Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
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" When then (he says) the Light and the Spirit have been received down into the impure and disorderly Womb of manifold suffering, the Serpent — the Wind of the Darkness, the First-born of the Waters — entering in generated man, and the impure Womb neither loves nor recognises any other form.8
" And so the Perfect Logos of the Light from above having made Himself like unto the Beast, the Serpent, entered into the impure Womb, having deceived it4 through His similitude to the Beast ; in order that He may loose the bonds that are laid upon the perfect mind that is generated in the impurity of the Womb by the First-born of the Water — Snake, Wind, Beast.
" This (he says) is the Servant's Form ; 5 and this isp. 399 the necessity of the Descent of the Logos of God into the Womb of the Virgin.
1 The following lines are destroyed beyond the power of reconstruction.
2 In the case of a serpent this would be " hissing " ; fftptyna, however, is properly the sound of a pipe, and puts us in mind of the Syriktes of the Naassene Document.
3 Sc. than that of the Serpent.
4 Sc. the Womb.
6 Cf. Philipp., ii. 7 : " But He emptied Himself, taking on the Servant's Form, being made in the likeness of men." The "emptying" or KfVaxm was the change from the vK^put^a. or Fullness of Light to the Kevoifta. or Emptiness of Darkness. Paul (or the writer of the Epistle, whoever he was) is here using the technical language of the Qnosis.
" But it is not sufficient (he says) that the Perfect Man, the Logos, has entered into the Womb of the Virgin and loosed the pains that are in that Darkness ; nay, but after entering into the foul mysteries in the Womb, He washed Himself and drank the Cup of Living Water bubbling-forth — a thing that everyone must do who is about to strip off the Servant-Form and put on the Celestial Garment."
There can be little doubt but that the main ideas in the background of this system of the Gnosis are closely connected with general Orphic and Chaldaean ideas, and also with the main schematology of our " Poemandres " tractate.
From the Orphic tradition handed on by Apion we have seen that the ^Eon is the Circle of Infinitude and Eternity illumined by the Logos.
THE " MITHRIAC ,<EON"
The whole of this Orphic lore (in other words, the Chaldsean wisdom-teaching) seems to me to be summed up in one division of the symbolism of the Mithra-cult, as may be seen by an inspection of the monuments reproduced by Cumont, and especially those of the mysterious figure which he calls " la dimnite l&mtocdphale," and the birth of the God from the Eock ; this seems to point, as we might very well suspect, to a strong Chaldsean element in the Mithriac tradition.
Cumont1 tells us that although some scholars have rejected the name of " Mithriac ^Eon," which was given by Zoega to this awe-inspiring mystic figure,1 in his opinion (and he knows more of the subject than any other authority) it may very well have been actually called -<Eon in the sacred books of the mysteries.
1 Textes et Monuments Figures relatifs aux Mysteres de Mithra (Bruxelles, 1899), i. 76 ff., where all the references are given.
If, however, this was the case, the mystic meaning, says Cumont, was of such a nature that it was concealed from the profane.
Our classical authorities inform us that the Magi expressed the name of the Supreme God, which was in reality ineffable, by various substitutes. The general name for the Mystery Deity was Cronus, and Cronus in the sense of Time.
"The Mithriac Cronus is a personification of Time, and this fact, which is now fairly established, permits us immediately to determine the identity of this pseudonymous God.
" There is only one Persian divinity which he can possibly represent, and that is Zervan Akarana, Infinite Time, whom, from the time of the Achemenides, a sect of the Magi placed at the origin of things, and from whom they would have both Ormuzd and Ahriman to have been born.
" It was this God that the adepts of the mysteries placed at the head of the celestial hierarchy, and considered as the first principle ; or, to put it differently, it was the Zervanist system that the Mazdseans of Asia Minor taught to the Western followers of the Iranian religion."
This all seems to me to point not to a Persian origin