Gnosticism

astrology, medicines and magic. This sect was anathema to the Church, and its later variants, Paulicians, Cathari, Albigensis, Lollards, and later still the Carbonari, never failed to arouse the persecuting fervour of the Church.

Apollonius of Tyana (q.v.), a Pagan, was supposed to have some connection with the Gnostics. The first Gnostic of eminence was Simon Magus (q.v.) contemporary with the Christian apostles. The Simonians are said to have interpreted the Creation in Genesis as symbolic of the gestation of the fœtus, the temptation of Eve and the Garden of Eden having a like character. The Carpocratians, one of the Gnostic sects, derived their mysteries and rites from Isis worship. They used Theurgic incantations, symbols and signs. The Ophites also adopted Egyptian rites, and, as their name indicates, these included much of serpent symbolism, an actual serpent being the central object of their mysteries. Marcos, disciple of Valentinus, and founder of the Marcian sect, celebrated Mass with two chalices, pouring wine from the larger into a smaller, and on pronouncing a magical formula, the vessel was filled with a liquor like blood, which swelled up seething. Other sects practised divination and prophecy by means of female somnambules. Some of the sects became degraded in doctrine and ritual, this often being of an orgiastic character.

The Gnostic talismans were mostly engraved on gems, the colour and traditional qualities of the jewel being part of its magical efficacy. They used spells and charms and mystic formulæ, said to loose fetters, to cause blindness in one's enemies, to procure dreams, to gain favour, to encompass any desire whatsoever." In a Greek Gnostic Papyrus is to be found the following spell of Agathocles, for producing dreams: "Take a cat, black all over, and which has been killed; prepare a writing tablet, and write the following with a solution of myrrh, and the dream which thou desirest to be sent, and put in the mouth of the cat. The text to be transcribed runs : Keimi, Keimi, I am the Great One, in whose mouth rests Mommom, Thoth, Nauumbre, Karikha, Kenyro, Paarmiathon, the sacred Ian icê ieu aêoi, who is above the heaven, Amekheumen, Neunana, Seunana, Ablanathanalba,' (here follow further names, then,) 'Put thyself in connection with N.N. in this matter (as to the substance of the dream named,) but if it is necessary then bring for me N.N. hither by thy power; lord of the whole world, fiery god, put thyself in connexion with N.N.' Again, there follows a list of meaningless names, the formula ending: Hear me, for I shall speak the great name, Thoth! whom each god honours, and each demon fears, by whose command every messenger performs his mission. Thy name answers to the seven (vowels) a, e, ê, i, o, u, ô, iauoeêaô oueê ôia. I named thy glorious name, the name for all needs. Put thyself in connection with N.N., Hidden One, God, with respect to this name, which Apollobex also used." The repetition of apparently meaningless syllables was always held to be of great efficacy in magical rites, either as holding the secret name of the powers invoked, or of actual power in themselves. In Atanasi's Magic Papyrus, Spell VII., directs you to lay the link of a chain upon a leaden plate, and having traced its outline, to write thereon, round the circumference, the common Gnostic legend in Greek characters (reading both ways) continuously. Within the circle was written the nature of the thing which it was desired to prevent. The operation was called "The Ring of Hermes." The link was then to be folded up on the leaden plate, and thrown into the grave of one dead before his time, or else into a disused well. After the formula above given, was to follow in Greek: Prevent thou such and such a person from doing such and such a thing "'—a proof that the long string of epithets all referred to the same power. These

God

instances might be multiplied, although much of the more valuable parts of the Gnostic doctrines were destroyed by every persecutor who arose, and this was easily done, for the sacred and mystic teachings, the prayers and spells were inscribed on perishable parchments. That much of the evil was imputed to them by the Church because of their more philosophic habit of thought in opposition to faith and dogma, is beyond doubt.

Goat: The devil is frequently represented under the shape of a goat, and as such presided over the witches' Sabbath. The goat is also the emblem of sinful men at the day of judgment." (See Baphomet; Witchcraft.)

Goblin: A spirit formerly supposed to lurk in houses. They were generally of a mischievous and grotesque type. Hobgoblins, according to Junius, were so called because they were wont to hop on one leg.

God: According to the ancient magical conception of God in the scheme of the universe, evil is the inevitable contrast and complement of good. God permits the existence of the shadow in order that it may intensify the purity of the light. Indeed he has created both and they are inseparable the one being necessary to and incomprehensible without the other.

The very idea of goodness loses its meaning if considered apart from that of evil-Gabriel is a foil to Satan and Satan to Gabriel. The dual nature of the spiritual world penetrates into every department of life material and spiritual. It is typified in light and darkness, cold and heat, truth and error, in brief, the names of any two opposing forces will serve to illustrate the great primary law of natureviz. the continual conflict between the positive or good and the negative or evil.

