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

1 Evidently a reference to the Chaldsean fourfold (man-eaglelion-bull) glyph of what Later Orphicism and Platonism called the Autozoon, representing the four main types of Animal Life ; the same mystery which Ezekiel saw in the Vision of the Mercabah, or Celestial Chariot — a reflected picture, I believe, from the Chaldaean Mysteries.

2 Verses 24 and 25 of the Keceived Text are omitted.

3 a.ffx-nfi.off'uvn — meaning also " formlessness."

4 Of. Ex. v. 2.

5 That is, baptism.

6 We wonder what "they" really did say? They may have argued in their private circles that even in the foulest things the clean soul could recognise the reversed signs of the Mysteries of Purity ; for certainly these things require an explanation — nay, more urgently do they require an interpretation in proportion to their foulness. The hateful suggestion of Hippolytus that these ascetic and spiritually-minded folk — for their doctrines plainly show them to be so — were as foul as those of the Flood, only shows the ineradicable prejudice of unwitting self-righteousness.

(7) And they say that not only the Mysteries of the Assyrians and Phrygians substantiate this teaching (logos) concerning the Blessed Nature, which is at once hidden and manifest [but also those of the Egyptians 1 ].

C.2 [The Nature] which (H. he says) is the Kingdom of the
Heavens sought for within man —

H. — concerning which [Nature] they hand on a distinct tradition in the Gospel entitled According to Thomas, saying as follows :

C. " He who seeketh shall find me in children from the age of seven years 3 ; for in them at the fourteenth year 4 [lit. aeon] I hidden am made manifest."

H. But this is not Christ's Saying but that of Hippocrates :

" A boy of seven years [is] half a father." 5

Hence as they place the Original Nature of the universals in the Original Seed, having learned the Hippocratian dictum that a child of seven is half a father, they say at fourteen years, according to Thomas, it is manifested. This6 is their ineffable and mysterious Logos.7

(8 8) S. (H. — At anyrate they say that) the Egyptians — who are the most ancient of men after the Phrygians, who at the same time were confessedly the first to communicate to mankind the Mystery-rites and Orgies of all the Gods, and to declare their Forms and Energies — have the mysteries of Isis, holy, venerable, and not to be disclosed to the uninitiated.

1 Completion of R.

2 Picking up "Blessed Nature" from the first paragraph of §6.

3 Cf. Ex. viii. 6, note.

4 At fourteen a boy took his first initiation into the Egyptian priesthood.

5 Of. Littre, Traduct. des CEuvres d'Hippocrate, torn. i. p. 396.

6 Presumably referring to Seed.

7 Perhaps, however, they meant something very different, and perhaps even their analogies are not so foolish as they seemed toH.

8 The material here seems to follow directly on § 5. It is a summary by H. ; but seeing that there is more in it of S. than of H., we will print it as S., indicating H. when possible.

H. And these are nothing else than the robbing of the member of Osiris, and its being sought for by the seven-robed and blackmantled J [Goddess].

And (they [the Egyptians] say) Osiris is Water.2
And Seven-robed Nature —

H. — having round her, nay, robing herself in seven aetheric vestures — for thus they 3 allegorically designate the planet-stars, calling [their spheres] setheric vestures —

S. — being metamorphosed, as ever-changing Genesis, by the Ineffable and Uncopiable and Incomprehensible and Formless, is shown forth as creation.

J. And this is what (H. he says) is said in the
Scripture :

"Seven times the Just shall fall and rise again."*

For these " fallings " (H. he says) are the changes of the stars,5 set in motion by the Mover of all things.

(9) S. Accordingly they6 declare concerning the Essence of the Seed which is the cause of all things in

1 Isis, or Nature, as the seven spheres and the eighth sphere ( ? the " black " earth).

2 That is the Celestial Nile or Heaven-Ocean, which fructifies Mother Nature. " The Alexandrians honoured the same God as being both Osiris and Adonis, according to their mystical godblending (syncrasia)." Damascius, "Life of Isidorus" (Phot., BttL, 242 ; p. 342 a. 21, ed. Bek.).

3 Sc. the Egyptians.