The Corpus Hermeticum

by Hermes Trismegistus

  But it is possible for one who hath the Mind, to free himself from vice.

  8. Wherefore I’ve ever heard, my son, Good Daimon also say - (and had He set it down in written words, He would have greatly helped the race of men; for He alone, my son, doth truly, as the Firstborn God, gazing on all things, give voice to words (logoi) divine) - yea, once I heard Him say:

  “All things are one, and most of all the bodies which the mind alone perceives. Our life is owing to [God’s] Energy and Power and Aeon. His Mind is good, so is His Soul as well. And this being so, intelligible things know naught of separation. So, then, Mind, being Ruler of all things, and being Soul of God, can do whate’er it wills.”

  9. So do thou understand, and carry back this word (logos) unto the question thou didst ask before - I mean about Mind’s Fate.

  For if thou dost with accuracy, son, eliminate [all] captious arguments (logoi), thou wilt discover that of very truth the Mind, the Soul of God, doth rule o’er all - o’er Fate, and Law, and all things else; and nothing is impossible to it - neither o’er Fate to set a human soul, nor under Fate to set [a soul] neglectful of what comes to pass. Let this so far suffice from the Good Daimon’s most good [words].

  Tat: Yea, [words] divinely spoken, father mine, truly and helpfully. But further still explain me this.

  10. Thou said’st that Mind in lives irrational worked in them as [their] nature, co-working with their impulses.

  But impulses of lives irrational, as I do think, are passions.

  Now if the Mind co-worketh with [these] impulses, and if the impulses of [lives] irrational be passions, then is Mind also passion, taking its color from the passions.

  Hermes: Well put, my son! Thou questionest right nobly, and it is just that I as well should answer [nobly].

  11. All things incorporeal when in a body are subject unto passion, and in the proper sense they are [themselves] all passions.

  For every thing that moves itself is incorporeal; while every thing that’s moved is body.

  Incorporeals are further moved by Mind, and movement’s i.e., movement is passion.

  Both, then, are subject unto passion - both mover and the moved, the former being ruler and the latter ruled.

  But when a man hath freed himself from body, then is he also freed from passion.

  But, more precisely, son, naught is impassible, but all are passible.

  Yet passion differeth from passibility; for that the one is active, while the other’s passive.

  Incorporeals moreover act upon themselves, for either they are motionless or they are moved; but whichsoe’er it be, it’s passion.

  But bodies are invaribly acted on, and therefore they are passible.

  Do not, then, let terms trouble thee; action and passion are both the selfsame thing. To use the fairer sounding term, however, does no harm.

  12. Tat: Most clearly hast thou, father mine, set forth the teaching (logos).

  Hermes: Consider this as well, my son; that these two things God hath bestowed on man beyond all mortal lives - both mind and speech (logos) equal to immortality. He hath the mind for knowing God and uttered speech (logos) for eulogy of Him.

  And if one useth these for what he ought, he’ll differ not a whit from the immortals. Nay, rather, on departing from the body, he will be guided by the twain unto the Choir of Gods and Blessed Ones.

  13. Tat: Why, father mine! - do not the other lives make use of speech (logos)?

  Hermes: Nay, son; but i.e., only use of voice; speech is far different from voice. For speech is general among all men, while voice doth differ in each class of living thing.

  Tat: But with men also, father mine, according to each race, speech differs.

  Hermes: Yea, son, but man is one; so also speech is one and is interpreted, and it is found the same in Egypt, and in Persia, and in Greece.

  Thou seemest, son, to be in ignorance of Reason’s (Logos) worth and greatness. For that the Blessed God, Good Daimon, hath declared:

  “Soul is in Body, Mind in Soul; but Reason (Logos) is in Mind, and Mind in God; and God is Father of [all] these.”

  14. The Reason, then, is the Mind’s image, and Mind God’s [image]; while Body is [the image] of the Form; and Form [the image] of the Soul.

  The subtlest part of Matter is, then, Air or vital spirit; of Air, Soul; of Soul, Mind; and of Mind, God.

  And God surroundeth all and permeateth all; while Mind Surroundeth Soul, Soul Air, Air Matter.

  Necessity and Providence and Nature are instruments of Cosmos and of Matter’s ordering; while of intelligible things each is Essence, and Sameness is their Essence.

  But of the bodies of the Cosmos each is many; for through possessiong Sameness, [these] composed bodies, though they do change from one into another of themselves, do natheless keep the incorruption of their Sameness.

  15. Whereas in all the rest of composed bodies, of each there is a certain number; for without number structure cannot be, or composition, or decomposition.

  Now it is units that give birth to number and increase it, and, being decomposed, are taken back again into themselves.

  Matter is one; and this whole Cosmos - the mighty God and image of the mightier One, both with Him unified, and the conserver of the Will and Order of the Father - is filled full of Life.

