VI. "Accordingly the First Egg that was ever pro-

duced being gradually warmed by the Living Creature within it, breaks open, and then there takes shape and comes forth some such thing as Orpheus says :
** When the skull-like ' wide-yawning Egg did break [etc.].^
"So by the mighty power of Him who came forth and who made Himself manifest, ' the shell ' ^ receives its articulation^ and obtains its orderly arrangement ;
1 It is thought of as floating in this Matter.
* The Living One.
> Kp€a^ov — an otherwise unknown word. Many emendations have heen suggested ; but it does not seem to be necessary to go beyond irparlor, especially as we have seen (for instance, in the Naassene Document) that this was a faYourite symbol of the Heaven.
* Unfortunately, the rest of the Orphic quotation is not given.
* Or body— the matter in the Egg.
* k^iiwiv- its fitting together, or harmony.
392 THRICB-OREATEST HERICBS
while He Himself presides as though it were upon s throne on Heaven's height, and in the [realma] ir^Afl^Hff sends forth His light all round upon the Boondlev -ffion."
OnaaRTABT
This is evidently the Logos — ^the Gkxl from the Sg^ and the God from the Sock ; for the Primal Firmamoit was symbolised as Rock, as Adamant; just as in physical nature, the life-spark appears from the mineral kingdom.
The Logos presides in highest heaven, in the iDeflEU)]e spaces, whence He sends out His rays upon the JSon, that Bound of Bounds which is itseU Boandlesa. For the Egg may be thought of as the Boundary of some special universe or system ; whereas the Man. is the Boundary of all universes.
The information given in this quotation purports to be the Orphic tradition of cosmogony; wi^ thij^ oos- mogony all Hellenistic theologians would be familiar, and therefore we are not surprised to find many points of contact between it and the general ideas in our " Poemandres " cosmogenesis, which, though doubtiess having an original nucleus of Egyptian tradition in it^ is nevertheless strongly overworked by minds that were also saturated with the mingled traditions of Plato, Pythagoras, and Orpheus.
Indeed, both "Plato" and "Pythagoras," on their mystical side, are strongly tinged with "Orpheua* Now, Orphidsm was the revival of pre-Hesiodic Orphism initiated by Onomacritus under the PdaistratidsL Original Orphism was, in my opinion, a blend of Hellenic Bardic lore with " Chaldsean " elements. It is not sur- prising, therefore, that when the " Books of the Chal- dasans," collected for the Alexandrian library.
CONCERNING THE JBON-DOCTRINE 393
turned into Greeks great interest should have been taken in them by Hellenistic scholars, who found therein a confirmation of the Greek Wisdom of Orpheus, little suspecting that that Wisdom was in origin partially from the same source.
The Sethian Gnosis
In illustration of this Chaldffio-Orphic symbolical cosmogony as " philosophised '' in a Hellenistic Gnostic environment, we will quote from a system ascribed by Hippolytus to the Sethians (a name indicating an Egyptian environment), and brought by him into the closest connection with those whom he calls the Naassenes — that is to say, with what he considers to be one of the earliest forms of the Christian Gnosis, but which, as we have shown, is a form of the pre-Christian Gnosis overworked in Christian terms about the middle of the second century. Of these Sethians, Hippolytus ^ tells us as follows :
''They think that there are Three Principles* of the universals having certain definite boundaries, and yet that each of these Principles possesses boundless potentialities.
** Now, the Essences of these Principles (he says) are light and Darkness ; and in the midst of these is pure Spirit.
" The Spirit, however, that is set in the midst of the Darkness that is below and of the Light that is above, is not a spirit [or breath] like a blast of wind or some light breeze that can be felt; but is as it were the delicate scent of unguent or of incense compounded and
» Philoi,, v. 19 ; ed. C, p. 209 ff.; ed. D. and S., pp. 198 ffl ; ed. M., 138 ff. * ^X^^*— flonroee or beginningi.
894 THRICB-ORRAUBT mathna
prepared, — a f oroe of fngrmnoe that traTda with a motion ao rapid as to be quite inoonoeivaUe and br beyond the power of words to ezpreaa.
** Now, since li^t is above and Darknees below, and Spirit in some such way as I have said between then, — ^the Nature of the light is that it shines forth from above, like a ray of the sun, into the Darkness beneath, while that of the fragrance of the Spirit^ which has the middle rank, is, contrary wise, that it extends itself and is carried in every direction ; just as in the case of in- cense on a fire, we see its fragrance carried in eveiy direction*
** And such being the Power of the triply divided [Principles], the combined Power of the Spirit and light descends into the Darkness which is set beneath them.
" And the Darkness is an awesome Water into which the Light together with the Spirit is drawn down and transferred.
"The Darkness, however, is not without under- standing, but quite intelligent, and it knows that if light were taken from Darkness, Darkness would remain isolated, unmamfest,^ splendourless, pownrless, ineffectual, strengthless.
** Wherefore is it constrained vnth all its inteUigSDoe and understanding to hold down to itself the lustre and spark of the Light together vnth the fragrance of the Spirit
** And one can see an image of the nature ot die latter in a man's face — [namely] the pupil of the eye,* which IB dark because of the waters underlying it^ yet illumined by Spirit
"As, therefore, the Darkness contends for ths Splendour, in order that it may make a slave of the
1 A^oWf — the q)po6ite of Phanea.
' Have we here any further cine to the title Md^ wU/^m I
CONCBRNINO THE ^SON-DOCTRINE 395
Light-spark and see, ao also the light and the Spirit contend for their own Power ; they strive to raise and bring back to themselves those powers which are mingled with the dark and awesome Water beneath.
" Now all the powers of the three Principles, being infinitely infinite in number, are sagacious and intelli- gent each according to its own essence. And though they are countless in multitude, yet, being sagacious and intelligent, as long as they remain by themselves, they are all at peace.
" If, however, one power is brought into contact with another power, the dissimilarity in their juxtaposition brings about a certain motion and energy that takes its shape from the concurrent motion of the juxta- position of the contacting powers.^
" For the con-currence of the powers constitutes as it were the impression (ruiroi) of a seal struck off by concussion* so as to resemble the [die] that stamps the substances brought into contact with it.
" Since then the powers of the three Principles are infinite in number, and from the infinite powers are infinite concurrences, images of infinite seals are of necessity produced.
"These images, then, are the forms (ISeai) of the different kinds of living creatures.
''Now from the first mighty concurrences of the three Principles there resulted a mighty type of seal — Heaven and Earth.
" And Heaven and Earth have a configuration
> I may be mistaken, but the ideas involved in this exposition seem to be precisely the same as those involved in the most modem dynamic theories of atomicity, except that the atoms or rather monads of our Qnostics are intelligent
* lit, con-currence.
896 THRIGB-QBRATBST HKRlflCS
reaembling a Womb, with the embryo^ in the middk; mnd if (be saTs) one would bring this to the test of tight, let him acrutiniBe acientificallj the gravid womb of whataoever living cieatare he wishes, and he wiU find the model of Heaven and Earth and of all thingB between them lying before him without an j alteratioD.
*" So the configuration of Heaven and Earth was soch that it resembled a Womb as it were, according to the first concourse [of the three Principles].
'' And again in the midst of Heaven and Earth infinite concourses of powers occurred, and every single con- course eflTected and expressed the image of nothing ebe but a seal of Heaven and Earth— a thing resembling a Womb.
** And in the Earth itself there developed from the infinite seals of diffSorent kinds of living creatures, [living things] still more infinite.
** And into all this infinity below the Heaven in the different kinds of living creatures, the fragrance of the Spirit from above together with the Light was sown and was distributed.* . . .
"Accordingly there arose out of the Water a first- bom source — Wind vehement and boisterous — and cause of all genesis.
'Tor by making a certain seething' in the waters it ^ raises up waves from the waters.
" And tl^ genesis of the waves, being as it were a
^ Lit, DAYel ; but the word stands metapharicaUy for anything like a nayel— «.^. the bo« of a ahield, a knob of any kind ; henoe any centre, or nucleus.
' Hippolytus here seems to have omitted some impoftant section of his source from lus summary ; in any case the text of that which follows ib very corrupt, and in some important details demonstrably imperfect, as may be seen by comparing the Epitome, X. iv.
* Or ferment. * 8c Wind.
CONCERNINO THE i£ON-DOCTRINfi 397
certain pregnant ^ impulse, is the source of the produc- tion of man or mind, whenever [this motion] quickens under the impulse of the Spirit.
"And whenever this wave, raised from the Water by the Wind, and rendering nature pr^nant, receives in itself the power of production of the female, it keeps down the light from above that has been sown into it together with the fragrance of the Spirit, — that is to say, mind that takes forms in the various types ; that is a perfect god, brought down from the Ingenerable Light from above and Spirit into a human nature, as into a temple, by the course of Nature and motion of the Wind, generated from Water, commingled and blended with bodies, as though he were the salt of existing things and the light of the Darkness, struggling to be freed from bodies, and unable to find liberation and the way out of himself.
"For as it were a very minute spark . . . like a ray* ....
"Every thought and care of the light above, there- fore, is how and in what way mind may be liberated from the Death of the evil and dark Body,' from the Father below, who is the Wind that in ferment and tur- moil raised up the waves and brought to birth perfect mind, son of himself, and yet not his own in essence.
" For he was a ray from above, from that Perfect light, overpowered in the sinuous^ and awesome and bitter^
> iyitvfAmw — a plaj on kv/ao, which meaiiB embryo as well as wave.
* The text is here destroyed beyond hope of conjecture. ' 8e, Darkness.
* iTKoKt^, Cf, the o-iroXfdf of (7. K,^ i. 4.
^ Cf, the Naassene Hymn : " She seeks to flee the bitter Chaos " ; and compare Jacob Bohme's ^ Bitterness," and also his " three Principles,'' with those of our system. The analogies are striking, and yet Jacob could not possibly have known this system physically.
398 IHRICB-OEKATB8T meniraft
and blood-stained Water ; and that Light is the Spint of light borne upon the water.^ . . .
*' But the Wind, being both boiateroiia and vdiemoit in its rush, is in ita whistling * like onto a Serpent— a winged one.
"From the Wind, that is from the Serpent, the source of generation arose in the way that has been said; all things receiving together the beginning of generation.
" When then (he says) the Light and the Spirit have been received down into the impure and disorderly Womb of manifold suffering, the Serpent — the Wind the Darkness, the First-bom of the Waters— entering in generated man, and the impure Womb neither loves nor recognises any other form.'
" And so the Perfect Logos of the Light from above having made Himself like unto the Beast, the Serpent, entered into the impure Womb, having deceived it* through His similitude to the Beast; in order that He may loose the bonds that are laid upon the per- fect mind that is generated in the impurity of the Womb by the First-bom of the Waters-Snake, Wind, Beast.

^ The following lines are deetrojed beyond the power d reeonstraction.
* In the case of a serpent this would be **luning" ; wiftypm^ however, is properly the sound of a pipe, and puts us in mind d the Syriktes of the Naassene Document.
> Se. than that of the Serpent.
« Se. the Womb.
« Cf. Philipp., iL 7 : *' But He emptied Himaeli, taking on the Servant's Form, being nuule in the likeness of men." The *' emptying" or nhm^is was the change from the vx4^«fM or Fullness of Light to the mivm^^ or Emptineai of Darknesa. Fral ((HT the writer of the Epistle, whoever he was) is here using the technical language of the Qnosis.
CONCERNING THE ^ON-DOOTBINE 399
the necessity of the Descent of the Logos of God into the Womb of the Virgin.
** But it IB not sufficient (he says) that the Perfect Man, the Logos, has entered into the Womb of the Virgin and loosed the pains that are in that Darkness ; nay, but after entering into the foul mysteries in the Womb, He washed Himself and drank the Cup of Living Water bubbling-forth — a thing that everyone must do who is about to strip off the Servant-Form and put on the Celestial (Garment."
There can be little doubt but that the main ideas in the background of this system of the Gnosis are closely connected with general Orphic and Chaldsean ideas, and also with the main schematology of our ** PoemaAdres " tractate.
From the Orphic tradition handed on by Apion we have seen that the i£on is the Circle of Infinitude and Eternity illumined by the Logos.
The "Mithriac -fioN"
The whole of this Orphic lore (in other words, the Chaldffian wisdom-teaching) seems to me to be summed up in one division of the symbolism of the Mithra-cult, as may be seen by an inspection of the monuments reproduced by Cumont, and especially those of the mysterious figure which he calls "/a diviniU Uonto- dphale'' and the birth of the God from the Rock; this seems to point, as we might very well suspect, to a strong Chaldaean element in the Mithriac tradition.
