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

Nevertheless that a wide-spread Chnuphis-literature, in the Agathodaimonistic sense, existed prior to the second century B.C., Reitzenstein has shown by a number of interesting quotations (pp. 129-133). In Hellenistic times the worship of Chnuphis as the Primal Deity and God of Revelation was strongly established, and, most interesting of all for us, his symbol was the serpent. The symbol, then, of Agathodaimon as Logos was the Serpent of Wisdom, and we are in contact with the line of tradition of the Gnostic Ophites and Naassenes. And so also in Ptolemaic times we find his syzygy, Isis, also symbolised as a serpent, and both of them frequently as serpents with human heads ; they are both " as wise as serpents." And as Horus was their son, so we find the hawk-headed symbol of that God united with a serpent body. So also we find Agathodaimon, in his sun-aspect, symbolised as a serpent with a lion's head.1 He is the

See the Nechepso Fragment 29 (Riess, p. 379).

Isis, LADY OF WISDOM, DISCIPLE OF THRICE-GREATEST
HERMES

In addition to the types of Hermes and his disciples, and Agathodaimon and his disciples, we have also in our Trismegistic literature another type — namely, Isis and her disciples. Isis is the ancient Lady of all wisdom, and Teacher of all magic. In the early Hellenistic period she is substituted for Hermes as Orderer of the cosmos,1 while Plutarch calls her Lady of the Heart and Tongue even as is Hermes.2 She " sees " the teaching.

As her disciple, she has in the Stobsean Ex. xxxi.3 a king, probably King Ammon.

In a Magic Papyrus she even appears as teacher of Asclepius.4 But the more usual and natural type is that of Isis as teacher of her son Horus, and so we find Lucian speaking of Pythagoras visiting Egypt to learn wisdom of her prophets, and saying that the sage of Samos descended into the adyta and learned the Books of Horus and Isis.6 To this type of literature belongs our lengthy Stobaean Exx. xxv.-xxvii.

But in all of this Isis owes her wisdom to face to face instruction by the most ancient Hermes, with whom she gets into contact through spiritual vision. All this I have discussed in the Commentaries to Exx. xxv.- xxvii. ; the conclusion being that to the mind of the Pcemandrists, no matter how ancient might be any line of tradition, whether of Agathodaimon or Osiris or Isis, the direct teaching of the Mind transcended it.

1 R., Zwei relig. Frag., 104 ff. 2 De Is. et Os., xlviii.

3 With heading : " Of Hermes from the [Sermon] of Isis to
Horus."

4 Wessely, Denkschr. d. K. K. Akad. (1893), p. 41, 1. 633.

5 Alectruon, 18.

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