The description given of himself by Hermes as "the white cloud in the noon-day sky," proved to be a quotation from an ancient ritual, subsequently recovered by her, in which the "Hymn to Hermes"[33] opens thus:—
As a moving light between heaven and earth: as a white cloud assuming many shapes;
He descends and rises: he guides and illumines; he transmutes himself from small to great, from bright to shadowy, from the opaque image to the diaphanous mist.
Star of the East, conducting the Magi; cloud from whose midst the holy voice speaketh; by day a pillar of vapour, by night a shining flame.
All these are symbolic expressions for the Understanding, especially in respect of divine things, so that Hermes is no individual soul or spirit, but the divine spirit Itself operating as the second of the Creative Elohim, and as a function therefore of man's own spirit when duly unfolded and purified, in token whereof it is said in the recovered hymn[34] to the Planet-God Iacchos—
Within thee, O Man, is the Universe; the thrones of all the Gods are in thy temple....
And the Spirits which speak unto thee are of thine own kingdom.
In the hymn of invocation summoning the Seeress to her mission in the name of the two first of the "Holy Seven," the Spirits of Wisdom and Understanding, both of whom were wont to manifest themselves to her, Hermes is referred to as "the God who knows"; the other being personified as Pallas Athena. "In the Celestial," we were informed, "all things are Persons."
"Wake, prophet-soul, the time draws near,
'The God who knows' within thee stirs
And speaks, for His thou art, and Hers
Who bears the mystic shield and spear.
A touch divine shall thrill thy brain,
Thy soul shall leap to life, and lo!
What she has known, again shall know,
What she has seen, shall see again.