"So is it, too, with that which is manifested from them; namely,
that though it (_sci._ the Middle Distance, Incomprehensible Air) is one, it
is found to be two, male-female, having the female in itself.
"Thus is
Mind in Thought--inseparable from one another, which though one are yet found
to be two."
I believe that our Vision of the Cross sets forth in living
symbol precisely what is explained above in more "abstract" terms. It
would, however, be a mistake to make abstractions of these sublime ideas;
they must be realized as fullnesses, as transcendent realities. The Air,
the Batos, the Middle Distance, is the manifestation, or thinking-manifest,
of the Divine to Itself, the true meaning of _mā-yā_. (See
the Trismegistic Sermon, "Though Unmanifest God is most Manifest," and
the commentary, _H._, ii., 99-109).
11. I have translated the term
διαπηξἁμενος by "cross-beaming," for διαπἡγιον is a "cross-beam"; and I would
refer the reader to the famous myth of Plato known as "The Vision of Er,"
where the same idea is set forth when we read:
"There they saw the
extremities of the Boundaries of the Heaven, extended in the midst of the
Light; for this Light was the final Boundary of Heaven--_somewhat like the
undergirdings of ships_--and thus confined its whole revolution." (See _H._,
i., 440.)
This "cross-beaming" or operation of the Cross is the mode of
the energizing of the Logos. It is the simultaneous separating and joining
of the generable and the ingenerable, the two modes of the Self-generable;
it is the link between personal and impersonal, bound and free, finite
and infinite. It is the instrument of creation, male-female in
one.
12. There is little surprise, therefore, in learning that this
mystery is not the "cross of wood" which the disciple will see and has seen
in the pictures framed by his lower mind, when reading the historicized
narrative of the mystery-drama or hearing the great story. Nor is it to be
imagined that the Lord could be hung upon such a cross of wood, seeing that
He is crucified in all men--He whom even the disciple in contemplation
cannot see as He is, but can only hear the Wisdom of His Voice.
13. "I
was held to be what I am not." As to what the many say concerning the
mystery, they speak as the many vain and contradictory opinions. Nay, even
those who believed in Him have not understood; they have been content with a
poor and unworthy conception of the mystery.
The teaching seems to be
that as the Christ-story was intended to be the setting-forth of an exemplar
of what perfected man might be--namely, that the path was fully opened for
him all the way up to God--it was spiritual suicide to rest content with a
limited and prejudiced view. Every mould of thought was to be broken, every
imperfect conception was to be transcended, if there was to be
realization.
For those who cling to the outward forms and symbols the
Place of Rest is neither seen nor spoken of. This Place of Rest, this Home of
Peace, is in reality the very Cross itself, the Firm Foundation, the that on
which the whole creation rests. And if the Place of Rest, where all things
cross, and unite, the Mystic Centre of the whole system, which is everywhere,
is not seen or spoken of, "much more shall the Lord of it be neither seen
nor spoken of"--He who has the power, of the Centre, who can adjust
His "centre of gravity" at every moment of time, and therewith the attitude
of this Great Body or, if it be preferred, of his Mind, and thus be
in perpetual balance, as the Justified and the Just One.
14. The
interpretation of the Vision that follows in the text may in its turn be
interpreted from several standpoints. It may be regarded cosmicly according
to the _restauratio omnium_, when the whole creation becomes the object of
the Great Mercy, as Basilides calls it; or it may be taken soteriologically
as referring to the salvation or the making safe or sure of our humanity, or
it may be referred to the perfection of the individual man.
The
multitude of one appearance are the Earth-bound, the Hylics as the Gnostics
called them; that is, those who are immersed in things of matter, the
"delights of the world." They are the Dead, because they are under the sway
of birth-and-death, the spheres of Fate. They have not yet "risen from the
Dead," and consciously ascended the Cross of Light and Life.
Thus in the
preface to _The Book of the Gnoses of the Invisible God_, that is to say,
"The Book of the Gnosis of Jesus the Living One"--which begins with the
beautiful words: "I have loved you and longed to give you Life"--we read the
following Saying of the Lord:
"Jesus saith: Blessed is the man who
crucifieth the world, and doth not let the world crucify him."
