FOOTNOTES
[1] This is the beginning of the Mt. Athos MS., the first pages having disappeared. With regard to the first chapter περὶ ἀστρολόγων, Cruice, following therein Miller, points out that nearly the whole of it has been taken from Book V with the same title of Sextus Empiricus’ work, Πρὸς Μαθηματικούς, and also that the copying is so faulty that to make sense it is necessary to restore the text in many places from that of Sextus. Sextus’ book begins, as did doubtless that of Hippolytus, with a description of the divisions of the zodiac, the cardinal points (Ascendant, Mid-heaven, Descendant, and Anti-Meridian), the cadent and succeedent houses, the use of the clepsydra or water-clock, the planets and their “dignities,” “exaltations” and “falls,” and finally, their “terms,” with a description of which our text begins. It is, perhaps, a pity that Miller did not restore the whole of the missing part from Sextus Empiricus; but the last-named author is not very clear, and the reader who wishes to go further into the matter and to acquire some knowledge of astrological jargon is recommended to consult also James Wilson’s Complete Dictionary of Astrology, reprinted at Boston, U.S.A., in 1885, or, if he prefers a more learned work, M. Bouché-Leclercq’s L’Astrologie Grecque, Paris, 1899. But it may be said here that the astrologers of the early centuries made their predictions from a “theme,” or geniture, which was in effect a map of the heavens at the moment of birth, and showed the ecliptic or sun’s path through the zodiacal signs divided into twelve “houses,” to each of which a certain significance was attached. The foundation of this was the horoscope or sign rising above the horizon at the birth, from which they were able to calculate the other three cardinal points given above, the cadent houses being those four which go just before the cardinal points and the four succeedents those which follow after them. The places of the planets, including in that term the sun and moon, in the ecliptic were then calculated and their symbols placed in the houses indicated. From this figure the judgment or prediction was made, but a great mass of absurd and contradictory tradition existed as to the influence of the planets on the life, fortune, and disposition of the native, which was supposed to depend largely on their places in the theme both in relation to the earth and to each other.
[2] Bouché-Leclercq, op. cit., p. 206, rightly defines these terms as fractions of signs separated by internal boundaries and distributed in each sign among the five planets. Cf. J. Firmicus Maternus, Matheseos, II, 6, and Cicero, De Divinatione, 40. Wilson, op. cit., s.h.v., says they are certain degrees in a sign, supposed to possess the power of altering the nature of a planet to that of the planet in the term of which it is posited. All the authors quoted say that the astrologers could not agree upon the extent or position of the various “terms,” and that in particular the “Chaldæans” and the “Egyptians” were hopelessly at variance upon the point.
[3] In the translation I have distinguished Miller’s additions to the text from Sextus Empiricus’ by enclosing them in square brackets, reserving the round brackets for my own additions from the same source, which I have purposely made as few as possible. So with other alterations.
[4] δορυφορεῖσθαι, lit., “have spear-bearers.” “Stars” in Sextus Empiricus nearly always means planets.
[5] This is the famous “trine” figure or aspect of modern astrologers. Its influence is supposed to be good; that of the square next described, the reverse.
[6] Hippolytus here omits a long disquisition by Sextus on the position of the planets and the Chaldæan system. Where the text resumes the quotation it is in such a way as to alter the sense completely; wherefore I have restored the sentence preceding from Sextus.
[7] συμπάσχει, “suffer with.”
[8] τὸ περίεχον. The term used by astrologers to denote the whole æther surrounding the stars or, in other words, the whole disposition of the heavens. “Ambient” is its equivalent in modern astrology.
[9] This is an anticipation of the Peratic heresy to which a chapter in Book V (pp. [146] ff. infra) is devoted. Ἀκεμβὴς is there spelt Κελβὴς, but Ἀκεμβὴς is restored in Book X and is copied by Theodoret. “Peratic” is thought by Salmon (D.C.B., s.h.v.) to mean “Mede.”
[10] “Toparch” means simply “ruler of a place.” Proastius (προάστιος) generally the dweller in a suburb. Here it probably means the powers in some part of the heavens which is near to a place or constellation without actually forming part of it.
[11] νενομισμένα. Cf. νενομισμένως, “in the established manner,” Callistratus, Ecphr., 897.
[12] τῶς πρακτικῶν λόγων, or, perhaps, “of the systems used.”
[13] ἀσύστατον, lit., “not holding together,” punningly used as epithet for both the art and the heresy.
[14] What follows to the concluding paragraph of Chap. 7 is taken nearly verbatim from Sextus Empiricus.
[15] For these terms see n. on p. [67] supra.
[16] ὡροσκόπιον seems here put for ὡροσκοπεῖον = horologium, or clock.
[17] ἀπότεξις, “the bringing-forth” is the word used by Sextus throughout. As Sextus was a medical man it is probably the technical term corresponding to our “parturition.” Miller reads ἀποτάξις which does not seem appropriate.
[18] διάθεμα. See n. on p. [67] supra.
[19] I have here followed Sextus’ division of the sentence. Cruice translates στέαρ, farina aqua subacta, for which I can see no justification. Macmahon here follows him.
[20] Restoring from Sextus οἴχεται for ἦρται.
[21] ὡροσκόπον, “the ascending sign.” So Sextus.
[22] Restoring from Sextus ἐφ’ ἑκάστου for ἐν ἑκάστῳ; τὸν ἀκριβῆ for τὸ ἀκριβὲς and omitting καταλαβέσθαι.
[24] Sextus has described earlier (p. 342, Fabricius) the whole process of warning the astrologer of the moment of birth by striking a metal disc, which I have called “gong.”
[25] ἀορίστου τυγχανούσης.
[26] ἐν πλείονι χρόνῳ καὶ ἐν συχνῷ πρὸς αἴσθησιν δυνάμενον μερίζεσθαι, majori et longiori temporis spatio ad aurium sensum dividatur, Cr.; “with proportionate delay,” Macmahon. I do not understand how either his or Cruice’s construction is arrived at.
[27] Sextus has “on the hills.”
[28] ὡροσκοποῦντος might mean “which marks the hour.”
[29] φαίνεται ... ἀλλοιότερον ... διάθεμα.
[30] quam diligenter observari possit in coelo nativitas, Cr., (before) “the nativity can be carefully observed in the sky.”
[31] γένεσις. The word in Greek astrological works has the same meaning as “geniture” or “nativity” in modern astrological jargon. Identical with “theme.”
[32] The whole of this sentence is corrupt, and the scribe was probably taking down something from Sextus which was read to him without his understanding it. I have given what seems to be the sense of the passage.
[33] ὑδρίαι, Sextus (p. 342, Fabr.), has described the clepsydra or water-clock and its defects as a measurer of time.
[34] ἐν πλάτει.
[35] τὰ ἀποτελέσματα. A technical expression for the results or influence on sublunary things of the position of the heavenly bodies. Cf. Bouché-Leclercq, op. cit., p. 328, n. 1.
[36] Sextus adds παγίως, “positively.”
[37] οἱ μαθηματικοί. The only passage in our text where Hippolytus uses the word in this sense. He seems to have taken it from Sextus’ title κατὰ τὸν μαθηματικὸν λόγον.
[38] A play of words upon Λέω and ἀνδρεῖος.
[39] σπουδῆς. Hippolytus inserts an unnecessary οὐ before the word. See Sextus, p. 355.
[40] οἰκειώσεως χάριν, gratia consuetudinis, Cr.
[41] Does this refer to Otho’s encouragement by the astrologer Ptolemy to rebel against Galba? See Tacitus, Hist., I, 22. The sentence does not appear in Sextus.
[42] Sextus says 9977 years.
[43] φθάσει συνδραμεῖν, “arrive at concurrence with.” Sextus answers the question in the negative.
[44] Here the quotations from Sextus end.
[45] παρ’ ἔθνεσι “among the nations.” A curious expression in the mouth of a Greek, although natural to a Jew.
[46] Is this an allusion to trigonometry? The rest of the sentence, as will presently be seen, refers to Plato’s Timæus. Cf. also Timæus the Locrian, c. 5.
[47] Διὸ τοῖς ἐπιτόμοις χρησάμενος. An indication that Hippolytus’ knowledge of Plato was not first-hand.
[48] The passage which follows is from the Timæus, XII, where Plato describes how the World-maker set in motion two concentric circles revolving different ways, the external called the Same and Like, and the internal the Other, or Different.
[49] This seems to be generally accepted as Plato’s meaning. Jowett says the three are the orbits of the Sun, Venus and Mercury, the four those of the Moon, Saturn, Mars and Jupiter. The Wanderers are of course the planets.
[50] i. e., swifter and slower.
[51] ἐπιφανεία.
[52] Perhaps the following extract from the pseudo-Timæus the Locrian, now generally accepted as a summary of the second century, may make this clearer. After explaining that the cosmos and its parts are divided into “the Same” and “the Different,” he says: “The first of these leads from without all that are within them, along the general movement from East to West. But the latter, belonging to the Different, lead from within the parts that are carried along from West to East, and are self-moved, and they are whirled round and along, as it may happen, by the movement of the Same which possesses in the Cosmos a superior power. Now the movement of the Different, being divided according to a harmonical proportion, takes the form of 7 circles,” and he then goes on to describe the orbits of the planets.
[53] Lit., “if one section be severed.”
[54] Cf. Plato, Timæus, c. 12.
[55] A palpable mistake. As Cruice points out, if the Earth’s diameter is as said in the text, its perimeter must be 251,768 stadia, which is not far from the 252,000 stadia assigned to it by Eratosthenes.
[56] Lacunæ in both these sentences.
[57] The common Greek name for the planet Ares or Mars (♂).
[58] All these numbers are hopelessly corrupt in the text and the scribe varies the notation repeatedly. I have given the figures as finally settled by Cruice and his predecessors. The Shining One is the planet Hermes or Mercury (☿).
[59] βάθη, “depths”; rather height if we consider the orbits of the planets as concentric and fitting into one another like jugglers’ caps or the skins of an onion.
[60] ἐν λόγοις συμφώνοις. Cruice would read τόνοις for λόγοις on the strength of what Pliny, Hist. Nat., II, 20, says about Pythagoras having taught that the intervals between the planets’ orbits were musical tones. He seems to mean the gamut or chromatic scale as contrasted with the enharmonic.
[61] See last note.
[62] See note on p. [81] infra as to what this doubling and tripling means.
[63] συμφωνίᾳ.
[64] ἐπιτετάρτῳ, superquarta, Cr., 1 + ¼; see Liddell and Scott, quoting Nicomachus Gerasenus Arithmeticus.
[65] It is not easy to see from this confused statement whether it is the system of Plato or Archimedes at which Hippolytus is aiming. The one, however, that it most resembles is that of the neo-Pythagoreans, of which the following table is given in M. Bigourdan’s excellent work on L’Astronomie: Evolution des Idées et des Méthodes, Paris 1911, p. 49:—
| Planets | ♁ | ☽ | ☿ | ♀ | ☉ | ♂ | ♃ | ♄ | Fixed stars | ||
| Interval | { | in tones | 1 | ½ | ½ | 1½ | 1 | ½ | ½ | ½ | |
| in thousands of stadia | 126 | 63 | 63 | 189 | 126 | 63 | 63 | 63 | |||
| Absolute distances in thousands of stadia | 0 | 126 | 189 | 252 | 441 | 567 | 630 | 693 | 756 |
[66] The object of all these figures is apparently to prove that those of Archimedes are wrong and that the Platonic theory—said, one does not know with what truth, to have been inherited from Pythagoras, viz., that the intervals between the orbits of the different bodies of the cosmos are arranged like the notes on a musical scale—is to be preferred. This was perhaps to be expected from a Churchman as favouring the doctrine of creation by design. It is difficult at first sight to see how the figures in the text bear out Hippolytus’ contention, inasmuch as the distances here given of the seven planets (including therein the Sun and Moon) from the Earth proceed in an irregular kind of arithmetical progression ranging from one to fifty-four, the distance from the Earth to the Moon which Hippolytus accepts from Archimedes as correct being taken as unity. Thus, let us call this unit of distance x, and we have the table which follows:—
Table I (of distances)
| Distance | of | Earth | (♁) | from | ☽ | = | 5,544,130 | stadia or | x |
| ” | ” | ” | ☉ | = | 16,632,390 | ” | 3x | ||
| ” | ” | ” | ♀ | = | 33,264,780 | ” | 6x | ||
| ” | ” | ” | ☿ | = | 55,441,300 | ” | 10x | ||
| ” | ” | ” | ♂ | = | 105,338,470 | ” | 19x | ||
| ” | ” | ” | ♃ | = | 149,691,510 | ” | 27x | ||
| ” | ” | ” | ♄ | = | 299,383,020 | ” | 54x |
But let us take the figures given in the text for the intervals between the Earth and the seven “planets” arranged in the same order, and again taking the Earth to Moon distance as unity, we have:—
Table II (of intervals)
| Interval | between | ♁ | and | ☽ | = | 5,554,130 | stadia or | x |
| ” | ” | ☽ | ” | ☉ | = | 11,088,260 | ” | 2x |
| ” | ” | ☉ | ” | ♀ | = | 16,632,390 | ” | 3x |
| ” | ” | ♀ | ” | ☿ | = | 22,176,520 | ” | 4x(22) |
| ” | ” | ☿ | ” | ♂ | = | 49,897,170 | ” | 9x(32) |
| ” | ” | ♂ | ” | ♃ | = | 44,353,040 | ” | 8x(23) |
| ” | ” | ♃ | ” | ♄ | = | 149,691,510 | ” | 27x(33) |
This agrees almost entirely with the theory which M. Bigourdan in the work mentioned in the last note has worked out as the Platonic theory of the distances of the different planets from the Earth, “the supposed centre of their movements” (p. 228). Thus:—
| Planets | ☽ | ☉ | ♀ | ☿ | ♂ | ♃ | ♄ |
| Distances | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 8 | 9 | 27 |
which distances are, in his own words, “les termes enchevêtrés de deux progressions géométriques ayant respectivement pour raison 2 et 3, savoir 1, 2, 4, 8—1, 3, 9, 27; on voit que l’unité est, comme chez Pythagore, la distance de la Terre à la Lune.” This conclusion is amply borne out by Hippolytus’ figures, which, as given in Table II above, show a regular progression from 2 and 3 to 22 and 32, then to 23 and 33, which explains what our author means by increasing the Earth to the Moon distance, κατὰ τὰ διπλάσιον καὶ τριπλάσιον. The only discrepancy between this and M. Bigourdan’s table is that he has transposed the distances between ☿—♂ and ♂—♄ respectively; but as I do not know the details of the calculation on which he bases his figures, I am unable to say whether the mistake is his or Hippolytus’.
[67] Are we to conclude from this that these last calculations are those of Claudius Ptolemy, the author of the Almagest? He has certainly not been mentioned before, but his fame was so great that Hippolytus may have been certain that the allusion would be understood by his audience. Ptolemy lived, perhaps, into the last quarter of the second century.
