Plutarch: Concerning the Mysteries of Isis and Osiris (Part 5)

2. Moreover, we shall make Eudoxus 2 cease to disbelieve and be perplexed, how it is neither Demeter who has charge of love-affairs but Isis, nor Dionysus who has the power either to make the Nile increase or to rule over the dead [but Osiris].

3. For we think that by one Common Reason (Logos) 1 these Gods have been ordained over every domain of good; and every fair and good thing possible for nature owes its origin to their means,—[Osiris] giving [them] their origins and [Isis] receiving and distributing [them].

Footnotes

345:2 Cf. lxii. et al.

346:1 Parallel to “Common Sense.”

Gnosticism and Hermetica

AGAINST THE WEATHER AND VEGETATION GOD THEORIES

LXV. 1. And we shall also get our hands on the dull crowd who take pleasure in associating the [mystic recitals] about these Gods either with changes of the atmosphere according to the seasons, or with the generation of the corn and sowings and ploughings, and in saying that Osiris is buried when the sown corn is hidden by the earth, and comes to life and shows himself again when it begins to sprout.

2. For which cause also [they declare] that Isis, on feeling she is pregnant, ties an amulet round her [neck] on the sixth day of the first half of the month Phaōphi; 2 and that Harpocrates is brought forth about the winter solstice imperfect and infant in the things that sprout too early. 3

3. For which cause they offer him first-fruits of growing lentils, and they keep the days of thanks for safe delivery after the spring equinox.

4. For they love to hear these things and believe them, drawing conviction from things immediately at hand and customary.

LXVI. 1. Still there is nothing to complain of if

[only], in the first place, they cherish the Gods in common with ourselves, and do not make them peculiar to Egyptians, either by characterising Nile and only the land that Nile waters by these names, or, by saying that marshes and lotuses and god-making [are their monopoly], deprive the rest of mankind who have no Nile or Butō or Memphis, of [the] Great Gods.

2. Indeed, all [men] have Isis and know her and the Gods of her company; for though they learned not long ago to call some of them by names known among the Egyptians, still they knew and honoured the power of each [of them] from the beginning.

3. In the second place, and what is more important—they should take very good heed and be apprehensive lest unwittingly they write-off the sacred mysteries and dissolve them into winds and streams, and sowing and ploughings, and passions of earth and changes of seasons.

4. As those who [say] that Dionysus is wine and Hephæstus flame, and Persephone, as Cleanthes says somewhere, the wind that drives through the crops and is killed; and [as] some poet says of the reapers:

Then when they, lusty, cut Demeter’s limbs. 1

5. For these in nothing differ from those who regard a pilot as sails and ropes and anchor, and a weaver as yarns and threads, and a physician as potions and honey-brew and barley-water; nay, they put into men’s minds dangerous and atheistic notions, by transferring names of Gods to natures and to things that have no sense or soul, and which are necessarily destroyed by men according to their need and use. For it is not possible to consider such things in themselves as Gods.

LXVII. 1. For a God is not a thing without a mind or soul, or one made subject to the hand of man; but it

is from these things that we deduce that those who bestow them on us for our use and offer them [to us] in perpetual abundance, are Gods.

2. Not different [Gods] for different peoples, not non-Greek and Greek, not southern and northern [Gods]; but just as sun and moon and earth and sea [are] common to all [men], though they are called by different names by different peoples, so of the Reason (Logos) that orders all things, and of one Providence that also directs powers ordained to serve under her for all [purposes], have different honours and titles been made according to their laws by different [nations].

3. And there are consecrated symbols, some obscure ones and others more plain, guiding the intelligence towards the mysteries of the Gods, [though] not without risk.

4. For some going entirely astray have stepped into superstitions, while others, shunning superstition as a quagmire, have unwittingly fallen into atheism 1 as down a precipice.

LXVIII. 1. Wherefore especially with regard to such things, should we, taking with us Reason (Logos) as our mystic guide out of philosophy, reverently meditate upon each of the things said and done; in order that, [we may avoid what] Theodorus said, [namely] that when he offered his words with his right hand some of his hearers took them with their left,—and so not miss the mark by taking in another sense what laws on offerings and feasts have well ordained.

2. For that all [these things] must be referred to the Reason (Logos), we may learn from themselves also.

For on the nineteenth of the first month, 2 when they

keep a feast to Hermes, they eat honey and figs, saying when so doing, “Truth is sweet.” And the amulet of Isis which the myth says she put round her [neck] 1 is, when interpreted, “True Voice.”

3. And we should not consider Harpocrates either as an imperfect or infant god, or a [god] of pulse, 2 but as protector and chastener of the babyish and imperfect and inarticulate reason that men have about Gods. For which cause he has his finger laid upon his lips as a symbol of reticence and silence.

4. And in the month of Mesorē 3 when they make offerings of pulse, they say: “Tongue [is] fortune; tongue is daimon.”

5. And they say that of the trees in Egypt the persea especially has been made sacred to the Goddess, because its fruit resembles a heart and its leaf a tongue.

6. For of all man’s natural possessions nothing is more godlike than logos [word or reason], and especially that concerning the Gods, nor is there anything that decides more weightily for happiness.

7. Wherefore we commend him who goes down to consult the Oracle here 4 to think religiously and speak reverently. But the many act ridiculously when, after they have in the processions and feasts made proclamation to speak reverently, they subsequently speak and think the most irreverent things about the Gods themselves.

LXIX. 1. What use, then, must one make of those melancholy and laughterless and mournful sacrifices, if it is not right either to omit the rites of custom, or to confound our views about Gods and throw them into confusion with absurd suspicions?

2. Yea, among Greeks, too, many things are done, just about the same time also, similar to those which Egyptians perform in the sacred [rites].

3. For instance, at Athens, the women fast at the Thesmophoria, sitting on the ground. While Bœotians move the palace of Achæa, 1 giving that festival the name of Epachthē [the Grief-bringing], as though Demeter were in grief (ἄχθει) on account of the Descent 2 of Korē.

4. And this month is the one for sowing when the Pleiades rise, which Egyptians call Athyr, 3 Greeks Pyanepsiōn, and Bœotians Damatrios. 4

5. Moreover, Theopompus 5 tells us that the Western peoples 6 consider and name the winter Kronos, the summer Aphrodite, and the spring Persephone; and [say] that all things are born from Kronos and Aphrodite.

6. While the Phrygians, thinking that the God sleeps in winter, and wakes in summer, celebrate in his honour the Orgies of his “Going to sleep” at one time, and at another of his “Waking up”; while the Paphlagonians pretend that he is bound hand and foot and imprisoned in winter, and in spring is set in motion and freed from his bonds.

LXX. 1. And the season of the year suggests that the appearance of mourning is assumed at the hiding away of grains [in the earth],—which the ancients did not

consider gods, but gifts of the Gods, indispensable [indeed] if we are to live otherwise then savagely and like the brutes.

2. And at the season when, you know, these [ancients] saw the [fruits] entirely disappearing from the trees and ceasing, and those they had sown themselves still scanty and poor,—in scraping away the earth with their hands, and pressing it together again, and depositing [the seed] in uncertainty as to whether it would come up again and have its proper consummation, they used to do many things similar to those who bury and mourn.

3. Then, just as we say that one who buys Plato’s books “buys Plato,” and that one who presents the creations of Menander “acts Menander,” so did they not hesitate to call the gifts and creations of the Gods by the names of the Gods—honouring them and reverencing them by use.

4. But those [who came] after, receiving [these names] like boors and ignorantly misapplying what happens 1 to the fruits to the Gods [themselves], and not merely calling but believing the advent and hiding away of the necessaries [of life] generations and destructions of gods, filled their heads with absurd, indecent, and confused opinions, although they had the absurdity of their unreason before their eyes.

5. Excellent, however, was the view of Xenophanes 2 of Colophon that Egyptians don’t mourn if they believe in Gods and don’t believe in Gods if they mourn; nay, that it would be ridiculous for them in the same breath to mourn and pray for the seed to appear again, in order that it might again be consumed and mourned for.

LXXI. 1. But such is not really the case; but, while mourning for the grain, they pray the Gods, the authors and givers [of it], to renew it again and make other grow up in the place of that which is consumed.

2. Whence there is an excellent saying among the philosophers, that those who do not learn how to hear names rightly, use things wrongly. Just as those of the Greeks who have not learned or accustomed themselves to call bronzes and pictures and marbles images in honour of the Gods, but [call them] Gods, [and] then make bold to say that Lacharēs stripped Athena, and Dionysius cut off Apollo’s golden curls, and that Capitoline Zeus was burnt and perished in the Civil Wars,—these without knowing it find themselves drawn into adopting mischievous opinions following [directly] on the [abuse of] names.

3. And this is especially the case of Egyptians with regard to the honours they pay to animals. For in this respect, at any rate, Greeks speak rightly when they consider the dove as the sacred creature of Aphrodite, and the dragon of Athena, and the raven of Apollo, and the dog of Artemis, as Euripides [sings]:

Thou shalt be dog, pet of torch-bearing Hecate. 1

4. Whereas most of the Egyptians, by the service and cult they pay to the animals themselves as though they were Gods, have not only covered their sacred rites entirely with laughter and ridicule—which is the least evil of their fatuity; but a dangerous way of thinking grows up which perverts the weak and simple to pure superstition, and, in the case of the shrewder and bolder, degenerates into an atheistic and brutal rationalism.

5. Wherefore, also, it is not unfitting to run through the conjectures about these things. 1

Footnotes

346:2 Copt. Paopi—corr. roughly with October.

346:3 Cf. lxviii. 2, 3. Ḥeru-p-Khart, Horus the Younger, or the “Child,’’ so called to distinguish him from Ḥeru-ur, or Horus the Elder. Cf. Budge, op. cit., i. 468 f.

347:1 Cf. Ps. Plut., De Vita Homeri, § 23.

348:1 King again, erroneously in my opinion, refers this to the Christians.

348:2 Copt. Thoth—corr. roughly with September.

349:1 Cf. lxv. 2.

349:2 Cf. ibid., 3.

349:3 Copt. Mesōrē—corr. roughly with August.

349:4 Sc. at Delphi.

350:1 A surname of Demeter, by which she was worshipped at Athens by the Gephyræans who had emigrated thither from Bœotia (Herod., v. 61).

350:2 Sc. into Hades.

350:3 Copt. Hathōr—corr. roughly to November, or rather last half of October and first of November. Cf. also lvi. 10.

350:4 That is, the month of Demeter.

350:5 Müller, i. 328. T. flourished 2nd half of 4th century B.C.

350:6 That is, presumably, the Celts.

351:1 τὰ πάθη—lit., “the passions.”

351:2 X. flourished about end of 6th and beginning of 5th century B.C.

352:1 Nauck, p. 525.

353:1 Dr Budge (op. cit., i. 29) writes: “Such monuments and texts as we have . . . seem to show that the Egyptians first worshipped animals as animals, and nothing more, and later as the habitations of divine spirits and gods; but there is no reason for thinking that the animal worship of the Egyptians was descended from a system of totems and fetishes as Mr J. F. M‘Lennan (Fortnightly Review, 1869-1870) believed.” I believe myself that the Egyptian animal-cult depended chiefly on the fact that life flowed differently in different animal forms, corresponding with the life-currents in the invisible forms or aspects of the Animal-Soul of the Cosmos.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

CONCERNING THE WORSHIP OF ANIMALS, AND TOTEMISM

LXXII. 1. As for the [theory] that the Gods out of fear of Typhon changed themselves into these animals—as it were hiding themselves in the bodies of ibises and dogs and hawks—it beats any juggling or story-telling.

2. Also the [theory] that all the souls of the dead that persist, have their rebirth 2 into these [animals] only, is equally incredible.

3. And of those who would assign some reason connected with the art of government, some say that Osiris upon his great campaign, 3 divided his force into many divisions—(they call them companies and squadrons in Greek)—and gave them all ensigns of animal figures, and that each of these became sacred and venerated by the clan of those banded together under it.

4. Others [say] that the kings after [Osiris], in order

to strike terror into their foes, used to appear dressed in wild beasts’ heads of gold and silver.

5. While others tell us that one of the clever and crafty kings, on learning that, though the Egyptians were fickle by nature and quick for change and innovation, they nevertheless possessed an invincible and unrestrainable might owing to their numbers when in agreement and co-operation, showed them and implanted into their minds an enduring superstition,—an occasion of unceasing disagreement.

6. For in as much as the beasts—some of which he enacted some [clans] should honour and venerate and others others—are hostile and inimical to one another, and as each one of them by nature likes different food from the others, each [clan] in protecting its own special [beasts] and growing angry at their being injured, was for ever unconsciously being drawn into the enmities of the beasts, and [so] brought into a state of warfare with the others.

7. For even unto this day the people of Wolf-town are the only Egyptians who eat sheep, because the wolf, whom they regard as god, [does so].

8. And the people of Oxyrhynchus-town, in our own day, when the folk of Dog-town ate the oxyrhynchus 1 fish, caught a dog and sacrificing it as a sacred victim, ate it; and going to war because of this, they handled one another roughly, and subsequently were roughly handled by the Romans in punishment. 2

LXXIII. 1. Again, as many say that the soul of Typhon himself was parted among these animals, the myths would seem enigmatically to hint that every irrational and brutal nature is born from a part of the

[paragraph continues] Evil Daimon, and that to appease and soothe him they pay cult and service to them.

2. But if he fall upon them mighty and dire, bringing on them excessive droughts, or pestilent diseases, or other unlooked-for strange mischances, then the priests lead away at dark in silence quietly some of the venerated [beasts], and threaten and try to scare away the first [one] of them; if, however, it stops, they consecrate and sacrifice it, as though, I suppose, this were some kind of chastisement of the Daimon, or some specially great means of purification in the greater [emergencies].

3. For in the Goddess-of-child-bed-town 1 they used to burn living men to ashes, as Manethōs has told us, calling them Typhoneian; and the ashes they winnowed away and scattered. 2

4. This, however, was done publicly, and at one special time, in the Dog-days; whereas the consecratings of the venerated beasts, which are never spoken of and take place at irregular times, according to the emergencies, are unknown to the multitude, except when they have burials, and [the priests] bringing out some of the others, cast them in [to the grave with them] in the presence of all,—in the belief that they annoy Typhon in return and curtail what gives him pleasure. For only the Apis and a few other [animals] seem to be sacred to Osiris; while they assign the majority to him [Typhon].

5. And if he [Osiris] is really Reason (Logos), I think that the object of our enquiry is found in the case of these [animals] that are admitted to have common honours with him,—as, for instance, the ibis, and hawk, and dog-headed ape; [while] Apis himself [is his

soul . . .], 1 for thus, you know, they call the goat at Mendes.

LXXIV. 1. There remain of course the utilitarian and symbolical [reasons], of which some have to do with one of the two [Gods], but most [of them] with both.

2. As for the ox and sheep and ichneumon, 2 it is clear they paid them honours on account of their usefulness and utility,—just as Lemnians crested larks which seek out and break the eggs of locusts, and Thessalians storks, because when their land produced multitudes of snakes, they came and destroyed them all—(wherefore they made a law that whoever killed a stork should be banished 3)—so with the asp and weasel and scarab, because they discerned in them certain faint likenesses of the power of the Gods, as it were [that] of the sun in water-drops.

3. For as to the weasel, many still think and say that as it is impregnated through the ear and brings forth by the mouth, it is a likeness of the birth of reason (logos). 4

4. Again [they say] the species of scarab has no female, but all, as males, discharge their seed into the stuff they have made into balls, 5 which they roll along by pushing, moving [themselves] in the opposite direction, just as the sun seems to turn the heaven round in the opposite direction, while it is [the heaven] itself that moves from west to east. 6

5. And the asp, because it does not age, and moves without limbs with ease and pliancy, they likened to a star.

LXXV. 1. Nay, not even has the crocodile had honour paid it without some show of credible cause, for it alone is tongue-less. 1

For the Divine Reason (Logos) stands not in need of voice, and:

“Moving on a soundless path with justice guides [all] mortal things.” 2

2. And they say that it alone, when it is in the water, has its eyes covered by a smooth and transparent membrane that comes down from the upper lid, 3 so that they see without being seen,—an attribute of the First God. 4

3. And whenever the female lays her eggs on the land, it is known that this will be the limit of the Nile’s

increase. For as they cannot lay in the water, and fear to do so far from it, they so accurately fore-feel what will be, that they make use of the rise of the river for laying their eggs and hatching them, and yet keep them dry and beyond the danger of being wetted.

