groups of Harpocratians—that is, worshippers of Horus—some of whom derived their tradition from Salōmē, others from Mariamnē, and others again from Martha (Origen, C. Celsum, v. 62). This suggests an Egyptian setting. (For Salome and Maria or Miriam (Mariamnē), the Sisters of Jesus, see D. J. L., 405 f .; for Martha, Our Lady, see ibid., 375 ff.) In the Gnostic Acts of Philip, Mariamnē, or Mariammē (both forms being found in the MSS., according to R. A. Lipsius, Die apokr. Apostelgeschichten—Brunswick, 1884—iii. 12), is the “virgin sister” of Philip, and plays an important rôle as prophetess. She is to Philip as Thekla to Paul, or Helen to Simon. Compare with this the “sister wife” whom Paul demands the right to take about like “the rest of the Apostles and the Brethren of the Lord and Cephas” (1 Corinth. ix. 5; D. J. L., 229). Salmon (art. “Mariamne” in Smith and Wace’s D. of Christ. Biog., iii. 830) refers to the Mary (Magdalene) of the Pistis Sophia, the chief questioner of the Master and His favourite disciple, the sister of Martha. The tradition of the Gnosis from James, the Brother of the Lord, is asserted by Clement of Alexandria in Book VI. of his lost work, The Institutions, where he writes: “The Lord imparted the Gnosis to James the Just, to John and Peter, after His resurrection; these delivered it to the rest of the Apostles, and they to the Seventy” (Euseb., Hist. Eccles., ii. 1; cf. D. J. L., 226).

148:1 From here onwards we use the revised critical text of Reitzenstein (pp. 83-98), who appends what we may call an apparatus criticus of the emendations and conjectures of the various editions of our solitary MS. R., as usual, however, gives no translation.

148:2 Is. liii. 8—same reading as LXX. Cf. also 25 § J.

148:3 A remark of the writer of S., which, as we shall see at the end, is divided into Texts and Commentary.

148:4 The “he says” may be ascribed to any subsequent hand; I have marked them all H. to avoid further complication.

149:1 “Burstings forth,” inspirations, revealings, or mysteries.

149:2 In Greek transformation, son of Apollo and the daughter of Minos, born in Libya. This points to a very ancient myth-connection with the old Cretan civilisation. Garamas was also called Amphithemis (q.v. in Roscher’s Lex.); he appears also, according to one tradition, to have been the father of Ammon. (See “Garamantis Nympha,” ibid.)

149:3 This passage is doubly interesting, for it is not only a source, but a source within a source. Already a number of scholars have recognised it as an Ode; and not only so, but conjectured with much probability that it is by no less a master than Pindar himself. Nay, further, it is part of a Hymn to Jupiter Ammon—an additionally interesting point for us as showing strong Egyptian influence. It is true that in our text of Hippolytus the order of the words has been frequently changed to bring it into prose form; but the reconstruction of most of it is not difficult, and quite convincing. I translate from the text of Bergk’s final revision, as given S. 134, 135; C. 142. R., for some reason or other, does not refer to this interesting side-light.

150:1 Sc. of the Fate-Sphere.

150:2 This looks back, though with variants, to Ephes. iii. 15.

150:3 Sc. the image-man, or Adam of “red” earth.

150:4 Sc. the Chaldæans.

150:5 τύπῳ.

150:6 Sc. the Naassenes.

150:7 This is a further indication of the environment of the Naassenes. Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 7.

150:8 That is from Man (Father), Man Son of Man (Son), or Flowing Chaos (Mother)—corresponding in Hellenic mythology to Kronos, Zeus, and Rhea. For Rhea (from ρέειν, “to flow”) is the Moist or Liquid Nature, as with the Stoics; she is the a-cosmic or unordered Earth, the Prima Materia (the First Earth, the Spouse of Heaven—Uranus), Hyle Proper, who carries in her bosom the Logos. For references, see R., p. 99, n. 2.

151:1 Cf. Ex. viii. 8.

151:2 The preceding paragraph is evidently composed of selections from S. R. (p. 85, n. 1) thinks that we have here the description of only one aspect of Soul, and that the description of the remaining two aspects has been omitted by H.

151:3 Sc. the Naassenes, in H.’s view.

152:1 μορφῆς—lit., either form or beauty.

152:2 Sc. of cosmos.

152:3 This paragraph and § 7, together with the accompanying overworkings, seem to have been misplaced by H., according to R. (pp. 99, 100).

The sudden introduction of the name Attis without any preliminaries, indicates another lacuna; the transition from the Assyrian to the Phrygian Mysteries of the Great Mother is too brusque.

152:4 The threefold nature of the Soul is thus distinguished by: (i.) The union (or marriage) which joins it to generation, or to earth-life—the nature of things on earth; (ii.) The union which joins it with death—the nature of the things “beneath” the earth; (iii.) The union which joins it with formal beauty, or beauty in form (μορφή)—the nature of super-terrene (or sublunary) things, here regarded as the Elysian state.

The love of the Mother of the Gods for the Soul represents the “fourth state” (the turīya of Vedantic mystic psychology), or the absorption of the masculine power of the Soul by its own higher Feminine Nature. Cf. in Damascius’ “Life of Isidores” (Photius, Bibl., ed. Bekker, 345 a. 5: “I fell asleep, and in a vision Attis seemed to appear to me, and, on behalf of the Mother of the Gods, to initiate me into the feast called Hilaria—a mystery which discloses the way of our salvation from Hades.” Hades, the realm of Selēnē, is not Tartarus, the realm of Death.

153:1 Compare the so-called Second Epistle of Clement (an early homily incorporating extra-canonical Gospel-materials), xii. 2: “For the Lord Himself being asked by some one when his Kingdom should come, said: When the two shall be one, and the outside as the inside, and the male with the female neither male nor female”; and also the well-known logoi, from The Gospel according to the Egyptians, quoted several times by Clement of Alexandria: “When Salome asked how long Death should prevail, the Lord said: So long as ye women bear children; for I am come to destroy the work of the Female. And Salome said to Him: Did I therefore well in bearing no children? The Lord answered and said: Eat every Herb, but eat not that which hath bitterness. When Salome asked when these things about which she questioned should be made known, the Lord said: When ye trample upon the Garment of Shame; when the Two become One, and Male with Female neither male nor female.” And with the last logos of the above compare the new-found fragment of a lost Gospel: “His disciples say unto Him: When wilt thou be manifest to us, and when shall we see Thee? He saith: When ye shall be stripped and not be ashamed.”—Grenfell and Hunt, New Sayings of Jesus (London, 1904), p. 40. The environment is Egyptian and ascetic; it is a saying addressed to a community, as may be seen from one of the previous logoi: “Having one garment what do ye [lack]?”

153:2 See Rom. i. 20-23, 25-27.

153:3 ἀόρατα.

153:4 ἀΐδιος—evidently a word-play.

153:5 The received Pauline text is slightly shortened here.

154:1 Evidently a reference to the Chaldæan fourfold (man-eagle-lion-bull) glyph of what Later Orphicism and Platonism called the Autozōon, representing the four main types of Animal Life; the same mystery which Ezekiel saw in the Vision of the Mercabah, or Celestial Chariot—a reflected picture, I believe, from the Chaldæan Mysteries.

154:2 Verses 24 and 25 of the Received Text are omitted.

154:3 ἀσχημοσύνη—meaning also “formlessness.”

154:4 Cf. Ex. v. 2.

154:5 That is, baptism.

154:6 We wonder what “they” really did say? They may have argued in their private circles that even in the foulest things the clean soul could recognise the reversed signs of the Mysteries of Purity; for certainly these things require an explanation—nay, more urgently do they require an interpretation in proportion to their foulness. The hateful suggestion of Hippolytus that these ascetic and spiritually-minded folk—for their doctrines plainly show them to be so—were as foul as those of the Flood, only shows the ineradicable prejudice of unwitting self-righteousness.

155:1 Completion of R.

155:2 Picking up “Blessed Nature” from the first paragraph of 6.

155:3 Cf. Ex. viii. 6, note.

155:4 At fourteen a boy took his first initiation into the Egyptian priesthood.

155:5 Cf. Littré, Traduct. des Œuvres d’Hippocrate, tom. i. p. 396.

155:6 Presumably referring to Seed.

155:7 Perhaps, however, they meant something very different, and perhaps even their analogies are not so foolish as they seemed to H.

155:8 The material here seems to follow directly on § 5. It is a summary by H.; but seeing that there is more in it of S. than of H., we will print it as S., indicating H. when possible.

156:1 Isis, or Nature, as the seven spheres and the eighth sphere (? the “black” earth).

156:2 That is the Celestial Nile or Heaven-Ocean, which fructifies Mother Nature. “The Alexandrians honoured the same God as being both Osiris and Adonis, according to their mystical god-blending (syncrasia).” Damascius, “Life of Isidorus” (Phot., Bibl., 242; p. 342 a. 21, ed. Bek.).

156:3 Sc. the Egyptians.

156:4 Prov. xxiv. 16—same reading as LXX. Cf. Luke xvii. 4.: “If he trespass against thee seven times in a day and turn again to thee, saying, ‘I repent’; thou shalt forgive.” This saying is apparently from the “Logia” source; cf. Matt, xviii. 21, and compare the idea with the scheme of the “repentance” of the Pistis Sophia.

156:5 The seven planetary spheres; but it may also connect with the idea of the falling “stars” as the souls descending into matter, according to the Platonic and Hermetic doctrine.

156:6 Probably the Egyptians in their Mysteries, connecting with what is summarised by H. at end of § 6 and beginning of § 7.

157:1 Evidently a logos from some Hellenistic scripture. In the evidence of Zosimus which we adduce at the end of our Trismegistic Fragments, he quotes (§§ 15 and 7) from the “Inner Door”—a lost treatise of Hermes Trismegistus—as follows: “For that the Son of God having power in all things, becoming all things that He willeth, appeareth as He willeth to each.” Thus we have S. quoting the original logos, which, I suggest, belongs to the “Pœmandres” type of Trismegistic literature. Therefore that type was in existence before S. This confirms our attribution of the “they declare” to the Egyptians and their Mysteries (Trismegisticism being principally the Hellenised form of those Mysteries), and also the completion of R. at the end of the first paragraph of § 7 above.

157:2 Cf. Matt. xix. 17 = Mark x. 18 = Luke xviii. 19. The first clause agrees with Mark and Luke, the second with Matthew (omitting “the” before “Good”). The presumably primitive reading of the positive command, “Call me not Good,” has disappeared entirely from this phase of tradition.

157:3 A different form from Matt. v. 45, but the same idea; for the other tradition, see Luke vi. 35.

158:1 Cf. Matt v. 15 = Mark iv. 21 = Luke viii. 16 and xi. 33.

158:2 Cf. Matt. x. 27 = Luke xii. 3.

158:3 That is, symbolically distinguished statues of Hermes.

158:4 The text is faulty; but compare Pausanias, VI. xxvi. 5, where, speaking of Cyllene, he says: “The image of Hermes which the people of the place revere exceedingly, is nothing but an ithyphallus on a pedestal.” This famous symbolic figure at Cyllene is mentioned also by Artemidorus, Oneirocr., i. 45; and by Lucian, Jupiter Tragædus, 42. Cf. J. G. Frazer’s Pausanias (London, 1898), iv. 110.

159:1 Psychagogue and psychopomp—or leader and evoker of souls—apparently here meaning him who takes souls out of body and brings them back again to it.

159:2 μνηστήρων—lit., meaning “recalling to mind”; and also “suitors.” Cf. Od., xxiv. 1 ff.

159:3 Empedocles, On Purifications (Diels, 119; Stein, 390; Karsten, 11; Fairbanks, First Philosophers of Greece, 206); Empedocles continues: “ . . . have I fallen here on the earth to consort with mortals!”

159:4 The Naassenes, in H.’s opinion.

159:5 The souls.

159:6 Some editors think this is a mistake for Ialdabaōth. The name, however, appears in the system of Justinus (Hipp., Philos., v. 26) as Esaddaios, evidently the transliteration of El Shaddai, as one of the twelve Paternal Angels, the Sons of Elohim, the Demiurge of the sensible world, and of Eden, the Maternal Potency or Nature.

159:7 τοῦ ἰδικοῦ κόσμου—the cosmos of species and not of wholes. Cf. § 17 below for the passage of C. from which H. takes this. Compare Ptah-Hephaistos, the Demiurge by Fire, the Fourth, in the Inscription of London given in Chap. VI. above.

160:1 Sc. Hermes.

160:2 The continuation of the above quotation—Od., xxiv. 2 ff.

160:3 Cf. C. H., i. 14: “he who hath power over the lives of cosmos.”

160:4 Ps. ii. 9—same reading as LXX.

160:5 Or “get back memory,” or “become suitors.”

160:6 Eph. v. 14—a shortened form of the present Pauline text; Paul himself, however, seems to be quoting from some older writing. If the intermediate reading (ἐπιψαύσει for ἐπιφαύσει) can stand (see W. H., Ap. 125), it would mean “Christ shall touch thee” with His rod.

160:7 Cf. Plutarch, De Is. et Os., xxxiv. After saying that Osiris, or the Logos, is symbolised as Ocean and Water, and that Thales took his idea of Primal “Water, as the cause of things, from the Egyptians, the initiated priest of Apollo and learned comparative mythologist continues: “The Greeks say that ‘son’ (ὑιόν) comes from ‘water’ (ὕδατος) and ‘to moisten’ (ὕσαι), and they call Dionysus ‘Hyes’ (ὕην) as Lord of the Moist (ὑγρᾶς) Nature, he being the same as Osiris.” Stoll in Roscher’s Lex. (sub vv.) says that “Hyēs” and “Hyē” were respectively designations of Dionysus and Semele, and that the meaning is the “Moistener” and the “Moistened” (references loc. cit.). The nymphs who reared Bacchus were also called Hyades (Pherecydes, 46; p. 108, ed. Sturz). Hyēs was also a popular epithet of Zeus as god of rain. See also Lobeck, Aglaophamus, 782 and 1045 ff.; Anecd., Bekk., p. 202: Some say that Hyēs = Attis, others that Hyēs = Dionysus; “for Zeus poured (ὕσε) ambrosia upon him.” One of the names of Bacchus was Ambrosia (Pherecy., ibid.; Non., xxi. 20). I would therefore suggest that the mystic cry “Hye Kye” meant “O Moistener beget!”

161:1 Ps. xix. 4. That is the Sound (= Word) of the Heavens; quoted also in Rom. x. 18.

161:2 Cf. Od., xxiv. 5. And compare also Hamlet, I. i.:

                                “The sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.”

161:3 Od., ibid. ff.

161:4 Ps. cxviii. 22. Quoted in Matt. xxi. 42; Mark xii. 10; Luke xx. 17; Acts iv. 11.

162:1 Taken by C. from S. and J., § 20; but I think that C. has missed the true meaning of the “corner-stone” in the brain.

162:2 Cf. Eph. iii. 15.

162:3 Is. xxviii. 16—reading ἐντάσσω for ἐμβάλλω of LXX.; quoted also in Eph. ii. 20 and 1 Pet. ii. 7.

162:4 Sc. Isaiah.

162:5 Completion of the lacuna by R.

162:6 χαράκωμα—a technical term also for the “Gnostic” supernal Horos or Boundary.

162:7 Dan. ii. 15.

162:8 Compare the “complaints of the souls” in the K.K. fragments.

162:9 Od., xxiv. 9 f.

162:10 Od., ibid.

163:1 Cf. Il., xiv. 201, 246; Hymn. Orph., lxxxiii. 2.

163:2 Ps. lxxxii. 6.

163:3 Cf. Gal. iv. 27: “But Jerusalem Above is free, which is our Mother.” (W. and H. text.)

163:4 The final quotation within the quotation is also from Ps. lxxxii. 6. Here, then, we have a quotation from a scripture (“what is written”), glossed by J. with his special exegesis, but already being an exegesis of an Old Testament logos. It is not only a halacha, to use a term of Talmudic Kabbinism, but it is an authoritative apocalypse of the Jewish Gnosis.

163:5 John iii. 6.

163:6 Sc. the Naassenes, according to H.

164:1 I am persuaded that this stood originally in J., and not in C.—being LXX. for Joshua.

164:2 This paragraph summarises S. See next S.

164:3 ἀβσίλευτος—that is, presumably, those who have learned to rule themselves, the “self-taught” race, etc., of Philo.

164:4 Eusebius (Præp. Evang., IX. xxviii. and xxix. 5 ff.; ed. Dind. i. 505 ff. and 508 ff.), quoting from Alexander Cornelius (Polyhistor), who nourished about 100 B.C., has preserved to us a number of verses from a tragedy (called The Leading Forth) on the subject of Moses and the Exodus story, by a certain Ezechiel, a (? Alexandrian) Hebrew poet writing in Greek. In these fragments of Ezechiel’s tragedy, Mariam, Sepphōra, and Jothōr are all dramatis personæ. These spellings and that of Madiam are, of course, all LXX. (that is, Greek Targum) forms of our A.V. Miriam, Jethro, Zipporah, and Midian.

165:1 Il., xv. 189.

165:2 Cf. Luke viii. 10. Luke seems to preserve the reading of the source more correctly than Matt. xiii. 13 or Mark iv. 12. The Saying looks back to Is. vi. 9.

165:3 Cf. § 30 J.

165:4 These three names are based on the Hebrew text of Is. xxviii. 13, A.V.: “But the Word of the Lord was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a little.” LXX.: “καὶ ἔσται αὐτοῖς τὸ λόγιον κυρίου τοῦ θεοῦ, θλῖψις ἐπὶ θλῖψιν ἐλπὶς ἐπ’ ἐλπίδι, ἔτι μικρὸν ἔτι μικρόν.” That is: “And the logion [oracle, the Urim-and-Thummim, or instrument of the Logos, according to Philo] of God shall be to them tribulation on tribulation, hope on hope, still little still little.” See Epiphanius, Hær., xxv. 4. “Saulasau saulasau” = “tribulation on tribulation, tribulation on tribulation;” “kaulakau kaulakau” = “hope on hope, hope on hope;” “zeēsar [zeēsar]” = “still little still little”—that is, the “Height of Hope,” the “Depth of Tribulation,” and the “As yet Very Little”—evidently referring to the as yet small number of the Regenerate. Cf. Pistis Sophia, 354: “One out of a thousand, and two out of ten thousand.” See Salmon’s article, “Caulacau,” in Smith and Wace’s D. of Ch. Biog., i. 424 f. It is also to be noticed that Epiphanius ascribes the origin of these names to the Nicolaïtans. In Hebrew the corresponding name would be Balaamites; and Balaam or Bileam (Nico-laus) was one of the Rabbinical by-names for Jeschu (Jesus). See D. J. L., p. 188.

165:5 This and the following paragraph seem to have been misplaced by J. or C., for § 19 connects directly with the exposition concerning the ithyphallic Hermes. See R. 100, n. 4.

166:1 ὡς ἐκ γῆς ῥέοντα Ι`η-ρυόν-ην.

166:2 Mēn was the Phrygian Deus Lunus. See Drexler’s admirable art. s.v. in Roscher, ii. 2687-2770.

166:3 κεκέρακε—a word-play on κέρας (horn), unreproducible in English.

166:4 John i. 3, 4. So the present text; but it must have been “nothing” in the text which lay before C.

166:5 Cf. the logos, from The Book of the Great Logos according to the Mystery: “Jesus, the Living One, answered and said: Blessed is the man who knoweth this [Word (Logos)], and hath brought down the Heaven, and borne the Earth and raised it heavenwards, and he becometh the Middle, for it (the Middle) is ‘nothing.’”—Schmidt (C.), Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache aus dem Codex Brucianus (Leipzig, 1892), p. 144; and Koptisch-gnostische Schriften (Leipzig, 1905), p. 259.

166:6 That is the world of phenomena, or cosmos of species (ἰδικός) and not of genera or wholes.

166:7 The fourth Demiurgic Power of the Sensible World was Esaldaios, as we have already seen from J., § 12. The indications are too vague to recover the “measures” and “numbers” of the system. But the “third and fourth” are apparently both “fiery”—the former giving “light,” the latter “heat.” Compare § 23 C., who speaks of the third Gate, or entrance to the third Heaven. This Heaven, the third from below, would correspond with the first ætheric sphere—there being, presumably, three before the fourth or middle, the “Fiery Ruler.”

167:1 Sc. “Heavenly Horn of Mēn.”

167:2 Cf. Gen. xliv. 5.

167:3 Bergk includes these verses among the Anacreontica, n. 63, p. 835. Cf. Anacr., i. 10 (Bergk, 50, 10).

167:4 The last line is reconstructed by Cruice (not. in loc.). Cf. Anacr., xxvi. 25, 26. Was Omar Ḵhayyām, then, “Anacreon palingenēs,” or was the same spirit in each?

167:5 Cf. John ii. 11. The reading of our quotation, however, is very different from that of the familiar Textus Receptus.

167:6 Cf. Luke xvii. 21.

167:7 Cf. Matt. xiii. 44.

167:8 Cf. Matt. xiii. 33 = Luke xiii. 20.

168:1 This seems to connect immediately with the end of § 16. See R. 100, n. 4.

168:2 S. probably had “For,” which was glossed by J. into “Moreover.”

168:3 But this “statue,” as we have seen, was the ithyphallus simply.

168:4 Or Typal Man.

168:5 Or, generated or born from Above.

168:6 Cf. John vi. 53, which reads in T. R.: “Amēn, Amēn, I say unto you, if ye eat not the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, ye have not Life in yourselves.”

168:7 Cf. Matt. xx. 22 = Mark x. 38 (where the phrase is put in a question).

168:8 Cf. John viii. 21 and xiii. 33. It is remarkable that in the text of our Gospels these logoi are addressed to the Jews; C., however, takes them as sayings addressed to the disciples. It is possible that we may have here a “source” of the Fourth Gospel!

169:1 These “tribes,” then, were not the Jewish tribes, ten of which did not return, but twelve typical natures of men, and something else.

169:2 See Immisch’s excellent art., “Kureten u. Korybanten,” in Roscher, ii. 1587-1628.

169:3 Κορύβας, the Lord of the Corybantes, or frenzied priests of Cybele, is thus feigned by mystical word-play to be ὁ ἀπὸ-κορυφῆς-βας, “he who descends from the head.”

169:4 Cf. C., § 14.

169:5 Apparently a quotation from some Jewish apocryphon. Cf. John v. 37: “Ye have never at any time heard His voice nor have ye seen His form.”

170:1 Cf. Ps. xxviii. 10.

170:2 Ibid., 3.

170:3 Conflation of LXX. of Ps. xxiv. 17 and Ps. xxi. 21.

170:4 A paraphrase of LXX.—Is. xli. 8.

170:5 A paraphrase of LXX.—Is. xliii. 1.

170:6 Isaiah; or the Word speaking through the prophet.

170:7 Is. xliii. 1.

170:8 Sc. Isaiah.

170:9 Paraphrase of LXX.—Is. xlix. 15.

170:10 Is. xlix. 16.

171:1 Ps. xxiii. 7 and 9.

171:2 Ps. xxiii. 10.

171:3 Sc. a “Serpent.”

171:4 Ps. xxi. 6.

171:5 Ps. xxiii. 10 and 8.

171:6 Sc. the psalmist; or, rather, the Logos through the psalmist.

171:7 Job xl. 27.

171:8 Gen. xxviii. 7.

171:9 Sc. Jacob.

171:10 Gen. xxviii. 17.

171:11 Cf. John x. 9—“true” not appearing in the traditional text.

171:12 Sc. “Jacob”—using the name in the Philonean sense.

172:1 This is the Zeus Phrygius of Diodor. iii. 58, and Eustathius, 565, 3. Cf. R. 163, n. 3, and Zwei relig. Fragen, 104, n. 3.

172:2 ἔπαυσε.

172:3 παῦε παῦε, a mystical word-play on πά-πά.

172:4 Cf. Eph. ii. 17.

172:5 Cf. what underlies Matt, xxiii. 27, Luke xi. 44, and Acts xxiii. 3.

172:6 Cf. “Jesus, the Living [One]” in the Introduction to the newest found Sayings; and also passim in the Introduction (apparently an excerpt from another document) to the First Book of Ieou, in the Codex Brucianus.

172:7 Cf. what underlies Matt, xxvii. 52, 53.

173:1 Some words have apparently been omitted, corresponding to the final clause of the last sentence in S. See R., p. 101.

173:2 Cf. 2 Cor. xii. 2-4.

173:3 Cf. 1 Cor. ii. 13, 14.

173:4 Cf. John vi. 44. Instead of “Heavenly Father,” T. R. reads “the Father who sent me.” Compare with this the longest of the newest found logoi, concerning “them who draw us” towards self-knowledge or the “kingship within.” (Grenfell and Hunt, op. cit., p. 15.)

173:5 Cf. Matt. vii. 21.

174:1 Cf. Matt. xxi. 31. T. R. reads “The Kingdom of God.”

174:2 Or perfectionings, or completions, or endings, or initiations; also taxes—here a mystical synonym for pleromata (fullnesses) or logoi (words).

174:3 Or, collectors of dues.

174:4 1 Cor. x. 11.

174:5 Cf. the logos underlying Matt. xiii. 3 ff. = Mark iv. 3 ff. = Luke viii. 5 ff.

174:6 Slightly paraphrased from LXX.—Deut. xxxi. 20.

174:7 In that they are rulers of themselves, members of the “self-taught” Race—ἀβασιλεύτους, that is, free from the Rulers of Destiny, or Kārmic bonds.

175:1 Cf. Matt. iii. 10= Luke iii. 9. Cf. also Hipp., Philos., vi. 16, in his maltreatment of the “Simonian” Gnosis.

175:2 That is, Sons of the Logos.

175:3 Cf. note on the third Ruler in § 17 C.

175:4 Presumably the Phrygians.

175:5 If our attribution of this to J. is correct (R. gives it to C.), we have perhaps before us a logos from the Phrygian Mysteries.

175:6 This may possibly be assigned to C.; but C. usually comments on J. and does not lead, and the terminology is that of J. and not of C.

175:7 A simple form of Matt. vii. 6. Is it by any means possible an underlying mystical word-play on the Eleusinian logos “ὕε κύε”; hence ὕς (pig)—a synonym of χοῖρος and κύων (dog)?

175:8 This section seems to be misplaced, and § 25 probably followed § 23 immediately in the original; the antithesis of Fruitful and Unfruitful following one another, as above (§ 22), the antithesis of Dead and God.

175:9 αἰ-πόλος, vulg. = “goat-herd.”

176:1 S. had probably “ignorant.”

176:2 ἀειπόλος, τουτέστι ἀεὶ πολῶν. Cf. Plato, Cratylus, 408 C, D.

176:3 This is not very clear. But see Mozley’s article, “Polus,” in Smith, Wayte, and Marindin’s D. of Gk. and Rom. Antiquities (London, 1891), ii. 442, 443: “Both in [Plato’s] Timæus, 40 B. and [Aristotle’s] De Cælo, ii. 14, πόλος is used, not for the entire heaven, but for the axis of heaven and earth, around which the whole revolved. Again in the De Cælo, ii. 2, the πόλοι are the poles, north and south, in our sense of the word.” Compare also the rubric in one of the rituals in the Greek Magic Papyri—C. Wessely, Griechische Zauberpapyrus, in Denkschr. d. Akad., ph. hist. Kl., xxxvi. (Vienna, 1888)—where it is said that the Sun will then move towards the Pole, and the theurgist will see Seven Virgins (the Seven Fortunes of Heaven) approach, and Seven Youths, with heads of bulls (the Pole-lords of Heaven), who make the axis turn (661-670). Compare this with the “cylinder” idea in the fragment of K. K. Then there will appear the Great God “in a white robe and trowsers, with a crown of gold on his head, holding in his right hand the golden shoulder of a heifer, that is the Bear that sets in motion and keeps the heaven turning in due seasons.” This God will pronounce an oracle, and the theurgist will then receive the gift of divination. The special interest of this tradition is that it contains a Magian element (to wit, the “trowsers”), and this connects closely with Phrygia and the cult that was wedded most closely with the Mithriaca, namely, that of the Mother of the Gods.

176:4 Od., iv. 384. In the Proteus myth Egypt is the Nile—that is, the “Great Green,” the Heaven Ocean. Proteus was also said to have been the messenger or servant of Poseidon, the special God, it will be remembered, of Plato’s Atlantis.

177:1 πιπράσκεται, a synonym of πωλεῖται, which, besides the meaning of “coming and going,” or “moving about,” also signifies “is sold”; but I do not see the appositeness of the remark, unless the “ignorant” so understood it.

177:2 Is. liv. 1; quoted also in Gal. iv. 27. Cf. Philo, De Execrat., § 7; M. ii. 435, P. 936 (Ri. v. 254): “For when she [the Soul] is a multitude of passions and filled with vices, her children swarming over her—pleasures, appetites, folly, intemperance, unrighteousness, injustice—she is weak and sick, and lies at death’s door, dying; but when she becomes sterile, and ceases to bring them forth, or even casts them from her, forthwith, from the change, she becometh a chaste virgin, and, receiving the Divine Seed, she fashions and engenders marvellous excellencies that Nature prizeth highly—prudence, courage, temperance, justice, holiness, piety, and the rest of the virtues and good dispositions.”

There are, thus, seen to be identical ideas of a distinctly marked character in both J. and Philo. Did J., then, belong to Philo’s “circle”? Or, rather, did Philo represent a propagandist side of J.’s circle? In other words, can we possibly have before us in J. a Therapeut allegorical exercise, based on S., by an exceedingly liberal-minded Hellenistic Jewish mystic?

178:1 Cf. Matt. ii. 18, which depends on Jer. xxxi. 15 (LXX. xxxviii. 15). In T. R., however, the reading is by no means the same as in LXX. C. favours the Gospel text rather than that of LXX.

178:2 This shows a very detached frame of mind on behalf of J. Perhaps it may be an interpolation of C.

178:3 Jer. xvii. 9.

178:4 This has all the appearance of a quotation from some mystic apocryphon of the Gnosis.

178:5 See Cumont (F.), Mystères de Mithra (Brussels, 1898). In the monuments representing the bull-slaying myth of the Mithriaca, the bull’s tail is frequently terminated in “une truffe d’epis”—the number varies, being either one, three, five, or seven. In the Bundahish all things are generated from the body, especially from the spinal marrow, of the slain bull. Sometimes the wheat-ears are represented as flowing like blood from the wound above the heart inflicted by the dagger of Mithras, the Bull-slayer (op. cit., i. 186, 187). The constellation of the Wheat-ear in the Virgin, which was supposed to give good harvests, presumably refers to the same idea (cf. Eratosth., Cataster., 9). See op. cit., i. 202, 205, n. 2. The wheat-ear, therefore, symbolised in one aspect the “generative seed”—in animals and men-animals the spermatozoa, in man a mystery. Mithraicism had the closest connection with the Phrygian Mystery Cult; indeed, the Magna Mater Mysteries were used by it for the initiation of women, who were excluded from the Mithriaca proper.

179:1 The Light-spark of Pistis Sophia nomenclature.

179:2 That is, the hierophant initiate of the Great Mother.

179:3 ὑπὸ πολλῷ πύρι, lit., “to the accompaniment of much fire.” This refers, I believe, to the brilliant illumination of the Temple, or, as it was variously called, the Initiation Hall (τελεστήριον), the Mystic Enclosure (μυστικὸς σηκός)—though this was probably the inner court surrounding the Temple proper the Great Hall (μέγαρον), or Palace (άγάκτορον). As Hatch says, in the tenth of his famous Hibbert Lectures for 1888: “And at night there were the mystic plays: the scenic representations, the drama in symbol and for sight. The torches were extinguished; they stood outside the Temple [in the Mystic Enclosure, presumably] in the silence and darkness. The door opened—there was a blaze of light—before them was enacted the drama.” Hatch (E.), The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church (4th ed., London, 1892). See also my “Notes on the Eleusinian Mysteries,” in The Theosoph. Rev. (April 1898), xxii. p. 151.

180:1 See especially Lobeck, Aglaophamus, 587 ff.

180:2 ἤλθομεν, this verb forming its tenses from √ερ and √ελυθ, and ἔλευσις meaning also “coming.”

180:3 Emend, by Keil.

180:4 ἀνελθεῖν.

180:5 It need hardly be said that this is all mystical word-play; ἀνακτόρειον is philologically derived from the same stem as ἄναξ, “a king.” Cf. the Anaktoron or Palace as the name of the Eleusinian Temple of Initiation.

180:6 Heracleitus, Fr. (25, Diels; 101, Fairbanks, First Philosophers of Greece). “Deaths” may also be rendered destinies, fates, or dooms.

181:1 Sc. the first path.

181:2 These verses are from some unknown poet, who is conjectured variously to have been either Parmenides or Pamphus of Athens. See notes in loc. in both Schneidewin and Cruice.

181:3 Sc. those of Persephonē.

181:4 Sc. the Greater Mysteries; in which, presumably, the candidate went through some symbolic rite of death and resurrection.

181:5 Or true virility, ἀπηρσενωμένους, which equates with ἀπ-ανδρουμένους, I believe, and does not mean demasculati, or exuta virilitate, as translated respectively by Schneidewin and Cruice. For the “death” mentioned above and the “casting away of the garments,” see the Mystery Ritual in The Acts of John (F. F. F., 431-434); and for the latter and the “Virginal Spirit,” the passages on the Sacred Marriage which I have collected in the chapter on the main doctrines of Philo.

182:1 A loose reference to LXX.—Is. vii. 14.

182:2 Or Eternity of Eternities.

182:3 Cf. Matt. vii. 13, 14; our text, however, is an inversion of the clauses, with several various readings, of T. R.

182:4 This seems to connect with the Fruitful of § 25. See below, in the Hymn “Whether blest Child,” the “cut wheat-ear” that Amygdalos brought forth.

182:5 This refers to the First Man.

182:6 Vulg., Almond-tree.

182:7 In the Mithriaca, Mithras, in the most ancient myth, was represented as in (? born from) a Tree. See Cumont.

182:8 Reading οἱονεὶ διαφύζοντα with S., C., and R.; but the Codex has οιον ἰδία σφύζοντα. If we read ᾠόν for the corrupt οιον, we get “the Egg throbbing apart” or in separation—and so link on with the Orphic (Chaldæan) tradition.

182:9 διήμυξε, the synonym of a term which occurs frequently in the Pistis Sophia, “I tore myself asunder.”

182:10 That is, to Man Son of Man.

183:1 The somewhat boastful tone, shown in several passages already, probably betrays C.; it may, however, be assigned to J.

183:2 ἀμύξαι, a play on Amygdalos.

183:3 That is, “scarifications.”

183:4 Cf. John i. 3., reading, however, οὐδὲν and not the οὐδὲ ἕν of W. H.

183:5 The Piper; properly, the player on the syrinx or seven-reeded Pan-pipe. Compare the Mystery Ritual in The Acts of John: “I would pipe; dance all of you!” (F. F. F., p. 432); and, “We have piped unto you and ye have not danced” (Matt. xi. 17 = Luke vii. 27).

183:6 Or harmonised; that is, cosmic or ordered. Cf. C. H., i. 15: “For being above the Harmony, He became a slave enharmonised”; also Orph. Hymn., viii. 11; and also Acts of John, where the Logos is spoken of as “Wisdom in harmony” (F. F. F., 436).

183:7 Cf. John iv. 24.

183:8 A conflation of John iv. 21 and 23. The “mountain,” when used mystically, signifies the inner “Mount of initiation.” Jerusalem in the text signifies the Jerusalem Below. The true worshippers worship in the Jerusalem Above.

184:1 Sc. the Son.

184:2 Sc. the Piper.

184:3 ρῆμα—used also by Philo and LXX.

184:4 With slight verbal omissions the opening lines down to “foundation” are identical with the beginning of The Great Apocalypse or Announcement of the “Simonian” tradition, an exceedingly interesting document from which some quotations have been preserved to us by Hippolytus elsewhere (Philos., vi. 9). The “Simonian” tradition was regarded by all the Church Fathers as the source of all “heresy”; but modern criticism regards The Great Announcement as a late document of the Christian Gnosis. The quotation of this document by J., however, makes this opinion, in my view, entirely untenable. If my analysis stands firm, The Great Announcement is thus proved to be pre-Christian, according to the traditional date. I am also inclined to think that in this quotation itself we have already the work of a commentator and not the original form of the Apocalypse.

185:1 Cf. § 16 J.

185:2 Cf. Matt. xiii. 31 = Mark iv. 30 = Luke xiii. 18.

185:3 Sc. the Heavens of the Psalm, that is, the Æons and the rest above.

185:4 Ps. xviii. 3.

185:5 The Naassenes, in H’s view.

185:6 ἀπρονοήτως.

185:7 κιθάραν—the ancient cithara was triangular in shape and had seven strings.

185:8 The text of the following Ode has been reconstructed by Wilamowitz in Hermes, xxxvii. 328; our translation is from his reconstruction.

185:9 ἄκουσμα—a hearing, an instruction, lesson, discourse, sermon, applied to the public lectures of Pythagoras (Jamb., V. P., 174). It means also a song or even a “singer,” a “bard.” “Their singers (ἀκούσματα) are thus called ‘bards’” (Posid. ap. Athen., vi. 49). The Hearers (οἱ ἀκουσματικοί) were the Probationers in the School of Pythagoras (see s.vv. in Sophocles’ Lex.). Schneidewin and Cruice adopt Hermann’s “emendation,” ἄκρισμα (mutilation), but I prefer the reading of the Codex, as referring to the “mournful piper,” or Logos, in the flowing “discord” of Rhea or Chaos, and therefore the “song” that Rhea is beginning to sing as she changes from Chaos to Cosmos.

186:1 Perhaps Quick, for θεὸς is from θέ-ειν, “to run,” to imitate the word-play of our mystics.

186:2 Or cut.

186:3 βόμβοις.

186:4 Lit., “bellower.”

187:1 The Hebrew Naḥash, as we have already seen.

187:2 There being more of J. than of H. in this, I have printed it as J. though it is a defaced J. I am also persuaded that in what follows we have a quotation from a “Simonian” document by J. rather than J. himself.

187:3 That is, temples.

187:4 Who derived all things symbolically from “Water.”

187:5 Cf. Deut. xxxiii. 17.

187:6 Cf. Gen. ii. 10 (LXX.).

188:1 Cf. Gen. ii. 11, 12.

188:2 Ibid., 13.

188:3 Ibid., 14.

188:4 Ibid.

188:5 The substance of this is also to be found in the “Simonian” tradition “refuted” by Hippolytus.

188:6 Cf. Gen. i. 7.

188:7 Cf. John iv. 10.

189:1 Lit., the Heracleian stone.

189:2 κερκίδι. Cf. Hipp., Phil., v. 17, on system of Sethiani (S. 198, 36). Both S. and C. translate it correctly as “spina,” meaning “backbone”; it has, however, been erroneously translated as “spur.” Plutarch, De Is. et Os., lxii. 3, tells us that the load-stone was called by the Egyptians “bone of Horus”; and Horus is the “hawk” par excellence, the “golden hawk.” Cf. Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 246, who says that we are informed by Manetho (thus making Manetho the main source of Plutarch) that the “load-stone is by the Egyptians called the ‘bone of Horus,’ as iron is the ‘bone of Typho.’” In the chapter of the Ritual dealing with the deification of the members, the backbone of the deceased is identified with the backbone of Set (xlii. 12). Elsewhere (cviii. 8) the deceased is said “to depart having the harpoon of iron in him.” This seems to suggest the black backbone of death and the golden backbone of life.

189:3 Cf. John ix. 1; τυφλὸς ἐκ γενετῆς, perhaps mystically meaning “blind from (owing to) genesis.” Cf. the “blind accuser” in the Trismegistic treatise quoted by Zosimus in our Fragments.

189:4 John i. 9.

189:5 This is evidently to be attributed to J., or rather his “Simonian” source, as it follows directly on the sentence about “every nature selecting.” Either C. has suppressed the opening words of J.’s paragraph and substituted his own gloss, or H. has mangled his text.

190:1 A lacuna in the Codex which is thus completed by S. and C.

190:2 Cf. Is. xl. 15.

190:3 That is, Messiah-ites, or Anointed-ones.

190:4 Cf. 1 Sam. xvi. 13.

190:5 1 Sam. x. 1.

190:6 The text of this Hymn is in places very corrupt; I have followed Cruice’s emendations mostly. Schneidewin, for some reason or other which he does not state, omits it bodily from his Latin translation.

191:1 This attribution may be thought by some to be questionable; but as it is far more similar to the thought-sphere of J. than to that of C., I have so assigned it. It belonged to the same circles to which we must assign the sources of J.

191:2 γενικὸς—perhaps “general” simply.

191:3 Or, of the Whole.

191:4 The Codex has ἔλαφον, which, with Miller, we correct into ἐλάφου. Is this a parallel with the “lost sheep” idea? Can it possibly connect with the conception underlying the phrases on the golden tablets found in tombs of “Orphic” initiates, on the territory of ancient Sybaris: “A kid thou hast fallen into the milk” (“Timpone grande” Tablet a, Naples Museum, Kaibel, C.I.G.I.S., 642); and, “A kid I have fallen into milk” (“Campagno” Tablet a, ibid., 641, and Append., p. 668)? But this connection is very hazy; it more probably suggests the nebris or “fawn-skin” of the Bacchic initiates (see my Orpheus, “The Fawn-skin,” pp. 243 ff., for an explanation). Cruice proposes to substitute ὑδαρὸν (“watery”); but there seems no reason why we should entirely reject the reading of the Codex, especially as C.’s suggestion breaks the rule of the “more difficult” reading being the preferable.

191:5 βασιλείαν—kingdom or kingship.

191:6 The Codex reads εἶπεν διησοῦς ἐσὸρ. Can this possibly be a glossed and broken-down remains of Ἰαω Ζεησαρ (Iaō Zeēsar)?

192:1 Cruice thinks this refers to the breath of God’s anger; but surely it refers to the Holy Spirit of God?

192:2 Sc. the soul, the “wandering sheep.”

192:3 Cf. “the bitter Water,” or “Darkness,” or “Chaos,” of the Sethian system in Hipp., Philos., v. 19; and see the note to the comments following Hermes-Prayer v., p. 92.

192:4 The Logos in His descent through the spheres takes on the Forms of all the Powers.

192:5 Is it, however, possible that the original Hymn had Naas (Νάαν) and not Gnosis (Γνῶσιν)?

193:1 Cf. R. 99, 100; and 100, n. 4.

195:1 Wilamowitz’ hesitating attribution of it to the reign of Hadrian (117-138 A.D.) is, in my opinion, devoid of any objective support whatever. (See R., p. 102.) Reitzenstein himself (p. 165) would place it in the second century B.C.

195:2 Incidentally also it may be pointed out that this analysis gives the coup de grâce to Salmon’s contention (“The Cross-references in the Philosophumena,” Hermathena, 1885, v. 389 if.) that the great systems of the Gnosis made known to us only by Hippolytus are all the work of a single forger who imposed upon the credulity of the heresy-hunting Bishop of Portus. This contention, though to our mind one of the most striking instances of “the good Homer nodding,” was nevertheless practically endorsed by Stähelin (Die gnostische Quellen Hippolyts in seiner Hauptschrift gegen die Haeretiken, 1890; in Texte u. Untersuchungen, VI.), who went over the whole ground opened up by Salmon with minute and scrupulous industry. The general weakness of this extraordinary hypothesis of forgery has, however, been well pointed out by De Faye in his Introduction à l’Étude du Gnosticisme au II^e et au III^e Siècle (Paris, 1903), pp. 24 ff.; though De Faye also maintains a late date.

196:1 R. p. 9.

197:1 Dieterich, Abraxas, 203 ff.

197:2 Gen. xlii. 11.

197:3 De Confus. Ling., § 11; M. i. 411, P. 326 (Ri. ii. 257).

198:1 To make himself a cosmos like the Great Cosmos.

198:2 Ibid., § 28; M. i. 426, 427, P. 341 (Ri. ii. 279).

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VIII

PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA AND THE HELLENISTIC THEOLOGY

CONCERNING PHILO AND HIS METHOD

Seeing that a study of the Trismegistic literature is essentially a study in Hellenistic theology, no introduction to this literature would be adequate which did not insist upon the utility of a careful review of the writings of Philo, the famous Jewish Hellenist of Alexandria, and which did not point to the innumerable parallels which are traceable between the basic principles of the Jewish philosopher-mystic and the main ideas embodied in our tractates. To do this, however, in detail would require a volume, and as we are restricted to the narrow confines of a chapter, nothing but a few general outlines can be sketched in, the major part of our space being reserved for a consideration of what Philo has to say of the Logos, or Divine Reason of things, the central idea of his cosmos.

In perusing the voluminous writings 1 of our witness, the chief point on which we would insist at the very outset, is that we are not studying a novel system devised by a single mind, we are not even face to face with a new departure in method, but that the writings

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of our Alexandrian 1 came at the end of a line of predecessors; true that Philo is now, owing to the preservation of his writings, by far the most distinguished of such writers, but he follows in their steps. His method of allegorical interpretation is no new invention, 2 least of all is his theology.

In brief, Philo is first and foremost an “apologist”; his writings are a defence of the Jewish myths and prophetic utterances, interpreted allegorically, in terms not of Hellenic philosophy proper, but rather of Hellenistic theology, that is, of philosophy theologised, or of theology philosophised; in other words, in the language of the current cultured Alexandrian religio-philosophy of his day.

As Edersheim, in his admirable article, 3 says, speaking

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of this blend of the faith of the synagogue with the thinking of Greece: “It can scarcely be said that in the issue the substance and spirit were derived from Judaism, the form from Greece. Rather does it often seem as if the substance had been Greek and only the form Hebrew.”

But here Edersheim seems to be not sufficiently alive to the fact that the “Greek thinking” was already in Hellenistic circles strongly theologised and firmly wedded to the ideas of apocalypsis and revelation. How, indeed, could it have been otherwise in Egypt, in the face of the testimony of our present work?

Philo, then, does but follow the custom among the cultured of his day when he treats the stories of the patriarchs as myths, and the literally intractable narratives as the substance of an ethical mythology. It was the method of the religio-philosophy of the time, which found in allegorical interpretation the “antidote of impiety,” and by its means unveiled the supposed under-meaning (ὑπνόια) of the myths.

The importance of Philo, then, lies not so much in his originality, as in the fact that he hands on much that had been evolved before him; for, as Edersheim says, and as is clear to any careful student of the Philonean tractates: “His own writings do not give the impression of originality. Besides, he repeatedly refers to the allegorical interpretation of others, as well as to canons of allegorism apparently generally recognised. He also enumerates differing allegorical interpretations of the same subjects. All this affords evidence of the existence of a school of Hellenist [Hellenistic, rather] interpretation” (p. 362).

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But this does not hold good only for the interpretation of “the myths of Israel” by Hellenistic Jews; it holds good of the whole cultured religious world of the time, and pre-eminently of the Hellenistic schools of every kind in Egypt. In brief, Philo’s philosophy was often already philosophised myth before he ingeniously brought it into play for the interpretation of Hebrew story.

In short, the tractates of Philo and our Trismegistic sermons have both a common background—Hellenistic theology or theosophy. Both use a common language.

Philo, of course, like the rest of his contemporaries, had no idea of criticism in the modern sense; he was a thorough-going apologist of the Old Covenant documents. These were for him in their entirety the inerrant oracles of God Himself; nay, he even went to the extent of believing the apologetic Greek version to be literally inspired. 1

Nevertheless he was, as a thinker, confronted with the same kind of difficulties as face us to-day with immeasurably greater distinctness. The ideas of God, of the world-order, and of the nature of man, were so far advanced in his day beyond the frequently crude and repugnant representations found in the ancient scriptures of his people, that he found it impossible to claim for them on their surface-value the transcendency of the last word of wisdom from God to man, at anyrate among the cultured to whom he addressed himself. These difficulties he accordingly sought to remove by an allegorical interpretation, whereby he read into them the views of the highest philosophical and religious environment of his time.

Having no idea of the philosophy of history, or of the history of religion, or of the canons of literary

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criticism, as we now understand these things, he never stopped to enquire whether the writers of the ancient documents intended their narratives to be taken as myths embodying an esoteric meaning; much less did he ask himself, as we ask ourselves to-day, whether these writers had not in all probability frequently written up the myths of other nations into a history of their own patriarchs and other worthies; on the contrary, he relieved them of all responsibility, and entirely eliminated the natural human element, by his theory of prophecy, which assumed that they had acted as impersonal, passive instruments of the Divine inspiration.

But even Philo, when he came to work it out, could not maintain this absolutism of inspiration, and so we find him elsewhere unable to ascribe a consistent level of inspiration to his “Moses,” who of course, in Philo’s belief, wrote the Pentateuch from the first to the last word. Thus we find him even in the “Five Fifths” making a threefold classification of inspiration: (i.) The Sacred Oracles “spoken directly of God by His interpreter the prophet”; (ii.) Those prophetically delivered “in the form of question and answer”; and (iii) Those “proceeding from Moses himself while in some state of inspiration and under the influence of the deity.” 1

But what is most pleasant is to find that Philo admitted the great philosophers of Greece into his holy assembly, and though he gives the pre-eminence to Moses, yet it is, as it were, to a first among equals—a wide-minded tolerance that was speedily forgotten in the bitter theological strife that subsequently broke forth.

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THE GREAT IMPORTANCE OF HIS WRITINGS

But what makes the writings of our Alexandrian so immensely important for us is, that the final decade of his life is contemporary with the coming into manifestation of Christianity in the Græco-Roman world owing to the energetic propaganda of Paul.

Philo was born somewhere between 30 and 20 B.C., and died about 45 A.D. There is, of course, not a single word in his voluminous writings that can in any way be construed into a reference to Christianity as traditionally understood; but the language of Philo, if not precisely the diction of the writers of the New Testament documents, has innumerable points of resemblance with their terminology; for the language of Hellenistic theology is largely, so to speak, the common tongue of both, while the similarity of many of their ideas is astonishing.

Philo, moreover, was by no means an obscure member of the community to which he belonged; on the contrary, he was a most distinguished ornament of the enormous Jewish colony of Alexandria, which occupied no less than two out of the five wards of the city. 1 His brother, Alexander, was the head of the largest banking firm of the capital of Egypt, which was also the intellectual and commercial centre of the Græco-Roman world. Indeed, Alexander may be said to have been the Rothschild of the time. The operations of the firm embraced the contracting of loans for the Imperial House, while the banker himself was a personal friend of the Emperor, and his sons intermarried with the family of the Jewish King Agrippa.

Philo, himself, though he would have preferred the solitude of the contemplative life, took an active part

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in the social life of the great capital; and, at the time of the greatest distress of his compatriots in the city, when they were overwhelmed by a violent outbreak of anti-semitism, their lives in danger, their houses plundered, and their ancient privileges confiscated, it was the aged Philo who was chosen as spokesman of the embassy to Caius Caligula (A.D. 40).

Here, then, we have a man in just the position to know what was going on in the world of philosophy, of letters, and religion, and not only at Alexandria, but also wherever Jewish enterprise—which had then, as it now has, the main commerce of the world in its hands—pushed itself. The news of the world came to Alexandria, and the mercantile marine was largely owned by Hebrews.

Philo is, therefore, the very witness we should choose of all others to question as to his views on the ideas we find in our Trismegistic tractates, and this we may now proceed to do without any further preliminaries.

CONCERNING THE MYSTERIES

Speaking of those who follow the contemplative life, 1 Philo writes:

“Now this natural class of men [lit. race] is to be found in many parts of the inhabited world; for both the Grecian and non-Grecian world must needs share in the perfect Good.” 2

In Egypt, he tells us, there were crowds of them in every province, and they were very numerous indeed about Alexandria. Concerning such men Philo tells us elsewhere:

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“All those, whether among Greeks or non-Greeks, who are practisers of wisdom (ἀσκηταὶ σοφίας), living a blameless and irreproachable life, determined on doing injury to none, and on not retaliating if injury be done them,” avoid the strife of ordinary life, “in their enthusiasm for a life of peace free from contention.”

Thus are they “most excellent contemplators of nature (θεωροὶ τῆς φύσεως) and all things therein; they scrutinise earth and sea, and air and heaven, and the natures therein, their minds responding to the orderly motion of moon and sun, and the choir of all the other stars, both variable and fixed. They have their bodies, indeed, planted on earth below; but for their souls, they have made them wings, so that they speed through æther (αἰθεροβατοῦντες), and gaze on every side upon the powers above, as though they were the true world-citizens, most excellent, who dwell in cosmos as their city; such citizens as Wisdom hath as her associates, inscribed upon the roll of Virtue, who hath in charge the supervising of the common weal. . . .

“Such men, though [in comparison] but few in number, keep alive the covered spark of Wisdom secretly, throughout the cities [of the world], in order that Virtue may not be absolutely quenched and vanish from our human kind.” 1

Again, elsewhere, speaking of those who are good and wise, he says:

“The whole of this company (θίασος) have voluntarily deprived themselves of the possession of aught in abundance, thinking little of things dear to the flesh. Now athletes are men whose bodies are well cared for and full of vigour, men who make strong the fort, their body, against their soul; whereas the [athletes] of

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[this] discipline, pale, wasted, and, as it were, reduced to skeletons, sacrifice even the muscles of their bodies to the powers of their own souls, dissolving, if the truth be told, into one form—that of the soul, and by their mind becoming free from body.

“The earthly element is, therefore, naturally dissolved and washed away, when the whole mind in its entirety resolves to make itself well-pleasing unto God. This race is rare, however, and found with difficulty; still it is not impossible it should exist.” 1

And in another passage, when referring to the small number of the “prudent and righteous and gracious,” Philo says:

“But the ‘few,’ though rare [to meet with], are yet not non-existent. Both Greece and Barbary [that is, non-Greek lands] bear witness [to them].

“For in the former there nourished those who are pre-eminently and truly called the Seven Sages—though others, both before and after them, in every probability reached the [same] height—whose memory, in spite of their antiquity, has not evanished through the length of time, while that of those of far more recent date has been obliterated by the tide of the neglect of their contemporaries.

“While in non-Grecian lands, in which the most revered and ancient in such words and deeds [have nourished], are very crowded companies of men of worth and virtue; among the Persians, for example, the [caste] of Magi, who by their careful scrutiny of nature’s works for purpose of the gnosis of the truth, in quiet silence, and by means of [mystic] images of piercing clarity (τρανωτέραις ἐμφάσεσιν) are made initiate into the mysteries of godlike virtues, and in their turn initiate [those who come after them]; in

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[paragraph continues]India the [caste] of the Gymnosophists, who, in addition to their study of the lore of nature, toil in [the fields of] morals, and [so] make their whole life a practical example of [their] virtue.

“Nor are Palestine and Syria, in which no small portion of the populous nation of the Jews dwell, unfruitful in worth and virtue. Certain of them are called Essenes, in number upwards of 4000, according to my estimate.” 1

Philo then proceeds to give an account of these famous mystics.

In Egypt itself, however, he selects out of the many communities of the Therapeutæ and Therapeutrides (which the Old Latin Version renders Cultores et Cultrices pietatis) 2 only one special group, with which he was presumably personally familiar and which was largely Jewish. Of this order (σύστημα) 3 Philo gives us a most graphic account, both of their settlement and mode of life. By means of this intensely interesting sketch of the Contemplative or Theoretic Life, and by the parallel passages from the rest of Philo’s works which Conybeare has so industriously marshalled in his “Testimonia,” we are introduced into the environment and atmosphere of these Theoretics, and find ourselves in just such circumstances as would condition the genesis of our Trismegistic literature.

The whole of Philo’s expositions revolve round the idea that the truly philosophic life is an initiation into the Divine Mysteries; for him the whole tradition of Wisdom is necessarily a mystery-tradition. Thus he tells us of his own special Therapeut community, south of Alexandria:

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“In every cottage there is a sacred chamber, 1 which is called semneion and monastērion 2 in which, in solitude, they are initiated into the mysteries of the solemn life.” 3

With this it will be of interest to compare Matt, vi. 6: “When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in the Hidden; and thy Father who seeth in the Hidden, shall reward thee.”

It is said that among the “Pharisees” there was a praying-room in every house.

We may also compare with the above reference to the Mysteries Luke xii. 2 = Matt. x. 26, from a “source” which promised the revelation of all mysteries, following on the famous logos also quoted in Mark iv. 22 and Luke viii. 17:

“For there is nothing veiled which shall not be revealed, and hidden which shall not be made known.” “Therefore, whatsoever ye (M., I) have spoken in darkness, shall be heard in the light, and what ye have spoken (M., heard) in the ear in the closets, shall be heralded forth on the house-tops.”

Both Evangelists have evidently adapted their “source” to their own purposes, but the main sense of the original form is not difficult to recover.

It is further of interest to compare with the first clause of the above passages the new-found logos:

“Jesus saith, Everything that is not before thy face and that which is hidden from thee, shall be revealed to thee. For there is nothing hidden that shall

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not be made manifest, nor buried that shall not be raised.” 1

But there are other and more general mysteries referred to in Philo; for, in speaking of the command that the unholy man who is a speaker of evil against divine things, should be removed from the most holy places and punished, our initiated philosopher bursts forth:

“Drive forth, drive forth, ye of the closed lips, and ye revealers 2 of the divine mysteries, 3 the promiscuous and rabble crowd of the defiled—souls unamenable to purification, and hard to wash clean, who wear ears that cannot be closed, and tongues that cannot be kept within the doors [of their lips]—organs that they ever keep ready for their own most grievous mischance, hearing all things and things not law [to hear].” 4

Of these “ineffable mysteries,” 5 he elsewhere says, in explaining that the wives of the patriarchs stand allegorically as types of virtues:

“But in order that we may describe the conception and birth-throes of the Virtues, let bigots 6 stop their ears, or else let them depart. For that we give a higher teaching of the mysteries divine, to mystæ who are worthy of the holiest rites [of all].

“And these are they who, free from arrogance, practise real and truly genuine piety, free from display

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of any kind. But unto them who are afflicted with incorrigible ill—the vanity of words, close-sticking unto names, and empty show of manners, who measure purity and holiness by no other rule [than this]—[for them] we will not play the part of hierophant.” 1

Touching on the mystery of the Virgin-birth, to which we will refer later on, Philo continues:

“These things receive into your souls, ye mystæ, ye whose ears are purified, as truly sacred mysteries, and see that ye speak not of them to any who may be without initiation, but storing them away within your hearts, guard well your treasure-house; not as a treasury in which gold and silver are laid up, things that do perish, but as the pick and prize of all possessions—the knowledge of the Cause [of all] and Virtue, and of the third, the child of both.” 2

Now the “Divine Spirit” (θεῖον πνεῦμα), says Philo, does not remain among the many, though it may dwell with them for a short time.

“It is [ever] present with only one class of men—with those who, having stripped themselves of all the things in genesis, even to the innermost veil and garment of opinion, come unto God with minds unclothed and naked.

“And so Moses, having fixed his tent outside the camp—that is, the whole of the body 3—that is to say, having made firm his mind, so that it does not move, begins to worship God; and, entering into the darkness, the unseen land, abideth there, being initiated into the most holy mysteries. And he becomes, not only a mystēs, but also a hierophant of revelations, 4 and

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teacher of divine things, which he will indicate to those who have had their ears made pure.

“With such kind of men, then, the Divine Spirit is ever present, guiding their every way aright.” 1

Referring to the ritual sacrifices of a heifer and two rams, Philo declares that the slaying of the second ram, and the symbolic rite of sprinkling certain portions of the bodies of the priests with its blood, was ordained “for the highest perfectioning of the consecrated by means of the purification of chastity 2—which [ram] he [‘Moses’] called, according to its meaning, the ‘[ram] of perfectioning,’ since they [the priests] were about to act as hierophants of mysteries appropriate to the servants (θεραπευταῖς) and ministers of God.” 3

So also Philo’s language about the Therapeuts proper, and not the allegorically interpreted temple-sacrificers, is that of the Mysteries, when he writes:

“Now they who betake themselves to this service (θεραπείαν) [of God do so], not because of any custom, or on some one’s advice and appeal, but carried away with heavenly love, like those initiated into the Bacchic or Corybantic Mysteries, they are a-fire with God until they see the object of their love.” 4

These Mysteries were, of course, not to be revealed except to the worthy. Therefore he says:

“Nor because thou hast a tongue and mouth and organ of speech, shouldst thou tell forth all, even things that may not be spoken.” 5

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And in the last section of the same treatise he writes:

“Wherefore I think that [all] those who are not utterly without [proper] instruction, would prefer to be made blind than to see things not proper [to be seen], to be made deaf than to hear harmful words, and to have their tongue cut out, to prevent them divulging aught of the ineffable Mysteries. . . . Nay, it is even better to make oneself eunuch than to rush madly into unlawful unions.” 1

With which we may usefully compare Matt. v. 29: “If thy right eye offend thee, cut it out and cast it from thee”; and Matt. xix. 12: “There are some who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of the heavens; he that can receive it, let him receive it.” Both passages are found in the first Gospel only.

For the comprehension of virtue man requires the reason only; but for the doing of ill, the evil man requires the organs of the body, says our mystic dualist; “for how will he be able to divulge the Mysteries, if he have no organ of speech?” 2

This continual harping on the divulging of the Mysteries, shows that Philo considered it the greatest of all enormities; we might almost think that he had in view some movement that was divulging part of the mystery-tradition to the untrained populace.

Elsewhere, speaking of those “who draw nigh unto God, abandoning the life of death, and sharing in immortality,” he tells us these are the “Naked”—(that is, “naked” of the trammels of the flesh)—who sacrifice all to God. And he adds that only these “are permitted to see the ineffable Mysteries of God, who

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are able to cloak them and guard them” from the unworthy. 1

With regard to these Mysteries, they were, as we might expect, divided into the Lesser and the Greater—in the former of which the neophytes “worked on the untamed and savage passions, as though they were softening the [dough 2 of their] food with reason (logos).”

The manner of preparing this divine food, so that it becomes the bread of life, was a mystery. 3

One of the doctrines revealed in these Lesser Mysteries was plainly that of the Trinity; for, commenting on Gen. xviii. 2: “And he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him”—Philo writes:

“‘He lifted up his eyes,’ not the eyes of his body, for God cannot be seen by the senses, but by the soul [alone]; for at a fitting time He is discovered by the eyes of wisdom.

“Now the power of sight of the souls of the many and unrighteous is ever shut in, since it lies dead in deep sleep, and can never respond and be made awake to the things of nature and the types and ideas within her. But the spiritual eyes of the wise man are awake, and behold them; nay, they are sleeplessly alert, ever watchful from desire of seeing.

“Wherefore it is well said in the plural, that he raised not one eye, but all the eyes that are in the soul, so that one would have said that he was altogether all eye. Having, then, become the eye, he begins to see the holy and divine vision of the Lord, in such a fashion that the one vision appeared as a trinity, and the trinity as a unity.” 4

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Elsewhere, referring to the same story, and to the words of Abraham to Sarah “to hasten and knead three measures of fine meal, and to make cakes upon the hearth,” 1 Philo expounds the mystery at length as follows. It refers to that experience of the inner life:

“When God, accompanied by His two highest Potencies, Dominion (ἀρχή) and Goodness, making One [with Himself] in the midst, produces in the seeing soul a triple presentation, of which [three persons] each transcends all measure; for God transcendeth all delineation, and equally transcendent are His Potencies, but He [Himself] doth measure all.

“Accordingly, His Goodness is the measure of things good, and His Dominion is the measure of things subject, while He Himself is chief of all, both corporeal and incorporeal. 2

“Wherefore also these Potencies, receiving the Reason (Logos) of His rules and ordinances, measure out all things below them. And, therefore, it is right that these three measures should, as it were, be mingled and blended together in the soul, in order that, being persuaded that He is Highest God, who transcendeth His Potencies, both making Himself manifest without them, and also causing Himself to be seen in them, it [the soul] may receive His impressions (χαρακτῆρας), and powers, and blessings, and [so] becoming initiate into the perfect secrets, may not lightly disclose the divine Mysteries, but, treasuring them up, and keeping sure silence, guard them in secret.

“For it is written: ‘Make [them] secret,’—for the sacred sermon (λόγον) of initiation (μύστην) about the Ingenerable and about His Potencies ought to be kept

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secret, since it is not within the power of every man to guard the sacred trust (παρακαταθήκην) of the divine revelations (ὀργίων).” 1

CONCERNING THE SACRED MARRIAGE

But the chief of all the mysteries for Philo was, apparently, the Sacred Marriage, the mystic union of the soul, as female, with God, as male (Deo nubere). In this connection he refers to Gen. iv. 1:

“And Adam knew his wife. And she conceived and bare Cain. And she said: I have gotten a man by means of the Lord. And He caused her also to bring forth Abel his brother.” 2

We are, of course, not concerned with the legitimacy or consistency of Philo’s allegorising system, whereby he sought to invoke the authority of his national scriptures in support of his chosen doctrines; but we are deeply concerned with these doctrines themselves, as being the favourite dogmas of his circle and of similar circles of allied mystics of the time.

His views on the subject are clearly indicated, for he tells us in the same passage that he is speaking of a secret of initiation, not of the conception and parturition of women, but of Virtues—that is, of the virtuous soul. Accordingly he continues in § 13:

“But it is not lawful for Virtues, in giving birth to their many perfections, to have part or lot in a mortal husband. And yet they will never bring forth of themselves, without conceiving their offspring of another.

“Who, then, is He who soweth in them their glorious [progeny], if not the Father of all universal things—

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the God beyond all genesis, who yet is Sire of everything that is? For, for Himself, God doth create no single thing, in that He stands in need of naught; but for the man who prays to have them [He creates] all things.”

And then, bringing forward Sarah, Leah, Rebecca, and Sepphora, as examples of the Virtues who lived with the great prophets of his race, Philo declares that “Sarah” conceived, when God looked upon her while she was in solitary contemplation, and so she brought forth for him who eagerly longed to attain to wisdom—namely, for him who is called “Abraham.”

And so also in the case of “Leah,” it is said “God opened her womb,” which is the part played by a husband; and so she brought forth for him who underwent the pains of labour for the sake of the Beautiful—namely, for him who is called “Jacob”; “so that Virtue received the divine seed from the Cause [of all], while she brought forth for that one of her lovers who was preferred above all other suitors.”

So also when the “all-wise,” he who is called “Isaac,” went as a suppliant to God, his Virtue, “Rebecca,” that is Steadfastness, became pregnant in consequence of his supplication.

Whereas “Moses,” without any supplication or prayer, attained to the winged and sublime Virtue “Sepphora,” and found her with child by no mortal husband. 1

Moreover, in § 14, in referring to Jeremiah, Philo writes:

“For I, having been initiated into the Great Mysteries by Moses, the friend of God, nevertheless when I set eyes upon Jeremiah, the prophet, and learned that he is not only a mystes, but also an adept hierophant, I did not hesitate to go to him as his disciple.

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“And he, in that in much [he says] he is inspired by God, uttered a certain oracle [as] from the Face of God, who said unto the Virtue of Perfect Peace: ‘Hast thou not called Me as ’twere House and Father and Husband of thy virginity?’ 1—suggesting in the clearest [possible] fashion that God is both Home, the incorporeal land of incorporeal ideas, and Father of all things, in that He did create them, and Husband of Wisdom, sowing for the race of mankind the seed of blessedness into good virgin soil.

“For it is fitting God should converse with an undefiled, an untouched and pure nature, with her who is in very truth the Virgin, in fashion very different from ours.

“For the congress of men for the procreation of children makes virgins women. But when God begins to associate with the soul, He brings it to pass that she who was formerly woman becomes virgin again. For banishing the foreign and degenerate and non-virile desires, by which it was made womanish, He substitutes for them native and noble and pure virtues. . . .

“But it is perhaps possible that even a virgin soul may be polluted by intemperate passions, and so dishonoured.

“Wherefore the oracle hath been careful to say that God is husband not of ‘a virgin’—for a virgin is subject to change and death—but of ‘virginity’ [that is of] the idea which is ever according to the same [principles], and in the same mode.

“For whereas things that have qualities, have with their nature received both birth and dissolution, the [archetypal] potencies which mould them have obtained a lot transcending dissolution.

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“Wherefore is it not fitting that God, who is beyond all generation and all change, should sow [in us] the ideal seeds of the immortal virgin Virtues, and not those of the woman who changes the form of her virginity?” 1

But, indeed, as Conybeare says:

“The words, virgin, virginity, ever-virginal, occur on every other page of Philo. It is indeed Philo who first 2 formulated the idea of the Word or ideal ordering principle of the Cosmos being born of an ever-virgin soul, which conceives, because God the Father sows into her His intelligible rays and divine seed, so begetting His only well-beloved son, the Cosmos.” 3

Thus, speaking of the impure soul, Philo writes:

“For when she is a multitude of passions and filled with vices, her children swarming over her—pleasures, appetites, folly, intemperance, unrighteousness, injustice—she is weak and sick, and lies at death’s door, dying; but when she becomes sterile, and ceases to bring them forth or even casts them from her, forthwith, from the change, she becometh a chaste virgin, and, receiving the Divine Seed, she fashions and engenders marvellous excellencies that nature prizeth highly—prudence, courage, temperance, justice, holiness, piety, and the rest of the virtues and good dispositions.” 4

So also, speaking of the Therapeutrides, he writes:

“Their longing is not for mortal children, but for a deathless progeny, which the soul that is in love with God can alone bring forth, when the Father hath sown into it the spiritual light-beams, by means of which it

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shall be able to contemplate (θεωρεῖν) the laws of wisdom.” 1

And as to the progeny of such virgin-mothers, Philo elsewhere instances the birth of “Isaac”—“which could not refer to any man,” but is “a synonym of Joy, the best of the blessed states of the soul—Laughter, the spiritually conceived (ἐνδιάθετος) 2 Son of God, Who bestoweth him as a comfort and means of good cheer on souls of perfect peace.” 3

And a little later on he adds:

“And Wisdom, who, after the fashion of a mother, brings forth the self-taught Race, declares that God is the sower of it.” 4

And yet, again, elsewhere, speaking of this spiritual progeny, Philo writes:

“But all the Servants of God (Therapeuts), who are lawfully begotten, shall fulfill the law of [their] nature, which commands them to be parents. For the men shall be fathers of many sons, and the women mothers of numerous children.” 5

So also, in the case of the birth of Joseph, when his mother, Rachael, says to Jacob: “Give me children!”—“the Supplanter, disclosing his proper nature, will reply: ‘Thou hast wandered into deep error. For I am not in God’s place, who alone is able to open the wombs of souls, and sow in them virtues, and make them pregnant and mothers of good things.’” 6

So too, again, in connection with the birth of Isaac, referring to the exultant cry of Sarah: “The Lord hath

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made me Laughter; for whosoever heareth, rejoiceth with me” 1—Philo bursts forth:

“Open, then, wide your ears, ye mystæ, and receive the most holy mysteries. ‘Laughter’ is Joy, and ‘hath made’ is the same as ‘hath begotten’; so that what is said hath the following meaning: ‘The Lord hath begotten Isaac’—for He is Father of the perfect nature, sowing in the soul and generating blessedness.” 2

That all of this was a matter of vital moment for Philo himself, may be seen from what we must regard as an intensely interesting autobiographical passage, in which our philosopher, speaking of the happy childbirth of Wisdom, writes:

“For some she judges entirely worthy of living with her, while others seem as yet too young to support such admirable and wise house-sharing; these latter she hath permitted to solemnise the preliminary initiatory rites of marriage, holding out hopes of its [future] consummation.

“‘Sarah’ then, the Virtue who is mistress of my soul, hath brought forth, but hath not brought forth for me—for that I could not, because I was too young, receive [into my soul] her offspring—wisdom, and righteousness, and piety—because of the brood of bastard brats which empty opinions had borne me.

“For the feeding of these last, the constant care and incessant anxiety concerning them, have forced me to take no thought for the legitimate children who are the true citizens.

“It is well, therefore, to pray Virtue not only to bear children, who even without praying brings her fair

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progeny to birth, but also to bear sons for us, so that we may be blessed with a share in her seed and offspring.

“For she is wont to bear to God alone, with thankfulness repaying unto Him the first-fruits of the things she hath received, [to Him] who, Moses says, ‘hath opened’ her ever-virgin ‘womb.’” 1

But, indeed, Philo is never wearied of reiterating this sublime doctrine, which for him was the consummation of the mysteries of the holy life. Thus, then, again he sets it forth as follows:

“We should, accordingly, understand that the True Reason (Logos) of nature has the potency of both father and husband for different purposes—of a husband, when he casts the seed of virtues into the soul as into a good field; of a father, in that it is his nature to beget good counsels, and fair and virtuous deeds, and when he hath begotten them, he nourisheth them with those refreshing doctrines which discipline and wisdom furnish.

“And the intelligence is likened at one time to a virgin, at another to a wife, or a widow, or one who has not yet a husband.

“[It is likened] to a virgin, when the intelligence keeps itself chaste and uncorrupted from pleasures and appetites, and griefs and fears, the passions which assault it; and then the father who begot it, assumes the leadership thereof.

“And when she (intelligence) lives as a comely wife with comely Reason (Logos), that is with virtuous Reason, this self-same Reason himself undertakes the care of her, sowing, like a husband, the most excellent concepts in her.

“But whenever the soul is bereft of her children of

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prudence, and of her marriage with Right Reason, widowed of her most fair possessions, and left desolate of Wisdom, through choosing a blameworthy life—then, let her suffer the pains she hath decreed against herself, with no wise Reason to play physician to her transgressions, either as husband and consort, or as father and begetter.” 1

Referring to Jacob’s dream of the white, and spotted, and ring-straked, and speckled kine, Philo tells us that this, too, must be taken as an allegory of souls. The first class of souls, he says, are “white.”

“The meaning is that when the soul receives the Divine Seed, the first-born births are spotlessly white, like unto light of utmost purity, to radiance of the greatest brilliance, as though it were the shadowless ray of the sun’s beams from a cloudless sky at noon.” 2

With this it is of service to compare the Vision of Hades seen by Thespesius (Aridæus), and related by Plutarch. Thespesius’ guide in the Unseen World draws his attention to the “colours” and “markings” of the souls as follows:

“Observe the colours of the souls of every shade and sort: that greasy, brown-grey is the pigment of sordidness and selfishness; that blood-red, inflamed shade is a sign of a savage and venomous nature; wherever blue-grey is, from such a nature incontinence in pleasure is not easily eradicated; innate malignity, mingled with envy, causes that livid discoloration, in the same way as cuttle-fish eject their sepia.

“Now it is in earth-life that the vice of the soul (being acted upon by the passions, and re-acting upon the body) produces these discolorations; while the purification and correction here have for their object

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the removal of these blemishes, so that the soul may become entirely ray-like and of uniform colour.” 1

Again, in giving the allegorical meaning of the primitive-culture story of Tamar, 2 Philo not only interprets it by the canon of the Sacred Marriage, but also introduces other details from the Mysteries. Thus he writes:

“For being a widow she was commanded to sit in the House of the Father, the Saviour; for whose sake for ever abandoning the congress and association with mortal [things], she is bereft and widowed from [all] human pleasures, and receives the Divine quickening, and, full-filled with the Seeds of virtue, conceives, and is in travail with fair deeds. And when she brings them forth, she carries off the trophies from her adversaries, and is inscribed as victor, receiving as a symbol the palm of victory.” 3

And every stage of this divine conception is but the shadow of the great mystery of cosmic creation, which Philo sums up as follows:

“We shall, however, be quite correct in saying that the Demiurge who made all this universe, is also at the same time Father of what has been brought into existence; while its Mother is the Wisdom of Him who hath made it—with whom God united, though not as man [with woman], and implanted the power of genesis. And she, receiving the Seed of God, brought forth with perfect labour His only beloved Son, whom all may perceive 4—this Cosmos.” 5

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CONCERNING THE LOGOS

The idea of God found in Philo is that of the more enlightened theology of his time. God is That which transcends all things and all ideas. It would, of course, be a far too lengthy study to marshal the very numerous passages in which our philosopher sets forth his view on Deity; and so we shall select only two passages simply to give the reader who may not be acquainted with the works of the famous Alexandrian, some notion of the transcendency of his conception. For, as he writes:

“What wonder is it if That-which-[really]-is transcends the comprehension of man, when even the mind which is in each of us, is beyond our power of knowing? Who hath ever beheld the essence of the soul?” 1

This Mystery of Deity was, of necessity, in itself ineffable; but in conception, it was regarded under two aspects—the active and the passive causative principles.

“The Active Principle, the Mind of the universals, is absolutely pure, and absolutely free from all admixture; It transcendeth Virtue; It transcendeth Wisdom; nay, It transcendeth even the Good Itself and the Beautiful Itself.

“The Passive Principle is of itself soulless and motionless, but when It is set in motion, and enformed and ensouled by the Mind, It is transformed into the most perfect of all works—namely, this Cosmos.” 2

This Passive Principle is generally taken by commentators to denote Matter; but if so, it must be equated with Wisdom, which we have just seen was regarded by Philo as the Mother of the Cosmos.

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But beyond all else Philo is useful to us in recording the views of contemporary Hellenistic theology concerning the concept of the Logos, the Mystery of the Heavenly Man. the Son of God. Even as this word of mystic meaning comes forward in almost every tractate and fragment of our Trismegistic literature, so in Philo is it the dominant idea in a host of passages.

It should, however, never be forgotten that Philo is but handing on a doctrine; he is inventing nothing. His testimony, therefore, is of the greatest possible value for our present study, and deserves the closest attention. We shall accordingly devote the rest of this chapter exclusively to this subject, and marshal the evidence, if not in Philo’s own words, at anyrate in as exact a translation of them as we can give; for although much has been written on the matter, we know no work in which the simple expedient of letting Philo speak for himself has been attempted.

THE SON OF GOD

The Logos, then, is pre-eminently the Son of God, for Philo writes:

“Moreover God, as Shepherd and King, leads [and rules] with law and justice the nature of the heaven, the periods of sun and moon, the changes and harmonious progressions of the other stars—deputing [for the task] His own Right Reason (Logos), His Firstborn Son, to take charge of the sacred flock, as though he were the Great King’s viceroy.” 1

Of this Heavenly Man, who was evidently for Philo the Celestial Messiah of God, he elsewhere writes:

“Moreover, I have heard one of the companions of Moses uttering some such word (logos) as this:

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[paragraph continues]‘Behold Man whose name is East,’ 1—a very strange appellation, if you imagine the man composed of body and soul to be meant; but if you take him for that Incorporeal Man in no way differing from the Divine Image, you will admit that the giving him the name of East exactly hits the mark.

“For the Father of things that are hath made him rise as His Eldest Son, whom elsewhere He hath called His First-born, and who, when he hath been begotten, imitating the ways of his Sire, and contemplating His archetypal patterns, fashions the species [of things].” 2

Here we notice first of all Philo’s graphic manner (a commonplace of the time) of quoting Ezekiel as though he were still alive, and he had heard him speak; and, in the second place, that the First-born Son is symbolically represented as the Sun rising in the East.

THE TRUE HIGH PRIEST

That, moreover, the Logos is the Son of God, he explains at length in another passage, when writing of the true High Priest:

“But we say that the High Priest is not a man, but the Divine Reason (Logos), who has no part or lot in any transgressions, not only voluntary errors, but also involuntary ones. For, says Moses, he cannot be defiled either ‘on account of his father,’ the Mind, nor ‘on account of his mother,’ 3 the [higher] Sense—in that, as I think, it is his good fortune to have incorruptible

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and perfectly pure parents,—God for father, who is as well Father of all things, and for mother Wisdom, through whom all things came into genesis; and because ‘his head hath been anointed with oil,’—I mean his ruling principle 1 shineth with ray-like brilliance, so that he is deemed fit for robing in his vestures.

“Now the Most Ancient Reason (Logos) of That-which-is is vestured with the Cosmos as his robe;—for he wrappeth himself in Earth and Water, Air and Fire, and what comes from them; the partial soul [doth clothe itself] in body; the wise man’s mind in virtues.

“And ‘he shall not take the mitre from off his head,’ [signifies] he shall not lay aside the royal diadem, the symbol of his admirable rule, which, however, is not that of an autocrat-emperor, but of a viceroy.

“Nor ‘will he rend his garments,’—for the Reason (Logos) of That-which-is, being the bond of all things, as hath been said, both holds together all the parts, and binds them, and does not suffer them to be dissolved or separated.” 2

In another passage Philo treats of the same subject still more plainly from the point of view of the Mysteries, writing as follows:

“For there are, as it seems, two temples of God;—the one is this Cosmos, in which there is also the High Priest, His First-born Divine Reason (Logos); the other is the rational soul, whose [High] Priest is the True Man, a sensible copy of whom is he who rightly performs the prayers and sacrifices of his Father, who is ordained to wear the robe, the duplicate of the

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universal heaven, in order that the cosmos may work together with man, and man with the universe.” 1

THE ELDER AND YOUNGER SONS OF GOD

The Cosmic Logos is not the sensible cosmos, but the Mind thereof. This Philo explains at length.

“It is then clear, that He who is the generator of things generated, and the artificer of things fashioned, and the governor of things governed, must needs be absolutely wise. He is in truth the father, and artificer, and governor of all in both the heaven and cosmos.

“Now things to come are hidden in the shade of future time, sometimes at short, and sometimes at long distances. But God is the artificer of time as well. For He is father of its father; and time’s father is the cosmos, which manifests its motion as the genesis of time; so that time holds to God the place of grandson.

“For that this cosmos 2 is the Younger Son of God, in that it is perceptible to sense. The Son who’s older than this one, He hath declared to be no one [perceivable by sense], for that he is conceivable by mind alone. But having judged him worthy of the elder’s rights, He hath determined that he should remain with Him alone.

“This [cosmos], then, the Younger Son, the sensible, being set a-moving, has caused time’s nature to appear and disappear; so that there nothing is which future is with God, who has the very bounds of time subject to Him. For ’tis not time, but time’s archetype and paradigm, Eternity (or Æon), which is His life. But

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in Eternity naught’s past, and naught is future, but all is present only.” 1

YET GOD IS ONE

The Logos, then, is not God absolute, but the Son of God par excellence, and as such is sometimes referred to as “second,” and once even as the “second God.” Thus Philo writes:

“But the most universal [of all things] is God, and second the Reason (Logos) of God.” 2

In his treatise entitled Questions and Answers, however, we read:

“But why does He say as though [He were speaking] about another God, ‘in the image of God I made “man”,’ 3 but not in His own image?

“Most excellently and wisely is the oracle prophetically delivered. For it was not possible that anything subject to death should be imaged after the supremest God who is the Father of the universes, but after the second God who is His Reason (Logos).

“For it was necessary that the rational impress in the soul of man should be stamped [on it] by the Divine Reason (Logos), since God, who is prior even to His own Reason, transcendeth every rational nature; [so that] it was not lawful that aught generable should be made like unto Him who is beyond the Reason, and established in the most excellent and the most singular Idea [of all].” 4

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From this passage we see that though it is true Philo calls the Logos the “second God,” he does not depart from his fundamental monotheism, for the Logos is not an entity apart from God, but the Reason of God. Nevertheless, this solitary phrase of Philo’s is almost invariably trotted out in the forefront of all enquiry into Philo’s Logos-doctrine, in order that the difference between this phrase and the wording of the Proem to the Fourth Gospel may be insisted on as strongly as possible for controversial apologetical purposes.

That, however, Philo is a strict monotheist may be seen from the following passage, in which he is commenting on the words of Gen. xxxi. 13: “I am the God who was seen by thee in the place of God” 1—where, apparently, two Gods are referred to.

“What, then, should we say? The true God is one; they who are called gods, by a misuse of the term, are many. On which account the Holy Word 2 has, on the present occasion, indicated the true [God] by means of the article, saying: ‘I am the God’; but the [one so named] by misuse of the term, without the article, saying: ‘who was seen by thee in the place,’ not of the God, but only ‘of God.’ And what he (Moses) here calls ‘God’ is His Most Ancient Word (Logos).” 3

THE LOGOS IS LIFE AND LIGHT

This Logos, moreover, is Life and Light. For, speaking of Intelligible or Incorporeal “Spirit” and “Light,” Philo writes:

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“The former he [‘Moses’] called the Breath of God, because it is the most life-giving thing [in the universe], and God is the cause of life; and the latter the Light [of God], because it is by far the most beautiful thing [in the universe].

“For by so much more glorious and more brilliant is the intelligible [Light] than the visible, as, methinks, the sun is than darkness, and day than night, and the mind, which is the guide of the whole soul, than the sensible means of discernment, and the eyes than the body.

“And he calls the invisible and intelligible Divine Reason (Logos) the Image of God. And of this [Image] the image [in its turn] is that intelligible light, which has been created as the image of the Divine Reason who interprets it [that is, Light’s] creation.

“[This Light] is the [One] Star, beyond [all] heavens, the Source of the Stars that are visible to the senses, which it would not be beside the mark to call All-brilliancy, and from which the sun and moon and the rest of the stars, both errant and fixed, draw their light, each according to its power.” 1

The necessity and reason of forming some such concept of the Logos is that man cannot bear the utter transcendency of God in His absoluteness. And applying this idea further to theophanies in human form, Philo writes:

“For just as those who are unable to look at the sun itself look upon its reflected rays as the sun, and the [light-] changes round the moon, as the moon itself, so also do men regard the Image of God, His Angel, Reason (Logos), as Himself.” 2

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THE DIVINE VISION

Such Divine Vision is the object of the contemplative life, for:

“It is the special gift of those who dedicate themselves to the service (θεραπευόντων) of That-which-is . . . to ascend by means of their rational faculties to the height of the æther, setting before themselves ‘Moses’—the Race that is the friend of God, 1 as the leader of the way.

“For then they will behold ‘the place that is clear,’ 2 on which the immovable and unchangeable God hath set His feet, and the [regions] beneath His feet, as it were a work of sapphire stone, and as it might be the form of the firmament of heaven, the sensible cosmos, which he [‘Moses’] symbolises by these things.

“For it is seemly that those who have founded a brotherhood for the sake of wisdom, should long to see Him; and if they cannot do this, to behold at least His Image, Most Holy Reason (Logos), 3 and after him also the most perfect work in [all] things sensible, [namely] this cosmos.

“For the work of philosophy is naught else than the striving clearly to see these things.” 4

THE SONS OF GOD ON EARTH

And later on, in the same treatise (§ 28), Philo writes still more interestingly and instructively as follows:

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“But they who have attained unto wisdom, are, as they should be, called Sons of the One God, as Moses admits when he says: ‘Ye are the Sons of the Lord God,’ 1 and ‘God who begat thee,’ 2 and ‘Is not He Himself thy father?’ 3 . . .

“And if a man should not as yet have the good fortune to be worthy to be called a Son of God, let him strive manfully to set himself in order according to His First-born Reason (Logos), the Oldest Angel, who is as though it were the Angel-chief, of many names; for he is called Dominion, 4 and Name of God, and Reason, and the Man-after-the-likeness, and Seeing Israel.

“And for this reason I was induced a little before to praise the principles of them who say: ‘We are all Sons of One Man.’ 5 For even if we have not yet become fit to be judged Sons of God, we may at anyrate be Sons of His Eternal Likeness, His Most Holy Reason; for Reason, the Eldest [of all Angels], is God’s Likeness [or Image].” 6

And so also we read elsewhere:

“But the Reason (Logos) is God’s Likeness, by whom [sc. Reason] the whole Cosmos was fashioned.” 7

This Divine Reason of things, then, was the means by which the Cosmos came into existence. And so we find Philo writing:

“But if anyone should wish to make use of naked

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terms, he might say that the intelligible order of things 1 is nothing else than the Reason (Logos) of God perpetually creating the [sensible] world-order.

THE CITY OF GOD

“For the Intelligible City is nothing else but the reasoning of the Architect determining in His Mind to found a city perceivable by the senses after [the model of] the City which the mind alone can perceive.

“This is the doctrine of Moses and not [only] mine. At any rate in describing the genesis of man he expressly agrees that he [man] was fashioned in the image of God. And if this is the case with the part—the image of the Image—it is plainly also the case with the whole Form, that is the whole of this sensible cosmos, which is a [far] greater imitation of the Divine Image than the human image is.

“It is plain, moreover, that the Archetypal Seal, which we call Cosmos which is perceptible only to the intellect, must itself be the Archetypal Pattern, 2 the Idea of ideas, the Reason (Logos) of God.” 3

And elsewhere also he writes:

“Passing, then, from details, behold the grandest House or City, namely, this cosmos. Thou shalt find that the cause of it is God, by whom it came into existence. The matter of it is the four elements, out of which it has been composed. The instrument by means of which it has been built, is the Reason (Logos) of God. And the object of its building is the Goodness of the Creator.” 4

And again:

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GOD’S SHADOW

“Now the Reason (Logos) is the Likeness of God, by which the whole cosmos was made.” 1

And still more clearly:

“But God’s Shadow is His Reason (Logos), which using, as it were an instrument, He made the cosmos. And this Shadow is as it were the Archetypal Model of all else. For that as God is the Original of His Image, which he [‘Moses’] now calls [His] Shadow, so, [in its turn] that Image is the model of all else, as he [‘Moses’] showed when, at the beginning of the law-giving, he said: ‘And God made man according to the Image of God,’ 2—this Likeness being imaged according to God, and man being imaged according to this Likeness, which received the power of its Original.” 3

Moreover, the Divine Reason, as an instrument, is regarded as the means of separation and division:

“So God, having sharpened His Reason (Logos), the Divider of all things, cut off both the formless and undifferentiated essence of all things, and the four elements of cosmos which had been separated out of it, 4 and the animals and plants which had been compacted by means of these.” 5

With this we may compare the following passage from The Acts of John, where we read of the Logos:

“But what it is in truth, as conceived of in itself, and as spoken of to thee, 6—it is the marking-off [or delimitation] of all things, the firm necessity of those

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things that are fixed and were unsettled, the Harmony of Wisdom.” 1

But to return to the concept of the Logos as symbolised by the idea of a City; speaking of the six “cities of refuge,” Philo allegorises them as follows:

“Is not, then, the most ancient and most secure and best Mother-city, and not merely City, the Divine Reason (Logos), to which it is of the greatest service to flee first?

“The other five, as though they were colonies [from it], are the Powers of the Speaker [of this Word (Logos)], of which the chief is the Creative [Potency], according to which He who creates by Reason [or Word], fashioned the cosmos. The second is the Sovereign [Potency], according to which He who created, ruleth that which is brought into existence. The third is the Merciful [Potency], by means of which the Artist hath compassion and hath mercy on His own work. The fourth is the Legislative Providence, by means of which He doth forbid the things that may not be. . . .” 2

Philo then regards these “cities” as symbolising the refuges to which the various kinds of erring souls should flee to find comfort. If the Divine Reason, and the Creative and Sovereign (Kingly) Powers are too far off for the comprehension of the sinner’s ignorance, then he should flee to other goals at a shorter distance, the “cities” of the Necessary Powers, namely, the Powers of Mercy and of the Law, which latter are twofold, Enjoining and Forbidding, the latter again of which is referred to vaguely, at the end of the chapter, as the “averting of evils” without further definition.

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Moreover, Philo continues, there are symbols of these five Potencies mentioned in the Scriptures:

“[The symbols] of Command and Prohibition are the [two tables of the] laws in the ark; of the Merciful Potency, the top of the ark, which he [‘Moses’] calls the Mercy-seat; of the Creative and Sovereign [Potencies], the winged Cherubim, who are set over it.

“But the Divine Reason (Logos) above them did not take any visible shape, inasmuch as no sensible object answers to it, for it is the very Likeness of God, the Eldest of all beings, one and all, which are cognisable by mind alone, the nearest to the [One and] Only One-that-is, without a space of any kind between, copied inerrantly.

“For it is said: ‘I will speak to thee from above the Mercy-seat, from between the two Cherubim.’ 1

“So that he who drives the Chariot 2 of the Powers is the Word (Logos), and He who is borne in the Chariot is He who speaks [the Word], giving commandment to the Driver for the right driving of the universe.” 3

THE TRUE SHEPHERD

Again, speaking of God as the True Shepherd of the universe and all things therein, the elements and all therein, the sun, moon, and planets, the stars and heavens, Philo writes:

“[He placed] at the head His own True Reason (Logos), His First-born Son, who shall succeed unto the care of this sacred flock, as though he were the lieutenant of the Great King.” 4

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The Divine Reason of things, moreover, is regarded as the Plērōma or Fullness of all powers,—ideal space, and ideal time, if such terms can be permitted. The Logos is the Æon or Eternity proper. And so Philo speaks of:

“The Divine Reason (Logos) whom God Himself hath full-filled entirely and throughout with incorporeal powers.” 1

THE APOSTLES OF GOD

This Supreme Logos, then, is filled full of powers—words, logoi, in their turn, energies of God. As Philo writes:

“For God not disdaining to descend into the sensible world, sends forth as His apostles His own ‘words’ (logoi) to give succour to those who love virtue; and they act as physicians and expel the diseases of the soul.” 2

These “words” or “reasons” are men’s angels; they are the “light-sparks” or “rays” in the heart—of which we hear so much in “Gnostic” and allied literature—all from the Father-Sun, the Light of God, or Logos proper, which Philo calls “the Light of the invisible and supremest Deity that rays and shines transcendently on every side.”

THE LADDER OF THE “WORDS”

“When this Light shineth into the mind, the secondary beams of the ‘words’ (logoi) set [or are hidden].” 3

In treating of the allegorical Ladder set up from earth to heaven, Philo first gives what he considers to

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be its cosmic correspondences and then applies the figure to the little world of man:

“The ladder (κλῖμαξ), then, symbolically spoken of, is in the cosmos somewhat of the nature I have suggested. But if we turn our attention to it in man, we shall find it is the soul; the foot of which is as it were its earthly part—namely, sensation, while its head is as it were its heavenly part—the purest mind.

“Up and down through all of it the ‘words’ (logoi) go incessantly; whenever they ascend, drawing it up together with them, divorcing it from its mortal nature, and revealing the sight of those things which alone are worth the seeing; not that when they descend they cast it down, for neither God nor yet God’s Word (Logos) is cause of any loss.

“But they accompany them 1 [in their descent] for love of man and pity of our race, to succour, and give help, that they, by breathing into them their saving breaths, may bring the soul to life, tossed as it is upon the body [’s waves] as on a river [’s bosom].

“It is the God and Governor of the universe alone who doth, transcending sound and sight, walk ’mid the minds of them who have been throughly purified. For them there is an oracle, which the sage prophesied, in which is said: ‘I will walk amid you; and I will be your God.’ 2

“But in the minds of them who are still being washed, and have not yet had throughly cleansed the life that is befouled and stained with bodies’ grossness, it is the angels, the ‘words’ (logoi) divine, making them bright for Virtue’s eyes.” 3

This Light of God is, as has repeatedly been said before, the Divine Reason of things.

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“‘For the Lord is my Light and my Saviour,’ 1 as is sung in the Hymns;—[He is] not only Light, but the Archetype of every other light; nay rather more ancient and sublime than the Archetypal Model [of all things], in that this [latter] is His Word (Logos). For the [Universal] Model is His all-full 2 Word, the Light, while He Himself is like to naught of things created.” 3

THE LOGOS THE SPIRITUAL SUN

This Word, or Logos, is further symbolised among phenomena as the sun. The Spiritual Sun is the Divine Reason—“the intelligible Model of the [sun] that moves in heaven.”

“For the Word (Logos) of God, when it enters into our earthly constitution, succours and aids those who are Virtue’s kinsmen, and those that are favourably disposed to her, affording them a perfect place of refuge and salvation, and shedding on their foes 4 destruction and ruin past repair.” 5

The Logos is thus naturally the panacea of all ills.

“For the Word (Logos) is, as it were, the saving medicine for all the wounds and passions of the soul, which [Word], the lawgiver declares, we should restore ‘before the sun’s going down’ 6—that is, before the

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most brilliant rays of God, supremest and most manifest, go down [or set]—[rays] which through His pity for our race He has sent forth from [His high] Heaven into the mind of man.

“For whilst that Light most Godlike abideth in the soul, we shall restore the ‘word’ (logos) that hath been given to us in pledge, as though it were a garment, that it may be to him who doth receive it, the special property of man—[a garment] both to cover up the shame 1 of life, and to enjoy the gift of God and have respite in quietude, by reason of the present help of such a counsellor, and of a shielder such as will never leave the rank in which he hath been stationed.” 2

From all of which it seems that Philo is drawing a distinction between the Pure Light of the Logos and the reflection of that Light in the reason of man, for he goes on to say:

“Indeed we have prolonged this long excursus for no other reason than to explain that the trained mind, moved by irregular motions to productiveness and its contrary, and, as it were, continually ascending and descending [the ladder]—when it is productive and raised into the height, then is it bathed in radiance of the archetypal immaterial rays of the Logic 3 Source of God who bringeth all unto perfection; and when it doth descend and is barren, it is illumined by their

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images, the ‘words’ (logoi) immortal, whom it is custom to call angels.” 1

THE DISCIPLES OF THE LOGOS

And a little later on Philo proceeds to speak of those who are disciples or pupils of the Holy Word or Divine Reason.

“These are they who are truly men, lovers of temperance, and orderliness, and modesty,”—whose life he proceeds further to describe in similar terms to those he uses of the Therapeuts.

Such a life, he concludes, “is adapted not for those who are called men, but for those who are truly so.” 2

For those, then, who consciously set their feet upon the ladder of true manhood, there is a Way up even to Deity Itself, for Philo writes:

“Stability, and sure foundation, and eternally abiding in the same, changeless and immovable, is, in the first place, a characteristic of That-which-is; and, in the second, [a characteristic] of the Reason (Logos) of That-which-is—which Reason He hath called his Covenant; in the third, of the wise man; and in the fourth, of him who goeth forward [towards wisdom].” 3

How, then, continues Philo, can the wicked mind think that it can stand alone—“when it is swept hither and thither by the eddies of passion, which carry the body forth to burial as a corpse?”

And a little later on he proceeds to tell us that Eden must be taken to stand for the Wisdom of God.

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“And the Divine Reason (Logos) floweth down like a river, from Wisdom, as from a source, that it may irrigate and water the heavenly shoots and plants of Virtue-lovers, that grow upon the sacred Mountain of the Gods, 1 as though it were a paradise.

THE RIVER OF THE DIVINE REASON

“And this Holy Reason is divided into four sources—I mean it is separated into four virtues—each of which is a queen. For its being divided into sources 2 does not bear any resemblance to division of space, but rather to a sovereignty, 3 in order that, having pointed to the virtues, as its boundaries, he [‘Moses’] may immediately display the wise man, who makes use of these virtues, as king, elected to kingship, not by the show of men’s hands, but by choice of that Nature [namely, Virtue] which alone is truly free, and genuine, and above all bribes. . . .

“Accordingly, one of the companions of Moses, likening this Word (Logos) to a river, says in the Hymns: ‘The river of God was filled with water.’ 4

“Now it is absurd that any of the rivers flowing on earth should be so called; but, as it seems, he [the psalmist] clearly signifies the Divine Reason (Logos), full of the flood of Wisdom, having no part of itself bereft or empty [thereof], but rather, as has been said, being entirely diffused throughout the universe, and [again] raised up to the height [thereof], by reason of

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the perpetual and continuous [circling] course of that eternally flowing fountain.

“There is also the following song-verse: ‘The rapid flow of the river maketh glad the city of God.’ 1

JERUSALEM ABOVE

“What kind of city? For what is now the holy city, 2 in which is the holy temple, was founded at a distance from sea and rivers; so that it is clear that [the writer] intends to represent by means of an under-meaning something different from the surface-sense.

“For indeed the stream of the Divine Reason (Logos) continually flowing on with rapidity and regularity, diffuses all things through all and maketh them glad.

“And in one sense he calls cosmos the City of God, inasmuch as, receiving the whole cup 3 of the Divine draught it . . ., 4 and, being made joyous, it shouteth with a joy that can never be taken away or quenched for the eternity.

“But in another sense [he uses it of] the soul of the wise man, in which God is said to walk as in a city, for ‘I will walk in you and I will be your God.’ 5

“And for the happy soul that stretches forth its own reasoning 6 as a most holy drinking vessel 7—who is it that poureth forth the sacred measures of true joy, if not the cup-bearer of God, the [Divine] Reason (Logos), who is master of the feast?—he who differs not from

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the draught, but is himself unmingled delight, and sweetness, forthpouring, good-cheer, the immortal philtre of all joy and of contentment,—if we may use the words of poetry.

“But the City of God the Hebrews call Jerusalem, which by interpretation signifies the ‘Sight of Peace.’ Wherefore seek not the City of That-which-is in regions of the earth—for ’tis not made of stocks and stones; but [seek it] in the soul that doth not war, but offers unto them of the keen sight a life of contemplation and of peace.” 1

This, then, is how Philo understands the New Jerusalem (or Ogdoad), so familiar to us from the writings of the “Gnostic” schools, beyond which was the Plērōma or Treasure of Light. For elsewhere he writes:

“He will offer a fair and fitting prayer, as Moses did, that God may open for us His Treasure, yea [His] Reason (Logos) sublime, and pregnant with lights divine, which he [‘Moses’] has called Heaven.” 2

These “lights” are “reasons” (logoi), for a little further on he says:

“Thou seest that the soul is not nourished with things earthly and contemptible, but by the reasons God rains down from His sublime and pure nature, which he [‘Moses’] calls Heaven.” 3

THE LOGOS IS AS MANNA AND CORIANDER SEED

And a little further on, referring to the allegorical “manna,” or heavenly food, “the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat” (Ex. xvi. 13), he writes:

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“Dost thou not see the food of the soul, what it is? It is the Continuing Reason (Logos) of God, like unto dew, encircling the whole of it [the soul] on all sides, and suffering no part of it to be without its share of it [the Logos].

“But this Reason is not apparent everywhere, but [only] in the man who is destitute of passions and vices; yea, subtle is it for the mind to distinguish, or to be distinguished by the mind, exceedingly translucent and pure for sight to see.

“It is, moreover, as it were, a coriander seed. 1 For agriculturalists declare that the seed of the coriander can be divided and dissected infinitely, and that every single part and section [thereof], when sown, comes up just as the whole seed. Such also is the Reason (Logos) of God, profitable in its entirety and in every part, however small it be.” 2

And he adds a little further on:

“This is the teaching of the hierophant and prophet, Moses, who will say: ‘This is the bread, the food which God hath given to the soul,’ 3 that He hath given [us] for meat and drink, His own Word, 4 His own Reason, 5 for this [Reason] is the bread which He hath given us to eat; this is the Word.” 6

THE LOGOS IS THE PUPIL OF GOD’S EYE

Philo also likens the Divine Reason to the pupil of the eye—a figure that will meet us later in considering the meaning of the Κόρη Κόσμου (“Virgin of the World”) treatise—for he writes:

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“May not [this Reason] be also likened to the pupil of the eye? For just as the eye’s pupil, though the smallest part [of it], does yet behold all of the zones of things existing—the boundless sea, and vastness of the air, and all of the whole heaven which the sun doth bound from east to west,—so is the sight of the Divine Reason the keenest sight of all, so that it can behold all things; by which [men] shall behold things worthy to be seen beyond white [light] 1 itself.

“For what could be more bright or more far-seeing than Reason Divine, by shining in which the other [lights] drive out all mist and darkness, striving to blend themselves with the soul’s light.” 2

“MAN SHALL NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONE”

And again, in a passage of intense interest we read:

“For He nourisheth us with His Reason (Logos)—the most general [of all things]. . . . And the Reason of God is above the whole cosmos; it is the most ancient and most general of all the things that are.

“This Reason the ‘fathers’ 3 knew not,—not [our] true [eternal] fathers, but those hoary in time, who say: ‘Let us take a leader, and let us return unto’—the passions of—‘Egypt.’ 4

“Therefore let God announce His [good] tidings to the soul in an image: ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word 5 that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,’ 6—that is, he shall be nourished by the whole of Reason (Logos) and by [every] part of it. For ‘mouth’ is a symbol of the [whole] Logos, and ‘word’ is its part.” 7

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These “fathers,” then, are those of the lower nature, and not our true spiritual parents; it is these “fathers” that we are to abandon.

Compare with this Matt. x. 37: “He who loveth father and mother more than Me is not worthy of Me”; and the far more striking form of the tradition in Luke xiv. 26: “If any man cometh unto Me, and doth not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea and his own soul also, he cannot be My disciple.”

In the Gnostic gospel, known as the Pistis Sophia (341), the mystic meaning of these parents is given at length, as signifying the rulers of the lower nature, and the Master is made to say: “For this cause have I said unto you aforetime, ‘He who shall not leave father and mother to follow after Me is not worthy of Me.’ What I said then was, ‘Ye shall leave your parents the rulers, that ye may be children of the First Everlasting Mystery.’”

But the most arresting point is that Matt. iv. 4, in the story of the Temptation, quotes precisely the same words of the LXX. text of Deut. viii. 3 which Philo does, beginning where he does and finishing where he does, both omitting the final and tautological “shall man live”—a very curious coincidence. Luke iv. 4 preserves only the first half of the sentence; but it evidently lay in exactly the same form in which Philo uses it before the first and third Evangelists in their second or “Logia” source. It was, then, presumably a frequently quoted text.

THE LOGOS-MEDIATOR

The Divine Reason is further figured as a true “Person,” the Mediator between God and man. Thus Philo writes:

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“And on His angel-ruling and most ancient Reason (Logos), the Father who created all, hath bestowed a special gift—that standing between them as a Boundary, 1 he may distinguish creature from Creator.

“He [the Reason] ever is himself the suppliant unto the Incorruptible on mortal kind’s behalf in its distress, and is the King’s ambassador to subject nature.

“And he exulteth in his gift, and doth majesticly insist thereon, declaring: ‘Yea, have I stood between the Lord and you,’ 2—not increate as God, nor yet create as ye, but in the midst between the [two] extremes, hostage to both: to Him who hath created him, for pledge that the creature never will remove itself entirely [from Him], nor make revolt, choosing disorder in order’s place; and to the thing created for good hope that God, the Merciful, will never disregard the work of His own hands. ‘For I will herald forth the news of peace to the creation from Him who knows how to make wars to cease, from God the Everlasting Peacekeeper.’” 3

In considering what is claimed to be the elaborate symbolism of the sacred vestments of the High Priest, and the nature of this symbolical office, Philo declares that the twelve stones upon the breast of the High Priest, in four rows of three each, are a symbol of the Divine Reason (Logos), which holds together and regulates the universe; this breastplate, then, is the logion or sacred oracle of God.

“For it was necessary that he who was consecrated to the Father of the cosmos, should have [His] Son,

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the most perfect in virtue, as intercessor, 1 both for the forgiveness 2 of sins, and for the abundant supply of the most unstinted blessings.

“It probably also imparts the preliminary teaching to the Servant of God, 3 that if he cannot be worthy of Him who made the cosmos, he should nevertheless without ceasing strive to be worthy of that cosmos; for when he has [once] been clothed with its likeness, 4 he is bound forthwith, by carrying about the image of the model 5 in his head, of his own self to change himself as though it were from man into the nature of the cosmos, and, if we ought to say so 6—nay, he who speaks on truth ought to speak truth!—be [himself] a little cosmos.” 7

THE YOGA OF PLOTINUS

With these most instructive indications we may compare the intensely interesting passage of Plotinus in his essay “On Intelligible Beauty,” where he gives his yoga-system, so to speak. It is perhaps the most important passage that has come down to us from the coryphæus of Later Platonism, giving, as it does, in every probability, the method of the school whereby ecstasis was attained.

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“Let us, then, form a mental image of this cosmos with each of its parts remaining what it is, and yet interpenetrating one another, [imagining] them all together into one as much as we possibly can,—so that whatsoever one comes first into the mind as the ‘one’ (as for instance the outer sphere), there immediately follows also the sight of the semblance of the sun, and together with it that of the other stars, 1 and the earth, and sea, and all things living, as though in [one] transparent sphere,—in fine, as though all things could be seen in it.

“Let there, then, be in the soul some semblance of a sphere of light [transparent], having all things in it, whether moving or still, or some of them moving and others still.

“And, holding this [sphere] in the mind, conceive in thy self another [sphere], removing [from it all idea of] mass; take from it also [the idea of] space, and the phantom of matter in thy mind; and do not try to image another sphere [merely] less in bulk than the former.

“Then invoking God who hath made [that true sphere] of which thou holdest the phantom [in thy mind], pray that He may come.

“And may He come with his own cosmos, 2 with all the Gods therein—He being one and all, and each one all, united into one, yet different in their powers, and yet, in that one [power] of multitude all one.

“Nay, rather the One God is all [the Gods] for that He falleth not short [of Himself] though all of them are [from Him]; [and] they are all together, yet each again apart in [some kind of] an unextended state, possessing no form perceptible to sense.

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“For, otherwise, one would be in one place, another in another, and [each] be ‘each,’ and not ‘all’ in itself, without parts other from the others and [other] from itself.

“Nor is each whole a power divided and proportioned according to a measurement of parts; but this [whole] is the all, all power, extending infinitely and infinitely powerful;—nay, so vast is that [divine world-order 1], that even its ‘parts’ are infinite.” 2

THE RACE OF GOD

But to return to Philo. The rational soul or mind of man is potentially the Intelligible Cosmos or Logos; thus he writes:

“The great Moses did not call the species of the rational soul by a name resembling any one of the things created, but he called it the image of the Divine and Invisible, deeming it a true [image] brought into being and impressed with the soul of God, of which the Signet is the Eternal Reason (Logos).” 3

All of which the disciplined soul shall realise in himself. Of such a man Abraham is a type, for:

“Abandoning mortal things, he ‘is added to the people of God,’ 4 plucking the fruit of immortality, having become equal to the angels. For the angels are the host of God, incorporeal and happy souls.”

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The angels are the “people” of God; but there is a still higher degree of union, whereby a man becomes one of the “Race” or “Kin” of God. This “Race” is an intimate union of all them who are “kin to Him”; they become one. For this Race “is one, the highest one, but ‘people’ is the name of many.”

“As many, then, as have advanced in discipline and instruction, and been perfected [therein], have their lot among this ‘many.’

“But they who have passed beyond these introductory exercises, becoming natural Disciples of God, receiving wisdom free from all toil, migrate to this incorruptible and perfect Race, receiving a lot superior to their former lives in genesis.” 1

And that the mind is immortal may be shown allegorically from the death of Moses, who, says Philo, migrated “by means of the Word (Logos) of the Cause, 2 by whom the whole cosmos was created.”

This is said “in order that thou mayest learn that God regards the wise man as of equal honour with the cosmos; for it is by means of the same Reason (Logos) that He hath made the universe, and bringeth back the perfect man from earthly things unto Himself again.” 3

But enough of Philo for the moment. Sufficient has been given to let the reader hear the Alexandrian speak for himself on the central idea of his cosmos. Much else could be added—indeed, volumes could be written on the subject—for it gives us one of the most important backgrounds of Christian origins, and without a thorough knowledge of Hellenistic theology it is impossible in any way to get our values of many things correctly.

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Footnotes

199:1 In all, upwards of sixty Philonean tractates are preserved to us; and in addition we have also numerous fragments from lost works.

200:1 Philo is known to the Jews as Yedidyah ha-Alakhsanderi.

200:2 Thus, in D. V. C., § 3; M. ii. 475, P. 893 (Ri. v. 309, C. 65), referring to his beloved Therapeuts, he himself says: “They have also works of ancient authors who were once heads of their school, and left behind them many monuments of the method used in allegorical works.” Nor was this “allegorising” Jewish only; it was common. It was applied to Homer; it was the method of the Stoics. Indeed, this “treatment (θεραπεία) of myths” was the only way in which the results of the philosophy and science of the time could be brought into touch with popular faith.

The text I use is that of Richter (M. C. E.), Philonis Judæi Opera Omnia, in Bibliotheca Sacra Patrum Ecclesiæ Græcorum (Leipzig, 1828-1830), 8 vols. M. refers to the edition of Mangey; P. to the Paris edition; Ri. stands for that of Richter—thus abbreviated so as not to be confused with R., which elsewhere stands for Reitzenstein; C. stands for Conybeare’s critical text of the D. V. C. (Oxford, 1895), the only really critical text of any tractate which we so far possess.

200:3 “Philo,” in Smith and Wace’s Dict. of Christ. Biog. (London, 1887), iv. 357-389—by far the best general study on the subject in English. Drummond’s (J.) two volumes, Philo Judæus, or The Alexandrian Philosophy (London, 1888), may also be consulted, but they leave much to be desired. The only English translation is that of Yonge (C. D.), The Works of Philo Judæus (London, 1854) in Bonn’s Library; but it is by no means satisfactory, and I have in every instance of quotation made my own version.

202:1 Or “divinely prompted” (De Vit. Mos., ii. 5-7).

203:1 De Vit. Mos., iii. 23, 24.

204:1 For a sketch of ancient Alexandria, see F. F. F., pp. 96-120.

205:1 For a translation of the famous tractate on this subject, from the recent critical text of Conybeare, see F. F. F., pp. 66-82.

205:2 D. V. C., § 3; M. ii. 474, P. 891 (Ri. v. 308, C. 56).

206:1 De Sept., §§ 3, 4; M. ii. 279, P. 1175 (Ri. v. 21, 22).

207:1 De Mut. Nom., § 4; M. i. 583, P. 1049 (Ri. iii. 163, 164).

208:1 Quod Om. Prob. L., § 11; M. ii. 456, P. 876 (Ri. v. 284, 285).

208:2 C., p. 146, 1. 13.

208:3 D. V. C., § 9; M. ii. 482, P. 900 (Ri. v. 319, C. 111).

209:1 Or shrine—a small room or closet.

209:2 That is, a sanctuary or monastery, the latter in the sense of a place where one can be alone or in solitude. This is the first use of the term “monastery” known in classical antiquity, and, as we see, it bears a special and not a general meaning.

209:3 Ibid., § 3; M. ii. 475, P. 892 (Ri. v. 309, C. 60).

210:1 Grenfell and Hunt, New Sayings of Jesus (London, 1904), p. 18.

210:2 Lit., ye mystæ and hierophants.

210:3 Lit., orgies—that is, “burstings forth” of inspiration, or revealings.

210:4 De Prof., § 16; M. i. 558, P. 462 (Ri. iii. 128).

210:5 Leg. Alleg., i. 39, 4.

210:6 δεισιδαίμονες—here meaning the literalists; it generally signifies the religious in a good sense, and the superstitious in a bad one.

211:1 De Cherub., § 12; M. i. 146, P. 115 (Ri. i. 208).

211:2 Ibid., § 14; M. i. 147, P. 116 (Ri. i. 210).

211:3 Cf. Leg. Alleg., ii. § 15; M. i. 76, P. 1097 (Ri. i. 105).

211:4 Lit., orgies.

212:1 De Gigan., § 12; M. i. 270, P. 291 (Ri. ii. 61).

212:2 Philo, apparently, would have it that the sacrifice of the ram, which was a symbol of virility, signified the obligation of chastity prior to initiation into the higher rites.

212:3 De Vit. Mos., iii. § 17; M. ii. 157, P. 675 (Ri. iv. 216). The Therapeuts, with Philo, then do not mean “Healers,” as has been sometimes thought, but “Servants of God.”

212:4 D. V. C., § 2; M. ii. 473, P. 891 (Ri. v. 306, C. 41, 42).

212:5 Quod Det. Pot. Insid., § 27; M. i. 211, P. 174 (Ri. i. 295).

213:1 Ibid., § 48; M. i. 224, P. 186 (Ri. i. 314).

213:2 Leg. Alleg., i. § 32; M. i. 64, P. 59 (Ri. i. 87).

214:1 Leg. Alleg., ii. § xv.; M. i. 76, P. 1097 (Ri. i. 106).

214:2 Which they brought out of Egypt—that is, the body.

214:3 De Sacrif., § 16; M. i. 174, P. 139 (Ri. i. 245).

214:4 Quæst. in Gen., iv. § 2; P. Auch. 243 (Ri. vii. 61).

215:1 Gen. xviii. 6.

215:2 That is, apparently, the “good” = the “incorporeal,” and the “subject” = the “corporeal.”

216:1 De Sacrif., § 15; M. i. 173, 174; P. 139 (Ri. i. 244, 245).

216:2 De Cherub., § 12; M. i. 146, P. 115 (Ri. i. 208).

217:1 Ibid., § 13; M. i. 147, P. 116, 117 (Ri. i. 209).

218:1 Jer. iv. 3—where A.V. translates: “Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth?”

219:1 De Cherub., § 14, 15; M. i. 148, P. 116, 117 (Ri. i. 210, 211).

219:2 In this, however, I venture to think that Conybeare is mistaken; it was a common dogma of the Hellenistic theology of the time.

219:3 Op. sup. cit., pp. 302, 303.

219:4 De Execrat., § 7; M. ii. 435, P. 936 (Ri. v. 254). See “Myth of Man in the Mysteries,” S. § 25 J.

220:1 D. V. C., § 8; M. ii. 482, P. 899 (Ri. v. 318, C. 108).

220:2 Elsewhere an epithet of the Logos.

220:3 De Mut. Nom., § 23; M. i. 598, P. 1065 (Ri. iii. 183).

220:4 Ibid., § 24; M. i. 599, P. 1065 (Ri. iii. 184).

220:5 De Præm. et Pæn., § 18; M. ii. 425, P. 927 (Ri. v. 241).

220:6 Leg. Alleg., iii. § 63; M. i. 122, 123, P. 94 (Ri. i. 175). Cf. Gen. xxx. 2: “Am I in God’s stead?”

221:1 Gen. xxi. 6. A.V.: “God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me.”

221:2 Leg. Alleg., iii. § 77; M. i. 131, P. 101 (Ri. i. 187). Cf. also De Cherub., § 13; M. i. 147, P. 115 (Ri. i. 209).

222:1 Gen. xxix. 31. Cong. Erud. Grat., § 2; M. i. 520, P. 425 (Ri. iii. 72).

223:1 De Spec. Leg., § 7; M. ii. 275, P. 774 (Ri. v. 15, 16).

223:2 De Som., i. § 35; M. i. 651, P. 595 (Ri. iii. 257).

224:1 De Ser. Num. Vind., 565 C.; ed. Bern. iii. 459. See, for a translation of the whole Vision, my “Notes on the Eleusinian Mysteries,” Theosophical Review (April, May, June, 1898), xxii. 145 ff., 232 ff., 312 ff.

224:2 Gen. xxxviii. 11 ff.

224:3 Quod Deus Immut., § 29; M. i. 293, P. 313 (Ri. ii. 94).

224:4 Lit., “sensible.”

224:5 De Ebriet., § 8; M. i. 361, P. 244 (Ri. i. 189).

225:1 De Mut. Nom., § 2; M. i. 579, P. 1045 (Ri. iii. 159).

225:2 De Mund. Op., § 2; M. i. 2, P. 2 (Ri. i. 6).

226:1 De Agric., § 13; M. i. 308, P. 195 (Ri. ii. 116).

227:1 Or Rising. Cf. Zech. vi. 12—where A.V. translates: “Behold the man whose name is The Branch.” Philo, however, follows LXX., but reads ἄνθρωπος instead of ἀνήρ. The Man-doctrine of the “Pœmandres” and of the Naassene Document was a fundamental one with Philo.

227:2 De Confus. Ling., § 14; M. i. 414, P. 329 (Ri. ii. 262).

227:3 Cf. Lev. xxi. 11.

228:1 τὸ ἡγεμονικόν—that is, the authoritative or responsible part of the soul, namely, the reason—a Stoic technical term.

228:2 De Prof., § 20; M. i. 562, P. 466 (Ri. iii. 133). The quotations look back to Lev. xxi. 10, but the readings in the first two differ from the LXX.

229:1 De Som., § 37; M. i. 653, P. 597 (Ri. iii. 260).

229:2 That is the sensible and not the intelligible cosmos.

230:1 Quod Deus Im., § 6; M. i. 277, P. 298 (Ri. ii. 72, 73).

230:2 Leg. Alleg., § 21; M. i. 82, P. 1103 (Ri. i. 113).

230:3 Cf. Gen. i. 27. Philo reads ἐν εἰκόνι instead of the κατ᾽ εἰκόνα of LXX., and ἐποίησα instead of ἐποίησε.

230:4 Namely, in His Reason. The Greek text is quoted by Eusebius, Præp. Evang., vii. 13 (M. ii. 625, Ri. vi. 175), who gives it as from Bk. i. of Quæst. et Solut. The original text is lost, but we have a Latin Version—q.v. ii. § 62 (Ri. vi. 356)—which, however, in this instance, has made sorry havoc of the original.

231:1 Philo and LXX. both have: “ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ θεὸς ὁ ὀφθείς σοι ἐν τόπῳ θεοῦ”; whereas A.V. translates: “I am the God of Beth-el”—that is, the “House or Place of El or God.”

231:2 Here meaning the Inspiration of Scripture.

231:3 De Som., § i. 39; M. i. 655, P. 599 (Ri. iii. 262, 263).

232:1 De Mund. Op., § 8; M. i. 6, 7, P. 6 (Ri. i. 11).

232:2 De Som., § 41; M. i. 657, P. 600 (Ri. iii. 264).

233:1 This is the Race of the Logos.

233:2 Cf. Ex. xxiv. 10. A.V. does not render this reading, but LXX. gives “The place where the God of Israel stood.”

233:3 Which here, as also above, Philo would equate with the “Place of God.”

233:4 De Confus. Ling., § 20; M. i. 419, P. 333, 334 (Ri. ii. 268, 269).

234:1 Deut. xiv. 1. A.V.: “Ye are the children of the Lord your God.” LXX.: “Ye are the sons of the Lord your God.”

234:2 Deut. xxxii. 18. A.V.: “God that formed thee.” LXX. has the same reading as Philo.

234:3 Deut. xxxii. 6.

234:4 ἀρχή, or Source, Beginning, as in the Proem to the Fourth Gospel.

234:5 Gen. xlii. 11.

234:6 De Confus. Ling., § 28; M. i. 426, 427, P. 341 (Ri. ii. 279).

234:7 De Monarch., ii. § 5; M. ii. 225, P. 823 (Ri. iv. 302).

235:1 Or the cosmos, which is comprehensible by the intellect alone.

235:2 Or Paradigm.

235:3 De Mund. Op., § 6; M. i. 5, P. 5 (Ri. i. 9).

235:4 De Cherub.,, § 35; M. i. 162, P. 129 (Ri. i. 228).

236:1 De Monarch., ii. § 5; M. ii. 225, P. 823 (Ri. iv. 302).

236:2 Gen. i. 26.

236:3 Leg. Alleg., iii. 31; M. i. 106, 107, P. 79 (Ri. i. 152, 153).

236:4 Sc. the essence.

236:5 Sc. elements. Quis Rer. Div. Her., § 27; M. i. 492, P. 500 (Ri. iii. 32).

236:6 John, to whom the Master is speaking.

237:1 F. F. F., 436.

237:2 De Prof., § 18; M. i. 560, P. 464 (Ri. iii. 130). There is unfortunately a lacuna in the text, so that we do not learn the characteristics of the fifth potency; but this is explained elsewhere,—the Legislative Providence being a twofold potency, namely, the Enjoining and the Forbidding.

238:1 Ex. xxv. 22.

238:2 This plainly refers to the Mercabah or Chariot of the Vision of Ezechiel.

238:3 De Prof., § 19; M. i. 561, P. 465 (Ri. iii. 131).

238:4 De Agric., § 12; M. i. 308, P. 195 (Ri. ii. 116).

239:1 De Som., i. § 11; M. i. 630, P. 574 (Ri. iii. 227).

239:2 Ibid., § 12; M. i. 631, P. 575 (Ri. iii. 229).

239:3 Ibid., § 13.

240:1 Sc. the souls.

240:2 Lev. xxvi. 12.

240:3 De Som., § 23; M. i. 642, 643, P. 587 (Ri. iii. 245, 246).

241:1 Ps. xxvii. 1. A.V. “salvation.” LXX. reads φωτισμός, “illumination”—a technical term among the mystics of Early Christendom for baptism—instead of the φῶς of Philo.

241:2 That is, the Logos as Pleroma.

241:3 De Som., § 13.

241:4 Sc. the vices of the soul.

241:5 Ibid., § 15; M. i. 363, P. 578 (Ri. iii. 232).

241:6 This seems to be somewhat reminiscent of the custom of evening prayer in the Therapeut and other similar communities, when, at the time of the setting of the sun, it was enjoined that “rational” praises should be restored or given back to God, for benefits received.

Philo, however, is here somewhat laboriously commenting, in allegorical fashion, on the pawnbroking bye-law in Ex. xxii. 26, 27: “But if thou takest in pledge thy neighbour’s garment, thou shalt give it him back before the going down of the sun. For this is his covering; this is the only garment of his indecency. In what [else] shall he sleep? If, then, he shall cry unto me, I will give ear to him; for I am pitiful.” (See § 16.) The A.V. translates otherwise.

242:1 Cf. the well-known logos from the Gospel according to the Egyptians, “Unless ye tread on the garment of shame.”

242:2 De Som., § 18; M. i. 637, P. 582 (Ri. iii. 238).

242:3 Or Rational.

243:1 Ibid., § 19; M. i. 638, P. 582 (Ri. iii. 239).

243:2 Ibid., 20; M. i. 639, P. 584 (Ri. iii. 241). Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 24.

243:3 De Som., ii. § 36; M. i. 690, P. 1140 (Ri. iii. 312).

244:1 Lit., Olympian.

244:2 ἀρχαὶ mean sources, but also principles and sovereignties. It is, however, impossible to keep the word-play in English.

244:3 Or kingdom, namely, “of the heavens,” or rulership of the celestial realms, or rather of one’s self.

244:4 Ps. lxv. 9. So also LXX.; but A.V., “Thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water.”

245:1 Ps. xlvi. 4. LXX. has the plural, rivers or streams. A.V. translates: “There is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God.”

245:2 The physical Jerusalem in Palestine.

245:3 κρατῆρα—lit., crater or mixing-bowl.

245:4 A lacuna occurs here in the text.

245:5 A loose quotation of Lev. xxvi. 12, as already cited above.

245:6 λογισμόν.

245:7 ἔκπωμα.

246:1 De Som., ii. §§ 37-39; M. i. 690-692, P. 1141, 1142 (Ri. iii. 312-315).

246:2 Leg. Alleg., iii. § 34; M. i. 108, P. 80 (Ri. i. 155).

246:3 Ibid., § 56; M. i. 119, P. 90 (Ri. i. 170).

247:1 The grain of mustard seed of the Gospels and of the “Gnostics.”

247:2 Ibid., § 59; M. i. 121, 122, P. 92 (Ri. i. 172, 173).

247:3 A gloss on Ex. xiv. 15.

247:4 ῥῆμα.

247:5 λόγος.

247:6 Leg. Alleg., iii., § 0; M. i. 121, P. 92 (Ri. i. 173).

248:1 The reading seems to be faulty.

248:2 Ibid., § 59.

248:3 Cf. Deut. viii. 13.

248:4 Num. xiv. 4.

248:5 ῥήματι.

248:6 Deut. viii. 3.

248:7 Leg. Alleg., iii. § 61; M. i. 121, P. 93 (Ri. i. 174).

250:1 Cf. the “Gnostic” Horos (not the Egyptian Hōrus) as referred to previously.

250:2 Perhaps a reflection of Num. xvi. 48.

250:3 Quis Rer. Div. Her., § 42; M. i. 501, 502, P. 504 (Ri. iii. 45, 46).

251:1 παρακλήτῳ—as paraclete, or intercessor, or defender (a term of the law courts), or comforter.

251:2 ἀμνηστείαν—lit., amnesty, or forgetfulness of wrong.

251:3 τὸν τοῦ θεοῦ θεραπευτήν—the Therapeut.

251:4 The dress of the High Priest, then, symbolised the cosmos—the elements, etc. May we deduce from this that in one of the Therapeut initiations the approyed candidate was clothed in such a symbolic robe?

251:5 Sc. the Logos as cosmos.

251:6 Signifying a religious scruple as referring to a matter of initiation.

251:7 De Vit. Mos., iii. § 14; M. ii. 155, P. 673 (Ri. iv. 212, 213).

252:1 Presumably the seven “planetary spheres” of “difference,” as set forth in Plato’s Timæus.

252:2 Sc. the intelligible or spiritual world-order.

253:1 Intelligible cosmos.

253:2 Ennead, V. viii. (cap. ix.), 550 A-D.; Plot. Op. Om., ed. F. Creuzer (Oxford, 1835), ii. 1016, 1017. M. N. Bouillet—in Les Ennéades de Plotin (Paris, 1861), iii. 122, 123—gives, as usual, an excellently clear rendering, but it is not easy to recognise some of his sentences in the text.

253:3 De Plant. Noe, § 5; M. i. 332, P. 216, 217 (Ri. ii. 148).

253:4 A gloss on Gen. xxv. 8: “And was added (A.V. gathered) to his people.”

254:1 De Sacrif., § 2; M. i. 164, P. 131 (Ri. i. 233).

254:2 Deut. xxxiv. 5. A.V.: “According to the word of the Lord.”

254:3 De Sacrif., § 3; M. i. 165, P. 131 (Ri. i. 233).

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IX

PLUTARCH: CONCERNING THE MYSTERIES OF ISIS AND OSIRIS

FOREWORD

In the chapter on Philo we attempted to set before the reader some outlines of the central doctrine of Hellenistic theology—the sublime concept of the Logos—as envisaged by a learned Jew of the Diaspora, steeped in Hellenism, and living in the capital of Egypt and the centre of the intellectual life of Greater Greece.

In the present chapter we shall endeavour to give the reader a further insight into this master-idea from another standpoint, and shall reproduce the views of a learned Greek, who, while remaining on the ground of Hellenic traditions proper, turns his eyes to Egypt, and reads what part of its mysterious message he can decipher, in Greek modes of thought.

Plutarch, of Chæroneia in Bœotia, nourished in the second half of the first century A.D., and so follows immediately on Philo and on Paul; like Philo, however, he knows nothing of the Christians, though like the Alexandrian he treats of precisely those problems and questions which were and are of pre-eminent interest for Christians.

Plutarch chooses as his theme the myth and mysteries of Osiris and Isis. He gives the myth in its main outlines, and introduces us into the general religious

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atmosphere of the Egyptian belief of what we may, perhaps, be allowed to call “Demotic” times. But he does far more than this. Initiated himself into the Osiriaca, of which there was apparently a thiasos at Delphi, though on the one hand he possesses more knowledge of formal details than he feels himself permitted to disclose, on the other hand he is aware that the “true initiate of Isis” is one who goes far beyond any formal reception of the symbolic mysteries; the true initiate must of his own initiative for ever keep searching and probing more deeply into the intimate reason of things, as adumbrated by the “things said and done” in the sacred rites (iii. 3).

For this task Plutarch is well equipped, not only by his wide knowledge of the philosophy and theology and science of his day, but also by the fact that he held a high office at Delphi in the service of Apollo and also in connection with the Dionysiac rites. He was almost certainly a hierophant, and no merely formal one at that.

Plutarch accordingly gives a most instructive exposition, which should enable us, if only we are content to put ourselves in his place, and condescend to think in the terms of the thought of his day, to review the ancient struggle between physical reason and formal theology which was then in full conflict—a conflict that has been renewed on a vastly extended scale for the last few centuries, and which is still being fought to a finish or honourable truce in our own day.

Our initiated philosopher is on the side neither of atheism or pure physicism, nor on that of superstition, as he understood those terms in his day; he takes a middle ground, and seeks final refuge in the fair vision of the Logos; and that, too, in all humility, for he knows well that whatever he can say is at best but a

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dim reflection of the glory of the Highest, as indeed he expressly tells us when writing:

“Nor can the souls of men here on the earth, swathed as they are in bodies and enwrapped in passions, commune with God, except so far as they can reach some dun sort of a dream of Him with the perception of a mind trained in philosophy” (lxxiii. 2).

We accordingly find Plutarch discussing the various theories of his day which professed to explain the mythological and theological enigmas of the ancients, with special reference to the Osiris myth.

He discusses the theory of Evemerus, that the gods were nothing but ancient kings and worthies, and dismisses it as no really satisfactory explanation (xxiii.).

He then proceeds to consider the theory that these things refer to the doings of daimones,—which he thinks a decided improvement on that of Evemerus (xxv.).

Thence he passes to the theories of the Physicists or natural phenomenalists (xxxii.), and of the Mathematici—that is to say, the Pythagorean speculations as to the celestial spheres, and their harmonies (xli.).

In each of these three latter theories he thinks there is some truth; still each by itself is insufficient; they must be combined (xlv.), and even then it is not enough.

He next considers the question of first principles, and discusses the theories of the One, the Two, and the Many; again finding something to be said for each view, and yet adopting none of them as all-sufficient.

But of all attempted interpretations he finds the least satisfactory to be that of those who are content to limit the hermeneutics of the mystery-myths simply to the operations of ploughing and sowing. With this “vegetation god” theory he has little patience, and stigmatises its professors as that “dull crowd” (lxv.).

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[paragraph continues]And here, perhaps, some of us may think that Plutarch is not out of date even in the twentieth century of grace, and his arguments might be recommended to the consideration of those anthropologists who are just now with such complacency running to death what Mr Andrew Lang humourously calls the “Covent Garden” theory.

Further on, dealing as he does with the puzzling question of Egyptian “animal worship,” Plutarch is brought face to face with many problems of “taboo” and “totemism,” and he is not without interest in what he says on these subjects (lxxii. f.), and in the theories of utilitarianism and symbolism which he adduces (lxxiv.).

Finally, he gives us his view of the rationale of the custom of incense-burning (lxxix.), which should be of some concern to many in present-day Christian communities.

But the whole of this complex of custom and rites, puzzling and self-contradictory as they may appear, and the whole of the riddles and veiled enigmas of Egyptian priestly tradition, are, Plutarch believes, resolvable into transparent simplicity by a proper understanding of the true nature of man and of his relation to Divine Nature, that Wisdom who is the eternal and inseparable spouse of Divine Reason, the Logos.

It would perhaps have been simpler for some of my readers—it certainly would have been shorter—had I condensed what Plutarch has to say; but my desire is rather to let this student of the comparative theology of his day speak for himself, and not to give my own views; for I still believe, in spite of the superior formal education of the twentieth century, that we cannot normally know more about the ancient

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mysteries and their inner purport than the best minds who were initiated into them while they still flourished.

For not only are we without the precise data which these ancients possessed, but also the phase of thought through which we have recently been passing, and in which we mostly still are, is not one which can sympathetically tolerate those very considerations which, in my opinion, provide the most fertile ground of explanation of the true inwardness of what was best in those mystery-traditions.

Moreover, I have thought it of service to give a full version of this treatise of Plutarch’s from a decent critical text, 1 for the only translation in English read by me is by no means a careful piece of work, 2 and manifestly rendered from a very imperfect text; also, the language of Plutarch in some passages appears to me to be deserving of more careful handling than has as yet been accorded it, for a number of sentences seem to have been purposely phrased so as to be capable of conveying a double meaning.

Finally, with regard to his own interpretation, I would suggest that Plutarch, as was natural to a Greek, has more insisted on intellectual modes of thought than perhaps an Egyptian priest would have been inclined to do; for it seems probable that to the Egyptian mind the chief interest would lie in the possibility of the realisation of immediate contact with the Mystery in all those modes which are not so much intellectual as

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sensible; in other words, it would be by making himself a vehicle of the Great Breath in his body rather than a mirror of the Mystery in his mind, that the son of the Nile Land would seek for union.

It is, moreover, of interest to find that Plutarch addresses his treatise to a lady. For though we have extant several moral tractates addressed to wives—such as Porphyry’s Letter to Marcella, and Plutarch’s Consolation to his own wife, Timoxena—it is rare to find philosophical treatises addressed to women, and nowadays many women are once more interested in such “philosophy.”

Plutarch wrote his essay at Delphi (lxviii. 6), and addressed it to Klea, a lady who held a distinguished position among the Delphic priestesses, and who had herself been initiated into the Osiriac Mysteries—her very name Klea being, perhaps, her mystery-name (xxxv.). The treatise is, therefore, addressed to one who was prepared to read into it more than appears on the surface.

It should also be remembered that in all probability the main source of Plutarch’s information was the now lost treatise of Manetho on the Egyptian Religion, and in this connection it is of interest to record Granger’s opinion, who, in referring to Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride, says:

“First he deals with those opinions which identify the Egyptian gods with natural objects—Osiris with the Nile, Isis with the land, and so on. Then he considers the interpretations of those who identify the gods with the sun and moon, etc. (ch. lxi.). These speculations summarise for us, at first or second hand, some of the Hermetic books current in Plutarch’s time.” 1

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Footnotes

259:1 I use the texts of Parthey, Plutarch: Über Isis und Osiris (Berlin, 1850), and of Bernardakis, Plutarchi Chaeronensis Moralia (“Bibliotheca Teubneriana”; Leipzig, 1889), ii. 471 ff.

259:2 See King (C. W.), Plutarch’s Morals: Theosophical Essays (London, 1889), pp. 1-71. S. Squire’s Plutarch’s Treatise of Isis and Osiris (Cambridge, 1744) I have not read, and few can procure a copy nowadays.

260:1 Granger (F.), “The Poemander of Hermes Trismegistus,” Jour. Theol Stud., vol. v. No. 19, p. 399.

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CONCERNING ISIS AND OSIRIS

ADDRESS TO KLEA CONCERNING GNOSIS AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH 1

I. 1. 2 While all who have mind, O Klea, should ask for all their blessings from the Gods—let us, by pursuing after them, pray to obtain from them those [blessings] of gnosis 3 concerning them, as far as ’tis within the reach of men; in that there’s nothing greater for a man to get, nor more majestic for a God to give, than Truth.

2. Of other things their God gives men what they require, whereas of mind and wisdom He gives a share 4 to them—since He [Himself] possesses these and uses [them].

For the Divine is neither blest through silver and through gold, nor strong through thunderings and lightnings, but [blest and strong] by gnosis and by wisdom.

3. And thus most finely of all things which he hath said about the Gods—sounding aloud:

Yea have they both a common source and one [fair] native land;
But Zeus came into being first and he knew more—

hath Homer made pronouncement of the primacy of Zeus as more majestic, in that in gnosis and in wisdom it 5 is older.

4. Nay, I believe that the good fortune of æonian life—the which the God hath gotten for his lot—is

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that by reason of His gnosis the things in genesis should not entirely die; for when the knowing of existing things and being wise is taken from it, freedom from death is Time—not Life.

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Footnotes

261:1 I have added some sub-headings as an indication of contents.

261:2 I have numbered the paragraphs for greater convenience of reference.

261:3 ἐπιστήμης.

261:4 A play on δίδωσιν and μετα-δίδωσιν.

261:5 Sc. the primacy.

THE ART OF KNOWING AND OF DIVINISING

II. 1. Wherefore the longing for the Godly state is a desire for Truth, and specially the [truth] about the Gods, in so much as it doth embrace reception of the sacred [things]—instruction and research; 1 a work more holy than is all and every purging rite and temple-service, and not least pleasing to that Goddess whom thou servest, in that she is particularly wise and wisdom-loving, seeing her very name doth seem to indicate that knowing and that gnosis 2 is more suitable to her than any other title.

2. For that “Isis” is Greek, 3 and [so is] “Typhōn”—in that he’s foe unto the Goddess, and is “puffed up” 4 through [his] unknowing and deceit, and tears the Holy Reason (Logos) into pieces and makes away with it; the which the Goddess gathers up again and recomposes, and transmits to those perfected in the art of divinising, 5—which by the means of a continually sober life

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and by [their] abstinence from many foods and sexual indulgences, tempers intemperate pleasure-love, and doth accustom [them] to undergo, without being broken down, the rigorous tasks of service in the sacred [rites], the end of which is gnosis of the First and Lordly One, the One whom mind alone can know, 1 for whom the Goddess calls on [them] to seek, though He is by her side and one with her.

3. Nay more, the very appellation of the holy [place] doth plainly promise gnosis, that is eidēsis, of That-which-is; for it is named Iseion, as though “of them who shall know” 2 That-which-is, if that with reason (logos) and with purity 3 we enter in the holy [places] of the Goddess.

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Footnotes

262:1 τὴν μάθησιν . . . καὶ ζήτησιν. Mathesis was the technical Pythagorean term for gnosis.

262:2 τὸ εἰδ-έναι καὶ τὴν ἐπ-ισ-τήμην—word-plays on ἶσις.

262:3 Cf. lx. 2. The Egyptian of Isis is Ȧst.

262:4 τετυφωμένος—a play on τυφών—lit., “wrapped in smoke (τῦφος),” and because one so wrapped in smoke or clouds has his intelligence darkened, hence “puffed up with conceit,” crazy and demented. Typhōn is the dark or hidden side of the Father.

262:5 θειώσεως (not in L. and S. or Soph.); it presumably comes from the stem of θειόω, which means: (i.) to smoke with sulphur and so purify; (ii.) to make divine (θεῖος), and so transmute into godship. The sentence may thus also mean “those initiated into the sulphur rite”—a not impossible rendering when we remember the Alchemical literature which had its source in Chemia-Egypt. It will also permit us to connect brimstone with Typhōn—hoofs and all!

263:1 Or the Intelligible—νοητοῦ.

263:2 εἰς-ομένων τὸ ὄν—a play on ἰσ-εῖ-ον—fut. of √ϝιδ (vid) from which comes also εἴδησις above. This may also mean “seeing” as well as “knowing,” and thus may refer to the Epopteia or Mystery of Sight, and not the preliminary Mystery of Hearing (Muēsis).

263:3 ὁσίως—another play on ἶσις; cf. lx. 3.

THE TRUE INITIATES OF ISIS

III. 1. Yet many have set down that she is Hermes’ daughter, and many [that she is] Prometheus’s,—I holding the latter as discoverer of wisdom and foreknowledge, and Hermes of the art of letters and the Muses’ art.

2. Wherefore, in Hermes-city, they call the foremost of the Muses Isis, as well as Righteousness, 4 in that she’s

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wise, 1 as has been said, 2 and shows 3 the mysteries of the Gods to those who are with truth and justice called the Carriers of the holy [symbols] and Wearers of the holy robes. 4

3. And these are they who carry the holy reason (logos) about the Gods, purged of all superstition and superfluity, in their soul, as in a chest, and cast robes round it 5—in secret disclosing such [things] of the opinion 6 about the Gods as are black and shadowy, and such as are clear and bright, just as they are suggested by the [sacred] dress.

4. Wherefore when the initiates of Isis at their “death” are adorned in these [robes], it is a symbol that this Reason (Logos) is with them; and with Him and naught else they go there. 7

5. For it is not the growing beard and wearing cloak that makes philosophers, O Klea, nor clothing in linen and shaving oneself that makes initiates of Isis; but a true Isiac is one who, when he by law 8 receives them, searches out by reason (logos) the [mysteries] shown and

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done concerning these Gods, and meditates upon the truth in them.

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Footnotes

263:4 δικαιοσύνην, or Justice (Maāt), that is, the “power of the Judge,” Hermes being Judge of the Scales. The Nine are the Paut of Hermes, he being the tenth, the mystery being here read differently from the Ogdoad point of view—that is to say, macrocosmically instead of cosmically.

264:1 Or, perhaps, the reading should be “Wisdom.”

264:2 Cf. ii. 1.

264:3 δεικνύουσαν—probably a play on δικαιοσύνην.

264:4 ἱεροφόροις καὶ ἱεροστόλοις. Plutarch by his “with truth and justice” warns the reader against taking these words to mean simply the carriers of the sacred vessels and instruments in the public processions, and the sacristans or keepers of the sacred vestments.

264:5 περιστέλλοντες, which also means componere—that is, to lay out a corpse and so to bury.

264:6 οἰήσεως = δόξης, appearance, seeming—that is, the public myth; as opposed to λόγος = ἐπιστήμη, knowledge or reality.

264:7 Or “walk there”—that is, in “Hades.” Or, again, the “death” is the death unto sin when they become Alive and walk among the “dead” or ordinary men.

264:8 That is, when the initiation is a lawful one, or really takes effect; when a man’s karma permits it, that is, after passing the proper tests.

WHY THE PRIESTS ARE SHAVEN AND WEAR LINEN

IV. 1. Now, as far as the “many” are concerned, even this commonest and smallest [secret] is hid from them,—namely, why the priests cut off their hair, and wear linen robes; for some do not at all care to know about these things, while others say that they abstain from [the use of] the sheep’s wool, as they do from its flesh, because they hold it sacred, and that they shave their heads through being in mourning, and wear linen things on account of the colour which the flax in flower sends forth, resembling the ætherial radiance 1 that surrounds the cosmos.

2. But the true cause, [the] one of all, is, as Plato says, [because]: “It is not lawful for pure to touch not pure.” 2

Now, superfluity 3 of nourishment and excretion is nothing chaste or pure; and it is from superfluities that wool and fur and hair and nails spring up and grow.

3. It would, thus, be laughable for them to cut off their own hair in the purifications, shaving themselves, and making smooth their whole body evenly, and [then] put on and wear the [hair] of animals. 4

4. For indeed we should think that Hesiod, when he says:

Nor from five-branched at fire-blooming of Gods
Cut dry from green with flashing blade 5—

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teaches that [men] ought to keep holy day only when pure of such [superfluities], and not at the sacred operations themselves have need of purification and the removal of superfluities.

5. Again, the flax grows out of the deathless earth, and yields a fruit that man may eat, and offers him a smooth pure raiment that does not weigh upon the watcher, 1 but is well joined for every hour, 2 and is the least cone-bearing, 3 as they say,—concerning which things there is another reason (logos).

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Footnotes

265:1 χρόαν—also meaning surface, skin, and tone in melody.

265:2 Phæd., 67 B.

265:3 περίσσωμα—also probably here a play on that which is “round the body” (περὶ σῶμα)—namely, the hair.

265:4 θρεμμάτων—lit., “things nourished” (from τρέφω), presumably a play on the “nourishment” (τροφή) above.

265:5 Op. et Dies, 741 f. This scrap of ancient gnomic wisdom Hesiod has preserved, I believe, from the “Orphic” fragments still in circulation in his day in Bœotia among the people from an Older Greece. I have endeavoured to translate it according to the most primitive meaning of the words. In later days it was thought that “five-branched” was the hand, and that the couplet referred to a prohibition against paring the nails at a feast of the Gods! In this sense also Plutarch partly uses it. But if I am right in my version, we have in the lines a link with that very early tradition in Greece which in later times was revived by the Later Platonic School, in a renewed contact with the ancient Chaldæan mystery-tradition of the Fire. “Five-branched” would thus mean man, or rather purified man, and the saying referred to the “pruning of this tree.” In it also we have an example of a “Pythagorean symbol” three hundred years before Pythagoras. Finally, I would remind the reader of the Saying which the Master is said to have uttered as He passed to the Passion of the Crucifixion (Luke xxiii. 31): “For if they do these things in the moist stock [A.V. green tree], what shall be done in the dry?”—presumably the quotation of an old gnomic saying or mystery logos. The “moist nature” is the feminine side of the “fiery” or “dry.”

266:1 Reading σκοποῦντι for σκέποντι—that is, the soul.

266:2 εὐάρμοστον δὲ πρὸς πᾶσαν ὥραν—“well adapted for every season” is the common translation; the “hour,” however, is a technical astrological term.

266:3 Vulg., “lice-producing”—but φθείρ also means a special kind of pine producing small cones; and the great cone was a symbol of the Logos, and the small cone of physical generation. It is also connected with φθείρω, meaning to corrupt, and so to breed corruption.

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OF THE REFRAINING FROM FLESH AND SALT AND SUPERFLUITIES

V. 1. And the priests handle so hardly 1 the nature of superfluities, that they not only deprecate the many kinds of pulse, and of meats the sheep-flesh 2 kinds and swine-flesh kinds, as making much superfluity, but also at their times of purification they remove the salts from the grains, 3 having other further reasons as well as the fact that it makes the more thirsty and more hungry sharpen their desire the more.

2. For to argue that salts are not pure owing to the multitude of small lives 4 that are caught 5 and die in them when they solidify themselves, as Aristagoras said, 6 is naïve.

3. They are, moreover, said to water the Apis also from a special well, and by all means to keep him from the Nile,—not that they think His 7 water stained with blood because of the Crocodile, 8 as some think (for nothing is so precious to Egyptians as the Nile),

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but that the water of Nile’s superfluity 1 on being drunk seems to make fat, nay, rather to make much too much of flesh.

4. And [so] they do not wish the Apis to be so nor yet themselves, but [wish] to wear their bodies on their souls compact and light, and neither to com-press nor op-press them by the mortal part prevailing and its weighing down of the divine.

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Footnotes

267:1 Vulg., “endure with such difficulty” or “feel such disgust at.”

267:2 Referring usually to small animals of the sheep and goat kind, and more generally to all sacrificial animals.

267:3 Or, perhaps, more generally, “the salt from their food.” It more probably refers to mineral and not to vegetable salts.

267:4 That is animalculæ.

267:5 ἁλισκόμενα—probably a word-play on ἅλας (salts).

267:6 Müller, ii. 99. Aristagoras was a Greek writer on Egypt, who flourished about the last quarter of the 4th century B.C.

267:7 Namely the Nile, as Osiris, or the Great Deep.

267:8 Mystically the “Leviathan” (e.g. of the “Ophites”) who lived in the Great Deep. Cf. also Ps. civ. 26, where, speaking of the Great Sea (25), it is written: “There go the ships [the barides, boats, or vehicles of souls], and there is that Leviathan [LXX. Dragon] whom thou hast fashioned to take his pastime [LXX. sport or mock] therein.”

268:1 τὸ Νειλῷον ὕδωρ—τὰ Νειλῷα was the Feast of the Overflowing of the Nile.

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.

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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.

ON FISH TABOOS

VII. 1. As to sea-fish, all [Egyptians] abstain generally (not from all [fish] but) from some;—as, for example, those of the Oxyrhynchus nome from those caught with a hook, for as they venerate the sharp-snouted fish, 5 they fear that the hook 6 is not pure when “sharp-snout” is caught by it; 7 while those of the Syēnē nome [abstain from] the “devourer,” 8 for that it seems that it appears together with the rising of the Nile, and that it shows their 9 growth to those in joy, seen as a self-sent messenger.

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2. Their priests, upon the other hand, abstain from all; and [even] on the ninth of the first month, 1 when every one of the rest of the Egyptians eats a broiled fish before his front door, 2 the priests do not taste it, but burn their fishes to ashes before the doors [of the Temple]. 3

3. And they have two reasons [for this], of which I will later on take up the sacred and extraordinary [one], according with the facts religiously deduced concerning Osiris and Typhon. The evident, the one that’s close at hand, in showing forth the fish as a not necessary and a not unsuperfluous cooked food, bears witness unto Homer, who makes neither the Phæacians of luxurious lives, nor yet the Ithakēsian Island men, use fish, nor yet Odysseus’s Companions 4 in so great a Voyage and on the Sea before they came to the last Strait. 5

4. And generally [the priests] think that the sea’s from fire and is beyond the boundaries—nor part nor element [of earth], but of another kind, a superfluity cor-rupted and cor-rupting.

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Footnotes

269:5 τὸν ὀξύρυγχον—perhaps the pike.

269:6 ἄγκιστρον—dim. of ἄγκος, meaning a “bend” of any kind. Perhaps it may be intended as a play on the ankh tie or “noose of life,” the well-known Egyptian symbol, generally called the crux ansata.

269:7 If we read αὑτῷ for αὐτῷ it would suggest a mystic meaning, namely, “falls into his own snare.”

269:8 φαγροῦ—Vulg., sea-bream; but Hesychius spells it φάγωρος, connecting it with φαγεῖν, to devour.

269:9 Or “his” (the Nile’s); but the “self-sent messenger” (αὐτάγγελος) seems to demand “their,” and so suggests a mystical sense.

270:1 Copt. Thoth—corr. roughly with September.

270:2 πρὸ τῆς αὐλείου θύρας—that is, the outside door into the αὐλή, or court of the house. Cf. the title of the Trismegistic treatise given by Zosimus—“The Inner Door.” There may, perhaps, be some mystical connection.

270:3 Cf. Luke xxiv. 42: “And they gave Him a piece of broiled fish.” This was after His “resurrection.” Also cf. Talmud Bab., “Sanhedrin,” 103a: “That thou shalt not have a son or disciple who burns his food publicly, like Jeschu ha-Notzri” (D. J. L., 189).

270:4 Compare the Companions of Horus in the Solar Boat.

270:5 I fancy there must be some under-meaning here, and so I have put the key-words in capitals.

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THE ONION AND PIG TABOOS

VIII. 1. For nothing reasonless, or [purely] fabulous, or from [mere] superstition, as some suppose, has been incorporated into the foundation of the sacred operations, but some things have moral and needful causes, while others are not without a share in the embellishment of science and physics,—as, for instance, in the case of the onion.

2. [The story] that Diktys, 1 the nursling of Isis, 2 fell into the river and was drowned, in trying to catch the onions with his hands, 3 [is] utterly incredible.

3. The priests, however, keep themselves pure of the onion, and treat it hardly, being [ever] on the watch against it, because it is the only thing whose nature is to be well nourished and to flourish when the moon’s a-wane.

It’s food 4 for neither fast nor feast,—neither for the former in that it makes those feeding 5 on it thirst, while for the latter it makes them weep.

4. And in like manner also they consider the sow an unholy animal, because it seems to be covered especially when the moon is on the wane, while the bodies of those who drink its milk burst forth 6 into leprosy 7 and scabrous roughnesses.

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5. And the tale (logos) they tell after once only 1 sacrificing and eating pig at the full-moon—[namely] that Typhon when pursuing pig towards full-moon found the wooden coffin in which the body of Osiris lay dead, and scattered it in pieces 2—they do not all receive, thinking it is a trifling mis-hearing [of the true tale] like many more. 3

6. But they say their ancients so protected themselves against softness [of living] and extravagance and agreeable sensations, that they said a slab was set up in the holy place at Thebes with deprecations in-lettered on it against Meinis 4 the King, who first changed the Egyptians from the way of life without riches and without needs and plain.

7. Moreover, Technactis, father of Bocchoris, 5 is said, when marching on the Arabs, 6 when his baggage was delayed, 7 to have used with joy the food nearest at hand, and afterwards to have fallen into deep sleep on a bed of straw, 8 and so embraced frugality; and in

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consequence of this [he is said] to have execrated the Meinian, and, with the approval of the priests, to have graven his execration on stone.

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Footnotes

271:1 Diktys = the Netter. In other myth-cycles Diktys was son of Poseidon, and is often called simply the Fisher.

271:2 Cf. xvi., xvii.

271:3 ἐπιδρασσόμενον. The Fisher-soul, therefore, presumably fell out of the celestial boat or baris of Isis, and the myth may not be quite so ἀπίθανον as Plutarch would have us think. Cf. xvii. 3. Ordinary onions do not grow in rivers.

271:4 Or “fit”—πρόσφορον.

271:5 τοὺς προσφερομένους—a word-play on “food.”

271:6 ἐξανθεῖ—lit., “flower.”

271:7 λεπρὰν—that which makes the skin scaly and rough (λεπρὸς, as opposed to λεῖος, smooth); there being also, I believe, a mystical under-meaning in it all.

272:1 Apparently once a year.

272:2 Cf. xviii. 1.

272:3 This makes us doubt whether there may not be a number of similar “mis-hearings” in the myth as handed on by Plutarch.

272:4 Probably this should be Μνεῦις (Mnevis), the sacred black bull, venerated as the symbol of the ka of Rā, and so it may contain some mystical allusion. Cf. xxxiii. 5.

272:5 τέχνακτις is, perhaps, a word-play on τέχ (√τεκ, τίκτω), “creative” or “generative,” and ἀκτίς, “ray”; while βοκχόρις may also be a play—such as, if one is allowed to speculate wildly, βοῦς, “kine,” and χορός, “dance,” reflecting the celestial βουκόλος or Cowherd.

272:6 It is to be noticed that there was an Arab nome in Egypt, and that Egypt was mapped out into a mystic body; and further, that the different surrounding nations were regarded as representative each of certain powers.

272:7 Or it may mean “when his filth delayed him,” and so contain a mystical implication.

272:8 ἐπὶ στιβάδος. It may also mean “on the way.”

THE KINGS, THE RIDDLES OF THE PRIESTS, AND THE MEANING OF AMOUN

IX. 1. The kings were appointed from the priests or from the warriors,—the one caste possessing worth and honour through manliness, and the other through wisdom.

2. And he who was appointed from the warriors immediately became [one] of the priests and shared in their philosophy,—which for the most part was hidden in myths and words (logoi), containing dim reflections and transparencies of truth, as, doubtless, they themselves make indirectly plain by fitly setting sphinxes up before the temples, as though their reasoning about the Gods possessed a wisdom wrapped in riddle. 1

3. Indeed, the seat 2 of Athena (that is Isis, as they think) at Saïs used to have the following inscription on it:

“I am all that has been and is and shall be, and no mortal has ever re-vealed 3 my robe.” 4

4. Moreover, while the majority think that the proper name of Zeus with the Egyptians is Amoun (which we by a slight change call Ammōn), Manethō, the Sebennyte, considers it His hidden [one], and that His [power of] hiding is made plain by the very articulation of the sound.

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5. Hecatæus 1 of Abdēra, however, says that the Egyptians use this word to one another also when they call one to them, for that its sound has got the power of “calling to.” 2

6. Wherefore when they call to the First God—who they think is the same for every man—as unto the Unmanifest and Hidden, invoking Him to make Him manifest and plain to them, they say “Amoun!”

So great, then, was the care Egyptians took about the wisdom which concerned the mysteries of the Gods.

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Footnotes

273:1 Cf. M. L. ridellus, F. rideau, a curtain or veil.

273:2 The technical term for the sitting statue of a god or goddess.

273:3 ἀπεκάλυψεν—that is, no one within duality has expressed or shown that in which this aspect of feminine life veils itself.

273:4 For this mystical logos of Net (Neith), the Great Mother, cf. Budge, op. cit., i. 459 f.

274:1 H. flourished 550-475 B.C. A. was a town on the southern shore of Thrace.

274:2 προσκλητικήν. H. thus seems to suggest that it (? Amen) was a “word of power,” a word of magic for evoking the ka of a person, or summoning it to appear. It does not seem very probable that the Egyptians shouted it after one another in the street.

OF THE GREEK DISCIPLES OF EGYPTIANS AND OF PYTHAGORAS AND HIS SYMBOLS

X. 1. And the most wise of the Greeks also are witnesses—Solon, Thales, Plato, Eudoxus, Pythagoras, and, as some say, Lycurgus as well—through coming to Egypt and associating with her priests.

2. And so they say that Eudoxus was hearer of Chonouphis 3 of Memphis, and Solon of Sonchis of Saïs, and Pythagoras of Œnuphis of Heliopolis.

3. And the last especially, as it appears, being contemplated and contemplating, 4 brought back to the

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memory of his men their 1 symbolic and mysterious [art], containing their dogmas in dark sayings.

4. For most of the Pythagoric messages leave out nothing of what are called the hieroglyphic letters; for instance: “Eat not on what bears two”; 2 “Sit not down on measure”; 3 “Plant not phœnix”; 4 “Stir not fire with knife 5 in house.”

5. And, for myself at least, I think that his men’s calling the monad Apollo, 6 and the dyad Artemis, and the hebdomad Athena, and the first cube 7 Poseidon, also resembles those whose statues preside over the sacred places, and whose dramas are acted [there], yea and [the names] painted 8 [there as well].

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6. For they write the King and Lord, Osiris, 1 with “eye” and “sceptre.” 2 But some interpret the name also as “many-eyed,” since in the Egyptian tongue os means “many,” and iri “eye.”

7. And they write Heaven, as unageing through eternity, 3 with “heart,” [that is] spirit, 4 [rising] from “altar” 5 underneath.

8. And at Thebes there used to be set up hand-less statues of judges, while the [statue] of the chief judge had its eyes tight shut,—seeing that Justice neither gives nor takes gift, and is not worked on.

9. And for the warriors, “scarab” was their seal-emblem;—for the scarab is not female, but all [scarabs] are male, 6 and they engender their seed into matter [or material] which they make into spheres, preparing a field not so much of nourishment 7 as of genesis.

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Footnotes

274:3 That is, presumably, Knouph or Knef.

274:4 θαυμασθεὶς καὶ θαυμάσας, passive and active of the verb of θαῦμα, generally translated “wonder,” but meaning radically “look at with awe”; hence contemplate religiously (the art of θεωρία), and hence the Platonic (? Pythagorean) saying: “The beginning of philosophy is wonder.” Compare the variants of the new-found Jesus logos (“Let not him who seeks,” etc.), which preserve both θαμβηθεὶς and θαυμάσας.

275:1 That is, to the men of Greece the art of the Egyptians.

275:2 ἐπὶ δίφρον (= δι-φόρον)—variously translated “off a chair,” “in a chariot,” hence “on a journey.” “That which bears two” is that which either carries two or brings forth two; the logos is thus, perhaps, a warning against falling into duality of any kind, and hence an injunction to contemplate unity.

275:3 The χοῖνιξ was a dry measure, the standard of a man’s (slave’s) daily allowance of corn. Hence, perhaps, in one sense the symbol may mean: “Be not content with your ‘daily bread’ only”; yet any meaning connected with “that which measures” would suit the interpretation, such as, “Best not on measure, but move in the unimmeasurable.”

275:4 φοῖνιξ means a “Phœnician” (as opposed to an Egyptian), a “date palm” (as opposed to a “pine”), and a “phœnix”; in colour this was “purple red,” “purple,” or “crimson.” The phœnix proper rose again from its ashes; its colour was golden. φυτύειν means “plant,” but also “engender,” “beget.”

275:5 μάχαιρα was, in Homeric times, the technical term for the sacred sacrificial knife—the knife that kills and divides the victim’s body, while the fire transmutes and consumes it. There may, perhaps, be some connection between the symbol and the gnomic couplet of Hesiod quoted above (iv. 3); it is, however, generally said to mean, “Do not provoke an angry man,” but this leaves out of consideration the concluding words “in house.”

275:6 Cf. lxxv. 14.

275:7 Presumably the ogdoad or eight.

275:8 Or “written” or “engraved.”

276:1 Eg. Ȧsȧr.

276:2 Generally a “throne” in the hieroglyphs. But for the numerous variants, see Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 113. Cf. li. 1 below.

276:3 ἀϊδιότητα—lit., form-(or idea-) less-ness; transcending all forms.

276:4 θυμὸν, one of the most primitive terms of Greek psychology—spirit or soul, or more generally life-principle.

276:5 ἐσχάρα, an altar for burnt offerings; here probably symbolising Earth as the syzygy of Heaven.

276:6 It is to be remembered that the “mark” of the warriors was their manliness (ix. 1).

276:7 Matter (ὕλη) being the Nurse, “according to Plato.” The legend was that the scarab beetle deposited its seed into dung which it first made into balls (lxxiv. 5).

ADVICE TO KLEA CONCERNING THE HIDDEN MEANING OF THE MYTHS

XI. 1. When, therefore, thou hearest the myth-sayings of the Egyptians concerning the Gods—wanderings and

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dismemberings, and many such passions 1—thou shouldst remember what has been said above, and think none of these things spoken as they [really] are in state and action.

2. For they do not call Hermes “Dog” as a proper name, but they associate the watching and waking from sleep of the animal, 2 who by knowing and not knowing determines friend from foe (as Plato says 3), with the most Logos-like of the Gods.

3. Nor do they think that the sun rises as a new-born babe from a lotus, but so they write “sun-rise,” riddling the re-kindling of the sun from moist [elements]. 4

4. Moreover, they called the most crude and awesome King of the Persians (Ōchus) 5—who killed many and finally cut the throat of Apis and made a hearty meal off him with his friends—“Knife,” 6 and they call him so unto this day in the Catalogue 7 of their kings,—not, of course, signifying his essence by its proper name, 8 but likening the hardness of his mood 9 to an instrument of slaughter.

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5. So too shalt thou, if thou hearest and receivest the [mysteries] about the Gods from those who interpret the myth purely and according to the love of wisdom, and if thou doest ever and keepest carefully the customs observed by the priests, and if thou thinkest that thou wilt offer neither sacrifice nor act more pleasing to the Gods than the holding a true view concerning them,—thou shalt escape an ill no less than being-without-the-gods, 1 [that is to say] the fearing-of-the-daimones. 2

XII. 1. The myth which is told is—in its very shortest possible [elements], after the purely useless and superfluous have been removed—as follows:

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Footnotes

277:1 παθήματα—the technical mystery-term for such experiences, or sensible knowing.

277:2 Or “of the Animal”—the Living One or Animal Itself or World Soul, if Dog is taken to mean the genus or Great Dog.

277:3 Rep., ii. 375 F.

277:4 That is, the ideogram of a new-born child with its finger on its lips seated on the bosom of the lotus signified “sun-rise,” and “sun-rise” within as well as without. The “re-kindling” or “lighting up again” was presumably also a symbol of the “new birth from above.”

277:5 Artaxerxes III.; the priests, however, presumably used this incident to illustrate some more general truth. A similar story is also related of Cambyses (xliv. 8); they also called Ōchus “Ass” (xxxi. 4).

277:6 The sacrificial knife again, as in x. 2.

277:7 Cf. xxxviii. 6.

277:8 Perhaps even meaning by “his name of power.”

277:9 Or “of the turn,” where it might refer to the turn of Egypt’s fate-wheel.

278:1 Or “atheism.”

278:2 Generally rendered “superstition.”

THE MYSTERY-MYTH

2. They say that when Rhea 3 secretly united with Kronos, Helios on sensing 4 it imprecated her not to bring forth in month or year. 5

3. That Hermes being in love with the Goddess, came to conjunction [with her]; then playing draughts 6 against Selene, 7 and winning 8 the seventieth of each

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of the lights, he con-duced from all 1 five days and in-duced them into the three hundred and sixty [days]—which Egyptians call the “now in-duced,” 2 and keep as birthdays of the Gods. 3

4. [And they say] that on the first Osiris was born, and that a voice fell out 4 together with him on his being brought forth—to wit: “The Lord of all forth comes to light.”

5. But some say that a certain Pamylē, 5 being moistened 6 from the holy [place] of Zeus, heard a voice directing her to proclaim with outcry that “Great King Good-doing Osiris is born”; and that because of this she nursed Osiris, Kronos entrusting him to her, and they keep with mystic rites the Pamylia in his honour, similar to the Phallephoria. 7

6. And on the second [they say] Arouēris [was born]—whom they call Apollo, and some call Elder Horus. 8

On the third that Typhon, neither in season nor in place, but breaking through with a blow, leapt forth through her side. 9

On the fourth that Isis was born in all moist [conditions].

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On the fifth Nephthys, whom they name End and Aphroditē, while some [call] her also Victory.

7. And [they say] that Osiris and Arouēris were from Helios, Isis from Hermes, and Typhon and Nephthys from Kronos, and therefore the kings considering the third 1 of the “induced” [days] nefast, used neither to consult nor serve themselves till night. 2

8. And [they say] that Nephthys was married to Typhon; 3 but Isis and Osiris being in love with each other, united even before they were born, down in the Womb beneath the Darkness. 4

9. Some, moreover, say that Arouēris thus came to birth, and that he is called Elder Horus by Egyptians, but Apollo by Greeks.

XIII. 1. And [they say] that when Osiris was king, he straightway set free the Egyptians from a life from which they could find no way out and like unto that of wild beasts, 5 both setting fruits before them, and laying down laws, and teaching them to honour the Gods.

2. And that subsequently he went over the whole earth, clearing it, 6 not in the least requiring arms, but drawing the multitude to himself by charming them with persuasion and reason (logos), 7 with song and every art the Muses give; 8 and that for this

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cause he seems to the Greeks to be the same as Dionysus. 1

3. And [they say] that while he was away, Typhon attempted no revolution, owing to Isis keeping very careful guard, and having the power 2 in her hands, holding it fast; but that when he [Osiris] came back, he made with art a wile for him, con-juring seventy-two men, and having as co-worker a queen coming out of Æthiopia, whom they call Asō. 3

4. But that after measuring out for himself in secret the body of Osiris, 4 and having devised, according to the size, 5 a beautiful and extraordinarily ornamented chest, 6 brought it into the banqueting hall. 7

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5. And that when they were delighted at the sight and wondered, Typhon, in sport, promised to give the chest to him who could make himself exactly equal to it by laying himself down in it. 1

6. And that when all were trying, one after another, since no one fitted, Osiris stepped in and laid himself down.

7. And they who were present running up, dashed on the lid, and, after some [of them] had closed it down with fastenings, and others had poured hot lead over it, they carried it out to the River, 2 and let it go into the Sea by way of the Tanitic 3 mouth, which [they say] Egyptians call even to this day by a hateful and abominable name.

8. These things they say were done on the seventeenth of the month Athur, 4 in which [month] the Sun passes through the Scorpion; it being the eight-and-twentieth year of Osiris’ reign.

9. Some, however, say that he had lived and not reigned so long. 5

XIV. 1. And as the Pans and Satyrs 6 that inhabit round Chemmis 7 were the first to sense the

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passion 1 [of Osiris], and give tongue concerning what was being done, [they say] that on this account sudden disturbances and emotions of crowds are even unto this day called “panics.”

2. But when Isis 2 sensed it, she cut off one of her curls, and put on a mourning dress, whence the city to this day bears the name Koptō. 3

But others think the name signifies privation, 4 for they say that koptein is to de-prive.

3. And [they say] that she, wandering about in every direction, and finding no way out, never approached any one without accosting him; nay, she asked even little children whom she happened to meet, about the chest.

4. And they happened to have seen, and showed the mouth 5 through which the friends of Typhon let the vessel 6 go into the Sea.

5. Because of this [they say] Egyptians believe that little children have prophetic power, and they especially divine from the sounds of their voices, when playing in the holy places and shouting about anything.

6. 7 And [they say] that when [Isis] was aware that

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[paragraph continues]Osiris in ignorance had fallen in love and united himself with her sister 1 as with herself, and seeing as proof the honey-clover 2 wreath which he had left behind with Nephthys, she sought for the babe—(for she [N.] exposed it immediately she bore it, through fear of Typhon 3).

7. And after it was found with toil and trouble—dogs 4 guiding Isis to it it—was reared and became her guard and follower, being called Anubis, and is said to guard the Gods, as their dogs men.

XV. 1. It was from him she got intelligence about the chest:—that after it had been wave-tossed out by the Sea to the Byblos 5 country, the land-wash had gently brought it to rest in a certain heather-bush.” 6

2. And the heather-bush, in a short time running up into a most beautiful and very large young tree, enfolded, and grew round it, 7 and hid it entirely within itself.

3. And the King, 8 marvelling at the greatness of the

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tree, after cutting off the branches, and rounding off the trunk that surrounded the coffin without its being seen, 1 set it up as the prop of his roof.

4. And they say that on her hearing of these things by the daimonian spirit of a voice, 2 Isis came to Byblos, and, sitting down at a fountain-head, downcast and weeping, held converse with no one else, but she embraced and showed affection to the maids of the Queen, curling 3 their hair and exhaling from herself on their skin a marvellous fragrance.

5. And when the Queen saw her maids, longing for the ambrosia-smelling hair and skin of the stranger came upon her.

And so when she had been sent for and had become an inmate [of the palace, the Queen] made her nurse of her little one.

