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

since with the creation time began. Presently it assumes the form of a lily, the vignette in the Ritual representing the head of Osiris enshrined in that flower ; the Godhead manifested in the flesh coming forth from immaculate purity. ' I am the pure lily,' we read, ' coming forth from the lily of light. I am the source of illumination and the channel of the breath of immortal beauty. I bring the messages; Horus accomplishes them.' Later the soul passes into the form of the urceiis, ' the soul of the earth.' . . . And finally it assumes the semblance of a crocodile ; becoming subject, that is, to the passions of humanity. For the human passions, being part of the nature wherein man was originally created, are not intrinsically evil but only become evil when insubordinate to the soul."1

"THE BOOK OF THE MASTER"

And not only was the Deity worshipped as the Source of Light and Life, but also as the Fount of Love. " I am the Fount of Joy," says the Creator in the Ritual, and when the Atf-crown of illumination is set upon the head of the triumphant candidate after accomplishing the " Passage of the Sun," as referred to above, the hynm proclaims that " north and south of that crown is Love." 2 Into this Love the catechumen was initiated from the Secret Scroll, whose name is thus given in one of the copies : " This Book is the Greatest of Mysteries. Do not let the eye of anyone look upon it — that were an abomination. ' The Book of the Master of the Secret House ' is its name." 3

1 Op. cit., pp. 163, 164. 2 Op. cit., p. 95.

3 Op. cit., p. 96. The title seems to be found only in the latest recension of the twenty-sixth Saite dynasty — the time of our King Ammon — but certainly no better one can be suggested.

The whole conception of the doctrine exposed in its chapters is instruction in Light and Life.

But are we to suppose that the majority were really instructed in this wisdom ? — for we find it customary to wrap up some chapters of this Secret Scroll with almost every mummy. By no means. It seems to me that there are at least three phases in the use of this scripture, and in the process of degeneration from knowledge to superstition which can be so clearly traced in the history of Egypt. First there was the real instruction, followed by initiation while living ; secondly, there was the recitation of the instruction over the uninitiated dead to aid the soul of the departed in the middle passage ; and thirdly, there was the burying a chapter or series of chapters of the Book of the Master as a talisman to protect the defunct, when in far later times the true meaning of the words written in the sacred characters had been lost, though they were still " superstitiously " regarded as magical "words of power."

The recitation of some of the chapters over the dead body of the uninitiated, however, is not to be set down as a useless " superstition," but was a very efficacious form of " prayers for the dead." After a man's decease he was in conscious contact with the unseen world, even though he may have been sceptical of its existence, or at any rate unfit to be taught its real nature, prior to his decease. But after the soul was freed from the prison of the body, even the uninitiated was in a condition to be instructed on the nature of the path he then perforce must travel. But as he could not even then properly pronounce the " words " of the sacred tongue, the initiated priest recited or chanted the passages.

THE STEPS OF THE PATH

" For the doctrine contained in those mystic writings was nothing else than an account of the Path pursued by the Just when, the bonds of the flesh being loosed, he passed through stage after stage of spiritual growth — the Entrance on Light, the Instruction in Wisdom, the Second Birth of the Soul, the Instruction in the Well of Life, the Ordeal of Fire, and the Justification in Judgment ; until, illumined in the secret Truth and adorned with the jewels of Immortality, he became indissolubly united with Him whose name, says the Egyptian Ritual, is Light, Great Creator." l