{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th1/th145.htm","path":"gno/th1/th145.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th1/th145.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 1, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\n\u201cHear then, my son, how standeth God and All. God; \u00c6on; Cosmos; Time; Becoming.\u201d\u2014C. H., xi. (xii.) 1.\nWhile rigidly excluding any consideration of the amazing elaboration of Christo-Gnostic \u00e6onology, it may not be unserviceable to offer a \u201cfew notes in connection with the simpler idea of the \u00c6on. The subject really requires a treatise in itself, but that would, of course, be too lengthy an undertaking for these Prolegomena. 1\nLet us, then, first turn to a striking passage which purports to give us the Orphic tradition of the Genesis of the World-Egg, and of the relation of its Glorious Progeny to the \u00c6on.\nThe passage is of great interest for us in our present enquiry, for if it is not a direct quotation from Apion, the Alexandrian savant, and bitter opponent of the Jews and of Philo, during the first half of the first\ncentury A.D., it at anyrate represents the view of the Hellenistic theology of that period.\nThe passage is found in one of the sources of the composite and overworked document known as the Clementine Homilies, 1 and runs as follows:\nIII. \u201cThere was when naught was but Chaos and an indistinguishable mixture of unordered elements still jumbled all together; both Nature herself being witness to it, and great men having thought it must be so.\n\u201cAnd as witness, I will bring forward for you the greatest of the great in wisdom, Homer himself, speaking about the original con-fusion:\n\u201cBut may you all become water and earth\u00a02\u2014\n\u2014meaning that thence all things have had their genesis, and that after the dissolution of their moist and earthy essence they are all restored again to their first nature\u2014which is Chaos.\n\u201cAnd Hesiod, in his Theogony, says:\n\u201cIn truth Chaos came into being the very first.\u00a03 \n\u201cAnd by \u2018came into being\u2019 he evidently means that\nit was generated as are things generable, and not that it for ever was as are things ingenerable.\n\u201cOrpheus also likens Chaos to an Egg in which was the con-fusion of the primordial elements. 1\n\u201cThis is what Hesiod supposes by Chaos, what Orpheus calls an Egg\u2014a thing generable, projected from the infinity of Matter (Hyl\u0113), and brought into being as follows:\nIV. \u201cBoth fourfold Matter 2 being ensouled and the whole Infinitude being as though it were a Depth (\u0392\u03c5\u03b8\u03cc\u03c2), flowing perpetually and indistinguishably moving, and over and over again pouring forth countless imperfect mixtures, now of one kind and now of another, and thereby dissolving them again owing to its lack of order, and engulphing so that it could not be bound [together] to serve for the generation of a living creature\u2014it happened that the infinite Sea itself, being driven round 3 by its own peculiar nature, flowed with a natural motion in an orderly fashion from out of itself into itself, as it were a vortex, 4 and blended its essences, and thus involuntarily the most developed part of all of them, 5 that which was most serviceable for the generation of a living creature, flowed, as it were in a funnel, down the middle of the universe, and was carried to the bottom\nby means of the vortex that swept up everything, and drew after it the surrounding Spirit, 1 and so gathering itself together as it were into the most productive [form of all], it constituted a discrete state [of things].\n\u201cFor just as a bubble is made in water, so a sphere-like hollow form gathered itself together from all sides.\n\u201cThereupon, itself being impregnated in itself, carried up 2 by the Divine Spirit that had taken it to itself as consort, it thrust forth its head (\u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03ad\u03ba\u03c5\u03c8\u03b5\u03bd 3) into the Light\u2014this, the greatest thing perchance that\u2019s ever been conceived, as though it were out of the Infinite Deep\u2019s universe a work of art had been conceived and brought to birth, an ensouled work [in form] like unto the circumference of eggs, [in speed] like to the swiftness of a wing. 4\nV. \u201cI would therefore have you think of Cronus (\u039a\u03c1\u03cc\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2) as Time (\u03a7\u03c1\u03cc\u03bd\u03bf\u03bd 5), and of Rhea (\u1ffe\u03a1\u03ad\u03b1) as the flowing (\u03c4\u1f78 \u03c1\u03ad\u03bf\u03bd) of the Moist Essence; for the whole of Matter being moved in Time brought forth, as it were, an Egg, the whole surrounding sphere-like Heaven (\u1f48\u03c5\u03c1\u03b1\u03bd\u03cc\u03c2), which in the beginning was full of the productive marrow, 6 so that it might be able to bring forth elements and colours of all kinds; and yet the\nmanifold appearances which it was ever presenting, all came from One Essence and One Colour.