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

The ascending souls of normally evolving humanity are thought of, apparently, as describing ever widening

1 Of. C. H., xviii. 8 ff.

circles in their wheelings in and out of incarnation, rising, as they increase in virtue and knowledge, at the zenith of their ascent in the intermediate state, before they turn to descend again into rebirth, ever nearer to the limits of the sensible world and, the frontiers of Heaven.

41. But there is also another class of descending royal souls, who have only slightly transgressed, and therefore descend only as far as this grade of humanity.

42. For the royal or ruling soul is not only a warrior monarch ; his sovereignty may be also shown in arts of peace. He may be a righteous judge, a musician or poet, a truth-lover or philosopher. The activities of these souls are not determined, as is the case with souls of lower grades, — that is, those souls which have fallen deeper into material existence, — by what Basilides would have called the " appendages " of the animal nature ; they are determined by a fairer taxis, an escort of angels and daimones, who accompany them into birth.

43. The description of their manner of birth, however, is, unfortunately, lost to us, owing either to the hesitation of Stobaeus to make it public, or to its being cut out by some subsequent copyist.

^ 44. We are next told that sex is no essential characteristic of the soul. It is an " accident " of the body, but this body is not the physical, but the "aery" body, which air, however, is not a simple element, but already differentiated into four sub-elements.1

45. Moreover the sight, or intelligence, of the soul also depends upon the purity of certain envelopes, which are called " airs," — " airs " apparently more subtle even than the aery body (45 ).1

1 The "spirituous" or "aery" body, or vehicle, is composed of the sub-elements, but in it is a predominance of the sub-element Cc air," just as in the physical there is a predominance of " earth." — Philoponus, Prooem. in Aristot. de Anima ; see my Orpheus (London, 1896), "The Subtle Body," pp. 276-281. Cf. also 8. I. H.t 15, 20.

46. Next follows a naive reason for the excellence of Egypt and the wisdom of the Egyptians (46-48). Here the writer seems to be no longer dependent directly on the Trismegistic tradition, but is inserting and expanding popular notions.

49. The remaining sections of the Excerpt are taken up with speculations as to the cause of delirium (49, 50), and Stobaeus brings his extract to a conclusion apparently without allowing the writer to complete his exposition.

SOURCES ?

The discussion as to the meaning of the title, which has so far been invariably translated "The Virgin of the World," will come more appropriately later on.

How much of the original treatise has been handed on to us by Stobseus we have no external means of deciding. Our two Extracts, however, plainly stand in immediate connection with each other, and the original text is broken only by the unfortunate omission of the Hymn of Osiris and Isis. The first Extract, moreover, is plainly not the beginning of the treatise, since it opens with words referring to what has gone before ; while the second Extract ends in a very unsatisfactory manner in the middle of a subject.

What we have, however, gives us some very interesting indications of how the writer regarded his sources, — whether written or oral, whether physical or psychic. He of course would have us take his treatise as a literary unity ; and indeed the subject is so worked up that it is very difficult to discover what the literary

1 Compare this with the prdnds of Indian theosophy ; see
C. H., x. (xi.) 13, Comment.

sources that lay before the writer may have been, for the story runs on straight enough in the same thoughtmould and literary form, in spite of the insertion of somewhat contradictory statements concerning the sources of information.