The Encomium of Kings (Part 1)

Commentary—

The Apology of a Pœmandrist

Speculation as to Date

The Story of the, Pythic Grasshopper

The True King

The Fellow-Rulers of the Height

II. THE PERFECT SERMON; OR THE ASCLEPIUS

307-390

Commentary—

The Title

The Old Latin Translation and the Greek Original

Of the Writer and the Persons of the Dialogue

The Doctrine of the Will of God

Concerning Spirit and the All-Sense

The Prophetic Utterances

The Proscription of the Worship of the Gods

The Last Hope of the Religion of the Mind

Gnosticism and Hermetica

Corpus Hermeticum

CORPUS HERMETICUM I.

PŒMANDRES, THE SHEPHERD OF MEN

(Text: R. 328-338; P. 1-18; Pat. 5b-8.) 1

1. It chanced once on a time my mind was meditating on the things that are, 2 my thought was raised to a great height, the senses of my body being held back—just as men are who are weighed down with sleep after a fill of food, or from fatigue of body.

Methought a Being more than vast, in size beyond all bounds, called out my name and saith: What wouldst thou hear and see, and what hast thou in mind to learn and know?

2. And I do say: Who art thou?

He saith: I am Man-Shepherd, 3 Mind of all-

masterhood 1; I know what thou desirest and I’m with thee everywhere.

3. [And] I reply: I long to learn the things that are, and comprehend their nature, and know God. This is, I said, what I desire to hear.

He answered back to me: Hold in thy mind all thou wouldst know, and I will teach thee.

4. E’en with these words His aspect changed, 2 and straightway, in the twinkling of an eye, all things were opened to me, and I see a Vision limitless, all things turned into Light,—sweet, joyous [Light]. And I became transported as I gazed.

But in a little while Darkness came settling down on part [of it], awesome and gloomy, coiling in sinuous folds, 3 so that methought it like unto a snake. 4

And then the Darkness changed into some sort of a Moist Nature, tossed about beyond all power of words, belching out smoke as from a

fire, and groaning forth a wailing sound that beggars all description.

[And] after that an outcry inarticulate came forth from it, as though it were a Voice of Fire.

5. [Thereon] out of the Light . . . 1 a Holy Word (Logos) 2 descended on that Nature. And upwards to the height from the Moist Nature leaped forth pure Fire; light was it, swift and active too.

The Air, too, being light, followed after the Fire; from out the Earth-and-Water rising up to Fire so that it seemed to hang therefrom.

But Earth-and-Water stayed so mingled each with other, that Earth from Water no one could discern. 3 Yet were they moved to hear by reason of the Spirit-Word (Logos) pervading them.

6. Then saith to me Man-Shepherd: Didst understand this Vision what it means?

Nay; that shall I know, I said.

That Light, He said, am I, thy God, Mind, prior to Moist Nature which appeared from Darkness; the Light-Word (Logos) [that appeared] from Mind is Son of God.

What then?—say I.

Know that what sees in thee 1 and hears is the Lord’s Word (Logos); but Mind is Father-God. Not separate are they the one from other; just in their union [rather] is it Life consists.

Thanks be to Thee, I said.

So, understand the Light [He answered], and make friends with it.

7. And speaking thus He gazed for long into my eyes, 2 so that I trembled at the look of Him.

But when He raised His head, I see in Mind the Light, [but] now in Powers no man could number, and Cosmos 3 grown beyond all bounds, and that the Fire was compassed round about by a most mighty Power, and [now] subdued had come unto a stand.

And when I saw these things I understood by reason of Man-Shepherd’s Word (Logos).

8. But as I was in great astonishment, He saith to me again: Thou didst behold in Mind the Archetypal Form whose being is before beginning without end. Thus spake to me Man-Shepherd.

And I say: Whence then have Nature’s elements their being?

To this He answer gives: From Will of God.

[paragraph continues] [Nature 1] received the Word (Logos), and gazing on the Cosmos Beautiful 2 did copy it, making herself into a cosmos, by means of her own elements and by the births of souls.

9. And God-the-Mind, being male and female both, as Light and Life subsisting, brought forth another Mind to give things form, who, God as he was of Fire and Spirit, 3 formed Seven Rulers who enclose the cosmos that the sense perceives. 4 Men call their ruling Fate. 5

10. Straightway from out the downward elements God’s Reason (Logos) 6 leaped up to Nature’s pure formation, and was at-oned with the Formative Mind; for it was co-essential with it. 7 And Nature’s downward elements were thus left reason-less, so as to be pure matter.

11. Then the Formative Mind ([at-oned] with Reason), he who surrounds the spheres and spins them with his whirl, set turning his formations, and let them turn from a beginning boundless unto an endless end. For that the circulation

of these [spheres] begins where it doth end, as Mind doth will.

And from the downward elements Nature brought forth lives reason-less; for He did not extend the Reason (Logos) [to them]. The Air brought forth things winged; the Water things that swim, and Earth-and-Water one from another parted, as Mind willed. And from her bosom Earth produced what lives she had, four-footed things and reptiles, beasts wild and tame.

12. But All-Father Mind, being Life and Light, did bring forth Man 1 co-equal to Himself, with whom He fell in love, as being His own child; for he was beautiful beyond compare, the Image of his Sire. In very truth, God fell in love with His own Form 2; and on him did bestow all of His own formations.

13. And when he gazed upon what the Enformer had created in the Father, [Man] too wished to enform; and [so] assent was given him by the Father. 3

Changing his state to the formative sphere, 4 in that he was to have his whole authority, 5 he

gazed upon his Brother’s creatures. 1 They fell in love with him, and gave him each a share of his own ordering. 2

And after that he had well-learned their essence and had become a sharer in their nature, he had a mind to break right through the Boundary of their spheres, and to subdue 3 the might of that which pressed upon the Fire. 4

14. So he who hath the whole authority o’er [all] the mortals in the cosmos and o’er its lives irrational, bent his face downwards through 5 the Harmony, 6 breaking right through its strength, and showed to downward Nature God’s fair Form.

And when she saw that Form of beauty which can never satiate, and him who [now] possessed within himself each single energy of [all seven] Rulers as well as God’s [own] Form, she smiled with love; for ’twas as though she’d seen the image of Man’s fairest form upon her Water, his shadow on her Earth.

He in his turn beholding the form like to himself, existing in her, in her Water, loved it and willed to live in it; and with the will came act, 1 and [so] he vivified the form devoid of reason.

And Nature took the object of her love and wound herself completely round him, and they were intermingled, for they were lovers.

15. And this is why beyond all creatures on the earth man is twofold; mortal because of body, but because of the essential Man immortal.

Though deathless and possessed of sway o’er all, yet doth he suffer as a mortal doth, subject to Fate.

Thus though above the Harmony, within the Harmony he hath become a slave. Though male-female, 2 as from a Father male-female, and though he’s sleepless from a sleepless [Sire], yet is he overcome [by sleep].

16. Thereon [I say: Teach on], 3 O Mind of me, for I myself as well 4 am amorous of the Word (Logos).

The Shepherd said: This is the mystery kept hid until this day.

Nature embraced by Man brought forth a wonder, oh so wonderful. For as he had the nature of the Concord 1 of the Seven, who, as I said to thee, [were made] of Fire and Spirit 2—Nature delayed not, but immediately brought forth seven “men,” in correspondence with the natures of the Seven, male-female and moving in the air. 3

Thereon [I said]: O Shepherd, . . . 4; for now I’m filled with great desire and long to hear; do not run off. 5

The Shepherd said: Keep silence, for not as yet have I unrolled for thee the first discourse (logos).

Lo! I am still, I said.

17. In such wise then, as I have said, the generation of these seven came to pass. Earth was as woman, her Water filled with longing; ripeness she took from Fire, spirit from Æther. Nature thus brought forth frames to suit the form of Man.

And Man from Life and Light changed into soul and mind,—from Life to soul, from Light to mind.

And thus continued all the sense-world’s

parts 1 until the period of their end and new beginnings.

18. Now listen to the rest of the discourse (logos) which thou dost long to hear.

The period being ended, the bond that bound them all was loosened by God’s Will. For all the animals being male-female, at the same time with man were loosed apart; some became partly male, some in like fashion [partly] female. And straightway God spake by His Holy Word (Logos):

“Increase ye in increasing, and multiply in multitude, ye creatures and creations all; and man that hath Mind in him, let him learn to know that he himself is deathless, and that the cause of death is love, 2 though Love is all.” 3

19. When He said this, His Forethought 4 did by means of Fate and Harmony effect their couplings and their generations founded. And so all things were multiplied according to their kind.

And he who thus hath learned to know himself, hath reached that Good which doth transcend abundance; but he who through a love that leads astray, expends his love upon his body,—

he stays in Darkness wandering, 1 and suffering through his senses things of Death.

20. What is the so great fault, said I, the ignorant commit, that they should be deprived of deathlessness?

Thou seem’st, he said, O thou, not to have given heed to what thou heardest. Did not I bid thee think?

Yea do I think, and I remember, and therefore give Thee thanks.

If thou didst think [thereon], [said He], tell me: Why do they merit death who are in Death?

It is because the gloomy Darkness is the root and base of the material frame; from it 2 came the Moist Nature; from this 3 the body in the sense-world was composed; and from this [body] Death doth the Water drain.

21. Right was thy thought, O thou! But how doth “he who knows himself, go unto Him,” as God’s Word (Logos) hath declared?

And I reply: the Father of the universals doth consist of Light and Life, and from Him Man was born.

Thou sayest well, [thus] speaking. Light and Life is Father-God, and from Him Man was born.

If then thou learnest that thou art thyself of

[paragraph continues] Life and Light, and that thou [only] happen’st to be out of them, thou shalt return again to Life. Thus did Man-Shepherd speak.

But tell me further, Mind of me, I cried, how shall I come to Life again . . . . for God doth say: “The man who hath Mind in him, let him learn to know that he himself [is deathless].”

22. Have not all men then Mind?

Thou sayest well, O thou, thus speaking. I, Mind, myself am present with holy men and good, the pure and merciful, men who live piously.

[To such] my presence doth become an aid, and straightway they gain gnosis of all things, and win the Father’s love by their pure lives, and give Him thanks, invoking on Him blessings, and chanting hymns, intent on Him with ardent love.

And ere they give the body up unto its proper death, they turn them with disgust from its sensations, from knowledge of what things they operate. 1 Nay, it is I, the Mind, that will not let the operations which befall the body, work to their [natural] end. For being door-keeper I’ll close up [all] the entrances, and cut the mental actions off which base and evil energies induce.

23. But to the Mind-less ones, the wicked and depraved, the envious and covetous, and those who murder do and love impiety, I am far off,

yielding my place to the Avenging Daimon, who sharpening the fire, tormenteth him and addeth fire to fire upon him, and rusheth on him through his senses, thus rendering him the readier for transgressions of the law, so that he meets with greater torment; nor doth he ever cease to have desire for appetites inordinate, insatiately striving in the dark. 1

24. Well hast thou taught me all, as I desired, O Mind. And now, pray, tell me further of the nature of the Way Above as now it is [for me]. 2

To this Man-Shepherd said: When thy material body is to be dissolved, first thou surrenderest the body by itself unto the work of change, and thus the form thou hadst doth vanish, and thou surrenderest thy way of life, 3 void of its energy, unto the Daimon. 4 The body’s senses next pass back into their sources, becoming separate, and resurrect as energies; and passion and desire 5 withdraw unto that nature which is void of reason.

25. And thus it is that man doth speed his way thereafter upwards through the Harmony.

To the first zone he gives the Energy of Growth and Waning; unto the second [zone], Device of Evils [now] de-energized 1; unto the third, the Guile of the Desires de-energized; unto the fourth, his Domineering Arrogance, [also] de-energized; unto the fifth, unholy Daring and the Rashness of Audacity, de-energized; unto the sixth, Striving for Wealth by evil means, deprived of its aggrandisement; and to the seventh zone, Ensnaring Falsehood, de-energized. 2

26. And then, with all the energizings of the Harmony stript from him, clothed in his proper Power, he cometh to that Nature which belongs unto the Eighth, 3 and there with those-that-are hymneth the Father.

They who are there welcome his coming there with joy; and he, made like to them that sojourn there, doth further hear the Powers who are above the Nature that belongs unto the Eighth, singing their songs of praise to God in language of their own.

And then they, in a band, 4 go to the Father home; of their own selves they make surrender of themselves to Powers, and [thus] becoming Powers they are in God. This the good end for

those who have gained Gnosis—to be made one with God.

Why shouldst thou then delay? Must it not be, since thou hast all received, that thou shouldst to the worthy point the way, in order that through thee the race of mortal kind may by [thy] God be saved?

27. This when He’d said, Man-Shepherd mingled with the Powers. 1

But I, with thanks and blessings unto the Father of the universal [Powers], was freed, full of the power He had poured into me, and full of what He’d taught me of the nature of the All and of the loftiest Vision.

And I began to preach to men the Beauty of Devotion and of Gnosis:

O ye people, earth-born folk, ye who have given yourselves to drunkenness and sleep and ignorance of God, be sober now, cease from your surfeit, cease to be glamoured by irrational sleep 2!

28. And when they heard, they came with one accord. Whereon I say:

Ye earth-born folk, why have ye given up yourselves to Death, while yet ye have the power of sharing Deathlessness? Repent, O ye, who walk with Error arm in arm and make of Ignorance the sharer of your board; get ye from out the light of Darkness, and take your part in Deathlessness, forsake Destruction!

29. And some of them with jests upon their lips 1 departed [from me], abandoning themselves unto the Way of Death; others entreated to be taught, casting themselves before my feet.

But I made them arise, and I became a leader of the Race 2 towards home, teaching the words (logoi), how and in what way they shall be saved. I sowed in them the words (logoi) of wisdom 3; of Deathless Water were they given to drink. 4

And when even was come and all sun’s beams began to set, I bade them all give thanks to God. And when they had brought to an end the giving of their thanks, each man returned to his own resting place.

30. But I recorded in my heart Man-Shepherd’s benefaction, and with my every hope fulfilled more than rejoiced. For body’s sleep became

the soul’s awakening, 1 and closing of the eyes—true vision, pregnant with Good my silence, and the utterance of my word (logos) begetting of good things.

All this befell me from my Mind, that is Man-Shepherd, Word (Logos) of all masterhood, 2 by whom being God-inspired I came unto the Plain of Truth. 3 Wherefore with all my soul and strength thanksgiving 4 give I unto Father-God.

31. Holy art Thou, O God, the universals’ Father.

Holy art Thou, O God, whose Will perfects itself by means of its own Powers.

Holy art Thou, O God, who willeth to be known and art known by Thine own.

Holy art Thou, who didst by Word (Logos) make to consist the things that are.

Holy art Thou, of whom All-nature hath been made an Image.

Holy art Thou, whose Form Nature hath never made.

Holy art Thou, more powerful than all power.

Holy art Thou, transcending all pre-eminence.

Holy Thou art, Thou better than all praise.

Accept my reason’s 1 offerings pure, from soul and heart for aye stretched up to Thee, O Thou unutterable, unspeakable, Whose Name naught but the Silence can express.

32. Give ear to me who pray that I may ne’er of Gnosis fail, [Gnosis] which is our common Being’s nature 2; and fill me with Thy Power, and with this Grace [of Thine], that I may give the Light to those in ignorance of the Race, my Brethren, and Thy Sons.

For this cause I believe, and I bear witness; I go to Life and Light. Blessed art Thou, O Father. Thy Man 3 would holy be as Thou art holy, e’en as Thou gavest him Thy full authority 4 [to be].

Footnotes

3:1 P. = Parthey (G.), Hermetis Trismegisti Poemander (Berlin; 1854). Pat. = Patrizzi (F.), Nova de Universis Philosophia (Venice; 1593).

3:2 περὶ τῶν ὄντων.

3:3 Ποιμάνδρης.

4:1 ὁ τῆς αὐθεντίας νοῦς. The αὐθεντία was the summa potestas of all things; see R. 8, n. 1; and § 30 below. Cf. also C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 15.

4:2 ἠλλάγη τῇ ἰδέᾳ.

4:3 σκολιῶς ἐσπειραμένον. The sense is by no means certain. Ménard translates “de forme sinueuse”; Everard, “coming down obliquely”; Chambers, “sinuously terminated.” But cf. in the Sethian system “the sinuous Water—that is, Darkness (see Hipp., Philos., v. 19).

4:4 Cf. Hipp., Philos., v. 9 (S. 170, 71): “They say the Serpent is the Moist Essence.”

5:1 A lacuna of six letters in the text.

