Hellenic · Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I · 10 of 15
Plutarch: Concerning the Mysteries of Isis and Osiris (Part 1)
Foreword
261-366
Address to Klea concerning Gnosis and the Search for Truth
The Art of Knowing and of Divinising
The True Initiates of Isis
Why the Priests are Shaven and wear Linen
Of the Refraining from Flesh and Salt and Superfluities
On the Drinking of Wine
On Fish Taboos
The Onion and Pig Taboos
The Kings, the Riddles of the Priests and the Meaning of Amoun
Of the Greek Disciples of Egyptians and of Pythagoras and his Symbols
Advice to Klea concerning the Hidden Meaning of the Myths
The Mystery-Myth
The Undermeaning, a Reflexion of a Certain Reason
Concerning the Tombs of Osiris
Concerning the Theory of Evemerus
The Theory of the Daimones
Concerning Sarapis
Concerning Typhon
The Theory of the Physicists
Concerning Osiris and Dionysus
The Theory of the Physicists Resumed
The Theory of the Mathematici
The Theory of the Dualists
The Proper Reason according to Plutarch
The Symbolism of the Sistrum
The True “Logos” again according to Plutarch
Against the Weather and Vegetation God Theories
Concerning the Worship of Animals and Totemism
Concerning the Sacred Robes
Concerning Incense
Afterword
X. “Hermas” and “Hermes”
369-386
An Anticipation
The Higher Criticism of “The Shepherd of Hermas”
The Introduction of the “Pastoral Hermas”
Comparison with our “Pœmandres”
The Popular Symbolic Representation of the Shepherd
The Name “Hermas”
An Early Form of the “Pœmandres”
The Holy Mount
“Gnostic” Elements
The Vices and Virtues
The Early Date of the Original “Hermas”
The Dependence Theory to be used with Caution
The Visions of Crates
The General Christian “Many” and the Gnostic “Few”
The Story of Abbot Olympius
A Final Word
XI. Concerning the Æon-Doctrine
387-412
The Scope of our Essay
The Orphic Tradition of the Genesis of the World Egg
Commentary
The Sethian Gnosis
The Mithriac Æon
Probable Date of Origin of the Hellenistic Æon-Doctrine
Abraxas
The Feast of the Æon
The Quintessence and the Monad
The Æon in Plato
Concerning the Hellenistic Origin of Æonology
The Æon the Logos
The Roman Sæculum Cult derived from Egypt
The Æonic Immensities of Egypt
A Song of Praise to the Æon
The Demiurgic Æon
The Æon in Theurgic Literature
XII. The Seven Zones and their Characteristics
413-428
Macrobius on “The Descent of the Soul from the Heights of Cosmos to the Depths of Earth”
The Tradition of Servius
Criticism of the Evidence
The “Ophite” Hebdomad
The Simpler Form of the Trismegistic Gnosis
Concerning Leviathan and Behemoth
The “Fence of Fire”
XIII. Plato: Concerning Metempsychosis
429-436
The Soul and her Mysteries in the “Phædrus”
Plotinus on Metempsychosis
Proclus on the Descent of Souls into Irrational Natures
XIV. The Vision of Er
437-449
Er Son of Armenius
From the Mysteries
The Cylinder
The Vision
Commentary
XV. Concerning the Crater or Cup
450-456
The Crater in Plato
In “Orpheus,” Macrobius, and Proclus
The Vision of Aridæus
The Origin of the Symbol to be sought in Orphic Tradition
XVI. The Disciples of Thrice-Greatest Hermes
457-481
Ptah, Sekhet and I-em-ḥetep (Asclepius)
Nefer-Tem
Imhotep-Imuth-Asclepius
Thāth-Tat
The Incarnations of Thoth
The Disciples of Lord Hermes in Petosiris and Nechepso
Tosothros-Asclepius
Imuth-Asclepius the Master-Mason and Poet
Æsculapius the Healer
Asclepius in Trismegistic Tradition
Concerning Ammon
Prophet and King
Amenhotep-Asclepius
The Sacred Group of Four
James, John and Peter
The Triad of Disciples
Chnum the Good Daimon
Osiris Disciple of Agathodaimon the Thrice-greatest
Logos-Mind the Good Daimon
Chnum Good Mind the Æon
Isis, Lady of Wisdom, Disciple of Thrice-greatest Hermes
Gnosticism and Hermetica
Was he one or many, merging Name and fame in one, Like a stream, to which, converging, Many streamlets run? . . . . . .
Who shall call his dreams fallacious? Who has searched or sought All the unexplored and spacious Universe of thought?
Who in his own skill confiding, Shall with rule and line Mark the border-land dividing Human and divine?
Trismegistus! Three times greatest! How thy name sublime Has descended to this latest Progeny of time!
Longfellow, Hermes Trismegistus. 1
Footnotes
xvi:1 This poem is dated January 1882. Chambers (p. 155, n.) says: “It is noteworthy that the last poem of Longfellow was a lyrical ode in celebration of Hermes Trismegistus.”
Gnosticism and Hermetica
Thrice-Greatest Hermes
THE REMAINS OF THE TRISMEGISTIC LITERATURE
WRITER AND READER
Little did I think when, years ago, I began to translate some of the Trismegistic tractates, that the undertaking would finally grow into these volumes. My sole object then was to render the more important of these beautiful theosophic treatises into an English that might, perhaps, be thought in some small way worthy of the Greek originals. I was then more attracted by the sermons themselves than by the manifold problems to which they gave rise; I found greater pleasure in the spiritual atmosphere they created, than in the critical considerations which insistently imposed themselves upon my mind, as I strove to realise their importance for the history of the development of religious ideas in the Western world.
And now, too, when I take pen in hand to grapple with the difficulties of “introduction” for those who will be good enough to follow my all-insufficient labours, it is to the tractates themselves that I turn again and again for refreshment in the task; and every time I turn to them I am persuaded that the best of them are worthy of all the labour a man can bestow upon them.
Though it is true that the form of these volumes, with their Prolegomena and Commentaries and numerous notes, is that of a technical treatise, it has nevertheless been my aim to make them throughout accessible to the general reader, even to the man of one language who, though no scholar himself, may yet be deeply interested in such studies. These volumes must, therefore, naturally fall short of the precision enjoyed by the works of technical specialists which are filled with direct quotations from a number of ancient and modern tongues; on the other hand, they have the advantage of appealing to a larger public, while at the same time the specialist is given every indication for controlling the statements and translations.
Nor should the general reader be deterred by an introductory volume under the imposing sub-title of Prolegomena, imagining that these chapters are necessarily of a dull, critical nature, for the subjects dealt with are of immense interest in themselves (at least they seem so to me), and are supplementary to the Trismegistic sermons, frequently adding material of a like nature to that in our tractates.
Some of these Prolegomena have grown out of the Commentaries, for I found that occasionally subjects lent themselves to such lengthy digressions that they could be removed to the Prolegomena to the great advantage of the Commentary. The arrangement of the material thus accumulated, however, has proved a very difficult task, and I have been able to preserve but little logical sequence in the chapters; but this is owing mainly to the fact that the extant Trismegistic literature itself is preserved to us in a most chaotic fashion, and I as yet see no means of inducing any sure order into this chaos.
THE EXTANT TRISMEGISTIC LITERATURE
To distinguish our writings both from the Egyptian “Books of Thoth” and the Hermes Prayers of the popular Egyptian cult, as found in the Greek Magic Papyri, and also from the later Hermetic Alchemical literature, I have adopted the term Trismegistic literature in place of the usual designation Hermetic.
Of this Greek Trismegistic literature proper, much is lost; that which remains to us, of which I have endeavoured to gather together every fragment and scrap, falls under five heads:
A. The Corpus Hermeticum. B. The Perfect Sermon, or the Asclepius. C. Excerpts by Stobæus. D. References and Fragments in the Fathers. E. References and Fragments in the Philosophers.
A. The Corpus Hermeticum includes what has, previous to Reitzenstein, 1 been known as the “Poimandres” 2 collection of fourteen Sermons and the “Definitions of Asclepius.”
B. The Perfect Sermon, or the Asclepius, is no longer extant in Greek, but only in an Old Latin version.
C. There are twenty-seven Excerpts, from otherwise lost Sermons, by John Stobæus, a Pagan scholar of the
end of the fifth or beginning of the sixth century, who was an immense reader and made a most valuable collection of extracts from Greek authors, though studiously avoiding every Christian writer. Some of these Excerpts are of great length, especially those from the Sermon entitled “The Virgin of the World”; these twenty-seven Excerpts are exclusive of extracts from Sermons still preserved in our Corpus.
D. From the Church Fathers we obtain many references and twenty-five short Fragments, otherwise unknown to us, and considerably widening our acquaintance with the scope of the literature.
E. From Zosimus and Fulgentius we obtain three Fragments, and from the former and Iamblichus, and Julian the Emperor-Philosopher, we obtain a number of valuable references.
Such are what at first sight may appear to be the comparatively scanty remains of what was once an exceedingly abundant literature. But when we remember that this literature was largely reserved and kept secret, we cannot but congratulate ourselves that so much has been preserved; indeed, as we shall see later on, but for the lucky chance of a Hermetic apologist selecting some of the sermons to exemplify the loyal nature of the Trismegistic teaching with respect to kings and rulers, we should be without any Hermetic Corpus at all, and dependent solely on our extracts and fragments.
But even with our Hermetic Corpus before us we should never forget that we have only a fraction of the Trismegistic literature—the flotsam and jetsam, so to say, of a once most noble vessel that sailed the seas of human endeavour, and was an ark of refuge to many a pious and cultured soul.
References to lost writings of the School will meet
us abundantly in the course of our studies, and some attempt will be made later on to form a notion of the main types of the literature.
As for the rest of the so-called Hermetic works, medico-mathematical, astrological and medico-astrological, and alchemical, and for a list of the many inventions attributed to the Thrice-greatest—inventions as numerous as, and almost identical with, those attributed to Orpheus by fond posterity along the line of “pure” Hellenic tradition—I would refer the student to the Bibliotheca Græca of Joannes Albertus Fabricius. 1
For the Alchemical and Mediæval literature the two magnificent works of Berthelot (M. P. E.) are indispensable—namely, Collection des anciens Alchimistes grecs (Paris, 1888), and La Chimie au Moyen Âge (Paris, 1893).
In close connection with the development of this form of “Hermetic” tradition must be taken the Hermes writings and traditions among the Arabs. See Beausobre’s Histoire Critique de Manichée et du Manichéisme (Amsterdam, 1734), i. 326; also Fleischer (H. L.), Hermes Trismegislus an die menschliche Seele, Arabisch und Deutsch (Leipzig, 1870); Bardenhewer (O.), Hermetis Trismegisti qui apud Arabes fertur de Castigatione Animæ Liber (Bonn, 1873); and especially R. Pietschmann, the pupil of Georg Ebers, who devotes the fourth part of his treatise, entitled Hermes Trismegistus nach ägyptischen und orientalischen Überlieferungen (Leipzig, 1875), to a consideration of the Hermes tradition, “Bei Syrern und Araben.”
Reitzenstein treats very briefly of the development of this later Hermetic literature on pp. 188-200 of his Poimandres. 1
THE ORIGINAL MS. OF OUR CORPUS
From the fragmentary nature of the remains of the Trismegistic literature that have come down to us, it will be at once seen that a critical text of them is a complicated undertaking; for, apart from the Corpus, the texts have to be collected from the works of many authors. This, however, has never yet been done in any critical fashion; so that a translator has first of all to find the best existing critical texts of these authors from which to make his version. This, I hope, I have succeeded in doing; but even so, numerous obscurities still remain in the texts of the excerpts, fragments, and quotations, and it is highly desirable that some scholar specially acquainted with our literature should collect all these together in one volume, and work over the labours of specialists on the texts of Stobæus and the Fathers, with the added equipment of his own special knowledge.
Even the text of our Corpus is still without a thoroughly critical edition; for though Reitzenstein has done this work most admirably for C. H., i., xiii. (xiv.), and (xvi.)-(xviii.), basing himself on five MSS. and the printed texts of the earlier editions, he has not thought fit to give us a complete text.
A list of the then known MSS. is given in Harles’ edition of Fabricius’ Bibliotheca Græca (pp. 51, 52); while Parthey gives notes on the only two MSS. he used in his edition of fourteen of the Sermons of
our Corpus. It is, however, generally believed that there may be other MSS. hidden away in Continental libraries.
All prior work on the MSS., however, is entirely superseded by Reitzenstein in his illuminating “History of the Text” (pp. 319-327), in which we have the whole matter set forth with the thoroughness that characterises the best German scholarship.
From him we learn that we owe the preservation of our Hermetic Corpus to a single MS. that was found in the eleventh century in a sad condition. Whole quires and single leaves were missing, both at the beginning (after ch. i.) and the end (after ch. xvi.); even in the remaining pages, especially in the last third, the writing was in a number of places no longer legible.
In this condition the MS. came into the hands of Michael Psellus, the great reviver of Platonic studies at Byzantium, probably at the time when his orthodoxy was being called into question. Psellus thought he would put these writings into circulation again, but at the same time guard himself against the suspicion that their contents corresponded with his own conclusions. This accounts for the peculiar scholion to C. H., i. 18, which seems at first pure monkish denunciation of Pœmandres as the Devil in disguise to lead men from the truth, while the conclusion of it betrays so deep an interest in the contents that it must have been more than purely philological.
And that such an interest was aroused in the following centuries at Byzantium, may be concluded from the fact that the last three chapters, which directly justify polytheism or rather Heathendom, were omitted in a portion of the MSS., and only that part of the Corpus received a wider circulation which corresponded
with what might be regarded at first sight as a Neoplatonism assimilated to Christianity. The text was reproduced with thoughtless exactitude, so that though its tradition is extraordinarily bad, it is uniform, and we can recover with certainty the copy of Psellus from the texts of the fourteenth century.
These Trismegistic Sermons obtained a larger field of operation with the growth of Humanism in the West. Georgius Gemistus Pletho, in the latter part of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century, brought Neoplatonism from Byzantium into Italy as a kind of religion and made a deep impression on Cosimo Medici; and Marsiglio Ficino, who was early selected by the latter as the head of the future Academy, must have made his Latin translation of our Corpus, which appeared in 1463, to serve as the first groundwork of this undertaking. Cosimo had the Greek text brought from Bulgaria (Macedonia) by a monk, Fra Lionardo of Pistoja, and it is still in the Medicean Library.
It was not, however, till the middle of the sixteenth century that the Greek text was printed; and meantime, with the great interest taken in these writings by the Humanists, a large number of MSS. arose which sought to make the text more understandable or more elegant; such MSS. are of no value for the tradition of the text.
TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS
We will now proceed to give some account of the texts and translations of the Trismegistic writings, a bibliographical labour which the general reader will most probably skip, but which the real student will appreciate at its proper value. 1
The best account of the texts and translations up to 1790 is that of Harles, who has entirely rewritten the account of Fabricius (op. cit., pp. 52 ff.). 1
The editio princeps was not a text but a Latin translation by Marsiglio Ficino (Marsilius Ficinus), published in quarto in 1471. 2 Both the name of the publisher and place of publication are lacking, but the British Museum catalogue inserts them in parenthesis as “G. de Lisa, Treviso,” presumably on the authority of Harles. This translation consisted of the so-called “Pœmandres,” in fourteen chapters, that is to say fourteen treatises, under the general title, Mercurii Trismegisti Liber de Potestate et Sapientia Dei (or The Book of Mercury Trismegist concerning the Power and Wisdom of God). The enormous popularity of this work is seen by the fact of the very numerous editions (for a book of that time) through which it ran. No less than twenty-two editions have appeared, the first eight of them in the short space of a quarter of a century. 3
In 1548 there appeared an Italian translation of Ficinus’ Latin version of the “Pœmandres” collection, entitled Il Pimandro di Mercurio Trismegisto, done into Florentine by Tommaso Benci, printed at Florence in 12mo. A second edition was printed at Florence in 1549 in 8vo, with numerous improvements by Paitoni.
The first Greek text was printed at Paris, in 1554, by Adr. Turnebus; it included the “Pœmandres” and “The Definitions of Asclepius,” to which the Latin version of Ficino was appended. The title is, Mercurii Trismegisti Pœmander seu de Potestate ac Sapientia Divina: Aesculapii Definitiones ad Ammonem Regem; the Greek was edited by P. Angelo da Barga (Angelus Vergecius).
