Plutarch: Concerning the Mysteries of Isis and Osiris (Part 6)

thus be hidden in the syncretism of that land—where West and East were for ever meeting. It is, however, much safer to assume that, in the Story of Er, Plato is handing on the doctrines of Orphic eschatology; 1 whether or not the story already existed in some form, and was worked up and elaborated by the greatest artist in words of all philosophers, will perhaps never be known. But to the story itself.

THE CYLINDER

614 C.—Er, in a certain daimonian or psychic plane (τόπος τις δαιμόνιος), is made a spectator of a turning-point or change of course in the ascent and descent of souls. He thus seems to have been in a space or state midway between Tartarus and Heaven—presumably the invisible side of the sublunary space.

The world-engine of Fate, or Kārmic World-whorl, is represented by seven spheres (surrounded by an eighth) whose harmonious spinning is adjusted by the three Fates, the Daughters of Necessity.

Jowett (loc. cit.) says that the heaven-sphere is represented under the symbol of a “cylinder or box.” Where the “box” comes in I do not know; the term “cylinder” does not occur in the text, and even the cylinder idea is exceedingly difficult to discover in any precise sense. Indeed, it may be doubted whether the “heaven-sphere” is to be so definitely interpreted; for then our discussion of the meaning of the term “cylinder,” which occurs definitely in our K. K. Fragments, would be greatly simplified.

The matter is hard to understand, and Jowett’s

attempts at exposition are hazy and sketchy in the extreme. Either Plato is talking nonsense, or Jowett does not understand the elements of his idea. Stewart’s attempt, which makes use of the latest Platonic research, is far more successful, but he also has to abandon many points in despair. 1 How difficult the solution of the problem is may be seen from the text, which gives the symbolism of the vision of the spheres somewhat as follows:

THE VISION

616 B.—“Now when those in the meadow 2 had tarried seven days, on the eighth they were obliged to proceed on their journey upwards, and, on the fourth day after, 3 he [Er] said they came to a region where they saw light extended straight as a column from above throughout the whole extent of heaven and earth, in colour resembling the rainbow, only brighter and purer.

“Another day’s journey brought them to it, and there they saw the extremities of the boundaries of the heaven extended in the midst of the light; for this light was the final boundary of the heaven—somewhat like the under-girdings of ships—and thus confined its whole revolution.

“From these extremities depended the spindle of Necessity, by means of which all its revolutions are made to revolve. The spindle’s stalk 4 and its hook are made of adamant, 5 and the whorl of a mixture of adamant and other kinds [of elements].

“And the nature of the whorl is as follows. In shape it was like that of the one down here; but in itself we must understand from his description that it was somewhat as though in one great hollow whorl clean scooped out there lay another similar but smaller one fitted into it, as though they were jars 1 fitting into one another. And so he said there was a third and a fourth, and [also] four others. For in all there are eight whorls set in one another—looking like circles from above as to their rims, 2 [but from below] finished off into the continuous belly 3 of one whorl round the shaft, which is driven right through the eighth whorl.

“The first and outermost whorl had the circle of its rim first in width; that of the sixth was second; that of the fourth, third; that of the eighth, fourth; that of the seventh, fifth; that of the fifth, sixth; that of the third, seventh; that of the second, eighth.

617.—“And the circle of the largest was variegated; that of the seventh brightest; that of the eighth had its colour from the seventh shining on it; those of the second and of the fifth had [colours] somewhat like one another, but yellower than the preceding; the third had the whitest colour; the fourth was reddish; the sixth was second in whiteness. 4

“Now the spindle as a whole circled round at the same rate in its revolution; and within this revolution as a whole the seven circles revolved slowly in a contrary direction to the one as a whole; of these the eighth went the fastest of them; the seventh, sixth, and fifth came second [in speed, and at the same rate] with one another; the fourth, in a reversed orbit, as it appeared to them, was third in speed; the third was fourth and the second fifth.

“The spindle revolved on the knees of Necessity; and on its circles above, on each of them, was a Siren whom they carried round with them, singing a single sound or tone; and from all eight of them a single harmony was produced.

“And there were three others seated at equal distances round about, each upon a throne,—the Daughters of Necessity, the Fates, clothed in white robes, with garlands on their heads, Lachesis and Clotho and Atropos; and they sang to the tune of the Sirens’ harmony,—Lachesis sang things that have been, Clotho things that are, and Atropos things that shall be.

“And Clotho from time to time with her right hand gave an extra turn to the outer spin of the spindle; Atropos, with her left, in like fashion to the inner ones; while Lachesis in turn touched the one with one hand and the other with the other.

“Now when they [Er and the souls] arrived, they had to go immediately to Lachesis. Accordingly a prophet [a proclaimer] first of all arranged them in their proper order, and taking from the lap of Lachesis both lots 1 and samples of lives, he ascended a kind of raised place and said:

“‘The word (logos) of the Virgin Lachesis, Daughter of Necessity! Ye souls, ye things of a day, lo the

beginning of another period of mortal birth that brings you death. It is not your daimon who will have you assigned to him by lot, but ye who will choose your daimon. He who obtains the first turn let him first choose a life to which he will of necessity have to hold. As for Virtue, Necessity has no control over her, but every one will possess her more or less just as he honours or dishonours her. The responsibility is the chooser’s; God is blameless.’

“Thus speaking he threw the lots to all of them, and each picked up the one that fell beside him, except Er, who was not permitted to do so. So every one who picked up a lot knew what turn he had got.

618.—“After this he set on the ground before them the samples of the lives, in far greater number than those present. They were of every kind; not only lives of every kind of animal, but also lives of every kind of man. There were lives of autocratic power [lit., tyrannies] among them, some continuing to the end, some breaking off half-way and ending in poverty, exile, and beggary. There were also lives of famous men, some famed for their beauty of form and strength, and victory in the games, others for their birth and the virtues of their forebears; others the reverse of famous, and for similar reasons. So also with regard to the lives of women.

“As to the rank of the soul, it was no longer in the power [of the chooser], for the decree of Necessity is that its choosing of another life conditions its change of soul-rank. As for other things, riches and poverty were mingled with each other, and these sometimes with disease and sometimes with health, and sometimes a mean between these.”

Thereupon Plato breaks into a noble disquisition on what is the best choice, and how a man should take

with him into the world an adamantine faith in truth and right; and then continues:

619 B.—“And this is precisely what the messenger from that invisible world reported that the prophet said:

“‘Even for him who comes last in turn, if he but choose with his mind, and live consistently, there is in store a life desirable and far from evil. So let neither him who has the best choice be careless, nor him who comes last despair.’

“And when he had thus spoken, the one who had the first choice, Er said, immediately went and chose the largest life of autocratic power, but through folly and greediness he did not choose with sufficient attention to all points, and failed to notice the fate wrapped up with it, of ‘dishes of his own children’ 1 and other ills. But when he had examined it at leisure, he began to beat his breast, and bemoan his choice, not abiding by what the prophet had previously told him; for he did not lay the blame of these evils on himself, but on ill-luck and daimones, and everything rather than himself. And he was one of those who came from heaven, who in his former life had lived in a well-ordered state, and been virtuous from custom and not from a love of wisdom. 2

“In brief, it was by no means the minority of those who involved themselves in such unfortunate choices who came from heaven, seeing that such souls were unexercised in the hardships of life. Many of those who came from earth, as they had suffered hardships themselves, and had seen others suffering them, did not make their choice off-hand.

“Consequently many of the souls, independently of the fortune of their turn, changed good for evil, and evil for good. For if a man should always, whenever he comes into life on earth, live a sound philosophic life, and the lot of his choice should not fall out to him among the last, the chances are, according to this news from the other world, that he will not only spend his life happily here, but also that the path which he will tread from here to there, and thence back again, will not be below the earth 1 and difficult, but easy and of a celestial nature.

620.—“Yes, the vision he had, Er said, was well worth the seeing, showing how each class of souls chose their lives. 2 The vision was both a pitiful and laughable as well as a wonderful thing to see. For the most part they chose according to the experience of their former life. For Er said that he saw the soul that had once been that of Orpheus becoming the life of a swan for choice, 3 through its hatred of womankind, because owing to the death of Orpheus at the hands of women, it did not wish to come into existence by conception in a woman. He further saw the soul of Thamyras 4 choose the life of a nightingale. On the contrary, he saw also a swan change to the choice of a human life, and other musical animals in like fashion.