For a scriptural illustration of this point, let the story of Cain and Abel be taken. The moral superiority of his brother is at first irksome to Cain, finally intolerable. He murders Abel, thus bringing on his own head the wrath of God and the self-punishment of the murderer. For in killing Abel he has done himself no good, but harm. He has not done away with Abel's superiority, but has added to himself a burden of guilt that can be expiated only by much suffering.

Suffering is shewn in the Scriptures to be the only means by which evil is overcome by good. Cain re-appears in the story of the prodigal son, who after privation and suffering is restored to his father who forgives him fully and freely.

The possibility of sin and error is therefore entirely consistent with and even inseparable from life, and the great sinner a more vital being than the colourless character, because having greater capacity for evil he has also greater capacity for good, and in proportion to his faults so will his virtues be when he turns to God. There is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons," because more force of character, more power for good or evil is displayed by the sinner than by the feebly correct. And that power is the most precious thing in life.

This great dual law, right and wrong, two antagonistic forces, call them what we will, is designated by the term duad. It is the secret of life and the revelation of that secret means death. This secret is embodied in the myth of the Tree of Knowledge in Genesis. At death the discord will be resolved, but not till then.

From the duad is derived the triad on which is based the doctrine of the Trinity. Two forces producing equilibrium, the secret of nature, are designated by the duad, and these Three, call them life, good, evil, constitute one law. By adding the conception of unity to that of the triad we arrive at the tetrad, the perfect number of four, the

source of all numerical combinations. According to theology there are three persons in God, and these three form one Deity. Three and one make four because unity isrequired to explain the Three. Hence, in almost all languages, the name of God consists of four letters. Again, two affirmations make two negations either possible or necessary. According to the Kabalists the name of the Evil one consisted of the same four letters spelled backward, signifying that evil is merely the reflection or shadow of good" The last reflection or imperfect mirage of light in shadow."

All which exists in light or darkness, good or evil, exists through the tetrad. The triad or trinity, then, is explained by the duad and resolved by the tetrad. Godfrey A priest of Provence, who had seduced several woOne of them, a nun, to save herself, asserted that Godfrey had bewitched her.

men.

Arrested and imprisoned, he was tortured until he confessed that he was a magician, and that he had, by means of his breathing and other enchantments, corrupted this woman and several others. He was even induced, in his extreme agony, to speak of his presence at the Witches' Sabbath, and to give a long description of it. After these confessions had been cruelly extorted from the anguish of failing nature, the Parliament of Aix condemned him, on the 30th of April, 1611, to be burnt alive, as guilty of magic, sorcery, impiety, and abominable lust-a sentence which was carried into execution without delay.

This horrible affair gave rise to an adventure which has been related by the Abbé of Papon.

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"The process," said he, "contained many depositions upon the power of the demons. Several witnesses protested that after being anointed with a magic oil, Godfrey transported himself to the Sabbath, and afterwards returned to his chamber down the shaft of the chimney. day, when these depositions had been read to the Parliament, and the imagination of the judges excited by a long recital of supernatural events, there was heard in the chimney an extraordinary noise, which suddenly terminated with the apparition of a tall black man. The judges thought it was the devil come to the rescue of his disciple, and fled away swiftly, with the exception of a councillor Thorton, their reporter, who, finding himself entangled in his desk, could not follow them. Terrified by what he saw, with trembling body and staring eyes, and repeatedly making the sign of the cross, he in his turn affrighted the pretended demon, who was at a loss to understand the magistrate's perturbation. Recovering from the embarrassment he made himself known, and proved to be a chimney sweeper who, after having swept the chimney of the Messieurs des Comptes, whose chimneys joined those of the Tournelle, had by mistake descended into the chamber of the Parliament.'

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang: German Author, (1749-1832): Johann Wolfgang Goethe, probably the most celebrated of all German writers, was born at Frankfurt-on-the-Main in 1749, his father being a lawyer of some eminence. At an early age the boy showed a persistent fondness for drawing, and assimilated the rudiments of learning with surprising ease; while in 1759, on a French nobleman of æsthetic tastes coming to stay with the Goethes, a warm friendship between him and the future author sprang up, and proved the means of accelerating the latter's intellectual development. Shortly after this a French theatre was founded at Frankfurt, and here young Goethe became conversant with Racine; while simultaneously he made some early attempts at original writing, and began to learn Italian, Latin and Greek, English and even Hebrew. Very soon, however, a little cloud came to darken his horizonjust the cloud which has dimmed the blue skies for so

Goethe

many youths--for at the age of fifteen he became desperately enamoured of a young girl, and as his parents disapproved of the match the pair were separated straightway. At first Goethe declared himself broken-hearted, and being intensely virile, as all men of might are, he sought consolation in loose-living. But a broken heart seldom proves a fatal malady, and the disappointed lover's restoration to mental health was facilitated betimes by his removal from his native town to Leipsic, where he entered the university, intending to become a lawyer.