\n\u201cFor just as in the product of the peacock, although the colour of the egg seems to be one, it has nevertheless potentially in it the countless colours of the bird that is to be brought to perfection, so also the Ensouled Egg conceived from Infinite Matter, when it is set in motion from the perpetually flowing Matter below it, 1 exhibits changes of all kinds.\n\u201cFor from within the circumference a certain male-female Living Creature is imaged out by the Foreknowledge of the Divine Spirit that indwells in it, whom 2 Orpheus doth call Manifestor (\u03a6\u03ac\u03bd\u03b7\u03c2\u2014Phan\u0113s), because when he is manifest (\u03c6\u03b1\u03bd\u03b5\u03af\u03c2) the universe shines forth from him, through the lustre of Fire, most glorious of elements, perfected in the Moist [Element].\n\u201cNor is this incredible, for in the case of glow-worms, for example, Nature allows us to see a \u2018moist light.\u2019\nVI. \u201cAccordingly the First Egg that was ever produced 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:\n\u201cWhen the skull-like\u00a03 wide-yawning Egg did break [etc.].\u00a04 \n\u201cSo by the mighty power of Him who came forth and who made Himself manifest, \u2018the shell\u2019 5 receives its articulation 6 and obtains its orderly arrangement;\nwhile He Himself presides as though it were upon a throne on Heaven\u2019s height, and in the [realms] ineffable sends forth His light all round upon the Boundless \u00c6on.\u201d\nThis is evidently the Logos\u2014the God from the Egg, and the God from the Rock; for the Primal Firmament was symbolised as Rock, as Adamant; just as in physical nature, the life-spark appears from the mineral kingdom.\nThe Logos presides in highest heaven, in the ineffable spaces, whence He sends out His rays upon the \u00c6on, that Bound of Bounds which is itself Boundless. For the Egg may be thought of as the Boundary of some special universe or system; whereas the \u00c6on is the Boundary of all universes.\nThe information given in this quotation purports to be the Orphic tradition of cosmogony; with this cosmogony 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 \u201cP\u0153mandres\u201d cosmogenesis, which, though doubtless 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.\nIndeed, both \u201cPlato\u201d and \u201cPythagoras,\u201d on their mystical side, are strongly tinged with \u201cOrpheus.\u201d Now, Orphicism was the revival of pre-Hesiodic Orphism initiated by Onomacritus under the Peisistratid\u00e6. Original Orphism was, in my opinion, a blend of Hellenic Bardic lore with \u201cChald\u00e6an\u201d elements. It is not surprising, therefore, that when the \u201cBooks of the Chald\u00e6ans,\u201d collected for the Alexandrian Library, were\nturned into Greek, 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.\nIn illustration of this Chald\u00e6o-Orphic symbolical cosmogony as \u201cphilosophised\u201d in a Hellenistic Gnostic environment, we will quote from a system ascribed by Hippolytus to the S\u0113thians (a name indicating an Egyptian environment), and brought by him into the closest connection with those whom he calls the Naassenes\u2014that 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 S\u0113thians, Hippolytus 1 tells us as follows:\n\u201cThey think that there are Three Principles 2 of the universals having certain definite boundaries, and yet that each of these Principles possesses boundless potentialities.\n\u201cNow, the Essences of these Principles (he says) are Light and Darkness; and in the midst of these is pure Spirit.\n\u201cThe 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\nprepared,\u2014a force of fragrance that travels with a motion so rapid as to be quite inconceivable and far beyond the power of words to express.\n\u201cNow, since Light is above and Darkness below, and Spirit in some such way as I have said between them,\u2014the 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 incense on a fire, we see its fragrance carried in every direction.\n\u201cAnd 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.\n\u201cAnd the Darkness is an awesome Water into which the Light together with the Spirit is drawn down and transferred.\n\u201cThe Darkness, however, is not without understanding, but quite intelligent, and it knows that if Light were taken from Darkness, Darkness would remain isolated, unmanifest, 1 splendourless, powerless, ineffectual, strengthless.\n\u201cWherefore is it constrained with all its intelligence and understanding to hold down to itself the lustre and spark of the Light together with the fragrance of the Spirit.\n\u201cAnd one can see an image of the nature of the latter in a man\u2019s face\u2014[namely] the pupil of the eye, 2 which is dark because of the waters underlying it, yet illumined by Spirit.\n\u201cAs, therefore, the Darkness contends for the Splendour, in order that it may make a slave of the\n[paragraph continues] Light-spark and see, so 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.