Excerpt XXVII: From the Sermon of Isis to Horus (Part 2)

That which brings it about that some of them are stouter, some more delicate, is, son, that [cosmic] “air” in which all things are made. “Air” for the soul is nothing but the body which envelopes it, an element which is composed of earth and water, air and fire. 1

As, then, the composition of the female ones has more of wet and cold, but less of dry and warm, accordingly the soul which is shut in a plasm of this kind, becomes relaxed and delicate, just as the contrary is found to be in case of males.

For in their case there’s more of dry and warm, and less of cold and wet; wherefore the souls in bodies such as these are sturdy and more active.

45. And how do souls become intelligent, O mother mine?

And Isis answered:

The organ of the sight, my son, is swathed in wrappings. When these are dense and thick, the eye is dim; but when they’re thin and light, then is the sight most keen. So is it also for the soul. For it as well has envelopes incorporal appropriate to it, just as it is itself incorporal.

[paragraph continues] These envelopes are “airs” which are in us. When these are light and thin and clear, then is the soul intelligent; but, on the contrary, when they are dense and thick and turbid, then [the soul], as in bad weather, sees not at distance but only things which lie about its feet.

46. And Horus said:

What is the reason, mother, that the men outside our holiest land are not so wise of mind as our compatriots?

And Isis said:

The Earth lies in the middle of the universe upon her back, like to a human being, with eyes turned up to heaven, and portioned out into as many regions as there are limbs in man.

She turns her eyes to Heaven as though to her own Sire, 1 that with his changes she may also bring about her own.

She hath her head set to the south of all, right shoulder to south-east, left shoulder to south-west; her feet below the Bear, right foot beneath its tail, left under its head; her thighs beneath those that succeed the Bear; her waist beneath the middle [Stars].

47. A sign of this is that men in the south, who dwell upon her head, are fine about the head and have good hair.

Those in the east are ready for a fight and archer folk—for this pertains to the right hand.

Those in the west are steadier and for the most part fight with the left hand, and what is done by others with the right, they for their part attribute to the left.

Those underneath the Bear excel in feet and have especially good legs.

Those who come after them a little way, about the zone which is our present Italy and Greece, they all have well-made thighs and backs. . . .

Moreover, all these [northern] parts being whiter than the rest bear whiter men upon them.

But since the holiest land of our forebears lies in the midst of Earth, and that the midst of a man’s body serves as the precinct of the heart alone, and heart’s the spot from which the soul doth start, the men of it not only have no less the other things which all the rest possess, but as a special thing are gifted with intelligence beyond all men and filled with wisdom, in that they are begotten and brought up above her heart.

48. Further, my son, the south being the receiver of the clouds which mass themselves together from the atmosphere . . . 1

For instance, it is just because there is this concentration of them in the south, that it is said our river doth flow thence, upon the breaking up of the frost there.

For whensoe’er a cloud 1 descends, it turns the air about it into mist, and sends it downward in a kind of fog; and fog or mist is an impediment not only to the eyes, but also to the mind.

Whereas the east, O Horus, great in glory, in that ’tis thrown into confusion and made overhot by the continual risings of the sun, and in like fashion too, the west, its opposite, in that it suffers the same things through its descents, 2 afford the men born in them no conditions for clear observation. And Boreas with his concordant cold, together with their bodies doth congeal the minds of men as well.

Whereas the centre of all these being pure and undisturbed, foreknows both for itself and all that are in it. For, free from trouble, ever it brings forth, adorns and educates, and only with such weapons wars [on men], and wins the victory, and with consummate skill, like a good

satrap, 1 bestows the fruit of its own victory upon the vanquished.

49. This too expound, O lady, mother mine! For what cause is it that when men still keep alive in long disease, their rational part—their very reason and their very soul—at times becomes disabled?

And Isis answer made:

Of living things, my son, some are made friends with fire, and some with water, some with air, and some with earth, and some with two or three of these, and some with all.

And, on the contrary, again some are made enemies of fire, and some of water, some of earth, and some of air, and some of two of them, and some of three, and some of all.

For instance, son, the locust and all flies flee fire; the eagle and the hawk and all high-flying birds flee water; fish, air and earth; the snake avoids the open air. Whereas snakes and all creeping things love earth; all swimming things [love] water; winged things, air, of which they are the citizens; while those that fly still higher [love] the fire and have their habitat near it. Not that some of the animals as well do not love fire; for instance salamanders, for they even have their homes in it. It is because one or

another of the elements doth form their bodies outer envelope.

50. Each soul, accordingly, while it is in its body is weighted and constricted by these four. Moreover it is natural it also should be pleased with some of them and pained with others.

For this cause, then, it doth not reach the height of its prosperity; still, as it is divine by nature, e’en while [wrapped up] in them, it struggles and it thinks, though not such thoughts as it would think were it set free from being bound in bodies.

Moreover if these [frames] are swept with storm and stress, or of disease or fear, then is the soul itself tossed on the waves, as man 1 upon the deep with nothing steady under him.

Footnotes

126:1 MS. A adds “of daimones.”

128:1 A lacuna, unfortunately, here occurs in the text, and must be of some extent, for the way of both of these souls is not given.

129:1 Cf. 45 below.

130:1 Cf. P. S. A., xxiv. 1.

131:1 Something has evidently fallen out here, as the sentence is nowhere completed.

132:1 Reading νεφέλη for νεφέλῃ. The text is very faulty.

132:2 These ideas of course spring from the conception of a flat earth and moving sun. The sun was thus thought to be nearer the earth at its rising and setting, and consequently those at the extremes of east and west were thought to be in danger of being burnt up by its heat.

133:1 Some historical allusion may perhaps be suspected in this term; but I can find nothing appropriate to suggest.

134:1 For ἄνθρωπος Meineke reads ἀνθέρικος (“asphodel”), and compares Callimachus, H. in Del., 193: παλιρροίῃ ἐπινήχεται ἀνθέρικος ὤς. But I see no necessity for this strained “emendation.”

Gnosticism and Hermetica

COMMENTARY

ARGUMENT

1. The “Virgin of the World” is a sacred sermon of initiation into the Hermes-lore, the first initiation, in which the tradition of the wisdom is handed on by the hierophant to the neophyte, by word of mouth. The instructor, or revealer, is the representative of Isis-Sophia, and speaks in her name, pouring forth for her beloved son, the new-born Horus, the first draught of

immortality, which is to purge away the poison of the mortal cup of forgetfulness and ignorance, and so raise him from the “dead.”

This pouring-forth explains that the divine economy is perfect order, mystery transcending mystery,—each state of being, and each being, a mystery to those below that state.

This order no mortal intellect can ever grasp; nay, in the far-off ages, when as yet there were no men, but only Gods, those essences that know no death, the first creation of the World-creator,—even these Gods, these mysteries to us, were in amazement at the glories of the greater mysteries which decked the Heaven with their unveiled transcendent beauty. Even these Gods did not know God as yet.

2. The Gods were immortal, but unknowing; they were intoxicated with Heaven’s beauty, amazed, nay awestruck, at the splendour of the mysteries of Heaven. Then came there forth another outpouring of the Father over all; He poured the Splendour of His Mind into their hearts and they began to know. 1

With this representation is blended a mythical historical tradition which suggests that all this was brought about for an “earth” on which our humanity had not as yet appeared, in far-off distant days when apparently our earth was not as now, ages ago, the purest Golden Age when there were Gods, not men. In that race of Gods, those of them in whom the ray was no low-burning spark, but a divine flame, were the instructors in the heavenly wisdom.

3. Of these was Hermes, a race or “being” rather

than an individual; these “Sons of Fire” left the record of their wisdom engraved on “stone” in symbol, in charge of others of the same race but less knowing than themselves; and so they ascended to Heaven.

4. Those that succeeded them had not the flame so bright within their hearts; they were of the same race, but younger souls—the Tat-race. Hermes could not hand on the direct knowledge to them, the “perfect sight” (θεωρία), and so recorded the wisdom in symbol and myth. Still later the Asclepius-race joined themselves to the Tat-souls.

All this, however, took place many many ages ago, long even before the days of the men-gods Osiris and Isis; for the real wisdom of Hermes was so ancient that even Isis herself had had to search out the hidden records, and that too by means of the inner sight, when she herself had won the power to see, and the True Sun had risen for her mind.

5. But the strain of reconstructing the history of this far-distant past, as he conceived it to have been, is too much for the writer. He knows he is dealing with “myths,” with what Plutarch would have called the “doings of the daimones;” he knows that in reality these primæval “Books” of Hermes have no longer any physical existence, if indeed they ever had any; he knows that no matter what legends are told, or whatever the general priesthood may believe about ancient physical inscriptions of the primæval Hermes,—all this has passed away, and that the real wisdom of Hermes is engraved on the tablets of the æther, and not hidden in the shrines of earth.

The “Books” are engraved in the “sacred symbols of the cosmic elements,” and hidden away hard by the “secrets of Osiris”—the mysteries of creative fire, the light that speaks in the heart. The true Books of

[paragraph continues] Hermes are hidden away in their own zones, the pure elements of the unseen world—the celestial Egypt.

6. This wisdom was held in safe keeping for the “souls” of men; it was a soul-gnosis, not a physical knowledge. Hereupon the writer begins the recital of his tradition 1 of the creation of the “souls” of men in their unfallen state, all of which is derived from the “Books of Hermes.” The soul-creation runs as follows:

The Watchers 2 approach the Creator. The hour has struck for a new Cosmic Dawn, for a new Day. The time has come for Cosmos to awake after the Night. 3 The Creative Mind of the universe turns His attention, His thought, to a new phase of things, a new world-period.

7. God smiled, and His laughter thrilled through space, 4 and with His Word, called forth into the light the new dawn from out the primæval darkness of the new world-space. His first creation, transcendental or intelligible Nature, stood before Him, in all the marvel of her new beauty, the primal plērōma, or potential fullness, of the new universe or system, the ideal cosmos of our world, for there were many others,—the Gods who marvelled at the mystery.

Straightway this Nature fell from one into three, herself and Toil and their fairest child Invention, to

whom God gave the gift of being, themselves producing ideal form alone.

The first creation, then, was the bringing forth of potencies and types and ideas, to whom God gave the gift of being; it was as yet the world “above,” the primæval Heaven, in ultimate perfection, thus constituting the unchanging boundaries of the new universe that was to be. These things-that-are were filled with “mysteries,” not “breaths” or “lives,” for these were not as yet.

8. The next stage is the breathing of the spiritual (not the physical) breath of lives into the fairest blend of the primal elements that condition the world-area. This blend or soul-substance is called psychōsis. The primal elements were not our mixed earth, water, fire, and air, but “knowing fire” (perhaps “fire in itself,” as Hermes elsewhere calls it, or intelligible fire, perchance the “flower of fire” of the so-called “Chaldæan Oracles” 1) and unknowing air, if we may judge from the phrase (7): “Let heaven be filled with all things full, and air and æther [? = fire] too!” It is Heaven or the ideal world that is so filled; even earth-water was not yet manifested, much less earth and water.

It seems, then, that these souls (souls corresponding above with the subsequent man-stage below) were a blend of the three: spirit, knowing fire, and unknowing air,—triads, yet a unity called psychōsis.

9. They were moreover all essentially equal, but differed according to some fixed law of numbering; they were also apparently definite in number, one soul perchance for every star, as with Plato, according to the law of similarity of less and greater, of within and without.

10. These souls, then, were “sacred (or typical) men,”

a creation prior to that of the “sacred animals”; their habitat was in Upper Nature, the “all-fairest station of the æther”—the celestial cosmos.

11. They were appointed to certain stations and to the task of keeping the “wheel revolving,”—that is, as we shall see, they were to fashion forms for birth and death, and so provide means of transmission for the life-currents ever circulating in the great sphere. This was their appointed task, the law imposed on them, as obedient children of the Great King, their sire. So long as they kept their appointed stations they were to live for ever in surroundings of bliss and beauty, in full contemplation of the glories of the greater universe, throned amid the stars. But if they disobeyed the law, bonds and punishment await them.

12. We next come to a further creation of souls—a subject somewhat difficult to follow. These souls are of an inferior grade to the preceding, for they are composed of the primal water and earth, of “water in itself” and “earth in itself” we must suppose, and not of the compound elements we now call by these names. These are the souls of certain “sacred animals” or lives, which bear the same relationship to the souls which “keep the wheel revolving” as animals do to man on earth. They are, however, not shaped like the animals on earth, nor possess even typical animal forms, but bear the forms of men, though they are not men.

13. Still was the divine “water-earth” substance unexhausted, and so the residue was handed over to “those souls that had gone in advance and had been summoned to the land of Gods,”—that is to say, those stations near the Gods, in highest æther, of which mention has just been made. These souls are, of course, the man-souls proper.

Out of this residue these Builders were to fashion

animals, after the models the Creator gave them,—certain types of life, below the “man” type proper, ranged in due order corresponding to the “motions of the souls.” That is to say, there were various classes of Builders according to the types of animals which were to be copied. The Builders were to fashion the forms, the Creator was to breathe into them the life.

14. Thus these Builders fashioned the etheric doubles of birds, quadrupeds, fish and reptiles, and not their physical bodies, for as yet the earth was not solid.

15. And so the Builder-souls accomplished their task, and fashioned the primæval copies of the celestial types of animals. Proud of their work, they grew restive at the restraints placed upon them by the law of their stations, and overstepped the limits decreed by the Creator. 1

Whereupon the punishment is pronounced, and the Creator resolves to make the human frame, therein to imprison the disobedient souls.

And here we learn incidentally that all of this

psychogenesis which has gone before was the direct teaching of Hermes to the writer; of no physical Hermes, however, but of that Hermes whose “Books” are hidden in the zones (5), of the Hermes whom the writer, as he would have us believe, came to know face to face only after his inner vision was opened, and he had gazed with all-seeing eyes “upon the mysteries of that new dawn” (4).

16. For the new and mysterious fabrication of the man-form, all the seven obedient Gods, to whom the man-souls are kin (17), are summoned by the chief of them, Hermes himself, the beloved son and messenger of the Supreme, “soul of My Soul, and holy mind of My own Mind.” 1

17. All of the seven promise to bestow the best they have on man.

18. The plasm out of which the man-form is to be modelled is the residue of the mixture out of which the Builders had already made the animal doubles. But the Builder of the man-frames was Hermes himself, who mixed the plasm with still more water.

19. Here the writer inserts a further piece of information concerning the source of his tradition. It is no longer as before what Hermes himself reveals to him in vision, but what the writer was told at a certain initiation called the “Black Rite.” This rite was presided over by Kamēphis, who is called the “earliest of all,” or perhaps more correctly the “most primæval of [us] all.” Kamēphis is thus conceived as the representative of a more ancient wisdom than that of Isis, and yet even he but hands on the tradition of Hermes. 2

20. The souls are “enfleshed,” and utter loud complaints. Apparently not all at first can speak articulately; most of them can only groan, or scream,

or hiss. The leading class of souls can, however, so far dominate the plasm as to speak articulately, and so one of their number utters a desperate appeal to Heaven.

21. They have now lost their celestial state, and Heaven is shut away from them; no longer can they see “without the light.” They are shut down into a “heart’s small compass”; the Sun of their being has become a light-spark only, hidden in the heart. This is, of course, the logos, the inmost reality in man.

22. The souls pray for some amelioration of their unhappy lot, and the conditions of the moral law are expounded to them. They who do rightly shall, on their body’s dissolution, reascend to Heaven and be at rest; they who do ill, shall work out their redemption under the law of metempsychosis, or change from body to body, from prison to prison.

23. Details of this metempsychosis are then given with special reference to the incarnations of the “more righteous,” who shall be kings, philosophers and prophets. Such souls apparently, for it is not expressly so stated, shall, in passing round the wheel of rebirth, when out of incarnation in a human body, have some sort of life with the souls of the leading types of animals, which are given as eagles, lions, dragons, and dolphins. Or, if we are unjustified in this speculation, such souls shall in their animal parts have intimate relation with the noblest types of animal essence (24).

25. There now comes upon the scene the mighty Intellect of the Earth, a veritable Erdgeist, in the form of Mōmus, who speaking out of affection for him (28), urges Hermes to increase ills and trials upon the souls of men, so that they shall not dare too much (25-27). And thereon Hermes sets in motion the instrument or engine of unerring fate and mechanical retribution (28, 29).