And
later on the mystery is set forth in another Saying:
"Jesus saith:
Blessed is the man who knoweth this Word, and hath brought down the Heaven,
and borne the Earth and raised it heavenwards; and he becometh the Midst, for
it (the Midst) is a 'nothing.'" (_F._, 518, 519.)
Those who have become
spiritual, who have "risen from the Dead," are born into the Race of the
Logos, they become kin with Him.
Of this Race much has been written by
the mystics of the many different schools of these early days.
Thus
the Jewish Gnostic commentator of the Naassene Document writes:
"One is
the Nature Below which is subject to Death; and one is the Race without a
king [that is, those who are kings of themselves] which is born Above" (_H._,
i., 164.).
And the Christian Gnostic commentator refers to the "ineffable
Race of perfect men" (_H._, i., 166), who are in the Logos.
Such
_illuminati_ were called by one tradition of the Christianized Gnosis the
Race of Elxai, the Hidden Power or Holy Spirit, the Spouse of Iexai, the
Hidden Lord or Logos. (_H._, ii., 242; see my _Did Jesus live 100 B.C.?_
chap. xviii.)
Philo of Alexandria tells us that "Wisdom, who, after the
fashion of a mother, brings forth the self-taught Race, declares that God is
the Sower of it" (_H._, i., 220). This is the term he applies to his
beloved Therapeuts, adding that "this Race is rare and found with
difficulty."
Elsewhere he tells us that the angels are the "people" of
God; but there is a still higher degree of union, whereby a man becomes one
of the Race, or Kin, of God. This Race is an intimate union of all them who
are "kin to Him"; they become one. For this Race "is one, the highest one;
but 'people' is the name of many."
"As many, then, as have advanced in
discipline and instruction, and been perfected therein, have their lot among
this 'many.'
"But they who have passed beyond these introductory
exercises, becoming natural disciples of God, receiving Wisdom free from all
toil, migrate to this incorruptible and perfect Race, receiving a lot
superior to their former lives in genesis" (_H._, i., 554.).
And so in
one of the Hymns of Thrice Greatest Hermes, after the triple trisagion, the
"Hermes" or Illuminated prays:
"And fill me with Thy Power and with this
Grace of Thine, that I may give the Light to those in ignorance of the
Race--my Brethren and Thy Sons." (_H._, ii., 20.).
Philo calls it
"self-taught," just as the Buddhists speak of the Arhats as _asekha_; and the
Trismegistic teacher writes:
"This Race, my sons, is never taught; but
when He willeth it, its memory is restored by God." (_H._, ii.,
221.)
The "Elect Race" of Valentinus is the "Sonship" of Basilides
that incarnates on earth for the abolition of Death. (_F._, 303.)
In
the _Pistis Sophia_ document, the Sophia, or the soul turning towards the
Light, first utters seven repentances, or "turnings-of-the-mind," or rather
of the whole nature. At the fourth of these, the turning-point of some
subcycle of the great Return, she prays that the Image of the Light may not
be turned or averted from her, for the time is come when "those who turn in
the lowest regions" should be regarded--"the mystery which is made the type
of the Race." (_F._, 471.)
Again in the introduction to _The Book of the
Great Logos according to the Mystery_, the disciples beg the Master to
explain the Mystery of the Word. Jesus answers that the Life of His Father
consists in their purifying their souls from all earthly stain, and making
them to become the Race of the Mind, so that they may be filled with
understanding and by His teaching perfect themselves. (_F._,
528.)
Finally in the marvellous _Untitled Apocalypse_ of the Bruce Codex
we read:
"These words said the Lord of the Universe to them, and
disappeared from them, and hid Himself from them.
"And the
Births-of-matter rejoiced that they had been remembered, and were glad that
they had come out of the narrow and difficult place, and prayed to the Hidden
Mystery:
"'Give us authority that we may create for ourselves æons and
worlds according to Thy Word, upon which Thou didst agree with Thy servant;
for Thou alone art the changeless One, Thou alone the boundless,
the uncontainable, self-taught, self-born Self-father; Thou alone art
the unshakeable and unknowable; Thou alone art Silence and Love, and Source
of all; Thou alone art virgin of matter, spotless; whose Race no man
can tell, whose manifestation no man can comprehend.'" (_F._, 564.)
