The Fifth Parable
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This ascends from the earth into the sky and
again descends from the sky to the earth, and
receives the power and efficacy of things above and of things below.
By this means you will acquire the glory of the whole world, and
so you will drive away all shadows and blindness.
The Emerald Tablet
Hod (Glory)
Lords of Form
The image on the Plate is a Hermaphrodite with two heads and two wings. The male head (with a golden halo) on the right side of the body has a red wing. The female (with a silver halo) has a white wing.
The female hand holds an Egg, which is described by the text. The Egg contains the four Elements:
- the shell is the Earth,
- the “white” (the albumin) is Water,
- the skin between the shell and the white is Air, and
- the yolk is Fire. (The yolk is surrounded by a ‘subtle skin’, which represents our ‘subtle air’.)
The Aether, the fifth element, is located within the Yolk. (And from the Aether emerges the chick, Life.)
The male hand holds a disk. The center of the disk has an image with representations of the four Elements: a meadow and mountain (Earth), the Sun (Fire), sky (Air), and a river in the background (Water). This is surrounded by a rim of black (the Material Body), which is surrounded by dark gray (the Mind), which is surrounded by silver (Etheric Body). The outer edge of the disk is gold (Astral Body).
Another interpretation of the disk is that it is an eye (specifically, the Third Eye, the Pineal Gland). In Man: The Grand Symbol of the Mysteries, Hall describes the eye as “a little world, the lens which is in the midst of it being an eye within an eye, a world within a world, for all the parts are patterned after the entire.”
Hod, the eighth Sephiroth in the Cabalistic Tree of Life, is sometimes referred to as Splendor. Splendor is reflected light (distinguished from Radiance, which is emanated light). The Initiate’s Astral Body reflects the Divine Light. The more pure the Astral Body is, the more Divine Light it reflects, driving “away all shadows and blindness”.
Hod is also sometimes referred to as Glory, an aura, the Astral Body.
Just as Herakles was about to die on the pyre, Zeus struck him with a thunderbolt. Then, as the Fourth Parable alluded, the winged woman took the Initiate to heaven. When Herakles’ Mortal Body died, he was transported to Olympus by the goddess Athena (ascending from the earth to the sky).