Mead quotes Plutarch's report that the Egyptians called their black-soiled country, as though "it were the black of the eye, Chemia," and follows the word into mystic sight: Egypt as the pupil of the world's eye. He does not mention that this chapter of Plutarch is the classical source for one of the derivations long proposed for the words chemistry and alchemy, the art of the black land. The rival derivation takes the word from a Greek root for pouring, and neither is settled. The silence is notable in a volume whose fragments include Zosimus the alchemist, and on a page that has just cited Reitzenstein's evidence from the alchemical Hermes literature. Mead reads the black as vision; the art's own name may read it as soil.
Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. III — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
Open to all
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
page 48
It is far more natural to make the Agathodaimon of the Papyrus refer to Osiris ; for indeed it is one of his most frequent designations. Moreover, it is precisely Osiris who is pre-eminently connected with the so-called "under world," the unseen world, the " mysterious dark." He is lord there, while Isis remains on earth ; it is he who would most fitly give instructions on such matters, and indeed one of the ancient mystery-sayings was precisely, "Osiris is a dark God."1
" He who is Lord in the perfecting black," might thus mean that Osiris, the masculine potency 2 of the soul, purified and perfected the man on the mysterious dark side of things, and completed the work which Isis, the feminine potency of the soul, had begun on him.
That, in the highest mystery-circles, this was some stage of union of the man with the higher part of himself, may be deduced from the interesting citations made by Keitzenstein (pp. 142-144) from the later Alchemical Hermes-literature ; it clearly refers to the mystic "sacred marriage,"3 the intimate union of the soul with the logos, or divine ray. Much could be written on this subject, but it will be sufficient to append two passages of more than ordinary interest. The Jewish over-writer of the Naassene Document contends that the chief mystery of the Gnosis was but the consummation of the instruction given in the various mystery-institutions of the nations. The
1 Compare also the mystery ritual in The Acts of John : " I am thy God, not that of the betrayer" (F?F. F., p. 434).
2 As the Gnostic Marcus would have called it.
3 On this icpds yd]j.os or yd/j.os trvevfjiaTtK^s, see Lobeck (C. A.),
Aglaophamus (Konigsberg, 1829), 608, 649, 651.
Lesser Mysteries, he tells us, commenting on the text of the Pagan commentator, pertained to " fleshly generation," whereas the Greater dealt with the new birth, or second birth, with regeneration, and not with genesis. And speaking of a certain mystery, he says :
"For this is the Gate of Heaven, and this is the House of God, where the Good God l dwells alone, into which [House] no impure [man] shall come; but it is kept under watch for the spiritual alone ; where when they come they must cast away their garments, and all become bridegrooms obtaining their true manhood through the Virginal Spirit. For such a man is the Virgin big with child, conceiving and bearing a Son, not psychic, not fleshly, but a blessed Mon of JEons."2
In the marvellous mystery-ritual of the new-found fragments of The Acts of John, lately discovered in a fourteenth century MS. in Vienna, disguised in hymn form, and hiding an almost inexhaustible mine of very early tradition, the "sacred marriage" is plainly suggested as one of the keys to part of the ritual. Compare, for instance, with the "casting away of their garments," in the above-quoted passage of the Naassene writer, the following: " [The Disciple.] I would flee.
[The Master.] I would [have thee] stay.
[The Assistants.] Amen !
[The Disciple] I would be robed.
[The Master.] And I would robe [thee].
[The Assistants] Amen !
[The Disciple.] I would be at-oned.
1 That is, the Agathodaimon.
2 That is, the "Birth of Horus." Hippolytus, Philos., v. 8 (ed. Dunk, and Schneid, pp. 164, 166, 11. 86-94). see "Myth of Man in the Mysteries," § 28. The last clause is the gloss of the later Christian over-writer.
[TJie Master.] And I would at-one.
[The Assistants.] Amen ! " l
BLACK LAND.
But to return to the " mysterious black." Plutarch tells us : " Moreover, they [the Egyptians] call Egypt, inasmuch as its soil is particularly black, as though it were the black of the eye, Chemia, and compare it with the heart," 2 — for, he adds, it is hot and moist, and set in the southern part of the inhabitable world, in the same way as the heart in the left side of a man.3
Egypt, the "sacred land" par excellence, was called Chemia or Chem (Hem), Black-land, because of the nature of its dark loamy soil; it was, moreover, in symbolic phraseology the black of the eye, that is, the pupil of the earth-eye, the stars and planets being regarded as the eyes of the gods.4 Egypt, then, was the eye and heart of the Earth ; the Heavenly Nile poured its light-flood of wisdom through this dark of the eye, or made the land throb like a heart with the celestial life-currents.
Nor is the above quotation an unsupported statement of Plutarch's, for in an ancient text from Edfu,5 we read : " Egypt (lit. the Black), which is so called after the eye of Osiris, for it is his pupil."
Ammon-Kneph, too, as we have seen, is black, or blue-black, signifying his hidden and mysterious