Cumont^ tells us that although some scholars have rejected the name of ''Mithriac iEon," which was
^ TeoAei et MonwnmU Ftgwrdi rdatifi aux Mytthru ds Mithra (Bruzelles, 1899), i. 76 ff., where all the references are given.
400 THRICB-QBRATBST HKRlfKH
given bj Zogga to this awe-inspiriiig znTBtic figore^^ in falfl opinion (and be knows more of the sabject than any other authoritj) it may Yery well have been actually called iEon in the sacred books ot the mysteries.
If, however, this was the case, the mystic meaning, says Comont, was of snch a nature that it was r^mfmlf4 from the profana
Our classical authorities inform us that the Migi expressed the name of the Supreme God, which was in reality ineffable, by various substitutes. The general name for the Mystery Deity was Cronus, and Cnmu in the sense of Time.
"The Mithriac Cronus is a personification of lime, and this fact, which is now fairly estabUshed, permits us immediately to determine the identity of Uus pseu- donymous God.
** There is only one Persian divinity which he can possibly represent, and that is Zervan Akarana, Infinite Time, whom, from the time of the Achemenides, a sect of the Magi placed at the origin of things, and from whom they would have both Ormuxd and Ahriman to have been bom.
** It was this God that the adepts of the mysteries placed at the head of the celestial hierarchy, and con- sidered as the first principle ; or, to put it differently, it was the Zervanist system that the Magdiwins of Asia Minor taught to the Western followers of the Iranian religion."
This all seems to me to point not to a Persian origin
^ A Being with lion's hesd, and esgle's wingi, and brute^ feet, and human body, enwrapped with a aerpent^ atanding on a globe and holding the keys of life and death in ita two hands. There are many variants, however, aU of them highly instructive, as pourtraying the Autoioon, or Living Creatue in itself, the sommalion of all forms of life, induding man.
OONCERNING TH£ i£ON-DOCTRIN£ 401
of the .^n, as Cumont supposes, but to a Chaldsean element dominating the Mithriac form of the Magian tradition.^
Probable Date op Origin of the Hellenistic .^n-doctrine
Now the Chaldsean and Egyptian wisdom-cultures had many root-ideas in common (were they not regarded by the Greeks as the wisdom-traditions par excellence 1); we are not therefore surprised to find that ^ypt, with its ever-recurring grandiose mystery- phrases of enormous time-periods, such as " He of the millions of years/' had on its own soil a highly de- veloped idea of Eternity and of Eternities — that is, of the .^n and of the ^ns; and indeed the strongly Egyptian forms of the Gnosis, which we have preserved to us under Christian overworking, are involved in the most complex aeonology.
It seems, however, almost as though the evidence suggests that this Egyptian element had been revivified, and rescued from the oblivion in which it had been buried in a decadent age, in the symbolism of an almost forgotten past, by a stream of Chaldsean ideas that poured into Hellenistic circles in the early Alexandrian period. When precisely the .£on-idea forced itself upon the philosophic mind of Alexandrian thinkers as an unavoidable mystic necessity, it is difficult to say with any certainty. It can, however, be said without fear of serious contradiction that it may have done so from early Ptolemaic times, and with certainty that it did so in the first century B.C. as truly as in the first century A.D.
niat the term Mon was in frequent use in the
* Reitzenstein (p. 276) is also of Una opinion. VOL. L 26
402 THBICB-OBKATBST HTCIIMICS
popular Hermes-colt maj be seen in Hennes-Ptaytf y. 4, where Tboth is characterised as the ".£00 ol the JEons who changes himself into all forma in Tisiooa* So also in Prayer viiL 2, the Good Daimon, who hta different names given him in the different hours, is called '* Wealth-giving JEonr So also with lais, who is called Wisdom and .£on in the Papyri.^
In conclusion, we may glanoe at whuU Beitseostdn (pp. 272 SI) has to say concerning this ^^AiatumUkm.'
Abraxas
The name Abraxas, which consisted of seven elements or letters, was a mystery-designation of the Qod who combined in himself the whole power of the Seven Planets, and also of the Tear of S65 days, the sum of the number-values of the letters of Abiaxas working out to 365. This mysterious Being was the ''Tear*; but the Tear as the Eternity, also conceived of in a spatial aspect, as the Spirit or Name that extends from Heaven to Earth, the God who pervades and full-fills the Seven Spheres, and the Three Hundred and Sixty- five Zones, the Inner Gkxl, " He who has His seat within the Seven Poles— AEfflOYQ," as the Papyri have it, and also without them, as we riiall see.
The mysterious formula "the Name of which the figure is 365" meets us in such connectionB, that it cannot be taken to mean simply the ** Tear-Gk)d," but is a synonym of the Highest Gkxl, a secret, mysterious Being. In brief it was, as we have seen, no other than the Lion-headed Ood, called in Greek JEon.
Indeed, we know from Philo of Byblos* that^ at least in his day, the second haU of the first century ajx (and,
> K 270.
* Ap. Buseb., Prmp. Evamg^ L 10^ 7 ; 34b.
CONCERNING THE iBON-DOCTRINE 403
for all we know, prior to it), there were in Phoenicia communities of the .^n— of the Highest and Super- celestial One.
Thb Feast of thb iBoN
The first dated use of the word in a religious sense is found in Messala (who was Consul, 53 B.C.), as Johannes Lydus tells us.^ Moreover, Lydus informs us that the Ancients (oc iraXai) celebrated a Feast of the .^n on January 5th.' This can be no other than the Feast of which Epiphanius gives us such interesting details in treating of the Epiphany, when he writes, after de- scribing the festival in the Koreion at Alexandria :*
'' And if they are asked the meaning of this mystery, they answer and say : To-day at this hour the Maiden (Eore), that is the Virgin, has given birth to the JEojl" ^
In the next paragraph Epiphanius designates this Mon as the Alone-begotten. Here, then, we have striking evidence that in its Egyptian environment the cult of the .£on was associated with mystery-rites reminding us strongly of the symbolism of the Christ- mystery,
Thb Quintessence and the Monad
Moreover, Messala^ tells us of this Mon, that He " who made all things and governs all things, joined
1 De Mmt., iv. (ed. Wiinflcli, p. 64, 6).
* Or rather 6th. Beitzenstein'B (p. 274) gloss (wph tUw) to iw\ riis wd/iwnis^ is erroneous, for this would make the date January 11th.
' For a translation of the passage, see the Oommentary on the K. K, Excerpts in treating of the term *' Virgin of the World."
^ Epiphanius, Hatr,, li. SS ; ed. Dindorf, ii. 483. Cf. D. J. L., pp. 410 f., •* The Crucifixion and Resurrection Mystery-Rite."
^ Quoted by Macrobius, SahtmaL^ h ix.
404 THBICB-ORIATBST WKRlflW
together bj means of the surroiindiiig HeaTon the power and nature of Water and Earth, heavj and downward, flowing down into the Depth, and tiiat of Fire and Spirit, light and mshing upward to U» measurelesB Height It is this nughtiest power of Heaven that hath bound together these two unequal powera."
Lydua (ibid.) furthermore tella ua that the idea of the Mon waa aaaociated by the Pythagoreans with the idea of the Monad ; indeed, they aeem to have derived the word aiOn from id, the Ionic form of fua (one).
Any attempt to refer this Pythagorean identification to the earlier Pythagoreana would be at once rejected by the majority of aeholara, but I believe myaelf that the original Pjrthagoreana were far too cloee to the Borderland between mythology and philosophy not to have peraonified or at leaat aubstantialised their " Numbers " and the Source of them. At anyrate it ia highly inatructive to find Plato himaelf writing in the Tinumu:
Tn ifioN iH Plato
" And when the Father who begot it [the C!osmos] saw that by its motion and its life it had become a likeness of the Everlasting Gods, He marvelled, and in delight determined further to make it atill more like its Original^ And as the latter ia an Everlasting Living Being, He sought to make this [Sensible] Universe as far as possible like it
{cu on a generable creature was not possible.
"Accordingly He determined to make a movii^
> That ill the Idssl Ooamoa.
CONCERNING THB iBON-DOCTRINB 405
image of Eternity (AiS>voi); and so in setting the Heaven in order He makes it an everlasting (aldviov) image, moving according to number, of Eternity (Aiwvos) that rests in One— an image which we have, you know, caUedTime."!
Here it is very plain that Mon is not Time, but the Paradigm thereof — ^Eternity. It is the Consummation of the Eternal Gk)d8 — namely, the Pleroma, the Monad par excelUfice. We, therefore, find already in Plato the idea of thOw^on fully developed. Did Plato "invent" it ? Or did he put an already existing idea into philo- sophical terms? He presumably found it already existing. Was it then Orphic (Pythagorean), or did he learn of it in Egypt ? Who shall say precisely ?
CONCBBNING THB HbLLEKISTIC ORIGIN OF iBONOLOGT
Seeing, however, that we find the idea of the Mon fully developed in Plato, and seeing that Plato was, so to speak, scripture for our Hermetic writers, it is exceedingly puzzling that we should find it apparently introduced at a certain stage into the Trismegistic literature as a new doctrine.
It may be, however, that those who had followed Plato on purely philosophical lines had hitherto paid little attention to the idea of the ^on, except as an ultimate principle beyond the reach of speculation. When, however, the enthusiastic seership of mysticism dared to soar beyond heaven into the Heaven of heavens, and so to divide the Simplicity into an Infinitude of Multiplicity, the term Mon came to be used no longer for a transcendent unity but as the connotation of a grade of Being.
» Ttm., 37c,D.
406 THRICB-ORIATnT HKRinW
It maj then have been that our Hermetic writen reasserted the use of the term in its simpler pJiilni^ph*^ meaning as a check to over-enthosiaatic apeeoIaticxL
But even if it were a reaction againat a too grest luxury of speculation, it must have been contem- poraneous with the development of SBcmolqgy ; ao that in any case C. H. xL (xii) must be dated from this poiBt of view.
When soonology arose we cannot say predselj; but SBonology in the Gnoatio sense of the term was, aa we have seen, to some extent at least ftTi the earliest Christian documents.
Thi .£om the Logos
Now though the Trismegistic tractate (7. H^ xL (xiL) is evidently in literary contact with the Timam^ it nevertheless purports to give more *" esoteric," or at any rate more precise, instruction than is to be found in Plato's famous cosmogonical treatise. It does not follow Plato, but hands on an instruction that has already been formulated in a preciae and categorical fashion. The ladder of existence is God, JEon, Cosmos, Time, Genesis ;— each following one from the other.
iEon is the Power of God (§ 3), whereas Cosmos is Gtxi's creation and work (§§ 3, 4). The iBon, standing between Grod and Cosmos, is the Paradigm, and so also the Son of Grod (§ 16), and the final end of man is that he should become Sj^h (§ 20) — that is. Son of God. .£on is thus evidently the Logos of God, or the Intelligible Co8mo6,as distinguished from the Sensible Cosmos. This
^ Qf. § 1 : ^ Ab many men say many thingii and thaae divene about the All and Good " ; and Tim.^ 89c : ''If than, O Soecalw, aince many men eay many thinga about the Goda and the geneelB of the AIL''
CONCERNING THB iBON-DOCTRINE 407
Mem is the Fullness in which all things move, and chiefly the Seven Cosmoi (§ 7).
Thb Soman SiBCULUM-CuLT dsbivsd fbom Egypt
Now, Beitzenstein (pp. 274 ft) shows very clearly that the Cult of the SsBCulum or .^n was strongly developed in Roman theology in at least the first century b.c. This is too early a date for us to assign this development to the influence of the Mithras-cult Can it then be that Some was influenced by Egypt ? Such at anyrate is Seitzenstein's opinion (p. 277), who points to the fact that Messala, who is fully imbued with the .£on-idea, was a contemporary of Nigidius, the most learned of the Romans after Varro, and a Pythagorean philosopher of high attainments. Now it is remarkable that in his work, De Sptunra Barbariea, Nigidius treats of the ^yptian Sphere.