“The soul that obtained the twentieth lot chose

the life of a lion; it was the soul of Ajax, son of Telamon, to avoid being a man, because it still remembered the [unjust] decision about the arms. The next soul was Agamemnon’s; and it too, out of hatred to the human race on account of its sufferings, changed into the life of an eagle. 1 The soul of Atalanta obtained its lot in the middle, and letting her eye fall on the great honours paid an ‘athlete,’ was unable to pass it by, and took it. The soul of Epeius, 2 son of Panopeus, he saw pass into the nature of a woman skilful in the arts. And far away among the last he saw the soul of the buffoon Thersites putting on an ‘ape.’

“By a stroke of luck also he saw the soul of Odysseus, which had obtained the last lot of all, come to make its choice. From memory of its former labours it had given itself a rest from love of renown, and for a long time went about to find the life of a man in private life with nothing to do with public affairs, and with great difficulty found one lying in a corner and thus passed over by all the rest; on seeing it, it declared that it would have done the same even if it had had first turn, and been glad to do it.

“And Er said that of the rest of the brutes also in like fashion some of them passed into men, and some into one another, the unrighteous ones changing into wild ones, and the righteous into tame; in fact, there were intermixings of every kind.

“When, then, all the souls had chosen their lives according to the number of their turn, they went in order to Lachesis; and she sent along with them the daimon each had chosen, as watcher over his life and bringer to pass of the things he had chosen. And

the daimon first of all brought the soul to Clotho, set it beneath her hand and the whirling of the spindle, thus ratifying the fate each soul had chosen in its turn. And after he had attached it to her, he brought it to the spinning of Atropos, thus making its destinies 1 irreversible.

621.—“Thence [Er] went, without turning, [down] beneath the Throne 2 of Necessity, and when he had passed down through it, and the others had also done so, they all passed on to the Plain of Forgetfulness (Lethē) in a frightful and stifling heat; for it was bare of trees and vegetation of every kind.

“As it was now evening they camped by the River Heedlessness whose water no vessel can hold. 3 They were all, however, compelled to drink a certain quantity of its water; those who are not safeguarded by prudence drink more than their quantity, while he who keeps on drinking it forgets everything.

“When they had fallen asleep and midnight had come, there was thunder and earthquake, and thence suddenly they were carried up into birth [genesis] some one way some another, like shooting stars.

“Er, however, was prevented from drinking the water; but in what manner and by what means he got back to his body he could not say, only, suddenly waking in the morning, he found himself lying on the pyre.”

COMMENTARY

The question that one naturally asks oneself is: Did Plato conclude his great treatise on the Ideal State with a popular legend in jest, or had he some deeper purpose? I cannot but think that he was jesting seriously. Is it too wild a supposition that he is hinting at things which he could not disclose because of his oath? Those who knew would understand; those who did not would think he was jesting simply, and so the mysteries would not be disclosed.

In any case we have, I think, got a hint of the part played by the Daimon in our treatise. Whether or not Hermes “copied” the idea from Plato, or both derived it from the same tradition, must be left to the fancy and taste of individual scholars. The Daimon is the watcher over the “way of life” (ἦθος); he is not necessarily a Kakodaimon, but so to speak the Kārmic Agent of the soul, appointed to carry out the “choice” of that soul, both good and ill, according to the Law of Necessity. 1 The choice is man’s; Nature adjusts the balance.

The Vision is of a typical nature, and the types are mythologized in the persons of well-known characters in Grecian story. The “way of life” the souls choose becomes the garment of “habit” they are to wear, their form of personality, or kārmic limitation. Apparently some souls, instead of choosing a reincarnation in a human body, prefer to live the “lives” of certain animal natures. Are we then to believe that Plato seriously endorsed the popular ideas of metempsychosis? Or is it possible that he is referring to some state of existence of souls, which was symbolized by certain animal types

in the Mysteries; as was certainly the case with the “lion” and “eagle,” though the “swan” and “nightingale” and “ape” are, as far as I am aware, never mentioned in this connection? Can it be that Plato here gives play to his imagination, basing his speculations on some general idea he may have learned in Egypt?

We know from the so-called “Diagram of the Ophites,” which is still traceable in a fragmentary form in the polemic of Origen against Celsus, that the “seven spheres” of the lower psychic nature were characterised by the names of animals: lion, bull, serpent, eagle, bear, dog, ass. We also know how the whole subject of animal correspondences preoccupied the attention of the Egyptian priesthood. But not only can we now make no reasonable scheme out of the fragmentary indications that have come down to us, but we also feel pretty well certain that if Plutarch’s account of the beliefs of the later Egyptians on the subject is approximately reliable, the priests themselves of those days had no longer any consistent scheme.

We may, therefore, conclude either that the whole matter was a vain superstition entirely devoid of any basis in reality; or that there was a psychic science of animal natures and their relationship to man which was once the possession of the priesthood of the ancient civilisation of Egypt, but that it was lost, owing to the departure from amongst men of those who had the power to understand it, and subsequently only fragments of misunderstood tradition remained among the lesser folk on earth. This at anyrate is the theory of our Trismegistic treatises.

Footnotes

437:1 Jowett, Dialogues, iii. clxvi.

438:1 The Theosophical Review (April, May, June, 1898), xxii. 145 ff., 232 ff., 312 ff.

439:1 And this I find to be the opinion of the last commentator on the subject; see Stewart (J. A.), The Myths of Plato (London, 1905), pp. 152 ff.

440:1 So also Dreyer (J. L. E.), History of the Planetary Systems from Thales to Kepler (Cambridge, 1906), pp. 56 ff.

440:2 The daimonian region.

440:3 That is the eleventh day; Er, it will be remembered, was “unconscious” for twelve days.

440:4 Or shaft.

440:5 That which cannot be destroyed or changed.

441:1 The shape would thus approximate to an oblate spheroid.

441:2 To carry out the metaphor of the jars.

441:3 Lit., “back.”

441:4 The names of the spheres may be deduced from Tim. 38, and are as follows: 1. Fixed Stars (all-coloured); 2. Saturn (yellow); 3. Jupiter (whitish); 4. Mars (reddish); 5. Mercury (yellowish); 6. Venus (white); 7. Sun (light-colour); 8. Moon (light-colour reflected). How the above statements as to “width of rim” and colours are to be made to work in with the scheme of rates of motions and numbers given in Tim. 36, I have not as yet been able to discover from any commentator. And seeing that Er is said to have seen this mystery from a region that transcended even the daimonian region, it is perhaps out of place to insist on a purely physical interpretation of the data.

442:1 Or number-turns.

444:1 A literary embellishment from the Tragic Muse of Greece, and the mythical recitals of Thyestian banquets.

444:2 ἔθει ἄνευ φιλοσοφίας.

445:1 The Tartarean spheres of the invisible world, popularly believed to be below the earth; that is, philosophically, more material than earth-life.

445:2 The vision (θέα) was therefore typical.

445:3 The birds are typical of souls living in the air—that is, in aery bodies and not in physical ones; or types of intelligence.

445:4 Or Thamyris, an ancient Thracian bard; it is said that in his conceit he imagined he could surpass the Muses in song, in consequence of which he was deprived of his sight and the power of singing.

446:1 Notice the “lion” and “eagle” are selected as types—they being typical sun-animals, as we have already seen.

446:2 The fabled engineer of the Trojan Horse.

447:1 τὰ ἐπικλωσθέντα—a play on Κλωθώ.

447:2 This is probably a symbol of the heaven-plane.

447:3 οὖ τὸ ὕδωρ ἀγγείον οὐδὲν στέγειν. So this is usually translated; but as the souls drink of it, the appropriateness of the rendering is not very apparent. On the other hand, στέγειν is used of things that are water-tight—e.g. houses and ships; hence “whose water no vessel can keep out.” The “vessel” might thus stand for the ship of the soul; and if so, we are in contact with an Egyptian idea. The River is in the Desert—the reverse of the Nile and Egypt, of Osiris and Isis, their Typhonean counterparts.

