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

desiring Himself as Father. In other of the Trismegistic tractates1 this "Feminine Aspect" of Deity is called Wisdom and Nature and Generation and Isis. He is Wisdom as desiring Himself, — that Desire being the Primal Cause as Mother of the whole worldprocess, which is consummated by His Fullness uniting with His Desire or Wisdom, and so perfecting it.

This is the whole burden of the Gnostic Sophiamythus, which I have given very good reasons for believing derived its main element from Egypt.2 Curiously enough, Keitzenstein (pp. 39, 40) quotes the two chapters (liii. and liv.) from Plutarch on which I base my conclusions, but he does not notice that in this respect the Christianized Gnosis is distinctly dependent on Egypt.

And so Philo 3 also tells us that the Mother of All is Gnosis (e7rt<7T?//x»?)> the very same name that Plutarch gives to Isis.

The Mother, when thought of as without the Pleroma, is impregnated by the Word, which Basilides would have called the All -seed Potency of the Pleroma, endowed with all Powers, and sent forth as the seed of the sensible cosmos that is to be. The Mother in her higher Nature contemplates the Eternal Cosmos or Order of the Pleroma, and in her lower Nature copies its Beauties by means of the permutations and combinations of her elements and the generations and transformations of her lives or souls.

This form of cosmogenesis Eeitzenstein (p. 46) regards as of a pantheistic nature, while the general narrative he holds to set forth a world-representation of a dualistic tendency. It is true, as he himself

1 For references, see R. 39, n. 1 ; also 44.

2 Cf. my note on Plut., De Is. et Os., liv. 6, in the Prolegg.

3 De Ebriet., § 30.

p. 31

admits, that this blend of contradictory conceptions meets us frequently in Gnostic systems of a more or less contemporary date ; nevertheless he lays great stress upon this difference, and so insists upon an interpolation.

In this he is confirmed (p. 39) by the fact that whereas § 9 speaks of God the Mind being male-female, we are in the second vision face to face with " eine weiUiche Allyottlieit" who stands next to the Highest God.

I must, however, confess that these contradictions do not make so great an impression upon my mind as they seem to have done on the critical faculty of Professor Reitzenstein. There is no system known to me, even of the most exclusive monotheism, into which dualism does not creep somehow or other at some stage ; it cannot be avoided, for it is in the nature of things.

The dualism of our text is, however, by no means so very marked, for though it is not distinctly stated in § 4, it leaves it clearly to be inferred that the Darkness comes from the Light itself, for previously there was nothing but Light ; " all things " had become Light to the eye of the seer. It is the mystery of the sad-eyed Serpent of Darkness wrapping itself round the lower limbs of the Light.

It was, in my opinion, precisely for the sake of removing the thought of dualism that the seer is shown a still more intimate vision within the Light Veil, where all ideas of monotheism, dualism, tritheism, polytheism, and pantheism lose their formal distinctions in a Formless State, or, at any rate, in a State of Being where all are interblended with all. In describing it, the " tongue of flesh " has to use the familiar language of form, but every word employed has a new significance ;

for even the "tongue of angels" cannot describe it, or any of the " tongues " of heaven ; He alone who speaks forth the Words of the One Tongue can express it.

Whence this sublime conception of the Pleroma came, I do not know; it seems to me impossible to find a geographical origin for such things, as, indeed, it seems vain to seek a geographical origin for dualism and the rest. For the writer or writers of our tractate these ideas came from the nature of things, from the immediate experience of sight.