At Leipsic Goethe showed slender affection for the actual curriculum, and instead he continued in essay writing and drawing, while he even took lessons in etching. He also found time for another love-affair, but this was cut short in 1768 by his undergoing a serious illness; and, on his recovering therefrom, he decided to leave his present alma mater in favour of that of Strasburg. Arrived there, he became intimate with Jung Stilling, while his taste for letters was strengthened, Homer and Ossian being the masters for whom he chiefly avowed affection; while, though he continued to show himself callous as regards law, he succeeded in becoming an advocate in 1771, whereupon he returned to Frankfurt.

Goethe had already written a quantity of verse and prose, and now, in his native town, he began to do critiques for some of the newspapers there, while simultaneously he commenced writing Goetz von Berlichingen and Werther. These were followed shortly by Prometheus, and in 1774 the author started working at Faust, while the following year witnessed the production of some of his best love poems, these being addressed to Lilli Schönemann, daughter of a Frankfurt banker. Nothing more than poetry, however, was destined to result from this new devotion; and scarcely had it come and gone ere Goethe's whole life was changed, for meanwhile his writings had become famous, and now the young Duke Carl August of Weimar, anxious for a trusty henchman, invited the rising author to come to his court. The invitation was accepted, Goethe became a member of the privy-council, while subsequently he was raised to the rank of Geheimrath and then ennobled. Goethe's life at Weimar was a very busy one. Trusted implicitly by the Duke, he directed public roads and buildings, he attended to military_and_academic affairs, and he founded a court theatre. But though having all these outlets for his energy he continued to write voluminously, among the most important works he produced during his first years at the Duke's court being Iphigenia and Wilhelm Meister; while in 1787 he made a lengthy stay in Italy, visiting Naples, Pompei, Rome and Milan. Returning to Weimar, he began writing Egmont; while in 1795 he made the acquaintance of Schiller, with whom he speedily became very intimate, and along with whom he worked on the Horen, a journal designed to elevate the literary tastes of the masses. About this period, too, Goethe wrote his play of Hermann und Dorothea, and likewise did sundry translations from Voltaire, Diderot and Benvenuto Cellini; while the year 1806 is a significant one in his history, marked as it is alike by his marriage and by the entry of Napoleon into Weimar. The conquering general and the German poet each found much in the other to admire, and the latter was decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honour; nor did his literary activities show any signs of flagging as yet, for in 1811 he wrote Dichtung und Wahrheit, in 1821 Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre, and a little later he commenced working at a second part of Faust, During the time he was engaged thus he had two famous visitors, Beethoven coming from Vienna and Thackeray from London; and, though the composer imagined himself coldly received, the novelist on the contrary spoke with enthusiasm of the welcome accorded him. But Goethe was

now well-stricken in years, his health was beginning to fail, and he died early in 1832.

Few great writers, not even Disraeli or Sir Walter Scott, had fuller lives than Goethe. His love-affairs, besides those cited above, were countless, and his early taste for the graphic arts continued to the end of his days, resulting in his making a vast collection of treasures; while his interest in mysticism, by virtue of which he is included in this volume, manifested itself in divers forms besides the writing of Faust. For, something of a nympholept as he was, Goethe's mind was essentially an aspirational and speculative one, and during his childhood at Frankfurt he used to do symbolical drawings of the soul's aspirations to the deity, while subsequently he became immersed in the study of the Christian religion. Anon he grew sceptical on this subject, his ideas being altered not only by his own ruminations but by his readings in various inconoclastic philosophers, especially Rousseau; and it would seem that latterly his intellect was less engaged by Christianity than by those other and probably more ancient Eastern faiths, his leanings in this direction being demonstrated by sundry works from his pen, notably his West-östliche Divan. One of his note-books, moreover, shows that while a young man at Strassburg he made a close study of Giordano Bruno and other early scientists; while as a boy he was a keen student of alchemy, reading deeply in Welling and van Helmont, Basil Valentine and Paracelsus, and even fitting up a laboratory where he spent long hours in arduous experiments. No doubt it was while engaged in this way that he first conceived the idea of writing a drama on the subject of Dr. Faustus, but be that as it may, his alchemistic and other scientific researches certainly stood him in good stead when ultimately composing this work. The story's main outlines are so well known already-not only by reason of Calderon's and Marlowe's versions, but by the operas of Gounod, Schumann and Berlioz-that it were superfluous if not impertinent to offer anything of the nature of a paraphrase or synopsis here; but it should be said, in drawing to a conclusion, that after all it is mainly on account of Faust that Goethe takes rank as a mystic, and a great mystic, for his rendering of the immortal theme is acknowledged as among the finest things in the whole of mystical literature.

