“As, therefore, Himself pro-ducing Himself by means of Himself, He manifested to Himself His own Thought; so also His Thought on manifesting did not make [Him], but beholding Him, she concealed the Father, that is the Power, in Herself, and is [thus] male-female, Power and Thought.
“Thence is it that they partner one another (for Power in no way differs from Thought) and yet are one. From the things Above is discovered Power, and from those Below Thought.
“So is it, too, with that which is manifested from them; namely, that though it (sci. the Middle Distance, Incomprehensible Air) is one, it is found to be two, male-female, having the female in itself.
“Thus is Mind in Thought—inseparable from one another, which though one are yet found to be two.”
I believe that our Vision of the Cross sets forth in living symbol precisely what is explained above in more “abstract” terms. It would, however, be a mistake to make abstractions of these sublime ideas; they must be realized as fullnesses, as transcendent realities. The Air, the Batos, the Middle Distance, is the manifestation, or thinking-manifest, of the Divine to Itself, the true meaning of mā-yā. (See the Trismegistic Sermon, “Though Unmanifest God is most Manifest,” and the commentary, H., ii., 99-109).
11. I have translated the term διαπηξάμενος by “cross-beaming,” for διαπήγιον is a “cross-beam”; and I would refer the reader to the famous myth of Plato known as “The Vision of Er,” where the same idea is set forth when we read:
“There they saw the extremities of the Boundaries of the Heaven, extended in the midst of the Light; for this Light was the final Boundary of Heaven—somewhat like the undergirdings of ships—and thus confined its whole revolution.” (See H., i., 440.)
This “cross-beaming” or operation of the Cross is the mode of the energizing of the Logos. It is the simultaneous separating and joining of the generable and the ingenerable, the two modes of the Self-generable; it is the link between personal and impersonal, bound and free, finite and infinite. It is the instrument of creation, male-female in one.
12. There is little surprise, therefore, in learning that this mystery is not the “cross of wood” which the disciple will see and has seen in the pictures framed by his lower mind, when reading the historicized narrative of the mystery-drama or hearing the great story. Nor is it to be imagined that the Lord could be hung upon such a cross of wood, seeing that He is crucified in all men—He whom even the disciple in contemplation cannot see as He is, but can only hear the Wisdom of His Voice.
13. “I was held to be what I am not.” As to what the many say concerning the mystery, they speak as the many vain and contradictory opinions. Nay, even those who believed in Him have not understood; they have been content with a poor and unworthy conception of the mystery.