To
understand, man must pass beyond the stage of man, and self-realize himself
as "kin to Him"--the Logos.
It is, however, doubtful whether "Race" is
the correct reading in our text; but as it is the clear reading in 15 the
above notes are germane to our study. The MS. apparently reads "every Limb."
This again is one of the most general Gnostic mystical terms, and is taken
over from the Osiric Mysteries. The Limbs of the God are scattered abroad,
and collected together again in the resurrection. The inner meaning of this
graphic symbolism may be gleaned from the following striking
passages.
In a MS. of the Gnostic Marcus there is a description of the
method of symbolizing the Great Body of the Heavenly Man, whereby the
twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet were assigned in pairs to the
twelve Limbs. This Body was the symbol of the ideal economy, dispensation or
ordering of the universe, its planes, regions, hierarchies, and powers.
(_F._, 366.)
This also is the true Body of man, the Source of all his
bodies. And so we read the following mystery-saying in _The Gospel of
Eve_:
"I stood on a lofty mountain and saw a Great Man, and another, a
dwarf, and heard as it were a Voice of thunder, and drew nigh for to hear.
And He spake unto me and said: 'I am thou, and thou art I; and wheresoever
thou art, I am there, and in all am I sown (or scattered). And
whencesoever thou willest, thou gatherest Me; and gathering Me, thou
gatherest Thyself.'" (_F._, 439.)
This is a vision of the Great Person
and little person, of the Higher Self and lower self. It may also be
interpreted in terms of the Logos and humanity; but it comes nearer home to
think of it as the mystery of the individual man--the scattering of the Limbs
of the Great Person in the personalities that have been his in many
births.
This idea is brought out more clearly in a passage from _The
Gospel of Philip_. It is an apology or defence, as it was called, a formula
to be used by the soul in its ascent above, as it passed through the space
of the Midst; and for the mystic it is a declaration of the state of a
man who is in his last compulsory earth-life.
"I have recognised
myself, and gathered myself together from all sides. I have sown no children
for the Ruler, but have torn up his roots, and have gathered together my
Limbs that were scattered abroad. I know Thee who Thou art; for I am of those
from Above." (_Ibid._)
He has sown no children to the Ruler, the Lord of
Death; he has not contracted any fresh debt, or created a new form of
personality, into which he must again incarnate. But he has torn up the roots
of Death, by shattering the form of egoity, and bursting the bonds of Fate.
He has gathered together his Limbs, completed the articulation of his
Perfect Body.
The Limbs were according to certain orderings, one of
which was the configuration of the five-fold Star, the five-limbed Man. Thus
in _The Acts of Thomas_ we read:
"Come Thou who art more ancient far
than the five holy Limbs--Mind, Thought, Reflection, Thinking, Reasoning!
Commune with them of later birth!" (_F._, 422.)
These five Limbs are
also the five Words of the mystery of the Vesture of Light in the _Pistis
Sophia_ (p. 16), with which the Christ is clothed in power on the Day of
Triumph, the Great Day "Come unto us," when His Limbs are gathered together
and the Song of the Powers begins:
"Come unto us, for we are Thy
Fellow-Limbs. We are all one with thee. We are one and the same, and Thou art
one and the same."
In the whole document much is said of the "sweet
mysteries that are in the Limbs of the Ineffable," but it would be too long
to repeat it here. It will be perhaps of greater service to append a very
striking passage, from _The Books of the Saviour_, which has been copied into
the MS. of the _Pistis Sophia_ (pp. 253, 254):
"And they who are
worthy of the Mysteries that dwell in the Ineffable, which are those that
have not emanated--these are prior to the First Mystery. To use a similitude
and correspondence of speech that ye may understand, they are the Limbs of
the Ineffable. And each is according to the dignity of its Glory--the Head
according to the dignity of the Head, the Eye according to the dignity of the
Eye, the Ear according to the dignity of the Ear, and the rest of the Limbs
[in like fashion]; so that the matter is plain: There are many Limbs
(Members) but only one Body.