5:2 The idea of the Logos was the central concept of Hellenistic theology; it was thus a word of many meanings, signifying chiefly Reason and Word, but also much else. I have accordingly throughout added the term Logos after the English equivalent most suitable to the context.

5:3 Cf. Il., vii. 99, as quoted by Apion in the chapter “Concerning the Æon” as Comment, on C. H., xi. (xii.).

6:1 That is, in vision.

6:2 Cf. C. H., xi (xii) 6.

6:3 κόσμον. The word kosmos (world-order) means either “order” or “world”; and in the original there is frequently a play upon the two meanings, as in the case of logos.

7:1 Nature and God’s Will are identical.

7:2 That is, the ideal world-order in the realms of reality.

7:3 Presumably the Pure Air of § 3.

7:4 τὸν αἰσθητὸν κόσμον. The sensible or manifested world, our present universe, as distinguished from the ideal eternal universe, the type of all universes.

7:5 εἱμαρμένη.

7:6 The Logos which had previously descended into Nature.

7:7 ὁμοούσιος, usually translated “consubstantial”; but οὐσία is “essence” and “being” rather than “substance.”

8:1 The Prototype, Cosmic, Ideal or Perfect Man.

8:2 Or Beauty (μορφῆς).

8:3 Cf. The Gospel of Mary in the Akhmīm Codex: “He nodded, and when He had thus nodded assent . . . .” (F. F. F., 586).

8:4 The Eighth Sphere bounding the Seven.

8:5 For note on ἐξουσία, see R. in loc. and 48, n. 3.

9:1 That is the Seven Spheres fashioned by his Brother.

9:2 τάξις, rank or order.

9:3 Or “wear down” (καταπονῆσαι). The reading κατανοῆσαι, however, may be more correct; “he had a mind to come to knowledge of” this Boundary or Ring Pass not. See R. 49, n. 1.

9:4 Sc. the Mighty Power of § 9.

9:5 παρέκυψεν. Cf. Cyril, C. J., i. 33 (Frag. xiii.); R. 50: “beugt sich . . . nieder” But compare especially Plato, Phædrus, 249 C., where he speaks of the soul “raising up her face (ἀνακύψασα) to That which is.” Cf. also Apion in Clement. Hom., vi. 4, in Comment. C. H., xi. (xii.)

9:6 That is, the harmonious interplay, concord or system of the spheres ruled by the Rulers; in other words, the cosmos of Fate.

10:1 ἐνέργεια, energy, and realization.

10:2 That is “a-sexual” but having the potentiality of both sexes.

10:3 For the various suggestions for filling up this lacuna, see R. in loc.; and for that of Keil, see R. 367.

10:4 Sc. as well as Nature.

11:1 Harmony.

11:2 See § 9.

11:3 μεταρσίους. A term that must have a more definite meaning than the vague “sublime” by which it is generally translated.

11:4 For Keil’s completion of the lacuna, see R. 368.

11:5 μὴ ἔκτρεχε, perhaps meaning diverge from the subject, or go too fast; lit., it means “do not run away.”

12:1 That is, the parts of what Hermes elsewhere calls the “cosmic man.”

12:2 Cf. C. H., xvi. 16.

12:3 Omitting the τἀ before ὄντα.

12:4 πρόνοια, that is Nature as Sophia or Providence or Will.

13:1 There is a word-play between πλάνης and πλανώμενος.

13:2 Sc. Darkness.

13:3 Sc. The Moist Nature.

14:1 εἰδότες αὐτῶν τὰ ἐνεργήματα.

15:1 The text of this paragraph is hopelessly confused in the MSS.

15:2 περὶ τῆς ἀνόδου τῆς γινομένης.

15:3 τὸ ἦθος, the “habitual” part of man, presumably way of life impressed by habit on the body; or it may be “class” of life as in the Vision of Er.

15:4 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 16.

15:5 ὁ θυμὸς καὶ ἡ ἐπιθυμία,—the masculine and feminine as positive and negative aspects of the “animal soul.”

16:1 ἀνενέργητον.

16:2 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 7.

16:3 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 15.

16:4 τάξει, order, group, sc. of the Nine;—the Father being the Ten, or consummation.

17:1 Cf. K. K., 25: “Thus speaking God became Imperishable Mind.”

17:2 Cf. the logos, “Jesus saith, I stood in the midst of the world, and in the flesh was I seen of them, and I found all men drunken, and none found I athirst among them, and my soul grieveth over the sons of men, because they are blind in heart.” Sayings of Our Lord from an Early Greek Papyrus, Grenfell & Hunt (London; 1897).

18:1 Cf. P. S. A., xii. 2.

18:2 The Race of the Logos, of all who were conscious of the Logos in their hearts, who had repented and were thus logoi.

18:3 Cf. Mark iv. 4: “He who soweth soweth the Word (Logos)”

18:4 Cf. K. K., 1—the drink given by Isis to Horus.

19:1 νῆψις, lit. soberness, watchfulness, lucidity.

19:2 See § 2 above.

19:3 Cf. K. K. (Stob., Ec., i. 49; p. 459, 20, W.), and Damascius, in Phot., Bibl., p. 337b, 23.

19:4 εὐλογίαν,—a play on λόγος.

20:1 λογικάς.

20:2 τῆς γνώσεως τῆς κατ᾽ οὐσίαν ἡμῶν, “our being,” that is, presumably, the “being” of man and God, the “being” which man shares with God.

20:3 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 20.

20:4 ἐξουσίαν.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

COMMENTARY

OF VISION AND APOCALYPSIS

The “Pœmandres” treatise not only belongs to the most important type of the Trismegistic literature, but is also the most important document within that type. It constitutes, so to speak, the Ground-Gospel of the Pœmandres Communities, in the form of a revelation or apocalypse received by the founder of the tradition,

that founder, however, being not a historical personage but the personification of a teaching-power or grade of spiritual illumination—in other words, of one who had reached the “Hermes,” or rather “Thrice-greatest,” state of consciousness or enlightenment.

This stage of enlightenment was characterized by a heightening of the spiritual intuition which made the mystic capable of receiving the first touch of cosmic consciousness, and of retaining it in his physical memory when he returned to the normal state.

The setting forth of the teaching is thus naturally in the form of apocalyptic, and of apocalyptic of an ordered and logical nature; for it purports to be a setting forth of the spiritual “Epopteia” of the Inner Mysteries, the Vision revealed by the Great Initiator or Master-Hierophant, Mind of all-masterhood.

This Vision, as we are told by many seers and prophets of the time, was incapable of being set forth by “tongue of flesh” in its own proper terms, seeing that it transcended the consciousness of normal humanity. Being in itself a living, potent, intelligible reality, apart from all forms either material or intellectual in any way known to man, it pervaded his very being and made his whole nature respond to a new key of truth, or rather, vibrate in a higher octave, so to say, where all things, while remaining the same, received a new interpretation and intensity.

The interpretation of this Vision, however, was conditioned by the “matter” of each seer; he it was who had to clothe the naked beauty of the Truth—as the Gnostic Marcus would have phrased it—with the fairest garment he himself possessed, the highest thoughts, the best science, the fairest traditions, the most grandiose imagination known to him. Thus it is that we have so many modes of expression among the

mystics of the time, so many varieties of spiritual experience—not because the experience itself was “other,” the experience was the “same” for all, but the speaking of it forth was conditioned by the religious and philosophical and scientific heredity of the seer.

This element, then, is the basic fact in all such apocalyptic. It is, however, seldom that we meet with a document that has come to us straight from the hand of a seer writing down his own immediate experience without admixture; for the delight of the Vision was not that it gave new facts or ideas of the same nature as those already in circulation, but that it threw light on existing traditions, and showed them forth as being parts of a whole. Once the man had come into touch with the Great Synthesis, there rushed into his mind innumerable passages of scripture, scraps of myths, fragments of cosmogenesis, logoi and logia, and symbols of all kinds that fitted naturally. These were not any special writer’s monopoly, there was no copyright in them, they were all utterances of the same Logos, the Great Instructor of humanity.

Thus the literature that was produced was anonymous or pseudepigraphic. There was first of all a nucleus of personal vision and direct illumination, then a grouping of similar matter from various sources into a whole for didactic purposes. Nor was there any idea among these mystics and scripture-writers that the form once issued should become for ever stereotyped as inerrant; there were many recensions and additions and interpolations. It was left to those without the sense of illumination to stereotype the forms and claim for them the inerrancy of verbal dictation by the Deity. Those who wrote the apocalypses from personal knowledge of vision could not make such claim for their scriptures, for they knew

how they were written, and what was the nature of hearing and sight.

We have accordingly to treat all such documents as natural human compositions, but while doing so, while on the one side analyzing them with microscopic attention as literary compositions, put together from other sources, over-written, redacted and interpolated, we have also, on the other, to bear in mind that this was not done by clever manipulators and literary charlatans, but by men who regarded such work as a holy and spiritual task, who endeavoured to arrange all under the inspiration of a sweet influence for good, who believed themselves under guidance in their selection of matter, and in recombining the best in other scriptures into a new whole that might prove still better for the purpose of further enlightenment suitable to their immediate environment.

The “Pœmandres” treatise is of this nature—that is to say, though we have not the original form before us, we have what was intended to be read as a single document. We shall accordingly endeavour in our comments not to allow the anomalies of its outer form to detract from our appreciation of its inner spirit, and yet, on the other hand, not to permit the beauty of much that is in it to blind us to the fact that the present form has evolved from simpler beginnings.

THE GREAT AND LITTLE MAN

1. In deep meditation the disciple reaches the consummation of his efforts, and receives initiation from the Master of the masters, who is to confer upon him authority (ἐξουσίαν—see § 32) to teach, that is, to be a master or a Hermes.

2. That this Grand Master of the Inner Mysteries

was Man and Shepherd of men, the Very Self of men, has been amply shown in the Prolegomena, but the striking parallelism with the very wording of our text, the Great Man, the “Being more than vast,” who tells the little man, that though for the first time he now knows his Greater Self, that Self has ever been “everywhere with thee,” is best shown by the beautiful logos from the Gospel of Eve (presumably an Egyptian gospel), which we have already quoted elsewhere 1:

“I stood on a lofty mountain, 2 and saw a gigantic Man and another, a dwarf; and I heard, as it were, a voice of thunder, and drew nigh for to hear; and He spake unto me and said: I am thou, and thou art I; and wheresoever thou mayest be, I am there. 3 In all am I scattered, and whencesoever thou willest, thou gatherest Me; and gathering Me, thou gatherest Thyself.”

THE PRESENCE

3. The conditions of the seeing of the Holy Sight had been fulfilled by the disciple; he had weaned himself from all lower desires. No longer, like the theurgist in the Hermes-invocations of the popular cult, does he pray for wealth and fame and cheerful countenance, and the rest; his one desire, his only will, is now to “learn the things that are, and comprehend their nature and know God.” He craves for Gnosis,—Gnosis of Cosmos and its mysteries, Gnosis

of Nature, the Great Mother, and, finally, Gnosis of God, the Father of the worlds. This is the one question he “holds in his mind,” his whole nature is concentrated into this one point of interrogation.

It is to be noticed that we are not told, as in the Gospel of Eve, that the seer stood, as it were, apart from himself, and saw his little self and Greater Self simultaneously. He is conscious of a Presence, of a Persona in the highest theological meaning of the word, who is not seen so much as felt, speaking to him Mind to mind; he hears this Presence rather than sees it.

THE VISION OF CREATION

4. The first part of his mental question is: How came this cosmos into being? The answer is the changing of the Boundless Presence into “Light, sweet joyous Light.” He loses all sight of “all things” in his mind, the mental image he had formed of cosmos, and is plunged into the infinitude of Limitless Light and Joy, which transports him out of himself in highest ecstasy.

But he has craved for Gnosis, not Joy and Light, but Wisdom, the understanding and reconciliation of the great Opposites, the Cross of all Manifestation.

Therefore must he know the Mystery of Ignorance as well as that of Knowledge. Within the Infinitude of Light appears the Shadow of the Unknown, which translates itself to his consciousness as Darkness,—the Shadow of the Thrice-unknown Darkness, which, as Damascius tells us, 1 was the First Principle of the Egyptians, the Ineffable Mystery, of which they “said nothing,” and of which our author says nothing.

This Darkness comes forth from within outwards to the disciple’s consciousness, it spreads “downwards” in sinuous folds like a Great Snake, symbolizing, presumably, the unknown, and to him unknowable, mysteries of the differentiation of the root of matter of the cosmos that was to be; its motion was spiral, sinuous, unending vibrations, not yet confined into a sphere; not yet ordered, but chaotic, in unceasing turmoil, a terrible contrast to the sweet peace of the Light, gradually changing from Dark Space or Spirit into a Fluid or Flowing Matter, or Moist Nature; that is, presumably, what the Greek mystics would have called Rhea, the Primal Mother or Matter of the future universe.

It wails and groans—that is, its motion is as yet unharmonized. In the terminology of the Sophia-mythus, it is the inchoate birth from the Sophia Above, in the Fullness, brought forth by herself alone, without her syzygy or consort. On account of its imperfection she wails and groans to the Father of All and His Perfections, that her Perfection may be sent to fashion her child, who is herself in manifestation, into a world of order, and eventually into a Perfection in its turn. 1

The Primal Undifferentiated or Chaotic Sound, from the Darkness of its first state, gradually manifests itself under the brooding power of the Boundless Light, into less confused thunderings and murmurings, and finally reaches a stage symbolized by a “Cry,” a “Voice of Fire,” of Fire, not Light, expressing a need and want, longing for union with the Articulate Power or Cosmic Word.

The three most primal stages thus seem to be symbolized by Darkness, Moist Essence, Fire. These

were not our differentiated elements, but the Primal Pre-cosmic Elements.

The same idea, though in different forms, is met with in a system of the Gnosis preserved for us by the Old Latin translator of Irenæus, 1 and also by Theodoret, 2 who ascribes it to the Sēthians, whom he says are also called Ophianæ or Ophitæ. Now Sēth was Typhon or Darkness, Dark Light, and this Sēth may very well have been symbolized as the Great Serpent of Darkness, as it is in our text; hence the name “Those of the Serpent,” perhaps given them by their theological adversaries (orthodox Jews and Christians). In this system the Primal Elements are given as Water, Darkness, Abyss, and Chaos. The Light was the Child of the supreme Trinity—the First Man, the Second Man, and the Holy Spirit or First Woman. This Light the Jewish and Christian over-working of the original tradition called the Cosmic Christ.

Thus the Fire of Desire, or Cry of the Darkness, was to be satisfied or checked or quenched by the Light’s fashioning its inchoate substance into the cosmos; and so in another Vision, preserved in a treatise of the same type, Hermes sees, by gazing “through the Master,” the cosmos in its finished beauty, when all things in it are full of Light and nowhere is there Fire. 3

THE DESCENT OF THE LOGOS

5. Upon this Cry for Light, into the Heart of the Dark-Moist-Fiery-Nature is dropped a Holy Word, the Seed of the future Cosmos. This Word is Articulate (its Limbs are perfect), Seasonable and Ordering. The

[paragraph continues] Cosmic Animal Nature is impregnated with the Light of the Supernal Reason, which pervades its whole being.

This pervading immediately effects an ordering of the Chaotic Elements into Pure Fire, Pure Air, and Pure Water-Earth. Moreover, it is to be gathered from the sequel that Nature saw the Word and all his Beauty in her Fire and Air, but as yet only heard him in her Water-Earth.

6. The Shepherd thus explains that Light 1 is really Mind, and Mind is God,—God prior to Nature, but not prior to Darkness. The Unity of Light and Darkness is a still higher Mystery. Light and Mind is the highest concept the disciple can yet form of God. The Light-Word, or emanation of Supernal Reason, is Son of God, Son of Great Mind.

THE REVELATION OF THE PLĒRŌMA

With the words “What then?” Reitzenstein (p. 37) perceives that the sequence of the narrative is broken by a second vision, and is only resumed with § 9. This he regards as an interpolation of another form of cosmogenesis, into the one which is being described.

It seems to me, however, that the breaking of the main narrative may be regarded as a necessary digression rather than as an interpolation of foreign material—necessary in order to bring on to the scene the hitherto invisible Greatnesses, “within” the Veil of Light, which constitute the Economy of the Plērōma. More had to be seen by the disciple before he was in a position to understand what he had so far seen. He must now unite with the Light, his previous seeing being that of its reflection, the logos within him. Not that this

logos and Light (or Mind) are separate. They are in reality one, the Son is one with the Father in the state that transcends the opposites. The Logos apparently comes forth, yet it remains ever with the Father, and this coming forth and yet remaining constitutes its Life—in other words, it is an emanation. Thus Hermes is bidden to understand the Light as Life, and so make friends with it.

