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

Herodotus, Homerus, Lycurgus, Melampus, Musseus, (Enopides of Chios, Orpheus, Pausanias, Pherecydes, Polybius, Simmias, Solon, Sphserus, Strabo, Telecles, Thales, Theodorus, Xenophanes of Colophon, Zamolxis. I have quoted this note on purpose to show the overpowering weight of evidence which some modern theorists have to face, in order to maintain their thesis that the philosophy of Greece was solely a native product. The universal testimony of the Greeks themselves is that all their greatest philosophers, geometricians, mathematicians, historians, geographers, and especially their theosophists, were pupils of the Egyptian Wisdom ; the modern theory of the unaided evolution of philosophy on the soil of Greece, which is so universally accepted, is, to my mind, entirely erroneous. The " form " or " manner" of "philosophizing" was of course solely due to Greek genius, but the "matter" of it was of hoary antiquity. Cf. Plutarch, De Is. et Os., x.

1 That is to say, presumably, teachers of all without distinction of race. Op. aY., i. 1.

with Deity. Now the Eays of the Spiritual Sun are really One Light, "polarised" variously by the "spheres" of which we have heard so much in the Trismegistic treatises. These Eays come forth from the Logos, and each illuminates a certain division of the whole hierarchy of beings from the Logos to man, and characterises further the lower kingdoms, animals and plants, and minerals. Hence, for instance, among animals, we get the ibis, the ape and the dog as being especially sacred to Thoth or Hermes.

THOSE OF THE HERMAIC NATURE

Among men generally, also, there are certain whose characteristics are of a " Hermaic " x nature ; the more evolved of these are adapted to certain lines of study and research, while again among those few of these who are beginning to be really conscious of the science of sacred things, that is to say, among the initiated students or priests, the direct influence of this Kay or Person begins to be consciously felt, by each, as Jamblichus says, according to his ability, for there are still many grades.

Now the peculiar unanimity that prevailed in these strictly hierarchical schools of initiation, and the grand doctrine of identification that ran throughout the whole economy — whereby the pupil became identified with the master when he received his next grade of initiation, and whereby his master was to him the living symbol of all that was above that master, that is to say, was Hermes for him, in that he was the messenger to him of the Word, and was the channel whereby the divine inspiration came to him — rendered the ascription to

1 It is from this region of ideas that the terms "mercurial temperament," and so forth, have reached modern times over the bridge of astrological tradition.

Hermes of all the sacred scriptures, such as the sermons of initiation, a very natural proceeding. It was not the case of a modern novel-writer taking out a copyright for his own precious productions, but simply of the recorder, scribe or copyist of the sacred science handing on the tradition. As long as this was confined to the disciplined schools of the sacred science it was without danger, but when irresponsible people began to copy a method, to whose discipline they refused to submit, for purposes of edification, and so appended the names of great teachers to their own lucubrations, they paved the way for that chaos of confusion in which we are at present stumbling.

THE BOOKS OF HERMES

Towards the end of his treatise Jamblichus, in treating of the question of the innumerable hierarchies of being and their sub-hierarchies, says that these are so multiplex that they had to be treated by the ancient priests from various aspects, and even among those who were " wise in great things " in his own time the teaching was not one and the same.

" The main states of being were completely set forth by Hermes (in the twenty thousand books, as Seleucus l writes, or in the thirty-six thousand five hundred and twenty-five as Manetho relates), while the sub-states are interpreted in many other writings by the ancients, some of them sub-dividing 2 some of the sub-states and others others." 3

At first sight it would seem that we are not to sup-