4. And they lay sixty [eggs] and hatch them out in as many days, and the longest-lived of them live as many years,—which is the first of the measures for those who treat systematically of celestial [phenomena]. 1

5. Moreover, of those that have honours paid them for both [reasons] 2—of the dog, we have already treated above. 3

6. As for the ibis, while killing the death-dealing of the reptiles, 4 it was the first to teach them the use of medicinal evacuation, when they observed it being thus rinsed out and purged by itself. 5

7. While those of the priests who are most punctilious in their observances, in purifying themselves, take the water for cleansing from a place where the ibis has drunk; for it neither drinks unwholesome or poisoned 6 water, nor [even] goes near it.

8. Again, by the relative position of its legs to one another, and [of these] to its beak, it forms an equilateral triangle; and yet again, the variegation and admixture of its black with its white feathers suggest the gibbous moon. 7

9. Nor ought we to be surprised at Egyptians being so fond of meagre likenesses; for Greeks too in both their

pictured and plastic resemblances of Gods use many such [vague indications].

10. For instance, in Crete there was a statue of Zeus which had no ears,—for it behoves the Ruler and Lord of all to listen to no one.

11. And Pheidias used the serpent in the [statue] of Athena, and the tortoise in that of Aphrodite at Elis,—because on the one hand virgins need protecting, and on the other because keeping-at-home and silence are becoming to married women.

12. Again, the trident of Poseidon is a symbol of the third region, which the sea occupies, assigned [to him] after the heaven and air. For which cause also they invented the names Amphi-trite and Trit-ons. 1

13. And the Pythagoreans have embellished both numbers and figures with appellations of Gods.

For they used to call the equilateral triangle Athena—Head-born and Third-born 2—because it is divided by three plumb-lines 3 drawn from the three angles.

14. And [they called] “one” Apollo, from privation of multitude, 4 and owing to the singleness 5 of the monad; and “two” Strife and Daring, and “three” Justice [or Rightness],—for as wronging and being wronged were according to deficiency and excess, rightness [or justice] was born to equality between them. 6

15. And what is called the Tetraktys, the six-and-thirty, was [their] greatest oath (as has been said over and over again), and is called Cosmos,—which is produced by adding together the first four even and [the first] four odd [numbers]. 1

LXXVI. 1. If, then, the most approved of the philosophers, when they perceived in soulless and bodiless things a riddle of the Divine, did not think it right to neglect anything or treat it with disrespect, still more liking, I think, we should then have for the peculiarities in natures that are endowed with sense and possess soul and passion and character,—not paying honour to these, but through them to the Divine; so that since they are made by Nature into mirrors clearer [than any man can make], we should consider this as the instrument and art of God who ever orders all things.

2. And, generally, we should deem that nothing soulless is superior to a thing with soul, nor one without sense to one possessing it; not even if one should bring together into one spot all the gold and emeralds in the world.

3. For that which is Divine does not reside in colours or shapes or smoothnesses; nay, all things that either have no share or are not of a nature to share in life, have a lot of less value than that of dead bodies. 2

4. Whereas the Nature that lives and sees, and has its source of motion from itself, and knowledge of things that are its and those that are not, has

appropriated both an “efflux of the Good,” 1 and a share of the Thinker “by whom the universe is steered,” as Heracleitus says. 2

5. For which cause the Divine is not less well pourtrayed in these [sc. animals] than by means of works of art in bronze and stone, which while equally susceptible of decay and mutilations, 3 are in their nature destitute of all feeling and understanding.

6. With regard to the honours paid to animals, then, I approve this view more highly than any other that has been mentioned.

Footnotes

353:2 παλιγγενεσίαν.

353:3 Sc. for civilising the world.

354:1 Lit., “sharp-snout.”

354:2 And such things occur “even to this day” in India under the British Rāj.

355:1 ἐν εἰλειθυίας πόλει.

355:2 Over the fields?

356:1 A lacuna occurs here which I have partially filled up, conjecturally, as above.

356:2 An Egyptian animal of the weasel kind which was said to hunt out crocodiles’ eggs; also called “Pharaoh’s rat.”

356:3 Cf. Arist., Mirab., xxiii.

356:4 Cf. xxii. 1—“Physiologus” again. For a criticism of this legend, see R. 43.

356:5 Cf. x. 9.

356:6 Budge (op. cit., ii. 379 f.) writes: “The beetle or scarabæus . . . belongs to the family called Scarabacidæ (Coprophagi), of which the Scarabæus sacer is the type. . . . A remarkable peculiarity exists in the structure and situation of the hind legs, which are placed so near the extremity of the body, and so far from each other as to give the insect a most extraordinary appearance when walking. This peculiar formation is, nevertheless, particularly serviceable to its possessors in rolling the balls of excrementitious matter in which they enclose their eggs. . . . These balls are at first irregular and soft, but, by degrees, and during the process of rolling along, become rounder and harder; they are propelled by means of the hind legs. Sometimes these balls are an inch and a half, or two inches in diameter, and in rolling this along the beetles stand almost upon their heads, with the heads turned from the balls.” The scarabæus was called kheprerȧ in Egyptian, and was the symbol of Kheperȧ the Great God of creation and resurrection; he was the “father of the gods,” and the creator of all things in heaven and earth, self-begotten and self-born; he was usually identified with the rising sun and new-birth generally.

357:1 “Physiologus” again, doubtless; it might, however, be said that its tongue is rudimentary.

357:2 Euripides, Tro., 887.

357:3 Lit., “brow.”

357:4 That is, the First-born Reason.

358:1 That is, presumably, either the 60 of the Chaldæans, or the 3 × 4 × 5 of the “most perfect” triangle of the Mathematici.

358:2 Namely, the utilitarian and symbolical; cf. lxxiv. 1.

358:3 Cf. xiv. 6.

358:4 Cf. Rawlinson’s Herodotus, ii. 124, 125.

358:5 There is a similar legend in India, I am told.

358:6 May also mean “bewitched.”

358:7 That is, the moon in its third quarter.

359:1 From τριτὸς, “third.”

359:2 κορυφαγεννῆ καὶ τριτογένειαν,—that is, Koryphagennēs and Tritogeneia.

359:3 τρισὶ καθέτοις,—a κάθετος (sc. γραμμή) is generally a perpendicular; but here the reference must be to this appended figure:

359:4 That is, presumably, ἀ-πόλλων, from ἀ (priv.) and πολλοὶ (many).

359:5 δι’ ἁπλότητα,—the play being apparently ἀ-πολ (πλο)-της.

359:6 Lit., in the midst.

360:1 The Tetraktys was ordinarily considered to be the sum of the first four numbers simply, that is 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10; but here we have it given as 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 16, and 2 + 4 + 6 + 8 = 20, and 16 + 20 = 36. The oath is said to have been: “Yea, by Him who did bestow upon our soul Tetraktys, Ever-flowing Nature, Source possessing roots”—the “roots” being the four elements.

360:2 Sc. which have at least been the vehicle of life.

361:1 Plat., Phædr., 251 B.

361:2 Mullach, i. 328.

361:3 Reading πηρώσεις.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

CONCERNING THE SACRED ROBES

LXXVII. 1. Now as to robes: those of Isis [are] variegated in their dyes, for her power [is] connected with matters producing all things and receiving [all]—light darkness, day night, fire water, life death, beginning end; while the [robe] of Osiris has neither shade nor variegation, but one single [property]—the light-like, 4 for the Source is pure and the First and Intelligible unmixed.

2. Wherefore when they have once and once only received this [robe], 5 they treasure it away and keep it from all eyes and hands; whereas they use those of Isis on many occasions.

3. For it is by use that the things which are sensible and ready to hand, present many unfoldings and views of themselves as they change now one way now another;

whereas the intelligence of the Intelligible and Pure and Single, shining through the soul, like lightning-flash, once and once only perchance allows [us] to contact and behold [It].

4. For which cause both Plato 1 and Aristotle call this part of philosophy “epoptic,” 2 from the fact that they who transcend by the reason (logos) these mixed and multiform things of opinion, are raised unto that Primal [One], Simple and Matter-less, and [so] contacting in its singleness the pure truth concerning It, they think philosophy has as it were [its] perfect end.

LXXVIII. 1. The fact, moreover, which the present priests cautiously hint at by expiatory sacrifices and covering their faces—[namely] that this God is ruler and king of the dead, being no other than him who is called Hades and Pluto among Greeks—in that they do not know how it is true, confuses the multitude, who suppose that the truly sacred and holy Osiris lives on earth and under earth, where the bodies of those who seem to have [reached their] end are hidden [away].

2. But He Himself is far, far from the earth, unspotted and unstained, and pure of every essence that is susceptible of death and of decay. Nor can the souls of men here [on the earth], swathed as they are with bodies and enwrapped in passions, commune with God, except so far as they can reach some dim sort of a dream [of Him], with the perception of a mind trained in philosophy.

3. But when [their souls] freed [from these bonds] pass to the Formless and Invisible and Passionless and Pure, this God becomes their guide and king, as though they hung on Him, and gazed insatiate upon His Beauty,

and longed after it—[Beauty] that no man can declare or speak about.

4. It is with this the ancient tale (logos) makes Isis e’er in love, and, by pursuit [of it], and consort [with it], makes [her] full-fill all things down here with all things fair and good, whatever things have part in genesis.

5. Thus, then, these things contain the reason (logos) that’s more suitable to God.

Footnotes

361:4 τὸ φωτοειδές Cf. the better-known term τὸ αὐγοειδές, “the ray-like”.

361:5 Presumably in the initiation symbolising the investiture with the Robe of Glory.

362:1 Symp., 210 A.

362:2 In its highest sense—that is, intelligible or spiritual “seership,” not the symbolic “sight” in the formal Greater Mysteries.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

CONCERNING INCENSE

LXXIX. 1. And must I also speak of the daily incense-offerings, as I promised, 1 the reader should first of all have in mind the fact, that not only have men [in general] always paid most serious attention to things that conduce to health, but that especially in sacred ceremonies and purifications and prescribed modes of life “healthy” is not less important than “holy”; for they did not think it right to render service to the Pure and perfectly Harmless and Unpolluted with either bodies or with souls festering and diseased.

2. Since, then, the air—of which we make most use, and with which we have most to do—does not always keep the same disposition and blend, but at night is condensed, and weighs down the body, and brings the soul into a desponding and anxious state, as though it had become mist-like and heavy; [therefore] as soon as they get up they incense with pine resin, sanifying and purifying the air by its 2 disintegration, and fanning up again the [fire of the] spirit connate with body 3

which had died down,—since its perfume possesses a vehement and penetrating [force].

3. And, again, at mid-day, perceiving that the sun draws from the earth by force an exceedingly large and heavy exhalation, and commingles it with the air, they incense with myrrh. 1 For its heat dissolves and disperses the turbid and mud-like combination in the atmosphere.

4. And, indeed, physicians seem to relieve sufferers from plague by making a great blaze, as though it cleared the air. But it clears it better if they burn fragrant woods, such as [those] of cypress, juniper, and pine.

5. At any rate, they say that at Athens, at the time of the Great Plague, Akrōn the physician became famous through ordering them to keep fires burning by the side of the sick, for he [thus] benefitted not a few.

6. And Aristotle says that the sweet-smelling odours, given off by perfumes and flowers and meadows, conduce no less to health than to enjoyment; because by their warmth and softness they diffuse themselves gently through the brain, which is naturally cold and as though congested.

7. And if, moreover, they call myrrh bal among Egyptians—and in translation this comes pretty near to meaning the dispersion of silly talk—this also affords some evidence for the reason why [they use it].

LXXX. 1. And [finally] kuphi 2 is a mixture composed of sixteen ingredients:—of honey, and wine, and raisins, and cyperus; 3 of pine-resin, and myrrh,

and aspalathus, 1 and seseli; 2 and further of mastich, 3 and bitumen, 4 and nightshade, 5 and sorrel; and in addition to these of both junipers 6 (of which they call the one the larger and the other the smaller), and cardamum, and sweet-flag. 7

2. And these are not compounded in a haphazard way, but with the sacred writings being read aloud 8 to the perfume-makers when they mix them.

3. And as to their number,—even though it has all the appearance of square from square, and [that too] the only one of equally equal numbers that has the power of making the perimeter equal to the area, 9 it must be said that its serviceableness for this purpose at least is of the slightest.

4. But the majority of the ingredients, as they possess aromatic properties, liberate a sweet breath and healthy exhalation, by which both the air is changed, and the body being gently and softly moved by the vapour, falls asleep 10 and loosens the distressing strain of the day’s anxieties, as though they were knots, [and yet] without any intoxication.

5. Moreover, they polish up the image-making and receptive organ of dreams like a mirror, and make it clearer, no less than the playing on the lyre which the Pythagoreans used to use before sleep, thus charming away and sanifying the passionate and reason-less nature of the soul.

6. For things smelt call back the failing sense, and often, on the other hand, dull and quiet it by [their] soothing [effect], when their exhalations are diffused through the body; just as some of the physicians say that sleep is induced when the vaporisation of the food, as it were creeping gently round the inward parts and groping about, produces a kind of tickling.

7. And they use kuphi both as draught and mixture; for when it is drunk it is thought to purge the intestines, [but when applied externally 1] to be an emollient.

8. And apart from these [considerations], resin is a work of the sun; and myrrh [comes from] the exudation of the trees under the sun-heat; while of the ingredients of kuphi, some flourish more at night, like all things whose nature it is to be nourished by cool breezes and shade and dew and damp.

9. Seeing that the light of day is one and single, and Pindar tells us that the sun is seen “through empty æther”; 2 while air is a blend and mixture of many lights and properties, as it were of seeds dropped from every star into one [field].

10. Naturally, then, they use the former as incenses by day, as being single and having their birth from the sun; and the latter when night sets in, as being mixed and manifold in its qualities.

Footnotes

363:1 Cf. lii. 5.

363:2 Sc. the resin’s.

363:3 That is, presumably, what was called the “bodily or animal spirits”—the ethers or prāṇa’s.

364:1 The resinous gum of an Arabian tree; probably a kind of acacia.

364:2 This was also used as a medicine.

364:3 κυπείρου,—Cyperus comosus, an aromatic plant used in embalming, a sweet-smelling marsh plant. Cf. F. cypère and E. cypres.

365:1 ἀσπαλάθου,—a prickly shrub yielding a fragrant oil; mentioned in the Apocrypha and in some old herbalists. Cf. “I gave a sweet smell like cinnamon and aspalathus”—Ecclus. xxiv. 15. It was not the Genista acanthoclada.

365:2 σεσέλεως,—the Tordylium officinale; formerly called in English also “cicely.”

365:3 σχίνου,—or may be “squill.”

365:4 ἀσφάλτου.

365:5 θρύον,—or may be “rush.”

365:6 Lit., juniper-berries.

365:7 κάλαμου,—probably Acorus calamus (cf. Ex. xxx. 23 et al.). It is to be noticed that the ingredients are arranged in four sets of four each.

365:8 That is to the sound of mantrāḥ, as a Hindu would say.

365:9 Cf. xlii. 2 and figure in note.

365:10 The kuphi being used at sundown.

366:1 A lacuna of 8 or 9 letters occurs here in E.

366:2 Olymp., i. 6.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

AFTERWORD

So ends this exceedingly instructive treatise of Plutarch, which, in spite of the mass of texts and monuments concerning Ȧsȧr and Ȧst which have already been deciphered by the industry of Egyptologists, remains the most complete account of the root mystery-myth of ancient Egypt. The myth of Osiris and Isis goes back to the earliest times of which we have record, and is always found in the same form. Indeed the “Ritual,” the “Book of the Dead,” which should rather be called the “Book of the Living,” might very well be styled “The Gospel of Osiris.”

It would be out of place here to seek for the historical origin of this Great Mystery; certainly Osiris was originally something greater than a “water sprite,” as Budge supposes. Osiris and Isis were and are originally, as I believe, cosmic or super-cosmic beings; for the Elder and Younger Horus, regarded macrocosmically, were the Intelligible and Sensible Worlds, and, regarded microcosmically, pertained to the mystery of the Christ-stage of manhood.

It may, of course, be denied that the ancient Egyptians were capable of entertaining any such notions; we, however, prefer the tradition of our Trismegistic tractates to the “primitive-culture” theories of anthropological speculation. That, however, such views were entertained in the first centuries is incontrovertible, as may be seen from a careful study of Philo of Alexandria alone. Thus to quote one passage out of many with regard to the two Horoi:

“For that this cosmos is the Younger Son of God, in that it is perceptible to sense. The Son who’s older than this one, He hath declared to be no one [perceptible by sense], for that he is conceivable by mind alone.

[paragraph continues] But having judged him worthy of the Elder’s rights, He hath determined that he should remain with Him alone.” 1

When, moreover, we speak of the Christ-stage of manhood, we mean all that mystery that lies beyond the normal stage of man, including both the super-man stage and that of the Christ.

In any case, Plutarch is of the greatest service for understanding the atmosphere and environment in which the students of the Trismegistic tradition moved, and we have therefore bestowed more care upon him than perhaps the general reader may think necessary.