29. Now all these things took place at the dawn of earth-life, when all as yet was inert, as far as our now solid earth is concerned. We must then suppose that as yet our present phase of existence on earth had not yet been manifested; that all was as yet in a far subtler or more primitive state of existence, when earth was still all “a-tremble,” and had not yet hardened to its present state of solidity;—that is to say, that the man-plasm was in an etheric state (30).

31. The earth gradually hardens. Into the now more solid earth, the Creator and His obedient sons, the Gods who had not made revolt, poured forth the blessings of nature. This is described by the beautiful symbol of the hands of blessing, figured in Egypt as the sun-rays, each terminating in a hand for giving light and life. 1

The imprisoned souls, the kinsmen of the Gods obedient, continue their revolt; they are the leaders of mankind, of a mankind far weaker than themselves, a humanity, apparently evolved normally from the nature of things and as yet in its childhood. Instead of teaching them the lessons of love and wisdom, the Disobedient Ones use them for evil purposes, for war and conflict, for oppression and savagery.

32. Things go from bad to worse; the earth is befouled with the horrors of savage man, until in despair the pure elements complain to God. They pray that He will send a holy emanation of Himself to set things right (32-34).

35. Hereupon God sends forth the mystery of a new birth, a divine descent, or emanation, an avatāra, as the Aryan Hindu tradition would call it, a dual manifestation. 2 And so Osiris and Isis are born to help the

world, to recall men from savagery, and restore the moral order (35-37).

It was they who were taught directly by Hermes (37) in all law and science and wisdom. Their mission meets with success, and the “world” is filled with a knowledge of the Path of Return. But before their ascension into Heaven they have a petition to make to the Father, that not only earth but also the surrounding spaces up to Heaven itself may be filled with a knowledge of the truth. Thus then they proceed to hymn the Sire and Monarch of all in a praise-giving which, unfortunately, Stobæus did not think fit to copy.

The original text of the “Virgin of the World” treatise is obviously broken only by the omission of the Hymn of Osiris and Isis, and Excerpt ii. follows otherwise immediately on Excerpt i. The subject is the birth of royal souls, taken up from the instruction given in K. K., 23, 24 above.

39. There are four chief spaces: (i) Invisible Heaven, inhabited by the Gods, with the Invisible Sun as lord of all; (ii) Æther, inhabited by the Stars, of which for us the Sun is leader; (iii) Air, in which dwell non-incarnate souls, ruled by the Moon, as watcher o’er the paths of genesis; (iv) Earth, inhabited by men and animals, and over men the immediate ruler is the Divine King of the time.

40. The king-soul is the last of the Gods but the first of men 1; he is, however, on earth a demigod only, for his true divinity is obscured. His soul, or ka, comes from a soul-plane superior to that of the rest of mankind.

The ascending souls of normally evolving humanity are thought of, apparently, as describing ever widening

circles in their wheelings in and out of incarnation, rising, as they increase in virtue and knowledge, at the zenith of their ascent in the intermediate state, before they turn to descend again into rebirth, ever nearer to the limits of the sensible world and, the frontiers of Heaven.

41. But there is also another class of descending royal souls, who have only slightly transgressed, and therefore descend only as far as this grade of humanity.

42. For the royal or ruling soul is not only a warrior monarch; his sovereignty may be also shown in arts of peace. He may be a righteous judge, a musician or poet, a truth-lover or philosopher. The activities of these souls are not determined, as is the case with souls of lower grades,—that is, those souls which have fallen deeper into material existence,—by what Basilides would have called the “appendages” of the animal nature; they are determined by a fairer taxis, an escort of angels and daimones, who accompany them into birth.

43. The description of their manner of birth, however, is, unfortunately, lost to us, owing either to the hesitation of Stobæus to make it public, or to its being cut out by some subsequent copyist.

44. We are next told that sex is no essential characteristic of the soul. It is an “accident” of the body, but this body is not the physical, but the “aery” body, which air, however, is not a simple element, but already differentiated into four sub-elements. 1

45. Moreover the sight, or intelligence, of the soul also depends upon the purity of certain envelopes, which

are called “airs,”—“airs” apparently more subtle even than the aery body (45). 1

46. Next follows a naïve reason for the excellence of Egypt and the wisdom of the Egyptians (46-48). Here the writer seems to be no longer dependent directly on the Trismegistic tradition, but is inserting and expanding popular notions.

49. The remaining sections of the Excerpt are taken up with speculations as to the cause of delirium (49, 50), and Stobæus brings his extract to a conclusion apparently without allowing the writer to complete his exposition.

SOURCES?

The discussion as to the meaning of the title, which has so far been invariably translated “The Virgin of the World,” will come more appropriately later on.

How much of the original treatise has been handed on to us by Stobæus we have no external means of deciding. Our two Extracts, however, plainly stand in immediate connection with each other, and the original text is broken only by the unfortunate omission of the Hymn of Osiris and Isis. The first Extract, moreover, is plainly not the beginning of the treatise, since it opens with words referring to what has gone before; while the second Extract ends in a very unsatisfactory manner in the middle of a subject.

What we have, however, gives us some very interesting indications of how the writer regarded his sources,—whether written or oral, whether physical or psychic. He of course would have us take his treatise as a literary unity; and indeed the subject is so worked up that it is very difficult to discover what the literary

sources that lay before the writer may have been, for the story runs on straight enough in the same thought-mould and literary form, in spite of the insertion of somewhat contradictory statements concerning the sources of information.

When, however, Reitzenstein (p. 136) expressly states that the creation-story shows indubitable traces of two older forms, and that this is not a matter of surprise, as we find two (or more precisely four) different introductions,—we are not able entirely to follow him. It is true that these introductory statements are apparently at variance, but on further consideration they appear to be not really self-contradictory.

THE DIRECT VOICE AND THE BOOKS OF HERMES

The main representation is that the teacher of Isis is Hermes, who saw the world-creation, that is, the creation of our earth-system, and the soul-making, with his own spiritual sight (2). Isis has obtained her knowledge in two ways: either from the sacred Books of Hermes (4, 5); or by the direct spiritual voice of the Master (15). The intention here is plainly to claim the authority of direct revelation, for even the Books are not physical. They have disappeared, if indeed they ever were physical, and can only be recovered from the tablets of unseen nature, by ascending to the zones (5) where they are hidden; and these zones are plainly the same as the soul-spaces mentioned in S. I. H., 8.

At the same time there is mention of another tradition, which, though in later details purporting to be historic and physical, in its beginnings is involved in purely mythological and psychic considerations. When the first and most ancient Hermes ascended to Heaven, he left his Books in the charge of the Gods, his kinsmen,

in the zones, and not on earth (3). On earth there succeeded to this wisdom a younger race, beloved of Hermes, and personified as his son Tat. These were souls as yet too young to understand the true science face to face. They were apparently regarded as the Tat (Thoth) priesthood of our humanity, who were subsequently joined by wisdom-lovers of another line of tradition, the Imuth (Asclepius) brotherhood, who had their doctrine originally from Ptah. 1 This seems to hint at some ancient union of two traditions or schools of mystic science, perhaps from the Memphitic and Thebaic priesthoods respectively. 2

What, however, is clear is that the writer professes to set forth a higher and more direct teaching than either the received tradition of the Isiac mystery-cult or of the Tat-Asclepius school. This he does in the person of Isis as the face to face disciple of the most ancient Hermes, 3 thus showing us that in the Hermes-circles of the Theoretics, or those who had the direct sight, though the Isis mystery-teaching was considered a tradition of the wisdom, it was nevertheless held to be entirely subordinate to the illumination of the direct sight.

KAMEPHIS AND THE DARK MYSTERY

In apparent contradiction to all this we have the following statement: “Now give good heed, son Horus, for thou art being told the mystic spectacle which Kamēphis, our forefather, was privileged to hear from Hermes, the record-writer of all deeds, and I from Kamēphis when he did honour me with the Black [Rite] that gives perfection” (19). 1

Here Reitzenstein (p. 137) professes to discover the conflation of two absolutely distinct traditions of (i) Kamephis, a later god and pupil of Hermes, and (ii) Kamephis, an older god and teacher of Isis; but in this I cannot follow him. It all depends on the meaning assigned to the words παρὰ τοῦ πάντων προγενεστέρου, which Reitzenstein regards as signifying “the most ancient of all [gods],” but which I translate as “the most ancient of [us] all.”

I take it to mean simply that, according to the general Isis-tradition, the founder of its mysteries was stated to be Kamephis, but that the Isis-Hermes circles claimed that this Kamephis, though truly the most ancient figure in the Isis tradition proper, was nevertheless in his turn the pupil of the still more ancient Hermes.

The grade of Kamephis was presumably represented in the mystery-cult by the arch-hierophant who presided at the degree called the “Dark Mystery” or “Black Rite.” It was a rite performed only for those

who were judged worthy of it (ἐτίμησεν) after long probation in lower degrees, something of a far more sacred character, apparently, than the instruction in the mysteries enacted in the light.

I would suggest, therefore, that we have here a reference to the most esoteric institution of the Isiac tradition, the more precise nature of which we will consider later on; it is enough for the moment to connect it with certain objects or shows that were apparently made to appear in the dark. As Clement of Alexandria says in his famous commonplace book, called the Stromateis 1:

“It is not without reason that in the mysteries of the Greeks, lustrations hold the first place, analogous to ablutions among the Barbarians [that is, non-Greeks]. After these come the lesser mysteries, which have some foundation of instruction and of preliminary preparation for what is to follow; and then the great mysteries, in which nothing remains to be learned of the universe, but only to contemplate and comprehend nature [herself] and the things [which are mystically shown to the initiated].” 2

KNEPH-KAMEPHIS

But who was Kamēphis in the theology of the Egyptians? According to Reitzenstein, Kamephis or Kmephis, that is Kmeph, is equated by Egyptologists with Kneph, who, according to Plutarch, 1 was worshipped in the Thebaid as the ingenerable and immortal God. Kneph, however, as Sethe has shown, 2 is one of the aliases of Ammon, who is the “bull [or husband] of his mother,” the “creator who has created himself.” Kneph is, moreover, the Good Daimon, as Philo of Byblus says. 3 He is the Sun-god and Heaven-god Ammon.

“If he open his eyes, he filleth all with light in his primæval 4 land; and if he close them all is dark.” 5

Here we have Kneph-Ammon as the giver of light in darkness, and the opener of the eyes.

Moreover, Porphyry 6 tells us that the Egyptians regarded Kneph as the demiurge or creator, and represented him in the form of a man, with skin of a blue-black tint, girt with a girdle, and holding

a sceptre, and wearing a crown of regal wings. This symbolism, says Porphyry, signified that he was the representative of the Logos or Reason, difficult to discover, hidden, 1 not manifest 2; it is he who gives light and also life 3; he is the King. The winged crown upon his head, he adds, signifies that he moves or energizes intellectually.

Kamephis, then, stands in the Isis-tradition for the representative of Agathodaimon, the Logos-creator. He is, however, a later holder of this office, and has had it handed on to him by Hermes, or at any rate he is instructed in the Logos-wisdom by Hermes.

HERMES I. AND HERMES II.

In this connection it is instructive to refer to the account which Syncellus 4 tells us he took from the statement of Manetho.

Manetho, says Syncellus, states in his Books, that he based his replies concerning the dynasties of Egypt to King Ptolemy on the monuments.

“[These monuments], he [Manetho] tells us, were engraved in the sacred language, and in the characters of the sacred writing, by Thoth the First Hermes; after the Flood they were translated from the sacred language into the then common tongue, but [still written] in hieroglyphic characters, and stored away in books, by the Good Daimon’s son, the Second Hermes, the father of Tat, in the inner shrines of the temples of Egypt.”

Here we have a tradition, going back as far as Manetho, which I have shown, in Chapter V. of the “Prolegomena” on “Manetho, High Priest of Egypt,” cannot be so lightly disposed of as has been previously supposed,—dealing expressly with the Books of Hermes.

This tradition, it is true, differs from the account given in our Sermon (3-5), where the writer says nothing expressly of a flood, but evidently wishes us to believe that the most ancient records of Hermes were magically hidden in the zones of the unseen world, and that the flood, if there was one, was a flood or lapse of time that had utterly removed these records from the earth. For him they no longer existed physically.

Manetho’s account deals with another view of the matter. His tradition appears to be as follows. The oldest records were on stone monuments which had survived some great flood in Egypt. These records belonged to the period of the First Hermes, the Good Daimon par excellence, the priesthood, therefore, of the earliest antediluvian Egyptian civilization. After the flood they were translated from the most archaic language into ancient Egyptian, and preserved in book-form by the Second Hermes, the priesthood, presumably, of the most ancient civilization after the flood, who were in time succeeded by the Tat priesthood.

That this tradition is elsewhere contradicted by the Isis-tradition proper, which in a somewhat similar genealogy places Isis at the very beginning prior even to Hermes I., 1 need not detain us, since each tradition would naturally claim the priority of those whom it regarded as its own special founders, and we are for the moment concerned only with the claims of the Hermes-school.

The main point of interest is that there was a tradition which explained the past on the hypothesis of periods of culture succeeding one another,—the oldest being supposed to have been the wisest and highest; the most archaic hieroglyphic language, which perhaps the priests of Manetho’s day could no longer fully understand, 1 was supposed to have been the tongue of the civilization before the Flood of Hermes I. It may even be that the remains of this tongue were preserved only in the magical invocations, as a thing most sacred, the “language of the gods.”

The point of view, however, of the circle to which our writer belonged, was that the records of this most ancient civilization were no longer to be read even in the oldest inscriptions; they could only be recovered by spiritual sight. Into close relation with this, we must, I think, bring the statement made in § 37, that Osiris and Isis, though they themselves had learned all the secrets of the records of Hermes, nevertheless kept part of them secret, and engraved on stone only such as were adapted for the intelligence of “mortal men.”

The Kamephis of the Isis-tradition, then, apparently stands for Kneph as Agathodaimon, that is for Hermes, but not for our Hermes I., 2 for he has no physical

contact with the Isis-tradition, but for Hermes II., who was taught by Hermes I.

THE BLACK RITE

But what is the precise meaning of the “black rite” at which Kamephis presides? I have already suggested the environment in which the general meaning may be sought, though I have not been able to produce any objective evidence of a precise nature. Reitzenstein (pp. 139 ff.), however, thinks he has discovered that evidence. His view is as follows:

The key to the meaning, according to him, is to be found in the following line from a Magic Papyrus 1:

“I invoke thee, Lady Isis, with whom the Good Daimon doth unite, 2 He who is Lord ἐν τῷ τελείῳ μέλανι.”

Reitzenstein thinks that the Good Daimon here stands for Chnum, and works out (p. 140) a learned hypothesis that the “black” refers to a certain territory of black earth, between Syene and Takompso, the Dedocaschœnus, especially famed for its pottery, which was originally in the possession of the Isis priesthood, but was subsequently transferred to the priesthood of Chnum by King Dośer. Reitzenstein would thus, presumably, translate the latter half of the sentence as “the Good Daimon who is Lord in the perfect black [country],” and so make it refer to Chnum, though indeed he seems himself to feel the inadequacy of this explanation to cover the word “perfect” (p. 144). But this seems to me to take all the dignified meaning out of both our text and that of the Magic Papyrus, and to introduce

local geographical considerations which are plainly out of keeping with the context.

It is far more natural to make the Agathodaimon of the Papyrus refer to Osiris; for indeed it is one of his most frequent designations. Moreover, it is precisely Osiris who is pre-eminently connected with the so-called “under world,” the unseen world, the “mysterious dark.” He is lord there, while Isis remains on earth; it is he who would most fitly give instructions on such matters, and indeed one of the ancient mystery-sayings was precisely, “Osiris is a dark God.” 1

“He who is Lord in the perfecting black,” might thus mean that Osiris, the masculine potency 2 of the soul, purified and perfected the man on the mysterious dark side of things, and completed the work which Isis, the feminine potency of the soul, had begun on him.