In 1557 appeared the first French translation by Gabriel du Preau, at Paris, with a lengthy title, Deux Livres de Mercure Trismegiste Hermés tres ancien Theologien, et excellant Philozophe. L’un de la puissance et sapience de Dieu. L’autre de la volonte de Dieu. Auecq’un Dialogue de Loys Lazarel, poete Chrestien, intitulé le Bassin d’Hermés.
This seems to be simply a translation of an edition of Ficinus’ Latin version published at Paris by Henr. Stephanus in 1505, to which a certain worthy, Loys Lazarel, who further rejoiced in the agnomen of Septempedanus, appended a lucubration of his own of absolutely no value, 1 for the title of Estienne’s edition runs: Pimander Mercurii Liber de Sapientia et Potestate Dei. Asclepius, ejusdem Mercurii Liber de Voluntate Divina. Item Crater Hermetis a Lazarelo Septempedano.
In 1574 Franciscus Flussas Candalle reprinted at Bourdeaux, in 4to, Turnebus’ Greek text, which he emended, with the help of the younger Scaliger and other Humanists, together with a Latin translation, under the title, Mercurii Trismegisti Pimander sive Pœmander. This text is still of critical service to-day.
This he followed with a French translation, printed in 1579, also at Bourdeaux in folio, and bearing the title, Le Pimandre de Mercure Trismegiste de la Philosophie
[paragraph continues] Chrestienne, Cognoissance du Verb Divin, et de l’Excellence des Œuvres de Dieu. This we are assured is translated “de l’exemplaire Grec, avec collation de très-amples commentaires,” 1 all of which is followed by the full name and titles of Flussas, to wit, “François Monsieur de Foix, de la famille de Candalle, Captal de Buchs, etc., Evesque d’Ayre, etc.,” the whole being dedicated to “Marguerite de France, Roine de Navarre.”
Twelve years later Franciscus Patricius (Cardinal Francesco Patrizzi) printed an edition of the text of the Sermons of the Corpus, of “The Asclepius,” and also of most of the Extracts and of some of the Fragments; he, however, has arranged them all in a quite arbitrary fashion, and has as arbitrarily altered the text, which generally followed that of Turnebus and Candalle, in innumerable places. To this he appended a Latin translation, in which he emended the versions of Ficino and de Foix, as he tells us, in no less than 1040 places. These were included in his Nova de Universis Philosophia, printed at Ferrara, in folio, 1591, and again at Venice by R. Meiettus, in 1593, as an appendix to his Nov. de Un. Phil., now increased to fifty books.
This Latin translation of Patrizzi was printed apart, together with the Chaldæan Oracles, at Hamburg in 12mo, also, in 1593, under the title Magia Philosophica. The latter edition bears the subscription on the title-page, “jam nunc primum ex Biblioteca Ranzoviana è tenebris eruta,” which Harles explains as a reprint by plain Henr. Ranzou, who is, however, described in the volume itself as “produx.” It seems to have been again reprinted at Hamburg in 1594 in 8vo.
Meantime the Carmelite, Hannibal Rossellus, 2 had
been laboriously engaged for many years on an edition of the “Pœmandres” with most elaborate commentaries. This was printed at Cracow by Lazarus, in six volumes in folio, from 1585 to 1590. Rossel treats of philosophy, theology, the Pope, the scriptures, and all disciplines in his immanibus commentariis, inepte as some say, while others bestow on him great praise. His title is Pymander Mercurii Trismegisti. This was reprinted with the text and translation of de Foix in folio at Cologne in 1630, under the title Divinus Pimander Hermetis Mercurii Trismegisti.
Hitherto nothing had been done in England, but in 1611 an edition of Ficinus’ translation was printed in London. This was followed by what purports to be a translation of the “Pœmandres” from Arabic, 1 “by that learned Divine, Doctor Everard,” as the title-page sets forth. It was printed in London in 1650 in 8vo, with a preface by “J. F.,” and bears the title The Divine Pymander of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus, in xvii. Books. Translated formerly out of the Arabick into Greek [!] and thence into Latin, and Dutch, and now out of the Original into English. There was a second edition of Everard’s version printed at London in 1657, in 12mo. There are also reprints of the 1650 edition by Fryar of Bath, with an introduction by Hargrave Jennings, in 1884; 2 by P. B. Randolph, Toledo, Ohio, 1889; and by the Theosophical Publishing Society, in the Collectanea Hermetica, edited by W. Wynn Westcott, in 1893.
To what Dutch translation Everard refers I cannot discover, for the only one known to me is that printed
at Amsterdam in 1652 in 12mo. It is a translation of Patrizzi’s text, and bears the title, Sestien Boecken van den Hermes Trismegistus. . . . uyt het Griecx ghebracht . . . met eene . . . Voorede uyt het Latijn von F. Patricius in de welcke hij bewijst dat desen . . . Philosoph heeft gebleoyt voor Moyses, etc. Harles says nothing of this edition, but speaks of one printed at Amsterdam in 1643 in 4to, by Nicholas van Rauenstein, but I can find no other trace of it.
The first German translation was by a certain Alethophilus, and was printed at Hamburg in 1706 (8vo) under the title Hermetis Trismegisti Erkäntnüss der Natur, etc., containing seventeen pieces; this was reprinted at Stuttgart in 1855, in a curious collection by J. Schieble, entitled Kleiner Wunder-Schauplatz. 1 The title reads Hermetis Trismegisti Einleitung in’s höchste Wissen von Erkentniss der Natur und der darin sich offenbarenden grossen Grottes, with an appendix concerning the person of Hermes, etc.
But why Schieble should have reprinted Alethophilus’ translation is not clear, when in 1781 a new translation into German, with critical notes and valuable suggestions for emending the text, had appeared by Dieterich Tiedemann (Berlin and Stettin, in 8vo), entitled Hermes Trismegists Pœmander, oder von der göttlichen Macht und Weisheit, a rare book which, already in 1827, Baumgarten-Crusius 2 laments
as almost unfindable in the republic of letters, and of which the British Museum possesses no copy. 1
It is remarkable that of a work which exhausted so many editions in translation and was evidently received with such great enthusiasm, there have been so few editions of the text, and that for two centuries and a quarter 2 no attempt was made to collate the different MSS. and editions, until in 1854 Gustav Parthey printed a critical text of the fourteen pieces of “Pœmandres,” at Berlin, under the title Hermetis Trismegisti Pœmander, to which he appended a Latin translation based on the original version of Ficino successively revised by de Foix and Patrizzi. Parthey’s promise to edit reliqua Hermetis scripta has not been fulfilled, and no one else has so far attempted this most necessary task.
Reitzenstein’s (p. 322) opinion of Parthey’s text, however, is very unfavourable. In the first place, Parthey took Patrizzi’s arbitrary alterations as a true tradition of the text; in the second, he himself saw neither of the MSS. on which he says he relies. The first of these was very carelessly copied for him and carelessly used by him; while the second, which was copied by D. Hamm, is very corrupt owing to very numerous “corrections” and interpolations by a later hand—all of which Parthey has adopted as ancient readings. His text, therefore, concludes Reitzenstein, is doubly falsified—a very discouraging judgment for lovers of accuracy.
In 1866 there appeared at Paris, in 8vo, a complete translation in French of the Trismegistic treatises and
fragments by Louis Ménard, entitled Hermès Trismégiste, preceded by an interesting study on the origin of the Hermetic books, of which a second edition was printed in 1867. This is beyond question the most sympathetic version that we at present possess.
Everard’s version of the “Pœmandres” being reprinted in 1884 by Fryar of Bath, the rest of the treatises were retranslated by Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland from Ménard’s French version (including his notes), and appeared in 1885 (in 4to), published by Fryar, but bearing a publisher’s name in India, under the general title The Hermetic Works: The Virgin of the World of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus. Meantime, in 1882, J. D. Chambers had published (at Edinburgh, in 8vo) a crabbed and slavishly literal translation of the “Pœmandres,” together with the Excerpts from Stobæus and the Notices of Hermes in the Fathers, with an introductory Preface, under the title, The Theological and Philosophical Works of Hermes Trismegistus, Christian Neoplatonist. Indeed, the loose and erroneous version of Everard is far more comprehensible than this fantastically literal translation.
For the last six years I have myself been publishing, in the pages of The Theosophical Review, translations of the Trismegistic Sermons and also a few of the studies now included in these Prolegomena; all of the former, however, have been now carefully revised, and the latter have for the most part been greatly enlarged and improved.
Finally, in 1904, E. Reitzenstein of Strassburg published at Leipzig his illuminating study, Poimandres, in which he gives the critical text of C. H., i., xiii. (xiv.), (xvi.)-(xviii.), based on five MSS. and the best early printed editions, with all that minute care, knowledge of palæography, and enthusiasm for philology which
characterises the best textual-critical work of modern scholarship. Why, however, Reitzenstein has not done the same good service for the whole of the Corpus as he has done for the selected sermons, is a mystery. He is the very man for the task, and the service he could render would be highly appreciated by many.
So much, then, for the existing partial texts and translations of the extant Trismegistic literature. Of the translations with which I am acquainted, 1 Everard’s (1650), the favourite in England, because of its dignified English, is full of errors, mistranslations, and obscurities; it is hopeless to try to understand “Hermes” from this version. Chambers’s translation (1882, from the text of Parthey) is so slavishly literal that it ceases to be English in many places, in others goes wide of the sense, and, in general, is exasperating. Ménard’s French translation (1866, also from Parthey’s text) is elegant and sympathetic, but very free in many places; in fact, not infrequently quite emancipated from the text. The most literally accurate translation is Parthey’s Latin version (based on the Latin translation of Ficino, as emended by Candalle and Patrizzi); but even in such literal rendering he is at fault at times, while in general no one can fully understand the Latin without the Greek. To translate “Hermes” requires not only a good knowledge of Greek, but also a knowledge of that Gnosis which he has not infrequently so admirably handed on to us.
Footnotes
3:1 Reitzenstein (R.), Poimandres: Studien zur griechisch-ägyptischen und frühchristlichen Literatur (Leipzig; 1904).
3:2 Variously translated, or metamorphosed, as Pœmandres, Pœmander, Poemandre, Pymandar, Pimander, Pimandre, Pimandro. Already Patrizzi, in 1591, pointed out that only one treatise could be called by this title; but, in spite of this, the bad habit inaugurated by the editio princeps (in Latin translation) of Marsiglio Ficino has persisted to the last edition of the text by Parthey (1854) and the last translation by Chambers (1882).
5:1 Vol. i., lib. i., cap. vii. See the fourth and last edition (Leipzig, 1790), with up to that time unedited supplements by Fabricius and G. C. Heumann, and very numerous and important additions by G. C. Harles.
6:1 For the Hermetic writing in Pitra, Analecta Sacra et Classica, pt. ii., see R., pp. 16, n. 4, and 259, n. 1; and for reference to the Arabic literature, pp. 23, n. 5, and 172, n. 3.
8:1 This study was published in the Theosophical Review, May 1899, and is independent of Reitzenstein’s work.
9:1 S. F. W. Hoffmann’s Bibliographisches Lexicon der gesammten Litteratur der Griechen (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1839) simply copies Harles, while his appendix of “Erläuterungsschriften” is of no value.
9:2 R. (p. 320), as we have seen, gives the date as 1463, but I have found no trace of this edition.
9:3 The dates of these editions are as follows, though doubtless there were other editions of which we have lost record: 1471, ’72, ’81, ’83, ’91, ’93, ’94, ’97; 1503, ’05, ’16, ’22, ’32, ’49, ’52, ’54, ’61, ’70, ’76, ’77; 1611, ’41. They were printed at Venice, Paris, Basle, Lyons, and London.
10:1 The writer has painfully perused it, for, more fortunate than the British Museum, he possesses a copy of this rare work.
11:1 These on perusal prove of little value.
11:2 R. 322 calls him a Minorite.
12:1 It is clear, however, that Everard translated from Ficinus’ Latin version, and that the “Arabick” is a myth.
12:2 Of which only 200 copies were issued to subscribers, as though, forsooth, they were to come into great “occult” secrets thereby.
13:1 Part of the full title runs: K. W.-S. d. Wissenschaften, Mysterien, Theosophie, göttlichen und morgenländischen Magie, Naturkräfte, hermet. u. magnet. Phil., Kabbala, u. and. höhern Kentnissen, and much more in the same strain, but I have no doubt the reader has already had enough of it. From 1855 to 1857 fourteen parts appeared, mostly taken up with German translations of Hermes, of Agrippa’s Philosophia Occulta from the Latin, and of The Telescope of Zoroaster from the French.
13:2 Op. inf. cit., p. 10.
14:1 I have, therefore, not been able to avail myself of Tiedemann’s labours. R. 322 speaks highly of them.
14:2 The last edition prior to Parthey’s was the reprint of Flussas’ text, at Cologne in 1630, appended to Rossel’s lucubrations.
16:1 As already remarked, I have not been able to see a copy of the German of Tiedemann.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
THE HISTORY OF THE EVOLUTION OF OPINION
THE CHIEF POINTS OF INTERROGATION
We have now to consider the following interesting points:
The early Church Fathers in general accepted the Trismegistic writings as exceedingly ancient and authoritative, and in their apologetic writings quote them in support of the main general positions of Christianity.
In the revival of learning, for upwards of a century and a half, all the Humanists welcomed them with open arms as a most valuable adjunct to Christianity, and as being in accord with its doctrines; so much so that they laboured to substitute Trismegistus for Aristotle in the schools.
During the last two centuries and a half, however, a body of opinion was gradually evolved, infinitesimal in its beginnings but finally well-nigh shutting out every other view, that these writings were Neoplatonic forgeries and plagiarisms of Christianity.
Finally, with the dawn of the twentieth century, the subject has been rescued from the hands of opinion, and has begun to be established on the firm ground of historical and critical research, opening up problems of the greatest interest and importance for the history of Christian origins and their connection with Hellenistic
theology and theosophy, and throwing a brilliant light on the development of Gnosticism.
The first point will be brought out in detail in the volume in which a translation of all the passages and references to Thrice-greatest Hermes in the writings of the Church Fathers will be given; while the last will be made abundantly apparent, we hope, in the general course of our studies. The second and third points will now demand our immediate attention, especially the third, for we have endeavoured with great labour to become acquainted with all the “arguments” which have tended to build up this opinion; and unless we have to change all our ideas as to the time-frame of so-called Neoplatonism, we are entirely unconvinced; for we find that it has been evolved from unsupported assertions, and that not one single work exists which ventures in any satisfactory fashion to argue the question (most writers merely reasserting or echoing prior opinions), or in which the statements made may not as easily prove the priority of the Trismegistic school to the Neoplatonic as the reverse.
We will then proceed to give some account of this chaos of contradictory opinions, picking out the most salient points.
THE OPINIONS OF THE HUMANISTS
That the early scholars of the revival of learning were all unanimously delighted with the Trismegistic writings, is manifest from the bibliography we have already given, and that they should follow the judgment of the ancient Fathers in the matter is but natural to expect; for them not only were the books prior to Christianity, but they were ever assured that Hermes
had been a really existent personality, like any of the Biblical worthies, such as Enoch and Noah (as was unquestionably believed in those days), and further, that he was prior to, or a contemporary of, Moses. 1
Thus in the editio princeps of Ficino we read: “Whoever thou art who readest these things, whether grammarian, or rhetorician, or philosopher, or theologian, know thou that I am Hermes the Thrice-greatest, at whom wondered first the Egyptians and the other nations, and subsequently the ancient Christian theologians, in utter stupefaction at my doctrine rare of things divine.”
The opinion of Ficino, that the “writer” of the “Pœmandres” tractates was one who had a knowledge both of Egyptian and Greek, is of interest as being that of a man uncontaminated by the infinite doubts with which the atmosphere of modern criticism is filled, and thus able to get a clean contact with his subject.
Of the same mind were Loys Lazarel and du Preau, the first French translator; while the Italian Cardinal Patrizzi appends to his labours the following beautiful words (attributed by some to Chalcidius 2), which he puts in the mouth of Hermes:
“Till now, my son, I, banished from my home, have lived expatriate in exile. Now safe and sound I seek my home once more. And when but yet a little while I shall have left thee, freed from these bonds of body, see that thou dost not mourn me as one dead. For I return to that supreme and happy state to which the universe’s citizens will come when in the after-state.
[paragraph continues] For there the Only God is supreme lord, and He will fill His citizens with wondrous joy, compared to which the state down here which is regarded by the multitude as life, should rather be called death.” 1
Patrizzi believed that Hermes was contemporary with Moses, basing himself upon the opinion of Eusebius in his Chronicum, 2 and thought that it would be to the greatest advantage of the Christian world, if such admirable and pious philosophy as was contained in the Trismegistic writings were substituted in the public schools for Aristotle, whom he regarded as overflowing with impiety.