Footnotes

368:1 Quod Deus Im., § 6; M. 1, 277, P. 298 (Ri. ii. 72, 73).

Gnosticism and Hermetica

“HERMAS” AND “HERMES”

AN ANTICIPATION

When, in a recent book, 1 I was treating of the Early Church document The Shepherd of Hermas, in connection with the ancient and mysterious Book of Elxai, which, according to Epiphanius, circulated among the Essenes, Nazorenes, Ebionites, and Sampsæans, I wrote as follows:

“It is also of very great interest to notice the many intimate points of contact between the contents of the Apocalyptic Hermas and the teaching of the Early ‘Shepherd of Men’ tractate of the mystic school who looked to Hermes the Thrice-Greatest as their inspirer, that is to say, the earliest deposit of the Trismegistic literature. But that is another story which has not yet been told.”

At the same time, all unknown to me, Reitzenstein must have written, or have been writing, his learned pages on “Hermas and Poimandres,” coming to practically the same conclusion as I had in cruder form expressed several years earlier, when commenting on Hilgers’ theory 2 that the “Shepherd of Men” was

written in opposition to the “Shepherd of Hermas,” and suggesting that if there were any dependence of one on the other, it was in exactly the reverse sense to that of Hilger’s assumption. 1

THE HIGHER CRITICISM OF “THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS”

Like all the other extant extra-canonical documents of the Early Church, and especially the Antilegomena, as Eusebius calls them, that is to say books disputed in his day but earlier admitted by wide circles into the canon, The Shepherd of Hermas has been submitted to the most searching analysis by modern criticism. Though its unity is still strenuously defended by some scholars, the majority are convinced of its composite nature; and I follow Hilgenfeld, 2 who detects in the present form of this document three elements, or, so to say, three deposits: (i.) The Apocalyptic—Viss. i.-iv.; (ii.) The Pastoral—Vis. v.-Sim. vii.; (iii.) The Secondary, or appendix of the latest redactor—Simm. viii.-x. “Hermas i.” and “Hermas ii.” cite nothing from any of the canonical books of the New Testament, and this should be, for most scholars, a striking indication of their early date.

THE INTRODUCTION OF THE “PASTORAL HERMAS”

“Hermas ii.,” the “Pastoral Hermas,” begins as follows: 3

1. “Now when I had prayed in my house, and sat me

down upon my couch, there entered a man of glorious appearance, in the guise of a Shepherd, clad in a white skin, 1 with a wallet on his shoulders, and a staff in his hand. And he embraced me, and I embraced him. 2

2. “And straightway he sat down by my side. He saith to me: I am sent by the most Sovereign Angel, that I may dwell with thee for the rest of the days of thy life.

3. “I thought that he had come to tempt me; 3 and I say unto him: Who art thou? For I do know (say I) into whose charge I have been given. He saith to me: Dost thou not know? Nay—answer I. I am (saith he) the Shepherd 4 into whose charge thou hast been given.

4. “E’en as he spoke, his aspect changed, and I knew him, that it was he to whom I had been given in charge.”

COMPARISON WITH OUR “PŒMANDRES”

If we now compare the Greek text of this interesting passage with that of the introductory paragraphs of the “Pœmandres,” it will be found impossible to refer their striking similarities merely to a common type of expression; the verbal agreements are too precise, and

stand out convincingly at the first glance, without needing the assistance of the large type in which Reitzenstein (pp. 11, 12) has had them printed in his reproduction of the texts.

Most remarkable of all, however, is the similarity of ideas; for “Hermas” as for “Hermes” the Shepherd is not only a shepherd but a “shepherd of men,” even as in a different connection but in the same circle of ideas Peter and others were to become “fishers of men.” 1

Now, not only on general grounds is it difficult for any one who has carefully studied the two documents, to believe that the writer of the philosophic-mystical treatise not only had the Christian apocalyptic writing before him but took it as his point of departure; but, even if we are still strongly dominated by what has hitherto been the traditional view in all such questions, and cling to the theory that when there is similarity the Christian scripture must necessarily have been first in the field, it is very difficult to believe that a copier of “Hermas” should have left no traces of an acquaintance with the very distinctive feature of the robe and staff and wallet of the shepherd, and of the conversation which follows in what, on this theory, would be the presupposed original.

THE POPULAR SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION OF THE SHEPHERD

The mystical representation and thought-atmosphere of the writer or redactor of our present “Pœmandres” are far removed from any direct traces of contact with the folk-consciousness, in which the appurtenances mentioned by “Hermas” were the typical literary description

of a shepherd since the time of Theocritus; 1 not only so, but this was the symbolic representation of the “Shepherd of Men” in the general Hellenistic religious consciousness. Indeed, we find unquestionable proofs that Hermes was pre-eminently regarded as the “Good Shepherd,” and a figure of him with staff and wallet and single robe was a great favourite in the popular cult. 2

In one passage 3 in which mention is made of this wallet and staff, further details are given showing that these simple symbols were well understood. The right hand is raised, and the left holds staff and wallet. Moreover, the staff has a serpent entwined round it, and Hermes is clad in a single robe. Like Isis, he stands upon the world-sphere, which has also a serpent twined round it. Hermes here represents the Mind or Logos, the father-mother (staff and wallet) force of nature; with the “left” he brings into generation, with the “right” he leads souls out of genesis, either to death, or regeneration. In this prayer, Hermes (as the sun) is called “the Shepherd who hath his fold in the West.” 4

It is to be further remarked that Hermes is in the dress of the “Poor,” 5 and of the “Naked.” 6

THE NAME “HERMAS”

But to return to Hermas. Why “Hermas” of all names in the world in this connection? We have a large literature in which “Hermes” plays the part of seer, and prophet, and revealer, and writer of sacred scriptures; in it, moreover, he figures as the beloved disciple of the Heavenly Mind, the Shepherd of Men. But what have we in Christian tradition to explain the name “Hermas”? Nothing, absolutely nothing, but contradictory hypotheses which try to discover a historic Hermas so as to authenticate the provenance of what is manifestly, like nearly every similar document of the time, pseudepigraphic. In my opinion, indeed, the very name Hermas betrays more clearly than anything else the “Hermes” source of the Christian writer’s setting of part of his most interesting apocalyptic. “Hermas” is because of “Hermes,” rather than “Hermes” in answer to “Hermas,” as Hilgers would have it.

AN EARLY FORM OF THE “PŒMANDRES”

This, however, does not mean to say that “Hermas” took the setting of the introduction of his Pastoral apocalypses from precisely the same text of the “Pœmandres” which now lies before us, for our present text is manifestly the redaction of an earlier form; so that if we could recover the other form we should in all probability find some additional verbal agreement of “Hermas” with “Hermes.”

That the ideas of the “Pœmandres” treatise were the mystical and philosophical side of much that appears in the popular cult of the time, may be seen by an inspection of the prayers from the Magic Papyri which we have translated. 1 In them the Mind, as the Shepherd of Men, and the Revealer of the Light, is clearly set forth. Reitzenstein’s view (p. 32), accordingly, is that the Christian writer must have taken his description of the Shepherd from what originally was a fuller text of the “Pœmandres” than the one preserved to us, and that this will account for several features which would otherwise be peculiar to “Hermas.” This text was in closer verbal agreement with the general language of the popular Hermes religion as preserved to us in the Hermes-Prayers. 2

THE HOLY MOUNT

But the direct points of contact between “Hermas” and the Trismegistic literature are not confined to the “Pœmandres” document. As the original writer of “Hermas” was dependent on “Hermes” for the setting of the introduction to his Pastoral apocalypses, so also it is highly probable that the redactor was influenced by a lost treatise referred to in the introduction of “The Sacred Sermon on the Mountain,” C. H., xiii. (xiv.).

In this treatise reference is made to one of the now lost “General Sermons,” 3 the scene of which also took

place on a mountain. For in connection with it mention is made by Tat of his passing over a mountain, or ascending a mountain, at the beginning of his noviciate, when he became a “suppliant”; 1 while it is further stated by Tat that at that stage the doctrine was not clearly explained, but rather hidden in riddles; for that as yet he was not sufficiently purified, and made “a stranger to the world-illusion.”

Now, it is remarkable that “Hermas,” in the appendix to the book (Sim. ix.), tells us that after these revelations the Shepherd came to him again, and told him that much had not been explained because of his “weakness in the flesh”; but now that he has been strengthened by the Spirit, the Shepherd will explain all “with greater clearness.” He then takes him away into Arcadia (a very unexpected locality for a Christian writer in Rome to choose), to a “breast-like mountain,” where he has the further teaching revealed to him.

But, strangely enough, it was precisely in Arcadia that the chief Hellenic cult of Hermes existed, as stated by Lactantius, basing himself on the common belief at Rome; 2 and from Arcadia it was that Hermes, according to a tendency-legend that even at Rome went back at least to the second century B.C., set forth to teach the Egyptians.

“GNOSTIC” ELEMENTS

Moreover, “Hermas” is throughout strongly tinged with “Gnostic” elements. As I wrote in my last book, 3 it is practically one of the very numerous

permutations and combinations of the Sophia-mythus—one of the many settings-forth of the mystic lore and love of the Christ and the Sophia, or Wisdom, of the Son of God and His spouse or sister, the Holy Spirit, of the King and Queen, of the Lord and the Virgin Church. In its most instructive series of visions are depicted the mystic scenes of the allegorical drama of man’s inner nature—the mystery-play of all time.

But when we say “Gnostic” we mean much that is also Hellenistic mysticism, and therefore much that is also “Hermetic,” for in the Trismegistic literature there is set forth a Gnosis of a far simpler type than in any of the Christian systems technically called “Gnostic.”

THE VICES AND VIRTUES

A striking example of the similarity of ideas of this nature is found in comparing the list of twelve vices and ten (seven and three) virtues, given in C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 7-10, 1 with “Hermas,” Sim. ix. 15, 1-3, where twelve “virgins,” each bearing the name of a virtue, are set over against twelve “women clothed in black,” each bearing the name of a vice; and with “Hermas,” Vis. iii. 8, 7, where seven women, each in turn the mother of the other, are called by the names of seven virtues.

We need not, of course, necessarily suppose any direct contact in this case, though it is curious that the list of virtues occurs precisely in the sermon “On the Mountain”; but both writers clearly move in, or are influenced by, the same circle of ideas, and that, too, ideas of a very special nature.

The above points are sufficient for our purpose, and throw a most interesting light on one element in the

composition of the very ancient Christian document whose exclusion from the canon, after enjoying for so many years practically canonical authority, is to be regretted.

THE EARLY DATE OF THE ORIGINAL “HERMAS”

Now, “Apocalyptic Hermas” is distinctly “anti-Pauline,” and perhaps this more than anything else accounts for the final exclusion of the book from the canon; it is therefore in vain to seek in it quotations from any of the Pauline Letters. But what is still more remarkable, neither it nor the “Pastoral Hermas” quote from any of the Canonical Gospels. This argues a very early date.

If, then, we are inclined to accept the statement of the writer of the Muratorian Fragment (c. 170 A.D.) that “Hermas” was written at Rome during the bishopric of Pius (140-c. 155 A.D.), this must refer to the completed work of the last redactor who is held responsible for “Hermas iii.,” and who was acquainted with several books of the canon. The “Pastoral Hermas” may thus be fairly pushed back to the beginning of the first century.

We have also to remember—a point which Reitzenstein does not seem to have taken into consideration—not only that the Greek original of our form of “Hermas” is lost, but that the Old Latin version has also disappeared, and that we possess only a Greek retranslation from the Latin. 1 Under these circumstances, it is still more surprising that such strong traces of direct literary dependence on the original form of the “Pœmandres” introduction should still remain in our “Hermas.”

THE DEPENDENCE THEORY TO BE USED WITH CAUTION

It would, however, in my opinion be a grave mistake to push the theory of literary dependence too far, and to seek to account for the main content of “Hermas” on any theory of direct borrowing from allied sources, or even solely of direct external conditioning by the mystical and theological ideas of the time. There is no a priori reason against the high probability that the original writer was recording some genuine inner experiences, however much, as was the fashion of the time, and of other times and climes, they may have been expanded, interpolated, and polished by literary art.

It is true that all such inner experiences would be strongly conditioned by the prior conceptions, thought-tone, and theological beliefs of the writer, and by the current and traditional types of such experiences known in his day. Indeed, it is very difficult anywhere to meet with the record of visions or apocalyptic utterances which are not so conditioned. The Buddhist seer, sees in the mode of traditional Buddhist conceptions of the unseen; the Hellenic mantis and sibyl find themselves in an invisible world of the familiar nature known to them from the mythologists, and poets, and mystery-traditions; the Egyptian prophet moves amid the familiar topography and schematology of the Amenti of his nation; even an Ezekiel sees in the symbols of the Babylonian cultus; while the Christian mystic invariably finds himself in the conventional heaven of the saints and the hell of the sinners.

It is not, therefore, necessary to follow Reitzenstein (pp. 8-11) in detail, when he seeks to show the strong influence of heathen mystical literature on the early

[paragraph continues] Christian document we are discussing, and to point to striking parallels between the setting of the first four visions of “Hermas,” and the visions of Zosimus, as preserved in the fragments of his “Acts,” 1 or the “Visit to Hades” of Setme and Si-Osiri, and their passing through the Seven Halls, 2 as partially preserved in the Demotic “Tales of Khamuas.” 3

It is true that Zosimus, who nourished towards the end of the third century, was a member of the Pœmandres community, and, therefore, what he has to say is of great interest to us, for doubtless his visions were strongly conditioned by the Trismegistic tradition and especially by the Isis-type of its literature, and the cognate Egyptian “Books of Hermes”; but the points on which Reitzenstein lays stress seem somewhat too general to allow of our drawing any direct conclusion with regard to “Hermas” and “Hermes.”

There is a certain similarity; but our information is too scanty to permit of any precise drawing of general conclusions. There is, however, a valuable piece of information which prevents us from attributing all the similarities which may be noticed purely to the general thought-atmosphere of the times. In one particular at least, we can be more definite.

THE VISIONS OF CRATES

Zosimus is not the only follower of Thrice-greatest Hermes whose visions are still on record. Crates also

has left an account of his mystic experiences, though unfortunately transmitted to us only in Arabic translation from the original Greek. 1

Crates leaves his body and enters the unseen world. “While I was praying,” he writes, “I felt myself suddenly carried into the airs [of heaven], following the same path as the sun and moon.” Here he meets with Thrice-greatest Hermes in the guise of “an old man, the most beautiful of men, seated on a chair; he was clad in white raiment, and held a book in his hand resting on the arm of the chair.”

Compare this with “Hermas” (Vis. ii. 2, 2): “I see opposite me a chair, and on it a covering of wool white as hail; 2 then came there an old woman, in shining white raiment, having a book in her hand, and sat down alone.”

After this revelation, and when the “old woman” had ceased reading from the book, four young men came and carried off the chair, and departed with it to the East (ibid., 4, 1).

Here again it is of interest to compare this with the introduction to a magical “light-ritual,” where the seer has a vision of four men with crowns on their heads who bring in the “throne of the god.” 3

Crates is taught from the book and bidden to write what he is told. “Make thy book according to the instructions which I have given; and know that I am with thee and will never leave thee till thou hast accomplished all.”

So also “Hermas”; compare also the last sentence

with the phrase in the Introduction to the “Pastoral Hermas”: “I am sent . . . that I may dwell with thee for the rest of the days of thy life.”

In another vision, Crates is instructed in a dialogue which strongly reflects the style and substance of our Trismegistic sermons. And in yet another he moves in the psychic reflection of the setting of the now for the most part lost Isis-type of the literature, which has a more strongly Egyptian colouring. He is transported to yet another heaven and firmament, and there sees the temple of Ptah (Hephæstus), and the statue of Venus (Isis), which holds converse with him.

He was then evidently saturated with the Trismegistic tradition, and had access to treatises which are now, unfortunately, lost to us, for it is just this type of the literature which shows signs of the more direct influence of Egyptian ideas, and the mention of the temple of Ptah is a striking confirmation that Reitzenstein is on the right track in his analysis of the oldest deposit of the “Pœmandres,” which he connects with the Ptah-tradition.

THE GENERAL CHRISTIAN “MANY” AND THE GNOSTIC “FEW”

That the end and aim of the later Egyptian religion, and of all Hellenistic religious circles in general, was a Gnosis, or definite mystical experience in the form of visions and apocalypses, is manifest on all sides; and that this also was the chief interest of very numerous circles in the Early Church is a fundamental fact in the study of Christian origins which should not be impatiently brushed on one side, or minimised almost to extinction as of no real importance, but which should be restored to the first rank in seeking

an explanation of the many obscure problems of these early days which no purely objective considerations will solve.