7. Hitherto the Light had been one for him a sameness which his highest vision could not pierce, the Veil of Light that shut the Beauties, Perfections and Greatnesses of the Intelligible from the eyes of his mind. To pierce this veil a still more expanded power of sight had to be given him by the Master. The little word or light-spark within him is intensified by the Great Word of the Master, this Word being an Intelligible Utterance of the Mind, an intensification of being.

He now sees and understands the countless Powers within the Light, which constitute the Intelligible Archetypal Form or Idea of all worlds. Between the special sensible cosmos of his prior vision and this Immensity was a Mighty Power, or Great Boundary (Horos), 1 that encircled the elements of the sensible cosmos and held its Fire in check.

8. In amazement he asks whence come these apparently disorderly and untamed elements of the new world in process that have to be subdued and separated from the Concord of the Perfection of the Powers? And the answer is that Chaos, too, has its being from God’s Will. Discord and Concord, Chaos and Cosmos, are both of God. The Primal Elements are, as it were, the Passions of God’s Will desiring Himself. It is Himself as Mother or Spouse

desiring Himself as Father. In other of the Trismegistic tractates 1 this “Feminine Aspect” of Deity is called Wisdom and Nature and Generation and Isis. He is Wisdom as desiring Himself,—that Desire being the Primal Cause as Mother of the whole world-process, which is consummated by His Fullness uniting with His Desire or Wisdom, and so perfecting it.

This is the whole burden of the Gnostic Sophia-mythus, which I have given very good reasons for believing derived its main element from Egypt. 2 Curiously enough, Reitzenstein (pp. 39, 40) quotes the two chapters (liii. and liv.) from Plutarch on which I base my conclusions, but he does not notice that in this respect the Christianized Gnosis is distinctly dependent on Egypt.

And so Philo 3 also tells us that the Mother of All is Gnosis (ἐπιστήμη), the very same name that Plutarch gives to Isis.

The Mother, when thought of as without the Plērōma, is impregnated by the Word, which Basilides would have called the All-seed Potency of the Plērōma, endowed with all Powers, and sent forth as the seed of the sensible cosmos that is to be. The Mother in her higher Nature contemplates the Eternal Cosmos or Order of the Plērōma, and in her lower Nature copies its Beauties by means of the permutations and combinations of her elements and the generations and transformations of her lives or souls.

This form of cosmogenesis Reitzenstein (p. 46) regards as of a pantheistic nature, while the general narrative he holds to set forth a world-representation of a dualistic tendency. It is true, as he himself

admits, that this blend of contradictory conceptions meets us frequently in Gnostic systems of a more or less contemporary date; nevertheless he lays great stress upon this difference, and so insists upon an interpolation.

In this he is confirmed (p. 39) by the fact that whereas § 9 speaks of God the Mind being male-female, we are in the second vision face to face with “eine weibliche Allgottheit” who stands next to the Highest God.

I must, however, confess that these contradictions do not make so great an impression upon my mind as they seem to have done on the critical faculty of Professor Reitzenstein. There is no system known to me, even of the most exclusive monotheism, into which dualism does not creep somehow or other at some stage; it cannot be avoided, for it is in the nature of things.

The dualism of our text is, however, by no means so very marked, for though it is not distinctly stated in § 4, it leaves it clearly to be inferred that the Darkness comes from the Light itself, for previously there was nothing but Light; “all things” had become Light to the eye of the seer. It is the mystery of the sad-eyed Serpent of Darkness wrapping itself round the lower limbs of the Light.

It was, in my opinion, precisely for the sake of removing the thought of dualism that the seer is shown a still more intimate vision within the Light Veil, where all ideas of monotheism, dualism, tritheism, polytheism, and pantheism lose their formal distinctions in a Formless State, or, at any rate, in a State of Being where all are interblended with all. In describing it, the “tongue of flesh” has to use the familiar language of form, but every word employed has a new significance;

for even the “tongue of angels” cannot describe it, or any of the “tongues” of heaven; He alone who speaks forth the Words of the One Tongue can express it.

Whence this sublime conception of the Plērōma came, I do not know; it seems to me impossible to find a geographical origin for such things, as, indeed, it seems vain to seek a geographical origin for dualism and the rest. For the writer or writers of our tractate these ideas came from the nature of things, from the immediate experience of sight.

The form of expression, of course, may be susceptible of a geographical treatment, but as yet I am not satisfied that any clear heredity has been made out for this supposed interpolation. The Feminine Divinity, next the Highest God, is not set over against that God, but is His own Will. He is in the Plērōma Vision as much and as little male and female as in the general narrative. He transcends all opposites and contains all opposites in Himself.

What is clear, however, is that in the combination of both visions we have before us a simple and early form of the Gnosis which we meet with later in Christian over-workings, and especially in the very elaborate expositions of the Basilidian and Valentinian schools, the systems of which can, in their main elements, be paralleled and compared point by point with our treatise; but this would be too lengthy a proceeding in our present study, for it would require a volume to itself in any way adequately to treat of it. 1

THE SECOND EMANATION

9. We now return to the main narrative. Within the World-Egg, which was encircled by the Mighty Power (the Gnostic Horos), there had already been developed three Cosmic Elements (not our mixed elements)—Fire, Air, and Water-Earth. This had been effected by the descent of the Cosmic Logos into the Primal Elements of Disorder. As the Logos descended, Fire and Air ascended, and the Logos remained in Water-Earth. This was the result of the First Outpouring from the Potency of the Plērōma, the First Word uttered by Mind.

The Second Outpouring of Mind was of Mind no longer regarded as Light only, but as Light and Life, Male-Female. This emanation appeared as Enforming Mind—that is, the Fashioner or Former, Artificer or Demiurge of lives or souls; it was the ensouling of the Ordered Elements of Nature with lives, whereby these Elements were drawn together into forms.

The Great Mind, as Light and Life, reflected itself in the “pure formation” of Nature—that is to say, in Fire and Spirit (Air), Fire for Light and Spirit for Life, to further enform things.

The Mighty Power or Self-limitation of Mind, the Boundary that no mortal can pass, marks off the formative area of the whole cosmos. This area, however, was by no means only the mixed sensible world (cosmos) which we perceive with our present physical senses. On the contrary, there are within it various orders (cosmoi) of the main cosmos. For the Ordering Mind, as the Enformer or Soul-fashioner, differentiates itself into seven Ruling Forms or Spheres which “enclose” the mixed sensible cosmos; these spheres, therefore, must be of a psychic nature—that is to say,

of a pure or subtle substance; they are Forms of subtle matter endowed with reason. They constitute the Cosmic Engine of the fashioning of souls, or psychic natures, and of their perpetual transforming. Their energies and activities are those of Fate, or the ordered sequence of cause and effect, symbolized by spheres perpetually entering into themselves.

10. In all the main phases there is to be observed the idea of a downward tendency followed by an upward. The Darkness descends; it then transmutes itself and aspires above in a Cry or Yearning for Light. The Word descends; immediately the Fire and Air ascend. The Formative Mind descends; immediately the Word ascends from the mixed Water-Earth—and at-ones itself with its co-essential emanation from the Father—to a space about the Seven, and thus leaves the still down-tending elements in the Element Water-Earth deprived of its immediate presence, after giving physical matter the initial impulse to order. This physical matter our author calls “pure matter,” meaning thereby matter deprived of the immediate presence of Reason.

11. Hereupon from the impulse she has received Nature begins her physical enformation, develops her physical elements and bodies of irrational lives. Water-Earth divides into water and earth, and also air, for this air is clearly something different from the Spirit-Air that ascended; the lower air is one of the downward elements.

THE DESCENT OF MAN

12. When this had been accomplished, there followed a Third Outpouring—the descent of Man, the consummation of the whole Enformation of things, a still

more transcendent manifestation of Mind, the One Form that contains all forms, His Very Image coequal with Himself. He finally comes Himself to consummate and save the cosmos in the Form of Man—that is, to gather it to Himself and take it back into the Plērōma.

Nevertheless the Word and the Formative Mind and Man are not three different Persons; they are all co-essential with each other and one with the Father. For the Word is co-essential with the Demiurgic Mind (§ 10), and the latter is Brother of Man (§ 13), and Man is co-equal with God (§ 12).

13. And so Man, the Beloved, descends; and in his descent he is clothed with all the powers of his Brother’s creative energy, the creative energy of Life conjoined with rational Light.

Having learned the lesson of the conformations and of the limitations of the Spheres, he desires to break right through the Great Boundary itself; but to do this he must descend still further into matter. Before he can burst through upwards he must break through downwards.

14. Accordingly he breaks through the Spheres downwards, seeking his consort Nature below, and shows her his Divine Form radiant with all the energies bestowed on him by all the Powers above.

And she in her great love wound herself round the image of this Form mirrored upon her water, and the shadow of it thrown upon her earth; just as the Darkness wound itself, like a Great Serpent, round the lower parts of the Light, so does Nature coil herself round the shadow and reflection of Man. Man is above, yet is he below; man is free, yet is he bound—bound willingly in love for her who is himself.

Reitzenstein (pp. 47-49) is greatly puzzled with all

this, and seeks to distinguish several contradictory elements, presumably supposing that these elements are woven together into a literary patchwork from distinct traditions. I cannot myself follow him here with any clearness. Of course the writer or writers of our treatise did not discover new ideas or invent new terms; they used what was in their minds and the minds of their circle. It was, however, the weaving of it into a whole, not as a literary exercise, but as a setting forth in the most understandable terms with which they were acquainted of the “things seen,” that was their main interest. Those who had the “sight” would understand and appreciate their labours, those who had not would never understand, no matter what terms or what language were used.

When, then, Reitzenstein (p. 47) says that in § 11, in the bringing forth by Nature of irrational lives, there is a confusion of contradictory conceptions, he fails to see that Nature is ever the World-Soul, the spouse of Mind; though Darkness she is spouse of Light. Unaided she brings forth things irrational, a phase of that birth of Nature by herself that is incomplete.

So also in § 13, Reitzenstein detects contradictory elements, which he ascribes to two different regions of ideas. He does not, however, perceive that though in one sentence the “formations” are said to be those of the Father, and in the next those of the Brother, this is no real confusion, because the Formative Mind is the Father, enforming Himself in Himself; this self-energizing, when regarded by itself, may be spoken of as other than the Father, but is not really so.

Nor can I see that there is any real contradiction in the breaking through of the Spheres as though they were the product of an opposing Power to that of the Son. The Fate was certainly so regarded by men who

were under its sway; but our treatise is endeavouring precisely to give an insight into the state of things beyond the Fate. The burden of its teaching is that all these oppositions are really illusory; man can transcend these limitations and come into the freedom of the Sons of God. Even the most terrible and fundamental oppositions are not really so, but all are Self-limitations of God’s Will; and man is Son of God co-equal with Him.

THE FIRST MEN

16. Our treatise then describes the first appearance of man on earth, which it regards as a great mystery never before revealed, “the mystery kept hid until this day.” This I take to mean that it had hitherto never been written about, but had been kept as a great secret.

This secret was the doctrine that the first men, of which there were seven types, were hermaphrodites, and not only so, but lived in the air; their frames were of fire and spirit, and not of the earth-water elements. The Celestial Man, or type of humanity, was gradually differentiating himself from his proper nature of Light and Life, and taking on bodies of fire and air, was changing into mind (Light-fire) and soul (Life-spirit).

This presumably lasted for long periods of time, the lower animal forms gradually evolving to greater complexity as Nature strove to copy the “Form” of Man, and Man devolving gradually until there was a union, and the human subtle form could find vehicles among the highest animal shapes.

The first incarnate men appear to have been at first also hermaphrodite; and it must have been a time when everything was in a far greater state of flux than things are now.

“INCREASE AND MULTIPLY”

18. This period of pre-sexual or bi-sexual development having come to an end, the separation of the sexes took place. The commandment is given by the Word: “Increase ye in increasing and multiply in multitude” (αὐξάνεσθε ἐν αὐξήσει καὶ πληθύνεσθε ἐν πλήθει).

It is true that this is reminiscent of the oft-repeated formula in the Greek Targum of Genesis,—αὐξάνεσθε καὶ πληθύνεσθε, 1—but it is only slightly reminiscent, the main injunction being strengthened, and the rest of the logos being quite different from anything found in Genesis. As nothing else in the whole treatise can be referred to direct Hebrew influence, we must conclude that the formula was, so to speak, in the air, and has so crept into our treatise. 2

It has, however, given rise to a diatribe copied on to the margin of one MS.—B. (Par. 1220)—by a later hand, and incorporated into the text of M. (Vat. 951). It is in B. ascribed to Psellus, 3 who goes out of his way to stigmatize Hermes as a sorcerer and a plagiarist throughout of Moses; in brief, the Devil is a thief of the Truth to lead men astray. In this we learn more about the limitation of the so-called “Prince of Philosophers” 4 than of aught else.

19. This increasing and multiplying, the perpetual coupling of bodies, and the birth of new ones, is effected by the Fate, or Harmony of the Formative Spheres, the Engine of Birth, set under Forethought or Providence (πρόνοια). This Pronoia can be none else than Nature herself as the Wisdom or Knowledge of God—in other words, His Will.

LOVE

The motive power of all is Love. If this Love manifests itself as Desire for things of Matter, the Lover stays in Darkness wandering; if it becomes the Will to know Light, the Lover becomes the Knower of himself, and so eventually at-one with Good.

20. But why should love of body merit Death—that is to say, make man mortal? The disciple attempts an explanation from what he has seen. Although his answer is approved, the meaning is by no means clear.

The physical body, or body in the sense-world, is composed of the Moist Nature, which in a subsequent phase remains as Water-Earth, and in a still subsequent phase divides itself into the elements of physical earth, water, and air. The dissolution of the combination of these elements is effected by Death—that is, Darkness, the Drainer of the Water, the Typhonean Power. Water must thus here symbolize the Osirian Power of fructification and holding together. The Moist Nature then seems to be differentiated from the Darkness by the energizing of Light in its most primitive brooding. But seeing that the Light is also Life, the Darkness, which is posited as the ultimate opposite, is Death.

THE WAY OF DEATHLESSNESS

21. The Way of Deathlessness is then considered. The disciple repeats his lesson, and the Master commends

him; the Way Up is the Path of Self-knowledge.

Still the disciple cannot believe that this is for him; he cannot understand that Mind is in him, or rather is himself, in so much as Mind as Teacher seems to be without him. The play is on Mind and mind; the one gives the certitude of Immortality, the other is still bound by the illusion of Death. The disciple has not this certitude; Mind, then, is not his.

22. The Master then further explains the mystery. Gnosis must be preceded by moral purification; there must be a turning-away before the Re-turn can be accomplished. The whole nature must be changed. Yet every effort that the little man seems to make of his own striving is really the energizing of the Great Man.

23. Those, however, who yield themselves to lower desires, drive the Mind away, and their appetites are only the more strengthened by the mind.

The text of this paragraph is very corrupt, so that the exact sense of the original is not recoverable; and this makes it all the more difficult to understand what is meant by the Avenging Daimon, the Counterpart of the Mind. This difficulty is increased by § 24, where we are told that the “way of life” (τὸ ἦθος) is at death surrendered to the Daimon.

If, however, the reader will refer to the section on “The Vision of Er” (in the Miscellanea of the “Prolegomena”), which in my original MS. followed as a Digression on this passage, he will be put in contact with the Platonic view of the Daimon and “way of life”; in our treatise, however, the teaching is of a more intimate character, and must be taken in conjunction with C. H., x. (xi.) 16 and 21, where we shall comment on it at further length.

THE ASCENT OF THE SOUL

24. The subject of instruction is now the Way Above (ἄνοδος), or ascent of the soul out of the body at death.

The physical body is left to the work of change and dissolution. The life of integration and conservation ceases, and the life of disintegration begins.

The form (εἶδος) thus vanishes, apparently from the man’s consciousness; that is to say, presumably, he is no longer clothed in the form of his physical body, but is apparently in some other vehicle; the particular fixed form, or “way of life,” or “habit,” he wore on earth being handed over to the Daimon deprived of all energy, so that apparently it becomes an empty shell.

The next sentence is a great puzzle, and I can only guess at the meaning. The senses which had previously been united by the mind become separate—that is, instead of a whole they become parts (μέρη), they return to the natural animal state of sensation, and the animal part of man, or his vehicle of passion and desire, begins in its turn to disintegrate, the mind or reason (logos) being gradually separated from it, or, rather, its true nature showing forth in the man as he gradually strips off the irrational tendencies of the energies.

