Hellenic · Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I · 11 of 15
Plutarch: Concerning the Mysteries of Isis and Osiris (Part 2)
The above prayers afford us some striking examples of the popular Hellenistic form of the Hermes religion, 5
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
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,—
[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.
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
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
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
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.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
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.
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
[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
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
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
[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.
“‘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.
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
[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
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
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
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
[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
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
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
[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.
[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
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
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
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
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
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,
[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
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
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
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
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]
[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.
“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.
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).
Gnosticism and Hermetica
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
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
[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
[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;
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
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
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
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,
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
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
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.
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.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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—
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
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
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—
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
“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
(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.
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
[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
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
[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
(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
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
[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
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
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:
“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
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
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
(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
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
[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
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)
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
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.
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].
(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
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
[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.
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
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:
“[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
[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.
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—
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
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
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!
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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!
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
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,
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
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,
[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
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.).