[68] Genesis vi. 4. The subject seems to have had irresistible fascination for Christian converts of Asiatic blood, whether orthodox or heretic. Manes also wrote a book upon the Giants, cf. Kessler, Mani, Berlin, 1899, pp. 191 ff.
[69] Hippolytus seems to have been entirely ignorant that the calculations he derides were anything but mere guesswork. They were not only singularly accurate considering the imperfection of the observations at the disposal of their author, but have also been of the greatest use to science as laying the foundation of all future astronomy.
[70] ἀμέτρους. Another pun on their measurements.
[71] Nothing definite is known of this Colarbasus or his supposed astrological heresy. The accounts given of him by Irenæus and Epiphanius describe him as holding tenets identical with those of Marcus. Hort, following Baur, believes that he never existed, and that his name is simply a Greek corruption of Qol arba, “the Voice of the Four.” See D.C.B., s.h.v.
[72] περὶ μαθηματικῶν. The article is omitted; but he must mean the students and not the study. This is curious, because Mathematicus in the Rome of Hippolytus must have meant astrologer and nothing else, and what follows has nothing to do with astrology. Rather is it what was called in the Renaissance Arithmomancy. Cruice refers us to Athanasius Kircher’s Arithmologia on the subject. Cornelius Agrippa, De vanitate et incertitudine Scientiarum, writes of it as “The Pythagorean lot,” and it is described in Gaspar Peucer’s De præcipuis Divinationum generibus, 1604.
[73] ψῆφοι, lit., pebbles, i. e. counters.
[74] στοιχεῖα: letters as the component parts or elements of words.
[75] Reading with the text τινὰς for Cruice’s τινὰ.
[76] In the text the Kappa and Tau are written at full length, the other numbers in the usual Greek notation, a proof that the scribe was here writing from dictation and not copying MS.
[77] ψηφισθὲν.
[78] The name is spelt Πάτροκλος.
[79] So that the “root” may be either 7 or 6 according as you use the “rule of 9” or of 7. A reductio ad absurdum.
[80] ἐὰν ἀπαρτίσῃ, “is even or complete.”
[81] I omit the Rho, which in the Codex precedes the Alpha. Cruice suggests it is put for Π.
[82] They do not, but make 26. Cruice adds an Alpha between the 8 and the 3: but in any case the rule just enunciated is broken by the reckoning in of two 2’s.
[83] Αἴας. Α = 1, ι = 10 = 1, α = 1 (omitted), ς = 200 = 2. 1 + 1 + 2 = 4.
[84] The Homeric name for Paris.
[85] κύριον ὄνομα as opposed to μεταφορὸν ὄνομα, a name transferred from one to another, or family name.
[86] Not 8 but 4. ο = 70 = 7, δ = 4, υ = 400 = 4, σ = 200 = 2, ε = 5 (with duplicate omitted) = 22, which divided by 9 leaves 4, or by 7, only 1. The next sentence and a similar remark at the last sentence but one of the chapter are probably by a commentator or scribe and have slipped into the text by accident. Oddly enough, nothing is said as to what happens if the “roots” are equal, as they seem to be in this case.
[87] Another mistake. Α = 1, σ = 200 = 2, τ = 300 = 3, ε = 5, ρ = 100 = 1, ο = 70 = 7, π = 80 = 8, ι = 10 = 1 (with duplicates omitted) = 28, which divided by 9 leaves 1, or by 7, 0 = 7.
[88] ὅταν μέντοι δευτερόν τινες ἀγωνίζωνται. Quum vero quidam iterum decertant de numeris, Cr. But the allusion is almost certainly to two charioteers or combatants meeting in successive contests. Half the divination and magic of the early centuries refers to the affairs of the circus, and the text has nothing about de numeris.
[89] Lit., inspection of the forehead (or face), or what Lavater called physiognomy. The word was known to Ben Jonson, who uses it in his Alchymist. “By a rule, Captain. In metoposcopy, which I do work by. A certain star in the forehead which you see not,” etc.
[90] ἰδέας.
[91] I have not thought it worth while to set down the various readings suggested by the different editors and translators for these “forms and qualities.” The whole of this chapter is taken from Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, and was corrupted by every copyist. The common type suggested with eyebrows meeting over the nose is plainly Alexandrian, as we know from the portraits on mummy-cases in Ptolemaic times.
[92] κοπιαταὶ. The dictionaries give “grave-digger,” which makes no sense.
[93] ὀφθαλμοῖς μέλασιν ὡς ἠλειμμένοις, “eyes black as if oiled.” Not a bad description of the eyes of a certain type of Levantine.
[94] The text has κολυμβῶσιν, which must refer to the eyes.
[95] Yet he twice calls them ψεῦσται, or “cheats.”
[96] Miller thinks this last characteristic interpolated.
[97] Reading λευκῷ for ἀλυκῷ, “salt,” which seems impossible.
[98] Reading ὑποδούλιοι for ὑπόδουλοι.
[99] Is any one born with grey hair?
[100] οἱ αὐτοὶ φύσεως. A similar phrase has just occurred under the same sign: a proof of the utter corruption of the text.
[101] ὀρχησταί in codex. Probably a mistake for εἰς κοινωνίαν εὔχρηστοι, “useful to the community.”
[102] δι’ ἐπινοίας; probably a sarcasm.
[103] It is hardly necessary to point out the futility of this astrology, its base being the theory that the earth is the centre of the universe. Nearly all the characteristics given above have, however, less to do with the stars than with those supposed to distinguish the different animals named. This is really sympathetic magic, or what was later called “the signatures of things.”
[104] A lacuna in the text here extending to the opening words of the next chapter.
[105] Richard Ganschinietz, in a study on Hippolytus’ Capitel gegen die Magier appearing in Gebhardt’s and Harnack’s Texte und Untersuchungen, dritte Reihe Bd. 9, Leipzig, 1913, says it is not doubtful that Hippolytus took this chapter from Celsus’ book κατὰ μάγων, which he discovers in Origen’s work against the last-named author. He assumes that Lucian of Samosata in his Ἀλέξανδρος ἢ Ψευδόμαντις borrowed from the same source.
[106] τῶν δαιμόνων, a demonibus, Cr. But the word δαίμων is hardly ever used in classic or N.T. Greek for a devil or evil spirit, generally called δαιμόνιον. Δαίμων here and elsewhere in this chapter plainly means a god of lesser rank or spirit. Cf. Plutarch de Is. et Os., cc. 25-30.
[107] τῷ παιδὶ, the magician’s assistant necessary in all operations requiring confederacy or hypnotism.
[108] For the composition of this see Plutarch, op. cit., c. 81.
[109] ὁ μυχός. Often used for the women’s chamber or gynaeceum.
[110] Clearly the Egyptian sun-god Ra or Rê, the Phi in front being the Coptic definite article. It is a curious instance of the undying nature of any superstition that in the magical ceremonies of the extant Parisian sect of Vintrasists, Ammon-Ra, the Theban form of this god, is invoked apparently with some idea that he is a devil. See Jules Bois’ Le Satanisme et la Magie, Paris, 1895.
[111] χαλκάνθον, sulphate of iron, which, mixed with tincture or decoction of nut-galls, makes writing ink. Our own word copperas is an exact translation.
[112] φιάλη. A broad flat pan used for sacrificial purposes.
[113] There is some muddle here, probably due to Hippolytus not having any practical acquaintance with the tricks described. The smoke of nut-galls would hardly make the writing visible. On the other hand, letters written in milk will turn brown if exposed to the fire without the application of any ash.
[114] A sauce made of brine and small fish.
[115] See the roughly-drawn vignettes usual in magic papyri, e. g. Parthey, Zwei griechische Zauberpapyri, Berlin, 1866, p. 155; Karl Wessely, Griechische Zauberpapyri von Paris und London, Vienna, 1888, p. 118.
[116] τὰς φρένας. One of Hippolytus’ puns.
[117] Hebrew was used in these ceremonies, because they were largely in the hands of the Jews. See Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity, II, pp. 33, 34, for references.
[118] ἠχεῖ. Particularly appropriate to the striking of a metal disc.
[119] The book of course was a long roll of parchment, the inner coils of which could be drawn out as described.
[120] ὀρυκτῶν ἁλῶν. Cruice translates fossil salts. Does he mean rock-salt?
[121] τὸ ἰνδικὸν μέλαν. Either indigo dye or pepper. Cayenne pepper put in the flame might have a startling effect on the audience.
[122] Where?
[123] Said to be an astringent earth made from rock-alum, and containing both alum and vitriol. Known to Hippocrates.
[124] Red lead or vermilion? The idea seems to be to frighten the dupe by the supposed prodigy of a hen laying eggs which have red or black inside them instead of white.
[125] Pliny, Nat. Hist., VIII, c. 75, says the sheep is compelled when it feeds to turn away from the sun by reason of the weakness of its head. This is probably the story which Hippolytus or the author has exaggerated. Something is omitted from the text.
[126] Seal or porpoise oil?
[127] Hymns like these are to be found in the two collections of magic papyri quoted in n. on p. [93] supra.
[128] He tells us how this trick is performed on p. [100] infra. Lecanomancy or divination by the bowl was generally performed by means of a hypnotized boy, as described in Lane’s Modern Egyptians. This, however, is a more elaborate process dependent on fraud.
[129] Reading νάτρον for νίτρον. It was common in Egypt, and saltpetre would not have the same effect, which seems to depend on the expulsion of carbonic acid.
[130] μυρσίνη. Cruice suggests μάλφη, a mixture of wax and pitch, which hardly seems indicated. Storax is the ointment recommended by eighteenth-century conjurers. Water is all that is needful.
[131] ἰχθυοκόλλα. Presumably fish-glue. Macmahon suggests isinglass. The salamander, the use of which is to be sought in sympathetic magic, was no doubt calcined and used in powder. σκολοπένδριον, “millipede” and σκολόπενδρον, “hart’s tongue fern” are the alternative readings suggested. Fern-oil is said to be good for burns.
[132] Probably chalk or gypsum.
[133] αὐτορρύτων κηκίδων τε κενῶν. Κήκις here evidently means any sort of nut-shell. But how can it be “self-flowing”? Miller’s suggested φορυτὸν makes no better sense.
[134] The lion-headed figure of the Mithraic worship is shown thus setting light to an altar in Cumont’s Textes et Monuments de Mithra, II, p. 196, fig. 22. A similar figure with an opening at the back of the head to admit the “wind-pipe” described in the text shows how this was effected. See the same author’s Les Mystères de Mithra, Brussels, 1913, p. 235, figs. 26, 27.
[135] The solution of alum would be effective without any other ingredients.
[136] That is, not by guesswork. Another pun.
[137] The letter was of course in the form of a writing-tablet bound about with silk or cord, to which the seal was attached.
[138] This would make something like plaster of Paris.
[139] This book or the former one. Lucian describes the same process in his Alexander, which he dedicates to Celsus; v. n. on p. [92] supra.
[140] ἀφορμὰς λαβών, “taking them as starting-points.”
[141] Cruice suggests that this sentence has either got out of place or is an addition by an annotator. Probably an afterthought of Hippolytus’.
[142] See n. on p. [97] supra.
[143] κύανος. A dark-blue substance which some think steel, others lapis lazuli.
[144] συμπαῖκται, “playfellows.” Here, as elsewhere in the text, accomplices or confederates.
[145] Several words missing here, perhaps by intention. It would be interesting to know if the “drug” was any preparation of phosphorus.
[146] Should be Baubo, a synonym of Hecate in the hymn to that goddess published by Miller, Mélanges de Litt. Grecque, Paris, 1868, pp. 442 ff.
[147] Most of the epithets and names here used are to be found in the hymn quoted in the last note. The goddess is there identified not only with Artemis and Persephone, but with the Sumerian Eris-ki-gal, lady of hell.
[148] A sort of magic lantern? κάτοπτρον, which I have translated mirror, might be a lens. One is said to have been found in Assyria.
[149] πόρρωθεν. Better, perhaps, πόρροτεθεν.
[150] Full moon, or half, or quarter, as the case may be.
[151] Schneidewin seems to be right in suggesting a lacuna here.
[152] ἐν ὑαλώδεσι τύποις. Schneidewin suggests τόποις unreasonably. Many alabaster jars are nearly transparent.
[153] Cf. Aristotle, De Hist. Animal., V, 10, 2. Said to be Coryphæna hippurus.
[154] The hiatus leaves us in doubt how this operated. Perhaps it liberated free ammonia.
[155] Reading ἐπίπλοον βοείου instead of, with Cruice, ἐπίπλεον βώλου, “filled with clay.”
[156] ἀφανὲς, “unapparent.”
[157] ἀπηνέχθημεν. An admission that this chapter was an afterthought.
[158] ὡς εἰκάσαι, ἐστι, ut patet, Cr.
[159] θεολόγοι. It does not mean “theologians” in our sense, but narrator of stories about the gods. Orpheus is always considered a θεολόγος.
[160] ποδαπός. Not, as Cruice translates, quale, which would be better expressed by the ποίον of Aristotle.
[161] τὸ σύμπαν αὐτὸ.
[162] It is fairly certain that Hippolytus in this “Recapitulation” must here be summarizing the missing Books II and III. He has said nothing in any part of the work that has come down to us about the Persian theology, and in Book I he calls Zaratas or Zoroaster a Chaldæan and not a Persian.
[163] ψήφοις ὑπέβαλον καὶ are supplied by Schneidewin in the place of three words rubbed out.
[164] Reading with Schneidewin μοιρῶν for μυρῶν and ἐπιπνοίας for ἐπίνοιας.
[165] By indivisible comparison (σύγκρισις) he seems to imply that these numbers cannot be divided except by 1. Hence Cruice would omit 9 as being divisible by 3. Perhaps he means “like indivisibility.”
[166] Cruice suggests that this was an astronomical instrument and quotes Cl. Ptolemy, Harmon., I, 2, in support.
[167] Why should the cosmos be masculo-feminine? The Valentinians said the same thing about their Sophia, who was, as I have said elsewhere (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Oct. 1917), a personification of the Earth. The idea seems to go back to Sumerian times. Cf. Forerunners, II, 45, n. 1, and Mr. S. Langdon, Tammuz and Ishtar, Oxford, 1914, pp. 7, 43 and 115.
[168] The worshippers of the Greek Isis declared Isis to be the earth and Osiris water. See Forerunners, I, 73, for references. If Hippolytus is here recapitulating Books II and III, it is probable that the lacuna was occupied with some reference to the Alexandrian deities and their connection with the arithmetical speculations of the Neo-Pythagoreans. Could this be substantiated, we should not need to look further for the origin of the Simonian and Valentinian heresies.
[169] ψηφιζόμενα κὰι ἀναλυόμενα, supputata et diversa, Cr. The process seems to be that called earlier (p. [85] supra) the rule of 9.
[170] 361 ÷ 9 = 40 + 1; 605 ÷ 9 = 67 + 2.
[171] ἀπερίζυγον, lit., “unyoked.”
[172] εἰς ἐννάδα here appears in the text apparently as an alternative reading. Cruice suggests “with an ennead deducted.”
[173] Meaning that some reckon the numerical value of all the letters in a name, others that of the vowels only.