  Naught is there in it throughout the whole of Aeon, the Father’s [everlasting] Re-establishment - nor of the whole, nor of the parts - which doth not live.

  For not a single thing that’s dead, hath been, or is, or shall be in [this] Cosmos.

  For that the Father willed it should have Life as long as it should be. Wherefore it needs must be a God.

  16. How then, O son, could there be in the God, the image of the Father, in the plenitude of Life - dead things?

  For that death is corruption, and corruption destruction.

  How then could any part of that which knoweth no corruption be corrupted, or any whit of him the God destroyed?

  Tat: Do they not, then, my father, die - the lives in it, that are its parts?

  Hermes: Hush, son! - led into error by the term in use for what takes place.

  They do not die, my son, but are dissolved as compound bodies.

  Now dissolution is not death, but dissolution of a compound; it is dissolved not so that it may be destroyed, but that it may become renewed.

  For what is the activity of life? Is it not motion? What then in Cosmos is there that hath no motion? Naught is there, son!

  17. Tat: Doth not Earth even, father, seem to thee to have no motion?

  Hermes: Nay, son; but rather that she is the only thing which, though in very rapid motion, is also stable.

  For how would it not be a thing to laugh at, that the Nurse of all should have no motion, when she engenders and brings forth all things?

  For ‘tis impossible that without motion one who doth engender, should do so.

  That thou should ask if the fourth part or element is not inert, is most ridiculous; for the body which doth have no motion, gives sign of nothing but inertia.

  18. Know, therefore, generally, my son, that all that is in Cosmos is being moved for increase or for decrease.

  Now that which is kept moving, also lives; but there is no necessity that that which lives, should be all same.

  For being simultaneous, the Cosmos, as a whole, is not subject to change, my son, but all its parts are subject unto it; yet naught [of it] is subject to corruption, or destroyed.

  It is the terms employed that confuse men. For ‘tis not genesis that constituteth life, but ‘tis sensation; it is not change that constituteth death, but ‘tis forgetfulness.

  Since, then, these things are so, they are immortal all - Matter, [and] Life, [and] Spirit, Mind [and] Soul, of which whatever liveth, is co
mposed.

  19. Whatever then doth live, oweth its immortality unto the Mind, and most of all doth man, he who is both recipient of God, and co-essential with Him.

  For with this life alone doth God consort; by visions in the night, by tokens in the day, and by all things doth He foretell the future unto him - by birds, by inward parts, by wind, by tree.

  Wherefore doth man lay claim to know things past, things present and to come.

  20. Observe this too, my son; that each one of the other lives inhabiteth one portion of the Cosmos - aquatic creatures water, terrene earth, and aery creatures air; while man doth use all these - earth, water air [and] fire; he seeth Heaven, too, and doth contact it with [his] sense.

  But God surroundeth all, and permeateth all, for He is energy and power; and it is nothing difficult, my son, to conceive God.

  21. But if thou wouldst Him also contemplate, behold the ordering of the Cosmos, and [see] the orderly behavior of its ordering this is a play on the word “cosmos”, which means “order, arrangement”; behold thou the Necessity of things made manifest, and [see] the Providence of things become and things becoming; behold how Matter is all-full of Life; [behold] this so great God in movement, with all the good and noble [ones] - gods, daimones and men!

  Tat: But these are purely energies, O father mine!

  Hermes: If, then, they’re purely energies, my son - by whom, then, are they energized except by God?

  Or art thou ignorant, that just as Heaven, Earth, Water, Air, are parts of Cosmos, in just the selfsame way God’s parts are Life and Immortality, [and] Energy, and Spirit, and Necessity, and Providence, and Nature, Soul, and Mind, and the Duration that is, Aeon or Eternity of all these that is called Good?

  And there are naught of things that have become, or are becoming, in which God is not.

  22. Tat: Is He in Matter, father, then?

  Hermes: Matter, my son, is separate from God, in order that thou may’st attribute to it the quality of space. But what thing else than mass think’st thou it is, if it’s not energized?

  Whereas if it be energized, by whom is it made so? For energies, we said, are parts of God.

  By whom are, then, all lives enlivened? By whom are things immortal made immortal? By whom changed things made changeable?

  And whether thou dost speak of Matter, of Body, or of Essence, know that these too are energies of God; and that materiality is Matter’s energy, that corporeality is Bodies’ energy, and that essentiality doth constituteth the energy of Essence; and this is God - the All.

  23. And in the All is naught that is not God. Wherefore nor i.e., neither size, nor space, nor quality, nor form, nor time, surroundeth God; for He is All, and All surroundeth all, and permeateth all.

  Unto this Reason (Logos), son, thy adoration and thy worship pay. There is one way alone to worship God; [it is] not to be bad.

