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

Those who had reached the full grade of Hermes are to keep silence on their " virtue " or power (§ 22) ; they were never to boast of their Gnosis. If they did, it would only bring the G-nosis into contempt ; for they would still appear as ordinary men, would probably often say and do things, when they were not in the higher state of consciousness, which fell below the standard of their high ideals, and so they would be slanderers or calumniators of the Gnosis before the world.

14. The New Birth is further characterized as the Essential Birth (>} ova-Mrjg yeW*?) ; it was the birth of the Essential Man, the God, Son of the One, to which other treatises refer.1

OF THE OGDOAD

• 15. Tat now desires to hear the Praise-giving of the Powers, which only those can sing who have reached the stage called Eighth, or the Ogdoad; this is the state above the Harmony or the Hebdomad of Fate
• (C. H., i. 26). The man is now free and no longer a slave. It is the power of prophetic hymnody, for the man now hears the True Harmony of things and is above the Concatenation of Difference ; it is the state " that keeps the soul in tune." He who has reached this height can ever sing in tune ; it is the state of the Hearer of the Eternal Praise-giving, and those who reach it can express it infinitely, each in his own fashion.

The idea of the Ogdoad is represented in many a Christian Gnostic system, especially in the Valentinian tradition, which has many Egyptian elements in it.

So we read in the Excerpts from Theodotus appended to the writings of Clement of Alexandria:

" Him whom the Mother 2 brings to birth, she leadeth unto Death and to the world ; but him whom Christ brings to rebirth, He change th into Life, unto the Ogdoad."3

Many were the names given to the Ogdoad by the
Christian Gnostics, — such as the Jerusalem Above,
Wisdom, the Land flowing with milk and honey, the
Holy Spirit, the Land of the Lord, the Mesotes.

These terms were, however, with the exception of the last, Jewish synonyms; the term Ogdoad itself was in all probability Egyptian. Thus in one of the Magic Papyri we read :

1 Cf. P. 8. A., vii. 2.

2 Sc. the Lower Mother, Nature.

3 Exx. ex Theodot., § 80 (ed. Dindorf, iii. 453).

"Having known the power of the book, thou shalt hide it, my son. For in it there is stored the Authentic Name, which is the Name Ogdoad, — He who doth order and doth regulate all things." l

A HYMN FOR MORNING AND FOR EVENING PRAYER

16. The Hymn that follows is to be kept secret — that is to say, it is to be taken by Tat as an example of the form of prayer he is now to use in his private devotions, and is therefore probably intended to replace some other form of prayer which he had hitherto been using, as was the custom in such communities.

The instruction to use it at sunset and sunrise, in the open air, reminds us of the appended passages to " The Shepherd " treatise, where we read (§ 29) :

"And when even was come and all sun's beams began to set, I bade them all give thanks to God." 2

Compare also what Philo tells us of the Therapeuts :

" Twice a day, at dawn and even, they are accustomed to offer up prayers; as the sun rises praying for the sunshine, the real Sunshine, that their minds may be filled with Heavenly Light, and as it sets praying that their soul, completely lightened of the lust of the senses and sensations, may withdraw to its own Congregation and Council-chamber, there to track out Truth." 3

So also Apollonius of Tyana is said to have prayed and meditated three times a day : at daybreak (Phil., V. A., vi. 10, 18 ; vii. 31), at mid-day (vii. 10), and at

1 Leyden Papyrus W. 8., 139, 45 (Leemans) ; cf. also ibid., 141,
5 ; R. 54. For further comments on the Ogdoad, see Commentary
on C. if., i. 26.

2 Of. also P. 8. A., xli. 1.

s D. V. a, M. ii. 475 ; P. 893.

sundown (viii. 13); and with regard to "keeping silence on their virtue," we are told of the Later Pythagoreans, of whom he was so conspicuous an example :

" In particular they kept the rule of silence regarding the Divine Service [that is, the Gnosis]. For they heard within them many Divine and unspeakable things on which it would have been difficult for them to keep silence, had they not first learned that it was just this Silence which spoke to them " (i. I).1

And so the Hymn has to be heard in silence; all earthly sounds must be stilled for the Heavenly Harmony to be heard.