[174] What follows has nothing to do with divination, but treats of the celestial map as a symbolical representation of the Christian scheme of salvation. Hippolytus condemns the notion as a “heresy,” but if so, its place ought to be in Book V. It is doubtful from what author or teacher he derived his account of it; but all the quotations from Aratus’ Phænomena which he gives are to be found in Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 41, where they make, as they do not here, a connected story.
[175] One of the passages favouring the conjecture that the book was originally in the form of lectures.
[176] οἱ ἐντυγχάνοντες, legentibus, Cr. It may just as easily mean “those who come across this.”
[177] “Catasterisms” was the technical term for these transfers, of which the Coma Berenices is the best-known example. Cf. Bouché-Leclercq, op. cit., p. 23.
[178] The long-eared owl (strix otus). According to Ælian it had a reputation for stupidity, and was therefore a type of the easy dupe, Athenæus, Deipnosophistæ, IX, 44, 45, tells a similar story to that in the text about the bustard.
[179] Reading μετανάσσεται for μετανίσσεται or μετανείσεται.
[180] στρεπτούς, volventes, Cr. An attempt to pun on πόλος, the Pole.
[181] Job i. 7. The Book of Job according to some writers comes from an Essene school, which may give us some clue to the origin of these ideas. The Enochian literature to which the same tendency is assigned is full of speculations about the heavenly bodies. See Forerunners, I, p. 159, for references.
[182] ὁ ἐν γόνασιν. Aratus calls this constellation ὁ ἐν γόνασι καθήμενος, Cicero Engonasis, Ovid Genunixus, Vitruvius, Manilius and J. Firmicus Maternus, Ingeniculus.
[183] A perversion of the “it shall bruise thy head and thou shall bruise his heel,” of Genesis iii. 15.
[184] From his attitude the Kneeler resembles the figure of Atlas supporting the world, who as Omophorus plays a great part in Manichæan mythology. Cumont derives this from a Babylonian original, for which and his connection with Mithraic cosmogony see his Recherches sur le Manichéisme, Brussels, 1908, I, p. 70, figs. 1 and 2. The constellation is now known as Hercules.
[185] Hippolytus here evidently quotes not from Aratus, but from some unnamed Gnostic or heretic writer, whom Cruice thinks must have been a Jew. Yet he was plainly a Christian, as appears from his remarks about the “Second Creation.” An Ebionite writer might have preserved many Essene superstitions.
[186] Cruice, following Roeper, says these words have slipped in from an earlier page.
[187] ὀφιοῦχος. The “Ophiuchus huge” of Milton or Anguitenens.
[188] Ἑλίκη. So Aratus and Apollonius Rhodius. Said to be so called from its perpetually revolving. Cruice remarks on this sentence that it does not seem to have been written by a Greek, and quotes Epiphanius as to the addiction of the Pharisees to astrology. But see last note but one.
[189] ἑλίκη. A pun quite in Hippolytus’ manner.
[190] πρὸς ἣν ... ναυτίλλονται. Cruice and Macmahon alike translate this “towards which,” but Aratus clearly means “steer by” both here and earlier.
[191] Herodotus I, 1. He does not say, however, that the Greeks were Phœnicians.
[192] Rather the conceiver, from κύω, to conceive. γεννάω is used of the mother by Aristotle, De Gen. Animal., 3, 5, 6.
[193] λογικῆς.
[194] Reading Ιάσαδος for Cruice’s Ἰασίδαο. The text is said to have εἰς ἀΐδαο.
[195] γράμματα, elementa, Cr. But I think the allusion is to the story they contain for those who can read them.
[196] The Swan.
[197] τὰς ἰδέας.
[198] If Hippolytus’ words are here correctly transcribed, the “heretic” quoted seems to have two inconsistent ideas about the stars. One is that the constellations are types or allegories of what takes place in man’s soul; the other, that they are the patterns after which the creatures of this world were made. This last is Mithraic rather than Christian.
[199] τῆς τούτων ὑπολήψεως, ab horum cogitationibus, Cr.
[200] ἀγαπητοί. The word generally used in a sermon.
[201] This also reads like a peroration.
[202] In this chapter Hippolytus for the first time sets himself seriously to prove the thesis which he has before asserted, i. e., that all the Gnostic systems are derived from the teachings of the Greek philosophers. His mode of doing so is to compare the elaborate systems of Aeons or emanations of deity imagined by heresiarchs like Simon Magus and Valentinus to the views attributed by him to Pythagoras which make all nature to spring from one indivisible point. Whether Pythagoras ever held such views may be doubted and we have no means of checking Hippolytus’ always loose statements on this point; but something like them appears in the Theaetetus of Plato where arithmetic and geometry seem to be connected by talk about oblong as well as square numbers and the construction of solids from them. If we imagine with the Greeks (see n. on p. [37] supra) that numbers are not abstract things, but actual portions of space, there is indeed a strong likeness between the ideas of the later Platonists as to the construction of the world by means of numbers and those attributed to the Gnostic teachers as to its emanation from God. Whether these last really held the views thus attributed to them is another matter. Cf. Forerunners, II, pp. 99, 100.
[203] ἀπὸ τοῦ σημείου seems to be repeated needlessly.
[204] ῥυὲν, “flowing out.”
[205] πέρος ἔχουσα σημεῖον. Surely it has two limits—a point at each end.
[206] σῶμα. In the next sentence he uses the proper word στερεόν.
[207] This is, I suppose, quoted from the Ἀποφάσις μεγαλή attributed to Simon, as he speaks afterwards (II, p. 9 infra) of the small becoming great, “as it is written in the Apophasis, if it ... come into being from the indivisible point. But the great will be in the boundless æon,” etc.
[208] What follows from this point down to the end of the paragraph is an almost verbatim transcript of the passage in Book I (pp. [37] ff. supra), where it is given as the teaching of Pythagoras. The only substantial differences are: that hypostasis is written for hypothesis in the second sentence of the passage; the Tetractys is no longer said to be the “source” of eternal nature; and the 11, 12, etc., are now said to take, and not “share” their beginning from the 10.
[209] ὑπόθεσιν ἑαυτοῖς ἐντεῦθεν σχεδιάσαντες, suis dogmatibus fundamentum posuerunt, Cr.
[210] τὸ πνεῦμα. Cruice translates this by spiritum, and is followed by Macmahon. I think, however, he means the breath, it being the idea of the ancients that the arteries were air-vessels.
[211] παρεγκεφαλίς.
[212] κωνάριον.
[213] νωτιαῖον μοελόν.
[214] It is at any rate plain from this that the missing Books II and III at one time existed.
[215] These words appear in the MS. at the foot of this Book.
BOOK V
THE OPHITE HERESIES
p. 137.1. These are the contents of the 5th (book) of the Refutation of all Heresies.
2. What the Naassenes say who call themselves Gnostics, and that they profess those opinions which the philosophers of the Greeks and the transmitters of the Mysteries first laid down, starting wherefrom they have constructed heresies.
3. And what things the Peratæ imagine, and that their doctrine is not framed from the Holy Scriptures but from the astrological (art).
4. What is the system according to the Sithians, and that they have patched together their doctrine by plagiarizing from those wise men according to the Greeks, (to wit) Musæus and Linus and Orpheus.
5. What Justinus imagined and that his doctrine is not framed from the Holy Scriptures, but from the marvellous tales of Herodotus the historiographer.
1. Naassenes.[1]
p. 138.6. I consider that the tenets concerning the Divine and the fashioning of the cosmos (held by) all those who are deemed philosophers by Greeks and Barbarians have been very painfully set forth in the four books before this. Whose curious arts I have not neglected, so that I have undertaken for the readers no chance labour, exhorting many to love of learning and certainty of knowledge about the truth. Now therefore there remains to hasten on to the refutation of the heresies, with which intent[2] also we have set forth the things aforesaid. From which philosophers the heresiarchs have taken hints in common[3] and patching like cobblers the mistakes of the ancients on to their own thoughts, have offered them as new to those they can deceive, as we shall prove in (the books) which follow. For the rest, it is time to approach the subjects laid down before, but to begin with those who have dared to sing the praises of the Serpent, who is in fact the cause of the error, through certain systems invented by his action. Therefore p. 139. the priests and chiefs of the doctrine were the first who were called Naassenes, being thus named in the Hebrew tongue: for the Serpent is called Naas.[4] Afterwards they called themselves Gnostics alleging that they alone knew the depths.[5] Separating themselves from which persons, many men have made the heresy, which is really one, a much divided affair, describing the same things according to varying opinions, as this discourse will argue as it proceeds.
These men worship as the beginning of all things, according to their own statement, a Man and a Son of Man. But this Man is masculo-feminine[6] and is called by them Adamas;[7] and hymns to him are many and various. And p. 140. the hymns, to cut it short, are repeated by them somehow like this:—
“From thee a father, and through thee a mother, the two deathless names, parents of Aeons, O thou citizen of heaven, Man of great name!”[8]
But they divide him like Geryon into three parts. For there is of him, they say, the intellectual (part), the psychic and the earthly; and they consider that the knowledge of him is the beginning of the capacity to know God, speaking thus: “The beginning of perfection is the knowledge of man, but the knowledge of God is completed perfection.” But all these things, he says, the intellectual, and the psychic and the earthly, proceeded and came down together into one man, Jesus who was born of Mary;[9] and there spoke together, he says, in the same way, these three men each of them from his own substance to his own. For there are three kinds of universals[10] according to them (to wit) the angelic,[11] the psychic and the earthly; and three churches, the angelic, the psychic and the earthly; but their names are: Chosen, Called, Captive.[12]
p. 141.7. These are the heads of the very many discourses which they say James the brother of the Lord handed down to Mariamne.[13] So then, that the impious may no longer speak falsely either of Mariamne, or of James, or of his Saviour, we will come to the Mysteries, whence comes their fable, both the Barbarian and the Greek, and we shall see how these men collecting together the hidden and ineffable mysteries of the nations[14] and speaking falsely of Christ, lead astray those who have not seen the Gentiles’ secret rites. For since the Man Adamas is their foundation, and they say there has been written of him “Who shall declare his p. 142. generation?”[15] learn ye how, taking from the nations in turn the undiscoverable and distinguished[16] generation of the Man, they apply this to Christ.
“For earth, say the Greeks, was the first to give forth man, thus bearing a goodly gift. For she wished to be the mother not of plants without feeling and wild beasts without sense, but of a gentle and God-loving animal. But hard it is, he says, to discover whether Alalcomeneus of the Boeotians came forth upon the p. 143. Cephisian shore as the first of men, or whether (the first men) were the Idæan Curetes, a divine race, or the Phrygian Corybantes whom the Sun saw first shooting up like trees, or whether Arcadia brought forth Pelasgus earlier than the Moon, or Eleusis Diaulus dweller in the Rarian field, or Lemnos gave birth to Cabirus, fair child of ineffable orgies, or Pallene to Alcyon, eldest of the Giants. But the Libyans say Iarbas the first-born crept forth from the parched field to pluck Zeus’ sweet acorn. So also, he says that the Nile of the Egyptians, making fat the mud which unto this day begets life, gave forth living bodies made flesh with moist heat.”[17]
But the Assyrians say that fish-eating[18] Oannes (the first man) was born among them and the Chaldæans (say the same thing about) Adam; and they assert that he was the man whom the earth brought forth alone, and that he lay breathless, motionless (and) unmoved like unto a statue being the image of him on high who is praised in song as the man Adamas; but that he was produced by many p. 144. powers about whom in turn there is much talk.[19]
In order then that the Great Man[20] on high, from whom, as they say, “every fatherhood[21] named on earth and in the heavens” is framed, might be completely held fast, there was given to him also a soul, so that through the soul he might suffer, and that the enslaved “image of the great and most beautiful and Perfect Man”—for thus they call him—might be punished.[22] Wherefore again they ask what is the soul and of what kind is its nature that coming to the man and moving[23] him it should enslave and punish the image of the Perfect Man. But they ask this, not from the Scriptures, but from the mystic rites. And they say that the soul is very hard to find and to comprehend, since it does not stay in the same shape or form, nor is it always in one and the same state, so that one might describe it by a type or comprehend it in substance.[24] But these various changes of the soul they hold to be set down in the Gospel inscribed to the Egyptians.
They doubt then, as do all other men of the nations, whether the soul is from the pre-existent, or from the self-begotten, p. 145. or from the poured-forth Chaos.[25] And first they betake themselves to the mysteries of the Assyrians[26] to understand the triple division of the Man; for the Assyrians were the first to think the soul tripartite and yet one. For every nature, they say, longs for the soul, but each in a different way. For soul is the cause of all things that are, and all things which are nourished and increase, he says, require soul. For nothing like nurture or increase, he says, can occur unless soul be present. And even the stones, he says, are animated,[27] for they have the power of increase, and no increase can come without nourishment. For by addition increase the things which increase and the addition is the nourishment of that which is nourished.[28] Therefore every nature he says, of things in heaven, and on earth, and below the earth, longs for a soul. But the Assyrians call such a thing[29] Adonis or Endymion or (Attis); and when it is invoked as Adonis Aphrodite loves and longs after the soul of such name. And Aphrodite is generation[30] according to them. But when Persephone or Core loves Adonis[31] there is a certain mortal soul separated from Aphrodite p. 146. (that is from generation).[32] And if Selene should come to desire of Endymion[33] and to love of his beauty, the nature of the sublime ones, he says, also requires soul. But if, he says, the Mother of the Gods castrate Attis,[34] and she holds this loved one, the blessed nature of the hypercosmic and eternal ones on high recalls to her, he says, the masculine power of the soul.[35] For, says he, the Man is masculo-feminine. According to this argument of theirs, then, the so-called[36] intercourse of woman with man is by (the teaching of) their school shown to be an utterly wicked and defiling thing. For Attis is castrated, he says, that is, he has changed over from the earthly parts of the lower creation to the eternal substance on high, where, he says, there is neither male nor female,[37] but a new creature,[38] a new Man, who is masculo-feminine. What they mean by “on high” I will show in its appropriate place when I come to it. But they say it bears witness to what they say that Rhea is not simply one (goddess) but, so to speak, the p. 147. whole creature.[39] And this they say is made quite clear by the saying:—“For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made by Him, in truth, His eternal power and godhead, so that they are without excuse. Since when they knew Him as God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but foolishness deceived their hearts. For thinking themselves wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likenesses of an image of corruptible man and of birds and of fourfooted and creeping things. Wherefore God gave them up to passions of dishonour. For even their women changed their natural use to that which is against nature.”[40] And what the natural use is according to them, we shall see later. “Likewise, also the males leaving the natural use of the female burned in their lust one toward another males among males working unseemliness.”[41] But unseemliness is according to them the first and blessed and unformed substance which is the cause of all the forms of p. 148. things which are formed. “And receiving in themselves the recompense of their error which is meet.”[42] For in these words, which Paul has spoken, they say is comprised their whole secret and the ineffable mystery of the blessed pleasure. For the promise of baptism[43] is not anything else according to them than the leading to unfading pleasure him who is baptized according to them in living water and anointed with silent[44] ointment.
