Thrice Greatest Hermes

The first part of his mental question is: How came this cosmos into being? The answer is the changing of the Boundless Presence into "Light, sweet joyous Light". He loses all sight of "all things" in his mind, the mental image he bad formed of cosmos, and is plunged into the infinitude of Limitless Light and Joy, which transports him out of himself in highest ecstasy. But he has craved for Gnosis, not Joy and Light, but Wisdom, the understanding and reconciliation of the great Opposites, the Cross of all Manifestation. Therefore must he know the Mystery of Ignorance as well as that of Knowledge. Within the Infinitude of Light appears the Shadow of the Unknown, which translates itself to his consciousness as Darkness, -the Shadow of the Thrice-unknown Darkness, which, as Damascus tells us, was the First Principle of the Egyptians, the Ineffable Mystery, of which they "said nothing", and of which our author says nothing. This Darkness comes forth from within outwards to the disciple's consciousness, it spreads "downwards" in sinuous folds like a Great Snake, symbolizing, presumably, the unknown, and to him unknowable, mysteries of the differentiation of the root of matter of the cosmos that was to be; its motion was spiral, sinuous, unending vibrations, not yet confined into a sphere; not yet ordered, but chaotic, in unceasing turmoil, a terrible contrast to the sweet peace of the Light, gradually changing from Dark Space or Spirit into a Fluid or Flowing Matter, or Moist Nature; that is, presumably, what the Greek mystics would have called Rhea, the Primal Mother or Matter of the future universe.