d of that spiritual one that is born again, in every respect of the
same substance with that (first) man."

This extract from Hippolytus occurs in the long discourse in which he
'exposes' the heresy of the so-called Naassene doctrines and mysteries.
But the whole discourse should be read by those who wish to understand
the Gnostic philosophy of the period contemporary with and anterior to
the birth of Christianity. A translation of the discourse, carefully
analyzed and annotated, is given in G. R. S. Mead's Thrice-greatest
Hermes (1) (vol. i); and Mead himself, speaking of it, says (p. 141):
"The claim of these Gnostics was practically that the good news of the
Christ (the Christos) was the consummation of the inner doctrine of the
Mystery-institutions of all the nations; the end of them all being the
revelation of the Mystery of Man." Further, he explains that the Soul,
in these doctrines, was regarded as synonymous with the Cause of All;
and that its loves were twain--of Aphrodite (or Life), and of Persephone
(or Death and the other world). Also that Attis, abandoning his sex in
the worship of the Mother-Goddess (Dea Syria), ascends to Heaven--a new
man, Male-female, and the origin of all things: the hidden Mystery being
the Phallus itself, erected as Hermes in all roads and boundaries and
temples, the Conductor and Reconductor of Souls.

(1) Reitzenstein, op. cit., quotes the discourse largely. The
Thrice-greatest Hermes may also be consulted for a translation of
Plutarch's Isis and Osiris.

All this may sound strange, but one may fairly say that it represented
in its degree, and in that first 'unfallen' stage of human thought
and psychology, a true conception of the cosmic Life, and indeed a
conception quite sensible and admirable, until, of course, the Second
Stage brought corruption. No sooner was this great force of the cosmic
life diverted from its true uses of Generation and Regeneration (1) and
appropriated by the individual to his own private pleasure--no sooner
was its religious character as a tribal service (2), (often rendered
within the Temple precincts) lost sight of or degraded into a commercial
transaction--than every kind of evil fell upon mankind. Corruptio optimi
pessima. It must be remembered too that simultaneous with this sexual
disruption occurred the disruption of other human relations; and
we cease to be surprised that disease and selfish passions, greed,
jealousy, slander, cruelty, and