That, in the highest mystery-circles, this was some stage of union of the man with the higher part of himself, may be deduced from the interesting citations made by Reitzenstein (pp. 142-144) from the later Alchemical Hermes-literature; it clearly refers to the mystic “sacred marriage,” 3 the intimate union of the soul with the logos, or divine ray. Much could be written on this subject, but it will be sufficient to append two passages of more than ordinary interest. The Jewish over-writer of the Naassene Document contends that the chief mystery of the Gnosis was but the consummation of the instruction given in the various mystery-institutions of the nations. The

[paragraph continues] Lesser Mysteries, he tells us, commenting on the text of the Pagan commentator, pertained to “fleshly generation,” whereas the Greater dealt with the new birth, or second birth, with regeneration, and not with genesis. And speaking of a certain mystery, he says:

“For this is the Gate of Heaven, and this is the House of God, where the Good God 1 dwells alone, into which [House] no impure [man] shall come; but it is kept under watch for the spiritual alone; where when they come they must cast away their garments, and all become bridegrooms obtaining their true manhood through the Virginal Spirit. For such a man is the Virgin big with child, conceiving and bearing a Son, not psychic, not fleshly, but a blessed Æon of Æons.” 2

In the marvellous mystery-ritual of the new-found fragments of The Acts of John, lately discovered in a fourteenth century MS. in Vienna, disguised in hymn form, and hiding an almost inexhaustible mine of very early tradition, the “sacred marriage” is plainly suggested as one of the keys to part of the ritual. Compare, for instance, with the “casting away of their garments,” in the above-quoted passage of the Naassene writer, the following:

“[The Disciple.] I would flee.

[The Master.] I would [have thee] stay.

[The Assistants.] Amen!

[The Disciple.] I would be robed.

[The Master.] And I would robe [thee].

[The Assistants.] Amen!

[The Disciple.] I would be at-oned.

[The Master.] And I would at-one.

[The Assistants.] Amen!” 1

BLACK LAND.

But to return to the “mysterious black.” Plutarch tells us: “Moreover, they [the Egyptians] call Egypt, inasmuch as its soil is particularly black, as though it were the black of the eye, Chemia, and compare it with the heart,” 2—for, he adds, it is hot and moist, and set in the southern part of the inhabitable world, in the same way as the heart in the left side of a man. 3

Egypt, the “sacred land” par excellence, was called Chemia or Chem (Ḥem), Black-land, because of the nature of its dark loamy soil; it was, moreover, in symbolic phraseology the black of the eye, that is, the pupil of the earth-eye, the stars and planets being regarded as the eyes of the gods. 4 Egypt, then, was the eye and heart of the Earth; the Heavenly Nile poured its light-flood of wisdom through this dark of the eye, or made the land throb like a heart with the celestial life-currents.

Nor is the above quotation an unsupported statement of Plutarch’s, for in an ancient text from Edfu, 5 we read: “Egypt (lit. the Black), which is so called after the eye of Osiris, for it is his pupil.”

Ammon-Kneph, too, as we have seen, is black, or blue-black, signifying his hidden and mysterious

character; and in the above-quoted passage he is called “he who holds himself hidden in his eye,” or “he who veils himself in his pupil.”

This pupil, then, concludes Reitzenstein (p. 145), is the “mysterious black.” Is this, then, the origin of this peculiar phrase? If so, it would be connected with seeing, the spiritual sight, the true Epopteia.

THE PUPIL OF THE WORLD’S EYE

But Isis, also, is the black earth, and, therefore, the pupil of the eye of Osiris, and, therefore, also of the Chnum or Ammon identified with Osiris at Syene. Isis, therefore, herself is the “Pupil of the World’s Eye”—the κόρη κόσμου. 1

Reitzenstein would, therefore, have it that the original type of our treatise looks back to a tradition which makes the mystery-goddess Isis the disciple and spouse of the mysterious Chnum or Ammon, or Kneph or Kamephis, as Agathodaimon; and, therefore, presumably, that the making of this Kamephis the disciple in his turn of Hermes is a later development of the tradition, when the Hermes-communities gained ascendancy in certain circles of the Isis-tradition.

This is very probable; but dare we, with Reitzenstein, cast aside the “traditional” translation of κόρη κόσμου, as “Virgin of the World,” and prefix to our treatise as title the new version, “The Pupil of the Eye of the World”? It certainly sounds strange as a title to unaccustomed ears, and differs widely from any other titles of the Hermetic sermons known to us. But what does the “Virgin of the World” mean in connection with our treatise? Isis as the Virgin Mother is a

familiar idea to students of Egyptology 1; she is κατ᾽ ἐξοχὴν, the “World-Virgin.”

THE SON OF THE VIRGIN

And here it will be of interest to turn to a curious statement of Epiphanius 2; it is missing in all editions of this Father prior to that of Dindorf (Leipzig, 1859), which was based on the very early (tenth century) Codex Marcianus 125, all previous editions being printed from a severely censured and bowdlerized fourteenth century MS.

Epiphanius is stating that the true birthday of the Christ is the Feast of Epiphany, “at a distance of thirteen days from the increase of the light [i.e. December 25]; for it needs must have been that this should be a figure of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and of His twelve disciples, who make up the thirteen days of the increase of the Light.” The Feast of the Epiphany was a great day in Egypt, connected with the “Birth of the Æon,”—a phase of the “Birth of Horus.” For Epiphanius thus continues:

“How many other things in the past and present support and bear witness to this proposition, I mean the birth of Christ! Indeed, the leaders of the idol-cults, 3 filled with wiles to deceive the idol-worshippers who believe in them, in many places keep highest festival on this same night of Epiphany [= the Manifestation to Light], so that they whose hopes are in error may not seek the truth. For instance, at

[paragraph continues] Alexandria, in the Koreion, 1 as it is called—an immense temple, that is to say the Precinct of the Virgin—after they have kept all-night vigil with songs and music, chanting to their idol, when the vigil is over, at cock-crow, they descend with lights into an underground crypt, and carry up a wooden image lying naked on a litter, with the seal of a cross made in gold on its forehead, and on either hand two similar seals, and on either knee two others, all five seals being similarly made in gold. And they carry round the image itself, circumambulating seven times the innermost temple, to the accompaniment of pipes, tabors and hymns, and with merry-making they carry it down again underground. And if they are asked the meaning of this mystery, they answer: ‘To-day at this hour the Maiden (Korē), that is, the Virgin, gave birth to the Æon.’”

He further adds that at Petra, in Arabia, where, among other places, this mystery was also performed, the Son of the Virgin is called by a name meaning the “Alone-begotten of the Lord.” 2

Here, then, at Alexandria, in every probability the very environment of our treatise, we have a famous mystery-rite, solemnized in the Temple of the Virgin, who gives birth to a Son, the Æon. This, we shall not be rash in assuming, signifies not only the birth of the new year, but also still more profound mysteries, when we remember the words of the Naassene Document quoted above: “For such a man is the Virgin, big with child, conceiving and bearing a Son,—not psychic, not fleshly [nor, we may add, temporal], but

a blessed Æon of Æons”—that is, an Eternity of Eternities, an immortal God.

We should also notice the crowing of the cock, which plays so important a part in the crucifixion-story in the Gospels, 1 and above all things the stigmata on the image, the symbols of a cosmic and human mystery.

THE MYSTERY OF THE BIRTH OF HORUS

In our own treatise the mysterious Birth of Horus is also referred to (35, 36) as follows.

Isis has handed on the tradition of the Coming of Osiris, the Divine emanation, the descent of the efflux of the Supreme, and Horus asks: “How was it, mother, then, that Earth received God’s efflux?”—where Earth may well refer to the “Dark Earth,” a synonym of Isis herself.

And Isis answers: “I may not tell the story of [this] birth; for it is not permitted to describe the origin of this descent, O Horus, [son] of mighty power, lest afterward the way of birth of the immortal Gods should be known unto men.”

Here I think we have a clear reference to the mysterious “Birth of Horus,” the birth of the gods,—that is to say, of how a man becomes a god, becomes the most royal of all souls, gains the kingdom, or lordship over himself. This mystery was not yet to be revealed to the neophyte—Horus—and yet this Birth is suggested to Tat by Hermes—C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 2—when he says: “Wisdom that understands in silence [such is the matter and the womb from out which Man is born] and the True Good the Seed.”

The womb is the mysterious Silence, the matter is

[paragraph continues] Wisdom, Isis herself, the seed is the Good, the Agathodaimon, Osiris.

But in our treatise Horus has not yet reached to this high state; Isis, as the introductory words tell us, is pouring forth for him “the first draught of immortality” only, “which souls have custom to receive from gods”; he is being raised to the understanding of a daimon, but not as yet to that of a god.

All of this, moreover, seems to have been part and parcel of the Isis mystery-tradition proper, for as Diodorus (i. 25), following Hecatæus, informs us, it was Isis who “discovered the philtre of immortality, by means of which, when her son Horus, who had been plotted against by the Titans, and found dead (νεκρόν) beneath the water, not only raised him to life (ἀναστῆσαι) by giving him life (ψυχήν), but also made him sharer in immortality.”

Here we have evidence to show that in the mystery-myth Horus was regarded as the human soul, and that there were two interpretations of the mystery. It referred not only to the “rising from the dead” in another body, or return to life in another enfleshment, but also to a still higher mystery, whereby the consciousness of immortality was restored to the memory of the soul. The soul had been cast by the Titans, or the opposing powers of the subtle universe, into the deep waters of the Great Sea, the Ocean of Generation, or Celestial Nile, for as the mysterious informant of Cleombrotus told him, 1 these stories of Titans concerned daimons or souls proper, not bodies. 2

From this death in the sea of matter, Isis, the Mother Soul, brings Horus repeatedly back to life, and finally bestows on him the knowledge of immortality, and so raises him from the “dead.” 1

This birth of the “true man” within, the logos, was and is for man the chief of all mysteries. In the Chapter on “The Popular Theurgic Hermes-Cult,” we have already, in elucidation of the sacramental formula, “Thou art I and I am thou,” quoted the agraphon from the Gospel of Eve concerning the Great Man and the Little Man or Dwarf, and lovers of the Aupaniṣhad literature of Hindu-Aryan theosophy need hardly be

reminded of “the ‘man,’ of the size of a thumb,” within, in the ether of the heart. 1

“ISHON”

But what is of more immediate interest is that the same idea is to some extent found in the Old Covenant documents, especially in the Prophetical and Wisdom literature, which latter was strongly influenced by Hellenistic ideas.

Ishon, which literally means “little man” or “dwarf,” 2 is in A.V. generally translated “apple of the eye.” 3

Thus we read in a purely literal sense, referring to weeping: “Let not the apple of thine eye cease” (Lam. ii. 18).

It was, however, a common persuasion, that the intelligence or soul itself, not merely the reflection of the image of another person, resided in the eye, and was made manifest chiefly by the eye.

Thus the “apple of the eye” was used as a synonym for a man’s most precious possession, the treasure-house as it were of the light of a man.

And so we read: “He [Yahweh] kept him [Israel] as the apple of his eye” (Ps. xvii. 8)—where ishon is in the Hebrew further glossed as the “daughter of the eye”; and again: “Thus saith the Lord of Hosts: . . . He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye” (Zech. ii. 8).

The “apple of the eye” (ishon) was, then, something of great value, something very precious, and, therefore, we read in the Wisdom-literature that the punishment of the man who curses his father and mother is that “his lamp shall be put out in obscure (ishon) darkness” (Prov. xx. 20)—that is, that he shall thus extinguish the lamp of his intelligence, or perhaps spiritual nature, “in the apple of his eye there will be darkness”; and this connects with a passage in the Psalms which shows traces of the same Wisdom-teaching. “In the hidden part 1 [of man] thou shalt make me to know wisdom” (Ps. li. 6).

But the most striking passages are to be found in that pre-eminently Wisdom-chapter in the Proverbs-collection, where the true Israelite is warned to remain faithful to the Law (Torah), and to have no commerce with the “strange woman,” the “harlot”—that is, the “false doctrines” of the Gentiles. 2

“Keep my law as the apple of thine eye” (Prov. vii. 2), says the writer, speaking in the name of Yahweh, for he has seen the young and foolish being led astray by the “strange woman.” “He went the way to her house, in the twilight, in the evening; in the black (ishon) and dark night” (Prov. vii. 9). That is to say,

his lamp was put out; there was dark night in his eye, in that little man of his, which should be his true light-spark understanding the wisdom of Yahweh.

Here, I think, we have additional evidence, that the idea, that the pupil of the eye was the seat of the spiritual intelligence in man, was widespread in Hellenistic circles. 1 But even so, can we translate κόρη κόσμου as the “Apple of the World-Eye”? It is true that Isis is the instrument or organ of conveying the hidden wisdom to Horus, and that it is eventually Hermes or the Logos who is the true light itself, which shines through her, the pupil of Egypt’s eye, 2 out of that mysterious darkness, in which she found herself, when she received illumination at the hands of Kamephis; but is this sufficient justification for rejecting the traditional translation of the title, and adopting a new version?

On the whole I am inclined to think, that though the new rendering may at first sight appear somewhat strained, nevertheless in proportion as we become more familiarized with the idea and remember the thought-environment of the time, we may venture so to translate it. Isis, then, is the “Apple or Pupil of the Eye of Osiris.” On earth the “mysterious black” is Egypt

herself, the wisdom-land. Isis is the mysterious wisdom of Egypt, but in our treatise she is even more than this, for she is that wisdom but now truly illumined by the direct sight, the new dawn of the Trismegistic discipline of which she speaks (4).

To a Greek, however, the word κόρη would combine and not distinguish the two meanings of the title over which we have been labouring; but even as logos meant both “word” and “reason,” so korē would mean both “virgin” and “pupil of the eye”; but as it is impossible to translate it in English by one word, we have followed the traditional rendering.

THE SIXTY SOUL-REGIONS

We now turn to a few of the most important points which require more detailed treatment than the space of a footnote can accommodate. There are, of course, many other points that could be elaborated, but if that were done, the present work would run into volumes.

The number of degrees into which the soul-stuff (psychōsis) is divided, is given as three, and as sixty (10). If this statement stood by itself we should have been somewhat considerably puzzled to have known what to make of it, even when we remembered the mystic statement that 60 is par excellence the number of the soul, and that he who can unriddle the enigma will know its nature.

Fortunately, however, if we turn to S. I. H., 6 (Ex. xxvii.), we find that according to this tradition the soul-regions also were divided into 60 spaces, presumably corresponding to the types of souls.

They were in 4 main divisions and 60 special spaces, with no overlapping (7). These spaces were also called zones, firmaments or layers.

We are further told (6) that the lowest division, that

is the one nearest to the earth, consists of 4 spaces; the second, of 8; the third, of 16; and the fourth, of 32.

And still further (7), that there were besides the 4 main divisions 12 intervallic ones. This introduces an element of uncertainty, for, as far as I am aware, we have no objective information which can enable us to determine how the intervallic divisions were located in the mind of the writer; speculation is rash, but a scheme has suggested itself to me, and I append it with all reservation.

First of all we have 4 main divisions or planes, separated from one another by 3 determinations of some sort, for the whole ordering pertains to the Air proper, and perhaps the 4 states of Air were regarded as earthy, watery, aery, and fiery Air. The 3 determinations may perhaps have been regarded as corresponding to the three main grades or florescences of the soul-stuff, which were apparently of a superior substance.

Each division of the 4 may further have been regarded as divided off by three intervallic determinations; so that we should have 3 such intervals in the lowest division, subdividing it into 4 spaces of 1 space each; 3 in the second, subdividing it into 4 spaces of 2 spaces each; 3 in the third, subdividing it into 4 spaces of 4 spaces each; and 3 in the fourth, subdividing it into 4 spaces of 8 spaces each. The sum of these intervals would thus be 12.

PLUTARCH’S YOGIN

In this connection, however, I cannot refrain from appending a pleasant story told by Plutarch. 1

The speaker is Cleombrotus, a Lacedæmonian gentleman and man of means, who was a great traveller, and a greedy collector of information of all sorts to form the basis of a philosophical religion. He had spent much time in Egypt, and had also been a voyage beyond the Red Sea. On his travels Cleombrotus had heard of a philosopher-recluse, who lived in complete retirement, except once a year when he was seen by “the folk round the Red Sea”; then it was that a certain divine inspiration came upon him, and he came forth and “prophesied” to the nobles and royal scribes who used to flock to hear him. With great difficulty, and only after the expenditure of much money, Cleombrotus discovered the hermitage of this recluse, and was granted a courteous reception.

Our old philosopher was the handsomest man Cleombrotus had ever met, deeply versed in the knowledge of plants, and a great linguist. With Cleombrotus, however, he spoke Doric, and almost in verse, and “as he spake perfume filled the place from the sweetness of his breath.”

His knowledge of the various mystery-cults was profound, and his intimate acquaintance with the unseen world remarkable; he explained many things to Cleombrotus, and especially the nature of the daimones, and the important part they played as factors in any satisfactory interpretation of ancient mythology, seeing that most of the great myths referred to the doings of the daimones and not of mortals.

