more hair-drawings
Huck wrote:
"Lazzarelli's poem doesn't triangulate. This is hair-drawn and only confuses that, what is really there.
It's not totally clear, to which context Lazzarelli's order refers, but it is rather clear to which it not refers."
My use of the word "triangulates" was perhaps too poetic...
My point is that the 27 are 9 multiples of 3; and that the placement of Mercury at #9 is perhaps meaningful in relation to Polyhymnia #18 & to Victory #27. Note at lines 203 ff, under the Prime Cause, Lazzarelli speaks of Polyhymnia: "She was first among the nymphs of Mt. Helicon of former times, and I am able to sing what I learned through her recollection." She procedes to discuss the incomprehensibility of the Prime Cause, and the presence within it of the First Changeable, which lie beyond the 8th sphere=Hope.
Mercury #9 reminded me of the following "lost" work ("rediscovered" 1947):
"Lord, grant us a wisdom from your power that reaches us, so that we may describe to ourselves the vision of the eighth and the ninth."
"Lord, grant us the truth in the image. Allow us through the spirit to see the form of the image that has no deficiency, and receive the reflection of the pleroma from us through our praise. "
"I am Mind, and I see another Mind, the one that moves the soul! I see the one that moves me from pure forgetfulness. You give me power! I see myself! I want to speak! Fear restrains me. I have found the beginning of the power that is above all powers, the one that has no beginning. I see a fountain bubbling with life. I have said, my son, that I am Mind. I have seen! Language is not able to reveal this. For the entire eighth, my son, and the souls that are in it, and the angels, sing a hymn in silence. And I, Mind, understand."
"What he had finished praising, he shouted, "Father Trismegistus! What shall I say? We have received this light. And I myself see this same vision in you. And I see the eighth, and the souls that are in it, and the angels singing a hymn to the ninth and its powers. And I see him who has the power of them all, creating those <that are> in the spirit."
"It is advantageous from now on, that we keep silence in a reverent posture. Do not speak about the vision from now on. It is proper to sing a hymn to the father until the day to quit (the) body."
"What you sing, my father, I too want to sing."
"I am singing a hymn within myself. While you rest yourself, be active in praise. For you have found what you seek."
"But is it proper, my father, that I praise because I am filled in my heart?"
"What is proper is your praise that you will sing to God, so that it might be written in this imperishable book."
"I will offer up the praise in my heart, as I pray to the end of the universe and the beginning of the beginning, to the object of man's quest, the immortal discovery, the begetter of light and truth, the sower of reason, the love of immortal life. No hidden word will be able to speak about you, Lord. Therefore, my mind wants to sing a hymn to you daily. I am the instrument of your spirit; Mind is your plectrum. And your counsel plucks me. I see myself! I have received power from you. For your love has reached us."
"My son, write this book for the temple at Diospolis in hieroglyphic characters, entitling it 'The Eighth Reveals the Ninth.'"
"I will do it, my <father>, as you command now."
"And write an oath in the book, lest those who read the book bring the language into abuse, and not (use it) to oppose the acts of fate. ..by stages he advances and enters into the way of immortality. And thus he enters into the understanding of the eighth that reveals the ninth."
"This is the oath: I make him who will read this holy book swear by heaven and earth, and fire and water, and seven rulers of substance, and the creating spirit in them, and the <unbegotten> God, and the self-begotten one, and him who has been begotten, that he will guard the things that Hermes has said. And those who keep the oath, God will be reconciled with them and everyone whom we have named. But wrath will come to each one of those who violate the oath. This is the perfect one who is, my son."
The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth-Translated by James Brashler, Peter A. Dirkse, and Douglas M. Parrott
"Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth"
" This work is a leading example of what Fowden calls an "initiatory" hermetic text concerned with the final phases of a "philosophical paideia," the last steps that the initiate takes to recognize his true nature and then, in knowing God, to attain godhood. NHC VI.6 shares these sublime intentions with some parts of the Corpus Hermeticum, especially C.H. I and XIII, but most of the other seventeen Greek treatises are "preparatory" in Fowden's taxonomy. The describe various lower stages in the progress toward wisdom that the initiate must acquire before enjoying the rebirth offered in C.H. XIII or NHC VI.6.[132]"
http://www.onelittleangel.com/wisdom/art/manuscript.asp?mc=378
"A single region of the sky might be termed the seven planetary heavens or the twelve zodiacal mansions, depending on whether it was subdivided horizontally or vertically; but however the region of astral determinism was called, it differed both spatially and ontologically from the eighth heaven beyond the planets; and the ninth heaven differed yet again. Typologically, the Hermetic view may be seen as a conflation of apocalyptists' heavens with the hypostases of Neoplatonism. Whereas apocalyptists' heavens were all made out of the same sort of ethereal stuff, Hermetic heavens formed three distinctive states of being.
Eliade (1982:298-301) recognized the initiatory character of the so-called philosophical texts of Hermetism, and Fowden (1993:104-115) clarified the basic contours of the mystical experiences that the texts describe as "rebirth." The following account builds on the fine presentation by Fowden but places greater emphasis on the ontological implications of rebirth."
"To go on to reach the Ninth cosmic region, the imaginal realm of forms had itself to be transcended."
"The assertion that "he enters into the understanding of the eighth that reveals the ninth" (Disc. 8-9 63; Robinson 1988:326) epitomizes this part of the mystical technique. Visualization practices were used to induce visions of images that had forms. The visualizations were known to be fabricated, but the visions that they triggered were thought to be unfabricated. These reflections on the visions were made during the visionary state while in the company of the envisioned souls and angels. Due presumably to the visions' coherence or intelligibility, initiates postulated the reality of a Mind that was responsible for ideas that took visionary form as images. This Mind was not manifest to the initiate, but the images that manifested its ideas were. The text does not mention whether Mind, in this context, was human or divine.
Once the ninth had been postulated on the basis of the evidence of the eighth, the initiate was ready to move on to the ninth itself."
http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/Merkur.html
-John
