Under this general title is now being published a series of small volumes, drawn from, or based upon, the mystic, theosophic and gnostic writings of the ancients, so as to make more easily audible for the ever-widening circle of those who love such things, some echoes of the mystic experiences and initiatory lore of their spiritual ancestry. There are many who love the life of the spirit, and who long for the light of gnostic illumination, but who are not sufficiently equipped to study the writi

CONTENTS TEXTS Bonnet (M.), Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha (Leipzig, 1898). James (M. R.), Apocrypha Anecdota, T. & S. , v. i. (Cambridge, 1897). F. = Fragments of a Faith Forgotten , 2nd. ed. (London, 1906). H. = Thrice Greatest Hermes (London, 1906). ECHOES FROM THE GNOSIS SOME PROPOSED SUBJECTS FOR FORTHCOMING VOLUMES THE CHALDÆAN ORACLES. THE HYMN OF THE PRODIGAL. SOME ORPHIC FRAGMENTS.   THE GNOSTIC CRUCIFIXION....

The Gnostic Mystery of the Crucifixion is most clearly set forth in the new-found fragments of The Acts of John , and follows immediately on the Sacred Dance and Ritual of Initiation which we endeavoured to elucidate in Vol. IV. of these little books, in treating of The Hymn of Jesus . The reader is, therefore, referred to the “Preamble” of that volume for a short introduction concerning the nature of the Gnostic Acts in general and of the Leucian Acts of John in particular. I would, however, ad

1. [97 (xii.)] And having danced these things with us, Beloved, the Lord went out. And we, as though beside ourselves, or wakened out of sleep, fled each our several ways. 2. I, however, though I saw the beginning of His passion could not stay to the end, but fled unto the Mount of Olives weeping over that which had befallen. 3. And when He was hung on the tree of the cross, at the sixth hour of the day darkness came over the whole earth. And my Lord stood in the midst of the Cave, and filled it

The translation is frequently a matter of difficulty, for the text has been copied in a most careless and unintelligent fashion, so that the ingenuity of the editors has often been taxed to the utmost and has not infrequently completely broken down. It is of course quite natural that orthodox scribes should blunder when transcribing Gnostic documents, owing to their ignorance of the subject and their strangeness to the ideas; but this particular copyist is at times quite barbarous, and as the su

The vision itself is not so marvellous as the instruction; nevertheless it allows us to see that the Cross in its supernal nature is the Heavenly Man with arms outstretched in blessing, showering benefits on all—the perpetual Self-sacrifice ( F. , 330). And in this connection we should remind ourselves of the following striking sentence from The Untitled Apocalypse of the Bruce Codex, an apocalypse which contains perhaps the most sublime visions that have survived to us from the Gnosis: “The Out