That the General Christian of these days, as of all subsequent centuries, had naturally much to learn in these matters from the trained Mystic, whether of his own faith or of another, is saying nothing to his discredit, for he naturally belonged to the “many” who were striving to become the “few.” General Christianity, however, spread so rapidly that the definite cultivation of the spiritual faculties practised by the early contemplatives of the faith soon gave place to a fanatical enthusiasm for a misunderstood monkdom, which swamped the monasteries with a flood of the “many,” who were often without any true vocation for the holy life, and not unfrequently quite ignorant of the elements of contemplation.

We need not speak of the wild fanaticism of warrior monkdom let loose with pick and hatchet and fire-brand to destroy the treasures of religious art throughout the beautiful Hellenic world, but even among the quiet and peaceable brethren there was much ignorance. How unknowing some of these good folk were, we may learn from a naïve story, the very simplicity of which convinces the reader of its genuineness.

Perhaps some one may here interject: But this has nothing to do with “Hermas”! Perhaps not; but it has a great deal to do with a proper understanding of the history of the development of General Christianity and its relationship to the deeper religious consciousness of the first centuries. When, then, I read the Greek text of this simple story, as reproduced by Reitzenstein, 1 I thought that some who could not read

[paragraph continues] Greek, but who take a very deep interest in such matters, might like to hear it, and so I have set it down in English.

THE STORY OF ABBOT OLYMPIUS

The story runs as follows:

“Abbot Olympius 1 said that one day a priest of the [Heathen] Greeks came down to Scetis; 2 he came to my cell and passed the night there.

“Seeing the manner of life of the monks, he saith to me: ‘Living in this way, do ye not enjoy visions from your God?’ ‘Nay!’ I answer.

“Then saith the priest to me: ‘So long as we duly serve our God with holy deeds, he hideth nought from us, but revealeth unto us his mysteries. And ye, in spite of all your great labours—watchings, keeping silence, disciplines—sayest thou, ye see nought? Assuredly, then, if ye see nought, ye have let evil reasonings come into your hearts which shut you from your God; and ’tis for this cause his mysteries are not revealed to you.’

“And I went and told the elder [brethren] the words of the priest; and they were astonished and agreed that so it was. For impure reasonings do shut off God from man.”

I do not exactly understand what is the precise meaning of λογισμούς, which usually means

“reasonings,” and seems on the face of it to suggest that the monks’ intellectual grasp of the matter was at fault. It may, however, mean simply that their “thoughts” were impure. But this is not any more satisfactory, for the monks must have known already that impure thoughts were to be driven out.

What is clear is that the “priest of the Greeks” had personal experience of these pious exercises, and came from a circle where such things were normally practised; he, moreover, knew what was the reason for the monks’ non-success in contemplation. He knew that it all depended on thought, and that, too, on “good thought,” so that the “Good” might descend on the “good,” as the Hermes-Prayer (i. 9, 13) says. But he knew more than this; he knew that there was also need of “right thought,” of Gnosis as well as of faith, of the proper use of the intelligence and the driving out of erroneous ideas with regard to the nature of God.

A FINAL WORD

But for a final word on “Hermas.” This early document was written at Rome; so all are agreed. It would, then, seem necessary to allow of sufficient time for a wide circulation of the older form of the “Pœmandres,” before it could reach Rome from Egypt. This time could not have been short, for it must be reckoned not by geographical considerations, which are hardly of any consequence in this connection, but by the fact that the “Pœmandres” was the gospel of a school that laid the greatest possible stress on secrecy. How, then, could a Christian writer have got possession of a copy? Had the pledge of secrecy already by this time been removed? This is not credible, for later Trismegistic documents still lay the greatest stress upon it.

Were, then, the early Christian mystical writers in intimate relationship with such circles as the Pœmandres-community? Some Gnostics undoubtedly were; was the writer of “Hermas”? Was there once friendship where subsequently was bitter strife?

Such and many other most interesting questions arise, but there is little hope that any satisfactory answer will be given them until the work on the mystical religious environment of the time has been pushed forward to such a point, that men may gradually become accustomed to the view that much of the secret of the Origins lies concealed in that very environment.

In any case, the way is cleared for pushing back the earlier “Pœmandres” document well into the first century, and for ranking it, therefore, as at least contemporary with the earliest of the New Testament writings.

Footnotes

369:1 Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.?—An Enquiry into the Talmud Jesus Stories, the Toldoth Jeschu, and Some Curious Statements of Epiphanius (London, 1903), pp. 365 ff.

369:2 See Hilgers (J.), De Hermetis Trismegisti Poimandro Commentatio (Bonn, 1855).

370:1 See The Theosophical Review, xxiv. 302, 303 (June 1899).

370:2 Hilgenfeld (A.), Hermæ Pastor (2nd ed.: Leipzig, 1881).

370:3 Ἀποκάλυψις έ, the fifth revelation or vision of our composite document, which for all we know may have stood first in some earlier “source.”

371:1 Presumably a sheep’s skin of white wool.

371:2 Compare the Story of the Spirit Double who came down unto Jesus when a boy, as told by Mary the Mother, in the Pistis Sophia, 121: “He embraced thee and kissed thee, and thou also didst kiss him; ye became one.” Compare this with the common mystic belief of the time in the possibility of union with such a spiritual presence; and also the possession by a daimon (λῆψις δαίμονος), which is treated of at length by Reitzenstein, and particularly referred to this pasage in Hermas (R. 230).

371:3 Compare Pistis Sophia, 120: “I was in doubt and thought it was a phantom tempting me.”

371:4 On this Gebhardt and Harnack, in their edition (Leipzig, 1877), can only comment: “In visionibus angelicus pastor nusquam memoratur.”

372:1 Compare the interesting inscription from Sakkāra quoted from Erman (note, below).

373:1 R. 11, n. 3.

373:2 Compare Wessely, Denkschr. d. K. K. Akad. (1888), 103, 2359 ff.

373:3 Ibid., 104, 2373.

373:4 Erman (Ägypten, 515) refers to an inscription from Sakkāra, in which a mystical shepherd says to his flock: “Your Shepherd is in the West with the fishes,”—an interesting conjunction of ideas for students of archaic Christian symbolism. The idea is also Babylonian, the Star-flocks of the Gods being fed beyond the Ocean in the West.

373:5 Compare the dress of the Essenes, and the account of the sending forth of the disciples, Matt. x. 9 = Mark vi. 8 = Luke ix. 3. The direct contradiction of the account in Mark to the statements in Matthew and Luke, makes it exceedingly probable that not only the one robe, and staff, but also the wallet, were the typical signs of those who went forth to “raise the dead.”

373:6 He is clad in the περίζωμα, the working dress (or apron), in which men were said to work “naked” (nudus, γυμνός)—that is, clad in one robe. See also note on the sentence: “And naked I sought the Naked,” in treating of the Gymnosophists (or Naked Philosophers), in my Apollonius of Tyana (London, 1901), p. 100.

375:1 See “The Popular Theurgic Hermes Cult in the Greek Magic Papyri.”

375:2 Compare Hermas, Vis. v. 2: “I am sent . . . that I may dwell with thee for the rest of the days of thy life,” with Prayer i. 10: “for all the length of my life’s days”; and v. 3: “I know into whose charge I have been given,” with Prayer ii. 7: “I know thee, Hermes.”

375:3 ἐν τοῖς γενεκοῖς.

376:1 A term used by Philo as a synonym of Therapeut.

376:2 Div. Institt., i. 6—as cited among Evidences from the Fathers, where see my note on Phenëus.

376:3 Op. sup. cit., p. 365.

377:1 The very treatise to which we have previously referred in connection with the “mountain.”

378:1 See Gebhardt and Harnack, op. cit., Prolegg. xi. n. 2.

380:1 The texts are given by Berthelot (M. P. S.), Les Alchimistes grecs.

380:2 See The Book of the Dead, cxliv., cxlvii.

380:3 Griffith (F. Ll.), Stories of the High Priests of Memphis (Oxford, 1900), pp. 45 ff.

381:1 Berthelot (M. P. S.), La Chimie au Moyen Âge, iii. 44 ff., 268, n. 1; R. 361.

381:2 According to the Ethiopic translation. See The Apostolic Fathers, p. 325, n. 4, in the “Ante-Nicene Christian Library,” vol. i. (Edinburgh, 1867).

381:3 Kenyon (F. G.), Greek Pap. Cat., p. 65; R. 280, n. 3.

383:1 R. 34—from Apophthegmata Patrum, in Cotelerius’ Ecclesiæ Græcæ Monumenta, i. 582.

384:1 I do not know who this Olympius was, unless, perchance, he may have been the monk referred to by Nilus (ii. 77), the famous ascetic of Sinai, who flourished in the first quarter of the fifth century.

384:2 Again, I can find no information about this place; it was, however, presumably in the Nitriote nome south of the Delta—for the priest “ came down.’’

Gnosticism and Hermetica

CONCERNING THE ÆON-DOCTRINE

“Hear then, my son, how standeth God and All. God; Æon; Cosmos; Time; Becoming.”—C. H., xi. (xii.) 1.

THE SCOPE OF OUR ESSAY

While rigidly excluding any consideration of the amazing elaboration of Christo-Gnostic æonology, it may not be unserviceable to offer a “few notes in connection with the simpler idea of the Æon. The subject really requires a treatise in itself, but that would, of course, be too lengthy an undertaking for these Prolegomena. 1

Let us, then, first turn to a striking passage which purports to give us the Orphic tradition of the Genesis of the World-Egg, and of the relation of its Glorious Progeny to the Æon.

The passage is of great interest for us in our present enquiry, for if it is not a direct quotation from Apion, the Alexandrian savant, and bitter opponent of the Jews and of Philo, during the first half of the first

century A.D., it at anyrate represents the view of the Hellenistic theology of that period.

The passage is found in one of the sources of the composite and overworked document known as the Clementine Homilies, 1 and runs as follows:

THE ORPHIC TRADITION OF THE GENESIS OF THE WORLD-EGG

III. “There was when naught was but Chaos and an indistinguishable mixture of unordered elements still jumbled all together; both Nature herself being witness to it, and great men having thought it must be so.

“And as witness, I will bring forward for you the greatest of the great in wisdom, Homer himself, speaking about the original con-fusion:

“But may you all become water and earth 2—

—meaning that thence all things have had their genesis, and that after the dissolution of their moist and earthy essence they are all restored again to their first nature—which is Chaos.

“And Hesiod, in his Theogony, says:

“In truth Chaos came into being the very first. 3

“And by ‘came into being’ he evidently means that

it was generated as are things generable, and not that it for ever was as are things ingenerable.

“Orpheus also likens Chaos to an Egg in which was the con-fusion of the primordial elements. 1

“This is what Hesiod supposes by Chaos, what Orpheus calls an Egg—a thing generable, projected from the infinity of Matter (Hylē), and brought into being as follows:

IV. “Both fourfold Matter 2 being ensouled and the whole Infinitude being as though it were a Depth (Βυθός), flowing perpetually and indistinguishably moving, and over and over again pouring forth countless imperfect mixtures, now of one kind and now of another, and thereby dissolving them again owing to its lack of order, and engulphing so that it could not be bound [together] to serve for the generation of a living creature—it happened that the infinite Sea itself, being driven round 3 by its own peculiar nature, flowed with a natural motion in an orderly fashion from out of itself into itself, as it were a vortex, 4 and blended its essences, and thus involuntarily the most developed part of all of them, 5 that which was most serviceable for the generation of a living creature, flowed, as it were in a funnel, down the middle of the universe, and was carried to the bottom

by means of the vortex that swept up everything, and drew after it the surrounding Spirit, 1 and so gathering itself together as it were into the most productive [form of all], it constituted a discrete state [of things].

“For just as a bubble is made in water, so a sphere-like hollow form gathered itself together from all sides.

“Thereupon, itself being impregnated in itself, carried up 2 by the Divine Spirit that had taken it to itself as consort, it thrust forth its head (προέκυψεν 3) into the Light—this, the greatest thing perchance that’s ever been conceived, as though it were out of the Infinite Deep’s universe a work of art had been conceived and brought to birth, an ensouled work [in form] like unto the circumference of eggs, [in speed] like to the swiftness of a wing. 4

V. “I would therefore have you think of Cronus (Κρόνος) as Time (Χρόνον 5), and of Rhea (῾Ρέα) as the flowing (τὸ ρέον) of the Moist Essence; for the whole of Matter being moved in Time brought forth, as it were, an Egg, the whole surrounding sphere-like Heaven (Ὀυρανός), which in the beginning was full of the productive marrow, 6 so that it might be able to bring forth elements and colours of all kinds; and yet the

manifold appearances which it was ever presenting, all came from One Essence and One Colour.

“For just as in the product of the peacock, although the colour of the egg seems to be one, it has nevertheless potentially in it the countless colours of the bird that is to be brought to perfection, so also the Ensouled Egg conceived from Infinite Matter, when it is set in motion from the perpetually flowing Matter below it, 1 exhibits changes of all kinds.

“For from within the circumference a certain male-female Living Creature is imaged out by the Foreknowledge of the Divine Spirit that indwells in it, whom 2 Orpheus doth call Manifestor (Φάνης—Phanēs), because when he is manifest (φανείς) the universe shines forth from him, through the lustre of Fire, most glorious of elements, perfected in the Moist [Element].

“Nor is this incredible, for in the case of glow-worms, for example, Nature allows us to see a ‘moist light.’

VI. “Accordingly the First Egg that was ever produced being gradually warmed by the Living Creature within it, breaks open, and then there takes shape and comes forth some such thing as Orpheus says:

“When the skull-like 3 wide-yawning Egg did break [etc.]. 4

“So by the mighty power of Him who came forth and who made Himself manifest, ‘the shell’ 5 receives its articulation 6 and obtains its orderly arrangement;

while He Himself presides as though it were upon a throne on Heaven’s height, and in the [realms] ineffable sends forth His light all round upon the Boundless Æon.”

COMMENTARY

This is evidently the Logos—the God from the Egg, and the God from the Rock; for the Primal Firmament was symbolised as Rock, as Adamant; just as in physical nature, the life-spark appears from the mineral kingdom.

The Logos presides in highest heaven, in the ineffable spaces, whence He sends out His rays upon the Æon, that Bound of Bounds which is itself Boundless. For the Egg may be thought of as the Boundary of some special universe or system; whereas the Æon is the Boundary of all universes.

The information given in this quotation purports to be the Orphic tradition of cosmogony; with this cosmogony all Hellenistic theologians would be familiar, and therefore we are not surprised to find many points of contact between it and the general ideas in our “Pœmandres” cosmogenesis, which, though doubtless having an original nucleus of Egyptian tradition in it, is nevertheless strongly overworked by minds that were also saturated with the mingled traditions of Plato, Pythagoras, and Orpheus.

Indeed, both “Plato” and “Pythagoras,” on their mystical side, are strongly tinged with “Orpheus.” Now, Orphicism was the revival of pre-Hesiodic Orphism initiated by Onomacritus under the Peisistratidæ. Original Orphism was, in my opinion, a blend of Hellenic Bardic lore with “Chaldæan” elements. It is not surprising, therefore, that when the “Books of the Chaldæans,” collected for the Alexandrian Library, were

turned into Greek, great interest should have been taken in them by Hellenistic scholars, who found therein a confirmation of the Greek Wisdom of Orpheus, little suspecting that that Wisdom was in origin partially from the same source.

THE SETHIAN GNOSIS

In illustration of this Chaldæo-Orphic symbolical cosmogony as “philosophised” in a Hellenistic Gnostic environment, we will quote from a system ascribed by Hippolytus to the Sēthians (a name indicating an Egyptian environment), and brought by him into the closest connection with those whom he calls the Naassenes—that is to say, with what he considers to be one of the earliest forms of the Christian Gnosis, but which, as we have shown, is a form of the pre-Christian Gnosis overworked in Christian terms about the middle of the second century. Of these Sēthians, Hippolytus 1 tells us as follows:

“They think that there are Three Principles 2 of the universals having certain definite boundaries, and yet that each of these Principles possesses boundless potentialities.

“Now, the Essences of these Principles (he says) are Light and Darkness; and in the midst of these is pure Spirit.

“The Spirit, however, that is set in the midst of the Darkness that is below and of the Light that is above, is not a spirit [or breath] like a blast of wind or some light breeze that can be felt; but is as it were the delicate scent of unguent or of incense compounded and

prepared,—a force of fragrance that travels with a motion so rapid as to be quite inconceivable and far beyond the power of words to express.

“Now, since Light is above and Darkness below, and Spirit in some such way as I have said between them,—the Nature of the Light is that it shines forth from above, like a ray of the sun, into the Darkness beneath, while that of the fragrance of the Spirit, which has the middle rank, is, contrary wise, that it extends itself and is carried in every direction; just as in the case of incense on a fire, we see its fragrance carried in every direction.

