Chapter 612

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The Pymander of our museums and libraries is an abridgment of one of the Books of Thoth, by a Platonist of Alexandria. In the Third Century it was remodelled after old Hebrew and Phœnician MSS. by a Jewish Kabalist, and called the Genesis of Enoch. But even its disfigured remnants show how closely its text agrees with the Archaic Doctrine, as is shown in the creation of the Seven Creators and Seven Primitive Men. As to Enoch, Thoth or Hermes, Orpheus and Cadmus, these are all generic names, branches and offshoots of the seven primordial Sages—incarnated Dhyân Chohans or Devas, in illusive, not mortal bodies—who taught Humanity all it knew, and whose earliest disciples assumed their Master’s names. This custom passed from the Fourth to the Fifth Race. Hence the sameness of the traditions about Hermes—of whom Egyptologists count five—Enoch, etc.; they are all inventors of letters; none of them die; they still live, and are the first Initiators into, and Founders of, the Mysteries. It was only very lately that the Genesis of Enoch disappeared from among the Kabalists. Guillaume Postel saw it. It was most certainly in a great measure a transcript from the Books of Hermes, and far anterior to the Books of Moses, as Éliphas Lévi tells his readers.