448:1 For the more intimate teaching on this point, see C. H., x. (xi.) 16 ff.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

CONCERNING THE CRATER OR CUP

“He filled a mighty Cup with it [Mind], and sent it down, joining a Herald [to it], to whom He gave command to make this proclamation to the hearts of men: Baptize thyself with this Cup’s baptism,” etc.—C. H., iv. (v.) 4.

THE CRATER IN PLATO

Whence came this idea of a Crater or Cup into our Trismegistic literature? Most scholars will answer unhesitatingly: From Plato. The Crater was the Cup in which the Creator mixed the Elements of the World-Soul; for we read in Timæus (41 D), where Plato is treating of the formation of human souls:

“Thus spake He, and once again into the Cup which He had used in blending and mingling the Soul of the Universe, He poured the remains of the Elements He had employed, and mingled them in much the same manner; they were not, however, pure as before, but in the second and third degree.”

I am, however, not inclined to attribute the origin of this symbolic expression simply to the imagery of Plato’s poetic mind, but am far more inclined to believe that Plato was using a familiar figure of “Orphic” symbolism. The idea of not only an Ultimate Crater,

but of many subsidiary ones in the celestial and invisible realms, is closely connected with the “Orphic” idea of a Vortex.

IN “ORPHEUS,” MACROBIUS, AND PROCLUS

Orpheus is said to have called the Æther the Mighty Whirlpool. 1 This forms the Egg or Womb of Cosmos; it is a modification of Chaos or Rhea, the Eternally-flowing, the Mother of the Gods, the Great Container. Thus Proclus, in speaking of Chaos, says:

“The last Infinity, by which also Matter (ὕλη) is circumscribed, is the Container, the field and plane of ideas. About her is ‘neither limit, nor foundation, nor seat, but excessive Darkness.’” 2

Plato, as we have seen, in his psychogony, speaks openly of this Cup or Crater (Mixing Space, or Vortex) in two aspects; in it the Deity mixes the All-Soul of universal nature from the purest Cosmic Elements, and from it He also “ladles out” the souls of men, composed of a less pure mixture of these Elements.

Further, Macrobius tells us that Plato elsewhere indirectly refers to another aspect of this Cup.

“Plato speaks of this in the Phædo, and says that the soul is dragged back into body, hurried on by new intoxication, desiring to taste a fresh draught of the overflow of matter, 3 whereby it is weighed down and brought back [to earth]. The sidereal [astral] Crater of Father Liber [Dionysus, Bacchus] is a symbol of this mystery; and this is what the Ancients called the

[paragraph continues] River of Lethe, the Orphics saying that Father Liber was Hylic Mind.” 1

We have here, therefore, a higher and lower Cup. Proclus, moreover, speaks of several of such Craters, when he writes:

“Plato in the Philebus hands on the tradition of the Vulcanic Crater . . . and Orpheus is acquainted with the Cup of Dionysus, and ranges many such Cups round the Solar Table.” 2

Elsewhere, again, Proclus tells us that the Demiurge is said “to constitute the psychical essences in conjunction with the Crater”; this “Crater is the peculiar cause of souls, and is co-arranged with the Demiurgus and filled from Him, but fills souls”; thus it is called the Fountain of Souls. 3

If with these indications before us we might venture to generalize, we might say that, according to Orpheo-Pythagorean, Platonic, and Hermetic ideas, the “matter” of every “plane” was thought of as proceeding from such a Crater or Cup, from within without, and the elements thereof as being refunded into such a Cup or Centre or Receptacle—that is, from a more subtle, simpler, and inner phase to a more gross, complex, and outer phase, and vice versâ. In other words, the Crater is the “monadic” or “atomic” state of the matter of any given phase or state of existence.

THE VISION OF ARIDÆUS

With the above data before us, it will also be instructive to turn to the Vision of Aridæus (Thespesius)

as related by Plutarch, 1 a vision that may be compared with profit with the Vision of Er as told by Plato. Thespesius is being conducted through Hades, or the Invisible World in contact with earth-life, by a kinsman who has “passed over,” as Spiritists would say, and curiously enough he there comes across a Chasm and a Crater—for part of the story runs:

“After these explanations he was conducted by his kinsman at great speed across an immense space, as it seemed, nevertheless easily and directly as though supported by wings of light-rays; until having arrived at a Vast Vortex (χάσμα) extending downwards, he was abandoned by the power that supported him.

“He observed also that the same thing happened to the rest of the souls there, for checking their flight, like birds, and sinking down, they fluttered round the Vortex in a circle, not daring to go straight through it.

“Inside it seemed to be decked like Bacchic caves 2 with trees and verdure and every kind of foliage, while out of it came a soft and gentle air, laden with marvellous sweet scents, making a blend like wine for topers, so that the souls feasting on the fragrance were melted with delight in mutual embraces, while the whole place was wrapt in revelry and laughter and the spirit of sport and pleasure. 3

“Thespesius’ kinsman told him that this was the Way by which Dionysus ascended to the Gods and

afterwards took up Semele; 1 it was called the Place of Lēthē (Oblivion). 2

“Wherefore he would not suffer Thespesius to stay there, though he wished to do so, but forcibly dragged him away, explaining how that the rational part of the soul was melted and moistened 3 by pleasure, while the irrational part, and that which is of a corporeal nature, being then moistened and made fleshly, awakens the memory of the body, and from this memory come a yearning and a desire which drag down the soul into

generation . . . the soul being weighed down with moisture.

“Next Thespesius, after travelling another great distance, seemed to be looking at a huge Cup, 1 with streams flowing into it; one whiter than the foam of the sea or snow, another like the purple which the rainbow sends forth, while from a distance the others were tinged with other colours, each having its own shade.

“But when he came closer, the Cup itself (into which they flowed)—the surroundings disappearing, and the colours growing fainter—lost its varied colouring and only retained a white brilliance.”

Compare also the Hellenist writer in the Naassene Document (§ 17 S.): “The Greek theologi generally call Him [the Logos] the “Heavenly Horn of Mēn,” because he has mixed and mingled all things with all.”

On this the Jewish Gnostic writer comments: “This is the Drinking Vessel,—the Cup in which ‘the King drinketh and divineth.’”

It is, says the Hellenist commentator again, “the Cup (of Anacreon) speaking forth speechlessly the Ineffable Mystery.”

The Jewish commentator was a contemporary of Philo’s, and the Hellenist was prior to him; thus we see that the Cup symbol was used in precisely the same significance as in our text in at least the first century B.C., and that the idea was referred to the Greek theologers—in other words, the Orphics—and not to Plato.

THE ORIGIN OF THE SYMBOL TO BE SOUGHT IN ORPHIC TRADITION

With the above data before us, I think we may be persuaded without difficulty that the idea of the Cup, or Mixing-Bowl, did not owe its origin to any invention of Plato’s, but that the greatest of philosophers, when he makes use of the symbol, does but employ a familiar image well known to his audience—as, indeed, is very apparent in the summary fashion in which he introduces the figure. In other words, the symbol or image was a commonplace of the Orphic tradition, and doubtless, therefore, familiar to every Pythagorean.

Now, in our treatise it is noticeable that this Cup-symbol is equated with the Monad 1 or Oneness—a technical Pythagorean term.

Footnotes

451:1 πελώριον χάσμα (Simplicius, Ausc., iv. 123); magna vorago (Syrianus, Metaph., ii. 33a). Cf. Prolegg. ch. xi., “The Orphic Tradition of the Genesis of the World-Egg.”

451:2 Comment. in Tim., ii. 117. See my Orpheus, p. 154.

451:3 Gnosticè, “the superfluity of naughtiness.”

452:1 Comment, in Som. Scip., XI. ii. 66.

452:2 Comment. in Tim., v. 316 (Taylor’s trans.).

452:3 Taylor (T.), Theology of Plato, V. xxxi.

453:1 De Sera Numinis Vindicta, xxii. (ed. Bernardakis, iii. 454-466).

453:2 Were the Bacchic Mysteries then celebrated in caves?

453:3 This is clearly in correspondence with the “Astral Crater of Father Liber” of Macrobius.

