Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
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1. I.2 While all who have mind, O Klea, should ask for all their blessings from the Gods — let us, by pursuing after them, pray to obtain from them those [blessings] of gnosis3 concerning them, as far as 'tis within the reach of men ; in that there's nothing greater for a man to get, nor more majestic for a God to give, than Truth.
2. Of other things their God gives men what they require, whereas of mind and wisdom He gives a share 4 to them — since He [Himself] possesses these and uses [them].
For the Divine is neither blest through silver and through gold, nor strong through thunderings and lightnings, but [blest and strong] by gnosis and by wisdom.
3. And thus most finely of all things which he hath said about the Gods — sounding aloud :
Yea have they both a common source and one [fair] native land ; But Zeus came into being first and he knew more — hath Homer made pronouncement of the primacy of Zeus as more majestic, in that in gnosis and in wisdom it 5 is older.
4. Nay, I believe that the good fortune of aeonian life — the which the God hath gotten for his lot — is
1 I have added some sub-headings as an indication of contents.
2 I have numbered the paragraphs for greater convenience of reference. 3 en-iar^ui?!.
A play on SiBwo-iv and /ueTa-SfSwo-ii/. 6 Sc. the primacy.
that by reason of His gnosis the things in genesis should not entirely die ; for when the knowing of existing things and being wise is taken from it, freedom from death is Time — not Life.
THE ART OF KNOWING AND OF DIVINISING
II. 1. Wherefore the longing for the Godly state is a desire for Truth, and specially the [truth] about the Gods, in so much as it doth embrace reception of the sacred [things] — instruction and research;1 a work more holy than is all and every purging rite and temple-service, and not least pleasing to that Goddess whom thou servest, in that she is particularly wise and wisdom-loving, seeing her very name doth seem to indicate that knowing and that gnosis 2 is more suitable to her than any other title.
2. For that " Isis" is Greek,3 and [so is] " Typhon"— in that he's foe unto the Goddess, and is " puffed up " 4 through [his] unknowing and deceit, and tears the Holy Reason (Logos) into pieces and makes away with it ; the which the Goddess gathers up again and recomposes, and transmits to those perfected in the art of divinising,5 — which • by the means of a continually sober life
. . Kal CiiTtiffiv. Mathesis was the technical Pythagorean term for gnosis.
2 rb elS-fvai /cal T$)lr^ir-i<r-T^/uijj/ — word-plays on lens.
3 Cf. Ix. 2. The Egyptian of Isis is Ast.
4 T6Ti/0oyteVos — a play on TM^>&V — lit., "wrapped in smoke (rv(f>os)," and because one so wrapped in smoke or clouds has his intelligence darkened, hence " puffed up with conceit," crazy and demented. TyphSn is the dark or hidden side of the Father.
and by [their] abstinence from many foods and sexual indulgences, tempers intemperate pleasure-love, and doth accustom [them] to undergo, without being broken down, the rigorous tasks of service in the sacred [rites], the end of which is gnosis of the First and Lordly One, the One whom mind alone can know,1 for whom the Goddess calls on [them] to seek, though He is by her side and one with her.
5 Ottc&fffus (not in L. and S. or Soph.) ; it presumably comes from the stem of 6ti6ut which means : (i.) to smoke with sulphur and so purify ; (ii.) to make divine (0«<oj), and so transmute into godship. The sentence may thus also mean "those initiated into the sulphur rite" — a not impossible rendering when we
3. Nay more, the very appellation of the holy [place] doth plainly promise gnosis, that is eidesis, of Thatwhich-is ; for it is named Iseion, as though " of them who shall know"2 That-which-is, if that with reason (logos) and with purity 3 we enter in the holy [places] of the Goddess.
THE TRUE INITIATES OF Isis
III. 1. Yet many have set down that she is Hermes' ~} daughter, and many [that she is] Prometheus's, — I holding the latter as discoverer of wisdom and foreknowledge, and Hermes of the art of letters and the Muses' art.
2. Wherefore, in Hermes-city, they call the foremost of the Muses Isis, as well as Righteousness,4 in that she's remember the Alchemical literature which had its source in Chemia-Egypt. It will also permit us to connect brimstone with Typhon — hoofs and all !