\n\u201cNow all the powers of the three Principles, being infinitely infinite in number, are sagacious and intelligent 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.\n\u201cIf, 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 juxtaposition of the contacting powers. 1\n\u201cFor the con-currence of the powers constitutes as it were the impression (\u03c4\u03cd\u03c0\u03bf\u03c2) of a seal struck off by concussion 2 so as to resemble the [die] that stamps the substances brought into contact with it.\n\u201cSince 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.\n\u201cThese images, then, are the forms (\u1f30\u03b4\u03ad\u03b1\u03b9) of the different kinds of living creatures.\n\u201cNow from the first mighty concurrences of the three Principles there resulted a mighty type of seal\u2014Heaven and Earth.\n\u201cAnd Heaven and Earth have a configuration\nresembling a Womb, with the embryo 1 in the middle; and if (he says) one would bring this to the test of sight, let him scrutinise scientifically the gravid womb of whatsoever living creature he wishes, and he will find the model of Heaven and Earth and of all things between them lying before him without any alteration.\n\u201cSo the configuration of Heaven and Earth was such that it resembled a Womb as it were, according to the first concourse [of the three Principles].\n\u201cAnd again in the midst of Heaven and Earth infinite concourses of powers occurred, and every single concourse effected and expressed the image of nothing else but a seal of Heaven and Earth\u2014a thing resembling a Womb.\n\u201cAnd in the Earth itself there developed from the infinite seals of different kinds of living creatures, [living things] still more infinite.\n\u201cAnd 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. 2 . . .\n\u201cAccordingly there arose out of the Water a first-born source\u2014Wind vehement and boisterous\u2014and cause of all genesis.\n\u201cFor by making a certain seething 3 in the waters it 4 raises up waves from the waters.\n\u201cAnd the genesis of the waves, being as it were a\ncertain pregnant 1 impulse, is the source of the production of man or mind, whenever [this motion] quickens under the impulse of the Spirit.\n\u201cAnd whenever this wave, raised from the Water by the Wind, and rendering nature pregnant, 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,\u2014that 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.\n\u201cFor as it were a very minute spark . . . like a ray 2 . . . .\n\u201cEvery thought and care of the Light above, therefore, is how and in what way mind may be liberated from the Death of the evil and dark Body, 3 from the Father below, who is the Wind that in ferment and turmoil raised up the waves and brought to birth perfect mind, son of himself, and yet not his own in essence.\n\u201cFor he was a ray from above, from that Perfect Light, overpowered in the sinuous 4 and awesome and bitter 5\nand blood-stained Water; and that Light is the Spirit of Light borne upon the water. 1 . . .\n\u201cBut the Wind, being both boisterous and vehement in its rush, is in its whistling 2 like unto a Serpent\u2014a winged one.\n\u201cFrom 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.\n\u201cWhen then (he says) the Light and the Spirit have been received down into the impure and disorderly Womb of manifold suffering, the Serpent\u2014the Wind of the Darkness, the First-born of the Waters\u2014entering in generated man, and the impure Womb neither loves nor recognises any other form. 3\n\u201cAnd 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 4 through His similitude to the Beast; in order that He may loose the bonds that are laid upon the perfect mind that is generated in the impurity of the Womb by the First-born of the Water\u2014Snake, Wind, Beast.\n\u201cThis (he says) is the Servant\u2019s Form; 5 and this is\nthe necessity of the Descent of the Logos of God into the Womb of the Virgin.\n\u201cBut it is 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\u2014a thing that everyone must do who is about to strip off the Servant-Form and put on the Celestial Garment.\u201d\nThere 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 Chald\u00e6an ideas, and also with the main schematology of our \u201cP\u0153mandres\u201d tractate.\nFrom the Orphic tradition handed on by Apion we have seen that the \u00c6on is the Circle of Infinitude and Eternity illumined by the Logos.\nThe whole of this Orphic lore (in other words, the Chald\u00e6an 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 \u201cla divinit\u00e9 l\u00e9ontoc\u00e9phale,\u201d and the birth of the God from the Rock; this seems to point, as we might very well suspect, to a strong Chald\u00e6an element in the Mithriac tradition.\nCumont 1 tells us that although some scholars have rejected the name of \u201cMithriac \u00c6on,\u201d which was\ngiven by Zo\u00ebga to this awe-inspiring mystic figure, 1 in his opinion (and he knows more of the subject than any other authority) it may very well have been actually called \u00c6on in the sacred books of the mysteries.