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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gnostic Crucifixion, by G. R. S. Mead
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Gnostic Crucifixion
+
+Author: G. R. S. Mead
+
+Release Date: April 1, 2011 [EBook #35735]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION
+
+
+
+
+WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+                                      _Net._
+
+  THRICE GREATEST HERMES (3 vols.)      30/-
+
+  FRAGMENTS OF A FAITH FORGOTTEN        10/6
+
+  DID JESUS LIVE 100 B.C.?               9/-
+
+  THE WORLD-MYSTERY                      5/-
+
+  THE GOSPEL AND THE GOSPELS             4/6
+
+  APOLLONIUS OF TYANA                    3/6
+
+  THE UPANISHADS (2 vols.)               3/-
+
+  PLOTINUS                               1/-
+
+
+
+
+  ECHOES FROM THE GNOSIS
+
+  BY G. R. S. MEAD
+
+  VOL. VII.
+
+
+  THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION
+
+
+  THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY
+  LONDON AND BENARES
+  1907
+
+
+  PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
+
+
+
+
+ECHOES FROM THE GNOSIS.
+
+
+Under this general title is now being published a series of small volumes,
+drawn from, or based upon, the mystic, theosophic and gnostic writings of
+the ancients, so as to make more easily audible for the ever-widening
+circle of those who love such things, some echoes of the mystic
+experiences and initiatory lore of their spiritual ancestry. There are
+many who love the life of the spirit, and who long for the light of
+gnostic illumination, but who are not sufficiently equipped to study the
+writings of the ancients at first hand, or to follow unaided the labours
+of scholars. These little volumes are therefore intended to serve as
+introduction to the study of the more difficult literature of the subject;
+and it is hoped that at the same time they may become for some, who have,
+as yet, not even heard of the Gnosis, stepping-stones to higher things.
+
+G. R. S. M.
+
+
+
+
+THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                             PAGE
+
+  PREFACE                       9
+
+  THE VISION OF THE CROSS      12
+
+  COMMENTS                     20
+
+  POSTCRIPT                    69
+
+
+TEXTS
+
+Bonnet (M.), _Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha_ (Leipzig, 1898).
+
+James (M. R.), _Apocrypha Anecdota, T. & S._, v. i. (Cambridge, 1897).
+
+
+_F._ = _Fragments of a Faith Forgotten_, 2nd. ed. (London, 1906).
+
+_H._ = _Thrice Greatest Hermes_ (London, 1906).
+
+
+
+
+ECHOES FROM THE GNOSIS
+
+
+  VOL. I.   THE GNOSIS OF THE MIND.
+  VOL. II.  THE HYMNS OF HERMES.
+  VOL. III. THE VISION OF ARIDÆUS.
+  VOL. IV.  THE HYMN OF JESUS.
+  VOL. V.   THE MYSTERIES OF MITHRA.
+  VOL. VI.  A MITHRIAC RITUAL.
+  VOL. VII. THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION.
+
+
+SOME PROPOSED SUBJECTS FOR FORTHCOMING VOLUMES
+
+  THE CHALDÆAN ORACLES.
+  THE HYMN OF THE PRODIGAL.
+  SOME ORPHIC FRAGMENTS.
+
+
+
+
+THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The Gnostic Mystery of the Crucifixion is most clearly set forth in the
+new-found fragments of _The Acts of John_, and follows immediately on the
+Sacred Dance and Ritual of Initiation which we endeavoured to elucidate in
+Vol. IV. of these little books, in treating of _The Hymn of Jesus_.
+
+The reader is, therefore, referred to the "Preamble" of that volume for a
+short introduction concerning the nature of the Gnostic Acts in general
+and of the Leucian _Acts of John_ in particular. I would, however, add a
+point of interest bearing on the date which was forgotten, though I have
+frequently remarked upon it when lecturing on the subject.
+
+The strongest proof that we have in our fragment very early material is
+found in the text itself, when it relates the following simple form of the
+miracle of the loaves.
+
+"Now if at any time He were invited by one of the Pharisees and went to
+the bidding, we used to go with Him. And before each was set a single loaf
+by the host; and of them He Himself also received one. Then He would give
+thanks and divide His loaf among us; and from this little each had enough,
+and our own loaves were saved whole, so that those who bade Him were
+amazed."
+
+If the marvellous narratives of the feeding of the five thousand had been
+already in circulation, it is incredible that this simple story, which we
+may so easily believe, should have been invented. Of what use, when the
+minds of the hearers had been strung to the pitch of faith which had
+already accepted the feeding of the five thousand as an actual physical
+occurrence, would it have been to invent comparatively so small a wonder?
+On the other hand, it is easy to believe that from similar simple stories
+of the power of the Master, which were first of all circulated in the
+inner circles, the popular narratives of the multitude-feeding miracles
+could be developed. We, therefore, conclude, with every probability, that
+we have here an indication of material of very early date.
+
+Nevertheless when we come to the Mystery of the Crucifixion as set forth
+in our fragment, we are not entitled to argue that the popular history was
+developed from it in a similar fashion. The problem it raises is of
+another order, and to it we will return when the reader has been put in
+possession of the narrative, as translated from Bonnet's text. John is
+supposed to be the narrator.
+
+(The Arabic figures and the Roman figures in square brackets refer
+respectively to Bonnet's and James' texts. I have added the side figures
+for convenience of reference in the comments.)
+
+
+
+
+THE VISION OF THE CROSS.
+
+
+1. [97 (xii.)] And having danced these things with us, Beloved, the Lord
+went out. And we, as though beside ourselves, or wakened out of sleep,
+fled each our several ways.
+
+2. I, however, though I saw the beginning of His passion could not stay to
+the end, but fled unto the Mount of Olives weeping over that which had
+befallen.
+
+3. And when He was hung on the tree of the cross, at the sixth hour of the
+day darkness came over the whole earth.
+
+And my Lord stood in the midst of the Cave, and filled it with light, and
+said:
+
+4. "John, to the multitude below, in Jerusalem, I am being crucified, and
+pierced with spears and reeds, and vinegar and gall is being given Me to
+drink. To thee now I speak, and give ear to what I say. 'Twas I who put it
+in thy heart to ascend this Mount, that thou mightest hear what disciple
+should learn from Master, and man from God."
+
+5. [98 (xiii.)] And having thus spoken, He showed me a Cross of Light set
+up, and round the Cross a vast multitude, and therein one form and a
+similar appearance, and in the Cross another multitude not having one
+form.
+
+6. And I beheld the Lord Himself above the Cross. He had, however, no
+shape, but only as it were a voice--not, however, this voice to which we
+are accustomed, but one of its own kind and beneficent and truly of God,
+saying unto me:
+
+7. "John, one there needs must be to hear those things, from Me; for I
+long for one who will hear.
+
+8. "This Cross of Light is called by Me for your sakes sometimes Word
+(Logos), sometimes Mind, sometimes Jesus, sometimes Christ, sometimes
+Door, sometimes Way, sometimes Bread, sometimes Seed, sometimes
+Resurrection, sometimes Son, sometimes Father, sometimes Spirit, sometimes
+Life, sometimes Truth, sometimes Faith, sometimes Grace.
+
+9. "Now those things [it is called] as towards men; but as to what it is
+in truth, itself in its own meaning to itself, and declared unto Us, [it
+is] the defining (or delimitation) of all things, both the firm necessity
+of things fixed from things unstable, and the 'harmony' of Wisdom.
+
+10. "And as it is Wisdom in 'harmony,' there are those on the Right and
+those on the Left--powers, authorities, principalities, and dæmons,
+energies, threats, powers of wrath, slanderings--and the Lower Root from
+which hath come forth the things in genesis.
+
+11 [99]. "This, then, is the Cross which by the Word (Logos) hath been the
+means of 'cross-beaming' all things--at the same time separating off the
+things that proceed from genesis and those below it [from those above],
+and also compacting them all into one.
+
+12. "But this is not the cross of wood which thou shalt see when thou
+descendest hence; nor am I he that is upon the cross--[I] whom now thou
+seest not, but only hearest a voice.
+
+13. "I was held [to be] what I am not, not being what I was to many
+others; nay, they will call Me something else, abject and not worthy of
+Me. As, then, the Place of Rest is neither seen nor spoken of, much more
+shall I, the Lord of it, be neither seen [nor spoken of].
+
+14. [100 (xiv.)] "Now the multitude of one appearance round the Cross is
+the Lower Nature. And as to those whom thou seest in the Cross, if they
+have not also one form, [it is because] the whole Race (or every Limb) of
+Him who descended hath not yet been gathered together.
+
+15. "But when the Upper Nature, yea, the Race that is coming unto Me, in
+obedience to My Voice, is taken up, then thou who now hearkenest to Me,
+shalt become it, and it shall no longer be what it is now, but above them
+as I am now.
+
+16. "For so long as thou callest not thyself Mine, I am not what I am. But
+if thou hearkenest unto Me, hearing, thou, too, shalt be as I [am], and I
+shall be what I was, when thou [art] as I am with Myself; for from this
+thou art.
+
+17. "Pay no attention, then, to the many, and them that are without the
+mystery think little of; for know that I am wholly with the Father and the
+Father with Me.
+
+18. [101 (xv.)] "Nothing, then, of the things which they will say of Me
+have I suffered; nay that Passion as well which I showed unto thee and the
+rest, by dancing [it], I will that it be called a mystery.
+
+19. "What thou art, thou seest; this did I show unto thee. But what I am,
+this I alone know, [and] none else.
+
+20. "What, then, is Mine suffer Me to keep; but what is thine see thou
+through Me. To see Me as I really am I said is not possible, but only what
+thou art able to recognise, as being kin [to Me] (or of the same Race).
+
+21. "Thou hearest that I suffered; yet I did not suffer: that I suffered
+not; yet I did suffer: that I was pierced; yet was I not smitten: that I
+was hanged; yet I was not hanged: that blood flowed from me; yet it did
+not flow: and in a word the things they say about Me I had not, and the
+things they do not say those I suffered. Now what they are I will riddle
+for thee; for I know that thou wilt understand.
+
+22. "Understand, therefore, in Me, the slaying of a Word (Logos), the
+piercing of a Word, the blood of a Word, the wounding of a Word, the
+hanging of a Word, the passion of a Word, the nailing (or putting
+together) of a Word, the death of a Word.
+
+23. "And thus I speak separating off the man. First, then, understand the
+Word, then shalt thou understand the Lord, and in the third place [only]
+the man and what he suffered."
+
+24. [102 (xvi.)] And having said these things to me, and others which I
+know not how to say as He Himself would have it, He was taken up, no one
+of the multitude beholding Him.
+
+25. And when I descended I laughed at them all, when they told Me what
+they did concerning Him, firmly possessed in myself of this [truth] only,
+that the Lord contrived all things symbolically, and according to [His]
+dispensation for the conversion and salvation of man.
+
+
+
+
+COMMENTS.
+
+
+The translation is frequently a matter of difficulty, for the text has
+been copied in a most careless and unintelligent fashion, so that the
+ingenuity of the editors has often been taxed to the utmost and has not
+infrequently completely broken down. It is of course quite natural that
+orthodox scribes should blunder when transcribing Gnostic documents, owing
+to their ignorance of the subject and their strangeness to the ideas; but
+this particular copyist is at times quite barbarous, and as the subject is
+deeply mystical and deals with the unexpected, the reconstruction of the
+original reading is a matter of great difficulty. With a number of
+passages I am still unsatisfied, though I hope they are somewhat nearer
+the spirit of the original than other reconstructions which have been
+attempted.
+
+It is always a matter of difficulty for the rigidly objective mind to
+understand the point of view of the Gnostic scripture-writers. One thing,
+however, is certain: they lived in times when the rigid orthodoxy of the
+canon was not yet established. They were in the closest touch with the
+living tradition of scripture-writing, and they knew the manner of it.
+
+The probability is that paragraphs 1-3 are from the pen of the redactor or
+compiler of the _Acts_, and that the narrative, beginning with the words
+"And my Lord stood in the midst of the Cave," is incorporated from prior
+material--a mystic vision or apocalypse circulated in the inner circles.
+
+The compiler knows the general Gospel-story, and seems prepared to admit
+its historical basis; at the same time he knows well that the story
+circulated among the people is but the outer veil of the mystery, and so
+he hands on what we may well believe was but one of many visions of the
+mystic crucifixion.
+
+The gentle contempt of those who had entered into the mystery, for those
+unknowing ones who would fain limit the crucifixion to one brief historic
+event, is brought out strongly, and savours, though mildly, of the
+bitterness of the struggle between the two great forces of the inner and
+spiritualizing and the outer and materializing traditions.
+
+1. The disciples flee after beholding the inner mystery of the Passion and
+At-one-ment as set forth in the initiating drama of the Mystic Dance which
+formed the subject of our fourth volume.
+
+2. Yet even John the Beloved, in spite of this initiation, cannot yet bear
+the thought that his Master did actually suffer historically as a
+malefactor on the physical cross. In his distress he flees unto the Mount
+of Olives, above Jerusalem.
+
+But to the Gnostic the Mount of Olives was no physical hill, though it was
+a mount in the physical, and Jerusalem no physical city, though a city in
+the physical. The Mount, however it might be distinguished locally, was
+the Height of Contemplation, and the bringing into activity of a certain
+inner consciousness; even as Jerusalem here was the Jerusalem below, the
+physical consciousness.
+
+3. The sentence "when He was hung on the tree of the Cross" contains a
+great puzzle. The word for "tree" in the original is _batos_; this may
+mean the "bush" or "tree" of the cross. But the Cross for the Gnostics was
+a living symbol. It was not only the cross of dead wood, or the dead trunk
+of a tree lopped of its branches--a symbol of Osiris in death; it was also
+the Tree of Life, and was equated with the "Fiery Bush" out of which the
+Angel of God spake to Moses--that is the Tree of Fiery Life, in the
+Paradise of man's inner nature, whence the Word of God expresses itself to
+one who is worthy to hear. And this Tree of Life was also, as the Cross,
+the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; indeed, both are but one Tree, for
+the fruit of the Tree of Life is the knowledge of good and evil, the cross
+of the opposites.
+
+But seeing that the word _batos_ in Greek had also another meaning, the
+Gnostics, by their method of mystical word-play, based on the power of
+sound, brought this further meaning into use for the expansion of the
+idea. The difference of accentuation and of gender (though the reading of
+the Septuagint is masculine and not feminine as is usual with _batos_ in
+the sense of bush or tree) presented no difficulty to the word-alchemy of
+these allegorists.
+
+Hippolytus, in his _Refutation of all Heretics_, attempts to summarize a
+system of the Christianized Gnosis which is assigned to the Docetæ; and
+Docetism is precisely the chief characteristic of our _Acts of John_, as
+we have already pointed out in Vol. IV. In this unsympathetic summary
+there is a passage which throws some light on our puzzle. It would, of
+course, require a detailed analysis of our hæresiologist's "refutation" of
+the Docetic system to make the passage to which we refer (_op. cit._,
+viii., 9) fully comprehensible; but as this would be too lengthy an
+undertaking for these short comments, we must content ourselves with a
+bald statement.
+
+The pure spiritual emanations or ideas or intelligences of the Light
+descend into the lowest Darkness of matter. For the moulding of vehicles
+or bodies for them it is necessary to call in the aid of the God of Fire,
+the creative or rather formative Power, who is "Living Fire begotten of
+Light."
+
+Hippolytus summarizes, doubtless imperfectly, from the Docetic document
+that lay before him, as follows:
+
+"Moses refers to this God as the Fiery God who spake from the _Batos_,
+that is to say, from the Dark Air; for _Batos_ is all the Air subjected to
+Darkness."
+
+That is, presumably, the material Air, Air of the Darkness, as compared
+with the spiritual Air or Air of the Light. The Docetic writer, Hippolytus
+says, explained the use of the term as follows:
+
+"Moses called it _Batos_, because, in their passing from Above, Below, all
+the Ideas of the Light [that is, the Light-sparks or spirits of men] used
+the Air as their means of passage (_batos_)."
+
+In other words _Batos_, as Air, was the link between Light and Darkness,
+which Darkness was regarded as essentially a flowing or Watery chaos. The
+Batos was the Way Down and the Way Up of souls.
+
+We are not, however, to suppose that the origin of this idea was the text
+of _Exodus_. By no means; the idea came first, indeed was fundamental with
+the Gnosis; the mystic exegesis of the "burning bush" passage was an
+exercise in ingenuity. For the Gnosis, the that which at once separated
+and united the Light and the Darkness was the Cross. The Angel of God
+speaking to Moses out of the Fiery Batos was for the Christian Gnostics
+one of the most striking apocalypses of ancient Jewish scripture; and it
+was primarily one of the chief functions of the Gnosis to throw light on
+the under-meaning. This the Docetic exegete does in his own fashion, using
+the reading of the Greek Targum or Translation of the Seventy, in this
+wise: "_Batos?_ _Batos_ does not mean 'bush' really, but 'medium of
+transmission,'" It is by means of this that the Word of God comes unto
+us--namely, by the mystery of the uniter-separator in one, which was
+called by many names.
+
+For instance, in setting forth the Sophia-mythus, or Wisdom-story, or
+mystery of cosmogenesis, of the Valentinian school, Hippolytus (_op.
+cit._, vi. 3), treats of the Cross as the final mystery of all. With
+original documents before him, he writes:
+
+"Now it is called Boundary, because it bounds off the Deficiency from the
+Fullness [so as to make it] exterior to it; it is called Partaker because
+it partakes of the Deficiency as well; and it is called Cross (or Stock)
+because it hath been fixed immovably and unchangeably, so that nothing of
+the Deficiency should be able to approach the eternities within the
+Fullness."