And they say that not only do the mysteries of the Assyrians bear witness to their saying, but also those of the Phrygians concerning the blessed nature, hitherto hidden and yet at the same time displayed, of those who were and are and shall be, which, he says, is the kingdom of the heavens sought for within man.[45] Concerning which nature they have explicitly made tradition in the Gospel inscribed according to Thomas,[46] saying thus: “Whoso seeks me shall find me in children from seven years (upwards). For there in the fourteenth year I who am hidden p. 149. am made manifest.” This, however, is the saying not of Christ but of Hippocrates, who says: “At seven years old, a boy is half a father.” Whence they who place the primordial nature of the universals in the primordial seed having heard the Hippocratian (adage) that a boy of seven years old is half a father, say that in fourteen years according to Thomas it will be manifest. This is their ineffable and mystical saying.[47]
They say then that the Egyptians, who are admitted to be the most ancient of all men after the Phrygians and the first at once to impart to all men the initiations and secret rites[48] of the gods, and to have proclaimed forms and activities, have the holy and august and for those who are not initiated unutterable mysteries of Isis. And these are nothing else than the pudendum of Osiris which was snatched away and sought for by her of the seven stoles and black p. 150. garments.[49] But they say Osiris is water. And the seven-stoled nature which has about it and is equipped with seven ethereal stoles—for thus they allegorically call the wandering stars—is like mutable generation[50] and shows that the creation is transformed by the Ineffable and Unportrayable[51] and Incomprehensible and Formless One. And this is what is said in the Scripture: “The just shall fall seven times and rise again.”[52] For these falls, he says, are the turnings about of the stars when moved by him who moves all things. They say, then, about the substance of the seed which is the cause of all things that are, that it belongs to none of these but begets and creates all things that are, speaking thus: “I become what I wish, and I am what I am; wherefore I say that it is the immoveable that moves all things. For it remains what it is, creating all things and nothing comes into being from begotten things.”[53] He says that this alone is good and that it is of this that the Saviour spoke when he said: “Why callest thou me good? There is one good, my Father who is in the heavens, Who makes the sun to rise upon the just and the unjust, and p. 151. rains upon the holy and the sinners.”[54] And who are the holy upon whom He rains and who the sinful we shall see with other things later on. And this is the great secret and the unknowable mystery concealed and revealed by the Egyptians. For Osiris, he says, is in the temple in front of Isis, whose pudendum stands exposed looking upwards from below, and wearing as a crown all its fruits of begotten things.[55] And they say not only does such a thing stand in the most holy temples, but is made known to all like a light not set under a bushel but placed on a candlestick making p. 152. its announcement on the housetops in all the streets and highways and near all dwellings being set before them as some limit and term.[56] For they call this the bringer of luck, not knowing what they say.
And this mystery the Greeks who have taken it over from the Egyptians keep unto this day. For we see, he says, the (images) of Hermes in such a form honoured among them. And they say that they especially honour Cyllenius the Eloquent. For Hermes is the Word who, being the interpreter and fashioner[57] of what has been, is, and will be, stands honoured among them carved into some such form which is the pudendum of a man straining from the things below to those on high. And that this—that is, such a Hermes—is, he says, a leader of souls and a sender forth of them, and a cause of souls, did not escape the poets of the nations who speak thus:—
“Cyllenian Hermes called forth the souls
Of the suitors.”—
(Homer, Odyssey, XXIV, 1.)
p. 153.Not of the suitors of Penelope, he says, O unhappy ones, but of those awakened from sleep and recalled to consciousness
“From such honour and from such enduring bliss.”—
(Empedocles, 355, Stürz.)
that is, from the blessed Man on high or from the arch-man Adamas, as they think, they have been brought down here into the form of clay that they may be made slaves to the fashioner of this creation, Jaldabaoth, a fiery god, a fourth number.[58] For thus they call the demiurge and father of the world of form.
“But he holds in his hands the rod
Fair and golden, wherewith he lulls to sleep the eyes of men,
Whomso he will, while others he awakens from sleep.”—
(Odyssey, XXIV, 3 ff.)
This, he says, is he who has authority over life and death of whom he says it is written: “Thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron.”[59] But the poet wishing to adorn the incomprehensible p. 154. (part)[60] of the blessed nature of the Word, makes his rod not iron but golden. And he charms to sleep the eyes of the dead, he says, and again awakens those sleepers who are stirred out of sleep and become suitors. Of these, he says, the Scripture spoke: “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise and Christ shall shine upon thee.”[61] This is the Christ, he says, who in all begotten things is the Son of Man, impressed (with the image) by the Logos of whom no image can be made.[62] This, he says, is the great and unspeakable mystery of the Eleusinians “Hye Cye”[63] seeing that all things are set under him, and this is the saying: “Their sound went forth into all the earth,”[64] just as
“Hermes waved the rod and they followed gibbering.”—
(Homer, Odyssey, XXIV, 5-7.)
still meaning the souls as the poet shows, saying figuratively:—
“And even as bats flit gibbering in the secret recesses
Of a wondrous cave when one has fallen down out of the rock
From the cluster....”—
(Ibid., XXIV, 9 seq.)
p. 155.Out of the rock, he says, is said of Adamas. This, he says, is Adamas, “the corner-stone which has become the head of the corner.”[65] For in the head is the impressed brain of the substance from which every fatherhood is impressed.[66] “Which Adamas,” he says, “I place at the foundation of Zion.”[67] Allegorically, he says, he means the image of the Man. But that Adamas is placed within the teeth, as Homer says, “the hedge of teeth,”[68] that is, the wall and stockade within which is the inner man, who has fallen from Adamas the arch-man[69] on high who is (the rock) “cut without cutting hands”[70] and brought down into the image of oblivion,[71] the earthly and clayey. And he says that the souls follow him, the Word, gibbering.
Even so the souls gibbered as they fared together,
But he went before,
that is, he led them,
“Gracious Hermes led them adown the dark ways.”—
(Odyssey, XXIV, 9 ff.)
p. 156.that is, he says, into eternal countries remote from all evil. For whence, says he, did they come?
“By Ocean’s flood they came and the Leucadian cliff
And by the Sun’s gates and the land of dreams.”—
(Odyssey, ubi cit.)
This he says is Ocean, “source of gods and source of men”[72] ever ebbing and flowing now forth and now back. But when he says Ocean flows forth there is birth of men, but when back to the wall and stockade and the Leucadian rock there is birth of gods. This he says is that which is written: “I have said ye are all gods and sons of the Highest; if you hasten to flee from Egypt and win across the Red Sea into the desert,” that is from the mixture below to the Jerusalem above who is the Mother of (all) living. “But if ye return again to Egypt,” that is to the mixture below, p. 157. “ye shall die as men.”[73] For deathly, says he, is all birth below, but deathless that which is born above; for it is born of water alone and the spirit, spiritual not fleshly. This, he says, is that which is written: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.”[74] This is, according to them, the spiritual birth. This, he says, is the great Jordan which flowing forth prevented the sons of Israel from coming out of the land of Egypt—or rather, from the mixture below; for Egypt is the body according to them—until Joshua[75] turned it and made it flow back towards its source.
8. Following up these and such-like (words) the most wonderful Gnostics having invented a new art of grammar[76] imagine that their own prophet Homer unspeakably[77] foreshowed[78] these things and they mock at those who not being initiated in the Holy Scriptures are led together into such designs. But they say: whoso says all things were framed from one, errs; but whoso says from three speaks the truth and gives an exposition of (the things of) the universe. For one, he says, is the blessed nature of the Blessed Man above, Adamas, and one is the mortal (nature), p. 158. below, and one is the kingless race begotten on high, where, he says, is Mariam the sought-for one, and Jothor the great wise one, and Sephora the seer,[79] and Moses whose generation was not in Egypt—for there were children born to him in Midian—and this, he says, was not forgotten by the poets:—
“In three lots were all things divided and each drew a domain of his own.”—(Iliad, XV, 169.)
For sublime things, he says, must needs be spoken, but they are spoken everywhere, lest “hearing they should not hear and seeing they should see not.”[80] For if, he says, the sublime things were not spoken, the cosmos could not have been framed. These are the three ponderous words: Caulacau, Saulasau, Zeesar.[81] Caulacau the one on high, p. 159. Adamas, Saulasau, the mortal nature below, Zeesar the Jordan which flows back on its source. This is, he says, the masculo-feminine Man who is in all things, whom the ignorant call the triple-bodied Geryon—as if Geryon were “flowing from Earth”[82]—and the Greeks usually “the heavenly horn of Mên”[83] because he has mingled and compounded all things with all. “For all things, he says, were made through him and apart from him not one thing was made. That which was in him is life.”[84] This, he says is the life, the unspeakable family of perfect men which was not known to the former generation. But the “nothing” which came into being apart from him is the world of form; for it came without him by the 3rd and 4th.[85] This, he says, is the cup Condy in which the king drinking, divineth. This, he says, is that which was hidden among the fair grains of Benjamin. And the Greeks also say the same with raving lips:—
“Bring water, bring wine, O boy
Intoxicate me, plunge me into sleep.
The cup tells me
p. 160.What I must become.”[86]—
(Anacreon, XXVI, 25, 26.)
It was enough, he says, that only this should be known to men that Anacreon’s cup spoke mutely an unspeakable mystery. For mute, he says, was Anacreon’s cup which says Anacreon, tells him with mute speech what he must become, that is spiritual not fleshly, if he hears the hidden mystery in silence. And this is the water in those fair nuptials which Jesus changed by making wine. This, he says, is the mighty and true beginning of the signs which Jesus did in Cana in Galilee and made known the kingdom of the heavens. This, he says, is the kingdom of the heavens within us, as a treasure as the leaven hidden within three measures of meal.[87]
p. 161.This is, he says, the great and unspeakable mystery of the Samothracians which is allowed to be known to us alone who are perfect. For the Samothracians explicitly hand down in the mysteries celebrated by them that Adam is the Arch-man. And in the temple of the Samothracians stand two statues of naked men having both hands stretched forth to heaven and their pudenda turned upwards like that of Hermes on (Mt.) Cyllene. But the aforesaid statues are the images of the Arch-man and of the re-born spiritual one in all things of one substance[88] with that man. This, he says, is what was spoken by the Saviour: “Unless ye drink my blood and eat my flesh, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of the heavens; but even though, He says, ye drink the cup which I drink when I go forth you will not be able to enter there.”[89] For He knew, he says, from which nature each of His disciples was, and that each of them was compelled to come to his own special nature. For from the twelve tribes, he says, He chose twelve p. 162. disciples,[90] and by them He spake to every tribe. Whence, he says, all could not have heard the preachings of the twelve disciples, nor, had they heard them could they have been received. For the things which are not according to[91] nature are with them natural.
This, he says, the Thracians who dwell about Mt. Hæmus and like them the Phrygians call Corybas,[92] because although he takes the beginning of his descent from the head on high and from the Unportrayable one and passes through all the sources of underlying things, we know not how and in what fashion he comes. This, he says, is the saying: “We have heard his voice, but we have not seen his shape.”[93] For, he says, the voice of him who is set apart and has been impressed with the image[94] is heard, but no one has seen what is the shape which has come down from on high from the Unportrayable One. But it is in the earthly form and no one is aware of it. This, he says, is the God who dwells in the flood according to the Psalter and “who speaks aloud and cries from many waters.”[95] “Many waters,” he says, is the manifold generation of mortal men, wherefrom he shouts and cries p. 163. aloud to the Unportrayable Man: “Deliver my only begotten from the lions!”[96] In answer to this, he says, is the saying: “Thou art my son, O Israel. Fear not. If thou passest through the rivers they shall not overwhelm thee; if through the fire, it shall not burn thee.”[97] By rivers is meant, he says, the moist essence of generation, and by fire the rage and desire for generation. “Thou art mine. Be not afraid.” And again he speaks: “If a mother forget her children and pities them not nor gives them suck, yet will I not forget thee.”[98] Adamas, he says, speaks to his own men: “But although a woman shall forget these things, yet will I not forget you. I have graven you on my hands.”[99] But concerning his ascension, that is, the being born again, that he may be born spiritual, not fleshly, he says, the Scripture speaks: “Lift up the gates, ye rulers, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the p. 164. King of Glory shall enter in.”[100] That is the wonder of wonders. “For who,” he says, “is this King of Glory? A worm and not a man, a reproach of man and an object of contempt for the people. This is the King of Glory, he who is mighty in battle.”[101] But he means the war which is in the body, because the (outward) form is made from warring elements, he says, as it is written: “Remember the war which is in the body.”[102] The same entrance and the same gate, he says, Jacob saw when journeying to Mesopotamia—for Mesopotamia, he says, is the flow of the great Ocean flowing forth from the middle part[103] of the Perfect Man—and he wondered at the heavenly gate, saying: “How terrible is this place! It is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of Heaven.”[104] Wherefore, he says, the saying of Jesus: “I am the true gate.”[105] Now He who says this is, he says, the Perfect p. 165. Man who has been impressed above (with the image) of the Unportrayable one. Therefore he says, the perfect man will not be saved unless born again by entering in through this gate.
But this same one, he says, the Phrygians[106] call also Papas, because he set at rest that which had been moved irregularly and discordantly before his coming. For the name of Papa, he says, is (taken from) all things in heaven, on earth, and below the earth, saying: “Make to cease! make to cease![107] the discord of the cosmos and make peace for those that are afar off,”[108] that is, for the material and earthly, and also “for those that are anigh,” that is, for the spiritual and understanding perfect men. But the Phrygians say that the same one is also a “corpse,” having been buried in the body as in a monument or tomb.[109] This, he says, is the saying: “Ye are whited sepulchres filled within with dead men’s bones,”[110] that is, there is not within you the living Man. And again, he says, “the dead shall leap forth from their graves,”[111] that is, the spiritual man, not the fleshly, shall be born again from the bodies of the earthly. This, he says, is the resurrection which comes through the p. 166. gate of the heavens, through which if they do not enter, all remain dead. And the same Phrygians, he says again, say that this same one is by reason of the change a god. For he becomes God when he arises from the dead and enters into heaven through the same gate. This gate, he says, Paul the Apostle knew, having set it ajar in mystery and declaring that he “was caught up by an angel and came unto a second and third heaven into Paradise itself and beheld what he beheld, and heard ineffable words which it is not lawful for man to utter.”[112] These are, he says, the mysteries called ineffable by all “which (we also speak) not in the words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual; but the natural[113] man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him”;[114] and these, he says, are the ineffable mysteries of the Spirit which we alone behold. Concerning them, he says, the Saviour spake: “No man shall come unto me unless my heavenly Father draw some one (unto me).”[115] For very hard it is, he says, to receive and take this great and ineffable mystery. And p. 167. again, he says, the Saviour spake: “Not every one who sayeth unto me, Lord! Lord! shall enter into the kingdom of the heavens, but he who doeth the will of my Father who is in the heavens.”[116] Of which (will) he says, they must be doers and not hearers only to enter into the kingdom of the heavens. And again, says he, He spake: “The publicans and the harlots go before you into the kingdom of the heavens.”[117] For the publicans, he says, are those who receive the taxes of market-wares, and we are the tax-gatherers “upon whom the ends of the æons have come down.”[118] For the “ends,” he says, are the seeds sown in the cosmos by the Unportrayable One,[119] whereby the whole cosmos is completed;[120] for by them also it began to be. And this, he says, is the saying: “The sower went forth to sow, and some (seed) fell on the wayside and was trodden under foot, and some upon stony (parts) and sprang up; and because it had no root, he says, it withered and died. But some fell, he says, upon the fair and goodly earth and brought forth some a hundredfold, and some sixty and some thirty. p. 168. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”[121] This is, he says, that no one becomes a hearer of these mysteries save only the perfect Gnostics. This, he says, is the fair and goodly earth of which Moses spake: “I will bring you to a fair and goodly land, to a land flowing with milk and honey.”[122] This, he says, is the honey and the milk, tasting which the perfect become kingless and partakers of the fulness.[123] The same, he says, is the Pleroma, whereby all things that are begotten by the unbegotten have come into being and are filled.
