is continual allusions to this _more_, plain
enough to the person for whom it was intended, that renders the MS. so
peculiarly difficult. Who is Phaneia, the Mother without the Pleroma,
who owes her position to the descent of the Royal Robe? She stands for
nature in what may be called its sacramental aspect, and she also
stands for the Churches, if I mistake not, and more particularly for
the community or order to which the writer or writers belonged. This
implies a certain claim to a high mystical self-knowledge on the part
of that community. Again, the title "Son Protogennetor" is most
significant. He that bore it must be the Son of the Sacred House, the
"Son of the Doctrine," and the First Parent, or Father in God, of those
to come after. He invites comparison not only with the Saviour of the
Gospels, but also with figures that appear in the myths of the mystery
cults: with Horos, the son of Isis, with Hermes the Thrice-Great, with
the "Eagle" or "Father" whose title represented the highest grade of
the Mithriaca. I suggest that he may represent the ideal candidate in
the mystery of initiation--that is to say, he who, by entering into
himself, has attained to the "unio mystica," has raised up the "Man"
within himself, has been "reborn" as a god in Divine consciousness, and
so is qualified to hand on the vital processes of the Gnosis to others,
becoming thereby their spiritual parent. So he is called Son
Protogennetor. He is Christ in the sense that Galahad of the "Quest,"
and Parsifal of Wagner's great drama are Christ. The theory of
initiation as conceived in the early mystical communities seems, in
part at any rate, to rest upon the proposition that he who has himself
attained to Union with God is able to "start," to "initiate," in
suitable persons, and under certain conditions, those processes which,
under Providence, result in a like consummation. Thus we appear to
have a claim in the MS. to a transmitted "Mastership" in the ranks of
the order going back to Jesus Himself: "For whose sake resurrection is
given to the body. He is the Father of all Light-Sparks," The Propator
and Autopator would seem to represent different aspects of this claim.
"Gnosis" was not the possession of a body of secret Doctrine in the
sense of having a number of formal propositions containing occult
information, but a vital knowledge of the processes of "Regeneration"
or "Apotheosis."

Then, again, we have the idea of a "Divin