6. And the name of the King, they say, was Malkander, 4 while her name according to some was Astarte, according to others Saōsis, and according to others Nemanous, 5—or whatever is the name for which the Greek equivalent would be Athenaïs. 6

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XVI. 1. And [they say] that instead of giving it 1 the breast, Isis reared the little one by putting her finger 2 into its mouth, and that at night she burnt round 3 the mortal [elements] of its body, and, turning herself into a swallow, flew round the pillar and twittered a dirge; until the Queen, through spying [on her] and crying out 4 when she saw the babe being burnt round, deprived it of its immortality. 5

2. That when the Goddess revealed herself, she claimed for herself the pillar of the roof; and, taking it down with the greatest care, she cut away the heather-tree from round it, then wrapping this 6 up in fine linen, and pouring the juices of sweet herbs over it, 7 she placed it in the hands of the royal couple; and even unto this day the people of Byblos venerate the wood 8 lying in the holy place of Isis.

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3. As for the coffin, she flung herself round it, and kept moaning so long, that the younger of the little ones of the king died away; 1 and, taking the elder with herself, and placing the coffin on a boat, she sailed away.

4. And when the River Phædrus 2 raised too rough a wind 3 just after dawn, 4 waxing wrath, she dried up his stream.

XVII. 1. And [they say] that when first she found solitude and was by herself, she opened the chest, and laying her face on his face, she kissed [him] and shed tears.

2. And that when the little one came up in silence from behind and understood, on sensing it she turned herself about, and passionately gave him an awe-ful look. And the little one could not hold himself up against the awe of her, and died.

3. But some say [it was] not thus, but, as it has been said before, 5 that he fell out 6 into the river.

4. And he has honours owing to the Goddess, for the Manerōs 7 whom Egyptians hymn at their symposia is he.

5. While others relate that the boy was called Palæstinos 8 or Pelousios, and that the city 9 was named after him when it was founded by the Goddess; and that the Manerōs who is hymned was the first to discover the art of the Muses. 10

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6. But some say that it is the name of no one, but a manner of speech for men drinking and feasting,—with the meaning “May such and such things be present in becoming measure!” For the Egyptians on every such occasion shout out this, it being indicated to them by “Manerōs.”

7. Just as, doubtless, also their being shown the image of a dead man carried round in a small wooden coffin, is not a reminder of the Osirian passion, as some suppose; but it is in order to exhort them while filled with wine to make use of things present, in that all will very presently be such [as it], that they bring in an unpleasing after-revel.

XVIII. 1. And [they say] that when Isis had gone a journey to her son Horus, who was being reared at Boutos, 1 and had put away 2 the chest, 3 Typhon, taking his dogs 4 out by night towards the moon, came upon it; and recognising the body, tore it into fourteen pieces, and scattered them abroad.

2. And Isis [they say] on learning this, searched for them in a papyrus skiff (baris) sailing away through the marshes; 5 whence those who sail in papyrus hulls are not injured by the crocodiles, either because they 6 fear or rather revere the Goddess. 7

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3. And it is because of this [they say] that many tombs of Osiris are spoken of in Egypt 1—through her performing burial rites on meeting with each piece.

4. Some, however, say no; but that making herself images [of them] she distributed these to each city, 2 as though she were giving it the [whole] body, in order that it might have honours from the multitude, and that even if Typhon should get the better of Horus, he might renounce his search for the true tomb when many were spoken of and pointed out.

5. Now, the only one of the parts of Osiris which Isis did not find was that which causes awe; for that it was cast straightway into the River, and the scaly-coat, 3 and the devourer, 4 and the sharp-snout 5 ate it up—which [they say] among fishes are considered specially expiate; 6 and that Isis, making herself a counterfeit instead of it, consecrated the phallus; in honour of which the Egyptians keep festival even to this day. 7

XIX. 1. Thereafter Osiris, coming to Horus out of

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the Invisible, 1 worked through him and trained him for the fight.

2. He then put this test question to him: “What does he consider fairest?” And when he said: “Helping father and mother in ill plight,”—he asked a second: “What animal does he think most useful for those who go out to fight?”

3. And when Horus said “Horse,” he marvelled at him, and was quite puzzled why he did not say “Lion” rather than “Horse.” 2

4. Accordingly Horus said: “‘Lion’ is a needful thing to one requiring help, but ‘Horse’ [can] scatter in pieces the foe in flight and consume him utterly.” 3

Thus hearing, Osiris rejoiced that Horus was fitly prepared.

5. And it is said that as many were changing over to the side of Horus, Thūēris, 4 Typhon’s concubine, came too; and that a certain serpent pursuing after her was cut in pieces by those round Horus. 5 And to-day on this account they cast down a small rope and cut it in pieces for all to see. 6

6. The fight lasted for many days, and Horus won. Nevertheless, when Isis received Typhon in bonds, she did not make away with him. Far from it; she unbound him and let him go.

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7. Horus, however, did not bear this temperately; but, laying hands on his mother, he drew off the crown from her head. Whereupon Hermes 1 crowned her with a head-dress of cow-horns.

8. And [they say] that also when Typhon got the chance of bringing a bastardy suit against Horus, and Hermes was counsel for the defence, Horus was judged legitimate by the Gods. 2

And that [afterwards] Typhon was fought under in two other fights.

9. And that Isis brought forth from her union with Osiris after his death 3 Harpocrates 4—who missed the month and was weak in his limbs from below upwards. 5

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Footnotes

278:3 The Mother of the Gods—“Flowing,” that is, motion pure and simple, unordered or chaotic.

278:4 In the most primitive meaning of the word αἰσθόμενον—from √αισ, lengthened form of αι (compare ἀΐω).

278:5 μηνὶ μητ᾽ ἐνιαυτῷ. Both words are connected with roots meaning “one” in ancient dialects; μὴν = μ-εὶς (Æol.) and ἔνος = an-nus (Lat.). Cf. εἵς, μ-ία, ἕν; hence ἐνι-αυτός = “one-same.” The Goddess, therefore, apart from the Sun, could only bring forth in a day.

278:6 πέττια,—πεσσός was an oval-shaped stone for playing a game like our draughts; it was also used for the board on which the game was played, divided by 5 straight lines each way, and therefore into 36 squares.

278:7 Sc. the moon.

278:8 Or “taking away.”

279:1 Sc. the lights.

279:2 ἐπαγομέναις—or “now intercalated.”

279:3 This is an exceedingly puzzling statement. The “lights” cannot be the “lights” of the moon, of which there were 30 phases. It more probably has some connectipn with 360, the 70th of which works out at 5⋅142857—a number not so very far removed from our own calculations. The “each” in the text may thus be an error.

279:4 A voice from heaven, a Bath-kol, proceeding from the Womb of Rhea.

279:5 παμίλη—presumably a play on πᾶν (all) and ὕλη (matter).

279:6 ὑδρευομένην—presumably by the Great Moistener; it is, however, generally translated “drawing water.”

279:7 That is the “Phallus-Bearing.”

279:8 Eg. Heru-ur.

279:9 πλεῦρα—meaning in man radically “rib”; also side of a square, and root of a square (or cubic) number. Typhon would be represented by the diagonal.

280:1 That is, the birthday of Typhon.

280:2 A strange sentence; but as the kings were considered Gods, they probably worshipped themselves, or at least their own ka, and consulted themselves as oracles.

280:3 Presumably as being opposite, or as hating one another.

280:4 Cf. liv. 4.

280:5 Metaphors reminiscent of the symbolism of the so-called Book of the Dead.

280:6 Sc. of wild beasts; but may also mean “softening it,” when Osiris stands for Water, and again “making it mild,” or “civilising it.”

280:7 He himself being the Logos.

280:8 μουσικῆς—music, in the modern meaning of the term, was only one of the arts of the Muses, the nine daughters of Zeus.

281:1 Διό-νυσος—that is, “he of the Mount (νῦσα) of Zeus.”

281:2 That is “sovereignty.”

281:3 Probably the prototype of the Alchemical Azoth. Æthiopia was the land of the black folk south of Egypt, the land par excellence of the black magicians as opposed to the good ones of the Egyptians (this, of course, being the Egyptian point of view). The Osiris-myth was in Egyptian, presumably, as easily interpretable into the language of magic and con-juration as into other values. Compare the Demotic folk-tales of Khamuas, in Grifiith’s Stories of the High Priests of Memphis, for how this view of it would read in Egyptian. Æthiopia would also mean the Dark Earth as opposed to the Light Heaven.

281:4 The “body of Osiris” may mean the cosmos (great or little), as the “body of Adam,” its copy in the Kabalah.

281:5 Or, “according to the greatness”—using “greatness” in its Gnostic signification, as here meaning the great cosmos and also the cosmic body of man.

281:6 In Pythagorean terms, “an odd-ly ordered rectangular encasement”—referring, perhaps, to a certain configuration of cosmic permanent atoms. But see the plate which Isaac Myer calls “A Medieval Idea of the Makrokosm, in the Heavenly Zodiacal Ark,” but which intitles itself “Forma Exterior Arcæ Noë ex Descriptione Mosis.” This is a coffin, and within it lies the dead Christ. The plate is prefixed to p. 439 of Myer’s Qabbalah (Philadelphia, 1888). It also presumably refers to the “germ” of the cosmic robe of the purified man, the “robe of glory.” In mysticism the metaphors cannot be kept unmixed, for it is the apotheosis of syncretism.

281:7 Lit., the “drinking together,” referring perhaps to the conjunction of certain cosmic forces, and also microcosmically to souls in a state of joy or festivity or bliss, prior to incarnation.

282:1 That is, prove the “permanent atoms” were his own—if we think in terms of reincarnation.

282:2 Sc. the Sacred Nile, Great Jordan, etc., the Stream of Ocean, which, flowing downwards, is the birth of men, and upwards, the birth of Gods.

282:3 ταν-ιτικοῦ—probably a word-play connected with √ταν, “to stretch,” and so make tense or thin, or expand, and so the “widestretched mouth of the Great River.” Cf. the Titans or Stretchers.

282:4 Copt. Hathōr—corr. roughly to November.

282:5 Cf. xlii. 4.

282:6 Two classes of elemental existences.

282:7 That is Ȧpu, the Panopolis of the Greeks; the name Chemmis, the modern Akhmīm, is derived from an old Egyptian name. See Budge, op. cit., ii. 188.

283:1 πάθος—the technical term of what was enacted in the mystery-drama.

283:2 As Mother Nature.

283:3 Meaning “I cut”; and in mid. “I cut or beat the breast,” as a sign of mourning.

283:4 “The depriving things of their power” or “negation”; Osiris being the fertilising or generative or positive power.

283:5 Sc. the way or passage. In little children the life force is not sexually polarised.

283:6 ἀγγεῖον—a vase or vessel of any kind, hence funerary urn or even coffin; but μεταγγίζειν means “to pour from one vessel into another,” and μεταγγισμὸς is the Pythagorean technical term for metempsychosis or palingenesis.

283:7 This paragraph, which breaks the narrative, is introduced to give the myth of the birth of Anubis.

284:1 Sc. Nephthys.

284:2 Meli-lote—lotos in Greek stands for several plants; it might be translated as “honey-lotus.” Cf. xxxviii. 5.

284:3 Her legitimate spouse.

284:4 A term used frequently among the Greeks (who presumably got the idea elsewhere) for the servants, agents, or watchers of the higher Gods; thus the Eagle is called the “winged dog” of Zeus Æsch., Pr., 1022). “Dog,” as we have seen (xi. 1, n.) signifies a power of the World, Soul or Great Animal, also of individual souls.

284:5 That is, “Papyrus.” This Byblos was a “city in the Papyrus Swamps of the Delta.” (So Budge, op. cit., ii. 190.)

284:6 ἐρείκη—probably a play on the root-meaning of ἐρείκειν, “to quiver,” is intended. The Egyptian erīca was taller and more bushy than ours. Or it may be the tamarisk; elsewhere it is called a mulberry-tree.

284:7 Sc. the “coffin”—perhaps here signifying what has lately been called the “permanent atom” in man.

284:8 The ruler of the form-side of things.

285:1 On the erroneously called “Gnostic” gems, the lopped trunk is a frequent symbol; the lopped “five-branched,” presumably.

285:2 Notice the three stages of awareness: (i.) the babbling of children; (ii.) the intelligence given by the dog; (iii.) the daimonian spirit of a voice (Heb. Bath-kol).

285:3 Isis, when she first lost Osiris, cut off a curl (xiv. 2).

285:4 Apparently, though curiously, a play on the Semitic MLK or Malek, “king,” and the Greek andr, “man”—that is, “king of men.”

285:5 Or “Nemanōs.” The names seem to have been impartially maltreated by the copyists; thus we find such variants as Aspartē, Sooses, Neimanoë.

285:6 There was among the ancients an art of name-translation, as Plato tells us in the Story of Atlantis, in which the Atlantic names he says, were translated into Greek by Solon or by the priests of Saïs. Here, I believe, there is also a word-play intended. Isis, as we have seen, was pre-eminently Nurse, τίτθη, a further intensification of the intensified τί-θη; from √θα, “suckle”; the common form of “nurse” was τι-θή-νη. On the contrary, ἀθηναΐς is a daughter or derivative of ἀ-θή-νη, one who does not give suck; for Athena was born from the head and was the virgin goddess par excellence. Mythologically, Athenais was wife of Alalkomeneus, the eponymous hero of a city in Bœotia, where was a very ancient temple of Athena. In the Pindaric ode quoted in S. (1) of chapter, “Myth of Man in the Mysteries,” Alalkomeneus is given as one of the equivalents for the “first man.”

286:1 The child’s name was Diktys, according to viii. 2.

286:2 The √δεκ in δάκτυλος is said to be the same as that in δέκα, “ten,” and “ten” is the number of “perfection.”

286:3 Or “away.”

286:4 Lit., “croaking” like a raven, to match the “twittering” of the swallow.

286:5 This presumably hints that Isis, as the Divine Mother, endeavours to make all perfect and sound, while the earthly mother prevents this.

286:6 Sc. the erīca.

286:7 Cf. John xix. 40: “So they took the body of Jesus and wrapped it in fine linen together with sweet herbs.”

286:8 τὸ ξύλον—the term used repeatedly in the New Testament for the cross.

287:1 Or “swooned,” or lost consciousness.

287:2 φάιδρος—lit., Bright, Beaming, Shining—that is, the Sun-stream.

287:3 Or “breath” (πνεῦμα).

287:4 That is “at sun-rise.”

287:5 Cf. viii. 2.

287:6 Sc. of the boat of Isis.

287:7 Μαν-έρως. I fancy this is a play, in conjunction with the κατα-μαν-θάν-οντα, and ἀπο-θάν-οντα (the “understanding” and “dying away”) above; the name would then mean either “love of understanding” or “understanding of love.”

287:8 παλαιστινός—perhaps a play on παλαιστής, “a wrestler”; hence a “rival” or “suitor.”

287:9 Pelusium; the Pelusian was the eastern mouth of the Nile.

287:10 See note on xii. 1.

288:1 Generally supposed to stand for the city Butō, but may be some word-play. Can it be connected with Boōtes, the Ploughman—the constellation Arcturus—the voyage being celestial; that is, a movement of the world-soul or change of state in the individual soul? Budge (p. 192) gives its Egyptian equivalent as Per-Uatchit, i.e. “House of the Eye.”

288:2 Lit., from her feet.

288:3 Lit., vessel; may also mean “cell.”

288:4 Vulg., “hunting.”

288:5 ἕλη—a probable play on the δι-ελεῖν (“tear to pieces”) above.

288:6 Sc. the crocodiles.

288:7 It is remarkable how that every now and then Plutarch inserts apparently the most naïve superstitions without a word of explanation. They cannot be all simply irresponsible on dits. It is, perhaps, not without significance that the “chest” is first of all drifted to the Papyrus country, and that the baris of Isis should be made of papyrus. It seems almost as if it symbolised some “vehicle” that was safe from the “crocodile” of the deep. In other words, the skiffs are not paper boats and the crocodiles not alligators.

289:1 “And Egypt they say is the body” to quote a refrain from Hippolytus concerning the “Gnostics.”

289:2 Presumably of the fourteen sacred ones.

289:3 λεπιδωτόν.

289:4 φάγρον.

289:5 ὀξύρυγχον.

289:6 Anthropologically, “taboo.”

289:7 What these “fourteen parts” of Osiris may be is beyond the sphere of dogmatism. I would suggest that there may be along one line some connection with those seeds of life which have lately been called “permanent atoms”; and along another line, that of the birth of the Christ-consciousness, there may be a series of powers derived from past incarnations.

290:1 Hades.

290:2 The “Horse” may symbolise purified passion, and “Lion” a certain receptive power of the mind.

290:3 The white “Horse” was presumably opposed to the red “Ass” of Typhon, as the purified vehicle of the soul contrasted with the impure. “Lion” was one of the grades in the Mithriac Mysteries; it was a sun-animal.

290:4 Eg. Ta-urt (Budge, op. cit., p. 193).

290:5 That is, by the Companions of Horus (or Disciples of the Christ)—a frequent scene in the vignettes of the Book of the Dead.

290:6 That is, in the public mystery processions.

291:1 The symboliser as well as the interpreter of the Gods.

291:2 Cf. liv. 3.

291:3 Or it may mean “completion” (τελευτήν).

291:4 In Eg. Ḥeru-p-khart, i.e., “Horus the Younger.”

291:5 τοῖς κάτωθεν γυίοις—but, presumably, not from above downwards.

THE UNDER-MEANING A REFLEXION OF A CERTAIN REASON

XX. I. These are approximately the chief headings of their myth, after the most ill-omened have been removed,—such as, for instance, the one about the cutting up into pieces of Horus, and the beheading of Isis.

2. That, however, if people suppose and say these things about that Blessed and Incorruptible Nature according to which especially the Divine conceives itself, as though they were actually enacted and really took place, “thou shouldst spit out and cleanse mouth,” according to Æschylus, 6 there is no need to tell thee; 7 for of thyself thou showest displeasure at those who hold illegitimate and barbarous notions about the Gods.

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3. But that these things are not at all like lean tales and quite empty figments, such as poets and prose-writers weave and expand as though they were spiders spinning them out of themselves from a source that has no basis in fact, but that they contain certain informations and statements,—thou knowest of thyself.

4. And just as the Mathematici 1 say that “Iris” 2 is the sun’s reflexion many-coloured by the return of its visual impression to the cloud, so the myth down here is a reflexion of a certain reason (logos) that bends its thinking back on other things; as both the sacred offerings suggest by the reflected element of mournfulness and sadness they contain, and also the dispositions of the temples which in one direction open out into side-walks and courts for moving about in, open to the sky and clear of objects, while in the other they have hidden and dark robing-rooms under ground, like places for putting coffins in and burying-spots.

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Footnotes

291:6 Ed. Nauck, p. 84.

291:7 Sc. Klea.

292:1 Presumably, again, the Pythagorean grade above the Hearers.

292:2 Sc. the rainbow.

CONCERNING THE TOMBS OF OSIRIS

5. And not least of all does the belief of the Osirians—since the body [of Osiris] is said to be in many places—[suggest this].

6. For they say that both Diochitē is called Polichnē, 3 because it alone has the true one; and [also] that it is at Abydos that the wealthy and powerful of the Egyptians are mostly buried,—their ambition being to have a common place of burial with the body of Osiris; and [again] that it is at Memphis that the Apis is

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reared as the image of the soul of Osiris, because it is there also that his body lies.

7. And as for the City, 1 some interpret it as “Harbour of Good Things,” but others give it the special meaning of “Tomb of Osiris”; it is, however, the little island one 2 at Philæ [they say] which is in other respects inaccessible and inapproachable by all, and that not even the birds light on it or fish come near it, but at a certain season the priests cross over [to it] and make offerings to the dead, and place wreaths on the monument which is overshadowed by a . . . 3 tree, which is greater in size than any olive.

XXI. 1. Eudoxus, however, [says] that, though many tombs are spoken of in Egypt, the body lies at Būsiris, for that this had been the native city of Osiris; nevertheless Taphosiris requires no further reason [to establish its claim], for the name explains itself—namely, “Burying of Osiris.”

“But I rede of cutting of wood, of rending of linen, and pouring of pourings, because many of the mystery-[meanings] have been mixed up with them.” 4

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2. But the priests say that not only of these Gods, but also of all the other gods also who are not ingenerable and indestructible, the bodies lie buried with them when they 1 have done their work, and have service rendered them, while their souls shine in heaven as

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stars; and that [of the former] the [soul] of Isis is called Dog by the Greeks, but Sōthis by the Egyptians, while the [soul] of Horus [is called] Ōriōn, 1 and Typhon’s Bear. 2

3. And [they say] that for the burials of the animals to whom honour is paid, the rest [of the Egyptians] pay the [dues which are] mutually determined; but that those alone who inhabit the Thebaid give nothing, since they believe that no God is subject to death, and that he whom they themselves call Knēph is ingenerable and immortal.

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Footnotes

292:3 Either the reading is at fault, or some word-play is intended. Dio-chitē is probably Zeus-something; but I cannot resolve it. While Polichnē is a rare diminutive of πόλις, and would thus mean “Little City.”

293:1 ? Memphis; or, perhaps, as contrasted with the Little City above.

293:2 Sc. city; νιστιτάνην is a hopeless reading, and as the editors can make nothing out of it, I suggest νησίτιδα or νησιδάνην (πόλιν).

293:3 μηθίδης—apparently an error; Bernardakis suggests μίνθης (Lat. mentha) “mint.” Can the right reading be μηδικῆς (πόας)? The herba medica, was, however, the sainfoin or lucerne, which, though reminding us of the melilote of xiv., is hardly capable of overshadowing a tomb even in the most intricate symbolical sense.

293:4 Evidently a verbal quotation from Eudoxus. The “cutting of wood” presumably refers to the trunk with lopped branches, which, as we have already mentioned, occurs so frequently on so-called “Gnostic” gems; the “rending of linen” (λίνου) might also be made to refer to Linus, the Bard, and his being torn to pieces like Osiris; Linos also means the “Song of Linus,” so called, it is supposed by some, because in earliest times the strings of the cithara were made of flax. For other names of singers used for lays or modes of song, compare Manerōs and Pæan; though, of course, the modern way is to regard the singer as the personification of the lay. Thus in Emil Naumann’s History of Music (trans, by F. Praeger; London, 1882), p. 3, we read: “The Greek tribes of Peloponnesus and Hellas, as well as the Egyptians, Phœnicians, the Greeks inhabiting the isles of the Ægean Sea, and especially those of Cyprus, had a primitive ‘Lament’ which seems to have come originally from Phœnicia. It was a funeral chant on the death of the youthful Adonis. . . . The Egyptians changed its signification into a lament of Isis for Osiris. The Greeks called it Linos, and the Egyptians Maneros.” The beginning of the “Manerōs,” or the Lament of Isis for her Beloved, is given as follows by Naumann (p. 40):

“Return, oh, return!
God Panu, return!
Those that were enemies are no more here.
Oh lovely helper, return,
That thou may’st see me, thy sister,
Who loves thee.
And com’st thou not near me?
O beautiful youth, return, oh, return!
When I see thee not
My heart sorrows for thee,
My eyes ever seek thee,
I roam about for thee, to see thee in the form of the Nai,
To see thee, to see thee, thou beautiful lov’d one.
Let me the Radiant, see thee
God Panu, All-Glory, see thee again!
To thy belovèd come, blessed Onnòfris,
Come to thy sister, come to thy wife,
God Urtuhet, oh, come!
Come to thy consort!”

Unfortunately, Naumann does not give any references by which we can control his statements.

294:1 The bodies; presumably referring to the mummies of those men and women who were believed to have reached the god-stage while living.

295:1 Cf. xxii. 3.

295:2 Probably all name-plays: κύων (dog), √κυ (conceive)—see lxi. 6; H-ōr-os, Ōr-iōn; ἄρκ-τος (bear), √αρκ (suffice, endure, bear); Ursa Major is called the Wain.

CONCERNING THE THEORY OF EVEMERUS

XXII. 1. Now, since many of such [? tombs] are spoken of and pointed out, those who think these [myths] commemorate the awe-inspiring and mighty works and passions of kings and tyrants who, through surpassing virtue and power, put in a claim for the reputation of divinity, and afterwards experienced reverses of fortune,—employ a very easy means of escape from the [true] reason (logos), and not unworthily transfer the ill-omened [element in them] from Gods to men, and they have the following to help them from the narratives related.

2. For instance, the Egyptians tell us that Hermes had a short-armed 3 body, that Typhon was red-skinned,

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[paragraph continues]Horus white, and Osiris black, as though they were [men] born in the course of nature.

3. Moreover, also, they call Osiris “General” and Kanōbus 1 “Pilot,”—from whom, they say, the star got its name.

And [they say] that the ship which Greeks call Argō is an image of the bark of Osiris, constellated in his honour, and that it sails not far from Ōriōn and Dog, the former of which Egyptians consider the sacred [boat] of Horus and the latter of Isis. 2

XXIII. 1. But I am afraid that this is “moving the immoveable,” and “warring” not only “against many centuries,” according to Simōnidēs, 3 but “against many nations of men” and races held fast by religious feeling towards these Gods—when people let nothing alone but transfer such mighty names from heaven to earth, and [so] banish and dissolve the sense of worship and faith that has been implanted in nearly all [men] from their first coming into existence, opening up wide entrances for the godless folk, 4 and reducing the divine [mysteries] to the level of men’s doings, and giving a splendid licence to the charlatanries of Evemerus 5 the Messenian, who of himself composing the counterpleas of a baseless science of myths unworthy of any credit, flooded the civilised world with sheer atheism, listing off level all those who are looked on as gods into names of generals and admirals and kings, who (he is good enough to say)

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existed in bygone days, and are recorded in letters of gold at Panchōn, 1—which [records] neither any non-Greek nor any Greek has ever come across, but Evemerus alone, when he went his voyage to the Panchoans and Triphyllians, who never have been nor are anywhere on earth.

XXIV. 1. And yet mighty deeds of Semiramis are sung of among Assyrians, and mighty [deeds] of Sesōstris in Egypt. And Phrygians even unto this day call splendid and marvellous doings “manic,” owing to the fact that Manes, one of their bygone kings, proved himself a good and strong man among them—the one whom some call Mazdes. 2 Cyrus led Persians and Alexander Macedonians, conquering to almost the ends of the earth; still they have the name and memory of good kings [only].

2. “And if some elated by vast boastfulness,” as Plato says, 3 “concomitant with youth and ignorance, through having their souls inflamed with pride,” have accepted titles like gods and dedications of temples, their glory has flourished for a short time [only], and afterwards they have incurred the penalty of vanity and imposture coupled with impiety and indecency: 4

Death coming swift on them, like smoke they rose and fell. 5

And now like runaway [slaves] that can be lawfully

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taken, torn from the temples and altars, they have naught but their tombs and graves.

3. Wherefore Antigonus the Elder, when a certain Hermodotus, in his poems, proclaimed him “Son of the Sun and God,” remarked: “My night-stool boy has not so exalted an opinion of me.”

And with reason also did Lysippus, the sculptor, blame Apelles, the painter, for putting a thunderbolt in Alexander’s hand when painting his portrait; whereas he himself gave him a spear-head,—from which not even time itself shall take away the glory, for it is true and really his.

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Footnotes

295:3 γαλι-άγκωνα—lit., weasel-armed. Now, as we are told further on (lxxiv. 3) that the weasel (γαλῆ), or marten, was fabled to conceive through the ear and bring forth through the mouth, this animal was evidently a symbol of mind-conception. “Weasel-armed” may thus symbolise some faculty of the interpretative mind (Hermes).

296:1 Canopus was fabled to be the pilot of the bark of Osiris; in Greek mythology he was the pilot of the General Menelaos on his return from Troy.

296:2 Cf. xxi. 2.

296:3 Bergk, iii. 522.

296:4 Or “atheists.” “An evident allusion to the Christians,” says King (in loc.); but we think Plutarch was more impersonal than his commentator.

296:5 E. flourished in the last quarter of the 4th century B.C.

297:1 The capital, presumably, of the mythical island of Panchæa, which was supposed to be somewhere on the southern coast of Asia, and to which Evemerus pretended he had sailed on a voyage down the Red Sea.

297:2 King notes: “The common title of the Sassanean kings was ‘Masdesin’—‘servant of Ormazd.’”

297:3 Legg., 716 A.

297:4 A bold thing to write in an age of Emperor-divinising.

297:5 Apparently from an otherwise unknown poet. See Bergk, iii. 637.

THE THEORY OF THE DAIMONES

XXV. 1 1. They, therefore, [do] better who believe that the things related about Typhon and Osiris and Isis are passions neither of gods nor of men, but of mighty daimones, who—as Plato and Pythagoras and Xenocrates and Chrysippus say, following the theologers of bygone days—have been born more manful than men, far surpassing us in the strength of their nature, yet not having the divine unmixed and pure, but proportioned with the nature of soul and sense of body, susceptible of pleasure and pain and all the passions, which as innate to such metamorphoses trouble some [of them] more and others less.

2. For the Gigantic and Titanic [Passions] sung of among the Greeks, and certain lawless deeds of Kronos and antagonisms of Pythōn against Apollo, and fleeings of Dionysus, and wanderings of Demeter, in no way fall behind the Osiric and Typhonic [Passions], and others which all may hear unrestrainedly spoken of in myth.

And all these things which, under the veil of mystic

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sacred rites and perfectionings, are carefully kept from being spoken of to, or being allowed to be seen by, the multitude, have a similar reason (logos). 1

XXVI. 1. Moreover, we hear Homer also on every occasion calling the good variously “godlike” and “equal to gods,” and as “having directions 2 from gods”; whereas he employs epithets connected with the daimones to both worthy and unworthy in common:

Draw nigh them daimonian! Why so fearest the Argives? 3

And again:

But when indeed for the fourth time he charged, a daimon’s equal. 4

And:

O thou daimonian! what so great ills do Priam now
And Priam’s sons to thee, that thou dost hotly rage
Troy’s well-built town to rase? 5

—as though the daimones possessed a mixed and an unbalanced nature and propensity.

2. For which reason Plato 6 refers unto the God upon Olympus’ height things “right” and “odd,” 7 and to the daimones those that respond to these. 8

3. Moreover, Xenocrates 9 thinks that the nefast days, and all the holy days on which are strikings or beatings or fastings or blasphemies or foul language, have nothing to do with honours paid to gods or to beneficent daimones; but that there are natures in

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the circumambient, 1 mighty and powerful indeed, but difficult to turn and sullen, who take pleasure in such things, and when they get them turn to nothing worse.

4. The beneficent and good ones, again, Hesiod also calls “holy daimones” and “guardians of men”—“wealth-givers and possessors of this sovereign prerogative.” 2

5. Plato 3 again gives to this race the name of hermeneutic and of diaconic 4 ’twixt Gods and men, speeding up thitherwards men’s vows and prayers, and bringing thence prophetic answers hitherwards and gifts of [all] good things.

6. Whereas Empedocles 5 says that the daimones have to amend whatever faults they make, or discords they may strike:

“For æther’s rush doth chase them seawards; sea spews them on land’s flat; and earth into the beams of tireless sun; and he casts [them again] into the swirls of æther. One takes them from another, and all abhor [them]” 6—until after being thus chastened and purified they regain their natural place and rank.

XXVII. 1. Born from the self-same womb as these and things like them, they say, are the legends about Typhon: how that he wrought dire deeds through envy and ill-will, and after throwing all things into confusion and filling the whole earth and sea as well with ills, he afterwards did make amends.

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2. But the sister-wife 1 of Osiris who upheld his honour, after she had quenched and laid to rest Typhon’s frenzy and fury, did not allow forgetfulness and silence to overtake the struggles and trials he had endured, and her own wanderings and many [deeds] of wisdom, and many [feats] of manliness; but intermingling with the most chaste perfectionings images and under-meanings and copies of the passion she then endured, she hallowed at one and the same time a lesson of religion and a consolation to men and women placed in like circumstances.

3. And she and Osiris, being changed through virtue from good daimones into gods 2—as [were] subsequently Heracles and Dionysus—possess the dignities of gods and daimones at one and the same time, fitly combined everywhere indeed but with the greatest power among those above earth and under earth.

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Footnotes

298:1 This chapter is quoted by Eusebius, Præp. Ev., V. v. 1.

299:1 Sc. to the mysteries of the Egyptians.

299:2 μήδεα—also meaning virilia.

299:3 Il., xiii. 810.

299:4 Il., v. 438.

299:5 Il., iv. 31 f.

299:6 Legg., 717 A.

299:7 Pythagorean technical terms.

299:8 τὰ ἀντίφωνα—the meaning seeming to be rather that of “concord” than of “discord.”

299:9 An immediate pupil of Plato’s.

300:1 The air or ether that surrounds the earth.

300:2 Op. et Dies, 126.

300:3 Symp., 202 E.

300:4 That is, “interpretative and ministering.”

300:5 E. flourished 494-434 B.C.

300:6 Stein, 377 ff.; Karsten, 16 ff.; Fairbanks, p. 204. The quotation appears to me inapposite, for Empedocles seems to be speaking of “any who defile their bodies sinfully” and not of daimones; but perhaps the “received” recombination of the fragments is at fault.

301:1 See the note on “sister-wife” in comment on Mariamnē (Hipp., Philos.—Introd.) in chapter on “Myth of Man.”—Prolegg., p. 147, n. 7.

301:2 That is to say, according to this theory the myth represented the degree of initiation by which a man passed from the stage of daimon into the state of god, or from super-man to christ.

CONCERNING SARAPIS

4. For they say that Sarapis is no other than Pluto, and Isis Persephassa, as Archemachus of Eubœa has said, 3 and Heracleides of Pontus, when he supposes that the seat of the oracle at Canopus is Pluto’s.

XXVIII. 1. And Ptolemy the Saviour 4 saw in a dream the gigantic statue of Pluto—though he had not previously seen or known what form it was—ordering him to bring it to Alexandria.

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2. And when he did not know and had no idea where [the statue] was set up even after he had described his vision to his friends, there was found a man, a great traveller, by name Sōsibius, who said he had seen at Sinope just such a colossus as the King seemed to have seen.

3. He [Ptolemy] accordingly sent Sōtelēs and Dionysius, who, after expending much time and pains, not, however, without the help of God’s providence, removed it secretly and brought it away.

4. And when it had been brought [to Alexandria] and set up publicly, the assistants of Timotheus, the interpreter, and of Manethōs, the Sebennyte, coming to the conclusion that it was a statue of Pluto—judging by its cerberus and huge serpent—convinced Ptolemy that it was that of no other of the Gods than Sarapis; for it did not come from Sinopē with this designation, but after it had been brought to Alexandria it received the Egyptian name for Pluto, namely, Sarapis.

5. And yet people sink into the opinion of Heracleitus the physicist, when he says: “Hades 1 and Dionysus are the same, for whomsoever they rage and riot.”

For those who postulate that Hades means the body, because the soul is as it were deranged and drunken in it, put forward a [too] meagre interpretation.

6. But [it is] better to identify Osiris with Dionysus, and Sarapis 2 with Osiris, so designated after he had changed his nature. 3 Wherefore “Sarapis” is common to all, 4 just as, you know, those who share in the sacred rites know that “Osiris” is.

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XXIX. 1. For it is not worth while paying attention to the Phrygian writings, in which Isis is said to have been the daughter of Charops, 1 son of Heracles, and Typhon [son] of Æacus, 2 [also] son of Heracles.

2. Nor [is it worth while] refraining from disregarding Phylarchus, 3 when he writes that “it was Dionysus who first brought two oxen from India to Egypt, of which the name of one was Apis, and of the other Osiris; and Sarapis is the name of Him who orders [or adorns] the universe from sairein [‘sweep,’ ‘clean’], which some say [means] ‘beautifying’ and ‘adorning’”;—for these [remarks] of Phylarchus are absurd.

3. But still more so are those of them who say that Sarapis is not a god, but that the coffin of Apis 4 is thus named, and that certain brazen gates at Memphis, called “Gates of Oblivion and Wailing,” open with a deep mournful sound, when they bury Apis, and that therefore at every sounding of brass 5 we are plunged into oblivion.

4. More moderate are they who claim that the

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simultaneous motion of the universe is thus called [sc. Sarapis], from seuesthai and sousthai 1 [“speed”].

5. But the majority of the priests say that “Osiris” and “Apis” have been woven together into the same [name], explaining and teaching that we should look on the Apis as an en-formed image of the soul of Osiris.

6. If, however, the name of Sarapis is Egyptian, I for my part think it denotes “Good Cheer” and “Delight,”—finding a proof in the fact that Egyptians call the feast “Delights”—Sairei.

And, indeed, Plato says that Hades has been so called as being “sweet” 2 and gentle to those with him.

7. And with Egyptians both many other of their names are logoi, 3 and they call subterrene space, to which they think the souls depart after death, Amenthē—the name signifying “the [space] which takes and gives.” 4

8. But whether this, too, is one of the names that left Hellas long ago and have been brought back again, 5 we will examine later on; for the present, let us continue with the remaining [points] of the belief we have in hand.

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Footnotes

301:3 Müller, iv. 315.

301:4 The first Greek King of Egypt, 324-285 B.C.

302:1 That is, Pluto.

302:2 Sar-apis—a combination of Osiris and Apis, the soul of Osiris; cf. xxix. 5. In Eg. Ȧsȧr-Hapi.

302:3 Presumably from that of a daimon to that of a god.

302:4 That is, apparently, a common principle in all men.

303:1 Lit. “Bright- (or Glad-) eyed.”

303:2 Lit., “Wailer.”

303:3 A historian; flourished c. 215 B.C.

303:4 Ἄπιδος σόρον—another word-play, “sor-apis.”

303:5 ἠχοῦντος . . . χαλκώματος. This has, nevertheless, presumably some mystic meaning. In the myths, cymbals were said to have been used to protect the infant Bacchus, and infant Zeus, and to keep off the Titans—so, presumably, plunging them into oblivion. Compare also 1 Corinth. xiii. 1, where Paul, speaking of the exercise of the “gift of tongues” (glossalaly) without love (ἀγάπη), uses precisely the same term, when saying: “I am become as sounding brass (χαλκὸς ἠχῶν) or tinkling cymbal” the latter being, perhaps, a reference to the sistrum, while the former is perhaps a metaphor, derived from the hardness and colour (“red”) of brass, or rather bronze or copper, referring to a state of mind which plunges us into oblivion of our better part—namely, spiritual love.

304:1 A contracted form of the former—from √σϝε or √σεϝ, with idea of “swiftness.” (?) Serapis—sev-a-this—sevesthai.

304:2 ἁδούσιον—unknown to the lexicons. I suggest that it may be connected with ἦδος, from √σϝαδ of ἁνδάνω—hence “sweet.”

304:3 Presumably “words of deep meaning”—another technical use of this Proteus-like term.

304:4 Budge (op. cit., ii. 200) says: “The Egyptian form of the word is Amentet, and the name means ‘hidden place.’”

304:5 How very Greek! Cf. lxi. 4.

CONCERNING TYPHON

XXX. 1. Osiris and Isis have, then, changed from good daimones into gods. While as for the dimmed and shattered power of Typhon, though it is at the last

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gasp and in its final death-throes, they still appease and soothe it with certain feasts of offerings.

2. Yet, again, every now and then at certain festivals they humiliate it dreadfully and treat it most despitefully,—even to rolling red-skinned men in the mud, and driving an ass over a precipice (as the Koptos folk), because Typhon was born with his skin red and ass-like. While the Busiris folk and Lycopolitans do not use trumpets at all, as they sound like an ass [braying].

3. And generally they think that the ass is not clean, but a daimonic animal, on account of its resemblance to that [god]; and making round-cakes for feasts of offerings on both the month of Paÿni and that of Phaōphi, 1 they stamp on them an “ass tied.” 2

4. And on the Feast of Offerings of the Sun, they pass the word to the worshippers not to wear on the body things made of gold nor to give food to an ass. 3

5. The Pythagorics also seem to consider Typhon a daimonic power; for they say that Typhon was produced on the six-and-fiftieth even measure; and again that the [power 4] of the equilateral triangle is that of Hades and Dionysus and Ares; that of the square is that of Rhea and Aphroditē and Demeter and Hestia (that is, Hera); that of the dodecagon, that of Zeus; and that of the fifty-six angled [regular polygon], that of Typhon—as Eudoxus relates. 5

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XXXI. 1. And, as Egyptians believe that Typhon was born red-skinned, 1 they offer in sacrifice even the red ones of the oxen [only] after making the scrutiny so close, that if [the beast] has even a single hair black or white, they consider it ought not to be offered; for if it were sacrificed, it would not be an acceptable offering to the gods, but the contrary, [as are] all those animals which have seized on the souls of impure and unrighteous men in the course of their transformation into bodies other [than human].

2. Wherefore after uttering imprecations on the head of the victim, 2 and cutting off its head, they used to cast it into the river in olden days, but nowadays they give it to strangers.

3. But as to the one that is to be sacrificed, those of the priests who are called Sealers, set a mark upon it—the seal (as Kastōr 3 relates) having the impression of a man forced down on one knee with his hands drawn round behind him, and a sword sticking in his throat. 4

4. And they think that the ass also has the distinction of its resemblance [to Typhon], as has been said, owing to its aversion to being taught and to its wantonness, no less than on account of its skin. 5

5. For which cause also since they especially detested

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[paragraph continues]Ōchus 1 of [all] the Persian kings as being blood-polluted and abominable, they gave him the nickname of “Ass.”

But he, with the retort: “This Ass, however, will make a fine feast off your Ox”—slaughtered the Apis, as Deinōn has told us. 2

6. Those, however, who say that Typhon’s flight from the fight on an ass lasted seven days, and that after reaching a place of safety he begat sons—Hierosolymus and Judæus—are instantly convicted of dragging Judaïc matters into the myth. 3

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Footnotes

305:1 Copt. Paōni and Paopi—corr. roughly with June and October.

305:2 ὄνον δεδεμένον. Cf. Matt. xxi. 2: ὄνον δεδεμένην; cf. also 1. 3, where it is a hippopotamus.

305:3 That is, presumably, not to weigh down their minds with the superfluity of riches, nor to feed up the stupid and lustful energies of their souls.

305:4 A “power” in Pythagorean technology is the side of a square (or, perhaps, of any equilateral polygon) in geometry; and in arithmetic the square root, or that which being multiplied into itself produces the square.

305:5 Eudoxus seems to have been Plutarch’s authority for his statements regarding Pythagorean doctrine; cf. vi., lii., lxii. The Typhonic figure might be generated by “sevening” the interior angles of a regular octagon and producing the radii to the circumference of the circumscribed circle, or by “eighting” the interior angles of a regular heptagon.

306:1 Or “fire-coloured.”

306:2 Compare the Ritual of Azāzel (the scape-goat), one of the two goats set apart on the Great Day of Atonement among the Jews (Lev. xvi. 8 ff.).

306:3 Cf. also Plut., Ætia Romana, x. Castor was a Greek historian who was a contemporary of Cicero and Julius Cæsar.

306:4 The ox was, therefore, the vicarious atonement of the man.

306:5 It was a red ass, then, which symbolised the Typhonic power.

307:1 Cf. xi. 4.

307:2 Müller, ii. 95. Deinōn was a contemporary of Alexander the Great, and wrote a history of Persia.

307:3 This item of ancient scandal would almost seem to have come from the pen of an Apion; it is an interesting specimen of theological controversy in story-form.

THE THEORY OF THE PHYSICISTS

XXXII. 1. 4 The above [data] then afford [us] such and such suggestions. But from another start let us consider the simplest of those who seem to give a more philosophical explanation.

2. These are those who say that, just as the Greeks allegorise time as Kronos, and air as Hera, and the changes of air into fire as the generation of Hephæstus, so, with the Egyptians, Osiris uniting with Isis (earth) is Neilos, and Typhon is the sea, into which Neilos falling vanishes and is dispersed, except such part [of him] as the earth takes up and receives, and so becomes endowed with productiveness by him.

3. And there is a sacred dirge made on Kronos 5—and it laments “him who is born in the left-hand and died in the right-hand parts.”

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4. For Egyptians think that the eastern [parts] of cosmos are “face,” the northern “right hand,” and the southern “left hand.”

5. The Nile, accordingly, since it flows from the southern [parts] and is consumed by the sea in the northern, is naturally said to have its birth in the left hand and its death in the right hand.

6. Wherefore the priests both pronounce the sea expiate and call salt “Typhon’s foam”; and one of the chief prohibitions they have is: “Not to set salt on table.” And they do not give greeting to sailors, 1 because they use the sea, and get their living from it. And for this cause chiefly they accuse fish of being a cause of offence, and write up: “Hate fish!”

7. At anyrate at Saïs, in the entrance of the temple of Athena, there used to be chiselled up “babe,” “old man,” and after that “hawk,” then “fish,” and last of all “hippopotamus.”

8. This meant in symbols: “O ye who are being born and are dying, God hates shamelessness.”

9. For “babe” is the symbol of birth, and “old man” of death, and by “hawk” they mean God, and by “fish” hatred—as has been said on account of the sea—and by “hippopotamus” shamelessness, for it is fabled that after it has killed its sire it violates its dam.

10. Moreover, what is said by the Pythagorics, namely, that the sea is the tears of Kronos, would seem to riddle the fact of its not being pure and cognate with itself.

11. Let these things then be stated from outside sources as matters of common information.

XXXIII. 1. But the more wise of the priests call not only the Nile Osiris, and the sea Typhon; but [they

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call] without exception every source and power that moistens, Osiris—considering [him] cause of generation and essence of seed, and Typhon everything dry and fiery, and of a drying nature generally and one hostile to moisture.

2. And for this cause also, as they think he [Typhon] was born with a reddish-yellow body, somewhat pale, they do not by any means readily meet or willingly associate with men that look like this.

3. On the other hand, again, they say in the language of myth that Osiris was born black, because all [Nile] water blackens both earth and garments and clouds when mixed [with them], and [because] moisture in the young makes their hair black, whereas greyness comes on those past their prime, as though it were a turning pale owing to its drying up.

4. The spring, too, is blooming and productive and balmy; but autumn, through lack of moisture, is inimical to plants and baneful to animals.

5. And the ox that is kept at Sun-city which they call Mnevis—sacred to Osiris, while some also consider it sire of Apis—is black [also] and has second honours after Apis.

6. Moreover, they call Egypt, since it is especially black-soiled, just like the black of the eye, Chēmia, and liken it to a heart; for it is warm and moist, and is mostly confined in, and adjacent to, the southern part of the civilised world, just like the heart [is] in man’s left-hand side.

XXXIV. 1. Moreover, they say that sun and moon do not use chariots for vehicles, but sail round in boats—[thus] riddling their being nourished by and being born in the “Moist.”

2. And they think that Homer also, like Thales, set down Water as source and birth of all things, after

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learning [it] from Egyptians; for that Oceanus is Osiris, and Tēthys 1 Isis, as nursing all things and rearing them all up together.

3. For Greeks also call “emission of seed” ἀπ-ουσίαν and “intercourse” συν-ουσίαν, and “son” (υἱὸν) from “water” (ὕδατος) and “moisten” (ὗσαι); 2 and [they call] Dionysus Huēs, as lord of the Moist Nature, in that he is no other than Osiris.

4. In fact, Hellanicus 3 seems to have heard Osiris called Hu-siris by the priests; for he persists in thus calling the god, presumably from his nature and power of invention. 4

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Footnotes

307:4 This paragraph and the next is quoted by Eusebius, Præp. Ev., III. iii. 11.

307:5 That is Nile.

308:1 Lit., “pilots”; but presumably here used in a more general sense.

310:1 As connected with Τήθη, the Nurse of all, and identified by some with the Primal Earth; and so signified by the word-play Τηθὺν and τιθην-ουμένην (“nursing”).

310:2 The word-play runs: ap-ous-ia, sun-ous-ia, hu-ion, hud-atos, hus-ai.

310:3 The most eminent of the Greek logographers; fl. 553-504 B.C.

310:4 εὑρέσεως—probably another word-play, heuresis and husiris.

CONCERNING OSIRIS AND DIONYSUS

XXXV. 1. That, however, he is the same as Dionysus—who should know better than thou thyself, O Klea, who art Archi-charila 5 of the Thyiades at Delphi,

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and wast dedicated to the Osiriaca before thou wert born? 1

But if for the sake of others we must quote testimonies, let us leave the things that must not be spoken of in their proper place.

2. The rites, however, which the priests perform in burning the Apis, when they transport its body on a raft, in no way fall short of a Bacchic Orgy. For they put on fawn-skins and carry thyrsuses, 2 and shout and dance just like those inspired at celebrations of the Mysteries of Dionysus.

3. Wherefore many of the Greeks make Dionysus also bull-formed; while the women of the Eleians invoke him praying “the god with the bull’s foot to come” to them.

4. The Argives, moreover, give Dionysus the epithet of “bull-born,” and they call him up out of the water with the sound of trumpets, casting a lamb into the abyss for the Gate-keeper. 3 The trumpets they hide in thyrsi, as Socrates has said in his “[Books] on Rites.” 4

5. The Titanic [Passions] also and the [Dionysian] Night-rites agree with what we are told about the tearings-in-pieces and revivings and palingeneses of Osiris; and similarly the [stories] of the burials.

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6. For both Egyptians point to tombs of Osiris everywhere, as has been said, 1 and [also] Delphians believe the relics of Dionysus are deposited with them by the side of the Oracle, and the Holy Ones offer an offering, of which we must not speak, in the fane of Apollo, when the Thyiades awake “Him of the winnowing fan.”

7. And that Greeks consider Dionysus to be lord and prince not only of wine, but of every moist nature, Pindar witnesses sufficiently when he sings:

May gladsome Dionysus make the pasturage of trees to grow—
Pure light of autumn. 2

8. For which cause also they who give worship to Osiris are forbidden to destroy a cultivated tree or to stop up a water-source.

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Footnotes

310:5 The text reads ἀρχικλὰ—an apparently impossible collection of letters. As no one has so far purged the reading, I would suggest χάριλαν or ἀρχι-χάριλαν. Stending (in Roscher, s.v.) reminds us of the myth of the orphan maid Charila, who during a famine begged alms at the gate of the palace of the King of ancient Delphi; the King not only refused her, but drove her away slapping her face with his shoe. Whereupon the little maid for shame hanged herself. After the famine was over the Oracle decreed an atonement for her death. And so every nine years an effigy made to represent Charila was done to death, and then carried off by the leader of the Thyiades (or priestesses of Bacchus), and buried, with a rope round its neck, in a gorge. Cf. Harrison (Jane E.), Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Cambridge, 1903), p. 106. As Klea was leader of the Thyiades, this office fell to her; it may, therefore, even be that her name is some play on Charila.

311:1 Lit., “from father and mother.”

311:2 Symbolic wands, generally cane-like or knotted like a bamboo, and sometimes wreathed in ivy and vine leaves, with a pine-cone at top.

311:3 τῷ πυλαόχῳ.

311:4 Müller, iv. 498. This was probably Socrates of Cos, who is known to have been the author of a work entitled Ἐπικλήσεις θεῶν (e.g. Dion. Laërt., ii. 4), meaning either “Prayers to the Gods,” or “Surnames of the Gods.”

312:1 Cf. xx. 5.

312:2 Bergk, i. 433.

THE THEORY OF THE PHYSICISTS RESUMED

XXXVI. 1. And they call not only the Nile, but also without distinction all that is moist, “Osiris’ efflux”; and the water-vase always heads the processions of the priests in honour of the God.

2. And with “rush” 3 they write “king” and the “southern climate” of the cosmos; and “rush” is interpreted as “watering” and “conception” of all things, and is supposed to resemble in its nature the generative member.

3. And when they keep the feast Pamylia, which is phallic, as has been said, 4 they bring out and carry round an image having a phallus three times the size of it.

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4. For God is source, and every source by the power of generation makes manifold that which comes from it. And “many times” we are accustomed to call “thrice,” as, for instance, “thrice-blessed,” and “three times as many, endless, bonds” 1—unless, indeed, “three fold” was used in its authentic meaning by those of old; for the Moist Nature, as being source and genesis of all, moved from the beginning the first three bodies—earth, air, and fire.

5. For the logos that is superadded to the myth—how that Typhon cast the chief part of Osiris into the river, and Isis could not find it, but after dedicating an object answering to it, and having made it ready, she commanded them to keep the Phallephoria in its honour—comes to this: namely, an instruction that the generative and spermatic [powers] of the God had moisture as their first matter, and by means of moisture were immingled with those things which have been produced to share in genesis.

6. But there is another logos of the Egyptians—that Apophis, as brother of the Sun, made war on Zeus, and that when Osiris fought on his [Zeus’] side and helped him to conquer his foe, Zeus adopted him as his son and called him Dionysus.

7. Moreover, the mythical nature of this logos goes to show that it connects with the truth about nature. For Egyptians call [Cosmic] Breath 2 Zeus—to which Dry and Fiery is hostile; this [latter] is not the Sun, but it has a certain kinship with him. And Moisture, by quenching the excess of Dryness, increases and strengthens the exhalations by which the Breath nourishes itself and waxes strong.

XXXVII. 1. Moreover, both Greeks consecrate the

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ivy to Dionysus and [also] among Egyptians it is said to be called chen-osiris—the name meaning, they say, “Osiris-plant.”

2. Further, Ariston, who wrote Colonies of the Athenians, came across some Letter or other of Alexarchus’s, 1 in which it is related that Dionysus, as son of Osiris and Isis, is not called Osiris but Arsaphēs by the Egyptians—([this is] in Ariston’s first book)—the name signifying “manliness.”

3. Hermæus also supports this in the first book of his Concerning the Egyptians, for he says that “Osiris” is, when translated, “Strong.” 2

4. I disregard Mnaseas, 3 who associated Dionysus and Osiris and Sarapis with Epaphos; 4 I also disregard Anticleides, 5 who says that Isis, as daughter of Prometheus, 6 lived with Dionysus; for the peculiarities which have been stated about the festivals and offerings carry a conviction with them that is clearer than the witnesses [I have produced].

XXXVIII. 1. And of the stars they consider Sirius to be Isis’s 7—as being a water-bringer. And they honour the Lion, and ornament the doors of the temples with gaping lions’ mouths; since Nilus overflows:

When first the Sun doth with the Lion join. 8

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2. And as they hold the Nile to be “Osiris’s efflux,” so too they think earth Isis’s body—not all [of it], but what the Nile covers, sowing [her] with seed and mingling with her; and from this intercourse they give birth to Horus.

3. And Horus is the season (ὥρα) and [fair] blend of air that keeps and nourishes all in the atmosphere—who, they say, was nursed by Lēto in the marshes round Butō; for the watery and soaked-through earth especially nourishes the exhalations that quench and abate dryness and drought.

4. And they call the extremities of the land, both on the borders and where touching the sea, Nephthys; for which cause they give Nephthys the name of “End,” 1 and say she lives with Typhon.

5. And when the Nile exceeds its boundaries and overflows more than usual, and [so] consorts with the extreme districts, they call it the union of Osiris with Nephthys—proof of which is given by the ‘springing up of plants, and especially of the honey-clover, 2 for it was by its falling [from Osiris] and being left behind that Typhon was made aware of the wrong done to his bed. Hence it is that Isis conceived Horus in lawful wedlock, but Nephthys Anubis clandestinely.

6. In the Successions of the Kings, 3 however, they record that when Nephthys was married to Typhon, she was at first barren; and if they mean this to apply not to a woman but to their Goddess, they enigmatically refer to the utterly unproductive nature of the land owing to sterility.

XXXIX. 1. The conspiracy and despotism of Typhon, moreover, was the power of drought getting the mastery over and dispersing the moisture which both generates the Nile and increases it.

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2. While his helper, the Æthiopian queen, 1 riddles southerly winds from Æthiopia. For when these prevail over the Annuals 2 (which drive the clouds towards Æthiopia), and prevent the rains which swell the Nile from bursting,—Typhon takes possession and scorches; and thus entirely mastering the Nile he forces him out into the sea, contracted into himself through weakness and flowing empty and low.

3. For the fabled shutting-up of Osiris into the coffin is, perhaps, nothing but a riddle of the occultation and disappearance of water. Wherefore they say that Osiris disappeared in the month of Athyr, 3—when, the Annuals ceasing entirely, the Nile sinks, and the land is denuded, and, night lengthening, darkness increases, and the power of the light wanes and is mastered, and the priests perform both other melancholy rites, and, covering a cow made entirely of gold 4 with a black coat of fine linen as a mask of mourning for the Goddess—for they look on the “cow” as an image of Isis and as the earth—they exhibit it for four days from the seventeenth consecutively.

4. For the things mourned for are four: first, the Nile failing and sinking; second, the northern winds being completely extinguished by the southern gaining the mastery; third, the day becoming less than the night; and, finally, the denudation of the earth, together with the stripping of the trees which shed their leaves at that time.

5. And on the nineteenth, at night they go down to the sea; and the keepers and priests carry out the

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sacred chest, having within it a small golden vessel, into which they take and pour fresh water; and shouts are raised by the assistants as though Osiris were found.

6. Afterwards they knead productive soil with the water, and mixing with it sweet spices and fragrant incense, they mould it into a little moon-shaped image of very costly stuffs. And they dress it up and deck it out,—showing that they consider these Gods the essence of earth and water.

XL 1. And when again Isis recovers Osiris and makes Horus grow, strengthened with exhalations and moist clouds,—Typhon is indeed mastered, but not destroyed.

2. For the Mistress and Goddess of the earth did not allow the nature which is the opposite of moisture to be destroyed entirely, but she slackened and weakened it, wishing that the blend should continue; for it was not possible the cosmos should be perfect, had the fiery [principle] ceased and disappeared.

3. And if these things are not said contrary to probability, it is probable also that one need not reject that logos also,—how that Typhon of old got possession of the share of Osiris; for Egypt was [once] sea. 1

4. For which cause many [spots] in its mines and mountains are found even to this day to contain shells; and all springs and all wells—and there are great numbers of them—have brackish and bitter water, as though it were the stale residue of the old-time sea collecting together into them.

5. But Horus in time got the better of Typhon,—that, is, a good season of rains setting in, the Nile driving out the sea made the plain reappear by filling it up again with its deposits,—a fact, indeed, to which our

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senses bear witness; for we see even now that as the river brings down fresh mud, and advances the land little by little, the deep water gradually diminishes, and the sea recedes through its bottom being heightened by the deposits.

6. Moreover, [we see] Pharos, which Homer 1 knew as a day’s sail distant from Egypt, now part [and parcel] of it; not that the [island] itself has sailed to land, 2 or extended itself shorewards, but because the intervening sea has been forced back by the river’s reshaping of and adding to the mainland.

7. These [explanations], moreover, resemble the theological dogmas laid down by the Stoics,—for they also say that the generative and nutritive Breath [or Spirit] is Dionysus; the percussive and separative, Heracles; the receptive, Ammon [Zeus]; that which extends through earth and fruits, Demeter and Korē; and that [which extends] through sea, Poseidon. 3

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Footnotes

312:3 θρύον—confounded by King (in loc.) with θρῖον, “fig leaf” (perhaps connected with τρὶς, from the three lobes of the leaf); the “rush” is presumably the papyrus.

312:4 Cf. xii.

313:1 Bernardakis gives the references as Il., vi. 154 and viii. 340, but I am unable to verify them.

313:2 Or “Spirit” (πνεῦμα).

314:1 Ariston and Alexarchus and Hermæus (cf. xlii. 7) seem to be otherwise unknown to fame.

314:2 ὄμβριμος = ὄβριμος—strong, virile, manly. Cf. the Eleusinian sacred name Brimos for Iacchos.

314:3 Flourished latter half of 3rd century B.C.

314:4 Son of Zeus and Io, born in the Nile, after the long wanderings of his mother. He is fabled by the Greeks to have been subsequently King of Egypt and to have built Memphis. Herodotus (ii. 153; iii. 27, 28) says that Epaphos = Apis.

314:5 A Greek writer subsequent to the time of Alexander the Great.

314:6 Cf. iii. 1.

314:7 But cf. lxi. 5.

314:8 Aratus, Phœnom., 351.

315:1 Cf. xii. 6.

315:2 Cf. xiv. 6.

315:3 Cf. xi. 4.

316:1 Asō; cf. xiii. 3.

316:2 The “Etesian” winds, which, in Egypt blew from the N.W. during the whole summer.

316:3 Copt. Hathor—corr. roughly with November.

316:4 Cf. “the golden calf” incident of the Exodus story.

317:1 Another proof of the common persuasion that there had been a Flood in Egypt.

318:1 Il., iv. 355.

318:2 A play on the “day’s sail” (δρόμον) and ἀνα-δραμοῦσαν.

318:3 It is, of course, a very poor interpretation of the myth to talk only about floods and desert, sea and rain, etc. These are all facts illustrating the underlying truth, but they are not the real meaning.

THE THEORY OF THE MATHEMATICI

XLI. 1. Those, however, who combine with the above [considerations] of the Physicists some of the Mathematic [doctrines] derived from star-lore, think that the solar cosmos is called Typhon and the lunar Osiris. 4

2. For [they think] that the Moon, in that its light is generative and moistening, is favourable both for breedings of animals and sproutings of plants; whereas the Sun, with untempered and harsh fire, burns and

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withers up [all] that are growing and blowing, and with fiery heat renders the major part of the earth entirely uninhabitable, and in many places utterly masters the Moon.

3. For which cause Egyptians always call Typhon Sēth, 1—that is, “that which oppresses and constrains by force.”

4. And they have a myth that Heracles is settled in the Sun and accompanies him in his revolutions, while Hermes does the same with the Moon.

5. For the [revolutions] of the Moon resemble works of reason (logos) and super-abundant wisdom, while those of the Sun are like penetrating strokes [given] with force and power. 2

6. Moreover, the Stoics say that the sun is kept burning and nourished from the sea, 3 whereas to the Moon the waters of springs and lakes send up a sweet and mild exhalation.

XLII. 1. The Egyptian myth runs that the death of Osiris took place on the seventeenth, when the full-moon is most conspicuously at the full.

2. Wherefore the Pythagoreans call this day also “Interception,” 4 and regard this number as expiable.

3. For the “sixteen” being square and the “eighteen” oblong 5—which alone of plane numbers happen to have their perimeters equal to the areas contained by them 6—the mean, “seventeen,” coming between them, intercepts and divorces them from one another, and divides

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the ratio of “nine” to “eight” 1 by being cut into unequal intervals.

4. And eight-and-twenty is the number of years which some say Osiris lived, and others that he reigned; 2 for this is the number of the lights of the Moon, and it rolls out its own circle in this number of days.

5. And at what they call the Burials of Osiris they cut the tree-trunk and make it into a crescent-shaped coffin, because the Moon, when it approaches the Sun, becomes crescent-shaped and hides itself away.

6. And the tearing of Osiris into fourteen pieces they refer enigmatically to the days in which the luminary wanes after full-moon up to new-moon.

7. And the day on which it first appears, escaping from his beams and passing by the Sun, they call “Imperfect Good.”

8. For Osiris is “Good-doer.” The name, indeed, means many things, but chiefly what they call “Might energising and good-doing.” And the other name of the God,—Omphis, Hermæus 3 says, means [also] when translated, “Benefactor.”

XLIII. 1. Moreover, they think that the risings of the Nile have a certain analogy with the lights of the Moon.

2. For the greatest [rising], about Elephantinē, is eight-and-twenty cubits, the same number as are the lights and measures of its monthly periods; and the least, about Mendes and Xoïs, is of six cubits, [analogous] to the half -moon; while the mean, about Memphis, when it is the right quantity, [is] of fourteen cubits, [analogous] to the full-moon.

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3. And [they consider] the Apis the animated image of Osiris, and that he is conceived whenever generative light from the Moon fastens on a cow in heat.

4. For which cause also many of the markings of the Apis—lights shading off into darks—resemble the configurations of the moon.

5. Moreover, on the new-moon of the month Phamenōth 1 they keep festival, calling it “Entrance” 2 of Osiris into the Moon, as it is the beginning of spring.

6. By thus placing the power of Osiris in the Moon, they mean that Isis consorts with him while being [at the same time] the cause of his birth. 3

7. For which cause also they call the Moon Mother of the cosmos, and think that she has a male-female nature,—for she is filled by the Sun and made pregnant, and again of herself sends forth and disseminates into the air generative principles.

8. For [they say] she does not always overmaster the destruction wrought by Typhon; 4 but, though frequently mastered, even when bound hand and foot she frees herself again by her generative power, and fights the way through to Horus.

9. And Horus is the cosmos surrounding the earth—not entirely exempt from destruction either, nor yet from generation.

XLIV. 1. Some, moreover, make out of the myth a riddle of the phenomena of eclipses also.

2. For the Moon is eclipsed at the full, when the Sun has the station opposite it, she entering the shadow of the earth,—just as they say Osiris [entered] the

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coffin. And she again conceals the Sun and causes him to disappear, on the thirtieth [of the month], though she does not entirely destroy him, as neither did Isis Typhon.

3. And when Nephthys conceives Anubis, Isis adopts him. For Nephthys is that which is below the earth and non-manifest, while Isis [is] that which is above the earth and manifest.

4. And the circle just touching them and called “Horizon,” as being common to both of them, has been called Anubis, and is likened to a dog for its characteristic; for the dog has the use of its sight both by day and night alike.

5. And Anubis seems to possess this power among Egyptians—just as Hecate with Greeks—being at one and the same time chthonian and olympian. 1

6. Some, however, think that Anubis is Kronos; 2 wherefore as he breeds all things out of himself and conceives (κύων) [all] in himself, he got the name of Dog (κυών).

7. There is, then, for the worshippers of Anubis some [mystery] or other that may not be spoken of. 3

8. In olden times, indeed, the dog enjoyed the highest honours in Egypt; but seeing that when Cambyses 4 slew the Apis and cast it out, no [animal] approached or touched its carcase but only the dog, he [thus] lost the [distinction of] being first and most honoured of the rest of the animals.

9. There are some, however, who call the shadow of the earth into which they think the Moon falls and is eclipsed, Typhon.

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Footnotes

318:4 This is a worse guess than even that of the Physicists. Cf. li. 5.

319:1 Cf. lxii. 2 et al.

319:2 Cf. the Stoic attributes of Heracles in xl. 7.

319:3 If this is intended for the Great Sea of Space, it would be credible.

319:4 ἀντίφραξιν.

319:5 Square and Oblong were two of the fundamental “pairs of opposites” among the Pythagoreans. Cf. xlviii. 5.

319:6

320:1 The sesquioctave. In areas 8 is half of 16, and 9 of 18; while in a proportional measuring-rod or canon of 27 units, intervals of 8, 9, and 10 units succeeding one another complete the 27.

320:2 Cf. xiii. 8, 9.

320:3 Cf. xxxviii. 2.

321:1 Copt, the same—roughly corr. to March.

321:2 ἔμβασιν—or perhaps “Embarking.”

321:3 That is, is both wife and mother.

321:4 Typhon being the Sun according to this theory.

322:1 That is, infernal and celestial.

322:2 In the sense of Time.

322:3 This seems to suggest that Plutarch, though he faithfully records what “people say,” by no means wishes his readers to believe them.

322:4 But see xi. 4 and xxxi. 4.

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THE THEORY OF THE DUALISTS

XLV. 1. From [all of] which it seems not unreasonable to conclude that no simple by itself gives the right meaning, but that they all collectively do so.

2. For neither drought nor wind nor sea nor darkness is the essential of Typhon, but the whole hurtful and destructive [element] which is in nature.

3. For we must neither place the principles of the whole in soulless bodies, as [do] Democritus and Epicurus, nor yet assume one Reason (Logos) [only] and one Providence that prevails over and masters all things as demiurge [or artificer] of quality-less matter, as [do] the Stoics.

4. For it is impossible either that anything at all of no worth should exist where God is cause of all, or of worth where [He is cause] of nothing.

5. For “reciprocal” [is] cosmos’ “harmony, as that of lyre or bow,” according to Heracleitus, 1 and according to Euripides:

There could not be apart good things and bad,
But there’s a blend of both so as to make things fair. 2

6. Wherefore this exceedingly ancient doctrine also comes down from the theologers and law-givers to poets and philosophers—[a doctrine] that has its origin set down to no man’s name, and yet possessed of credit, strong and not so easy to efface, surviving in many places not in words or voices 3 only, but also in [secret]

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perfectionings and [public] offerings, both non-Greek and Greek [ones]—that neither does the universe mindless and reason-less and guidance-less float in “That which acts of its own will,” nor is there one Reason [only] that rules and guides, as though with rudder as it were and bits obedient to the reins; but that [the universe] is many things and these a blend of evil things and good.

7. Or, rather, seeing that Nature produces nothing, generally speaking, unmixed down here, it is not that from two jars a single mixer, like a tavern-keeper, pouring things out like drinks, mixes them up for us, but that from two opposite principles and two antagonistic powers—the one leading [things] to the right and on the straight [road], the other upsetting and undoing [them]—both life has been made mixed, and cosmos (if not the whole, at anyrate this [cosmos] which surrounds the earth and comes after the Moon) irregular and variable, and susceptible of changes of every kind.

8. For if nothing has been naturally brought into existence without a cause, and Good cannot furnish cause of Bad, the nature of Bad as well as Good must have a genesis and principle peculiar to itself.

XLVI. 1 1. And this is the opinion of most of the most wise.

2. For some think there are two craft-rival Gods, as it were,—one the artificer of good [things], the other of [things] worthless. Others call the better “God” and the other “Daimon,” as Zoroaster the Mage, who, they tell us, lived five thousand years before the Trojan War.

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3. Zoroaster, then, called the one Ōromazēs, and the other Areimanios, and further announced that the one resembled light especially of things sensible, and the other, contrariwise, darkness and ignorance, while that between the two was Mithrēs; wherefore the Persians call Mithrēs the Mediator.

4. He taught them, moreover, to make offerings of gladsome prayers to the one, and to the other of melancholy de-precations.

5. For bruising a certain plant called “moly” 1 in a mortar, they invoke Hades and Darkness; then mixing it with the blood of a wolf whose throat has been cut, they carry it away and cast it into a sunless spot.

6. For they think that both of plants some are of the Good God and others of the Evil Daimon; and of animals, dogs, for instance, and birds 2 and hedgehogs of the Good, and water-rats of the Bad; wherefore they consider fortunate the man who kills the largest number [of the last].

XLVII. 1. Not that they also do not tell many mythic stories about the Gods; such as are, for example, the following:

Ōromazēs, born from the purest light, and Areimanios, of the nether darkness, are at war with one another.

2. And the former made six Gods: the first of good mind, the second of truth, the third of good order, and of the rest, one of wisdom, one of wealth, and the producer of things sweet following things fair; while the latter [made] craft-rivals as it were to those equal in number.

3. Then Ōromazēs having tripled himself, removed himself from the sun so far as the sun is distant from the earth, and adorned the heaven with stars; and he

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established one star above all as warder and look-out, [namely] Sirius.

4. And having made four-and-twenty other gods, he put them into an egg.

Whereupon those that were made from Areimanios, just the same in number, piercing through the egg . . . 1—whence the bad have been mingled with the good.

5. But a time appointed by Fate will come when Areimanios’s letting loose of pestilence and famine must be utterly brought to an end, and made to vanish by these [good gods], and the earth becoming plane and level, there must ensue one mode of life and one way of government for men, all being happy and one-tongued. 2

6. Theopompus, however, says that, according to the Magi, for three thousand years alternately one of the Gods conquers and the other is conquered, and for yet another three thousand years they fight and war, and each undoes the work of the other.

7. But that in the end Hades fails, and men shall be happy, neither requiring food nor casting shadow; 3 while the God who has contrived these things is still and at rest for a time—not otherwise long for a God, but proportionate to a man’s sleeping.

8. The style of myth among the Magi, then, is somewhat after this manner.

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XLVIII. 1. Moreover, Chaldæans declare that of the planets—which they call birth-presiding gods—two are good workers, two ill-doers, while three are intermediates and common.

2. As for the dogmas of the Greeks, they are, I take it, plain to all, ascribing as they do the good allotment to Olympian Zeus, and that which has to be averted to Hades.

3. Moreover, they have a myth that Harmony is the child of Aphrodite and Ares, the latter of whom is harsh and strife-loving, while the former is gentle and a lover of love-striving.

4. For Heracleitus plainly calls “War”—“father and king and lord of all,” 1 and says that Homer, when he prays “that strife and hatred cease from gods as well,” 2 forgets that he is imprecating the means of birth of all, in that they have their genesis from conflict and antipathy; that:

“Sun will not o’erstep his proper bounds, for if he do, Furies, Eight’s bodyguard, will find him out.” 3

5. The Pythagorics [also], in a list of names, set down the predicates of Good as—One, Finite, Abiding, Straight, Odd, Square, Equal, Right, Light; and of Bad as—Two, Infinite, Moving, Curved, Even, Oblong, Unequal, Left, Dark,—on the ground that these are the underlying principles of genesis.

6. Aristotle [also predicates] the former as Form and the latter as Privation.

7. While Plato, though in many passages disguising himself and hiding his face, calls the former of the opposite principles Same and the latter Other.

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8. But in his Laws, being now older, no longer in riddles and in symbols, but with authentic names, he says 1 cosmos is moved not by one soul, but probably by several, in any case not less than two,—whereof the one is good-doing, the other the opposite to this and maker of things opposite.

9. He leaves out, however, a certain third intermediate nature, neither soul-less nor reason-less nor motion-less of itself, as some think, 2 but depending on both of them, and for ever longing for and desiring and following after the better, as the following [passages] of the argument (logos), 3 combining as it does for the most part the theology of the Egyptians with their philosophy, show.

XLIX. 1. For though the genesis and composition of this cosmos has been blended from opposing, though not equal-strengthed, powers, the lordship is nevertheless that of the Better [one].

2. Still it is impossible the Worse should be entirely destroyed, as it is largely innate in the body and largely in the soul of the universe, and ever in desperate conflict with the Better.

3. In the Soul [of cosmos], then, Mind and Reason (Logos), the guide and lord of all the best in it, is Osiris; and so in earth and air and water and heaven and stars, that which is ordered and appointed and in health, is the efflux of Osiris, reflected in seasons and temperatures and periods.

4. But Typhon is the passionate and titanic and reasonless and impulsive [aspect] of the Soul, while of

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its corporeal [side he is] the death-dealing and pestilent and disturbing, with unseasonable times and intemperate atmospheres and concealments of sun and moon,—as though they were the charges and obliterations of Typhon.

5. And the name is a predicate of Sēth, as they call Typhon; for [Sēth] means “that which oppresses and constrains by force;” 1 it means also, frequently, “turning upside down,” and, again, “overleaping.”

6. Some, moreover, say that one of the companions of Typhon was Bebōn; 2 while Manethōs [says] that Typhon himself was also called Bebōn, and that the name signifies “holding back” or “hindering,” since the power of Typhon stands in the way of things going on their way and moving towards what they have to.

L. 1. Wherefore also of domestic animals they apportion to him the least tractable—the ass; while of wild ones, the most savage—the crocodile and hippopotamus.

2. As to the ass, we have already given some explanation. At Hermes-city, however, as image of Typhon, they show us a hippopotamus on which stands a hawk 3 fighting a snake,—indicating by the hippopotamus Typhon, and by the hawk power and rule, of which Typhon frequently possessing himself by force, ceases not from being himself in and throwing [others] into a state of disorder by means of evil.

3. Wherefore also when they make offerings on the seventh of the month Tybi, 4—which [day] they call

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[paragraph continues]“Arrival of Isis from Phœnicia,” they mould on the cakes a bound hippopotamus. 1

4. And at Apollo-city it is the custom for absolutely everyone to eat a piece of crocodile. And on one [particular] day they hunt down and kill as many [of them] as they possibly can, and throw them down right in front of the temple, saying that Typhon escaped Horus by turning himself into a crocodile,—considering as they do that all animals and plants and experiences that are evil and harmful are Typhon’s works and parts and movements.

LI. 1. Osiris, again, on the other hand, they write with “eye” and “sceptre,” 2 the former of which [they say] shows his providence, and the latter his power; just as Homer, when calling him who is ruler and king of all “Zeus supreme counsellor,” 3 seems by “supreme” to signify his supremacy, and by “counsellor” his good counsel and providence.

2. They frequently write this god with “hawk” 4 as well; for it excels in tension of sight and swiftness of flight, and can naturally support itself on the smallest quantity of food.

3. It is said, moreover, to hover over the bodies of the unburied dead and to cast earth upon them. 5 And when it drops down on the river to drink, it sets its wings upright, and after drinking it lowers them again,—by which it is evident it saves itself and escapes from the crocodile, for if it is caught its wings remain fixed as they were set. 6

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4. And everywhere they exhibit a man-shaped image of Osiris,—ithyphallic, because of his generative and luxuriant [nature].

And they dress his statue in a flame-coloured robe,—since they consider the sun as body of the power of the Good, as it were a visible [sign] of an essence that mind only can conceive.

5. Wherefore also we should pay no attention to those who assign the sphere of the sun to Typhon, 1—to whom nothing light or salutary, neither order nor genesis, nor any motion that has measure and reason, belongs, but [rather] their contraries.

6. And we should not set down drought which destroys many of the animals and plants, as the sun’s work, but [rather as that] of the breaths and waters in earth and air not being seasonably blended when the principle of disorderly and unbounded power makes discord and quenches the exhalations.

LII. 1. And in the sacred hymns to Osiris, they invoke him who is hidden in the Arms of the Sun; 2 and on the thirteenth of the month of Epiphi 3 they keep with feast the Birthday of the Eye of Horus, when moon and sun are in the same straight line; as they think that not only the moon but also the sun is eye and light of Horus.

2. And on the eighth of the waning [half] of Paōphi 4 they keep the Birthday of the Sun’s Staff, after the autumnal equinox,—signifying that he needs an under-prop, as it were, and strengthening, deficient as he is

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in heat and light, declining and moving obliquely from us.

3. Moreover, just after the winter solstice they carry the Cow round the shrine [seven times], and the circuit is called the Seeking for Osiris, as in winter the Goddess longs for the “water” of the Sun.

4. And she goes round this number of times, because he completes his passing from the winter to the summer solstice in the seventh month.

5. Moreover, Horus, son of Osiris, is said to have been the first of all to make offerings to the Sun on the fourth of the waxing moon, as is written in the [books] entitled Birthdays of Horus.

6. Though indeed every day they offer incense to the Sun in three kinds—resin at his rising, myrrh at mid-heaven, and what is called “kuphi” at his setting; the reason for each of which I will explain later on. 1 And with all these they think to make the Sun propitious to them and to do him service.

7. But what need is there to collect many such indications? For there are those who say point-blank that Osiris is Sun and is called Sirius by Greeks—though with Egyptians the addition of the article has caused the name to be mistaken 2—and who declare Isis to be no other than Moon; whence also [they say] that the horned ones of her statues are representations of her crescent, while by the black-robed ones are signified the occultations and overshadowings in which she follows Sun longing after him.

8. Accordingly they invoke Moon for affairs of love; and Eudoxus 3 says that Isis decides love-affairs.

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9. And these [explanations] have in a modified way some share of plausibility; whereas it is not worth while even listening to those who make the Sun Typhon.

10. But let us ourselves again take up the proper reason (logos).

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Footnotes

323:1 Mullach, i. 319; Fairbanks (45), p. 37. The whole logos of Heracleitus runs: “They know not how differing agrees with itself,—back-flying (παλίντονος) harmony as though of lyre or bow.” That is, as a stretched string flies back again to its original position.

323:2 Nauck, p. 294.

323:3 That is, presumably, “in logoi and voices from heaven.”

324:1 For a criticism and notes on this chapter and the following, see Cumont (F.), Textes et Monuments Figurés relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra (Bruxelles, 1896), ii. 33-35.

325:1 Thought by some to be the Cappadocian equivalent of the haoma or soma plant.

325:2 That is “cocks.”

326:1 A lacuna occurs here in the text.

326:2 This may refer to the consciousness of the spiritual life.

326:3 There are thus three thousand years in which Ahura Mazda has the upper hand, three thousand in which Ahriman is victorious, three thousand in which the forces are balanced, and in the tenth thousand years comes the Day of Light. Cf. Pistis Sophia, 243: “Jesus answered and said unto Mary: ‘A Day of Light is a thousand years in the world, so that thirty-six myriads of years and a half myriad of years of the world make a single Year of Light.’” The not casting of a shadow was supposed to he a characteristic of souls not attached to body; but it refers here rather to those who are “straight” with the Spiritual Sun.

327:1 Fairbanks, (44) pp. 34, 35.

327:2 Cf. Il., xviii. 107; Fairbanks, (43) pp. 34, 35.

327:3 Fairbanks, (29) pp. 32, 33.

328:1 This is a very brief summary of the argument in Legg., x. 896 ff. (Jowett, v. 282 ff.).

328:2 Cf. xlv. 6.

328:3 This “argument” is Plutarch’s own treatise and not Plato’s dialogue, as King supposes.

329:1 Cf. xli. 2.

329:2 βέβωνα, but perhaps rather βεβῶνα—and so βεβῶς, a play on βεβῶν, “steadying” or “straining.” In Eg. Bebi or Baba; cf. Budge, op. cit., ii. 92.

329:3 Cf. li. 2.

329:4 Copt. Tobi—corr. roughly to January.

330:1 Cf. “bound ass” above, xxx. 3.

330:2 Cf. x. 6.

330:3 Il., viii. 22; xvii. 339.

330:4 Cf. 1. 2. Compare the Eagle of Zeus.

330:5 More of the “Physiologus.”

330:6 “In the crocodile’s gullet,” comments King, “and so prevents him gulping down the bird.” We are, however, inclined to think that Plutarch is a bit of a humourist, and that there is no necessity for commenting seriously on his on dits.

331:1 Cf. xli. 1; also § 9 below.

331:2 That is the Sun’s Rays.

331:3 Copt. Epep—corr. roughly with July.

331:4 Copt. Paopi—corr. roughly with October.

332:1 Cf. lxxix., lxxx.

332:2 That is ὁ σείριος = ὄσιρις—an absurd contention, of course, though flattering to Greek vanity.

332:3 Cf. vi., x., xxx., lxii., lxiv.

THE PROPER REASON ACCORDING TO PLUTARCH

LIII. 1. For Isis is the feminine [principle] of Nature and that which is capable of receiving the whole of genesis; in virtue of which she has been called “Nurse” and “All-receiving” by Plato, 1 and, by the multitude, “She of ten-thousand names,” through her being transformed by Reason (Logos) and receiving all forms and ideas [or shapes].

2. And she hath an innate love of the First and Most Holy of all things (which is identical with the Good), and longs after and pursues it. But she flees from and repels the domain of the Bad, and though she is the field and matter of them both, yet doth she ever incline to the Better of herself, and offers [herself] for him to beget and sow into herself emanations and likenesses, with which she joys and delights that she is pregnant and big with their generations.

3. For Generation is image of Essence in Matter and Becoming copy of Being.

LIV. 1. Hence not unreasonably do they say in the myth that [while] the Soul of Osiris is eternal and indestructible, Typhon often tears his Body in pieces and makes it disappear, and that Isis seeks it wandering and puts it together again.

2. For the Real and Conceivable-by-the-mind-alone and Good is superior to destruction and change; but the images which the sensible and corporeal imitates

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from it, and the reasons (logoi) and forms and likenesses which it receives, just as seal-impressions in wax, do not last for ever, but are seized upon by the disorderly and turbulent [elements], expelled hither from the field above, and fighting against the Horus whom Isis brings forth as the sensible image of that cosmos which mind alone can conceive.

3. Wherefore also [Horus] is said to have a charge of bastardy brought against him by Typhon—of not being pure and unalloyed like his sire, Reason (Logos), itself by itself, unmixed and impassible, but bastardized with matter on account of the corporeal [element]. 1

4. Nevertheless, Horus gets the best of it and wins, through Hermes—that is, the Reason (Logos) 2—bearing witness and showing that Nature reflects the [true] Cosmos by changing her forms according to That-which-mind-alone-can-conceive. 3

5. For the genesis of Apollo 4 from Isis and Osiris 5 that took place while the Gods were still in the womb of Rhea, is an enigmatical way of stating that before this [sensible] cosmos became manifest, and Matter was perfected by Reason (Logos), Nature, proving herself imperfect, of herself brought forth her first birth.

6. Wherefore also they say that that God was lame 6 in the dark, and call him Elder Horus; for he was not cosmos, but a sort of image and phantasm of the world which was to be. 7

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LV. 1. But this Horus [of ours] is their Son, 1 horizoned 2 and perfect, who has not destroyed Typhon utterly, but has brought over to his side his efficacy and strength; hence they say it is that the statue of Horus at Coptos grasps in one hand Typhon’s virilia.

2. Moreover, they have a myth that Hermes cut out the sinews of Typhon and used them for lyre strings,—[thus] teaching [us] how Reason (Logos) brought the universe into harmony, and made it concordant out of discordant elements. He did not destroy the destructive power but lamed it.

3. Hence while weak and ineffective up there, down here, by being blinded and interwoven with the passible and changeable elements, it is cause of shakings and tremors in earth, of droughts and tempests in air, and again of lightnings and thunderings.

4. Moreover, it infects waters and winds with pestilences, and shoots up and rears itself as far as the moon, frequently blurring and blackening its light, as Egyptians think.

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5. And they say that Typhon at one time strikes the Eye of Horus, and at another takes it out and swallows it. By “striking” they refer enigmatically to the monthly diminution of the moon, and by “blinding” to its eclipse, which the sun remedies by immediately shining on it after it has passed out of the shadow of the earth. 1

LVI. 1. Now the better and diviner Nature is from these:—[to wit] the Intelligible and Matter, and that from them which Greeks call Cosmos.

2. Plato, 2 indeed, was wont to call the Intelligible Idea and Model and Father; and Matter Mother and Nurse—both place and ground of Genesis; and the offspring of both Genesis.

3. And one might conjecture that Egyptians [also revered 3] the fairest of the triangles, likening the nature of the universe especially to this; for Plato also, in his Republic, 4 seems to have made additional use of this in drawing up his marriage scheme. 5

4. And this triangle has its perpendicular [side] of “three,” its base of “four,” and its hypotenuse of “five”; its square being equal to the [sum of the] squares on the containing sides. 6

5. We must, accordingly, compare its perpendicular to male, its base to female, and its hypotenuse to the offspring of both; and [conjecture] Osiris as source, Isis as receptacle, and Horus as result.

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6. For the “three” is the first “odd” 1 and perfect; 2 while the “four” [is] square from side “even” two; 3 and the “five” resembles partly its father and partly its mother, being composed of “three” and “two.”

7. And panta [all] is only a slight variant of pente [five]; and they call counting pempasasthai [reckoning by fives].

8. And five makes a square equal to the number of letters among Egyptians, 4 and a period of as many years as the Apis lives.

9. Thus they usually call Horus also Min 5—that is, “being seen”; for cosmos is a sensible and see-able thing.

10. And Isis is sometimes called Muth, 6 and again Athyri 7 and Methyer. And by the first of the names they mean “Mother”; by the second, “Cosmic House” of Horus,—as also Plato [calls her] “Ground of Genesis” and “She who receives”; and the third is compounded from “Full” and “Cause,”—for Matter is full of

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[paragraph continues]Cosmos, and consorts with the Good and Pure and Ordered.

LVII. 1. And Hesiod 1 also, when he makes all the first [elements to be] Chaos and Earth and Tartarus and Love, might be thought to assume no other principles than these,—if at anyrate in substituting the names we assign to Isis that of Earth, to Osiris that of Love, and to Typhon that of Tartarus; for his Chaos seems to be subsumed as ground and place of the universe.

2. Our data also in a way invite as witness Plato’s myth which Socrates details in the Symposium 2 about the Birth of Love,—telling [us how] that Poverty wanting children lay down by the side of sleeping Means, and conceiving by him brought forth Love of a mixed nature and capable of assuming every shape, in as much, indeed, as he is the offspring of a good and wise father and one sufficient for all, but of an incapable mother and one without means, 3 who on account of her need is ever clinging to some one else and importuning some one else. 4

3. For his Means is no other than the First Beloved and Desirable and Perfect and Sufficient; and he calls Matter Poverty,—who is herself of herself deficient of the Good, but is ever being filled by Him and longing for and sharing in [Him].

4. And the Cosmos, that is Horus, is born from these; and Horus, though neither eternal nor impassible nor indestructible, but ever-generable, continues by means of the changes and periods of his passions to remain ever young and ever to escape destruction.

LVIII. 1. Now, we should make use of the myths not

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as though they were altogether sacred sermons (logoi), but taking the serviceable [element] of each according to its similitude [to reason].

2. When, then, we say Matter, we should not be swept into the opinions of some philosophers, and suppose some body or other of itself soul-less and quality-less, and inert and inefficient; for we call oil the “matter” of a perfume, [and] gold that of a statue, though they are not destitute of every quality.

3. [Nay,] we submit the soul itself and [even] the thought of man as the “matter” of knowledge and virtue to the reason (logos) to order and bring into rhythm.

4. Moreover, some have declared the mind [to be] “region of ideas,” and, as it were, the “impressionable substance 1 of the intelligibles.”

5. And some think that the substance of the woman 2 is neither power nor source, but matter and nutriment of birth.

6. If, then, we attach ourselves to these, we ought thus also to think of this Goddess as having eternally her share in the First God, and consorting [with Him] for love of the goodness and beauty that surround Him, never opposed to Him, but, just as we say that a lawful and righteous husband loves [his wife] righteously, and a good wife though she has her husband and consorts with him, still desires [him], so [should we] think of Her as clinging to Him, and importuning Him, 3 though [ever] filled full with His supremest and purest parts.

LIX. 1. But where Typhon steals in, laying hold of the last [parts, we should think of Her as] then seeming to wear a melancholy countenance, and being said to

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mourn, and to be seeking after certain relics and fragments of Osiris, and enfolding them in her robes, receiving them when destroyed into herself, and hiding them away, just as She also produces them again when they are born, and sends them forth from herself.

2. For while the reasons (logoi) and ideas and emanations of the God in heaven and stars remain [for ever], those that are disseminated into things passible—in earth and sea and plants and animals—being dissolved and destroyed and buried, come to light over and over again and reappear in their births.

3. For which cause the myth says that Typhon lived with Nephthys, but that Osiris had knowledge of her secretly.

4. For the last parts of Matter, which they call Nephthys and End, are mainly in possession of the destructive power; nevertheless the Generative and Saving One distributes into them weak and faint seed which is destroyed by Typhon, except so much as Isis by adoption saves and nourishes and compacts together.

LX. 1. But He is on the whole the Better one, as both Plato and Aristotle suppose; and the generative and moving [power] of Nature moves to Him and towards being, while the annihilating and destructive [moves] from Him and towards non-being.

2. Wherefore they derive the name Isis from hastening (ἵεσθαι) and coursing with knowledge, since she is ensouled and prudent motion.

3. For her name is not foreign; 1 but just as all the Gods have a common name from two elements—“that which can be seen” and “that which runs” 2—so we

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call this Goddess “Isis” from “knowledge,” 1 and Egyptians [also] call her Isis. 2

4. And thus Plato also says the ancients signified the “Holy 3 [Lady]” by calling her “Isia,”—and so also “Mental Perception” and “Prudence,” in as much as she is [the very] course and motion of Mind hastening 4 and coursing, and that they placed Understanding—in short, the Good and Virtue—in things that flow 5 and run.

5. Just as [he says] again, the Bad is railed at with corresponding names, when they call that which hinders nature and binds it up and holds it and prevents it from hastening and going, “badness,” 6 “difficulty,” 7 “cowardice” 8 [and] “distress.”

LXI. 1. And Osiris has had his name from a combination of ὅσιος (holy) and ἱερός (sacred); for there is a common Reason (Logos) of things in Heaven and of things in Hades,—the former of which the ancients were accustomed to call sacred, and the latter holy.

2. And the Reason that [both] brings [down] to light the heavenly things and is [also] of things that are

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mounting upwards, 1 is called Anubis, and sometimes also Hermanubis, 2 belonging in his former capacity to things above and in his latter to things below [them].

3. Wherefore also they offer him in his former capacity a white cock, 3 and in his latter a saffron-coloured one,—thinking that the former things are pure and the latter mixed and manifold.

4. Nor ought we to be surprised at the manipulation of the names back into Greek. 4 For tens of thousands of others that disappeared with those who emigrated from Greece, continue unto this day and sojourn with foreigners; for recalling some of which they blame the poets’ art as “barbarising,”—I mean those who call such words “glosses.” 5

5. Further, they relate that in what are called the “Books of Hermes,” it is written that they call the Power that rules the ordained revolution of the Sun, Horus, while the Greeks [call it] Apollo; and the Power that rules the Breath [or Spirit], some [call] Osiris, others Sarapis, and others Sōthis in Egyptian.

6. The last means “conception” (κύησιν) or “conceiving” (τὸ κύειν). 6 Wherefore also, by inversion of the name, the star [Sōthis] which they consider the special one of Isis, is called Dog (κύων) in Greek.

7. We should, however, least of all be jealous about the names; still if we were, I would sooner give up

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[paragraph continues]“Sarapis” than “Osiris”; for though I think the former is a foreign one and the latter Greek, yet are they both [names] of One God and One Power.

LXIL 1. The Egyptian [names] also resemble these [Greek ones]. For they often call Isis by the name of Athena, which expresses some such meaning as “I have come from myself”—which is [again] indicative of self-motive course.

2. While “Typhon,” as has been said, 1 is called Sēth and Bebōn and Smu,—the names being intended to signify a certain forcible and preventative checking, opposition or reversing.

3. Moreover, they call the loadstone “Bone of Horus,” 2 and iron “[Bone] of Typhon,” as Manethōs relates; for just as iron often resembles that which is attracted to and follows after the loadstone, and often is turned away from it, and repelled to an opposite direction, so the saving and good and reason-possessing motion of the Cosmos both turns towards itself and makes more gentle by persuasion that harsh and typhonean [motion]; and then again after raising it into itself, it reverses it and plunges it into the infinitude.

4. Moreover, Eudoxus 3 says that the Egyptians tell a myth about Zeus that, as in consequence of his having his legs grown together, 4 he could not walk, for shame he lived in solitude; and so Isis, by cutting in two and separating these limbs of his body, made his going even-footed. 5

5. By those things, moreover, the myth enigmatically

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hints that the Mind and Reason (Logos) of God after it had progressed 1 in itself in the invisible and unmanifest, came forth into genesis by means of motion.

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Footnotes

333:1 Timæus, 51 A.

334:1 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 10; Lact., iv. 6 (Frag. v.).

334:2 This shows that in one tradition Hermes and Osiris were identified.

334:3 Cf. xix. 4.

334:4 Sc. Horus.

334:5 The sequel I think shows that “and Osiris” is a gloss; but see xii. 8.

334:6 Cf. lxii.

334:7 These two paragraphs are, in my opinion, of the utmost value for the critical investigation of the sources of the famous Sophia mythus of Gnosticism. The imperfect birth (Abortion) of the Sophia (Wisdom, Nature, Isis), as the result of her effort to bring forth of herself, without her consort, or syzygy, while still in the Plērōma (Womb of Rhea), paves the way for the whole scheme of one of the main forms of Gnostic cosmology and subsequent soteriology, the Creator Logos and Saviour having to perfect the imperfect product of Nature. This is, I believe, the first time that the above passage of Plutarch has been brought into connection with the Sophia-mythus, and all previous translations with which I am acquainted accordingly make havoc of the meaning. See F. F. F., pp. 339 ff.; and for the Pauline use of the technical term “Abortion,” D. J. L., pp. 355 ff.; for “Balaam the Lame Man” (? a by-name for Jeschu-Horus), see ibid., p. 201. Reitzenstein (pp. 39, 40) quotes these two chapters, and adds some parallels from the Trismegistic literature.

335:1 Adopting the suggestion of Bernardakis—ὁ υἱὸς for αὐτός.

335:2 Or “defined,” ὡρισμένος—a play on ὧρος.

336:1 All this according to the Mathematici, presumably; the “eye” of Horus would rather signify “mentality.”

336:2 Timæus, 50 C.

336:3 There is a lacuna in the text.

336:4 Rep., 545 D ff. See also Adam (J.), The Nuptial Number of Plato: its Solution and Significance (London, 1891).

336:5 That is to say, that in Plutarch’s opinion Plato derived the idea originally from Egypt.

336:6 That is, 9 + 16 = 25.

337:1 “One” being reckoned neither odd nor even.

337:2 That is, divisible by itself and “one” only.

337:3 τετράγωνος ἀνὸ πλευρᾶς ἀρτίου τῆς δυάδος.

337:4 That is, the Egyptian alphabet consisted of 25 letters.

337:5 In the Ritual (chap. xvii. 30), the deceased is made to say: “I am the God Ȧmsu (or Min) in his coming forth; may his two plumes be set upon my head for me.” And in answer to the question: “Who, then, is this?”—the text goes on to say: “Ȧmsu is Horus, the avenger of his father, and his coming forth is his birth. The plumes upon his head are Isis and Nephthys when they go forth to set themselves there, even as his protectors, and they provide that which his head lacketh; or (as others say), they are the two exceeding great uraei which are upon the head of their father Tem, or (as others say), his two eyes are the two plumes which are upon his head.” (Budge, op. cit., ii. 258.)

337:6 Eg. Mut, the syzygy of Ȧmen. Mut means “Mother”; she was the World-mother. See Budge, op. cit., ii. 28 ff.

337:7 Cf. lxix. 4, “Athyr” probably meaning Hathor.

338:1 Theog., 116-122.

338:2 Symp., 203 B; Jowett, i. 573 ff.

338:3 ἀπόρον—a play on πόρος.

338:4 Cf. lviii. 6, last clause.

339:1 ἐκμαγεῖον. Cf. Plat., Tim., 50 C; Thæet., 191 C, 196 A.

339:2 τὸ σπέρμα τῆς γυναικός—lit., “the seed of the woman.”

339:3 Cf. lvii. 2.

340:1 That is, non-Greek—βαρβαρικόν. Cf. ii. 2.

340:2 The word-play being θεὸς—θεατὸς—θέον.

341:1 Cf. ii. 3 for the word-play, and also for ὁσία in the next paragraph.

341:2 They, however, probably called her something resembling Ȧst.

341:3 τὴν ὁσιάν—but Plutarch is mistaken, for in Cratylus, 401 C it is a question of οὐσιάν and ἐσιάν and not of ὁσιάν and ἰσίαν.

341:4 ἱεμένου, picking up the ἵεσθαι above in paragraph 2.

341:5 Cf. Crat., 415 D, where the word-play is ἀρετὴ and ἀει-ρειτὴ (ever-flowing).

341:6 Cf. Crat., 415 C—where the play is κακ-ία = κακῶς ἰὸν (ἰέναι)—badly going.

341:7 ἀπορ-ία—the word-play being ἀ (not) and πορ-εύεσθαι (going)—ibid., C, D.

341:8 “δειλία signifies that the soul is bound with a strong chain (δεσμὸς), for λίαν means strength, and therefore δειλία expresses the greatest and strongest bond of the soul” (ibid.). See Jowett, i. 359 f.

342:1 That is, things in Hades (the Invisible)—not Tartarus.

342:2 Horus was endowed with many characteristics of other gods. Thus with Ȧnpu or Anubis he becomes Ḥeru-em-Ȧnpu, i.e. Horus as Anubis, and is said to dwell in the “divine hall.” This is the Hermanubis of Plutarch. Cf. Budge, op. cit., i. 493.

342:3 “A cock to Æsculapius.”

342:4 Cf. xxix. 8.

342:5 γλώττας—a technical term for obsolete or foreign words that need explanation.

342:6 Cf. xxi. 2.

343:1 Cf. xli., xlix. (end).

343:2 Cf. the “bone of the sea-hawk” in Hipp., Philo., v. 9 and 17; and note to J., in “Myth of Man in the Mysteries,” p. 189.

343:3 Cf. xxx., lxix., et al.

343:4 The invisible serpent-form of the God.

343:5 Cf. Plat., Tim., 44 D and 45 A; and liv. 5 above concerning the birth of the Elder Horus.

344:1 Or “walked,” suggesting some idea of single motion in itself—the motion of “sameness,” symbolised by a serpent with its tail in its mouth. The serpent was one of the most favourite symbols of the Logos, and this perhaps accounts for the “legs grown together.”

THE SYMBOLISM OF THE SISTRUM

LXIII. 1. The sistrum (σεῖστρον) also shows that existent things must be shaken up (σείεσθαι) and never have cessation from impulse, but as it were be wakened up and agitated when they fall asleep and die away.

2. For they say they turn aside and beat off Typhon with sistra,—signifying that when corruption binds nature fast and brings her to a stand, [then] generation frees her and raises her from death by means of motion.

3. Now the sistrum has a curved top, and its arch contains the four [things] that are shaken. For the part of the cosmos which is subject to generation and corruption, is circumscribed by the sphere of the moon, and all [things] in it are moved and changed by the four elements—fire and earth and water and air.

4. And on the arch of the sistrum, at the top, they put the metal figure of a cat with a human face, and at the bottom, below the shaken things, the face sometimes of Isis and sometimes of Nephthys,—symbolising by the faces generation and consummation (for these are the changes and motions of the elements), and by the cat the moon, on account of the variable nature, 2 night habits, and fecundity of the beast.

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5. For it is fabled to bring forth one, then two, and [then] three, and four, and five [at a birth], and then adds one by one until seven; 1 so that in all she brings forth eight-and-twenty, the number of lights of the moon.

6. This, however, is probably somewhat too mythical; anyway, the pupils of its eyes seem to become full and dilate at the full-moon, and to contract and shut out the light during the wanings of that luminary.

7. And by the human face of the cat is signified the intellectual and reasonable nature of the changes that take place in connection with the moon.

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Footnotes

344:2 τὸ ποικίλον. King translates this “pied colour,” and deduces that “the original colour of the cat was tabby”; but, as the school-boy says, I don’t see it.

345:1 More “Physiologus”; or rather, there was a mystical theory about other things which was adapted to a popular natural history of the cat, and then the fable was cited as “proof” of the original theory.

THE TRUE “LOGOS,” AGAIN, ACCORDING TO PLUTARCH

LXIV. 1. But, to speak concisely, it is not correct to consider either water or sun or earth or heaven as Osiris or Isis, or, again, fire or drought or sea as Typhon; but if we were to assign simply that [nature] to the latter which is not subject to measure or rule owing to excesses or insufficiencies, and should reverence and honour that which has been subjected to order and is good and beneficent, as the work of Isis, and the image and copy and reason of Osiris, we should not miss the mark.

2. Moreover, we shall make Eudoxus 2 cease to disbelieve and be perplexed, how it is neither Demeter who has charge of love-affairs but Isis, nor Dionysus who has the power either to make the Nile increase or to rule over the dead [but Osiris].

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3. For we think that by one Common Reason (Logos) 1 these Gods have been ordained over every domain of good; and every fair and good thing possible for nature owes its origin to their means,—[Osiris] giving [them] their origins and [Isis] receiving and distributing [them].

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Footnotes

345:2 Cf. lxii. et al.

346:1 Parallel to “Common Sense.”

AGAINST THE WEATHER AND VEGETATION GOD THEORIES

LXV. 1. And we shall also get our hands on the dull crowd who take pleasure in associating the [mystic recitals] about these Gods either with changes of the atmosphere according to the seasons, or with the generation of the corn and sowings and ploughings, and in saying that Osiris is buried when the sown corn is hidden by the earth, and comes to life and shows himself again when it begins to sprout.

2. For which cause also [they declare] that Isis, on feeling she is pregnant, ties an amulet round her [neck] on the sixth day of the first half of the month Phaōphi; 2 and that Harpocrates is brought forth about the winter solstice imperfect and infant in the things that sprout too early. 3

3. For which cause they offer him first-fruits of growing lentils, and they keep the days of thanks for safe delivery after the spring equinox.

4. For they love to hear these things and believe them, drawing conviction from things immediately at hand and customary.

LXVI. 1. Still there is nothing to complain of if

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[only], in the first place, they cherish the Gods in common with ourselves, and do not make them peculiar to Egyptians, either by characterising Nile and only the land that Nile waters by these names, or, by saying that marshes and lotuses and god-making [are their monopoly], deprive the rest of mankind who have no Nile or Butō or Memphis, of [the] Great Gods.

2. Indeed, all [men] have Isis and know her and the Gods of her company; for though they learned not long ago to call some of them by names known among the Egyptians, still they knew and honoured the power of each [of them] from the beginning.

3. In the second place, and what is more important—they should take very good heed and be apprehensive lest unwittingly they write-off the sacred mysteries and dissolve them into winds and streams, and sowing and ploughings, and passions of earth and changes of seasons.

4. As those who [say] that Dionysus is wine and Hephæstus flame, and Persephone, as Cleanthes says somewhere, the wind that drives through the crops and is killed; and [as] some poet says of the reapers:

Then when they, lusty, cut Demeter’s limbs. 1

5. For these in nothing differ from those who regard a pilot as sails and ropes and anchor, and a weaver as yarns and threads, and a physician as potions and honey-brew and barley-water; nay, they put into men’s minds dangerous and atheistic notions, by transferring names of Gods to natures and to things that have no sense or soul, and which are necessarily destroyed by men according to their need and use. For it is not possible to consider such things in themselves as Gods.

LXVII. 1. For a God is not a thing without a mind or soul, or one made subject to the hand of man; but it

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is from these things that we deduce that those who bestow them on us for our use and offer them [to us] in perpetual abundance, are Gods.

2. Not different [Gods] for different peoples, not non-Greek and Greek, not southern and northern [Gods]; but just as sun and moon and earth and sea [are] common to all [men], though they are called by different names by different peoples, so of the Reason (Logos) that orders all things, and of one Providence that also directs powers ordained to serve under her for all [purposes], have different honours and titles been made according to their laws by different [nations].

3. And there are consecrated symbols, some obscure ones and others more plain, guiding the intelligence towards the mysteries of the Gods, [though] not without risk.

4. For some going entirely astray have stepped into superstitions, while others, shunning superstition as a quagmire, have unwittingly fallen into atheism 1 as down a precipice.

LXVIII. 1. Wherefore especially with regard to such things, should we, taking with us Reason (Logos) as our mystic guide out of philosophy, reverently meditate upon each of the things said and done; in order that, [we may avoid what] Theodorus said, [namely] that when he offered his words with his right hand some of his hearers took them with their left,—and so not miss the mark by taking in another sense what laws on offerings and feasts have well ordained.

2. For that all [these things] must be referred to the Reason (Logos), we may learn from themselves also.

For on the nineteenth of the first month, 2 when they

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keep a feast to Hermes, they eat honey and figs, saying when so doing, “Truth is sweet.” And the amulet of Isis which the myth says she put round her [neck] 1 is, when interpreted, “True Voice.”

3. And we should not consider Harpocrates either as an imperfect or infant god, or a [god] of pulse, 2 but as protector and chastener of the babyish and imperfect and inarticulate reason that men have about Gods. For which cause he has his finger laid upon his lips as a symbol of reticence and silence.

4. And in the month of Mesorē 3 when they make offerings of pulse, they say: “Tongue [is] fortune; tongue is daimon.”

5. And they say that of the trees in Egypt the persea especially has been made sacred to the Goddess, because its fruit resembles a heart and its leaf a tongue.

6. For of all man’s natural possessions nothing is more godlike than logos [word or reason], and especially that concerning the Gods, nor is there anything that decides more weightily for happiness.

7. Wherefore we commend him who goes down to consult the Oracle here 4 to think religiously and speak reverently. But the many act ridiculously when, after they have in the processions and feasts made proclamation to speak reverently, they subsequently speak and think the most irreverent things about the Gods themselves.

LXIX. 1. What use, then, must one make of those melancholy and laughterless and mournful sacrifices, if it is not right either to omit the rites of custom, or to confound our views about Gods and throw them into confusion with absurd suspicions?

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2. Yea, among Greeks, too, many things are done, just about the same time also, similar to those which Egyptians perform in the sacred [rites].

3. For instance, at Athens, the women fast at the Thesmophoria, sitting on the ground. While Bœotians move the palace of Achæa, 1 giving that festival the name of Epachthē [the Grief-bringing], as though Demeter were in grief (ἄχθει) on account of the Descent 2 of Korē.

4. And this month is the one for sowing when the Pleiades rise, which Egyptians call Athyr, 3 Greeks Pyanepsiōn, and Bœotians Damatrios. 4

5. Moreover, Theopompus 5 tells us that the Western peoples 6 consider and name the winter Kronos, the summer Aphrodite, and the spring Persephone; and [say] that all things are born from Kronos and Aphrodite.

6. While the Phrygians, thinking that the God sleeps in winter, and wakes in summer, celebrate in his honour the Orgies of his “Going to sleep” at one time, and at another of his “Waking up”; while the Paphlagonians pretend that he is bound hand and foot and imprisoned in winter, and in spring is set in motion and freed from his bonds.

LXX. 1. And the season of the year suggests that the appearance of mourning is assumed at the hiding away of grains [in the earth],—which the ancients did not

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consider gods, but gifts of the Gods, indispensable [indeed] if we are to live otherwise then savagely and like the brutes.

2. And at the season when, you know, these [ancients] saw the [fruits] entirely disappearing from the trees and ceasing, and those they had sown themselves still scanty and poor,—in scraping away the earth with their hands, and pressing it together again, and depositing [the seed] in uncertainty as to whether it would come up again and have its proper consummation, they used to do many things similar to those who bury and mourn.

3. Then, just as we say that one who buys Plato’s books “buys Plato,” and that one who presents the creations of Menander “acts Menander,” so did they not hesitate to call the gifts and creations of the Gods by the names of the Gods—honouring them and reverencing them by use.

4. But those [who came] after, receiving [these names] like boors and ignorantly misapplying what happens 1 to the fruits to the Gods [themselves], and not merely calling but believing the advent and hiding away of the necessaries [of life] generations and destructions of gods, filled their heads with absurd, indecent, and confused opinions, although they had the absurdity of their unreason before their eyes.

5. Excellent, however, was the view of Xenophanes 2 of Colophon that Egyptians don’t mourn if they believe in Gods and don’t believe in Gods if they mourn; nay, that it would be ridiculous for them in the same breath to mourn and pray for the seed to appear again, in order that it might again be consumed and mourned for.

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LXXI. 1. But such is not really the case; but, while mourning for the grain, they pray the Gods, the authors and givers [of it], to renew it again and make other grow up in the place of that which is consumed.

2. Whence there is an excellent saying among the philosophers, that those who do not learn how to hear names rightly, use things wrongly. Just as those of the Greeks who have not learned or accustomed themselves to call bronzes and pictures and marbles images in honour of the Gods, but [call them] Gods, [and] then make bold to say that Lacharēs stripped Athena, and Dionysius cut off Apollo’s golden curls, and that Capitoline Zeus was burnt and perished in the Civil Wars,—these without knowing it find themselves drawn into adopting mischievous opinions following [directly] on the [abuse of] names.

3. And this is especially the case of Egyptians with regard to the honours they pay to animals. For in this respect, at any rate, Greeks speak rightly when they consider the dove as the sacred creature of Aphrodite, and the dragon of Athena, and the raven of Apollo, and the dog of Artemis, as Euripides [sings]:

Thou shalt be dog, pet of torch-bearing Hecate. 1

4. Whereas most of the Egyptians, by the service and cult they pay to the animals themselves as though they were Gods, have not only covered their sacred rites entirely with laughter and ridicule—which is the least evil of their fatuity; but a dangerous way of thinking grows up which perverts the weak and simple to pure superstition, and, in the case of the shrewder and bolder, degenerates into an atheistic and brutal rationalism.

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5. Wherefore, also, it is not unfitting to run through the conjectures about these things. 1

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Footnotes

346:2 Copt. Paopi—corr. roughly with October.

346:3 Cf. lxviii. 2, 3. Ḥeru-p-Khart, Horus the Younger, or the “Child,’’ so called to distinguish him from Ḥeru-ur, or Horus the Elder. Cf. Budge, op. cit., i. 468 f.

347:1 Cf. Ps. Plut., De Vita Homeri, § 23.

348:1 King again, erroneously in my opinion, refers this to the Christians.

348:2 Copt. Thoth—corr. roughly with September.

349:1 Cf. lxv. 2.

349:2 Cf. ibid., 3.

349:3 Copt. Mesōrē—corr. roughly with August.

349:4 Sc. at Delphi.

350:1 A surname of Demeter, by which she was worshipped at Athens by the Gephyræans who had emigrated thither from Bœotia (Herod., v. 61).

350:2 Sc. into Hades.

350:3 Copt. Hathōr—corr. roughly to November, or rather last half of October and first of November. Cf. also lvi. 10.

350:4 That is, the month of Demeter.

350:5 Müller, i. 328. T. flourished 2nd half of 4th century B.C.

350:6 That is, presumably, the Celts.

351:1 τὰ πάθη—lit., “the passions.”

351:2 X. flourished about end of 6th and beginning of 5th century B.C.

352:1 Nauck, p. 525.

353:1 Dr Budge (op. cit., i. 29) writes: “Such monuments and texts as we have . . . seem to show that the Egyptians first worshipped animals as animals, and nothing more, and later as the habitations of divine spirits and gods; but there is no reason for thinking that the animal worship of the Egyptians was descended from a system of totems and fetishes as Mr J. F. M‘Lennan (Fortnightly Review, 1869-1870) believed.” I believe myself that the Egyptian animal-cult depended chiefly on the fact that life flowed differently in different animal forms, corresponding with the life-currents in the invisible forms or aspects of the Animal-Soul of the Cosmos.

CONCERNING THE WORSHIP OF ANIMALS, AND TOTEMISM

LXXII. 1. As for the [theory] that the Gods out of fear of Typhon changed themselves into these animals—as it were hiding themselves in the bodies of ibises and dogs and hawks—it beats any juggling or story-telling.

2. Also the [theory] that all the souls of the dead that persist, have their rebirth 2 into these [animals] only, is equally incredible.

3. And of those who would assign some reason connected with the art of government, some say that Osiris upon his great campaign, 3 divided his force into many divisions—(they call them companies and squadrons in Greek)—and gave them all ensigns of animal figures, and that each of these became sacred and venerated by the clan of those banded together under it.

4. Others [say] that the kings after [Osiris], in order

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to strike terror into their foes, used to appear dressed in wild beasts’ heads of gold and silver.

5. While others tell us that one of the clever and crafty kings, on learning that, though the Egyptians were fickle by nature and quick for change and innovation, they nevertheless possessed an invincible and unrestrainable might owing to their numbers when in agreement and co-operation, showed them and implanted into their minds an enduring superstition,—an occasion of unceasing disagreement.

6. For in as much as the beasts—some of which he enacted some [clans] should honour and venerate and others others—are hostile and inimical to one another, and as each one of them by nature likes different food from the others, each [clan] in protecting its own special [beasts] and growing angry at their being injured, was for ever unconsciously being drawn into the enmities of the beasts, and [so] brought into a state of warfare with the others.

7. For even unto this day the people of Wolf-town are the only Egyptians who eat sheep, because the wolf, whom they regard as god, [does so].

8. And the people of Oxyrhynchus-town, in our own day, when the folk of Dog-town ate the oxyrhynchus 1 fish, caught a dog and sacrificing it as a sacred victim, ate it; and going to war because of this, they handled one another roughly, and subsequently were roughly handled by the Romans in punishment. 2

LXXIII. 1. Again, as many say that the soul of Typhon himself was parted among these animals, the myths would seem enigmatically to hint that every irrational and brutal nature is born from a part of the

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[paragraph continues]Evil Daimon, and that to appease and soothe him they pay cult and service to them.

2. But if he fall upon them mighty and dire, bringing on them excessive droughts, or pestilent diseases, or other unlooked-for strange mischances, then the priests lead away at dark in silence quietly some of the venerated [beasts], and threaten and try to scare away the first [one] of them; if, however, it stops, they consecrate and sacrifice it, as though, I suppose, this were some kind of chastisement of the Daimon, or some specially great means of purification in the greater [emergencies].

3. For in the Goddess-of-child-bed-town 1 they used to burn living men to ashes, as Manethōs has told us, calling them Typhoneian; and the ashes they winnowed away and scattered. 2

4. This, however, was done publicly, and at one special time, in the Dog-days; whereas the consecratings of the venerated beasts, which are never spoken of and take place at irregular times, according to the emergencies, are unknown to the multitude, except when they have burials, and [the priests] bringing out some of the others, cast them in [to the grave with them] in the presence of all,—in the belief that they annoy Typhon in return and curtail what gives him pleasure. For only the Apis and a few other [animals] seem to be sacred to Osiris; while they assign the majority to him [Typhon].

5. And if he [Osiris] is really Reason (Logos), I think that the object of our enquiry is found in the case of these [animals] that are admitted to have common honours with him,—as, for instance, the ibis, and hawk, and dog-headed ape; [while] Apis himself [is his

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soul . . .], 1 for thus, you know, they call the goat at Mendes.

LXXIV. 1. There remain of course the utilitarian and symbolical [reasons], of which some have to do with one of the two [Gods], but most [of them] with both.

2. As for the ox and sheep and ichneumon, 2 it is clear they paid them honours on account of their usefulness and utility,—just as Lemnians crested larks which seek out and break the eggs of locusts, and Thessalians storks, because when their land produced multitudes of snakes, they came and destroyed them all—(wherefore they made a law that whoever killed a stork should be banished 3)—so with the asp and weasel and scarab, because they discerned in them certain faint likenesses of the power of the Gods, as it were [that] of the sun in water-drops.

3. For as to the weasel, many still think and say that as it is impregnated through the ear and brings forth by the mouth, it is a likeness of the birth of reason (logos). 4

4. Again [they say] the species of scarab has no female, but all, as males, discharge their seed into the stuff they have made into balls, 5 which they roll along by pushing, moving [themselves] in the opposite direction, just as the sun seems to turn the heaven round in the opposite direction, while it is [the heaven] itself that moves from west to east. 6

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5. And the asp, because it does not age, and moves without limbs with ease and pliancy, they likened to a star.

LXXV. 1. Nay, not even has the crocodile had honour paid it without some show of credible cause, for it alone is tongue-less. 1

For the Divine Reason (Logos) stands not in need of voice, and:

“Moving on a soundless path with justice guides [all] mortal things.” 2

2. And they say that it alone, when it is in the water, has its eyes covered by a smooth and transparent membrane that comes down from the upper lid, 3 so that they see without being seen,—an attribute of the First God. 4

3. And whenever the female lays her eggs on the land, it is known that this will be the limit of the Nile’s

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increase. For as they cannot lay in the water, and fear to do so far from it, they so accurately fore-feel what will be, that they make use of the rise of the river for laying their eggs and hatching them, and yet keep them dry and beyond the danger of being wetted.

4. And they lay sixty [eggs] and hatch them out in as many days, and the longest-lived of them live as many years,—which is the first of the measures for those who treat systematically of celestial [phenomena]. 1

5. Moreover, of those that have honours paid them for both [reasons] 2—of the dog, we have already treated above. 3

6. As for the ibis, while killing the death-dealing of the reptiles, 4 it was the first to teach them the use of medicinal evacuation, when they observed it being thus rinsed out and purged by itself. 5

7. While those of the priests who are most punctilious in their observances, in purifying themselves, take the water for cleansing from a place where the ibis has drunk; for it neither drinks unwholesome or poisoned 6 water, nor [even] goes near it.

8. Again, by the relative position of its legs to one another, and [of these] to its beak, it forms an equilateral triangle; and yet again, the variegation and admixture of its black with its white feathers suggest the gibbous moon. 7

9. Nor ought we to be surprised at Egyptians being so fond of meagre likenesses; for Greeks too in both their

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pictured and plastic resemblances of Gods use many such [vague indications].

10. For instance, in Crete there was a statue of Zeus which had no ears,—for it behoves the Ruler and Lord of all to listen to no one.

11. And Pheidias used the serpent in the [statue] of Athena, and the tortoise in that of Aphrodite at Elis,—because on the one hand virgins need protecting, and on the other because keeping-at-home and silence are becoming to married women.

12. Again, the trident of Poseidon is a symbol of the third region, which the sea occupies, assigned [to him] after the heaven and air. For which cause also they invented the names Amphi-trite and Trit-ons. 1

13. And the Pythagoreans have embellished both numbers and figures with appellations of Gods.

For they used to call the equilateral triangle Athena—Head-born and Third-born 2—because it is divided by three plumb-lines 3 drawn from the three angles.

14. And [they called] “one” Apollo, from privation of multitude, 4 and owing to the singleness 5 of the monad; and “two” Strife and Daring, and “three” Justice [or Rightness],—for as wronging and being wronged were according to deficiency and excess, rightness [or justice] was born to equality between them. 6

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15. And what is called the Tetraktys, the six-and-thirty, was [their] greatest oath (as has been said over and over again), and is called Cosmos,—which is produced by adding together the first four even and [the first] four odd [numbers]. 1

LXXVI. 1. If, then, the most approved of the philosophers, when they perceived in soulless and bodiless things a riddle of the Divine, did not think it right to neglect anything or treat it with disrespect, still more liking, I think, we should then have for the peculiarities in natures that are endowed with sense and possess soul and passion and character,—not paying honour to these, but through them to the Divine; so that since they are made by Nature into mirrors clearer [than any man can make], we should consider this as the instrument and art of God who ever orders all things.

2. And, generally, we should deem that nothing soulless is superior to a thing with soul, nor one without sense to one possessing it; not even if one should bring together into one spot all the gold and emeralds in the world.

3. For that which is Divine does not reside in colours or shapes or smoothnesses; nay, all things that either have no share or are not of a nature to share in life, have a lot of less value than that of dead bodies. 2

4. Whereas the Nature that lives and sees, and has its source of motion from itself, and knowledge of things that are its and those that are not, has

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appropriated both an “efflux of the Good,” 1 and a share of the Thinker “by whom the universe is steered,” as Heracleitus says. 2

5. For which cause the Divine is not less well pourtrayed in these [sc. animals] than by means of works of art in bronze and stone, which while equally susceptible of decay and mutilations, 3 are in their nature destitute of all feeling and understanding.

6. With regard to the honours paid to animals, then, I approve this view more highly than any other that has been mentioned.

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Footnotes

353:2 παλιγγενεσίαν.

353:3 Sc. for civilising the world.

354:1 Lit., “sharp-snout.”

354:2 And such things occur “even to this day” in India under the British Rāj.

355:1 ἐν εἰλειθυίας πόλει.

355:2 Over the fields?

356:1 A lacuna occurs here which I have partially filled up, conjecturally, as above.

356:2 An Egyptian animal of the weasel kind which was said to hunt out crocodiles’ eggs; also called “Pharaoh’s rat.”

356:3 Cf. Arist., Mirab., xxiii.

356:4 Cf. xxii. 1—“Physiologus” again. For a criticism of this legend, see R. 43.

356:5 Cf. x. 9.

356:6 Budge (op. cit., ii. 379 f.) writes: “The beetle or scarabæus . . . belongs to the family called Scarabacidæ (Coprophagi), of which the Scarabæus sacer is the type. . . . A remarkable peculiarity exists in the structure and situation of the hind legs, which are placed so near the extremity of the body, and so far from each other as to give the insect a most extraordinary appearance when walking. This peculiar formation is, nevertheless, particularly serviceable to its possessors in rolling the balls of excrementitious matter in which they enclose their eggs. . . . These balls are at first irregular and soft, but, by degrees, and during the process of rolling along, become rounder and harder; they are propelled by means of the hind legs. Sometimes these balls are an inch and a half, or two inches in diameter, and in rolling this along the beetles stand almost upon their heads, with the heads turned from the balls.” The scarabæus was called kheprerȧ in Egyptian, and was the symbol of Kheperȧ the Great God of creation and resurrection; he was the “father of the gods,” and the creator of all things in heaven and earth, self-begotten and self-born; he was usually identified with the rising sun and new-birth generally.

357:1 “Physiologus” again, doubtless; it might, however, be said that its tongue is rudimentary.

357:2 Euripides, Tro., 887.

357:3 Lit., “brow.”

357:4 That is, the First-born Reason.

358:1 That is, presumably, either the 60 of the Chaldæans, or the 3 × 4 × 5 of the “most perfect” triangle of the Mathematici.

358:2 Namely, the utilitarian and symbolical; cf. lxxiv. 1.

358:3 Cf. xiv. 6.

358:4 Cf. Rawlinson’s Herodotus, ii. 124, 125.

358:5 There is a similar legend in India, I am told.

358:6 May also mean “bewitched.”

358:7 That is, the moon in its third quarter.

359:1 From τριτὸς, “third.”

359:2 κορυφαγεννῆ καὶ τριτογένειαν,—that is, Koryphagennēs and Tritogeneia.

359:3 τρισὶ καθέτοις,—a κάθετος (sc. γραμμή) is generally a perpendicular; but here the reference must be to this appended figure:

359:4 That is, presumably, ἀ-πόλλων, from ἀ (priv.) and πολλοὶ (many).

359:5 δι’ ἁπλότητα,—the play being apparently ἀ-πολ (πλο)-της.

359:6 Lit., in the midst.

360:1 The Tetraktys was ordinarily considered to be the sum of the first four numbers simply, that is 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10; but here we have it given as 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 16, and 2 + 4 + 6 + 8 = 20, and 16 + 20 = 36. The oath is said to have been: “Yea, by Him who did bestow upon our soul Tetraktys, Ever-flowing Nature, Source possessing roots”—the “roots” being the four elements.

360:2 Sc. which have at least been the vehicle of life.

361:1 Plat., Phædr., 251 B.

361:2 Mullach, i. 328.

361:3 Reading πηρώσεις.

CONCERNING THE SACRED ROBES

LXXVII. 1. Now as to robes: those of Isis [are] variegated in their dyes, for her power [is] connected with matters producing all things and receiving [all]—light darkness, day night, fire water, life death, beginning end; while the [robe] of Osiris has neither shade nor variegation, but one single [property]—the light-like, 4 for the Source is pure and the First and Intelligible unmixed.

2. Wherefore when they have once and once only received this [robe], 5 they treasure it away and keep it from all eyes and hands; whereas they use those of Isis on many occasions.

3. For it is by use that the things which are sensible and ready to hand, present many unfoldings and views of themselves as they change now one way now another;

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whereas the intelligence of the Intelligible and Pure and Single, shining through the soul, like lightning-flash, once and once only perchance allows [us] to contact and behold [It].

4. For which cause both Plato 1 and Aristotle call this part of philosophy “epoptic,” 2 from the fact that they who transcend by the reason (logos) these mixed and multiform things of opinion, are raised unto that Primal [One], Simple and Matter-less, and [so] contacting in its singleness the pure truth concerning It, they think philosophy has as it were [its] perfect end.

LXXVIII. 1. The fact, moreover, which the present priests cautiously hint at by expiatory sacrifices and covering their faces—[namely] that this God is ruler and king of the dead, being no other than him who is called Hades and Pluto among Greeks—in that they do not know how it is true, confuses the multitude, who suppose that the truly sacred and holy Osiris lives on earth and under earth, where the bodies of those who seem to have [reached their] end are hidden [away].

2. But He Himself is far, far from the earth, unspotted and unstained, and pure of every essence that is susceptible of death and of decay. Nor can the souls of men here [on the earth], swathed as they are with bodies and enwrapped in passions, commune with God, except so far as they can reach some dim sort of a dream [of Him], with the perception of a mind trained in philosophy.

3. But when [their souls] freed [from these bonds] pass to the Formless and Invisible and Passionless and Pure, this God becomes their guide and king, as though they hung on Him, and gazed insatiate upon His Beauty,

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and longed after it—[Beauty] that no man can declare or speak about.

4. It is with this the ancient tale (logos) makes Isis e’er in love, and, by pursuit [of it], and consort [with it], makes [her] full-fill all things down here with all things fair and good, whatever things have part in genesis.

5. Thus, then, these things contain the reason (logos) that’s more suitable to God.

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Footnotes

361:4 τὸ φωτοειδές Cf. the better-known term τὸ αὐγοειδές, “the ray-like”.

361:5 Presumably in the initiation symbolising the investiture with the Robe of Glory.

362:1 Symp., 210 A.

362:2 In its highest sense—that is, intelligible or spiritual “seership,” not the symbolic “sight” in the formal Greater Mysteries.

CONCERNING INCENSE

LXXIX. 1. And must I also speak of the daily incense-offerings, as I promised, 1 the reader should first of all have in mind the fact, that not only have men [in general] always paid most serious attention to things that conduce to health, but that especially in sacred ceremonies and purifications and prescribed modes of life “healthy” is not less important than “holy”; for they did not think it right to render service to the Pure and perfectly Harmless and Unpolluted with either bodies or with souls festering and diseased.

2. Since, then, the air—of which we make most use, and with which we have most to do—does not always keep the same disposition and blend, but at night is condensed, and weighs down the body, and brings the soul into a desponding and anxious state, as though it had become mist-like and heavy; [therefore] as soon as they get up they incense with pine resin, sanifying and purifying the air by its 2 disintegration, and fanning up again the [fire of the] spirit connate with body 3

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which had died down,—since its perfume possesses a vehement and penetrating [force].

3. And, again, at mid-day, perceiving that the sun draws from the earth by force an exceedingly large and heavy exhalation, and commingles it with the air, they incense with myrrh. 1 For its heat dissolves and disperses the turbid and mud-like combination in the atmosphere.

4. And, indeed, physicians seem to relieve sufferers from plague by making a great blaze, as though it cleared the air. But it clears it better if they burn fragrant woods, such as [those] of cypress, juniper, and pine.

5. At any rate, they say that at Athens, at the time of the Great Plague, Akrōn the physician became famous through ordering them to keep fires burning by the side of the sick, for he [thus] benefitted not a few.

6. And Aristotle says that the sweet-smelling odours, given off by perfumes and flowers and meadows, conduce no less to health than to enjoyment; because by their warmth and softness they diffuse themselves gently through the brain, which is naturally cold and as though congested.

7. And if, moreover, they call myrrh bal among Egyptians—and in translation this comes pretty near to meaning the dispersion of silly talk—this also affords some evidence for the reason why [they use it].

LXXX. 1. And [finally] kuphi 2 is a mixture composed of sixteen ingredients:—of honey, and wine, and raisins, and cyperus; 3 of pine-resin, and myrrh,

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and aspalathus, 1 and seseli; 2 and further of mastich, 3 and bitumen, 4 and nightshade, 5 and sorrel; and in addition to these of both junipers 6 (of which they call the one the larger and the other the smaller), and cardamum, and sweet-flag. 7

2. And these are not compounded in a haphazard way, but with the sacred writings being read aloud 8 to the perfume-makers when they mix them.

3. And as to their number,—even though it has all the appearance of square from square, and [that too] the only one of equally equal numbers that has the power of making the perimeter equal to the area, 9 it must be said that its serviceableness for this purpose at least is of the slightest.

4. But the majority of the ingredients, as they possess aromatic properties, liberate a sweet breath and healthy exhalation, by which both the air is changed, and the body being gently and softly moved by the vapour, falls asleep 10 and loosens the distressing strain of the day’s anxieties, as though they were knots, [and yet] without any intoxication.

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5. Moreover, they polish up the image-making and receptive organ of dreams like a mirror, and make it clearer, no less than the playing on the lyre which the Pythagoreans used to use before sleep, thus charming away and sanifying the passionate and reason-less nature of the soul.

6. For things smelt call back the failing sense, and often, on the other hand, dull and quiet it by [their] soothing [effect], when their exhalations are diffused through the body; just as some of the physicians say that sleep is induced when the vaporisation of the food, as it were creeping gently round the inward parts and groping about, produces a kind of tickling.

7. And they use kuphi both as draught and mixture; for when it is drunk it is thought to purge the intestines, [but when applied externally 1] to be an emollient.

8. And apart from these [considerations], resin is a work of the sun; and myrrh [comes from] the exudation of the trees under the sun-heat; while of the ingredients of kuphi, some flourish more at night, like all things whose nature it is to be nourished by cool breezes and shade and dew and damp.

9. Seeing that the light of day is one and single, and Pindar tells us that the sun is seen “through empty æther”; 2 while air is a blend and mixture of many lights and properties, as it were of seeds dropped from every star into one [field].

10. Naturally, then, they use the former as incenses by day, as being single and having their birth from the sun; and the latter when night sets in, as being mixed and manifold in its qualities.

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Footnotes

363:1 Cf. lii. 5.

363:2 Sc. the resin’s.

363:3 That is, presumably, what was called the “bodily or animal spirits”—the ethers or prāṇa’s.

364:1 The resinous gum of an Arabian tree; probably a kind of acacia.

364:2 This was also used as a medicine.

364:3 κυπείρου,—Cyperus comosus, an aromatic plant used in embalming, a sweet-smelling marsh plant. Cf. F. cypère and E. cypres.

365:1 ἀσπαλάθου,—a prickly shrub yielding a fragrant oil; mentioned in the Apocrypha and in some old herbalists. Cf. “I gave a sweet smell like cinnamon and aspalathus”—Ecclus. xxiv. 15. It was not the Genista acanthoclada.

365:2 σεσέλεως,—the Tordylium officinale; formerly called in English also “cicely.”

365:3 σχίνου,—or may be “squill.”

365:4 ἀσφάλτου.

365:5 θρύον,—or may be “rush.”

365:6 Lit., juniper-berries.

365:7 κάλαμου,—probably Acorus calamus (cf. Ex. xxx. 23 et al.). It is to be noticed that the ingredients are arranged in four sets of four each.

365:8 That is to the sound of mantrāḥ, as a Hindu would say.

365:9 Cf. xlii. 2 and figure in note.

365:10 The kuphi being used at sundown.

366:1 A lacuna of 8 or 9 letters occurs here in E.

366:2 Olymp., i. 6.

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AFTERWORD

So ends this exceedingly instructive treatise of Plutarch, which, in spite of the mass of texts and monuments concerning Ȧsȧr and Ȧst which have already been deciphered by the industry of Egyptologists, remains the most complete account of the root mystery-myth of ancient Egypt. The myth of Osiris and Isis goes back to the earliest times of which we have record, and is always found in the same form. Indeed the “Ritual,” the “Book of the Dead,” which should rather be called the “Book of the Living,” might very well be styled “The Gospel of Osiris.”

It would be out of place here to seek for the historical origin of this Great Mystery; certainly Osiris was originally something greater than a “water sprite,” as Budge supposes. Osiris and Isis were and are originally, as I believe, cosmic or super-cosmic beings; for the Elder and Younger Horus, regarded macrocosmically, were the Intelligible and Sensible Worlds, and, regarded microcosmically, pertained to the mystery of the Christ-stage of manhood.

It may, of course, be denied that the ancient Egyptians were capable of entertaining any such notions; we, however, prefer the tradition of our Trismegistic tractates to the “primitive-culture” theories of anthropological speculation. That, however, such views were entertained in the first centuries is incontrovertible, as may be seen from a careful study of Philo of Alexandria alone. Thus to quote one passage out of many with regard to the two Horoi:

“For that this cosmos is the Younger Son of God, in that it is perceptible to sense. The Son who’s older than this one, He hath declared to be no one [perceptible by sense], for that he is conceivable by mind alone.

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[paragraph continues]But having judged him worthy of the Elder’s rights, He hath determined that he should remain with Him alone.” 1

When, moreover, we speak of the Christ-stage of manhood, we mean all that mystery that lies beyond the normal stage of man, including both the super-man stage and that of the Christ.

In any case, Plutarch is of the greatest service for understanding the atmosphere and environment in which the students of the Trismegistic tradition moved, and we have therefore bestowed more care upon him than perhaps the general reader may think necessary.

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Footnotes

368:1 Quod Deus Im., § 6; M. 1, 277, P. 298 (Ri. ii. 72, 73).

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X

“HERMAS” AND “HERMES”

AN ANTICIPATION

When, in a recent book, 1 I was treating of the Early Church document The Shepherd of Hermas, in connection with the ancient and mysterious Book of Elxai, which, according to Epiphanius, circulated among the Essenes, Nazorenes, Ebionites, and Sampsæans, I wrote as follows:

“It is also of very great interest to notice the many intimate points of contact between the contents of the Apocalyptic Hermas and the teaching of the Early ‘Shepherd of Men’ tractate of the mystic school who looked to Hermes the Thrice-Greatest as their inspirer, that is to say, the earliest deposit of the Trismegistic literature. But that is another story which has not yet been told.”

At the same time, all unknown to me, Reitzenstein must have written, or have been writing, his learned pages on “Hermas and Poimandres,” coming to practically the same conclusion as I had in cruder form expressed several years earlier, when commenting on Hilgers’ theory 2 that the “Shepherd of Men” was

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written in opposition to the “Shepherd of Hermas,” and suggesting that if there were any dependence of one on the other, it was in exactly the reverse sense to that of Hilger’s assumption. 1

THE HIGHER CRITICISM OF “THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS”

Like all the other extant extra-canonical documents of the Early Church, and especially the Antilegomena, as Eusebius calls them, that is to say books disputed in his day but earlier admitted by wide circles into the canon, The Shepherd of Hermas has been submitted to the most searching analysis by modern criticism. Though its unity is still strenuously defended by some scholars, the majority are convinced of its composite nature; and I follow Hilgenfeld, 2 who detects in the present form of this document three elements, or, so to say, three deposits: (i.) The Apocalyptic—Viss. i.-iv.; (ii.) The Pastoral—Vis. v.-Sim. vii.; (iii.) The Secondary, or appendix of the latest redactor—Simm. viii.-x. “Hermas i.” and “Hermas ii.” cite nothing from any of the canonical books of the New Testament, and this should be, for most scholars, a striking indication of their early date.

THE INTRODUCTION OF THE “PASTORAL HERMAS”

“Hermas ii.,” the “Pastoral Hermas,” begins as follows: 3

1. “Now when I had prayed in my house, and sat me

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down upon my couch, there entered a man of glorious appearance, in the guise of a Shepherd, clad in a white skin, 1 with a wallet on his shoulders, and a staff in his hand. And he embraced me, and I embraced him. 2

2. “And straightway he sat down by my side. He saith to me: I am sent by the most Sovereign Angel, that I may dwell with thee for the rest of the days of thy life.

3. “I thought that he had come to tempt me; 3 and I say unto him: Who art thou? For I do know (say I) into whose charge I have been given. He saith to me: Dost thou not know? Nay—answer I. I am (saith he) the Shepherd 4 into whose charge thou hast been given.

4. “E’en as he spoke, his aspect changed, and I knew him, that it was he to whom I had been given in charge.”

COMPARISON WITH OUR “PŒMANDRES”

If we now compare the Greek text of this interesting passage with that of the introductory paragraphs of the “Pœmandres,” it will be found impossible to refer their striking similarities merely to a common type of expression; the verbal agreements are too precise, and

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stand out convincingly at the first glance, without needing the assistance of the large type in which Reitzenstein (pp. 11, 12) has had them printed in his reproduction of the texts.

Most remarkable of all, however, is the similarity of ideas; for “Hermas” as for “Hermes” the Shepherd is not only a shepherd but a “shepherd of men,” even as in a different connection but in the same circle of ideas Peter and others were to become “fishers of men.” 1

Now, not only on general grounds is it difficult for any one who has carefully studied the two documents, to believe that the writer of the philosophic-mystical treatise not only had the Christian apocalyptic writing before him but took it as his point of departure; but, even if we are still strongly dominated by what has hitherto been the traditional view in all such questions, and cling to the theory that when there is similarity the Christian scripture must necessarily have been first in the field, it is very difficult to believe that a copier of “Hermas” should have left no traces of an acquaintance with the very distinctive feature of the robe and staff and wallet of the shepherd, and of the conversation which follows in what, on this theory, would be the presupposed original.

THE POPULAR SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION OF THE SHEPHERD

The mystical representation and thought-atmosphere of the writer or redactor of our present “Pœmandres” are far removed from any direct traces of contact with the folk-consciousness, in which the appurtenances mentioned by “Hermas” were the typical literary description

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of a shepherd since the time of Theocritus; 1 not only so, but this was the symbolic representation of the “Shepherd of Men” in the general Hellenistic religious consciousness. Indeed, we find unquestionable proofs that Hermes was pre-eminently regarded as the “Good Shepherd,” and a figure of him with staff and wallet and single robe was a great favourite in the popular cult. 2

In one passage 3 in which mention is made of this wallet and staff, further details are given showing that these simple symbols were well understood. The right hand is raised, and the left holds staff and wallet. Moreover, the staff has a serpent entwined round it, and Hermes is clad in a single robe. Like Isis, he stands upon the world-sphere, which has also a serpent twined round it. Hermes here represents the Mind or Logos, the father-mother (staff and wallet) force of nature; with the “left” he brings into generation, with the “right” he leads souls out of genesis, either to death, or regeneration. In this prayer, Hermes (as the sun) is called “the Shepherd who hath his fold in the West.” 4

It is to be further remarked that Hermes is in the dress of the “Poor,” 5 and of the “Naked.” 6

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THE NAME “HERMAS”

But to return to Hermas. Why “Hermas” of all names in the world in this connection? We have a large literature in which “Hermes” plays the part of seer, and prophet, and revealer, and writer of sacred scriptures; in it, moreover, he figures as the beloved disciple of the Heavenly Mind, the Shepherd of Men. But what have we in Christian tradition to explain the name “Hermas”? Nothing, absolutely nothing, but contradictory hypotheses which try to discover a historic Hermas so as to authenticate the provenance of what is manifestly, like nearly every similar document of the time, pseudepigraphic. In my opinion, indeed, the very name Hermas betrays more clearly than anything else the “Hermes” source of the Christian writer’s setting of part of his most interesting apocalyptic. “Hermas” is because of “Hermes,” rather than “Hermes” in answer to “Hermas,” as Hilgers would have it.

AN EARLY FORM OF THE “PŒMANDRES”

This, however, does not mean to say that “Hermas” took the setting of the introduction of his Pastoral apocalypses from precisely the same text of the “Pœmandres” which now lies before us, for our present text is manifestly the redaction of an earlier form; so that if we could recover the other form we should in all probability find some additional verbal agreement of “Hermas” with “Hermes.”

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That the ideas of the “Pœmandres” treatise were the mystical and philosophical side of much that appears in the popular cult of the time, may be seen by an inspection of the prayers from the Magic Papyri which we have translated. 1 In them the Mind, as the Shepherd of Men, and the Revealer of the Light, is clearly set forth. Reitzenstein’s view (p. 32), accordingly, is that the Christian writer must have taken his description of the Shepherd from what originally was a fuller text of the “Pœmandres” than the one preserved to us, and that this will account for several features which would otherwise be peculiar to “Hermas.” This text was in closer verbal agreement with the general language of the popular Hermes religion as preserved to us in the Hermes-Prayers. 2

THE HOLY MOUNT

But the direct points of contact between “Hermas” and the Trismegistic literature are not confined to the “Pœmandres” document. As the original writer of “Hermas” was dependent on “Hermes” for the setting of the introduction to his Pastoral apocalypses, so also it is highly probable that the redactor was influenced by a lost treatise referred to in the introduction of “The Sacred Sermon on the Mountain,” C. H., xiii. (xiv.).

In this treatise reference is made to one of the now lost “General Sermons,” 3 the scene of which also took

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place on a mountain. For in connection with it mention is made by Tat of his passing over a mountain, or ascending a mountain, at the beginning of his noviciate, when he became a “suppliant”; 1 while it is further stated by Tat that at that stage the doctrine was not clearly explained, but rather hidden in riddles; for that as yet he was not sufficiently purified, and made “a stranger to the world-illusion.”

Now, it is remarkable that “Hermas,” in the appendix to the book (Sim. ix.), tells us that after these revelations the Shepherd came to him again, and told him that much had not been explained because of his “weakness in the flesh”; but now that he has been strengthened by the Spirit, the Shepherd will explain all “with greater clearness.” He then takes him away into Arcadia (a very unexpected locality for a Christian writer in Rome to choose), to a “breast-like mountain,” where he has the further teaching revealed to him.

But, strangely enough, it was precisely in Arcadia that the chief Hellenic cult of Hermes existed, as stated by Lactantius, basing himself on the common belief at Rome; 2 and from Arcadia it was that Hermes, according to a tendency-legend that even at Rome went back at least to the second century B.C., set forth to teach the Egyptians.

“GNOSTIC” ELEMENTS

Moreover, “Hermas” is throughout strongly tinged with “Gnostic” elements. As I wrote in my last book, 3 it is practically one of the very numerous

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permutations and combinations of the Sophia-mythus—one of the many settings-forth of the mystic lore and love of the Christ and the Sophia, or Wisdom, of the Son of God and His spouse or sister, the Holy Spirit, of the King and Queen, of the Lord and the Virgin Church. In its most instructive series of visions are depicted the mystic scenes of the allegorical drama of man’s inner nature—the mystery-play of all time.

But when we say “Gnostic” we mean much that is also Hellenistic mysticism, and therefore much that is also “Hermetic,” for in the Trismegistic literature there is set forth a Gnosis of a far simpler type than in any of the Christian systems technically called “Gnostic.”

THE VICES AND VIRTUES

A striking example of the similarity of ideas of this nature is found in comparing the list of twelve vices and ten (seven and three) virtues, given in C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 7-10, 1 with “Hermas,” Sim. ix. 15, 1-3, where twelve “virgins,” each bearing the name of a virtue, are set over against twelve “women clothed in black,” each bearing the name of a vice; and with “Hermas,” Vis. iii. 8, 7, where seven women, each in turn the mother of the other, are called by the names of seven virtues.

We need not, of course, necessarily suppose any direct contact in this case, though it is curious that the list of virtues occurs precisely in the sermon “On the Mountain”; but both writers clearly move in, or are influenced by, the same circle of ideas, and that, too, ideas of a very special nature.

The above points are sufficient for our purpose, and throw a most interesting light on one element in the

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composition of the very ancient Christian document whose exclusion from the canon, after enjoying for so many years practically canonical authority, is to be regretted.

THE EARLY DATE OF THE ORIGINAL “HERMAS”

Now, “Apocalyptic Hermas” is distinctly “anti-Pauline,” and perhaps this more than anything else accounts for the final exclusion of the book from the canon; it is therefore in vain to seek in it quotations from any of the Pauline Letters. But what is still more remarkable, neither it nor the “Pastoral Hermas” quote from any of the Canonical Gospels. This argues a very early date.

If, then, we are inclined to accept the statement of the writer of the Muratorian Fragment (c. 170 A.D.) that “Hermas” was written at Rome during the bishopric of Pius (140-c. 155 A.D.), this must refer to the completed work of the last redactor who is held responsible for “Hermas iii.,” and who was acquainted with several books of the canon. The “Pastoral Hermas” may thus be fairly pushed back to the beginning of the first century.

We have also to remember—a point which Reitzenstein does not seem to have taken into consideration—not only that the Greek original of our form of “Hermas” is lost, but that the Old Latin version has also disappeared, and that we possess only a Greek retranslation from the Latin. 1 Under these circumstances, it is still more surprising that such strong traces of direct literary dependence on the original form of the “Pœmandres” introduction should still remain in our “Hermas.”

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THE DEPENDENCE THEORY TO BE USED WITH CAUTION

It would, however, in my opinion be a grave mistake to push the theory of literary dependence too far, and to seek to account for the main content of “Hermas” on any theory of direct borrowing from allied sources, or even solely of direct external conditioning by the mystical and theological ideas of the time. There is no a priori reason against the high probability that the original writer was recording some genuine inner experiences, however much, as was the fashion of the time, and of other times and climes, they may have been expanded, interpolated, and polished by literary art.

It is true that all such inner experiences would be strongly conditioned by the prior conceptions, thought-tone, and theological beliefs of the writer, and by the current and traditional types of such experiences known in his day. Indeed, it is very difficult anywhere to meet with the record of visions or apocalyptic utterances which are not so conditioned. The Buddhist seer, sees in the mode of traditional Buddhist conceptions of the unseen; the Hellenic mantis and sibyl find themselves in an invisible world of the familiar nature known to them from the mythologists, and poets, and mystery-traditions; the Egyptian prophet moves amid the familiar topography and schematology of the Amenti of his nation; even an Ezekiel sees in the symbols of the Babylonian cultus; while the Christian mystic invariably finds himself in the conventional heaven of the saints and the hell of the sinners.

It is not, therefore, necessary to follow Reitzenstein (pp. 8-11) in detail, when he seeks to show the strong influence of heathen mystical literature on the early

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[paragraph continues]Christian document we are discussing, and to point to striking parallels between the setting of the first four visions of “Hermas,” and the visions of Zosimus, as preserved in the fragments of his “Acts,” 1 or the “Visit to Hades” of Setme and Si-Osiri, and their passing through the Seven Halls, 2 as partially preserved in the Demotic “Tales of Khamuas.” 3

It is true that Zosimus, who nourished towards the end of the third century, was a member of the Pœmandres community, and, therefore, what he has to say is of great interest to us, for doubtless his visions were strongly conditioned by the Trismegistic tradition and especially by the Isis-type of its literature, and the cognate Egyptian “Books of Hermes”; but the points on which Reitzenstein lays stress seem somewhat too general to allow of our drawing any direct conclusion with regard to “Hermas” and “Hermes.”

There is a certain similarity; but our information is too scanty to permit of any precise drawing of general conclusions. There is, however, a valuable piece of information which prevents us from attributing all the similarities which may be noticed purely to the general thought-atmosphere of the times. In one particular at least, we can be more definite.

THE VISIONS OF CRATES

Zosimus is not the only follower of Thrice-greatest Hermes whose visions are still on record. Crates also

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has left an account of his mystic experiences, though unfortunately transmitted to us only in Arabic translation from the original Greek. 1

Crates leaves his body and enters the unseen world. “While I was praying,” he writes, “I felt myself suddenly carried into the airs [of heaven], following the same path as the sun and moon.” Here he meets with Thrice-greatest Hermes in the guise of “an old man, the most beautiful of men, seated on a chair; he was clad in white raiment, and held a book in his hand resting on the arm of the chair.”

Compare this with “Hermas” (Vis. ii. 2, 2): “I see opposite me a chair, and on it a covering of wool white as hail; 2 then came there an old woman, in shining white raiment, having a book in her hand, and sat down alone.”

After this revelation, and when the “old woman” had ceased reading from the book, four young men came and carried off the chair, and departed with it to the East (ibid., 4, 1).

Here again it is of interest to compare this with the introduction to a magical “light-ritual,” where the seer has a vision of four men with crowns on their heads who bring in the “throne of the god.” 3

Crates is taught from the book and bidden to write what he is told. “Make thy book according to the instructions which I have given; and know that I am with thee and will never leave thee till thou hast accomplished all.”

So also “Hermas”; compare also the last sentence

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with the phrase in the Introduction to the “Pastoral Hermas”: “I am sent . . . that I may dwell with thee for the rest of the days of thy life.”

In another vision, Crates is instructed in a dialogue which strongly reflects the style and substance of our Trismegistic sermons. And in yet another he moves in the psychic reflection of the setting of the now for the most part lost Isis-type of the literature, which has a more strongly Egyptian colouring. He is transported to yet another heaven and firmament, and there sees the temple of Ptah (Hephæstus), and the statue of Venus (Isis), which holds converse with him.

He was then evidently saturated with the Trismegistic tradition, and had access to treatises which are now, unfortunately, lost to us, for it is just this type of the literature which shows signs of the more direct influence of Egyptian ideas, and the mention of the temple of Ptah is a striking confirmation that Reitzenstein is on the right track in his analysis of the oldest deposit of the “Pœmandres,” which he connects with the Ptah-tradition.

THE GENERAL CHRISTIAN “MANY” AND THE GNOSTIC “FEW”

That the end and aim of the later Egyptian religion, and of all Hellenistic religious circles in general, was a Gnosis, or definite mystical experience in the form of visions and apocalypses, is manifest on all sides; and that this also was the chief interest of very numerous circles in the Early Church is a fundamental fact in the study of Christian origins which should not be impatiently brushed on one side, or minimised almost to extinction as of no real importance, but which should be restored to the first rank in seeking

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an explanation of the many obscure problems of these early days which no purely objective considerations will solve.

That the General Christian of these days, as of all subsequent centuries, had naturally much to learn in these matters from the trained Mystic, whether of his own faith or of another, is saying nothing to his discredit, for he naturally belonged to the “many” who were striving to become the “few.” General Christianity, however, spread so rapidly that the definite cultivation of the spiritual faculties practised by the early contemplatives of the faith soon gave place to a fanatical enthusiasm for a misunderstood monkdom, which swamped the monasteries with a flood of the “many,” who were often without any true vocation for the holy life, and not unfrequently quite ignorant of the elements of contemplation.

We need not speak of the wild fanaticism of warrior monkdom let loose with pick and hatchet and fire-brand to destroy the treasures of religious art throughout the beautiful Hellenic world, but even among the quiet and peaceable brethren there was much ignorance. How unknowing some of these good folk were, we may learn from a naïve story, the very simplicity of which convinces the reader of its genuineness.

Perhaps some one may here interject: But this has nothing to do with “Hermas”! Perhaps not; but it has a great deal to do with a proper understanding of the history of the development of General Christianity and its relationship to the deeper religious consciousness of the first centuries. When, then, I read the Greek text of this simple story, as reproduced by Reitzenstein, 1 I thought that some who could not read

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[paragraph continues]Greek, but who take a very deep interest in such matters, might like to hear it, and so I have set it down in English.

THE STORY OF ABBOT OLYMPIUS

The story runs as follows:

“Abbot Olympius 1 said that one day a priest of the [Heathen] Greeks came down to Scetis; 2 he came to my cell and passed the night there.

“Seeing the manner of life of the monks, he saith to me: ‘Living in this way, do ye not enjoy visions from your God?’ ‘Nay!’ I answer.

“Then saith the priest to me: ‘So long as we duly serve our God with holy deeds, he hideth nought from us, but revealeth unto us his mysteries. And ye, in spite of all your great labours—watchings, keeping silence, disciplines—sayest thou, ye see nought? Assuredly, then, if ye see nought, ye have let evil reasonings come into your hearts which shut you from your God; and ’tis for this cause his mysteries are not revealed to you.’

“And I went and told the elder [brethren] the words of the priest; and they were astonished and agreed that so it was. For impure reasonings do shut off God from man.”

I do not exactly understand what is the precise meaning of λογισμούς, which usually means

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“reasonings,” and seems on the face of it to suggest that the monks’ intellectual grasp of the matter was at fault. It may, however, mean simply that their “thoughts” were impure. But this is not any more satisfactory, for the monks must have known already that impure thoughts were to be driven out.

What is clear is that the “priest of the Greeks” had personal experience of these pious exercises, and came from a circle where such things were normally practised; he, moreover, knew what was the reason for the monks’ non-success in contemplation. He knew that it all depended on thought, and that, too, on “good thought,” so that the “Good” might descend on the “good,” as the Hermes-Prayer (i. 9, 13) says. But he knew more than this; he knew that there was also need of “right thought,” of Gnosis as well as of faith, of the proper use of the intelligence and the driving out of erroneous ideas with regard to the nature of God.

A FINAL WORD

But for a final word on “Hermas.” This early document was written at Rome; so all are agreed. It would, then, seem necessary to allow of sufficient time for a wide circulation of the older form of the “Pœmandres,” before it could reach Rome from Egypt. This time could not have been short, for it must be reckoned not by geographical considerations, which are hardly of any consequence in this connection, but by the fact that the “Pœmandres” was the gospel of a school that laid the greatest possible stress on secrecy. How, then, could a Christian writer have got possession of a copy? Had the pledge of secrecy already by this time been removed? This is not credible, for later Trismegistic documents still lay the greatest stress upon it.

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Were, then, the early Christian mystical writers in intimate relationship with such circles as the Pœmandres-community? Some Gnostics undoubtedly were; was the writer of “Hermas”? Was there once friendship where subsequently was bitter strife?

Such and many other most interesting questions arise, but there is little hope that any satisfactory answer will be given them until the work on the mystical religious environment of the time has been pushed forward to such a point, that men may gradually become accustomed to the view that much of the secret of the Origins lies concealed in that very environment.

In any case, the way is cleared for pushing back the earlier “Pœmandres” document well into the first century, and for ranking it, therefore, as at least contemporary with the earliest of the New Testament writings.

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Footnotes

369:1 Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.?—An Enquiry into the Talmud Jesus Stories, the Toldoth Jeschu, and Some Curious Statements of Epiphanius (London, 1903), pp. 365 ff.

369:2 See Hilgers (J.), De Hermetis Trismegisti Poimandro Commentatio (Bonn, 1855).

370:1 See The Theosophical Review, xxiv. 302, 303 (June 1899).

370:2 Hilgenfeld (A.), Hermæ Pastor (2nd ed.: Leipzig, 1881).

370:3 Ἀποκάλυψις έ, the fifth revelation or vision of our composite document, which for all we know may have stood first in some earlier “source.”

371:1 Presumably a sheep’s skin of white wool.

371:2 Compare the Story of the Spirit Double who came down unto Jesus when a boy, as told by Mary the Mother, in the Pistis Sophia, 121: “He embraced thee and kissed thee, and thou also didst kiss him; ye became one.” Compare this with the common mystic belief of the time in the possibility of union with such a spiritual presence; and also the possession by a daimon (λῆψις δαίμονος), which is treated of at length by Reitzenstein, and particularly referred to this pasage in Hermas (R. 230).

371:3 Compare Pistis Sophia, 120: “I was in doubt and thought it was a phantom tempting me.”

371:4 On this Gebhardt and Harnack, in their edition (Leipzig, 1877), can only comment: “In visionibus angelicus pastor nusquam memoratur.”

372:1 Compare the interesting inscription from Sakkāra quoted from Erman (note, below).

373:1 R. 11, n. 3.

373:2 Compare Wessely, Denkschr. d. K. K. Akad. (1888), 103, 2359 ff.

373:3 Ibid., 104, 2373.

373:4 Erman (Ägypten, 515) refers to an inscription from Sakkāra, in which a mystical shepherd says to his flock: “Your Shepherd is in the West with the fishes,”—an interesting conjunction of ideas for students of archaic Christian symbolism. The idea is also Babylonian, the Star-flocks of the Gods being fed beyond the Ocean in the West.

373:5 Compare the dress of the Essenes, and the account of the sending forth of the disciples, Matt. x. 9 = Mark vi. 8 = Luke ix. 3. The direct contradiction of the account in Mark to the statements in Matthew and Luke, makes it exceedingly probable that not only the one robe, and staff, but also the wallet, were the typical signs of those who went forth to “raise the dead.”

373:6 He is clad in the περίζωμα, the working dress (or apron), in which men were said to work “naked” (nudus, γυμνός)—that is, clad in one robe. See also note on the sentence: “And naked I sought the Naked,” in treating of the Gymnosophists (or Naked Philosophers), in my Apollonius of Tyana (London, 1901), p. 100.

375:1 See “The Popular Theurgic Hermes Cult in the Greek Magic Papyri.”

375:2 Compare Hermas, Vis. v. 2: “I am sent . . . that I may dwell with thee for the rest of the days of thy life,” with Prayer i. 10: “for all the length of my life’s days”; and v. 3: “I know into whose charge I have been given,” with Prayer ii. 7: “I know thee, Hermes.”

375:3 ἐν τοῖς γενεκοῖς.

376:1 A term used by Philo as a synonym of Therapeut.

376:2 Div. Institt., i. 6—as cited among Evidences from the Fathers, where see my note on Phenëus.

376:3 Op. sup. cit., p. 365.

377:1 The very treatise to which we have previously referred in connection with the “mountain.”

378:1 See Gebhardt and Harnack, op. cit., Prolegg. xi. n. 2.

380:1 The texts are given by Berthelot (M. P. S.), Les Alchimistes grecs.

380:2 See The Book of the Dead, cxliv., cxlvii.

380:3 Griffith (F. Ll.), Stories of the High Priests of Memphis (Oxford, 1900), pp. 45 ff.

381:1 Berthelot (M. P. S.), La Chimie au Moyen Âge, iii. 44 ff., 268, n. 1; R. 361.

381:2 According to the Ethiopic translation. See The Apostolic Fathers, p. 325, n. 4, in the “Ante-Nicene Christian Library,” vol. i. (Edinburgh, 1867).

381:3 Kenyon (F. G.), Greek Pap. Cat., p. 65; R. 280, n. 3.

383:1 R. 34—from Apophthegmata Patrum, in Cotelerius’ Ecclesiæ Græcæ Monumenta, i. 582.

384:1 I do not know who this Olympius was, unless, perchance, he may have been the monk referred to by Nilus (ii. 77), the famous ascetic of Sinai, who flourished in the first quarter of the fifth century.

384:2 Again, I can find no information about this place; it was, however, presumably in the Nitriote nome south of the Delta—for the priest “ came down.’’

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XI

CONCERNING THE ÆON-DOCTRINE

“Hear then, my son, how standeth God and All. God; Æon; Cosmos; Time; Becoming.”—C. H., xi. (xii.) 1.

THE SCOPE OF OUR ESSAY

While rigidly excluding any consideration of the amazing elaboration of Christo-Gnostic æonology, it may not be unserviceable to offer a “few notes in connection with the simpler idea of the Æon. The subject really requires a treatise in itself, but that would, of course, be too lengthy an undertaking for these Prolegomena. 1

Let us, then, first turn to a striking passage which purports to give us the Orphic tradition of the Genesis of the World-Egg, and of the relation of its Glorious Progeny to the Æon.

The passage is of great interest for us in our present enquiry, for if it is not a direct quotation from Apion, the Alexandrian savant, and bitter opponent of the Jews and of Philo, during the first half of the first

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century A.D., it at anyrate represents the view of the Hellenistic theology of that period.

The passage is found in one of the sources of the composite and overworked document known as the Clementine Homilies, 1 and runs as follows:

THE ORPHIC TRADITION OF THE GENESIS OF THE WORLD-EGG

III. “There was when naught was but Chaos and an indistinguishable mixture of unordered elements still jumbled all together; both Nature herself being witness to it, and great men having thought it must be so.

“And as witness, I will bring forward for you the greatest of the great in wisdom, Homer himself, speaking about the original con-fusion:

“But may you all become water and earth 2—

—meaning that thence all things have had their genesis, and that after the dissolution of their moist and earthy essence they are all restored again to their first nature—which is Chaos.

“And Hesiod, in his Theogony, says:

“In truth Chaos came into being the very first. 3

“And by ‘came into being’ he evidently means that

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it was generated as are things generable, and not that it for ever was as are things ingenerable.

“Orpheus also likens Chaos to an Egg in which was the con-fusion of the primordial elements. 1

“This is what Hesiod supposes by Chaos, what Orpheus calls an Egg—a thing generable, projected from the infinity of Matter (Hylē), and brought into being as follows:

IV. “Both fourfold Matter 2 being ensouled and the whole Infinitude being as though it were a Depth (Βυθός), flowing perpetually and indistinguishably moving, and over and over again pouring forth countless imperfect mixtures, now of one kind and now of another, and thereby dissolving them again owing to its lack of order, and engulphing so that it could not be bound [together] to serve for the generation of a living creature—it happened that the infinite Sea itself, being driven round 3 by its own peculiar nature, flowed with a natural motion in an orderly fashion from out of itself into itself, as it were a vortex, 4 and blended its essences, and thus involuntarily the most developed part of all of them, 5 that which was most serviceable for the generation of a living creature, flowed, as it were in a funnel, down the middle of the universe, and was carried to the bottom

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by means of the vortex that swept up everything, and drew after it the surrounding Spirit, 1 and so gathering itself together as it were into the most productive [form of all], it constituted a discrete state [of things].

“For just as a bubble is made in water, so a sphere-like hollow form gathered itself together from all sides.

“Thereupon, itself being impregnated in itself, carried up 2 by the Divine Spirit that had taken it to itself as consort, it thrust forth its head (προέκυψεν 3) into the Light—this, the greatest thing perchance that’s ever been conceived, as though it were out of the Infinite Deep’s universe a work of art had been conceived and brought to birth, an ensouled work [in form] like unto the circumference of eggs, [in speed] like to the swiftness of a wing. 4

V. “I would therefore have you think of Cronus (Κρόνος) as Time (Χρόνον 5), and of Rhea (῾Ρέα) as the flowing (τὸ ρέον) of the Moist Essence; for the whole of Matter being moved in Time brought forth, as it were, an Egg, the whole surrounding sphere-like Heaven (Ὀυρανός), which in the beginning was full of the productive marrow, 6 so that it might be able to bring forth elements and colours of all kinds; and yet the

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manifold appearances which it was ever presenting, all came from One Essence and One Colour.

“For just as in the product of the peacock, although the colour of the egg seems to be one, it has nevertheless potentially in it the countless colours of the bird that is to be brought to perfection, so also the Ensouled Egg conceived from Infinite Matter, when it is set in motion from the perpetually flowing Matter below it, 1 exhibits changes of all kinds.

“For from within the circumference a certain male-female Living Creature is imaged out by the Foreknowledge of the Divine Spirit that indwells in it, whom 2 Orpheus doth call Manifestor (Φάνης—Phanēs), because when he is manifest (φανείς) the universe shines forth from him, through the lustre of Fire, most glorious of elements, perfected in the Moist [Element].

“Nor is this incredible, for in the case of glow-worms, for example, Nature allows us to see a ‘moist light.’

VI. “Accordingly the First Egg that was ever produced being gradually warmed by the Living Creature within it, breaks open, and then there takes shape and comes forth some such thing as Orpheus says:

“When the skull-like 3 wide-yawning Egg did break [etc.]. 4

“So by the mighty power of Him who came forth and who made Himself manifest, ‘the shell’ 5 receives its articulation 6 and obtains its orderly arrangement;

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while He Himself presides as though it were upon a throne on Heaven’s height, and in the [realms] ineffable sends forth His light all round upon the Boundless Æon.”

COMMENTARY

This is evidently the Logos—the God from the Egg, and the God from the Rock; for the Primal Firmament was symbolised as Rock, as Adamant; just as in physical nature, the life-spark appears from the mineral kingdom.

The Logos presides in highest heaven, in the ineffable spaces, whence He sends out His rays upon the Æon, that Bound of Bounds which is itself Boundless. For the Egg may be thought of as the Boundary of some special universe or system; whereas the Æon is the Boundary of all universes.

The information given in this quotation purports to be the Orphic tradition of cosmogony; with this cosmogony all Hellenistic theologians would be familiar, and therefore we are not surprised to find many points of contact between it and the general ideas in our “Pœmandres” cosmogenesis, which, though doubtless having an original nucleus of Egyptian tradition in it, is nevertheless strongly overworked by minds that were also saturated with the mingled traditions of Plato, Pythagoras, and Orpheus.

Indeed, both “Plato” and “Pythagoras,” on their mystical side, are strongly tinged with “Orpheus.” Now, Orphicism was the revival of pre-Hesiodic Orphism initiated by Onomacritus under the Peisistratidæ. Original Orphism was, in my opinion, a blend of Hellenic Bardic lore with “Chaldæan” elements. It is not surprising, therefore, that when the “Books of the Chaldæans,” collected for the Alexandrian Library, were

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turned into Greek, great interest should have been taken in them by Hellenistic scholars, who found therein a confirmation of the Greek Wisdom of Orpheus, little suspecting that that Wisdom was in origin partially from the same source.

THE SETHIAN GNOSIS

In illustration of this Chaldæo-Orphic symbolical cosmogony as “philosophised” in a Hellenistic Gnostic environment, we will quote from a system ascribed by Hippolytus to the Sēthians (a name indicating an Egyptian environment), and brought by him into the closest connection with those whom he calls the Naassenes—that is to say, with what he considers to be one of the earliest forms of the Christian Gnosis, but which, as we have shown, is a form of the pre-Christian Gnosis overworked in Christian terms about the middle of the second century. Of these Sēthians, Hippolytus 1 tells us as follows:

“They think that there are Three Principles 2 of the universals having certain definite boundaries, and yet that each of these Principles possesses boundless potentialities.

“Now, the Essences of these Principles (he says) are Light and Darkness; and in the midst of these is pure Spirit.

“The Spirit, however, that is set in the midst of the Darkness that is below and of the Light that is above, is not a spirit [or breath] like a blast of wind or some light breeze that can be felt; but is as it were the delicate scent of unguent or of incense compounded and

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prepared,—a force of fragrance that travels with a motion so rapid as to be quite inconceivable and far beyond the power of words to express.

“Now, since Light is above and Darkness below, and Spirit in some such way as I have said between them,—the Nature of the Light is that it shines forth from above, like a ray of the sun, into the Darkness beneath, while that of the fragrance of the Spirit, which has the middle rank, is, contrary wise, that it extends itself and is carried in every direction; just as in the case of incense on a fire, we see its fragrance carried in every direction.

“And such being the Power of the triply divided [Principles], the combined Power of the Spirit and Light descends into the Darkness which is set beneath them.

“And the Darkness is an awesome Water into which the Light together with the Spirit is drawn down and transferred.

“The Darkness, however, is not without understanding, but quite intelligent, and it knows that if Light were taken from Darkness, Darkness would remain isolated, unmanifest, 1 splendourless, powerless, ineffectual, strengthless.

“Wherefore is it constrained with all its intelligence and understanding to hold down to itself the lustre and spark of the Light together with the fragrance of the Spirit.

“And one can see an image of the nature of the latter in a man’s face—[namely] the pupil of the eye, 2 which is dark because of the waters underlying it, yet illumined by Spirit.

“As, therefore, the Darkness contends for the Splendour, in order that it may make a slave of the

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[paragraph continues]Light-spark and see, so also the Light and the Spirit contend for their own Power; they strive to raise and bring back to themselves those powers which are mingled with the dark and awesome Water beneath.

“Now all the powers of the three Principles, being infinitely infinite in number, are sagacious and intelligent each according to its own essence. And though they are countless in multitude, yet, being sagacious and intelligent, as long as they remain by themselves, they are all at peace.

“If, however, one power is brought into contact with another power, the dissimilarity in their juxtaposition brings about a certain motion and energy that takes its shape from the concurrent motion of the juxtaposition of the contacting powers. 1

“For the con-currence of the powers constitutes as it were the impression (τύπος) of a seal struck off by concussion 2 so as to resemble the [die] that stamps the substances brought into contact with it.

“Since then the powers of the three Principles are infinite in number, and from the infinite powers are infinite concurrences, images of infinite seals are of necessity produced.

“These images, then, are the forms (ἰδέαι) of the different kinds of living creatures.

“Now from the first mighty concurrences of the three Principles there resulted a mighty type of seal—Heaven and Earth.

“And Heaven and Earth have a configuration

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resembling a Womb, with the embryo 1 in the middle; and if (he says) one would bring this to the test of sight, let him scrutinise scientifically the gravid womb of whatsoever living creature he wishes, and he will find the model of Heaven and Earth and of all things between them lying before him without any alteration.

“So the configuration of Heaven and Earth was such that it resembled a Womb as it were, according to the first concourse [of the three Principles].

“And again in the midst of Heaven and Earth infinite concourses of powers occurred, and every single concourse effected and expressed the image of nothing else but a seal of Heaven and Earth—a thing resembling a Womb.

“And in the Earth itself there developed from the infinite seals of different kinds of living creatures, [living things] still more infinite.

“And into all this infinity below the Heaven in the different kinds of living creatures, the fragrance of the Spirit from above together with the Light was sown and was distributed. 2 . . .

“Accordingly there arose out of the Water a first-born source—Wind vehement and boisterous—and cause of all genesis.

“For by making a certain seething 3 in the waters it 4 raises up waves from the waters.

“And the genesis of the waves, being as it were a

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certain pregnant 1 impulse, is the source of the production of man or mind, whenever [this motion] quickens under the impulse of the Spirit.

