POEMANDRES. I. 3 



that which appeared out of darkness ; but The luminous 

 Word(a) out of Mind, Son of God." 1 " What then ?" I say. 

 " Know thus : that in thee seeing and hearing is Word of 

 The Lord, but The Mind, Father God ; for they are not dis- 

 tinct from each other, for the union of these is the life." 2 

 " I thank thee," I said. " But understand The Light, and 

 become acquainted with that," He says. 



7. And saying this He looked me in the face for a long ' 

 time, so that I trembled at the form of Him. But He 

 having nodded (&), I beheld in my mind The Light, being 

 in numberless powers, and the World having become 

 illimitable, and the fire to be restrained by a very great 

 force, and subdued (c), to have assumed a stationary (d) 

 condition. But I comprehended (e) beholding these things, 

 because of the word of the Poemandres. 



8. But when I was in astonishment, He says to me 

 again, " Didst thou see in The Mind the Archetypical (/) 

 form, 3 that existing (g) before the indefinite beginning ? " 



(a) tx, voog (parsfvo; Xoyo?. (b) ecyocvft/aetyrog. (c) 



(d) artifft!/. (e) foa/oqQYiv. (/) etp%TV7roy <Bo?. (g) 



1 See Lactantius, " Div. Inst.," iv. c. 6, where he quotes, in the 

 original Greek, from the book, " ' O Ao'yos reXg/o? " (attributed also to 

 Hermes, but not his work), at length, similar expressions. See the 

 extracts from Lactantius, post. Part III. 



2 Compare John i. 1, 4 : " In the beginning was The Word, and 

 The Word was with (The) God, and the Word was God." (" God was 

 The Word," Greek). " The same was in the beginning with (The) God. 

 In Him was life, and the life was The Light of (the) men. The 

 Light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness apprehended it not. 

 There was The true Light, which lighteth every man coming into 

 the world." And see ibid. v. 26 : " God hath given unto us eternal 

 life, and this life is in His Son" (1 John v. 11). 



3 Plato, in the " Tiimeus" (28), had written to this effect (see the 

 paraphrase by Jowett, vol. iii. 532) : " All that is generated must of 

 necessity be generated by some cause. When the Creator (jtyfttovp- 

 yoj), ever looking to what concerns this, having used for this purpose 

 a certain pattern (-zro^aBdy^aT/), worked out the idea and power of 

 it ; thus of necessity to finish all things as beautiful. To have used 

 a created pattern could not have been beautiful. The eternal, in- 

 effable Father of all had in view an eternal archetype (or pattern). 

 To imagine the archetype created would be a blasphemy, seeing that 