454:1 His “mother,” from the under-world; referring to the mysteries of generation and the indestructibility of life. Semele in giving birth to Dionysus the Son of Zeus (the Creative Power), is said to have been killed by the Power of her Lord, but she was subsequently restored to life among the Gods by the Power of her Son. In reincarnating, it is said that part of the soul in giving birth to itself in this state “dies.” The “child” then born may, in his turn, in the case of one perfect, become the saviour of his “mother,” now become his spouse, and raise her, who is also himself, to a higher state.

454:2 Compare Pistis Sophia (336, 337), which tells us how certain kārmic agencies “give unto the old soul [prior to reincarnation] a Draught of Oblivion composed of the Seed of Iniquity, filled with all manner of desire and all forgetfulness. And the moment that that soul drinketh of that Draught, it forgetteth all the spaces [or regions] through which it hath travelled, and all the chastisements through which it hath passed; and that deadly Draught of Oblivion becometh a body external to the soul, like unto the soul in every way, and its perfect resemblance, and hence they call it the ‘counterfeit spirit.’”

But in the case of the purified soul it is different; for a higher power “bringeth a Cup full of intuition and wisdom, and also prudence, and giveth it to the soul, and casteth the soul into a body which will not be able to fall asleep or forget, because of the Cup of Prudence which hath been given unto it, but will be ever pure in heart and seeking after the Mysteries of Light, until it hath found them, by order of the Virgin of Light, in order that [that soul] may inherit the Light for ever.” (Ibid., 392, “Books of the Saviour.”)

454:3 Compare the “Moist Essence” of C. H., i. 4, and iii. (iv.) 1.

455:1 κρατήρ—bowl or basin.

456:1 It is of interest to notice that one of the apocryphal Books of Moses was called The Monad, and another The Key; this argues an early date and wide renown for our two treatises so entitled. See R. 182, n. 3.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

THE DISCIPLES OF THRICE-GREATEST HERMES

PTAḤ, SEKHET AND I-EM-ḤETEP (ASCLEPIUS)

Budge, in his Gods of the Egyptians (vol. i. ch. xvi.), tells us that the Great Triad of Memphis consisted of Ptaḥ, Sekhet, and I-em-ḥetep.

Ptaḥ, as we have seen, was the “Sculptor or Engraver,” the Demiurge par excellence. He is called the “Very Great God who came into being in the earliest time”; “Father of fathers, Power of powers”; “Father of beginnings and Creator of the Egg[s] of the Sun and Moon”; “Lord of Maāt [Truth], King of the Two Lands, the God of the Beautiful Face . . . who created His own Image, who fashioned His own Body, who hath established Maāt throughout the Two Lands”; “Ptaḥ the Disk of Heaven, Illuminer of the Two Lands with the Fire of His Two Eyes.” The “Workshop of Ptaḥ” was the World Invisible.

It was Ptaḥ who carried out the commands concerning the creation of the universe issued by Thoth.

The Syzygy or female counterpart of Ptaḥ was Sekhet, “who was at once his sister and wife, and the mother of his son Nefer-Tem, and a sister-form of the Goddess Bast” (op. cit., i. 514). She is called: “Greatly Beloved One of Ptaḥ, Lady of Heaven, Mistress of the Two Lands”; and one of her commonest names is “Nesert,” that is “Flame.”

It was Thoth (Ṭekh) who, with his Seven Wise Ones, planned the world (ib., 516). But if Ptaḥ is the executive power of Thoth and his Seven Wise Ones, so is Thoth the personification of the Intelligence of Ptaḥ. It is in this way that Sekhet becomes identified with Maāt, the inseparable spouse of Thoth.

NEFER-TEM

The third member of the Memphite Triad is Nefer-Tem, or the “Young Tem.” In the Ritual (Ch. lxxxi., version B) we read the “apology”: “Hail, thou Lotus, thou type of the God Nefer-Tem! I am he who knoweth you, and I know your name among the Gods, the Lords of the Underworld, and I am one of you.” Again, in Ch. clxxiv. 19, Nefer-Tem is compared with “the Lotus at the nostrils of Rā”; also, in Ch. clxxviii. 36, Nefer-Tem has the same title.

In the later texts Nefer-Tem is identified with many Gods, all of them forms of Horus or Thoth (ib., 522).

Here we are in contact with the Ptaḥ-tradition of Memphis which, we have seen, played an important part in the heredity of the cosmogenesis of our “Pœmandres” tractate. In it the simultaneous identification and distinction of Thoth and Ptaḥ and of Maāt and Sekhet are naturally explained, and the Son of these Powers is the Young Tem, identified with the Young Horus or Young Thoth who is to succeed his Father. Are we here on the track of the ancestry of our Tat?

At Heliopolis (Ȧnnu) the Ancient God Tem was equated with Rā. Tem was the Father-God, Lord of Heaven, and Begetter of the Gods (op. cit., i. 92, 93). Usertsen I. rebuilt the sanctuary of Heliopolis about

[paragraph continues] 2433 B.C., and dedicated it to Rā in the two forms of Horus and Temu (ib., 330).

“Tem was the first living Man-God known to the Egyptians, just as Osiris was the first dead Man-God, and as such was always represented in human form and with a human head. . . .

“Tem was, in fact, to the Egyptians a manifestation of God in human form. . . . It is useless to attempt to assign a date to the period when the Egyptians began to worship God in human form, for we have no material for so doing; the worship of Tem must, however, be of very great antiquity, and the fact that the priests of Rā in the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties united him to their God under the name of Rā-Tem, proves that his worship was wide-spread, and that the God was thought to possess attributes similar to those of Rā” (ib., 349, 350).

In the Trismegistic tradition in which Thoth holds the chief place, the Young Tem would thus represent the Young Thoth who succeeded to his Father when that Father ascended to the Gods.

IMHOTEP-IMUTH-ASCLEPIUS

Moreover the Egyptian texts prove that besides Nefer-Tem still another Son of Ptaḥ was regarded as the third member of the Memphitic Triad. This Son was called I-em-ḥetep (or Imḥotep), whom the Greeks called Imouthēs or Imuth, and equated him with their Asclepius.

The name I-em-ḥetep means “He who cometh in Peace,” and is very appropriate to the God who brought the knowledge of Healing to mankind; but I-em-ḥetep, though specially the God of medicine, was also the God of study and learning in general.

“As a God of learning he partook of some of the attributes of Thoth, and he was supposed to take the place of this God in the performance of funeral ceremonies, and in superintending the embalming of the dead; in later times he absorbed the duties of Thoth as ‘Scribe of the Gods,’ and the authorship of the words of power which protected the dead from enemies of every kind in the Underworld was ascribed to him” (ib., 522, 523).

In the “Ritual of Embalmment” 1 it is said to the Deceased: “Thy soul uniteth itself to I-em-ḥetep whilst thou art in the funeral valley.”

The oldest shrine of the God was situated close to Memphis, and was called the “Temple of I-em-ḥetep, the Son of Ptaḥ,” which the Greeks called the Asclēpieion.

Under Ptolemy IV., Philopator (222-205 B.C.), a temple was built to I-em-ḥetep on the Island of Philæ, and from the hieroglyphic inscriptions we learn that the God was called: “Great One, Son of Ptaḥ, the Creative God, made by Thenen, begotten by him and beloved by him, the God of divine forms in the temples, who giveth life to all men, the Mighty One of wonders, the Maker of times [?], who cometh unto him that calleth upon him wheresoever he may be, who giveth sons to the childless, the wisest and most learned one, the image and likeness of Thoth the Wise.” 2

Imḥotep-Asclepius was thus the “image and likeness of Thoth the Wise,” even as Nefer-Tem was

[paragraph continues] Young Thoth. Here we have precisely the distinction drawn between Asclepius and Tat in our Trismegistic literature; Asclepius was trained in all philosophy, Tat was young and as yet untrained.

“I-em-ḥetep,” concludes Budge, “was the God who sent sleep to those who were suffering and in pain, and those who were afflicted with any kind of disease formed his special charge; he was the Good Physician both of Gods and men, and he healed the bodies of mortals during life, and superintended the arrangements for the preservation of the same after death. . . . He was certainly the God of physicians and of all those who were occupied with the mingled science of medicine and magic; and when we remember that several of the first Kings of the Early Empire are declared by Manetho, whose statements have been supported by the evidence of the papyri, to have written, i.e. caused to be edited, works on medicine, it is clear that the God of medicine was in Memphis as old as the archaic period” (ib., 524).

