{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th2/th247.htm","path":"gno/th2/th247.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th2/th247.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 2, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\n3. [XI. M.] All things, then, being thus,\nthere\u2019s nothing stable, nothing fixed, nothing immoveable, of things that are being born, in Heaven or on the Earth.\nImmoveable 1 [is] God alone, and rightly [He] alone; for He Himself is in Himself, and by Himself, and round Himself, completely full and perfect.\nHe is His own immoveable stability. Nor by the pressure of some other one can He be moved, nor in the space [of anyone].\n4. For in Him are all [spaces], and He Himself alone is in them all; unless someone should venture to assert that God\u2019s own motion\u2019s in Eternity 2; nay, rather, it is just Immoveable Eternity itself, back into which the motion of all times is funded, and out of which the motion of all times takes its beginning.\n1. God, then, hath [ever] been unchanging, 3 and ever, in like fashion, with Himself hath the Eternity consisted,\u2014having within itself Cosmos ingenerate, which we correctly call [God] Sensible. 4\nOf that [transcendent] Deity this Image 5 hath been made,\u2014Cosmos the imitator of Eternity.\nTime, further, hath the strength and nature of its own stability, in spite of its being in perpetual motion,\u2014from its necessity of [ever] from itself reverting to itself.\n2. And so, although Eternity is stable, motionless, and fixed, still, seeing that the movement of [this] Time (which is subject to motion) is ever being recalled into Eternity,\u2014and for that reason Time\u2019s mobility is circular,\u2014it comes to pass that the Eternity itself, although in its own self, is motionless, [yet] on account of Time, in which it is\u2014(and it is in it),\u2014it seems to be in movement as all motion.\nSo that it comes to pass, that both Eternity\u2019s stability becometh moved, and Time\u2019s mobility becometh stable.\nSo may we ever hold that God Himself is moved into Himself by [ever-] same transcendency of motion. 1\nFor that stability is in His vastness motion motionless; for by His vastness is [His] law exempt from change. 2\n3. That, then, which so transcends, which is not subject unto sense, [which is] beyond all bounds, [and which] cannot be grasped,\u2014That\ntranscends all appraisement; That cannot be supported, nor borne up, nor can it be tracked out. 1\nFor where, and when, and whence, and how, and what, He is,\u2014is known to none. 2 For He\u2019s borne up by [His] supreme stability, and His stability is in Himself [alone],\u2014whether [this mystery] be God, or the Eternity, or both, or one in other, or both in either.\n4. And for this cause, just as Eternity transcends the bounds of Time; so Time [itself], in that it cannot have bounds set to it by number, or by change, or by the period of the revolution of some second [kind of Time],\u2014is of the nature of Eternity.\nBoth, then, seem boundless, both eternal. And so stability, though naturally fixed, yet seeing that it can sustain the things that are in motion,\u2014because of all the good it does by reason of its firmness, deservedly doth hold the chiefest place.\n1. The principals of all that are, are, therefore, God and \u00c6on. 3\nThe Cosmos, on the other hand, in that \u2019tis moveable, is not a principal. 4\nFor its mobility exceeds its own stability by treating the immoveable fixation as the law of everlasting movement.\nThe Whole Sense, 1 then, of the Divinity, though like [to Him] in its own self immoveable, doth set itself in motion within its own stability.\n\u2019Tis holy, incorruptible, and everlasting, and if there can be any better attribute to give to it, [\u2019tis its],\u2014Eternity of God supreme, in Truth itself subsisting, the Fullness of all things, of Sense, and of the whole of Science, consisting, so to say, with God. 2\n2. The Cosmic Sense is the container 3 of all sensibles, [all] species, and [all] sciences.\nThe human [higher sense consists] in the retentiveness of memory, in that it can recall all things that it hath done.\nFor only just as far as the man-animal has the divinity of Sense 1 descended; in that God hath not willed the highest Sense divine should be commingled with the rest of animals; lest it should blush for shame 2 on being mingled with the other lives.\nFor whatsoever be the quality, or the extent, of the intelligence of a man\u2019s Sense, the whole of it consists in power of recollecting what is past.