But the same one is called by the Phrygians “unfruitful.” For he is unfruitful when he is fleshly and performs the desire of the flesh. This, he says, is the saying: “Every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire.”[124] For these fruits, he says, are only the rational, the living man who enter by the third gate.[125] They say, indeed: “Ye who eat dead things and make living ones, what will ye make if ye eat living things?”[126] For they say that words[127] and thoughts and men are living things cast down by that Unportrayable One into the form p. 169. below. This, he says, is what he means: “Throw not your holy things to the dogs nor pearls to the swine,”[128] saying that the intercourse of woman with man is the work of dogs and swine.
But this same one, he says, the Phrygians call goatherd, not because, he says, he feeds goats and he-goats, as the psychic man calls them, but because, he says, he is Aipolos, that is, he who is ever revolving[129] and turning about and driving the whole cosmos in its circumvolution. For to revolve is to turn about and to change the position of things, whence, he says, the two centres of the heaven men call Poles. And the poet says:—
“What unerring ancient of the sea turns hither
The Immortal Egyptian Proteus.”—
(Odyssey, IV, 384.)
He[130] is not betrayed (by Eidothea), he says, but turns himself about, as it were, and goes to and fro. He says, too, that cities wherein we dwell are called πόλεις, because p. 170. we turn and go about in them. Thus, he says, the Phrygians call him Aipolos, who turns everything always in every direction and changes it into what it should be. But the Phrygians also call the same one “of many fruits,” because (the Naassene writer) says, “the children of the desolate are more in number than those of her who has a husband”;[131] that is, the deathless things which are born again and ever remain are many, if few are those which are born (once); but all the things of the flesh, he says, are corruptible, even if those which are born are many. Wherefore, he says, Rachel mourned for her children and would not be comforted when mourning over them, for she knew, he says, that they were not.[132] And Jeremiah wails for the Jerusalem below, not the city in Phœnicia,[133] but the mortal generation below. For Jeremiah, he says, also knew the Perfect Man who has been born again of water and the spirit and is not fleshly. The same Jeremiah indeed said: “He is a man, and who shall know him?”[134] Thus, he says, the knowledge of the Perfect Man is very deep and hard to comprehend. For the beginning of perfection, he says, is the knowledge of man; but the knowledge of God is completed perfection.
p. 171.The Phrygians also say, however, that he is a “green ear of corn reaped”; and following the Phrygians, the Athenians when initiating (any one) into the Eleusinian (Mysteries) also show to those who have been made epopts the mighty and wonderful and most perfect mystery for an epopt[135] there—a green ear of corn reaped in silence.[136] And this ear of corn is also for the Athenians the great and perfect spark of light from the Unportrayable One; just as the hierophant himself, not indeed castrated like Attis, but rendered a eunuch by hemlock, and cut off from all fleshly generation, celebrating by night at Eleusis the great and ineffable mysteries beside a huge fire, cries aloud and makes proclamation, saying: “August Brimo has brought forth a holy son, Brimos,” that is, the strong (has given birth) to the strong.[137] For august is, he says, the generation which is spiritual or heavenly or sublime, and strong is that which is thus generated. For the mystery is called Eleusis or Anacterion: “Eleusis,” he says, because we spiritual ones p. 172. came on high rushing from the Adamas below.[138] For eleusesthai, he says is to come, but anactoreion the return on high. This, he says, is what they who have been initiated into the mysteries of the Eleusinians say. But it is a regulation that those who have been initiated into the Lesser Mysteries should moreover be initiated into the Great. For greater destinies obtain greater portions.[139] But the Lesser Mysteries, he says, are those of Persephone below and of the way leading thither, which is wide and broad and bears the dead to Persephone, and the poet says:—
“But under her is a straight and rugged road
Hollow and muddy, but the best to lead
To the delightful grove of much-reverenced Aphrodite.”[140]
These, he says, are the Lesser Mysteries, those of fleshly generation, after being initiated into which men ought to p. 173. cease (from the small) and be initiated into the great and heavenly ones. For those who have obtained greater destinies, he says, receive greater portions. For this, he says, is the gate of heaven and this the house of God where the good God dwells alone,[141] into which will not enter, he says, any unpurified, any psychic or fleshly one; but it is kept for the spiritual only, where those who are must cast aside[142] their garments and all become bridegrooms, having come to maturity through the virgin spirit.[143] For this is the virgin who bears in her womb and conceives and gives birth to a son not psychic or corporeal, but the blessed Aeon of Aeons. Concerning these things, he says, the Saviour expressly spake: “Narrow and straitened is the way that leads to life and few are those who enter into it; but wide and broad is the way leading to destruction and many are they who pass along it.”[144]
9. But the Phrygians further say that the Father of the p. 174. universals is Amygdalus, not a tree, he says, but that pre-existent almond[145] which containing within itself the perfect fruit (and) as if pulsating and stirring in the depth, tore asunder its breasts and gave birth to its own invisible and unnameable and ineffable boy of whom we are speaking.[146] For “Amyxai” is as if to burst and cut asunder,[147] as he says, in the case of inflamed bodies having within them any gathering, the surgeons who cut them open call them “amychas.” Thus, he says, the Phrygians call the almond from whom the invisible one proceeded and was born, and through whom all things came into being and apart from whom nothing came into being.
But the Phrygians say that he who was thence born is a piper, because that which was born is a melodious spirit. For God, he says, is a Spirit, wherefore neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall the true worshippers prostrate themselves, but in spirit.[148] For spiritual, he says, is the prostration of the perfect, not fleshly. But the Spirit, he says, (is) there where both the Father and the Son are named, being p. 175. there born from this (Son and from) the Father.[149] This, he says, is the many-named, myriad-eyed[150] incomprehensible One for whom every nature yearns, but each in a different way. This, he says, is the Word[151] of God, which is, he says, the word of announcement of the great Power. Wherefore it will be sealed and hidden and concealed, lying in the habitation wherein the root of the universals[152] is established, that is[153] (the root) of Aeons, Powers, Thoughts, Gods, Angels, Emissary Spirits, things which are, things which are not, things begotten, things unbegotten, things incomprehensible, things comprehensible, years, months, days, hours (and) of an Indivisible Point,[154] from which what is least begins to increase successively. The Point, he says, being nothing and consisting of nothing (and) being indivisible will become of itself a certain magnitude incomprehensible by thought.[155] It, he says, is the kingdom of the heavens, the grain of mustard seed, the Indivisible Point inherent to the body which none knoweth, he says, save the spiritual alone. This, he says, is the saying: “There are no tongues nor speech where their voice is not p. 176. heard.”[156]
Thus they hastily declare that the things which are said and are done by all men are to be understood in their way, imagining that all things become spiritual. Whence they also say that not even they who exhibit (in the) theatres say or do anything not comprehended in advance.[157] So for example, he says, when the populace have assembled in the theatres[158] some one makes entrance clad in a notable robe bearing a cithara and singing to it. Thus he speaks chanting the Great Mysteries[159] (but) not knowing what he is saying:—
“Whether thou art the offspring of Kronos, or of blessed Zeus,
Or of mighty Rhea, Hail Attis, the sad mutilation of Rhea.[160]
The Assyrians call thee the much-longed-for Adonis,
p. 177.Egypt names thee Osiris, heavenly horn of the Moon.[161]
The Greeks Sophia,[162] the Samothracians, the revered Adamna,
The Thessalians, Corybas, and the Phrygians
Sometimes Papas, now the dead, or a god,
Or the unfruitful one, or goatherd,
Or the green ear of corn reaped,
Or he to whom the flowering almond-tree gave birth
As a pipe-playing man.”[163]
This, he says, is the many-formed Attis to whom they sing praises, saying:—
“I will hymn Attis, son of Rhea, not making quiver with a buzzing sound, nor with the cadence of the Idæan Curetes’ flutes, but I will mingle (with the hymn) the Phœbun music of the lyre. Evohe, Evan, for (thou art) Bacchus, (thou art) Pan, (thou art the) shepherd of white stars.”
For such and such-like words they frequent the so-called Mysteries of the great Mother, thinking especially that by means of what is enacted there, they perceive the whole mystery. For they get no advantage from what is acted there except that they are not castrated. They merely perfect the work of the castrated;[164] for they give most pointed and careful instructions to abstain as if castrated from intercourse with women. But the rest of the work as p. 178. we have said many times, they perform like the castrated.
But they worship none other than the Naas, calling themselves Naassenes. But Naas is the serpent, from whom he says, all temples under heaven are called naos from the Naas; and that to that Naas alone is dedicated every holy place and every initiation and every mystery, and generally that no initiation can be found under heaven in which there is not a naos and the Naas within it, whence it has come to be called a naos. But they say that the serpent is the watery substance, as did Thales of Miletos[165] and that no being, in short, of immortals or mortals, of those with souls or of those without souls, can be made without him. And that all things are set under him, and that he is good and contains all things within him as in the horn of the one-horned bull[166] (so as) to contribute beauty and bloom to all things according to their own nature and kind, as if he had passed through all “as if he went forth from Edem and cut himself into four heads.”[167]
But this Edem, they say, is the brain, as it were bound p. 179. and enlaced in the surrounding coverings as in the heavens; and they consider man as far as the head alone to be Paradise. Therefore “the river that came forth from Eden”—that is from the brain—they think “is separated into four heads and the name of the first river is called Phison; this it is which encompasses all the land of Havilat. There is gold and the gold of that land is good, and there is bdellium and the onyx stone.”[168] This, he says, (is the) eye, bearing witness by its honour (among the other features) and its colours to the saying: “But the name of the second river is Gihon; this it is which encompasses all the land of Ethiopia.” This, he says, is the hearing, being somewhat like a labyrinth. “And the name of the third is Tigris; this it is which goes about over against the Assyrians.” This, he says, is the smell which makes use of the swiftest current of the flood. And it goes about over against the Assyrians because in inspiration the breath drawn in from the outer air is sharper and stronger than the respired breath. For this is the nature of respiration. “The fourth river is Euphrates.” This they say, is the mouth, which is the seat of prayer and the entrance of food, p. 180. which gladdens[169] and nourishes and characterizes[170] the spiritual perfect man. This, he says, is the water above the firmament concerning which, he says, the Saviour spake: “If thou knewest who it is that asks thou would have asked of him, and he would have given thee to drink living rushing water.”[171] To this water, he says, comes every nature to choose its own substances,[172] and from this water goes forth to every nature that which is proper to it, he says, more (certainly) than iron to the magnet, gold to the spine of the sea-falcon and husks to amber.[173] But if anyone, he says, is blind from birth, and has not beheld the true light which lightens every man who cometh into the world,[174] let him recover his sight again through us, and behold how as it were through some Paradise full of all plants and seeds, the water flows among them. Let him see, too, that from one and the same water the olive-tree chooses and draws to itself oil, and the vine wine, and each of the other plants (that which is) according to its kind.
p. 181.But that Man, he says, is without honour in the world, and much honoured [in heaven, being betrayed] by those who know not to those who know him not, and accounted like a drop which falleth from a vessel.[175] But we are, he says, the spiritual who have chosen out of the living water, the Euphrates flowing through the midst of Babylon, that which is ours, entering in through the true gate which is Jesus the blessed. And we alone of all men are Christians, whom the mystery in the third gate has made perfect, and have been anointed[176] there with silent ointment from the horn like David and not from the earthen vessel, he says, like Saul,[177] who abode with the evil spirit of fleshly desire.
10. These things, then, we have set forth as a few out of many: for the undertakings of folly which are nonsensical and madlike are innumerable. But since we have expounded to the best of our ability their unknowable gnosis, we have thought it right to add this also. This psalm has been concocted by them, whereby they seem to hymn all the p. 182. mysteries of their error thus:—[178]
The generic law of the universe was the primordial mind;
But the second was the poured-forth light[179] of the First-born:
And the third toiling soul received the Law as its portion.
Whence clothed in watery shape,
The loved one subject to toil (and) death,
p. 183.Now having lordship, she beholds the light,
Now cast forth to piteous state, she weeps.
Now she weeps (and now) rejoices;
Now laments (and now) is judged;
Now is judged (and now) is dying.
Now no outlet is left or she wandering
The labyrinth of woes has entered.[180]
But Jesus said: Father, behold!
A strife of woes upon Earth
From thy breath has fallen,
But she seeks to flee malignant chaos.
And knows not how to win through it,
For this cause send me, O Father,
p. 184.Holding seals I will go down,
Through entire æons I will pass,
All mysteries I will disclose;
The forms of the gods I will display;
The secrets of the holy way
Called Gnosis, I will hand down.
These things the Naassenes attempt, calling themselves Gnostics.[181] But since the error is many-headed and truly of diverse shape like the fabled Hydra, we, having struck off its heads at one blow by refutation, (and) using the rod of Truth, will utterly destroy the beast. For the remaining heresies differ little from this, they all being linked together by one spirit of error. But since they by changing the words and the names wish the heads of the serpent to be many, we shall not thus fail to refute them thoroughly as they will.
p. 185.
