FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   >>  
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
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   >>  



Top keywords:
Father
 

processes

 

community

 
knowledge
 
initiation
 
represent
 

Christ

 

attained

 

Gnosis

 

Doctrine


mystery
 
Protogennetor
 

mystical

 

stands

 

called

 

propositions

 

Parsifal

 

Wagner

 

conceived

 

theory


communities
 

Regeneration

 

qualified

 
formal
 

Galahad

 
information
 
parent
 

Apotheosis

 

spiritual

 

occult


consciousness

 

Sparks

 
consummation
 
Autopator
 

Propator

 
transmitted
 

Mastership

 

resurrection

 

result

 

proposition


number

 

Himself

 
secret
 

possession

 
conditions
 
Providence
 

persons

 

initiate

 
suitable
 

aspects