THE FIRST DOUBT
And that such opinions were the only ones as late as 1630, is evident from the favour still shown to the voluminous commentaries of de Foix and Rossel. Nevertheless some fifty years previously, a hardy pioneer of scepticism had sturdily attacked the validity of the then universal Hermes tradition on one point at least—and that a fundamental one. For Patrizzi (p. 1a) declares that a certain Jo. Goropius Becanus was the first after so many centuries to dare to say that Hermes (as a single individual) never existed! But the worthy Goropius, who appears to have flourished about 1580, judging by an antiquarian treatise of his on the race and language of the “Cimbri or Germani” published at Amsterdam, had no followers as yet in a belief that is now universally accepted by all critical scholarship. But this has to do with the Hermes-saga and not directly with the question of the Trismegistic works,
and so we may omit for the present any reference to the host of contradictory opinions on “Hermes” which are found in all the writers to whom we are referring, and none of which, prior to the decipherment of the hieroglyphics, are of any particular value.
THE LAUNCHING OF THE THEORY OF PLAGIARISM
It was about the middle of the seventeenth century that the theory of plagiarism and forgery was started. Ursin (Joh. Henr. Ursinus), a pastor of the Evangelical Church at Ratisbon, published at Nürnberg in 1661, a work, in the second part of which he treated of “Hermes Trismegistus and his Writings,” 1 and endeavoured to show that they were wholesale plagiarisms from Christianity, but his arguments were subjected to a severe criticism by Brucker some hundred years later. 2
This extreme view of Ursin was subsequently modified into the subsidiary opinions that the Trismegistic works were composed by a half-Christian (semi-christiano) or interpolated by Christian overworking.
The most distinguished name among the early holders of the former opinion is that of Isaac Casaubon, 3 who dates these writings at the beginning of the second
century; Casaubon’s opinions, however, were promptly refuted by Cudworth in his famous work The True Intellectual System of the Universe, the first edition of which was printed at London, in folio, 1678. 1 Cudworth would have it, however, that Casaubon was right as far as the treatises entitled “The Shepherd of Men” and “The Secret Sermon on the Mountain” are concerned, and that these treatises were counterfeited by Christians since the time of Iamblichus—a very curious position to assume, since a number of the treatises themselves look back to this very “Shepherd” as the original document of the whole “Pœmandres” cycle.
But, indeed, so far we have no arguments, no really critical investigation, 2 so that we need not detain the reader among these warring opinions, on which the cap was set by the violent outburst of Colberg in defence of orthodoxy against the Alchemists, Rosicrucians, Quakers, Anabaptists, Quietists, etc., of which fanatici, as he calls them, Hermes, he declares, was the Patriarch. 3
THE ONLY ARGUMENT ADDUCED
One might almost believe that Colberg was an incarnation of a Church Father continuing his ancient polemic against heresy; in any case the whole question of heresy
was now revived, and the eighteenth and nineteenth century criticism of the Trismegistic works almost invariably starts with this prejudice in mind and seeks (almost without exception) to father the Trismegistic writings on Neoplatonism, which it regards as the most powerful opponent of orthodoxy from the third century onwards. Harles (1790) gives the references to all the main factors in the evolution of this opinion during the eighteenth century; 1 but the only argument that the century produced—indeed, the only argument that has ever been adduced—is that the doctrines of the Trismegistic writings are clearly Platonic, and that too of that type of mystical Platonism which was especially the characteristic of the teaching of Iamblichus at the end of the third century A.D., and which is generally called Neoplatonism; therefore, these writings were forged by the Neoplatonists to prop up dying Paganism against the ever more and more vigorous Christianity. We admit the premisses, but we absolutely deny the conclusion. But before pointing out the weakness of this conclusion of apologetic scholarship, we must deal with the literature on the subject in the last century. The eighteenth century produced no arguments in support of this conclusion beyond the main premisses which we have admitted. 2 Has the nineteenth century
produced any others so as to justify the position taken up by the echoes of opinion in all the popular encyclopædias with regard to these most valuable and beautiful treatises? 1
If our encyclopædias deign to rest their assertions on authority, they refer us to Fabricius (Harles) and Baumgarten-Crusius. We have already seen that Harles will not help us much; will the latter authority throw any more light on the subject? We are afraid not; for, instead of a bulky volume, we have before us a thin academical exercise of only 19 pp., 2 in which the author puts forward the bare opinion that these books were invented by Porphyry and his school, and this mainly because he thinks that Orelli 3 had proved the year before that the Cosmogony of Sanchoniathon was invented by the “Platonici.” Moreover, was not Porphyry an enemy of Christ, for did he not write XV. Books against the Christians? All of which can scarcely be dignified with the name of argument, far less with that of proof.
THE THEORY OF HILGERS
The same may be said of the short academical thesis of Hilgers, 1 who first shows the weakness of Möhler’s strange opinion 2 that the author was a Christian who pretended to be a Pagan and inserted “errors” on purpose. Hilgers finally ends up with the lame conclusion that Christian doctrine was known to the author of the “Pœmandres” cycle, especially the Gospel of “John” and Letters of Paul; but how it is possible to conjecture anything besides, he does not know. Of the possibility of the priority of the “Pœmandres” to the writings of “John” and Paul, Hilgers does not seem to dream; nevertheless this is as logical a deduction as the one he draws from the points of contact between the two groups of literature. But Hilgers has got an axe of his own to grind, and a very blunt one at that; he thinks that “The Shepherd of Men” was written at the same time as “The Shepherd of Hermas,” that simple product of what is called the sub-apostolic age—a document held in great respect by the early outer communities of General Christianity, and used for purposes of edification. Our “Shepherd,” Hilgers thinks, was written in opposition to the Hermas document, but he can do nothing but point to the similarity of name as a proof of his hypothesis. This topsyturvy opinion we shall seek to reverse in a subsequent chapter on “‘Hermes’ and ‘Hermas.’”
As to the author of our “Shepherd,” Hilgers thinks he has shown that “he was not a follower of the
doctrines of the Christ, but of the so-called Neoplatonists, and among these especially of Philo Judæus”; in fact he seems, says Hilgers, to have been a Therapeut. 1
THE GERMAN THEORY OF NEOPLATONIC “SYNCRETISMUS”
Here we have the first appearance of another tendency; the more attention is bestowed upon the Trismegistic writings, the more it is apparent that they cannot be ascribed to Neoplatonism, if, as generally held, Neoplatonism begins with Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, and Porphyry in the third century. Therefore, in this subject, and in this subject alone, we find a tendency in later writers to push back the Neoplatonists so as to include Philo Judæus, who flourished in the first half of the first century! On these lines we should soon get Neo-platonism back to Plato and Pythagoras, and so be forced to drop the “Neo” and return to the old honoured name of simple “Platonici.”
But already by this time in Germany the theory of Neoplatonic Syncretismus to prop up sinking Heathendom against rising Christianity had become crystallised, as may be seen from the article on “Hermes, Hermetische Schriften” in Pauly’s famous Real Encyclopädie der classischen Alterthumswissenshaft (Stuttgart, 1844), where this position is assumed from the start.
Parthey, however, in 1854, in his preface, ventures on no such opinion, but expresses a belief that we may even yet discover in Egypt a demotic text of the “Pœmandres,” which shows that he considered the original to have been written in Egyptian, and therefore not by a Neoplatonist.
THE FRENCH THEORY OF EGYPTIAN ORIGIN
In France, moreover, the Egyptian paternity of the Trismegistic writings, and that too on very sensible lines, was asserted about the same time, namely, in 1858, by Artaud in his article on “Hermès Trismégiste,” in Hoeffer’s Nouvelle Biographie Générale, published at Paris by Messrs Firmin Didot. Artaud writes:
“In the mystic sense Thoth or the Egyptian Hermes was the symbol of the Divine Mind; he was the incarnated Thought, the living Word—the primitive type of the Logos of Plato and the Word of the Christians. . . .
“We have heard Champollion, the younger, giving expression to the formal opinion that the books of Hermes Trismegistus really contained the ancient Egyptian doctrine of which traces can be discovered from the hieroglyphics which cover the monuments of Egypt. Moreover, if these fragments themselves are examined, we find in them a theology sufficiently in accord with the doctrines set forth by Plato in his Timaeus—doctrines which are entirely apart from those of the other schools of Greece, and which were therefore held to have been derived by Plato from the temples of Egypt, when he went thither to hold converse with its priests.” 1
Artaud is also of the opinion that these Trismegistic treatises are translations from the Egyptian.
THE VIEWS OF MÉNARD
Nowadays, with our improved knowledge of Egyptology, this hypothesis has to be stated in far more
careful terms before it can find acceptance among the learned; nevertheless it was evidently the conviction of Dévéria, who in a work of which he only succeeded in writing the first two pages, proposed to comment on the entire text of the Trismegistic Books from the point of view of an Egyptologist. For these Books, he declared, offered an almost complete exposition of the esoteric philosophy of ancient Egypt. 1
But by far the most sympathetic and really intelligent account of the subject is that of Ménard, 2 who gives us a pleasant respite from the chorus of the German Neoplatonic syncretism theory. And though we do not by any means agree with all that he writes, it will be a relief to let in a breath of fresh air upon the general stuffiness of our present summary of opinions.
The fragments of the Trismegistic literature which have reached us are the sole surviving remains of that “Egyptian philosophy” which arose from the congress of the religious doctrines of Egypt with the philosophical doctrines of Greece. In other words, what the works of Philo were to the sacred literature of the Jews, the Hermaica were to the Egyptian sacred writings. Legend and myth were allegorised and philosophised and replaced by vision and instruction. But who were the authors of this theosophic method? This question is of the greatest interest to us, for it is one of the factors in the solution of the problem of the literary evolution of Christianity, seeing that there are intimate points of contact of ideas between several of the Hermetic documents and certain Jewish and Christian writings, especially the opening verses of Genesis, the treatises of Philo, the fourth Gospel
[paragraph continues] (especially the Prologue), and beyond all the writings of the great Gnostic doctors Basilides and Valentinus.
Such and similar considerations lead Ménard to glance at the environment of infant Christianity and the various phenomena connected with its growth, and this he does from the point of view of an enlightened independent historical scholar.
“Christianity,” he writes, “did not fall like a thunderbolt into the midst of a surprised and startled world. It had its period of incubation, and while it was engaged in evolving the positive form of its dogmas, the problems of which it was seeking the solution were the subject of thought in Greece, Asia, and Egypt. Similar ideas were in the air and shaped themselves into all sorts of propositions.
“The multiplicity of sects which have arisen in our own times under the name of socialism, can give but a faint idea of the marvellous intellectual chemistry which had established its principal laboratory at Alexandria. Humanity had set in the arena mighty philosophical and moral problems: the origin of evil, the destiny of the soul, its fall and redemption; the prize to be given was the government of the conscience. The Christian solution 1 won, and caused the rest to be forgotten, sunk for the most part in the shipwreck of the past. Let us then, when we come across a scrap of the flotsam and jetsam, recognise in it the work of a beaten competitor and not of a plagiarist. Indeed, the triumph of Christianity was prepared by those very men who thought themselves its rivals, but who were only its forerunners. The title suits them, though many were contemporaries of the Christian era, while others were a little later; for the succession of a religion only dates from the day when it is accepted by the
nations, just as the reign of a claimant to the throne dates from his victory” (pp. ix., x.).
Ménard distinguishes three principal groups in the Trismegistic treatises, which he assigns to Jewish, Greek, and Egyptian influences. In them also he finds a link between Philo and the Gnostics.
“Between the first Gnostic sects and the Hellenic Jews represented by Philo, a link is missing; this can be found in several of the Hermetic works, especially ‘The Shepherd of Men’ and ‘The Sermon on the Mountain.’ In them also will perhaps be found the reason of the differences, so often remarked upon, between the first three Gospels and the fourth” (p. xliv.).
Next, the direction in which that “link” is to be looked for is more clearly shown, though here Ménard is, I think, too precise when writing:
“It seems certain that ‘The Shepherd’ came from that school of Therapeuts of Egypt, who have been often erroneously confounded with the Essenians of Syria and Palestine” (p. lvi).
But “instead of the physical discipline of the Essenians, who, according to Philo, practised manual labour, put the product of their toil into the common fund, and reduced philosophy to ethics, and ethics to charity, the ‘monasteries’ of the Therapeuts contributed to Christian propaganda a far more Hellenised population, trained in abstract speculations and mystic allegories. From these tendencies, combined with the dogma of the incarnation, arose the Gnostic sects. ‘The Shepherd’ should be earlier than these schools” (p. lviii.).
As to “The Sermon on the Mountain,” “it can be placed, in order of ideas and date, between ‘The Shepherd’ and the first Gnostic schools; it should be
a little earlier than the founders of Gnosticism, Basilides, and Valentinus” (p. lxv.).
If Gnosticism be taken with Ménard to mean the Christianised theosophy of Basilides and Valentinus from the first quarter of the second century onwards, the oldest Trismegistic treatises are demonstrably earlier, for their Gnosticism is plainly a far simpler form; in fact, so much more simple that, if we could proceed on so crude an hypothesis as that of a straight-lined evolution, we should be forced to find room for intermediate forms of Gnosticism between them and the Basilidian and the Valentinian Gnosis. And of this Ménard seems to be partly conscious when writing: “We can follow in the Hermetic books the destiny of this Judæo-Egyptian Gnosis, which, during the first century, existed side by side with Christianity without allowing itself to be absorbed by it, passing insensibly from the Jewish school of Philo to the Greek school of Plotinus” (p. lxvii.).
Ménard here used the term Christianity for that tendency which afterwards was called Catholic or General Christianity, the body to which these very same Gnostics gave the principal dogmas of its subsequent theology.
But if the Gnostics were Therapeuts, and the Trismegistic writers Therapeuts, why should Ménard call them Jews, as he appears to do in his interesting question, “Where are the Jewish Therapeuts at the end of the second century?” Certainly Philo laboured to give his readers the impression that the Therapeuts were principally Jews, perhaps to win respect for his compatriots in his apology for his nation; but the Therapeuts were, evidently, on his own showing, drawn from all the nations and scattered abroad in very numerous communities, though many Jews were doubtless in
their ranks—indeed, Philo probably knew little about their communities other than the Mareotic. If, then, the term “Therapeut” will explain some of the phenomena presented by these writings, the combination “Jewish Therapeuts” will certainly not do so. The very answer of Ménard himself to his question shows that even these Mareotic Therapeuts could not have been orthodox Jews, for the French scholar proceeds to surmise not only that, “some, converted to Christianity, became monks or Gnostics of the Basilidian or Valentinian school,” but that “others more and more assimilated themselves to Paganism.”
And by “Paganism” our author says he does not mean “polytheism,” for “at this period all admitted into the divine order of things a well-defined hierarchy with a supreme God at the head; only for some this supreme Deity was in the world, for others outside it” (p. lxxiv.).
Ménard’s introduction meets with the general approval of Reitzenstein (p. 1), who characterises it as feinsinnige, and agrees that he has rightly appreciated many of the factors, especially from the theological side; he, however (p. 116, n. 2), dissents, and rightly dissents, from Ménard as to any direct Jewish influence on the Trismegistic literature, and refuses to admit that the “Pœmandres” can in any way be characterised as a Jewish-Gnostic writing.
But the sensible views of Ménard were impotent to check the crystallisation of the German theory, which was practically repeated by Zeller, 1 and once more by
[paragraph continues] Pietschmann in his learned essay, 1 based in part on A. G. Hoffmann’s article “Hermes” in Ersch and Grüber’s Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste. 2
An exception to this tendency, however, is to be found in the opinion of Aall; 3 who, though he adduces no proof, would on general grounds place the composition of the Hermetic literature (though whether or not by this he means our extant Trismegistic sermons is not clear) as far back as the second century B.C., and would see in it an offshoot from the same stem which later on supplied the ground-conceptions of the Johannine theology. 4
ENGLISH ENCYCLOPÆDISM
In England, as we have seen, the subject, like so many others of a similar nature, has been almost entirely neglected, but with the encyclopædic activity of the past generation we find it touched upon, and in the usual encyclopædic fashion. The German position is assumed, without one word of proof or reference to any, as an “acquired fact of science”! The “last effort of expiring Heathendom” theory is trotted out with complacency and with that impressive air of official knowledge which makes the pronouncements of the family physician a law unto all its members, from baby to father—until the specialist is called in. And
unfortunately these ex cathedrâ encyclopædic pronouncements are all the general reader will ever hear. This is the case with all those three indifferent articles in our current dictionaries of reference. 1 We are assured that, “as all are generally agreed,” the writings are Neoplatonic, and this without any qualification or definition of the term, and that too in dictionaries where the term “Neoplatonic,” in articles on the subject, is applied solely to the “Chain” from Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus onwards. The presumption is plain that by Neoplatonic forgeries we are to understand a date of at earliest from the middle of the third century onwards.
