trans. G. R. S. Mead
1906
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NOTE |
The Hermetic fragments are the remains of the Classical literature ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus and which descend to us in part through citations in late authors. They fall into three categories: (a) excerpts, almost entirely from the fifth century anthologies of Stobaeus, (b) citations in polemics by the Church Fathers, and (c) citations by the pagan authors. The following collection of fragments was collected by Theosophist G. R. S. Mead from earlier anthologies of Hermetic fragments and published in the third volume of his massive Thrice-Greatest Hermes (1906). This page contains all of the fragments he identified except for the Kore Kosmou and the Sermon of Isis to Horus, which are found in Stobaeus and are published in translation here.
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I. Fragments from Stobaeus
OF PIETY AND [TRUE] PHILOSOPHY
Text: Stobæus, Phys., xxxv. 1, under heading: “Of Hermes—from the [Book] to Tat”; G. pp. 273-278; M. i. 190-194; W. i. 273-278. Ménard, Livre IV., No. i. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,” pp. 225-230.)
1. Her. Both for the sake of love to man, and piety to God, I [now], my son, for the first time take pen in hand.
For there can be no piety more righteous than to know the things that are, and to give thanks for these to Him who made them,—which I will never cease to do.
2. Tat. By doing what, O father, then, if naught be true down here, may one live wisely?
Her. Be pious, son! Who pious is, doth reach the height of [all] philosophy; without philosophy the height of piety cannot be scaled.
But he who learns what are existent things, and how they have been ordered, and by whom, and for whose sake,—he will give thanks for all unto the Demiurge, as unto a good sire, a nurse [most] excellent, a steward who doth never break his trust.
3. Who giveth thanks, he will be pious; and he who pious is, will [get to] know both where is Truth, and what it is.
And as he learns, he will more and more pious grow.
For never, son, can an embodied soul that has once leaped aloft, so as to get a hold upon the truly Good and True, slip back again into the contrary.
For when the soul [once] knows the Author of its Peace, ’tis filled with wondrous love, and with forgetfulness of every ill, and can no more keep from the Good.
4. Let this be, O [my] son, the goal of piety;—to which if thou attain, thou shalt both nobly live, and happily depart from life, for that thy soul no longer will be ignorant of whither it should wing its flight again.
This is the only [Way], my son,—the Path [that leads] to Truth, [the Path] on which our forebears, too, did set their feet, and, setting them, did find the Good.
Solemn and smooth this Path, yet difficult to tread for soul while still in body.
5. For first it hath to fight against itself, and make a great dissension, and manage that the victory should rest with the one part [of its own self].
For that there is a contest of the one against the two,—the former trying to flee, the latter dragging down.
And there’s great strife and battle [dire] of these with one another,—the one desiring to escape, the others striving to detain.
6. The victory, moreover, of the one or of the others is not resemblant.
For that the one doth hasten [upwards] to the Good, the others settle [downwards] to the bad.
The one longs to be freed; the others love their slavery.
If [now] the two be vanquished, they remain deprived of their own selves and of their ruler; but if the one be worsted, ’tis harried by the two, and driven about, being tortured by the life down here.
This is, [my] son, the one who leadeth thee upon the Thither Path.
Thou must, [my] son, first leave behind thy body, before the end [of it is reached], and come out victor in the life of conflict, and thus as victor wend thy way towards home.
7. And now, [my] son, I will go through the things that are by heads; for thou wilt understand the things that will be said, if thou remember what thy ears have heard.
All things that are, are [then] in motion; alone the that which is not, is exempt from it.
Every body is in a state of change; [but] all bodies are not dissolvable; some bodies [only] are dissolvable.
Not every animal is mortal; not every animal, immortal.
That which can be dissolved, can [also] be destroyed; the permanent [is] the unchangeable; the that which doth not change, [is] the eternal.
What doth become for ever, for ever also is destroyed; what once for all becomes, is never more destroyed, nor does it [ever more] become some other thing.
8. First God; second the Cosmos; third [is] man.
The Cosmos, for man’s sake; and man, for God’s.
The soul’s irrational part is mortal; its rational part, immortal.
All essence [is] immortal; all essence, free from change.
All that exists [is] twofold; naught of existing things remains.
Not all are moved by soul; the soul moves all that doth exist.
9. All that suffereth [is] sensible; not all that’s sensible, doth suffer.
All that feels pain, doth also have experience of pleasure,—a mortal life; not all that doth experience pleasure, feeleth [also] pain,—a life immortal.
Not every body’s subject to disease; all bodies subject to disease are subject [too] to dissolution.
10. The mind’s in God; the reasoning faculty’s in man.
The reason’s in the mind; the mind’s above all suffering.
Nothing in body’s true; all in the bodiless is free from what’s untrue.
All that becomes, [is] subject unto change; not all that doth become, need be dissolved.
Naught[’s] good upon the earth; naught[’s] bad in heaven.
11. God[’s] good; [and] man [is] bad.
Good [is] free-willed; bad is against the will.
The gods do choose what things are good, as good; . . .
The good law of the mighty [One] is the good law; good law’s the law.
Time’s for the gods; the law for men.
Bad is the stuff that feeds the world; time is the thing that brings man to an end.
12. All in the heaven is free from change; all on the earth is subject unto it.
Naught in the heaven’s a slave; naught on the earth is free.
Nothing can not be known in heaven; naught can be known on earth.
The things on earth do not consort with things in heaven.
All things in heaven are free from blame; all on the earth are blameworthy.
The immortal is not mortal; the mortal, not immortal.
That which is sown, is not invariably brought forth; but that which is brought forth, must have invariably been sown.
13. [Now] for a body that can be dissolved, [there are] two “times”:—[the period] from its sowing till its birth, and from its birth until its death; but for an everlasting body, the time from birth alone.
Things subject unto dissolution wax and wane.
The matter that’s dissolved, doth undergo two contrary transformings:—death and birth; but everlasting [matter], doth change either to its own self, or into things like to itself.
The birth of man [is] the beginning of his dissolution; man’s dissolution the beginning of his birth.
That which departs, [returns; and what returns] departs [again].
14. Of things existent, some are in bodies, some in forms, and some [are] in activities.
Body[’s] in forms; and form and energy in body.
The deathless shares not in the mortal [part]; the mortal shares in the immortal.
The mortal body doth not mount into the deathless one; the deathless one descends 5 into the mortal frame.
Activities do not ascend, but they descend.
15. The things on earth bestow no benefit on things in heaven; the things in heaven shower every benefit on things on earth.
Of bodies everlasting heaven is the container; of those corruptible, the earth.
Earth [is] irrational; the heaven [is] rational.
The things in heaven [are] under it; the things on earth above the earth.
Heaven[’s] the first element; earth[’s] the last element.
Fore-knowledge [is] God’s Order; Necessity[’s] handmaiden to Fore-knowledge.
Fortune[’s] the course of the disorderly,—the image of activity, untrue opinion.
What, [then] is God? The Good that naught can change.
What, man? The bad that can be changed.
16. If thou rememberest these heads, thou wilt remember also what I have already set forth for thee with greater wealth of words. For these are summaries of those.
Avoid, however, converse with the many [on these things]; not that I would that thou shouldst keep them selfishly unto thyself, but rather that thou shouldst not seem ridiculous unto the multitude.
For that the like’s acceptable unto the like; the unlike’s never friend to the unlike.
Such words as these have very very few to give them ear; nay, probably, they will not even have the few.
They have, moreover, some [strange force] peculiar unto themselves; for they provoke the evil all the more to bad.
Wherefore thou shouldst protect the many [from themselves], for they ignore the power of what’s been said.
17. Tat. What meanest thou, O father?
Her. This, [my] son! All that in man is animal, is proner unto bad [than unto good]; nay, it doth cohabit with it, because it is in love with it.
Now if this animal should learn that Cosmos is subject to genesis, and all things come and go according to Fore-knowledgenand by Necessity, Fate ruling all,—in no long time it would grow worse than it is now, [and] thinking scorn of the whole [universe] as being subject unto genesis, and unto Fate referring [all] the causes of the bad, would never cease from every evil deed.
Wherefore, care should be taken of them, in order that being [left] in ignorance, they may become less bad through fear of the unknown.
1. Her. Both for the sake of love to man, and piety to God, I [now], my son, for the first time take pen in hand.
For there can be no piety more righteous than to know the things that are, and to give thanks for these to Him who made them,—which I will never cease to do.
2. Tat. By doing what, O father, then, if naught be true down here, may one live wisely?
Her. Be pious, son! Who pious is, doth reach the height of [all] philosophy; without philosophy the height of piety cannot be scaled.
But he who learns what are existent things, and how they have been ordered, and by whom, and for whose sake,—he will give thanks for all unto the Demiurge, as unto a good sire, a nurse [most] excellent, a steward who doth never break his trust.
3. Who giveth thanks, he will be pious; and he who pious is, will [get to] know both where is Truth, and what it is.
And as he learns, he will more and more pious grow.
For never, son, can an embodied soul that has once leaped aloft, so as to get a hold upon the truly Good and True, slip back again into the contrary.
For when the soul [once] knows the Author of its Peace, ’tis filled with wondrous love, and with forgetfulness of every ill, and can no more keep from the Good.
4. Let this be, O [my] son, the goal of piety;—to which if thou attain, thou shalt both nobly live, and happily depart from life, for that thy soul no longer will be ignorant of whither it should wing its flight again.
This is the only [Way], my son,—the Path [that leads] to Truth, [the Path] on which our forebears, too, did set their feet, and, setting them, did find the Good.
Solemn and smooth this Path, yet difficult to tread for soul while still in body.
5. For first it hath to fight against itself, and make a great dissension, and manage that the victory should rest with the one part [of its own self].
For that there is a contest of the one against the two,—the former trying to flee, the latter dragging down.
And there’s great strife and battle [dire] of these with one another,—the one desiring to escape, the others striving to detain.
6. The victory, moreover, of the one or of the others is not resemblant.
For that the one doth hasten [upwards] to the Good, the others settle [downwards] to the bad.
The one longs to be freed; the others love their slavery.
If [now] the two be vanquished, they remain deprived of their own selves and of their ruler; but if the one be worsted, ’tis harried by the two, and driven about, being tortured by the life down here.
This is, [my] son, the one who leadeth thee upon the Thither Path.
Thou must, [my] son, first leave behind thy body, before the end [of it is reached], and come out victor in the life of conflict, and thus as victor wend thy way towards home.
7. And now, [my] son, I will go through the things that are by heads; for thou wilt understand the things that will be said, if thou remember what thy ears have heard.
All things that are, are [then] in motion; alone the that which is not, is exempt from it.
Every body is in a state of change; [but] all bodies are not dissolvable; some bodies [only] are dissolvable.
Not every animal is mortal; not every animal, immortal.
That which can be dissolved, can [also] be destroyed; the permanent [is] the unchangeable; the that which doth not change, [is] the eternal.
What doth become for ever, for ever also is destroyed; what once for all becomes, is never more destroyed, nor does it [ever more] become some other thing.
8. First God; second the Cosmos; third [is] man.
The Cosmos, for man’s sake; and man, for God’s.
The soul’s irrational part is mortal; its rational part, immortal.
All essence [is] immortal; all essence, free from change.
All that exists [is] twofold; naught of existing things remains.
Not all are moved by soul; the soul moves all that doth exist.
9. All that suffereth [is] sensible; not all that’s sensible, doth suffer.
All that feels pain, doth also have experience of pleasure,—a mortal life; not all that doth experience pleasure, feeleth [also] pain,—a life immortal.
Not every body’s subject to disease; all bodies subject to disease are subject [too] to dissolution.
10. The mind’s in God; the reasoning faculty’s in man.
The reason’s in the mind; the mind’s above all suffering.
Nothing in body’s true; all in the bodiless is free from what’s untrue.
All that becomes, [is] subject unto change; not all that doth become, need be dissolved.
Naught[’s] good upon the earth; naught[’s] bad in heaven.
11. God[’s] good; [and] man [is] bad.
Good [is] free-willed; bad is against the will.
The gods do choose what things are good, as good; . . .
The good law of the mighty [One] is the good law; good law’s the law.
Time’s for the gods; the law for men.
Bad is the stuff that feeds the world; time is the thing that brings man to an end.
12. All in the heaven is free from change; all on the earth is subject unto it.
Naught in the heaven’s a slave; naught on the earth is free.
Nothing can not be known in heaven; naught can be known on earth.
The things on earth do not consort with things in heaven.
All things in heaven are free from blame; all on the earth are blameworthy.
The immortal is not mortal; the mortal, not immortal.
That which is sown, is not invariably brought forth; but that which is brought forth, must have invariably been sown.
13. [Now] for a body that can be dissolved, [there are] two “times”:—[the period] from its sowing till its birth, and from its birth until its death; but for an everlasting body, the time from birth alone.
Things subject unto dissolution wax and wane.
The matter that’s dissolved, doth undergo two contrary transformings:—death and birth; but everlasting [matter], doth change either to its own self, or into things like to itself.
The birth of man [is] the beginning of his dissolution; man’s dissolution the beginning of his birth.
That which departs, [returns; and what returns] departs [again].
14. Of things existent, some are in bodies, some in forms, and some [are] in activities.
Body[’s] in forms; and form and energy in body.
The deathless shares not in the mortal [part]; the mortal shares in the immortal.
The mortal body doth not mount into the deathless one; the deathless one descends 5 into the mortal frame.
Activities do not ascend, but they descend.
15. The things on earth bestow no benefit on things in heaven; the things in heaven shower every benefit on things on earth.
Of bodies everlasting heaven is the container; of those corruptible, the earth.
Earth [is] irrational; the heaven [is] rational.
The things in heaven [are] under it; the things on earth above the earth.
Heaven[’s] the first element; earth[’s] the last element.
Fore-knowledge [is] God’s Order; Necessity[’s] handmaiden to Fore-knowledge.
Fortune[’s] the course of the disorderly,—the image of activity, untrue opinion.
What, [then] is God? The Good that naught can change.
What, man? The bad that can be changed.
16. If thou rememberest these heads, thou wilt remember also what I have already set forth for thee with greater wealth of words. For these are summaries of those.
Avoid, however, converse with the many [on these things]; not that I would that thou shouldst keep them selfishly unto thyself, but rather that thou shouldst not seem ridiculous unto the multitude.
For that the like’s acceptable unto the like; the unlike’s never friend to the unlike.
Such words as these have very very few to give them ear; nay, probably, they will not even have the few.
They have, moreover, some [strange force] peculiar unto themselves; for they provoke the evil all the more to bad.
Wherefore thou shouldst protect the many [from themselves], for they ignore the power of what’s been said.
17. Tat. What meanest thou, O father?
Her. This, [my] son! All that in man is animal, is proner unto bad [than unto good]; nay, it doth cohabit with it, because it is in love with it.
Now if this animal should learn that Cosmos is subject to genesis, and all things come and go according to Fore-knowledgenand by Necessity, Fate ruling all,—in no long time it would grow worse than it is now, [and] thinking scorn of the whole [universe] as being subject unto genesis, and unto Fate referring [all] the causes of the bad, would never cease from every evil deed.
Wherefore, care should be taken of them, in order that being [left] in ignorance, they may become less bad through fear of the unknown.
OF THE INEFFABILITY OF GOD
Text: Stob., Flor., lxxx. [lxxviii.] 9, under the heading: “Of Hermes from the [Book] to Tat”; G. iii. 135; M. iii. 104, 105. Ménard, Livre IV., No. x. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,” p. 256.)
[Her.] To understand 2 God is difficult, to speak [of Him] impossible.
For that the Bodiless can never be expressed in body, the Perfect never can be comprehended by that which is imperfect, and that ’tis difficult for the Eternal to company with the ephemeral.
The one is for ever, the other doth pass; the one is in [the clarity of] Truth, the other in the shadow of appearance.
So far off from the stronger [is] the weaker, the lesser from the greater [is so far], as [is] the mortal [far] from the Divine.
It is the distance, then, between the two that dims the Vision of the Beautiful.
For ’tis with eyes that bodies can be seen, with tongue that things seen can be spoken of; but That which hath no body, that is unmanifest, and figureless, and is not made objective [to us] out of matter,—cannot be comprehended by our sense.
I have it in my mind, O Tat, I have it in my mind, that what cannot be spoken of, is God.
[Her.] To understand 2 God is difficult, to speak [of Him] impossible.
For that the Bodiless can never be expressed in body, the Perfect never can be comprehended by that which is imperfect, and that ’tis difficult for the Eternal to company with the ephemeral.
The one is for ever, the other doth pass; the one is in [the clarity of] Truth, the other in the shadow of appearance.
So far off from the stronger [is] the weaker, the lesser from the greater [is so far], as [is] the mortal [far] from the Divine.
It is the distance, then, between the two that dims the Vision of the Beautiful.
For ’tis with eyes that bodies can be seen, with tongue that things seen can be spoken of; but That which hath no body, that is unmanifest, and figureless, and is not made objective [to us] out of matter,—cannot be comprehended by our sense.
I have it in my mind, O Tat, I have it in my mind, that what cannot be spoken of, is God.
OF TRUTH
Text: Stob., Flor., xi. 23, under heading: “Of Hermes from the [Sermons] to Tat”; G, i. 307-311; M. i. 248-251; H. iii. 436-441. Ménard, Livre IV., No. ix. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,” pp. 251-255.)
1. [Her.] Concerning Truth, O Tat, it is not possible that man should dare to speak, for man’s an animal imperfect, composed out of imperfect members, his tabernacle patched together from many bodies strange [to him].
But what is possible and right, this do I say,—that Truth is [to be found] in the eternal bodies only, [those things] of which the bodies in themselves are true,—fire very fire and nothing else, earth very earth and nothing else, air very air and nothing else, and water very water and naught else.
Our frames, however, are a compound of all these. For they have [in them] fire, and they have also earth, they’ve water, too, and air; but they are neither fire, nor earth, nor water, nor air, 1 nor any [element that’s] true.
And if our composition has not had Truth for its beginning, how can it either see or speak the Truth?
Nay, it can only have a notion of it,—[and that too] if God will.
2. All things, accordingly, that are on earth, O Tat, are not the Truth; they’re copies [only] of the True.
And these are not all things, but few [of them]; the rest consist of falsity and error, Tat, and shows of seeming like unto images.
Whenever the appearance doth receive the influx from above, it turns into a copy of the Truth; without its energizing from above, it is left false.
Just as the portrait also indicates the body in the picture, but in itself is not a body, in spite of the appearance of the thing that’s seen.
’Tis seen as having eyes; but it sees naught, hears naught at all.
The picture, too, has all the other things, but they are false, tricking the sight of the beholders,—these thinking that they see what’s true, while what they see is really false.
All, then, who do not see what’s false see truth.
If, then, we thus do comprehend, or see, each one of these 1 just as it really is, we really comprehend and see.
But if [we comprehend, or see, things] contrary to that which is, we shall not comprehend, nor shall we know aught true.
3. [Tat.] There is, then, father, Truth e’en on the earth?
[Her.] Not inconsiderably, O son, art thou at fault.
Truth is in no wise, Tat, upon the earth, nor can it be.
But some men can, [I say,] have an idea of it,—should God grant them the power of godly vision.
Thus there is nothing true on earth,—[so much] I know and say. All are appearances and shows,—I know and speak true [things]. We ought not, surely, though, to call the knowing and the speaking of true things the Truth?
4. [Tat.] Why, how on earth ought we to know and speak of things being true,—yet nothing’s true on earth?
[Her.] This [much] is true,—that we do not know aught that’s true down here. How could it be, O son?
For Truth is the most perfect virtue, the very highest Good, by matter undisturbed, uncircumscribed by body,—naked, [and] evident, changeless, august, unalterable Good.
But things down here, O son, thou seest what they are,—not able to receive this Good, corruptible, [and] passible, dissolvable, changeful, and ever altering, being born from one another.
Things, then, that are not true even to their own selves, how can they [possibly] be true?
For all that alters is untrue; it does not stay in what it is, but shows itself to us by changing into one another its appearances.
5. [Tat.] And even man,—is he not true, O father?
[Her.] As man,—he is not true, O son. For that the True is that which has its composition from itself alone, and in itself stays as it is.
But man has been composed of many things, and does not stay in his own self.
He changes and he alters, from age to age, from form to form, and that too, even while he’s still in [one and] the [same] tent.
Nay, many fail to recognize their children, when a brief space of time comes in between; and so again of children with their parents.
That, then, which changes so that it’s no longer recognized,—can that be true, O Tat?
Is it not, rather, false, coming and going, in the [all] varied shows of its [continual] changes?
But do thou have it in thy mind that a true thing is that which stays and lasts for aye.
But “man” is not for ever; wherefore it is not true. “Man’s” an appearance. And appearance is extreme untruth.
6. [Tat.] But these external bodies, father, too, in that they change, are they not true?
[Her.] All that is subject unto genesis and change, is verily not true; but in as much as they are brought to being by the Forefather [of them all], they have their matter true.
But even they have something false in that they change; for naught that doth not stay with its own self is true.
[Tat.] True, father [mine]! Is one to say, then, that the Sun alone,—in that in greater measure than the rest of them he doth not change but stayeth with himself,—is Truth?
[Her.] [Nay, rather, but] because he, and he only, hath entrusted unto him the making of all things in cosmos, ruling all and making all;—to whom I reverence give, and worship pay unto his Truth, and recognise him as the Demiurge after the One and First.
[Tat.] What then, O father, should’st thou say is the first Truth?
[Her.] The One and Only, Tat,—He who is not of matter, or in body, the colourless, the figureless, the changeless [One], He who doth alter not, who ever is.
But the untrue, O son, doth perish. All things, however, on the earth that perish,—the Forethought of the True hath comprehended [them], and doth and will encompass [them].
For birth without corruption cannot be; corruption followeth on every birth, in order that it may be born again.
For that things that are born, must of necessity be born from things that are destroyed; and things that have been born, must of necessity be [once again] destroyed, in order that the genesis of things existent may not stop.
First, [then], see that thou recognize him as the Demiurge for birth-and-death of [all] existent things.
8. Things that are born out of destruction, then, must of necessity be false,—in that they are becoming now these things, now those. For ’tis impossible they should become the same.
But that which is not “same,”—how can it possibly be true?
Such things we should, then, call appearances, [my] son; for instance, if we give the man his proper designation, [we ought to designate him] a man’s appearance;—[and so] the child a child’s appearance, the youth a youth’s appearance, the man a man’s appearance, the old man an appearance of the same.
For man is not a man, nor child a child, nor youth a youth, nor grown up man a grown up man, nor aged man a [single] aged man.
But as they change they are untrue,—both pre-existent things and things existent.
But thus think of them, son,—as even these untruths being energies dependent from above from Truth itself.
And this being so, I say untruth is Truth’s in-working.
1. [Her.] Concerning Truth, O Tat, it is not possible that man should dare to speak, for man’s an animal imperfect, composed out of imperfect members, his tabernacle patched together from many bodies strange [to him].
But what is possible and right, this do I say,—that Truth is [to be found] in the eternal bodies only, [those things] of which the bodies in themselves are true,—fire very fire and nothing else, earth very earth and nothing else, air very air and nothing else, and water very water and naught else.
Our frames, however, are a compound of all these. For they have [in them] fire, and they have also earth, they’ve water, too, and air; but they are neither fire, nor earth, nor water, nor air, 1 nor any [element that’s] true.
And if our composition has not had Truth for its beginning, how can it either see or speak the Truth?
Nay, it can only have a notion of it,—[and that too] if God will.
2. All things, accordingly, that are on earth, O Tat, are not the Truth; they’re copies [only] of the True.
And these are not all things, but few [of them]; the rest consist of falsity and error, Tat, and shows of seeming like unto images.
Whenever the appearance doth receive the influx from above, it turns into a copy of the Truth; without its energizing from above, it is left false.
Just as the portrait also indicates the body in the picture, but in itself is not a body, in spite of the appearance of the thing that’s seen.
’Tis seen as having eyes; but it sees naught, hears naught at all.
The picture, too, has all the other things, but they are false, tricking the sight of the beholders,—these thinking that they see what’s true, while what they see is really false.
All, then, who do not see what’s false see truth.
If, then, we thus do comprehend, or see, each one of these 1 just as it really is, we really comprehend and see.
But if [we comprehend, or see, things] contrary to that which is, we shall not comprehend, nor shall we know aught true.
3. [Tat.] There is, then, father, Truth e’en on the earth?
[Her.] Not inconsiderably, O son, art thou at fault.
Truth is in no wise, Tat, upon the earth, nor can it be.
But some men can, [I say,] have an idea of it,—should God grant them the power of godly vision.
Thus there is nothing true on earth,—[so much] I know and say. All are appearances and shows,—I know and speak true [things]. We ought not, surely, though, to call the knowing and the speaking of true things the Truth?
4. [Tat.] Why, how on earth ought we to know and speak of things being true,—yet nothing’s true on earth?
[Her.] This [much] is true,—that we do not know aught that’s true down here. How could it be, O son?
For Truth is the most perfect virtue, the very highest Good, by matter undisturbed, uncircumscribed by body,—naked, [and] evident, changeless, august, unalterable Good.
But things down here, O son, thou seest what they are,—not able to receive this Good, corruptible, [and] passible, dissolvable, changeful, and ever altering, being born from one another.
Things, then, that are not true even to their own selves, how can they [possibly] be true?
For all that alters is untrue; it does not stay in what it is, but shows itself to us by changing into one another its appearances.
5. [Tat.] And even man,—is he not true, O father?
[Her.] As man,—he is not true, O son. For that the True is that which has its composition from itself alone, and in itself stays as it is.
But man has been composed of many things, and does not stay in his own self.
He changes and he alters, from age to age, from form to form, and that too, even while he’s still in [one and] the [same] tent.
Nay, many fail to recognize their children, when a brief space of time comes in between; and so again of children with their parents.
That, then, which changes so that it’s no longer recognized,—can that be true, O Tat?
Is it not, rather, false, coming and going, in the [all] varied shows of its [continual] changes?
But do thou have it in thy mind that a true thing is that which stays and lasts for aye.
But “man” is not for ever; wherefore it is not true. “Man’s” an appearance. And appearance is extreme untruth.
6. [Tat.] But these external bodies, father, too, in that they change, are they not true?
[Her.] All that is subject unto genesis and change, is verily not true; but in as much as they are brought to being by the Forefather [of them all], they have their matter true.
But even they have something false in that they change; for naught that doth not stay with its own self is true.
[Tat.] True, father [mine]! Is one to say, then, that the Sun alone,—in that in greater measure than the rest of them he doth not change but stayeth with himself,—is Truth?
[Her.] [Nay, rather, but] because he, and he only, hath entrusted unto him the making of all things in cosmos, ruling all and making all;—to whom I reverence give, and worship pay unto his Truth, and recognise him as the Demiurge after the One and First.
[Tat.] What then, O father, should’st thou say is the first Truth?
[Her.] The One and Only, Tat,—He who is not of matter, or in body, the colourless, the figureless, the changeless [One], He who doth alter not, who ever is.
But the untrue, O son, doth perish. All things, however, on the earth that perish,—the Forethought of the True hath comprehended [them], and doth and will encompass [them].
For birth without corruption cannot be; corruption followeth on every birth, in order that it may be born again.
For that things that are born, must of necessity be born from things that are destroyed; and things that have been born, must of necessity be [once again] destroyed, in order that the genesis of things existent may not stop.
First, [then], see that thou recognize him as the Demiurge for birth-and-death of [all] existent things.
8. Things that are born out of destruction, then, must of necessity be false,—in that they are becoming now these things, now those. For ’tis impossible they should become the same.
But that which is not “same,”—how can it possibly be true?
Such things we should, then, call appearances, [my] son; for instance, if we give the man his proper designation, [we ought to designate him] a man’s appearance;—[and so] the child a child’s appearance, the youth a youth’s appearance, the man a man’s appearance, the old man an appearance of the same.
For man is not a man, nor child a child, nor youth a youth, nor grown up man a grown up man, nor aged man a [single] aged man.
But as they change they are untrue,—both pre-existent things and things existent.
But thus think of them, son,—as even these untruths being energies dependent from above from Truth itself.
And this being so, I say untruth is Truth’s in-working.
OF GOD, NATURE AND THE GODS
Text: Stob., Phys., xxxv. 11, under the heading: “Of Hermes”; G. pp. 295, 296; M. i. 206; W. i. 293. Ménard, Livre IV., No. iv. of “Fragments Divers,” p. 274).
1. [Her.] There is, then, That which transcends being,—beyond all things existent, and all that really are.
For That-transcending-being is [that mystery] because of which exists that being-ness which is called universal, common unto intelligibles that really are, and to those beings which are thought of according to the law of sameness.
Those which are contrary to these, according to the law of otherness, are again themselves according to themselves.
And Nature is an essence which the senses can perceive, containing in itself all sensibles.
2. Between these are the intelligible and the sensible gods.
Things that pertain to the intelligence, share in [the nature of] the Gods that are intelligible only; while things pertaining to opinion, have their part with those that are the sensible.
These latter are the images of the intelligences 3; the Sun, for instance, is the image of the Demiurgic God above the Heaven.
For just as He hath made the universe, so doth Sun make the animals, and generate the plants, and regulate the breaths.
1. [Her.] There is, then, That which transcends being,—beyond all things existent, and all that really are.
