Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
XL VI.1 1. And this is the opinion of most of the most wise.
2. For some think there are two craft-rival Gods, as it were, — one the artificer of good [things], the other of [things] worthless. Others call the better " God " and the other " Daimon," as Zoroaster the Mage, who, they tell us, lived five thousand years before the Trojan War.
1 For a criticism and notes on this chapter and the following, see Cumont (F.), Textes et Monuments Figures relatifs aux My stores de Mithra (Bruxelles, 1896), ii. 33-35.
3. Zoroaster, then, called the one Oromazes, and the other Areimanios, and further announced that the one resembled light especially of things sensible, and the other, contrariwise, darkness and ignorance, while that between the two was Mithres ; wherefore the Persians call Mithres the Mediator.
4. He taught them, moreover, to make offerings of gladsome prayers to the one, and to the other of melancholy de-precations.
5. For bruising a certain plant called " moly " * in a mortar, they invoke Hades and Darkness ; then mixing it with the blood of a wolf whose throat has been cut, they carry it away and cast it into a sunless spot.
6. For they think that both of plants some are of the Good God and others of the Evil Daimon ; and of animals, dogs, for instance, and birds2 and hedgehogs of the Good, and water-rats of the Bad; wherefore they consider fortunate the man who kills the largest number [of the last].
XLVII. 1. Not that they also do not tell many mythic stories about the Gods ; such as are, for example, the following :
Oromazes, born from the purest light, and Areimanios, of the nether darkness, are at war with one another.
2. And the former made six Gods : the first of good mind, the second of truth, the third of good order, and of the rest, one of wisdom, one of wealth, and the producer of things sweet following things fair ; while the latter [made] craft-rivals as it were to those equal in number.
3. Then Oromazes having tripled himself, removed himself from the sun so far as the sun is distant from the earth, and adorned the heaven with stars ; and he
1 Thought by some to be the Cappadocian equivalent of the haoma or soma plant.
2 That is " cocks."
established one star above all as warder and look-out, [namely] Sirius.
4. And having made four-and-twenty other gods, he put them into an egg.
Whereupon those that were made from Areimanios, just the same in number, piercing through the egg . . -1 — whence the bad have been mingled with the good.
5. But a time appointed by Fate will come when Areimanios's letting loose of pestilence and famine must be utterly brought to an end, and made to vanish by these [good gods], and the earth becoming plane and level, there must ensue one mode of life and one way of government for men, all being happy and one-tongued.2
6. Theopompus, however, says that, according to the Magi, for three thousand years alternately one of the Gods conquers and the other is conquered, and for yet another three thousand years they fight and war, and each undoes the work of the other.
7. But that in the end Hades fails, and men shall be happy, neither requiring food nor casting shadow ; 3 while the God who has contrived these things is still and at rest for a time — not otherwise long for a God, but proportionate to a man's sleeping.
8. The style of myth among the Magi, then, is somewhat after this manner.
1 A lacuna occurs here in the text.
2 This may refer to the consciousness of the spiritual life.
3 There are thus three thousand years in which Ahura Mazda has the upper hand, three thousand in which Ahriman is victorious, three thousand in which the forces are balanced, and in the tenth thousand years comes the Day of Light. Of. Pistis Sophia, 243: "Jesus answered and said unto Mary: 'A Day of Light is a thousand years in the world, so that thirty-six myriads of years and a half myriad of years of the world make a single Year of Light.' " The not casting of a shadow was supposed to he a characteristic of souls not attached to body; but it refers here rather to those who are " straight " with the Spiritual Sun.
XLVIII. 1. Moreover, Chaldseans declare that of the planets — which they call birth -presiding gods — two are good workers, two ill-doers, while three are intermediates and common.