Thb ^Sonic Imminsitiss op Egypt
Egypt, as we have already remarked, at a very early date arrived at the idea of eternal or at anyrate of enormously long periods of time, and had symbolised this conception in a primordial syzygy or pair of Gods. Indeed, the names of the primordial Time-pair, Qbw (9ebu) and Qbt (Qebut), are immediately derived from ** Hb," generally translated "Million," but by Brugsch and others as JEon} All the Egyptian Gkxls were Lords of the Eternity or of the Eternities. But not only so, the
> Budge (op. cit.y L 285) writee : ** According to the late Dr Brugsch (Religion, p. 138), the name Hel^ is connected with the word which indicates an imdefined and unlimited number, i,e. heh ; when applied to time the idea suggested is ' millions of years,' and Heh is equivalent to the Qreek mUh^"
408 THUGB-ORIATBST HKRMTW
tenn " eternity " was used in oonneetion with definite time-periodB; f or inatanoe, "* in a rnilUcm (bretemitjr) ol thirty year periods." And again : " Th j kingdom will have the lastingneas of etemi^ and of infinitely many hondred-and-twenty-year periods ; ten inilKons of thy years, millions of thy months, hnndred-ihonaands of thy days, ten-tbonsands ot thine honia.*^
Here we most remark the numbers 120 (that is 12 X 10) and 30 ; aU essential nnmbers of the Gnostic Pleroma of .£ons.
It is also of interest in oonnection with the ISme-pair, to note that Horapollo, the Alexandrian grammarian, tells us that the E^ptians when they desire to express the idea of JEon write " sun and moon " * (i 1), and when they want to write ** year " they draw ** Isis," that is " woman " (i 3).
We thus see that in Egypt there were ,£on8 of Periods or Tears, and Tears of iEons. Above all these ruled the (jod of the .£ons, the highest God of many a mystic community.
A SONO OF PbAISI to TBI iEON
And 80 we read the following song of praise to the Mon, inscribed on a " secret tablet " by some unknown Brother of a forgotten Order :
1. '* Hail unto Thee, 0 thou All-Cosmos of sethereal Spirit 1 Hail unto Thee, O Spirit, who doth extend from Heaven to Earth, and from the Earth that's in the middle of the orb of Cosmos to the ends of the Abyss!
2. " Hail unto Thee, 0 Spirit who doth enter into me, who clingetb unto me or who doth part thyself from
> BmgBch, IFarUdnuk, tL 838.
- The nsiial symbols for " everlMting."
CONCERNING THE .SON-DOCTRINE 409
me, according to the Will of God in goodness of His heart!
3. ''Hail unto Thee, 0 thou Beginning and thou End of Nature naught can move! Hail unto thee thou vortex of the liturgy ^ unweariable of [Nature's] elements !
4. *' Hail unto Thee, O thou Illumination of the solar beam that shines to serve the world. Hail unto Thee, thou Disk of the night-shining moon, that shines un- equally! Hail, ye Spirits all of the sethereal statues [of the Gods] !
5. " Hail to you [all], whom holy Brethren and holy Sisters ought to hail in giving of their praise I
6. '^ 0 Spirit, mighty one, most mighty circling and incomprehensible Configuration of the Cosmos, celestial, sethereal, inter-aethereal, water-like, earth-like, fire-like, air-like, like unto light, to darkness like, shining as do the stars, — moist, hot, cold Spirit !
7. " I praise Thee, God of gods, who ever doth restore the Cosmos, and who doth store the Depth away ' upon its throne of settlement no eye can see, who fixest Heaven and Earth apart, and coverest the Heaven with thy golden everlasting (acWW) wings, and makest firm the Earth on everlasting thrones 1
8. "Thou who hangest up the ^ther in the lofty Height, and scatterest the Air with thy self-moving blasts, who mak'st the Water eddy round in circles !
9. " 0 Thou who raisest up the fiery whirlwinds, and makest thunder, lightning, rain, and shakings of the earth, 0 God of iEons ! Mighty art thou, Lord God, 0 Master of the All I" »
* Or service— MiTowp7(«.
• e^vavpivas — or treasure away.
» Wessely, DenkicKr, d, K, K. Akad, (1888), p. 72, IL 1116 ff. ; R. 277, 278.
410 THBICB-OBKATBST mtttiraQ
Here than ie no eeparation of Ood as and extra-coemic ; He is both the one and the oOmbl He 18 both the FoUneea of the Godhead and also the FnUneee of Gosmoe. He ia both the CioemoB, and He who is above the Coamoa and bebw the Goamoa.^
Thi DnnuBOic Mas
Baitttnatein (p. 278), referrmg to oar TriamegiBtic tractate, C. H^ zL {iaL\ pointa to the diatinctian made between Mou and Ood on one aide and Mon and Coamoa on the other. ThiSi he thinka, ahowa signs of the influence of a fundamental trait of Wanenintif theologr which makes the Deminige the Second God.
However this may be, there certainly waa a distine- tion drawn between the Creative, or rather Formative, God and the Suprnne Deity, in many a Christian Gnostic System, and not unfrequently of a vety dis- paraging nature to the former. Already in Jewish mystic and j^osophic (Gnostic) drdee a distinction had had to be drawn between the idea of Gk)d aa the Creator God, and the idea of God as the Ineffable Mystery of Mysteries. This had been necessitated by the contact of the Jewish Gnostics with tiie dd wisdom-ideas and with the fundamental pcetulatea of Greek philosophy.
The Mw in Thxuboic Ijtbratubi
Many examples could be given,' but we prefer to follow Beitzenstein (p. 279) in his references to the Magic Papyri, or Apocryphal literature of the same clasa,
> Cy. R. 88 ; HermM-Prayer, viL 1.
' See my FragmenU of a Faith FarffOtUn.
CX)NGERNIN6 THE iEON-DOCTRINE 411
and append the translation of two striking quotations, as opening up an entirely novel side of the subject
Thus in the eighth Book of Moses, we find the following passage in which the Jewish Creator Qod is placed in the second rank as compared with the Egyptian Supreme Principle.
^ And God, looking down unto the earth, said : lAO ! And all stood still, and then came into being from His Voice a Great God, most mighty, who is Lord of all things, who caused to stand the things that shall be ; and no longer was there any thing without order in the sethereal realma" ^
So also in an invocation to an unknown God, most probably to the Spirit to whom the Brother of the unknown community addressed his praise-giving as given above — we meet with the same distinction.
'*Thee, the only and blest Father of the .^ns, I invoke with prayers like unto Cosmos ! '
'' Come unto me who fiUest the whole Cosmos with thy Breath, and dost hang up on high the Fire out of the Water,' and dost from out the Water separate the Earth. . . . The Lord bore witness to thy Wisdom, that is the Mon, and bade thee to have strength as He Himself hath strength." *
And, later on, the Theurgist exclaims :
** Seceive my words as shafts of fire, for that I am God's Man, for whom was made the fairest plasm of spirit, dew * and earth."
He is a Man whose words are effective and bring all
> Dieterich, Abraxas, 184-d9.
* That is, preBumably, " offerings of the reason," as our tractates have it ; or prayers that put the mind in sympathy with the true order of things.
' The Heaven Ocean.
* Wessely, Dtnhchr, d. K, K. Akad. (1888), p. 73, IL 1168 ff.
* Or pure water.
412 THRICE-GREATBST ineRwieg
ihingilopuB; for bis " words * are r«»ipiJT^g '^^ or^tbeoi^*
Other pasBiges are bnmght forwaitl bj T^ (pp. 280-286) to show that the idea of the Logos or Mod, as Seoond God was a fimdainental oonoeptiai m Hellenistic theology.
This may very well have been the case in genenl Hellenistic theology ; bat in philosophical ciides, « we have pointed oat in Seating of the Logos-idea i& Philo, the distinction was f onnal and not ^'wxMirimi So also in oar Trismegistic treatieeo, which are saturated with transcendental pantheistic or moniatic. or rathor panmonistic, conceptions, if the Logos momentarily treated of as apart frcMn Sapzeme Deity, it is not so in reality ; for the Logos is the Beason of God, God in His eternal Energy, and the .£on is the Eternity of Deity, God in His energic JSamitj, the Best that is the Scarce of all Motion.
For the fullest exposition of the iEon - doctrine in our Trismegistic tractates, see The PerfeA Serwum, xxx.-xxxii, and my commentary thereon.
XII
THE SEVEN ZONES AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS
"To the first zone he gives the energy of Growth and Waning; unto the second zone, Device of Evib now de-energized ; unto the third, the Guile of the Desires de-energized ; unto the fourth, his Domineering Arro- gance also de-energized ; unto the fifth, unholy Daring and the Rashness of Audacity de-energized ; unto the sixth, Striving for Wealth by evil means deprived of its aggrandisement ; and to the seventh zone. Ensnaring Falsehood de^nergized."— (7. JJ., i. 25.
Macbobiub on ''Thb Dbscent op thb Soul fbom THB Hbiqht of Cosmos to thb Depths of Eabth"
Let us first turn to the commentary of Macrobius on the famous " Dream of Scipio," which Cicero introduces into his BepMic (Bk. YI.), just as Plato appends the Vision of Er to his. Macrobius devotes the twelfth chapter of his First Book to a consideration of " The Descent of the Soul from the Height of Cosmos to the Depths of Earth," and professes to base himself on Pythagorean and Platonic traditions. His dissertation covers more ground than the precise subject of the zones with which we are more immediately concerned ; but as the whole scheme is of interest to our present
418
414 THRICS-ORIATESr mgRiraa
Studies, we will append a translatioii whole chapter.
" [According to fythagoraa] when the Soul desooods from the Boundary where the Zodiac and GmImjj [or Milky Way] meet, from a spherical form, which is the only divine one, it is elongated into a conical one^ by its downward tendency.
" Just as the line is bom from the point and prooeedB into length out of the indivisible, so the aoul from its point, that is 'monad,' comes into 'dyad' — its fint production [or lengthening].
« And this is the essence which Plato in the IS/mmut, speaking about the construction of the World-Sool, describee as indivisible yet at the same time divisibla
** For just as the Soul of the World so also the soul of an individual man will be found in one respect incapable of division — ^if it is regarded from the stand- point of the simplicity of its divine nature — and in another capable [of division] — since the former is diffused through the members of the world, and the lattnr through those of a man.
''When then the soul is drawn towards body — in this first production of it — it begins to experience a material agitation, matter flowing into it.'
" And this is remarked by Plato in the Fkade [when he says] that the soul is drawn to body staggering with recent intoxication, — meaning us to understand bj this a new draught of matter's superflui^, by which it becomes defiled and gravid and so is brought down.
" A symbol of tlus mystic secret is that Starry Gup (Oraiir) of Father Bacchus placed in the space between
^ Not into a mathematical oone, but into an ^gg-ah^ad or elliptical form resembling that of a pine-oone.
' This shows that the soul was thon^t of as being withool or outside body of every kind, and body was taken iato ik
THE SEVEN ZONES AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS 415
^ Cancer and Leo^ — meaning that intoxication is there first experienced by souls in their descent by the influx of matter into them. From which cause also forget- fulness, the companion of intoxication, then begins secretly to creep into souls.
''For if souls brought down to body memory of the divine things of which they were conscious in heaven, there would be no difference of opinion among men concerning the divine state. But all, indeed, in their descent drink of forgetfulness — some more, some lesa
"And for this cause on earth, though the truth is not clear to all, they nevertheless have all some opinion about it ; for opinion arises when memory sinks. Those, however, are greater discoverers of truth who have drunk less of forgetfulness, because they remember more easily what they have known before in that state.
"Hence it is that what the Latins call a 'lecture {lectio) the Greeks call a 're-knowing' {repetita cog- nitio^ because when we give utterance to true things, we re-cognize the things which we knew by nature before the influence of matter intoxicated our souls in their descent into body.
" Now it is this Matter (Hyli) which, after being im- pressed by the [divine] ideas, fashioned every body in the cosmos which we see. Its highest and purest nature, by means of which the divinities are either sustained or consist,* is called Nectar, and is believed to be the drink of the gods; while its lower and more
> Of. Pidii Sophia, pp. 371 and ZffJ.
* That is, preBumably, h^dyimff/Au — a philosophical discourse, or sacred sermon.
' As distingmshed from '* exist" Latin, however, is but a poor medium for the expression of philosophical distinctions.
416 THRICB-ORKATBST HKRMK8
turbid nature is the drink of aoula. The latter is whit the Ancienta called the River of Lathe [or Forgetfahie»].
''The Orphic [initiates], however, aappoae that Dionysus himself is to be underatood aa 'Hjlic Kous'^— [that Mind] whidi after ita birth tnm the Indivisible [Mind] is itaelf divided into individiiil [minds].
"And it is for this reason that in their Myaterj- tradition Dionysus is represented as being torn limb from limb by the fury of the Titans, and, after the pieces have been buried, as coming together again whole and one ; for Nous — which, as we have aaid, k their term for Mind — by offering itaelf for diviaion from its undivided state, and by returning to the undivided from the divided, both fulfils the duties of the coemos and also performs the mysteries of its ovm nature.
