This doctrine is not
Egyptian, but seems to have been in its origin part and parcel of
the Chaldean Mystery-tradition and was widely spread in Hellenistic
circles."[6]
Thus, in the introductory remarks prefixed by Hippolytus to the
document he is quoting he asserts that the Naassenes honour as the
Logos of all universals Man, and Son of Man--"and they divide him
into three, for they say he has a mental, psychic, and choic aspect;
and they think that the Gnosis of this Man is the beginning of the
possibility of knowing God, saying, 'The beginning of Perfection is
the Gnosis of Man, but the Gnosis of God is perfected Perfection.'
All these, mental, psychic, and earthy, descended together into one
Man, Jesus, the Son of Mary."[7]
Thus the Myth of Man, the Mystery of Generation, is the subject matter
of the document in question, and this myth is set forth with reference
to all the Mysteries, beginning with the Assyrian.
Paragraph 5 runs: "Now the Assyrians call this Mystery Adonis, and
whenever it is called Adonis it is Aphrodite who is in love with and
desires Soul so-called, and Aphrodite is Genesis according to
them."[8]
But in the next section the writer jumps from the Assyrian to the
Phrygian Mysteries, saying, "But if the Mother of the Gods emasculates
Attis, she too regarding him as the object of her love, it is the
Blessed Nature above of the super-Cosmic, and Aeonian spaces which
calls back the masculine power of Soul to herself.
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