Cleombrotus, however, has told his story merely as an introduction to the quotation of a scrap of information let fall by the old philosopher concerning the plurality of worlds 1; thus, then, he continues:

“THE PLAIN OF TRUTH”

“He told me that the number of worlds was neither infinite, nor one, nor five, but that there were 183 of them, arranged in the figure of a triangle of which each side contained 60, and of the remaining 3 one set at each angle. And those on the sides touch each other, revolving steadily as in a choral dance. And the area of the triangle is the Common Hearth of all, and is called the ‘Plain of Truth,’ 1 in which the logoi and ideas and paradigms of all things which have been, and which shall be, lie immovable; and the Æon [or Eternity] being round them [sc. the ideas], time flows down upon the worlds like a stream. And the sight and contemplation (θέαν) of these things is possible for the souls of men only once in ten thousand years, should they have lived a virtuous life. And the highest of our initiations here below is only the dream of that true vision and initiation 2; and the discourses [sc. delivered in the mystic rites] have been carefully devised to awaken the memory of the sublime things above, or else are to no purpose.”

This statement I am inclined to regard as one of the most distinct pronouncements on the nature of the higher mysteries which has been preserved to us from antiquity, and the locus classicus and point of departure for any really fruitful discussion of the true nature of the philosophic mysteries, and yet I have never seen it referred to in this connection.

Our old philosopher was well acquainted with the Egyptian mystery-tradition, for Cleombrotus obtained information from him concerning the esoteric significance of Typhon and Osiris, and what I have quoted above falls naturally into place in the scheme of ideas of the tradition preserved in the treatise which we are discussing. 1 It, indeed, pertains to a higher side of the matter, for it purports to be the highest theoria of all, and possible for the souls even of the most righteous only at long periods of time.

Of course the representation is symbolical. The triangle is no triangle; it is the “plain of truth,” the “hearth of the universe.” The triangle, then, pertained to the plane of Fire proper and not Air. Still, the ordering of the “worlds” is similar to that of our soul spaces. The triangle is shut off from the manifested world by the Æon; it is out of space and time proper. Time flows down from it. The worlds proper are 3 worlds or cosmoi, each divided into 60 subordinate cosmoi, in choral dance, or orderly harmonious movement of one to the other. Our soul-spaces, then, may have been regarded as some reflection of these supernal conditions.

One is almost tempted to turn the plane triangle

into a solid figure, a tetrahedron, 1 and imagine the idea of a world or wheel, at each of the four angles, and to speculate on the Wheels of Ezekiel, the prototype of the Mercabah or Heavenly Chariot of Kabalism, the Throne of Truth of the Supreme, but I will not try the patience of my readers any further, for doubtless most of them will have cried already: Hold, enough!

THE BOUNDARIES OF THE NUMBERS WHICH PREEXIST IN THE SOUL

Perhaps, however, it would be as well, before dismissing the subject, to consider very briefly what Plato, following Pythagoras, 2 has to say concerning the “boundaries” of all numbers which pre-exist in the soul. These soul-numbers are 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 27 (the combination of the two Pythagorean series 1, 2, 4, 8 and 1, 3, 9, 27), or 1, 2, 3, 2², 2³, 3², 3³. Of these numbers 1, 2, 3 are apportioned to the World-Soul itself, in its intellectual or spiritual aspect, and signify its abiding in (1), its proceeding from (2), and its returning to itself (3); this with regard to primary natures. But in addition, intermediate subtle natures or souls are “providentially” ordered in their evolution and involution, by the World-Soul; they proceed according to the power of the fourth term (4 or 2²), “which possesses generative powers,” and return according to that of the fifth (9 or 3²), “which reduces them to one.” Finally also solid or gross natures are also “providentially” ordered in their procession according to 8 (2³), and in their conversion according to 27 (3³). 3

From all of which we get the following scheme of circular progression and conversion of the soul, the various main stages through which it passes:

With this compare the “Chaldæan Oracle” (ap. Psellus, 19): “Do not soil the spirit, nor turn the plane into the solid”—μὴ πνεῦμα μολύνῃς μῦτε βαθύνῃς τὸ ἐπίπεδον (ed. Cory, Or. clii., p. 270); where the four stages correspond to the point, line, plane, and solid. It is also to be remembered that since x0 = 1, 20 = 1 and 30 = l.

That these are the boundary numbers of the soul, according to Pythagoreo-Platonic tradition, is of interest, but how this can in any way be made to agree with the ordering of the soul-spaces in our treatise is a puzzle. That by adding these numbers together (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 8 + 9 + 27) we get 54, and by farther adding the numbers of the World-Soul proper (1 + 2 + 3) we get 6, and so total out the whole sum of the phases to 60, savours somewhat of “fudging,” as we used to call it at school. It is by no means convincing, for we are here combining particulars with universals as though they were of equal dignity; still the ancients frequently resort to such combinations.

That, however, there is something more than learned trifling in these numbers of Plato may be seen by the brilliant study of Adam on the “nuptial number” of Plato, 1 which was based upon the properties of the

[paragraph continues] “Pythagorean triangle,” a right-angled triangle to the containing sides of which the values of 3 and 4 were given, the value of its hypothenuse being consequently 5; and 3 × 4 × 5 = 60. The numbers 3, 4, 5, together with the series 1, 2, 4, 8, and 1, 3, 9, 27, were the numerical sequences which supplied those “canons of proportion” with which the Pythagoreans and Platonists chiefly busied themselves.

Still, as far as I can see, this does not throw any clear light on the ordering of the soul spaces as given in our treatise, and we are therefore tempted to connect it with the tradition of the mysterious 60’s of Cleombrotus. But what that choral dance was which ordered the subordinate cosmoi into 60’s, and whether they proceeded by stages which might correspond to 3’s and 4’s and 5’s, we have, as far as I am aware, no data on which to base an argument. It may, however, have been connected with Babylonian ideas; the 3 may have been regarded as “falling into” 4, so making 12, and this stage in its turn have been regarded as “falling into” 5, and so making 60.

THE MYSTERIOUS CYLINDER

It is to be noticed, however, that before the souls revolted, the Demiurge “appointed for them limits and reservations 1 in the height of Upper Nature, that they might keep the cylinder a-whirl in proper order and economy” (11).

They were, then, confined to certain orderings and spaces. But what is the mysterious “cylinder” which they were to keep revolving?

So far I have come across nothing that throws any

direct light on the subject. However, Proclus 1 says that Porphyry stated that among the Egyptians the letter χ, surrounded by a circle, symbolized the mundane soul.

It is curious that Porphyry should have referred this idea to the Egyptians, when he must have known that Plato, to whom Porphyry looked as the corypheus of all philosophy, had treated of the significance of the symbol X (in Greek χ) in perhaps the most discussed passage of the Timæus (36B). 2 This letter symbolized the mutual relation of the axes and equators of the sphere of the “same” (the “fixed stars”) and the sphere of the “other” (the “seven planetary spheres”). Porphyry, however, may have believed that Plato, or Pythagoras, got the idea in the first place from Egypt—the common persuasion of his school.

This enigma of Plato is described as follows by Jowett in his Introduction to the Timæus 3:

“The universe revolves round a centre once in twenty-four hours, but the orbits of the fixed stars take a different direction from that of the planets. The outer and the inner sphere cross one another and meet again at a point opposite to that of their first contact; the first moving in a circle from left to right along the side of a parallelogram which is supposed to be inscribed in it, the second also moving in a circle along the diagonal of the same parallelogram from right to left 4; or, in

other words, the first describing the path of the equator, the second, the path of the ecliptic.”

We should thus, just as the Egyptians, according to Porphyry, symbolized it, represent the conception by the figure of a circle with two diameters suggesting respectively the equator and the ecliptic.

But what is the rectangular figure to which Jowett refers, but which he does not further describe? The circles are spheres; and, therefore, the rectangular figure must be a solid figure inscribed in the sphere “of the same.” If we now set the circle revolving parallel to the longer sides of the figure, this “parallelogram” will trace out a cylinder, while the seven spheres of the “other,” the “souls” of the “planets,” moving parallel to one of the diagonals of our figure, and in an opposite direction to the sphere of the “same,” will, by their mutual difference of rates of motion, cause their “bodies” (the souls surrounding the bodies) to trace out spiral orbits.

All this in itself, I confess, seems very far-fetched, and I should have thrown my notes on the subject into the waste-paper basket, but for the following consideration:

Basil of Cæsarea, in his Hexæmeron, or Homilies on

the Six Days of Creation, declared it “a matter of no interest to us whether the earth is a sphere or a cylinder or a disk, or concave in the middle like a fan.” 1

The cylinder-idea, then, was a favourite theory with regard to the earth-shape in the time of Basil, that is the fourth century.

This cylinder-idea, however, I am inclined to think was very ancient. In the domain of Greek speculation we first meet with it in what little is known of the system of Anaximander of Miletus, the successor of Thales.

Anaximander is reported to have believed that “the earth is a heavenly body, controlled by no other power, and keeping its position because it is the same distance from all things; the form of it is curved, cylindrical, like a stone column; it has two faces; one of these is the ground beneath our feet, and the other is opposite to it.” 2

And again: “That the earth is a cylinder in form, and that its depth is one-third of its breadth.” 3

Now I have never been able to persuade myself that the earliest philosophers of Greece “invented” the ideas ascribed to them. They stood on the borderland of mythology and mysticism, and, in every probability, took their ideas from ancient traditions.

[paragraph continues] Anaximander himself was in every probability indirectly, for all we know even directly, influenced by Egyptian and Chaldæan notions; indeed, who can any longer doubt in the light of the Cnossus excavations?” 1

Anaximander is thus said to have regarded the earth-cylinder as fixed, whereas in our treatise the cylinder is not the earth and is not fixed; it is, on the contrary, a celestial cylinder and in constant motion. Can it, then, possibly be that this cylinder notion was associated with some Babylonian idea, and had its source in that country par excellence of cylinders? In Babylonia, moreover, the cylinder-shape was frequently used for seals, fashioned like a small roller, so that the characters or symbols engraved on them could be impressed on soft substance, such as wax. Further, the Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations were, as we know, closely associated, and pre-eminently so in the matter of sigils and seals. In the Coptic-Gnostic works, translated from Greek originals, and indubitably mainly of Egyptian origin, the idea of “characters,” “seals,” and “sigils,” as types impressed on matter, is a commonplace.

Can our cylinder, then, have some connection with the circle of animal types, or types of life, of which so much is said in our treatise? The souls of the supernal man class would then have had the task of keeping this cylinder in motion, so that thereby the various types were continually impressed on the plasms in the sphere of generation, or ever-becoming—the wheel of genesis?

This may be so, for in P. S. A., 19, we read: “The air, moreover, is the engine, or machine, through which

all things are made . . . mortal from mortal things and things like these.”

So also in K. K., 28, Hermes says: “And I will skillfully devise an instrument, mysterious, possessed of power of sight that cannot err . . . an instrument that binds together all that’s done.”

Here again we have the same idea, all connected with the notion of Fate or Heimarmene; the instrument of Hermes is the Kārmic Wheel, by which cause and effect are linked together, and that too with a moral purpose. 1

Finally, in connection with our cylinder, we may compare the Âryan Hindu myth of the “Churning of the Ocean,” in the Viṣhṇu Purāṇa. The churning-staff or Pillar was the heaven-mountain, round which was coiled the cosmic serpent, to serve as rope for twirling it. The rope was held at either end by the Devas and Asuras, or gods and dæmons. There is also a mystic symbol in India which probably connects with a similar range of ideas. It is two superimposed triangles (⧖), with their apices touching, and round the centre a serpent is twined,—a somewhat curious resemblance to our X and cylinder-idea. And so much for this puzzling symbol.

THE EAGLE, LION, DRAGON AND DOLPHIN

We now pass to the four leading types of animals, connected with souls of the highest rank—namely, the eagle, lion, dragon, and dolphin (24, 25)—which it may be of interest to compare with the symbolism of some of the degrees of the Mithriac Mysteries. 2

[paragraph continues] In one of the preliminary degrees of the rite, we are informed, some of the mystæ imitated the voices of birds, others the roaring of lions. 1 All of this was interpreted by the initiates as having reference to transmigration or metempsychosis. Thus Porphyry 2 tells us that in the Mysteries of Mithras they called the mystæ by the names of different animals, so symbolizing man’s common lower nature with that of the irrational animals. Thus, for instance, they called some of the men “lions,” and some of the women “lionesses,” some were called “ravens,” while the “fathers,” the highest grade, were called “hawks” and “eagles.” The “ravens” were the lowest grade; those of the “lion” grade were apparently previously invested with the disguises and masks of a series of animal forms before they received the lion shape.

Porphyry tells us, further, that Pallas, who had, prior to Porphyry’s day, written an excellent treatise on the Mithriaca, now unfortunately lost, asserts that all this was vulgarly believed to refer to the zodiac, but that in truth it symbolized a mystery of the human soul, which is invested with animal natures of various kinds, 3

according to the tradition of the Magi. Thus they call the sun (and therefore those corresponding to this nature) a bull, a lion, a dragon, and a hawk.

It is further to be remembered that Appuleius, 1 in describing the robe with which he was invested after his initiation into the Mysteries of Isis, tells us that he was enthroned as the sun, robed in twelve sacramental stoles or garments; these garments were of linen with beautiful paintings upon them, so that from every side “you might see that I was remarkable by the animals which were painted round my vestment in various colours.” This dress, he says, was called the “Olympic Stole.”

MOMUS

Finally, it may perhaps be of service to make the reader a little better acquainted with Momus.

Among the Greeks Momus was the personification of the spirit of fault-finding. Hesiod, in his Theogony (214), places him among the second generation of the children of Night, together with the Fates. From the Cypria 2 of Stasimus, 3 we learn that, when Zeus, in answer to Earth’s prayer to relieve her of her overpopulation of impious mankind, 4 first sent the Theban War, and on this proving insufficient, bethought him of annihilating the human race by thunderbolts (fire) and floods (water), Momus advises the Father of gods and men to marry the goddess Thetis to a mortal, so that a beautiful daughter (Aphrodite-Helen) might be born to

them, and so mankind, Greeks and Barbarians, on her account be involved in internecine strife—namely, the Trojan War. Further, the Scholiast on Il., i. 5, avers that it was Momus whom Homer meant to represent by the “will” or “counsel” of Zeus.

Sophocles, moreover, wrote a Satyric drama called “Momus,” 1 and so also Achæus. 2

Both Plato 3 and Aristotle 4 refer to Momus. Callimachus, the chief librarian of the Alexandrian Library, from 260-240 B.C., in his Ætia, 5 pilloried his critic and former pupil Apollonius Rhodius as Momus.

Momus, moreover, was a favourite figure with the Sophists and Rhetoricians, especially of the second century A.D. In Æl. Aristides, 6 Momus, as he could find no fault with Aphrodite herself, found fault with her shoe. 7 Lucian makes Aphrodite vow to oppose Momus tooth and nail, 8 and makes Momus find fault with even the greatest works of the gods, such as the house of Athene, the bull of Zeus, and the men of Hephæstus,—the last because the god-smith had not put windows in their breasts so that their hearts might be seen. 9

And, interestingly enough in connection with our treatise, Lucian, in one of his witty sketches, 10 makes

[paragraph continues] Momus one of the persons of the dialogue with Zeus and Hermes. Momus finds fault because Bacchus is reckoned among the gods, and is commanded by Zeus to refrain from making ridicule of Hercules and Asclepius.

The popular figure of Momus was that of a feeble old man, 1—a very different representation from the grandiose Intelligence of our treatise, a true Lucifer.

Some representations give his one sharp tooth, and others wings. The story runs that Zeus finally banished him from Olympus for his fault-finding. 2

The Onomastica Vaticana 3 connects Momus with Mammon; but this side-issue need not detain us. 4

THE MYSTIC GEOGRAPHY OF SACRED LANDS

With regard to the symbolic figure of the Earth of §§ 46-48 of the second K. K. Extract, and the persuasion that Egypt was the heart or centre thereof, we may append two quotations on the subject from widely different standpoints. The first is from Dr Andrew D. White’s recent volumes 5:

“Every great people of antiquity, as a rule, regarded its own central city or most holy place as necessarily the centre of the earth.

“The Chaldeans held that their ‘holy house of the gods’ was the centre. The Egyptians sketched the world under the form of a human figure, in which Egypt was the heart, and the centre of it Thebes. For the Assyrians, it was Babylon; for the Hindus, it was Mount Meru; for the Greeks, so far as the civilized

world was concerned, Olympus or the temple of Delphi; for the modern Mohammedans, it is Mecca and its sacred stone; the Chinese, to this day, speak of their empire as the ‘middle kingdom.’ It was in accordance, then, with a simple tendency of human thought that the Jews believed the centre of the world to be Jerusalem.