"Of this I have spoken in a plan, a
correspondence and similitude, but not in its true form; nor have I revealed
the Word in Truth, but as the Mystery of the Ineffable.
"And all the
Limbs that are in Him..., that is, they that dwell in the Mystery of the
Ineffable, and they that dwell in Him, and also the Three Spaces that follow
according to their Mysteries--of all of these in truth and verity am I the
Treasure; apart from which there is no Treasure peculiar to [this] cosmos.
But there are other Words and Mysteries and Regions [of other
worlds].
"Now, therefore, Blessed is he who hath found the Words of the
Mysteries of the Space towards the exterior. He is a God who hath found the
Words of the Mysteries of the second Space, in the midst. He is a Saviour and
free of every space who hath found the Words of the Mysteries of the
third Space towards the interior....
"But He, on the other hand, who
hath found the Words of the Mysteries which I have set forth for you
according to a similitude--namely, the Limbs of the Ineffable--Amēn I say
unto you, that man who hath found the Words of those Mysteries in the Truth
of God, he is the First in Truth, and like unto Him; for it is through these
Words and Mysteries that [all things are made] and the universe itself stands
through that First One. Therefore is he who hath found the Words of these
Mysteries, like unto the First. For it is the gnosis of the Gnosis of the
Ineffable in which I have spoken with you this day."
It is thus seen
that the means used in revealing the manner of the highest Mysteries of the
Ineffable was by the similitude of the Limbs or Members of the Body. It,
therefore, follows, as we have already seen, that this symbolism was one of
the most, if not the most, fundamental in this Gnosis. The three stages of
perfectioning are those of the Saint, God and Saviour. But these are still
stages in evolution or process, no matter how sublime they be. The fourth or
consummation is other; it transcends process, it is ever itself with itself,
embracing all processes and all powers simultaneously. But we must not be
tempted to comment on this instructive passage, for there is quite enough
material in it to develop into a small treatise in itself. For an admirable
intuition of the Mystery of the Limbs of the Ineffable, and the meaning of
the words "the Head is according to the dignity of the Head," etc., the
reader is referred to the beautiful passage in _The Untitled Apocalypse_ of
the Bruce Codex, quoted in the comments on _The Hymn of Jesus_ (pp. 54,
55).
The Gnostic seers lost themselves in the contemplation of the
simultaneous simplicity and multiplicity of these Mysteries. Thus again in
the same _Untitled Apocalypse_ we read:
"He it is whose Limbs
(Members) make a myriad of myriads of Powers, each one of which comes from
Him." (_F._, 547).
This graphic symbolism of the Limbs is derived from
the tradition of the Osiric Mysteries. Many a passage could be quoted in
illustration from _The Book of the Coming-forth by Day_, that strange and
marvellous collection of Egyptian Rituals commonly known as the _Book of the
Dead_; but perhaps the under-meaning of the mystery is nowhere more clearly
shown than in the following magnificent passage from _The Litany of the Sun_,
inscribed on the Tombs of the Kings of ancient Thebes:
"The Kingly
Osiris is an intelligent Essence. His Limbs conduct Him; His 'Fleshes' open
the way for Him. Those who are born from Him create Him. They rest when they
have caused the Kingly Osiris to be born.
"It is He who causes them to be
born. It is He who engenders them. It is He who causes them to exist. His
Birth is the Birth of Rā in Amenti. He causes the Kingly Osiris to be born;
He causes the Birth of Himself."
(See my _World-Mystery_, 2nd ed., p.
162.)
It requires no elaboration to show that this is precisely the same
mystery as the secret set forth in our Vision of the Cross. The Kingly Osiris
is Ātman, the Self, the True Man, the Monad. This is the Kingly Osiris
in his male-female nature, self-creative. Ātman is both the producer
and product of evolution. In a restricted sense the above may be
interpreted from the standpoint of the individuality and its series of
personalities in incarnation.
