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

As to the symbolic use of the term Mountain, I need hardly remind my readers that it was perhaps the most common figure employed in the apocalypses of the time. Instances come immediately crowding into the mind, such as the " Mount of Galilee " in the Askew and Bruce Gnostic Codices, on which all the great initiations and rites are performed by the Kisen Lord ; or the Mount Tabor3 of The Gospel according to the Hebrews, " My Mother the Holy Spirit took me by one of the hairs of the head and carried me unto Mount Tabor " ; or in the Acts of John, where the Vision of the Spiritual Crucifixion is shown to John on the Mount; or in The Gospel of Eve, where the Vision of the Great and Little Man is seen on the Mount ; or in The Shepherd of Her mas, where the Angel of Repentance bears off Hermas to the Mount of Arcadia, etc. In every case the Mountain is no physical mountain, but the height of contemplation, an interior state of spiritual consciousness.

Stage in., again, is of interest because of the terms in which it is described ; they may be compared with the same teaching in the Behnesa logos :

1 De Sac. Ab. et G., i. 186, 33.

2 See the praise-giving of Tat, § 21.

3 " The Mountain of Light," the traditional scene of the Transfiguration.

Jesus saith : " Except ye fast to the world, ye shall in nowise find the Kingdom of God."

Again, in Tat's prayer for the consummation of his probation : " And now do thou fill up the things that fall short in me " (TCI v(rT€prj/maTa avaTrXijpcoarov), it should be noticed that we have the well-known technical terms of the Christianized Gnosis, the Pleroma and Hysterema, or Fullness and Insufficiency.

THE BIRTH FKOM ABOVE

The time has come for Tat to receive, through his master, the touch of the true Mind-consciousness, the Christ is to be born in his heart, the light of the Pleroma is to shine into his inmost being. It is to be a New Birth, a Regeneration (TraAiyyeVo-/?), or Ee-birth (di/ayevvrjcris), in the sense of being born from Above (avcoOev).

Compare John iii. 3: "Amen, Amen, I say unto thee; Except a man be born from Above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God." And also 7 : " Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye (pi.) must be born from Above," — where the comment on a prior saying, " Ye must be born from Above," formally unsuited to the scheme of a dialogue between Jeschu and Eabbi Nakdimon, reveals the work of the Haggadist.

So also in 1 Pet. i. 22, 23 : " Having made your souls holy by hearkening to the Truth l . . . being Re-born (avayeycvvrjfjLevoi) not from the seed of destruction, but from the Seed that cannot be destroyed, through the Word 2 (Logos) of God, who lives and endures." 3

1 Precisely as did Tat.

2 Cf. precisely the same formula in our treatise, § 21 .

3 That is, of God as Mon and God as Life, which is the union of God as Mind and Logos.

These passages from the New Testament Scriptures are not, of course, cited to show any dependence of our Hermetic authors on the New Testament writers ; but simply to show how they mutually explain one another. For indeed the doctrine of the New Birth and of the Sacred Marriage was beyond all else the crowning mystery of the Spiritual Way for all the mystic schools of the time.1

THE VIRGIN BIRTH

2. The secret that Tat would learn is the Mystery of the Birth from the Virgin Womb — the Birth of Man, the Great Mystery of Eegeneration. Many illustrations of the meaning of this pivot-doctrine of the Christian teaching might be quoted from Gnostic writings, but it will be sufficient to remind the reader of what the Jewish Commentator in the Naassene Document (§ 28) has written in contrasting the Great Mysteries (or the heavenly ones) with the Little Mysteries (those of fleshly generation). Speaking of the Mysteries of Eegeneration, he writes :

" For this is the Gate of Heaven, and this is the House of God, where the Good God dwells alone ; into which no impure [man] shall come, but it is kept under guard for the spiritual alone, — where when they come, they must cast away their garments, and all become bridegrooms, obtaining their true manhood, through the Virginal Spirit. For this is the Virgin big with child, conceiving and bearing a Son.

And to this the Christian Commentator adds : —
" not psychic, not fleshly, but a blessed Mon of JSons."