For That-transcending-being is [that mystery] because of which exists that being-ness which is called universal, common unto intelligibles that really are, and to those beings which are thought of according to the law of sameness.
Those which are contrary to these, according to the law of otherness, are again themselves according to themselves.
And Nature is an essence which the senses can perceive, containing in itself all sensibles.
2. Between these are the intelligible and the sensible gods.
Things that pertain to the intelligence, share in [the nature of] the Gods that are intelligible only; while things pertaining to opinion, have their part with those that are the sensible.
These latter are the images of the intelligences 3; the Sun, for instance, is the image of the Demiurgic God above the Heaven.
For just as He hath made the universe, so doth Sun make the animals, and generate the plants, and regulate the breaths.
OF MATTER
Text: Stobæus, Phys., xi. 2, under the heading: “Of Hermes from the [Sermons] to Tat”; G. p. 121; M. i. 84, 85; W. i. 131. Ménard, Livre IV., No. viii. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his son Tat,” p. 250.)
Her. Matter both has been born, O son, and it has been [before it came into existence]; for Matter is the vase of genesis, and genesis, the mode of energy of God, who’s free from all necessity of genesis, and pre-exists.
[Matter], accordingly, by its reception of the seed of genesis, did come [herself] to birth, and [so] became subject to change, and, being shaped, took forms; for she, contriving the forms of her [own] changing, presided over her own changing self.
The unborn state of Matter, then, was formlessness; its genesis is its being brought into activity.
Her. Matter both has been born, O son, and it has been [before it came into existence]; for Matter is the vase of genesis, and genesis, the mode of energy of God, who’s free from all necessity of genesis, and pre-exists.
[Matter], accordingly, by its reception of the seed of genesis, did come [herself] to birth, and [so] became subject to change, and, being shaped, took forms; for she, contriving the forms of her [own] changing, presided over her own changing self.
The unborn state of Matter, then, was formlessness; its genesis is its being brought into activity.
OF TIME
Text: Stob., Phys., viii. 41, under heading: “Of Hermes from the [Sermons] to Tat”; G. p. 93; M. i. 64. Ménard, Livre IV., No. v. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,” p. 241.)
1. Now to find out concerning the three times; for they are neither by themselves, nor [yet] are they at-oned; and [yet] again they are at-oned, and by themselves [as well].
For should’st thou think the present is without the past, it can’t be present unless it has become already past.
For from the past the present comes, and from the present future goes.
But if we have to scrutinize more closely, thus let us argue:
2. Past time doth pass into no longer being this, and future [time] doth not exist, in its not being present; nay, present even is not present, in its continuing.
Time, then, which stands not [steady] (ἕστηκε), but which is on the turn, without a central point at which to stop,—how can it be called instant (ἐνεστώς), seeing even that it hath no power to stand (ἑστάναι)?
Again, past joining present, and present [joining] future, they [thus] are one; for they are not without them in their sameness, and their oneness, and their continuity.
Thus, [then], time’s both continuous and discontinuous, though one and the same [time].
1. Now to find out concerning the three times; for they are neither by themselves, nor [yet] are they at-oned; and [yet] again they are at-oned, and by themselves [as well].
For should’st thou think the present is without the past, it can’t be present unless it has become already past.
For from the past the present comes, and from the present future goes.
But if we have to scrutinize more closely, thus let us argue:
2. Past time doth pass into no longer being this, and future [time] doth not exist, in its not being present; nay, present even is not present, in its continuing.
Time, then, which stands not [steady] (ἕστηκε), but which is on the turn, without a central point at which to stop,—how can it be called instant (ἐνεστώς), seeing even that it hath no power to stand (ἑστάναι)?
Again, past joining present, and present [joining] future, they [thus] are one; for they are not without them in their sameness, and their oneness, and their continuity.
Thus, [then], time’s both continuous and discontinuous, though one and the same [time].
OF BODIES EVERLASTING [AND BODIES PERISHABLE]
Text: Stob., Phys., xxxv. 8, under the curious heading: “Of Hermes—From the [Sermons] to Ammon to Tat”; where “to Tat” is evidently a marginal correction for an erroneous “to Ammon.” G. pp. 292-294; M. i. 204, 205; W. i. 290-292. Ménard, Livre IV., No. iii. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,” pp. 238, 239.)
1. [Her.] The Lord and Demiurge of all eternal bodies, Tat, when He had made them once for all, made them no more, nor doth He make them [now].
Committing them unto themselves, and co-uniting them with one another, He let them go, in want of naught, as everlasting things.
If they have want of any, it will be want of one another and not of any increase to their number from without, in that they are immortal.
For that it needs must be that bodies made by Him should have their nature of this kind.
2. Our Demiurge, however, who is [himself already] in a body, hath made us,—he makes for ever, and will [ever] make, bodies corruptible and under sway of death.
For ’twere not law that he should imitate the Maker of himself,—all the more so as ’tis impossible.
For that the latter did create from the first essence which is bodiless; the former made as from the bodying brought into existence [by his Lord].
3. It follows, then, according to right reason, that while those bodies, since they are brought into existence from incorporal essence, are free from death, ours are corruptible and under sway of death,—in that our matter is composed of bodies, as may be seen from their being weak and needing much assistance.
For how would it be possible our bodies’ continuity should last, unless it had some nutriment imported [into it] from similar elements, and [so] renewed our bodies day by day?
For that we have a stream of earth, and water, fire, and air, flowing into us, which renovates our bodies, and keeps our tent 1 together.
We are too weak to bear the motions [of our frames], enduring them not even for one single day.
For know, [my] son, that if our bodies did not rest at night, we should not last a single day.
4. Wherefore, our Maker, being good, and with foreknowledge of all things, in order that the animal may last, hath given sleep, the greatest [calm 2] of the fatigue of motion, and hath appointed equal time to each, or rather more, for rest.
Ponder well, son, the mightiest energy of sleep,—the opposite to the soul’s [energy], but not inferior to it.
For that just as the soul is motion’s energy, so bodies also cannot live without [the help of] sleep.
For ’tis the relaxation and the recreation of the jointed limbs; it also operates within, converting into body the fresh supply of matter that flows in, apportioning to each its proper [kind],—the water to the blood, the earth to bones and marrow, the air to nerves and veins, the fire to sight.
Wherefore the body, too, feels keen delight in sleep, for it is sleep that brings this [feeling of] delight into activity.
1. [Her.] The Lord and Demiurge of all eternal bodies, Tat, when He had made them once for all, made them no more, nor doth He make them [now].
Committing them unto themselves, and co-uniting them with one another, He let them go, in want of naught, as everlasting things.
If they have want of any, it will be want of one another and not of any increase to their number from without, in that they are immortal.
For that it needs must be that bodies made by Him should have their nature of this kind.
2. Our Demiurge, however, who is [himself already] in a body, hath made us,—he makes for ever, and will [ever] make, bodies corruptible and under sway of death.
For ’twere not law that he should imitate the Maker of himself,—all the more so as ’tis impossible.
For that the latter did create from the first essence which is bodiless; the former made as from the bodying brought into existence [by his Lord].
3. It follows, then, according to right reason, that while those bodies, since they are brought into existence from incorporal essence, are free from death, ours are corruptible and under sway of death,—in that our matter is composed of bodies, as may be seen from their being weak and needing much assistance.
For how would it be possible our bodies’ continuity should last, unless it had some nutriment imported [into it] from similar elements, and [so] renewed our bodies day by day?
For that we have a stream of earth, and water, fire, and air, flowing into us, which renovates our bodies, and keeps our tent 1 together.
We are too weak to bear the motions [of our frames], enduring them not even for one single day.
For know, [my] son, that if our bodies did not rest at night, we should not last a single day.
4. Wherefore, our Maker, being good, and with foreknowledge of all things, in order that the animal may last, hath given sleep, the greatest [calm 2] of the fatigue of motion, and hath appointed equal time to each, or rather more, for rest.
Ponder well, son, the mightiest energy of sleep,—the opposite to the soul’s [energy], but not inferior to it.
For that just as the soul is motion’s energy, so bodies also cannot live without [the help of] sleep.
For ’tis the relaxation and the recreation of the jointed limbs; it also operates within, converting into body the fresh supply of matter that flows in, apportioning to each its proper [kind],—the water to the blood, the earth to bones and marrow, the air to nerves and veins, the fire to sight.
Wherefore the body, too, feels keen delight in sleep, for it is sleep that brings this [feeling of] delight into activity.
OF ENERGY AND FEELING
Text: Stob., Phys., xxxv. 6, under the heading: “From the [Sermons] to Tat”; G. pp. 284-291; M. i. 198-203; W. i. 284-289. Ménard, Livre IV., No. ii. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,” pp. 231-237.)
1. Tat. Rightly hast thou explained these things, O father [mine]. Now give me further teaching as to those.
For thou hast said somewhere that science and that art do constitute the rational’s energy.
But now thou say’st that the irrational lives, through deprivation of the rational, are and are called ir-rational.
According to this reasoning, [therefore], it follows of necessity that the irrational lives are without any share in science or in art, through deprivation of the rational.
2. Her. [It follows] of necessity, [my] son.
Tat. How, then, O father, do we see some of irrational [creatures] using [both] intelligence, and art?—the ants, for instance, storing their food for winter, and in like fashion, [too,] the creatures of the air building their nests, and the four-footed beasts [each] knowing their own holes.
Her. These things they do, O son, neither by science nor by art, but by [the force of] nature.
Science and art are teachable; but none of these irrationals is taught a thing.
Things done by nature are [so] done by reason of the general energy of things.
Things [done] by art and science are achieved by those who know, [and] not by all.
Things done by all are brought into activity by nature.
3. For instance, all look up [to heaven]; but all [are] not musicians, or [are] all archers, or hunters, or the rest.
But some of them have learned one thing, [others another thing], science and art being active [in them].
In the same way, if some ants only did this thing, and others not, thou would’st have rightly said they acted by [the light] of science, and stored their food by means of art.
But if they all without distinction are driven by their nature to [do] this, though [it may be] against their will,—’tis plain they do not do it or by science or by art.
4. For Tat, these energies, though [in themselves] they are incorporal, are [found] in bodies, and act through bodies.
Wherefore, O Tat, in that they are incorporal, thou sayest that they are immortal; but, in so far as without bodies they cannot manifest activity, I say that they are ever in a body.
Things once called into being for some purpose, or some cause, things that come under Providence and Fate, can never stay inactive of their proper energy.
For that which is, shall ever be; for that this [being] is [the very] body and the life of it.
5. It follows from this reason, [then,] that these are always bodies.
Wherefore I say that “bodying” itself is an eternal [exercise of] energy.
If bodies are on earth, they’re subject unto dissolution; yet must these [ever] be [on earth to serve] as places and as organs for the energies.
The energies, however, [are] immortal, and the immortal is eternally,—[that is, that] body-making, if it ever is, is energy.
6. [The energies] accompany the soul, though not appearing all at once.
Some of them energize the man the moment that he’s born, united with the soul round its irrational [parts]; whereas the purer ones, with change of age, co-operate with the soul’s rational part.
But all these energies depend on bodies. From godly bodies they descend to mortal [frames], these body-making [energies]; each one of them is [ever] active, either around the body or the soul.
Yea, they are active with the soul itself without a body. They are for ever in activity.
The soul, however, is not for ever in a mortal body, for it can be without the body; whereas the energies can never be without the bodies.
This is a sacred saying (logos), son: Body apart from soul cannot persist; its being can.
7. Tat. What dost thou mean, O father [mine]?
Her. Thus understand it, Tat! When soul leaves body, body itself remains.
But [even] the body so abandoned, as long as it remains, is in activity, being broken up and made to disappear.
For body without [the exercise of] energy could not experience these things.
This energy, accordingly, continues with the body when the soul has gone.
This, therefore, is the difference of an immortal body and a mortal one,—that the immortal doth consist of a one single matter, but this [body does] not.
The former’s active, and the latter’s passive.
For every thing that maketh active is the stronger; and [every thing] that is made active is the weaker.
The stronger, too, being in authority and free, doth lead; the [weaker] follows [as] a slave.
8. The energies, then, energize not only bodies that are ensouled, but also [bodies] unensouled,—stocks, stones, and all such things;—both making [them] to grow, and to bear fruits, and ripening [them], dissolving, melting, rotting and crumbling [them], and setting up [in them] all like activities which bodies without souls can undergo.
For energy’s the name, O son, for just the thing that’s going on,—that is becoming.
And many things needs must for ever be becoming; nay, rather, all things [must].
For never is Cosmos bereft of any of existent things, but being borne for aye in its own self, it bears existent things,—[things] that shall never cease from being destroyed again.
9. Know, then, that energy of every kind is ever free from death,—no matter what it is, or in what body.
And of the energies, some are of godly bodies, and some of those which are corruptible; some [are] general, and some special. Some [are] of genera, and some are of the parts of every genus.
The godly ones, [accordingly], are those that exercise their energies through everlasting bodies. And these are perfect [energies], in that [they energize] through perfect bodies.
But partial [energies are] those [that energize] through each one of the [single] living things.
And special [energies are those that energize] through each one of existent things.
10. This argument, accordingly, O son, deduces that all things are full of energies.
For though it needs must be that energies should be in bodies,—and there be many bodies in the Cosmos,—I say that energies are many more than bodies.
For often in one body there is [found] one, and a second and a third [activity],—not counting in the general ones that come with it.
By general ones I mean the purely corporal ones, that exercise themselves through the sensations and the motions [of the body].
For that without these energies the body [of an animal] can not persist.
11. The souls of men, however, have a second class of energies,—the special ones [that exercise themselves] through arts, and sciences, and practices, and [purposed] doings.
For that the feelings follow on the energies or rather are completions of the energies.
Know, then, O son, the difference of energy and of sensation.
[Thus] energy is sent down from above; whereas sensation, being in the body and having its existence from it, receives the energy and makes it manifest, as though it did embody it.
Wherefore I say sensations are both corporal and mortal, and last as long as doth the body [only].
Nay, rather, its sensations are born together with the body, and they die with it.
12. But the immortal bodies in themselves have no sensation,—[not even an] immortal [one], as though they were composed out of some essence of some kind.
For that sensation doth arise entirely from naught else than either from the bad or else the good that’s added to the body, or that is, on the contrary, taken [from it] again.
But with eternal bodies there is no adding to nor taking from.
Wherefore, sensation doth not occur in them.
13. Tat. Is, then, sensation felt in every body?
Her. In every body, son; and energies are active in all [bodies, too].
Tat. Even in bodies without souls, O father [mine]?
Her. Even in them, O son. There are, however, differences in the sensations.
The feelings of the rationals occur with reason; those of irrationals are simply corporal; as for the things that have no soul, they [also] have sensations, but passive ones,—experience of increase [only] and decrease.
Moreover, passion and sensation depend from one [same] head, and they are gathered up again into the same, and that, too, by the energies.
14. Of lives with souls there are two other energies which go with the sensations and the passions,—grief and joy.
And without these, an ensouled life, and most of all a rational one, could not experience sensation.
Wherefore, I say that there are forms of passions,—[and] forms that dominate the rational lives more [than the rest].
The energies, then, are the active forces [in sensations], while the sensations are the indications of the energies.
15. Further, as these are corporal, they’re set in motion by the irrational parts of [a man’s] soul; wherefore, I say that both of them are mischievous.
For that both joy, though [for the moment] it provides sensation joined with pleasure, immediately becomes a cause of many ills to him who feeleth it; while grief [itself] provides [still] greater pains and suffering.
Wherefore, they both would seem [most] mischievous.
16. Tat. Can, then, sensation be the same in soul and body, father [mine]?
Her. How dost thou mean,—sensation in the soul, [my] son?
Tat. Surely it cannot be that soul’s incorporal, and that sensation is a body, father,—sensation which is sometimes in a body and sometimes not, [just as the soul]?
Her. If we should put it in a body, son, we should [then] represent it as like the soul or [like] the energies. For that we say these are incorporals in bodies.
But [as] sensation’s neither energy nor soul, nor any other thing than body, according to what has been said above, it cannot, therefore, be incorporal.
And if it’s not incorporal, it must be body.
For of existing things some must be bodies and the rest incorporal.
1. Tat. Rightly hast thou explained these things, O father [mine]. Now give me further teaching as to those.
For thou hast said somewhere that science and that art do constitute the rational’s energy.
But now thou say’st that the irrational lives, through deprivation of the rational, are and are called ir-rational.
According to this reasoning, [therefore], it follows of necessity that the irrational lives are without any share in science or in art, through deprivation of the rational.
2. Her. [It follows] of necessity, [my] son.
Tat. How, then, O father, do we see some of irrational [creatures] using [both] intelligence, and art?—the ants, for instance, storing their food for winter, and in like fashion, [too,] the creatures of the air building their nests, and the four-footed beasts [each] knowing their own holes.
Her. These things they do, O son, neither by science nor by art, but by [the force of] nature.
Science and art are teachable; but none of these irrationals is taught a thing.
Things done by nature are [so] done by reason of the general energy of things.
Things [done] by art and science are achieved by those who know, [and] not by all.
Things done by all are brought into activity by nature.
3. For instance, all look up [to heaven]; but all [are] not musicians, or [are] all archers, or hunters, or the rest.
But some of them have learned one thing, [others another thing], science and art being active [in them].
In the same way, if some ants only did this thing, and others not, thou would’st have rightly said they acted by [the light] of science, and stored their food by means of art.
But if they all without distinction are driven by their nature to [do] this, though [it may be] against their will,—’tis plain they do not do it or by science or by art.
4. For Tat, these energies, though [in themselves] they are incorporal, are [found] in bodies, and act through bodies.
Wherefore, O Tat, in that they are incorporal, thou sayest that they are immortal; but, in so far as without bodies they cannot manifest activity, I say that they are ever in a body.
Things once called into being for some purpose, or some cause, things that come under Providence and Fate, can never stay inactive of their proper energy.
For that which is, shall ever be; for that this [being] is [the very] body and the life of it.
5. It follows from this reason, [then,] that these are always bodies.
Wherefore I say that “bodying” itself is an eternal [exercise of] energy.
If bodies are on earth, they’re subject unto dissolution; yet must these [ever] be [on earth to serve] as places and as organs for the energies.
The energies, however, [are] immortal, and the immortal is eternally,—[that is, that] body-making, if it ever is, is energy.
6. [The energies] accompany the soul, though not appearing all at once.
Some of them energize the man the moment that he’s born, united with the soul round its irrational [parts]; whereas the purer ones, with change of age, co-operate with the soul’s rational part.
But all these energies depend on bodies. From godly bodies they descend to mortal [frames], these body-making [energies]; each one of them is [ever] active, either around the body or the soul.
Yea, they are active with the soul itself without a body. They are for ever in activity.
The soul, however, is not for ever in a mortal body, for it can be without the body; whereas the energies can never be without the bodies.
This is a sacred saying (logos), son: Body apart from soul cannot persist; its being can.
7. Tat. What dost thou mean, O father [mine]?
Her. Thus understand it, Tat! When soul leaves body, body itself remains.
But [even] the body so abandoned, as long as it remains, is in activity, being broken up and made to disappear.
For body without [the exercise of] energy could not experience these things.
This energy, accordingly, continues with the body when the soul has gone.
This, therefore, is the difference of an immortal body and a mortal one,—that the immortal doth consist of a one single matter, but this [body does] not.
The former’s active, and the latter’s passive.
For every thing that maketh active is the stronger; and [every thing] that is made active is the weaker.
The stronger, too, being in authority and free, doth lead; the [weaker] follows [as] a slave.
8. The energies, then, energize not only bodies that are ensouled, but also [bodies] unensouled,—stocks, stones, and all such things;—both making [them] to grow, and to bear fruits, and ripening [them], dissolving, melting, rotting and crumbling [them], and setting up [in them] all like activities which bodies without souls can undergo.
For energy’s the name, O son, for just the thing that’s going on,—that is becoming.
And many things needs must for ever be becoming; nay, rather, all things [must].
For never is Cosmos bereft of any of existent things, but being borne for aye in its own self, it bears existent things,—[things] that shall never cease from being destroyed again.
9. Know, then, that energy of every kind is ever free from death,—no matter what it is, or in what body.
And of the energies, some are of godly bodies, and some of those which are corruptible; some [are] general, and some special. Some [are] of genera, and some are of the parts of every genus.
The godly ones, [accordingly], are those that exercise their energies through everlasting bodies. And these are perfect [energies], in that [they energize] through perfect bodies.
But partial [energies are] those [that energize] through each one of the [single] living things.
And special [energies are those that energize] through each one of existent things.
10. This argument, accordingly, O son, deduces that all things are full of energies.
For though it needs must be that energies should be in bodies,—and there be many bodies in the Cosmos,—I say that energies are many more than bodies.
For often in one body there is [found] one, and a second and a third [activity],—not counting in the general ones that come with it.
By general ones I mean the purely corporal ones, that exercise themselves through the sensations and the motions [of the body].
For that without these energies the body [of an animal] can not persist.
11. The souls of men, however, have a second class of energies,—the special ones [that exercise themselves] through arts, and sciences, and practices, and [purposed] doings.
For that the feelings follow on the energies or rather are completions of the energies.
Know, then, O son, the difference of energy and of sensation.
[Thus] energy is sent down from above; whereas sensation, being in the body and having its existence from it, receives the energy and makes it manifest, as though it did embody it.
Wherefore I say sensations are both corporal and mortal, and last as long as doth the body [only].
Nay, rather, its sensations are born together with the body, and they die with it.
12. But the immortal bodies in themselves have no sensation,—[not even an] immortal [one], as though they were composed out of some essence of some kind.
For that sensation doth arise entirely from naught else than either from the bad or else the good that’s added to the body, or that is, on the contrary, taken [from it] again.
But with eternal bodies there is no adding to nor taking from.
Wherefore, sensation doth not occur in them.
13. Tat. Is, then, sensation felt in every body?
Her. In every body, son; and energies are active in all [bodies, too].
Tat. Even in bodies without souls, O father [mine]?
Her. Even in them, O son. There are, however, differences in the sensations.
The feelings of the rationals occur with reason; those of irrationals are simply corporal; as for the things that have no soul, they [also] have sensations, but passive ones,—experience of increase [only] and decrease.
Moreover, passion and sensation depend from one [same] head, and they are gathered up again into the same, and that, too, by the energies.
14. Of lives with souls there are two other energies which go with the sensations and the passions,—grief and joy.
And without these, an ensouled life, and most of all a rational one, could not experience sensation.
Wherefore, I say that there are forms of passions,—[and] forms that dominate the rational lives more [than the rest].
The energies, then, are the active forces [in sensations], while the sensations are the indications of the energies.
15. Further, as these are corporal, they’re set in motion by the irrational parts of [a man’s] soul; wherefore, I say that both of them are mischievous.
For that both joy, though [for the moment] it provides sensation joined with pleasure, immediately becomes a cause of many ills to him who feeleth it; while grief [itself] provides [still] greater pains and suffering.
Wherefore, they both would seem [most] mischievous.
16. Tat. Can, then, sensation be the same in soul and body, father [mine]?
Her. How dost thou mean,—sensation in the soul, [my] son?
Tat. Surely it cannot be that soul’s incorporal, and that sensation is a body, father,—sensation which is sometimes in a body and sometimes not, [just as the soul]?
Her. If we should put it in a body, son, we should [then] represent it as like the soul or [like] the energies. For that we say these are incorporals in bodies.
But [as] sensation’s neither energy nor soul, nor any other thing than body, according to what has been said above, it cannot, therefore, be incorporal.
And if it’s not incorporal, it must be body.
For of existing things some must be bodies and the rest incorporal.
OF [THE DECANS AND] THE STARS
Text: Stob., Phys., xxi. 9, under the heading: “Of Hermes from the [Sermon] to Tat,” pp. 184-190; M. i. 129-133; W. i. 189-194. Ménard, Livre IV., No. vi. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,” pp. 242-247, under the sub-heading, “Of the Decans and the Stars.”)
1. Tat. Since in thy former General Sermons (Logoi), [father,] thou didst promise me an explanation of the Six-and-thirty Decans, explain, I prithee, now concerning them and their activity.
Her. There’s not the slightest wish in me not to do so, O Tat, and this should prove the most authoritative sermon (logos) and the chiefest of them all. So ponder on it well.
We have already spoken unto thee about the Circle of the Animals, or the Life-giving one, of the Five Planets, and of Sun and Moon, and of the Circle of each one of these.
2. Tat. Thou hast done so, Thrice-greatest one.
Her. Thus would I have thee understand as well about the Six-and-thirty Decans,—calling the former things to mind, in order that the sermon on the latter may also be well understood by thee.
Tat. I have recalled them, father, [to my mind].
Her. We said, [my] son, there is a Body which encompasses all things.
Conceive it, then, as being in itself a kind of figure of a sphere-like shape; so is the universe conformed.
Tat. I’ve thought of such a figure in my mind, just as thou dost describe, O father [mine].
3. Her. Beneath the Circle of this [all-embracing] frame are ranged the Six-and-thirty Decans, between this Circle of the Universe and that one of the Animals, determining the boundaries of both these Circles, and, as it were, holding that of the Animals aloft up in the air, and [so] defining it.
They share the motion of the Planetary Spheres, and [yet] have equal powers with the [main] motion of the Whole, crosswise the Seven.
They’re checked by nothing but the All-encircling Body, for this must be the final thing in the [whole grades of] motion,—itself by its own self.
But they speed on the Seven other Circles, because they move with a less rapid motion than the [Circle] of the All.
Let us, then, think of them as though of Watchers stationed round [and watching] over both the Seven themselves and o’er the Circle of the All,—or rather over all things in the World,—holding together all, and keeping the good order of all things.
4. Tat. Thus do I have it, father, in my mind, from what thou say’st.
Her. Moreover, Tat, thou should’st have in thy mind that they are also free from the necessities laid on the other Stars.
They are not checked and settled in their course, nor are they [further] hindered and made to tread in their own steps again; nor are they kept away from the Sun’s light,—[all of] which things the other Stars endure.
But free, above them all, as though they were inerrant Guards and Overseers of the whole, they night and day surround the universe.
5. Tat. Do these, then, also, further exercise an influence upon us?
Her. The greatest, O [my] son. For if they act in them, how should they fail to act on us as well,—both on each one of us and generally?
Thus, O [my] son, of all those things that happen generally, the bringing into action is from these; as for example,—and ponder what I say,—downfalls of kingdoms, states’ rebellions, plagues [and] famines, tidal waves [and] quakings of the earth; no one of these, O son, takes place without their action.
Nay, further still, bear this in mind. If they rule over them, and we are in our turn beneath the Seven, dost thou not think that some of their activity extends to us as well,—[who are] assuredly their sons, or [come into existence] by their means?
6. Tat. What, [then,] may be the type of body that they have, O father [mine]?
Her. The many call them daimones; but they are not some special class of daimones, for they have not some other kind of bodies made of some special kind of matter, nor are they moved by means of soul, as we [are moved], but they are [simple] operations of these Six-and-thirty Gods.
Nay, further, still, have in thy mind, O Tat, their operations,—that they cast in the earth the seed of those whom [men] call Tanĕs, some playing the part of saviours, others being most destructive.
7. Further the Stars in heaven as well do in their several [courses] bear them underworkers; and they have ministers and warriors too.
And they in [everlasting] congress with them speed on their course in æther floating, fullfilling [all] its space, so that there is no space above empty of stars.
They are the cosmic engine of the universe, having their own peculiar action, which is subordinate, however, to the action of the Thirty-six,—from whom throughout [all] lands arise the deaths of [all] the other lives with souls, and hosts of [lesser] lives that spoil the fruit.
8. And under them is what is called the Bear,—just in the middle of the Circle of the Animals, composed of seven stars, and with another corresponding [Bear] above its head.
Its energy is as it were an axle’s, setting nowhere and nowhere rising, but stopping [ever] in the self-same space, and turning round the same, giving its proper motion to the Life-producing Circle, and handing over this whole universe from night to day, from day to night.
And after this there is another choir of stars, to which we have not thought it proper to give names; but they who will come after us, in imitation, will give them names themselves.
9. Again, below the Moon, are other stars, corruptible, deprived of energy, which hold together for a little while, in that they’ve been exhaled out of the earth itself into the air above the earth,—which ever are being broken up, in that they have a nature like unto [that of] useless lives on earth, which come into existence for no other purpose than to die,—such as the tribe of flies, and fleas, and worms, and other things like them.
For these are useful, Tat, neither to us nor to the world; but, on the contrary, they trouble and annoy, being nature’s by-products, which owe their birth to her extravagance.
Just in the same way, too, the stars exhaled from earth do not attain the upper space.
They cannot do so, since they are sent forth from below; and, owing to the greatness of their weight, dragged down by their own matter, they quickly are dispersed, and, breaking up, fall back again on earth, affecting nothing but the mere disturbance of the air about the earth.
10. There is another class, O Tat, that of the so-called long-haired [stars], appearing at their proper times, and after a short time, becoming once again invisible;—they neither rise nor set nor are they broken up.
These are the brilliant messengers and heralds of the general destinies of things that are to be.
They occupy the space below the Circle of the Sun.
When, then, some chance is going to happen to the world, [comets] appear, and, shining for some days, again return behind the Circle of the Sun, and stay invisible,—some showing in the east, some in the north, some in the west, and others in the south. We call them Prophets.