\nIf, however, this was the case, the mystic meaning, says Cumont, was of such a nature that it was concealed from the profane.\nOur classical authorities inform us that the Magi 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 Cronus in the sense of Time.\n\u201cThe Mithriac Cronus is a personification of Time, and this fact, which is now fairly established, permits us immediately to determine the identity of this pseudonymous God.\n\u201cThere 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 Ormuzd and Ahriman to have been born.\n\u201cIt was this God that the adepts of the mysteries placed at the head of the celestial hierarchy, and considered as the first principle; or, to put it differently, it was the Zervanist system that the Mazd\u00e6ans of Asia Minor taught to the Western followers of the Iranian religion.\u201d\nThis all seems to me to point not to a Persian origin\nof the \u00c6on, as Cumont supposes, but to a Chald\u00e6an element dominating the Mithriac form of the Magian tradition. 1\nNow the Chald\u00e6an and Egyptian wisdom-cultures had many root-ideas in common (were they not regarded by the Greeks as the wisdom-traditions par excellence?); we are not therefore surprised to find that Egypt, with its ever-recurring grandiose mystery-phrases of enormous time-periods, such as \u201cHe of the millions of years,\u201d had on its own soil a highly developed idea of Eternity and of Eternities\u2014that is, of the \u00c6on and of the \u00c6ons; and indeed the strongly Egyptian forms of the Gnosis, which we have preserved to us under Christian overworking, are involved in the most complex \u00e6onology.\nIt 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 Chald\u00e6an ideas that poured into Hellenistic circles in the early Alexandrian period. When precisely the \u00c6on-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.\nThat the term \u00c6on was in frequent use in the\npopular Hermes-cult may be seen in Hermes-Prayer v. 4, where Thoth is characterised as the \u201c\u00c6on of the \u00c6ons who changes himself into all forms in visions.\u201d So also in Prayer viii. 2, the Good Daimon, who has different names given him in the different hours, is called \u201cWealth-giving \u00c6on.\u201d So also with Isis, who is called Wisdom and \u00c6on in the Papyri. 1\nIn conclusion, we may glance at what Reitzenstein (pp. 272 ff.) has to say concerning this \u201cAionenlehre.\u201d\nThe name Abraxas, which consisted of seven elements or letters, was a mystery-designation of the God who combined in himself the whole power of the Seven Planets, and also of the Year of 365 days, the sum of the number-values of the letters of Abraxas working out to 365. This mysterious Being was the \u201cYear\u201d; but the Year 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 God, \u201cHe who has His seat within the Seven Poles\u2014\u0391\u0395\u0397\u0399\u039f\u03a5\u03a9,\u201d as the Papyri have it, and also without them, as we shall see.\nThe mysterious formula \u201cthe Name of which the figure is 365\u201d meets us in such connections, that it cannot be taken to mean simply the \u201cYear-God,\u201d but is a synonym of the Highest God, a secret, mysterious Being. In brief it was, as we have seen, no other than the Lion-headed God, called in Greek \u00c6on.\nIndeed, we know from Philo of Byblos 2 that, at least in his day, the second half of the first century A.D. (and,\nfor all we know, prior to it), there were in Ph\u0153nicia communities of the \u00c6on\u2014of the Highest and Supercelestial One.\nThe 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. 1 Moreover, Lydus informs us that the Ancients (\u03bf\u1f31 \u03c0\u03ac\u03bb\u03b1\u03b9) celebrated a Feast of the \u00c6on on January 5th. 2 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 describing the festival in the Koreion at Alexandria: 3\n\u201cAnd if they are asked the meaning of this mystery, they answer and say: To-day at this hour the Maiden (Kor\u0113), that is the Virgin, has given birth to the \u00c6on.\u201d 4\nIn the next paragraph Epiphanius designates this \u00c6on as the Alone-begotten. Here, then, we have striking evidence that in its Egyptian environment the cult of the \u00c6on was associated with mystery-rites reminding us strongly of the symbolism of the Christ-mystery.\nMoreover, Messala 5 tells us of this \u00c6on, that He \u201cwho made all things and governs all things, joined\ntogether by means of the surrounding Heaven the power and nature of Water and Earth, heavy and downward, flowing down into the Depth, and that of Fire and Spirit, light and rushing upward to the measureless Height. It is this mightiest power of Heaven that hath bound together these two unequal powers.\u201d\nLydus (ibid.) furthermore tells us that the idea of the \u00c6on was associated by the Pythagoreans with the idea of the Monad; indeed, they seem to have derived the word ai\u014dn from \u1f30\u03ac, the Ionic form of \u03bc\u03af\u03b1 (one).