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

The next sentence is a great puzzle, and I can only guess at the meaning. The senses which had previously been united by the mind become separate — that is, instead of a whole they become parts (/ae/o^), they return to the natural animal state of sensation, and the animal part of man, or his vehicle of passion and desire, begins in its turn to disintegrate, the mind or reason (logos) being gradually separated from it, or, rather, its true nature showing forth in the man as he gradually strips off the irrational tendencies of the energies.

25. Those irrational tendencies have their sources in the Harmony of the Fate-Sphere of seven subordinate spheres or zones; and in these zones he leaves his inharmonious propensities, deprived of their energy. For the Harmony is only evil apparently ; it is really the Engine of Justice and Necessity to readjust the foolish choice of the soul — that is, to purify its irrational desires, or those propensities in it that are not under the sway of right reason and philosophy. For a better understanding of the characteristics ascribed to the "seven spheres," we must "run off" into another Digression, which the reader will find relegated to ch. xii. of the " Prolegomena," under the title " Concerning the Seven Zones and their Characteristics." This, then, having been taken as a direct commentary on § 25, we continue with the text of our treatise.

THE EIGHTH SPHERE

26. The soul of the initiated strips itself naked of the " garment of shame," the selfish energizings, and stands "clothed in its own power." This refers probably to the stripping off of the "carapace of selfhood," the garments woven by its vices, and the putting on of the " wedding garment " of its virtues.

This state of existence is called the Eighth,1 a state of comparative " sameness " as transcending the zones of " difference." It is the Ogdoad of the Gnostics, the Jerusalem Above, the plane of the Ego in its own form, the natural state of " those-that-are."

In another sense it may perhaps mean that the man, after passing through the phases of the lower mind, now enters within into the region of the pure mind, the Higher Ego, and there is at-oned with all the experiences of his past lives that are worthy of immortality, his virtuous energizings, — the "those-that-are," that perhaps constitute the "crown of mighty lives" sung of by the Pythian Oracle when celebrating the death of Plotinus.2

In this state the man, who has freed himself from the necessity of reincarnation, hears the Song of the Powers above the Ogdoad — that is to say, in Gnostic terms, the a Cf. Porphyry, Plotini Vita, xxii., ed. Creuzer (Oxford, 1835) ; also Theosoph. Rev. (July 1898), p. 403.

1 Cf. Com. on G. #.,.xiii. (xiv.) 14.

Hymn of the ^Eons of the Pleroma. Such a man would have reached the consummation of his earthly pilgrimage, and be ready to pass on into the Christstate, or, at any rate, the state of super-man. He would be the Victor who had won the right of investiture with the Eobe of Glory, and the dignity of the crowning with the Kingship of the Heavens. This Final Initiation is most beautifully set forth in the opening pages of the Pistis Sophia, and especially in the Song of the Powers (pp. 17 ff.)> beginning with the words : " Come unto us, for we are thy fellow-members. We are all one with thee."

The consummation of the mystery is that the alter-egos of the Individual Ego, or the sum total of purified personalities which in that state constitute its membership, or taxis, of their own selves surrender themselves to a fullness of union or a transcendency of separation, in which they become the powers or energies of a New Man, the true Son of Man ; they pass into a state where they each blend with all, and yet lose nothing of themselves, but rather find in this new union the consummation of all their powers. In this state of Sonship of the Divine they are no longer limited by bodies, nor even by partial souls or individual minds ; but, becoming Powers, they are not only in God, but one with the Divine Will — nay, in final consummation, God Himself.