The Corpus Hermeticum Read online

  And the soul’s vice is ignorance. For that the soul who hath no knowledge of the things that are, or knowledge of their nature, or of Good, is blinded by the body’s passions and tossed about.

  This wretched soul, not knowing what she is, becomes the slave of bodies of strange form in sorry plight, bearing the body as a load; not as the ruler, but the ruled. This [ignorance] is the soul’s vice.

  9. But on the other hand the virtue of the soul is Gnosis. For he who knows, he good and pious is, and still while on the earth divine.

  Tat: But who is such an one, O father mine?

  Hermes: He who doth not say much or lend his ear to much. For he who spendeth time in arguing and hearing arguments, doth shadow-fight. For “God, the Father and the Good”, is not to be obtained by speech or hearing.

  And yet though this is so, there are in all the beings senses, in that they cannot without senses be.

  But Gnosis is far different from sense. For sense is brought about by that which hath the mastery o’er us, while Gnosis is the end i.e., goal of science, and science is God’s gift.

  10. All science is incorporeal, the instrument it uses being the mind, just as the mind employs the body.

  Both then come into bodies, [I mean] both things that are cognizable by mond alone and things material. For all things must consist out of antithesis and contrariety; and this can otherwise not be.

  Tat: Who then is this material God of whom thou speakest?

  Hermes: Cosmos is beautiful, but is not good - for that it is material and freely passible; and though it is the first of all things passible, yet is it in the second rank of being and wanting in itself.

  And though it never hath itself its birth in time, but ever is, yet is its being in becoming, becoming for all time the genesis of qualities and quantities; for it is mobile and all material motion’s genesis.

  11. It is intelligible rest that moves material motion in this way, since Cosmos is a sphere - that is to say, a head. And naught of head above’s material, as naught of feet below’s intelligible, but all material.

  And head itself is moved in a sphere-like way - that is to say, as head should move, is mind.

  All then that are united to the “tissue” of this “head” (in which is soul) are in their nature free from death - just as when body hath been made in soul, are things that hath more soul than body.

  Whereas those things which are at greater distance from this “tissue” - there, where are things which have a greater share of body than of soul - are by their nature subject unto death.

  The whole, however, is a life; so that the universe consists of both the hylic and of the intelligible.

  12. Again, the Cosmos is the first of living things, while man is second after it, though first of things subject to death.

  Man hath the same ensouling power in him as all the rest of living things; yet is he not only not good, but even evil, for that he’s subject unto death.

  For though the Cosmos also is not good in that it suffers motion, it is not evil, in that it is not subject to death. But man, in that he’s subject both to motion and to death, is evil.

  13. Now then the principles of man are this-wise vehicled: mind in the reason (logos), the reason in the soul, soul in the spirit or, rather, vital spirits, and spirit in the body.

  Spirit pervading [body] by means of veins and arteries and blood, bestows upon the living creature motion, and as it were doth bear it in a way.

  For this cause some do think the soul is blood, in that they do mistake its nature, not knowing that [at death] it is iteh spirit that must first withdraw into the soul, whereon the blood congeals and veins and arteries are emptied, and then the living creature or life is withdrawn; and this is body’s death.

  14. Now from one Source all things depend; while Source [dependeth] from the One and Only [One]. Source is, moreover, moved to become Source again; whereas the One standeth perpetually and is not moved.

  Three then are they: “God, the Father and the Good”, Cosmos and man.

  God doth contain Cosmos; Cosmos [containeth] man. Cosmos is e’er God’s Son, man as it were Cosmos’ child.

  15. Not that, however, God ignoreth man; nay, right well doth He know him, and willeth to be known.

  This is the sole salvation for a man - God’s Gnosis. This is the Way Up to the Mount.

  By Him alone the soul becometh good, not whiles is good, whiles evil, but [good] out of necessity.

  Tat: What dost thou mean, Thrice-greatest one?

  Hermes: Behold an infant’s soul, my son, that is not yet cut off, because its body is still small and not as yet come unto its full bulk.

  Tat: How?

  Hermes: A thing of beauty altogether is [such a soul] to see, not yet befouled by body’s passions, still all but hanging from the Cosmic Soul!

  But when the body grows in bulk and draweth down the soul into its mass, then doth the soul cut off itself and bring upon itself forgetfulness, and no more shareth in the Beautiful and the Good. And this forgetfulness becometh vice.

  16. It is the same for them who go out from the body.

  For when the soul withdraws into itself, the spirit doth contract itself within the blood, and the soul within the spirit. And then the mind, stripped of its wrappings, and naturally divine, taking unto itself a fiery body, doth traverse every space, after abandoning the soul unto its judgement and whatever chastisement it hath deserved.

  Tat: What dost thou, father, mean by this? The mind is parted from soul and soul from spirit? Whereas thou said’st the soul was the mind’s vesture, and the soul’s the spirit.