11. Such is the nature of the stars. The stars, however, differ from the star-groups.
The stars are they which sail in heaven; the star-groups, on the contrary, are fixed in heaven’s frame, and they are borne along together with the heaven,—Twelve out of which we call the Zōdia.
He who knows these can form some notion clearly of [what] God is; and, if one should dare say so, becoming [thus] a seer for himself, [so] contemplate Him, and, contemplating Him, be blessed.
12. Tat. Blessèd, in truth, is he, O father [mine], who contemplateth Him.
Her. But ’tis impossible, O son, that one in body should have this good chance.
Moreover, he should train his soul beforehand, here and now, that when it reacheth there, [the space] where it is possible for it to contemplate, it may not miss its way.
But men who love their bodies,—such men will never contemplate the Vision of the Beautiful and Good.
For what, O son, is that [fair] Beauty which hath no form nor any colour, nor any mass?
Tat. Can there be aught that’s beautiful apart from these?
Her. God only, O [my] son; or rather that which is still greater,—the [proper] name of God.
1. Tat. Since in thy former General Sermons (Logoi), [father,] thou didst promise me an explanation of the Six-and-thirty Decans, explain, I prithee, now concerning them and their activity.
Her. There’s not the slightest wish in me not to do so, O Tat, and this should prove the most authoritative sermon (logos) and the chiefest of them all. So ponder on it well.
We have already spoken unto thee about the Circle of the Animals, or the Life-giving one, of the Five Planets, and of Sun and Moon, and of the Circle of each one of these.
2. Tat. Thou hast done so, Thrice-greatest one.
Her. Thus would I have thee understand as well about the Six-and-thirty Decans,—calling the former things to mind, in order that the sermon on the latter may also be well understood by thee.
Tat. I have recalled them, father, [to my mind].
Her. We said, [my] son, there is a Body which encompasses all things.
Conceive it, then, as being in itself a kind of figure of a sphere-like shape; so is the universe conformed.
Tat. I’ve thought of such a figure in my mind, just as thou dost describe, O father [mine].
3. Her. Beneath the Circle of this [all-embracing] frame are ranged the Six-and-thirty Decans, between this Circle of the Universe and that one of the Animals, determining the boundaries of both these Circles, and, as it were, holding that of the Animals aloft up in the air, and [so] defining it.
They share the motion of the Planetary Spheres, and [yet] have equal powers with the [main] motion of the Whole, crosswise the Seven.
They’re checked by nothing but the All-encircling Body, for this must be the final thing in the [whole grades of] motion,—itself by its own self.
But they speed on the Seven other Circles, because they move with a less rapid motion than the [Circle] of the All.
Let us, then, think of them as though of Watchers stationed round [and watching] over both the Seven themselves and o’er the Circle of the All,—or rather over all things in the World,—holding together all, and keeping the good order of all things.
4. Tat. Thus do I have it, father, in my mind, from what thou say’st.
Her. Moreover, Tat, thou should’st have in thy mind that they are also free from the necessities laid on the other Stars.
They are not checked and settled in their course, nor are they [further] hindered and made to tread in their own steps again; nor are they kept away from the Sun’s light,—[all of] which things the other Stars endure.
But free, above them all, as though they were inerrant Guards and Overseers of the whole, they night and day surround the universe.
5. Tat. Do these, then, also, further exercise an influence upon us?
Her. The greatest, O [my] son. For if they act in them, how should they fail to act on us as well,—both on each one of us and generally?
Thus, O [my] son, of all those things that happen generally, the bringing into action is from these; as for example,—and ponder what I say,—downfalls of kingdoms, states’ rebellions, plagues [and] famines, tidal waves [and] quakings of the earth; no one of these, O son, takes place without their action.
Nay, further still, bear this in mind. If they rule over them, and we are in our turn beneath the Seven, dost thou not think that some of their activity extends to us as well,—[who are] assuredly their sons, or [come into existence] by their means?
6. Tat. What, [then,] may be the type of body that they have, O father [mine]?
Her. The many call them daimones; but they are not some special class of daimones, for they have not some other kind of bodies made of some special kind of matter, nor are they moved by means of soul, as we [are moved], but they are [simple] operations of these Six-and-thirty Gods.
Nay, further, still, have in thy mind, O Tat, their operations,—that they cast in the earth the seed of those whom [men] call Tanĕs, some playing the part of saviours, others being most destructive.
7. Further the Stars in heaven as well do in their several [courses] bear them underworkers; and they have ministers and warriors too.
And they in [everlasting] congress with them speed on their course in æther floating, fullfilling [all] its space, so that there is no space above empty of stars.
They are the cosmic engine of the universe, having their own peculiar action, which is subordinate, however, to the action of the Thirty-six,—from whom throughout [all] lands arise the deaths of [all] the other lives with souls, and hosts of [lesser] lives that spoil the fruit.
8. And under them is what is called the Bear,—just in the middle of the Circle of the Animals, composed of seven stars, and with another corresponding [Bear] above its head.
Its energy is as it were an axle’s, setting nowhere and nowhere rising, but stopping [ever] in the self-same space, and turning round the same, giving its proper motion to the Life-producing Circle, and handing over this whole universe from night to day, from day to night.
And after this there is another choir of stars, to which we have not thought it proper to give names; but they who will come after us, in imitation, will give them names themselves.
9. Again, below the Moon, are other stars, corruptible, deprived of energy, which hold together for a little while, in that they’ve been exhaled out of the earth itself into the air above the earth,—which ever are being broken up, in that they have a nature like unto [that of] useless lives on earth, which come into existence for no other purpose than to die,—such as the tribe of flies, and fleas, and worms, and other things like them.
For these are useful, Tat, neither to us nor to the world; but, on the contrary, they trouble and annoy, being nature’s by-products, which owe their birth to her extravagance.
Just in the same way, too, the stars exhaled from earth do not attain the upper space.
They cannot do so, since they are sent forth from below; and, owing to the greatness of their weight, dragged down by their own matter, they quickly are dispersed, and, breaking up, fall back again on earth, affecting nothing but the mere disturbance of the air about the earth.
10. There is another class, O Tat, that of the so-called long-haired [stars], appearing at their proper times, and after a short time, becoming once again invisible;—they neither rise nor set nor are they broken up.
These are the brilliant messengers and heralds of the general destinies of things that are to be.
They occupy the space below the Circle of the Sun.
When, then, some chance is going to happen to the world, [comets] appear, and, shining for some days, again return behind the Circle of the Sun, and stay invisible,—some showing in the east, some in the north, some in the west, and others in the south. We call them Prophets.
11. Such is the nature of the stars. The stars, however, differ from the star-groups.
The stars are they which sail in heaven; the star-groups, on the contrary, are fixed in heaven’s frame, and they are borne along together with the heaven,—Twelve out of which we call the Zōdia.
He who knows these can form some notion clearly of [what] God is; and, if one should dare say so, becoming [thus] a seer for himself, [so] contemplate Him, and, contemplating Him, be blessed.
12. Tat. Blessèd, in truth, is he, O father [mine], who contemplateth Him.
Her. But ’tis impossible, O son, that one in body should have this good chance.
Moreover, he should train his soul beforehand, here and now, that when it reacheth there, [the space] where it is possible for it to contemplate, it may not miss its way.
But men who love their bodies,—such men will never contemplate the Vision of the Beautiful and Good.
For what, O son, is that [fair] Beauty which hath no form nor any colour, nor any mass?
Tat. Can there be aught that’s beautiful apart from these?
Her. God only, O [my] son; or rather that which is still greater,—the [proper] name of God.
[CONCERNING THE RULE OF PROVIDENCE, NECESSITY AND FATE]
Text: Stob., Phys., iv. 8, under heading: “Of Hermes to his Son”; G. pp. 61, 62; M. i. 42, 43; W. i. 73, 74. Ménard, Livre IV., No. vii. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,” pp. 248, 249.)
1. [Tat.] Rightly, O father, hast thou told me all; now further, [pray,] recall unto my mind what are the things that Providence doth rule, and what the things ruled by Necessity, and in like fashion also [those] under Fate.
[Her.] I said there were in us, O Tat, three species of incorporals.
The first’s a thing the mind alone can grasp; it thus is colourless, figureless, massless, proceeding out of the First Essence in itself, sensed by the mind alone.
And there are also, [secondly,] in us, opposed to this, configurings,—of which this serves as the receptacle.
But what has once been set in motion by the Primal Essence for some [set] purpose of the Reason (Logos), and that has been conceived [by it], straightway doth change into another form of motion; this is the image of the Demiurgic Thought.
2. And there is [also] a third species of incorporals, which doth eventuate round bodies,—space, time, [and] motion, figure, surface, size, [and] species.
Of these there are two [sets of] differences.
The first [lies] in the quality pertaining specially unto themselves; the second [set is] of the body.
The special qualities are figure, colour, species, space, time, movement.
[The differences] peculiar to body are figure configured, and colour coloured; there’s also form conformed, surface and size.
The latter with the former have no part.
3. The Intelligible Essence, then, in company with God, has power o’er its own self, and [power] to keep another, in that it keeps itself, since Essence in itself is not under Necessity.
But when ’tis left by God, it takes unto itself the corporal nature; its choice of it being ruled by Providence,—that is, its choosing of the world.
All the irrational is moved to-wards some reason.
Reason [comes] under Providence; unreason [falls] under Necessity; the things that happen in the corporal [fall] under Fate.
Such is the Sermon on the rule of Providence, Necessity and Fate.
1. [Tat.] Rightly, O father, hast thou told me all; now further, [pray,] recall unto my mind what are the things that Providence doth rule, and what the things ruled by Necessity, and in like fashion also [those] under Fate.
[Her.] I said there were in us, O Tat, three species of incorporals.
The first’s a thing the mind alone can grasp; it thus is colourless, figureless, massless, proceeding out of the First Essence in itself, sensed by the mind alone.
And there are also, [secondly,] in us, opposed to this, configurings,—of which this serves as the receptacle.
But what has once been set in motion by the Primal Essence for some [set] purpose of the Reason (Logos), and that has been conceived [by it], straightway doth change into another form of motion; this is the image of the Demiurgic Thought.
2. And there is [also] a third species of incorporals, which doth eventuate round bodies,—space, time, [and] motion, figure, surface, size, [and] species.
Of these there are two [sets of] differences.
The first [lies] in the quality pertaining specially unto themselves; the second [set is] of the body.
The special qualities are figure, colour, species, space, time, movement.
[The differences] peculiar to body are figure configured, and colour coloured; there’s also form conformed, surface and size.
The latter with the former have no part.
3. The Intelligible Essence, then, in company with God, has power o’er its own self, and [power] to keep another, in that it keeps itself, since Essence in itself is not under Necessity.
But when ’tis left by God, it takes unto itself the corporal nature; its choice of it being ruled by Providence,—that is, its choosing of the world.
All the irrational is moved to-wards some reason.
Reason [comes] under Providence; unreason [falls] under Necessity; the things that happen in the corporal [fall] under Fate.
Such is the Sermon on the rule of Providence, Necessity and Fate.
[OF JUSTICE]
Text: Stob., Phys., iii. 52, under the vague heading: “Of Hermes”; G. p. 50; M. i. 33, 34; W. i. 62, 63. Ménard, Livre IV., No. iv. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,” p. 240.)
1. [Her.] For there hath been appointed, O [my] son, a very mighty Daimon turning in the universe’s midst, that sees all things that men do on the earth.
Just as Foreknowledge and Necessity have been set o’er the Order of the gods, in the same way is Justice set o’er men, causing the same to act on them.
For they rule o’er the order of the things existing as divine, which have no will, nor any power, to err.
For the Divine cannot be made to wander; from which the incapacity to err accrues [to it].
But Justice is appointed to correct the errors men commit on earth.
2. For, seeing that their race is under sway of death, and made out of bad matter, [it naturally errs], and failure is the natural thing, especially to those who are without the power of seeing the Divine.
’Tis over these that Justice doth have special sway. They’re subject both to Fate through the activities of birth, 2 and unto Justice through the mistakes [they make] in life.
1. [Her.] For there hath been appointed, O [my] son, a very mighty Daimon turning in the universe’s midst, that sees all things that men do on the earth.
Just as Foreknowledge and Necessity have been set o’er the Order of the gods, in the same way is Justice set o’er men, causing the same to act on them.
For they rule o’er the order of the things existing as divine, which have no will, nor any power, to err.
For the Divine cannot be made to wander; from which the incapacity to err accrues [to it].
But Justice is appointed to correct the errors men commit on earth.
2. For, seeing that their race is under sway of death, and made out of bad matter, [it naturally errs], and failure is the natural thing, especially to those who are without the power of seeing the Divine.
’Tis over these that Justice doth have special sway. They’re subject both to Fate through the activities of birth, 2 and unto Justice through the mistakes [they make] in life.
OF PROVIDENCE AND FATE
Text: Stob., Phys., v. 20, under heading: “Of Hermes from the [Sermons] to Ammon”; G. p. 70; M. i. 48, 49; W. i. 82. Ménard, Livre IV., No. ii. of “Fragments of the Books of Hermes to Ammon,” p. 258.)
All things are born by Nature and by Fate, and there is not a [single] space bereft of Providence.
Now Providence is the Self-perfect Reason.
And of this [Reason] there are two spontaneous powers,—Necessity and Fate.
And Fate doth minister to Providence and to Necessity; while unto Fate the Stars do minister.
For Fate no one is able to escape, nor keep himself from their shrewd scrutiny.
For that the Stars are instruments of Fate; it is at its behest that they effect all things for nature and for men.
All things are born by Nature and by Fate, and there is not a [single] space bereft of Providence.
Now Providence is the Self-perfect Reason.
And of this [Reason] there are two spontaneous powers,—Necessity and Fate.
And Fate doth minister to Providence and to Necessity; while unto Fate the Stars do minister.
For Fate no one is able to escape, nor keep himself from their shrewd scrutiny.
For that the Stars are instruments of Fate; it is at its behest that they effect all things for nature and for men.
OF THE WHOLE ECONOMY
Text: Stob., Phys., v. 16, under sub-heading: “Of the Whole Economy,” followed by: “Of Hermes from the [Sermons] to Ammon (Ἀμοῦν)”; G. p. 68; M. i. 47; W. i. 79, 80. Ménard, Livre IV., No. i. of “Fragments of the Books of Hermes to Ammon”).
Now what supporteth the whole World, is Providence; what holdeth it together and encircleth it about, is [called] Necessity; what drives all on and drives them round, is Fate, bringing Necessity to bear on them (for that its nature is the bringing into play of [this] Necessity); [it is] the cause of birth and death of life.
So, then, the Cosmos is beneath the sway of Providence (for ’tis the first to meet with it); but Providence [itself] extends itself to Heaven.
For which cause, too, the Gods revolve, and speed round [Heaven], possessed of tireless, never-ceasing motion.
But Fate [extends itself in Cosmos]; for which cause, too, Necessity [encompasses the Cosmos].
And Providence foreknows; but Fate’s the reason of the disposition of the Stars.
Such is the law that no one can escape, by which all things are ordered.
Now what supporteth the whole World, is Providence; what holdeth it together and encircleth it about, is [called] Necessity; what drives all on and drives them round, is Fate, bringing Necessity to bear on them (for that its nature is the bringing into play of [this] Necessity); [it is] the cause of birth and death of life.
So, then, the Cosmos is beneath the sway of Providence (for ’tis the first to meet with it); but Providence [itself] extends itself to Heaven.
For which cause, too, the Gods revolve, and speed round [Heaven], possessed of tireless, never-ceasing motion.
But Fate [extends itself in Cosmos]; for which cause, too, Necessity [encompasses the Cosmos].
And Providence foreknows; but Fate’s the reason of the disposition of the Stars.
Such is the law that no one can escape, by which all things are ordered.
OF SOUL [I.]
Text: Stob., Phys., xxxv. 9, under heading: “Of Hermes from the [Sermons] to Ammon”; G. pp. 282, 283; M. i. 196, 197; W. 281, 282. Ménard, Livre IV., No. iii. of “Fragments of the Books of Hermes to Ammon,” pp. 259, 260.)
1. The Soul is further [in itself] incorporal essence, and even when in body it by no means doth depart from the essentiality peculiar to itself.
Its nature is, according to its essence to be for ever moving, according to its thought [to be] self-motive [purely], not moved in something, nor towards something, nor [yet] because of something.
For it is prior [to them] in power, and prior stands not in any need of consequents.
“In something,” furthermore,—means space, and time, and nature; “towards something,”—[this] means harmony, and form, and figure; “because of something,”—[this] means body, for ’tis because of body that there is time, and space, and nature.
Now all these things are in connection with each other by means of a congenital relationship.
2. For instance, now, the body must have space, for it would be past all contriving that a body should exist without a space.
It changes, too, in nature, and ’tis impossible for change to be apart from time, and from the movement nature makes; nor is it further possible for there to be composing of a body apart from harmony.
It is because of body, then, that space exists; for that by its reception of the changes of the body, it does not let a thing that’s changing pass away.
But, changing, it doth alternate from one thing to another, and is deprived of being in a permanent condition, but not of being body.
For body, quâ body, remains body; but any special moment of its state does not remain.
The body, then, keeps changing in its states.
3. And so, space is incorporal, and time, and natural motion; but each of these has naturally its own peculiar property.
The property of space is receptivity; of time [’tis] interval and number; of nature [it is] motion; of harmony [’tis] love; of body, change.
The special nature of the Soul, however, is essential thought.
1. The Soul is further [in itself] incorporal essence, and even when in body it by no means doth depart from the essentiality peculiar to itself.
Its nature is, according to its essence to be for ever moving, according to its thought [to be] self-motive [purely], not moved in something, nor towards something, nor [yet] because of something.
For it is prior [to them] in power, and prior stands not in any need of consequents.
“In something,” furthermore,—means space, and time, and nature; “towards something,”—[this] means harmony, and form, and figure; “because of something,”—[this] means body, for ’tis because of body that there is time, and space, and nature.
Now all these things are in connection with each other by means of a congenital relationship.
2. For instance, now, the body must have space, for it would be past all contriving that a body should exist without a space.
It changes, too, in nature, and ’tis impossible for change to be apart from time, and from the movement nature makes; nor is it further possible for there to be composing of a body apart from harmony.
It is because of body, then, that space exists; for that by its reception of the changes of the body, it does not let a thing that’s changing pass away.
But, changing, it doth alternate from one thing to another, and is deprived of being in a permanent condition, but not of being body.
For body, quâ body, remains body; but any special moment of its state does not remain.
The body, then, keeps changing in its states.
3. And so, space is incorporal, and time, and natural motion; but each of these has naturally its own peculiar property.
The property of space is receptivity; of time [’tis] interval and number; of nature [it is] motion; of harmony [’tis] love; of body, change.
The special nature of the Soul, however, is essential thought.
[OF SOUL, II.]
Text: Stob., Phys., xxxv. 7, under heading: “Of Hermes from the [Sermons] to Ammon”; G. pp. 291, 292; M. i. 203, 204; W. i. 289, 290. Ménard, Livre IV., No. iv. of “Fragments of the Books of Hermes to Ammon,” pp. 261, 262.)
1. That which is moved is moved according to the operation of the motion that doth move the all.
For that the Nature of the all supplies the all with motion,—one [motion being] the [one] according to its Power, the other that according to [its] Operation.
The former doth extend itself throughout the whole of Cosmos, and holdeth it together from within; the latter doth extend itself [around it], and encompasseth it from without. And these go everywhere together through all things.
Now the [Productive] Nature of all things supplies the things produced with [power of re-] production, sowing the seeds of its own self, [and] having its becomings by means of moving matter.
2. And Matter being moved was heated and did turn to Fire and Water,—the one [being] strong and active, and the other passive.
And Fire opposed by Water was dried up by it, and did become Earth borne on Water.
And when it was excessively dried up, a vapour rose from out the three,—from Water, Earth and Fire,—and became Air.
The [Four] came into congress, [then,] according to the reason of the Harmony,—hot with cold, [and] dry with moist.
And from the union of these [four] is spirit born, and seed proportionate to the surrounding Spirit.
This [spirit] falling in the womb does not remain inactive in the seed, but being active it transforms the seed, and [this] being [thus] transformed, develops growth and size.
And as it grows in size, it draws unto itself a copy of a model, and is modelled.
3. And on the model is the form supported,—by means of which that which is represented by an image is so represented.
Now, since the spirit in the womb had not the motion that maintaineth life, but that which causeth fermentation [only], the Harmony composed the latter as the receptacle of rational life.
This [life] is indivisible and changeless; it never changes from its changelessness.
It ruleth the conception of the thing within the womb, by means of numbers, delivereth it, and bringeth it into the outer air.
The Soul dwells very near to it;—not owing to some common property, but under the constraint of Fate; for that it has no love to be with body.
Wherefore, [the Harmony] according unto Fate doth furnish to the thing that’s born [its] rational motion, and the intellectual essence of the life itself.
For that [this] doth insinuate itself into the spirit, and set it moving with the motion of the life.
1. That which is moved is moved according to the operation of the motion that doth move the all.
For that the Nature of the all supplies the all with motion,—one [motion being] the [one] according to its Power, the other that according to [its] Operation.
The former doth extend itself throughout the whole of Cosmos, and holdeth it together from within; the latter doth extend itself [around it], and encompasseth it from without. And these go everywhere together through all things.
Now the [Productive] Nature of all things supplies the things produced with [power of re-] production, sowing the seeds of its own self, [and] having its becomings by means of moving matter.
2. And Matter being moved was heated and did turn to Fire and Water,—the one [being] strong and active, and the other passive.
And Fire opposed by Water was dried up by it, and did become Earth borne on Water.
And when it was excessively dried up, a vapour rose from out the three,—from Water, Earth and Fire,—and became Air.
The [Four] came into congress, [then,] according to the reason of the Harmony,—hot with cold, [and] dry with moist.
And from the union of these [four] is spirit born, and seed proportionate to the surrounding Spirit.
This [spirit] falling in the womb does not remain inactive in the seed, but being active it transforms the seed, and [this] being [thus] transformed, develops growth and size.
And as it grows in size, it draws unto itself a copy of a model, and is modelled.
3. And on the model is the form supported,—by means of which that which is represented by an image is so represented.
Now, since the spirit in the womb had not the motion that maintaineth life, but that which causeth fermentation [only], the Harmony composed the latter as the receptacle of rational life.
This [life] is indivisible and changeless; it never changes from its changelessness.
It ruleth the conception of the thing within the womb, by means of numbers, delivereth it, and bringeth it into the outer air.
The Soul dwells very near to it;—not owing to some common property, but under the constraint of Fate; for that it has no love to be with body.
Wherefore, [the Harmony] according unto Fate doth furnish to the thing that’s born [its] rational motion, and the intellectual essence of the life itself.
For that [this] doth insinuate itself into the spirit, and set it moving with the motion of the life.
[OF SOUL, III.]
Text: Stob., Phys., xli. 3, under the simple heading: “Of Hermes”; G. pp. 323, 324; M. i. 227, 228; W. i. 320, 321. Ménard, Livre IV., No. v. of “Fragments of the Books of Hermes to Ammon,” pp. 263, 264.)
1. The Soul is, then, incorporal essence; for if it should have body, it would no longer have the power of being self-maintained.
For every body needeth being; it needeth also ordered life as well.
For that for every thing that comes to birth, change also must succeed.
For that which doth become, becomes in size; for in becoming it hath increase.
Again, for every thing that doth increase, decrease succeedeth; and on increase destruction.
For, sharing in the form of life, it lives; it shares, also, in being through the Soul.
2. But that which is the cause of being to another, is being first itself.
And by [this] “being” I now mean becoming in reason, and taking part in intellectual life.
It is the Soul that doth supply this intellectual life.
It is called living through the life, and rational through the intellect, and mortal through the body.
Soul is, accordingly, a thing incorporal, possessing [in itself] the power of freedom from all change.
For how would it be possible to talk about an intellectual living thing, if that there were no [living] essence to furnish life?
Nor, any more, would it be possible to say a rational [living] thing, were there no ratiocinative essence to furnish intellectual life.
3. It is not to all [lives] that intellect extends; [it doth depend] on the relationship of body’s composition to the Harmony.
For if the hot in the compost be in excess, he’s light and fervid; but if the cold, he’s heavy and he’s dull.
For Nature makes the composition fit the Harmony.
There are three forms of the becoming,—the hot, the cold, and medium.
It makes it fit according to the ruling Star in the star-mixture.
And Soul receiving it, as Fate decrees, supplies this work of Nature with [the proper kind of] life.
Nature, accordingly, assimilates the body’s harmony unto the mixture of the Stars, and co-unites its complex mixtures with their Harmony, so that they are in mutual sympathy.
For that the end of the Stars’ Harmony is to give birth to sympathy according to their Fate.
1. The Soul is, then, incorporal essence; for if it should have body, it would no longer have the power of being self-maintained.
For every body needeth being; it needeth also ordered life as well.
For that for every thing that comes to birth, change also must succeed.
For that which doth become, becomes in size; for in becoming it hath increase.
Again, for every thing that doth increase, decrease succeedeth; and on increase destruction.
For, sharing in the form of life, it lives; it shares, also, in being through the Soul.
2. But that which is the cause of being to another, is being first itself.
And by [this] “being” I now mean becoming in reason, and taking part in intellectual life.
It is the Soul that doth supply this intellectual life.
It is called living through the life, and rational through the intellect, and mortal through the body.
Soul is, accordingly, a thing incorporal, possessing [in itself] the power of freedom from all change.
For how would it be possible to talk about an intellectual living thing, if that there were no [living] essence to furnish life?
Nor, any more, would it be possible to say a rational [living] thing, were there no ratiocinative essence to furnish intellectual life.
3. It is not to all [lives] that intellect extends; [it doth depend] on the relationship of body’s composition to the Harmony.
For if the hot in the compost be in excess, he’s light and fervid; but if the cold, he’s heavy and he’s dull.
For Nature makes the composition fit the Harmony.
There are three forms of the becoming,—the hot, the cold, and medium.
It makes it fit according to the ruling Star in the star-mixture.
And Soul receiving it, as Fate decrees, supplies this work of Nature with [the proper kind of] life.
Nature, accordingly, assimilates the body’s harmony unto the mixture of the Stars, and co-unites its complex mixtures with their Harmony, so that they are in mutual sympathy.
For that the end of the Stars’ Harmony is to give birth to sympathy according to their Fate.
[OF SOUL, IV.] |
Text: Stob., Phys., xli. 4, under heading: “Of the Same”—that is, “Of Hermes”; G. pp. 324, 325; M. i. 228, 229; W. i. 321, 322. Ménard, Livre IV., No. vi. of “Fragments of the Book of Hermes to Ammon,” pp. 265, 266.)
1. Soul, Ammon, then, is essence containing its own end within itself; in [its] beginning taking to itself the way of life allotted it by Fate, it draws also unto itself a reason like to matter, possessing “heart” and “appetite.”
“Heart,” too, is matter; if it doth make its state accordant with the Soul’s intelligence, it, [then,] becometh courage, and is not led away by cowardice.
And “appetite” is matter, too; if it doth make its state accord with the Soul’s rational power, it [then] becometh temperance, and is not moved by pleasure, for reasoning fills up the “appetite’s” deficiency.
2. And when both [these] are harmonized, and equalized, and both are made subordinate to the Soul’s rational power, justice is born.
For that their state of equilibrium doth take away the “heart’s” excess, and equalizes the deficiency of “appetite.”
The source of these, however, is the penetrating essence of all thought, its self by its own self, [working] in its own reason that doth think round everything, with its own reason as its rule.
It is the essence that doth lead and guide as ruler; its reason is as ’twere its counsellor who thinks about all things.
3. The reason of the essence, then, is gnosis of those reasonings which furnish the irrational [part] with reasoning’s conjecturing,—a faint thing as compared with reasoning [itself], but reasoning as compared with the irrational, as echo unto voice, and moonlight to the sun.
And “heart” and “appetite” are harmonized upon a rational plan; they pull the one against the other, and [so] they learn to know in their own selves a circular intent.
1. Soul, Ammon, then, is essence containing its own end within itself; in [its] beginning taking to itself the way of life allotted it by Fate, it draws also unto itself a reason like to matter, possessing “heart” and “appetite.”
“Heart,” too, is matter; if it doth make its state accordant with the Soul’s intelligence, it, [then,] becometh courage, and is not led away by cowardice.
And “appetite” is matter, too; if it doth make its state accord with the Soul’s rational power, it [then] becometh temperance, and is not moved by pleasure, for reasoning fills up the “appetite’s” deficiency.
2. And when both [these] are harmonized, and equalized, and both are made subordinate to the Soul’s rational power, justice is born.
For that their state of equilibrium doth take away the “heart’s” excess, and equalizes the deficiency of “appetite.”
The source of these, however, is the penetrating essence of all thought, its self by its own self, [working] in its own reason that doth think round everything, with its own reason as its rule.
It is the essence that doth lead and guide as ruler; its reason is as ’twere its counsellor who thinks about all things.
3. The reason of the essence, then, is gnosis of those reasonings which furnish the irrational [part] with reasoning’s conjecturing,—a faint thing as compared with reasoning [itself], but reasoning as compared with the irrational, as echo unto voice, and moonlight to the sun.