So much for the more important information that Budge has to offer us on the subject of Asclepius-Imuth from the side of pure Egyptian tradition—if we can use such a phrase of that tradition as strained through the sieve of almost purely physical interpretation. 1

THĀTH-TAT

And now let us turn to Reitzenstein and his instructive Dissertation, “Hermes u. Schüler” (pp. 117 ff.).

Unquestionably the most general form of sermon found in the remains of our Trismegistic literature is that of instruction to Tat the “Son” of Hermes, who is “Father” and Initiator. Of these instructions two Corpora existed, namely, “The General Sermons” and “The Expository Sermons.”

The name Tat is, of course, a variant of Thoth (Teḥut); but whereas Hermes himself is always in such sermons characterised as Thrice-greatest, Tat has not yet reached to this grade of mastership; he is still “Young.”

The name “Tat” occurs in one of the prayers in the Magic Papyri, part of which is undecipherable, and can only be translated by following the conjecture of Reitzenstein (p. 117, n. 6).

“Show thyself unto me in thy prophetic power O God of mighty mind, Thrice-great Hermes! Let him who rules the four regions of the Heavens and the four foundations of the Earth appear. Be present unto me O thou in Heaven, be present unto me thou from the Egg. . . . Speak, the Two Gods also are round thee,—the one God is called Thāth and the other Haf.” 1

Spiegelberg equates Haf with Ḥpj, the “Genius of the Dead” who appears coupled with Thoth in a Coptic Magic Papyrus of the second century A.D., 2 where Isis speaks of “my father Ape-Thoth.” This thus seems to identify Haf with Anubis—that is, Harmanup or Horus as Anubis. And Anubis, as Hermes-Tat, was considered in Egyptian tradition to be a composer of sacred scripture. 3

THE INCARNATIONS OF THOTH

The prayer just cited appears to put us into contact with the atmosphere of some inner mysteries of spiritual instruction. The God or Spiritual Master contains in himself his disciple, or a duad or triad of disciples; the relationship of Master and disciple is of the most intimate nature; not only is it of that of father to son, but of mother to child—for the disciple is born in the womb of the Master Presence. The disciple is as it were his ka.

Thus for the Egyptians, as Sethe and others have pointed out, the wise priest, that is a priest truly initiated into the Wisdom, was regarded as an incarnation of Thoth, and such an one after the death of his body was worshipped as Thoth.

And so we find at Medinet Habu the remains of a shrine, erected in the time of Ptolemy IX. (Euergetes II.)—146-117 BC.—to a certain High Priest of Memphis, Teos, who is called “Teos the Ibis,” 1 that is Thoth, and so identified with Thoth himself.

What we learn from the general tradition of this belief in the “incarnation” of Thoth into the perfected disciple of Wisdom, and the ascription of sacred literature to similar though not identical God-names to that of Thoth himself, is that there was on the one

hand a firm belief in the unity of the Thoth-tradition, and on the other a necessary division of the sacred literature into older and later periods. The Thoth of the older period was regarded as a God, the Thoth of more recent times as a God-man. 1 And so we find Plato in the famous passage of the Philebus, 18 B, uncertain whether to speak of Thoth as God or man.

THE DISCIPLES OF LORD HERMES IN PETOSIRIS AND NECHEPSO

In the known oldest references to the Thoth-Hermes literature, there has so far not been discovered anything that suggests the existence of a distinction between Hermes [Thoth] and Tat [Thoth]; but the absence of references proves little. Already, however, Nechepso and Petosiris, in the second century B.C., make Hermes the teacher of the younger God-disciples Anubis and Asclepius; in which connection it is of interest to note the following passage from a horoscope for the first year of the Emperor Antoninus Pius, 2 set up by the priests of Hermes at Thebes—the Greek of which is very faulty and evidently written by “Barbari”:

“After enquiry based on many books, handed down to us by the wise Ancients, the Chaldæans,—both Petosiris,and especially King Necheus [sic; i.e. Nechepso], in as much as they also took counsel of our Lord Hermes and of Asclepius, that is of Imouthēs, son of Hephēstus. . . .” 3

From this we learn that in the second century A.D. the writings of Petosiris and Nechepso, together with the “Chaldæan Books,” still formed part of the Temple Library at Thebes; moreover, that Petosiris and Nechepso, in the second century B.C., based themselves on these Books as well as on Books ascribed to both Hermes and Asclepius. Moreover, from the Fragments of Nechepso 1 we learn that he had before him a sermon of Asclepius called Moirogenesis, concerning the Genesis of Fate, and also Dialogues in which Hermes instructs Asclepius and Anubis concerning the mysteries of astrology. These Trismegistic works must thus be dated prior to the beginning of the second century B.C.

Sethe, in his essay on Asclepius-Imhotep, has endeavoured to show that this Imuth was originally a man, and that divine honours were first paid to him in the reign of Amāsis (Amōsis—Ȧāḥ-mes), about 1700 B.C.

TOSOTHRUS-ASCLEPIUS

Manetho, however, tells us another story, when he writes of a certain king of the Third Dynasty (B.C. 3700): “Toso[r]thrus reigned twenty-nine years. He is called Asclepius by the Egyptians, for his medical knowledge. He built a house of hewn stones, and greatly patronised literature.” 2

Tosothrus is Tcheser or Tcheser-sa (Dośer), the second king of the Third Dynasty from Memphis. The “house of hewn stones” which he built, received remarkable confirmation from the excavations which were carried out by the Prussian General Minutoli in 1819, 3 in the Step-Pyramid of Ṣaḳḳāra. This temple,

says Budge (op. cit., i. 219) “is certainly the oldest of all the large buildings which have successfully resisted the action of wind and weather, and destruction by the hand of man.”

In the Inscription of the Seven Famine Years, 1 moreover, belonging in its present form to the later Ptolemaic period, but a copy of a far more ancient record, we read, in Sethe’s restored Greek text:

“Tosothrus, in whose days (lived) Imouthēs. He was considered by the Egyptians to be Asclepius because of his knowledge of the healing art; he discovered the art of building with hewn stones, and, moreover, occupied himself with literature.”

We thus learn that long before Manetho’s time there was an Asclepian literature, and not only did this deal with medicine but also with scripture in general and with “masonry.”

IMUTH-ASCLEPIUS THE MASTER MASON AND POET

That Asclepius was specially occupied with the sacred building-art, may be seen from Sethe’s study, whose industry has discovered a book on Temple-building ascribed to Imuth, a “Book that came from Heaven northwards from Memphis.” It was according to this Book that Ptolemy X. (Soter II.) and Ptolemy XI. (Alexander I.) enlarged the building of their ancestors at Edfu, “in agreement with the writing concerning the plans of the Temple of Horus, which the chief prelector of the priests, Imhotp, the son of Ptaḥ, had written.”

There were also certain very ancient Sermons (or Songs) of Imhotp, and a saying from one of these

[paragraph continues] Sermons, the “Song from the House of King Intf,” is given by Sethe as follows:

“I have heard the words of Imhotp and Hardadaf; they are still much spoken of, but where are their abodes?”

Perhaps this explains the statement in S. H. I. (Stob., Ec., i. 49; W. p. 467, 4) that Asclepius-Imuth was the inventor of poetry. Imuth was to the Egyptians what Orpheus, Linus or Musæus was to the Greeks.