“And whenever this wave, raised from the Water by the Wind, and rendering nature pregnant, receives in itself the power of production of the female, it keeps down the Light from above that has been sown into it together with the fragrance of the Spirit,—that is to say, mind that takes forms in the various types; that is a perfect god, brought down from the Ingenerable Light from above and Spirit into a human nature, as into a temple, by the course of Nature and motion of the Wind, generated from Water, commingled and blended with bodies, as though he were the salt of existing things and the light of the Darkness, struggling to be freed from bodies, and unable to find liberation and the way out of himself.

“For as it were a very minute spark . . . like a ray 2 . . . .

“Every thought and care of the Light above, therefore, is how and in what way mind may be liberated from the Death of the evil and dark Body, 3 from the Father below, who is the Wind that in ferment and turmoil raised up the waves and brought to birth perfect mind, son of himself, and yet not his own in essence.

“For he was a ray from above, from that Perfect Light, overpowered in the sinuous 4 and awesome and bitter 5

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and blood-stained Water; and that Light is the Spirit of Light borne upon the water. 1 . . .

“But the Wind, being both boisterous and vehement in its rush, is in its whistling 2 like unto a Serpent—a winged one.

“From the Wind, that is from the Serpent, the source of generation arose in the way that has been said; all things receiving together the beginning of generation.

“When then (he says) the Light and the Spirit have been received down into the impure and disorderly Womb of manifold suffering, the Serpent—the Wind of the Darkness, the First-born of the Waters—entering in generated man, and the impure Womb neither loves nor recognises any other form. 3

“And so the Perfect Logos of the Light from above having made Himself like unto the Beast, the Serpent, entered into the impure Womb, having deceived it 4 through His similitude to the Beast; in order that He may loose the bonds that are laid upon the perfect mind that is generated in the impurity of the Womb by the First-born of the Water—Snake, Wind, Beast.

“This (he says) is the Servant’s Form; 5 and this is

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the necessity of the Descent of the Logos of God into the Womb of the Virgin.

“But it is not sufficient (he says) that the Perfect Man, the Logos, has entered into the Womb of the Virgin and loosed the pains that are in that Darkness; nay, but after entering into the foul mysteries in the Womb, He washed Himself and drank the Cup of Living Water bubbling-forth—a thing that everyone must do who is about to strip off the Servant-Form and put on the Celestial Garment.”

There can be little doubt but that the main ideas in the background of this system of the Gnosis are closely connected with general Orphic and Chaldæan ideas, and also with the main schematology of our “Pœmandres” tractate.

From the Orphic tradition handed on by Apion we have seen that the Æon is the Circle of Infinitude and Eternity illumined by the Logos.

THE “MITHRIAC ÆON”

The whole of this Orphic lore (in other words, the Chaldæan wisdom-teaching) seems to me to be summed up in one division of the symbolism of the Mithra-cult, as may be seen by an inspection of the monuments reproduced by Cumont, and especially those of the mysterious figure which he calls “la divinité léontocéphale,” and the birth of the God from the Rock; this seems to point, as we might very well suspect, to a strong Chaldæan element in the Mithriac tradition.

Cumont 1 tells us that although some scholars have rejected the name of “Mithriac Æon,” which was

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given by Zoëga to this awe-inspiring mystic figure, 1 in his opinion (and he knows more of the subject than any other authority) it may very well have been actually called Æon in the sacred books of the mysteries.

If, however, this was the case, the mystic meaning, says Cumont, was of such a nature that it was concealed from the profane.

Our classical authorities inform us that the Magi expressed the name of the Supreme God, which was in reality ineffable, by various substitutes. The general name for the Mystery Deity was Cronus, and Cronus in the sense of Time.

“The Mithriac Cronus is a personification of Time, and this fact, which is now fairly established, permits us immediately to determine the identity of this pseudonymous God.

“There is only one Persian divinity which he can possibly represent, and that is Zervan Akarana, Infinite Time, whom, from the time of the Achemenides, a sect of the Magi placed at the origin of things, and from whom they would have both Ormuzd and Ahriman to have been born.

“It was this God that the adepts of the mysteries placed at the head of the celestial hierarchy, and considered as the first principle; or, to put it differently, it was the Zervanist system that the Mazdæans of Asia Minor taught to the Western followers of the Iranian religion.”

This all seems to me to point not to a Persian origin

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of the Æon, as Cumont supposes, but to a Chaldæan element dominating the Mithriac form of the Magian tradition. 1

PROBABLE DATE OF ORIGIN OF THE HELLENISTIC DOCTRINE

Now the Chaldæan and Egyptian wisdom-cultures had many root-ideas in common (were they not regarded by the Greeks as the wisdom-traditions par excellence?); we are not therefore surprised to find that Egypt, with its ever-recurring grandiose mystery-phrases of enormous time-periods, such as “He of the millions of years,” had on its own soil a highly developed idea of Eternity and of Eternities—that is, of the Æon and of the Æons; and indeed the strongly Egyptian forms of the Gnosis, which we have preserved to us under Christian overworking, are involved in the most complex æonology.

It seems, however, almost as though the evidence suggests that this Egyptian element had been revivified, and rescued from the oblivion in which it had been buried in a decadent age, in the symbolism of an almost forgotten past, by a stream of Chaldæan ideas that poured into Hellenistic circles in the early Alexandrian period. When precisely the Æon-idea forced itself upon the philosophic mind of Alexandrian thinkers as an unavoidable mystic necessity, it is difficult to say with any certainty. It can, however, be said without fear of serious contradiction that it may have done so from early Ptolemaic times, and with certainty that it did so in the first century B.C. as truly as in the first century A.D.

That the term Æon was in frequent use in the

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popular Hermes-cult may be seen in Hermes-Prayer v. 4, where Thoth is characterised as the “Æon of the Æons who changes himself into all forms in visions.” So also in Prayer viii. 2, the Good Daimon, who has different names given him in the different hours, is called “Wealth-giving Æon.” So also with Isis, who is called Wisdom and Æon in the Papyri. 1

In conclusion, we may glance at what Reitzenstein (pp. 272 ff.) has to say concerning this “Aionenlehre.”

ABRAXAS

The name Abraxas, which consisted of seven elements or letters, was a mystery-designation of the God who combined in himself the whole power of the Seven Planets, and also of the Year of 365 days, the sum of the number-values of the letters of Abraxas working out to 365. This mysterious Being was the “Year”; but the Year as the Eternity, also conceived of in a spatial aspect, as the Spirit or Name that extends from Heaven to Earth, the God who pervades and full-fills the Seven Spheres, and the Three Hundred and Sixty-five Zones, the Inner God, “He who has His seat within the Seven Poles—ΑΕΗΙΟΥΩ,” as the Papyri have it, and also without them, as we shall see.

The mysterious formula “the Name of which the figure is 365” meets us in such connections, that it cannot be taken to mean simply the “Year-God,” but is a synonym of the Highest God, a secret, mysterious Being. In brief it was, as we have seen, no other than the Lion-headed God, called in Greek Æon.

Indeed, we know from Philo of Byblos 2 that, at least in his day, the second half of the first century A.D. (and,

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for all we know, prior to it), there were in Phœnicia communities of the Æon—of the Highest and Supercelestial One.

THE FEAST OF THE ÆON

The first dated use of the word in a religious sense is found in Messala (who was Consul, 53 B.C.), as Johannes Lydus tells us. 1 Moreover, Lydus informs us that the Ancients (οἱ πάλαι) celebrated a Feast of the Æon on January 5th. 2 This can be no other than the Feast of which Epiphanius gives us such interesting details in treating of the Epiphany, when he writes, after describing the festival in the Koreion at Alexandria: 3

“And if they are asked the meaning of this mystery, they answer and say: To-day at this hour the Maiden (Korē), that is the Virgin, has given birth to the Æon.” 4

In the next paragraph Epiphanius designates this Æon as the Alone-begotten. Here, then, we have striking evidence that in its Egyptian environment the cult of the Æon was associated with mystery-rites reminding us strongly of the symbolism of the Christ-mystery.

THE QUINTESSENCE AND THE MONAD

Moreover, Messala 5 tells us of this Æon, that He “who made all things and governs all things, joined

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together by means of the surrounding Heaven the power and nature of Water and Earth, heavy and downward, flowing down into the Depth, and that of Fire and Spirit, light and rushing upward to the measureless Height. It is this mightiest power of Heaven that hath bound together these two unequal powers.”

Lydus (ibid.) furthermore tells us that the idea of the Æon was associated by the Pythagoreans with the idea of the Monad; indeed, they seem to have derived the word aiōn from ἰά, the Ionic form of μία (one).

Any attempt to refer this Pythagorean identification to the earlier Pythagoreans would be at once rejected by the majority of scholars, but I believe myself that the original Pythagoreans were far too close to the Borderland between mythology and philosophy not to have personified or at least substantiated their “Numbers” and the Source of them. At anyrate it is highly instructive to find Plato himself writing in the Timæus:

THE ÆON IN PLATO

“And when the Father who begot it [the Cosmos] saw that by its motion and its life it had become a likeness of the Everlasting Gods, He marvelled, and in delight determined further to make it still more like its Original. 1 And as the latter is an Everlasting Living Being, He sought to make this [Sensible] Universe as far as possible like it.

“Now the nature of the Living Being was eternal (αἰώνιος—æonian); but to bestow this quality entirely on a generable creature was not possible.

“Accordingly He determined to make a moving

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image of Eternity (Αἰῶνος); and so in setting the Heaven in order He makes it an everlasting (αἰώνιον) image, moving according to number, of Eternity (Αἰῶνος) that rests in One—an image which we have, you know, called Time.” 1

Here it is very plain that Æon is not Time, but the Paradigm thereof—Eternity. It is the Consummation of the Eternal Gods—namely, the Plērōma, the Monad par excellence. We, therefore, find already in Plato the idea of the Æon fully developed. Did Plato “invent” it? Or did he put an already existing idea into philosophical terms? He presumably found it already existing. Was it then Orphic (Pythagorean), or did he learn of it in Egypt? Who shall say precisely?

CONCERNING THE HELLENISTIC ORIGIN OF ÆONOLOGY

Seeing, however, that we find the idea of the Æon fully developed in Plato, and seeing that Plato was, so to speak, scripture for our Hermetic writers, it is exceedingly puzzling that we should find it apparently introduced at a certain stage into the Trismegistic literature as a new doctrine.

It may be, however, that those who had followed Plato on purely philosophical lines had hitherto paid little attention to the idea of the Æon, except as an ultimate principle beyond the reach of speculation. When, however, the enthusiastic seership of mysticism dared to soar beyond heaven into the Heaven of heavens, and so to divide the Simplicity into an Infinitude of Multiplicity, the term Æon came to be used no longer for a transcendent unity but as the connotation of a grade of Being.

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It may then have been that our Hermetic writers reasserted the use of the term in its simpler philosophic meaning as a check to over-enthusiastic speculation.

But even if it were a reaction against a too great luxury of speculation, it must have been contemporaneous with the development of æonology; so that in any case C. H. xi. (xii.) must be dated from this point of view.

When æonology arose we cannot say precisely; but æonology in the Gnostic sense of the term was, as we have seen, to some extent at least existing as early as the earliest Christian documents.

THE ÆON THE LOGOS

Now though the Trismegistic tractate C. H., xi. (xii.) is evidently in literary contact with the Timæus, 1 it nevertheless purports to give more “esoteric,” or at any rate more precise, instruction than is to be found in Plato’s famous cosmogonical treatise. It does not follow Plato, but hands on an instruction that has already been formulated in a precise and categorical fashion. The ladder of existence is God, Æon, Cosmos, Time, Genesis;—each following one from the other.

Æon is the Power of God (§ 3), whereas Cosmos is God’s creation and work (§§ 3, 4). The Æon, standing between God and Cosmos, is the Paradigm, and so also the Son of God (§ 15), and the final end of man is that he should become Æon (§ 20)—that is, Son of God. Æon is thus evidently the Logos of God, or the Intelligible Cosmos, as distinguished from the Sensible Cosmos. This

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[paragraph continues]Æon is the Fullness in which all things move, and chiefly the Seven Cosmoi (§ 7).

THE ROMAN SÆCULUM-CULT DERIVED FROM EGYPT

Now, Reitzenstein (pp. 274 ff.) shows very clearly that the Cult of the Saeculum or Æon was strongly developed in Roman theology in at least the first century B.C. This is too early a date for us to assign this development to the influence of the Mithras-cult. Can it then be that Rome was influenced by Egypt? Such at anyrate is Reitzenstein’s opinion (p. 277), who points to the fact that Messala, who is fully imbued with the Æon-idea, was a contemporary of Nigidius, the most learned of the Romans after Varro, and a Pythagorean philosopher of high attainments. Now it is remarkable that in his work, De Sphæra Barbarica, Nigidius treats of the Egyptian Sphere.

THE ÆONIC IMMENSITIES OF EGYPT

Egypt, as we have already remarked, at a very early date arrived at the idea of eternal or at anyrate of enormously long periods of time, and had symbolised this conception in a primordial syzygy or pair of Gods. Indeed, the names of the primordial Time-pair, Ḥḥw (Ḥeḥu) and Ḥḥt (Ḥeḥut), are immediately derived from “Ḥḥ,” generally translated “Million,” but by Brugsch and others as Æon. 1 All the Egyptian Gods were Lords of the Eternity or of the Eternities. But not only so, the

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term “eternity” was used in connection with definite time-periods; for instance, “in a million (or eternity) of thirty year periods.” And again: “Thy kingdom will have the lastingness of eternity and of infinitely many hundred-and-twenty-year periods; ten millions of thy years, millions of thy months, hundred-thousands of thy days, ten-thousands of thine hours.” 1

Here we must remark the numbers 120 (that is 12 × 10) and 30; all essential numbers of the Gnostic Plērōma of Æons.

It is also of interest in connection with the Time-pair, to note that Horapollo, the Alexandrian grammarian, tells us that the Egyptians when they desire to express the idea of Æon write “sun and moon” 2 (i. 1), and when they want to write “year” they draw “Isis,” that is “woman” (i. 3).

We thus see that in Egypt there were Æons of Periods or Years, and Years of Æons. Above all these ruled the God of the Æons, the highest God of many a mystic community.

A SONG OF PRAISE TO THE ÆON

And so we read the following song of praise to the Æon, inscribed on a “secret tablet” by some unknown Brother of a forgotten Order:

1. “Hail unto Thee, O thou All-Cosmos of æthereal Spirit! Hail unto Thee, O Spirit, who doth extend from Heaven to Earth, and from the Earth that’s in the middle of the orb of Cosmos to the ends of the Abyss!

2. “Hail unto Thee, O Spirit who doth enter into me, who clingeth unto me or who doth part thyself from

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me, according to the Will of God in goodness of His heart!

3. “Hail unto Thee, O thou Beginning and thou End of Nature naught can move! Hail unto thee thou vortex of the liturgy 1 unweariable of [Nature’s] elements!

4. “Hail unto Thee, O thou Illumination of the solar beam that shines to serve the world. Hail unto Thee, thou Disk of the night-shining moon, that shines unequally! Hail, ye Spirits all of the æthereal statues [of the Gods]!

5. “Hail to you [all], whom holy Brethren and holy Sisters ought to hail in giving of their praise!

6. “O Spirit, mighty one, most mighty circling and incomprehensible Configuration of the Cosmos, celestial, æthereal, inter-æthereal, water-like, earth-like, fire-like, air-like, like unto light, to darkness like, shining as do the stars,—moist, hot, cold Spirit!

7. “I praise Thee, God of gods, who ever doth restore the Cosmos, and who doth store the Depth away 2 upon its throne of settlement no eye can see, who fixest Heaven and Earth apart, and coverest the Heaven with thy golden everlasting (αἰωνίαις) wings, and makest firm the Earth on everlasting thrones!

8. “Thou who hangest up the Æther in the lofty Height, and scatterest the Air with thy self-moving blasts, who mak’st the Water eddy round in circles!

9. “O Thou who raisest up the fiery whirlwinds, and makest thunder, lightning, rain, and shakings of the earth, O God of Æons! Mighty art thou, Lord God, O Master of the All!” 3

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Here there is no separation of God as intra-cosmic and extra-cosmic; He is both the one and the other. He is both the Fullness of the Godhead and also the Fullness of Cosmos. He is both the Cosmos, and He who is above the Cosmos and below the Cosmos. 1

THE DEMIURGIC ÆON

Reitzenstein (p. 278), referring to our Trismegistic tractate, C. H., xi. (xii.), points to the distinction made between Æon and God on one side and Æon and Cosmos on the other. This, he thinks, shows signs of the influence of a fundamental trait of Hellenistic theology which makes the Demiurge the Second God.

However this may be, there certainly was a distinction drawn between the Creative, or rather Formative, God and the Supreme Deity, in many a Christian Gnostic System, and not unfrequently of a very disparaging nature to the former. Already in Jewish mystic and philosophic (Gnostic) circles a distinction had had to be drawn between the idea of God as the Creator God, and the idea of God as the Ineffable Mystery of Mysteries. This had been necessitated by the contact of the Jewish Gnostics with the old wisdom-ideas and with the fundamental postulates of Greek philosophy.

THE ÆON IN THEURGIC LITERATURE

Many examples could be given, 2 but we prefer to follow Reitzenstein (p. 279) in his references to the Magic Papyri, or Apocryphal literature of the same class,

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and append the translation of two striking quotations, as opening up an entirely novel side of the subject.

Thus in the eighth Book of Moses, we find the following passage in which the Jewish Creator God is placed in the second rank as compared with the Egyptian Supreme Principle.

“And God, looking down unto the earth, said: IAŌ! And all stood still, and then came into being from His Voice a Great God, most mighty, who is Lord of all things, who caused to stand the things that shall be; and no longer was there any thing without order in the æthereal realms.” 1

So also in an invocation to an unknown God, most probably to the Spirit to whom the Brother of the unknown community addressed his praise-giving as given above—we meet with the same distinction.

“Thee, the only and blest Father of the Æons, I invoke with prayers like unto Cosmos! 2

“Come unto me who fillest the whole Cosmos with thy Breath, and dost hang up on high the Fire out of the Water, 3 and dost from out the Water separate the Earth. . . . The Lord bore witness to thy Wisdom, that is the Æon, and bade thee to have strength as He Himself hath strength.” 4

And, later on, the Theurgist exclaims:

“Receive my words as shafts of fire, for that I am God’s Man, for whom was made the fairest plasm of spirit, dew 5 and earth.”

He is a Man whose words are effective and bring all

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things to pass; for his “words” are compelling “acts,” or “theurgic.”

Other passages are brought forward by Reitzenstein (pp. 280-286) to show that the idea of the Logos or Æon as Second God was a fundamental conception in Hellenistic theology.

This may very well have been the case in general Hellenistic theology; but in philosophical circles, as we have pointed out in treating of the Logos-idea in Philo, the distinction was formal and not essential. So also in our Trismegistic treatises, which are saturated with transcendental pantheistic or monistic, or rather panmonistic, conceptions, if the Logos or Æon is momentarily treated of as apart from Supreme Deity, it is not so in reality; for the Logos is the Season of God, God in His eternal Energy, and the Æon is the Eternity of Deity, God in His energic Eternity, the Rest that is the Source of all Motion.

For the fullest exposition of the Æon-doctrine in our Trismegistic tractates, see The Perfect Sermon, xxx.-xxxii., and my commentary thereon.

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Footnotes

387:1 From Prof. Montet’s report (Asiatic Qr. Rev., Oct. 1904) of the “Proceedings of the Second International Congress of the History of Religions” (Bâle), Aug. 20-Sept. 2, 1904, I see that Reitzenstein presented a monograph on the “Aion” to the Congress. I do not, however, know whether this has yet been published.

388:1 Clement. Hom., VI. iii. ff.; ed. A. Schwegler (Stuttgart, 1847), pp. 168 ff.; ed. P. de Lagarde (Leipzig, 1865), pp. 74 ff. See also Lobeck, Aglaophamus, pp. 475, 478; and my Orpheus, pp. 156 and 162, 163. For the latest critical view on the Apion-speeches, see Waitz (H.), Die Pseudoklementinen Homilien und Rekognitionen (Texte und Untersuchungen, Neue Folge, Bd. X. Hft. IV.), pp. 251-256, “Der Dialog des Klemens mit Appion über die heidnische Mythologie.”

388:2 Il., vii. 99. Cf. the Earth-and-Water of C. H., i. 5.

388:3 Theog., 116.

389:1 Orpheus apparently does nothing of the kind, but draws a distinction between Chaos and the Egg.

389:2 Cf. the Pythagorean Tetraktys, in the famous oath—“The Fourfold Root of Ever-flowing Nature.”

389:3 Or impelled or pushed in every direction.

389:4 Thus forming the Vortex Atom of the Cosmos.

389:5 The text reads: καὶ οὕτως ἐξ ἀκουστοῦ τῶν πάνπων τὸ νοστιμώτατον. As ἐξ ἀκουστοῦ has hitherto proved insoluble for all editors, I would suggest ἐξ ἀκουσίου. As to νοστιμώτατον, L. and S. are of little assistance unless it is taken in the sense of “ripest.” Sophocles gives “essential, valuable, perfect, the best part of any thing.”

390:1 This probably means the Spirit that ensouled Matter; or to use a more familiar expression, the Spirit of God which “brooded over the Deep.”

390:2 Sc. out of the Depth of Matter or Darkness, on to the surface of it, where was the Light.

390:3 Cf. C. H., i. 14: “bent his face downwards” (παρέκυψεν), and note thereon.

390:4 According to Basilides the “wings” of the Sonship are the Holy Spirit. This symbolism is presumably to be connected with the Egyptian “Winged Globe.” See F. F. F., p. 26.

390:5 A very ancient word-play.

390:6 Sometimes used for brain. Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 11, and the Jewish Commentator in the Naassene Document. This is the Spermatic Essence of the Logos.

391:1 It is thought of as floating in this Matter.

391:2 The Living One.

391:3 κραναίου—an otherwise unknown word. Many emendations have been suggested; but it does not seem to be necessary to go beyond κρανίον, especially as we have seen (for instance, in the Naassene Document) that this was a favourite symbol of the Heaven.

391:4 Unfortunately, the rest of the Orphic quotation is not given.

391:5 Or body—the matter in the Egg.

391:6 ἁρμονίαν—its fitting together, or harmony.

393:1 Philos., v. 19; ed. C., p. 209 ff.; ed. D. and S., pp. 198 ff.; ed. M., 138 ff.

393:2 ἀρχάς—sources or beginnings.

394:1 ἀφανές—the opposite of Phanes.

394:2 Have we here any further clue to the title Κόρη Κόσμου?

395:1 I may be mistaken, but the ideas involved in this exposition seem to be precisely the same as those involved in the most modern dynamic theories of atomicity, except that the atoms or rather monads of our Gnostics are intelligent.

395:2 Lit., con-currence.

396:1 Lit., navel; but the word stands metaphorically for anything like a navel—e.g. the boss of a shield, a knob of any kind; hence any centre, or nucleus.

396:2 Hippolytus here seems to have omitted some important section of his source from his summary; in any case the text of that which follows is very corrupt, and in some important details demonstrably imperfect, as may be seen by comparing the Epitome, X. iv.

396:3 Or ferment.

396:4 Sc. Wind.

397:1 ἐγκύμων—a play on κῦμα, which means embryo as well as wave.

397:2 The text is here destroyed beyond hope of conjecture.

397:3 Sc. Darkness.

397:4 σκολιῷ. Cf. the σκολιῶς of C. H., i. 4.

397:5 Cf, the Naassene Hymn: “She seeks to flee the bitter Chaos”; and compare Jacob Böhme’s “Bitterness,” and also his “three Principles,” with those of our system. The analogies are striking, and yet Jacob could not possibly have known this system physically.

398:1 The following lines are destroyed beyond the power of reconstruction.

398:2 In the case of a serpent this would be “hissing”; σύριγμα, however, is properly the sound of a pipe, and puts us in mind of the Syriktēs of the Naassene Document.

398:3 Sc. than that of the Serpent.

398:4 Sc. the Womb.

398:5 Cf. Philipp., ii. 7: “But He emptied Himself, taking on the Servant’s Form, being made in the likeness of men.” The “emptying” or κένωσις was the change from the πλήρωμα or Fullness of Light to the κένωμα or Emptiness of Darkness. Paul (or the writer of the Epistle, whoever he was) is here using the technical language of the Gnosis.

399:1 Textes et Monuments Figurés relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra (Bruxelles, 1899), i. 76 ff., where all the references are given.

400:1 A Being with lion’s head, and eagle’s wings, and brute’s feet, and human body, enwrapped with a serpent, standing on a globe and holding the keys of life and death in its two hands. There are many variants, however, all of them highly instructive, as pourtraying the Autozoon, or Living Creature in itself, the summation of all forms of life, including man.

401:1 Reitzenstein (p. 276) is also of this opinion.

402:1 R. 270.

402:2 Ap. Euseb., Præp. Evang., I. 10, 7; 34 B.

403:1 De Mens., iv. (ed. Wünsch, p. 64, 6).

403:2 Or rather 6th. Reitzenstein’s (p. 274) gloss (πρὸ εἰδῶν) to ἐπὶ τῆς πέμπτης, is erroneous, for this would make the date January 11th.

403:3 For a translation of the passage, see the Commentary on the K. K. Excerpts in treating of the term “Virgin of the World.”

403:4 Epiphanius, Haer., li. 22; ed. Dindorf, ii. 483. Cf. D. J. L., pp. 410 f., “The Crucifixion and Resurrection Mystery-Rite.”

403:5 Quoted by Macrobius, Saturnal., I. ix.

404:1 That is, the Ideal Cosmos.

405:1 Tim., 37 C, D.

406:1 Cf. § 1: “As many men say many things, and these diverse about the All and Good”; and Tim., 29 C: “If then, O Socrates, since many men say many things about the Gods and the genesis of the All.”

407:1 Budge (op. cit., i. 285) writes: “According to the late Dr Brugsch (Religion, p. 132), the name Ḥeḥ is connected with the word which indicates an undefined and unlimited number, i.e. ḥeḥ; when applied to time the idea suggested is ‘millions of years,’ and Ḥeḥ is equivalent to the Greek αἰών.”

408:1 Brugsch, Wörterbuch, vi. 839.

408:2 The usual symbols for “everlasting.”

409:1 Or service—λειτουργία.

409:2 θησαυρίσας—or treasure away.

409:3 Wessely, Denkschr. d. K. K. Akad. (1888), p. 72, 11. 1115 ff.; R. 277, 278.

410:1 Cf. R. 28; Hermes-Prayer, vii. 1.

410:2 See my Fragments of a Faith Forgotten.

411:1 Dieterich, Abraxas, 184-99.

411:2 That is, presumably, “offerings of the reason,” as our tractates have it; or prayers that put the mind in sympathy with the true order of things.

411:3 The Heaven Ocean.

411:4 Wessely, Denkschr. d. K. K. Akad. (1888), p. 73, 11. 1168 ff.

411:5 Or pure water.

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XII

THE SEVEN ZONES AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS

“To the first zone he gives the energy of Growth and Waning; unto the second zone, Device of Evils now de-energized; unto the third, the Guile of the Desires de-energized; unto the fourth, his Domineering Arrogance also de-energized; unto the fifth, unholy Daring and the Rashness of Audacity de-energized; unto the sixth, Striving for Wealth by evil means deprived of its aggrandisement; and to the seventh zone, Ensnaring Falsehood de-energized.”—C. H., i. 25.

MACROBIUS ON “THE DESCENT OF THE SOUL FROM THE HEIGHT OF COSMOS TO THE DEPTHS OF EARTH”

Let us first turn to the commentary of Macrobius on the famous “Dream of Scipio,” which Cicero introduces into his Republic (Bk. VI.), just as Plato appends the Vision of Er to his. Macrobius devotes the twelfth chapter of his First Book to a consideration of “The Descent of the Soul from the Height of Cosmos to the Depths of Earth,” and professes to base himself on Pythagorean and Platonic traditions. His dissertation covers more ground than the precise subject of the zones with which we are more immediately concerned; but as the whole scheme is of interest to our present

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studies, we will append a translation of practically the whole chapter.

“[According to Pythagoras] when the Soul descends from the Boundary where the Zodiac and Galaxy [or Milky Way] meet, from a spherical form, which is the only divine one, it is elongated into a conical one 1 by its downward tendency.

“Just as the line is born from the point and proceeds into length out of the indivisible, so the soul from its point, that is ‘monad,’ comes into ‘dyad’—its first production [or lengthening].

“And this is the essence which Plato in the Timæus, speaking about the construction of the World-Soul, describes as indivisible yet at the same time divisible.

“For just as the Soul of the World so also the soul of an individual man will be found in one respect incapable of division—if it is regarded from the standpoint of the simplicity of its divine nature—and in another capable [of division]—since the former is diffused through the members of the world, and the latter through those of a man.

“When then the soul is drawn towards body—in this first production of it—it begins to experience a material agitation, matter flowing into it. 2

“And this is remarked by Plato in the Phædo [when he says] that the soul is drawn to body staggering with recent intoxication,—meaning us to understand by this a new draught of matter’s superfluity, by which it becomes defiled and gravid and so is brought down.

“A symbol of this mystic secret is that Starry Cup (Cratēr) of Father Bacchus placed in the space between

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[paragraph continues]Cancer and Leo 1—meaning that intoxication is there first experienced by souls in their descent by the influx of matter into them. From which cause also forgetfulness, the companion of intoxication, then begins secretly to creep into souls.

“For if souls brought down to body memory of the divine things of which they were conscious in heaven, there would be no difference of opinion among men concerning the divine state. But all, indeed, in their descent drink of forgetfulness—some more, some less.

“And for this cause on earth, though the truth is not clear to all, they nevertheless have all some opinion about it; for opinion arises when memory sinks. Those, however, are greater discoverers of truth who have drunk less of forgetfulness, because they remember more easily what they have known before in that state.

“Hence it is that what the Latins call a ‘lecture’ (lectio) the Greeks call a ‘re-knowing’ (repetita cognitio 2), because when we give utterance to true things, we re-cognize the things which we knew by nature before the influence of matter intoxicated our souls in their descent into body.

“Now it is this Matter (Hylē) which, after being impressed by the [divine] ideas, fashioned every body in the cosmos which we see. Its highest and purest nature, by means of which the divinities are either sustained or consist, 3 is called Nectar, and is believed to be the drink of the gods; while its lower and more

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turbid nature is the drink of souls. The latter is what the Ancients called the River of Lethe [or Forgetfulness].

“The Orphic [initiates], however, suppose that Dionysus himself is to be understood as ‘Hylic Nous’ 1—[that Mind] which after its birth from the Indivisible [Mind] is itself divided into individual [minds].

“And it is for this reason that in their Mystery-tradition Dionysus is represented as being torn limb from limb by the fury of the Titans, and, after the pieces have been buried, as coming together again whole and one; for Nous—which, as we have said, is their term for Mind—by offering itself for division from its undivided state, and by returning to the undivided from the divided, both fulfils the duties of the cosmos and also performs the mysteries of its own nature.

“The soul, therefore, having by means of this first weight [of matter] fallen down from the Zodiac and Galaxy into the series of spheres that lie below them, in continuing its descent through them, is not only enwrapped in the envelope of a luminous body, 2 but also develops the separate motions which it is to exercise.

“In the sphere of Saturn [it develops] the powers of reasoning and theorizing 3—which [the Greeks] call τὸ λογιστικὸν and τὸ θεωρητικόν; in that of Jupiter, the power of putting into practice—which they call τὸ πρακτικόν; in that of Mars, the power of ardent vehemence—which they call τὸ θυμικόν; in that of the Sun, the nature of sensing and imagining—which they call τὸ αἰσθητικὸν and τὸ φανταστικόν; in that of Venus, the motion of desire—which they call τὸ

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ἐπιθυμητικόν, in the sphere of Mercury, the power of giving expression to and interpretation of feelings—which they call τὸ ἑρμη νευτικόν; on its entrance into the sphere of the Moon it brings into activity τὸ φυτικόν—that is, the nature of making bodies grow and of moving them.

“And this [soul], though the last thing in the divine series, is nevertheless the first thing in us and in all terrestrial beings; just as this body [of ours], though the dregs of things divine, is still the first substance of the animal world.

“And this is the difference between terrene bodies and supernal—I mean those of the heaven and stars and of the other elements 1—that the latter are summoned upwards to the abode of the soul, and are worthy of immunity from death from the very nature of the space in which they are and their imitation of sublimity.

“The soul, however, is drawn down to these terrene bodies, and so it is thought to die when it is imprisoned in the region of things fallen and in the abode of death. Nor should it cause distress that we have so often spoken of death in connection with the soul, which we have declared to be superior to death. For the soul is not annihilated by [what is called] its death, but is [only] buried for a time; nor is the blessing of its perpetuity taken from it by its submersion for a time, since when it shall have made it worthy to be cleansed clean utterly of all contagion of its vice, it shall once more return from body to the light of Everlasting Life restored and whole.” 2

The characteristics of the spheres given by Macrobius are according to their simple energies; there is no

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question of good or bad; it is the “thinking” of the soul that conditions the use of these energies for beneficent or maleficent ends.

THE TRADITION OF SERVIUS

Servius, however, in his Commentary on Virgil’s Æneid, vi. 714, hands on another tradition, in which the Spheres were regarded as inimical to the good of the soul, its evil propensities being ascribed to their energies. Some scholars are of opinion that Virgil in his famous Sixth Book is largely dependent on the ideas of popular Egyptian theology; 1 however that may be, Servius writes as follows:

“The philosophers tell us what the soul loses in its descent through the separate spheres. For which cause also the Mathematici imagine that our body and soul are knit together by the powers of the separate divinities, on the supposition that when souls descend, they bring with them the sluggishness of Saturn, the passionateness of Mars, the lustfulness of Venus, the cupidity of Mercury, and the desire for rule of Jupiter. And these things perturb souls, so that they are unable to use their own energy and proper powers.”

It is to be noticed that the characteristics of the Sun and Moon are omitted, and this points to a doctrine in which Sun and Moon were treated as distinct from “the five.” So also in the “Books of the Saviour” appended to the Pistis Sophia document we find (pp. 360, 366 ff.) mention of only five planets. The

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tradition of this doctrine is exceedingly obscure, 1 and does not immediately concern us, as our text works on a “seven” basis.

CRITICISM OF THE EVIDENCE

I have done my best to discover some consistent scheme by which the contradictory data in Macrobius, Servius, and Hermes might be reconciled, but the tabularising of their indications only makes confusion worse confounded.

It is evident, however, that the main thing that Macrobius hands on, and which he attributes to Orphic-Pythagorean-Platonic tradition, contains in itself no suggestion that these philosophers attributed any evil tendencies to the characteristics of the spheres in themselves. The tradition of Macrobius is as follows:

 

Saturn	{	τὸ θεωρητικὸν τὸ λογιστικὸν		intelligentia. ratiocinatio.
Jupiter		τὸ πρακτικὸν		vis agendi.
Mars		τὸ θυμικὸν		ardor animositatis.
Sun	{	τὸ αἰσθητικὸν τὸ φανταστικὸν		natura sentiendi. natura opinandi.
Venus		τὸ ἐπιθυμητικὸν		motus desiderii.
Mercury		τὸ ἑρμηνευτικὸν	{	vis pronuntiandi et interpretandi quæ sentiantur.
Moon		τὸ φυτικὸν	{	natura plantandi et agendi corpora.

The confusion between the “vis agendi” of Jupiter and that of the Moon may be resolved by supposing that the former was the application of the reasoning

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faculty to the practical things of life, while the latter was the power of moving one’s own physical body, if indeed the “et agendi” is not a gloss of Macrobius.

Servius, on the contrary, is following a tradition in which the spheres were regarded as the sources of evil tendencies; ethical considerations dominate the whole conception. Seeing, however, that it is a fivefold distribution, we are unable to equate it with the doctrine of Hermes, which is sevenfold. Nevertheless, there are some parallels.

The lustfulness (libido) of Servius is to be paralleled with the “guile of the desires” or “lustful error” (ἡ ἐπιθυμητικὴ ἀπάτη) of Hermes. This is ascribed to the third zone by Hermes, and to Venus by Servius, Venus further coming third in Macrobius.

The “desire of rule” (desiderium regni) of Servius is clearly the “domineering arrogance” (ἡ ἀρχοντικὴ προφανία) of Hermes. In Hermes this belongs to the middle zone (fourth); in Servius it is ascribed to Jupiter, presumably as the ruler of the age—the ruler of the previous age being Saturn, who has been deprived of his energy and so rendered “torpid.”

The “passion” or “wrathfulness” (iracundia) of Servius is also to be paralleled to some extent with the “unholy daring” of Hermes. It is ascribed to the fifth zone by Hermes and to Jupiter by Servius, Mars also coming fifth in Macrobius.

Finally, the “love of gain” (lucri cupiditas) of Servius may be paralleled by the “striving for wealth by evil means” (αἱ ἀφορμαὶ αἱ κακαὶ τοῦ πλούτου) of Hermes. Hermes attributes this to the sixth zone, and Servius to Mercury.

The remaining quality mentioned by Servius, “torpor,” which he ascribes to Saturn, equates with nothing in Hermes, unless we can persuade ourselves that the

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“ensnaring falsehood” or “falsehood that lies in wait” (τὸ ἐνεδρεῦον ψεῦδος) of Hermes has some connection with it.

The scheme of Hermes is septenary, and connected with the ideas of the ascent of the soul through seven zones, which we must locate as seven superimposed atmospheres extending from the surface of the earth to the moon’s orbit. There is no question here of the Celestial Spheres proper of the Philosophers, the characteristics of the energies of which are neither good nor evil in themselves; nor is there apparently any question of the “animal soul” proper, for the “passions and desires” are said to withdraw into the “nature which is void of reason.” Though nothing more is said about this nature in this connection, in the general belief of the time its dominion was thought of as located below the earth-surface—as a Tartarus of seven zones, corresponding to those above, in which the “animal soul” or “vehicle of desire” was thought of as being gradually disintegrated, its energies finally going back to their source in the Depths of the Darkness, while the process of such disintegration or metamorphosis produced a parallel consciousness of chastisements and horrors. The seven zones of our text, however, are apparently the region of purification of the lower energies of the human soul; the mental energies led into error by the animal passions.

THE “OPHITE” HEBDOMAD

Now if we turn to Salmon’s article on the “Hebdomad,” 1 and to his discussion of the tradition of the “Ophites”—a mysterious medley of chaotic elements, which have not yet been analysed in any satisfactory

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fashion, but which have their roots in pre-Christian traditions of a very varied nature within the general characteristic of a syncretic Gnosticism—we find that after treating of the Celestial Hebdomad, he continues as follows:

“Besides the higher hebdomad of the seven angels, the Ophite system told of a lower hebdomad. After the serpent in punishment for having taught our first parents to transgress the commands of Ialdabaoth was cast down into this lower world, he begat himself six sons, 1 who with himself form a hebdomad, the counterpart of that of which his father Ialdabaoth is chief. These are the seven demons, the scene of whose activity is this lower earth, not the heavens; and who delight in injuring the human race on whose account their father had been cast down. Origen (Adv. Cels., vi. 30) gives their names and forms from an Ophite Diagram; Michael in form as a lion, Suriel as an ox, Raphael as a dragon, Gabriel as an eagle, Thautabaoth as a bear, Erataoth as a dog, Onoel as an ass.”

Here, I think, we are on the track of one aspect of a general mystery-tradition that Hermes has “philosophized.” I say one aspect, for the “Ophite” tradition is not a single form of tradition, but a medley of traditions containing a number of forms; it is a complex or syncretism of Chaldæan, Persian, and Egyptian elements, patched together, or “centonized,” if we may use the term, with Jewish industry.

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THE SIMPLER FORM OF THE TRISMEGISTIC GNOSIS

The wealth of symbolism and profusion of mysterious personifications with which these systems of subjective imagery were smothered, could exercise only a partial fascination on the clear-thinking, philosophical mind which had been trained in the method of Plato. If such a mind was combined with the mystic temperament, as was indubitably the case with the writer of our “Pœmandres” treatise, his main effort would be to simplify and categorize in the terms of philosophy at the expense of apocalyptic detail; nevertheless, when a man lived in the midst of such ideas, and was presumably in intimate relations with mystics and seers of all sorts, he could not but be strongly affected by the main presuppositions of all such apocalyptic, and the general notions of the schematology of the Unseen World, which all students of such matters at that period seem to have accepted in common.

We thus find that our Trismegistic literature, though dealing throughout with the Gnosis, treats it in a far more simple way than any other known system of the time. Nevertheless, even the complex imagery of the Ophite schools is occasionally summed up in a few graphic general symbols, and these, too, representing probably the oldest elements in them.

CONCERNING LEVIATHAN AND BEHEMOTH

From the confused description by Origen 1 of the famous but exceedingly puzzling Ophite Diagram that both Celsus and Origen had before them, though in different forms, we can make out with certainty only

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that this chart of the Unseen Spaces was divided into three main divisions—Upper, Middle, and Lower. The Middle Space contained a geometrical diagram of a group of ten circles surrounded by one great circle. This Great Circle was called Leviāthān, and the grouping of circles within it was apparently divided into a three and a seven. The Lower Space had in it a grouping of seven circles, the circles of the seven ruling daimones (xxx.)—elsewhere called Archontics—and the whole group was apparently called Bĕhēmōth (xxv.).

Celsus, quoted by Origen (xxvii.), tells us that the doctrine was that on the death of the body two groups of angels range themselves on either side of the soul, 1 the one set being called “Angels of Light” and the other “Archontics”—evidently intended for “Angels of Darkness.” Thus the evil soul was thought to be led away by the Daimones to Behemoth, and the pure soul to Leviathan.

We cannot enter into the endless discussions concerning these two Great Beasts, mentioned together in Job xl. 15-24, and separately in Isaiah and Psalms; the most recent research comes to the conclusion that “it would seem that Leviāthān was regarded as lord of the ocean and Bĕhēmōth of dry land.” 2

But in our diagram Leviathan is Lord of the Heaven-Ocean or Great Green or Cosmic Air, and Behemoth Lord of the Cosmic Earth.

Indeed, in the Book of Enoch, 3 the apocalyptic writer associates these two monsters with precisely the same eschatological considerations which Origen tells us were the purpose of the Diagram, only “Enoch” speaks of

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the Last Day, while the Ophite writer has in view the ascent of the soul of an initiate after death.

At the final separation of Righteous and Unrighteous, “Enoch” tells us, these Great Creatures, which before were united, will be parted. That is to say, at death there is a metamorphosis of the soul.

From what is said in “Enoch,” moreover, I deduce that the Upper Space of the Ophite Diagram was intended to represent the Celestial Paradise, that is the state of the Pure Mind or of the Righteous.

Leviathan and Behemoth are figured in IV. Esdras vi. 49-52, as Devourers of the Unrighteous; while general Jewish apocalyptic in both Apocrypha and Talmud believed that these monsters would in their turn become the food of the Righteous in Messianic times. 1

From all these indications we deduce that Behemoth was the Great Beast and Leviathan the Great Fish. The animal soul, intensified by contact with the human mind, then goes back to its source the Great Beast, and is devoured by it, and reabsorbed by it, its energies returning to the sum total of energies of the Great Animal Group-Soul, the whole energy and experience of which shall eventually become the “food” of the perfected man; that is to say, presumably, he will in his turn devour and so transmute these energies; the perfected man will thrive by transmuting the Body of the Great Beast into the Body of the Great Man.

The Great Fish, however, would seem to symbolize the higher energies of the soul, which also require transmutation. In being born into the stature of the Great Man, the Son of Man must needs pass “three days” in the Belly of the Whale. This Great Fish is of the nature of knowledge; for does not Oannes come

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out of the Ocean in fish-form to teach, 1 in the Assyrian Mystery-tradition, and does not the Ophite tradition in another of its phases 2 derive the inspiration of the great prophets of Israel, in their several degrees, from this same Group of Angels which the Diagram calls Leviathan?

It is also of interest to notice that Leviathan and Behemoth were believed to have once formed one monster, which was subsequently divided into male and female, Behemoth being male and Leviathan female. This reminds one of the primæval Water-Earth of Hermes, which was subsequently divided into Water and Earth, just as the animals were first of all male-female, and subsequently were separated. Moreover, in the Vision of Er the arcs of the journeyings of the ascending and descending souls end in two orifices above in the sky and two below in the earth, as though they were the ends of a once great hollow ring or circle that had been divided, or as it were two serpents arched above and below, with mouths and tails as orifices; and, curiously enough, in the Pistis Sophia the souls of the unrighteous enter by the mouth of the Lower Dragon and depart by the tail.

Now, Leviathan being female and Behemoth male, and both forming together as it were the circumference of the Great Wheel of Necessity, the Wheel of Genesis, the attribution of the gestation, so to speak, of the

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virtues of the soul to the one and the digesting of its vices to the other, is not so surprising. Further, they could be regarded as the right-hand or left-hand arcs or hemispheres of the Wheel, or Sphere, or Egg, according to celestial topography; whereas in Egyptian terrestrial parallelism the right hand was to the north and the left hand the south, upper and lower Egypt. Curiously enough, in Isa. xxx. 6, Behemoth is called the monster “of the south land.” 1

Whether or no the writer of the “Pœmandres” was directly influenced by the precise forms of tradition to which we have referred, is impossible to determine; but that he was influenced by the general ideas as symbolized is indubitable, and that he understood the esoteric meaning of the “hippopotamus” and “crocodile” symbols in Egyptian mysticism is highly probable.

THE “FENCE OF FIRE”

Origen (xxxi.), moreover, tells us that, according to the Ophites, the consciousness of the soul after passing through the domain of the animal-formed Rulers, broke through what was called the “Fence of Iniquity,” and so turned towards the higher spheres, through which it also had to pass. In the seventh and highest of them, over which ruled the Virtue which was called Hōræus, 2 it addresses the Ruler thereof with an apology or defence of its own innocence, beginning with the words: “O thou who hast transcended the ‘Fence of Fire’ without fear!”

This Fence of Fire was symbolised in the form of the Diagram which Origen (xxxiii.) had before him, as a

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circle of fire with a flaming sword lying across its diameter. This must then have been intended to represent the Sphere of Fire, or Angel or Guardian of the Gate, which had to be passed before the Celestial Paradise could be entered, for the flashing, circling blade is said to have guarded the “Tree of Gnosis and of Life.”

The same idea of a typical Boundary or Fence meets us in the “Pœmandres.” It is Man who breaks through the seven spheres and also their enclosing Sphere, the Might or Power that circumscribed the Fire. The root idea is the same. The point of view of Hermes, however, like that of the Ophite Gnostics, is not the passage round the Circle of Necessity of the souls of the unregenerate, as in the Vision of Er, but of the Straight Ascent of the soul of the initiate, his breaking through the spheres. It is the ascent of a soul who has reached the Hermes-stage, or Thrice-greatest grade, the final stage of winning its freedom, the Ascent after the last compulsory birth—the Ascent “as now it is for me” (§ 25).

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Footnotes

414:1 Not into a mathematical cone, but into an egg-shaped or elliptical form resembling that of a pine-cone.

414:2 This shows that the soul was thought of as being without or outside body of every kind, and body was taken into it.

415:1 Cf. Pistis Sophia, pp. 371 and 367.

415:2 That is, presumably, ἀνάγνωσμα—a philosophical discourse, or sacred sermon.

415:3 As distinguished from “exist.” Latin, however, is but a poor medium for the expression of philosophical distinctions.

416:1 νοῦς ὑλικός.

416:2 The augoeides.

416:3 Or of contemplative reason, synthesis as opposed to analysis.

417:1 That is, the elements other than those of earth.

417:2 Ed. Eyssenhardt (F.), pp. 531 ff. (Leipzig, 1893).

418:1 Cf., for instance, Maass (E.), Die Tagesgötter in Rom und den Provinzen, p. 33. See R. 53, n. 1.

419:1 For references, see R. 53, n. 2.

421:1 Smith and Wace’s D. of Christ. Biog., ii. 849-851.

422:1 In Irenæus (C. Hær., I. xxx. 5; ed. Stieren, i. 266) this sevenfold serpent is the son of Ialdabaoth (the Creative Mind), and is said to be “mind,” also “crooked mind,” coiled up like a serpent.

423:1 C. Cels., VI. xxv. ff.

424:1 Plainly a conflation of Persian and Chaldæan ideas.

424:2 Cheyne’s article, “Behemoth and Leviathan,” in the Encyclopædia Biblica.

424:3 Charles’ Trans., lx. 7 ff. (Ethiop. V., p. 155).

425:1 See Charles, op. cit., p. 155, n. 7.

426:1 Oannes also comes to teach from the Waters of the Euphrates; the Jewish overwriter of the Naassene Document (see “Myth of Man in the Mysteries”) equates Euphrates with Great Jordan, and this with the Stream of Ocean; and, curiously enough, Origen (xxviii.) ascribes the Ophite teaching to a certain Euphrates, of whom no one else has ever heard. It is, however, a common error of the Church Fathers to mistake a principle of the Gnosis for the founder of a heresy.

426:2 See Salmon, loc. sup. cit.

427:1 According to Cheyne’s rendering in the above-quoted article.

427:2 That is, presumably, the Hōrus-like; thus showing traces of an Egyptian element.

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XIII

PLATO: CONCERNING METEMPSYCHOSIS

“And the soul’s vice is ignorance. For that the soul who hath no knowledge of the things that are, or knowledge of their nature, or of Good, is blinded by the body’s passions and tossed about.

“This wretched soul, not knowing what she is, becomes the slave of bodies of strange form in sorry plight, bearing the body as a load; not as the ruler, but the ruled.”—C. H., x. (xi.) 8. 1

For the better understanding of this passage, we may appropriately refresh the memory of our readers with the Platonic doctrine of the transmigration of souls, as given in the Phædrus, 248 ff., using for this purpose the best translation we have in English, namely, that of Stewart, 2 as a basis, but often departing from it for greater clearness.

THE SOUL AND HER MYSTERIES IN THE “PHÆDRUS”

“This is the life of the Gods. Of the other Souls, whosoever followeth God best, and is being made most like unto Him, keepeth the Head 3 of her Charioteer

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lifted up into the Space without the firmament; so she is carried round with the circuit thereof, yet being [still] troubled with the Horses, 1 and hardly beholding the Things-which-are; so she is now lifted up, now sinketh down, and because of the compulsion of the Horses, seeth some of the Things-which-are, and some she seeth not.

“And the rest of the Souls, you must know, follow all striving after that which is above, but unable [to reach it], and so are carried round together and sink below it, 2 trampling upon one another, and running against one another, and pressing on for to outstrip one another, with mighty great sound of tumult and sweat.

“And here by reason of the unskilfulness 3 of the Charioteers, many Souls are maimed, and many have many feathers [of their wings] broken; and all, greatly travailing, depart without initiation in the Sight of That-which-is, and departing betake them to the food of Opinion.

“Now this is why there is so great anxiety to see the Space where is the Plain of Truth,—both because the pasture suited to the Best Part of the Soul groweth in the Meadow there, and the power of wing, whereby the Soul is lightly carried up, is nourished by it, and that the law of Adrasteia is that whatsoever Soul by following after God hath seen somewhat of the true things, shall be without affliction till its next journey round; and if she can always do this, 4 she shall be without hurt alway.

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“But when through incapacity to follow [God] she doth not see, and, overtaken by some evil chance, filled with forgetfulness and wickedness, she is weighed down, and, being weighed down, she sheds the feathers of her wings and falls on to the Earth,—then is the law not to plant her 1 in her first birth in a beast’s nature; but to implant the Soul that hath seen most into the seed of one who shall become a Wisdom-lover, or a lover of the Beautiful, or a man who truly loves the Muses; the Soul that hath seen second best, into the seed of one who shall become a king that loveth law, and is a warrior and a true ruler; the Soul that hath seen third, unto the seed of one who shall become busied in civic duties, or in some stewardship, or in affairs; the one that hath seen fourth, into the seed of one who shall be a hardship-loving master of the body’s discipline or skilled in healing of the body; the Soul that hath seen fifth, into that which shall have a life connected with the oracles or mystic rites some way; 2 unto the sixth a life poetic shall be joined, or that of some one or of another of the tribe of copiers; unto the seventh, the life of workman or of husbandman; unto the eighth, that of a sophist or a demagogue; unto the ninth, that of a tyrant.

“In all these lives, whoever lives them righteously obtains a better fate; he who unrighteously, a worse.

“Now to the selfsame state from which each Soul hath come, she cometh not again for some ten thousand years. For sooner than this period no Soul [re-]gains

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its wings, except the Soul of him who has loved wisdom naturally or contrary to nature. 1

“Such Souls in the third period of a thousand years, if they have chosen thrice this life successively, thus getting themselves wings, depart in the three thousandth year. 2

“But the other Souls, when they have ended their first life, are brought to judgment; and being judged, some go to places of correction below the Earth and pay the penalty, while others are rewarded by being raised unto a certain space in Heaven where they live on in a condition appropriate unto the life they lived in a man’s form.

“But in the thousandth year both classes come to the lottery of lives, and each doth make choice of its second life, whatever it may choose. 3

“And now is it that a Soul that once had had a man’s life doth pass into a brute’s life, 4 and from a

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brute, he who was once a man, passes again into a man; for that indeed the Soul that never hath seen truth, will never come into this configuration. 1

“For we must understand ‘man,’ in the sense of form, as one proceeding from many sensations and collected into a unit by means of ratiocination. 2 But this 3 is recollection (ἀνάμνησις) of those things which our Soul once did see when she journeyed with God, 4 and looked beyond the things we now call things that are, by raising her face 5 to That-which-really-is.

“Wherefore of right, alone the understanding of the Wisdom-lover hath got wings; for he is ever engaged upon those things in memory as far as he can be, on being engaged at which, as being a God, he is divine.

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“The man then who doth make a right use of memories such as these, ever being made perfect in perfect perfectionings, alone becometh really Perfect. 1

“But in as much as he eschews the things that men strive after, and is engaged in the Divine [alone], he is admonished by the many as though he were beside himself, 2 for they cannot perceive he is inspired by God.”

PLOTINUS ON METEMPSYCHOSIS

Let us now turn to the genuine disciples of the master for further light on this tenet, and first of all to Plotinus.

The most sympathetic notice of this tenet in Plotinus is to be found in Jules Simon’s Histoire de l’École d’Alexandrie (Paris, 1845), i. 588 ff., based for the most part on En., I. i. 12; II. ix. 6; IV. iii. 9; V. ii. 2; and on Ficinus’ Commentary (p. 508 of Creuzer’s edition).

After citing some “ironical” passages from Plotinus (in which the philosopher disguised the real doctrine which in his day still pertained to the teachings of a higher initiation), Jules Simon goes on to say:

“Even though admitting that this doctrine of metempsychosis is taken literally by Plotinus, we should still have to ask for him as for Plato, whether the human soul really inhabits the body of an animal, and whether it is not reborn only into a human body which reflects the nature of a certain animal by the character of its passions.

“The commentators of the Alexandrian school sometimes interpreted Plato in this sense. Thus, according

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to Proclus, Plato in the Phædrus condemns the wicked to live as brutes and not to become them, κατίεναι εἰς βιὸν θήρειον, καὶ οὐκ εἰς σῶμα θήρειον (Proc., Comm. Tim., p. 329). Chalcidius gives the same interpretation, for he distinguishes between the doctrines of Plato and those of Pythagoras and Empedocles, qui non naturam modō feram, sed etiam formas. 1 Hermes (Comm. of Chalcidius on Timæus; ed. Fabric., p. 350) declares in unmistakable terms that a human soul can never return to the body of an animal, and that the will of the Gods for ever preserves it from such disgrace.” 2

PROCLUS ON THE DESCENT OF SOULS INTO IRRATIONAL NATURES

Again, Proclus in his Commentaries on the Timæus, writes very definitely with reference to the following passage of Plato:

“And if he still in these conditions did not cease from vice, he would keep on changing into some brutish nature according as he acted in a way resembling the expression in genesis of such a mode of vicious living.” 3

For he says:

“With reference to this descent of souls into irrational animals, it is usual for men to enquire how it is meant.

“And some think that what are called brute-like lives are certain resemblances of men to brutes, for that it is not possible for the rational essence to become the soul of a brute.

“Others allow that even this [human soul] may be

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immediately degraded to reason-less creatures, for that all souls are of one and the same species, so that they may become wolves and panthers and ichneumons.

“But the true reason (logos) asserts that though the human soul may be degraded to brutes, it is [only] to brutes which possess the life suited to such a purpose, while the degraded soul is as it were vehicled on this [life], and bound to it sympathetically.

“And this has been demonstrated by us at great length in our lectures on the Phædrus, and that this is the only way in which such de-gradation can take place. If, however, it is necessary to remind you that this meaning (logos) is that of Plato, it must be added that in the Republic 1 he says that the soul of Thersites assumed an ape [life], but not an ape’s body, and in the Phædrus 2 that [the soul] descends into a brutish life, and not into a brutish body, for the mode of life goes with its appropriate soul. And in the passage [from the Timæus] he says that it changes into a brute-like nature; for the brutish nature is not the body but the life [principle] of the brute.” 3

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Footnotes

429:1 See commentary thereon.

429:2 Stewart (J. A.), The Myths of Plato (London, 1905), pp. 313 ff.; cf. also Jowett (Oxford, 1892), i. 454 ff.; and Taylor (London, 1804), iii. 325 ff.

429:3 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 11: “Since Cosmos is a sphere—that is to say, a head.”

430:1 Cf. 246 B: “For ’tis a Yoke of Horses that the Charioteer of Man’s Soul driveth, and, moreover, of his Horses the one is well favoured and good and of good stock, the other of the contrary and contrary.”

430:2 Lit., under water.

430:3 Lit., evil—that is, ignorance.

430:4 Viz., behold the truth.

431:1 Sc. as a germ or seed.

431:2 It is low down in the scale, indeed, that Plato places the soothsayers and hierophants; he is, however, “ironical,” for he places poets even lower down, and still lower sophists and tyrants, all in keeping with his well-known views about these people as known in his own time.

432:1 ἢ παιδεραστήσαντος μετὰ φιλοσοφίας—Stewart, “Of loved his comrade in the bonds of wisdom”; Jowett, “or a lover who is not devoid of philosophy”; Taylor, “or together with philosophy has loved beautiful forms.” I fancy that Plato has used this graphic expression simply to designate a man who has not true union with wisdom, but is seeking for union though ignorantly.

432:2 “The numbers three and ten are called perfect; because the former is the first complete number, and the latter in a certain respect the whole of number; the consequent series of numbers being only a repetition of the numbers which this contains. Hence, as 10 multiplied into itself produces 100, a plane number, and this again multiplied by 10 produces 1000, a solid number; and as 1000 multiplied by 3 forms 3000, and 1000 by 10, 10,000; on this account Plato employs these numbers as symbols of the purgation of the soul, and her restitution to her proper perfection and felicity. I say, as symbols; for we must not suppose that this is accomplished in just so many years, but that the soul’s restitution takes place in a perfect manner.”—Taylor, op. cit., iii. 325.

432:3 Cf. the “Vision of Er.”

432:4 “We must not understand by this that the soul of a man becomes the soul of a brute; but that by way of punishment it is bound to the soul of a brute, or carried in it, just as dæmons used to reside in our souls. Hence all the energies of the rational soul are perfectly impeded, and its intellectual eye beholds naught but the dark and tumultuous phantasms of a brutal life.”—Taylor, loc. cit.

433:1 Viz., the form of a man; it is, however, also an astrological term.

433:2 There seems to be no agreement among translators as to the meaning of this sentence: δεῖ γὰρ ἄνθρωπον ξυνιέναι καὶ εἶδος λεγόμενον, ἐκ πολλῶν ἰὸν αἰσθήσεων εἰς ἕν λογισμῷ ξυναιρούμενον. Stewart translates: “Man must needs understand the Specific Form which proceedeth from the perceiving of many things, and is made one by Thought;” Jowett: “For a man must have intelligence of universals, and be able to proceed from the many particulars of sense to one conception of reason;” Taylor: “Indeed it is necessary to understand man, denominated according to species, as a being proceeding from the information of many senses, to a perception contracted into one reasoning power.”

433:3 Sc. collecting into one.

433:4 That is to say, revolved in the Cosmos Order.

433:5 Cf. C. H., i. 14: “So [Man] . . . bent his face downwards through the Harmony.”

434:1 All these are technical terms of the Mysteries.

434:2 Cf. C. H., ix. (x.) 4: “For this cause they who Gnostic are please not the many nor the many them. They are thought mad and laughed at.”

435:1 Who not only made the soul go into an animal nature but into animal forms.

435:2 The last sentence of C. H., x. (xi.) being quoted textually by Chalcidius.

435:3 Tim., 42 C.

436:1 Lib. X. 620 C.

436:2 Phædr., 249 B.

436:3 Comment, in Plat. Tim., 329 D; ed. Schneider (Warsaw, 1847), pp. 800, 801. With all of this the views of Basilides (F. F. F., 275 ff.) may be most instructively compared.

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XIV

THE VISION OF ER

“But to the Mindless ones, the wicked and depraved, the envious and covetous, and those who murder do and love impiety, I am far off, yielding my place to the Avenging Daimon.”—C. H., ff., i. 23.

ER SON OF ARMENIUS

To this Daimon it is that the “way of life” of the man is surrendered at death (§ 24). In this connection we may consider the Story or Vision of “Ēr Son of Armenius,” which Plato tells at the end of the last book (X.) of his Republic (614 B ff.), for the symbolism is very similar to that of our tractate and the subject is more or less the same.

This Ēr is said by Clement of Alexandria to have been Zoroaster, “but no trace of acquaintance with Zoroaster is found elsewhere in Plato’s writings, and there is no reason for giving him the name of Er the Pamphylian. The philosophy of Heracleitus cannot be shown to be borrowed from Zoroaster, and still less the myths of Plato.” 1

What the source of the story is, scholarship has so far been unable to discover; the vast majority of scholars holding it to be an invention of Plato.

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It is the story of a man “killed in battle,” whose body was brought home on the tenth day still fresh and showing no sign of decomposition. On the twelfth day, when laid on the funeral pyre, Er awakes and tells a strange story of his experiences in the invisible world.

This story should be taken in close connection with Plutarch’s similar but fuller Vision of Aridæus (Thespesius), upon which I have commented at length in my “Notes on the Eleusinian Mysteries.” 1

FROM THE MYSTERIES

I there stated that the experiences of Aridæus were either a literary subterfuge for describing part of the instruction in certain Mysteries, or the Vision, in popular story form, was considered so true a description of what was thought to be the nature of the invisible world and the after-death conditions of the soul, that it required little alteration to make it useful for that purpose.

I would now suggest that the Story of Er is also used by Plato for a somewhat similar purpose. It is further interesting to notice that one of the characters in the Vision of Er is called Ardiæus, while in Plutarch the main personage is called Aridæus. The transposition of a single letter is so slight as to make the names practically identical, and the subject matter is so similar that we are inclined to think that there must be some connection between the Visions. Moreover, Aridæus is said to have been a native of Soli in Cilicia, just as Er is said to have been a Pamphylian; the tradition of such stories would thus seem to have been derived from Asia Minor, and the origin of them may

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thus be hidden in the syncretism of that land—where West and East were for ever meeting. It is, however, much safer to assume that, in the Story of Er, Plato is handing on the doctrines of Orphic eschatology; 1 whether or not the story already existed in some form, and was worked up and elaborated by the greatest artist in words of all philosophers, will perhaps never be known. But to the story itself.

THE CYLINDER

614 C.—Er, in a certain daimonian or psychic plane (τόπος τις δαιμόνιος), is made a spectator of a turning-point or change of course in the ascent and descent of souls. He thus seems to have been in a space or state midway between Tartarus and Heaven—presumably the invisible side of the sublunary space.

The world-engine of Fate, or Kārmic World-whorl, is represented by seven spheres (surrounded by an eighth) whose harmonious spinning is adjusted by the three Fates, the Daughters of Necessity.

Jowett (loc. cit.) says that the heaven-sphere is represented under the symbol of a “cylinder or box.” Where the “box” comes in I do not know; the term “cylinder” does not occur in the text, and even the cylinder idea is exceedingly difficult to discover in any precise sense. Indeed, it may be doubted whether the “heaven-sphere” is to be so definitely interpreted; for then our discussion of the meaning of the term “cylinder,” which occurs definitely in our K. K. Fragments, would be greatly simplified.

The matter is hard to understand, and Jowett’s

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attempts at exposition are hazy and sketchy in the extreme. Either Plato is talking nonsense, or Jowett does not understand the elements of his idea. Stewart’s attempt, which makes use of the latest Platonic research, is far more successful, but he also has to abandon many points in despair. 1 How difficult the solution of the problem is may be seen from the text, which gives the symbolism of the vision of the spheres somewhat as follows:

THE VISION

616 B.—“Now when those in the meadow 2 had tarried seven days, on the eighth they were obliged to proceed on their journey upwards, and, on the fourth day after, 3 he [Er] said they came to a region where they saw light extended straight as a column from above throughout the whole extent of heaven and earth, in colour resembling the rainbow, only brighter and purer.

“Another day’s journey brought them to it, and there they saw the extremities of the boundaries of the heaven extended in the midst of the light; for this light was the final boundary of the heaven—somewhat like the under-girdings of ships—and thus confined its whole revolution.

“From these extremities depended the spindle of Necessity, by means of which all its revolutions are made to revolve. The spindle’s stalk 4 and its hook are made of adamant, 5 and the whorl of a mixture of adamant and other kinds [of elements].

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“And the nature of the whorl is as follows. In shape it was like that of the one down here; but in itself we must understand from his description that it was somewhat as though in one great hollow whorl clean scooped out there lay another similar but smaller one fitted into it, as though they were jars 1 fitting into one another. And so he said there was a third and a fourth, and [also] four others. For in all there are eight whorls set in one another—looking like circles from above as to their rims, 2 [but from below] finished off into the continuous belly 3 of one whorl round the shaft, which is driven right through the eighth whorl.

“The first and outermost whorl had the circle of its rim first in width; that of the sixth was second; that of the fourth, third; that of the eighth, fourth; that of the seventh, fifth; that of the fifth, sixth; that of the third, seventh; that of the second, eighth.

617.—“And the circle of the largest was variegated; that of the seventh brightest; that of the eighth had its colour from the seventh shining on it; those of the second and of the fifth had [colours] somewhat like one another, but yellower than the preceding; the third had the whitest colour; the fourth was reddish; the sixth was second in whiteness. 4

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“Now the spindle as a whole circled round at the same rate in its revolution; and within this revolution as a whole the seven circles revolved slowly in a contrary direction to the one as a whole; of these the eighth went the fastest of them; the seventh, sixth, and fifth came second [in speed, and at the same rate] with one another; the fourth, in a reversed orbit, as it appeared to them, was third in speed; the third was fourth and the second fifth.

“The spindle revolved on the knees of Necessity; and on its circles above, on each of them, was a Siren whom they carried round with them, singing a single sound or tone; and from all eight of them a single harmony was produced.

“And there were three others seated at equal distances round about, each upon a throne,—the Daughters of Necessity, the Fates, clothed in white robes, with garlands on their heads, Lachesis and Clotho and Atropos; and they sang to the tune of the Sirens’ harmony,—Lachesis sang things that have been, Clotho things that are, and Atropos things that shall be.

“And Clotho from time to time with her right hand gave an extra turn to the outer spin of the spindle; Atropos, with her left, in like fashion to the inner ones; while Lachesis in turn touched the one with one hand and the other with the other.

“Now when they [Er and the souls] arrived, they had to go immediately to Lachesis. Accordingly a prophet [a proclaimer] first of all arranged them in their proper order, and taking from the lap of Lachesis both lots 1 and samples of lives, he ascended a kind of raised place and said:

“‘The word (logos) of the Virgin Lachesis, Daughter of Necessity! Ye souls, ye things of a day, lo the

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beginning of another period of mortal birth that brings you death. It is not your daimon who will have you assigned to him by lot, but ye who will choose your daimon. He who obtains the first turn let him first choose a life to which he will of necessity have to hold. As for Virtue, Necessity has no control over her, but every one will possess her more or less just as he honours or dishonours her. The responsibility is the chooser’s; God is blameless.’

“Thus speaking he threw the lots to all of them, and each picked up the one that fell beside him, except Er, who was not permitted to do so. So every one who picked up a lot knew what turn he had got.

618.—“After this he set on the ground before them the samples of the lives, in far greater number than those present. They were of every kind; not only lives of every kind of animal, but also lives of every kind of man. There were lives of autocratic power [lit., tyrannies] among them, some continuing to the end, some breaking off half-way and ending in poverty, exile, and beggary. There were also lives of famous men, some famed for their beauty of form and strength, and victory in the games, others for their birth and the virtues of their forebears; others the reverse of famous, and for similar reasons. So also with regard to the lives of women.

“As to the rank of the soul, it was no longer in the power [of the chooser], for the decree of Necessity is that its choosing of another life conditions its change of soul-rank. As for other things, riches and poverty were mingled with each other, and these sometimes with disease and sometimes with health, and sometimes a mean between these.”

Thereupon Plato breaks into a noble disquisition on what is the best choice, and how a man should take

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with him into the world an adamantine faith in truth and right; and then continues:

619 B.—“And this is precisely what the messenger from that invisible world reported that the prophet said:

“‘Even for him who comes last in turn, if he but choose with his mind, and live consistently, there is in store a life desirable and far from evil. So let neither him who has the best choice be careless, nor him who comes last despair.’

“And when he had thus spoken, the one who had the first choice, Er said, immediately went and chose the largest life of autocratic power, but through folly and greediness he did not choose with sufficient attention to all points, and failed to notice the fate wrapped up with it, of ‘dishes of his own children’ 1 and other ills. But when he had examined it at leisure, he began to beat his breast, and bemoan his choice, not abiding by what the prophet had previously told him; for he did not lay the blame of these evils on himself, but on ill-luck and daimones, and everything rather than himself. And he was one of those who came from heaven, who in his former life had lived in a well-ordered state, and been virtuous from custom and not from a love of wisdom. 2

“In brief, it was by no means the minority of those who involved themselves in such unfortunate choices who came from heaven, seeing that such souls were unexercised in the hardships of life. Many of those who came from earth, as they had suffered hardships themselves, and had seen others suffering them, did not make their choice off-hand.

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“Consequently many of the souls, independently of the fortune of their turn, changed good for evil, and evil for good. For if a man should always, whenever he comes into life on earth, live a sound philosophic life, and the lot of his choice should not fall out to him among the last, the chances are, according to this news from the other world, that he will not only spend his life happily here, but also that the path which he will tread from here to there, and thence back again, will not be below the earth 1 and difficult, but easy and of a celestial nature.

620.—“Yes, the vision he had, Er said, was well worth the seeing, showing how each class of souls chose their lives. 2 The vision was both a pitiful and laughable as well as a wonderful thing to see. For the most part they chose according to the experience of their former life. For Er said that he saw the soul that had once been that of Orpheus becoming the life of a swan for choice, 3 through its hatred of womankind, because owing to the death of Orpheus at the hands of women, it did not wish to come into existence by conception in a woman. He further saw the soul of Thamyras 4 choose the life of a nightingale. On the contrary, he saw also a swan change to the choice of a human life, and other musical animals in like fashion.

“The soul that obtained the twentieth lot chose

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the life of a lion; it was the soul of Ajax, son of Telamon, to avoid being a man, because it still remembered the [unjust] decision about the arms. The next soul was Agamemnon’s; and it too, out of hatred to the human race on account of its sufferings, changed into the life of an eagle. 1 The soul of Atalanta obtained its lot in the middle, and letting her eye fall on the great honours paid an ‘athlete,’ was unable to pass it by, and took it. The soul of Epeius, 2 son of Panopeus, he saw pass into the nature of a woman skilful in the arts. And far away among the last he saw the soul of the buffoon Thersites putting on an ‘ape.’

“By a stroke of luck also he saw the soul of Odysseus, which had obtained the last lot of all, come to make its choice. From memory of its former labours it had given itself a rest from love of renown, and for a long time went about to find the life of a man in private life with nothing to do with public affairs, and with great difficulty found one lying in a corner and thus passed over by all the rest; on seeing it, it declared that it would have done the same even if it had had first turn, and been glad to do it.

“And Er said that of the rest of the brutes also in like fashion some of them passed into men, and some into one another, the unrighteous ones changing into wild ones, and the righteous into tame; in fact, there were intermixings of every kind.

“When, then, all the souls had chosen their lives according to the number of their turn, they went in order to Lachesis; and she sent along with them the daimon each had chosen, as watcher over his life and bringer to pass of the things he had chosen. And

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the daimon first of all brought the soul to Clotho, set it beneath her hand and the whirling of the spindle, thus ratifying the fate each soul had chosen in its turn. And after he had attached it to her, he brought it to the spinning of Atropos, thus making its destinies 1 irreversible.

621.—“Thence [Er] went, without turning, [down] beneath the Throne 2 of Necessity, and when he had passed down through it, and the others had also done so, they all passed on to the Plain of Forgetfulness (Lethē) in a frightful and stifling heat; for it was bare of trees and vegetation of every kind.

“As it was now evening they camped by the River Heedlessness whose water no vessel can hold. 3 They were all, however, compelled to drink a certain quantity of its water; those who are not safeguarded by prudence drink more than their quantity, while he who keeps on drinking it forgets everything.

“When they had fallen asleep and midnight had come, there was thunder and earthquake, and thence suddenly they were carried up into birth [genesis] some one way some another, like shooting stars.

“Er, however, was prevented from drinking the water; but in what manner and by what means he got back to his body he could not say, only, suddenly waking in the morning, he found himself lying on the pyre.”

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COMMENTARY

The question that one naturally asks oneself is: Did Plato conclude his great treatise on the Ideal State with a popular legend in jest, or had he some deeper purpose? I cannot but think that he was jesting seriously. Is it too wild a supposition that he is hinting at things which he could not disclose because of his oath? Those who knew would understand; those who did not would think he was jesting simply, and so the mysteries would not be disclosed.

In any case we have, I think, got a hint of the part played by the Daimon in our treatise. Whether or not Hermes “copied” the idea from Plato, or both derived it from the same tradition, must be left to the fancy and taste of individual scholars. The Daimon is the watcher over the “way of life” (ἦθος); he is not necessarily a Kakodaimon, but so to speak the Kārmic Agent of the soul, appointed to carry out the “choice” of that soul, both good and ill, according to the Law of Necessity. 1 The choice is man’s; Nature adjusts the balance.

The Vision is of a typical nature, and the types are mythologized in the persons of well-known characters in Grecian story. The “way of life” the souls choose becomes the garment of “habit” they are to wear, their form of personality, or kārmic limitation. Apparently some souls, instead of choosing a reincarnation in a human body, prefer to live the “lives” of certain animal natures. Are we then to believe that Plato seriously endorsed the popular ideas of metempsychosis? Or is it possible that he is referring to some state of existence of souls, which was symbolized by certain animal types

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in the Mysteries; as was certainly the case with the “lion” and “eagle,” though the “swan” and “nightingale” and “ape” are, as far as I am aware, never mentioned in this connection? Can it be that Plato here gives play to his imagination, basing his speculations on some general idea he may have learned in Egypt?

We know from the so-called “Diagram of the Ophites,” which is still traceable in a fragmentary form in the polemic of Origen against Celsus, that the “seven spheres” of the lower psychic nature were characterised by the names of animals: lion, bull, serpent, eagle, bear, dog, ass. We also know how the whole subject of animal correspondences preoccupied the attention of the Egyptian priesthood. But not only can we now make no reasonable scheme out of the fragmentary indications that have come down to us, but we also feel pretty well certain that if Plutarch’s account of the beliefs of the later Egyptians on the subject is approximately reliable, the priests themselves of those days had no longer any consistent scheme.

We may, therefore, conclude either that the whole matter was a vain superstition entirely devoid of any basis in reality; or that there was a psychic science of animal natures and their relationship to man which was once the possession of the priesthood of the ancient civilisation of Egypt, but that it was lost, owing to the departure from amongst men of those who had the power to understand it, and subsequently only fragments of misunderstood tradition remained among the lesser folk on earth. This at anyrate is the theory of our Trismegistic treatises.

---

Footnotes

437:1 Jowett, Dialogues, iii. clxvi.

438:1 The Theosophical Review (April, May, June, 1898), xxii. 145 ff., 232 ff., 312 ff.

439:1 And this I find to be the opinion of the last commentator on the subject; see Stewart (J. A.), The Myths of Plato (London, 1905), pp. 152 ff.

440:1 So also Dreyer (J. L. E.), History of the Planetary Systems from Thales to Kepler (Cambridge, 1906), pp. 56 ff.

440:2 The daimonian region.

440:3 That is the eleventh day; Er, it will be remembered, was “unconscious” for twelve days.

440:4 Or shaft.

440:5 That which cannot be destroyed or changed.

441:1 The shape would thus approximate to an oblate spheroid.

441:2 To carry out the metaphor of the jars.

441:3 Lit., “back.”

441:4 The names of the spheres may be deduced from Tim. 38, and are as follows: 1. Fixed Stars (all-coloured); 2. Saturn (yellow); 3. Jupiter (whitish); 4. Mars (reddish); 5. Mercury (yellowish); 6. Venus (white); 7. Sun (light-colour); 8. Moon (light-colour reflected). How the above statements as to “width of rim” and colours are to be made to work in with the scheme of rates of motions and numbers given in Tim. 36, I have not as yet been able to discover from any commentator. And seeing that Er is said to have seen this mystery from a region that transcended even the daimonian region, it is perhaps out of place to insist on a purely physical interpretation of the data.

442:1 Or number-turns.

444:1 A literary embellishment from the Tragic Muse of Greece, and the mythical recitals of Thyestian banquets.

444:2 ἔθει ἄνευ φιλοσοφίας.

445:1 The Tartarean spheres of the invisible world, popularly believed to be below the earth; that is, philosophically, more material than earth-life.

445:2 The vision (θέα) was therefore typical.

445:3 The birds are typical of souls living in the air—that is, in aery bodies and not in physical ones; or types of intelligence.

445:4 Or Thamyris, an ancient Thracian bard; it is said that in his conceit he imagined he could surpass the Muses in song, in consequence of which he was deprived of his sight and the power of singing.

446:1 Notice the “lion” and “eagle” are selected as types—they being typical sun-animals, as we have already seen.

446:2 The fabled engineer of the Trojan Horse.

447:1 τὰ ἐπικλωσθέντα—a play on Κλωθώ.

447:2 This is probably a symbol of the heaven-plane.

447:3 οὖ τὸ ὕδωρ ἀγγείον οὐδὲν στέγειν. So this is usually translated; but as the souls drink of it, the appropriateness of the rendering is not very apparent. On the other hand, στέγειν is used of things that are water-tight—e.g. houses and ships; hence “whose water no vessel can keep out.” The “vessel” might thus stand for the ship of the soul; and if so, we are in contact with an Egyptian idea. The River is in the Desert—the reverse of the Nile and Egypt, of Osiris and Isis, their Typhonean counterparts.

448:1 For the more intimate teaching on this point, see C. H., x. (xi.) 16 ff.

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XV

CONCERNING THE CRATER OR CUP

“He filled a mighty Cup with it [Mind], and sent it down, joining a Herald [to it], to whom He gave command to make this proclamation to the hearts of men: Baptize thyself with this Cup’s baptism,” etc.—C. H., iv. (v.) 4.

THE CRATER IN PLATO

Whence came this idea of a Crater or Cup into our Trismegistic literature? Most scholars will answer unhesitatingly: From Plato. The Crater was the Cup in which the Creator mixed the Elements of the World-Soul; for we read in Timæus (41 D), where Plato is treating of the formation of human souls:

“Thus spake He, and once again into the Cup which He had used in blending and mingling the Soul of the Universe, He poured the remains of the Elements He had employed, and mingled them in much the same manner; they were not, however, pure as before, but in the second and third degree.”

I am, however, not inclined to attribute the origin of this symbolic expression simply to the imagery of Plato’s poetic mind, but am far more inclined to believe that Plato was using a familiar figure of “Orphic” symbolism. The idea of not only an Ultimate Crater,

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but of many subsidiary ones in the celestial and invisible realms, is closely connected with the “Orphic” idea of a Vortex.

IN “ORPHEUS,” MACROBIUS, AND PROCLUS

Orpheus is said to have called the Æther the Mighty Whirlpool. 1 This forms the Egg or Womb of Cosmos; it is a modification of Chaos or Rhea, the Eternally-flowing, the Mother of the Gods, the Great Container. Thus Proclus, in speaking of Chaos, says:

“The last Infinity, by which also Matter (ὕλη) is circumscribed, is the Container, the field and plane of ideas. About her is ‘neither limit, nor foundation, nor seat, but excessive Darkness.’” 2

Plato, as we have seen, in his psychogony, speaks openly of this Cup or Crater (Mixing Space, or Vortex) in two aspects; in it the Deity mixes the All-Soul of universal nature from the purest Cosmic Elements, and from it He also “ladles out” the souls of men, composed of a less pure mixture of these Elements.

Further, Macrobius tells us that Plato elsewhere indirectly refers to another aspect of this Cup.

“Plato speaks of this in the Phædo, and says that the soul is dragged back into body, hurried on by new intoxication, desiring to taste a fresh draught of the overflow of matter, 3 whereby it is weighed down and brought back [to earth]. The sidereal [astral] Crater of Father Liber [Dionysus, Bacchus] is a symbol of this mystery; and this is what the Ancients called the

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[paragraph continues]River of Lethe, the Orphics saying that Father Liber was Hylic Mind.” 1

We have here, therefore, a higher and lower Cup. Proclus, moreover, speaks of several of such Craters, when he writes:

“Plato in the Philebus hands on the tradition of the Vulcanic Crater . . . and Orpheus is acquainted with the Cup of Dionysus, and ranges many such Cups round the Solar Table.” 2

Elsewhere, again, Proclus tells us that the Demiurge is said “to constitute the psychical essences in conjunction with the Crater”; this “Crater is the peculiar cause of souls, and is co-arranged with the Demiurgus and filled from Him, but fills souls”; thus it is called the Fountain of Souls. 3

If with these indications before us we might venture to generalize, we might say that, according to Orpheo-Pythagorean, Platonic, and Hermetic ideas, the “matter” of every “plane” was thought of as proceeding from such a Crater or Cup, from within without, and the elements thereof as being refunded into such a Cup or Centre or Receptacle—that is, from a more subtle, simpler, and inner phase to a more gross, complex, and outer phase, and vice versâ. In other words, the Crater is the “monadic” or “atomic” state of the matter of any given phase or state of existence.

THE VISION OF ARIDÆUS

With the above data before us, it will also be instructive to turn to the Vision of Aridæus (Thespesius)

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as related by Plutarch, 1 a vision that may be compared with profit with the Vision of Er as told by Plato. Thespesius is being conducted through Hades, or the Invisible World in contact with earth-life, by a kinsman who has “passed over,” as Spiritists would say, and curiously enough he there comes across a Chasm and a Crater—for part of the story runs:

“After these explanations he was conducted by his kinsman at great speed across an immense space, as it seemed, nevertheless easily and directly as though supported by wings of light-rays; until having arrived at a Vast Vortex (χάσμα) extending downwards, he was abandoned by the power that supported him.

“He observed also that the same thing happened to the rest of the souls there, for checking their flight, like birds, and sinking down, they fluttered round the Vortex in a circle, not daring to go straight through it.

“Inside it seemed to be decked like Bacchic caves 2 with trees and verdure and every kind of foliage, while out of it came a soft and gentle air, laden with marvellous sweet scents, making a blend like wine for topers, so that the souls feasting on the fragrance were melted with delight in mutual embraces, while the whole place was wrapt in revelry and laughter and the spirit of sport and pleasure. 3

“Thespesius’ kinsman told him that this was the Way by which Dionysus ascended to the Gods and

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afterwards took up Semele; 1 it was called the Place of Lēthē (Oblivion). 2

“Wherefore he would not suffer Thespesius to stay there, though he wished to do so, but forcibly dragged him away, explaining how that the rational part of the soul was melted and moistened 3 by pleasure, while the irrational part, and that which is of a corporeal nature, being then moistened and made fleshly, awakens the memory of the body, and from this memory come a yearning and a desire which drag down the soul into

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generation . . . the soul being weighed down with moisture.

“Next Thespesius, after travelling another great distance, seemed to be looking at a huge Cup, 1 with streams flowing into it; one whiter than the foam of the sea or snow, another like the purple which the rainbow sends forth, while from a distance the others were tinged with other colours, each having its own shade.

“But when he came closer, the Cup itself (into which they flowed)—the surroundings disappearing, and the colours growing fainter—lost its varied colouring and only retained a white brilliance.”

Compare also the Hellenist writer in the Naassene Document (§ 17 S.): “The Greek theologi generally call Him [the Logos] the “Heavenly Horn of Mēn,” because he has mixed and mingled all things with all.”

On this the Jewish Gnostic writer comments: “This is the Drinking Vessel,—the Cup in which ‘the King drinketh and divineth.’”

It is, says the Hellenist commentator again, “the Cup (of Anacreon) speaking forth speechlessly the Ineffable Mystery.”

The Jewish commentator was a contemporary of Philo’s, and the Hellenist was prior to him; thus we see that the Cup symbol was used in precisely the same significance as in our text in at least the first century B.C., and that the idea was referred to the Greek theologers—in other words, the Orphics—and not to Plato.

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THE ORIGIN OF THE SYMBOL TO BE SOUGHT IN ORPHIC TRADITION

With the above data before us, I think we may be persuaded without difficulty that the idea of the Cup, or Mixing-Bowl, did not owe its origin to any invention of Plato’s, but that the greatest of philosophers, when he makes use of the symbol, does but employ a familiar image well known to his audience—as, indeed, is very apparent in the summary fashion in which he introduces the figure. In other words, the symbol or image was a commonplace of the Orphic tradition, and doubtless, therefore, familiar to every Pythagorean.

Now, in our treatise it is noticeable that this Cup-symbol is equated with the Monad 1 or Oneness—a technical Pythagorean term.

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Footnotes

451:1 πελώριον χάσμα (Simplicius, Ausc., iv. 123); magna vorago (Syrianus, Metaph., ii. 33a). Cf. Prolegg. ch. xi., “The Orphic Tradition of the Genesis of the World-Egg.”

451:2 Comment. in Tim., ii. 117. See my Orpheus, p. 154.

451:3 Gnosticè, “the superfluity of naughtiness.”

452:1 Comment, in Som. Scip., XI. ii. 66.

452:2 Comment. in Tim., v. 316 (Taylor’s trans.).

452:3 Taylor (T.), Theology of Plato, V. xxxi.

453:1 De Sera Numinis Vindicta, xxii. (ed. Bernardakis, iii. 454-466).

453:2 Were the Bacchic Mysteries then celebrated in caves?

453:3 This is clearly in correspondence with the “Astral Crater of Father Liber” of Macrobius.

454:1 His “mother,” from the under-world; referring to the mysteries of generation and the indestructibility of life. Semele in giving birth to Dionysus the Son of Zeus (the Creative Power), is said to have been killed by the Power of her Lord, but she was subsequently restored to life among the Gods by the Power of her Son. In reincarnating, it is said that part of the soul in giving birth to itself in this state “dies.” The “child” then born may, in his turn, in the case of one perfect, become the saviour of his “mother,” now become his spouse, and raise her, who is also himself, to a higher state.

454:2 Compare Pistis Sophia (336, 337), which tells us how certain kārmic agencies “give unto the old soul [prior to reincarnation] a Draught of Oblivion composed of the Seed of Iniquity, filled with all manner of desire and all forgetfulness. And the moment that that soul drinketh of that Draught, it forgetteth all the spaces [or regions] through which it hath travelled, and all the chastisements through which it hath passed; and that deadly Draught of Oblivion becometh a body external to the soul, like unto the soul in every way, and its perfect resemblance, and hence they call it the ‘counterfeit spirit.’”

But in the case of the purified soul it is different; for a higher power “bringeth a Cup full of intuition and wisdom, and also prudence, and giveth it to the soul, and casteth the soul into a body which will not be able to fall asleep or forget, because of the Cup of Prudence which hath been given unto it, but will be ever pure in heart and seeking after the Mysteries of Light, until it hath found them, by order of the Virgin of Light, in order that [that soul] may inherit the Light for ever.” (Ibid., 392, “Books of the Saviour.”)

454:3 Compare the “Moist Essence” of C. H., i. 4, and iii. (iv.) 1.

455:1 κρατήρ—bowl or basin.

456:1 It is of interest to notice that one of the apocryphal Books of Moses was called The Monad, and another The Key; this argues an early date and wide renown for our two treatises so entitled. See R. 182, n. 3.

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XVI

THE DISCIPLES OF THRICE-GREATEST HERMES

PTAḤ, SEKHET AND I-EM-ḤETEP (ASCLEPIUS)

Budge, in his Gods of the Egyptians (vol. i. ch. xvi.), tells us that the Great Triad of Memphis consisted of Ptaḥ, Sekhet, and I-em-ḥetep.

Ptaḥ, as we have seen, was the “Sculptor or Engraver,” the Demiurge par excellence. He is called the “Very Great God who came into being in the earliest time”; “Father of fathers, Power of powers”; “Father of beginnings and Creator of the Egg[s] of the Sun and Moon”; “Lord of Maāt [Truth], King of the Two Lands, the God of the Beautiful Face . . . who created His own Image, who fashioned His own Body, who hath established Maāt throughout the Two Lands”; “Ptaḥ the Disk of Heaven, Illuminer of the Two Lands with the Fire of His Two Eyes.” The “Workshop of Ptaḥ” was the World Invisible.

It was Ptaḥ who carried out the commands concerning the creation of the universe issued by Thoth.

The Syzygy or female counterpart of Ptaḥ was Sekhet, “who was at once his sister and wife, and the mother of his son Nefer-Tem, and a sister-form of the Goddess Bast” (op. cit., i. 514). She is called: “Greatly Beloved One of Ptaḥ, Lady of Heaven, Mistress of the Two Lands”; and one of her commonest names is “Nesert,” that is “Flame.”

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It was Thoth (Ṭekh) who, with his Seven Wise Ones, planned the world (ib., 516). But if Ptaḥ is the executive power of Thoth and his Seven Wise Ones, so is Thoth the personification of the Intelligence of Ptaḥ. It is in this way that Sekhet becomes identified with Maāt, the inseparable spouse of Thoth.

NEFER-TEM

The third member of the Memphite Triad is Nefer-Tem, or the “Young Tem.” In the Ritual (Ch. lxxxi., version B) we read the “apology”: “Hail, thou Lotus, thou type of the God Nefer-Tem! I am he who knoweth you, and I know your name among the Gods, the Lords of the Underworld, and I am one of you.” Again, in Ch. clxxiv. 19, Nefer-Tem is compared with “the Lotus at the nostrils of Rā”; also, in Ch. clxxviii. 36, Nefer-Tem has the same title.

In the later texts Nefer-Tem is identified with many Gods, all of them forms of Horus or Thoth (ib., 522).

Here we are in contact with the Ptaḥ-tradition of Memphis which, we have seen, played an important part in the heredity of the cosmogenesis of our “Pœmandres” tractate. In it the simultaneous identification and distinction of Thoth and Ptaḥ and of Maāt and Sekhet are naturally explained, and the Son of these Powers is the Young Tem, identified with the Young Horus or Young Thoth who is to succeed his Father. Are we here on the track of the ancestry of our Tat?

At Heliopolis (Ȧnnu) the Ancient God Tem was equated with Rā. Tem was the Father-God, Lord of Heaven, and Begetter of the Gods (op. cit., i. 92, 93). Usertsen I. rebuilt the sanctuary of Heliopolis about

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[paragraph continues]2433 B.C., and dedicated it to Rā in the two forms of Horus and Temu (ib., 330).

“Tem was the first living Man-God known to the Egyptians, just as Osiris was the first dead Man-God, and as such was always represented in human form and with a human head. . . .

“Tem was, in fact, to the Egyptians a manifestation of God in human form. . . . It is useless to attempt to assign a date to the period when the Egyptians began to worship God in human form, for we have no material for so doing; the worship of Tem must, however, be of very great antiquity, and the fact that the priests of Rā in the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties united him to their God under the name of Rā-Tem, proves that his worship was wide-spread, and that the God was thought to possess attributes similar to those of Rā” (ib., 349, 350).

In the Trismegistic tradition in which Thoth holds the chief place, the Young Tem would thus represent the Young Thoth who succeeded to his Father when that Father ascended to the Gods.

IMHOTEP-IMUTH-ASCLEPIUS

Moreover the Egyptian texts prove that besides Nefer-Tem still another Son of Ptaḥ was regarded as the third member of the Memphitic Triad. This Son was called I-em-ḥetep (or Imḥotep), whom the Greeks called Imouthēs or Imuth, and equated him with their Asclepius.

The name I-em-ḥetep means “He who cometh in Peace,” and is very appropriate to the God who brought the knowledge of Healing to mankind; but I-em-ḥetep, though specially the God of medicine, was also the God of study and learning in general.

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“As a God of learning he partook of some of the attributes of Thoth, and he was supposed to take the place of this God in the performance of funeral ceremonies, and in superintending the embalming of the dead; in later times he absorbed the duties of Thoth as ‘Scribe of the Gods,’ and the authorship of the words of power which protected the dead from enemies of every kind in the Underworld was ascribed to him” (ib., 522, 523).

In the “Ritual of Embalmment” 1 it is said to the Deceased: “Thy soul uniteth itself to I-em-ḥetep whilst thou art in the funeral valley.”

The oldest shrine of the God was situated close to Memphis, and was called the “Temple of I-em-ḥetep, the Son of Ptaḥ,” which the Greeks called the Asclēpieion.

Under Ptolemy IV., Philopator (222-205 B.C.), a temple was built to I-em-ḥetep on the Island of Philæ, and from the hieroglyphic inscriptions we learn that the God was called: “Great One, Son of Ptaḥ, the Creative God, made by Thenen, begotten by him and beloved by him, the God of divine forms in the temples, who giveth life to all men, the Mighty One of wonders, the Maker of times [?], who cometh unto him that calleth upon him wheresoever he may be, who giveth sons to the childless, the wisest and most learned one, the image and likeness of Thoth the Wise.” 2

Imḥotep-Asclepius was thus the “image and likeness of Thoth the Wise,” even as Nefer-Tem was

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[paragraph continues]Young Thoth. Here we have precisely the distinction drawn between Asclepius and Tat in our Trismegistic literature; Asclepius was trained in all philosophy, Tat was young and as yet untrained.

“I-em-ḥetep,” concludes Budge, “was the God who sent sleep to those who were suffering and in pain, and those who were afflicted with any kind of disease formed his special charge; he was the Good Physician both of Gods and men, and he healed the bodies of mortals during life, and superintended the arrangements for the preservation of the same after death. . . . He was certainly the God of physicians and of all those who were occupied with the mingled science of medicine and magic; and when we remember that several of the first Kings of the Early Empire are declared by Manetho, whose statements have been supported by the evidence of the papyri, to have written, i.e. caused to be edited, works on medicine, it is clear that the God of medicine was in Memphis as old as the archaic period” (ib., 524).

So much for the more important information that Budge has to offer us on the subject of Asclepius-Imuth from the side of pure Egyptian tradition—if we can use such a phrase of that tradition as strained through the sieve of almost purely physical interpretation. 1

THĀTH-TAT

And now let us turn to Reitzenstein and his instructive Dissertation, “Hermes u. Schüler” (pp. 117 ff.).

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Unquestionably the most general form of sermon found in the remains of our Trismegistic literature is that of instruction to Tat the “Son” of Hermes, who is “Father” and Initiator. Of these instructions two Corpora existed, namely, “The General Sermons” and “The Expository Sermons.”

The name Tat is, of course, a variant of Thoth (Teḥut); but whereas Hermes himself is always in such sermons characterised as Thrice-greatest, Tat has not yet reached to this grade of mastership; he is still “Young.”

The name “Tat” occurs in one of the prayers in the Magic Papyri, part of which is undecipherable, and can only be translated by following the conjecture of Reitzenstein (p. 117, n. 6).

“Show thyself unto me in thy prophetic power O God of mighty mind, Thrice-great Hermes! Let him who rules the four regions of the Heavens and the four foundations of the Earth appear. Be present unto me O thou in Heaven, be present unto me thou from the Egg. . . . Speak, the Two Gods also are round thee,—the one God is called Thāth and the other Haf.” 1

Spiegelberg equates Haf with Ḥpj, the “Genius of the Dead” who appears coupled with Thoth in a Coptic Magic Papyrus of the second century A.D., 2 where Isis speaks of “my father Ape-Thoth.” This thus seems to identify Haf with Anubis—that is, Harmanup or Horus as Anubis. And Anubis, as Hermes-Tat, was considered in Egyptian tradition to be a composer of sacred scripture. 3

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THE INCARNATIONS OF THOTH

The prayer just cited appears to put us into contact with the atmosphere of some inner mysteries of spiritual instruction. The God or Spiritual Master contains in himself his disciple, or a duad or triad of disciples; the relationship of Master and disciple is of the most intimate nature; not only is it of that of father to son, but of mother to child—for the disciple is born in the womb of the Master Presence. The disciple is as it were his ka.

Thus for the Egyptians, as Sethe and others have pointed out, the wise priest, that is a priest truly initiated into the Wisdom, was regarded as an incarnation of Thoth, and such an one after the death of his body was worshipped as Thoth.

And so we find at Medinet Habu the remains of a shrine, erected in the time of Ptolemy IX. (Euergetes II.)—146-117 BC.—to a certain High Priest of Memphis, Teos, who is called “Teos the Ibis,” 1 that is Thoth, and so identified with Thoth himself.

What we learn from the general tradition of this belief in the “incarnation” of Thoth into the perfected disciple of Wisdom, and the ascription of sacred literature to similar though not identical God-names to that of Thoth himself, is that there was on the one

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hand a firm belief in the unity of the Thoth-tradition, and on the other a necessary division of the sacred literature into older and later periods. The Thoth of the older period was regarded as a God, the Thoth of more recent times as a God-man. 1 And so we find Plato in the famous passage of the Philebus, 18 B, uncertain whether to speak of Thoth as God or man.

THE DISCIPLES OF LORD HERMES IN PETOSIRIS AND NECHEPSO

In the known oldest references to the Thoth-Hermes literature, there has so far not been discovered anything that suggests the existence of a distinction between Hermes [Thoth] and Tat [Thoth]; but the absence of references proves little. Already, however, Nechepso and Petosiris, in the second century B.C., make Hermes the teacher of the younger God-disciples Anubis and Asclepius; in which connection it is of interest to note the following passage from a horoscope for the first year of the Emperor Antoninus Pius, 2 set up by the priests of Hermes at Thebes—the Greek of which is very faulty and evidently written by “Barbari”:

“After enquiry based on many books, handed down to us by the wise Ancients, the Chaldæans,—both Petosiris,and especially King Necheus [sic; i.e. Nechepso], in as much as they also took counsel of our Lord Hermes and of Asclepius, that is of Imouthēs, son of Hephēstus. . . .” 3

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From this we learn that in the second century A.D. the writings of Petosiris and Nechepso, together with the “Chaldæan Books,” still formed part of the Temple Library at Thebes; moreover, that Petosiris and Nechepso, in the second century B.C., based themselves on these Books as well as on Books ascribed to both Hermes and Asclepius. Moreover, from the Fragments of Nechepso 1 we learn that he had before him a sermon of Asclepius called Moirogenesis, concerning the Genesis of Fate, and also Dialogues in which Hermes instructs Asclepius and Anubis concerning the mysteries of astrology. These Trismegistic works must thus be dated prior to the beginning of the second century B.C.

Sethe, in his essay on Asclepius-Imhotep, has endeavoured to show that this Imuth was originally a man, and that divine honours were first paid to him in the reign of Amāsis (Amōsis—Ȧāḥ-mes), about 1700 B.C.

TOSOTHRUS-ASCLEPIUS

Manetho, however, tells us another story, when he writes of a certain king of the Third Dynasty (B.C. 3700): “Toso[r]thrus reigned twenty-nine years. He is called Asclepius by the Egyptians, for his medical knowledge. He built a house of hewn stones, and greatly patronised literature.” 2

Tosothrus is Tcheser or Tcheser-sa (Dośer), the second king of the Third Dynasty from Memphis. The “house of hewn stones” which he built, received remarkable confirmation from the excavations which were carried out by the Prussian General Minutoli in 1819, 3 in the Step-Pyramid of Ṣaḳḳāra. This temple,

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says Budge (op. cit., i. 219) “is certainly the oldest of all the large buildings which have successfully resisted the action of wind and weather, and destruction by the hand of man.”

In the Inscription of the Seven Famine Years, 1 moreover, belonging in its present form to the later Ptolemaic period, but a copy of a far more ancient record, we read, in Sethe’s restored Greek text:

“Tosothrus, in whose days (lived) Imouthēs. He was considered by the Egyptians to be Asclepius because of his knowledge of the healing art; he discovered the art of building with hewn stones, and, moreover, occupied himself with literature.”

We thus learn that long before Manetho’s time there was an Asclepian literature, and not only did this deal with medicine but also with scripture in general and with “masonry.”

IMUTH-ASCLEPIUS THE MASTER MASON AND POET

That Asclepius was specially occupied with the sacred building-art, may be seen from Sethe’s study, whose industry has discovered a book on Temple-building ascribed to Imuth, a “Book that came from Heaven northwards from Memphis.” It was according to this Book that Ptolemy X. (Soter II.) and Ptolemy XI. (Alexander I.) enlarged the building of their ancestors at Edfu, “in agreement with the writing concerning the plans of the Temple of Horus, which the chief prelector of the priests, Imhotp, the son of Ptaḥ, had written.”

There were also certain very ancient Sermons (or Songs) of Imhotp, and a saying from one of these

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[paragraph continues]Sermons, the “Song from the House of King Intf,” is given by Sethe as follows:

“I have heard the words of Imhotp and Hardadaf; they are still much spoken of, but where are their abodes?”

Perhaps this explains the statement in S. H. I. (Stob., Ec., i. 49; W. p. 467, 4) that Asclepius-Imuth was the inventor of poetry. Imuth was to the Egyptians what Orpheus, Linus or Musæus was to the Greeks.

And so Reitzenstein (p. 121) concludes that the tradition of the old Egyptian and Hellenistic literature is unbroken. In Hellenistic times this view of the Divine Son of Ptaḥ of Memphis and of his chief Shrine at Memphis spread widely, and his cult was extended to Thebes and even to Philæ. At Thebes he appears united with the Theban Thoth and his younger likeness or image Amenhotep—the twin-brother of Imhotep (Asclepius) Son of Hapu, who is said to have lived as a man under King Amenophis III. (Ȧmen-ḥetep), 1450 B.C., and who tells us himself how he became acquainted with the “Book of God” and saw in vision the “Pre-eminence of Thoth.” 1

The chief Temple of Asclepius at Memphis was still honoured in later times, and even in the days of Jerome its priesthood was renowned for its occult wisdom. 2

ÆSCULAPIUS THE HEALER

Of the Cult of Æsculapius in Greece and of the widespread influence of this ideal there is little need to remind the student of the comparative history of religions; we cannot, however, refrain from appending a paragraph

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from a remarkable address recently delivered by the Rev. J. Estlin Carpenter to the students of Manchester College, Oxford, 1 in which he says:

“Pass beyond the limits of Israel and its hopes, and you enter a world of religious phenomena, so varied as to be practically inexhaustible, and all the patient labour of the last thirty years has only begun to exhibit to us its contents. At every turn you are confronted with beliefs resembling those which pervade our New Testament, so that Prof. Cheyne has recently attempted in a very remarkable little volume, Bible Problems, to trace archæologically the roots of four great doctrines associated with the person of Jesus—the Virgin Birth, the Descent into Hades, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. The inscriptions reveal to you the very language of Christianity in the making. The hymns and liturgies of other faiths derive their strength from similar ideas, and express similar aspirations. Does Jesus, according to the Gospels, give sight to the blind, and call the dead back to life? So does Æsculapius. He, too, is wondrously born; he, too, is in danger in his infancy. He, too, heals the sick and raises the dead, till Zeus, jealous of this infringement of his prerogatives, smites him with his thunderbolt, and translates him to the world above. But from his heavenly seat he continues to exercise his healing power. His worship spreads all through Greece. After a great plague in Rome, in 291 B.C., it is planted on a sacred island in the Tiber. In the first century of our era you may follow it all round the Eastern Mediterranean. In Greece alone Pausanias mentions sixty-three Asklepieia. There were others in Asia Minor, Egypt, Sicily; nearly two hundred being still traceable. They were both

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sanctuaries and medical schools. A number of inscriptions relate details of cures, or consecrate the ex-votos, which are still dedicated at Loretto or Lourdes. The temple by the Tiber won special fame in the reign of Antoninus Pius, for the restoration of the sight of a blind man. Æsculapius himself bears the titles ‘king’ and θεὸς σωτήρ, ‘divine saviour.’ He was even σωτὴρ τῶν ὅλων, ‘saviour of the universe.’ In his cosmic significance he was thus identified-with Zeus himself, and on earth he was felt to be ‘most loving to man’ (cp. Tit. iii. 4). Harnack, in one of the fascinating chapters of his Expansion of Christianity, has traced the action of these influences on later Christianity conceived as a religion of healing or salvation, medicine alike of body and of mind. It must be enough now to remind you that the god was believed to reveal himself to those who sought his aid, and Origen affirms that a great multitude, both of Greeks and barbarians, acknowledge that they ‘have frequently seen, and still see, no mere phantom, but Æsculapius himself, healing and doing good, and foretelling the future.’”

But to pass on to the Trismegistic Asclepius.

ASCLEPIUS IN TRISMEGISTIC TRADITION

Asclepius comes forward in our literature as the type of a disciple of Trismegistus already trained in philosophy. This prior training must presumably be referred to the Ptah-tradition—Ptah being himself a God of Revelation, that is of teaching by means of apocalypsis, and Asclepius being originally his “son” and “priest.” But not only was Ptah a God of apocalypsis generally, but also a God of medicine, as he must needs have been for his son to have learned his wisdom from him.

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[paragraph continues]This view is brought out in a Hellenistic text which reads as follows:

“A Remedy from the shrines of Hephæstus [Ptah] at Memphis interpreted by the decision and owing to the philanthropy, they say, of Thrice-greatest Hermes; for he decided that it should be published with a view to man’s saving. It was found on a golden tablet written in Egyptian characters.” 1

The tradition of the date when Asclepius was admitted to the Trismegistic discipline is given in K. K., 3 (Stob., Ec., i. 49; W. p. 387, 1). After the ascension of Hermes, we are told:

“To him succeeded Tat, who was at once his son and heir unto these knowledges; and not long afterwards Asclepius-Imuth, according to the will of Ptah who is Hephæstus.”

What precise historical worth this tradition may contain, it is impossible to say; all we can suppose is that there was at some early date a union of two schools of mystic discipline belonging respectively to the Thebaic and Memphitic traditions. This union may have been somewhat analogous to that of the disciples of John the Baptist and of Jesus. What is clear, however, from our Trismegistic writings, is that there is no doubt whatever in the writer’s mind that the Trismegistic tradition is in possession of the higher wisdom; and, indeed, C. H., xiii. (xiv.) distinctly allows us to conclude that though. Tat was younger, in so far as he had not the technical training of the Asclepius-grade, it is nevertheless Tat, when he reaches “manhood,” and not Asclepius, who succeeds to the mastership of the School.

Nevertheless we find a number of Trismegistic writings, presupposed especially in “The Definitions of

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[paragraph continues]Asclepius” and in “The Perfect Sermon,” in which both Tat and Asclepius share in a common instruction—Asclepius appearing as the older and riper scholar.

This makes Reitzenstein (p. 122) suppose that this type of what we may call a company of two disciples was invented by the Hermes priests at Thebes, and that it was later on taken over by the Memphitic Ptah-Asclepius priests and developed in their own interest.

This may be so if we must be compelled to speculate on the dim shades of history which may be recovered from these obscure indications.

CONCERNING AMMON

Of the Trismegistic writings of Asclepius, Lactantius (D. I., ii. 15, 7) mentions a “Perfect Sermon” to the King (Ammon), 1 and also refers to a rich ancient literature by Asclepius addressed to the same king.

Reitzenstein (p. 123), moreover, says that C. H., (xvii.) presupposes writings addressed to the same King Ammon by Tat; but I gather that the persons of the dialogue are really Asclepius and the King, and not Tat, and that Tat has been substituted for Asclepius by some copyist in error.

However this may be, there was a large literature addressed by Hermes himself to Ammon, as we may see from the distinct statement in P. S. A., i. 2, and also from Stobæus, Exx. xii.-xix. The same tradition is preserved in the presumably later Hermetic treatise, Iatromathematica, which is also addressed to Ammon. 2

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PROPHET AND KING

Here, then, we have another type of literature, and that, too, very ancient, in which the wise Priest and Prophet is set over against the King as teacher or discoverer of hidden wisdom. This we have already seen to have been the relationship between the Priest and Prophet Petosiris and King Nechepso. But the type goes still further back to pre-Greek times in Egypt. It was, as we have learned from Plutarch, who probably hands on the information direct from Manetho, a necessity that the King, to be a true King, should be initiated into the wisdom of the Priests.

As we have already seen, Imuth-Asclepius appears in Manetho as an inventor, so also in the charming story put into the mouth of Socrates by Plato in his Phædrus (274 C) about “the famous old God whose name was Theuth,”—Thoth is the inventor par excellence. In this story—which elicits the remark from Phædrus: “Yes, Socrates, you can easily invent tales of Egypt, or of any other country”—Thoth takes his inventions to a certain King Thamus for his approval or disapproval, as to whether or no the Egyptians might be allowed the benefit of them. This Thamus was “King of the whole country of Egypt, and dwelt in that great city of upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the God Himself is called by them Ammon.”

In Hecatæus, also, Osiris, King of Thebes, has all inventions laid before him, and gives special honour to Hermes whose inventions were far and wide renowned. 1

In this connection it is to be noted that in the Theban Thoth-cult, Thoth was regarded as the Representative

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of the King and Light-God Rā (or Ammon). And so we read on the tomb of Seti I.:

“Thou art in my place, my representative. Wherefore are thou moreover called Thoth, Representative of the Light-God Rā.” 1

From these and other indications it is quite possible to conclude that Plato has used an ancient Egyptian logos as the basis of his story, and that this logos at a very early period found an echo in written instructions given by Thoth to the King.

All this took place on purely Egyptian ground, and hence the type of instruction from Thoth-Hermes to Ammon was fairly established in tradition before it was taken over by our Hellenistic Trismegistic writers.

AMENHOTEP-ASCLEPIUS

So far, however, I believe, no reference to books written by Imhotep (Asclepius) to Ammon in the pre-Greek period has been discovered. Sethe, 2 however, tells us that a certain Amenhotep who lived as early as the fifteenth century B.C., was a disciple and seer of Thoth. This Amenhotep was famous as a teacher of wisdom and discoverer of magic books; he was probably also renowned for his own writings as well. Gradually this Amenhotep became blended with Imhotep-Asclepius as his twin-brother, and finally in Ptolemaic times received divine honours at Thebes. Here, then, we have the blending in of another tradition, of a writer of books who was a disciple of Thoth, and was gradually confounded with Asclepius-Imuth, son of Ptah. And that there were two Asclepiuses, an older and a later, we are told distinctly by P. S. A., xxxvii. 3.

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Of the Sayings of this Asclepius a Greek porcelain 1 gives us some idea. The first three Sayings, however, are simply taken from the Sayings of the Seven Sages of Greece; the rest may be partially Egyptian. This scrap of evidence, however, is of importance; for already in the third century B.C., Orphic Sayings are known to have been worked up with Egyptian material, and here we have Greek gnomic material blended with an Egyptian Imuth-tradition of Sayings.

Perhaps still more careful research may reward us with further side-lights on the development of this Asclepius-literature prior to the Greek period, and in its earliest Hellenistic forms. As it is, we are left with the impression that the traces which have been already discovered, justify the remarks made by the writer of our Trismegistic “Definitions of Asclepius unto the King” or “The Perfect Sermon of Asclepius unto the King”—C. H., (xvi.)—as based upon a well-established tradition in the School, concerning the change brought about by putting the Egyptian forms of the Asclepian writings, which were of a very mystical nature, into the more precise forms of the Greek tongue.

THE SACRED GROUP OF FOUR

What, however, is clear in “The Perfect Sermon” of Hermes himself, where he gives instruction to his three disciples, Asclepius, Tat and Ammon, assembled in the “holy place,” is that the history of the matter is of small moment to the writer of that Sermon. He is dealing with the inner and more intimate side of the teaching. Asclepius, Tat and Ammon are for him the sacred triad, forming with the Master himself the “sacred group of four” (P. S. A., i. 2).

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With this we may very well compare the group of three made so familiar to us by the Evangelists—the three who were always with the Master in the most intimate moments of His inner life and exaltation—James, John and Peter.

Now, if the reader will refer to my notes on the last paragraph of Hippolytus’ Introduction to the Naassene document, he will see that Clement of Alexandria expressly asserts that:

“The Lord imparted the Gnosis to James the Just, to John and Peter, after His Resurrection; these delivered it to the rest of the Apostles, and they to the Seventy.”

JAMES, JOHN AND PETER

Here I would suggest that we have a similarity of conception. Asclepius is the main subsequent teacher, even as James is, in Christian tradition; Peter is the organiser, to whom the rulership over the Church is given—he represents the king-power, and may be equated with Ammon; while John is the Beloved even as is Tat.

John understands the spirit of the teaching best of all; James is more learned on the formal side; while Peter is the organiser, and in many an apocryphal story is made to display lack of control and want of understanding.

A most interesting scrap of Johannine tradition will throw some further light on the fact that John succeeded to the spiritual directorship, even as Tat, in our sermons, succeeds to Trismegistus.

This scrap is an addition to John xvii. 26, from a Codex of the Fourth Gospel, preserved in the Archives of the Templars of St John of Jerusalem in Paris: 1

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“Ye have heard what I said unto you: I am not of this world, the Comforter is among you, teach through the Comforter. As the Father has sent Me, even so send I you. Amen, I say unto you, I am not of this world; but John shall be your father, till he shall go with Me into Paradise. And He anointed them with the Holy Spirit.”

So also in an addition to John xix. 26-30, we read:

“He saith to His mother, Weep not; I go to My Father and to Eternal Life. Behold thy son! He will keep My place. Then saith He to the disciple, Behold thy mother! Then bowing His head He gave up the Ghost.”

Here then at the Supreme Crisis the Master constitutes John the spiritual Father of the School in His place. So is it with Tat.

THE TRIAD OF DISCIPLES

The idea of triads and other groups (e.g. of five and seven) united in the Presence of a Master, is familiar to the student of Druidical mysticism. In our “Perfect Sermon” we have such a triad, each disciple distinguished by strongly-marked characteristics; the tuning of these into one harmony, so that, to use another and a familiar simile, the disciples may be as the fingers of one hand, for the Master’s use, is a matter of enormous difficulty. One is characterised by Power, another by Knowledge, and another by Love. All three must sink their individually strongest characteristic in a supreme sacrifice, where all blend together into the Wisdom of the Master. This seems to me to be the inner purport of our “Perfect Sermon,” and whatever may be the history of the evolution of the

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forms of the literature, the eternal fact of the nature of the intimate teaching of the Christ to the Three was known to our writer.

CHNUM THE GOOD DAIMON

Let us now turn to the type of Trismegistic literature in which Osiris and Isis came forward as disciples; and first of all let us take a glance at the God Chnum, Chnubis, or Chnuphis (Knuphis), whose name occurs in so many of the Abraxas and Abraxoid gems.

Chnum was for Southern Egypt precisely what Ptah of Memphis was for Northern Egypt. He was the Fashioner of men, even as a potter makes pots on a wheel. Chnum was Demiurge and God of the heart. The chief centre of his cult was at Syene and the Island of Elephantine. Here he was regarded as the Father of Osiris. And so we hear of astrological dialogues between Chnum and Osiris, as, for instance, when we are told:

“And all that Kouphis, who is with them [the Egyptians], the Good Daimon, handed on, and his disciple Osiris philosophized.” 1

These writings were grouped with those of Nechepso, and also with our Trismegistic writings. Compare the passage in Firmicus Maternus which runs:

“All things which Mercurius (Hermes) and Chnubis [?] handed on to Æsculapius (Asclepius), which Petosiris discovered and Nechepso.” 2

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OSIRIS DISCIPLE OF AGATHODAIMON THE THRICE-GREATEST

The Patristic references to our Trismegistic literature further imform us that Osiris was regarded as the disciple of Agathodaimon, who in them bears the name of Thrice-greatest. 1 There is, however, nothing to show that Hermes himself appears in them as the disciple of Chnubis, as Reitzenstein says (p. 126). The introductory phrase of Lactantius to Frag. xix. runs: “But I [L.] will call to mind the words of Hermes the Thrice-greatest; in the ‘To Asclepius’ he says: ‘Osiris said: How, then, O thou Thrice-greatest, [thou] Good Daimon, did Earth in its entirety appear?’”

Here we have a sermon of Hermes quoting from a tradition in which Osiris appears as the disciple of Agathodaimon, who is also called Trismegistus; that is, the Agathodaimon-Osiris Dialogue type was old, and presumably pertained to one of the earliest forms of the Trismegistic literature, probably contemporary with the most ancient Pœmandres type. This type seems to have borne impressions of the form of the “Books of the Chaldæans” type of cosmogenesis, which we have seen to have strongly influenced Petosiris and Nechepso in the early second century B.C.

Agathodaimon is to Osiris as Pœmandres to Hermes.

LOGOS-MlND THE GOOD DAIMON

So also in the early Alchemical literature there is a treatise of Agathodaimon addressed to Osiris, and in it others are presupposed. 2 These Alchemical teachings of the Good Daimon are frequently in close contact with

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our Trismegistic doctrines; moreover, in the same literature, Hermes refers to Agathodaimon and appears to regard himself as his disciple. 1 It thus may be supposed that it was from Chnum that was originally derived the tradition of the Agathodaimonites. So thinks Reitzenstein; but I do not think that we have sufficient evidence as yet for so general a conclusion. The term Agathodaimon is a very general one, it is true, but the whole idea cannot be refunded into Chnum; in fact, Osiris is quite as much Agathodaimon as Chnum, and in C. H., xii. (xiii.), which deals with the General Mind, Good Mind, or Good Daimon, Agathodaimon is taken in the most general sense, and in the three quotations there made by Hermes from the “Sayings of the Good Daimon” (§§ 1, 8, 13), 2 we find that they are in the words of Heracleitus as inspired by the Logos; so that in reality Agathodaimon must be equated with Logos. The origin of Agathodaimon is then not solely Chnum; and Hermes therefore cannot be spoken of as the disciple of Chnubis, unless we can cite texts in which Thoth is so described.

In our Trismegistic literature the teaching is quite simple and distinct; as, for instance, in C. H., x. (xi.) 23: “He [Mind] is the Good Daimon.”

When, however, Reitzenstein (p. 128) declares that the sentence in § 25 of the same sermon, “For this cause can a man dare say that man on earth is God subject to death, while God in heaven is man from death immune,” 3 is a saying belonging to the

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[paragraph continues]Chnuphis-literature, we think he is going beyond the limits of probable conjecture, unless we substitute for Chnuphis the general term Agathodaimon in the sense of Logos.

When again Reitzenstein (p. 129) says that the fragments he has adduced show that Hermes was a later addition in the Agathodaimon-literature, and gradually pushed on one side Osiris the Son of the God of Revelation, we are not convinced that we have correctly recovered the “history”—for in the great Osiris-myth it is Hermes who is always the teacher of wisdom and not Osiris.

CHNUM GOOD MIND THE ÆON

Nevertheless that a wide-spread Chnuphis-literature, in the Agathodaimonistic sense, existed prior to the second century B.C., Reitzenstein has shown by a number of interesting quotations (pp. 129-133). In Hellenistic times the worship of Chnuphis as the Primal Deity and God of Revelation was strongly established, and, most interesting of all for us, his symbol was the serpent. The symbol, then, of Agathodaimon as Logos was the Serpent of Wisdom, and we are in contact with the line of tradition of the Gnostic Ophites and Naassenes. And so also in Ptolemaic times we find his syzygy, Isis, also symbolised as a serpent, and both of them frequently as serpents with human heads; they are both “as wise as serpents.” And as Horus was their son, so we find the hawk-headed symbol of that God united with a serpent body. So also we find Agathodaimon, in his sun-aspect, symbolised as a serpent with a lion’s head. 1 He is the Æon.

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ISIS, LADY OF WISDOM, DISCIPLE OF THRICE-GREATEST HERMES

In addition to the types of Hermes and his disciples, and Agathodaimon and his disciples, we have also in our Trismegistic literature another type—namely, Isis and her disciples. Isis is the ancient Lady of all wisdom, and Teacher of all magic. In the early Hellenistic period she is substituted for Hermes as Orderer of the cosmos, 1 while Plutarch calls her Lady of the Heart and Tongue even as is Hermes. 2 She “sees” the teaching.

As her disciple, she has in the Stobæan Ex. xxxi. 3 a king, probably King Ammon.

In a Magic Papyrus she even appears as teacher of Asclepius. 4 But the more usual and natural type is that of Isis as teacher of her son Horus, and so we find Lucian speaking of Pythagoras visiting Egypt to learn wisdom of her prophets, and saying that the sage of Samos descended into the adyta and learned the Books of Horus and Isis. 5 To this type of literature belongs our lengthy Stobæan Exx. xxv.-xxvii.

But in all of this Isis owes her wisdom to face to face instruction by the most ancient Hermes, with whom she gets into contact through spiritual vision. All this I have discussed in the Commentaries to Exx. xxv.-xxvii.; the conclusion being that to the mind of the Pœmandrists, no matter how ancient might be any line of tradition, whether of Agathodaimon or Osiris or Isis, the direct teaching of the Mind transcended it.

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Footnotes

460:1 See Maspero, op. cit., p. 80. Which of the numerous opp. citt. of Maspero’s this may be is not clear from Budge’s reference.

460:2 Cf. Brugsch, Thesaurus, p. 783; Religion, p. 527. Sethe, Imhotep, 1903—so Budge; but, more accurately, Sethe (K.), Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Altertumskunde Ägyptens, ii. 4 (“Imhotep, der Asklepios der Ägypter”).

461:1 For Asclepius among the Greeks, see Thraemer’s article “Asklepios” in Reseller’s Lex. d. . . . Mythologie (Leipzig, 1884-1900), i. 615-641; also the “Cornell Studies in Classical Philosophy,” No. III., The Cult of Asklepios, by Alice Walton, Ph.D. (Ithaca, N.Y., U.S.A., 1894).

462:1 Wessely, Denkschr. d. K. K. Akad. (1893), p. 38, 11. 550 ff.; Kenyon, Cat. of Gk. Pap., p. 102.

462:2 Griffith, in Zeitschr. f. äg. Sprache (1900), p. 90.

462:3 According to Manetho; see Müller, Manetho Fragm., 4.

463:1 Teephibis. Cf. Catal. Cod. Astral. Græc., i. 167: “Hermes Phibi the Thrice-greatest.” Sethe (op. sup. cit.) would equate this Teephibis with Hermes of Thebes, in connection with the statement of Clement of Alexandria (Strom., I. xxi. 134): “Of those, too, who once lived as men among the Egyptians, but who have been made Gods by human opinion, are Hermes of Thebes and Asclepius of Memphis.” If this is correct, we have our Trismegistus nourishing as Teephibis at the end of the second century B.C. But there seems to my mind to be nothing definite in Sethe’s contention.

464:1 There is also an older and younger Isis in the K. K. extracts, and also in both these and in P. S. A. an older and younger Asclepius.

464:2 R. (p. 119) has “des Kaisers Antonius”; but I know of no Emperor so called. The first years of Antoninus Pius would be 138-139 A.D.

464:3 Pap. du Louvre, 19 bis, Notices et Extraits, xviii. 2, 136.

465:1 Riess, Fr. 25.

465:2 Cory, An. Frags., p. 100. Budge, A History of Egypt (London, 1902), i. 218.

465:3 Reise zum Tempel des Jupiter Ammon, pp. 296 ff.

466:1 A rock inscription found on the cataract island Sehêl. R., p. 129.

467:1 R., p. 124. Cf. Sethe, Ægyptiaca, Festschrift für G. Ebers, pp. 106 ff.

467:2 Ammian. Marc., xxii. 14. 7; Vit, Hil., 21.

468:1 “Christianity in the Light of Historical Science,” in The Examiner (London), Oct. 21, 1905, pp. 668 ff.

470:1 Cod. Antinori 101, fol. 361.

471:1 Probably our C. H. (xvi.).

471:2 Camerarius, Astrologica (Nürnberg, 1537); Hermetis Iatromath., ed. Hoeschel (1597); Ideler, Physici et Medici Græci Minores, i. 387 and 430. Iatromathematici were those who practised medicine in conjunction with astrology, as was done in Egypt (Procl., Paraph. Ptol., p. 24).

472:1 Diodor., I. 15, 16.

473:1 Brugsch, Religion u. Myth. d. alt. Äg., p. 451.

473:2 Op. sup. cit., ibid.

474:1 Published by Wilcken in the “Festschrift für Ebers,” pp. 142 ff.

475:1 Given by Thilo, Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti (Leipzig, 1832), p. 880. Cf. Pick (B.), The Extra-Canonical Life of Christ (New York, 1903), p. 279.

477:1 Cramer, Anecd. Ox., iii. 171, 20.

477:2 Fir. Mat., iv. proœm. 5 (Skutsch and Kroll, p. 196, 21). The “and Chnubis” is the emendation of R. for the unintelligible letters “einhnusuix.”

478:1 Cf. Lactantius Fragg., xiv., xix., xxi., xxii.

478:2 Berthelot, Les Alchimistes grecs, Texte, p. 268.

479:1 Op. cit., pp. 125, 156-263.

479:2 We meet with a similar collection of Sayings, or Summaries of the chief points of teaching, in the Stobæan Ex. i. 7 ff., belonging to the Tat-literature, and also in (C. H., x. (xi.), xiv. (xv.), and (xvi.).

479:3 A very similar phrase occurs in Dio Cassius, Fr. 30; i. 87, ed. Boiss.

480:1 See the Nechepso Fragment 29 (Riess, p. 379).

481:1 R., Zwei relig. Frag., 104 ff.

481:2 De Is. et Os., xlviii.

481:3 With heading: “Of Hermes from the [Sermon] of Isis to Horus.”

481:4 Wessely, Denkschr. d. K. K. Akad. (1893), p. 41, 1. 633.

481:5 Alectruon, 18.

Thrice-Greatest Hermes

Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis

Being a Translation of the Extant Sermons and Fragments of the Trismegistic Literature, with Prolegomena, Commentaries, and Notes

By

G. R. S. Mead

Volume II.—Sermons

London and Benares

The Theosophical Publishing Society

[1906]

Prepared for sacred-texts.com, February 2009. This text is in the public domain because it was published prior to 1922.

p. ix

Contents

I. CORPUS HERMETICUM

CORP. HERM. I.

 

PŒMANDRES, THE SHEPHERD OF MEN	3–20
Commentary—
Of Vision and Apocalypsis	20
The Great and Little Man	23
The Presence	24
The Vision of Creation	25
The Descent of the Logos	27
The Revelation of the Pleroma	28
The Second Emanation	33
The Descent of Man	34
The First Men	37
“Increase and Multiply”	38
Love	39
The Way of Deathlessness	39
The Ascent of the Soul	41
The Eighth Sphere	42
The Three “Bodies” of the Buddha	44
The Preaching of the Gnosis	47
A Hymn of Praise and Prayer for the Gnosis	49
The Name “Poimandres”	50
The Good Shepherd	52
CORP. HERM. (II.)
THE GENERAL SERMON	58
CORP. HERM. II. (III.)
TO ASCLEPIUS	59–68
Commentary—
“An Introduction to the Gnosis of the Nature of All Things”	68
Space is a Plenum	70
The Spouse of Deity	71
God is Cause that Spirit is	71
He who is without a Wife is Half a Man	73
CORP. HERM. III. (IV.)
THE SACRED SERMON	75–77
Commentary—
Text and Title	78
The Trinity	78
From the System of the Nicolaïtans	79
The “Books of the Chaldæans”	81
The “Flood”	83
CORP. HERM. IV. (V.)
THE CUP OR MONAD	85–91
Commentary—
The Title	92
The Baptism of the Mind	93
The Holy Grail	94
The “Hating of the Body”	95
The Gnosis and its Blessings	97
The Ancient Path	98
CORP. HERM. V. (VI.)
THOUGH UNMANIFEST GOD IS MOST MANIFEST	99–106
Commentary—
The Title	106
Māyā	106
The Higher Pantheism or Panmonism	108
Hymn to All-God	108
CORP. HERM. VI. (VII.)
IN GOD ALONE IS GOOD AND ELSEWHERE NOWHERE	110–114
Commentary—
The Title	115
Dualism?	115
God the Pleroma of Good	117
CORP. HERM. VII. (VIII.)
THE GREATEST ILL AMONG MEN IS IGNORANCE OF GOD	120–121
Commentary—
A Preaching	122
The Probable Completion of an Oxyrhynchus Logion	122
CORP. HERM. VIII. (IX.)
THAT NO ONE OF EXISTING THINGS DOTH PERISH, BUT MEN IN ERROR SPEAK OF THEIR CHANGES AS DESTRUCTIONS AND AS DEATHS	124–127
Commentary—
The Cosmos as “Second God”	127
The Law of Apokatastasis	128
CORP. HERM. IX. (X.)
ON THOUGHT AND SENSE	129–136
Commentary—
Title and Ordering	136
“Sense-and-Thought”	137
“Those in Gnosis”	137
The True Gnostic	138
The Goal of the Gnosis	139
The Possibility of Knowing God	140
CORP. HERM. X. (XI.)
THE KEY	141–158
Commentary—
The Consummation of the “General Sermons”	159
The Will of God	160
Of Gnosis and Ecstasis	161
Of Apotheosis	163
The Metamorphoses of the Soul	163
The Ladder of Being	165
Concerning Transmigration	166
Gnosis the Virtue of the Soul	167
The Vehicles of the Soul	167
The Dual Soul	169
“He who Stands”	170
The Olympian Path	171
“When Mind becomes a Daimon”	171
The “Scourge” of the Christ	173
The Dispensation of the Universe	173
CORP. HERM. XI. (XII.)
MIND UNTO HERMES	175–189
Commentary—
Title and Form	190
The Æon-Lore	191
The Root of Form	193
“Become all Things”	194
The Good’s own Path	196
Concerning India	197
CORP. HERM. XII. (XIII.)
ABOUT THE COMMON MIND	199–212
Commentary—
The Sayings of the Good Daimon	213
Hermes and Basilides	215
The Sermons on Fate	217
Materiality and Corporality are Energies of God	218
CORP. HERM. XIII. (XIV.)
THE SECRET SERMON ON THE MOUNTAIN	219–233
THE SECRET HYMNODY	230–232
Commentary—
Concerning the Title	234
The Term “Apocryphon”	234
The Three Stages of Probation	236
The Mount of Initiation	238
The Birth from Above	239
The Virgin-Birth	240
The Race of the Logos	241
The Self-taught	242
The New Creation	243
The Way of Birth in God	244
Of the Ten and the Twelve	245
The Dawn of Cosmic Consciousness	249
The Vow of Silence	250
Of the Ogdoad	251
A Hymn for Morning and for Evening Prayer	252
A Theurgic Praise-Giving	253
“Through the Word”	255
CORP. HERM. XIV. (XV.)
A LETTER TO ASCLEPIUS	257–263
Commentary—
Asclepius and Tat	263
Compare with “Mind unto Hermes”	265
The Good Husbandman	265
CORP. HERM. (XVI.)
THE DEFINITIONS OF ASCLEPIUS UNTO KING AMMON	266–276
Commentary—
The Title	277
A Tradition Concerning the Trismegistic Literature	278
A Speculation as to Date	281
The Delineation of the Sun	282
Concerning the Daimones	282
CORP. HERM. (XVII.)
OF ASCLEPIUS TO THE KING	285–286
Commentary—
On the Adoration of Images	286
CORP. HERM. (XVIII.)
THE ENCOMIUM OF KINGS	288–298
Commentary—
The Apology of a Pœmandrist	298
Speculation as to Date	299
The Story of the, Pythic Grasshopper	300
The True King	302
The Fellow-Rulers of the Height	302
II. THE PERFECT SERMON; OR THE ASCLEPIUS	307–390
Commentary—
The Title	390
The Old Latin Translation and the Greek Original	391
Of the Writer and the Persons of the Dialogue	393
The Doctrine of the Will of God	395
Concerning Spirit and the All-Sense	396
The Prophetic Utterances	398
The Proscription of the Worship of the Gods	399
The Last Hope of the Religion of the Mind

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I

Corpus Hermeticum

p. 2

p. 3

CORPUS HERMETICUM I.

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PŒMANDRES, THE SHEPHERD OF MEN

(Text: R. 328-338; P. 1-18; Pat. 5b-8.) 1

1. It chanced once on a time my mind was meditating on the things that are, 2 my thought was raised to a great height, the senses of my body being held back—just as men are who are weighed down with sleep after a fill of food, or from fatigue of body.

Methought a Being more than vast, in size beyond all bounds, called out my name and saith: What wouldst thou hear and see, and what hast thou in mind to learn and know?

2. And I do say: Who art thou?

He saith: I am Man-Shepherd, 3 Mind of all-

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masterhood 1; I know what thou desirest and I’m with thee everywhere.

3. [And] I reply: I long to learn the things that are, and comprehend their nature, and know God. This is, I said, what I desire to hear.

He answered back to me: Hold in thy mind all thou wouldst know, and I will teach thee.

4. E’en with these words His aspect changed, 2 and straightway, in the twinkling of an eye, all things were opened to me, and I see a Vision limitless, all things turned into Light,—sweet, joyous [Light]. And I became transported as I gazed.

But in a little while Darkness came settling down on part [of it], awesome and gloomy, coiling in sinuous folds, 3 so that methought it like unto a snake. 4

And then the Darkness changed into some sort of a Moist Nature, tossed about beyond all power of words, belching out smoke as from a

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fire, and groaning forth a wailing sound that beggars all description.

[And] after that an outcry inarticulate came forth from it, as though it were a Voice of Fire.

5. [Thereon] out of the Light . . . 1 a Holy Word (Logos) 2 descended on that Nature. And upwards to the height from the Moist Nature leaped forth pure Fire; light was it, swift and active too.

The Air, too, being light, followed after the Fire; from out the Earth-and-Water rising up to Fire so that it seemed to hang therefrom.

But Earth-and-Water stayed so mingled each with other, that Earth from Water no one could discern. 3 Yet were they moved to hear by reason of the Spirit-Word (Logos) pervading them.

6. Then saith to me Man-Shepherd: Didst understand this Vision what it means?

Nay; that shall I know, I said.

That Light, He said, am I, thy God, Mind, prior to Moist Nature which appeared from Darkness; the Light-Word (Logos) [that appeared] from Mind is Son of God.

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What then?—say I.

Know that what sees in thee 1 and hears is the Lord’s Word (Logos); but Mind is Father-God. Not separate are they the one from other; just in their union [rather] is it Life consists.

Thanks be to Thee, I said.

So, understand the Light [He answered], and make friends with it.

7. And speaking thus He gazed for long into my eyes, 2 so that I trembled at the look of Him.

But when He raised His head, I see in Mind the Light, [but] now in Powers no man could number, and Cosmos 3 grown beyond all bounds, and that the Fire was compassed round about by a most mighty Power, and [now] subdued had come unto a stand.

And when I saw these things I understood by reason of Man-Shepherd’s Word (Logos).

8. But as I was in great astonishment, He saith to me again: Thou didst behold in Mind the Archetypal Form whose being is before beginning without end. Thus spake to me Man-Shepherd.

And I say: Whence then have Nature’s elements their being?

To this He answer gives: From Will of God.

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[paragraph continues][Nature 1] received the Word (Logos), and gazing on the Cosmos Beautiful 2 did copy it, making herself into a cosmos, by means of her own elements and by the births of souls.

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9. And God-the-Mind, being male and female both, as Light and Life subsisting, brought forth another Mind to give things form, who, God as he was of Fire and Spirit, 3 formed Seven Rulers who enclose the cosmos that the sense perceives. 4 Men call their ruling Fate. 5

10. Straightway from out the downward elements God’s Reason (Logos) 6 leaped up to Nature’s pure formation, and was at-oned with the Formative Mind; for it was co-essential with it. 7 And Nature’s downward elements were thus left reason-less, so as to be pure matter.

11. Then the Formative Mind ([at-oned] with Reason), he who surrounds the spheres and spins them with his whirl, set turning his formations, and let them turn from a beginning boundless unto an endless end. For that the circulation

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of these [spheres] begins where it doth end, as Mind doth will.

And from the downward elements Nature brought forth lives reason-less; for He did not extend the Reason (Logos) [to them]. The Air brought forth things winged; the Water things that swim, and Earth-and-Water one from another parted, as Mind willed. And from her bosom Earth produced what lives she had, four-footed things and reptiles, beasts wild and tame.

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12. But All-Father Mind, being Life and Light, did bring forth Man 1 co-equal to Himself, with whom He fell in love, as being His own child; for he was beautiful beyond compare, the Image of his Sire. In very truth, God fell in love with His own Form 2; and on him did bestow all of His own formations.

13. And when he gazed upon what the Enformer had created in the Father, [Man] too wished to enform; and [so] assent was given him by the Father. 3

Changing his state to the formative sphere, 4 in that he was to have his whole authority, 5 he

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gazed upon his Brother’s creatures. 1 They fell in love with him, and gave him each a share of his own ordering. 2

And after that he had well-learned their essence and had become a sharer in their nature, he had a mind to break right through the Boundary of their spheres, and to subdue 3 the might of that which pressed upon the Fire. 4

14. So he who hath the whole authority o’er [all] the mortals in the cosmos and o’er its lives irrational, bent his face downwards through 5 the Harmony, 6 breaking right through its strength, and showed to downward Nature God’s fair Form.

And when she saw that Form of beauty which can never satiate, and him who [now] possessed within himself each single energy of [all seven] Rulers as well as God’s [own] Form, she smiled with love; for ’twas as though she’d seen the image of Man’s fairest form upon her Water, his shadow on her Earth.

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He in his turn beholding the form like to himself, existing in her, in her Water, loved it and willed to live in it; and with the will came act, 1 and [so] he vivified the form devoid of reason.

And Nature took the object of her love and wound herself completely round him, and they were intermingled, for they were lovers.

15. And this is why beyond all creatures on the earth man is twofold; mortal because of body, but because of the essential Man immortal.

Though deathless and possessed of sway o’er all, yet doth he suffer as a mortal doth, subject to Fate.

Thus though above the Harmony, within the Harmony he hath become a slave. Though male-female, 2 as from a Father male-female, and though he’s sleepless from a sleepless [Sire], yet is he overcome [by sleep].

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16. Thereon [I say: Teach on], 3 O Mind of me, for I myself as well 4 am amorous of the Word (Logos).

The Shepherd said: This is the mystery kept hid until this day.

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Nature embraced by Man brought forth a wonder, oh so wonderful. For as he had the nature of the Concord 1 of the Seven, who, as I said to thee, [were made] of Fire and Spirit 2—Nature delayed not, but immediately brought forth seven “men,” in correspondence with the natures of the Seven, male-female and moving in the air. 3

Thereon [I said]: O Shepherd, . . . 4; for now I’m filled with great desire and long to hear; do not run off. 5

The Shepherd said: Keep silence, for not as yet have I unrolled for thee the first discourse (logos).

Lo! I am still, I said.

17. In such wise then, as I have said, the generation of these seven came to pass. Earth was as woman, her Water filled with longing; ripeness she took from Fire, spirit from Æther. Nature thus brought forth frames to suit the form of Man.

And Man from Life and Light changed into soul and mind,—from Life to soul, from Light to mind.

And thus continued all the sense-world’s

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parts 1 until the period of their end and new beginnings.

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18. Now listen to the rest of the discourse (logos) which thou dost long to hear.

The period being ended, the bond that bound them all was loosened by God’s Will. For all the animals being male-female, at the same time with man were loosed apart; some became partly male, some in like fashion [partly] female. And straightway God spake by His Holy Word (Logos):

“Increase ye in increasing, and multiply in multitude, ye creatures and creations all; and man that hath Mind in him, let him learn to know that he himself is deathless, and that the cause of death is love, 2 though Love is all.” 3

19. When He said this, His Forethought 4 did by means of Fate and Harmony effect their couplings and their generations founded. And so all things were multiplied according to their kind.

And he who thus hath learned to know himself, hath reached that Good which doth transcend abundance; but he who through a love that leads astray, expends his love upon his body,—

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he stays in Darkness wandering, 1 and suffering through his senses things of Death.

20. What is the so great fault, said I, the ignorant commit, that they should be deprived of deathlessness?

Thou seem’st, he said, O thou, not to have given heed to what thou heardest. Did not I bid thee think?

Yea do I think, and I remember, and therefore give Thee thanks.

If thou didst think [thereon], [said He], tell me: Why do they merit death who are in Death?

It is because the gloomy Darkness is the root and base of the material frame; from it 2 came the Moist Nature; from this 3 the body in the sense-world was composed; and from this [body] Death doth the Water drain.

21. Right was thy thought, O thou! But how doth “he who knows himself, go unto Him,” as God’s Word (Logos) hath declared?

And I reply: the Father of the universals doth consist of Light and Life, and from Him Man was born.

Thou sayest well, [thus] speaking. Light and Life is Father-God, and from Him Man was born.

If then thou learnest that thou art thyself of

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[paragraph continues]Life and Light, and that thou [only] happen’st to be out of them, thou shalt return again to Life. Thus did Man-Shepherd speak.

But tell me further, Mind of me, I cried, how shall I come to Life again . . . . for God doth say: “The man who hath Mind in him, let him learn to know that he himself [is deathless].”

22. Have not all men then Mind?

Thou sayest well, O thou, thus speaking. I, Mind, myself am present with holy men and good, the pure and merciful, men who live piously.

[To such] my presence doth become an aid, and straightway they gain gnosis of all things, and win the Father’s love by their pure lives, and give Him thanks, invoking on Him blessings, and chanting hymns, intent on Him with ardent love.

And ere they give the body up unto its proper death, they turn them with disgust from its sensations, from knowledge of what things they operate. 1 Nay, it is I, the Mind, that will not let the operations which befall the body, work to their [natural] end. For being door-keeper I’ll close up [all] the entrances, and cut the mental actions off which base and evil energies induce.

23. But to the Mind-less ones, the wicked and depraved, the envious and covetous, and those who murder do and love impiety, I am far off,

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yielding my place to the Avenging Daimon, who sharpening the fire, tormenteth him and addeth fire to fire upon him, and rusheth on him through his senses, thus rendering him the readier for transgressions of the law, so that he meets with greater torment; nor doth he ever cease to have desire for appetites inordinate, insatiately striving in the dark. 1

24. Well hast thou taught me all, as I desired, O Mind. And now, pray, tell me further of the nature of the Way Above as now it is [for me]. 2

To this Man-Shepherd said: When thy material body is to be dissolved, first thou surrenderest the body by itself unto the work of change, and thus the form thou hadst doth vanish, and thou surrenderest thy way of life, 3 void of its energy, unto the Daimon. 4 The body’s senses next pass back into their sources, becoming separate, and resurrect as energies; and passion and desire 5 withdraw unto that nature which is void of reason.

25. And thus it is that man doth speed his way thereafter upwards through the Harmony.

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To the first zone he gives the Energy of Growth and Waning; unto the second [zone], Device of Evils [now] de-energized 1; unto the third, the Guile of the Desires de-energized; unto the fourth, his Domineering Arrogance, [also] de-energized; unto the fifth, unholy Daring and the Rashness of Audacity, de-energized; unto the sixth, Striving for Wealth by evil means, deprived of its aggrandisement; and to the seventh zone, Ensnaring Falsehood, de-energized. 2

26. And then, with all the energizings of the Harmony stript from him, clothed in his proper Power, he cometh to that Nature which belongs unto the Eighth, 3 and there with those-that-are hymneth the Father.

They who are there welcome his coming there with joy; and he, made like to them that sojourn there, doth further hear the Powers who are above the Nature that belongs unto the Eighth, singing their songs of praise to God in language of their own.

And then they, in a band, 4 go to the Father home; of their own selves they make surrender of themselves to Powers, and [thus] becoming Powers they are in God. This the good end for

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those who have gained Gnosis—to be made one with God.

Why shouldst thou then delay? Must it not be, since thou hast all received, that thou shouldst to the worthy point the way, in order that through thee the race of mortal kind may by [thy] God be saved?

27. This when He’d said, Man-Shepherd mingled with the Powers. 1

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But I, with thanks and blessings unto the Father of the universal [Powers], was freed, full of the power He had poured into me, and full of what He’d taught me of the nature of the All and of the loftiest Vision.

And I began to preach to men the Beauty of Devotion and of Gnosis:

O ye people, earth-born folk, ye who have given yourselves to drunkenness and sleep and ignorance of God, be sober now, cease from your surfeit, cease to be glamoured by irrational sleep 2!

28. And when they heard, they came with one accord. Whereon I say:

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Ye earth-born folk, why have ye given up yourselves to Death, while yet ye have the power of sharing Deathlessness? Repent, O ye, who walk with Error arm in arm and make of Ignorance the sharer of your board; get ye from out the light of Darkness, and take your part in Deathlessness, forsake Destruction!

29. And some of them with jests upon their lips 1 departed [from me], abandoning themselves unto the Way of Death; others entreated to be taught, casting themselves before my feet.

But I made them arise, and I became a leader of the Race 2 towards home, teaching the words (logoi), how and in what way they shall be saved. I sowed in them the words (logoi) of wisdom 3; of Deathless Water were they given to drink. 4

And when even was come and all sun’s beams began to set, I bade them all give thanks to God. And when they had brought to an end the giving of their thanks, each man returned to his own resting place.

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30. But I recorded in my heart Man-Shepherd’s benefaction, and with my every hope fulfilled more than rejoiced. For body’s sleep became

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the soul’s awakening, 1 and closing of the eyes—true vision, pregnant with Good my silence, and the utterance of my word (logos) begetting of good things.

All this befell me from my Mind, that is Man-Shepherd, Word (Logos) of all masterhood, 2 by whom being God-inspired I came unto the Plain of Truth. 3 Wherefore with all my soul and strength thanksgiving 4 give I unto Father-God.

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31. Holy art Thou, O God, the universals’ Father.

Holy art Thou, O God, whose Will perfects itself by means of its own Powers.

Holy art Thou, O God, who willeth to be known and art known by Thine own.

Holy art Thou, who didst by Word (Logos) make to consist the things that are.

Holy art Thou, of whom All-nature hath been made an Image.

Holy art Thou, whose Form Nature hath never made.

Holy art Thou, more powerful than all power.

Holy art Thou, transcending all pre-eminence.

Holy Thou art, Thou better than all praise.

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Accept my reason’s 1 offerings pure, from soul and heart for aye stretched up to Thee, O Thou unutterable, unspeakable, Whose Name naught but the Silence can express.

32. Give ear to me who pray that I may ne’er of Gnosis fail, [Gnosis] which is our common Being’s nature 2; and fill me with Thy Power, and with this Grace [of Thine], that I may give the Light to those in ignorance of the Race, my Brethren, and Thy Sons.

For this cause I believe, and I bear witness; I go to Life and Light. Blessed art Thou, O Father. Thy Man 3 would holy be as Thou art holy, e’en as Thou gavest him Thy full authority 4 [to be].

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Footnotes

3:1 P. = Parthey (G.), Hermetis Trismegisti Poemander (Berlin; 1854). Pat. = Patrizzi (F.), Nova de Universis Philosophia (Venice; 1593).

3:2 περὶ τῶν ὄντων.

3:3 Ποιμάνδρης.

4:1 ὁ τῆς αὐθεντίας νοῦς. The αὐθεντία was the summa potestas of all things; see R. 8, n. 1; and § 30 below. Cf. also C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 15.

4:2 ἠλλάγη τῇ ἰδέᾳ.

4:3 σκολιῶς ἐσπειραμένον. The sense is by no means certain. Ménard translates “de forme sinueuse”; Everard, “coming down obliquely”; Chambers, “sinuously terminated.” But cf. in the Sethian system “the sinuous Water—that is, Darkness (see Hipp., Philos., v. 19).

4:4 Cf. Hipp., Philos., v. 9 (S. 170, 71): “They say the Serpent is the Moist Essence.”

5:1 A lacuna of six letters in the text.

5:2 The idea of the Logos was the central concept of Hellenistic theology; it was thus a word of many meanings, signifying chiefly Reason and Word, but also much else. I have accordingly throughout added the term Logos after the English equivalent most suitable to the context.

5:3 Cf. Il., vii. 99, as quoted by Apion in the chapter “Concerning the Æon” as Comment, on C. H., xi. (xii.).

6:1 That is, in vision.

6:2 Cf. C. H., xi (xii) 6.

6:3 κόσμον. The word kosmos (world-order) means either “order” or “world”; and in the original there is frequently a play upon the two meanings, as in the case of logos.

7:1 Nature and God’s Will are identical.

7:2 That is, the ideal world-order in the realms of reality.

7:3 Presumably the Pure Air of § 3.

7:4 τὸν αἰσθητὸν κόσμον. The sensible or manifested world, our present universe, as distinguished from the ideal eternal universe, the type of all universes.

7:5 εἱμαρμένη.

7:6 The Logos which had previously descended into Nature.

7:7 ὁμοούσιος, usually translated “consubstantial”; but οὐσία is “essence” and “being” rather than “substance.”

8:1 The Prototype, Cosmic, Ideal or Perfect Man.

8:2 Or Beauty (μορφῆς).

8:3 Cf. The Gospel of Mary in the Akhmīm Codex: “He nodded, and when He had thus nodded assent . . . .” (F. F. F., 586).

8:4 The Eighth Sphere bounding the Seven.

8:5 For note on ἐξουσία, see R. in loc. and 48, n. 3.

9:1 That is the Seven Spheres fashioned by his Brother.

9:2 τάξις, rank or order.

9:3 Or “wear down” (καταπονῆσαι). The reading κατανοῆσαι, however, may be more correct; “he had a mind to come to knowledge of” this Boundary or Ring Pass not. See R. 49, n. 1.

9:4 Sc. the Mighty Power of § 9.

9:5 παρέκυψεν. Cf. Cyril, C. J., i. 33 (Frag. xiii.); R. 50: “beugt sich . . . nieder” But compare especially Plato, Phædrus, 249 C., where he speaks of the soul “raising up her face (ἀνακύψασα) to That which is.” Cf. also Apion in Clement. Hom., vi. 4, in Comment. C. H., xi. (xii.)

9:6 That is, the harmonious interplay, concord or system of the spheres ruled by the Rulers; in other words, the cosmos of Fate.

10:1 ἐνέργεια, energy, and realization.

10:2 That is “a-sexual” but having the potentiality of both sexes.

10:3 For the various suggestions for filling up this lacuna, see R. in loc.; and for that of Keil, see R. 367.

10:4 Sc. as well as Nature.

11:1 Harmony.

11:2 See § 9.

11:3 μεταρσίους. A term that must have a more definite meaning than the vague “sublime” by which it is generally translated.

11:4 For Keil’s completion of the lacuna, see R. 368.

11:5 μὴ ἔκτρεχε, perhaps meaning diverge from the subject, or go too fast; lit., it means “do not run away.”

12:1 That is, the parts of what Hermes elsewhere calls the “cosmic man.”

12:2 Cf. C. H., xvi. 16.

12:3 Omitting the τἀ before ὄντα.

12:4 πρόνοια, that is Nature as Sophia or Providence or Will.

13:1 There is a word-play between πλάνης and πλανώμενος.

13:2 Sc. Darkness.

13:3 Sc. The Moist Nature.

14:1 εἰδότες αὐτῶν τὰ ἐνεργήματα.

15:1 The text of this paragraph is hopelessly confused in the MSS.

15:2 περὶ τῆς ἀνόδου τῆς γινομένης.

15:3 τὸ ἦθος, the “habitual” part of man, presumably way of life impressed by habit on the body; or it may be “class” of life as in the Vision of Er.

15:4 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 16.

15:5 ὁ θυμὸς καὶ ἡ ἐπιθυμία,—the masculine and feminine as positive and negative aspects of the “animal soul.”

16:1 ἀνενέργητον.

16:2 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 7.

16:3 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 15.

16:4 τάξει, order, group, sc. of the Nine;—the Father being the Ten, or consummation.

17:1 Cf. K. K., 25: “Thus speaking God became Imperishable Mind.”

17:2 Cf. the logos, “Jesus saith, I stood in the midst of the world, and in the flesh was I seen of them, and I found all men drunken, and none found I athirst among them, and my soul grieveth over the sons of men, because they are blind in heart.” Sayings of Our Lord from an Early Greek Papyrus, Grenfell & Hunt (London; 1897).

18:1 Cf. P. S. A., xii. 2.

18:2 The Race of the Logos, of all who were conscious of the Logos in their hearts, who had repented and were thus logoi.

18:3 Cf. Mark iv. 4: “He who soweth soweth the Word (Logos)”

18:4 Cf. K. K., 1—the drink given by Isis to Horus.

19:1 νῆψις, lit. soberness, watchfulness, lucidity.

19:2 See § 2 above.

19:3 Cf. K. K. (Stob., Ec., i. 49; p. 459, 20, W.), and Damascius, in Phot., Bibl., p. 337b, 23.

19:4 εὐλογίαν,—a play on λόγος.

20:1 λογικάς.

20:2 τῆς γνώσεως τῆς κατ᾽ οὐσίαν ἡμῶν, “our being,” that is, presumably, the “being” of man and God, the “being” which man shares with God.

20:3 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 20.

20:4 ἐξουσίαν.

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COMMENTARY

OF VISION AND APOCALYPSIS

The “Pœmandres” treatise not only belongs to the most important type of the Trismegistic literature, but is also the most important document within that type. It constitutes, so to speak, the Ground-Gospel of the Pœmandres Communities, in the form of a revelation or apocalypse received by the founder of the tradition,

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that founder, however, being not a historical personage but the personification of a teaching-power or grade of spiritual illumination—in other words, of one who had reached the “Hermes,” or rather “Thrice-greatest,” state of consciousness or enlightenment.

This stage of enlightenment was characterized by a heightening of the spiritual intuition which made the mystic capable of receiving the first touch of cosmic consciousness, and of retaining it in his physical memory when he returned to the normal state.

The setting forth of the teaching is thus naturally in the form of apocalyptic, and of apocalyptic of an ordered and logical nature; for it purports to be a setting forth of the spiritual “Epopteia” of the Inner Mysteries, the Vision revealed by the Great Initiator or Master-Hierophant, Mind of all-masterhood.

This Vision, as we are told by many seers and prophets of the time, was incapable of being set forth by “tongue of flesh” in its own proper terms, seeing that it transcended the consciousness of normal humanity. Being in itself a living, potent, intelligible reality, apart from all forms either material or intellectual in any way known to man, it pervaded his very being and made his whole nature respond to a new key of truth, or rather, vibrate in a higher octave, so to say, where all things, while remaining the same, received a new interpretation and intensity.

The interpretation of this Vision, however, was conditioned by the “matter” of each seer; he it was who had to clothe the naked beauty of the Truth—as the Gnostic Marcus would have phrased it—with the fairest garment he himself possessed, the highest thoughts, the best science, the fairest traditions, the most grandiose imagination known to him. Thus it is that we have so many modes of expression among the

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mystics of the time, so many varieties of spiritual experience—not because the experience itself was “other,” the experience was the “same” for all, but the speaking of it forth was conditioned by the religious and philosophical and scientific heredity of the seer.

This element, then, is the basic fact in all such apocalyptic. It is, however, seldom that we meet with a document that has come to us straight from the hand of a seer writing down his own immediate experience without admixture; for the delight of the Vision was not that it gave new facts or ideas of the same nature as those already in circulation, but that it threw light on existing traditions, and showed them forth as being parts of a whole. Once the man had come into touch with the Great Synthesis, there rushed into his mind innumerable passages of scripture, scraps of myths, fragments of cosmogenesis, logoi and logia, and symbols of all kinds that fitted naturally. These were not any special writer’s monopoly, there was no copyright in them, they were all utterances of the same Logos, the Great Instructor of humanity.

Thus the literature that was produced was anonymous or pseudepigraphic. There was first of all a nucleus of personal vision and direct illumination, then a grouping of similar matter from various sources into a whole for didactic purposes. Nor was there any idea among these mystics and scripture-writers that the form once issued should become for ever stereotyped as inerrant; there were many recensions and additions and interpolations. It was left to those without the sense of illumination to stereotype the forms and claim for them the inerrancy of verbal dictation by the Deity. Those who wrote the apocalypses from personal knowledge of vision could not make such claim for their scriptures, for they knew

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how they were written, and what was the nature of hearing and sight.

We have accordingly to treat all such documents as natural human compositions, but while doing so, while on the one side analyzing them with microscopic attention as literary compositions, put together from other sources, over-written, redacted and interpolated, we have also, on the other, to bear in mind that this was not done by clever manipulators and literary charlatans, but by men who regarded such work as a holy and spiritual task, who endeavoured to arrange all under the inspiration of a sweet influence for good, who believed themselves under guidance in their selection of matter, and in recombining the best in other scriptures into a new whole that might prove still better for the purpose of further enlightenment suitable to their immediate environment.

The “Pœmandres” treatise is of this nature—that is to say, though we have not the original form before us, we have what was intended to be read as a single document. We shall accordingly endeavour in our comments not to allow the anomalies of its outer form to detract from our appreciation of its inner spirit, and yet, on the other hand, not to permit the beauty of much that is in it to blind us to the fact that the present form has evolved from simpler beginnings.

THE GREAT AND LITTLE MAN

1. In deep meditation the disciple reaches the consummation of his efforts, and receives initiation from the Master of the masters, who is to confer upon him authority (ἐξουσίαν—see § 32) to teach, that is, to be a master or a Hermes.

2. That this Grand Master of the Inner Mysteries

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was Man and Shepherd of men, the Very Self of men, has been amply shown in the Prolegomena, but the striking parallelism with the very wording of our text, the Great Man, the “Being more than vast,” who tells the little man, that though for the first time he now knows his Greater Self, that Self has ever been “everywhere with thee,” is best shown by the beautiful logos from the Gospel of Eve (presumably an Egyptian gospel), which we have already quoted elsewhere 1:

“I stood on a lofty mountain, 2 and saw a gigantic Man and another, a dwarf; and I heard, as it were, a voice of thunder, and drew nigh for to hear; and He spake unto me and said: I am thou, and thou art I; and wheresoever thou mayest be, I am there. 3 In all am I scattered, and whencesoever thou willest, thou gatherest Me; and gathering Me, thou gatherest Thyself.”

THE PRESENCE

3. The conditions of the seeing of the Holy Sight had been fulfilled by the disciple; he had weaned himself from all lower desires. No longer, like the theurgist in the Hermes-invocations of the popular cult, does he pray for wealth and fame and cheerful countenance, and the rest; his one desire, his only will, is now to “learn the things that are, and comprehend their nature and know God.” He craves for Gnosis,—Gnosis of Cosmos and its mysteries, Gnosis

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of Nature, the Great Mother, and, finally, Gnosis of God, the Father of the worlds. This is the one question he “holds in his mind,” his whole nature is concentrated into this one point of interrogation.

It is to be noticed that we are not told, as in the Gospel of Eve, that the seer stood, as it were, apart from himself, and saw his little self and Greater Self simultaneously. He is conscious of a Presence, of a Persona in the highest theological meaning of the word, who is not seen so much as felt, speaking to him Mind to mind; he hears this Presence rather than sees it.

THE VISION OF CREATION

4. The first part of his mental question is: How came this cosmos into being? The answer is the changing of the Boundless Presence into “Light, sweet joyous Light.” He loses all sight of “all things” in his mind, the mental image he had formed of cosmos, and is plunged into the infinitude of Limitless Light and Joy, which transports him out of himself in highest ecstasy.

But he has craved for Gnosis, not Joy and Light, but Wisdom, the understanding and reconciliation of the great Opposites, the Cross of all Manifestation.

Therefore must he know the Mystery of Ignorance as well as that of Knowledge. Within the Infinitude of Light appears the Shadow of the Unknown, which translates itself to his consciousness as Darkness,—the Shadow of the Thrice-unknown Darkness, which, as Damascius tells us, 1 was the First Principle of the Egyptians, the Ineffable Mystery, of which they “said nothing,” and of which our author says nothing.

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This Darkness comes forth from within outwards to the disciple’s consciousness, it spreads “downwards” in sinuous folds like a Great Snake, symbolizing, presumably, the unknown, and to him unknowable, mysteries of the differentiation of the root of matter of the cosmos that was to be; its motion was spiral, sinuous, unending vibrations, not yet confined into a sphere; not yet ordered, but chaotic, in unceasing turmoil, a terrible contrast to the sweet peace of the Light, gradually changing from Dark Space or Spirit into a Fluid or Flowing Matter, or Moist Nature; that is, presumably, what the Greek mystics would have called Rhea, the Primal Mother or Matter of the future universe.

It wails and groans—that is, its motion is as yet unharmonized. In the terminology of the Sophia-mythus, it is the inchoate birth from the Sophia Above, in the Fullness, brought forth by herself alone, without her syzygy or consort. On account of its imperfection she wails and groans to the Father of All and His Perfections, that her Perfection may be sent to fashion her child, who is herself in manifestation, into a world of order, and eventually into a Perfection in its turn. 1

The Primal Undifferentiated or Chaotic Sound, from the Darkness of its first state, gradually manifests itself under the brooding power of the Boundless Light, into less confused thunderings and murmurings, and finally reaches a stage symbolized by a “Cry,” a “Voice of Fire,” of Fire, not Light, expressing a need and want, longing for union with the Articulate Power or Cosmic Word.

The three most primal stages thus seem to be symbolized by Darkness, Moist Essence, Fire. These

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were not our differentiated elements, but the Primal Pre-cosmic Elements.

The same idea, though in different forms, is met with in a system of the Gnosis preserved for us by the Old Latin translator of Irenæus, 1 and also by Theodoret, 2 who ascribes it to the Sēthians, whom he says are also called Ophianæ or Ophitæ. Now Sēth was Typhon or Darkness, Dark Light, and this Sēth may very well have been symbolized as the Great Serpent of Darkness, as it is in our text; hence the name “Those of the Serpent,” perhaps given them by their theological adversaries (orthodox Jews and Christians). In this system the Primal Elements are given as Water, Darkness, Abyss, and Chaos. The Light was the Child of the supreme Trinity—the First Man, the Second Man, and the Holy Spirit or First Woman. This Light the Jewish and Christian over-working of the original tradition called the Cosmic Christ.

Thus the Fire of Desire, or Cry of the Darkness, was to be satisfied or checked or quenched by the Light’s fashioning its inchoate substance into the cosmos; and so in another Vision, preserved in a treatise of the same type, Hermes sees, by gazing “through the Master,” the cosmos in its finished beauty, when all things in it are full of Light and nowhere is there Fire. 3

THE DESCENT OF THE LOGOS

5. Upon this Cry for Light, into the Heart of the Dark-Moist-Fiery-Nature is dropped a Holy Word, the Seed of the future Cosmos. This Word is Articulate (its Limbs are perfect), Seasonable and Ordering. The

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[paragraph continues]Cosmic Animal Nature is impregnated with the Light of the Supernal Reason, which pervades its whole being.

This pervading immediately effects an ordering of the Chaotic Elements into Pure Fire, Pure Air, and Pure Water-Earth. Moreover, it is to be gathered from the sequel that Nature saw the Word and all his Beauty in her Fire and Air, but as yet only heard him in her Water-Earth.

6. The Shepherd thus explains that Light 1 is really Mind, and Mind is God,—God prior to Nature, but not prior to Darkness. The Unity of Light and Darkness is a still higher Mystery. Light and Mind is the highest concept the disciple can yet form of God. The Light-Word, or emanation of Supernal Reason, is Son of God, Son of Great Mind.

THE REVELATION OF THE PLĒRŌMA

With the words “What then?” Reitzenstein (p. 37) perceives that the sequence of the narrative is broken by a second vision, and is only resumed with § 9. This he regards as an interpolation of another form of cosmogenesis, into the one which is being described.

It seems to me, however, that the breaking of the main narrative may be regarded as a necessary digression rather than as an interpolation of foreign material—necessary in order to bring on to the scene the hitherto invisible Greatnesses, “within” the Veil of Light, which constitute the Economy of the Plērōma. More had to be seen by the disciple before he was in a position to understand what he had so far seen. He must now unite with the Light, his previous seeing being that of its reflection, the logos within him. Not that this

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logos and Light (or Mind) are separate. They are in reality one, the Son is one with the Father in the state that transcends the opposites. The Logos apparently comes forth, yet it remains ever with the Father, and this coming forth and yet remaining constitutes its Life—in other words, it is an emanation. Thus Hermes is bidden to understand the Light as Life, and so make friends with it.

7. Hitherto the Light had been one for him a sameness which his highest vision could not pierce, the Veil of Light that shut the Beauties, Perfections and Greatnesses of the Intelligible from the eyes of his mind. To pierce this veil a still more expanded power of sight had to be given him by the Master. The little word or light-spark within him is intensified by the Great Word of the Master, this Word being an Intelligible Utterance of the Mind, an intensification of being.

He now sees and understands the countless Powers within the Light, which constitute the Intelligible Archetypal Form or Idea of all worlds. Between the special sensible cosmos of his prior vision and this Immensity was a Mighty Power, or Great Boundary (Horos), 1 that encircled the elements of the sensible cosmos and held its Fire in check.

8. In amazement he asks whence come these apparently disorderly and untamed elements of the new world in process that have to be subdued and separated from the Concord of the Perfection of the Powers? And the answer is that Chaos, too, has its being from God’s Will. Discord and Concord, Chaos and Cosmos, are both of God. The Primal Elements are, as it were, the Passions of God’s Will desiring Himself. It is Himself as Mother or Spouse

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desiring Himself as Father. In other of the Trismegistic tractates 1 this “Feminine Aspect” of Deity is called Wisdom and Nature and Generation and Isis. He is Wisdom as desiring Himself,—that Desire being the Primal Cause as Mother of the whole world-process, which is consummated by His Fullness uniting with His Desire or Wisdom, and so perfecting it.

This is the whole burden of the Gnostic Sophia-mythus, which I have given very good reasons for believing derived its main element from Egypt. 2 Curiously enough, Reitzenstein (pp. 39, 40) quotes the two chapters (liii. and liv.) from Plutarch on which I base my conclusions, but he does not notice that in this respect the Christianized Gnosis is distinctly dependent on Egypt.

And so Philo 3 also tells us that the Mother of All is Gnosis (ἐπιστήμη), the very same name that Plutarch gives to Isis.

The Mother, when thought of as without the Plērōma, is impregnated by the Word, which Basilides would have called the All-seed Potency of the Plērōma, endowed with all Powers, and sent forth as the seed of the sensible cosmos that is to be. The Mother in her higher Nature contemplates the Eternal Cosmos or Order of the Plērōma, and in her lower Nature copies its Beauties by means of the permutations and combinations of her elements and the generations and transformations of her lives or souls.

This form of cosmogenesis Reitzenstein (p. 46) regards as of a pantheistic nature, while the general narrative he holds to set forth a world-representation of a dualistic tendency. It is true, as he himself

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admits, that this blend of contradictory conceptions meets us frequently in Gnostic systems of a more or less contemporary date; nevertheless he lays great stress upon this difference, and so insists upon an interpolation.

In this he is confirmed (p. 39) by the fact that whereas § 9 speaks of God the Mind being male-female, we are in the second vision face to face with “eine weibliche Allgottheit” who stands next to the Highest God.

I must, however, confess that these contradictions do not make so great an impression upon my mind as they seem to have done on the critical faculty of Professor Reitzenstein. There is no system known to me, even of the most exclusive monotheism, into which dualism does not creep somehow or other at some stage; it cannot be avoided, for it is in the nature of things.

The dualism of our text is, however, by no means so very marked, for though it is not distinctly stated in § 4, it leaves it clearly to be inferred that the Darkness comes from the Light itself, for previously there was nothing but Light; “all things” had become Light to the eye of the seer. It is the mystery of the sad-eyed Serpent of Darkness wrapping itself round the lower limbs of the Light.

It was, in my opinion, precisely for the sake of removing the thought of dualism that the seer is shown a still more intimate vision within the Light Veil, where all ideas of monotheism, dualism, tritheism, polytheism, and pantheism lose their formal distinctions in a Formless State, or, at any rate, in a State of Being where all are interblended with all. In describing it, the “tongue of flesh” has to use the familiar language of form, but every word employed has a new significance;

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for even the “tongue of angels” cannot describe it, or any of the “tongues” of heaven; He alone who speaks forth the Words of the One Tongue can express it.

Whence this sublime conception of the Plērōma came, I do not know; it seems to me impossible to find a geographical origin for such things, as, indeed, it seems vain to seek a geographical origin for dualism and the rest. For the writer or writers of our tractate these ideas came from the nature of things, from the immediate experience of sight.

The form of expression, of course, may be susceptible of a geographical treatment, but as yet I am not satisfied that any clear heredity has been made out for this supposed interpolation. The Feminine Divinity, next the Highest God, is not set over against that God, but is His own Will. He is in the Plērōma Vision as much and as little male and female as in the general narrative. He transcends all opposites and contains all opposites in Himself.

What is clear, however, is that in the combination of both visions we have before us a simple and early form of the Gnosis which we meet with later in Christian over-workings, and especially in the very elaborate expositions of the Basilidian and Valentinian schools, the systems of which can, in their main elements, be paralleled and compared point by point with our treatise; but this would be too lengthy a proceeding in our present study, for it would require a volume to itself in any way adequately to treat of it. 1

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THE SECOND EMANATION

9. We now return to the main narrative. Within the World-Egg, which was encircled by the Mighty Power (the Gnostic Horos), there had already been developed three Cosmic Elements (not our mixed elements)—Fire, Air, and Water-Earth. This had been effected by the descent of the Cosmic Logos into the Primal Elements of Disorder. As the Logos descended, Fire and Air ascended, and the Logos remained in Water-Earth. This was the result of the First Outpouring from the Potency of the Plērōma, the First Word uttered by Mind.

The Second Outpouring of Mind was of Mind no longer regarded as Light only, but as Light and Life, Male-Female. This emanation appeared as Enforming Mind—that is, the Fashioner or Former, Artificer or Demiurge of lives or souls; it was the ensouling of the Ordered Elements of Nature with lives, whereby these Elements were drawn together into forms.

The Great Mind, as Light and Life, reflected itself in the “pure formation” of Nature—that is to say, in Fire and Spirit (Air), Fire for Light and Spirit for Life, to further enform things.

The Mighty Power or Self-limitation of Mind, the Boundary that no mortal can pass, marks off the formative area of the whole cosmos. This area, however, was by no means only the mixed sensible world (cosmos) which we perceive with our present physical senses. On the contrary, there are within it various orders (cosmoi) of the main cosmos. For the Ordering Mind, as the Enformer or Soul-fashioner, differentiates itself into seven Ruling Forms or Spheres which “enclose” the mixed sensible cosmos; these spheres, therefore, must be of a psychic nature—that is to say,

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of a pure or subtle substance; they are Forms of subtle matter endowed with reason. They constitute the Cosmic Engine of the fashioning of souls, or psychic natures, and of their perpetual transforming. Their energies and activities are those of Fate, or the ordered sequence of cause and effect, symbolized by spheres perpetually entering into themselves.