\nIt is through his retentiveness of memory, that man\u2019s been made the ruler of the earth.\n3. Now the intelligence of Nature 3 can be won by quality of Cosmic Sense,\u2014from all the things in Cosmos which sense can perceive.\nConcerning [this] Eternity, which is the second [one],\u2014the Sense of this we get from out the senses\u2019 Cosmos, and we discern its quality [by the same means].\nBut the intelligence of Quality [itself], the \u201cWhatness\u201d of the Sense of God Supreme, is Truth alone,\u2014of which [pure] Truth not even the most tenuous sketch, or [faintest] shade, in Cosmos is discerned.\nFor where is aught [of it] discerned by measurement of times,\u2014wherein are seen untruths, and births [-and-deaths], and errors?\n4. Thou seest, then, Asclepius, on what we are [already] founded, with what we occupy ourselves, and after what we dare to strive.\nBut unto Thee, O God most high, I give my thanks, in that Thou hast enlightened me with Light to see Divinity!\nAnd ye, O Tat, Asclepius and Ammon, in silence hide the mysteries divine within the secret places of your hearts, 1 and breathe no word of their concealment 2!\n5. Now in our case the intellect doth differ from the sense in this,\u2014that by the mind\u2019s extension intellect can reach to the intelligence and the discernment of the quality of Cosmic Sense.\nThe Intellect of Cosmos, on the other hand, extends to the Eternity and to the Gnosis of the Gods who are above itself. 3\nAnd thus it comes to pass for men, that we perceive the things in Heaven, as it were through a mist, as far as the condition of the human sense allows.\n\u2019Tis true that the extension [of the mind] which we possess for the survey of such transcendent things, is very narrow [still]; but [it\nwill be] most ample when it shall perceive with the felicity of [true] self-consciousness.\n368:1 That is, changeless.\n368:2 That is, again, in the \u00c6on.\n368:3 Stabilis.\n368:4 Cf. viii. 1 above.\n368:5 Cf. x. 3 above.\n369:1 Eadem immobilitate. The whole is an endeavour to at-one the \u201cPlatonic\u201d root-opposites \u201csame\u201d (\u03c4\u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03cc\u03bd) and \u201cother\u201d (\u03b8\u03ac\u03c4\u03b5\u03c1\u03bf\u03bd)\u2014the \u201cSelf\u201d and the \u201cnot-Self,\u201d sat-asat, \u0101tm\u0101n\u0101tman, of the Upani\u1e63hads.\n369:2 Lit. motionless.\n370:1 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 6; also xxxiv. 3 below.\n370:2 Compare the Hymn in C. H., v. (vi.) 10, 11.\n370:3 Or Eternity.\n370:4 Lit. does not hold the chief place.\n371:1 Cf. 3 below.\n371:2 Consistens, ut ita dixerim, cum deo. Is there possibly here underlying the Latin consistens cum deo the expanded form of the peculiar and elliptical \u03c0\u03c1\u1f78\u03c2 \u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03b8\u03b5\u1f78\u03bd of the Proem to the Fourth Gospel (the apud deum of the Vulgate)? This was explained by the Gnostic Ptolemy, somewhere about the middle of the second century, as \u201cat-one-ment with God,\u201d in his exegesis of the opening words, which he glosses as: \u201cThe at-one-ment with each other, together with their at-one-ment with the Father\u201d (\u1f21 \u03c0\u03c1\u1f78\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bb\u03bb\u03ae\u03bb\u03bf\u03c5\u03c2 \u1f04\u03bc\u03b1 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u1f21 \u03c0\u03c1\u1f78\u03c2 \u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03c0\u03b1\u03c4\u03ad\u03c1\u03b1 \u1f15\u03bd\u03c9\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2). So that the first verse of the Proem would run: \u201cIn the Beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was (one) with God; yea, the Logos was God. He was in the Beginning (one) with God\u201d\u2014? consistens cum deo. See Iren\u00e6us, Ref. Om. H\u00e6r., I. viii. 5\u2014Stieren (Leipzig; 1853), i. 102; also F. F. F., p. 388.\n371:3 Or receptacle.\n372:1 That is, the divine or higher sense, connected with memory in its beginnings and with the Platonic \u201creminiscence\u201d (the Pythagorean math\u0113sis) in its maturity.\n372:2 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 19.\n372:3 That is, Cosmos.\n373:1 Lit. breasts.\n373:2 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 22.\n373:3 The super-cosmic Gods, or beings of the Intelligible Cosmos; the \u00c6ons of the Gnostics.","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 2: II. The Perfect Sermon; or the Asclepius: Part XI","type":"page"}