“The book of Ezekiel speaks of Jerusalem as in the middle of the earth, and all other parts of the world as set around the holy city. Throughout the ‘ages of faith’ this was very generally accepted as a direct revelation from the Almighty regarding the earth’s form. St Jerome, the greatest authority of the early Church upon the Bible, declared, on the strength of this utterance of the prophet, that Jerusalem could be nowhere but at the earth’s centre; in the ninth century Archbishop Kabanus Maurus reiterated the same argument; in the eleventh century Hugh of St Victor gave to the doctrine another scriptural demonstration; and Pope Urban, in his great sermon at Clermont urging the Franks to the crusade, declared, ‘Jerusalem is the middle point of the earth’; in the thirteenth century an ecclesiastical writer much in vogue, the monk Cæsarius of Heisterbach, declared, ‘As the heart in the midst of the body, so is Jerusalem situated in the midst of our inhabited earth,’—‘so it was that Christ was crucified at the centre of the earth.’ Dante accepted this view of Jerusalem as a certainty, wedding it to immortal verse; and in the pious book of travels ascribed to Sir John Mandeville, so widely read in the Middle Ages, it is declared that Jerusalem is at the centre of the world, and that a spear standing erect at the Holy Sepulchre casts no shadow at the equinox.

“Ezekiel’s statement thus became the standard of orthodoxy to early map-makers. The map of the world at Hereford Cathedral, the maps of Andrea Bianco,

[paragraph continues] Marino Sanuto, and a multitude of others fixed this view in men’s minds, and doubtless discouraged during many generations any scientific statements tending to unbalance this geographical centre revealed in Scripture.”

So much for the righteous indignation of modern physical science; now for cryptology and mysticism. M. W. Blackden, in a recent article on “The Mysteries and the ‘Book of the Dead,’” writes as follows 1:

“One other key there is . . . without which it is useless to approach The Book of the Dead with the idea of discussing any of those gems of wisdom for which old Egypt was so famous. . . . The knowledge of its existence is no recent discovery: it is simply that ancient nations such as the Egyptians, Chaldees, and Jews, had a system of symbolic geography. . . .

“The Jewish and Egyptian priestly caste endeavoured to map out their lands in accordance with their symbols of spiritual things, so far as the physical features would permit. This symbolism of mountain, city, plain, desert, and river extended from the various parts and furniture of the Lodge, to use Masonic phraseology, up to the spiritual anatomy, as it were, of both macrocosm and microcosm.

“Thus in the Jewish Scriptures it is not difficult to distinguish, in the prophetic battles of the nations that were to rage round about Jerusalem, the same symbolism as we have more directly expressed in a little old book called The Siege of Mansoul, the author of which was the John Bunyan of The Pilgrim’s Progress, a man who could well grasp the excellence of geographical symbolism.

“I cannot, of course, here enter at length into the geographical symbols of Egypt, it would take too long; but as I have given Jerusalem as a symbol, I may say

further that Jerusalem as a symbol corresponds to the Egyptian On, or Heliopolis, and so astronomically to the centre of the world and of the universe, and in the microcosm to the spiritual Heart of Man. 1

“But there is one difference between the Hebrew and Egyptian city; for whereas the actual Jerusalem corresponds among the Hebrew prophets to that Jerusalem that now is, and is in bondage with her children, Heliopolis corresponded among the Egyptian priesthood to that city which was to come, the Heavenly City, the New Heart, that should be given to redeemed mankind.”

Here then we have a thesis that deserves a volume to itself; and so I leave it to him who has a mind to undertake the labour.

Footnotes

135:1 The arising of the knowledge of God among the Gods, and the gradual descent of this knowledge down to man, reminds us somewhat of the method of the descent of the “Gospel” in the system of Basilides.

137:1 Or rather apocalypse; see § 15: “As Hermes says when he speaks unto me.”

137:2 Cf. the Egregores of The Book of Enoch; see Charles’ Translation (Oxford; 1893), Index, under “Watchers.”

137:3 The new Manvantara following a periodical Pralaya, to use the terms of Indo-Aryan tradition.

137:4 The creation is figured in one Egyptian tradition as the bursting forth of the Creator into seven peals of laughter,—a sevenfold “Ha!”

138:1 Cf. the “florescence” of § 10.

140:1 Cf. the same idea as expressed by Basilides (ap. Hipp., Philos., vii. 27), but in reversed order, when, speaking of the consummation of the world-process, and the final ascension of the “Sonship” with all its experience gained from union with matter, he says of the remaining souls, which have not reached the dignity of the Sonship, that the Great Ignorance shall come upon them for a space.

“Thus all the souls of this state of existence, whose nature is to remain immortal in this state of existence alone, remain without knowledge of anything different from or better than this state; nor shall there be any rumour or knowledge of things superior in higher states, in order that the lower souls may not suffer pain by striving after impossible objects, just as though it were fish longing to feed on the mountains with sheep, for such a desire would end in their destruction. All things are indestructible if they remain in their proper condition, but subject to destruction if they desire to overleap and transgress their natural limits” (F. F. F., p. 270).

141:1 Cf. Cyril, C. Jul., i. 35; Frag. xvi.

141:2 Cf. §§ 29 and 37.

143:1 Cf. Hermes-Prayer, iii. 3.

143:2 This is of special interest as showing how the Egyptian tradition, in this pre-eminent above all others, did not limit the manifestation to the male sex alone.

144:1 Cf. C. H., xviii. 8 ff.

145:1 The “spirituous” or “aery” body, or vehicle, is composed of the sub-elements, but in it is a predominance of the sub-element “air,” just as in the physical there is a predominance of “earth.”—Philoponus, Proœm. in Aristot. de Anima; see my Orpheus (London, 1896), “The Subtle Body,” pp. 276-281. Cf. also S. I. H., 15, 20.

146:1 Compare this with the prāṇa’s of Indian theosophy; see C. H., x. (xi.) 13, Comment.

148:1 Cf. Diog. Laert., Proœm., i.: “The Egyptians say that Hephæstus (Ptah) was the son of Neilus (the Nile), and that he was the originator of philosophy, of that philosophy whose leaders are priests and prophets”—that is to say, a mystic philosophy of revelation.

148:2 Thus Suidas (s.v. “Ptah”) says that Ptah was the Hephæstus of the Memphite priesthood, and tells us that there was a proverbial saying current among them: “Ptah hath spoken unto thee.” This reminds us of our text: “As Hermes says when he speaks unto me.”

148:3 The type of Isis as utterer of “sacred sermons,” describing herself as daughter or disciple of Hermes, is old, and goes back demonstrably to Ptolemaic times. R. 136, n. 4; 137, n. 1.

149:1 ὁπότ᾽ ἐμὲ καὶ τῷ τελείῳ μέλανι ἐτίμησεν. This has hitherto been always supposed by the philological mind simply to refer to the mysteries of ink or writing, and that too without any humorous intent, but in all portentous solemnity. We must imagine, then, presumably, that it refers to the schooldays of Isis, when she was first taught the Egyptian equivalents for pothooks and hangers. This absurdity is repeated even by Meineke.

150:1 The more correct title of this work should be “Gnostic Jottings (or Notes) according to the True Philosophy,” as Clement states himself and as has been well remarked by Hort in his Ante-Nicene Fathers, p. 87 (London, 1895).

150:2 Op. cit., v. 11. Sopater (Dist. Quæst., p. 123, ed. Walz) speaks of these as “figures” (σχήματα), the same expression which Proclus (In Plat. Rep., p. 380) employs in speaking of the appearances which the Gods assume in their manifestations; Plato (Phædr., p. 250) calls them “blessed apparitions,” or beatific visions” (εὐδαίμονα φάσματα); the author of the Epinomis (p. 986) describes them as “what is most beautiful to see in the world”; these are the “mystic sights” or “wonders” (μυστικὰ θεάματα) of Dion Chrysostom (Orat., xii., p. 387, ed. Reiske); the “holy appearances” (ἅγια φαντάσματα) and “sacred shows” (ἱερὰ δεικνύμενα) of Plutarch (Wyttenbach, Fragm., vi. 1, t. v., p. 722, and De Profect. Virtut. Sent., p. 81, ed. Reiske); the “ineffable apparitions” (ἄρρητα φάσματα) of Aristides (Orat., xix. p. 416, ed. Dindorf); the “divine apparitions” (θεῖα φάσματα) of Himerius (Eclog., xxxii., p. 304, ed. Wernsdorf),—those sublime sights the memory of which was said to accompany the souls of the righteous into the after-life, and when they returned to birth. Cf. Lenormant (F.) on “The Eleusinian Mysteries” in The Contemporary Review (Sept. 1880), p. 416, who, however, thinks that these famous philosophers and writers bankrupted their adjectives merely for the mechanical figures and stage-devices of the lower degrees. See my “Notes on the Eleusinian Mysteries” in The Theosophical Review (April, May, June, 1898), vol. xxii., p. 156.

151:1 De Is. et Os., xxi.

151:2 Berl phil. Wochenschr. (1896), p. 1528; R. 137, n. 3.

151:3 R. 133, n. 2.

151:4 προτογόνῳ—cf. the προγενεστέρου πάντων above.

151:5 Epeius, ap. Eusebius, Præp. Ev., i. 10, p. 41 D.

151:6 Ap. Euseb., Præp., iii. 11, 45, p. 115.

152:1 Cf. the epithet “utterly hidden” found in the “Words (Logoi) of Ammon,” referred to by Justin Martyr, Cohort., xxxviii., and the note thereon in “Fragments from the Fathers.”

152:2 Typified by the dark-coloured body.

152:3 ζωοποιός—typified, presumably, by the girdle (the symbol of the woman) and the staff (the symbol of the man).

152:4 Chron., xl. (ed. Dind., i. 72).

153:1 Varro, De Gente Pop. Rom., ap. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, xviii. 3, 8; R. 139, n. 3.

154:1 It is said that with regard to ancient archaic texts which are still extant, modern Egyptology is able to translate them with greater accuracy than the priests of Manetho’s day; but this one may be allowed to question, unless the ancient texts are capable solely of a physical interpretation.

154:2 The Hermes, presumably, who was fabled to be the son of the Nile, not the physical Nile, but the Heaven Ocean, the Great Green, the Soul of Cosmos, and whom, we are told, the Egyptians would never speak of publicly, but, presumably, only within the circles of initiation. This Nile may be in one sense the Flood that hid the Books of Hermes in its depths or zones; but equally so the son of Nile may be the first Hermes after the Flood.

155:1 Wessley, Denkschr. d. k. Akad. (1893), p. 37, l. 500.

155:2 So R., though this is a meaning to which the lexicons give no support; the verb generally meaning “to defer” or “assent to.”

156:1 Compare also the mystery ritual in The Acts of John: “I am thy God, not that of the betrayer” (F. F. F., p. 434).

156:2 As the Gnostic Marcus would have called it.

156:3 On this ἱερός γάμος or γάμος πνευματικός, see Lobeck (C. A.), Aglaophamus (Königsberg, 1829), 608, 649, 651.

157:1 That is, the Agathodaimon.

157:2 That is, the “Birth of Horus.” Hippolytus, Philos., v. 8 (ed. Dunk, and Schneid, pp. 164, 166, ll. 86-94). see “Myth of Man in the Mysteries,” § 28. The last clause is the gloss of the later Christian over-writer.

158:1 The text is to be found in James (M. R.), Apocrypha Anecdota, ii. (Cambridge, 1897), in Texts and Studies; F. F. F., pp. 432, 433.

158:2 De Is. et Os., xxxiii.

158:3 Cf. this with K. K., 47, where Egypt is said to occupy the position of the heart of the earth.

158:4 Cf. K. K., 20: “Ye brilliant stars, eyes of the gods.”

158:5 Cited by Ebers, “Die Körperteile in Altägyptischen,” Abh. d. k. bayr. Akad. (1897), p. 111, where other references are given.

159:1 Compare also the Naassene document, § 8, in the “Myth of Man” chapter of the Prolegomena, where Isis is called “the seven-robed and black-mantled goddess.”

160:1 Cf. “Isis, the Queen of Heaven, whose most ancient and distinctive title was the Virgin Mother.” Marsham Adams (F.), The Book of the Master, or the Egyptian Doctrine of the Light born of the Virgin Mother (London, 1898), p. 63.

160:2 Hær., li. 22.

160:3 And pre-eminently, therefore, for Epiphanius, the Egyptians.

161:1 That is, the Temple of Korē. This can hardly be the Temple of Persephonē, as Dindorf (iii. 729) suggests, but rather the Temple of Isis.

161:2 Cf. D. J. L., pp. 407 ff.

162:1 Though some have conjectured that the “cock” was the popular name for the Temple-watchman who called the hours.

163:1 See below, where the story is given from Plutarch’s Moralia.

163:2 Compare The Book of the Dead, lxxviii. 31, 32; Budge’s Trans. (London, 1901), ii. 255: “I shall come forth . . . into the House of Isis, the divine lady. I shall behold sacred things which are hidden, and I shall be led on to the secret and holy things, even as they have granted unto me to see the birth of the Great God. Horus hath made me to be a spiritual body through his soul, [and I see what is therein].” Compare the last sentence with C. H., i. 7, and xi. (xii.) 6, where the pupil “sees” by means of the soul of his Master.

164:1 This passage, I believe, affords us an objective point of departure for the reconsideration of C. W. Leadbeater’s statement, in his Christian Creed (London, 1898), p, 45, that “Pontius Pilate” is a pseudo-historical gloss for πόντος πιλητός, the “dense sea” of “matter,” into which the soul is plunged. See for a discussion of this hypothesis D. T. L., pp. 423 ff.

In connection with this a colleague has supplied me with an exceedingly interesting note from Texts and Studies, iv. 2, Coptic Apocryphal Gospels, p. 177, Frag. 4. The Sahidic text is found in Rendiconti della R. Accademia dei Lincei, vol. iii., sem. 2, pp. 381-384 (Frammenti Copti, Nota Via), by Ignazio Guidi (1887). The legend runs that the Devil taking “the form of a fisherman,” goes fishing, and is met by Jesus as He was coming down from the Mount with His disciples. The Devil announces that “he who catcheth fish here, he is the Master. It is not a wonder to catch fish in the waters, the wonder is in this desert, to catch fish therein.” They then have a trial of skill, but the MS. unfortunately breaks off before the result is told. It is in this Fragment that the following remarkable sentence occurs: “Now as Pilate was saying these things before the authorities of Tiberius, the king, Herod, could not refrain from setting Pilate at naught, saying, ‘Thou art a Galilæan foreign Egyptian Pontus.’” The literal translation from the Coptic runs: “Thou art a Pontus Galilæan foreign Egyptian.”

165:1 Compare, for instance, Kaṭhopaniṣhad, Sec. ii., Pt. ii., iv. 11, 12: “The Man, of the size of a thumb, resides in the midst, within in the self, of the past and the future the lord; from him a man hath no desire to hide. This verily is That.

“The Man, of the size of a thumb, like flame free from smoke, of past and of future the lord, the same is to-day, to-morrow the same will he be. This verily is That.”—Mead and Chaṭṭopādhyāya’s Trans. (London, 1896), i. 68, 69.

Here “to-day” and “to-morrow” are said by some to refer to different incarnations; the “Man” (puruṣha) being the potential Self, destined finally to become, or grow into the stature of, the Great Self (Maha-puruṣha).

165:2 See the article, “Theosophic Light on Bible Shadows,” in The Theosophical Review (Nov. 1904), xxxv. 230, 231.

165:3 The minute image of a person reflected in the pupil of the eye of another may to some extent account for the popular belief underlying this identification.

166:1 The same idea which we found above in connection with Ammon.

166:2 To go “a-whoring” after strange gods and strange doctrines was the graphic figure invariably employed by Hebrew orthodoxy; “to commit fornication” not unfrequently echoes the same idea in the New Testament.

167:1 For the latest study on the subject, see Monseur (E.), “L’Âme Pupilline,” Rev. de l’Hist. des Relig. (Jan. and Feb. 1905), who discusses the significance in primitive religion of the reflected image to be seen in the pupil of the eye. This “little man” of the eye was taken to be its soul, and to control all its functions.