+
+Here it is useless to tie oneself to the physical symbol of a cross. The
+Stauros (Cross) in its true self is a living idea, a reality or
+root-principle. It is the principle of separation and limit, dividing
+entity from non-entity, being from non-being, perfection from
+imperfection, fullness or sufficiency from deficiency or
+insufficiency--Light from Darkness. It is the that which causes all
+opposites. At the same time it shares in all opposites, for it is the
+immediate emanation of the Father Himself, and therefore unites while
+separating. It is, therefore, the principle of participation or sharing
+in, sharing in both the Fullness and the Deficiency. Finally, it is the
+Stock or Pillar as that which "has stood, stands and will stand"--the
+principle of immobility, as the energy of the Father in His aspect of the
+supreme Individuality that changes not, because he is Lord of the
+ever-changing.
+
+That such a master-idea is difficult to grasp goes without saying; it was
+confessedly the supreme mystery. From it the mind, the formal mind of man,
+"falls back unable to grasp it"; for it is precisely this personal mind
+that creates duality, and insinuates itself between cause and effect. The
+spiritual Mind alone can embrace the opposites.
+
+But to return to our text. "When He was hung on the _batos_ of the
+Cross"--when He had reached the state of balance, was in the mystic
+centre--then at the sixth hour, that is mid-day, when there was greatest
+light, there was also greatest darkness.
+
+And then when the Lord, the Higher Self of the man, was balanced and
+justified, the man, the disciple, became conscious, in the cave of his
+heart--that is to say, in his inmost substantial nature--of the Presence
+of Light.
+
+4. Thereon follow the illumination and the explanation of the familiar
+drama of appearance taught to those "without the mystery."
+
+"The multitude below in Jerusalem" is the lower nature of the man, his
+unillumined mind. "Jerusalem Below" is set over against "Jerusalem Above,"
+the City of God. Jerusalem Below is that nature in him that is still
+unordered and unpurified; while Jerusalem Above is that ordered and
+purified portion of his substance that can respond to the immediate
+shining of the Light, which further orders it according to the Ordering of
+Heaven.
+
+And yet the drama below is real enough; there are ever crucifixion and
+piercing and the drinking of vinegar and gall, before the triumphant
+Christ is born. It is by such means that His Body is conformed; it is the
+mystery of the transformation of what we call evil into good. The Body of
+the Christ is perfected by the absorption of the impersonal evil of the
+world, which He transmutes into blessing.
+
+"'Twas I who put it in thy heart to ascend this Mount." I am thy Self, thy
+true God; 'twas I energizing in thee who enabled thee to rise to the
+height of contemplation, where thou canst "hear what disciple should learn
+from Master and man from God." The man has now reached the stage of Hearer
+in the Spiritual Mysteries.
+
+5. There then follows the vision of the great Cross of Light, fixed firm,
+and stretching from earth to heaven. Round its foot on earth is a vast
+multitude of all the nations of the world; they resemble one another in
+that they are configured according to the Darkness, their "Spark burns
+low." On the Cross, or in it, for doubtless the seer saw within as well as
+without, was another multitude of various grades of light, being formed
+into some marvellous Image like unto the Divine, but not yet completed--as
+it might be the Rose on the Cross, in the famous symbol of the
+Rosicrucians.
+
+6. And above the Cross, lost in the dazzling brilliancy of the Fullness,
+John beheld the Lord; he _beheld_ but could not _see_, because of the
+Great Light, as we are told in another great vision of the Master in the
+_Pistis Sophia_. He can hear only a Voice. But this Voice is no voice of
+man, but one "truly of God"--a Bath-kol or "Heavenly Voice," as the Rabbis
+called it--a Voice of sweetest reasonableness, using no words, but of a
+higher order of utterance, that can make the man speak to himself in his
+own language, using his own terms.
+
+7. The sentence "I long for one who will hear," is instinct with the
+yearning of the Divine Love, the eagerness to bestow, the longing to speak
+if only there be one to hear.
+
+8. There then follows a list of synonyms of the Cross, every one of which
+shows that the Cross, if a symbol, must be taken to denote the
+master-symbol of all symbols. It is the key to the chief nomenclature of
+the Gnosis and the greatest terms of the Gospel. These terms, it is
+stated, are used by the Wisdom "for your sakes," that is, to bring home in
+many ways to the hearts of men the intuition of the mystery.
+
+As is explained later on in the text, the mystery of the Cross is the
+mystery of the Word, the Spiritual Man, or Great Man, the Divine
+Individuality. Therefore is it called Word or Reason, Mind, Jesus and
+Christ. Son and Father; for Jesus is the Christ, both as human and divine,
+the two natures uniting in one in the Cross; and the Son is the Father in
+a still more divine meaning of the mystery; for both Son and Cross are of
+the Father alone, they are Himself manifesting Himself to Himself. The
+whole is the mystery of Ātman or the Self.
+
+The Door is the Door of the Two in One, the state of equilibrium of the
+opposites which opens out into the all-embracing consciousness and
+understanding of all oppositions.
+
+The Cross is the Way on which there is no travelling, for it perpetually
+enters into itself; it is the true Meth-od, not so much in the sense of
+the Way-between or the Medium or Mediator, as in the sense of the Means of
+Gnosis.
+
+It is also called Seed because it is the mystery of the power of growth
+and development; it is self-initiative.
+
+And if the Cross be Son and Father in separation and union, or as
+simultaneously Cause and Result, it is likewise Spirit or Ātman, and
+therefore Life.
+
+It is also Truth or the Perpetual Paradox, distinguishing and uniting in
+itself all pros and cons, and all analysis and synthesis in simultaneous
+operation.
+
+Therefore also is it called Faith, because it is the that which is stable
+and unchanging amid perpetual change. Faith in its true mystic meaning
+seems to denote the power of withdrawing the personal consciousness from
+between the pairs of opposites, where these appear external and other than
+oneself, and embracing the opposites within the greater consciousness,
+when they are within oneself and appear as natural processes in the great
+economy.
+
+Faith is of the contemplative mind; it embraces, it includes. It is
+therefore of the Great Mother, as the life and substance of the Cross; so
+also is it of Grace, elsewhere called Wisdom.
+
+Finally, the Cross regarded from this point of view is called Bread, the
+substance of Life.
+
+In a remarkable paper in _The Theosophical Review_, Nov., 1907, E. R.
+Innes speaks of a vision of a great drama of those Powers beyond the
+mind-spheres, which in the Indian scriptures are called Food and
+Eater--that is to say, the mystical union between the Not-self and the
+Self.
+
+In the _Chhāndogyopaniṣhad_, for instance, we read of one who had
+passed into the heaven-world possessing a knowledge of the identity of the
+Self and Not-self. The transformations of his vehicles that thus occur in
+the inner states or worlds become as it were processes of natural
+digestion in his Great Body, for we read:
+
+"Having what food he wills, what form he wills, this song he singing sits:
+
+  "'O wonder, wonder, wonder!
+  Food I; food I; food I!
+  Food-eater I; food-eater I; food-eater I!'"
+
+(See my _World-Mystery_, 2nd ed., p. 179.)
+
+Our author in similar fashion writes of a soul watching the processes of
+its own substance in the heaven-world.
+
+"She watched the interaction of those two great currents of the One Great
+Life-Force--the Life-Force as Supporter, the Life-Force as Sustainer. She
+watched the great transfiguration of the crossing over of the
+surface-forms as life met life in perfect mystic union. As the currents
+crossed the forms changed, but without loss of life or consciousness. The
+Powers crossed and recrossed; and with each appearance of that sacred
+symbol there was further expansion and intensification of the Life-Force.
+At each piercing or insinuation of the one into the other, that which had
+been two became one, yet there still remained the two. She watched the
+great mystery of that Cross on which the Heavenly Man dies in order to
+live again.
+
+"In heaven you do not demolish forms in order to sustain life, you daily
+insinuate yourself into all the forms you meet, and thus by supplying them
+with food, the food of your own greater life, you become each separate
+object, and gain in power and expansiveness. Thus in heaven by sacrifice
+do you grow and live, and slowly become the world. Thus in heaven do you
+give life to others in order to live yourself; thus do the many rebecome
+the One. The Great Mystery of the Bread of Life which must be partaken of
+by all before the Day of Triumph was acted out before her eyes."
+
+And it might be added that as heaven is a state and not a place, the
+mystery can be consummated on earth, and that this is the true sacrifice
+of the Christ and the Way to become a Christ.
+
+9. Ideas of this or a similar order may be held not rashly to underlie the
+words of our text. The Cross of Life may well be called the Harmony--or
+articulation, or joining-together--of Wisdom, for it is by means of Wisdom
+that all the contraries are joined together, and this Articulation
+constitutes the "firm necessity" of Fate, which was also called in the
+Gnostic schools the Harmony. And if it is a Cross of Life, it is also a
+Cross of Light, for Life and Light are the eternally united twin-natures,
+female and male, of the Logos, the Good. Life is Passion and Light is
+Understanding. The Logos divides Himself to experience and know Himself.
+
+10. All opposites unite in Wisdom as a ground; she is the pure substance
+in which all the powers play. It is only when the Cross is regarded as a
+separator, that it may be said to have a right and a left, with good
+forces on the one hand and evil on the other. The forces are in reality in
+themselves the same forces; it is the personality of the man (represented
+by the upright of the Cross), which refers all things to its incomplete
+self, that regards them as good and evil.
+
+This personality is rooted in the Lower Root or lower nature, and
+stretches upward towards the Above.
+
+But in reality there are roots above and branches below, or roots below
+and branches above, of the trunk of this Tree of Life and Light. Though
+the nomenclature is somewhat different, I cannot refrain from quoting a
+striking passage from a Gnostic scripture to give the reader some idea of
+the lofty region of thought to which the Gnosis accustomed its disciples.
+
+It is taken from _The Great Announcement_, a document ascribed by
+Hippolytus to the very beginning of the Christianized Gnosis. Strong
+efforts have been made to question this ascription, and to prove the
+document to be of a later date, but I think I have established a high
+probability that it may be even a pre-Christian writing (see _H._, i.
+184).
+
+The text is to be found in Hippolytus' _Refutation of all Heresies_ (vi.,
+18):
+
+"To you, therefore, I say what I say and write what I write. And the
+writing is this:
+
+"Of the universal Æons (Eternities) there are two Branchings, without
+beginning or end, from one Root, which is the Power unseeable,
+incomprehensible Silence.
+
+"Of these Branchings one is manifested from Above--the Great Power, Mind
+of the universals, ordering all things, male; and the other from
+Below--Great Thought, female, generating all things.
+
+"Thence partnering one another they pair (lit. have union--_syzygía_), and
+bring into manifestation the Middle Distance, incomprehensible Air without
+beginning or end.
+
+"In this is that Father, who supports and nourishes the things which have
+beginning and end.
+
+"This is He who has stood, stands and shall stand--a male-female Power in
+accordance with the transcendent Boundless Power, which hath neither
+beginning nor end, subsisting in onlyness.
+
+"It was by emanating from this Power (_sci._, Incomprehensible Silence)
+that Thought-in-onlyness became two.
+
+"Yet was He, (the Supernal Father) one; for having her (_sci._ Thought) in
+Himself He was alone [that is, all-one, or only, that is one-ly]. He was
+not, however, [in this state] 'first,' although transcendent; it was only
+in manifesting Himself from Himself that He became 'second' [that is to
+say, as He who stands]. Nay, He was not even called 'Father' till Thought
+named Him 'Father.'
+
+"As, therefore, Himself pro-ducing Himself by means of Himself, He
+manifested to Himself His own Thought; so also His Thought on manifesting
+did not make [Him], but beholding Him, she concealed the Father, that is
+the Power, in Herself, and is [thus] male-female, Power and Thought.
+
+"Thence is it that they partner one another (for Power in no way differs
+from Thought) and yet are one. From the things Above is discovered Power,
+and from those Below Thought.
+
+"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
+naïve 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).
+
+
+
+
+  PRINTED BY PERCY LUND, HUMPHRIES AND CO., LTD.,
+  THE COUNTRY PRESS, BRADFORD;
+  3, AMEN CORNER, LONDON, E.C.;
+  AND 97, BRIDGE STREET, MANCHESTER.
+  14887
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Gnostic Crucifixion, by G. R. S. Mead
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gnostic Crucifixion, by G. R. S. Mead
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Gnostic Crucifixion
+
+Author: G. R. S. Mead
+
+Release Date: April 1, 2011 [EBook #35735]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION
+
+
+
+
+WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+                                      _Net._
+
+  THRICE GREATEST HERMES (3 vols.)      30/-
+
+  FRAGMENTS OF A FAITH FORGOTTEN        10/6
+
+  DID JESUS LIVE 100 B.C.?               9/-
+
+  THE WORLD-MYSTERY                      5/-
+
+  THE GOSPEL AND THE GOSPELS             4/6
+
+  APOLLONIUS OF TYANA                    3/6
+
+  THE UPANISHADS (2 vols.)               3/-
+
+  PLOTINUS                               1/-
+
+
+
+
+  ECHOES FROM THE GNOSIS
+
+  BY G. R. S. MEAD
+
+  VOL. VII.
+
+
+  THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION
+
+
+  THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY
+  LONDON AND BENARES
+  1907
+
+
+  PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
+
+
+
+
+ECHOES FROM THE GNOSIS.
+
+
+Under this general title is now being published a series of small volumes,
+drawn from, or based upon, the mystic, theosophic and gnostic writings of
+the ancients, so as to make more easily audible for the ever-widening
+circle of those who love such things, some echoes of the mystic
+experiences and initiatory lore of their spiritual ancestry. There are
+many who love the life of the spirit, and who long for the light of
+gnostic illumination, but who are not sufficiently equipped to study the
+writings of the ancients at first hand, or to follow unaided the labours
+of scholars. These little volumes are therefore intended to serve as
+introduction to the study of the more difficult literature of the subject;
+and it is hoped that at the same time they may become for some, who have,
+as yet, not even heard of the Gnosis, stepping-stones to higher things.
+
+G. R. S. M.
+
+
+
+
+THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                             PAGE
+
+  PREFACE                       9
+
+  THE VISION OF THE CROSS      12
+
+  COMMENTS                     20
+
+  POSTCRIPT                    69
+
+
+TEXTS
+
+Bonnet (M.), _Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha_ (Leipzig, 1898).
+
+James (M. R.), _Apocrypha Anecdota, T. & S._, v. i. (Cambridge, 1897).
+
+
+_F._ = _Fragments of a Faith Forgotten_, 2nd. ed. (London, 1906).
+
+_H._ = _Thrice Greatest Hermes_ (London, 1906).
+
+
+
+
+ECHOES FROM THE GNOSIS
+
+
+  VOL. I.   THE GNOSIS OF THE MIND.
+  VOL. II.  THE HYMNS OF HERMES.
+  VOL. III. THE VISION OF ARID�US.
+  VOL. IV.  THE HYMN OF JESUS.
+  VOL. V.   THE MYSTERIES OF MITHRA.
+  VOL. VI.  A MITHRIAC RITUAL.
+  VOL. VII. THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION.
+
+
+SOME PROPOSED SUBJECTS FOR FORTHCOMING VOLUMES
+
+  THE CHALD�AN ORACLES.
+  THE HYMN OF THE PRODIGAL.
+  SOME ORPHIC FRAGMENTS.
+
+
+
+
+THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The Gnostic Mystery of the Crucifixion is most clearly set forth in the
+new-found fragments of _The Acts of John_, and follows immediately on the
+Sacred Dance and Ritual of Initiation which we endeavoured to elucidate in
+Vol. IV. of these little books, in treating of _The Hymn of Jesus_.
+
+The reader is, therefore, referred to the "Preamble" of that volume for a
+short introduction concerning the nature of the Gnostic Acts in general
+and of the Leucian _Acts of John_ in particular. I would, however, add a
+point of interest bearing on the date which was forgotten, though I have
+frequently remarked upon it when lecturing on the subject.
+
+The strongest proof that we have in our fragment very early material is
+found in the text itself, when it relates the following simple form of the
+miracle of the loaves.
+
+"Now if at any time He were invited by one of the Pharisees and went to
+the bidding, we used to go with Him. And before each was set a single loaf
+by the host; and of them He Himself also received one. Then He would give
+thanks and divide His loaf among us; and from this little each had enough,
+and our own loaves were saved whole, so that those who bade Him were
+amazed."
+
+If the marvellous narratives of the feeding of the five thousand had been
+already in circulation, it is incredible that this simple story, which we
+may so easily believe, should have been invented. Of what use, when the
+minds of the hearers had been strung to the pitch of faith which had
+already accepted the feeding of the five thousand as an actual physical
+occurrence, would it have been to invent comparatively so small a wonder?
+On the other hand, it is easy to believe that from similar simple stories
+of the power of the Master, which were first of all circulated in the
+inner circles, the popular narratives of the multitude-feeding miracles
+could be developed. We, therefore, conclude, with every probability, that
+we have here an indication of material of very early date.
+
+Nevertheless when we come to the Mystery of the Crucifixion as set forth
+in our fragment, we are not entitled to argue that the popular history was
+developed from it in a similar fashion. The problem it raises is of
+another order, and to it we will return when the reader has been put in
+possession of the narrative, as translated from Bonnet's text. John is
+supposed to be the narrator.
+
+(The Arabic figures and the Roman figures in square brackets refer
+respectively to Bonnet's and James' texts. I have added the side figures
+for convenience of reference in the comments.)
+
+
+
+
+THE VISION OF THE CROSS.
+
+
+1. [97 (xii.)] And having danced these things with us, Beloved, the Lord
+went out. And we, as though beside ourselves, or wakened out of sleep,
+fled each our several ways.
+
+2. I, however, though I saw the beginning of His passion could not stay to
+the end, but fled unto the Mount of Olives weeping over that which had
+befallen.
