The Story of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland and of the new Gospel of Interpretation Part 5

A larger part was played by Hermes in another instruction received a few months later[31]. This was also given in sleep, the vision taking the form of a "Banquet of the G.o.ds" in which the seeress received the following exhortation from him, in enforcement of the necessity of pure and natural habits of life for the perfectionment of the faculties requisite for full spiritual perception, when, having put into her hands a branch of a fig-tree bearing upon it ripe fruit, he said:--

"If you would be perfect, and able to know and to do all things, quit the heresy of Prometheus. Let fire warm and comfort you externally: it is heaven's gift. But do not wrest it from its rightful purpose, as did that betrayer of your race, to fill the veins of humanity with its contagion, and to consume your interior being with its breath. All of you are men of clay, as was the image which Prometheus made. Ye are nourished with stolen fire, and it consumes you. Of all the evil uses of heaven's good gifts, none is so evil as the internal use of fire. For your hot foods and drinks have consumed and dried up the magnetic power of your nerves, sealed your senses, and cut short your lives. Now, you neither see nor hear; for the fire in your organs consumes your senses. Ye are all blind and deaf, creatures of clay. We have sent you a book to read. Practise its precepts, and your senses shall be opened."

Then, not recognising him, I said, "Tell me your name, Lord." At this he laughed and answered, "I have been about you from the beginning. I am the white cloud on the noon-day sky." "Do you, then," I asked, "desire the whole world to abandon the use of fire in preparing food and drink?"

Instead of answering my question, he said, "We show you the excellent way. Two places only are vacant at our table. We have told you all that can be shown you on the level on which you stand.

But our perfect gifts, the fruits of the Tree of Life, are beyond your reach now. We cannot give them to you until you are purified and have come up higher. The conditions are G.o.d'S; the will is with you"[32].

The allusion to Prometheus, and the fact that Hermes had been represented in the Greek tragedy of that name as the executor of the vengeance of the G.o.ds upon Prometheus, as well also as the significance of the fig-branch and the fact of its being the symbol of Hermes as the Spirit of Understanding,--all these things were beyond her knowledge at the time, some of them indeed having been long lost. But all were made clear as our education for our work proceeded, and we learnt the intention and recognised the necessity of restoring the Greek presentment of the Sacred Mysteries in explanation of the Hebrew, and in correction of the ecclesiastical presentment of Christianity. The restoration was to be twofold, of faculty and of knowledge, the knowledge to be recovered through the faculty by which it was originally obtained. Hence the insistance on our adoption of the pure regimen of the Seers of all time. Hence, too, the presentation to her by Hermes of the fig-branch bearing ripe fruit. The parable of the cursing of the barren fig-tree was explained to us as denoting the loss by the church of the inward understanding, the Intuition. In the Seeress it was restored; she was the appointed representative of it. The "time of the end" was at hand, of the approach of which the budding of the fig-tree was to be the sign. And here it was not merely budding and blossoming, but bearing mature fruit to signify that in her the faculty was restored in its perfection.

In an instruction subsequently given to me by her Genius, he said of her, "I have fas.h.i.+oned a perfect instrument," implying that the process of her preparation under his tuition had extended over numerous lives.

And again, "The G.o.ds have given to their own a perfect ear."

Being desirous once to test the powers of a medium to whom she was totally unknown even by name, she asked his controlling spirit about herself and her faculty. "You are not a trance-medium at all!" the spirit exclaimed in reply. "My medium is a trance-medium. You are far beyond that. You are a spiritual lens. You are a mirror in which the highest spirits--the G.o.ds--can reflect their faces. You take the light of the whole universe and divide it so that it can be understood, as it has never been understood yet. Your gift is very extraordinary. You are a gla.s.s to reflect the highest and the greatest to the world." This was in 1877, before she was known in connection with the spiritual movement of the age.

The description given of himself by Hermes as "the white cloud in the noon-day sky," proved to be a quotation from an ancient ritual, subsequently recovered by her, in which the "Hymn to Hermes"[33] opens thus:--

As a moving light between heaven and earth: as a white cloud a.s.suming many shapes;

He descends and rises: he guides and illumines; he trans.m.u.tes himself from small to great, from bright to shadowy, from the opaque image to the diaphanous mist.

Star of the East, conducting the Magi; cloud from whose midst the holy voice speaketh; by day a pillar of vapour, by night a s.h.i.+ning flame.

All these are symbolic expressions for the Understanding, especially in respect of divine things, so that Hermes is no individual soul or spirit, but the divine spirit Itself operating as the second of the Creative Elohim, and as a function therefore of man's own spirit when duly unfolded and purified, in token whereof it is said in the recovered hymn[34] to the Planet-G.o.d Iacchos--

Within thee, O Man, is the Universe; the thrones of all the G.o.ds are in thy temple....

And the Spirits which speak unto thee are of thine own kingdom.

In the hymn of invocation summoning the Seeress to her mission in the name of the two first of the "Holy Seven," the Spirits of Wisdom and Understanding, both of whom were wont to manifest themselves to her, Hermes is referred to as "the G.o.d who knows"; the other being personified as Pallas Athena. "In the Celestial," we were informed, "all things are Persons."