\nAny attempt to refer this Pythagorean identification to the earlier Pythagoreans would be at once rejected by the majority of scholars, but I believe myself that the original Pythagoreans were far too close to the Borderland between mythology and philosophy not to have personified or at least substantiated their \u201cNumbers\u201d and the Source of them. At anyrate it is highly instructive to find Plato himself writing in the Tim\u00e6us:\n\u201cAnd when the Father who begot it [the Cosmos] 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 still more like its Original. 1 And as the latter is an Everlasting Living Being, He sought to make this [Sensible] Universe as far as possible like it.\n\u201cNow the nature of the Living Being was eternal (\u03b1\u1f30\u03ce\u03bd\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2\u2014\u00e6onian); but to bestow this quality entirely on a generable creature was not possible.\n\u201cAccordingly He determined to make a moving\nimage of Eternity (\u0391\u1f30\u1ff6\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2); and so in setting the Heaven in order He makes it an everlasting (\u03b1\u1f30\u03ce\u03bd\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd) image, moving according to number, of Eternity (\u0391\u1f30\u1ff6\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2) that rests in One\u2014an image which we have, you know, called Time.\u201d 1\nHere it is very plain that \u00c6on is not Time, but the Paradigm thereof\u2014Eternity. It is the Consummation of the Eternal Gods\u2014namely, the Pl\u0113r\u014dma, the Monad par excellence. We, therefore, find already in Plato the idea of the \u00c6on fully developed. Did Plato \u201cinvent\u201d it? Or did he put an already existing idea into philosophical terms? He presumably found it already existing. Was it then Orphic (Pythagorean), or did he learn of it in Egypt? Who shall say precisely?\nSeeing, however, that we find the idea of the \u00c6on 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.\nIt may be, however, that those who had followed Plato on purely philosophical lines had hitherto paid little attention to the idea of the \u00c6on, 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 \u00c6on came to be used no longer for a transcendent unity but as the connotation of a grade of Being.\nIt may then have been that our Hermetic writers reasserted the use of the term in its simpler philosophic meaning as a check to over-enthusiastic speculation.\nBut even if it were a reaction against a too great luxury of speculation, it must have been contemporaneous with the development of \u00e6onology; so that in any case C. H. xi. (xii.) must be dated from this point of view.\nWhen \u00e6onology arose we cannot say precisely; but \u00e6onology in the Gnostic sense of the term was, as we have seen, to some extent at least existing as early as the earliest Christian documents.\nNow though the Trismegistic tractate C. H., xi. (xii.) is evidently in literary contact with the Tim\u00e6us, 1 it nevertheless purports to give more \u201cesoteric,\u201d or at any rate more precise, instruction than is to be found in Plato\u2019s famous cosmogonical treatise. It does not follow Plato, but hands on an instruction that has already been formulated in a precise and categorical fashion. The ladder of existence is God, \u00c6on, Cosmos, Time, Genesis;\u2014each following one from the other.\n\u00c6on is the Power of God (\u00a7 3), whereas Cosmos is God\u2019s creation and work (\u00a7\u00a7 3, 4). The \u00c6on, standing between God and Cosmos, is the Paradigm, and so also the Son of God (\u00a7 15), and the final end of man is that he should become \u00c6on (\u00a7 20)\u2014that is, Son of God. \u00c6on is thus evidently the Logos of God, or the Intelligible Cosmos, as distinguished from the Sensible Cosmos. This\n[paragraph continues] \u00c6on is the Fullness in which all things move, and chiefly the Seven Cosmoi (\u00a7 7).\nNow, Reitzenstein (pp. 274 ff.) shows very clearly that the Cult of the Saeculum or \u00c6on 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 Rome was influenced by Egypt? Such at anyrate is Reitzenstein\u2019s opinion (p. 277), who points to the fact that Messala, who is fully imbued with the \u00c6on-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 Sph\u00e6ra Barbarica, Nigidius treats of the Egyptian Sphere.\nEgypt, 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, \u1e24\u1e25w (\u1e24e\u1e25u) and \u1e24\u1e25t (\u1e24e\u1e25ut), are immediately derived from \u201c\u1e24\u1e25,\u201d generally translated \u201cMillion,\u201d but by Brugsch and others as \u00c6on. 1 All the Egyptian Gods were Lords of the Eternity or of the Eternities. But not only so, the\nterm \u201ceternity\u201d was used in connection with definite time-periods; for instance, \u201cin a million (or eternity) of thirty year periods.\u201d And again: \u201cThy kingdom will have the lastingness of eternity and of infinitely many hundred-and-twenty-year periods; ten millions of thy years, millions of thy months, hundred-thousands of thy days, ten-thousands of thine hours.