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

The Holy Land of those who had gone out from the body, watered by the Celestial Nile, the Eiver of Heaven, of which the earthly river was a symbol and parallel, was divided into three regions, or states: (1) Eusta, the Territory of Initiation ; (2) Aahlu, the Territory of Illumination ; and (3) Amenti, the Place of Union with the Unseen Father.2

" In the religion of Egypt, the deepest and most fascinating mystery of antiquity, the visible creation, was conceived as the counterpart of the unseen world.3 And the substance consisted not of a mere vague belief in the life beyond the grave, but in tracing out the Path whereby the Just, when the portal of the tomb is lifted up,4 passes through the successive stages of

1 Op. rit., pref. v.

2 Op. tit., 13. Compare with this the three grades of Initiation given by Pietschmann (p. 24 n.), as cited above, p. 51.

3 The image-doctrine of our treatises.

4 This is an error ; true initiation consisted in the fact that

Initiation, of Illumination, and of Perfection, necessary to fit him for an endless union with Light, the Great Creator." 1

Thus we are told that at a certain point in Aahlu, the Territory of Illumination, the Osirified, the purified soul, has achieved the " Passage of the Sun " — that is to say, has passed beyond the mortal mind-plane ; he opens the Gates of the Celestial Nile and receives the Atf -crown of Illumination, " fashioned after the form of the Zodiacal light, the glory of the supreme heaven." This is presumably the " crown of lives " referred to in our sermons, which he receives in the sphere called "Eight," and with which he goes to the Father.

The Guide and Conductor through all these grades was Thoth the Eternal Wisdom ; * and we are told that:

THOTH THE INITIATOR

" Thoth the Divine Wisdom, clothes the spirit of the Justified 3 a million times in a garment of true linen,4 of cosmic consciousness was realised in the body, while a man still lived. This consciousness naturally included the after-death consciousness as part of its content.

1 Op. cit.t p. 24.

2 Op. cit., pp. 14, 15.

3 That is, he who has the " balanced " nature.

that substance, that is to say, which by its purity and its brilliancy reminds us of the mantles, woven out of rays of light, wherewith the sun enwraps the earth afresh each day as she rotates before him ; just as the soul of man is invested with new radiance each time that he turns to tbe presence of his Creator." Again, "in the harmonious proportion of the universe," the Egyptians saw " the Eternal Wisdom, Thoth, ' the Mind and Will of God.'"1

4 In my Did Jesus Live 100 B.C. ? — in treating of the Elxai tradition and the wild statements of the puzzled and puzzling Epiphanius, I asked : " May there not have been a mystery-teaching behind the beautiful historicised story of the sisters Mary and Martha, and of Lazarus, their brother, who was ' raised from the dead ' after being ' three days ' in the grave ? Was not Lazarus raised as a ' mummy ' swathed in grave-clothes ? " In this connection it is interesting to find Tertullian (De Corona, viii. ; Oehler, i. 436) referring to the " linen cloth " with which Jesus girt himself in John xiii. 4, 5, as the " proper garment of Osiris." The proper garment of Osiris at one stage consisted most probably of the symbolic linen wrappings of the " mummy."