"Wake, prophet-soul, the time draws near, 'The G.o.d who knows' within thee stirs And speaks, for His thou art, and Hers Who bears the mystic s.h.i.+eld and spear.

A touch divine shall thrill thy brain, Thy soul shall leap to life, and lo!

What she has known, again shall know, What she has seen, shall see again.

The ancient past through which she came...."[35]

As the Spirit of Understanding, the name of Hermes signifies both Rock and Interpreter. Hence the significance of the saying of Jesus, "Thou art the Rock, and upon this Rock I will build My Church," which He addressed not to the man Peter, but to the Spirit of Understanding whom He discerned as the prompter of Peter's confession of faith. By this Jesus implied that the only true and infallible church is that which is founded on the Understanding, and not on authority whether of book, tradition or inst.i.tution. The utterance of Jesus was a citation from the proem to the hymn to Hermes[36] recovered by us:--

"He is as a rock between earth and heaven, and the Lord G.o.d shall build His Church thereon.

As a city upon a mountain of stone, whose windows look forth on either side."

As our education proceeded we found indubitably that in excluding from its curriculum the whole range of the knowledges represented by the term "Hermetic," Ecclesiasticism has ignored the chief source of information concerning the Christian _origines_. Doing which it has incurred the reproach uttered by Jesus against those who took away the key of knowledge, neither entering in themselves, nor suffering others to enter in. And it was to restore this Gnosis, suppressed by the priests, that the new revelation was promised, with the reception of which we found ourselves charged, the prophecies pointing to a restoration both of faculty and of knowledge.

Besides the Fig-branch of Hermes, there is another symbol of the intuitional understanding which was disclosed to us as having special and peculiar relation to the work set us. This symbol is Woman herself.

She had already, in the instruction concerning the marriage in Cana[37], been shown to us as the inspirer and prompter. She was now shown to us as the interpreter. The reason why the fig-tree was the emblem of the inward understanding will be found in the citation presently to be given; which is a portion of an instruction received in interpretation of the prophecy of Daniel, re-enunciated by Jesus, concerning the recognition of the "abomination of desolation standing in the holy place"[38], as making and marking the time of the end of that generation which, for its materialisation of spiritual things, was called by Him an "adulterous," meaning an idolatrous, generation. It will be seen that in the Scripture symbology, as the soul is the feminine principle in man's spiritual system, and is called therefore the "Woman," the spirit being the masculine principle; so in man's mental system the intuition as the feminine mode of the mind is called the "Woman," and the intellect, as the masculine mode, the "Man." The following is the citation in question:--

Behold the FIG-TREE, and learn her parable. When the branch thereof shall become tender, and her buds appear, know that the day of G.o.d is upon you."

Wherefore, then, saith the Lord that the budding of the Fig-Tree shall foretell the end?

Because the Fig-Tree is the symbol of the Divine Woman, as the Vine of the Divine Man.

The Fig is the similitude of the Matrix, containing inward buds, bearing blossoms on its placenta, and bringing forth fruit in darkness. It is the Cup of Life, and its flesh is the seed-ground of new births.

The stems of the Fig-Tree run with milk: her leaves are as human hands, like the leaves of her brother the Vine.

And when the Fig-Tree shall bear figs, then shall be the Second Advent, the new sign of the Man bearing Water, and the manifestation of the Virgin-Mother crowned.

For when the Lord would enter the holy city, to celebrate His Last Supper with His disciples, He sent before Him the Fisherman Peter to meet the Man of the Coming Sign.

"There shall meet you a Man bearing a pitcher of Water."

Because, as the Lord was first manifest at a wine-feast in the morning, so must He consummate His work at a wine-feast in the evening.

It is His Pa.s.s-Over; for thereafter the Sun must pa.s.s into a new Sign.

After the Fish, the Water-Carrier; but the Lamb of G.o.d remains always in the place of victory, being slain from the foundation of the world.

For His place is the place of the Sun's triumph.

After the Vine the Fig; for Adam is first formed, then Eve.

And because our Lady is not yet manifest, our Lord is crucified.

Therefore came He vainly seeking fruit upon the Fig-Tree, "for the time of figs was not yet."

And from that day forth, because of the curse of Eve, no man has eaten fruit of the Fig-Tree.

For the inward understanding has withered away, there is no discernment any more in men. They have crucified the Lord because of their ignorance, not knowing what they did.

Wherefore, indeed, said our Lord to our Lady:--"Woman, what is between me and thee? For even _my_ hour is not yet come."

Because until the hour of the Man is accomplished and fulfilled, the hour of the Woman must be deferred.

Jesus is the Vine; Mary is the Fig-Tree. And the vintage must be completed and the wine trodden out, or ever the harvest of the Figs be gathered.

But when the hour of our Lord is achieved; hanging on His Cross, He gives our Lady to the faithful.

The chalice is drained, the lees are wrung out: then says He to His Elect:--"Behold thy Mother!"

But so long as the grapes remain unplucked, the Vine has nought to do with the Fig-Tree, nor Jesus with Mary.

He is first revealed, for He is the Word; afterwards shall come the hour of its Interpretation.

And in that day every man shall sit under the VINE and the FIG-TREE; the Dayspring shall arise in the Orient, and the Fig-Tree shall bear her fruit.