\u201d 1\nHere we must remark the numbers 120 (that is 12 \u00d7 10) and 30; all essential numbers of the Gnostic Pl\u0113r\u014dma of \u00c6ons.\nIt is also of interest in connection with the Time-pair, to note that Horapollo, the Alexandrian grammarian, tells us that the Egyptians when they desire to express the idea of \u00c6on write \u201csun and moon\u201d 2 (i. 1), and when they want to write \u201cyear\u201d they draw \u201cIsis,\u201d that is \u201cwoman\u201d (i. 3).\nWe thus see that in Egypt there were \u00c6ons of Periods or Years, and Years of \u00c6ons. Above all these ruled the God of the \u00c6ons, the highest God of many a mystic community.\nAnd so we read the following song of praise to the \u00c6on, inscribed on a \u201csecret tablet\u201d by some unknown Brother of a forgotten Order:\n1. \u201cHail unto Thee, O thou All-Cosmos of \u00e6thereal Spirit! Hail unto Thee, O Spirit, who doth extend from Heaven to Earth, and from the Earth that\u2019s in the middle of the orb of Cosmos to the ends of the Abyss!\n2. \u201cHail unto Thee, O Spirit who doth enter into me, who clingeth unto me or who doth part thyself from\nme, according to the Will of God in goodness of His heart!\n3. \u201cHail unto Thee, O thou Beginning and thou End of Nature naught can move! Hail unto thee thou vortex of the liturgy 1 unweariable of [Nature\u2019s] elements!\n4. \u201cHail 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 unequally! Hail, ye Spirits all of the \u00e6thereal statues [of the Gods]!\n5. \u201cHail to you [all], whom holy Brethren and holy Sisters ought to hail in giving of their praise!\n6. \u201cO Spirit, mighty one, most mighty circling and incomprehensible Configuration of the Cosmos, celestial, \u00e6thereal, inter-\u00e6thereal, water-like, earth-like, fire-like, air-like, like unto light, to darkness like, shining as do the stars,\u2014moist, hot, cold Spirit!\n7. \u201cI praise Thee, God of gods, who ever doth restore the Cosmos, and who doth store the Depth away 2 upon its throne of settlement no eye can see, who fixest Heaven and Earth apart, and coverest the Heaven with thy golden everlasting (\u03b1\u1f30\u03c9\u03bd\u03af\u03b1\u03b9\u03c2) wings, and makest firm the Earth on everlasting thrones!\n8. \u201cThou who hangest up the \u00c6ther in the lofty Height, and scatterest the Air with thy self-moving blasts, who mak\u2019st the Water eddy round in circles!\n9. \u201cO Thou who raisest up the fiery whirlwinds, and makest thunder, lightning, rain, and shakings of the earth, O God of \u00c6ons! Mighty art thou, Lord God, O Master of the All!\u201d 3\nHere there is no separation of God as intra-cosmic and extra-cosmic; He is both the one and the other. He is both the Fullness of the Godhead and also the Fullness of Cosmos. He is both the Cosmos, and He who is above the Cosmos and below the Cosmos. 1\nReitzenstein (p. 278), referring to our Trismegistic tractate, C. H., xi. (xii.), points to the distinction made between \u00c6on and God on one side and \u00c6on and Cosmos on the other. This, he thinks, shows signs of the influence of a fundamental trait of Hellenistic theology which makes the Demiurge the Second God.\nHowever this may be, there certainly was a distinction drawn between the Creative, or rather Formative, God and the Supreme Deity, in many a Christian Gnostic System, and not unfrequently of a very disparaging nature to the former. Already in Jewish mystic and philosophic (Gnostic) circles a distinction had had to be drawn between the idea of God as 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 the old wisdom-ideas and with the fundamental postulates of Greek philosophy.\nMany examples could be given, 2 but we prefer to follow Reitzenstein (p. 279) in his references to the Magic Papyri, or Apocryphal literature of the same class,\nand append the translation of two striking quotations, as opening up an entirely novel side of the subject.\nThus in the eighth Book of Moses, we find the following passage in which the Jewish Creator God is placed in the second rank as compared with the Egyptian Supreme Principle.\n\u201cAnd God, looking down unto the earth, said: IA\u014c! 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 \u00e6thereal realms.\u201d 1\nSo 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\u2014we meet with the same distinction.\n\u201cThee, the only and blest Father of the \u00c6ons, I invoke with prayers like unto Cosmos! 2\n\u201cCome unto me who fillest the whole Cosmos with thy Breath, and dost hang up on high the Fire out of the Water, 3 and dost from out the Water separate the Earth. . . . The Lord bore witness to thy Wisdom, that is the \u00c6on, and bade thee to have strength as He Himself hath strength.\u201d 4\nAnd, later on, the Theurgist exclaims:\n\u201cReceive my words as shafts of fire, for that I am God\u2019s Man, for whom was made the fairest plasm of spirit, dew 5 and earth.