CHAMBERS’S OPINION
And this although Justin Martyr (cir. 150 A.D.) bestows emphatic praise on these very same writings and classes their writer, “Hermes,” among the “most ancient philosophers,” a point which the German theorists and their English copiers have all discreetly shirked, but which, together with other considerations, has forced Chambers, in the preface to his translation (London, 1882), to give quite a new meaning to the term Neoplatonist, which he uses of Hermes in his title, 2 and to declare that our Hermes is entitled “to
be considered the real founder of Neoplatonism.” 1 Chambers would still, in spite of Justin’s clear testimony, wedge in the earliest deposit of Trismegistic literature immediately between the time of composition of the new canonical books and Justin, and devotes nearly all his notes to fishing out every verse of the New Testament he can which bears the slightest resemblance to the Trismegistic text. 2 But if we closely compare these so-called parallels, we are compelled to acknowledge that if there be any plagiarism it is not on the side of Hermes; nay, more, it is as plain as it can be that there is no verbal plagiarism at all, and that the similarity of ideas therefore pertains to quite another problem, for the distinctive dogmas of Common Christianity are entirely wanting; there is not a single word breathed of the historical Jesus, not a syllable concerning the nativity, the crucifixion, resurrection, ascension or coming of Christ to judgment, as Chambers admits.
GERMAN ENCYCLOPÆDISM
Let us now turn to the pronouncements of German encyclopædism on the subject. F. A. Brockhaus’ Conversations-Lexikon (Leipzig, 1884) does but repeat the old hypothesis. The Trismegistic writings are “the last monuments of Heathendom”; the writer, however, grudgingly takes in the date of Justin Martyr in the sentence, “presumably the majority of these writings belong to the second century,” but not a word is breathed of how this conclusion is arrived at.
A most valuable article, in fact far and away the
very best that has yet been done, containing innumerable references to all the articles in the most recent transactions of learned societies and to the papers in scientific periodicals, is that of Chr. Scherer on “Hermes,” in W. H. Roscher’s Auführliches Lexikon der griechischen u. römischen Mythologie (Leipzig, 1884, etc.). Unfortunately this article deals solely with the Hermes of the Greeks, while for “Hermes Trismegistos” we are referred to “Thoth,” an article which has not yet appeared. This brings our summary of opinions down to the close of the last century; we have probably omitted reference to some minor opinions, for no up-to-date bibliography exists on the subject, but we doubt that any work of importance has escaped our notice.
A RECENT ARTICLE BY GRANGER
The most recent work done in England on the subject, in the present century, is an article by Frank Granger, 1 who, in spite of some useful criticisms and suggestions on some points, is nevertheless in the main reactionary, and contends for a Christian origin of our most important tractates. The scope of his enquiry may be seen from his preliminary statement when he writes:
“We shall have little difficulty in showing, as against Zeller, that the book [? our Corpus, or the first Sermon only] is in the main homogeneous and of Christian origin. Not only so, our discussion will bring us into contact with the later Greek culture as it developed amid Egyptian surroundings, and will raise several problems of considerable importance. Among other
things we shall have to trace the way in which Hermes passes over into Christian tradition, and how the Greek representations of Hermes furnished Christian art with one of its earliest motives. 1 We shall further find in it a bridge by which we may pass over from Greek philosophy and science to modes of thought which are properly Christian. And yet the writer retains so much of the antique spirit that he can hardly be mistaken for an apologist of Paganism.”
When, however, Granger attempts to prove his case, he breaks down utterly, being able to point to little besides the popular phrase “increase and multiply.” Towards the end of his enquiry, however, he sees that the traditional values of many factors will have to be altered by a study of our literature, as, for instance, when he writes:
“The traditional estimate of Gnosticism, then, requires to be reconsidered, in the light of the Poemandres. It belongs to a time when religious definitions were still in the making—a time, therefore, when the limits of free discussion were not yet straitly drawn. Hence the various permutations of religious belief which we find in Irenæus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, would not be admitted by their exponents to be in conflict with the Christian faith, but would rather be regarded as exhibiting new and fruitful applications of principles common to all. Ecclesiastical opinion ultimately settled down in one direction rather than another. But until this process was complete, each living system of belief might count upon a possible victory, 2 and so, among others, the system which may be traced in the Poemandres. And the Poemandres is so far from being a merely heretical production, that
its relation to orthodox belief may fairly be indicated by saying that it answers to the earlier intellectual position of Clement of Alexandria.” 1
We should say rather that the difficulties in which our essayist is evidently involved by his hypothesis of Christian origin, would be considerably lessened by accepting the evidence on all hands which a more extended study of the Trismegistic and allied literatures affords, and by treating what he refers to as Gnosticism without qualification as the Christianised Gnosis, and not as Gnosticised Christianity.
We thus find Granger compelled, in keeping with the above, to guess the date of the “Pœmandres” as towards the end of the second century; but even so, he feels dissatisfied with himself, for he has to add: “Nor does this date preclude us from finding occasional traces of even earlier material.”
However we may dissent from Granger’s conclusions as to the “Pœmandres,” we agree with him in the importance he ascribes to the Gospel according to the Egyptians, in connection with which he writes 2:
“It is instructive to note that Salome, who plays so prominent a part in the Gospel according to the Egyptians, is the mother of St John, 3 and that the same Gnostic circles in which this gospel is current were also those in which we hear for the first time of the Fourth Gospel. That is to say, the Fourth Gospel comes to us from the hands of the Alexandrine Gnostics. The system of Valentinus is really a somewhat fanciful
commentary upon the opening chapters of St John’s Gospel. 1 Heracleon, the first great commentator 2 upon St John, was both a Gnostic and at the same time was really the master of Origen, and through him helped to determine the development of the orthodox theology. Now, the key to the interpretation of the Fourth Gospel is to be found in the Gnostic ideas which underlie the Poemandres, ideas to which Heracleon furnishes the clue. But the commentators have refused the help which the Gnostics could give, and the Fourth Gospel has been consistently misunderstood owing to the exaggerated stress which has been laid upon the doctrine of the λόγος.”
I am not quite clear what the last sentence is intended to mean. Too great stress cannot be laid upon the doctrine of the Logos, for it is, as we shall show, the fundamental concept of Hellenistic theology; but too great stress can and has been laid upon the illegitimate claim that the Proem of the Fourth Gospel embodies a peculiarly Christian doctrine.
Moreover, if the Fourth Gospel emerges in Alexandrine circles and is so essentially Gnostic, how can it be ascribed, as Granger appears to ascribe it, to “St John”? A very different conclusion seems to follow from Granger’s premisses.
The conclusion of the most recent study by English scholarship on our “Pœmandres” is as follows:
“The Poemandres, then, is a very striking exponent of the religious and philosophical ideas amid which
[paragraph continues] Alexandrine theology arose. On the one hand it is in touch with Greek mythology and science; on the other, with Jewish and Christian literature. The author is more sober than most of his Gnostic contemporaries; he is a more consistent reasoner than Clement.” 1
But if, as we shall show, the date of the “Pœmandres” must be pushed back demonstrably at least a hundred years, and if, as is exceedingly probable, it must go back still further, the whole problem is changed, and the relationship of all the factors alters proportionately.
REITZENSTEIN AND THE DAWN OF RIGHT VIEWS
But in the present century, by the publication of Reitzenstein’s Poimandres, the whole subject has been placed on a different footing and brought into a clearer light. Reitzenstein attacks the problem of the Trismegistic writings from an entirely objective, historical, philological, and literary standpoint. Being entirely emancipated from any theological preconceptions, he is always careful to point out that his conclusions are based solely on critical research in the domain of philology proper; he cannot, however, refrain at times from adding (somewhat slily) that these results are of the deepest interest to the theologian—indeed, we might say highly embarrassing if the theologian happens to be a traditionalist.
The general scope of Reitzenstein’s essay may be gathered from his sub-title, “Studies in Greek-Egyptian and Early Christian Literature.” Our Trismegistic writings form part of a large number of Greek written texts, the remains of a once exceedingly extensive Hellenistic theological literature; and by Hellenistic
theology is meant the blending of Greek and Oriental religious thought and experience. This Hellenistic theology was most strongly influenced by Egyptian conceptions and traditions. The Egyptian religion is known to have spread itself over the Hellenistic world, and every scholar will at once recall to mind how many Greek writers have treated expressly of the Egyptian religion, and how many passages in Greek literature refer to Egyptian beliefs, as compared with the very few which treat of Babylonian, Persian, or even Syrian.
Nevertheless, the remains of this Hellenistic theological literature have never been treated as a whole from the point of view of philology; the cause of this has been the entire disregard of the subject by Christian theologians, coupled with the grotesque grounds on which the consideration of the Hellenistic-Egyptian religion is usually set aside—one famous theologian lately going so far as to assert that the Egyptian worship was despised on all sides, both by Jews and Greeks, as the lowest depth of human superstition.
As then Egypt had a provably dominant position in Hellenistic literature, so also must she have had in some sort a correspondingly strong influence on Hellenistic culture, and consequently on the development of Hellenistic religious experience. The evidence of this is afforded by the Early Christian literature.
We have, therefore, here in these Greek-Egyptian and Early Christian documents the possibility of methodical work, seeing that it is a question of the comparative study of two contemporaneous literatures; moreover, the language and typology of the Christian literature is bound to betray traces of the general Hellenistic theology of the time (pp. v., vi.).
The study of Reitzenstein is thus a consideration of
our Trismegistic literature as a whole, and the analysis and comparison of two of the most typical sermons with other Hellenistic documents and with Early Christian writings.
This he does with praiseworthy and painstaking industry, with great acumen and admirable scholarly equipment; but his work is of no service to any but scholars, and that, too, to scholars who are specialists. It is a work bristling with technicalities of every description, and crammed with untranslated texts. Indeed, Reitzenstein belongs to that school of philological purists who think it a loss of dignity to translate anything; this is a very convenient convention, and I myself have often wished that I could have availed myself of it when face to face with innumerable difficulties of translation.
Reitzenstein, then, translates nothing, but busies himself with texts and the higher criticism of the subject. He, however, does not give us the text of our literature as a whole, or even of the Corpus Hermeticum, but only of four chapters and the fragments of a fifth. Moreover, the results of his investigations are very difficult to summarise; indeed, he nowhere summarises them himself in any certain fashion, his chapters being on the whole of the nature of studies in the Trismegistic literature rather than a complete exposition.
Nevertheless these studies are, beyond comparison, the most important and suggestive work that has yet been done on the subject; and as I shall avail myself of his labours on so many occasions in the sequel, I cannot refrain from acknowledging here the special debt of gratitude which all lovers of our sermons must feel to him, for compelling the attention of scholars to the first importance of the Trismegistic literature in the
domain of the history of the development of religious thought in the first centuries.
The general scope of his studies will be seen from the titles of the main chapters:—I. Age of the “Poimandres”; by “Poimandres” R. means C. H., i. only. II. Analysis of the “Poimandres”; III. Fundamental Conception of the “Poimandres”; IV. “Poimandres” and the Egyptian Apocalyptic Literature; V. Expansion of the Hermetic Literature; VI. The Hermetic Corpus; VII. The Later “Poimandres” Document (The Prophet-Initiation).
The theory of plagiarism from Christianity must for ever be abandoned. The whole literature is based on the “Pœmandres” as its original gospel, and the original form of this scripture must be placed at least prior to the second century A.D. How much earlier it goes back we cannot at present say with any exactitude; before the beginning of the second century is the terminus ad quem—that is to say it cannot possibly be later than this; to seek, therefore, for traditional Christian thoughts in this document is henceforth deprived of any prospect of success (p. 36).
Reitzenstein tells us (p. 2) that these writings in the first place interested him solely through their literary form, but that this interest became deepened as he gradually learned to value them as important records of that powerful religious movement which, like a flood, overflowed the West from the East, and, after preparing the way for Christianity, subsequently bore it along with it; the best and surest evidence of this religious revival is to be found in the literary form of Hellenistic theology.
This in itself is of interest enough and to spare; and at a time when every scrap of contemporary literature is being so eagerly scanned for the smallest side-light it
can throw on the environment and development of Christian origins, it is amazing that the Trismegistic writings should have been hitherto so studiously neglected.
A KEY TO EGYPT’S WISDOM
But there is another and still more profoundly interesting side of the subject which we cannot expect to find treated in a purely philological, technical, and critical treatise. The more one studies the best of these mystical sermons, casting aside all prejudice, and trying to feel and think with the writers, the nearer one is conscious of approaching the threshold of what may well be believed to have been the true Adytum of the best in the mystery-traditions of antiquity. Innumerable are the hints of the greatnesses and immensities lying beyond that threshold—among other precious things the vision of the key to Egypt’s wisdom, the interpretation of apocalypsis by the light of the sun-clear epopteia of the intelligible cosmos.
Such greatnesses and such mysteries have a power and beauty which the most disreputable tradition of the texts through unknowing hands cannot wholly disguise, and they are still recognisable, even though thus clad in the rags of their once fair garments, by those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
But to return to the points we raised in the opening of this chapter.
THE SUGGESTED ANSWERS TO OUR QUESTIONS
If we now re-state the problems we are considering in the interrogative form, we shall have to find answers to the following questions:
Why did the early Church Fathers accept the
Trismegistic writings as exceedingly ancient and authoritative, and in their apologetic writings quote them in support of the main impersonal dogmas of Christianity?
Why, in the revival of learning, for upwards of a century and a half did all the Humanists welcome them with open arms as a most valuable adjunct to Christianity, and as being in accord with its main doctrines, so much so that they laboured to substitute Trismegistus for Aristotle in the schools?
Finally, why during the last two centuries and a half has a body of opinion been gradually evolved, infinitesimal in its beginnings, but well-nigh shutting out every other view, that these writings are Neoplatonic forgeries?
The answers to these questions are simple:—The Church Fathers appealed to the authority of antiquity and to a tradition that had never been called in question, in order to show that they taught nothing fundamentally new—that, in brief, they taught on main points what Hermes had taught. They lived in days too proximate to that tradition to have ventured on bringing any charge of plagiarism and forgery against it without exposing themselves to a crushing rejoinder from men who were still the hearers of its “living voice” and possessors of its “written word.”
The scholars of the Renaissance naturally followed the unvarying tradition of antiquity, confirmed by the Fathers of the Church.
Gradually, however, it was perceived that, if the old tradition were accepted, the fundamental originality of general Christian doctrines—that is to say, the philosophical basis of the Faith, as apart from the historical dogmas peculiar to it—could no longer be maintained. It, therefore, became imperatively necessary to discredit the ancient tradition by every possible
means. With what success this policy has been attended we have already seen; we have also reviewed this growth of opinion, and shown its baseless character and the straits to which its defenders have been put.
From the clouds of this obscurantism the sun of Thrice-greatest Hermes and the radiance of his Gnosis have once more shone forth in the skies of humanistic enquiry and unprejudiced research. He is no longer to be called bastard, and plagiarist, and thief of other people’s property, but must be regarded as a genuine teacher of men, handing on his own, and giving freely of his substance to all who will receive the gift.
Footnotes
19:1 For a list of those who thought Hermes was prior to Moses, and even identical with Joseph, or even Adam, see Harles, p. 49 ff. and notes.
19:2 A Platonic philosopher who lived probably in the 4th century A.D.
20:1 Op. cit., p. 3a.
20:2 In which Patrizzi did but echo the opinion of his predecessors, such as Vergecius, the editor of the first edition of the Greek text, Candalle and many more.
21:1 De Zoroastre Bactriano Hermete Trismegisto Sanchoniathone Phœnicio eorumque Scriptis, et Aliis contra Mosaicæ Scripturæ Antiquitatem; Exercitationes Familiares, pp. 73-180—a book now very scarce.
21:2 Jacobi Bruckeri, Historia Critica Philosophiæ (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1767), i. 252 ff. Lib. ii., cap. vii., “De Philosophia Ægyptiorum.” See also Meiners’ Versuch über die Religionsgeschichte der ältesten Völker besonders der Egyptier (Göttingen, 1775).
21:3 De Rebus Sacris . . . Exercitationes ad Card. Baronii Prolegomena, i., n. 10 (London, 1614). Casaubon concludes that the whole book, i.e. the “Pœmandres,” is a pseudepigraph, the pure invention of some Christian or other, or perhaps better, of some semi-Christian (p. 56).