10. In all the main phases there is to be observed the idea of a downward tendency followed by an upward. The Darkness descends; it then transmutes itself and aspires above in a Cry or Yearning for Light. The Word descends; immediately the Fire and Air ascend. The Formative Mind descends; immediately the Word ascends from the mixed Water-Earth—and at-ones itself with its co-essential emanation from the Father—to a space about the Seven, and thus leaves the still down-tending elements in the Element Water-Earth deprived of its immediate presence, after giving physical matter the initial impulse to order. This physical matter our author calls “pure matter,” meaning thereby matter deprived of the immediate presence of Reason.

11. Hereupon from the impulse she has received Nature begins her physical enformation, develops her physical elements and bodies of irrational lives. Water-Earth divides into water and earth, and also air, for this air is clearly something different from the Spirit-Air that ascended; the lower air is one of the downward elements.

THE DESCENT OF MAN

12. When this had been accomplished, there followed a Third Outpouring—the descent of Man, the consummation of the whole Enformation of things, a still

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more transcendent manifestation of Mind, the One Form that contains all forms, His Very Image coequal with Himself. He finally comes Himself to consummate and save the cosmos in the Form of Man—that is, to gather it to Himself and take it back into the Plērōma.

Nevertheless the Word and the Formative Mind and Man are not three different Persons; they are all co-essential with each other and one with the Father. For the Word is co-essential with the Demiurgic Mind (§ 10), and the latter is Brother of Man (§ 13), and Man is co-equal with God (§ 12).

13. And so Man, the Beloved, descends; and in his descent he is clothed with all the powers of his Brother’s creative energy, the creative energy of Life conjoined with rational Light.

Having learned the lesson of the conformations and of the limitations of the Spheres, he desires to break right through the Great Boundary itself; but to do this he must descend still further into matter. Before he can burst through upwards he must break through downwards.

14. Accordingly he breaks through the Spheres downwards, seeking his consort Nature below, and shows her his Divine Form radiant with all the energies bestowed on him by all the Powers above.

And she in her great love wound herself round the image of this Form mirrored upon her water, and the shadow of it thrown upon her earth; just as the Darkness wound itself, like a Great Serpent, round the lower parts of the Light, so does Nature coil herself round the shadow and reflection of Man. Man is above, yet is he below; man is free, yet is he bound—bound willingly in love for her who is himself.

Reitzenstein (pp. 47-49) is greatly puzzled with all

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this, and seeks to distinguish several contradictory elements, presumably supposing that these elements are woven together into a literary patchwork from distinct traditions. I cannot myself follow him here with any clearness. Of course the writer or writers of our treatise did not discover new ideas or invent new terms; they used what was in their minds and the minds of their circle. It was, however, the weaving of it into a whole, not as a literary exercise, but as a setting forth in the most understandable terms with which they were acquainted of the “things seen,” that was their main interest. Those who had the “sight” would understand and appreciate their labours, those who had not would never understand, no matter what terms or what language were used.

When, then, Reitzenstein (p. 47) says that in § 11, in the bringing forth by Nature of irrational lives, there is a confusion of contradictory conceptions, he fails to see that Nature is ever the World-Soul, the spouse of Mind; though Darkness she is spouse of Light. Unaided she brings forth things irrational, a phase of that birth of Nature by herself that is incomplete.

So also in § 13, Reitzenstein detects contradictory elements, which he ascribes to two different regions of ideas. He does not, however, perceive that though in one sentence the “formations” are said to be those of the Father, and in the next those of the Brother, this is no real confusion, because the Formative Mind is the Father, enforming Himself in Himself; this self-energizing, when regarded by itself, may be spoken of as other than the Father, but is not really so.

Nor can I see that there is any real contradiction in the breaking through of the Spheres as though they were the product of an opposing Power to that of the Son. The Fate was certainly so regarded by men who

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were under its sway; but our treatise is endeavouring precisely to give an insight into the state of things beyond the Fate. The burden of its teaching is that all these oppositions are really illusory; man can transcend these limitations and come into the freedom of the Sons of God. Even the most terrible and fundamental oppositions are not really so, but all are Self-limitations of God’s Will; and man is Son of God co-equal with Him.

THE FIRST MEN

16. Our treatise then describes the first appearance of man on earth, which it regards as a great mystery never before revealed, “the mystery kept hid until this day.” This I take to mean that it had hitherto never been written about, but had been kept as a great secret.

This secret was the doctrine that the first men, of which there were seven types, were hermaphrodites, and not only so, but lived in the air; their frames were of fire and spirit, and not of the earth-water elements. The Celestial Man, or type of humanity, was gradually differentiating himself from his proper nature of Light and Life, and taking on bodies of fire and air, was changing into mind (Light-fire) and soul (Life-spirit).

This presumably lasted for long periods of time, the lower animal forms gradually evolving to greater complexity as Nature strove to copy the “Form” of Man, and Man devolving gradually until there was a union, and the human subtle form could find vehicles among the highest animal shapes.

The first incarnate men appear to have been at first also hermaphrodite; and it must have been a time when everything was in a far greater state of flux than things are now.

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“INCREASE AND MULTIPLY”

18. This period of pre-sexual or bi-sexual development having come to an end, the separation of the sexes took place. The commandment is given by the Word: “Increase ye in increasing and multiply in multitude” (αὐξάνεσθε ἐν αὐξήσει καὶ πληθύνεσθε ἐν πλήθει).

It is true that this is reminiscent of the oft-repeated formula in the Greek Targum of Genesis,—αὐξάνεσθε καὶ πληθύνεσθε, 1—but it is only slightly reminiscent, the main injunction being strengthened, and the rest of the logos being quite different from anything found in Genesis. As nothing else in the whole treatise can be referred to direct Hebrew influence, we must conclude that the formula was, so to speak, in the air, and has so crept into our treatise. 2

It has, however, given rise to a diatribe copied on to the margin of one MS.—B. (Par. 1220)—by a later hand, and incorporated into the text of M. (Vat. 951). It is in B. ascribed to Psellus, 3 who goes out of his way to stigmatize Hermes as a sorcerer and a plagiarist throughout of Moses; in brief, the Devil is a thief of the Truth to lead men astray. In this we learn more about the limitation of the so-called “Prince of Philosophers” 4 than of aught else.

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19. This increasing and multiplying, the perpetual coupling of bodies, and the birth of new ones, is effected by the Fate, or Harmony of the Formative Spheres, the Engine of Birth, set under Forethought or Providence (πρόνοια). This Pronoia can be none else than Nature herself as the Wisdom or Knowledge of God—in other words, His Will.

LOVE

The motive power of all is Love. If this Love manifests itself as Desire for things of Matter, the Lover stays in Darkness wandering; if it becomes the Will to know Light, the Lover becomes the Knower of himself, and so eventually at-one with Good.

20. But why should love of body merit Death—that is to say, make man mortal? The disciple attempts an explanation from what he has seen. Although his answer is approved, the meaning is by no means clear.

The physical body, or body in the sense-world, is composed of the Moist Nature, which in a subsequent phase remains as Water-Earth, and in a still subsequent phase divides itself into the elements of physical earth, water, and air. The dissolution of the combination of these elements is effected by Death—that is, Darkness, the Drainer of the Water, the Typhonean Power. Water must thus here symbolize the Osirian Power of fructification and holding together. The Moist Nature then seems to be differentiated from the Darkness by the energizing of Light in its most primitive brooding. But seeing that the Light is also Life, the Darkness, which is posited as the ultimate opposite, is Death.

THE WAY OF DEATHLESSNESS

21. The Way of Deathlessness is then considered. The disciple repeats his lesson, and the Master commends

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him; the Way Up is the Path of Self-knowledge.

Still the disciple cannot believe that this is for him; he cannot understand that Mind is in him, or rather is himself, in so much as Mind as Teacher seems to be without him. The play is on Mind and mind; the one gives the certitude of Immortality, the other is still bound by the illusion of Death. The disciple has not this certitude; Mind, then, is not his.

22. The Master then further explains the mystery. Gnosis must be preceded by moral purification; there must be a turning-away before the Re-turn can be accomplished. The whole nature must be changed. Yet every effort that the little man seems to make of his own striving is really the energizing of the Great Man.

23. Those, however, who yield themselves to lower desires, drive the Mind away, and their appetites are only the more strengthened by the mind.

The text of this paragraph is very corrupt, so that the exact sense of the original is not recoverable; and this makes it all the more difficult to understand what is meant by the Avenging Daimon, the Counterpart of the Mind. This difficulty is increased by § 24, where we are told that the “way of life” (τὸ ἦθος) is at death surrendered to the Daimon.

If, however, the reader will refer to the section on “The Vision of Er” (in the Miscellanea of the “Prolegomena”), which in my original MS. followed as a Digression on this passage, he will be put in contact with the Platonic view of the Daimon and “way of life”; in our treatise, however, the teaching is of a more intimate character, and must be taken in conjunction with C. H., x. (xi.) 16 and 21, where we shall comment on it at further length.

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THE ASCENT OF THE SOUL

24. The subject of instruction is now the Way Above (ἄνοδος), or ascent of the soul out of the body at death.

The physical body is left to the work of change and dissolution. The life of integration and conservation ceases, and the life of disintegration begins.

The form (εἶδος) thus vanishes, apparently from the man’s consciousness; that is to say, presumably, he is no longer clothed in the form of his physical body, but is apparently in some other vehicle; the particular fixed form, or “way of life,” or “habit,” he wore on earth being handed over to the Daimon deprived of all energy, so that apparently it becomes an empty shell.

The next sentence is a great puzzle, and I can only guess at the meaning. The senses which had previously been united by the mind become separate—that is, instead of a whole they become parts (μέρη), they return to the natural animal state of sensation, and the animal part of man, or his vehicle of passion and desire, begins in its turn to disintegrate, the mind or reason (logos) being gradually separated from it, or, rather, its true nature showing forth in the man as he gradually strips off the irrational tendencies of the energies.

25. Those irrational tendencies have their sources in the Harmony of the Fate-Sphere of seven subordinate spheres or zones; and in these zones he leaves his inharmonious propensities, deprived of their energy. For the Harmony is only evil apparently; it is really the Engine of Justice and Necessity to readjust the foolish choice of the soul—that is, to purify its irrational desires, or those propensities in it that are not under the sway of right reason and philosophy. For a better understanding of the characteristics ascribed to

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the “seven spheres,” we must “run off” into another Digression, which the reader will find relegated to ch. xii. of the “Prolegomena,” under the title “Concerning the Seven Zones and their Characteristics.” This, then, having been taken as a direct commentary on § 25, we continue with the text of our treatise.

THE EIGHTH SPHERE

26. The soul of the initiated strips itself naked of the “garment of shame,” the selfish energizings, and stands “clothed in its own power.” This refers probably to the stripping off of the “carapace of selfhood,” the garments woven by its vices, and the putting on of the “wedding garment” of its virtues.

This state of existence is called the Eighth, 1 a state of comparative “sameness” as transcending the zones of “difference.” It is the Ogdoad of the Gnostics, the Jerusalem Above, the plane of the Ego in its own form, the natural state of “those-that-are.”

In another sense it may perhaps mean that the man, after passing through the phases of the lower mind, now enters within into the region of the pure mind, the Higher Ego, and there is at-oned with all the experiences of his past lives that are worthy of immortality, his virtuous energizings,—the “those-that-are,” that perhaps constitute the “crown of mighty lives” sung of by the Pythian Oracle when celebrating the death of Plotinus. 2

In this state the man, who has freed himself from the necessity of reincarnation, hears the Song of the Powers above the Ogdoad—that is to say, in Gnostic terms, the

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[paragraph continues]Hymn of the Æons of the Plērōma. Such a man would have reached the consummation of his earthly pilgrimage, and be ready to pass on into the Christ-state, or, at any rate, the state of super-man. He would be the Victor who had won the right of investiture with the Robe of Glory, and the dignity of the crowning with the Kingship of the Heavens. This Final Initiation is most beautifully set forth in the opening pages of the Pistis Sophia, and especially in the Song of the Powers (pp. 17 ff.) beginning with the words: “Come unto us, for we are thy fellow-members. We are all one with thee.”

The consummation of the mystery is that the alter-egos of the Individual Ego, or the sum total of purified personalities which in that state constitute its membership, or taxis, of their own selves surrender themselves to a fullness of union or a transcendency of separation, in which they become the powers or energies of a New Man, the true Son of Man; they pass into a state where they each blend with all, and yet lose nothing of themselves, but rather find in this new union the consummation of all their powers. In this state of Sonship of the Divine they are no longer limited by bodies, nor even by partial souls or individual minds; but, becoming Powers, they are not only in God, but one with the Divine Will—nay, in final consummation, God Himself.

27. Of such a nature was the Shepherd; He, too, was the Christ of God, the Son of the Father, who could take all forms to carry out the Divine Will. When the form,—even though that form might for the disciple take on the appearance of the cosmos itself, as he conceived it,—had served its purpose, the Shepherd once more “mingled with the Powers.”

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THE THREE “BODIES” OF THE BUDDHA

The Shepherd was a Christ for those who prefer the name of Christian Tradition, a Buddha for those who are more familiar with Eastern terms. And that this is so may be clearly seen by considering the so-called “three bodies” (trikāyam) of a or the Buddha, for Buddhahood is a state beyond individuality in the separated sense in which we understand the term.

In the Chinese Version of Ashvaghosha’s now lost Sanskrit treatise, Mahāyāna-shraddhotpāda-shāstra, 1 we read:

“It is characteristic of all the Buddhas that they consider all sentient beings as their own self, and do not cling to their individual forms. How is this? Because they know truthfully that all sentient beings as well as their own self come from one and the same Suchness, and no distinction can be established among them.”

“All Tathāgatas are the Dharinakāya 2 itself, are the highest truth (paramārthasatya) itself, and have nothing to do with conditionality (samvṛittisatya) and compulsory actions; whereas the seeing, hearing, etc., of the sentient being diversify the Activity 3 of Tathāgatas.

“Now this Activity has a twofold aspect.

“The first depends on the phenomena-particularizing consciousness by means of which the Activity is conceived by the minds of all who fall short of the state of a Bodhisattva in their various degrees. This aspect is called the Body of Transformation (Nirmānakāya).

“But as the beings of this class do not know that the

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[paragraph continues]Body of Transformation is merely the shadow [or reflection] of their own evolving consciousness, they imagine it comes from some external sources, and so they give it a corporeal limitation. But the Body of Transformation [or what amounts to the same thing, the Dharmakāya] has nothing to do with Limitation or measurement.”

That is to say, a Buddha can only communicate with such minds by means of a form, that form being really that of their own most highly evolved consciousness. There are, however, others who have the consciousness of the “formless” state, but have not yet reached the Nirvāṇic Consciousness. These in this system are called Bodhisattvas.

“The second aspect [of the Dharmakāya] depends on the activity-consciousness (karmavijñāna), by means of which the Activity is conceived by the minds of the Bodhisattvas while passing from their first aspiration (chittotpāda) stage up to the height of Bodhisattva-hood. This is called the Body of Bliss (Sambhogakāya)” (pp. 100, 101).

We have used the term “formless state” in the penultimate paragraph to signify the states of consciousness in “worlds” called Arūpa; but these are only “formless” for consciousness which has not reached the Bodhisattva level—presumably the Buddhic plane of Neo-theosophical nomenclature.

For “this Body has infinite forms. The form has infinite attributes. The Attribute has infinite excellencies. And the accompanying reward of Bodhisattvas—that is, the region where they are predestined to be born—also has infinite merits and ornamentations. Manifesting itself everywhere, the Body of Bliss is infinite, boundless, limitless, unintermittent, directly coming forth from the Mind” (p. 101).

The older Chinese Version says: “It is boundless,

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cannot be exhausted, is free from the signs of limitation. Manifesting itself wherever it should manifest itself, it always exists by itself and is never destroyed” (p. 101, n. 2).

In other words, one who has reached the Nirvāṇic Consciousness—that is to say, a Master—can teach or be active on “planes” that are as yet unmanifest to us ordinary folk; these “planes,” however, even when the disciple is conscious of them, are conditioned by the self-limitation of his own imperfection. The Vehicles of this Activity are called Dharmakāya, Sambhogakāya and Nirmānakāya; and the limitation of their Activity is determined on the side of the disciple by the degree of his ability to function consciously in those states which are known in Neo-theosophical nomenclature respectively as those of Âtman, Buddhi and Higher Manas, or, in more general terms, those of the divine, spiritual and human aspects of the self.

In the first degree of conscious discipleship, then, the Master communicates with His disciples and teaches them by means of the Nirmānakāya; that is to say, He quickens the highest form of consciousness or conception of masterhood they have so far attained to—taking the form of their greatest love, perhaps, as they have known Him in the flesh, or as He has been told of as existing in the flesh, but not His own-form, which would transcend their consciousness.

The next stage is when the disciple learns to transcend his own “egoity,” in the ordinary sense of the word; this does not mean to say that his true individuality is destroyed, but instead of being tied down to one ego-vehicle, he has gained the power of manifesting himself wherever and however he will, at any moment of time; in brief, the power of self-generation on the plane of egoity, in that he has reached a higher

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state which is free from the limitations of a single line of egoity.

He now begins to realise in the very nature of his being that the “Self is in all and all in the Self.” Such a disciple, or Bodhisattva, is taught by the Master in this state of being, and the Kāya which he supplies for the energizing of his beloved Father is perfectly unintelligible to us, and can only be described as an expanded consciousness of utmost sympathy and compassion, which not only strives to blend with the Life of all beings, but also with the One Being in the world for him, the Beloved. Such a sensing of the Master’s Presence is called the Sambhogakāya of the Master, His Body of Bliss.

There is a still higher Perfection, the Dharmakāya, or Own-Nature of Masterhood. But how should the dim mind of one who is Without imagine the condition of One who is not only Within, but who combines both the Without and the Within in the Transcendent Unity of the Perfect Fullness?

THE PREACHING OF THE GNOSIS

27. With the exposition of the Consummation of the Teaching and the return to earth of the consciousness of the Seer, our treatise breaks off into a graphic instruction of how the Gnosis is to be utilized. The Wisdom is no man’s property; he who receives it holds it in trust for the benefit of the world-folk.

I am, however, inclined to believe that §§ 27 to 29 are a later interpolation, and that the treatise originally ran straight on after the conclusion of the Shepherd’s Instruction with the words: “But I recorded in my heart the Shepherd’s benefaction” (§ 30).

Until the end of § 26 we have moved in the

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atmosphere of an inner intimate personal instruction, set forth in a form evidently intended only for the few; indeed, as we find in other treatises emphatic injunctions to keep the teaching secret, we cannot but conclude that the oldest and most authoritative document of the school was guarded with the same secrecy. The general impression created by the instruction is not only that it itself is the consummation and reward of a strict and stern probation, and not a sermon to be preached on the house-tops, but also that those who followed that way were not propagandists, but rather members of a select philosophic community.

With § 27, however, all is changed; we are introduced to the picture of a man burning with enthusiasm to communicate, if not the direct teaching itself, at any rate the knowledge of its existence and saving power to all without distinction. In a few graphic sentences the history of the fortunes of this propagandist endeavour is sketched. An appeal is made of the most uncompromising nature; it is a clarion call to repentance, and we seem to be moving in an atmosphere that is Hebrew rather than Greek, prophetical rather than philosophical.

It would seem almost that this propagandist phase had been forced upon the community rather than that it was natural to it; something seems to have occurred which obliged it to enter the arena of general life and proclaim its existence publicly. What this compulsion was we have no means of determining with any exactitude, for the historical indications are very obscure. If we were to conjecture that it was the vigorous preaching of nascent Christianity which wrought this change, we should, I think, be taking part for whole, for prior to Christianity there was the most energetic propaganda made by the Jews, the

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intensity of which may be estimated by the phrase “Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte,” and the nature of which may be most clearly seen in the propaganda of the Sibylline writers, with whose diction the appeals to the “earth-born folk” in our text may be aptly compared, while the prayer at sunset may be paralleled with the prayers of the Essenes and Therapeuts.

On the other hand, the tradition of the Gnosis and Saving Faith preached by our Pœmandrists is distinctly not Hebrew; it is a philosophizing of other materials—materials which, as we have seen, were also partly used by Jewish and Christian mystics, and adapted to their own special traditions.

We thus see that at the time when Christianity came to birth there were many rival traditions contending for general recognition, all of them offering instruction in the Gnosis and hopes of Salvation, and I myself believe that all of them were partial manifestations of the impartial Quickening of the Spiritual Life which was at that time more abundantly poured forth than ever before or after in the Western world.

With § 30, if my conjecture of an interpolation is correct, the original treatise is continued, and we are told the nature of the awakening of the spiritual consciousness which has come to the new-born disciple.

Henceforth all things are new for him, they all have new meanings. He has become a man, instead of a “procession of fate”; he has reached the “Plain of Truth.” In Christian terms the Christ has been born in his heart consciously.

A HYMN OF PRAISE AND PRAYER FOR THE GNOSIS

31. The treatise is concluded with a most noble hymn, in which the further growth and effort of the

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man in spirit is set forth. Henceforth his effort will be to become like unto the Father Himself, to pass from Sonship into the Perfection of perfection, Identity or At-one-ment with the Father.

The sentence, “That I may give the Light to those in ignorance of the Race, my Brethren and Thy Sons,” seems to me to be either an interpolation, showing the same tendency as that of the propagandist section, or an indication that the whole hymn was added at the same time as the propagandist paragraphs, for the treatise proper seems to end naturally and consistently in the Hellenistic form of the tradition with the words, “I reached the Plain of Truth.” 1

THE NAME “POIMANDRES”

Many have already remarked that the name “Poimandres” is formed irregularly in Greek, and this has led to an interesting speculation by Granger, who writes:

“While, however, the name Poimandres does not answer to any Greek original, it is a close transliteration of a Coptic phrase. In the dialect of Upper Egypt p^em^en^etre means ‘the witness.’ That the Coptic article [p^e] should be treated as part of the name itself is not unusual; compare the name Pior. 2 Such a title corresponds very closely in style with the titles of other works of this same period—for example, the True Word of Celsus, or the Perfect Word, which is an alternative title of the Asclepius. The term Poemandres, therefore, on this supposition, contains an allusion to

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the widely spread legend of Hermes as witness, 1 a legend which is verified for us from several sources. But the writer has adapted the details to his purpose. Hermes is not himself the witness, but the herald of the witness.” 2

Granger then propounds the very strange theory, contradicted by all the phenomena and opposed to every authority, that the Coptic Gnostic works of the Askew and Bruce Codices were originally composed in Coptic with the adoption of Greek technical terms, whereas they are manifestly translations from the Greek. He, however, continues:

“There seems no adequate reason why such works may not have been composed in Coptic. The Egyptian Gnostic writings of the third century exhibit the same qualities of style as the Coptic biographies and apocalypses of the fourth and following centuries. And so I am prepared to believe that the Poemandres may have been first composed in Coptic. Or shall we say that the work was current from the first in both languages?” 3

We should say that the last guess is most highly improbable, and only denotes the indecision of the writer. The original “Pœmandres” may very well have been composed not in Coptic but in Demotic; but the reasons given by Granger, as based on the phenomena of the Gnostic Coptic writings, are not to be seriously considered. Nevertheless, the name “Poimandres” may be a Greek transliteration of an Egyptian name, though we hardly think that “The Witness”

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will suit the theme. In any case “Man-Shepherd” was certainly the idea conveyed to the Non-Egyptian by the name, however philologically unsound its form may be in Greek.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD

It has been no part of our task to attempt to trace the Hermes-idea along the line of pure Greek descent, for this would have led us too far from our immediate subject. There is, however, one element of that tradition which is of great interest, and to which we may draw the attention of the reader in passing. The beautiful idea of the Christ as the “Good Shepherd” is familiar to every Christian child. Why the Christ is the Shepherd of all men is shown us by this first of our marvellous treatises. In it we have the universal doctrine apart from any historical dogma, the eternal truth of an ever-recurring fact, and not the exaggeration of one instance of it.

The representation of Christ as the Good Shepherd was one of the earliest efforts of Christian art; but the prototype was far earlier than Christianity—in fact, it was exceedingly archaic. Statues of Hermes Kriophoros, or Hermes with a ram or lamb standing beside him, or in his arms, or on his shoulder, were one of the most favourite subjects for the chisel in Greece. We have specimens dating to the archaic period of Greek art. 1 Hermes in these archaic statues has a pointed cap, and not the winged head-dress and sandals of later art. This type in all probability goes back to Chaldæan symbolic art, to the bearers of the twelve “signs of the zodiac,” the “sacred animals.” These were, in one human correspondence, the twelve

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septs or classes of priests. Here we see that the Greek tradition itself was not pure Āryan even in its so-called archaic period. Chaldæa had given of her wisdom to post-diluvian Greece, even as she had perchance been in relation with Greece before the “flood.” Here, then, we have another element in the Hermes-idea. In fact, nowhere do we find a pure line of tradition; in every religion there are blendings and have been blendings. There was unconscious syncretism (and conscious also) long before the days of Alexandria, for unconscious syncretism is as old as race-blendings. Even as all men are kin, so are popular cults related; and even as the religion of nobler souls is of one paternity, so are the theosophies of all religions from one source.

One of the greatest secrets of the innermost initiated circles was the grand fact that all the great religions had their roots in one mother soil. And it was the spreading of the consciousness of this stupendous truth which subsequently—after the initial period of scepticism of the Alexandrian schools—gave rise to the many conscious attempts to synthesise the various phases of religion, and make “symphonies” of apparently contradictory philosophical tenets. Modern research, which is essentially critical and analytical, and rarely synthetical, classifies all these attempts under the term “syncretism,” a word which it invariably uses in a depreciatory sense, as characterising the blending of absolutely incompatible elements in the most uncritical fashion. But when the pendulum swings once more towards the side of synthesis, as it must do in the coming years—for we are but repeating to-day in greater detail what happened in the early centuries—then scholarship will once more recognise the unity of religion under the diversity of creeds and return to the old doctrine of the mysteries.

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In connection with the “Good Shepherd” glyph, it will be useful to quote from Granger’s instructive exposition on the subject, 1 where he writes:

“Since the identification of Jesus with Hermes took place in circles which formed part of the Christian community, 2 we shall not be surprised to find that one of the leading types of Christian art, the Good Shepherd, was immediately adopted from a current representation of the Greek Hermes. 3 As we see from Hippolytus (Refut., v. 7), the Gnostics were especially interested in Hermes as Hermes Logius, a type which was increasingly frequent in later Greek art. And this epithet was connected by them with the conception of Jesus as the Logos. Now another type of Hermes, the Kriophoros, seemed to bring together Jesus as the Logos and Jesus as the Good Shepherd. These representations of Jesus begin in the second century; and so they correspond in order of time with the appearance of the Gospel according to the Egyptians, and of those Gnostic compositions which largely depend upon it. 4

“Another fact leads us to think that the figure of

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the Good Shepherd had its roots in a previous tradition. ‘It is probable that there were no statues before the age of Constantine, except the Good Shepherd.’ 1 We must therefore add Hermes to the list of pagan types which were taken over for its own purpose by the rising Christian art.

“Moreover, we are enabled to advance one step further the long-standing controversy as to the portraits of Jesus. Since the figure of the Good Shepherd is borrowed from Greek sculpture, it cannot be used as evidence for the earliest conceptions about the appearance of Jesus. And so the arguments of Farrar and others fall to the ground, in so far as they take the presence of this type to show that there was no genuine tradition of Christ’s appearance. 2

“We are now in a position to throw a little further light upon the famous inscription of Abercius. The inscription speaks of a Shepherd—‘Who feedeth on the plains His flock of sheep, and hath great eyes that gaze forth every way. For He did teach me [how to understand and] scriptures worthy to believe.’ 3

“The Shepherd, whose great eyes look in every direction, is no other than Hermes treated as a symbol of Christ. And so some of the arguments which may be directed against the Christian character of this inscription, and to which Harnack 4 attaches an exaggerated weight, are turned aside.”

With all of this may be compared what we have

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already written in the Prolegomena on “The Popular Symbolic Representation of the Shepherd” in the chapter on “‘Hermas’ and ‘Hermes.’”

Compare also the Hymn to Attis in the Naassene tradition, where he is invoked “as Pan, as Bacchus, as Shepherd of bright stars.” This is the macrocosmic side of the microcosmic mystery.

We should also not forget the interesting grouping on a Christian lamp 1 and gem, 2 which goes back very probably to the third century. 3 It represents the Christ as the Good Shepherd, after the Hermes type, with a lamb on his shoulder. Above his head are the Seven “Planets,” the Lords of the Fate, and in addition the Sun and Moon on either side, as is frequently the case in Mithraic representations. Round his feet seven lambs 4 crowd, symbolical of the “seven peoples,” one under each “planet.” Moreover, on the right is Noah’s dove and ark, and Jonah being swallowed by the whale, while on the left is Jonah again, vomited on to the land and peacefully resting beneath the shade of the miraculous gourd-tree.

This seems to me to be a symbol of the mysteries, a glyph of rebirth. The lambs are the purified lower nature of the man, the purest essence of which is exalted to the head of the Great Man. This purified “little man” is swallowed by the Cosmic Fish, the Great Mother, the Womb of the Almighty, and the man is born again to rest under his own tree in the Paradise of the Further Shore.

It is also of interest to note that the Hermetic colonies already planted in Mesopotamia, in the earliest

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[paragraph continues]Islāmic times of which the Arabian writers tell us, called their head the “Shepherd.” 1

From all of which we conclude that the Good Shepherd was one of the leading ideas of Hellenistic theology.

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Footnotes

24:1 From Epiphanius, Hæres., xxvi. 3; see note to the first Hermes-Prayer (i. 11).

24:2 Symbolical of a high state of consciousness, the Mount of Perfection.

24:3 Cf. the Oxyrhynchus logion 5: “Jesus saith: Wherever there are [two], they are not without God, and wherever there is one alone, I say, I am with him.”

25:1 See note to the fifth Hermes-Prayer (v. 2).

26:1 Cf. F. F. F., 340, 341.

27:1 Hær., I. xxx. (Stieren, i. 363 ff.).

27:2 Hær., Fabb., i. 14. See F. F. F., pp. 188 ff.

27:3 “The Mind to Hermes,” C. H., xi. (xii.) 6, 7.

28:1 That is, the condition “seeing.”

29:1 Not Hōrus.

30:1 For references, see R. 39, n. 1; also 44.

30:2 Cf. my note on Plut., De Is. et Os., liv. 6, in the Prolegg.

30:3 De Ebriet., § 30.

32:1 The reader, however, may be referred to the chapters on “The Basilidian Gnosis,” “The Valentinian Movement,” “Some Outlines of Æonology,” and “The Sophia-Mythus,” in F. F. F., pp. 253-357.

38:1 Cf. Gen. i. 22 and 28, viii. 17, ix. 7, and xxxv. 11 (in the singular).

38:2 See, however, Frag. XX., and R. 126, n. 1. Cf. the same formula in C. H., iii. (iv.) 3 (P. 32, 11), and R. 116, n. 2.

38:3 And is printed in Boissonade’s (V. C.) edition of Michael Psellus, De Operatione Dæmonum (Nürnberg, 1838), pp. 153, 154.

38:4 If, indeed, the Psellus of our scholion is the Younger Psellus (eleventh century); the De Op. Dæm., however, is ascribed by many to the Elder Psellus (ninth century). See, however, the section “The Original MS. of our Corpus” in ch. i. of the “Prolegomena.”

42:1 Cf. Com. on C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 14.

42:2 Cf. Porphyry, Plotini Vita, xxii., ed. Creuzer (Oxford, 1835); also Theosoph. Rev. (July 1898), p. 403.

44:1 Ashvaghosha’s Discourse on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna. Translated for the first time from the Chinese Version by Teitaro Suzuki (Chicago, 1900). Mahāyāna means the “Great Vehicle” of Buddhism.

44:2 Lit. Body of the Law.

44:3 The italics are mine throughout.

50:1 It is to be noticed that the Hymn is a Song of Holiness. “Holy art thou” is nine times repeated—most probably intentionally. This was noticed long ago by Casaubon. See R. 58, n. 3.

50:2 Palladius, Hist. Laus., 89.

51:1 G. has just referred to the story of Hermes being witness for Horus when indicted on a charge of bastardy by Typhon, as related in Plutarch.

51:2 Granger (F.), “The Poemandres of Hermes Trismegistus,” J. Th. Stud., vol. v., no. 191, p. 400.

51:3 Ibid., p. 401.

52:1 See Reseller’s Lexikon, art. “Hermes.” “Hermes in der Kunst”—“Periode des Archaïsmus.”

54:1 Op. cit., pp. 408 ff.

54:2 G. seems here to be referring to the Naassene Document, but without any suspicion apparently of its composite character.

54:3 See Sittl, Klassische Kunstarchäologie, 777, 809, 819.

54:4 G. here again refers apparently to the Naassene Documents, which, however, did not depend on the Gospel according to the Egyptians, as we have shown; nor have we any sure ground for dating this widespread mystic gospel of Egypt as being of the second century rather than of the first. G. (p. 411) suggests that the scene of the Gospel of the Egyptians was on top of the Mount of Olives after the resurrection, which may very well be the case, and that the title of C. H., xiii. (xiv.), “The Secret Sermon on the Mountain,” has reference to this gospel, which is by no means probable, for our sermon keeps entirely within its own tradition in its setting.

55:1 Lowrie, Christian Art and Archæology, p. 290.

55:2 Taken in connection with the above quotation from Lowrie, we should say that it disposes of the whole contention. And for further corroboration of this view we would refer the reader to the Acts of John.

55:3 G. gives the Greek text only, omitting the first line, which runs: “The disciple of the Pure Shepherd.” Cf. R. 115.

55:4 Cf. Class. Rev., ix. 297.

56:1 Garucci, Storia della Arte christiana, vi. tav. 474; Perret, Catacombes de Rome, tab. 17, no. 5.

56:2 Perret, ibid., tab. 16, no. 80

56:3 R. 113.

56:4 The gem has only six.

57:1 Cf. Chwolsohn (D.), Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, ii. 628. Cf. R. 166 ff.

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CORPUS HERMETICUM (II.)

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THE GENERAL SERMON

(The title only is preserved in our Corpus, the text having disappeared with the loss of a quire or quires before the parent copy came into the hands of Psellus.)

*          *          *          *          *

*          *          *          *          *

*          *          *          *          *

*          *          *          *          *

*          *          *          *          *

*          *          *          *          *

*          *          *          *          *

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CORPUS HERMETICUM II. (III.)

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TO ASCLEPIUS

(Text: P. 19-30; Pat. 18b-20.)

*          *          *          *          *

1. Hermes. 1 All that is moved, Asclepius, is it not moved in something and by something?

Asclepius. Assuredly.

Her. And must not that in which it’s moved be greater than the moved?

Asc. It must.

Her. Mover, again, has greater power than moved?

Asc. It has, of course.

Her. The nature, furthermore, of that in which it’s moved must be quite other from the nature of the moved?

Asc. It must completely.

2. Her. Is not, again, this cosmos vast, [so vast] that than it there exists no body greater?

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Asc. Assuredly.

Her. And massive too, for it is crammed with multitudes of other mighty frames, nay rather all the other bodies that there are?

Asc. It is.

Her. And yet the cosmos is a body?

Asc. It is a body.

Her. And one that’s moved?

3. Asc. Assuredly.

Her. Of what size, then, must be the space in which it’s moved; and of what kind [must be] the nature [of that space]? Must it not be far vaster [than the cosmos], in order that it may be able to find room for its continued course, so that the moved may not be cramped for want of room and lose its motion?

Asc. Something, Thrice-greatest one, it needs must be, immensely vast.

4. Her. And of what nature? Must it not be, Asclepius, of just the contrary? And is not contrary to body bodiless?

Asc. Agreed.

Her. Space, then, is bodiless. But bodiless must either be some godlike thing or God [Himself]. And by “some godlike thing” I mean no more the generable but the ingenerable. 1

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5. If, then, space be some godlike thing, it is substantial 1; but if ’tis God [Himself], it transcends substance. But it is to be thought of otherwise [than God], and in this way.

God is first “thinkable” 2 for us, not for Himself, for that the thing that’s thought doth fall beneath the thinker’s sense. God then can not be “thinkable” unto Himself, in that He’s thought of by Himself as being nothing else than what He thinks. But He is “something else” for us, and so He’s thought of by us.

6. If space is, therefore, to be thought, [it should] not, [then, be thought as] God, but space. If God is also to be thought, [He should] not [be conceived] as space, but energy that can contain [all space].

Further, 3 all that is moved is moved not in the moved but in the stable. And that which moves [another] is of course stationary, for ’tis impossible that it should move with it.

Asc. How is it, then, that things down here, Thrice-greatest one, are moved with those that are [already] moved? For thou hast said 4 the errant spheres were moved by the inerrant one.

Her. This is not, O Asclepius, a moving with, but one against; they are not moved with

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one another, but one against the other. It is this contrariety which turneth the resistance of their motion into rest. For that resistance is the rest of motion.

7. Hence, too, the errant spheres, being moved contrarily to the inerrant one, are moved by one another by mutual contrariety, [and also] by the stable one through contrariety itself. And this can otherwise not be.

The Bears 1 up there, which neither set nor rise, think’st thou they rest or move?

Asc. They move, Thrice-greatest one.

Her. And what their motion, my Asclepius?

Asc. Motion that turns for ever round the same.

Her. But revolution—motion round same—is fixed by rest. For “round-the-same” doth stop “beyond-same.” “Beyond-same” then, being stopped, if it be steadied in “round-same”—the contrary stands firm, being rendered ever stable by its contrariety.

8. Of this I’ll give thee here on earth an instance, which the eye can see. Regard the animals down here,—a man, for instance, swimming! The water moves, yet the resistance of his hands and feet give him stability, so that he is not borne along with it, nor sunk thereby.

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Asc. Thou hast, Thrice-greatest one, adduced a most clear instance.

Her. All motion, then, is caused in station and by station.

The motion, therefore, of the cosmos (and of every other hylic animal 1) will not be caused by things exterior to the cosmos, but by things interior [outward] to the exterior—such [things] as soul, or spirit, or some such other thing incorporal.

’Tis not its body that doth move the living thing in it; nay, not even the whole [body of the universe a lesser] body e’en though there be no life in it. 2

9. Asc. What meanest thou by this, Thrice-greatest one? Is it not bodies, then, that move the stock and stone and all the other things inanimate?

Her. By no means, O Asclepius. The something-in-the-body, the that-which-moves the thing inanimate, this surely’s not a body, for that it moves the two of them—both body of the lifter and the lifted? So that a thing that’s lifeless will not move a lifeless thing. That which doth move [another thing] is animate, in that it is the mover.

Thou seest, then, how heavy laden is the soul,

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for it alone doth lift two bodies. That things, moreover, moved are moved in something as well as moved by something is clear.

10. Asc. Yea, 1 O Thrice-greatest one, things moved must needs be moved in something void. 2

Her. Thou sayest well, O [my] Asclepius! 3 For naught of things that are is void. Alone the “is-not” ’s void [and] stranger to subsistence. For that which is subsistent can never change to void. 4

Asc. Are there, then, O Thrice-greatest one, no such things as an empty cask, for instance, and an empty jar, a cup and vat, and other things like unto them?

Her. Alack, Asclepius, for thy far-wandering from the truth! Think’st thou that things most full and most replete are void?

11. Asc. How meanest thou, Thrice-greatest one?

Her. Is not air body?

Asc. It is.

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Her. And doth this body not pervade all things, and so, pervading, fill them? And “body”; doth body not consist from blending of the “four”? Full, then, of air are all thou callest void; and if of air, then of the “four.” 1

Further, of this the converse follows, that all thou callest full are void—of air; for that they have their space filled out with other bodies, and, therefore, are not able to receive the air therein. These, then, which thou dost say are void, they should be hollow named, not void; for they not only are, but they are full of air and spirit.

12. Asc. Thy argument (logos), Thrice-greatest one, is not to be gainsaid; air is a body. Further, it is this body which doth pervade all things, and so, pervading, fill them. What are we, then, to call that space in which the all doth move?

Her. The Bodiless, Asclepius.

Asc. What, then, is Bodiless?

Her. ’Tis Mind and Reason (Logos), whole out of whole, all self-embracing, free from all body, from all error free, unsensible to body and untouchable, self stayed in self, containing all, preserving those that are, whose rays, to use a

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likeness, are Good, Truth, Light beyond light, the Archetype of soul.

Asc. What, then, is God?

13. Her. Not any one of these is He; for He it is that causeth them to be, both all and each and every thing of all that are. Nor hath He left a thing beside that is-not; but they are all from things-that-are and not from things-that-are-not. For that the things-that-are-not have naturally no power of being anything, but rather have the nature of the inability-to-be. And, conversely, the things-that-are have not the nature of some time not-being.

14. Asc. What say’st thou ever, then, God is?

Her. God, therefore, is not Mind, but Cause that the Mind is; God is not Spirit, but Cause that Spirit is; God is not Light, but Cause that the Light is. Hence should one honour God with these two names [the Good and Father]—names which pertain to Him alone and no one else.

For no one of the other so-called gods, no one of men, or daimones, can be in any measure Good, but God alone; and He is Good alone and nothing else. The rest of things are separable all from the Good’s nature; for [all the rest] are soul and body, which have no space that can contain 1 the Good.

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15. For that as mighty is the Greatness of the Good as is the Being of all things that are—both bodies and things bodiless, things sensible and intelligible things. Call not thou, therefore, aught else Good, for thou would’st impious be; nor anything at all at any time call God but Good alone, for so thou would’st again be impious.

16. Though, then, the Good is spoken of by all, it is not understood by all, what thing it is. Not only, then, is God not understood by all, but both unto the gods and some of men they out of ignorance do give the name of Good, though they can never either be or become Good. For they are very different from God, while Good can never be distinguished from Him, for that God is the same as Good.

The rest of the immortal ones are natheless honoured with the name of God, and spoken of as gods; but God is Good not out of courtesy but out of nature. For that God’s nature and the Good is one; one is the kind of both, from which all other kinds [proceed].

The Good is He who gives all things and naught receives. 1 God, then, doth give all things and receive naught. God, then, is Good, and Good is God.

17. The other name of God is Father, again

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because He is the that-which-maketh all. The part of father is to make.

Wherefore child-making is a very great and a most pious thing in life for them who think aright, and to leave life on earth without a child a very great misfortune and impiety; and he who hath no child is punished by the daimons after death.

And this the punishment: that that man’s soul who hath no child, shall be condemned unto a body with neither man’s nor woman’s nature, a thing accurst beneath the sun.

Wherefore, Asclepius, let not your sympathies be with the man who hath no child, but rather pity his mishap, knowing what punishment abides for him.

Let all that has been said, then, be to thee, Asclepius, an introduction to the gnosis of the nature of all things.

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Footnotes

59:1 From here till the end of § 4 is quoted by Stobæus, Phys., xviii. 2; G. pp. 147-149; W. 157, 6 ff.

60:1 That is, beyond genesis, the universe of becoming, or the sensible universe.

61:1 οὐσιωδές.

61:2 Or intelligible.

61:3 From here till the end of § 9 (exclusive of the last sentence) is quoted by Stobæus, Phys., xix. 2; G. pp. 154-157; W. 163, 14 ff.

61:4 Sc. in some previous sermon.

62:1 Sc. Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.

63:1 That is, living material organism.

63:2 That is, in the lesser body.

64:1 For a criticism of Parthey’s text of the following three paragraphs, see R., pp. 209, 300. Parthey had uncritically conflated the text of our Corpus and the readings of Stobæus, in ignorance that he had before him two different recensions of the same text. I follow Reitzenstein.

64:2 Cf. P. S. A., xxxiii. 1.

64:3 From here to the end of § 12 is quoted by Stobæus, Phys., xviii. 3; G. pp. 149-150; W. 158, 13 ff.

64:4 The variant in Stobæus reads: “No single thing of things that are is void by reason of the [very nature of] subsistence. The ‘is’ could not be ‘is’ were it not full of subsistence [itself].” The rest of the variants need not be noted in translation.

65:1 The physical elements—earth, air, water and fire—were supposed to be severally combinations of the Primal Elements, Earth, Air, Water and Fire, one Element dominating in each. Thus our air would consist of a proportion of all four Great Elements, but would have Air predominant in it; and so for the rest.

66:1 In the original there is a word-play—χωριστά (separable) and χωρῆσαι (contain)—which is impossible to reproduce in translation.

67:1 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 3: ’Tis “He alone who taketh naught.”

COMMENTARY

“AN INTRODUCTION TO THE GNOSIS OF THE NATURE OF ALL THINGS”

This treatise has no precise title, for, as we have already seen in treating of the make-up of the Corpus, the traditional title, “Of Hermes to Tat, the General Sermon,” found in all the MSS., cannot apply to our

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tractate, which is addressed to Asclepius, and from which Stobæus quotes under the general title, “Of Hermes, from the [Sermons] to Asclepius.”

The supposition, however, that Sermon (II.) has dropped out from the parent copy of our Corpus, owing to the loss of one or more quires or quaternions, explains those phenomena so admirably, that it has only to be brought forward, as it has been by Reitzenstein, to carry conviction.

It is a curious fact, however, that Stobæus starts his quotations from this treatise precisely with the same words with which our text begins; nevertheless these words plunge us so immediately into a secondary subject, that Reitzenstein thinks there may have been a more general introduction which Johannes may very well have omitted.

That, however, the lost pages of our Corpus should have contained such an introduction, broken at precisely the very same point to a word, would seem to be a coincidence the reverse of probable; nevertheless the treatise itself purports to be a very formal one, for we learn from the concluding words (§ 17) that it was intended to be “An Introduction to the Gnosis (προγνωσία) of the Nature of All Things.”

We are, therefore, driven to conclude that, in spite of a most improbable coincidence, the beginning may have been lost, and that we have therefore to regret the loss not only of the whole of the “General Sermon” to Tat, but also of the introduction to the “Introduction to the Gnosis” addressed to Asclepius, and therewith, in all probability, some precious indications of how “Tat” and “Asclepius” are to be precisely defined.

Parthey’s conflated title (p. 19) from the MSS., and Stobæus, “Of Hermes the Thrice-greatest, the General Sermon to Asclepius,” must therefore be definitely

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abandoned, and, in lieu of the lost general title, we must be content with the simple heading, “To Asclepius.”

SPACE IS A PLENUM

The subject is that of the Fullness of Being or the Plenum of things. Space is a Plenum,—the fundamental concept of modern scientific speculation.

Asclepius, however, must guard himself against the confusion of Space with God; for God is not Space, but Cause thereof,—the True Transcendency of “that which can contain all things” (§ 6).

“In Him we move.” “All that is moved is moved in what is stable,” or “in Him who stands” (ἐν ἑστῶτι); where it is to be noticed that the term, “He who stands,” is found in Philo, and is made much of in Gnostic tradition, especially in the so-called Simonian Gnosis, for in The Great Announcement, from which Hippolytus has preserved some passages, the Logos is called “He who stands” or “He who has stood, stands and will stand.” 1 This is the aspect of the Reason of things that holds and compacts all together, the Stock or Pillar of Immobility, the opposite aspect being that of the Separator or Divider; the two together forming the Cross of Manifestation, the resolution of the Sphere of Sameness.

The World-Soul is in perpetual motion; this perpetual motion is ordered and reduced to a cosmos and harmony of motion by the introduction into it, by means of the Reason, of the root-forms of motion (mentioned in the Timæus and elsewhere);—up, down; right, left; front, back; in, out; round,—and no-motion.

All bodies are essentially inert; it is the soul that moves them, either immediately or mediately (§ 9).

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What the precise meaning of § 10 may be I cannot say; the tradition of the original text was variable, showing that the copyists had difficulty with it. As, however, the doctrine throughout is that of a Plenum (as, indeed, it is elsewhere in the Trismegistic writings), I can only suppose that the instructor of “Asclepius” was endeavouring to clinch his point by arguing that the only Void was the “is-not” or non-being; now as nonbeing cannot possibly “exist,” there can be no such thing as Void.

THE SPOUSE OF DEITY

That, then, in which “the All doth move,” in which all things “live and move and have their being,” is the Bodiless; in other words, the Mind or Reason of God, the Logos,—who, as Philo tells us, is the Place of God,—that is, Infinite Space itself, the Container of all things, the very Spouse of Deity. Spouse or Son, it matters not; that in which all moves and lives and breathes is Wisdom, Good and Truth, the Æon of æons, Light of light, Life of life, the Archetype of Soul itself (§ 12).

GOD IS CAUSE THAT SPIRIT IS

“God, then, is not Spirit,” 1 much less “a spirit,” 2 “but Cause that Spirit is”; for God is “Good alone.” Therefore: “Call not thou aught else Good.”

And now let us turn to F. C. Conybeare’s important criticism of Matt. xix. 17 = Mk. x. 18 = Lk. xviii. 19, in the first number of The Hibbert Journal, 3 where he

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brings forward very strong evidence that the original reading was: “Call thou me not Good; One only is Good, God the Father,”—a reading known to Marcion, the Clementine Homilies, Athanasius, Didymus, Tatian, and Origen (the two last inferentially).

If we compare this with our text, “Call not thou, therefore, aught else Good, for thou would’st impious be; nor any thing at all at any time call Good but God alone,” and “He is Good alone and nothing else,”—we cannot fail to be struck with the precise similarity of the phrasing and blend of ideas.

If, further, we take this in connection with the still more striking contrast, “God is not Spirit,” with the Johannine “God is Spirit,” we might at first sight almost persuade ourselves that our treatise had these Christian declarations immediately in mind. But the general phenomena of similarity of diction and idea of the Trismegistic literature with those of the New Testament documents is so much more satisfactorily explained by the fact that both literatures use mainly the common Hellenistic theological phrases of the time, that we need not distress ourselves with any suggestions either of plagiarism or of direct controversy.

Doubtless the declaration, “God is Spirit,” was a commonplace among the religio-philosophical circles of the time, and Hermes is here simply refining on a common idea. The reading, “Call thou not me Good,” which appears to have been preserved mainly in Gnostic tradition, may also as easily have come from a similar general idea that the One and Only One was Good alone.

It is, moreover, of special interest to notice that the second clause of the Marcionite reading runs: “There is one [only] Good, God the Father,” while in our

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treatise the two names of God are given as Good and Father; and so we read (§ 16): “God, then, is Good, and Good is God”; and immediately after (§ 17): “The other name of God is Father.” 1

Striking however, as are those coincidences, we are nevertheless wholly unpersuaded that there was any immediate literary contact between those two sets of Scripture. All that can be said is that their literary similarities are due to a common theological language and their many points of contact in ideas to a generally common atmosphere of theological conceptions.

HE WHO IS WITHOUT A WIFE IS HALF A MAN

Again, the doctrine of the duty to beget children (§ 17) seems at first sight to be an interpolation by a Jewish editor, the Jews holding that “he who is without a wife is half a man.” We must, however, remember that the Egyptian priests were married, and that the rule with them, as with the Pythagoreans, was that a man should first of all discharge his duty to society and live the “practical,” “political” or “social” life, before retiring into the life of contemplation. He must first beget children, not only that the race might be continued, but also that bodies might be supplied by parents devoted to the ideal of the religious or philosophic life, so that advanced souls might find birth in favourable conditions, and so the Order be continued.

This also is the ancient rule laid down by the Manu of the Āryan Hindus in the Mānava Dharma Shāstra. The duties of the householder station of life (Gṛihastha āshrama) must first be performed, before the parents can retire to the contemplative life (Vānaprastha

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āshrama). In special cases, however, exceptions could be made.

It may then be that Asclepius stands for those pupils who were still living the married life.

The scribe of the thirteenth century, Codex B. (Parisinus, 1220), has laconically written on the margin of this paragraph the single word “nonsense” (φλυαρία); he was presumably a monk.

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Footnotes

70:1 R., p. 305, also makes a brief reference to this.

71:1 Cf. Joh. iv. 24: “πνεῦμα ὁ Θεός.”

71:2 As the A.V. has it erroneously.

71:3 See his article, “Three Early Doctrinal Modifications of the Text of the Gospels,” in The Hibbert Journal (Oct. 1902), pp. 98-113. J. R. Wilkinson’s few remarks (H. J., Ap. 1903, pp. 575, 576) on Conybeare’s criticism of this synoptic passage do not seem to me to be of any weight.

73:1 Cf. the expression, “God, Father and the Good,” C. H., x. (xi.) 1.

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CORPUS HERMETICUM III. (IV.)

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THE SACRED SERMON

OF HERMES

(Text: P. 31-33; Pat. 8b-9.)

1. The Glory of all things is God, Godhead and Godly Nature. Source of the things that are is God, who is both Mind and Nature,—yea Matter, the Wisdom that reveals all things. Source [too] is Godhead,—yea Nature, Energy, Necessity, and End, and Making-new-again. 1

Darkness that knew no bounds was in Abyss, and Water [too] and subtle Breath intelligent; these were by Power of God in Chaos.

Then Holy Light arose; and there collected ’neath Dry Space 2 from out Moist Essence

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[paragraph continues]Elements; and all the Gods do separate things out from fecund Nature.

2. All things being undefined and yet unwrought, the light things were assigned unto the height, the heavy ones had their foundations laid down underneath the moist part of Dry Space, 1 the universal things being bounded off by Fire and hanged in Breath to keep them up.

And 2 Heaven was seen in seven circles; its Gods were visible in forms of stars with all their signs; while Nature had her members made articulate together with the Gods in her. And [Heaven’s] periphery revolved in cyclic course, borne on by Breath of God.

3. And every God by his own proper power brought forth what was appointed him. Thus there arose four-footed beasts, and creeping things, and those that in the water dwell, and things with wings, and everything that beareth seed, and grass, and shoot of every flower, all having in themselves seed of again-becoming. 3

And they selected out 4 the births 5 of men for gnosis of the works of God and attestation of the energy of Nature; the multitude of men for

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lordship over all beneath the Heaven and gnosis of its blessings, that they might increase in increasing and multiply in multitude, and every soul infleshed by revolution of the Cyclic Gods, for observation of the marvels of the Heaven and Heaven’s Gods’ revolution, and of the works of God and energy of Nature, for tokens of its blessings, for gnosis of the power of God, that they might know the fates that follow good and evil [deeds] and learn the cunning work of all good arts.

4. [Thus] there begins their living and their growing wise, according to the fate appointed by the revolution of the Cyclic Gods, and their deceasing for this end.

And there shall be memorials mighty of their handiworks upon the earth, leaving dim trace behind when cycles are renewed.

For every birth of flesh ensouled, and of the fruit of seed, and every handiwork, though it decay, shall of necessity renew itself, both by the renovation of the Gods and by the turning-round of Nature’s rhythmic wheel.

For that whereas the Godhead is Nature’s ever-making-new-again the cosmic mixture, Nature herself is also co-established in that Godhead.

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Footnotes

75:1 Cf. P. S. A., xxvi 2.

75:2 Lit. “Sand”; this presumably refers to the Light, and would thus mean “within the area or sphere of Light”—that is to say, manifestation. The “Moist Essence” is apparently the Water of Chaos, or primal substance.

76:1 ὑφ᾽ ὑγρᾷ ἄμμῳ; presumably the “Water” of space. The heavy things are apparently primæval or cosmic “Earth.”

76:2 The emended text from here to the end of the first sentence of § 3 is given by R. 47, n. 1.

76:3 Or “reincarnation” (παλιγγενεσίας).

76:4 ἐσπερμολόγουν.

76:5 τὰς γενέσεις.

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COMMENTARY

TEXT AND TITLE

The text seems to be very corrupt, and at one time I thought it incomplete; but it may very well end with the reference to the mighty deeds of the men of old.

The title “Sacred Sermon” would lead us to expect something of a special nature, something that would constitute a basis of doctrine. For we hear of the “Sacred Sermon” of Orpheus, and of the “Sacred Sermon” of Pythagoras, and are told that they formed the most sacred deposits of these two mystic schools respectively, and were regarded with special reverence; they thus seem to have been looked upon in some fashion as containing the groundwork of these systems.

And this is precisely what we find with our treatise; it is to a large extent a summary of the general ideas of the “Shepherd” cosmogony adapted to the needs of a simpler formularization.

When, however, Reitzenstein (p. 193) refers to this treatise cursorily as the preaching of some prophet or other which has been transferred to Hermes by the Redactor of our Corpus, he suggests that we are dealing with a doctrine foreign to the cosmogonical ideas of the “Shepherd.” It is, indeed, true that if we compare the data of the two treatises together, detail by detail, we shall find strong contradictions; but the general “feel” of both is the same, the general atmosphere is identical.

THE TRINITY

Prefixed to the cosmogenesis is a formal theological proœm, the precise meaning of which escapes me because of its almost mnemonic nature; it is, indeed

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quite in sūtra style. There appears, however, to be a distinct trinitarian 1 idea lurking in the first sentence, the trinity consisting of God (ὁ Θεὸς) and Godhead (τὸ θεῖον) and Nature (ἡ φύσις). The Glory or Power of all things is this Divine Trinity. The Source (or Beginning), the End and the Ever-renewing of all things are owing to this Triad. All three seem to be almost interchangeable terms. The Godhead is the Mind of God, Godly Nature is the Wisdom of God. Again, at the end of the sermon (§ 4) we are told that the Godhead (or that which is Divine) is “Nature’s ever-making-new-again the cosmic mixture.” Godhead in operation is Nature, while at the same time Nature is co-established in Godhead, and both are one in God, the Source of all.

The cosmogenesis begins with the grandiose image: “Darkness that knew no bounds was in Abyss.”

We have already, in commenting on “Darkness” in the “Pœmandres” treatise, referred, in explanation, to a Gnostic tradition in which the Primal Elements appear as Water, Darkness, Abyss, and Chaos, and have given some reason for ascribing the form of this tradition to Egypt—that is, Archaic Egypt, a parallel tradition to the Sumerian, both derived from a still more Archaic source.

FROM THE SYSTEM OF THE NICOLAÏTANS

If, now, we turn to Epiphanius (remembering that he picked up what he knew or thought he knew about the Gnostics in Egypt), we shall find that he has preserved from another Gnostic system an even more striking parallel with our text.

The Bishop of Salamis is denouncing the Nicolaïtans, 2 who for him were the earliest Christian Gnostics, there

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being very numerous and various sects of them, all deriving from a certain Nicolaus, whom Epiphanius would have us believe to have been one of the first seven deacons of the Church.

If, in reality, however, the Nicolaïtans = the Balaamites of early Talmudic Rabbinism, 1 then the original Nicolaïtans were the earliest Christians, for “Balaamites” was the Rabbinical by-name of the followers of Balaam (Bileam) = Jeschu, and Balaam = Nicolaos, in Hebrew and Greek respectively.

Curiously enough, moreover, in the paragraph (§ 4) before the one from which we are going to quote, Epiphanius ascribes the use of the mystic words, “Kaulakau Kaulakau,” to the Nicolaïtans, words which we have, with high probability, shown in the chapter “Myth of Man in the Mysteries” (§ 16 J., end) to have been used by a Jewish Gnostic of the time of Philo, writing in an Egyptian environment, and dealing with the Man-tradition, which is one of the main elements of the “Pœmandres” doctrine. All of which carries us back to the dawn of Christianity.

Speaking, then, of these Nicolaïtans, Epiphanius writes (xxv. 5):

“Others of them, again, plaster together empty names, saying: There was Darkness and Abyss (βυθός) and Water; and Spirit in the midst of them made separation of them.” 2

Here we have precisely the same elements as in our text for the foundation of a cosmogonical representation. What precise relationship these various traditions may have had to one another we cannot say with any certainty; but what we can say is that the writer or

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writers of our treatise are dealing with a material common to themselves, to pre-Christian Jewish Gnosticism and the earliest forms of the Christian Gnosis.

THE “BOOKS OF THE CHALDÆANS”

The sentence (in § 2), “All things being undefined and yet unwrought (ἀκατασκευάστων)” is also to be noticed, and, together with the opening sentence of the cosmogony, compared with the LXX. version of Gen. i. 2:

“And the earth was invisible and as yet unwrought (ἀκατασκεύαστος), and Darkness was upon the Abyss, and the Spirit of God was borne upon the Water.”

Are we, then, to suppose that our Trismegistic writer based himself directly upon this famous “oracle” of Jewish Scripture?

The Jewish Gnostics would doubtless do so in their commentaries; but the phenomena of the Christianized Jewish Gnostic systems persuade us rather that these Gnostic Jews did not derive their ideas directly from the text of their national Scripture, but from what we may call parallel traditions of an esoteric nature. We shall see later on, when treating of Zosimus, that there were translations of the Chaldæan sacred books in the Alexandrian Library, and we cannot but believe that the general ideas of Chaldæan cosmogony were familiar to all the learned of the time. For Chaldæa and Egypt were regarded as the two most wisdom-loving nations of antiquity, the two most sacred lands. What wonder, then, that Chaldæan and Egyptian ideas should be blended together, and turned out into a “scientific” whole, by the spirit of Greek “philosophizing,” in our treatises?

I would therefore conclude that both here, and in

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the repetition of the formula, “increase in increasing and multiply in multitude” (§ 3), from the “Pœmandres” treatise (§ 18), the similarities are not due to direct plagiarism, but to the fact that such logoi were “in the air.” I would also suggest that the somewhat peculiar term ἀκατασκεύαστος was not original with the Greek Targum of Genesis, first made at Alexandria some 250 years B.C., but that it was rather taken from the theological and philosophical language of the day and used by the Hebrew translators; that, in brief, in the LXX. translation already we have to take into account the strong influence of the technology of Hellenistic theology.

With regard to the whole of our treatise, I would suggest that we have the heads of topics which were to be subsequently explained and commented upon, rather than a didactic treatise setting forth a clear teaching. Like the proem, the cosmogenesis itself is straitly condensed, so condensed that the indications are too vague for us to form any clear mental picture of the process that is suggested. We have nothing but a series of headings that may have meant something very definite to the writer—may, in fact, have summed up for him a whole body of doctrine—but which for us, in our ignorance of detail, can have but little precise meaning.

To add to our difficulties, the text, as we have already said, appears to be very faulty. It is very probable that owing to its original brevity, copyists and readers would be tempted to gloss it in the interests of what would appear to them greater clearness; these glosses creeping into the text later on would, since the gloss-makers did not know the original scheme, blurr rather than elucidate the mother-text—and hence our tears.

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The most striking doctrine in the exposition is that of Renewal or Making-new-again (ἀνανέωσις). All animal and vegetable forms contain in themselves “the seed of again-becoming” (τὸ σπέρμα τῆς παλιγγενεσίας). I do not think that this is intended simply to mean that the individual is continued in the species; for we read that “every birth of flesh ensouled . . . shall of necessity renew itself (ἀνανεωθήσεται).” The doctrine that is preached is, therefore, that of palingenesis or “re-incarnation”; the renewal on the kārmic wheel of birth-and-death (φύσεως κύκλου ἐναριθμίου δρόμημα).

THE “FLOOD”

The last point to which we need call the reader’s attention is the sentence: “And there shall be memorials mighty of their handiworks upon the earth, leaving dim trace behind when cycles are renewed.”

The thought of the writer is evidently turned back towards the past, to a time when a mighty race, devoted to growth in wisdom, lived on earth and left great monuments of their wisdom in the work of their hands, dim traces of which were to be seen “in the renewal of the times.” This seems to me to be a clear reference to the general belief of the time (commonly, though erroneously, called Stoic) that there were alternate periods of destruction, by fire and water, and of renewal. In Egypt the common belief, as we have pointed out elsewhere, was that the last destruction had been by water and flood. Before this Flood our author believed there had been a mighty race of Egyptians, the race of the First Hermes, and that some dim traces of the mighty works of this bygone wisdom-loving civilization were still to be seen.

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I am, myself, strongly inclined to believe in this tradition; and I have sometimes speculated as to the possibility of there being buried beneath one or more of the pyramids the remains of some prehistoric buildings (perhaps also of pyramid-shape) that have survived the “Flood.”

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Footnotes

79:1 Not, of course, in a technical Christian sense.

79:2 Adv. Hær., xxv. 1-5.

80:1 See D. J. L., p. 188, where this identification is worked out with some probability.

80:2 Ed. Dindorf (Leipzig, 1859), ii. 35, 36.

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CORPUS HERMETICUM IV. (V.)

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THE CUP OR MONAD

OF HERMES TO TAT

(Text: P. 34-40; Pat. 26b-27.)

1. Hermes. With Reason (Logos), not with hands, did the World-maker 1 make the universal World 2; so that thou thus shouldst think of Him as everywhere and ever-being, the Author of all things, and One and Only, who by His Will 3 all beings hath created.

This Body of Him is a thing no man can touch, or see, or measure, a Body inextensible, like to no other frame. ’Tis neither Fire nor Water, Air nor Breath 4; yet all of them come from it. 5 Now being Good He willed to consecrate this [Body] to Himself alone, and set its Earth in order and adorn it. 6

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2. So down [to Earth] He sent the Cosmos 1 of this Frame Divine, 2—man, a life that cannot die, and yet a life that dies. And o’er [all other] lives and over Cosmos [too], did man excel by reason of the Reason (Logos) and the Mind. For contemplator of God’s works did man become; he marvelled and did strive to know their Author.

3. Reason (Logos) indeed, O Tat, among all men hath He distributed, but Mind not yet; not that He grudgeth any, for grudging cometh not from Him, 3 but hath its place below, within the souls of men who have no Mind.

Tat. Why then did God, O father, not on all bestow a share of Mind?

Her. He willed, my son, to have it set up in the midst for souls, just as it were a prize.

4. Tat. And where hath He had it set up?

Her. 4 He tilled a mighty Cup 5 with it, and sent it down, joining a Herald [to it], to whom He gave command to make this proclamation to the hearts of men:

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Baptize 1 thyself with this Cup’s baptism, what heart can do so, thou that hast faith thou canst ascend to Him that hath sent down the Cup, thou that dost know for what thou didst come into being!

As many then as understood the Herald’s tidings and doused themselves in Mind, became partakers in the Gnosis; and when they had “received the Mind” they were made “perfect men.”

But they who do not understand the tidings,these, since they possess the aid of Reason [only] and not Mind, are ignorant wherefor they have come into being and whereby.

5. The senses of such men are like irrational creatures’; and as their [whole] make-up is in their feelings and their impulses, 2 they fail in all appreciation of 3 those things which really are worth contemplation. These centre all their thought upon the pleasures of the body and its appetites, in the belief that for its sake man hath come into being.

But they who have received some portion of God’s gift, 4 these, Tat, if we judge by their deeds, have from Death’s bonds won their release; for they embrace in their own Mind all things,

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things on the earth, things in the heaven, and things above the heaven,—if there be aught. 1 And having raised themselves so far they sight the Good; and having sighted It, they look upon their sojourn here as a mischance; and in disdain of all, both things in body and the bodiless, they speed their way unto that One and Only One.

6. This is, O Tat, the Gnosis of the Mind, Vision of things Divine; God-knowledge is it, for the Cup is God’s.

Tat. Father, I, too, would be baptized.

Her. Unless thou first shalt hate thy Body, son, thou canst not love thy Self. But if thou lov’st thy Self thou shalt have Mind, and having Mind thou shalt share in the Gnosis.

Tat. Father, what dost thou mean?

Her. It is not possible, my son, to give thyself to both,—I mean to things that perish and to things divine. For seeing that existing things are twain, Body and Bodiless, in which the perishing and the divine are understood, the man who hath the will to choose is left the choice of one or other; for it can never be the twain should meet. And in those souls to whom the choice is left, the waning of the one causes the other’s growth to show itself.

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7. Now the choosing of the Better not only proves a lot most fair for him who makes the choice, seeing it makes the man a God, but also shows his piety to God. Whereas the [choosing] of the Worse, although it doth destroy the “man,” it only doth disturb God’s harmony to this extent, that as processions pass by in the middle of the way, without being able to do anything but take the road from others, so do such men move in procession through the world led by their bodies’ pleasures. 1

8. This being so, O Tat, what comes from God hath been and will be ours; but that which is dependent on ourselves, let this press onward and have no delay; for ’tis not God, ’tis we who are the cause of evil things, preferring them to good.

Thou see’st, son, how many are the bodies through which we have to pass, how many are the choirs of daimones, how vast the system of the star-courses 2 [through which our Path doth lie], to hasten to the One and Only God.

For to the Good there is no other shore 3; It hath no bounds; It is without an end; and

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for Itself It is without beginning, too, though unto us it seemeth to have one—the Gnosis.

9. Therefore to It Gnosis is no beginning; rather is it [that Gnosis doth afford] to us the first beginning of Its being known.

Let us lay hold, therefore, of the beginning, and quickly speed through all [we have to pass].

’Tis very hard, to leave the things we have grown used to, which meet our gaze on every side, and turn ourselves back to the Old Old [Path].

Appearances delight us, whereas things which appear not make their believing hard.

Now evils are the more apparent things, whereas the Good can never show Itself unto the eyes, for It hath neither form nor figure.

Therefore the Good is like Itself alone, and unlike all things else; for ’tis impossible that That which hath no body should make Itself apparent to a body.

10. The “Like’s” superiority to the “Unlike “and the “Unlike’s” 1 inferiority unto the “Like” consists in this:

The Oneness 2 being Source 3 and Root of all, is in all things as Root and Source. Without [this] Source is naught; whereas the Source [Itself] is from naught but Itself, since It is

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[paragraph continues]Source of all the rest. It is Itself Its Source, since It may have no other Source.

The Oneness then being Source, containeth every number, but is contained by none; engendereth every number, but is engendered by no other one.

11. Now all that is engendered is imperfect, it is divisible, to increase subject and to decrease; but with the Perfect [One] none of these things doth hold. Now that which is increasable increases from the Oneness, but succumbs through its own feebleness when it no longer can contain the One.

And now, O Tat, God’s Image 1 hath been sketched for thee, as far as it can be 2; and if thou wilt attentively dwell on it and observe it with thy heart’s eyes, believe me, son, thou’lt find the Path that leads above; nay, that Image shall become thy Guide 3 itself, because the Sight [Divine] hath this peculiar [charm], it holdeth fast and draweth unto it those who succeed in opening their eyes, just as, they say, the magnet [draweth] iron. 4

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Footnotes

85:1 ὁ δημιουργός.

85:2 τὸν πάντα κόσμον.

85:3 θέλησις.

85:4 Perhaps meaning Æther.

85:5 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 6.

85:6 κοσμῆσαι, the whole is a play on the word κόσμος (kosmos) which means “order,” “ornament,” and “world.” I have tried to retain it in English by using both meanings. The three preceding sentences, from “This Body” onwards, are quoted by Stobæus, Phys., I. ii. 30; G. i. 26; W. 38, 10 ff., under the heading “Of Hermes.”

86:1 That is, “Order.”

86:2 That is, the Body of God; the One Element.

86:3 Cf. C. H., v. (vi.) 2.

86:4 A critical text of most of these two paragraphs is given, R. 214, n. 1.

86:5 κρατῆρα, lit. a cratēr or mixing-bowl.

87:1 The meaning of this term is not to “sprinkle” with water, but to “plunge the whole body” into water.

87:2 καὶ ἐν θυμῷ καὶ ἐν ὀργῇ τὴν κρᾶσιν ἔχοντες.

87:3 Lit. “they do not wonder at.”

87:4 Sc. the Mind.

88:1 Cf. C. H. xi. (xii.) 19: “And contemplate what is beyond—if there be aught beyond the Cosmos.”

89:1 Critical text of simile is also given by R. 102, n. 2. Quoted by Zosimus in § “On the Anthropos Doctrine.”

89:2 καὶ συνέχειαν καὶ δρόμους ἀστέρων, the Septenary Spheres or “Cyclic Gods”; for the συέχεια (lit. continuity) is evidently the same as the ἁρμονία, Harmony, Concord, System.

89:3 ἀδιάβατον,—lit. not to be crossed, not to be forded.

90:1 Reading with B., τοῦ ἀνομοίου.

90:2 μονάς,—the Monad, that is the Good.

90:3 Or, Beginning.

91:1 The Universal Cosmos or Monad.

91:2 The above sentences, beginning with “The Oneness,” second paragraph of § 10, are quoted by Stobæus, Phys., I. x. 15; G. pp. 116, 117; W. 127, 6 ff .; under the heading, “Of Hermes.”

91:3 Cf. C. H., vii. (viii.) 2; ix. (x.) 10; x. (xi.) 21; R. 23, n. 5.

91:4 This simile is also used in the Naassene Document, and in Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris, where I have noticed it.

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COMMENTARY

THE TITLE

This beautiful little treatise, in which the great principles of the Gnosis are set forth so clearly and lucidly by the philosopher-mystic who penned it so many centuries ago, bears a double, or rather a triple, title: “Of Hermes to Tat: The Cup or Monad [or Oneness].” 1 The double title, however, is but a choice of names, for The Cup is The Oneness,—The One Element, 2 the “Body” of God, which is the Cause of all bodies and yet itself is bodiless; in other words, the Monad is the Intelligible Cosmos itself, God’s Image, elsewhere called His Alone-begotten Son.

That this idea of a Cup or Mixing-bowl (Cratēr), in the symbolic sense of an all-containing receptacle, in which all the elements were blended together, and in the metaphysical sense of a transcendent Unity, the source of all things measurable and numberable, was one of the main doctrines of the Trismegistic tradition, is plain from the Pœmandrist Zosimus, who refers especially to this Cup as the symbol of Spiritual Baptism—that is, the plunging of the whole nature into the Great Ocean of Spirit or Mind, so that the man becomes irradiate with Life and illumined with Light.

For a consideration of this Crater or Cup symbolism I must refer the reader to the chapter so entitled in the “Prolegomena”; it there being shown that in all probability it was transmitted along the Orphic line

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of tradition, though doubtless the Egyptian had some similar ideas.

Our treatise should be read in the closest connection with C. H., xi. (xii.), “The Mind to Hermes,” which is its “esoteric” counterpart. What is here set forth for Tat by Hermes is there imparted to Hermes by the Mind; what is here set forth for the probationer or “hearer” is there set forth for the advanced disciple or “seer”; or, to use Mystery terms, what is here told to the Mystes is there revealed to the Epopt. Thus, then, the Tat-instruction begins.

THE BAPTISM OF THE MIND

1. All things are made by Reason, the Formative Energy of the Mind. The Ideal Cosmos, or World-Order, is the Divine Body.

2. Earth is the sensible Cosmos; on Earth man, the image of the Image, or Reason, of God rules. The purpose of man is thus to become the contemplator (θεατής) of the works of God; it is by the “wonder” aroused in him by the sight of these marvels that he will rise eventually into a knowledge of God Himself. This “wonder” is, then, the beginning of the True Philosophy or God-knowledge (ἡ τοῦ θεοῦ κατανόησις).

3. All men have in them “reason” (the ray of the Reason or Logos), but as yet few have “Mind.” This “mind” is the true Son of Mind, it is the real man, the perfect man, self-conscious of his Self. This true Self-consciousness is the prize set up for souls to win: the crown of humanity, the Christ-state (or, at any rate, the super-man or true man state).

The Christ-Baptism is the plunging of the whole nature into the Mind-filled Cup,—the Plērōma of the Divine Being whose Body and Mind are one,—for is

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not the Cup the Body of God, “consecrated unto Himself alone” (§ 1), the Universal Body of all things?

THE HOLY GRAIL

It would be fascinating to speculate on what connection this Cup of Initiation may have had with the Mystic Eucharist, and the Original of the later Grail-tradition, which a great master of music and song has in our days made to live again in undying melody, and so restored it to its more universal significance. How Wagner sensed the marvel of the wondrous Vision with a poet’s intuition may be seen from his own words:

“To the enraptured gaze of one longing for celestial love, the clear blue atmosphere of heaven seems at first to condense itself into a wonderful, scarcely perceptible, but dazzlingly beautiful Vision. Then with gradually increasing precision the wonder-working angelic host is delineated in infinitely delicate outlines, as, conveying the holy vessel in its midst, it insensibly descends from the blazing heights of heaven. As the vision grows more and more distinct, . . . the heart throbs with the pain of ecstasy; . . . and when at last the Grail shows itself in the marvel of undraped reality, . . . the beholder’s brain reels—he falls down in a state of adoring annihilation. . . . With chaste rejoicing the angelic host then returns to the heavenly height, fading away into the nothingness whence it first emanated.”

But for the Seers of the Gnosis there was a more intimate realization, for they were bidden to cast aside all hesitation and fearlessly to plunge themselves into the very Cup Itself, the Ocean of Divine Love and Wisdom.

This was the Proclamation or Preaching (κήρυγμα),

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or Good Tidings, of the Herald of God to men, to those who had the Living Faith they could “ascend to Him who had sent down the Cup,” God’s Greatest Gift.

By such a Baptism as this, not by a symbolic sprinkling with water, is it that man is to be redeemed. This is the consummation of man’s earthly pilgrimage, the realization of the “Gnosis of the Mind, Vision of things Divine; God-knowledge is it; for the Cup is God’s.”

THE “HATING OF THE BODY”

6. In § 6 we have given us a discipline of the mystic way, the “hating of the body,” which is by no means to be taken literally.

A misunderstanding of this discipline led many of the mystics of the time (and, for a matter of that, has led most of the mystics of all time) to the false belief that the body (or matter generally) was the source of evil. Hence we have all the mortifications and chastisements of the flesh which the monkish spirit introduced into Christendom, and which persist in some quarters even to our own day. Against this the Common Sense of Christianity as a general religion, basing itself on the general utterances of the Christ, has ever protested.

Our mystic philosopher, in urging his disciples to hate the body, apparently does so because they are in the first stages of awakening, and so far have not got the “Mind” active in them.

In taking the first steps there must be developed a consciousness of the strong antithesis of good and evil, of love and hate, in order that the will of the disciple may be strengthened towards the good and weakened towards the bad.

When, however, his will is balanced between the two, when he as easily wills good as evil, then, and

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not till then, is he prepared to learn the further great lesson: that real wisdom consists in balance, in the Middle Way; that nothing is evil in itself—the Body is as honourable in its own sphere, as absolutely necessary and indispensable, as is the Mind in its.

He learns the great secret that to have one’s thoughts always in heaven is as erroneous as to have them always on earth; that there is a higher mode of existence, when the things of heaven and earth are within each other, and not apart.

As the Introduction to The Book of the Great Logos according to the Mystery has it:

“Jesus saith: Blessed is the man who knoweth this Word (Logos), and hath brought down the Heaven and borne up the Earth and raised it Heavenwards.” 1

Heaven and Earth must kiss each other for this consummation, this truly Sacred Marriage.

And yet in the third Synoptic (xvi. 25, 26) we read:

“Jesus saith: If any man come unto Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own soul also, he cannot be My disciple.”

Here we have precisely the same word “hate” (μισεῖ) as in our text. That, however, this “dark saying” was interpreted in a mystical sense by Gnostic tradition, as by no means referring to physical parents but to the past causes of our imperfections, 2 I have already pointed out on several occasions 3; we may therefore

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conclude that in a gnostic teaching, such as is our treatise, the terms “hate” and “body” are not to be literally interpreted.

8. And that this is so may be seen from the declaration in § 8: “For ’tis not God, ’tis we who are the cause of evil things, preferring them to good”;—where the cause of evil is not assigned to the body but to man’s own choice. And finally, to clinch our contention, we would refer the reader to the Sermon to Asclepius, C. H., vi. (vii.) 6:

“Such are the things that men call good and beautiful, Asclepius—things which we cannot flee or hate.”

THE GNOSIS AND ITS BLESSINGS

9. In § 9 we have to notice the phrase: “Therefore to It Gnosis is no beginning; rather is it that Gnosis doth afford to us the first beginning of Its being known”; and compare it with the logos quoted by the Jewish commentator in the Naassene Document (§ 25): “The Beginning of Perfection is Gnosis of Man, but Gnosis of God is Perfect Perfection.”

The claim for the Gnosis is therefore a modest one. The Gnosis is not an end in itself; it is but the beginning of the True Knowledge of God. They who receive the Baptism of the Mind are made “perfect men,” not Perfect; not until they have received this touch of the Christ-consciousness have they reached true manhood.

Those who have received this Baptism know why they have come into being,—the purpose of life. They become consciously immortal; they know they are deathless, they do not only believe it; their immortality is no longer a belief, it is a fact of knowledge.

They have won their freedom from Death and Fate, and know the real constitution of the cosmos up to the Threshold of the Good, the Plain of Truth—that is to

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say, presumably in Buddhist terms, as far as the Nirvāṇic state of consciousness. Not yet, however, have they entered Nirvāṇa—that is to say, become one with the Logos. They have seen the Sight or Vision of Nirvāṇa, but not entered into the Promised Land, that “Blessed Space,” which, as Basilides tells us, “can neither be conceived of nor characterized by any word.” 1

The Vision is an earnest of what they may be. They have become Gods, it is true, already, or, in other words, enjoy the same freedom and consciousness as the Gods or Angels, but there is a still more transcendent state, when they will be at-oned with Deity Himself.

THE ANCIENT PATH

Hard as it is to leave the “things we have grown used to,” the things habitual, it must be done if we are to enter into the Way of the Gnosis. But no new Path is this, no going forth into new lands (though it may have all the appearance of being so). The entrance on the Path of the Gnosis is a Going-Home, it is a Return—a Turning-Back (a True Repentance). “We must turn ourselves back unto the Old Old Way” (τὰ παλαιὰ καὶ ἀρχαῖα).

And for the followers of the Doctrine of Thrice-greatest Hermes, this Old Old Path could have meant nothing but the Archaic Wisdom of Ancient Egypt. The Wisdom of Egypt was thus the Gnosis.

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Footnotes

92:1 See R. 193. Unfortunately, though he twice quotes from our treatise, Stobæus adds nothing to our knowledge of the title, since he prefixes his extracts with the simple heading, “Of Hermes.”

92:2 Which is to be equated, I believe, “meta-physically” with the Quintessence or Æther.

96:1 Codex Brucianus; see F. F. F., p. 520.

96:2 Cf. the Pistis Sophia, 341-343, where the text is given as: “He who shall not leave father and mother to follow after Me is not worthy of Me,” and explained by the Saviour to mean: “Ye shall leave your Parents the Rulers, that ye may be Children of the First Everlasting Mystery.”

96:3 See, for instance, Extracts from the “Vâhan” (London, 1904), pp. 374-376.

98:1 See F. F. F., p. 261.

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CORPUS HERMETICUM V. (VI.)

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THOUGH UNMANIFEST GOD IS MOST MANIFEST

OF HERMES TO HIS SON TAT

(Text: P. 41-48; Pat. 12b-13b.)

1. I will recount for thee this sermon (logos) too, O Tat, that thou may’st cease to be without the mysteries of the God beyond all name. 1 And mark thou well how That which to the many seems unmanifest, will grow most manifest for thee.

Now were It manifest, It would not be. For all that is made manifest is subject to becoming, for it hath been made manifest. But the Unmanifest for ever is, for It doth not desire to be made manifest. It ever is, and maketh manifest all other things.

Being Himself unmanifest, as ever being and ever making-manifest, Himself is not made

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manifest. God is not made Himself; by thinking-manifest, 1 He thinketh all things manifest.

Now “thinking-manifest” deals with things made alone, for thinking-manifest is nothing else than making.

2. He, then, alone who is not made, ’tis clear, is both beyond all power of thinking-manifest, and is unmanifest.

And as He thinketh all things manifest, He manifests through all things and in all, and most of all in whatsoever things He wills to manifest.

Do thou, then, Tat, my son, pray first unto our Lord and Father, the One-and-Only One, from whom the One 2 doth come, to show His mercy unto thee, in order that thou mayest have the power to catch a thought of this so mighty God, one single beam of Him to shine into thy thinking. For thought alone “sees” the Unmanifest, in that it is itself unmanifest.

If, then, thou hast the power, He will, Tat, manifest to thy mind’s eyes. The Lord begrudgeth not Himself to anything, but manifests Himself through the whole world.

Thou hast the power of taking thought, of seeing it and grasping it in thy own “hands,” and gazing face to face upon God’s Image. 3 But

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if what is within thee even is unmanifest to thee, how, then, shall He Himself who is within thy self be manifest for thee by means of [outer] eyes?

3. But if thou wouldst “see” Him, bethink thee of the sun, bethink thee of moon’s course, bethink thee of the order of the stars. Who is the One who watcheth o’er that order? For every order hath its boundaries marked out by place and number.

The sun’s the greatest god of gods in heaven; to whom all of the heavenly gods give place as unto king and master. And he, this so-great one, he greater than the earth and sea, endures to have above him circling smaller stars than him. Out of respect to Whom, or out of fear of Whom, my son, [doth he do this]?

Nor like nor equal is the course each of these stars describes in heaven. Who [then] is He who marketh out the manner of their course and its extent?

4. The Bear up there that turneth round itself, and carries round the whole cosmos with it—Who is the owner of this instrument? Who He who hath set round the sea its bounds? Who He who hath set on its seat the earth?

For, Tat, there is someone who is the Maker and the Lord of all these things. It could not be that number, place and measure could be kept without someone to make them. No order

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whatsoever could be made by that which lacketh place and lacketh measure; nay, even this 1 is not without a lord, my son. For if the orderless lacks something, in that it is not lord of order’s path, it also is beneath a lord—the one who hath not yet ordained it order.

5. Would it were possible for thee to get thee wings, and soar into the air, and, poised midway ’tween earth and heaven, behold the earth’s solidity, the sea’s fluidity (the flowings of its streams), the spaciousness of air, fire’s swiftness, [and] the coursing of the stars, the swiftness of heaven’s circuit round them [all]!

Most blessed sight were it, my son, to see all these beneath one sway—the motionless in motion, and the unmanifest made manifest; whereby is made this order of the cosmos and the cosmos which we see of order.

6. If thou would’st see Him too through things that suffer death, 2 both on the earth and in the deep, 3 think of a man’s being fashioned in the womb, my son, and strictly scrutinize the art of Him who fashions him, and learn who fashioneth this fair and godly image of the Man. 4

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Who [then] is He who traceth out the circles of the eyes; who He who boreth out the nostrils and the ears; who He who openeth [the portal of] the mouth; who He who doth stretch out and tie the nerves; who He who channels out the veins; who He who hardeneth the bones; who He who covereth the flesh with skin; who He who separates the fingers and the joints; who He who widens out a treading for the feet; who He who diggeth out the ducts; who He who spreadeth out the spleen; who He who shapeth heart like to a pyramid; who He who setteth ribs together; who He who wideneth the liver out; who He who maketh lungs like to a sponge; who He who maketh belly stretch so much; who He who doth make prominent the parts most honourable, so that they may be seen, while hiding out of sight those of least honour?

7. Behold how many arts [employed] on one material, how many labours on one single sketch; and all exceeding fair, and all in perfect measure, yet all diversified! Who made them all? What mother, or what sire, save God alone, unmanifest, who hath made all things by His Will?

8. And no one saith a statue or a picture comes to be without a sculptor or [without] a painter; doth [then] such workmanship as this exist without a Worker? What depth of blindness, what deep impiety, what depth of ignorance!

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[paragraph continues]See, [then] thou ne’er, son Tat, deprivest works of Worker!

Nay, rather is He greater than all names, so great is He, the Father of them all. 1 For verily He is the Only One; and this His work, to be a father.

9. So, if thou forcest me somewhat too bold, to speak, His being is conceiving of all things and making [them]. 2

And as without its maker it is impossible that anything should be, so ever is He not unless He ever makes all things, in heaven, in air, in earth, in deep, in all of cosmos, in every part that is and that is not of everything. For there is naught in all the world that is not He.

He is Himself, both things that are and things that are not. The things that are He hath made manifest, He keepeth things that are not in Himself.

10. He is the God beyond all name; He the unmanifest, He the most manifest; He whom the mind [alone] can contemplate, He visible unto the eyes [as well]; He is the one of no body, the one of many bodies, nay, rather He of every body.

Naught is there which He is not. For all are

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[paragraph continues]He and He is all. 1 And for this cause hath He all names, in that they are one Father’s. And for this cause hath He Himself no name, in that He’s Father of [them] all. 2

Who, then, may sing Thee praise of Thee, or [praise] to Thee?

Whither, again, am I to turn my eyes to sing Thy praise; above, below, within, without?

There is no way, no place [is there] about Thee, nor any other thing of things that are.

All [are] in Thee; all [are] from Thee, O Thou who givest all and takest naught, for Thou hast all and naught is there Thou hast not.

11. And when, O Father, shall I hymn Thee? For none can seize Thy hour or time.

For what, again, shall I sing hymn? For things that Thou hast made, or things Thou hast not? For things Thou hast made manifest, or things Thou hast concealed?

How, 3 further, shall I hymn Thee? As being of myself? As having something of mine own? As being other?

For that Thou art whatever I may be; Thou art whatever I may do; Thou art whatever I may speak.

For Thou art all, and there is nothing else

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which Thou art not. Thou art all that which doth exist, and Thou art what doth not exist,—Mind when Thou thinkest, and Father when Thou makest, and God when Thou dost energize, and Good and Maker of all things.

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(For that the subtler part of matter is the air, of air the soul, of soul the mind, and of mind God.)

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Footnotes

99:1 Cf. § 8 end, and § 9 beginning.

100:1 ἐν φαντασίᾳ—that is to say, by thinking into manifestation.

100:2 Presumably the Manifested God; the One-and-Only One being the Unmanifested, the God beyond all name.

100:3 The Intelligible Cosmos.

102:1 Namely, that which lacketh place, number, and order; that is, disorder, chaos.

102:2 As opposed to the immortal world-order.

102:3 Cf. § 9 below, where it almost seems to mean “water.”

102:4 The Heavenly Man of “The Shepherd” treatise; man is the image of The Man, the Logos or Image of God. This and the following passage is referred to by Lactantius, D. Institt., ii. 10.

104:1 The translation of this sentence is conjectural; for the text is not only corrupt, but there appears to be a lacuna in it.

104:2 The male and female energies of the Divine Parent.

105:1 For emended reading, see R. 244.

105:2 That is, of all names. For the following, cf. P. S. A., xxxi. 3.

105:3 Text from here on given in R. 68, n. 4.

COMMENTARY

THE TITLE

The redactor of our Corpus must have taken this sermon from some collection of “Those to Tat,” for it begins “καὶ τόνδε σοι τὸν λόγον.” One other sermon at least, then, must have preceded it; but whether it was our C. H., iv. (v.), “The Cup,” or the lost C. H. (ii.), “The General Sermon,” it is impossible to say.

The sermon bears no title proper, and the enunciation of the subject, which stands in its place, is derived from the second sentence of the treatise itself, and has plainly been superscribed by some later Byzantine editor.

MĀYĀ

The opening paragraphs of this fine tractate are very difficult to render into English in any way that can preserve the subtle shades of meaning of the Greek. As this subtle word-play has been entirely missed by all previous translators, I have made a rough attempt to preserve it by using the somewhat clumsy term “manifest.” The word-play in Greek may be seen

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from the following list of the original terms taken in the order of their occurrence: ἀφανές, φανερώτατον, ἐμφανές, φαινόμενον, ἐφάνη, ἀφανές, φανῆναι, φανερά, ἀφανής, φανερῶν, φανεροῦται, φαντασίᾳ, φαντασιῶν, φαντασία, ἀφαντασίαστος καὶ ἀφανής, φαντασιῶν, φαίνεται, φανῆναι. These all occur in § 1 and the first two lines of § 2.

I have translated φαντασία by “thinking-manifest,” seeing that it is the power by which an object is made apparent or manifest. The doctrine is the same as that of the Vedānta philosophy, the Māyā of the Vedāntavādins. Māyā is generally translated “illusion,” but this is not a good equivalent, for it comes from the root ma, to make or measure. The Logos is called in the Vedānta, Māyin (masc.), the Maker, Measurer, or Creator, and His Power, or Shakti, is Māyā (fem.). It is the Power of the Divine Thought, and so far from being illusion in any ordinary sense of the word, is very real for us, and is only non-real as compared to the Logos Himself, the One Reality in the highest philosophical sense of the term.

The idea is magnificently summed up for us in a logos of Phōsilampēs, 1 quoted by the redactor of the Untitled Apocalypse of the Codex Brucianus, which runs as follows:

“Through Him is that-which-really-is and that-which-really-is-not, through which the Hidden-which-really-is and the Manifest-which-really-is-not exists.”

Also compare Hippolytus’ summary of the “Simonian” Gnosis:

“Of this Twofold Nature he calls the one side the Hidden and the other the Manifest, saying that the concealed [parts] of the Fire are hidden in the manifest, and the manifest produced by the concealed. . . .

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“And the manifest side of the Fire has all things in itself which a man can perceive of things visible, or which he unconsciously fails to perceive. Whereas the hidden side is everything that we can conceive as intelligible, . . . or which a man fails to conceive.” 1

2. “The Lord begrudgeth not Himself to any thing.” Compare this with C. H., iv. (v.) 3: “Not that He grudgeth any, for grudging cometh not from Him”; and compare both with the saying of Plato in the Timæus (29 E):

“He was Good, and to the Good there can never at any time be any grudging of aught.”

THE HIGHER PANTHEISM OR PANMONISM

10. With the soul-satisfying pantheism of § 10 we may with interest compare the address to the Logos in The Martyrdom of Peter, which still retains many Gnostic elements.

“Thou that art to be understood by spirit alone! Thou art my father, Thou my mother, Thou my brother, Thou my friend, Thou my servant, Thou my master. Thou art the all, and all is in Thee. Yea, all that is, is Thou; and there is nothing else that is but Thee alone!” 2

HYMN TO ALL-GOD

The treatise ends with one of the most magnificent Hymns to God ever written in any language—a hymn which some foolish copyist has spoilt by tagging on to it the gloss of a reader noted on the margin of the MS. from which our scribe copied.

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With the sentence: “All are in Thee, all are from Thee,” compare the Naassene Hymn (quoted in Hippolytus’ Introduction, in “The Myth of Man”):

“‘From Thee’ is Father, and ‘Through Thee,’ Mother,—the two Immortal Names, Parents of Æons, O Thou who hast the Heaven for Thy City, O Man of Mighty Names!”

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Footnotes

107:1 Perhaps a by-name of Basilides; see F. F. F., p. 554.

108:1 Hipp., Philos., vi. 9; see my Simon Magus (London, 1892), p. 13.

108:2 Lipsius (R. A.) and Bonnet (M.), Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha (Leipzig, 1891), i. 98.

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CORPUS HERMETICUM VI. (VII.)

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IN GOD ALONE IS GOOD AND ELSEWHERE NOWHERE

(Text: P. 48-53; Pat. 14a-15a.)

1. Good, O Asclepius, is in none else save God alone; nay, rather, Good is God Himself eternally.

If it be so, [Good] must be essence, from every kind of motion and becoming free (though naught is free from It), possessed of stable energy around Itself, never too little, nor too much, an ever-full supply. [Though] one, yet [is It] source of all; for what supplieth all is Good. When I, moreover, say [supplieth] altogether [all], it is for ever Good. But this belongs to no one else save God alone.

For He stands not in need of any thing, so that desiring it He should be bad; nor can a single thing of things that are be lost to Him, on losing which He should be pained; for pain is part of bad.

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Nor is there aught superior to Him, that He should be subdued by it; nor any peer to Him to do Him wrong, or [so that] He should fall in love on its account; nor aught that gives no ear to Him, whereat He should grow angry; nor wiser aught, for Him to envy.

2. Now as all these are non-existent in His being, what is there left but Good alone?

For just as naught of bad is to be found in such transcendent Being, so too in no one of the rest will Good be found.

For in them all are all the other things 1—both in the little and the great, both in each severally and in this living one 2 that’s greater than them all and mightiest [of them].

For things subject to birth 3 abound in passions, birth in itself being passible. But where there’s passion, nowhere is there Good; and where is Good, nowhere a single passion. For where is day, nowhere is night; and where is night, day is nowhere.

Wherefore in genesis the Good can never be, but only be in the ingenerate.

But seeing that the sharing in all things hath been bestowed on matter, so doth it share in Good.

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In this way is the Cosmos good; that, in so far as it doth make all things, as far as making goes it’s Good, but in all other things it is not Good. For it’s both passible and subject unto motion, and maker of things passible.

3. Whereas in man by greater or by less of bad is good determined. For what is not too bad down here, is good; and good down here is the least part of bad.

It cannot, therefore, be that good down here should be quite clean of bad, for down here good is fouled with bad; and being fouled, it stays no longer good, and staying not it changes into bad.

In God alone, is, therefore, Good, or rather Good is God Himself.

So then, Asclepius, the name alone of Good is found in men, the thing itself nowhere [in them], for this can never be.

For no material body doth contain It,—a thing 1 bound on all sides by bad, by labours, pains, desires and passions, by error and by foolish thoughts.

And greatest ill of all, Asclepius, is that each of these things that have been said above, is thought down here to be the greatest good.

And what is still an even greater ill, is belly-lust, the error that doth lead the band of all

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the other ills—the thing that makes us turn down here from Good.

4. And I, for my own part, give thanks to God, that He hath cast it in my mind about the Gnosis of the Good, that it can never be It 1 should be in the world. 2 For that the world is “fullness” 3 of the bad, but God of Good, and Good of God.

The excellencies of the Beautiful are round the very essence [of the Good]; nay, they do seem too pure, too unalloyed; perchance ’tis they that are themselves Its essences.

For one may dare to say, Asclepius,—if essence, sooth, He have—God’s essence is the Beautiful; the Beautiful is further also Good.

There is no Good that can be got from objects in the world. For all the things that fall beneath the eye are image-things and pictures as it were; while those that do not meet [the eye are the realities 4], especially the [essence] of the Beautiful and Good.

Just as the eye cannot see God, so can it not behold the Beautiful and Good. For that they are integral parts of God, wedded to Him alone, inseparate familiars, most beloved, with whom God is Himself in love, or they with God.

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5. If thou canst God conceive, thou shalt conceive the Beautiful and Good, transcending Light, made lighter than the Light by God. That Beauty is beyond compare, inimitate that Good, e’en as God is Himself.

As, then, thou dost conceive of God, conceive the Beautiful and Good. For they cannot be joined with aught of other things that live, since they can never be divorced from God.

Seek’st thou for God, thou seekest for the Beautiful. One is the Path that leadeth unto It—Devotion joined with Gnosis.

6. And thus it is that they who do not know and do not tread Devotion’s Path, do dare to call man beautiful and good, though he have ne’er e’en in his visions seen a whit that’s Good, but is enwrapped with every kind of bad, and thinks the bad is good, and thus doth make unceasing use of it, and even feareth that it should be ta’en from him, so straining every nerve not only to preserve but even to increase it.

Such are the things that men call good and beautiful, Asclepius,—things which we cannot flee or hate; for hardest thing of all is that we’ve need of them and cannot live without them.

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Footnotes

111:1 That is, things not Good.

111:2 Or animal; that is, cosmos as a single life or living creature.

111:3 Or genesis.

112:1 Sc. the body.

113:1 Sc. the Good.

113:2 Cosmos.

113:3 Or plērōma. The “world” is the plērōma of evil, but ‘God” the plērōma of good.

113:4 A lacuna unfortunately occurs here in the text.

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COMMENTARY

THE TITLE

This sermon, which bears no proper title, but has been headed by some editor with the enunciation of the subject taken from the opening sentence of the treatise itself, belongs to the Asclepius-group.

Reitzenstein (p. 194) thinks that this tractate and the previous Asclepius-Dialogue—C. H., ii. (iii.)—may very well have formed part of the same collection of Asclepiana.

DUALISM?

The teaching of our sermon is apparently dualistic; but is it not only formally so, and as an exercise to raise the thought of the pupil away from the “things he has grown used to”? For at the end Hermes declares:

“Such are the things that men call good and beautiful, Asclepius—things which we cannot flee or hate; for hardest thing of all is that we’ve need of them and cannot live without them.”

This is a clear advance on the formal Tat-teaching as to “hating” the body given in C. H., iv. (v.) 6, and points clearly to an instruction in which the cosmos was not regarded as the plērōma of bad, in spite of the formal and emphatic statement in § 4:

“ὁ γὰρ κόσμος πλήρωμά ἐστι τῆς κακίας.”

Moreover, if we turn to C. H., ix. (x.), 4—another treatise of Hermes to Asclepius, and curiously enough having as superscription almost the same proposition as heads our present treatise we read:

“χωρίον γὰρ αὐτῆς [κακίας] ἡ γῆ, οὐχ ὁ κόσμος, ὡς ἔνιοι ποτὲ ἐροῦσι βλασφημοῦντες.”

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“Bad’s place is earth, and not the world, as some will sometimes say with impious tongue.”

Here we have a formal denial in an Asclepius-tractate of the formal proposition in our Asclepius-sermon.

The cosmos is not evil; it is the beautiful world-order. Evil is a thing connected with the earth; there is no such thing as a πλήρωμα of evil; evil has at best only a χωρίον. They who say such things blaspheme.

This is strong language, and there seems no other conclusion to be drawn from it but that there were various schools within the Trismegistic tradition, and that they wrangled theologically together.

Is it, however, possible that the Hermes of our treatise is only speaking metaphorically, so that he may intensify the ideal of the Good, and that he was subsequently taken as speaking literally? For he must have known that the Cosmos was regarded as the Son of God, par excellence, the fairest and best-beloved of all, God’s Very Image.

On the other hand, we know that in the Trismegistic doctrine the “cosmic man” was opposed to the “essential man,” that, in fact, the term “cosmic” was used in the nomenclature of the time in a theological as well as in a philosophical sense. This was especially the case in Christianity. Many instances could be cited from the New Testament documents; and we have also a striking example of the use of “cosmos” in this sense in the second logion of the First Oxyrhynchus Fragment:

“Jesus saith: Except ye fast to the world (τὸν κόσμον), ye shall in no wise find the Kingdom of God.”

As, moreover, we nowhere else find mention of a “pleroma of evil,” we may permissibly conclude that it is here not intended to be taken literally, but only as a metaphorical expression.

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GOD THE PLEROMA OF GOOD

“God is the Pleroma of Good, and Good is the Pleroma of God.”

And so, speaking of the Triumphant Christ as the Cosmic Logos, Paul writes:

“And Him hath He (God) given as Head over all things unto the Church, 1 which is His Body—the Fullness (Plērōma) of Him who doth fulfil all things in all.” 2

The thought-atmosphere in which the idea of the “Church” as the Pleroma arose may be sampled from Philo, De Prœm. et Pœn., § xi. (M. ii. 418, p. 920; Ri. v. 232):

“And thus the soul, becoming a Pleroma of virtues by means of the three best [blessings]—nature, instruction (mathēsis) and practice (askēsis),—leaving no vacant spot in her for entrance of aught else, brings unto birth a perfect number,—her two hexads of sons, a miniature and copy of the circle of the types of life, 3 for the improvement of the things down here.

“This is the House 4 that naught can harm, the perfect and continual in the public scriptures, and also in the secret meanings of the mystic ones,—the House that won the prize, as I have said, of lordship o’er the tribes of its [own] race.”

“It was thus from this House in course of time, as it increased and became populous, that well-regulated cities were established, yea, disciplines of wisdom and of righteousness and holiness, in which the

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transmutation (μεταποίησις) of the rest of virtue was sought out in manner worthy of so high a work.”

In the Trismegistic tradition, however, the idea is simpler, as we learn from “The Definitions of Asclepius,” C. H. (xvi.) 3:

“For that the Fullness of all things is One and is in One,—this latter One not coming as a second One, but both being One. . . .

“For should one try to separate what seems to be both All and One and Same from One,—he will be found to take his epithet of ‘All’ from the idea of multitude and not from that of fullness (plērōma),—which is impossible; for if he put All for the One, he will destroy the All.”

Nevertheless, the Pleroma 1 of Life is more specially the Cosmos as the Son of God—that is, as the Logos. Thus in C. H., xii. (xiii.) 15, we read:

“Matter is one; and the World-order (Cosmos), as a whole,—the Mighty God and Image of the Mightier One, both with Him unified, and the Conserver of the Will and Order of the Father,—is Life’s Fullness (Plērōma). . . .

“How then, O son, could there be in the God,—the Image of the Father, the Plenitude (Plērōma) of Life, 2—dead things?”

And again in C. H., ix. (x.) 7:

“For [Cosmos] being a most wise Breath, bestows their qualities on bodies together with the one Pleroma—that of Life.”

5. This Pleroma of God is the Good and Beautiful. The Path to this True Good is one of balance,—for it

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is the Way of Devotion united unto Gnosis—in Sanskrit terms, the Bhakti-Mārga and Jñāna-Mārga combined. 1

6. Finally we learn, though inferentially, that things are not bad in themselves; the evil is that men are content with the little goods they have and cling desperately to these, in ignorance of the greater blessings to which they could attain, did they but open their spiritual eyes for the True Vision of the Good. For even the psychic visions of the soul, in spite of their beauty, give man no hint of that Most Blessed Sight of All.

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Footnotes

117:1 τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ, that is, the Spiritual Body of the “Elect.”

117:2 Eph. i. 23. Cf. Col. ii. 19: “In Him dwelleth the whole Fullness of the Godhead as in a body.”

117:3 Sc. the Zodiac.

117:4 Sc. of God.

118:1 Cf. John i. 16: “Of His Fullness we have all received, and grace on grace.”

118:2 Cf. John i. 4: “In Him was Life and the Life was the Light of men.”

119:1 Compare C. H., i. 27: “And I began to preach to men the beauty of Devotion and of Gnosis.”

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CORPUS HERMETICUM VII. (VIII.)

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THE GREATEST ILL AMONG MEN IS IGNORANCE OF GOD

(Text: P. 54, 55; Pat. 18a.)

1. Whither stumble ye, sots, who have sopped up the wine of ignorance unmixed, and can so far not carry it that ye already even spew it forth?

Stay ye, be sober, gaze upwards with the [true] eyes of the heart! And if ye cannot all, yet ye at least who can!

For that the ill of ignorance doth pour o’er all the earth and overwhelm the soul that’s battened down within the body, preventing it from fetching port within Salvation’s harbours.

2. Be then not carried off by the fierce flood, but using the shore-current, 1 ye who can, make for Salvation’s port, and, harbouring there, seek ye for one to take you by the hand and lead you 2 unto Gnosis’ gates.

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Where shines clear Light, of every darkness clean; where not a single soul is drunk, but sober all they gaze with their hearts’ eyes on Him who willeth to be seen.

No ear can hear Him, nor can eye see Him, nor tongue speak of Him, but [only] mind and heart.

But first thou must tear off from thee the cloak which thou dost wear,—the web of ignorance, the ground of bad, corruption’s chain, the carapace of darkness, the living death, sensation’s corpse, the tomb thou carriest with thee, the robber in thy house, who through the things he loveth, hateth thee, and through the things he hateth, bears thee malice.

3. Such is the hateful cloak thou wearest,—that throttles thee [and holds thee] down to it, in order that thou may’st not gaze above, and, having seen the Beauty of the Truth, and Good that dwells therein, detest the bad of it; having found out the plot that it hath schemed against thee, by making void of sense those seeming things which men think senses.

For that it hath with mass of matter blocked them up and crammed them full of loathsome lust, so that thou may’st not hear about the things that thou should’st hear, nor see the things that thou should’st see.

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Footnotes

120:1 Lit. back or up-current.

120:2 Cf. C. H., iv. (v.) 11; ix. (x.) 10; x (xi.) 2; R. 23, n. 5.

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COMMENTARY

A PREACHING

There is little to be said about this powerful appeal to cease from the drunkenness of physical sensations and to awaken to the Light.

Reitzenstein (p. 194) calls it a “Prophetenpredigt” and says that nowhere in the MSS. is it ascribed to Hermes; by which he can only mean that it bears no other superscription than the descriptive sentence which heads it.

The style and spirit remind us not so much of C. H., iii. (iv.), as Reitzenstein (p. 206, 1) suggests, as of the interpolated or superadded passages in the “Pœmandres” treatise (§ 27):

“O ye people, earthborn folk, ye who have given yourselves to drunkenness, and sleep, and ignorance, be sober now, cease from your surfeit, cease to be glamoured by irrational sleep!”

Did this sentence give rise to our little sermon; or is the sentence a summary of the preaching? Or do both sentence and sermon come from a common stock?

THE PROBABLE COMPLETION OF AN OXYRHYNCHUS LOGION

The last hypothesis seems to be the most satisfactory choice; and we may compare what would appear to be a familiar figure of speech among such communities with logion 3 of the First Oxyrhynchus Fragment:

“Jesus saith: I stood in the midst of the world (τοῦ κόσμου), and in the flesh did I appear unto them; and I found all men drunken, and none found I athirst among them; and my soul grieveth over the souls of

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men, because they are blind in their heart and see not . . .”

Can we fill up the missing word from our sermon?

“But sober all they gaze with their hearts’ eyes on Him who willeth to be seen.”

The missing word seems, therefore, to be “God.”

The Gospel that is preached is the Beauty of the Gnosis,—“the Beauty of the Truth and Good that dwells therein”; just as in C. H., i. 27:

“And I began to preach to men the Beauty of Devotion and of the Gnosis.”

The tempest-tossed on the Sea of Ignorance are to make for the Harbour of Salvation—evidently some great organization devoted to the holy life; therein they must seek for one who knows, who can take them by the hand and lead them unto the Gates of the Gnosis.

This suggests that the organization consisted of a general body, within which were grades of instruction; the many were striving for illumination, some few had reached it.

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CORPUS HERMETICUM VIII. (IX.)

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THAT NO ONE OF EXISTING THINGS DOTH PERISH, BUT MEN IN ERROR SPEAK OF THEIR CHANGES AS DESTRUCTIONS AND AS DEATHS

[OF HERMES TO TAT]

(Text: P. 56-59; Pat. 48a, 48b.)

1. [Hermes.] Concerning Soul and Body, son, we now must speak; in what way Soul is deathless, and whence comes the activity 1 in composing and dissolving Body.

For there’s no death for aught of things [that are]; the thought [this] word conveys, is either void of fact, or [simply] by the knocking off a syllable what is called “death,” doth stand for “deathless.” 2

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For death is of destruction, and nothing in the Cosmos is destroyed. For if Cosmos is second God, a life 1 that cannot die, it cannot be that any part of this immortal life should die. All things in Cosmos are parts of Cosmos, and most of all is man, the rational animal.

2. For truly first of all, eternal and transcending birth, is God the universals’ Maker. Second is he “after His image,” Cosmos, brought into being by Him, sustained and fed by Him, made deathless, as by his own Sire, living for aye, as ever free from death.

Now that which ever-liveth, differs from the Eternal; for He 2 hath not been brought to being by another, and even if He have been brought to being, He hath not been brought into being by Himself, but ever is brought into being.

For the Eternal, in that It is eternal, is the all. The Father is Himself eternal of Himself, but Cosmos hath become eternal and immortal by the Father.

3. And of the matter stored beneath it, 3 the Father made of it a universal body, and packing it together made it spherical—wrapping it round the life 4—[a sphere] which is immortal in itself, and that doth make materiality eternal.

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But He, the Father, full-filled with His ideas, did sow the lives 1 into the sphere, and shut them in as in a cave, willing to order forth 2 the life with every kind of living.

So He with deathlessness enclosed the universal body, that matter might not wish to separate itself from body’s composition, and so dissolve into its own [original] unorder.

For matter, son, when it was yet incorporate, was in unorder. And it doth still retain down here this [nature of unorder] enveloping the rest of the small lives 3—that increase-and-decrease which men call death.

4. It is round earthly lives that this unorder doth exist. For that the bodies of the heavenly ones preserve one order allotted to them from the Father as their rule 4; and it is by the restoration 5 of each one [of them] this order is preserved indissolute. 6

The “restoration” then of bodies on the earth

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is [thus their] composition, whereas their dissolution restores them to those bodies which can never be dissolved, that is to say, which know no death. Privation, thus, of sense is brought about, not loss of bodies.

5. Now the third life—Man, after the image of the Cosmos made, [and] having mind, after the Father’s will, beyond all earthly lives—not only doth have feeling with the second God, but also hath conception of the first; for of the one ’tis sensible as of a body, while of the other it conceives as bodiless and the Good Mind.

Tat. Doth then this life not perish?

Her. Hush, son! and understand what God, what Cosmos [is], what is a life that cannot die, and what a life subject to dissolution.

Yea, understand the Cosmos is by God and in God; but Man by Cosmos and in Cosmos.

The source and limit and the constitution of all things is God.

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Footnotes

124:1 ἐνέργεια.

124:2 The text is obscure, and the translations without exception make nonsense of it. Some words seem to be missing.

125:1 Living thing, “animal.”

125:2 Sc. the Eternal.

125:3 Sc. beneath the cosmos, world-order or universe.

125:4 The text here seems to me to be very faulty; for ποιόν, ποιά, I read ζῷον, ζῷα. In such unintelligible phrases as αὐτῷ τὸ ποιόν, and τὸ μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ ποιόν, the writer is evidently dealing with the Cosmos as the one life, the αὐτόζῳον, from which all other lives are derived; and if he did not write αὐτόζῳον, he assuredly wrote ζῷν. He wrote sense and not the nonsense of the present text.

126:1 Sc. the great lives or so-called heavenly “bodies.”

126:2 Or beautify.

126:3 As distinguished from the great lives or animals, the so-called heavenly “bodies.”

126:4 τὴν ἀρχήν,—or source or principle.

126:5 ἀποκατάστασις, a term used of the cyclic return of stars to their original positions.

126:6 If we may be permitted to coin a neologism.

COMMENTARY

THE COSMOS AS “SECOND GOD”

The superscription enunciates the nature of the treatise. It is evidently taken from the Dialogues to Tat, and originally formed part of some General Dissertation or of a collection of Dissertations.

It formed part of an instruction in which the Cosmos

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was treated of as “Second God,” as we find it also in Philo 1; but just as Philo guards against any idea of duality, so does our treatise when it ends with the words (§ 5):

“The source and limit and the constitution of all things is God.”

The Great Body of the Cosmos, the Sphere or Perfect Form, the root of all forms, seems to be bounded by the idea of the Æon or Eternity, or Deathlessness. It is, as it were, the Cave or Womb of all things in genesis, centred in the Pleroma of ideas, the Intelligible Cosmos, which is full-filled with the ideas of God (§ 3).

THE LAW OF APOKATASTASIS

The eternal order and life of Cosmos is preserved by the law of apokatastasis or restoration (§ 4), the law of ever-becoming, and cyclic renewal, the making-new-again (ἀνανέωσις) of C. H., iii. (iv.) 1.

There is no question of loss of body,—this is an illusion; there is a privation of sense, a going into latency of some particular phase of consciousness.

There are then Great Lives—God, Cosmos, Man. Cosmos is made in the image of God, Man in the image of Cosmos. Therefore has Man sense and mind; by the former he is “in sympathy with” the Cosmos, as Body by the latter he is conscious of God as Mind,—that is the Bodiless. Or as we might phrase it, by sense Man knows the Sensible Cosmos, by mind the Intelligible Cosmos, the Good Mind; for God is Source and Limit and the Constitution of all things—the Cosmos, both Intelligible and Sensible, included.

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Footnotes

128:1 Leg. Alleg., § 21; M. i. 82; P. 1103 (Ri. i. 113); Quæst. Sol., i. (quoted by Euseb., Præp. Evang., vii. 13). See in the “Prolegomena,” “Philo Concerning the Logos.”

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CORPUS HERMETICUM IX. (X.)

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ON THOUGHT AND SENSE

THAT THE BEAUTIFUL AND GOOD IS IN GOD ONLY AND ELSEWHERE NOWHERE

(Text: P. 60-67; Pat. 14, 15.)

1. I gave the Perfect Sermon (Logos) yesterday, Asclepius; to-day I think it right, as sequel thereunto, to go through point by point the Sermon about Sense.

Now sense and thought do seem to differ, in that the former has to do with matter, the latter has to do with substance. But unto me both seem to be at-one and not to differ—in men I mean. In other lives 1 sense is at-oned with nature, but in men thought.

Now mind doth differ just as much from thought as God doth from divinity. For that divinity by God doth come to be, and by mind thought, the sister of the word (logos) 2 and

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instruments of one another. For neither doth the word (logos) find utterance without thought, nor is thought manifested without word.

2. So sense and thought both flow together into man, as though they were entwined with one another. For neither without sensing can one think, nor without thinking sense.

But it is possible [they say] to think a thing apart from sense, as those who fancy sights in dreams. But unto me it seems that both of these activities occur in dream-sight, and sense doth pass out of the sleeping to the waking state.

For man is separated into soul and body, and only when the two sides of his sense agree together, does utterance of its thought conceived by mind take place.

3. For it is mind that doth conceive all thoughts good thoughts—when it receives the seeds from God, their contraries when [it receiveth them] from one of the daimonials; no part of Cosmos being free of daimon, who stealthily doth creep into the daimon who’s illumined by God’s Light, 1 and sow in him the seed of its own energy.

And mind conceives the seed thus sown,

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adultery, murder, parricide, [and] sacrilege, impiety, [and] strangling, casting down precipices, and all such other deeds as are the work of evil daimones.

4. The seeds of God, ’tis true, are few, but vast and fair, and good—virtue and self-control, devotion. Devotion is God-gnosis; and he who knoweth God, being filled with all good things, thinks godly thoughts and not thoughts like the many [think].

For this cause they who Gnostic are, 1 please not the many, nor the many them. They are thought mad and laughed at 2; they’re hated and despised, and sometimes even put to death.

For we did say 3 that bad must needs dwell here on earth, where ’tis in its own place. Its place is earth, and not Cosmos, as some will sometimes say with impious tongue.

But he who is a devotee of God, will bear with all—once he has sensed the Gnosis. For such an one all things, e’en though they be for others bad, are for him good; deliberately he doth refer them all unto the Gnosis. And, thing most marvellous, ’tis he alone who maketh bad things good.

5. But I return once more to the Discourse

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[paragraph continues](Logos) on Sense. That sense doth share with thought in man, doth constitute him man. But ’tis not [every] man, as I have said, who benefits by thought; for this man is material, that other one substantial.

For the material man, as I have said, [consorting] with the bad, doth have his seed of thought from daimons; while the substantial men [consorting] with the Good, are saved by God.

Now God is Maker of all things, and in His making, He maketh all [at last] like to Himself; but they, while they’re becoming 1 good by exercise of their activity, are unproductive things.

It is the working of the Cosmic Course 2 that maketh their becomings what they are, befouling some of them with bad and others of them making clean with good.

For Cosmos, too, Asclepius, possesseth sense-and-thought peculiar to itself, not like to that of

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man; ’tis not so manifold, but as it were a better and a simpler one.

6. The single sense-and-thought of Cosmos is to make all things, and make them back into itself again, as Organ of the Will of God, so organised that it, receiving all the seeds into itself from God, and keeping them within itself, may make all manifest, and [then] dissolving them, make them all new again; and thus, like a Good Gardener of Life, things that have been dissolved, it taketh to itself, and giveth them renewal once again.

There is no thing to which it gives not life; but taking all unto itself it makes them live, and is at the same time the Place of Life and its Creator.

7. Now bodies matter [-made] are in diversity. Some are of earth, of water some, some are of air, and some of fire.

But they are all composed; some are more [composite], and some are simpler. The heavier ones are more [composed], the lighter less so.

It is the speed of Cosmos’ Course that works the manifoldness of the kinds of births. For being a most swift Breath, it doth bestow their qualities on bodies together with the One Pleroma—that of Life.

8. God, then, is Sire of Cosmos; Cosmos, of [all] in Cosmos. And Cosmos is God’s Son; but things in Cosmos are by Cosmos.

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And properly hath it been called Cosmos [Order]; for that it orders 1 all with their diversity of birth, with its not leaving aught without its life, with the unweariedness of its activity, the speed of its necessity, the composition of its elements, and order of its creatures.

The same, then, of necessity and of propriety should have the name of Order.

The sense-and-thought, then, of all lives doth come into them from without, inbreathed by what contains [them all]; whereas Cosmos receives them once for all together with its coming into being, and keeps them as a gift from God.

9. But God is not, as some suppose, beyond the reach of sense-and-thought. It is through superstition men thus impiously speak.

For all the things that are, Asclepius, all are in God, are brought by God to be, and do depend on Him—both things that act through bodies, and things that through soul-substance make [other things] to move, and things that make things live by means of spirit, and things that take unto themselves the things that are worn out.

And rightly so; nay, I would rather say, He doth not have these things; but I speak forth the truth, He is them all Himself. He

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doth not get them from without, but gives them out [from Him].

This is God’s sense-and-thought, ever to move all things. And never time shall be when e’en a whit of things that are shall cease; and when I say “a whit of things that are,” I mean a whit of God. For things that are, God hath; nor aught [is there] without Him, nor [is] He without aught.

10. These things should seem to thee, Asclepius, if thou dost understand them, true; but if thou dost not understand, things not to be believed.

To understand is to believe, to not believe is not to understand.

My word (logos) doth go before [thee] 1 to the truth. But mighty is the mind, and when it hath been led by word up to a certain point, it hath the power to come before [thee 2] to the truth.

And having thought o’er all these things, and found them consonant with those which have already been translated by the reason, it 3 hath [e’en now] believed, and found its rest in that Fair Faith.

To those, then, who by God[’s good aid] do understand the things that have been said [by

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us] above, they’re credible; but unto those who understand them not, incredible.

Let so much, then, suffice on thought-and-sense.

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Footnotes

129:1 Or animals.

129:2 There is here the usual play on the meanings, reason, word, sermon or sacred discourse.

130:1 That is to say man, or rather the ego in man. The translators seem to make nonsense of this passage through rejecting the original reading.

131:1 οἱ ἐν γνώσει ὄντες, lit. they who are in Gnosis.

131:2 Cf. Plat., Phædr., 249 D: The wisdom-lover “is admonished, by the many as though he were beside himself.”

131:3 Sc. in some other sermon.

132:1 Or being made.

132:2 It is difficult to bring out the full delicacy of wording of the original in translation. First God’s ultimate intention is stated to be the making all things like (ὅμοια) Himself; this is the great sameness of union with Him. But meantime while this making, creating or becoming, is going on, these imperfections cannot produce—that is, become creators in their turn; they are unproductive (ἄφορα). That which is the instrument of God’s making is the cosmic course (φορά). We are finally (§ 7) told that it is bodies which are the cause of difference or diversity (ἐν διαφορᾷ), the opposite pole, so to speak, to the likeness (ὅμοια) with God.

134:1 Or adorns.

135:1 Cf. C. H., iv. (v.) 11; vii. (viii.) 2; x. (xi.) 21; R. 23, n. 5.

135:2 That is, presumably, before the pupil of the Gnosis is conscious of it in his physical brain.

135:3 Sc. the mind.

COMMENTARY

TITLE AND ORDERING

This treatise bears a double title:—“On Thought and Sense,” and “That the Beautiful and Good is in God only.” The former heading is clearly taken from the concluding words: “Let so much then suffice on thought-and-sense”; whereas the introductory sentence speaks of the Sermon on Sense only. The latter heading seems to be a thoughtless repetition of the title of C. H., vi. (vii.).

The opening words: “I gave the Perfect Sermon yesterday, Asclepius,” inform us not only that we have to do with an Asclepius Dialogue, but also that our sermon followed directly on the “Perfect Sermon,” a Latin version of which has fortunately been preserved to us. 1

It is, therefore, of very great interest to find that Lactantius, 2 in quoting a sentence from our treatise (§ 4)—“Devotion is God-gnosis”—continues with the words: “Asclepius, his hearer, has also explained the same idea at greater length in the Perfect Sermon.”

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Lactantius had, therefore, a collection before him in which these two sermons stood in close connection.

Reitzenstein (p. 195) thinks that our sermon must be an extract from a longer one, because he cannot bring himself to believe that so short a treatise could have been found in immediate connection (as the opening words suggest) with so lengthy and detailed a tractate as the “Perfect Sermon.” This may be so; and yet the formal beginning and ending of our sermon would seem to suggest that we are dealing with a complete tractate and not with an extract.

“SENSE-AND-THOUGHT”

The doctrine that in men “sense-and-thought” together constitutes human “sense” throws some light on the meaning of the term “sense” as used elsewhere in the Trismegistic literature, where we should expect to find “mind” employed, and that, too, in the sense of the higher mind.

Normal human “thought,” then, is, so to say, sensible, entirely bound up in sense-impressions; it is the mind alone that can soar beyond the senses, for it alone can be “illumined by God’s Light” (§ 3).

The mind is, as it were, a womb or woman, that can be impregnated either by the “Seeds of God” or by the “Daimonial Energy”; she thus conceives and brings forth virtues or vices.

All of this is precisely the same doctrine as Philo preaches, as may be seen by the passages we have quoted in the “Prolegomena” on the subject of the “Sacred Marriage.”

THOSE IN GNOSIS

The Seeds of God are Virtue and Self-control and Devotion or Piety; and Devotion in its true sense

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is God-gnosis, or Knowledge of God. The Gnostics, then, “they who are in Gnosis”—a curious expression—because of their natural divorcement from the “world,” “please not the many, nor the many them.”

“They are thought mad and laughed at; they’re hated and despised, and sometimes even put to death.”

Mark the impersonal note, the calm laying down of the causes of misunderstanding between the “many” and the “few’’; and compare this with the more personal note of the saying underlying the following Synoptic accommodations:

“Blessed are ye when men hate you and excommunicate you, and revile and expel your Name as evil, for the Son of Man’s sake” (Luke vi. 22).

“Blessed are ye when men revile you and persecute you and say all evil against you, lying, for My sake” (Matt. v. 11).

It is clear, at least it seems so to me, that “Luke” has kept closer to the original, and that that original was addressed not only to the members of a community, but to those who had been cast forth from some other community “for the sake of the Son of Man”—that is, because of the immediate inspiration of the Logos, which doubtless did not pay sufficient attention to the prejudices of the “many” of that community.

“Matthew,” on the contrary, seems to have adapted the Saying for general purposes and the necessities of the Cult of Jesus. 1

THE TRUE GNOSTIC

Excellent also is the doctrine that the true “Gnostic,” the man who is consciously growing into the stature of

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the Christ, the true “Devotee of God,” “will bear with all,” for he is beginning to know the Reason of things.

“For such an one all things, e’en though they be for others bad, are for him good; deliberately he doth refer them all unto the Gnosis.”

He sees the Good, he sees God, in all things. He is the true Alchemist. For “thing most marvellous, ’tis he alone who maketh bad things good”; by spiritual alchemy he transmutes the evil of the world to good; he drains the “cup of bitterness” unto the dregs, and transmutes it into the pure Water of Life.

In every Man, then, there are two “men,” the material (or hylic) and the substantial (or spiritual, οὐσιώδης).

Evil, however, is not a permanent thing; it is but the process of “becoming good,” the productive side of things (§ 5).

THE GOAL OF THE GNOSIS

It is difficult to bring out the delicacy of the wording of the original in translation. First God’s ultimate intention is stated to be the making of all things like unto (ὅμοια) Himself; the world-process is to be ultimately consummated in the Great Sameness of Union with Him. But meantime while this making, creating or becoming, or transformation, is going on, the imperfections cannot produce, that is, become creators in their turn; they are unproductive (ἄφορα). That which is the instrument or organ of God’s making is the Cosmic Course (φορά). We are finally (§ 7) told that the differences of bodies are conditioned by the speed of this Cosmic Course; therefore the opposite poles, Other and Same, are both ultimately referable to Cosmos, the Likeness of God.

The end to be achieved is to develop the “sense-and-thought” of the Cosmos, the One Sense, not manifold,

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but simple. This is the deliberate working with the Will of God, the Cosmic Will, the perpetual renewing of all things (ἀνανέωσις).

The Cosmos, then, as the Logos of God, is the Good Gardener of Life; it is both the place of Life and its Creator—that is to say, both female and male, both Mother and Father.

THE POSSIBILITY OF KNOWING GOD

But the Cosmos is not apart from God, nor even in God; God does not have Cosmos as a possession, but is Cosmos and all therein (§ 9). Cosmos is Son of God, His Very Self (§ 8).

Therefore we can learn to know somewhat of the nature of God by sense and thought, for, “God is not, as some suppose, beyond the reach of sense and thought” (ἀναισθητὸς καὶ ἀνόητος); that is, God does not entirely transcend sense and thought, for God is all things.

“As some suppose” doubtless refers again to the “blasphemers” of § 4—that is, the apparently dualistic doctrine set forth in C. H., vi. (vii.). 1

And so, finally, we learn that Faith, in the true sense, is a certitude of the mind, or of true manhood. “To understand is to believe” (§ 10). Gnosis and not belief is the Fair Faith.

Compare with this the “Perfect Sermon,” x. 1:

“The reason for a thesis such as this, O my Asclepius, I would that thou should’st grasp, not only with the keen attention of thy soul, but also with its living power as well.

“For ’tis a reason that most men cannot believe; the Perfect and the True are to be grasped by the more holy minds.”

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Footnotes

136:1 For it would, of course, be absurd to suppose that the “Perfect Sermon” could in any way be thought to indicate C. H., vi. (vii.), the last Asclepius Dialogue in our Corpus; especially when our sermon (§ 4) directly combats the teaching of C. H., vi.

136:2 Div. Institt., ii. 15 (Ed. Fritz., i. 106); cf. also v. 14.

138:1 R. (p. 213, 1) brings this passage of our sermon into connection with some assumed persecution of the Pœmandres communities in the course of the fourth century; but I cannot myself see the slightest ground for such an assumption.

140:1 Reitzenstein (p. 171, 2) compares this doctrine of the insensibility and incognizability of God with the Sabæan Gnosis.

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CORPUS HERMETICUM X. (XI.)

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THE KEY

OF THRICE-GREATEST HERMES

(Text: P. 67-84; Pat. 9b-12.)

1. Hermes. My yesterday’s discourse (logos) I did devote to thee, Asclepius, and so ’tis [only] right I should devote to-day’s to Tat; and this the more because ’tis the abridgment of the General Sermons (Logoi) which he has had addressed to him.

“God, Father and the Good,” then, Tat, hath 1 the same nature, or more exactly, energy.

For nature is a predicate of growth, and used of things that change, both mobile and immobile, that is to say, both human and divine, each one of which He willeth into being.

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But energy consists in something else, as we have shown in treating of the rest, both things divine and human things 1; which thing we ought to have in mind when treating of the Good. 2

2. God’s energy is then His Will; further His essence is to will the being of all things. For what is “God and Father and the Good” but the to be of all that are not yet? Nay, subsistence 3 self of everything that is;—this, then, is God, this Father, this the Good; to Him is added naught of all the rest.

And though the Cosmos, that is to say the Sun, is also sire himself to them that share in him; yet so far is he not the cause of good unto the lives, he is not even of their living.

So that e’en if he be a sire, he is entirely so by the compulsion of the Good’s Good-will, apart from which nor being nor becoming could e’er be.

3. Again, the parent is the children’s cause, both on the father’s and the mother’s side, 4 only by sharing in 5 the Good’s desire [that doth pour] through the Sun. It is the Good which doeth the creating.

And such a power can be possessed by no one

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else than Him alone who taketh naught, 1 but wills all things to be; I will not, Tat, say makes.

For that the maker is defective for long periods (in which he sometimes makes, and sometimes doth not make) both in the quality and in the quantity [of what he makes]; in that he sometimes maketh them so many and such like, and sometimes the reverse.

But “God and Father and the Good” is [cause] for all to be. So are at least these things for who can see.

4. For It doth will to be, and It is both Itself and most of all by reason of 2 Itself. Indeed all other things beside are just because of It; for the distinctive feature of the Good is “that it should be known.” Such is the Good, O Tat.

Tat. Thou hast, O father, filled us so full 3 of this so good and fairest Sight, that thereby my mind’s eye hath now become for me almost a thing to worship.

For that the Vision of the Good doth not, like the sun’s beam, fire-like blaze on the eyes and make them close; nay, on the contrary, it shineth forth and maketh to increase the seeing 4 of the eye, as far as e’er a man hath the capacity

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to hold the inflow of the radiance that the mind alone can see.

Not only does it come more swiftly down to us, but it does us no harm, and is instinct with all immortal life.

5. They who are able to drink in a somewhat more than others of this Sight, ofttimes from out the body fall asleep into this fairest Spectacle, as was the case with Uranus and Cronus, our forebears. 1 May this be our lot too, O father mine!

Her. Yea, may it be, my son! But as it is, we are not yet strung to the Vision, and not as yet have we the power our mind’s eye to unfold and gaze upon the Beauty of the Good—Beauty that naught can e’er corrupt or any comprehend.

For [only] then wilt thou upon It gaze when thou canst say no word concerning It. For Gnosis of the Good is holy silence and a giving holiday to every sense.

6. For neither can he who perceiveth It, perceive aught else; nor he who gazeth on It, gaze on aught else; nor hear aught else, nor stir his body any way. Staying his body’s every sense and every motion he stayeth still.

And shining then all round his mind, It shines

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through his whole soul, and draws it out of body, transforming all of him to essence.

For it is possible, my son, that a man’s soul should be made like to God, e’en while it still is in a body, if it doth contemplate the Beauty of the Good.

7. Tat. Made like to God! What dost thou, father, mean?

Her. Of every soul apart are transformations, son.

Tat. What meanest thou? Apart!

Her. 1 Didst thou not, in the General Sermons, hear that from One Soul—the All-soul—come all these souls which are made to revolve in all the cosmos, as though divided off?

Of these souls, then, it is that there are many changes, some to a happier lot and some to [just] the contrary of this.

Thus some that were once creeping things change into things that in the water dwell, the souls of water things change to earth-dwellers, those that live on the earth change into things with wings, and souls that live in air change into men, while human souls reach the first step of deathlessness changed into daimones.

And so they circle to the choir of the Inerrant Gods; for of the Gods there are two choirs, the

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one Inerrant, and the other Errant. And this is the most perfect glory of the soul.

8. But if a soul on entering in the body of a man persisteth in its vice, 1 it neither tasteth deathlessness nor shareth in the Good; but speeding back again it turns into the path that leads to creeping things. This is the sentence of the vicious soul.

And the soul’s vice is ignorance. 2 For that the soul who hath no knowledge of the things that are, or knowledge of their nature, or of Good, is blinded by the body’s passions and tossed about.

This wretched soul, not knowing what she is, becomes the slave of bodies of strange form in sorry plight, bearing the body as a load; not as the ruler, but the ruled. This [ignorance] is the soul’s vice.

9. But on the other hand the virtue of the soul is Gnosis. For he who knows, he good and pious is, and still while on the earth 3 divine.

Tat. But who is such an one, O father mine?

Her. He who doth not say much or lend his ear to much. For he who spendeth time in arguing and hearing arguments, doth shadow

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fight. For “God, the Father and the Good,” is not to be obtained by speech or hearing.

And yet though this is so, there are in all the beings senses, in that they cannot without senses be.

But Gnosis is far different from sense. For sense is brought about by that which hath the mastery o’er us, while Gnosis is the end of science, 1 and science is God’s gift.

10. All science is incorporal, the instrument it uses being the mind, just as the mind employs the body.

Both then come into bodies, [I mean] both things that are cognizable by mind alone and things material. 2 For all things must consist out of antithesis and contrariety; and this can otherwise not be.

Tat. Who then is this material God of whom thou speakest?

Her. Cosmos is beautiful, but is not good 3—for that it is material and freely passible 4; and though it is the first of all things passible, yet is it in the second rank of being and wanting in itself.

And though it never hath itself its birth in time, but ever is, yet is its being in becoming,

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becoming for all time the genesis of qualities and quantities; for it is mobile and all material motion’s genesis. 1

11. It is intelligible 2 rest that moves material motion in this way, 3 since Cosmos is a sphere—that is to say, a head. And naught of head above’s material, as naught of feet below’s intelligible, 4 but all material.

And head itself moved in a sphere-like way—that is to say, as head should move, 5 is mind.

All then that are united to the “tissue” of this “head” (in which 6 is soul) are in their nature free from death,—just as when body hath been made in soul, are things that have more soul than body.

Whereas those things which are at greater distance from this “tissue”—there, where are things which have a greater share of body than of soul—are by their nature subject unto death.

The whole, however, is a life; so that the universe consists of both the hylic and of the intelligible. 7

12. Again, the Cosmos is the first of living

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things, while man is second after it, though first of things subject to death.

Man hath the same ensouling power in him as all the rest of living things 1; yet is he not only not good, but even evil, 2 for that he’s subject unto death. 3

For though the Cosmos also is not good in that it suffers motion, it is not evil, in that it is not subject unto death. But man, in that he’s subject both to motion and to death, is evil. 4

13. Now then the principles 5 of man are this-wise vehicled: mind in the reason (logos), the reason in the soul, soul in the spirit, 6 [and] spirit in the body.

Spirit pervading [body] 7 by means of veins and arteries and blood, bestows upon the living creature motion, and as it were doth bear it in a way.

For this cause some do think the soul is blood, in that they do mistake its nature, not knowing that [at death] it is the spirit that must first

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withdraw into the soul, whereon the blood congeals and veins and arteries are emptied, and then the living creature is withdrawn; and this is body’s death.

14. Now from One Source 1 all things depend; while Source [dependeth] from the One and Only [One]. Source is, moreover, moved to become Source again; whereas the One standeth perpetually and is not moved.

Three then are they: “God, the Father and the Good,” Cosmos and man.

God doth contain Cosmos; Cosmos [containeth] man. Cosmos is e’er God’s Son, man as it were Cosmos’s child.

15. Not that, however, God ignoreth man; nay, right well doth He know him, and willeth to be known.

This is the sole salvation for a man—God’s Gnosis. This is the Way Up to the Mount. 2

By Him alone the soul becometh good, not whiles is good, whiles evil, but [good] out of necessity.

Tat. What dost thou mean, Thrice-greatest one?

Her. Behold an infant’s soul, my son, that is not yet cut off, 3 because its body is still small and not as yet come unto its full bulk. 4

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Tat. How?

Her. A thing of beauty altogether is [such a soul] to see, not yet befouled by body’s passions, still all but hanging from the Cosmic Soul!

But when the body grows in bulk and draweth down the soul into its mass, then doth the soul cut off itself and bring upon itself forgetfulness, and no more shareth in the Beautiful and Good. And this forgetfulness becometh vice.

16. It is the same for them who go out from the body.

For when the soul withdraws into itself, the spirit doth contract itself within the blood, and soul within the spirit. 1 And then the mind, stript of its wrappings, and naturally divine, taking unto itself a fiery body, doth traverse every space, after abandoning the soul unto its judgment and whatever chastisement it hath deserved.

Tat. 2 What dost thou, father, mean by this? The mind is parted from the soul and soul from

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spirit? Whereas thou said’st the soul was the mind’s vesture, and the soul’s the spirit.

17. Her. The hearer, son, should think with him who speaks and breathe with him 1; nay, he should have a hearing subtler than the voice of him who speaks.

It is, son, in a body made of earth that this arrangement of the vestures comes to pass. For in a body made of earth it is impossible the mind should take its seat itself by its own self in nakedness.

For neither is it possible on the one hand the earthy body should contain such immortality, nor on the other that so great a virtue should endure a body passible in such close contact with it. It taketh, then, the soul for as it were an envelope.

And soul itself, being too a thing divine, doth use the spirit as its envelope, while spirit doth pervade the living creature.

18. When then the mind doth free itself from the earth-body, it straightway putteth on its proper robe of fire, with which it could not dwell in an earth-body.

For earth doth not bear fire; for it is all set in a blaze even by a small spark. And for this cause is water poured round earth, to be a guard and wall, to keep the blazing of the fire away.

But mind, the swiftest thing of all divine out-

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thinkings, and swifter than all elements, hath for its body fire.

For mind being builder 1 doth use the fire as tool for the construction of all things—the Mind of all [for the construction] of all things, but that of man only for things on earth.

Stript of its fire the mind on earth cannot make things divine, for it is human in its dispensation. 2

19. The soul in man, however,—not every soul, but one that pious is—is a daimonic something and divine.

And such a soul when from the body freed, if it have fought the fight of piety—the fight of piety is to know God and to do wrong to no man—such soul becomes entirely mind.

Whereas the impious soul remains in its own essence, chastised by its own self, and seeking for an earthy body where to enter, if only it be human.

For that no other body can contain a human soul; nor is it right that any human soul should fall into the body of a thing that doth possess no reason. For that the law of God is this: to guard the human soul from such tremendous outrage. 3

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20. Tat. How father, then, is a man’s soul chastised?

Her. What greater chastisement of any human soul can there be, son, than lack of piety? What fire has so fierce flame as lack of piety? What ravenous beast so mauls the body as lack of piety the very soul?

Dost thou not see what hosts of ills the impious soul doth bear?

It shrieks and screams: I burn; I am ablaze; I know not what to cry or do; ah, wretched me, I am devoured by all the ills that compass me about; alack, poor me, I neither see nor hear!

Such are the cries wrung from a soul chastised; not, as the many think, and thou, son, dost suppose, that a [man’s] soul, passing from body, is changed into a beast.

Such is a very grave mistake, for that the way a soul doth suffer chastisement is this:

21. When mind becomes a daimon, the law requires that it should take a fiery body to execute the services of God; and entering in the soul most impious it scourgeth it with whips made of its sins.

And then the impious soul, scourged with its sins, is plunged in murders, outrage, blasphemy, in violence of all kinds, and all the other things whereby mankind is wronged. 1

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But on the pious soul the mind doth mount and guide it 1 to the Gnosis’ Light. And such a soul doth never tire in songs of praise [to God] and pouring blessing on all men, and doing good in word and deed to all, in imitation of its Sire. 2

22. Wherefore, my son, thou shouldst give praise to God and pray that thou mayst have thy mind Good [Mind]. It is, then, to a better state the soul doth pass; it cannot to a worse.

Further 3 there is an intercourse 4 of souls; those of the gods have intercourse with those of men, and those of men with souls of creatures which possess no reason.

The higher, further, have in charge the lower; the gods look after men, men after animals irrational, 5 while God hath charge of all; for He is higher than them all and all are less than He.

Cosmos is subject, then, to God, man to the Cosmos, and irrationals to man. But God is o’er them all, and God contains them all.

God’s rays, to use a figure, are His energies; the Cosmos’s are natures; the arts and sciences are man’s. 6

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The energies act through the Cosmos, thence through the nature-rays of Cosmos upon man; the nature-rays [act] through the elements; man [acteth] through the sciences and arts.

23. This is the dispensation 1 of the universe, depending from the nature of the One, pervading [all things] through the Mind, than which 2 is naught diviner or of greater energy; and naught a greater means for the at-oning men to gods and gods to men.

He, [Mind,] is the Good Daimon. Blessed the soul that is most filled with Him, and wretched 3 is the soul that’s empty of the Mind.

Tat. Father, what dost thou mean, again?

Her. 4 Dost think then, son, that every soul hath the Good [Mind]? For ’tis of Him we speak, not of the mind in service 5 of which we just were speaking, the mind sent down for [the soul’s] chastisement.

24. For soul without the mind “can neither speak nor act.” 6 For oftentimes the mind doth leave the soul, and at that time the soul nor sees

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nor understands, but is just like a thing that hath no reason. Such is the power of mind.

Yet doth it not endure a sluggish 1 soul, but leaveth such a soul tied to the body and bound tight down by it. Such soul, my son, doth not have Mind; and therefore such an one should not be called a man. 2 For that man is a thing-of-life 3 divine; man is not measured with the rest of lives of things upon the earth, but with the lives above in heaven, who are called gods.

Nay more, if we must boldly speak the truth, the true “man” is e’en higher than the gods, or at the [very] least the gods and men are every whit in power each with the other equal.

25. For no one of the gods in heaven shall come down on the earth, o’er-stepping heaven’s limit; whereas man doth mount up to heaven and measure it; he knows what things of it are high, what things are low, and learns precisely all things else besides. And greater thing than all; without e’en quitting earth, he doth ascend above. So vast a sweep doth he possess of ecstasy. 4

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For this cause can a man dare say that man on earth is god subject to death, while god in heaven is man from death immune.

Wherefore the dispensation of all things is brought about by means of 1 these, the twain—Cosmos and Man 2—but by 3 the One.

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Footnotes

141:1 The three are only different names for one idea; the verb is in the singular in the Greek. Cf. C. H., ii. (iii.) 16 and 17: “Good then is God and God is Good”; and “The other name of God is Father.”

142:1 That is to say, presumably, in the General Sermons.

142:2 Lit. of this.

142:3 ὕπαρξις. Cf. C. H., xvi. 4.

142:4 Lit. both with regard to seed and nourishment.

142:5 Lit. taking.

143:1 Cf. C. H., ii. (iii.) 16: “The Good is He who gives all things and naught receives.”

143:2 Lit. for.

143:3 ἐπλήρωσας,—reminding us of πλήρωμα.

143:4 Lit. light.

144:1 See Lact, D. Institt., i. 11; P. S. A., xi. 4, xxxvii. 3; and Ex. i. 4.

145:1 From here to end of § 8 is quoted by Stobæus, Phys., I. xli. 48 (G. i. 429, 430; W. 416, 18 ff.).

146:1 ἐὰν κακὴ μείνῃ.

146:2 Cf. C. H., xii. (xiii.) 3: “The great ill of the soul is Godlessness”; also below § 20: “What greater chastisement of any human soul can there be, son, than lack of piety?”

146:3 Lit. already.

147:1 ἐπιστήμης.

147:2 Or hylic.

147:3 But cf. P. S. A., xxvii. 1.

147:4 That is capable of suffering, or impressionable by agencies other than itself.

148:1 Genesis and becoming are both γένεσις in Greek.

148:2 Noëtic as opposed to hylic—the antithesis and contrariety mentioned above.

148:3 Namely the ever-becoming of genesis.

148:4 Or mental, in the sense of being of the same nature as the mind.

148:5 κεφαλικῶς.

148:6 In which “tissue.”

148:7 §§ 12, 13 are quoted by Stobæus, Phys., I. xxxix. 9 (G. i. 307; W. 350, 13 ff.).

149:1 That is to say, the world-system itself and all the globes in it.

149:2 Cf. Ex. i. 11 and 15.

149:3 Whereas the system and its globes are regarded as practically immortal.

149:4 Reitzenstein (p. 40, 1) gives a revised text of the major part of this utterance of Hermes, from “Cosmos is beautiful” onwards, but unfortunately he omits just the most obscure sentences in it.

149:5 Lit. a man’s soul, where ψυχὴ is used in a general sense, and not in the particular sense applied to it in the category which immediately follows.

149:6 πνεύματι.

149:7 Cf. P. S. A., vi. 4.

150:1 ἀρχή.

150:2 Lit. to Olympus.

150:3 Sc. from the world-soul.

150:4 Cf. the instructive exposition of Basilides in F. F. F., pp. 274 f.

151:1 This is generally translated “the spirit is contracted into the blood, and the soul into the spirit,” but such a translation contradicts § 13, where we are told that “the spirit withdraws into the soul” at death. It seems to mean that the spirit passes within, out of the blood, and the soul is then clothed in a spirit-vesture, or borne in a spirit-vehicle.

151:2 From here to the end of § 18 is quoted by Stobæus, Phys., xl. 3 (G. i. 312, 313; W. 310, 25 ff.); only the dialogue is ascribed in error to Asclepius and Tat and not to Hermes and Tat.

152:1 Cf. P. S. A., x. i.

153:1 δημιουργός.

153:2 τῇ διοικήσει, i.e. in its economy.

153:3 This paragraph is quoted by Stobæus, Phys., xli. 49 (G. i. 430, 431; W. 417, 15 ff.). For the idea, cf. P. S. A., xxxii. 2.

154:1 Cf. P. S. A., xxv. 4 and xxviii. 1.

155:1 Cf. C. H., iv. (v.) 11; vii. (viii.) 11; ix. (x.) 10; R. 23, n. 5.

155:2 Namely, the Good.

155:3 From here to the end is quoted by Stobæus, Phys., I. xxxix. 8 (G. i. 305-307; W. 303, 14 ff.).

155:4 κοινωνία. Cf. P. S. A., xxiii. 1.

155:5 Cf. P. S. A., v. 1.

155:6 Cf. Ex. viii. 1.

156:1 διοίκησις, compare 19.

156:2 Sc. the Mind.

156:3 κακοδαίμων, as opposed to ὁ ἀγαθὸς δαίμων. It is impossible to reproduce the original word-play in translation.

156:4 Stobæus (Gaisford) here reads “A.”—that is, Asclepius.

156:5 τοῦ ὑπηρετικοῦ, compare § 21, “the services of God” (τὰς τοῦ θεοῦ ὑπηρεσίας); that is to say, Hermes speaks of the Universal Mind and not of the mind in man.

156:6 A quotation from the ancient gnomic poet Theognis (v. 177). Theognis lived c. 570-490 B.C.

157:1 νωτρᾶς,—? νωθρᾶς. Everard translates “an idle or lazy soul,” in his usual slipshod fashion of inserting doubles; Parthey gives “inertem animam”; Ménard, “l’âme vicieuse”; Chambers, “inert.” Several of the old editors omit the entire sentence.

157:2 Cf. Philo, De Som., § 20; M. i. 639; P. 584 (Ri. iii. 241): “not for those who are called men, but for those who are truly so.”

157:3 Or animal.

157:4 ἐκστάσεως, lit. extension, or consciousness.

158:1 διά.

158:2 Cf. P. S. A., x. 3.

158:3 ὑπό.

COMMENTARY

THE CONSUMMATION OF THE “GENERAL SERMONS”

What “yesterday’s sermon,” which Hermes addressed to Asclepius, may have been, we have no means of deciding. The similarity of the phrase with the opening words of C. H., ix. (x.) is noticeable, and points, perhaps, to a collection of Sermons to Asclepius and Tat strung together in some chronological order, as delivered day by day. If this be the fact, however, we must assume that such introductions were prefixed by the editor of that collection.

“The Key of Thrice-greatest Hermes” must have been considered one of the most remarkable documents of the school, for, as we have already mentioned in the case of “The Cup” treatise, the apocryphal “Books of Moses” plagiarize the title. 4

That it was an important treatise may also be seen from the fact that Stobæus reproduces no less than five extracts from it under the title, “From the [Sermons] of Hermes to Tat,” or simply “Of Hermes.” Strangely enough in two cases (xxxix. 8 and xl. 3) Stobæus makes

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the persons of the dialogue Asclepius and Tat; this, however, must be a mistake, for it contradicts his own headings, it contradicts the nature of the sermon, it contradicts the supposed introduction of the editor of the collection from whom the redactor of our Corpus has taken his text, and it contradicts Chalcidius, who quotes from our treatise as a treatise of Hermes. 1

Nevertheless, in spite of the importance of the treatise, it purports to be an epitome, 2 an abridgment of the “General Sermons” (οἱ γενικοὶ λόγοι) 3 addressed to Tat.

The sermon itself, however, has by no means the appearance of being an abridgment; on the contrary, it is one of the most complete and fundamental expositions that we have.

I would, therefore, suggest that the general reference in the words, “as we have shown in treating of the rest” (§ 1), and the precise reference to “The General Sermons,” in § 7, have originated this wording of the introduction with the editor of the collection of Asclepius and Tat Sermons which I have previously supposed. It is a gloss of the editor and no part of the original text.

If this argument holds good, “The Key,” instead of

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being an epitome, is a further teaching that presupposes a prior instruction already given in “The General Sermons,” and so stands out as a more intimate exposition of the inward doctrine of the higher grades of the school.

Reitzenstein (p. 461) would have it that the doctrine of Sermons, ix. (x.) and x. (xi.), is a mediate one between the dualism of vi. (vii.) and the pronounced pantheistic mysticism of v. (vi.) and xi. (xii.); but I should fancy that these labels, even if they are correctly attached, would not represent such overwhelming contradictions to the Trismegistic doctors as they appear to do to their modern critics. There were different points of view; there were different grades of instruction; every doctrine had more truth in it at the proper time and in the right place. In any case this sermon is one of the most beautiful tractates preserved to us.

THE WILL OF GOD

1. Our treatise begins with the statement that the universe and all therein is due to the Energy or Effective Working of God—that is to say, His Will. This Will is immutable and constant—the Law of the universe.

How subtly these philosophers in their most intimate circles used these terms may be seen from the Gnostic Doctor, Basilides, who writes:

“Naught was,—neither matter, nor substance, nor voidness of substance, nor simplicity, nor impossibility of composition, nor inconceptibility, nor imperceptibility, neither man, nor angel [Hermeticè, daimon], nor God; in fine, neither anything at all for which man has ever found a name, nor any operation which falls within the range either of his perception or conception.

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“Such, or rather far more removed from the power of man’s comprehension, was the state of Non-Being, when the Deity beyond Being, without thinking, or feeling, or determining, or choosing, or being compelled, or desiring, willed to create universality.”

“When I use the term will,” writes Basilides, “I do so merely to suggest the idea of an operation transcending all volition, thought, or sensible action.” 1

2. God’s Energy, or Self-realization, is, then, His Will (θέλησις); His Essence (οὐσία) or Substance is “to will the being of all things”; in brief, He is the Very Subsistence (ὕπαρξις) of all—a term which subsequently came into great prominence in the later Platonic philosophy.

3. In § 3 we have a clear distinction drawn between the transcendent idea of God as Creator or Willer, and the ordinary conception of God as Maker or Fabricator or Demiurge—a distinction that meets us in almost every Gnostic system. In our treatise, however, there is no setting of the one idea over against the other in any sense of antagonism. It is only stated that the self-operation of Deity transcends all such limited conceptions as that of a Maker or Fabricator.

OF GNOSIS AND ECSTASIS

4. The distinctive feature of God as the Good, or the Desirable, the Supreme Consummation, is “that He should be known” (τὸ γνωρίζεσθαι); in other words, the science of all sciences is the Gnosis of God.

5. The Vision Glorious, the One Sight, is next spoken of under the simile of the shining of a Ray of the Light

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and Life of the Spiritual Sun into the mind. This consummation of Ecstasis, 1 we are told, was a transcending of the limitations of body, and was a faculty possessed by the forebears (πρόγονοι) of the “race” into which Hermes and now Tat are being born; these ancestors are mentioned under symbolic Greek names, evidently a substitute for Egyptian ones, for the reference is clearly to the priesthood of some past civilization of the Nile Land. At the same time, it can be referred to certain grades of super-men, regarded as gods, who had reached to certain stages of celestial dignity. 2

To this idea of ancient Masters of the Gnosis in Egypt, Lactantius refers as follows:

“And so it appears that he [Cronus] was not born from Heaven (which is impossible), but from that man who was called Uranus; and that this is so, Trismegistus bears witness, when, in stating that there have been very few in whom the perfect science has been found, he mentioned in their number Uranus, Cronus, and Hermes his kinsfolk.” 3

Lactantius seems to be somewhat under the fascination of the theory of Euhemerus, and has no credence in the Heaven-born, in spite of the Christ Birth. We, however, learn from him that he knew of a statement by Hermes in this connection in which, besides Uranus and Cronus, an ancient Hermes was mentioned. Now in our treatise this is not the case, and Tat and not Hermes is the speaker; whereas in P. S. A., xxxvii., where Hermes speaks of his progenitor Hermes, no

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mention is made of Uranus and Cronus. Therefore Lactantius refers to a lost treatise of Hermes.

OF APOTHEOSIS

6. The nature of Ecstasy is then further explained; it is the fruit of meditation or contemplation, the consummation of the Theoretic Life.

“The Gnosis of the Good is holy silence and a giving holiday (καταργία) to every sense.”

The Holy Silence reminds us of the Sigē of the Christian Gnostics; here, however, instead of the Mother-Æon of Cosmos, it is used in the sense of the pure mother-nature of the little cosmos of man, the divine womb that brings to birth the true man.

With this may be compared C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 2:

“Wisdom conceived by mind in silence, such is the matter and the womb from out which man is born, and the true Good the seed.”

It is hardly necessary to add that this is the Yoga of the Upaniṣhads. Indeed, the first part of § 6 might be taken word for word from those sublime treatises of Vaidik theosophy, and shows how identical is the thought of those who have first-hand experience of the higher consciousness.

“For it is possible, my son, that a man’s soul should be made like to God (ἀποθεωθῆναι), e’en while it still is in a body, if it doth contemplate the Beauty of the Good.”

This is the “deification” (ἀποθέωσις), or “apotheōsis” of a man; he becomes like unto God, in that he becomes a god. The Beauty of the Good is the Cosmic Order; and the mode of this meditation was to bring the soul into sympathy with the Cosmic Soul.

THE METAMORPHOSES OF THE SOUL

7. The secret of this divine operation (or theurgy) is based upon the fact that the soul can be transformed

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into every likeness. The Great Likeness of God is the Cosmic Order, the making oneself into this Likeness is the supreme transformation or transfiguration of the soul.

The separated or individual soul is in perpetual pilgrimage, revolving on the wheel of transformation. This doctrine was shared in by many other faiths, and it was also Egyptian.

In this connection we may refer instructively to Hippolytus’ quotations from the Naassene Document (§ 3 S.):

“And they 1 say that the soul is very difficult to discover, and hard to understand; for it never remains of the same appearance, or form, or in the same state, so that we can describe it by a general type, or comprehend it by an essential quality.”

On this Hippolytus comments:

“These variegated metamorphoses they 2 have laid down in the Gospel superscribed ‘According to the Egyptians.’”

The Gospel according to the Egyptians is lost, with the exception of a few fragments. We, however, here learn that it described the metamorphoses of the soul. It was a Gospel having its origin in Egypt and suited to Egyptian modes of thought. It follows, therefore, that the doctrine of the soul’s transformation was Egyptian. 3

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THE LADDER OF BEING

The Hermetic doctrine of the evolution of the soul, by means of multitudinous transformations, is characterised by certain main moments, for in the course of it it passes through definite stages of existence designated as animal, human, daimonic, and god-like; there being, further, two grades of being within the choir of gods—the errant and inerrant. The final stage is the most perfect glory (δόξα) or power of the soul.

With all of this there is a strikingly exact parallel of ideas in the Pauline Letters.

“But some one will say: How do the dead rise, and with what body do they come [? back]?

“Thou foolish one! That which thou sowest is not made quick unless it die.

“And that which thou sowest—’tis not the body that shall be thou sowest, but a naked grain of wheat or of one of the other seeds. 1

“’Tis God that gives to it 2 a body as he will,—yea to every one of the seeds its proper body.

“Not every flesh is the same flesh; but there is one of men, another flesh of beasts, another flesh of birds, and another of fishes.

“There are also bodies celestial, as well as bodies terrestrial. But the glory of the celestial [bodies] is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.

“[And of the former] the glory of the sun is one, and the glory of the moon is another, and [yet] another is the glory of the stars; for star differeth from star in glory.

“So also is the resurrection of the dead.” 3

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And by “resurrection of the dead,” I believe that Paul meant what all the instructed of the time meant—namely, the “reaching the first step of deathlessness,” as Hermes has it in our treatise. The death or vice of the soul is ignorance, the virtue or life of the soul is Gnosis.

“For he who knows, he good and pious is, and still while on the earth, divine.”

CONCERNING TRANSMIGRATION

8. With § 8, however, we are confronted with what appears to be a great difficulty. Hermes here seems to teach distinctly that a vicious (that is, an ignorant) soul, one who has not attained to Gnosis, goes back to attachment to animal bodies, while in §§ 19 ff., he at great length denies that a human soul can possibly do so. Is there any solution of this apparently complete self-contradiction in one and the same treatise?

Far as I am from desiring to play the apologist for any scripture, I am prevented from appending an impatient “No” to this query, for the following considerations:

In the first place, Hermes in § 8 is speaking of the vicious or ignorant soul, while in § 19 he is speaking not only of the “human” soul, but of the human soul that hath the Good Mind (§ 23); whereas the ignorant soul “doth not have Mind, and, therefore, such an one should not be called a man” (§ 24). Here, then, we have a fundamental distinction in souls incarnated into the “body of a man” (§ 8); they are of two classes.

The doctrine of § 8 applies to one class, the doctrine of § 19 to another.

Metempsychosis, in the sense of continued revolution on the wheel of life and death, is only for him who “persisteth in his vice”—that is to say, is

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still ignorant. Gnosis thus means the freedom from saṁsāra, to use a common Brāhmanical and Buddhistic term.

The ignorant soul does not see the Light, being “blinded by the body’s passions, and tossed about”; this is the “turmoil” of which Plato speaks in the Timæus.

And here I must refer the reader to “Plato Concerning Metempsychosis,” in the “Prolegomena,” a chapter which I have written mainly in elucidation of the problems raised by our treatise.

GNOSIS THE VIRTUE OF THE SOUL

9. So much, then, for the soul which persisteth in its vice or ignorance; but the virtue of the soul is Gnosis.

“For he who knows, he good and pious is, and still while on the earth, divine.”

This is precisely the same idea as that of the Jīvanmukta in Indian theosophy—namely, the man who has reached Mukti or Liberation while still living in the body.

Hermes thus proceeds to distinguish Gnosis, the end of human science, from sense or opinion. Gnosis is the apotheosis of the mind, its immediate perception of the things-that-are—namely, the Intelligible Cosmos.

11. The Sensible or Hylic Cosmos is then explained, and also the nature of man, and his relationship to the Cosmos and God.

THE VEHICLES OF THE SOUL

13. The vehicles of man’s “Soul” are then categorized (ψυχὴ δὲ ἀνθρώπου ὀχεῖται τὸν τρόπον τοῦτον), the Soul being here used in the sense of the Self, and as distinguished from the “soul” in the category. They are

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as follows, one within the other, in the sense of being respectively more intimate to the true nature of man:

Mind (νοῦς); reason (λόγος); soul (ψυχή); spirit (πνεῦμα); body (σῶμα).

The remarkable similarity of this category with the psychology of the Upaniṣhads cannot fail to strike the student of those mother-treatises of Vaidik theosophy. Thus we read in the Kaṭhopaniṣhad, I. iii. 10, 11:

“Beyond the senses are the rudiments 1; beyond the rudiments impulsive mind; beyond the mind, the reason; beyond the reason, the Great Self.

“Beyond the Great, the Increate 2; beyond the Increate, the Man 3; beyond the Man, not any thing; That is the goal; That is the final end.”

The analogy is striking. Body = gross elements; spirit = subtle elements; soul = impulsive mind (manas); reason = reason (buddhi 4); Mind = the Great (Mahat); Source (ἀχρή) = the Increate; the One and Only (τὸ ἕν καὶ μόνον) = the Man.

These so-called “vehicles,” “envelopes,” or “sheaths” (koshas), are elsewhere given in the Upaniṣhads as: anna-maya-kosha—that is, the kosha composed of, or resulting from, food (body); prāṇa-maya-k., of life (spirit); mano-maya-k., of impulse (soul); vijñāna-maya-k., of discrimination (reason); ānanda-maya-k., of bliss (Mind).

“Spirit” is thus seen to correspond to life (prāna); it is that which “bestows upon the living creature motion, and, as it were, doth bear it” (i.e. support it) “in a way” (§ 13). It is not Life, but individualized

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life, and in the Aupaniṣhad literature is differentiated into five modes, which may be almost translated as etheric currents or modes of motion in the body. 1

The quotation from Proclus in “Plato Concerning Metempsychosis,” will have sufficiently shown that this “life” is of the same nature as the animal life. It is that principle of soul which man shares with the animals.

THE DUAL SOUL

And here we may refer to Jamblichus (De Myst., viii. 6), when referring to the “Hermaic writings” he says:

“Man has two souls, as these writings say. The one is from the first Mind, and partakes also of the power of the Creator, while the other, the soul under constraint, comes from the revolution of the celestial [spheres]; into the latter the former, the soul that is the seer of God, 2 insinuates itself at a later period.

“This being so, the soul that descends into us from the worlds [or spheres] keeps time with the circuit of these worlds, while the soul from the Mind existing in us in an intelligible fashion is free from the whirl of genesis; by this the bonds of Destiny are burst asunder; by this the Path up to the Gods whom mind alone can see is brought to birth; by such a life as this is that Great Art Divine, which leads us up to That beyond the spheres of genesis, brought to its consummation.”

Hermes in our treatise is, however, more precise as to the so-called “vehicles” or “souls,” for he writes (§ 17):

“Mind taketh, then, the soul for, as it were, an

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envelope. And soul itself being, too, a thing divine, 1 doth use the spirit as its envelope, while spirit doth pervade the living creature.” 2

“HE WHO STANDS”

The Supreme Principle of all, the One and Only One, who “standeth perpetually” (§ 14), is the Intelligible Logos (ἡ νοητὴ στάσις, cf. § 11), the ὁ ἑστὼς of the Christianized Gnosis, as seen especially in the Simonian Great Announcement. He is the Cause of the perpetual motion of the Hylic Cosmos. Compare this with the following passage of Numenius:

“Now there are two modes of life, the first of the First and the second of the Second God. For it is evident that the First God should be standing (ἑστὼς), and the Second, on the contrary, moved. The First, then, is occupied about things intelligible, and the Second about things intelligible and sensible.

“Marvel not that I say this; for thou shalt hear what is still more marvellous. For I say that it is not the motion that appertains to the Second, but the rest that pertains to the First, which is the innate ‘motion’ from which both their cosmic order and their eternal community and their preservation [or salvation] is poured forth on things universal.” 3

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THE OLYMPIAN PATH

15. In § 15 the Gnosis is again declared to be the only Path of Salvation or Safety. 1 It is the Way Up to the Mount, 2 the Olympian Path.

The term Eleusis was also interpreted as Anabasis, or the Way Up. 3 Compare the Jewish commentator in the Naassene Document (§ 27):

“First is the Mystery called ‘Eleusis’ and ‘Anaktoreion’—Eleusis because we come from Above, 4 streaming down from Adamas, 5 . . . and Anaktoreion from ‘Returning Above.’”

“WHEN MIND BECOMES A DAIMON”

16. The next main doctrine touched on is one of immense importance, for it gives us the inner teaching which illuminates the “dark saying” in the “Pœmandres” (§ 24), when treating of the Way Up (ἄνοδος):

“And thou surrenderest thy way of life unto the daimon.”

For in our treatise Hermes tells us that at death:

“The mind stript of its wrappings, and naturally divine, taking unto itself a fiery body, doth traverse every space, after abandoning the soul unto its judgment and whatever chastisement it hath deserved.”

The key to this is the sentence (§ 21):

“When mind becomes a daimon, the law requires that it should take a fiery body to execute the services of God.”

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At death, the mind, of its own nature, perforce becomes a “servant of God,” a Therapeut 1; the man is his own judge and his own chastizer.

The “fire of hell” is then but the reflection of the light of the mind; it is the burning remorse of a mind that now sees the inevitable results of every selfish action—thought, word, and deed; that each of these comes inevitably back on the sender forth of it.

The soul, thus, lives out (and that too in the most realistic fashion, it realizes the actuality of the law in all its most minute details) the inevitable consequences of its past vicious deeds in body.

Here we have the hint of a psychology and of an inner teaching that persuades us there was a profound wisdom at the back of the intermediate instruction of these schools.

Compare this most reasonable theory of after-death “illumination” with the crudities of the eternal torment idea of popular religion with which we are so familiar, and reflect on what a “falling off” there has been from the Gnosis of the early days.

And what is the “fiery body” of the mind but the ray-like or starry vehicle of the man, the αὐγοειδὲς ἢ ἀστροειδὲς of Philoponus? 2

This is the true “Astral Body” of a man, and not the “watery vesture” which is referred to under the term in modern nomenclature.

This is the true Body of Purification, that burns up all impurities, and in the light of the conflagration burns into man the memory of the Gnosis.

The soul is thus “chastised by its own self”; and if Hermes had taught us nothing else, he would have amply deserved the gratitude of humanity, and the title

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of Thrice-greatest. Yet is “Hermes” no single man, but a mind illuminated by the Mind.

THE “SCOURGE” OF THE CHRIST

21. So then “the impious soul, scourged with its own sins, is plunged in murders, outrage, blasphemy, in violence of all kinds, and all the other things whereby mankind is wronged.”

This is the “scourge” by which the Christ drives the unworthy out of His Temple. It does not mean that the soul is driven into doing these things, but that it is made to realize or suffer them—the consequences of its prior misdeeds. Whatever wrong it has done to its fellows, such it suffers, in the realization of its true nature, whereby the Light of Gnosis brings into amazing contrast the darkness or ignorance of its past actions. 1

THE DISPENSATION OF THE UNIVERSE

22. And so Hermes explains the nature of “the dispensation of the universe”—the interlinking of the grades of being from God downwards the intercourse or communion of souls.

God, Cosmos and Man are grades of being. Each is a sun, as it were, in their operations, or powers or rays. God’s rays are His energies or self-realizing operations; those of Cosmos are the natures of things, those of Man are the arts and sciences.

This communion or intercourse of higher with lower natures is to be realized on the side of man by the consummation of the sacred marriage, whereby man becomes a god, and finally God.

He only is blessed who is filled with God—that is to

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say, the true Gnostic who has received the consecration of the Fullness or Plērōma. 1

Whereas the soul that is empty of God is deprived of that Fullness, cut off from it, and so empty of the Mind. This is the state of Emptiness (κένωμα) or Insufficiency (ὑστέρημα).

24. Such souls, says Hermes, should not be called men. For a true man is not only equal to a god, but even higher than the gods. Such a man we should, in Christian nomenclature, call a Christ—one animated or illuminated by the Mind or Spirit of God.

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Footnotes

158:4 R. 182, 3; 190, 2.

159:1 Chalcid., Comment. in Timæum (ed. Fabric.), p. 350.

159:2 Compare also the introduction to C. H., xvi. (see R. 191, 1); and also Ex. i. 16 and Comment.

159:3 Cf. § 7, below; C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 1; and Exs. ix. 1 and xviii. 1. The title must be so translated, I think, in spite of the fact that in the introductory words of the above treatise the term is immediately followed by the antithesis “rebirth” (παλιγγενεσία), as though the Sermons were on birth or genesis (γένεσις),—which, as we know from the Naassene Document, was the subject of the Lesser Mysteries, whereas Rebirth was that of the Greater. Everard gives “in the general speeches”; Parthey, “in communibus”; Ménard, “dans les discours généraux”; Chambers, “in the Generalities.”

161:1 Hipp., Philos., vii. 21 (ed. D. and S., p. 358); F. F. F., pp. 257, 258.

162:1 Cf. § 25, where ecstasis is explained as an extension of consciousness,—a certain “greatness” (μέγεθος).

162:2 See the “Chart of Orphic Cosmogony,” facing p. 87 of my Orpheus (London, 1896), where Uranus and Cronus are referred to the two lower of the three Noëtic “planes” transcending the Sensible Universe.

162:3 Div. Institt., i. 11 (ed. Fritz., i. 29, 30).

164:1 The quotation is from the text of the Hellenistic Commentator, who is referring to the Chaldæans.

164:2 The Gnostics Hippolytus calls the Naassenes.

164:3 Reitzenstein (p. 22, 2) says that it was in error that the Greeks stated the Egyptians believed in metempsychosis; in this I believe that Reitzenstein is himself in error. The Egyptians at any rate demonstrably believed in soul metamorphosis; and when we find people who lived in Egypt teaching this metamorphosis in connection with metempsychosis, it is but natural to conclude that the Greeks, who were in touch with the living tradition of Egypt, knew more about the matter than modern scepticism.

