{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th2/th210.htm","path":"gno/th2/th210.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th2/th210.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 2, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\nThis beautiful little treatise, in which the great principles of the Gnosis are set forth so clearly and lucidly by the philosopher-mystic who penned it so many centuries ago, bears a double, or rather a triple, title: \u201cOf Hermes to Tat: The Cup or Monad [or Oneness].\u201d 1 The double title, however, is but a choice of names, for The Cup is The Oneness,\u2014The One Element, 2 the \u201cBody\u201d of God, which is the Cause of all bodies and yet itself is bodiless; in other words, the Monad is the Intelligible Cosmos itself, God\u2019s Image, elsewhere called His Alone-begotten Son.\nThat this idea of a Cup or Mixing-bowl (Crat\u0113r), in the symbolic sense of an all-containing receptacle, in which all the elements were blended together, and in the metaphysical sense of a transcendent Unity, the source of all things measurable and numberable, was one of the main doctrines of the Trismegistic tradition, is plain from the P\u0153mandrist Zosimus, who refers especially to this Cup as the symbol of Spiritual Baptism\u2014that is, the plunging of the whole nature into the Great Ocean of Spirit or Mind, so that the man becomes irradiate with Life and illumined with Light.\nFor a consideration of this Crater or Cup symbolism I must refer the reader to the chapter so entitled in the \u201cProlegomena\u201d; it there being shown that in all probability it was transmitted along the Orphic line\nof tradition, though doubtless the Egyptian had some similar ideas.\nOur treatise should be read in the closest connection with C. H., xi. (xii.), \u201cThe Mind to Hermes,\u201d which is its \u201cesoteric\u201d counterpart. What is here set forth for Tat by Hermes is there imparted to Hermes by the Mind; what is here set forth for the probationer or \u201chearer\u201d is there set forth for the advanced disciple or \u201cseer\u201d; or, to use Mystery terms, what is here told to the Mystes is there revealed to the Epopt. Thus, then, the Tat-instruction begins.\n1. All things are made by Reason, the Formative Energy of the Mind. The Ideal Cosmos, or World-Order, is the Divine Body.\n2. Earth is the sensible Cosmos; on Earth man, the image of the Image, or Reason, of God rules. The purpose of man is thus to become the contemplator (\u03b8\u03b5\u03b1\u03c4\u03ae\u03c2) of the works of God; it is by the \u201cwonder\u201d aroused in him by the sight of these marvels that he will rise eventually into a knowledge of God Himself. This \u201cwonder\u201d is, then, the beginning of the True Philosophy or God-knowledge (\u1f21 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03bd\u03cc\u03b7\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2).\n3. All men have in them \u201creason\u201d (the ray of the Reason or Logos), but as yet few have \u201cMind.\u201d This \u201cmind\u201d is the true Son of Mind, it is the real man, the perfect man, self-conscious of his Self. This true Self-consciousness is the prize set up for souls to win: the crown of humanity, the Christ-state (or, at any rate, the super-man or true man state).\nThe Christ-Baptism is the plunging of the whole nature into the Mind-filled Cup,\u2014the Pl\u0113r\u014dma of the Divine Being whose Body and Mind are one,\u2014for is\nnot the Cup the Body of God, \u201cconsecrated unto Himself alone\u201d (\u00a7 1), the Universal Body of all things?\nIt would be fascinating to speculate on what connection this Cup of Initiation may have had with the Mystic Eucharist, and the Original of the later Grail-tradition, which a great master of music and song has in our days made to live again in undying melody, and so restored it to its more universal significance. How Wagner sensed the marvel of the wondrous Vision with a poet\u2019s intuition may be seen from his own words:\n\u201cTo the enraptured gaze of one longing for celestial love, the clear blue atmosphere of heaven seems at first to condense itself into a wonderful, scarcely perceptible, but dazzlingly beautiful Vision. Then with gradually increasing precision the wonder-working angelic host is delineated in infinitely delicate outlines, as, conveying the holy vessel in its midst, it insensibly descends from the blazing heights of heaven. As the vision grows more and more distinct, . . . the heart throbs with the pain of ecstasy; . . . and when at last the Grail shows itself in the marvel of undraped reality, . . . the beholder\u2019s brain reels\u2014he falls down in a state of adoring annihilation. . . . With chaste rejoicing the angelic host then returns to the heavenly height, fading away into the nothingness whence it first emanated.\u201d\nBut for the Seers of the Gnosis there was a more intimate realization, for they were bidden to cast aside all hesitation and fearlessly to plunge themselves into the very Cup Itself, the Ocean of Divine Love and Wisdom.\nThis was the Proclamation or Preaching (\u03ba\u03ae\u03c1\u03c5\u03b3\u03bc\u03b1),\nor Good Tidings, of the Herald of God to men, to those who had the Living Faith they could \u201cascend to Him who had sent down the Cup,\u201d God\u2019s Greatest Gift.\nBy such a Baptism as this, not by a symbolic sprinkling with water, is it that man is to be redeemed. This is the consummation of man\u2019s earthly pilgrimage, the realization of the \u201cGnosis of the Mind, Vision of things Divine; God-knowledge is it; for the Cup is God\u2019s.\u201d\n6. In \u00a7 6 we have given us a discipline of the mystic way, the \u201chating of the body,\u201d which is by no means to be taken literally.\nA misunderstanding of this discipline led many of the mystics of the time (and, for a matter of that, has led most of the mystics of all time) to the false belief that the body (or matter generally) was the source of evil. Hence we have all the mortifications and chastisements of the flesh which the monkish spirit introduced into Christendom, and which persist in some quarters even to our own day. Against this the Common Sense of Christianity as a general religion, basing itself on the general utterances of the Christ, has ever protested.