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

7 This is a further indication of the environment of the Naassenes. Cf. G. H., x. (xi.) 7.

8 That is from Man (Father), Man Son of Man (Son), or Flowing Chaos (Mother) — corresponding in Hellenic mythology to

H. And first of all, in considering the triple division of Man, they fly for help to the Initiations of the Assyrians ; for the Assyrians were the first to consider the Soul triple and [yet] one.

(4) S. Now every nature (H. he says) yearns after
Soul — one in one way and another in another.

For Soul is cause of all in Genesis. All things that are sustained and grow (H. he says) need Soul. Indeed, no sustenance (H. he says) or growth is possible without the presence of Soul.

Nay, even stones (H. he says) are ensouled;1 for they have the power of increase [or growth] ; and growth could not take place without sustenance; for it is by addition that things which increase grow ; and addition is the sustenance of that which is sustained.2

(5) Now the Assyrians call this [Mystery] Adonis (or Endymidn). And whenever it is called Adonis (H. he says), it is Aphrodite who is in love with and desires Soul so-called.

H. And Aphrodite is Genesis according to them.3

But when Persephone (that is, Kore) is in love with Adonis, Soul becomes subject to Death, separated from Aphrodite (that is, from Genesis).

But if Selene is impassioned of Endymidn, and is in

Kronos, Zeus, and Rhea. For Rhea (from peW, " to flow ") is the Moist or Liquid Nature, as with the Stoics ; she is the a-cosmic or unordered Earth, the Prima Materia (the First Earth, the Spouse of Heaven — Uranus), Hyle Proper, who carries in her bosom the Logos. For references, see R., p. 99, n. 2.

1 Of. Ex. viii. 8.

2 The preceding paragraph is evidently composed of selections from S. R. (p. 85, n. 1) thinks that we have here the description of only one aspect of Soul, and that the description of the remaining two aspects has been omitted by H.

3 Sc. the Naassenes, in H.'s view.

love with [formal"| beauty,1 it is the Nature of the higher [spaces 2] (H. he says) which desires Soul.

(63) But if (H. he says) the Mother of the Gods emasculate Attis — she, too, regarding him as the object of her love — it is the Blessed Nature Above of the supercosmic and seonian [spaces] which calls back the masculine power of Soul to herself.4

H. For Man, he says, is male-female. According, then, to this theory of theirs, the intercourse between man and woman is exhibited as most mischievous, and is forbidden according to their teaching.

J. For Attis (H. he says) is emasculated — that is [Soul is separated] from the earthy parts of the creation [tending] downwards, and ascends in quest of the Ionian Essence Above — lit., either form or beauty.

2 Sc. of cosmos.

3 This paragraph and § 7, together with the accompanying overworkings, seem to have been misplaced by H., according to R. (pp. 99, 100).

The sudden introduction of the name Attis without any preliminaries, indicates another lacuna ; the transition from the Assyrian to the Phrygian Mysteries of the Great Mother is too brusque.

4 The threefold nature of the Soul is thus distinguished by : (i.) The union (or marriage) which joins it to generation, or to earthlife — the nature of things on earth ; (ii.) The union which joins it with death — the nature of the things " beneath " the earth ; (iii.) The union which joins it with formal beauty, or beauty in form (popQ-fi) — the nature of super-terrene (or sublunary) things, here regarded as the Elysian state.

The love of the Mother of the Gods for the Soul represents the " fourth state " (the turlya of Vedantic mystic psychology), or the absorption of the masculine power of the Soul by its own higher Feminine Nature. Cf. in Damascius' " Life of Isidores " (Photius, Bibl., ed. Bekker, 345 a. 5 : "I fell asleep, and in a vision Attis seemed to appear to me, and, on behalf of the Mother of the Gods, to initiate me into the feast called Hilaria — a mystery which discloses the way of our salvation from Hades." Hades, the realm of Selene, is not Tartarus, the realm of Death.

C. — where (H. he says) is " neither male nor female," l but a new creature, a new man, who is male-female.

H. What they call "Above" I will explain when I come to the proper place. And they say that this theory is supported not simply by [the myth] of Rhea, but also, to put it briefly, by universal creation.