And “heart” and “appetite” are harmonized upon a rational plan; they pull the one against the other, and [so] they learn to know in their own selves a circular intent.
[OF SOUL, V.]
Text: Stob., Phys., xli. 5, under heading: “Of the Same”—that is, “Of Hermes”; G. pp. 325-327; M. i. 229, 230; W. i. 322-324. Ménard, Livre IV., No. vii. of “Fragments of the Books of Hermes to Ammon,” pp. 267, 268.)
1. [Now], every Soul is free from death and in perpetual motion.
For in the General Sermons we have said some motions are by means of the activities, 2 others are owing to the bodies.
We say, moreover, that the Soul’s produced out of a certain essence,—not a matter,—incorporal itself, just as its essence is.
Now every thing that’s born, must of necessity be born from something.
All things, moreover, in which destruction followeth on birth, must of necessity have two kinds of motion with them:—the [motion] of the Soul, by which they’re moved; and body’s [motion], by which they wax and wane.
Moreover, also, on the former’s dissolution, the latter is dissolved.
This I define, [then,] as the motion of bodies corruptible.
2. The Soul, however, is in perpetual motion,—in that perpetually it moves itself, and makes [its] motion active [too] in other things.
And so, according to this reason, every Soul is free from death, having for motion the making active of itself.
The kinds of Souls are three:—divine, [and] human, [and] irrational.
Now the divine [is that] of its divine body, in which there is the making active of itself. For it is moved in it, and moves itself.
For when it is set free from mortal lives, it separates itself from the irrational portions of itself, departs unto the godlike body, and as ’tis in perpetual motion, is moved in its own self, with the same motion as the universe.
3. The human [kind] has also something of the godlike [body], but it has joined to it as well the [parts] irrational,—the appetite and heart.
These latter also are immortal, in that they happen also in themselves to be activities; but [they are] the activities of mortal bodies.
Wherefore, they are removed far from the godlike portion of the Soul, when it is in its godlike body; but when this enters in a mortal frame, they also cling to it, and by the presence [of these elements] it keeps on being a human Soul.
But that of the irrationals consists of heart and appetite. And for this cause these lives are also called irrational, through deprivation of the reason of the Soul.
4. You may consider, too, as a fourth [kind] that of the soulless, which from without the bodies operates in them, and sets them moving.
But this should [really] be the moving of itself within its godlike body, and the moving of these [other] things as it were by the way.
1. [Now], every Soul is free from death and in perpetual motion.
For in the General Sermons we have said some motions are by means of the activities, 2 others are owing to the bodies.
We say, moreover, that the Soul’s produced out of a certain essence,—not a matter,—incorporal itself, just as its essence is.
Now every thing that’s born, must of necessity be born from something.
All things, moreover, in which destruction followeth on birth, must of necessity have two kinds of motion with them:—the [motion] of the Soul, by which they’re moved; and body’s [motion], by which they wax and wane.
Moreover, also, on the former’s dissolution, the latter is dissolved.
This I define, [then,] as the motion of bodies corruptible.
2. The Soul, however, is in perpetual motion,—in that perpetually it moves itself, and makes [its] motion active [too] in other things.
And so, according to this reason, every Soul is free from death, having for motion the making active of itself.
The kinds of Souls are three:—divine, [and] human, [and] irrational.
Now the divine [is that] of its divine body, in which there is the making active of itself. For it is moved in it, and moves itself.
For when it is set free from mortal lives, it separates itself from the irrational portions of itself, departs unto the godlike body, and as ’tis in perpetual motion, is moved in its own self, with the same motion as the universe.
3. The human [kind] has also something of the godlike [body], but it has joined to it as well the [parts] irrational,—the appetite and heart.
These latter also are immortal, in that they happen also in themselves to be activities; but [they are] the activities of mortal bodies.
Wherefore, they are removed far from the godlike portion of the Soul, when it is in its godlike body; but when this enters in a mortal frame, they also cling to it, and by the presence [of these elements] it keeps on being a human Soul.
But that of the irrationals consists of heart and appetite. And for this cause these lives are also called irrational, through deprivation of the reason of the Soul.
4. You may consider, too, as a fourth [kind] that of the soulless, which from without the bodies operates in them, and sets them moving.
But this should [really] be the moving of itself within its godlike body, and the moving of these [other] things as it were by the way.
[OF SOUL, VI.]
Text: Stob., Phys., xli. 6, under heading: “Of the Same”—that is, “Of Hermes”; G. pp. 327, 328; M. i. 229, 230; W. i. 324, 325. Ménard, Livre IV., No. viii. of “Fragments of the Books of Hermes to Ammon,” pp. 269, 270.)
1. Soul, then, is an eternal intellectual essence, having for purpose the reason of itself; and when it thinks with [it,] it doth attract [unto itself] the Harmony’s intention.
But when it leaves behind the body Nature makes, it bideth in and by itself,—the maker of itself in the noëtic world.
It ruleth its own reason, bearing in its own thought a motion (called by the name of life) like unto [that of] that which cometh into life.
2. For that the thing peculiar to the Soul [is this],—to furnish other things with what is like its own peculiarity.
There are, accordingly, two lives, two motions:—one, that according to the essence of the Soul; the other, that according to the nature of the body.
The former [is] more general, [the latter is more partial]; the [life] that is according unto essence has no authority but its own self, the other [is] under necessity.
For every thing that’s moved, is under the necessity of that which moveth [it].
The motion that doth move, however, is in close union with the love of the noëtic essence.
For Soul must be incorporal,—essence that hath no share in any body Nature makes.
For were it corporal, it would have neither reason nor intelligence.
For every body is without intelligence; but when it doth receive of essence, it doth obtain the power of being a breathing animal.
3. The spirit [hath the power to contemplate] the body; the reason of the essence hath the power to contemplate the Beautiful.
The sensible—the spirit—is that which can discern appearances. It is distributed into the various sense-organs; a part of it becometh spirit by means of which we see, [a part] by means of which we hear, [a part] by means of which we smell, [a part] by means of which we taste, [a part] by means of which we touch.
This spirit, when it is led upwards by the understanding, discerns that which is sensible; but if ’tis not, it only maketh pictures for itself.
For it is of the body, and that, too, receptible of all [impressions].
4. The reason of the essence, on the other hand, is that which is possessed of judgment.
The knowledge of things worthy [to be known] is co-existent with the reason; [that which is coexistent] with the spirit [is] opinion.
The latter has its operation from the surrounding world; the former, from itself.
1. Soul, then, is an eternal intellectual essence, having for purpose the reason of itself; and when it thinks with [it,] it doth attract [unto itself] the Harmony’s intention.
But when it leaves behind the body Nature makes, it bideth in and by itself,—the maker of itself in the noëtic world.
It ruleth its own reason, bearing in its own thought a motion (called by the name of life) like unto [that of] that which cometh into life.
2. For that the thing peculiar to the Soul [is this],—to furnish other things with what is like its own peculiarity.
There are, accordingly, two lives, two motions:—one, that according to the essence of the Soul; the other, that according to the nature of the body.
The former [is] more general, [the latter is more partial]; the [life] that is according unto essence has no authority but its own self, the other [is] under necessity.
For every thing that’s moved, is under the necessity of that which moveth [it].
The motion that doth move, however, is in close union with the love of the noëtic essence.
For Soul must be incorporal,—essence that hath no share in any body Nature makes.
For were it corporal, it would have neither reason nor intelligence.
For every body is without intelligence; but when it doth receive of essence, it doth obtain the power of being a breathing animal.
3. The spirit [hath the power to contemplate] the body; the reason of the essence hath the power to contemplate the Beautiful.
The sensible—the spirit—is that which can discern appearances. It is distributed into the various sense-organs; a part of it becometh spirit by means of which we see, [a part] by means of which we hear, [a part] by means of which we smell, [a part] by means of which we taste, [a part] by means of which we touch.
This spirit, when it is led upwards by the understanding, discerns that which is sensible; but if ’tis not, it only maketh pictures for itself.
For it is of the body, and that, too, receptible of all [impressions].
4. The reason of the essence, on the other hand, is that which is possessed of judgment.
The knowledge of things worthy [to be known] is co-existent with the reason; [that which is coexistent] with the spirit [is] opinion.
The latter has its operation from the surrounding world; the former, from itself.
[THE POWER OF CHOICE]
Text: Stob., Ethica, vii. 31, under heading: “Of Hermes”; G. (ii.) pp. 654, 655; M. ii. 100, 101; W. ii. 160, 161. Ménard, Livre IV., No. i. of “Fragments Divers,” pp. 271, 272.)
There is, then, essence, reason, thought, perception.
Opinion and sensation move towards perception; reason directs itself towards essence; and thought sends itself forth through its own self.
And thought is interwoven with perception, and entering into one another they become one form,—which is that of the Soul [itself].
Opinion and sensation move towards the Soul’s perception; but they do not remain in the same state. Hence is there excess, and falling short, and difference with them.
When they are drawn away from the perception, they deteriorate; but when they follow it and are obedient, they share in the perceptive reason through the sciences.
2. We have the power to choose; it is within our power to choose the better, and in like way [to choose] the worse, according to our will.
And if [our] choice clings to the evil things, it doth consort with the corporeal nature; [and] for this cause Fate rules o’er him who makes this choice.
Since, then, the intellectual essence in us is absolutely free,—[namely] the reason that embraces all in thought,—and that it ever is a law unto itself and self-identical, on this account Fate does not reach it.
Thus furnishing it first from the First God, it sent forth the perceptive reason, and the whole reason which Nature hath appointed unto them that come to birth.
With these the Soul consorting, consorteth with their fates, though [in herself] she hath no part [or lot] in their fates’ nature.
(Patrizzi (p. 42) adds the following to the preceding; it is not found in Stobæus, and appears to be a scholium.)
What is necessitated by the interwoven harmony of [all] the parts, in no way differs from that which is fated.
There is, then, essence, reason, thought, perception.
Opinion and sensation move towards perception; reason directs itself towards essence; and thought sends itself forth through its own self.
And thought is interwoven with perception, and entering into one another they become one form,—which is that of the Soul [itself].
Opinion and sensation move towards the Soul’s perception; but they do not remain in the same state. Hence is there excess, and falling short, and difference with them.
When they are drawn away from the perception, they deteriorate; but when they follow it and are obedient, they share in the perceptive reason through the sciences.
2. We have the power to choose; it is within our power to choose the better, and in like way [to choose] the worse, according to our will.
And if [our] choice clings to the evil things, it doth consort with the corporeal nature; [and] for this cause Fate rules o’er him who makes this choice.
Since, then, the intellectual essence in us is absolutely free,—[namely] the reason that embraces all in thought,—and that it ever is a law unto itself and self-identical, on this account Fate does not reach it.
Thus furnishing it first from the First God, it sent forth the perceptive reason, and the whole reason which Nature hath appointed unto them that come to birth.
With these the Soul consorting, consorteth with their fates, though [in herself] she hath no part [or lot] in their fates’ nature.
(Patrizzi (p. 42) adds the following to the preceding; it is not found in Stobæus, and appears to be a scholium.)
What is necessitated by the interwoven harmony of [all] the parts, in no way differs from that which is fated.
OF ISIS TO HORUS
Text: Stob., Flor., xiii. 50, under the heading: “Of Hermes from the [Sermon] of Isis to Horus”; G. i. 328; M. i. 265; H. iii. 467. Schow gives another heading, which Gaisford (in a note) thinks is from the Vienna codex, namely: “Of Hermes from the Intercession (or Supplication,—Πρεσβείας) of Isis.” Ménard, Livre IV., No. ii. of “Fragments Divers,” p. 272.)
A refutation, when it is recognized, O greatest King, carries the man who is refuted towards the desire of things he did not know before.
A refutation, when it is recognized, O greatest King, carries the man who is refuted towards the desire of things he did not know before.
[AN APOPHTHEGM]
(Text: W., i. 34, 5.)
Hermes on being asked, What is God?—replied: The Demiurge of wholes,—the Mind most wise and everlasting.
Hermes on being asked, What is God?—replied: The Demiurge of wholes,—the Mind most wise and everlasting.
FROM “APHRODITE”
Text: Stob., Phys., xxxvi. 2, under heading: “Of Hermes from ‘Aphrodite’”; G. pp. 297, 298; M. i. 207, 208; W. i. 295, 296. Ménard, Livre IV., No. iii. of “Fragments Divers,” p. 273.)
[——] How, [then,] are offspring born like to their parents? Or how are they returned to [their own] species?
[Aphrodite.] I will set forth the reason. When generation stores up seed from the ripe blood being sweated forth, it comes to pass that somehow there’s exhaled from the whole mass 4 of limbs a certain essence, following the law of a divine activity, as though the man himself were being born; the same thing also in the woman’s case apparently takes place.
When, then, what floweth from the man hath the ascendancy, and keeps intact, the young one’s brought to light resembling its sire; contrary wise, in the same way, [resembling] its dam.
Moreover, if there should be ascendancy of any part, [then] the resemblance [of the young] will favour that [especial] part.
But sometimes also for long generations the offspring favoureth the husband’s form, because his decan has the greater influence 1 at that [particular] moment when the wife conceives.
[——] How, [then,] are offspring born like to their parents? Or how are they returned to [their own] species?
[Aphrodite.] I will set forth the reason. When generation stores up seed from the ripe blood being sweated forth, it comes to pass that somehow there’s exhaled from the whole mass 4 of limbs a certain essence, following the law of a divine activity, as though the man himself were being born; the same thing also in the woman’s case apparently takes place.
When, then, what floweth from the man hath the ascendancy, and keeps intact, the young one’s brought to light resembling its sire; contrary wise, in the same way, [resembling] its dam.
Moreover, if there should be ascendancy of any part, [then] the resemblance [of the young] will favour that [especial] part.
But sometimes also for long generations the offspring favoureth the husband’s form, because his decan has the greater influence 1 at that [particular] moment when the wife conceives.
[A HYMN OF THE GODS]
(Text: Stob., Phys., v. 14, under the simple heading: “Of Hermes”; G. p. 65 M. i. 45; W. i. 77. The same verses are read in the appendix to the Anthologia Palatina, p. 768, n. 40.)
Seven Stars far varied in their course revolved upon the [wide] Olympian plain; with them for ever will Eternity spin [fate]:—Mēnē that shines by night, [and] gloomy Kronos, [and] sweet Hēlios, and Paphiē who’s carried in the shrine, courageous Arēs, fair-wingèd Hermēs, and Zeus the primal source from whom Nature doth come.
Now they themselves have had the race of men entrusted to their care; so that in us there is a Mēnē, Zeus, an Arēs, Paphiē, a Kronos, Hēlios and Hermēs.
Wherefore we are divided up [so as] to draw from the ætherial spirit, 1 tears, laughter, anger, birth, reason, sleep, desire.
Tears are Kronos, birth Zeus, reason [is] Hermēs, courage Mars, and Mēnē sleep, in sooth, and Cytherēa desire, and Hēlios [is] laughter—for ’tis because of him that justly every mortal thinking thing doth laugh and the immortal world.
Seven Stars far varied in their course revolved upon the [wide] Olympian plain; with them for ever will Eternity spin [fate]:—Mēnē that shines by night, [and] gloomy Kronos, [and] sweet Hēlios, and Paphiē who’s carried in the shrine, courageous Arēs, fair-wingèd Hermēs, and Zeus the primal source from whom Nature doth come.
Now they themselves have had the race of men entrusted to their care; so that in us there is a Mēnē, Zeus, an Arēs, Paphiē, a Kronos, Hēlios and Hermēs.
Wherefore we are divided up [so as] to draw from the ætherial spirit, 1 tears, laughter, anger, birth, reason, sleep, desire.
Tears are Kronos, birth Zeus, reason [is] Hermēs, courage Mars, and Mēnē sleep, in sooth, and Cytherēa desire, and Hēlios [is] laughter—for ’tis because of him that justly every mortal thinking thing doth laugh and the immortal world.
II. References and Fragments in the Fathers
JUSTIN MARTYR
i. Cohortatio ad Gentiles, xxxviii.; Otto (J. C. T.), ii. 122 (2d ed., Jena, 1849).
THE MOST ANCIENT OF PHILOSOPHERS
Now if any of you should think that he has learnt the doctrine concerning God from those of the philosophers who are mentioned among you as most ancient, let him give ear to Ammon and Hermes. For Ammon in the Words (Logoi) concerning himself calls God “utterly hidden”; while Hermes clearly and plainly declares:
To understand God is difficult; to speak [of Him] impossible, even for one who can understand.
THE “WORDS OF AMMON”
This passage occurs at the very end of the treatise. Justin will have it that the most ancient of all the philosophers are on his side.
These are Ammon and Hermes. Justin, moreover, knows of certain Words (Logoi), or Sermons, or Sacred Utterances of Ammon, which must have been circulating in Greek, otherwise it is difficult to see how Justin was acquainted with them. They were evidently of an apocalyptic nature, in the form of a self-revelation of Ammon or God.
These “Words of Ammon” have clearly nothing to do with the Ammonian type of the surviving Trismegistic literature, where Ammon is a hearer and not an instructor, least of all the supreme instructor or Agathodaimon. In them we may see an intermediate stage of direct dependence of Hellenistic theological literature on Egyptian originals, for we have preserved to us certain Hymns from the El-Khargeh Oasis which bear the inscription “‘The Secret Words of Ammon’ which were found on Tables of Mulberry-wood.”
THE INEFFABILITY OF GOD
The sentence from Hermes is from a lost sermon, a fragment of which is preserved in an excerpt by Stobæus. It was probably the opening words of what Stobæus calls “The [Sermon] to Tat,” that is to say, probably one of the “Expository Sermons to Tat,” as Lactantius calls them.
The idea in the saying was a common place in Hellenistic theological thought, and need not be always directly referred to the much-quoted words of Plato: “To find the Father and the Maker of this universe is a [great] work, and finding [Him] it is impossible to tell [Him] unto all.” Indeed, it is curious to remark that Justin reproduces the text of the Hermetic writer far more faithfully than when he refers directly to the saying of Plato.
ii. I. Apologia, xxi.; Otto, i. 54.
HERMES AND ASCLEPIUS SONS OF GOD
And when we say that the Word (Logos) which is the first begetting of God, was begotten without intercourse,—Jesus Christ, our Master,—and that he was crucified, and was dead, and rose again and ascended into heaven, we bring forward no new thing beyond those among you who are called Sons of Zeus. For ye know how many Sons the writers who are held in honour among you ascribe to Zeus:—Hermes, the Word (Logos), who was the interpreter and teacher of all; and Asclepius, who was also a healer, and was smitten by the bolt [of his sire] and ascended into heaven . . . [and many others] . . .
iii. Ibid., xxii.; Otto, i. 58.
HERMES THE WORD WHO BRINGS TIDINGS FROM GOD
But as to the Son of God called Jesus,—even though he were only a man [born] in the common way, [yet] because of [his] wisdom is he worthy to be called Son of God; for all writers call God “Father of men and gods.” And if we say [further] that he was also in a special way, beyond his common birth, begotten of God [as] Word (Logos) of God, let us have this in common with you who call Hermes the Word (Logos) who brings tidings from God.
THE SONS OF GOD IN HELLENISTIC THEOLOGY
It is remarkable that Justin heads the list of Sons of God—Dionysus, Hercules, etc.—with Hermes and Asclepius. Moreover, when he returns to the subject he again refers to Hermes and to Hermes alone. This clearly shows that the most telling parallel he could bring forward was that of Hermes, who, in the Hellenistic theological world of his day, was especially thought of under the concept of the Logos.
The immediate association of the name of Asclepius with that of Hermes is also remarkable, and indicates that they were closely associated in Justin’s mind; the indication, however, is too vague to permit of any positive deduction as to an Asclepius-element in the Trismegistic literature current in Rome in Justin’s time. Justin, in any case, has apparently very little first-hand knowledge of the subject, for he introduces the purely Hellenic myth of Asclepius being struck by a thunderbolt, which, we need hardly say, is entirely foreign to the conception of the Hellenistic Asclepius, the disciple of Hermes.
AN UNVERIFIABLE QUOTATION
To these quotations Chambers (p. 139) adds the following passage from II. Apologia, vi.,—which in date may be placed some four or five years after the First.
“Now to the Father of all no name can be given; seeing that He is ingenerable; for by whatsoever name one may be called, he has as his elder the one who gives the name. But ‘Father,’ and ‘God,’ and ‘Creator,’ and ‘Lord,’ and ‘Master’ are not names, but terms of address [derived] from His blessings and His works.”
It is quite true that this passage might be taken verbally from a Hermetic tractate, but I can find no authority in the text of Justin for claiming it as a quotation. For the same idea in Hermes compare C. H., v. (vi.) 10, and Lact., D. I., i. 6.
THE MOST ANCIENT OF PHILOSOPHERS
Now if any of you should think that he has learnt the doctrine concerning God from those of the philosophers who are mentioned among you as most ancient, let him give ear to Ammon and Hermes. For Ammon in the Words (Logoi) concerning himself calls God “utterly hidden”; while Hermes clearly and plainly declares:
To understand God is difficult; to speak [of Him] impossible, even for one who can understand.
THE “WORDS OF AMMON”
This passage occurs at the very end of the treatise. Justin will have it that the most ancient of all the philosophers are on his side.
These are Ammon and Hermes. Justin, moreover, knows of certain Words (Logoi), or Sermons, or Sacred Utterances of Ammon, which must have been circulating in Greek, otherwise it is difficult to see how Justin was acquainted with them. They were evidently of an apocalyptic nature, in the form of a self-revelation of Ammon or God.
These “Words of Ammon” have clearly nothing to do with the Ammonian type of the surviving Trismegistic literature, where Ammon is a hearer and not an instructor, least of all the supreme instructor or Agathodaimon. In them we may see an intermediate stage of direct dependence of Hellenistic theological literature on Egyptian originals, for we have preserved to us certain Hymns from the El-Khargeh Oasis which bear the inscription “‘The Secret Words of Ammon’ which were found on Tables of Mulberry-wood.”
THE INEFFABILITY OF GOD
The sentence from Hermes is from a lost sermon, a fragment of which is preserved in an excerpt by Stobæus. It was probably the opening words of what Stobæus calls “The [Sermon] to Tat,” that is to say, probably one of the “Expository Sermons to Tat,” as Lactantius calls them.
The idea in the saying was a common place in Hellenistic theological thought, and need not be always directly referred to the much-quoted words of Plato: “To find the Father and the Maker of this universe is a [great] work, and finding [Him] it is impossible to tell [Him] unto all.” Indeed, it is curious to remark that Justin reproduces the text of the Hermetic writer far more faithfully than when he refers directly to the saying of Plato.
ii. I. Apologia, xxi.; Otto, i. 54.
HERMES AND ASCLEPIUS SONS OF GOD
And when we say that the Word (Logos) which is the first begetting of God, was begotten without intercourse,—Jesus Christ, our Master,—and that he was crucified, and was dead, and rose again and ascended into heaven, we bring forward no new thing beyond those among you who are called Sons of Zeus. For ye know how many Sons the writers who are held in honour among you ascribe to Zeus:—Hermes, the Word (Logos), who was the interpreter and teacher of all; and Asclepius, who was also a healer, and was smitten by the bolt [of his sire] and ascended into heaven . . . [and many others] . . .
iii. Ibid., xxii.; Otto, i. 58.
HERMES THE WORD WHO BRINGS TIDINGS FROM GOD
But as to the Son of God called Jesus,—even though he were only a man [born] in the common way, [yet] because of [his] wisdom is he worthy to be called Son of God; for all writers call God “Father of men and gods.” And if we say [further] that he was also in a special way, beyond his common birth, begotten of God [as] Word (Logos) of God, let us have this in common with you who call Hermes the Word (Logos) who brings tidings from God.
THE SONS OF GOD IN HELLENISTIC THEOLOGY
It is remarkable that Justin heads the list of Sons of God—Dionysus, Hercules, etc.—with Hermes and Asclepius. Moreover, when he returns to the subject he again refers to Hermes and to Hermes alone. This clearly shows that the most telling parallel he could bring forward was that of Hermes, who, in the Hellenistic theological world of his day, was especially thought of under the concept of the Logos.
The immediate association of the name of Asclepius with that of Hermes is also remarkable, and indicates that they were closely associated in Justin’s mind; the indication, however, is too vague to permit of any positive deduction as to an Asclepius-element in the Trismegistic literature current in Rome in Justin’s time. Justin, in any case, has apparently very little first-hand knowledge of the subject, for he introduces the purely Hellenic myth of Asclepius being struck by a thunderbolt, which, we need hardly say, is entirely foreign to the conception of the Hellenistic Asclepius, the disciple of Hermes.
AN UNVERIFIABLE QUOTATION
To these quotations Chambers (p. 139) adds the following passage from II. Apologia, vi.,—which in date may be placed some four or five years after the First.
“Now to the Father of all no name can be given; seeing that He is ingenerable; for by whatsoever name one may be called, he has as his elder the one who gives the name. But ‘Father,’ and ‘God,’ and ‘Creator,’ and ‘Lord,’ and ‘Master’ are not names, but terms of address [derived] from His blessings and His works.”
It is quite true that this passage might be taken verbally from a Hermetic tractate, but I can find no authority in the text of Justin for claiming it as a quotation. For the same idea in Hermes compare C. H., v. (vi.) 10, and Lact., D. I., i. 6.
ATHENAGORAS
Libellus pro Christianis, xxviii.; Schwartz (E.), p. 57, 24 (Leipzig, 1891).
Athenagoras was acquainted with a Greek literature circulated under the name of Hermes Trismegistus, to whom he refers as authority for his euhemeristic contention that the gods were once simply men.
Athenagoras was acquainted with a Greek literature circulated under the name of Hermes Trismegistus, to whom he refers as authority for his euhemeristic contention that the gods were once simply men.
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
. Protrepticus, ii. 29; Dindorf (G.), i. 29, (Oxford, 1869)—(24 P., 8 S.).
MANY HERMESES AND ASCLEPIUSES
(After referring to the three Zeuses, five Athenas, and numberless Apollos of complex popular tradition, Clement continues:)
________________________
But what were I to mention the many Asclepiuses, or the Hermeses that are reckoned up, or the Hephæstuses of mythology?
________________________
Clement lived in the very centre of Hellenistic theology, and his grouping together of the names of Asclepius, Hermes and Hephæstus, the demiurgic Ptah, whose tradition was incorporated into the Pœmandres doctrine, is therefore not fortuitous, but shows that these three names were closely associated in his mind, and that, therefore, he was acquainted with the Trismegistic literature. This deduction is confirmed by the following passage.
ii. Stromateis, I. xxi. 134; Dindorf, ii. 108 (399 P., 144 S.).
THE APOTHEOSIS OF HERMES AND ASCLEPIUS
Of those, too, who once lived as men among the Egyptians, but who have been made gods by human opinion, [are] Hermes of Thebes and Asclepius of Memphis.
________________________
(To this we may appropriately append what Clement has to tell us about the “Books of Hermes,” when, writing in the last quarter of the second century, he describes one of the sacred processions of the Egyptians as follows:)
iii. Ibid., VI. iv. 35; Dind., iii. 156, 157.
THE BOOKS OF HERMES
First comes the “Singer” bearing some one of the symbols of music. This [priest], they tell us, has to make himself master of two of the “Books of Hermes,” one of which contains (1) Hymns [in honour] of the Gods, and the other (2) Reflections on the Kingly Life.
After the “Singer” comes the “Time-watcher” bearing the symbols of the star-science, a dial after a hand and phœnix. He must have the division of the “Books of Hermes” which treats of the stars ever at the tip of his tongue—there being four of such books. The first of these deals with (3) the Ordering of the apparently Fixed Stars, the next [two] (4 and 5) with the conjunctions and variations of Light of the Sun and Moon, and the last (6) with the Risings [of the Stars].
Next comes the “Scribe of the Mysteries,” with wings on his head, having in either hand a book and a ruler in which is the ink and reed pen with which they write. He has to know what they call the sacred characters, and the books about (7) Cosmography, and (8) Geography, (9) the Constitution of the Sun and Moon, and (10) of the Five Planets, (11) the Survey of Egypt, and (12) the Chart of the Nile, (13) the List of the Appurtenances of the Temples and (14) of the Lands consecrated to them, (15) the Measures, and (16) Things used in the Sacred Rites.
After the above-mentioned comes the “Overseer of the Ceremonies,” bearing the cubit of justice and the libation cup [as his symbols]. He must know all the books relating to the training [of the conductors of the public cult], and those that they call the victim-sealing books. There are ten of these books which deal with the worship which they pay to the gods, and in which the Egyptian cult is contained; namely [those which treat] of (17) Sacrifice, (18) First-fruits, (19) Hymns, (20) Prayers, (21) Processions, (22) Feasts, and (23-26) the like.
After all of these comes the “Prophet” clasping to his breast the water-vase so that all can see it; and after him follow those who carry the bread that is to be distributed. The “Prophet” as chief of the temple, learns by heart the ten books which are called “hieratic”; these contain the volumes (27-36) treating of the Laws, and the Gods, and the whole Discipline of the Priests. For you must know that the “Prophet” among the Egyptians is also the supervisor of the distribution of the [temple] revenues.