2. Peratæ.[182]
12. There is also indeed a certain other (heresy), the Peratic, the blasphemy of whose (followers) against Christ has for many years evaded (us). Whose secret mysteries it now seems fitting for us to bring into the open. They suppose the cosmos to be one, divided into three parts. But of this triple division, one part according to them is, as it were, a single principle like a great source[183] which may be p. 186. cut by the mind into boundless sections. And the first and chiefest section according to them is the triad and (the one part of it)[184] is called Perfect Good and Fatherly Greatness.[185] But the second part of this triad of theirs is, as it were, a certain boundless multitude of powers which have come into being from themselves, while the third is (the world of) form. And the first is unbegotten and is good; and the second is good (and) self-begotten, while the third is begotten.[186] Whence they say expressly that there are three Gods, three logoi, three minds, and three men. For they assign to each part of the world of the divided divisibility, gods and logoi and minds and men and the rest. But they say that from on high, from the unbegottenness and the first section of the cosmos, when the cosmos had already been brought to completion, there came down through causes which we shall declare later[187] in the days of Herod a certain triple-bodied and triple-powered[188] man called Christ, containing within Himself all the compounds[189] and powers from p. 187. the three parts of the cosmos. And this, he says is the saying: “The whole Pleroma was pleased to dwell within Him bodily and the whole godhead” of the Triad thus divided “is in Him.”[190] For, he says that there were brought down from the two overlying worlds, (to wit) the unbegotten and the self-begotten, unto this world in which we are, seeds of all powers. But what is the manner of their descent we shall see later.[191] Then he says that Christ was brought down from on high from the unbegottenness so that through His descent all the threefold divisions should be saved. For the things, he says, brought down below shall ascend through Him; but those which take counsel together against those brought down from above shall be banished and after they have been punished shall be rooted out. This, he says, is the saying: “The Son of Man came not into the world to destroy the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”[192] He calls “the world,” he says, the two overlying portions, (to wit) the unbegotten and the self-begotten. When the Scripture says: “Lest ye be judged with the world,”[193] he says, it means the third part of the cosmos (to wit) that of form. For the third part p. 188. which he calls the world must be destroyed, but the two overlying ones preserved from destruction.[194]
13. Let us first learn, then, how they who have taken this teaching from the astrologers insult Christ, working destruction for those who follow them in such error. For the astrologers, having declared the cosmos to be one, divided it[195] into the twelve fixed parts of the Zodiacal signs, and call the cosmos of the fixed Zodiacal signs one unwandering world. But the other, they say, is the world of the planets alike in power and in position and in number which exists as far as the Moon.[196] And that one world receives from the other a certain power and communion, and that things below partake of things above. But so that what is said shall be made plain, I will use in part the very words of the astrologers,[197] recalling to the readers what was said before in the place where we set forth the whole art of astrology. Their doctrines then are these: From the emanation of the stars the genitures of things below are influenced. For the Chaldæans, scrutinizing p. 189. the heavens with great care, said that (the seven stars) account for the active causes of everything which happens to us; but that the degrees of the Zodiacal circle work with them. (Then they divide the Zodiacal circle into) 12 parts, and each Zodiacal sign into 30 degrees and each degree into 60 minutes; for these they call the least and the undivided. And they call some of the Zodiacal signs male and others female, some bicorporal and others not, some tropical and others firm. Then there are male or female according as they have a nature co-operating in the begetting of males (or females). Moved by which, I think[198] the Pythagoricians[199] call the monad male, the dyad female, and the triad again male and in like manner the rest of the odd and even numbers. And some dividing each sign into dodecatemories employ p. 190. nearly the same plan. For example, in Aries they call the first dodecatemory Aries and masculine, its second Taurus and feminine, and its third Gemini and masculine, and so on with the other parts. And they say that Gemini and Sagittarius which stands opposite to it and Virgo and Pisces are bicorporal signs, but the others not. And in like manner, those signs are tropical in which the Sun turns about and makes the turnings of the ambient, as, for example, the sign Aries and its opposite Libra, Capricorn and Cancer. For in Aries, the spring turning occurs, in Capricorn the winter, in Cancer the summer and in Libra the autumn. These things also and the system concerning them we have briefly set forth in the book before this, whence the lover of learning can learn how Euphrates the Peratic and Celbes the Carystian, the founders of the heresy, altering only the names, have really set down like things, having also paid immoderate attention to the art. p. 191. For the astrologers also say that there are “terms” of the stars in which they deem the ruling stars to have greater power. For example in some (they do evil), but in others good, of which they call these malefic and those benefic. And they say that (the Planets) behold one another and are in harmony with one another as they appear in trine (or square). Now the stars beholding one another are figured in trine when they have a space of three signs between them, but in square if they have two. And as in the man the lower parts suffer with the head and the head suffers with the lower parts, thus do the things on earth p. 192. with those above the Moon. But (yet) there is a certain difference and want of sympathy between them since they have not one and the same unity.
This alliance and difference of the stars, although a Chaldæan (doctrine), those of whom we have spoken before have taken as their own and have falsified the name of truth. (For they) announce as the utterance of Christ a strife of aeons and a falling-away of good powers to the bad, and proclaim reconciliations of good and wicked.[200] Then they invoke Toparchs and Proastii,[201] making for themselves also very many other names which are not obvious but systematize unsystematically the whole idea of the astrologers about the stars. As they have thus laid the foundation of an enormous error they shall be completely refuted by our appropriate arrangement. For I shall set side by side with the aforesaid Chaldaic art of the astrologers some of the doctrines of the Peratics, from which comparison it will be p. 193. understood how the words of the Peratics are avowedly those of the astrologers, but not of Christ.
14. It seems well then to use for comparison a certain one of the books[202] magnified by them wherein it is said: “I am a voice of awaking from sleep in the aeon of the night, (and) now I begin to lay bare the power from Chaos. The power is the mud of the abyss, which raises the mire of the imperishable watery void, the whole power of the convulsion, pale as water, ever-moving, bearing with it the stationary, holding back those that tremble, setting free those that approach, relieving those that sigh, bringing down those that increase, a faithful steward of the traces of the winds, taking advantage of the things thrown up by the p. 194. twelve eyes of the Law,[203] showing a seal to the power which arranges by itself the onrushing unseen water which is called Thalassa.[204] Ignorance has called this power Kronos guarded with chains since he bound together the maze of the dense and cloudy and unknown and dark Tartarus. There are born after the image of this (power) Cepheus, Prometheus, Iapetus.[205] (The) power to whom Thalassa is entrusted is masculo-feminine, who traces back the hissing (water) from the twelve mouths of the twelve pipes and after preparing distributes it. (This power) is small and reduces the boisterous restraining rising (of the sea) and seals up the ways of her paths, so that nothing should declare war or suffer change. The Typhonic daughter of this (power) is the faithful guard of all sorts of waters. Her name is Chorzar. Ignorance calls her Poseidôn, after whose likeness came Glaucus, Melicertes, Iö,[206] Nebroë. He that is encircled with the 12-angled pyramid[207] and darkens the gate into the pyramid p. 195. with divers colours and perfects the whole blackness[208]—this one is called Core[209] whose 5 ministers are: first Ou, 2nd Aoai, 3rd Ouô, 4th Ouöab, 5th ... Other faithful stewards there are of his toparchy of day and night who rest in their authority. Ignorance has called them the wandering stars on which hangs perishable birth. Steward of the rising of the wind[210] is Carphasemocheir (and second) Eccabaccara, but ignorance calls these Curetes. (The) third ruler of the winds is Ariel[211] after whose image came Æolus (and) Briares. And ruler of the 12-houred night (is) Soclas[212] whom ignorance has called Osiris. After his likeness there were born Admetus, Medea, Hellen, Aethusa. Ruler of the 12-houred day-time is Euno. He is steward of the rising of the first-blessed[213] and ætherial (goddess) whom ignorance calls Isis. The sign of this (ruler) is the Dog-star[214] after whose image were born Ptolemy son of Arsinoë, Didyme, Cleopatra, Olympias. (The) right hand power of God is she whom p. 196. ignorance calls Rhea, after whose image were born Attis, Mygdon,[215] Oenone. The left-hand power has authority over nurture whom ignorance calls Demeter. Her name is Bena. After the likeness of this (god) were born Celeus, Triptolemus, Misyr,[216] Praxidice. (The) right-hand power has authority over seasons. Ignorance calls this (god) Mena after whose image were born, Bumegas,[217] Ostanes, Hermes Trismegistus, Curites, Zodarion, Petosiris, Berosos, Astrampsychos, Zoroaster. (The) left-hand power of fire. Ignorance calls him Hephæstus after whose image were born Erichthonius, Achilleus, Capaneus, Phæthon, Meleager, Tydeus, Enceladus, Raphael, Suriel,[218] Omphale. Three middle powers suspended in air (are) causes of birth. Ignorance calls them Fates, after whose image were born (the) house of Priam, (the) house of Laius, Ino, Autonoë, Agave, Athamas, Procne (the) Danaids, the Peliades. A masculo-feminine power there is ever childlike, who grows not old, (the) cause of beauty, of pleasure, of prime, of yearning, of desire, whom ignorance calls Eros, after whose image were born Paris, Narcissus, Ganymede, Endymion, p. 197. Tithonus, Icarius, Leda, Amymonê, Thetis, (the) Hesperides, Jason, Leander, Hero.” These are the Proastii up to Aether. For thus he inscribes the book.
15. The heresy of the Peratæ, it has been made easily apparent to all, has been adapted from the (art) of the astrologers with a change of names alone. And their other books include the same method, if any one cared to go through them. For, as I have said, they think the unbegotten and overlying things to be the causes of birth of the begotten, and that our world, which they call that of form, came into being by emanation, and that all those stars together which are beheld in the heaven become the causes of birth in this world, they changing their names as is to be seen from a comparison of the Proastii. And secondly after the same fashion indeed, as they say that the world came into being from the emanation of her[219] on high, thus they say that things here have their birth and death and are governed p. 198. by the emanation from the stars. Since then the astrologers know the Ascendant and Mid-heaven and the Descendant and the Anti-meridian, and as the stars sometimes move differently from the perpetual turning of the universe, and at other times there are other succeedents to the cardinal point and (other) cadents from the cardinal points, (the Peratæ) treating the ordinance of the astrologers as an allegory, picture the cardinal points as it were God and monad and lord of all generation, and the succeedent as the left hand and the cadent the right. When therefore any one reading their writings finds a power spoken of by them as right or left, let him refer to the centre, the succeedent and the cadent, and he will clearly perceive that their whole system of practice has been established on astrological teaching.
16. But they call themselves Peratæ, thinking that nothing which has its foundations in generation can escape the fate determined from birth for the begotten. For if anything, he says, is begotten it also perishes wholly, as it seemed also p. 199. to the Sibyl.[220] But, he says, we alone who know the compulsion of birth and the paths whereby man enters into the world and have been carefully instructed—we alone can pass through[221] and escape destruction. But water, he says, is destruction, and never, he says, did the world perish quicker than by water. But the water which rolls around the Proastii is, they say, Kronos. For such a power, he says, is of the colour of water and this power, that is Kronos, none of those who have been founded in generation can escape. For Kronos is set as a cause over every birth so that it shall be subject to destruction[222] and no birth could occur in which Kronos is not an impediment. This, he says is what the poets say and the gods (themselves) also fear:—
Let earth be witness thereto and wide heaven above
And the water of Styx that flows below.
The greatest of oaths and most terrible to the blessed gods.—
(Homer, Odyssey, vv. 184 ff.)
But not only do the poets say this, he says, but also the wisest of the Greeks, whereof Heraclitus is one, who says, p. 200. “For water becomes death to souls.”[223]
This death (the Peratic) says seizes the Egyptians in the Red Sea with their chariots. And all the ignorant, he says, are Egyptians and this he says is the going out from Egypt (that is) from the body. For they think the body little Egypt (and) that it crosses over the Red Sea, that is, the water of destruction which is Kronos, and that it is beyond the Red Sea, that is birth, and comes into the desert, that is, outside generation where are together the gods of destruction and the god of salvation. But the gods of destruction, he says, are the stars which bring upon those coming into being the necessity of mutable generation. These, he said, Moses called the serpents of the desert which bite and cause to perish those who think they have crossed the Red Sea. Therefore, he says, to those sons of Israel who were bitten in the desert, Moses displayed the true and perfect serpent, those who believed on which were not bitten in the desert, p. 201. that is, by the Powers. None then, he says, can save and set free those brought forth from the land of Egypt, that is, from the body and from this world, save only the perfect serpent, the full of the full.[224] He who hopes on this, he says, is not destroyed by the serpents of the desert, that is, by the gods of generation. It is written, he says, in a book of Moses.[225] This serpent, he says, is the Power which followed Moses, the rod which was turned into a serpent. And the serpents of the magicians who withstood the power of Moses in Egypt were the gods of destruction; but the rod of Moses overthrew them all and caused them to perish.
This universal serpent, he says, is the wise word of Eve. This, he says, is the mystery of Edem, this the river flowing out of Edem, this the mark which was set on Cain so that all that found him should not kill him. This, he says, is (that) Cain whose sacrifice was not accepted by the god of this world; but he accepted the bloody sacrifice of Abel, for the lord of this world delights in blood.[226] He it is, he says, who in the last days appeared in man’s shape in the p. 202. time of Herod, born after the image of Joseph who was sold from the hand of his brethren and to whom alone belonged the coat of many colours. This, he says, is he after the image of Esau whose garment was blessed when he was not present, who did not receive, he says, the blind man’s blessing, but became rich elsewhere taking nothing from the blind one, whose face Jacob saw as a man might see the face of God. Concerning whom he says, it is written that: “Nebrod was a giant hunting before the Lord.”[227] There are, he says, as many counterparts of him as there were serpents seen in the desert biting the sons of Israel, from which that perfect one that Moses set up delivered those that were bitten. This, he says, is the saying: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”[228] After his likeness was the brazen serpent in the desert which Moses set up. The similitude of this alone is always seen in the heaven in light. This he says is the mighty beginning about which it is written. About this he says is the saying: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and p. 203. the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him and without Him nothing was. That which was in Him was life.”[229] And in Him, he says, Eve came into being (and) Eve is life. She, he says is Eve, mother of all living[230] (the) nature common (to all), that is, to gods, angels, immortals, mortals, irrational beings, and rational ones; for, he says, “to all” speaking collectively. And if the eyes of any are blessed, he says, he will see when he looks upward to heaven the fair image of the serpent in the great summit[231] of heaven turning about and becoming the source of all movement of all present things. And (the beholder) will know that without Him there is nothing framed of heavenly or of earthly things or of things below the earth—neither night, nor moon, nor fruits, nor generation, nor wealth, nor wayfaring, nor generally is there anything of things which are that He does not point out. In this, he says, is the great wonder beheld in the heavens by those who can see.
For against this summit (that is) the head which is the most difficult of all things to be believed by those who know it not,
p. 204.“The setting and rising mingle with one another.”—
(Aratus, Phain., v. 62.)
This it is concerning which ignorance speaks:—
“The Dragon winds, great wonder of dread portent.”—
(Ibid., v. 46.)
and on either side of him Corona and Lyra are ranged and above, by the very top of his head, a piteous man, the Kneeler, is seen
“Holding the sole of the right foot of winding Draco.”—
(Ibid., v. 70.)