“And such being the Power of the triply divided [Principles], the combined Power of the Spirit and Light descends into the Darkness which is set beneath them.

“And the Darkness is an awesome Water into which the Light together with the Spirit is drawn down and transferred.

“The Darkness, however, is not without understanding, but quite intelligent, and it knows that if Light were taken from Darkness, Darkness would remain isolated, unmanifest, 1 splendourless, powerless, ineffectual, strengthless.

“Wherefore is it constrained with all its intelligence and understanding to hold down to itself the lustre and spark of the Light together with the fragrance of the Spirit.

“And one can see an image of the nature of the latter in a man’s face—[namely] the pupil of the eye, 2 which is dark because of the waters underlying it, yet illumined by Spirit.

“As, therefore, the Darkness contends for the Splendour, in order that it may make a slave of the

[paragraph continues] Light-spark and see, so also the Light and the Spirit contend for their own Power; they strive to raise and bring back to themselves those powers which are mingled with the dark and awesome Water beneath.

“Now all the powers of the three Principles, being infinitely infinite in number, are sagacious and intelligent each according to its own essence. And though they are countless in multitude, yet, being sagacious and intelligent, as long as they remain by themselves, they are all at peace.

“If, however, one power is brought into contact with another power, the dissimilarity in their juxtaposition brings about a certain motion and energy that takes its shape from the concurrent motion of the juxtaposition of the contacting powers. 1

“For the con-currence of the powers constitutes as it were the impression (τύπος) of a seal struck off by concussion 2 so as to resemble the [die] that stamps the substances brought into contact with it.

“Since then the powers of the three Principles are infinite in number, and from the infinite powers are infinite concurrences, images of infinite seals are of necessity produced.

“These images, then, are the forms (ἰδέαι) of the different kinds of living creatures.

“Now from the first mighty concurrences of the three Principles there resulted a mighty type of seal—Heaven and Earth.

“And Heaven and Earth have a configuration

resembling a Womb, with the embryo 1 in the middle; and if (he says) one would bring this to the test of sight, let him scrutinise scientifically the gravid womb of whatsoever living creature he wishes, and he will find the model of Heaven and Earth and of all things between them lying before him without any alteration.

“So the configuration of Heaven and Earth was such that it resembled a Womb as it were, according to the first concourse [of the three Principles].

“And again in the midst of Heaven and Earth infinite concourses of powers occurred, and every single concourse effected and expressed the image of nothing else but a seal of Heaven and Earth—a thing resembling a Womb.

“And in the Earth itself there developed from the infinite seals of different kinds of living creatures, [living things] still more infinite.

“And into all this infinity below the Heaven in the different kinds of living creatures, the fragrance of the Spirit from above together with the Light was sown and was distributed. 2 . . .

“Accordingly there arose out of the Water a first-born source—Wind vehement and boisterous—and cause of all genesis.

“For by making a certain seething 3 in the waters it 4 raises up waves from the waters.

“And the genesis of the waves, being as it were a

certain pregnant 1 impulse, is the source of the production of man or mind, whenever [this motion] quickens under the impulse of the Spirit.

“And whenever this wave, raised from the Water by the Wind, and rendering nature pregnant, receives in itself the power of production of the female, it keeps down the Light from above that has been sown into it together with the fragrance of the Spirit,—that is to say, mind that takes forms in the various types; that is a perfect god, brought down from the Ingenerable Light from above and Spirit into a human nature, as into a temple, by the course of Nature and motion of the Wind, generated from Water, commingled and blended with bodies, as though he were the salt of existing things and the light of the Darkness, struggling to be freed from bodies, and unable to find liberation and the way out of himself.

“For as it were a very minute spark . . . like a ray 2 . . . .

“Every thought and care of the Light above, therefore, is how and in what way mind may be liberated from the Death of the evil and dark Body, 3 from the Father below, who is the Wind that in ferment and turmoil raised up the waves and brought to birth perfect mind, son of himself, and yet not his own in essence.

“For he was a ray from above, from that Perfect Light, overpowered in the sinuous 4 and awesome and bitter 5

and blood-stained Water; and that Light is the Spirit of Light borne upon the water. 1 . . .

“But the Wind, being both boisterous and vehement in its rush, is in its whistling 2 like unto a Serpent—a winged one.

“From the Wind, that is from the Serpent, the source of generation arose in the way that has been said; all things receiving together the beginning of generation.

“When then (he says) the Light and the Spirit have been received down into the impure and disorderly Womb of manifold suffering, the Serpent—the Wind of the Darkness, the First-born of the Waters—entering in generated man, and the impure Womb neither loves nor recognises any other form. 3

“And so the Perfect Logos of the Light from above having made Himself like unto the Beast, the Serpent, entered into the impure Womb, having deceived it 4 through His similitude to the Beast; in order that He may loose the bonds that are laid upon the perfect mind that is generated in the impurity of the Womb by the First-born of the Water—Snake, Wind, Beast.

“This (he says) is the Servant’s Form; 5 and this is

the necessity of the Descent of the Logos of God into the Womb of the Virgin.

“But it is not sufficient (he says) that the Perfect Man, the Logos, has entered into the Womb of the Virgin and loosed the pains that are in that Darkness; nay, but after entering into the foul mysteries in the Womb, He washed Himself and drank the Cup of Living Water bubbling-forth—a thing that everyone must do who is about to strip off the Servant-Form and put on the Celestial Garment.”

There can be little doubt but that the main ideas in the background of this system of the Gnosis are closely connected with general Orphic and Chaldæan ideas, and also with the main schematology of our “Pœmandres” tractate.

From the Orphic tradition handed on by Apion we have seen that the Æon is the Circle of Infinitude and Eternity illumined by the Logos.

THE “MITHRIAC ÆON”

The whole of this Orphic lore (in other words, the Chaldæan wisdom-teaching) seems to me to be summed up in one division of the symbolism of the Mithra-cult, as may be seen by an inspection of the monuments reproduced by Cumont, and especially those of the mysterious figure which he calls “la divinité léontocéphale,” and the birth of the God from the Rock; this seems to point, as we might very well suspect, to a strong Chaldæan element in the Mithriac tradition.

Cumont 1 tells us that although some scholars have rejected the name of “Mithriac Æon,” which was

given by Zoëga to this awe-inspiring mystic figure, 1 in his opinion (and he knows more of the subject than any other authority) it may very well have been actually called Æon in the sacred books of the mysteries.

If, however, this was the case, the mystic meaning, says Cumont, was of such a nature that it was concealed from the profane.

Our classical authorities inform us that the Magi expressed the name of the Supreme God, which was in reality ineffable, by various substitutes. The general name for the Mystery Deity was Cronus, and Cronus in the sense of Time.

“The Mithriac Cronus is a personification of Time, and this fact, which is now fairly established, permits us immediately to determine the identity of this pseudonymous God.

“There is only one Persian divinity which he can possibly represent, and that is Zervan Akarana, Infinite Time, whom, from the time of the Achemenides, a sect of the Magi placed at the origin of things, and from whom they would have both Ormuzd and Ahriman to have been born.

“It was this God that the adepts of the mysteries placed at the head of the celestial hierarchy, and considered as the first principle; or, to put it differently, it was the Zervanist system that the Mazdæans of Asia Minor taught to the Western followers of the Iranian religion.”

This all seems to me to point not to a Persian origin

of the Æon, as Cumont supposes, but to a Chaldæan element dominating the Mithriac form of the Magian tradition. 1

PROBABLE DATE OF ORIGIN OF THE HELLENISTIC DOCTRINE

Now the Chaldæan and Egyptian wisdom-cultures had many root-ideas in common (were they not regarded by the Greeks as the wisdom-traditions par excellence?); we are not therefore surprised to find that Egypt, with its ever-recurring grandiose mystery-phrases of enormous time-periods, such as “He of the millions of years,” had on its own soil a highly developed idea of Eternity and of Eternities—that is, of the Æon and of the Æons; and indeed the strongly Egyptian forms of the Gnosis, which we have preserved to us under Christian overworking, are involved in the most complex æonology.

It seems, however, almost as though the evidence suggests that this Egyptian element had been revivified, and rescued from the oblivion in which it had been buried in a decadent age, in the symbolism of an almost forgotten past, by a stream of Chaldæan ideas that poured into Hellenistic circles in the early Alexandrian period. When precisely the Æon-idea forced itself upon the philosophic mind of Alexandrian thinkers as an unavoidable mystic necessity, it is difficult to say with any certainty. It can, however, be said without fear of serious contradiction that it may have done so from early Ptolemaic times, and with certainty that it did so in the first century B.C. as truly as in the first century A.D.

That the term Æon was in frequent use in the

popular Hermes-cult may be seen in Hermes-Prayer v. 4, where Thoth is characterised as the “Æon of the Æons who changes himself into all forms in visions.” So also in Prayer viii. 2, the Good Daimon, who has different names given him in the different hours, is called “Wealth-giving Æon.” So also with Isis, who is called Wisdom and Æon in the Papyri. 1

In conclusion, we may glance at what Reitzenstein (pp. 272 ff.) has to say concerning this “Aionenlehre.”

ABRAXAS

The name Abraxas, which consisted of seven elements or letters, was a mystery-designation of the God who combined in himself the whole power of the Seven Planets, and also of the Year of 365 days, the sum of the number-values of the letters of Abraxas working out to 365. This mysterious Being was the “Year”; but the Year as the Eternity, also conceived of in a spatial aspect, as the Spirit or Name that extends from Heaven to Earth, the God who pervades and full-fills the Seven Spheres, and the Three Hundred and Sixty-five Zones, the Inner God, “He who has His seat within the Seven Poles—ΑΕΗΙΟΥΩ,” as the Papyri have it, and also without them, as we shall see.

The mysterious formula “the Name of which the figure is 365” meets us in such connections, that it cannot be taken to mean simply the “Year-God,” but is a synonym of the Highest God, a secret, mysterious Being. In brief it was, as we have seen, no other than the Lion-headed God, called in Greek Æon.

Indeed, we know from Philo of Byblos 2 that, at least in his day, the second half of the first century A.D. (and,

for all we know, prior to it), there were in Phœnicia communities of the Æon—of the Highest and Supercelestial One.

THE FEAST OF THE ÆON

The first dated use of the word in a religious sense is found in Messala (who was Consul, 53 B.C.), as Johannes Lydus tells us. 1 Moreover, Lydus informs us that the Ancients (οἱ πάλαι) celebrated a Feast of the Æon on January 5th. 2 This can be no other than the Feast of which Epiphanius gives us such interesting details in treating of the Epiphany, when he writes, after describing the festival in the Koreion at Alexandria: 3

“And if they are asked the meaning of this mystery, they answer and say: To-day at this hour the Maiden (Korē), that is the Virgin, has given birth to the Æon.” 4

In the next paragraph Epiphanius designates this Æon as the Alone-begotten. Here, then, we have striking evidence that in its Egyptian environment the cult of the Æon was associated with mystery-rites reminding us strongly of the symbolism of the Christ-mystery.

THE QUINTESSENCE AND THE MONAD

Moreover, Messala 5 tells us of this Æon, that He “who made all things and governs all things, joined

together by means of the surrounding Heaven the power and nature of Water and Earth, heavy and downward, flowing down into the Depth, and that of Fire and Spirit, light and rushing upward to the measureless Height. It is this mightiest power of Heaven that hath bound together these two unequal powers.”

Lydus (ibid.) furthermore tells us that the idea of the Æon was associated by the Pythagoreans with the idea of the Monad; indeed, they seem to have derived the word aiōn from ἰά, the Ionic form of μία (one).

Any attempt to refer this Pythagorean identification to the earlier Pythagoreans would be at once rejected by the majority of scholars, but I believe myself that the original Pythagoreans were far too close to the Borderland between mythology and philosophy not to have personified or at least substantiated their “Numbers” and the Source of them. At anyrate it is highly instructive to find Plato himself writing in the Timæus:

THE ÆON IN PLATO

“And when the Father who begot it [the Cosmos] saw that by its motion and its life it had become a likeness of the Everlasting Gods, He marvelled, and in delight determined further to make it still more like its Original. 1 And as the latter is an Everlasting Living Being, He sought to make this [Sensible] Universe as far as possible like it.

“Now the nature of the Living Being was eternal (αἰώνιος—æonian); but to bestow this quality entirely on a generable creature was not possible.

“Accordingly He determined to make a moving

image of Eternity (Αἰῶνος); and so in setting the Heaven in order He makes it an everlasting (αἰώνιον) image, moving according to number, of Eternity (Αἰῶνος) that rests in One—an image which we have, you know, called Time.” 1

Here it is very plain that Æon is not Time, but the Paradigm thereof—Eternity. It is the Consummation of the Eternal Gods—namely, the Plērōma, the Monad par excellence. We, therefore, find already in Plato the idea of the Æon fully developed. Did Plato “invent” it? Or did he put an already existing idea into philosophical terms? He presumably found it already existing. Was it then Orphic (Pythagorean), or did he learn of it in Egypt? Who shall say precisely?

CONCERNING THE HELLENISTIC ORIGIN OF ÆONOLOGY

Seeing, however, that we find the idea of the Æon fully developed in Plato, and seeing that Plato was, so to speak, scripture for our Hermetic writers, it is exceedingly puzzling that we should find it apparently introduced at a certain stage into the Trismegistic literature as a new doctrine.

It may be, however, that those who had followed Plato on purely philosophical lines had hitherto paid little attention to the idea of the Æon, except as an ultimate principle beyond the reach of speculation. When, however, the enthusiastic seership of mysticism dared to soar beyond heaven into the Heaven of heavens, and so to divide the Simplicity into an Infinitude of Multiplicity, the term Æon came to be used no longer for a transcendent unity but as the connotation of a grade of Being.

It may then have been that our Hermetic writers reasserted the use of the term in its simpler philosophic meaning as a check to over-enthusiastic speculation.

But even if it were a reaction against a too great luxury of speculation, it must have been contemporaneous with the development of æonology; so that in any case C. H. xi. (xii.) must be dated from this point of view.

When æonology arose we cannot say precisely; but æonology in the Gnostic sense of the term was, as we have seen, to some extent at least existing as early as the earliest Christian documents.

THE ÆON THE LOGOS

Now though the Trismegistic tractate C. H., xi. (xii.) is evidently in literary contact with the Timæus, 1 it nevertheless purports to give more “esoteric,” or at any rate more precise, instruction than is to be found in Plato’s famous cosmogonical treatise. It does not follow Plato, but hands on an instruction that has already been formulated in a precise and categorical fashion. The ladder of existence is God, Æon, Cosmos, Time, Genesis;—each following one from the other.

Æon is the Power of God (§ 3), whereas Cosmos is God’s creation and work (§§ 3, 4). The Æon, standing between God and Cosmos, is the Paradigm, and so also the Son of God (§ 15), and the final end of man is that he should become Æon (§ 20)—that is, Son of God. Æon is thus evidently the Logos of God, or the Intelligible Cosmos, as distinguished from the Sensible Cosmos. This

[paragraph continues] Æon is the Fullness in which all things move, and chiefly the Seven Cosmoi (§ 7).

THE ROMAN SÆCULUM-CULT DERIVED FROM EGYPT

Now, Reitzenstein (pp. 274 ff.) shows very clearly that the Cult of the Saeculum or Æon was strongly developed in Roman theology in at least the first century B.C. This is too early a date for us to assign this development to the influence of the Mithras-cult. Can it then be that Rome was influenced by Egypt? Such at anyrate is Reitzenstein’s opinion (p. 277), who points to the fact that Messala, who is fully imbued with the Æon-idea, was a contemporary of Nigidius, the most learned of the Romans after Varro, and a Pythagorean philosopher of high attainments. Now it is remarkable that in his work, De Sphæra Barbarica, Nigidius treats of the Egyptian Sphere.

THE ÆONIC IMMENSITIES OF EGYPT

Egypt, as we have already remarked, at a very early date arrived at the idea of eternal or at anyrate of enormously long periods of time, and had symbolised this conception in a primordial syzygy or pair of Gods. Indeed, the names of the primordial Time-pair, Ḥḥw (Ḥeḥu) and Ḥḥt (Ḥeḥut), are immediately derived from “Ḥḥ,” generally translated “Million,” but by Brugsch and others as Æon. 1 All the Egyptian Gods were Lords of the Eternity or of the Eternities. But not only so, the

term “eternity” was used in connection with definite time-periods; for instance, “in a million (or eternity) of thirty year periods.” And again: “Thy kingdom will have the lastingness of eternity and of infinitely many hundred-and-twenty-year periods; ten millions of thy years, millions of thy months, hundred-thousands of thy days, ten-thousands of thine hours.” 1

Here we must remark the numbers 120 (that is 12 × 10) and 30; all essential numbers of the Gnostic Plērōma of Æons.