+
+3. And when He was hung on the tree of the cross, at the sixth hour of the
+day darkness came over the whole earth.
+
+And my Lord stood in the midst of the Cave, and filled it with light, and
+said:
+
+4. "John, to the multitude below, in Jerusalem, I am being crucified, and
+pierced with spears and reeds, and vinegar and gall is being given Me to
+drink. To thee now I speak, and give ear to what I say. 'Twas I who put it
+in thy heart to ascend this Mount, that thou mightest hear what disciple
+should learn from Master, and man from God."
+
+5. [98 (xiii.)] And having thus spoken, He showed me a Cross of Light set
+up, and round the Cross a vast multitude, and therein one form and a
+similar appearance, and in the Cross another multitude not having one
+form.
+
+6. And I beheld the Lord Himself above the Cross. He had, however, no
+shape, but only as it were a voice--not, however, this voice to which we
+are accustomed, but one of its own kind and beneficent and truly of God,
+saying unto me:
+
+7. "John, one there needs must be to hear those things, from Me; for I
+long for one who will hear.
+
+8. "This Cross of Light is called by Me for your sakes sometimes Word
+(Logos), sometimes Mind, sometimes Jesus, sometimes Christ, sometimes
+Door, sometimes Way, sometimes Bread, sometimes Seed, sometimes
+Resurrection, sometimes Son, sometimes Father, sometimes Spirit, sometimes
+Life, sometimes Truth, sometimes Faith, sometimes Grace.
+
+9. "Now those things [it is called] as towards men; but as to what it is
+in truth, itself in its own meaning to itself, and declared unto Us, [it
+is] the defining (or delimitation) of all things, both the firm necessity
+of things fixed from things unstable, and the 'harmony' of Wisdom.
+
+10. "And as it is Wisdom in 'harmony,' there are those on the Right and
+those on the Left--powers, authorities, principalities, and d�mons,
+energies, threats, powers of wrath, slanderings--and the Lower Root from
+which hath come forth the things in genesis.
+
+11 [99]. "This, then, is the Cross which by the Word (Logos) hath been the
+means of 'cross-beaming' all things--at the same time separating off the
+things that proceed from genesis and those below it [from those above],
+and also compacting them all into one.
+
+12. "But this is not the cross of wood which thou shalt see when thou
+descendest hence; nor am I he that is upon the cross--[I] whom now thou
+seest not, but only hearest a voice.
+
+13. "I was held [to be] what I am not, not being what I was to many
+others; nay, they will call Me something else, abject and not worthy of
+Me. As, then, the Place of Rest is neither seen nor spoken of, much more
+shall I, the Lord of it, be neither seen [nor spoken of].
+
+14. [100 (xiv.)] "Now the multitude of one appearance round the Cross is
+the Lower Nature. And as to those whom thou seest in the Cross, if they
+have not also one form, [it is because] the whole Race (or every Limb) of
+Him who descended hath not yet been gathered together.
+
+15. "But when the Upper Nature, yea, the Race that is coming unto Me, in
+obedience to My Voice, is taken up, then thou who now hearkenest to Me,
+shalt become it, and it shall no longer be what it is now, but above them
+as I am now.
+
+16. "For so long as thou callest not thyself Mine, I am not what I am. But
+if thou hearkenest unto Me, hearing, thou, too, shalt be as I [am], and I
+shall be what I was, when thou [art] as I am with Myself; for from this
+thou art.
+
+17. "Pay no attention, then, to the many, and them that are without the
+mystery think little of; for know that I am wholly with the Father and the
+Father with Me.
+
+18. [101 (xv.)] "Nothing, then, of the things which they will say of Me
+have I suffered; nay that Passion as well which I showed unto thee and the
+rest, by dancing [it], I will that it be called a mystery.
+
+19. "What thou art, thou seest; this did I show unto thee. But what I am,
+this I alone know, [and] none else.
+
+20. "What, then, is Mine suffer Me to keep; but what is thine see thou
+through Me. To see Me as I really am I said is not possible, but only what
+thou art able to recognise, as being kin [to Me] (or of the same Race).
+
+21. "Thou hearest that I suffered; yet I did not suffer: that I suffered
+not; yet I did suffer: that I was pierced; yet was I not smitten: that I
+was hanged; yet I was not hanged: that blood flowed from me; yet it did
+not flow: and in a word the things they say about Me I had not, and the
+things they do not say those I suffered. Now what they are I will riddle
+for thee; for I know that thou wilt understand.
+
+22. "Understand, therefore, in Me, the slaying of a Word (Logos), the
+piercing of a Word, the blood of a Word, the wounding of a Word, the
+hanging of a Word, the passion of a Word, the nailing (or putting
+together) of a Word, the death of a Word.
+
+23. "And thus I speak separating off the man. First, then, understand the
+Word, then shalt thou understand the Lord, and in the third place [only]
+the man and what he suffered."
+
+24. [102 (xvi.)] And having said these things to me, and others which I
+know not how to say as He Himself would have it, He was taken up, no one
+of the multitude beholding Him.
+
+25. And when I descended I laughed at them all, when they told Me what
+they did concerning Him, firmly possessed in myself of this [truth] only,
+that the Lord contrived all things symbolically, and according to [His]
+dispensation for the conversion and salvation of man.
+
+
+
+
+COMMENTS.
+
+
+The translation is frequently a matter of difficulty, for the text has
+been copied in a most careless and unintelligent fashion, so that the
+ingenuity of the editors has often been taxed to the utmost and has not
+infrequently completely broken down. It is of course quite natural that
+orthodox scribes should blunder when transcribing Gnostic documents, owing
+to their ignorance of the subject and their strangeness to the ideas; but
+this particular copyist is at times quite barbarous, and as the subject is
+deeply mystical and deals with the unexpected, the reconstruction of the
+original reading is a matter of great difficulty. With a number of
+passages I am still unsatisfied, though I hope they are somewhat nearer
+the spirit of the original than other reconstructions which have been
+attempted.
+
+It is always a matter of difficulty for the rigidly objective mind to
+understand the point of view of the Gnostic scripture-writers. One thing,
+however, is certain: they lived in times when the rigid orthodoxy of the
+canon was not yet established. They were in the closest touch with the
+living tradition of scripture-writing, and they knew the manner of it.
+
+The probability is that paragraphs 1-3 are from the pen of the redactor or
+compiler of the _Acts_, and that the narrative, beginning with the words
+"And my Lord stood in the midst of the Cave," is incorporated from prior
+material--a mystic vision or apocalypse circulated in the inner circles.
+
+The compiler knows the general Gospel-story, and seems prepared to admit
+its historical basis; at the same time he knows well that the story
+circulated among the people is but the outer veil of the mystery, and so
+he hands on what we may well believe was but one of many visions of the
+mystic crucifixion.
+
+The gentle contempt of those who had entered into the mystery, for those
+unknowing ones who would fain limit the crucifixion to one brief historic
+event, is brought out strongly, and savours, though mildly, of the
+bitterness of the struggle between the two great forces of the inner and
+spiritualizing and the outer and materializing traditions.
+
+1. The disciples flee after beholding the inner mystery of the Passion and
+At-one-ment as set forth in the initiating drama of the Mystic Dance which
+formed the subject of our fourth volume.
+
+2. Yet even John the Beloved, in spite of this initiation, cannot yet bear
+the thought that his Master did actually suffer historically as a
+malefactor on the physical cross. In his distress he flees unto the Mount
+of Olives, above Jerusalem.
+
+But to the Gnostic the Mount of Olives was no physical hill, though it was
+a mount in the physical, and Jerusalem no physical city, though a city in
+the physical. The Mount, however it might be distinguished locally, was
+the Height of Contemplation, and the bringing into activity of a certain
+inner consciousness; even as Jerusalem here was the Jerusalem below, the
+physical consciousness.
+
+3. The sentence "when He was hung on the tree of the Cross" contains a
+great puzzle. The word for "tree" in the original is _batos_; this may
+mean the "bush" or "tree" of the cross. But the Cross for the Gnostics was
+a living symbol. It was not only the cross of dead wood, or the dead trunk
+of a tree lopped of its branches--a symbol of Osiris in death; it was also
+the Tree of Life, and was equated with the "Fiery Bush" out of which the
+Angel of God spake to Moses--that is the Tree of Fiery Life, in the
+Paradise of man's inner nature, whence the Word of God expresses itself to
+one who is worthy to hear. And this Tree of Life was also, as the Cross,
+the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; indeed, both are but one Tree, for
+the fruit of the Tree of Life is the knowledge of good and evil, the cross
+of the opposites.
+
+But seeing that the word _batos_ in Greek had also another meaning, the
+Gnostics, by their method of mystical word-play, based on the power of
+sound, brought this further meaning into use for the expansion of the
+idea. The difference of accentuation and of gender (though the reading of
+the Septuagint is masculine and not feminine as is usual with _batos_ in
+the sense of bush or tree) presented no difficulty to the word-alchemy of
+these allegorists.
+
+Hippolytus, in his _Refutation of all Heretics_, attempts to summarize a
+system of the Christianized Gnosis which is assigned to the Docet�; and
+Docetism is precisely the chief characteristic of our _Acts of John_, as
+we have already pointed out in Vol. IV. In this unsympathetic summary
+there is a passage which throws some light on our puzzle. It would, of
+course, require a detailed analysis of our h�resiologist's "refutation" of
+the Docetic system to make the passage to which we refer (_op. cit._,
+viii., 9) fully comprehensible; but as this would be too lengthy an
+undertaking for these short comments, we must content ourselves with a
+bald statement.
+
+The pure spiritual emanations or ideas or intelligences of the Light
+descend into the lowest Darkness of matter. For the moulding of vehicles
+or bodies for them it is necessary to call in the aid of the God of Fire,
+the creative or rather formative Power, who is "Living Fire begotten of
+Light."
+
+Hippolytus summarizes, doubtless imperfectly, from the Docetic document
+that lay before him, as follows:
+
+"Moses refers to this God as the Fiery God who spake from the _Batos_,
+that is to say, from the Dark Air; for _Batos_ is all the Air subjected to
+Darkness."
+
+That is, presumably, the material Air, Air of the Darkness, as compared
+with the spiritual Air or Air of the Light. The Docetic writer, Hippolytus
+says, explained the use of the term as follows:
+
+"Moses called it _Batos_, because, in their passing from Above, Below, all
+the Ideas of the Light [that is, the Light-sparks or spirits of men] used
+the Air as their means of passage (_batos_)."
+
+In other words _Batos_, as Air, was the link between Light and Darkness,
+which Darkness was regarded as essentially a flowing or Watery chaos. The
+Batos was the Way Down and the Way Up of souls.
+
+We are not, however, to suppose that the origin of this idea was the text
+of _Exodus_. By no means; the idea came first, indeed was fundamental with
+the Gnosis; the mystic exegesis of the "burning bush" passage was an
+exercise in ingenuity. For the Gnosis, the that which at once separated
+and united the Light and the Darkness was the Cross. The Angel of God
+speaking to Moses out of the Fiery Batos was for the Christian Gnostics
+one of the most striking apocalypses of ancient Jewish scripture; and it
+was primarily one of the chief functions of the Gnosis to throw light on
+the under-meaning. This the Docetic exegete does in his own fashion, using
+the reading of the Greek Targum or Translation of the Seventy, in this
+wise: "_Batos?_ _Batos_ does not mean 'bush' really, but 'medium of
+transmission,'" It is by means of this that the Word of God comes unto
+us--namely, by the mystery of the uniter-separator in one, which was
+called by many names.
+
+For instance, in setting forth the Sophia-mythus, or Wisdom-story, or
+mystery of cosmogenesis, of the Valentinian school, Hippolytus (_op.
+cit._, vi. 3), treats of the Cross as the final mystery of all. With
+original documents before him, he writes:
+
+"Now it is called Boundary, because it bounds off the Deficiency from the
+Fullness [so as to make it] exterior to it; it is called Partaker because
+it partakes of the Deficiency as well; and it is called Cross (or Stock)
+because it hath been fixed immovably and unchangeably, so that nothing of
+the Deficiency should be able to approach the eternities within the
+Fullness."
+
+Here it is useless to tie oneself to the physical symbol of a cross. The
+Stauros (Cross) in its true self is a living idea, a reality or
+root-principle. It is the principle of separation and limit, dividing
+entity from non-entity, being from non-being, perfection from
+imperfection, fullness or sufficiency from deficiency or
+insufficiency--Light from Darkness. It is the that which causes all
+opposites. At the same time it shares in all opposites, for it is the
+immediate emanation of the Father Himself, and therefore unites while
+separating. It is, therefore, the principle of participation or sharing
+in, sharing in both the Fullness and the Deficiency. Finally, it is the
+Stock or Pillar as that which "has stood, stands and will stand"--the
+principle of immobility, as the energy of the Father in His aspect of the
+supreme Individuality that changes not, because he is Lord of the
+ever-changing.
+
+That such a master-idea is difficult to grasp goes without saying; it was
+confessedly the supreme mystery. From it the mind, the formal mind of man,
+"falls back unable to grasp it"; for it is precisely this personal mind
+that creates duality, and insinuates itself between cause and effect. The
+spiritual Mind alone can embrace the opposites.
+
+But to return to our text. "When He was hung on the _batos_ of the
+Cross"--when He had reached the state of balance, was in the mystic
+centre--then at the sixth hour, that is mid-day, when there was greatest
+light, there was also greatest darkness.
+
+And then when the Lord, the Higher Self of the man, was balanced and
+justified, the man, the disciple, became conscious, in the cave of his
+heart--that is to say, in his inmost substantial nature--of the Presence
+of Light.
+
+4. Thereon follow the illumination and the explanation of the familiar
+drama of appearance taught to those "without the mystery."
+
+"The multitude below in Jerusalem" is the lower nature of the man, his
+unillumined mind. "Jerusalem Below" is set over against "Jerusalem Above,"
+the City of God. Jerusalem Below is that nature in him that is still
+unordered and unpurified; while Jerusalem Above is that ordered and
+purified portion of his substance that can respond to the immediate
+shining of the Light, which further orders it according to the Ordering of
+Heaven.
+
+And yet the drama below is real enough; there are ever crucifixion and
+piercing and the drinking of vinegar and gall, before the triumphant
+Christ is born. It is by such means that His Body is conformed; it is the
+mystery of the transformation of what we call evil into good. The Body of
+the Christ is perfected by the absorption of the impersonal evil of the
+world, which He transmutes into blessing.
+
+"'Twas I who put it in thy heart to ascend this Mount." I am thy Self, thy
+true God; 'twas I energizing in thee who enabled thee to rise to the
+height of contemplation, where thou canst "hear what disciple should learn
+from Master and man from God." The man has now reached the stage of Hearer
+in the Spiritual Mysteries.
+
+5. There then follows the vision of the great Cross of Light, fixed firm,
+and stretching from earth to heaven. Round its foot on earth is a vast
+multitude of all the nations of the world; they resemble one another in
+that they are configured according to the Darkness, their "Spark burns
+low." On the Cross, or in it, for doubtless the seer saw within as well as
+without, was another multitude of various grades of light, being formed
+into some marvellous Image like unto the Divine, but not yet completed--as
+it might be the Rose on the Cross, in the famous symbol of the
+Rosicrucians.
+
+6. And above the Cross, lost in the dazzling brilliancy of the Fullness,
+John beheld the Lord; he _beheld_ but could not _see_, because of the
+Great Light, as we are told in another great vision of the Master in the
+_Pistis Sophia_. He can hear only a Voice. But this Voice is no voice of
+man, but one "truly of God"--a Bath-kol or "Heavenly Voice," as the Rabbis
+called it--a Voice of sweetest reasonableness, using no words, but of a
+higher order of utterance, that can make the man speak to himself in his
+own language, using his own terms.
+
+7. The sentence "I long for one who will hear," is instinct with the
+yearning of the Divine Love, the eagerness to bestow, the longing to speak
+if only there be one to hear.
+
+8. There then follows a list of synonyms of the Cross, every one of which
+shows that the Cross, if a symbol, must be taken to denote the
+master-symbol of all symbols. It is the key to the chief nomenclature of
+the Gnosis and the greatest terms of the Gospel. These terms, it is
+stated, are used by the Wisdom "for your sakes," that is, to bring home in
+many ways to the hearts of men the intuition of the mystery.
+
+As is explained later on in the text, the mystery of the Cross is the
+mystery of the Word, the Spiritual Man, or Great Man, the Divine
+Individuality. Therefore is it called Word or Reason, Mind, Jesus and
+Christ. Son and Father; for Jesus is the Christ, both as human and divine,
+the two natures uniting in one in the Cross; and the Son is the Father in
+a still more divine meaning of the mystery; for both Son and Cross are of
+the Father alone, they are Himself manifesting Himself to Himself. The
+whole is the mystery of Atman or the Self.
+
+The Door is the Door of the Two in One, the state of equilibrium of the
+opposites which opens out into the all-embracing consciousness and
+understanding of all oppositions.
+
+The Cross is the Way on which there is no travelling, for it perpetually
+enters into itself; it is the true Meth-od, not so much in the sense of
+the Way-between or the Medium or Mediator, as in the sense of the Means of
+Gnosis.
+
+It is also called Seed because it is the mystery of the power of growth
+and development; it is self-initiative.
+
+And if the Cross be Son and Father in separation and union, or as
+simultaneously Cause and Result, it is likewise Spirit or Atman, and
+therefore Life.
+
+It is also Truth or the Perpetual Paradox, distinguishing and uniting in
+itself all pros and cons, and all analysis and synthesis in simultaneous
+operation.