165:1 The “grain of mustard seed”—“wheat” if a good body comes therefrom, “tares” if an imperfect growth results.

165:2 Sc. the soul as grain.

165:3 1 Cor. xv. 35-42.

168:1 The subtler elements.

168:2 Avyakta, undifferentiated cosmic substance.

168:3 Purusha, the True Man.

168:4 The manas and buddhi of the Upaniṣhads are not to be confounded with these terms as at present employed in modern Theosophical literature.

169:1 Cf. K. K., 44, 45, Comment.

169:2 Cf. C. H., ix. (x.) 3: “The daimon who’s illumined by God’s Light.”

170:1 That is, being logos, as from the Creator or Second Mind.

170:2 Cf. Exx. iv. 2; xv. 2; xix. 3; and Frag. xviii.

170:3 Quoted by Eusebius, Præp. Evang., XI. xviii. 20, 21 (539 B), ed. Dindorf (Leipzig, 1867), ii. 41. We do not know Numenius’ date, but it was probably about the first half of the first century A.D. Though Numenius is almost invariably designated as a Pythagorean, he was rather a universalist, for his object was not only to trace the doctrines of Plato up to Pythagoras, but to show that they were not at variance with the doctrines and mysteries of the Brāhmans, Jews, Magi and Egyptians.

171:1 Cf. the passage from Jamblichus quoted above.

171:2 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 1: “The Passing o’er the Mount.”

171:3 Cf. C. H., i. 24.

171:4 Eleusis meaning Coming, Advent.

171:5 The Man or Mind.

172:1 Cf. 23: “The mind in service.”

172:2 See my Orpheus, pp. 292 ff.

173:1 With this compare the function of the Mind on the soul in incarnation, as described in C. H., xii. (xiii.) 4.

174:1 Cf. John i. 16: “Of His Fullness have we all received.”

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CORPUS HERMETICUM XI. (XII.)

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MIND UNTO HERMES

(Text: P. 85-99; Pat. 20b-23.)

1. Mind. Master this sermon (logos), 1 then, Thrice-greatest Hermes, and bear in mind the spoken words; and as it hath come unto Me to speak, I will no more delay.

Hermes. As many men say many things, and these diverse, about the All and Good, I have not learned the truth. Make it, then, clear to me, O Master mine! For I can trust the explanation of these things, which comes from Thee alone.

2. Mind. Hear [then], My son, how standeth God and All.

God; Æon 2; Cosmos; Time; Becoming. 3

God maketh Æon; Æon, Cosmos; Cosmos, Time; and Time, Becoming.

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The Good,—the Beautiful, Wisdom, Blessedness,—is essence, as it were, 1 of God; of Æon, Sameness 2; of Cosmos, Order; of Time, Change; and of Becoming, Life and Death.

The energies of God are Mind and Soul; of Æon, lastingness 3 and deathlessness; of Cosmos, restoration and the opposite thereof 4; of Time, increase and decrease; and of Becoming, quality.

Æon is, then, in God; Cosmos, in Æon; in Cosmos, Time; in Time, Becoming.

Æon stands firm round God; Cosmos is moved in Æon; Time hath its limits 5 in the Cosmos; Becoming doth become in Time.

3. The source, 6 therefore, of all is God; their essence, Æon; their matter, Cosmos.

God’s power is Æon; Æon’s work is Cosmos—which never hath become, yet ever doth become by Æon.

Therefore will Cosmos never be destroyed, for Æon’s indestructible; nor doth a whit of things in Cosmos perish, for Cosmos is enwrapped by Æon round on every side.

Her. But God’s Wisdom—what is that?

Mind. The Good and Beautiful, and Blessedness, and Virtue’s all, and Æon.

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Æon, then, ordereth 1 [Cosmos], imparting deathlessness and lastingness to matter.

4. For its 2 becoming doth depend on Æon, as Æon doth on God.

Now Genesis 3 and Time, in Heaven and on the Earth, are of two natures.

In Heaven they are unchangeable and indestructible, but on the Earth they’re subject unto change and to destruction.

Further, the Æon’s soul is God; the Cosmos’ soul is Æon; the Earth’s soul, Heaven.

And God’s in Mind; and Mind, in Soul; and Soul, in Matter; and all of them through Æon.

But all this Body, 4 in which are all the bodies, is full of Soul; and Soul is full of Mind, and [Mind] of God.

It 5 fills it 6 from within, and from without encircles it, making the All to live.

Without, this vast and perfect Life 7 [encircles] Cosmos; within, it fills [it with] all lives 8; above, in Heaven, continuing in sameness; below, on Earth, changing becoming.

5. And Æon doth preserve this [Cosmos], or by Necessity, or by Foreknowledge, or by

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[paragraph continues]Nature, or by whatever else a man supposes or shall suppose. And all is this,—God energizing.

The Energy of God is Power that naught can e’er surpass, a Power with which no one can make comparison of any human thing at all, or any thing divine.

Wherefore, O Hermes, never think that aught of things above or things below is like to God, for thou wilt fall from truth. For naught is like to That which hath no like, and is Alone and One.

And do not ever think that any other can possibly possess His power; for what apart from Him is there of life, and deathlessness and change of quality? For what else should He make 1?

God’s not inactive, 2 since all things [then] would lack activity; for all are full of God.

But neither in the Cosmos anywhere, nor in aught else, is there inaction. For that “inaction” is a name that cannot be applied to either what doth make or what is made. 3

6. But all things must be made; both ever

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made, and also in accordance with the influence of every space. 1

For He who makes, is in them all; not stablished in some one of them, nor making one thing only, but making all.

For being Power, He energiseth in the things He makes and is not independent of them,—although the things He makes are subject to Him.

Now gaze through Me 2 upon the Cosmos that’s now subject to thy sight; regard its Beauty carefully—Body in pure perfection, though one than which there’s no more ancient one, ever in prime of life, and ever-young, nay, rather, in even fuller and yet fuller prime!

7. Behold, again, the seven subject Worlds 3; ordered 4 by Æon’s order, 5 and with their varied course full-filling Æon!

[See how] all things [are] full of light, and nowhere [is there] fire; for ’tis the love and blending of the contraries and the dissimilars

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that doth give birth to light down shining by the energy of God, 1 the Father of all good, the Leader of all order, and Ruler of the seven world-orderings!

[Behold] the Moon, forerunner of them all, the instrument of nature, and the transmuter of its lower matter!

[Look at] the Earth set in the midst of All, foundation of the Cosmos Beautiful, feeder and nurse of things on Earth!

And contemplate the multitude of deathless lives, how great it is, and that of lives subject to death; and midway, between both, immortal [lives] and mortal, [see thou] the circling Moon.

8. And all are full of Soul, and all are moved by it, each in its proper way; some round the Heaven, others around the Earth; [see] how the right [move] not unto left, nor yet the left unto the right; nor the above below, nor the below above.

And that all these are subject unto Genesis, 2 My dearest Hermes, thou hast no longer need to learn of Me. For that they bodies are, have souls, and they are moved.

But ’tis impossible for them to come together into one without some one to bring them [all]

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together. It must, then, be that such a one as this must be some one who’s wholly One.

9. For as the many motions of them [all] are different, and as their bodies are not like, yet has one speed been ordered for them all, it is impossible that there should be two or more makers for them.

For that one single order is not kept among “the many”; but rivalry will follow of the weaker with the stronger, and they will strive.

And if the maker of the lives that suffer change and death, should be another, 1 he would desire to make the deathless ones as well; just as the maker of the deathless ones, [to make the lives] that suffer death.

But come! if there be two, 2—if Matter’s one, and Soul is one, in whose hands would there be the distribution 3 for the making? Again, if both of them have some of it, in whose hands may there be the greater part?

10. But thus conceive it, then; that every living body doth consist of soul and matter, whether [that body be] of an immortal, or a mortal, or an irrational [life].

For that all living bodies are ensouled; whereas, upon the other hand, those that live not, are matter by itself.

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And, in like fashion, Soul when in its self is, after its own maker, cause of life; but the cause of all life is He who makes the things that cannot die.

Her. How, then, is it that, first, lives subject unto death are other than the deathless ones? And, next, how is it that that Life which knows no death, and maketh deathlessness, doth not make animals immortal?

11. Mind. First, that there is some one who does these things, is clear; and, next, that He is also One, is very manifest. For, also, Soul is one, and Life is one, and Matter one.

Her. But who is He?

Mind. Who may it other be than the One God? Whom else should it beseem to put Soul into lives but God alone? One, then, is God.

It would indeed be most ridiculous, if when thou dost confess the Cosmos to be one, Sun one, Moon one, and Godhead 1 one, thou shouldst wish God Himself to be some one or other of a number!

12. All things, therefore, He makes, in many [ways]. And what great thing is it for God to make life, soul, and deathlessness, and change, when thou [thyself] dost do 2 so many things?

For thou dost see, and speak, and hear, and

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smell, and taste, and touch, and walk, and think, and breathe. And it is not one man who smells, a second one who speaks, a third who touches, another one who smells, another one who walks, another one who thinks, and [yet] another one who breathes. But one is he who doth all these.

And yet no one of these could be apart from God. For just as, shouldst thou cease from 1 these, thou wouldst no longer be a living thing, so also, should God cease from them (a thing not law to say), no longer is He God.

13. For if it hath been shown that no thing can inactive 2 be, how much less God? For if there’s aught He doth not make (if it be law to say), He is imperfect. But if He is not only not inactive, but perfect [God], then He doth make all things.

Give thou thyself to Me, My Hermes, for a little while, 3 and thou shalt understand more easily how that God’s work is one, in order that all things may be—that are being made, or once have been, or that are going to be made. And this 4 is, My belovèd, Life; this is the Beautiful; this is the Good; this, God.

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14. And if them wouldst in practice 1 understand [this work], behold what taketh place with thee desiring to beget. Yet this is not like unto that, for He doth not enjoy.

For that indeed He hath no other one to share in what He works, for working by Himself, He ever is at work, Himself being what He doth. 2 For did He separate Himself from it, 3 all things would [then] collapse, and all must die, Life ceasing.

But if all things are lives, and also Life is one; then, one is God. And, furthermore, if all are lives, both those in Heaven and those on Earth, and One Life in them all is made to be by God, and God is it 4—then, all are made by God.

Life is the making-one of Mind and Soul; accordingly Death is not the destruction of those that are at-oned, 5 but the dissolving of their union.

15. Æon, moreover, is God’s image; Cosmos [is] Æon’s; the Sun, of Cosmos; and Man, [the image] of the Sun.

The people call change death, because the body is dissolved, and life, when it’s dissolved, withdraws to the unmanifest. But in this

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sermon (logos), Hermes, my beloved, as thou dost hear, I say the Cosmos also suffers change,—for that a part of it each day is made to be in the unmanifest,—yet it is ne’er dissolved.

These are the passions of the Cosmos—revolvings and concealments; revolving is conversion and concealment renovation.

16. The Cosmos is all-formed,—not having forms external to itself, but changing them itself within itself. Since, then, Cosmos is made to be all-formed, what may its maker be? For that, on the one hand, He should not be void of all form; and, on the other hand, if He’s all-formed, He will be like the Cosmos. Whereas, again, has He a single form, He will thereby be less than Cosmos.

What, then, say we He is?—that we may not bring round our sermon (logos) into doubt; for naught that mind conceives of God is doubtful.

He, then, hath one idea, 1 which is His own alone, which doth not fall beneath the sight, being bodiless, and [yet] by means of bodies manifesteth all [ideas]. 2 And marvel not that there’s a bodiless idea.

17. For it is like the form of reason (logos) 3

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and mountain-tops in pictures. 1 For they appear to stand out strongly from the rest, but really are quite smooth and flat.

And now consider what is said more boldly, but more truly!

Just as man cannot live apart from Life, so neither can God live without [His] doing good. 2 For this is as it were the life and motion as it were of God—to move all things and make them live.

18. Now some of the things said 3 should bear a sense peculiar to themselves. So understand, for instance, what I’m going to say.

All are in God, [but] not as lying in a place. For place is both a body and immovable, and things that lie do not have motion.

Now things lie one way in the bodiless, another way in being made manifest.

Think, [then,] of Him who doth contain them all; and think, that than the bodiless naught is more comprehensive, or swifter, or more potent, but it is the most comprehensive, the swiftest, and most potent of them all.

19. And, thus, think from thyself, and bid

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thy soul go unto any land; and there more quickly than thy bidding will it be. And bid it journey oceanwards; and there, again, immediately ’twill be, not as if passing on from place to place, but as if being there.

And bid it also mount to heaven; and it will need no wings, nor will aught hinder it, nor fire of sun, nor æther, nor vortex-swirl, 1 nor bodies of the other stars; but, cutting through them all, it will soar up to the last Body [of them all]. 2 And shouldst thou will to break through this as well, and contemplate what is beyond—if there be aught beyond the Cosmos 3; it is permitted thee.

20. Behold what power, what swiftness, thou dost have! And canst thou do all of these things, and God not [do them]?

Then, in this way know 4 God; as having all things in Himself as thoughts, the whole Cosmos itself.

If, then, thou dost not make thyself like unto God, thou canst not know Him. For like is knowable to like [alone].

Make, [then,] thyself to grow to the same stature as the Greatness which transcends all

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measure; leap forth from every body; transcend all Time; become Eternity 1; and [thus] shalt thou know God.

Conceiving nothing is impossible unto thyself, think thyself deathless and able to know all,—all arts, all sciences, the way of every life. 2

Become more lofty than all height, and lower than all depth. Collect into thyself all senses of [all] creatures,—of fire, [and] water, dry and moist. Think that thou art at the same time in every place,—in earth, in sea, in sky; not yet begotten, in the womb, young, old, [and] dead, in after-death conditions. 3

And if thou knowest all these things at once, 4—times, places, doings, qualities, and quantities; thou canst know God. 5

21. But if thou lockest up thy soul within thy body, and dost debase it, saying: I nothing know; I nothing can; I fear the sea; I cannot scale the sky; I know not who I was, who I shall be;—what is there [then] between [thy] God and thee?

For thou canst know naught of things beautiful and good so long as thou dost love thy body and art bad.

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The greatest bad there is, is not to know God’s Good 1; but to be able to know [Good], and will, and hope, is a Straight Way, the Good’s own [Path], both leading there and easy. 2

If thou but sett’st thy foot thereon, ’twill meet thee everywhere, ’twill everywhere be seen, both where and when thou dost expect it not,—waking, sleeping, sailing, journeying, by night, by day, speaking, [and] saying naught. For there is naught that is not image of the Good.

22. Her. Is God unseen?

Mind. Hush! Who is more manifest than He? For this one reason hath He made all things, that through them all thou mayest see Him.

This is the Good of God, this [is] His Virtue,—that He may be made manifest through all. 3

For naught’s unseen, even of things that are without a body. Mind sees itself 4 in thinking, God in making. 5

So far these things have been made manifest to thee, Thrice-greatest one! Reflect on all the rest in the same way within thyself, and thou shalt not be led astray.

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Footnotes

175:1 Or thy reason.

175:2 Eternity; the ideal world, beyond time. Cf. P. S. A., xxx., xxxi.

175:3 Genesis.

176:1 That is to say, the term “ess-ence” cannot really be applied to God, for He is beyond “be-ing.”

176:2 Or identity.

176:3 Or duration.

176:4 ἀνταποκατάστασις.

176:5 Or is accomplished.

176:6 πηγή.

177:1 Or adorneth.

177:2 Sc. Matter’s Becoming or Genesis.

177:3 Or Becoming.

177:4 Sc. Cosmos.

177:5 Sc. Soul.

177:6 Sc. Body, of Universe or Cosmos.

177:7 Or Animal; that is, Soul.

177:8 Or animals.

178:1 Sc. than those which are Himself.

178:2 ἀργός. There is a word-play in the terms ἔργον (work), ἐνεργῶν (working in, energizing), ἐνεργής (active, energetic), ἐνέργεια (in-working, activity), and ἀργός (not-working, inactive, idle), ἀργία (inactivity, idleness), which it is impossible to bring out fully in English.

178:3 Or what becomes.

179:1 This seems to mean, that all things in the world of genesis (making, creating, or becoming) have their root-activity, first from the sameness of becoming of the one sphere or space, and then their differentiated activity from the seven spheres, spaces, or planes, which are the instruments of God in the differentiation of the Cosmos.

179:2 Mind—i.e. with the mind’s eye, or spiritual sight, or by the help of the Master’s illuminating power. Cf. C. H., i. 7 and xiii. (xiv.) 11.

179:3 κόσμους, cosmoi or world-orders.

179:4 Or adorned, or made beautiful.

179:5 The order of the Æon (Eternity, the Spiritual Space), æonian or everlasting order.

180:1 The text from “Now gaze . . .” to here is given in R. 36, n. 1.

180:2 Or becoming.

181:1 From the maker of the immortals.

181:2 Sc. makers.

181:3 Sc. of matter and life.

182:1 Or Divinity.

182:2 Or make; a play on the double meaning of the Greek verb.

183:1 Lit. become inactive of (καταργηθῇς).

183:2 A word has here dropped out in the text, which I have supplied by ἀργὸν (inactive), and not by the usual conjecture “apart from God.”

183:3 Cf. P. S. A., iii. 1: “Now lend to me the whole of thee.”

183:4 Sc. work, doing, making, or creating.

184:1 ἔργῳ, in deed, in work.

184:2 Or makes.

184:3 Sc. His work, or creation.

184:4 Viz., this Life.

184:5 That is, Mind and Soul, sc. the Logos and World-Soul, or ego and animal soul.

185:1 The root of form; used also loosely in Greek to denote form.

185:2 Or forms.

185:3 Or idea of the sermon.

186:1 καὶ ἐν ταῖς γραφαῖς ἀκρώρειαι. All the translators talk of “margins” in MSS., and make entire nonsense of the passage. I can find absolutely no authority for translating ἀκρώρειαι margins.

186:2 Or making the Good; that is, Æon.

186:3 Or points of the sermon.

187:1 ἡ δίνη, presumably the vortex or “whorl” of the solar system (cf. “Vision of Er”).

187:2 Sc. the body or limit of the whole cosmos.

187:3 Cf. C. H., iv. (v.) 5: “And things above the heaven—if there be aught.”

187:4 Or think.

188:1 Lit. Æon.

188:2 παντὸς ζῷου ἦθος,—or nature of every animal.

188:3 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 11.

188:4 Or art simultaneously conscious of.

188:5 A critical text from “Make, then, thy self” to here is given by R., p. 238.

189:1 τὸ θεῖον—lit. the Godly, or Divine.

189:2 Cf. Ex. i. 4.

189:3 The preceding question and answer is quoted with very slight verbal variants by Cyril, Contra Julianum, ii. 52.

189:4 Or is seen.

189:5 Or doing.

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COMMENTARY

TITLE AND FORM

The title in the MSS. is simply “Mind to Hermes.” When, therefore, Cyril, in quoting the first three paragraphs of § 22 of our treatise, says that Hermes wrote these words “to his own mind,” 1 he is evidently either a very careless reader, 2 or had not seen at first hand the treatise from which he quotes.

From its contents, moreover, it is very evident that our treatise, as far as its form is concerned, looks back to the “Pœmandres” as the type of instruction to Hermes (or to a Hermes).

This highly authoritative form of enunciating doctrine was evidently chosen because it was desired to impart a more intimate instruction than that of the “General Sermons” and the like,—to wit, the inculcation of the Æon-doctrine, in connection with the marvellous doctrine of At-one-ment with all things which constitutes the Path of the Good. The doctrine is no longer “Become (or make thyself like) Cosmos,” but “Become Æon” (§ 20).

Now it is remarkable that the instruction given in our treatise by the Mind to Hermes is, almost point for point, the “esoteric” teaching of which the Sermon of Hermes to Tat, entitled the “Cup or Monad”—C. H., iv. (v.)—is the “exoteric” form.

That the instruction in these Trismegistic schools of initiation was divided into grades is manifest on all sides; and, therefore, nothing is more natural than to find these two sermons standing in such intimate relations to one another as to doctrine, the one containing

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the more intimate and advanced explanation of the more general instruction of the other.

And that this inner instruction on the “Cup” doctrine must have been thought to be of very great value, is evident when we reflect that “The Cup” sermon was one of the most famous of all the treatises of Hermes, for, as we have seen, its title was worth being plagiarized, and the Baptism of the Cup, of which it treated, constituted the goal of the endeavour of the disciples of the School, as Zosimus tells us.

Mystically, then, the main interest of our treatise centres in the doctrine of the At-one-ment (as the inner consummation of the Baptism in the Cup or Monad), to which the Æon-idea is but a formal introduction; historically, however, the introduction of the Æon-idea presents itself as a critical problem, for the term is not found in the ‘‘Pœmandres,” and, therefore, presumably was not used in the earliest documents of the School.

THE ÆON-LORE

When, then, did this Æon-idea impose itself upon the older form of tradition of the Trismegistic schools? This is a most important question; for if we can in any way answer it, we shall be in a position to assign a terminus ad quem for the earlier forms of Hermetic doctrine.

The answer to the question seems to me to be involved in the supposition that the Æon-doctrine must have influenced “Hermeticism” at more or less the same date as that at which it influenced “Gnosticism.”

Now “Gnosticism,” in its Christianized forms, is practically never found without the Æon-lore.

The earliest forms of Christian Gnosis referred to

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by the later Patristic hæresiologists are bound up with Æonology. Not only so, but the very earliest reference to Gnosticism by any Christian writer presupposes the Æon-doctrine, and uses it in illustration of the spiritual state of the writer. 1

The widespread influence of the Æon-doctrine can thus be traced back to at least the origins of Christianity.

Now as the Gnosis existed before any Christian form of it was developed, the question of the date when the Æon-doctrine was introduced into it must be referred to pre-Christian times.

And, indeed, the very simple character of the Æon-lore in our treatise, 2 as compared with the mind-bewildering complexity and transcendency of first and second century Christian Gnosticism, is all in favour of an early date for its introduction into “Hermeticism,” which is only another name for “Gnosticism” of a preponderatingly Hellenic form.

If this line of reasoning holds good, we have in it a very strong presumption that the older forms of the Trismegistic treatises were pre-Christian.

And that this is so may be seen by the absolute identity of the teaching of our treatise (§ 2) with that of Philo, when he writes:

“But God is the Artificer of Time as well. For He is Father of its Father; and Time’s Father is the Cosmos, which manifests its motion in the genesis of Time. . . .

“This [Cosmos] then, the Younger Son, the Sensible, being set a-moving, has caused Time’s nature to appear

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and disappear; so that there nothing is which future is with God, who has the very Bounds of Time subject to Him. For ’tis not Time, but Time’s Archetype and Paradigm, Eternity (or Æon), which is His Life. 1 But in Eternity naught is past, and naught is future, but all is present only.” 2

This passage of Philo is of the utmost importance for estimating the date of our treatises; for not only does it prove that the oldest forms of the Trismegistic literature were pre-Christian, but it further persuades us that our treatise, which belongs to a later type of this literature, may be dated as contemporary with Philo.

Chapter xi. in the Prolegomena, “Concerning the Æon-Doctrine,” should be taken in close connection with this treatise, for it is not only introductory to it, but frequently refers directly to it.

For the rest, it is not necessary to attempt any detailed comments, since the instruction of the writer is clear enough for any careful reader to follow with ease after making himself acquainted with the general ideas in the preceding treatises. One or two notes on special points, however, may be attempted.

THE ROOT OF FORM

Thus in § 16, the sentence: “The Cosmos is all-formed (παντόμορφος),—not having forms external to itself, but changing them itself within itself,”—reminds us of P. S. A., xix. 3: “The ‘Thirty-six’ who have the name of Horoscopes are in the self-same space as the fixed stars; of these the essence-chief, or prince,

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is he whom they call Pantomorph, or Omniform (παντόμορφος, vel omniformis),who fashioneth the various forms for various species”; and also of P. S. A., xxxv.: “But they are changed as many times as there are moments in the hour of that revolving circle in which abides that God whom we have called All-form.”

Compare also C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 12, where, speaking of the “Circle of the types of life,” Hermes says it is “composed of elements, twelve in number, but of one nature, an omniform idea.”

With this compare Hermes-Prayer iv., addressed to Thoth as the Logos:

“Thee I invoke alone, thou who alone in all the Cosmos dost impose order on gods and men, who dost transform thyself in holy forms, making to be from things that are not, and from the things that are, making the not to be.”

But the main interest of our treatise is not that the Intelligible Cosmos or Logos can create and destroy and transmute all forms at will, but that man as the microcosm has potential in him this great magic power.

“BECOME ALL THINGS”

The daring instruction given to Hermes in §§ 19 and 20 is distinctly a discipline of the Egyptian Wisdom; for though it is here set forth plainly and without circumlocution, as a straightforward intimate instruction, stripped of all mysterious hints or hesitating subterfuges, 1 it is clearly in the same circle of ideas of which popular Egyptian theurgy had some inkling. But whereas the philosopher-mystic was bidden to do this for himself of his own volition and achievement, the theurgist had to beg some god to do it for him.

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Thus in the same Prayer, to which we have already referred, we read (§§ 2, 3):

“O holy Thoth, the true sight of whose face none of the gods endures! Make me to be in every creature’s name [or ‘true form’],—wolf, dog, or lion, fire, tree, or vulture, wall, or water, or what thou will’st, for thou art able so to do.”

So also in P. S. A., vii., we have the same idea, for certainly the phrasing of the sentences suggests something beyond the ordinary powers of the mind or imagination.

“He mingles with the elements by reason of the swiftness of his mind. He plunges into the sea’s depths by means of its profundity. He puts his values on all things.

“Heaven does not seem too high for him; for it is measured by the wisdom of his mind as though it were quite near.

“No darkness of the air obstructs the penetration of his mind. No density of earth impedes his work. No depth of water blunts his sight.

“Though still the same, yet is he all, and everywhere is he the same.”

It is indeed a marvellous “yoga” system that is sketched for us in our treatise. There is no question here of abstraction or negation, but a courageous identification or At-one-ment of oneself with all that lives and breathes. This is the Path of the Gnosis, the Way to Know God.

In other words, man is to copy his prototype, the Mind, and just as the Mind or Man, in the “Pœmandres” treatise, “had a mind to break right through the Boundary of the spheres” (§ 13), so is our philosopher bidden to “soar up to the Last Body of them all” (§ 19), that Last Body being the One Element of Cosmos itself.

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“And shouldst thou will to break through this as well, and contemplate what is beyond—if there be aught beyond the Cosmos; it is permitted thee.”

That the hard and fast distinctions which modern commentators would draw between words, in considering these mystical treatises, would have been laughed at by the writers of them, is amply manifested when the writer with enthusiastic fervour bursts forth:

“Then in this way know God, as having in Himself as thoughts the whole Cosmos itself.

“If, then, thou dost not make thyself like unto God, 1 thou canst not know Him. 2 For like is knowable to like [alone]. Make, then, thyself to grow to the same stature as the Greatness which transcends all measure; leap forth from every body; transcend all time; become Eternity; and thus shalt thou know God.”

Every body or space must be transcended, even the Body of Cosmos itself; for the man must grow into the “stature of the Greatness that transcends all measure,” that is, the intelligible superspatial Plērōma, the Æon as the Logos and Paradigm of Cosmos. And every time and all Time must also be transcended; for the man must become Eternity—that is, the Æon as the Paradigm of Time.

THE GOOD’S OWN PATH

In no scripture that I know is this Path more admirably set forth—the Good’s own Path. All things, all spaces, and all times have to be realized as being within oneself simultaneously; if this is realized or known, not only imagined, then a man becomes a true Knower of God, a Gnostic.

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Nor has ever a truer sentence been written than the wonderful words concerning this Path to the Supreme:

“If thou but sett’st thy foot thereon, ’twill meet thee everywhere, ’twill everywhere be seen, both where and when thou dost expect it not—waking, sleeping, sailing, journeying, by night, by day, speaking, and saying naught. For there is naught that is not image of the Good.”

CONCERNING INDIA

In conclusion, I would only point out that if for the hopeless reading in the first sentence of § 19 we were to take Patrizzi’s emendation, which has been adopted by Parthey, we should have the interesting sentence:

“And, thus, think from thyself, and bid thy soul go unto India.”

If this should be the original reading, it is remarkable that India should have been selected of all places. We know, however, from a study of what is known of the life of Apollonius of Tyana, that this “Gnostic” philosopher made an enormous propaganda of Indian ideas among the philosophic and mystic communities and schools of the first century. Apollonius must have known something, perhaps a great deal, concerning the siddhis acquired by yoga-practices. At any rate, we find his biographer Philostratus making him write the following letter to his Eastern hosts on his return from India:

“I came to you by land and ye have given me the sea; nay, rather, by sharing with me your wisdom ye have given me power to travel through heaven. These things will I bring back to the mind of the Greeks, and I will hold converse with you as though ye were

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present, if it be that I have not drunk of the Cup of Tantalus in vain.” 1

That an intensely great interest was taken in Indian ideas at Alexandria is shown by the fact that we find Plotinus himself in 242 starting off with the expedition of Gordian to the East in the hope of coming in contact with the Indian Wisdom.

But all these considerations, though interesting in themselves, do not immediately concern us, unless we are subjectively persuaded that the emendation of Patrizzi is firmly established. Should, however, this reading in any way be confirmed by objective evidence, we should have to reconsider the question of date by the light of it, though, I fear, with little chance of any definite result. For though the propaganda of Indian ideas by Apollonius could not have begun prior to the middle of the first century, we have in this fact no very sure criterion, for “India” must have been in the air, and strongly in the air, even prior to Apollonius’ visit to India, or why should he have been induced to make so long and dangerous a journey? Indeed, “India” had been in the air ever since the expedition of Alexander—that is, from the beginning of the Alexandrian period—the second quarter of the fourth century B.C. onwards.

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Footnotes

190:1 C. Jul., ii. 52; ed. Migne, col. 580 B.

190:2 Cf. R. 128, i.; 196, 3.

192:1 Namely, Paul in his Letters, which are the earliest of all Christian documents. See my article, “Some Notes on the Gnostics,” in The Nineteenth Century and After (Nov. 1902), pp. 822-835; and D. J. L., pp. 353 ff.

192:2 Perhaps the clearest exposition is to be found in P. S. A., xxx. and xxxi.

193:1 Cf. C. H., i. 6; the Union of the Logos and Mind—or First-Born Son and Father—is Life; they are united in Æon.

193:2 Quod Deus Im., § 6; M. i. 277; P. 298 (Ri. ii. 72, 73).

194:1 Or, as the writer of the Pistis Sophia would say, ἐν παρρησίᾳ, “face to face without a parable.”

196:1 Sc. as Cosmos.

196:2 Sc. as Father of this Only Son.

198:1 Philos., Vit. Ap., iii. 51. Cf. my Apollonius of Tyana, the Philosopher Reformer of the First Century A.D. (London, 1901), p. 88.

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CORPUS HERMETICUM XII. (XIII.)

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ABOUT THE COMMON MIND

OF HERMES TO TAT

(Text: P. 99-113; Pat. 23b-25b.)

1. Hermes. The Mind, O Tat, is of God’s very essence—(if such a thing as essence of God 1 there be)—and what that is, it and it only knows precisely.

The Mind, then, is not separated off from God’s essentiality, but is united unto it, as light to sun.

This Mind in men is God, and for this cause some of mankind are gods, and their humanity is nigh unto divinity.

For the Good Daimon said: “Gods are immortal men, and men are mortal gods.”

2. But in irrational lives Mind is their nature. For where is Soul, there too is Mind; just as where Life, there is there also Soul.

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But in irrational lives their soul is life devoid of mind 1; for Mind is the in-worker of the souls of men for good;—He works on them for their own good.

In lives irrational He doth co-operate with each one’s nature; but in the souls of men He counteracteth them.

For every soul, when it becomes embodied, is instantly depraved by pleasure and by pain.

For in a compound body, just like juices, pain and pleasure seethe, and into them the soul, on entering in, is plunged. 2

3. O’er whatsoever souls the Mind doth, then, preside, to these it showeth its own light, by acting counter to their prepossessions, just as a good physician doth upon the body prepossessed by sickness, pain inflict, burning or lancing it for sake of health.

In just the selfsame way the Mind inflicteth pain upon the soul, to rescue it from pleasure, whence comes its every ill.

The great ill of the soul is godlessness 3; then

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followeth fancy 1 for all evil things and nothing good.

So, then, Mind counteracting it doth work good on the soul, as the physician health upon the body.

4. But whatsoever human souls have not the Mind as pilot, they share in the same fate as souls of lives irrational.

For [Mind] becomes co-worker with them, giving full play to the desires towards which [such souls] are borne,—[desires] that from the rush of lust strain after the irrational; [so that such human souls,] just like irrational animals, cease not irrationally to rage and lust, nor ever are they satiate of ills.

For passions and irrational desires are ills exceeding great; and over these God hath set up the Mind to play the part of judge and executioner.

5. Tat. In that case, father mine, the teaching (logos) as to Fate, 2 which previously thou didst explain to me, risks to be over-set.

For that if it be absolutely fated for a man to fornicate, or commit sacrilege, or do some other evil deed, why is he punished,—when he hath done the deed from Fate’s necessity?

Her. All works, my son, are Fate’s; and without Fate naught of things corporal—or good, or ill—can come to pass.

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But it is fated too, that he who doeth ill, shall suffer. And for this cause he doth it—that he may suffer what he suffereth, because he did it.

6. But for the moment, [Tat,] let be the teaching (logos) as to vice and Fate, for we have spoken of these things in other [of our sermons]; but now our teaching (logos) is about the Mind:—what Mind can do, and how it is [so] different,—in men being such and such, and in irrational lives [so] changed; and [then] again that in irrational lives it is not of a beneficial nature, while that in men it quencheth out the wrathful and the lustful elements.

Of men, again, we must class some as led by reason, and others as unreasoning.

7. But all men are subject to Fate, and genesis and change, for these 1 are the beginning and the end of Fate.

And though all men do suffer fated things, those led by reason (those whom we said the Mind doth guide) do not endure like suffering with the rest; but, since they’ve freed themselves from viciousness, not being bad, they do not suffer bad.

Tat. How meanest thou again, my father? Is not the fornicator bad; the murderer bad; and [so with] all the rest?

Her. [I meant not that;] but that the

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[paragraph continues]Mind-led man, my son, though not a fornicator, will suffer just as though he had committed fornication, and though he be no murderer, as though he had committed murder.

The quality of change he can no more escape than that of genesis.

But it is possible for one who hath the Mind, to free himself from vice.

8. Wherefore I’ve ever heard, my son, Good Daimon also say—(and had He set it down in written words, He would have greatly helped the race of men; for He alone, my son, doth truly, as the First-born God, gazing upon all things, give voice to words (logoi) divine)—yea, once I heard Him say:

“All things are one, and most of all the bodies which the mind alone perceives. Our life is owing to [God’s] Energy and Power and Æon. His Mind is Good, so is His Soul as well. And this being so, intelligible things know naught of separation. So, then, Mind, being Ruler of all things, and being Soul of God, can do whate’er it wills.”

9. So do thou understand, and carry back this word (logos) unto the question thou didst ask before,—I mean about Mind’s Fate.

For if thou dost with accuracy, son, eliminate [all] captious arguments (logoi), thou wilt discover that of very truth the Mind, the Soul

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of God, doth rule o’er all—o’er Fate, and Law, and all things else; and nothing is impossible to it,—neither o’er Fate to set a human soul, 1 nor under Fate to set [a soul] neglectful of what comes to pass. Let this so far suffice from the Good Daimon’s most good [words]. 2

Tat. Yea, [words] divinely spoken, father mine, truly and helpfully. But further still explain me this.

10. Thou said’st that Mind in lives irrational worked in them as [their] nature, co-working with their impulses.

But impulses of lives irrational, as I do think, are passions.

Now if the Mind co-worketh with [these] impulses, and if the impulses of [lives] irrational be passions, then is Mind also passion, taking its colour from the passions.

Her. Well put, my son! Thou questionest right nobly, and it is just that I as well should answer [nobly].

11. All things incorporal when in a body are subject unto passion, and in the proper sense they are [themselves] all passions.

For every thing that moves [another] is incorporal; while every thing that’s moved is body.

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Incorporals are further moved by Mind, and movement’s passion.

Both, then, are subject unto passion—both mover and the moved, the former being ruler and the latter ruled.

But when a man hath freed himself from body, then is he also freed from passion.

But, more precisely, son, naught is impassible, but all are passible.

Yet passion differeth from passibility; for that the one is active, while the other’s passive.

Incorporals 1 moreover act upon themselves, for either they are motionless 2 or they are moved; but whichsoe’er it be, it’s passion.

But bodies are invariably acted on, and therefore are they passible.

Do not, then, let terms trouble thee; action and passion are both the selfsame thing. To use the fairer sounding term, however, does no harm.

12. Tat. Most clearly hast thou, father mine, set forth the teaching (logos).

Her. Consider this as well, my son; that these two things God hath bestowed on man beyond all mortal lives—both mind and speech

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[paragraph continues](logos) equal to immortality. He hath the mind for knowing God and uttered speech (logos) for eulogy of Him. 1

And if one useth these for what he ought, he’ll differ not a whit from the immortals. 2 Nay, rather, on departing from the body, he will be guided by the twain unto the Choir of Gods and Blessed Ones.

13. Tat. Why, father mine!—do not the other lives make use of speech (logos)?

Her. Nay, son; but use of voice; speech is far different from voice. For speech is general among all men, while voice doth differ in each class of living thing.

Tat. But with men also, father mine, according to each race, speech differs.

Her. Yea, son, but man is one; so also speech is one and is interpreted, and it is found the same in Egypt, and in Persia, and in Greece.

Thou seemest, son, to be in ignorance of Reason’s (Logos) 3 worth and greatness. For that the Blessed God, Good Daimon, hath declared:

“Soul is in Body, Mind in Soul; but Reason (Logos) is in Mind, and Mind in God; and God is Father of [all] these.”

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14. The Reason, then, is the Mind’s image, and Mind God’s [image]; while Body is [the image] of the Form; and Form [the image] of the Soul.

The subtlest part of Matter is, then, Air; of Air, Soul; of Soul, Mind; and of Mind, God. 1

And God surroundeth all and permeateth all 2; while Mind surroundeth Soul, Soul Air, Air Matter.

Necessity 3 and Providence and Nature are instruments of Cosmos and of Matter’s ordering; while of intelligible things each is Essence, and Sameness is their Essence.

But of the Bodies 4 of the Cosmos each is many; for through possessing Sameness, [these] composed Bodies, though they do change from one into another of themselves, do natheless ever keep the incorruption of their Sameness.

15. Whereas in all the rest of composed bodies, of each there is a certain number; for without number structure cannot be, or composition, or decomposition.

Now it is units that give birth to number and increase it, and, being decomposed, are taken back again into themselves.

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Matter is one; and this whole Cosmos—the mighty God and image of the mightier One, both with Him unified, and the conserver of the Will and Order of the Father—is filled full of Life. 1

Naught is there in it throughout the whole of Æon, the Father’s [everlasting] Re-establishment, 2—nor of the whole, nor of its parts,—which doth not live.

For not a single thing that’s dead, hath been, or is, or shall be in [this] Cosmos.

For that the Father willed it should have Life as long as it should be. Wherefore it needs must be a God.

16. How, then, O son, could there be in the God, the image of the Father, 3 in the plenitude 4 of Life—dead things 5?

For that death is corruption, and corruption is destruction.

How then could any part of that which knoweth no corruption be corrupted, or any whit of him the God destroyed?

Tat. Do they not, then, my father, die—the lives in it, that are its parts?

Her. Hush, son!—led into error by the term in use for what takes place.

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They do not die, my son, but are dissolved as compound bodies.

Now dissolution is not death, but dissolution of a compound; it is dissolved not so that it may be destroyed, but that it may become renewed.

For what is the activity of life? Is it not motion? What then in Cosmos is there that hath no motion? Naught is there, son!

17. Tat. Doth not Earth even, father, seem to thee to have no motion?

Her. Nay, son; but rather that she is the only thing which, though in very rapid motion, is also stable.

For how would it not be a thing to laugh at, that the Nurse of all should have no motion, when she engenders and brings forth all things?

For ’tis impossible that without motion one who doth engender, should do so.

That thou shouldst ask if the fourth part 1 is not inert, is most ridiculous; for that the body which doth have no motion, gives sign of nothing but inertia.

18. Know, therefore, generally, my son, that all that is in Cosmos is being moved for decrease or for increase.

Now that which is kept moving, also lives; but there is no necessity that that which lives, should be all same.

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For being simultaneous, the Cosmos, as a whole, is not subject to change, my son, but all its parts are subject unto it; yet naught [of it] is subject to corruption, or destroyed.

It is the terms employed that confuse men. For ’tis not genesis that constituteth life, but ’tis sensation; it is not change that constituteth death, but ’tis forgetfulness.

Since, then, these things are so, they are immortal all,—Matter, [and] Life, [and] Spirit, Mind [and] Soul, of which whatever liveth, is composed.

19. Whatever then doth live, oweth its immortality unto the Mind, and most of all doth man, he who is both recipient of God, and co-essential with Him.

For with this life alone doth God consort; by visions in the night, by tokens in the day, and by all things doth He foretell the future unto him,—by birds, by inward parts, by wind, by tree.

Wherefore doth man lay claim to know things past, things present and to come.

20. Observe this, too, my son; that each one of the other lives inhabiteth one portion of the Cosmos,—aquatic creatures water, terrene earth, and aery creatures air; while man doth use all these,—earth, water, air, [and] fire; he seeth heaven, too, and doth contact it with [his] sense.

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But God surroundeth all, and permeateth all, 1 for He is energy and power; and it is nothing difficult, my son, to conceive God.

21. But if thou wouldst Him also contemplate, behold the ordering of the Cosmos, and [see] the orderly behaviour of its ordering; behold thou the Necessity of things made manifest, and [see] the Providence of things become and things becoming; behold how Matter is all-full of Life; [behold] this so great God in movement, with all the good and noble [ones]—gods, daimones and men!

Tat. But these are purely energies, O father mine!

Her. If, then, they’re purely energies, my son,—by whom, then, are they energized except by God?

Or art thou ignorant, that just as Heaven, Earth, Water, Air, are parts of Cosmos, in just the selfsame way God’s parts are Life and Immortality, [and] Energy, and Spirit, and Necessity, and Providence, and Nature, Soul, and Mind, and the Duration 2 of all these that is called Good?

And there is naught of things that have become, or are becoming, in which God is not.

22. Tat. Is He in Matter, father, then?

Her. Matter, my son, is separate from God,

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in order that thou may’st attribute unto it the quality of space. But what thing else than mass 1 think’st thou it is, if it’s not energized? Whereas if it be energized, by whom is it made so? For energies, we said, are parts of God.

By whom are, then, all lives enlivened? By whom are things immortal made immortal? By whom changed things made changeable?

And whether thou dost speak of Matter, or of Body, or of Essence, know that these too are energies of God; and that materiality is Matter’s energy, that corporality is Bodies’ energy, and that essentiality doth constitute the energy of Essence; and this is God—the All.

23. And in the All is naught that is not God. Wherefore nor size, nor space, nor quality, nor form, nor time, surroundeth God; for He is All, and All surroundeth all, and permeateth all.

Unto this Reason (Logos), son, thy adoration and thy worship pay. There is one way alone to worship God; [it is] not to be bad. 2

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Footnotes

199:1 That is, if we can use such a term with respect to God.

200:1 That is, of the mind manifested in man as distinguished from the general Mind.

200:2 βαπτίζεται.

200:3 ἀθεότης. Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 8, 9: “And the soul’s vice is ignorance”; and § 20: “What greater chastisement of any human soul, can there be, son, than lack of piety?” The only way of salvation from the bonds of Fate is thus “piety” or “godliness.” See R. 102, 1, for references.

201:1 δόξα.

201:2 Heimarmenē.

202:1 Sc. genesis and change.

204:1 Cf. Lact., D. I., ii. 15.

204:2 The critical text of this paragraph is given R. 78.

205:1 Reading ἀσώματα for σώματα.

205:2 The words I have translated by “act,” “active” and “action,” may be more literally rendered by “energize,” “energic” and “energy.” The “motionless” has “energy” because it is the cause of motion to that which it moves.

206:1 Following the emendation of R.

206:2 The critical text of the above paragraphs is given R. 156, n. 6.

206:3 It is impossible to bring out the word-play of the original in English; and so the double meaning is lost.

207:1 This sentence is tagged on to the end of C. H., v. (vi.) by some scribe.

207:2 Cf. § 20 below.

207:3 Reading ἀνάγκη for ἀνάγκῃ; see § 21 below.

207:4 Sc. the elements.

208:1 Lit. a Plērōma of Life.

208:2 ἀποκατάστασις.

208:3 Reading πατρὸς for παντός.

208:4 Plērōma.

208:5 A critical text of the last five paragraphs is given R. 25, n. 1.

209:1 Sc. element.

211:1 Cf. § 14 above.

211:2 Sc. Æon.

212:1 Probably in the sense of “quantity.”

212:2 Lactantius, D. I., vi. 25, translates the last two sentences into Latin, with the strange remark that Hermes so spake in treating “About Justice.” See the following Commentary on § 6, and Ex. xi.

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COMMENTARY

THE SAYINGS OF THE GOOD DAIMON

This Sermon has as its subject the Common or General Mind—Great Mind, Good Mind, Good Daimon. For Mind, as we are told (§ 2), is the Benefactor of men (εὐεργέτης ἀνθρώπων); He is the Good Shepherd, the Good Husbandman, the Good Physician, as He is called in different tractates.

From a critical standpoint, the point of greatest interest is that our Hermes in no less than three places (§§ 1, 8, 13) quotes certain Sayings of the Good Daimon.

Now the first of these quotations (§ 1)—“Gods are immortal men, and men are mortal Gods”—is one of the most cited Sayings of Heracleitus. 1 Hermes, however, does not mean to say that Heracleitus was Agothodaimon, but that Heracleitus was the mouthpiece of the Good Mind when he uttered this “word” (logos).

Nor was this the opinion of Hermes only; it was the belief apparently of Heracleitus himself when he declared:

“Not because you hear me say so, but because you hear the Reason (Logos) so declare, is it wise to confess that All are One.” 2

At any rate the term Logos, as used by Heracleitus, in connection with such a declaration, is taken by Hippolytus 3 to mean the All-pervading Reason, and not the normal reason of man.

What, then, is our surprise to find the second of

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[paragraph continues]Hermes’ quotations of a Saying of the Good Daimon qualified by the words (§ 8): “And had He set it down in written words” or “in writing,” when that quotation begins with the words: “All are One” 1—the root-formula of Heracleitus.

Such Sayings of Heracleitus must have been the common property of all the philosophers of the time and of their pupils. But the quotation of Hermes does not end with the formula of Heracleitus; it continues, how far exactly it is difficult to determine. Reitzenstein (p. 127) would apparently make it end with the word “Æon,” but I am inclined to think it goes to the end of § 8. In either case it includes the term “Æon.”

If, now, we turn to the third quotation from the Sayings of the Good Daimon (§ 13), we are at once struck with its remarkable resemblance to the form of teaching in C. H., xi. (xii.) 4. Though there is no precise verbal agreement, there is a striking identity of style of formula.

In our treatise, however, the Saying is used in authoritative illustration of the meaning of the Reason (Logos), whereas in the “Mind to Hermes,”—that is, in the Sermon of the Good Daimon Himself to Hermes—Reason is omitted, Mind and Reason being there transcended by Æon and Mind.

Moreover, the whole style of what follows this quotation in our treatise is exactly the same as the style of instruction in C. H., xi. (xii.)—short categorical formulæ; and, further, the previous quotation (§ 8) contains the key-word Æon, which characterizes the teaching of the “Mind to Hermes.”

I therefore conclude that our Hermes is using a more

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intimate instruction, known only to the Hermes-grade, and not published for the Tat-degree; and that this is the meaning of his saying that it has not been written down. He means simply that it has not yet been allowed to be published for those in the Tat-stage.

There were, then, other treatises now lost of the same type as that of the “Mind to Hermes”; in them there were quotations from the Sayings of Heracleitus; the “Obscure Philosopher” being regarded as one who had come into direct contact with the Logos or Mind, and as one, therefore, who spoke with the authority of direct revelation.

HERMES AND BASILIDES

The next point of critical interest is the sentence in § 7:

“I meant not that, but that the Mind-led man, my son, though not a fornicator, will suffer just as though he had committed fornication, and though he be no murderer, as though he had committed murder.”

If we now turn to the quotation which Clement of Alexandria 1 gives us from Book XXIII. of the Exegetica, of Basilides, we read:

“For just as the babe, who, although it hath done no wrong previously, or actively committed any sin, yet hath the capacity of sin in it,—whenever it is subjected to suffering, is advantaged and reaps many benefits, which otherwise are difficult to gain; in just the selfsame way is it, that although a perfect man may not have sinned in act, and yet doth suffer pains, he suffereth them in just the selfsame fashion as a babe; having within himself the tendency to sin, but refusing to embrace the opportunity to sin, he doth not

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sin. So that even for such a man as this we ought not to suppose the incapacity for sin.

“For just as it is the will to commit fornication that constitutes the fornicator, even though he does not find the opportunity of actually committing fornication, and the will to commit murder that constitutes the murderer, although he may not be actually able to effect his purpose; so also in the case of the ‘sinless’ man I mean, if I see him suffering, even if he has actually done no sin, I shall say he is evil by his will to sin. For I will say anything rather than that Providence is evil.” 1

Providence, as in our treatise, is here the instrument of the Good (§ 14), of the Will of God; it is the will of man that is the source of evil, as we learn from C. H., iv. (v.) 8: “For ’tis not God, ’tis we who are the cause of evil things, preferring them to good.”

In our treatise, then, the very same problem is treated as in the Exegetica of Basilides. Hermes speaks of the “Mind-led man,” the “man who has the Logos in him”; Basilides speaks of the “perfect man.” So also in C. H., iv. (v.) 4, the “perfect man” is he who has “received the Mind.”

The ideas of Hermes and of Basilides are practically identical; the words of both are strikingly similar when they cite fornication and murder as typical sins, and these and no others.

Compare again with this idea of the babe in Basilides the words of Hermes in C. H., x. (xi.) 15:

“Behold an infant’s soul, my son, that is not yet cut off, because its body is still small and not as yet come unto its full bulk. . . . A thing of beauty altogether is such a soul to see, not yet befouled with body’s passions, still all but hanging from the Cosmic Soul.”

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And with this compare what Hippolytus 1 tells us of Valentinus:

“Valentinus says that he once saw a babe that had only just been born, and that he proceeded to question it to find out who it was. And the babe replied and said it was the Logos.”

And also the Psalm of Valentinus quoted by the same heresiologist 2:

All things depending from Spirit I see;
All things supported by Spirit I view;
Flesh from Soul depending;
Soul by Air supported;
Air from Æther hanging;
Fruits borne of the Deep;
Babe borne of the Womb.

Here, then, as in other instances, we have intimate points of contact between the Hermetic and Christian Gnosis. Is there, however, any question of direct plagiarism? I think not; but that the Christian doctors and the Hermetic philosophers were both in contact with the same body of inner teaching.

4. With the action of the Mind on the soul in incarnation (§ 4) compare C. H., x. (xi.), 18, 19, where the office of the Mind in respect to the soul out of incarnation is graphically described.

THE SERMONS ON FATE

6. In § 6 Hermes tells us that he has already spoken about Fate in others of his Sermons; while in §§ 14 and 21 he three times refers to Necessity and Providence.

In this connection it is to be noticed that Lactantius (D. I., vi. 25), in quoting the last two sentences of our

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treatise, says that he takes them from a Sermon by Hermes “On Justice.”

Now, Stobæus has preserved for us an Extract (xi.) from a Sermon dealing with Justice, Providence, Necessity and Fate; also an Extract (x.) from a Sermon of Hermes to Tat dealing with Fate, and ending with the words: “Such is the Sermon on the rule of Providence, Necessity and Fate.” We have also an Extract (xiii.) “Of Hermes from the Books to Ammon,” entitled “Of the General Economy,” which deals with Providence, Necessity and Fate.

There were, then, according to Hermes, already existing not one but several Sermons on Fate, and, as we learn from Stobæus, not only in the Tat-literature but also in the Ammon-literature. It seems, then, probable that in the collection used by Lactantius the Tat-Sermons on Fate immediately preceded our treatise, and that one of these sermons (the one immediately preceding our treatise, presumably) was entitled “On Justice,” thus confirming the title I have prefixed to the Stobæus Extract xi.

MATERIALITY AND CORPORALITY ARE ENERGIES OF GOD

22. Finally, in § 22 it has to be noticed that with the express teaching that Matter and Body are so far from being evil that they are Energies of God—His materiality and corporality—the charge of dualism against our philosophers must for ever be abandoned. Their doctrine was that of pan-monism; and, therefore, wherever we find signs of dualism, or even distinct statements of an indubitably dualistic nature, we must understand that this was a formal convenience for the better insistence upon the need of strenuous exertion to solve the mystery of the opposites, rather than an essential doctrine of the Gnosis.

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Footnotes

213:1 Diels, 62; Bywater, 67; Fairbanks, 67 (p. 40), which see for references to ancient authors who quote it.

213:2 Diels, 50; Bywater, 1; Fairbanks, 1 (p. 24).

213:3 Philos., ix. 9.

214:1 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 25, and xvi. (“Definitions of Asclepius”) 3; for references to the Magical and Alchemical literature, see R. 39, 1; 106, 5; 127, 3.

215:1 Strom., IV. xii., § 82 (P. 600; S. 217): Dindorf., ii. 363.

216:1 See F. F. F., 274, 275.

217:1 Philos., vi. 42 (D. and S., 302); F. F. F., p. 306.

217:2 Philos., vi. 37 (D. and S., 290); see emended text in Hilgenfeld (A.), Die Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums (Leipzig, 1884), p. 304; F. F. F., p. 307.

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CORPUS HERMETICUM XIII. (XIV.)

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THE SECRET SERMON ON THE MOUNTAIN

CONCERNING REBIRTH AND THE PROMISE OF SILENCE

OF THRICE-GREATEST HERMES UNTO TAT HIS SON

(Text: R. 339-348; P. 114-128; Pat. 15b-17b.)

1. Tat. [Now] in the General Sermons, 1 father, thou didst speak in riddles most unclear, conversing on Divinity; and when thou saidst no man could e’er be saved before Rebirth, 2 thy meaning thou didst hide.

Further, when I became thy Suppliant, in Wending up the Mount, 3 after thou hadst conversed with me, and when I longed to learn the Sermon (Logos) on Rebirth (for this beyond all

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other things is just the thing I know not), thou saidst, that thou wouldst give it me—“when thou shalt have become a stranger to the world.” 1

Wherefore I got me ready and made the thought in me a stranger 2 to the world-illusion.

And now do thou fill up the things that fall short 3 in me with what thou saidst would give me the tradition 4 of Rebirth, setting it forth in speech or in the secret way.

I know not, O Thrice-greatest one, from out what matter and what womb Man comes to birth, or of what seed. 5

2. Hermes. Wisdom that understands 6 in silence 7 [such is the matter and the womb from out which Man is born], and the True Good the seed.

Tat. Who is the sower, father? For I am altogether at a loss.

Her. It is the Will of God, my son.

Tat. And of what kind is he that is begotten, father? For I have no share of that essence in

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me, which doth transcend the senses. 1 The one that is begot will be another one from God, God’s Son?

Her. All in all, out of all powers composed.

Tat. Thou tellest me a riddle, father, and dost not speak as father unto son.

Her. This Race, 2 my son, is never taught; but when He willeth it, its memory is restored by God.

3. Tat. Thou sayest things impossible, O father, things that are forced. Hence answers would I have direct unto these things. Am I a son strange to my father’s race?

Keep it not, father, back from me. I am a true-born son; explain to me the manner of Rebirth.

Her. What may I say, my son? I can but tell thee this. Whene’er I see within myself the Simple Vision 3 brought to birth out of God’s mercy, 4 I have passed through myself into a Body that can never die. And now I am not what I was before; but I am born in Mind.

The way to do this is not taught, and it cannot be seen by the compounded 5 element by means of which thou seest.

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Yea, I have had my former composed form dismembered for me. I am no longer touched, yet have I touch; I have dimension too; and [yet] am I a stranger to them now.

Thou seest me with eyes, my son; but what I am thou dost not understand [even] with fullest strain of body and of sight.

4. Tat. Into fierce frenzy and mind-fury hast thou plunged me, father, for now no longer do I see myself.

Her. I would, my son, that thou hadst e’en passed right through thyself, as they who dream in sleep yet sleepless.

Tat. Tell me this too! Who is the author 1 of Rebirth?

Her. The Son of God, the One Man, by God’s Will.

5. Tat. Now hast thou brought me, father, unto pure stupefaction.

Arrested from the senses which I had before, . . . . 2; for [now] I see thy Greatness identical with thy distinctive form.

Her. Even in this thou art untrue 3; the mortal form doth change with every day. ’Tis turned by time to growth and waning, as being an untrue thing. 4

6. Tat. What then is true, Thrice-greatest One?

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Her. That which is never troubled, son, which cannot be defined; that which no colour hath, nor any figure, which is not turned, which hath no garment, which giveth light; that which is comprehensible unto itself [alone], which doth not suffer change; that which no body can contain. 1

Tat. In very truth I lose my reason, father. Just when I thought to be made wise by thee, I find the senses of this mind of mine blocked up.

Her. Thus is it, son: That which is upward borne like fire, yet is borne down like earth, that which is moist like water, yet blows like air, 2 how shalt thou this perceive with sense—the that which is not solid nor yet moist, which naught can bind or loose, of which in power and energy alone can man have any notion,—and even then it wants a man who can 3 perceive the Way of Birth in God 4?

7. Tat. I am incapable of this, O father, then?

Her. Nay, God forbid, my son! Withdraw into thyself, and it will come; will, and it comes to pass; throw out of work the body’s senses, and thy Divinity shall come to birth; purge from thyself the brutish torments—things of matter.

Tat. I have tormentors then in me, O father?

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Her. Ay, no few, my son; nay, fearful ones and manifold.

Tat. I do not know them, father.

Her. Torment the first is this Not-knowing, 1 son; the second one is Grief; the third, Intemperance; the fourth, Concupiscence; the fifth, Unrighteousness; the sixth is Avarice; the seventh, Error 2; the eighth is Envy; the ninth, Guile 3; the tenth is Anger; eleventh, Rashness; the twelfth is Malice.

These are in number twelve; but under them are many more, my son; and creeping through the prison of the body 4 they force the man that’s placed within 5 to suffer in his senses. But they depart (although not all at once) from him who hath been taken pity on by God 6; and this it is which constitutes the manner of Rebirth. And . . . . 7 the Reason (Logos).

8. And now, my son, be still and solemn silence keep! Thus shall the mercy that flows on us from God not cease.

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Henceforth rejoice, O son, for by the Powers of God thou art being purified for the articulation of the Reason (Logos).

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Gnosis of God hath come to us, and when this comes, my son, Not-knowing is cast out.

Gnosis of Joy hath come to us, and on its coming, son, Sorrow will flee away to them who give it room. The Power that follows Joy do I invoke, thy Self-control. O Power most sweet! Let us most gladly bid it welcome, son! How with its coming doth it chase Intemperance away!

9. Now fourth, on Continence I call, the Power against Desire.

. . . . 1 This step, my son, is Righteousness’ firm seat. For without judgment 2 see how she hath chased Unrighteousness away. We are made righteous, son, by the departure of Unrighteousness.

Power sixth I call to us,—that against Avarice, Sharing-with-all. 3

And now that Avarice is gone, I call on Truth. And Error flees, and Truth is with us.

See how [the measure of] the Good is full, my

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son, upon Truth’s coming. For Envy hath gone from us; and unto Truth is joined the Good as well, with Life and Light.

And now no more doth any torment of the Darkness venture nigh, but vanquished [all] have fled with whirring wings.

10. Thou knowest [now], my son, the manner of Rebirth. And when the Ten is come, my son, that driveth out the Twelve, the Birth in understanding 1 is complete, and by this Birth we are made into Gods.

Who then doth by His mercy gain this Birth in God, abandoning the body’s senses, knows himself [to be of Light and Life 2] and that he doth consist of these, and [thus] is filled with Bliss.

11. Tat. By God made steadfast, father, no longer with the sight my eyes afford I look on things, but with the energy the Mind doth give me through the Powers. 3

In heaven am I, in earth, in water, air; I am in animals, in plants; I’m in the womb, before the womb, after the womb; I’m everywhere!

But further tell me this: How are the torments of the Darkness, when they are twelve in number, driven out by the ten Powers? What is the way of it, Thrice-greatest one?

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12. Her. This dwelling-place 1 through which we have just passed, my son, is constituted from the circle of the types-of-life, this being composed of elements, twelve in number, but of one nature, an omniform 2 idea. For man’s delusion there are disunions 3 in them, son, while in their action they are one. Not only can we never part Rashness from Wrath; they cannot even be distinguished.

According to right reason (logos), then, they 4 naturally withdraw once and for all, in as much as they are chased out by no less than ten powers, that is, the Ten.

For, son, the Ten is that which giveth birth to souls. And Life and Light are unified there, where the One hath being from the Spirit. According then to reason (logos) the One contains the Ten, the Ten the One.

13. Tat. Father, I see the All, I see myself in Mind.

Her. This is, my son, Rebirth—no more to look on things from body’s view-point (a thing three ways in space extended), 5 . . . 6 though this Sermon (Logos) on Rebirth, on which I did not

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comment 1;—in order that we may not be calumniators 2 of the All unto the multitude, to whom indeed the God Himself doth will we should not.

14. Tat. Tell me, O father: This Body which is made up of the Powers, is it at any time dissolved?

Her. Hush, [son]! Speak not of things impossible, else wilt thou sin and thy Mind’s eye be quenched.

The natural body which our sense perceives is far removed from this essential birth.

The first must be dissolved, the last can never be; the first must die, the last death cannot touch.

Dost thou not know thou hast been born a God, Son of the One, even as I myself?

15. Tat. I would, O father, hear the Praise-giving with hymn which thou didst say thou heardest then when thou wert at the Eight [the Ogdoad] of Powers.

Her. Just as the Shepherd did foretell [I should], my son, [when I came to] the Eight. 3

Well dost thou haste to “strike thy tent,” 4 for thou hast been made pure.

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The Shepherd, Mind of all masterhood, 1 hath not passed on to me more than hath been writ down, for full well did He know that I should of myself be able to learn all, and hear what I should wish, and see all things.

He left to me the making of fair things 2; wherefore the Powers within me, e’en as they are in all, 3 break into song.

16. Tat. Father, I wish to hear; I long to know these things.

Her. Be still, my son; hear the Praise-giving now that keeps [the soul] in tune, Hymn of Re-birth—a hymn I would not have thought fit so readily to tell, had’st thou not reached the end of all.

Wherefore this is not taught, but is kept hid in silence.

Thus then, my son, stand in a place uncovered to the sky, facing the southern wind, 4 about the sinking of the setting sun, and make thy worship; so in like manner too when he doth rise, with face to the east wind.

Now, son, be still!

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THE SECRET HYMNODY

17. Let every nature of the World receive the utterance of my hymn!

Open thou Earth! Let every bolt of the Abyss be drawn for me. Stir not, ye Trees!

I am about to hymn creation’s Lord, both All and One.

Ye Heavens open, and ye Winds stay still; [and] let God’s deathless Sphere receive my word (logos)!

For I will sing the praise of Him who founded all; who fixed the Earth, and hung up Heaven, and gave command that Ocean should afford sweet water [to the Earth], to both those parts that are inhabited and those that are not, for the support and use of every man; who made the Fire to shine for gods and men for every act.

Let us together all give praise to Him, sublime above the Heavens, of every nature Lord!

’Tis He who is the Eye of Mind; may He accept the praise of these my Powers!

18. Ye Powers that are within me, hymn the One and All; sing with my Will, Powers all that are within me!

O blessed Gnosis, by thee illumined, hymning through thee the Light that mind alone can see, 1 I joy in Joy of Mind.

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Sing with me praises all ye Powers!

Sing praise, my Self-control; sing thou through me, my Righteousness, the praises of the Righteous; sing thou, my Sharing-all, the praises of the All; through me sing, Truth, Truth’s praises!

Sing thou, O Good, the Good! O Life and Light, from us to you our praises flow!

Father, I give Thee thanks, to Thee Thou Energy of all my Powers; I give Thee thanks, O God, Thou Power of all my Energies!

19. Thy Reason (Logos) sings through me Thy praises. Take back through me the All into [Thy] Reason—[my] reasonable oblation 1!

Thus cry the Powers in me. They sing Thy praise, Thou All; they do Thy Will.

From Thee Thy Will 2; to Thee the All. Receive from all their reasonable oblation. The All that is in us, O Life, preserve; O Light illumine it; O God in-spirit it. 3

It is Thy Mind that plays the Shepherd 4 to Thy Word, 5 O Thou Creator, Bestower of the Spirit [upon all]. 6

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20. [For] Thou art God; Thy Man 1 thus cries to Thee through Fire, through Air, through Earth, through Water, [and] through Spirit, through Thy creatures.

’Tis from Thy Æon I have found Praise-giving; and in Thy Will, 2 the object of my search, have I found rest.

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Tat. By thy good pleasure 3 have I seen this Praise-giving being sung, 4 O father; I have set it in my Cosmos too.

Her. Say in the Cosmos that thy mind alone can see, my son.

Tat. Yea, father, in the Cosmos that the mind alone can see; for I have been made able by thy Hymn, and by thy Praise-giving my mind hath been illumined. But further I myself as well would from my natural mind send praise-giving to God.

21. Her. But not unheedfully, my son.

Tat. Ay. What I behold in mind, that do I say.

To thee, thou Parent of my Bringing into Birth, as unto God I, Tat, send reasonable offerings. 5 O God and Father, thou art the Lord, thou art the Mind. Receive from me oblations

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reasonable as thou would’st wish; for by thy Will all things have been perfected.

Her. Send thou oblation, son, acceptable to God, the Sire of all; but add, my son, too, “through the Word” (Logos).

Tat. I give thee, father, thanks for showing me to sing such hymns.

22. Her. Happy am I, my son, that thou hast brought the good fruits forth of Truth, products that cannot die.

And now that thou hast learnt this lesson from me, make promise to keep silence 1 on thy virtue, and to no soul, my son, make known the handing on to thee the manner of Rebirth, that we may not be thought to be calumniators. 2

And now we both of us have given heed sufficiently, both I the speaker and the hearer thou.

In Mind 3 hast thou become a Knower of thyself and of our [common] Sire.

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Footnotes

219:1 ἐν τοῖς γενικοῖς. Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 1 and 7.

219:2 παλιγγενεσία.

219:3 Reading ἐπὶ τῆς τοῦ ὄρους μεταβάσεως with P., and not κατα-βάσεως with R. Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 15; Jamb., D. M., viii. 6.

220:1 κόσμου.

220:2 Reading ἀπηλλοτρίωσα with the majority of the editors, and not the ἀπήδρισα of R.

220:3 τὰ ὑστερήματα ἀναπλήρωσον.

220:4 παραδοῦναι, the word used for the giving of this lesson or inner instruction is the technical term for the “handing on” of a doctrine or being initiated into it.

220:5 R.’s reading would make this refer to Hermes: “I know not from what womb thou com’st to birth.” But the whole instruction seems to favour the usually accepted reading.

220:6 σοφία νοερά.

220:7 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 5.

221:1 τῆς ἐν ἐμοὶ οὐσίας τῆς νοητῆς.

221:2 Cf. Ex. i. 3.

221:3 ἄπλαστον, that is to say, not made up, non-fictitious, not compounded; that is, simple—the opposite of compounded.

221:4 Cf. below, § 7: the man “who hath been taken pity on by God”; and also §10.

221:5 πλαστόν.

222:1 γενεσιουργός.

222:2 A lacuna unfortunately follows.

222:3 ψεύδῃ.

222:4 ὡς ψεῦδος.

223:1 Cf. P. S. A., xxxi..3.

223:2 Cf. C. H., iv. (v.) 1.

223:3 Retaining the reading δεόμενου δὲ τοῦ δυναμένου.

223:4 τὴν ἐν θεῷ γένεσιν—cf. § 10.

224:1 ἄγνοια.

224:2 ἀπάτη.

224:3 δόλος.

224:4 Cf. C. H., xvi. 15.

224:5 ἐνδιάθετον.

224:6 Cf. above, § 3: “brought to birth out of God’s mercy”; and also § 10.

224:7 A lacuna in the text.

225:1 Something has here evidently fallen out in the text.

225:2 χωρὶς κρίσεως. If, however, we must read κτίσεως with the majority of the editors, I cannot understand the various translations. Everard gives “without labour”; Parthey, “nulla contentione”; Ménard, “sans combat”; Chambers, “without contention.” I would, therefore, render it: “See how she hath chased out Unrighteousness without a home”; for it seems to me that in χωρὶς κτίσεως we have the exact antithesis of ἕδρασμα. Righteousness has here her firm seat or abode, and Unrighteousness is thus naturally without a home.

225:3 κοινωνίαν.

226:1 νοερὰ γένεσις, lit., intellectual birth.

226:2 Completed from C. H., i. 22.

226:3 τῇ διὰ δινάμεων νοητικῇ ἐνεργείᾳ.

227:1 σκῆνος,—tent or tabernacle of the human soul. Cf. below, § 15.

227:2 Cf. commentary on C. H., xi. (xii.) 16.

227:3 διαζυγαὶ—the opposite of συζυγίαι.

227:4 That is, the Twelve.

227:5 As opposed to some other dimension, presumably.

227:6 Some words are evidently missing.

228:1 See § 1.

228:2 διάβολοι, compare § 22. The lacuna probably contained some reference to keeping silence.

228:3 Cf. C. H., i. 26.

228:4 λῦσαι τὸ σκῆνος. Cf. above, § 12. The meaning is generally to free oneself from the trammels of the body. Compare the Pythian Oracle concerning Plotinus: “But now since thou hast struck thy tent and left the tomb of thy daimonic soul” (νῦν δ᾽ ὅτε δὴ σκῆνος μέν ἐλύσαο, σῆμα δ᾽ ἔλειψας ψυχῆς δαιμονίς). Porphyry, Plotini Vita, xxii.; cf. Ex. vii. 3; Ex. iii. 1.

229:1 Cf. C. H., i. 2.

229:2 Sc. psalms and praise-giving.

229:3 Sc. prophets.

229:4 Also used of the south-west quarter. The “south wind” is thought to have extended from SSE. to W.

230:1 τὸ νοητὸν φῶς.

231:1 Cf. below, 21.

231:2 Cf. P. S. A., Comment, and R. 39, n. 1.

231:3 The Spirit being Light and Life.

231:4 ποιμαίνει, acts as a shepherd or feeds; Pœmandres is thus the Shepherd of men or the feeder of men, He who gives them the heavenly food.

231:5 The Word or Reason or true Man in man.

231:6 πνευματοφόρε δημιουργέ.

232:1 Cf. C. H., i. 32.

232:2 βουλή.

232:3 θέλημα.

232:4 Cf., for instance, The Ascension of Isaiah, i. 6: “In the twentieth year of the reign of Hezekiah, Isaiah had seen the words of this prophecy.”—Charles’ Trans. (London, 1900), p. 5.

232:5 Cf. above, § 18.

233:1 Cf. P. S. A., xxxii. 4.

233:2 διάβολοι, slanderers, calumniators; compare § 13; also Ex. i. 16.

233:3 νοερῶς.

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COMMENTARY

CONCERNING THE TITLE

“The Secret Sermon on the Mountain” is the main title given in all the MSS., with the exception of A; the subsidiary contents-title is evidently derived from the same edition to which we owe the other contents-titles preserved in our Corpus. Reitzenstein (p. 193), however, thinks that the main title has arisen by mistake. What the mistake is he does not tell us; perhaps he means that in our Sermon there is no mention of “On a Mountain,” but rather, as in § 1, if we accept his reading, of “Down a Mountain.” But in this we cannot follow him; for the whole teaching is precisely “On the Mount”—to the top of which Tat has now come. For the “Mountain” was symbolic of stages of inner development, and in § 9 we are told precisely: “This step (the fifth) is Righteousness’ firm seat,”—showing that the Mountain was conceived as an ascent or stair of steps as is so often seen in Egyptian frescoes.

THE TERM APOCRYPHON

Again, with regard to the title, the term “Secret” (ἀπόκρυφος—apocryphal) is used in its original sense of hidden away, meaning esoteric or not put into circulation, as applied to a logos or sermon, or a collection of logoi or sayings.

A logos in this sense had very much the same meaning for our Ancients as the Sanskrit mahā-vākyam (“great saying”) has to-day for an Indian theosophist who applies the term to the great mystical utterances of the Upaniṣhads; such as: “That art thou” (Tat tvam asi), etc.

In classical antiquity these logoi or logia were

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regarded as words of wisdom, and were the most sacred legacies of the sages to humanity. These oracular utterances were frequently collected together, and even prior to the days of syncretism formed the most sacred “deposits” (διαθῆκαι) of various nations; the same term being subsequently given to the Christian Bible.

Thus Herodotus calls Onomacritus, the first collector of the archaic Orphic Hymns, a “depository of oracles” (διαθέτην χρησμῶν),—the word carrying the meaning of “one who arranges,” corresponding exactly to the term Vyāsa in Sanskrit, the supposed “author” of the Mahābhārata.

Such collections of logoi or logia were then generally called “deposits,” the word also sometimes bearing the meaning of “testaments” as containing the expression of the Divine will or dispensation. The same term is used by Strabo (x. 482) of the Laws of Lycurgus; it was also applied by the Orphics and Pythagoreans to such sacred laws 1; while Ecclesiastical writers subsequently used it in reference to the Canonical Books. 2

The Orphics and Pythagoreans also called these collections “sacred utterances” (ἱεροὶ λόγοι); and even Clement of Alexandria refers to such a saying of Orpheus as “that truly sacred utterance” (τὸν ὄντως ἱερὸν λόγον).

That such collections were kept secret is not surprising; indeed, such must have been the case from time immemorial. But even on the ground of purely Greek and Roman history, we are not without information of collections of oracles carefully guarded as the secret scriptures or bibles of nations.

Cicero 3 speaks of such a bible of the Veii. The Athenians, in the time of the Kings, possessed a similar

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bible of logia 1; and Dinarchus 2 tells us that the safety of the State depended on this secret scripture (ἀπορρήτους διαθῆκας) These occult sayings (ἀπόθεντα ἔπη) are further called by Suidas (s.v.) “withdrawn volumes” (βιβλία ἀνακεχωρηκότα)—that is to say, books withdrawn from public perusal, or, in other words, apocryphal, hidden or secret (ἀπόκρυφα).

And not only was this the case with the ancient writings themselves, but also with the commentaries upon them, and by degrees with everything referring to them, until finally we find Themistius the rhetorician, in the fourth century, speaking of that “mass of Archaic wisdom not open to the public or in general circulation, but scarce and occult.” 3

We have, therefore, translated the term by “secret” as conveying the proper meaning of the epithet in the title, and not by “apocryphal,” a word that nowadays connotes the judgment of a theological canon.

THE THREE STAGES OF PROBATION

1. In the first paragraph Tat definitely refers to three Stages of Probation, before he is deemed fit to hear the Sermon on Rebirth.

(i) First there is the General or Preliminary Instruction contained in a collection of discourses called the General Sermons (Γενικοὶ Λόγοι).

(ii) Next is the Stage where Tat becomes the Suppliant of Hermes, a stage characterized by Conversation or Dialogue (διαλεχθῆναι); that is to say, Tat was allowed to ask questions. This is further

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symbolically described by a phrase, ἐπὶ τῆς τοῦ ὄρους μεταβάσεως, which is difficult to translate, but which seems to mean either Passing up, or Wending up, the Mountain, or Wending over the Mountain. That is to say, that Hermes was gradually leading Tat to the top of the Mountain, in plain words, as far as his normal intellect could carry him; the Top of the Mountain representing the highest point of unaided mental faculty.

This stage was, I believe, represented by the collection of Sermons to Tat, or Dialogues with Tat, known as the Διεξοδικοὶ Λόγοι—a term somewhat difficult to translate precisely.

The fundamental meaning of διέξοδος is a “way through and out,” a “pathway” or “passage,” or “means of escape.” It thus comes to mean the course of a narrative, or a detailed narrative, exposition, discussion. Hence also a “passage” of Scripture. As set over against γενικὸς (General), therefore, διεξοδικὸς would mean Detailed or Expository; but at the same time it would to the Greek ear suggest the meaning of the Means of Escape or the Way out of Ignorance.

(iii) The third Stage is that of Moral and Mental Purification. “Wherefore I got me ready and made the thought (τὸ φρόνημα) in me a stranger to the world-illusion” (τῆς τοῦ κόσμου ἀπάτης)—the Error that in § 7 sums up the first six vices, and is in § 9 driven out by Truth.

Stage ii. may have been technically known as that of the Suppliant, though, of course, of this we cannot be sure. In any case the term must be considered in close connection with Philo’s treatise On the Contemplative Life, which, as Conybeare tells us, most probably formed Book IV. of Philo’s voluminous work, or rather apology, De Legatione. The alternative title of this

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work was The Suppliants. By “Suppliant” Philo tells us he means “one who has fled to God and taken refuge with Him.” 1

Here, however, the term is used in a narrower sense, as adapted to the personal relationship of disciple to master, who, during the time of probation, stands to him as the representative of God. The master is his spiritual father, the image of God the Father. 2

THE HOLY MOUNT OF INITIATION

As to the symbolic use of the term Mountain, I need hardly remind my readers that it was perhaps the most common figure employed in the apocalypses of the time. Instances come immediately crowding into the mind, such as the “Mount of Galilee” in the Askew and Bruce Gnostic Codices, on which all the great initiations and rites are performed by the Risen Lord; or the Mount Tabor 3 of The Gospel according to the Hebrews, “My Mother the Holy Spirit took me by one of the hairs of the head and carried me unto Mount Tabor”; or in the Acts of John, where the Vision of the Spiritual Crucifixion is shown to John on the Mount; or in The Gospel of Eve, where the Vision of the Great and Little Man is seen on the Mount; or in The Shepherd of Hermas, where the Angel of Repentance bears off Hermas to the Mount of Arcadia, etc. In every case the Mountain is no physical mountain, but the height of contemplation, an interior state of spiritual consciousness.

Stage iii., again, is of interest because of the terms in

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which it is described; they may be compared with the same teaching in the Behnesa logos:

Jesus saith: “Except ye fast to the world, ye shall in nowise find the Kingdom of God.”

Again, in Tat’s prayer for the consummation of his probation: “And now do thou fill up the things that fall short in me” (τὰ ὑστερήματα ἀναπλήρωσον), it should be noticed that we have the well-known technical terms of the Christianized Gnosis, the Plērōma and Hysterēma, or Fullness and Insufficiency.

THE BIRTH FROM ABOVE

The time has come for Tat to receive, through his master, the touch of the true Mind-consciousness, the Christ is to be born in his heart, the light of the Plērōma is to shine into his inmost being. It is to be a New Birth, a Regeneration (παλιγγένεσις), or Re-birth (ἀναγέννησις), in the sense of being born from Above (ἄνωθεν).

Compare John iii. 3: “Amen, Amen, I say unto thee; Except a man be born from Above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” And also 7: “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye (pl.) must be born from Above,”—where the comment on a prior saying, “Ye must be born from Above,” formally unsuited to the scheme of a dialogue between Jeschu and Rabbi Nakdimon, reveals the work of the Haggadist.

So also in 1 Pet. i. 22, 23: “Having made your souls holy by hearkening to the Truth 1 . . . being Re-born (ἀναγεγεννημένοι) not from the seed of destruction, but from the Seed that cannot be destroyed, through the Word 2 (Logos) of God, who lives and endures.” 3

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These passages from the New Testament Scriptures are not, of course, cited to show any dependence of our Hermetic authors on the New Testament writers; but simply to show how they mutually explain one another. For indeed the doctrine of the New Birth and of the Sacred Marriage was beyond all else the crowning mystery of the Spiritual Way for all the mystic schools of the time. 1

THE VIRGIN BIRTH

2. The secret that Tat would learn is the Mystery of the Birth from the Virgin Womb—the Birth of Man, the Great Mystery of Regeneration. Many illustrations of the meaning of this pivot-doctrine of the Christian teaching might be quoted from Gnostic writings, but it will be sufficient to remind the reader of what the Jewish Commentator in the Naassene Document (§ 28) has written in contrasting the Great Mysteries (or the heavenly ones) with the Little Mysteries (those of fleshly generation). Speaking of the Mysteries of Regeneration, he writes:

“For this is the Gate of Heaven, and this is the House of God, where the Good God dwells alone; into which no impure [man] shall come, but it is kept under guard for the spiritual alone,—where when they come, they must cast away their garments, and all become bridegrooms, obtaining their true manhood, through the Virginal Spirit. For this is the Virgin big with child, conceiving and bearing a Son.”

And to this the Christian Commentator adds:—“not psychic, not fleshly, but a blessed Æon of Æons.”

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The Jewish Commentator uses the language of Philo, who, as we have shown, centred his ideas round the conception of the Sacred Marriage and the Virginal Spirit.

So, too, does our treatise. The Womb is Silence, the silence of contemplation, the image of the Great Silence the Mother of the Æons in many a Christianized Gnostic System; the Matter is Wisdom; the Æon’s coming to consciousness in man is the Birth of Man the Son of God; and the Seed is the Good or Logos sown by the Will of the Father. This is the Birth of the Christ in man, the Great Mystery that awaits us when we have made ourselves strangers to the world-illusion.

Is this Son then, asks Tat, other than God? No, answers Hermes; it is the Mystery of Sameness, not of Difference; it is the Plērōma, not the Insufficiency,—“All in all, out of all powers composed,” the Common Fruit of the Plērōma, as the Valentinians would have expressed it.

THE RACE OF THE LOGOS

It is a Race, not an individual; it is We and no longer I. 1 This is the Race of the Logos; the Self-taught Race of Philo; or, as Hermes says: “This Race, my son, is never taught, but when He willeth it, its memory is restored by God.”

This is the ἀνάμνησις of Pythagoras and Plato,—the regaining of the consciousness of the Divine State; it must be self-perceived. And so Philo tells us:

“But as for the Race of Devotees who are taught ever more and more to see, let them strive for the intuition of That-which-is; let them transcend the sun which men perceive [and gaze upon the Light beyond, the

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[paragraph continues]True Sun or Logos], nor ever leave this rank which leads to Perfect Blessedness. Now they who betake themselves to the [Divine] Service, [do so] not because of any custom, or some one’s advice or appeal, but are carried away by Heavenly Love.” 1

They are of the Race of Elxai, the Hidden Power or Holy Spirit, the Spouse of Iexai, the Hidden Lord or Logos. 2

THE SELF-TAUGHT

3. Hermes cannot teach to Tat this Birth in words, even as Isis is not permitted to declare it openly to Horus (K. K., 36):

“I may not tell the story of this Birth; for it is not permitted to describe the origin of thy descent, O Horus, son of mighty power, lest afterward the Way-of-Birth of the immortal Gods should be known unto men”—that is, the Mystery of the Birth of Horus.

Hermes can only guide Tat towards the realisation of the Blessed Sight, by putting himself into that sublime state of consciousness, so that Tat, so to speak, bathes, or is baptized in, his master’s spiritual presence, the Cup of the Mind. This, as we have seen already from several treatises, was the way of transmission of the Power of the powers, the true Laying-on of Hands.

Hermes describes the change that takes place in himself when he passes into the higher spiritual consciousness. He seems to “pass through himself”—to “involve” himself, as it is said somewhere in the Mahābhārata of the Ṛiṣhis—“into a Body that can never die,” that is, into a, or rather the, Essential or Cosmic Body, 3 that embraces the cosmos within it. The

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way to do this is not taught, for it cannot be understood from any sensible experience, the outer physical form of the adept remaining as it was before. It is an inner change. The Birth of a Christ is the striking of a new keynote; everything remains apparently as it was before, but all things receive a new interpretation.

No physical sight, even of the greatest intensity, can penetrate the Veil of this Mystery.

“Thou seest me with eyes, my son; but what I am thou dost not understand.”

With this compare the marvellous Ritual of Initiation in The Acts of John:

“Who I am thou shalt know when I depart. 1 What I am seen to be, that am I not; but what I am, thou shalt see when thou comest.” 2

None but those who have reached the Christ-state can know it; no teaching will avail to explain its manner and its mysteries. It must be realized.

THE NEW CREATION

4. But Tat, who has “made himself ready,” is becoming quickened by the power of his master. His spiritual senses are being born; already he is losing touch with the physical; he no longer sees himself. But this is not enough; he must not only be able to lose consciousness of his physical body, and see and hear as though with the mind alone, but he must “invert” himself, pass right through himself, and no longer see things as without him, but all things as within him.

All this is a New Creation to be accomplished in the man himself. The Author or Genesiurge of Re-birth, as

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contrasted with the Maker or Demiurge of Birth, is the One Man, the Logos, the Energic Reason and Will of God; the one is the Creator of the Immortal Body, the other is the Maker of the mortal frame.

THE WAY OF BIRTH IN GOD

5. The reading of the next sentence is faulty, and it is impossible to extract the correct meaning. The “Greatness” (τὸ μέγεθος) and “distinctive form” (χαρακτήρ) are terms familiar enough to us in Christian Gnostic writings. 1 Greatness connotes the same idea as Æon; “character” or “distinctive form” or “rank” is generally the impression from a typical original, and here stands for the form by which a man is recognised.

6. Hermes then proceeds to describe the nature of this Greatness or Æon, or Sameness, manifested in difference. It is, alchemically speaking, the One Element, which can only be comprehended by one Born in God—that is, by a God.

7. The way of this Birth is then described as a de-energizing, or throwing out of work of the body’s senses, with a corresponding energizing of the One Sense, the Æonic Consciousness; or as a purging out of

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the tendencies of the lower nature, and replacing them by the energies of the Divine Powers.

This is the Mystery of Repentance (μετανοῖα), not a change of mind only, but a change throughout the whole nature; all things in the man turn towards God.

The forces or energies of the soul have no direction in themselves; it is the will of man that can turn them “downwards” or “upwards,” so that they become vices or virtues.

OF THE TEN AND THE TWELVE

8., But not only does Hermes set forth a formal exposition of this Repentance in terms of the conquest and driving out of the Horde of Vices by the Company of Virtues, but at the same time he performs an efficacious theurgic rite of invocation whereby he enables Tat to realize the instruction in immediate experience.

The Virtues that Hermes invokes are not abstractions, but definite substantial powers; they are, in fact, the “filling up” of Tat’s “insufficiency”; in other words, they are what the Christian Gnostics would have called the Æons of the Plērōma.

Behind all there is a definite scheme of numbering. There is a Twelve and a Ten and a Seven and a Three and a One.

The Torments of the Darkness are the Twelve; they are not torments in themselves, but only for him who is in Error. They are Twelve yet are they one, for though they are “pantomorph” or “omniform,” yet are they of one nature; the Twelve are thus conditioned by the main irrational “types of life,” or animal natures,—the so-called zodiac.

These divisions are not, however, fundamental, they are solely for man’s delusion or error; in action they

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are one—that is, they keep man in Error or Ignorance. Thus they can be regarded as one, or two, or three, or four, or six; and so combined and recombined.

Twelve, then, is the nature of the “animal soul” in man—the number of his going-forth into externality. This out-going is arrested when man repents, and turns himself to return, to go within; the cosmogonical is transformed by the soteriological; the “enformation according to substance” gives place to the “enformation according to gnosis.” As Ignorance characterized the Twelve, so does Gnosis characterize the Ten, the Perfect Number or Number of Perfection.

The Going-forth was that of the multiplication of species—Twelve (3 × 4 or 2 × 6); the Return is Ten, that is the Seven and the Three; and Seven is addition (3 + 4) and not multiplication.

Multiplication seems here to mean the generation, by two parents, of things of the same kind and power; while addition signifies the intensification of the same nature to a higher power.

The Ten is “that which giveth birth to souls”—that is, human souls; and not only human souls, but, in its consummation, to divine souls.

It may, perhaps, be of interest here to set down simple lists of the vices and virtues as given in our treatise, and to append to them the list of vices in C. H., i. 24 and 26.

 

1. Not-knowing.	1. Gnosis.
2. Grief.	2. Joy.
3. Intemperance.	3. Self-control.
4. Concupiscence.	4. Continence.
5. Unrighteousness.	5. Righteousness.
6. Avarice.	6. Sharing-with-all.
7. Error.	7. Truth.
8. Envy.

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9. Guile.	8. The Good.
10. Anger.	9. Life.
11. Rashness.	10. Light.
12. Malice.
1. Growth and Waning.	First Zone.
2. Device of Evils.	Second Zone.
3. Guile of the Desires.	Third Zone.
4. Arrogance.	Fourth Zone.
5. Daring and Rashness.	Fifth Zone.
6. Getting Wealth.	Sixth Zone.
7. Falsehood.	Seventh Zone.
8. Those-that-are.	Eighth.
9. The Powers in a band.	Ninth.
10. The Father.	Tenth.

It is at once seen that the first seven virtues are arranged so as to be the direct antitheses of the first seven vices. The root of the Twelve is Ignorance; indeed, all the Twelve are permutations of Ignorance. They seem to be twelve, whereas they are but one in nature; again, not only are they twelve, but manifold (§ 12).

Thus, for instance, Rashness and Wrath or Anger are but one, and so of the rest; the permutations are infinite. This may be seen from the septenary classification in “The Shepherd” treatise, where we have: Guile of the Desires (3), a combination of Guile (9) and Desire or Concupiscence (4); Device of Evils (2), a combination of Guile (9) and Malice (12); Unholy Daring and Rashness (5), a combination of Unrighteousness (5) and Rashness (11); Getting Wealth by evil means (6), a combination of Guile (9) and Avarice (6). So also just as Anger (10) and Rashness (11) are one, so are Envy (8) and Avarice (6) but aspects of the same

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thing; and so again Intemperance (3) and Concupiscence or Desire (4), Grief (2) and Ignorance (1), etc.

All are summed up in Ignorance, or Error, just as the seven virtues are summed up in Gnosis or Truth. 1 And just as Ignorance is the source of vice, so is Knowledge or Gnosis the beginning of Truth. Gnosis is not the end but the beginning of the Path, the end of it is God or the Good.

The difference between the “Pœmandres” arrangement and the categories of our treatise is conditioned by the fact that in the former the process of transformation in the case of a good man after death is described, whereas in the latter the Way of Rebirth in a living man is set forth.

That the Virtues (and Vices, therefore) were categorized according to the fundamental numbers of the Gnosis may be seen in most systems of Christian Gnostic æonology; indeed, it was a common plan of the general Gnostic theosophy of the time. In our treatise we have set forth the manner of the immediate practical ethical realization of what might be taken by a superficial student of Gnostic æonology as an empty schematology of purely metaphysical abstractions. 2 These things, however, meant everything to the Gnostic; they were fullnesses—no abstractions, but transcendent realities.

So also in the Shepherd of Hermas (Vis. iii. 8, 7), just as in our treatise, we are presented with the Vision of a Band of seven Women, each the mother of the next, seven Virtues, called: Faith, Continence, Simplicity, Freedom-from-malice, Seriousness, Gnosis (ἐπιστήμη), Love.

And not only do we have the Seven, but also the

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[paragraph continues]Twelve, twelve Maidens (Sim. xv. 1-3): Faith, Continence, Power, Long-suffering, Simplicity, Freedom-from-malice, Chastity, Joyfulness, Truth, Understanding, Concord, Love.

To these are opposed twelve Women in dark robes: Infidelity, Incontinence, Disobedience, Error, Grief, Depravity, Wantonness, Quickness-to-wrath, Falsehood, Folly, Slander, Hate.

Zosimus also speaks of the Twelve Fates (Μοῖραι) of Death, and associates them with the Passions. 1

But, indeed, the subject is infinite, for it is the consummation of all right endeavour and all true progress in humanity. We must, then, leave it for the present, to avoid running to too great length in these comments. Sufficient for the moment to point to the fact that the Ten is not only the Wedding Garment of Purity, but also the Robe of Power or Glory. In its consummation also it is the Garment of the Christ, the One Robe without seam throughout, for the Ten contains the One, and the One contains the Ten.

THE DAWN OF COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS

13. The result of this Potent Invocation of the Powers,—that is to say, the realization of the full meaning of the sacred rite which consummates itself in the consciousness of Hermes, and so communicates itself in some measure to Tat, 2—is that Tat begins to “see”; “I see the All, I see myself in Mind.”

“In heaven am I, in earth, in water, air; I am in animals, in plants; I’m in the womb, before the womb, after the womb,—I’m everywhere” (§ 11).

Compare this with C. H., xi. (xii.) 22, where Hermes is himself being taught by Mind:

“Collect into thyself all senses of all creatures,—of

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fire, and water, dry and moist. Think that thou art at the same time in every place, in earth, in sea, in sky; not yet begotten, in the womb, young, old and dead, in after-death conditions.”

This is, as we have seen, a pure Egyptian formula, and connotes the opening of the “cosmic consciousness.”

This consciousness, whatever else it may be, is a transcending of our three-dimensional limitation of consciousness,—that of the “body’s view-point,—a thing three ways in space extended.”

THE VOW OF SILENCE

The mystery of this New Birth in consciousness is to be kept secret; therefore Hermes has not commented on it, presumably in the Expository Sermons; moreover, it must even now be kept secret (§ 22), and therefore is the treatise a Secret Sermon. The reason for this is given both here and in § 22: “That we may not be thought to be calumniators” (διάβολοι), by the Many or Unknowing. What may be the precise meaning of this phrase I do not know, and can only speculate.

Those who had reached the full grade of Hermes are to keep silence on their “virtue” or power (§ 22); they were never to boast of their Gnosis. If they did, it would only bring the Gnosis into contempt; for they would still appear as ordinary men, would probably often say and do things, when they were not in the higher state of consciousness, which fell below the standard of their high ideals, and so they would be slanderers or calumniators of the Gnosis before the world.

14. The New Birth is further characterized as the Essential Birth (ἡ οὐσιώδης γένεσις); it was the birth of

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the Essential Man, the God, Son of the One, to which other treatises refer. 1

OF THE OGDOAD

15. Tat now desires to hear the Praise-giving of the Powers, which only those can sing who have reached the stage called Eighth, or the Ogdoad; this is the state above the Harmony or the Hebdomad of Fate (C. H., i. 26). The man is now free and no longer a slave. It is the power of prophetic hymnody, for the man now hears the True Harmony of things and is above the Concatenation of Difference; it is the state “that keeps the soul in tune.” He who has reached this height can ever sing in tune; it is the state of the Hearer of the Eternal Praise-giving, and those who reach it can express it infinitely, each in his own fashion.

The idea of the Ogdoad is represented in many a Christian Gnostic system, especially in the Valentinian tradition, which has many Egyptian elements in it.

So we read in the Excerpts from Theodotus appended to the writings of Clement of Alexandria:

“Him whom the Mother 2 brings to birth, she leadeth unto Death and to the world; but him whom Christ brings to rebirth, He changeth into Life, unto the Ogdoad.” 3

Many were the names given to the Ogdoad by the Christian Gnostics,—such as the Jerusalem Above, Wisdom, the Land flowing with milk and honey, the Holy Spirit, the Land of the Lord, the Mesotes.

These terms were, however, with the exception of the last, Jewish synonyms; the term Ogdoad itself

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was in all probability Egyptian. Thus in one of the Magic Papyri we read:

“Having known the power of the book, thou shalt hide it, my son. For in it there is stored the Authentic Name, which is the Name Ogdoad,—He who doth order and doth regulate all things.” 1

A HYMN FOR MORNING AND FOR EVENING PRAYER

16. The Hymn that follows is to be kept secret—that is to say, it is to be taken by Tat as an example of the form of prayer he is now to use in his private devotions, and is therefore probably intended to replace some other form of prayer which he had hitherto been using, as was the custom in such communities.

The instruction to use it at sunset and sunrise, in the open air, reminds us of the appended passages to “The Shepherd” treatise, where we read (§ 29):

“And when even was come and all sun’s beams began to set, I bade them all give thanks to God.” 2

Compare also what Philo tells us of the Therapeuts:

“Twice a day, at dawn and even, they are accustomed to offer up prayers; as the sun rises praying for the sunshine, the real Sunshine, that their minds may be filled with Heavenly Light, and as it sets praying that their soul, completely lightened of the lust of the senses and sensations, may withdraw to its own Congregation and Council-chamber, there to track out Truth.” 3

So also Apollonius of Tyana is said to have prayed and meditated three times a day: at daybreak (Phil., V. A., vi. 10, 18; vii. 31), at mid-day (vii. 10), and at

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sundown (viii. 13); and with regard to “keeping silence on their virtue,” we are told of the Later Pythagoreans, of whom he was so conspicuous an example:

“In particular they kept the rule of silence regarding the Divine Service [that is, the Gnosis]. For they heard within them many Divine and unspeakable things on which it would have been difficult for them to keep silence, had they not first learned that it was just this Silence which spoke to them” (i. 1). 1

And so the Hymn has to be heard in silence; all earthly sounds must be stilled for the Heavenly Harmony to be heard.

17. It is to be noticed that in four out of the five MSS. the title “Secret Hymnody” is followed by the indication “Logos IV.”

Reitzenstein (p. 345, n. 21) thinks that the three prior “Logoi” were:

I. “Holy art Thou, O God”—C. H., i. 31, 32.

II. “The Glory of all things is God”—C. H., iii. (iv.).

III. “Whither stumble ye, sots?”—C. H., vii. (viii.).

The latter two, however, are not hymns; the only other hymn in our Corpus being:

“Who then may sing Thee praise of Thee?”—C. H., v. (vi.) 10, 11.

Our Hymn is a Hymn to the Sun, it is true, but to the Spiritual Sun, not the physical orb of day. It is to the Eye of Mind that these orisons are addressed—to the All-seeing Light.

Nor is this Eulogy a formal Te Deum, but a potent theurgic Praise-giving. All nature is to thrill with the joy of this thankfulness.

Most beautiful is this Song of Praise, all of it, but we would specially call attention to the words:

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“Thy Reason sings through me Thy praises. Take back through me the All into Thy Reason—my reasonable oblation 1! From Thee Thy Will; to Thee the All!”

The Outbreathing of the Universe through the Reason or Logos 2 is the manifestation or realisation of the Will of God. The Logos is Son, Will is Mother and God Father.

The Inbreathing of the Universe is through Man (“Thy Man thus cries to Thee,” § 20): “Take back through Me the All.” This is accomplished in the first instance by the sacrifice of the reason, of man’s small limited reason, to the Great Reason of things.

And yet the All, the Universe itself, is not something other than God; it is all God.

“From Thee Thy Will”; Thou art the Source of all. “To Thee the All”; Thou art the End of all, the Desirable One, The Good.

Compare with this the Hymn in the Jewish deposit of the Naassene Document:

“From Thee is Father, and Through Thee Mother,—the two Immortal Names, Parents of Æons, O Thou who hast the Heaven for thy City, O Man of Mighty Names!”

Also notice: “The All that is in us, O Life, preserve; O Light, illumine it; O God, in-spirit it!” And compare it with § 12, where we are told: “While Life and Light are unified there, where the One hath being from the Spirit.”

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The Prayer is for the Baptism of Light—Illumination by the Gnosis 1; this was the Dowsing in the Mind of “The Cup” treatise, even as true Baptism in primitive Christianity was called Illumination or φωτισμός.

“THROUGH THE WORD”

21. Tat now feels himself impelled to utter praises himself. He says what he feels. His master has given him the impulse, has made the conditions for him whereby he is conceived as a Child of God, a Prophet. But as yet he is not grown into the stature of a true Seer. His higher nature has received the germ, but this must have time to develop, and only gradually will its power descend into his lower mind.

At present his thankfulness is poured forth to his master, who has performed the theurgic rite of initiation (“All things have been perfected”) for him.

But Hermes restrains him; it is not to the master that his thanks are due, but to God. And if he cannot as yet give thanks direct to God, then let him send those thanks—“acceptable oblations”—to God “Through the Word.”

And that this was and is the practice of universal Christendom requires no pointing out;—the most striking parallel to the wording of our treatise being 1 Pet. ii. 5: “Spiritual oblations acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

Tat has now passed from the rank of Hearer to that of Knower; he is now a true Gnostic: “Thou hast become a Knower of thyself, and of our Sire.”

Compare logos 2 of the latest found Sayings at Oxyrhynchus:

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“(Strive therefore?) to know yourselves, and ye shall know ye are Sons of the (almighty?) Father; (and?) ye shall know that ye are in (the City of God? 1), and ye are (the City? 2).”

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Footnotes

235:1 Grotius, ap. Jablonski, ii. 397; Lobeck, Aglaoph., p. 714.

235:2 Euseb., Chron., 99 A.

235:3 De Div., i. 44.

236:1 Herod., v. 90.

236:2 Or. c. Demos., 91, 20.

236:3 Or., IV. 60: “στῖφος ἀρχαιας σοφίας, οὐ κοινῆς οὐδε ἐν μέσῳ κυλινδουμένης ἀλλὰ σπανίου καὶ ἀποθέτου.”

238:1 De Sac. Ab. et C., i. 186, 33.

238:2 See the praise-giving of Tat, § 21.

238:3 “The Mountain of Light,” the traditional scene of the Transfiguration.

239:1 Precisely as did Tat.

239:2 Cf. precisely the same formula in our treatise, § 21.

239:3 That is, of God as Æon and God as Life, which is the union of God as Mind and Logos.

240:1 The antiquity of the ideas connected with this spiritual mystery may be seen from what Reitzenstein (pp. 227 ff.) has to say concerning mystic συνουσία or congress; of it, as perhaps of nothing so much in the world, may it be said corruptio optimi pessima.

241:1 Compare the Song of the Powers in Pistis Sophia (pp. 16, 17), where the “We” alternates with the “I.”

242:1 D. V. C., M. 473, 10; P. 891.

242:2 See D. J. L., pp. 374, 375.

242:3 Cf. R. 52. But compare especially § 6, and C. H., iv. (v.) 1.

243:1 That is, when the Presence is withdrawn,—by contrast.

243:2 Texts and Studies, V. i. 14.

244:1 The term “Greatness,” however, is probably of Egyptian derivation. In the Papyrus Insinger, written somewhere during the last half of the first century B.C. and first half of the first century A.D., according to Spiegelberg, God’s Wisdom and Providence are praised (coll. xxxv., xxxvi.). The superscription of this section runs: “The Four-and-Twentieth Teaching: The Instruction: Learn the Greatness of God, that thou mayest let it come into thine heart” (xxxv. 17); and later on: “He knoweth the Blasphemer who thinketh wickedness, He knoweth the Pious with the Greatness of God in his heart. The tongue, before even it is questioned—its words God knoweth” (xxxvi. 3-5). This is further explained by the sentence: “Thoth is heart and tongue of the Pious; lo! his house is God!” (xxxv. 19). R. 237.

248:1 Cf. P. S. A., xxix. 2.

248:2 The usual way, indeed, in which it is taken.

249:1 Berthelot, 244; R. 214.

249:2 Cf. C. H., i. 7; xi. (ixi.) 6.

251:1 Cf. P. S. A., vii. 2.

251:2 Sc. the Lower Mother, Nature.

251:3 Exx. ex Theodot., § 80 (ed. Dindorf, iii. 453).

252:1 Leyden Papyrus W. S., 139, 45 (Leemans); cf. also ibid., 141, 5; R. 54. For further comments on the Ogdoad, see Commentary on C. H., i. 26.

252:2 Cf. also P. S. A., xli. 1.

252:3 D. V. C., M. ii. 475; P. 893.

253:1 See my Apollonius of Tyana, pp. 123 and 120.

254:1 Cf. 1 Pet. ii. 5: “Ye also as living stones are built up, a spiritual house for holy service, to offer up spiritual oblations acceptable to God through Jesus Christ,” And also Rom. xii. 1: “I beseech you, therefore, brethren, to present your bodies as a living oblation, holy, well-pleasing unto God,—your reasonable service.”

254:2 Hesychius in his Lexicon defines Logos as the “Cause of Activity,” or that which underlies action,—ἡ τοῦ δράματος ὑπόθεσις.

255:1 Compare γνῶσις ἁγία, φωτισθεὶς ἀπὸ σοῦ (§ 18); φῶτιζε φώς (§ 19); ἐπιφώτισταί μου ὁ νοῦς (§ 21).

256:1 Sc. the Ogdoad.

256:2 Cf. 1. Pet. ii. 5: “Ye are built up as living stones, a spiritual house for service.”

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CORPUS HERMETICUM XIV. (XV.)

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[A LETTER] OF THRICE-GREATEST HERMES TO ASCLEPIUS

UNTO ASCLEPIUS GOOD HEALTH OF SOUL! 1

(Text: P. 128-134; Pat. 49, 50.)

1. Since in thy absence my son Tat desired to learn the nature of the things that are, and would not let me hold it over, as [natural to] a younger son fresh come to gnosis of the [teachings] on each single point,—I was compelled to tell [him] more, in order that the contemplation 2 [of them] might be the easier for him to follow.

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I would, then, choosing out the chiefest heads of what was said, write them in brief to thee, explaining them more mystic-ly, 1 as unto one of greater age and one well versed in Nature.

2. If all things manifest have been and are being made, and made things are not made by their own selves but by another; [if] made things are the many,—nay more, are all things manifest and all things different and not alike; and things that are being made are being made by other [than themselves];—there is some one who makes these things; and He cannot be made, but is more ancient than the things that can.

For things that can be made, I say, are made by other [than themselves]; but of the things that owe their being to their being made, it is impossible that anything should be more ancient than them all, save only That which is not able to be made.

3. So He is both Supreme, and One, and Only, the truly wise in all, as having naught more ancient [than Himself].

For He doth rule o’er both the number, size and difference of things that are being made, and o’er the continuity of their making [too].

Again, things makeable are seeable; but He cannot be seen.

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For for this cause He maketh,—that He may not be able to be seen.

He, therefore, ever maketh 1; and therefore can He ne’er be seen.

To comprehend Him thus is meet; and comprehending, [it is meet] to marvel; and marvelling, to count oneself as blessed, as having learnt to know one’s Sire.

4. For what is sweeter than one’s own true Sire? Who, then, is He; and how shall we learn how to know Him?

Is it not right to dedicate to Him alone the name of God, or that of Maker, or of Father, or rather [all] the three;—God for His Power, and Maker for His Energy, and Father for His Good?

Now Power doth differ from the things which are being made; while Energy consisteth in all things being made.

Wherefore we ought to put away verbosity and foolish talk, and understand these two—the made and Maker. For that of them there is no middle [term]; there is no third.

5. Wherefore in all that thou conceivest, in all thou nearest, these two recall to mind; and think all things are they, reckoning as doubtful naught, nor of the things above, nor of the things below, neither of things divine, nor things

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that suffer change or things that are in obscuration. 1

For all things are [these] twain, Maker and made, and ’tis impossible that one should be without the other; for neither is it possible that “Maker” should exist without the “made,” for each of them is one and the same thing.

Wherefore ’tis no more possible for one from other to be parted, than self from self.

6. Now if the Maker is naught else but That which makes, Alone, Simple, Uncompound, it needs must do this [making] to Itself,—to Which its Maker’s making is “its being made.” 2

And as to all that’s being made,—it cannot be

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[paragraph continues][so made] by being made by its own self; but it must needs be made by being made by other. Without the “Maker” “made” is neither made nor is; for that the one without the other doth lose its proper nature by deprivation of that other.

If, 1 then, all things have been admitted to be two,—the “that which is being made” and “that which makes,”—[all then] are one in union of these,—the “that which leadeth” and the “that which followeth.”

The making God is “that which leadeth”; the “that which is being made,” whatever it be, the “that which followeth.”

7. And do not thou be chary of things made because of their variety, from fear of attribution of a low estate and lack of glory unto God.

For that His Glory’s one,—to make all things; and this is as it were God’s Body, the making [of them]. 2

But by the Maker’s self naught is there thought or bad or base.

These things are passions which accompany the making process, as rust doth brass and filth doth body; but neither doth the brass-smith

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make the rust, nor the begetters of the body filth, nor God [make] evil.

It is continuance in the state of being made 1 that makes them lose, as though it were, their bloom; and ’tis because of this God hath made change, as though it were the making clean of genesis.

8. Is it, then, possible for one and the same painter man to make both heaven, and gods, and earth, and sea, and men, and all the animals, and lifeless things, and trees, and yet impossible for God to make all things?

What monstraus lack of understanding; what want of knowledge as to God! 1

For such the strangest lot of all do suffer; for though they say they worship piously and sing the praise of God, yet by their not ascribing unto Him the making of all things, they know not God; and, added unto this not-knowing, they’re guilty even of the worst impiety to Him—passions to Him attributing, or arrogance, or impotency.

For if He doth not make all things, from arrogance He doth not make, or not being able,—which is impiety [to think].

9. One Passion hath God only—Good; and He who’s Good, is neither arrogant nor impotent.

For this is God—the Good, which hath all power of making all.

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And all that can be made is made by God,—that is, by [Him who is] the Good and who can make all things. 1

But would’st thou learn how He doth make, and how things made are made, thou may’st do so.

10. Behold a very fair and most resemblant image—a husbandman casting the seed into the ground; here wheat, there barley, and there [again] some other of the seeds!

Behold one and the same man planting the vine, the apple, and [all] other trees!

In just the selfsame way doth God sow Immortality in Heaven, and Change on Earth, and Life and Motion in the universe.

These are not many, but few and easy to be numbered; for four in all are they,—and God Himself and Genesis, in whom are all that are.

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Footnotes

257:1 εὖ φρονεῖν. I do not know the exact meaning of this expression. Everard translates “to be truly wise”; Parthey, “recte sapere” following Patrizzi; Ménard, “sagesse”; Chambers, “to be rightly wise.” I would suggest that εὖ φρονεῖν was the form used among these disciples of the Inner Way for the usual χαίρειν. Instead of wishing one another happiness, they wished each other wisdom, good thought, right thinking, good health of soul.

257:2 θεωρία.

258:1 That is to say, more fully and profoundly, as to one more advanced in the mystic science.

259:1 Cf. C. H., xvi. 18.

260:1 τῶν ἐν μυχῷ. I do not know what is the exact meaning of this expression. Everard translates “things that are in darkness or secret”; Parthey, “quæ sunt in abdito”; Ménard, “dans les profondeurs”; Chambers, “those in secrecy.” I suggest that the technical term μυχός, signifying generally a shut-in or locked-up place (conclave, as Damascius translates it), is to be referred, along the line of Platonic and Pythagorean tradition, to Pherecydes. Porphyry (De Antro Nymph., C. 31) tells us that the synonyms “μυχοί (chambers?), recesses (or pits), caverns, doors, gates” were used by Pherecydes as symbolical expressions to signify “the geneses and apogeneses of souls,” whatever these terms may mean exactly. The “birth” and “decease” of a soul, in this connection, presumably mean its coming into the world of genesis out of the womb of the World-soul, and its reception back again into the bosom of the great Mother. If this be so, our text would seem to indicate that things are in two states,—in a state of change (that is, in the active condition), and again in a passive condition, in the state which Indian philosophers call laya or pralaya. See for the μυχοί of Pherecydes Sturz’s Pherecydis Fragmenta, pp. 43 ff. (Leipzig, 1824).

260:2 Or genesis.

261:1 From here to the end of the sermon, with the exception of the final sentences of § 7 and § 10, and the third sentence of § 9, and with a few very slight verbal variants, is quoted by Cyril, Contra Julianum, ii. 64 (Migne, col. 598 D).

261:2 Cf. C. H., xvi. 18.

262:1 Or genesis.

263:1 This sentence, which appears to be very tautological, is omitted by Cyril.

COMMENTARY

ASCLEPIUS AND TAT

Fabricius, in his Bibliotheca Græca, 2 says that the title should be “On the Nature of the All,” and that he has recovered it from Cyril, C. Jul., ii., but I cannot verify this statement.

The form of this treatise is different from any of the

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preceding, being that of a letter. It evidently belongs to the Asclepius-Tat type of tradition, as in C. H., x. (xi.): “My yesterday’s discourse I did devote to thee, Asclepius, and so ’tis only right I should devote to-day’s to Tat.”

The distinction drawn between Tat and Asclepius is of interest; Tat is the younger,—who has only “just come to Gnosis of the teaching on each single point.” Can this mean that he has only just been permitted to share in the “Expository Sermons” or “Detailed Discourses”? It is probable, for C. H., x. (xi.) 1, continues: “And this the more because ’tis the abridgment (epitome) of the General Sermons which he has had addressed to him.”

Asclepius is older, and already ἐπιστήμων τῆς φύσεως—well-versed in the study of Nature.

What may be the exact significance underlying these personifications it is very difficult to say; but the same facts, whatever they may have been, are clearly referred to in K K. (Stob., Ecl., i. 49; p. 386, 24 W.); especially the later accession of “Asclepius” to the School, and the fact that “Tat,” because of his too great “youth,” could not have handed on to him the tradition of the complete or all-perfect contemplation (ὁλοτελὴς θεωρία)—that is, of the mathēsis or gnōsis, or, in other words, the “learning of the things that are, the contemplating of their nature and the knowing God” (C. H., i. 3); or the “being taught the nature of the all and the Supreme Vision” (ibid., 27).

This view of the tradition of the School seems to clash entirely with the other view set forth in C. H., xiii. (xiv.), where Tat has handed on to him the “manner of Rebirth,” but a probable explanation has already been attempted in the “Prolegomena,” chap, xvi.: “The Disciples of Thrice-greatest Hermes.”

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COMPARE WITH “MIND UNTO HERMES”

The treatise itself requires little commentary; the similarity of its doctrine, however, with that of the “Mind unto Hermes” is remarkable. For instance, compare the last sentence of § 7 of our treatise with C. H., xi. (xii.) 14: “For that indeed He hath no other one to share in what He works, for working by Himself, He ever is at work, Himself being what He doth.”

Compare also the first sentence of § 8 with C. H., xi. (xii.) 20: “Behold what power, what swiftness thou dost have! And canst thou do all of these things, and God not do them?”

THE GOOD HUSBANDMAN

With the Good Husbandman “image” (§ 10) compare:

“Come unto me, Good Husbandman, Good Daimon, Harpocrates, Chnouphis . . . who rollest down the stream of Nilus, 1 and minglest with the Sea . . . as man with woman.” 2

And in the Alchemical literature:

“[Come then], and coming contemplate, enquire of Acharantus (?), the Husbandman, and learn of Him, what is it that is sown, and what that which is reaped; and thou shalt learn that he who soweth corn shall reap corn also, and he who soweth barley shall in like manner reap barley.” 3

So also Zosimus in the “Book Concerning the Logos”:

“And that I tell thee truth, I call to witness Hermes, when he says: Go unto Achaab (?), the Husbandman, and thou shalt learn that he who soweth corn gives birth to corn.” 4

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Footnotes

263:2 Ed. Harles (4th ed.), vol. i. lib. i. cap. vii.

265:1 The Heavenly River of fructifying essence.

265:2 Abhandl. d. Berl. Akad. (1865), p. 120, 26; R. 143.

265:3 Berthelot, p. 30.

265:4 Berthelot, p. 89.

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CORPUS HERMETICUM (XVI.)

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THE DEFINITIONS OF ASCLEPIUS UNTO KING AMMON

THE PERFECT SERMON OF ASCLEPIUS UNTO THE KING

(Text: R. 348-354; Pat. at end. 1)

1. Great is the sermon (logos) which I send to thee, O King—the summing up and digest, as it were, of all the rest.

For it is not composed to suit the many’s prejudice, since it contains much that refuteth them.

Nay, it will seem to thee as well to contradict sometimes my sermons too.

Hermes, my master, in many a conversation, both when alone, and sometimes, too, when Tat was there, has said, that unto those who come across my books, their composition will seem most simple and [most] clear; but, on the contrary, as ’tis unclear, and has the [inner]

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meaning of its words concealed, it will be still unclearer, when, afterwards, the Greeks will want to turn our tongue into their own,—for this will be a very great distorting and obscuring of [even] what has been [already] written.

2. Turned into our own native tongue, 1 the sermon (logos) keepeth clear the meaning 2 of the words (logoi) [at any rate].

For that its very quality of sound, the [very] power of the Egyptian names, have in themselves the bringing into act of what is said.

As far as, then, thou canst, O King—(and thou canst [do] all things)—keep [this] our sermon from translation; in order that such mighty mysteries may not come to the Greeks, and the disdainful speech of Greece, with [all] its looseness, and its surface beauty, 3 so to speak, take all the strength out of 4 the solemn and the strong—the energetic 5 speech of Names.

The Greeks, O King, have novel words, energic of “argumentation” [only]; and thus is the philosophizing of the Greeks—the noise of words.

But we do not use words; but we use sounds full-filled with deeds.

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3. Thus, then, will I begin the sermon by invocation unto God, the universals’ Lord and Maker, [their] Sire, and [their] Encompasser; who though being All is One, 1 and though being One is All; for that the Fullness of all things is One, and [is] in One, this latter One not coming as a second [One], but both being One.

And this is the idea 2 that I would have thee keep, through the whole study of our sermon, Sire!

For should one try to separate what seems to be both All and One and Same from One,—he will be found to take 3 his epithet of “All” from [the idea of] multitude, and not from [that of) fullness 4—which is impossible; for if he part All from the One, he will destroy the All. 5

For all things must be One—if they indeed are One. Yea, they are One; and they shall never cease being One—in order that the Fullness may not be destroyed.

*          *          *          *          *

4. See then in Earth a host of founts of Water and of Fire forth-spirting in its midmost parts; in one and the same [space all] the three

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natures visible—of Fire, and Water, and of Earth, depending from one Root. 1

Whence, too, it 2 is believed to be the Treasury 3 of every matter. It sendeth forth of its 4 abundance, and in the place [of what it sendeth forth] receiveth the subsistence from above. 5

For thus the Demiurge 6—I mean the Sun—eternally doth order Heaven and Earth, pouring down Essence, 7 and taking Matter up, drawing both round Himself and to Himself all things, and from Himself giving all things to all.

For He it is whose goodly energies extend not only through the Heaven and the Air, but also onto Earth, right down unto the lowest Depth and the Abyss.

6. And if there be an Essence which the mind alone can grasp, 8 this is his Substance, 9 the reservoir 10 of which would be His Light.

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But whence this [Substance] doth arise, or floweth forth, He, [and He] only, knows.

*          *          *          *          *

Or rather, in space and nature, He is near unto Himself . . . though as He is not seen by us, . . . understand [Him] by conjecture. 1

7. The spectacle of Him, however, is not left unto conjecture; nay [for] His very rays, 2 in greatest splendour, shine all round on all the Cosmos that doth lie above and lie below.

For He is stablished in the midst, wreathed with the Cosmos, 3 and just as a good charioteer, He safely drives the cosmic team, 4 and holds them in unto Himself, 5 lest they should run away in dire disorder.

The reins are Life, and Soul, and Spirit, Deathlessness, and Genesis.

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He lets it, then, drive [round] not far off from Himself—nay, if the truth be said, together with Himself.

8. And in this way He operates 1 all things. To the immortals He distributeth perpetual permanence; and with the upper hemisphere of His own Light—all that he sends above from out His other side, 2 [the side of him] which looks to Heaven—He nourisheth the deathless parts of Cosmos.

But with that side that sendeth down [its Light], and shineth round all of the hemisphere 3 of Water, and of Earth, and Air, He vivifieth, and by births and changes keepeth in movement to and fro the animals 4 in these [the lower] parts of Cosmos. . . .

9. He changes them in spiral fashion, and doth transform them into one another, genus to genus, species into species, their mutual changes into one another being balanced—just as He does when He doth deal with the Great Bodies.

For in the case of every body, [its] permanence [consists in] transformation.

In case of an immortal one, there is no

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dissolution; but when it is a mortal one, it is accompanied with dissolution. 1

And this is how the deathless body doth differ from the mortal, and how the mortal one doth differ from the deathless.

10. Moreover, as His Light’s continuous, so is His Power of giving Life to lives continuous, and not to be brought to an end in space or in abundance.

For there are many choirs of daimons round Him, like unto hosts of very various kinds; who though they dwell with mortals, yet are not far from the immortals; but having as their lot from here unto the spaces of the Gods, 2 they watch o’er the affairs of men, and work out things appointed by the Gods—by means of storms, whirlwinds and hurricanes, by transmutations wrought by fire and shakings of the earth, 3 with famines also and with wars requiting [man’s] impiety,—for this is in man’s case the greatest ill against the Gods.

11. For that the duty of the Gods is to give benefits; the duty of mankind is to give worship 4; the duty of the daimons is to give requital.

For as to all the other things men do, through

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error, or foolhardiness, or by necessity, which they call Fate, 1 or ignorance—these are not held requitable among the Gods; impiety alone is guilty at their bar.

12. The Sun is the preserver 2 and the nurse of every class. 3

And just as the Intelligible World, 4 holding the Sensible in its embrace, fills it [all] full, distending it with forms of every kind and every shape—so, too, the Sun distendeth all in Cosmos, affording births to all, and strengtheneth them.

When they are weary or they fail, He takes them in His arms again.

13. And under Him is ranged the choir of daimons—or, rather, choirs; for these are multitudinous and very varied, ranked underneath the groups of Stars, 5 in equal number with each one of them.

So, marshalled in their ranks, they are the ministers of each one of the Stars, being in their natures good, and bad, that is, in their activities (for that a daimon’s essence is activity); while

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some of them are [of] mixed [natures], good and bad.

14. To all of these has been allotted the authority o’er things upon the Earth; and it is they who bring about the multifold confusion of the turmoils on the Earth—for states and nations generally, and for each individual separately.

For they do shape our souls like to themselves, and set them moving with them,—obsessing nerves, and marrow, veins and arteries, the brain itself, down to the very heart. 1

15. For on each one of us being born and made alive, the daimons take hold on us—those [daimones] who are in service at that moment [of the wheel] of Genesis, who are ranged under each one of the Stars. 2

For that these change at every moment; they do not stay the same, but circle back again.

These, then, descending through the body 3 to the two parts 4 of the soul, set it 5 awhirling, each one towards its own activity.

But the soul’s rational part is set above the lordship of the daimons—designed to be receptacle of God.

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16. Who then doth have a Ray shining upon him through the Sun within his rational part—and these in all are few on them the daimons do not act; for no one of the daimons or of Gods has any power against one Ray of God.

As for the rest, they are all led and driven, soul and body, by the daimons—loving and hating the activities of these.

The reason (logos), [then,] is not the love that is deceived and that deceives. 1

The daimons, therefore, exercise the whole of this terrene economy, 2 using our bodies as [their] instruments.

And this economy Hermes has called Heimarmenē. 3

17. The World Intelligible, 4 then, depends from God; the Sensible from the Intelligible [World].

The Sun, through the Intelligible and the Sensible Cosmos, pours forth abundantly the stream from God of Good,—that is, the demiurgic operation.

And round the Sun are the Eight Spheres, dependent from Him—the [Sphere] of the

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[paragraph continues]Non-wandering Ones, the Six [Spheres] of the Wanderers, and one Circumterrene.

And from the Spheres depend the daimones; and from these, men.

And thus all things and all [of them] depend from God. 1

18. Wherefore God is the Sire of all; the Sun’s [their] Demiurge; the Cosmos is the instrument of demiurgic operation.

Intelligible Essence regulateth Heaven; and Heaven, the Gods; the daimones, ranked underneath the Gods, regulate men.

This is the host 2 of Gods and daimones. 3

Through these God makes all things for His own self.

And all [of them] are parts of God; and if they all [are] parts—then, God is all.

Thus, making all, He makes Himself; nor ever can He cease [His making], for He Himself is ceaseless. 4

Just, then, as God doth have no end and no beginning, so doth His making have no end and no beginning. 5

*          *          *          *          *

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Footnotes

266:1 At the end after P. S. A., but the pages are unnumbered.

267:1 This presumably means from the hieroglyphic into the demotic—τῇ πατρῷᾳ διαλέκτῳ ἐρμηνευόμενος.

267:2 Lit. the mind.

267:3 Or, perhaps, smartness.

267:4 Make jejune, so to say—ἐξίτηλον ποιήσῃ.

267:5 That is, “words of power,” words that do things.

268:1 Cf. R. 127, 3; and P. S. A., i. 1.

268:2 Lit. mind.

268:3 The construction is very elliptical; ἐκδεξάμενος simply.

268:4 That is, completeness, perfection,—πληρώματος.

268:5 Cf. Plato, Soph., 259 D, E.

269:1 Cf. P. S. A., iv. 1.

269:2 Sc. Earth.

269:3 A magazine, a store-house,—ταμιεῖον. The term “treasure” (θησαυρός) is found in most lavish use in the Greek-Coptic Gnostic works, and also in Christian Gnostic literature and Jewish Apocalyptic.

269:4 Sc. matter’s.

269:5 τὴν ἄνωθεν ὕπαρξιν,—hyparxis, substance or subsistence, a word of frequent use and highly technical meaning with the last of the Neo-Platonists, especially with Proclus. Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 2.

269:6 Cf. P. S. A., xxix. 4.

269:7 Lit. bringing or drawing down; κατάγειν = deducere, elicere—used frequently of magic arts.

269:8 νοητὴ οὐσία = intelligibilis essentia.

269:9 ὄγκος = moles, mass, bulk, volume; in later philosophy it means “atom,” and may mean so here, of course in the philosophical and mystic and not in the physical sense.

269:10 ὑποδοχή = receptaculum.

270:1 The text is very corrupt. Patrizzi translates: “Vel quia ipso loco, et natura prope se ipsum existens, non a nobis conspicitur cogit nos per conjecturas intelligere”—which certainly does not represent the Greek. Ménard conjectures brilliantly but in entire emancipation from the text: “Pour comprendre par induction ce qui se dérobe à notre vue, il faudrait être près de lui et analogue à sa nature.” Reitzenstein discovers two lacunas in the text, but does not attempt to fill them. As the text stands, then, all attempt at translation seems hopeless.

270:2 Lit. his very sight,—αὐτὴ ἡ ὄψις, that is, his rays, ὄψις being used of the visual rays which were supposed by the science of the time to proceed from the eyes. Cf. Ex. vii. 4.

270:3 Wearing the Cosmos as a wreath or crown; the visible sun being regarded as a “head.” See “The Perfect Sermon.”

270:4 Lit. car or chariot—ἅρμα.

270:5 Lit. binds it to himself—ἀναδήσας εἰς ἑαυτόν.

271:1 δημιουργεῖ.

271:2 Lit. part.

271:3 κύτος = a, hollow, vase, or vessel.

271:4 That is, those lives subject to death, as opposed to the immortals.

272:1 Compare “Sermon to Tat,” I. (Ménard). Cf. Stob., Ecl, i. 61; 274, 24 W.

272:2 Lit. “the land of these”—that is, of the immortals.

272:3 Cf. Ex. ix. 5.

272:4 Or, to be pious. Cf. P. S. A., ix. 1.

273:1 εἱμαρμένην.

273:2 σωτήρ.

273:3 Or genus.

273:4 Or Cosmos.

273:5 ὑπὸ τὰς τῶν ἀστέρων πλινθίδας. πλινθίς = πλινθίον, and is used of any rectangular figure, and also of groups of stars as in Eratosth. apud Strab., II. i. 35; v. 36 (Lex. Sophocles); compare αἱ τῶν πλινθίων ὑπογραφαί, the fields, or spaces, into which the Augurs divided the heavens, templa, or regiones coeli (Lex. Liddell and Scott).

274:1 Lit. viscera.

274:2 Cf. P. S. A., xxxv. 2.

274:3 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 7.

274:4 The two irrational parts, “passion” and “desire” (θυμὸς and ἐπιθυμία).

274:5 The soul.

275:1 This Erōs is the lower love (cf. C. H., i. 18: “love, the cause of death”), not the Divine Love who inspires Hermes in “The Perfect Sermon” and who is mentioned C. H., xviii. 14.

275:2 διοίκησιν.

275:3 Or, Fate; cf. C. H., i. 9; and P. S. A., xix.

275:4 Or, Intelligible Cosmos.

276:1 Cf. P. S. A., iv. 1 n.; and xix.

276:2 Or army, or hierarchy. Compare the “soldier” degree of the Mithriaca.

276:3 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 22; and P. S. A., v. 1.

276:4 Cf. C. H., xiv. (xv.), 7 and 5.

276:5 See Commentary to Frag. iv. (Lact., D. I., ii. 15).

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COMMENTARY

CONCERNING THE TlTLE

Patrizzi has run (xvi.) and (xvii.) together, under the title “Definitions of Asclepius—Book I.,” though he clearly saw that (xvii.) did not belong to (xvi.) by his remark, “videntur sequentia ex alio libro sumpta.” He also heads (xvii.) 1-10 “Definitions of Asclepius—Book II.,” and 11-16 “D. of A.—Book III.,” though the contents have evidently nothing to do with such a title.

In the MSS. a later hand has added to the general title a catalogue of contents as follows:

“Of God; Matter; Evil; Fate; the Sun; Intelligible Essence; Divine Essence; Man; the Economy of the Plērōma; the Seven Stars; the Man after the Likeness” 1—for which largely irrelevant list Patrizzi substitutes the title: “Of the Sun and Daimons.”

Reitzenstein (p. 192) is of opinion that this contents-list, and also the similar headings in (xviii.), are due to some Byzantine scribe, who also foolishly interpolated (xvii.).

But even to (xvi.) the title “Definitions of Asclepius” seems very inappropriate; while, on the other hand, we find Lactantius (D. I., ii. 5), in referring to the “incursions of daimones,” claiming that it was a doctrine also of Hermes, and adding:

“Asclepius, his hearer, has also explained the same idea at greater length in that ‘Perfect Sermon’ which he wrote to the King.”

This is quite definite, and the authority of Lactantius should perhaps be preferred to that of the MSS., but as the title would clash with “The Perfect Sermon” of Hermes to Asclepius, and as Lactantius may just

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possibly mean “in that initiatory sermon,”—the term perfectus being used in a general and not in an appellative sense,—I have kept the traditional title and placed that of Lactantius second.

A TRADITION CONCERNING THE TRISMEGISTIC LITERATURE

1. Like “The Key”—C. H., x. (xi.)—of Hermes, our treatise is an Epitome 1; Asclepius has previously written a number of Sermons to the King.

The reference to the “Conversations” between Hermes and Asclepius and Tat, sometimes when both the latter were present and sometimes with Asclepius alone, presupposes the existence of this class of Dialogue, and indicates that the Correspondence of Asclepius with the King is a later deposit of our literature. 2

This literary activity of Asclepius is claimed in the introduction to be authorized by Hermes, and, moreover, purports to have been originally written in Demotic Egyptian. In other words, the writer would have us believe that the Greek is a translation from Egyptian. This it clearly is not; and we can only conclude that the “prophecy” as to direct translation is a literary fiction of our author.

2. On the other hand, it is highly probable that our author was in contact with a living tradition, to the effect that the Hermes-teaching was originally Egyptian, and that this was “interpreted” into Greek—that is, into Greek modes of thought, rather than “translated” in the ordinary sense into Greek.

In any case, the contempt shown by our author for the Greek language and “philosophizing,” and his

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admiration for Hieroglyphic Egyptian as a “language of the Gods”—a magical tongue, that by its māntric power compelled the understanding of the hearer, by putting him in sympathy with the ideas pictured by the ideograms, or sounded forth by the “names of power” 1—show that he was not only not a Greek, but also no lover of Greek Philosophy.

This is exceedingly puzzling, seeing not only that the majority of the writers of our tractates are plainly deep students and lovers of Plato, but also that the author of our tractate himself also writes very much in the same style as they do.

All of this seems to indicate that in his introduction he was using for his own purposes some tradition about the ancient Thoth-literature that was current in his time. A form of this tradition was also made use of by Philo of Byblus in the first century, when he makes the Phœnician priest Sanchuniathon discover the origin of the Phœnician cosmogony and mystery-teaching in the Books of Taautos, “whom the Egyptian called Thoyth, the Alexandrians Thoth, and the Greeks changed into Hermes.”

Sanchuniathon, he says, “having come across the secret writings that had been discovered and brought from the shrines of the Temples of Ammon,—compositions which were not known to all,—practised by himself the science (τῆν μάθησιν) of all things.” 2

Philo also professes to quote from one of the earliest priests of Phœnicia, a certain Thabiōn, who is said apparently to have got his information from a writing of the Seven Kabiri, and of Asclepius, the pupil of Taautos. This Thabiōn asserted that Taautos was made King of Egypt by Kronos—that is, Ammon. 3

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Here we are evidently in contact with certain traditions with regard to Thoth-Hermes, his ancestors and pupils, and secret writings. Presumably many such traditions were floating about, and were used according to the fancy and taste of Hellenistic writers for their own purposes.

But there was also another tradition concerning a certain King Ammon, used in one form by Jamblichus, when he writes:

“It was Hermes who first taught this Path [sc. the Way up to God]. And Bitys, 1 the Prophet, translated [his teachings concerning it] for King Ammon, discovering them in the inner temple in an inscription in the sacred characters at Saïs in Egypt.” 2

What our author and Jamblichus have in common is that there were certain secret teachings of Hermes in the Sacred Language of Ancient Egypt hidden away in the inner shrines of the temples, and that these were translated into the current Egyptian language of the time for a certain King Ammon.

It must, then, have been some tradition of this kind that our author or writer had in mind; he would have it believed that he was writing in the style or according to the model of a certain literature.

Who this King Ammon was can only be guessed at; but to my mind it is probable that the “translations” of Bitys were made in connection with the translation activity of Manetho for King Ptolemy, and this translation was into Greek. Our author, however, would refer it to some Egyptian King, and so seek to invoke the authority of a high antiquity for the treatise he was putting into circulation.

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A SPECULATION AS TO DATE

5. What seems to differentiate our treatise from the rest of the tractates, is the prominence its author gives to the doctrine of the Sun as Demiurgic Orderer of all things. This so to speak pantheistic form of Sun-worship is peculiarly Egyptian. 1

Now if we remember the disdainful way in which Greek “philosophizing” is spoken of in the introduction, we may be tempted to take the sentence, “And if there be any essence which the mind alone can grasp” (§ 6), as a somewhat patronizing reference to the Intelligible World of Greek Philosophy, as also the analogy in § 12; but when we turn to §§ 17 and 18 the exposition fully adopts the doctrine of the Intelligible and Sensible Worlds. This is so irreconcilable a contradiction that one is almost compelled to believe that the introduction is by another hand altogether, and that our sermon proper begins with § 3.

But even so, the sermon is addressed to some King or other—“The Perfect Sermon to the King” of Lactantius—without any further qualification. Who, however, this King may have been historically must remain a matter of pure conjecture.

7. When, then, Reitzenstein, pointing to § 7, says that the symbolism of the Sun as a charioteer wearing a crown of rays corresponds with that of the pictures of the Aurelian Sun-god, and adds further it is the Roman Empire-god of the third century, we are quite prepared to acknowledge a similarity of symbolism. But if it is intended to suggest that, therefore, we are to date our document by this similarity, it must be admitted that the indications are far too vague; for the symbolism of the Sun as the ray-crowned charioteer

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is fundamental with the cult of Mithras, and is found in Greece long before the Aurelian period.

THE DELINEATION OF THE SUN

It is interesting, however, here to notice that the Sun is “wreathed with cosmos,” and to compare this with the passage concerning the Macro-prosopus in the Untitled Apocalypse of the Coptic Gnostic Codex Brucianus, and especially with the sentence:

“The Hair of His Head is the number of the Hidden Worlds, and the Outline of His Face is the Type of the Æons.” 1

In this Untitled Apocalypse there is a strong Egyptian under-colouring; that, however, the idea of a crown of powers was pre-eminently Egyptian may be seen from many a passage in the Pistis Sophia.

8. It is also of interest to notice that the delineation of the Sun in § 8 reminds us of the Orphic Phanes, especially the reference to the two hemispheres above and below,—the two parts of the Egg in Orphic symbolism.

9. The hint that the sun-life runs in some sort of spiral or serpentine fashion in animals, and that this also is the case with the Great Bodies or Celestial Animals, is of interest.

CONCERNING THE DAIMONES

10. Our author then proceeds to set forth his doctrine of the daimones or ministers of the Gods, who are assigned to the lower hemisphere of operation, from the Earth to the Sun, the Gods presumably occupying the higher hemisphere of activity. These daimones are what a Hindu or Buddhist would call kārmic agents, for they are all connected with what is called the Fate-

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[paragraph continues]Sphere, the Instrument or the Wheel of Genesis, or Saṁsāra.

15. These daimones rule over the lower energies of the soul; the higher energy or rational part of the soul is set above them, and is designed to be the “receptacle of God,”—or rather of His Ray,—the Mind proper.

16. With § 16 compare the remarkable passage in one of the Letters of Valentinus:

“One [alone] is Good, whose free utterance is His manifestation through His Son; it is by Him alone that the heart can become pure, when every evil essence has been expelled from it.

“Now its purity is prevented by the many essences which take up their abode in it, for each of them accomplishes its own deeds, outraging it in divers fashions with unseemly lusts.

“As far as I can see, the heart seems to receive somewhat the same treatment as an inn [or caravanserai], which has holes and gaps made in its walls, and is frequently filled with dung, men living filthily in it and taking no care of the place as being someone else’s property. Thus is it with the heart so long as it has no care taken of it, ever unclean and the abode of many daimons.

“But when the Alone Good Father hath regard unto it, it is sanctified and shineth with light; and he who possesseth such a heart is so blessed that ‘he shall see God.’” 1

The language of Valentinus is remarkably like that of our treatises; Valentinus himself was an Egyptian.

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17. Entirely Egyptian also is the Scheme of Dependency given in § 17, as we have already pointed out on several occasions, quoting from a Hymn of Valentinus.

The sentence: “Wherefore God is the Sire of all; the Sun’s [their] Demiurge”—distinctly contradicts Reitzenstein’s (p. 198, 1) statement that the Sun in our treatise is worshipped as the All-god. The Sun is He “by whom all things are made,”—the Creative Logos of God. 1

19. The treatise is evidently incomplete; if, however, we turn to the contents-title given at the beginning of these comments we can gain but little information as to what is missing, for the contents there given do not in any but the vaguest fashion correspond to the substance of our treatise, nor do the subjects treated of come in the same order as in the contents-heading. The Divine Essence, Man, the Economy of the Plērōma and the Man after the Likeness, which are clearly not treated of in our text, may then have been treated in the missing portion of our tractate; but this is all we can say.

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Footnotes

277:1 R. 348 n.

278:1 Cf. also Ex. i. 16, and Comment.

278:2 This deduction, however, has to be modified by the view we hold as to the authorship of the introduction. See Comment., § 5.

279:1 Cf. R. 269.

279:2 Ap. Euseb., Præp. Ev., I. ix. 29.

279:3 Ibid., I. x. 38, 39.

280:1 Cf. Zosimus (§ 8).

280:2 De Myst., viii. 5.

281:1 Cf. R. 198, 1; and also Comment on § 17 below.

282:1 F. F. F., 549.

283:1 Quoted by Clemens Alexandrinus, Strom., II. xx. 114; P. 489 (ed. Dindorf, ii. 219). See for further critical text, Hilgenfeld (A.), Ketzergesch. d. Urchrist., p. 296; F. F. F., 300, 301.

284:1 Cf. P. S. A., xxix. 5.

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CORPUS HERMETICUM (XVII.)

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[OF ASCLEPIUS TO THE KING]

(Text: R. 354; Pat. at end of last piece.)

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Asclepius. If thou dost think [of it], O King, even of bodies there are things bodiless. 1

The King. What [are they]?—(asked the King.)

Asc. The bodies that appear in mirrors—do they not seem then to have no body?

The King. It is so, O Asclepius 2; thou thinkest like a God 3!—(the King replied.)

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Asc. There are things bodiless as well as these; for instance, forms 1—do not they seem to thee to have no body, but to appear in bodies not only of the things which are ensouled, but also of those which are not ensouled?

The King. Thou sayest well, Asclepius.

Asc. Thus, [then,] there are reflexions of things bodiless on bodies, and of bodies too upon things bodiless—that is to say, [reflexions] of the Sensible on the Intelligible World, and of the [World] Intelligible on the Sensible.

Wherefore, pay worship to the images, O King, since they too have their forms as from the World Intelligible.

(Thereon His Majesty arose and said:)

The King. It is the hour, 2 O Prophet, to see about the comfort of our guests. To-morrow, [then,] will we resume our sacred converse. 3

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Footnotes

285:1 Cf. Plat., Soph., 229 D, 240 A, 246 B.

285:2 The corrector of B has changed the name Asclepius into Tat, as he has everywhere in C. H., ii. (iii.); R. 193, 1.

285:3 θείως.

286:1 Or ideas.

286:2 Cf. Plat., Soph., 241 B.

286:3 θεολογῄσομεν.

COMMENTARY

ON THE ADORATION OF IMAGES

The loss of the end of the previous sermon, and also the loss of almost the whole of (xvii.), is to be accounted for by the falling out of one or more quires from the original MS. of our Corpus, 4 a phenomenon similar to that already remarked in the case of C. H., ii. (iii).

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And that this is the fact is brought out interestingly by the note of Reitzenstein (p. 193, 1)—namely, that one of the correctors of one of the copies (Paris MS.) of this faulty original has precisely in these two places changed the name Asclepius into Tat. He was puzzled, and thought that his “correction” would set matters right; as a matter of fact, however, it only adds to the confusion.

What the main subject of our treatise may have been we can hardly conjecture; part of it, however, must have been devoted to an explanation of the rationale of image-adoration,—“Wherefore pay worship to the images, O King,”—of which we hear so much in P. S. A.

These symbolic images of the Gods are said to have their “forms” (ἰδέας) in sympathetic relation with the Intelligible World. These are mutual “reflections,” the one of the other.

Now as the Ka of the God was thought to have immediate relation with the image-symbol of the God, and the Gods were of the Intelligible World,—the statues of the Gods were thought to be images of the Image in some special way; they were regarded as providing a straight path or line of connection between Earth and Heaven, just as a man who made himself like to the Man after the Likeness became in himself a Way Up.

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Footnotes

286:4 R. 198.

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CORPUS HERMETICUM (XVIII.)

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[THE ENCOMIUM OF KINGS]

(ABOUT THE SOUL’S BEING HINDERED BY THE PASSION OF THE BODY)

(Text: R. 355-360; Pat. at end.)

1. [Now] in the case of those professing the harmonious art of muse-like melody—if, when the piece is played, the discord of the instruments doth hinder their intent, its rendering becomes ridiculous.

For when his instruments are quite too weak for what’s required of them, the music-artist needs must be laughed at by the audience.

For He, with all good will, gives of His art unweariedly; they blame the [artist’s] weakness.

He then who is the Natural Musician-God, not only in His making of the harmony of His [celestial] songs, but also in His sending forth the rhythm of the melody of His own song[s]

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right down unto the separate instruments, 1 is, as God, never wearied.

For that with God there is no growing weary.

2. So, then, if ever a musician desires to enter into the highest contest of his art he can—when now the trumpeters have rendered the same phrase of the [composer’s] skill, and afterwards the flautists played the sweet notes of the melody upon their instruments, 2 and they complete the music of the piece with pipe and plectrum—[if any thing goes wrong,] one 3 does not lay the blame upon the inspiration 4 of the music-maker.

Nay, [by no means,]—to him one renders the respect that is his due; one blames the falseness of the instrument, in that it has become a hindrance to those who are most excellent—embarrassing the maker of the music in [the execution of] his melody, and robbing those who listen of the sweetness of the song.

3. In like way also, in our case, let no one of

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our audience for the weakness that inheres in body, blame impiously our Race. 1

Nay, let him know God is Unwearied Spirit 2—for ever in the self-same way possessed of His own science, unceasing in His joyous gifts, the self-same benefits bestowing everywhere.

4. And if the Pheidias—the Demiurge—is not responded to, by lack of matter to perfect His skilfulness, although for His own part the Artist has done all he can, let us not lay the blame on Him.

But let us, [rather,] blame the weakness of the string, 3 in that, because it is too slack or is too tight, it mars the rhythm of the harmony.

5. So when it is that the mischance occurs by reason of the instrument, no one doth blame the Artist.

Nay, [more;] the worse the instrument doth chance to be, the more the Artist gains in reputation by the frequency with which his hand doth strike the proper note, 4 and more the love the listeners pour upon that Music-

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maker, without 1 the slightest thought of blaming him.

So will we too, most noble [Sirs], set our own lyre in tune again, within, with the Musician!

6. Nay, I have seen one of the artist-folk 2—although he had no power of playing on the lyre—when once he had been trained for the right noble theme, make frequent use of his own self as instrument, and tune the service of his string by means of mysteries, so that the listeners were amazed at how he turned necessitude into magnificence. 3

Of course you know the story of the harper who won the favour of the God who is the president of music-work.

[One day,] when he was playing for a prize, and when the breaking of a string became a hindrance to him in the contest, the favour of the Better One supplied him with another string, and placed within his grasp the boon of fame.

A grasshopper was made to settle on his lyre, through the foreknowledge of the Better One,

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and [so] fill in the melody in substitution of the [broken] string. 1

And so by mending of his string the harper’s grief was stayed, and fame of victory was won.

7. And this I feel is my own case, most noble [Sirs]!

For but just now I seemed to make confession of my want of strength, and play the weakling for a little while; but now, by virtue of the strength of [that] Superior One, as though my song about the King had been perfected [by Him, I seem] to wake my muse.

For, you must know, the end of [this] our duty will be the glorious fame of Kings, and the good-will of our discourse (logos) [will occupy itself] about the triumphs which they win.

Come then, let us make haste! For that the singer willeth it, and hath attuned his lyre 2 for this; nay more, more sweetly will he play, more fitly will he sing, as he has for his song the greater subjects of his theme.

8. Since, then, he 3 has the [stringing] of his lyre tuned specially to Kings, and has the key

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of laudatory songs, and as his goal the Royal praises, let him first raise himself unto the highest King—the God of wholes.

Beginning, [then,] his song from the above, he, [thus,] in second place, descends to those after His likeness who hold the sceptre’s power 1; since Kings themselves, indeed, prefer the [topics] of the song should step by step descend from the above, and where they have their [gifts of] victory presided o’er for them, thence should their hopes be led in orderly succession.

9. Let, then, the singer start with God, the greatest King of wholes, who is for ever free from death, both everlasting and possessed of [all] the might of everlastingness, the Glorious Victor, the very first, from whom all victories descend to those who in succession do succeed to victory. 2

10. Our sermon (logos) then, doth hasten to descend to [Kingly] praises and to the Presidents of common weal and peace, the Kings—whose lordship in most ancient times was placed upon the highest pinnacle by God Supreme; for whom the prizes have already been prepared even before their prowess in the war; of whom the trophies have been raised even before the shock of conflict.

For whom it is appointed not only to be Kings but also to be best.

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At whom, before they even stir, the foreign land 1 doth quake.

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(ABOUT THE BLESSING OF THE BETTER [ONE] AND PRAISING OF THE KING)

11. But now our theme (logos) doth hasten on to blend its end with its beginnings—with blessing of the Better [One] 2; and then to make a final end of its discourse (logos) on those divinest Kings who give us the [great] prize of peace.

For just as we began [by treating] of the Better [One] and of the Power Above, so let us make the end bend round again unto the same—the Better [One].

Just as the Sun, the nurse of all the things that grow, on his first rising, gathers unto himself the first-fruits of their yield with his most mighty hands, using his rays as though it were for plucking off their fruits—yea, [for] his rays are [truly] hands for him who plucketh first the most ambrosial [essences] of plants—so, too, should we, beginning from the Better [One], and [thus] recipient of His wisdom’s stream, and turning it upon the garden of our souls above

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the heavens, 1—we should [direct and] train these [streams] of blessing back again unto their source, [blessing] whose entire power of germination [in us] He hath Himself poured into us.

12. ’Tis fit ten thousand tongues and voices should be used to send His blessings back again unto the all-pure God, who is the Father of our souls; and though we cannot utter what is fit—for we are [far] unequal to the task—[yet will we say what best we can].

For Babes just born have not the strength to sing their Father’s glory as it should be sung; but they give proper thanks for them, according to their strength, and meet with pardon for their feebleness. 2

Nay, it is rather that God’s glory doth consist in this [one] very thing—that He is greater than His children; and that the prelude and the source, the middle and the end, of blessings, is to confess the Father to be infinitely puissant and never knowing what a limit means.

13. So is it, too, in the King’s case.

For that we men, as though we were the children of the King, feel it our natural duty to give praise to him. Still must we ask for pardon [for our insufficiency], e’en though ’tis granted by our Sire before we [even] ask.

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And as it cannot be the Sire will turn from Babes new-born because they are so weak, but rather will rejoice when they begin to recognise [his love] 1—so also will the Gnosis of the all [rejoice], which doth distribute life to all, and power of giving blessing back to God, which He hath given [us].

14. For God, being Good, and having in Himself eternally the limit of His own eternal fitness, and being deathless, and containing in Himself that lot of that inheritance that cannot come unto an end, and [thus] for ever ever-flowing from out that energy of His, He doth send tidings to this world down here [to urge us] to the rendering of praise that brings us home again. 2

With Him, 3 therefore, is there no difference with one another; there is no partiality 4 with Him.

But they are one in Thought. One is the Prescience 5 of all. They have one Mind—their Father.

One is the Sense that’s active through them—

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their passion for each other. 1 ’Tis Love 2 Himself who worketh the one harmony of all.

15. Thus, therefore, let us sing the praise of God.

Nay, rather, let us [first] descend to those who have received their sceptres from Him.

For that we ought to make beginning with our Kings, and so by practising ourselves on them, accustom us to songs of praise, and train ourselves in pious service to the Better [One].

[We ought] to make the very first beginnings of our exercise of praise begin from him, 3 and through him exercise the practice [of our praise], that so there may be in us both the exercising of our piety towards God, and of our praise to Kings.

16. For that we ought to make return to them, in that they have extended the prosperity of such great peace to us.

It is the virtue of the King, nay, ’tis his name alone, that doth establish peace.

He has his name of King because he levelleth the summits of dissension with his smooth tread, 4 and is the lord of reason (logos) that [makes] for peace.

And in as much, in sooth, as he hath made

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himself the natural protector of the kingdom which is not his native land, 1 his very name [is made] the sign of peace.

For that, indeed, you know, the appellation of the King has frequently at once restrained the foe.

Nay, more, the very statues of the King are peaceful harbours for those most tempest-tossed.

The likeness of the King alone has to appear to win the victory, and to assure to all the citizens freedom from hurt and fear.

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Footnotes

289:1 ἄχρι τῶν κατὰ μέρος ὀργάνων,—that is, to “parts” as opposed to “wholes”; “wholes” signifying generally noumenal or celestial essences, “parts” meaning the separate existences of the phenomenal or sensible world.

289:2 ἄρτι δὲ καὶ αὐλητῶν τοῖς μελικοῖς τὸ τῆς μελῳδίας λιγυρὸν ἐργασαμένων.—I do not know what this means exactly. Ménard translates: quand les joueurs de flûte ont exprimé les finesses de la mélodie; Patrizzi gives: melicis organis melodiæ dulcedinem.

289:3 Or perhaps “he,” meaning the judge of the contest.

289:4 τῷ πνεύματι.

290:1 The Race of the Prophets, or Gnostics—the Race of the Logos.

290:2 Referring to the “inspiration” or “breath” above,—ὡς ἀκάματον μέν ἐστι πνεῦμα ὁ θεός. Compare John iv. 24: πνεῦμα ὁ θεός—God is Spirit.

290:3 The metaphor has become somewhat mixed by the introduction of Pheidias, who was a “musician” in marble and ivory and gold, and not on strings and pipes.

290:4 τῇς κρούσεως πολλάκις πρὸς τὸν τόνον ἐμπεσούσης.

291:1 Reading ἔχοντες for ἔσχον.

291:2 Meaning presumably prophets.

291:3 It is difficult to follow the exact meaning of some of the writer’s rhetorical sentences, even if our text is sound; here, however, the text, even after passing through Reitzenstein’s hands, is still very halting, and so I venture on this translation with all hesitation.

292:1 The song of the cicala was so pleasant to the ear of the Ancients, that we frequently find it used in poetry as a simile for sweet sounds. Plato calls the grasshoppers the “prophets of the Muses.”

292:2 For the idea of the prophet being the lyre of God, cf. Montanus (ap. Epiphan., Hær., xlviii. 4). See also the references to Philo given by R. 204, n. 1.

292:3 Sc. the singer.

293:1 Cf. K. K., 39 ff.

293:2 But see Plasberg’s reading. R. 370.

294:1 τὸ βάρβαρον.

294:2 τοῦ κρείττονος,—that is God, or the inner God, as in the last section.

295:1 εἰς τὰ ἡμέτερα τῶν ψυχῶν ὑπερουράνια φυτά.

295:2 Lit. “in this.”

296:1 Lit. “at their recognition,”—ἐπὶ τῆς ἐπιγνώσεως—a play on epignōsis and gnōsis, and a parallel between the wisdom of God and the royal knowledge of the King.

296:2 εἰς τόνδε τὸν κὸσμον παρέχων τὴν ἀπαγγελίαν εἰς διασωστικὴν εὐφημίαν,—where it may be possible to connect ἀπαγγελία with the familiar εὐαγγέλιον.

296:3 ἐκείσε.

296:4 τὸ ἀλλοπρόσαλλον.

296:5 πρόγνωσις.

297:1 τὸ εἰς ἀλλήλους φίλτρον.

297:2 ὁ ἔρως,—the Higher Love.

297:3 Sc. the King.

297:4 The word-play between βασιλεὺς and βάσει λείᾳ is unreproducible in English.

298:1 τῆς βασιλείας τῆς βαρβαρικῆς.

COMMENTARY

THE APOLOGY OF A PŒMANDRIST

This, the last piece in our Corpus, differs so greatly both in style and form of contents from the rest of our sermons, that we are plainly dealing with a different order of endeavour.

The style is for the most part so very artificial and forced, that we are conscious of labour and effort, and sometimes of such obscurity as to make a clear rendering almost impossible. The contents are of the nature of an elaborate set Eulogy of Kings.

Whether or not this concluding piece ever bore a proper title it is impossible to say, for the existing headings are plainly added by a later redactor, 2—as we

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have already seen in a number of other instances. I have therefore ventured to superscribe as the main title “The Encomium of Kings,” 1 and have placed the contents-headings in parentheses.

Reitzenstein, in his analysis of the Corpus, concludes (p. 207) that this Eulogy was appended to the collection of treatises by the original redactor, or collector.

He was an Egyptian Rhetor, who was a follower of the Trismegistic tradition, and his object in making the collection was mainly to show the Rulers of the Empire that not only was there nothing in the Hermes religion that could excite their suspicion, but that, on the contrary, it was in its most fundamental teachings admirably calculated to inculcate Loyalty to the Rulers of the Empire’s destinies.

It is, indeed, to this “Apology,” so to speak, that we owe the good fortune of the preservation of our Corpus.

SPECULATIONS AS TO DATE

Who the “most noble [Sirs]” of §§ 5 and 7, to whom the Eulogy is immediately addressed, may be, is difficult to determine, for though the subject is the “Encomium of Kings” in general, some actual King was evidently in the mind of the writer when he penned § 16. Perhaps the “most noble” may have been the high officials of Egypt.

The lost conclusion of our Encomium, for our actual text is evidently incomplete, may have given clearer indications of the Emperor for whose ultimate perusal the Eulogy was intended. As it is, the indications are of the vaguest.

Reitzenstein, however, is of opinion (pp. 207, 208) that the indications in § 16 best suit the reign of

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[paragraph continues]Diocletian (imp. 285-305 A.D.); but he is aware that, as far as these are concerned, an earlier date is not excluded (p. 208). It is only when he has treated, in his Addenda (pp. 371-374), the Encomium as an example of later Greek “art-prose,” or rhythmic prose, the scheme of the accentuation of which has been of late years carefully studied, especially by Meyer and Wilamowitz, that he comes definitely to the conclusion that the external form of our Rhetor’s effort fits precisely the time of Diocletian’s Triumph, 302 A.D. I cannot, however, say that I am convinced by his arguments.

The strained and elaborate introduction (§§ 1-5) needs no further comment; no doubt it is very “fine writing,” but it is difficult to pin some of it down to any precise meaning in translation.

THE STORY OF THE PYTHIC GRASSHOPPER

6. With § 6, however, our interest is awakened, for it reminds us of the famous Introduction to the Protrepticus, or Exhortation to the Greeks, of Clement of Alexandria, when he says:

“I could tell thee also of another—brother to these 1—story and singer, of Eunomus the Locrian and the Pythic grasshopper.

“At Pytho there was gathered together a solemn assembly of Greeks to celebrate the Death of the Serpent, with Eunomus to sing the funeral song of the beast.

“Whether his song was a hymn or a dirge I cannot say; anyhow, there was a contest, and Eunomus had to harp it in the heat of the day, when the grasshoppers, warmed by the sun, were singing underneath the leaves along the hills.

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“They were singing not to the Serpent, the dead thing, but to God the All-wise, a song of unrestrained mode far better than the modes of Eunomus.

“A cord breaks for the Locrian; the grasshopper flies on to the yoke; it chirped on the harp as on a branch; and the minstrel, modulating to the song of the grasshopper, filled up the missing string.

“It was not that the grasshopper was attracted by the song of Eunomus, as the story would have it, setting up a brazen statue at Pytho of Eunomus, harp and all, and his helper in the contest; it flew on naturally and sung naturally. The Greeks, however, thought it played the music.” 1

This passage shows that the story referred to by our author was well known, so well known indeed that Clement takes it as a text for a naturalistic explanation of Hellenic miracle. No literary dependence, however, of one or the other can be entertained, for the similarity of the “τὴν νευρὰν ἀνεπλήρωσεν αὐτῷ” of our text and the “ὁ ᾠδὸς τὴν λείπουσαν ἀνεπλήρωσε χορδὴν” of Clement is far too slight a link to bear the weight of any argument of this nature. 2

11. There is evidently a lacuna after § 10, and, judging by the opening words of § 11, it must be of some length, for the Praise of Kings so far is of a very brief description.

It is also of interest to notice how much easier the style of our author is when he treats of the Praises of God; his words seem to come far more easily, as though he had a subject to deal with with which he was more familiar, as, indeed, he ought to have been if he had studied the treatises he has collected together.

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THE TRUE KING

13. The idea that all his subjects are the children of the King is Egyptian; or, rather, it is the tradition of all nations who believed in Divine Kings. The true King was he who, so to speak, contained all his subjects within himself; they were all “members,” or, as we should say, cells, of his true Body. The nation was the King; the victory of the nation was ascribed to the virtue of the King. 1

THE FELLOW-RULERS OF THE HEIGHT

14. The last three sentences of § 14 Reitzenstein (p. 208) would take as referring to the Kings under the suzerainty of the Emperor, who were bound to him by a common bond of love, in order that he may the more insist on the Diocletian date. 2 I would, however, refer the idea to the ideal of harmony and unity of the Beings of the Intelligible World, as described, for instance, by Plotinus, when he writes:

“They see themselves in others. For all things are transparent, and there is nothing dark or resisting, and everyone is manifest to everyone internally, and all things are made manifest; for light is manifest to light. For everyone has all things in himself, and again sees in another all things, so that all things are everywhere, and all in all, and each in all, and infinite the glory. For each of them is great, since the small also is great. And the sun there is all the stars, and, again, each and all are the sun. In each, one thing is pre-eminent above the rest, but it also shows forth all.” 3

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Compare this also with the intuition of the seer in The Untitled Apocalypse of the Codex Brucianus:

“Their Crowns send forth Rays; the Brilliancy of their Bodies is as the life of the Space into which they are come; the Word (Logos) that comes out of their mouth is Eternal Life, and the Light that comes forth from their Eyes is Rest for them; the Movement of their Hands is their Flight to the Space out of which they are come, and their Gazing on their own Faces is Knowledge of themselves; their Giving to themselves is a repeated Return, and the Stretching out of their Hands establishes them; the Hearing of their Ears is the Perception in their Heart; and the Union of their Limbs is the Ingathering of Israel; their Holding to one another is their Fortification in the Logos.” 1

This is the Egyptian counterpart of the Plotinian Ecstasis; and Plotinus was by birth an Egyptian.

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Footnotes

298:2 In fact, are due to the first hand in B C D M. See R. 355, 1; 358, 12.

299:1 See § 15—ἡ πρὸς τοὺς βασιλέας εὐφημία—and compare note to Clem. Alex., iii., in “Fragments from the Fathers.”

300:1 Amphion, Arion and Orpheus.

301:1 Clem. Al., Prot., i. 1; P. 2 (ed. Dindorf, i. 2).

301:2 Cf. R. 205, 206.

302:1 This belief, indeed, is the power of the Japanese in our own day.

302:2 He thus, apparently, would take the ἐκείσε as referring to these subject kings and rulers.

302:3 En., V. viii. 4.

303:1 F. F. F., 557.

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II

The Perfect Sermon

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THE PERFECT SERMON

OR THE ASCLEPIUS

(Text: The Greek original is lost, and only a Latin version remains to us. I use the text of Hildebrand (G. F.), L. Apuleii Opera Omnia ex Fide Optimorum Codicum (Leipzig, 1842), Pars II., pp. 279-334; but have very occasionally preferred the text in Patrizzi’s Nova de Universis Philosophia (Venice, 1593), or of the Bipontine edition of Appuleius, Lucii Apuleji Madaurensis Platonici Philosophi Opera (Biponti, 1788), pp. 285-325.)

I

1. 1 [I. M. 2] [Trismegistus.] God, O Asclepius, hath brought thee unto us that thou mayest hear a Godly sermon, 3 a sermon such as well may seem of all the previous ones we’ve [either] uttered, or with which we’ve been inspired by the Divine, more Godly than the piety of [ordinary] faith.

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If thou with eye of intellect 1 shalt see this Word 2 thou shalt in thy whole mind be filled quite full of all things good.

If that, indeed, the “many” be the “good,” and not the “one,” in which are “all.” Indeed the difference between the two is found in their agreement,—“All” is of “One” 3 or “One” is “All.” So closely bound is each to other, that neither can be parted from its mate.

But this with diligent attention shalt thou learn from out the sermon that shall follow [this].

But do thou, O Asclepius, go forth a moment and call in the one who is to hear. 4

(And when he had come in, Asclepius proposed that Ammon too should be allowed to come. Thereon Thrice-greatest said:)

[Tris.] There is no cause why Ammon should be kept away from us. For we remember how we have ourselves set down in writing many things to his address, 5 as though unto a son most dear and most beloved, of physics many things, of ethics [too] as many as could be.

It is, however, with thy name I will inscribe this treatise.

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But call, I prithee, no one else but Ammon, lest a most pious sermon on a so great theme be spoilt by the admission of the multitude.

For ’tis the mark of an unpious mind to publish to the knowledge of the crowd a tractate brimming o’er with the full Greatness of Divinity.

(When Ammon too had come within the holy place, and when the sacred group of four was now complete with piety and with God’s goodly presence—to them, sunk in fit silence reverently, their souls and minds pendent on Hermes’ lips, thus Love 1 Divine began to speak.)

II

1. [Tris.] The soul of every man, O [my] Asclepius, is deathless; yet not all in like fashion, but some in one way or [one] time, some in another.

Asc. Is not, then, O Thrice-greatest one, each soul of one [and the same] quality?

Tris. How quickly hast thou fallen, O Asclepius, from reason’s true sobriety!

Did not I say that “All” is “One,” and “One” is “All,” 2 in as much as all things have

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been in the Creator before they were created. Nor is He called unfitly “All,” in that His members are the “All.”

Therefore, in all this argument, see that thou keep in mind Him who is “One”-“All,” or who Himself is maker of the “All.”

2. All things descend from Heaven to Earth, to Water and to Air.

’Tis Fire alone, in that it is borne upwards, giveth life; that which [is carried] downwards [is] subservient to Fire.

Further, whatever doth descend from the above, begetteth; what floweth upwards, nourisheth.

’Tis Earth alone, in that it resteth on itself, that is Receiver of all things, and [also] the Restorer of all genera that it receives.

This Whole, 1 therefore, as thou rememberest, 2 in that it is of all,—in other words, all things, embraced by nature under “Soul” and “World,” 3 are in [perpetual] flux, so varied by the multiform equality of all their forms, that countless kinds of well-distinguished qualities may be discerned, yet with this bond of union, that all should seem as One, and from “One” “All.” 4

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III

1. That, then, from which the whole Cosmos is formed, consisteth of Four Elements—Fire, Water, Earth, and Air; Cosmos [itself is] one, [its] Soul [is] one, and God is one.

Now lend to me the whole of thee, 1—all that thou can’st in mind, all that thou skill’st in penetration.

For that the Reason 2 of Divinity may not be known except by an intention of the senses like to it. 3

’Tis 4 likest to the torrent’s flood, down-dashing headlong from above with all-devouring tide; so that it comes about, that by the swiftness of its speed it is too quick for our attention, not only for the hearers, but also for the very teachers. 5

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Footnotes

307:1 I have added numbers to the paragraphs for greater convenience of reference.

307:2 Ménard has divided the treatise into fifteen parts, which I have thus distinguished; the numbering of the chapters are those usually found.

307:3 Or, a sermon about the Gods.

308:1 Intelligens.

308:2 Reason or sermon or logos; cf. iii. and below: “For that the Reason,” etc.

308:3 But ii. 1, referring again to this idea, has the reading: “‘All’ is ‘One.’” Cf. C. H., xvi. 3; and also xx. 2 below.

308:4 This, as we shall see later on, is Tat. See xxxii. below.

308:5 Lit. to his name.

309:1 Cupido; without doubt Erōs in the lost original; cf. xxi. 1 below; and Frag. xviii.

309:2 This, as we have already noted, is a variant of the reading in i., where we find “omnia unius esse” (“all” is of “one”) and not “omnia unum esse” (“all” is “one”).

310:1 Sc. the Cosmos.

310:2 Presumably from some previous sermon.

310:3 That is, Cosmos.

310:4 The Latin of this paragraph is very obscure.

311:1 Cf. C. H., xi. (xii.) 15: “Give thou thyself to Me, My Hermes, for a little while.”

311:2 Ratio—that is, Logos.

311:3 Lit. divine—that is, by a concentration like to the singleness of the Godhead.

311:4 That is, “This Reason is.”

311:5 “Quo efficitur ut intentionem nostram . . . celeri velocitate praetereat.” Compare with this the description of the instruction of the Therapeuts in Philo’s famous tractate, De Vita Contemplativa, 901 P., 483 M.—Conybeare’s text, p. 117 (Oxford; 1895): “For when in giving an interpretation, one continues to speak rapidly without pausing for breath, the mind of the hearers is left behind, unable to keep up the pace”—ὁ τῶν ἀκροωμένων νοῦς συνομαρτεῖν ἀδυντῶν ὑστερίζει.

2. [II. M.] Heaven, then, God Sensible, is the

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director of all bodies; bodies’ increasings and decreasings are ruled by Sun and Moon.

But He who is the Ruler of the Heaven, and of its Soul as well, and of all things within the Cosmos,—He is God, who is the Maker of all things.

For from all those that have been said above, 1 o’er which the same God rules, there floweth forth a flood of all things streaming through the Cosmos and the Soul, of every class and kind, throughout the Nature of [all] things.

The Cosmos hath, moreover, been prepared by God as the receptacle of forms of every kind. 2

Forth-thinking Nature by these kinds of things, He hath extended Cosmos unto Heaven by means of the Four Elements,—all to give pleasure to the eye of God.

IV

1. And all dependent from Above 3 are subdivided into species in the fashion 4 which I am to tell.

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The genera of all things company with their own species; so that the genus is a class in its entirety, the species is part of a genus.

The genus of the Gods will, therefore, make the species of the Gods out of itself.

In like way, too, the genus of the daimons, and of men, likewise of birds, and of all [animals] the Cosmos doth contain within itself, brings into being species like itself.

There is besides a genus other than the animal,—a genus, or indeed a soul, in that it’s not without sensation,—in consequence of which it both finds happiness in suitable conditions, and pines and spoils in adverse ones;—I mean [the class] of all things on the earth which owe their life to the sound state of roots and shoots, of which the various kinds are scattered through the length and breadth of Earth.

2. The Heaven itself is full of God. The genera we have just mentioned, therefore, occupy up to the spaces of all things whose species are immortal.

For that a species is part of a genus,—as man, for instance, of mankind,—and that a part must follow its own class’s quality.

From which it comes to pass that though all genera are deathless, all species are not so.

The genus of Divinity is in itself and in its species 1 [also] deathless.

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As for the genera of other things,—as to their genus, they [too] are everlasting; [for] though [the genus] perish in its species, yet it persists through its fecundity in being born. And for this cause its species are beneath the sway of death; so that man mortal is, mankind immortal.

V

1. And yet the species of all genera are interblended with all genera; some 1 which have previously been made, some which are made from these.

The latter, then, which are being made,—either by Gods, or daimons, or by men,—are species all most closely like to their own several genera.

For that it is impossible that bodies should be formed without the will of God; or species be configured without the help of daimons; or animals be taught and trained without the help of men. 2

2. Whoever of the daimons, then, transcending their own genus, are, by chance, united with a species, 3 by reason of the neighbourhood of any species of the Godlike class,—these are considered like to Gods. 4

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Whereas those species of the daimons which continue in the quality of their own class,—these love men’s rational nature [and occupy themselves with men], and are called daimons proper.

Likewise is it the case with men, or more so even. Diverse and multiform, the species of mankind. And coming in itself from the association spoken of above, it of necessity doth bring about a multitude of combinations of all other species and almost of all things.

3. Wherefore doth man draw nigh unto the Gods, if he have joined himself unto the Gods with Godlike piety by reason of his mind, whereby he is joined to the Gods; and [nigh] unto the daimons, in that he is joined unto them [as well].

Whereas those men who are contented with the mediocrity of their own class, and the remaining species of mankind, will be like those unto the species of whose class they’ve joined themselves. 1

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Footnotes

312:1 This seems to refer to the Elements.

312:2 Omniformium specierum.

312:3 Omnia autem desuper pendentia. Compare with this the famous Psalm of Valentius, “All things depending from Spirit I see”—πάντα κρεμάμενα πνεύματι βλέπω—Hippolytus, Philos., vi. 37. For revised text see Hilgenfeld’s (A.) Ketzergeschichte, p. 304 (Leipzig, 1884), and for a translation, my Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, p. 307 (London; 1900). See also end of xix. 4 below, and C. H., xvi. 17.

312:4 Genere.

313:1 That is, the Gods.

314:1 Sc. species.

314:2 Cf. C. H., xvi. 18, for the hierarchy of Gods and daimones; and for the “intercourse of souls,” C. H., x. (xi.) 22.

314:3 That is, one of the immortal species, or a God.

314:4 That is, they become Gods.

315:1 A suggestion of man’s attraction to the various species of the animal nature.

VI

1. [III. M.] It is for reasons such as these, Asclepius, man is a mighty wonder,—an animal meet for our worship and for our respect.

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For he doth pass into God’s Nature, 1 as though himself were God. This genus [also] knows the genus of the daimons, as though man knew he had a [common] origin with them. He thinketh little of the part of human nature in him, from confidence in the divineness of [his] other part.