It is also of interest in connection with the Time-pair, to note that Horapollo, the Alexandrian grammarian, tells us that the Egyptians when they desire to express the idea of Æon write “sun and moon” 2 (i. 1), and when they want to write “year” they draw “Isis,” that is “woman” (i. 3).

We thus see that in Egypt there were Æons of Periods or Years, and Years of Æons. Above all these ruled the God of the Æons, the highest God of many a mystic community.

A SONG OF PRAISE TO THE ÆON

And so we read the following song of praise to the Æon, inscribed on a “secret tablet” by some unknown Brother of a forgotten Order:

1. “Hail unto Thee, O thou All-Cosmos of æthereal Spirit! Hail unto Thee, O Spirit, who doth extend from Heaven to Earth, and from the Earth that’s in the middle of the orb of Cosmos to the ends of the Abyss!

2. “Hail unto Thee, O Spirit who doth enter into me, who clingeth unto me or who doth part thyself from

me, according to the Will of God in goodness of His heart!

3. “Hail unto Thee, O thou Beginning and thou End of Nature naught can move! Hail unto thee thou vortex of the liturgy 1 unweariable of [Nature’s] elements!

4. “Hail unto Thee, O thou Illumination of the solar beam that shines to serve the world. Hail unto Thee, thou Disk of the night-shining moon, that shines unequally! Hail, ye Spirits all of the æthereal statues [of the Gods]!

5. “Hail to you [all], whom holy Brethren and holy Sisters ought to hail in giving of their praise!

6. “O Spirit, mighty one, most mighty circling and incomprehensible Configuration of the Cosmos, celestial, æthereal, inter-æthereal, water-like, earth-like, fire-like, air-like, like unto light, to darkness like, shining as do the stars,—moist, hot, cold Spirit!

7. “I praise Thee, God of gods, who ever doth restore the Cosmos, and who doth store the Depth away 2 upon its throne of settlement no eye can see, who fixest Heaven and Earth apart, and coverest the Heaven with thy golden everlasting (αἰωνίαις) wings, and makest firm the Earth on everlasting thrones!

8. “Thou who hangest up the Æther in the lofty Height, and scatterest the Air with thy self-moving blasts, who mak’st the Water eddy round in circles!

9. “O Thou who raisest up the fiery whirlwinds, and makest thunder, lightning, rain, and shakings of the earth, O God of Æons! Mighty art thou, Lord God, O Master of the All!” 3

Here there is no separation of God as intra-cosmic and extra-cosmic; He is both the one and the other. He is both the Fullness of the Godhead and also the Fullness of Cosmos. He is both the Cosmos, and He who is above the Cosmos and below the Cosmos. 1

THE DEMIURGIC ÆON

Reitzenstein (p. 278), referring to our Trismegistic tractate, C. H., xi. (xii.), points to the distinction made between Æon and God on one side and Æon and Cosmos on the other. This, he thinks, shows signs of the influence of a fundamental trait of Hellenistic theology which makes the Demiurge the Second God.

However this may be, there certainly was a distinction drawn between the Creative, or rather Formative, God and the Supreme Deity, in many a Christian Gnostic System, and not unfrequently of a very disparaging nature to the former. Already in Jewish mystic and philosophic (Gnostic) circles a distinction had had to be drawn between the idea of God as the Creator God, and the idea of God as the Ineffable Mystery of Mysteries. This had been necessitated by the contact of the Jewish Gnostics with the old wisdom-ideas and with the fundamental postulates of Greek philosophy.

THE ÆON IN THEURGIC LITERATURE

Many examples could be given, 2 but we prefer to follow Reitzenstein (p. 279) in his references to the Magic Papyri, or Apocryphal literature of the same class,

and append the translation of two striking quotations, as opening up an entirely novel side of the subject.

Thus in the eighth Book of Moses, we find the following passage in which the Jewish Creator God is placed in the second rank as compared with the Egyptian Supreme Principle.

“And God, looking down unto the earth, said: IAŌ! And all stood still, and then came into being from His Voice a Great God, most mighty, who is Lord of all things, who caused to stand the things that shall be; and no longer was there any thing without order in the æthereal realms.” 1

So also in an invocation to an unknown God, most probably to the Spirit to whom the Brother of the unknown community addressed his praise-giving as given above—we meet with the same distinction.

“Thee, the only and blest Father of the Æons, I invoke with prayers like unto Cosmos! 2

“Come unto me who fillest the whole Cosmos with thy Breath, and dost hang up on high the Fire out of the Water, 3 and dost from out the Water separate the Earth. . . . The Lord bore witness to thy Wisdom, that is the Æon, and bade thee to have strength as He Himself hath strength.” 4

And, later on, the Theurgist exclaims:

“Receive my words as shafts of fire, for that I am God’s Man, for whom was made the fairest plasm of spirit, dew 5 and earth.”

He is a Man whose words are effective and bring all

things to pass; for his “words” are compelling “acts,” or “theurgic.”

Other passages are brought forward by Reitzenstein (pp. 280-286) to show that the idea of the Logos or Æon as Second God was a fundamental conception in Hellenistic theology.

This may very well have been the case in general Hellenistic theology; but in philosophical circles, as we have pointed out in treating of the Logos-idea in Philo, the distinction was formal and not essential. So also in our Trismegistic treatises, which are saturated with transcendental pantheistic or monistic, or rather panmonistic, conceptions, if the Logos or Æon is momentarily treated of as apart from Supreme Deity, it is not so in reality; for the Logos is the Season of God, God in His eternal Energy, and the Æon is the Eternity of Deity, God in His energic Eternity, the Rest that is the Source of all Motion.

For the fullest exposition of the Æon-doctrine in our Trismegistic tractates, see The Perfect Sermon, xxx.-xxxii., and my commentary thereon.

Footnotes

387:1 From Prof. Montet’s report (Asiatic Qr. Rev., Oct. 1904) of the “Proceedings of the Second International Congress of the History of Religions” (Bâle), Aug. 20-Sept. 2, 1904, I see that Reitzenstein presented a monograph on the “Aion” to the Congress. I do not, however, know whether this has yet been published.

388:1 Clement. Hom., VI. iii. ff.; ed. A. Schwegler (Stuttgart, 1847), pp. 168 ff.; ed. P. de Lagarde (Leipzig, 1865), pp. 74 ff. See also Lobeck, Aglaophamus, pp. 475, 478; and my Orpheus, pp. 156 and 162, 163. For the latest critical view on the Apion-speeches, see Waitz (H.), Die Pseudoklementinen Homilien und Rekognitionen (Texte und Untersuchungen, Neue Folge, Bd. X. Hft. IV.), pp. 251-256, “Der Dialog des Klemens mit Appion über die heidnische Mythologie.”

388:2 Il., vii. 99. Cf. the Earth-and-Water of C. H., i. 5.

388:3 Theog., 116.

389:1 Orpheus apparently does nothing of the kind, but draws a distinction between Chaos and the Egg.

389:2 Cf. the Pythagorean Tetraktys, in the famous oath—“The Fourfold Root of Ever-flowing Nature.”

389:3 Or impelled or pushed in every direction.

389:4 Thus forming the Vortex Atom of the Cosmos.

389:5 The text reads: καὶ οὕτως ἐξ ἀκουστοῦ τῶν πάνπων τὸ νοστιμώτατον. As ἐξ ἀκουστοῦ has hitherto proved insoluble for all editors, I would suggest ἐξ ἀκουσίου. As to νοστιμώτατον, L. and S. are of little assistance unless it is taken in the sense of “ripest.” Sophocles gives “essential, valuable, perfect, the best part of any thing.”

390:1 This probably means the Spirit that ensouled Matter; or to use a more familiar expression, the Spirit of God which “brooded over the Deep.”

390:2 Sc. out of the Depth of Matter or Darkness, on to the surface of it, where was the Light.

390:3 Cf. C. H., i. 14: “bent his face downwards” (παρέκυψεν), and note thereon.

390:4 According to Basilides the “wings” of the Sonship are the Holy Spirit. This symbolism is presumably to be connected with the Egyptian “Winged Globe.” See F. F. F., p. 26.

390:5 A very ancient word-play.

390:6 Sometimes used for brain. Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 11, and the Jewish Commentator in the Naassene Document. This is the Spermatic Essence of the Logos.

391:1 It is thought of as floating in this Matter.

391:2 The Living One.

391:3 κραναίου—an otherwise unknown word. Many emendations have been suggested; but it does not seem to be necessary to go beyond κρανίον, especially as we have seen (for instance, in the Naassene Document) that this was a favourite symbol of the Heaven.

391:4 Unfortunately, the rest of the Orphic quotation is not given.

391:5 Or body—the matter in the Egg.

391:6 ἁρμονίαν—its fitting together, or harmony.

393:1 Philos., v. 19; ed. C., p. 209 ff.; ed. D. and S., pp. 198 ff.; ed. M., 138 ff.

393:2 ἀρχάς—sources or beginnings.

394:1 ἀφανές—the opposite of Phanes.

394:2 Have we here any further clue to the title Κόρη Κόσμου?

395:1 I may be mistaken, but the ideas involved in this exposition seem to be precisely the same as those involved in the most modern dynamic theories of atomicity, except that the atoms or rather monads of our Gnostics are intelligent.

395:2 Lit., con-currence.

396:1 Lit., navel; but the word stands metaphorically for anything like a navel—e.g. the boss of a shield, a knob of any kind; hence any centre, or nucleus.

396:2 Hippolytus here seems to have omitted some important section of his source from his summary; in any case the text of that which follows is very corrupt, and in some important details demonstrably imperfect, as may be seen by comparing the Epitome, X. iv.

396:3 Or ferment.

396:4 Sc. Wind.

397:1 ἐγκύμων—a play on κῦμα, which means embryo as well as wave.

397:2 The text is here destroyed beyond hope of conjecture.

397:3 Sc. Darkness.

397:4 σκολιῷ. Cf. the σκολιῶς of C. H., i. 4.

397:5 Cf, the Naassene Hymn: “She seeks to flee the bitter Chaos”; and compare Jacob Böhme’s “Bitterness,” and also his “three Principles,” with those of our system. The analogies are striking, and yet Jacob could not possibly have known this system physically.

398:1 The following lines are destroyed beyond the power of reconstruction.

398:2 In the case of a serpent this would be “hissing”; σύριγμα, however, is properly the sound of a pipe, and puts us in mind of the Syriktēs of the Naassene Document.

398:3 Sc. than that of the Serpent.

398:4 Sc. the Womb.

398:5 Cf. Philipp., ii. 7: “But He emptied Himself, taking on the Servant’s Form, being made in the likeness of men.” The “emptying” or κένωσις was the change from the πλήρωμα or Fullness of Light to the κένωμα or Emptiness of Darkness. Paul (or the writer of the Epistle, whoever he was) is here using the technical language of the Gnosis.

399:1 Textes et Monuments Figurés relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra (Bruxelles, 1899), i. 76 ff., where all the references are given.

400:1 A Being with lion’s head, and eagle’s wings, and brute’s feet, and human body, enwrapped with a serpent, standing on a globe and holding the keys of life and death in its two hands. There are many variants, however, all of them highly instructive, as pourtraying the Autozoon, or Living Creature in itself, the summation of all forms of life, including man.

401:1 Reitzenstein (p. 276) is also of this opinion.

402:1 R. 270.

402:2 Ap. Euseb., Præp. Evang., I. 10, 7; 34 B.

403:1 De Mens., iv. (ed. Wünsch, p. 64, 6).

403:2 Or rather 6th. Reitzenstein’s (p. 274) gloss (πρὸ εἰδῶν) to ἐπὶ τῆς πέμπτης, is erroneous, for this would make the date January 11th.

403:3 For a translation of the passage, see the Commentary on the K. K. Excerpts in treating of the term “Virgin of the World.”

403:4 Epiphanius, Haer., li. 22; ed. Dindorf, ii. 483. Cf. D. J. L., pp. 410 f., “The Crucifixion and Resurrection Mystery-Rite.”

403:5 Quoted by Macrobius, Saturnal., I. ix.

404:1 That is, the Ideal Cosmos.

405:1 Tim., 37 C, D.

406:1 Cf. § 1: “As many men say many things, and these diverse about the All and Good”; and Tim., 29 C: “If then, O Socrates, since many men say many things about the Gods and the genesis of the All.”

407:1 Budge (op. cit., i. 285) writes: “According to the late Dr Brugsch (Religion, p. 132), the name Ḥeḥ is connected with the word which indicates an undefined and unlimited number, i.e. ḥeḥ; when applied to time the idea suggested is ‘millions of years,’ and Ḥeḥ is equivalent to the Greek αἰών.”

408:1 Brugsch, Wörterbuch, vi. 839.

408:2 The usual symbols for “everlasting.”

409:1 Or service—λειτουργία.

409:2 θησαυρίσας—or treasure away.

409:3 Wessely, Denkschr. d. K. K. Akad. (1888), p. 72, 11. 1115 ff.; R. 277, 278.

410:1 Cf. R. 28; Hermes-Prayer, vii. 1.

410:2 See my Fragments of a Faith Forgotten.

411:1 Dieterich, Abraxas, 184-99.

411:2 That is, presumably, “offerings of the reason,” as our tractates have it; or prayers that put the mind in sympathy with the true order of things.

411:3 The Heaven Ocean.

411:4 Wessely, Denkschr. d. K. K. Akad. (1888), p. 73, 11. 1168 ff.

411:5 Or pure water.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

THE SEVEN ZONES AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS

“To the first zone he gives the energy of Growth and Waning; unto the second zone, Device of Evils now de-energized; unto the third, the Guile of the Desires de-energized; unto the fourth, his Domineering Arrogance also de-energized; unto the fifth, unholy Daring and the Rashness of Audacity de-energized; unto the sixth, Striving for Wealth by evil means deprived of its aggrandisement; and to the seventh zone, Ensnaring Falsehood de-energized.”—C. H., i. 25.

MACROBIUS ON “THE DESCENT OF THE SOUL FROM THE HEIGHT OF COSMOS TO THE DEPTHS OF EARTH”

Let us first turn to the commentary of Macrobius on the famous “Dream of Scipio,” which Cicero introduces into his Republic (Bk. VI.), just as Plato appends the Vision of Er to his. Macrobius devotes the twelfth chapter of his First Book to a consideration of “The Descent of the Soul from the Height of Cosmos to the Depths of Earth,” and professes to base himself on Pythagorean and Platonic traditions. His dissertation covers more ground than the precise subject of the zones with which we are more immediately concerned; but as the whole scheme is of interest to our present

studies, we will append a translation of practically the whole chapter.

“[According to Pythagoras] when the Soul descends from the Boundary where the Zodiac and Galaxy [or Milky Way] meet, from a spherical form, which is the only divine one, it is elongated into a conical one 1 by its downward tendency.

“Just as the line is born from the point and proceeds into length out of the indivisible, so the soul from its point, that is ‘monad,’ comes into ‘dyad’—its first production [or lengthening].

“And this is the essence which Plato in the Timæus, speaking about the construction of the World-Soul, describes as indivisible yet at the same time divisible.

“For just as the Soul of the World so also the soul of an individual man will be found in one respect incapable of division—if it is regarded from the standpoint of the simplicity of its divine nature—and in another capable [of division]—since the former is diffused through the members of the world, and the latter through those of a man.

“When then the soul is drawn towards body—in this first production of it—it begins to experience a material agitation, matter flowing into it. 2

“And this is remarked by Plato in the Phædo [when he says] that the soul is drawn to body staggering with recent intoxication,—meaning us to understand by this a new draught of matter’s superfluity, by which it becomes defiled and gravid and so is brought down.

“A symbol of this mystic secret is that Starry Cup (Cratēr) of Father Bacchus placed in the space between

[paragraph continues] Cancer and Leo 1—meaning that intoxication is there first experienced by souls in their descent by the influx of matter into them. From which cause also forgetfulness, the companion of intoxication, then begins secretly to creep into souls.

“For if souls brought down to body memory of the divine things of which they were conscious in heaven, there would be no difference of opinion among men concerning the divine state. But all, indeed, in their descent drink of forgetfulness—some more, some less.

“And for this cause on earth, though the truth is not clear to all, they nevertheless have all some opinion about it; for opinion arises when memory sinks. Those, however, are greater discoverers of truth who have drunk less of forgetfulness, because they remember more easily what they have known before in that state.

“Hence it is that what the Latins call a ‘lecture’ (lectio) the Greeks call a ‘re-knowing’ (repetita cognitio 2), because when we give utterance to true things, we re-cognize the things which we knew by nature before the influence of matter intoxicated our souls in their descent into body.