  17. Hermes: The hearer, son, should think with him who speaks and breathe with him; nay, he should have a hearing subtler than the voice of him who speaks.

  It is, son, in a body made of earth that this arrangement of the vestures comes to pass. For in a body made of earth it is impossible the mind should take its seat itself by its own self in nakedness.

  For neither is it possible on the one hand the earthly body should contain so much immortality, nor on the other that so great a virtue should endure a body passible in such close contact with it. It taketh, then, the soul for as it were an envelope.

  And soul itself, being too and thing divine, doth use the spirit as its envelope, while spirit doth pervade the living creature.

  18. When then the mind doth free itself from the earth-body, it straightway putteth on its proper robe of fire, with which it could not dwell in an earth-body.

  For earth doth not bear fire; for it is all set in a blaze even by a small spark. And for this cause is water poured around earth, to be a guard and wall, to keep the blazing of the fire away.

  But mind, the swiftest thing of all divine outthinkings, and swifter than all elements, hath for its body fire.

  For mind being builder doth use the fire as tool for the construction of all things - the Mind of all [for the construction] of all things, but that of man only for things on earth.

  Stript of its fire the mind on earth cannot make things divine, for it is human in its dispensation.

  19. The soul in man, however - not every soul, but one that pious is - is a daimonic something and divine.

  And such a soul when from the body freed, if it have fought the fight of piety - the fight of piety is to know God and to do wrong to no man - such a soul becomes entirely mind.

  Whereas the impious soul remains in its own essence, chastised by its own self, and seeking for an earthly body where to enter, if only it be human.

  For that no other body can contain a human soul; nor is it right that any human soul should fall into the body of a thing that doth possess no reason. For that the law of God is this: to guard the human soul from such tremendous outrage.

  20. Tat: How father, then, is a man’s soul chastised?
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br />   Hermes: What greater chastisement of any human soul can there be, son, than lack of piety? What fire has so fierce a flame as lack of piety? What ravenous beast so mauls the body as lack of piety the very soul?

  Dost thou not see what hosts of ills the impious soul doth bear?

  It shrieks and screams: I burn; I am ablaze; I know not what to cry or do; ah, wretched me, I am devoured by all the ills that compass me about; alack, poor me, I neither see nor hear!

  Such are the cries wrung from a soul chastised; not, as the many think, and thou, son, dost suppose, that a [man’s] soul, passing from body, is changed into a beast.

  Such is a very grave mistake, for that the way a soul doth suffer chastisement is this:

  21. When mind becomes a daimon, the law requires that it should take a fiery body to execute the services of God; and entering in the soul most impious it scourgeth it with whips made of its sins.

  And then the impious soul, scourged with its sins, is plunged in murders, outrage, blasphemy, in violence of all kinds, and all the other things whereby mankind is wronged.

  But on the pious soul the mind doth mount and guide it to the Gnosis’ Light. And such a soul doth never tire in songs of praise [to God] and pouring blessing on all men, and doing good in word and deed to all, in imitation of its Sire.

  22. Wherefore, my son, thou shouldst give praise to God and pray that thou mayst have thy mind Good Mind. It is, then, to a better state the soul doth pass; it cannot to a worse.

  Further there is an intercourse of souls; those of the gods have intercourse with those of men, and those of men with souls of creatures which possess no reason.

  The higher, further, have in charge the lower; the gods look after men, men after animals irrational, while God hath charge of all; for He is higher than them all and all are less than He.

  Cosmos is subject, then, to God, man to the Cosmos, and irrationals to man. But God is o’er them all, and God contains them all.

  God’s rays, to use a figure, are His energies; the Cosmos’s are natures, the arts and sciences are man’s.

  The energies act through the Cosmos, thence through the nature-rays of Cosmos upon man; the nature-rays [act] through the elements, man [acteth] through the sciences and arts.

  23. This is the dispensation of the universe, depending from the nature of the One, pervading [all things] through the Mind, than which is naught diviner nor of greater energy; and naught a greater means for the at-oning men to gods and gods to men.

  He, [Mind,] is the Good Daimon. Blessed the soul that is most filled with Him, and wretched is the soul that’s empty of the Mind.

  Tat: Father, what dost thou mean, again?

  Hermes: Dost think then, son, that every soul hath the Good [Mind]? For ‘tis of Him we speak, not of the mind in service of which we were just speaking, the mind sent down for [the soul’s] chastisement.

  24. For soul without the mind “can neither speak nor act”. For oftentimes the mind doth leave the soul, and at that time the soul neither sees nor understands, but is just like a thing that hath no reason. Such is the power of mind.

  Yet doth it not endure a sluggish soul, but leaveth such a soul tied to the body and bound tight down by it. Such soul, my son, doth not have Mind; and therefore such an one should not be called a man. For that man is a thing-of-life or animal divine; man is not measured with the rest of lives of things upon the earth, but with the lives above in heaven, who are called gods.