22:1 See his dissertation on Hermes and the Hermetic writings in the edition of 1820, vol. ii., pp. 128-155.
22:2 Though Reitzenstein (p. 1) speaks of the”schneidende Kritik“ of Casaubon.
22:3 Vol. i., p. 89, of the following amply entitled work, Das Platonisch-Hermetisches [sic] Christenthum, begriffend die historische Erzehlung vom Ursprung und vielerley Secten der heutigen Fanatischen Theologie, unterm Namen der Paracelsisten, Weigelianer, Rosencreutzer, Quäker, Bohmisten, Wiedertäuffer, Bourignisten, Labadisten und Quietisten, by M. Ehre Gott Daniel Colberg, 2 vols. (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1690, 1691).
23:1 Op. supr. cit.; the most “advanced” writer on the subject being Tiedemann, to whose work we have already referred; but unfortunately we have not been able to procure a copy, and the British Museum is without it. Tiedemann thinks that none of the Trismegistic writings existed before the fourth century, while Fabricius himself, whose summary of prior opinion is overworked by Harles, assigns them to the time of Porphyry and Iamblichus, though Harles dates the earliest of them from the end of the first to the middle of the second century (p. 48, n.).
23:2 It may be worth while here to record the opinion of Gibbon, who would ascribe a Christian origin to some of the Trismegistic writings, and impatiently dismisses the subject by classing Hermes with Orpheus and the Sibyls as a cloak for Christian forgery (vol. ii. p. 69, Bury’s ed.).
24:1 How the public is catered for may be seen from any popular “knowledge”-digest. The following will serve as a specimen, taken from the article “Hermes Trismegistus,” in The American Encyclopædia: a Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge, edited by Ripley and Dana (New York, 1874): “In the conflict between Neoplatonism and Christianity, the former sought to give a profounder and more spiritual meaning to the pagan philosophy, by combining the wisdom of the Egyptians and the Greeks, and representing it as a very ancient, divine revelation.”
24:2 Delivered before the University of Jena at Pentecost, 1827, by Lud. Frid. Otto Baumgarten-Crusius.
24:3 Orelli (J. C.), Sanchoniathonis Fragmenta de Cosmogonia et Theologia Phœnicorum (Leipzig, 1826).
25:1 Hilgers (B. J.), De Hermetis Trismegisti Poimandro Commentatio (Bonn, 1855), suggested by the appearance of Parthey’s text in 1854.
25:2 Möhler (J. A.), Patrologie, pp. 950-951—a brief note on Hermes. Ed. by F. X. Reithmayr (Regensberg, 1840).
26:1 Op. cit., pp. 16-17.
27:1 The whole of this article has been lifted, without acknowledgment, by M‘Clintock and Strong in their Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature (New York, 1872).
28:1 Pierret, Mélanges d’Archéologie égyptienne et assyrienne, i. (1873), p. 112; R. 1, n. 1.
28:2 Op. sup. cit., 1866.
29:1 The popular Christian solution, Ménard should have said.
32:1 Gesch. d. griech. Philos., III., ii., 225 ff. Zeller, while recognising the Gnostic nature of C. H. i. and C. H. xiii. (xiv.), treats the rest of our Corpus as an expression of declining Paganism. So also Erdmann (Hist. Philos., i. 113, 2, Tr.), who deals with our Corpus only, and assigns its sermons to different authors and times. He contends that C. H. xiii. (xiv.) shows a Neo-pythagorean tendency, a term far vaguer than Neo-platonic even.
33:1 Hermes Trismegistos n. ägyp., griech. u. oriental. Überlieferungen (Leipzig, 1875).
33:2 A laborious article replete with references, but dealing solely with the Hermes-saga and not with our writings.
33:3 Aall (A.), Geschichte der Logosidee in der Philosophie (Leipzig, vol. i. 1896, vol. ii. 1899), ii. 78, n. 4.
33:4 Cf. Reitzenstein, Zwei religionsgeschichtliche Fragen (Strassburg, 1901), p. 93, n. 3.
34:1 Art. “Hermes and Hermes Trismegistus,” by L. Schmitz, in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (London, 1870), a work which is now entirely out of date; Jowett’s art., “Hermes Trismegistus,” in the Encyclopædia Britannica (9th ed., London, 1880), repeated in the recent reprint without alteration; and Mozley’s art., “Hermes Trismegistus,” in Smith and Wace’s Dictionary of Christian Biography (London, 1882); to both of which articles, if not to the works themselves, the above remark also applies.
34:2 The Theological and Philosophical Works of Hermes Trismegistus, Christian Neoplatonist.
35:1 Op. cit., p. xii.
35:2 In this repeating de Foix, who attempted the same task more than three hundred years before.
36:1 “The Poemandres of Hermes Trismegistus,” in The Journal of Theological Studies, vol. v. No. 19, April 1904 (London).
37:1 Namely, that of the Good Shepherd.
37:2 This is a reflection of Ménard’s sensible view.
38:1 Ibid., p. 406.
38:2 Ibid., p. 411.
38:3 I have never come across this statement before, and so regret that G. has not given his authority. If such were the tradition, it would be exceedingly instructive. Salome, however, in the fragments of this Gospel preserved to us, says categorically that she has never “brought forth.”
39:1 It is not, even if the “opening chapters” be reduced to the Proem. Heracleon, one of the disciples of Valentinus, comments directly on this Proem, but from the point of view of a quite independent tradition.
39:2 The first commentator of any kind of which we have any knowledge, rather.
40:1 Ibid., p. 412.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
THOTH THE MASTER OF WISDOM
THOTH (TEḤUTI)
The present chapter will be devoted to a brief consideration of the nature, powers, and attributes of the divine personification Thoth (Teḥuti), the Master of Wisdom and Truth, on the ground of pure Egyptian tradition. As I have unfortunately no sufficient knowledge of Egyptian, I am not in a position to control by the texts the information which will be set before the reader; it will, however, be derived from the works of specialists, and mainly from the most recent study on the subject, the two sumptuous volumes of Dr E. A. Wallis Budge, the keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities in the British Museum.
First of all, however, let us see what the German scholar Pietschmann has had to say on Thoth in his monograph specially devoted to Thrice-greatest Hermes according to Egyptian, Greek, and Oriental traditions. 1
The first part of Pietschmann’s treatise, in which he seems to be content, as far as his own taste and feeling are concerned, to trace the original of the grandiose concept of the Thrice-greatest to the naïve conception of an “ibis-headed moon-god,” is devoted to the consideration of what he calls the god Teχ-Ṭeḥuti among
the Egyptians. Why Pietschmann should have chosen this double form of the name for his sub-title is not very clear. The variants appear to be Teḥ, Teḥu, Teḥut, and Teḥuti—of which it would seem that the Greek form Thoth is an attempt to transliterate Teḥut. There are, however, it may be remarked, no less than eighteen variants of the name found in Greek and Latin. I should thus myself be inclined to use the form Teḥut if it were permissible; but of this I am not quite sure, as the weak-sounding though undoubtedly more common form Teḥuti, is usually employed by scholars. As, however, Teḥuti, to my ears at any rate, is not a very dignified sounding cognomen, I shall use the Greek form Thoth as being the more familiar to English readers.
THOTH ACCORDING TO PIETSCHMANN
Horapollo tells us that the ibis was the symbol of Thoth as the “master of the heart and reason in all men,” 1 though why this was so must remain hidden in the mystery of the “sacred animals,” which has not yet to my knowledge been in any way explained.
And as Thoth, the Logos, was in the hearts of all, so was he the heart of the world whose life directed and permeated all things. 2
Thus the temple, as the dwelling of the God, was regarded as a model of the world, and its building as a copy of the world-building. And just as Thoth had ordained measure, number, and order in the universe, so was he the master-architect of temple-building and of all the mystic monuments. Thus, as the ordering world-mind, a text addresses Thoth as follows:
“Thou art the great, the only God, the Soul of the Becoming.” 1
To aid him in the world Thoth has a spouse, or syzygy, Nehe-māut. She is, among the Gnostics, the Sophia-aspect of the Logos. She is presumably the Nature of our Trismegistic treatises. Together Thoth and Nehe-māut are the initiators of all order, rule, and law in the universe.
Thus Thoth is especially the representative of the Spirit, the Inner Reason of all things; he is the Protector of all earthly laws, and every regulation of human society. 2 Says a text:
“His law is firmly established, like that of Thoth.” 3
As representative of the Reason immanent in the world, Thoth is the mediator through whom the world is brought into manifestation. He is the Tongue of Rā, the Herald of the Will of Rā, 4 and the Lord of Sacred Speech. 5
“What emanates from the opening of his mouth, that cometh to pass; he speaks, and it is his command; he is the Source of Speech, the Vehicle of Knowledge, the Revealer of the Hidden.” 6
Thoth is thus the God of writing and all the arts and sciences. On a monument of Seti I. he is called “Scribe of the nine Gods.” He writes “the truth of the nine Gods,” and is called “Scribe of the King of Gods and men.”
Hence he is naturally inventor of the hieroglyphics, and patron and protector of all temple-archives and libraries, and of all scribes. At the entrance of one of the halls of the Memnonium at Thebes, the famous “Library of Osymandias,” called “The great House of Life,” we find Thoth as “Lord in the Hall of Books.” 1
In the Ebers papyrus we read: “His guide is Thoth, who bestows on him the gifts of his speech, who makes the books, and illumines those who are learned therein, and the physicians who follow him, that they may work cures.”
We shall see that one of the classes of priests was devoted to the healing of the body, just as another was devoted to the healing of the soul.
These books are also called “The Great Gnoses of Thoth.” 2 Thoth was thus God of medicine, but not so much by drugs as by means of mesmeric methods and certain “magic formulæ.” Thus he is addressed as “Thoth, Lord of Heaven, who givest all life, all health.” 3
THE THREE GRADES OF THE EGYPTIAN MYSTERIES
Moreover, Thoth was also Lord of Rebirth: 4 “Thou hast given life in the Land of the Living; Thou hast
made them live in the Region of Flames; Thou hast given respect of thy counsels in the breasts and in the hearts of men—mortals, intelligences, creatures of light.”
The Land of the Living was the Invisible World, a glorious Land of Light and Life for the seers of ancient Egypt. Mortals, Intelligences, Creatures of Light, were, says Pietschmann, the “three grades of the Egyptian mysteries.” 1 These grades were, one may assume from our treatises: (1) Mortals—probationary pupils who were instructed in the doctrine, but who had not yet realised the inner vision; (2) Intelligences—those who had done so and had become “men,” that is to say who had received the “Mind”; (3) Beings (or Sons) of Light—those who had become one with the Light, that is to say those who had reached the nirvāṇic consciousness.
So much for what Pietschmann can be made to tell us of Thoth as Wisdom-God among the Egyptians.
THOTH ACCORDING TO REITZENSTEIN
To the information in Pietschmann may be added that which is given by Reitzenstein in the second of his two important studies, Zwei religionsgeschichtliche Fragen nach ungedruckten Texten der Strassburger Bibliothek (Strassburg, 1901). This second study deals with “Creation-myths and the Logos-doctrine,” the special Creation-myths treated of being found in a hitherto unpublished Greek text, which hands on purely Egyptian ideas in Greek dress and with Greek god-names, and which is of great interest and importance for the general subject of which our present studies form part.
The writer of this cosmogonical fragment was a priest or prophet of Hermes, and Hermes plays the most important part in the creation-story. Reitzenstein then proceeds to show that in the oldest Egyptian cosmogony the cosmos is brought into being through the Divine Word, which Thoth, who seems to have originally been equated with the Sun-god, speaks forth. This gives him the opportunity of setting down the attributes ascribed to Thoth in Egypt in pre-Greek times. 1 As, however, the same ground is covered more fully by Budge, we will now turn to his Gods of the Egyptians, or Studies in Egyptian Mythology (London, 1904), vol. i. pp. 400 ff., and lay under contribution the chapter entitled “Thoth (Teḥuti) and Maāt, and the other Goddesses who were associated with him,” as the most recent work on the subject by a specialist in Egyptological studies, whose opinions, it is true, may doubtless on many points be called into question by other specialists, but whose data must be accepted by the layman as based on prolonged first-hand study of the original texts. In using the material supplied by Dr Budge, however, I shall venture on setting it forth as it appears to me—that is to say, with the ideas awakened in my own mind by the study of his facts.
THOTH ACCORDING TO BUDGE
In the Hymns to Rā in the Ritual or Book of the Dead, and in works of a similar nature, we find that Thoth and Maāt stand one on either side of the Great God in his Boat, and that their existence was believed to be coeval with his own. Maāt is thus seen to be the feminine counterpart, syzygy or shakti, of Thoth, and her name is associated with the idea of Truth and
[paragraph continues] Righteousness—that which is right, true, real, genuine, upright, righteous, just, steadfast, unalterable.
HIS DEIFIC TITLES
From the inscriptions of the later dynastic period, moreover, we learn that Thoth was called “Lord of Khemennu (Hermopolis), Self-created, to whom none hath given birth, God One.” He is the great Measurer, the Logos, “He who reckons in Heaven, the Counter of the Stars, the Enumerator of the Earth and of what is therein, and the Measurer of the Earth.”
He is the “Heart of Rā which cometh forth in the form of the God Thoth.”
As Lord of Hermopolis, where was his chief shrine, and of his temples in other cities, he was called “Lord of Divine Words,” “Lord of Maāt,” “Judge of the two Combatant Gods”—that is, of Horus and Set. Among other titles we find him called “Twice-great,” and “Thrice-great.” “From this last,” says Budge, “were derived the epithets ‘Trismegistus’ and ‘Termaximus’ of the classical writers.” We, however, doubt if this is so, and prefer the explanation of Griffith, as we shall see later on.
In addition to these deific titles, which identify him with the Logos in the highest meaning of the term, he was also regarded as the Inventor and God of all arts and sciences; he was “Lord of Books,” “Scribe of the Gods,” and “Mighty in speech”—that is to say, “his words took effect,” says Budge; his was the power of the “Spoken Word,” the Word whose language is action and realisation. He was said to be the author of many of the so-called “funeral works” by means of which the “deceased” gained everlasting life. These books were, however, rather in their origin sermons of
initiation for living men, setting forth the “death unto sin and the new birth unto righteousness.” Thus in the Book of the Dead he plays a part to which are assigned powers greater than those of Osiris or even of Rā himself.
HIS SYMBOLS AND NAME
He is usually depicted in human form with the head of an ibis, or sometimes as an ibis; but why he is so symbolised remains a mystery even unto this day. It is also of little purpose to set down the emblems he carries, or the various crowns he wears, without some notion of what these hidden symbols of a lost wisdom may purport. The meanings of these sacred signs were clear enough, we may believe, to those who were initiated into the “Language of the Word”; to them they revealed the mystery, while for the profane they veiled and still veil their true significance.
Teḥuti, the Egyptian name of Thoth, it has been suggested, is to be derived from teḥu, the supposed oldest name of the ibis in Egypt; the termination ti thus signifying that he who was thus called possessed the powers and qualities of the ibis.
But if this is the true derivation, seeing that Teḥuti in his highest aspect is a synonym for the Logos of our system at the very least, I would suggest that we should rather exalt the “ibis” to the heavens than drag down the sublime concept of that Logos to considerations connected with a degenerate fowl of earth, and believe that the Egyptians chose it in wisdom rather than folly, as being some far-off reflection of a certain Great Bird of the Cosmic Depths, a member of that circle of Sacred Animals of which the now conventional Signs of the Zodiac are but faint sky-glyphs.
But the derivation of the name Teḥuti which seems
to have been favoured by the Egyptians themselves was from tekh, which usually means a “weight,” but is also found as the name of Thoth himself. Now the determinative for the word tekh is the sign for the “heart”; moreover, Horapollo (i. 36) tells us that when the Egyptians wish to write “heart” they draw an ibis, adding, “for this bird was dedicated to Hermes (Thoth) as Lord of all Knowledge and Understanding.” Is it possible, however, that in this Horapollo was either mistaken or has said less than he knew; and that the Egyptians once wrote simply “heart” for Thoth, who presided over the “weighing of the heart,” but subsequently, in their love of mystery, and owing to the name-play, substituted the bird tekh or teknu, which we know closely resembled the ibis, for the more sacred symbol?