''The soul, therefore, having by means of this fint weight [of matter] fallen down from the Zodiac and Galaxy into the series of spheres that lie below them, in continuing its descent through them, is not only enwrapped in the envelope of a luminoua body,' but also develops the separate motions which it is to exercise.
"In the sphere of Saturn [it develops] the powers of reasoning and theorizing* — ^which [the.Oreeka] call TO XoyirrtKov and to Otrnfitirucov ; in that of Jupiter, the power of putting into practice — ^which they caU ro irpaKTucoy; in that of Mars, the powey^f ardrat vehemence— which they call to Ovfiucov ; in rhat»of the Sun, the nature of sensing and imagining — ^which they call TO aurOnrucoy and to ^ayrcumKov] in that of Venus, the motion of desire— which they call to
> The augoeidM.
' Or of oontemplative reaaon, synthatii as oppond to anilysii.
THE SEVEN ZONES AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS 417
iiriOvfjLnriKov'i in the sphere of Mercury, the power of giving expression to and interpretation of feelings — which they call to epu.fi vevrucov ; on its entrance into the sphere of the Moon it brings into activity to 4>vtik6v — that is, the nature of making bodies grow and of moving them.
"And this [soul], though the last thing in the divine series, is nevertheless the first thing in us and in all terrestrial beings ; just as this body [of ours], though the dregs of things divine, is still the first substance of the animal world.
** And this is the difference between terrene bodies and supernal — I mean those of the heaven and stars and of the other elements^ — that the latter are summoned upwards to the abode of the soul, and are worthy of immunity from death from the very nature of the space in which they are and their imitation of sublimity.
** The soul, however, is drawn down to these terrene bodies, and so it is thought to die when it is imprisoned in the region of things fallen and in the abode of death. Nor should it cause distress that we have so often spoken of death in connection with the soul, which we have declared to be superior to death. For the soul is not annihilated by [what is called] its death, but is [only] buried for a time; nor is the blessing of its perpetuity taken from it by its submersion for a time, since when it shall have made it worthy to be cleansed clean utterly of all contagion of its vice, it shall once more return from body to the light of Everlasting life restored and whole." *
The characteristics of the spheres given by Macrobius are according to their simple energies; there is no
^ That ifl, the elements other than thoee of earth. > Ed. Eyaeenhardt (F.), pp. 631 ft (Leipzig, 1893). VOL. 1. 27
418 THRICS-ORKAraBT WKRMICB
queBtion of good or bad ; it ia the ** thinking* of the soul that conditions the nae of theae eiiaKgiei for beneficent or maleficent enda.
Thi TRADrnoN o? SiRyius
SeryioB, however, in his Commentary on IHig^^ jEneid, vL 714, hands on another tradition, in which the spheres were regarded as inimical to the good of the soul, its evil propensities being ascribed to their energies. Some sdiolars are of opinion that Viigil in his famous Sixth Book is largely dependent on the ideas of popular Egyptian theology ; ^ however thst may be, Servius writes as follows :
'' The philosophers tell us what the aoul loaea in iti descent through the separate spherea. For whidi cause also the Mathematid imagine that our body and soul are knit together by the powers of the separate divinities, on the supposition that when soob descend, they bring with them the slnggiahness of Saturn, the passionateness of Mars, the lustfolness of Venus, the cupidity of Mercury, and the desire for rote of Jupiter. And these things perturb soula, so that they are unable to use their own energy and proper powers."
It is to be noticed that the characteristics of the Sun and Moon are omitted, and this points to a doctrine in which Sun and Moon were treated as distinct from appended to the Fidii Sophia document we find (pp. 360, 366 ff.) mention of only five planeta. The
1 Cf^ for instanoe, Mam (KX Dis Tagmgmir tn Bm^wmiim iVovinsfii, p. 33. See B. 63, n. 1.
THE SEVEN ZONES AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS 419
tradition of this doctrine is exceedingly obscure,^ and does not immediately concern us, as our text works on a ** seven" basis.
Criticism of thb Evidenok
I have done my best to discover some consistent scheme by which the contradictory data in Macrobius, Servius, and Hermes might be reconciled, but the tabularising of their indications only makes confusion worse confounded.
It is evident, however, that the main thing that Macrobius hands on, and which he attributes to Orphic -Pythagorean -Platonic tradition, contains in itself no suggestion that these philosophers attributed any evil tendencies to the characteristics of the spheres in themselvea The tradition of Macrobius is as follows :
Saturn
TO detaptrriKoy . TO Xoyirrucov
irUelligeTUia.
ratiocinatio.
Jupiter
TO irpaKTlKOP
vis agendi.
Mars
TO BvfllKOV
ardor animositatis.
Sun
TO alo'QflTlKOV , TO ^aVTaOTtKOV
natura sentitndi.
natura apinandi.
Venus
TO iiriOu/JLfp-lKOV
motus desiderii. r vis pronurUiandi
Mercury
TO ip/JLflVeUTlKOV
\ quas serUiarUwr.
Moon
TO it>^TlKOV
( natwra plarUandi \ et agendi corpora.
The confusion between the " vis agendi " of Jupiter and that of the Moon may be resolved by supposing that the former was the application of the reasoning
1 For references, see R. 53, n. 2.
420 TH&ICS-GRKATBST HTCRIIIW
faculty to the practical things of life^ while the latter was the power of moving one's own ^jmsal hodj, if indeed the'*ei agendi " is not a gloss of Macrobiiia
Servios, on the contrary, is following a traditkm in which the spheres were regarded as the sources of eril tendencies ; ethical considerations dominate the whole conception. Seeing, however, that it is a fivefold dis- tribution, we are unable to equate it with the doctrine of Hermes, which is sevenfold. Nevertheless, there are some parallels.
The lustfulness {libido) of Servius is to be p^y^llfW with the "guile of the desires" or "* lustful error " (i iTTiOvfitfTiKii axcnTr) of Hermes. This is ascribed to the third zone by Hermes, and to Venus by Serrius, Venus further coming third in Macrobius.
The " desire of rule " (duiderium re^i) of Servius ii clearly the "domineering arrogance" (ly ofixo^ru^ irpoifHii^ia) of Hermes. In Hermes this belongs to the middle zone (fourth); in Servius it is ascribed to Jupiter, presumably as the ruler of the age — the ruler of the previous age being Saturn, who has been deprived of his energy and so rendered " torpid."
The *' passion" or ** wrathf ulness " (iraeundia) of Servius is also to be paralleled to some extent with the "unholy daring" of Hermes. It is ascribed to the fifth zone by Hermes and to Jupiter by Servius, Mars also coming fifth in Macrobius.
Finally, the " love of gain " {luert eupidiias) of Servius may be paralleled by the " striving for wealth by evil means " (cu a^opfiai at KaKoi toS irXourav) of Hermea Hermes attributes this to the sixth zone, and Servius to Mercury.
The remaining quality mentioned by Servius, ** torpor," which he ascribes to Saturn, equates with nothing in Hermes, unless we can persuade ourselves that the
THE SEVEN ZONES AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS 421
" ensnaring falsehood " or " falsehood that lies in wait " (to iveSptvov \lr€vSo9) of Hermes has some connection with it.
The scheme of Hermes is septenary, and connected with the ideas of the ascent of the soul through seven jBones, which we must locate as seven superimposed atmospheres extending from the surface of the earth to the moon's orbit There is no question here of the Celestial Spheres proper of the Philosophers, the charac- teristics of the energies of which are neither good nor evil in themselves ; nor is there apparently any question of the '' animal soul ** proper, for the " passions and desires'' are said to withdraw into the "nature which is void of reason." Though nothing more is said about this nature in this connection, in the general belief of the time its dominion was thought of as located below the earth-surface— as a Tartarus of seven zones, corresponding to those above, in which the ''animal soul " or '' vehicle of desire " was thought of as being gradually disintegrated, its energies finally going back to their source in the Depths of the Darkness, while the process of such disintegration or metamorphosis produced a parallel consciousness of chastisements and horrors. The seven zones of our text, however, are apparently the region of purification of the lower energies of the human soul; the mental energies led into error by the animal passions.
The "Ophite" Hebdomad
Now if we turn to Salmon's article on the "Heb- domad,"^ and to his discussion of the tradition of the "Ophites" — a mysterious medley of chaotic elements, which have not yet been analysed in any satisfactory
1 Smith and Wace's D. of Chrid. Biog., ii 849-861.
422 THRICB-QREATBST HKRMWS
fashion, but which have their roots in pre-Quislian traditions of a very varied nature within the genefsl characteristic of a syncretic Gnoeticiam — we find thsl after treating of the Celestial Hebdomad, he continves as follows :
" Besides the higher hebdomad of the seven angeii^ the OjAite system told of a lower hebdomad. After the serpent in punishment for having taught onr first parents to transgress the commands of laldabaoth wis cast down into this lower world, he begat himself six sons,^ who with himself form a hebdomad, the coaster- part of that of which his father laldabaoth is cfaieL These are the seven demons, the scene of whose activitj is this lower earth, not the heavens ; and who det^ in injuring the human race on whose account their father had been cast down. Origen {Adv. CeU^ vL 30) gives their names and forms from an Ophite Di^;ram ; Michael in form as a lion, Suriel as an ox, Ri^Jiael as a dragon, Gabriel as an eagle, Thautabaoth aa a bear, Erataoth as a dog, Onoel as an asa"
Here, I think, we are on the track of one aspect of a general mystery-tradition that Hermes has *' philo- sophized." I say one aspect, for the " Ophite " tradi- tion is not a single form of tradition, but a medley of traditions containing a number of forms ; it is a com- plex or syncretism of Chaldean, Persian, and Egyptian elements, patched together, or " centoniwd," if we may use the term, with Jewish industry.
1 In Irensos (C. Hm^ I. xxx. 6 ; ed. Stieren, L S66) this sevenfold serpent Ib the son of laldabaoth (the OreatiYe MindX and is said to be *' mind," also '* crooked mind," coiled up like a serpent
THE SEVEN ZONES AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS 423
Thb Sdiflsr Form of the Trismkoibtic Gnosis
The wealth of symbolism and profusion of mysterious personifications with which these systems of subjective imagery were smothered, could exercise only a partial fascination on the clear-thinking, philosophical mind which had been trained in the method of Plato. If such a mind was combined with the mystic temperament, as was indubitably the case with the writer of our "Poemandrea" treatise, his main effort would be to simplify and categorize in the terms of philosophy at the expense of apocalyptic detail ; nevertheless, when a man lived in the midst of such ideas, and was presumably in intimate relations with mystics and seers of all sorts, he could not but be strongly affected by the main presuppositions of all such apocalyptic, and the general notions of the schematology of the Unseen World, which all students of such matters at that period seem to have accepted in common.
We thus find that our Trismegistic literature, though dealing throughout with the Gnosis, treats it in a far more simple way than any other known system of the time. Nevertheless, even the complex imagery of the Ophite schools is occasionally summed up in a few graphic general symbols, and these, too, representing probably the oldest elements in them.
CONCBRNINO LBVUTHAN AND BiHIHOTH
From the confused description by Origen^ of the famous but exceedingly puzzling Ophite Diagram that both Celsus and Origen had before them, though in different forms, we can make out with certainty only
» C. OeU., VI. XXV. ft
424 THRICB-OREATBST HTgRMRS
that this chart of the Unseen Spaces was divided into three main divisionfl — Upper, Middle, and Lower. The Middle Space contained a geometrical diagram of • group of ten circles surrounded bj one great drek. This Great Circle was called Leviathan, and the grouping of circles within it was apparently divided into a Uiroe and a seven. The Lower Space had in it a grouping of seven circles, the circles of the seven ruling daimniifg (xxx.)— elsewhere called Archontics — and the whole group was apparently called Behemoth (xxv.).
Celsus, quoted by Origen (xxviL), tells us that the doctrine was that on the death of the body two groups of angels range themselves on either side ol the soul,^ the one set being called "Angels of light" and the other " Archontics "—evidently intended for " Angels of Darkness." Thus the evil soul was thought to be led away by the Daimones to Behemoth, and the pore soul to Leviathan.
We cannot enter into the endless discussions con- cerning these two Great Beasts, mentioned together in Job xL 15-24, and separately in Isaiah and Ptalms; the most recent research comes to the conclusion that " it would seem that Leviathan was regarded as lord of the ocean and BShgmoth of dry land."*
But in our diagram Leviathan is Lord of the Heaven- Ocean or Great Green or Cosmic Air, and Behemoth Lord of the Cosmic Earth.