25. Those irrational tendencies have their sources in the Harmony of the Fate-Sphere of seven subordinate spheres or zones; and in these zones he leaves his inharmonious propensities, deprived of their energy. For the Harmony is only evil apparently; it is really the Engine of Justice and Necessity to readjust the foolish choice of the soul—that is, to purify its irrational desires, or those propensities in it that are not under the sway of right reason and philosophy. For a better understanding of the characteristics ascribed to

the “seven spheres,” we must “run off” into another Digression, which the reader will find relegated to ch. xii. of the “Prolegomena,” under the title “Concerning the Seven Zones and their Characteristics.” This, then, having been taken as a direct commentary on § 25, we continue with the text of our treatise.

THE EIGHTH SPHERE

26. The soul of the initiated strips itself naked of the “garment of shame,” the selfish energizings, and stands “clothed in its own power.” This refers probably to the stripping off of the “carapace of selfhood,” the garments woven by its vices, and the putting on of the “wedding garment” of its virtues.

This state of existence is called the Eighth, 1 a state of comparative “sameness” as transcending the zones of “difference.” It is the Ogdoad of the Gnostics, the Jerusalem Above, the plane of the Ego in its own form, the natural state of “those-that-are.”

In another sense it may perhaps mean that the man, after passing through the phases of the lower mind, now enters within into the region of the pure mind, the Higher Ego, and there is at-oned with all the experiences of his past lives that are worthy of immortality, his virtuous energizings,—the “those-that-are,” that perhaps constitute the “crown of mighty lives” sung of by the Pythian Oracle when celebrating the death of Plotinus. 2

In this state the man, who has freed himself from the necessity of reincarnation, hears the Song of the Powers above the Ogdoad—that is to say, in Gnostic terms, the

[paragraph continues] Hymn of the Æons of the Plērōma. Such a man would have reached the consummation of his earthly pilgrimage, and be ready to pass on into the Christ-state, or, at any rate, the state of super-man. He would be the Victor who had won the right of investiture with the Robe of Glory, and the dignity of the crowning with the Kingship of the Heavens. This Final Initiation is most beautifully set forth in the opening pages of the Pistis Sophia, and especially in the Song of the Powers (pp. 17 ff.) beginning with the words: “Come unto us, for we are thy fellow-members. We are all one with thee.”

The consummation of the mystery is that the alter-egos of the Individual Ego, or the sum total of purified personalities which in that state constitute its membership, or taxis, of their own selves surrender themselves to a fullness of union or a transcendency of separation, in which they become the powers or energies of a New Man, the true Son of Man; they pass into a state where they each blend with all, and yet lose nothing of themselves, but rather find in this new union the consummation of all their powers. In this state of Sonship of the Divine they are no longer limited by bodies, nor even by partial souls or individual minds; but, becoming Powers, they are not only in God, but one with the Divine Will—nay, in final consummation, God Himself.

27. Of such a nature was the Shepherd; He, too, was the Christ of God, the Son of the Father, who could take all forms to carry out the Divine Will. When the form,—even though that form might for the disciple take on the appearance of the cosmos itself, as he conceived it,—had served its purpose, the Shepherd once more “mingled with the Powers.”

THE THREE “BODIES” OF THE BUDDHA

The Shepherd was a Christ for those who prefer the name of Christian Tradition, a Buddha for those who are more familiar with Eastern terms. And that this is so may be clearly seen by considering the so-called “three bodies” (trikāyam) of a or the Buddha, for Buddhahood is a state beyond individuality in the separated sense in which we understand the term.

In the Chinese Version of Ashvaghosha’s now lost Sanskrit treatise, Mahāyāna-shraddhotpāda-shāstra, 1 we read:

“It is characteristic of all the Buddhas that they consider all sentient beings as their own self, and do not cling to their individual forms. How is this? Because they know truthfully that all sentient beings as well as their own self come from one and the same Suchness, and no distinction can be established among them.”

“All Tathāgatas are the Dharinakāya 2 itself, are the highest truth (paramārthasatya) itself, and have nothing to do with conditionality (samvṛittisatya) and compulsory actions; whereas the seeing, hearing, etc., of the sentient being diversify the Activity 3 of Tathāgatas.

“Now this Activity has a twofold aspect.

“The first depends on the phenomena-particularizing consciousness by means of which the Activity is conceived by the minds of all who fall short of the state of a Bodhisattva in their various degrees. This aspect is called the Body of Transformation (Nirmānakāya).

“But as the beings of this class do not know that the

[paragraph continues] Body of Transformation is merely the shadow [or reflection] of their own evolving consciousness, they imagine it comes from some external sources, and so they give it a corporeal limitation. But the Body of Transformation [or what amounts to the same thing, the Dharmakāya] has nothing to do with Limitation or measurement.”

That is to say, a Buddha can only communicate with such minds by means of a form, that form being really that of their own most highly evolved consciousness. There are, however, others who have the consciousness of the “formless” state, but have not yet reached the Nirvāṇic Consciousness. These in this system are called Bodhisattvas.

“The second aspect [of the Dharmakāya] depends on the activity-consciousness (karmavijñāna), by means of which the Activity is conceived by the minds of the Bodhisattvas while passing from their first aspiration (chittotpāda) stage up to the height of Bodhisattva-hood. This is called the Body of Bliss (Sambhogakāya)” (pp. 100, 101).

We have used the term “formless state” in the penultimate paragraph to signify the states of consciousness in “worlds” called Arūpa; but these are only “formless” for consciousness which has not reached the Bodhisattva level—presumably the Buddhic plane of Neo-theosophical nomenclature.

For “this Body has infinite forms. The form has infinite attributes. The Attribute has infinite excellencies. And the accompanying reward of Bodhisattvas—that is, the region where they are predestined to be born—also has infinite merits and ornamentations. Manifesting itself everywhere, the Body of Bliss is infinite, boundless, limitless, unintermittent, directly coming forth from the Mind” (p. 101).

The older Chinese Version says: “It is boundless,

cannot be exhausted, is free from the signs of limitation. Manifesting itself wherever it should manifest itself, it always exists by itself and is never destroyed” (p. 101, n. 2).

In other words, one who has reached the Nirvāṇic Consciousness—that is to say, a Master—can teach or be active on “planes” that are as yet unmanifest to us ordinary folk; these “planes,” however, even when the disciple is conscious of them, are conditioned by the self-limitation of his own imperfection. The Vehicles of this Activity are called Dharmakāya, Sambhogakāya and Nirmānakāya; and the limitation of their Activity is determined on the side of the disciple by the degree of his ability to function consciously in those states which are known in Neo-theosophical nomenclature respectively as those of Âtman, Buddhi and Higher Manas, or, in more general terms, those of the divine, spiritual and human aspects of the self.

In the first degree of conscious discipleship, then, the Master communicates with His disciples and teaches them by means of the Nirmānakāya; that is to say, He quickens the highest form of consciousness or conception of masterhood they have so far attained to—taking the form of their greatest love, perhaps, as they have known Him in the flesh, or as He has been told of as existing in the flesh, but not His own-form, which would transcend their consciousness.

The next stage is when the disciple learns to transcend his own “egoity,” in the ordinary sense of the word; this does not mean to say that his true individuality is destroyed, but instead of being tied down to one ego-vehicle, he has gained the power of manifesting himself wherever and however he will, at any moment of time; in brief, the power of self-generation on the plane of egoity, in that he has reached a higher

state which is free from the limitations of a single line of egoity.

He now begins to realise in the very nature of his being that the “Self is in all and all in the Self.” Such a disciple, or Bodhisattva, is taught by the Master in this state of being, and the Kāya which he supplies for the energizing of his beloved Father is perfectly unintelligible to us, and can only be described as an expanded consciousness of utmost sympathy and compassion, which not only strives to blend with the Life of all beings, but also with the One Being in the world for him, the Beloved. Such a sensing of the Master’s Presence is called the Sambhogakāya of the Master, His Body of Bliss.

There is a still higher Perfection, the Dharmakāya, or Own-Nature of Masterhood. But how should the dim mind of one who is Without imagine the condition of One who is not only Within, but who combines both the Without and the Within in the Transcendent Unity of the Perfect Fullness?

THE PREACHING OF THE GNOSIS

27. With the exposition of the Consummation of the Teaching and the return to earth of the consciousness of the Seer, our treatise breaks off into a graphic instruction of how the Gnosis is to be utilized. The Wisdom is no man’s property; he who receives it holds it in trust for the benefit of the world-folk.

I am, however, inclined to believe that §§ 27 to 29 are a later interpolation, and that the treatise originally ran straight on after the conclusion of the Shepherd’s Instruction with the words: “But I recorded in my heart the Shepherd’s benefaction” (§ 30).

Until the end of § 26 we have moved in the

atmosphere of an inner intimate personal instruction, set forth in a form evidently intended only for the few; indeed, as we find in other treatises emphatic injunctions to keep the teaching secret, we cannot but conclude that the oldest and most authoritative document of the school was guarded with the same secrecy. The general impression created by the instruction is not only that it itself is the consummation and reward of a strict and stern probation, and not a sermon to be preached on the house-tops, but also that those who followed that way were not propagandists, but rather members of a select philosophic community.

With § 27, however, all is changed; we are introduced to the picture of a man burning with enthusiasm to communicate, if not the direct teaching itself, at any rate the knowledge of its existence and saving power to all without distinction. In a few graphic sentences the history of the fortunes of this propagandist endeavour is sketched. An appeal is made of the most uncompromising nature; it is a clarion call to repentance, and we seem to be moving in an atmosphere that is Hebrew rather than Greek, prophetical rather than philosophical.

It would seem almost that this propagandist phase had been forced upon the community rather than that it was natural to it; something seems to have occurred which obliged it to enter the arena of general life and proclaim its existence publicly. What this compulsion was we have no means of determining with any exactitude, for the historical indications are very obscure. If we were to conjecture that it was the vigorous preaching of nascent Christianity which wrought this change, we should, I think, be taking part for whole, for prior to Christianity there was the most energetic propaganda made by the Jews, the

intensity of which may be estimated by the phrase “Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte,” and the nature of which may be most clearly seen in the propaganda of the Sibylline writers, with whose diction the appeals to the “earth-born folk” in our text may be aptly compared, while the prayer at sunset may be paralleled with the prayers of the Essenes and Therapeuts.

On the other hand, the tradition of the Gnosis and Saving Faith preached by our Pœmandrists is distinctly not Hebrew; it is a philosophizing of other materials—materials which, as we have seen, were also partly used by Jewish and Christian mystics, and adapted to their own special traditions.

We thus see that at the time when Christianity came to birth there were many rival traditions contending for general recognition, all of them offering instruction in the Gnosis and hopes of Salvation, and I myself believe that all of them were partial manifestations of the impartial Quickening of the Spiritual Life which was at that time more abundantly poured forth than ever before or after in the Western world.

With § 30, if my conjecture of an interpolation is correct, the original treatise is continued, and we are told the nature of the awakening of the spiritual consciousness which has come to the new-born disciple.

Henceforth all things are new for him, they all have new meanings. He has become a man, instead of a “procession of fate”; he has reached the “Plain of Truth.” In Christian terms the Christ has been born in his heart consciously.

A HYMN OF PRAISE AND PRAYER FOR THE GNOSIS

31. The treatise is concluded with a most noble hymn, in which the further growth and effort of the

man in spirit is set forth. Henceforth his effort will be to become like unto the Father Himself, to pass from Sonship into the Perfection of perfection, Identity or At-one-ment with the Father.

The sentence, “That I may give the Light to those in ignorance of the Race, my Brethren and Thy Sons,” seems to me to be either an interpolation, showing the same tendency as that of the propagandist section, or an indication that the whole hymn was added at the same time as the propagandist paragraphs, for the treatise proper seems to end naturally and consistently in the Hellenistic form of the tradition with the words, “I reached the Plain of Truth.” 1

THE NAME “POIMANDRES”

Many have already remarked that the name “Poimandres” is formed irregularly in Greek, and this has led to an interesting speculation by Granger, who writes:

“While, however, the name Poimandres does not answer to any Greek original, it is a close transliteration of a Coptic phrase. In the dialect of Upper Egypt pemenetre means ‘the witness.’ That the Coptic article [pe] should be treated as part of the name itself is not unusual; compare the name Pior. 2 Such a title corresponds very closely in style with the titles of other works of this same period—for example, the True Word of Celsus, or the Perfect Word, which is an alternative title of the Asclepius. The term Poemandres, therefore, on this supposition, contains an allusion to

the widely spread legend of Hermes as witness, 1 a legend which is verified for us from several sources. But the writer has adapted the details to his purpose. Hermes is not himself the witness, but the herald of the witness.” 2

Granger then propounds the very strange theory, contradicted by all the phenomena and opposed to every authority, that the Coptic Gnostic works of the Askew and Bruce Codices were originally composed in Coptic with the adoption of Greek technical terms, whereas they are manifestly translations from the Greek. He, however, continues:

“There seems no adequate reason why such works may not have been composed in Coptic. The Egyptian Gnostic writings of the third century exhibit the same qualities of style as the Coptic biographies and apocalypses of the fourth and following centuries. And so I am prepared to believe that the Poemandres may have been first composed in Coptic. Or shall we say that the work was current from the first in both languages?” 3

We should say that the last guess is most highly improbable, and only denotes the indecision of the writer. The original “Pœmandres” may very well have been composed not in Coptic but in Demotic; but the reasons given by Granger, as based on the phenomena of the Gnostic Coptic writings, are not to be seriously considered. Nevertheless, the name “Poimandres” may be a Greek transliteration of an Egyptian name, though we hardly think that “The Witness”

will suit the theme. In any case “Man-Shepherd” was certainly the idea conveyed to the Non-Egyptian by the name, however philologically unsound its form may be in Greek.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD

It has been no part of our task to attempt to trace the Hermes-idea along the line of pure Greek descent, for this would have led us too far from our immediate subject. There is, however, one element of that tradition which is of great interest, and to which we may draw the attention of the reader in passing. The beautiful idea of the Christ as the “Good Shepherd” is familiar to every Christian child. Why the Christ is the Shepherd of all men is shown us by this first of our marvellous treatises. In it we have the universal doctrine apart from any historical dogma, the eternal truth of an ever-recurring fact, and not the exaggeration of one instance of it.

The representation of Christ as the Good Shepherd was one of the earliest efforts of Christian art; but the prototype was far earlier than Christianity—in fact, it was exceedingly archaic. Statues of Hermes Kriophoros, or Hermes with a ram or lamb standing beside him, or in his arms, or on his shoulder, were one of the most favourite subjects for the chisel in Greece. We have specimens dating to the archaic period of Greek art. 1 Hermes in these archaic statues has a pointed cap, and not the winged head-dress and sandals of later art. This type in all probability goes back to Chaldæan symbolic art, to the bearers of the twelve “signs of the zodiac,” the “sacred animals.” These were, in one human correspondence, the twelve

septs or classes of priests. Here we see that the Greek tradition itself was not pure Āryan even in its so-called archaic period. Chaldæa had given of her wisdom to post-diluvian Greece, even as she had perchance been in relation with Greece before the “flood.” Here, then, we have another element in the Hermes-idea. In fact, nowhere do we find a pure line of tradition; in every religion there are blendings and have been blendings. There was unconscious syncretism (and conscious also) long before the days of Alexandria, for unconscious syncretism is as old as race-blendings. Even as all men are kin, so are popular cults related; and even as the religion of nobler souls is of one paternity, so are the theosophies of all religions from one source.

One of the greatest secrets of the innermost initiated circles was the grand fact that all the great religions had their roots in one mother soil. And it was the spreading of the consciousness of this stupendous truth which subsequently—after the initial period of scepticism of the Alexandrian schools—gave rise to the many conscious attempts to synthesise the various phases of religion, and make “symphonies” of apparently contradictory philosophical tenets. Modern research, which is essentially critical and analytical, and rarely synthetical, classifies all these attempts under the term “syncretism,” a word which it invariably uses in a depreciatory sense, as characterising the blending of absolutely incompatible elements in the most uncritical fashion. But when the pendulum swings once more towards the side of synthesis, as it must do in the coming years—for we are but repeating to-day in greater detail what happened in the early centuries—then scholarship will once more recognise the unity of religion under the diversity of creeds and return to the old doctrine of the mysteries.