Now the books which are absolutely indispensable for Hermes are forty-two in number. Six-and-thirty of them, which contain the whole wisdom-discipline of the Egyptians, are learned by heart by the [grades of priests] already mentioned. The remaining six are learned by the “Shrine-bearers”; these are medical treatises dealing with (37) the Constitution of the Body, with (38) Diseases, (39) Instruments, (40) Drugs, (41) Eyes, and finally (42) with the Maladies of Women.
THE GENERAL CATALOGUE OF THE EGYPTIAN PRIESTLY LIBRARY
This exceedingly interesting passage of Clement gives us the general catalogue of the Egyptian priestly library and the background of the Greek translations and adaptations in our Trismegistic writings.
The whole of these writings fall into this frame, and the oldest deposit or “Pœmandres” type fits in excellently with the content of the hieratic books (the titles of which Clement has unfortunately omitted), or with those that were kept secret. These hieratic books were evidently the more important and were in charge of the “Prophet,” that is to say, of those high priests of the temples who were directors of the prophetic discipline, the very subject of our “Pœmandres” treatises.
MANY HERMESES AND ASCLEPIUSES
(After referring to the three Zeuses, five Athenas, and numberless Apollos of complex popular tradition, Clement continues:)
________________________
But what were I to mention the many Asclepiuses, or the Hermeses that are reckoned up, or the Hephæstuses of mythology?
________________________
Clement lived in the very centre of Hellenistic theology, and his grouping together of the names of Asclepius, Hermes and Hephæstus, the demiurgic Ptah, whose tradition was incorporated into the Pœmandres doctrine, is therefore not fortuitous, but shows that these three names were closely associated in his mind, and that, therefore, he was acquainted with the Trismegistic literature. This deduction is confirmed by the following passage.
ii. Stromateis, I. xxi. 134; Dindorf, ii. 108 (399 P., 144 S.).
THE APOTHEOSIS OF HERMES AND ASCLEPIUS
Of those, too, who once lived as men among the Egyptians, but who have been made gods by human opinion, [are] Hermes of Thebes and Asclepius of Memphis.
________________________
(To this we may appropriately append what Clement has to tell us about the “Books of Hermes,” when, writing in the last quarter of the second century, he describes one of the sacred processions of the Egyptians as follows:)
iii. Ibid., VI. iv. 35; Dind., iii. 156, 157.
THE BOOKS OF HERMES
First comes the “Singer” bearing some one of the symbols of music. This [priest], they tell us, has to make himself master of two of the “Books of Hermes,” one of which contains (1) Hymns [in honour] of the Gods, and the other (2) Reflections on the Kingly Life.
After the “Singer” comes the “Time-watcher” bearing the symbols of the star-science, a dial after a hand and phœnix. He must have the division of the “Books of Hermes” which treats of the stars ever at the tip of his tongue—there being four of such books. The first of these deals with (3) the Ordering of the apparently Fixed Stars, the next [two] (4 and 5) with the conjunctions and variations of Light of the Sun and Moon, and the last (6) with the Risings [of the Stars].
Next comes the “Scribe of the Mysteries,” with wings on his head, having in either hand a book and a ruler in which is the ink and reed pen with which they write. He has to know what they call the sacred characters, and the books about (7) Cosmography, and (8) Geography, (9) the Constitution of the Sun and Moon, and (10) of the Five Planets, (11) the Survey of Egypt, and (12) the Chart of the Nile, (13) the List of the Appurtenances of the Temples and (14) of the Lands consecrated to them, (15) the Measures, and (16) Things used in the Sacred Rites.
After the above-mentioned comes the “Overseer of the Ceremonies,” bearing the cubit of justice and the libation cup [as his symbols]. He must know all the books relating to the training [of the conductors of the public cult], and those that they call the victim-sealing books. There are ten of these books which deal with the worship which they pay to the gods, and in which the Egyptian cult is contained; namely [those which treat] of (17) Sacrifice, (18) First-fruits, (19) Hymns, (20) Prayers, (21) Processions, (22) Feasts, and (23-26) the like.
After all of these comes the “Prophet” clasping to his breast the water-vase so that all can see it; and after him follow those who carry the bread that is to be distributed. The “Prophet” as chief of the temple, learns by heart the ten books which are called “hieratic”; these contain the volumes (27-36) treating of the Laws, and the Gods, and the whole Discipline of the Priests. For you must know that the “Prophet” among the Egyptians is also the supervisor of the distribution of the [temple] revenues.
Now the books which are absolutely indispensable for Hermes are forty-two in number. Six-and-thirty of them, which contain the whole wisdom-discipline of the Egyptians, are learned by heart by the [grades of priests] already mentioned. The remaining six are learned by the “Shrine-bearers”; these are medical treatises dealing with (37) the Constitution of the Body, with (38) Diseases, (39) Instruments, (40) Drugs, (41) Eyes, and finally (42) with the Maladies of Women.
THE GENERAL CATALOGUE OF THE EGYPTIAN PRIESTLY LIBRARY
This exceedingly interesting passage of Clement gives us the general catalogue of the Egyptian priestly library and the background of the Greek translations and adaptations in our Trismegistic writings.
The whole of these writings fall into this frame, and the oldest deposit or “Pœmandres” type fits in excellently with the content of the hieratic books (the titles of which Clement has unfortunately omitted), or with those that were kept secret. These hieratic books were evidently the more important and were in charge of the “Prophet,” that is to say, of those high priests of the temples who were directors of the prophetic discipline, the very subject of our “Pœmandres” treatises.
TERTULLIAN
i. Contra Valentinianos, xv.; Œhler (F.), ii. 402 (Leipzig, 1844).
HERMES THE MASTER OF ALL PHYSICS
(Writing sarcastically of the Gnostic Sophia-myth, Tertullian exclaims:)
Well, then, let the Pythagoreans learn, the Stoics know, [yea,] Plato even, whence matter—which they [sc. the Pythagoreans and the rest] would have to be ingenerable—derived its source and substance to [form] this pile of a world,—[a mystery] which not even the famous Thrice-greatest Hermes, the master of all physics, has thought out.
_____________________________________
The doctrine of Hermes, and of Hellenistic theology in general, however, is that matter comes from the One God. It is remarkable that Tertullian keeps his final taunt for that school which was evidently thought the foremost of all—that of the “famous Thrice-greatest Hermes.”
ii. De Anima, ii.; Œhler, ii. 558.
HERMES THE WRITER OF SCRIPTURE
(Inveighing against the wisdom of the philosophers, Tertullian says:)
She [philosophy] has also been under the impression that she too has drawn from what they [the philosophers] consider “sacred” scriptures; because antiquity thought that most authors were gods (deos), and not merely inspired by them (divos),—as, for instance, Egyptian Hermes, with whom especially Plato had intercourse, . . . [and others] . . . .
_____________________________________
Here again, as with Justin, Hermes heads the list; moreover, in Tertullian’s mind, Hermes belongs to antiquity, to a more ancient stratum than Pythagoras and Plato, as the context shows; Plato, of course, depends on Hermes, not Hermes on Plato; of this Tertullian has no doubt. There were also “sacred scriptures” of Hermes, and Hermes was regarded as a god.
iii. Ibid., xxviii.; Œhler, ii. 601.
HERMES THE FIRST TEACHER OF REINCARNATION
What then is the value nowadays of that ancient doctrine mentioned by Plato, about the reciprocal migration of souls; how they remove hence and go thither, and then return hither and pass through life, and then again depart from this life, made quick again from the dead? Some will have it that this is a doctrine of Pythagoras; while Albinus will have it to be a divine pronouncement, perhaps of Egyptian Hermes.
iv. Ibid., xxxiii.; Œhler, ii. 610.
HERMES ON METEMPSYCHOSIS
(Arguing ironically against the belief in metempsychosis, Tertullian writes:)
Even if they [souls] should continue [unchanged] until judgment [is pronounced upon them] . . . a point which was known to Egyptian Hermes, when he says that the soul on leaving the body is not poured back into the soul of the universe, but remains individualized:
FRAGMENT I.
That it may give account unto the Father of those things which it hath done in body.
____________________________
This exact quotation is to be found nowhere in the existing remains of the Trismegistic literature, but it has every appearance of being genuine.
Œhler (note c) refers to C. H., x. (xi.) 7, but this passage of “The Key” is only a general statement of the main idea of metempsychosis.
A more appropriate parallel is to be found in P. S. A., xxviii. 1: “When, [then,] the soul’s departure from the body shall take place,—then shall the judgment and the weighing of its merit pass into its highest daimon’s power”—a passage, however, which retains far stronger traces of the Egyptian prototype of the idea than does that quoted by Tertullian.
HERMES THE MASTER OF ALL PHYSICS
(Writing sarcastically of the Gnostic Sophia-myth, Tertullian exclaims:)
Well, then, let the Pythagoreans learn, the Stoics know, [yea,] Plato even, whence matter—which they [sc. the Pythagoreans and the rest] would have to be ingenerable—derived its source and substance to [form] this pile of a world,—[a mystery] which not even the famous Thrice-greatest Hermes, the master of all physics, has thought out.
_____________________________________
The doctrine of Hermes, and of Hellenistic theology in general, however, is that matter comes from the One God. It is remarkable that Tertullian keeps his final taunt for that school which was evidently thought the foremost of all—that of the “famous Thrice-greatest Hermes.”
ii. De Anima, ii.; Œhler, ii. 558.
HERMES THE WRITER OF SCRIPTURE
(Inveighing against the wisdom of the philosophers, Tertullian says:)
She [philosophy] has also been under the impression that she too has drawn from what they [the philosophers] consider “sacred” scriptures; because antiquity thought that most authors were gods (deos), and not merely inspired by them (divos),—as, for instance, Egyptian Hermes, with whom especially Plato had intercourse, . . . [and others] . . . .
_____________________________________
Here again, as with Justin, Hermes heads the list; moreover, in Tertullian’s mind, Hermes belongs to antiquity, to a more ancient stratum than Pythagoras and Plato, as the context shows; Plato, of course, depends on Hermes, not Hermes on Plato; of this Tertullian has no doubt. There were also “sacred scriptures” of Hermes, and Hermes was regarded as a god.
iii. Ibid., xxviii.; Œhler, ii. 601.
HERMES THE FIRST TEACHER OF REINCARNATION
What then is the value nowadays of that ancient doctrine mentioned by Plato, about the reciprocal migration of souls; how they remove hence and go thither, and then return hither and pass through life, and then again depart from this life, made quick again from the dead? Some will have it that this is a doctrine of Pythagoras; while Albinus will have it to be a divine pronouncement, perhaps of Egyptian Hermes.
iv. Ibid., xxxiii.; Œhler, ii. 610.
HERMES ON METEMPSYCHOSIS
(Arguing ironically against the belief in metempsychosis, Tertullian writes:)
Even if they [souls] should continue [unchanged] until judgment [is pronounced upon them] . . . a point which was known to Egyptian Hermes, when he says that the soul on leaving the body is not poured back into the soul of the universe, but remains individualized:
FRAGMENT I.
That it may give account unto the Father of those things which it hath done in body.
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This exact quotation is to be found nowhere in the existing remains of the Trismegistic literature, but it has every appearance of being genuine.
Œhler (note c) refers to C. H., x. (xi.) 7, but this passage of “The Key” is only a general statement of the main idea of metempsychosis.
A more appropriate parallel is to be found in P. S. A., xxviii. 1: “When, [then,] the soul’s departure from the body shall take place,—then shall the judgment and the weighing of its merit pass into its highest daimon’s power”—a passage, however, which retains far stronger traces of the Egyptian prototype of the idea than does that quoted by Tertullian.
CYPRIAN
i. De Idolorum Vanitate, vi.; Baluze, p. 220 (Paris, 1726).
GOD IS BEYOND ALL UNDERSTANDING
Thrice-Greatest Hermes speaks of the One God, and confesses Him beyond all understanding and all appraisement.
_____________________________________
This is evidently a reference to the most quoted sentence of Hermes. See Justin Martyr i. below, and other references.
Chambers (p. 140), after this notice in Cyprian, inserts a passage from Eusebius (c. 325 A.D.), which he says is “a clear quotation from the ‘Pœmandres’ of Hermes, whom, however, he [Eusebius] probably confounds with the Shepherd of Hermas.”
Eusebius (Hist. Ecc., v. 8), however, quotes Irenæus (iv. 20, 2), who quotes literally The Shepherd of Hermas (Mand., i.). Indeed, it is the most famous sentence in that early document. See the list of its quotations by the Fathers in the note to Gebhardt and Harnack’s text (Leipzig, 1897), p. 70. Such verbal exactitude is not to be found in the remaining Trismegistic literature; the idea, however, is the basis of the whole Trismegistic theology.
GOD IS BEYOND ALL UNDERSTANDING
Thrice-Greatest Hermes speaks of the One God, and confesses Him beyond all understanding and all appraisement.
_____________________________________
This is evidently a reference to the most quoted sentence of Hermes. See Justin Martyr i. below, and other references.
Chambers (p. 140), after this notice in Cyprian, inserts a passage from Eusebius (c. 325 A.D.), which he says is “a clear quotation from the ‘Pœmandres’ of Hermes, whom, however, he [Eusebius] probably confounds with the Shepherd of Hermas.”
Eusebius (Hist. Ecc., v. 8), however, quotes Irenæus (iv. 20, 2), who quotes literally The Shepherd of Hermas (Mand., i.). Indeed, it is the most famous sentence in that early document. See the list of its quotations by the Fathers in the note to Gebhardt and Harnack’s text (Leipzig, 1897), p. 70. Such verbal exactitude is not to be found in the remaining Trismegistic literature; the idea, however, is the basis of the whole Trismegistic theology.
ARNOBIUS
i. Adversus Nationes, ii. 13; Hildebrand (G. F.), p. 136 (Halle, 1844).
THE SCHOOL OF HERMES
(Arnobius complains that the followers of the philosophic schools laugh at the Christians, and selects especially the adherents of a certain tradition as follows:)
You, you I single out, who belong to the school of Hermes, or of Plato and Pythagoras, and the rest of you who are of one mind and walk in union in the same paths of doctrine.
THE SCHOOL OF HERMES
(Arnobius complains that the followers of the philosophic schools laugh at the Christians, and selects especially the adherents of a certain tradition as follows:)
You, you I single out, who belong to the school of Hermes, or of Plato and Pythagoras, and the rest of you who are of one mind and walk in union in the same paths of doctrine.
LACTANTIUS
i. Divinæ Institutiones, i. 6, 1; Brandt, p. 18; Fritzsche, i. 13.
THOYTH-HERMES AND HIS BOOKS ON THE GNOSIS
Let us now pass to divine testimonies; but, first of all, I will bring into court testimony which is like divine [witness], both on account of its exceeding great age, and because he whom I shall name was carried back again from men unto the gods.
In Cicero, Caius Cotta, the Pontifex, arguing against the Stoics about faiths and the diversity of opinions which obtain concerning the gods, in order that, as was the way of the Academics, he might bring all things into doubt, declares that there were five Hermeses; and after enumerating four of them in succession, [he adds] that the fifth was he by whom Argus was slain, and for that cause he fled into Egypt, and initiated the Egyptians into laws and letters.
The Egyptians call him Thoyth, and from him the first month of their year (that is, September) has received its name. He also founded a city which even unto this day is called Hermopolis. The people of Phenëus, indeed, worship him as a god; but, although he was [really] a man, still he was of such high antiquity, and so deeply versed in every kind of science, that his knowledge of [so] many things and of the arts gained him the title of “Thrice-greatest.”
He wrote books, indeed many [of them], treating of the Gnosis of things divine, in which he asserts the greatness of the Highest and One and Only God, and calls Him by the same names as we [do]—God and Father. And [yet], so that no one should seek after His name, he has declared that He cannot be named, in that He doth not need to have a name, owing, indeed, unto the very [nature of His] unity. His words are these:
FRAGMENT II.
But God [is] one; and He who’s one needs not a name, for He [as one] is The-beyond-all-names.
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THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF THE HERMETIC TRADITION
For Lactantius, then, Hermes was very ancient; moreover, he was one who descended from heaven and had returned thither. When, however, Firmianus attempts the historical origins of the Hermetic tradition, as was invariably the case with the ancients, he can do nothing better than refer us to a complex though interesting myth, and to a legend of it devised to flatter the self-esteem of its Hellenic creators: A Greek god, whose cult, moreover, was known to be intimately connected with an ancient mystery-tradition, was the originator of the wisdom of Egypt. Of course; and so with all nations who had any ancient learning—their special tradition was oldest and best and originator of all others!
For the rest, Lactantius knows nothing historically of the tradition which he esteemed so highly, and the mention of the Latinized name Thoyth and of Hermopolis does but throw the paucity of his knowledge into deeper relief. What Lactantius does know is a large literature in Greek and its general tendency.
The sentence he quotes is not found textually in any of the extant Trismegistic literature.
ii. Ibid., i. 11, 61; Brandt, p. 47; Fritzsche, i. 29, 30.
URANUS, CRONUS AND HERMES, ADEPTS OF THE PERFECT SCIENCE
And so it appears that he [Cronus] was not born from Heaven (which is impossible), but from that man who was called Uranus; and that this is so, Trismegistus bears witness, when, in stating that there have been very few in whom the perfect science has been found, he mentioned in their number Uranus, Cronus and Hermes, his own kinsfolk.
iii. Ibid., ii. 8, 48; Brandt, p. 138; Fritzsche, i. 89.
DIVINE PROVIDENCE
For the World was made by Divine Providence, not to mention Thrice-greatest, who preaches this.
iv. Ibid., ii. 8, 68; Brandt, p. 141; Fritzsche, i. 91.
ON MORTAL AND IMMORTAL SIGHT
His [God’s] works are seen by the eyes; but how He made them, is not seen even by the mind, “in that,” as Hermes says:
FRAGMENT III.
Mortal cannot draw nigh to the Immortal, nor temporal to the Eternal, nor the corruptible to That which knoweth no corruption.
And, therefore, hath the earthly animal not yet capacity to see celestial things, in that it is kept shut within the body as in a prison house, lest with freed sense, emancipate, it should see all.
The first part of this citation (which Lactantius gives in Latin) is identical in idea with a sentence in Frag. iv.—that favourite source of quotation, which Stobæus, Ex. ii. (Flor. lxxx. [lxxviii.] 9), excerpted from “The [Sermon] to Tat.” It might, then, be thought that this was simply a paraphrase of Lactantius’, or that he was quoting from memory, and that the second sentence was not quotation but his own writing. But the second sentence is so thoroughly Trismegistic that it has every appearance of being genuine.
v. Ibid., ii. 10, 13; Brandt, p. 149; Fritzsche, i. 96.
MAN MADE AFTER THE IMAGE OF GOD
But the making of the truly living man out of clay is of God. And Hermes also hands on the tradition of this fact,—for not only has he said that man was made by God after the Image of God, but also he has attempted to explain with what skilfulness He has formed every single member in the body of man, since there is not one of them which is not admirably suited not only for what it has to do, but also adapted for beauty.
_______________________________
Man made after the Image of God is one of the fundamental doctrines of the Trismegistic tradition. For instance, P. S. A., vii. 2: “The [man] ‘essential,’ as say the Greeks, but which we call the ‘form of the Divine Similitude’”; and x. 3: “Giving the greatest thanks to God, His Image reverencing,—not ignorant that he [man] is, too, God’s image, the second [one]; for that there are two images of God—Cosmos and man.”
vi. Ibid., ii. 12, 4; Brandt, p. 156; Fritzsche, i. 100.
HERMES THE FIRST NATURAL PHILOSOPHER
Empedocles . . . [and others] . . . laid down four elements, fire, air, water, and earth,—[in this] perchance following Trismegistus, who said that our bodies were composed of these four elements by God.
“For that they have in them something of fire, something of air, something of water, and something of earth,—and yet they are not fire [in itself], nor air, nor water, nor earth.”
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All this about the elements is, of course, a commonplace of ancient physics, and we may, therefore, dismiss the naïve speculation of Lactantius, who evidently thought he had the very words of the first inventor of the theory before him; for he renders into Latin word for word the same text which Stobæus has preserved to us in an excerpt from “The [Sermons] to Tat”—Ex. iii. I.
vii. Ibid., ii. 14, 5; Brandt, p. 163; Fritzsche, i. 105.
THE DAIMON-CHIEF
Thus there are two classes of daimons,—the one celestial, and the other terrestrial. The latter are impure spirits, the authors of the evils that are done, of whom the same Diabolus is chief. Whence Trismegistus calls him the “Daimon-chief.”
viii. Ibid., ii. 15, 6; Brandt, p. 166; Fritzsche, i. 106.
DEVOTION IS GOD-GNOSIS
In fine, Hermes asserts that those who have known God, not only are safe from the attacks of evil daimons, but also that they are not held even by Fate. He says:
FRAGMENT IV.
The one means of protection is piety. For neither doth an evil daimon nor doth Fate rule o’er the pious man. For God doth save the pious [man] from every ill. The one and only good found in mankind is piety.
And what piety means, he witnesses in another place, saying:
“Devotion is God-Gnosis.”
Asclepius, his Hearer, has also explained the same idea at greater length in that “Perfect Sermon” which he wrote to the King.
Both, then, assert that the daimons are the enemies and harriers of men, and for this cause Trismegistus calls them “evil ‘angels’,”—so far was he from being ignorant that from celestial beings they had become corrupted, and so earthly.
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This passage is given in Greek, and is quoted, but with numerous glosses, also by Cyril (Contra Julianum, iv. 130); it is also practically the same as the sentence in P. S. A., xxix.: “The righteous man finds his defence in serving God and deepest piety. For God doth guard such men from every ill.”
Now we know that Lactantius had the Greek of this “Perfect Sermon” before him, and we know that our Latin translation is highly rhetorical and paraphrastic.
The only difficulty is that Lactantius’ quotation ends with the sentence: “The one and only good found in mankind is piety”; and this does not appear in the Latin translation of P. S. A. On the other hand, Firmianus immediately refers by name to a Perfect Sermon, which, however, he says was written by Asclepius, and addressed to the King. Our Fragment is, therefore, probably from the lost ending of C. H., xvi. (see Commentary on the title).
ix. Ibid., iv. 6, 4; Brandt, p. 286; Fritzsche, i. 178.
THE COSMIC SON OF GOD
Hermes, in that book which is entitled the “Perfect Sermon,” uses these words:
FRAGMENT V.
The Lord and Master of all things (whom ’tis our custom to call God), when He had made the second God, the Visible and Sensible,—I call Him sensible, not that He hath sensation in Himself (for as to this, whether or no He hath Himself sensation, we will some other time enquire), but that He is object of senses and of mind,—when, then, He’d made Him First, and One and Only, He seemed to Him most fair, and filled quite full of all things good. At Him he marvelled, and loved Him altogether as His Son.
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Lactantius here quotes from the lost Greek original of “The Perfect Sermon,” viii. 1. We have thus a means of controlling the old Latin translation which has come down to us.
It is, by comparison, very free and often rhetorical; inserting phrases and even changing the original, as, for instance, when in the last clause it says: “He fell in love with him as being part of His Divinity.”
It is, however, possible that the translator may have had a different text before him, for there is reason to believe that there were several recensions of the P. S. A.
x. Ibid., iv. 6, 9; Brandt, p. 291; Fritzsche, i. 179.
THE DEMIURGE OF GOD
(Speaking of the Son of God and identifying Him with the pre-existent Wisdom spoken of in Proverbs viii. 22, Lactantius adds:)
Wherefore also Trismegistus has called Him the “Demiurge of God.”
xi. Ibid., iv. 7, 3; Brandt, p. 292; Fritzsche, i. 179.
THE NAME OF GOD
Even then [when the world shall be consummated], it [God’s Name] will not be able to be uttered by the mouth of man, as Hermes teaches, saying:
FRAGMENT VI.
But the Cause of this Cause is the Divine and the Ingenerable Good’s Good-will, which first brought forth the God whose Name cannot be spoken by the mouth of man.
xii. Ibid., iv. 7, 3; Brandt, p. 293; Fritzsche, i. 179, 180.
THE HOLY WORD ABOUT THE LORD OF ALL.
And a little after [he says] to his son:
FRAGMENT VII.
For that there is, [my] son, a Word [Logos] of wisdom, that no tongue can tell,—a Holy [Word] about the only Lord of all, the God before all thought,—whom to declare transcends all human power.
xiii. Ibid., iv. 8, 5; Brandt, p. 296; Fritzsche, i. 181.
HIS OWN FATHER AND OWN MOTHER
But Hermes also was of the same opinion when he says:
“His own father and His own mother.”
xiv. Ibid., iv. 9, 3; Brandt, p. 300; Fritzsche, i. 182, 183.
THE POWER AND GREATNESS OF THE WORD
Trismegistus, who has tracked out, I know not how, almost all truth, has often described the power and greatness of the Word (Logos), as the above quotation 3 from him shows, in which he confesses the Word to be Ineffable and Holy, and in that its telling forth transcends the power of man.
xv. Ibid., iv. 13, 2; Brandt, p. 316; Fritzsche, i. 190.
THE FATHERLESS AND MOTHERLESS
For God, the Father, and the Source, and Principle of things, in that He hath no parents, is very truly called by Trismegistus “father-less” and “mother-less” in that He is brought forth from none.
xvi. Ibid., v. 14, 11; Brandt, p. 446; Fritzsche, i. 256.
PIETY THE GNOSIS OF GOD
But “piety is nothing else than Gnosis of God,” as Trismegistus has most truly laid down, as we have said in another place.
xvii. Ibid., vi. 25, 10; Brandt, p. 579; Fritzsche, ii. 60.
THE ONLY WAY TO WORSHIP GOD
Concerning justice, he [Trismegistus, who in this (namely concerning sacrifice) “agrees substantially and verbally with the prophets”] has thus spoken:
“Unto this Word (Logos), my son, thy adoration and thy homage pay. There is one way alone to worship God,—[it is] not to be bad.”
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Here Lactantius translates literally from C. H., xii. (xiii.) 23, a sermon which now bears the title, “About the Common Mind to Tat.” Hermes, however, in the context of the quoted passage, is not writing “about justice,” and much less could the whole sermon be so entitled, if indeed Lactantius intended us so to understand it. But see the Commentary, C. H., xii. (xiii.) 6, and Ex. xi., “On Justice.”
xviii. Ibid., v. 25, 11; Brandt, p. 579; Fritzsche, ii. 60.
THE WORTHIEST SACRIFICE TO GOD
Also in that “Perfect Sermon,” when he heard Asclepius enquiring of his son, whether it would be pleasing to his father, that incense and other perfumes should be offered in their holy rite to God, [Hermes] exclaimed:
FRAGMENT VIII.
Nay, nay; speak more propitiously, O [my] Asclepius! For very great impiety is it to let come in the mind any such thought about that One and Only Good.
These things, and things like these, are not appropriate to Him. For He is full of all things that exist and least of all stands He in need [of aught].
But let us worship pouring forth our thanks. The [worthiest] sacrifice to Him is blessing, [and blessing] only.
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With this compare the passage in P. S. A., xli. 2 (p. 61, 16, Goldb.). Here again we have the means of controlling the old Latin translator, but not with such exactitude as before, for Lactantius has also turned the Greek text into Latin. But not only from the other specimens of Lactantius’ Hermes translations, but also from his present close reproduction of the ordinary wording of the Trismegistic treatises, we may be further confident that the Old Latin translation is free, paraphrastic, and rhetorical, as we have already remarked.
xix. Ibid., vii. 4, 3; Brandt, p. 593; Fritzsche, ii. 69.
MAN MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD
But Hermes was not ignorant that man was made by God and in the Image of God.
xx. Ibid., vii. 9, 11; Brandt, p. 612; Fritzsche, ii. 82.
CONTEMPLATION
(Speaking of man being the only animal that has his body upright, and face raised to heaven, looking towards his Maker, Lactantius says:)
And this “looking” Hermes has most rightly named contemplation.
xxi. Ibid., vii. 13, 3; Brandt, p. 624 Fritzsche, ii. 90.
THE DUAL NATURE OF MAN
Hermes, in describing the nature of man, in order that he might teach how he was made by God, brings forward the following:
FRAGMENT IX.
From the two natures, the deathless and mortal, He made one nature,—that of man,—one and the self-same thing; and having made the self-same [man] both somehow deathless and somehow mortal, He brought him forth, and set him up betwixt the godlike and immortal nature and the mortal, that seeing all he might wonder at all.
___________________________________
WONDER THE BEGINNING OF PHILOSOPHY
This idea of “wondering” was, doubtless, a commonplace in Hellenistic philosophical circles and looked back to the Platonic saying: “There is no other beginning of Philosophy than wondering.” Compare also one of the newest found “Logoi of Jesus,” from the rubbish heaps of Oxyrhynchus, which runs: “Let not him that seeketh . . . cease until he find, and when he finds he shall wonder; wondering he shall reign, and reigning he shall rest.”
Wondering is the beginning of Gnosis; this makes a man king of himself, and thus master of gods and men, and so he has peace. The translation of βασιλεύσει by Grenfell and Hunt as “reach the kingdom” seems to me to have no justification.
Lactantius here quotes the Greek text of P. S. A., viii. 3, and so once again we can control the Old Latin version. The Church Father is plainly the more reliable, reproducing as he does familiar Hermetic phrasing and style; and we thus again have an insight into the methods of our rhetorical, truncated, and interpolated Latin Version.
xxii. Ibid., vii. 18, 3; Brandt, p. 640; Fritzsche, ii. 99.