The now commonest name for Thoth, however, is Egy. hab, Copt, hibōi, Gk. ibis; and it is the white ibis (Abû Hannes) which is the Ibis religiosa, so say Liddell and Scott. Another of the commonest symbolic forms of Thoth is the dog-headed ape. Thus among birds he is glyphed as the ibis, among animals as the cynocephalus. The main apparent reason for this, as we shall see later on, is because the ibis was regarded as the wisest of birds, and the ape of animals. 1
In the Judgment Scene of the Book of the Dead the dog-headed ape (Āān) is seated on the top of the beam of the Balance in which the heart of the deceased is weighed; his duty apparently is to watch the pointer and tell his master Thoth when the beam is level. Brugsch has suggested that this ape is a form of Thoth
as God of “equilibrium,” and that it elsewhere symbolises the equinoxes; but this does not explain the ape. Thoth is indeed, as we have seen, the Balancer—“Judge of the two Combatant Gods,” 1 Horus and Set; he it is who stands at the meeting of the Two Ways, at the junction of Order and Chaos; but this by no means explains the puzzling cynocephalus. It was in one sense presumably connected with a certain state of consciousness, a reflection of the true Mind, just as were the lion and the eagle (or hawk); it “mimicked” that Mind better than the rest of the “animals.”
Horapollo (i. 16), basing himself on some Hellenistic sources, tells us that the Egyptians symbolised the equinoxes by a sitting cynocephalus. One of the reasons which he gives for this is delightfully “Physiologic”; he tells us that at the equinoxes once every two hours, or twelve times a day, the cynocephalus micturates. 2 From this as from so many of such tales we learn what the “sacred animal” did in heaven, rather than what the physical ape performed on earth. (Cf. R. 265, n. 3.)
THE SHRINE OF THOTH
“The principal seat of the Thoth-cult was Khemennu, or Hermopolis, a city famous in Egyptian mythology as the place containing the “high ground on which Rā rested when he rose for the first time.”
Dare I here speculate that in this we have the mountain of our “Secret Sermon on the Mountain,”
and that it was in the Thoth mystery-tradition of Hermopolis that the candidates for initiation were taught to ascend the mountain of their own inner natures, on the top of which the Spiritual Sun would rise and rest upon their heads “for the first time,” as Isis says in our “Virgin of the World” treatise?
THOTH AND HIS COMPANY OF EIGHT
At Khemennu 1 Thoth was regarded as the head of a Company of Eight—four pairs of divinities or divine powers, each a syzygy of male and female powers, positive and negative, active and passive, the oldest example of the Gnostic Ogdoad.
This was long ago the view of Brugsch, and it is now strongly supported by Budge, on the evidence of the texts, as against the opinion of Maspero, who would make the Hermopolitan a copy of the Heliopolitan Paut, or Company, which included Osiris and Isis. Budge, however, squarely declares that “the four pairs of gods of Hermopolis belong to a far older conception of the theogony than that of the company of gods of Heliopolis.”
If this judgment is well founded, we have here a most interesting parallel in the Osirian type of our Trismegistic literature, in which Osiris and Isis look to Hermes (Thoth) as their teacher, as being far older and wiser than themselves.
The great struggle between Light and Darkness, of the God of Light and the God of Darkness, goes back to the earliest Egyptian tradition, and the fights of Rā and Āpep, Ḥeru-Behuṭet and Set, and Horus, son of Isis, and Set, are “in reality only different versions of one and the same story, though belonging
to different periods.” The Horus and Set version is apparently the most recent. The names of the Light God and Dark God thus change, but what does not change is the name of the Arbiter, the Mediator, “whose duty it was to prevent either God from gaining a decisive victory, and from destroying one another.” This Balancer was Thoth, who had to keep the opposites in equilibrium.
THE HOUSE OF THE NET
The name of the Temple of Thoth at Khemennu, or the City of Eight, was Ḥet Ȧbtit, or “House of the Net”—a very curious expression. From Ch. cliii. of the Ritual, however, we learn that there was a mysterious Net which, as Budge says, “was supposed to exist in the Under World and that the deceased regarded it with horror and detestation. Every part of it—its poles, and ropes, and weights, and small cords, and hooks—had names which he was obliged to learn if he wished to escape from it, and make use of it to catch food for himself, instead of being caught by ‘those who laid snares.’”
Interpreting this from the mystical standpoint of the doctrine of Rebirth, or the rising from the dead—that is to say, of the spiritual resurrection of those who had died to the darkness of their lower natures and had become alive to the light of the spiritual life, and this too while alive in the body and not after the death of this physical frame—I would venture to suggest that this Net was the symbol of a certain condition of the inner nature which shut in the man into the limitations of the conventional life of the world, and shut him off from the memory of his true self. The poles, ropes, weights, small cords, and hooks
were symbols of the anatomy and physiology, so to say, of the invisible “body” or “carapace” or “egg” or “envelope” of the soul. The normal man was emeshed in this engine of Fate; the man who received the Mind inverted this Net, so to speak, transmuted and transformed it, so that he could catch food for himself. “Come ye after me and I will make you fishers of men.” The food with which the “Christ” nourishes his “body” is supplied by men.
Thus in a prayer in this chapter of the Ritual we read: “Hail, thou ‘God who lookest behind thee,’ 1 thou ‘God who hast gained the mastery over thine heart,’ 2 I go a-fishing with the cordage [? net] of the ‘Uniter of the earth,’ and of him that maketh a way through the earth. 3 Hail ye Fishers who have given birth to your own fathers, 4 who lay snares with your nets, and who go round about in the chambers of the waters, take ye not me in the net wherewith ye ensnare the helpless fiends, and rope me not in with the rope wherewith ye roped in the abominable fiends of earth, which had a frame which reached unto heaven, and weighted parts that rested upon earth.” 5
And in another chapter (cxxxiii.) the little man says to the Great Man within him: “Lift thyself up, O thou Rā, who dwellest in this divine shrine; draw thou unto thyself the winds, inhale the North wind, and swallow thou the beqesu of thy net on the day wherein thou breathest Maāt.”
“On the day wherein thou breathest Maāt” suggests the inbreathing or inspiration of Truth and Righteousness, the Holy Ghost, or Holy Breath or Life, the Spouse of the Ordering Mind or Logos. The winds are presumably the four great cosmic currents of the Divine Breath, the North wind being the “down-breath” of the Great Sphere.
The term beqesu has not yet been deciphered (can it mean knots?); but the swallowing of the Net seems to suggest the transformation of it, inwardly digesting of it, in such a fashion that the lower is set free and becomes one with the higher.
And that this idea of a net is very ancient, especially in its macrocosmic significance, is evidenced by the parallel of the Assyrian and Babylonian versions of the great fight between the Sun-god Marduk and the Chaotic Mother Tiamat and her titanic and daimonic powers of disordered motion and instability—both Egyptian and Babylonian traditions probably being derived from some primitive common source.
“He (Marduk) set lightning in front of him, with burning fire he filled his body. He made a net to enclose the inward parts of Tiamat, the Four Winds he set so that nothing of her might escape; the South wind and the North wind, and the East wind and the West
wind, he brought near to the net which his father Anu had given him.” 1
Now in the Hymns of the popular Hermes-cult found in the Greek Magic Papyri, one of the most favourite forms of address to Hermes is “O thou of the four winds.” Moreover, we may compare with the rope with which the Fishers “rope the abominable fiends of earth,” the passage of Athenagoras to which we have already referred, and in which he tells us concerning the Mysteries that the mythos ran that Zeus, after dismembering his father, and taking the kingdom, pursued his mother Rhea who refused his nuptials. “But she having assumed a serpent form, he also assumed the same form, and having bound her with what is called the ‘Noose of Hercules’ (τῷ καλουμένῳ Ἡρακλειωτικῷ ἄμματι), was joined with her. And the symbol of this transformation is the Rod of Hermes.”
Here again it is the symbolic Caduceus that represents the equilibrium between the opposed forces; it is the power of Thoth that binds and loosens; he holds the keys of heaven and hell, of life and death. It is further quite evident that Athenagoras is referring to a Hellenistic form of the Mysteries, in which the influence of Egypt is dominant. The “Noose of Hercules” is thus presumably the “Noose of Ptah.” Now Ptah is the creator and generator, and his “Noose” or “Tie” is probably the Ankh-tie or symbol of life, the familiar crux ansata, of which the older form is a twisted rope, probably representing the binding together of male and female life in generation. Ptah is also the God of Fire, and we should not forget that it is Hephaistos in Greek myth who catches Aphrodite and Ares in a Net which he has cunningly contrived—at which the gods laughed in High Olympus.
In the list of titles of the numerous works belonging to the cycle of Orphic literature, one is called The Veil (Πέπλος) and another The Net (Δίκτυον). 1
In the Panathenæa the famous Peplum, Veil, Web, or Robe of Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom, was borne aloft like the sail of a galley; but this was the symbol only of the Mysteries. Mystically it signified the Veil of the Universe, studded with stars, the many-coloured Veil of Nature, 2 the famous Veil or Robe of Isis, that no “mortal” or “dead man” has raised, for that Veil was the spiritual nature of the man himself, and to raise it he had to transcend the limits of individuality, break the bonds of death, and so become consciously immortal.
Eschenbach 3 is thus quite correct when, in another of its aspects, he refers this Veil to the famous Net of Vulcan. Moreover Aristotle, quoting the Orphic writings, speaks of the “living creature born in the webs of the Net”; 4 while Photius tells us that the book of Dionysius Ægeensis, entitled Netting, or Concerning Nets (Δικτυακά), treated of the generation of mortals. 5 And Plato himself likens the intertwining of the nerves, veins, and arteries to the “network of a basket” or a bird-cage. 6
All of which, I think, shows that Thoth’s Temple of the Net must have had some more profound significance in its name than that it was a building in which “the emblem of a net, or perhaps a net itself, was venerated,” as Budge lamely surmises.
THOTH THE LOGOS
But to resume. We have seen that Thoth was considered to be the “heart” and “tongue” of Rā the Supreme—that is, not only the reason and mental powers of the god Rā, and the means whereby they were translated into speech, but rather the Controller of the life and Instrument of the utterance of the Supreme Will; He was the Logos in the fullest sense of that mysterious name, the Creative Word. He it is who utters the “words” whereby the Will of the Supreme is carried into effect, and his utterance is that of Necessity and Law; his “words” are not the words of feeble human speech, but the compelling orders of the Creative Will.
“He spoke the words which resulted in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and he taught Isis the words which enabled her to revivify the dead body of Osiris, in suchwise that Osiris could beget a child by her; and he gave her the formulæ which brought back her son Horus to life after he had been stung to death by a scorpion.”
All of which, I believe, refers microcosmically to the mystery of the resurrection from the dead, by the power of the Logos. “Osiris” must die before he can be raised, and beget a son, who is himself, by immaculate conception within his own spiritual nature. “Horus” must be poisoned to death by the scorpion of “Typhon” before he can be raised by the baptism of the pure waters of Life.
THE WORDS OF THOTH
Thoth’s “knowledge and powers of calculation measured out the heavens and planned the earth, and
everything which is in them; his will and power kept the forces in heaven and earth in equilibrium; it was his skill in celestial mathematics which made proper use of the laws (maāt) upon which the foundation and maintenance of the universe rested; it was he who directed the motions of the heavenly bodies and their times and seasons; and without his words the gods, whose existence depended upon them, could not have kept their place among the followers of Rā”—but would presumably have disappeared into another universe.
Thoth is the Judge of the dead, the Recorder and Balancer of all “words,” the Recording Angel; for the testing of the soul in the Balance of the Hall of Osiris is called the “weighing of words” and not of “actions.” But these “words” were not the words a man uttered, nor even the “reasons” he thought he had for his deeds, but the innermost intentions of his soul, the ways of the will of his being.
This doctrine of “words” as expressions of will, however, had, in addition to its moral significance, a magical application. “The whole efficacy of prayer appears to have depended upon the manner and tone of voice in which the words were spoken.”
It was Thoth who taught these words-of-power and how to utter them; he was the Master of what the Hindus would call mantra-vidyā, or the science of invocation or sacred chanting. These mantrāḥ were held in ancient Egypt, as they were and are to-day in India, and elsewhere among knowers of such matters, of special efficacy in affecting the “bodies” and conditions of that fluid nature which exists midway between the comparative solidity of normal physical nature and the fixed nature of the mind.
These “words” were connected with vital “breath” and the knowing use of it; that is to say, they were
only really efficacious when the spoken words of physical sound corresponded naturally in their vowels and consonants, or their fluid and fixed elements, with the permutations and combinations of the inner elements of Nature; they then and only then were maā or true or authentic or real—that is to say, they were “words-of -power” in that they compelled matter to shape itself according to true cosmic notions.
Thus in a book called The Book of Breathings, it is said: “Thoth, the most mighty God, the Lord of Khemennu, cometh to thee, and he writeth for thee The Book of Breathings with his own fingers. 1 Thus thy soul shall breathe for ever and ever, and thy form shall be endowed with life upon earth, and thou shalt be made a God, along with the souls of the Gods, and they shall be the heart of Rā [for thee], and thy members shall be the members of the Great God.”
THOTH AND THE OSIRIFIED
In the Ritual we learn of the services which Thoth performs for “Osiris,” that is for the Osirified, for he repeats them for every man who has been acquitted in the Judgment. Of three striking passages quoted by Budge, we will give the following as the most comprehensible, and therefore the seemingly most important for us. It is to be found in Ch. clxxxiii. and runs as follows, in the words placed in the mouth of the one who is being resurrected into an Osiris.
“I have come unto thee, O son of Nut, Osiris, Prince of everlastingness; I am in the following of God Thoth, and I have rejoiced at everything which he hath done for thee. He hath brought unto thee sweet air for thy nose, and life and strength for thy beautiful face, and
the North wind which cometh forth from Tem for thy nostrils. . . . He hath made God Shu to shine upon thy body; he hath illumined thy path with rays of splendour; he hath destroyed for thee [all] the evil defects which belong to thy members by the magical power of the words of his utterance. He hath made the two Horus brethren to be at peace for thee; 1 he hath destroyed the storm wind and the hurricane; he hath made the Two Combatants to be gracious unto thee, and the two lands 2 to be at peace before thee; he hath put away the wrath which was in their hearts, and each hath become reconciled unto his brother.”
THOTH THE MEASURER
Budge then proceeds to give the attributes of Thoth as connected with time-periods and the instruments of time, the sun and moon. As Ȧāh-Teḥuti, he is the Measurer and Regulator of times and seasons, and is clearly not the Moon-god simply—though Budge says that he clearly is—for Thoth as Ȧāh is the “Great Lord, the Lord of Heaven, the King of the Gods”; he is the “Maker of Eternity and Creator of Everlastingness.” He is, therefore, not only the Æon, but its creator; and that is something vastly different from the Moon-god.
THE TITLE “THRICE-GREATEST”
On p. 401 our authority has already told us that one of the titles of Thoth is “Thrice-great,” and that the Greeks derived the honorific title Trismegistus from this; but on p. 415 he adds: “The title given to him in some inscriptions, ‘three times great, great’
[paragraph continues] [that is, greatest], from which the Greeks derived their appellation of the god ὁ τρισμέγιστος, or ‘ter maximus,’ has not yet been satisfactorily explained, and at present the exact meaning which the Egyptians assigned to it is unknown.”
If this title is found in the texts, it will settle a point of long controversy, for it has been strenuously denied that it ever occurs in the hieroglyphics; unfortunately, however, Dr Budge gives us no references. To the above sentence our distinguished Egyptologist appends a note to the effect that a number of valuable facts on the subject have been collected by Pietschmann in the book we have already made known to our readers. We have, however, not been able to find any valuable facts in Pietschmann which are in any way an elucidation of the term Thrice-greatest; but to this point we will return in another chapter.
THE SUPREMACY OF THOTH
The peculiar supremacy ascribed to Thoth by the Egyptians, however, has been amply demonstrated, and, as the great authority to whom we are so deeply indebted, says in his concluding words: “It is quite clear that Thoth held in their minds a position which was quite different from that of any other god, and that the attributes which they ascribed to him were unlike the greater number of those of any member of their companies of gods. The character of Thoth is a lofty and a beautiful conception, and is, perhaps, the highest idea of deity ever fashioned in the Egyptian mind, which, as we have already seen, was somewhat prone to dwell on the material side of divine matters. Thoth, however, as the personification of the Mind of God, and as the all-pervading, and governing, and directing power
of heaven and earth, forms a feature of the Egyptian religion which is as sublime as the belief in the resurrection of the dead in a spiritual body, and as the doctrine of everlasting life.”
Thoth is then the Logos of God, who in his relation to mankind becomes the Supreme Master of Wisdom, 1 the Mind of all masterhood.