\nOur mystic philosopher, in urging his disciples to hate the body, apparently does so because they are in the first stages of awakening, and so far have not got the \u201cMind\u201d active in them.\nIn taking the first steps there must be developed a consciousness of the strong antithesis of good and evil, of love and hate, in order that the will of the disciple may be strengthened towards the good and weakened towards the bad.\nWhen, however, his will is balanced between the two, when he as easily wills good as evil, then, and\nnot till then, is he prepared to learn the further great lesson: that real wisdom consists in balance, in the Middle Way; that nothing is evil in itself\u2014the Body is as honourable in its own sphere, as absolutely necessary and indispensable, as is the Mind in its.\nHe learns the great secret that to have one\u2019s thoughts always in heaven is as erroneous as to have them always on earth; that there is a higher mode of existence, when the things of heaven and earth are within each other, and not apart.\nAs the Introduction to The Book of the Great Logos according to the Mystery has it:\n\u201cJesus saith: Blessed is the man who knoweth this Word (Logos), and hath brought down the Heaven and borne up the Earth and raised it Heavenwards.\u201d 1\nHeaven and Earth must kiss each other for this consummation, this truly Sacred Marriage.\nAnd yet in the third Synoptic (xvi. 25, 26) we read:\n\u201cJesus saith: If any man come unto Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own soul also, he cannot be My disciple.\u201d\nHere we have precisely the same word \u201chate\u201d (\u03bc\u03b9\u03c3\u03b5\u1fd6) as in our text. That, however, this \u201cdark saying\u201d was interpreted in a mystical sense by Gnostic tradition, as by no means referring to physical parents but to the past causes of our imperfections, 2 I have already pointed out on several occasions 3; we may therefore\nconclude that in a gnostic teaching, such as is our treatise, the terms \u201chate\u201d and \u201cbody\u201d are not to be literally interpreted.\n8. And that this is so may be seen from the declaration in \u00a7 8: \u201cFor \u2019tis not God, \u2019tis we who are the cause of evil things, preferring them to good\u201d;\u2014where the cause of evil is not assigned to the body but to man\u2019s own choice. And finally, to clinch our contention, we would refer the reader to the Sermon to Asclepius, C. H., vi. (vii.) 6:\n\u201cSuch are the things that men call good and beautiful, Asclepius\u2014things which we cannot flee or hate.\u201d\n9. In \u00a7 9 we have to notice the phrase: \u201cTherefore to It Gnosis is no beginning; rather is it that Gnosis doth afford to us the first beginning of Its being known\u201d; and compare it with the logos quoted by the Jewish commentator in the Naassene Document (\u00a7 25): \u201cThe Beginning of Perfection is Gnosis of Man, but Gnosis of God is Perfect Perfection.\u201d\nThe claim for the Gnosis is therefore a modest one. The Gnosis is not an end in itself; it is but the beginning of the True Knowledge of God. They who receive the Baptism of the Mind are made \u201cperfect men,\u201d not Perfect; not until they have received this touch of the Christ-consciousness have they reached true manhood.\nThose who have received this Baptism know why they have come into being,\u2014the purpose of life. They become consciously immortal; they know they are deathless, they do not only believe it; their immortality is no longer a belief, it is a fact of knowledge.\nThey have won their freedom from Death and Fate, and know the real constitution of the cosmos up to the Threshold of the Good, the Plain of Truth\u2014that is to\nsay, presumably in Buddhist terms, as far as the Nirv\u0101\u1e47ic state of consciousness. Not yet, however, have they entered Nirv\u0101\u1e47a\u2014that is to say, become one with the Logos. They have seen the Sight or Vision of Nirv\u0101\u1e47a, but not entered into the Promised Land, that \u201cBlessed Space,\u201d which, as Basilides tells us, \u201ccan neither be conceived of nor characterized by any word.\u201d 1\nThe Vision is an earnest of what they may be. They have become Gods, it is true, already, or, in other words, enjoy the same freedom and consciousness as the Gods or Angels, but there is a still more transcendent state, when they will be at-oned with Deity Himself.\nHard as it is to leave the \u201cthings we have grown used to,\u201d the things habitual, it must be done if we are to enter into the Way of the Gnosis. But no new Path is this, no going forth into new lands (though it may have all the appearance of being so). The entrance on the Path of the Gnosis is a Going-Home, it is a Return\u2014a Turning-Back (a True Repentance). \u201cWe must turn ourselves back unto the Old Old Way\u201d (\u03c4\u1f70 \u03c0\u03b1\u03bb\u03b1\u03b9\u1f70 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f00\u03c1\u03c7\u03b1\u1fd6\u03b1).\nAnd for the followers of the Doctrine of Thrice-greatest Hermes, this Old Old Path could have meant nothing but the Archaic Wisdom of Ancient Egypt. The Wisdom of Egypt was thus the Gnosis.\n92:1 See R. 193. Unfortunately, though he twice quotes from our treatise, Stob\u00e6us adds nothing to our knowledge of the title, since he prefixes his extracts with the simple heading, \u201cOf Hermes.\u201d\n92:2 Which is to be equated, I believe, \u201cmeta-physically\u201d with the Quintessence or \u00c6ther.\n96:1 Codex Brucianus; see F. F. F., p. 520.\n96:2 Cf. the Pistis Sophia, 341-343, where the text is given as: \u201cHe who shall not leave father and mother to follow after Me is not worthy of Me,\u201d and explained by the Saviour to mean: \u201cYe shall leave your Parents the Rulers, that ye may be Children of the First Everlasting Mystery.\u201d\n96:3 See, for instance, Extracts from the \u201cV\u00e2han\u201d (London, 1904), pp. 374-376.\n98:1 See F. F. F., p. 261.","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 2: I. Corpus Hermeticum: Com...","type":"page"}