How much more happy is the blend of human nature [than of all the rest]! Joined to the Gods by his cognate divinity, a man looks down upon the part of him by means of which he’s common with the Earth.

The rest of things to which he knows he’s kin, by [reason of] the heavenly order [in him], he binds unto himself with bonds of love; and thus he turns his gaze to Heaven.

2. So, then, [man] hath his place in the more blessed station of the Midst; so that he loves [all] those below himself, and in his turn is loved by those above.

He tills the Earth. He mingles with the Elements by reason of the swiftness of his mind. He plunges into the Sea’s depths by means of its 2 profundity. He puts his values on all things.

Heaven seems not too high for him; for it is

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measured by the wisdom of his mind as though it were quite near.

No darkness of the Air obstructs the penetration of his mind. No density of Earth impedes his work. No depth of Water blunts his sight. 1

[Though still] the same [yet] is he all, and everywhere is he the same.

3. Of all these genera, those [species] which are animal have [many] roots, which stretch from the above below, 2 whereas those which are stationary 3—these from [one] living root send forth a wood of branching greenery up from below into the upper parts.

Moreover, some of them are nourished with a two-fold form of food, while others with a single form.

Twain are the forms of food—for soul and body, of which [all] animals consist. Their soul is nourished by the ever-restless motion of the World 4; their bodies have their growth from

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foods [drawn] from the water and the earth of the inferior world. 1

Spirit, 2 with which they 3 all are filled, being interblended with the rest, 4 doth make them live; sense being added, and also reason in the case of man—which hath been given to man alone as a fifth part out of the æther.

Of all the living things 5 [God] doth adorn, extend, exalt, the sense of man alone unto the understanding of the Reason of Divinity. 6

But since I am impressed to speak concerning Sense, I will a little further on set forth for you the sermon on this [point]; for that it is most holy, and [most] mighty, not less than in the Reason of Divinity itself.

VII

1. But now I’ll finish for you what I have begun. For I was speaking at the start of union with the Gods, by which men only 7 consciously enjoy 8 the Gods’ regard,—I mean whatever men have won such rapture that they have obtained a share of that Divine Sense of intelligence which

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is the most 1 Divine of Senses, found in God and in man’s reason.

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Asc. Are not the senses of all men, Thrice-greatest one, the same?

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Tris. Nay, [my] Asclepius, all have not won true reason 2; but wildly rushing in pursuit of [reason’s] counterfeit, 3 they never see the thing itself, and are deceived. And this breeds evil in their minds, and [thus] transforms the best of animals into the nature of a beast and manners of the brutes.

2. But as to Sense and all things similar, I will set forth the whole discourse when [I explain] concerning Spirit.

For man is the sole animal that is twofold. One part of him is simple: the [man] “essential,” 4 as say the Greeks, but which we call the “form of the Divine Similitude.”

He also is fourfold: that which the Greeks call “hylic,” 5 [but] which we call “cosmic”; of which is made the corporal part, in which is vestured what we just have said is the divine in man, 6—in which the godhead of the Mind alone,

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together with its kin, that is the Pure Mind’s senses, findeth home and rest, its self with its own self, as though shut in the body’s walls.

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Footnotes

316:1 This contradicts somewhat the more careful wording of C. H., x. (xi.) 1, where the term Energy is preferred.

316:2 Sc. the mind’s.

317:1 Cf. C. H., xi. (xii.) 19.

317:2 Compare with this the symbolism of the “fire-tree” and the “rootage” of the æons, in the “Simonian” system of the Gnōsis, taken by Hippolytus from the document entitled The Great Announcement (Hipp., Philos., vi. 9 and 18). Also the common figure of the Ashvattha tree of Indo-Aryan mythology; for instance, in the Kaṭhopaniṣhad, II. vi. 1: “The old, old tree that sees no morrow’s dawn, [stands] roots up, branches down” (see Mead and Chaṭṭopādhyāya’s Upaniṣhads, i. 74—London; 1896). Ashvatthaḥ = a-shvaḥ-tha, that is, “which stands not till to-morrow.” The idea is that the world-tree (saṁsāravṛikṣha) never lasts till to-morrow, for all things are perpetually changing.

317:3 Lit. non-animal.

317:4 Or Cosmos.

318:1 Cf. xi. 2.

318:2 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 13, and Commentary thereon.

318:3 That is, animal bodies.

318:4 Presumably the rest of the Earth elements.

318:5 Lit. animals.

318:6 Lit. the Divine Reason, Ratio, or Logos.

318:7 Sc. of the animals. Cf. xviii. 1 below.

318:8 Per-fruuntur. Cf., for the idea, xxii. 1 below.

319:1 Lit. more.

319:2 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 23, 24; iv. (v.) 3; and ix. 3 below.

319:3 Lit. image.

319:4 The Greek term οὐσιώδης is here retained. Cf. viii. 2 below.

319:5 The Greek ὑλικὸν being retained in the Latin.

319:6 Cf. C. H., xvi. 15.

3. [IV. M.] Asc. What, then, Thrice-greatest one, has caused it that man should be planted in the world, and should not pass his life in highest happiness in that part [of the universe] where there is God?

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[Tris.] Rightly thou questionest, O [my] Asclepius! And we pray God that He bestow on us the power of setting forth this reason; since everything depends upon His Will, and specially those things that are set forth about the Highest Whole, the Reason that’s the object of our present argument. Hear, then, Asclepius!

VIII

1. The Lord and Maker of all things, whom we call rightly God, when from Himself He made the second [God], the Visible and Sensible, 1—I call him Sensible not that He hath sensation in Himself (for as to this, whether or no He have himself sensation, we will some other time declare), but that He is the object of the senses of those who see;—when, then, He made Him first, but second to Himself, and that He seemed

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to Him [most] fair, as one filled to the full with goodness of all things, He fell in love with Him as being part of His Divinity. 1

2. Accordingly, in that He was so mighty and so fair, He willed that some one else should have the power to contemplate the One He had made from Himself. And thereon He made man,—the imitator of His Reason and His Love. 2

The Will of God is in itself complete accomplishment; inasmuch as together with His having willed, in one and the same time He hath brought it to full accomplishment.

And so, when He perceived that the “essential” 3 [man] could not be lover 4 of all things, unless He clothed him in a cosmic carapace, He shut him in within a house of body,—and ordered it that all [men] should be so,—from either nature making him a single blend and fair-proportioned mixture.

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3. Therefore hath He made man of soul and body,—that is, of an eternal and a mortal nature; so that an animal thus blended can content his dual origin,—admire and worship things in heaven, and cultivate and govern things on earth. 1

By mortal things 2 I do not mean the water or the earth [themselves], for these are two of the [immortal] elements that nature hath made subject unto men,—but [either] things that are by men, or [that are] in or from them 3; such as the cultivation of the earth itself, pastures, [and] buildings, harbours, voyagings, intercommunications, mutual services, which are the firmest bonds of men between themselves and that part of the Cosmos which consists [indeed] of water and of earth, [but is] the Cosmos’ terrene part,—which is preserved by knowledge and the use of arts and sciences; without which [things] God willeth not Cosmos should be complete. 4

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In that necessity doth follow what seems good to God; performance waits upon His will.

Nor is it credible that that which once hath pleased Him, will become unpleasing unto God; since He hath known both what will be, and what will please Him, long before.

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Footnotes

320:1 Sc. the Logos as Cosmos. Cf. xxxi. 1 below.

321:1 The Greek original of this passage is quoted by Lactantius, Div. Institt., iv. 6, and runs as follows in Fritzsche’s (O. F.) text (Leipzig, 1842):

“The Lord and Maker of all things (whom ’tis our custom to call God) when He had made the second God, the Visible and Sensible,—I call him Sensible not that He hath sensation in Himself (for as to this, whether or no He have himself sensation, we will some other time enquire), but that He is object of senses and of mind;—when, then, He’d made Him first, and One and Only, He seemed to Him most fair, and filled quite full of all things good. At Him He marvelled, and loved Him altogether as His Son.” With the last words, cf. Plat., Tim., 37 D.

321:2 Diligentiæ.

321:3 The Greek οὐσιώδης being again, as in vii. 2, retained in the Latin. Cf. C. H., i. 15 and ix. (x.) 5.

321:4 Diligentem.

322:1 This sentence is also quoted by Lactantius (Div. Institt., vii. 13) in the original Greek, which reads:

“From the two natures, the deathless and the mortal, He made one nature,—that of man, one and the selfsame thing. And having made the selfsame [man] both somehow deathless and also somehow mortal, He brought him [forth], and set him up betwixt the godlike and immortal nature and the mortal; that seeing all he might wonder at all.”

322:2 That is, the “things on earth.”

322:3 That is, the two elements mentioned.

322:4 The above paragraph seems to have been very imperfectly translated into Latin.

IX

1. [V. M.] But, O Asclepius, I see that thou with swift desire of mind art in a hurry to be told how man can have a love and worship of the Heaven, or of the things that are therein. Hear, then, Asclepius!

The love of God and Heaven, together with all them that are therein, is one perpetual act of worship. 1

No other thing ensouled, of Gods or animals, can do this thing, save man alone. 2 ’Tis in the admiration, adoration, [and] the praise of men, and [in their] acts of worship, that Heaven and Heaven’s hosts find their delight.

2. Nor is it without cause the Muses’ choir hath been sent down by Highest Deity unto the host of men; in order that, forsooth, the terrene world should not seem too uncultured, had it lacked the charm of measures, but rather that with songs and praise of men accompanied with

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music, 1 He might be lauded,—He who alone is all, or is the Sire of all; and so not even on the earths, 2 should there have been an absence of the sweetness of the harmony of heavenly praise.

3. Some, then, though they be very few, endowed with the Pure Mind, 3 have been entrusted with the sacred charge of contemplating Heaven.

Whereas those men who, from the two-fold blending of their nature, have not as yet withdrawn their inner reason from their body’s mass, 4 these are appointed for the study of the elements, and [all] that is below them.

4. Thus man’s an animal; yet not indeed less potent in that he’s partly mortal, but rather doth he seem to be all the more fit and efficacious for reaching Certain Reason, since he has had mortality bestowed on him as well.

For it is plain he could not have sustained the strain of both, unless he had been formed out of both natures, 5 so that he could possess the powers of cultivating Earthly things and loving Heaven.

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X

1. The Reason of a thesis such as this, O [my] Asclepius, I would that thou should’st grasp, not only with the keen attention of thy soul, but also with its living power 1 [as well].

For ’tis a Reason that most men cannot believe; the Perfect and the True are to be grasped by the more holy minds. 2 Hence, then, will I begin.

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Footnotes

323:1 Una est obsequiorum frequentatio. Cf. Ex. i. 3.

323:2 Cf. C. H., xvi. 11: “The duty of mankind is to give worship.”

324:1 Musicatis; or perhaps “Muse-inspired”; a word which, like so many others, occurs only in the Latin of this treatise.

324:2 In terris, pl.

324:3 Cf. vii. 1 and 2 above.

324:4 The reading is “interiorem intelligentiam mole corporis resederunt,” of which I can make nothing; resederunt is evidently an error.

324:5 There is here a “double” in the text, which the editor has not removed.

325:1 Vivacitate. Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 17; and xix. 1 below.

325:2 Cf. C. H., ix. (x.) 10.

2. [VI. M.] The Lord of the Eternity 3 is the first God; the second’s Cosmos; man is the third. 4

God is the Maker of the Cosmos and of all the things therein; at the same time He ruleth 5 all, with man himself, [who is] the ruler of the compound thing 6; the whole of which man taking on himself, doth make of it the proper care of his own love, in order that the two of them, himself and Cosmos, may be an ornament each unto other; so that from this divine compost of man, “World” seems most fitly called “Cosmos” 7 in Greek.

3. He knows himself; he knows the World as

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well. 1 So that he recollects, indeed, what is convenient to his own parts. He calls to mind what he must use, that they may be of service to himself; giving the greatest praise and thanks to God, His Image 2 reverencing,—not ignorant that he is, too, God’s image the second [one]; for that there are two images of God—Cosmos and man. 3

4. So that it comes to pass that, since man’s is a single structure,—in that part [of him] which doth consist of Soul, and Sense, of Spirit, and of Reason, he’s divine; so that he seems to have the power to mount from as it were the higher elements into the Heaven.

But in his cosmic part, which is composed of fire, and water, and of air, he stayeth mortal on the Earth,—lest he should leave all things committed to his care forsaken and bereft.

Thus human kind is made in one part deathless, and in the other part subject to death while in a body.

XI

1. Now of that dual nature,—that is to say of man,—there is a chief capacity. [And that is] piety, which goodness follows after.

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[And] this [capacity] then, and then only, seems to be perfected, if it be fortified with virtue of despising all desires for alien things.

For alien from every part of kinship with the Gods 1 are all things on the Earth, whatever are possessed from bodily desires,—to which we rightly give the name “possessions,” in that they are not born with us, but later on begin to be possessed by us; wherefore we call them by the name possessions. 2

2. All such things, then, are alien from man,—even his body. So that we can despise not only what we long for, but also that from which the vice of longing comes to us.

For just as far as the increase of reason leads our 3 soul, so far one should be man; in order that by contemplating the divine, one should look down upon, and disregard the mortal part, which hath been joined to him, through the necessity of helping on the lower 4 world.

3. For that, in order that a man should be complete in either part, observe that he hath

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been composed of elements of either part in sets of four;—with hands, and feet, both of them pairs, and with the other 1 members of his body, by means of which he may do service to the lower (that is to say the terrene) world.

And to these parts [are added other] four;—of sense, and soul, of memory, and foresight, by means of which he may become acquainted with the rest of things divine, and judge of them.

Hence it is brought about that man investigates the differences and qualities, effects and quantities of things, with critical research; yet, as he is held back with the too heavy weight of body’s imperfection, he cannot properly descry the causes of the nature of [all] things which [really] are the true ones.

4. Man, then, being thus created and composed, and to such ministry and service set by Highest God,—man, by his keeping suitably the world in proper order, [and] by his piously adoring God, in both becomingly and suitably obeying God’s Good Will,—[man being] such as this, with what reward think’st thou he should be recompensed?

If that, indeed,—since Cosmos is God’s work,—he who preserves and adds on to its beauty

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by his love, joins his own work unto God’s Will; when he with toil and care doth fashion out the species 1 (which He hath made [already] with His Divine Intent), with help of his own body;—with what reward think’st thou he should be recompensed, unless it be with that with which our forebears 2 have been blest?

5. That this may be the pleasure of God’s Love, such is our prayer for you, devoted ones.

In other words, may He, when ye have served your time, and have put off the world’s restraint, and freed yourselves from deathly bonds, restore you pure and holy to the nature of your higher self, 3 that is of the Divine!

XII

1. Asc. Rightly and truly, O Thrice-greatest one, thou speakest. This is the prize for those who piously subordinate their lives to God and live to help the world.

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Tris. [To those], however, who have lived in other fashion impiously,—[to them] both is return to Heaven denied, and there’s appointed them migration into other bodies 4 unworthy of a holy soul and base; so that, as this discourse

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of ours will show, 1 souls in their life on earth run risk of losing hope of future immortality.

2. But [all of this] doth seem to some beyond belief; a tale to others; to others [yet again], perchance, a subject for their mirth. 2

For in this life in body, it is a pleasant thing—the pleasure that one gets from one’s possessions. 3 ’Tis for this cause that spite, in envy of its [hope of] immortality, doth clap the soul in prison, 4 as they say, and keep it down, so that it stays in that part of itself in which it’s mortal, nor suffers it to know the part of its divinity.

3. For I will tell thee, as though it were prophetic-ly, 5 that no one after us 6 shall have the Single Love, the Love of wisdom-loving, 7 which consists in Gnosis of Divinity alone,—[the practice of] perpetual contemplation and of holy piety. For that the many do confound philosophy with multifarious reasoning. 8

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Asc. Why is it, then, the many make philosophy so hard to grasp; or wherefore is it they confound this thing with multifarious reasoning?

XIII

1. Tris. ’Tis in this way, Asclepius;—by mixing it, by means of subtle expositions, with divers sciences not easy to be grasped,—such as arithmetic, and music, and geometry.

But Pure Philosophy, which doth depend on godly piety alone, should only so far occupy itself with other arts, that it may [know how to] appreciate the working out in numbers of the fore-appointed stations of the stars when they return, and of the course of their procession.

Let her, moreover, know how to appreciate the Earth’s dimensions, its qualities and quantities, the Water’s depths, the strength of Fire, and the effects and nature of all these. [And so] let her give worship and give praise unto the Art and Mind of God.

2. As for [true] Music,—to know this is naught else than to have knowledge of the order of all things, and whatsoe’er God’s Reason hath decreed.

For that the order of each several thing when set together in one [key] for all, by means of skilful reason, will make, as ’twere,

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the sweetest and the truest harmony with God’s [own] Song. 1

XIV

1. Asc. Who, therefore, will the men be after us 2?

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Tris. They will be led astray by sophists’ cleverness, and turned from True Philosophy,—the Pure and Holy [Love].

For that to worship God with single mind and soul, and reverence the things that He hath made, and to give thanks unto His Will, which is the only thing quite full of Good,—this is Philosophy unsullied by the soul’s rough curiousness.

But of this subject let what has been said so far suffice.

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Footnotes

325:3 That is, the Æon. Cf. xxx. 1 below.

325:4 Cf. Ex. i. 8.

325:5 Reading gubernat for gubernando.

325:6 That is, the compost, or “cosmic” part of himself, apparently, of v. 2.

325:7 The original Greek κόσμος is here retained in the Latin; it means “order, adornment, ornament,” as well as “world.”

326:1 The idea is that man is a microcosm; he is, as to his bodies, “cosmic” (“mundanus homo”), for his vehicles are made of the elements; he is thus in these an image or seed (microcosm) of the universe, the macrocosm.

326:2 Sc. Cosmos. Cf. xxxi. 1 below.

326:3 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 25, last sentence.

327:1 Ab omnibus divinæ cognationis partibus.

327:2 This seems somewhat tautological. The first clause runs: “quæcunque terrena corporali cupiditate possidentur; quæ merito possessionem nomine nuncupantur.” This Latin word-play seems almost to suggest that we are dealing with an embellishment of the translator; it may, however, have stood in the original. Cf. xii. 2 below.

327:3 Lit. my.

327:4 Reading inferioris for interioris, as immediately below in § 3. Cf. vi. 3, last sentence.

328:1 This seems very loose indeed; the text or the Latin translation is probably at fault, unless the “other members” are supposed to be grouped in sets of double pairs.

329:1 Singular—that is, the species in the Cosmos, according to the type in the Divine Mind.

329:2 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 5; Lact., D. I., i. 11; and xxxvii. 3 below.

329:3 Lit. part.

329:4 In corporalia . . . migratio.

330:1 The Latin here does not construe.

330:2 Cf. C. H., i. 29; also xxv. 3 below.

330:3 Cf. xi. 1 above.

330:4 Obtorto . . . collo.

330:5 Ego enim tibi quasi prædivinans dixero. Notice the dixero,—the “prophetic” tense, if we may be permitted to coin a term to characterize this use, which reminds us so strongly of the “Sibylline” literature and the allied prophetic centonism of the time.

330:6 Cf. Ex. ix. 8, and xiv. 1 below.

330:7 Lit. philosophy. Cf. in Philo, D. V. C., the “Heavenly Love” with which the Therapeuts were “afire with God.” Cf. xiv. 1, and Ex. i. 3.

330:8 Cf. C. H., xvi. 2.

332:1 Cf. “Heaven’s harmonious song” in xxviii. 11 below.

332:2 Cf. xii. 3 above, and notes.

2. [VII. M.] And now let us begin to treat of Spirit and such things.

There was first God and Matter, 3 which we in Greek 4 believe [to be] the Cosmos; and Spirit was with Cosmos, or Spirit was in Cosmos, but not in like way as in God 5; nor were there

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things [as yet] from which the Cosmos [comes to birth] in God.

They were not; just for the very reason that they were not, but were as yet in that [condition] whence they have had their birth. 1

For those things only are not called ingenerable which have not yet been born, but [also] those which lack the fertilizing power of generating, so that from them naught can be born.

And so whatever things there are that have in them the power of generating,—these two are generable, [that is to say,] from which birth can take place, though they be born from their own selves [alone]. For there’s no question that from those born from themselves birth can with ease take place, since from them all are born.

3. God, then, the everlasting, God the eternal, nor can be born, nor could He have been born. That 2 is, That was, That shall be ever. This, therefore, is God’s Nature—all from itself [alone].

But Matter 3 (or the Nature of the Cosmos) 4 and Spirit, although they do not seem to be things born from any source, 5 yet in themselves

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possess the power of generation and of generating,—the nature of fecundity.

For the beginning 1 [truly] is in [just that] quality of nature which possesses in itself the power and matter both of conception and of birth. 2 This, 3 then, without conception of another, is generable of its own self.

XV

1. But, on the other hand, [whereas] those things which only have the power of bringing forth by blending with another nature, are thus to be distinguished, this Space of Cosmos, 4 with those that are in it, seems not to have been born, in that [the Cosmos] has in it undoubtedly all Nature’s potency. 5

By “Space” I mean that in which are all things. For all these things could not have been had Space not been, to hold them all. Since for all things that there have been, must be provided Space.

For neither could the qualities nor quantities, nor the positions, nor [yet] the operations, be distinguished of those things which are no where.

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2. So then the Cosmos, also, though not born, still has in it the births 1 of all; in that, indeed, it doth afford for all of them most fecund wombs for their conception.

It, therefore, is the sum of [all that] quality of Matter which hath creative potency, although it hath not been [itself] created.

And, seeing that [this] quality of Matter is in its nature [simple] productiveness; so the same [source] produces bad as well [as good].

XVI

1. I have not, therefore, O Asclepius and Ammon, said what many say, that God could not excise and banish evil from the Scheme 2 of Things;—to whom no answer need at all be given. Yet for your sakes I will continue what I have begun, and give a reason.

They say that God ought to have freed the World from bad in every way; for so much is it 3 in the World, that it doth seem to be as though it were one of its limbs.

This was foreseen by Highest God and [due] provision made, as much as ever could have been in reason made, then when He thought it proper to endow the minds of men with sense, 4 and science and intelligence.

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2. For it is by these things alone whereby we stand above the rest of animals, that we are able to avoid the snares and crimes of ill.

For he who shall on sight have turned from them, before he hath become immeshed in them,—he is a man protected by divine intelligence and [godly] prudence.

For that the ground-work of [true] science doth consist of the top-stones of virtue.

3. It is by Spirit that all things are governed in the Cosmos, and made quick,—Spirit made subject to the Will of Highest God, as though it were an engine or machine.

So far, then, [only] let Him be by us conceived,—as Him who is conceivable by mind alone, who is called Highest God, the Ruler and Director of God Sensible, 1—of Him who in Himself includes all Space, all Substance, and all Matter, of things producing and begetting, and all whatever is, however great it be.

XVII

1. It is by Spirit that all species in the Cosmos are [or] moved or ruled,—each one according to its proper nature given it by God.

Matter, 2 or Cosmos, on the other hand, is that which holds all things,—the field of motion, 3 and

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the that which crowds together 1 all; of which God is the Ruler, distributing unto all cosmic things all that is requisite to each.

It is with Spirit that He fills all things, according to the quality of each one’s nature.

2. [Now,] seeing that the hollow roundness 2 of the Cosmos is borne round into the fashion of a sphere; by reason of its [very] quality or form, it never can be altogether visible unto itself.

So that, however high a place in it thou shouldest choose for looking down below, thou could’st not see from it what is at bottom, because in many places it confronts [the senses], and so is thought to have the quality [of being visible throughout]. 3

For it is solely owing to the forms of species, with images of which it seems insculpted, that it is thought [to be] as though ’twere visible [throughout]; but as a fact ’tis ever to itself invisible.

3. Wherefore, its bottom, or its [lowest] part, if [such a] place there be within a sphere, is called in Greek a-eidēs 4; since that eidein 5 in

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[paragraph continues]Greek means “seeing,”—which “being-seen” the sphere’s beginning 1 lacks.

Hence, too, the species have the name eideai, 2 since they’re of form we cannot see.

Therefore, in that they are deprived of “being-seen,” in Greek they are called Hades; in that they are at bottom 3 of the sphere, they’re called in Latin Inferi.

These, then, are principal and prior, 4 and, as it were, the sources and the heads of all the things which are in them, 5 through them, or from them.

XVIII

1. Asc. All things, then, in themselves (as thou, Thrice-greatest one, dost say) are cosmic [principles] (as I should say) of all the species which are in them, [or] as it were, the sum and substance of each one of them. 6

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Tris. So Cosmos, then, doth nourish bodies; the Spirit, souls; the [Higher] Sense (with which Celestial Gift mankind alone is blest) 7 doth feed the mind.

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And [these are] not all men, but [they are] few, whose minds are of such quality that they can be receptive of so great a blessing.

2. For as the World’s illumined by the Sun, so is the mind of man illumined by that Light; nay, in [still] fuller measure.

For whatsoever thing the Sun doth shine upon, it is anon, by interjection of the Earth or Moon, or by the intervention of the night, robbed of its light.

But once the [Higher] Sense hath been commingled with the soul of man, there is at-onement from the happy union of the blending of their natures; so that minds of this kind are never more held fast in errors of the darkness.

Wherefore, with reason have they said the [Higher] Senses are the souls of Gods; to which I add: not of all Gods, but of the great ones [only]; nay, even of the principles of these.

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Footnotes

332:3 The Greek ὕλη is here retained by the translator.

332:4 Græce.

332:5 The Latin translation is confused. The original seems to have stated that Spirit and Cosmos (or Matter) were as yet one, or Spirit-Matter.

333:1 That is, presumably, they were in potentiality.

333:2 Hoc.

333:3 Again ὕλη in the Latin text.

333:4 Cf. “Matter or Cosmos” of xvii. 2.

333:5 Principio, “beginning” the same word as that used in the Vulgate translation of the Proem of the fourth Gospel.

334:1 Initium.

334:2 This seems to make it clear that the idea “Cosmos” is regarded under the dual concept of Spirit-Matter.

334:3 Sc. Primal Nature, or Spirit-Matter.

334:4 Cf. xxx. 1, and xxxiv. 1 below.

334:5 The Latin construction is very faulty.

335:1 Naturas.

335:2 Lit. nature.

335:3 Sc. evil or bad.

335:4 Presumably meaning the higher sense.

336:1 That is, Cosmos.

336:2 Again ὕλη.

336:3 Agitatio.

337:1 Frequentatio.

337:2 Cava rotunditas—that is, presumably, concavity.

337:3 Propter quod multis locis instat, qualitatemque habere creditur. The Latin translation is evidently faulty. Ménard omits the sentence entirely, as he so often does when there is difficulty.

337:4 Ἀ-ειδής—that is, “Invisible”; that is, Hades (Ἀιδὴς or Ἅδης).

337:5 εἰδεῖν—? ἰδεῖν.

338:1 Primum spheræ; the top or bottom presumably, or periphery, of the world-sphere.

338:2 εἰδέαι—? ἰδέαι—that is, forms, species,—but also used of the highest species, viewed as “ideas.”

338:3 Sc. at the centre.

338:4 Or principles and priorities (antiquiora).

338:5 Sc. the “ideas.”

338:6 The Latin text is hopeless.

338:7 Cf. vii. i.

XIX

1. [VIII. M.] Asc. What dost thou call, Thrice-greatest one, the heads of things, or sources of beginnings?

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Tris. Great are the mysteries which I reveal to thee, divine the secrets I disclose; and so I

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make beginning of this thing 1 with prayers for Heaven’s favour.

The hierarchies 2 of Gods are numerous; and of them all one class is called the Noumenal, 3 the other [class] the Sensible. 4

The former are called Noumenal, not for the reason that they’re thought to lie beyond our 5 senses; for these are just the Gods we sense more truly than the ones we call the visible,—just as our argument will prove, and thou, if thou attend, wilt be made fit to see.

For that a lofty reasoning, and much more one that is too godlike for the mental grasp of [average] men, if that the speaker’s words are not received 6 with more attentive service of the ears,—will fly and flow beyond them; or rather will flow back [again], and mingle with the streams of its own source. 7

2. There are, then, [certain] Gods who are the principals 8 of all the species.

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Next there come those whose essence 1 is their principal. These are the Sensible, each similar to its own dual source, 2 who by their sensibility 3 affect all things,—the one part through the other part [in each] making to shine the proper work of every single one.

Of Heaven,—or of whatsoe’er it be that is embraced within the term,—the essence-chief 4 is Zeus; for ’tis through Heaven that Zeus gives life to all.

Sun’s essence-chief is light; for the good gift of light is poured on us through the Sun’s disk.

3. The “Thirty-six,” who have the name of Horoscopes, 5 are in the [self] same space as the Fixed Stars; of these the essence-chief, or prince, is he whom they call Pantomorph, or Omniform, 6 who fashioneth the various forms for various species.

The “Seven” who are called spheres, have essence-chiefs, that is, [have each] their proper rulers, whom they call [all together] Fortune and Heimarmenē, 7 whereby all things are changed

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by nature’s law; perpetual stability being varied with incessant motion. 1

The Air, moreover, is the engine, or machine, through which all things are made—(there is, however, an essence-chief of this, a second [Air])—mortal from mortal things and things like these. 2

4. These hierarchies of Gods, then, being thus and [in this way] related, 3 from bottom unto top, are [also] thus connected with each other, and tend towards themselves; so mortal things are bound to mortal, things sensible to sensible.

The whole of [this grand scale of] Rulership, however, seems to Him [who is] the Highest Lord, either to be not many things, or rather [to be] one.

For that from One all things depending, 4 and flowing down from it,—when they are seen as

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separate, they’re thought to be as many as they possibly can be; but in their union it is one [thing], or rather two, from which all things are made;—that is, from Matter, by means of which the other things are made, and by the Will of Him, by nod of whom they’re brought to pass.

XX

1. Asc. Is this again the reason, O Thrice-greatest one?

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Tris. It is, Asclepius. For God’s the Father or the Lord of all, or whatsoever else may be the name by which He’s named more holily and piously by men,—which should be set apart among ourselves for sake of our intelligence.

For if we contemplate this so transcendent God, we shall not make Him definite by any of these names.

For if a [spoken] word 1 is this:—a sound proceeding from the air, when struck by breath, 2 denoting the whole will, perchance, of man, or else the [higher] sense, which by good chance a man perceives by means of mind, when out of [all his] senses, 3—a name the stuff of which,

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made of a syllable or two, has so been limited and pondered, that it might serve in man as necessary link between the voice and ear;—thus [must] the Name of God in full consist of Sense, and Spirit, and of Air, and of all things in them, or through, or with them. 1

2. Indeed, I have no hope that the Creator of the whole of Greatness, the Father and the Lord of all the things [that are], could ever have one name, even although it should be made up of a multitude—He who cannot be named, or rather He who can be called by every name.

For He, indeed, is One and All 2; so that it needs must be that all things should be called by the same name as His, or He Himself called by the names of all.

3. He, then, alone, yet all-complete in the fertility of either sex, ever with child of His own Will, doth ever bring to birth whatever He hath willed to procreate.

His Will is the All-goodness, which also is the Goodness of all things, born from the nature of His own Divinity,—in order that all things may be, just as they all have been, and that henceforth the nature of being born from their own selves may be sufficient to all things that will be born.

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Let this, then, be the reason given thee, Asclepius, wherefore and how all things are made of either sex.

XXI

1. Asc. Thou speak’st of God, then, O Thrice-greatest one?

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Tris. Not only God, Asclepius, but all things living and inanimate. For ’tis impossible that any of the things that are should be unfruitful.

For if fecundity should be removed from all the things that are, it could not be that they should be for ever what they are. I mean that Nature, 1 Sense, and Cosmos, have in themselves the power of being born, 2 and of preserving all things that are born.

For either sex is full of procreation; and of each one there is a union, or,—what’s more true,—a unity incomprehensible; which you may rightly call Erōs 3 or Aphroditē, or both [names].

2. This, then, is truer than all truth, and plainer than what the mind [’s eye] perceives;—that from that Universal God of Universal Nature all other things for evermore have found, and had bestowed on them, the mystery of

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bringing forth; in which there is innate the sweetest Charity, [and] Joy, [and] Merriment, Longing, and Love Divine.

We might have had to tell the mighty power and the compulsion of this mystery, if it had not been able to be known by every one from personal experience, by observation of himself.

3. For if thou should’st regard that supreme [point] of time when . . . 1 the one nature doth pour forth the young into the other one, and when the other greedily absorbs [it] from the first, and hides it [ever] deeper [in itself]; then, at that time, out of their common congress, females attain the nature of the males, males weary grow with female listlessness.

And so the consummation of this mystery, so sweet and requisite, is wrought in secret; lest, owing to the vulgar jests of ignorance, the deity of either sex should be compelled to blush at natural congress,—and much more still, if it should be subjected to the sight of impious folk.

XXII

1. The pious are not numerous, however; nay, they are very few, so that they may be counted even in the world. 2

Whence it doth come about, that in the many

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bad inheres, through defect of the Gnosis and Discernment of the things that are.

For that it is from the intelligence of Godlike Reason, 1 by which all things are ordered, there come to birth contempt and remedy of vice throughout the world.

But when unknowingness and ignorance persist, all vicious things wax strong, and plague the soul with wounds incurable; so that, infected with them, and invitiated, it swells up, as though it were with poisons,—except for those who know the Discipline of souls and highest Cure of intellect.

2. So, then, although it may do good to few alone, ’tis proper to develope and explain this thesis:—wherefore Divinity hath deigned to share His science and intelligence with men alone. Give ear, accordingly!

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When God, [our] Sire and Lord, made man, after the Gods, out of an equal mixture of a less pure cosmic part and a divine,—it [naturally] came to pass the imperfections 2 of the cosmic part remained commingled with [our] frames, and other ones 3 [as well], by reason of the food and sustenance we have out of necessity in common with all lives 4; by reason of which

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things it needs must be that the desires, and passions, and other vices, of the mind should occupy the souls of human kind.

3. As for the Gods, in as much as they had been made of Nature’s fairest 1 part, and have no need of the supports of reason and of discipline, 2—although, indeed, their deathlessness, the very strength of being ever of one single age, stands in this case for prudence and for science, still, for the sake of reason’s unity, instead of science and of intellect (so that the Gods should not be strange to these),—He, by His everlasting law, decreed for them an order, 3 circumscribed by the necessity of law.

While as for man, He doth distinguish him from all the other animals by reason and by discipline alone; by means of which men can remove and separate their bodies’ vices,—He helping them to hope and effort after deathlessness.

4. In fine, He hath made man both good and able to share in immortal life,—out of two natures, [one] mortal, [one] divine.

And just because he is thus fashioned by the Will of God, it is appointed that man should be superior both to the Gods, who have been made

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of an immortal nature only, and also to all mortal things.

It is because of this that man, being joined unto the Gods by kinsmanship, doth reverence them with piety and holy mind; while, on their side, the Gods with pious sympathy regard and guard all things of men.

XXIII

1. But this can only be averred of a few men endowed with pious minds. Still, of the rest, the vicious folk, we ought to say no word, for fear a very sacred sermon should be spoiled by thinking of them.

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Footnotes

340:1 Initium facio; or perhaps perform the sacred rite, or give initiation.

340:2 Genera.

340:3 Intelligibilis (= οἱ νοητοί); lit. that which can be known by intellect (alone).

340:4 Sensibilis (= οἱ αἰσθητοί); lit. that which can be known by the senses.

340:5 That is, the “Sense” of those who have reached the “Trismegistic” grade, though of course beyond the range of the normal senses.

340:6 The text is faulty.

340:7 Cf. x. 1 above; and C. H., x. (xi.) 17.

340:8 Principes.

341:1 The Greek original οὐσία being retained.

341:2 That is, presumably, essence and sensibility.

341:3 That is, presumably, their power of affecting the senses.

341:4 The Greek οὐσιάρχης is retained in the Latin.

341:5 Horoscopi (= ὡροσκόποι); generally called Decans; cf. Ex. ix., where the Decans are explained.

341:6 Παντόμορφον vel omniformem; see xxxv. below; also C. H., xi. (xii.) 16, Comment.

341:7 That is, Fate, εἱμαρμένη.

342:1 Quoted in the original Greek by Ioan. Laurentius Lydus, De Mensibus, iv. 7; Wünsch (Leipzig, 1898), p. 70, 22; as follows: “And Hermes is witness in his [book], called ‘The Perfect Sermon,’ when saying: ‘They that are called the Seven Spheres have a Source that is called Fortune or Fate, which changes all things and suffers them not to remain in the same [conditions].’” The quotation is continued without a break; the rest of it, however, corresponds to nothing in our context, but is somewhat similar to ch. xxxix. 1, 2.

342:2 That is, the region of things subject to death. The text is faulty. Cf. with this “engine” the “cylinder” of the K. K. Fragments (10).

342:3 Ab imo ad summum se admoventibus; for admoventibus compare “genus admotum superis,” Silius Italicus, viii. 295.

342:4 Cf. iv. 1 above, and the note.

343:1 Vox (= name), presumably λόγος in the original; a play on “word” and “reason,” but also referring to the mysterious “name” of a person.

343:2 Spiritu, or spirit.

343:3 Ex sensibus = presumably, in ecstasis.

344:1 The text of this paragraph is very unsatisfactory.

344:2 Cf. i. 1 above.

345:1 Here, presumably, meaning hyle.

345:2 Naturam again.

345:3 Cf. 1, 2, above.

346:1 Quo ex crebro attritu prurimus ut . . . .

346:2 Cf. Ex. i. 16.

347:1 Cf. vii. 1 above.

347:2 Vitia; lit. vices.

347:3 Sc. imperfections.

347:4 Lit. animals.

348:1 Mundissima—that is, most cosmic, or “adorned.”

348:2 Or science.

348:3 Ordinem—that is, Cosmos. Compare this also with the idea of the Gnostic Horos which “surrounds” the Plērōma.

[IX. M.] And 1 since our sermon treats of the relationship and intercourse 2 of men and Gods,—learn, Asclepius, the power and strength of man!

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[Our] Lord and Father, or what is Highest God,—as He’s Creator of the Gods in Heaven, so man’s the maker of the gods who, in the temples, suffer man’s approach, and who not only have light poured on them, but who send forth [their] light [on all]; not only does a man go forward towards the God[s], but also he confirms the Gods [on earth]. 3

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Art thou surprised, Asclepius; nay is it not that even thou dost not believe?

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2. Asc. I am amazed, Thrice-greatest one; but willingly I give assent to [all] thy words. I judge that man most blest who hath attained so great felicity.

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Tris. And rightly so; [for] he deserves our wonder, in that he is the greatest of them all.

As for the genus of the Gods in Heaven,—’tis plain from the commixture 1 of them all, that it has been made pregnant from the fairest part of nature, 2 and that the only signs [by which they are discerned] are, as it were, before all else their heads. 3

3. Whereas the species of the gods which humankind constructs is fashioned out of either nature,—out of that nature which is more ancient and far more divine, and out of that which is in men; that is, out of the stuff of which they have been made and are configured, not only in their heads alone, but also in each limb and their whole frame.

And 4 so mankind, in imaging Divinity, stays

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mindful of the nature and the source of its own self.

So that, just as [our] Sire and Lord did make the Gods æonian, that they might be like Him; so hath mankind configured its own gods according to the likeness of the look of its own self. 1

XXIV

1. Asc. Thou dost not mean their statues, dost thou, O Thrice-greatest one?

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Tris. [I mean their] statues, O Asclepius,—dost thou not see how much thou even, doubtest?—statues, ensouled with sense, and filled with spirit, which work such mighty and such [strange] results,—statues which can foresee what is to come, and which perchance can prophesy, foretelling things by dreams and many other ways,—[statues] that take their strength away from men, or cure their sorrow, if they do so deserve.

Dost thou not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is the image of the Heaven 2; or, what is truer still, the transference, or the descent, of all that are in governance or exercise in Heaven? And if more truly [still] it must be said,—this land of ours is Shrine of all the World.

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2. Further, in that ’tis fitting that the prudent should know all before, it is not right ye should be ignorant of this.

The time will come when Egypt will appear to have in vain served the Divinity with pious mind and constant worship 1; and all its holy cult will fall to nothingness and be in vain.

For that Divinity is now about to hasten back from Earth to Heaven, and Egypt shall be left; and Earth, which was the seat of pious cults, shall be bereft and widowed of the presence of the Gods.

And foreigners shall fill this region and this land; and there shall be not only the neglect of pious cults, but—what is still more painful,—as though enacted by the laws, a penalty shall be decreed against the practice of [our] pious cults and worship of the Gods—[entire] proscription of them.

3. Then shall this holiest land, seat of [our] shrines and temples, be choked with tombs and corpses. 2

O Egypt, Egypt, of thy pious cults tales only will remain, as far beyond belief for thy own sons [as for the rest of men]; words only will be left cut on thy stones, thy pious deeds recounting!

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And Egypt will be made the home of Scyth 1 or Indian, or some one like to them,—that is a foreign neighbour. 2

Ay, for the Godly company 3 shall mount again to Heaven, and their forsaken worshippers shall all die out; and Egypt, thus bereft of God and man, shall be abandoned.

4. And now I speak to thee, O River, holiest [Stream]! I tell thee what will be. With bloody torrents shalt thou overflow thy banks. Not only shall thy streams divine be stained with blood; but they shall all flow over [with the same].

The tale of tombs shall far exceed the [number of the] quick; and the surviving remnant shall be Egyptians in their tongue alone, but in their actions foreigners.

XXV

1. Why dost thou weep, Asclepius? Nay, more than this, by far more wretched,—Egypt herself shall be impelled and stained with greater ills.

For she, the Holy [Land], and once deservedly

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the most beloved by God, by reason of her pious service of the Gods on earth,—she, the sole colony 1 of holiness, and teacher of religion [on the earth], shall be the type of all that is most barbarous.

And then, out of our loathing for mankind, the World will seem no more deserving of our wonder and our praise.

All this good thing, 2—than which there has been fairer naught that can be seen, nor is there anything, nor will there [ever] be,—will be in jeopardy.

2. And it will prove a burden unto men; and on account of this they will despise and cease to love this Cosmos as a whole,—the changeless work of God; the glorious construction of the Good, comprised of multifold variety of forms; the engine of God’s Will, supporting His own work ungrudgingly; the multitudinous whole massed in a unity of all, that should be reverenced, praised and loved,—by them at least who have the eyes to see.

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For Darkness will be set before the Light, and Death will be thought preferable to Life. No one will raise his eyes to Heaven; the pious man will be considered mad, the impious a sage; the frenzied held as strong, the worst as best.

3. For soul, and all concerning it,—whereby it doth presume that either it hath been born deathless, or that it will attain to deathlessness, according to the argument I have set forth for you,—[all this] will be considered not only food for sport, 1 but even vanity.

Nay, [if ye will] believe me, the penalty of death shall be decreed to him who shall devote himself to the Religion of the Mind.

New statutes shall come into force, a novel law; naught [that is] sacred, nothing pious, naught that is worthy of the Heaven, or Gods in Heaven, shall [e’er] be heard, or [even] mentally believed.

4. The sorrowful departure of the Gods from men takes place; bad angels 2 only stay, who mingled with humanity will lay their hands on them, and drive the wretched folk to every ill of recklessness,—to wars, and robberies, deceits,

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and all those things that are opposed to the soul’s nature. 1

Then shall the Earth no longer hold together; the Sea no longer shall be sailed upon; nor shall the Heaven continue with the Courses of the Stars, nor the Star-course in Heaven.

The voice of every God 2 shall cease in the [Great] Silence that no one can break; the fruits of Earth shall rot; nay, Earth no longer shall bring forth; and Air itself shall faint in that sad listlessness.

XXVI

1. This, when it comes, shall be the World’s old age, impiety,—irregularity, and lack of rationality in all good things.

And when these things all come to pass, Asclepius,—then He, [our] Lord and Sire, God First in power, and Ruler of the One God [Visible], 3 in check of crime, and calling error back from the corruption of all things unto good manners and to deeds spontaneous with His Will (that is to say God’s Goodness),—ending all ill, by either washing it away with water-flood, or burning it away with fire, or by the means of pestilent diseases, spread

p. 357

throughout all hostile lands,—God will recall the Cosmos to its ancient form 1; so that the World itself shall seem meet to be worshipped and admired; and God, the Maker and Restorer of so vast a work, be sung by the humanity who shall be then, with ceaseless heraldings of praise and [hymns of] blessing.

2. For this [Re-] birth of Cosmos is the making new 2 of all good things, and the most holy and most pious bringing-back again of Nature’s self, by means of a set course of time,—of Nature, which was without beginning, and which is without an end. For that God’s Will hath no beginning; and, in that ’tis the same and as it is, it is without an end.

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Asc. Because God’s Nature’s the Determination 3 of the Will. Determination is the Highest Good; is it not so, Thrice-greatest one?

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3. Tris. Asclepius, Will is Determination’s child; nay, willing in itself comes from the Will.

Not that He willeth aught desiring it; for that He is the Fullness of all things, and wills what things He has.

He thus wills all good things, and has all that He wills. Nay, rather, He doth think and will all good.

This, then, is God; the World of Good’s His Image.

XXVII

1. Asc. [Is Cosmos] good, Thrice-greatest one?

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Tris. [’Tis] good, 1 as I will teach thee, O Asclepius.

For just as God is the Apportioner and Steward of good things to all the species, or [more correctly] genera, which are in Cosmos,—that is to say, of Sense, 2 and Soul, and Life,—so Cosmos is the giver and bestower of all things which seem unto [us] mortals good;—that is to say, the alternation of its parts, of seasonable fruits, birth, growth, maturity, and things like these.

And for this cause God doth transcend the height of highest Heaven, extending everywhere, and doth behold all things on every side.

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2. Beyond the Heaven starless Space doth stretch, stranger to every thing possessed of body.

The Dispensator who’s between the Heaven and Earth, is Ruler of the Space which we call Zeus [Above].

The Earth and Sea is ruled by Zeus Below 1; he is the Nourisher of mortal lives, and of fruit-bearing [trees].

It is by reason of the powers of all of these 2 that fruits, and trees, and earth, grow green.

The powers and energies of [all] the other [Gods] will be distributed through all the things that are.

3. Yea, they who rule the earth shall be distributed [through all the lands], and [finally] be gathered in a state, 3—at top of Egypt’s upper part, 4—which shall be founded towards the setting sun, and to which all the mortal race shall speed.

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Asc. But now, just at this moment, where are they, Thrice-greatest one?

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Tris. They’re gathered in a very large

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community, 1 upon the Libyan Hill. 2 And now enough concerning this hath been declared.

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Footnotes

349:1 This sentence and the first half of the next, down to “suffer man’s approach,” is quoted word for word in Latin by Augustine, De Civitate Dei, xxiii.

349:2 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 22.

349:3 The Latin translation of this paragraph seems confused.

350:1 This is, apparently, the “star stuff” of which their bodies are made.

350:2 De mundissima parte naturæ esse prægnatum—whatever that means; but cf. p. 348, n. 1.

350:3 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 10, 11.

350:4 This sentence, together with the first five sentences of the next chapter, down to the words “and constant worship,” are quoted in Latin with two or three slight verbal variants by Augustine, De Civitate Dei, xxiii.

351:1 Cf. xxxvii. 2 below.

351:2 Cf. Comment, on K. K., 46-48.

352:1 Augustine’s quotation ends here.

352:2 Sepulchrorum erit mortuorumque plenissima. This sentence is quoted verbatim by Augustine, De Civitate Dei, xxvi.

353:1 Compare Colossians iii. 11: “Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.”

353:2 Vicina barbaria; lit. a neighbouring foreign country. Compare this with the previous note. It is strange the two, Scyth and barbarian, coming twice together.

353:3 Divinitas.

354:1 Deductio the technical term for leading out a colony from the metropolis or mother city. Compare Philo, De Vita Contemplativa, P. 892, M. 474 (Conybeare, p. 58): “In Egypt there are crowds of them [the Therapeuts] in every province, or nome as they call it, and especially at Alexandria. For they who are in every way the most highly advanced, lead out a colony (ἀποικίαν στέλλονται), as it were to the Therapeutic father-land”; and also the numerous parallel passages cited by Conybeare from Philo’s other writings.

354:2 Sc. the Cosmos.

355:1 Cf. xii. 2 above.

355:2 Nocentes angeli,—usually daimones in our tractates; still, as Lactantius (D. I., ii. 15) says that Hermes calls the daimones “evil angels” (ἀγγέλους πονηροὺς), he most probably took it from the Greek original of our sermon.

356:1 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 21.

356:2 Omnis vox divina; or, perhaps, the “whole Word of God.”

356:3 That is, Cosmos.

357:1 The above passage is cited in the original Greek by Lactantius (D. I., vii. 8) as from the “Perfect Sermon” of Hermes. As we might expect from what had been already said on this subject, it differs from our Latin translation, and runs as follows:

“Now when these things shall be as I have said, Asclepius, then will [our] Lord and Sire, the God and Maker of the First and the One God, look down on what is done, and making firm His Will, that is the Good, against disorder,—recalling error, and cleaning out the bad, either by washing it away with water-flood, or burning it away with swiftest fire, or forcibly expelling it with war and famine,—will bring again His Cosmos to its former state, and so achieve its Restoration.”

357:2 Cf. C. H., iii. (iv.) 1.

357:3 Consilium = βουλή.

358:1 This seems a formal contradiction of C. H., x. (xi.) 10, but is not really so.

358:2 Meaning higher sense, presumably; reading sensus for sensibus.

359:1 Jupiter Plutonius. Ménard suggests “Zeus souterrain (Sarapis?)”; the original was probably Zeus Aidoneus.

359:2 It is not clear who “these” are; perhaps all that have so far been mentioned, but this does not seem satisfactory. Doubtless the Latin translation is, as usual, at fault.

359:3 Or city.

359:4 In summo Ægypti initio.

360:1 Civitate.

360:2 In monte Libyco; lit. on a (or the) Libycan, or Libyan or African Hill or Mount. Compare with this xxxvii. below.

4. [X. M.] But now the question as to deathlessness or as to death must be discussed.

The expectation and the fear of death torture the multitude, who do not know True Reason.

Now death is brought about by dissolution of the body, wearied out with toil, and of the number, when complete, by which the body’s members are arranged into a single engine for the purposes of life. The body dies, when it no longer can support the life-powers 3 of a man.

This, then, is death,—the body’s dissolution, and the disappearance of corporeal sense. 4

As to this death anxiety is needless. But there’s another [death] which no man can

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escape, 1 but which the ignorance and unbelief of man think little of.

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5. Asc. What is it, O Thrice-greatest one, that men know nothing of, or disbelieve that it can be?

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Tris. So, lend thy ear, Asclepius!

XXVIII

1. When, [then,] the soul’s departure from the body shall take place,—then shall the judgment and the weighing of its merit pass into its highest daimon’s power. 2

And when he sees it pious is and just,—he suffers it to rest in spots appropriate to it.

But if he find it soiled with stains of evil deeds, and fouled with vice,—he drives it from Above into the Depths, and hands it o’er to warring hurricanes and vortices of Air, of Fire, and Water. 3

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2. ’Twixt Heaven and Earth, upon the waves of Cosmos, is it dragged in contrary directions, for ever racked with ceaseless pains 1; so that in this its deathless nature doth afflict the soul, in that because of its unceasing sense, it hath the yoke of ceaseless torture set upon its neck.

Know, then, that we should dread, and be

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afraid, and [ever] be upon our guard, lest we should be entangled in these [toils].

For those who do not now believe, will after their misdeeds be driven to believe, by facts not words, by actual sufferings of punishment and not by threats.

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3. Asc. The faults of men are not, then, punished, O Thrice-greatest one, by law of man alone?

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Tris. In the first place, Asclepius, all things on Earth must die.

Further, those things which live by reason of a body, and which do cease from living by reason of the same,—all these, according to the merits of this life, or its demerits, find due [rewards or] punishments.

[And as to punishments] they’re all the more severe, if in their life [their misdeeds] chance to have been hidden, till their death. 1 For [then] they will be made full conscious of all things by the divinity, just as they are, according to the shades of punishment allotted to their crimes.

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XXIX

1. Asc. And these deserve [still] greater punishments, Thrice-greatest one?

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Tris. [Assuredly;] for those condemned by laws of man do lose their life by violence, so that [all] men may see they have not yielded up their soul to pay the debt of nature, but have received the penalty of their deserts.

Upon the other hand, the righteous man finds his defence in serving God and deepest piety. For God doth guard such men from every ill. 1

2. Yea, He who is the Sire of all, [our] Lord, and who alone is all, doth love to show Himself to all.

It is not by the place where he may be, nor by the quality which he may have, nor by the greatness which he may possess, but by the mind’s intelligence alone, that He doth shed His light on man,—[on him] who shakes the clouds of Error from his soul, and sights the brilliancy of Truth, 2 mingling himself with the All-sense of the Divine Intelligence; through love 3 of which he wins his freedom from that part of him o’er which Death rules, and has the

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seed of the assurance of his future Deathlessness implanted in him.

3. This, then, is how the good will differ from the bad. Each several one will shine in piety, in sanctity, in prudence, in worship, and in service of [our] God, and see True Reason, as though [he looked at it] with [corporal] eyes; and each will by the confidence of his belief excel all other men, as by its light the Sun the other stars. 1

For that it is not so much by the greatness of his light as by his holiness and his divinity, the Sun himself lights up the other stars. 2

Yea, [my] Asclepius, thou should’st regard him as the second God, 3 ruling all things, and giving light to all things living in the Cosmos, whether ensouled or unensouled.

For if the Cosmos is a living thing, and if it has been, and it is, and will be ever-living,—naught in the Cosmos is subject to death.

For of an ever-living thing, it is [the same] of every part which is; [that is,] that ’tis [as ever-living] as it is [itself]; and in the World itself [which is] for everyone, and at the self-same time an ever-living thing of life,—in it there is no place for death. 4

5. And so he 5 should be the full store of

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life and deathlessness; if that it needs must be that he should live for ever.

And so the Sun, just as the Cosmos, lasts for aye. So is he, too, for ever ruler of [all] vital powers, or of [our] whole vitality; he is their ruler, or the one who gives them out.

God, then, is the eternal ruler of all living things, or vital functions, that are in the World. He is the everlasting giver-forth of Life itself. 1

Once for all [time] He hath bestowed Life on all vital powers; He further doth preserve them by a law that lasts for evermore, as I will [now] explain.

XXX

1. For in the very Life of the Eternity 2 is Cosmos moved; and in the very Everlastingness 3 of Life [itself] is Cosmic Space. 4

On which account it 5 shall not stop at any time, nor shall it be destroyed; for that its very self is palisaded 6 round about, and bound together as it were, by Living’s Sempiternity.

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Cosmos is [thus] Life-giver unto all that are in it, and is the Space of all that are in governance beneath the Sun.

The motion of the Cosmos in itself consisteth of a two-fold energy. ’Tis vivified itself from the without by the Eternity, 1 and vivifies all things that are within, making all different, by numbers and by times, fixed and appointed [for them].

2. Now Time’s distinguished on the Earth by quality of air, by variation of its heat and cold; in Heaven by the returnings of the stars to the same spots, the revolution of their course in Time.

And while the Cosmos is the home 2 of Time, 3 it is kept green [itself] by reason of Time’s course and motion.

Time, on the other hand, is kept by regulation. Order and Time effect renewal of all things which are in Cosmos by means of alternation.

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Footnotes

360:3 Vitalia.

360:4 This passage is quoted in the original Greek by Stobæus, Florilegium, cxx. 27 (G. iii. 464; M. iv. 105, 106; Pat. 45, under title “Death”), under the heading “Of Hermes from the [Sermons] to Asclepius.” It runs as follows:

“Now must we speak of death. For death affrights the many as the greatest of all ills, in ignorance of fact. Death is the dissolution of the toiling frame. For when the ‘number’ of the body’s joints becomes complete,—the basis of the body’s jointing being number,—that body dies; [that is,] when it no longer can support the man. And this is death,—the body’s dissolution and the disappearance of corporeal sense.”

The directness and the sturdy vigour of the Greek original has clearly lost much in the rhetorical paraphrasing of the Latin translator.

361:1 Necessaria.

361:2 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 21.

361:3 The substance of these two sentences is contained in a “quotation” from the Greek by J. Laurentius Lydus, De Mensibus, iv. 149 (Wünsch, 167, 15): “According to the Egyptian Hermes who, in what is called ‘The Perfect Sermon,’ says as follows: ‘But such souls as transgress the norm of piety, when they do leave their body, are handed over to the daimones and carried downwards through the air, cast forth as from a sling into the zones of fire and hail, which poets call Pyriphlegethon and Tartarus.’” That this is a “quotation,” however, I doubt very much, for if we compare it with D. M., iv. 31 (W. 90, 24), which very faintly echoes the teaching of our chaps, iv., v., xxvii., we shall find that Tartarus and Pyriphlegethon are entirely due to Laurentius himself. The passage runs as follows:

“For the Egyptian Hermes, in his Sermon called Perfect, says that the Avenging of the daimones, being present in matter itself, chastise the human part [of us] according as it has deserved; while the Purifying ones confined to the air purify the souls after death that are trying to soar aloft, [conducting them] round the haily and fiery zones of the air, which the poets and Plato himself in the Phædo call Tartarus and Pyriphlegethon; while the Saving ones again, stationed in the lunar space, save the souls.” Cf. Ex. ix. 6.

362:1 Ménard here quotes a couple of lines from Empedocles (c. 494-434 B.C.), cited by Plutarch, but without giving any reference. They are from the famous passage beginning ἔστιν ἀνάγκης χρῆμα κ.τ.λ. (369-382), of which the following is Fairbanks’ translation. See Fairbanks (A.), The First Philosophers of Greece (London, 1898), p. 205:

“There is an utterance of Necessity, an ancient decree of the Gods, eternal, sealed fast with broad oaths: Whenever any one defiles his body sinfully with bloody gore or perjures himself in regard to wrongdoing,—one of those spirits who are heir to long life (δαίμων οἵτε μακραίωνες λελάχασι βιοῖο),—thrice ten thousand seasons shall he wander apart from the blessed, being born meanwhile in all sorts of mortal forms (φυόμενον παντοῖα διὰ χρόνου εἴδεα θνητῶν) changing one bitter path of life for another. For mighty Air pursues him Seaward, and Sea spews him forth on the threshold of Earth, and Earth casts him into the rays of the unwearied Sun, and Sun into the eddies of Air: one receives him from the other, and all hate him. One of these now am I too, a fugitive from the gods and a wanderer, at the mercy of raging Strife.”

363:1 Cf. the Vision of Thespesius (Aridæus) in Plutarch, De Sera Numinis Vindicta: “Thus he had to see that the shades of notorious criminals who had been punished in earth-life were not so hardly dealt with . . . ; whereas those who had passed their lives in undetected vice, under cloak and show of virtue, were hemmed in by the retributory agents, and forced with labour and pain to turn their souls inside out.”

364:1 Compare the Fragment quoted in Greek by Lactantius, D. I., ii. 15, and by Cyril, C. J., iv. 130.

364:2 Cf. xiii. (xiv.) 7-9, Comment.

364:3 Cf. xii. 3 above.

365:1 Astris.

365:2 Stellas.

365:3 Cf. C. H., xvi. 5. ff.

365:4 The text of this paragraph is very corrupt.

365:5 That is, the Sun.

366:1 See Comment on C. H., xvi. 17.

366:2 Æternitatis, doubtless αἰῶνος in the original Greek,—that is, the Æon; cf. x. 2 above. For the general Æon-doctrine, see chap, xi. in the Prolegomena, and xxxii. 1 below.

366:3 Æternitate; Æon again.

366:4 Lit. the Space of Cosmos; cf. xv. 1 above.

366:5 Sc. Cosmos.

366:6 Circumvallatus et quasi constrictus. Compare with this the idea of the Horos or Boundary in the æonology of “Them of Valentinus,” as set forth by Hippolytus (Philosophumena, vi. 31):

“Moreover that the formlessness of the Abortion should finally never again make itself visible to the perfect Æons, the Father Himself also sent forth the additional emanation of a single Æon, the Cross [or Stock, τὸν σταυρόν], which being created great, as [the creature] of the great and perfect Father, and emanated to be the Guard and Wall of protection [lit. Paling or Stockade—χαράκωμα, the Roman vallum] of the Æons, constitutes the Boundary (ὅρος) of the Plērōma, holding the thirty Æons together within itself. For these [thirty] are they which form the divine creation.” See F. F. F., p. 342.

367:1 That is, the Æon.

367:2 Receptaculum.

367:3 Cf. C. H., xi. (xii.) 2.

3. [XI. M.] All things, then, being thus,

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there’s nothing stable, nothing fixed, nothing immoveable, of things that are being born, in Heaven or on the Earth.

Immoveable 1 [is] God alone, and rightly [He] alone; for He Himself is in Himself, and by Himself, and round Himself, completely full and perfect.

He is His own immoveable stability. Nor by the pressure of some other one can He be moved, nor in the space [of anyone].

4. For in Him are all [spaces], and He Himself alone is in them all; unless someone should venture to assert that God’s own motion’s in Eternity 2; nay, rather, it is just Immoveable Eternity itself, back into which the motion of all times is funded, and out of which the motion of all times takes its beginning.

XXXI

1. God, then, hath [ever] been unchanging, 3 and ever, in like fashion, with Himself hath the Eternity consisted,—having within itself Cosmos ingenerate, which we correctly call [God] Sensible. 4

Of that [transcendent] Deity this Image 5 hath been made,—Cosmos the imitator of Eternity.

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Time, further, hath the strength and nature of its own stability, in spite of its being in perpetual motion,—from its necessity of [ever] from itself reverting to itself.

2. And so, although Eternity is stable, motionless, and fixed, still, seeing that the movement of [this] Time (which is subject to motion) is ever being recalled into Eternity,—and for that reason Time’s mobility is circular,—it comes to pass that the Eternity itself, although in its own self, is motionless, [yet] on account of Time, in which it is—(and it is in it),—it seems to be in movement as all motion.

So that it comes to pass, that both Eternity’s stability becometh moved, and Time’s mobility becometh stable.

So may we ever hold that God Himself is moved into Himself by [ever-] same transcendency of motion. 1

For that stability is in His vastness motion motionless; for by His vastness is [His] law exempt from change. 2

3. That, then, which so transcends, which is not subject unto sense, [which is] beyond all bounds, [and which] cannot be grasped,—That

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transcends all appraisement; That cannot be supported, nor borne up, nor can it be tracked out. 1

For where, and when, and whence, and how, and what, He is,—is known to none. 2 For He’s borne up by [His] supreme stability, and His stability is in Himself [alone],—whether [this mystery] be God, or the Eternity, or both, or one in other, or both in either.

4. And for this cause, just as Eternity transcends the bounds of Time; so Time [itself], in that it cannot have bounds set to it by number, or by change, or by the period of the revolution of some second [kind of Time],—is of the nature of Eternity.

Both, then, seem boundless, both eternal. And so stability, though naturally fixed, yet seeing that it can sustain the things that are in motion,—because of all the good it does by reason of its firmness, deservedly doth hold the chiefest place.

XXXII

1. The principals of all that are, are, therefore, God and Æon. 3

The Cosmos, on the other hand, in that ’tis moveable, is not a principal. 4

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For its mobility exceeds its own stability by treating the immoveable fixation as the law of everlasting movement.

The Whole Sense, 1 then, of the Divinity, though like [to Him] in its own self immoveable, doth set itself in motion within its own stability.

’Tis holy, incorruptible, and everlasting, and if there can be any better attribute to give to it, [’tis its],—Eternity of God supreme, in Truth itself subsisting, the Fullness of all things, of Sense, and of the whole of Science, consisting, so to say, with God. 2

2. The Cosmic Sense is the container 3 of all sensibles, [all] species, and [all] sciences.

The human [higher sense consists] in the retentiveness of memory, in that it can recall all things that it hath done.

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For only just as far as the man-animal has the divinity of Sense 1 descended; in that God hath not willed the highest Sense divine should be commingled with the rest of animals; lest it should blush for shame 2 on being mingled with the other lives.

For whatsoever be the quality, or the extent, of the intelligence of a man’s Sense, the whole of it consists in power of recollecting what is past.

It is through his retentiveness of memory, that man’s been made the ruler of the earth.

3. Now the intelligence of Nature 3 can be won by quality of Cosmic Sense,—from all the things in Cosmos which sense can perceive.

Concerning [this] Eternity, which is the second [one],—the Sense of this we get from out the senses’ Cosmos, and we discern its quality [by the same means].

But the intelligence of Quality [itself], the “Whatness” of the Sense of God Supreme, is Truth alone,—of which [pure] Truth not even the most tenuous sketch, or [faintest] shade, in Cosmos is discerned.

For where is aught [of it] discerned by measurement of times,—wherein are seen untruths, and births [-and-deaths], and errors?

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4. Thou seest, then, Asclepius, on what we are [already] founded, with what we occupy ourselves, and after what we dare to strive.

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But unto Thee, O God most high, I give my thanks, in that Thou hast enlightened me with Light to see Divinity!

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And ye, O Tat, Asclepius and Ammon, in silence hide the mysteries divine within the secret places of your hearts, 1 and breathe no word of their concealment 2!

5. Now in our case the intellect doth differ from the sense in this,—that by the mind’s extension intellect can reach to the intelligence and the discernment of the quality of Cosmic Sense.

The Intellect of Cosmos, on the other hand, extends to the Eternity and to the Gnosis of the Gods who are above itself. 3

And thus it comes to pass for men, that we perceive the things in Heaven, as it were through a mist, as far as the condition of the human sense allows.

’Tis true that the extension [of the mind] which we possess for the survey of such transcendent things, is very narrow [still]; but [it

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will be] most ample when it shall perceive with the felicity of [true] self-consciousness.

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Footnotes

368:1 That is, changeless.

368:2 That is, again, in the Æon.

368:3 Stabilis.

368:4 Cf. viii. 1 above.

368:5 Cf. x. 3 above.

369:1 Eadem immobilitate. The whole is an endeavour to at-one the “Platonic” root-opposites “same” (ταὐτόν) and “other” (θάτερον)—the “Self” and the “not-Self,” sat-asat, ātmānātman, of the Upaniṣhads.

369:2 Lit. motionless.

370:1 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 6; also xxxiv. 3 below.

370:2 Compare the Hymn in C. H., v. (vi.) 10, 11.

370:3 Or Eternity.

370:4 Lit. does not hold the chief place.

371:1 Cf. 3 below.

371:2 Consistens, ut ita dixerim, cum deo. Is there possibly here underlying the Latin consistens cum deo the expanded form of the peculiar and elliptical πρὸς τὸν θεὸν of the Proem to the Fourth Gospel (the apud deum of the Vulgate)? This was explained by the Gnostic Ptolemy, somewhere about the middle of the second century, as “at-one-ment with God,” in his exegesis of the opening words, which he glosses as: “The at-one-ment with each other, together with their at-one-ment with the Father” (ἡ πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἄμα καὶ ἡ πρὸς τὸν πατέρα ἕνωσις). So that the first verse of the Proem would run: “In the Beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was (one) with God; yea, the Logos was God. He was in the Beginning (one) with God”—? consistens cum deo. See Irenæus, Ref. Om. Hær., I. viii. 5—Stieren (Leipzig; 1853), i. 102; also F. F. F., p. 388.

371:3 Or receptacle.

372:1 That is, the divine or higher sense, connected with memory in its beginnings and with the Platonic “reminiscence” (the Pythagorean mathēsis) in its maturity.

372:2 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 19.

372:3 That is, Cosmos.

373:1 Lit. breasts.

373:2 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 22.

373:3 The super-cosmic Gods, or beings of the Intelligible Cosmos; the Æons of the Gnostics.

XXXIII

1. [XII. M.] Now on the subject of a “Void,” 1—which seems to almost all a thing of vast importance,—I hold the following view.

Naught is, naught could have been, naught ever will be void.

For all the members of the Cosmos are completely full; so that Cosmos itself is full and [quite] complete with bodies, diverse in quality and form, possessing each its proper kind and size.

And of these bodies—one’s greater than another, or another’s less than is another, by difference of strength and size.

Of course, the stronger of them are more easily perceived, just as the larger [are]. The lesser ones, however, or the more minute, can scarcely be perceived, or not at all—those which we know are things [at all] by sense of touch alone.

Whence many come to think they are not bodies, and that there are void spaces,—which is impossible.

2. So also [for the Space] which is called

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[paragraph continues]Extra-cosmic,—if there be any (which I do not believe),—[then] is it filled by Him with things Intelligible, that is things of like nature with His own Divinity; just as this Cosmos which is called the Sensible, is fully filled with bodies and with animals, consonant with its proper nature and its quality;—[bodies] the proper shape of which we do not all behold, but [see] some large beyond their proper measure, some very small; either because of the great space which lies between [them and ourselves], or else because our sight is dull; so that they seem to us to be minute, or by the multitude are thought not to exist at all, because of their too great tenuity.

I mean the daimones, who, I believe, have their abode with us, and heroes, who abide between the purest part of air above us and the earth,—where it is ever cloudless, and no [movement from the] motion of a single star [disturbs the peace].

3. Because of this, Asclepius, thou shalt call nothing void; unless thou wilt declare of what that’s void, which thou dost say is void;—for instance, void of fire, of water, or things like to these.

For if it should fall out, that it should seem that anything is able to be void of things like these,—though that which seemeth void be little

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or be big, it still cannot be void of spirit and of air.

XXXIV

1. In like way must we also talk concerning “Space,” 1—a term which by itself is void of “sense.” 2

For Space seems what it is from that of which it is [the space]. For if the qualifying 3 word is cut away, the sense is maimed.

Wherefore we shall [more] rightly say the space of water, space of fire, or [space] of things like these.

For as it is impossible that aught be void; so is Space also in itself not possible to be distinguished what it is.

For if you postulate a space without that [thing] of which it is [the space], it will appear to be void space,—which I do not believe exists in Cosmos.

2. If nothing, then, is void, so also Space by its own self does not show what it is unless you add to it lengths, breadths [and depths],—just as you add the proper marks 4 unto men’s bodies.

These things, then, being thus, Asclepius, and ye who are with [him],—know the Intelligible

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[paragraph continues]Cosmos (that is, [the one] which is discerned by contemplation of the mind alone) is bodiless; nor can aught corporal be mingled with its nature,—[by corporal I mean] what can be known by quality, by quantity, and numbers. For there is nothing of this kind in that.

3. This Cosmos, then, which is called Sensible, is the receptacle of all things sensible,—of species, qualities, or bodies.

But not a single one of these can quicken without God. For God is all, and by Him [are] all things, and all [are] of His Will.

For that He is all Goodness, Fitness, Wisdom, unchangeable,—that can be sensed and understood by His own self alone.

Without Him naught hath been, nor is, nor will be.

4. For all things are from Him, in Him, and through Him,—both multitudinous qualities, and mighty quantities, and magnitudes exceeding every means of measurement, and species of all forms;—which things, if thou should’st understand, Asclepius, thou wilt give thanks to God.

And if thou should’st observe it 1 as a whole, thou wilt be taught, by means of the True Reason, that Cosmos in itself is knowable to sense, 2 and that all things in it are wrapped

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as in a vesture by that Higher Cosmos 1 [spoken of above].

XXXV

1. Now every single class of living thing, 2 Asclepius, of whatsoever kind, or it be mortal or be rational, whether it be endowed with soul, or be without one, just as each has its class, 3 so does each several [class] have images of its own class.

And though each separate class of animal has in it every form of its own class, still in the selfsame [kind of] form the units differ from each other.

And so although the class of men is of one kind, so that a man can be distinguished by his [general] look, still individual men within the sameness of their [common] form do differ from each other.

2. For the idea 4 which is divine, is bodiless, and is whatever is grasped by the mind.

So that although these two, 5 from which the general form and body are derived, are bodiless, it is impossible that any single form should be produced exactly like another,—because the

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moments of the hours and points of inclination [when they’re born] are different.

But they are changed as many times as there are moments in the hour of that revolving Circle in which abides that God whom we have called All-formed. 1

3. The species, 2 then, persists, as frequently producing from itself as many images, and as diverse, as there are moments in the Cosmic Revolution, 3—a Cosmos which doth [ever] change in revolution. But the idea 4 [itself] is neither changed nor turned.

So are the forms of every single genus permanent, [and yet] dissimilar in the same [general] form.

XXXVI

1. Asc. And does the Cosmos have a species, O Thrice-greatest one?

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Tris. Dost not thou see, Asclepius, that all has been explained to thee as though to one asleep?

For what is Cosmos, or of what doth it consist, if not of all things born?

This, 5 then, you may assert of heaven, and

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earth, and elements. For though the other things possess more frequent change of species, [still even] heaven, [by its] becoming moist, or dry, or cold, or hot, or clear, or dull, [all] in one kind 1 of heaven,—these [too] are frequent changes into species. 2

2. Earth hath, moreover, always many changes in its species;—both when she brings forth fruits, and when she also nourishes her bringings-forth with the return of all the fruits; the diverse qualities and quantities of air, its stoppings and its flowings 3; and before all the qualities of trees, of flowers, and berries, of scents, of savours—species.

Fire [also] brings about most numerous conversions, and divine. For these are all-formed images of Sun and Moon 4; they’re, as it were, like our own mirrors, which with their emulous resplendence give us back the likenesses of our own images.

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Footnotes

374:1 Cf. C. H., xi. (xii.).

376:1 Cf. xv. 1 above.

376:2 Intellectu caret.

376:3 Principale,—lit. principal.

376:4 Signa; characteristics, presumably.

377:1 Sc. the Cosmos.

377:2 Sensibilem; probably referring to the sensus par excellence; that is, the higher or cosmic sense.

378:1 That is, the Intelligible Cosmos; presumably the Æon.

378:2 Animalium.

378:3 Genus.

378:4 Species; meaning here apparently the genus or class.

378:5 Apparently the idea and mind.

379:1 Cf. C. H., xi. (xii.) 16; and C. H., xvi. 15; also xix. 3 above, and xxxvi. 2 below.

379:2 That is, apparently, the “divine species,” or idea, the genus.

379:3 Cf. xl. 3 below.

379:4 Species.

379:5 That is, that there are genera embracing many species.

380:1 Specie.

380:2 The construction is here confuted and elliptical.

380:3 This clause seems to be out of place.

380:4 Presumably of the ideal Sun and Moon; for “all-formed,” cf. xxxv. 2 above.

XXXVII

1. [XIII. M.] But 5 now let this suffice about such things; and let us once again return

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to man and reason,—gift divine, from which man has the name of rational animal.

Less to be wondered at are the things said of man,—though they are [still] to be admired. Nay, of all marvels that which wins our wonder [most] is that man has been able to find out the nature of the Gods and bring it into play.

2. Since, then, our earliest progenitors were in great error, 1—seeing they had no rational faith about the Gods, and that they paid no heed unto their cult and holy worship,—they chanced upon an art whereby they made Gods [for themselves]. 2

To this invention they conjoined a power that suited it, [derived] from cosmic nature; and blending these together, since souls they could not make, [they set about] evoking daimons’ souls or those of angels; [and thus] attached them to their sacred images and holy mysteries, so that the statues should, by means of these, possess the powers of doing good and the reverse.

3. For thy forebear, Asclepius, the first discoverer of medicine, to whom there is a temple

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hallowed on Libya’s Mount, 1 hard by the shore of crocodiles, 2 in which his cosmic man 3 reposes, that is to say his body; for that the rest [of him], or better still, the whole (if that a man when wholly [plunged] in consciousness of life, 4 be better), hath gone back home to heaven,—still furnishing, [but] now by his divinity, the sick with all the remedies which he was wont in days gone by to give by art of medicine.

4. Hermes, which is the name of my forebear, whose home is in a place called after him, 5 doth aid and guard all mortal [men] who come to him from every side. 6

As for Osiris’ [spouse]; how many are the blessings that we know Isis bestows when she’s propitious; how many does she injure when she’s wrath!

For that the terrene and the cosmic Gods are

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easily enraged, in that they are created and composed of the two natures.

5. And for this cause it comes to pass that these are called the “sacred animals” by the Egyptians, and that each several state 1 gives service to the souls of those whose souls have been made holy, 2 while they were still alive; so that [the several states] are governed by the laws [of their peculiar sacred animals], and called after their names.

It is because of this, Asclepius, those [animals] which are considered by some states deserving of their worship, in others are thought otherwise; and on account of this the states of the Egyptians wage with each other frequent war.

XXXVIII

1. Asc. And of what nature, O Thrice-greatest one, may be the quality of those who are considered terrene Gods?

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Tris. It doth consist, Asclepius, of plants, and stones, and spices, which contain the nature of [their own] divinity.

And for this cause they are delighted with repeated sacrifice, with hymns, and lauds, and

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sweetest sounds, tuned to the key of Heaven’s harmonious song. 1

2. So that what is of heavenly nature, 2 being drawn down into the images by means of heavenly use and practices, may be enabled to endure with joy the nature of mankind, and sojourn with it for long periods of time.

Thus is it that man is the maker of the Gods.

3. But do not, O Asclepius, I pray thee, think the doings of the terrene Gods are the result of chance.

The heavenly Gods dwell in the heights of Heaven, each filling up and watching o’er the rank he hath received; whereas these Gods of ours, 3 each in its way,—by looking after certain things, foretelling others by oracles and prophecy, foreseeing others, and duly helping them along,—act as allies of men, as though they were our relatives and friends.

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Footnotes

380:5 The first six paragraphs of this chapter are quoted in Latin, with two slight verbal variants, by Augustine, De Civitate Dei, xxiv., xxvi.

381:1 Ménard thinks he can distinguish the hand of a Christian scribe in this sentence, which he translates with great freedom, “qui s’égaraient dans l’incrédulité.” A more careful translation, however, does not seem to favour this hypothesis. Hermes says simply that primitive mankind were ignorant of the Gods, and so in error.

381:2 That is, images. Cf. xxx. above; and C. H., xvii.

382:1 Cf. xxvii. 3 above.

382:2 In monte Libyæ circa littus crocodilorum. Does this refer to a Crocodilopolis (κροκοδείλων πόλις, Ptol., iv. 5, § 65)? And if so, to which of these cities, for there were several? The best known of these is Arsinoë in the Faiyyūm; but there was also another down south, in the Thebaid, on the W. bank of the Nile, lat. 25° 6‘, of which remains are still visible at Embeshanda, on the verge of the Libyan desert. See Smith’s Dict. of Gk. and Rom. Geography (London, 1878), sub voc.

382:3 Presumably his mummy.

382:4 In sensu vitæ.

382:5 Hermopolis therefore (compare Lact., D. Institt., i. 6); that is to say, Hermopolis Magna (Ἑρμοῦ πόλις μεγάλη), the modern Eshmūn, on the left bank of the Nile, about lat. 27° 4‘.

382:6 To get wisdom. Augustine’s quotation ends here.

383:1 Or city. For the animal cult of the Egyptians, see Plutarch, De Is. et Os., lxxii. ff.

383:2 Or consecrated.

384:1 Cf. “God’s song” in xiii. 2 above.

384:2 Namely, the nature of the Gods.

384:3 The terrene Gods; the daimones of C. H., xvi. 14.

XXXIX

1. [XIV. M.] Asc. What part of the economy, 4 Thrice-greatest one, does the Heimarmenē, or Fate, then occupy? For do not the celestial Gods rule over generals 5; the terrene occupy particulars?

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Tris. That which we call Heimarmenē, Asclepius, is the necessity of all things that are born, 1 bound ever to themselves with interlinked enchainments.

This, then, is either the effector of all things, or it is highest God, or what is made the second God by God Himself,—or else the discipline 2 of all things both in heaven and on earth, established by the laws of the Divine.

2. And so these twain, Fate and Necessity, are bound to one another mutually by inseparable cohesion. 3

The former of them, the Heimarmenē, gives birth to the beginnings of all things; Necessity compels the end of [all] depending from these principals.

On these doth Order follow, that is their warp-and-woof, and Time’s arrangement for the perfecting of [all] things. For there is naught without the interblend of Order. 4

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That Cosmos 1 is made perfect in all things; for Cosmos’ self is vehicled 2 in Order, or totally consists of Order.

XL

1. So, then, these three, Fate, [and] Necessity, [and] Order, are most immediately effected by God’s Will, who rules the Cosmos by His Law and by His Holy Reason.

From these, accordingly, all willing or not-willing is altogether foreign, according to God’s Will. 3

They are not moved by wrath nor swayed by favour, but are the instruments of the Eternal Reason’s self-compulsion, which is [the Reason] of Eternity, 4 that never can be turned aside, or changed, or be destroyed.

2. First, then, is Fate, which, as it were, by casting in the seed, supplies the embryo of all that are to be.

Follows Necessity, whereby they all are forcibly compelled unto their end.

Third, Order [comes], preserving warp-and-woof of [all] the things which Fate and [which] Necessity arrange. 5

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This, then, is the Eternity, which neither doth begin nor cease to be, which, fixed by law unchangeable, abides in the unceasing motion of its course.

3. It rises and it sets, by turns, throughout its limbs 1; so that by reason of Time’s changes it often rises with the very limbs with which it [once] had set.

For [its] sphericity,—its law of revolution, 2—is of this nature, that all things are so straitly joined to their own selves, that no one knoweth what is the beginning of their revolution 3; since they appear for ever all to go before and follow after their own selves.

Good and bad issues, 4 [therefore,] are commingled in all cosmic things.

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Footnotes

384:4 Rationis; lit. reason.

384:5 Catholicorum.

385:1 Or borne, quæ geruntur.

385:2 Disciplina = ? gnōsis.

385:3 Glutino.

385:4 Cf. J. Laurentius Lydus, De Mensibus, iv. 7 (Wünsch, 70); the rest of the quotation following on what has been already quoted in the note to xix. 3. The Greek is either a very much shortened form or the Latin a very much expanded one, for the former may be translated as follows: “And Fate is also fated Activity (or Energy), or God Himself, or the Order that doth follow that Activity set over all things in the heaven and all things on the earth, together with Necessity. The former (Fate) gives birth to the very beginnings of things, the latter compels the ends also to come into existence. And on them there follow Order and Law, and there is naught that’s orderless.” Cf. Ex. i. 15, and Ex. xi. 1.

386:1 Mundus = cosmos, meaning also order in Greek.

386:2 Gestatur.

386:3 Divinitus.

386:4 That is, the Æon.

386:5 Fate thus seems to be regarded as the Creator, Order as the Preserver, and Necessity as the Destroyer or Regenerator.

387:1 Membra; that is, parts, presumably constellations.

387:2 Cf. xxxv. 3 below.

387:3 Volubilitatis; that is, their turning into themselves; the symbol of which was the serpent swallowing its tail.

387:4 Eventus et fors.

4. [XV. M.] And now it hath been told you on each several point,—as man hath power [to tell], and God hath willed it and permitted it.

This, then, alone remains that we should do,—bless God and give Him praise; and so return to taking thought for body [’s comfort].

For now sufficiently have we been filled with feast of mind by our discourse on sacred things. 5

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XLI

1. Now when they came forth from the holy place, 1 they turned their faces towards the south 2 when they began their prayers to God.

For when the sun is setting, should anyone desire to pray to God, he ought to turn him thitherwards 3; so also at the rising of the same, unto that spot which lies beneath the sun. 4

As they were just beginning to recite the prayer, Asclepius did whisper:

---

[Asc.] Let us suggest to father, Tat,—what he did bid us do, 5—that we should say our prayer to God with added incense and with unguents.

Whom when Thrice-greatest heard, he grew distressed and said:

---

2. [Tris.] Nay, nay, Asclepius; speak more propitious words! For this is like to profanation of [our] sacred rites,—when thou dost pray to God, to offer incense and the rest.

For naught is there of which He stands in need, in that He is all things, or all are in Him.

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But let us worship, pouring forth our thanks. For this is the best incense in God’s sight,—when thanks are given to Him by men. 1

---

3. [We give] Thee grace, Thou highest [and] most excellent! For by Thy Grace we have received the so great Light of Thy own Gnosis.

O holy Name, fit [Name] to be adored, O Name unique, by which the Only God 2 is to be blest through worship of [our] Sire,—[of Thee] who deignest to afford to all a Father’s piety, and care, and love, and whatsoever virtue is more sweet [than these], endowing [us] with sense, [and] reason, [and] intelligence;—with sense that we may feel Thee; with reason that we may track Thee out from the appearances of things 3; with means of recognition that we may joy in knowing Thee.

4. Saved by Thy Power divine, let us rejoice that Thou hast shown Thyself to us in all Thy Fullness. Let us rejoice that Thou hast deigned to consecrate us, [still] entombed in bodies, to Eternity.

For this is the sole festival of praise worthy of man,—to know Thy Majesty.

We have known Thee; yea, by the Single Sense of our intelligence, we have perceived

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[paragraph continues]Thy Light supreme,—O Thou true Life of life, O Fecund Womb that giveth birth to every nature!

5. We have known Thee, O Thou completely filled with the Conception from Thyself of Universal Nature!

We have known Thee, O Thou Eternal Constancy!

For in the whole of this our prayer in worship of Thy Good, this favour only of Thy Goodness do we crave;—that Thou wilt keep us constant in our Love of knowing Thee, 1 and let us ne’er be cut off from this kind of Life.

---

With this desire we [now] betake us to [our] pure and fleshless meal. 2

---

Footnotes

387:5 Cf. the conclusion of C. H., xvii.

388:1 De adyto; “down from,” literally.

388:2 This is apparently an error for south-west or west.

388:3 That is, to the setting sun or the west. Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 16, Comment.

388:4 Subsolanus, lying beneath the sun; that is to say, eastern.

388:5 Cf. xxxviii. 1 above.

389:1 For the three preceding paragraphs, see Lact., D. I., vi. 25.

389:2 The Cosmos, presumably, as the One God.

389:3 Suspicionibus; hints, perhaps, and so phenomena.

390:1 Or of Thy Gnosis.

390:2 Cænam.

COMMENTARY

THE TITLE

The titles in the Latin MSS. vary. The heading preferred by Hildebrand is “Asclepius, or a Dialogue of Thrice-greatest Hermes”; while in the Bipontine edition, the title stands: “Thrice-greatest Hermes Concerning the Nature of the Gods; A Sermon addressed to Asclepius.” Ménard, the French translator, prefers: “A Sermon of Initiation, or Asclepius.”

The treatise begins with a transparent gloss, in all probability originally the marginal note of some scribe,

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or student, which has improperly crept into the text. It runs: “This Asclepius is my Sun-god”; that is to say, apparently: “This Sermon ‘Asclepius’ has illumined me”; from which it is evident that the title lying before the scribe was “Asclepius” simply, as may be seen from § 2: “It is, however, with thy name I will inscribe this treatise.” Stobæus, moreover, in quoting from the original Greek (of xxvii. 4), heads his extract simply, “Of Hermes from the [Sermons] to Asclepius.”

On the other hand, the Church Father Lactantius, writing at the beginning of the fourth century, and quoting from the Greek original, says twice, categorically (D. I., iv. 6 and vii. 8): “Hermes in illo libro qui λόγος τέλειος inscribitur”; that is, “Hermes in the Book entitled ‘The Perfect Sermon,’ or ‘The Sermon of Initiation’”; while Johannes Laurentius Lydus on three occasions quotes from this “Perfect Sermon” of Hermes, and on each occasion so names it.

I have accordingly preferred this as the main title, and added “The Asclepius” as an alternative.

THE OLD LATIN TRANSLATION AND THE GREEK ORIGINAL

Of the Greek original we have quotations or references by Lactantius (see viii. 1 and 3; xxv. 4: xxvi. 1; xli. 2), Johannes Laurentius Lydus (see xix. 3; xxviii. 1; xxxix. 1, 2), and Stobæus (see xxvii. 4).

If we compare these Greek quotations with our Latin translation, we shall find, not only that the Latin is an exceedingly free rendering of the Greek, showing many expansions and contractions, and often missing the sense of the original, but also that even in Greek there were probably several recensions of the same text. 1

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Indeed, the free rendering of our translation is of such a nature that it is impossible to base upon it any certain conclusions as to the date of the original or its precise worth in the history of religion. 1

That, however, our Latin translation is an ancient one is proved by Augustine’s verbal quotations from it (see xxiii. 1; xxiii. 3-xxiv. 2; xxiv. 3; xxvii. 1-4). It was thus in existence about 400 A.D. at least. 2

Tradition, however, has assigned to it a far higher antiquity, attributing it to no less distinguished a writer than Appuleius, and so referring it to the first half of the second century.

This attribution has, of course, for long been questioned by modern criticism, and Reitzenstein, though he does not discuss the subject, accepts the adverse verdict and refers us to a “Pseudo-Appuleius.”

Hildebrand, whose minute acquaintance with Appuleius’ peculiar style and neologisms is a guarantee of his competence, has thoroughly gone into the matter; and though he sums up against tradition, it is in a half-hearted way. The translation, if not by Appuleius, is at any rate in old African Latin, and there is nothing in the style which absolutely forbids the possibility of its being by the author of The Golden Ass and the initiate of Isis. The strongest point, other than philological, against tradition is that Augustine does not say the translation was by Appuleius; but this seems to me to be unworthy of serious consideration.

It is, of course, difficult to turn possibilities into probabilities, but I see no reason why the Greek original of our Sermon should not be assigned to the

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earlier Hermes-Asclepian dialogues as well as to any others. That it was one of the most famous is evident by its wide quotation, and by the fact that several recensions of the Greek text were in circulation.

OF THE WRITER AND THE PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE

The Latin translator retains a number of the original Greek technical terms, and if we could only rely on his translation giving us the substance of the original in all cases, we should be presented in several passages with phenomena which would persuade us that the writer of the original intended his readers to think he was an Egyptian, and that his native nomenclature was other than Greek, as is also the case in C. H. (xvi.).

For instance, in vii. 2, “the man ‘essential,’ 1 as say the Greeks,”—but this may be a gloss of the Latin translator.

Again, in x. 2: “So that . . . ‘World’ seems most fitly called ‘Cosmos’ in Greek,”—which seems to be the original.

Yet again, the “multifarious reasoning” of xii. 3 reminds us strongly of “the philosophizing of the Greeks—the noise of words,” in C. H., xvi. 2.

On the other hand, the phrase, “which we in Greek (græce) believe to be the Cosmos,” would seem to make the original author forget his Egyptian rôle.

While “its bottom . . . is called in Greek A-eidēs,” coupled with “in Greek they are called Hades . . . in Latin Inferi” (xvii. 3), may be assigned to a gloss of the translator.

In xxiv. 1, however, the sentence, “Dost thou not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is the image of the Heaven? . . . This land of ours is shrine of the whole world”—coupled with the rest of the chapter, and Ch. xxv.

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[paragraph continues]—could hardly have been written by a Greek. In xxviii. 1, moreover, the “weighing of the merit” of the soul is strongly Egyptian, and so with the image and animal-cult.

As to the persons of the dialogue, I would suggest that originally the sermon was addressed to Asclepius alone, and that the slight narrative indications were added later to adapt it to wider circles.

The chief disciple is evidently Asclepius; he it is who is already “well versed in Nature,” according to C. H., xiv. (xv.) 1; that is to say, he has progressed beyond the stage of Hearer, for he questions Hermes, whereas Tat does not ask questions, but listens only, he is “the one who is to hear” (i. 1). To them is added Ammon on the proposal of Asclepius; and Ammon is admitted on the ground that he had already had much written to him, but apparently had not yet been admitted to oral teaching.

The teaching is delivered in solemn surroundings in the holy place or shrine (i. 2), and teacher and pupils constitute the “sacred four.” Hermes teaches in a state of exaltation; the place is filled with “God’s goodly presence,” and “Love Divine” instructs them, through Hermes’ lips, in answer to the Pure and Single Love of Philosophy in their hearts (cf. xii. 3; xiv. 1).

The same hand that wrote the warning against revealing the sermon to others in i. 2 also probably wrote: “And ye, O Tat, Asclepius and Ammon, in silence hide the mysteries divine within the secret places of your hearts, and breathe no word of their concealment!” (xxxii. 4); he also, presumably, glossed “Asclepius” (xxxiv. 2) with “and ye who are with him,” and added the naïve whisper of Asclepius to Tat (xli. 1).

This redactor (if our analysis is correct), moreover,

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was a member of a select 1 ascetic community, judging at any rate by his last sentence (xli. 5); in which case Ammon can hardly be equated with any King Ammon, but must be taken as standing for some grade of the community. I would suggest that this grade was similar to that of the Exoterici of the Pythagoreans or the outer circles of the Essenes, of which the members still lived in the world, but received instruction. In this case, however, the “we” of the last sentence would have to be taken as referring to Asclepius and Tat, and not to Ammon.

As to the dependence of our sermon on the rest of the literature, I find more points of contact between it and C. H., x. (xi.), “The Key” sermon addressed to Tat; none of the references, however, which I have given in the notes, show any literal dependence.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE WILL OF GOD

In the general doctrine the stress laid on the concept of the Will of God 2 is to be specially noticed. This Will seems to be almost personified, and is, of course, a fundamental doctrine of the Trismegistic religio-philosophy. 3

In xxvi. 1 it is identified with the Goodness 4 of God, and the Nature of God. 5 But what it seems to correspond to most nearly is the Æon or Eternity-idea which is set forth very clearly in xxx.-xxxii.—in fact, more clearly than anywhere else in the Trismegistic

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literature. God and Æon are the sources of all things; and Æon is “the Eternity of God, in Truth itself subsisting, the Fullness of all things” (xxxii. 1). The Will of God is thus the Æon or Plērōma, the Wisdom, the Energy, the Spouse of the Supreme.

This Will rules Cosmos with Law and Holy Reason (xl.); Cosmos being the Order of things involved in Fate and Necessity the instruments of the Divine Will. 1

Our sermon is also characterized by the frequent use it makes of the terms Spirit and Sense.

CONCERNING SPIRIT AND THE ALL-SENSE

The Spirit is evidently Cosmic Life (vi. 4; xxvii. 1) and individual life (x. 4). 2 The exposition of it begins with xiv. 2; Spirit and Matter, or the Nature of the Cosmos (xiv. 3), are practically regarded as the Positive and Negative, or Masculine and Feminine Energies of the Divine.

Spirit is the Ruler (xvii. 1) of all things in Cosmos or Nature; it is the immediate Instrument of the Will of God (xvi. 3); and is, indeed, loosely identified with that Will (xix. 4); while in still looser fashion Spirit seems to be symbolized by “Heaven” and the Sensible Cosmos by “Earth” (xix. 2).

It is very probable that this doctrine of Spirit as Divine Breath is fundamentally Egyptian, and owes nothing to immediate Semitic influence. However this may be, the use of the term Sense, as apparently in some way superior to Reason (vi. 4; x. 4), is very striking, and, as in some cases opposed to the exaltation of the Reason found elsewhere in our tractates, under the influence of this leading idea of Greek philosophy, discloses an Egyptian point of view.

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We have already noticed this use of the term in some of our tractates, but in our present sermon it is brought into great prominence. This Sense is not the differentiated senses, but a Unit or Cosmic Sense.

It is “the Divine Sense of intelligence,” and is found only in God and in man’s reason (vii. 1; xxxii. 2).

It is the “Higher Sense (with which Celestial Gift mankind alone is blest)”—characterized as the “feeder of the mind” (xviii. 1); yet on the other hand this “Higher Sense” is that “which by good chance a man perceives by mind, when out of all his senses.”

This Sense is in some fashion closely connected with Nature and Cosmos (xxi. 1); through it man “disciplines his soul,” and “cures his intellect,” thus gaining “intelligence of God-like Reason” (xxii. 1), and finally “mingling himself with the All-sense of the Divine Intelligence” (xxix. 2).

This All-sense is the same as the “Whole Sense of Divinity,” and is the Likeness of God; it is “in its own self immoveable,” and yet “doth set itself in motion within its own stability” (xxxii. 1). Man must make himself like unto this Likeness.

This Likeness is evidently the Æon or Intelligible Cosmos; for the “Cosmic Sense is the Container of all sensibles” (xxxii. 2).

In man its chief normal characteristic is the retentiveness of memory, “through which man is made ruler of the Earth” (xxxii. 2). This Sense is then man’s continuum, the germ of everlastingness in him, the root-ground of consciousness (xxxii. 3), the Single Sense of the intelligence (xli. 4), which is fully brought to birth only when a man “is wholly plunged in consciousness of life (in sensu vitæ)” (xxxvii. 3),—the “spiritual life” of the Christian Gnostics.

The fact that we have only a translation to deal with

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prevents us laying too much stress on details, but the general idea is clear enough; so too with the rest of this, the longest of our sermons, we must be content to refer only to general points, the chief of which are the “prophetic” utterances.

THE PROPHETIC UTTERANCES

These present us with problems of very great difficulty, and, so far, I have neither seen any solution nor has any occurred to me.

So much work has been done on contemporary prophetic utterances of this nature, especially on the Sibylline Literature, that it may be said that the scholastic mind has reached certain general criteria with regard to such pronouncements—the chief of which is that the hypothesis of genuine prophecy is not to be entertained.

In the Sibylline literature, indeed, this is clearly established; for much of it consists of traditional history written in the prophetical tense, so to say; when the history comes to an end the date of the “prophetical” writer is at once detected, for all that follows has no longer any relation to historical events.

In the case of our “prophecies,” however, we have nothing of this nature to guide us. All we can say is that they seem to have been written, most probably, at a time when the Trismegistic communities were being persecuted.

That this was in the course of the fourth century, however, as Reitzenstein (p. 213) supposes, seems to me to be, so far, destitute of any sure objective confirmation; it not only compels us to suppose that the prophecies are later interpolations (which they may possibly be), but that these interpolations are later than Lactantius; whereas there is every probability that

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the Church Father had the text of them before him, 1 and his date is the beginning of the fourth century.

On the other hand, Zosimus, writing somewhere about the end of the third and beginning of the fourth century, breathes no word of persecution, and leads us to suppose that the community was still flourishing. We are thus still in the gravest uncertainty.

The first of our “prophecies” is in xii. 3: “For I will tell thee as though it were propheticly”—addressed to Asclepius, and, therefore, probably not due to the redactor who we have supposed added the narrative sentences.

The lament of the writer is that “the Single Love, the Love of Pure Philosophy,” is fast disappearing from the world; he can hardly have had Christianity in mind when writing these words, for he contrasts the “Pure Philosophy” with “multifarious reasoning” and “divers sciences,” and the latter can hardly be said to be characteristic of General Christianity.

If, however, his words may be said to include also Gnostic Christianity, then he was clearly not in sympathy with it; but this can hardly be the case, seeing that the resemblances between the Trismegistic and Christian Gnosis are of a very intimate nature.

THE PROSCRIPTION OF THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS

Turning next to xxiv. 2, we meet with the clear statement that the worship of the Gods will be legally proscribed by the “barbarian” masters of Egypt (also xxv. 3).

Such a general proscription in this emphatic sense took place in Egypt only with the destruction of the Serapeum by the Christians themselves in 389 A.D.

p. 400

[paragraph continues]Of persecutions of the Christians by the Roman authorities in Egypt prior to this we get clear indications in the writings of the Christian Gnostic Basilides, who flourished at Alexandria at the beginning of the second century, and wrote specially of martyrdom. But this will little help us for the proscription of a cult that favoured the worship of the Gods and of their images.

Can it, then, be possible that these prophetic utterances were written at a time when many of the same nature were being penned by Jew and Christian? For our author, as for Jewish and Christian writers, the “End of the World” was at hand; his expectation is in this precisely the same as that of the writers of the New Testament documents.

The cause of this dire event is that Egypt, the “shrine of the whole world,” the “Holy Land” 1 par excellence, will be polluted with all iniquity and violence. The Cult of the Gods will cease, and the Gods will leave the Earth and mount to Heaven. The man’s whole heart is bleeding for Egypt, even as the heart of a Jew for Jerusalem.

If there is any immediate historical references in these heartfelt utterances, we must seek them in such phrases as: “This holiest land, seat of our shrines and temples, shall be choked with tombs and corpses” (xxiv. 3); “the tale of tombs shall far exceed the number of the quick” (ibid., § 4) 2; and “Egypt shall be made the home of Scyth or Indian, or someone like to them—that is, a foreign neighbour.”

It is true that the Christians were ever reproached

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with worshipping the dead, and building churches over the bones of the dead—an act of utter pollution according to all Pagan notions; but the words of our author, even allowing for all hyperbole, can hardly be construed in this sense.

People like Scyths or Indians, again, if we are to suppose any historical reference, can hardly be imagined to refer to the Romans; while the Goths under Alaric, who ravaged Greece in 395, 396 A.D., are too late even for Reitzenstein. Moreover, we have already in our notes pointed to the strange conjunction of Scyth and Barbarian in our text as being also found in Colossians.

On the other hand, nothing but the entire State suppression of the Pagan Religion in all its forms can satisfy xxv. 3, and this just suits the end of the fourth century.

If, however, we cannot entertain so late a date, and I do not think we can, there seems nothing for it but to give the writer some credit for his prognostication of the future; for eventually things certainly turned out for him and all he held most dear very much as he imagined or feared they would.

THE LAST HOPE OF THE RELIGION OF THE MIND

At any rate the last hope of the Pure Love, the Religion of the Mind, is in the Trismegistic Communities, if indeed it is so permitted to interpret xxvii. 3:

“Yea, they who rule the earth shall be distributed [through all the lands], and finally be gathered in a state,—at top of Egypt’s upper part,—which shall be founded towards the setting sun, and to which all the mortal race shall speed.”

We need not insist upon details, for our translator

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may have gone wide of the original; for instance, the “race” may, instead of being “mortal” in the original, have been the “Race” of which we have already heard so much in Philo and these tractates; but the similarity of the idea cannot fail to remind us of Philo when, in writing of the Redeemed of Spiritual Israel, he says:

“Those who were but scattered in Hellas and non-Grecian (Barbarian) lands, over islands and over continents, shall rise up with one impulse, and from diverse regions flock together unto the one spot revealed to them.” 1

And with this further compare the famous passage on the Therapeuts:

“Now this Race of men is to be found in many parts of the inhabited world, both the Grecian and non-Grecian world, sharing in the Perfect Good.

“In Egypt there are crowds of them in every province, or nome as they call it, and especially round Alexandria. For they who are in every way (or in every nome) the most highly advanced, come as colonists, 2 as it were, to the Therapeutic fatherland.” 3

Moreover, just as the Therapeuts in the immediately following lines of Philo are said to have their community on a hill, so too in our text we immediately find mention of the Trismegistic communities as having their chief centre on the Libyan Hill,—a community which is spoken of as “very large” in numbers, and so is somewhat of a contradiction to the numbers of the Pious given in xxii. 1, where we are told “they may be counted even in the world,” unless the sentence is to be taken as rhetorical.

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This Hill is called the Libyan Mount, a vague enough title; nor is this vagueness removed when we find it again referred to (in xxxvii. 3) as the place of burial of the body of the First Asclepius, and obtain the additional information that it is “hard by the shore of crocodiles,” for this can hardly refer to Crocodilopolis in the Fayyūm, the most northern of the towns so named, seeing that the Libyan Mount is “at the top of Egypt’s upper part,” and “towards the setting sun.”

This, however, corresponds admirably with the location of Philo’s Therapeut community on the southern shore of Lake Mareotis, just south of Alexandria; but few indeed will be found to entertain the possibility even that Philo and our author may be speaking of the same people from different standpoints and under different names.

As far as I can see, there is no certainty in the matter; and, therefore, I leave it as a problem of immense interest that has not as yet found a solution.

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Footnotes

391:1 See R. 195, 2.

392:1 The so-founded opinions of Bernays and Zeller are characterized by Reitzenstein (p. 195) as of as little value as the opinions which made the whole of our literature dependent on New Platonism.

392:2 Augustine’s date is 354-430 A.D.

393:1 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 14.

395:1 Cf. for references to the “few,” xxii. 1; xxiii. 1; xxxiv. 3; xl. 1.

395:2 Cf. vii. 3; viii. 2; xi. 4; xiv. 1; xvi. 3; xix. 4; xx. 3; xxii. 4; xxv. 2; xxvi. 1, 2 and 3.

395:3 Cf. especially C. H., iv. (v.) 1; x. (xi.) i.

395:4 In the Greek text of Lactantius this is “the Good.”

395:5 Cf. vi. 1; xiv. 3.

396:1 Cf. also C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 19, 20, and R. 39, n. 1.

396:2 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 13, and Commentary.

399:1 See xxv. 4, and note.

400:1 The “image of the Heaven”; cf. K. K., 46-48.

400:2 This is very different language from the more moderate tone of C. H., ix. (x.) 4, where we are told about the Gnostics, “they are thought mad and laughed at; they’re hated and despised, and sometimes even put to death.”

402:1 De Execrat., § 9; M. ii. 435, 436; P. 937 (Ri. v. 255).

402:2 Cf. in our Sermon, xxv. 1: Egypt, “the sole colony of holiness.”

402:3 D. V. C., C. 56 ff; M. i. 474; P. 892. Cf. F. F. F., 69.

Thrice-Greatest Hermes

Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis

Being a Translation of the Extant Sermons and Fragments of the Trismegistic Literature, with Prolegomena, Commentaries, and Notes

By

G. R. S. Mead

Volume III.—Excerpts and Fragments

London and Benares

The Theosophical Publishing Society

[1906]

Prepared for sacred-texts.com, February 2009. This text is in the public domain because it was published prior to 1922.

p. v

Contents

I. EXCERPTS BY STOBÆUS

 

Ex. I. Of Piety and True Philosophy	3
Commentary	12
Ex. II. Of the Ineffability of God	14
Commentary	15
Ex. III. Of Truth	17
Commentary	23
Ex. IV. God, Nature and the Gods	24
Commentary	25
Ex. V. Of Matter	26
Ex. VI. Of Time	28
Ex. VII. Of Bodies Everlasting and Bodies Perishable	30
Commentary	33
Ex. VIII. Of Energy and Feeling	34
Commentary	43
Ex. IX. Of the Decans and the Stars	45
Commentary	54
Ex. X. Concerning the Rule of Providence, Necessity and Fate	55
Commentary	57
Ex. XI. Of Justice	58
Commentary	59
Ex. XII. Of Providence and Fate	60
Ex. XIII. Of the Whole Economy	61
Ex. XIV. Of Soul, I.	63
Ex. XV. Of Soul, II.	65
The Embryonic Stages of Incarnation	68
Ex. XVI. Of Soul, III.	72
Ex. XVII. Of Soul, IV.	75
Ex. XVIII. Of Soul, V.	77
Commentary	79
Ex. XIX. Of Soul, VI.	80
Commentary	82
Ex. XX. The Power of Choice	84
Commentary	86
Ex. XXI. Of Isis to Horus	87
Commentary	87
Ex. XXII. An Apophthegm	88
Ex. XXIII. From “Aphrodite”	89
Commentary	90
Ex. XXIV. A Hymn of the Gods	91
Commentary	92
Ex. XXV. The Virgin of the World, I.	93
Ex. XXVI. The Virgin of the World, II.	125
Commentary
Argument	134
Sources?	146
The Direct Voice and the Books of Hermes	147
Kamephis and the Dark Mystery	149
Kneph-Kamephis	151
Hermes I. and Hermes II.	152
The Black Rite	155
Black Land	158
The Pupil of the World’s Eye	159
The Son of the Virgin	160
The Mystery of the Birth of Horus	162
“Ishon”	165
The Sixty Soul-Regions	168
Plutarch’s Yogin	169
The Plain of Truth	171
The Boundaries of the Numbers which Pre-exist in the Soul	173
The Mysterious “Cylinder”	175
The Eagle, Lion, Dragon and Dolphin	180
Momus	182
The Mystic Geography of Sacred Lands	184
Ex. XXVII. From the Sermon of Isis to Horus	188
Commentary
Argument	204
Title and Ordering	206
The Books of Isis and Horus	207
The Watery Sphere and Subtle Body	209
The Habitat of Encarnate Souls	210

II. REFERENCES AND FRAGMENTS IN THE FATHERS

	I. JUSTIN MARTYR
i.	The Most Ancient of Philosophers	215
	The “Words of Ammon”	215
	The Ineffability of God	216
ii.	Hermes and Asclepius Sons of God	217
iii.	Hermes the Word who brings Tidings from God	217
	The Sons of God in Hellenistic Theology	218
	An Unverifiable Quotation	218
	II. ATHENAGORAS	220
	III. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
i.	Many Hermeses and Asclepiuses	221
ii.	The Apotheosis of Hermes and Asclepius	222
iii.	The Books of Hermes	222
The General Catalogue of the Egyptian Priestly Library	225
IV. TERTULLIAN
i.	Hermes the Master of all Physics	226
ii.	Hermes the Writer of Scripture	227
iii.	Hermes the First Preacher of Reincarnation	227
iv.	Hermes on Metempsychosis
Frag. I.	228
V. CYPRIAN
God is beyond all Understanding	229
VI. ARNOBIUS
The School of Hermes	230
VII. LACTANTIUS
i.	Thoyth-Hermes and his Books of the Gnosis	231
Frag. II.	233
The Historical Origin of the Hermetic Tradition	233
ii.	Uranus, Cronus and Hermes, Adepts of the Perfect Science	234
iii.	Divine Providence	235
iv.	On Mortal and Immortal Sight
Frag. III.	235
v.	Man made after the Image of God	236
vi.	Hermes the First Natural Philosopher	237
vii.	The Daimon-Chief	237
viii.	Devotion in God-Gnosis
Frag. IV.	238
ix.	The Cosmic Son of God
Frag. V.	239
x.	The Demiurge of God	240
xi.	The Name of God
Frag. VI.	241
xii.	The Holy Word about the Lord of All
Frag. VII.	241
xiii.	His Own Father and Own Mother	242
xiv.	The Power and Greatness of the Word	242
xv.	The Fatherless and Motherless	242
xvi.	Piety the Gnosis of God	243
xvii.	The Only Way to Worship God	243
xviii.	The Worthiest Sacrifice to God
Frag. VIII.	244
xix.	Man made in the Image of God	244
xx.	Contemplation	245
xxi.	The Dual Nature of Man
Frag. IX.	245
Wonder the Beginning of Philosophy	246
xxii.	The Cosmic Restoration
Frag. X.	247
xxii.	Of Hermes and his Doctrine Concerning God	247
xxiv.	A Repetition	248
xxv.	Plato as Prophet follows Trismegistus	248
VIII. AUGUSTINE
i.-iii.	Three Quotations from the Old Latin Version of the “Perfect Sermon”	249
IX. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA
i.	Cyril’s Corpus of XV. Books	251
ii.	The Incorporeal Eye
Frag. XI.	253
iii.	The Heavenly Word Proceeding Forth
Frag. XII.	254
The Pyramid
Frag. XIII.	254
The Nature of God’s Intellectual World
Frag. XIV.	255
The Word of the Creator
Frag. XV.	256
iv.	Mind of Mind
Frag. XVI.	257
He is All
Frag. XVII.	258
Concerning Spirit
Frag. XVIII.	258
The “To Asclepius” of Cyril’s Corpus	259
v.	From “The Mind”	260
vi.	Osiris and Thrice-greatest Agathodaimon
Frag. XIX.	261
“Let there be Earth!”
Frag. XX.	262
The Generation of the Sun
Frag. XXI.	262
“Let the Sun be!”
Frag. XXII.	263
vii.	The Firmament
Frag. XXIII.	263
viii.	From the “To Asclepius”	264
ix.	The Sole Protection	265
x.	The Supreme Artist
Frag. XXIV.	266
xi.	An Unreferenced Quotation
Frag. XXV.	266
X. SUIDAS
Hermes speaks of the Trinity	268
An Orphic Hymn	269
XI. ANONYMOUS	270

III. REFERENCES AND FRAGMENTS IN THE PHILOSOPHERS

I. ZOSIMUS
On the Anthrōpos-Doctrine	273
The Processions of Fate	273
“The Inner Door”	274
Against Magic
Frag. XXVI.	275
Thoth the First Man	276
The Libraries of the Ptolemies	277
Nikotheos	278
From the Books of the Chaldæans	279
Man the Mind
Frag. XXVII.	280
The Counterfeit Daimon	281
His Advice to Theosebeia	283
II. JAMBLICHUS
Abammon the Teacher	285
Hermes the Inspirer	286
Those of the Hermaïc Nature	288
The Books of Hermes	289
The Monad from the One	291
The Tradition of the Trismegistic Literature	291
Bitys	294
Ostanes-Asclepius	296
From the Hermaïc Workings	297
The Cosmic Spheres	299
III. JULIAN THE EMPEROR
The Disciples of Wisdom	303
IV. FULGENTIUS THE MYTHOGRAPHER
Frag. XXVIII.	305

IV. CONCLUSION

An Attempt at Classifying the Extant Literature	306
Of Hermes	306
To Tat	308
To Asclepius	310
To Ammon	311
Of Asclepius	312
Of Isis	312
From the Agathodaimon Literature	313
Of Judgments of Value	314
The Sons of God	316
Concerning Dates	319
The Blend of Traditions	321
Of Initiation	323
A Last Word	325

V. INDEX

p. 1

I

Excerpts by Stobæus

p. 2

p. 3

EXCERPT I.

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OF PIETY AND [TRUE] PHILOSOPHY

(Title from Patrizzi (p. 4); preceded by “Of Thrice-greatest Hermes.”

Text: Stobæus, Phys., xxxv. 1, under heading: “Of Hermes—from the [Book] to Tat”; G. pp. 273-278; M. i. 190-194; W. i. 273-278. 1

Ménard, Livre IV., No. i. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,” pp. 225-230.)

1. 2 Her. Both for the sake of love to man, and piety 3 to God, I [now], my son, for the first time take pen in hand. 4

p. 4

For there can be no piety more righteous than to know the things that are, and to give thanks for these to Him who made them,—which I will never cease to do.

2. Tat. By doing what, O father, then, if naught be true down here, may one live wisely?

Her. Be pious, 1 son! Who pious is, doth reach the height of [all] philosophy 2; without philosophy the height of piety cannot be scaled.

But he who learns what are existent things, and how they have been ordered, and by whom, and for whose sake,—he will give thanks for all unto the Demiurge, as unto a good sire, a nurse [most] excellent, a steward who doth never break his trust. 3

3. Who giveth thanks, he will be pious; and he who pious is, will [get to] know both where is Truth, and what it is.

And as he learns, he will more and more pious grow.

For never, son, can an embodied soul that has once leaped aloft, so as to get a hold upon the truly Good and True, slip back again into the contrary.

For when the soul [once] knows the Author of its Peace, 4 ’tis filled with wondrous love, 5 and

p. 5

with forgetfulness 1 of every ill, and can no more keep from the Good.

4. Let this be, O [my] son, the goal of piety;—to which if thou attain, thou shalt both nobly live, and happily depart from life, for that thy soul no longer will be ignorant of whither it should wing its flight again.

This is the only [Way], my son,—the Path [that leads] to Truth, [the Path] on which our forebears, 2 too, did set their feet, and, setting them, did find the Good. 3

Solemn and smooth this Path, yet difficult to tread for soul while still in body.

5. For first it hath to fight against itself, and make a great dissension, and manage that the victory should rest with the one part [of its own self].

For that there is a contest of the one against the two, 4—the former trying to flee, the latter dragging down.

p. 6

And there’s great strife and battle [dire] of these with one another,—the one desiring to escape, the others striving to detain.

6. The victory, moreover, of the one or of the others 1 is not resemblant.

For that the one doth hasten [upwards] to the Good, the others settle [downwards] to the bad.

The one longs to be freed; the others love their slavery.

If [now] the two be vanquished, they remain deprived of their own selves and of their ruler 2; but if the one be worsted, ’tis harried by the two, and driven about, being tortured by the life down here.

This 3 is, [my] son, the one who leadeth thee upon the Thither 4 Path.

Thou must, [my] son, first leave behind thy body, 5 before the end [of it 6 is reached], and come out victor in the life of conflict, and thus as victor wend thy way towards home.

7. And now, [my] son, I will go through the things that are by heads 7; for thou wilt understand the things that will be said, if thou remember what thy ears have heard.

All things that are, are [then] in motion; alone the that which is not, is exempt from it.

p. 7

Every body is in a state of change; [but] all bodies are not dissolvable; some bodies [only] are dissolvable.

Not every animal is mortal; not every animal, immortal.

That which can be dissolved, can [also] be destroyed; the permanent [is] the unchangeable; the that which doth not change, [is] the eternal.

What doth become 1 for ever, for ever also is destroyed 2; what once for all becomes, is never more destroyed, nor does it [ever more] become some other thing.

8. First God; second the Cosmos; third [is] man. 3

The Cosmos, for man’s sake; and man, for God’s.

The soul’s irrational part 4 is mortal; its rational part, immortal.

All essence [is] immortal; all essence, free from change.

All that exists 5 [is] twofold; naught of existing things remains.

Not all are moved by soul; the soul moves all that doth exist. 6

p. 8

9. All that suffereth [is] sensible; not all that’s sensible, doth suffer.

All that feels pain, doth also have experience of pleasure,—a mortal life 1; not all that doth experience pleasure, feeleth [also] pain,—a life immortal.

Not every body’s subject to disease; all bodies subject to disease are subject [too] to dissolution.

10. The mind’s in God; the reasoning faculty’s 2 in man.

The reason’s in the mind; the mind’s above all suffering.

Nothing in body’s true 3; all in the bodiless is free from what’s untrue.

All that becomes, [is] subject unto change; not all that doth become, need be dissolved.

Naught[’s] good upon the earth; naught[’s] bad in heaven.

11. God[’s] good; [and] man [is] bad. 4

Good [is] free-willed; bad is against the will.

The gods do choose what things are good, as good; . . .

The good law of the mighty [One] 5 is the good law; good law’s the law.

p. 9

Time’s for the gods; the law for men. 1

Bad is the stuff that feeds the world; time is the thing that brings man to an end.

12. All in the heaven is free from change; all on the earth is subject unto it.

Naught in the heaven’s a slave; naught on the earth is free.

Nothing can not be known in heaven; naught can be known on earth.

The things on earth do not consort with things in heaven. 2

All things in heaven are free from blame; all on the earth are blameworthy.

The immortal is not mortal; the mortal, not immortal.

That which is sown, is not invariably brought forth; but that which is brought forth, must have invariably been sown.

13. [Now] for a body that can be dissolved, [there are] two “times”:—[the period] from its sowing till its birth, and from its birth until its death; but for an everlasting body, the time from birth alone. 3

Things subject unto dissolution wax and wane.

The matter that’s dissolved, doth undergo two

p. 10

contrary transformings:—death and birth; but everlasting [matter], doth change either to its own self, or into things like to itself.

The birth of man [is] the beginning of his dissolution; man’s dissolution the beginning of his birth.

That which departs, 1 [returns; and what returns] departs [again]. 2

14. Of things existent, some are in bodies, some in forms, and some [are] in activities. 3

Body[’s] in forms; and form and energy in body.

The deathless shares not in the mortal [part]; the mortal shares in the immortal.

The mortal body doth not mount 4 into the deathless one; the deathless one descends 5 into the mortal frame.

Activities do not ascend, but they descend.

15. The things on earth bestow no benefit on things in heaven; the things in heaven shower every benefit on things on earth.

Of bodies everlasting heaven is the container; of those corruptible, the earth.

Earth [is] irrational; the heaven [is] rational.

The things in heaven [are] under it; the things on earth above the earth.

p. 11

Heaven[’s] the first element; earth[’s] the last element.

Fore-knowledge 1 [is] God’s Order; Necessity[’s] handmaiden to Fore-knowledge.

Fortune[’s] 2 the course of the disorderly,—the image of activity, 3 untrue opinion.

What, [then] is God? The Good that naught can change.

What, man? The bad that can be changed. 4

16. If thou rememberest these heads, 5 thou wilt remember also what I have already set forth for thee with greater wealth of words. For these are summaries 6 of those.

Avoid, however, converse with the many [on these things]; not that I would that thou shouldst keep them selfishly unto thyself, but rather that thou shouldst not seem ridiculous unto the multitude. 7

For that the like’s acceptable unto the like; the unlike’s never friend to the unlike.

Such words as these have very very few to give them ear; nay, probably, they will not even have the few. 8

They have, moreover, some [strange force]

p. 12

peculiar unto themselves; for they provoke the evil all the more to bad.

Wherefore thou shouldst protect the many [from themselves], for they ignore the power of what’s been said.

17. Tat. What meanest thou, O father?

Her. This, [my] son! All that in man is animal, is proner unto bad [than unto good]; nay, it doth cohabit with it, because it is in love with it.

Now if this animal should learn that Cosmos is subject to genesis, and all things come and go according to Fore-knowledge 1 and by Necessity, Fate ruling all,—in no long time it would grow worse than it is now, 2 [and] thinking scorn of the whole [universe] as being subject unto genesis, and unto Fate referring [all] the causes of the bad, would never cease from every evil deed.

Wherefore, care should be taken of them, in order that being [left] in ignorance, they may become less bad through fear of the unknown.

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COMMENTARY

Patrizzi thought so highly of this excerpt that he chose it for Book I. of his collection. He, however, erroneously made the persons of the dialogue Asclepius and Tat, instead of Hermes and Tat—an unaccountable

p. 13

mistake, in which he has been followed by all the editors of Stobæus except Wachsmuth.

In the introduction the treatise purports to be a letter written to Tat,—a new departure, for it is “for the first time”; on the other hand the form of the treatise is the usual one of oral instruction, of question and answer (§ 2). Nevertheless in § 16 we learn that the definitions given in §§ 7-15 are intended as heads or summaries of previous sermons.

But already in C. H., x. (xi.) 1, we have an abridgment or epitome (or rather a summation) of the General Sermons delivered to Tat, just as we have in C. H., xvi., “the summing up and digest, as it were, of all the rest’’ of the Sermons of Asclepius to the King, under the traditional title, “The Definitions of Asclepius.” The headings in our sermon, then, may probably have been intended for the summary of the teaching of the Expository Sermons to Tat (see in Cyril, Frag. xv.). Some of our definitions, however, are strikingly similar to those in C. H., x. (xi.), but this may be accounted for by supposing that “The Key” itself was one of, or rather the continuation of, the Expository Sermons. 1

The warning to use great discretion in communicating the instruction to the “many,” because of the danger of teaching the Gnosis to the morally unfit, seems to be an appropriate ending to the sermon; we may then be fairly confident that we have in the above a complete tractate of “The [? Expository] Sermons to Tat”; the title, however, is the invention of Patrizzi, and not original.

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Footnotes

3:1 G. = Gaisford (T.), Joannis Stobæi Florilegium (Oxford, 1822), 4 vols.; Io. Stob. Ec. Phys. et Ethic. Libri Duo (Oxford, 1850), 2 vols.

M. = Meineke (A.), Joh. Stob. Flor. (Leipzig, 1855, 1856), 3 vols.; Joh. Stob. Ec. Phys. et Ethic. Lib. Duo (Leipzig, 1860), 2 vols.

W. = Wachsmuth (C.), Io. Stob. Anthologii Lib. Duo Priores . . . Ec. Phys. et Ethic. (Berlin, 1884), 2 vols.

H. = Hense (O.), I. Stob. Anth. Lib. Tert. (Berlin, 1894), 1 vol., incomplete.

3:2 I have numbered the paragraphs in all the excerpts for convenience of reference.

3:3 εὐσεβείας,—it might also be rendered by worship.

3:4 τόδε συλλράφω.

4:1 Or give worship unto God,—εὐσέβει.

4:2 In its true sense of wisdom-loving.

4:3 ἐπιτρόπῳ πιστῷ.

4:4 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 3, Comment.

4:5 Cf. P. S. A., ix. 1; xii. 3.

5:1 Where λήθη (forgetfulness) is opposed to ἔρως (love),—that is to say, reminiscence, the secret of the μάθησις (mathēsis) of the Pythagoreans, the knowledge of the Author of our being or of our “race” within,—ψυχὴ μαθοῦσα ἑαυτῆς τὸν προπάτορα (cf. Ex. iii. 6).

5:2 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 5; P. S. A., xi. 4; xxxvii. 3; Lact., D. I., i. 11.

5:3 Cf. C. H., xi. (xii.) 21.

5:4 The “one” is the rational element (τὸ λογικόν) and the “two” are the passional (τὸ θυμικόν) and desiderative (τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν) elements of the irrational nature (τὸ ἄλογον, or τὸ αἰσθητὸν as below), the “heart” and the “appetite.” Cf. Ex. xvii.; see also “Orphic Psychology” in my Orpheus (London, 1896), pp. 273-275.

6:1 Lit. of the two.

6:2 That is, the one.

6:3 Sc. the one.

6:4 ἐκεῖσε—that is, to the Good and True, or God.

6:5 Cf. Ex. ix. 12.

6:6 Sc. the Path.

6:7 Or summarily; cf. § 16 below.

7:1 Or is born.

7:2 Or dies.

7:3 πρῶτον ὁ θεὸς, δεύτερον ὁ κόσμος, τρίτον ὁ ἄνθρωπος. Cf. P. S. A., x.: “The Lord of the Eternity (Æon) is the first God; second is Cosmos; man’s the third.”

7:4 Lit. sensible part,—τὸ αἰσθητόν.

7:5 πᾶν τὸ ὄν,—as opposed to οὐσία. (essence).

7:6 The meaning of ex-istence, being the coming out of pure being into the state of becoming.

8:1 Or animal; perhaps this and the following interjection are glosses.

8:2 ὁ λογισμός,—perhaps a mistake for λόγος, as Patrizzi has it.

8:3 Or real.

8:4 But see § 15 below; and cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 12.

8:5 The text is faulty; as is also apparently that of the following sentence. None of the conjectures yet put forward are satisfactory.

9:1 Or time is divine, the law is man’s.

9:2 I have not adopted W.’s lengthy emendations.

9:3 This is the idea of sempiternity—of things which have a beginning but no end.

10:1 Or dies.

10:2 There is a lacuna in the text.

10:3 Or energies.

10:4 Lit. go.

10:5 Lit. comes.

11:1 Or Providence. Cf. P. S. A., xxxix. 2; § 17 below; and Ex. xi. 1.

11:2 τύχη.

11:3 Or energy.

11:4 Reading τρεπτὸν for the hopeless ἄτρεπτον of the text. Cf. 11 above.

11:5 Cf. § 7 above.

11:6 περιοχαί.

11:7 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 13 and 22.

11:8 Cf. P. S. A., xxii. 1.

12:1 Or Providence; cf. § 15 above.

12:2 Lit. than itself.

13:1 Cf. R. (p. 128), who calls them a “Collection of Sayings of Hermes.”

p. 14

EXCERPT II.

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[OF THE INEFFABILITY OF GOD]

(I have added the title, the excerpt not being found in Patrizzi.

Text: Stob., Flor., lxxx. [lxxviii.] 9, under the heading: “Of Hermes from the [Book] to Tat”; G. iii. 135; M. iii. 104, 105. 1

Ménard, Livre IV., No. x. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,” p. 256.)

[Her.] To understand 2 God is difficult, to speak [of Him] impossible.

For that the Bodiless can never be expressed in body, the Perfect never can be comprehended by that which is imperfect, and that ’tis difficult for the Eternal to company with the ephemeral.

The one is for ever, the other doth pass; the one is in [the clarity of] Truth, the other in the shadow of appearance.

So far off from the stronger [is] the weaker,

p. 15

the lesser from the greater [is so far], as [is] the mortal [far] from the Divine.

It is the distance, then, between the two that dims the Vision of the Beautiful.

For ’tis with eyes that bodies can be seen, with tongue that things seen can be spoken of; but That which hath no body, that is unmanifest, and figureless, and is not made objective [to us] out of matter,—cannot be comprehended by our sense.

I have it in my mind, O Tat, I have it in my mind, that what cannot be spoken of, is God.

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COMMENTARY

Justin Martyr quotes these opening words of our excerpt verbatim, assigning them to Hermes (Cohort., 38; Otto, ii. 122). 1

The substance of the second sentence is given twice by Lactantius in Latin (Div. Institt., ii. 8; Ep. 4); in the second passage the Church Father also quotes verbatim the first sentence of our excerpt, and from his introductory words we learn that they were the beginning of a written sermon from Hermes to his son (Tat).

The first four sentences are also quoted in almost identical words (there being two variants of reading and two slight additions) by Cyril,—Contra Julianum, i. 31 (Migne, col. 549 B), who, moreover, gives some additional lines, beginning (Frag. xi.): “If, then, there be an incorporeal eye,” etc.

p. 16

If, furthermore, we are right in supposing that Frag. xv. (Cyril, ibid., i. 33) is from the same sermon, then this sermon is the “First Sermon of the Expository [Sermons] to Tat,” and the Stobæan heading, “From the [Book] to Tat,” will mean the collection of Expository Sermons (see Comment, on Frag. xv.).

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Footnotes

14:1 Hense’s text ends with xlii. 17; the second part has apparently never been published.

14:2 Or think of.

15:1 Which see for Commentary under “Fragments.”

p. 17

EXCERPT III.

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OF TRUTH

(Title from Patrizzi (p. 46b), preceded by: “Of Thrice-greatest Hermes to Tat.”

Text: Stob., Flor., xi. 23, under heading: “Of Hermes from the [Sermons] to Tat”; G, i. 307-311; M. i. 248-251; H. iii. 436-441.

Ménard, Livre IV., No. ix. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,” pp. 251-255.)

1. [Her.] Concerning Truth, O Tat, it is not possible that man should dare to speak, for man’s an animal imperfect, composed out of imperfect members, his tabernacle 1 patched together from many bodies strange [to him].

But what is possible and right, this do I say,—that Truth is [to be found] in the eternal bodies only, [those things] of which the bodies in themselves are true, 2—fire very fire and nothing else, earth very earth and nothing else, air very air and nothing else, and water very water and naught else.

p. 18

Our frames, however, are a compound of all these. For they have [in them] fire, and they have also earth, they’ve water, too, and air; but they are neither fire, nor earth, nor water, nor air, 1 nor any [element that’s] true.

And if our composition has not had Truth for its beginning, how can it either see or speak the Truth?

Nay, it can only have a notion of it,—[and that too] if God will.

2. All things, accordingly, that are on earth, O Tat, are not the Truth; they’re copies [only] of the True.

And these are not all things, but few [of them]; the rest consist of falsity and error, Tat, and shows of seeming like unto images.

Whenever the appearance doth receive the influx from above, it turns into a copy of the Truth; without its 2 energizing from above, it is left false.

Just as the portrait also indicates the body in the picture, but in itself is not a body, in spite of the appearance of the thing that’s seen.

’Tis seen as having eyes; but it sees naught, hears naught at all.

The picture, too, has all the other things, but they are false, tricking the sight of the beholders,

p. 19

[paragraph continues]—these thinking that they see what’s true, while what they see is really false.

All, then, who do not see what’s false see truth.

If, then, we thus do comprehend, or see, each one of these 1 just as it really is, we really comprehend and see.

But if [we comprehend, or see, things] contrary to that which is, we shall not comprehend, nor shall we know aught true.

3. [Tat.] There is, then, father, Truth e’en on the earth?

[Her.] Not inconsiderably, O son, art thou at fault.

Truth is in no wise, Tat, upon the earth, nor can it be.

But some men can, [I say,] have an idea of it,—should God grant them the power of godly vision. 2

Thus there is nothing true on earth,—[so much] I know and say. All are appearances and shows,—I know and speak true [things]. We ought not, surely, though, to call the knowing and the speaking of true things the Truth?

4. [Tat.] Why, how on earth ought we to know and speak of things being true,—yet nothing’s true on earth?

p. 20

[Her.] This [much] is true,—that we do not know aught that’s true down here. 1 How could it be, O son?

For Truth is the most perfect virtue, the very highest Good, by matter undisturbed, uncircumscribed by body,—naked, [and] evident, changeless, august, unalterable Good.

But things down here, O son, thou seest what they are,—not able to receive this Good, corruptible, [and] passible, dissolvable, changeful, and ever altering, being born from one another.

Things, then, that are not true even to their own selves, how can they [possibly] be true?

For all that alters is untrue; it does not stay in what it is, but shows itself to us by changing into one another its appearances.

5. [Tat.] And even man,—is he not true, O father?

[Her.] As man,—he is not true, O son. For that the True is that which has its composition from itself alone, and in itself stays as it is.

But man has been composed of many things, and does not stay in his own self.

He changes and he alters, from age to age, from form to form, and that too, even while he’s still in [one and] the [same] tent. 2

Nay, many fail to recognize their children,

p. 21

when a brief space of time comes in between; and so again of children with their parents.

That, then, which changes so that it’s no longer recognized,—can that be true, O Tat?

Is it not, rather, false, coming and going, 1 in the [all] varied shows of its [continual] changes?

But do thou have it in thy mind that a true thing is that which stays and lasts for aye.

But “man” is not for ever; wherefore it 2 is not true. “Man’s” an appearance. And appearance is extreme untruth.

6. [Tat.] But these external bodies, 3 father, too, in that they change, are they not true?

[Her.] All that is subject unto genesis and change, is verily not true; but in as much as they are brought to being by the Forefather 4 [of them all], they have their matter true.

But even they have something false in that they change; for naught that doth not stay with its own self is true.

[Tat.] True, father [mine]! Is one to say, then, that the Sun alone,—in that in greater measure than the rest of them he doth not change but stayeth with himself,—is Truth?

[Her.] [Nay, rather, but] because he, and

p. 22

he only, hath entrusted unto him the making of all things in cosmos, 1 ruling all and making all;—to whom I reverence give, and worship pay unto his Truth, and recognise him as the Demiurge after the One and First.

[Tat.] What then, O father, should’st thou say is the first Truth?

[Her.] The One and Only, Tat,—He who is not of matter, or in body, the colourless, the figureless, the changeless [One], He who doth alter not, who ever is.

But the untrue, O son, doth perish. All things, however, on the earth that perish,—the Forethought of the True hath comprehended [them], and doth and will encompass [them].

For birth without corruption 2 cannot be; corruption followeth on every birth, in order that it may be born again.

For that things that are born, must of necessity be born from things that are destroyed 3; and things that have been born, must of necessity be [once again] destroyed, in order that the genesis of things existent may not stop.

First, [then], see that thou recognize him 4 as the Demiurge for birth-and-death 5 of [all] existent things.

p. 23

8. Things that are born out of destruction, then, must of necessity be false,—in that they are becoming now these things, now those. For ’tis impossible they should become the same.

But that which is not “same,”—how can it possibly be true?

Such things we should, then, call appearances, [my] son; for instance, if we give the man his proper designation, [we ought to designate him] a man’s 1 appearance;—[and so] the child a child’s appearance, the youth a youth’s appearance, the man a man’s appearance, the old man an appearance of the same.

For man is not a man, nor child a child, nor youth a youth, nor grown up man a grown up man, nor aged man a [single] aged man.

But as they change they are untrue,—both pre-existent things and things existent.

But thus think of them, son,—as even these untruths being energies dependent from above from Truth itself.

And this being so, I say untruth is Truth’s in-working. 2

---

COMMENT

The excerpt seems complete in itself, but whether it lay before Stobæus as a single sermon or as a part of a sermon it is impossible to say.

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Footnotes

17:1 σκῆνος. Cf. Ex. vii. 3 note, and also § 5 below.

17:2 Or real.

18:1 Compare Lact., D. I., ii. 12.

18:2 That is, Truth’s.

19:1 This presumably refers to the simple elements of things in themselves.

19:2 τὴν θεοπτικὴν . . . δύναμιν.

20:1 Taking ἐνθάδε with the preceding clause.

20:2 Cf. § 1 above.

21:1 Lit. becoming.

21:2 Neuter, that is, the series of temporary appearances of the true man.

21:3 The heavenly bodies presumably.

21:4 τοῦ προπάτορος; cf. Ex. i. 3.

22:1 Cf. Ex. vii. 2, and § 7 below.

22:2 Or perishing.

22:3 Or are corrupted, or perish.

22:4 That is, the Sun; cf. § 6 above.

22:5 Lit. genesis.

23:1 Lit. manhood’s.

23:2 Or operation; ἐνέργημα.

p. 24

EXCERPT IV.

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[GOD, NATURE AND THE GODS]

(Patrizzi (p. 51b) gives no title; but simply the heading “In Another [Book].”

Text: Stob., Phys., xxxv. 11, under the heading: “Of Hermes”; G. pp. 295, 296; M. i. 206; W. i. 293.

Ménard, Livre IV., No. iv. of “Fragments Divers,” p. 274).

1. [Her.] There is, then, That which transcends being, 1—beyond all things existent, and all that really are.

For That-transcending-being is [that mystery] because of which exists that being-ness 2 which is called universal, common unto intelligibles that really are, and to those beings which are thought of according to the law of sameness.

Those which are contrary to these, according to the law of otherness, are again themselves according to themselves. 3

p. 25

And Nature is an essence which the senses can perceive, containing in itself all sensibles.

2. Between these 1 are the intelligible 2 and the sensible gods.

Things that pertain to the intelligence, share in [the nature of] the Gods that are intelligible only; while things pertaining to opinion, have their part with those that are the sensible.

These latter are the images of the intelligences 3; the Sun, for instance, is the image of the Demiurgic God above the Heaven.

For just as He hath made the universe, so doth Sun make the animals, and generate the plants, and regulate the breaths. 4

---

COMMENT

I have supplied the title for the sake of uniformity. If we compare our extract with Ex. vii, and especially the last sentence of the former with the first sentence of § 2 of the latter, and note that in Stobæus the one excerpt follows almost immediately on the other, we shall be fairly well persuaded that they both come from the same collection—namely, the Sermons to Tat.

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Footnotes

24:1 Or the pre-existent; τὸ πρὸ ὄν, or τὸ προόν.

24:2 οὐσιότης; or essentiality.

24:3 This seems to refer to the seven spheres of difference or otherness (κατὰ τὸ ἕτερον) moving symbolically against, or “crosswise with,” the all-embracing sphere of sameness (καθ᾽ ἑαυτό); or it may mean that they have a sameness in the fact that their motions enter into themselves “again.”

25:1 Presumably God and Nature.

25:2 νοηματικοί,—a very rare form, and may possibly mean perceptible.

25:3 νοημάτων.

25:4 Or spirits. The last clause, “and regulates,” etc., is absent from some MSS., and is, therefore, considered spurious by some editors; but its unexpectedness is a strong guarantee of its genuineness. The “spirits” are the prāṇa’s of Hindu physiological psychology; cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 13, Comment., and Exs. xv. 2, xix. 3.

p. 26

EXCERPT V

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[OF MATTER]

(I have added the title, it being the same as that of the main section of Stobæus, Patrizzi (p. 51) giving only the simple heading “From the [Sermons] to Tat.”

Text: Stobæus, Phys., xi. 2, under the heading: “Of Hermes from the [Sermons] to Tat”; G. p. 121; M. i. 84, 85; W. i. 131.

Ménard, Livre IV., No. viii. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his son Tat,” p. 250.)

Her. Matter both has been born, O son, and it has been [before it came into existence]; for Matter is the vase of genesis, 1 and genesis, the mode of energy of God, who’s free from all necessity of genesis, and pre-exists.

[Matter], accordingly, by its reception of the seed of genesis, did come [herself] to birth, and [so] became subject to change, and, being shaped,

p. 27

took forms; for she, contriving the forms of her [own] changing, presided over her own changing self.

The unborn state 1 of Matter, then, was formlessness 2; its genesis is its being brought into activity.

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Footnotes

26:1 Or receptacle or field of genesis, or birth (ἀγγεῖον γενέσεως). The idea of a vessel or vase of birth was a familiar symbol with the Pythagoreans; μεταγγισμός (from the simile of pouring water out of one vessel into another) being one of their synonyms for metempsychosis.

27:1 ἀγεννησία

27:2 ἀμορφία. Compare this with the Christian Gnostic commentator of the Naassene Document, quoted by Hippolytus (Philos. v. 7), and the comment of Hippolytus on him: “Their first and Blessed Formless Essence (ἀσχημάτιστος οὐσία), the cause of all forms” (“Myth of Man,” § 7).

p. 28

EXCERPT VI.

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OF TIME

(Title from Patrizzi (p. 38b); followed by: “To the Same Tat.”

Text: Stob., Phys., viii. 41, under heading: “Of Hermes from the [Sermons] to Tat”; G. p. 93; M. i. 64.

Ménard, Livre IV., No. v. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,” p. 241.)

1. Now to find out concerning the three times; for they are neither by themselves, nor [yet] are they at-oned; and [yet] again they are at-oned, and by themselves [as well].

For should’st thou think the present is without the past, it can’t be present unless it has become already past. 1

For from the past the present comes, and from the present future goes.

But if we have to scrutinize more closely, thus let us argue:

2. Past time doth pass into no longer being

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this, 1 and future [time] doth not exist, in its not being present; nay, present even is not present, in its continuing.

Time, then, which stands not [steady] (ἕστηκε), but which is on the turn, without a central point at which to stop,—how can it be called in-stant (ἐνεστώς), 2 seeing even that it hath no power to stand (ἑστάναι)?

Again, past joining present, and present [joining] future, they [thus] are one; for they are not without them 3 in their sameness, and their oneness, and their continuity.

Thus, [then], time’s both continuous and discontinuous, though one and the same [time].

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Footnotes

28:1 That is, apparently, you cannot think of the present until it is already past.

29:1 That is, apparently, “present.”

29:2 The usual term in Greek for “present,” but I have here translated it by “instant” in order to keep the word-play, which would otherwise entirely vanish in translation.

29:3 That is, apparently, any one without the other two, or any two without the other one.

p. 30

EXCERPT VII.

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OF BODIES EVERLASTING [AND BODIES PERISHABLE]

(Title (first half) from Patrizzi (p. 45b), followed by “To the Same Tat.”

Text: Stob., Phys., xxxv. 8, under the curious heading: “Of Hermes—From the [Sermons] to Ammon to Tat”; where “to Tat” is evidently a marginal correction for an erroneous “to Ammon.” G. pp. 292-294; M. i. 204, 205; W. i. 290-292.

Ménard, Livre IV., No. iii. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,” pp. 238, 239.)

1. [Her.] The Lord and Demiurge of all eternal bodies, Tat, when He had made them once for all, made them no more, nor doth He make them [now].

Committing them unto themselves, and co-uniting them with one another, He let them go, in want of naught, as everlasting things.

If they have want of any, it will be want of one another and not of any increase to their number from without, in that they are immortal.

p. 31

For that it needs must be that bodies made by Him should have their nature of this kind.

2. Our Demiurge, 1 however, who is [himself already] in a body, 2 hath made us,—he makes for ever, and will [ever] make, bodies corruptible and under sway of death.

For ’twere not law that he should imitate the Maker of himself,—all the more so as ’tis impossible.

For that the latter did create from the first essence which is bodiless; the former made as from the bodying 3 brought into existence [by his Lord].

3. It follows, then, according to right reason, that while those bodies, since they are brought into existence from incorporal essence, are free from death, ours are corruptible and under sway of death,—in that our matter is composed of bodies, 4 as may be seen from their being weak and needing much assistance.

For how would it be possible our bodies’ continuity should last, unless it had some nutriment imported [into it] from similar elements, and [so] renewed our bodies day by day?

For that we have a stream of earth, and water,

p. 32

fire, and air, flowing into us, which renovates our bodies, and keeps our tent 1 together.

We are too weak to bear the motions [of our frames], enduring them not even for one single day.

For know, [my] son, that if our bodies did not rest at night, we should not last a single day.

4. Wherefore, our Maker, being good, and with foreknowledge of all things, in order that the animal may last, hath given sleep, the greatest [calm 2] of the fatigue of motion, and hath appointed equal time to each, or rather more, for rest.

Ponder well, son, the mightiest energy of sleep,—the opposite to the soul’s [energy], but not inferior to it.

For that just as the soul is motion’s energy, so bodies also cannot live without [the help of] sleep.

For ’tis the relaxation and the recreation of the jointed limbs; it also operates within,

p. 33

converting into body the fresh supply of matter that flows in, apportioning to each its proper [kind],—the water to the blood, the earth to bones and marrow, the air to nerves and veins, the fire to sight. 1

Wherefore the body, too, feels keen delight in sleep, for it is sleep that brings this [feeling of] delight into activity.

---

COMMENT

Patrizzi’s title is by no means descriptive of the main contents of the excerpt, which is evidently from the Sermons of Hermes to Tat, and from the same collection of these from which Stobæus has taken the previous two extracts,—that is, presumably, the Expository Sermons.

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Footnotes

31:1 That is, the Demiurge of our bodies, which are not everlasting.

31:2 The Sun, perhaps; cf. C. H., xvi. 18; and Ex., iii. 6 and iv. 2; and Lact., D. I., iv. 6.

31:3 σωματώσεως,—cf. Ex. viii. 5.

31:4 Sc. the elements.

32:1 σκῆνος,—used by Plato (ap. Clem. Alex., 703), and the Pythagoreans (Timæus Locr., 100 A, 101, C, E), and the Later Platonists, for the body as the tabernacle of the soul. See especially the response of the Oracle at Delphi, when consulted concerning the state of the soul of Plotinus after death, as quoted by Porphyry in his Life of Plotinus: “But now since thou hast struck thy tent, and left the tomb of thy angelic soul” (see my “Lives of the Later Platonists” in The Theosophical Review (July, 1896), xviii. 372. Cf. Ex. iii. 1 and 5; and C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 12 and 15.

32:2 Added by Heeren to complete the sense.

33:1 Cf. C. H., xvi. 7, note.

p. 34

EXCERPT VIII.

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OF ENERGY AND FEELING

(Title from Patrizzi (p. 44); preceded by “Of Thrice-greatest Hermes.”

Text: Stob., Phys., xxxv. 6, under the heading: “From the [Sermons] to Tat”; G. pp. 284-291; M. i. 198-203; W. i. 284-289.

Ménard, Livre IV., No. ii. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,” pp. 231-237.)

1. Tat. Rightly hast thou explained these things, O father [mine]. Now give me further teaching as to those.

For thou hast said somewhere 1 that science and that art do constitute the rational’s energy. 2

But now thou say’st that the irrational lives, 3 through deprivation of the rational, are and are called ir-rational.

According to this reasoning, [therefore], it follows of necessity that the irrational lives are

p. 35

without any share in science or in art, through deprivation of the rational.

2. Her. [It follows] of necessity, [my] son.

Tat. How, then, O father, do we see some of irrational [creatures] using [both] intelligence, and art?—the ants, for instance, storing their food for winter, and in like fashion, [too,] the creatures of the air building their nests, and the four-footed beasts [each] knowing their own holes. 1

Her. These things they do, O son, neither by science nor by art, but by [the force of] nature.

Science and art are teachable; but none of these irrationals is taught a thing.

Things done by nature are [so] done by reason of the general energy of things.

Things [done] by art and science are achieved by those who know, [and] not by all.

Things done by all are brought into activity 2 by nature.

3. For instance, all look up [to heaven]; but all [are] not musicians, or [are] all archers, or hunters, or the rest.

But some of them have learned one thing,

p. 36

[paragraph continues][others another thing], science and art being active 1 [in them].

In the same way, if some ants only did this thing, and others not, thou would’st have rightly said they acted by [the light] of science, and stored their food by means of art.

But if they all without distinction are driven by their nature to [do] this, though [it may be] against their will,—’tis plain they do not do it or by science or by art.

4. For Tat, these energies, though [in themselves] they are incorporal, are [found] in bodies, and act through bodies.

Wherefore, O Tat, in that they are incorporal, thou sayest that they are immortal; but, in so far as without bodies they cannot manifest activity, 2 I say that they are ever in a body.

Things once called into being for some purpose, or some cause, things that come under Providence and Fate, can never stay inactive of their proper energy.

For that which is, shall ever be; for that this [being] is [the very] body and the life of it.

5. It follows from this reason, [then,] that these are always bodies.

Wherefore I say that “bodying” 3 itself is an eternal [exercise of] energy.

p. 37

If bodies are on earth, they’re subject unto dissolution; yet must these [ever] be [on earth to serve] as places and as organs for the energies.

The energies, however, [are] immortal, and the immortal is eternally,—[that is, that] body-making, if it ever is, 1 is energy.

6. [The energies] accompany the soul, though not appearing all at once.

Some of them energize the man the moment that he’s born, united with the soul round its irrational [parts]; whereas the purer ones, with change of age, 2 co-operate with the soul’s rational part.

But all these energies depend on bodies. From godly 3 bodies they descend to mortal [frames], these body-making [energies]; each one of them is [ever] active, either around the body or the soul.

Yea, they are active with the soul itself without a body. They are for ever in activity.

The soul, however, is not for ever in a mortal body, for it can be without the body; whereas the energies can never be without the bodies.

p. 38

This is a sacred saying (logos), son: Body apart from soul cannot persist; its being can. 1

7. Tat. What dost thou mean, O father [mine]?

Her. Thus understand it, Tat! When soul leaves body, body itself remains.

But [even] the body so abandoned, 2 as long as it remains, is in activity, being broken up and made to disappear.

For body without [the exercise of] energy could not experience these things. 3

This energy, accordingly, continues with the body when the soul has gone.

This, therefore, is the difference of an immortal body and a mortal one,—that the immortal doth consist of a one single matter, but this [body does] not.

The former’s active, and the latter’s passive.

For every thing that maketh active is the stronger; and [every thing] that is made active is the weaker.

The stronger, too, being in authority and free, doth lead; the [weaker] follows [as] a slave.

8. The energies, then, energize not only bodies that are ensouled, but also [bodies] unensouled,

p. 39

[paragraph continues]—stocks, stones, 1 and all such things;—both making [them] to grow, and to bear fruits, and ripening [them], dissolving, melting, rotting and crumbling [them], and setting up [in them] all like activities which bodies without souls can undergo.

For energy’s 2 the name, O son, for just the thing that’s going on,—that is becoming.

And many things needs must for ever be becoming; nay, rather, all things [must].

For never is Cosmos bereft of any of existent things, but being borne 3 for aye in its own self, it bears existent things,—[things] that shall never cease from being destroyed again. 4

9. Know, then, that energy of every kind is ever free from death,—no matter what it is, or in what body.

And of the energies, some are of godly bodies, and some of those which are corruptible; some [are] general, and some special. Some [are] of genera, and some are of the parts of every genus.

The godly ones, [accordingly], are those that exercise their energies through everlasting bodies. And these are perfect [energies], in that [they energize] through perfect bodies.

But partial [energies are] those [that energize] through each one of the [single] living things.

p. 40

And special [energies are those that energize] through each one of existent things.

10. This argument, accordingly, O son, deduces that all things are full of energies.

For though it needs must be that energies should be in bodies,—and there be many bodies in the Cosmos,—I say that energies are many more than bodies.

For often in one body there is [found] one, and a second and a third [activity],—not counting in the general ones that come with it.

By general ones I mean the purely corporal ones, that exercise themselves through the sensations 1 and the motions [of the body].

For that without these energies the body [of an animal] can not persist.

11. The souls of men, however, have a second class of energies,—the special ones [that exercise themselves] through arts, and sciences, and practices, and [purposed] doings. 2

For that the feelings 3 follow on the energies or rather are completions 4 of the energies.

Know, then, O son, the difference of energy and of sensation.

[Thus] energy is sent down from above; whereas sensation, being in the body and having its existence from it, receives the energy

p. 41

and makes it manifest, as though it did embody it.

Wherefore I say sensations are both corporal and mortal, and last as long as doth the body [only].

Nay, rather, its sensations are born together with the body, and they die with it.

12. But the immortal bodies in themselves have no sensation,—[not even an] immortal [one], as though they were composed out of some essence of some kind.

For that sensation doth arise entirely from naught else than either from the bad or else the good that’s added to the body, or that is, on the contrary, taken [from it] again.

But with eternal bodies there is no adding to nor taking from.

Wherefore, sensation doth not occur in them.

13. Tat. Is, then, sensation felt in every body?

Her. In every body, son; and energies are active in all [bodies, too].

Tat. Even in bodies without souls, O father [mine]?

Her. Even in them, O son. There are, however, differences in the sensations.

The feelings of the rationals occur with reason; those of irrationals are simply corporal; as for the things that have no soul, they [also] have

p. 42

sensations, but passive ones,—experience of increase [only] and decrease. 1

Moreover, passion and sensation depend from one [same] head, 2 and they are gathered up again into the same, and that, too, by the energies.

14. Of lives 3 with souls there are two other energies which go with the sensations and the passions,—grief and joy.

And without these, an ensouled life, and most of all a rational one, could not experience sensation.

Wherefore, I say that there are forms of passions,—[and] forms that dominate the rational lives more [than the rest].

The energies, then, are the active forces [in sensations], while the sensations are the indications of the energies.

15. Further, as these 4 are corporal, they’re set in motion by the irrational parts of [a man’s] soul; wherefore, I say that both of them are mischievous.

For that both joy, though [for the moment] it provides sensation joined with pleasure, immediately becomes a cause of many ills 5 to

p. 43

him who feeleth it; while grief [itself] provides [still] greater pains and suffering.

Wherefore, they both would seem [most] mischievous.

16. Tat. Can, then, sensation be the same in soul and body, father [mine]?

Her. How dost thou mean,—sensation in the soul, [my] son?

Tat. Surely it cannot be that soul’s incorporal, and that sensation is a body, father,—sensation which is sometimes in a body and sometimes not, [just as the soul]?

Her. If we should put it in a body, son, we should [then] represent it as like the soul or [like] the energies. For that we say these 1 are incorporals in bodies.

But [as] sensation’s neither energy nor soul, nor any other thing than body, according to what has been said above, it cannot, therefore, be incorporal.

And if it’s not incorporal, it must be body.

For of existing things some must be bodies and the rest incorporal.

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COMMENT

Again, as with the last excerpt, the earlier editions of Stobæus have Asclepius and Tat as the persons of

p. 44

the dialogue instead of Hermes and Tat. Wachsmuth gives them correctly.

The second sentence is of great interest, for it refers us presumably to C. H., x. (xi.), 22: “God’s rays, to use a figure, are his energies; the Cosmos’s are natures; the arts and sciences are man’s.” Seeing, however, that “The Key” is an Epitome of the General Sermons to Tat, the statement may also have been made in one of these sermons.

In either case the existence of these General Sermons is presupposed, and, therefore, it may be that our excerpt is, again, one of the Expository Sermons to Tat.

The beginning of the Sermon has clearly been omitted by Stobæus, and apparently the end also.

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Footnotes

34:1 That is in some previous sermon.

34:2 Action or operation,—ἐνέργειαν εἶναι τοῦ λογικοῦ. Cf. § 11 below.

34:3 Or animals.

35:1 καὶ τὰ ἀέρια ζῶα ὁμοίως καλιὰς ἑαυτοῖς συντιθέντα, τὰ δὲ τετράποδα γνωρίζοντα τοὺς φωλεοὺς τοὺς ἰδίους. Compare Matt. viii. 20 = Luke ix. 58 (word for word): αἱ ἀλώπεκες φωλεοὺς ἔχουσιν καὶ τὰ πετεινὰ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ κατασκηνώσεις—“The foxes have holes and the birds of the air nests.” The first and third Evangelists here copy verbally from their “Logia” source.

35:2 Or energized.

36:1 Or energizing.

36:2 Lit. energize.

36:3 σωμάτωσιν,—cf. Ex. vii. 2; cf. also the ψύχωσις of K. K., 9.

37:1 That is, if it goes on continually.

37:2 κατὰ μεταβολὴν τῆς ἡλικίας,—generally supposed to be the seventh year. Compare the apocryphal logos: “He who seeks me shall find me in children from the age of seven years”—quoted by the Christian Overwriter of the Naassene Document from the Gospel according to Thomas (Hipp., Philos., v. 7; § 7 in “Myth of Man”).

37:3 Or divine,—the bodies of the Gods, the heavenly bodies, or the spiritual and immortal bodies of the soul.

38:1 συνεστάναι μὲν σῶμα χωρὶς ψυχῆς οὐ δύναται, τὸ δὲ εἶναι δύναται,—“its being” presumably refers to the abstract “bodying” (σωμάτωσις) referred to above.

38:2 Lit. this body.

38:3 Sc. dissolution and disappearance.

39:1 Cf. Naassene Document, § 4, and § 13 below.

39:2 Or activity.

39:3 Or conceived.

39:4 Reading αὖθις for αὐτοῦ, with Heeren.

40:1 Or feelings.

40:2 ἐνεργημάτων,—cf. § 1 above.

40:3 Or sensations.

40:4 Or effects—ἀποτελέσματα.

42:1 Cf. § 8 above, and note.

42:2 ἀπὸ μιᾶς κορυφῆς ἤρτηνται. Compare this with Plato, Phædo, i. 60 B, where Socrates speaks of the pleasant and the painful as “two (bodies) hanging from one head” (ἐκ μιᾶς κορυφῆς συνημμένω).

42:3 Or animals.

42:4 That is, the sensation of pleasure and pain.

42:5 Sc. by contrast.

43:1 That is, soul and energies.

p. 45

EXCERPT IX.

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OF [THE DECANS AND] THE STARS

(Patrizzi (p. 38b) does not give the first third of the text (§§ 1-5), and his title, “Of the Stars,” is evidently incomplete; it is followed by “To the Same [i.e. Tat].”

Text: Stob., Phys., xxi. 9, under the heading: “Of Hermes from the [Sermon] to Tat,” pp. 184-190; M. i. 129-133; W. i. 189-194.

Ménard, Livre IV., No. vi. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,” pp. 242-247, under the sub-heading, “Of the Decans and the Stars.”)

1. Tat. Since in thy former General Sermons (Logoi 1), [father,] thou didst promise me an explanation of the Six-and-thirty Decans, 2 explain, I prithee, now concerning them and their activity. 3

Her. There’s not the slightest wish in me not to do so, O Tat, and this should prove the

p. 46

most authoritative sermon (logos) and the chiefest of them all. So ponder on it well.

We have already spoken unto thee about the Circle of the Animals, or the Life-giving one, 1 of the Five Planets, and of Sun and Moon, and of the Circle 2 of each one of these.

2. Tat. Thou hast done so, Thrice-greatest one.

Her. Thus would I have thee understand as well about the Six-and-thirty Decans,—calling the former things to mind, in order that the sermon on the latter may also be well understood by thee.

Tat. I have recalled them, father, [to my mind].

Her. We said, [my] son, there is a Body which encompasses all things.

Conceive it, then, as being in itself a kind of figure of a sphere-like shape; so is the universe conformed.

Tat. I’ve thought of such a figure in my mind, just as thou dost describe, O father [mine].

3. Her. Beneath the Circle of this [all-embracing] frame 3 are ranged the Six-and-thirty Decans, between this Circle of the Universe and that one of the Animals, determining the boundaries of both these Circles, and, as it were,

p. 47

holding that of the Animals aloft up in the air, and [so] defining it.

They 1 share the motion of the Planetary Spheres, and [yet] have equal powers with the [main] motion of the Whole, 2 crosswise 3 the Seven.

They’re 4 checked by nothing but the All-encircling Body, for this must be the final thing in the [whole grades of] motion,—itself by its own self.

But they speed on the Seven other Circles, because they 5 move with a less rapid motion than the [Circle] of the All.

Let us, then, think of them as though of Watchers stationed round [and watching] over both the Seven themselves and o’er the Circle of the All,—or rather over all things in the World,

p. 48

[paragraph continues]—holding together all, and keeping the good order of all things.

4. Tat. Thus do I have it, father, in my mind, from what thou say’st.

Her. Moreover, Tat, thou should’st have in thy mind that they are also free from the necessities laid on the other Stars.

They are not checked and settled in their course, nor are they [further] hindered and made to tread in their own steps again 1; nor are they kept away from 2 the Sun’s light,—[all of] which things the other Stars endure.

But free, above them all, as though they were inerrant Guards and Overseers of the whole, they night and day surround the universe.

5. Tat. Do these, then, also, further exercise an influence 3 upon us?

Her. The greatest, O [my] son. For if they act in 4 them, 5 how should they fail to act on us as well,—both on each one of us and generally? 6

Thus, O [my] son, of all those things that happen generally, the bringing into action 7 is from these 8; as for example,—and ponder what I say,—downfalls of kingdoms, states’ rebellions,

p. 49

plagues [and] famines, tidal waves [and] quakings of the earth; no one of these, O son, takes place without their action. 1

Nay, further still, bear this in mind. If they rule over them, and we are in our turn beneath the Seven, dost thou not think that some of their activity extends to us as well,—[who are] assuredly their sons, or [come into existence] by their means?

6. Tat. What, [then,] may be the type 2 of body that they have, O father [mine]?

Her. The many call them daimones; but they are not some special class of daimones, for they have not some other kind of bodies made of some special kind of matter, nor are they moved by means of soul, as we [are moved], but they are [simple] operations 3 of these Six-and-thirty Gods.

Nay, further, still, have in thy mind, O Tat, their operations,—that they cast in the earth the seed of those whom [men] call Tanĕs, some playing the part of saviours, others being most destructive. 4

p. 50

7. Further the Stars 1 in heaven as well do in their several [courses] bear them 2 underworkers 3; and they 4 have ministers and warriors 5 too.

And they 6 in [everlasting] congress with them 7 speed on their course in æther floating, fullfilling [all] its 8 space, so that there is no space above empty of stars.

They are the cosmic engine of the universe, 9 having their own peculiar action, which is subordinate, however, to the action of the Thirty-six,—from whom throughout [all] lands arise the deaths of [all] the other lives 10 with souls, and hosts of [lesser] lives that spoil the fruit.

8. And under them 11 is what is called the

p. 51

[paragraph continues]Bear, 1—just in the middle of the Circle of the Animals, 2 composed of seven stars, and with another corresponding [Bear] 3 above its head.

Its energy is as it were an axle’s, setting nowhere and nowhere rising, but stopping [ever] in the self-same space, and turning round the same, giving its proper motion 4 to the Life-producing Circle, 5 and handing over this whole universe from night to day, from day to night.

And after this 6 there is another choir of stars, to which we have not thought it proper to give names; but they who will come after us, 7 in imitation, will give them names themselves. 8

9. Again, below the Moon, are other stars, 9 corruptible, deprived of energy, which hold together for a little while, in that they’ve been exhaled out of the earth itself into the air above the earth,—which ever are being broken up, in that they have a nature like unto [that of] useless lives on earth, which come into existence for no other purpose than to die,—such as the tribe of flies, and fleas, and worms, and other things like them.

p. 52

For these are useful, Tat, neither to us nor to the world; but, on the contrary, they trouble and annoy, being nature’s by-products, 1 which owe their birth to her extravagance. 2

Just in the same way, too, the stars exhaled from earth do not attain the upper space.

They cannot do so, since they are sent forth from below; and, owing to the greatness of their weight, dragged down by their own matter, they quickly are dispersed, and, breaking up, fall back again on earth, affecting nothing but the mere disturbance of the air about the earth.

10. There is another class, O Tat, that of the so-called long-haired [stars], 3 appearing at their proper times, and after a short time, becoming once again invisible;—they neither rise nor set nor are they broken up.

These are the brilliant messengers and heralds of the general destinies of things 4 that are to be.

They occupy the space below the Circle of the Sun.

When, then, some chance is going to happen to the world, [comets] appear, and, shining for some days, again return behind 5 the Circle of the Sun, and stay invisible,—some showing in

p. 53

the east, some in the north, some in the west, and others in the south. We call them Prophets. 1

11. Such is the nature of the stars. The stars, however, differ from the star-groups. 2

The stars are they which sail 3 in heaven; the star-groups, on the contrary, are fixed in heaven’s frame, 4 and they are borne along together with the heaven,—Twelve out of which we call the Zōdia. 5

He who knows these can form some notion clearly of [what] God is; and, if one should dare say so, becoming [thus] a seer for himself, [so] contemplate Him, and, contemplating Him, be blessed.

12. Tat. Blessèd, in truth, is he, O father [mine], who contemplateth Him.

Her. But ’tis impossible, O son, that one in body 6 should have this good chance.

Moreover, he should train his soul beforehand, here and now, that when it reacheth there, [the space] where it is possible for it to contemplate, it may not miss its way.

But men who love their bodies,—such men will never contemplate the Vision of the Beautiful and Good.

p. 54

For what, O son, is that [fair] Beauty which hath no form nor any colour, nor any mass? 1

Tat. Can there be aught that’s beautiful apart from these?

Her. God only, O [my] son; or rather that which is still greater,—the [proper] name of God.

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COMMENTARY

The earlier editors of Stobæus (apparently following the mistake of Patrizzi) have Asclepius instead of Tat as the second person of the dialogue, which is clearly wrong according to the text itself (see the first sentence given to Hermes, and §§ 9 and 10). 2

The excerpt is from a sermon in the Collection to Tat. It belongs to the further explanation of things referred to only generally in the General Sermons; it is, therefore, again probably from one of the Expository Sermons, in which series already a sermon has been given on the Zodiacal Twelve and on the Seven Spheres.

Seeing also that it is stated that this sermon is “most authoritative and the chiefest of them all,” we must suppose that it came at the end of one of the Books of the Expository Sermons.

We seem to have the beginning of the sermon, but not the end, for Stobæus breaks off in an aimless and provoking fashion in the midst of a subject.

For a list of the Egyptian names of the Decans, with their Greek transcriptions and symbols, see Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 304-308.

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Footnotes

45:1 ἐν τοῖς ἔμπροσθεν γενικοῖς λόγοις. Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 1 and 7; xiii. (xiv.) 1; and Ex. xviii. 1.

45:2 These are the “Horoscopes” of P. S. A., xix. 3. Cf. also Origen, C. Cels., viii. 58; R. 225, n. 1.

45:3 Or energy.

46:1 The zodiac; περὶ τοῦ ζωδιακοῦ κύκλου ἢ τοῦ ζωοφόρου,—of which the second member is probably a gloss; but see § 8 below.

46:2 Or sphere.

46:3 Or body.

47:1 That is, the Decans.

47:2 Or Universe.

47:3 This refers to the astronomical system underlying the Pythagoreo-Platonic tradition, as, for instance, set forth allegorically and symbolically by Plato in the famous passage in The Timæus (36 B, C). “The entire compound he (the Demiurge) divided lengthways into two parts, which he joined to one another at the centre like the letter X, and bent them into a circular form, connecting them with themselves and each other at the point opposite to their original meeting point; and, comprehending them in a uniform revolution upon the same axis, he made the one the outer and the other the inner circle. Now the motion of the outer circle he called the motion of the same, and the motion of the inner circle the motion of the other or diverse” (Jowett’s Translation, iii. 454, 455). The X symbolizes the “crosswise,” which in terms of motion may be translated as “inverse to.”

47:4 Sc. the Decans.

47:5 The Decans.

48:1 Referring, presumably, to the fixed stars and the planets.

48:2 Reading ἀπὸ for ὑπὸ,—referring to eclipses.

48:3 Or energy.

48:4 Or energize.

48:5 That is, the Seven Spheres.

48:6 The rest of the fragment is also found in Patrizzi (p. 38b) under the title “Of the Stars.”

48:7 Or energy.

48:8 Sc. the Decans.

49:1 Cf. C. H., xvi. 10.

49:2 τὺπος. The question concerning the spiritual and other spaces and their inhabitants, “Of what type are they?”—occurs with great frequency in the Bruce and Askew Gnostic Codices.

49:3 Or energies.

49:4 ὅτι καὶ εἰς τὴν γῆν σπερματίζουσιν ἃς καλοῦσί τάνας, τὰς μὲν σωτηρίους, τὰς δὲ ὀλεθριώτατας. Neither Patrizzi nor Gaisford, nor Meineke, nor Wachsmuth, nor Ménard, has a word to say on this most interesting passage. I would suggest in the first place that the text is faulty, and that we should read “οὓς καλοῦσι Τάνας, τοὺς μὲν σωτηρίους, τοὺς δὲ ὀλεθριωτάτους”; and in the second that Τάνας is a shortened form of Τιτᾶνας or Titans. Τάνας (? from Τᾶν) is connected with ταναός, “stretched out,” from √ταν, just as Τιτὰν is connected with τιταίνω,—Τιτᾶνες thus signifying the Stretchers or Strivers. It may, however, also be connected with τίτας (τίτης)—from τίνω, and so mean Avengers. Cf. J. Laurent. Lydus, De Mensibus, iv. 31 (W. 90, 24), as given in note to P. S. A., xxviii. 1.

50:1 The planetary spheres, presumably.

50:2 Sc. the Decans.

50:3 ὑπολειτουργούς—a ἅπαξ λεγόμενον. The term λειτουργοί, however, is of frequent occurrence in the Askew and Bruce Codices. See, for instance, Pistis Sophia (Schwartze’s Trans.), p. 10: “Atque δεκανοι ἀρχοντων eorumque λειτουργοι”

50:4 The Decans.

50:5 στρατιώτας—soldiers; one of the most famous of the degrees of the Mithriac mysteries was that of the Soldier. See Cumont (F.), Textes et Monuments Figurés relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra (Bruxelles; 1899), i. 315, and especially 317, n. 1.

50:6 The Star-spheres.

50:7 The Decans.

50:8 Æther’s.

50:9 συγκοσμοῦντες τὸ πᾶν.

50:10 Or animals.

50:11 The Decans.

51:1 The Great Bear. Compare “Behold the Bear up there that circles round the Pole.”

51:2 The zodiac.

51:3 The Little Bear.

51:4 Lit. energy.

51:5 Cf. § 1 above.

51:6 Sc. the Bear.

51:7 Cf. P. S. A., xii. 3; xiv. 1.

51:8 That is, apparently, invent them out of their own heads haphazard.

51:9 Referring, presumably, to the phenomena of “shooting stars.”

52:1 παρακολουθήματα—sequellæ.

52:2 See the same idea in Plutarch, De Is. et Os., iv. 5, concerning lice.

52:3 The comets—τῶν καλουμένων κομετῶν.

52:4 ἀποτελεσμάτων.

52:5 Lit. below.

53:1 μάντεις, seers or diviners.

53:2 ἀστέρες δὲ ἄστρων διαφορὰν ἔχουσιν. The ἀστέρες are the planets, aerolites and comets; the ἄστρα are the sidera, signs of the fixed stars or constellations.

53:3 Or float (αἰωρούμενοι), lit. are raised aloft.

53:4 Or body.

53:5 The zodiac; lit. the animal signs, or signs of lives.

53:6 Cf. Ex. i. 6.

54:1 Or body.

54:2 Ménard and Wachsmuth have Tat. For other changes of a similar nature cf. Exx. i. and viii., and C. H., ii. (iii.), and xvii.

p. 55

EXCERPT X.

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[CONCERNING THE RULE OF PROVIDENCE, NECESSITY AND FATE]

(Title in Patrizzi (p. 38), “Of Fate,” simply; followed by “From the [Sermons] to Tat.”

Text: Stob., Phys., iv. 8, under heading: “Of Hermes to his Son”; G. pp. 61, 62; M. i. 42, 43; W. i. 73, 74.

Ménard, Livre IV., No. vii. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,” pp. 248, 249.)

1. [Tat.] Rightly, O father, hast thou told me all; now further, [pray,] recall unto my mind what are the things that Providence doth rule, and what the things ruled by Necessity, and in like fashion also [those] under Fate.

[Her.] I said there were in us, O Tat, three species of incorporals.

The first’s a thing the mind alone can grasp 1; it thus is colourless, figureless, massless, 2 proceeding out of the First Essence in itself, sensed by the mind alone. 3

And there are also, [secondly,] in us, opposed

p. 56

to this, 1 configurings, 2—of which this serves as the receptacle. 3

But what has once been set in motion by the Primal 4 Essence for some [set] purpose of the Reason (Logos), and that has been conceived 5 [by it], straightway doth change into another form of motion; this is the image of the Demiurgic Thought. 6

2. And there is [also] a third species of incorporals, which doth eventuate round bodies,—space, time, [and] motion, figure, surface, 7 size, [and] species.