167:2 Cf., for the idea in the mind of the ancients, Tim. 45 B: “So much of the fire as would not burn, but gave a gentle light, they formed into a substance akin to the light of every-day life; and the pure fire which is within us and related thereto they made to flow through the eyes in a stream smooth and dense, compressing the whole eye, and especially the centre part, so that it kept out everything of a coarser nature, and allowed to pass only this pure element.”

169:1 De Defectu Oraculorum, xxi., xxii. (42lA-422C), ed. G. N. Bernardakis (Leipzig, 1891), iii. 97-101. See my paper, “Plutarch’s Yogī,” in The Theosophical Review (Dec. 1891), ix. 295-297.

170:1 In this referring to the passage in the Timæus, (55 C D), which runs: “Now, he who, duly reflecting on all this, enquires whether the worlds are to be regarded as indefinite or definite in number, will be of opinion that the notion of their indefiniteness is characteristic of a sadly indefinite and ignorant mind. He, however, who raises the question whether they are to be truly regarded as one or five, takes up a more reasonable position” (Jowett’s Trans., 3rd ed., iii. 475, 476).

171:1 Cf. S. I. H., 3: “Now as I chance myself to be as though initiate into the nature that transcendeth death, and that my feet have crossed the Plain of Truth”; and K. K., 22: “The Monarch came, and sitting on the Throne of Truth made answer to their prayers.” The locus classicus is, of course, Plato, Phædrus, 248 B.

171:2 Cf. K. K., 37: “’Tis they who, taught by Hermes that the things below have been disposed by God to be in sympathy with things above, established on the earth the sacred rites o’er which the mysteries in heaven preside.”

172:1 Our difficulty, however, is that Plutarch, in the words of one of his characters, rejects the idea of this numbering being in any way Egyptian, and ascribes it to a certain Petron of Himera in Sicily,—thereby suggesting a probable Pythagorean connection.

173:1 See the section, “Some Outlines of Æonology,” F. F. F., pp. 311-335.

173:2 See my Orpheus (London, 1896), pp. 255-262.

173:3 Cf. Taylor (T.), “Introd. to Timæus,” Works of Plato (London, 1804), p. 442.

174:1 Rep., viii. 545C-547A. See Adam (J.), The Nuptial Number of Plato: Its Solution and Significance (London, 1891).

175:1 Which may have been regarded as the prototypes of the soul-spaces.

176:1 Comment. in Plat. Tim., 216C; ed. C. E. C. Schneider (Vratislaviæ, 1847), p. 250.

176:2 A passage which Proclus, op. cit., 213A (ed. Sch., p. 152) further explains by means of the “harmonic canon” or ruler.

176:3 Jowett (B.), Dialogues of Plato (3rd ed., Oxford, 1892), iii. 403.

176:4 Cf. text 36C: “The motion of the same he carried round by the side to the right, and the motion of the diverse diagonally to the left,”—that is the side of the rectangular figure supposed to be inscribed in the circle of the “same,” and diagonally, across the rectangular figure from corner to corner; and 38D, 39A: “Now, when all the stars which were necessary to the creation of time [i.e. the spheres of the sun, moon, and five planets] had attained a motion suitable to them, and had become living creatures, having bodies fastened by vital chains, and learned their appointed task, moving in the motion of the diverse, which is diagonal, and passes through, and is governed by the motion of the same, they revolved, some in a larger and some in a lesser orbit. . . . The motion of the same made them turn all in a spiral.” With these instruments of “time,” surrounded by the sphere of the same, compare the idea of time flowing down on the worlds, from the Æon, in the story of Cleombrotus.

178:1 So quoted in Andrew Dickson White’s History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (New York, 1898), i. 92. Dr White, unfortunately, does not give the exact reference. The “fan” is, of course, the winnowing fan, a broad basket into which the corn mixed with chaff was received after threshing, and was then thrown up into the wind, so as to disperse the chaff and leave the grain.

178:2 Alexander of Aphrodisias, Comment. on Aristotle in Meteor., 91r (vol. i., 268 I d); Diels, Doxographi Græci (Berlin, 1879), p. 478. Cf. Aëtius, De Placitis Reliquiæ, iii. 10 (Diels, 579).

178:3 Plutarch, Strom., 2 (Diels, 579). See Fairbanks (A.), The First Philosophers of Greece (London, 1898), pp. 13, 14.

179:1 Delitzsch also, in his Babel und Bibel, states that the great debt of early Greece to Assyria will be made clear in a forthcoming work of German scholarship.

180:1 I have also got a stray reference, “κύλινδρος, Plut., 2, 682 C, Xylander’s pages,” but I have not been able to verify this.

180:2 See Cumont (F.), Textes et Monuments figurés relat. aux Mystères de Mithra (Bruxelles, 1899), i. 315.

181:1 Ps. Augustine, Quæstt. Vet. et Nov. Test. (Migne, P. L., tom, xxxiv. col. 2214 f.).

181:2 De Abstinentia, iv. 16 (ed. Nauck, p. 253).

181:3 Cf. Clement of Alexandria on the Basilidian theory of “appendages,” remembering that the School of Basilides was strongly tinctured with Egyptian ideas. “The Basilidians are accustomed to give the name of appendages (or accretions) to the passions. These essences, they say, have a certain substantial existence, and are attached to the rational soul, owing to a certain turmoil and primitive confusion. On to this nucleus other bastard and alien natures of the essence grow, such as those of the wolf, ape, lion, goat, etc. . . . And not only do human souls thus intimately associate themselves with the impulses and impressions of irrational animals, but they even initiate the movements and beauties of plants, because they likewise bear the characteristics of plants appended to them. Nay, there are also certain characteristics [of minerals] shown by habits, such as the hardness of adamant” (F. F. F., p. 276).

182:1 Metamorphoses, Book xi.

182:2 Which Pindar and Herodotus ascribed to Homer himself.

182:3 See Frag. I. from the Scholion on Hom., Il., i. 5 ff.

182:4 See K. K., 34.

183:1 Frag. 369-374B (ed. Dind.); the context of which some believe to be found in Lucian’s Hermotimus, 20.

183:2 Frag. 29, from the Scholion on Aristophanes, Pax, 357.

183:3 Rep., vi. 487A: “Nor would even Momus find fault with this.”

183:4 De Partt. Animal., iii. 2.

183:5 And also at the end of his Hymn to Apollo, ii. 112; also Epigram. Frag., 70.

183:6 Or., 49; ed. Jebb, p. 497.

183:7 Cf. Julian, Ep. ad Dionys.

183:8 Dial. Deor., xx. 2.

183:9 Hermot., xx.; cf. Nig., xxxii.; Dial. Deor., ix.; Ver. Hist., ii. 3; Bab. Fab., lix.; and Jup. Trag., xxii.

183:10 Deor. Consil, iv.

184:1 Philostratus, Ep. 21.

184:2 For the above and other references, see Trümpel’s art. “Momus,” in Roscher’s Lexicon.

184:3 Lug., 194, 59.

184:4 See Nestle’s art. “Mammon,” in Cheyne’s Encyclopædia Biblica.

184:5 Op. supra cit., i. 98, 99.

186:1 The Theosophical Review (July, 1902), vol. xxx. pp. 406, 407.

187:1 “There is an old map of the world in the British Museum which demonstrates both these significations. See also Mappa Mundi, ‘Ebsdorf,’ 1284, and that in Hereford Cathedral made by Richard of Haldingham, one of the Prebends, 1290-1310.”

Gnosticism and Hermetica

EXCERPT XXVII.

FROM THE SERMON OF ISIS TO HORUS

(Patrizzi (p. 34b) runs this on to the last without a break.

Text: Stob., Phys., xli. 68, 69, under heading, “Of Hermes: A Sermon of Isis to Horus”; G. pp. 476-481; M. i. 342-352; W. i. 458-472.

Ménard: Livre III., No. iii. of “Fragments,” etc., as above, pp. 209-221.)

1. 1 In wondrous fashion—(Horus said)—hast thou explained to me, most mighty mother Isis, the details of God’s wondrous soul-making, and I remain in wonder; but not as yet hast thou told me whereto the souls when freed from body go. I would then thank thee for being made initiate by word of mouth 2 into this vision of the soul, 3 O only mother, deathless one!

2. And Isis said:

Give ear, my son; most indispensable is this

research. That which doth hold together, doth also have a place which doth not disappear. For this is what my sermon will set forth.

O wondrous, mighty son of mighty sire Osiris, [the souls] when they go forth from bodies, are not confusedly and in a rush dissolved into the air, and scattered in the rest of boundless Breath, so that they cannot any more as the same [souls] return again to bodies; nor is it possible, again, to turn them back unto that place from which they came at first—no more than water taken from the bottom of a jar can be poured 1 [back again] into the self-same place whence it was taken; nor does the same when taken take a place peculiar to it, but is mixed up with the whole mass of water. 2 Not thus is it [with souls], high-minded Horus!

3. Now as I chance myself to be as though initiate into the nature which transcendeth death, and that my feet have crossed the Plain of Truth, I will explain to thee in detail how it is; and preface this by telling thee that water is a body void of reason condensed from many compound things into a fluid mass, whereas the soul’s a thing of individual nature, son, and of a royal kind, a work of God’s [own] hands and mind, and of itself led by itself to mind.

What then doth come from “one” and not from “other,” cannot be mingled with a different thing; wherefore it needs must be that the soul’s congress with the body is a concord wrought by God’s necessity.

But that they are not [all] confusedly and [all] at random and by chance sent up again to one and the same place, but each to its own proper region, is clear from what [the soul] doth suffer while still it is in body and in plasm, when it has been made dense against its proper nature.

Now give good heed to the similitude recounted, Horus well-beloved!

4. Suppose in one and the same cage have been shut up both men and eagles, doves and swans, and swallows, hawks and sparrows, flies, and snakes, and lions, leopards, wolves, and dogs, and hares, and kine and sheep, and some amphibious animals, as seals and others, tortoises and our own crocodiles; then, that, my son, at one [and the same] moment they are [all] let out.

They [all] will turn instinctively—man to his gathering spots and roofs; the eagle to the ether, in which its nature is to spend its life; the doves into the neighbouring air; the hawks [to that] above [the doves]; the swallows where men dwell; the sparrows round the fruit-trees; the swans where they may sing; the flies about the earth, [but only] so far from it as they can

with [-out their losing] smell of man (for that the fly, my son, is fond of man especially and tends to earth); the lions and the leopards towards the hills; the wolves towards desert spots; the dogs after men’s tracks; the kine to stalls and fields; the sheep to pastures; the snakes to earth’s recesses; the seals and tortoises, with [all] their kind, unto the deeps and streams, so that they neither should be robbed of the dry land nor taken from their cognate water—each one returning to its proper place by means of its internal means of judgment.

So every soul, both in a human form and otherwise incarnate on the earth, knows where it has to go,—unless some foolish person 1 come and say, my son, that it is possible a bull should live in water and a tortoise up in air!

5. And if this be the case when they are plunged in flesh and blood—that they do nothing contrary to what’s appointed them, e’en though they are being punished (for being put in body is a punishment for them)—how much the more [is it the case] when they possess their proper liberty [and are set free] from punishment and being plunged [in body]?

Now the most holy ordering of souls is on this wise. Turn thou thy gaze above, most noble-

natured son, upon their orders. The space from height of heaven to the moon devotes itself unto the gods and stars and to the rest of providence; the space, my son, from moon to us is dwelling place of souls.

This so great air, however, has in it a belt to which it is our use to give the name of wind, a definite expanse in which it is kept moving to refresh the things on earth, and which I will hereafter tell about.

Yet in no manner by its motion on itself does it become an obstacle to souls; for though it keeps on moving, souls can dart up or dart down, 1 just as the case may be, free from all let and hindrance. For they pass through without immixture or adhesion as water flows through oil.

6. Now of this interval, Horus, my son, there are four main divisions and sixty special spaces.

Of these [divisions] the first one upwards from the earth is of four spaces, so that the earth in certain of its mountain heights and peaks extends and comes so far, but beyond these it cannot in its nature go in height.

The second after this is of eight spaces, in which the motions of the winds take place.

Give heed, O son, for thou art hearing

mysteries that must not be disclosed—of earth and heaven and all the holy air which lies between, in which there is the motion of the wind and flight of birds. For above this the air doth have no motion and sustains no life.

This [moving] air moreover hath of its own nature this authority—that it can circulate in its own spaces and also in the four of earth with all the lives which it contains, while earth cannot ascend into its [realm].

The third consists of sixteen spaces filled with subtle air and pure.

The fourth consists of two and thirty [spaces], in which there is the subtlest and the finest air; it is by means of this that [air] shuts from itself the heavens above which are by nature fiery.

7. This ordering is up and down in a straight line and has no overlapping; so that there are four main divisions, twelve intervallic ones and sixty spaces.

And in these sixty spaces dwell the souls, each one according to its nature, for though they are of one and the same substance, they’re not of the same dignity. For by so much as any space is higher from the earth than any other, by so much do the souls in them, my son, surpass in eminence the one the other. 1

What souls, however, go to each of them, I

will accordingly begin again to tell thee, Horus, [son] of great renown, taking their order from above down to the earth.

CONCERNING THE INBREATHING AND THE TRANSMIGRATION OF THE SOUL 1

8. The [air] between the earth and heavens, Horus, is spaced out by measure and by harmony.

These spaces have been named by some of our forefathers zones, by others firmaments, by others layers.

And in them dwell both souls which have been set free from their bodies, and also those which have as yet been never shut in body.

And each of them, my son, hath just the place it doth deserve; so that the godly and the kingly ones dwell in the highest space of all, those least in honour and the rest of the decadent ones [dwell] in the lowest space of all, while middling souls dwell in the middle space.

Accordingly, those souls which are sent down to rule, are sent down, Horus, from the upper zones; and when they are set free [again] they go back to the same or even still more lofty ones, unless it be they still have acted contrary

to their own nature’s dignity and the pronouncement of the Law of God.

Such souls as these the Providence above, according to the measure of their sins, doth banish down to lower spaces; just as with those which are inferior in dignity and power, it leads them up from lower [realms] to vaster and more lofty ones.

9. For up above [them all] there are two ministers of universal Providence, of whom one is the warder of the souls, the other their conductor. The warder [watches o’er the souls when out of body], while the conductor is dispatcher and distributor of souls into their bodies. The former keeps them, while the latter sends them forth according to the Will of God.

For this cause (logos) then, my son, nature on earth according to the change of deeds above doth model out the vessels and shape out the tents in which the souls are cast. 1 Two energies, experience and memory, assist her.

And this is memory’s task, [to see] that nature guards the type of every thing sent down out of its source and keeps its mixture as it is above; while of experience [the work is this, to see] conformably to every one of the descending souls it may have its embodiment, and that the

plasms may be made effective 1—that for the swift ones of the souls the bodies also may be swift, for slow ones slow, for active active ones, for sluggish sluggish ones, for powerful powerful, and for crafty crafty ones, and in a word for every one of them as it is fit.

10. For not without intention hath she clad winged things with plumage; and tricked out with senses more than ordinary and more exact those which have reason; and some of the four-footed things made strong with horns, some strong with teeth, some strong with claws and hoofs; while creeping things she hath made supple with bodies clad in easy-moving scales, which easily can glide away.

And that the watery nature of their body may not remain entirely weak, she doth provide the sharpened fangs of some of them with power; so that by reason of the fear of death [they cause] they’re stronger than the rest.

The swimming things being timorous, she gives to dwell within an element where light can exercise nor one nor other of its powers, for fire in water gives nor light nor heat. But each of them, swimming in water clad in scales or spines, flees from what frightens it where’er it will, using the water as a means of hiding it from sight.

11. For souls are shut in each class of these bodies according to their similarity [to them]. Those which have power of judgment go down into men; and those that lack it into quadrupeds, whose [only] law is force; the crafty ones [go] into reptiles, for none of them attack a man in front, but lie in wait and strike him down; and into swimming things the timid ones or those which are not worthy to enjoy the other elements. In every class, however, there are found some which no longer use their proper nature.

How [meanest thou] again, my mother? Horus said.

And Isis answered:

A man, for instance, son, o’ersteps his power of judgment; a quadruped avoids the use of force; and reptiles lose their craftiness; and birds their fear of men. So much [then] for the ordering of [souls] above and their descent, and for the making of their bodies.

12. In every class and kind of the above, my son, there may be found some regal souls; others also descend with various natures, some fiery, and some cold, some overbearing, and some mild, some skilled, some unskilled, some idle, some industrious, some one thing, some another. And this results from the arrangement of the regions whence the souls leap down to their embodiment.