Indeed, in the Book of Bnoekf the apocalyptic writer associates these two monsters with precisely the same eschatological considerations which Origen teUs us were the purpose of the Diagram, only ^ Enoch " speaks of
1 Plainly a conflation of Persian and Chaldfloan ideas. * Cheyne's article, " Behemoth and Leviathan," in the EmaftU- pcBdia Btbliea.
» CharW Trana., Ix. 7 ff. (Ethiop. V., p. 166).
THB SEVEN ZONES AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS 425
the Last Day, while the Ophite writer has in view the ascent of the soul of an initiate after death.
At the final separation of Bighteous and Unrighteous, " Enoch " tells us, these Great Creatures, which before were united, will be parted. That is to say, at death there is a metamorphosis of the soul.
From what is said in " Enoch," moreover, I deduce that the Upper Space of the Ophite Diagram was intended to represent the Celestial Paradise, that is the state of the Pure Mind or of the Righteous.
Leviathan and Behemoth are figured in IV. Esdras vi 49-52, as Devourers of the Unrighteous; while general Jewish apocalyptic in both Apocrypha and Talmud believed that these monsters would in their turn become the food of the Bighteous in Messianic times.^
From all these indications we deduce that Behemoth was the Great Beast and Leviathan the Great Fish The animal soul, intensified by contact with the human mind, then goes back to its source the Great Beast, and is devoured by it, and reabsorbed by it, its energies returning to the sum total of energies of the Great Animal Group-Soul, the whole energy and experience of which shall eventually become the "food" of the perfected man ; that is to say, presumably, he will in his turn devour and so transmute these energies ; the perfected man will thrive by transmuting the Body of the Great Beast into the Body of the Great Man.
The Great Fish, however, would seem to symbolize the higher energies of the soul, which also require transmutation. In being bom into the stature of the Great Man, the Son of Man must needs pass ''three days" in the Belly of the Whale. This Great Fish is of the nature of knowledge; for does not Cannes come 1 See Charles, op. cit., p. 155, n. 7.
426 THRICB-OREATBST HSRMBS
out of the Ocean in fish-form to teach/ in the Asspmt Mystery-tradition, and does not the Ophite trmdition in another of its phases' derive the inspiration of the g^reat prophets of Israel, in their several d^^rees, from this same Group of Angels which the Diagram calk Leviathan?
It is also of interest to notice that LeviaUian and Behemoth were believed to have once formed one monster, which was subsequently divided into mak and female, Behemoth being male and Leviathan female. This reminds one of the primaeval Water- Earth of Hermes, which was subsequently divided into Water and Earth, just as the animals were first of all male-female, and subsequently were separated. More- over, in the Vision of Er the arcs of the joumeyings of the ascending and descending souls end in two orifices above in the sky and two below in the earth, as UMragfa they were the ends of a once great hollow ring or circle that had been divided, or as it were two serpents arched above and below, with mouths and tails as orifices ; and, curiously enough, in the Fidii Sophia the souls of the unrighteous enter by the mouth of the Lower Dragon and depart by the tail
Now, Leviathan being female and Behemoth male, and both forming together as it were the circumferenoe of the Great Wheel of Necessity, the Wheel ol Gvenesis, the attribution of the gestation, so to speak, of the
1 Oannee alao comes to teach from the Waten of the Eaphxate ; the Jewish overwriter of the Naassene Docament (see *'Myth of Man in the Mysteries " ) equates Euphrates with Great Jordan, and this with the Stream of Ocean ; and, curiously enough, Qrigen (zzviiL) ascribes the Ophite teaching to a certain Euphrates, of whom no one else has ever heard. It is, however, a commfi error of the Church Fathers to mistake a principle of the Qnoni for the founder of a heresy.
> See Salmon, loe. mtip, oU,
THE SEVEN ZONES AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS 427
virtues of the soul to the one and the digesting of its vices to the other, is not so surprising. Further, they could be regarded as the right-hand or left-hand arcs or hemispheres of the Wheel, or Sphere, or Egg, accord- ing to celestial topography; whereas in Egyptian terrestrial parallelism the right hand was to the north and the left hand the south, upper and lower Egypt. Curiously enough, in Isa. xxx. 6, Behemoth is called the monster " of the south land." ^
Whether or no the writer of the " Poemandres " was directly influenced by the precise forms of tradition to which we have referred, is impossible to determine; but that be was influenced by the general ideas as symbolized is indubitable, and that he understood the esoteric meaning of the ''hippopotamus" and ''croco- dile" symbols in Egyptian mysticism is highly probable.
The "Fence of Fikb"
Origen (xxxi.), moreover, tells us that, according to the Ophites, the consciousness of the soul after passing through the domain of the animal -formed Rulers, broke through what was called the " Fence of Iniquity," and so turned towards the higher spheres, through which it also had to pass. In the seventh and highest of them, over which ruled the Virtue which was called Horseus,' it addresses the Ruler thereof with an apology or defence of its own innocence, beginning with the words: "0 thou who hast transcended the 'Fence of Fire ' without fear ! "
Ttus Fence of Fire was symbolised in the form of the Diagram which Origen (xxxiiL) had before him, as a
1 According to Cheyne's rendering in the above-quoted article. ' That is, presumably, the Horus-like ; thus showing traces of an Egyptian element
428 THRICE-GRRATBST HERMES
circle of fire with a flaming sword lying across its dia- meter. This must then have been intended to represent the Sphere of Fire, or Angel or Guardian of the Gate, which had to be passed before the Celestial Paradise could be entered, for the flashing, circling blade is said to have guarded the " Tree of Gnosis and of life."
The same idea of a typical Boundary or Fence meets us in the *' Pcemandres." It is Man who breaks through the seven spheres and also their enclosing Sphere, the Might or Power that circamscribed th^ Fira The root idea is the same. The point of view of Hermes, however, like that of the Ophite Gnostics, is not the passage round the Circle of Necessity of the souls of the unregenerate, as in the Vision of Er, but of the Straight Ascent of the soul of the initiate, his breaking through the spheres. It is the ascent of a soul who has reached the Hermes-stage» or Thrice- greatest grade, the final stage of winning its freedom, the Ascent after the last compulsory birth — the Ascent ** as now it is for me" (§ 25).
XIII
PLATO: CONCEKNING METEMPSYCHOSIS
** And the sours vice is ignorance. For that the soul who hath no knowledge of the things that are, or knowledge of their nature, or of Oood, is blinded by the body's passions and tossed about
"This wretched soul, not knowing what she is, becomes the slave of bodies of strange form in sorry plight, bearing the body as a load ; not as the ruler, but the ruled."— a JT., x. (xL) 8.^
For the better understanding of this passage, we may appropriately refresh the memory of our readers with the Platonic doctrine of the transmigration of souls, as given in the Phcedi'us, 248 ff., using for this purpose the best translation we have in English, namely, that of Stewart,^ as a basis, but often departing from it for greater clearness.
Thk Soul and heb Mystsbiss in thb ''Ph^edbus"
" This is the life of the Gods. Of the other Souls, whosoever followeth God best, and is being made most like unto Him, keepeth the Head^ of her Charioteer
^ See commentary thereon.
« Stewart (J. A.), Th$ Myths of Plato (London, 1906), pp. 313 fif. ; c/. alao Jowett (Oxford, 1892), i. 464 fif. ; and Taylor (London, 1804), iii. 326 ff.
^ Cf, 0, H,y X. (xi.) 11 : **Since Cosmofl is a sphere— that is to say, a head."
429
430 THRICS-ORRATBST HKRinCB
lifted up into the Space without the firmaiYiftnt; ao At 18 carried round with the circuit thereof, yet being [still] troubled with the Horaea,^ and hardlj behcddiiig the Thing8-which-«re ; so ahe ia now lifted up, now ainketh down, and becauae of the oompnlaioii of the Horaea, aeeth aome of the Thingi-which-are, and aome ahe aeeth not
*" And the reat of the Soula, you muat know, f oDow all atriving after that which is above, but unable [to reach it], and ao are carried round together and aink below it,' trampling upon one another, and running against one another, and preaaing on for to outstrip one another, with mighty great sound of tumult and sweat
"And here by reason of the imskilfulnees * ol the Charioteers, many Souls are maimed, and many have many feathers [of their wings] broken; and all, greatlj travailing, depart without initiation in the Sight ct That-which-is, and departing betake them to the food of Opinion.
'' Now this is why there is so great anxiety to see the Space where is the Plain of Truth, — ^both because the pasture suited to the Best Part of the Soul groweth in the Meadow there, and the power of wing, whereby the Soul is lightly carried up, is nourished by it, and that the law of Adrasteia is that whatsoever Soul by following after God hath seen somewhat of the true things, shall be without affliction till its next joumqr round; and if she can always do this,* ahe ahall be without hurt alway.
1 Qf. 846 B : ** For 'tis a Yoke of Hones that the Charioteer ol Man's Soul driyeth, and, moreover, of his Horses the one is well fayoured and good and of good stock, the other of the oontiary and contrary."
' Lit, under water.
* Lit, evil — that is, ignorance.
* Viz., behold the truth.
PLATO: OONGERNING METBMPSYCHOSIS 431
" But when through incapadtj to follow [Qod] she doth not see, and, overtaken by some evil chance, filled with f orgetf ulness and wickedness, she is weighed down, and, being weighed down, she sheds the feathers of her wings and falls on to the Earth, — then is the law not to plant her ^ in her first birth in a beast's nature ; but to implant the Soul that hath seen most into the seed of one who shall become a Wisdom-lover, or a lover of the Beautiful, or a man who truly loves the Muses; the Soul that bath seen second best, into the seed of one who shall become a king that loveth law, and is a warrior and a true ruler ; the Soul that hath seen third, unto the seed of one who shall become busied in civic duties, or in some stewardship, or in affairs; the one that hath seen fourth, into the seed of one who shall be a hardship-loving master of the body's discipline or skilled in healing of the body ; the Soul that hath seen fifth, into that which shall have a life connected with the oracles or mystic rites some way ; * unto the sixth a life poetic shall be joined, or that of some one or of another of the tribe of copiers ; unto the seventh, the life of workman or of husbandman ; unto the eighth, that of a sophist or a demagogue ; unto the ninth, that of a tyrant.
** In all these lives, whoever lives them righteously obtains a better fate ; he who unrighteously, a worse.
" Now to the selfsame state from which each Soul hath come, she cometh not again for some ten thousand years. For sooner than this period no Soul [re-]^ains
^ &. as a germ or seed.
' It is low down in the scale, indeed, that Plato places the soothsayers and hierophants ; he is, however, " ironical," for he places poets even lower down, and still lower sophists and tyrants, all in keeping with his well-known views about these people as known in his own time.
432 THRICE-OREATEST HKRMICa
itB wings, exoept the Soul of him who has loved wisdom naturally or contrary to nature.^
** Such Souls in the third period of a thousand yetn, if they have chosen thrice this life suooeasively, thai getting themselves wings, depart in the three thou- sandth year.'
"But the other Souls, when they have ended their first life, are brought to judgment; and being judged, some go to places of correction below the Earth and pay the penalty, while others are rewarded by being raised unto a certain space in Heaven where they live on in a condition appropriate unto the life they hved in a man's form.
" But in the thousandth year both claaaes come to the lottery of lives, and each doth make choice of its second life, whatever it may choose.'
''And now is it that a Soul that once had had a man's life doth pass into a brute's life,* and from a
1 f v«iSff^«#rV«rr»> Mrit ^•#9^«t— Stewart^ ''or loved hit comnuie in the bonds of wisdom" ; Jowett^ ''or a lover who ii not devoid of philosophy" ; Taylor, "or together with pkilcaopl^ hai loved beautiful forms.** I &ncy that Plato has used this graphic expression simply to designate a man who has not tme imiaa with wisdom, but is seeking for union though ignorantly.
' ** The numbers three and ten are called perfect ; because the former is the first complete number, and the latter in a certain respect the whole of number ; the consequent series ci numbers being only a repetition of the numbers which this enntaina. Hence , as 10 multiplied into itself produces 100, a plane nnmber, and this again multiplied by 10 produces 1000, a solid number ; and as 1000 multipHed by 3 forms 3000, and 1000 by 10. 10,000; on this account Plato employs these numbers as symbols of the purgation of the soul, and her restitution to her proper perfeetioBi and felicity. I say, as symbols ; for we must not suppoee that this it accomplished in just so many years, but that the scnil's i takes place in a perfect manner." — ^Taylor, op. est, iiL 385.
» Cy. the "Vision of Er."
