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It is "A Song of Praise to the Aeon," which is said to have been inscribed on a "secret tablet," by some unknown Brother of a forgotten Order, perhaps one of the Communities of the Aeon-the Highest and Supercelestial One-which Philo of Byblos, in the second half of the first century of our era, tells us were in existence in Phoenicia in his day, and doubtless were also existing in Egypt. The text is found in the Greek Magic Papyri.
A SONG OF PRAISE TO THE AEON
Hail unto Thee, O Thou All-Cosmos of ethereal Spirit!
Hail unto Thee, O Spirit, who doth extend from Heaven to Earth, and from the Earth that's in the middle of the orb of Cosmos to the ends of the Abyss!
Hail unto Thee, O Spirit, who doth enter into me, who clingeth unto me or who doth part Thyself from me according to the Will of God in goodness of His heart!
Hail unto Thee, O Thou Beginning and Thou End of Nature naught can move!
Hail unto Thou, Thou Liturgy unweariable of Nature's Elements!
Hail 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 ethereal Statues of the Gods!
Hail to You all, whom holy Brethren and holy Sisters hail in giving of their praise!
O Spirit, Mighty One, most mighty circling and incomprehensible Configuration of the Cosmos, hail! -- celestial, aethereal interaethereal, water-like, earth-like, fire-like, airlike, like unto light, to darkness like, shining as do the Stars-moist, hot, cold Spirit!
I praise Thee, God of gods, who ever doth restore the Cosmos, and who doth store the Depth away upon its Throne of Settlement no eye can see, who fixest Heaven and Earth apart, and coverest the Heaven with Thy golden everlasting wings, and makest firm the Earth on everlasting Thrones!
O Thou who hangest up the (Ether in the lofty Height, and scatterest the Air with Thyself moving Blasts, who mak'st the Water eddy round in circles!
O Thou who raisest up the fiery Whirlwind, and makest thunder, lightning, rain, and shakings of the earth, O God of (Eons! Mighty art Thou, Lord God, O Master of the All!
The Aeon is the Invisible Intelligible Cosmos, the All-Cosmos of Aethereal Spirit or Quintessence, as distinguished from the Sensible Cosmos of the four Great Elements, pure Fire and Air and Water and Earth, and not our mixed elements.
The reader has only to compare the opening and closing sentences of "The Secret Hymnody" with the first paragraph of our hymn to see that we are in precisely the same circle of ideas.
Heaven, Earth, and the Abyss, the three worlds, through which the Spirit, like Vishnu in the Purina's, takes "three strides."
It is this Spirit, the Great Breath of Life, that is the out-breath and in-breath of man's manifold existences. When the Spirit breathes out he is born, from death into life, and also from life into death; for the life of the body is the death of the soul. And when the Spirit inbreathes he becomes dead, dead to things of the body, but alive to the things of the soul.
And all this is "according to the Will of God in goodness of His heart." For the Will of God is the Energy, or Effective Working, of God, that which transcends all our human ideas of Love-dictated by the goodness of His heart, which ever wills the good of all beings, for the Heart of God is the Good Itself, the Aeon.
The Aeon is neither Beginning nor End, but both; for all the Spheres or Being which it energizes, end where they begin, and begin where they end-they dance in eternal revolution, for their "everlasting revelling-place" is in the Vortex of the Ceaseless Liturgy, or Service, of the Elements. The Aeon is the Cause of the Magna Vorago, the Mighty Whirlpool of the Universe, for it is the Monad or Supreme Atom of all atoms and all combinations of atoms.
The Aeon is the Illumination or Source of Light for all the Lights of Heaven, the Sun and Moon and all the rest of the "Aethereal Statues of the Gods" the countless suns in space.
The Aeon is Spirit, of Light and Life consisting, and so Father-Mother of all Spirits, whose true Bodies are the fiery spheres, the sidereal bodies ray-like, star-like.
Therefore, the Brethren and Sisters of this community of gnostic servants of God rightly praise all the Gods, for these Gods are the true community of saints or holy ones in Heaven, even as the Brethren and Sisters are endeavoring to become saints on earth, holy as they are holy.
The Aeon is the Great Paradigm or One Exemplar of all things, the Eternal Configuration of the Cosmos and all cosmoi, in a septenary of three quintessential and four essential elements, which are completed by the all-color, Light, and no-color, Darkness, into a decad of which Spirit is the beginning and the end, existing in three modes-reminding us of the Trigunam, or three-fold nature of Prakriti or Nature in Indian theosophy -- moist, hot, cold; black, red, white; Tamas, Rajas and Sattva.
The Great Work of the God of Gods is perpetually to restore the Cosmos, to refresh, to renew it, in its threefold nature of Height and Midst and Depth-the endoderm, mesoderm and ectoderm, as it were, of the cosmic germ-cell-over which the Spirit broods with its golden everlasting wings, as the Great Bird who perpetually hatches forth the Egg of the Universe.
And from this brooding there ever comes forth into being the perpetual cosmo-genesis of all things; and, seeing that all beings come forth from the Aeon, each and all, in their cosmic nature, are Aeons as well, so that the Aeon is also God of Aeons.
He is the God of millions of years, of millions of months, and millions of days-whether those time periods be of the earth or of the universe-and so God of all existences, even as He is God of the Eternity of all things.
And here we must bring our little hymn-book to a close, in the hope that some may be found to sing in response to the Hymns of Heathen Hermes even in this twentieth-century of Christian grace; for perhaps, after all, Hermes and Christ are not in reality such strangers to each other as traditional theological prejudice would have us believe.