We will now turn to one whose views are considered heterodox by conservative and unimaginative critics, 2 who confine themselves solely to externals, and to the lowest and most physical meanings of the hieroglyphics—to one who has, I believe, come nearer to the truth than any of his critics, and whose labours are most highly appreciated by all lovers of Egyptian mystic lore.
THE VIEWS OF A SCHOLAR-MYSTIC
The last work of W. Marsham Adams 3 deserves the closest attention of every theosophical student. Not, however, that we think the author’s views with regard to a number of points of detail, and especially with regard to the make-up of the Great Pyramid, are to be accepted in any but the most provisional manner, for as yet we in all probability do not know what the full contents of that pyramid are, only a portion of them being known to us according to some seers. The chief merit of the book before us is the intuitional grasp of
its author on the general nature of the mystery-cultus, as derived from the texts, and especially those of the Ritual or the so-called Book of the Dead, as Lepsius named it, setting a bad fashion which is not yet out of fashion. The Egyptian priests themselves, according to our author, called it The Book of the Master of the Secret House, the Secret House being, according to Adams, the Great Pyramid, otherwise called the “Light.”
THE SPIRITUAL NATURE OF THE INNER TRADITION OF EGYPTIAN WISDOM
In his Preface the author gives us clearly to understand that he regards the Wisdom of Egypt as forming the main background of some of the principal teachings of Early Christianity; and that this view is strongly confirmed by a careful study of the Trismegistic literature and its sources, will be made apparent in the course of our own labours. But before we proceed to quote from the former Fellow of New College, Oxford, whose recent death is regretted by all lovers of Egypt’s Wisdom, we must enter a protest.
Mr Adams has severely handicapped his work; indeed, he has destroyed nine-tenths of its value for scholars, by neglecting to append the necessary references to the texts which he cites. Such an omission is suicidal, and, indeed, it would be impossible for us to quote Mr Adams were it not that our Trismegistic literature permits us—we might almost say compels us—to take his view of the spiritual nature of the inner tradition of Egyptian Wisdom. Not, however, by any means that our author has traversed the same ground; he has not even mentioned the name of the Thrice-greatest one, and seems to have been ignorant of our treatises. Mr Adams claims to have arrived at his
conclusions solely from the Egyptian texts themselves, and to have been confirmed in his ideas by personal inspection of the monuments. In fact, he considers it a waste of time to pay attention to anything written in Greek about Egyptian ideas, and speaks of “the distortion and misrepresentation wherein those ideas were involved, when filtered through the highly imaginative but singularly unobservant intellect of Greece.” 1 Thus we have a writer attacking the same problem from a totally different standpoint—for we ourselves regard the Greek tradition of the Egyptian Gnosis as a most valuable adjunct to our means of knowledge of the Mind of Egypt—and yet reaching very similar conclusions.
THE HOLY LAND OF EGYPT AND ITS INITIATES
The Holy Land of those who had gone out from the body, watered by the Celestial Nile, the River of Heaven, of which the earthly river was a symbol and parallel, was divided into three regions, or states: (1) Rusta, the Territory of Initiation; (2) Aahlu, the Territory of Illumination; and (3) Amenti, the Place of Union with the Unseen Father. 2
“In the religion of Egypt, the deepest and most fascinating mystery of antiquity, the visible creation, was conceived as the counterpart of the unseen world. 3 And the substance consisted not of a mere vague belief in the life beyond the grave, but in tracing out the Path whereby the Just, when the portal of the tomb is lifted up, 4 passes through the successive stages of
[paragraph continues] Initiation, of Illumination, and of Perfection, necessary to fit him for an endless union with Light, the Great Creator.” 1
Thus we are told that at a certain point in Aahlu, the Territory of Illumination, the Osirified, the purified soul, has achieved the “Passage of the Sun”—that is to say, has passed beyond the mortal mind-plane; he opens the Gates of the Celestial Nile and receives the Atf-crown of Illumination, “fashioned after the form of the Zodiacal light, the glory of the supreme heaven.” This is presumably the “crown of lives” referred to in our sermons, which he receives in the sphere called “Eight,” and with which he goes to the Father.
The Guide and Conductor through all these grades was Thoth the Eternal Wisdom; 2 and we are told that:
THOTH THE INITIATOR
“Thoth the Divine Wisdom, clothes the spirit of the Justified 3 a million times in a garment of true linen, 4 of
that substance, that is to say, which by its purity and its brilliancy reminds us of the mantles, woven out of rays of light, wherewith the sun enwraps the earth afresh each day as she rotates before him; just as the soul of man is invested with new radiance each time that he turns to the presence of his Creator.” Again, “in the harmonious proportion of the universe,” the Egyptians saw “the Eternal Wisdom, Thoth, ‘the Mind and Will of God.’” 1
We have seen that Pietschmann considers the original of Thoth, the God of Wisdom, to be nothing more than the ibis-headed moon-god, thus intentionally deriving the origin of the Great Initiator from what he considers to be the crude beginnings of primitive ideas. But Thoth was the Great Reckoner, the Recorder of the Balance of Justice, the Teller of the Kārmic Scales. Now the mortal time-recorder for the Egyptians was the moon, “for if we consider the motion of the moon relatively to the sun, we shall find that the time that it takes in covering a space equal to its own disc is just an hour. . . . Now, that measure of the ‘Hour’ was peculiarly sacred in Egypt; each of the twenty-four which elapse during a single rotation of the earth being consecrated to its own particular deity, twelve of light and twelve of darkness. ‘Explain the God in the hour,’ is the demand made of the adept in the Ritual when standing in the Hall of Truth. And that God in the hour, we learn, was Thoth, the ‘Lord of the Moon and the Reckoner of the Universe.’” 2
Again, with regard to the moon-phases, the first day of the lunar month was called “the conception of the moon,” the second its “birth,” and so on step by step till it was full. Now the time of all lower initiations was the full moon. Thus “in the lunar representations
on the walls of the temple of Denderah we have fourteen steps leading up to the fifteenth or highest, whereon was enthroned Thoth, the Lord of the Moon.” 1
For some such reasons was Thoth called Lord of the Moon, not that the moon gave birth to the idea of Thoth. We must not seek for the origin of the Wisdom-tradition in its lower symbols. For in the inscription on the coffin of Ankhnes-Ra-Neferab—that is of her “whose life was the Sacred Heart of Ra”—we read: “Thy name is the Moon, the Heart of Silence, the Lord of the Unseen World” 2—of the space “as far as the moon,” or the “sublunary region,” as the old books say, the first after-death state, where souls are purified from earthly stains.
SOME OF THE DOCTRINES OF INITIATION
The end set before the neophyte was illumination, and the whole cult and discipline and doctrines insisted on this one way to Wisdom. The religion of Egypt was essentially the Religion of the Light.
But “most characteristic of all was the omnipotent and all-dominating sense of the fatherhood of God, producing the familiar and in some respects even joyous aspect which the Egyptians imparted to the idea of death.” And “to the sense which the priests at least possessed, both of the divine personality and of their own ultimate union with the personal deity [the Logos], far more probably than to any artificial pretension to a supposed exclusiveness, may be ascribed the mystery enshrouding their religion.” 3
And as Light was the Father of the Religion of Illumination, so was Life, his consort or syzygy, the Mother of the Religion of Joy. “Life was the centre,
the circumference, the totality of Good. Life was the sceptre in the hand of Amen; life was the richest ‘gift of Osiris.’ ‘Be not ungrateful to thy Creator,’ says the sage Ptah-Hotep, in what is perhaps the oldest document in existence, ‘for he has given thee life.’ ‘I am the Fount of Light,’ says the Creator in the Ritual. ‘I pierce the Darkness. I make clear the Path for all; the Lord of Joy.’” 1 Or again, as the postulant prays to the setting sun: “O height of Love, thou openest the double gate of the Horizon.” 2
Here we have the full doctrine of the Light and Life which is the keynote of our treatises. Again, the doctrine of the endless turning of the spheres, which “end where they begin,” in the words of “The Shepherd,” is shown in the great fourth year festival of Hep-Tep or “Completion-Beginning,” when “the revolution and the rotation of our planet were simultaneously completed and begun afresh.” 3
THE TEMPLES OF INITIATION
That the ancient temples of initiation in Egypt were models of the Sophia Above, or of the “Heavenly Jerusalem,” to use a Jewish Gnostic term, or, in other words, of the Type of the world-building, we may well believe. Thus it is with interest that we read the remarks of Adams on the temple of Denderah (or Annu), rebuilt several times according to the ancient plans, and an important centre of the mystery-cultus. The temple was dedicated to Hat-Hor, whose ancient title was the Virgin-Mother.
“In the centre of the temple is the Hall of the Altar, with entrances opening east and west; and beyond it lies the great hall of the temple entitled the Hall of
the Child in his Cradle, from whence access is obtained to the secret and sealed shrine entered once a year by the high priest, on the night of mid-summer.” 1
There were also various other halls and chambers each having a distinctive name, “bearing reference, for the most part, to the Mysteries of the light and of a divine Birth.” We have such names as: Hall of the Golden Rays, Chamber of Gold, Chamber of Birth, Dwelling of the Golden One, Chamber of Flames.
Now as the famous planisphere of Denderah—a wall-painting transferred bodily from the temple to Paris, early in the last century—“contains the northern and southern points, we are enabled to correlate the parts of that picture with the various parts of the temple, and thereby to discover a striking correspondence between the different parts of the inscription and the titles of the chambers and halls occupying relative positions.” 2
Thus we have in the planisphere corresponding to the halls and chambers such names as: Horus, the Entrance of the Golden Heavens, the Golden Heaven of Isis, Horizon of Light, Palace Chamber of Supreme Light, Heavenly Flame of Burning Gold. “And as the chief hall of the temple was the Hall of the Child in his Cradle, so the chief representation on the planisphere is the holy Mother with the divine Child in her arms.”
THE MYSTERY OF THE BIRTH OF HORUS.
Now the great mystery of Egypt was the second birth, the “Birth of Horus.” In “The Virgin of the World,” a long fragment of the lost Trismegistic treatise, “The Sacred Book,” preserved by Stobæus, Isis says to Horus: I will not tell of this birth; I
must not, mighty Horus, reveal the origin of thy race, lest men should in the future know the generation of the Gods. Of the nature of this rebirth we are familiar from our treatises. But in spite of such clear indications the mystery of the Golden Horus has not yet been revealed.
In another passage from the same book Isis declares that the sovereignty or kingship of philosophy is in the hands of Harnebeschenis. This transliterated Egyptian name is given by Pietschmann 1 as originally either Hor neb en χennu (Horus the Lord of Xennu), or as Hor nub en χennu (the Golden Horus of Xennu). His hieroglyph was the golden hawk, who flies nearest the sun, and gazes upon it with unwinking eyes, a fit symbol for the new-born, the “man” illuminate.
Indeed, says Adams, “throughout the sacred writings of Egypt, there is no doctrine of which more frequent mention is made than that of a divine birth.” 2
In what circle of ideas to place the Birth of Horus the theosophical student may perhaps glean by reversing the stages given in the following interesting passage of our author:
“In the Teaching of Egypt, around the radiant being, which in its regenerate life could assimilate itself to the glory of the Godhead, was formed the ‘khaibit,’ or luminous atmosphere, consisting of a series of ethereal envelopes, at once shading and diffusing its flaming lustre, as the earth’s atmosphere shades and diffuses the solar rays. And at each successive transformation (Ritual, lxxvii-lxxxvii.) it descended nearer to the moral [? normal] conditions of humanity. From the form of the golden hawk, the semblance of the absolute divine substance of the one eternal self-existent being, it passes to the ‘Lord of Time,’ the image of the Creator,
since with the creation time began. Presently it assumes the form of a lily, the vignette in the Ritual representing the head of Osiris enshrined in that flower; the Godhead manifested in the flesh coming forth from immaculate purity. ‘I am the pure lily,’ we read, ‘coming forth from the lily of light. I am the source of illumination and the channel of the breath of immortal beauty. I bring the messages; Horus accomplishes them.’ Later the soul passes into the form of the uræus, ‘the soul of the earth.’ . . . And finally it assumes the semblance of a crocodile; becoming subject, that is, to the passions of humanity. For the human passions, being part of the nature wherein man was originally created, are not intrinsically evil but only become evil when insubordinate to the soul.” 1
“THE BOOK OF THE MASTER”
And not only was the Deity worshipped as the Source of Light and Life, but also as the Fount of Love. “I am the Fount of Joy,” says the Creator in the Ritual, and when the Atf-crown of illumination is set upon the head of the triumphant candidate after accomplishing the “Passage of the Sun,” as referred to above, the hymn proclaims that “north and south of that crown is Love.” 2 Into this Love the catechumen was initiated from the Secret Scroll, whose name is thus given in one of the copies: “This Book is the Greatest of Mysteries. Do not let the eye of anyone look upon it—that were an abomination. ‘The Book of the Master of the Secret House’ is its name.” 3
The whole conception of the doctrine exposed in its chapters is instruction in Light and Life.
But are we to suppose that the majority were really instructed in this wisdom?—for we find it customary to wrap up some chapters of this Secret Scroll with almost every mummy. By no means. It seems to me that there are at least three phases in the use of this scripture, and in the process of degeneration from knowledge to superstition which can be so clearly traced in the history of Egypt. First there was the real instruction, followed by initiation while living; secondly, there was the recitation of the instruction over the uninitiated dead to aid the soul of the departed in the middle passage; and thirdly, there was the burying a chapter or series of chapters of the Book of the Master as a talisman to protect the defunct, when in far later times the true meaning of the words written in the sacred characters had been lost, though they were still “superstitiously” regarded as magical “words of power.”
The recitation of some of the chapters over the dead body of the uninitiated, however, is not to be set down as a useless “superstition,” but was a very efficacious form of “prayers for the dead.” After a man’s decease he was in conscious contact with the unseen world, even though he may have been sceptical of its existence, or at any rate unfit to be taught its real nature, prior to his decease. But after the soul was freed from the prison of the body, even the uninitiated was in a condition to be instructed on the nature of the path he then perforce must travel. But as he could not even then properly pronounce the “words” of the sacred tongue, the initiated priest recited or chanted the passages.
THE STEPS OF THE PATH
“For the doctrine contained in those mystic writings was nothing else than an account of the Path pursued by the Just when, the bonds of the flesh being loosed, he passed through stage after stage of spiritual growth—the Entrance on Light, the Instruction in Wisdom, the Second Birth of the Soul, the Instruction in the Well of Life, the Ordeal of Fire, and the Justification in Judgment; until, illumined in the secret Truth and adorned with the jewels of Immortality, he became indissolubly united with Him whose name, says the Egyptian Ritual, is Light, Great Creator.” 1
It should, however, be remembered that this must not be taken in its absolute sense even for the initiate, much less for the uninitiated. For even in the mystic schools themselves, as we may see from our treatises, there were three modes in which knowledge could be communicated—“By simple instruction, by distant vision, or by personal participation.” 2 For indeed there were many phases of being, many steps of the great ladder, each in ever greater fullness embracing the stages mentioned, each a reflection or copy of a higher phase.
Thus, for example, “the solemn address, described in the Sai-an-Sinsin, of the ‘Gods in the House of Osiris,’ followed by the response of the ‘Gods in the House of Glory’—the joyous song of the holy departed who stand victorious before the judgment-seat, echoed triumphantly by the inner chorus of their beloved who have gone before them into the fullness of life” 3—must be taken as indicative of several stages. Such, for instance, as the normal union of the man’s consciousness with that
of his higher ego, after exhausting his spiritual aspirations in the intermediate heaven-world—this is the joining the “those-that-are” of “The Shepherd” treatise, in other words, the harvest of those past lives of his that are worthy of immortality; or again the still higher union of the initiated with the “pure mind”; or again the still sublimer union of the Master with the nirvāṇic consciousness; and so on perchance to still greater Glories.
