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A SONG OF PRAISE TO THE ÆON
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A SONG OF PRAISE TO THE Æ ON
And so we read the following song of praise to the Æ on, inscribed on a “secret tablet” by some unknown Brother of a forgotten Order:
1. “Hail unto Thee, O thou All-Cosmos of æ thereal Spirit! Hail unto Thee, O Spirit, who doth extend from Heaven to Earth, and from the Earth that’s in the middle of the orb of Cosmos to the ends of the Abyss!
2. “Hail unto Thee, O Spirit who doth enter into me, who clingeth unto me or who doth part thyself from
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me, according to the Will of God in goodness of His heart!
3. “Hail unto Thee, O thou Beginning and thou End of Nature naught can move! Hail unto thee thou vortex of the liturgy 1 unweariable of [Nature’s] elements!
4. “Hail unto Thee, O thou Illumination of the solar beam that shines to serve the world. Hail unto Thee, thou Disk of the night-shining moon, that shines unequally! Hail, ye Spirits all of the æ thereal statues [of the Gods]!
5. “Hail to you [all], whom holy Brethren and holy Sisters ought to hail in giving of their praise!
6. “O Spirit, mighty one, most mighty circling and incomprehensible Configuration of the Cosmos, celestial, æ thereal, inter-æ thereal, water-like, earth-like, fire-like, air-like, like unto light, to darkness like, shining as do the stars, —moist, hot, cold Spirit!
7. “I praise Thee, God of gods, who ever doth restore the Cosmos, and who doth store the Depth away 2 upon its throne of settlement no eye can see, who fixest Heaven and Earth apart, and coverest the Heaven with thy golden everlasting (α ἰ ω ν ί α ι ς ) wings, and makest firm the Earth on everlasting thrones!
8. “Thou who hangest up the Æ ther in the lofty Height, and scatterest the Air with thy self-moving blasts, who mak’st the Water eddy round in circles!
9. “O Thou who raisest up the fiery whirlwinds, and makest thunder, lightning, rain, and shakings of the earth, O God of Æ ons! Mighty art thou, Lord God, O Master of the All! ” 3
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Here there is no separation of God as intra-cosmic and extra-cosmic; He is both the one and the other. He is both the Fullness of the Godhead and also the Fullness of Cosmos. He is both the Cosmos, and He who is above the Cosmos and below the Cosmos. 1
THE DEMIURGIC Æ ON
Reitzenstein (p. 278), referring to our Trismegistic tractate, C. H., xi. (xii. ), points to the distinction made between Æ on and God on one side and Æ on and Cosmos on the other. This, he thinks, shows signs of the influence of a fundamental trait of Hellenistic theology which makes the Demiurge the Second God.
However this may be, there certainly was a distinction drawn between the Creative, or rather Formative, God and the Supreme Deity, in many a Christian Gnostic System, and not unfrequently of a very disparaging nature to the former. Already in Jewish mystic and philosophic (Gnostic) circles a distinction had had to be drawn between the idea of God as the Creator God, and the idea of God as the Ineffable Mystery of Mysteries. This had been necessitated by the contact of the Jewish Gnostics with the old wisdom-ideas and with the fundamental postulates of Greek philosophy.
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THE Æ ON IN THEURGIC LITERATURE
Many examples could be given, 2 but we prefer to follow Reitzenstein (p. 279) in his references to the Magic Papyri, or Apocryphal literature of the same class,
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and append the translation of two striking quotations, as opening up an entirely novel side of the subject.
Thus in the eighth Book of Moses, we find the following passage in which the Jewish Creator God is placed in the second rank as compared with the Egyptian Supreme Principle.
“And God, looking down unto the earth, said: IAŌ! And all stood still, and then came into being from His Voice a Great God, most mighty, who is Lord of all things, who caused to stand the things that shall be; and no longer was there any thing without order in the æ thereal realms. ” 1
So also in an invocation to an unknown God, most probably to the Spirit to whom the Brother of the unknown community addressed his praise-giving as given above—we meet with the same distinction.
“Thee, the only and blest Father of the Æ ons, I invoke with prayers like unto Cosmos! 2
“Come unto me who fillest the whole Cosmos with thy Breath, and dost hang up on high the Fire out of the Water, 3 and dost from out the Water separate the Earth. . . . The Lord bore witness to thy Wisdom, that is the Æ on, and bade thee to have strength as He Himself hath strength. ” 4
And, later on, the Theurgist exclaims:
“Receive my words as shafts of fire, for that I am God’s Man, for whom was made the fairest plasm of spirit, dew 5 and earth. ”
He is a Man whose words are effective and bring all
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things to pass; for his “words” are compelling “acts, ” or “theurgic. ”
Other passages are brought forward by Reitzenstein (pp. 280-286) to show that the idea of the Logos or Æ on as Second God was a fundamental conception in Hellenistic theology.
This may very well have been the case in general Hellenistic theology; but in philosophical circles, as we have pointed out in treating of the Logos-idea in Philo, the distinction was formal and not essential. So also in our Trismegistic treatises, which are saturated with transcendental pantheistic or monistic, or rather panmonistic, conceptions, if the Logos or Æ on is momentarily treated of as apart from Supreme Deity, it is not so in reality; for the Logos is the Season of God, God in His eternal Energy, and the Æ on is the Eternity of Deity, God in His energic Eternity, the Rest that is the Source of all Motion.
For the fullest exposition of the Æ on-doctrine in our Trismegistic tractates, see The Perfect Sermon, xxx. -xxxii., and my commentary thereon.
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