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

1 Of which Schow gives the alternative heading : " From the Intercession (or Supplication) of Isis," which Gaisford (in a note) thinks is from the Vienna Codex. This, however, is not the case, for the Vindobonensis preserves the usual reading excep hat the last word is missing. See R. 134, n. 3.

2 R. (p. 135, n. 3), however, thinks this impossible.

have crossed the Plain of Truth " (3) that is as we have shown in the Comments on K. K., 10, the writer claims to have reached the degree of illumination which bestows on men the consciousness of the gods. " Isis," then, is not "common to all priests," as Jamblichus says of "Hermes," without the honorific qualification "Thrice-greatest," but rather of a certain grade of initiation ; the teacher of that lower grade, or Horusgrade, being Hermes' representative. Isis was commonly regarded as the Lady of all wisdom and teacher of all magic. Already in the earliest Hellenistic period she had attributes similar to those of Thoth-Hermes, and thus comes forward as the Orderer of the world 1 ; and not only so, but, like Thoth, she is called Lady of the heart and of the tongue ; that is to say, her attributes were those of the Logos.2

That there was a secret theosophic and apocalyptic literature ascribed to Isis and Horus may be seen from Lucian, who, in one of his humorous sketches, puts into the mouth of Pythagoras the following sentence :

" I also journeyed to Egypt that I might make the acquaintance of the prophets of wisdom, and I descended into the shrines of the temples and learned the Books of Isis and Horus." 3

Here again, then, as Manetho tells us, these Books, as the Books of Hermes, were kept secret in the holy of holies of the Temples ; and these shrines were evidently

1 See Reitzenstein, Zwei religionsgesch. Fragen, 104 ff.

2 Plutarch, De Is. et Os., Ixviii. : " They say that of the trees in Egypt the persea is especially dedicated to her, and that its fruit resembles a heart, and its leaf a tongue. For nothing that men have is more divine than the word (logos), and especially the [word] concerning the gods." The fruit of the persea grew from the stem.

3 Gallus, 18.

underground for Pythagoras is said to have " descended " to them.

This is the Horus who is not only, after Osiris, the lord of power and might, that is, Mng, but lord of philosophy, as Arnebeschenis (12). For Arnebeschenis, that is Har-nebeschenis, is, as Spiegelberg has shown,1 an Egyptian proper name, meaning " Horus lord of Letopolis," at one time an important city in the Delta. In the Alchemical literature also we meet with Horus as a writer of books, as for instance in the superscription " Horus the Gold-miner to Cronus who is Ammon." 2

Here we see that Horus stands to Isis as Asclepius to Hermes ; Asclepius wrote books to Ammon, and so Horus wrote books to Ammon; but whereas the Trismegistic tradition proper looked back to Cronus (Ammon) as one of its earliest teachers, the later writings converted Ammon into a king who was taught by Asclepius or by Horus.

THE WATERY SPHERE AND SUBTLE BODY

The writer of 8. 1. H. tells us that the soul in its royal state, that is while lord of itself, is a divine creature, but in incarnation it is united with the watery plasm or subtle body, of K. K.y 18, where Hermes says that in making it he " used more water than was required " ; and to which the soul in its complaint (§ 21) refers as a "watery sphere." This union makes it dense "against its proper nature" (3), and it is further densified by a certain " vaporous " nature which unites it with the physical frame (15, 17, 20) ; concerning all of which it is of interest to refer to Philoponus, who tells us that :

1 Demotische Studien, i., "Agyptische u. griechische Eigennamen," p. 28 (cf. also p. 41) ; R. 135.

2 Berthelot, p. 103.