And so Reitzenstein (p. 121) concludes that the tradition of the old Egyptian and Hellenistic literature is unbroken. In Hellenistic times this view of the Divine Son of Ptaḥ of Memphis and of his chief Shrine at Memphis spread widely, and his cult was extended to Thebes and even to Philæ. At Thebes he appears united with the Theban Thoth and his younger likeness or image Amenhotep—the twin-brother of Imhotep (Asclepius) Son of Hapu, who is said to have lived as a man under King Amenophis III. (Ȧmen-ḥetep), 1450 B.C., and who tells us himself how he became acquainted with the “Book of God” and saw in vision the “Pre-eminence of Thoth.” 1

The chief Temple of Asclepius at Memphis was still honoured in later times, and even in the days of Jerome its priesthood was renowned for its occult wisdom. 2

ÆSCULAPIUS THE HEALER

Of the Cult of Æsculapius in Greece and of the widespread influence of this ideal there is little need to remind the student of the comparative history of religions; we cannot, however, refrain from appending a paragraph

from a remarkable address recently delivered by the Rev. J. Estlin Carpenter to the students of Manchester College, Oxford, 1 in which he says:

“Pass beyond the limits of Israel and its hopes, and you enter a world of religious phenomena, so varied as to be practically inexhaustible, and all the patient labour of the last thirty years has only begun to exhibit to us its contents. At every turn you are confronted with beliefs resembling those which pervade our New Testament, so that Prof. Cheyne has recently attempted in a very remarkable little volume, Bible Problems, to trace archæologically the roots of four great doctrines associated with the person of Jesus—the Virgin Birth, the Descent into Hades, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. The inscriptions reveal to you the very language of Christianity in the making. The hymns and liturgies of other faiths derive their strength from similar ideas, and express similar aspirations. Does Jesus, according to the Gospels, give sight to the blind, and call the dead back to life? So does Æsculapius. He, too, is wondrously born; he, too, is in danger in his infancy. He, too, heals the sick and raises the dead, till Zeus, jealous of this infringement of his prerogatives, smites him with his thunderbolt, and translates him to the world above. But from his heavenly seat he continues to exercise his healing power. His worship spreads all through Greece. After a great plague in Rome, in 291 B.C., it is planted on a sacred island in the Tiber. In the first century of our era you may follow it all round the Eastern Mediterranean. In Greece alone Pausanias mentions sixty-three Asklepieia. There were others in Asia Minor, Egypt, Sicily; nearly two hundred being still traceable. They were both

sanctuaries and medical schools. A number of inscriptions relate details of cures, or consecrate the ex-votos, which are still dedicated at Loretto or Lourdes. The temple by the Tiber won special fame in the reign of Antoninus Pius, for the restoration of the sight of a blind man. Æsculapius himself bears the titles ‘king’ and θεὸς σωτήρ, ‘divine saviour.’ He was even σωτὴρ τῶν ὅλων, ‘saviour of the universe.’ In his cosmic significance he was thus identified-with Zeus himself, and on earth he was felt to be ‘most loving to man’ (cp. Tit. iii. 4). Harnack, in one of the fascinating chapters of his Expansion of Christianity, has traced the action of these influences on later Christianity conceived as a religion of healing or salvation, medicine alike of body and of mind. It must be enough now to remind you that the god was believed to reveal himself to those who sought his aid, and Origen affirms that a great multitude, both of Greeks and barbarians, acknowledge that they ‘have frequently seen, and still see, no mere phantom, but Æsculapius himself, healing and doing good, and foretelling the future.’”

But to pass on to the Trismegistic Asclepius.

ASCLEPIUS IN TRISMEGISTIC TRADITION

Asclepius comes forward in our literature as the type of a disciple of Trismegistus already trained in philosophy. This prior training must presumably be referred to the Ptah-tradition—Ptah being himself a God of Revelation, that is of teaching by means of apocalypsis, and Asclepius being originally his “son” and “priest.” But not only was Ptah a God of apocalypsis generally, but also a God of medicine, as he must needs have been for his son to have learned his wisdom from him.

[paragraph continues] This view is brought out in a Hellenistic text which reads as follows:

“A Remedy from the shrines of Hephæstus [Ptah] at Memphis interpreted by the decision and owing to the philanthropy, they say, of Thrice-greatest Hermes; for he decided that it should be published with a view to man’s saving. It was found on a golden tablet written in Egyptian characters.” 1

The tradition of the date when Asclepius was admitted to the Trismegistic discipline is given in K. K., 3 (Stob., Ec., i. 49; W. p. 387, 1). After the ascension of Hermes, we are told:

“To him succeeded Tat, who was at once his son and heir unto these knowledges; and not long afterwards Asclepius-Imuth, according to the will of Ptah who is Hephæstus.”

What precise historical worth this tradition may contain, it is impossible to say; all we can suppose is that there was at some early date a union of two schools of mystic discipline belonging respectively to the Thebaic and Memphitic traditions. This union may have been somewhat analogous to that of the disciples of John the Baptist and of Jesus. What is clear, however, from our Trismegistic writings, is that there is no doubt whatever in the writer’s mind that the Trismegistic tradition is in possession of the higher wisdom; and, indeed, C. H., xiii. (xiv.) distinctly allows us to conclude that though. Tat was younger, in so far as he had not the technical training of the Asclepius-grade, it is nevertheless Tat, when he reaches “manhood,” and not Asclepius, who succeeds to the mastership of the School.

Nevertheless we find a number of Trismegistic writings, presupposed especially in “The Definitions of

[paragraph continues] Asclepius” and in “The Perfect Sermon,” in which both Tat and Asclepius share in a common instruction—Asclepius appearing as the older and riper scholar.

This makes Reitzenstein (p. 122) suppose that this type of what we may call a company of two disciples was invented by the Hermes priests at Thebes, and that it was later on taken over by the Memphitic Ptah-Asclepius priests and developed in their own interest.

This may be so if we must be compelled to speculate on the dim shades of history which may be recovered from these obscure indications.

CONCERNING AMMON

Of the Trismegistic writings of Asclepius, Lactantius (D. I., ii. 15, 7) mentions a “Perfect Sermon” to the King (Ammon), 1 and also refers to a rich ancient literature by Asclepius addressed to the same king.

Reitzenstein (p. 123), moreover, says that C. H., (xvii.) presupposes writings addressed to the same King Ammon by Tat; but I gather that the persons of the dialogue are really Asclepius and the King, and not Tat, and that Tat has been substituted for Asclepius by some copyist in error.

However this may be, there was a large literature addressed by Hermes himself to Ammon, as we may see from the distinct statement in P. S. A., i. 2, and also from Stobæus, Exx. xii.-xix. The same tradition is preserved in the presumably later Hermetic treatise, Iatromathematica, which is also addressed to Ammon. 2

PROPHET AND KING

Here, then, we have another type of literature, and that, too, very ancient, in which the wise Priest and Prophet is set over against the King as teacher or discoverer of hidden wisdom. This we have already seen to have been the relationship between the Priest and Prophet Petosiris and King Nechepso. But the type goes still further back to pre-Greek times in Egypt. It was, as we have learned from Plutarch, who probably hands on the information direct from Manetho, a necessity that the King, to be a true King, should be initiated into the wisdom of the Priests.

As we have already seen, Imuth-Asclepius appears in Manetho as an inventor, so also in the charming story put into the mouth of Socrates by Plato in his Phædrus (274 C) about “the famous old God whose name was Theuth,”—Thoth is the inventor par excellence. In this story—which elicits the remark from Phædrus: “Yes, Socrates, you can easily invent tales of Egypt, or of any other country”—Thoth takes his inventions to a certain King Thamus for his approval or disapproval, as to whether or no the Egyptians might be allowed the benefit of them. This Thamus was “King of the whole country of Egypt, and dwelt in that great city of upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the God Himself is called by them Ammon.”

In Hecatæus, also, Osiris, King of Thebes, has all inventions laid before him, and gives special honour to Hermes whose inventions were far and wide renowned. 1

In this connection it is to be noted that in the Theban Thoth-cult, Thoth was regarded as the Representative

of the King and Light-God Rā (or Ammon). And so we read on the tomb of Seti I.:

“Thou art in my place, my representative. Wherefore are thou moreover called Thoth, Representative of the Light-God Rā.” 1

From these and other indications it is quite possible to conclude that Plato has used an ancient Egyptian logos as the basis of his story, and that this logos at a very early period found an echo in written instructions given by Thoth to the King.

All this took place on purely Egyptian ground, and hence the type of instruction from Thoth-Hermes to Ammon was fairly established in tradition before it was taken over by our Hellenistic Trismegistic writers.