THE COSMIC RESTORATION
And Hermes states this [the destruction of the world] plainly. For in that book which bears the title of “The Perfect Sermon,” after an enumeration of the evils of which we have spoken, he adds:
FRAGMENT X.
Now when these things shall be, as I have said, Asclepius, then will [our] Lord and Sire, the God and Maker of the First and the One God, look down on what is done, and, making firm His Will,—that is the Good,—against disorder, recalling error, and purging out the bad, either by washing it away with water-flood, or burning it away with swiftest fire, or forcibly expelling it with war and famine,—He [then] will bring again His Cosmos to its former state, and so achieve its Restoration.
xxiii. Ibid., Epitome, 4, 4; Brandt, p. 679; Fritzsche, ii. 117.
OF HERMES AND HIS DOCTRINE CONCERNING GOD
Hermes,—who, on account of his virtue and knowledge of many arts, gained the title of Thrice-greatest, who also in the antiquity of his doctrine preceded the philosophers, and who is worshipped as god among the Egyptians,—declaring the greatness of the One and Only God with unending praises, calls Him God and Father, [and says] He has no name, for that He has no need for a distinctive name, inasmuch as He alone is, nor has He any parents, in that He is both from Himself and by Himself.
In writing to his son [Tat] he begins as follows:
“To comprehend God is difficult, to speak [of Him] impossible, even for one who can comprehend; for the Perfect cannot be comprehended by the imperfect, nor the Invisible by the visible.”
xxiv. Ibid., Ep., 14; Brandt, p. 685; Fritzsche, ii. 121.
A REPETITION
(Lactantius repeats in almost identical words what he has written in i. 11.)
xxv. Ibid., Ep., 37 (42), 2; Brandt, p. 712; Fritzsche, ii. 140.
PLATO AS PROPHET FOLLOWS TRISMEGISTUS
By means of him [the Logos] as Demiurge, as Hermes says, He [God the Father] hath devised the beautiful and wondrous creation of the world. . . .
Finally Plato has spoken concerning the first and second God, not plainly as a philosopher, but as a prophet, perchance in this following Trismegistus, whose words I have added in translation from the Greek.
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(Lactantius then translates verbally from the Greek text he has quoted in iv. 6, 4, omitting, however, the last clause and the parenthesis in the middle.)
THOYTH-HERMES AND HIS BOOKS ON THE GNOSIS
Let us now pass to divine testimonies; but, first of all, I will bring into court testimony which is like divine [witness], both on account of its exceeding great age, and because he whom I shall name was carried back again from men unto the gods.
In Cicero, Caius Cotta, the Pontifex, arguing against the Stoics about faiths and the diversity of opinions which obtain concerning the gods, in order that, as was the way of the Academics, he might bring all things into doubt, declares that there were five Hermeses; and after enumerating four of them in succession, [he adds] that the fifth was he by whom Argus was slain, and for that cause he fled into Egypt, and initiated the Egyptians into laws and letters.
The Egyptians call him Thoyth, and from him the first month of their year (that is, September) has received its name. He also founded a city which even unto this day is called Hermopolis. The people of Phenëus, indeed, worship him as a god; but, although he was [really] a man, still he was of such high antiquity, and so deeply versed in every kind of science, that his knowledge of [so] many things and of the arts gained him the title of “Thrice-greatest.”
He wrote books, indeed many [of them], treating of the Gnosis of things divine, in which he asserts the greatness of the Highest and One and Only God, and calls Him by the same names as we [do]—God and Father. And [yet], so that no one should seek after His name, he has declared that He cannot be named, in that He doth not need to have a name, owing, indeed, unto the very [nature of His] unity. His words are these:
FRAGMENT II.
But God [is] one; and He who’s one needs not a name, for He [as one] is The-beyond-all-names.
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THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF THE HERMETIC TRADITION
For Lactantius, then, Hermes was very ancient; moreover, he was one who descended from heaven and had returned thither. When, however, Firmianus attempts the historical origins of the Hermetic tradition, as was invariably the case with the ancients, he can do nothing better than refer us to a complex though interesting myth, and to a legend of it devised to flatter the self-esteem of its Hellenic creators: A Greek god, whose cult, moreover, was known to be intimately connected with an ancient mystery-tradition, was the originator of the wisdom of Egypt. Of course; and so with all nations who had any ancient learning—their special tradition was oldest and best and originator of all others!
For the rest, Lactantius knows nothing historically of the tradition which he esteemed so highly, and the mention of the Latinized name Thoyth and of Hermopolis does but throw the paucity of his knowledge into deeper relief. What Lactantius does know is a large literature in Greek and its general tendency.
The sentence he quotes is not found textually in any of the extant Trismegistic literature.
ii. Ibid., i. 11, 61; Brandt, p. 47; Fritzsche, i. 29, 30.
URANUS, CRONUS AND HERMES, ADEPTS OF THE PERFECT SCIENCE
And so it appears that he [Cronus] was not born from Heaven (which is impossible), but from that man who was called Uranus; and that this is so, Trismegistus bears witness, when, in stating that there have been very few in whom the perfect science has been found, he mentioned in their number Uranus, Cronus and Hermes, his own kinsfolk.
iii. Ibid., ii. 8, 48; Brandt, p. 138; Fritzsche, i. 89.
DIVINE PROVIDENCE
For the World was made by Divine Providence, not to mention Thrice-greatest, who preaches this.
iv. Ibid., ii. 8, 68; Brandt, p. 141; Fritzsche, i. 91.
ON MORTAL AND IMMORTAL SIGHT
His [God’s] works are seen by the eyes; but how He made them, is not seen even by the mind, “in that,” as Hermes says:
FRAGMENT III.
Mortal cannot draw nigh to the Immortal, nor temporal to the Eternal, nor the corruptible to That which knoweth no corruption.
And, therefore, hath the earthly animal not yet capacity to see celestial things, in that it is kept shut within the body as in a prison house, lest with freed sense, emancipate, it should see all.
The first part of this citation (which Lactantius gives in Latin) is identical in idea with a sentence in Frag. iv.—that favourite source of quotation, which Stobæus, Ex. ii. (Flor. lxxx. [lxxviii.] 9), excerpted from “The [Sermon] to Tat.” It might, then, be thought that this was simply a paraphrase of Lactantius’, or that he was quoting from memory, and that the second sentence was not quotation but his own writing. But the second sentence is so thoroughly Trismegistic that it has every appearance of being genuine.
v. Ibid., ii. 10, 13; Brandt, p. 149; Fritzsche, i. 96.
MAN MADE AFTER THE IMAGE OF GOD
But the making of the truly living man out of clay is of God. And Hermes also hands on the tradition of this fact,—for not only has he said that man was made by God after the Image of God, but also he has attempted to explain with what skilfulness He has formed every single member in the body of man, since there is not one of them which is not admirably suited not only for what it has to do, but also adapted for beauty.
_______________________________
Man made after the Image of God is one of the fundamental doctrines of the Trismegistic tradition. For instance, P. S. A., vii. 2: “The [man] ‘essential,’ as say the Greeks, but which we call the ‘form of the Divine Similitude’”; and x. 3: “Giving the greatest thanks to God, His Image reverencing,—not ignorant that he [man] is, too, God’s image, the second [one]; for that there are two images of God—Cosmos and man.”
vi. Ibid., ii. 12, 4; Brandt, p. 156; Fritzsche, i. 100.
HERMES THE FIRST NATURAL PHILOSOPHER
Empedocles . . . [and others] . . . laid down four elements, fire, air, water, and earth,—[in this] perchance following Trismegistus, who said that our bodies were composed of these four elements by God.
“For that they have in them something of fire, something of air, something of water, and something of earth,—and yet they are not fire [in itself], nor air, nor water, nor earth.”
_______________________________________
All this about the elements is, of course, a commonplace of ancient physics, and we may, therefore, dismiss the naïve speculation of Lactantius, who evidently thought he had the very words of the first inventor of the theory before him; for he renders into Latin word for word the same text which Stobæus has preserved to us in an excerpt from “The [Sermons] to Tat”—Ex. iii. I.
vii. Ibid., ii. 14, 5; Brandt, p. 163; Fritzsche, i. 105.
THE DAIMON-CHIEF
Thus there are two classes of daimons,—the one celestial, and the other terrestrial. The latter are impure spirits, the authors of the evils that are done, of whom the same Diabolus is chief. Whence Trismegistus calls him the “Daimon-chief.”
viii. Ibid., ii. 15, 6; Brandt, p. 166; Fritzsche, i. 106.
DEVOTION IS GOD-GNOSIS
In fine, Hermes asserts that those who have known God, not only are safe from the attacks of evil daimons, but also that they are not held even by Fate. He says:
FRAGMENT IV.
The one means of protection is piety. For neither doth an evil daimon nor doth Fate rule o’er the pious man. For God doth save the pious [man] from every ill. The one and only good found in mankind is piety.
And what piety means, he witnesses in another place, saying:
“Devotion is God-Gnosis.”
Asclepius, his Hearer, has also explained the same idea at greater length in that “Perfect Sermon” which he wrote to the King.
Both, then, assert that the daimons are the enemies and harriers of men, and for this cause Trismegistus calls them “evil ‘angels’,”—so far was he from being ignorant that from celestial beings they had become corrupted, and so earthly.
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This passage is given in Greek, and is quoted, but with numerous glosses, also by Cyril (Contra Julianum, iv. 130); it is also practically the same as the sentence in P. S. A., xxix.: “The righteous man finds his defence in serving God and deepest piety. For God doth guard such men from every ill.”
Now we know that Lactantius had the Greek of this “Perfect Sermon” before him, and we know that our Latin translation is highly rhetorical and paraphrastic.
The only difficulty is that Lactantius’ quotation ends with the sentence: “The one and only good found in mankind is piety”; and this does not appear in the Latin translation of P. S. A. On the other hand, Firmianus immediately refers by name to a Perfect Sermon, which, however, he says was written by Asclepius, and addressed to the King. Our Fragment is, therefore, probably from the lost ending of C. H., xvi. (see Commentary on the title).
ix. Ibid., iv. 6, 4; Brandt, p. 286; Fritzsche, i. 178.
THE COSMIC SON OF GOD
Hermes, in that book which is entitled the “Perfect Sermon,” uses these words:
FRAGMENT V.
The Lord and Master of all things (whom ’tis our custom to call God), when He had made the second God, the Visible and Sensible,—I call Him sensible, not that He hath sensation in Himself (for as to this, whether or no He hath Himself sensation, we will some other time enquire), but that He is object of senses and of mind,—when, then, He’d made Him First, and One and Only, He seemed to Him most fair, and filled quite full of all things good. At Him he marvelled, and loved Him altogether as His Son.
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Lactantius here quotes from the lost Greek original of “The Perfect Sermon,” viii. 1. We have thus a means of controlling the old Latin translation which has come down to us.
It is, by comparison, very free and often rhetorical; inserting phrases and even changing the original, as, for instance, when in the last clause it says: “He fell in love with him as being part of His Divinity.”
It is, however, possible that the translator may have had a different text before him, for there is reason to believe that there were several recensions of the P. S. A.
x. Ibid., iv. 6, 9; Brandt, p. 291; Fritzsche, i. 179.
THE DEMIURGE OF GOD
(Speaking of the Son of God and identifying Him with the pre-existent Wisdom spoken of in Proverbs viii. 22, Lactantius adds:)
Wherefore also Trismegistus has called Him the “Demiurge of God.”
xi. Ibid., iv. 7, 3; Brandt, p. 292; Fritzsche, i. 179.
THE NAME OF GOD
Even then [when the world shall be consummated], it [God’s Name] will not be able to be uttered by the mouth of man, as Hermes teaches, saying:
FRAGMENT VI.
But the Cause of this Cause is the Divine and the Ingenerable Good’s Good-will, which first brought forth the God whose Name cannot be spoken by the mouth of man.
xii. Ibid., iv. 7, 3; Brandt, p. 293; Fritzsche, i. 179, 180.
THE HOLY WORD ABOUT THE LORD OF ALL.
And a little after [he says] to his son:
FRAGMENT VII.
For that there is, [my] son, a Word [Logos] of wisdom, that no tongue can tell,—a Holy [Word] about the only Lord of all, the God before all thought,—whom to declare transcends all human power.
xiii. Ibid., iv. 8, 5; Brandt, p. 296; Fritzsche, i. 181.
HIS OWN FATHER AND OWN MOTHER
But Hermes also was of the same opinion when he says:
“His own father and His own mother.”
xiv. Ibid., iv. 9, 3; Brandt, p. 300; Fritzsche, i. 182, 183.
THE POWER AND GREATNESS OF THE WORD
Trismegistus, who has tracked out, I know not how, almost all truth, has often described the power and greatness of the Word (Logos), as the above quotation 3 from him shows, in which he confesses the Word to be Ineffable and Holy, and in that its telling forth transcends the power of man.
xv. Ibid., iv. 13, 2; Brandt, p. 316; Fritzsche, i. 190.
THE FATHERLESS AND MOTHERLESS
For God, the Father, and the Source, and Principle of things, in that He hath no parents, is very truly called by Trismegistus “father-less” and “mother-less” in that He is brought forth from none.
xvi. Ibid., v. 14, 11; Brandt, p. 446; Fritzsche, i. 256.
PIETY THE GNOSIS OF GOD
But “piety is nothing else than Gnosis of God,” as Trismegistus has most truly laid down, as we have said in another place.
xvii. Ibid., vi. 25, 10; Brandt, p. 579; Fritzsche, ii. 60.
THE ONLY WAY TO WORSHIP GOD
Concerning justice, he [Trismegistus, who in this (namely concerning sacrifice) “agrees substantially and verbally with the prophets”] has thus spoken:
“Unto this Word (Logos), my son, thy adoration and thy homage pay. There is one way alone to worship God,—[it is] not to be bad.”
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Here Lactantius translates literally from C. H., xii. (xiii.) 23, a sermon which now bears the title, “About the Common Mind to Tat.” Hermes, however, in the context of the quoted passage, is not writing “about justice,” and much less could the whole sermon be so entitled, if indeed Lactantius intended us so to understand it. But see the Commentary, C. H., xii. (xiii.) 6, and Ex. xi., “On Justice.”
xviii. Ibid., v. 25, 11; Brandt, p. 579; Fritzsche, ii. 60.
THE WORTHIEST SACRIFICE TO GOD
Also in that “Perfect Sermon,” when he heard Asclepius enquiring of his son, whether it would be pleasing to his father, that incense and other perfumes should be offered in their holy rite to God, [Hermes] exclaimed:
FRAGMENT VIII.
Nay, nay; speak more propitiously, O [my] Asclepius! For very great impiety is it to let come in the mind any such thought about that One and Only Good.
These things, and things like these, are not appropriate to Him. For He is full of all things that exist and least of all stands He in need [of aught].
But let us worship pouring forth our thanks. The [worthiest] sacrifice to Him is blessing, [and blessing] only.
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With this compare the passage in P. S. A., xli. 2 (p. 61, 16, Goldb.). Here again we have the means of controlling the old Latin translator, but not with such exactitude as before, for Lactantius has also turned the Greek text into Latin. But not only from the other specimens of Lactantius’ Hermes translations, but also from his present close reproduction of the ordinary wording of the Trismegistic treatises, we may be further confident that the Old Latin translation is free, paraphrastic, and rhetorical, as we have already remarked.
xix. Ibid., vii. 4, 3; Brandt, p. 593; Fritzsche, ii. 69.
MAN MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD
But Hermes was not ignorant that man was made by God and in the Image of God.
xx. Ibid., vii. 9, 11; Brandt, p. 612; Fritzsche, ii. 82.
CONTEMPLATION
(Speaking of man being the only animal that has his body upright, and face raised to heaven, looking towards his Maker, Lactantius says:)
And this “looking” Hermes has most rightly named contemplation.
xxi. Ibid., vii. 13, 3; Brandt, p. 624 Fritzsche, ii. 90.
THE DUAL NATURE OF MAN
Hermes, in describing the nature of man, in order that he might teach how he was made by God, brings forward the following:
FRAGMENT IX.
From the two natures, the deathless and mortal, He made one nature,—that of man,—one and the self-same thing; and having made the self-same [man] both somehow deathless and somehow mortal, He brought him forth, and set him up betwixt the godlike and immortal nature and the mortal, that seeing all he might wonder at all.
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WONDER THE BEGINNING OF PHILOSOPHY
This idea of “wondering” was, doubtless, a commonplace in Hellenistic philosophical circles and looked back to the Platonic saying: “There is no other beginning of Philosophy than wondering.” Compare also one of the newest found “Logoi of Jesus,” from the rubbish heaps of Oxyrhynchus, which runs: “Let not him that seeketh . . . cease until he find, and when he finds he shall wonder; wondering he shall reign, and reigning he shall rest.”
Wondering is the beginning of Gnosis; this makes a man king of himself, and thus master of gods and men, and so he has peace. The translation of βασιλεύσει by Grenfell and Hunt as “reach the kingdom” seems to me to have no justification.
Lactantius here quotes the Greek text of P. S. A., viii. 3, and so once again we can control the Old Latin version. The Church Father is plainly the more reliable, reproducing as he does familiar Hermetic phrasing and style; and we thus again have an insight into the methods of our rhetorical, truncated, and interpolated Latin Version.
xxii. Ibid., vii. 18, 3; Brandt, p. 640; Fritzsche, ii. 99.
THE COSMIC RESTORATION
And Hermes states this [the destruction of the world] plainly. For in that book which bears the title of “The Perfect Sermon,” after an enumeration of the evils of which we have spoken, he adds:
FRAGMENT X.
Now when these things shall be, as I have said, Asclepius, then will [our] Lord and Sire, the God and Maker of the First and the One God, look down on what is done, and, making firm His Will,—that is the Good,—against disorder, recalling error, and purging out the bad, either by washing it away with water-flood, or burning it away with swiftest fire, or forcibly expelling it with war and famine,—He [then] will bring again His Cosmos to its former state, and so achieve its Restoration.
xxiii. Ibid., Epitome, 4, 4; Brandt, p. 679; Fritzsche, ii. 117.
OF HERMES AND HIS DOCTRINE CONCERNING GOD
Hermes,—who, on account of his virtue and knowledge of many arts, gained the title of Thrice-greatest, who also in the antiquity of his doctrine preceded the philosophers, and who is worshipped as god among the Egyptians,—declaring the greatness of the One and Only God with unending praises, calls Him God and Father, [and says] He has no name, for that He has no need for a distinctive name, inasmuch as He alone is, nor has He any parents, in that He is both from Himself and by Himself.
In writing to his son [Tat] he begins as follows:
“To comprehend God is difficult, to speak [of Him] impossible, even for one who can comprehend; for the Perfect cannot be comprehended by the imperfect, nor the Invisible by the visible.”
xxiv. Ibid., Ep., 14; Brandt, p. 685; Fritzsche, ii. 121.
A REPETITION
(Lactantius repeats in almost identical words what he has written in i. 11.)
xxv. Ibid., Ep., 37 (42), 2; Brandt, p. 712; Fritzsche, ii. 140.
PLATO AS PROPHET FOLLOWS TRISMEGISTUS
By means of him [the Logos] as Demiurge, as Hermes says, He [God the Father] hath devised the beautiful and wondrous creation of the world. . . .
Finally Plato has spoken concerning the first and second God, not plainly as a philosopher, but as a prophet, perchance in this following Trismegistus, whose words I have added in translation from the Greek.
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(Lactantius then translates verbally from the Greek text he has quoted in iv. 6, 4, omitting, however, the last clause and the parenthesis in the middle.)
AUGUSTINE
i. De Civitate Dei, xxiii.; Hoffmann (E.), i. 392 (Vienna, 1899-1900). 1
THREE QUOTATIONS FROM THE OLD LATIN VERSION OF THE “PERFECT SERMON”
Augustine is arguing against the views of Appuleius (first half of the second century) on the cult of the “daimones,” and in so doing introduces a long disquisition on the doctrine of “Egyptian Hermes, whom they call Thrice-greatest,” concerning image-worship, or the consecrated and “ensouled,” or “animated,” statues of the gods.
In the course of his remarks the Bishop of Hippo quotes at length from a current Latin version of “The Perfect Sermon” or “Asclepius” (though without himself giving any title), which we see at once must have been the very same text that has come down to us in its entirety. It is precisely the same text, word for word, with ours; the variants being practically of the most minute character.
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First of all Augustine quotes from P. S. A., xxiii. 3, xxiv. 2. This “prophecy” of the downfall of the Egyptian religion Augustine naturally takes as referring to the triumph of Christianity, and so he ridicules Hermes “[qui] tam impudenter dolebat, quam imprudentur sciebat.”
ii. Ibid., xxiv.; Hoffmann, i. 396.
The Bishop of Hippo begins his next chapter with a quotation from P. S. A., xxxvii. 1, 2, on the same subject, and proceeds scornfully to criticise the statements of the Trismegistic writer.
iii. Ibid., xxvi.; Hoffmann, i. 402.
After quoting the sentence, from P. S. A., xxiv. 3, in which Hermes says that the pure temples of Egypt will all be polluted with tombs and corpses, Augustine proceeds to contend that the gods of Egypt are all dead men, and in support of his contention he quotes P. S. A., xxxvii. 3, 4.
THREE QUOTATIONS FROM THE OLD LATIN VERSION OF THE “PERFECT SERMON”
Augustine is arguing against the views of Appuleius (first half of the second century) on the cult of the “daimones,” and in so doing introduces a long disquisition on the doctrine of “Egyptian Hermes, whom they call Thrice-greatest,” concerning image-worship, or the consecrated and “ensouled,” or “animated,” statues of the gods.
In the course of his remarks the Bishop of Hippo quotes at length from a current Latin version of “The Perfect Sermon” or “Asclepius” (though without himself giving any title), which we see at once must have been the very same text that has come down to us in its entirety. It is precisely the same text, word for word, with ours; the variants being practically of the most minute character.
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First of all Augustine quotes from P. S. A., xxiii. 3, xxiv. 2. This “prophecy” of the downfall of the Egyptian religion Augustine naturally takes as referring to the triumph of Christianity, and so he ridicules Hermes “[qui] tam impudenter dolebat, quam imprudentur sciebat.”
ii. Ibid., xxiv.; Hoffmann, i. 396.
The Bishop of Hippo begins his next chapter with a quotation from P. S. A., xxxvii. 1, 2, on the same subject, and proceeds scornfully to criticise the statements of the Trismegistic writer.
iii. Ibid., xxvi.; Hoffmann, i. 402.
After quoting the sentence, from P. S. A., xxiv. 3, in which Hermes says that the pure temples of Egypt will all be polluted with tombs and corpses, Augustine proceeds to contend that the gods of Egypt are all dead men, and in support of his contention he quotes P. S. A., xxxvii. 3, 4.
CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA
i. Contra Julianum, i. 30; Migne, col. 548 A.
CYRIL’S CORPUS OF XV. BOOKS
(Cyril, after claiming that Pythagoras and Plato obtained their wisdom in Egypt from what, he professes, they had heard of Moses there, proceeds:)
And I think the Egyptian Hermes also should be considered worthy of mention and recollection—he who, they say, bears the title of Thrice-greatest because of the honour paid him by his contemporaries, and, as some think, in comparison with Hermes the fabled son of Zeus and Maia.
This Hermes of Egypt, then, although an initiator into mysteries, and though he never ceased to cleave to the shrines of idols, is [nevertheless] found to have grasped the doctrines of Moses, if not with entire correctness, and beyond all cavil, yet still in part.
For both [Hermes] himself has been benefitted [by Moses], and reminder of this [fact] has also been made in his own writings by [the editor] at Athens who put together the fifteen books entitled “Hermaïca.” [This editor] writes concerning him [Hermes] in the first book, putting the words into the mouth of one of the priests of the sacred rites:
“In order then that we may come to things of a like nature (?),—have you not heard that our Hermes divided the whole of Egypt into allotments and portions, measuring off the acres with the chain, 1 and cut canals for irrigation purposes, and made nomes, and named the lands [comprised in them] after them, and established the interchange of contracts, and drew up a list of the risings of the stars, and [the proper times] to cut plants; and beyond all this he discovered and bequeathed to posterity numbers, and calculations, and geometry, and astronomy, and astrology, and music, and the whole of grammar?”
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This Corpus of XV. Books is evidently the source of Cyril’s information, and he takes the above quotation from the Introduction, which purported to be written by an Egyptian priest (as is also the case in the treatise De Mysteriis, traditionally ascribed to Jamblichus), but which Cyril says was written at Athens, by presumably some Greek editor.
ii. Ibid., i. 31; Migne col. 549 B.
THE INCORPOREAL EYE
Thrice-greatest Hermes says somewhat as follows:
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(Cyril then quotes, with four slight verbal variants, the first four paragraphs of the passage excerpted by Stobæus, Ex. ii., and then proceeds without a break:)
FRAGMENT XI.
If, then, there be an incorporeal eye, let it go forth from body unto the Vision of the Beautiful; let it fly up and soar aloft, seeking to see not form, nor body, nor [even] types [of things], but rather That which is the Maker of [all] these,—the Quiet and Serene, the Stable and the Changeless One, the Self, the All, the One, the Self of self, the Self in self, the Like to Self [alone], That which is neither like to other, nor [yet] unlike to self, and [yet] again Himself.
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Though Cyril runs this passage on to the four paragraphs which in the Stobæan Extract are continued by three other paragraphs, I am quite persuaded that the Archbishop of Alexandria took the above from the same “Sermon to Tat” as the Anthologist.
iii. Ibid., i. 33; Migne, col. 552 D.
THE HEAVENLY WORD PROCEEDING FORTH
And Thrice-greatest Hermes thus delivers himself concerning God:
FRAGMENT XII.
For that His Word (Logos) proceeding forth,—all-perfect as he was, and fecund, and creative in fecund Nature, falling on fecund Water, made Water pregnant.
THE PYRAMID
And the same again [declares]:
FRAGMENT XIII.
The Pyramid, then, is below [both] Nature and the Intellectual World. For that it hath above it ruling it the Creator-Word of the Lord of all,—who, being the First Power after Him, [both] increate [and] infinite, leaned forth from Him, and has his seat above, and rule o’er all that have been made through him. He is the First-born of the All-perfection, His perfect, fecund and true Son.
THE NATURE OF GOD’S INTELLECTUAL WORD
And again the same [Hermes], when one of the Temple-folk in Egypt questions him and says:
FRAGMENT XIV.
But why, O most mighty Good Daimon, was he called by this name by the Lord of all?—replies:
Yea, have I told thee in what has gone before, but thou hast not perceived it.
The nature of His Intellectual Word (Logos) is a productive and creative Nature. This is as though it were His Power-of-giving-birth, or [His] Nature, or [His] Mode of being, or call it what you will,—only remembering this: that He is Perfect in the Perfect, and from the Perfect makes, and creates, and makes to live, perfect good things.
Since, then, He hath this nature, rightly is He thus named.
THE WORD OF THE CREATOR
And the same [Hermes], in the First Sermon of the “Expository [Sermons] to Tat,” speaks thus about God:
FRAGMENT XV.
The Word (Logos) of the Creator, O [my] son, transcends all sight; He [is] self-moved; He cannot be increased, nor [yet] diminished; Alone is He, and like unto Himself [Alone], equal, identical, perfect in His stability, perfect in order; for that He is the One, after the God alone beyond all knowing.
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The first two Fragments (xi. and xii.) seem to be taken from the same sermon, the contents of which resembled the first part of the “Shepherd of Men” treatise; it has all the appearance of a discourse addressed to Tat, and probably came in “The Expository Sermons.”
The third Fragment (xiii.) belongs to the more frankly Egyptian type, the Agathodaimon literature, in which Hermes, as the Good Spirit, figures as the teacher of the Mystery-god Osiris.
The last Fragment (xv.) is so similar in its phrasing to Fragment xi., already given by Cyril (i. 31), that I am strongly inclined to think the Archbishop took both from the same source. If so, we can reconstruct part of “The First Sermon of the Expository [Sermons] to Tat,” the beginning of which (see Lact., Ep., 4) is also given by Stobæus, Ex. ii., with the heading from “The [Book] to Tat,” while he heads other extracts “From the [pl.] to Tat.”
v. Ibid., ii. 35; Migne, col. 556 A.
MIND OF MIND
And Hermes also says in the Third Sermon of those to Asclepius:
FRAGMENT XVI.
It is not possible such mysteries [as these] should be declared to those who are without initiation in the sacred rites. But ye, lend [me] your ears, [ears] of your mind!
There was One Intellectual Light alone,—nay, Light transcending Intellectual Light. He is for ever Mind of mind 3 who makes [that] Light to shine.
There was no other; [naught] save the Oneness of Himself [alone]. For ever in Himself [alone], for ever doth He compass all in His own Mind,—His Light and Spirit.
HE IS ALL
And after some other things he says:
FRAGMENT XVII.
Without Him [is] neither god, nor angel, nor daimon, nor any other being. For He is Lord of all, [their] Father, and [their] God, and Source, and Life, and Power, and Light, and Mind, and Spirit. For all things are in Him and for His sake.
CONCERNING SPIRIT
And again, in the same Third Sermon of those to Asclepius, in reply to one who questions [him] concerning the Divine Spirit, the same [Hermes] says as follows:
FRAGMENT XVIII.
