Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

" For just as in the product of the peacock, although the colour of the egg seems to be one, it has nevertheless potentially in it the countless colours of the bird that is to be brought to perfection, so also the Ensouled Egg conceived from Infinite Matter, when it is set in motion from the perpetually flowing Matter below it,1 exhibits changes of all kinds.

" For from within the circumference a certain malefemale Living Creature is imaged out by the Foreknowledge of the Divine Spirit that indwells in it, whom 2 Orpheus doth call Manifestor (&dvw — Phanes), because when he is manifest (0ai/e/9) the universe shines forth from him, through the lustre of Fire, most glorious of elements, perfected in the Moist [Element].

" Nor is this incredible, for in the case of glow-worms, for example, Nature allows us to see a c moist light.'

VI. "Accordingly the First Egg that was ever produced being gradually warmed by the Living Creature within it, breaks open, and then there takes shape and comes forth some such thing as Orpheus says :

" When the skull-like 3 wide-yawning Egg did break [etc.].4

"So by the mighty power of Him who came forth and who made Himself manifest, ' the shell ' 5 receives its articulation 6 and obtains its orderly arrangement ;

1 It is thought of as floating in this Matter.

2 The Living One.

3 Kpavaiov — an otherwise unknown word. Many emendations have been suggested ; but it does not seem to be necessary to go beyond Kpavtov, especially as we have seen (for instance, in the Naassene Document) that this was a favourite symbol of the Heaven.

4 Unfortunately, the rest of the Orphic quotation is not given.
6 Or body — the matter in the Egg.

- its fitting together, or harmony.

while He Himself presides as though it were upon a throne on Heaven's height, and in the [realms] ineffable sends forth His light all round upon the Boundless .Eon."

COMMENTARY

This is evidently the Logos — the God from the Egg, and the God from the Rock ; for the Primal Firmament was symbolised as Eock, as Adamant; just as in physical nature, the life-spark appears from the mineral kingdom.

The Logos presides in highest heaven, in the ineffable spaces, whence He sends out His rays upon the Mon, that Bound of Bounds which is itself Boundless. .For the Egg may be thought of as the Boundary of some special universe or system ; whereas the Mon is the Boundary of all universes.

The information given in this quotation purports to be the Orphic tradition of cosmogony; with this cosmogony all Hellenistic theologians would be familiar, and therefore we are not surprised to find many points of contact between it and the general ideas in our " Poemandres " cosmogenesis, which, though doubtless having an original nucleus of Egyptian tradition in it, is nevertheless strongly overworked by minds that were also saturated with the mingled traditions of Plato, Pythagoras, and Orpheus.

Indeed, both "Plato" and "Pythagoras," on their mystical side, are strongly tinged with "Orpheus." Now, Orphicism was the revival of pre-Hesiodic Orphism initiated by Onomacritus under the Peisistratidse. Original Orphism was, in my opinion, a blend of Hellenic Bardic lore with " Chaldsean " elements. It is not surprising, therefore, that when the " Books of the Chaldseans," collected for the Alexandrian Library, werep. 393 turned into Greek, great interest should have been taken in them by Hellenistic scholars, who found therein a confirmation of the Greek Wisdom of Orpheus, little suspecting that that Wisdom was in origin partially from the same source.

THE SETHIAN GNOSIS