Thus we are told that the new twice-born, on his initiation, “clothed in power and crowned with light, traverses the abodes or scenes of his former weakness, there to discern, by his own enlightened perception, how it is ‘Osiris who satisfies the balance of Him who rules the heavens’; to exert in its supernal freedom his creative will, now the lord, not the slave of the senses; and to rejoice in the just suffering which wrought his Illumination and Mastery.” 1
But higher and still higher he has yet to soar beyond earth and planets and even beyond the sun, “across the awful chasms of the unfathomable depths to far-off Sothis, the Land of Eternal Dawn, to the Ante-chamber of the Infinite Morning.” 2
AN ILLUMINATIVE STUDY
Many other passages of great beauty and deep interest could we quote from the pages of Marsham Adams’ illuminative study, but enough has been said for our purpose. The Wisdom of Egypt was the main source of our treatises without a doubt. Even if only one-hundredth part of what our author writes were the truth, our case would be established; and if Egypt did not teach this Wisdom, then we must perforce bow
down before Mr Adams as the inventor of one of the most grandiose religions of the universe. But the student of inner nature knows that it is not an invention, and though, if he be a scholar at the same time, he cannot but regret that Mr Adams has omitted his references, he must leave the critics to one or other of the horns of the dilemma; they must either declare that our author has invented it all and pay homage to what in that case would be his sublime genius, or admit that the ancient texts themselves have inspired Mr Adams with these ideas. And if this be a foretaste of what Egypt has preserved for us, what may not the future reveal to continued study and sympathetic interpretation!
Footnotes
47:1 Hermes Trismegistos, nach ägyptischen, griechischen und orientalischen Überlieferungen (Leipzig, 1875).
48:1 πάσης καρδίας καί λογισμοῦ δεσπότης, p. 40, ed. Leemans.
48:2 Der Gott, “der in pantheistischer Anschauungsweise die ganze Welt belehrend durchdrang,” writes Pietschmann, p. 14.
49:1 Pleyte, Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde, 1867, 10. The text is taken from a papyrus in the Leyden Museum.
49:2 See Pietschmann, p. 15.
49:3 From an ostrakon in the Louvre, De Horrack, Zeitschrift für ä S. u. A., 1868, 2. And again at Denderah, the King is said to “establish the laws like Thoth the twice-great one.” See Dümichen, ibid., 1867, 74.
49:4 Lepsius, Erster Götterkreis, Taf. 1, 2. Text S. 181.
49:5 Brugsch, Wörterbuch, 803, and many other references.
49:6 For a long list of references, see Pietschmann in loco. I have so far cited some of these references to show that the statements of Pietschmann are based upon very ample authority. In what follows, however, these references may be omitted as they are not owing to my own industry, and the scholar can obtain them from Pietschmann’s book for himself.
50:1 Op. cit., p. 16.
50:2 Compare this title, die grossen Erkentnisse des Teḥuti, with the Coptic Codex Brucianus—Voici le livre des gnoses de l’Invisible divin.” Amélineau, Notice sur le Papyrus gnostique Bruce, p. 83 (Paris, 1891). See also Carl Schmidt, Gnostische Schriften in koptischer Sprache aus dem Codex Brucianus (Leipzig, 1892).
50:3 Op. cit., p. 20.
50:4 Herr der Metempsychose (Lord of Palingenesis), says Pietschmann, p. 23.
51:1 Op. cit., p. 24 n.
52:1 Op. cit., pp. 71 ff.
55:1 And this is the case with the latter even to-day, where in the Sudan the natives “believe that its intelligence is of the highest order, and that its cunning is far superior to that of man.” (Op. cit., i. 21.)
56:1 This is one of the most interesting of his titles: “Judge of the Reḥeḥui, the Pacifier of the Gods, who dwelleth in Unnu” (Hermopolis). (Op. cit., i. 405.)
56:2 This must have been the mystery folk-tale circulated by the priests, for Marius Victorinus repeats it (Halm, Rhet. Lat. Min., p. 223), and it is preserved in the Physiologos (xlv. p. 275—Lauchert).
57:1 Which means “City of the Eight [Gods].” (Op. cit., i. 113.)
59:1 Perhaps suggesting two-faced or Janus-like—before and behind, without and within. With this, however, may be compared the symbolic headdress or mask worn by the virgin Korē (Proserpina) in the Eleusinian Mysteries; she had, Athenagoras (xx. 292) tells us, “two ordinary eyes, and two in her forehead, with her face at the back of her neck.”
59:2 Suggesting Thoth.
59:3 Suggesting the power of him who can either wrap the Net round the man or open it in a new direction, so that the man can “pass right through his body,” as Hermes says to Tat in one of our Sermons.
59:4 Suggesting “Christs” who have given birth to their Father, the Mind, in their hearts.
59:5 The fiends of a once mighty frame suggest beings of a daimonic nature. Perhaps there is a formal distinction intended by the epithet “helpless” and “abominable,” corresponding with the rational and irrational aspects of the soul as set forth in our sermons.
61:1 King (L. W.), Babylonian Religion, p. 71.
62:1 See my Orpheus (London, 1896), pp. 39 and 44 ff.
62:2 Cf. Philo, De Som., i. (v. 92—Pfeiff)—τὸ παμποίκιλον ὔφασμα τουτονὶ τὸν κόσμον.
62:3 Eschenbach (A. C.), Epigenes de Poesi Orphica (Nürnberg, 1702), p. 51.
62:4 De Gen. Anim., II. i. 613C.
62:5 Bibl, clxxxv.
62:6 Tim., 1079F.
65:1 The symbol of his actualising power.
66:1 Showing that Set is Horus in his form of darkness.
66:2 Mystically, the upper and lower kingdoms in man.
68:1 “Thoth the Wise” of the “Inscription of London” § 4 (R. 64), to which we shall refer later on.
68:2 See the reviews on the below-mentioned work in The Athenæum of 31st December 1898, and The Academy of 31st December 1898 and 7th January 1899.
68:3 The Book of the Master, or The Egyptian Doctrine of the Light born of the Virgin Mother (London, 1898)—a sequel to his study entitled The House of the Hidden Places, a Clue to the Creed of Early Egypt from Egyptian Sources (London, 1895).
70:1 Op. cit., pref. v.
70:2 Op. cit., 13. Compare with this the three grades of Initiation given by Pietschmann (p. 24 n.), as cited above, p. 51.
70:3 The image-doctrine of our treatises.
70:4 This is an error; true initiation consisted in the fact that cosmic consciousness was realised in the body, while a man still lived. This consciousness naturally included the after-death consciousness as part of its content.
71:1 Op. cit., p. 24.
71:2 Op. cit., pp. 14, 15.
71:3 That is, he who has the “balanced” nature.
71:4 In my Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.?—in treating of the Elxai tradition and the wild statements of the puzzled and puzzling Epiphanius, I asked: “May there not have been a mystery-teaching behind the beautiful historicised story of the sisters Mary and Martha, and of Lazarus, their brother, who was ‘raised from the dead’ after being ‘three days’ in the grave? Was not Lazarus raised as a ‘mummy’ swathed in grave-clothes?” In this connection it is interesting to find Tertullian (De Corona, viii.; Oehler, i. 436) referring to the “linen cloth” with which Jesus girt himself in John xiii. 4, 5, as the “proper garment of Osiris.” The proper garment of Osiris at one stage consisted most probably of the symbolic linen wrappings of the “mummy.”
72:1 Op. cit., p. 23.
72:2 Op. cit., p. 30.
73:1 Op. cit., p. 194.
73:2 Op. cit., p. 161.
73:3 Op. cit., pp. 18, 20.
74:1 Op. cit., p. 36.
74:2 Op. cit., p. 153.
74:3 Op. cit., p. 37.
75:1 Op. cit., p. 71.
75:2 Op. cit., p. 75.
76:1 Op. cit., p. 44.
76:2 Op. cit., p. 89.
77:1 Op. cit., pp. 163, 164.
77:2 Op. cit., p. 95.
77:3 Op. cit., p. 96. The title seems to be found only in the latest recension of the twenty-sixth Saite dynasty—the time of our King Ammon—but certainly no better one can be suggested.
79:1 Op. cit., pp. 103, 104.
79:2 Op. cit., p. 148.
79:3 Op. cit., p. 120.
80:1 Op. cit., p. 185.
80:2 Op. cit., p. 186.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
THE POPULAR THEURGIC HERMES-CULT IN THE GREEK MAGIC PAPYRI
THE “RELIGION OF HERMES”
That at one period the “Religion of Hermes” was not only widely spread, but practically supreme, in popular Hellenistic circles, may be seen from a study of the texts of the numerous magic papyri which have been preserved, and made accessible to us by the industry of such immensely laborious scholars as Leemans, Dieterich, Wessely, and Kenyon.
The Greek Hermes prayers, as with many others of a similar nature, are manifestly overworkings of more ancient types, and, as we might expect, are of a strongly syncretistic nature. In them we can distinguish in popular forms, based on the ancient traditions of Egyptian magic, most interesting shadows of the philosophic and theosophic ideas which our Trismegistic literature has set forth for us in the clear light of dignified simplicity.
But just as we now know that the once so-called “Gnostic,” Abraxas and Abraxoid amulets, gems, and rings pertained to the general popular magical religion and had nothing to do with the Gnosis proper, so we may be sure that the circles of high mysticism, who refused to offer to God even so pure a sacrifice as
the burnt offering of incense, and deemed naught worthy of Him, short of the “prayers and praises of the mind,” had nothing directly to do with the popular Hermes prayers, least of all with the invocatory rites of popular theurgy, and phylactery or amulet consecration.
Nevertheless, there is much of interest for us in these invocations, and much that can throw side-lights on the higher teaching and practice which transformed all external rites into the discipline of inner spiritual experience.
The following prayers, which, as far as I know, have not been previously translated, are rendered from the most recently revised texts of Reitzenstein, who has omitted the magic names, and emended the previous editions. I cannot but think, however, that these texts might be submitted to a more searching analysis than has yet been accorded them. They seem to present somewhat similar phenomena to the recensions of the Book of the Dead; that is to say, fragments of material from the tradition of a greater past have been adapted and overworked for the needs of a lesser age. Indeed, the whole effort of the Trismegistic schools seems to have been to restore the memory of that greater past; it had been forgotten, and its dim record had become a superstition instead of a living faith, a degenerate magic instead of a potent theurgy. The theurgy of our prayers is that of dwarfs; the theurgy of the past was believed to have been that of giants.
I. AN INVOCATION TO HERMES AS THE GOOD MIND 1
[Revised text, R. 15-18; Leemans (C.), Papyri Græc. Mus. Ant. Pub. Lug. Bat. (Leyden, 1885), II. 141, 14 ff., and V. 27, 27 ff.; Dieterich (A.), Abraxas (Leipzig, 1891), 195, 4 ff.; and Jahrbücher f. class. Phil., Suppl. XVI. 808 ff. (Papyrus Mag. Mus. Lug. Bat.).]
1. Come unto me, O thou of the four winds, 2 almighty one, 3 who breathest spirit into men to give them life;
2. Whose name is hidden, and beyond the power of men to speak; 4 no prophet [even] can pronounce it; yea, even daimons, when they hear thy name, are fearful!
3. O thou, whose tireless eyes are sun and moon, 5—[eyes] that shine in the pupils 6 of the eyes of men!
4. O thou, who hast the heaven for head, æther for body, [and] earth for feet, and for the water round thee ocean’s deep! 7 Thou the Good Daimon art, who art the sire of all things good, and nurse of the whole world. 8
5. Thy everlasting revelling-place 9 is set above.
6. Thine the good emanations 10 of the stars,—those daimons, fortunes, and those fates by whom are given
wealth, good blend [of nature], 1 and good children, good fortune, and good burial. For thou art lord of life,—
7. Thou who art king of heavens and earth and all that dwell in them;
8. Whose Righteousness is never put away; whose Muses hymn thy glorious name; whom the eight Wardens guard,—thou the possessor of the Truth 2 pure of all lie!
9. Thy Name and Spirit rest upon the good. 3
10. O mayst thou come into my mind and heart for all the length of my life’s days, and bring unto accomplishment all things my soul desires!
11. For thou art I, and I am thou. 4 Whate’er I speak, may it for ever be; for that I have thy Name 5 to guard me in my heart. 6
12. And every serpent 1 roused shall have no power o’er me, nor shall I be opposed by any spirit, or daimonial power, or any plague, or any of the evils in the Unseen World; 2 for that I have thy Name within my soul.
13. Thee I invoke; come unto me, Good, altogether good, [come] to the good, 3—thou whom no magic can enchant, no magic can control, 4 who givest me good health, security, 5 good store, good fame, victory, [and] strength, and cheerful countenance! 6
14. Cast down the eyes of all who are against me, and give me grace on all my deeds! 7
II. AN INVOCATION TO LORD HERMES
[Revised and restored text, stripped of later overworkings, R. 20, 21. Wessely (C.), Denkschriften der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, “Neue griechische Zauberpapyri” (Vienna, 1893), vol. xlii. p. 55; Kenyon (F. G.), Greek Papyri in the British Museum (London, 1893), i. 116.]
1. Come unto me, Lord Hermes, even as into women’s wombs [come] babes! 8
2. Come unto me, Lord Hermes, who dost collect the food of gods and men! 9
3. Lord Hermes, come to me, and give me grace,
[and] food, [and] victory, [and] health and happiness, and cheerful countenance, 1 beauty and powers in sight of all!
4. I know thy Name that shineth forth in heaven; I know thy forms 2 as well; I know thy tree; 3 I know thy wood 4 as well.
5. I know thee, Hermes, who thou art, and whence thou art, and what thy city is.
6. I know thy names in the Egyptian tongue, 5 and thy true name as it is written on the holy tablet in the holy place at Hermes’ city, where thou dost have thy birth.
7. I know thee, Hermes, and thou [knowest] me; [and] I am thou, and thou art I. 6
8. Come unto me; fulfil all that I crave; be favourable to me together with good fortune and the blessing of the Good. 7
III. AN INVOCATION TO LORD HERMES
[Revised and restored text, R. 21. It is worked in with the preceding, but is of later date.]
1. Come unto me, Lord Hermes, O thou of many names, who know’st the secrets hidden both beneath the poles [of heaven] and underneath the earth!
2. Come unto me, Lord Hermes, thou benefactor, who doest good to all the world!
3. Give ear to me, [and] give me grace with all that are on earth; open for me the hands of all that give like thee; 1 [and] make them give me what their hands contain!
4. Even as Horus, 2 if e’er he called on thee, O greatest of all gods, in every trial, in every space, ’gainst gods, and men, and daimones, and things that live in water and on earth,—had grace and riches with gods, and men, and every living thing beneath the earth;—so let me, too, who call on thee! So give me grace, form, beauty!
6. Hear me, O Hermes, doer of good deeds, thou the inventor of [all] incantations, 3 speak me good words! 4
7. Hear me, O Hermes, for I have done all things [that I should do] for thy black dog-ape, 5 lord of the nether ones!
8. O, soften all [towards me], and give me might
[and] form, 1 and let them give me gold, and silver [too], and food of every kind continually.
9. Preserve me evermore for the eternity from spells, deceits, and witchery of every kind, from evil tongues, from every check and every enmity of gods and men!
10. Give unto me grace, victory, success, and satisfaction!
11. For thou art I, and I am thou; thy Name is mine, and mine is thine; for that I am thy likeness. 2
12. Whatever shall befall me in this year, or month, or day, or hour,—it shall befall the Mighty God, whose symbol is upon the holy vessel’s prow. 3
IV. AN INVOCATION TO THOTH AS LOGOS
[Revised text, R. 22. Leemans, op. cit., II. 103, 7; Dieterich, op. cit., 189.]
1. Thee I invoke alone, thou who alone in all the world imposest order upon gods and men, 1 who dost transform thyself in holy forms, 2 making to be from things that are not, and from the things that are making the not to be.
2. O holy Thoth, 3 the true sight of whose face none of the gods endures!
3. Make me to be in every creature’s name 4—wolf, dog, [or] lion, fire, tree, [or] vulture, 5 wall, 6 [or] water, 7 or what thou will’st, for thou art able [so to do].
V. AN INVOCATION TO HERMES AS THE SPIRITUAL LIGHT
[Revised text R. 22, 23. Leemans, ibid., II. 87, 24; Dieterich, ibid., 176, 1.]
1. Thee I invoke who hast created all, who dost transcend the whole, the self-begotten God, who seest all and hearest all, but who art seen by none.
2. For thou didst give the sun his glory and all might, the moon her increase and her decrease, and [unto both] their ordained course. Though thou didst not diminish aught the [powers of] darkness, the still
more ancient [than the sun and moon], thou mad’st them equal [with it]. 1
3. For when thou didst shine forth, Cosmos came into being, and light appeared, and all things were dispensed through thee; wherefore they all are under thee.
4. O thou, whose actual form none of the gods can see, who dost transform thyself into them all in visions [that men see], O thou Eternity of the eternity. 2
5. Thee I invoke, O Lord, that thy true form may manifest to me, for that I am in servitude below thy world, 3 slave to thy angel and unto thy fear. 4
6. Through thee the pole and earth are fixed.
7. Thee I invoke, O Lord, e’en as the gods whom thou hast made to shine, that they may have their power.