+
+Therefore also is it called Faith, because it is the that which is stable
+and unchanging amid perpetual change. Faith in its true mystic meaning
+seems to denote the power of withdrawing the personal consciousness from
+between the pairs of opposites, where these appear external and other than
+oneself, and embracing the opposites within the greater consciousness,
+when they are within oneself and appear as natural processes in the great
+economy.
+
+Faith is of the contemplative mind; it embraces, it includes. It is
+therefore of the Great Mother, as the life and substance of the Cross; so
+also is it of Grace, elsewhere called Wisdom.
+
+Finally, the Cross regarded from this point of view is called Bread, the
+substance of Life.
+
+In a remarkable paper in _The Theosophical Review_, Nov., 1907, E. R.
+Innes speaks of a vision of a great drama of those Powers beyond the
+mind-spheres, which in the Indian scriptures are called Food and
+Eater--that is to say, the mystical union between the Not-self and the
+Self.
+
+In the _Chhandogyopanishad_, for instance, we read of one who had
+passed into the heaven-world possessing a knowledge of the identity of the
+Self and Not-self. The transformations of his vehicles that thus occur in
+the inner states or worlds become as it were processes of natural
+digestion in his Great Body, for we read:
+
+"Having what food he wills, what form he wills, this song he singing sits:
+
+  "'O wonder, wonder, wonder!
+  Food I; food I; food I!
+  Food-eater I; food-eater I; food-eater I!'"
+
+(See my _World-Mystery_, 2nd ed., p. 179.)
+
+Our author in similar fashion writes of a soul watching the processes of
+its own substance in the heaven-world.
+
+"She watched the interaction of those two great currents of the One Great
+Life-Force--the Life-Force as Supporter, the Life-Force as Sustainer. She
+watched the great transfiguration of the crossing over of the
+surface-forms as life met life in perfect mystic union. As the currents
+crossed the forms changed, but without loss of life or consciousness. The
+Powers crossed and recrossed; and with each appearance of that sacred
+symbol there was further expansion and intensification of the Life-Force.
+At each piercing or insinuation of the one into the other, that which had
+been two became one, yet there still remained the two. She watched the
+great mystery of that Cross on which the Heavenly Man dies in order to
+live again.
+
+"In heaven you do not demolish forms in order to sustain life, you daily
+insinuate yourself into all the forms you meet, and thus by supplying them
+with food, the food of your own greater life, you become each separate
+object, and gain in power and expansiveness. Thus in heaven by sacrifice
+do you grow and live, and slowly become the world. Thus in heaven do you
+give life to others in order to live yourself; thus do the many rebecome
+the One. The Great Mystery of the Bread of Life which must be partaken of
+by all before the Day of Triumph was acted out before her eyes."
+
+And it might be added that as heaven is a state and not a place, the
+mystery can be consummated on earth, and that this is the true sacrifice
+of the Christ and the Way to become a Christ.
+
+9. Ideas of this or a similar order may be held not rashly to underlie the
+words of our text. The Cross of Life may well be called the Harmony--or
+articulation, or joining-together--of Wisdom, for it is by means of Wisdom
+that all the contraries are joined together, and this Articulation
+constitutes the "firm necessity" of Fate, which was also called in the
+Gnostic schools the Harmony. And if it is a Cross of Life, it is also a
+Cross of Light, for Life and Light are the eternally united twin-natures,
+female and male, of the Logos, the Good. Life is Passion and Light is
+Understanding. The Logos divides Himself to experience and know Himself.
+
+10. All opposites unite in Wisdom as a ground; she is the pure substance
+in which all the powers play. It is only when the Cross is regarded as a
+separator, that it may be said to have a right and a left, with good
+forces on the one hand and evil on the other. The forces are in reality in
+themselves the same forces; it is the personality of the man (represented
+by the upright of the Cross), which refers all things to its incomplete
+self, that regards them as good and evil.
+
+This personality is rooted in the Lower Root or lower nature, and
+stretches upward towards the Above.
+
+But in reality there are roots above and branches below, or roots below
+and branches above, of the trunk of this Tree of Life and Light. Though
+the nomenclature is somewhat different, I cannot refrain from quoting a
+striking passage from a Gnostic scripture to give the reader some idea of
+the lofty region of thought to which the Gnosis accustomed its disciples.
+
+It is taken from _The Great Announcement_, a document ascribed by
+Hippolytus to the very beginning of the Christianized Gnosis. Strong
+efforts have been made to question this ascription, and to prove the
+document to be of a later date, but I think I have established a high
+probability that it may be even a pre-Christian writing (see _H._, i.
+184).
+
+The text is to be found in Hippolytus' _Refutation of all Heresies_ (vi.,
+18):
+
+"To you, therefore, I say what I say and write what I write. And the
+writing is this:
+
+"Of the universal �ons (Eternities) there are two Branchings, without
+beginning or end, from one Root, which is the Power unseeable,
+incomprehensible Silence.
+
+"Of these Branchings one is manifested from Above--the Great Power, Mind
+of the universals, ordering all things, male; and the other from
+Below--Great Thought, female, generating all things.
+
+"Thence partnering one another they pair (lit. have union--_syzyg�a_), and
+bring into manifestation the Middle Distance, incomprehensible Air without
+beginning or end.
+
+"In this is that Father, who supports and nourishes the things which have
+beginning and end.
+
+"This is He who has stood, stands and shall stand--a male-female Power in
+accordance with the transcendent Boundless Power, which hath neither
+beginning nor end, subsisting in onlyness.
+
+"It was by emanating from this Power (_sci._, Incomprehensible Silence)
+that Thought-in-onlyness became two.
+
+"Yet was He, (the Supernal Father) one; for having her (_sci._ Thought) in
+Himself He was alone [that is, all-one, or only, that is one-ly]. He was
+not, however, [in this state] 'first,' although transcendent; it was only
+in manifesting Himself from Himself that He became 'second' [that is to
+say, as He who stands]. Nay, He was not even called 'Father' till Thought
+named Him 'Father.'
+
+"As, therefore, Himself pro-ducing Himself by means of Himself, He
+manifested to Himself His own Thought; so also His Thought on manifesting
+did not make [Him], but beholding Him, she concealed the Father, that is
+the Power, in Herself, and is [thus] male-female, Power and Thought.
+
+"Thence is it that they partner one another (for Power in no way differs
+from Thought) and yet are one. From the things Above is discovered Power,
+and from those Below Thought.
+
+"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 _ma-ya_. (See the
+Trismegistic Sermon, "Though Unmanifest God is most Manifest," and the
+commentary, _H._, ii., 99-109).
+
+11. I have translated the term [Greek: diapexamenos] by "cross-beaming,"
+for [Greek: diapegion] 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 �ons 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--Amen 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 Ra 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
+Atman, the Self, the True Man, the Monad. This is the Kingly Osiris in
+his male-female nature, self-creative. Atman 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
+na�ve 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 Docet�.
+
+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 Pleroma [or Fullness]--'and what is the Greatness'--that is, the
+Pleroma of the �ons [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 �ons 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 �ons; 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).
+
+
+
+
+  PRINTED BY PERCY LUND, HUMPHRIES AND CO., LTD.,
+  THE COUNTRY PRESS, BRADFORD;
+  3, AMEN CORNER, LONDON, E.C.;
+  AND 97, BRIDGE STREET, MANCHESTER.
+  14887
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
+
+The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version
+these letters have been replaced with transliterations that appear
+as [Greek: transliteration].
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Gnostic Crucifixion, by G. R. S. Mead
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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Gnostic Crucifixion, by G. R. S. Mead.
+    </title>
+
+    <style type="text/css">
+
+    p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+
+    body {margin-left: 12%; margin-right: 12%;}
+
+    .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right; font-style: normal;}
+
+    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; clear: both;}
+
+    hr {width: 33%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; clear: both;}
+
+    table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
+
+    .giant {font-size: 200%}
+    .huge {font-size: 150%}
+
+    .blockquot {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .poem {margin-left:15%;}
+
+    .right {text-align: right;}
+    .center {text-align: center;}
+
+    .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+    a:link {color:#0000ff; text-decoration:none}
+    a:visited {color:#6633cc; text-decoration:none}
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+    .verts {margin-left: 30%; margin-right: 30%;}
+    .vertsbox {border: solid 2px; padding-left: 1em; padding-right: 1em;}
+
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gnostic Crucifixion, by G. R. S. Mead
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Gnostic Crucifixion
+
+Author: G. R. S. Mead
+
+Release Date: April 1, 2011 [EBook #35735]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="center"><span class="giant">THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="verts">
+<div class="vertsbox">
+<p class="center"><strong>WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR</strong></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><i>Net.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Thrice Greatest Hermes</span> (3 vols.)</td><td align="right">30/-</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Fragments of a Faith Forgotten</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="right">10/6</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.?</span></td><td align="right">9/-</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">The World-Mystery</span></td><td align="right">5/-</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Gospel and the Gospels</span></td><td align="right">4/6</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Apollonius of Tyana</span></td><td align="right">3/6</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Upanishads</span> (2 vols.)</td><td align="right">3/-</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Plotinus</span></td><td align="right">1/-</td></tr></table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>ECHOES<br />FROM<br />THE<br />GNOSIS</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>BY<br />G. R. S.<br />MEAD<br />VOL. VII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><span class="huge">THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>THE<br />THEOSOPHICAL<br />PUBLISHING<br />SOCIETY</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>LONDON<br />AND<br />BENARES<br />1907</td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>ECHOES FROM THE GNOSIS.</h2>
+
+<p>Under this general title is now being published a series of small volumes,
+drawn from, or based upon, the mystic, theosophic and gnostic writings of
+the ancients, so as to make more easily audible for the ever-widening
+circle of those who love such things, some echoes of the mystic
+experiences and initiatory lore of their spiritual ancestry. There are
+many who love the life of the spirit, and who long for the light of
+gnostic illumination, but who are not sufficiently equipped to study the
+writings of the ancients at first hand, or to follow unaided the labours
+of scholars. These little volumes are therefore intended to serve as
+introduction to the study of the more difficult literature of the subject;
+and it is hoped that at the same time they may become for some, who have,
+as yet, not even heard of the Gnosis, stepping-stones to higher things.</p>
+
+<p class="right">G. R. S. M.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION</h2>
+
+
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">CONTENTS</span></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Preface</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Vision of the Cross</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_12">12</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Comments</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_20">20</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Postcript</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td></tr></table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">TEXTS</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">Bonnet (M.), <i>Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha</i> (Leipzig, 1898).</p>
+
+<p class="center">James (M. R.), <i>Apocrypha Anecdota, T. &amp; S.</i>, v. i. (Cambridge, 1897).</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><i>F.</i> = <i>Fragments of a Faith Forgotten</i>, 2nd. ed. (London, 1906).</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>H.</i> = <i>Thrice Greatest Hermes</i> (London, 1906).</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<div class="verts">
+<div class="vertsbox">
+<p class="center"><strong>ECHOES FROM THE GNOSIS</strong></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Vol.</span></td><td align="right">I.</td><td>THE GNOSIS OF THE MIND.</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Vol.</span></td><td align="right">II.</td><td>THE HYMNS OF HERMES.</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Vol.</span></td><td align="right">III.</td><td>THE VISION OF ARID&AElig;US.</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Vol.</span></td><td align="right">IV.</td><td>THE HYMN OF JESUS.</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Vol.</span></td><td align="right">V.</td><td>THE MYSTERIES OF MITHRA.</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Vol.</span></td><td align="right">VI.</td><td>A MITHRIAC RITUAL.</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Vol.</span></td><td align="right">VII.</td><td>THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="center">SOME PROPOSED SUBJECTS FOR FORTHCOMING VOLUMES</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE CHALD&AElig;AN ORACLES.<br /><br />
+THE HYMN OF THE PRODIGAL.<br /><br />
+SOME ORPHIC FRAGMENTS.<br /></p>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="giant">THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION.</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h2>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+<p>The Gnostic Mystery of the Crucifixion is most clearly set forth in the
+new-found fragments of <i>The Acts of John</i>, and follows immediately on the
+Sacred Dance and Ritual of Initiation which we endeavoured to elucidate in
+Vol. IV. of these little books, in treating of <i>The Hymn of Jesus</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The reader is, therefore, referred to the &#8220;Preamble&#8221; of that volume for a
+short introduction concerning the nature of the Gnostic Acts in general
+and of the Leucian <i>Acts of John</i> in particular. I would, however, add a
+point of interest bearing on the date which was forgotten, though I have
+frequently remarked upon it when lecturing on the subject.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>The strongest proof that we have in our fragment very early material is
+found in the text itself, when it relates the following simple form of the
+miracle of the loaves.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now if at any time He were invited by one of the Pharisees and went to
+the bidding, we used to go with Him. And before each was set a single loaf
+by the host; and of them He Himself also received one. Then He would give
+thanks and divide His loaf among us; and from this little each had enough,
+and our own loaves were saved whole, so that those who bade Him were
+amazed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>If the marvellous narratives of the feeding of the five thousand had been
+already in circulation, it is incredible that this simple story, which we
+may so easily believe, should have been invented. Of what use, when the
+minds of the hearers had been strung to the pitch of faith which had
+already accepted the feeding of the five thousand as an actual physical
+occurrence, would it have been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> to invent comparatively so small a wonder?