In connection with the “Good Shepherd” glyph, it will be useful to quote from Granger’s instructive exposition on the subject, 1 where he writes:

“Since the identification of Jesus with Hermes took place in circles which formed part of the Christian community, 2 we shall not be surprised to find that one of the leading types of Christian art, the Good Shepherd, was immediately adopted from a current representation of the Greek Hermes. 3 As we see from Hippolytus (Refut., v. 7), the Gnostics were especially interested in Hermes as Hermes Logius, a type which was increasingly frequent in later Greek art. And this epithet was connected by them with the conception of Jesus as the Logos. Now another type of Hermes, the Kriophoros, seemed to bring together Jesus as the Logos and Jesus as the Good Shepherd. These representations of Jesus begin in the second century; and so they correspond in order of time with the appearance of the Gospel according to the Egyptians, and of those Gnostic compositions which largely depend upon it. 4

“Another fact leads us to think that the figure of

the Good Shepherd had its roots in a previous tradition. ‘It is probable that there were no statues before the age of Constantine, except the Good Shepherd.’ 1 We must therefore add Hermes to the list of pagan types which were taken over for its own purpose by the rising Christian art.

“Moreover, we are enabled to advance one step further the long-standing controversy as to the portraits of Jesus. Since the figure of the Good Shepherd is borrowed from Greek sculpture, it cannot be used as evidence for the earliest conceptions about the appearance of Jesus. And so the arguments of Farrar and others fall to the ground, in so far as they take the presence of this type to show that there was no genuine tradition of Christ’s appearance. 2

“We are now in a position to throw a little further light upon the famous inscription of Abercius. The inscription speaks of a Shepherd—‘Who feedeth on the plains His flock of sheep, and hath great eyes that gaze forth every way. For He did teach me [how to understand and] scriptures worthy to believe.’ 3

“The Shepherd, whose great eyes look in every direction, is no other than Hermes treated as a symbol of Christ. And so some of the arguments which may be directed against the Christian character of this inscription, and to which Harnack 4 attaches an exaggerated weight, are turned aside.”

With all of this may be compared what we have

already written in the Prolegomena on “The Popular Symbolic Representation of the Shepherd” in the chapter on “‘Hermas’ and ‘Hermes.’”

Compare also the Hymn to Attis in the Naassene tradition, where he is invoked “as Pan, as Bacchus, as Shepherd of bright stars.” This is the macrocosmic side of the microcosmic mystery.

We should also not forget the interesting grouping on a Christian lamp 1 and gem, 2 which goes back very probably to the third century. 3 It represents the Christ as the Good Shepherd, after the Hermes type, with a lamb on his shoulder. Above his head are the Seven “Planets,” the Lords of the Fate, and in addition the Sun and Moon on either side, as is frequently the case in Mithraic representations. Round his feet seven lambs 4 crowd, symbolical of the “seven peoples,” one under each “planet.” Moreover, on the right is Noah’s dove and ark, and Jonah being swallowed by the whale, while on the left is Jonah again, vomited on to the land and peacefully resting beneath the shade of the miraculous gourd-tree.

This seems to me to be a symbol of the mysteries, a glyph of rebirth. The lambs are the purified lower nature of the man, the purest essence of which is exalted to the head of the Great Man. This purified “little man” is swallowed by the Cosmic Fish, the Great Mother, the Womb of the Almighty, and the man is born again to rest under his own tree in the Paradise of the Further Shore.

It is also of interest to note that the Hermetic colonies already planted in Mesopotamia, in the earliest

[paragraph continues] Islāmic times of which the Arabian writers tell us, called their head the “Shepherd.” 1

From all of which we conclude that the Good Shepherd was one of the leading ideas of Hellenistic theology.

Footnotes

24:1 From Epiphanius, Hæres., xxvi. 3; see note to the first Hermes-Prayer (i. 11).

24:2 Symbolical of a high state of consciousness, the Mount of Perfection.

24:3 Cf. the Oxyrhynchus logion 5: “Jesus saith: Wherever there are [two], they are not without God, and wherever there is one alone, I say, I am with him.”

25:1 See note to the fifth Hermes-Prayer (v. 2).

26:1 Cf. F. F. F., 340, 341.

27:1 Hær., I. xxx. (Stieren, i. 363 ff.).

27:2 Hær., Fabb., i. 14. See F. F. F., pp. 188 ff.

27:3 “The Mind to Hermes,” C. H., xi. (xii.) 6, 7.

28:1 That is, the condition “seeing.”

29:1 Not Hōrus.

30:1 For references, see R. 39, n. 1; also 44.

30:2 Cf. my note on Plut., De Is. et Os., liv. 6, in the Prolegg.

30:3 De Ebriet., § 30.

32:1 The reader, however, may be referred to the chapters on “The Basilidian Gnosis,” “The Valentinian Movement,” “Some Outlines of Æonology,” and “The Sophia-Mythus,” in F. F. F., pp. 253-357.

38:1 Cf. Gen. i. 22 and 28, viii. 17, ix. 7, and xxxv. 11 (in the singular).

38:2 See, however, Frag. XX., and R. 126, n. 1. Cf. the same formula in C. H., iii. (iv.) 3 (P. 32, 11), and R. 116, n. 2.

38:3 And is printed in Boissonade’s (V. C.) edition of Michael Psellus, De Operatione Dæmonum (Nürnberg, 1838), pp. 153, 154.

38:4 If, indeed, the Psellus of our scholion is the Younger Psellus (eleventh century); the De Op. Dæm., however, is ascribed by many to the Elder Psellus (ninth century). See, however, the section “The Original MS. of our Corpus” in ch. i. of the “Prolegomena.”

42:1 Cf. Com. on C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 14.

42:2 Cf. Porphyry, Plotini Vita, xxii., ed. Creuzer (Oxford, 1835); also Theosoph. Rev. (July 1898), p. 403.

44:1 Ashvaghosha’s Discourse on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna. Translated for the first time from the Chinese Version by Teitaro Suzuki (Chicago, 1900). Mahāyāna means the “Great Vehicle” of Buddhism.

44:2 Lit. Body of the Law.

44:3 The italics are mine throughout.

50:1 It is to be noticed that the Hymn is a Song of Holiness. “Holy art thou” is nine times repeated—most probably intentionally. This was noticed long ago by Casaubon. See R. 58, n. 3.

50:2 Palladius, Hist. Laus., 89.

51:1 G. has just referred to the story of Hermes being witness for Horus when indicted on a charge of bastardy by Typhon, as related in Plutarch.

51:2 Granger (F.), “The Poemandres of Hermes Trismegistus,” J. Th. Stud., vol. v., no. 191, p. 400.

51:3 Ibid., p. 401.

52:1 See Reseller’s Lexikon, art. “Hermes.” “Hermes in der Kunst”—“Periode des Archaïsmus.”

54:1 Op. cit., pp. 408 ff.

54:2 G. seems here to be referring to the Naassene Document, but without any suspicion apparently of its composite character.

54:3 See Sittl, Klassische Kunstarchäologie, 777, 809, 819.

54:4 G. here again refers apparently to the Naassene Documents, which, however, did not depend on the Gospel according to the Egyptians, as we have shown; nor have we any sure ground for dating this widespread mystic gospel of Egypt as being of the second century rather than of the first. G. (p. 411) suggests that the scene of the Gospel of the Egyptians was on top of the Mount of Olives after the resurrection, which may very well be the case, and that the title of C. H., xiii. (xiv.), “The Secret Sermon on the Mountain,” has reference to this gospel, which is by no means probable, for our sermon keeps entirely within its own tradition in its setting.

55:1 Lowrie, Christian Art and Archæology, p. 290.

55:2 Taken in connection with the above quotation from Lowrie, we should say that it disposes of the whole contention. And for further corroboration of this view we would refer the reader to the Acts of John.

55:3 G. gives the Greek text only, omitting the first line, which runs: “The disciple of the Pure Shepherd.” Cf. R. 115.

55:4 Cf. Class. Rev., ix. 297.

56:1 Garucci, Storia della Arte christiana, vi. tav. 474; Perret, Catacombes de Rome, tab. 17, no. 5.

56:2 Perret, ibid., tab. 16, no. 80

56:3 R. 113.

56:4 The gem has only six.

57:1 Cf. Chwolsohn (D.), Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, ii. 628. Cf. R. 166 ff.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

CORPUS HERMETICUM (II.)

THE GENERAL SERMON

(The title only is preserved in our Corpus, the text having disappeared with the loss of a quire or quires before the parent copy came into the hands of Psellus.)

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Gnosticism and Hermetica

CORPUS HERMETICUM II. (III.)

TO ASCLEPIUS

(Text: P. 19-30; Pat. 18b-20.)

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1. Hermes. 1 All that is moved, Asclepius, is it not moved in something and by something?

Asclepius. Assuredly.

Her. And must not that in which it’s moved be greater than the moved?

Asc. It must.

Her. Mover, again, has greater power than moved?

Asc. It has, of course.

Her. The nature, furthermore, of that in which it’s moved must be quite other from the nature of the moved?

Asc. It must completely.

2. Her. Is not, again, this cosmos vast, [so vast] that than it there exists no body greater?

Asc. Assuredly.

Her. And massive too, for it is crammed with multitudes of other mighty frames, nay rather all the other bodies that there are?

Asc. It is.

Her. And yet the cosmos is a body?

Asc. It is a body.

Her. And one that’s moved?

3. Asc. Assuredly.

Her. Of what size, then, must be the space in which it’s moved; and of what kind [must be] the nature [of that space]? Must it not be far vaster [than the cosmos], in order that it may be able to find room for its continued course, so that the moved may not be cramped for want of room and lose its motion?

Asc. Something, Thrice-greatest one, it needs must be, immensely vast.

4. Her. And of what nature? Must it not be, Asclepius, of just the contrary? And is not contrary to body bodiless?

Asc. Agreed.

Her. Space, then, is bodiless. But bodiless must either be some godlike thing or God [Himself]. And by “some godlike thing” I mean no more the generable but the ingenerable. 1

5. If, then, space be some godlike thing, it is substantial 1; but if ’tis God [Himself], it transcends substance. But it is to be thought of otherwise [than God], and in this way.

God is first “thinkable” 2 for us, not for Himself, for that the thing that’s thought doth fall beneath the thinker’s sense. God then can not be “thinkable” unto Himself, in that He’s thought of by Himself as being nothing else than what He thinks. But He is “something else” for us, and so He’s thought of by us.

6. If space is, therefore, to be thought, [it should] not, [then, be thought as] God, but space. If God is also to be thought, [He should] not [be conceived] as space, but energy that can contain [all space].

Further, 3 all that is moved is moved not in the moved but in the stable. And that which moves [another] is of course stationary, for ’tis impossible that it should move with it.

Asc. How is it, then, that things down here, Thrice-greatest one, are moved with those that are [already] moved? For thou hast said 4 the errant spheres were moved by the inerrant one.

Her. This is not, O Asclepius, a moving with, but one against; they are not moved with

one another, but one against the other. It is this contrariety which turneth the resistance of their motion into rest. For that resistance is the rest of motion.

7. Hence, too, the errant spheres, being moved contrarily to the inerrant one, are moved by one another by mutual contrariety, [and also] by the stable one through contrariety itself. And this can otherwise not be.

The Bears 1 up there, which neither set nor rise, think’st thou they rest or move?

Asc. They move, Thrice-greatest one.

Her. And what their motion, my Asclepius?

Asc. Motion that turns for ever round the same.

Her. But revolution—motion round same—is fixed by rest. For “round-the-same” doth stop “beyond-same.” “Beyond-same” then, being stopped, if it be steadied in “round-same”—the contrary stands firm, being rendered ever stable by its contrariety.

8. Of this I’ll give thee here on earth an instance, which the eye can see. Regard the animals down here,—a man, for instance, swimming! The water moves, yet the resistance of his hands and feet give him stability, so that he is not borne along with it, nor sunk thereby.

Asc. Thou hast, Thrice-greatest one, adduced a most clear instance.

Her. All motion, then, is caused in station and by station.

The motion, therefore, of the cosmos (and of every other hylic animal 1) will not be caused by things exterior to the cosmos, but by things interior [outward] to the exterior—such [things] as soul, or spirit, or some such other thing incorporal.

’Tis not its body that doth move the living thing in it; nay, not even the whole [body of the universe a lesser] body e’en though there be no life in it. 2

9. Asc. What meanest thou by this, Thrice-greatest one? Is it not bodies, then, that move the stock and stone and all the other things inanimate?

Her. By no means, O Asclepius. The something-in-the-body, the that-which-moves the thing inanimate, this surely’s not a body, for that it moves the two of them—both body of the lifter and the lifted? So that a thing that’s lifeless will not move a lifeless thing. That which doth move [another thing] is animate, in that it is the mover.

Thou seest, then, how heavy laden is the soul,

for it alone doth lift two bodies. That things, moreover, moved are moved in something as well as moved by something is clear.

10. Asc. Yea, 1 O Thrice-greatest one, things moved must needs be moved in something void. 2

Her. Thou sayest well, O [my] Asclepius! 3 For naught of things that are is void. Alone the “is-not” ’s void [and] stranger to subsistence. For that which is subsistent can never change to void. 4

Asc. Are there, then, O Thrice-greatest one, no such things as an empty cask, for instance, and an empty jar, a cup and vat, and other things like unto them?

Her. Alack, Asclepius, for thy far-wandering from the truth! Think’st thou that things most full and most replete are void?

11. Asc. How meanest thou, Thrice-greatest one?

Her. Is not air body?

Asc. It is.

Her. And doth this body not pervade all things, and so, pervading, fill them? And “body”; doth body not consist from blending of the “four”? Full, then, of air are all thou callest void; and if of air, then of the “four.” 1

Further, of this the converse follows, that all thou callest full are void—of air; for that they have their space filled out with other bodies, and, therefore, are not able to receive the air therein. These, then, which thou dost say are void, they should be hollow named, not void; for they not only are, but they are full of air and spirit.

12. Asc. Thy argument (logos), Thrice-greatest one, is not to be gainsaid; air is a body. Further, it is this body which doth pervade all things, and so, pervading, fill them. What are we, then, to call that space in which the all doth move?

Her. The Bodiless, Asclepius.

Asc. What, then, is Bodiless?

Her. ’Tis Mind and Reason (Logos), whole out of whole, all self-embracing, free from all body, from all error free, unsensible to body and untouchable, self stayed in self, containing all, preserving those that are, whose rays, to use a

likeness, are Good, Truth, Light beyond light, the Archetype of soul.

Asc. What, then, is God?

13. Her. Not any one of these is He; for He it is that causeth them to be, both all and each and every thing of all that are. Nor hath He left a thing beside that is-not; but they are all from things-that-are and not from things-that-are-not. For that the things-that-are-not have naturally no power of being anything, but rather have the nature of the inability-to-be. And, conversely, the things-that-are have not the nature of some time not-being.

14. Asc. What say’st thou ever, then, God is?

Her. God, therefore, is not Mind, but Cause that the Mind is; God is not Spirit, but Cause that Spirit is; God is not Light, but Cause that the Light is. Hence should one honour God with these two names [the Good and Father]—names which pertain to Him alone and no one else.

For no one of the other so-called gods, no one of men, or daimones, can be in any measure Good, but God alone; and He is Good alone and nothing else. The rest of things are separable all from the Good’s nature; for [all the rest] are soul and body, which have no space that can contain 1 the Good.

15. For that as mighty is the Greatness of the Good as is the Being of all things that are—both bodies and things bodiless, things sensible and intelligible things. Call not thou, therefore, aught else Good, for thou would’st impious be; nor anything at all at any time call God but Good alone, for so thou would’st again be impious.

16. Though, then, the Good is spoken of by all, it is not understood by all, what thing it is. Not only, then, is God not understood by all, but both unto the gods and some of men they out of ignorance do give the name of Good, though they can never either be or become Good. For they are very different from God, while Good can never be distinguished from Him, for that God is the same as Good.

The rest of the immortal ones are natheless honoured with the name of God, and spoken of as gods; but God is Good not out of courtesy but out of nature. For that God’s nature and the Good is one; one is the kind of both, from which all other kinds [proceed].

The Good is He who gives all things and naught receives. 1 God, then, doth give all things and receive naught. God, then, is Good, and Good is God.

17. The other name of God is Father, again

because He is the that-which-maketh all. The part of father is to make.

Wherefore child-making is a very great and a most pious thing in life for them who think aright, and to leave life on earth without a child a very great misfortune and impiety; and he who hath no child is punished by the daimons after death.

And this the punishment: that that man’s soul who hath no child, shall be condemned unto a body with neither man’s nor woman’s nature, a thing accurst beneath the sun.

Wherefore, Asclepius, let not your sympathies be with the man who hath no child, but rather pity his mishap, knowing what punishment abides for him.

Let all that has been said, then, be to thee, Asclepius, an introduction to the gnosis of the nature of all things.

Footnotes

59:1 From here till the end of § 4 is quoted by Stobæus, Phys., xviii. 2; G. pp. 147-149; W. 157, 6 ff.

60:1 That is, beyond genesis, the universe of becoming, or the sensible universe.

61:1 οὐσιωδές.

61:2 Or intelligible.

