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

All of this, moreover, seems to have been part and parcel of the Isis mystery-tradition proper, for as Diodorus (i. 25), following Hecataeus, informs us, it was Isis who "discovered the philtre of immortality, by means of which, when her son Horus, who had been plotted against by the Titans, and found dead (veKpov) beneath the water, not only raised him to life (avacrTria-ai) by giving him life (tyvxfiv), but also made him sharer in immortality."

Here we have evidence to show that in the mysterymyth Horus was regarded as the human soul, and that there were two interpretations of the mystery. It referred not only to the "rising from the dead" in another body, or return to life in another enfleshment, but also to a still higher mystery, whereby the consciousness of immortality was restored to the memory of the soul. The soul had been cast by the Titans, or the opposing powers of the subtle universe, into the deep waters of the Great Sea, the Ocean of Generation, or Celestial Nile, for as the mysterious informant of Cleombrotus told him,1 these stories of Titans concerned daimons or souls proper, not bodies.2

1 See below, where the story is given from Plutarch's Moralia.

2 Compare The Book of the Dead, Ixxviii. 31, 32 ; Budge's Trans. (London, 1901), ii. 255 : "I shall come forth . . . into the House of Isis, the divine lady. I shall behold sacred things which are hidden, and 1 shall be led on to the secret and holy things, even as they have granted unto me to see the birth of

From this death in the sea of matter, Isis, the Mother Soul, brings Horus repeatedly back to life, and finally bestows on him the knowledge of immortality, and so raises him from the "dead."1

This birth of the " true man " within, the logos, was and is for man the chief of all mysteries. In the Chapter on " The Popular Theurgic Hermes-Cult," we have already, in elucidation of the sacramental formula, " Thou art I and I am thou," quoted the agraphon from the Gospel of Em concerning the Great Man and the Little Man or Dwarf, and lovers of the Aupanishad literature of Hindu-Aryan theosophy need hardly be the Great God. Horus hath made me to be a spiritual body through his soul, [and I see what is therein]." Compare the last sentence with C. H., i. 7, and xi. (xii.) 6, where the pupil "sees" by means of the soul of his Master.

1 This passage, I believe, affords us an objective point of departure for the reconsideration of C. W. Leadbeater's statement, in his Christian Creed (London, 1898), p, 45, that "Pontius Pilate" is a pseudo-historical gloss for ir6vTos iri\-rjr6s, the "dense sea" of "matter," into which the soul is plunged. See for a discussion of this hypothesis D. T. L., pp. 423 ff.

In connection with this a colleague has supplied me with an exceedingly interesting note from Texts and Studies, iv. 2, Coptic Apocryphal Gospels, p. 177, Frag. 4. The Sahidic text is found in Rendiconti della R. Accademia dei Lincei, vol. iii., sem. 2, pp. 381-384 (Frammenti Copti, Nota Via), by Ignazio Guidi (1887). The legend runs that the Devil taking " the form of a fisherman," goes fishing, and is met by Jesus as He was coming down from the Mount with His disciples. The Devil announces that " he who catcheth fish here, he is the Master. It is not a wonder to catch fish in the waters, the wonder is in this desert, to catch fish therein." They then have a trial of skill, but the MS. unfortunately breaks off before the result is told. It is in this Fragment that the following remarkable sentence occurs : " Now as Pilate was saying these things before the authorities of Tiberius, the king, Herod, could not refrain from setting Pilate at naught, saying, 'Thou art a Galilcean foreign Egyptian Pontus.'" The literal translation from the Coptic runs : " Thou art a Pontus Galilaean foreign Egyptian."

reminded of " the ' man,' of the size of a thumb," within, in the ether of the heart.1

" ISHON "

But what is of more immediate interest is that the same idea is to some extent found in the Old Covenant documents, especially in the Prophetical and Wisdom literature, which latter was strongly influenced by Hellenistic ideas.