+On the other hand, it is easy to believe that from similar simple stories
+of the power of the Master, which were first of all circulated in the
+inner circles, the popular narratives of the multitude-feeding miracles
+could be developed. We, therefore, conclude, with every probability, that
+we have here an indication of material of very early date.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless when we come to the Mystery of the Crucifixion as set forth
+in our fragment, we are not entitled to argue that the popular history was
+developed from it in a similar fashion. The problem it raises is of
+another order, and to it we will return when the reader has been put in
+possession of the narrative, as translated from Bonnet&#8217;s text. John is
+supposed to be the narrator.</p>
+
+<p>(The Arabic figures and the Roman figures in square brackets refer
+respectively to Bonnet&#8217;s and James&#8217; texts. I have added the side figures
+for convenience of reference in the comments.)</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE VISION OF THE CROSS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>1. [97 (xii.)] And having danced these things with us, Beloved, the Lord
+went out. And we, as though beside ourselves, or wakened out of sleep,
+fled each our several ways.</p>
+
+<p>2. I, however, though I saw the beginning of His passion could not stay to
+the end, but fled unto the Mount of Olives weeping over that which had
+befallen.</p>
+
+<p>3. And when He was hung on the tree of the cross, at the sixth hour of the
+day darkness came over the whole earth.</p>
+
+<p>And my Lord stood in the midst of the Cave, and filled it with light, and
+said:</p>
+
+<p>4. &#8220;John, to the multitude below, in Jerusalem, I am being crucified,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> and
+pierced with spears and reeds, and vinegar and gall is being given Me to
+drink. To thee now I speak, and give ear to what I say. &#8217;Twas I who put it
+in thy heart to ascend this Mount, that thou mightest hear what disciple
+should learn from Master, and man from God.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>5. [98 (xiii.)] And having thus spoken, He showed me a Cross of Light set
+up, and round the Cross a vast multitude, and therein one form and a
+similar appearance, and in the Cross another multitude not having one
+form.</p>
+
+<p>6. And I beheld the Lord Himself above the Cross. He had, however, no
+shape, but only as it were a voice&mdash;not, however, this voice to which we
+are accustomed, but one of its own kind and beneficent and truly of God,
+saying unto me:</p>
+
+<p>7. &#8220;John, one there needs must be to hear those things, from Me; for I
+long for one who will hear.</p>
+
+<p>8. &#8220;This Cross of Light is called by Me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> for your sakes sometimes Word
+(Logos), sometimes Mind, sometimes Jesus, sometimes Christ, sometimes
+Door, sometimes Way, sometimes Bread, sometimes Seed, sometimes
+Resurrection, sometimes Son, sometimes Father, sometimes Spirit, sometimes
+Life, sometimes Truth, sometimes Faith, sometimes Grace.</p>
+
+<p>9. &#8220;Now those things [it is called] as towards men; but as to what it is
+in truth, itself in its own meaning to itself, and declared unto Us, [it
+is] the defining (or delimitation) of all things, both the firm necessity
+of things fixed from things unstable, and the &#8216;harmony&#8217; of Wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>10. &#8220;And as it is Wisdom in &#8216;harmony,&#8217; there are those on the Right and
+those on the Left&mdash;powers, authorities, principalities, and d&aelig;mons,
+energies, threats, powers of wrath, slanderings&mdash;and the Lower Root from
+which hath come forth the things in genesis.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>11 [99]. &#8220;This, then, is the Cross which by the Word (Logos) hath been the
+means of &#8216;cross-beaming&#8217; all things&mdash;at the same time separating off the
+things that proceed from genesis and those below it [from those above],
+and also compacting them all into one.</p>
+
+<p>12. &#8220;But this is not the cross of wood which thou shalt see when thou
+descendest hence; nor am I he that is upon the cross&mdash;[I] whom now thou
+seest not, but only hearest a voice.</p>
+
+<p>13. &#8220;I was held [to be] what I am not, not being what I was to many
+others; nay, they will call Me something else, abject and not worthy of
+Me. As, then, the Place of Rest is neither seen nor spoken of, much more
+shall I, the Lord of it, be neither seen [nor spoken of].</p>
+
+<p>14. [100 (xiv.)] &#8220;Now the multitude of one appearance round the Cross is
+the Lower Nature. And as to those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> whom thou seest in the Cross, if they
+have not also one form, [it is because] the whole Race (or every Limb) of
+Him who descended hath not yet been gathered together.</p>
+
+<p>15. &#8220;But when the Upper Nature, yea, the Race that is coming unto Me, in
+obedience to My Voice, is taken up, then thou who now hearkenest to Me,
+shalt become it, and it shall no longer be what it is now, but above them
+as I am now.</p>
+
+<p>16. &#8220;For so long as thou callest not thyself Mine, I am not what I am. But
+if thou hearkenest unto Me, hearing, thou, too, shalt be as I [am], and I
+shall be what I was, when thou [art] as I am with Myself; for from this
+thou art.</p>
+
+<p>17. &#8220;Pay no attention, then, to the many, and them that are without the
+mystery think little of; for know that I am wholly with the Father and the
+Father with Me.</p>
+
+<p>18. [101 (xv.)] &#8220;Nothing, then, of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> things which they will say of Me
+have I suffered; nay that Passion as well which I showed unto thee and the
+rest, by dancing [it], I will that it be called a mystery.</p>
+
+<p>19. &#8220;What thou art, thou seest; this did I show unto thee. But what I am,
+this I alone know, [and] none else.</p>
+
+<p>20. &#8220;What, then, is Mine suffer Me to keep; but what is thine see thou
+through Me. To see Me as I really am I said is not possible, but only what
+thou art able to recognise, as being kin [to Me] (or of the same Race).</p>
+
+<p>21. &#8220;Thou hearest that I suffered; yet I did not suffer: that I suffered
+not; yet I did suffer: that I was pierced; yet was I not smitten: that I
+was hanged; yet I was not hanged: that blood flowed from me; yet it did
+not flow: and in a word the things they say about Me I had not, and the
+things they do not say those I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> suffered. Now what they are I will riddle
+for thee; for I know that thou wilt understand.</p>
+
+<p>22. &#8220;Understand, therefore, in Me, the slaying of a Word (Logos), the
+piercing of a Word, the blood of a Word, the wounding of a Word, the
+hanging of a Word, the passion of a Word, the nailing (or putting
+together) of a Word, the death of a Word.</p>
+
+<p>23. &#8220;And thus I speak separating off the man. First, then, understand the
+Word, then shalt thou understand the Lord, and in the third place [only]
+the man and what he suffered.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>24. [102 (xvi.)] And having said these things to me, and others which I
+know not how to say as He Himself would have it, He was taken up, no one
+of the multitude beholding Him.</p>
+
+<p>25. And when I descended I laughed at them all, when they told Me what
+they did concerning Him, firmly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> possessed in myself of this [truth] only,
+that the Lord contrived all things symbolically, and according to [His]
+dispensation for the conversion and salvation of man.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+<h2>COMMENTS.</h2>
+
+<p>The translation is frequently a matter of difficulty, for the text has
+been copied in a most careless and unintelligent fashion, so that the
+ingenuity of the editors has often been taxed to the utmost and has not
+infrequently completely broken down. It is of course quite natural that
+orthodox scribes should blunder when transcribing Gnostic documents, owing
+to their ignorance of the subject and their strangeness to the ideas; but
+this particular copyist is at times quite barbarous, and as the subject is
+deeply mystical and deals with the unexpected, the reconstruction of the
+original reading is a matter of great difficulty. With a number of
+passages I am still unsatisfied, though I hope they are somewhat nearer
+the spirit of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> original than other reconstructions which have been
+attempted.</p>
+
+<p>It is always a matter of difficulty for the rigidly objective mind to
+understand the point of view of the Gnostic scripture-writers. One thing,
+however, is certain: they lived in times when the rigid orthodoxy of the
+canon was not yet established. They were in the closest touch with the
+living tradition of scripture-writing, and they knew the manner of it.</p>
+
+<p>The probability is that paragraphs 1-3 are from the pen of the redactor or
+compiler of the <i>Acts</i>, and that the narrative, beginning with the words
+&#8220;And my Lord stood in the midst of the Cave,&#8221; is incorporated from prior
+material&mdash;a mystic vision or apocalypse circulated in the inner circles.</p>
+
+<p>The compiler knows the general Gospel-story, and seems prepared to admit
+its historical basis; at the same time he knows well that the story
+circulated among the people is but the outer veil of the mystery, and so
+he hands on what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> we may well believe was but one of many visions of the
+mystic crucifixion.</p>
+
+<p>The gentle contempt of those who had entered into the mystery, for those
+unknowing ones who would fain limit the crucifixion to one brief historic
+event, is brought out strongly, and savours, though mildly, of the
+bitterness of the struggle between the two great forces of the inner and
+spiritualizing and the outer and materializing traditions.</p>
+
+<p>1. The disciples flee after beholding the inner mystery of the Passion and
+At-one-ment as set forth in the initiating drama of the Mystic Dance which
+formed the subject of our fourth volume.</p>
+
+<p>2. Yet even John the Beloved, in spite of this initiation, cannot yet bear
+the thought that his Master did actually suffer historically as a
+malefactor on the physical cross. In his distress he flees unto the Mount
+of Olives, above Jerusalem.</p>
+
+<p>But to the Gnostic the Mount of Olives was no physical hill, though it was
+a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> mount in the physical, and Jerusalem no physical city, though a city in
+the physical. The Mount, however it might be distinguished locally, was
+the Height of Contemplation, and the bringing into activity of a certain
+inner consciousness; even as Jerusalem here was the Jerusalem below, the
+physical consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>3. The sentence &#8220;when He was hung on the tree of the Cross&#8221; contains a
+great puzzle. The word for &#8220;tree&#8221; in the original is <i>batos</i>; this may
+mean the &#8220;bush&#8221; or &#8220;tree&#8221; of the cross. But the Cross for the Gnostics was
+a living symbol. It was not only the cross of dead wood, or the dead trunk
+of a tree lopped of its branches&mdash;a symbol of Osiris in death; it was also
+the Tree of Life, and was equated with the &#8220;Fiery Bush&#8221; out of which the
+Angel of God spake to Moses&mdash;that is the Tree of Fiery Life, in the
+Paradise of man&#8217;s inner nature, whence the Word of God expresses itself to
+one who is worthy to hear. And this Tree of Life was also, as the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> Cross,
+the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; indeed, both are but one Tree, for
+the fruit of the Tree of Life is the knowledge of good and evil, the cross
+of the opposites.</p>
+
+<p>But seeing that the word <i>batos</i> in Greek had also another meaning, the
+Gnostics, by their method of mystical word-play, based on the power of
+sound, brought this further meaning into use for the expansion of the
+idea. The difference of accentuation and of gender (though the reading of
+the Septuagint is masculine and not feminine as is usual with <i>batos</i> in
+the sense of bush or tree) presented no difficulty to the word-alchemy of
+these allegorists.</p>
+
+<p>Hippolytus, in his <i>Refutation of all Heretics</i>, attempts to summarize a
+system of the Christianized Gnosis which is assigned to the Docet&aelig;; and
+Docetism is precisely the chief characteristic of our <i>Acts of John</i>, as
+we have already pointed out in Vol. IV. In this unsympathetic summary
+there is a passage<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> which throws some light on our puzzle. It would, of
+course, require a detailed analysis of our h&aelig;resiologist&#8217;s &#8220;refutation&#8221; of
+the Docetic system to make the passage to which we refer (<i>op. cit.</i>,
+viii., 9) fully comprehensible; but as this would be too lengthy an
+undertaking for these short comments, we must content ourselves with a
+bald statement.</p>
+
+<p>The pure spiritual emanations or ideas or intelligences of the Light
+descend into the lowest Darkness of matter. For the moulding of vehicles
+or bodies for them it is necessary to call in the aid of the God of Fire,
+the creative or rather formative Power, who is &#8220;Living Fire begotten of
+Light.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Hippolytus summarizes, doubtless imperfectly, from the Docetic document
+that lay before him, as follows:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Moses refers to this God as the Fiery God who spake from the <i>Batos</i>,
+that is to say, from the Dark Air; for <i>Batos</i> is all the Air subjected to
+Darkness.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>That is, presumably, the material Air, Air of the Darkness, as compared
+with the spiritual Air or Air of the Light. The Docetic writer, Hippolytus
+says, explained the use of the term as follows:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Moses called it <i>Batos</i>, because, in their passing from Above, Below, all
+the Ideas of the Light [that is, the Light-sparks or spirits of men] used
+the Air as their means of passage (<i>batos</i>).&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In other words <i>Batos</i>, as Air, was the link between Light and Darkness,
+which Darkness was regarded as essentially a flowing or Watery chaos. The
+Batos was the Way Down and the Way Up of souls.</p>
+
+<p>We are not, however, to suppose that the origin of this idea was the text
+of <i>Exodus</i>. By no means; the idea came first, indeed was fundamental with
+the Gnosis; the mystic exegesis of the &#8220;burning bush&#8221; passage was an
+exercise in ingenuity. For the Gnosis, the that which at once separated
+and united the Light and the Darkness was the Cross.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> The Angel of God
+speaking to Moses out of the Fiery Batos was for the Christian Gnostics
+one of the most striking apocalypses of ancient Jewish scripture; and it
+was primarily one of the chief functions of the Gnosis to throw light on
+the under-meaning. This the Docetic exegete does in his own fashion, using
+the reading of the Greek Targum or Translation of the Seventy, in this
+wise: &#8220;<i>Batos?</i> <i>Batos</i> does not mean &#8216;bush&#8217; really, but &#8216;medium of
+transmission,&#8217;&#8221; It is by means of this that the Word of God comes unto
+us&mdash;namely, by the mystery of the uniter-separator in one, which was
+called by many names.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, in setting forth the Sophia-mythus, or Wisdom-story, or
+mystery of cosmogenesis, of the Valentinian school, Hippolytus (<i>op.
+cit.</i>, vi. 3), treats of the Cross as the final mystery of all. With
+original documents before him, he writes:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now it is called Boundary, because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> it bounds off the Deficiency from the
+Fullness [so as to make it] exterior to it; it is called Partaker because
+it partakes of the Deficiency as well; and it is called Cross (or Stock)
+because it hath been fixed immovably and unchangeably, so that nothing of
+the Deficiency should be able to approach the eternities within the
+Fullness.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Here it is useless to tie oneself to the physical symbol of a cross. The
+Stauros (Cross) in its true self is a living idea, a reality or
+root-principle. It is the principle of separation and limit, dividing
+entity from non-entity, being from non-being, perfection from
+imperfection, fullness or sufficiency from deficiency or
+insufficiency&mdash;Light from Darkness. It is the that which causes all
+opposites. At the same time it shares in all opposites, for it is the
+immediate emanation of the Father Himself, and therefore unites while
+separating. It is, therefore, the principle of participation or sharing
+in, sharing in both the Fullness and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> Deficiency. Finally, it is the
+Stock or Pillar as that which &#8220;has stood, stands and will stand&#8221;&mdash;the
+principle of immobility, as the energy of the Father in His aspect of the
+supreme Individuality that changes not, because he is Lord of the
+ever-changing.</p>
+
+<p>That such a master-idea is difficult to grasp goes without saying; it was
+confessedly the supreme mystery. From it the mind, the formal mind of man,
+&#8220;falls back unable to grasp it&#8221;; for it is precisely this personal mind
+that creates duality, and insinuates itself between cause and effect. The
+spiritual Mind alone can embrace the opposites.</p>
+
+<p>But to return to our text. &#8220;When He was hung on the <i>batos</i> of the
+Cross&#8221;&mdash;when He had reached the state of balance, was in the mystic
+centre&mdash;then at the sixth hour, that is mid-day, when there was greatest
+light, there was also greatest darkness.</p>
+
+<p>And then when the Lord, the Higher Self of the man, was balanced and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+justified, the man, the disciple, became conscious, in the cave of his
+heart&mdash;that is to say, in his inmost substantial nature&mdash;of the Presence
+of Light.</p>
+
+<p>4. Thereon follow the illumination and the explanation of the familiar
+drama of appearance taught to those &#8220;without the mystery.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The multitude below in Jerusalem&#8221; is the lower nature of the man, his
+unillumined mind. &#8220;Jerusalem Below&#8221; is set over against &#8220;Jerusalem Above,&#8221;
+the City of God. Jerusalem Below is that nature in him that is still
+unordered and unpurified; while Jerusalem Above is that ordered and
+purified portion of his substance that can respond to the immediate
+shining of the Light, which further orders it according to the Ordering of
+Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>And yet the drama below is real enough; there are ever crucifixion and
+piercing and the drinking of vinegar and gall, before the triumphant
+Christ is born. It is by such means that His Body is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> conformed; it is the
+mystery of the transformation of what we call evil into good. The Body of
+the Christ is perfected by the absorption of the impersonal evil of the
+world, which He transmutes into blessing.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Twas I who put it in thy heart to ascend this Mount.&#8221; I am thy Self, thy
+true God; &#8217;twas I energizing in thee who enabled thee to rise to the
+height of contemplation, where thou canst &#8220;hear what disciple should learn
+from Master and man from God.&#8221; The man has now reached the stage of Hearer
+in the Spiritual Mysteries.</p>
+
+<p>5. There then follows the vision of the great Cross of Light, fixed firm,
+and stretching from earth to heaven. Round its foot on earth is a vast
+multitude of all the nations of the world; they resemble one another in
+that they are configured according to the Darkness, their &#8220;Spark burns
+low.&#8221; On the Cross, or in it, for doubtless the seer saw within as well as
+without, was another multitude<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> of various grades of light, being formed
+into some marvellous Image like unto the Divine, but not yet completed&mdash;as
+it might be the Rose on the Cross, in the famous symbol of the
+Rosicrucians.</p>
+
+<p>6. And above the Cross, lost in the dazzling brilliancy of the Fullness,
+John beheld the Lord; he <i>beheld</i> but could not <i>see</i>, because of the
+Great Light, as we are told in another great vision of the Master in the
+<i>Pistis Sophia</i>. He can hear only a Voice. But this Voice is no voice of
+man, but one &#8220;truly of God&#8221;&mdash;a Bath-kol or &#8220;Heavenly Voice,&#8221; as the Rabbis
+called it&mdash;a Voice of sweetest reasonableness, using no words, but of a
+higher order of utterance, that can make the man speak to himself in his
+own language, using his own terms.</p>
+
+<p>7. The sentence &#8220;I long for one who will hear,&#8221; is instinct with the
+yearning of the Divine Love, the eagerness to bestow, the longing to speak
+if only there be one to hear.</p>
+
+<p>8. There then follows a list of synonyms<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> of the Cross, every one of which
+shows that the Cross, if a symbol, must be taken to denote the
+master-symbol of all symbols. It is the key to the chief nomenclature of
+the Gnosis and the greatest terms of the Gospel. These terms, it is
+stated, are used by the Wisdom &#8220;for your sakes,&#8221; that is, to bring home in
+many ways to the hearts of men the intuition of the mystery.</p>
+
+<p>As is explained later on in the text, the mystery of the Cross is the
+mystery of the Word, the Spiritual Man, or Great Man, the Divine
+Individuality. Therefore is it called Word or Reason, Mind, Jesus and
+Christ. Son and Father; for Jesus is the Christ, both as human and divine,
+the two natures uniting in one in the Cross; and the Son is the Father in
+a still more divine meaning of the mystery; for both Son and Cross are of
+the Father alone, they are Himself manifesting Himself to Himself. The
+whole is the mystery of &#256;tman or the Self.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>The Door is the Door of the Two in One, the state of equilibrium of the
+opposites which opens out into the all-embracing consciousness and
+understanding of all oppositions.</p>
+
+<p>The Cross is the Way on which there is no travelling, for it perpetually
+enters into itself; it is the true Meth-od, not so much in the sense of
+the Way-between or the Medium or Mediator, as in the sense of the Means of
+Gnosis.</p>
+
+<p>It is also called Seed because it is the mystery of the power of growth
+and development; it is self-initiative.</p>
+
+<p>And if the Cross be Son and Father in separation and union, or as
+simultaneously Cause and Result, it is likewise Spirit or &#256;tman, and
+therefore Life.</p>
+
+<p>It is also Truth or the Perpetual Paradox, distinguishing and uniting in
+itself all pros and cons, and all analysis and synthesis in simultaneous
+operation.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore also is it called Faith, because it is the that which is stable
+and unchanging amid perpetual change.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> Faith in its true mystic meaning
+seems to denote the power of withdrawing the personal consciousness from
+between the pairs of opposites, where these appear external and other than
+oneself, and embracing the opposites within the greater consciousness,
+when they are within oneself and appear as natural processes in the great
+economy.</p>
+
+<p>Faith is of the contemplative mind; it embraces, it includes. It is
+therefore of the Great Mother, as the life and substance of the Cross; so
+also is it of Grace, elsewhere called Wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, the Cross regarded from this point of view is called Bread, the
+substance of Life.</p>
+
+<p>In a remarkable paper in <i>The Theosophical Review</i>, Nov., 1907, E. R.
+Innes speaks of a vision of a great drama of those Powers beyond the
+mind-spheres, which in the Indian scriptures are called Food and
+Eater&mdash;that is to say, the mystical union between the Not-self and the
+Self.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>In the <i>Chh&#257;ndogyopani&#7779;had</i>, for instance, we read of one who had
+passed into the heaven-world possessing a knowledge of the identity of the
+Self and Not-self. The transformations of his vehicles that thus occur in
+the inner states or worlds become as it were processes of natural
+digestion in his Great Body, for we read:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Having what food he wills, what form he wills, this song he singing sits:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;&#8216;O wonder, wonder, wonder!<br />
+Food I; food I; food I!<br />
+Food-eater I; food-eater I; food-eater I!&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>(See my <i>World-Mystery</i>, 2nd ed., p. 179.)</p>
+
+<p>Our author in similar fashion writes of a soul watching the processes of
+its own substance in the heaven-world.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She watched the interaction of those two great currents of the One Great
+Life-Force&mdash;the Life-Force as Supporter, the Life-Force as Sustainer. She
+watched the great transfiguration of the crossing over of the
+surface-forms as life met life<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> in perfect mystic union. As the currents
+crossed the forms changed, but without loss of life or consciousness. The
+Powers crossed and recrossed; and with each appearance of that sacred
+symbol there was further expansion and intensification of the Life-Force.