61:3 From here till the end of § 9 (exclusive of the last sentence) is quoted by Stobæus, Phys., xix. 2; G. pp. 154-157; W. 163, 14 ff.

61:4 Sc. in some previous sermon.

62:1 Sc. Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.

63:1 That is, living material organism.

63:2 That is, in the lesser body.

64:1 For a criticism of Parthey’s text of the following three paragraphs, see R., pp. 209, 300. Parthey had uncritically conflated the text of our Corpus and the readings of Stobæus, in ignorance that he had before him two different recensions of the same text. I follow Reitzenstein.

64:2 Cf. P. S. A., xxxiii. 1.

64:3 From here to the end of § 12 is quoted by Stobæus, Phys., xviii. 3; G. pp. 149-150; W. 158, 13 ff.

64:4 The variant in Stobæus reads: “No single thing of things that are is void by reason of the [very nature of] subsistence. The ‘is’ could not be ‘is’ were it not full of subsistence [itself].” The rest of the variants need not be noted in translation.

65:1 The physical elements—earth, air, water and fire—were supposed to be severally combinations of the Primal Elements, Earth, Air, Water and Fire, one Element dominating in each. Thus our air would consist of a proportion of all four Great Elements, but would have Air predominant in it; and so for the rest.

66:1 In the original there is a word-play—χωριστά (separable) and χωρῆσαι (contain)—which is impossible to reproduce in translation.

67:1 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 3: ’Tis “He alone who taketh naught.”

Gnosticism and Hermetica

COMMENTARY

“AN INTRODUCTION TO THE GNOSIS OF THE NATURE OF ALL THINGS”

This treatise has no precise title, for, as we have already seen in treating of the make-up of the Corpus, the traditional title, “Of Hermes to Tat, the General Sermon,” found in all the MSS., cannot apply to our

tractate, which is addressed to Asclepius, and from which Stobæus quotes under the general title, “Of Hermes, from the [Sermons] to Asclepius.”

The supposition, however, that Sermon (II.) has dropped out from the parent copy of our Corpus, owing to the loss of one or more quires or quaternions, explains those phenomena so admirably, that it has only to be brought forward, as it has been by Reitzenstein, to carry conviction.

It is a curious fact, however, that Stobæus starts his quotations from this treatise precisely with the same words with which our text begins; nevertheless these words plunge us so immediately into a secondary subject, that Reitzenstein thinks there may have been a more general introduction which Johannes may very well have omitted.

That, however, the lost pages of our Corpus should have contained such an introduction, broken at precisely the very same point to a word, would seem to be a coincidence the reverse of probable; nevertheless the treatise itself purports to be a very formal one, for we learn from the concluding words (§ 17) that it was intended to be “An Introduction to the Gnosis (προγνωσία) of the Nature of All Things.”

We are, therefore, driven to conclude that, in spite of a most improbable coincidence, the beginning may have been lost, and that we have therefore to regret the loss not only of the whole of the “General Sermon” to Tat, but also of the introduction to the “Introduction to the Gnosis” addressed to Asclepius, and therewith, in all probability, some precious indications of how “Tat” and “Asclepius” are to be precisely defined.

Parthey’s conflated title (p. 19) from the MSS., and Stobæus, “Of Hermes the Thrice-greatest, the General Sermon to Asclepius,” must therefore be definitely

abandoned, and, in lieu of the lost general title, we must be content with the simple heading, “To Asclepius.”

SPACE IS A PLENUM

The subject is that of the Fullness of Being or the Plenum of things. Space is a Plenum,—the fundamental concept of modern scientific speculation.

Asclepius, however, must guard himself against the confusion of Space with God; for God is not Space, but Cause thereof,—the True Transcendency of “that which can contain all things” (§ 6).

“In Him we move.” “All that is moved is moved in what is stable,” or “in Him who stands” (ἐν ἑστῶτι); where it is to be noticed that the term, “He who stands,” is found in Philo, and is made much of in Gnostic tradition, especially in the so-called Simonian Gnosis, for in The Great Announcement, from which Hippolytus has preserved some passages, the Logos is called “He who stands” or “He who has stood, stands and will stand.” 1 This is the aspect of the Reason of things that holds and compacts all together, the Stock or Pillar of Immobility, the opposite aspect being that of the Separator or Divider; the two together forming the Cross of Manifestation, the resolution of the Sphere of Sameness.

The World-Soul is in perpetual motion; this perpetual motion is ordered and reduced to a cosmos and harmony of motion by the introduction into it, by means of the Reason, of the root-forms of motion (mentioned in the Timæus and elsewhere);—up, down; right, left; front, back; in, out; round,—and no-motion.

All bodies are essentially inert; it is the soul that moves them, either immediately or mediately (§ 9).

What the precise meaning of § 10 may be I cannot say; the tradition of the original text was variable, showing that the copyists had difficulty with it. As, however, the doctrine throughout is that of a Plenum (as, indeed, it is elsewhere in the Trismegistic writings), I can only suppose that the instructor of “Asclepius” was endeavouring to clinch his point by arguing that the only Void was the “is-not” or non-being; now as nonbeing cannot possibly “exist,” there can be no such thing as Void.

THE SPOUSE OF DEITY

That, then, in which “the All doth move,” in which all things “live and move and have their being,” is the Bodiless; in other words, the Mind or Reason of God, the Logos,—who, as Philo tells us, is the Place of God,—that is, Infinite Space itself, the Container of all things, the very Spouse of Deity. Spouse or Son, it matters not; that in which all moves and lives and breathes is Wisdom, Good and Truth, the Æon of æons, Light of light, Life of life, the Archetype of Soul itself (§ 12).

GOD IS CAUSE THAT SPIRIT IS

“God, then, is not Spirit,” 1 much less “a spirit,” 2 “but Cause that Spirit is”; for God is “Good alone.” Therefore: “Call not thou aught else Good.”

And now let us turn to F. C. Conybeare’s important criticism of Matt. xix. 17 = Mk. x. 18 = Lk. xviii. 19, in the first number of The Hibbert Journal, 3 where he

brings forward very strong evidence that the original reading was: “Call thou me not Good; One only is Good, God the Father,”—a reading known to Marcion, the Clementine Homilies, Athanasius, Didymus, Tatian, and Origen (the two last inferentially).

If we compare this with our text, “Call not thou, therefore, aught else Good, for thou would’st impious be; nor any thing at all at any time call Good but God alone,” and “He is Good alone and nothing else,”—we cannot fail to be struck with the precise similarity of the phrasing and blend of ideas.

If, further, we take this in connection with the still more striking contrast, “God is not Spirit,” with the Johannine “God is Spirit,” we might at first sight almost persuade ourselves that our treatise had these Christian declarations immediately in mind. But the general phenomena of similarity of diction and idea of the Trismegistic literature with those of the New Testament documents is so much more satisfactorily explained by the fact that both literatures use mainly the common Hellenistic theological phrases of the time, that we need not distress ourselves with any suggestions either of plagiarism or of direct controversy.

Doubtless the declaration, “God is Spirit,” was a commonplace among the religio-philosophical circles of the time, and Hermes is here simply refining on a common idea. The reading, “Call thou not me Good,” which appears to have been preserved mainly in Gnostic tradition, may also as easily have come from a similar general idea that the One and Only One was Good alone.

It is, moreover, of special interest to notice that the second clause of the Marcionite reading runs: “There is one [only] Good, God the Father,” while in our

treatise the two names of God are given as Good and Father; and so we read (§ 16): “God, then, is Good, and Good is God”; and immediately after (§ 17): “The other name of God is Father.” 1

Striking however, as are those coincidences, we are nevertheless wholly unpersuaded that there was any immediate literary contact between those two sets of Scripture. All that can be said is that their literary similarities are due to a common theological language and their many points of contact in ideas to a generally common atmosphere of theological conceptions.

HE WHO IS WITHOUT A WIFE IS HALF A MAN

Again, the doctrine of the duty to beget children (§ 17) seems at first sight to be an interpolation by a Jewish editor, the Jews holding that “he who is without a wife is half a man.” We must, however, remember that the Egyptian priests were married, and that the rule with them, as with the Pythagoreans, was that a man should first of all discharge his duty to society and live the “practical,” “political” or “social” life, before retiring into the life of contemplation. He must first beget children, not only that the race might be continued, but also that bodies might be supplied by parents devoted to the ideal of the religious or philosophic life, so that advanced souls might find birth in favourable conditions, and so the Order be continued.

This also is the ancient rule laid down by the Manu of the Āryan Hindus in the Mānava Dharma Shāstra. The duties of the householder station of life (Gṛihastha āshrama) must first be performed, before the parents can retire to the contemplative life (Vānaprastha

āshrama). In special cases, however, exceptions could be made.

It may then be that Asclepius stands for those pupils who were still living the married life.

The scribe of the thirteenth century, Codex B. (Parisinus, 1220), has laconically written on the margin of this paragraph the single word “nonsense” (φλυαρία); he was presumably a monk.

Footnotes

70:1 R., p. 305, also makes a brief reference to this.

71:1 Cf. Joh. iv. 24: “πνεῦμα ὁ Θεός.”

71:2 As the A.V. has it erroneously.

71:3 See his article, “Three Early Doctrinal Modifications of the Text of the Gospels,” in The Hibbert Journal (Oct. 1902), pp. 98-113. J. R. Wilkinson’s few remarks (H. J., Ap. 1903, pp. 575, 576) on Conybeare’s criticism of this synoptic passage do not seem to me to be of any weight.

73:1 Cf. the expression, “God, Father and the Good,” C. H., x. (xi.) 1.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

CORPUS HERMETICUM III. (IV.)

THE SACRED SERMON

OF HERMES

(Text: P. 31-33; Pat. 8b-9.)

1. The Glory of all things is God, Godhead and Godly Nature. Source of the things that are is God, who is both Mind and Nature,—yea Matter, the Wisdom that reveals all things. Source [too] is Godhead,—yea Nature, Energy, Necessity, and End, and Making-new-again. 1

Darkness that knew no bounds was in Abyss, and Water [too] and subtle Breath intelligent; these were by Power of God in Chaos.

Then Holy Light arose; and there collected ’neath Dry Space 2 from out Moist Essence

[paragraph continues] Elements; and all the Gods do separate things out from fecund Nature.

2. All things being undefined and yet unwrought, the light things were assigned unto the height, the heavy ones had their foundations laid down underneath the moist part of Dry Space, 1 the universal things being bounded off by Fire and hanged in Breath to keep them up.

And 2 Heaven was seen in seven circles; its Gods were visible in forms of stars with all their signs; while Nature had her members made articulate together with the Gods in her. And [Heaven’s] periphery revolved in cyclic course, borne on by Breath of God.

3. And every God by his own proper power brought forth what was appointed him. Thus there arose four-footed beasts, and creeping things, and those that in the water dwell, and things with wings, and everything that beareth seed, and grass, and shoot of every flower, all having in themselves seed of again-becoming. 3

And they selected out 4 the births 5 of men for gnosis of the works of God and attestation of the energy of Nature; the multitude of men for

lordship over all beneath the Heaven and gnosis of its blessings, that they might increase in increasing and multiply in multitude, and every soul infleshed by revolution of the Cyclic Gods, for observation of the marvels of the Heaven and Heaven’s Gods’ revolution, and of the works of God and energy of Nature, for tokens of its blessings, for gnosis of the power of God, that they might know the fates that follow good and evil [deeds] and learn the cunning work of all good arts.

4. [Thus] there begins their living and their growing wise, according to the fate appointed by the revolution of the Cyclic Gods, and their deceasing for this end.

And there shall be memorials mighty of their handiworks upon the earth, leaving dim trace behind when cycles are renewed.

For every birth of flesh ensouled, and of the fruit of seed, and every handiwork, though it decay, shall of necessity renew itself, both by the renovation of the Gods and by the turning-round of Nature’s rhythmic wheel.

For that whereas the Godhead is Nature’s ever-making-new-again the cosmic mixture, Nature herself is also co-established in that Godhead.

Footnotes

75:1 Cf. P. S. A., xxvi 2.

75:2 Lit. “Sand”; this presumably refers to the Light, and would thus mean “within the area or sphere of Light”—that is to say, manifestation. The “Moist Essence” is apparently the Water of Chaos, or primal substance.

76:1 ὑφ᾽ ὑγρᾷ ἄμμῳ; presumably the “Water” of space. The heavy things are apparently primæval or cosmic “Earth.”

76:2 The emended text from here to the end of the first sentence of § 3 is given by R. 47, n. 1.

76:3 Or “reincarnation” (παλιγγενεσίας).

76:4 ἐσπερμολόγουν.

76:5 τὰς γενέσεις.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

COMMENTARY

TEXT AND TITLE

The text seems to be very corrupt, and at one time I thought it incomplete; but it may very well end with the reference to the mighty deeds of the men of old.

The title “Sacred Sermon” would lead us to expect something of a special nature, something that would constitute a basis of doctrine. For we hear of the “Sacred Sermon” of Orpheus, and of the “Sacred Sermon” of Pythagoras, and are told that they formed the most sacred deposits of these two mystic schools respectively, and were regarded with special reverence; they thus seem to have been looked upon in some fashion as containing the groundwork of these systems.

And this is precisely what we find with our treatise; it is to a large extent a summary of the general ideas of the “Shepherd” cosmogony adapted to the needs of a simpler formularization.

When, however, Reitzenstein (p. 193) refers to this treatise cursorily as the preaching of some prophet or other which has been transferred to Hermes by the Redactor of our Corpus, he suggests that we are dealing with a doctrine foreign to the cosmogonical ideas of the “Shepherd.” It is, indeed, true that if we compare the data of the two treatises together, detail by detail, we shall find strong contradictions; but the general “feel” of both is the same, the general atmosphere is identical.

THE TRINITY

Prefixed to the cosmogenesis is a formal theological proœm, the precise meaning of which escapes me because of its almost mnemonic nature; it is, indeed

quite in sūtra style. There appears, however, to be a distinct trinitarian 1 idea lurking in the first sentence, the trinity consisting of God (ὁ Θεὸς) and Godhead (τὸ θεῖον) and Nature (ἡ φύσις). The Glory or Power of all things is this Divine Trinity. The Source (or Beginning), the End and the Ever-renewing of all things are owing to this Triad. All three seem to be almost interchangeable terms. The Godhead is the Mind of God, Godly Nature is the Wisdom of God. Again, at the end of the sermon (§ 4) we are told that the Godhead (or that which is Divine) is “Nature’s ever-making-new-again the cosmic mixture.” Godhead in operation is Nature, while at the same time Nature is co-established in Godhead, and both are one in God, the Source of all.

The cosmogenesis begins with the grandiose image: “Darkness that knew no bounds was in Abyss.”

We have already, in commenting on “Darkness” in the “Pœmandres” treatise, referred, in explanation, to a Gnostic tradition in which the Primal Elements appear as Water, Darkness, Abyss, and Chaos, and have given some reason for ascribing the form of this tradition to Egypt—that is, Archaic Egypt, a parallel tradition to the Sumerian, both derived from a still more Archaic source.

FROM THE SYSTEM OF THE NICOLAÏTANS

If, now, we turn to Epiphanius (remembering that he picked up what he knew or thought he knew about the Gnostics in Egypt), we shall find that he has preserved from another Gnostic system an even more striking parallel with our text.

The Bishop of Salamis is denouncing the Nicolaïtans, 2 who for him were the earliest Christian Gnostics, there

being very numerous and various sects of them, all deriving from a certain Nicolaus, whom Epiphanius would have us believe to have been one of the first seven deacons of the Church.

If, in reality, however, the Nicolaïtans = the Balaamites of early Talmudic Rabbinism, 1 then the original Nicolaïtans were the earliest Christians, for “Balaamites” was the Rabbinical by-name of the followers of Balaam (Bileam) = Jeschu, and Balaam = Nicolaos, in Hebrew and Greek respectively.

Curiously enough, moreover, in the paragraph (§ 4) before the one from which we are going to quote, Epiphanius ascribes the use of the mystic words, “Kaulakau Kaulakau,” to the Nicolaïtans, words which we have, with high probability, shown in the chapter “Myth of Man in the Mysteries” (§ 16 J., end) to have been used by a Jewish Gnostic of the time of Philo, writing in an Egyptian environment, and dealing with the Man-tradition, which is one of the main elements of the “Pœmandres” doctrine. All of which carries us back to the dawn of Christianity.

Speaking, then, of these Nicolaïtans, Epiphanius writes (xxv. 5):

“Others of them, again, plaster together empty names, saying: There was Darkness and Abyss (βυθός) and Water; and Spirit in the midst of them made separation of them.” 2

Here we have precisely the same elements as in our text for the foundation of a cosmogonical representation. What precise relationship these various traditions may have had to one another we cannot say with any certainty; but what we can say is that the writer or

writers of our treatise are dealing with a material common to themselves, to pre-Christian Jewish Gnosticism and the earliest forms of the Christian Gnosis.