15. And now to return to the text. The
Race is the Upper Nature, now scattered abroad in the hearts of men; it is
the true Spirit of man, the hidden Divinity within him. It is this which
re-turns, and so causes the man to turn or repent. It is obedient, that is
audient, to the Voice of the Self, the compelling Utterance of the Logos. He
who not only hears, but hearkens to or obeys the sweet counsels of this Great
Persuasion, becomes this Upper Nature consciously; and therefore it no longer
is what it was, for it is conscious in the man, and so the man is above men
of the lower nature.
16. These mysterious sentences all set forth the
state of true Self-consciousness. So long as man is not conscious that he is
Divine, so long is the Divine in him not what it really is; the "lower"
"limits" the "higher." Union is attained by "hearkening," by "attention."
Then it is that the man becomes his Higher Self, and that Higher Self becomes
in its turn the Self, having taken his self in separation into his Self as
union.
17. This "attention" is the straining or striving towards the One;
and therefore no attention must be paid to the many. The whole strife
of warring opinions and doubts must be reconciled, or at-oned, within
the Mystery. The thought must be allowed to dwell but little on
"those without." A height must be reached from which the whole human drama
can be seen as a spectacle below and within; this height is not with regard
to space and place, but with respect to consciousness and realization
that all is taking place within the man's Great Body as the operations of
the Divine economy. They who are "without the mystery" are not
arbitrarily excluded, but are those who prefer to go forth without instead
of returning within.
18. They who have re-turned, or turned back on
themselves, and entered into themselves for the realization of true
Self-consciousness, alone can understand the meaning of the Great Passion, as
has been so admirably set forth in the Mystery-Ritual of the
Dance.
Those who have consciousness of these spiritual verities, nay,
even those who have but dimly felt their greatness, will easily understand
that the story of the crucifixion as believed in by the masses was for the
Gnostics but the shadow of an eternal happening that most intimately
concerned every man in his inmost nature.
19. The outer story was
centred round a dramatic crisis of death on a stationary cross--a dead
symbol, and a symbol of death. But the inner rite was one of movement and
"dancing," a living symbol and a symbol of life. This was shown to the
disciple--indeed, as we have seen, he was made in the Dance to partake in
it--that he might know the mystery of suffering in a moment of Great
Experience. He saw it and became it; it was shown him in action. He had seen
sorrow and suffering, and the cause of it had been dimly felt; but its
ceasing he did not yet know really, for the ceasing of sorrow could only come
when he could realize sorrow and joy, suffering and bliss, simultaneously.
And that mystery the Christ alone knows.
20. Let the disciple then first
see the suffering of the man through, not his own, but His Master's eyes. He
will first only see the mystery, grasp it intellectually; he will not as yet
realize it. When he realizes it, there will then be bliss indeed, for he will
begin to become the Master Himself. And the Master is the conqueror of
woe--not, however, in the sense of the annihilator of it, but as the one who
rejoices in it; for he knows that it is the necessary concomitant of bliss,
and that the more pain he suffers in one portion of his nature, the more
bliss he experiences in another; the deeper the one the deeper the other,
and therewith the intenser becomes his whole nature. His Great Body
is learning to respond to greater and greater impulses or
"vibrations."
The consummation is that he becomes capable of experiencing
joy in sorrow and sorrow in joy; and thus reaches to the gnosis that these
are inseparables, and that the solution of the mystery is the power of
ever experiencing both simultaneously.
21. It may thus to some extent
become clear that what is asserted of the Christ in the general Gospel-story
is typically true and yet is not true. Those who look at one side only of the
living picture see in a glass darkly.
If we could only realize that
all the ugliness and misery and confusion of life is but the underside, as it
were, of a pattern woven on the Great Loom or embroidered by Divine Fingers!
We can in our imperfect consciousness see only the underside, the medley of
crossing of threads, the knots and finishings-off; we cannot see the pattern.
Nevertheless it exists simultaneously with the underside. The Christ sees
both sides simultaneously, and understands.
22. But the term that our
Gnostic writer chooses with which to depict this grade of being is not
Christ, but Word or Reason (Logos). This Reason is not the ratiocinative
faculty in man which conditions him as a duality; it is rather more as a
Divine Monad, as Pure Reason, or that which can hold all opposites in one. It
is called Word because it is the immediate intelligible Utterance of
God.