AMENHOTEP-ASCLEPIUS

So far, however, I believe, no reference to books written by Imhotep (Asclepius) to Ammon in the pre-Greek period has been discovered. Sethe, 2 however, tells us that a certain Amenhotep who lived as early as the fifteenth century B.C., was a disciple and seer of Thoth. This Amenhotep was famous as a teacher of wisdom and discoverer of magic books; he was probably also renowned for his own writings as well. Gradually this Amenhotep became blended with Imhotep-Asclepius as his twin-brother, and finally in Ptolemaic times received divine honours at Thebes. Here, then, we have the blending in of another tradition, of a writer of books who was a disciple of Thoth, and was gradually confounded with Asclepius-Imuth, son of Ptah. And that there were two Asclepiuses, an older and a later, we are told distinctly by P. S. A., xxxvii. 3.

Of the Sayings of this Asclepius a Greek porcelain 1 gives us some idea. The first three Sayings, however, are simply taken from the Sayings of the Seven Sages of Greece; the rest may be partially Egyptian. This scrap of evidence, however, is of importance; for already in the third century B.C., Orphic Sayings are known to have been worked up with Egyptian material, and here we have Greek gnomic material blended with an Egyptian Imuth-tradition of Sayings.

Perhaps still more careful research may reward us with further side-lights on the development of this Asclepius-literature prior to the Greek period, and in its earliest Hellenistic forms. As it is, we are left with the impression that the traces which have been already discovered, justify the remarks made by the writer of our Trismegistic “Definitions of Asclepius unto the King” or “The Perfect Sermon of Asclepius unto the King”—C. H., (xvi.)—as based upon a well-established tradition in the School, concerning the change brought about by putting the Egyptian forms of the Asclepian writings, which were of a very mystical nature, into the more precise forms of the Greek tongue.

THE SACRED GROUP OF FOUR

What, however, is clear in “The Perfect Sermon” of Hermes himself, where he gives instruction to his three disciples, Asclepius, Tat and Ammon, assembled in the “holy place,” is that the history of the matter is of small moment to the writer of that Sermon. He is dealing with the inner and more intimate side of the teaching. Asclepius, Tat and Ammon are for him the sacred triad, forming with the Master himself the “sacred group of four” (P. S. A., i. 2).

With this we may very well compare the group of three made so familiar to us by the Evangelists—the three who were always with the Master in the most intimate moments of His inner life and exaltation—James, John and Peter.

Now, if the reader will refer to my notes on the last paragraph of Hippolytus’ Introduction to the Naassene document, he will see that Clement of Alexandria expressly asserts that:

“The Lord imparted the Gnosis to James the Just, to John and Peter, after His Resurrection; these delivered it to the rest of the Apostles, and they to the Seventy.”

JAMES, JOHN AND PETER

Here I would suggest that we have a similarity of conception. Asclepius is the main subsequent teacher, even as James is, in Christian tradition; Peter is the organiser, to whom the rulership over the Church is given—he represents the king-power, and may be equated with Ammon; while John is the Beloved even as is Tat.

John understands the spirit of the teaching best of all; James is more learned on the formal side; while Peter is the organiser, and in many an apocryphal story is made to display lack of control and want of understanding.

A most interesting scrap of Johannine tradition will throw some further light on the fact that John succeeded to the spiritual directorship, even as Tat, in our sermons, succeeds to Trismegistus.

This scrap is an addition to John xvii. 26, from a Codex of the Fourth Gospel, preserved in the Archives of the Templars of St John of Jerusalem in Paris: 1

“Ye have heard what I said unto you: I am not of this world, the Comforter is among you, teach through the Comforter. As the Father has sent Me, even so send I you. Amen, I say unto you, I am not of this world; but John shall be your father, till he shall go with Me into Paradise. And He anointed them with the Holy Spirit.”

So also in an addition to John xix. 26-30, we read:

“He saith to His mother, Weep not; I go to My Father and to Eternal Life. Behold thy son! He will keep My place. Then saith He to the disciple, Behold thy mother! Then bowing His head He gave up the Ghost.”

Here then at the Supreme Crisis the Master constitutes John the spiritual Father of the School in His place. So is it with Tat.

THE TRIAD OF DISCIPLES

The idea of triads and other groups (e.g. of five and seven) united in the Presence of a Master, is familiar to the student of Druidical mysticism. In our “Perfect Sermon” we have such a triad, each disciple distinguished by strongly-marked characteristics; the tuning of these into one harmony, so that, to use another and a familiar simile, the disciples may be as the fingers of one hand, for the Master’s use, is a matter of enormous difficulty. One is characterised by Power, another by Knowledge, and another by Love. All three must sink their individually strongest characteristic in a supreme sacrifice, where all blend together into the Wisdom of the Master. This seems to me to be the inner purport of our “Perfect Sermon,” and whatever may be the history of the evolution of the

forms of the literature, the eternal fact of the nature of the intimate teaching of the Christ to the Three was known to our writer.

CHNUM THE GOOD DAIMON

Let us now turn to the type of Trismegistic literature in which Osiris and Isis came forward as disciples; and first of all let us take a glance at the God Chnum, Chnubis, or Chnuphis (Knuphis), whose name occurs in so many of the Abraxas and Abraxoid gems.

Chnum was for Southern Egypt precisely what Ptah of Memphis was for Northern Egypt. He was the Fashioner of men, even as a potter makes pots on a wheel. Chnum was Demiurge and God of the heart. The chief centre of his cult was at Syene and the Island of Elephantine. Here he was regarded as the Father of Osiris. And so we hear of astrological dialogues between Chnum and Osiris, as, for instance, when we are told:

“And all that Kouphis, who is with them [the Egyptians], the Good Daimon, handed on, and his disciple Osiris philosophized.” 1

These writings were grouped with those of Nechepso, and also with our Trismegistic writings. Compare the passage in Firmicus Maternus which runs:

“All things which Mercurius (Hermes) and Chnubis [?] handed on to Æsculapius (Asclepius), which Petosiris discovered and Nechepso.” 2

OSIRIS DISCIPLE OF AGATHODAIMON THE THRICE-GREATEST

The Patristic references to our Trismegistic literature further imform us that Osiris was regarded as the disciple of Agathodaimon, who in them bears the name of Thrice-greatest. 1 There is, however, nothing to show that Hermes himself appears in them as the disciple of Chnubis, as Reitzenstein says (p. 126). The introductory phrase of Lactantius to Frag. xix. runs: “But I [L.] will call to mind the words of Hermes the Thrice-greatest; in the ‘To Asclepius’ he says: ‘Osiris said: How, then, O thou Thrice-greatest, [thou] Good Daimon, did Earth in its entirety appear?’”

Here we have a sermon of Hermes quoting from a tradition in which Osiris appears as the disciple of Agathodaimon, who is also called Trismegistus; that is, the Agathodaimon-Osiris Dialogue type was old, and presumably pertained to one of the earliest forms of the Trismegistic literature, probably contemporary with the most ancient Pœmandres type. This type seems to have borne impressions of the form of the “Books of the Chaldæans” type of cosmogenesis, which we have seen to have strongly influenced Petosiris and Nechepso in the early second century B.C.

Agathodaimon is to Osiris as Pœmandres to Hermes.

LOGOS-MlND THE GOOD DAIMON

So also in the early Alchemical literature there is a treatise of Agathodaimon addressed to Osiris, and in it others are presupposed. 2 These Alchemical teachings of the Good Daimon are frequently in close contact with

our Trismegistic doctrines; moreover, in the same literature, Hermes refers to Agathodaimon and appears to regard himself as his disciple. 1 It thus may be supposed that it was from Chnum that was originally derived the tradition of the Agathodaimonites. So thinks Reitzenstein; but I do not think that we have sufficient evidence as yet for so general a conclusion. The term Agathodaimon is a very general one, it is true, but the whole idea cannot be refunded into Chnum; in fact, Osiris is quite as much Agathodaimon as Chnum, and in C. H., xii. (xiii.), which deals with the General Mind, Good Mind, or Good Daimon, Agathodaimon is taken in the most general sense, and in the three quotations there made by Hermes from the “Sayings of the Good Daimon” (§§ 1, 8, 13), 2 we find that they are in the words of Heracleitus as inspired by the Logos; so that in reality Agathodaimon must be equated with Logos. The origin of Agathodaimon is then not solely Chnum; and Hermes therefore cannot be spoken of as the disciple of Chnubis, unless we can cite texts in which Thoth is so described.