+At each piercing or insinuation of the one into the other, that which had
+been two became one, yet there still remained the two. She watched the
+great mystery of that Cross on which the Heavenly Man dies in order to
+live again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In heaven you do not demolish forms in order to sustain life, you daily
+insinuate yourself into all the forms you meet, and thus by supplying them
+with food, the food of your own greater life, you become each separate
+object, and gain in power and expansiveness. Thus in heaven by sacrifice
+do you grow and live, and slowly become the world. Thus in heaven do you
+give life to others in order to live yourself; thus do the many rebecome
+the One. The Great Mystery of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> Bread of Life which must be partaken of
+by all before the Day of Triumph was acted out before her eyes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And it might be added that as heaven is a state and not a place, the
+mystery can be consummated on earth, and that this is the true sacrifice
+of the Christ and the Way to become a Christ.</p>
+
+<p>9. Ideas of this or a similar order may be held not rashly to underlie the
+words of our text. The Cross of Life may well be called the Harmony&mdash;or
+articulation, or joining-together&mdash;of Wisdom, for it is by means of Wisdom
+that all the contraries are joined together, and this Articulation
+constitutes the &#8220;firm necessity&#8221; of Fate, which was also called in the
+Gnostic schools the Harmony. And if it is a Cross of Life, it is also a
+Cross of Light, for Life and Light are the eternally united twin-natures,
+female and male, of the Logos, the Good. Life is Passion and Light is
+Understanding. The Logos divides Himself to experience and know Himself.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>10. All opposites unite in Wisdom as a ground; she is the pure substance
+in which all the powers play. It is only when the Cross is regarded as a
+separator, that it may be said to have a right and a left, with good
+forces on the one hand and evil on the other. The forces are in reality in
+themselves the same forces; it is the personality of the man (represented
+by the upright of the Cross), which refers all things to its incomplete
+self, that regards them as good and evil.</p>
+
+<p>This personality is rooted in the Lower Root or lower nature, and
+stretches upward towards the Above.</p>
+
+<p>But in reality there are roots above and branches below, or roots below
+and branches above, of the trunk of this Tree of Life and Light. Though
+the nomenclature is somewhat different, I cannot refrain from quoting a
+striking passage from a Gnostic scripture to give the reader some idea of
+the lofty region of thought to which the Gnosis accustomed its disciples.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>It is taken from <i>The Great Announcement</i>, a document ascribed by
+Hippolytus to the very beginning of the Christianized Gnosis. Strong
+efforts have been made to question this ascription, and to prove the
+document to be of a later date, but I think I have established a high
+probability that it may be even a pre-Christian writing (see <i>H.</i>, i.
+184).</p>
+
+<p>The text is to be found in Hippolytus&#8217; <i>Refutation of all Heresies</i> (vi.,
+18):</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To you, therefore, I say what I say and write what I write. And the
+writing is this:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of the universal &AElig;ons (Eternities) there are two Branchings, without
+beginning or end, from one Root, which is the Power unseeable,
+incomprehensible Silence.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of these Branchings one is manifested from Above&mdash;the Great Power, Mind
+of the universals, ordering all things, male; and the other from
+Below&mdash;Great Thought, female, generating all things.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>&#8220;Thence partnering one another they pair (lit. have union&mdash;<i>syzyg&iacute;a</i>), and
+bring into manifestation the Middle Distance, incomprehensible Air without
+beginning or end.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In this is that Father, who supports and nourishes the things which have
+beginning and end.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This is He who has stood, stands and shall stand&mdash;a male-female Power in
+accordance with the transcendent Boundless Power, which hath neither
+beginning nor end, subsisting in onlyness.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It was by emanating from this Power (<i>sci.</i>, Incomprehensible Silence)
+that Thought-in-onlyness became two.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yet was He, (the Supernal Father) one; for having her (<i>sci.</i> Thought) in
+Himself He was alone [that is, all-one, or only, that is one-ly]. He was
+not, however, [in this state] &#8216;first,&#8217; although transcendent; it was only
+in manifesting Himself from Himself that He became &#8216;second&#8217; [that is to
+say, as He who stands]. Nay, He was not even called<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> &#8216;Father&#8217; till Thought
+named Him &#8216;Father.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;As, therefore, Himself pro-ducing Himself by means of Himself, He
+manifested to Himself His own Thought; so also His Thought on manifesting
+did not make [Him], but beholding Him, she concealed the Father, that is
+the Power, in Herself, and is [thus] male-female, Power and Thought.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thence is it that they partner one another (for Power in no way differs
+from Thought) and yet are one. From the things Above is discovered Power,
+and from those Below Thought.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So is it, too, with that which is manifested from them; namely, that
+though it (<i>sci.</i> the Middle Distance, Incomprehensible Air) is one, it is
+found to be two, male-female, having the female in itself.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thus is Mind in Thought&mdash;inseparable from one another, which though one
+are yet found to be two.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I believe that our Vision of the Cross<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> sets forth in living symbol
+precisely what is explained above in more &#8220;abstract&#8221; 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 <i>m&#257;-y&#257;</i>. (See the
+Trismegistic Sermon, &#8220;Though Unmanifest God is most Manifest,&#8221; and the
+commentary, <i>H.</i>, ii., 99-109).</p>
+
+<p>11. I have translated the term <ins class="correction" title="diapexamenos">&#948;&#953;&#945;&#960;&#951;&#958;&#8049;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#959;&#962;</ins>
+by &#8220;cross-beaming,&#8221; for <ins class="correction" title="diapegion">&#948;&#953;&#945;&#960;&#942;&#947;&#953;&#959;&#957;</ins>
+is a &#8220;cross-beam&#8221;; and I would refer the reader to
+the famous myth of Plato known as &#8220;The Vision of Er,&#8221; where the same idea
+is set forth when we read:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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&mdash;<i>somewhat like the undergirdings of ships</i>&mdash;and thus confined its
+whole revolution.&#8221; (See <i>H.</i>, i., 440.)</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>This &#8220;cross-beaming&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>12. There is little surprise, therefore, in learning that this mystery is
+not the &#8220;cross of wood&#8221; 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&mdash;He whom even the disciple in contemplation cannot
+see as He is, but can only hear the Wisdom of His Voice.</p>
+
+<p>13. &#8220;I was held to be what I am not.&#8221; As to what the many say concerning
+the mystery, they speak as the many vain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;namely, that
+the path was fully opened for him all the way up to God&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> is everywhere, is
+not seen or spoken of, &#8220;much more shall the Lord of it be neither seen nor
+spoken of&#8221;&mdash;He who has the power, of the Centre, who can adjust His
+&#8220;centre of gravity&#8221; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>restauratio omnium</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> &#8220;delights of the world.&#8221; They are the Dead, because they are under
+the sway of birth-and-death, the spheres of Fate. They have not yet &#8220;risen
+from the Dead,&#8221; and consciously ascended the Cross of Light and Life.</p>
+
+<p>Thus in the preface to <i>The Book of the Gnoses of the Invisible God</i>, that
+is to say, &#8220;The Book of the Gnosis of Jesus the Living One&#8221;&mdash;which begins
+with the beautiful words: &#8220;I have loved you and longed to give you
+Life&#8221;&mdash;we read the following Saying of the Lord:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Jesus saith: Blessed is the man who crucifieth the world, and doth not
+let the world crucify him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And later on the mystery is set forth in another Saying:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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 &#8216;nothing.&#8217;&#8221; (<i>F.</i>, 518, 519.)</p>
+
+<p>Those who have become spiritual,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> who have &#8220;risen from the Dead,&#8221; are born
+into the Race of the Logos, they become kin with Him.</p>
+
+<p>Of this Race much has been written by the mystics of the many different
+schools of these early days.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the Jewish Gnostic commentator of the Naassene Document writes:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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&#8221; (<i>H.</i>, i., 164.).</p>
+
+<p>And the Christian Gnostic commentator refers to the &#8220;ineffable Race of
+perfect men&#8221; (<i>H.</i>, i., 166), who are in the Logos.</p>
+
+<p>Such <i>illuminati</i> 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. (<i>H.</i>, ii., 242; see my <i>Did Jesus live 100
+B.C.?</i> chap. xviii.)</p>
+
+<p>Philo of Alexandria tells us that &#8220;Wisdom, who, after the fashion of a
+mother, brings forth the self-taught Race,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> declares that God is the Sower
+of it&#8221; (<i>H.</i>, i., 220). This is the term he applies to his beloved
+Therapeuts, adding that &#8220;this Race is rare and found with difficulty.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Elsewhere he tells us that the angels are the &#8220;people&#8221; 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 &#8220;kin to
+Him&#8221;; they become one. For this Race &#8220;is one, the highest one; but
+&#8216;people&#8217; is the name of many.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;As many, then, as have advanced in discipline and instruction, and been
+perfected therein, have their lot among this &#8216;many.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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&#8221; (<i>H.</i>, i., 554.).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>And so in one of the Hymns of Thrice Greatest Hermes, after the triple
+trisagion, the &#8220;Hermes&#8221; or Illuminated prays:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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&mdash;my Brethren and Thy Sons.&#8221;
+(<i>H.</i>, ii., 20.).</p>
+
+<p>Philo calls it &#8220;self-taught,&#8221; just as the Buddhists speak of the Arhats as
+<i>asekha</i>; and the Trismegistic teacher writes:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This Race, my sons, is never taught; but when He willeth it, its memory
+is restored by God.&#8221; (<i>H.</i>, ii., 221.)</p>
+
+<p>The &#8220;Elect Race&#8221; of Valentinus is the &#8220;Sonship&#8221; of Basilides that
+incarnates on earth for the abolition of Death. (<i>F.</i>, 303.)</p>
+
+<p>In the <i>Pistis Sophia</i> document, the Sophia, or the soul turning towards
+the Light, first utters seven repentances, or &#8220;turnings-of-the-mind,&#8221; 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> or averted from her, for the time is come when &#8220;those
+who turn in the lowest regions&#8221; should be regarded&mdash;&#8220;the mystery which is
+made the type of the Race.&#8221; (<i>F.</i>, 471.)</p>
+
+<p>Again in the introduction to <i>The Book of the Great Logos according to the
+Mystery</i>, 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. (<i>F.</i>, 528.)</p>
+
+<p>Finally in the marvellous <i>Untitled Apocalypse</i> of the Bruce Codex we
+read:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;These words said the Lord of the Universe to them, and disappeared from
+them, and hid Himself from them.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>&#8220;&#8216;Give us authority that we may create for ourselves &aelig;ons 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.&#8217;&#8221; (<i>F.</i>, 564.)</p>
+
+<p>To understand, man must pass beyond the stage of man, and self-realize
+himself as &#8220;kin to Him&#8221;&mdash;the Logos.</p>
+
+<p>It is, however, doubtful whether &#8220;Race&#8221; 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 &#8220;every Limb.&#8221; 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> collected
+together again in the resurrection. The inner meaning of this graphic
+symbolism may be gleaned from the following striking passages.</p>
+
+<p>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. (<i>F.</i>, 366.)</p>
+
+<p>This also is the true Body of man, the Source of all his bodies. And so we
+read the following mystery-saying in <i>The Gospel of Eve</i>:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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: &#8216;I am thou, and thou art I; and wheresoever thou
+art, I am there, and in all am I sown<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> (or scattered). And whencesoever
+thou willest, thou gatherest Me; and gathering Me, thou gatherest
+Thyself.&#8217;&#8221; (<i>F.</i>, 439.)</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the scattering of the Limbs of the Great Person in the
+personalities that have been his in many births.</p>
+
+<p>This idea is brought out more clearly in a passage from <i>The Gospel of
+Philip</i>. 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+gathered together my Limbs that were scattered abroad. I know Thee who
+Thou art; for I am of those from Above.&#8221; (<i>Ibid.</i>)</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The Limbs were according to certain orderings, one of which was the
+configuration of the five-fold Star, the five-limbed Man. Thus in <i>The
+Acts of Thomas</i> we read:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Come Thou who art more ancient far than the five holy Limbs&mdash;Mind,
+Thought, Reflection, Thinking, Reasoning! Commune with them of later
+birth!&#8221; (<i>F.</i>, 422.)</p>
+
+<p>These five Limbs are also the five<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> Words of the mystery of the Vesture of
+Light in the <i>Pistis Sophia</i> (p. 16), with which the Christ is clothed in
+power on the Day of Triumph, the Great Day &#8220;Come unto us,&#8221; when His Limbs
+are gathered together and the Song of the Powers begins:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In the whole document much is said of the &#8220;sweet mysteries that are in the
+Limbs of the Ineffable,&#8221; but it would be too long to repeat it here. It
+will be perhaps of greater service to append a very striking passage, from
+<i>The Books of the Saviour</i>, which has been copied into the MS. of the
+<i>Pistis Sophia</i> (pp. 253, 254):</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And they who are worthy of the Mysteries that dwell in the Ineffable,
+which are those that have not emanated&mdash;these are prior to the First
+Mystery. To use a similitude and correspondence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> of speech that ye may
+understand, they are the Limbs of the Ineffable. And each is according to
+the dignity of its Glory&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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&mdash;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].</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>&#8220;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....</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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&mdash;namely, the
+Limbs of the Ineffable&mdash;Am&#275;n 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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>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 &#8220;the Head is
+according to the dignity of the Head,&#8221; etc., the reader is referred to the
+beautiful passage in <i>The Untitled Apocalypse</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> of the Bruce Codex, quoted
+in the comments on <i>The Hymn of Jesus</i> (pp. 54, 55).</p>
+
+<p>The Gnostic seers lost themselves in the contemplation of the simultaneous
+simplicity and multiplicity of these Mysteries. Thus again in the same
+<i>Untitled Apocalypse</i> we read:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He it is whose Limbs (Members) make a myriad of myriads of Powers, each
+one of which comes from Him.&#8221; (<i>F.</i>, 547).</p>
+
+<p>This graphic symbolism of the Limbs is derived from the tradition of the
+Osiric Mysteries. Many a passage could be quoted in illustration from <i>The
+Book of the Coming-forth by Day</i>, that strange and marvellous collection
+of Egyptian Rituals commonly known as the <i>Book of the Dead</i>; but perhaps
+the under-meaning of the mystery is nowhere more clearly shown than in the
+following magnificent passage from <i>The Litany of the Sun</i>, inscribed on
+the Tombs of the Kings of ancient Thebes:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The Kingly Osiris is an intelligent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> Essence. His Limbs conduct Him; His
+&#8216;Fleshes&#8217; 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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 R&#257; in Amenti. He
+causes the Kingly Osiris to be born; He causes the Birth of Himself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>(See my <i>World-Mystery</i>, 2nd ed., p. 162.)</p>
+
+<p>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
+&#256;tman, the Self, the True Man, the Monad. This is the Kingly Osiris in
+his male-female nature, self-creative. &#256;tman 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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 &#8220;lower&#8221; &#8220;limits&#8221; the
+&#8220;higher.&#8221; Union is attained by &#8220;hearkening,&#8221; by &#8220;attention.&#8221; Then it is
+that the man becomes his Higher Self, and that Higher Self <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>becomes in its
+turn the Self, having taken his self in separation into his Self as union.</p>
+
+<p>17. This &#8220;attention&#8221; 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 &#8220;those
+without.&#8221; 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&#8217;s Great Body as the operations of the
+Divine economy. They who are &#8220;without the mystery&#8221; are not arbitrarily
+excluded, but are those who prefer to go forth without instead of
+returning within.</p>
+
+<p>18. They who have re-turned, or turned back on themselves, and entered
+into themselves for the realization of true<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>19. The outer story was centred round a dramatic crisis of death on a
+stationary cross&mdash;a dead symbol, and a symbol of death. But the inner rite
+was one of movement and &#8220;dancing,&#8221; a living symbol and a symbol of life.
