Related Texts • The Corpus Hermeticum • The Hermetic Arcanum • Aureus, or the Golden Tractate of Hermes Related Subjects • Gnosticism • Alchemy • Rosicrucianism • Thelema • Hermeticism

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The Spread of the Gnosis

With the consummation of the higher teaching and the return to earth of the consciousness of the Seer, our treatise breaks off into a graphic instruction of how the new Gnosis is to be utilized. The Wisdom is no man's property; he who receives it holds it in trust for the benefit of the world. Until this point, we have moved in the atmosphere of an inner intimate personal instruction, set forth in a form evidently intended only for the few. Indeed, as we find in other treatises emphatic injunctions to keep the teaching secret, we cannot but conclude that such a revered and authoritative document of the Hermetic school was at one time guarded with the same secrecy.

In any case, all things are new for our author; all things have new meanings. He has become a Son of God, instead of a procession of Fate; he has reached the "Plain of Truth." In Christian terms, the Christ has been born in his heart consciously.   Henceforth his effort will be to become like unto the Father Himself, to pass from Sonship into the Perfection of perfection, Identity or At-one-ment with the Father.

The Meaning of "Pymander"

Many researchers have already remarked that the name "Pymander" is formed irregularly in Greek, and this has led to an interesting speculation by Frederick Granger in his commentary where he writes: "While, however, the name Pymander does not answer to any Greek original, it is a close transliteration of a Coptic phrase. In the dialect of Upper Egypt 'py-meretre' means 'the witness'. That the Coptic article (py) should be treated as part of the name itself is not unusual. Such a title corresponds very closely in style with the titles of other works of the Corpus Hermeticum , such as The Perfect Word, which is an alternative title of the "Asclepius." The term Pymander, therefore, on this supposition, contains an allusion to the widely spread legend of Hermes as the witness, a legend that is verified for us from many sources. Nonetheless, the meaning taken in most commentaries is that of "the Good Shepherd," in the sense of Hermes, the Shepherd of Man. This was certainly the idea conveyed to the non-Egyptians by the name, however philologically unsound its form may be.

It has been no part of our task to attempt to trace the Hermes idea, for this would have led us too far from our immediate subject. There is, however, one element of that tradition which is of great interest, and to which we may draw the attention of the reader in passing. The beautiful idea of the Christ as the "Good Shepherd" is familiar to every Christian child. Why the Christ is the Shepherd of all men is shown us by this first of the marvelous treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum . In it we have the universal doctrine apart from any historical dogma, the eternal truth of an ever-recurring fact, and not the exaggeration of one instance of it.

The representation of Christ as the Good Shepherd was one of the earliest efforts of Christianity, although the prototype was far earlier than Christianity. In fact, it was exceedingly archaic. Statues of Hermes as the Kriophoros, or Hermes with a ram or lamb standing beside him, or in his arms, or on his shoulder, were one of the most favorite subjects for the chisel in Greece. We have specimens dating to the most archaic period of Greek art. Hermes in these archaic statues has a pointed cap and not the winged headdress and sandals of later art. This type in all probability goes back to Chaldean symbolic art, to the bearers of the twelve "signs of the zodiac" and the "sacred animals" of the stars. These were, in one human correspondence, the twelve "septs" or classes of priests. Here we see that the Greek tradition itself was not pure Aryan even in its so-called archaic period. Chaldea had given her wisdom to post-diluvian Greece, even as she had perchance been in relation with Greece before the Great Flood.

Conclusion

Here, then, we have another element in the Hermes idea. In fact, nowhere do we find a pure line of tradition; in every religion there are blendings and have always been blendings. There was unconscious syncretism (and conscious also) long before the days of Alexandria, for unconscious syncretism is as old as our race-bindings. Even as all men are kin, so are popular cults related; and even as the religion of nobler souls is of one paternity, so are the theosophies of all religions from one source.

One of the greatest secrets of the innermost initiated circles was the grand fact that all the great religions had their roots in one mother soil. And it was the spreading of the consciousness of this stupendous truth that subsequently gave rise to the many conscious attempts to synthesize the various phases of religion, and make "symphonies" of apparently contradictory philosophical tenets. Modern research, which is essentially critical and analytical, and rarely synthetical, classifies all these attempts under the term "syncretism" -- a word that it invariably uses in a depreciatory sense, as characterizing the blending of absolutely incompatible elements in the most uncritical fashion. But when the pendulum swings once more towards the side of synthesis, as it must do in the coming epoch -- for we are but repeating today in greater derail what happened in the early centuries -- then scholarship will once more recognize the unity of religion under the diversity of creeds and return to the original doctrine of the Hermetic Mysteries.

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