{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th1/th116.htm","path":"gno/th1/th116.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th1/th116.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 1, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\nIV. 1. Now, as far as the \u201cmany\u201d are concerned, even this commonest and smallest [secret] is hid from them,\u2014namely, why the priests cut off their hair, and wear linen robes; for some do not at all care to know about these things, while others say that they abstain from [the use of] the sheep\u2019s wool, as they do from its flesh, because they hold it sacred, and that they shave their heads through being in mourning, and wear linen things on account of the colour which the flax in flower sends forth, resembling the \u00e6therial radiance 1 that surrounds the cosmos.\n2. But the true cause, [the] one of all, is, as Plato says, [because]: \u201cIt is not lawful for pure to touch not pure.\u201d 2\nNow, superfluity 3 of nourishment and excretion is nothing chaste or pure; and it is from superfluities that wool and fur and hair and nails spring up and grow.\n3. It would, thus, be laughable for them to cut off their own hair in the purifications, shaving themselves, and making smooth their whole body evenly, and [then] put on and wear the [hair] of animals. 4\n4. For indeed we should think that Hesiod, when he says:\nNor from five-branched at fire-blooming of Gods\nCut dry from green with flashing blade 5\u2014\nteaches that [men] ought to keep holy day only when pure of such [superfluities], and not at the sacred operations themselves have need of purification and the removal of superfluities.\n5. Again, the flax grows out of the deathless earth, and yields a fruit that man may eat, and offers him a smooth pure raiment that does not weigh upon the watcher, 1 but is well joined for every hour, 2 and is the least cone-bearing, 3 as they say,\u2014concerning which things there is another reason (logos).\n265:1 \u03c7\u03c1\u03cc\u03b1\u03bd\u2014also meaning surface, skin, and tone in melody.\n265:2 Ph\u00e6d., 67 B.\n265:3 \u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03af\u03c3\u03c3\u03c9\u03bc\u03b1\u2014also probably here a play on that which is \u201cround the body\u201d (\u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u1f76 \u03c3\u1ff6\u03bc\u03b1)\u2014namely, the hair.\n265:4 \u03b8\u03c1\u03b5\u03bc\u03bc\u03ac\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd\u2014lit., \u201cthings nourished\u201d (from \u03c4\u03c1\u03ad\u03c6\u03c9), presumably a play on the \u201cnourishment\u201d (\u03c4\u03c1\u03bf\u03c6\u03ae) above.\n265:5 Op. et Dies, 741 f. This scrap of ancient gnomic wisdom Hesiod has preserved, I believe, from the \u201cOrphic\u201d fragments still in circulation in his day in B\u0153otia among the people from an Older Greece. I have endeavoured to translate it according to the most primitive meaning of the words. In later days it was thought that \u201cfive-branched\u201d was the hand, and that the couplet referred to a prohibition against paring the nails at a feast of the Gods! In this sense also Plutarch partly uses it. But if I am right in my version, we have in the lines a link with that very early tradition in Greece which in later times was revived by the Later Platonic School, in a renewed contact with the ancient Chald\u00e6an mystery-tradition of the Fire. \u201cFive-branched\u201d would thus mean man, or rather purified man, and the saying referred to the \u201cpruning of this tree.\u201d In it also we have an example of a \u201cPythagorean symbol\u201d three hundred years before Pythagoras. Finally, I would remind the reader of the Saying which the Master is said to have uttered as He passed to the Passion of the Crucifixion (Luke xxiii. 31): \u201cFor if they do these things in the moist stock [A.V. green tree], what shall be done in the dry?\u201d\u2014presumably the quotation of an old gnomic saying or mystery logos. The \u201cmoist nature\u201d is the feminine side of the \u201cfiery\u201d or \u201cdry.\u201d\n266:1 Reading \u03c3\u03ba\u03bf\u03c0\u03bf\u1fe6\u03bd\u03c4\u03b9 for \u03c3\u03ba\u03ad\u03c0\u03bf\u03bd\u03c4\u03b9\u2014that is, the soul.\n266:2 \u03b5\u1f50\u03ac\u03c1\u03bc\u03bf\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u03b4\u1f72 \u03c0\u03c1\u1f78\u03c2 \u03c0\u1fb6\u03c3\u03b1\u03bd \u1f65\u03c1\u03b1\u03bd\u2014\u201cwell adapted for every season\u201d is the common translation; the \u201chour,\u201d however, is a technical astrological term.\n266:3 Vulg., \u201clice-producing\u201d\u2014but \u03c6\u03b8\u03b5\u03af\u03c1 also means a special kind of pine producing small cones; and the great cone was a symbol of the Logos, and the small cone of physical generation. It is also connected with \u03c6\u03b8\u03b5\u03af\u03c1\u03c9, meaning to corrupt, and so to breed corruption.","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 1: IX. Plutarch: Concerning the Mysteries of Isis and Osiris: Why the Priests are Shaven and wear Linen","type":"page"}