+This was shown to the disciple&mdash;indeed, as we have seen, he was made in
+the Dance to partake in it&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>20. Let the disciple then first see the suffering of the man through, not
+his own, but His Master&#8217;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&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> to greater and greater impulses or &#8220;vibrations.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> The Christ sees both sides
+simultaneously, and understands.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;man, the personal man, the thing we each of
+us now are, God in multiplicity, and why there is suffering.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+<h2>POSTCRIPT.</h2>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the
+perpetual Self-sacrifice (<i>F.</i>, 330). And in this connection we should
+remind ourselves of the following striking sentence from <i>The Untitled
+Apocalypse</i> of the Bruce Codex, an apocalypse which contains perhaps the
+most sublime visions that have survived to us from the Gnosis:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The Outspreading of His Hands is the manifestation of the Cross.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And then follows the key of the mystery:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The Source of the Cross is the Man [Logos] whom no man can comprehend.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>(See <i>Hymn of Jesus</i>, p. 53.)</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>No man can comprehend Man; the little cannot contain the Great, except
+potentially.</p>
+
+<p>It was some echo of this sublime teaching that found its way into the
+na&iuml;ve though allegorical narrative of <i>The Acts of Philip</i>. When Philip
+was crucified he cursed his enemies.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">&#8220;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.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> and his apostles. They are thus converted and sing their
+repentance. Whereupon a Voice was heard saying: &#8220;I shall be merciful to
+you in the Cross of Light.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Philip is reproved by the Saviour for his unmerciful spirit.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> Philip hanging head downwards, they lamented with
+great lamentation at the lawless action which they had done.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The doers of the &#8220;lawless&#8221; deed are the same as the &#8220;lawless Jews&#8221; in the
+<i>Acts of John</i>&mdash;&#8220;those who are under the law of the lawless Serpent&#8221;; that
+is to say, those who are under the sway of Generation, as contrasted with
+those under the law of Re-generation (see <i>Hymn of Jesus</i>, pp. 28, 47).</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Concerning the mystery of the crucifixion of the Christ we learn somewhat
+of its inner nature from the doctrines of the Docet&aelig;.</p>
+
+<p>His baptism was on this wise: He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> 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 &#8220;tree,&#8221; and yet triumph over the
+powers of the Ruler and not be found naked, but clothed in a robe of
+glory. Hence the saying: &#8220;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.&#8221; (<i>F.</i>, p. 221).</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> explains a famous
+passage in the Pauline <i>Letter to the Ephesians</i> as follows:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;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&#8217;&mdash;that is to say, the psychic and not the bodily man&mdash;&#8216;that ye
+may be strong to know what is the Depth&#8217;&mdash;that is, the Father of the
+universals&mdash;&#8216;and what is the Breadth&#8217;&mdash;that is the Cross, the Boundary of
+the Pl&#275;r&#333;ma [or Fullness]&mdash;&#8216;and what is the Greatness&#8217;&mdash;that is, the
+Pl&#275;r&#333;ma of the &aelig;ons [the eternities or universals, the Limbs of the
+Body of the Ineffable].&#8221; (<i>F.</i>, 532).</p>
+
+<p>To be closely compared with the Vision in <i>The Acts of John</i> is the
+Address of Andrew to the Cross in <i>The Acts of Andrew</i>. They both plainly
+belong to the same tradition, and might indeed have been written by the
+same hand.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Rejoicing I come to thee, Thou Cross, the Life-giver, Cross whom I now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+know to be mine. I know thy mystery; for thou hast been planted in the
+world to make-fast things unstable.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thy head stretcheth up into heaven, that thou mayest symbol-forth the
+Heavenly Logos, the Head of all things.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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 [<i>sci.</i>, the Limbs] that are
+scattered abroad.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thy foot is set in the earth, sunk in the deep [<i>i.e.</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;O Cross, engine, most skilfully devised, of Salvation, given unto men by
+the Highest; O Cross, invincible trophy of the Conquest of Christ o&#8217;er His
+foes; O Cross, thou life-giving tree, roots planted on earth, fruit
+treasured in heaven; O Cross most venerable, sweet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> 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!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>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. &#8220;Give up thy life that thou
+mayest live,&#8221; says that inspired mystic treatise, <i>The Voice of the
+Silence</i>, 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&mdash;the Mystery of Man.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen above that Philip is hanged head downwards, but he is not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+the most famous instance of this reversal. The best known is associated
+with the name of Peter in the mystic romances.</p>
+
+<p>Thus in a fragment of the Linus-collection called <i>The Martyrdom of
+Peter</i>, we learn the doctrine as set forth in a speech put into the mouth
+of Peter thus crucified:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Fitly wast Thou alone stretched on the Cross with head on high, O Lord,
+who hast redeemed all of the world from sin.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have desired to imitate Thee in Thy Passion too; yet would I not take
+on myself to be hanged upright.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;For we, pure men and sinners, are born from Adam, but Thou art God of
+God, Light of true Light, before all &aelig;ons and after them; thought worthy
+to become for men Man without strain of man, Thou has stood forth man&#8217;s
+glorious Saviour&mdash;Thou ever upright, ever raised on high, eternally Above!</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;We, men according to the flesh, are sons of the First Man (Adam), who
+sank<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> his being in the earth, whose fall in human generation is shown
+forth.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;For this world down below doth think the right what is the left&mdash;this
+world in which Thou, Lord, hast found us like the Ninevites, and by Thy
+holy preaching hast thou rescued these about to die.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The &#8220;authors of this life&#8221; of reversal, are the &#8220;parents&#8221; of the &#8220;lower
+nature&#8221;; 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 &#8220;three days&#8221; 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+acts for the benefit of those in Nineveh or the Jerusalem Below, or this
+world.</p>
+
+<p>But for those who had ears to hear there was a still further instruction
+concerning the secret of the Mystic Cross.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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&mdash;the hidden mystery
+of every nature and secret source of every thing composed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> by men&#8217;s
+unrighteous error) into the Left, and those that men had taken for the
+Left into eternal things.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Whence in a mystery the Lord hath said: &#8216;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&#8217;s Kingdom.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>(This saying is from <i>The Gospel according to the Egyptians</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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:
+&#8216;Christ is the Word and Voice of God.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The Word in truth is symbolled forth by that straight stem on which I
+hang. As for the Voice&mdash;since that voice is a thing of flesh, with
+features not to be ascribed unto God&#8217;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.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Right in the centre, joining twain in one, is set the nail of
+discipline&mdash;conversion and repentance.&#8221; (<i>F.</i>, 446-449.)</p>
+
+<p>The interpretation becomes somewhat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>The Untitled
+Apocalypse</i> phrases it in an ecstasy of enthusiasm:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;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 &AElig;ons;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> they were called the &#8216;Births of Joy,&#8217; because the All
+had joyed with the Father.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;These are the worlds from which the Cross upsprang; out of these
+incorporeal Members did the Man arise.&#8221; (<i>F.</i>, 550).</p>
+
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diff --git a/35735.txt b/35735.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gnostic Crucifixion, by G. R. S. Mead
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Gnostic Crucifixion
+
+Author: G. R. S. Mead
+
+Release Date: April 1, 2011 [EBook #35735]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION
+
+
+
+
+WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+                                      _Net._
+
+  THRICE GREATEST HERMES (3 vols.)      30/-
+
+  FRAGMENTS OF A FAITH FORGOTTEN        10/6
+
+  DID JESUS LIVE 100 B.C.?               9/-
+
+  THE WORLD-MYSTERY                      5/-
+
+  THE GOSPEL AND THE GOSPELS             4/6
+
+  APOLLONIUS OF TYANA                    3/6
+
+  THE UPANISHADS (2 vols.)               3/-
+
+  PLOTINUS                               1/-
+
+
+
+
+  ECHOES FROM THE GNOSIS
+
+  BY G. R. S. MEAD
+
+  VOL. VII.
+
+
+  THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION
+
+
+  THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY
+  LONDON AND BENARES
+  1907
+
+
+  PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
+
+
+
+
+ECHOES FROM THE GNOSIS.
+
+
+Under this general title is now being published a series of small volumes,
+drawn from, or based upon, the mystic, theosophic and gnostic writings of
+the ancients, so as to make more easily audible for the ever-widening
+circle of those who love such things, some echoes of the mystic
+experiences and initiatory lore of their spiritual ancestry. There are
+many who love the life of the spirit, and who long for the light of
+gnostic illumination, but who are not sufficiently equipped to study the
+writings of the ancients at first hand, or to follow unaided the labours
+of scholars. These little volumes are therefore intended to serve as
+introduction to the study of the more difficult literature of the subject;
+and it is hoped that at the same time they may become for some, who have,
+as yet, not even heard of the Gnosis, stepping-stones to higher things.
+
+G. R. S. M.
+
+
+
+
+THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                             PAGE
+
+  PREFACE                       9
+
+  THE VISION OF THE CROSS      12
+
+  COMMENTS                     20
+
+  POSTCRIPT                    69
+
+
+TEXTS
+
+Bonnet (M.), _Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha_ (Leipzig, 1898).
+
+James (M. R.), _Apocrypha Anecdota, T. & S._, v. i. (Cambridge, 1897).
+
+
+_F._ = _Fragments of a Faith Forgotten_, 2nd. ed. (London, 1906).
+
+_H._ = _Thrice Greatest Hermes_ (London, 1906).
+
+
+
+
+ECHOES FROM THE GNOSIS
+
+
+  VOL. I.   THE GNOSIS OF THE MIND.
+  VOL. II.  THE HYMNS OF HERMES.
+  VOL. III. THE VISION OF ARIDAEUS.
+  VOL. IV.  THE HYMN OF JESUS.
+  VOL. V.   THE MYSTERIES OF MITHRA.
+  VOL. VI.  A MITHRIAC RITUAL.
+  VOL. VII. THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION.
+
+
+SOME PROPOSED SUBJECTS FOR FORTHCOMING VOLUMES
+
+  THE CHALDAEAN ORACLES.
+  THE HYMN OF THE PRODIGAL.
+  SOME ORPHIC FRAGMENTS.
+
+
+
+
+THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The Gnostic Mystery of the Crucifixion is most clearly set forth in the
+new-found fragments of _The Acts of John_, and follows immediately on the
+Sacred Dance and Ritual of Initiation which we endeavoured to elucidate in
+Vol. IV. of these little books, in treating of _The Hymn of Jesus_.
+
+The reader is, therefore, referred to the "Preamble" of that volume for a
+short introduction concerning the nature of the Gnostic Acts in general
+and of the Leucian _Acts of John_ in particular. I would, however, add a
+point of interest bearing on the date which was forgotten, though I have
+frequently remarked upon it when lecturing on the subject.
+
+The strongest proof that we have in our fragment very early material is
+found in the text itself, when it relates the following simple form of the
+miracle of the loaves.
+
+"Now if at any time He were invited by one of the Pharisees and went to
+the bidding, we used to go with Him. And before each was set a single loaf
+by the host; and of them He Himself also received one. Then He would give
+thanks and divide His loaf among us; and from this little each had enough,
+and our own loaves were saved whole, so that those who bade Him were
+amazed."
+
+If the marvellous narratives of the feeding of the five thousand had been
+already in circulation, it is incredible that this simple story, which we
+may so easily believe, should have been invented. Of what use, when the
+minds of the hearers had been strung to the pitch of faith which had
+already accepted the feeding of the five thousand as an actual physical
+occurrence, would it have been to invent comparatively so small a wonder?
+On the other hand, it is easy to believe that from similar simple stories
+of the power of the Master, which were first of all circulated in the
+inner circles, the popular narratives of the multitude-feeding miracles
+could be developed. We, therefore, conclude, with every probability, that
+we have here an indication of material of very early date.
+
+Nevertheless when we come to the Mystery of the Crucifixion as set forth
+in our fragment, we are not entitled to argue that the popular history was
+developed from it in a similar fashion. The problem it raises is of
+another order, and to it we will return when the reader has been put in
+possession of the narrative, as translated from Bonnet's text. John is
+supposed to be the narrator.
+
+(The Arabic figures and the Roman figures in square brackets refer
+respectively to Bonnet's and James' texts. I have added the side figures
+for convenience of reference in the comments.)
+
+
+
+
+THE VISION OF THE CROSS.
+
+
+1. [97 (xii.)] And having danced these things with us, Beloved, the Lord
+went out. And we, as though beside ourselves, or wakened out of sleep,
+fled each our several ways.
+
+2. I, however, though I saw the beginning of His passion could not stay to
+the end, but fled unto the Mount of Olives weeping over that which had
+befallen.
+
+3. And when He was hung on the tree of the cross, at the sixth hour of the
+day darkness came over the whole earth.
+
+And my Lord stood in the midst of the Cave, and filled it with light, and
+said:
+
+4. "John, to the multitude below, in Jerusalem, I am being crucified, and
+pierced with spears and reeds, and vinegar and gall is being given Me to
+drink. To thee now I speak, and give ear to what I say. 'Twas I who put it
+in thy heart to ascend this Mount, that thou mightest hear what disciple
+should learn from Master, and man from God."
+
+5. [98 (xiii.)] And having thus spoken, He showed me a Cross of Light set
+up, and round the Cross a vast multitude, and therein one form and a
+similar appearance, and in the Cross another multitude not having one
+form.
+
+6. And I beheld the Lord Himself above the Cross. He had, however, no
+shape, but only as it were a voice--not, however, this voice to which we
+are accustomed, but one of its own kind and beneficent and truly of God,
+saying unto me:
+
+7. "John, one there needs must be to hear those things, from Me; for I
+long for one who will hear.
+
+8. "This Cross of Light is called by Me for your sakes sometimes Word
+(Logos), sometimes Mind, sometimes Jesus, sometimes Christ, sometimes
+Door, sometimes Way, sometimes Bread, sometimes Seed, sometimes
+Resurrection, sometimes Son, sometimes Father, sometimes Spirit, sometimes
+Life, sometimes Truth, sometimes Faith, sometimes Grace.
+
+9. "Now those things [it is called] as towards men; but as to what it is
+in truth, itself in its own meaning to itself, and declared unto Us, [it
+is] the defining (or delimitation) of all things, both the firm necessity
+of things fixed from things unstable, and the 'harmony' of Wisdom.
+
+10. "And as it is Wisdom in 'harmony,' there are those on the Right and
+those on the Left--powers, authorities, principalities, and daemons,
+energies, threats, powers of wrath, slanderings--and the Lower Root from
+which hath come forth the things in genesis.
+
+11 [99]. "This, then, is the Cross which by the Word (Logos) hath been the
+means of 'cross-beaming' all things--at the same time separating off the
+things that proceed from genesis and those below it [from those above],
+and also compacting them all into one.
+
+12. "But this is not the cross of wood which thou shalt see when thou
+descendest hence; nor am I he that is upon the cross--[I] whom now thou
+seest not, but only hearest a voice.
+
+13. "I was held [to be] what I am not, not being what I was to many
+others; nay, they will call Me something else, abject and not worthy of
+Me. As, then, the Place of Rest is neither seen nor spoken of, much more
+shall I, the Lord of it, be neither seen [nor spoken of].
+
+14. [100 (xiv.)] "Now the multitude of one appearance round the Cross is
+the Lower Nature. And as to those whom thou seest in the Cross, if they
+have not also one form, [it is because] the whole Race (or every Limb) of
+Him who descended hath not yet been gathered together.
+
+15. "But when the Upper Nature, yea, the Race that is coming unto Me, in
+obedience to My Voice, is taken up, then thou who now hearkenest to Me,
+shalt become it, and it shall no longer be what it is now, but above them
+as I am now.
+
+16. "For so long as thou callest not thyself Mine, I am not what I am. But
+if thou hearkenest unto Me, hearing, thou, too, shalt be as I [am], and I
+shall be what I was, when thou [art] as I am with Myself; for from this
+thou art.
+
+17. "Pay no attention, then, to the many, and them that are without the
+mystery think little of; for know that I am wholly with the Father and the
+Father with Me.
+
+18. [101 (xv.)] "Nothing, then, of the things which they will say of Me
+have I suffered; nay that Passion as well which I showed unto thee and the
+rest, by dancing [it], I will that it be called a mystery.
+
+19. "What thou art, thou seest; this did I show unto thee. But what I am,
+this I alone know, [and] none else.
+
+20. "What, then, is Mine suffer Me to keep; but what is thine see thou
+through Me. To see Me as I really am I said is not possible, but only what
+thou art able to recognise, as being kin [to Me] (or of the same Race).
+
+21. "Thou hearest that I suffered; yet I did not suffer: that I suffered
+not; yet I did suffer: that I was pierced; yet was I not smitten: that I
+was hanged; yet I was not hanged: that blood flowed from me; yet it did
+not flow: and in a word the things they say about Me I had not, and the
+things they do not say those I suffered. Now what they are I will riddle
+for thee; for I know that thou wilt understand.
+
+22. "Understand, therefore, in Me, the slaying of a Word (Logos), the
+piercing of a Word, the blood of a Word, the wounding of a Word, the
+hanging of a Word, the passion of a Word, the nailing (or putting
+together) of a Word, the death of a Word.
+
+23. "And thus I speak separating off the man. First, then, understand the
+Word, then shalt thou understand the Lord, and in the third place [only]
+the man and what he suffered."
+
+24. [102 (xvi.)] And having said these things to me, and others which I
+know not how to say as He Himself would have it, He was taken up, no one
+of the multitude beholding Him.
+
+25. And when I descended I laughed at them all, when they told Me what
+they did concerning Him, firmly possessed in myself of this [truth] only,
+that the Lord contrived all things symbolically, and according to [His]
+dispensation for the conversion and salvation of man.
+
+
+
+
+COMMENTS.
+
+
+The translation is frequently a matter of difficulty, for the text has
+been copied in a most careless and unintelligent fashion, so that the
+ingenuity of the editors has often been taxed to the utmost and has not
+infrequently completely broken down. It is of course quite natural that
+orthodox scribes should blunder when transcribing Gnostic documents, owing
+to their ignorance of the subject and their strangeness to the ideas; but
+this particular copyist is at times quite barbarous, and as the subject is
+deeply mystical and deals with the unexpected, the reconstruction of the
+original reading is a matter of great difficulty. With a number of
+passages I am still unsatisfied, though I hope they are somewhat nearer
+the spirit of the original than other reconstructions which have been
+attempted.
+
+It is always a matter of difficulty for the rigidly objective mind to
+understand the point of view of the Gnostic scripture-writers. One thing,
+however, is certain: they lived in times when the rigid orthodoxy of the
+canon was not yet established. They were in the closest touch with the
+living tradition of scripture-writing, and they knew the manner of it.
+
+The probability is that paragraphs 1-3 are from the pen of the redactor or
+compiler of the _Acts_, and that the narrative, beginning with the words
+"And my Lord stood in the midst of the Cave," is incorporated from prior
+material--a mystic vision or apocalypse circulated in the inner circles.
+
+The compiler knows the general Gospel-story, and seems prepared to admit
+its historical basis; at the same time he knows well that the story
+circulated among the people is but the outer veil of the mystery, and so
+he hands on what we may well believe was but one of many visions of the
+mystic crucifixion.
+
+The gentle contempt of those who had entered into the mystery, for those
+unknowing ones who would fain limit the crucifixion to one brief historic
+event, is brought out strongly, and savours, though mildly, of the
+bitterness of the struggle between the two great forces of the inner and
+spiritualizing and the outer and materializing traditions.
+
+1. The disciples flee after beholding the inner mystery of the Passion and
+At-one-ment as set forth in the initiating drama of the Mystic Dance which
+formed the subject of our fourth volume.