THE “BOOKS OF THE CHALDÆANS”

The sentence (in § 2), “All things being undefined and yet unwrought (ἀκατασκευάστων)” is also to be noticed, and, together with the opening sentence of the cosmogony, compared with the LXX. version of Gen. i. 2:

“And the earth was invisible and as yet unwrought (ἀκατασκεύαστος), and Darkness was upon the Abyss, and the Spirit of God was borne upon the Water.”

Are we, then, to suppose that our Trismegistic writer based himself directly upon this famous “oracle” of Jewish Scripture?

The Jewish Gnostics would doubtless do so in their commentaries; but the phenomena of the Christianized Jewish Gnostic systems persuade us rather that these Gnostic Jews did not derive their ideas directly from the text of their national Scripture, but from what we may call parallel traditions of an esoteric nature. We shall see later on, when treating of Zosimus, that there were translations of the Chaldæan sacred books in the Alexandrian Library, and we cannot but believe that the general ideas of Chaldæan cosmogony were familiar to all the learned of the time. For Chaldæa and Egypt were regarded as the two most wisdom-loving nations of antiquity, the two most sacred lands. What wonder, then, that Chaldæan and Egyptian ideas should be blended together, and turned out into a “scientific” whole, by the spirit of Greek “philosophizing,” in our treatises?

I would therefore conclude that both here, and in

the repetition of the formula, “increase in increasing and multiply in multitude” (§ 3), from the “Pœmandres” treatise (§ 18), the similarities are not due to direct plagiarism, but to the fact that such logoi were “in the air.” I would also suggest that the somewhat peculiar term ἀκατασκεύαστος was not original with the Greek Targum of Genesis, first made at Alexandria some 250 years B.C., but that it was rather taken from the theological and philosophical language of the day and used by the Hebrew translators; that, in brief, in the LXX. translation already we have to take into account the strong influence of the technology of Hellenistic theology.

With regard to the whole of our treatise, I would suggest that we have the heads of topics which were to be subsequently explained and commented upon, rather than a didactic treatise setting forth a clear teaching. Like the proem, the cosmogenesis itself is straitly condensed, so condensed that the indications are too vague for us to form any clear mental picture of the process that is suggested. We have nothing but a series of headings that may have meant something very definite to the writer—may, in fact, have summed up for him a whole body of doctrine—but which for us, in our ignorance of detail, can have but little precise meaning.

To add to our difficulties, the text, as we have already said, appears to be very faulty. It is very probable that owing to its original brevity, copyists and readers would be tempted to gloss it in the interests of what would appear to them greater clearness; these glosses creeping into the text later on would, since the gloss-makers did not know the original scheme, blurr rather than elucidate the mother-text—and hence our tears.

The most striking doctrine in the exposition is that of Renewal or Making-new-again (ἀνανέωσις). All animal and vegetable forms contain in themselves “the seed of again-becoming” (τὸ σπέρμα τῆς παλιγγενεσίας). I do not think that this is intended simply to mean that the individual is continued in the species; for we read that “every birth of flesh ensouled . . . shall of necessity renew itself (ἀνανεωθήσεται).” The doctrine that is preached is, therefore, that of palingenesis or “re-incarnation”; the renewal on the kārmic wheel of birth-and-death (φύσεως κύκλου ἐναριθμίου δρόμημα).

THE “FLOOD”

The last point to which we need call the reader’s attention is the sentence: “And there shall be memorials mighty of their handiworks upon the earth, leaving dim trace behind when cycles are renewed.”

The thought of the writer is evidently turned back towards the past, to a time when a mighty race, devoted to growth in wisdom, lived on earth and left great monuments of their wisdom in the work of their hands, dim traces of which were to be seen “in the renewal of the times.” This seems to me to be a clear reference to the general belief of the time (commonly, though erroneously, called Stoic) that there were alternate periods of destruction, by fire and water, and of renewal. In Egypt the common belief, as we have pointed out elsewhere, was that the last destruction had been by water and flood. Before this Flood our author believed there had been a mighty race of Egyptians, the race of the First Hermes, and that some dim traces of the mighty works of this bygone wisdom-loving civilization were still to be seen.

I am, myself, strongly inclined to believe in this tradition; and I have sometimes speculated as to the possibility of there being buried beneath one or more of the pyramids the remains of some prehistoric buildings (perhaps also of pyramid-shape) that have survived the “Flood.”

Footnotes

79:1 Not, of course, in a technical Christian sense.

79:2 Adv. Hær., xxv. 1-5.

80:1 See D. J. L., p. 188, where this identification is worked out with some probability.

80:2 Ed. Dindorf (Leipzig, 1859), ii. 35, 36.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

CORPUS HERMETICUM IV. (V.)

THE CUP OR MONAD

OF HERMES TO TAT

(Text: P. 34-40; Pat. 26b-27.)

1. Hermes. With Reason (Logos), not with hands, did the World-maker 1 make the universal World 2; so that thou thus shouldst think of Him as everywhere and ever-being, the Author of all things, and One and Only, who by His Will 3 all beings hath created.

This Body of Him is a thing no man can touch, or see, or measure, a Body inextensible, like to no other frame. ’Tis neither Fire nor Water, Air nor Breath 4; yet all of them come from it. 5 Now being Good He willed to consecrate this [Body] to Himself alone, and set its Earth in order and adorn it. 6

2. So down [to Earth] He sent the Cosmos 1 of this Frame Divine, 2—man, a life that cannot die, and yet a life that dies. And o’er [all other] lives and over Cosmos [too], did man excel by reason of the Reason (Logos) and the Mind. For contemplator of God’s works did man become; he marvelled and did strive to know their Author.

3. Reason (Logos) indeed, O Tat, among all men hath He distributed, but Mind not yet; not that He grudgeth any, for grudging cometh not from Him, 3 but hath its place below, within the souls of men who have no Mind.

Tat. Why then did God, O father, not on all bestow a share of Mind?

Her. He willed, my son, to have it set up in the midst for souls, just as it were a prize.

4. Tat. And where hath He had it set up?

Her. 4 He tilled a mighty Cup 5 with it, and sent it down, joining a Herald [to it], to whom He gave command to make this proclamation to the hearts of men:

Baptize 1 thyself with this Cup’s baptism, what heart can do so, thou that hast faith thou canst ascend to Him that hath sent down the Cup, thou that dost know for what thou didst come into being!

As many then as understood the Herald’s tidings and doused themselves in Mind, became partakers in the Gnosis; and when they had “received the Mind” they were made “perfect men.”

But they who do not understand the tidings,these, since they possess the aid of Reason [only] and not Mind, are ignorant wherefor they have come into being and whereby.

5. The senses of such men are like irrational creatures’; and as their [whole] make-up is in their feelings and their impulses, 2 they fail in all appreciation of 3 those things which really are worth contemplation. These centre all their thought upon the pleasures of the body and its appetites, in the belief that for its sake man hath come into being.

But they who have received some portion of God’s gift, 4 these, Tat, if we judge by their deeds, have from Death’s bonds won their release; for they embrace in their own Mind all things,

things on the earth, things in the heaven, and things above the heaven,—if there be aught. 1 And having raised themselves so far they sight the Good; and having sighted It, they look upon their sojourn here as a mischance; and in disdain of all, both things in body and the bodiless, they speed their way unto that One and Only One.

6. This is, O Tat, the Gnosis of the Mind, Vision of things Divine; God-knowledge is it, for the Cup is God’s.

Tat. Father, I, too, would be baptized.

Her. Unless thou first shalt hate thy Body, son, thou canst not love thy Self. But if thou lov’st thy Self thou shalt have Mind, and having Mind thou shalt share in the Gnosis.

Tat. Father, what dost thou mean?

Her. It is not possible, my son, to give thyself to both,—I mean to things that perish and to things divine. For seeing that existing things are twain, Body and Bodiless, in which the perishing and the divine are understood, the man who hath the will to choose is left the choice of one or other; for it can never be the twain should meet. And in those souls to whom the choice is left, the waning of the one causes the other’s growth to show itself.

7. Now the choosing of the Better not only proves a lot most fair for him who makes the choice, seeing it makes the man a God, but also shows his piety to God. Whereas the [choosing] of the Worse, although it doth destroy the “man,” it only doth disturb God’s harmony to this extent, that as processions pass by in the middle of the way, without being able to do anything but take the road from others, so do such men move in procession through the world led by their bodies’ pleasures. 1

8. This being so, O Tat, what comes from God hath been and will be ours; but that which is dependent on ourselves, let this press onward and have no delay; for ’tis not God, ’tis we who are the cause of evil things, preferring them to good.

Thou see’st, son, how many are the bodies through which we have to pass, how many are the choirs of daimones, how vast the system of the star-courses 2 [through which our Path doth lie], to hasten to the One and Only God.

For to the Good there is no other shore 3; It hath no bounds; It is without an end; and

for Itself It is without beginning, too, though unto us it seemeth to have one—the Gnosis.

9. Therefore to It Gnosis is no beginning; rather is it [that Gnosis doth afford] to us the first beginning of Its being known.

Let us lay hold, therefore, of the beginning, and quickly speed through all [we have to pass].

’Tis very hard, to leave the things we have grown used to, which meet our gaze on every side, and turn ourselves back to the Old Old [Path].

Appearances delight us, whereas things which appear not make their believing hard.

Now evils are the more apparent things, whereas the Good can never show Itself unto the eyes, for It hath neither form nor figure.

Therefore the Good is like Itself alone, and unlike all things else; for ’tis impossible that That which hath no body should make Itself apparent to a body.

10. The “Like’s” superiority to the “Unlike “and the “Unlike’s” 1 inferiority unto the “Like” consists in this:

The Oneness 2 being Source 3 and Root of all, is in all things as Root and Source. Without [this] Source is naught; whereas the Source [Itself] is from naught but Itself, since It is

[paragraph continues] Source of all the rest. It is Itself Its Source, since It may have no other Source.

The Oneness then being Source, containeth every number, but is contained by none; engendereth every number, but is engendered by no other one.

11. Now all that is engendered is imperfect, it is divisible, to increase subject and to decrease; but with the Perfect [One] none of these things doth hold. Now that which is increasable increases from the Oneness, but succumbs through its own feebleness when it no longer can contain the One.

And now, O Tat, God’s Image 1 hath been sketched for thee, as far as it can be 2; and if thou wilt attentively dwell on it and observe it with thy heart’s eyes, believe me, son, thou’lt find the Path that leads above; nay, that Image shall become thy Guide 3 itself, because the Sight [Divine] hath this peculiar [charm], it holdeth fast and draweth unto it those who succeed in opening their eyes, just as, they say, the magnet [draweth] iron. 4

Footnotes

85:1 ὁ δημιουργός.

85:2 τὸν πάντα κόσμον.

85:3 θέλησις.

85:4 Perhaps meaning Æther.

85:5 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 6.

85:6 κοσμῆσαι, the whole is a play on the word κόσμος (kosmos) which means “order,” “ornament,” and “world.” I have tried to retain it in English by using both meanings. The three preceding sentences, from “This Body” onwards, are quoted by Stobæus, Phys., I. ii. 30; G. i. 26; W. 38, 10 ff., under the heading “Of Hermes.”

86:1 That is, “Order.”

86:2 That is, the Body of God; the One Element.

86:3 Cf. C. H., v. (vi.) 2.

86:4 A critical text of most of these two paragraphs is given, R. 214, n. 1.

86:5 κρατῆρα, lit. a cratēr or mixing-bowl.

87:1 The meaning of this term is not to “sprinkle” with water, but to “plunge the whole body” into water.

87:2 καὶ ἐν θυμῷ καὶ ἐν ὀργῇ τὴν κρᾶσιν ἔχοντες.

87:3 Lit. “they do not wonder at.”

87:4 Sc. the Mind.

88:1 Cf. C. H. xi. (xii.) 19: “And contemplate what is beyond—if there be aught beyond the Cosmos.”

89:1 Critical text of simile is also given by R. 102, n. 2. Quoted by Zosimus in § “On the Anthropos Doctrine.”

89:2 καὶ συνέχειαν καὶ δρόμους ἀστέρων, the Septenary Spheres or “Cyclic Gods”; for the συέχεια (lit. continuity) is evidently the same as the ἁρμονία, Harmony, Concord, System.

89:3 ἀδιάβατον,—lit. not to be crossed, not to be forded.

90:1 Reading with B., τοῦ ἀνομοίου.

90:2 μονάς,—the Monad, that is the Good.

90:3 Or, Beginning.

91:1 The Universal Cosmos or Monad.

91:2 The above sentences, beginning with “The Oneness,” second paragraph of § 10, are quoted by Stobæus, Phys., I. x. 15; G. pp. 116, 117; W. 127, 6 ff .; under the heading, “Of Hermes.”

91:3 Cf. C. H., vii. (viii.) 2; ix. (x.) 10; x. (xi.) 21; R. 23, n. 5.

91:4 This simile is also used in the Naassene Document, and in Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris, where I have noticed it.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

COMMENTARY

THE TITLE

This beautiful little treatise, in which the great principles of the Gnosis are set forth so clearly and lucidly by the philosopher-mystic who penned it so many centuries ago, bears a double, or rather a triple, title: “Of Hermes to Tat: The Cup or Monad [or Oneness].” 1 The double title, however, is but a choice of names, for The Cup is The Oneness,—The One Element, 2 the “Body” of God, which is the Cause of all bodies and yet itself is bodiless; in other words, the Monad is the Intelligible Cosmos itself, God’s Image, elsewhere called His Alone-begotten Son.

That this idea of a Cup or Mixing-bowl (Cratēr), in the symbolic sense of an all-containing receptacle, in which all the elements were blended together, and in the metaphysical sense of a transcendent Unity, the source of all things measurable and numberable, was one of the main doctrines of the Trismegistic tradition, is plain from the Pœmandrist Zosimus, who refers especially to this Cup as the symbol of Spiritual Baptism—that is, the plunging of the whole nature into the Great Ocean of Spirit or Mind, so that the man becomes irradiate with Life and illumined with Light.

For a consideration of this Crater or Cup symbolism I must refer the reader to the chapter so entitled in the “Prolegomena”; it there being shown that in all probability it was transmitted along the Orphic line

of tradition, though doubtless the Egyptian had some similar ideas.

Our treatise should be read in the closest connection with C. H., xi. (xii.), “The Mind to Hermes,” which is its “esoteric” counterpart. What is here set forth for Tat by Hermes is there imparted to Hermes by the Mind; what is here set forth for the probationer or “hearer” is there set forth for the advanced disciple or “seer”; or, to use Mystery terms, what is here told to the Mystes is there revealed to the Epopt. Thus, then, the Tat-instruction begins.

THE BAPTISM OF THE MIND

1. All things are made by Reason, the Formative Energy of the Mind. The Ideal Cosmos, or World-Order, is the Divine Body.

2. Earth is the sensible Cosmos; on Earth man, the image of the Image, or Reason, of God rules. The purpose of man is thus to become the contemplator (θεατής) of the works of God; it is by the “wonder” aroused in him by the sight of these marvels that he will rise eventually into a knowledge of God Himself. This “wonder” is, then, the beginning of the True Philosophy or God-knowledge (ἡ τοῦ θεοῦ κατανόησις).

3. All men have in them “reason” (the ray of the Reason or Logos), but as yet few have “Mind.” This “mind” is the true Son of Mind, it is the real man, the perfect man, self-conscious of his Self. This true Self-consciousness is the prize set up for souls to win: the crown of humanity, the Christ-state (or, at any rate, the super-man or true man state).

The Christ-Baptism is the plunging of the whole nature into the Mind-filled Cup,—the Plērōma of the Divine Being whose Body and Mind are one,—for is

not the Cup the Body of God, “consecrated unto Himself alone” (§ 1), the Universal Body of all things?

THE HOLY GRAIL

It would be fascinating to speculate on what connection this Cup of Initiation may have had with the Mystic Eucharist, and the Original of the later Grail-tradition, which a great master of music and song has in our days made to live again in undying melody, and so restored it to its more universal significance. How Wagner sensed the marvel of the wondrous Vision with a poet’s intuition may be seen from his own words:

“To the enraptured gaze of one longing for celestial love, the clear blue atmosphere of heaven seems at first to condense itself into a wonderful, scarcely perceptible, but dazzlingly beautiful Vision. Then with gradually increasing precision the wonder-working angelic host is delineated in infinitely delicate outlines, as, conveying the holy vessel in its midst, it insensibly descends from the blazing heights of heaven. As the vision grows more and more distinct, . . . the heart throbs with the pain of ecstasy; . . . and when at last the Grail shows itself in the marvel of undraped reality, . . . the beholder’s brain reels—he falls down in a state of adoring annihilation. . . . With chaste rejoicing the angelic host then returns to the heavenly height, fading away into the nothingness whence it first emanated.”

