he
Unknown--Invisible, Incomprehensible Silence. It is true that he does
not so name the Great Power, He who has stood, stands and will stand;
but that which comes forth from Silence is Speech, and the idea is the
same whatever the terminology employed may be. Setting aside the
Hermetic teachings and those of the later Gnosis, we find this idea of
the Great Silence referred to several times in the fragments of the
Chaldaean Oracles. It is called "God-nourished Silence" ([Greek: sigae
theothremmon]), according to whose divine decrees the Mind that
energizes before all energies, abides in the Paternal Depth.[107] Again:

This unswerving Deity is called the Silent One by the gods, and is
said to consent (lit. sing together) with the Mind, and to be known
by the Souls through Mind alone.[108]

Elsewhere the Oracles demonstrate this Power which is prior to the
highest Heaven as "Mystic Silence."[109]

The Word, then, issuing from Silence is first a Monad, then a Duad, a
Triad and a Hebdomad. For no sooner has differentiation commenced in it,
and it passes from the state of Oneness ([Greek: monotaes]), than the
Duadic and Triadic state immediately supervene, arising, so to say,
simultaneously in the mind, for the mind cannot rest on Duality, but is
forced by a law of its nature to rest only on the joint emanation of the
Two. Thus the first natural resting point is the Trinity. The next is
the Hebdomad or Septenary, according to the mathematical formula
2^{n}-1, the sum of _n_ things taken 1, 2, 3 ... _n_, at a time. The
Trinity being manifested, _n_ here =3; and 2^{3}-1 = 7.

Thus Simon has six Roots and the Seventh Power, seven in all, as the
type of the Aeons in the Pleroma. These all proceed from the Fire. In
like manner also the Cabeiric deities of Samothrace and Phoenicia were
Fire-gods, born of the Fire. Nonnus tells us they were sons of the
mysterious Hephaestus (Vulcan),[110] and Eusebius, in his quotations
from Sanchuniathon, that they were _seven_ in number.[111] The Vedic
Agni (Ignis) also, the God of Fire, is called "Seven-tongued"
(Sapta-jihva) and "Seven-flamed" (Sapta-jvala).[112]

In the _Hibbert Lectures_ of 1887, Prof. A.H. Sayce gives the following
Hymn of Ancient Babylonia to the Fire-god, from _The Cuneiform
Inscriptions of Western Asia_ (iv. 15):

1. The (bed) of the earth they took for their border, but the god
appeared not,

2. from the foundations of the earth he