* We must not understand by this that the soul ol a
PLATO: CONCERNINQ METEMPSYCHOSIS 433
brute, he who was once a maD, passes again into a man ; for that indeed the Soul that never hath seen truth, will never come into this configuration.^
"For we must understand 'man,' in the sense of form, as one proceeding from many sensations and collected into a unit by means of ratiocination.^ But this^ is recollection (ava/xi/i^iO of those things which our Soul once did see when she journeyed with God,^ and looked beyond the things we now call things that are, by raising her face ^ to That-which-really-is.
" Wherefore of right, alone the understanding of the Wisdom-lover hath got wings ; for he is ever engaged upon those things in memory as far as he can be, on being engaged at which, as being a God, he is divine.
becomes the soul of a brute ; but that by way of puniBhment it is bound to the BOtd of a brate, or carried in it, just as demons used to reside in our souls. Hence all the energies of the rational soul are perfectly impeded, and its intellectual eye beholds naught but the dark and tumultuous phantasms of a brutal life."— Taylor, kccii.
1 Viz., the form of a man ; it is, however, also an astrological term.
' There seems to be no agreement among translators as to the meaning of this sentence: S«
Stewart translates : '' Man must needs understand the Specific Form which proceedeth from the perceiving of many things, and is made one by Thought;" Jowett: ''For a man must have intelligence of universals, and be able to proceed from the many particulars of sense to one conception of reason;" Taylor: ** Indeed it is necessary to understand man, denominated ac- cording to species, as a being proceeding from the information of many senses, to a perception contracted into one reasoning power."
3 Se, collecting into one.
4 That is to say, revolved in the Cosmos Order.
ft Cf, C. F., L 14: "So [Man] . . . bent his face downwards through the Harmony."
VOL. I. 28
434 THRICK-ORKATBST mtRMM
''Tbe man then who doth make m li^t ob i memories such as these, ever being made pofad a perfect perfectionings, alone beoometh really Ftakcl'
" But in as much as he eschews the things that as strive after, and is engaged in ibe Diyine [akms^ b ■ admonished by the many as though he were beiii himself,* for they cannot peromve he is inqiiedtf God-
FLOTmus CM MimcpsTCHosm
Let us now torn to the genuine disciples cl tbe master for farther light on this tenets and first of iD to Plotinns.
The most sympathetic notice of this tenet in Flotinm is to be found in Jules Simon's HiUoire dU ttak a Alexandra (Paris, 1845), L 588 fil, based for the moK parton.Spi.,Lil2; II. iJL6; IV.iiL 9; V. iL2; sad on Ficinus' Commentary (p. 508 of Cronser^s editionX
After citing some ** ironical " passages from Pktinv (in which the philosopher disguised the real doctrine which in his day still pertained to the higher initiation), Jules Simon goes on to say :
" Even though admitting that this doctrine of metem- psychosis is taken literally by Plotinus, we should still have to ask for him as for Plato, whether the human soul really inhabits the body of an animal, and whedier it is not reborn only into a human body which reflects the nature of a certain animal by the character of its passions.
" The commentators of the Alexandrian school some- times interpreted Plato in this sensa Thus, according
> All these are technical terms of the MjsterieiL
> Cf. C. H^ iz. (z.) 4 : ""Fot this cause tbsj who Qnoilie are please not the many nor the manj them. They are thon^it mad and laughed at"
PLATO: CX)NCBRKING METEMPSYCHOSIS 435
to Proclus, Plato in the Phadrus condemns the wicked to live as brutes and not to become them, KarUvai ek fitov diipetov, iccu ovK «iV crA/uia dijpetov (Proc., Comm, Tim., p. 329). Chalcidius gives the same interpretation, for he distinguishes between the doctrines of Plato and those of Pythagoras and Empedocles, qui non ncUv/ram modO feram, sed etiam farmas^ Hermes {Coram, of Chalcidius on Timoms ; ed. Fabric, p. 350) declares in unmistakable terms that a human soul can never return to the body of an animal, and that the will of the Gkxis for ever preserves it from such disgrace." '
Proglus on the Descent of Souls into Irrational Natures
Again, Proclus in his Commentaries on the Tvfnasm, writes very definitely with reference to the following passage of Plato :
'' And if he still in these conditions did not cease from vice, he would keep on changing into some brutish nature according as he acted in a way resembling the expression in genesis of such a mode of vicious living." '
For he says :
"With reference to this descent of souls into irrational animals, it is usual for men to enquire how it is meant
" And some think that what are called brute-like lives are certain resemblances of men to brutes, for that it is not possible for the rational essence to hecom^e the soul of a brute.
'' Others allow that even this [human soul] may be
^ Who not only made the soul go into an animal naXw but into animal /orfTw.
' The last sentence of C, H., x. (xi.) being quoted textually by Chalcidius.
* Tvm.^ 420.
436 THRICB-ORBATBST HSRMSS
immediately degraded to reaaon-lesB creatures, for this all souls are of one and the same species, so that xbej may become wolves and panthers and ichneumons.
" But the true reason (lo^) asserts that though the human soul may be degraded to brutes, it is [only] to brutes which possess the life suited to such a purpose, while the degraded soul is as it were vehicled on this [life], and bound to it sympathetically.
''And this has been demonstrated by us at grest length in our lectures on the PJuBdrns^ and that this is the only way in which such de-gradation can take place. If, however, it is necessary to remind you that this meaning (logos) is that of Plato, it must be added that in the BeptMie^ he says that the soul of ThersiteB assumed an ape [U/e], but not an ape's &otfy, and in the Phoodrxu * that [the soul] descends into a brutish li/i, and not into a brutish lody, for the mode of life goes with its appropriate souL And in the passage [from the T\masu$\ he says that it changes into a brute-like nature ; for the brutiBh nature is not the body but the life [principle] of the brute."'
iLib.X.e80a sPtodr.,849a
* Camm^iU. in Plat. Tim^ 329d; ed. Sehndder (Wszmv. 1847X pp. 800, 801. With all of this the views {F. F, F^ S75 ff.) may be moet instructively compared.
XIV
THE VISION OF ER
'' But to the Mindless ones, the wicked and depraved, the envious and covetous, and those who murder do and love impiety, I am far off, yielding my place to the Avenging Daimon." — C. if., L 23.
£b Son of Armekius
To this Daimon it is that the " way of life " of the man is surrendered at death (§ 24). In this connection we may consider the Story or Vision of "£r Son of Armenius," which Plato tells at the end of the last book (X.) of his Republic (614 b ff.), for the symbolism is very similar to that of our tractate and the subject is more or less the same.
This £r is said by Clement of Alexandria to have been Zoroaster, "but no trace of acquaintance with Zoroaster is found elsewhere in Plato's writings, and there is no reason for giving him the name of Er the Pampbylian. The philosophy of Heracleitus cannot be shown to be borrowed from Zoroaster, and still less the myths of Plato." ^
What the source of the story is, scholarship has so far been unable to discover; the vast majority of scholars holding it to be an invention of Plato.
^ Jowett^ Dialoguei^ iii. clxvi. 437
438 THRICS-ORBATBST HRRMKS
It is the story of a man "killed in battle,* whose body was brought home on the tenth day still fresh and showing no sign of decomposition. On the twelfth day, when laid on the funeral pyre, Er awakes and telb a strange story of his experiences in the invisible world.
This story should be taken in close connection with Plutarch's similar but fuller Vision of Aridsus (Tbespesius), upon which I have commented at length in my '' Notes on the Eleusinian Mysteries." ^
Fbom thi Mtstirib
I there stated that the experiences of Aridsens wers either a literary subterfuge for describing part of the instruction in certain Mysteries, or the Vision, in popdar story form, was considered so true a description of what was thought to be the nature of the invisible world and the after-death conditions of the sonl, that it required little alteration to make it useful for that purpose.
I would now suggest that the Story of Er is also used by Plato for a somewhat similar purpose. It is farther interesting to notice that one of the characters in the Vision of Er is called Ardiseus, while in Plutarch the main personage is called Aridsus. The transposition of a single letter is so slight as to make the names practically identical, and the subject matter is so similar that we are inclined to think that there must be some connection between the Visions. Moreover, AridflBus is said to have been a native of Soli in Cilicia, just as Er is said to have been a Pkmidiylian; the tradition of such stories would thus seem to have been derived from Asia Minor, and the origin of them may
1 Th4 77Uo0opJki(xUi2mfio (April, May, Jime,^ 838 ff., 318 ff.
THE VISION OF ER 489
thus be hidden in the sjmoretism of that land — ^where Weet and East were for ever meeting. It is, however, much safer to assume that, in the Story of Er, Plato is handing on the doctrines of Orphic eschatology ; ^ whether or not the story already existed in some form, and was worked up and elaborated by the greatest artist in words of all philosophers, will perhaps never be known. But to the story itself.
The Ctlindsb
614 c. — Er, in a certain daimonian or psychic plane (roiro^ T(9 SaijULOvioi)^ is made a spectator of a turning- point or change of course in the ascent and descent of souls. He thus seems to have been in a space or state midway between Tartarus and Heaven — ^presumably the invisible side of the sublunary space.
The world-engine of Fate, or E&rmic World-whorl, is represented by seven spheres (surrounded by an eighth) whose harmonious spinning is adjusted by the three Fates, the Daughters of Necessity.
Jowett {loe, eit.) says that the heaven-sphere is represented under the symbol of a ** cylinder or box.** Where the " box " comes in I do not know ; the term "cylinder" does not occur in the text, and even the cylinder idea is exceedingly difficult to discover in any precise sense. Indeed, it may be doubted whether the "heaven-sphere" is to be so definitely interpreted; for then our discussion of the meaning of the term " cylinder," which occurs definitely in our K. K Frag- ments, would be greatly simplified.
The matter is hard to understand, and Jowett's
^ And this I find to be the opinion of the last commentator on the subject ; see Stewart (J. A.\ The Myihi of Plato (London, 1905), pp. 15S ff.
440 THRICB-aREATEST HERMES
attempts at exposition are hazy and sketchy in the extrema Either Plato is talking nonaense, or Jow^ does not understand the elements of his idea. Stewart^s attempt, which makes use of the lateet Flatonic research, is far more successful, but he also has to abandon many points in despair.^ How difficult the solution of the problem is may be seen from the text, which gives die symbolism of the vision of the spheres somewhat as follows :
Ths Vision
616 B. — " Now when those in the meadow ' had tarried seven days, on the eighth they were obliged to prooeed on their journey upwards, and, on the fourth day after,' he [Er] said they came to a region where they saw light extended straight as a column from above throu^ out the whole extent of heaven and earth, in colour resembling the rainbow, only brighter and purer.
"Another day's journey brought them to it, and there they saw the extremities of the boundaries of the heaven extended in the midst of the light; for this light was the final boundary of the heaven — somewhat like the under-girdings of ships — and thus confined its whole revolution.
Trom these extremities depended the spindle of Necessity, by means of which all its revolutions are made to revolve. The spindle's stalk * and its hook are made of adamant,^ and the whorl of a mixture of adamant and other kinds [of elements].
1 So alao Drejer (J. L. E,\ Hidmy qf Uu Plandaiy S^dmu from ThaUi to KepUr (Cambridge, 1906X pp. 56 ff.
' The daimonian region.
* That is the eleventh day ; Er, it will be remembered, was ** unconflcioua'' for twelve days.

^ That which cannot be destroyed or changed.
THE VISION OF ER 441
"And the nature of the whorl is as follows. In shape it was like that of the one down here ; but in itself we must understand from his description that it was somewhat as though in one great hollow whorl clean scooped out there lay another similar but smaller one fitted into it, as though they were jars ^ fitting into one another. And so he said there was a third and a fourth, and [also] four others. For in all there are eight whorls set in one another — ^looking like circles from above as to their rims,^ [but from below] finished off into the continuous belly ^ of one whorl round the shaft, which is driven right through the eighth whorL
" The first and outermost whorl had the circle of its rim first in width ; that of the sixth was second ; that of the fourth, third ; that of the eighth, fourth; that of the seventh, fifth ; that of the fifth, sixth ; that of the third, seventh ; that of the second, eighth.
617. — ** And the circle of the largest was variegated ; that of the seventh brightest ; that of the eighth had its colour from the seventh shining on it ; those of the second and of the fifth had [colours] somewhat like one another, but yellower than the preceding; the third had the whitest colour ; the fourth was reddish ; the sixth was second in whitenesa^
I The shape would thus approximate to an oblate spheroid. > To carry out the metaphor of the jars. * Lit., "back."