23. This is the first mystery that man must learn to understand;
then will he be able to understand God as unity; and only finally will he
understand the greatest mystery of all--man, the personal man, the thing we
each of us now are, God in multiplicity, and why there is
suffering.
24. With this the writer breaks off, knowing fully how
difficult it is to express in human speech the living ideas that have come to
birth in him, and knowing that there are still more marvellous truths of
which he has caught some glimpse or heard some echo, but which he feels he
can in no way set forth in proper decency.
And so he tells us the Lord
is taken up, unseen by the multitudes. That is to say, presumably, no one in
the state of the multiplicity of the lower nature can behold the vision of
unity.
25. When he descends from the height of contemplation, however,
he remembers enough to enable him to laugh at the echoes of his former
doubts and fancies and misconceptions, and to make him realize the
marvellous power of the natural living symbolic language that underlies the
words of the mystery-narrative that sets forth the story of the
Christ.
POSTCRIPT.
The vision itself is not so
marvellous as the instruction; nevertheless it allows us to see that the
Cross in its supernal nature is the Heavenly Man with arms outstretched in
blessing, showering benefits on all--the perpetual Self-sacrifice (_F._,
330). And in this connection we should remind ourselves of the following
striking sentence from _The Untitled Apocalypse_ of the Bruce Codex, an
apocalypse which contains perhaps the most sublime visions that have survived
to us from the Gnosis:
"The Outspreading of His Hands is the
manifestation of the Cross."
And then follows the key of the
mystery:
"The Source of the Cross is the Man [Logos] whom no man can
comprehend."
(See _Hymn of Jesus_, p. 53.)
No man can comprehend
Man; the little cannot contain the Great, except potentially.
It was
some echo of this sublime teaching that found its way into the naive though
allegorical narrative of _The Acts of Philip_. When Philip was crucified he
cursed his enemies.
"And behold suddenly the abyss was opened, and
the whole of the place in which the proconsul was sitting was swallowed
up, and the whole of the temple, and the viper which they worshipped,
and great crowds, and the priests of the viper, about seven thousand
men, besides women and children, except where the apostles were; they
remained unshaken."
This is a cataclysm in which the lower nature
of the man is engulfed. The apostles are his higher powers; the rest the
opposing forces. The latter plunge into Hades and experience the punishments
of those who crucify the Christ and his apostles. They are thus converted and
sing their repentance. Whereupon a Voice was heard saying: "I shall be
merciful to you in the Cross of Light."
Philip is reproved by the
Saviour for his unmerciful spirit.
"But I, O Philip, will not endure
thee, because thou hast swallowed up the men in the abyss; but behold My
Spirit is in them, and I will bring them up from the dead; and thus they,
seeing thee, shall believe in the Glory of Him that sent thee.
"And
the Saviour having turned, stretched up His hand, and marked a Cross in the
Air coming down from Above even unto the Abyss, and it was full of Light, and
had its form after the likeness of a ladder. And all the multitude that had
gone down from the City into the Abyss came up on the Ladder of the Cross of
Light; but there remained below the proconsul and the viper which these
worshipped. And when the multitude had come up, having looked upon Philip
hanging head downwards, they lamented with great lamentation at the lawless
action which they had done."
The doers of the "lawless" deed are the same
as the "lawless Jews" in the _Acts of John_--"those who are under the law of
the lawless Serpent"; that is to say, those who are under the sway of
Generation, as contrasted with those under the law of Re-generation (see
_Hymn of Jesus_, pp. 28, 47).
Philip stands for the man learning the last
lesson of divine mercy. The Proconsul and the Viper are the antitypes of the
Saviour and the Serpent of Wisdom. The crucifixion of Philip is, however, not
the same as the crucifixion of the Christ; he is hanged reversed, his head to
the earth and not towards heaven. It is a lower grade of the
mysteries.
Concerning the mystery of the crucifixion of the Christ we
learn somewhat of its inner nature from the doctrines of the
Docetæ.