And in the rear of the Kneeler is the imperfect serpent grasped with both hands by Ophiuchus and prevented from touching the Crown lying by the Perfect Serpent.[232]
17. This is the variegated wisdom of the Peratic heresy, which is difficult to describe completely, it being so tangled through having been framed from the art of astrology. So far as it was possible, therefore, we have set forth all its force in few words. But in order to expound their whole mind in epitome we think it right to add this: According to them the universe is Father, Son and Matter.[233] p. 205. Of these three every one contains within himself boundless powers. Now midway between Matter and the Father sits the Son, the Word, the Serpent, ever moving himself towards the immoveable Father and towards Matter (which itself) is moved. And sometimes he turns himself towards the Father and receives the powers in his own person,[234] and when he has thus received them he turns towards Matter; and Matter being without quality and formless takes pattern from the forms[235] which the Son has taken as patterns from the Father. But the Son takes pattern from the Father unspeakably and silently and unchangeably, that is, as Moses says the colours of the (sheep) that longed,[236] flowed from the rods set up in the drinking-places. In such a way also did the powers flow from the Son to Matter according to the yearning of the power which (flowed) from the rods upon the things conceived. But the difference and unlikeness of the colours which flowed from the rods through the waters into the sheep is, he says, the difference of corruptible and incorruptible birth. Or rather, as a painter while taking nothing from the animals (he paints), yet transfers with his pencil to the drawing-tablet all their forms, thus the Son by his own power transfers to Matter the p. 206. types[237] of the Father. All things that are here are therefore the Father’s types and nothing else. For if any one, he says has strength enough to comprehend from the things here that he is a type from the Father on high transferred hither and made into a body, as in the conception from the rod, he becomes white,[238] (and) wholly of one substance[239] with the Father who is in the heavens, and returns thither. But if he does not light upon this doctrine, nor discover the necessity of birth, like an abortion brought forth in a night he perishes in a night. Therefore, says he, when the Saviour speaks of “Your Father who is in heaven”[240] He means him from whom the Son takes the types and transfers them hither. And when He says “Your father is a manslayer from the beginning”[241] he means the Ruler and Fashioner of Matter who receiving the types distributed by the Son has produced children here. Who is a manslayer from the beginning because his work makes for corruption and death.[242] None therefore, he says, can be saved nor p. 207. return (on high) save by the Son who is the Serpent. For as he brought from on high the Father’s types, so he again carries up from here those of them who have been awakened and have become types of the Father, transferring them thither from here as hypostatized from the Unhypostatized[243] One. This, he says, is the saying “I am the Door.” But he transfers them, he says (as the light of vision)[244] to those whose eyelids are closed, as the naphtha draws everywhere the fire to itself—or rather as the magnet the iron but nothing else, or as the sea-hawk’s spine the gold but nothing else, or as again (as) the chaff is drawn by the amber.[245] Thus, he says, the perfect and consubstantial race which has been made the image[246] (of the Father) but nought else is again led from the world by the Serpent, just as it was sent down here by him.
For the proof of this they bring forward the anatomy of the brain, likening the cerebrum to the Father from its immobility, and the cerebellum to the Son from its being moved and existing in serpent form. Which (last) they imagine ineffably and without giving any sign to attract p. 208. through the pineal gland the spiritual and life-giving substance emanating from the Blessed One.[247] Receiving which the cerebellum, as the Son silently transfers the forms to Matter, spreads abroad the seeds and genera of things born after the flesh, to the spinal marrow. By the use of this simile, they seem to introduce cleverly their ineffable mysteries handed down in silence which it is not lawful for us to utter. Nevertheless they will easily be comprehended from what I have said.
18. But since I think I have set forth clearly the Peratic heresy and by many words have made plain what had escaped (notice), and since it has mixed up everything with everything concealing its own peculiar poison, it seems right to proceed no further with the charge, the opinions laid down by them being sufficient accusation against them.[248]
3. The Sethiani.
p. 209.19. Let us see then what the Sethians say.[249] They are of opinion[250] that there are three definite principles of the universals, and that each of the principles contains boundless powers. But what they mean by powers let him judge who hears them speak thus: Everything which you understand by your mind or which you pass by unthought of, is formed by nature to become each of these principles, as in the soul of man every art which is taught. For example, he says, that a boy will become a piper if he spend some time with a piper, or a geometrician if he does so with a geometrician, or a grammarian with a grammarian, or a carpenter with a carpenter, and to one in close contact with other trades it will happen in the same way. But the substance of the principles, he says, are light and darkness; and between them there is uncontaminated spirit. But the spirit which is set between the darkness below and the light on high, is not breath like a gust of wind or some little p. 210. breeze which can be perceived, but resembles some faint perfume of balsam or of incense artificially compounded, as a power penetrating by force of a fragrance inconceivable and better than can be said in speech. But since the light is above and the darkness below and the spirit as has been said between them, the light naturally shines like a ray of the sun on high on the underlying darkness, and again the fragrance of the spirit having the middle place spreads abroad and is borne in all directions, as we observe the fragrance of the incense burnt in the fire carried everywhere. And such being the power of the triply divided, the power of the spirit and of the light together is in the darkness which is ranged below them. But the darkness is a fearful water, into which the light with the spirit is drawn down and transformed into such a nature (as the water).[251] And the darkness is not witless, but prudent completely, and knows that if the light be taken from the darkness, the darkness remains desolate, viewless, without light, p. 211. powerless, idle, and strengthless. Wherefore with all its sense and wit it is forced to detain within itself the brilliance and spark of the light with the fragrance of the spirit. And an image of their nature is to be seen in the face of man, (to wit) the pupil of the eye dark from the underlying fluids, (and) lighted up by (the) spirit. As then the darkness seeks after the brilliance, that it may hold the spark as a slave and may see, so do the light and the spirit seek after their own power, and make haste to raise up and take back to themselves their powers which have been mingled with the underlying dark and fearful water.[252] But all the powers of the three principles being everywhere boundless in number are each of them wise and understanding as regards its own substance, and the countless multitude of them being wise and understanding, whenever they remain by themselves are all at rest. But if one power draws near to another, the unlikeness of (the things in) juxtaposition effects a certain movement and activity formed from the movement, by the coming together and juxtaposition of the meeting p. 212. powers. For the coming together of the powers comes to pass like some impression of a seal struck by close conjunction for the sealing of the substances brought up (to it).[253] Since then the powers of the three principles are boundless in number and the conjunctions of the boundless powers (also) boundless, there must needs be produced images of boundless seals. Now these images are the forms[254] of the different animals.
From the first great conjunction then of the three principles came into being a certain great form of a seal, (to wit) heaven and earth. And heaven and earth are planned very like a matrix having the navel[255] in the midst. And if, he says, one wishes to have this design under his eyes, let him examine with skill the pregnant womb of any animal he pleases, and he will discover the type of heaven and earth and of all those things between which lie unchangeably below. And the appearance of heaven and earth became by the first conjunction such as to be like a womb. But again between heaven and earth boundless conjunctions of powers have occurred. And each conjunction wrought and stamped[256] nothing else than a seal of p. 213. heaven and earth like a womb. But within this (the earth) there grew from the boundless seals boundless multitudes of different animals. And into all this infinity which is under heaven there was scattered and distributed among the different animals, together with the light, the fragrance of the spirit from on high.
Then there came into being from the water the first-born[257] principle (to wit) a wind violent and turbulent and the cause of all generation. For making some agitation in the waters it raises waves in them. But the motion of the waves as if it were some impregnating impulse is a beginning of generation of man or beast when it is driven onward swollen by the impulse of the spirit. But when this wave has been raised from the water and made pregnant in the natural way, and has received within itself the feminine power of reproduction, it retains the light scattered from on high together with the fragrance of the spirit—that p. 214. is mind given shape in the different species.[258] Which (mind) is a perfect God, who is brought down from the unbegotten light on high and from the spirit into man’s nature as into a temple, by the force of nature and the movement of the wind. It has been engendered from the water (and) commingled and mixed with the bodies as if it were (the) salt of the things which are and a light of the darkness struggling to be freed from the bodies and not able to find deliverance and its way out. For some smallest spark from the light (has been mingled) with the fragrance from above (i. e. from the spirit), like a ray (making composition of things dissolved and) solution of things compounded as, he says, is said in a psalm.[259] Therefore every thought and care of the light on high is how and in what way the mind may be set free from the death of the wicked and dark body (and) from the Father of that which is below, who is the wind which raised the waves in agitation and disorder p. 215. and has begotten Nous his own perfect son, not being his own (son) as to substance.[260] For he was a ray from on high from that perfect light overpowered in the dark and fearful bitter and polluted water, which (ray) is the shining spirit borne above the water. When then the waves (raised from the) waters [have received within themselves the feminine power of reproduction, they detain in[261]] the different species, like some womb, (the light) scattered (from on high), (with the fragrance of the spirit) as is seen in all animals.
But the wind at once violent and turbulent is borne along like the hissing of a serpent. First then from the wind, that is from the serpent, came the principle of generation in the way aforesaid,[262] all things having received the principle of generation at the same time. When then the light and the spirit were received into the unpurified p. 216. and much suffering disordered womb, the serpent, the wind of the darkness, the first-born of the waters entering in, begets man, and the unpurified womb neither loves nor recognizes any other form (but the serpent’s).[263] Then the perfect Word of the light on high, having been made like the beast, the serpent, entered into the unpurified womb, beguiling it by its likeness to the beast, so that it might loose the bands which encircle the Perfect Mind which was begotten in the impurity of the womb by the first-born of the water, (to wit) the serpent, the beast. This, he says, is the form of the slave[264] and this the need for the descent of the Word of God into the womb of a Virgin. But it is not enough, he says, that the Perfect Man, the Word, has entered into the womb of a virgin and has loosed the pangs which were in that darkness. But in truth after entering into the foul mysteries of the womb, He was washed[265] and drank of the cup of living bubbling water, which he must needs drink who was about to do off the slave-like form and do on a heavenly garment.
p. 217.20. This is what the champions of the Sethianian doctrines say, to put it shortly. But their system is made up of sayings by physicists and of words spoken in respect of other matters, which they transfer to their own system and explain as we have said. And they say that Moses also supported their theory when he said “Darkness, gloom and whirlwind.” These, he says, are the three words. Or when he says that there were three born in Paradise, Adam, Eve (and the) Serpent; or when he says three (others), Cain, Abel (and) Seth; and yet again three, Shem, Ham (and) Japhet; or when he speaks of three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, (and) Jacob; or when he says that there existed three days before the Sun and Moon; or when he says that there are three laws (the) prohibitive, (the) permissive and the punitive. And a prohibitive law is: “From every tree in Paradise thou mayest eat the fruit, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, eat not.” But in this saying: “Go forth from thine own land, and from thy kindred and (thou shalt come) hither into a land which I shall show thee.” This law he says is permissive for he who chooses may go forth and he who chooses may remain. But the law is punitive which says “Thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not murder”—for to each of these sins there is a penalty.[266]
p. 218.But the whole teaching of their system is taken from the ancient theologists Musæus, Linus and he who most especially makes known the initiations and mysteries (to wit), Orpheus. For their discourse about the womb is also that of Orpheus; and the phallus, which is virility, is thus explicitly mentioned in the Bacchica of Orpheus.[267] And these things were made the subject of initiation and were handed down to men, before the initiatory rite of Celeus, Triptolemus, Demeter, Core and Dionysos in Eleusis, at Phlium in Attica. For earlier than the Eleusinian Mysteries are the secret rites of the so-called Great (Mother) in Phlium. For there is in that (town) a porch, and on the porch to this day is engraved the representation of all the words spoken (in them). p. 219. Many things are engraved on that porch concerning which Plutarch also makes discourse in his ten books against Empedocles. And on the doors is engraved a certain old man grey-haired, winged, having his pudendum stretched forth, pursuing a fleeing woman of a blue colour. And there is written over the old man “Phaos ruentes” and over the woman “Pereēphicola.” But “phaos ruentes” seems to be the light according to the theory of the Sethians and the “phicola” the dark water, while between them is at an interval the harmony of the spirit. And the name of “Phaos ruentes” denotes the rushing below of the light as they say from on high. So that we may reasonably say that the Sethians celebrate among themselves (rites) in some degree akin to the Phliasian Mysteries of the Great (Mother).[268] And to the triple division of things the poet seems to bear witness when he says:—
“And in three lots were all things divided
And each drew his own domain.”—
(Homer, Il., XV, 189.[269])
that is each of the threefold divisions has taken power. p. 220. And, as for the underlying dark water below, that the light has plunged into it and that the spark borne down (into it) ought to be restored and taken on high from it, the all-wise Sethians seem to have here borrowed from Homer when he says:—
“Let earth be witness and wide heaven above
And the water of Styx that flows below
The greatest oath and most terrible to the blessed gods.”[270]—
(Il. XV, 36-38.)
That is, the gods, according to Homer, think water something ill-omened and frightful, wherefore the theory of the Sethians says it is frightful to the Nous.
21. This is what they say and other things like it in endless writings. And they persuade those who are their disciples to read the theory of Composition and Mixture[271] which is studied by many others and by Andronicus the Peripatetic. The Sethians then say that the theory about Composition and Mixture is to be framed after this fashion: The light ray from on high has been compounded and the p. 221. very small spark has been lightly mingled[272] in the dark waters below, and (these two) have united and exist in one mass as one odour (results) from the many kinds of incense on the fire. And the expert who has as his test an acute sense of smell ought to delicately distinguish from the sole smell of the incense the different kinds of it set on the fire; as (for example) if it be storax and myrrh and frankincense or if anything else be mixed with it. And they make use of other comparisons, as when they say that if brass has been mixed with gold, a certain process[273] has been discovered which separates the gold from the brass. And in like manner if tin or brass or anything of the same kind be found mixed with silver, these by some better process of alloy are also separated. But even now any one distinguishes water mixed with wine. Thus, he says, if all things are mingled together they are distinguished. And truly, he says, learn from the animals. For when the animal is dead each (of its parts) is separated (from the rest) and thus when dissolved, the animal disappears. This he says is the saying: “I come not to bring peace upon the earth but a sword”[274]—that is to cut in twain and separate the things p. 222. which have been compounded together. For each of the compounds is cut in twain and separated when it lights on its proper place. For as there is one place of composition for all the animals, so there has been set up one place of dissolution, which no man knoweth, he says, save only we who are born again, spiritual not fleshly, whose citizenship is in the heavens above.
With these insinuations they corrupt their hearers, both when they misuse words, turning good sayings into bad as they wish, and when they conceal their own iniquity by what comparisons they choose. All things then, he says, which are compounds have their own peculiar place and run towards their own kindred things as the iron to the magnet, the straw to the amber, and the gold to the sea-hawk’s spine.[275] And thus the (ray) of light which was mingled with the water having received from teaching and learning (the knowledge of) its own proper place hastens to the Word come from on high in slave-like form and becomes with the Word a Word where the Word is, more (quickly) than the iron (flies) to the magnet.
p. 223.And that these things are so, he says, and that all compounded things are separated at their proper places, learn (thus):—There is among the Persians in the city Ampa near the Tigris a well, and near this well and above it has been built a cistern having three outlets. From which well if one draws, and takes up in a jar what is drawn from the well whatever it is and pours it into the cistern hard by; when it comes to the outlets and is received from each outlet in one vessel, it separates itself. And in the first outlet is exhibited an incrustation[276] of salt, and in the second bitumen, and in the third oil. But the oil is black, as he says Herodotus also recounts,[277] has a heavy odour and the Persians call it rhadinace. This simile of the well, say the Sethians, suffices for the truth of their proposition better than all that has been said above.
22. The opinion of the Sethians seems to us to have been made tolerably plain. But if any one wishes to learn the whole of their system let him read the book inscribed Paraphrase (of) Seth; for all their secrets he will find there enshrined.[278] But since we have set forth the things of the p. 224. Sethians[279] let us see also what Justinus thinks.