“Now it is this Matter (Hylē) which, after being impressed by the [divine] ideas, fashioned every body in the cosmos which we see. Its highest and purest nature, by means of which the divinities are either sustained or consist, 3 is called Nectar, and is believed to be the drink of the gods; while its lower and more

turbid nature is the drink of souls. The latter is what the Ancients called the River of Lethe [or Forgetfulness].

“The Orphic [initiates], however, suppose that Dionysus himself is to be understood as ‘Hylic Nous’ 1—[that Mind] which after its birth from the Indivisible [Mind] is itself divided into individual [minds].

“And it is for this reason that in their Mystery-tradition Dionysus is represented as being torn limb from limb by the fury of the Titans, and, after the pieces have been buried, as coming together again whole and one; for Nous—which, as we have said, is their term for Mind—by offering itself for division from its undivided state, and by returning to the undivided from the divided, both fulfils the duties of the cosmos and also performs the mysteries of its own nature.

“The soul, therefore, having by means of this first weight [of matter] fallen down from the Zodiac and Galaxy into the series of spheres that lie below them, in continuing its descent through them, is not only enwrapped in the envelope of a luminous body, 2 but also develops the separate motions which it is to exercise.

“In the sphere of Saturn [it develops] the powers of reasoning and theorizing 3—which [the Greeks] call τὸ λογιστικὸν and τὸ θεωρητικόν; in that of Jupiter, the power of putting into practice—which they call τὸ πρακτικόν; in that of Mars, the power of ardent vehemence—which they call τὸ θυμικόν; in that of the Sun, the nature of sensing and imagining—which they call τὸ αἰσθητικὸν and τὸ φανταστικόν; in that of Venus, the motion of desire—which they call τὸ

ἐπιθυμητικόν, in the sphere of Mercury, the power of giving expression to and interpretation of feelings—which they call τὸ ἑρμη νευτικόν; on its entrance into the sphere of the Moon it brings into activity τὸ φυτικόν—that is, the nature of making bodies grow and of moving them.

“And this [soul], though the last thing in the divine series, is nevertheless the first thing in us and in all terrestrial beings; just as this body [of ours], though the dregs of things divine, is still the first substance of the animal world.

“And this is the difference between terrene bodies and supernal—I mean those of the heaven and stars and of the other elements 1—that the latter are summoned upwards to the abode of the soul, and are worthy of immunity from death from the very nature of the space in which they are and their imitation of sublimity.

“The soul, however, is drawn down to these terrene bodies, and so it is thought to die when it is imprisoned in the region of things fallen and in the abode of death. Nor should it cause distress that we have so often spoken of death in connection with the soul, which we have declared to be superior to death. For the soul is not annihilated by [what is called] its death, but is [only] buried for a time; nor is the blessing of its perpetuity taken from it by its submersion for a time, since when it shall have made it worthy to be cleansed clean utterly of all contagion of its vice, it shall once more return from body to the light of Everlasting Life restored and whole.” 2

The characteristics of the spheres given by Macrobius are according to their simple energies; there is no

question of good or bad; it is the “thinking” of the soul that conditions the use of these energies for beneficent or maleficent ends.

THE TRADITION OF SERVIUS

Servius, however, in his Commentary on Virgil’s Æneid, vi. 714, hands on another tradition, in which the Spheres were regarded as inimical to the good of the soul, its evil propensities being ascribed to their energies. Some scholars are of opinion that Virgil in his famous Sixth Book is largely dependent on the ideas of popular Egyptian theology; 1 however that may be, Servius writes as follows:

“The philosophers tell us what the soul loses in its descent through the separate spheres. For which cause also the Mathematici imagine that our body and soul are knit together by the powers of the separate divinities, on the supposition that when souls descend, they bring with them the sluggishness of Saturn, the passionateness of Mars, the lustfulness of Venus, the cupidity of Mercury, and the desire for rule of Jupiter. And these things perturb souls, so that they are unable to use their own energy and proper powers.”

It is to be noticed that the characteristics of the Sun and Moon are omitted, and this points to a doctrine in which Sun and Moon were treated as distinct from “the five.” So also in the “Books of the Saviour” appended to the Pistis Sophia document we find (pp. 360, 366 ff.) mention of only five planets. The

tradition of this doctrine is exceedingly obscure, 1 and does not immediately concern us, as our text works on a “seven” basis.

CRITICISM OF THE EVIDENCE

I have done my best to discover some consistent scheme by which the contradictory data in Macrobius, Servius, and Hermes might be reconciled, but the tabularising of their indications only makes confusion worse confounded.

It is evident, however, that the main thing that Macrobius hands on, and which he attributes to Orphic-Pythagorean-Platonic tradition, contains in itself no suggestion that these philosophers attributed any evil tendencies to the characteristics of the spheres in themselves. The tradition of Macrobius is as follows:

Saturn

{

τὸ θεωρητικὸν τὸ λογιστικὸν

intelligentia. ratiocinatio.

Jupiter

τὸ πρακτικὸν

vis agendi.

Mars

τὸ θυμικὸν

ardor animositatis.

Sun

{

τὸ αἰσθητικὸν τὸ φανταστικὸν

natura sentiendi. natura opinandi.

Venus

τὸ ἐπιθυμητικὸν

motus desiderii.

Mercury

τὸ ἑρμηνευτικὸν

{

vis pronuntiandi et interpretandi quæ sentiantur.

Moon

τὸ φυτικὸν

{

natura plantandi et agendi corpora.

The confusion between the “vis agendi” of Jupiter and that of the Moon may be resolved by supposing that the former was the application of the reasoning

faculty to the practical things of life, while the latter was the power of moving one’s own physical body, if indeed the “et agendi” is not a gloss of Macrobius.

Servius, on the contrary, is following a tradition in which the spheres were regarded as the sources of evil tendencies; ethical considerations dominate the whole conception. Seeing, however, that it is a fivefold distribution, we are unable to equate it with the doctrine of Hermes, which is sevenfold. Nevertheless, there are some parallels.

The lustfulness (libido) of Servius is to be paralleled with the “guile of the desires” or “lustful error” (ἡ ἐπιθυμητικὴ ἀπάτη) of Hermes. This is ascribed to the third zone by Hermes, and to Venus by Servius, Venus further coming third in Macrobius.

The “desire of rule” (desiderium regni) of Servius is clearly the “domineering arrogance” (ἡ ἀρχοντικὴ προφανία) of Hermes. In Hermes this belongs to the middle zone (fourth); in Servius it is ascribed to Jupiter, presumably as the ruler of the age—the ruler of the previous age being Saturn, who has been deprived of his energy and so rendered “torpid.”

The “passion” or “wrathfulness” (iracundia) of Servius is also to be paralleled to some extent with the “unholy daring” of Hermes. It is ascribed to the fifth zone by Hermes and to Jupiter by Servius, Mars also coming fifth in Macrobius.

Finally, the “love of gain” (lucri cupiditas) of Servius may be paralleled by the “striving for wealth by evil means” (αἱ ἀφορμαὶ αἱ κακαὶ τοῦ πλούτου) of Hermes. Hermes attributes this to the sixth zone, and Servius to Mercury.

The remaining quality mentioned by Servius, “torpor,” which he ascribes to Saturn, equates with nothing in Hermes, unless we can persuade ourselves that the

“ensnaring falsehood” or “falsehood that lies in wait” (τὸ ἐνεδρεῦον ψεῦδος) of Hermes has some connection with it.

The scheme of Hermes is septenary, and connected with the ideas of the ascent of the soul through seven zones, which we must locate as seven superimposed atmospheres extending from the surface of the earth to the moon’s orbit. There is no question here of the Celestial Spheres proper of the Philosophers, the characteristics of the energies of which are neither good nor evil in themselves; nor is there apparently any question of the “animal soul” proper, for the “passions and desires” are said to withdraw into the “nature which is void of reason.” Though nothing more is said about this nature in this connection, in the general belief of the time its dominion was thought of as located below the earth-surface—as a Tartarus of seven zones, corresponding to those above, in which the “animal soul” or “vehicle of desire” was thought of as being gradually disintegrated, its energies finally going back to their source in the Depths of the Darkness, while the process of such disintegration or metamorphosis produced a parallel consciousness of chastisements and horrors. The seven zones of our text, however, are apparently the region of purification of the lower energies of the human soul; the mental energies led into error by the animal passions.

THE “OPHITE” HEBDOMAD

Now if we turn to Salmon’s article on the “Hebdomad,” 1 and to his discussion of the tradition of the “Ophites”—a mysterious medley of chaotic elements, which have not yet been analysed in any satisfactory

fashion, but which have their roots in pre-Christian traditions of a very varied nature within the general characteristic of a syncretic Gnosticism—we find that after treating of the Celestial Hebdomad, he continues as follows:

“Besides the higher hebdomad of the seven angels, the Ophite system told of a lower hebdomad. After the serpent in punishment for having taught our first parents to transgress the commands of Ialdabaoth was cast down into this lower world, he begat himself six sons, 1 who with himself form a hebdomad, the counterpart of that of which his father Ialdabaoth is chief. These are the seven demons, the scene of whose activity is this lower earth, not the heavens; and who delight in injuring the human race on whose account their father had been cast down. Origen (Adv. Cels., vi. 30) gives their names and forms from an Ophite Diagram; Michael in form as a lion, Suriel as an ox, Raphael as a dragon, Gabriel as an eagle, Thautabaoth as a bear, Erataoth as a dog, Onoel as an ass.”

Here, I think, we are on the track of one aspect of a general mystery-tradition that Hermes has “philosophized.” I say one aspect, for the “Ophite” tradition is not a single form of tradition, but a medley of traditions containing a number of forms; it is a complex or syncretism of Chaldæan, Persian, and Egyptian elements, patched together, or “centonized,” if we may use the term, with Jewish industry.

THE SIMPLER FORM OF THE TRISMEGISTIC GNOSIS

The wealth of symbolism and profusion of mysterious personifications with which these systems of subjective imagery were smothered, could exercise only a partial fascination on the clear-thinking, philosophical mind which had been trained in the method of Plato. If such a mind was combined with the mystic temperament, as was indubitably the case with the writer of our “Pœmandres” treatise, his main effort would be to simplify and categorize in the terms of philosophy at the expense of apocalyptic detail; nevertheless, when a man lived in the midst of such ideas, and was presumably in intimate relations with mystics and seers of all sorts, he could not but be strongly affected by the main presuppositions of all such apocalyptic, and the general notions of the schematology of the Unseen World, which all students of such matters at that period seem to have accepted in common.

We thus find that our Trismegistic literature, though dealing throughout with the Gnosis, treats it in a far more simple way than any other known system of the time. Nevertheless, even the complex imagery of the Ophite schools is occasionally summed up in a few graphic general symbols, and these, too, representing probably the oldest elements in them.

CONCERNING LEVIATHAN AND BEHEMOTH

From the confused description by Origen 1 of the famous but exceedingly puzzling Ophite Diagram that both Celsus and Origen had before them, though in different forms, we can make out with certainty only

that this chart of the Unseen Spaces was divided into three main divisions—Upper, Middle, and Lower. The Middle Space contained a geometrical diagram of a group of ten circles surrounded by one great circle. This Great Circle was called Leviāthān, and the grouping of circles within it was apparently divided into a three and a seven. The Lower Space had in it a grouping of seven circles, the circles of the seven ruling daimones (xxx.)—elsewhere called Archontics—and the whole group was apparently called Bĕhēmōth (xxv.).

Celsus, quoted by Origen (xxvii.), tells us that the doctrine was that on the death of the body two groups of angels range themselves on either side of the soul, 1 the one set being called “Angels of Light” and the other “Archontics”—evidently intended for “Angels of Darkness.” Thus the evil soul was thought to be led away by the Daimones to Behemoth, and the pure soul to Leviathan.

We cannot enter into the endless discussions concerning these two Great Beasts, mentioned together in Job xl. 15-24, and separately in Isaiah and Psalms; the most recent research comes to the conclusion that “it would seem that Leviāthān was regarded as lord of the ocean and Bĕhēmōth of dry land.” 2

But in our diagram Leviathan is Lord of the Heaven-Ocean or Great Green or Cosmic Air, and Behemoth Lord of the Cosmic Earth.

Indeed, in the Book of Enoch, 3 the apocalyptic writer associates these two monsters with precisely the same eschatological considerations which Origen tells us were the purpose of the Diagram, only “Enoch” speaks of

the Last Day, while the Ophite writer has in view the ascent of the soul of an initiate after death.

At the final separation of Righteous and Unrighteous, “Enoch” tells us, these Great Creatures, which before were united, will be parted. That is to say, at death there is a metamorphosis of the soul.

From what is said in “Enoch,” moreover, I deduce that the Upper Space of the Ophite Diagram was intended to represent the Celestial Paradise, that is the state of the Pure Mind or of the Righteous.

Leviathan and Behemoth are figured in IV. Esdras vi. 49-52, as Devourers of the Unrighteous; while general Jewish apocalyptic in both Apocrypha and Talmud believed that these monsters would in their turn become the food of the Righteous in Messianic times. 1

From all these indications we deduce that Behemoth was the Great Beast and Leviathan the Great Fish. The animal soul, intensified by contact with the human mind, then goes back to its source the Great Beast, and is devoured by it, and reabsorbed by it, its energies returning to the sum total of energies of the Great Animal Group-Soul, the whole energy and experience of which shall eventually become the “food” of the perfected man; that is to say, presumably, he will in his turn devour and so transmute these energies; the perfected man will thrive by transmuting the Body of the Great Beast into the Body of the Great Man.

The Great Fish, however, would seem to symbolize the higher energies of the soul, which also require transmutation. In being born into the stature of the Great Man, the Son of Man must needs pass “three days” in the Belly of the Whale. This Great Fish is of the nature of knowledge; for does not Oannes come

out of the Ocean in fish-form to teach, 1 in the Assyrian Mystery-tradition, and does not the Ophite tradition in another of its phases 2 derive the inspiration of the great prophets of Israel, in their several degrees, from this same Group of Angels which the Diagram calls Leviathan?

It is also of interest to notice that Leviathan and Behemoth were believed to have once formed one monster, which was subsequently divided into male and female, Behemoth being male and Leviathan female. This reminds one of the primæval Water-Earth of Hermes, which was subsequently divided into Water and Earth, just as the animals were first of all male-female, and subsequently were separated. Moreover, in the Vision of Er the arcs of the journeyings of the ascending and descending souls end in two orifices above in the sky and two below in the earth, as though they were the ends of a once great hollow ring or circle that had been divided, or as it were two serpents arched above and below, with mouths and tails as orifices; and, curiously enough, in the Pistis Sophia the souls of the unrighteous enter by the mouth of the Lower Dragon and depart by the tail.

Now, Leviathan being female and Behemoth male, and both forming together as it were the circumference of the Great Wheel of Necessity, the Wheel of Genesis, the attribution of the gestation, so to speak, of the

virtues of the soul to the one and the digesting of its vices to the other, is not so surprising. Further, they could be regarded as the right-hand or left-hand arcs or hemispheres of the Wheel, or Sphere, or Egg, according to celestial topography; whereas in Egyptian terrestrial parallelism the right hand was to the north and the left hand the south, upper and lower Egypt. Curiously enough, in Isa. xxx. 6, Behemoth is called the monster “of the south land.” 1

Whether or no the writer of the “Pœmandres” was directly influenced by the precise forms of tradition to which we have referred, is impossible to determine; but that he was influenced by the general ideas as symbolized is indubitable, and that he understood the esoteric meaning of the “hippopotamus” and “crocodile” symbols in Egyptian mysticism is highly probable.

THE “FENCE OF FIRE”

Origen (xxxi.), moreover, tells us that, according to the Ophites, the consciousness of the soul after passing through the domain of the animal-formed Rulers, broke through what was called the “Fence of Iniquity,” and so turned towards the higher spheres, through which it also had to pass. In the seventh and highest of them, over which ruled the Virtue which was called Hōræus, 2 it addresses the Ruler thereof with an apology or defence of its own innocence, beginning with the words: “O thou who hast transcended the ‘Fence of Fire’ without fear!”

This Fence of Fire was symbolised in the form of the Diagram which Origen (xxxiii.) had before him, as a

circle of fire with a flaming sword lying across its diameter. This must then have been intended to represent the Sphere of Fire, or Angel or Guardian of the Gate, which had to be passed before the Celestial Paradise could be entered, for the flashing, circling blade is said to have guarded the “Tree of Gnosis and of Life.”