For from the regal zone they leap down [into birth], the soul of the like nature ruling them 1; for there are many sovereignties. Some are of souls, and some of bodies, and some of arts, and some of sciences, and some are of ourselves.

How [meanest thou] again, my mother, “of ourselves”?

For instance, son, it is thy sire Osiris who is [the ruler] of the souls of them born after us up to this time 2; whereas the prince of every race [is ruler] of their bodies; [the king] of counsel is the father and the guide of all, Thrice-greatest Hermes; of medicine Asclepius, Hephæstus’ son; of power and might again Osiris, and after him thyself, my son; and of philosophy Arnebeschēnis; of poetry again Asclepius-Imuth.

13. For generally, my son, thou’lt find, if thou inquirest, that there are many ruling many things and many holding sway o’er many. And he who rules them all, my son, is from the highest space; while he who rules some part of them, doth have the rank of that particular realm from which he is.

Those who come from the regal zone, [have] a more ruling [part to play; those from the zone

of fire 1] become fire-workers and fire-tenders; those from the watery one live out their life in waters; those from the [zone] of science and of art are occupied with arts and sciences; those from the [zone] of inactivity inactively and heedlessly live out their lives.

For that the sources of all things wrought on the earth by word or deed, are up above, and they dispense for us their essences by weight and measure; and there is naught which hath not come down from above, and will return again to re-descend.

14. What dost thou mean again by this, my mother? Tell me!

And Isis once again did make reply: Most holy Nature hath set in living creatures the clear sign of this return. For that this breath which we breathe from above out of the air, we send out up again, to take it in [once more].

And we have in us organs, son, to do this work, and when they close their mouths whereby the breath’s received, then we no longer are as now we are, but we depart.

Moreover, son of high renown, there are some other things which we have added to us outside the weighed-out mixture [of the body].

15. What, then (said Horus), is this mixture, mother?

It is a union and a blend of the four elements; and from this blend and union a certain vapour 1 rises, which is enveloped by the soul, but circulates within the body, sharing with each, with body and with soul, its nature. And thus the differences of changes are effected both in soul and body.

For if there be in the corporeal make-up more of fire, thereon the soul, which is by nature hot, taking unto itself another thing that’s hot, and [so] being made more fiery, makes the life more energetic and more passionate, and the body quick and active.

If [there be] more of air, thereon the life becomes both light and springy and unsteady both in the soul and body.

And if there’s more of water, then the creature also doth become of supple soul and easy disposition, and ready of embrace, and able easily to meet and join with others, through water’s power of union and communion with the rest of things; for that it finds a place in all, and when it is abundant, doth dissolve what it surrounds, while if [there’s] little [of it], it sinks into and doth become what it is mingled with. As for their bodies, by dampness and by sponginess they are not made compact, but by a slight attack of sickness are dissolved, and fall away by

little and by little from the bond which holds them severally together.

And if the earthy [element] is in excess, the creature’s soul is dull, for it has not its body-texture loosely knit, or space for it to leap through, the organs of sensation being dense; but by itself it stays within, bound down by weight and density. As for its body, it is firm, but heavy and inert, and only moved of choice by [exercise of] strength.

But if there is a balanced state of all [the elements], then is the animal made hot for doing, light for moving, well-mixed for contact, and excellent for holding things together. 1

16. Accordingly those which have more in them of fire and air, these are made into birds, and have their state above hard by those elements from which they came.

While those which have more fire, less air, and earth and water equal, these are made into men, and for the creature the excess of heat is turned into sagacity; for that the mind in us is a hot thing which knows not how to burn, but has intelligence to penetrate all things.

And those which have in them more water and more earth, but moderate air and little fire,

these are turned into quadrupeds, and those which have more heat are stronger than the rest. Those which have equal earth and water, are made into reptiles. These through their lack of fire lack courage and straightforwardness; while through their having water in them they are cold; and through their having earth they heavy are and torpid; yet through their having air, they can move easily if they should choose to do so.

Those which have in them more of wet, and less of dry, these are made into fish. These through their lack of heat and air are timorous and try to hide themselves, and through excess of wet and earthy elements, they find their home, through their affinity, in fluid earth and water.

17. It is according to the share [they have] in every element and to the compass of that share, that bodies reach full growth [in man]; according to the smallness of their share the other animals have been proportioned—according to the energy which is in every element. 1

Moreover, O my well-beloved, I say, that when, out of this state [of things], the blend based on the first commixture [of the elements in any case], and the resultant vapour 2 from it,

so far preserve their own peculiarity, that neither the hot part takes on another heat, nor [does] the aery [take] another air, nor [does] the watery part another wetness, nor [yet] the earthy [take] another density, then doth the animal remain in health.

18. But if they do not, son, remain in the proportions which they had from the beginning, but are too much increased—(I do not mean in energy according to their compass or in the change of sex and body brought about by growth, but in the blend, as we have said before, of the component elements, so that the hot, for instance, is increased too much or too much lessened, and so for all the rest)—then will the animal be sick.

19. And if this [increase] doth take place in both the elements of heat and air, the soul’s tent-fellows, then doth the creature fall into symbolic dreams and ecstasies; for that a concentration of the elements whereby the bodies are dissolved has taken place. For ’tis the earthy element itself which is the condensation of the body; the watery element in it as well is a fluidity to make it dense. Whereas the aery element is that in us which has the power of motion, and fire is that which makes an end of all of them.

20. Just then as is the vapour 1 which ariseth

from the first conjunction and co-blending of the elements, as though it were a kindling or an exhalation,—whatever it may be, it mingles with the soul and draws it to itself, so that it shares its nature good or bad. And if the soul remains in its original relationship and common life with it, it keeps its rank.

But when there’s added from without some larger share than what was first laid down for it,—either to the whole mixture, or to its parts, or to one part of it,—then the resulting change effected in the vapour doth bring about a change or in the disposition of the soul or of the body.

The fire and air, as tending upward, hasten upward to the soul, which dwells in the same regions as themselves; the watery and the earthy elements, as tending down, sink down upon the body, which doth possess the self-same seat.

*     *     *     *     *

Footnotes

188:1 I have numbered the paragraphs for convenience of reference.

188:2 μύστης. The mystēs, speaking generally, was initiated by word of mouth, the epoptēs by sight or vision.

188:3 θεωρία.

189:1 Reading ἐπιχεῖν for ἐπέχειν.

189:2 The construction of the whole of the above paragraph is exceedingly involved.

191:1 τις τῶν τυφωνίων—an interesting phrase as showing that Typhon was regarded as the enemy of Osiris (the Logos or Reason).

192:1 Cf. the beginning of the Apocalypse of Thespesius (Aridæus) in Plutarch, De Sera Num. Vind., xxii.

193:1 For a consideration of this ordering, see p. 168 ff. above.

194:1 This appears to be a heading inserted by Stobæus (Phys., xli. 64) or some scribe; there seems to be no break in the text.

195:1 The text is exceedingly imperfect, and in its present state quite untranslatable.

196:1 The text is again very imperfect.

198:1 The text is here very corrupt, and the reading of the last words of the two following sentences very doubtful.

198:2 That is presumably since the time when Osiris and Isis lived on earth among men.

199:1 The text is exceedingly defective.

200:1 Cf. 17 and 20 below.

201:1 The text is faulty, the language artificial, the analogy strained, and the sense accordingly obscure. Meineke reads: γενναῖον δὲ εἰς θήξιν.

202:1 The text is utterly corrupt and has not yet been even plausibly emended.

202:2 Cf. 15 and 20.

203:1 Cf. 15 and 17.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

COMMENTARY

ARGUMENT

The Sermon from which this Extract is taken plainly belonged to the same class of literature as the K. K. Excerpts. The writer is an initiate of a higher degree, imparting instruction to his pupil by word of mouth.

He himself, however, professes to have “seen,” for he has been plunged in the Cup of Immortality, and his feet have crossed the Plain of Truth (3).

1. The subject is the excarnate state of souls (1-3). The instruction is given by an analogy and a similitude (4). Each soul seeks naturally its proper habitat in the unseen world.

5. The ordering of the spaces of the excarnate souls is then described. These spaces are all in the “great air,” the sublunary region, extending from the earth surface to the moon.

6. Of this great interval there are 4 main divisions and 60 spaces, the divisions consisting respectively of 4, 8, 16 and 32 sub-spaces. Above the second division from below there is no motion of the “air”; the “wind,” or “moving air” belt, belongs properly to this second division, but has also authority over the first or lowest division, which extends from the earth-surface to the tops of the highest mountains.

7. Besides these 4 divisions and 60 spaces, there is a further ordering into 12 “intervallic” divisions. 1

8. All is arranged by measure and harmony, and after death every soul goes to the space of its desert, ascending and descending according to an unerring law of Providence.

9. To carry out this economy there are two ministers of Providence, the warder and the conductor of souls. The one watches over souls who are out of body, and the other brings them back to suitable bodies. These bodies are made by nature in exact correspondence with their former deeds and characters; in this nature is aided by the energies of experience and memory (9-11).

12. The nature of the soul is conditioned by its habitat in the air-spaces or zones; and this is especially

the case with those of the regal type. The names of some of these royal souls and their offices are given.

13. In brief all is ordered from above; the source of all is above in the soul-spaces, and as all souls come thence, so will all return thither.

14. How this is effected is explained as being conditioned by a certain link between soul and body, a sort of quintessence, or exhalation, or vapour, of the blend of sub-elements which compose the body (14-20). 1 It is a sort of etheric link between soul and body; it circulates in the body, but also shares with the soul, which is not thought of as being in the body, but as a sphere enveloping the body; or at any rate the body is in the soul, and not the soul in the body. Health is said to depend upon the maintenance of the due proportion of the “vapours” 2 of this “etheric double” (18).

Not only so, but the increase of vitality or intensity in these elements in the “vapour,” is the means of remembering symbolic dreams and passing into a state of ecstasy; finally it is the fiery element of this “vapour” which dissolves this “spirituous body” (19).

It is by means of this link that changes are effected from soul to body, and from body to soul (20); and here, unfortunately, Stobæus ends his excerpt.

TITLE AND ORDERING

The “Sermon of Isis to Horus” extract is, in both style and context, so similar to the K. K. excerpts that we might almost take it to be part and parcel of the very same treatise; but if this had been the case, Stobæus, following his custom, would have presumably headed it with a simple “from the same.” He may,

however, have made a mistake, for that the good Joannes sometimes nods, may be seen from the short Excerpt xxi., which he says is also taken from “The [Sermon] of Isis to Horus” 1; but this cannot be the case, since Isis is here addressing a certain king as her pupil, and not Horus.

Moreover, at the very beginning of our excerpt Horus distinctly states that Isis has already explained to him “the details of God’s wondrous soul-making,” and thanks her “for being made initiate by word of mouth into the vision of the soul,”—all of which is a precise reference to the contents of the K. K. excerpts. I am, therefore, inclined to think that not only is it a further tractate of instruction following immediately on K. K., but that even if it were supposed to be part and parcel of the same sermon, and that “The [Sermon] of Isis to Horus” was simply a sub-title or alternative title of the “Virgin of the World,” the hypothesis could not be easily set aside. 2

In any case it is quite certain that S. I. H. belongs to precisely the same type as K. K.; and that it pertains to the same special class of Trismegistic literature, and to a somewhat similar type as the treatise from which Cyril quotes Fragg. xix., xx., xxi., in which Osiris figures as the disciple of the Good Daimon, Trismegistus.

THE BOOKS OF ISIS AND HORUS

Here also, as in K. K., Isis comes forward as “initiated into the nature that transcendeth death,” her “feet

have crossed the Plain of Truth” (3) that is as we have shown in the Comments on K. K., 10, the writer claims to have reached the degree of illumination which bestows on men the consciousness of the gods. “Isis,” then, is not “common to all priests,” as Jamblichus says of “Hermes,” without the honorific qualification “Thrice-greatest,” but rather of a certain grade of initiation; the teacher of that lower grade, or Horus-grade, being Hermes’ representative. Isis was commonly regarded as the Lady of all wisdom and teacher of all magic. Already in the earliest Hellenistic period she had attributes similar to those of Thoth-Hermes, and thus comes forward as the Orderer of the world 1; and not only so, but, like Thoth, she is called Lady of the heart and of the tongue; that is to say, her attributes were those of the Logos. 2

That there was a secret theosophic and apocalyptic literature ascribed to Isis and Horus may be seen from Lucian, who, in one of his humorous sketches, puts into the mouth of Pythagoras the following sentence:

“I also journeyed to Egypt that I might make the acquaintance of the prophets of wisdom, and I descended into the shrines of the temples and learned the Books of Isis and Horus.” 3

Here again, then, as Manetho tells us, these Books, as the Books of Hermes, were kept secret in the holy of holies of the Temples; and these shrines were evidently

underground for Pythagoras is said to have “descended” to them.

This is the Horus who is not only, after Osiris, the lord of power and might, that is, king, but lord of philosophy, as Arnebeschēnis (12). For Arnebeschēnis, that is Har-nebeschenis, is, as Spiegelberg has shown, 1 an Egyptian proper name, meaning “Horus lord of Letopolis,” at one time an important city in the Delta. In the Alchemical literature also we meet with Horus as a writer of books, as for instance in the superscription “Horus the Gold-miner to Cronus who is Ammon.” 2

Here we see that Horus stands to Isis as Asclepius to Hermes; Asclepius wrote books to Ammon, and so Horus wrote books to Ammon; but whereas the Trismegistic tradition proper looked back to Cronus (Ammon) as one of its earliest teachers, the later writings converted Ammon into a king who was taught by Asclepius or by Horus.

THE WATERY SPHERE AND SUBTLE BODY

The writer of S. I. H. tells us that the soul in its royal state, that is while lord of itself, is a divine creature, but in incarnation it is united with the watery plasm or subtle body, of K. K., 18, where Hermes says that in making it he “used more water than was required”; and to which the soul in its complaint (§ 21) refers as a “watery sphere.” This union makes it dense “against its proper nature” (3), and it is further densified by a certain “vaporous” nature which unites it with the physical frame (15, 17, 20); concerning all of which it is of interest to refer to Philoponus, who tells us that:

“They [the ancients] further add, that there is something of a plantal and plastic life 1 also, exercised by the soul, in those spirituous and airy bodies after death; they being nourished too, though not after the same manner, as these gross earthly bodies of ours are here, but by vapours; and that not by parts or organs, but throughout the whole of them (as sponges), 2 they imbibing everywhere those vapours. For which cause, they who are wise will in this life also take care of using a thinner and dryer diet, that so that spirituous body (which we have also at this present time within our grosser body) may not be clogged and incrassated, but attenuated. Over and above which these ancients made use of catharms, or purgations, to the same end and purpose also: for as this earthly body is washed with water, so is that spirituous body cleansed by cathartic vapours; some of these vapours being nutritive, others purgative. Moreover, these ancients further declared concerning this spirituous body, that it was not organized, but did the whole of it, in every part throughout, exercise all functions of sense, the soul hearing and seeing, and perceivng all sensibles, by it everywhere.” 3

THE HABITAT OF EXCARNATE SOULS

But to return to our treatise; the dwelling-place of excarnate souls is the Air, the sublunary region of four main layers, which are successively subtler and finer as they are more removed from the earth; the uppermost limit of the Air is coterminous with the fiery or ætheric realms (6), the habitat of the gods.

In the different zones, or firmaments, or layers of this Air, dwell not only excarnate souls, during the period between their incarnations, but also those which have never yet been shut in body—that is, presumably, the daimones (8).

With regard to the manner in which souls are kept in their appropriate spaces after the death of the body, and the way in which they are brought back to appropriate bodies, and the two ministers of Providence (9), it is of value to note that in this we have a simple outline of what is explained at great length and in much detail in the Coptic Gnostic work called Pistis Sophia. It would, however, occupy too much space here to deal with the representations of the Egyptian Gnostic work on this subject in a satisfactory manner, and as the text is now accessible in English, it can easily be consulted by the reader. 1

Footnotes

205:1 See Comments on K. K., 10.

206:1 This bears a curious resemblance to the prāṇamaya kosha, or “vital sheath,” of the Vedāntins.

206:2 Vedāntic prāṇa’s, of which there are five.

207:1 Of which Schow gives the alternative heading: “From the Intercession (or Supplication) of Isis,” which Gaisford (in a note) thinks is from the Vienna Codex. This, however, is not the case, for the Vindobonensis preserves the usual reading except that the last word is missing. See R. 134, n. 3.

