Datasets:

alexandreteles

/

alexandria

like 2

And He began to sing a hymn, praising His Father, and saying:

I praise Tee . . . ; for Thou hast drawn Thyself unto Thyself altogether in Truth, till Thou has set free the space of this Little Idea [?the Cosmos]; yet hast Thou not withdrawn Thyself. For what now is Thy Will, O Unapproachable God?

Thereon He made His Disciples answer three times: Amen, Amen, Amen!"

As far as I can discover from the most recent works of reference, "Amen" is considered by scholars to be a pure Hebrew word. It is said to have been originally an adjective signifying "stability," "firmness," "certainty," which subsequently became an interjection, used first of all in conversation, and then restricted to the most solemn form of asseveration; as, for instance, in oaths, and, in the temple ritual, in the responses of the congregation to the doxologies and solemn utterances of the priests and readers.

According to the Portuguese reading of the vowels it is pronounced Âmên (the vowels as in Italian). The Greek transliteration is Amên.

In Revelation (iii. 14), Christ is called the Amen: "These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true Witness."

We are told that in the great synagogue at Alexandria, at the conclusion of the reader's doxology, the attendant signalled with a flag for the congregation to respond Amen.

This use of this sacred utterance was taken over by the Christian churches; so that we find Jerome writing: "Like unto celestial thunder the Amen re-echoes."

It is well know that Hebrew and Aramaic are exceedingly rich in loan-words from other languages. I have, however, never seen it yet suggested that Amen may be a loan-word. I would now, with all submission to Hebraist specialists, make this suggestion, for Plutarch in his treatise On Isis and Osiris writes (ix. 4):

"Moreover, while the majority think that the proper name of Zeus with the Egyptians is Amoun (which we by a slight change call Ammôn), Manethô, the Sebennyte, considers it His hidden one, and that His power of hiding is made plain by the very articulation of the sound.

"Hecatæus of Abdera, however, says that the Egyptians use this word to one another also when they call one to them, for that its sound has got the power of 'calling to'.

"Wherefore when they call to the First God--who they think is the same for every man--as unto the Unmanifest and Hidden, invoking Him to make Him manifest and plain to them, they say 'Amoun!'"

Ammôn or Amoun is usually transliterated directly from the hieroglyphics as Amen. We thus learn that in Egypt Amen was a "word of power," indeed the chief "word of power" in general theurgic use.

We cannot suppose that Hecataeus, in his History of Egypt, intended us to understand that the Egyptians shouted it after one another in the street. It was rather used as a word of magic, for evoking the Ka of a person, or as the chiefest of all invocations to the Invisible Deity.

The exact parallel is to be found today in the use of the "Word of Glory" (the Pranava), Om or Aum, in India.

The sacred dancing was common to all great mystery-ceremonies. Here it will be sufficient to quote from what Philo of Alexandria, in the first quarter of our era, tells us, in his famous treatise On the Contemplative Life, about the sacred dances of the Therapeuts or "Servants of God." He writes:

"Then the president rising chants a hymn which has been made in God's honour, either a new one which he has composed, or an old one of the ancient poets.

"For they have left behind them many metres and tunes in trimetric epics, processional hymns, libation-odes, altar-chants, stationary choruses, and dance-songs, all admirably measured off in diversified strains.

"And after him the others also, in bands, in proper order, take up the chanting, while the rest listen in deep silence, except when they have to join in the burden and refrains; for they all, both men and women,join in. . . .

"After the banquet they keep the holy all-night festival. And this is how it is kept:

"They all stand up in a body; and about the middle of the ceremony they first of all separate into two bands, men in one and women in the other. And a leader is chosen for each, the conductor whose reputation is greatest and the one most suitable for the post.

"They then chant hymns made in God's honour, in many metres and melodies; sometimes singing in chorus, sometimes one band beating time to the answering chant of the other, now dancing to its music, now inspiring it, at one time in processional hymns, at another in standing songs, turning and returning in the dance.

"Then when each band has feasted [that is, has sung and dance] apart by itself, drinking of God-pleasing nectar, just as in the Bacchic rites men drink the wine unmixed, they join together, and one chorus is formed of the two bands. . .

"So the chorus of men and women Therapeuts . . . , by means of melodies in parts and harmony--the high notes of the women answering to the deep tones of the men--produces a harmonious and most musical symphony. The ideas are of the most beautiful, the expressions of the most beautiful, and the dancers reverent; while the goal of the ideas, expressions, and dancers is piety.

"Thus drunken into morning's light with this fair drunkenness, with no head-heaviness or drowsiness, but with eyes and body fresher even than when they came to the banquet, they take their stand at dawn, when, catching sight of the rising sun, they raise their hands to heaven, praying for Sunlight and Truth, and keenness of Spiritual Vision."