In our Trismegistic literature the teaching is quite simple and distinct; as, for instance, in C. H., x. (xi.) 23: “He [Mind] is the Good Daimon.”

When, however, Reitzenstein (p. 128) declares that the sentence in § 25 of the same sermon, “For this cause can a man dare say that man on earth is God subject to death, while God in heaven is man from death immune,” 3 is a saying belonging to the

[paragraph continues] Chnuphis-literature, we think he is going beyond the limits of probable conjecture, unless we substitute for Chnuphis the general term Agathodaimon in the sense of Logos.

When again Reitzenstein (p. 129) says that the fragments he has adduced show that Hermes was a later addition in the Agathodaimon-literature, and gradually pushed on one side Osiris the Son of the God of Revelation, we are not convinced that we have correctly recovered the “history”—for in the great Osiris-myth it is Hermes who is always the teacher of wisdom and not Osiris.

CHNUM GOOD MIND THE ÆON

Nevertheless that a wide-spread Chnuphis-literature, in the Agathodaimonistic sense, existed prior to the second century B.C., Reitzenstein has shown by a number of interesting quotations (pp. 129-133). In Hellenistic times the worship of Chnuphis as the Primal Deity and God of Revelation was strongly established, and, most interesting of all for us, his symbol was the serpent. The symbol, then, of Agathodaimon as Logos was the Serpent of Wisdom, and we are in contact with the line of tradition of the Gnostic Ophites and Naassenes. And so also in Ptolemaic times we find his syzygy, Isis, also symbolised as a serpent, and both of them frequently as serpents with human heads; they are both “as wise as serpents.” And as Horus was their son, so we find the hawk-headed symbol of that God united with a serpent body. So also we find Agathodaimon, in his sun-aspect, symbolised as a serpent with a lion’s head. 1 He is the Æon.

ISIS, LADY OF WISDOM, DISCIPLE OF THRICE-GREATEST HERMES

In addition to the types of Hermes and his disciples, and Agathodaimon and his disciples, we have also in our Trismegistic literature another type—namely, Isis and her disciples. Isis is the ancient Lady of all wisdom, and Teacher of all magic. In the early Hellenistic period she is substituted for Hermes as Orderer of the cosmos, 1 while Plutarch calls her Lady of the Heart and Tongue even as is Hermes. 2 She “sees” the teaching.

As her disciple, she has in the Stobæan Ex. xxxi. 3 a king, probably King Ammon.

In a Magic Papyrus she even appears as teacher of Asclepius. 4 But the more usual and natural type is that of Isis as teacher of her son Horus, and so we find Lucian speaking of Pythagoras visiting Egypt to learn wisdom of her prophets, and saying that the sage of Samos descended into the adyta and learned the Books of Horus and Isis. 5 To this type of literature belongs our lengthy Stobæan Exx. xxv.-xxvii.

But in all of this Isis owes her wisdom to face to face instruction by the most ancient Hermes, with whom she gets into contact through spiritual vision. All this I have discussed in the Commentaries to Exx. xxv.-xxvii.; the conclusion being that to the mind of the Pœmandrists, no matter how ancient might be any line of tradition, whether of Agathodaimon or Osiris or Isis, the direct teaching of the Mind transcended it.

Footnotes

460:1 See Maspero, op. cit., p. 80. Which of the numerous opp. citt. of Maspero’s this may be is not clear from Budge’s reference.

460:2 Cf. Brugsch, Thesaurus, p. 783; Religion, p. 527. Sethe, Imhotep, 1903—so Budge; but, more accurately, Sethe (K.), Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Altertumskunde Ägyptens, ii. 4 (“Imhotep, der Asklepios der Ägypter”).

461:1 For Asclepius among the Greeks, see Thraemer’s article “Asklepios” in Reseller’s Lex. d. . . . Mythologie (Leipzig, 1884-1900), i. 615-641; also the “Cornell Studies in Classical Philosophy,” No. III., The Cult of Asklepios, by Alice Walton, Ph.D. (Ithaca, N.Y., U.S.A., 1894).

462:1 Wessely, Denkschr. d. K. K. Akad. (1893), p. 38, 11. 550 ff.; Kenyon, Cat. of Gk. Pap., p. 102.

462:2 Griffith, in Zeitschr. f. äg. Sprache (1900), p. 90.

462:3 According to Manetho; see Müller, Manetho Fragm., 4.

463:1 Teephibis. Cf. Catal. Cod. Astral. Græc., i. 167: “Hermes Phibi the Thrice-greatest.” Sethe (op. sup. cit.) would equate this Teephibis with Hermes of Thebes, in connection with the statement of Clement of Alexandria (Strom., I. xxi. 134): “Of those, too, who once lived as men among the Egyptians, but who have been made Gods by human opinion, are Hermes of Thebes and Asclepius of Memphis.” If this is correct, we have our Trismegistus nourishing as Teephibis at the end of the second century B.C. But there seems to my mind to be nothing definite in Sethe’s contention.

464:1 There is also an older and younger Isis in the K. K. extracts, and also in both these and in P. S. A. an older and younger Asclepius.

464:2 R. (p. 119) has “des Kaisers Antonius”; but I know of no Emperor so called. The first years of Antoninus Pius would be 138-139 A.D.

464:3 Pap. du Louvre, 19 bis, Notices et Extraits, xviii. 2, 136.

465:1 Riess, Fr. 25.

465:2 Cory, An. Frags., p. 100. Budge, A History of Egypt (London, 1902), i. 218.

465:3 Reise zum Tempel des Jupiter Ammon, pp. 296 ff.

466:1 A rock inscription found on the cataract island Sehêl. R., p. 129.

467:1 R., p. 124. Cf. Sethe, Ægyptiaca, Festschrift für G. Ebers, pp. 106 ff.

467:2 Ammian. Marc., xxii. 14. 7; Vit, Hil., 21.

468:1 “Christianity in the Light of Historical Science,” in The Examiner (London), Oct. 21, 1905, pp. 668 ff.

470:1 Cod. Antinori 101, fol. 361.

471:1 Probably our C. H. (xvi.).

471:2 Camerarius, Astrologica (Nürnberg, 1537); Hermetis Iatromath., ed. Hoeschel (1597); Ideler, Physici et Medici Græci Minores, i. 387 and 430. Iatromathematici were those who practised medicine in conjunction with astrology, as was done in Egypt (Procl., Paraph. Ptol., p. 24).

472:1 Diodor., I. 15, 16.

473:1 Brugsch, Religion u. Myth. d. alt. Äg., p. 451.

473:2 Op. sup. cit., ibid.

474:1 Published by Wilcken in the “Festschrift für Ebers,” pp. 142 ff.

475:1 Given by Thilo, Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti (Leipzig, 1832), p. 880. Cf. Pick (B.), The Extra-Canonical Life of Christ (New York, 1903), p. 279.

477:1 Cramer, Anecd. Ox., iii. 171, 20.

477:2 Fir. Mat., iv. proœm. 5 (Skutsch and Kroll, p. 196, 21). The “and Chnubis” is the emendation of R. for the unintelligible letters “einhnusuix.”

478:1 Cf. Lactantius Fragg., xiv., xix., xxi., xxii.

478:2 Berthelot, Les Alchimistes grecs, Texte, p. 268.

479:1 Op. cit., pp. 125, 156-263.

479:2 We meet with a similar collection of Sayings, or Summaries of the chief points of teaching, in the Stobæan Ex. i. 7 ff., belonging to the Tat-literature, and also in (C. H., x. (xi.), xiv. (xv.), and (xvi.).

479:3 A very similar phrase occurs in Dio Cassius, Fr. 30; i. 87, ed. Boiss.

480:1 See the Nechepso Fragment 29 (Riess, p. 379).

481:1 R., Zwei relig. Frag., 104 ff.

481:2 De Is. et Os., xlviii.

481:3 With heading: “Of Hermes from the [Sermon] of Isis to Horus.”

481:4 Wessely, Denkschr. d. K. K. Akad. (1893), p. 41, 1. 633.

481:5 Alectruon, 18.