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

So also in an invocation to an unknown God, most probably to the Spirit to whom the Brother of the unknown community addressed his praise-giving as given above — we meet with the same distinction.

"Thee, the only and blest Father of the ^Eons, I invoke with prayers like unto Cosmos ! 2

" Come unto me who fillest the whole Cosmos with thy Breath, and dost hang up on high the Fire out of the Water,3 and dost from out the Water separate the Earth. . . . The Lord bore witness to thy Wisdom, that is the ^Eon, and bade thee to have strength as He Himself hath strength." *

And, later on, the Theurgist exclaims :

" Eeceive my words as shafts of fire, for that I am God's Man, for whom was made the fairest plasm of spirit, dew 5 and earth."

He is a Man whose words are effective and bring all things to pass ; for his " words " are compelling " acts," or "theurgic."

1 Dieterich, Abraxas, 184-99.

2 That is, presumably, " offerings of the reason," as our tractates have it ; or prayers that put the mind in sympathy with the true order of things.

3 The Heaven Ocean.

* Wessely, Denkschr. d. K. K. Akad. (1888), p. 73, 11. 1168 ff. 5 Or pure water.

Other passages are brought forward by Eeitzenstein (pp. 280-286) to show that the idea of the Logos or ^Eon as Second God was a fundamental conception in Hellenistic theology.

This may very well have been the case in general Hellenistic theology; but in philosophical circles, as we have pointed out in treating of the Logos-idea in Philo, the distinction was formal and not essential. So also in our Trismegistic treatises, which are saturated with transcendental pantheistic or monistic, or rather panmonistic, conceptions, if the Logos or Mon is momentarily treated of as apart from Supreme Deity, it is not so in reality ; for the Logos is the Season of God, God in His eternal Energy, and the ^Eon is the Eternity of Deity, God in His energic Eternity, the Kest that is the Source of all Motion.

For the fullest exposition of the ^Eon - doctrine in our Trismegistic tractates, see The Perfect Sermon, xxx.-xxxii., and my commentary thereon.

XII

THE SEVEN ZONES AND THEIE
CHAKACTEEISTICS

" To the first zone he gives the energy of Growth and Waning; unto the second zone, Device of Evils now de-energized ; unto the third, the Guile of the Desires de-energized ; unto the fourth, his Domineering Arrogance also de-energized ; unto the fifth, unholy Daring and the Rashness of Audacity de-energized ; unto the sixth, Striving for Wealth by evil means deprived of its aggrandisement ; and to the seventh zone, Ensnaring Falsehood de-energized." — C. JET., i. 25.

MACROBIUS ON "THE DESCENT OF THE SOUL FROM
THE HEIGHT OF COSMOS TO THE DEPTHS OF EARTH"

Let us first turn to the commentary of Macrobius on the famous " Dream of Scipio," which Cicero introduces into his Republic (Bk. VI.), just as Plato appends the Vision of Er to his. Macrobius devotes the twelfth chapter of his First Book to a consideration of " The Descent of the Soul from the Height of Cosmos to the Depths of Earth," and professes to base himself on Pythagorean and Platonic traditions. His dissertation covers more ground than the precise subject of the zones with which we are more immediately concerned ; but as the whole scheme is of interest to our present studies, we will append a translation of practically the whole chapter.

" [According to Pythagoras] when the Soul descends from the Boundary where the Zodiac and Galaxy [or Milky Way] meet, from a spherical form, which is the only divine one, it is elongated into a conical one x by its downward tendency.

" Just as the line is born from the point and proceeds into length out of the indivisible, so the soul from its point, that is 'monad,' comes into 'dyad' — its first production [or lengthening].

" And this is the essence which Plato in the Timceus, speaking about the construction of the World-Soul, describes as indivisible yet at the same time divisible.