\u201d\nHe is a Man whose words are effective and bring all\nthings to pass; for his \u201cwords\u201d are compelling \u201cacts,\u201d or \u201ctheurgic.\u201d\nOther passages are brought forward by Reitzenstein (pp. 280-286) to show that the idea of the Logos or \u00c6on as Second God was a fundamental conception in Hellenistic theology.\nThis may very well have been the case in general Hellenistic theology; but in philosophical circles, as we have pointed out in treating of the Logos-idea in Philo, the distinction was formal and not essential. So also in our Trismegistic treatises, which are saturated with transcendental pantheistic or monistic, or rather panmonistic, conceptions, if the Logos or \u00c6on is momentarily treated of as apart from Supreme Deity, it is not so in reality; for the Logos is the Season of God, God in His eternal Energy, and the \u00c6on is the Eternity of Deity, God in His energic Eternity, the Rest that is the Source of all Motion.\nFor the fullest exposition of the \u00c6on-doctrine in our Trismegistic tractates, see The Perfect Sermon, xxx.-xxxii., and my commentary thereon.\n387:1 From Prof. Montet\u2019s report (Asiatic Qr. Rev., Oct. 1904) of the \u201cProceedings of the Second International Congress of the History of Religions\u201d (B\u00e2le), Aug. 20-Sept. 2, 1904, I see that Reitzenstein presented a monograph on the \u201cAion\u201d to the Congress. I do not, however, know whether this has yet been published.\n388:1 Clement. Hom., VI. iii. ff.; ed. A. Schwegler (Stuttgart, 1847), pp. 168 ff.; ed. P. de Lagarde (Leipzig, 1865), pp. 74 ff. See also Lobeck, Aglaophamus, pp. 475, 478; and my Orpheus, pp. 156 and 162, 163. For the latest critical view on the Apion-speeches, see Waitz (H.), Die Pseudoklementinen Homilien und Rekognitionen (Texte und Untersuchungen, Neue Folge, Bd. X. Hft. IV.), pp. 251-256, \u201cDer Dialog des Klemens mit Appion \u00fcber die heidnische Mythologie.\u201d\n388:2 Il., vii. 99. Cf. the Earth-and-Water of C. H., i. 5.\n388:3 Theog., 116.\n389:1 Orpheus apparently does nothing of the kind, but draws a distinction between Chaos and the Egg.\n389:2 Cf. the Pythagorean Tetraktys, in the famous oath\u2014\u201cThe Fourfold Root of Ever-flowing Nature.\u201d\n389:3 Or impelled or pushed in every direction.\n389:4 Thus forming the Vortex Atom of the Cosmos.\n389:5 The text reads: \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03bf\u1f55\u03c4\u03c9\u03c2 \u1f10\u03be \u1f00\u03ba\u03bf\u03c5\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u03c0\u03ac\u03bd\u03c0\u03c9\u03bd \u03c4\u1f78 \u03bd\u03bf\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9\u03bc\u03ce\u03c4\u03b1\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd. As \u1f10\u03be \u1f00\u03ba\u03bf\u03c5\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 has hitherto proved insoluble for all editors, I would suggest \u1f10\u03be \u1f00\u03ba\u03bf\u03c5\u03c3\u03af\u03bf\u03c5. As to \u03bd\u03bf\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9\u03bc\u03ce\u03c4\u03b1\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd, L. and S. are of little assistance unless it is taken in the sense of \u201cripest.\u201d Sophocles gives \u201cessential, valuable, perfect, the best part of any thing.\u201d\n390:1 This probably means the Spirit that ensouled Matter; or to use a more familiar expression, the Spirit of God which \u201cbrooded over the Deep.\u201d\n390:2 Sc. out of the Depth of Matter or Darkness, on to the surface of it, where was the Light.\n390:3 Cf. C. H., i. 14: \u201cbent his face downwards\u201d (\u03c0\u03b1\u03c1\u03ad\u03ba\u03c5\u03c8\u03b5\u03bd), and note thereon.\n390:4 According to Basilides the \u201cwings\u201d of the Sonship are the Holy Spirit. This symbolism is presumably to be connected with the Egyptian \u201cWinged Globe.\u201d See F. F. F., p. 26.\n390:5 A very ancient word-play.\n390:6 Sometimes used for brain. Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 11, and the Jewish Commentator in the Naassene Document. This is the Spermatic Essence of the Logos.\n391:1 It is thought of as floating in this Matter.\n391:2 The Living One.\n391:3 \u03ba\u03c1\u03b1\u03bd\u03b1\u03af\u03bf\u03c5\u2014an otherwise unknown word. Many emendations have been suggested; but it does not seem to be necessary to go beyond \u03ba\u03c1\u03b1\u03bd\u03af\u03bf\u03bd, especially as we have seen (for instance, in the Naassene Document) that this was a favourite symbol of the Heaven.\n391:4 Unfortunately, the rest of the Orphic quotation is not given.\n391:5 Or body\u2014the matter in the Egg.\n391:6 \u1f01\u03c1\u03bc\u03bf\u03bd\u03af\u03b1\u03bd\u2014its fitting together, or harmony.\n393:1 Philos., v. 19; ed. C., p. 209 ff.; ed. D. and S., pp. 198 ff.; ed. M., 138 ff.\n393:2 \u1f00\u03c1\u03c7\u03ac\u03c2\u2014sources or beginnings.\n394:1 \u1f00\u03c6\u03b1\u03bd\u03ad\u03c2\u2014the opposite of Phanes.\n394:2 Have we here any further clue to the title \u039a\u03cc\u03c1\u03b7 \u039a\u03cc\u03c3\u03bc\u03bf\u03c5?