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

1 The antiquity of the ideas connected with this spiritual mystery may be seen from what Reitzenstein (pp. 227 ff.) has to say concerning mystic ffwov<rla or congress ; of it, as perhaps of nothing so much in the world, may it be said corruptio optimipessima.

The Jewish Commentator uses the language of Philo, who, as we have shown, centred his ideas round the conception of the Sacred Marriage and the Virginal Spirit.

So, too, does our treatise. The Womb is Silence, the silence of contemplation, the image of the Great Silence the Mother of the ^Eons in many a Christianized Gnostic System ; the Matter is Wisdom ; the ^Eon's coming to consciousness in man is the Birth of Man the Son of God ; and the Seed is the Good or Logos sown by the Will of the Father. This is the Birth of the Christ in man, the Great Mystery that awaits us when we have made ourselves strangers to the world-illusion.

Is this Son then, asks Tat, other than God ? No, answers Hermes ; it is the Mystery of Sameness, not of Difference ; it is the Pleroma, not the Insufficiency, — " All in all, out of all powers composed," the Common Fruit of the Pleroma, as the Valentinians would have expressed it.

THE KACE OF THE LOGOS

It is a Eace, not an individual ; it is We and no longer I.1 This is the Eace of the Logos ; the Self-taught Eace of Philo ; or, as Hermes says : " This Eace, my son, is never taught, but when He willeth it, its memory is restored by God."

This is the avd/uLvrja-is of Pythagoras and Plato, — the regaining of the consciousness of the Divine State ; it must be self -perceived. And so Philo tells us :

" But as for the Eace of Devotees who are taught ever more and more to see, let them strive for the intuition of That-which-is ; let them transcend the sun which men perceive [and gaze upon the Light beyond, the

1 Compare the Song of tlie Powers in Pistis Sophia (pp. 16, 17), where the " We " alternates with the " I."

True Sun or Logos], nor ever leave this rank which leads to Perfect Blessedness. Now they who betake themselves to the [Divine] Service, [do so] not because of any custom, or some one's advice or appeal, but are carried away by Heavenly Love." *

They are of the Eace of Elxai, the Hidden Power or Holy Spirit, the Spouse of lexai, the Hidden Lord or Logos.2

THE SELF-TAUGHT

3. Hermes cannot teach to Tat this Birth in words,
even as Isis is not permitted to declare it openly to
Horus (K. K., 36) :

" I may not tell the story of this Birth ; for it is not permitted to describe the origin of thy descent, 0 Horus, son of mighty power, lest afterward the Way-of- Birth of the immortal Gods should be known unto men " — that is, the Mystery of the Birth of Horus.

Hermes can only guide Tat towards the realisation of the Blessed Sight, by putting himself into that sublime state of consciousness, so that Tat, so to speak, bathes, or is baptized in, his master's spiritual presence, the Cup of the Mind. This, as we have seen already from several treatises, was the way of transmission of the Power of the powers, the true Laying-on of Hands.

Hermes describes the change that takes place in himself when he passes into the higher spiritual consciousness. He seems to "pass through himself" — to "involve" himself, as it is said somewhere in the Mahabharata of the Eishis — "into a Body that can never die," that is, into a, or rather the, Essential or Cosmic Body,3 that embraces the cosmos within it. The way to do this is not taught, for it cannot be understood from any sensible experience, the outer physical form of the adept remaining as it was before. It is an inner change. The Birth of a Christ is the striking of a new keynote ; everything remains apparently as it was before, but all things receive a new interpretation.

1 D. V. ft, M. 473, 10 ; P. 891.

2 See D. J. L.t pp. 374, 375.

3 Of. R. 52. But compare especially § 6, and C. H.t iv. (v.) 1.

No physical sight, even of the greatest intensity, can penetrate the Veil of this Mystery.

" Thou seest me with eyes, my son ; but what I am thou dost not understand."

With this compare the marvellous Ritual of Initiation in The Acts of John :