{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th1/th123.htm","path":"gno/th1/th123.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th1/th123.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 1, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\nXI. 1. When, therefore, thou hearest the myth-sayings of the Egyptians concerning the Gods\u2014wanderings and\ndismemberings, and many such passions 1\u2014thou shouldst remember what has been said above, and think none of these things spoken as they [really] are in state and action.\n2. For they do not call Hermes \u201cDog\u201d as a proper name, but they associate the watching and waking from sleep of the animal, 2 who by knowing and not knowing determines friend from foe (as Plato says 3), with the most Logos-like of the Gods.\n3. Nor do they think that the sun rises as a new-born babe from a lotus, but so they write \u201csun-rise,\u201d riddling the re-kindling of the sun from moist [elements]. 4\n4. Moreover, they called the most crude and awesome King of the Persians (\u014cchus) 5\u2014who killed many and finally cut the throat of Apis and made a hearty meal off him with his friends\u2014\u201cKnife,\u201d 6 and they call him so unto this day in the Catalogue 7 of their kings,\u2014not, of course, signifying his essence by its proper name, 8 but likening the hardness of his mood 9 to an instrument of slaughter.\n5. So too shalt thou, if thou hearest and receivest the [mysteries] about the Gods from those who interpret the myth purely and according to the love of wisdom, and if thou doest ever and keepest carefully the customs observed by the priests, and if thou thinkest that thou wilt offer neither sacrifice nor act more pleasing to the Gods than the holding a true view concerning them,\u2014thou shalt escape an ill no less than being-without-the-gods, 1 [that is to say] the fearing-of-the-daimones. 2\nXII. 1. The myth which is told is\u2014in its very shortest possible [elements], after the purely useless and superfluous have been removed\u2014as follows:\n277:1 \u03c0\u03b1\u03b8\u03ae\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u2014the technical mystery-term for such experiences, or sensible knowing.\n277:2 Or \u201cof the Animal\u201d\u2014the Living One or Animal Itself or World Soul, if Dog is taken to mean the genus or Great Dog.\n277:3 Rep., ii. 375 F.\n277:4 That is, the ideogram of a new-born child with its finger on its lips seated on the bosom of the lotus signified \u201csun-rise,\u201d and \u201csun-rise\u201d within as well as without. The \u201cre-kindling\u201d or \u201clighting up again\u201d was presumably also a symbol of the \u201cnew birth from above.\u201d\n277:5 Artaxerxes III.; the priests, however, presumably used this incident to illustrate some more general truth. A similar story is also related of Cambyses (xliv. 8); they also called \u014cchus \u201cAss\u201d (xxxi. 4).\n277:6 The sacrificial knife again, as in x. 2.\n277:7 Cf. xxxviii. 6.\n277:8 Perhaps even meaning by \u201chis name of power.\u201d\n277:9 Or \u201cof the turn,\u201d where it might refer to the turn of Egypt\u2019s fate-wheel.\n278:1 Or \u201catheism.\u201d\n278:2 Generally rendered \u201csuperstition.\u201d","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 1: IX. Plutarch: Concerning ...","type":"page"}