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

Horapollo (i. 16), basing himself on some Hellenistic sources, tells us that the Egyptians symbolised the equinoxes by a sitting cynocephalus. One of the reasons which he gives for this is delightfully " Physiologic " ; he tells us that at the equinoxes once every two hours, or twelve times a day, the cynocephalus micturates.2 From this as from so many of such tales we learn what the " sacred animal " did in heaven, rather than what the physical ape performed on earth. (Of. R 265, n. 3.)

THE SHRINE OF THOTH

" The principal seat of the Thoth-cult was Khemennu, or Hermopolis, a city famous in Egyptian mythology as the place containing the "high ground on which Ra rested when he rose for the first time."

Dare I here speculate that in this we have the mountain of our " Secret Sermon on the Mountain,"

1 This is one of the most interesting of his titles : " Judge of the Rehehui, the Pacifier of the Gods, who dwelleth in Unnu " (Hermopolis). (Op. cit., i. 405.)

2 This must have been the mystery folk-tale circulated by the priests, for Marius Victorinus repeats it (Halm, Ehet. Lai. Min., p. 223), and it is preserved in the Physiologos (xlv. p. 275 — Lauchert).

and that it was in the Thoth mystery-tradition of Hermopolis that the candidates for initiation were taught to ascend the mountain of their own inner natures, on the top of which the Spiritual Sun would rise and rest upon their heads " for the first time," as Isis says in our " Virgin of the World " treatise ?

THOTH AND His COMPANY OF EIGHT

At Khemennu l Thoth was regarded as the head of a Company of Eight — four pairs of divinities or divine powers, each a syzygy of male and female powers, positive and negative, active and passive, the oldest example of the Gnostic Ogdoad.

This was long ago the view of Brugsch, and it is now strongly supported by Budge, on the evidence of the texts, as against the opinion of Maspero, who would make the Hermopolitan a copy of the Heliopolitan Paut, or Company, which included Osiris and Isis. Budge, however, squarely declares that "the four pairs of gods of Hermopolis belong to a far older conception of the theogony than that of the company of gods of Heliopolis."

If this judgment is well founded, we have here a most interesting parallel in the Osirian type of our Trismegistic literature, in which Osiris and Isis look to Hermes (Thoth) as their teacher, as being far older and wiser than themselves.

The great struggle between Light and Darkness, of the God of Light and the God of Darkness, goes back to the earliest Egyptian tradition, and the fights of Ha and Apep, Heru-Behutet and Set, and Horus, son of Isis, and Set, are "in reality only different versions of one and the same story, though belonging

1 Which means " City of the Eight [Gods ]." (Op. tit., i. 113.)

to different periods." The Horus and Set version is apparently the most recent. The names of the Light God and Dark God thus change, but what does not change is the name of the Arbiter, the Mediator, " whose duty it was to prevent either God from gaining a decisive victory, and from destroying one another." This Balancer was Thoth, who had to keep the opposites in equilibrium.

THE HOUSE OF THE NET

The name of the Temple of Thoth at Khemennu, or the City of Eight, was Het Abtit, or "House of the Net" — a very curious expression. From Ch. cliii. of the Kitual, however, we learn that there was a mysterious Net which, as Budge says, " was supposed to exist in the Under World and that the deceased regarded it with horror and detestation. Every part of it — its poles, and ropes, and weights, and small cords, and hooks — had names which he was obliged to learn if he wished to escape from it, and make use of it to catch food for himself, instead of being caught by 'those who laid snares.' "