Had there not been some Purpose of the Lord of all, so that I should disclose this word (logos), ye would not have been filled with so great love to question me about it. Now give ye ear unto the rest of the discourse (logos).
Of this same Spirit, of which I have already spoken many times, all things have need; for that it raises up all things, each in its own degree, and makes them live, and gives them nourishment, and [finally] removes them from its holy source, aiding the spirit, and for ever giving life to all, the [one] productive One.”
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THE “TO ASCLEPIUS” OF CYRIL’S CORPUS
From the above statements of Cyril we learn that in addition to “The Expository Sermons to Tat,” he had also before him a collection of “Sermons to Asclepius”; of these there were at least three. Was “The Perfect Sermon” one of this collection? It may have been; for the style of it is cast in the same mould as that of these Fragments in Cyril.
Hermes, in the Third Sermon of Cyril’s collection, is addressing several hearers, for he uses the plural; so also in P. S. A., i. 2. Hermes addresses Asclepius, Tat, and Ammon.
In the Third Sermon, Hermes also says: “It is not possible such mysteries should be declared to those who are without initiation in the sacred rites”; in P. S. A., i. 2, Hermes declares: “It is a mark of an impious mind to publish to the knowledge of the crowd a tractate brimming o’er with the full grandeur of divinity.” The numinis majestas (grandeur of divinity) is precisely the same idea as the Spirit, the “Divine supremacy and power,” as Cyril says referring to Hermes.
Finally, in the Third Sermon, Hermes makes the striking remark that the Love (ἔρως) of the Gnosis which urges on the disciples, is inspired by the Providence or Foresight of God—that is, by His Spirit; P. S. A., i. 28, ends with the words: “To them, sunk in fit silence reverently, their souls and minds pendent on Hermes’ lips, thus Love (ἔρως) Divine began to speak.”
The setting of the mode of exposition is then identical in the two Sermons, and we may thus very well refer them to the same collection.
v. Ibid., ii. 52; Migne, col. 580 B.
FROM “THE MIND”
To this I will add what Thrice-greatest Hermes wrote “To his own Mind,”—for thus the Book is called.
(Cyril then quotes, with very slight verbal variants, the last question and answer in C. H., xi. (xii.) 22.)
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In our Corpus the treatise is not written by Hermes to the Mind, but, on the contrary, it is cast in the mould of a revelation of “The Mind to Hermes,” and is son entitled. Cyril thus seems to have been mistaken. It may, then, have been that in the copy which lay before the Church Father, the title read simply: “The Mind.”
vi. Ibid., ii. 55; Migne, col. 586 D.
OSIRIS AND THRICE-GREATEST AGATHODAIMON
But I will call to mind the words of Hermes the Thrice-greatest; in “The Asclepius” he says:
FRAGMENT XIX.
Osiris said: How, then, O thou Thrice-greatest, [thou] Good Spirit, did Earth in its entirety appear?
The Great Good Spirit made reply:
By gradual drying up, as I have said; and when the many Waters got commandment . . . 5 to go into themselves again, the Earth in its entirety appeared, muddy and shaking.
Then, when the Sun shone forth, and without ceasing burned and dried it up, the Earth stood compact in the Waters, with Water all around.
“LET THERE BE EARTH”
Further, in yet another place [he writes]:
FRAGMENT XX.
The Maker and the Lord of all thus spake: Let there be Earth, and let the Firmament appear!
And forthwith the beginning of the [whole] creation, Earth, was brought into existence.
THE GENERATION OF THE SUN
So much about the Earth; as to the Sun, he again says as follows:
FRAGMENT XXI.
Then said Osiris: O thou Thrice-greatest, [thou] Good Spirit, whence came this mighty one?
Would’st thou, Osiris, that we tell to thee the generation of the Sun, whence he appeared?
He came from out the Foresight of the Lord of all; yea, the Sun’s birth proceedeth from the Lord of all, through His Creative Holy Word.
“LET THE SUN BE!”
In like manner also in the “First Expository Sermon to Tat,” he says:
FRAGMENT XXII.
Straightway the Lord of all spake unto His own Holy and Intelligible—to His Creative Word (Logos): Let the Sun be!
And straightway with His word (logos), the Fire that hath its nature tending upward,—I mean pure [Fire], that which gives greatest light, has the most energy, and fecundates the most,—Nature embraced with her own Spirit, and raised it up aloft out of the Water.
(After referring to Genesis i. 6: “And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters,”—Cyril proceeds:)
vii. Ibid., ii. 57; Migne, col. 588 C.
THE FIRMAMENT
Moreover the Hermes who is with them Thrice-greatest mentions this [that is, the firmament] again. For he describes God as saying to His creations:
FRAGMENT XXIII.
I will encompass you with this Necessity, you who are disobedient to me, which hath been laid on you as a Command through My own Word (Logos); for him ye have as Law.
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This quotation also is probably taken from the same source as the previous passage—that is, from the “First Expository Sermon to Tat.” The idea and setting, however, should also be compared with the parallel in the K. K. Excerpt (Stob., Phys., xli. 44; Gaisf., p. 408): “O Souls, Love and Necessity shall be your lords, they who are lords and marshals after me of all,”—where the “after me” (μετ᾽ ἐμέ) might perhaps confirm the “up to me” in the preceding note as the more correct rendering.
viii. Ibid., ii. 64; Migne, col. 598 D.
FROM THE “TO ASCLEPIUS”
For Hermes, who is called Thrice-greatest, writes thus to Asclepius about the nature of the universe:
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(Here follows with a few slight verbal variants the text of C. H., xiv. (xv.) 6, 7, beginning: “If, then, all things have been admitted to be two.”)
And some lines after he proceeds in warmer language, setting forth a striking argument, and says:
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(Then follows §§ 8, 9 of the same sermon, except the third sentence, and § 10 omitting the last sentence.)
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The same treatise must have lain before Cyril as that contained in our Corpus in the form of a letter with the heading, “Unto Asclepius good health of soul!”—for the Archbishop says that Hermes “writes thus to Asclepius.”
ix. Ibid., iv. 130; Migne, col. 702.
THE SOLE PROTECTION
(After quoting Porphyry as warning against participation in blood-rites for fear of contamination from evil daimons, Cyril proceeds:)
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And their Thrice-greatest Hermes seems also to be of the same opinion; for he, too, writes as follows, in the [sermon] “To Asclepius,” concerning those unholy daimons against whom we ought to protect ourselves, and flee from them with all the speed we can:
_________________________
“The sole protection—and this we must have—is piety. For neither evil daimon, yea nor Fate, can ever overcome or dominate a man who pious is, and pure, and holy. For God doth save the truly pious man from every ill.”
x. Ibid., viii. 274; Migne, col. 920 D.
THE SUPREME ARTIST
Moreover, their Thrice-greatest Hermes has said somewhere about God, the Supreme Artist of all things:
FRAGMENT XXIV.
Moreover, as perfectly wise He established Order and its opposite; in order that things intellectual, as being older and better, might have the government of things and the chief place, and that things sensible, as being second, might be subject to these.
Accordingly that which tends downward, and is heavier than the intellectual, has in itself the wise Creative Word (Logos).
xi. Ibid. (?).
AN UNREFERENCED QUOTATION
(Chambers (p. 154) gives the following, “Cyrill. Contra Julian., citing Hermes” but without any reference, and I can find it nowhere in the text:)
FRAGMENT XXV.
If thou understandest that One and Sole God, thou wilt find nothing impossible; for It is all virtue.
Think not that It may be in some one; say not that it is out of some one.
It is without termination; it is the termination of all.
Nothing contains It; for It contains all in Itself.
What difference is there then between the body and the Incorporeal, the created and the Uncreated; that which is subject to necessity, and what is Free; between the things terrestrial and things Celestial, the things corruptible and things Eternal?
Is it not that the One exists freely and that the others are subject to necessity?
CYRIL’S CORPUS OF XV. BOOKS
(Cyril, after claiming that Pythagoras and Plato obtained their wisdom in Egypt from what, he professes, they had heard of Moses there, proceeds:)
And I think the Egyptian Hermes also should be considered worthy of mention and recollection—he who, they say, bears the title of Thrice-greatest because of the honour paid him by his contemporaries, and, as some think, in comparison with Hermes the fabled son of Zeus and Maia.
This Hermes of Egypt, then, although an initiator into mysteries, and though he never ceased to cleave to the shrines of idols, is [nevertheless] found to have grasped the doctrines of Moses, if not with entire correctness, and beyond all cavil, yet still in part.
For both [Hermes] himself has been benefitted [by Moses], and reminder of this [fact] has also been made in his own writings by [the editor] at Athens who put together the fifteen books entitled “Hermaïca.” [This editor] writes concerning him [Hermes] in the first book, putting the words into the mouth of one of the priests of the sacred rites:
“In order then that we may come to things of a like nature (?),—have you not heard that our Hermes divided the whole of Egypt into allotments and portions, measuring off the acres with the chain, 1 and cut canals for irrigation purposes, and made nomes, and named the lands [comprised in them] after them, and established the interchange of contracts, and drew up a list of the risings of the stars, and [the proper times] to cut plants; and beyond all this he discovered and bequeathed to posterity numbers, and calculations, and geometry, and astronomy, and astrology, and music, and the whole of grammar?”
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This Corpus of XV. Books is evidently the source of Cyril’s information, and he takes the above quotation from the Introduction, which purported to be written by an Egyptian priest (as is also the case in the treatise De Mysteriis, traditionally ascribed to Jamblichus), but which Cyril says was written at Athens, by presumably some Greek editor.
ii. Ibid., i. 31; Migne col. 549 B.
THE INCORPOREAL EYE
Thrice-greatest Hermes says somewhat as follows:
_________________________
(Cyril then quotes, with four slight verbal variants, the first four paragraphs of the passage excerpted by Stobæus, Ex. ii., and then proceeds without a break:)
FRAGMENT XI.
If, then, there be an incorporeal eye, let it go forth from body unto the Vision of the Beautiful; let it fly up and soar aloft, seeking to see not form, nor body, nor [even] types [of things], but rather That which is the Maker of [all] these,—the Quiet and Serene, the Stable and the Changeless One, the Self, the All, the One, the Self of self, the Self in self, the Like to Self [alone], That which is neither like to other, nor [yet] unlike to self, and [yet] again Himself.
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Though Cyril runs this passage on to the four paragraphs which in the Stobæan Extract are continued by three other paragraphs, I am quite persuaded that the Archbishop of Alexandria took the above from the same “Sermon to Tat” as the Anthologist.
iii. Ibid., i. 33; Migne, col. 552 D.
THE HEAVENLY WORD PROCEEDING FORTH
And Thrice-greatest Hermes thus delivers himself concerning God:
FRAGMENT XII.
For that His Word (Logos) proceeding forth,—all-perfect as he was, and fecund, and creative in fecund Nature, falling on fecund Water, made Water pregnant.
THE PYRAMID
And the same again [declares]:
FRAGMENT XIII.
The Pyramid, then, is below [both] Nature and the Intellectual World. For that it hath above it ruling it the Creator-Word of the Lord of all,—who, being the First Power after Him, [both] increate [and] infinite, leaned forth from Him, and has his seat above, and rule o’er all that have been made through him. He is the First-born of the All-perfection, His perfect, fecund and true Son.
THE NATURE OF GOD’S INTELLECTUAL WORD
And again the same [Hermes], when one of the Temple-folk in Egypt questions him and says:
FRAGMENT XIV.
But why, O most mighty Good Daimon, was he called by this name by the Lord of all?—replies:
Yea, have I told thee in what has gone before, but thou hast not perceived it.
The nature of His Intellectual Word (Logos) is a productive and creative Nature. This is as though it were His Power-of-giving-birth, or [His] Nature, or [His] Mode of being, or call it what you will,—only remembering this: that He is Perfect in the Perfect, and from the Perfect makes, and creates, and makes to live, perfect good things.
Since, then, He hath this nature, rightly is He thus named.
THE WORD OF THE CREATOR
And the same [Hermes], in the First Sermon of the “Expository [Sermons] to Tat,” speaks thus about God:
FRAGMENT XV.
The Word (Logos) of the Creator, O [my] son, transcends all sight; He [is] self-moved; He cannot be increased, nor [yet] diminished; Alone is He, and like unto Himself [Alone], equal, identical, perfect in His stability, perfect in order; for that He is the One, after the God alone beyond all knowing.
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The first two Fragments (xi. and xii.) seem to be taken from the same sermon, the contents of which resembled the first part of the “Shepherd of Men” treatise; it has all the appearance of a discourse addressed to Tat, and probably came in “The Expository Sermons.”
The third Fragment (xiii.) belongs to the more frankly Egyptian type, the Agathodaimon literature, in which Hermes, as the Good Spirit, figures as the teacher of the Mystery-god Osiris.
The last Fragment (xv.) is so similar in its phrasing to Fragment xi., already given by Cyril (i. 31), that I am strongly inclined to think the Archbishop took both from the same source. If so, we can reconstruct part of “The First Sermon of the Expository [Sermons] to Tat,” the beginning of which (see Lact., Ep., 4) is also given by Stobæus, Ex. ii., with the heading from “The [Book] to Tat,” while he heads other extracts “From the [pl.] to Tat.”
v. Ibid., ii. 35; Migne, col. 556 A.
MIND OF MIND
And Hermes also says in the Third Sermon of those to Asclepius:
FRAGMENT XVI.
It is not possible such mysteries [as these] should be declared to those who are without initiation in the sacred rites. But ye, lend [me] your ears, [ears] of your mind!
There was One Intellectual Light alone,—nay, Light transcending Intellectual Light. He is for ever Mind of mind 3 who makes [that] Light to shine.
There was no other; [naught] save the Oneness of Himself [alone]. For ever in Himself [alone], for ever doth He compass all in His own Mind,—His Light and Spirit.
HE IS ALL
And after some other things he says:
FRAGMENT XVII.
Without Him [is] neither god, nor angel, nor daimon, nor any other being. For He is Lord of all, [their] Father, and [their] God, and Source, and Life, and Power, and Light, and Mind, and Spirit. For all things are in Him and for His sake.
CONCERNING SPIRIT
And again, in the same Third Sermon of those to Asclepius, in reply to one who questions [him] concerning the Divine Spirit, the same [Hermes] says as follows:
FRAGMENT XVIII.
Had there not been some Purpose of the Lord of all, so that I should disclose this word (logos), ye would not have been filled with so great love to question me about it. Now give ye ear unto the rest of the discourse (logos).
Of this same Spirit, of which I have already spoken many times, all things have need; for that it raises up all things, each in its own degree, and makes them live, and gives them nourishment, and [finally] removes them from its holy source, aiding the spirit, and for ever giving life to all, the [one] productive One.”
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THE “TO ASCLEPIUS” OF CYRIL’S CORPUS
From the above statements of Cyril we learn that in addition to “The Expository Sermons to Tat,” he had also before him a collection of “Sermons to Asclepius”; of these there were at least three. Was “The Perfect Sermon” one of this collection? It may have been; for the style of it is cast in the same mould as that of these Fragments in Cyril.
Hermes, in the Third Sermon of Cyril’s collection, is addressing several hearers, for he uses the plural; so also in P. S. A., i. 2. Hermes addresses Asclepius, Tat, and Ammon.
In the Third Sermon, Hermes also says: “It is not possible such mysteries should be declared to those who are without initiation in the sacred rites”; in P. S. A., i. 2, Hermes declares: “It is a mark of an impious mind to publish to the knowledge of the crowd a tractate brimming o’er with the full grandeur of divinity.” The numinis majestas (grandeur of divinity) is precisely the same idea as the Spirit, the “Divine supremacy and power,” as Cyril says referring to Hermes.
Finally, in the Third Sermon, Hermes makes the striking remark that the Love (ἔρως) of the Gnosis which urges on the disciples, is inspired by the Providence or Foresight of God—that is, by His Spirit; P. S. A., i. 28, ends with the words: “To them, sunk in fit silence reverently, their souls and minds pendent on Hermes’ lips, thus Love (ἔρως) Divine began to speak.”
The setting of the mode of exposition is then identical in the two Sermons, and we may thus very well refer them to the same collection.
v. Ibid., ii. 52; Migne, col. 580 B.
FROM “THE MIND”
To this I will add what Thrice-greatest Hermes wrote “To his own Mind,”—for thus the Book is called.
(Cyril then quotes, with very slight verbal variants, the last question and answer in C. H., xi. (xii.) 22.)
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In our Corpus the treatise is not written by Hermes to the Mind, but, on the contrary, it is cast in the mould of a revelation of “The Mind to Hermes,” and is son entitled. Cyril thus seems to have been mistaken. It may, then, have been that in the copy which lay before the Church Father, the title read simply: “The Mind.”
vi. Ibid., ii. 55; Migne, col. 586 D.
OSIRIS AND THRICE-GREATEST AGATHODAIMON
But I will call to mind the words of Hermes the Thrice-greatest; in “The Asclepius” he says:
FRAGMENT XIX.
Osiris said: How, then, O thou Thrice-greatest, [thou] Good Spirit, did Earth in its entirety appear?
The Great Good Spirit made reply:
By gradual drying up, as I have said; and when the many Waters got commandment . . . 5 to go into themselves again, the Earth in its entirety appeared, muddy and shaking.
Then, when the Sun shone forth, and without ceasing burned and dried it up, the Earth stood compact in the Waters, with Water all around.
“LET THERE BE EARTH”
Further, in yet another place [he writes]:
FRAGMENT XX.
The Maker and the Lord of all thus spake: Let there be Earth, and let the Firmament appear!
And forthwith the beginning of the [whole] creation, Earth, was brought into existence.
THE GENERATION OF THE SUN
So much about the Earth; as to the Sun, he again says as follows:
FRAGMENT XXI.
Then said Osiris: O thou Thrice-greatest, [thou] Good Spirit, whence came this mighty one?
Would’st thou, Osiris, that we tell to thee the generation of the Sun, whence he appeared?
He came from out the Foresight of the Lord of all; yea, the Sun’s birth proceedeth from the Lord of all, through His Creative Holy Word.
“LET THE SUN BE!”
In like manner also in the “First Expository Sermon to Tat,” he says:
FRAGMENT XXII.
Straightway the Lord of all spake unto His own Holy and Intelligible—to His Creative Word (Logos): Let the Sun be!
And straightway with His word (logos), the Fire that hath its nature tending upward,—I mean pure [Fire], that which gives greatest light, has the most energy, and fecundates the most,—Nature embraced with her own Spirit, and raised it up aloft out of the Water.
(After referring to Genesis i. 6: “And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters,”—Cyril proceeds:)
vii. Ibid., ii. 57; Migne, col. 588 C.
THE FIRMAMENT
Moreover the Hermes who is with them Thrice-greatest mentions this [that is, the firmament] again. For he describes God as saying to His creations:
FRAGMENT XXIII.
I will encompass you with this Necessity, you who are disobedient to me, which hath been laid on you as a Command through My own Word (Logos); for him ye have as Law.
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This quotation also is probably taken from the same source as the previous passage—that is, from the “First Expository Sermon to Tat.” The idea and setting, however, should also be compared with the parallel in the K. K. Excerpt (Stob., Phys., xli. 44; Gaisf., p. 408): “O Souls, Love and Necessity shall be your lords, they who are lords and marshals after me of all,”—where the “after me” (μετ᾽ ἐμέ) might perhaps confirm the “up to me” in the preceding note as the more correct rendering.
viii. Ibid., ii. 64; Migne, col. 598 D.
FROM THE “TO ASCLEPIUS”
For Hermes, who is called Thrice-greatest, writes thus to Asclepius about the nature of the universe:
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(Here follows with a few slight verbal variants the text of C. H., xiv. (xv.) 6, 7, beginning: “If, then, all things have been admitted to be two.”)
And some lines after he proceeds in warmer language, setting forth a striking argument, and says:
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(Then follows §§ 8, 9 of the same sermon, except the third sentence, and § 10 omitting the last sentence.)
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The same treatise must have lain before Cyril as that contained in our Corpus in the form of a letter with the heading, “Unto Asclepius good health of soul!”—for the Archbishop says that Hermes “writes thus to Asclepius.”
ix. Ibid., iv. 130; Migne, col. 702.
THE SOLE PROTECTION
(After quoting Porphyry as warning against participation in blood-rites for fear of contamination from evil daimons, Cyril proceeds:)
_________________________
And their Thrice-greatest Hermes seems also to be of the same opinion; for he, too, writes as follows, in the [sermon] “To Asclepius,” concerning those unholy daimons against whom we ought to protect ourselves, and flee from them with all the speed we can:
_________________________
“The sole protection—and this we must have—is piety. For neither evil daimon, yea nor Fate, can ever overcome or dominate a man who pious is, and pure, and holy. For God doth save the truly pious man from every ill.”
x. Ibid., viii. 274; Migne, col. 920 D.
THE SUPREME ARTIST
Moreover, their Thrice-greatest Hermes has said somewhere about God, the Supreme Artist of all things:
FRAGMENT XXIV.
Moreover, as perfectly wise He established Order and its opposite; in order that things intellectual, as being older and better, might have the government of things and the chief place, and that things sensible, as being second, might be subject to these.
Accordingly that which tends downward, and is heavier than the intellectual, has in itself the wise Creative Word (Logos).
xi. Ibid. (?).
AN UNREFERENCED QUOTATION
(Chambers (p. 154) gives the following, “Cyrill. Contra Julian., citing Hermes” but without any reference, and I can find it nowhere in the text:)
FRAGMENT XXV.
If thou understandest that One and Sole God, thou wilt find nothing impossible; for It is all virtue.
Think not that It may be in some one; say not that it is out of some one.
It is without termination; it is the termination of all.
Nothing contains It; for It contains all in Itself.
What difference is there then between the body and the Incorporeal, the created and the Uncreated; that which is subject to necessity, and what is Free; between the things terrestrial and things Celestial, the things corruptible and things Eternal?
Is it not that the One exists freely and that the others are subject to necessity?
SUIDAS [i.e., The Suda]
Lexicon, s.v. Ἑρμῆς ὁ τρισμέγιστος; Im. Bekker (Berlin 1854).
HERMES SPEAKS OF THE TRINITY
Hermes the Thrice-greatest.—He was an Egyptian sage, and flourished before Pharaoh. He was called Thrice-greatest because he spoke of the Trinity, declaring that in the Trinity there is One Godhead, as follows:
“Before Intellectual Light was Light Intellectual; Mind of mind, too, was there eternally, Light-giving. There was naught else except the Oneness of this [Mind] and Spirit all-embracing.
“Without this is nor god, nor angel, nor any other being. For He is Lord and Father, and the God of all; and all things are beneath Him, [all things are] in Him.
(The source of Suidas, or of his editor, is manifestly Cyril, C. J., i. 35 (Fragg. xvi., xvii.), of which a very garbled edition is reproduced. The same statement and passage is also quoted by Cedrenus, John Malalas, and the author of the Chronicum Alexandrinum. See Bernhardy’s edition of Suidas (Halle, 1853), i. 527, notes.) Suidas then continues without a break:)
“His Word (Logos), all-perfect as he was, and fecund, and creative, falling in fecund Nature, yea in fecund Water, made Water pregnant.”
After saying this he has the following prayer:
AN ORPHIC HYMN
“Thee, Heaven, I adjure, wise work of mighty God; thee I adjure, Word of the Father which He spake first, when He established all the world!
“Thee I adjure, [O Heaven], by the alone-begotten Word (Logos) himself, and by the Father of the Word alone-begotten, yea, by the Father who surroundeth all,—be gracious, be gracious!”
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This is not a prayer from Hermes, but three verses (the last somewhat altered) of an Orphic hymn excerpted from Cyril, ibid., i. 33 (Migne, col. 552 C),—lines also attributed to “Orpheus” by Justin Martyr. The last half of the prayer seems to be a pure invention of Suidas, or of his editor, based partially on Cyril’s comments.
HERMES SPEAKS OF THE TRINITY
Hermes the Thrice-greatest.—He was an Egyptian sage, and flourished before Pharaoh. He was called Thrice-greatest because he spoke of the Trinity, declaring that in the Trinity there is One Godhead, as follows:
“Before Intellectual Light was Light Intellectual; Mind of mind, too, was there eternally, Light-giving. There was naught else except the Oneness of this [Mind] and Spirit all-embracing.
“Without this is nor god, nor angel, nor any other being. For He is Lord and Father, and the God of all; and all things are beneath Him, [all things are] in Him.
(The source of Suidas, or of his editor, is manifestly Cyril, C. J., i. 35 (Fragg. xvi., xvii.), of which a very garbled edition is reproduced. The same statement and passage is also quoted by Cedrenus, John Malalas, and the author of the Chronicum Alexandrinum. See Bernhardy’s edition of Suidas (Halle, 1853), i. 527, notes.) Suidas then continues without a break:)
“His Word (Logos), all-perfect as he was, and fecund, and creative, falling in fecund Nature, yea in fecund Water, made Water pregnant.”
After saying this he has the following prayer:
AN ORPHIC HYMN
“Thee, Heaven, I adjure, wise work of mighty God; thee I adjure, Word of the Father which He spake first, when He established all the world!
“Thee I adjure, [O Heaven], by the alone-begotten Word (Logos) himself, and by the Father of the Word alone-begotten, yea, by the Father who surroundeth all,—be gracious, be gracious!”
_____________________________
This is not a prayer from Hermes, but three verses (the last somewhat altered) of an Orphic hymn excerpted from Cyril, ibid., i. 33 (Migne, col. 552 C),—lines also attributed to “Orpheus” by Justin Martyr. The last half of the prayer seems to be a pure invention of Suidas, or of his editor, based partially on Cyril’s comments.
ANONYMOUS
And here we may conveniently append a reference to the Dialogue of an ancient Christian writer on astrology—a blend of Platonism, Astrology, and Christianity—entitled Hermippus de Astrologia Dialogus, from the name of the chief speaker.
This writer was undoubtedly acquainted with our Corpus, for he quotes (p. 9. 3) from C. H., i. 5; (p. 21, 5) from C. H., x. (xi.) 12; (p. 70, 17) from C. H., x. (xi.) 6; in a general fashion (p. 24, 25) from C. H., xvi.; and phrases (p. 12, 21 and p. 14, 13) from C. H., xviii.
This writer was undoubtedly acquainted with our Corpus, for he quotes (p. 9. 3) from C. H., i. 5; (p. 21, 5) from C. H., x. (xi.) 12; (p. 70, 17) from C. H., x. (xi.) 6; in a general fashion (p. 24, 25) from C. H., xvi.; and phrases (p. 12, 21 and p. 14, 13) from C. H., xviii.
III. References and Fragments in the Philosophers
ZOSIMUS
ON THE ANTHRŌPOS-DOCTRINE
(Zosimus flourished somewhere at the end of the third and beginning of the fourth century A.D. He was a member of what Reitzenstein (p. 9) calls the Poimandres-Gemeinde, and, in writing to a certain Theosebeia, a fellow-believer in the Wisdom-tradition, though not as yet initiated into its spiritual mysteries, he urges her to hasten to Poimandres and baptize herself in the Cup. The following quotation is of first importance for the understanding of the Anthrōpos-Doctrine or Myth of Man in the Mysteries.
In one of the Books of his great work distinguished by the letter Omega, and dedicated to Oceanus as the “Genesis and Seed of all the Gods,”—speaking of the uninitiated, those still beneath the sway of the Heimarmenē or Fate, who cannot understand his revelations,—he writes:)
THE PROCESSIONS OF FATE.
1. Such men [our] Hermes, in his “Concerning Nature,” hath called mind-less,—naught but “processions” of Fate,—in that they have no notion of aught of things incorporal, or even of Fate herself who justly leads them, but they blaspheme her corporal schoolings, and have no notion of aught else but of her favours.
“THE INNER DOOR”
2. But Hermes and Zoroaster have said the Race of Wisdom-lovers is superior to Fate, by their neither rejoicing in her favours,—for they have mastered pleasures,—not by their being struck down by her ills,—for ever living at the “Inner Door,” and not receiving from her her fair gift, in that they look unto the termination of [her] ills.
3. On which account, too, Hesiod doth introduce Prometheus counselling Epimetheus, and doth tell him not to take the Gift from Zeus who rules Olympus, but send it back again,—[thus] teaching his own brother through philosophy to return the Gifts of Zeus,—that is, of Fate.
4. But Zoroaster, boasting in knowledge of all things Above, and in the magic of embodied speech, professes that all ills of Fate,—both special [ills] and general [ones],—are [thus] averted.
AGAINST MAGIC
5. Hermes, however, in his “About the Inner Door,” doth deprecate [this] magic even, declaring that:
The spiritual man, [the man] who knows himself, should not accomplish any thing by means of magic, e’en though he think it a good thing, nor should he force Necessity, but suffer [her to take her course], according to her nature and decree; [he should] progress by seeking only, through the knowledge of himself and God, to gain the Trinity that none can name, and let Fate do whate’er she will to her own clay—that is, the body.
FRAGMENT XXVI.
6. And being so minded (he says), and so ordering his life, he shall behold the Son of God becoming all things for holy souls, that he may draw her forth from out the region of the Fate into the Incorporeal [Man].
7. For having power in all, He becometh all things, whatsoever He will, and, in obedience to the Father[’s nod], through the whole Body doth He penetrate, and, pouring forth His Light into the mind of every [soul], He starts it back unto the Blessed Region, where it was before it had become corporal,—following after Him, yearning and led by Him unto the Light.
