George Robert Stow Mead

Thrice Greatest Hermes: Excerpts and fragments

Some Short Sketches Among the Gnostics, Mainly of the First Two Centuries : a Contribution to the Study of Christian Origins Based on the Most Recently Recovered Materials

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten

Echoes from the Gnosis: a Mithriac ritual. 1907

Between 1906 and 1908, G. R. S. Mead published eleven small books under the series title "Echoes from the Gnosis." These books contain translations and interpretations of the Gnostic writings of the ancients. Long before the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, Mead translated these esoteric texts of various origins (Christian, Roman, Greek). He wanted to make this material accessible to the growing number of people at the time eager to encounter this ancient mystical religion based on an intuitive process of knowing oneself and the hidden aspects of life and existence. Upon the publication of the 100-year anniversary edition of the series, the appeal for this same material remains stronger than ever.

Echoes from the Gnosis

A Mithriac Ritual

Echoes from the Gnosis: the Wedding-Song of wisdom. 1908

A Quarterly Review

Quest

Four Comparative Studies in General Theosophy

The World-mystery

The Quest

Echoes from the Gnosis: the hymns of Hermes. 1907

Some Mystical Adventures

brevi studi sugli Gnostici, principalment dei primi due secoli--contributo allo studio delle origini Cristiane, basato su materiali più recentemente ricuperati

Frammenti di una fede dimenticata

The Wedding-song of Wisdom

Orpheus. (Theosophy of the Greeks).

WHO has not heard the romantic legend of Orpheus and Eurydice? The polished verse of Virgil, in his GeorgiME (iv. 452-527), has immortalised the story, told by "Cærulean Proteus". But few know the importance that mythical Orpheus plays in Grecian legends, nor the many arts and sciences attributed to him by fond posterity. Orpheus was the father of the Pan-Hellenic faith, the great theologer, the man who brought to Greece the sacred rites of secret worship and taught the mysteries of nature and of God. To him the Greeks confessed they owed religion, the arts, the sciences both sacred and profane; and, therefore, in dealing with the subject I have proposed to myself in this essay, it will be necessary to treat of a theology "which was first mystically and symbolically promulgated by Orpheus, afterwards disseminated enigmatically through images by Pythagoras, and in the last place scientifically unfolded by Plato and his genuine disciples" or to use the words of Proclus, the last great master of Neoplatonism, "all the theology of the Greeks comes from Orphic mystagogy," that is to say, initiation into the mysteries. Not only did the learned of the Pagan world ascribe the sacred science to the same source, but also the instructed of the Christian fathers (ibid., p. 466). It must not, however, be supposed that Orpheus was regarded as the "inventor" of theology, but rather as the transmitter of the science of divine things to the Grecian world, or even as the reformer of an existing cult that, even in the early times before the legendary Trojan era, had already fallen into decay. The well-informed among the ancients recognised a common basis in the inner rites of the then existing religions, and even the least mystical of writers admit a 'common bond of discipline,' as, for instance, Lobeck, who demonstrates that the ideas of the Egyptians, Chaldæans, OrphiME and Pythagoreans were derived from a common source.

The Theosophy of the Greeks

Orpheus

George Robert Stow Mead

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