Symbols ana a

^,J Corpus Henricricum, 10.8.

153

^Ibid., 1.22-26, 43.

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^In some texts the seventh sphere, instead of the eighth, expresses the same meaning; in relation to the aforementioned in the introduction (pp. 13-16), the definition of the seventh state has a special meaning and should he taken in the same sense as that of "the one standing, who keeps standing and who will go on standing” (flippolytus, Philosophumena, 6.13). Some concurrences: an esoteric meaning of the biblical seventh day ot '’resr” (the Initiatic pax) alter the other six of work; Horus, the God who succeeded in definitively conquering the dragon Typhon is the eighth son of Isis, who sought the virile parts (the power ot Osiris), dressed in seven black ''garments.” Osiris, the "primordial masculine," quartered or mutilated by the dragon and put back together again by Horus, can then compare himself to the Vedic Pra/apati, who after having created the Waters (Waters - Dragon) was assimilated by them (dissolution) and then came out of them in die form ot a golden seed (Rlg^Veda, 10.121; 1.7).

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^M C[. G. Postcl, Ckvis absconding, 15, 1116, which speaks of the "law of grace which extracted men from the Waters ot the world," and refers to the symbol of Christ, who "walks on the sea sustained by his own power," an identical expression to that used in the Corpus Hcrmecicum tor those who reach the eighth level.

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^{Corpus Hermedcum, 72. The same symbolism is quite frequent in the Orient, cf. Dhammapada (86. .348, .370) where crossing the stream is explained as crossing and passing beyond the kingdom of death, and where the ascetic who has overcome the five obsracles is identified with the one who has crossed the ocean; Suttanipaca, .3.6.36; Katha-Upanishad, 1,3.2. The " upstream-swuniner" is a technical expres­sion for rhar "purity” of the heart that has arrived at the formless states -arupa—(ci. Dhammapada, 218). From the Gnostic point of view, Jesus was considered one of those who "have raised themselves against the stream" (Philosophurnena, 5.7-8). Cf. place on p. 102 of the Chymica vannust a man is preparing to cross a river and on the other bank are seen "winged" beings (Air stares); there is also a ship en route ro a Htus secrerus. The two symbolic directions of the Waters ate revealed in a Gnostic commentary to Homer (Odyssey, 24.9-12). Oceanus, father of the gods and ot men, ehhs and flows hack again; in falling he gives way co the generation of men and in rising, to the white stone(leucasia). he brings in the gods, referred to as the "Seven Gods” and "the Androgyne Man in everyone" (in Hippolytus, Philosophurnena, 5.7-8),}

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^CAG, 2:261; 3:250

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