« The names of the spheres may be deduced from Tim, 38, and are as follows : 1. Fixed Stars (all-coloured) ; S. Saturn (yellow) ; 3. Jupiter (whitish) ; 4. Mars (reddish) ; 6. Mercury (yellowish) ; 6. Venus (white) ; 7. Sun (light-colour) ; 8. Moon (light-colour reflected). How the above statements as to " width of rim " and colours are to be made to work in with the scheme of rates of motions and numbers given in Tim. 36, 1 have not as yet been able to discover from any commentator. And seeing that £r is said to have seen this mystery from a region that transcended even the daimonian region, it is perhaps out of place to insist on a purely physical interpretation of the data.
442 THRICB-ORSATB8T mnilfKS
''Now the spindle as a whole ciicled round at the same rate in its revolution ; and within this revolntiosi as a whole the seven circles revolved slowlj in a contrary direction to the one as a whole ; of these the eighth went the fastest of them; the seventh, aiitli, and fifth came second [in speed, and at the same rate] with one another ; the fourth, in a revereed orbit, as it appeared to them, was third in speed ; the third wis fourth and the second fifth.
The spindle revolved on the knees of Neoassity; and on its circles above, on each of them, was a 8izsa whom they carried round with them, nn^ng a so]^ sound or tone; and from all eight of them a sing^ harmony was produced.
''And there were three others seated at equal distances round about, each upon a throne, — the Daughters of Necessity, the Fates, clothed in whito robes, with garlands on their heads, Lachesis and Qotho and Atropos ; and they sang to the tune of the Sirsn^ harmony, — Lachesis sang things that have been^ dotiw things tjiat are, and Atropos things that shall be.
"And Clotho from time to time with her ri^ hand gave an extra turn to the outer spin of tin spindle ; Atropos, with her left, in like fashion to the inner ones ; while Lachesis in turn touched the one with one hand and the other with the other.
"Now when they [£r and the souls] arrived, they had to go immediately to LachesiB. Accordingly a prophet [a proclaimer] first of all arranged them in their proper order, and taking from the lap of Tachesis both lots ^ and samples of lives, he ascended a kind of raised place and said :
" * The word (logos) of the Virgin Lachesis, Daughter of Necessity! Te souls, ye things of a day, lo the 1 Or nnmbeF-tuma.
THB VISION OF ER 443
beginning of another period of mortal birth that brings 70U death. It is not your daimon who will have you assigned to him by lot, but ye who will choose your daimon. He who obtains the first turn let him first choose a life to which he will of necessity have to hold. As for Virtue, Necessity has no control over her, but every one will possess her more or less just as he honours or dishonours her. The responsibility is the chooser's; Grod is blameless.*
*' Thus speaking he threw the lots to all of them, and each picked up the one that fell beside him, except Er, who was not permitted to do so. So every one who picked up a lot knew what turn he had got
618. — " After this he set on the ground before them the samples of the lives, in far greater number than those present They were of every kind; not only lives of every kind ol animal, but also lives of every kind of man. There were lives of autocratic power [lit, tyrannies] among them, some continuing to the end, some breaking off half-way and ending in poverty, exile, and beggary. There were also lives of famous men, some famed for their beauty of form and strength, and victory in the games, others for their birth and the virtues of their forebears ; others the reverse of famous, and for similar reasons. So also with regard to the lives of women.
" As to the rank of the soul, it was no longer in the power [of the chooser], for the decree of Necessity is that its choosing of another life conditions its change of soul-rank. As for other things, riches and poverty were mingled with each other, and these sometimes with disease and sometimes with health, and sometimes a mean between these."
Thereupon Plato breaks into a noble disquisition on what is the best choice, and how a man should take
i
444 THRICB-ORSATEST HRRIIKR
with him into the world an adamantine faith in tnth and right; and then continues:
619 & — "And this is precisely what the meewngar from that invisible world reported that the profbei said:
" ' Even for him who comes last in tam« if he bat chooae with his mind, and live consistently, tiiere is in store a life desirable and far from evil So let neither hin who has the best choice be careless, nor him who comfls last despair.'
"And when he had thus spoken, the one who had the first choice, Er said, immediately went and chose the largest life of autocratic power, but throng foUy and greediness he did not choose with sufficient attention to all points, and failed to notice the hia wrapped up with it, of ' dishes of his own children ' ^ and other ills. But when he had examined it at leisure, he began to beat his breast, and bemoan his choice, not abiding by what the prophet had previously told him; for he did not lay the blame of these evils on himsdt but on ill-luck and daimones, and everything rather than himself. And he was one of those who came from heaven, who in his former life had lived in a well-ordered state, and been virtuous from custon and not from a love of wisdom.*
''In brief, it was by no means the minority of those who involved themselves in such unfortunate choices who came from heaven, seeing that such souk were unexercised in the hardships of life. Many of those who came from earth, as they had suffered hud* ships themselves, and had seen others sufiFering them, did not make their choice off-hand.
> A literary embelliahment from the Tngic If uae of Qn&et^ and the mythical recitals of Thyestian banquets, s Iff ( Artv ^•#«^Uff.
THE VISION OF ER 445
"Consequently many of the souls, independently of the fortune of their turn, changed good for evil, and evil for good. For if a man should always, whenever he comes into life on earth, live a sound philosophic life, and the lot of his choice should not fall out to him among the last, the chances are, according to this news from the other world, that he will not only spend his life happily here, but also that the path which he will tread from here to there, and thence back again, will not be below the earth ^ and difficult, but easy and of a celestial nature.
620. — "Yes, the vision he had, Er said, was well worth the seeing, showing how each class of souls chose their lives.^ The vision was both a pitiful and laughable as well as a wonderful thing to see. For the most part they chose according to the experience of their former life. For £r said that he saw the soul that had once been that of Orpheus becoming the life of a swan for choice,' through its hatred of womankind, because owing to the death of Orpheus at the hands of women, it did not wish to come into existence by conception in a woman. He further saw the soul of Thamyras^ choose the life of a nightingale. On the contrary, he saw also a swan change to the choice of a human life, and other musical animals in like fashion.
"The soul that obtained the twentieth lot chose
1 The Tartarean spheres of the invisible world, popularly believed to be below the earth ; that is, philosophicaily, more material than earth-life.
^ The vision (94a) was therefore typical
' The birds are typical of souls living in the air — that is, in aery bodies and not in physical ones ; or types of intelligence.
4 Or Thamyris, an ancient Thracian baid ; it is said that in his conceit he imagined he could surpass the Muses in song, in con- sequence of which he was deprived of his sight and the power of singing.
446 THRIGB-ORSATKST HKRMKS
the life of a lion; it was the aonl of Ajax, son of TelamoD, to avoid beiiig a man, becaoae it still re- membered the [unjust] decision about the anna The next soul was Agamemnon's ; and it too, out of hatred to the human race on account of its sufTeringB, changed into the life of an eagla^ The soul of Atalaoti obtained its lot in the middle, and letting her eje bll on the great honours paid an ' aUilete,' was unable to pass it by, and took it The soul of Epeiua,' son of Panopeus, he saw pass into the nature of a womaa skilful in the arts. And far away among the last he saw the soul of the buffoon Thendtes putting on an 'apa'
''By a stroke of luck also he saw the soul of Odysseus, which had obtained the last lot of all, cone to make its choica From memory of its former labours it had given itself a rest from love of renown, and for a long time went about to find the life of a man in private life with nothing to do with public affisdrs, and with great difBculty found one lying in a comer and thus passed over by all the rest ; on seeing it, it de- clared that it would have done the same even if it had had first turn, and been glad to do it
" And £r said that of the rest of the brutes also in like fashion some of them passed into men, and some into one another, the unrighteous ones changing into wild ones, and the righteous into tame ; in fact, tiieie were intermixings of every kind.
"When, then, all the souls had chosen their fives according to the number of their turn, they went in order to Lachesis ; and she sent along with them the daimon each had chosen, as watcher over his life and bringer to pass of the things he had chosen. And
1 Notioe the ''lion" and ''eae^e" are selected m tjpca thoy being typical tun-animala^ as we have already seen. * The fabled engineer of the Trojan Hone.
THE VISION OF £R 447
the daiinon first of all brought the soul to Clotho, set it beneath her hand and the whirling of the spindle, thus ratifying the fate each soul had chosen in its turn. And after he had attached it to her, he brought it to the spinning of Atropos, thus making its destinies^ irreversible.
621. — "Thence [Kr] went, without turning, [down] beneath the Throne^ of Necessity, and when he had passed down through it, and the others had also done so, they all passed on to the Plain of Forgetfulness (LethS) in a frightful and stifling heat ; for it was bare of trees and vegetation of every kind.
" As it was now evening they camped by the Biver Heedlessness whose water no vessel can hold.' They were all, however, compelled to drink a certain quantity of its water ; those who are not safeguarded by prudence drink more than their quantity, while he who keeps on drinking it forgets everything.
" When they had fallen asleep and midnight had come, there was thunder and earthquake, and thence suddenly they were carried up into birth [genesis] some one way some another, like shooting stars.
** Er, however, was prevented from drinking the water ; but in what manner and by what means he got back to his body he could not say, only, suddenly waking in the morning, he found himself lying on the pyre.*"
1 rh 49utKm^4pT9r-^ play on KKm$4.
' This is probably a symbol of the heaven-plane.
' oZ rh 9Zmp iiyytiop oMp ar4y§tp. So this is usually translated ; but as the souls drink of it, the appropriateness of tiie rendering is not very apparent. On the other hand, 9r4y§» is used of things that are water-tight — €.g, houses and ships ; hence ^ whose water no vessel can keep out." The " vessel " might thus stand for the ship of the soul ; and if so, we are in contact with an Egyptian idea. The River is in the Desert— the reverse of the Nile and Egypt, of Osiris and Isii, their Typhonean counterparts.
448 THRICR-OREATEST HKRMK8
Ck>MMINTABT
The question that one naturally asks oneself is: Did Plato conclude his great treatise on the Ideal State with a popular l^end in jeet, or had he some deepa purpose? I cannot but think that he was jesting seriously. Is it too wild a supposition that he is hinting at things which he could not disclose because of his oath ? Those who knew would understand ; those who did not would think he was jesting simply, and so the mysteries would not be disclosed.
In any case we have, I think, got a hint of the part played by the Daimon in our treatise. Whether or not Hermes " copied "* the idea from Plato, or both derived it from the same tradition, must be left to the fancj and taste of individual scholars. The Daimon is the watcher over the "way of life" (1^09); he is not necessarily a Eakodaimon, but so to speak the E^irmie Agent of the soul, appointed to carry out the " choice " of that soul, both good and ill, according to the Law of Necessity.^ The choice is man's; Nature adjusts the balance.
The Vision is of a typical nature, and the types are mythologized in the persons of well-known characters in Grecian story. The '* way of life " the souls chooss becomes the garment of " habit "* they are to wear, their form of personality, or karmic limitation. Apparently some souls, instead of choosing a reincarnation in t human body, prefer to live the " lives " of certain animal natures. Are we then to believe that Plato seriously endorsed the popular ideas of metempsychosis ? Or is it possible that he is referring to some state of existence of souls, which was symbolized by certain animal types
1 For the more intimate teaching on this pointy see C. H^ x.(xi.)16fli:
THE VISION OF ER 449
in the Mysteries ; as was certainly the case with the " lion " and " eagle," though the " swan " and •' nightin- gale" and "ape" are, as far as I am aware, never mentioned in this connection? Can it be that Plato here gives play to his imagination, basing his speculations on some general idea he may have learned in Egypt ?
We know from the so-called " Diagram of the Ophites," which is still traceable in a fragmentary form in the polemic of Origen against Celsus, that the "seven spheres " of the lower psychic nature were characterised by the names of animals : lion, bull, serpent, eagle, bear, dog, ass. We also know how the whole subject of animal correspondences preoccupied the attention of the Egyptian priesthood. But not only can we now make no reasonable scheme out of the fragmentary indications that have come down to us, but we also feel pretty well certain that if Plutarch's account of the beliefs of the later Egyptians on the subject is approximately reliable, the priests themselves of those days had no longer any consistent scheme.
We may, therefore, conclude either that the whole matter was a vain superstition entirely devoid of any basis in reality ; or that there was a psychic science of animal natures and their relationship to man which was once the possession of the priesthood of the ancient civilisation of Egypt, but that it was lost, owing to the departure from amongst men of those who had the power to understand it, and subsequently only fragments of misunderstood tradition remained among the lesser folk on earth. This at anyrate is the theory of our Tris- megistic treatises.