His baptism was on this wise: He washed Himself in the Jordan,
that is the Stream of the Logos, and after His purification in the
Life-giving Water, He became possessed of a spiritual or perfect body, the
type and signature of which were in accordance with the matter of his
virginity, that is of virgin substance; so that when the World-ruler, or God
of generation or death, condemned his own plasm, the physical body, to
death, that is to the Cross, the soul nourished in that physical body might
strip off the body of flesh, and nail it to the "tree," and yet triumph over
the powers of the Ruler and not be found naked, but clothed in a robe
of glory. Hence the saying: "Except a man be born of Water and the Spirit
he cannot enter into the Kingship of the Heavens; that which is born of
the flesh is flesh." (_F._, p. 221).
It was because of these and such
like ideas, and in the conviction that the mystery of the crucifixion was to
be worked out in every man, that a Gnostic writer, following the Valentinian
tradition, explains a famous passage in the Pauline _Letter to the Ephesians_
as follows:
"'For this cause I bow my knees to the God and Father and
Lord of our Lord Jesus Christ, that God may vouchsafe to you that Christ may
dwell in your inner man'--that is to say, the psychic and not the bodily
man--'that ye may be strong to know what is the Depth'--that is, the Father
of the universals--'and what is the Breadth'--that is the Cross, the Boundary
of the Plērōma [or Fullness]--'and what is the Greatness'--that is,
the Plērōma of the æons [the eternities or universals, the Limbs of
the Body of the Ineffable]." (_F._, 532).
To be closely compared with
the Vision in _The Acts of John_ is the Address of Andrew to the Cross in
_The Acts of Andrew_. They both plainly belong to the same tradition, and
might indeed have been written by the same hand.
"Rejoicing I come to
thee, Thou Cross, the Life-giver, Cross whom I now know to be mine. I know
thy mystery; for thou hast been planted in the world to make-fast things
unstable.
"Thy head stretcheth up into heaven, that thou mayest
symbol-forth the Heavenly Logos, the Head of all things.
"Thy middle
parts are stretched forth, as it were hands to right and left, to put to
flight the envious and hostile power of the Evil One, that thou mayest gather
together into one them [_sci._, the Limbs] that are scattered
abroad.
"Thy foot is set in the earth, sunk in the deep [_i.e._, abyss],
that thou mayest draw up those that lie beneath the earth and are held fast
in the regions beneath it, and mayest join them to those in heaven.
"O
Cross, engine, most skilfully devised, of Salvation, given unto men by the
Highest; O Cross, invincible trophy of the Conquest of Christ o'er His foes;
O Cross, thou life-giving tree, roots planted on earth, fruit treasured in
heaven; O Cross most venerable, sweet thing and sweet name; O Cross most
worshipful, who bearest as grapes the Master, the true vine, who dost bear,
too, the Thief as thy fruit, fruitage of faith through confession; thou who
bringest the worthy to God through the Gnosis and summonest sinners home
through repentance!"
A magnificent address indeed. The identification of
the Master and the man with the Cross and in the Cross is hardly disguised.
The Cross is the Tree of Life and the tree of death simultaneously. "Give up
thy life that thou mayest live," says that inspired mystic treatise, _The
Voice of the Silence_, and this is no other than the secret of the Mystery of
the Cross. The Master is hanged between two thieves, the one repentant and
the other obdurate, the soul turned towards the Light and towards
the Darkness, all united in the one Mystery of the Cross--the Mystery of
Man.
We have seen above that Philip is hanged head downwards, but he is
not the most famous instance of this reversal. The best known is
associated with the name of Peter in the mystic romances.
Thus in a
fragment of the Linus-collection called _The Martyrdom of Peter_, we learn
the doctrine as set forth in a speech put into the mouth of Peter thus
crucified:
"Fitly wast Thou alone stretched on the Cross with head on
high, O Lord, who hast redeemed all of the world from sin.
"I have
desired to imitate Thee in Thy Passion too; yet would I not take on myself to
be hanged upright.
"For we, pure men and sinners, are born from Adam, but
Thou art God of God, Light of true Light, before all æons and after them;
thought worthy to become for men Man without strain of man, Thou has stood
forth man's glorious Saviour--Thou ever upright, ever raised on high,
eternally Above!