Of these there are two [sets of] differences.

The first [lies] in the quality pertaining specially unto themselves; the second [set is] of the body.

The special qualities are figure, colour, species, space, time, movement.

[The differences] peculiar to body are figure

p. 57

configured, and colour coloured; there’s also form conformed, surface and size. 1

The latter with the former have no part.

3. The Intelligible Essence, then, in company with God, 2 has power o’er its own self, and [power] to keep 3 another, in that it keeps itself, since Essence in itself is not under Necessity.

But when ’tis left by God, it takes unto itself the corporal nature; its choice of it being ruled by Providence,—that is, its choosing of the world. 4

All the irrational is moved to-wards some reason.

Reason [comes] under Providence; unreason [falls] under Necessity; the things that happen in the corporal [fall] under Fate.

Such is the Sermon on the rule of Providence, Necessity and Fate.

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COMMENT

I have taken the title from the concluding words, which are evidently the end of the sermon. Stobæus thus seems to have reproduced the whole of this little tractate, which should be read in connection with Exx. xi., xii. and xiii. C. H., xii. (xiii.) 6 (see Commentary), seems to presuppose this sermon.

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Footnotes

55:1 Or an intelligible something.

55:2 Or bodiless.

55:3 That is, the intelligible essence.

56:1 Sc. of opposite nature to the first incorporal, as negative to positive, say.

56:2 σχηματότητες—that is, the “somethings” more subtle or ideal than figures or shapes,—types, or prototypes, or paradigms of some kind.

56:3 That is, plays the part of matter, “womb,” or “nurse” to these.

56:4 Lit. intelligible.

56:5 Or received.

56:6 Or Mind. Heeren (as also all editors subsequent to him) thinks that something has here fallen out of the text, because he finds no second incorporal specifically mentioned; but the duality of the demiurgic thought, active and passive, creative and conceptive, will do very well for the second.

56:7 Or appearance.

57:1 The distinction seems to be between colour, form, etc., “in itself,” and differentiated colours, forms, etc.

57:2 πρὸς τῷ θεῷ γενομένη.

57:3 Or save, preserve.

57:4 This sentence seems to be corrupt.

p. 58

EXCERPT XI.

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[OF JUSTICE]

(I have added the title, the excerpt not being found in Patrizzi.

Text: Stob., Phys., iii. 52, under the vague heading: “Of Hermes”; G. p. 50; M. i. 33, 34; W. i. 62, 63.

Ménard, Livre IV., No. iv. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,” p. 240.)

1. [Her.] For there hath been appointed, O [my] son, a very mighty Daimon turning in the universe’s midst, that sees all things that men do on the earth.

Just as Foreknowledge 1 and Necessity have been set o’er the Order of the gods, in the same way is Justice set o’er men, causing the same to act on them.

For they rule o’er the order of the things existing as divine, which have no will, nor any power, to err.

For the Divine cannot be made to wander; from which the incapacity to err accrues [to it].

p. 59

But Justice is appointed to correct the errors men commit on earth.

2. For, seeing that their race is under sway of death, and made out of bad matter, [it naturally errs], and failure is the natural thing, especially to those who are without the power of seeing the Divine. 1

’Tis over these that Justice doth have special sway. They’re subject both to Fate through the activities of birth, 2 and unto Justice through the mistakes [they make] in life. 3

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COMMENT

The title and place of this excerpt has been discussed in the Commentary on C. H., xii. (xiii.) 6. It belongs to the Tat-Sermons, and in the collection of Lactantius probably stood prior to the Sermon of Hermes to Tat, “About the General Mind.” 4

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Footnotes

58:1 Or Providence. Cf. Ex. i. 15, note.

59:1 This recalls Philo’s description of the Therapeuts, who were “taught ever more and more to see,” and strive for the “intuition” or “sight of that which is,”—τῆς τοῦ ὄντος θέας (Philo, D. V. C., 891 P., 473 M.).

59:2 That is, through the natural accidents that attend life in a body.

59:3 That is, in their way of living—ἐν τῷ βίω.

59:4 Compare with it Exx. x., xii., xiii.

p. 60

EXCERPT XII.

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OF PROVIDENCE AND FATE

(Title from Patrizzi (p. 38); followed by: “From the [Sermons] to Ammon.”

Text: Stob., Phys., v. 20, under heading: “Of Hermes from the [Sermons] to Ammon”; G. p. 70; M. i. 48, 49; W. i. 82.

Ménard, Livre IV., No. ii. of “Fragments of the Books of Hermes to Ammon,” p. 258.)

All things are born by Nature and by Fate, and there is not a [single] space bereft of Providence.

Now Providence is the Self-perfect 1 Reason.

And of this [Reason] there are two spontaneous powers,—Necessity and Fate.

And Fate doth minister to Providence and to Necessity; while unto Fate the Stars 2 do minister.

For Fate no one is able to escape, nor keep himself from their 3 shrewd scrutiny. 4

For that the Stars are instruments of Fate; it is at its behest that they effect all things for nature and for men. 5

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Footnotes

60:1 αὐτοτελὴς λόγος,—complete in itself.

60:2 That is, the Seven Spheres.

60:3 Sc. of the Stars.

60:4 δεινότητος.

60:5 With this extract compare Exx. x., xi., xiii.

p. 61

EXCERPT XIII.

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OF THE WHOLE ECONOMY

(Patrizzi (p. 38) gives no title, but only the heading: “To the Same Ammon (Αμμωνα).”

Text: Stob., Phys., v. 16, under sub-heading: “Of the Whole Economy,” followed by: “Of Hermes from the [Sermons] to Ammon (Ἀμοῦν 1)”; G. p. 68; M. i. 47; W. i. 79, 80.

Ménard, Livre IV., No. i. of “Fragments of the Books of Hermes to Ammon”).

Now what supporteth the whole World, 2 is Providence; what holdeth it together and encircleth it about, is [called] Necessity; what drives all on and drives them round, 3 is Fate, bringing Necessity to bear on them (for that its nature is the bringing into play of [this] Necessity); [it 4 is] the cause of birth and death 5 of life.

So, then, the Cosmos is beneath the sway of

p. 62

[paragraph continues]Providence 1 (for ’tis the first to meet with it); but Providence [itself] 2 extends itself to Heaven.

For which cause, 3 too, the Gods revolve, and speed round [Heaven], 4 possessed of tireless, never-ceasing motion.

But Fate [extends itself in Cosmos]; for which cause, too, Necessity [encompasses the Cosmos]. 5

And Providence foreknows; but Fate’s the reason of the disposition of the Stars. 6

Such is the law that no one can escape, by which all things are ordered. 7

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Footnotes

61:1 The only place in which this form occurs in Stobæus; cf. v. 20, and xxxv. 4, 7, 8.

61:2 Or Cosmos.

61:3 Or makes them to revolve

61:4 Fate—εἱμαρμένη.

61:5 Or destruction.

62:1 Lit. “first has Providence.” The following words in parentheses seem to be the gloss of a scribe who was puzzled by the sentence. Usener, however, would detect a lacuna after the parentheses and the beginning of a new excerpt after that, and Wachsmuth agrees with him. This seems to me to be unnecessary.

62:2 That is, pure Providence unmixed with Necessity and Fate.

62:3 That is, because of Providence, the law of heaven.

62:4 αὐτόν.

62:5 The text is hopeless, being simply: εἱμαρμένη δὲ, διότι καὶ ἀνάγκη.

62:6 That is, the Seven Spheres.

62:7 Cf. Exx. x., xi., xii.

p. 63

EXCERPT XIV.

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OF SOUL [I.]

(Title from Patrizzi (p. 40); preceded by “Of Thrice-greatest Hermes,” and followed by “To the Same Ammon.”

Text: Stob., Phys., xxxv. 9, under heading: “Of Hermes from the [Sermons] to Ammon”; G. pp. 282, 283; M. i. 196, 197; W. 281, 282.

Ménard, Livre IV., No. iii. of “Fragments of the Books of Hermes to Ammon,” pp. 259, 260.)

1. The Soul is further [in itself] incorporal essence, and even when in body it by no means doth depart from the essentiality peculiar to itself.

Its nature is, according to its essence to be for ever moving, according to its thought [to be] self-motive [purely], not moved in something, nor towards something, nor [yet] because of something.

For it is prior [to them] in power, and prior stands not in any need of consequents.

“In something,” furthermore,—means space, and time, and nature; “towards something,”—[this] means harmony, and form, and figure; “because of something,”—[this] means body, for ’tis because of body that there is time, and space, and nature.

p. 64

Now all these things are in connection with each other by means of a congenital relationship.

2. For instance, now, the body must have space, for it would be past all contriving that a body should exist without a space.

It changes, too, in nature, and ’tis impossible for change to be apart from time, and from the movement nature makes; nor is it further possible for there to be composing of a body apart from harmony.

It is because of body, then, that space exists; for that by its reception of the changes of the body, it does not let a thing that’s changing pass away.

But, changing, it doth alternate from one thing to another, and is deprived of being in a permanent condition, but not of being body.

For body, quâ body, remains body; but any special moment of its state does not remain.

The body, then, keeps changing in its states.

3. And so, space is incorporal, and time, and natural motion; but each of these has naturally its own peculiar property.

The property of space is receptivity; of time [’tis] interval and number; of nature [it is] motion; of harmony [’tis] love; of body, change.

The special nature of the Soul, however, is essential thought. 1

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Footnotes

64:1 Or thinking according to essence,—ἡ κατ’ οὐσίαν νόησις.

p. 65

EXCERPT XV.

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[OF SOUL, II.]

(Patrizzi (p. 40) runs this on to the preceding without a break.

Text: Stob., Phys., xxxv. 7, under heading: “Of Hermes from the [Sermons] to Ammon”; G. pp. 291, 292; M. i. 203, 204; W. i. 289, 290.

Ménard, Livre IV., No. iv. of “Fragments of the Books of Hermes to Ammon,” pp. 261, 262.)

1. That which is moved is moved according to the operation of the motion that doth move the all.

For that the Nature of the all supplies the all with motion,—one [motion being] the [one] according to its 1 Power, the other that according to [its] Operation. 2

The former doth extend itself throughout the whole of Cosmos, and holdeth it together from within; the latter doth extend itself [around it], and encompasseth it from without. And these go everywhere together through all things.

p. 66

Now the [Productive] Nature 1 of all things supplies the things produced with [power of re-] production, sowing the seeds of its own self, [and] having its becomings 2 by means of moving matter.

2. And Matter being moved was heated and did turn to Fire and Water,—the one [being] strong and active, and the other passive.

And Fire opposed by Water was dried up by it, and did become Earth borne on Water.

And when it 3 was excessively dried up, 4 a vapour rose from out the three,—from Water, Earth and Fire,—and became Air.

The [Four] came into congress, [then,] according to the reason of the Harmony, 5—hot with cold, [and] dry with moist.

And from the union 6 of these [four] is spirit born, and seed proportionate to the surrounding Spirit.

This [spirit] falling in the womb does not remain inactive in the seed, but being active it transforms the seed, and [this] being [thus] transformed, develops growth and size.

p. 67

And as it grows in size, it draws unto itself a copy of a model, 1 and is modelled.

3. And on the model is the form supported,—by means of which that which is represented by an image is so represented.

Now, since the spirit in the womb had not the motion that maintaineth life, but that which causeth fermentation 2 [only], the Harmony composed the latter as the receptacle 3 of rational life. 4

This [life] is indivisible and changeless; it never changes from its changelessness.

It 5 ruleth the conception of the thing within the womb, by means of numbers, delivereth it, and bringeth it into the outer air.

The Soul 6 dwells very near to it 7;—not owing to some common property, but under the constraint of Fate; for that it has no love to be with body. 8

Wherefore, [the Harmony 9] according unto Fate doth furnish to the thing that’s born [its] 10

p. 68

rational motion, and the intellectual essence of the life itself.

For that [this 1] doth insinuate itself into the spirit, and set it moving with the motion of the life. 2

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COMMENTARY

Patrizzi is evidently at fault in running this on to Ex. xiv. without a break. The subject again is not so much “Of Soul” as “Of Conception and Birth,” but as the general exposition falls in very well with the nature of the subjects treated in Exx. xiv. and xvi., we may keep the same general title, though we may be quite certain that it was not that of the original.

The exposition in § 2 is reminiscent of an apocalyptic style, and seems to be a Greek overworking of Egyptian ideas; for though the details are different and the precise meaning difficult to disentangle, the general point of view may be compared with the embryonic stages of incarnation given in the Pistis Sophia (pp. 344 ff.).

THE EMBRYONIC STAGES OF INCARNATION

“Then the Rulers summon the workmen of their æons, to the number of three hundred and sixty-five, and hand over to them the soul and the counterfeit of the spirit bound together, the one to the other, the counterfeit of the spirit being outside the soul, and the

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compound of the power within the soul being inside both, that they may hold together.

“(345) And the Rulers give commandment to the workmen, saying: ‘This is the type which ye shall set in the body of the matter of the world. Set ye the compound of the power which is in the soul within all of them, that they may hold together, for it is their support, and outside the soul place the counterfeit of the spirit.’ This is the order which they have given to their workmen, that they may set the antitypes in bodies.

“Following this plan the workmen of the Rulers bring the power, the soul and the counterfeit of the spirit, and pour them all three into the world, passing through the world of the Rulers of the Midst.

“The Rulers of the Midst also inspect the counterfeit of the spirit and also the destiny. The latter, whose name is the destiny, leadeth on a man until it hath him killed by the death which is destined for him. This the Rulers of the Great Fate have bound to the soul.

“And the workmen of the Sphere bind the soul with the power, with the counterfeit of the spirit and with the destiny. And the whole is divided so as to form two parts, to surround the man and also the woman in the world, in whom the sign hath been set for them to be sent unto them. (346) And they give one part to the man and the other to the woman in the food of the world, either in the aery, or watery, or etheric substance which they imbibe. . . .

“Now, therefore, when the workmen of the Rulers have cast one part into the woman and the other into the man in the manner which I have just related, even though [the pair] be removed to a great distance from one another, the workmen compel them secretly to be

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united together in the union of the world. Then the counterfeit of the spirit which is in the male cometh unto the part [of itself] which hath been sent into the world in the matter of the body [of the man], and sacrificeth it and casteth it into the womb of the woman, a deposit of the seed of iniquity. And forthwith the three hundred and sixty-five workmen of the Rulers enter into her, to take up their abode in her. The workmen of the two parts are all there together.

“(347) And the workmen check the blood that cometh from all the nourishment that the woman eateth or drinketh, and keep it in the womb of the woman for forty days. And after forty days, they work the blood [that cometh] from the essence of all the nourishment, and work it together carefully in the woman’s womb.

“After forty days they spend another thirty days in building its members in the likeness of the body of a man; each buildeth a member. I will tell you of the decans who thus build [the body] . . . when I explain the emanation of the plērōma.

“Afterwards, when the workmen have completed the body entirely with all its members in seventy days, they summon into the body which they have builded, first the counterfeit of the spirit, next they summon the soul within those, and finally they summon the compound of the power within the soul, and the destiny they place outside all, for it is not blended with them, but followeth after and accompanieth them.”

(An elaborate account of the “sealing” of the members of the plasm is then given.)

“And when the number of the months of the child’s conception is full, the babe is born, the compound of the power being small in it, the soul being small in it, and the counterfeit of the spirit being small in it;

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whereas the destiny, being vast, is not mingled with the body, according to the regulation of the three (350), but followeth after the soul, the body and the counterfeit of the spirit, until the soul passeth from the body according to the type of death whereby he shall die according to what hath been decreed unto him by the Rulers of the Great Fate.”

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Footnotes

65:1 Sc. Nature’s.

65:2 Or energy.

66:1 φύσις simply; but as there is a play in the original on the words φύσις, φύουσα, φυήν, and φυομένοις, I have tried to retain it in translation by a series of allied words.

66:2 γενέσεις.

66:3 Sc. Fire.

66:4 περιξηραινομένου.

66:5 Or law of Harmony,—κατὰ τὸν τῆς ἁρμονίας λόγον.

66:6 Lit. “breathing with one breath,”—ἐκ τῆς συμπνοίας—a wordplay on πνεῦμα (spirit). For “spirit,” cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 13, Comment., and Exx. xix. 3; iv. 2.

67:1 Or image of a figure,—εἴδωλον . . . σχήματος.

67:2 τὴν δὲ βραστικήν.

67:3 Or vehicle,—ὑποδοχήν.

67:4 τῦς διανοητικῆς ζωῆς,—of the purposive rational life, otherwise called the Harmony.

67:5 Sc. the Harmony.

67:6 Reading ψυχὴ for ψυχῇ.

67:7 The new-born babe.

67:8 Compare Plutarch, Frag., v. 9 (ed. Didot): “For you should know the intercourse and the conjunction of the soul with body is contrary to nature.”

67:9 It is not easy to disentangle the subjects of some of the above clauses.

67:10 Sc. the thing’s.

68:1 Sc. the rational movement.

68:2 ζωτικῶς,—this may perhaps have some reference to the circle of lives, or the zodiac.

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EXCERPT XVI.

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[OF SOUL, III.]

(I have added the title, Patrizzi (p. 40b) having only the heading: “To the Same Ammon.”

Text: Stob., Phys., xli. 3, under the simple heading: “Of Hermes”; G. pp. 323, 324; M. i. 227, 228; W. i. 320, 321.

Ménard, Livre IV., No. v. of “Fragments of the Books of Hermes to Ammon,” pp. 263, 264.)

1. The Soul is, then, incorporal essence; for if it should have body, it would no longer have the power of being self-maintained. 1

For every body needeth being; it needeth also ordered life 2 as well.

For that for every thing that comes to birth, 3 change also must succeed. 4

For that which doth become, 5 becomes in size; for in becoming it hath increase.

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Again, for every thing that doth increase, decrease succeedeth; and on increase destruction.

For, sharing in the form of life, 1 it 2 lives; it shares, also, in being through the Soul.

2. But that which is the cause of being to another, is being first itself.

And by [this] “being” I now mean becoming in reason, and taking part in intellectual life.

It is the Soul that doth supply this intellectual life.

It is called living 3 through the life, and rational through the intellect, and mortal through the body.

Soul is, accordingly, a thing incorporal, possessing [in itself] the power of freedom from all change.

For how would it be possible to talk about an intellectual living thing, 4 if that there were no [living] essence to furnish life?

Nor, any more, would it be possible to say a rational [living] thing, were there no ratiocinative essence to furnish intellectual life.

3. It is not to all [lives] that intellect extends; [it doth depend] on the relationship of body’s composition to the Harmony.

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For if the hot in the compost be in excess, he’s light 1 and fervid; but if the cold, he’s heavy and he’s dull.

For Nature makes the composition fit the Harmony.

There are three forms of the becoming,—the hot, the cold, and medium.

It 2 makes it fit according to the ruling Star 3 in the star-mixture.

And Soul receiving it, 4 as Fate decrees, supplies this work of Nature with [the proper kind of] life.

Nature, accordingly, assimilates the body’s harmony unto the mixture of the Stars, and co-unites its complex mixtures with their Harmony, so that they are in mutual sympathy.

For that the end of the Stars’ Harmony is to give birth to sympathy according to their Fate.

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Footnotes

72:1 Or of saving itself.

72:2 ζωῆς τῆς ἐν τάξει κειμένης,—lit. life set, or placed, in order (as distinguished from intellectual life), that is, presumably, sensible or cosmic life.

72:3 Or has becoming, or genesis.

72:4 Or follow.

72:5 Or is born.

73:1 εἴδους ζωῆς,—that is, formal life, or life set in order.

73:2 Sc. body, or that which comes to birth.

73:3 ζῶον (subs.) according to Gaisford,—that is, an animal; but I prefer ζωόν (adj.), taking it with the following λογικὸν and θνητόν.

73:4 Or animal.

74:1 κοῦφος (mas.),—the subject is, therefore, man, the rational animal.

74:2 Sc. Nature.

74:3 Or, presumably, planetary sphere.

74:4 Sc. the body-compost.

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EXCERPT XVII.

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[OF SOUL, IV.]

(Patrizzi (p. 41) runs this on to the preceding without a break.

Text: Stob., Phys., xli. 4, under heading: “Of the Same”—that is, “Of Hermes”; G. pp. 324, 325; M. i. 228, 229; W. i. 321, 322.

Ménard, Livre IV., No. vi. of “Fragments of the Book of Hermes to Ammon,” pp. 265, 266.)

1. Soul, Ammon, then, is essence containing its own end within itself; in [its] beginning taking to itself the way of life allotted it by Fate, it draws also unto itself a reason like to matter, possessing “heart” and “appetite.” 1

“Heart,” too, is matter; if it doth make its state accordant with the Soul’s intelligence, it, [then,] becometh courage, and is not led away by cowardice.

And “appetite” is matter, too; if it doth make its state accord with the Soul’s rational power, it [then] becometh temperance, and is not

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moved by pleasure, for reasoning fills up the “appetite’s” deficiency.

2. And when both [these] 1 are harmonized, and equalized, and both are made subordinate to the Soul’s rational power, justice is born.

For that their state of equilibrium doth take away the “heart’s” excess, and equalizes the deficiency of “appetite.”

The source of these, 2 however, is the penetrating essence of all thought, 3 its self by its own self, [working] in its own reason that doth think round everything, 4 with its own reason as its rule. 5

It is the essence that doth lead and guide as ruler; its reason is as ’twere its counsellor who thinks about all things. 6

3. The reason of the essence, then, is gnosis of those reasonings which furnish the irrational [part] with reasoning’s conjecturing, 7—a faint thing as compared with reasoning [itself], but reasoning as compared with the irrational, as echo unto voice, and moonlight to the sun.

And “heart” and “appetite” are harmonized upon a rational plan; they pull the one against the other, and [so] they learn to know in their own selves a circular intent. 8

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Footnotes

75:1 In a metaphorical sense,—θυμὸν καὶ ἐπιθυμία; terms originally belonging to a primitive stage of culture, and often translated “anger and concupiscence”—positive and negative, denoting the “too much” and the “too little” of the animal nature, and to he paralleled with the νοῦς and ἐπίνοια of the rational nature. Cf. Ex. i. 5 and xviii. 3.

76:1 Sc. virtues,—courage and temperance.

76:2 Sc. two virtues.

76:3 ἡ διανοητικὴ οὐσία,—that is, the essence which penetrates, or pervades, all things by means of thought.

76:4 ἐν τῷ αὐτῆς περινοητικῷ λόγῳ.

76:5 Or power, or ruling principle.

76:6 ὁ περινοητικός.

76:7 εἰκασμόν.

76:8 διάνοια.

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EXCERPT XVIII.

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[OF SOUL, V.]

(Patrizzi (p. 41) runs this on to the last without a break.

Text: Stob., Phys., xli. 5, under heading: “Of the Same”—that is, “Of Hermes”; G. pp. 325-327; M. i. 229, 230; W. i. 322-324.

Ménard, Livre IV., No. vii. of “Fragments of the Books of Hermes to Ammon,” pp. 267, 268.)

1. [Now], every Soul is free from death and in perpetual motion.

For in the General Sermons 1 we have said some motions are by means of the activities, 2 others are owing to the bodies.

We say, moreover, that the Soul’s produced out of a certain essence,—not a matter,—incorporal itself, just as its essence is.

Now every thing that’s born, must of necessity be born from something.

All things, moreover, in which destruction followeth on birth, must of necessity have two kinds of motion with them:—the [motion] of

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the Soul, by which they’re moved; and body’s [motion], by which they wax and wane.

Moreover, also, on the former’s dissolution, the latter 1 is dissolved.

This I define, [then,] as the motion of bodies corruptible.

2. The Soul, however, is in perpetual motion,—in that perpetually it moves itself, and makes [its] motion active [too] in other things.

And so, according to this reason, every Soul is free from death, having for motion the making active of itself.

The kinds of Souls are three:—divine, [and] human, [and] irrational.

Now the divine [is that] of its divine body, in which there is the making active of itself. For it is moved in it, and moves itself.

For when it is set free from mortal lives, it separates itself from the irrational portions of itself, departs unto the godlike body, and as ’tis in perpetual motion, is moved in its own self, with the same motion as the universe.

3. The human [kind] has also something of the godlike [body], but it has joined to it as well the [parts] irrational,—the appetite and heart. 2

These latter also are immortal, in that they

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happen also in themselves to be activities; but [they are] the activities of mortal bodies.

Wherefore, they are removed far from the godlike portion of the Soul, when it is in its godlike body; but when this 1 enters in a mortal frame, they 2 also cling to it, and by the presence [of these elements] it keeps on being a human Soul.

But that of the irrationals consists of heart and appetite. And for this cause these lives are also called irrational, through deprivation of the reason of the Soul.

4. You may consider, too, as a fourth [kind] that of the soulless, which from without 3 the bodies operates in them, and sets them moving.

But this should [really] be the moving of itself within its godlike body, and the moving of these [other] things as it were by the way.

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COMMENT

The mention of the General Sermons (§ 1) raises the question as to whether or no our extract may not be from one of the Sermons to Tat, for in all other cases these General Sermons are referred to in the Tat-literature. The contents, however, are so similar to the extracts from the Sermons to Ammon that we keep this excerpt with them.

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Footnotes

77:1 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 1 and 7; xiii. (xiv.) 1; and Ex. ix. 1.

77:2 Or energies.

78:1 The former is here the body; the latter, the motion of waxing and waning.

78:2 Cf. Ex. xvii.

79:1 Sc. the divine part.

79:2 The irrational parts.

79:3 The other kinds presumably operating in bodies from within.

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EXCERPT XIX.

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[OF SOUL, VI.]

(Patrizzi (p. 41b) runs this on to the last without a break.

Text: Stob., Phys., xli. 6, under heading: “Of the Same”—that is, “Of Hermes”; G. pp. 327, 328; M. i. 229, 230; W. i. 324, 325.

Ménard, Livre IV., No. viii. of “Fragments of the Books of Hermes to Ammon,” pp. 269, 270.)

1. Soul, then, is an eternal intellectual essence, having for purpose 1 the reason of itself; and when it thinks with 2 [it,] 3 it doth attract [unto itself] the Harmony’s intention. 4

But when it leaves behind the body Nature makes, 5 it bideth in and by itself,—the maker of itself in the noëtic 6 world.

It ruleth its own reason, bearing in its own thought 7 a motion (called by the name of life)

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like unto [that of] that which cometh into life. 1

2. For that the thing peculiar to the Soul [is this],—to furnish other things with what is like its own peculiarity.

There are, accordingly, two lives, two motions:—one, that according to the essence of the Soul; the other, that according to the nature of the body.

The former [is] more general, [the latter is more partial]; the [life] that is according unto essence has no authority but its own self, the other [is] under necessity.

For every thing that’s moved, is under the necessity of that which moveth [it].

The motion that doth move, however, is in close union with the love of the noëtic essence.

For Soul must be incorporal,—essence that hath no share in any body Nature makes.

For were it corporal, it would have neither reason nor intelligence. 2

For every body is without intelligence; but when it doth receive of essence, it doth obtain the power of being a breathing animal.

3. The spirit 3 [hath the power to contemplate] the body; the reason of the essence hath the power to contemplate the Beautiful.

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The sensible—the spirit—is that which can discern appearances. It is distributed into the various sense-organs 1; a part of it becometh spirit by means of which we see, 2 [a part] by means of which we hear, [a part] by means of which we smell, [a part] by means of which we taste, [a part] by means of which we touch.

This spirit, when it is led upwards by the understanding, discerns that which is sensible 3; but if ’tis not, it only maketh pictures for itself.

For it is of the body, and that, too, receptible of all [impressions].

4. The reason of the essence, on the other hand, is that which is possessed of judgment. 4

The knowledge of things worthy [to be known] is co-existent with the reason; [that which is coexistent] with the spirit [is] opinion.

The latter has its operation from the surrounding world; the former, from itself.

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COMMENT

As Exx. xvi.-xix. follow one another in Stobæus, it is highly probable that they are all taken from the same group of sermons, and as their contents are so similar to those of Exx. xiv. and xv., and these are stated by

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[paragraph continues]Stobæus to be from the “Sermons to Ammon,” we are fairly justified in grouping them all together. How many Sermons to Ammon there may have been in the collection used by Stobæus we have no means of knowing; they may also perhaps have had no distinctive title; but as Stobæus usually leaves out the titles in quoting, even when we know them from other sources, there is no definite conclusion to be drawn from his silence.

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Footnotes

80:1 νόημα.

80:2 συννοοῦσα.

80:3 Sc. the reason.

80:4 διάνοιαν.

80:5 Lit. the physical body.

80:6 This might here be translated “the self-purposive,” to pick up the word-play on νόημα and διάνοια.

80:7 Or purpose,—νοήματι.

81:1 That is, presumably, of the same nature as the motion of the soul in incarnation or perhaps of the animal soul.

81:2 νόησιν.

81:3 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 13, Comment.; and Exx. xv. 2, iv. 2.

82:1 Lit. organic senses; cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 17.

82:2 Lit. spirituous sight.

82:3 That is, the sensible or phenomenal world.

82:4 τὸ φρονοῦν.

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EXCERPT XX.

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[THE POWER OF CHOICE]

(Patrizzi (p. 42) runs this on to Ex. xix. without a break.

Text: Stob., Ethica, vii. 31, under heading: “Of Hermes”; G. (ii.) pp. 654, 655; M. ii. 100, 101; W. ii. 160, 161.

Ménard, Livre IV., No. i. of “Fragments Divers,” pp. 271, 272.)

There is, then, essence, reason, thought, 1 perception. 2

Opinion and sensation move towards perception; reason directs itself towards essence; and thought sends itself forth through its own self.

And thought is interwoven with perception, and entering into one another they become one form,—which is that of the Soul [itself].

Opinion and sensation move towards the Soul’s perception; but they do not remain in the same state. Hence is there excess, and falling short, and difference with them.

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When they are drawn away from the perception, they deteriorate; but when they follow it and are obedient, they share in the perceptive reason through the sciences. 1

2. We have the power to choose; it is within our power to choose the better, and in like way [to choose] the worse, according to our will. 2

And if [our] choice clings to the evil things, it doth consort with the corporeal nature; [and] for this cause Fate rules o’er him who makes this choice.

Since, then, the intellectual essence 3 in us is absolutely free,—[namely] the reason that embraces all in thought,—and that it ever is a law unto itself and self-identical, on this account Fate does not reach it. 4

Thus furnishing it first from the First God, it 5 sent forth the perceptive reason, and the whole reason which Nature hath appointed unto them that come to birth.

With these the Soul consorting, consorteth with their fates, though [in herself] she hath no part [or lot] in their fates’ nature.

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(Patrizzi (p. 42) adds the following to the preceding; it is not found in Stobæus, and appears to be a scholium.)

What is necessitated by the interwoven harmony 1 of [all] the parts, in no way differs from that which is fated.

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COMMENT

I have supplied a temporary heading for the sake of uniformity. Our extract, however, seems to be taken from a lengthy treatise, and was probably one of the Sermons to Tat.

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Footnotes

84:1 νόημα.

84:2 διάνοια.

85:1 διὰ τῶν μαθημἄτων.

85:2 Reading ἑκουσίως for the meaningless ἀκουσίως of the text.

85:3 Reading νοηματικὴ with Patrizzi, instead of σωματικὴ as with G. W. prefers ἀσώματος (incorporal).

85:4 Sc. the reason.

85:5 The Soul, or intellectual essence. The text is very obscure, and Wachsmuth does not seem to have improved it. Cf. C. H., xii. (xiii.) 8.

86:1 Lit. interweaving.

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EXCERPT XXI.

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OF ISIS TO HORUS

(Title in Patrizzi (p. 45) is “From Isis.”

Text: Stob., Flor., xiii. 50, under the heading: “Of Hermes from the [Sermon] of Isis to Horus”; G. i. 328; M. i. 265; H. iii. 467.

Schow gives another heading, which Gaisford (in a note) thinks is from the Vienna codex, namely: “Of Hermes from the Intercession (or Supplication,—Πρεσβείας) of Isis.” 1

Ménard, Livre IV., No. ii. of “Fragments Divers,” p. 272.)

A refutation, when it is recognized, O greatest King, carries the man who is refuted towards the desire of things he did not know before.

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COMMENT

This fragment is clearly not in the style of the excerpt from the “Sermon of Isis to Hermes” (Ex. xxvii.); it is far more closely reminiscent of C. H., xvi. or xvii., and is, therefore, probably from the Sermon of Asclepius to the King.

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Footnotes

87:1 R. (p. 134, n. 3) says simply that the last word (“Horus”) is missing in the Vindobonensis, and finds no difficulty in recognizing a type of literature in which King (Ammon) is a pupil of Isis.

p. 88

EXCERPT XXII.

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[AN APOPHTHEGM]

(Text: W., i. 34, 5.)

Hermes on being asked, What is God?—replied: The Demiurge of wholes,—the Mind most wise and everlasting.

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EXCERPT XXIII.

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FROM “APHRODITE”

(Title in Patrizzi (p. 45) is “The Likeness of Children,” followed by: “From Aphrodite.”

Text: Stob., Phys., xxxvi. 2, under heading: “Of Hermes from ‘Aphrodite’”; G. pp. 297, 298; M. i. 207, 208; W. i. 295, 296.

Ménard, Livre IV., No. iii. of “Fragments Divers,” p. 273.)

[——] How, [then,] are offspring born like to their parents? Or how are they returned 1 to [their own] species 2?

[Aphrodite.] I will set forth the reason. When generation stores up seed from the ripe blood being sweated forth, 3 it comes to pass that somehow there’s exhaled from the whole mass 4 of limbs a certain essence, following the

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law of a divine activity, as though the man himself were being born; the same thing also in the woman’s case apparently takes place.

When, then, what floweth from the man hath the ascendancy, and keeps intact, the young one’s brought to light resembling its sire; contrary wise, in the same way, [resembling] its dam.

Moreover, if there should be ascendancy of any part, [then] the resemblance [of the young] will favour that [especial] part.

But sometimes also for long generations the offspring favoureth the husband’s form, because his decan has the greater influence 1 at that [particular] moment when the wife conceives.

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COMMENT

This fragment belongs to a type of Hermetic literature of which it is the sole surviving specimen. It is in form identical with the Isis and Horus type; but what the name of the questioner of Aphrodite could have been is difficult to say.

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Footnotes

89:1 ἀποδίδοται,—referring, presumably, to the idea of metempsychosis.

89:2 Or families.

89:3 ἐξαφεδρουμένου. But W. has ἐξαφρουμένου (turned into foam), following the emendation of Usener, based on Clem. Al. Pædagog., I, vi. 48.

89:4 Lit. body.

90:1 λόγον.

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EXCERPT XXIV.

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[A HYMN OF THE GODS]

(Text: Stob., Phys., v. 14, under the simple heading: “Of Hermes”; G. p. 65 M. i. 45; W. i. 77. The same verses are read in the appendix to the Anthologia Palatina, p. 768, n. 40.)

Seven Stars far varied in their course revolved upon the [wide] Olympian plain; with them for ever will Eternity 1 spin [fate] 2:—Mēnē that shines by night, [and] gloomy Kronos, [and] sweet Hēlios, and Paphiē who’s carried in the shrine, 3 courageous Arēs, fair-wingèd Hermēs, and Zeus the primal source 4 from whom Nature doth come.

Now they themselves have had the race of

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men entrusted to their care; so that in us there is a Mēnē, Zeus, an Arēs, Paphiē, a Kronos, Hēlios and Hermēs.

Wherefore we are divided up [so as] to draw from the ætherial spirit, 1 tears, laughter, anger, birth, reason, sleep, desire.

Tears are Kronos, birth Zeus, reason [is] Hermēs, courage Mars, and Mēnē sleep, in sooth, and Cytherēa desire, and Hēlios [is] laughter—for ’tis because of him that justly every mortal thinking thing doth laugh and the immortal world.

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COMMENT

This is the only known specimen of verses attributed to the Trismegistic tradition. Liddell and Scott, however, under “νυκτιφανής,” do not question this attribution, while Clement of Alexandria (Strom., vi. p. 633 [this is a reference of Wachsmuth’s which I cannot verify]) praises the “Hymns of the Gods” of Hermes. On the contrary, in Anthol. Palat., p. 442, n. 491, the seventh verse is ascribed to Theon of Alexandria.

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Footnotes

91:1 Or Æon.

91:2 ἐπινήσεται. But the Anthology reads “καὶ τοῖσιν ἀεὶ κανονίζεται”—that is to say, Eternity or Æon is for ever regulated or measured by the Seven; which seems to have no sense unless it means that the Seven are the instruments, whereby Eternity is divided into time.

91:3 That is, Venus, the image of whom was, presumably, carried in a small shrine in processions.

91:4 ἀρχιγένεθλος.

92:1 Meaning the one element or ether simply.

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EXCERPT XXV.

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THE VIRGIN OF THE WORLD [I.] 1

(Title in Patrizzi (p. 27b), in the Latin translation, “Minerva Mundi.” 2

Text: Stob., Phys., xli. 44, under heading: “From Thrice-Greatest Hermes’ Sacred Book ‘The Virgin of the World’”; G. pp. 395-419; M. i. 281-298; W. i. 385-407.

Ménard, Livre III., No. i. of “Fragments of the Sacred Book entitled ‘The Virgin of the World,’” pp. 177-200.)

1. 3 So speaking Isis doth pour forth for Horus the sweet draught (the first) of

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deathlessness 1 which souls have custom to receive from Gods, and thus begins her holiest discourse (logos):

Seeing that, Son Horus, Heaven, adorned with many a wreath [of starry crowns], is set o’er every nature of [all] things beneath, and that nowhere it lacketh aught of anything which the whole cosmos now doth hold,—in every way it needs must be that every nature which lies underneath, should be co-ordered and full-filled by those that lie above; for things below cannot of course give order to the ordering above.

It needs must, therefore, be the less should give place to the greater mysteries. The ordinance of the sublimer things transcends the lower; it is both sure in every way and falleth ’neath no mortal’s thought. Wherefore the [mysteries] below did sigh, fearing the wondrous beauty and the everlasting durance of the ones above,

’Twas worth the gazing 2 and the pains to see Heaven’s beauty, beauty that seemed like God,—God who was yet unknown, and the rich majesty of Night, who weaves her web with rapid light, 3 though it be less than Sun’s, and of the other mysteries 4 in turn that move in Heaven, with ordered motions and with periods

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of times, with certain hidden influences 1 bestowing order on the things below and co-increasing them.

2. Thus fear succeeded fear, and searching search incessant, and for so long as the Creator of the universals willed, did ignorance retain its grip on all. But when He judged it fit to manifest Him who He is, He breathed into the Gods the Loves, and freely poured the splendour 2 which He had within His heart, into their minds, in ever greater and still greater measure; that firstly they might have the wish to seek, next they might yearn to find, and finally have power to win success as well. But this, my Horus, wonder-worthy son, could never have been done had that seed 3 been subject to death, for that as yet had no existence, but only with a soul that could vibrate responsive to the mysteries of Heaven.

3. Such was all-knowing Hermes, who saw all things, and seeing understood, and understanding had the power both to disclose and to give explanation. For what he knew, he graved on stone; yet though he graved them onto stone he hid them mostly, keeping sure silence though in speech, that every younger age of cosmic time

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might seek for them. And thus, with charge unto his kinsmen of the Gods to keep sure watch, he mounted to the Stars.

To him succeeded Tat, who was at once his son and heir unto these knowledges; and not long afterwards Asclepius-Imuth, according to the will of Ptah who is Hephæstus, 1 and all the rest who were to make enquiry of the faithful certitude of heavenly contemplation, as Foreknowledge 2 willed, Foreknowledge queen of all.

4. Hermes, however, made explanation to surrounding [space], how that not even to his son (because of the yet newness of his youth) had he been able to hand on the Perfect Vision. But when the Sun did rise for me, and with all-seeing eyes I 3 gazed upon the hidden [mysteries] of that New Dawn, and contemplated them, slowly there came to me—but it was sure—conviction that the sacred symbols of the cosmic elements were hid away hard by the secrets of Osiris.

5. [Hermes], ere he returned to Heaven, invoked a spell on them, and spake these words. (For ’tis not meet, my son, that I should leave this proclamation ineffectual, but [rather] should speak forth what words [our] Hermes uttered

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when he hid his books away.) Thus then he said:

“O holy books, who have been made by my immortal hands, by incorruption’s magic spells, . . . 1 free from decay throughout eternity remain and incorrupt from time! Become unseeable, unfindable, for every one whose foot shall tread the plains of this [our] land, until old Heaven doth bring forth meet instruments for you, whom the Creator shall call souls.”

Thus spake he; and, laying spells on them by means of his own works, he shuts them safe away in their own zones. And long enough the time has been since they were hid away. 2

6. And Nature, O my son, was barren, till they who then were under orders to patrol the Heaven, approaching to the God of all, their King, reported on the lethargy of things. The time was come for cosmos to awake, and this was no one’s task but His alone.

“We pray Thee, then,” they said, “direct Thy thought to things which now exist and to what things the future needs.”

7. When they spake thus, God smiled and said: “Nature, arise!” And from His word

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there came a marvel, feminine, possessed of perfect beauty, gazing at which the Gods stood all-amazed. And God the Fore-father, with name of Nature, honoured her, and bade her be prolific.

Then gazing fixedly on the surrounding space, He spake these words as well: “Let Heaven be filled with all things full, and Air, and Æther too! “God spake and it was so. And Nature with herself communing knew she must not disregard the Sire’s command; so with the help of Toil she made a daughter fair, whom she did call Invention. And on her 1 God bestowed the gift of being, and with His gift He set apart all them that had been so-far made, filled them with mysteries, and to Invention gave the power of ruling them.

8. But He, no longer willing that the world above should be inert, but thinking good to fill it full of breaths, so that its parts should not remain immotive and inert, He thus began on these 2 with use of holy arts as proper for the bringing forth of His own special work.

For taking breath from His own Breath and blending this with knowing Fire, 3 He mingled them with certain other substances which have

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no power to know; and having made the two 1—either with other—one, with certain hidden words of power, He thus set all the mixture going thoroughly; until out of the compost smiled a substance, as it were, far subtler, purer far, and more translucent than the things from which it came; it was so clear that no one but the Artist could detect it.

9. And since it neither thawed when fire was set unto it (for it was made of Fire), nor yet did freeze when it had once been properly produced (for it was made of Breath), but kept its mixture’s composition a certain special kind, peculiar to itself, of special type and special blend,—(which composition, you must know, God called Psychōsis, after the more auspicious meaning of the name and from the similarity of its behaviour 2)

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[paragraph continues]—it was from this coagulate He fashioned souls enough in myriads, 1 moulding with order and with measure the efflorescent product of the mixture for what He willed, with skilled experience and fitting reason, so that they should not be compelled to differ any way one from another.

10. For, you must know, the efflorescence that exhaled out of the movement God induced, was not like to itself. For that its first florescence was greater, fuller, every way more pure, than was its second; its second was far second to the first, but greater far than was its third. 2 And thus the total number of degrees reached up to sixty. 3 In spite of this, in laying down the law, He ordered it that all should be eternal, as though from out one essence, the forms of which Himself alone could bring to their completion.

11. Moreover, He appointed for them limits and reservations in the height of upper Nature, 4

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that they might keep the cylinder 1 a-whirl in proper order and economy and [thus] might please their Sire. And so in that all-fairest station of the Æther He summoned unto Him the natures of all things that had as yet been made, and spake these words:

“O Souls, ye children fair of Mine own Breath and My solicitude, whom I have now with My own Hands 2 brought to successful birth and consecrate to My own world, give ear unto these words of Mine as unto laws, and meddle not with any other space but that which is appointed for you by My will.

“For you, if ye keep steadfast, the Heaven, with the star-order, and thrones I have ordained full-filled with virtue, shall stay as now they are for you; but if ye shall in any way attempt some innovation contrary to My decrees, I swear to you by My most holy Breath, and by this mixture out of which I brought you into being, and by these Hands of Mine which gave you life, 3 that I will speedily devise for you a bond and punishments.”

12. And having said these words, the God,

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who is my Lord, mixed the remaining cognate elements (Water and Earth 1) together, and, as before, invoking on them certain occult words, words of great power though not so potent as the first, He set them moving rapidly, and breathed into the mixture power of life; and taking the coagulate (which like the other floated to the top), when it had been well steeped and had become consistent, He modelled out of it those of the [sacred] animals 2 possessing forms like unto men’s.

The mixtures’ residue He gave unto those souls that had gone in advance and had been summoned to the lands of Gods, to regions near the Stars, and to the [choir of] holy daimones. He said:

13. “My sons, ye children of My Nature, fashion things! Take ye the residue of what My art hath made, and let each fashion something which shall bear resemblance to his own nature. These will I further give to you as models.”

He took and set in order fair and fine, agreeably to the motions of the souls, the world of sacred animals, appending as it were to those resembling men those which came next in order, and on these types of lives He did bestow

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the all-devising powers and all-contriving procreative breath of all the things which were for ever generally to be.

And He withdrew, with promises to join unto the visible productions of their hands breath that cannot be seen, 1 and essence of engendering its like to each, so that they might give birth to others like themselves. And these are under no necessity to do aught else than what they did at first.

14. [And Horus asked:]

What did the souls do, mother, then?

And Isis said:

Taking the blend of matter, Horus, son, they first looked at the Father’s mixture and adored it, and tried to find out whence it was composed; but this was not an easy thing for them to know.

They then began to fear lest they should fall beneath the Father’s wrath for trying to find out, and so they set to work to do what they were bid.

Thereon, out of the upper stuff which had its topmost layer superfluously light, they formed the race of birds; while they were doing this the mixture had become half-hardened, and by this time had taken on a firm consistency—thereon they fashioned out the race of things

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which have four feet; [next they did fashion forth] the race of fish—less light and needing a moist substance of a different kind to swim in; and as the residue was of a cold and heavy nature, from it the Souls devised the race of creeping things.

15. They then, my son, as though they had done something grand, with over-busy daring armed themselves, and acted contrary to the commands they had received; and forthwith they began to overstep their proper limits and their reservations, and would no longer stay in the same place, but were for ever moving, and thought that being ever stationed in one place was death.

That they would do this thing, however, O my son (as Hermes says when he speaks unto me), had not escaped the Eye of Him who is the God and Lord of universal things; and He searched out a punishment and bond, the which they now in misery endure.

Thus was it that the Sovereign King of all resolved to fabricate with art the human frame, in order that in it the race of Souls throughout might be chastised.

16. “Then sending for me,” Hermes says, “He spake: ‘Soul of My Soul, and holy mind of My own Mind, 1 up to what point, the nature of the

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things beneath, shall it be seen in gloom? How long shall what has up to now been made remain inactive and be destitute of praise? Bring hither to Me now, My son, all of the Gods in Heaven,’ said God”—as Hermes saith.

And when they came obedient to His command,—“Look down,” said He, “upon the Earth, and all beneath.” And they forthwith both looked and understood the Sovereign’s will. And when He spake to them on human kind’s behalf, they [all] agreed to furnish those who were to be, with whatsoever thing they each could best provide.

17. Sun said: “I’ll shine unto my full.”

Moon promised to pour light upon the after-the-sun course, and said she had already given birth to Fear, and Silence, and also Sleep, and Memory—a thing that would turn out to be most useful for them. 1

Cronus announced himself already sire of Justice and Necessity.

Zeus said: “So that the race which is to be may not for ever fight, already for them have I made Fortune, and Hope, and Peace.”

Ares declared he had become already sire of Struggle, Wrath, and Strife.

Nor yet did Aphrodite hesitate; she also said: “I’ll join to them Desire, my Lord, and Bliss,

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and Laughter [too], so that our kindred souls, in working out their very grievous condemnation, may not exhaust their punishment unto the full.”

Full pleased were all, my son, at Aphrodite’s words.

“And for my part,” said Hermes, “I will make men’s nature well endowed; I will devote to them Prudence and Wisdom, Persuasiveness and Truth, and never will I cease from congress with Invention, but ever will I benefit the mortal life of men born underneath my types of life. 1 For that the types our Father and Creator hath set apart for me, are types of wisdom and intelligence, and more than ever [is this so] what time the motion of the Stars set over them doth have the natural power of each consonant with itself.”

18. And God, the Master of the universe, rejoiced on hearing this, and ordered that the race of men should be.

“I,” Hermes says, “was seeking for the stuff which had to be employed, and calling on the Monarch for His aid. And He gave order to the Souls to give the mixture’s residue; and taking it I found it utterly dried up.

“Thereon, in mixing it, I used more water far than was required to bring the matter back unto

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its former state, so that the plasm was in every way relaxable, and weak and powerless, in order that it might not, in addition to its natural sagacity, be full of power as well.

“I moulded it, and it was fair; and I rejoiced at seeing mine own work, and from below I called upon the Monarch to behold. And He did look on it, and was rejoiced, and ordered that the Souls should be enfleshed.

“Then were they first plunged in deep gloom, and, learning that they were condemned, began to wail. 1 I was myself amazed at the Souls’ utterances.”

19. Now give good heed, son Horus, for thou art being told the Mystic Spectacle which Kamēphis, our forefather, was privileged to hear from Hermes, record-writer of all deeds, and I from Kamēphis, most ancient of [us] all, when he did honour me with the Black [Rite] that gives perfection; hear thou it now from me!

For when, O wondrous son of mighty fame, if they were about to be shut in their prisons, some simply uttered wails and groans—in just the self-same way as beasts that once have been at liberty, when torn from their accustomed haunts they love so well, will be bad slaves, will fight

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and make revolt, and be in no agreement with their masters; nay more, if circumstance should serve, will even do to death those that oppress them. 1

Others with louder outcry hissed like snakes; another one shrieked shrilly, and ere he spake shed many tears, and, turning up and down what things served him as eyes, he said:

20. “O Heaven, thou source of our begetting, O Æther, Air, O Hands and holy Breath of God our Monarch, O ye most brilliant Stars, eyes of the Gods, O tireless light of Sun and Moon, co-nurslings of our origin,—reft from [you] all we suffer piteously.

“And this the more, in that from spacious realms of light, from out [thy] holy envelope and wealthy dome, and from the blessed government we shared with Gods, we shall be thus shut down into these honourless and lowly quarters.

“What is the so unseemly thing we miserables have done? What [crime] deserves these punishments? How many sins await us wretched ones? How many are the things we have to do in this our hopeless plight, necessities to furnish for this watery frame that is so soon dissolved?

21. “For that no longer shall our eyes behold

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the souls of God; when through such watery spheres as these we see our own forefather Heaven grown small and tiny, we shall dissolve in sighs,—nay, there’ll be times we shall not see at all, 1 for sentence hath been passed on us poor things; the gift of real sight hath not been given to us, in that it hath not been permitted us to see without the light. Windows they are, not eyes! 2

“How wretchedly shall we endure to hear our kindred breaths breathe in the air, when we no longer shall be breathing with them! For home, instead of this great world high in the air, a heart’s small mass awaits us. Set Thou us free from bonds so base as these to which we have sunk down, and end our grief!

“O Lord, and Father, and our Maker, if so it be Thou hast thus quickly grown indifferent unto the works of Thine own Hands, appoint for us some limits! Still deem us worthy of some words, though they be few, while yet we can see through the whole world-order bright on every side!”

22. Thus speaking, Horus, son, the Souls gained their request; for that the Monarch came, and sitting on the Throne of Truth made answer to their prayers.

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“O Souls, Love and Necessity shall be your lords, 1 they who are lords and marshals after Me of all. 2 Know, all of you who are set under My unageing rule, that as long as ye keep you free of sin, ye shall dwell in the fields of Heaven; but if some cause of blame for aught attach itself to you, ye shall dwell in the place that Destiny allots, condemned to mortal wombs.

“If, then, the things imputed to your charge be slight, leaving the bond of fleshly frames subject to death, ye shall again embrace your [father] Heaven, and sigh no more; but if ye shall commit some greater sins, and with the end appointed of your frames be not advanced, no longer shall ye dwell in Heaven, nor even in the bodies of mankind, but shall continue after that to wander round in lives irrational.” 3

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23. Thus speaking, Horus mine, He gave to all the gift of breath, 1 and thus continued:

“It is not without purpose or by chance I have laid down the law of your transformings 2; but as [it will be] for the worse if ye do aught unseemly, so for the better, if ye shall will what’s worthy of your birth.

“For I, and no one else, will be the Witness and the Watcher. Know, then, it is for what ye have done heretofore, ye do endure this being shut in bodies as a punishment.

“The difference in your rebirths, accordingly, for you, shall be as I have said, a difference of bodies, and their [final] dissolution [shall be] a benefit and a [return to] the fair happiness of former days.

“But if ye think to do aught else unworthy of Me, your mind shall lose its sight so as to think the contrary [of what is true], and take the punishment for benefit; the change to better things for infamous despite.

“But the more righteous of you, who stand upon the threshold of the change to the diviner state, shall among men be righteous kings, and genuine philosophers, founders of states, and lawgivers, and real seers, and true herb-knowers,

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and prophets of the Gods most excellent, skilful musicians, skilled astronomers, and augurs wise, consummate sacrificers,—as many of you as are worthy of things fair and good.

24. “Among winged tribes [they shall be] eagles, for these will neither scare away their kind nor feed on them; nay more, when they are by, no other weaker beast will be allowed by them to suffer wrong, for what will be the eagles’ nature is too just [to suffer it].

“Among four-footed things [they will be] lions,—a life of strength and of a kind which in a measure needs no sleep, in mortal body practising the exercises of immortal life—for they nor weary grow nor sleep. 1

“And among creeping things [they will be] dragons, in that this animal will have great strength and live for long, will do no harm, and in a way be friends with man, and let itself be tamed; it will possess no poison and will cast its skin, 2 as is the nature of the Gods.

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“Among the things that swim [they will be] dolphins; for dolphins will take pity upon those who fall into the sea, and if they are still breathing bear them to the land, while if they’re dead they will not ever even touch them, though they will be the most voracious tribe that in the water dwells.”

25. Thus speaking God became imperishable Mind. 1 Thereon, son Horus, from the Earth uprose a very Mighty Spirit which no mass of body could contain, whose strength consisted in his intellect. And though he knew full well the things on which he questioned—the body with which man was clothed according to his type, a body fair and dignified, yet savage overmuch and full of fear—immediately he saw the souls were entering the plasms, he cried out:

“What are these called, O Hermes, Writer of the Records of the Gods?”

And when he answered “Men!”—“Hermes,” he said, “it is a daring work, this making man, with eyes inquisitive, and talkative of tongue, with power henceforth to hear things even which

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are no concern of his, dainty of smell, who will use to its full his power of touch on every thing.

“Hast thou, his generator, judged it good to leave him free from care, who in the future daringly will gaze upon the fairest mysteries which Nature hath? Wouldst thou leave him without a grief, who in the days to come will make his thoughts reach unto mysteries beyond the Earth?

26. “Men will dig up the roots of plants, and will find out their juices’ qualities. Men will observe the nature of the stones. Men will dissect not only animals irrational, but they’ll dissect themselves, desiring to find out how they were made. They will stretch out their daring hands e’en to the sea, and cutting self-grown forests down will ferry one another o’er to lands beyond. [Men] will seek out as well the inner nature of the holy spaces which no foot may tread, and will chase after them into the height, desiring to observe the nature of the motion of the Heaven.

“These are yet moderate things [which they will do]. For nothing more remains than Earth’s remotest realms; nay, in their daring they will track out Night, the farthest Night of all.

27. “Naught have they, then, to stop them from receiving their initiation in the good of

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freedom from all pain, and, unconstrained by terror’s grievous goads, from living softly out a life free from all care.

“Then will they not gird on the armour of an over-busy daring up to Heaven? Will they not, then, reach out their souls freed from all care unto the [primal] elements themselves?

“Teach them henceforth to long to plan out something, where they have as well to fear the danger of its ill-success, in order that they may be tamed by the sharp tooth of pain in failure of their hopes.

“Let the too busy nature of their souls be balanced by desires, and fears, and griefs, and empty hopes.

“Let loves in quick succession sway their souls, hopes, manifold desires, sometimes fulfilled, and sometimes unfulfilled, that the sweet bait of their success may draw them into struggle amid direr ills.

“Let fever lay its heavy hand on them, that losing heart they may submit desire to discipline.”

28. Thou grievest, dost thou, Horus, son, to hear thy mother put these things in words? Art thou not struck with wonder, art thou not terror-struck at how poor man was grievously oppressed? Hear what is sadder still!

When Momos said these things Hermes was pleased, for what he said was said out of affection

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for him; and so he did all that he recommended, speaking thus:

“Momos, the Nature of the Breath Divine which doth surround [all things] shall not become inert. The Master of the universe appointed me as steward and as manager.

“Wherefore the overseer of His command will be the keen-eyed Goddess of the all, Adrasteia 1; and I will skilfully devise an instrument, mysterious, possessed of power of sight that cannot err, and cannot be escaped, whereto all things on earth shall of necessity be subject, from birth to final dissolution,—an instrument which binds together all that’s done. This instrument shall rule all other things on Earth as well [as man].”

29. These words, said Hermes, did I speak to Momos, and forthwith the instrument was set a-going.

When this was done, and when the souls had entered in the bodies, and [Hermes] had himself been praised for what was done, again the Monarch did convoke the Gods in session. The Gods assembled, and once more did He make proclamation, saying:

“Ye Gods, all ye who have been made of chiefest Nature, free from all decay, who have

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received as your appointed lot for ever more to order out the mighty Æon, through whom all universal things will never weary grow surrendering themselves in turn the one to other,—how long shall we be rulers of this sovereignty that none can ever know? How long these things, shall they transcend the power of sight of Sun and Moon?

“Let each of us bring forth according to his power. Let us by our own energy wipe out this inert state of things; let chaos seem to be a myth incredible to future days. Set hand to mighty work; and I myself will first begin.”

30. He spake; straightway in cosmic order there began the differentiation of the up-to-then black unity [of things]. And Heaven shone forth above tricked out with all his mysteries; Earth, still a-tremble, as the Sun shone forth grew harder, and appeared with all the fair adornments that bedeck her round on every side. For beautiful to God are even things which men think mean, in that in truth they have been made to serve the laws of God.

And God rejoiced when now He saw His works a-moving; and filling full His Hands, which held as much as all surrounding space, with all that Nature had produced, and squeezing tight the handfuls mightily, He said:

“Take [these], O holy Earth, take those, all-

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honoured one, who art to be the mother of all things, and henceforth lack thou naught!”

31. God spake, and opening His Hands, such Hands as God should have, He poured them all into the composition of the world. And they in the beginnings were unknown in every way; for that the Souls as newly shut in prison, not enduring their disgrace, began to strive in emulation with the Gods in Heaven, in full command of their high birth, and when held back, in that they had the same Creator, made revolt, and using weaker men as instruments, began to make them set upon each other, and range themselves in conflict, and make war among themselves.

Thus strength did mightily prevail o’er weakness, so that the strong did burn and massacre the weak, and from the holy places down they cast the living and the dead down from the holy shrines, until the Elements in their distress resolved to go to God their Monarch [to complain] about the savage state in which men lived.

The evil now being very great, the Elements approached the God who made them, and formulated their complaint in some such words as these:

32. It was moreover Fire who first received authority to speak. He said:

“O Lord, Artificer of this new World, thou

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[paragraph continues]Name mysterious among the Gods, and up to now revered by all mankind, how long hast Thou, O Daimon, judged it right to leave the life of mortals without God?

“Show now Thyself unto Thy World consulting 1 Thee; initiate the savagery of life with peace; give laws to life; to right give oracles; fill with fair hopes all things; and let men fear the vengeance of the Gods, and none will sin.

“Should they receive due retribution for their sins, they will refrain henceforth from doing wrong; they will respect their oaths, and no one any more will ponder sacrilege.

“Let them be taught to render thanks for benefits received, that I, the Fire, may joyfully do service in the sacrificial rites, that they may from the altar send sweet-smelling vapours forth.

“For up to now I am polluted, Lord; and by the godless daring of these men I am compelled to burn up flesh. They will not let me be for what I was brought forth; but they adulterate with all indecency my undecaying state.”

33. And Air too said:

“I also, Master, am made turbid by the vapours which the bodies of the dead exhale, and I am pestilential, and, no longer filled with health, I gaze down from above on things I ought not to behold.”

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Next Water, O my son of mighty soul, received authority to speak, and spake and said:

“O Father, O wonderful Creator of all things, Daimon self-born, and Nature’s Maker, who through Thee doth conceive all things, now at this last, command the rivers’ streams for ever to be pure, for that the rivers and the seas or wash the murderers’ hands or else receive the murdered.”

34. After came Earth in bitter grief, and taking up the tale, O son of high renown, thus she began to speak:

“O sovereign Lord, Chief of the Heavenly Ones, and Master of the Wheels, 1 Thou Ruler of us Elements, O Sire of them who stand beside Thee, from whom all things have the beginning of their increase and of their decrease, and into whom they cease again and have the end that is their due according to Necessity’s decree, O greatly honoured One, the godless rout of men doth dance upon my bosom.

“I hold in my embrace as well the nature of all things; for I, as Thou didst give command, not only bear them all, but I receive them also when they’re killed. But now am I dishonoured. The world upon the Earth though filled with all things [else] hath not a God.

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“For having naught to fear they sin in everything, and from my heights, O Lord, down [dead] they fall by every evil art. And soaking with the juices of their carcases I’m all corrupt. Hence am I, Lord, compelled to hold in me those of no worth. With all I bear I would hold God as well.

“Bestow on Earth, if not Thyself, for I could not contain Thee, yet some holy Emanation 1 of Thyself. Make Thou the Earth more honoured than the rest of Elements; for it is right that she should boast of gifts from Thee, in that she giveth all.”

35. Thus spake the Elements; and God, fullfilling all things with the sound of His [most] holy Voice, spake thus:

“Depart, ye Holy Ones, ye Children worthy of a mighty Sire, nor yet in any way attempt to innovate, nor leave the whole of [this] My World without your active service.

“For now another Efflux of My Nature is among you, and he shall be a pious supervisor of all deeds—judge incorruptible of living men and monarch absolute of those beneath the earth, not only striking terror [into them] but taking vengeance on them. And by his class of birth the fate he hath deserved shall follow every man.”

And so the Elements did cease from their complaint,

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upon the Master’s order, and they held their peace; and each of them continued in the exercise of his authority and in his rule.

36. And Horus thereon said:

How was it, mother, then, that Earth received God’s Efflux?

And Isis said:

I may not tell the story of [this] birth 1; for it is not permitted to describe the origin of thy descent, O Horus, [son] of mighty power, lest afterwards the way-of-birth of the immortal Gods should be known unto men,—except so far that God the Monarch, the universal Orderer and Architect, sent for a little while thy mighty sire Osiris, and the mightiest Goddess Isis, that they might help the world, for all things needed them.

’Tis they who filled life full of life. ’Tis they who caused the savagery of mutual slaughtering of men to cease. ’Tis they who hallowed precincts to the Gods their ancestors and spots for holy rites. ’Tis they who gave to men laws, food, and shelter.

’Tis they who will, says Hermes, learn to know the secrets of my records all, and will make separation of them; and some they will keep for themselves, while those that are best suited for the benefit of mortal men, they will engrave on tablet and on obelisk.

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’Tis they who were the first to set up courts of law; and filled the world with justice and fair rule. ’Tis they who were the authors of good pledges and of faith, and brought the mighty witness of an oath into men’s lives.

’Tis they who taught men how to wrap up those who ceased to live, as they should be. 1

’Tis they who searched into the cruelty of death, and learned that though the spirit which goes out longs to return into men’s bodies, yet if it ever fail to have the power of getting back again, then loss of life results.

’Tis they who learned from Hermes that surrounding space was filled with daimons, and graved on hidden stones [the hidden teaching].

’Tis they alone who, taught by Hermes in God’s hidden codes, became the authors of the arts, and sciences, and all pursuits which men do practise, and givers of their laws.

’Tis they who, taught by Hermes that the things below have been disposed by God to be in sympathy with things above, established on the earth the sacred rites o’er which the mysteries in Heaven preside.

’Tis they who, knowing the destructibility of [mortal] frames, devised the grade of prophets, in all things perfected, in order that no prophet who stretched forth his hands unto the Gods,

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should be in ignorance of anything, that magic and philosophy should feed the soul, and medicine preserve the body when it suffered pain.

38. And having done all this, my son, Osiris and myself perceiving that the world was [now] quite full, were thereupon demanded back by those who dwell in Heaven, but could not go above till we had made appeal unto the Monarch, that surrounding space might with this knowledge of the soul 1 be filled as well, and we ourselves succeed in making our ascent acceptable [to Him]. . . . For that God doth in hymns rejoice.

Ay, mother, Horus said. On me as well bestow the knowledge of this hymn, that I may not remain in ignorance.

And Isis said: Give ear, O son! 2

*     *     *     *     *

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Footnotes

93:1 Or “Apple of the Eye of the World”—see Commentary. Referred to as K. K.,—i.e. Κόρη Κόσμου.

93:2 Curiously enough, though the page-headings throughout have “Minerva Mundi,” the heading of p. 28 still stands “Pupilla Mundi”—showing that Patrizzi himself was puzzled how to translate the Greek, and had probably in the first place translated it throughout “Pupilla Mundi,” or “Apple of the Eye of the World.” In his Introduction (p. 3), however, Patrizzi writes: “But there is extant also another [book of Hermes] with the title of ‘The Sacred Book,’ which we found in Cyprus, in a monastery called Enclistra, at the same time as the rest of the books, and which John Stobæus has inserted in his Physical Eclogues together with other fragments.” This would seem to suggest that Patrizzi had seen the original Sermon, and that its main title was “The Sacred Book.”

93:3 I have numbered the paragraphs for convenience of reference.

94:1 τὸ πρῶτον ἀμβροσίας.

94:2 Or contemplation, θεωρίας.

94:3 Sc. The weft and warp of stars.

94:4 The planetary spheres.

95:1 ἀπόροιαι, or emanations. Cf. R. 16, n. 4, for the conflation of the pure Egyptian emanation doctrine with astrological considerations.

95:2 Radiance or light.

95:3 Sc. the race of the Gods.

96:1 For the restored text, see R. 122.

96:2 Or Providence, πρόνοια.

96:3 The masculine is here used, the writer forgetting for the moment that he had assumed the person of Isis.

97:1 The text is here again hopeless. Meineke’s emendation (Adnot., p. cxxx.) ἃς . . . φαρμάκῳ χρίσας ἐπικρατῷ—which makes Hermes smear the books with some magical ointment—is ingenious, but hardly satisfactory, though Wachsmuth adopts it.

97:2 This is purely conjectural; the text is utterly corrupt.

98:1 Sc. Invention.

98:2 Sc. the breaths or spirits.

98:3 πῦρ νοερόν—a term in frequent use subsequently among the Later Platonists; cf. Porphyry, ap. Euseb., Præp. Ev., XV. xi. 16

99:1 Sc. the knowing and unknowing primal elements. Cf. P. S. A., vi.

99:2 The text is very involved and obscure, and the meaning of the writer is by no means clear. Psychōsis (ψύχωσις) means either animation (quickening) or “making cold” (cf. ψύχω and ψυχόω); the name Psychōsis is thus apparently supposed by the writer to have some connection with the term ἔψυχε (“freeze,” or grow cold), which he has just employed in his description of the behaviour of the mixture. In its less auspicious sense ἔψυχε meant “grow cold”; in its more auspicious meaning it signified “breathe.” But even so it must be said that the further reason (viz., similarity of behaviour) given for the choice of the term Psychōsis is the exact opposite of what is stated in the description of the soul-stuff’s nature; and this is all the more puzzling when we recall the theory of Origen and his predecessors that the soul (ψυχή) was so-called precisely because it had grown cold and fallen away from the Divine heat and life. With the term cf. the σωμάτωσις of Exx. viii. 5, vii. 2.

100:1 Cf. Plato, Tim., 41: “He divided the whole mixture into souls equal in number to the stars, and assigned each soul to a star.” So also Philo, who speaks of the souls as “equal in number to the stars”—De Som., i. § 22; M. 642, P. 586 (Ri. iii. 244).

100:2 Cf. Plato, ibid.: “They [the souls] were not, however, pure as before, but diluted to the second and third degrees.

100:3 See § 56 below.

100:4 Of the Nature Above (τῆς ἄνω φύσεως); cf. the “Jerusalem Above” of the “Gnostics.” Cf. also Tim., 41 D: “And having there [that is, among the stars] placed them as in a chariot, he showed them the nature of the universe, and declared to them the laws of destiny, according to which their first birth should be one and the same for all,—no one should suffer a disadvantage at his hands; they were to be sown in the instruments of time severally adapted to them, and to come forth the most religious of animals; and as human nature was of two kinds, the superior race would hereafter be called man.” With the last sentence, cf. also 12 below.

101:1 Cf. P. S. A., xix.

101:2 Cf. § 31 below.

101:3 Cf. Hermes-Prayer, iii. 3, and note.

102:1 We have had previous mention of fire, (æther) and air,—the psychōsis being the quintessence.

102:2 These are presumably the types of life in the upper world, symbolized by the zodiac.

103:1 So Meineke in notes, following Cantor,—instead of the traditional “visible.”

104:1 Cf. Cyril, C. J., i. 15 (Frag. xvi.).

105:1 Cf. Plat. Crit., 108.

106:1 Sc. “signs of the zodiac,” so-called.

107:1 There is a lacuna in the text, which I have thus conjecturally completed.

108:1 The reading of this sentence has not yet been properly emended, so that its translation is somewhat conjectural.

109:1 An Orphic verse has here crept into the text from the margin. It runs: “By light it is we see; by eyes we naught behold.” Fragm. Monad., x., p. 504, Herm.

109:2 Cf. Plat., Men., 76; Seneca, Quæst. Nat., iv. 9.

110:1 Cf. Tim. 42 A: “When they should be implanted in bodies by necessity . . . they should have . . . sensation . . . and love.”

110:2 Cf. Frag. xxiii.

110:3 Cf. Tim., 42 B: “He who lived well during his appointed time was to return and dwell in his native star, and there he would have a blessed and congenial existence. But if he failed in attaining this, at the second birth, he would pass into a woman, and if, when in that state of being, he did not desist from evil, he would be continually changed into some brute who resembled him in the evil nature which he had acquired, and would not cease from his toils and transformations until he followed the revolution of the ‘same’ and the ‘like’ within him, and overcame by the help of reason the turbulent and irrational mob of later accretions, made up of fire and air and water and earth, and returned to the form of his first and better state.” Notice the omission of any reference to the inferior status of woman in the Egyptian tradition.

111:1 Lit. “their spirits”—which apparently link the souls with their bodies.

111:2 Reading μεταβολάς.

112:1 Cf. Manetho, cited in the Orthography of Chœroboscus (Cramer, Anecd. Ox., ii. 235, 32; Ælian, H. A., v. 39, who follows Apion; R. 145, n. 3). But indeed this queer belief is a commonplace of the Mediæval Bestiaries, which all go back to their second century Alexandrian prototype, the famous Physiologus, which was doubtless in part based on Aristotle’s History of Animals and Pliny’s Natural History.

112:2 ἐάσει δὲ καὶ γηράσαν. The reading is corrupt. But if we read γῆρας for γηράσαν, we have in the writer’s ornate and somewhat strained style ἐᾶν γῆρας for the usual γῆρας ἐκδύνειν found in Aristotle (H. V., 5. 7. 10; 8. 17. 11) for the changing of a serpent’s skin. The phrase “as is the nature of the Gods” may then be explained as referring to the parallel between the anciently supposed rejuvenescence of the serpent and the perpetual growing young of the Gods.

113:1 Cf. C. H., i. 27: “This when he’d said, the Shepherd mingled with the powers.” Cf. Tim., 42 E: “When the Creator had made all these ordinances He remained in His own accustomed nature.”

116:1 Nemesis, the kārmic deity, “she from whom none can escape, according to the generally accepted derivation of the name.

119:1 Sc. as supplicants consulting an oracle.

120:1 Or disks, presumably the world-wheels.

121:1 τινὰ ίερὰν ὰπόρροιαν.

122:1 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 3 (Com.).

123:1 Sc. mummification.

124:1 θεωρία, contemplative science, face to face knowledge.

124:2 The Commentary begins at the end of the following excerpt.

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EXCERPT XXVI.

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THE VIRGIN OF THE WORLD [II.]

(Patrizzi (p. 32b) runs this on to the last without a break.

Text: Stob., Phys., ili. 45, under heading: “In the Same”; G. pp. 420-427; M. i. 299-304; W. i. 407-414.

Ménard; Livre III., No. ii. of “Fragment,” etc., as above, pp. 201-208.)

39. Now if thou wouldst, O son of mighty soul, know aught beside, ask on!

And Horus said: O mother of great honour, I would know how royal souls are born?

And Isis said: Son Horus, the distinction which marks out the royal souls is somewhat of this kind.

Four regions are there in the universe which fall beneath a law and leadership which cannot be transgressed—Heaven, and the Æther, and the Air, and the most holy Earth.

Above in Heaven, son, the Gods do dwell, o’er whom with all the rest doth rule the Architect of all; and in the Æther [dwell] the Stars, o’er whom the mighty Light-giver the Sun holds sway; but

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in the Air [live] only souls, 1 o’er whom doth rule the Moon; and on the Earth [do dwell] men and the rest of living things, o’er whom he who doth happen to be king holds sway.

40. The Gods engender, son, the kings it has deserved, to rule [the race] that lives on Earth. The rulers are the emanations of the king, of whom the nearer to him is more royal than the rest; for that the Sun, in that ’tis nearer than the Moon to God, is far more vast and potent, to whom the Moon comes second both in rank and power.

The king, then, is the last of all the other Gods, but first of men; and so long as he is upon the Earth, he is divorced from his true godship, but hath something that doth distinguish him from men and which is like to God.

The soul which is sent down to dwell in him, is from that space which is above those regions whence [the souls] descend to other men. Down from that space the souls are sent to rule for those two reasons, son.

41. They who have run a noble, blameless race throughout the cycle of their lives, and are about to be changed into Gods, [are born as kings,] in order that by exercise of kingship they may train themselves to use the power the Gods enjoy; while certain souls who are already Gods, but

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have in some slight way infringed the rule of life which God inspired, are born as kings, in order that they may not, in being clothed in bodies, undergo the punishment of loss of dignity as well as nature, and that they may not, when they are enfleshed, have the same lot as other men, but have when bound what they enjoyed when free.

42. The differences which are, however, in the dispositions shown by those who play the part of kings, are not determined by distinguishing their souls, for these are all divine, but by the constitution of the angels and the daimons who attend on them. For that such souls as these descending for such purposes do not come down without a guard and escort; for Justice up above knows how to give to each what is its due estate e’en though they be made exiles from their country ever fair.

When, then, my son, the angels and the daimons who bring down the soul are of a warlike kind, it has to keep firm hold of their proclivities, forgetting its own proper deeds, but all the more remembering the doings of the other host attached to it.

When they are peaceful, then the soul as well doth order its own course in peace.

When they love justice, then it too defends the right.

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When they are music-lovers, then it also sings.

And when they are truth-lovers, then it also doth philosophize.

For as it were out of necessity these souls keep a firm hold of the proclivities of those that bring them here; for they are falling down to man’s estate, forgetting their own nature, and the farther they depart from it, the more they have in memory the disposition of those [powers] which shut them [into bodies].

43. Well hast thou, mother, all explained, said Horus. But noble souls,—how they are born, thou hast not told me yet.

As on the Earth, son Horus, there are states which differ one from other, so also is it in the case of souls. For they have regions whence they start; and that which starts from a more glorious place, hath nobler birth than one which doth not so. For just as among men the free is thought more noble than the slave—(for that which is superior in souls and of a ruling nature of necessity subjects what is inferior)—so also, son, . . . . 1

*     *     *     *     *

44. And how are male and female souls produced?

Souls, Horus, son, are of the self-same nature

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in themselves, in that they are from one and the same place where the Creator modelled them; nor male nor female are they. Sex is a thing of bodies, not of souls.

That which brings it about that some of them are stouter, some more delicate, is, son, that [cosmic] “air” in which all things are made. “Air” for the soul is nothing but the body which envelopes it, an element which is composed of earth and water, air and fire. 1

As, then, the composition of the female ones has more of wet and cold, but less of dry and warm, accordingly the soul which is shut in a plasm of this kind, becomes relaxed and delicate, just as the contrary is found to be in case of males.

For in their case there’s more of dry and warm, and less of cold and wet; wherefore the souls in bodies such as these are sturdy and more active.

45. And how do souls become intelligent, O mother mine?

And Isis answered:

The organ of the sight, my son, is swathed in wrappings. When these are dense and thick, the eye is dim; but when they’re thin and light, then is the sight most keen. So is it also for the soul. For it as well has envelopes incorporal appropriate to it, just as it is itself incorporal.

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[paragraph continues]These envelopes are “airs” which are in us. When these are light and thin and clear, then is the soul intelligent; but, on the contrary, when they are dense and thick and turbid, then [the soul], as in bad weather, sees not at distance but only things which lie about its feet.

46. And Horus said:

What is the reason, mother, that the men outside our holiest land are not so wise of mind as our compatriots?

And Isis said:

The Earth lies in the middle of the universe upon her back, like to a human being, with eyes turned up to heaven, and portioned out into as many regions as there are limbs in man.

She turns her eyes to Heaven as though to her own Sire, 1 that with his changes she may also bring about her own.

She hath her head set to the south of all, right shoulder to south-east, left shoulder to south-west; her feet below the Bear, right foot beneath its tail, left under its head; her thighs beneath those that succeed the Bear; her waist beneath the middle [Stars].

47. A sign of this is that men in the south, who dwell upon her head, are fine about the head and have good hair.

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Those in the east are ready for a fight and archer folk—for this pertains to the right hand.

Those in the west are steadier and for the most part fight with the left hand, and what is done by others with the right, they for their part attribute to the left.

Those underneath the Bear excel in feet and have especially good legs.

Those who come after them a little way, about the zone which is our present Italy and Greece, they all have well-made thighs and backs. . . .

Moreover, all these [northern] parts being whiter than the rest bear whiter men upon them.

But since the holiest land of our forebears lies in the midst of Earth, and that the midst of a man’s body serves as the precinct of the heart alone, and heart’s the spot from which the soul doth start, the men of it not only have no less the other things which all the rest possess, but as a special thing are gifted with intelligence beyond all men and filled with wisdom, in that they are begotten and brought up above her heart.

48. Further, my son, the south being the receiver of the clouds which mass themselves together from the atmosphere . . . 1

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For instance, it is just because there is this concentration of them in the south, that it is said our river doth flow thence, upon the breaking up of the frost there.

For whensoe’er a cloud 1 descends, it turns the air about it into mist, and sends it downward in a kind of fog; and fog or mist is an impediment not only to the eyes, but also to the mind.

Whereas the east, O Horus, great in glory, in that ’tis thrown into confusion and made overhot by the continual risings of the sun, and in like fashion too, the west, its opposite, in that it suffers the same things through its descents, 2 afford the men born in them no conditions for clear observation. And Boreas with his concordant cold, together with their bodies doth congeal the minds of men as well.

Whereas the centre of all these being pure and undisturbed, foreknows both for itself and all that are in it. For, free from trouble, ever it brings forth, adorns and educates, and only with such weapons wars [on men], and wins the victory, and with consummate skill, like a good

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satrap, 1 bestows the fruit of its own victory upon the vanquished.

49. This too expound, O lady, mother mine! For what cause is it that when men still keep alive in long disease, their rational part—their very reason and their very soul—at times becomes disabled?

And Isis answer made:

Of living things, my son, some are made friends with fire, and some with water, some with air, and some with earth, and some with two or three of these, and some with all.

And, on the contrary, again some are made enemies of fire, and some of water, some of earth, and some of air, and some of two of them, and some of three, and some of all.

For instance, son, the locust and all flies flee fire; the eagle and the hawk and all high-flying birds flee water; fish, air and earth; the snake avoids the open air. Whereas snakes and all creeping things love earth; all swimming things [love] water; winged things, air, of which they are the citizens; while those that fly still higher [love] the fire and have their habitat near it. Not that some of the animals as well do not love fire; for instance salamanders, for they even have their homes in it. It is because one or

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another of the elements doth form their bodies outer envelope.

50. Each soul, accordingly, while it is in its body is weighted and constricted by these four. Moreover it is natural it also should be pleased with some of them and pained with others.

For this cause, then, it doth not reach the height of its prosperity; still, as it is divine by nature, e’en while [wrapped up] in them, it struggles and it thinks, though not such thoughts as it would think were it set free from being bound in bodies.

Moreover if these [frames] are swept with storm and stress, or of disease or fear, then is the soul itself tossed on the waves, as man 1 upon the deep with nothing steady under him.

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Footnotes

126:1 MS. A adds “of daimones.”

128:1 A lacuna, unfortunately, here occurs in the text, and must be of some extent, for the way of both of these souls is not given.

129:1 Cf. 45 below.

130:1 Cf. P. S. A., xxiv. 1.

131:1 Something has evidently fallen out here, as the sentence is nowhere completed.

132:1 Reading νεφέλη for νεφέλῃ. The text is very faulty.

132:2 These ideas of course spring from the conception of a flat earth and moving sun. The sun was thus thought to be nearer the earth at its rising and setting, and consequently those at the extremes of east and west were thought to be in danger of being burnt up by its heat.

133:1 Some historical allusion may perhaps be suspected in this term; but I can find nothing appropriate to suggest.

134:1 For ἄνθρωπος Meineke reads ἀνθέρικος (“asphodel”), and compares Callimachus, H. in Del., 193: παλιρροίῃ ἐπινήχεται ἀνθέρικος ὤς. But I see no necessity for this strained “emendation.”

COMMENTARY

ARGUMENT

1. The “Virgin of the World” is a sacred sermon of initiation into the Hermes-lore, the first initiation, in which the tradition of the wisdom is handed on by the hierophant to the neophyte, by word of mouth. The instructor, or revealer, is the representative of Isis-Sophia, and speaks in her name, pouring forth for her beloved son, the new-born Horus, the first draught of

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immortality, which is to purge away the poison of the mortal cup of forgetfulness and ignorance, and so raise him from the “dead.”

This pouring-forth explains that the divine economy is perfect order, mystery transcending mystery,—each state of being, and each being, a mystery to those below that state.

This order no mortal intellect can ever grasp; nay, in the far-off ages, when as yet there were no men, but only Gods, those essences that know no death, the first creation of the World-creator,—even these Gods, these mysteries to us, were in amazement at the glories of the greater mysteries which decked the Heaven with their unveiled transcendent beauty. Even these Gods did not know God as yet.

2. The Gods were immortal, but unknowing; they were intoxicated with Heaven’s beauty, amazed, nay awestruck, at the splendour of the mysteries of Heaven. Then came there forth another outpouring of the Father over all; He poured the Splendour of His Mind into their hearts and they began to know. 1

With this representation is blended a mythical historical tradition which suggests that all this was brought about for an “earth” on which our humanity had not as yet appeared, in far-off distant days when apparently our earth was not as now, ages ago, the purest Golden Age when there were Gods, not men. In that race of Gods, those of them in whom the ray was no low-burning spark, but a divine flame, were the instructors in the heavenly wisdom.

3. Of these was Hermes, a race or “being” rather

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than an individual; these “Sons of Fire” left the record of their wisdom engraved on “stone” in symbol, in charge of others of the same race but less knowing than themselves; and so they ascended to Heaven.

4. Those that succeeded them had not the flame so bright within their hearts; they were of the same race, but younger souls—the Tat-race. Hermes could not hand on the direct knowledge to them, the “perfect sight” (θεωρία), and so recorded the wisdom in symbol and myth. Still later the Asclepius-race joined themselves to the Tat-souls.

All this, however, took place many many ages ago, long even before the days of the men-gods Osiris and Isis; for the real wisdom of Hermes was so ancient that even Isis herself had had to search out the hidden records, and that too by means of the inner sight, when she herself had won the power to see, and the True Sun had risen for her mind.

5. But the strain of reconstructing the history of this far-distant past, as he conceived it to have been, is too much for the writer. He knows he is dealing with “myths,” with what Plutarch would have called the “doings of the daimones;” he knows that in reality these primæval “Books” of Hermes have no longer any physical existence, if indeed they ever had any; he knows that no matter what legends are told, or whatever the general priesthood may believe about ancient physical inscriptions of the primæval Hermes,—all this has passed away, and that the real wisdom of Hermes is engraved on the tablets of the æther, and not hidden in the shrines of earth.

The “Books” are engraved in the “sacred symbols of the cosmic elements,” and hidden away hard by the “secrets of Osiris”—the mysteries of creative fire, the light that speaks in the heart. The true Books of

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[paragraph continues]Hermes are hidden away in their own zones, the pure elements of the unseen world—the celestial Egypt.

6. This wisdom was held in safe keeping for the “souls” of men; it was a soul-gnosis, not a physical knowledge. Hereupon the writer begins the recital of his tradition 1 of the creation of the “souls” of men in their unfallen state, all of which is derived from the “Books of Hermes.” The soul-creation runs as follows:

The Watchers 2 approach the Creator. The hour has struck for a new Cosmic Dawn, for a new Day. The time has come for Cosmos to awake after the Night. 3 The Creative Mind of the universe turns His attention, His thought, to a new phase of things, a new world-period.

7. God smiled, and His laughter thrilled through space, 4 and with His Word, called forth into the light the new dawn from out the primæval darkness of the new world-space. His first creation, transcendental or intelligible Nature, stood before Him, in all the marvel of her new beauty, the primal plērōma, or potential fullness, of the new universe or system, the ideal cosmos of our world, for there were many others,—the Gods who marvelled at the mystery.

Straightway this Nature fell from one into three, herself and Toil and their fairest child Invention, to

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whom God gave the gift of being, themselves producing ideal form alone.

The first creation, then, was the bringing forth of potencies and types and ideas, to whom God gave the gift of being; it was as yet the world “above,” the primæval Heaven, in ultimate perfection, thus constituting the unchanging boundaries of the new universe that was to be. These things-that-are were filled with “mysteries,” not “breaths” or “lives,” for these were not as yet.

8. The next stage is the breathing of the spiritual (not the physical) breath of lives into the fairest blend of the primal elements that condition the world-area. This blend or soul-substance is called psychōsis. The primal elements were not our mixed earth, water, fire, and air, but “knowing fire” (perhaps “fire in itself,” as Hermes elsewhere calls it, or intelligible fire, perchance the “flower of fire” of the so-called “Chaldæan Oracles” 1) and unknowing air, if we may judge from the phrase (7): “Let heaven be filled with all things full, and air and æther [? = fire] too!” It is Heaven or the ideal world that is so filled; even earth-water was not yet manifested, much less earth and water.

It seems, then, that these souls (souls corresponding above with the subsequent man-stage below) were a blend of the three: spirit, knowing fire, and unknowing air,—triads, yet a unity called psychōsis.

9. They were moreover all essentially equal, but differed according to some fixed law of numbering; they were also apparently definite in number, one soul perchance for every star, as with Plato, according to the law of similarity of less and greater, of within and without.

10. These souls, then, were “sacred (or typical) men,”

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a creation prior to that of the “sacred animals”; their habitat was in Upper Nature, the “all-fairest station of the æther”—the celestial cosmos.

11. They were appointed to certain stations and to the task of keeping the “wheel revolving,”—that is, as we shall see, they were to fashion forms for birth and death, and so provide means of transmission for the life-currents ever circulating in the great sphere. This was their appointed task, the law imposed on them, as obedient children of the Great King, their sire. So long as they kept their appointed stations they were to live for ever in surroundings of bliss and beauty, in full contemplation of the glories of the greater universe, throned amid the stars. But if they disobeyed the law, bonds and punishment await them.

12. We next come to a further creation of souls—a subject somewhat difficult to follow. These souls are of an inferior grade to the preceding, for they are composed of the primal water and earth, of “water in itself” and “earth in itself” we must suppose, and not of the compound elements we now call by these names. These are the souls of certain “sacred animals” or lives, which bear the same relationship to the souls which “keep the wheel revolving” as animals do to man on earth. They are, however, not shaped like the animals on earth, nor possess even typical animal forms, but bear the forms of men, though they are not men.

13. Still was the divine “water-earth” substance unexhausted, and so the residue was handed over to “those souls that had gone in advance and had been summoned to the land of Gods,”—that is to say, those stations near the Gods, in highest æther, of which mention has just been made. These souls are, of course, the man-souls proper.

Out of this residue these Builders were to fashion

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animals, after the models the Creator gave them,—certain types of life, below the “man” type proper, ranged in due order corresponding to the “motions of the souls.” That is to say, there were various classes of Builders according to the types of animals which were to be copied. The Builders were to fashion the forms, the Creator was to breathe into them the life.

14. Thus these Builders fashioned the etheric doubles of birds, quadrupeds, fish and reptiles, and not their physical bodies, for as yet the earth was not solid.

15. And so the Builder-souls accomplished their task, and fashioned the primæval copies of the celestial types of animals. Proud of their work, they grew restive at the restraints placed upon them by the law of their stations, and overstepped the limits decreed by the Creator. 1

Whereupon the punishment is pronounced, and the Creator resolves to make the human frame, therein to imprison the disobedient souls.

And here we learn incidentally that all of this

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psychogenesis which has gone before was the direct teaching of Hermes to the writer; of no physical Hermes, however, but of that Hermes whose “Books” are hidden in the zones (5), of the Hermes whom the writer, as he would have us believe, came to know face to face only after his inner vision was opened, and he had gazed with all-seeing eyes “upon the mysteries of that new dawn” (4).

16. For the new and mysterious fabrication of the man-form, all the seven obedient Gods, to whom the man-souls are kin (17), are summoned by the chief of them, Hermes himself, the beloved son and messenger of the Supreme, “soul of My Soul, and holy mind of My own Mind.” 1

17. All of the seven promise to bestow the best they have on man.

18. The plasm out of which the man-form is to be modelled is the residue of the mixture out of which the Builders had already made the animal doubles. But the Builder of the man-frames was Hermes himself, who mixed the plasm with still more water.

19. Here the writer inserts a further piece of information concerning the source of his tradition. It is no longer as before what Hermes himself reveals to him in vision, but what the writer was told at a certain initiation called the “Black Rite.” This rite was presided over by Kamēphis, who is called the “earliest of all,” or perhaps more correctly the “most primæval of [us] all.” Kamēphis is thus conceived as the representative of a more ancient wisdom than that of Isis, and yet even he but hands on the tradition of Hermes. 2

20. The souls are “enfleshed,” and utter loud complaints. Apparently not all at first can speak articulately; most of them can only groan, or scream,

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or hiss. The leading class of souls can, however, so far dominate the plasm as to speak articulately, and so one of their number utters a desperate appeal to Heaven.

21. They have now lost their celestial state, and Heaven is shut away from them; no longer can they see “without the light.” They are shut down into a “heart’s small compass”; the Sun of their being has become a light-spark only, hidden in the heart. This is, of course, the logos, the inmost reality in man.

22. The souls pray for some amelioration of their unhappy lot, and the conditions of the moral law are expounded to them. They who do rightly shall, on their body’s dissolution, reascend to Heaven and be at rest; they who do ill, shall work out their redemption under the law of metempsychosis, or change from body to body, from prison to prison.

23. Details of this metempsychosis are then given with special reference to the incarnations of the “more righteous,” who shall be kings, philosophers and prophets. Such souls apparently, for it is not expressly so stated, shall, in passing round the wheel of rebirth, when out of incarnation in a human body, have some sort of life with the souls of the leading types of animals, which are given as eagles, lions, dragons, and dolphins. Or, if we are unjustified in this speculation, such souls shall in their animal parts have intimate relation with the noblest types of animal essence (24).

25. There now comes upon the scene the mighty Intellect of the Earth, a veritable Erdgeist, in the form of Mōmus, who speaking out of affection for him (28), urges Hermes to increase ills and trials upon the souls of men, so that they shall not dare too much (25-27). And thereon Hermes sets in motion the instrument or engine of unerring fate and mechanical retribution (28, 29).

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29. Now all these things took place at the dawn of earth-life, when all as yet was inert, as far as our now solid earth is concerned. We must then suppose that as yet our present phase of existence on earth had not yet been manifested; that all was as yet in a far subtler or more primitive state of existence, when earth was still all “a-tremble,” and had not yet hardened to its present state of solidity;—that is to say, that the man-plasm was in an etheric state (30).

31. The earth gradually hardens. Into the now more solid earth, the Creator and His obedient sons, the Gods who had not made revolt, poured forth the blessings of nature. This is described by the beautiful symbol of the hands of blessing, figured in Egypt as the sun-rays, each terminating in a hand for giving light and life. 1

The imprisoned souls, the kinsmen of the Gods obedient, continue their revolt; they are the leaders of mankind, of a mankind far weaker than themselves, a humanity, apparently evolved normally from the nature of things and as yet in its childhood. Instead of teaching them the lessons of love and wisdom, the Disobedient Ones use them for evil purposes, for war and conflict, for oppression and savagery.

32. Things go from bad to worse; the earth is befouled with the horrors of savage man, until in despair the pure elements complain to God. They pray that He will send a holy emanation of Himself to set things right (32-34).

35. Hereupon God sends forth the mystery of a new birth, a divine descent, or emanation, an avatāra, as the Aryan Hindu tradition would call it, a dual manifestation. 2 And so Osiris and Isis are born to help the

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world, to recall men from savagery, and restore the moral order (35-37).

It was they who were taught directly by Hermes (37) in all law and science and wisdom. Their mission meets with success, and the “world” is filled with a knowledge of the Path of Return. But before their ascension into Heaven they have a petition to make to the Father, that not only earth but also the surrounding spaces up to Heaven itself may be filled with a knowledge of the truth. Thus then they proceed to hymn the Sire and Monarch of all in a praise-giving which, unfortunately, Stobæus did not think fit to copy.

---

The original text of the “Virgin of the World” treatise is obviously broken only by the omission of the Hymn of Osiris and Isis, and Excerpt ii. follows otherwise immediately on Excerpt i. The subject is the birth of royal souls, taken up from the instruction given in K. K., 23, 24 above.

39. There are four chief spaces: (i) Invisible Heaven, inhabited by the Gods, with the Invisible Sun as lord of all; (ii) Æther, inhabited by the Stars, of which for us the Sun is leader; (iii) Air, in which dwell non-incarnate souls, ruled by the Moon, as watcher o’er the paths of genesis; (iv) Earth, inhabited by men and animals, and over men the immediate ruler is the Divine King of the time.

40. The king-soul is the last of the Gods but the first of men 1; he is, however, on earth a demigod only, for his true divinity is obscured. His soul, or ka, comes from a soul-plane superior to that of the rest of mankind.

The ascending souls of normally evolving humanity are thought of, apparently, as describing ever widening

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circles in their wheelings in and out of incarnation, rising, as they increase in virtue and knowledge, at the zenith of their ascent in the intermediate state, before they turn to descend again into rebirth, ever nearer to the limits of the sensible world and, the frontiers of Heaven.

41. But there is also another class of descending royal souls, who have only slightly transgressed, and therefore descend only as far as this grade of humanity.

42. For the royal or ruling soul is not only a warrior monarch; his sovereignty may be also shown in arts of peace. He may be a righteous judge, a musician or poet, a truth-lover or philosopher. The activities of these souls are not determined, as is the case with souls of lower grades,—that is, those souls which have fallen deeper into material existence,—by what Basilides would have called the “appendages” of the animal nature; they are determined by a fairer taxis, an escort of angels and daimones, who accompany them into birth.

43. The description of their manner of birth, however, is, unfortunately, lost to us, owing either to the hesitation of Stobæus to make it public, or to its being cut out by some subsequent copyist.

44. We are next told that sex is no essential characteristic of the soul. It is an “accident” of the body, but this body is not the physical, but the “aery” body, which air, however, is not a simple element, but already differentiated into four sub-elements. 1

45. Moreover the sight, or intelligence, of the soul also depends upon the purity of certain envelopes, which

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are called “airs,”—“airs” apparently more subtle even than the aery body (45). 1

46. Next follows a naïve reason for the excellence of Egypt and the wisdom of the Egyptians (46-48). Here the writer seems to be no longer dependent directly on the Trismegistic tradition, but is inserting and expanding popular notions.

49. The remaining sections of the Excerpt are taken up with speculations as to the cause of delirium (49, 50), and Stobæus brings his extract to a conclusion apparently without allowing the writer to complete his exposition.

SOURCES?

The discussion as to the meaning of the title, which has so far been invariably translated “The Virgin of the World,” will come more appropriately later on.

How much of the original treatise has been handed on to us by Stobæus we have no external means of deciding. Our two Extracts, however, plainly stand in immediate connection with each other, and the original text is broken only by the unfortunate omission of the Hymn of Osiris and Isis. The first Extract, moreover, is plainly not the beginning of the treatise, since it opens with words referring to what has gone before; while the second Extract ends in a very unsatisfactory manner in the middle of a subject.

What we have, however, gives us some very interesting indications of how the writer regarded his sources,—whether written or oral, whether physical or psychic. He of course would have us take his treatise as a literary unity; and indeed the subject is so worked up that it is very difficult to discover what the literary

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sources that lay before the writer may have been, for the story runs on straight enough in the same thought-mould and literary form, in spite of the insertion of somewhat contradictory statements concerning the sources of information.

When, however, Reitzenstein (p. 136) expressly states that the creation-story shows indubitable traces of two older forms, and that this is not a matter of surprise, as we find two (or more precisely four) different introductions,—we are not able entirely to follow him. It is true that these introductory statements are apparently at variance, but on further consideration they appear to be not really self-contradictory.

THE DIRECT VOICE AND THE BOOKS OF HERMES

The main representation is that the teacher of Isis is Hermes, who saw the world-creation, that is, the creation of our earth-system, and the soul-making, with his own spiritual sight (2). Isis has obtained her knowledge in two ways: either from the sacred Books of Hermes (4, 5); or by the direct spiritual voice of the Master (15). The intention here is plainly to claim the authority of direct revelation, for even the Books are not physical. They have disappeared, if indeed they ever were physical, and can only be recovered from the tablets of unseen nature, by ascending to the zones (5) where they are hidden; and these zones are plainly the same as the soul-spaces mentioned in S. I. H., 8.

At the same time there is mention of another tradition, which, though in later details purporting to be historic and physical, in its beginnings is involved in purely mythological and psychic considerations. When the first and most ancient Hermes ascended to Heaven, he left his Books in the charge of the Gods, his kinsmen,

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in the zones, and not on earth (3). On earth there succeeded to this wisdom a younger race, beloved of Hermes, and personified as his son Tat. These were souls as yet too young to understand the true science face to face. They were apparently regarded as the Tat (Thoth) priesthood of our humanity, who were subsequently joined by wisdom-lovers of another line of tradition, the Imuth (Asclepius) brotherhood, who had their doctrine originally from Ptah. 1 This seems to hint at some ancient union of two traditions or schools of mystic science, perhaps from the Memphitic and Thebaic priesthoods respectively. 2

What, however, is clear is that the writer professes to set forth a higher and more direct teaching than either the received tradition of the Isiac mystery-cult or of the Tat-Asclepius school. This he does in the person of Isis as the face to face disciple of the most ancient Hermes, 3 thus showing us that in the Hermes-circles of the Theoretics, or those who had the direct sight, though the Isis mystery-teaching was considered a tradition of the wisdom, it was nevertheless held to be entirely subordinate to the illumination of the direct sight.

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KAMEPHIS AND THE DARK MYSTERY

In apparent contradiction to all this we have the following statement: “Now give good heed, son Horus, for thou art being told the mystic spectacle which Kamēphis, our forefather, was privileged to hear from Hermes, the record-writer of all deeds, and I from Kamēphis when he did honour me with the Black [Rite] that gives perfection” (19). 1

Here Reitzenstein (p. 137) professes to discover the conflation of two absolutely distinct traditions of (i) Kamephis, a later god and pupil of Hermes, and (ii) Kamephis, an older god and teacher of Isis; but in this I cannot follow him. It all depends on the meaning assigned to the words παρὰ τοῦ πάντων προγενεστέρου, which Reitzenstein regards as signifying “the most ancient of all [gods],” but which I translate as “the most ancient of [us] all.”

I take it to mean simply that, according to the general Isis-tradition, the founder of its mysteries was stated to be Kamephis, but that the Isis-Hermes circles claimed that this Kamephis, though truly the most ancient figure in the Isis tradition proper, was nevertheless in his turn the pupil of the still more ancient Hermes.

The grade of Kamephis was presumably represented in the mystery-cult by the arch-hierophant who presided at the degree called the “Dark Mystery” or “Black Rite.” It was a rite performed only for those

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who were judged worthy of it (ἐτίμησεν) after long probation in lower degrees, something of a far more sacred character, apparently, than the instruction in the mysteries enacted in the light.

I would suggest, therefore, that we have here a reference to the most esoteric institution of the Isiac tradition, the more precise nature of which we will consider later on; it is enough for the moment to connect it with certain objects or shows that were apparently made to appear in the dark. As Clement of Alexandria says in his famous commonplace book, called the Stromateis 1:

“It is not without reason that in the mysteries of the Greeks, lustrations hold the first place, analogous to ablutions among the Barbarians [that is, non-Greeks]. After these come the lesser mysteries, which have some foundation of instruction and of preliminary preparation for what is to follow; and then the great mysteries, in which nothing remains to be learned of the universe, but only to contemplate and comprehend nature [herself] and the things [which are mystically shown to the initiated].” 2

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KNEPH-KAMEPHIS

But who was Kamēphis in the theology of the Egyptians? According to Reitzenstein, Kamephis or Kmephis, that is Kmeph, is equated by Egyptologists with Kneph, who, according to Plutarch, 1 was worshipped in the Thebaid as the ingenerable and immortal God. Kneph, however, as Sethe has shown, 2 is one of the aliases of Ammon, who is the “bull [or husband] of his mother,” the “creator who has created himself.” Kneph is, moreover, the Good Daimon, as Philo of Byblus says. 3 He is the Sun-god and Heaven-god Ammon.

“If he open his eyes, he filleth all with light in his primæval 4 land; and if he close them all is dark.” 5

Here we have Kneph-Ammon as the giver of light in darkness, and the opener of the eyes.

Moreover, Porphyry 6 tells us that the Egyptians regarded Kneph as the demiurge or creator, and represented him in the form of a man, with skin of a blue-black tint, girt with a girdle, and holding

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a sceptre, and wearing a crown of regal wings. This symbolism, says Porphyry, signified that he was the representative of the Logos or Reason, difficult to discover, hidden, 1 not manifest 2; it is he who gives light and also life 3; he is the King. The winged crown upon his head, he adds, signifies that he moves or energizes intellectually.

Kamephis, then, stands in the Isis-tradition for the representative of Agathodaimon, the Logos-creator. He is, however, a later holder of this office, and has had it handed on to him by Hermes, or at any rate he is instructed in the Logos-wisdom by Hermes.

HERMES I. AND HERMES II.

In this connection it is instructive to refer to the account which Syncellus 4 tells us he took from the statement of Manetho.

Manetho, says Syncellus, states in his Books, that he based his replies concerning the dynasties of Egypt to King Ptolemy on the monuments.

“[These monuments], he [Manetho] tells us, were engraved in the sacred language, and in the characters of the sacred writing, by Thoth the First Hermes; after the Flood they were translated from the sacred language into the then common tongue, but [still written] in hieroglyphic characters, and stored away in books, by the Good Daimon’s son, the Second Hermes, the father of Tat, in the inner shrines of the temples of Egypt.”

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Here we have a tradition, going back as far as Manetho, which I have shown, in Chapter V. of the “Prolegomena” on “Manetho, High Priest of Egypt,” cannot be so lightly disposed of as has been previously supposed,—dealing expressly with the Books of Hermes.

This tradition, it is true, differs from the account given in our Sermon (3-5), where the writer says nothing expressly of a flood, but evidently wishes us to believe that the most ancient records of Hermes were magically hidden in the zones of the unseen world, and that the flood, if there was one, was a flood or lapse of time that had utterly removed these records from the earth. For him they no longer existed physically.

Manetho’s account deals with another view of the matter. His tradition appears to be as follows. The oldest records were on stone monuments which had survived some great flood in Egypt. These records belonged to the period of the First Hermes, the Good Daimon par excellence, the priesthood, therefore, of the earliest antediluvian Egyptian civilization. After the flood they were translated from the most archaic language into ancient Egyptian, and preserved in book-form by the Second Hermes, the priesthood, presumably, of the most ancient civilization after the flood, who were in time succeeded by the Tat priesthood.

That this tradition is elsewhere contradicted by the Isis-tradition proper, which in a somewhat similar genealogy places Isis at the very beginning prior even to Hermes I., 1 need not detain us, since each tradition would naturally claim the priority of those whom it regarded as its own special founders, and we are for the moment concerned only with the claims of the Hermes-school.

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The main point of interest is that there was a tradition which explained the past on the hypothesis of periods of culture succeeding one another,—the oldest being supposed to have been the wisest and highest; the most archaic hieroglyphic language, which perhaps the priests of Manetho’s day could no longer fully understand, 1 was supposed to have been the tongue of the civilization before the Flood of Hermes I. It may even be that the remains of this tongue were preserved only in the magical invocations, as a thing most sacred, the “language of the gods.”

The point of view, however, of the circle to which our writer belonged, was that the records of this most ancient civilization were no longer to be read even in the oldest inscriptions; they could only be recovered by spiritual sight. Into close relation with this, we must, I think, bring the statement made in § 37, that Osiris and Isis, though they themselves had learned all the secrets of the records of Hermes, nevertheless kept part of them secret, and engraved on stone only such as were adapted for the intelligence of “mortal men.”

The Kamephis of the Isis-tradition, then, apparently stands for Kneph as Agathodaimon, that is for Hermes, but not for our Hermes I., 2 for he has no physical

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contact with the Isis-tradition, but for Hermes II., who was taught by Hermes I.

THE BLACK RITE

But what is the precise meaning of the “black rite” at which Kamephis presides? I have already suggested the environment in which the general meaning may be sought, though I have not been able to produce any objective evidence of a precise nature. Reitzenstein (pp. 139 ff.), however, thinks he has discovered that evidence. His view is as follows:

The key to the meaning, according to him, is to be found in the following line from a Magic Papyrus 1:

“I invoke thee, Lady Isis, with whom the Good Daimon doth unite, 2 He who is Lord ἐν τῷ τελείῳ μέλανι.”

Reitzenstein thinks that the Good Daimon here stands for Chnum, and works out (p. 140) a learned hypothesis that the “black” refers to a certain territory of black earth, between Syene and Takompso, the Dedocaschœnus, especially famed for its pottery, which was originally in the possession of the Isis priesthood, but was subsequently transferred to the priesthood of Chnum by King Dośer. Reitzenstein would thus, presumably, translate the latter half of the sentence as “the Good Daimon who is Lord in the perfect black [country],” and so make it refer to Chnum, though indeed he seems himself to feel the inadequacy of this explanation to cover the word “perfect” (p. 144). But this seems to me to take all the dignified meaning out of both our text and that of the Magic Papyrus, and to introduce

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local geographical considerations which are plainly out of keeping with the context.

It is far more natural to make the Agathodaimon of the Papyrus refer to Osiris; for indeed it is one of his most frequent designations. Moreover, it is precisely Osiris who is pre-eminently connected with the so-called “under world,” the unseen world, the “mysterious dark.” He is lord there, while Isis remains on earth; it is he who would most fitly give instructions on such matters, and indeed one of the ancient mystery-sayings was precisely, “Osiris is a dark God.” 1

“He who is Lord in the perfecting black,” might thus mean that Osiris, the masculine potency 2 of the soul, purified and perfected the man on the mysterious dark side of things, and completed the work which Isis, the feminine potency of the soul, had begun on him.

That, in the highest mystery-circles, this was some stage of union of the man with the higher part of himself, may be deduced from the interesting citations made by Reitzenstein (pp. 142-144) from the later Alchemical Hermes-literature; it clearly refers to the mystic “sacred marriage,” 3 the intimate union of the soul with the logos, or divine ray. Much could be written on this subject, but it will be sufficient to append two passages of more than ordinary interest. The Jewish over-writer of the Naassene Document contends that the chief mystery of the Gnosis was but the consummation of the instruction given in the various mystery-institutions of the nations. The

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[paragraph continues]Lesser Mysteries, he tells us, commenting on the text of the Pagan commentator, pertained to “fleshly generation,” whereas the Greater dealt with the new birth, or second birth, with regeneration, and not with genesis. And speaking of a certain mystery, he says:

“For this is the Gate of Heaven, and this is the House of God, where the Good God 1 dwells alone, into which [House] no impure [man] shall come; but it is kept under watch for the spiritual alone; where when they come they must cast away their garments, and all become bridegrooms obtaining their true manhood through the Virginal Spirit. For such a man is the Virgin big with child, conceiving and bearing a Son, not psychic, not fleshly, but a blessed Æon of Æons.” 2

In the marvellous mystery-ritual of the new-found fragments of The Acts of John, lately discovered in a fourteenth century MS. in Vienna, disguised in hymn form, and hiding an almost inexhaustible mine of very early tradition, the “sacred marriage” is plainly suggested as one of the keys to part of the ritual. Compare, for instance, with the “casting away of their garments,” in the above-quoted passage of the Naassene writer, the following:

“[The Disciple.] I would flee.

[The Master.] I would [have thee] stay.

[The Assistants.] Amen!

[The Disciple.] I would be robed.

[The Master.] And I would robe [thee].

[The Assistants.] Amen!

[The Disciple.] I would be at-oned.

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[The Master.] And I would at-one.

[The Assistants.] Amen!” 1

BLACK LAND.

But to return to the “mysterious black.” Plutarch tells us: “Moreover, they [the Egyptians] call Egypt, inasmuch as its soil is particularly black, as though it were the black of the eye, Chemia, and compare it with the heart,” 2—for, he adds, it is hot and moist, and set in the southern part of the inhabitable world, in the same way as the heart in the left side of a man. 3

Egypt, the “sacred land” par excellence, was called Chemia or Chem (Ḥem), Black-land, because of the nature of its dark loamy soil; it was, moreover, in symbolic phraseology the black of the eye, that is, the pupil of the earth-eye, the stars and planets being regarded as the eyes of the gods. 4 Egypt, then, was the eye and heart of the Earth; the Heavenly Nile poured its light-flood of wisdom through this dark of the eye, or made the land throb like a heart with the celestial life-currents.

Nor is the above quotation an unsupported statement of Plutarch’s, for in an ancient text from Edfu, 5 we read: “Egypt (lit. the Black), which is so called after the eye of Osiris, for it is his pupil.”

Ammon-Kneph, too, as we have seen, is black, or blue-black, signifying his hidden and mysterious

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character; and in the above-quoted passage he is called “he who holds himself hidden in his eye,” or “he who veils himself in his pupil.”

This pupil, then, concludes Reitzenstein (p. 145), is the “mysterious black.” Is this, then, the origin of this peculiar phrase? If so, it would be connected with seeing, the spiritual sight, the true Epopteia.

THE PUPIL OF THE WORLD’S EYE

But Isis, also, is the black earth, and, therefore, the pupil of the eye of Osiris, and, therefore, also of the Chnum or Ammon identified with Osiris at Syene. Isis, therefore, herself is the “Pupil of the World’s Eye”—the κόρη κόσμου. 1

Reitzenstein would, therefore, have it that the original type of our treatise looks back to a tradition which makes the mystery-goddess Isis the disciple and spouse of the mysterious Chnum or Ammon, or Kneph or Kamephis, as Agathodaimon; and, therefore, presumably, that the making of this Kamephis the disciple in his turn of Hermes is a later development of the tradition, when the Hermes-communities gained ascendancy in certain circles of the Isis-tradition.

This is very probable; but dare we, with Reitzenstein, cast aside the “traditional” translation of κόρη κόσμου, as “Virgin of the World,” and prefix to our treatise as title the new version, “The Pupil of the Eye of the World”? It certainly sounds strange as a title to unaccustomed ears, and differs widely from any other titles of the Hermetic sermons known to us. But what does the “Virgin of the World” mean in connection with our treatise? Isis as the Virgin Mother is a

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familiar idea to students of Egyptology 1; she is κατ᾽ ἐξοχὴν, the “World-Virgin.”

THE SON OF THE VIRGIN

And here it will be of interest to turn to a curious statement of Epiphanius 2; it is missing in all editions of this Father prior to that of Dindorf (Leipzig, 1859), which was based on the very early (tenth century) Codex Marcianus 125, all previous editions being printed from a severely censured and bowdlerized fourteenth century MS.

Epiphanius is stating that the true birthday of the Christ is the Feast of Epiphany, “at a distance of thirteen days from the increase of the light [i.e. December 25]; for it needs must have been that this should be a figure of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and of His twelve disciples, who make up the thirteen days of the increase of the Light.” The Feast of the Epiphany was a great day in Egypt, connected with the “Birth of the Æon,”—a phase of the “Birth of Horus.” For Epiphanius thus continues:

“How many other things in the past and present support and bear witness to this proposition, I mean the birth of Christ! Indeed, the leaders of the idol-cults, 3 filled with wiles to deceive the idol-worshippers who believe in them, in many places keep highest festival on this same night of Epiphany [= the Manifestation to Light], so that they whose hopes are in error may not seek the truth. For instance, at

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[paragraph continues]Alexandria, in the Koreion, 1 as it is called—an immense temple, that is to say the Precinct of the Virgin—after they have kept all-night vigil with songs and music, chanting to their idol, when the vigil is over, at cock-crow, they descend with lights into an underground crypt, and carry up a wooden image lying naked on a litter, with the seal of a cross made in gold on its forehead, and on either hand two similar seals, and on either knee two others, all five seals being similarly made in gold. And they carry round the image itself, circumambulating seven times the innermost temple, to the accompaniment of pipes, tabors and hymns, and with merry-making they carry it down again underground. And if they are asked the meaning of this mystery, they answer: ‘To-day at this hour the Maiden (Korē), that is, the Virgin, gave birth to the Æon.’”

He further adds that at Petra, in Arabia, where, among other places, this mystery was also performed, the Son of the Virgin is called by a name meaning the “Alone-begotten of the Lord.” 2

Here, then, at Alexandria, in every probability the very environment of our treatise, we have a famous mystery-rite, solemnized in the Temple of the Virgin, who gives birth to a Son, the Æon. This, we shall not be rash in assuming, signifies not only the birth of the new year, but also still more profound mysteries, when we remember the words of the Naassene Document quoted above: “For such a man is the Virgin, big with child, conceiving and bearing a Son,—not psychic, not fleshly [nor, we may add, temporal], but

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a blessed Æon of Æons”—that is, an Eternity of Eternities, an immortal God.

We should also notice the crowing of the cock, which plays so important a part in the crucifixion-story in the Gospels, 1 and above all things the stigmata on the image, the symbols of a cosmic and human mystery.

THE MYSTERY OF THE BIRTH OF HORUS

In our own treatise the mysterious Birth of Horus is also referred to (35, 36) as follows.

Isis has handed on the tradition of the Coming of Osiris, the Divine emanation, the descent of the efflux of the Supreme, and Horus asks: “How was it, mother, then, that Earth received God’s efflux?”—where Earth may well refer to the “Dark Earth,” a synonym of Isis herself.

And Isis answers: “I may not tell the story of [this] birth; for it is not permitted to describe the origin of this descent, O Horus, [son] of mighty power, lest afterward the way of birth of the immortal Gods should be known unto men.”

Here I think we have a clear reference to the mysterious “Birth of Horus,” the birth of the gods,—that is to say, of how a man becomes a god, becomes the most royal of all souls, gains the kingdom, or lordship over himself. This mystery was not yet to be revealed to the neophyte—Horus—and yet this Birth is suggested to Tat by Hermes—C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 2—when he says: “Wisdom that understands in silence [such is the matter and the womb from out which Man is born] and the True Good the Seed.”

The womb is the mysterious Silence, the matter is

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[paragraph continues]Wisdom, Isis herself, the seed is the Good, the Agathodaimon, Osiris.

But in our treatise Horus has not yet reached to this high state; Isis, as the introductory words tell us, is pouring forth for him “the first draught of immortality” only, “which souls have custom to receive from gods”; he is being raised to the understanding of a daimon, but not as yet to that of a god.

All of this, moreover, seems to have been part and parcel of the Isis mystery-tradition proper, for as Diodorus (i. 25), following Hecatæus, informs us, it was Isis who “discovered the philtre of immortality, by means of which, when her son Horus, who had been plotted against by the Titans, and found dead (νεκρόν) beneath the water, not only raised him to life (ἀναστῆσαι) by giving him life (ψυχήν), but also made him sharer in immortality.”

Here we have evidence to show that in the mystery-myth Horus was regarded as the human soul, and that there were two interpretations of the mystery. It referred not only to the “rising from the dead” in another body, or return to life in another enfleshment, but also to a still higher mystery, whereby the consciousness of immortality was restored to the memory of the soul. The soul had been cast by the Titans, or the opposing powers of the subtle universe, into the deep waters of the Great Sea, the Ocean of Generation, or Celestial Nile, for as the mysterious informant of Cleombrotus told him, 1 these stories of Titans concerned daimons or souls proper, not bodies. 2

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From this death in the sea of matter, Isis, the Mother Soul, brings Horus repeatedly back to life, and finally bestows on him the knowledge of immortality, and so raises him from the “dead.” 1

This birth of the “true man” within, the logos, was and is for man the chief of all mysteries. In the Chapter on “The Popular Theurgic Hermes-Cult,” we have already, in elucidation of the sacramental formula, “Thou art I and I am thou,” quoted the agraphon from the Gospel of Eve concerning the Great Man and the Little Man or Dwarf, and lovers of the Aupaniṣhad literature of Hindu-Aryan theosophy need hardly be

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reminded of “the ‘man,’ of the size of a thumb,” within, in the ether of the heart. 1

“ISHON”

But what is of more immediate interest is that the same idea is to some extent found in the Old Covenant documents, especially in the Prophetical and Wisdom literature, which latter was strongly influenced by Hellenistic ideas.

Ishon, which literally means “little man” or “dwarf,” 2 is in A.V. generally translated “apple of the eye.” 3

Thus we read in a purely literal sense, referring to weeping: “Let not the apple of thine eye cease” (Lam. ii. 18).

It was, however, a common persuasion, that the intelligence or soul itself, not merely the reflection of the image of another person, resided in the eye, and was made manifest chiefly by the eye.

Thus the “apple of the eye” was used as a synonym for a man’s most precious possession, the treasure-house as it were of the light of a man.

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And so we read: “He [Yahweh] kept him [Israel] as the apple of his eye” (Ps. xvii. 8)—where ishon is in the Hebrew further glossed as the “daughter of the eye”; and again: “Thus saith the Lord of Hosts: . . . He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye” (Zech. ii. 8).

The “apple of the eye” (ishon) was, then, something of great value, something very precious, and, therefore, we read in the Wisdom-literature that the punishment of the man who curses his father and mother is that “his lamp shall be put out in obscure (ishon) darkness” (Prov. xx. 20)—that is, that he shall thus extinguish the lamp of his intelligence, or perhaps spiritual nature, “in the apple of his eye there will be darkness”; and this connects with a passage in the Psalms which shows traces of the same Wisdom-teaching. “In the hidden part 1 [of man] thou shalt make me to know wisdom” (Ps. li. 6).

But the most striking passages are to be found in that pre-eminently Wisdom-chapter in the Proverbs-collection, where the true Israelite is warned to remain faithful to the Law (Torah), and to have no commerce with the “strange woman,” the “harlot”—that is, the “false doctrines” of the Gentiles. 2

“Keep my law as the apple of thine eye” (Prov. vii. 2), says the writer, speaking in the name of Yahweh, for he has seen the young and foolish being led astray by the “strange woman.” “He went the way to her house, in the twilight, in the evening; in the black (ishon) and dark night” (Prov. vii. 9). That is to say,

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his lamp was put out; there was dark night in his eye, in that little man of his, which should be his true light-spark understanding the wisdom of Yahweh.

Here, I think, we have additional evidence, that the idea, that the pupil of the eye was the seat of the spiritual intelligence in man, was widespread in Hellenistic circles. 1 But even so, can we translate κόρη κόσμου as the “Apple of the World-Eye”? It is true that Isis is the instrument or organ of conveying the hidden wisdom to Horus, and that it is eventually Hermes or the Logos who is the true light itself, which shines through her, the pupil of Egypt’s eye, 2 out of that mysterious darkness, in which she found herself, when she received illumination at the hands of Kamephis; but is this sufficient justification for rejecting the traditional translation of the title, and adopting a new version?

On the whole I am inclined to think, that though the new rendering may at first sight appear somewhat strained, nevertheless in proportion as we become more familiarized with the idea and remember the thought-environment of the time, we may venture so to translate it. Isis, then, is the “Apple or Pupil of the Eye of Osiris.” On earth the “mysterious black” is Egypt

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herself, the wisdom-land. Isis is the mysterious wisdom of Egypt, but in our treatise she is even more than this, for she is that wisdom but now truly illumined by the direct sight, the new dawn of the Trismegistic discipline of which she speaks (4).

To a Greek, however, the word κόρη would combine and not distinguish the two meanings of the title over which we have been labouring; but even as logos meant both “word” and “reason,” so korē would mean both “virgin” and “pupil of the eye”; but as it is impossible to translate it in English by one word, we have followed the traditional rendering.

THE SIXTY SOUL-REGIONS

We now turn to a few of the most important points which require more detailed treatment than the space of a footnote can accommodate. There are, of course, many other points that could be elaborated, but if that were done, the present work would run into volumes.

The number of degrees into which the soul-stuff (psychōsis) is divided, is given as three, and as sixty (10). If this statement stood by itself we should have been somewhat considerably puzzled to have known what to make of it, even when we remembered the mystic statement that 60 is par excellence the number of the soul, and that he who can unriddle the enigma will know its nature.

Fortunately, however, if we turn to S. I. H., 6 (Ex. xxvii.), we find that according to this tradition the soul-regions also were divided into 60 spaces, presumably corresponding to the types of souls.

They were in 4 main divisions and 60 special spaces, with no overlapping (7). These spaces were also called zones, firmaments or layers.

We are further told (6) that the lowest division, that

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is the one nearest to the earth, consists of 4 spaces; the second, of 8; the third, of 16; and the fourth, of 32.

And still further (7), that there were besides the 4 main divisions 12 intervallic ones. This introduces an element of uncertainty, for, as far as I am aware, we have no objective information which can enable us to determine how the intervallic divisions were located in the mind of the writer; speculation is rash, but a scheme has suggested itself to me, and I append it with all reservation.

First of all we have 4 main divisions or planes, separated from one another by 3 determinations of some sort, for the whole ordering pertains to the Air proper, and perhaps the 4 states of Air were regarded as earthy, watery, aery, and fiery Air. The 3 determinations may perhaps have been regarded as corresponding to the three main grades or florescences of the soul-stuff, which were apparently of a superior substance.

Each division of the 4 may further have been regarded as divided off by three intervallic determinations; so that we should have 3 such intervals in the lowest division, subdividing it into 4 spaces of 1 space each; 3 in the second, subdividing it into 4 spaces of 2 spaces each; 3 in the third, subdividing it into 4 spaces of 4 spaces each; and 3 in the fourth, subdividing it into 4 spaces of 8 spaces each. The sum of these intervals would thus be 12.

PLUTARCH’S YOGIN

In this connection, however, I cannot refrain from appending a pleasant story told by Plutarch. 1

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The speaker is Cleombrotus, a Lacedæmonian gentleman and man of means, who was a great traveller, and a greedy collector of information of all sorts to form the basis of a philosophical religion. He had spent much time in Egypt, and had also been a voyage beyond the Red Sea. On his travels Cleombrotus had heard of a philosopher-recluse, who lived in complete retirement, except once a year when he was seen by “the folk round the Red Sea”; then it was that a certain divine inspiration came upon him, and he came forth and “prophesied” to the nobles and royal scribes who used to flock to hear him. With great difficulty, and only after the expenditure of much money, Cleombrotus discovered the hermitage of this recluse, and was granted a courteous reception.

Our old philosopher was the handsomest man Cleombrotus had ever met, deeply versed in the knowledge of plants, and a great linguist. With Cleombrotus, however, he spoke Doric, and almost in verse, and “as he spake perfume filled the place from the sweetness of his breath.”

His knowledge of the various mystery-cults was profound, and his intimate acquaintance with the unseen world remarkable; he explained many things to Cleombrotus, and especially the nature of the daimones, and the important part they played as factors in any satisfactory interpretation of ancient mythology, seeing that most of the great myths referred to the doings of the daimones and not of mortals.

Cleombrotus, however, has told his story merely as an introduction to the quotation of a scrap of information let fall by the old philosopher concerning the plurality of worlds 1; thus, then, he continues:

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“THE PLAIN OF TRUTH”

“He told me that the number of worlds was neither infinite, nor one, nor five, but that there were 183 of them, arranged in the figure of a triangle of which each side contained 60, and of the remaining 3 one set at each angle. And those on the sides touch each other, revolving steadily as in a choral dance. And the area of the triangle is the Common Hearth of all, and is called the ‘Plain of Truth,’ 1 in which the logoi and ideas and paradigms of all things which have been, and which shall be, lie immovable; and the Æon [or Eternity] being round them [sc. the ideas], time flows down upon the worlds like a stream. And the sight and contemplation (θέαν) of these things is possible for the souls of men only once in ten thousand years, should they have lived a virtuous life. And the highest of our initiations here below is only the dream of that true vision and initiation 2; and the discourses [sc. delivered in the mystic rites] have been carefully devised to awaken the memory of the sublime things above, or else are to no purpose.”

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This statement I am inclined to regard as one of the most distinct pronouncements on the nature of the higher mysteries which has been preserved to us from antiquity, and the locus classicus and point of departure for any really fruitful discussion of the true nature of the philosophic mysteries, and yet I have never seen it referred to in this connection.

Our old philosopher was well acquainted with the Egyptian mystery-tradition, for Cleombrotus obtained information from him concerning the esoteric significance of Typhon and Osiris, and what I have quoted above falls naturally into place in the scheme of ideas of the tradition preserved in the treatise which we are discussing. 1 It, indeed, pertains to a higher side of the matter, for it purports to be the highest theoria of all, and possible for the souls even of the most righteous only at long periods of time.

Of course the representation is symbolical. The triangle is no triangle; it is the “plain of truth,” the “hearth of the universe.” The triangle, then, pertained to the plane of Fire proper and not Air. Still, the ordering of the “worlds” is similar to that of our soul spaces. The triangle is shut off from the manifested world by the Æon; it is out of space and time proper. Time flows down from it. The worlds proper are 3 worlds or cosmoi, each divided into 60 subordinate cosmoi, in choral dance, or orderly harmonious movement of one to the other. Our soul-spaces, then, may have been regarded as some reflection of these supernal conditions.

One is almost tempted to turn the plane triangle

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into a solid figure, a tetrahedron, 1 and imagine the idea of a world or wheel, at each of the four angles, and to speculate on the Wheels of Ezekiel, the prototype of the Mercabah or Heavenly Chariot of Kabalism, the Throne of Truth of the Supreme, but I will not try the patience of my readers any further, for doubtless most of them will have cried already: Hold, enough!

THE BOUNDARIES OF THE NUMBERS WHICH PREEXIST IN THE SOUL

Perhaps, however, it would be as well, before dismissing the subject, to consider very briefly what Plato, following Pythagoras, 2 has to say concerning the “boundaries” of all numbers which pre-exist in the soul. These soul-numbers are 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 27 (the combination of the two Pythagorean series 1, 2, 4, 8 and 1, 3, 9, 27), or 1, 2, 3, 2², 2³, 3², 3³. Of these numbers 1, 2, 3 are apportioned to the World-Soul itself, in its intellectual or spiritual aspect, and signify its abiding in (1), its proceeding from (2), and its returning to itself (3); this with regard to primary natures. But in addition, intermediate subtle natures or souls are “providentially” ordered in their evolution and involution, by the World-Soul; they proceed according to the power of the fourth term (4 or 2²), “which possesses generative powers,” and return according to that of the fifth (9 or 3²), “which reduces them to one.” Finally also solid or gross natures are also “providentially” ordered in their procession according to 8 (2³), and in their conversion according to 27 (3³). 3

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From all of which we get the following scheme of circular progression and conversion of the soul, the various main stages through which it passes:

With this compare the “Chaldæan Oracle” (ap. Psellus, 19): “Do not soil the spirit, nor turn the plane into the solid”—μὴ πνεῦμα μολύνῃς μῦτε βαθύνῃς τὸ ἐπίπεδον (ed. Cory, Or. clii., p. 270); where the four stages correspond to the point, line, plane, and solid. It is also to be remembered that since x⁰ = 1, 2⁰ = 1 and 3⁰ = l.

That these are the boundary numbers of the soul, according to Pythagoreo-Platonic tradition, is of interest, but how this can in any way be made to agree with the ordering of the soul-spaces in our treatise is a puzzle. That by adding these numbers together (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 8 + 9 + 27) we get 54, and by farther adding the numbers of the World-Soul proper (1 + 2 + 3) we get 6, and so total out the whole sum of the phases to 60, savours somewhat of “fudging,” as we used to call it at school. It is by no means convincing, for we are here combining particulars with universals as though they were of equal dignity; still the ancients frequently resort to such combinations.

That, however, there is something more than learned trifling in these numbers of Plato may be seen by the brilliant study of Adam on the “nuptial number” of Plato, 1 which was based upon the properties of the

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[paragraph continues]“Pythagorean triangle,” a right-angled triangle to the containing sides of which the values of 3 and 4 were given, the value of its hypothenuse being consequently 5; and 3 × 4 × 5 = 60. The numbers 3, 4, 5, together with the series 1, 2, 4, 8, and 1, 3, 9, 27, were the numerical sequences which supplied those “canons of proportion” with which the Pythagoreans and Platonists chiefly busied themselves.

Still, as far as I can see, this does not throw any clear light on the ordering of the soul spaces as given in our treatise, and we are therefore tempted to connect it with the tradition of the mysterious 60’s of Cleombrotus. But what that choral dance was which ordered the subordinate cosmoi into 60’s, and whether they proceeded by stages which might correspond to 3’s and 4’s and 5’s, we have, as far as I am aware, no data on which to base an argument. It may, however, have been connected with Babylonian ideas; the 3 may have been regarded as “falling into” 4, so making 12, and this stage in its turn have been regarded as “falling into” 5, and so making 60.

THE MYSTERIOUS CYLINDER

It is to be noticed, however, that before the souls revolted, the Demiurge “appointed for them limits and reservations 1 in the height of Upper Nature, that they might keep the cylinder a-whirl in proper order and economy” (11).

They were, then, confined to certain orderings and spaces. But what is the mysterious “cylinder” which they were to keep revolving?

So far I have come across nothing that throws any

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direct light on the subject. However, Proclus 1 says that Porphyry stated that among the Egyptians the letter χ, surrounded by a circle, symbolized the mundane soul.

It is curious that Porphyry should have referred this idea to the Egyptians, when he must have known that Plato, to whom Porphyry looked as the corypheus of all philosophy, had treated of the significance of the symbol X (in Greek χ) in perhaps the most discussed passage of the Timæus (36B). 2 This letter symbolized the mutual relation of the axes and equators of the sphere of the “same” (the “fixed stars”) and the sphere of the “other” (the “seven planetary spheres”). Porphyry, however, may have believed that Plato, or Pythagoras, got the idea in the first place from Egypt—the common persuasion of his school.

This enigma of Plato is described as follows by Jowett in his Introduction to the Timæus 3:

“The universe revolves round a centre once in twenty-four hours, but the orbits of the fixed stars take a different direction from that of the planets. The outer and the inner sphere cross one another and meet again at a point opposite to that of their first contact; the first moving in a circle from left to right along the side of a parallelogram which is supposed to be inscribed in it, the second also moving in a circle along the diagonal of the same parallelogram from right to left 4; or, in

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other words, the first describing the path of the equator, the second, the path of the ecliptic.”

We should thus, just as the Egyptians, according to Porphyry, symbolized it, represent the conception by the figure of a circle with two diameters suggesting respectively the equator and the ecliptic.

But what is the rectangular figure to which Jowett refers, but which he does not further describe? The circles are spheres; and, therefore, the rectangular figure must be a solid figure inscribed in the sphere “of the same.” If we now set the circle revolving parallel to the longer sides of the figure, this “parallelogram” will trace out a cylinder, while the seven spheres of the “other,” the “souls” of the “planets,” moving parallel to one of the diagonals of our figure, and in an opposite direction to the sphere of the “same,” will, by their mutual difference of rates of motion, cause their “bodies” (the souls surrounding the bodies) to trace out spiral orbits.

All this in itself, I confess, seems very far-fetched, and I should have thrown my notes on the subject into the waste-paper basket, but for the following consideration:

Basil of Cæsarea, in his Hexæmeron, or Homilies on

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the Six Days of Creation, declared it “a matter of no interest to us whether the earth is a sphere or a cylinder or a disk, or concave in the middle like a fan.” 1

The cylinder-idea, then, was a favourite theory with regard to the earth-shape in the time of Basil, that is the fourth century.

This cylinder-idea, however, I am inclined to think was very ancient. In the domain of Greek speculation we first meet with it in what little is known of the system of Anaximander of Miletus, the successor of Thales.

Anaximander is reported to have believed that “the earth is a heavenly body, controlled by no other power, and keeping its position because it is the same distance from all things; the form of it is curved, cylindrical, like a stone column; it has two faces; one of these is the ground beneath our feet, and the other is opposite to it.” 2

And again: “That the earth is a cylinder in form, and that its depth is one-third of its breadth.” 3

Now I have never been able to persuade myself that the earliest philosophers of Greece “invented” the ideas ascribed to them. They stood on the borderland of mythology and mysticism, and, in every probability, took their ideas from ancient traditions.

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[paragraph continues]Anaximander himself was in every probability indirectly, for all we know even directly, influenced by Egyptian and Chaldæan notions; indeed, who can any longer doubt in the light of the Cnossus excavations?” 1

Anaximander is thus said to have regarded the earth-cylinder as fixed, whereas in our treatise the cylinder is not the earth and is not fixed; it is, on the contrary, a celestial cylinder and in constant motion. Can it, then, possibly be that this cylinder notion was associated with some Babylonian idea, and had its source in that country par excellence of cylinders? In Babylonia, moreover, the cylinder-shape was frequently used for seals, fashioned like a small roller, so that the characters or symbols engraved on them could be impressed on soft substance, such as wax. Further, the Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations were, as we know, closely associated, and pre-eminently so in the matter of sigils and seals. In the Coptic-Gnostic works, translated from Greek originals, and indubitably mainly of Egyptian origin, the idea of “characters,” “seals,” and “sigils,” as types impressed on matter, is a commonplace.

Can our cylinder, then, have some connection with the circle of animal types, or types of life, of which so much is said in our treatise? The souls of the supernal man class would then have had the task of keeping this cylinder in motion, so that thereby the various types were continually impressed on the plasms in the sphere of generation, or ever-becoming—the wheel of genesis?

This may be so, for in P. S. A., 19, we read: “The air, moreover, is the engine, or machine, through which

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all things are made . . . mortal from mortal things and things like these.”

So also in K. K., 28, Hermes says: “And I will skillfully devise an instrument, mysterious, possessed of power of sight that cannot err . . . an instrument that binds together all that’s done.”

Here again we have the same idea, all connected with the notion of Fate or Heimarmene; the instrument of Hermes is the Kārmic Wheel, by which cause and effect are linked together, and that too with a moral purpose. 1

Finally, in connection with our cylinder, we may compare the Âryan Hindu myth of the “Churning of the Ocean,” in the Viṣhṇu Purāṇa. The churning-staff or Pillar was the heaven-mountain, round which was coiled the cosmic serpent, to serve as rope for twirling it. The rope was held at either end by the Devas and Asuras, or gods and dæmons. There is also a mystic symbol in India which probably connects with a similar range of ideas. It is two superimposed triangles (⧖), with their apices touching, and round the centre a serpent is twined,—a somewhat curious resemblance to our X and cylinder-idea. And so much for this puzzling symbol.

THE EAGLE, LION, DRAGON AND DOLPHIN

We now pass to the four leading types of animals, connected with souls of the highest rank—namely, the eagle, lion, dragon, and dolphin (24, 25)—which it may be of interest to compare with the symbolism of some of the degrees of the Mithriac Mysteries. 2

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[paragraph continues]In one of the preliminary degrees of the rite, we are informed, some of the mystæ imitated the voices of birds, others the roaring of lions. 1 All of this was interpreted by the initiates as having reference to transmigration or metempsychosis. Thus Porphyry 2 tells us that in the Mysteries of Mithras they called the mystæ by the names of different animals, so symbolizing man’s common lower nature with that of the irrational animals. Thus, for instance, they called some of the men “lions,” and some of the women “lionesses,” some were called “ravens,” while the “fathers,” the highest grade, were called “hawks” and “eagles.” The “ravens” were the lowest grade; those of the “lion” grade were apparently previously invested with the disguises and masks of a series of animal forms before they received the lion shape.

Porphyry tells us, further, that Pallas, who had, prior to Porphyry’s day, written an excellent treatise on the Mithriaca, now unfortunately lost, asserts that all this was vulgarly believed to refer to the zodiac, but that in truth it symbolized a mystery of the human soul, which is invested with animal natures of various kinds, 3

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according to the tradition of the Magi. Thus they call the sun (and therefore those corresponding to this nature) a bull, a lion, a dragon, and a hawk.

It is further to be remembered that Appuleius, 1 in describing the robe with which he was invested after his initiation into the Mysteries of Isis, tells us that he was enthroned as the sun, robed in twelve sacramental stoles or garments; these garments were of linen with beautiful paintings upon them, so that from every side “you might see that I was remarkable by the animals which were painted round my vestment in various colours.” This dress, he says, was called the “Olympic Stole.”

MOMUS

Finally, it may perhaps be of service to make the reader a little better acquainted with Momus.

Among the Greeks Momus was the personification of the spirit of fault-finding. Hesiod, in his Theogony (214), places him among the second generation of the children of Night, together with the Fates. From the Cypria 2 of Stasimus, 3 we learn that, when Zeus, in answer to Earth’s prayer to relieve her of her overpopulation of impious mankind, 4 first sent the Theban War, and on this proving insufficient, bethought him of annihilating the human race by thunderbolts (fire) and floods (water), Momus advises the Father of gods and men to marry the goddess Thetis to a mortal, so that a beautiful daughter (Aphrodite-Helen) might be born to

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them, and so mankind, Greeks and Barbarians, on her account be involved in internecine strife—namely, the Trojan War. Further, the Scholiast on Il., i. 5, avers that it was Momus whom Homer meant to represent by the “will” or “counsel” of Zeus.

Sophocles, moreover, wrote a Satyric drama called “Momus,” 1 and so also Achæus. 2

Both Plato 3 and Aristotle 4 refer to Momus. Callimachus, the chief librarian of the Alexandrian Library, from 260-240 B.C., in his Ætia, 5 pilloried his critic and former pupil Apollonius Rhodius as Momus.

Momus, moreover, was a favourite figure with the Sophists and Rhetoricians, especially of the second century A.D. In Æl. Aristides, 6 Momus, as he could find no fault with Aphrodite herself, found fault with her shoe. 7 Lucian makes Aphrodite vow to oppose Momus tooth and nail, 8 and makes Momus find fault with even the greatest works of the gods, such as the house of Athene, the bull of Zeus, and the men of Hephæstus,—the last because the god-smith had not put windows in their breasts so that their hearts might be seen. 9

And, interestingly enough in connection with our treatise, Lucian, in one of his witty sketches, 10 makes

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[paragraph continues]Momus one of the persons of the dialogue with Zeus and Hermes. Momus finds fault because Bacchus is reckoned among the gods, and is commanded by Zeus to refrain from making ridicule of Hercules and Asclepius.

The popular figure of Momus was that of a feeble old man, 1—a very different representation from the grandiose Intelligence of our treatise, a true Lucifer.

Some representations give his one sharp tooth, and others wings. The story runs that Zeus finally banished him from Olympus for his fault-finding. 2

The Onomastica Vaticana 3 connects Momus with Mammon; but this side-issue need not detain us. 4

THE MYSTIC GEOGRAPHY OF SACRED LANDS

With regard to the symbolic figure of the Earth of §§ 46-48 of the second K. K. Extract, and the persuasion that Egypt was the heart or centre thereof, we may append two quotations on the subject from widely different standpoints. The first is from Dr Andrew D. White’s recent volumes 5:

“Every great people of antiquity, as a rule, regarded its own central city or most holy place as necessarily the centre of the earth.

“The Chaldeans held that their ‘holy house of the gods’ was the centre. The Egyptians sketched the world under the form of a human figure, in which Egypt was the heart, and the centre of it Thebes. For the Assyrians, it was Babylon; for the Hindus, it was Mount Meru; for the Greeks, so far as the civilized

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world was concerned, Olympus or the temple of Delphi; for the modern Mohammedans, it is Mecca and its sacred stone; the Chinese, to this day, speak of their empire as the ‘middle kingdom.’ It was in accordance, then, with a simple tendency of human thought that the Jews believed the centre of the world to be Jerusalem.

“The book of Ezekiel speaks of Jerusalem as in the middle of the earth, and all other parts of the world as set around the holy city. Throughout the ‘ages of faith’ this was very generally accepted as a direct revelation from the Almighty regarding the earth’s form. St Jerome, the greatest authority of the early Church upon the Bible, declared, on the strength of this utterance of the prophet, that Jerusalem could be nowhere but at the earth’s centre; in the ninth century Archbishop Kabanus Maurus reiterated the same argument; in the eleventh century Hugh of St Victor gave to the doctrine another scriptural demonstration; and Pope Urban, in his great sermon at Clermont urging the Franks to the crusade, declared, ‘Jerusalem is the middle point of the earth’; in the thirteenth century an ecclesiastical writer much in vogue, the monk Cæsarius of Heisterbach, declared, ‘As the heart in the midst of the body, so is Jerusalem situated in the midst of our inhabited earth,’—‘so it was that Christ was crucified at the centre of the earth.’ Dante accepted this view of Jerusalem as a certainty, wedding it to immortal verse; and in the pious book of travels ascribed to Sir John Mandeville, so widely read in the Middle Ages, it is declared that Jerusalem is at the centre of the world, and that a spear standing erect at the Holy Sepulchre casts no shadow at the equinox.

“Ezekiel’s statement thus became the standard of orthodoxy to early map-makers. The map of the world at Hereford Cathedral, the maps of Andrea Bianco,

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[paragraph continues]Marino Sanuto, and a multitude of others fixed this view in men’s minds, and doubtless discouraged during many generations any scientific statements tending to unbalance this geographical centre revealed in Scripture.”

So much for the righteous indignation of modern physical science; now for cryptology and mysticism. M. W. Blackden, in a recent article on “The Mysteries and the ‘Book of the Dead,’” writes as follows 1:

“One other key there is . . . without which it is useless to approach The Book of the Dead with the idea of discussing any of those gems of wisdom for which old Egypt was so famous. . . . The knowledge of its existence is no recent discovery: it is simply that ancient nations such as the Egyptians, Chaldees, and Jews, had a system of symbolic geography. . . .

“The Jewish and Egyptian priestly caste endeavoured to map out their lands in accordance with their symbols of spiritual things, so far as the physical features would permit. This symbolism of mountain, city, plain, desert, and river extended from the various parts and furniture of the Lodge, to use Masonic phraseology, up to the spiritual anatomy, as it were, of both macrocosm and microcosm.

“Thus in the Jewish Scriptures it is not difficult to distinguish, in the prophetic battles of the nations that were to rage round about Jerusalem, the same symbolism as we have more directly expressed in a little old book called The Siege of Mansoul, the author of which was the John Bunyan of The Pilgrim’s Progress, a man who could well grasp the excellence of geographical symbolism.

“I cannot, of course, here enter at length into the geographical symbols of Egypt, it would take too long; but as I have given Jerusalem as a symbol, I may say

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further that Jerusalem as a symbol corresponds to the Egyptian On, or Heliopolis, and so astronomically to the centre of the world and of the universe, and in the microcosm to the spiritual Heart of Man. 1

“But there is one difference between the Hebrew and Egyptian city; for whereas the actual Jerusalem corresponds among the Hebrew prophets to that Jerusalem that now is, and is in bondage with her children, Heliopolis corresponded among the Egyptian priesthood to that city which was to come, the Heavenly City, the New Heart, that should be given to redeemed mankind.”

Here then we have a thesis that deserves a volume to itself; and so I leave it to him who has a mind to undertake the labour.

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Footnotes

135:1 The arising of the knowledge of God among the Gods, and the gradual descent of this knowledge down to man, reminds us somewhat of the method of the descent of the “Gospel” in the system of Basilides.

137:1 Or rather apocalypse; see § 15: “As Hermes says when he speaks unto me.”

137:2 Cf. the Egregores of The Book of Enoch; see Charles’ Translation (Oxford; 1893), Index, under “Watchers.”

137:3 The new Manvantara following a periodical Pralaya, to use the terms of Indo-Aryan tradition.

137:4 The creation is figured in one Egyptian tradition as the bursting forth of the Creator into seven peals of laughter,—a sevenfold “Ha!”

138:1 Cf. the “florescence” of § 10.

140:1 Cf. the same idea as expressed by Basilides (ap. Hipp., Philos., vii. 27), but in reversed order, when, speaking of the consummation of the world-process, and the final ascension of the “Sonship” with all its experience gained from union with matter, he says of the remaining souls, which have not reached the dignity of the Sonship, that the Great Ignorance shall come upon them for a space.

“Thus all the souls of this state of existence, whose nature is to remain immortal in this state of existence alone, remain without knowledge of anything different from or better than this state; nor shall there be any rumour or knowledge of things superior in higher states, in order that the lower souls may not suffer pain by striving after impossible objects, just as though it were fish longing to feed on the mountains with sheep, for such a desire would end in their destruction. All things are indestructible if they remain in their proper condition, but subject to destruction if they desire to overleap and transgress their natural limits” (F. F. F., p. 270).

141:1 Cf. Cyril, C. Jul., i. 35; Frag. xvi.

141:2 Cf. §§ 29 and 37.

143:1 Cf. Hermes-Prayer, iii. 3.

143:2 This is of special interest as showing how the Egyptian tradition, in this pre-eminent above all others, did not limit the manifestation to the male sex alone.

144:1 Cf. C. H., xviii. 8 ff.

145:1 The “spirituous” or “aery” body, or vehicle, is composed of the sub-elements, but in it is a predominance of the sub-element “air,” just as in the physical there is a predominance of “earth.”—Philoponus, Proœm. in Aristot. de Anima; see my Orpheus (London, 1896), “The Subtle Body,” pp. 276-281. Cf. also S. I. H., 15, 20.

146:1 Compare this with the prāṇa’s of Indian theosophy; see C. H., x. (xi.) 13, Comment.

148:1 Cf. Diog. Laert., Proœm., i.: “The Egyptians say that Hephæstus (Ptah) was the son of Neilus (the Nile), and that he was the originator of philosophy, of that philosophy whose leaders are priests and prophets”—that is to say, a mystic philosophy of revelation.

148:2 Thus Suidas (s.v. “Ptah”) says that Ptah was the Hephæstus of the Memphite priesthood, and tells us that there was a proverbial saying current among them: “Ptah hath spoken unto thee.” This reminds us of our text: “As Hermes says when he speaks unto me.”

148:3 The type of Isis as utterer of “sacred sermons,” describing herself as daughter or disciple of Hermes, is old, and goes back demonstrably to Ptolemaic times. R. 136, n. 4; 137, n. 1.

149:1 ὁπότ᾽ ἐμὲ καὶ τῷ τελείῳ μέλανι ἐτίμησεν. This has hitherto been always supposed by the philological mind simply to refer to the mysteries of ink or writing, and that too without any humorous intent, but in all portentous solemnity. We must imagine, then, presumably, that it refers to the schooldays of Isis, when she was first taught the Egyptian equivalents for pothooks and hangers. This absurdity is repeated even by Meineke.

150:1 The more correct title of this work should be “Gnostic Jottings (or Notes) according to the True Philosophy,” as Clement states himself and as has been well remarked by Hort in his Ante-Nicene Fathers, p. 87 (London, 1895).

150:2 Op. cit., v. 11. Sopater (Dist. Quæst., p. 123, ed. Walz) speaks of these as “figures” (σχήματα), the same expression which Proclus (In Plat. Rep., p. 380) employs in speaking of the appearances which the Gods assume in their manifestations; Plato (Phædr., p. 250) calls them “blessed apparitions,” or beatific visions” (εὐδαίμονα φάσματα); the author of the Epinomis (p. 986) describes them as “what is most beautiful to see in the world”; these are the “mystic sights” or “wonders” (μυστικὰ θεάματα) of Dion Chrysostom (Orat., xii., p. 387, ed. Reiske); the “holy appearances” (ἅγια φαντάσματα) and “sacred shows” (ἱερὰ δεικνύμενα) of Plutarch (Wyttenbach, Fragm., vi. 1, t. v., p. 722, and De Profect. Virtut. Sent., p. 81, ed. Reiske); the “ineffable apparitions” (ἄρρητα φάσματα) of Aristides (Orat., xix. p. 416, ed. Dindorf); the “divine apparitions” (θεῖα φάσματα) of Himerius (Eclog., xxxii., p. 304, ed. Wernsdorf),—those sublime sights the memory of which was said to accompany the souls of the righteous into the after-life, and when they returned to birth. Cf. Lenormant (F.) on “The Eleusinian Mysteries” in The Contemporary Review (Sept. 1880), p. 416, who, however, thinks that these famous philosophers and writers bankrupted their adjectives merely for the mechanical figures and stage-devices of the lower degrees. See my “Notes on the Eleusinian Mysteries” in The Theosophical Review (April, May, June, 1898), vol. xxii., p. 156.

151:1 De Is. et Os., xxi.

151:2 Berl phil. Wochenschr. (1896), p. 1528; R. 137, n. 3.

151:3 R. 133, n. 2.

151:4 προτογόνῳ—cf. the προγενεστέρου πάντων above.

151:5 Epeius, ap. Eusebius, Præp. Ev., i. 10, p. 41 D.

151:6 Ap. Euseb., Præp., iii. 11, 45, p. 115.

152:1 Cf. the epithet “utterly hidden” found in the “Words (Logoi) of Ammon,” referred to by Justin Martyr, Cohort., xxxviii., and the note thereon in “Fragments from the Fathers.”

152:2 Typified by the dark-coloured body.

152:3 ζωοποιός—typified, presumably, by the girdle (the symbol of the woman) and the staff (the symbol of the man).

152:4 Chron., xl. (ed. Dind., i. 72).

153:1 Varro, De Gente Pop. Rom., ap. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, xviii. 3, 8; R. 139, n. 3.

154:1 It is said that with regard to ancient archaic texts which are still extant, modern Egyptology is able to translate them with greater accuracy than the priests of Manetho’s day; but this one may be allowed to question, unless the ancient texts are capable solely of a physical interpretation.

154:2 The Hermes, presumably, who was fabled to be the son of the Nile, not the physical Nile, but the Heaven Ocean, the Great Green, the Soul of Cosmos, and whom, we are told, the Egyptians would never speak of publicly, but, presumably, only within the circles of initiation. This Nile may be in one sense the Flood that hid the Books of Hermes in its depths or zones; but equally so the son of Nile may be the first Hermes after the Flood.

155:1 Wessley, Denkschr. d. k. Akad. (1893), p. 37, l. 500.

155:2 So R., though this is a meaning to which the lexicons give no support; the verb generally meaning “to defer” or “assent to.”

156:1 Compare also the mystery ritual in The Acts of John: “I am thy God, not that of the betrayer” (F. F. F., p. 434).

156:2 As the Gnostic Marcus would have called it.

156:3 On this ἱερός γάμος or γάμος πνευματικός, see Lobeck (C. A.), Aglaophamus (Königsberg, 1829), 608, 649, 651.

157:1 That is, the Agathodaimon.

157:2 That is, the “Birth of Horus.” Hippolytus, Philos., v. 8 (ed. Dunk, and Schneid, pp. 164, 166, ll. 86-94). see “Myth of Man in the Mysteries,” § 28. The last clause is the gloss of the later Christian over-writer.

158:1 The text is to be found in James (M. R.), Apocrypha Anecdota, ii. (Cambridge, 1897), in Texts and Studies; F. F. F., pp. 432, 433.

158:2 De Is. et Os., xxxiii.

158:3 Cf. this with K. K., 47, where Egypt is said to occupy the position of the heart of the earth.

158:4 Cf. K. K., 20: “Ye brilliant stars, eyes of the gods.”

158:5 Cited by Ebers, “Die Körperteile in Altägyptischen,” Abh. d. k. bayr. Akad. (1897), p. 111, where other references are given.

159:1 Compare also the Naassene document, § 8, in the “Myth of Man” chapter of the Prolegomena, where Isis is called “the seven-robed and black-mantled goddess.”

160:1 Cf. “Isis, the Queen of Heaven, whose most ancient and distinctive title was the Virgin Mother.” Marsham Adams (F.), The Book of the Master, or the Egyptian Doctrine of the Light born of the Virgin Mother (London, 1898), p. 63.

160:2 Hær., li. 22.

160:3 And pre-eminently, therefore, for Epiphanius, the Egyptians.

161:1 That is, the Temple of Korē. This can hardly be the Temple of Persephonē, as Dindorf (iii. 729) suggests, but rather the Temple of Isis.

161:2 Cf. D. J. L., pp. 407 ff.

162:1 Though some have conjectured that the “cock” was the popular name for the Temple-watchman who called the hours.

163:1 See below, where the story is given from Plutarch’s Moralia.

163:2 Compare The Book of the Dead, lxxviii. 31, 32; Budge’s Trans. (London, 1901), ii. 255: “I shall come forth . . . into the House of Isis, the divine lady. I shall behold sacred things which are hidden, and I shall be led on to the secret and holy things, even as they have granted unto me to see the birth of the Great God. Horus hath made me to be a spiritual body through his soul, [and I see what is therein].” Compare the last sentence with C. H., i. 7, and xi. (xii.) 6, where the pupil “sees” by means of the soul of his Master.

164:1 This passage, I believe, affords us an objective point of departure for the reconsideration of C. W. Leadbeater’s statement, in his Christian Creed (London, 1898), p, 45, that “Pontius Pilate” is a pseudo-historical gloss for πόντος πιλητός, the “dense sea” of “matter,” into which the soul is plunged. See for a discussion of this hypothesis D. T. L., pp. 423 ff.

In connection with this a colleague has supplied me with an exceedingly interesting note from Texts and Studies, iv. 2, CopticApocryphal Gospels, p. 177, Frag. 4. The Sahidic text is found in Rendiconti della R. Accademia dei Lincei, vol. iii., sem. 2, pp. 381-384 (Frammenti Copti, Nota Via), by Ignazio Guidi (1887). The legend runs that the Devil taking “the form of a fisherman,” goes fishing, and is met by Jesus as He was coming down from the Mount with His disciples. The Devil announces that “he who catcheth fish here, he is the Master. It is not a wonder to catch fish in the waters, the wonder is in this desert, to catch fish therein.” They then have a trial of skill, but the MS. unfortunately breaks off before the result is told. It is in this Fragment that the following remarkable sentence occurs: “Now as Pilate was saying these things before the authorities of Tiberius, the king, Herod, could not refrain from setting Pilate at naught, saying, ‘Thou art a Galilæan foreign Egyptian Pontus.’” The literal translation from the Coptic runs: “Thou art a Pontus Galilæan foreign Egyptian.”

165:1 Compare, for instance, Kaṭhopaniṣhad, Sec. ii., Pt. ii., iv. 11, 12: “The Man, of the size of a thumb, resides in the midst, within in the self, of the past and the future the lord; from him a man hath no desire to hide. This verily is That.

“The Man, of the size of a thumb, like flame free from smoke, of past and of future the lord, the same is to-day, to-morrow the same will he be. This verily is That.”—Mead and Chaṭṭopādhyāya’s Trans. (London, 1896), i. 68, 69.

Here “to-day” and “to-morrow” are said by some to refer to different incarnations; the “Man” (puruṣha) being the potential Self, destined finally to become, or grow into the stature of, the Great Self (Maha-puruṣha).

165:2 See the article, “Theosophic Light on Bible Shadows,” in The Theosophical Review (Nov. 1904), xxxv. 230, 231.

165:3 The minute image of a person reflected in the pupil of the eye of another may to some extent account for the popular belief underlying this identification.

166:1 The same idea which we found above in connection with Ammon.

166:2 To go “a-whoring” after strange gods and strange doctrines was the graphic figure invariably employed by Hebrew orthodoxy; “to commit fornication” not unfrequently echoes the same idea in the New Testament.

167:1 For the latest study on the subject, see Monseur (E.), “L’Âme Pupilline,” Rev. de l’Hist. des Relig. (Jan. and Feb. 1905), who discusses the significance in primitive religion of the reflected image to be seen in the pupil of the eye. This “little man” of the eye was taken to be its soul, and to control all its functions.

167:2 Cf., for the idea in the mind of the ancients, Tim. 45 B: “So much of the fire as would not burn, but gave a gentle light, they formed into a substance akin to the light of every-day life; and the pure fire which is within us and related thereto they made to flow through the eyes in a stream smooth and dense, compressing the whole eye, and especially the centre part, so that it kept out everything of a coarser nature, and allowed to pass only this pure element.”

169:1 De Defectu Oraculorum, xxi., xxii. (42lA-422C), ed. G. N. Bernardakis (Leipzig, 1891), iii. 97-101. See my paper, “Plutarch’s Yogī,” in The Theosophical Review (Dec. 1891), ix. 295-297.

170:1 In this referring to the passage in the Timæus, (55 C D), which runs: “Now, he who, duly reflecting on all this, enquires whether the worlds are to be regarded as indefinite or definite in number, will be of opinion that the notion of their indefiniteness is characteristic of a sadly indefinite and ignorant mind. He, however, who raises the question whether they are to be truly regarded as one or five, takes up a more reasonable position” (Jowett’s Trans., 3rd ed., iii. 475, 476).

171:1 Cf. S. I. H., 3: “Now as I chance myself to be as though initiate into the nature that transcendeth death, and that my feet have crossed the Plain of Truth”; and K. K., 22: “The Monarch came, and sitting on the Throne of Truth made answer to their prayers.” The locus classicus is, of course, Plato, Phædrus, 248 B.

171:2 Cf. K. K., 37: “’Tis they who, taught by Hermes that the things below have been disposed by God to be in sympathy with things above, established on the earth the sacred rites o’er which the mysteries in heaven preside.”

172:1 Our difficulty, however, is that Plutarch, in the words of one of his characters, rejects the idea of this numbering being in any way Egyptian, and ascribes it to a certain Petron of Himera in Sicily,—thereby suggesting a probable Pythagorean connection.

173:1 See the section, “Some Outlines of Æonology,” F. F. F., pp. 311-335.

173:2 See my Orpheus (London, 1896), pp. 255-262.

173:3 Cf. Taylor (T.), “Introd. to Timæus,” Works of Plato (London, 1804), p. 442.

174:1 Rep., viii. 545C-547A. See Adam (J.), The Nuptial Number of Plato: Its Solution and Significance (London, 1891).

175:1 Which may have been regarded as the prototypes of the soul-spaces.

176:1 Comment. in Plat. Tim., 216C; ed. C. E. C. Schneider (Vratislaviæ, 1847), p. 250.

176:2 A passage which Proclus, op. cit., 213A (ed. Sch., p. 152) further explains by means of the “harmonic canon” or ruler.

176:3 Jowett (B.), Dialogues of Plato (3rd ed., Oxford, 1892), iii. 403.

176:4 Cf. text 36C: “The motion of the same he carried round by the side to the right, and the motion of the diverse diagonally to the left,”—that is the side of the rectangular figure supposed to be inscribed in the circle of the “same,” and diagonally, across the rectangular figure from corner to corner; and 38D, 39A: “Now, when all the stars which were necessary to the creation of time [i.e. the spheres of the sun, moon, and five planets] had attained a motion suitable to them, and had become living creatures, having bodies fastened by vital chains, and learned their appointed task, moving in the motion of the diverse, which is diagonal, and passes through, and is governed by the motion of the same, they revolved, some in a larger and some in a lesser orbit. . . . The motion of the same made them turn all in a spiral.” With these instruments of “time,” surrounded by the sphere of the same, compare the idea of time flowing down on the worlds, from the Æon, in the story of Cleombrotus.

178:1 So quoted in Andrew Dickson White’s History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (New York, 1898), i. 92. Dr White, unfortunately, does not give the exact reference. The “fan” is, of course, the winnowing fan, a broad basket into which the corn mixed with chaff was received after threshing, and was then thrown up into the wind, so as to disperse the chaff and leave the grain.

178:2 Alexander of Aphrodisias, Comment. on Aristotle in Meteor., 91r (vol. i., 268 I d); Diels, Doxographi Græci (Berlin, 1879), p. 478. Cf. Aëtius, De Placitis Reliquiæ, iii. 10 (Diels, 579).

178:3 Plutarch, Strom., 2 (Diels, 579). See Fairbanks (A.), The First Philosophers of Greece (London, 1898), pp. 13, 14.

179:1 Delitzsch also, in his Babel und Bibel, states that the great debt of early Greece to Assyria will be made clear in a forthcoming work of German scholarship.

180:1 I have also got a stray reference, “κύλινδρος, Plut., 2, 682 C, Xylander’s pages,” but I have not been able to verify this.

180:2 See Cumont (F.), Textes et Monuments figurés relat. aux Mystères de Mithra (Bruxelles, 1899), i. 315.

181:1 Ps. Augustine, Quæstt. Vet. et Nov. Test. (Migne, P. L., tom, xxxiv. col. 2214 f.).

181:2 De Abstinentia, iv. 16 (ed. Nauck, p. 253).

181:3 Cf. Clement of Alexandria on the Basilidian theory of “appendages,” remembering that the School of Basilides was strongly tinctured with Egyptian ideas. “The Basilidians are accustomed to give the name of appendages (or accretions) to the passions. These essences, they say, have a certain substantial existence, and are attached to the rational soul, owing to a certain turmoil and primitive confusion. On to this nucleus other bastard and alien natures of the essence grow, such as those of the wolf, ape, lion, goat, etc. . . . And not only do human souls thus intimately associate themselves with the impulses and impressions of irrational animals, but they even initiate the movements and beauties of plants, because they likewise bear the characteristics of plants appended to them. Nay, there are also certain characteristics [of minerals] shown by habits, such as the hardness of adamant” (F. F. F., p. 276).

182:1 Metamorphoses, Book xi.

182:2 Which Pindar and Herodotus ascribed to Homer himself.

182:3 See Frag. I. from the Scholion on Hom., Il., i. 5 ff.

182:4 See K. K., 34.

183:1 Frag. 369-374B (ed. Dind.); the context of which some believe to be found in Lucian’s Hermotimus, 20.

183:2 Frag. 29, from the Scholion on Aristophanes, Pax, 357.

183:3 Rep., vi. 487A: “Nor would even Momus find fault with this.”

183:4 De Partt. Animal., iii. 2.

183:5 And also at the end of his Hymn to Apollo, ii. 112; also Epigram. Frag., 70.

183:6 Or., 49; ed. Jebb, p. 497.

183:7 Cf. Julian, Ep. ad Dionys.

183:8 Dial. Deor., xx. 2.

183:9 Hermot., xx.; cf. Nig., xxxii.; Dial. Deor., ix.; Ver. Hist., ii. 3; Bab. Fab., lix.; and Jup. Trag., xxii.

183:10 Deor. Consil, iv.

184:1 Philostratus, Ep. 21.

184:2 For the above and other references, see Trümpel’s art. “Momus,” in Roscher’s Lexicon.

184:3 Lug., 194, 59.

184:4 See Nestle’s art. “Mammon,” in Cheyne’s Encyclopædia Biblica.

184:5 Op. supra cit., i. 98, 99.

186:1 The Theosophical Review (July, 1902), vol. xxx. pp. 406, 407.

187:1 “There is an old map of the world in the British Museum which demonstrates both these significations. See also Mappa Mundi, ‘Ebsdorf,’ 1284, and that in Hereford Cathedral made by Richard of Haldingham, one of the Prebends, 1290-1310.”

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EXCERPT XXVII.

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FROM THE SERMON OF ISIS TO HORUS

(Patrizzi (p. 34b) runs this on to the last without a break.

Text: Stob., Phys., xli. 68, 69, under heading, “Of Hermes: A Sermon of Isis to Horus”; G. pp. 476-481; M. i. 342-352; W. i. 458-472.

Ménard: Livre III., No. iii. of “Fragments,” etc., as above, pp. 209-221.)

1. 1 In wondrous fashion—(Horus said)—hast thou explained to me, most mighty mother Isis, the details of God’s wondrous soul-making, and I remain in wonder; but not as yet hast thou told me whereto the souls when freed from body go. I would then thank thee for being made initiate by word of mouth 2 into this vision of the soul, 3 O only mother, deathless one!

2. And Isis said:

Give ear, my son; most indispensable is this

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research. That which doth hold together, doth also have a place which doth not disappear. For this is what my sermon will set forth.

O wondrous, mighty son of mighty sire Osiris, [the souls] when they go forth from bodies, are not confusedly and in a rush dissolved into the air, and scattered in the rest of boundless Breath, so that they cannot any more as the same [souls] return again to bodies; nor is it possible, again, to turn them back unto that place from which they came at first—no more than water taken from the bottom of a jar can be poured 1 [back again] into the self-same place whence it was taken; nor does the same when taken take a place peculiar to it, but is mixed up with the whole mass of water. 2 Not thus is it [with souls], high-minded Horus!

3. Now as I chance myself to be as though initiate into the nature which transcendeth death, and that my feet have crossed the Plain of Truth, I will explain to thee in detail how it is; and preface this by telling thee that water is a body void of reason condensed from many compound things into a fluid mass, whereas the soul’s a thing of individual nature, son, and of a royal kind, a work of God’s [own] hands and mind, and of itself led by itself to mind.

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What then doth come from “one” and not from “other,” cannot be mingled with a different thing; wherefore it needs must be that the soul’s congress with the body is a concord wrought by God’s necessity.

But that they are not [all] confusedly and [all] at random and by chance sent up again to one and the same place, but each to its own proper region, is clear from what [the soul] doth suffer while still it is in body and in plasm, when it has been made dense against its proper nature.

Now give good heed to the similitude recounted, Horus well-beloved!

4. Suppose in one and the same cage have been shut up both men and eagles, doves and swans, and swallows, hawks and sparrows, flies, and snakes, and lions, leopards, wolves, and dogs, and hares, and kine and sheep, and some amphibious animals, as seals and others, tortoises and our own crocodiles; then, that, my son, at one [and the same] moment they are [all] let out.

They [all] will turn instinctively—man to his gathering spots and roofs; the eagle to the ether, in which its nature is to spend its life; the doves into the neighbouring air; the hawks [to that] above [the doves]; the swallows where men dwell; the sparrows round the fruit-trees; the swans where they may sing; the flies about the earth, [but only] so far from it as they can

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with [-out their losing] smell of man (for that the fly, my son, is fond of man especially and tends to earth); the lions and the leopards towards the hills; the wolves towards desert spots; the dogs after men’s tracks; the kine to stalls and fields; the sheep to pastures; the snakes to earth’s recesses; the seals and tortoises, with [all] their kind, unto the deeps and streams, so that they neither should be robbed of the dry land nor taken from their cognate water—each one returning to its proper place by means of its internal means of judgment.

So every soul, both in a human form and otherwise incarnate on the earth, knows where it has to go,—unless some foolish person 1 come and say, my son, that it is possible a bull should live in water and a tortoise up in air!

5. And if this be the case when they are plunged in flesh and blood—that they do nothing contrary to what’s appointed them, e’en though they are being punished (for being put in body is a punishment for them)—how much the more [is it the case] when they possess their proper liberty [and are set free] from punishment and being plunged [in body]?

Now the most holy ordering of souls is on this wise. Turn thou thy gaze above, most noble-

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natured son, upon their orders. The space from height of heaven to the moon devotes itself unto the gods and stars and to the rest of providence; the space, my son, from moon to us is dwelling place of souls.

This so great air, however, has in it a belt to which it is our use to give the name of wind, a definite expanse in which it is kept moving to refresh the things on earth, and which I will hereafter tell about.

Yet in no manner by its motion on itself does it become an obstacle to souls; for though it keeps on moving, souls can dart up or dart down, 1 just as the case may be, free from all let and hindrance. For they pass through without immixture or adhesion as water flows through oil.

6. Now of this interval, Horus, my son, there are four main divisions and sixty special spaces.

Of these [divisions] the first one upwards from the earth is of four spaces, so that the earth in certain of its mountain heights and peaks extends and comes so far, but beyond these it cannot in its nature go in height.

The second after this is of eight spaces, in which the motions of the winds take place.

Give heed, O son, for thou art hearing

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mysteries that must not be disclosed—of earth and heaven and all the holy air which lies between, in which there is the motion of the wind and flight of birds. For above this the air doth have no motion and sustains no life.

This [moving] air moreover hath of its own nature this authority—that it can circulate in its own spaces and also in the four of earth with all the lives which it contains, while earth cannot ascend into its [realm].

The third consists of sixteen spaces filled with subtle air and pure.

The fourth consists of two and thirty [spaces], in which there is the subtlest and the finest air; it is by means of this that [air] shuts from itself the heavens above which are by nature fiery.

7. This ordering is up and down in a straight line and has no overlapping; so that there are four main divisions, twelve intervallic ones and sixty spaces.

And in these sixty spaces dwell the souls, each one according to its nature, for though they are of one and the same substance, they’re not of the same dignity. For by so much as any space is higher from the earth than any other, by so much do the souls in them, my son, surpass in eminence the one the other. 1

What souls, however, go to each of them, I

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will accordingly begin again to tell thee, Horus, [son] of great renown, taking their order from above down to the earth.

CONCERNING THE INBREATHING AND THE TRANSMIGRATION OF THE SOUL 1

8. The [air] between the earth and heavens, Horus, is spaced out by measure and by harmony.

These spaces have been named by some of our forefathers zones, by others firmaments, by others layers.

And in them dwell both souls which have been set free from their bodies, and also those which have as yet been never shut in body.

And each of them, my son, hath just the place it doth deserve; so that the godly and the kingly ones dwell in the highest space of all, those least in honour and the rest of the decadent ones [dwell] in the lowest space of all, while middling souls dwell in the middle space.

Accordingly, those souls which are sent down to rule, are sent down, Horus, from the upper zones; and when they are set free [again] they go back to the same or even still more lofty ones, unless it be they still have acted contrary

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to their own nature’s dignity and the pronouncement of the Law of God.

Such souls as these the Providence above, according to the measure of their sins, doth banish down to lower spaces; just as with those which are inferior in dignity and power, it leads them up from lower [realms] to vaster and more lofty ones.

9. For up above [them all] there are two ministers of universal Providence, of whom one is the warder of the souls, the other their conductor. The warder [watches o’er the souls when out of body], while the conductor is dispatcher and distributor of souls into their bodies. The former keeps them, while the latter sends them forth according to the Will of God.