207:2 R. (p. 135, n. 3), however, thinks this impossible.

208:1 See Reitzenstein, Zwei religionsgesch. Fragen, 104 ff.

208:2 Plutarch, De Is. et Os., lxviii.: “They say that of the trees in Egypt the persea is especially dedicated to her, and that its fruit resembles a heart, and its leaf a tongue. For nothing that men have is more divine than the word (logos), and especially the [word] concerning the gods.” The fruit of the persea grew from the stem.

208:3 Gallus, 18.

209:1 Demotische Studien, i., “Ägyptische u. griechische Eigennamen,” p. 28 (cf. also p. 41); R. 135.

209:2 Berthelot, p. 103.

210:1 τῆς φυτικῆς ζωῆς,—that is, vegetative.

210:2 Endosmosis and exosmosis.

210:3 Philoponus, Proœm. in Aristot. de Anima, as given in Cudworth’s Intellectual System (ed. 1820), iii. 506 ff.; see my Orpheus, pp. 278, 279.

211:1 For Melchizedek, the “Receiver of light and Guide of souls,” see P. S., passim, and especially 35-37, 292, 327; for Zorokothora-Melchizedek and Ieou, see “The Books of the Saviour,” ibid., 365 ff.; and for Gabriel and Michael, ibid., 138.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

References and Fragments in the Fathers

I.

JUSTIN MARTYR

i. Cohortatio ad Gentiles, xxxviii.; Otto (J. C. T.), ii. 122 (2d ed., Jena, 1849). 1

THE MOST ANCIENT OF PHILOSOPHERS

Now if any of you should think that he has learnt the doctrine concerning God from those of the philosophers who are mentioned among you as most ancient, let him give ear to Ammon and Hermes. For Ammon in the Words (Logoi) concerning himself 2 calls God “utterly hidden”; while Hermes clearly and plainly declares:

To understand God is difficult; to speak [of Him] impossible, even for one who can understand. 3

THE “WORDS OF AMMON”

This passage occurs at the very end of the treatise. Justin will have it that the most ancient of all the philosophers are on his side.

These are Ammon and Hermes. Justin, moreover, knows of certain Words (Logoi), or Sermons, or Sacred Utterances of Ammon, which must have been circulating in Greek, otherwise it is difficult to see how Justin was acquainted with them. They were evidently of an apocalyptic nature, in the form of a self-revelation of Ammon or God.

These “Words of Ammon” have clearly nothing to do with the Ammonian type of the surviving Trismegistic literature, where Ammon is a hearer and not an instructor, least of all the supreme instructor or Agathodaimon. In them we may see an intermediate stage of direct dependence of Hellenistic theological literature on Egyptian originals, for we have preserved to us certain Hymns from the El-Khargeh Oasis which bear the inscription “‘The Secret Words of Ammon’ which were found on Tables of Mulberry-wood.” 1

THE INEFFABILITY OF GOD

The sentence from Hermes is from a lost sermon, a fragment of which is preserved in an excerpt by Stobæus. It was probably the opening words of what Stobæus calls “The [Sermon] to Tat,” 2 that is to say, probably one of the “Expository Sermons to Tat,” as Lactantius calls them. 3

The idea in the saying was a common place in

[paragraph continues] Hellenistic theological thought, and need not be always directly referred to the much-quoted words of Plato: “To find the Father and the Maker of this universe is a [great] work, and finding [Him] it is impossible to tell [Him] unto all.” 1 Indeed, it is curious to remark that Justin reproduces the text of the Hermetic writer far more faithfully than when he refers directly to the saying of Plato. 2

ii. I. Apologia, xxi.; Otto, i. 54.

HERMES AND ASCLEPIUS SONS OF GOD

And when we say that the Word (Logos) which is the first begetting of God, was begotten without intercourse,—Jesus Christ, our Master,—and that he was crucified, and was dead, and rose again and ascended into heaven, we bring forward no new thing beyond those among you who are called Sons of Zeus. For ye know how many Sons the writers who are held in honour among you ascribe to Zeus:—Hermes, the Word (Logos), who was the interpreter and teacher of all; and Asclepius, who was also 3 a healer, 4 and was smitten by the bolt [of his sire] and ascended into heaven . . . [and many others] . . .

iii. Ibid., xxii.; Otto, i. 58.

HERMES THE WORD WHO BRINGS TIDINGS FROM GOD

But as to the Son of God called Jesus,—even though he were only a man [born] in the common way, [yet] because of [his] wisdom is he worthy to be called Son

of God; for all writers call God “Father of men and gods.” And if we say [further] that he was also in a special way, beyond his common birth, begotten of God [as] Word (Logos) of God, let us have this in common with you who call Hermes the Word (Logos) who brings tidings 1 from God.

THE SONS OF GOD IN HELLENISTIC THEOLOGY

It is remarkable that Justin heads the list of Sons of God—Dionysus, Hercules, etc.—with Hermes and Asclepius. Moreover, when he returns to the subject he again refers to Hermes and to Hermes alone. This clearly shows that the most telling parallel he could bring forward was that of Hermes, who, in the Hellenistic theological world of his day, was especially thought of under the concept of the Logos.

The immediate association of the name of Asclepius with that of Hermes is also remarkable, and indicates that they were closely associated in Justin’s mind; the indication, however, is too vague to permit of any positive deduction as to an Asclepius-element in the Trismegistic literature current in Rome in Justin’s time. Justin, in any case, has apparently very little first-hand knowledge of the subject, for he introduces the purely Hellenic myth of Asclepius being struck by a thunderbolt, which, we need hardly say, is entirely foreign to the conception of the Hellenistic Asclepius, the disciple of Hermes.

AN UNVERIFIABLE QUOTATION

To these quotations Chambers (p. 139) adds the following passage from II. Apologia, vi.,—which in date may be placed some four or five years after the First.

“Now to the Father of all no name can be given; seeing that He is ingenerable; for by whatsoever name one may be called, he has as his elder the one who gives the name. But ‘Father,’ and ‘God,’ and ‘Creator,’ and ‘Lord,’ and ‘Master’ are not names, but terms of address [derived] from His blessings and His works.”

It is quite true that this passage might be taken verbally from a Hermetic tractate, but I can find no authority in the text of Justin for claiming it as a quotation. For the same idea in Hermes compare C. H., v. (vi.) 10, and Lact., D. I., i. 6.

Footnotes

215:1 The Exhortation is considered by most pseudepigraphic, but is supposed by others to be the earliest work of Justin, which may be placed conjecturally about 130 A.D.; the First Apology is generally ascribed to the year 148 A.D.

215:2 Taking the reading περὶ ἑαυτοῦ (Otto, n. 13), adopted in R. 138.

215:3 Quoted also by Lactantius, D. I. Epit., 4; Cyril Alex., Con. Jul., i. 31; and Stobæus, Flor., lxxx. [lxxviii.], 94 (Ex. ii. 1).

216:1 R. 138. The connection between this Ammon and Hermes was probably the same as that which is said to have existed between the king-god Thamus-Ammon and the god of invention Theuth-Hermes. Thamus-Ammon was a king philosopher, to whom Theuth brought all his inventions and discoveries for his (Ammon’s) judgment, which was not invariably favourable. See the pleasant story told by Plato, Phædrus, 274 C. Cf. also the notes on Kneph-Ammon, K. K., 19, Comment.

216:2 Stob., loc. infra cit.

216:3 See Fragg. xi., xii., xiii., xv., xx., xxii., xxiii., xxiv. (?).

217:1 Timæus, 28 C.

217:2 See Cohort., xxii.; II. Apol., x. Clemens Alex., Origen, Minutius Felix, Lactantius, and other of the Fathers also quote this saying of Plato.

217:3 That is, like Jesus.

217:4 θεραπευτὴν (therapeut).

218:1 τὸν παρὰ θεοῦ ἀγγελτικόν. Compare Plutarch, De Is. et Os., xxvi. 5.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

II.

ATHENAGORAS

Libellus pro Christianis, 1 xxviii.; Schwartz (E.), p. 57, 24 (Leipzig, 1891). 2

Athenagoras was acquainted with a Greek literature circulated under the name of Hermes Trismegistus, to whom he refers as authority for his euhemeristic contention that the gods were once simply men. 3

Footnotes

220:1 Written probably about 176-177 A.D.

220:2 In Texte u. Untersuchungen (von Gebhardt and Harnack), Bd. iv.

220:3 Cf. R, pp. 2 and 160.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

III.

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA 1

i. Protrepticus, ii. 29; Dindorf (G.), i. 29, (Oxford, 1869)—(24 P., 8 S.).

MANY HERMESES AND ASCLEPIUSES

(After referring to the three Zeuses, five Athenas, and numberless Apollos of complex popular tradition, Clement continues:)

But what were I to mention the many Asclepiuses, or the Hermeses that are reckoned up, or the Hephæstuses of mythology?

Clement lived in the very centre of Hellenistic theology, and his grouping together of the names of Asclepius, Hermes and Hephæstus, the demiurgic Ptah, whose tradition was incorporated into the Pœmandres doctrine, is therefore not fortuitous, but shows that these three names were closely associated in his mind, and that, therefore, he was acquainted with the Trismegistic literature. This deduction is confirmed by the following passage.

ii. Stromateis, I. xxi. 134; Dindorf, ii. 108 (399 P., 144 S.).

THE APOTHEOSIS OF HERMES AND ASCLEPIUS

Of those, too, who once lived as men among the Egyptians, but who have been made gods by human opinion, [are] Hermes of Thebes and Asclepius of Memphis.

(To this we may appropriately append what Clement has to tell us about the “Books of Hermes,” when, writing in the last quarter of the second century, he describes one of the sacred processions of the Egyptians as follows:)

iii. Ibid., VI. iv. 35; Dind., iii. 156, 157.

THE BOOKS OF HERMES

First comes the “Singer” bearing some one of the symbols of music. This [priest], they tell us, has to make himself master of two of the “Books of Hermes,” one of which contains (1) Hymns [in honour] of the Gods, 1 and the other (2) Reflections 2 on the Kingly Life.

After the “Singer” comes the “Time-watcher” bearing the symbols of the star-science, a dial after a hand and phœnix. He must have the division of the “Books of Hermes” which treats of the stars ever at the tip of his tongue—there being four of such books. The first of these deals with (3) the Ordering of the

apparently Fixed Stars, 1 the next [two] (4 and 5) with the conjunctions and variations of Light of the Sun and Moon, and the last (6) with the Risings [of the Stars].

Next comes the “Scribe of the Mysteries,” with wings on his head, having in either hand a book and a ruler 2 in which is the ink and reed pen with which they write. He has to know what they call the sacred characters, and the books about (7) Cosmography, and (8) Geography, (9) the Constitution of the Sun and Moon, and (10) of the Five Planets, (11) the Survey of Egypt, and (12) the Chart of the Nile, (13) the List of the Appurtenances of the Temples and (14) of the Lands consecrated to them, (15) the Measures, and (16) Things used in the Sacred Rites.

After the above-mentioned comes the “Overseer 3 of the Ceremonies,” bearing the cubit of justice and the libation cup [as his symbols]. He must know all the books relating to the training [of the conductors of the public cult], and those that they call the victim-sealing 4

books. There are ten of these books which deal with the worship which they pay to the gods, and in which the Egyptian cult is contained; namely [those which treat] of (17) Sacrifice, (18) First-fruits, (19) Hymns, (20) Prayers, (21) Processions, (22) Feasts, and (23-26) the like.

After all of these comes the “Prophet” clasping to his breast the water-vase so that all can see it; and after him follow those who carry the bread that is to be distributed. 1 The “Prophet” as chief of the temple, learns by heart the ten books which are called “hieratic”; these contain the volumes (27-36) treating of the Laws, and the Gods, and the whole Discipline of the Priests. For you must know that the “Prophet” among the Egyptians is also the supervisor of the distribution of the [temple] revenues.

Now the books which are absolutely indispensable 2

for Hermes 1 are forty-two in number. Six-and-thirty of them, which contain the whole wisdom-discipline 2 of the Egyptians, are learned by heart by the [grades of priests] already mentioned. The remaining six are learned by the “Shrine-bearers” 3; these are medical treatises dealing with (37) the Constitution of the Body, with (38) Diseases, (39) Instruments, (40) Drugs, (41) Eyes, 4 and finally (42) with the Maladies of Women.

THE GENERAL CATALOGUE OF THE EGYPTIAN PRIESTLY LIBRARY

This exceedingly interesting passage of Clement gives us the general catalogue of the Egyptian priestly library and the background of the Greek translations and adaptations in our Trismegistic writings.

The whole of these writings fall into this frame, and the oldest deposit or “Pœmandres” type fits in excellently with the content of the hieratic books (the titles of which Clement has unfortunately omitted), or with those that were kept secret. These hieratic books were evidently the more important and were in charge of the “Prophet,” that is to say, of those high priests of the temples who were directors of the prophetic discipline, the very subject of our “Pœmandres” treatises. 5

Footnotes

221:1 Fl., 175-200 A.D.

222:1 I have numbered the books and used capitals for greater clearness.

222:2 ἐκλογισμόν; I do not know what this term means in this connection. The usual translation of “Regulations” seems to me unsatisfactory. Some word such as “Praise” (? read εὐλογισμόν) seems to be required, as may be seen from the title of C. H., (xviii.), “The Encomium of Kings.”

223:1 τῶν ἀπλανῶν φαινομένων ἄστρων.

223:2 κανόνα.; this must mean a hollow wooden case shaped like a ruler.

223:3 στολιστής, called also ἱερόστολος. This priestly office is usually translated as the “keeper of the vestments,” the “one who is over the wardrobe.” But such a meaning is entirely foreign to the contents of the books which are assigned to him. He was evidently the organiser of the ceremonies, especially the processions.

223:4 μοσχοσφραγιστικά—that is to say, literally, books relating to the art of one who picks out and “seals calves” for sacrifice. The literal meaning originally referred to the selection of the sacred Apis bull-calf, into which the power of the god was supposed to have re-incarnated, in the relic of some primitive magic rite which the conservatism of the Egyptians still retained in the public cult. Its meaning, however, was later on far more general, as we see by the nature of the books assigned to this division. Boulage, in his Mystères d’Isis (Paris, 1820, p. 21), says that “the seal of the priests which marked the victims was a man kneeling with his hands bound behind his back, and a sword pointed at his throat, for it was in this attitude that the neophyte received the first initiation, signifying that he agreed to perish by the sword if he revealed any of the secrets revealed to him.” This he evidently deduced from Plutarch’s De Is. et Os., xxxi. 3.

224:1 οἱ τὴν ἔκπεμψιν τῶν ἄρτων βαστάζοντες. The “Prophet” belonged to the grade of high priests who had practical knowledge of the inner way. As the flood of the Nile came down and irrigated the fields and brought forth the grain for bread, and so gave food to Egypt, so did the living stream of the Gnosis from the infinite heights of space pour into the Hierophant, and he in his turn became Father Nile for the priests, his disciples, who in their turn distributed the bread of knowledge to the people. A pleasing symbolism, of which the bread and water of the earlier ascetic schools of Christendom, who rejected wine, was perhaps a reminiscence. Nor has even the General Church in its older forms forgotten to sprinkle the people from the water-vase and distribute among them the bread.

224:2 This seems to suggest that there were others, the knowledge of which was optional, or rather reserved for the few. There may perhaps have been forty-nine in all.

225:1 That is, the priesthood.

225:2 Lit. philosophy.

225:3 παστοφόροι, those who carried the pastos as a symbol; this apparently symbolized the shrine or casket of the soul; in other words, the human body. These Pastophors were the priests who were the physicians of the body, the higher grades being presumably physicians of the soul.

225:4 This seems to be an error of the copyist.

225:5 As to the hieroglyphic inscription at Edfu, which was thought by Jomasd to contain references to the titles of these forty-two books, see Parthey, Über Isis und Osiris, p. 255.

Gnosticism and Hermetica

IV.

TERTULLIAN 1

i. Contra Valentinianos, xv.; Œhler (F.), ii. 402 (Leipzig, 1844).

HERMES THE MASTER OF ALL PHYSICS

(Writing sarcastically of the Gnostic Sophia-myth, Tertullian exclaims:)

Well, then, let the Pythagoreans learn, the Stoics know, [yea,] Plato even, whence matter—which they [sc. the Pythagoreans and the rest] would have to be ingenerable—derived its source and substance to [form] this pile of a world,—[a mystery] which not even the famous Thrice-greatest Hermes, the master of all physics, has thought out.