“Hermes waved the rod and they followed gibbering.”-- (Homer, _Odyssey_, XXIV, 5-7.)
still meaning the souls as the poet shows, saying figuratively:--
“And even as bats flit gibbering in the secret recesses Of a wondrous cave when one has fallen down out of the rock From the cluster....”-- (_Ibid._, XXIV, 9 _seq._)
[Sidenote: p. 155.] Out of the rock, he says, is said of Adamas. This, he says, is Adamas, “the corner-stone which has become the head of the corner.”[65] For in the head is the impressed brain of the substance from which every fatherhood is impressed.[66] “Which Adamas,” he says, “I place at the foundation of Zion.”[67] Allegorically, he says, he means the image of the Man. But that Adamas is placed within the teeth, as Homer says, “the hedge of teeth,”[68] that is, the wall and stockade within which is the inner man, who has fallen from Adamas the arch-man[69] on high who is (the rock) “cut without cutting hands”[70] and brought down into the image of oblivion,[71] the earthly and clayey. And he says that the souls follow him, the Word, gibbering.
Even so the souls gibbered as they fared together, But he went before,
“Gracious Hermes led them adown the dark ways.”-- (_Odyssey_, XXIV, 9 ff.)
[Sidenote: p. 156.] that is, he says, into eternal countries remote from all evil. For whence, says he, did they come?
“By Ocean’s flood they came and the Leucadian cliff And by the Sun’s gates and the land of dreams.”-- (_Odyssey_, _ubi cit._)
This he says is Ocean, “source of gods and source of men”[72] ever ebbing and flowing now forth and now back. But when he says Ocean flows forth there is birth of men, but when back to the wall and stockade and the Leucadian rock there is birth of gods. This he says is that which is written: “I have said ye are all gods and sons of the Highest; if you hasten to flee from Egypt and win across the Red Sea into the desert,” that is from the mixture below to the Jerusalem above who is the Mother of (all) living. “But if ye return again to Egypt,” that is to the mixture below, [Sidenote: p. 157.] “ye shall die as men.”[73] For deathly, says he, is all birth below, but deathless that which is born above; for it is born of water alone and the spirit, spiritual not fleshly. This, he says, is that which is written: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.”[74] This is, according to them, the spiritual birth. This, he says, is the great Jordan which flowing forth prevented the sons of Israel from coming out of the land of Egypt--or rather, from the mixture below; for Egypt is the body according to them--until Joshua[75] turned it and made it flow back towards its source.