The ancient past through which she came..." [35]
As the Spirit of Understanding, the name of Hermes signifies both Rock and Interpreter. Hence the significance of the saying of Jesus, "Thou art the Rock, and upon this Rock I will build My Church," which He addressed not to the man Peter, but to the Spirit of Understanding whom He discerned as the prompter of Peter's confession of faith. By this Jesus implied that the only true and infallible church is that which is founded on the Understanding, and not on authority whether of book, tradition or institution. The utterance of Jesus was a citation from the proem to the hymn to Hermes[36] recovered by us:—
"He is as a rock between earth and heaven, and the Lord God shall build His Church thereon.
As a city upon a mountain of stone, whose windows look forth on either side."
As our education proceeded we found indubitably that in excluding from its curriculum the whole range of the knowledges represented by the term "Hermetic," Ecclesiasticism has ignored the chief source of information concerning the Christian origines. Doing which it has incurred the reproach uttered by Jesus against those who took away the key of knowledge, neither entering in themselves, nor suffering others to enter in. And it was to restore this Gnosis, suppressed by the priests, that the new revelation was promised, with the reception of which we found ourselves charged, the prophecies pointing to a restoration both of faculty and of knowledge.
Besides the Fig-branch of Hermes, there is another symbol of the intuitional understanding which was disclosed to us as having special and peculiar relation to the work set us. This symbol is Woman herself. She had already, in the instruction concerning the marriage in Cana[37], been shown to us as the inspirer and prompter. She was now shown to us as the interpreter. The reason why the fig-tree was the emblem of the inward understanding will be found in the citation presently to be given; which is a portion of an instruction received in interpretation of the prophecy of Daniel, re-enunciated by Jesus, concerning the recognition of the "abomination of desolation standing in the holy place"[38], as making and marking the time of the end of that generation which, for its materialisation of spiritual things, was called by Him an "adulterous," meaning an idolatrous, generation. It will be seen that in the Scripture symbology, as the soul is the feminine principle in man's spiritual system, and is called therefore the "Woman," the spirit being the masculine principle; so in man's mental system the intuition as the feminine mode of the mind is called the "Woman," and the intellect, as the masculine mode, the "Man." The following is the citation in question:—
Behold the Fig-Tree, and learn her parable. When the branch thereof shall become tender, and her buds appear, know that the day of God is upon you.
Wherefore, then, saith the Lord that the budding of the Fig-Tree shall foretell the end?
Because the Fig-Tree is the symbol of the Divine Woman, as the Vine of the Divine Man.
The Fig is the similitude of the Matrix, containing inward buds, bearing blossoms on its placenta, and bringing forth fruit in darkness. It is the Cup of Life, and its flesh is the seed-ground of new births.