\n395:1 I may be mistaken, but the ideas involved in this exposition seem to be precisely the same as those involved in the most modern dynamic theories of atomicity, except that the atoms or rather monads of our Gnostics are intelligent.\n395:2 Lit., con-currence.\n396:1 Lit., navel; but the word stands metaphorically for anything like a navel\u2014e.g. the boss of a shield, a knob of any kind; hence any centre, or nucleus.\n396:2 Hippolytus here seems to have omitted some important section of his source from his summary; in any case the text of that which follows is very corrupt, and in some important details demonstrably imperfect, as may be seen by comparing the Epitome, X. iv.\n396:3 Or ferment.\n396:4 Sc. Wind.\n397:1 \u1f10\u03b3\u03ba\u03cd\u03bc\u03c9\u03bd\u2014a play on \u03ba\u1fe6\u03bc\u03b1, which means embryo as well as wave.\n397:2 The text is here destroyed beyond hope of conjecture.\n397:3 Sc. Darkness.\n397:4 \u03c3\u03ba\u03bf\u03bb\u03b9\u1ff7. Cf. the \u03c3\u03ba\u03bf\u03bb\u03b9\u1ff6\u03c2 of C. H., i. 4.\n397:5 Cf, the Naassene Hymn: \u201cShe seeks to flee the bitter Chaos\u201d; and compare Jacob B\u00f6hme\u2019s \u201cBitterness,\u201d and also his \u201cthree Principles,\u201d with those of our system. The analogies are striking, and yet Jacob could not possibly have known this system physically.\n398:1 The following lines are destroyed beyond the power of reconstruction.\n398:2 In the case of a serpent this would be \u201chissing\u201d; \u03c3\u03cd\u03c1\u03b9\u03b3\u03bc\u03b1, however, is properly the sound of a pipe, and puts us in mind of the Syrikt\u0113s of the Naassene Document.\n398:3 Sc. than that of the Serpent.\n398:4 Sc. the Womb.\n398:5 Cf. Philipp., ii. 7: \u201cBut He emptied Himself, taking on the Servant\u2019s Form, being made in the likeness of men.\u201d The \u201cemptying\u201d or \u03ba\u03ad\u03bd\u03c9\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2 was the change from the \u03c0\u03bb\u03ae\u03c1\u03c9\u03bc\u03b1 or Fullness of Light to the \u03ba\u03ad\u03bd\u03c9\u03bc\u03b1 or Emptiness of Darkness. Paul (or the writer of the Epistle, whoever he was) is here using the technical language of the Gnosis.\n399:1 Textes et Monuments Figur\u00e9s relatifs aux Myst\u00e8res de Mithra (Bruxelles, 1899), i. 76 ff., where all the references are given.\n400:1 A Being with lion\u2019s head, and eagle\u2019s wings, and brute\u2019s feet, and human body, enwrapped with a serpent, standing on a globe and holding the keys of life and death in its two hands. There are many variants, however, all of them highly instructive, as pourtraying the Autozoon, or Living Creature in itself, the summation of all forms of life, including man.\n401:1 Reitzenstein (p. 276) is also of this opinion.\n402:1 R. 270.\n402:2 Ap. Euseb., Pr\u00e6p. Evang., I. 10, 7; 34 B.\n403:1 De Mens., iv. (ed. W\u00fcnsch, p. 64, 6).\n403:2 Or rather 6th. Reitzenstein\u2019s (p. 274) gloss (\u03c0\u03c1\u1f78 \u03b5\u1f30\u03b4\u1ff6\u03bd) to \u1f10\u03c0\u1f76 \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u03c0\u03ad\u03bc\u03c0\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2, is erroneous, for this would make the date January 11th.\n403:3 For a translation of the passage, see the Commentary on the K. K. Excerpts in treating of the term \u201cVirgin of the World.\u201d\n403:4 Epiphanius, Haer., li. 22; ed. Dindorf, ii. 483. Cf. D. J. L., pp. 410 f., \u201cThe Crucifixion and Resurrection Mystery-Rite.\u201d\n403:5 Quoted by Macrobius, Saturnal., I. ix.\n404:1 That is, the Ideal Cosmos.\n405:1 Tim., 37 C, D.\n406:1 Cf. \u00a7 1: \u201cAs many men say many things, and these diverse about the All and Good\u201d; and Tim., 29 C: \u201cIf then, O Socrates, since many men say many things about the Gods and the genesis of the All.\u201d\n407:1 Budge (op. cit., i. 285) writes: \u201cAccording to the late Dr Brugsch (Religion, p. 132), the name \u1e24e\u1e25 is connected with the word which indicates an undefined and unlimited number, i.e. \u1e25e\u1e25; when applied to time the idea suggested is \u2018millions of years,\u2019 and \u1e24e\u1e25 is equivalent to the Greek \u03b1\u1f30\u03ce\u03bd.\u201d\n408:1 Brugsch, W\u00f6rterbuch, vi. 839.\n408:2 The usual symbols for \u201ceverlasting.\u201d\n409:1 Or service\u2014\u03bb\u03b5\u03b9\u03c4\u03bf\u03c5\u03c1\u03b3\u03af\u03b1.\n409:2 \u03b8\u03b7\u03c3\u03b1\u03c5\u03c1\u03af\u03c3\u03b1\u03c2\u2014or treasure away.\n409:3 Wessely, Denkschr. d. K. K. Akad. (1888), p. 72, 11. 1115 ff.; R. 277, 278.\n410:1 Cf. R. 28; Hermes-Prayer, vii. 1.\n410:2 See my Fragments of a Faith Forgotten.\n411:1 Dieterich, Abraxas, 184-99.\n411:2 That is, presumably, \u201cofferings of the reason,\u201d as our tractates have it; or prayers that put the mind in sympathy with the true order of things.\n411:3 The Heaven Ocean.\n411:4 Wessely, Denkschr. d. K. K. Akad. (1888), p. 73, 11. 1168 ff.\n411:5 Or pure water.","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 1: XI. Concerning the \u00c6...","type":"page"}