Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
THAT at one period the " Eeligion of Hermes " was not only widely spread, but practically supreme, in popular Hellenistic circles, may be seen from a study of the texts of the numerous magic papyri which have been preserved, and made accessible to us by the industry of such immensely laborious scholars as Leemans, Dieterich, Wessely, and Kenyon.
The Greek Hermes prayers, as with many others of a similar nature, are manifestly overworkings of more ancient types, and, as we might expect, are of a strongly syncretistic nature. In them we can distinguish in popular forms, based on the ancient traditions of Egyptian magic, most interesting shadows of the philosophic and theosophic ideas which our Trismegistic literature has set forth for us in the clear light of dignified simplicity.
But just as we now know that the once so-called " Gnostic," Abraxas and Abraxoid amulets, gems, and rings pertained to the general popular magical religion and had nothing to do with the Gnosis proper, so we may be sure that the circles of high mysticism, who refused to offer to God even so pure a sacrifice as the burnt offering of incense, and deemed naught worthy of Him, short of the " prayers and praises of the mind," had nothing directly to do with the popular Hermes prayers, least of all with the invocatory rites of popular theurgy, and phylactery or amulet consecration.
Nevertheless, there is much of interest for us in these invocations, and much that can throw side-lights on the higher teaching and practice which transformed all external rites into the discipline of inner spiritual experience.
The following prayers, which, as far as I know, have not been previously translated, are rendered from the most recently revised texts of Reitzenstein, who has omitted the magic names, and emended the previous editions. I cannot but think, however, that these texts might be submitted to a more searching analysis than has yet been accorded them. They seem to present somewhat similar phenomena to the recensions of the Book of the Dead; that is to say, fragments of material from the tradition of a greater past have been adapted and overworked for the needs of a lesser age. Indeed, the whole effort of the Trismegistic schools seems to have been to restore the memory of that greater past ; it had been forgotten, and its dim record had become a superstition instead of a living faith, a degenerate magic instead of a potent theurgy. The theurgy of our prayers is that of dwarfs ; the theurgy of the past was believed to have been that of giants.
I. AN INVOCATION TO HERMES AS THE GOOD MIND l
[Revised text, R. 15-18 ; Leemans (C.), Papyri Grose. Mus. Ant.
Pub. Lug. Bat. (Leyden, 1885), II. 141, 14 ff., and V. 27, 27 ff. ;
Dieterich (A.), Abraxas (Leipzig, 1891), 195, 4 ff. ; and Jahrbiicher
f. class. PM.,'Suppl. XVI. 808 ff. (Papyrus Mag. Mus. Lug. Bat.).]
1. Come unto me, O thou of the four winds,2 almighty one,3 who breathest spirit into men to give them life;
2. Whose name is hidden, and beyond the power of men to speak ; 4 no prophet [even] can pronounce it ; yea, even daimons, when they hear thy name, are fearful !
3. O thou, whose tireless eyes are sun and moon,6 —
[eyes] that shine in the pupils 6 of the eyes of men !
4. 0 thou. who hast the heaven for head, aether for body, [and] earth for feet, and for the water round thee ocean's deep ! 7 Thou the Good Daimon art, who art the sire of all things good, and nurse of the whole world.8
5. Thy everlasting revelling-place 9 is set above.
6. Thine the good emanations 10 of the stars, — those daimons, fortunes, and those fates by whom are given
1 I have supplied the titles.
2 Perhaps originally spirits or breaths.
3 •KwroicpdTwp, used of Hermes, Anth. P., append., 282.
4 Compare Lactantius, i. 6 (Frag. II.) ; and especially iv. 7 (Frag. VI.).
5 The " eyes and light of Horus," according to Plutarch, De Is. et Os., lii. ; mystically, the higher and lower " ego " and much else.
6 iv rats n6pius — compare the dissertation on the meaning of the title of our treatise generally translated "Virgin (K&PII) of the World," in the commentary thereto.
7 Sc. the Ocean of Space, the " Great Green " of the Ritual.
8 That is, father-mother of the universe.
9 Kufjiaa-T^piov — that is, heaven. See vn. 3 below.