Goetia (See Key of Solomon the King.) Golden Key: Under this title have been published many volumes purporting to reveal an infallible method of attaining success in a lottery. La Clef d'or, or La Véritable trésor de la fortune, reprinted from time to time at Lille, is based on the doctrine of sympathetic numbers, which the author claims to have discovered. Each number drawn, he declares, has five sympathetic numbers which directly follow it. Thus the number 4 has for its sympathetic numbers 30, 40, 50, 20, and 76. Knowing this, of course, it is an easy matter to win fortune at a lottery. Gormogons: A Jacobite Masonic Society, perhaps related to the Lodges of Harodim (q.v.) They employed pseudonyms like the latter, and had an ambassador at Rome. Their history is sketched in a pamphlet dated 1724, entitled "Two Letters to a Friend," and in the work of Prichard (1730). The Duke of Wharton and the Chevalier Ramsay who were well-known Jacobites, were members of the Order. They had a cipher and secret reception of their own, and used a jargon in which the names of places and individuals were hidden and transposed. A plate of Hogarth's is extant in which the Order is lampooned under the title of The Mystery of Masonry brought to light by ye Gormogons."

Graal, The Lost Book of the: The origin of the Graal legend, which is of course speculative. Seven ancient books are cited as being the possible cradle of the story, but none of

them quite meet the case. In the Huth Merlin, a Book of the Sanctuary" is referred to, but this is a book of records, not containing any special spiritual allusion.

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If, and it is very doubtful if, such a book ever existed, it was most probably a Mass book, extant about 1100. Its contents would relate to a Mass following the Last Supper, in which Christ gave Himself, the Priest serving. The mystery is threefold. (1) of Origin, which is part of the mystery of the Incarnation. (2) of Manifestation, which would have taken place had the world been worthy. (3) of Removal: this world being unworthy, the Graal was said to be removed, yet not hidden, for it is always discernible by anyone worthy, or qualified to see it. As has been said, it is not probable that such a Mass-book ever existed. Grail, Holy: A portion of the Arthurian cycle of romance, of late origin embodying a number of tales dealing with the search for a certain vessel of great sanctity, called the grail" or graal." Versions of the story are numerousthe most celebrated of them being the Conte del Graal, the Grand St. Graal, Sir Percyvalle, Quete del St. Graal, and Guyot; but there are many others. These overlap in many respects, but the standard form of the story may perhaps be found in the Grand St. Graal-one of the latest versions, which dates from the thirteenth century. It tells how Joseph of Arimathea employed a dish used at the last supper to catch the blood of the Redeemer which flowed from his body before his burial. The wanderings of Joseph are then described. He leads a band to Britain, where he is cast into prison, but is delivered by Evelach or Mordrains, who is instructed by Christ to assist him. This Mordrains builds a monastery where the Grail is housed. Brons, Joseph's brother-in-law, has a son Alain, who is appointed guardian of the Grail; and this Alain having caught a great fish, with which he feeds the entire household, is called the Rich Fisher, which title becomes that of the Grail keepers in perpetuity. Alain placed the Grail in the castle of Corbenic, and thence in due time come various knights of King Arthur's court in quest of the holy vessel, but only the purest of the pure can approach its vicinity; and in due time Percival attains to sight of the marvel.

It is probable that the Grail idea was originated by early mediæval legends of the quest for talismans which conferred great boons upon the finder: as for example, the Shoes of Swiftness, the Cloak of Invisibility, the Ring of Gyges, and so forth; and that these stories were interpreted in the light and spirit of medieval Christianity and mysticism. They may be divided into two classes: those which are connected with the quest for certain talismans, of which the Grail is only one, and which deal with the personality of the hero who achieved the quest; and secondly those which deal with the nature and history of the talismans.

A great deal of controversy has raged around the probable Eastern origin of the Grail Legend, and much erudition has been employed to show that Guyot, a Provençal poet who flourished in the middle of the twelfth century, found at Toledo in Spain an Arabian book by an astrologer, Flegitanis, which contained the Grail story. But the name Flegitanis can by no means be an Arabian proper name; and it might perhaps be the Persian fele kedanéh, a Persian combined word which signifies" astrology," and in this case it would be the title of an astrological work. Professor Bergmann and others believed that the Holy Legend originated in the mind of Guyot himself; but this conclusion was strongly combated by the late Alfred Nutt. There is, however, good reason to believe that the story may have been brought from the East by the Knights Templar.

The Grail Legend has often been held by certain writers