The same idea of a typical Boundary or Fence meets us in the “Pœmandres.” It is Man who breaks through the seven spheres and also their enclosing Sphere, the Might or Power that circumscribed the Fire. The root idea is the same. The point of view of Hermes, however, like that of the Ophite Gnostics, is not the passage round the Circle of Necessity of the souls of the unregenerate, as in the Vision of Er, but of the Straight Ascent of the soul of the initiate, his breaking through the spheres. It is the ascent of a soul who has reached the Hermes-stage, or Thrice-greatest grade, the final stage of winning its freedom, the Ascent after the last compulsory birth—the Ascent “as now it is for me” (§ 25).

Footnotes

414:1 Not into a mathematical cone, but into an egg-shaped or elliptical form resembling that of a pine-cone.

414:2 This shows that the soul was thought of as being without or outside body of every kind, and body was taken into it.

415:1 Cf. Pistis Sophia, pp. 371 and 367.

415:2 That is, presumably, ἀνάγνωσμα—a philosophical discourse, or sacred sermon.

415:3 As distinguished from “exist.” Latin, however, is but a poor medium for the expression of philosophical distinctions.

416:1 νοῦς ὑλικός.

416:2 The augoeides.

416:3 Or of contemplative reason, synthesis as opposed to analysis.

417:1 That is, the elements other than those of earth.

417:2 Ed. Eyssenhardt (F.), pp. 531 ff. (Leipzig, 1893).

418:1 Cf., for instance, Maass (E.), Die Tagesgötter in Rom und den Provinzen, p. 33. See R. 53, n. 1.

419:1 For references, see R. 53, n. 2.

421:1 Smith and Wace’s D. of Christ. Biog., ii. 849-851.

422:1 In Irenæus (C. Hær., I. xxx. 5; ed. Stieren, i. 266) this sevenfold serpent is the son of Ialdabaoth (the Creative Mind), and is said to be “mind,” also “crooked mind,” coiled up like a serpent.

423:1 C. Cels., VI. xxv. ff.

424:1 Plainly a conflation of Persian and Chaldæan ideas.

424:2 Cheyne’s article, “Behemoth and Leviathan,” in the Encyclopædia Biblica.

424:3 Charles’ Trans., lx. 7 ff. (Ethiop. V., p. 155).

425:1 See Charles, op. cit., p. 155, n. 7.

426:1 Oannes also comes to teach from the Waters of the Euphrates; the Jewish overwriter of the Naassene Document (see “Myth of Man in the Mysteries”) equates Euphrates with Great Jordan, and this with the Stream of Ocean; and, curiously enough, Origen (xxviii.) ascribes the Ophite teaching to a certain Euphrates, of whom no one else has ever heard. It is, however, a common error of the Church Fathers to mistake a principle of the Gnosis for the founder of a heresy.

426:2 See Salmon, loc. sup. cit.

427:1 According to Cheyne’s rendering in the above-quoted article.

427:2 That is, presumably, the Hōrus-like; thus showing traces of an Egyptian element.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

PLATO: CONCERNING METEMPSYCHOSIS

“And the soul’s vice is ignorance. For that the soul who hath no knowledge of the things that are, or knowledge of their nature, or of Good, is blinded by the body’s passions and tossed about.

“This wretched soul, not knowing what she is, becomes the slave of bodies of strange form in sorry plight, bearing the body as a load; not as the ruler, but the ruled.”—C. H., x. (xi.) 8. 1

For the better understanding of this passage, we may appropriately refresh the memory of our readers with the Platonic doctrine of the transmigration of souls, as given in the Phædrus, 248 ff., using for this purpose the best translation we have in English, namely, that of Stewart, 2 as a basis, but often departing from it for greater clearness.

THE SOUL AND HER MYSTERIES IN THE “PHÆDRUS”

“This is the life of the Gods. Of the other Souls, whosoever followeth God best, and is being made most like unto Him, keepeth the Head 3 of her Charioteer

lifted up into the Space without the firmament; so she is carried round with the circuit thereof, yet being [still] troubled with the Horses, 1 and hardly beholding the Things-which-are; so she is now lifted up, now sinketh down, and because of the compulsion of the Horses, seeth some of the Things-which-are, and some she seeth not.

“And the rest of the Souls, you must know, follow all striving after that which is above, but unable [to reach it], and so are carried round together and sink below it, 2 trampling upon one another, and running against one another, and pressing on for to outstrip one another, with mighty great sound of tumult and sweat.

“And here by reason of the unskilfulness 3 of the Charioteers, many Souls are maimed, and many have many feathers [of their wings] broken; and all, greatly travailing, depart without initiation in the Sight of That-which-is, and departing betake them to the food of Opinion.

“Now this is why there is so great anxiety to see the Space where is the Plain of Truth,—both because the pasture suited to the Best Part of the Soul groweth in the Meadow there, and the power of wing, whereby the Soul is lightly carried up, is nourished by it, and that the law of Adrasteia is that whatsoever Soul by following after God hath seen somewhat of the true things, shall be without affliction till its next journey round; and if she can always do this, 4 she shall be without hurt alway.

“But when through incapacity to follow [God] she doth not see, and, overtaken by some evil chance, filled with forgetfulness and wickedness, she is weighed down, and, being weighed down, she sheds the feathers of her wings and falls on to the Earth,—then is the law not to plant her 1 in her first birth in a beast’s nature; but to implant the Soul that hath seen most into the seed of one who shall become a Wisdom-lover, or a lover of the Beautiful, or a man who truly loves the Muses; the Soul that hath seen second best, into the seed of one who shall become a king that loveth law, and is a warrior and a true ruler; the Soul that hath seen third, unto the seed of one who shall become busied in civic duties, or in some stewardship, or in affairs; the one that hath seen fourth, into the seed of one who shall be a hardship-loving master of the body’s discipline or skilled in healing of the body; the Soul that hath seen fifth, into that which shall have a life connected with the oracles or mystic rites some way; 2 unto the sixth a life poetic shall be joined, or that of some one or of another of the tribe of copiers; unto the seventh, the life of workman or of husbandman; unto the eighth, that of a sophist or a demagogue; unto the ninth, that of a tyrant.

“In all these lives, whoever lives them righteously obtains a better fate; he who unrighteously, a worse.

“Now to the selfsame state from which each Soul hath come, she cometh not again for some ten thousand years. For sooner than this period no Soul [re-]gains

its wings, except the Soul of him who has loved wisdom naturally or contrary to nature. 1

“Such Souls in the third period of a thousand years, if they have chosen thrice this life successively, thus getting themselves wings, depart in the three thousandth year. 2

“But the other Souls, when they have ended their first life, are brought to judgment; and being judged, some go to places of correction below the Earth and pay the penalty, while others are rewarded by being raised unto a certain space in Heaven where they live on in a condition appropriate unto the life they lived in a man’s form.

“But in the thousandth year both classes come to the lottery of lives, and each doth make choice of its second life, whatever it may choose. 3

“And now is it that a Soul that once had had a man’s life doth pass into a brute’s life, 4 and from a

brute, he who was once a man, passes again into a man; for that indeed the Soul that never hath seen truth, will never come into this configuration. 1

“For we must understand ‘man,’ in the sense of form, as one proceeding from many sensations and collected into a unit by means of ratiocination. 2 But this 3 is recollection (ἀνάμνησις) of those things which our Soul once did see when she journeyed with God, 4 and looked beyond the things we now call things that are, by raising her face 5 to That-which-really-is.

“Wherefore of right, alone the understanding of the Wisdom-lover hath got wings; for he is ever engaged upon those things in memory as far as he can be, on being engaged at which, as being a God, he is divine.

“The man then who doth make a right use of memories such as these, ever being made perfect in perfect perfectionings, alone becometh really Perfect. 1

“But in as much as he eschews the things that men strive after, and is engaged in the Divine [alone], he is admonished by the many as though he were beside himself, 2 for they cannot perceive he is inspired by God.”

PLOTINUS ON METEMPSYCHOSIS

Let us now turn to the genuine disciples of the master for further light on this tenet, and first of all to Plotinus.

The most sympathetic notice of this tenet in Plotinus is to be found in Jules Simon’s Histoire de l’École d’Alexandrie (Paris, 1845), i. 588 ff., based for the most part on En., I. i. 12; II. ix. 6; IV. iii. 9; V. ii. 2; and on Ficinus’ Commentary (p. 508 of Creuzer’s edition).

After citing some “ironical” passages from Plotinus (in which the philosopher disguised the real doctrine which in his day still pertained to the teachings of a higher initiation), Jules Simon goes on to say:

“Even though admitting that this doctrine of metempsychosis is taken literally by Plotinus, we should still have to ask for him as for Plato, whether the human soul really inhabits the body of an animal, and whether it is not reborn only into a human body which reflects the nature of a certain animal by the character of its passions.

“The commentators of the Alexandrian school sometimes interpreted Plato in this sense. Thus, according

to Proclus, Plato in the Phædrus condemns the wicked to live as brutes and not to become them, κατίεναι εἰς βιὸν θήρειον, καὶ οὐκ εἰς σῶμα θήρειον (Proc., Comm. Tim., p. 329). Chalcidius gives the same interpretation, for he distinguishes between the doctrines of Plato and those of Pythagoras and Empedocles, qui non naturam modō feram, sed etiam formas. 1 Hermes (Comm. of Chalcidius on Timæus; ed. Fabric., p. 350) declares in unmistakable terms that a human soul can never return to the body of an animal, and that the will of the Gods for ever preserves it from such disgrace.” 2

PROCLUS ON THE DESCENT OF SOULS INTO IRRATIONAL NATURES

Again, Proclus in his Commentaries on the Timæus, writes very definitely with reference to the following passage of Plato:

“And if he still in these conditions did not cease from vice, he would keep on changing into some brutish nature according as he acted in a way resembling the expression in genesis of such a mode of vicious living.” 3

For he says:

“With reference to this descent of souls into irrational animals, it is usual for men to enquire how it is meant.

“And some think that what are called brute-like lives are certain resemblances of men to brutes, for that it is not possible for the rational essence to become the soul of a brute.

“Others allow that even this [human soul] may be

immediately degraded to reason-less creatures, for that all souls are of one and the same species, so that they may become wolves and panthers and ichneumons.

“But the true reason (logos) asserts that though the human soul may be degraded to brutes, it is [only] to brutes which possess the life suited to such a purpose, while the degraded soul is as it were vehicled on this [life], and bound to it sympathetically.

“And this has been demonstrated by us at great length in our lectures on the Phædrus, and that this is the only way in which such de-gradation can take place. If, however, it is necessary to remind you that this meaning (logos) is that of Plato, it must be added that in the Republic 1 he says that the soul of Thersites assumed an ape [life], but not an ape’s body, and in the Phædrus 2 that [the soul] descends into a brutish life, and not into a brutish body, for the mode of life goes with its appropriate soul. And in the passage [from the Timæus] he says that it changes into a brute-like nature; for the brutish nature is not the body but the life [principle] of the brute.” 3

Footnotes

429:1 See commentary thereon.

429:2 Stewart (J. A.), The Myths of Plato (London, 1905), pp. 313 ff.; cf. also Jowett (Oxford, 1892), i. 454 ff.; and Taylor (London, 1804), iii. 325 ff.

429:3 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 11: “Since Cosmos is a sphere—that is to say, a head.”

430:1 Cf. 246 B: “For ’tis a Yoke of Horses that the Charioteer of Man’s Soul driveth, and, moreover, of his Horses the one is well favoured and good and of good stock, the other of the contrary and contrary.”

430:2 Lit., under water.

430:3 Lit., evil—that is, ignorance.

430:4 Viz., behold the truth.

431:1 Sc. as a germ or seed.

431:2 It is low down in the scale, indeed, that Plato places the soothsayers and hierophants; he is, however, “ironical,” for he places poets even lower down, and still lower sophists and tyrants, all in keeping with his well-known views about these people as known in his own time.

432:1 ἢ παιδεραστήσαντος μετὰ φιλοσοφίας—Stewart, “Of loved his comrade in the bonds of wisdom”; Jowett, “or a lover who is not devoid of philosophy”; Taylor, “or together with philosophy has loved beautiful forms.” I fancy that Plato has used this graphic expression simply to designate a man who has not true union with wisdom, but is seeking for union though ignorantly.

432:2 “The numbers three and ten are called perfect; because the former is the first complete number, and the latter in a certain respect the whole of number; the consequent series of numbers being only a repetition of the numbers which this contains. Hence, as 10 multiplied into itself produces 100, a plane number, and this again multiplied by 10 produces 1000, a solid number; and as 1000 multiplied by 3 forms 3000, and 1000 by 10, 10,000; on this account Plato employs these numbers as symbols of the purgation of the soul, and her restitution to her proper perfection and felicity. I say, as symbols; for we must not suppose that this is accomplished in just so many years, but that the soul’s restitution takes place in a perfect manner.”—Taylor, op. cit., iii. 325.

432:3 Cf. the “Vision of Er.”

432:4 “We must not understand by this that the soul of a man becomes the soul of a brute; but that by way of punishment it is bound to the soul of a brute, or carried in it, just as dæmons used to reside in our souls. Hence all the energies of the rational soul are perfectly impeded, and its intellectual eye beholds naught but the dark and tumultuous phantasms of a brutal life.”—Taylor, loc. cit.

433:1 Viz., the form of a man; it is, however, also an astrological term.

433:2 There seems to be no agreement among translators as to the meaning of this sentence: δεῖ γὰρ ἄνθρωπον ξυνιέναι καὶ εἶδος λεγόμενον, ἐκ πολλῶν ἰὸν αἰσθήσεων εἰς ἕν λογισμῷ ξυναιρούμενον. Stewart translates: “Man must needs understand the Specific Form which proceedeth from the perceiving of many things, and is made one by Thought;” Jowett: “For a man must have intelligence of universals, and be able to proceed from the many particulars of sense to one conception of reason;” Taylor: “Indeed it is necessary to understand man, denominated according to species, as a being proceeding from the information of many senses, to a perception contracted into one reasoning power.”

433:3 Sc. collecting into one.

433:4 That is to say, revolved in the Cosmos Order.

433:5 Cf. C. H., i. 14: “So [Man] . . . bent his face downwards through the Harmony.”

434:1 All these are technical terms of the Mysteries.

434:2 Cf. C. H., ix. (x.) 4: “For this cause they who Gnostic are please not the many nor the many them. They are thought mad and laughed at.”

435:1 Who not only made the soul go into an animal nature but into animal forms.

435:2 The last sentence of C. H., x. (xi.) being quoted textually by Chalcidius.

435:3 Tim., 42 C.

436:1 Lib. X. 620 C.

436:2 Phædr., 249 B.

436:3 Comment, in Plat. Tim., 329 D; ed. Schneider (Warsaw, 1847), pp. 800, 801. With all of this the views of Basilides (F. F. F., 275 ff.) may be most instructively compared.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

THE VISION OF ER

“But to the Mindless ones, the wicked and depraved, the envious and covetous, and those who murder do and love impiety, I am far off, yielding my place to the Avenging Daimon.”—C. H., ff., i. 23.

ER SON OF ARMENIUS

To this Daimon it is that the “way of life” of the man is surrendered at death (§ 24). In this connection we may consider the Story or Vision of “Ēr Son of Armenius,” which Plato tells at the end of the last book (X.) of his Republic (614 B ff.), for the symbolism is very similar to that of our tractate and the subject is more or less the same.

This Ēr is said by Clement of Alexandria to have been Zoroaster, “but no trace of acquaintance with Zoroaster is found elsewhere in Plato’s writings, and there is no reason for giving him the name of Er the Pamphylian. The philosophy of Heracleitus cannot be shown to be borrowed from Zoroaster, and still less the myths of Plato.” 1

What the source of the story is, scholarship has so far been unable to discover; the vast majority of scholars holding it to be an invention of Plato.

It is the story of a man “killed in battle,” whose body was brought home on the tenth day still fresh and showing no sign of decomposition. On the twelfth day, when laid on the funeral pyre, Er awakes and tells a strange story of his experiences in the invisible world.

This story should be taken in close connection with Plutarch’s similar but fuller Vision of Aridæus (Thespesius), upon which I have commented at length in my “Notes on the Eleusinian Mysteries.” 1

FROM THE MYSTERIES

I there stated that the experiences of Aridæus were either a literary subterfuge for describing part of the instruction in certain Mysteries, or the Vision, in popular story form, was considered so true a description of what was thought to be the nature of the invisible world and the after-death conditions of the soul, that it required little alteration to make it useful for that purpose.

I would now suggest that the Story of Er is also used by Plato for a somewhat similar purpose. It is further interesting to notice that one of the characters in the Vision of Er is called Ardiæus, while in Plutarch the main personage is called Aridæus. The transposition of a single letter is so slight as to make the names practically identical, and the subject matter is so similar that we are inclined to think that there must be some connection between the Visions. Moreover, Aridæus is said to have been a native of Soli in Cilicia, just as Er is said to have been a Pamphylian; the tradition of such stories would thus seem to have been derived from Asia Minor, and the origin of them may