Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. III — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

" 0 holy books, who have been made by my immortal hands, by incorruption's magic spells, . . .* free from decay throughout eternity remain and incorrupt from time ! Become unseeable, unfindable, for every one whose foot shall tread the plains of this [our] land, until old Heaven doth bring forth meet instruments for you, whom the Creator shall call souls."

Thus spake he ; and, laying spells on them by means of his own works, he shuts them safe away in their own zones. And long enough the time has been since they were hid away.2

6. And Nature, 0 my son, was barren, till they who then were under orders to patrol the Heaven, approaching to the God of all, their King, reported on the lethargy of things. The time was come for cosmos to awake, and this was no one's task but His alone.

" We pray Thee, then," they said, " direct Thy thought to things which now exist and to what things the future needs."

7. When they spake thus, God smiled and said : " Nature, arise ! " And from His word there came a marvel, feminine, possessed of perfect beauty, gazing at which the Gods stood all-amazed. And God the Fore-father, with name of Nature, honoured her, and bade her be prolific.

1 The text is here again hopeless. Meineke's emendation (Adnot., p. cxxx.) &s . . . QapudKcp xp'"**s €irncpary — which makes Hermes smear the books with some magical ointment — is ingenious, but hardly satisfactory, though Wachsmuth adopts it.

2 This is purely conjectural ; the text is utterly corrupt.

Then gazing fixedly on the surrounding space, He spake these words as well : " Let Heaven be filled with all things full, and Air, and zEther too ! " God spake and it was so. And Nature with herself communing knew she must not disregard the Sire's command ; so with the help of Toil she made a daughter fair, whom she did call Invention. And on her1 God bestowed the gift of being, and with His gift He set apart all them that had been so-far made, filled them with mysteries, and to Invention gave the power of ruling them.

8. But He, no longer willing that the world above should be inert, but thinking good to fill it full of breaths, so that its parts should not remain immotive and inert, He thus began on these 2 with use of holy arts as proper for the bringing forth of His own special work.

For taking breath from His own Breath and blending this with knowing Fire,3 He mingled them with certain other substances which have no power to know ; and having made the two 1 — either with other — one, with certain hidden words of power, He thus set all the mixture going thoroughly ; until out of the compost smiled a substance, as it were, far subtler, purer far, and

1 Sc. Invention.

2 Sc. the breaths or spirits.

3 vvp vofp6v — a term in frequent use subsequently among the Later Platonists ; cf. Porphyry, ap. Euseb., Prcep. Ev., XV. xi. 16

. more translucent than the things from which it came ; it was so clear that no one but the Artist could detect it.

9. And since it neither thawed when fire was set unto it (for it was made of Fire), nor yet did freeze when it had once been properly produced (for it was made of Breath), but kept its mixture's composition a certain special kind, peculiar to itself, of special type and special blend, — (which composition, you must know, God called Psychosis, after the more auspicious meaning of the name and from the similarity of its behaviour2)

1 Sc. the knowing and unknowing primal elements. Cf. P.S.A^vi.

2 The text is very involved and obscure, and the meaning of the writer is by no means clear. Psychosis (iJ/tJxoxrjy) means either animation (quickening) or " making cold " (cf. ^^\w and ^ux<fo>) ; the name Psychosis is thus apparently supposed by the writer to have some connection with the term et//i/x« ("freeze," or grow cold), which he has just employed in his description of the be-

haviour of the mixture. In its less auspicious sense fyvxe meant " grow cold " ; in its more auspicious meaning it signified " breathe." But even so it must be said that the further reason (viz., similarity of behaviour) given for the choice of the term Psychosis is the exact opposite of what is stated in the description of the soul-stuff's nature ; and this is all the more puzzling when we recall the theory of Origen and his predecessors that the soul (tyvx-fi) was so-called precisely because it had grown cold and fallen away from the Divine heat and life. With the term cf. the ffupdrtHris of Exx. viii. 5, vii. 2.