  Nay more, if we must boldly speak the truth, the true “man” is e’en higher than the gods, or at the [very] least the gods and men are very whit in power each with the other equal.

  25. For no one of the gods in heaven shall come down to the earth, o’er-stepping heaven’s limit; whereas man doth mount up to heaven and measure it; he knows what things of it are high, what things are low, and learns precisely all things else besides. And greater thing than all; without e’en quitting earth, he doth ascend above. So vast a sweep doth he possess of ecstasy.

  For this cause can a man dare say that man on earth is god subject to death, while god in heaven is man from death immune.

  Wherefore the dispensation of all things is brought about by means of there, the twain - Cosmos and Man - but by the One.

  11. Mind Unto Hermes

  This complex text is written as a revelation from the divine Mind - the “Man-Shepherd” of CH I - to Hermes, concerning the nature of God and the universe. Difficult enough in its own right, it has been made rather more so by some of Mead’s most opaque prose. I have tried to insert clarifications where these are most needed.

  Some notes on terminology may also be useful. The term Aeon here, as in many of the so-called “Gnostic” writings, refers to the timeless and spaceless realm of ideal being. The word cosmos means both “order” and “beauty” - the same root appears in the word “cosmetic”. Additionally, the words genesis and becoming in the translation are the same word in the Greek original.

  Finally, the word “inactive” in square brackets near the beginning of section 13 is Mead’s, intended to fill a lacuna in the text. The more usual conjecture, as he comments, is “apart from God”. - JMG

  1. Mind: Master this sermon (logos), then, Thrice-greatest Hermes, and bear in mind the spoken words; and as it hath come unto Me to speak, I will no more delay.

  Hermes: As many men say many things, and these diverse, about the All and Good, I have not learned the truth. Make it, then, clear to me, O Master mine! For I can trust the explanation of these things, which comes from Thee alone.

  2. Mind: Hear [then], My son, how standeth God and All.

  God; Aeon; Cosmos; Time; Becoming.

  God maketh Aeon; Aeon, Cosmos; Cosmos, Time; and Time, Becoming or Genesis.

  The Good - the Beautiful, Wisdom, Blessedness - is the essence, as it were, of God; of Aeon, the essence is Sameness; of Cosmos, Order; of Time, Change; and of Becoming, Life and Death.

  The energies of God are Mind and Soul; of Aeon, lastingness and deathlessness; of Cosmos, restoration and the opposite thereof; of Time, increase and decrease; and of Becoming, quality.

  Aeon is, then, in God; Cosmos, in Aeon; in Cosmos; Time; in Time, Becoming.

  Aeon stands firm round God; Cosmos is moved in Aeon; Time hath its limits or is accomplished in the Cosmos; Becoming doth become in Time.

  3. The source, therfore, of all is God; their essence, Aeon; their matter, Cosmos.

  God’s power is Aeon; Aeon’s work is Cosmos - which never hath become, yet ever doth become by Aeon.

  Therefore will Cosmos never be destroyed, for Aeon’s indestructible; nor doth a whit of things in Cosmos perish, for Cosmos is enwrapped by Aeon round on every side.

  Hermes: But God’s Wisdom - what is that?

  Mind: The Good and Beautiful, and Blessedness, and Virtue’s all, and Aeon.

  Aeon, then, ordereth [Cosmos], imparting deathlessness and lastingness to matter.

  4. For its beginning doth depend on Aeon, as Aeon doth on God.

  Now Genesis or Becoming and Time, in Heaven and upon the Earth, are of two natures.

  In Heaven they are unchangeable and indestructible, but on the Earth they’re subject unto change and to destruction.

  Further, the Aeon’s soul is God; the Cosmos’ soul is Aeon; the Earth’s soul, Heaven.

  And God is in Mind; and Mind, in Soul; and Soul, in Matter; and all of them through Aeon.

  But all this Body, in which are all the bodies, is full of Soul; and Soul is full of Mind, and Mind of God.

  It i.e., Soul fills it i.e., the Body of the Cosmos from within, and from without encircles it, making the All to live.

  Without, this vast and perfect Life [encircles] Cosmos; within, it fills [it with] all lives; above, in Heaven, continuing in sameness; below, on Earth, changing becoming.r />
  5. And Aeon doth preserve this [Cosmos], or by Necessity, or by Foreknowledge, or by Nature, or by whatever else a man supposes or shall suppose. And all is this - God energizing.

  The Energy of God is Power that naught can e’er surpass, a Power with which no one can make comparison of any human thing at all, or any thing divine.

  Wherefore, O Hermes, never think that aught of things above or things below is like to God, for thou wilt fall from truth. For naught is like to That which hath no like, and is Alone and One.