Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. II (the Corpus Hermeticum) — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

Thus the Fire of Desire, or Cry of the Darkness, was to be satisfied or checked or quenched by the Light's fashioning its inchoate substance into the cosmos ; and so in another Vision, preserved in a treatise of the same type, Hermes sees, by gazing " through the Master," the cosmos in its finished beauty, when all things in it are full of Light and nowhere is there Fire.3

THE DESCENT OF THE LOGOS

/ 5. Upon this Cry for Light, into the Heart of the Dark-Moist-Fiery-Nature is dropped a Holy Word, the Seed of the future Cosmos. This Word is Articulate (its Limbs are perfect), Seasonable and Ordering. The

1 Hcer., I. xxx. (Stieren, i. 363 ff.).

2 Hcer., Fabb., i. 14. See F. F. F., pp. 188 ff.

3 "The Mind to Hermes," C. H., xi. (xii.) 6, 7.

Cosmic Animal Nature is impregnated with the Light of the Supernal Eeason, which pervades its whole being.

This pervading immediately effects an ordering of the Chaotic Elements into Pure Fire, Pure Air, and Pure Water-Earth. Moreover, it is to be gathered from the sequel that Nature saw the Word and all his Beauty in her Fire and Air, but as yet only heard him in her Water-Earth.

J 6. The Shepherd thus explains that Light * is really Mind, and Mind is God, — God prior to Nature, but not prior to Darkness. The Unity of Light and Darkness is a still higher Mystery. Light and Mind is the highest concept the disciple can yet form of God. The Light- Word, or emanation of Supernal Keason, is Son of God, Son of Great Mind.

THE REVELATION OF THE PLEROMA

With the words " What then ? " Reitzenstein (p. 37) perceives that the sequence of the narrative is broken by a second vision, and is only resumed with § 9. This he regards as an interpolation of another form of cosmogenesis, into the one which is being described.

It seems to me, however, that the breaking of the main narrative may be regarded as a necessary digression rather than as an interpolation of foreign material — necessary in order to bring on to the scene the hitherto invisible Greatnesses, " within " the Veil of Light, which constitute the Economy of the Pleroma. More had to be seen by the disciple before he was in a position to understand what he had so far seen. He must now unite with the Light, his previous seeing being that of its reflection, the logos within him. Not that this 1 That is, the condition " seeing."

logos and Light (or Mind) are separate. They are in reality one, the Son is one with the Father in the state that transcends the opposites. The Logos apparently comes forth, yet it remains ever with the Father, and this coming forth and yet remaining constitutes its Life — in other words, it is an emanation. Thus Hermes is bidden to understand the Light as Life, and so make friends with it.

7. Hitherto the Light had been one for him a sameness which his highest vision could not pierce, the Veil of Light that shut the Beauties, Perfections and Greatnesses of the Intelligible from the eyes of his mind. To pierce this veil a still more expanded power of sight had to be given him by the Master. The little word or light-spark within him is intensified by the Great Word of the Master, this Word being an Intelligible Utterance of the Mind, an intensification of being.

He now sees and understands the countless Powers within the Light, which constitute the Intelligible Archetypal Form or Idea of all worlds. Between the special sensible cosmos of his prior vision and this Immensity was a Mighty Power, or Great Boundary (Horos),1 that encircled the elements of the sensible cosmos and held its Fire in check.

8. In amazement he asks whence come these apparently disorderly and untamed elements of the new world in process that have to be subdued and separated from the Concord of the Perfection of the Powers ? And the answer is that Chaos, too, has its being from God's Will. Discord and Concord, Chaos and Cosmos, are both of God. The Primal Elements are, as it were, the Passions of God's Will desiring Himself. It is Himself as Mother or Spouse

1 Not Horns.