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

Interpreting this from the mystical standpoint of the doctrine of Eebirth, or the rising from the dead — that is to say, of the spiritual resurrection of those who had died to the darkness of their lower natures and had become alive to the light of the spiritual life, and this too while alive in the body and not after the death of this physical frame — I would venture to suggest that this Net was the symbol of a certain condition of the inner nature which shut in the man into the limitations of the conventional life of the world, and shut him off from the memory of his true self. The poles, ropes, weights, small cords, and hooks were symbols of the anatomy and physiology, so to say, of the invisible "body" or "carapace" or "egg" or " envelope " of the soul. The normal man was emeshed in this engine of Fate; the man who received the Mind inverted this Net, so to speak, transmuted and transformed it, so that he could catch food for himself. " Come ye after me and I will make you fishers of men." The food with which the " Christ " nourishes his " body " is supplied by men.

Thus in a prayer in this chapter of the Eitual we read: "Hail, thou 'God who lookest behind thee,'1 thou 'God who hast gained the mastery over thine heart,' 2 I go a-fishing with the cordage [? net] of the ' Uniter of the earth,' and of him that maketh a way through the earth.3 Hail ye Fishers who have given birth to your own fathers,4 who lay snares with your nets, and who go round about in the chambers of the waters, take ye not me in the net wherewith ye ensnare the helpless fiends, and rope me not in with the rope wherewith ye roped in the abominable fiends of earth, which had a frame which reached unto heaven, and weighted parts that rested upon earth." 5

1 Perhaps suggesting two-faced or Janus-like — before and behind, without and within. With this, however, may be compared the symbolic headdress or mask worn by the virgin Kore (Proserpina) in the Eleusinian Mysteries ; she had, Athenagoras (xx. 292) tells us, " two ordinary eyes, and two in her forehead, with her face at the back of her neck."

2 Suggesting Thoth.

3 Suggesting the power of him who can either wrap the Net round the man or open it in a new direction, so that the man can "pass right through his body," as Hermes says to Tat in one of our Sermons.

* Suggesting " Christs " who have given birth to their Father, the Mind, in their hearts.

5 The fiends of a once mighty frame suggest beings of a daimonic nature. Perhaps there is a formal distinction intended

And in another chapter (cxxxiii.) the little man says to the Great Man within him : " Lift thyself up, O thou Ra, who dwellest in this divine shrine ; draw thou unto thyself the winds, inhale the North wind, and swallow thou the beqesu of thy net on the day wherein thou breathest Maat."

" On the day wherein thou breathest Maat " suggests the inbreathing or inspiration of Truth and Righteousness, the Holy Ghost, or Holy Breath or Life, the Spouse of the Ordering Mind or Logos. The winds are presumably the four great cosmic currents of the Divine Breath, the North wind being the "downbreath " of the Great Sphere.

The term beqesu has not yet been deciphered (can it mean knots ?) ; but the swallowing of the Net seems to suggest the transformation of it, inwardly digesting of it, in such a fashion that the lower is set free and becomes one with the higher.

And that this idea of a net is very ancient, especially in its macrocosmic significance, is evidenced by the parallel of the Assyrian and Babylonian versions of the great fight between the Sun-god Marduk and the Chaotic Mother Tiamat and her titanic and daimonic powers of disordered motion and instability— both Egyptian and Babylonian traditions probably being derived from some primitive common source.

"He (Marduk) set lightning in front of him, with burning fire he filled his body. He made a net to enclose the inward parts of Tiamat, the Four Winds he set so that nothing of her might escape ; the South wind and the North wind, and the East wind and the West