But for the Seers of the Gnosis there was a more intimate realization, for they were bidden to cast aside all hesitation and fearlessly to plunge themselves into the very Cup Itself, the Ocean of Divine Love and Wisdom.

This was the Proclamation or Preaching (κήρυγμα),

or Good Tidings, of the Herald of God to men, to those who had the Living Faith they could “ascend to Him who had sent down the Cup,” God’s Greatest Gift.

By such a Baptism as this, not by a symbolic sprinkling with water, is it that man is to be redeemed. This is the consummation of man’s earthly pilgrimage, the realization of the “Gnosis of the Mind, Vision of things Divine; God-knowledge is it; for the Cup is God’s.”

THE “HATING OF THE BODY”

6. In § 6 we have given us a discipline of the mystic way, the “hating of the body,” which is by no means to be taken literally.

A misunderstanding of this discipline led many of the mystics of the time (and, for a matter of that, has led most of the mystics of all time) to the false belief that the body (or matter generally) was the source of evil. Hence we have all the mortifications and chastisements of the flesh which the monkish spirit introduced into Christendom, and which persist in some quarters even to our own day. Against this the Common Sense of Christianity as a general religion, basing itself on the general utterances of the Christ, has ever protested.

Our mystic philosopher, in urging his disciples to hate the body, apparently does so because they are in the first stages of awakening, and so far have not got the “Mind” active in them.

In taking the first steps there must be developed a consciousness of the strong antithesis of good and evil, of love and hate, in order that the will of the disciple may be strengthened towards the good and weakened towards the bad.

When, however, his will is balanced between the two, when he as easily wills good as evil, then, and

not till then, is he prepared to learn the further great lesson: that real wisdom consists in balance, in the Middle Way; that nothing is evil in itself—the Body is as honourable in its own sphere, as absolutely necessary and indispensable, as is the Mind in its.

He learns the great secret that to have one’s thoughts always in heaven is as erroneous as to have them always on earth; that there is a higher mode of existence, when the things of heaven and earth are within each other, and not apart.

As the Introduction to The Book of the Great Logos according to the Mystery has it:

“Jesus saith: Blessed is the man who knoweth this Word (Logos), and hath brought down the Heaven and borne up the Earth and raised it Heavenwards.” 1

Heaven and Earth must kiss each other for this consummation, this truly Sacred Marriage.

And yet in the third Synoptic (xvi. 25, 26) we read:

“Jesus saith: If any man come unto Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own soul also, he cannot be My disciple.”

Here we have precisely the same word “hate” (μισεῖ) as in our text. That, however, this “dark saying” was interpreted in a mystical sense by Gnostic tradition, as by no means referring to physical parents but to the past causes of our imperfections, 2 I have already pointed out on several occasions 3; we may therefore

conclude that in a gnostic teaching, such as is our treatise, the terms “hate” and “body” are not to be literally interpreted.

8. And that this is so may be seen from the declaration in § 8: “For ’tis not God, ’tis we who are the cause of evil things, preferring them to good”;—where the cause of evil is not assigned to the body but to man’s own choice. And finally, to clinch our contention, we would refer the reader to the Sermon to Asclepius, C. H., vi. (vii.) 6:

“Such are the things that men call good and beautiful, Asclepius—things which we cannot flee or hate.”

THE GNOSIS AND ITS BLESSINGS

9. In § 9 we have to notice the phrase: “Therefore to It Gnosis is no beginning; rather is it that Gnosis doth afford to us the first beginning of Its being known”; and compare it with the logos quoted by the Jewish commentator in the Naassene Document (§ 25): “The Beginning of Perfection is Gnosis of Man, but Gnosis of God is Perfect Perfection.”

The claim for the Gnosis is therefore a modest one. The Gnosis is not an end in itself; it is but the beginning of the True Knowledge of God. They who receive the Baptism of the Mind are made “perfect men,” not Perfect; not until they have received this touch of the Christ-consciousness have they reached true manhood.

Those who have received this Baptism know why they have come into being,—the purpose of life. They become consciously immortal; they know they are deathless, they do not only believe it; their immortality is no longer a belief, it is a fact of knowledge.

They have won their freedom from Death and Fate, and know the real constitution of the cosmos up to the Threshold of the Good, the Plain of Truth—that is to

say, presumably in Buddhist terms, as far as the Nirvāṇic state of consciousness. Not yet, however, have they entered Nirvāṇa—that is to say, become one with the Logos. They have seen the Sight or Vision of Nirvāṇa, but not entered into the Promised Land, that “Blessed Space,” which, as Basilides tells us, “can neither be conceived of nor characterized by any word.” 1

The Vision is an earnest of what they may be. They have become Gods, it is true, already, or, in other words, enjoy the same freedom and consciousness as the Gods or Angels, but there is a still more transcendent state, when they will be at-oned with Deity Himself.

THE ANCIENT PATH

Hard as it is to leave the “things we have grown used to,” the things habitual, it must be done if we are to enter into the Way of the Gnosis. But no new Path is this, no going forth into new lands (though it may have all the appearance of being so). The entrance on the Path of the Gnosis is a Going-Home, it is a Return—a Turning-Back (a True Repentance). “We must turn ourselves back unto the Old Old Way” (τὰ παλαιὰ καὶ ἀρχαῖα).

And for the followers of the Doctrine of Thrice-greatest Hermes, this Old Old Path could have meant nothing but the Archaic Wisdom of Ancient Egypt. The Wisdom of Egypt was thus the Gnosis.

Footnotes

92:1 See R. 193. Unfortunately, though he twice quotes from our treatise, Stobæus adds nothing to our knowledge of the title, since he prefixes his extracts with the simple heading, “Of Hermes.”

92:2 Which is to be equated, I believe, “meta-physically” with the Quintessence or Æther.

96:1 Codex Brucianus; see F. F. F., p. 520.

96:2 Cf. the Pistis Sophia, 341-343, where the text is given as: “He who shall not leave father and mother to follow after Me is not worthy of Me,” and explained by the Saviour to mean: “Ye shall leave your Parents the Rulers, that ye may be Children of the First Everlasting Mystery.”

96:3 See, for instance, Extracts from the “Vâhan” (London, 1904), pp. 374-376.

98:1 See F. F. F., p. 261.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

CORPUS HERMETICUM V. (VI.)

THOUGH UNMANIFEST GOD IS MOST MANIFEST

OF HERMES TO HIS SON TAT

(Text: P. 41-48; Pat. 12b-13b.)

1. I will recount for thee this sermon (logos) too, O Tat, that thou may’st cease to be without the mysteries of the God beyond all name. 1 And mark thou well how That which to the many seems unmanifest, will grow most manifest for thee.

Now were It manifest, It would not be. For all that is made manifest is subject to becoming, for it hath been made manifest. But the Unmanifest for ever is, for It doth not desire to be made manifest. It ever is, and maketh manifest all other things.

Being Himself unmanifest, as ever being and ever making-manifest, Himself is not made

manifest. God is not made Himself; by thinking-manifest, 1 He thinketh all things manifest.

Now “thinking-manifest” deals with things made alone, for thinking-manifest is nothing else than making.

2. He, then, alone who is not made, ’tis clear, is both beyond all power of thinking-manifest, and is unmanifest.

And as He thinketh all things manifest, He manifests through all things and in all, and most of all in whatsoever things He wills to manifest.

Do thou, then, Tat, my son, pray first unto our Lord and Father, the One-and-Only One, from whom the One 2 doth come, to show His mercy unto thee, in order that thou mayest have the power to catch a thought of this so mighty God, one single beam of Him to shine into thy thinking. For thought alone “sees” the Unmanifest, in that it is itself unmanifest.

If, then, thou hast the power, He will, Tat, manifest to thy mind’s eyes. The Lord begrudgeth not Himself to anything, but manifests Himself through the whole world.

Thou hast the power of taking thought, of seeing it and grasping it in thy own “hands,” and gazing face to face upon God’s Image. 3 But

if what is within thee even is unmanifest to thee, how, then, shall He Himself who is within thy self be manifest for thee by means of [outer] eyes?

3. But if thou wouldst “see” Him, bethink thee of the sun, bethink thee of moon’s course, bethink thee of the order of the stars. Who is the One who watcheth o’er that order? For every order hath its boundaries marked out by place and number.

The sun’s the greatest god of gods in heaven; to whom all of the heavenly gods give place as unto king and master. And he, this so-great one, he greater than the earth and sea, endures to have above him circling smaller stars than him. Out of respect to Whom, or out of fear of Whom, my son, [doth he do this]?

Nor like nor equal is the course each of these stars describes in heaven. Who [then] is He who marketh out the manner of their course and its extent?

4. The Bear up there that turneth round itself, and carries round the whole cosmos with it—Who is the owner of this instrument? Who He who hath set round the sea its bounds? Who He who hath set on its seat the earth?

For, Tat, there is someone who is the Maker and the Lord of all these things. It could not be that number, place and measure could be kept without someone to make them. No order

whatsoever could be made by that which lacketh place and lacketh measure; nay, even this 1 is not without a lord, my son. For if the orderless lacks something, in that it is not lord of order’s path, it also is beneath a lord—the one who hath not yet ordained it order.

5. Would it were possible for thee to get thee wings, and soar into the air, and, poised midway ’tween earth and heaven, behold the earth’s solidity, the sea’s fluidity (the flowings of its streams), the spaciousness of air, fire’s swiftness, [and] the coursing of the stars, the swiftness of heaven’s circuit round them [all]!

Most blessed sight were it, my son, to see all these beneath one sway—the motionless in motion, and the unmanifest made manifest; whereby is made this order of the cosmos and the cosmos which we see of order.

6. If thou would’st see Him too through things that suffer death, 2 both on the earth and in the deep, 3 think of a man’s being fashioned in the womb, my son, and strictly scrutinize the art of Him who fashions him, and learn who fashioneth this fair and godly image of the Man. 4

Who [then] is He who traceth out the circles of the eyes; who He who boreth out the nostrils and the ears; who He who openeth [the portal of] the mouth; who He who doth stretch out and tie the nerves; who He who channels out the veins; who He who hardeneth the bones; who He who covereth the flesh with skin; who He who separates the fingers and the joints; who He who widens out a treading for the feet; who He who diggeth out the ducts; who He who spreadeth out the spleen; who He who shapeth heart like to a pyramid; who He who setteth ribs together; who He who wideneth the liver out; who He who maketh lungs like to a sponge; who He who maketh belly stretch so much; who He who doth make prominent the parts most honourable, so that they may be seen, while hiding out of sight those of least honour?

7. Behold how many arts [employed] on one material, how many labours on one single sketch; and all exceeding fair, and all in perfect measure, yet all diversified! Who made them all? What mother, or what sire, save God alone, unmanifest, who hath made all things by His Will?

8. And no one saith a statue or a picture comes to be without a sculptor or [without] a painter; doth [then] such workmanship as this exist without a Worker? What depth of blindness, what deep impiety, what depth of ignorance!

[paragraph continues] See, [then] thou ne’er, son Tat, deprivest works of Worker!

Nay, rather is He greater than all names, so great is He, the Father of them all. 1 For verily He is the Only One; and this His work, to be a father.

9. So, if thou forcest me somewhat too bold, to speak, His being is conceiving of all things and making [them]. 2

And as without its maker it is impossible that anything should be, so ever is He not unless He ever makes all things, in heaven, in air, in earth, in deep, in all of cosmos, in every part that is and that is not of everything. For there is naught in all the world that is not He.

He is Himself, both things that are and things that are not. The things that are He hath made manifest, He keepeth things that are not in Himself.

10. He is the God beyond all name; He the unmanifest, He the most manifest; He whom the mind [alone] can contemplate, He visible unto the eyes [as well]; He is the one of no body, the one of many bodies, nay, rather He of every body.

Naught is there which He is not. For all are

[paragraph continues] He and He is all. 1 And for this cause hath He all names, in that they are one Father’s. And for this cause hath He Himself no name, in that He’s Father of [them] all. 2

Who, then, may sing Thee praise of Thee, or [praise] to Thee?

Whither, again, am I to turn my eyes to sing Thy praise; above, below, within, without?

There is no way, no place [is there] about Thee, nor any other thing of things that are.

All [are] in Thee; all [are] from Thee, O Thou who givest all and takest naught, for Thou hast all and naught is there Thou hast not.

11. And when, O Father, shall I hymn Thee? For none can seize Thy hour or time.

For what, again, shall I sing hymn? For things that Thou hast made, or things Thou hast not? For things Thou hast made manifest, or things Thou hast concealed?

How, 3 further, shall I hymn Thee? As being of myself? As having something of mine own? As being other?

For that Thou art whatever I may be; Thou art whatever I may do; Thou art whatever I may speak.

For Thou art all, and there is nothing else

which Thou art not. Thou art all that which doth exist, and Thou art what doth not exist,—Mind when Thou thinkest, and Father when Thou makest, and God when Thou dost energize, and Good and Maker of all things.

(For that the subtler part of matter is the air, of air the soul, of soul the mind, and of mind God.)

Footnotes

99:1 Cf. § 8 end, and § 9 beginning.

100:1 ἐν φαντασίᾳ—that is to say, by thinking into manifestation.

100:2 Presumably the Manifested God; the One-and-Only One being the Unmanifested, the God beyond all name.

100:3 The Intelligible Cosmos.

102:1 Namely, that which lacketh place, number, and order; that is, disorder, chaos.

102:2 As opposed to the immortal world-order.

102:3 Cf. § 9 below, where it almost seems to mean “water.”

102:4 The Heavenly Man of “The Shepherd” treatise; man is the image of The Man, the Logos or Image of God. This and the following passage is referred to by Lactantius, D. Institt., ii. 10.

104:1 The translation of this sentence is conjectural; for the text is not only corrupt, but there appears to be a lacuna in it.

104:2 The male and female energies of the Divine Parent.

105:1 For emended reading, see R. 244.

105:2 That is, of all names. For the following, cf. P. S. A., xxxi. 3.

105:3 Text from here on given in R. 68, n. 4.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

COMMENTARY

THE TITLE

The redactor of our Corpus must have taken this sermon from some collection of “Those to Tat,” for it begins “καὶ τόνδε σοι τὸν λόγον.” One other sermon at least, then, must have preceded it; but whether it was our C. H., iv. (v.), “The Cup,” or the lost C. H. (ii.), “The General Sermon,” it is impossible to say.

The sermon bears no title proper, and the enunciation of the subject, which stands in its place, is derived from the second sentence of the treatise itself, and has plainly been superscribed by some later Byzantine editor.

MĀYĀ

The opening paragraphs of this fine tractate are very difficult to render into English in any way that can preserve the subtle shades of meaning of the Greek. As this subtle word-play has been entirely missed by all previous translators, I have made a rough attempt to preserve it by using the somewhat clumsy term “manifest.” The word-play in Greek may be seen

from the following list of the original terms taken in the order of their occurrence: ἀφανές, φανερώτατον, ἐμφανές, φαινόμενον, ἐφάνη, ἀφανές, φανῆναι, φανερά, ἀφανής, φανερῶν, φανεροῦται, φαντασίᾳ, φαντασιῶν, φαντασία, ἀφαντασίαστος καὶ ἀφανής, φαντασιῶν, φαίνεται, φανῆναι. These all occur in § 1 and the first two lines of § 2.

I have translated φαντασία by “thinking-manifest,” seeing that it is the power by which an object is made apparent or manifest. The doctrine is the same as that of the Vedānta philosophy, the Māyā of the Vedāntavādins. Māyā is generally translated “illusion,” but this is not a good equivalent, for it comes from the root ma, to make or measure. The Logos is called in the Vedānta, Māyin (masc.), the Maker, Measurer, or Creator, and His Power, or Shakti, is Māyā (fem.). It is the Power of the Divine Thought, and so far from being illusion in any ordinary sense of the word, is very real for us, and is only non-real as compared to the Logos Himself, the One Reality in the highest philosophical sense of the term.

The idea is magnificently summed up for us in a logos of Phōsilampēs, 1 quoted by the redactor of the Untitled Apocalypse of the Codex Brucianus, which runs as follows:

“Through Him is that-which-really-is and that-which-really-is-not, through which the Hidden-which-really-is and the Manifest-which-really-is-not exists.”

Also compare Hippolytus’ summary of the “Simonian” Gnosis: