Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. III — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
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4. Those that succeeded them had not the flame so bright within their hearts ; they were of the same race, but younger souls — the Tat-race. Hermes could not hand on the direct knowledge to them, the "perfect sight " (Oecopia), and so recorded the wisdom in symbol and myth. Still later the Asclepius-race joined themselves to the Tat-souls.
All this, however, took place many many ages ago, long even before the days of the men-gods Osiris and Isis ; for the real wisdom of Hermes was so ancient that even Isis herself had had to search out the hidden records, and that too by means of the inner sight, when she herself had won the power to see, and the True Sun had risen for her mind.
5. But the strain of reconstructing the history of this far-distant past, as he conceived it to have been, is too much for the writer. He knows he is dealing with " myths, " with what Plutarch would have called the " doings of the daimones ; " he knows that in reality these primaeval " Books " of Hermes have no longer any physical existence, if indeed they ever had any; he knows that no matter what legends are told, or whatever the general priesthood may believe about ancient physical inscriptions of the primaeval Hermes, — all this has passed away, and that the real wisdom of Hermes is engraved on the tablets of the aether, and not hidden in the shrines of earth.
The " Books " are engraved in the " sacred symbols of the cosmic elements, " and hidden away hard by the " secrets of Osiris " — the mysteries of creative fire, the light that speaks in the heart. The true Books of
Hermes are hidden away in their own zones, the pure elements of the unseen world — the celestial Egypt.
6. This wisdom was held in safe keeping for the " souls " of men ; it was a soul-gnosis, not a physical knowledge. Hereupon the writer begins the recital of his tradition 1 of the creation of the " souls " of men in their unfallen state, all of which is derived from the " Books of Hermes." The soul-creation runs as follows :
The Watchers 2 approach the Creator. The hour has struck for a new Cosmic Dawn, for a new Day. The time has come for Cosmos to awake after the Night.3 The Creative Mind of the universe turns His attention, His thought, to a new phase of things, a new worldperiod.
7. God smiled, and His laughter thrilled through space,4 and with His Word, called forth into the light the new dawn from out the primaeval darkness of the new world-space. His first creation, transcendental or intelligible Nature, stood before Him, in all the marvel of her new beauty, the primal pleroma, or potential fullness, of the new universe or system, the ideal cosmos of our world, for there were many others, — the Gods who marvelled at the mystery.
Straightway this Nature fell from one into three, herself and Toil and their fairest child Invention, to whom God gave the gift of being, themselves producing ideal form alone.
1 Or rather apocalypse ; see § 15 : "As Hermes says when he speaks unto me."
2 Cf. the Egregores of The Book of Enoch ; see Charles' Translation (Oxford ; 1893), Index, under "Watchers."
3 The new Manvantara following a periodical Pralaya, to use the terms of Indo-Aryan tradition.
4 The creation is figured in one Egyptian tradition as the bursting forth of the Creator into seven peals of laughter,- sevenfold«Ha!"
The first creation, then, was the bringing forth of potencies and types and ideas, to whom God gave the gift of being; it was as yet the world "above," the primaeval Heaven, in ultimate perfection, thus constituting the unchanging boundaries of the new universe that was to be. These things-that-are were filled with "mysteries," not "breaths" or "lives," for these were not as yet.