"We, men according to the flesh, are sons of the First
Man (Adam), who sank his being in the earth, whose fall in human generation
is shown forth.
"For we are brought to birth in such a way, that we do
seem to be poured into earth, so that the right is left, the left doth right
become; in that our state is changed in those who are the authors of this
life.
"For this world down below doth think the right what is the
left--this world in which Thou, Lord, hast found us like the Ninevites, and
by Thy holy preaching hast thou rescued these about to die."
The
"authors of this life" of reversal, are the "parents" of the "lower nature";
not our natural parents whom we are to love, but the powers of illusion we
are to abandon. The Jonah-myth was used as a type of the Initiate, who after
being "three days" in the Belly of the Fish, the Great Life or Animal that
dwells in the Ocean or Great Water, is vomited forth re-generate, and so a
fit vehicle for preaching with compelling words or acts for the benefit of
those in Nineveh or the Jerusalem Below, or this world.
But for those
who had ears to hear there was a still further instruction concerning the
secret of the Mystic Cross.
"But ye, my brothers, who have the right to
hear, lend me the ears of your heart, and understand what now must be
revealed to you--the hidden mystery of every nature and secret source of
every thing composed.
"For the First Man, whose race I represent by my
position, with head reversed, doth symbolize the birth into destruction; for
that his birth was death and lacked the Life-stream.
"But of His own
compassion the Power Above came down into the world, by means of corporal
substance, to him who by a just decree had been cast down into the earth, and
hanged upon the Cross, and by the means of this most holy calling [the Cross]
He did restore us, and did make for us these present things (which had till
then remained unchanged by men's unrighteous error) into the Left, and those
that men had taken for the Left into eternal things.
"In exaltation of
the Right He hath changed all the signs into their proper nature, considering
as good those thought not good, and those men thought malefic most
benign.
"Whence in a mystery the Lord hath said: 'If ye make not the
Right like to the Left, the Left like to the Right, Above as the Below,
Before as the Behind, ye shall not know God's Kingdom.'"
(This saying
is from _The Gospel according to the Egyptians_.)
"This saying have I
made manifest in myself, my brothers; this is the way in which your eyes of
flesh behold me hanging. It figures forth the Way of the First
Man.
"But ye, beloved, hearing these words, and, by conversion of your
nature and changing of your life, perfecting them, even as ye have turned
you from that Way of Error where ye trod, unto the most sure state of
Faith, so keep ye running, and strive towards the Peace that calls you
from Above, living the holy life. For that the Way in which ye travel there
is Christ.
"Therefore with Jesus, Christ, true God, ascend the Cross.
He hath been made for us the One and Only Word; whence also doth the Spirit
say: 'Christ is the Word and Voice of God.'
"The Word in truth is
symbolled forth by that straight stem on which I hang. As for the
Voice--since that voice is a thing of flesh, with features not to be ascribed
unto God's nature, the cross-piece of the Cross is thought to figure forth
that human nature which suffered the fault of change in the First Man, but by
the help of God-and-man received again its real Mind.
"Right in the
centre, joining twain in one, is set the nail of discipline--conversion and
repentance." (_F._, 446-449.)
The interpretation becomes somewhat
strained towards the end. The reversed hanging typified the man of sex, or
the man still under the sway of generation, separated into male and female.
Such hang head-downwards in the Great Womb of Nature, and all is reversed for
them. Hanged upright, the re-generate man contains in himself in active
operation the twin powers in union, now used for spiritual creation, and
self-perfection.
And if it be thought that there is abandonment of any
thing in this consummation, then let it be known that it is only a giving up
of the part for the whole, the passing from the state of separation to the
realization of inexpressible bliss; for as the inspired writer of _The
Untitled Apocalypse_ phrases it in an ecstasy of enthusiasm:
"This is
the eternal Father; this the ineffable, unthinkable, incomprehensible,
untranscendible Father. He it is in whom the All became joyous; it rejoiced
and was joyful, and brought forth in its joy myriads of myriads of Æons; they
were called the 'Births of Joy,' because the All had joyed with the
Father.
"These are the worlds from which the Cross upsprang; out of
these incorporeal Members did the Man arise." (_F._, 550). |
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