+
+2. Yet even John the Beloved, in spite of this initiation, cannot yet bear
+the thought that his Master did actually suffer historically as a
+malefactor on the physical cross. In his distress he flees unto the Mount
+of Olives, above Jerusalem.
+
+But to the Gnostic the Mount of Olives was no physical hill, though it was
+a mount in the physical, and Jerusalem no physical city, though a city in
+the physical. The Mount, however it might be distinguished locally, was
+the Height of Contemplation, and the bringing into activity of a certain
+inner consciousness; even as Jerusalem here was the Jerusalem below, the
+physical consciousness.
+
+3. The sentence "when He was hung on the tree of the Cross" contains a
+great puzzle. The word for "tree" in the original is _batos_; this may
+mean the "bush" or "tree" of the cross. But the Cross for the Gnostics was
+a living symbol. It was not only the cross of dead wood, or the dead trunk
+of a tree lopped of its branches--a symbol of Osiris in death; it was also
+the Tree of Life, and was equated with the "Fiery Bush" out of which the
+Angel of God spake to Moses--that is the Tree of Fiery Life, in the
+Paradise of man's inner nature, whence the Word of God expresses itself to
+one who is worthy to hear. And this Tree of Life was also, as the Cross,
+the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; indeed, both are but one Tree, for
+the fruit of the Tree of Life is the knowledge of good and evil, the cross
+of the opposites.
+
+But seeing that the word _batos_ in Greek had also another meaning, the
+Gnostics, by their method of mystical word-play, based on the power of
+sound, brought this further meaning into use for the expansion of the
+idea. The difference of accentuation and of gender (though the reading of
+the Septuagint is masculine and not feminine as is usual with _batos_ in
+the sense of bush or tree) presented no difficulty to the word-alchemy of
+these allegorists.
+
+Hippolytus, in his _Refutation of all Heretics_, attempts to summarize a
+system of the Christianized Gnosis which is assigned to the Docetae; and
+Docetism is precisely the chief characteristic of our _Acts of John_, as
+we have already pointed out in Vol. IV. In this unsympathetic summary
+there is a passage which throws some light on our puzzle. It would, of
+course, require a detailed analysis of our haeresiologist's "refutation" of
+the Docetic system to make the passage to which we refer (_op. cit._,
+viii., 9) fully comprehensible; but as this would be too lengthy an
+undertaking for these short comments, we must content ourselves with a
+bald statement.
+
+The pure spiritual emanations or ideas or intelligences of the Light
+descend into the lowest Darkness of matter. For the moulding of vehicles
+or bodies for them it is necessary to call in the aid of the God of Fire,
+the creative or rather formative Power, who is "Living Fire begotten of
+Light."
+
+Hippolytus summarizes, doubtless imperfectly, from the Docetic document
+that lay before him, as follows:
+
+"Moses refers to this God as the Fiery God who spake from the _Batos_,
+that is to say, from the Dark Air; for _Batos_ is all the Air subjected to
+Darkness."
+
+That is, presumably, the material Air, Air of the Darkness, as compared
+with the spiritual Air or Air of the Light. The Docetic writer, Hippolytus
+says, explained the use of the term as follows:
+
+"Moses called it _Batos_, because, in their passing from Above, Below, all
+the Ideas of the Light [that is, the Light-sparks or spirits of men] used
+the Air as their means of passage (_batos_)."
+
+In other words _Batos_, as Air, was the link between Light and Darkness,
+which Darkness was regarded as essentially a flowing or Watery chaos. The
+Batos was the Way Down and the Way Up of souls.
+
+We are not, however, to suppose that the origin of this idea was the text
+of _Exodus_. By no means; the idea came first, indeed was fundamental with
+the Gnosis; the mystic exegesis of the "burning bush" passage was an
+exercise in ingenuity. For the Gnosis, the that which at once separated
+and united the Light and the Darkness was the Cross. The Angel of God
+speaking to Moses out of the Fiery Batos was for the Christian Gnostics
+one of the most striking apocalypses of ancient Jewish scripture; and it
+was primarily one of the chief functions of the Gnosis to throw light on
+the under-meaning. This the Docetic exegete does in his own fashion, using
+the reading of the Greek Targum or Translation of the Seventy, in this
+wise: "_Batos?_ _Batos_ does not mean 'bush' really, but 'medium of
+transmission,'" It is by means of this that the Word of God comes unto
+us--namely, by the mystery of the uniter-separator in one, which was
+called by many names.
+
+For instance, in setting forth the Sophia-mythus, or Wisdom-story, or
+mystery of cosmogenesis, of the Valentinian school, Hippolytus (_op.
+cit._, vi. 3), treats of the Cross as the final mystery of all. With
+original documents before him, he writes:
+
+"Now it is called Boundary, because it bounds off the Deficiency from the
+Fullness [so as to make it] exterior to it; it is called Partaker because
+it partakes of the Deficiency as well; and it is called Cross (or Stock)
+because it hath been fixed immovably and unchangeably, so that nothing of
+the Deficiency should be able to approach the eternities within the
+Fullness."
+
+Here it is useless to tie oneself to the physical symbol of a cross. The
+Stauros (Cross) in its true self is a living idea, a reality or
+root-principle. It is the principle of separation and limit, dividing
+entity from non-entity, being from non-being, perfection from
+imperfection, fullness or sufficiency from deficiency or
+insufficiency--Light from Darkness. It is the that which causes all
+opposites. At the same time it shares in all opposites, for it is the
+immediate emanation of the Father Himself, and therefore unites while
+separating. It is, therefore, the principle of participation or sharing
+in, sharing in both the Fullness and the Deficiency. Finally, it is the
+Stock or Pillar as that which "has stood, stands and will stand"--the
+principle of immobility, as the energy of the Father in His aspect of the
+supreme Individuality that changes not, because he is Lord of the
+ever-changing.
+
+That such a master-idea is difficult to grasp goes without saying; it was
+confessedly the supreme mystery. From it the mind, the formal mind of man,
+"falls back unable to grasp it"; for it is precisely this personal mind
+that creates duality, and insinuates itself between cause and effect. The
+spiritual Mind alone can embrace the opposites.
+
+But to return to our text. "When He was hung on the _batos_ of the
+Cross"--when He had reached the state of balance, was in the mystic
+centre--then at the sixth hour, that is mid-day, when there was greatest
+light, there was also greatest darkness.
+
+And then when the Lord, the Higher Self of the man, was balanced and
+justified, the man, the disciple, became conscious, in the cave of his
+heart--that is to say, in his inmost substantial nature--of the Presence
+of Light.
+
+4. Thereon follow the illumination and the explanation of the familiar
+drama of appearance taught to those "without the mystery."
+
+"The multitude below in Jerusalem" is the lower nature of the man, his
+unillumined mind. "Jerusalem Below" is set over against "Jerusalem Above,"
+the City of God. Jerusalem Below is that nature in him that is still
+unordered and unpurified; while Jerusalem Above is that ordered and
+purified portion of his substance that can respond to the immediate
+shining of the Light, which further orders it according to the Ordering of
+Heaven.
+
+And yet the drama below is real enough; there are ever crucifixion and
+piercing and the drinking of vinegar and gall, before the triumphant
+Christ is born. It is by such means that His Body is conformed; it is the
+mystery of the transformation of what we call evil into good. The Body of
+the Christ is perfected by the absorption of the impersonal evil of the
+world, which He transmutes into blessing.
+
+"'Twas I who put it in thy heart to ascend this Mount." I am thy Self, thy
+true God; 'twas I energizing in thee who enabled thee to rise to the
+height of contemplation, where thou canst "hear what disciple should learn
+from Master and man from God." The man has now reached the stage of Hearer
+in the Spiritual Mysteries.
+
+5. There then follows the vision of the great Cross of Light, fixed firm,
+and stretching from earth to heaven. Round its foot on earth is a vast
+multitude of all the nations of the world; they resemble one another in
+that they are configured according to the Darkness, their "Spark burns
+low." On the Cross, or in it, for doubtless the seer saw within as well as
+without, was another multitude of various grades of light, being formed
+into some marvellous Image like unto the Divine, but not yet completed--as
+it might be the Rose on the Cross, in the famous symbol of the
+Rosicrucians.
+
+6. And above the Cross, lost in the dazzling brilliancy of the Fullness,
+John beheld the Lord; he _beheld_ but could not _see_, because of the
+Great Light, as we are told in another great vision of the Master in the
+_Pistis Sophia_. He can hear only a Voice. But this Voice is no voice of
+man, but one "truly of God"--a Bath-kol or "Heavenly Voice," as the Rabbis
+called it--a Voice of sweetest reasonableness, using no words, but of a
+higher order of utterance, that can make the man speak to himself in his
+own language, using his own terms.
+
+7. The sentence "I long for one who will hear," is instinct with the
+yearning of the Divine Love, the eagerness to bestow, the longing to speak
+if only there be one to hear.
+
+8. There then follows a list of synonyms of the Cross, every one of which
+shows that the Cross, if a symbol, must be taken to denote the
+master-symbol of all symbols. It is the key to the chief nomenclature of
+the Gnosis and the greatest terms of the Gospel. These terms, it is
+stated, are used by the Wisdom "for your sakes," that is, to bring home in
+many ways to the hearts of men the intuition of the mystery.
+
+As is explained later on in the text, the mystery of the Cross is the
+mystery of the Word, the Spiritual Man, or Great Man, the Divine
+Individuality. Therefore is it called Word or Reason, Mind, Jesus and
+Christ. Son and Father; for Jesus is the Christ, both as human and divine,
+the two natures uniting in one in the Cross; and the Son is the Father in
+a still more divine meaning of the mystery; for both Son and Cross are of
+the Father alone, they are Himself manifesting Himself to Himself. The
+whole is the mystery of Atman or the Self.
+
+The Door is the Door of the Two in One, the state of equilibrium of the
+opposites which opens out into the all-embracing consciousness and
+understanding of all oppositions.
+
+The Cross is the Way on which there is no travelling, for it perpetually
+enters into itself; it is the true Meth-od, not so much in the sense of
+the Way-between or the Medium or Mediator, as in the sense of the Means of
+Gnosis.
+
+It is also called Seed because it is the mystery of the power of growth
+and development; it is self-initiative.
+
+And if the Cross be Son and Father in separation and union, or as
+simultaneously Cause and Result, it is likewise Spirit or Atman, and
+therefore Life.
+
+It is also Truth or the Perpetual Paradox, distinguishing and uniting in
+itself all pros and cons, and all analysis and synthesis in simultaneous
+operation.
+
+Therefore also is it called Faith, because it is the that which is stable
+and unchanging amid perpetual change. Faith in its true mystic meaning
+seems to denote the power of withdrawing the personal consciousness from
+between the pairs of opposites, where these appear external and other than
+oneself, and embracing the opposites within the greater consciousness,
+when they are within oneself and appear as natural processes in the great
+economy.
+
+Faith is of the contemplative mind; it embraces, it includes. It is
+therefore of the Great Mother, as the life and substance of the Cross; so
+also is it of Grace, elsewhere called Wisdom.
+
+Finally, the Cross regarded from this point of view is called Bread, the
+substance of Life.
+
+In a remarkable paper in _The Theosophical Review_, Nov., 1907, E. R.
+Innes speaks of a vision of a great drama of those Powers beyond the
+mind-spheres, which in the Indian scriptures are called Food and
+Eater--that is to say, the mystical union between the Not-self and the
+Self.
+
+In the _Chhandogyopanishad_, for instance, we read of one who had
+passed into the heaven-world possessing a knowledge of the identity of the
+Self and Not-self. The transformations of his vehicles that thus occur in
+the inner states or worlds become as it were processes of natural
+digestion in his Great Body, for we read:
+
+"Having what food he wills, what form he wills, this song he singing sits:
+
+  "'O wonder, wonder, wonder!
+  Food I; food I; food I!
+  Food-eater I; food-eater I; food-eater I!'"
+
+(See my _World-Mystery_, 2nd ed., p. 179.)
+
+Our author in similar fashion writes of a soul watching the processes of
+its own substance in the heaven-world.
+
+"She watched the interaction of those two great currents of the One Great
+Life-Force--the Life-Force as Supporter, the Life-Force as Sustainer. She
+watched the great transfiguration of the crossing over of the
+surface-forms as life met life in perfect mystic union. As the currents
+crossed the forms changed, but without loss of life or consciousness. The
+Powers crossed and recrossed; and with each appearance of that sacred
+symbol there was further expansion and intensification of the Life-Force.
+At each piercing or insinuation of the one into the other, that which had
+been two became one, yet there still remained the two. She watched the
+great mystery of that Cross on which the Heavenly Man dies in order to
+live again.
+
+"In heaven you do not demolish forms in order to sustain life, you daily
+insinuate yourself into all the forms you meet, and thus by supplying them
+with food, the food of your own greater life, you become each separate
+object, and gain in power and expansiveness. Thus in heaven by sacrifice
+do you grow and live, and slowly become the world. Thus in heaven do you
+give life to others in order to live yourself; thus do the many rebecome
+the One. The Great Mystery of the Bread of Life which must be partaken of
+by all before the Day of Triumph was acted out before her eyes."
+
+And it might be added that as heaven is a state and not a place, the
+mystery can be consummated on earth, and that this is the true sacrifice
+of the Christ and the Way to become a Christ.
+
+9. Ideas of this or a similar order may be held not rashly to underlie the
+words of our text. The Cross of Life may well be called the Harmony--or
+articulation, or joining-together--of Wisdom, for it is by means of Wisdom
+that all the contraries are joined together, and this Articulation
+constitutes the "firm necessity" of Fate, which was also called in the
+Gnostic schools the Harmony. And if it is a Cross of Life, it is also a
+Cross of Light, for Life and Light are the eternally united twin-natures,
+female and male, of the Logos, the Good. Life is Passion and Light is
+Understanding. The Logos divides Himself to experience and know Himself.
+
+10. All opposites unite in Wisdom as a ground; she is the pure substance
+in which all the powers play. It is only when the Cross is regarded as a
+separator, that it may be said to have a right and a left, with good
+forces on the one hand and evil on the other. The forces are in reality in
+themselves the same forces; it is the personality of the man (represented
+by the upright of the Cross), which refers all things to its incomplete
+self, that regards them as good and evil.
+
+This personality is rooted in the Lower Root or lower nature, and
+stretches upward towards the Above.
+
+But in reality there are roots above and branches below, or roots below
+and branches above, of the trunk of this Tree of Life and Light. Though
+the nomenclature is somewhat different, I cannot refrain from quoting a
+striking passage from a Gnostic scripture to give the reader some idea of
+the lofty region of thought to which the Gnosis accustomed its disciples.
+
+It is taken from _The Great Announcement_, a document ascribed by
+Hippolytus to the very beginning of the Christianized Gnosis. Strong
+efforts have been made to question this ascription, and to prove the
+document to be of a later date, but I think I have established a high
+probability that it may be even a pre-Christian writing (see _H._, i.
+184).
+
+The text is to be found in Hippolytus' _Refutation of all Heresies_ (vi.,
+18):
+
+"To you, therefore, I say what I say and write what I write. And the
+writing is this:
+
+"Of the universal AEons (Eternities) there are two Branchings, without
+beginning or end, from one Root, which is the Power unseeable,
+incomprehensible Silence.
+
+"Of these Branchings one is manifested from Above--the Great Power, Mind
+of the universals, ordering all things, male; and the other from
+Below--Great Thought, female, generating all things.
+
+"Thence partnering one another they pair (lit. have union--_syzygia_), and
+bring into manifestation the Middle Distance, incomprehensible Air without
+beginning or end.
+
+"In this is that Father, who supports and nourishes the things which have
+beginning and end.
+
+"This is He who has stood, stands and shall stand--a male-female Power in
+accordance with the transcendent Boundless Power, which hath neither
+beginning nor end, subsisting in onlyness.
+
+"It was by emanating from this Power (_sci._, Incomprehensible Silence)
+that Thought-in-onlyness became two.
+
+"Yet was He, (the Supernal Father) one; for having her (_sci._ Thought) in
+Himself He was alone [that is, all-one, or only, that is one-ly]. He was
+not, however, [in this state] 'first,' although transcendent; it was only
+in manifesting Himself from Himself that He became 'second' [that is to
+say, as He who stands]. Nay, He was not even called 'Father' till Thought
+named Him 'Father.'
+
+"As, therefore, Himself pro-ducing Himself by means of Himself, He
+manifested to Himself His own Thought; so also His Thought on manifesting
+did not make [Him], but beholding Him, she concealed the Father, that is
+the Power, in Herself, and is [thus] male-female, Power and Thought.
+
+"Thence is it that they partner one another (for Power in no way differs
+from Thought) and yet are one. From the things Above is discovered Power,
+and from those Below Thought.
+
+"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 _ma-ya_. (See the
+Trismegistic Sermon, "Though Unmanifest God is most Manifest," and the
+commentary, _H._, ii., 99-109).
+
+11. I have translated the term [Greek: diapexamenos] by "cross-beaming,"
+for [Greek: diapegion] 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 aeons 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--Amen 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 Ra 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
+Atman, the Self, the True Man, the Monad. This is the Kingly Osiris in
+his male-female nature, self-creative. Atman 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 Docetae.
+
+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 Pleroma [or Fullness]--'and what is the Greatness'--that is, the
+Pleroma of the aeons [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 aeons 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 AEons; 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).
+
+
+
+
+  PRINTED BY PERCY LUND, HUMPHRIES AND CO., LTD.,
+  THE COUNTRY PRESS, BRADFORD;
+  3, AMEN CORNER, LONDON, E.C.;
+  AND 97, BRIDGE STREET, MANCHESTER.
+  14887
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
+
+The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version
+these letters have been replaced with transliterations that appear
+as [Greek: transliteration].
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Gnostic Crucifixion, by G. R. S. Mead
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