For this cause (logos) then, my son, nature on earth according to the change of deeds above doth model out the vessels and shape out the tents in which the souls are cast. 1 Two energies, experience and memory, assist her.

And this is memory’s task, [to see] that nature guards the type of every thing sent down out of its source and keeps its mixture as it is above; while of experience [the work is this, to see] conformably to every one of the descending souls it may have its embodiment, and that the

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plasms may be made effective 1—that for the swift ones of the souls the bodies also may be swift, for slow ones slow, for active active ones, for sluggish sluggish ones, for powerful powerful, and for crafty crafty ones, and in a word for every one of them as it is fit.

10. For not without intention hath she clad winged things with plumage; and tricked out with senses more than ordinary and more exact those which have reason; and some of the four-footed things made strong with horns, some strong with teeth, some strong with claws and hoofs; while creeping things she hath made supple with bodies clad in easy-moving scales, which easily can glide away.

And that the watery nature of their body may not remain entirely weak, she doth provide the sharpened fangs of some of them with power; so that by reason of the fear of death [they cause] they’re stronger than the rest.

The swimming things being timorous, she gives to dwell within an element where light can exercise nor one nor other of its powers, for fire in water gives nor light nor heat. But each of them, swimming in water clad in scales or spines, flees from what frightens it where’er it will, using the water as a means of hiding it from sight.

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11. For souls are shut in each class of these bodies according to their similarity [to them]. Those which have power of judgment go down into men; and those that lack it into quadrupeds, whose [only] law is force; the crafty ones [go] into reptiles, for none of them attack a man in front, but lie in wait and strike him down; and into swimming things the timid ones or those which are not worthy to enjoy the other elements. In every class, however, there are found some which no longer use their proper nature.

How [meanest thou] again, my mother? Horus said.

And Isis answered:

A man, for instance, son, o’ersteps his power of judgment; a quadruped avoids the use of force; and reptiles lose their craftiness; and birds their fear of men. So much [then] for the ordering of [souls] above and their descent, and for the making of their bodies.

12. In every class and kind of the above, my son, there may be found some regal souls; others also descend with various natures, some fiery, and some cold, some overbearing, and some mild, some skilled, some unskilled, some idle, some industrious, some one thing, some another. And this results from the arrangement of the regions whence the souls leap down to their embodiment.

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For from the regal zone they leap down [into birth], the soul of the like nature ruling them 1; for there are many sovereignties. Some are of souls, and some of bodies, and some of arts, and some of sciences, and some are of ourselves.

How [meanest thou] again, my mother, “of ourselves”?

For instance, son, it is thy sire Osiris who is [the ruler] of the souls of them born after us up to this time 2; whereas the prince of every race [is ruler] of their bodies; [the king] of counsel is the father and the guide of all, Thrice-greatest Hermes; of medicine Asclepius, Hephæstus’ son; of power and might again Osiris, and after him thyself, my son; and of philosophy Arnebeschēnis; of poetry again Asclepius-Imuth.

13. For generally, my son, thou’lt find, if thou inquirest, that there are many ruling many things and many holding sway o’er many. And he who rules them all, my son, is from the highest space; while he who rules some part of them, doth have the rank of that particular realm from which he is.

Those who come from the regal zone, [have] a more ruling [part to play; those from the zone

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of fire 1] become fire-workers and fire-tenders; those from the watery one live out their life in waters; those from the [zone] of science and of art are occupied with arts and sciences; those from the [zone] of inactivity inactively and heedlessly live out their lives.

For that the sources of all things wrought on the earth by word or deed, are up above, and they dispense for us their essences by weight and measure; and there is naught which hath not come down from above, and will return again to re-descend.

14. What dost thou mean again by this, my mother? Tell me!

And Isis once again did make reply: Most holy Nature hath set in living creatures the clear sign of this return. For that this breath which we breathe from above out of the air, we send out up again, to take it in [once more].

And we have in us organs, son, to do this work, and when they close their mouths whereby the breath’s received, then we no longer are as now we are, but we depart.

Moreover, son of high renown, there are some other things which we have added to us outside the weighed-out mixture [of the body].

15. What, then (said Horus), is this mixture, mother?

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It is a union and a blend of the four elements; and from this blend and union a certain vapour 1 rises, which is enveloped by the soul, but circulates within the body, sharing with each, with body and with soul, its nature. And thus the differences of changes are effected both in soul and body.

For if there be in the corporeal make-up more of fire, thereon the soul, which is by nature hot, taking unto itself another thing that’s hot, and [so] being made more fiery, makes the life more energetic and more passionate, and the body quick and active.

If [there be] more of air, thereon the life becomes both light and springy and unsteady both in the soul and body.

And if there’s more of water, then the creature also doth become of supple soul and easy disposition, and ready of embrace, and able easily to meet and join with others, through water’s power of union and communion with the rest of things; for that it finds a place in all, and when it is abundant, doth dissolve what it surrounds, while if [there’s] little [of it], it sinks into and doth become what it is mingled with. As for their bodies, by dampness and by sponginess they are not made compact, but by a slight attack of sickness are dissolved, and fall away by

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little and by little from the bond which holds them severally together.

And if the earthy [element] is in excess, the creature’s soul is dull, for it has not its body-texture loosely knit, or space for it to leap through, the organs of sensation being dense; but by itself it stays within, bound down by weight and density. As for its body, it is firm, but heavy and inert, and only moved of choice by [exercise of] strength.

But if there is a balanced state of all [the elements], then is the animal made hot for doing, light for moving, well-mixed for contact, and excellent for holding things together. 1

16. Accordingly those which have more in them of fire and air, these are made into birds, and have their state above hard by those elements from which they came.

While those which have more fire, less air, and earth and water equal, these are made into men, and for the creature the excess of heat is turned into sagacity; for that the mind in us is a hot thing which knows not how to burn, but has intelligence to penetrate all things.

And those which have in them more water and more earth, but moderate air and little fire,

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these are turned into quadrupeds, and those which have more heat are stronger than the rest. Those which have equal earth and water, are made into reptiles. These through their lack of fire lack courage and straightforwardness; while through their having water in them they are cold; and through their having earth they heavy are and torpid; yet through their having air, they can move easily if they should choose to do so.

Those which have in them more of wet, and less of dry, these are made into fish. These through their lack of heat and air are timorous and try to hide themselves, and through excess of wet and earthy elements, they find their home, through their affinity, in fluid earth and water.

17. It is according to the share [they have] in every element and to the compass of that share, that bodies reach full growth [in man]; according to the smallness of their share the other animals have been proportioned—according to the energy which is in every element. 1

Moreover, O my well-beloved, I say, that when, out of this state [of things], the blend based on the first commixture [of the elements in any case], and the resultant vapour 2 from it,

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so far preserve their own peculiarity, that neither the hot part takes on another heat, nor [does] the aery [take] another air, nor [does] the watery part another wetness, nor [yet] the earthy [take] another density, then doth the animal remain in health.

18. But if they do not, son, remain in the proportions which they had from the beginning, but are too much increased—(I do not mean in energy according to their compass or in the change of sex and body brought about by growth, but in the blend, as we have said before, of the component elements, so that the hot, for instance, is increased too much or too much lessened, and so for all the rest)—then will the animal be sick.

19. And if this [increase] doth take place in both the elements of heat and air, the soul’s tent-fellows, then doth the creature fall into symbolic dreams and ecstasies; for that a concentration of the elements whereby the bodies are dissolved has taken place. For ’tis the earthy element itself which is the condensation of the body; the watery element in it as well is a fluidity to make it dense. Whereas the aery element is that in us which has the power of motion, and fire is that which makes an end of all of them.

20. Just then as is the vapour 1 which ariseth

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from the first conjunction and co-blending of the elements, as though it were a kindling or an exhalation,—whatever it may be, it mingles with the soul and draws it to itself, so that it shares its nature good or bad. And if the soul remains in its original relationship and common life with it, it keeps its rank.

But when there’s added from without some larger share than what was first laid down for it,—either to the whole mixture, or to its parts, or to one part of it,—then the resulting change effected in the vapour doth bring about a change or in the disposition of the soul or of the body.

The fire and air, as tending upward, hasten upward to the soul, which dwells in the same regions as themselves; the watery and the earthy elements, as tending down, sink down upon the body, which doth possess the self-same seat.

*     *     *     *     *

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Footnotes

188:1 I have numbered the paragraphs for convenience of reference.

188:2 μύστης. The mystēs, speaking generally, was initiated by word of mouth, the epoptēs by sight or vision.

188:3 θεωρία.

189:1 Reading ἐπιχεῖν for ἐπέχειν.

189:2 The construction of the whole of the above paragraph is exceedingly involved.

191:1 τις τῶν τυφωνίων—an interesting phrase as showing that Typhon was regarded as the enemy of Osiris (the Logos or Reason).

192:1 Cf. the beginning of the Apocalypse of Thespesius (Aridæus) in Plutarch, De Sera Num. Vind., xxii.

193:1 For a consideration of this ordering, see p. 168 ff. above.

194:1 This appears to be a heading inserted by Stobæus (Phys., xli. 64) or some scribe; there seems to be no break in the text.

195:1 The text is exceedingly imperfect, and in its present state quite untranslatable.

196:1 The text is again very imperfect.

198:1 The text is here very corrupt, and the reading of the last words of the two following sentences very doubtful.

198:2 That is presumably since the time when Osiris and Isis lived on earth among men.

199:1 The text is exceedingly defective.

200:1 Cf. 17 and 20 below.

201:1 The text is faulty, the language artificial, the analogy strained, and the sense accordingly obscure. Meineke reads: γενναῖον δὲ εἰς θήξιν.

202:1 The text is utterly corrupt and has not yet been even plausibly emended.

202:2 Cf. 15 and 20.

203:1 Cf. 15 and 17.

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COMMENTARY

ARGUMENT

The Sermon from which this Extract is taken plainly belonged to the same class of literature as the K. K. Excerpts. The writer is an initiate of a higher degree, imparting instruction to his pupil by word of mouth.

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He himself, however, professes to have “seen,” for he has been plunged in the Cup of Immortality, and his feet have crossed the Plain of Truth (3).

1. The subject is the excarnate state of souls (1-3). The instruction is given by an analogy and a similitude (4). Each soul seeks naturally its proper habitat in the unseen world.

5. The ordering of the spaces of the excarnate souls is then described. These spaces are all in the “great air,” the sublunary region, extending from the earth surface to the moon.

6. Of this great interval there are 4 main divisions and 60 spaces, the divisions consisting respectively of 4, 8, 16 and 32 sub-spaces. Above the second division from below there is no motion of the “air”; the “wind,” or “moving air” belt, belongs properly to this second division, but has also authority over the first or lowest division, which extends from the earth-surface to the tops of the highest mountains.

7. Besides these 4 divisions and 60 spaces, there is a further ordering into 12 “intervallic” divisions. 1

8. All is arranged by measure and harmony, and after death every soul goes to the space of its desert, ascending and descending according to an unerring law of Providence.

9. To carry out this economy there are two ministers of Providence, the warder and the conductor of souls. The one watches over souls who are out of body, and the other brings them back to suitable bodies. These bodies are made by nature in exact correspondence with their former deeds and characters; in this nature is aided by the energies of experience and memory (9-11).

12. The nature of the soul is conditioned by its habitat in the air-spaces or zones; and this is especially

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the case with those of the regal type. The names of some of these royal souls and their offices are given.

13. In brief all is ordered from above; the source of all is above in the soul-spaces, and as all souls come thence, so will all return thither.

14. How this is effected is explained as being conditioned by a certain link between soul and body, a sort of quintessence, or exhalation, or vapour, of the blend of sub-elements which compose the body (14-20). 1 It is a sort of etheric link between soul and body; it circulates in the body, but also shares with the soul, which is not thought of as being in the body, but as a sphere enveloping the body; or at any rate the body is in the soul, and not the soul in the body. Health is said to depend upon the maintenance of the due proportion of the “vapours” 2 of this “etheric double” (18).

Not only so, but the increase of vitality or intensity in these elements in the “vapour,” is the means of remembering symbolic dreams and passing into a state of ecstasy; finally it is the fiery element of this “vapour” which dissolves this “spirituous body” (19).

It is by means of this link that changes are effected from soul to body, and from body to soul (20); and here, unfortunately, Stobæus ends his excerpt.

TITLE AND ORDERING

The “Sermon of Isis to Horus” extract is, in both style and context, so similar to the K. K. excerpts that we might almost take it to be part and parcel of the very same treatise; but if this had been the case, Stobæus, following his custom, would have presumably headed it with a simple “from the same.” He may,

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however, have made a mistake, for that the good Joannes sometimes nods, may be seen from the short Excerpt xxi., which he says is also taken from “The [Sermon] of Isis to Horus” 1; but this cannot be the case, since Isis is here addressing a certain king as her pupil, and not Horus.

Moreover, at the very beginning of our excerpt Horus distinctly states that Isis has already explained to him “the details of God’s wondrous soul-making,” and thanks her “for being made initiate by word of mouth into the vision of the soul,”—all of which is a precise reference to the contents of the K. K. excerpts. I am, therefore, inclined to think that not only is it a further tractate of instruction following immediately on K. K., but that even if it were supposed to be part and parcel of the same sermon, and that “The [Sermon] of Isis to Horus” was simply a sub-title or alternative title of the “Virgin of the World,” the hypothesis could not be easily set aside. 2

In any case it is quite certain that S. I. H. belongs to precisely the same type as K. K.; and that it pertains to the same special class of Trismegistic literature, and to a somewhat similar type as the treatise from which Cyril quotes Fragg. xix., xx., xxi., in which Osiris figures as the disciple of the Good Daimon, Trismegistus.

THE BOOKS OF ISIS AND HORUS

Here also, as in K. K., Isis comes forward as “initiated into the nature that transcendeth death,” her “feet

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have crossed the Plain of Truth” (3) that is as we have shown in the Comments on K. K., 10, the writer claims to have reached the degree of illumination which bestows on men the consciousness of the gods. “Isis,” then, is not “common to all priests,” as Jamblichus says of “Hermes,” without the honorific qualification “Thrice-greatest,” but rather of a certain grade of initiation; the teacher of that lower grade, or Horus-grade, being Hermes’ representative. Isis was commonly regarded as the Lady of all wisdom and teacher of all magic. Already in the earliest Hellenistic period she had attributes similar to those of Thoth-Hermes, and thus comes forward as the Orderer of the world 1; and not only so, but, like Thoth, she is called Lady of the heart and of the tongue; that is to say, her attributes were those of the Logos. 2

That there was a secret theosophic and apocalyptic literature ascribed to Isis and Horus may be seen from Lucian, who, in one of his humorous sketches, puts into the mouth of Pythagoras the following sentence:

“I also journeyed to Egypt that I might make the acquaintance of the prophets of wisdom, and I descended into the shrines of the temples and learned the Books of Isis and Horus.” 3

Here again, then, as Manetho tells us, these Books, as the Books of Hermes, were kept secret in the holy of holies of the Temples; and these shrines were evidently

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underground for Pythagoras is said to have “descended” to them.

This is the Horus who is not only, after Osiris, the lord of power and might, that is, king, but lord of philosophy, as Arnebeschēnis (12). For Arnebeschēnis, that is Har-nebeschenis, is, as Spiegelberg has shown, 1 an Egyptian proper name, meaning “Horus lord of Letopolis,” at one time an important city in the Delta. In the Alchemical literature also we meet with Horus as a writer of books, as for instance in the superscription “Horus the Gold-miner to Cronus who is Ammon.” 2

Here we see that Horus stands to Isis as Asclepius to Hermes; Asclepius wrote books to Ammon, and so Horus wrote books to Ammon; but whereas the Trismegistic tradition proper looked back to Cronus (Ammon) as one of its earliest teachers, the later writings converted Ammon into a king who was taught by Asclepius or by Horus.

THE WATERY SPHERE AND SUBTLE BODY

The writer of S. I. H. tells us that the soul in its royal state, that is while lord of itself, is a divine creature, but in incarnation it is united with the watery plasm or subtle body, of K. K., 18, where Hermes says that in making it he “used more water than was required”; and to which the soul in its complaint (§ 21) refers as a “watery sphere.” This union makes it dense “against its proper nature” (3), and it is further densified by a certain “vaporous” nature which unites it with the physical frame (15, 17, 20); concerning all of which it is of interest to refer to Philoponus, who tells us that:

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“They [the ancients] further add, that there is something of a plantal and plastic life 1 also, exercised by the soul, in those spirituous and airy bodies after death; they being nourished too, though not after the same manner, as these gross earthly bodies of ours are here, but by vapours; and that not by parts or organs, but throughout the whole of them (as sponges), 2 they imbibing everywhere those vapours. For which cause, they who are wise will in this life also take care of using a thinner and dryer diet, that so that spirituous body (which we have also at this present time within our grosser body) may not be clogged and incrassated, but attenuated. Over and above which these ancients made use of catharms, or purgations, to the same end and purpose also: for as this earthly body is washed with water, so is that spirituous body cleansed by cathartic vapours; some of these vapours being nutritive, others purgative. Moreover, these ancients further declared concerning this spirituous body, that it was not organized, but did the whole of it, in every part throughout, exercise all functions of sense, the soul hearing and seeing, and perceivng all sensibles, by it everywhere.” 3

THE HABITAT OF EXCARNATE SOULS

But to return to our treatise; the dwelling-place of excarnate souls is the Air, the sublunary region of four main layers, which are successively subtler and finer as they are more removed from the earth; the uppermost limit of the Air is coterminous with the fiery or ætheric realms (6), the habitat of the gods.

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In the different zones, or firmaments, or layers of this Air, dwell not only excarnate souls, during the period between their incarnations, but also those which have never yet been shut in body—that is, presumably, the daimones (8).

With regard to the manner in which souls are kept in their appropriate spaces after the death of the body, and the way in which they are brought back to appropriate bodies, and the two ministers of Providence (9), it is of value to note that in this we have a simple outline of what is explained at great length and in much detail in the Coptic Gnostic work called Pistis Sophia. It would, however, occupy too much space here to deal with the representations of the Egyptian Gnostic work on this subject in a satisfactory manner, and as the text is now accessible in English, it can easily be consulted by the reader. 1

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Footnotes

205:1 See Comments on K. K., 10.

206:1 This bears a curious resemblance to the prāṇamaya kosha, or “vital sheath,” of the Vedāntins.

206:2 Vedāntic prāṇa’s, of which there are five.

207:1 Of which Schow gives the alternative heading: “From the Intercession (or Supplication) of Isis,” which Gaisford (in a note) thinks is from the Vienna Codex. This, however, is not the case, for the Vindobonensis preserves the usual reading except that the last word is missing. See R. 134, n. 3.

207:2 R. (p. 135, n. 3), however, thinks this impossible.

208:1 See Reitzenstein, Zwei religionsgesch. Fragen, 104 ff.

208:2 Plutarch, De Is. et Os., lxviii.: “They say that of the trees in Egypt the persea is especially dedicated to her, and that its fruit resembles a heart, and its leaf a tongue. For nothing that men have is more divine than the word (logos), and especially the [word] concerning the gods.” The fruit of the persea grew from the stem.

208:3 Gallus, 18.

209:1 Demotische Studien, i., “Ägyptische u. griechische Eigennamen,” p. 28 (cf. also p. 41); R. 135.

209:2 Berthelot, p. 103.

210:1 τῆς φυτικῆς ζωῆς,—that is, vegetative.

210:2 Endosmosis and exosmosis.

210:3 Philoponus, Proœm. in Aristot. de Anima, as given in Cudworth’s Intellectual System (ed. 1820), iii. 506 ff.; see my Orpheus, pp. 278, 279.

211:1 For Melchizedek, the “Receiver of light and Guide of souls,” see P. S., passim, and especially 35-37, 292, 327; for Zorokothora-Melchizedek and Ieou, see “The Books of the Saviour,” ibid., 365 ff.; and for Gabriel and Michael, ibid., 138.

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p. 213

II

References and Fragments in the Fathers

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p. 215

I.

JUSTIN MARTYR

i. Cohortatio ad Gentiles, xxxviii.; Otto (J. C. T.), ii. 122 (2d ed., Jena, 1849). 1

THE MOST ANCIENT OF PHILOSOPHERS

Now if any of you should think that he has learnt the doctrine concerning God from those of the philosophers who are mentioned among you as most ancient, let him give ear to Ammon and Hermes. For Ammon in the Words (Logoi) concerning himself 2 calls God “utterly hidden”; while Hermes clearly and plainly declares:

To understand God is difficult; to speak [of Him] impossible, even for one who can understand. 3

THE “WORDS OF AMMON”

This passage occurs at the very end of the treatise. Justin will have it that the most ancient of all the philosophers are on his side.

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These are Ammon and Hermes. Justin, moreover, knows of certain Words (Logoi), or Sermons, or Sacred Utterances of Ammon, which must have been circulating in Greek, otherwise it is difficult to see how Justin was acquainted with them. They were evidently of an apocalyptic nature, in the form of a self-revelation of Ammon or God.

These “Words of Ammon” have clearly nothing to do with the Ammonian type of the surviving Trismegistic literature, where Ammon is a hearer and not an instructor, least of all the supreme instructor or Agathodaimon. In them we may see an intermediate stage of direct dependence of Hellenistic theological literature on Egyptian originals, for we have preserved to us certain Hymns from the El-Khargeh Oasis which bear the inscription “‘The Secret Words of Ammon’ which were found on Tables of Mulberry-wood.” 1

THE INEFFABILITY OF GOD

The sentence from Hermes is from a lost sermon, a fragment of which is preserved in an excerpt by Stobæus. It was probably the opening words of what Stobæus calls “The [Sermon] to Tat,” 2 that is to say, probably one of the “Expository Sermons to Tat,” as Lactantius calls them. 3

The idea in the saying was a common place in

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[paragraph continues]Hellenistic theological thought, and need not be always directly referred to the much-quoted words of Plato: “To find the Father and the Maker of this universe is a [great] work, and finding [Him] it is impossible to tell [Him] unto all.” 1 Indeed, it is curious to remark that Justin reproduces the text of the Hermetic writer far more faithfully than when he refers directly to the saying of Plato. 2

ii. I. Apologia, xxi.; Otto, i. 54.

HERMES AND ASCLEPIUS SONS OF GOD

And when we say that the Word (Logos) which is the first begetting of God, was begotten without intercourse,—Jesus Christ, our Master,—and that he was crucified, and was dead, and rose again and ascended into heaven, we bring forward no new thing beyond those among you who are called Sons of Zeus. For ye know how many Sons the writers who are held in honour among you ascribe to Zeus:—Hermes, the Word (Logos), who was the interpreter and teacher of all; and Asclepius, who was also 3 a healer, 4 and was smitten by the bolt [of his sire] and ascended into heaven . . . [and many others] . . .

iii. Ibid., xxii.; Otto, i. 58.

HERMES THE WORD WHO BRINGS TIDINGS FROM GOD

But as to the Son of God called Jesus,—even though he were only a man [born] in the common way, [yet] because of [his] wisdom is he worthy to be called Son

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of God; for all writers call God “Father of men and gods.” And if we say [further] that he was also in a special way, beyond his common birth, begotten of God [as] Word (Logos) of God, let us have this in common with you who call Hermes the Word (Logos) who brings tidings 1 from God.

THE SONS OF GOD IN HELLENISTIC THEOLOGY

It is remarkable that Justin heads the list of Sons of God—Dionysus, Hercules, etc.—with Hermes and Asclepius. Moreover, when he returns to the subject he again refers to Hermes and to Hermes alone. This clearly shows that the most telling parallel he could bring forward was that of Hermes, who, in the Hellenistic theological world of his day, was especially thought of under the concept of the Logos.

The immediate association of the name of Asclepius with that of Hermes is also remarkable, and indicates that they were closely associated in Justin’s mind; the indication, however, is too vague to permit of any positive deduction as to an Asclepius-element in the Trismegistic literature current in Rome in Justin’s time. Justin, in any case, has apparently very little first-hand knowledge of the subject, for he introduces the purely Hellenic myth of Asclepius being struck by a thunderbolt, which, we need hardly say, is entirely foreign to the conception of the Hellenistic Asclepius, the disciple of Hermes.

AN UNVERIFIABLE QUOTATION

To these quotations Chambers (p. 139) adds the following passage from II. Apologia, vi.,—which in date may be placed some four or five years after the First.

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“Now to the Father of all no name can be given; seeing that He is ingenerable; for by whatsoever name one may be called, he has as his elder the one who gives the name. But ‘Father,’ and ‘God,’ and ‘Creator,’ and ‘Lord,’ and ‘Master’ are not names, but terms of address [derived] from His blessings and His works.”

---

It is quite true that this passage might be taken verbally from a Hermetic tractate, but I can find no authority in the text of Justin for claiming it as a quotation. For the same idea in Hermes compare C. H., v. (vi.) 10, and Lact., D. I., i. 6.

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Footnotes

215:1 The Exhortation is considered by most pseudepigraphic, but is supposed by others to be the earliest work of Justin, which may be placed conjecturally about 130 A.D.; the First Apology is generally ascribed to the year 148 A.D.

215:2 Taking the reading περὶ ἑαυτοῦ (Otto, n. 13), adopted in R. 138.

215:3 Quoted also by Lactantius, D. I. Epit., 4; Cyril Alex., Con. Jul., i. 31; and Stobæus, Flor., lxxx. [lxxviii.], 94 (Ex. ii. 1).

216:1 R. 138. The connection between this Ammon and Hermes was probably the same as that which is said to have existed between the king-god Thamus-Ammon and the god of invention Theuth-Hermes. Thamus-Ammon was a king philosopher, to whom Theuth brought all his inventions and discoveries for his (Ammon’s) judgment, which was not invariably favourable. See the pleasant story told by Plato, Phædrus, 274 C. Cf. also the notes on Kneph-Ammon, K. K., 19, Comment.

216:2 Stob., loc. infra cit.

216:3 See Fragg. xi., xii., xiii., xv., xx., xxii., xxiii., xxiv. (?).

217:1 Timæus, 28 C.

217:2 See Cohort., xxii.; II. Apol., x. Clemens Alex., Origen, Minutius Felix, Lactantius, and other of the Fathers also quote this saying of Plato.

217:3 That is, like Jesus.

217:4 θεραπευτὴν (therapeut).

218:1 τὸν παρὰ θεοῦ ἀγγελτικόν. Compare Plutarch, De Is. et Os., xxvi. 5.

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II.

ATHENAGORAS

Libellus pro Christianis, 1 xxviii.; Schwartz (E.), p. 57, 24 (Leipzig, 1891). 2

Athenagoras was acquainted with a Greek literature circulated under the name of Hermes Trismegistus, to whom he refers as authority for his euhemeristic contention that the gods were once simply men. 3

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Footnotes

220:1 Written probably about 176-177 A.D.

220:2 In Texte u. Untersuchungen (von Gebhardt and Harnack), Bd. iv.

220:3 Cf. R, pp. 2 and 160.

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III.

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA 1

i. Protrepticus, ii. 29; Dindorf (G.), i. 29, (Oxford, 1869)—(24 P., 8 S.).

MANY HERMESES AND ASCLEPIUSES

(After referring to the three Zeuses, five Athenas, and numberless Apollos of complex popular tradition, Clement continues:)

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But what were I to mention the many Asclepiuses, or the Hermeses that are reckoned up, or the Hephæstuses of mythology?

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Clement lived in the very centre of Hellenistic theology, and his grouping together of the names of Asclepius, Hermes and Hephæstus, the demiurgic Ptah, whose tradition was incorporated into the Pœmandres doctrine, is therefore not fortuitous, but shows that these three names were closely associated in his mind, and that, therefore, he was acquainted with the Trismegistic literature. This deduction is confirmed by the following passage.

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ii. Stromateis, I. xxi. 134; Dindorf, ii. 108 (399 P., 144 S.).

THE APOTHEOSIS OF HERMES AND ASCLEPIUS

Of those, too, who once lived as men among the Egyptians, but who have been made gods by human opinion, [are] Hermes of Thebes and Asclepius of Memphis.

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(To this we may appropriately append what Clement has to tell us about the “Books of Hermes,” when, writing in the last quarter of the second century, he describes one of the sacred processions of the Egyptians as follows:)

iii. Ibid., VI. iv. 35; Dind., iii. 156, 157.

THE BOOKS OF HERMES

First comes the “Singer” bearing some one of the symbols of music. This [priest], they tell us, has to make himself master of two of the “Books of Hermes,” one of which contains (1) Hymns [in honour] of the Gods, 1 and the other (2) Reflections 2 on the Kingly Life.

After the “Singer” comes the “Time-watcher” bearing the symbols of the star-science, a dial after a hand and phœnix. He must have the division of the “Books of Hermes” which treats of the stars ever at the tip of his tongue—there being four of such books. The first of these deals with (3) the Ordering of the

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apparently Fixed Stars, 1 the next [two] (4 and 5) with the conjunctions and variations of Light of the Sun and Moon, and the last (6) with the Risings [of the Stars].

Next comes the “Scribe of the Mysteries,” with wings on his head, having in either hand a book and a ruler 2 in which is the ink and reed pen with which they write. He has to know what they call the sacred characters, and the books about (7) Cosmography, and (8) Geography, (9) the Constitution of the Sun and Moon, and (10) of the Five Planets, (11) the Survey of Egypt, and (12) the Chart of the Nile, (13) the List of the Appurtenances of the Temples and (14) of the Lands consecrated to them, (15) the Measures, and (16) Things used in the Sacred Rites.

After the above-mentioned comes the “Overseer 3 of the Ceremonies,” bearing the cubit of justice and the libation cup [as his symbols]. He must know all the books relating to the training [of the conductors of the public cult], and those that they call the victim-sealing 4

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books. There are ten of these books which deal with the worship which they pay to the gods, and in which the Egyptian cult is contained; namely [those which treat] of (17) Sacrifice, (18) First-fruits, (19) Hymns, (20) Prayers, (21) Processions, (22) Feasts, and (23-26) the like.

After all of these comes the “Prophet” clasping to his breast the water-vase so that all can see it; and after him follow those who carry the bread that is to be distributed. 1 The “Prophet” as chief of the temple, learns by heart the ten books which are called “hieratic”; these contain the volumes (27-36) treating of the Laws, and the Gods, and the whole Discipline of the Priests. For you must know that the “Prophet” among the Egyptians is also the supervisor of the distribution of the [temple] revenues.

Now the books which are absolutely indispensable 2

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for Hermes 1 are forty-two in number. Six-and-thirty of them, which contain the whole wisdom-discipline 2 of the Egyptians, are learned by heart by the [grades of priests] already mentioned. The remaining six are learned by the “Shrine-bearers” 3; these are medical treatises dealing with (37) the Constitution of the Body, with (38) Diseases, (39) Instruments, (40) Drugs, (41) Eyes, 4 and finally (42) with the Maladies of Women.

THE GENERAL CATALOGUE OF THE EGYPTIAN PRIESTLY LIBRARY

This exceedingly interesting passage of Clement gives us the general catalogue of the Egyptian priestly library and the background of the Greek translations and adaptations in our Trismegistic writings.

The whole of these writings fall into this frame, and the oldest deposit or “Pœmandres” type fits in excellently with the content of the hieratic books (the titles of which Clement has unfortunately omitted), or with those that were kept secret. These hieratic books were evidently the more important and were in charge of the “Prophet,” that is to say, of those high priests of the temples who were directors of the prophetic discipline, the very subject of our “Pœmandres” treatises. 5

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Footnotes

221:1 Fl., 175-200 A.D.

222:1 I have numbered the books and used capitals for greater clearness.

222:2 ἐκλογισμόν; I do not know what this term means in this connection. The usual translation of “Regulations” seems to me unsatisfactory. Some word such as “Praise” (? read εὐλογισμόν) seems to be required, as may be seen from the title of C. H., (xviii.), “The Encomium of Kings.”

223:1 τῶν ἀπλανῶν φαινομένων ἄστρων.

223:2 κανόνα.; this must mean a hollow wooden case shaped like a ruler.

223:3 στολιστής, called also ἱερόστολος. This priestly office is usually translated as the “keeper of the vestments,” the “one who is over the wardrobe.” But such a meaning is entirely foreign to the contents of the books which are assigned to him. He was evidently the organiser of the ceremonies, especially the processions.

223:4 μοσχοσφραγιστικά—that is to say, literally, books relating to the art of one who picks out and “seals calves” for sacrifice. The literal meaning originally referred to the selection of the sacred Apis bull-calf, into which the power of the god was supposed to have re-incarnated, in the relic of some primitive magic rite which the conservatism of the Egyptians still retained in the public cult. Its meaning, however, was later on far more general, as we see by the nature of the books assigned to this division. Boulage, in his Mystères d’Isis (Paris, 1820, p. 21), says that “the seal of the priests which marked the victims was a man kneeling with his hands bound behind his back, and a sword pointed at his throat, for it was in this attitude that the neophyte received the first initiation, signifying that he agreed to perish by the sword if he revealed any of the secrets revealed to him.” This he evidently deduced from Plutarch’s De Is. et Os., xxxi. 3.

224:1 οἱ τὴν ἔκπεμψιν τῶν ἄρτων βαστάζοντες. The “Prophet” belonged to the grade of high priests who had practical knowledge of the inner way. As the flood of the Nile came down and irrigated the fields and brought forth the grain for bread, and so gave food to Egypt, so did the living stream of the Gnosis from the infinite heights of space pour into the Hierophant, and he in his turn became Father Nile for the priests, his disciples, who in their turn distributed the bread of knowledge to the people. A pleasing symbolism, of which the bread and water of the earlier ascetic schools of Christendom, who rejected wine, was perhaps a reminiscence. Nor has even the General Church in its older forms forgotten to sprinkle the people from the water-vase and distribute among them the bread.

224:2 This seems to suggest that there were others, the knowledge of which was optional, or rather reserved for the few. There may perhaps have been forty-nine in all.

225:1 That is, the priesthood.

225:2 Lit. philosophy.

225:3 παστοφόροι, those who carried the pastos as a symbol; this apparently symbolized the shrine or casket of the soul; in other words, the human body. These Pastophors were the priests who were the physicians of the body, the higher grades being presumably physicians of the soul.

225:4 This seems to be an error of the copyist.

225:5 As to the hieroglyphic inscription at Edfu, which was thought by Jomasd to contain references to the titles of these forty-two books, see Parthey, Über Isis und Osiris, p. 255.

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IV.

TERTULLIAN 1

i. Contra Valentinianos, xv.; Œhler (F.), ii. 402 (Leipzig, 1844).

HERMES THE MASTER OF ALL PHYSICS

(Writing sarcastically of the Gnostic Sophia-myth, Tertullian exclaims:)

Well, then, let the Pythagoreans learn, the Stoics know, [yea,] Plato even, whence matter—which they [sc. the Pythagoreans and the rest] would have to be ingenerable—derived its source and substance to [form] this pile of a world,—[a mystery] which not even the famous Thrice-greatest Hermes, the master of all physics, has thought out.

---

The doctrine of Hermes, and of Hellenistic theology in general, however, is that matter comes from the One God. It is remarkable that Tertullian keeps his final taunt for that school which was evidently thought the foremost of all—that of the “famous Thrice-greatest Hermes.”

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ii. De Anima, ii.; Œhler, ii. 558.

HERMES THE WRITER OF SCRIPTURE

(Inveighing against the wisdom of the philosophers, Tertullian says:)

She [philosophy] has also been under the impression that she too has drawn from what they [the philosophers] consider “sacred” scriptures; because antiquity thought that most authors were gods (deos), and not merely inspired by them (divos),—as, for instance, Egyptian Hermes, with whom especially Plato had intercourse, 1 . . . [and others] . . . .

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Here again, as with Justin, Hermes heads the list; moreover, in Tertullian’s mind, Hermes belongs to antiquity, to a more ancient stratum than Pythagoras and Plato, as the context shows; Plato, of course, depends on Hermes, not Hermes on Plato; of this Tertullian has no doubt. There were also “sacred scriptures” of Hermes, and Hermes was regarded as a god.

iii. Ibid., xxviii.; Œhler, ii. 601.

HERMES THE FIRST TEACHER OF REINCARNATION

What then is the value nowadays of that ancient doctrine mentioned by Plato, 2 about the reciprocal migration of souls; how they remove hence and go thither, and then return hither and pass through life, and then again depart from this life, made quick again from the dead? Some will have it that this is a doctrine of Pythagoras; while Albinus 3 will have it to

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be a divine pronouncement, perhaps of Egyptian Hermes.

iv. Ibid., xxxiii.; Œhler, ii. 610.

HERMES ON METEMPSYCHOSIS

(Arguing ironically against the belief in metempsychosis, Tertullian writes:)

Even if they [souls] should continue [unchanged] until judgment [is pronounced upon them] . . . a point which was known to Egyptian Hermes, when he says that the soul on leaving the body is not poured back into the soul of the universe, but remains individualized 1:

FRAGMENT I.

That it may give account unto the Father of those things which it hath done in body.

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This exact quotation 2 is to be found nowhere in the existing remains of the Trismegistic literature, but it has every appearance of being genuine.

Œhler (note c) refers to C. H., x. (xi.) 7, but this passage of “The Key” is only a general statement of the main idea of metempsychosis.

A more appropriate parallel is to be found in P. S. A., xxviii. 1: “When, [then,] the soul’s departure from the body shall take place,—then shall the judgment and the weighing of its merit pass into its highest daimon’s power”—a passage, however, which retains far stronger traces of the Egyptian prototype of the idea than does that quoted by Tertullian.

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Footnotes

226:1 Fl., c. 200-216 A.D.

227:1 Adsuevit.

227:2 Cf. Phædo, p. 70.

227:3 A Platonic philosopher, and contemporary of Galen (130-?200 A.D.).

228:1 Determinatam.

228:2 Tertullian marks it by an “inquit.”

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V.

CYPRIAN 1

i. De Idolorum Vanitate, vi.; Baluze, p. 220 (Paris, 1726).

GOD IS BEYOND ALL UNDERSTANDING

Thrice-Greatest Hermes speaks of the One God, and confesses Him beyond all understanding and all appraisement.

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This is evidently a reference to the most quoted sentence of Hermes. See Justin Martyr i. below, and other references.

Chambers (p. 140), after this notice in Cyprian, inserts a passage from Eusebius (c. 325 A.D.), which he says is “a clear quotation from the ‘Pœmandres’ of Hermes, whom, however, he [Eusebius] probably confounds with the Shepherd of Hermas.”

Eusebius (Hist. Ecc., v. 8), however, quotes Irenæus (iv. 20, 2), who quotes literally The Shepherd of Hermas (Mand., i.). Indeed, it is the most famous sentence in that early document. See the list of its quotations by the Fathers in the note to Gebhardt and Harnack’s text (Leipzig, 1897), p. 70. Such verbal exactitude is not to be found in the remaining Trismegistic literature; the idea, however, is the basis of the whole Trismegistic theology.

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Footnotes

229:1 About 200-258 A.D.

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VI.

ARNOBIUS 1

i. Adversus Nationes, ii. 13; Hildebrand (G. F.), p. 136 (Halle, 1844).

THE SCHOOL OF HERMES

(Arnobius complains that the followers of the philosophic schools laugh at the Christians, and selects especially the adherents of a certain tradition as follows:)

You, you I single out, who belong to the school of Hermes, or of Plato and Pythagoras, and the rest of you who are of one mind and walk in union in the same paths of doctrine. 2

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Footnotes

230:1 He was a converted philosopher, and the teacher of Lactantius; flourished about 304 A.D.

230:2 Here again, as elsewhere, Hermes comes first; he was evidently regarded as the leader of philosophic theology as contrasted with popular Christian dogmatics. See R. 306.

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VII.

LACTANTIUS 1

i. Divinæ Institutiones, i. 6, 1; Brandt, p. 18; Fritzsche, i. 13. 2

THOYTH-HERMES AND HIS BOOKS ON THE GNOSIS

Let us now pass to divine testimonies; but, first of all, I will bring into court testimony which is like divine [witness], both on account of its exceeding great age, and because he whom I shall name was carried back again from men unto the gods.

In Cicero, 3 Caius Cotta, 4 the Pontifex, arguing against the Stoics about faiths and the diversity of opinions which obtain concerning the gods, in order that, as was the way of the Academics, 5 he might bring all things into doubt, declares that there were five Hermeses; and after enumerating four of them in succession, [he adds] that the fifth was he by whom

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[paragraph continues]Argus was slain, 1 and for that cause he fled into Egypt, and initiated the Egyptians into laws and letters.

The Egyptians call him Thoyth, and from him the first month of their year (that is, September) has received its name. He also founded a city which even unto this day is called Hermopolis. The people of Phenëus, 2 indeed, worship him as a god; but, although

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he was [really] a man, still he was of such high antiquity, and so deeply versed in every kind of science, that his knowledge of [so] many things and of the arts gained him the title of “Thrice-greatest.”

He wrote books, indeed many [of them], treating of the Gnosis 1 of things divine, in which he asserts the greatness of the Highest and One and Only God, and calls Him by the same names as we [do]—God and Father. 2 And [yet], so that no one should seek after His name, he has declared that He cannot be named, in that He doth not need to have a name, owing, indeed, unto the very [nature of His] unity. 3 His words are these 4:

FRAGMENT II.

But God [is] one; and He who’s one needs not a name, for He [as one] is The-beyond-all-names.

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THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF THE HERMETIC TRADITION

For Lactantius, then, Hermes was very ancient; moreover, he was one who descended from heaven and had returned thither. When, however, Firmianus attempts the historical origins of the Hermetic tradition, as was invariably the case with the ancients, he can do nothing better than refer us to a complex though

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interesting myth, and to a legend of it devised to flatter the self-esteem of its Hellenic creators: A Greek god, whose cult, moreover, was known to be intimately connected with an ancient mystery-tradition, was the originator of the wisdom of Egypt. Of course; and so with all nations who had any ancient learning—their special tradition was oldest and best and originator of all others!

For the rest, Lactantius knows nothing historically of the tradition which he esteemed so highly, and the mention of the Latinized name Thoyth 1 and of Hermopolis 2 does but throw the paucity of his knowledge into deeper relief. What Lactantius does know is a large literature in Greek and its general tendency.

The sentence he quotes is not found textually in any of the extant Trismegistic literature. 3

ii. Ibid., i. 11, 61; Brandt, p. 47; Fritzsche, i. 29, 30.

URANUS, CRONUS AND HERMES, ADEPTS OF THE PERFECT SCIENCE

And so it appears that he [Cronus] was not born from Heaven (which is impossible), but from that man who was called Uranus; and that this is so, Trismegistus bears witness, when, in stating that there have been very few in whom the perfect science has been found,

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he mentioned in their number Uranus, Cronus and Hermes, his own kinsfolk. 1

iii. Ibid., ii. 8, 48; Brandt, p. 138; Fritzsche, i. 89.

DIVINE PROVIDENCE

For the World was made by Divine Providence, not to mention Thrice-greatest, who preaches this. 2

iv. Ibid., ii. 8, 68; Brandt, p. 141; Fritzsche, i. 91.

ON MORTAL AND IMMORTAL SIGHT

His [God’s] works are seen by the eyes; but how He made them, is not seen even by the mind, “in that,” as Hermes says:

FRAGMENT III.

Mortal cannot draw nigh 3 to the Immortal, nor temporal to the Eternal, nor the corruptible to That which knoweth no corruption. 4

And, therefore, hath the earthly animal not yet capacity to see celestial things, in that it is kept shut within the body as in a prison house, lest with freed sense, emancipate, it should see all.

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The first part of this citation (which Lactantius gives in Latin) is identical in idea with a sentence in Frag. iv.—that favourite source of quotation, which Stobæus, Ex. ii. (Flor. lxxx. [lxxviii.] 9), excerpted from “The [Sermon] to Tat.” 1 It might, then, be thought that this was simply a paraphrase of Lactantius’, or that he was quoting from memory, and that the second sentence was not quotation but his own writing. But the second sentence is so thoroughly Trismegistic that it has every appearance of being genuine. 2

v. Ibid., ii. 10, 13; Brandt, p. 149; Fritzsche, i. 96.

MAN MADE AFTER THE IMAGE OF GOD

But the making of the truly living man out of clay 3 is of God. And Hermes also hands on the tradition of this fact,—for not only has he said that man was made by God after the Image of God, 4 but also he has attempted to explain with what skilfulness He has formed every single member in the body of man, since there is not one of them which is not admirably suited not only for what it has to do, but also adapted for beauty. 5

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Man made after the Image of God is one of the fundamental doctrines of the Trismegistic tradition. For instance, P. S. A., vii. 2: “The [man] ‘essential,’ as say the Greeks, but which we call the ‘form of the

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[paragraph continues]Divine Similitude’”; and x. 3: “Giving the greatest thanks to God, His Image reverencing,—not ignorant that he [man] is, too, God’s image, the second [one]; for that there are two images of God—Cosmos and man.” 1

vi. Ibid., ii. 12, 4; Brandt, p. 156; Fritzsche, i. 100.

HERMES THE FIRST NATURAL PHILOSOPHER

Empedocles 2 . . . [and others] . . . laid down four elements, fire, air, water, and earth,—[in this] perchance following Trismegistus, who said that our bodies were composed of these four elements by God.

“For that they have in them something of fire, something of air, something of water, and something of earth,—and yet they are not fire [in itself], nor air, nor water, nor earth.”

---

All this about the elements is, of course, a commonplace of ancient physics, and we may, therefore, dismiss the naïve speculation of Lactantius, who evidently thought he had the very words of the first inventor of the theory before him; for he renders into Latin word for word the same text which Stobæus has preserved to us in an excerpt from “The [Sermons] to Tat”—Ex. iii. I. 3

vii. Ibid., ii. 14, 5; Brandt, p. 163; Fritzsche, i. 105.

THE DAIMON-CHIEF

Thus there are two classes of daimons,—the one celestial, and the other terrestrial. The latter are impure spirits, the authors of the evils that are done, 4

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of whom the same Diabolus is chief. Whence Trismegistus calls him the “Daimon-chief.” 1

viii. Ibid., ii. 15, 6; Brandt, p. 166; Fritzsche, i. 106.

DEVOTION IS GOD-GNOSIS

In fine, Hermes asserts that those who have known God, not only are safe from the attacks of evil daimons, but also that they are not held even by Fate. 2 He says:

FRAGMENT IV.

The one means of protection is piety. For neither doth an evil daimon nor doth Fate rule o’er the pious man. 3 For God doth save the pious [man] from every ill. The one and only good found in mankind is piety.

And what piety means, he witnesses in another place, saying:

“Devotion is God-Gnosis.” 4

Asclepius, his Hearer, has also explained the same idea at greater length in that “Perfect Sermon” which he wrote to the King.

Both, then, assert that the daimons are the enemies and harriers of men, and for this cause Trismegistus

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calls them “evil ‘angels’,” 1—so far was he from being ignorant that from celestial beings they had become corrupted, and so earthly.

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This passage is given in Greek, and is quoted, but with numerous glosses, also by Cyril (Contra Julianum, iv. 130); it is also practically the same as the sentence in P. S. A., xxix.: “The righteous man finds his defence in serving God and deepest piety. For God doth guard such men from every ill.”

Now we know that Lactantius had the Greek of this “Perfect Sermon” before him, and we know that our Latin translation is highly rhetorical and paraphrastic.

The only difficulty is that Lactantius’ quotation ends with the sentence: “The one and only good found in mankind is piety”; and this does not appear in the Latin translation of P. S. A. On the other hand, Firmianus immediately refers by name to a Perfect Sermon, which, however, he says was written by Asclepius, and addressed to the King. Our Fragment is, therefore, probably from the lost ending of C. H., xvi. (see Commentary on the title).

ix. Ibid., iv. 6, 4; Brandt, p. 286; Fritzsche, i. 178.

THE COSMIC SON OF GOD

Hermes, in that book which is entitled the “Perfect Sermon,” uses these words:

FRAGMENT V.

The Lord and Master of all things (whom ’tis our custom to call God), when He had made the

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second God, the Visible and Sensible, 1—I call Him sensible, not that He hath sensation in Himself (for as to this, whether or no He hath Himself sensation, we will some other time enquire), but that He is object of senses and of mind,—when, then, He’d made Him First, and One and Only, 2 He seemed to Him most fair, and filled quite full of all things good. At Him he marvelled, and loved Him altogether as His Son. 3

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Lactantius here quotes from the lost Greek original of “The Perfect Sermon,” viii. 1. We have thus a means of controlling the old Latin translation which has come down to us.

It is, by comparison, very free and often rhetorical; inserting phrases and even changing the original, as, for instance, when in the last clause it says: “He fell in love with him as being part of His Divinity.”

It is, however, possible that the translator may have had a different text before him, for there is reason to believe that there were several recensions of the P. S. A. 4

x. Ibid., iv. 6, 9; Brandt, p. 291; Fritzsche, i. 179.

THE DEMIURGE OF GOD

(Speaking of the Son of God and identifying Him with the pre-existent Wisdom spoken of in Proverbs viii. 22, Lactantius adds:)

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Wherefore also Trismegistus has called Him the “Demiurge of God.” 1

xi. Ibid., iv. 7, 3; Brandt, p. 292; Fritzsche, i. 179.

THE NAME OF GOD

Even then [when the world shall be consummated], 2 it [God’s Name] will not be able to be uttered by the mouth of man, as Hermes teaches, saying:

FRAGMENT VI.

But the Cause of this Cause is the Divine and the Ingenerable Good’s Good-will, which 3 first brought forth the God whose Name cannot be spoken by the mouth of man. 4

xii. Ibid., iv. 7, 3; Brandt, p. 293; Fritzsche, i. 179, 180.

THE HOLY WORD ABOUT THE LORD OF ALL.

And a little after [he says] to his son:

FRAGMENT VII.

For that there is, [my] son, a Word [Logos] of wisdom, that no tongue can tell,—a Holy 5

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[paragraph continues][Word] about the only Lord of all, the God before all thought,—whom to declare transcends all human power. 1

xiii. Ibid., iv. 8, 5; Brandt, p. 296; Fritzsche, i. 181.

HIS OWN FATHER AND OWN MOTHER

But Hermes also was of the same opinion when he says:

“His own father and His own mother.” 2

xiv. Ibid., iv. 9, 3; Brandt, p. 300; Fritzsche, i. 182, 183.

THE POWER AND GREATNESS OF THE WORD

Trismegistus, who has tracked out, I know not how, almost all truth, has often described the power and greatness of the Word (Logos), as the above quotation 3 from him shows, in which he confesses the Word to be Ineffable and Holy, and in that its telling forth transcends the power of man.

xv. Ibid., iv. 13, 2; Brandt, p. 316; Fritzsche, i. 190.

THE FATHERLESS AND MOTHERLESS

For God, the Father, and the Source, and Principle of things, in that He hath no parents, is very truly called by Trismegistus “father-less” and “mother-less” 4 in that He is brought forth from none. 5

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xvi. Ibid., v. 14, 11; Brandt, p. 446; Fritzsche, i. 256.

PIETY THE GNOSIS OF GOD

But “piety is nothing else than Gnosis of God,” 1 as Trismegistus has most truly laid down, as we have said in another place. 2

xvii. Ibid., vi. 25, 10; Brandt, p. 579; Fritzsche, ii. 60.

THE ONLY WAY TO WORSHIP GOD

Concerning justice, he [Trismegistus, who in this (namely concerning sacrifice) “agrees substantially and verbally with the prophets”] has thus spoken:

“Unto this Word (Logos), my son, thy adoration and thy homage pay. There is one way alone to worship God,—[it is] not to be bad.”

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Here Lactantius translates literally from C. H., xii. (xiii.) 23, a sermon which now bears the title, “About the Common Mind to Tat.” Hermes, however, in the context of the quoted passage, is not writing “about justice,” and much less could the whole sermon be so entitled, if indeed Lactantius intended us so to understand it. But see the Commentary, C. H., xii. (xiii.) 6, and Ex. xi., “On Justice.”

xviii. Ibid., v. 25, 11; Brandt, p. 579; Fritzsche, ii. 60.

THE WORTHIEST SACRIFICE TO GOD

Also in that “Perfect Sermon,” when he heard Asclepius enquiring of his son, 3 whether it would be pleasing to his 4 father, that incense and other perfumes

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should be offered in their holy rite to God, [Hermes] exclaimed:

FRAGMENT VIII.

Nay, nay; speak more propitiously, O [my] Asclepius! For very great impiety is it to let come in the mind any such thought about that One and Only Good.

These things, and things like these, are not appropriate to Him. For He is full of all things that exist and least of all stands He in need [of aught].

But let us worship pouring forth our thanks. The [worthiest] sacrifice to Him is blessing, [and blessing] only.

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With this compare the passage in P. S. A., xli. 2 (p. 61, 16, Goldb.). Here again we have the means of controlling the old Latin translator, but not with such exactitude as before, for Lactantius has also turned the Greek text into Latin. But not only from the other specimens of Lactantius’ Hermes translations, but also from his present close reproduction of the ordinary wording of the Trismegistic treatises, we may be further confident that the Old Latin translation is free, paraphrastic, and rhetorical, as we have already remarked.

xix. Ibid., vii. 4, 3; Brandt, p. 593; Fritzsche, ii. 69.

MAN MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD

But Hermes was not ignorant that man was made by God and in the Image of God. 1

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xx. Ibid., vii. 9, 11; Brandt, p. 612; Fritzsche, ii. 82.

CONTEMPLATION

(Speaking of man being the only animal that has his body upright, and face raised to heaven, looking towards his Maker, Lactantius says:)

And this “looking” Hermes has most rightly named contemplation. 1

xxi. Ibid., vii. 13, 3; Brandt, p. 624 Fritzsche, ii. 90.

THE DUAL NATURE OF MAN

Hermes, in describing the nature of man, in order that he might teach how he was made by God, brings forward the following:

FRAGMENT IX.

From the two natures, the deathless and mortal, He made one nature,—that of man,—one and the self-same thing; and having made the self-same [man] both somehow deathless and somehow mortal, He brought him forth, and set him up betwixt 2 the godlike and immortal

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nature and the mortal, that seeing all he might wonder at all.

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WONDER THE BEGINNING OF PHILOSOPHY

This idea of “wondering” was, doubtless, a commonplace in Hellenistic philosophical circles and looked back to the Platonic saying: “There is no other beginning of Philosophy than wondering.” Compare also one of the newest found “Logoi of Jesus,” from the rubbish heaps of Oxyrhynchus, which runs: “Let not him that seeketh . . . cease until he find, and when he finds he shall wonder; wondering he shall reign, and reigning he shall rest.” 1

Wondering is the beginning of Gnosis; this makes a man king of himself, and thus master of gods and men, and so he has peace. The translation of βασιλεύσει by Grenfell and Hunt as “reach the kingdom” seems to me to have no justification.

Lactantius here quotes the Greek text of P. S. A., viii. 3, and so once again we can control the Old Latin version. The Church Father is plainly the more reliable, reproducing as he does familiar Hermetic phrasing and style; and we thus again have an insight into the methods of our rhetorical, truncated, and interpolated Latin Version.

xxii. Ibid., vii. 18, 3; Brandt, p. 640; Fritzsche, ii. 99.

THE COSMIC RESTORATION

And Hermes states this [the destruction of the world] 2 plainly. For in that book which bears the title

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of “The Perfect Sermon,” after an enumeration of the evils of which we have spoken, he adds:

FRAGMENT X.

Now when these things shall be, as I have said, Asclepius, then will [our] Lord and Sire, the God and Maker of the First and the One God, 1 look down on what is done, and, making firm His Will,—that is the Good,—against disorder, recalling error, and purging out the bad, either by washing it away with water-flood, or burning it away with swiftest fire, or forcibly expelling it with war and famine,—He [then] will bring again His Cosmos to its former state, and so achieve its Restoration. 2

xxiii. Ibid., Epitome, 4, 4; Brandt, p. 679; Fritzsche, ii. 117.

OF HERMES AND HIS DOCTRINE CONCERNING GOD

Hermes,—who, on account of his virtue and knowledge of many arts, gained the title of Thrice-greatest, who also in the antiquity of his doctrine preceded the philosophers, and who is worshipped as god among the Egyptians,—declaring the greatness of the One and Only God with unending praises, calls Him God and Father, [and says] He has no name, for that He has no need for a distinctive name, 3 inasmuch as He alone is,

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nor has He any parents, in that He is both from Himself and by Himself. 1

In writing to his son [Tat] he begins as follows:

“To comprehend God is difficult, to speak [of Him] impossible, even for one who can comprehend; for the Perfect cannot be comprehended by the imperfect, nor the Invisible by the visible.” 2

xxiv. Ibid., Ep., 14; Brandt, p. 685; Fritzsche, ii. 121.

A REPETITION

(Lactantius repeats in almost identical words what he has written in i. 11.)

xxv. Ibid., Ep., 37 (42), 2; Brandt, p. 712; Fritzsche, ii. 140.

PLATO AS PROPHET FOLLOWS TRISMEGISTUS

By means of him [the Logos] as Demiurge, 3 as Hermes says, He [God the Father] hath devised the beautiful and wondrous creation of the world. . . .

Finally Plato has spoken concerning the first and second God, not plainly as a philosopher, but as a prophet, perchance in this following Trismegistus, whose words I have added in translation from the Greek.

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(Lactantius then translates verbally from the Greek text he has quoted in iv. 6, 4, omitting, however, the last clause and the parenthesis in the middle.)

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Footnotes

231:1 A pupil of Arnobius; flourished at the beginning of the fourth century.

231:2 Brandt (S.), L. Caeli Firmiani Lactanti Opera Omnia,—Pars I., Divinae Institutiones et Epitome (Vienna, 1890). Pars II., to be edited by G. Laubmann, has not yet appeared. Fritzsche (O. F.), Div. Institt. (Leipzig, 1842), 2 vols.

231:3 De Natura Deorum, iii. 22, 56.

231:4 C. Aurelius Cotta, 124-76 (?) B.C.

231:5 Cicero makes Cotta maintain the cause of this school both here and in the De Oratore.

232:1 Argos, according to the many ancient myths concerning him, was all-seeing (πανόπτης), possessed of innumerable eyes, or, in one variant, of an eye at the top of his head. Like Hercules, he was of superhuman strength, and many similar exploits of his powers are recorded. In the Io-legends, Hera made Argos guardian of the cow into which the favourite of Zeus had been metamorphosed. Zeus accordingly sent Hermes to carry off his beloved. Hermes is said to have lulled Argos to sleep by means of his syrinx, or pipe of seven reeds, or by his caduceus, and then to have stoned him or cut off his head. See Reseller’s Ausführ. Lex. d. griech. u. röm. Myth., s.v. “Argos.” It is to be noticed that instead of Argum, four MSS. read argentum, which is curious as showing a Medieval Alchemical influence. See n. 4 to Ciceronis Opera Philosophica (Delph. et Var. Clas.), vol. ii. (London, 1830).

232:2 Pheneatæ,—Phenëus was a town in Arcadia, that country of ancient mysteries. (It is remarkable that Hermas is taken by the “Shepherd” in spirit to a mountain in Arcadia. See Shepherd of Hermas, Sim. ix. 1.) Cicero begins his description of the fifth Hermes with this statement, and Lactantius has thus awkwardly misplaced it. Pausanias (viii. 14, 6) tells us that Phenëus itself was considered as a very ancient city, and that its chief cult was that of Hermes. This cult of Hermes, moreover, was blended with an ancient mystery-tradition, for Pausanias (ibid., 15, 1) tells us that:

“The Pheneatians have also a sanctuary of Demeter sumamed Eleusinian, and they celebrate mysteries in her honour, alleging that rites identical with those performed at Eleusis were instituted in their land. . . . Beside the sanctuary of the Eleusinian goddess is what is called the Petroma, two great stones fitted to each other. Every second year, when they are celebrating what they call the Greater Mysteries, they open these stones, and taking out of them certain writings which bear on the mysteries, they read them in the hearing of the initiated, and put them back in their place that same night. I know, too, that on the weightiest matters most of the Pheneatians swear by the Petroma.” Frazer’s Translation, i. 393 (London, 1898).

233:1 Cognitionem.

233:2 Cf. P. S. A., xx. (p. 42, 16, Goldb.) et pass.; C. H., v. (vi.) 2.

233:3 Compare with Epitome 4 below.

233:4 Lactantius here quotes in Greek. Cf. P. S. A., xx. (p. 42, 27-43, 3, Goldb.).

234:1 Was, however, this the spelling found in Cicero, for Firmianus takes it from the text of Tully? It is a pity we have no critical apparatus of the text of Lactantius, for the MSS. of Cicero present us with the following extraordinary list of variants: Then, Ten, Their, Thoyt, Theyt, Theyn, Thetum, Them, Thernum, Theutatem, Theut, Thoyth, Thoth. See n. 5 to the text of Cicero, cited above. Cf. R. 117, n. 2.

234:2 Which he probably took from P. S. A., xxxvii. 4: “Whose home is in a place called after him.”

234:3 Chambers (p. 41, n. 1), in referring it to C. H., v. (vi.) 10, is mistaken.

235:1 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 5; P. S. A., xxxvii. 1. Also Lact., Epit., 14. In my commentary on the first passage I have shown that Lactantius is probably here referring to a lost Hermetic treatise.

235:2 Cf. Fragg. ap. Stob., Ecl., i. 5, 16, 20. It is to be noticed from the context that Lactantius places Trismegistus in a class apart together with the Sibylline Oracles and Prophets, and then proceeds to speak of the philosophers, Pythagoreans, Platonists, etc. He also repeats the same triple combination in iv. 6.

235:3 Propinquare. L. glosses this as meaning “come close to and follow with the intelligence.”

235:4 Cf. Frag. ap. Cyril, C. I., i. (vol. vi., p. 31 C).

236:1 Compare also Lact., Epit., 4.

236:2 It is interesting to note, in the history of the text-tradition, that the received reading σημήναι (“be expressed”) in Stobæus stands in one MS. (A) συμβῆναι, which seems to be a transference from the original of L.’s propinquare.

236:3 Limo,—slime or mud.

236:4 Lact. repeats this in vii. 4. Cf. C. H., i. 12.

236:5 Cf. C. H., v. (vi.) 6.

237:1 Cf. also Hermes-Prayer, iii. 11. R. 21, n. 11.

237:2 Date c. 494-434 B.C.

237:3 See also Ex. vii. 3; C. H., ii. (iii.) 11.

237:4 Cf. C. H., ix. (x.) 3; C. H., xvi. 10.

238:1 δαιμονιάρχην. This term is not found in the extant texts; “Diabolus” is, of course, not to be referred to Hermes, but to the disquisition of Lactantius at the beginning of 14.

238:2 Cf. Cyril, C. J., iv. (vol. vi. 130 E, Aub.).

238:3 For the same idea, see C. H., xii. (xiii.) 9.

238:4 ἡ γὰρ εὐσέβεια γνῶσις ἐστι τοῦ θεοῦ,—which Lactantius in another passage (v. 14) renders into Latin as “Pietas autem nihil aliud est quam dei notio,—is given in C. H., ix. (x.) 4 as: εὐσέβεια δέ ἐστι θεοῦ γνῶσις (where Parthey notes no various readings in MSS.).

239:1 ἀγγέλους πονηροὺς,—these words do not occur in our extant Greek texts; but the Lat. trans, of P. S. A., xxv. 4, preserves “nocentes angeli.”

240:1 Sc. the Logos as Cosmos.

240:2 Cf. Frag. x.

240:3 For last clause, see C. H., i. 12. Cf. also Ps. Augustin., C. Quinque Hæreses, vol. viii., Append, p. 3 E, Maur.

240:4 Lactantius himself also gives a partial translation of this passage in his Epitome, 42 (Fritz., ii. 140).

241:1 δημιουργὸν τοῦ . The exact words do not occur in our extant texts, but the idea is a commonplace of the Trismegistic doctrine; see especially P. S. A., xxvi.: “The Demiurgus of the first and the one God,” and Lact., ibid., vii. 18, 4: “God of first might, and Guider of the one God.” See also C. H., i. 10, 11, xvi. 18; Cyril, C. Jul., i. 33 (Frag. xiii.), and vi. 6 (Frag. xxi.); and Exx. iii. 6, iv. 2. Cf. also Ep. 14 below.

241:2 Cf. vii. 18 below.

241:3 Sc. will (βούλησις). Cf. especially P. S. A., Commentary.

241:4 This is plainly from the same source as the following Fragment.

241:5 Cf. C. H., i. 5; and Lact. and Cyril, passim (e.g. Fragg. xxi., xxii.).

242:1 This passage and the preceding, then, are evidently taken from “The Sermons to Tat.” Lactantius quotes in Greek, and again refers to the passage in iv. 9.

242:2 αὐτοπάτορα καὶ αὐτομήτορα—not found in the extant texts; but for the idea see C. H., i. 9. See also iv. 13, and Ep. 4 below.

242:3 Ibid., iv. 7.

242:4 ἀπάτωρ et ἀμήτωρ. Cf. Lact., D. I., i. 7, 2 (Brandt).

242:5 Terms not found in our extant texts; probably taken from the same source as the terms in iv. 8 above.

243:1 Notio dei.

243:2 Namely ii. 15, 6; q.v. for comment.

243:3 That is, Hermes’ son Tat.

243:4 That is, Tat’s father, Hermes.

244:1 See above, ibid., ii. 10, 13, Comment.

245:1 θεοπτίαν = θεωρίαν. See, for instance, C. H., xiv. (xv.) 1, and K. K., 1, 38, 51; also Frag. ap. Stob., Flar., xi. 23; and also compare C. H., iv. (v.) 2: “For contemplator (θεατής) of God’s works did man become.” It is also of interest to note that Justin Martyr (Dial. c. Tryph., 218 c) enumerates the Theoretics or Contemplatives, among the most famous sects of Philosophers, naming them in the following order: Platonics, Stoics, Peripatetics, Theoretics, Pythagorics.

245:2 Compare the “setting up betwixt” (ἐν μέσῳ . . . ἵδρυσεν) with the “setting up” of the mind “in the midst” of C. H., iv. (v.) 3.

246:1 Grenfell (B. P.) and Hunt (A. S.), New Sayings of Jesus, p. 13 (London, 1904).

246:2 Cf. iv. 7 above.

247:1 Cf. Frag. v.

247:2 Lactantius quotes the original Greek of P. S. A., xxvi. 1 (p. 48, 24, Goldb.), so that we can thus once more remark the liberties which the Old Latin translation has taken with the text.

247:3 Cf. Frag. ii.

248:1 See i. 6 and iv. 8 above.

248:2 The first clause is a verbatim translation of the text of the Stobæan Extract ii., while the second is a paraphrase even of L.’s own version from the Greek (see ii. 8 above). We learn, however, the new scrap of information that the quotation is from the beginning of the sermon.

248:3 The reference to the “Demiurge” looks back to iv. 6, 9.

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VIII.

AUGUSTINE

i. De Civitate Dei, xxiii.; Hoffmann (E.), i. 392 (Vienna, 1899-1900). 1

THREE QUOTATIONS FROM THE OLD LATIN VERSION OF THE “PERFECT SERMON”

Augustine is arguing against the views of Appuleius (first half of the second century) on the cult of the “daimones,” and in so doing introduces a long disquisition on the doctrine of “Egyptian Hermes, whom they call Thrice-greatest,” concerning image-worship, or the consecrated and “ensouled,” or “animated,” statues of the gods.

In the course of his remarks the Bishop of Hippo quotes at length from a current Latin version 2 of “The Perfect Sermon” or “Asclepius” (though without himself giving any title), which we see at once must have been the very same text that has come down to us in its entirety. It is precisely the same text, word for word, with ours; the variants being practically of the most minute character.

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First of all Augustine quotes from P. S. A., xxiii. 3, xxiv. 2. This “prophecy” of the downfall of the Egyptian religion Augustine naturally takes as referring to the triumph of Christianity, and so he ridicules Hermes “[qui] tam impudenter dolebat, quam imprudentur sciebat.”

ii. Ibid., xxiv.; Hoffmann, i. 396.

The Bishop of Hippo begins his next chapter with a quotation from P. S. A., xxxvii. 1, 2, on the same subject, and proceeds scornfully to criticise the statements of the Trismegistic writer.

iii. Ibid., xxvi.; Hoffmann, i. 402.

After quoting the sentence, from P. S. A., xxiv. 3, in which Hermes says that the pure temples of Egypt will all be polluted with tombs and corpses, Augustine proceeds to contend that the gods of Egypt are all dead men, and in support of his contention he quotes P. S. A., xxxvii. 3, 4.

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Footnotes

249:1 Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol. xxx. (Imp. Acad. of Vienna). The date of the writing of the treatise, De Civitate Dei, is fixed as being about 413-426 A.D.

249:2 Hujus Ægyptii verba, sicut in nostram linguam interpretata sunt.

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IX.

CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA 1

i. Contra Julianum, i. 30; Migne, col. 548 A. 2

CYRIL’S CORPUS OF XV. BOOKS

(Cyril, after claiming that Pythagoras and Plato obtained their wisdom in Egypt from what, he professes, they had heard of Moses there, proceeds:)

And I think the Egyptian Hermes also should be considered worthy of mention and recollection—he who, they say, bears the title of Thrice-greatest because of the honour paid him by his contemporaries, and, as some think, in comparison with Hermes the fabled son of Zeus and Maia.

This Hermes of Egypt, then, although an initiator into mysteries, 3 and though he never ceased to cleave to the shrines of idols, is [nevertheless] found to have grasped the doctrines of Moses, if not with entire correctness, and beyond all cavil, yet still in part.

p. 252

For both [Hermes] himself has been benefitted [by Moses], and reminder of this [fact] has also been made in his own writings by [the editor] at Athens who put together the fifteen books entitled “Hermaïca.” [This editor] writes concerning him [Hermes] in the first book, putting the words into the mouth of one of the priests of the sacred rites:

“In order then that we may come to things of a like nature (?),—have you not heard that our Hermes divided the whole of Egypt into allotments and portions, measuring off the acres with the chain, 1 and cut canals for irrigation purposes, and made nomes, 2 and named the lands [comprised in them] after them, and established the interchange of contracts, and drew up a list of the risings of the stars, and [the proper times 3] to cut plants; and beyond all this he discovered and bequeathed to posterity numbers, and calculations, and geometry, and astronomy, and astrology, and music, and the whole of grammar?”

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This Corpus of XV. Books is evidently the source of Cyril’s information, and he takes the above quotation from the Introduction, which purported to be written by an Egyptian priest (as is also the case in the treatise De Mysteriis, traditionally ascribed to Jamblichus), but which Cyril says was written at Athens, by presumably some Greek editor. 4

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ii. Ibid., i. 31; Migne col. 549 B.

THE INCORPOREAL EYE

Thrice-greatest Hermes says somewhat as follows:

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(Cyril then quotes, with four slight verbal variants, the first four paragraphs of the passage excerpted by Stobæus, Ex. ii., and then proceeds without a break:)

FRAGMENT XI.

If, then, there be an incorporeal eye, 1 let it go forth from body unto the Vision of the Beautiful; let it fly up and soar aloft, seeking to see not form, nor body, nor [even] types 2 [of things], but rather That which is the Maker of [all] these,—the Quiet and Serene, the Stable and the Changeless One, the Self, the All, the One, the Self of self, the Self in self, the Like to Self [alone], That which is neither like to other, nor [yet] unlike to self, and [yet] again Himself. 3

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Though Cyril runs this passage on to the four paragraphs which in the Stobæan Extract are continued by three other paragraphs, I am quite persuaded that the Archbishop of Alexandria took the above from the same “Sermon to Tat” 4 as the Anthologist. 5

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iii. Ibid., i. 33; Migne, col. 552 D.

THE HEAVENLY WORD PROCEEDING FORTH

And Thrice-greatest Hermes thus delivers himself concerning God:

FRAGMENT XII.

For that His Word (Logos) proceeding forth, 1—all-perfect as he was, and fecund, and creative in fecund Nature, falling on fecund 2 Water, made Water pregnant. 3

THE PYRAMID

And the same again [declares]:

FRAGMENT XIII.

The Pyramid, then, is below [both] Nature and the Intellectual World. 4 For that it 5 hath above it ruling it the Creator-Word 6 of the Lord of all,—who, being the First Power after

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[paragraph continues]Him, [both] increate [and] infinite, leaned forth 1 from Him, and has his seat above, and rule o’er all that have been made through him. He is the First-born of the All-perfection, His perfect, fecund and true Son. 2

THE NATURE OF GOD’S INTELLECTUAL WORD

And again the same [Hermes], when one of the Temple-folk 3 in Egypt questions him and says:

FRAGMENT XIV.

But why, O most mighty Good Daimon, was he 4 called by this name 5 by the Lord of all?—replies:

Yea, have I told thee in what has gone before, but thou hast not perceived it.

The nature of His Intellectual Word (Logos) is a productive and creative Nature. This is as though it were His Power-of-giving-birth, 6 or [His] Nature, or [His] Mode of being, or call it

p. 256

what you will,—only remembering this: that He is Perfect in the Perfect, and from the Perfect makes, and creates, and makes to live, perfect good things.

Since, then, He hath this nature, rightly is He thus named. 1

THE WORD OF THE CREATOR

And the same [Hermes], in the First Sermon of the “Expository [Sermons] to Tat,” 2 speaks thus about God:

FRAGMENT XV.

The Word (Logos) of the Creator, O [my] son, transcends all sight; He [is] self-moved; He cannot be increased, nor [yet] diminished; Alone is He, and like unto Himself [Alone], equal, identical, perfect in His stability, perfect in order; for that He is the One, after the God alone beyond all knowing.

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The first two Fragments (xi. and xii.) seem to be taken from the same sermon, the contents of which resembled the first part of the “Shepherd of Men” treatise; it has all the appearance of a discourse addressed to Tat, and probably came in “The Expository Sermons.”

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The third Fragment (xiii.) belongs to the more frankly Egyptian type, the Agathodaimon literature, in which Hermes, as the Good Spirit, figures as the teacher of the Mystery-god Osiris. 1

The last Fragment (xv.) is so similar in its phrasing to Fragment xi., already given by Cyril (i. 31), that I am strongly inclined to think the Archbishop took both from the same source. If so, we can reconstruct part of “The First Sermon of the Expository [Sermons] to Tat,” the beginning of which (see Lact., Ep., 4) is also given by Stobæus, Ex. ii., with the heading from “The [Book] to Tat,” while he heads other extracts “From the [pl.] to Tat.” 2

v. Ibid., ii. 35; Migne, col. 556 A.

MIND OF MIND

And Hermes also says in the Third Sermon of those to Asclepius:

FRAGMENT XVI.

It is not possible such mysteries [as these] should be declared to those who are without initiation in the sacred rites. But ye, lend [me] your ears, [ears] of your mind!

There was One Intellectual Light alone,—nay, Light transcending Intellectual Light. He is for ever Mind of mind 3 who makes [that] Light to shine.

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There was no other; [naught] save the Oneness of Himself [alone]. For ever in Himself [alone], for ever doth He compass all in His own Mind,—His Light and Spirit. 1

HE IS ALL

And after some other things he says:

FRAGMENT XVII.

Without Him 2 [is] neither god, nor angel, nor daimon, nor any other being. For He is Lord of all, [their] Father, and [their] God, and Source, and Life, and Power, and Light, and Mind, and Spirit. For all things are in Him and for His sake. 3

CONCERNING SPIRIT

And again, in the same Third Sermon of those to Asclepius, in reply to one who questions [him] concerning the Divine Spirit, the same [Hermes] says as follows:

FRAGMENT XVIII.

Had there not been some Purpose 4 of the Lord of all, so that I should disclose this word

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[paragraph continues](logos), ye would not have been filled with so great love 1 to question me about it. Now give ye ear unto the rest of the discourse (logos).

Of this same Spirit, of which I have already spoken many times, all things have need; for that it raises up all things, each in its own degree, and makes them live, and gives them nourishment, and [finally] removes them from its holy source, 2 aiding the spirit, 3 and for ever giving life to all, the [one] productive One.”

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THE “TO ASCLEPIUS” OF CYRIL’S CORPUS

From the above statements of Cyril we learn that in addition to “The Expository Sermons to Tat,” he had also before him a collection of “Sermons to Asclepius”; of these there were at least three. Was “The Perfect Sermon” one of this collection? It may have been; for the style of it is cast in the same mould as that of these Fragments in Cyril.

Hermes, in the Third Sermon of Cyril’s collection, is addressing several hearers, for he uses the plural; so also in P. S. A., i. 2. Hermes addresses Asclepius, Tat, and Ammon.

In the Third Sermon, Hermes also says: “It is not possible such mysteries should be declared to those

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who are without initiation in the sacred rites”; in P. S. A., i. 2, Hermes declares: “It is a mark of an impious mind to publish to the knowledge of the crowd 1 a tractate 2 brimming o’er with the full grandeur of divinity.” The numinis majestas (grandeur of divinity) is precisely the same idea as the Spirit, the “Divine supremacy and power,” as Cyril says referring to Hermes.

Finally, in the Third Sermon, Hermes makes the striking remark that the Love (ἔρως) of the Gnosis which urges on the disciples, is inspired by the Providence or Foresight of God—that is, by His Spirit; P. S. A., i. 28, ends with the words: “To them, sunk in fit silence reverently, their souls and minds pendent on Hermes’ lips, thus Love (ἔρως) Divine 3 began to speak.”

The setting of the mode of exposition is then identical in the two Sermons, and we may thus very well refer them to the same collection.

v. Ibid., ii. 52; Migne, col. 580 B.

FROM “THE MIND”

To this I will add what Thrice-greatest Hermes wrote “To his own Mind,”—for thus the Book is called.

(Cyril then quotes, with very slight verbal variants, the last question and answer in C. H., xi. (xii.) 22.)

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In our Corpus the treatise is not written by Hermes to the Mind, but, on the contrary, it is cast in the mould of a revelation of “The Mind to Hermes,” and is so

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entitled. Cyril thus seems to have been mistaken. 1 It may, then, have been that in the copy which lay before the Church Father, the title read simply: “The Mind.”

vi. Ibid., ii. 55; Migne, col. 586 D. 2

OSIRIS AND THRICE-GREATEST AGATHODAIMON

But I will call to mind the words of Hermes the Thrice-greatest; in “The Asclepius” 3 he says:

FRAGMENT XIX.

Osiris said: How, then, O thou Thrice-greatest, [thou] Good Spirit, 4 did Earth in its entirety appear?

The Great Good Spirit made reply:

By gradual drying up, as I have said; and when the many Waters got commandment . . . 5 to go into themselves again, the Earth in its entirety appeared, muddy and shaking.

Then, when the Sun shone forth, and without ceasing burned and dried it up, the Earth stood compact in the Waters, with Water all around. 6

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“LET THERE BE EARTH”

Further, in yet another place [he writes]:

FRAGMENT XX.

The Maker and the Lord of all thus spake: Let there be Earth, and let the Firmament appear 1!

And forthwith the beginning of the [whole] creation, Earth, was brought into existence. 2

THE GENERATION OF THE SUN

So much about the Earth; as to the Sun, he again says as follows:

FRAGMENT XXI.

Then said Osiris: O thou Thrice-greatest, [thou] Good Spirit, whence came this mighty one?

Would’st thou, Osiris, that we tell to thee the generation of the Sun, whence he appeared?

He came from out the Foresight of the Lord of all; yea, the Sun’s birth proceedeth from

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the Lord of all, through His Creative Holy Word. 1

“LET THE SUN BE!”

In like manner also in the “First Expository Sermon to Tat,” he says:

FRAGMENT XXII.

Straightway the Lord of all spake unto His own Holy and Intelligible—to His Creative Word (Logos): Let the Sun be!

And straightway with His word (logos), the Fire that hath its nature tending upward, 2—I mean pure [Fire], that which gives greatest light, has the most energy, and fecundates the most,—Nature embraced 3 with her own Spirit, and raised it up aloft out of the Water. 4

(After referring to Genesis i. 6: “And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters,”—Cyril proceeds:)

vii. Ibid., ii. 57; Migne, col. 588 C.

THE FIRMAMENT

Moreover the Hermes who is with them 5 Thrice-

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greatest mentions this [that is, the firmament] again. For he describes God as saying to His creations:

FRAGMENT XXIII.

I will encompass you with this Necessity, you who are disobedient to me, 1 which hath been laid on you as a Command through My own Word (Logos); for him ye have as Law.

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This quotation also is probably taken from the same source as the previous passage—that is, from the “First Expository Sermon to Tat.” The idea and setting, however, should also be compared with the parallel in the K. K. Excerpt (Stob., Phys., xli. 44; Gaisf., p. 408): “O Souls, Love and Necessity shall be your lords, they who are lords and marshals after me of all,”—where the “after me” (μετ᾽ ἐμέ) might perhaps confirm the “up to me” in the preceding note as the more correct rendering.

viii. Ibid., ii. 64; Migne, col. 598 D.

FROM THE “TO ASCLEPIUS”

For Hermes, who is called Thrice-greatest, writes thus to Asclepius about the nature of the universe:

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(Here follows with a few slight verbal variants the text of C. H., xiv. (xv.) 6, 7, beginning: “If, then, all things have been admitted to be two.”)

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And some lines after he proceeds in warmer language, setting forth a striking argument, and says:

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(Then follows §§ 8, 9 of the same sermon, except the third sentence, and § 10 omitting the last sentence.) 1

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The same treatise must have lain before Cyril as that contained in our Corpus in the form of a letter with the heading, “Unto Asclepius good health of soul!”—for the Archbishop says that Hermes “writes thus to Asclepius.” 2

ix. Ibid., iv. 130; Migne, col. 702.

THE SOLE PROTECTION

(After quoting Porphyry as warning against participation in blood-rites for fear of contamination from evil daimons, Cyril proceeds:)

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And their Thrice-greatest Hermes seems also to be of the same opinion; for he, too, writes as follows, in the [sermon] “To Asclepius,” concerning those unholy daimons against whom we ought to protect ourselves, and flee from them with all the speed we can:

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“The sole protection—and this we must have—is piety. For neither evil daimon, yea nor Fate, can ever overcome or dominate a man who pious is, and pure, and holy. For God doth save the truly pious man from every ill.” 3

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x. Ibid., viii. 274; Migne, col. 920 D.

THE SUPREME ARTIST

Moreover, their Thrice-greatest Hermes has said somewhere about God, the Supreme Artist 1 of all things:

FRAGMENT XXIV.

Moreover, as perfectly wise He established Order and its opposite 2; in order that things intellectual, as being older and better, might have the government of things and the chief place, and that things sensible, as being second, might be subject to these.

Accordingly that which tends downward, and is heavier than the intellectual, has in itself the wise Creative Word (Logos). 3

xi. Ibid. (?).

AN UNREFERENCED QUOTATION

(Chambers (p. 154) gives the following, “Cyrill. Contra Julian., citing Hermes” but without any reference, and I can find it nowhere in the text:)

FRAGMENT XXV.

If thou understandest that One and Sole God, thou wilt find nothing impossible; for It is all virtue.

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Think not that It may be in some one; say not that it is out of some one.

It is without termination; it is the termination of all.

Nothing contains It; for It contains all in Itself.

What difference is there then between the body and the Incorporeal, the created and the Uncreated; that which is subject to necessity, and what is Free; between the things terrestrial and things Celestial, the things corruptible and things Eternal?

Is it not that the One exists freely and that the others are subject to necessity?

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Footnotes

251:1 The date of Cyril’s patriarchate is 412-444 A.D.

251:2 Migne (J. P.), Patrologiæ Cursus Completus, Series Græca, tom. lxxvi. (Paris, 1859). S. P. N. Cyrilli . . . Pro Christiana Religione adversus Julianum Imperatorem Libri Decem. The text is also given R. 211, n. 1.

251:3 τελεστής.

252:1 “Acres,” lit. = areas 100 Egyptian cubits square; and “chain,” lit. = measuring cord.

252:2 Or provinces; Migne’s Latin translator gives this as “laws”!

252:3 Sc. of the moon.

252:4 ὑ συντεθεικὼς Ἀθήνησι,—a phrase which Chambers (p. 149) erroneously translates by “which he [Hermes] having composed for Athenians”! R. (p. 211, n. 1) thinks this redactor was some Neoplatonist.

253:1 Sc. the soul.

253:2 Sc. ideas.

253:3 Masc., not neut., as are all the preceding “self’s.” There is also throughout a play on “self” and “same” which is unreproducible in English.

253:4 That is, presumably, the “First Sermon of the Expository [Sermons] to Tat” (see Comment to the Stobæan Excerpt).

253:5 See also Fragg. xii., xiii., xv., xx., xxii., xxiii., xxiv. (?).

254:1 R. (p. 43) glosses this with “out of the month of God,” but I see no necessity for introducing this symbolism.

254:2 The adjective γόνιμος (“fecund”) is applied to both Logos and Physis (Nature); it might thus be varied as seedful and fruitful, or spermal and productive. Cf. Frag. xiii. Text reproduced R. 43.

254:3 Compare C. H., i. 8, 14, 15. This Fragment is also quoted, but plainly reproduced from Cyril, by Suidas (q.v.).

254:4 That is, the Logos.

254:5 Sc. the Pyramid, in physics the symbol of fire. See Frag. xxii.

254:6 δημιουργὸν λόγον. Compare Lact., D. I., iv. 6, 9.

255:1 προκύψασα—is, projected, presumably with the idea of emanation. Compare the hymn: “O Heavenly Word proceeding forth, Yet leaving not the Father’s side.” Compare the παρέκυψεν of C. H., i. 14, and note.

255:2 Compare C. H., i. 6, 9, 10; xiii. (xiv.) 3; xiv. (xv.) 3. For slightly revised text, see R. 243, n. 3. Reitzenstein thinks that the image which the writer had in his mind was the pyramid, or obelisk, with the sun-disk on the top.

255:3 τεμενιτῶν. The questioner was undoubtedly Osiris (see Frag. xix. below). Cyril then knows that “Osiris” was understood to stand for a grade of Egyptian priests. Cf. R. 131.

255:4 Presumably the Logos.

255:5 Presumably “Soul” (Psyche).

255:6 γένεσις.

256:1 This passage seems to refer to the identity of Soul and Logos. For revised text see R. 131, and the reference there to Plato, Cratylus, 400 B, where ψυχή, soul, is explained by the word-play φυσέχη, that is, that which has physis, or nature, or the power of production.

256:2 τῶν πρὸς τὸν Τὰτ διεξοδικῶν.

257:1 See Frag. xix. below, where Cyril (ii. 56) says that this type was found in the “Sermon to Asclepius,” that is, was put with the Asclepius-books in the collection which lay before him.

257:2 See also Fragg. xi., xii., xiii., xx., xxii., xxiii., xxiv. (?).

257:3 Cf. K. K., 16.

258:1 That is, Light and Life. See C. H., i. 9: “God, the Mind, . . . being Life and Light.”

258:2 Lit. outside of Him.

258:3 For a fuller statement of the idea in this paragraph, see C. H., ii. (iii.) 14. Cyril thinks that the above two Fragments refer to the Father, Son (Mind of mind and Light of light) and Holy Ghost (the Divine supremacy and power), and is thus the source of the statement in Suidas (s.v. “Hermes”) that Trismegistus spoke concerning the Trinity.

258:4 Or Providence, πρόνοια. R. (203, n. 2) refers this to a belief that only when some internal prompting gave permission to the master to expand the teaching, could he do so. Cf. Appul., Metam., xi. 21, 22; P. S. A., i.

259:1 ἔρως τοιοῦτος.

259:2 That is, presumably, causing their seeming death.

259:3 That is, the individual life-breath, unless the reading ἐπίκουρον πνεύματι is corrupt. The Latin translator in Migne goes hopelessly wrong, as, indeed, is frequently the case. Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 13, Comment; P. S. A., vi. 4; Exx. iv. 2, xv. 2, xix. 3.

260:1 That is, the uninitiated, the profanum vulgus.

260:2 Tractatus; presumably logos in the original Greek.

260:3 Cf. also P. S. A., xx. 2 and xxi. 1, 3.

261:1 Cf. R. 128, n. 1.

261:2 Texts of quotations reproduced in R. 127, n. 1.

261:3 From the quotations we can see that this could not have been the special heading of the treatise from which Cyril quotes, and which plainly belongs to the Agathodaimon type. Cyril probably means that the treatise, in his collection, came under the general title, “The Asclepius.”

261:4 Ἀγαθὸς δαίμων.

261:5 The reading is an untranslatable ἀπὸ τοῦ, where the lacuna is probably to be completed with “from the Lord of all.”

261:6 A distinction is evidently drawn between the (heavenly) Water and water (the companion element of earth). The text is immediately continued in Frag. xxi. below.

262:1 See C. H., i. 18, Commentary.

262:2 This seems to be taken not from a different place in the “To Asclepius,” but from another sermon, or group of sermons, most probably from the “First Expository Sermon to Tat”—as may be seen by comparing its phrasing with Frag. xxii. See also Fragg. xi., xii, xiii., xv., xxii., xxiii., xxiv. (?).

263:1 This is evidently an immediate continuation of Frag. xix. above. Cf. R. 126, n. 1, where the texts are reproduced.

263:2 See Frag. xiii. below, concerning the pyramid.

263:3 Embraced the Fire.

263:4 Sc. the Water-Earth, one element, not yet separated, according to C. H., i. 5. For other probable quotations from this “First Expository Sermon to Tat,” see Fragg. xi., xii., xiii., xv., xx., xxiii., xxiv. (?).

263:5 Sc. the philosophers.

264:1 τοῖς ἐπ᾽ ἐμε,—lit. “against me,” or it may perhaps be “up to me.” Migne’s Latin translator gives “qui in mea potestatis estis,” and Chambers (p. 153), “those from me”; neither of which can be correct.

265:1 Cyril also twice omits the words “ignorance and jealousy” after “arrogance and impotence” in 8, and also the words “and yet the other things” in 9.

265:2 Cf. Frag. iv., Comment.

265:3 Cf. P. S. A., xxix. 1. A comparison of this with Frag. iv., quoted by Lactantius (ii. 15), and the Commentary thereon, shows clearly that Cyril has strengthened the original text by interpolations. Cyril’s quotation (v. 176) from Julian, in which the Emperor refers to Hermes, is given under “Julian.”

266:1 ἀριστοτεχνοῦ,—an epithet applied by Pindar (Fr. 29) to Zeus.

266:2 ἀταξίαν.

266:3 This seems somewhat of a piece with the contents of the “First Expository Sermon to Tat.” See Fragg. xi., xii., xiii., xv , xx., xxii., xxiii.

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X.

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SUIDAS 1

Lexicon, s.v. Ἑρμῆς ὁ τρισμέγιστος; Im. Bekker (Berlin 1854).

HERMES SPEAKS OF THE TRINITY

Hermes the Thrice-greatest.—He was an Egyptian sage, and flourished before Pharaoh. He was called Thrice-greatest because he spoke of the Trinity, declaring that in the Trinity there is One Godhead, as follows:

“Before Intellectual Light was Light Intellectual; Mind of mind, too, was there eternally, Light-giving. There was naught else except the Oneness of this [Mind] and Spirit all-embracing.

“Without this is nor god, nor angel, nor any other being. For He is Lord and Father, and the God of all; and all things are beneath Him, [all things are] in Him. 2

(The source of Suidas, or of his editor, is manifestly

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[paragraph continues]Cyril, C. J., i. 35 (Fragg. xvi., xvii.), of which a very garbled edition is reproduced. The same statement and passage is also quoted by Cedrenus, John Malalas, and the author of the Chronicum Alexandrinum. See Bernhardy’s edition of Suidas (Halle, 1853), i. 527, notes.) Suidas then continues without a break:)

“His Word (Logos), all-perfect as he was, and fecund, and creative, falling in fecund Nature, yea in fecund Water, made Water pregnant.” 1

After saying this he has the following prayer:

AN ORPHIC HYMN

“Thee, Heaven, I adjure, wise work of mighty God; thee I adjure, Word 2 of the Father which He spake first, when He established all the world!

“Thee I adjure, [O Heaven], by the alone-begotten Word (Logos) himself, and by the Father of the Word alone-begotten, yea, by the Father who surroundeth all,—be gracious, be gracious!”

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This is not a prayer from Hermes, but three verses (the last somewhat altered) of an Orphic hymn excerpted from Cyril, ibid., i. 33 (Migne, col. 552 C),—lines also attributed to “Orpheus” by Justin Martyr. The last half of the prayer seems to be a pure invention of Suidas, or of his editor, based partially on Cyril’s comments.

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Footnotes

268:1 Date uncertain; some indications point to as late as the twelfth century; if these, however, are due to later redaction, others point to the tenth century.

268:2 He is above them as Lord and Father, as Mind and Light; and they are in Him as Lady and Mother, as Spirit and Life.

269:1 This is again, and this time almost verbally, taken from Cyril ibid., i. 33; Frag. xii.

269:2 φωνήν.

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XI.

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ANONYMOUS

And here we may conveniently append a reference to the Dialogue of an ancient Christian writer on astrology—a blend of Platonism, Astrology, and Christianity—entitled Hermippus de Astrologia Dialogus, 1 from the name of the chief speaker.

This writer was undoubtedly acquainted with our Corpus, for he quotes (p. 9. 3) from C. H., i. 5; (p. 21, 5) from C. H., x. (xi.) 12; (p. 70, 17) from C. H., x. (xi.) 6; in a general fashion (p. 24, 25) from C. H., xvi.; and phrases (p. 12, 21 and p. 14, 13) from C. H., xviii.

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Footnotes

270:1 Kroll (G.) and Viereck (P.), Anonymi Christiani de Astrologia Dialogus (Leipzig, 1895). Cf. R. p. 210.

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III

References and Fragments in the Philosophers

p. 272

p. 273

I.

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ZOSIMUS

ON THE ANTHRŌPOS-DOCTRINE

(Zosimus flourished somewhere at the end of the third and beginning of the fourth century A.D. He was a member of what Reitzenstein (p. 9) calls the Poimandres-Gemeinde, and, in writing to a certain Theosebeia, a fellow-believer in the Wisdom-tradition, though not as yet initiated into its spiritual mysteries, he urges her to hasten to Poimandres and baptize herself in the Cup. 1 The following quotation is of first importance for the understanding of the Anthrōpos-Doctrine or Myth of Man in the Mysteries.

In one of the Books of his great work distinguished by the letter Omega, and dedicated to Oceanus as the “Genesis and Seed of all the Gods,”—speaking of the uninitiated, those still beneath the sway of the Heimarmenē or Fate, who cannot understand his revelations,—he writes 2🙂

THE PROCESSIONS OF FATE.

1. Such men [our] Hermes, in his “Concerning Nature,” hath called mind-less,—naught but “processions” 3 of

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[paragraph continues]Fate,—in that they have no notion 1 of aught of things incorporal, or even of Fate herself who justly leads them, but they blaspheme her corporal schoolings, and have no notion of aught else but of her favours.

“THE INNER DOOR”

2. But Hermes and Zoroaster have said the Race of Wisdom-lovers is superior to Fate, by their neither rejoicing in her favours,—for they have mastered pleasures,—not by their being struck down by her ills,—for ever living at the “Inner Door,” 2 and not receiving 3 from her her fair gift, in that they look unto the termination of [her] ills. 4

3. On which account, too, Hesiod doth introduce Prometheus counselling Epimetheus, and doth tell him 5 not to take the Gift 6 from Zeus who rules Olympus, but send it back again,—[thus] teaching his own brother through philosophy 7 to return the Gifts of Zeus,—that is, of Fate.

4. But Zoroaster, boasting in knowledge of all things Above, and in the magic of embodied speech, 8

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professes that all ills of Fate,—both special [ills] and general [ones],—are [thus] averted.

AGAINST MAGIC

5. Hermes, however, in his “About the Inner Door,” doth deprecate [this] magic even, declaring that:

The spiritual man, [the man] who knows himself, 1 should not accomplish any thing by means of magic, e’en though he think it a good thing, nor should he force Necessity, but suffer [her to take her course], according to her nature and decree 2; [he should] progress by seeking only, through the knowledge of himself and God, to gain the Trinity 3 that none can name, and let Fate do whate’er she will to her own clay—that is, the body.

FRAGMENT XXVI.

6. And being so minded (he says), and so ordering his life, he shall behold the Son of God becoming all things for holy souls, that he may draw her 4 forth from out the region of the Fate into the Incorporeal [Man].

7. For having power in all, He becometh all things, whatsoever He will, 5 and, in obedience to the Father[’s nod], through the whole Body doth He penetrate, and, pouring forth His Light into the mind of every [soul], He starts it 6

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back unto the Blessed Region, 1 where it was before it had become corporal,—following after Him, yearning and led by Him unto the Light.

THOTH THE FIRST MAN

8. And [there] shall it see the Picture 2 that both Bitos hath described, and thrice-great Plato, and ten-thousand-times-great Hermes, for Thōythos translated 3 it into the first sacred 4 tongue,—Thōth the First Man, the Interpreter of all things which exist, and the Name-maker 5 for all embodied things. 6

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THE LIBRARIES OF THE PTOLEMIES

9. The Chaldæans and Parthians and Medes and Hebrews call Him 1 Adam, which is by interpretation virgin Earth, and blood-red 2 Earth, and fiery 3 Earth, and fleshly Earth.

10. And these indications were found in the book-collections 4 of the Ptolemies, which they stored away in every temple, and especially in the Serapeum, when they invited Asenas, the chief priest of Jerusalem, to send a “Hermes,” 5 who translated the whole of the Hebrew into Greek and Egyptian. 6

11. So the First Man is called by us Thōyth and by them Adam,—not giving His [true] name in the Language of the Angels, but naming Him symbolically according to His Body by the four elements [or letters] out of His whole Sphere, 7 whereas his Inner Man, the

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spiritual, has [also] both an authentic name and one for common use. 1

NIKOTHEOS

12. His authentic [name], however, I know not, owing to the so long [lapse of time 2]; for Nikotheos 3 who-is-not-to-be-found alone doth know these things.

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But that for common use is Man (Phōs), 1 from which it follows that men are called phōtas.

FROM THE BOOK OF THE CHALDÆANS

13. 2 “When Light-Man (Phōs) was in Paradise, exspiring 3 under the [presence of] Fate, they 4 persuaded Him to clothe himself in the Adam they had made, the [Adam] of Fate, him of the four elements,—as though [they said] being free from [her 5] ills and free from their 6 activities.

“And He, on account of this ‘freedom from ills’ did

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not refuse; but they boasted as though He had been brought into servitude [to them].” 1

14. For Hesiod said that the outer man was the “bond” 2 by which Zeus bound Prometheus.

Subsequently, in addition to this bond, he sends him another, Pandōra, 3 whom the Hebrews call Eve.

For Prometheus and Epimetheus 4 are one Man, according to the system of allegory,—that is, Soul and Body.

MAN THE MIND

And at one time He 5 bears the likeness of soul, at another of mind, at another of flesh, owing to the imperfect attention which Epimetheus paid to the counsel of Prometheus, his own mind. 6

15. For our Mind 7 saith:

FRAGMENT XXVII.

For that the Son of God having power in all things, becoming all things that he willeth, appeareth as he willeth to each. 8

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16. Yea, unto the consummation of the cosmos will He come secretly,—nay, openly associating with His own,—counselling them secretly, yea through their minds, to settle their account with their Adam, the blind accuser, 1 in rivalry with the spiritual man of light. 2

THE COUNTERFEIT DAIMON

17. And these things come to pass until the Counterfeit Daimon 3 come, in rivalry with themselves, and wishing to lead them into error, declaring that he is Son of God, being formless in both soul and body.

But they, becoming wiser from contemplation of

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[paragraph continues]Him who is truly Son of God, give unto him 1 his own Adam for death, 2 rescuing their own light spirits for [return to] their own regions where they were even before the cosmos [existed]. 3 . . .

18. And [it is] the Hebrews alone and the Sacred Books of Hermes [which tell us] these things about the man of light and his Guide the Son of God, and about the earthy Adam and his Guide, the Counterfeit, who doth blasphemously call himself Son of God, for leading men astray. 4

19. But the Greeks call the earthy Adam Epimetheus, who is counselled by his own mind, that is, his brother, not to receive the gifts of Zeus. Nevertheless being both deceived 5 and repenting, 6 and seeking the Blessed Land. . . . 7

But Prometheus, that is the mind, interprets all things and gives good counsel in all things to them who have understanding and hearing. But they who have only fleshly hearing are “processions of Fate.”

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HIS ADVICE TO THEOSEBEIA

To the foregoing we may append a version of Zosimus’ advice 1 to the lady Theosebeia, to which we have already referred, as offering an instructive counterpart to C. H., xiii. (xiv.). After a sally against the “false prophets,” through whom the daimones energize, not only requiring their offerings but also ruining their souls, Zosimus continues:

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“But be not thou, O lady, [thus] distracted, as, too, I bade thee in the actualizing [rites], and do not turn thyself about this way and that in seeking after God; but in thy house be still, and God shall come to thee, He who is everywhere and not in some wee spot as are daimonian things.

“And having stilled thyself in body, still thou thyself in passions too—desire, [and] pleasure, rage [and] grief, and the twelve fates 2 of Death.

“And thus set straight and upright, call thou unto thyself Divinity; and truly shall He come, He who is everywhere and [yet] nowhere.

“And [then], without invoking them, perform the sacred rites unto the daimones,—not such as offer things to them and soothe and nourish them, but such as turn them from thee and destroy their power, which Mambres 3 taught to Solomon, King of Jerusalem, and all that Solomon himself wrote down from his own wisdom.

“And if thou shalt effectively perform these rites,

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thou shalt obtain the physical conditions of pure birth. And so continue till thou perfect thy soul completely.

“And when thou knowest surely that thou art perfected in thyself, then spurn . . . from thee 1 the natural things of matter, and make for harbour in Pœmandres’ 2 arms, and having dowsed thyself within His Cup, 3 return again unto thy own [true] race.” 4

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This was how Zosimus understood the teaching of the Trismegistic tradition, for he had experienced it.

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Footnotes

273:1 Op. sub. cit., p. 245.

273:2 Berthelot, Les Alchimistes grecs, pp. 229 ff. For a revised text, see R. pp. 102-106.

273:3 πομπάς,—processions, shows, or pageants. Cf. C. H., iv. (v.) 7: “Just as processions pass by in the middle of the way without being able to do anything but take the road from others, so do such men move in procession through the world led by their bodies’ pleasures.”

274:1 Or “in that they display naught”—φανταζομένους.

274:2 Codd. ἐναυλία. R. reads ἐν ἐναυλίᾳ, which is supported by the title of the Trismegistic treatise mentioned in the next paragraph but one. I feel almost tempted to propose to read ἐν ἀϋλίᾳ—(fr. ἄϋλος—“immaterial,” the being in a state free from ὕλη or “matter”), and so to translate it “for ever living in the immaterial.”

274:3 Codd. καταδεχόμενοι. R. reads καταδέχεσθαι. I suggest καταδεχομένους.

274:4 Codd. κακῶν, which I prefer to R.’s κακόν.

274:5 Op. et. Dies, 86.

274:6 Sc. Pandōra; cf. §§ 14 and 19 below.

274:7 Or wisdom-loving.

274:8 Presumably what the Vaidic theurgist would call mantravidyā.

275:1 Cf. C. H., i. 21.

275:2 Or decision or judgment.

275:3 τριάδα.

275:4 Sc. the soul.

275:5 Cf. § 15 below. Zosimus is apparently condensing from the original.

275:6 Sc. the soul or mind.

276:1 Cf. S., § 9 in the Naassene Document.

276:2 πίνακα—or tablet.

276:3 Lit. translates.

276:4 Priestly or hieratic. With this compare Syncellus’ (Chron., xl.) quotation, from Manetho’s Sothis, which declares that the first monuments recording the wisdom-mystery of most ancient Egypt “were engraved in the sacred language by Thōth, the first Hermes; after the Flood they were translated from the sacred language into the common tongue.” Cf. vol. i., ch. v., on “Hermes according to Manetho.”

276:5 ὀνοματοποιός,—referring specially to the making of names or words corresponding to natural cries and sounds. Compare the Adam of Genesis.

276:6 Cf. Plato, Philebus, 18 B: “Some god, or rather some godlike man, who in Egypt their tradition says was Theuth, observing that sound was infinite, first distinguished in this infinity a certain number of pure sounds [or vowels], and then other letters [or sound elements] which have sound, but are not pure sounds [the semi-vowels]; these two exist [each] in a definite number; and lastly he distinguished a third class of letters, which we now call mutes; and divided these, and likewise the two other classes of vowels and semi-vowels, into their individual elements, and told the number of them, and gave to each and all of them the names of letters.” (Cf. Jowett’s Trans., 3rd ed., iv. 583, 584.)

According to the number-system of the Gnostic Marcus, there are: seven vowels, eight semi-vowels, and nine mutes (F. F. F., p. 368). It is also of interest to notice that these elements of sound are applied to what Marcus calls the “Configuration of the Element”—? Sound—(τὸ σχῆμα τοῦ στοιχείου); they constitute the Glyph (or Character, or Impression, or Expression) of the Figure (or Diagram) of the Man of Truth. In the phrase “Glyph of the Figure” (ὁ χαρακτὴρ τοῦ γράμματος), the word γράμμα means either (i) a letter of the alphabet, or (ii) a note of music, or (iii) a mathematical figure or diagram (ibid., p. 367). Is there then any connection between the Pinax of Bitos and the Diagram of the Ophites referred to by Celsus?

277:1 Sc. the First Man.

277:2 Or of the nature of blood.

277:3 Codd. πυρὰ—? πυρία.

277:4 Or libraries.

277:5 That is, a learned priest or scribe.

277:6 Much translation of this kind was done at that period. Compare the Arabic translation of a “Book of Ostanes” (Berthelot, La Chimie au Moyen Age, iii. 121), in which an old inscription on an Egyptian stēlē is quoted: “Have you not heard the story that a certain philosopher [i.e. Egyptian priest] wrote to the Magi in Persia, saying: ‘I have found a copy of a book of the ancient sages; but as the book is written in Persian, I cannot read it. Send me then one of your wise men who can read for me the book I have found’?” R. 363.

277:7 Presumably referring to the whole Body of the Heavenly Man, to whose Limbs all the letters were assigned by Marcus.

278:1 προσηγορικόν,—this signifies generally the prœnomen as opposed to the nomen proper.

278:2 διὰ τὸ τέως,—lit. “because of the so long”; otherwise I cannot translate the phrase. This would, then, presumably refer to the length of time since the physical tradition of the ancient Thōyth initiates had disappeared; or the length of time the soul of Zosimus had been revolving in Genesis.

278:3 Lit. God-victor,—symbolizing the victory of the Inner God, or of a man who had raised himself to the status of a god. For Nikotheos, see the Gnostic “Untitled Apocalypse” of the Codex Brucianus (C. Schmidt, Gnos. Schrift. in kop. Sprach. aus d. C. B., p. 285), p. 12a: “Nikotheos hath spoken of Him [namely, the Alone-begotten,—see ibid., p. 601], and seen Him; for he is one [sc. of those who have seen Him face to face]. He [N.] said: ‘The Father exists exalted above all the perfect.’ He [N.] hath revealed the Invisible and the perfect Triple-power.”

In the Life of Plotinus, by Porphyry (c. xiv.), among the list of “Gnostics” against whose views on Matter the great coryphæus of Later Platonism wrote one of the books of his Enneads (II. ix.), there is mention of Nikotheos in close connection with Zoroaster and others (S. 603 ff.). If we now turn to Schmidt’s Plotins Stellung zum Gnosticismus und kirchlichen Christentum (Leipzig, 1900), in which he has examined at length the matter of the treatise of Plotinus and the passage of Porphyry, we find him returning to the consideration of Nikotheos (pp. 58 ff.). Schmidt (p. 61) takes the “hidden Nikotheos” for a “heavenly being,” indeed as identical with the Alone-begotten, and as, therefore, the revealer of Himself. This Alone-begotten is the “Light-Darkness” of p. 13a of the “Untitled Apocalypse” of C. B. In other words, Nikotheos seems to be a synonym of the Triumphant Christos. See R. Liechtenhan, Die Offenbarung in Gnosticismus (Gottingen, 1901), p. 31. So far for the inner meaning; but is there possibly an outer one? As there was an apocalypse, for the words of Nikotheos are quoted, there was a seer, a prophet, a Christos, who had seen and handed on. It is somewhat remarkable that one of the by-names given to Jesus (Jeschu) by Rabbinical theological controversy was Balaam (Bileam), meaning “Destroyer of the people.” Is there, then, any connection between Niko-theos on the one hand and Niko-laos (the Greek equivalent of Balaam) on the other? There are, at any rate, many other parallels in the Talmud Jeschu-Stories of names of dishonour on the Rabbinical side equating with names of exalted honour on the Gnostic and Christian side. If so—dare we ask the question?—have we in the logos of Nikotheos a fragment from an “Apocalypse of Jesus”?

Nay, may not Balaam-Niko-laos,—to take a lesson from the mystic word-play of the time,—“allegorically” have symbolized on the one hand the “victory of the many” (λαός), and on the other the “Victor of the many,” for “people” in Philo signifies the “many” as opposed to the “one’’ “race” (γένος) which sums up all His “limbs” in the Christ?

279:1 φὼς,—according to the accenting of R., but φῶς would mean “Light.”

279:2 This is evidently a quotation.

279:3 Reading διαπνεόμενος with the Codd., and not διαπνεομένῳ with R. This means “exhaling his light.” In the Egypto-Gnostic tradition underlying the Pistis Sophia, it is the function of the Rulers of the Fate to “squeeze out” the light from the souls and to devour it, or absorb it into themselves.

279:4 The Rulers of the Fate.

279:5 Sc. Fate’s.

279:6 Sc. the Seven Rulers or Energies of the Fate-sphere,—ἀνενέργητον.

280:1 This is evidently a quotation from a Greek translation of one of the Books of the Chaldæans (§§ 9, 10) in the Serapeum. It seems to me to be a “source” on which both the Hebrew and non-Hebrew Hellenists commentated in Alexandria. Thus both the commentator in S. and J. in the Naassene Document and the Pœmandrists of the period would use it in common.

280:2 Theog., 614.

280:3 Cf. §§ 3 and 19.

280:4 That is, Fore-thought and After-thought.

280:5 Sc. Man.

280:6 I am almost persuaded that § 14 is also a quotation or summary and not the simple exegesis of Zosimus; the original being from the pen of some non-Hebrew Hellenistic allegorizer.

280:7 That is, Pœmandrēs, the Shepherd of men.

280:8 Cf. § 7 above; evidently a quotation from the “Inner Door.” Compare also the logos quoted by S. (§ 8) in the Naassene Document from some Hellenistic scripture: “I become what I will, and am what I am.” Do Hermes and S. then both depend on the same scripture, in the form of an apocalypse; that is, does Hermes in his “expository sermon” depend on the direct teaching of the Mind to himself, which would be instruction in the first person?

281:1 τυφληγοροῦντος. The lexicons do not contain the word. It is probably a play on κατηγοροῦντος. Cf. note on “blind from birth” of C. in the Conclusion of Hippolytus in “Myth of Man” (vol. i. p. 189).

281:2 That is, presumably, though in one aspect only, the soul that sees in the Light as opposed to the blind body. This passage reflects the same thought-atmosphere as that which surrounds the saying underlying Matt. v. 25 (= Lk. xii. 57-59): “Agree with thine adversary quickly whiles thou art in the way with him, lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Amen, I say unto thee, thou shalt not come forth thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.” The third Evangelist, instead of the vague “agree,” preserves the technical terms ἀπηλλάχθαι, used of the discharge of a debt (cf. the technical καταλλαγὴν ἔχειν of our text), and πράκτωρ, an officer charged with the collection of taxes and debts. This Saying was interpreted by the Gnostics as having reference to the reincarnation of the soul into another body in order to discharge its kārmic debts.

281:3 ὁ ἀντίμιμος δαίμων. The term “counterfeit spirit” (ἀντίμιμον πνεῦμα) occurs frequently in the Pistis Sophia.

282:1 The Counterfeit Daimon.

282:2 Or execution.

282:3 The two last paragraphs are apparently also quoted or summarized from a Hellenistic commentary on a Book of the Hebrews, translated into Greek, and found in the libraries of the Ptolemies. It is remarkable that the contents of this book are precisely similar not only to the contents of the Books from which J. quotes in the Naassene Document, but also to the ideas about the Chaldæans which the commentator of S. sets forth.

282:4 If we can rely on this statement of Zosimus, this proves that there was a developed Anthrōpos-doctrine also in the Trismegistic Books, as apart from the Chaldæan Books,—that is, that the Pœmandrists did not take it from the Chaldæan Books, but had it from their own immediate line of tradition, namely, the Egyptian.

282:5 Cf. 13 above.

282:6 Lit. changing his mind.

282:7 A lacuna occurs in the text. We could almost persuade ourselves that Zosimus had the text of S. and even the source of J. before him. For “Blessed Land,” cf. § 7 above.

283:1 Berth., p. 244; for a revised text see R. 214, n. 1.

283:2 The twelve tormenting or avenging daimones of C. H., xiii. (xiv.).

283:3 The famous Egyptian Theurgist and Magician who is fabled to have contended with Moses; while others say he was the instructor of Moses.

284:1 The soul having now found itself wings and become the winged globe.

284:2 ἐπὶ τὸν Ποιμένανδρα (sic).

284:3 Cf. C. H., iv. (v.) 4.

284:4 Cf. C. H., i. 26, 29.

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II.

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JAMBLICHUS

ABAMMON THE TEACHER

The evidence of Jamblichus 1 is of prime importance seeing that it was he who put the Later Platonic School, previously led by the purely philosophical Ammonius, Plotinus and Porphyry, into conscious touch with those centres of Gnosis into which he had been initiated, and instructed it especially in the Wisdom of Egypt in his remarkable treatise generally known by the title On the Mysteries. The authorship of this treatise is usually disputed; but as Proclus, who was in the direct tradition, attributes it to Jamblichus, the probabilities are in favour of its authenticity.

Jamblichus writes with the authority of an accredited exponent of the Egyptian Wisdom as taught in these mysteries, and under the name of “Abammon, the Teacher,” proceeds to resolve the doubts and difficulties of the School with regard to the principles of the

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sacred science as formulated by Porphyry. Jamblichus begins his task with these significant words 1:

HERMES THE INSPIRER

“Hermes, the God who is our guide in [sacred] sermons, was rightly held of old as common to all priests. And seeing that it is he who has in charge the real science about the Gods, he is the same in all [our sacred sermons]. 2 And so it was to him that our ancestors attributed all the discoveries of their wisdom, attaching the name of Hermes to all the writings which had to do with such subjects. 3 And if we also enjoy that share of this God which has fallen to our lot, according to our ability [to receive him], thou dost well in submitting certain questions on theology to us priests, as thy friends, for their solution. And as I may fairly suppose that the letter sent to my disciple Anebo was written to myself, I will send thee the true answers to the questions thou hast asked. For it would not be proper that Pythagoras and Plato, and Democritus and Eudoxus, and many others of the ancient Greeks, 4 should have obtained fitting instruction

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from the recorders of the sacred science of their times, and that thou, our contemporary, who art of a like mind with these ancients, should lack guidance from the now living bearers of the title ‘Common Teachers.’” 1

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From the above important passage we learn that among the Egyptians the books which dealt technically with the science of sacred things, and especially with the science of the Gods, that is to say, with the nature of the hierarchy from man upwards to the Supreme Ruler of our system, were regarded as “inspired.” The Ray of the Spiritual Sun which illumined the sacred science was distinguished as a Person, and this Person, because of a partial similarity of attributes, the Greeks had long identified with their God Hermes. He was “common” to the priests of the sacred science, that is to say, it was this special Ray of the Spiritual Sun which illumined their studies. Not, however, that all were equally illumined, for there were many grades in the mysteries, many steps up the holy ascent to union

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with Deity. Now the Rays of the Spiritual Sun are really One Light, “polarised” variously by the “spheres” of which we have heard so much in the Trismegistic treatises. These Rays come forth from the Logos, and each illuminates a certain division of the whole hierarchy of beings from the Logos to man, and characterises further the lower kingdoms, animals and plants, and minerals. Hence, for instance, among animals, we get the ibis, the ape and the dog as being especially sacred to Thoth or Hermes.

THOSE OF THE HERMAÏC NATURE

Among men generally, also, there are certain whose characteristics are of a “Hermaïc” 1 nature; the more evolved of these are adapted to certain lines of study and research, while again among those few of these who are beginning to be really conscious of the science of sacred things, that is to say, among the initiated students or priests, the direct influence of this Ray or Person begins to be consciously felt, by each, as Jamblichus says, according to his ability, for there are still many grades.

Now the peculiar unanimity that prevailed in these strictly hierarchical schools of initiation, and the grand doctrine of identification that ran throughout the whole economy—whereby the pupil became identified with the master when he received his next grade of initiation, and whereby his master was to him the living symbol of all that was above that master, that is to say, was Hermes for him, in that he was the messenger to him of the Word, and was the channel whereby the divine inspiration came to him—rendered the ascription to

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[paragraph continues]Hermes of all the sacred scriptures, such as the sermons of initiation, a very natural proceeding. It was not the case of a modern novel-writer taking out a copyright for his own precious productions, but simply of the recorder, scribe or copyist of the sacred science handing on the tradition. As long as this was confined to the disciplined schools of the sacred science it was without danger, but when irresponsible people began to copy a method, to whose discipline they refused to submit, for purposes of edification, and so appended the names of great teachers to their own lucubrations, they paved the way for that chaos of confusion in which we are at present stumbling.

THE BOOKS OF HERMES

Towards the end of his treatise Jamblichus, in treating of the question of the innumerable hierarchies of being and their sub-hierarchies, says that these are so multiplex that they had to be treated by the ancient priests from various aspects, and even among those who were “wise in great things” in his own time the teaching was not one and the same.

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“The main states of being were completely set forth by Hermes (in the twenty thousand books, as Seleucus 1 writes, or in the thirty-six thousand five hundred and twenty-five as Manetho relates), while the sub-states are interpreted in many other writings by the ancients, some of them sub-dividing 2 some of the sub-states and others others.” 3

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At first sight it would seem that we are not to suppose

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that it took 20,000 volumes to set forth the main outlines of the cosmic system. Jamblichus would seem to mean that in the library or libraries of the books treating of the sacred science, the general scheme of the cosmos was set forth, and that the details were filled in very variously by many writers, each according to the small portion of the whole he had studied or speculated on. As to the number of books again we should not be dismayed, when we reflect that a book did not mean a large roll or volume but a division or chapter of such a roll. Thus we read of a single man composing no less than 6000 “books”!

But on further reflection this view does not seem satisfactory. The ghost of the very precise number 36,525, which Jamblichus substitutes from Manetho for the vague total 20,000 of Seleucus, refuses to be laid by such a weak-kneed process.

We see at once that 365⋅25 days is a very close approximation to the length of the solar year. We know further that 36,525 years was the sum of 25 Sothiac cycles (1461 × 25 = 36,525), 1 that most sacred time-period of the Egyptian secret astronomy, which was assigned to the revolution of the zodiac or the Great Year. Now supposing after all that Jamblichus does mean that Hermes actually did write the scheme of the cosmos in 36,525 “books” or “chapters”; and supposing further that these “chapters” were not written on papyrus, but in the heavens; and supposing still further that these “chapters” were simply so many great aspects of the real sun, just as the 365⋅25 days were but aspects of the physical sun—in such case the above favourite passage, which every previous writer has referred to actual books superscribed with the

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name of Hermes, and has dragged into every treatise on the Hermetic writings, will in future have to be removed from the list, and one of the functions of the real Hermes, the Initiator and Recorder, will become apparent to those who are “wise in greater things.”

THE MONAD FROM THE ONE

In the next chapter, after first speaking of the God over all, Jamblichus refers to the Logos, the God of our system, whom he calls “God of gods, the Monad from the One, prior to being and the source of being.” And then continues:

“For from Him cometh the essence of being and being; wherefore is He called Father of being. For He is prior to being, the source of spiritual existences; wherefore also is He called Source of spiritual things. These latter are the most ancient sources of all things, and Hermes places them before the æthereal and empyrean and celestial gods, bequeathing to us a hundred books on the history of the empyrean, and a like number on that of the æthereal, but a thousand of them concerning the celestial.” 1

I am inclined to think that there is a mistake in the numbers of these books, and that we should have 10 assigned to the first class, 100 to the second, and 1000 to the third. In any case we see that all are multiples of the perfect number 10; and that thus my theory is still supported by the further information that Jamblichus gives us.

THE TRADITION OF THE TRISMEGISTIC LITERATURE

We next come to a passage which deals directly with our Trismegistic literature. Jamblichus tells Porphyry that with the explanations he has already

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given him, he will be able to find his way in the Hermetic writings which have come into his hands.

“For the books in circulation bearing the name of Hermes contain Hermaïc doctrines, although they often use the language of the philosophers, seeing that they were translated from the Egyptian by men well skilled in philosophy.” 1

The information given by Jamblichus is precise; they were translations, but instead of a literal rendering, the translators used the usual phraseology of the Greek philosophical writers.

Jamblichus then goes on to say that physical astronomy and physical research generally were but a very small part of the Hermaïc science, by no means the most important.

For “the Egyptians deny that physics are everything; on the contrary they distinguish both the life of the soul and the life of the mind from nature, 2 not only in the case of the cosmos but also in man. They first posit Mind and Reason (Logos) as having a being peculiar to themselves, and then they tell us that the world of becoming [or generation] is created. As Forefather of all beings in generation they place the Creator, and are acquainted with the Life-giving Power which is prior to the celestial spaces and permeates them. Above the universe they place Pure Mind; this for the universe as a whole is one and undivided, but it is variously manifested in the several spheres. 3 And they do not speculate about these things with the unassisted reason, but they announce that by the divine art of their priestly science 4 they reach higher and more

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universal states [of consciousness] above the [Seven Spheres of] Destiny, ascending to God the Creator, 1 and that too without using any material means, or any other [material] assistance than the observation of a suitable opportunity.

“It was Hermes who first taught this Path. 2 And Bitys, the prophet, translated [his teachings concerning it] for King Ammon, 3 discovering them in the inner temple 4 in an inscription in the sacred characters at Saïs in Egypt. [From these writings it was that Bitys] handed on the tradition of the Name of God, as ‘That which pervadeth the whole universe.’” 5

“As to the Good Itself [the Egyptians] regard It in Its relation to the Divine as the God that transcends all thought, and in Its relation to man as the at-onement with Him—a doctrine which Bitys translated from the Hermaïc Books.” 6

From these two passages we learn that the ancient doctrine of Hermes concerning the Path, which is the keynote of our Trismegistic tracts, was to be found either in inscriptions in the sacred script in the secret chambers of the temples, into which no uninitiated person was ever permitted to enter, or in “books,” also in the sacred script; that these had never been translated until the reign of King Ammon. 7 But what are we to understand by translated? Into Greek? Not necessarily, but more probably interpreted from the

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hieroglyphic symbols into the Egyptian vernacular and written in the demotic character. The term used (διερμηνεύειν) clearly bears this sense; whereas if translation from Egyptian into Greek had been intended, we should presumably have had the same word (μεταγράφειν) employed which Jamblichus uses when speaking of the Hermetic books that had been read by Porphyry. Reitzenstein (p. 108), however, has apparently no doubt that the writings of Bitys were in Greek, and that these writings lay before Jamblichus and were the only source of his information. But I cannot be certain that this is the meaning of the Greek.

We have rather, according to my view, probably two strata of “translation”—from hieroglyphic into demotic, from demotic into Greek. As to Bitys, we know nothing more definite than Jamblichus tells us. Perhaps he was the first to translate from the sacred hieroglyphs into the vulgar tongue and script; and by that we mean the first to break the ancient rule and write down in the vulgar characters those holy sermons and treatises which previously had never before been inscribed in any but the most sacred characters. We are not, however, to suppose that Bitys was the only one to do this.

Now in our Trismegistic literature we have a deposit addressed to a King Ammon. Is it then possible that this King, whoever he was, was the initiator of a change of policy in the immemorial practice of the priests? It may be so, but at present we have not sufficient data to decide the point.

BITYS

A further scrap of information concerning Bitys, however, may be gleaned from Zosimus (§ 8), when, speaking of the Logos, the Son of God, pouring His Light

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into the soul and starting it on its Return Above, to the Blessed Region where it was before it had become corporeal (as described in the Trismegistic tractate, entitled “Concerning the Inner Door”)—he writes:

“And there shall it see the Picture (πίναξ) that both Bitos hath described, and thrice-greatest Plato, and ten-thousand-times-great Hermes,—for Thōythos translated it into the first sacred tongue,—Thōth the First Man.” 1

The identity of Bitys and Bitos is thus unquestionable. 2 Reitzenstein, however, asserts that neither of these name-forms is Egyptian, and therefore approves of the identification of our Bitys with “Pitys the Thessalian” of the Papyri, 3 as Dieterich has suggested. The headings of the fragments of the writings of Pitys in the Papyri run: “The Way [or Method] of Pitys”; “Pitys to King Ostanes Greeting”; “The Way of Pitys the King”; “Of Pitys the Thessalian.”

From this Reitzenstein (n. 2) concludes that already in the second and third centuries (? A.D.) Pitys is included among the prophetical theologi and Magians. What the precise date of these Papyri may be it is not easy to determine, but, whether or not they belong to the second and third centuries, it is evident that Pitys was regarded as ancient and a contemporary of the Magian Sage Ostanes.

King, 4 referring to a passage of the Elder Pliny (Nat. Hist., xxx. 4), which remarks on the similarity of the

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[paragraph continues]Magian Gnosis with the Druidical Gnosis of Gaul and Britain, says: “Pliny by his ‘Magica’ understands the rites instituted by Zoroaster, and first promulgated by Osthanes to the outer world, this Osthanes having been ‘military chaplain’ to Xerxes during his expedition to Greece.”

This date, if we can rely upon it, would take us back to the Persian Conquest of Egypt, but what has a Thessalian Pitys to do with that?

Curiously enough also Pliny in his xxviiith Book makes use of the writings of a certain Bithus of Dyrrachium, a city on the coast of Illyricum in the Ionic Gulf, known in Grecian history as Epidamnus.

All of this is puzzling enough; but whatever conclusions may be drawn from the evidence, the clearest indication is that Bitys was ancient, and therefore that whatever translating or rather “interpreting” there may have been, it was probably from hieroglyphic into demotic, and the latter was subsequently further “interpreted” into Greek.

OSTANES-ASCLEPIUS

But is Ostanes the Magian Sage of tradition, or may we adopt the brilliant conclusion of Maspero, and equate Ostanes with Asclepius, and so place him in the same circle with Bitys, or rather see in Bitys an “Asclepius”?

At any rate the following interesting paragraph of Granger 1 deserves our closest attention in this connection, when he writes:

“Maspero, following Goodwin, has shown that Ostanes is the name of a deity who belongs to the cycle of

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[paragraph continues]Thoth. 1 His name, Ysdnw, was derived by the Egyptians themselves from a verb meaning ‘to distinguish’ and he was a patron of intellectual perception. As time went on, he gained in importance. Under the Ptolemies he was often represented upon the Temple walls (l.c.). In Pliny he appears as an early writer upon medicine. 2 Some of the prescriptions quoted as from him are quite in the Egyptian style. 3 Philo Byblius, on whom, to be sure, not much reliance can be placed, 4 mentions a book of Ostanes—the Octateuch. 5 It is tempting to identify this with some such collection as the six medical books which occupy the last place in Clement’s list. 6 Now Pliny, as appears from his list of authorities, does not quote Ostanes directly. If we note that Democritus is mentioned by Pliny in the same context, and that Ostanes is the legendary teacher of Democritus upon his journey to Egypt, we shall consider it at least probable that Pliny depends upon Democritus for his mention of Ostanes. The Philosopher, whose visit to Egypt may be regarded as a historical fact, would in that case be dealing with a medical collection which passes under the name of Ostanes. Asclepius, who appears in the Pœmander, will be the Greek equivalent of Ostanes. Thus the collocation of Hermes and Asclepius is analogous to the kinship of the Egyptian deities, Thoth and Ysdnw.”

FROM THE HERMAÏC WRITINGS

That these Bitys-books contained the same doctrines as our Trismegistic writings is evident from the whole

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treatise of Jamblichus. Jamblichus throughout bases himself upon the doctrines of Hermes, 1 and clearly suggests that he does not owe his information to translations only, as was the case with Porphyry, but to records in Egyptian; but whether to the demotic treatises of the Bitys-school or to the heiroglyphic records themselves he does not say. That these doctrines were identical with the teachings in our Trismegistic literature requires no proof to any one who has read our treatises and the exposition of Jamblichus; for the benefit, however, of those who have not read Jamblichus, 2 we append a passage to show the striking similarity of ideas. Treating of the question of freewill and necessity raised by Porphyry, and replying to the objection that the Egyptians taught an astrological fatalism, Jamblichus writes:

“We must explain to you how the question stands by some further conceptions drawn from the Hermaïc writings. Man has two souls, as these writings say. The one is from the First Mind, and partakes also of the Power of the Creator, 3 while the other, the soul under constraint, comes from the revolution of the celestial [Spheres] 4; into the latter the former, the soul that is the Seer of God, insinuates itself at a later period. This then being so, the soul that descends into us from the worlds 5 keeps time with the circuits of these worlds, while the soul from the Mind, existing in us in a spiritual fashion, is free from the whirl of

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[paragraph continues]Generation; by this the bonds of Destiny are burst asunder; by this the Path up to the spiritual Gods is brought to birth; by such a life as this is that Great Art Divine, which leads us up to That beyond the Spheres of Genesis, 1 brought to its consummation.” 2

THE COSMIC SPHERES

With regard to the nature of these Spheres, Jamblichus shows very clearly that they are not the physical planets, as may be seen from the following passages of his De Mysteriis:

“With regard to partial existences, then, I mean in the case of the soul in partial manifestation, 3 we must admit something of the kind we have above. For just such a life as the [human] soul emanated before it entered into a human body, and just such a type as it made ready for itself, just such a body, to use as an instrument, does it have attached to it, and just such a corresponding nature accompanies [this body] and receives the more perfect life the soul pours into it. But with regard to superior existences and those that surround the Source of All as perfect existences, the inferior are set within the superior, bodies in bodiless existences, things made in their makers; and the former are kept in position by the latter enclosing them in a sphere.

“The revolutions of the heavenly Bodies, 4 therefore, being from the first set in the celestial revolutions of the æthereal Soul, 5 for ever continue in this relationship; while the Souls of the [invisible] Worlds, 6 extending to their [common] Mind, are completely

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surrounded by it, and from the beginning have their birth in it. And Mind in like manner, both partially and as a whole, is also contained in superior states of existence.” 1

And again in another passage Jamblichus writes:

“We say that [the Spiritual Sun and Moon, and the rest] are so far from being contained within their Bodies, that on the contrary, it is they who contain these Bodies of theirs within the Spheres of their own vitality and energy. And so far are they from tending towards their Bodies, that the tendency of these very Bodies is towards their Divine Cause. Moreover, their Bodies do not impede the perfection of their Spiritual and Incorporeal Nature or disturb it by being situated in it.” 2

To this we may add what Proclus writes in his Commentary on the Timæus of Plato:

“Each of the [Seven] Planetary Spheres is a complete World containing a number of divine offspring, which are invisible to us, and over all of these Spheres the Star 3 we see is the Ruler. Now Fixed Stars differ from those 4 in the Planetary Spheres in that the former have but one Monad, namely, their system as a whole 5; while the latter, namely the invisible globes in each of the Planetary Spheres, which globes have an orbit of their own determined by the revolution of their respective Spheres, have a double Monad—namely, their system as a whole, 6 and that dominant characteristic which has been evolved by selection in the several spheres of the system. For since globes are secondary to Fixed Stars they require a double order of government,

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first subordination to their system as a whole, and then subordination to their respective spheres. 1 And that in each of these spheres there is a host 2 on the same level 3 with each, you may infer from the extremes. 4 For if the Fixed Sphere 5 has a host on the same level as itself, and Earth has a host of earthy animals, 6 just as the former a host of heavenly animals, 7 it is necessary that every whole 8 should have a number of animals on the same level with itself; indeed it is because of the latter fact that they are called wholes. The intermediate levels, however, are outside the range of our senses, the extremes only being visible, the one through the transcendent brilliance of its nature, the other through its kinship with ourselves.” 9

It is evident that we are here dealing with what are known to Theosophical students as the “planetary chains” of our system, and that therefore these Spheres are not the physical planets; the visible planets are

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but a very small portion of the globes of these chains, of some of which there are no globes at all visible. The ascription therefore of the “influence” of these Spheres to the sun, moon, and five of the visible planets is at best a makeshift, a “correspondence,” or a “symbolism.”

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Footnotes

285:1 The exact date of Jamblichus is very conjectural. In my sketches of the “Lives of the Later Platonists” I have suggested about A.D. 255-330. See The Theosophical Review (Aug. 1896), xviii. 462, 463.

286:1 I translate from the text of Parthey (Berlin, 1857).

286:2 The term λόγος is, of course, used technically, as a sacred or inspired sermon or course of instruction.

286:3 πάντα τὰ οἰκεῖα συγγράμματα.

286:4 Parthey here adds the following interesting note: “The Egyptian teachers of Pythagoras were Œnuphis of On (Plut., De Is. et Os., 10) and Sonchis (Clem. Al., Strom., i. 15, 69); Plato was the pupil of Sechnuphis of On (Clem. l.c.) and of Chonuphis (Plut., De Gen. Socr., 578); Democritus was taught by Pammenes of Memphis (Georg. Sync., i. 471 Dind.); Eudoxus by Chonuphis of Memphis (Plut. and Clem. ll. cc.).” To this Parthey appends a list of some of the many other famous Greeks who owed their knowledge to Egyptian teachers, viz., Alcæus, Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ, Appuleius, Archimedes, Bias, Chrysippus of Cnidus, Cleobulus, Dædalus, Decæneus, Diodorus Siculus, Ellopion, Euripides, Hecatæus of Abdera, Hecatæus of Miletus, Hellanicus, Herodotus, Homerus, Lycurgus, Melampus, Musæus, Œnopides of Chios, Orpheus, Pausanias, Pherecydes, Polybius, Simmias, Solon, Sphærus, Strabo, Telecles, Thales, Theodorus, Xenophanes of Colophon, Zamolxis. I have quoted this note on purpose to show the overpowering weight of evidence which some modern theorists have to face, in order to maintain their thesis that the philosophy of Greece was solely a native product. The universal testimony of the Greeks themselves is that all their greatest philosophers, geometricians, mathematicians, historians, geographers, and especially their theosophists, were pupils of the Egyptian Wisdom; the modern theory of the unaided evolution of philosophy on the soil of Greece, which is so universally accepted, is, to my mind, entirely erroneous. The “form” or “manner” of “philosophizing” was of course solely due to Greek genius, but the “matter” of it was of hoary antiquity. Cf. Plutarch, De Is. et Os., x.

287:1 That is to say, presumably, teachers of all without distinction of race. Op. cit., i. 1.

288:1 It is from this region of ideas that the terms “mercurial temperament,” and so forth, have reached modern times over the bridge of astrological tradition.

289:1 Porphyry (De Abs., ii. c. 55) mentions a Seleucus whom he calls a “theologist”; Suidas says that Seleucus of Alexandria wrote a treatise On the Gods, in 100 books or chapters.

289:2 Reading διαλαβόντες instead of διαβάλλοντες.

289:3 Ibid., viii. 1.

290:1 See Georgius Syncellus, Chron., i. 97, ed. Dindorf. Also Eusebius, Chron., vi.

291:1 Op. cit., viii. 2.

292:1 Ibid., viii. 4.

292:2 That is, the life of the body.

292:3 Lit. distributed to all the spheres as different.

292:4 διὰ τῆς ἱερατικῆς θεουργίας,—lit. by the theurgy known to the priests.

293:1 The Mind in its creative aspect.

293:2 Sc. This Way up to God.

293:3 See Commentary on C. H. (xvi.).

293:4 Or secret shrine.

293:5 Op. cit., viii. 5.

293:6 Ibid., x. 7.

293:7 Identified by some writers with one of the last kings of the Saïtic dynasty (the xxvith), who reigned somewhere about 570 B.C. See Thomas Taylor, Iamblichus on the Mysteries, p. 306 n. (2nd ed., London, 1895). But as there is no objective evidence by which this identification can be controlled, we simply record it.

295:1 See notes appended to the extract from Zosimus.

295:2 As has already been supposed by Hoffmann and Riess in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyklopädie, i. 1347. R. 108.

295:3 Dieterich, Jahr. f. Phil, Suppl., xvi. 753; Wessely, Denkschr. d. K. K. Akad. (1888), pp. 92, 95, 98.

295:4 King (C. W.), The Gnostics and their Remains, 2nd ed. (London, 1887), p. 421, who, however, does not document his statement.

296:1 Granger (F.), “The Poemander of Hermes Trismegistus,” in The Journal of Theological Studies, vol. v., no. 19, ap. 1904 (London), p. 398.

297:1 Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch., xx. 142.

297:2 Nat. Hist., xxviii. 6.

297:3 P. S. B. A., ibid., 256, 261.

297:4 He, however, was very well placed to have accurate knowledge on such a point.—[G. R. S. M.]

297:5 Eus., Præp. Ev., I. x. 52.

297:6 Strom., VI. iv. 37.

298:1 Especially in Book VIII., which is entirely devoted to an exposition of Hermaïc doctrine, and ought perhaps to be here translated in full. I have, however, preferred to select the passages definitely characterized by Jamblichus as Hermaïc.

298:2 Who must be read in the original and not in the inelegant and puzzling version of Taylor, the only English translation.

298:3 The Second Mind according to “The Shepherd.”

298:4 The Seven Spheres of the Harmony.

298:5 The Seven Spheres.

299:1 πρὸς τὸ ἀγέννητον.

299:2 Op. cit., viii. 6.

299:3 That is, as an individual soul and not as the world-soul.

299:4 Physical planets.

299:5 Of all of our visible system?

299:6 That is to say, the seven spheres.

300:1 Op. cit., i. 8.

300:2 Ibid., i. 17.

300:3 That is, visible planet.

300:4 That is, perhaps, the invisible globes.

300:5 Lit. their wholeness.

300:6 In our case the whole solar system.

301:1 Or, as one would say in modern Theosophical terms, to their planetary chains.

301:2 Hierarchy.

301:3 σύστοιχον.

301:4 That is to say, we may infer from the fixed stars (or suns) and from the globes which we can see (i.e. the visible planets), the manner of those we cannot see.

301:5 The sphere of fixed stars or suns.

301:6 That is to say, all the visible globes (vulgo planets) of our system as a whole. An “animal” means a “living thing”; so that here “earthy animals” mean the living vehicles of the heavenly beings which we so erroneously call “heavenly bodies.”

301:7 That is to say, suns or solar systems.

301:8 Here whole means plane.

301:9 That is to say, the brilliant light of the suns in space, and the reflected light of the physical globes of the planetary spheres of our system. See Proclus, Commentarius in Platonis Timæum, Bk. iv., p. 279 D, E, p. 676, ed. Schneider (Vratislaviæ, 1847). The passage is very difficult to translate because of its technical nature. Taylor, in his translation (London, 1820, ii. 281, 282), misses nearly every point.

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III.

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JULIAN THE EMPEROR 1

Text: ap. Cyril, Contra Julianum, v. 176; Migne, col. 770 A. See also Neumann (C. I.), Juliani Imperatoris Librorum contra Christianos quæ supersunt (Leipzig, 1880), p. 193. 2

THE DISCIPLES OF WISDOM

That God, however, has not cared for the Hebrews only, [but rather] that in His love for all nations He hath bestowed on them [sc. the Hebrews] nothing worth very serious attention, whereas He has given us far greater and superior gifts, consider from what will follow. The Egyptians, counting up of their own race the names of not a few sages, can also say they have had many who have followed in the steps 3 of Hermes. I mean of the Third Hermes who used to come down 4 [to them] in Egypt. The Chaldæans [also can tell of] the [disciples] of Oannes and of Belus;

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and the Greeks of tens of thousands [who have the Wisdom] from Cheiron. 1 For it is from him that they derived their initiation into the mysteries of nature, and their knowledge of divine things; so that indeed [in comparison] the Hebrews seem only to give themselves airs about their own [attainments].

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Here we learn from Julian that the Third Hermes, the Hermes presumably of our Sermons, was known, by those initiated into the Gnosis, to be no physical historical Teacher, but a Teaching Power or Person, who taught from within spiritually.

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Footnotes

303:1 Julian the Emperor reigned 360-363 A.D. It was during the last year of his reign that he wrote Contra Christianos.

303:2 Also Taylor (Thomas), The Arguments of the Emperor Julian against the Christians (London, 1809), p. 36.

303:3 Lit. “from the succession” (διαδοχῆς).

303:4 ἐπιφοιτήσαντος,—“to come habitually to”; ἐπιφοίτησις is used of the “coming upon one,” or inspiration of a God.

304:1 Partially quoted by Reitzenstein (p. 175, n. 1).

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IV.

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FULGENTIUS THE MYTHOGRAPHER 1

An intermediate of the parent copy of our Corpus in every probability lay before Fulgentius. Thus we find him (p. 26, 18 H 2) referring to the first sermon, though barbarously enough, in the phrase: “Hermes in Opinandre libro,” and quoting from the introductory words; he also quotes (p. 88, 3) some words from C. H., xii. (xiii.), stupidly referring them to Plato, adding in Greek:

FRAGMENT XXVIII.

The human mind is god; if it be good, God [then] doth shower His benefits [upon us].

And twice (p. 85, 21, and p. 74, 11) Fulgentius refers in all probability to the lost ending of “The Definitions of Asclepius,” in the latter passage telling us, “as Hermes Trismegistus says,” that there were three kinds of music,—namely “adomenon, psallomenon, aulumenon,”—that is, singing, harping, and piping.

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Footnotes

305:1 The date of this Afro-Latin writer cannot be later than the sixth century.

305:2 Helm (R.), Fabii Planciadis Fulgentii V. C. Opera (Leipzig, 1898).

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p. 307

IV

Conclusion

p. 308

p. 309

AN ATTEMPT AT CLASSIFYING THE EXTANT LITERATURE

Before we proceed to append our concluding remarks, it will be as well to set down some attempt at classifying our extant sermons and fragments. Unfortunately, however, this cannot be done in any scientific manner, owing to the fact that the literature, even were it fully before us, would be found to be too chaotic. Indeed, even with our fragmentary information concerning it, we are acquainted with no less than four unrelated Corpora—those that lay before Lactantius, Cyril, and Stobæus, and our own imperfect Corpus of Byzantine tradition. There must also have been other Corpora or collections, as, for instance, the books that Jamblichus used, not to mention the ancient body of MSS. which lay before Petosiris and Nechepso.

OF HERMES

First and foremost, standing in a class by itself, must be placed:

C. H. i.—“The Pœmandres.”

This is the fundamental Gospel of the School, the Self-instruction of the Hermes-or Master-grade.

With it, as based upon it in general type, though not in form, must be taken:

C. H. xi. (xii.).—“Mind unto Hermes.”

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This is of later date, but still it must have been comparatively early, for it introduces the Æon-doctrine, which must be early, and is the esoteric instruction on the doctrines laid down in C. H. iv. (v.)—“The Cup”—which was perhaps regarded as the most important sermon after “The Pœmandres.”

Of the lost early literature we can get no clear indication; it may, however, be mentioned that the “Sayings of Agathodaimon” referred to in the Tat Sermon, C. H. xii. (xiii.), probably belonged to the most archaic deposit of the Trismegistic literature, and may be compared with the “Sayings of Ammon” mentioned by Justin Martyr. These belonged, presumably, originally solely to the Hermes-grade.

With the same type as the conclusion of the “Pœmandres” in its present form, that is to say with a later development, we must classify:

C. H. iii. (iv.).—“The Sacred Sermon”; and
C. H. vii. (viii).—“Whither stumble ye.”

Here also, for lack of a more satisfactory heading, we must place:

Ex. xxii.—“An Apophthegm of Hermes.”
Ex. xxiv.—“A Hymn of the Gods.”
Frag. xxvi.—From “The Inner Door.”
Frag. xxvii—“For Our Mind saith.”

The last being probably from one of the oldest deposits of the literature.

The next most convenient heading for classification is that under which we can place the greatest number of pieces, namely:

TO TAT

We know that the Tat-instruction was divided into

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[paragraph continues](a) “The General Sermons,” of which C. H. x. (xi.)—“The Key”—is said to be the epitome or rather summation; and (b) “The Expository Sermons,” of which C. H. xiii. (xiv.)—“The Secret Sermon on the Mountain”—was the consummation.

It is, of course, not certain whether the Tat Sermons were divided simply into these two classes, for though we are certain in a number of instances that we are dealing with an extract from an Expository Sermon, we are often in doubt when the heading is only “From the Sermon,” or “Sermons to Tat,” how to classify it. We do not know how many General Sermons there may have been, or whether they were divided into Books as were the Expository Sermons and the “To Asclepius,” at anyrate in the Corpus of Cyril. For convenience of classification, however, we may consider, though perfectly arbitrarily, that all the sermons and fragments which cannot fall under the heading of “Expository” may be treated as “General.”

The General Sermons

C. H. (ii.).—“The General Sermon.” 1
C. H. viii (ix.).—“That No One of Existing Things do Perish.”
Ex. x.—“Concerning the Rule of Providence.” 2
Ex. xi.—“Of Justice.” 3
Ex. xx.—“The Power of Choice.”
Fragg. vi and vii.
C. H. x. (xi.).—“The Key.”

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This last is stated to be the epitome or summation of “The General Sermons.” It is addressed to both Asclepius and Tat, and is to be taken in connection with “The Perfect Sermon.”

The Expository Sermons

Of these there were in the Corpus of Cyril three Books—to the First of which are assigned:

Fragg. xx. (?), xxii., xxiii., xxiv.
Ex. ii. and Fragg. iii., xi., xii., xv. 1

To be assigned to “The Expository Sermons” in general without any clearer indications:

Exx. iii. (?).—“Of Truth.” 2
Ex. iv. 3
Exx. v., vi., vii., viii., ix. 4
Ex. i.—“Of Piety and True Philosophy.” 5

From the Corpus Hermeticum we may conjecturally assign the following to this class:

C. H. iv. (v.).—“The Cup.” 6
C. H. v. (vi.).—“Though Manifest.”
C. H. vii. (viii.).—“About the Common Mind.” 7

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Finally, the whole course of these “Expository Sermons” is consummated by what we may call “The Initiation of Tat”:

C. H. xiii. (xiv.).—“The Secret Sermon on the Mountain.”

We next pass on to what Cyril calls the “To Asclepius,” of which, as of “The Expository Sermons, there were in his Corpus at least Three Books.

TO ASCLEPIUS

In our Corpus Hermeticum the following are assigned to Asclepius:

C. H. ii. (iii.). “An Introduction to the Gnosis of the Nature of All Things.”
C. H. vi. (vii.).—“In God Alone is Good.”
C. H. ix. (x.).—“About Sense.” 1
C. H. xiv. (xv.).—“A Letter to Asclepius.” 2

From the “To Asclepius” in Cyril’s collection we have:

Frag. xxv. (?).

And definitely from the Third “To Asclepius”:

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Fragg. xvi.-xviii.

In this Third Book it is probable that “The Perfect Sermon” was included in Cyril’s Corpus. This sermon, which is the longest we possess, was evidently originally addressed to Asclepius alone, for its alternative title is par excellence “The Asclepius,” and my conjecture that the introduction of the “holy three”—Asclepius, Tat and Ammon—is due to a later editor, is amply borne out by all the evidence. We may thus well conclude our list with:

“The Perfect Sermon.”

For the fragments of the lost Greek original of this important tractate, see Lactantius:

Fragg. v., viii., ix., x.

This Sermon is to be taken in close connection with “The Key” which sums up “The General Sermons” to Tat.

TO AMMON

Stobæus ascribes eight of his extracts to a Book or Books of his collection entitled “To Ammon.” These excerpts, however, would seem to be more appropriately classified under “Sermons to Tat.” As, however, Johannes distinctly so describes them, we will append them here.

Exx. xii, xiii.
Exx. xiv.-xix.—“Of Soul,” i.-vi.

Exx. xvi.-xix. follow one another in the text of the Excerpts by Stobæus; as Ex. xviii., however, refers to “The General Sermons,” it therefore would make us suppose that either we are here dealing with “The Expository Sermons” to Tat, or that the Ammon-grade had already had communicated to them “The General Sermons.”

The above are the four types of Trismegistic Sermons

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proper, and we next turn to the writings of the Disciples of Hermes.

OF ASCLEPIUS

It is remarkable that Asclepius, the most learned of the Three, writes his treatises and letters, not to philosophers or priests, or students, nor yet to his younger brother Tat—but invariably to the King or to Kings. He invariably writes to “Ammon”; and the once existing literature of this class was a very rich one, if we can believe the writer or redactor of C. H. (xvi.). The fragments that remain, however, are by no means numerous, and include:

C. H. (xvi.).—“The Definitions of Asclepius.” 1
Frag. iv.—Probably from the lost ending of above.
C. H. (xvii.).—“Of Asclepius to the King.” 2
Ex. xxi. (?)—which may, perhaps, be more correctly headed “Of Asclepius to the King” instead of with Stobæus “Of Isis to Horus.”

To neither Tat nor Ammon are tractates assigned; for when Tat is perfected he becomes in his turn Hermes, and so writes as Hermes, while Ammon is the man of action and affairs who does not teach. May we further from these phenomena conclude that “Asclepius” was the man who was skilled in theory and intellectual grasp, but was not capable of direct illumination as was Tat?

The next class of literature falls under the heading:

OF ISIS

Whether or not the forms of this literature which we possess are contemporaneous with or later than

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the Tat and Asclepius Sermons, we cannot say; but in any case they are based on ancient types—the “Books of Isis to Horus.” To this type we assign:

Ex. xxi.—“Of Isis to Horus.”

Though, as we have suggested above, this is an error of Johannes, and should be rather “Of Asclepius to the King.”

Ex. xxiii.—“From Aphrodite.”

Where Aphrodite probably equates with Isis.

Exx. xxv., xxvi.—“The Virgin of the World.”
Ex. xxvii.—“From the Sermon of Isis to Horus.”

The remaining class of literature is connected with the name of Osiris as the Disciple of Agathodaimon, the Thrice-greatest, and may be headed as:

FROM THE AGATHODAIMON LITERATURE

Our fragments are all taken from Cyril’s Corpus, and are referred to by him under the heading “To Asclepius.” We have, however, not included them under this heading in our tentative classification, because they are plainly not addressed to Asclepius, but belong to a quite different form of literature, most probably throwing back to an ancient type of the same nature as the “Books of Isis.” To this class are to be assigned:

Fragg. xiii., xiv., xix., xxi.

This form may be perhaps more appropriately taken with the “Sayings of Agathodaimon” and the “Sayings of Ammon” as Agathodaimon; both of which pertain to the oldest types of the Trismegistic literature.

Finally, we add the appendix to our Corpus written by a Pœmandrist rhetor and apologist:

C. H. (xviii.).—“The Encomium of Kings.”

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[paragraph continues]This may be taken with the quotation from the editor of Cyril’s Corpus of XV. Books.

And so we come to the end of our tentative classification; with the full conviction, however, that as no one at the time when the literature was extant in a number of Corpora and collections of all sorts attempted to classify it, so now that we have only the flotsam and jetsam of this once abundantly rich cargo before us, no inventory can be made that is of the slightest scientific value, and we can at best offer the reader a few sorted heaps of disjecta membra of varying dates.

OF JUDGMENTS OF VALUE

We now approach the conclusion of our task, but with the feeling that the whole matter should be put aside for years before any attempt be made to set down any judgments of value. We are as yet too much involved in a maze of details to be able to extricate ourselves into the clear space in which we can walk at ease round the labyrinth and view it from a general and detached point of view.

Nevertheless, we will endeavour to set down some general impressions of our experiences in the labyrinth—of the many windings we have had to traverse, and the many places with no way out into which we have been led by following the paths of history and criticism; out of which there has been time and again no egress, even when holding fast to the thread of light woven out of the illuminating rays of the doctrines of the tradition.

It is indeed a difficult task to stand with the feet of the mind set firm on the surface of objectivity, and with the head and heart of it in the heights and depths of the subjective and unmanifest. And yet this almost superhuman task is the Great Work set before every scholar of the Gnosis—the man who would think truly

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and judge justly, viewing the matter from all standpoints, and appraising it from without and within, from above and below, endeavouring to unite centre and circumference in a blended intuitional sense that transcends our divided senses and intellect.

The Trismegistic literature is scripture, and to its understanding we must bring all and every faculty that the best minds of to-day are bringing to bear upon the special scripture which each one may believe to be the most precious legacy from the Past to the Present.

Now the application of what is called “criticism” to scripture is the wielding of a two-edged sword; this sword is not only two-edged, but it is fiery. If it is rightly used, it will disperse the hosts of error and hew a path into the Paradise of Truth; but if it is wrongly used, it will react on the daring soul that attempts to grasp it, and he will find in it the flaming brand in the hands of the Angel-Warden that keeps him from the Gate of Heaven.

Criticism, which is regarded with such fear and trembling by some, and is sneered at and despised by others, is the sword that the Christ has brought on earth in these latter days. There is now war in the members of the faithful, war within them, such war as they cannot escape, if God has given them a mind with which to reason. Every man of intelligence who loves his own special scripture, is keenly aware of the war within his members—head against heart and heart against head, form against substance and substance against form. This is keenly felt by those who love their own special Bible; but how few can enter into the feelings of another who loves with equal fervour some other Bible? Who can be really fair to any other man’s religion? And by this we do not mean an absolutely lifeless indifference, in which the head

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alone is concerned—for there are not a few men of this type who deal with the comparative science of religion—but a lively sympathy that knows that the other man’s religion is the highest thing on earth for him, and the light-giving revelation of God’s Wisdom.

THE SONS OF GOD

In treating of the “Religion of the Mind,” of the Gnosis of Thrice-greatest Hermes, I have endeavoured to enter into it as I conceive the Disciples of that Way entered into it, with love and reverence. I would do the same with any other of the Great Religions of Humanity (and have done so in some cases), if I desired fervently, all prejudices and predilections apart, I will not say, to understand it—for what mortal mind can grasp the Divine Revelation in any of its Great Forms?—but to share, however imperfectly, in its illumination. Now, this attitude of mind and love of God and man is strongly deprecated by those who fear to stand accused of lack of loyalty to their own particular form of that Great Form of Faith which God has given for their guidance. The one object of their enquiries into other Great Forms of Faith is to “prove” that their own small form of the Great Form to which they give allegiance, is the end of all ends, and the highest of all heights, and that the other countless forms are of the Enemy of their God. My God, or rather God, for He is the Father of all, has no enemies; He has many sons, all brethren, and loves them equally even though they refuse to believe Him. There is but one Religion, its Great Forms are many, the forms of these Forms are innumerable, as many as are the individual minds and hearts of men, and the many hearts and minds of individual man.

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And here I would set forth my present all-insufficient notion of the Great Form of Religion known as Christianity, for there will doubtless be some who read these volumes who will accuse me of I know not what attitude other than that of their own to that Faith.

My faith in the Master of Christendom is unbounded; I dare not limit it or qualify it—for that Master is for me the Mind of all master-hood, Pœmandres Himself. For how can any small mind of man dare to limit the Illimitable, the Mystery of all mysteries, that enfolded Jesus the Christ, and Gautama the Buddha, and Zoroaster the Mage, and Lao-tze the Sage, and Orpheus the Bard, and Pythagoras the Philosopher, and Hermes the Gnostic, and all and every Master and Master of masters? Do I detract from the transcendency of Jesus the Christ, when I mention His Brethren, all Sons of God? I do not, for the Sons of God are not separate and apart, set over one against the other; they are all one Sonship of the Father, and these apparent differences must be left to those who think themselves wise enough to judge between them—instructed enough to know the within of the matter as well as the without, which in no case has come down to us in any but the most fragmentary and erroneous tradition. I do not know; I dare not judge those who are Judges of the quick and dead. And so I leave this audacity to those who would forget the logos of their Saviour: “Judge not.”

If, nevertheless, I am still judged as a “calumniator” by some, it is but natural injustice and quite understandable. There is, however, no real Injustice in the universe, and he who would be Justified and rise again with Osiris, must balance mortal seeming justice and injustice to reach the true equilibrium, and so be free of mortal opinion, and stand in the Hall of Truth. It is to the bar of this Judgment Hall that all men in

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the last resort appeal, whether they be born Christian or Mahommedan, Brāhman or Jew, Buddhist or Taoist, Zoroastrian or Pagan—or whether they be born to a manner of faith that is none of these, or to an ideal of faith that includes them all.

Christianity is the Faith of the Western World—the Faith most suited to it in nature and in form. He who gave that Faith, gave in fullest abundance through many sources; and the greatest sign of His authority, of His authentia, was the throwing open of some part of the age-long secret mystery-teaching to the many without distinction of age, sex, class, caste, colour, or nation, or of instruction. The inner doors of the Temple were thrown wide open to the Amme-ha-aretz; but the innermost door still remained closed, for it is a door that is not man-made—it opens into the within of things, and not into some inner court of formal instruction. That door still remained naturally closed to the unworthy and unknowing; but no Scribe or Pharisee of the established order of things could any longer keep the key thereof in his selfish hands. The key was given to all, but given still mystically, for it is hidden in the inner nature of each son of man, and if he seek not in himself, searching into the depths of his own nature, he will never find it. That key is the opener of the Gate of the Gnosis, the complement and syzygy and spouse of Faith; the virile husband of the woman-side of the Christ-Religion.

In the early days that Gnosis was given in greatest fullness; Faith there was, Faith in mighty abundance, but there was also Gnosis; and it was because of this Gnosis of not a few that the Faith of the many was so intense. But over these mysterious days, and the inner in-working of the Mystery, a veil has been drawn to hide the holy operations from profane eyes

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[paragraph continues]So that to-day, these many centuries after, the foolish of the Faith deny there was ever a Gnosis; just as their still more foolish predecessors persecuted the Gnostics of Christ and howled them down as Antichrists and First-born Sons of Satan. The natural veil was thus drawn over the too bright light of the Sacred Marriage when Heaven had kissed the Earth once more.

So great, then, is my faith in the authentia of the Master, so great my assurance of the wisdom of His Gnosis. If this be thought “calumny” of His transcendency, then we are judged “calumniators” with Hermes, a Knower of the Mystery, and so complimented immeasurably beyond our deserts.

CONCERNING DATES

And now let us turn to the Religion of the Mind, which is also the Religion of the Heart—for is not Thoth Lord of the heart of man?

In the first place we have endeavoured faithfully to investigate every statement or suggestion that can be thought to be indicative of date, and we have not succeeded in any single instance in fixing a precise date for any sermon or fragment. What, however, we have been able to do, is to clear the ground of many false opinions, and to show the insecurity, if not the absurdity, of any attempt at precision. Every hypothesis of precision of date, when that hypothesis has favoured a late date for any sermon, has broken down. Whenever there has been a clearer indication, as, for instance, in the case of the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Pœmandres of Hermes, it has thrown the time-period backwards and not forwards.

What has been proved, and amply proved, however, is that our literature goes back in an unbroken tradition of type and form and content to the earliest Ptolemaic

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times. The earliest forms of this literature are lost, but clear records of its nature remain. Of the extant literature there are specimens of varying date, though how they should be ordered is by no means clear; what, however, is clear is that some of our documents are at least contemporaneous with the earliest writings of Christianity.

In the “Prolegomena” we have established an unbroken line of tradition in which Gnosis and Mystery-teaching have been handed down through pre-Christian, Pagan and Jewish, and through Christian hands. We have further shown that the Gnosis of our Trismegistic documents is a simpler form than that of the great doctors of the Christianised Gnosis, Basilides and Valentinus, who flourished in the first quarter of the second century. The earlier of our sermons, therefore, represent one of the main streams, perhaps the main stream, of the Unchristianised Gnosis. We have further shown that, together with many other schools, both our Pœmandrists and the writers of the New Testament documents use a common theological or theosophical nomenclature, and have a common body of ideas.

What is clear from all this is that there is no plagiarism, no deliberate copying, no logoklopia of other men’s secrets, though there was the freest drawing on a common fund. The condition of affairs and the nature of the problems involved are such, that any theory of plagiarism at once becomes a two-edged sword; he who says that Trismegisticism copied from Christianity, can at once have his argument reversed into the form that Christianity copied from Trismegisticism.

As to date, then, we are dealing with a period when there was as yet no divorcement between Gnosis and Faith even in Christianity itself, and therefore the

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canons of judgment erected in later times by ecclesiastical self-limitation cannot be made to apply.

THE BLEND OF TRADITIONS

The view of General Christianity, gradually narrowed down by the Church Fathers into dogmatic Nicene Christianity, looked to one tradition only as the schoolmaster of the Faith—the tradition of Israel as the God-favoured Folk. Nevertheless it was the fair Greek tongue and the Greek method of thought that were used in evolving this special dispensation into a world-cult for the many.

The Trismegistic tradition laboured under no such limitation; its sympathies were more catholic. It is true that its main source was in Egypt, but it embraced with whole-hearted affection the wisdom of Hellas and the genius of Greece which were developed under Divine Providence to teach the Western Nations the glory and beauty of the mind. At the same time its sympathies were not divorced from the tradition of the Hebrews, though it refused to set them apart from the rest of humanity, and looked rather to the great river of wisdom in the Books of the Chaldæans, Persians, Medes, and Parthians, than to the single stream shut off in the Books of Israel. The spirit of our Trismegistic writings is the same as that which inspired the Pagan and Jewish and Christian Gnostic scribes of the Naassene Document, all of whom believed that there was but one Mystery which all the mystery-institutions of the world attempted to adumbrate.

If, then, we were to say for the sake of convenience that our Trismegistic writings enshrine the Wisdom of Egypt in Greek tradition, we should not divorce that Wisdom from the Wisdom of the Chaldæans and the rest. The Wisdom was one, the forms were many; and both

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[paragraph continues]Egypt and Chaldæa looked back to an Archaic Gnosis that was the common mother of their most ancient forms of Mystery-teaching.

And if we say that this Wisdom. has come down to us in Greek tradition, we should ever remember that this Græcising or philosophising has to do with the form and not with the substance. For whence did Thales and Pythagoras and Plato draw the inspiration for their philosophy or love of wisdom; was it not from Egypt? At anyrate so say the Greeks themselves without a single dissentient voice. And can we think that the Greeks, who were always so proud of their own achievements and boasted their own genius so loudly, would have given the palm of wisdom to Egypt had they not been compelled by overwhelming evidence to do so? But this does not mean that we are to deprive Hellas of her just laurels. Hellas was the mother of philosophy in the sense of systematic thinking and the development of the analytic reason. This is her great virtue and honour; independent research, and the piercing analysis of the intellect and the beauty of clear thinking in excellent expression, were her gifts to the Western world. It was she beyond the other nations that created for herself a subtler vehicle of thought for the manifestation of the powers of mental analysis. That, however, is not necessarily in itself wisdom, but the perfecting of an instrument whereby wisdom, if it be attained by other means, may be the more clearly expressed for those in whom the analytic faculties are being developed.

Wisdom transcends this mode of mind; for ratiocination is not ecstasis, the practical intelligence is not the contemplative mind. Nor is mind, using it as contrasted with the other faculties and energies and

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powers in man, the only or even the highest thing in man. This Secret of the Sphinx Egypt had possessed for millennia; so that her priests could say to Solon: “You Greeks are all children”—for the intellect in Greece was young, though destined to grow into a giant; whereas the hoary Gnosis of the heart of man was prior to the æons, and will continue when the æons shall cease.

That Gnosis of Man still awaits decipherment in Egypt; it is hidden in her glyphs and symbols and holy signs. But that Gnosis will never yield its secret to those who persist in interpreting these symbols of the Language of the Gods into their lower forms, forms intended for children and not for men. And indeed our Trismegistic sermons, if they should teach us nothing else, can at least assure us of this, for their writers were still ear to mouth with the Living Voice of that once Great Church of Wisdom. Our Pœmandrists knew what the mystery-tradition inculcated; they knew, for they had been within the holy shrines.

At anyrate for my part I prefer to believe their view of the matter, than to listen to the contemptuous patronage of modern conceit bred of complete ignorance of the manifold natures and powers and energies in man.

OF INITIATION

Indeed the whole of this theosophy of Egypt, as indeed of the theosophy of all climes and times, was intended to lead a man up the stairway of perfectioning, to the portals of the first true natural initiation, whereby he becomes superman, or, as Hermes would say, at last and in truth “man” and not a “procession of Fate.” Beyond that stage are many others too sublime for us in any way to understand; and it is just because

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of their sublimity that we do not understand and so we “interpret” things of the height into the lowest notions and opinions of the most limited things of sense. For beyond the superman stage comes the Christ, and then—but who shall speak of that which transcends even perfected master-hood?

And by initiation, in this sense, we do not mean probationary forms of drama and of instruction, “of things said and done,” but a natural thing and process, all that which the Christ of Christendom has laboured to inculcate with so much wisdom even in the blurred record that has come down to us. To this initiation a man may come without a physical guide or the help of any tradition of formal ceremony. Nevertheless, he would indeed be foolish who should say that the greater mystery-institutions which have been established by wise teachers and the Providence of God, have been or are of no effect.

On the contrary, the disciple of wisdom will study every record of such institutions accessible to him, and ponder on their marvellous multiplicity, and marvel at the infinite modes devised to play the pedagogue, that so man may be brought unto his God. Nevertheless, if he has not the love and wit to study such things, he should not despair, for is he not already in the Outer Court of the Temple, if he would but lift up his eyes to see the mysteries of the universe that surround him on every side?

We all are babes in the Womb of the Great Mother; how long we continue as babes, as embryos, remains for each of us to decide. For in this Birth the Mother alone cannot bear all the pains of labour; we too must help and strive and struggle and dare to breathe within her holy Womb, so as to accustom our dead lungs to expand, before the Great Birth can be accomplished, and we can at length walk forth into the Inner

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[paragraph continues]World erect upon our feet and draw in at every pore and in every atom its pure air without fear. But this Inner World is no thin shadow of the outer world, as it may appear to us in the dark night of our present ignorance; it is the Inner Cosmos, not the inner earth. Rapts and visions may let us see some mysteries of the inner earth, but not the mysteries of Earth, much less the Divine Mysteries of Cosmos.

Nor is there any need to label these things with precise terms, for now even the most experienced in such vision can know but in part; whereas then we shall know the Fullness, face to face, without a parable. But knowing this, who shall tell the Mystery, who can tell the Mystery—for is not the whole of Nature telling us this Mystery now at every moment with infinite voices from infinite mouths, and yet we hear nothing? For is not the whole creation designed with this one purpose to tell every son of man that he is of Light and Life and only happens to be out of them, as Hermes says?

A LAST WORD

But it is very possible that some who have done me the honour of reading to the end, will say: “This man is a dreamer, an ecstatic; we have no use for such in the hard world of rigid facts that confront us in our everyday life!”

But indeed I have little time for dreams and ecstasies in the sense in which my supposed critics would use the words, as any one may see who can realise the labour that has been expended on these volumes, nine-tenths of which are filled with translations and commentaries, criticisms and notes, in which dreams and ecstasies have no part, but only strenuous co-labour of mind and soul and body. And that is just the carrying out of what I hold to be the true doctrine of practical

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mysticism, or if objection be taken by the reader to that much ill-used word, of the Great Work of life. It is true that it is almost impossible to talk of these high or deep things except in language that in every expression and in every word is liable to misconstruction. For even when we call them high things, they are not high in space or place, but rather in the sense that they are of greater intensity than the shows and appearances of opinion that form the surfaces or superficialities of our world of normal conditioning.

Spirit in itself is not superior to mind, or mind to soul, or soul to body; each and all must work together according to their proper dignity, nature, and energy, in perfect equilibrium in the perfect man. They are not descending degrees of some one thing, but are mutually in some mysterious way all aspects of one another.

For should we regard them as quantitatively distinguished solely, then we should be looking at them from the point of view of divided body alone; or should we regard them as qualitatively distinguished, then we should be looking at them from the point of view of separated soul alone; or should we regard them as logically distinguished, then we should be regarding them from the standpoint of the formal reason solely; while if we should look at them as wholes monadically and synthetically, we should be regarding them from an abstract and not a vital view-point.

Nevertheless they are all each of other, the same in difference and different in the same. Their source and middle and their end is Man, and Man alone can reach unto the Gnosis of God.

And therefore we may conclude with the daring counsel given unto Hermes by the Mind—a doctrine fit for Men.

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“If, then, thou dost not make thyself like unto God, thou canst not know Him. For like is knowable to like alone.

“Make thou thyself to grow to the same stature as the Greatness which transcends all measure; leap forth from every Body; transcend all Time; become Eternity; and then shalt thou know God.

“Conceiving nothing is impossible unto thyself, think thyself deathless and able to know all—all arts, all sciences, the way of every life.

“Become more lofty than all height, and lower than all depth. Collect into thyself all senses of all creatures—of fire and water, dry and moist. Think that thou art at the same time in every place—in earth, in sea, in sky; not yet begotten, in the womb, young, old, and dead, in after-death conditions.

“And if thou knowest all these things at once—times, places, doings, qualities, and quantities; thou canst know God.”

This is the Straight Way, the Good’s Own Path, the Ancient Road.

“If thou but sett’st thy foot thereon, ’twill meet thee everywhere, ’twill anywhere be seen, both where and when thou dost expect it not—waking, sleeping, sailing, journeying, by night, by day, speaking, and saying naught. For there is naught that is not image of the Good.”

And so for the present writing we bid farewell to Thrice-greatest Hermes and the teachings of his Mind, the Shepherd of all men—with heart-felt thanks that by the Mercy of God the echo of his voice has come to us across the ages and bidden us once more remember.

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Footnotes

311:1 The text has bodily fallen out of our Corpus with one of the quires.

311:2 This seems to be a complete sermon, and to be presupposed in C. H. xii. (xiii.); as also Ex. xi.

311:3 Exx. x.-xiii. probably go here as being part of the “Sermons on Fate to Tat”; but they are assigned otherwise by Stobæus.

312:1 These all seem to go together from the same Sermon or Book, which in the case of Frag. xv. is definitely assigned by Cyril to the “First of the Expository Sermons.” The beginning of the Sermon is given in Lact. xxiv., and a reference in Lact. xiii.

312:2 Seems to be a complete tractate.

312:3 By comparison with Ex. vii.

312:4 Ex. ix. is characterised as “the most authoritative and chiefest of them all,” and therefore came, presumably, at the end of one of the Books of these Sermons.

312:5 A complete tractate, containing heads or summaries of previous sermons, and probably one towards the end of this collection.

312:6 The esoteric counterpart of which is C. H. xi. (xii.).

312:7 These three sermons are too advanced to be classed among “The General Sermons,” and in the case of the last, Tat is a questioner and not a hearer as he indubitably was in the introductory instruction.

313:1 This is said to follow on “The Perfect Sermon,” which was not included in our Corpus among the selections of the Pœmandrist apologist who redacted it.

313:2 This is said by the editor to be an expansion of an instruction already given to Tat, in Asclepius’ absence, and the doctrine is very similar to that contained in C. H. xi. (xii.)—“Mind unto Hermes.” It also stood in Cyril’s (viii.) “To Asclepius.”

315:1 The end is lost.

315:2 A fragment only from the end of the sermon is preserved.

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