VOL. I. • 29
XV
CONCERNING THE CSATEB OB CUP
''Hi filled a mightj Cup with it [Mind^ and se&t it down, joining a HotaUI [to ic^ to wbom He gave command to make this proclamatiiwi to the hearti of men : Baptise thyaelf with this Cap's baptism,* etCL—
Tee Cbatxr in Pulto
Whence came this idea of a Crater or Cap into our Trismegistic literature 7 Most scholars will answer unhesitatingly : From Plata The Crater was the Cap in which the Creator mixed the Elemoits of the World- Soul ; for we read in Timami (41 dX where Plato ii treating of the formation of human souls:
* Thus spake He, and once again into the Cup which He had used in blending and mingUng the Soul of the Universe, He poured the remains of the Elemonts He had employed, and minted them in much the ssme manner ; they were not^ however, pure as before, bot in the second and third degree.**
I am, however, not inclined to attribute the origm of this symbolic expression simply to the imaguy of Plato's poetic mind, but am far more inclined to be- lieve that Plato was using a familiar figure of ** Orphie* symbolism. The idea of not only an Ultimate G^mter,
460
COXC£RNING THE CRATKR OR CUP 451
but of many subsidiary ones in the celestial and invisible realms, is closely connected with the " Orphic " idea of a Vortex.
In « Orpheus," Macrobius, and Proclus
Orpheus is said to have called the Mther the Mighty Whirlpool This forms the Egg or Womb of Cosmos ; it is a modification of Chaos or Rhea, the Eternally- flowing, the Mother of the Gods, the Oreat Container. Thus Proclus, in speaking of Chaos, says :
''The last Infinity, by which also Matter (v\»i) is circumscribed, is the Container, the field and plane of ideaa About her is ' neither limit, nor foundation, nor seat, but excessive Darkness.' " ^
Plato, as we have seen, in his peychogony, speaks openly of this Cup or Crater (Mixing Space, or Vortex) in two aspects ; in it the Deity mixes the All-Soul of universal nature from the purest Cosmic Elements, and from it He also "* ladles out " the souls of men, composed of a less pure mixture of these Elements.
Further, Macrobius tells us that Plato elsewhere indirectly refers to another aspect of this Cup.
*' Plato speaks of this in the PhcBdo, and says that the soul is dragged back into body, hurried on by new intoxication, desiring to taste a fresh draught of the overflow of matter,' whereby it is weighed down and brought back [to earth]. The sidereal [astral] Crater of Father liber [Dionysus, Bacchus] is a symbol of this mystery; and this is what the Ancients called the
1 vfX^or x^M« (Simplicius, Auk,^ iv. 123) ; magna varago (SyrianuB, Metapk., iL 38a). Of. Prolegg. cb. xL, ^ The Orphic Tradition of the QeneaiB of the World-Egg.**
* ConmtnL tfi Tim,^ iL 117. See my Orjhgui^ p. 164.
' QnoBtio^ ''the ■aperflui^ of Danghtinewi,'
452 THRICK-GREATE8T iTieRifi^
River of Lethe, the Orphics sayiDg that Father liber was HyUc Mind." 1
We have here, therefore, a higher and lower Gii|l ProcIuB, moreover, speaks of several of such Crmtsn. when he vnrites:
" Plato in the Philebui hands on the tradition of the Vulcanic Crater . . . and Orpheus is acquainted with the Cup of Dionysus, and ranges many such Cups round the Solar Table."*
Elsewhere, again, Proclus tells us that the Demiuzgs is said "to constitute the psychical essences in con- junction with the Crater " ; this " Crater is the peculiar cause of souls, and is co-arranged with the Demiuigia and filled from Him, but fills souls " ; thus it is called the Fountain of Souls.'
If with these indications before us we might venture to generalize, we might say that, according to Orpheo- Pythagorean, Platonic, and Hermetic ideas, the ** matter' of every ''plane" was thought of as proceeding from such a Crater or Cup, from within without, and the elements thereof as being refunded into such a Cup or Centre or Beceptacle— that is, from a more subtle, simpler, and inner phase to a more gross, complex, and outer phase, and vice vend. In other words, the Crater is the *' monadic " or " atomic " state of the matter of any given phase or state of existence.
The Vision of Abidjeus
With the above data before us, it will also be in- structive to turn to the Vision of Aridseus (Thespesius)
1 Commant mi Som. Sdp^ XL iL 68.
s Ckmmtni. in Tim^ v. 316 (Taylor's trans.).
» Taylor (T.X Tfmlifgy qf Plaio, V. xxxi.
CONCERNING THE CRATER OR CUP 458
as related hj Plutarch,^ a vision that may be com- pared with profit with the Vision of £r as told by Plato. Thespesius is being conducted through Hades, or the Invisible World in contact with earth-life, by a kinsman who has ''passed over," as Spiritists would say, and curiously enough he there comes across a Chasm and a Craler — for part of the story nms:
"After these explanations he was conducted by his kinsman at great speed across an immense space, as it seemed, nevertheless easily and directly as though supported by wings of light-rays ; until having arrived at a Vast Vortex (xaa-fia) extending down- wards, he was abandoned by the power that sup- ported him.
"He observed also that the same thing happened to the rest of the souls there, for checking their flight, like birds, and sinking down, they fluttered round the Vortex in a circle, not daring to go straight through it
" Inside it seemed to be decked like Bacchic caves ' with trees and verdure and every kind of foliage, while out of it came a soft and gentle air, laden with marvellous sweet scents, making a blend like wine for topers, so that the souls feasting on the fragrance were melted with delight in mutual embraces, while the whole place was wrapt in revelry and laughter and the spirit of sport and pleasure.'
"Thespesius' kinsman told him that this was the Way by which Dionysus ascended to the Qods and
^ De Sera Numinii VindidOy xxii. (ed. BemaidakiB, iil 454- 466).
' Were the Bacchic M jateries then celebrated in caves ?
> This is clearly in correspondence with the ** Astral Crater of Father Liber" of Macrobins.
r
454 THRICE-GREATEST HERMES
afterwards took up Semele ;^ it was called the Fkoe of Lethe (Oblivion).*
"* Wherefore he would not suffer Thespesios to staj there, though he wished to do so, but forcibly dragged him away, explaining how that the rational part of the soul was melted and moistened' by pleasure, whik the irrational part, and that which is of a corporeal nature, being then moistened and made fleshly, awakens the memory of the body, and from this memory come a yearning and a desire which drag down the soul into
1 HiB ''moUier," from the under- world ; referring to tiie mjsteriefl of generation and the indestmctibility of life. Semele in giving birth to Dionysus the Son of Zeus (the CreatiTe PoverX is said to have been killed by the Power of her Lord, but she v« subsequently restored to life among the Qods by the Power of her Son. In reincarnating, it is said that part of the soul in giring birth to itself in this 6tato' in his turn, in the case of one perfect, become the saviour of his ^ mother,'' now become his spouse, and raise her, who is abo himself, to a higher state.
* Compare P%iU$ Saphda (336, 337X which tells us how certain kirmic agencies ** give unto the old soul [prior to reincamatiaD] a Draught of Oblivion composed of tVe Seed of Iniqui^, filled with all manner of desire and all forgetfulness. And the moment that that soul drinketh of that Diaught, it forgrtteth all the spaces [or regions] through which it hath travelled, and all the chastisements through which it hath passed ; and that deadly Draught of Oblivion becometh a body external to the soul, Uke unto the soul in every way, and its perfect resemblance, and hence they caU it the 'counterfeit spirit'"
But in the case of the purified soul it is different ; tor a hig^ power ** bringeth a Cup full of intuition and wisdom, and also prudence, and giveth it to the soul, and casteth the soul into a body which will not be able to hh asleep or forget^ because of the Cup of Prudence which hath been given unto it, but will be ever pure in heart and seeking after the Mysteries of Light, until it hath found them^ by order of the Virgin of Lights in order that [that soul] may inherit the Light for ever." (Ihid^ ZSH, " Books of the Saviour.")
' Compare the " Moist Essence " of C. Jf., L 4, and iii. (iv.) 1.
CONCERNING THE CRATER OR CUP 455
generation . . . the soul being weighed down with moiBtore.
"Next Thespesins, after travelling another great distance, seemed to be looking at a huge Cup,^ with streams flowing into it ; one whiter than the foam of the sea or snow, another like the purple which the rainbow sends forth, while from a distance the others were tinged with other colours, each having its own shade.
" But when he came closer, the Cup itself (into which they flowed) — the surroundings disappearing, and the colours growing fainter — lost its varied colouring and only retained a white brilliance."
Compare also the HeUenist writer in the Naassene Document (§ 17 S.) : ** The Greek theologi generally call Him [the Logos] the "Heavenly Horn of MSn," because he has mixed and mingled all things with aU."
On this the Jewish Gnostic writer comments : '* This is the Drinking Vessel, — the Cup in which ' the King drinketh and divineth.' "
It is, says the Hellenist commentator again, " the Cup (of Anacreon) speaking forth speechlessly the Ineffable Mystery."
The Jewish commentator was a contemporary of Fhilo's, and the Hellenist was prior to him ; thus we see that the Cup symbol was used in precisely the same significance as in our text in at least the first century B.C., and that the idea was referred to the Greek theologers — in other words, the Orphics — and not to Plato.
^ irpar^p— bowl or basin.
456 THRICB-OREATEST HERMSS
Thb Origin or thi Symbol to be sought IN Orphic Tradition
With the above data before ub, I think we may be persuaded without difficulty that the idea of the Cap, or Mixing- Bowl, did not owe its origin to any invention ci Plato's, but that the greatest of philosophers, when be makes use of the symbol, does but employ a familiar image well known to his audience — as, indeed, is very apparent in the summary fashion in which he intro- duces the figure. In other words, the symbol or image was a commonplace of the Orphic tradition, and doubtless, therefore, familiar to every Pythagorean.
Now, in our treatise it is noticeable that this Cup- symbol is equated with the Monad ^ or Oneness — a technical Pythagorean term.
1 It is of interwt to notice that one of the apocryphal Booh tf Mom was caUed Tki Momtd, and another Tko Ko^ ; this azgnei an early date and wide renown for our two trestisee so entitled. See R. 188, n. 3.
XVI
THE DISCIPLES OF THRICE-GREATEST HERMES
PrA9, Skkhit and I-im-^step (Abglkpius)
BuDOK, in his Ghds of ihs Egyptians (vol. i ch. xvi.), tells us that the Great Triad of Memphis consisted of PtalL, Sekhet, and I-em-betep.
Ptab, as we have seen, was the "Sculptor or Engraver/' the Demiurge par excellence. He is called the "Very Great God who came into being in the earliest time"; ''Father of fathers, Power of powers"; " Father of beginnings and Creator of the Egg[sJ of the Sun and Moon " ; '' Lord of Maat [Truth], Elng of the Two Lands, the God of the Beautiful Face . . . who created His own Image, who fashioned His own Body, who hath established Maat throughout the Two Lands" ; " Ptab the Disk of Heaven, Illuminer of the Two Lands with the Fire of His Two Eyes." The " Workshop of Ptab" was the World Invisible.
It was Ptab who carried out the commands concern- ing the creation of the universe issued by Thoth.
The Syzygy or female counterpart of Ptab was Sekhet, " who was at once his sister and wife, and the mother of his son Nefer-Tem, and a sister-form of the Goddess Bast" (op. cU., i 514). She is called: "Greatly Beloved One of Ptab, Lady of Heaven, Mistress of the Two Lands " ; and one of her commonest names is ** Neeert," that is ** Flame."
467
r\
458 THRICE-GREATEST HKRKBS
It was Thoth (Tekh) who, with his Seven Wiae Ones, planned the world ({&., 516). But if Ptal^ is the executive power of Thoth and his Seven Wise Ones, so is Thoth the personification of the Intelligence of Ptab. It is in this way that Sekhet becomes identified with Maat, the inseparable spouse of Thoth.
NKRB-Tnff
The third member of the Memphite Triad is Nefer- Tem, or the ** Toung Tem." In the Ritual (Ch. IxxzL, version B) we read the " apology " : '* Hail, thou Lotos, thou type of the God Nefer-Tem! I am he who knoweth you, and I know your name among the Grods, the Lords of the Underworld, and I am one of you." Again, in Ck clzxiv. 19, Nefer-Tem is compared with " the Lotus at the nostrils of Ba " ; also, in Ch. clxxviiL 36, Nefer-Tem has the same title.
In the later texts Nefer-Tem is identified with many Gods, all of them forms of Horns or Thoth (*., 522).
Here we are in contact with the Ptah-tradition of Memphis which, we have seen, played an important