  13. The Secret Sermon on the Mountain

  This dialogue is in many ways the culmination of the whole Corpus, summing up the theory of the Hermetic system at the same time as it provides an intriguing glimpse at the practice. The focus of the dialogue is the experience of Rebirth, which involves the replacement of twelve Tormentors within the self by ten divine Powers, leading to the awakening of knowledge of the self and God.

  The “Secret Hymnody” (sections 17-20) is presented as a litany for worship, to be performed twice each day, at sunrise and sunset. It’s interesting to note that while the sunrise worship is performed facing east, the sunset worship is done to the south; Egyptian tradition from Pharaonic times onward saw the west as the direction of death.

  The usual difficulties with the multiple meanings of the Greek word logos appear in the translation, compounded by Mead’s awkward style. Additionally, one of Mead’s few evasions can be found in section 12, where he relates the twelve Tormentors to the “twelve types-of-life”. This should more simply, and more accurately, have been translated as “the twelve signs of the Zodiac”. The Theosophical distaste for astrology may well have been involved here. - JMG

  1. Tat: [Now] in the General Sermons, father, thou didst speak in riddles most unclear, conversing on Divinity; and when thou saidst no man could e’er be saved before Rebirth, thy meaning thou didst hide.

  Further, when I became thy Suppliant, in Wending up the Mount, after thou hadst conversed with me, and when I longed to learn the Sermon (Logos) on Rebirth (for this beyond all other things is just the thing I know not), thou saidst, that thou wouldst give it me - “when thou shalt have become a stranger to the world”.

  Wherefore I got me ready and made the thought in me a stranger to the world-illusion.

  And now do thou fill up the things that fall short in me with what thou saidst would give me the tradition of Rebirth, setting it forth in speech or in the secret way.

  I know not, O Thrice-greatest one, from out what matter and what womb Man comes to birth, or of what seed.

  2. Hermes: Wisdom that understands in silence [such is the matter and the womb from out which Man is born], and the True Good the seed.

  Tat: Who is the sower, father? For I am altogether at a loss.

  Hermes: It is the Will of God, my son.

  Tat: And of what kind is he that is begotten, father? For I have no share of that essence in me, which doth transcend the senses. The one that is begot will be another one from God, God’s Son?

  Hermes: All in all, out of all powers composed.

  Tat: Thou tellest me a riddle, father, and dost not speak as father unto son.

  Hermes: This Race, my son, is never taught; but when He willeth it, its memory is restored by God.

  3. Tat: Thou sayest things impossible, O father, things that are forced. Hence answers would I have direct unto these things. Am I a son strange to my father’s race?

  Keep it not, father, back from me. I am a true-born son; explain to me the manner of Rebirth.

  Hermes: What may I say, my son? I can but tell thee this. Whene’er I see within myself the Simple Vision brought to birth out of God’s mercy, I have passed through myself into a Body that can never die. And now i am not as I was before; but I am born in Mind.

  The way to do this is not taught, and it cannot be seen by the compounded element by means of which thou seest.

  Yea, I have had my former composed form dismembered for me. I am no longer touched, but I have touch; I have dimension too; and [yet] am I a stranger to them now.

  Thou seest me with eyes, my son; but what I am thou dost not understand [even] with fullest strain of body and of sight.

  4. Tat: Into fierce frenzy and mind-fury hast thou plunged me, father, for now no longer do I see myself.

  Hermes: I would, my son, that thou hadst e’en passed right through thyself, as they who dream in sleep yet sleepless.

  Tat: Tell me this too! Who is the author of Rebirth?

  Hermes: The Son of God, the One Man, by God’s Will.

  5. Tat: Now hast thou brought me, father, unto pure stupefaction. Arrested from the senses which I had before,...lacuna in original text; for [now] I see thy Greatness identical with thy distinctive form.

  Hermes: Even in this thou art untrue; the mortal form doth change with every day. ‘Tis turned by time to growth and waning, as being an untrue thing.

  6. Tat: What then is true, Thrice-greatest One?

  Hermes: That which is never troubled, son, which cannot be defined; that which no color hath, nor any figure, which is not turned, which hath no garment, which giveth light; that which is comprehensible unto itself [alone], which doth not suffer change; that which no body can contain.

  Tat: In very truth I lose my reason, father. Just when I thought to be made wise by thee, I find the senses of this mind of mine blocked up.

  Hermes: Thus is it, son: That which is upward borne like fire, yet is borne down like earth
, that which is moist like water, yet blows like air, how shalt thou this perceive with sense - the that which is not solid nor yet moist, which naught can bind or loose, of which in power and energy alone can man have any notion - and even then it wants a man who can perceive the Way of Birth in God?

  7. Tat: I am incapable of this, O father, then?

  Hermes: Nay, God forbid, my son! Withdraw into thyself, and it will come; will, and it comes to pass; throw out of work the body’s senses, and thy Divinity shall come to birth; purge from thyself the brutish torments - things of matter.