4. Justinus.[280]
23. Justinus, being utterly opposed to every teaching of the Holy Scriptures, and also to the writing or speech[281] of the blessed Evangelists, since the Word taught his disciples saying: “Go not into the way of the Gentiles”[282]—which is plainly: Give no heed to the vain teaching of the Gentiles—seeks to bring back his hearers to the marvel-mongering of the Greeks and what is taught by it. He sets out word for word and in detail the fabulous tales of the Greeks, but neither teaches first hand[283] nor hands down his own complete mystery unless he has bound the dupe by an oath. Thereafter he explains the myth for the purpose of winning souls,[284] so that those who read the numberless follies of the books shall have the fables as consolation[285]—as if one tramping along a road and coming across an inn should see fit to rest—and so that when they have again turned to the p. 225. full study of the things read, they may not detest them until, being led on by the rush of the crowd, they have plunged into the offence artfully contrived by him, having first bound them by fearful oaths neither to utter nor to abandon his teaching and compelling them to accept it. Thus he delivers to them the mysteries impiously sought out by him, using as aforesaid the Greek myths and partly corrupted books according to what they indicate of the aforesaid heresies. For they all, drawn by one spirit, are led into a deep pit (of error) but each narrates and mythologizes the same things differently. But they all call themselves especially Gnostics, as if they alone had drunk in the knowledge of the perfect and good.
24. But swear, says Justinus, if you wish to know the things “which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor have they entered into the heart of man,”[286] (that is) Him who is good above all things, the Highest, to keep the ineffable secrets of the teaching. For our Father also, when he saw the Good One and was perfected by him, kept silence as to p. 226. the secrets[287] and swore as it is written: “The Lord sware and will not repent.”[288] Having then thus sealed up these (secrets), he turns their minds to many myths through a quantity (of books), and thus leads to the Good One, perfecting the mystæ by unspoken mysteries. But we shall not travel through more (of his works). We shall give as a sample the ineffable things from one book of his, it being one which he clearly thinks of high repute. It is inscribed Baruch.[289] We shall disclose one myth set forth in it by him out of many, it being also in Herodotus. Having transformed[290] this, he tells it to his hearers as new, the whole system of his teaching being made up out of it.
25. Now Herodotus[291] says that Heracles when driving Geryon’s oxen from Erytheia[292] came to Scythia and being wearied by the way lay down to sleep in some desert place for a short time. While he was asleep his horse disappeared, mounted on which he had made his long journey.[293] On waking he made search over most of the desert in the attempt to find his horse. He entirely misses the horse, p. 227. but finding a certain semi-virgin girl[294] in the desert, he asks her if she had seen the horse anywhere. The girl said that she had seen it, but would not at first show it to him unless Heracles would go with her to have connection with her. But Herodotus says that the upper part of the girl as far as the groin was that of a virgin, but that the whole body below the groin had in some sort the frightful appearance of a viper. But Heracles, being in a hurry to find his horse yielded to the beast. For he knew her and made her pregnant, and foretold to her after connection that she had in her womb three sons by him who would be famous.[295] And he bade her when they were born to give them the names Agathyrsus, Gelonus, and Scytha. And taking the horse from the beast-like girl as his reward, he went away with his oxen. But after this, there is a long story in Herodotus.[296] Let us dismiss it at present. But we will explain something of what Justinus teaches when he turns this myth into (one of) the generation of the things of the universe.
26. This he says: There were three unbegotten principles of the universals,[297] two male and one female. And p. 228. of the male, one is called the Good One, he alone being thus called, and he has foreknowledge of the universals. And the second is the Father of all begotten things, not having foreknowledge and being (unknowable and)[298] invisible. But the female is without foreknowledge, passionate, two-minded, two-bodied, in all things resembling Herodotus’ myth, a virgin to the groin and a viper below, as says Justinus. And this maiden is called Edem and Israel. These, he says, are the principles of the universals, their roots and sources, by which all things came into being, beside which nothing was. Then the Father without foreknowledge, beholding the semi-virgin, who was Edem, came to desire of her. This Father, he says, is called Elohim.[299] Not less did Edem desire Elohim, and desire brought them together into one favour of love. And the Father from such congress begot on Edem twelve angels of his own. And the names of these angels of the Father are: Michael, Amen, Baruch, Gabriel, Esaddæus.[300]... And the names of the angels of the Mother which Edem created are likewise set down. These are: Babel, Achamoth, Naas, Bel, Belias, p. 229. Satan, Saêl, Adonaios, Kavithan, Pharaoh, Karkamenos, Lathen.[301] Of these twenty-four angels the paternal ones join with the Father and do everything in accordance with his will, but the maternal angels (side) with the Mother, Edem. And he says that Paradise is the multitude of these angels taken together; concerning which Moses says: “God planted a Paradise in Edem towards the East,”[302] that is, towards the face of Edem that Edem might ever behold Paradise, that is, the angels. And the angels of this Paradise are allegorically called trees,[303] and Baruch, the third angel of the Father, is the Tree of Life, and Naas, the third angel of the Mother is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.[304] For thus, he says, the (words) of Moses ought to be interpreted, saying: Moses declared them covertly, because all do not come to the truth.
But he says also when Paradise was produced from the mutual pleasure of Elohim and Edem, the angels of Elohim taking (dust) from the fairest earth, that is, not from the beast-like parts of Edem, but from the man-like and cultivated regions of the earth above the groin, create man. But from the beast-like parts, he says, the wild beasts and p. 230. other animals are produced. Now they made man as a symbol of their[305] unity and good-will and placed in him the powers of each, Edem (supplying) the soul and Elohim the spirit.[306] And there thus came into being a certain seal, as it were and actual memorial of love and an everlasting sign of the marriage of Elohim and Edem, (to wit) a man who is Adam. And in like manner also, Eve came into being as Moses has written, an image and a sign and a seal to be for ever preserved of Edem. And there was likewise placed in Eve the image, a soul from Edem but a spirit from Elohim. And commands were given to them, “Increase and multiply and replenish the earth,”[307] that is Edem, for so he would have it written. For the whole of her own power Edem brought to Elohim as it were some dowry in marriage. Whence, he says, in imitation of that first marriage, women unto this day bring freely to their husbands in obedience to a certain divine and ancestral law (a dowry) which is that of Edem to Elohim.
But when heaven and earth and the things which were therein had been created as it is written by Moses, the twelve angels of the Mother were divided into four authorities and each quarter, he says, is called a river, (to wit) Phison and Gihon, Tigris and Euphrates, as Moses says: p. 231. These twelve angels visiting the four parts encompass and arrange the world, having a certain satrapial[308] power over the world by the authority of Edem. But they abide not always in their own places, but as it were in a circular dance, they go about exchanging place for place, and at certain times and intervals giving up the places assigned to them. When Phison has rule over the places, famine, distress and affliction come to pass in that part of the world, for miserly is the array of these angels. And in like manner in each of the quarters according to the nature and power of each, come evil times and troops of diseases. And evermore the flow of evil according to the rule of the quarters, as if they were rivers, by the will of Edem goes unceasingly about the world.
But from some such cause as this did the necessity of evil come about.[309] When Elohim had built and fashioned p. 232. the world from mutual pleasure, he wished to go up to the highest parts of heaven and to see whether any of the things of creation lacked aught. And he took his own angels with him, for he was (by nature) one who bears upward, and left below Edem, for she being earth did not wish to follow her spouse on high. Then Elohim coming to the upper limit of heaven and beholding a light better than that which himself had fashioned, said: “Open unto me the gates that I may enter in and acknowledge the Lord: For I thought that I was the Lord.”[310] And a voice from the light answered him, saying: “This is the gate of the Lord (and) the just enter through it.” And straightway the gate was opened, and the Father entered without his angels into the presence of the Good One and saw “what eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man.” Then the Good One says to him, “Sit thou on my right hand.”[311] But the Father says to the Good One: “Suffer me, O Lord, to overturn the world which I have made; for my spirit is bound in men and I wish to recover it.” Then says the Good One to him: “While with me thou canst do no evil; for thou and Edem made the world from mutual pleasure. Let therefore Edem hold creation p. 233. while she will;[312] but do thou abide with me.” Then Edem knowing that she had been abandoned by Elohim was grieved, and sat beside her own angels and adorned herself gloriously lest haply Elohim coming to desire of her should descend to her.
But since Elohim being ruled by the Good One did not come down to Edem, she gave command to Babel, who is Aphrodite, to bring about fornication and dissolutions of marriage among men, in order that as she was separated from Elohim, so also might the (spirit) of Elohim which is in men be tortured, (and) grieved by such separations and might suffer the same things as she did on being abandoned. And Edem gave great power to her third angel Naas,[313] that he might punish with all punishments the spirit of Elohim which is in men, so that through the spirit Elohim might be punished for having left his spouse contrary to their vows. The Father Elohim seeing this sent forth his third angel Baruch to the help of the spirit which is in men. p. 234. Then Baruch came again and stood in the midst of the angels—for the angels are Paradise in the midst of which he stood—and gave commandment to the man: “From every tree which is in Paradise freely eat, but from (the tree) of Knowledge of Good and Evil eat not,”[314] which tree is Naas. That is to say: Obey the eleven other angels of Edem for the eleven have passions, but have no transgression. But Naas had transgression, for he went in unto Eve and beguiled her and committed adultery with her, which is a breach of the Law. And he went in also unto Adam and used him as a boy which is also a breach of the Law.[315] Thence came adultery and sodomy.
From that time vices bore sway over men, and the good things came from a single source, the Father. For he, having gone up to the presence of the Good One showed the way to those who wished to go on high; but his having withdrawn from Edem made a source of ills to the spirit of p. 235. the Father which is in men. Therefore Baruch was sent to Moses, and through him spoke to the sons of Israel that he might turn them towards the Good One. But the third[316] (angel Naas) by means of the soul which came from Edem to Moses as also to all men, darkened the commandments of Baruch and made them listen to his own. Therefore the soul is arrayed against the spirit and the spirit against the soul.[317] For the soul is Edem and the spirit Elohim, each of them being in all mankind, both females and males. Again after this, Baruch was sent to the Prophets, so that by their means the spirit which dwells in man might hearken and flee from Edem and the device of wickedness[318] as the Father Elohim had fled. And in like manner and by the same contrivance, Naas by the soul which inhabits man along with the spirit of the Father seduced the Prophets, and they were all led astray and did not follow the words of Baruch which Elohim had commanded.
p. 236.In the sequel, Elohim chose Heracles as a prophet out of the uncircumcision and sent him that he might fight against the twelve angels of the creation of the wicked ones. These are the twelve contests of Heracles which he fought in their order from the first to the last against the lion, the bear, the wild boar,[319] and the rest. For these are the names of the nations which have been changed, they say, by the action of the angels of the Mother. But when he seemed to have prevailed, Omphale, who is Babel or Aphrodite[320] becomes connected with him and leads astray Heracles, strips him of his power (which is) the commands of Baruch which Elohim commanded, and puts other clothes on him, her own robe, which is the power of Edem who is below. And thus the power of prophecy[321] of Heracles and his works become imperfect.
Last of all in the days of Herod the king, Baruch is again sent below by Elohim and coming to Nazareth finds Jesus, the son of Joseph and Mary,[322] a boy of twelve years old, feeding sheep, and teaches Him all things from the beginning which came about from Edem and Elohim and the things p. 237. which shall be hereafter, and he said: “All the prophets before thee were led astray. Strive, therefore, O Jesus, Son of Man, that thou be not led astray, but preach this word unto men. And proclaim to them the things touching the Father and the Good One, and go on high to the Good One and sit there with Elohim the Father of us all.” And Jesus hearkened to the angel, saying: “Lord, I will do all (these) things,” and He preached. Then Naas wished to lead astray this one also (but Jesus did not wish to hearken to him)[323] for He remained faithful to Baruch. Then Naas, angered because he could not lead Him astray, made Him to be crucified. But He, leaving the body of Edem on the Cross, went on high to the Good One. But He said to Edem: “Woman, receive thy Son,”[324] that is the natural and earthly man, and commending[325] the spirit into the hands of the Father went on high to the presence of the Good One.
But the Good One is Priapus, who before anything was, was created. Whence he is called Priapus because he previously made[326] all things. Wherefore he says he is set up before every temple[327] being honoured by the whole creation and in the streets bears the blossoms of creation on his head, that is the fruits of creation of which he is the p. 238. cause having first made the creation which before did not exist. When therefore you hear men say that a swan came upon Leda and begot children from her, the swan is Elohim and Leda is Edem. And when men say that an eagle came upon Ganymede, the eagle is Naas and Ganymede is Adam. And when they say that the gold came upon Danae and begot children from her, the gold is Elohim and Danae is Edem. And likewise they making parallels in the same way teach all such words as bring in myths. When then the Prophets say: “Hear O Heaven and give ear O Earth, the Lord has spoken,”[328] Heaven means, he says, the spirit which is in man from Elohim and Earth the soul which is in man (together) with the spirit, and the Lord means Baruch, and Israel, Edem. For Edem is also called Israel the spouse of Elohim. “Israel,” he says, “knew me not; for if she had known that I was with the Good One, she would not have punished the spirit which is in man through the Father’s ignorance.”
27. Afterwards ... is written also the oath in the first p. 239. book which is inscribed Baruch which those swear who are about to hear these mysteries and to be perfected[329] by the Good One. Which oath, he says, our Father Elohim swore when in the presence of the Good One and having sworn did not repent, touching which, he says, it is written: “The Lord sware and did not repent.” This is that oath: “I swear by Him who is above all, the Good One, to preserve these mysteries and to utter them to none, nor to turn away from the Good One to creation.” And when he has sworn that oath he enters into the presence of the Good One and sees “what eye hath not seen nor ear heard and it has not entered into the heart of man,” and he drinks from the living water, which is their font, as they think, the well of living, sparkling water. For there is a distinction, he says, between water and water; and there is the water below the firmament of the bad creation, wherein are baptized[330] the earthly and natural men, and there is the living water p. 240. above the firmament of the Good One in which Elohim was baptized and having been baptized did not repent. And when the prophet declares, he says, to take unto himself a wife of whoredom because the earth whoring has committed whoredom from behind the Lord,[331] that is Edem from Elohim. In these words, he says, the prophet speaks clearly the whole mystery, but he was not hearkened to by the wickedness of Naas. In that same fashion also they hand down other prophetic sayings in many books. But pre-eminent among them is the book inscribed Baruch in which he who reads will know the whole management of their myth.
Now, though I have met with many heresies, beloved, I have met with none worse than this. But truly, as the saying is, we ought, imitating his Heracles, to cleanse the Augean dunghill or rather trench, having fallen into which his followers will never be washed clean nor indeed be able to come up out of it.
28. Since then we have set forth the designs of Justinus the Gnostic falsely so called, it seems fitting to set forth also p. 241. in the succeeding books the tenets of the heresies which follow him[332] and to leave none of them unrefuted; the things said by them being quite sufficient when exposed to make an example of them, if and only their hidden and unspeakable (mysteries) would leap to light into which the senseless are hardly and with much toil initiated.[333] Let us see now what Simon says.
END OF VOL. I.