And now we will turn to the text of our Hymn, which pertains to a still higher mystery, first of all dealing with the introductory words of the writer of the Acts.

The "lawless Jews" refers to those who are "under the law of the lawless Serpent"; that is to say, those who are under the sway of Generation as contrasted with those who are under the law of Regeneration, of carnal birth as opposed to spiritual birth; or again, of the Lesser as contrasted with the Greater Mysteries.

As the pre-Christian Greek redactor of the Naassene Document phrases it (T.G.H., i. 162)"

"For He [the Great Man, the Logos, the Serpent of Wisdom] is Ocean--'birth-causing of gods and birth-causing of men'--flowing and ebbing for ever, now up and now down."

And on this the early Jewish commentator remarks:

"When Ocean flows down, it is the birth-causing of men; and when He flows up, . . . it is the birth-causing of gods."

And further on he adds:

"This is the Great Jordan, which flowing downwards and preventing the Sons of Israel from going forth out of Egypt, or from the Intercourse Below, was turned back by Jesus [LXX. for Joshua] and made to flow upwards."

This one and the same Serpent was thus either Agathodaimôn (or Good Spirit) or the Kakodaimôn (or Evil Spirit), according to the will of man. The regenerated or perfect man, the man of repentance, he who has turned Homewards, or has his "face" set Above, whose will is being atoned with the Divine Will, turns the waters of Ocean upwards, and thus gives birth to himself as a god.

The doxology of our Hymn is triadic--Father, Son, Mother.

Charis, Grace or Love, is Wisdom, or God's Good-Will, the Holy Spirit, or Great breath; that is, the Power and Spouse of Deity.

The order of the triple praise-giving is then reversed: Mother, Son, Father; for Glory is the Great Presence, the Father.

And finally there is a trinity in unity, Praise being given to the Father as Light; the same as the oft-recurring invocation in the Coptic Gnostic works: "Father of all Fatherhood, Boundless Light!"

The doxology being ended, we come to a striking series of double clauses or antitheses. I at once submit that these were not originally intended to be uttered by one and the same person. On the contrary they are evidently amoebæan; that is, answering as in a dialogue. Nor were they addressed to the Disciples; there was some single person for whom the whole was intended, and to whom much of it is addressed.

If, then, we have before us not a hymn, but the remains of a mystery-ritual, there must have been two people in the circle. One of them was the Master, the Initiator. Who was the other? Manifestly, the one to be initiated.

Now the ultimate end of all Gnosis was the at-one-ment or union of the little man with the Great Man, of the human soul with the Divine Soul.

In the great Wisdom-myth, the human soul was regarded as the "lost sheep," the erring and suffering Sophia fallen into generation, from which she was saved by the Christ, her true Lord and Spouse.

On the side of the Great Descent we have the most wonderful attempts made by the Gnostics to pierce the veil of the mysteries of cosmogony--to catch some glimpse of how the Cosmos came into existence, and was fashioned by the creative power of the Logos, the Supernal Christ. This was called the "enformation according to substance"--the "substance" being the Sophia or Wisdom Herself as viewed in Her self-isolation from the Plêrôma or Fullness of Divine Being, the Transcendent Presence.

On the way of the Great Ascent or Return, the Gnosis attempted to raise the veil of the mysteries of soteriology, or of the rescue of the separated human soul, and its restoration to the Bosom of the Divine. This was called the "enformation according to gnosis"--that is, Self-consciousness.

The duologue is therefore carried on by those who are acting out the mystery of the Sophia and the Christ; through we should never forget that they are in reality or essentially one and the same Person,the lower and higher self in the Presence of the Great Self.

The twelve disciples are the representatives of the powers of the Master, sent forth (apostles) into the outer worlds, corresponding with the Great Twelve of the Presence,the Twelve Above; and they dance to the dancing or cosmic motions of the Twelve, even as the candidate, or neophyte, the Sophia below, dances to the cosmic motion of the Charis or Grace or Sophia Above.

And if this rite be duly consummated, the Presence that enwraps the doers of the mystery is Divine. The Presence is that of the Father Himself, who has no human form, but is as it were a "Heart" or "Head," a "Face," a Shekinah or Glory. How the seers of the Gnosis conceived this marvel of the Godhead may perhaps be seized dimly in the following passages from the "Untitled Apocalypse" of the Bruce Codex (F.F.F., p. 548):

"The Outline of His Face is beyond all possibility of knowing in the Outer Worlds--those Worlds that ever seek His Face, desiring to know it; for His Word has gone forth into them, and they long to see Him.

"The Light of His Eyes penetrates the Spaces of the Outer Plêrôma; and the Word that comes forth from His Mouth penetrates the Above and the Below.

"The Hairs of His Head is the number of the Hidden Worlds, and the Outline of his Face is the type of the Æons [i.e., Perfect Spheres and Eternities].