LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOM 485
There is one blessed nature of the blessed Adam above, who is Adamas. There
is one mortal nature below. And there is one kingless race that has ascended
above where are the sought-after Miriam, the grand wise man Jethro and Zip-
porah the seer,^14 and Moses, whose origin is not in Egypt because he had sons
in Midian.
The poets also knew this.
"All things were divided in three, and each received his lot of honor."^15
The great things must be expressed, but expressed by everyone in every pos-
sible way so "that hearing they may not hear and seeing may not see."^16 If the
great things had not been expressed, the universe could not have come into
existence. These are three supremely important words: Kaulakau, Saulasau,
and Zeesar^17 —Kaulakau, the one above Adamas; Saulasau, the mortal below;
and Zeesar, the Jordan that flows upward.
This is the male and female person who is in all, whom the ignorant call
three-bodied Geryon as if his name meant "flowing from the earth."^18 The
Greeks generally call him "the heavenly horn of the moon," because he has
mixed and combined everything with everything else. "For all things came
into existence through him, and apart from him nothing came into existence.
What came into existence in him is life."^19 "Life" is the ineffable race of perfect
human beings unknown to previous generations. "Nothing" that "came into
existence ... apart from him" is the world proper, and the world proper came
into existence apart from him, and was made by the third and fourth gods.
ATTIS
This is the great and ineffable mystery of the Samothracians that only those
of us who are perfect are allowed to know. In their mysteries the Samothra-
cians have the explicit tradition that Adam is the archetypal human. In the
temple of the Samothracians are two statues of naked men, with both hands
raised toward heaven and with their male members erect like the statue of- Miriam, Jethro, and Zipporah were, respectively, Moses' sister and his Midianite father-in-
law and wife. - Homer, Iliad 15.189.
- Matthew 13:13; Mark 4:12; Luke 8:10; John 12:40, all citing Isaiah 6:9-10.
- Three words derived from the Hebrew of Isaiah 28:10.
- Greekge-rheon.
- John 1:3-4-