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

• 8. The next stage is the breathing of the spiritual (not the physical) breath of lives into the fairest blend of the primal elements that condition the world-area. This blend or soul-substance is called psychosis. The primal elements were not our mixed earth, water, fire, and air, but " knowing fire " (perhaps " fire in itself," as Hermes elsewhere calls it, or intelligible fire, perchance the " flower of fire " of the so-called " Chaldsean Oracles " l) and unknowing air, if we may judge from the phrase
• (7) : " Let heaven be filled with all things full, and air and aether [? = fire] too!" It is Heaven or the ideal world that is so filled; even earth-water was not yet manifested, much less earth and water.

It seems, then, that these souls (souls corresponding above with the subsequent man-stage below) were a blend of the three : spirit, knowing fire, and unknowing air, — triads, yet a unity called psychosis.

9. They were moreover all essentially equal, but differed according to some fixed law of numbering; they were also apparently definite in number, one soul perchance for every star, as with Plato, according to the law of similarity of less and greater, of within and without.

10. These souls, then, were " sacred (or typical) men,"

1 Gf. the "florescence" of § 10.

a creation prior to that of the " sacred animals " ; their habitat was in Upper Nature, the " all-fairest station of the aether " — the celestial cosmos.

11. They were appointed to certain stations and to the task of keeping the " wheel revolving," — that is, as we shall see, they were to fashion forms for birth and death, and so provide means of transmission for the lifecurrents ever circulating in the great sphere. This was their appointed task, the law imposed on them, as obedient children of the Great King, their sire. So long as they kept their appointed stations they were to live for ever in surroundings of bliss and beauty, in full contemplation of the glories of the greater universe, throned amid the stars. But if they disobeyed the law, bonds and punishment await them.

12. We next come to a further creation of souls — a subject somewhat difficult to follow. These souls are of an inferior grade to the preceding, for they are composed of the primal water and earth, of " water in itself " and " earth in itself " we must suppose, and not of the compound elements we now call by these names. These are the souls of certain "sacred animals" or lives, which bear the same relationship to the souls which " keep the wheel revolving " as animals do to man on earth. They are, however, not shaped like the animals on earth, nor possess even typical animal forms, but bear the forms of men, though they are not men.

13. Still was the divine "water-earth" substance unexhausted, and so the residue was handed over to " those souls that had gone in advance and had been summoned to the land of Gods," — that is to say, those stations near the Gods, in highest aether, of which mention has just been made. These souls are, of course, the man-souls proper.

Out of this residue these Builders were to fashion animals, after the models the Creator gave them, — certain types of life, below the " man " type proper, ranged in due order corresponding to the " motions of the souls." That is to say, there were various classes of Builders according to the types of animals which were to be copied. The Builders were to fashion the forms, the Creator was to breathe into them the life.

14. Thus these Builders fashioned the etheric doubles of birds, quadrupeds, fish and reptiles, and not their physical bodies, for as yet the earth was not solid.

15. And so the Builder-souls accomplished their task, and fashioned the primaeval copies of the celestial types of animals. Proud of their work, they grew restive at the restraints placed upon them by the law of their stations, and overstepped the limits decreed by the Creator.1

Whereupon the punishment is pronounced, and the Creator resolves to make the human frame, therein to imprison the disobedient souls.

And here we learn incidentally that all of this