THOTH THE FIRST MAN
8. And [there] shall it see the Picture that both Bitos hath described, and thrice-great Plato, and ten-thousand-times-great Hermes, for Thōythos translated it into the first sacred tongue,—Thōth the First Man, the Interpreter of all things which exist, and the Name-maker for all embodied things.
THE LIBRARIES OF THE PTOLEMIES
9. The Chaldæans and Parthians and Medes and Hebrews call Him Adam, which is by interpretation virgin Earth, and blood-red Earth, and fiery Earth, and fleshly Earth.
10. And these indications were found in the book-collections of the Ptolemies, which they stored away in every temple, and especially in the Serapeum, when they invited Asenas, the chief priest of Jerusalem, to send a “Hermes,” who translated the whole of the Hebrew into Greek and Egyptian.
11. So the First Man is called by us Thōyth and by them Adam,—not giving His [true] name in the Language of the Angels, but naming Him symbolically according to His Body by the four elements [or letters] out of His whole Sphere, whereas his Inner Man, the spiritual, has [also] both an authentic name and one for common use.
NIKOTHEOS
12. His authentic [name], however, I know not, owing to the so long [lapse of time]; for Nikotheos who-is-not-to-be-found alone doth know these things.
But that for common use is Man (Phōs), from which it follows that men are called phōtas.
FROM THE BOOK OF THE CHALDÆANS
13. “When Light-Man (Phōs) was in Paradise, exspiring under the [presence of] Fate, they persuaded Him to clothe himself in the Adam they had made, the [Adam] of Fate, him of the four elements,—as though [they said] being free from [her] ills and free from their activities.
“And He, on account of this ‘freedom from ills’ did not refuse; but they boasted as though He had been brought into servitude [to them].”
14. For Hesiod said that the outer man was the “bond” by which Zeus bound Prometheus.
Subsequently, in addition to this bond, he sends him another, Pandōra, whom the Hebrews call Eve.
For Prometheus and Epimetheus are one Man, according to the system of allegory,—that is, Soul and Body.
MAN THE MIND
And at one time He bears the likeness of soul, at another of mind, at another of flesh, owing to the imperfect attention which Epimetheus paid to the counsel of Prometheus, his own mind.
15. For our Mind saith:
FRAGMENT XXVII.
For that the Son of God having power in all things, becoming all things that he willeth, appeareth as he willeth to each.
16. Yea, unto the consummation of the cosmos will He come secretly,—nay, openly associating with His own,—counselling them secretly, yea through their minds, to settle their account with their Adam, the blind accuser, in rivalry with the spiritual man of light.
THE COUNTERFEIT DAIMON
17. And these things come to pass until the Counterfeit Daimon come, in rivalry with themselves, and wishing to lead them into error, declaring that he is Son of God, being formless in both soul and body.
But they, becoming wiser from contemplation of Him who is truly Son of God, give unto him 1 his own Adam for death, rescuing their own light spirits for [return to] their own regions where they were even before the cosmos [existed]. . . .
18. And [it is] the Hebrews alone and the Sacred Books of Hermes [which tell us] these things about the man of light and his Guide the Son of God, and about the earthy Adam and his Guide, the Counterfeit, who doth blasphemously call himself Son of God, for leading men astray.
19. But the Greeks call the earthy Adam Epimetheus, who is counselled by his own mind, that is, his brother, not to receive the gifts of Zeus. Nevertheless being both deceived and repenting, and seeking the Blessed Land. . . .
But Prometheus, that is the mind, interprets all things and gives good counsel in all things to them who have understanding and hearing. But they who have only fleshly hearing are “processions of Fate.”
HIS ADVICE TO THEOSEBEIA
To the foregoing we may append a version of Zosimus’ advice to the lady Theosebeia, to which we have already referred, as offering an instructive counterpart to C. H., xiii. (xiv.). After a sally against the “false prophets,” through whom the daimones energize, not only requiring their offerings but also ruining their souls, Zosimus continues:
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“But be not thou, O lady, [thus] distracted, as, too, I bade thee in the actualizing [rites], and do not turn thyself about this way and that in seeking after God; but in thy house be still, and God shall come to thee, He who is everywhere and not in some wee spot as are daimonian things.
“And having stilled thyself in body, still thou thyself in passions too—desire, [and] pleasure, rage [and] grief, and the twelve fates of Death.
“And thus set straight and upright, call thou unto thyself Divinity; and truly shall He come, He who is everywhere and [yet] nowhere.
“And [then], without invoking them, perform the sacred rites unto the daimones,—not such as offer things to them and soothe and nourish them, but such as turn them from thee and destroy their power, which Mambres taught to Solomon, King of Jerusalem, and all that Solomon himself wrote down from his own wisdom.
“And if thou shalt effectively perform these rites, thou shalt obtain the physical conditions of pure birth. And so continue till thou perfect thy soul completely.
“And when thou knowest surely that thou art perfected in thyself, then spurn . . . from thee 1 the natural things of matter, and make for harbour in Pœmandres’ arms, and having dowsed thyself within His Cup, return again unto thy own [true] race.”
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This was how Zosimus understood the teaching of the Trismegistic tradition, for he had experienced it.
(Zosimus flourished somewhere at the end of the third and beginning of the fourth century A.D. He was a member of what Reitzenstein (p. 9) calls the Poimandres-Gemeinde, and, in writing to a certain Theosebeia, a fellow-believer in the Wisdom-tradition, though not as yet initiated into its spiritual mysteries, he urges her to hasten to Poimandres and baptize herself in the Cup. The following quotation is of first importance for the understanding of the Anthrōpos-Doctrine or Myth of Man in the Mysteries.
In one of the Books of his great work distinguished by the letter Omega, and dedicated to Oceanus as the “Genesis and Seed of all the Gods,”—speaking of the uninitiated, those still beneath the sway of the Heimarmenē or Fate, who cannot understand his revelations,—he writes:)
THE PROCESSIONS OF FATE.
1. Such men [our] Hermes, in his “Concerning Nature,” hath called mind-less,—naught but “processions” of Fate,—in that they have no notion of aught of things incorporal, or even of Fate herself who justly leads them, but they blaspheme her corporal schoolings, and have no notion of aught else but of her favours.
“THE INNER DOOR”
2. But Hermes and Zoroaster have said the Race of Wisdom-lovers is superior to Fate, by their neither rejoicing in her favours,—for they have mastered pleasures,—not by their being struck down by her ills,—for ever living at the “Inner Door,” and not receiving from her her fair gift, in that they look unto the termination of [her] ills.
3. On which account, too, Hesiod doth introduce Prometheus counselling Epimetheus, and doth tell him not to take the Gift from Zeus who rules Olympus, but send it back again,—[thus] teaching his own brother through philosophy to return the Gifts of Zeus,—that is, of Fate.
4. But Zoroaster, boasting in knowledge of all things Above, and in the magic of embodied speech, professes that all ills of Fate,—both special [ills] and general [ones],—are [thus] averted.
AGAINST MAGIC
5. Hermes, however, in his “About the Inner Door,” doth deprecate [this] magic even, declaring that:
The spiritual man, [the man] who knows himself, should not accomplish any thing by means of magic, e’en though he think it a good thing, nor should he force Necessity, but suffer [her to take her course], according to her nature and decree; [he should] progress by seeking only, through the knowledge of himself and God, to gain the Trinity that none can name, and let Fate do whate’er she will to her own clay—that is, the body.
FRAGMENT XXVI.
6. And being so minded (he says), and so ordering his life, he shall behold the Son of God becoming all things for holy souls, that he may draw her forth from out the region of the Fate into the Incorporeal [Man].
7. For having power in all, He becometh all things, whatsoever He will, and, in obedience to the Father[’s nod], through the whole Body doth He penetrate, and, pouring forth His Light into the mind of every [soul], He starts it back unto the Blessed Region, where it was before it had become corporal,—following after Him, yearning and led by Him unto the Light.
THOTH THE FIRST MAN
8. And [there] shall it see the Picture that both Bitos hath described, and thrice-great Plato, and ten-thousand-times-great Hermes, for Thōythos translated it into the first sacred tongue,—Thōth the First Man, the Interpreter of all things which exist, and the Name-maker for all embodied things.
THE LIBRARIES OF THE PTOLEMIES
9. The Chaldæans and Parthians and Medes and Hebrews call Him Adam, which is by interpretation virgin Earth, and blood-red Earth, and fiery Earth, and fleshly Earth.
10. And these indications were found in the book-collections of the Ptolemies, which they stored away in every temple, and especially in the Serapeum, when they invited Asenas, the chief priest of Jerusalem, to send a “Hermes,” who translated the whole of the Hebrew into Greek and Egyptian.
11. So the First Man is called by us Thōyth and by them Adam,—not giving His [true] name in the Language of the Angels, but naming Him symbolically according to His Body by the four elements [or letters] out of His whole Sphere, whereas his Inner Man, the spiritual, has [also] both an authentic name and one for common use.
NIKOTHEOS
12. His authentic [name], however, I know not, owing to the so long [lapse of time]; for Nikotheos who-is-not-to-be-found alone doth know these things.
But that for common use is Man (Phōs), from which it follows that men are called phōtas.
FROM THE BOOK OF THE CHALDÆANS
13. “When Light-Man (Phōs) was in Paradise, exspiring under the [presence of] Fate, they persuaded Him to clothe himself in the Adam they had made, the [Adam] of Fate, him of the four elements,—as though [they said] being free from [her] ills and free from their activities.
“And He, on account of this ‘freedom from ills’ did not refuse; but they boasted as though He had been brought into servitude [to them].”
14. For Hesiod said that the outer man was the “bond” by which Zeus bound Prometheus.
Subsequently, in addition to this bond, he sends him another, Pandōra, whom the Hebrews call Eve.
For Prometheus and Epimetheus are one Man, according to the system of allegory,—that is, Soul and Body.
MAN THE MIND
And at one time He bears the likeness of soul, at another of mind, at another of flesh, owing to the imperfect attention which Epimetheus paid to the counsel of Prometheus, his own mind.
15. For our Mind saith:
FRAGMENT XXVII.
For that the Son of God having power in all things, becoming all things that he willeth, appeareth as he willeth to each.
16. Yea, unto the consummation of the cosmos will He come secretly,—nay, openly associating with His own,—counselling them secretly, yea through their minds, to settle their account with their Adam, the blind accuser, in rivalry with the spiritual man of light.
THE COUNTERFEIT DAIMON
17. And these things come to pass until the Counterfeit Daimon come, in rivalry with themselves, and wishing to lead them into error, declaring that he is Son of God, being formless in both soul and body.
But they, becoming wiser from contemplation of Him who is truly Son of God, give unto him 1 his own Adam for death, rescuing their own light spirits for [return to] their own regions where they were even before the cosmos [existed]. . . .
18. And [it is] the Hebrews alone and the Sacred Books of Hermes [which tell us] these things about the man of light and his Guide the Son of God, and about the earthy Adam and his Guide, the Counterfeit, who doth blasphemously call himself Son of God, for leading men astray.
19. But the Greeks call the earthy Adam Epimetheus, who is counselled by his own mind, that is, his brother, not to receive the gifts of Zeus. Nevertheless being both deceived and repenting, and seeking the Blessed Land. . . .
But Prometheus, that is the mind, interprets all things and gives good counsel in all things to them who have understanding and hearing. But they who have only fleshly hearing are “processions of Fate.”
HIS ADVICE TO THEOSEBEIA
To the foregoing we may append a version of Zosimus’ advice to the lady Theosebeia, to which we have already referred, as offering an instructive counterpart to C. H., xiii. (xiv.). After a sally against the “false prophets,” through whom the daimones energize, not only requiring their offerings but also ruining their souls, Zosimus continues:
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“But be not thou, O lady, [thus] distracted, as, too, I bade thee in the actualizing [rites], and do not turn thyself about this way and that in seeking after God; but in thy house be still, and God shall come to thee, He who is everywhere and not in some wee spot as are daimonian things.
“And having stilled thyself in body, still thou thyself in passions too—desire, [and] pleasure, rage [and] grief, and the twelve fates of Death.
“And thus set straight and upright, call thou unto thyself Divinity; and truly shall He come, He who is everywhere and [yet] nowhere.
“And [then], without invoking them, perform the sacred rites unto the daimones,—not such as offer things to them and soothe and nourish them, but such as turn them from thee and destroy their power, which Mambres taught to Solomon, King of Jerusalem, and all that Solomon himself wrote down from his own wisdom.
“And if thou shalt effectively perform these rites, thou shalt obtain the physical conditions of pure birth. And so continue till thou perfect thy soul completely.
“And when thou knowest surely that thou art perfected in thyself, then spurn . . . from thee 1 the natural things of matter, and make for harbour in Pœmandres’ arms, and having dowsed thyself within His Cup, return again unto thy own [true] race.”
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This was how Zosimus understood the teaching of the Trismegistic tradition, for he had experienced it.
JAMBLICHUS
ABAMMON THE TEACHER
The evidence of Jamblichus is of prime importance seeing that it was he who put the Later Platonic School, previously led by the purely philosophical Ammonius, Plotinus and Porphyry, into conscious touch with those centres of Gnosis into which he had been initiated, and instructed it especially in the Wisdom of Egypt in his remarkable treatise generally known by the title On the Mysteries. The authorship of this treatise is usually disputed; but as Proclus, who was in the direct tradition, attributes it to Jamblichus, the probabilities are in favour of its authenticity.
Jamblichus writes with the authority of an accredited exponent of the Egyptian Wisdom as taught in these mysteries, and under the name of “Abammon, the Teacher,” proceeds to resolve the doubts and difficulties of the School with regard to the principles of the sacred science as formulated by Porphyry. Jamblichus begins his task with these significant words:
HERMES THE INSPIRER
“Hermes, the God who is our guide in [sacred] sermons, was rightly held of old as common to all priests. And seeing that it is he who has in charge the real science about the Gods, he is the same in all [our sacred sermons]. And so it was to him that our ancestors attributed all the discoveries of their wisdom, attaching the name of Hermes to all the writings which had to do with such subjects. And if we also enjoy that share of this God which has fallen to our lot, according to our ability [to receive him], thou dost well in submitting certain questions on theology to us priests, as thy friends, for their solution. And as I may fairly suppose that the letter sent to my disciple Anebo was written to myself, I will send thee the true answers to the questions thou hast asked. For it would not be proper that Pythagoras and Plato, and Democritus and Eudoxus, and many others of the ancient Greeks, should have obtained fitting instruction from the recorders of the sacred science of their times, and that thou, our contemporary, who art of a like mind with these ancients, should lack guidance from the now living bearers of the title ‘Common Teachers.’”
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From the above important passage we learn that among the Egyptians the books which dealt technically with the science of sacred things, and especially with the science of the Gods, that is to say, with the nature of the hierarchy from man upwards to the Supreme Ruler of our system, were regarded as “inspired.” The Ray of the Spiritual Sun which illumined the sacred science was distinguished as a Person, and this Person, because of a partial similarity of attributes, the Greeks had long identified with their God Hermes. He was “common” to the priests of the sacred science, that is to say, it was this special Ray of the Spiritual Sun which illumined their studies. Not, however, that all were equally illumined, for there were many grades in the mysteries, many steps up the holy ascent to union with Deity. Now the Rays of the Spiritual Sun are really One Light, “polarised” variously by the “spheres” of which we have heard so much in the Trismegistic treatises. These Rays come forth from the Logos, and each illuminates a certain division of the whole hierarchy of beings from the Logos to man, and characterises further the lower kingdoms, animals and plants, and minerals. Hence, for instance, among animals, we get the ibis, the ape and the dog as being especially sacred to Thoth or Hermes.
THOSE OF THE HERMAÏC NATURE
Among men generally, also, there are certain whose characteristics are of a “Hermaïc” nature; the more evolved of these are adapted to certain lines of study and research, while again among those few of these who are beginning to be really conscious of the science of sacred things, that is to say, among the initiated students or priests, the direct influence of this Ray or Person begins to be consciously felt, by each, as Jamblichus says, according to his ability, for there are still many grades.
Now the peculiar unanimity that prevailed in these strictly hierarchical schools of initiation, and the grand doctrine of identification that ran throughout the whole economy—whereby the pupil became identified with the master when he received his next grade of initiation, and whereby his master was to him the living symbol of all that was above that master, that is to say, was Hermes for him, in that he was the messenger to him of the Word, and was the channel whereby the divine inspiration came to him—rendered the ascription to Hermes of all the sacred scriptures, such as the sermons of initiation, a very natural proceeding. It was not the case of a modern novel-writer taking out a copyright for his own precious productions, but simply of the recorder, scribe or copyist of the sacred science handing on the tradition. As long as this was confined to the disciplined schools of the sacred science it was without danger, but when irresponsible people began to copy a method, to whose discipline they refused to submit, for purposes of edification, and so appended the names of great teachers to their own lucubrations, they paved the way for that chaos of confusion in which we are at present stumbling.
THE BOOKS OF HERMES
Towards the end of his treatise Jamblichus, in treating of the question of the innumerable hierarchies of being and their sub-hierarchies, says that these are so multiplex that they had to be treated by the ancient priests from various aspects, and even among those who were “wise in great things” in his own time the teaching was not one and the same.
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“The main states of being were completely set forth by Hermes (in the twenty thousand books, as Seleucus writes, or in the thirty-six thousand five hundred and twenty-five as Manetho relates), while the sub-states are interpreted in many other writings by the ancients, some of them sub-dividing some of the sub-states and others others.”
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At first sight it would seem that we are not to suppose that it took 20,000 volumes to set forth the main outlines of the cosmic system. Jamblichus would seem to mean that in the library or libraries of the books treating of the sacred science, the general scheme of the cosmos was set forth, and that the details were filled in very variously by many writers, each according to the small portion of the whole he had studied or speculated on. As to the number of books again we should not be dismayed, when we reflect that a book did not mean a large roll or volume but a division or chapter of such a roll. Thus we read of a single man composing no less than 6000 “books”!
But on further reflection this view does not seem satisfactory. The ghost of the very precise number 36,525, which Jamblichus substitutes from Manetho for the vague total 20,000 of Seleucus, refuses to be laid by such a weak-kneed process.
We see at once that 365⋅25 days is a very close approximation to the length of the solar year. We know further that 36,525 years was the sum of 25 Sothiac cycles (1461 × 25 = 36,525), that most sacred time-period of the Egyptian secret astronomy, which was assigned to the revolution of the zodiac or the Great Year. Now supposing after all that Jamblichus does mean that Hermes actually did write the scheme of the cosmos in 36,525 “books” or “chapters”; and supposing further that these “chapters” were not written on papyrus, but in the heavens; and supposing still further that these “chapters” were simply so many great aspects of the real sun, just as the 365⋅25 days were but aspects of the physical sun—in such case the above favourite passage, which every previous writer has referred to actual books superscribed with the name of Hermes, and has dragged into every treatise on the Hermetic writings, will in future have to be removed from the list, and one of the functions of the real Hermes, the Initiator and Recorder, will become apparent to those who are “wise in greater things.”
THE MONAD FROM THE ONE
In the next chapter, after first speaking of the God over all, Jamblichus refers to the Logos, the God of our system, whom he calls “God of gods, the Monad from the One, prior to being and the source of being.” And then continues:
“For from Him cometh the essence of being and being; wherefore is He called Father of being. For He is prior to being, the source of spiritual existences; wherefore also is He called Source of spiritual things. These latter are the most ancient sources of all things, and Hermes places them before the æthereal and empyrean and celestial gods, bequeathing to us a hundred books on the history of the empyrean, and a like number on that of the æthereal, but a thousand of them concerning the celestial.”
I am inclined to think that there is a mistake in the numbers of these books, and that we should have 10 assigned to the first class, 100 to the second, and 1000 to the third. In any case we see that all are multiples of the perfect number 10; and that thus my theory is still supported by the further information that Jamblichus gives us.
THE TRADITION OF THE TRISMEGISTIC LITERATURE
We next come to a passage which deals directly with our Trismegistic literature. Jamblichus tells Porphyry that with the explanations he has already given him, he will be able to find his way in the Hermetic writings which have come into his hands.
“For the books in circulation bearing the name of Hermes contain Hermaïc doctrines, although they often use the language of the philosophers, seeing that they were translated from the Egyptian by men well skilled in philosophy.”
The information given by Jamblichus is precise; they were translations, but instead of a literal rendering, the translators used the usual phraseology of the Greek philosophical writers.
Jamblichus then goes on to say that physical astronomy and physical research generally were but a very small part of the Hermaïc science, by no means the most important.
For “the Egyptians deny that physics are everything; on the contrary they distinguish both the life of the soul and the life of the mind from nature, not only in the case of the cosmos but also in man. They first posit Mind and Reason (Logos) as having a being peculiar to themselves, and then they tell us that the world of becoming [or generation] is created. As Forefather of all beings in generation they place the Creator, and are acquainted with the Life-giving Power which is prior to the celestial spaces and permeates them. Above the universe they place Pure Mind; this for the universe as a whole is one and undivided, but it is variously manifested in the several spheres. And they do not speculate about these things with the unassisted reason, but they announce that by the divine art of their priestly science they reach higher and more universal states [of consciousness] above the [Seven Spheres of] Destiny, ascending to God the Creator, and that too without using any material means, or any other [material] assistance than the observation of a suitable opportunity.
“It was Hermes who first taught this Path. And Bitys, the prophet, translated [his teachings concerning it] for King Ammon, discovering them in the inner temple in an inscription in the sacred characters at Saïs in Egypt. [From these writings it was that Bitys] handed on the tradition of the Name of God, as ‘That which pervadeth the whole universe.’”
“As to the Good Itself [the Egyptians] regard It in Its relation to the Divine as the God that transcends all thought, and in Its relation to man as the at-onement with Him—a doctrine which Bitys translated from the Hermaïc Books.”
From these two passages we learn that the ancient doctrine of Hermes concerning the Path, which is the keynote of our Trismegistic tracts, was to be found either in inscriptions in the sacred script in the secret chambers of the temples, into which no uninitiated person was ever permitted to enter, or in “books,” also in the sacred script; that these had never been translated until the reign of King Ammon But what are we to understand by translated? Into Greek? Not necessarily, but more probably interpreted from the hieroglyphic symbols into the Egyptian vernacular and written in the demotic character. The term used (διερμηνεύειν) clearly bears this sense; whereas if translation from Egyptian into Greek had been intended, we should presumably have had the same word (μεταγράφειν) employed which Jamblichus uses when speaking of the Hermetic books that had been read by Porphyry. Reitzenstein (p. 108), however, has apparently no doubt that the writings of Bitys were in Greek, and that these writings lay before Jamblichus and were the only source of his information. But I cannot be certain that this is the meaning of the Greek.
We have rather, according to my view, probably two strata of “translation”—from hieroglyphic into demotic, from demotic into Greek. As to Bitys, we know nothing more definite than Jamblichus tells us. Perhaps he was the first to translate from the sacred hieroglyphs into the vulgar tongue and script; and by that we mean the first to break the ancient rule and write down in the vulgar characters those holy sermons and treatises which previously had never before been inscribed in any but the most sacred characters. We are not, however, to suppose that Bitys was the only one to do this.
Now in our Trismegistic literature we have a deposit addressed to a King Ammon. Is it then possible that this King, whoever he was, was the initiator of a change of policy in the immemorial practice of the priests? It may be so, but at present we have not sufficient data to decide the point.
BITYS
A further scrap of information concerning Bitys, however, may be gleaned from Zosimus (§ 8), when, speaking of the Logos, the Son of God, pouring His Light into the soul and starting it on its Return Above, to the Blessed Region where it was before it had become corporeal (as described in the Trismegistic tractate, entitled “Concerning the Inner Door”)—he writes:
“And there shall it see the Picture (πίναξ) that both Bitos hath described, and thrice-greatest Plato, and ten-thousand-times-great Hermes,—for Thōythos translated it into the first sacred tongue,—Thōth the First Man.”
The identity of Bitys and Bitos is thus unquestionable. Reitzenstein, however, asserts that neither of these name-forms is Egyptian, and therefore approves of the identification of our Bitys with “Pitys the Thessalian” of the Papyri, as Dieterich has suggested. The headings of the fragments of the writings of Pitys in the Papyri run: “The Way [or Method] of Pitys”; “Pitys to King Ostanes Greeting”; “The Way of Pitys the King”; “Of Pitys the Thessalian.”
From this Reitzenstein (n. 2) concludes that already in the second and third centuries (? A.D.) Pitys is included among the prophetical theologi and Magians. What the precise date of these Papyri may be it is not easy to determine, but, whether or not they belong to the second and third centuries, it is evident that Pitys was regarded as ancient and a contemporary of the Magian Sage Ostanes.
King, referring to a passage of the Elder Pliny (Nat. Hist., xxx. 4), which remarks on the similarity of the Magian Gnosis with the Druidical Gnosis of Gaul and Britain, says: “Pliny by his ‘Magica’ understands the rites instituted by Zoroaster, and first promulgated by Osthanes to the outer world, this Osthanes having been ‘military chaplain’ to Xerxes during his expedition to Greece.”
This date, if we can rely upon it, would take us back to the Persian Conquest of Egypt, but what has a Thessalian Pitys to do with that?
Curiously enough also Pliny in his xxviiith Book makes use of the writings of a certain Bithus of Dyrrachium, a city on the coast of Illyricum in the Ionic Gulf, known in Grecian history as Epidamnus.
All of this is puzzling enough; but whatever conclusions may be drawn from the evidence, the clearest indication is that Bitys was ancient, and therefore that whatever translating or rather “interpreting” there may have been, it was probably from hieroglyphic into demotic, and the latter was subsequently further “interpreted” into Greek.
OSTANES-ASCLEPIUS
But is Ostanes the Magian Sage of tradition, or may we adopt the brilliant conclusion of Maspero, and equate Ostanes with Asclepius, and so place him in the same circle with Bitys, or rather see in Bitys an “Asclepius”?
At any rate the following interesting paragraph of Granger deserves our closest attention in this connection, when he writes:
“Maspero, following Goodwin, has shown that Ostanes is the name of a deity who belongs to the cycle of Thoth. His name, Ysdnw, was derived by the Egyptians themselves from a verb meaning ‘to distinguish’ and he was a patron of intellectual perception. As time went on, he gained in importance. Under the Ptolemies he was often represented upon the Temple walls (l.c.). In Pliny he appears as an early writer upon medicine. Some of the prescriptions quoted as from him are quite in the Egyptian style. Philo Byblius, on whom, to be sure, not much reliance can be placed, mentions a book of Ostanes—the Octateuch. It is tempting to identify this with some such collection as the six medical books which occupy the last place in Clement’s list. Now Pliny, as appears from his list of authorities, does not quote Ostanes directly. If we note that Democritus is mentioned by Pliny in the same context, and that Ostanes is the legendary teacher of Democritus upon his journey to Egypt, we shall consider it at least probable that Pliny depends upon Democritus for his mention of Ostanes. The Philosopher, whose visit to Egypt may be regarded as a historical fact, would in that case be dealing with a medical collection which passes under the name of Ostanes. Asclepius, who appears in the Pœmander, will be the Greek equivalent of Ostanes. Thus the collocation of Hermes and Asclepius is analogous to the kinship of the Egyptian deities, Thoth and Ysdnw.”
FROM THE HERMAÏC WRITINGS
That these Bitys-books contained the same doctrines as our Trismegistic writings is evident from the whole treatise of Jamblichus. Jamblichus throughout bases himself upon the doctrines of Hermes, and clearly suggests that he does not owe his information to translations only, as was the case with Porphyry, but to records in Egyptian; but whether to the demotic treatises of the Bitys-school or to the heiroglyphic records themselves he does not say. That these doctrines were identical with the teachings in our Trismegistic literature requires no proof to any one who has read our treatises and the exposition of Jamblichus; for the benefit, however, of those who have not read Jamblichus, we append a passage to show the striking similarity of ideas. Treating of the question of freewill and necessity raised by Porphyry, and replying to the objection that the Egyptians taught an astrological fatalism, Jamblichus writes:
“We must explain to you how the question stands by some further conceptions drawn from the Hermaïc writings. Man has two souls, as these writings say. The one is from the First Mind, and partakes also of the Power of the Creator, while the other, the soul under constraint, comes from the revolution of the celestial [Spheres]; into the latter the former, the soul that is the Seer of God, insinuates itself at a later period. This then being so, the soul that descends into us from the worlds keeps time with the circuits of these worlds, while the soul from the Mind, existing in us in a spiritual fashion, is free from the whirl of Generation; by this the bonds of Destiny are burst asunder; by this the Path up to the spiritual Gods is brought to birth; by such a life as this is that Great Art Divine, which leads us up to That beyond the Spheres of Genesis, brought to its consummation.”
THE COSMIC SPHERES
With regard to the nature of these Spheres, Jamblichus shows very clearly that they are not the physical planets, as may be seen from the following passages of his De Mysteriis:
“With regard to partial existences, then, I mean in the case of the soul in partial manifestation, 3 we must admit something of the kind we have above. For just such a life as the [human] soul emanated before it entered into a human body, and just such a type as it made ready for itself, just such a body, to use as an instrument, does it have attached to it, and just such a corresponding nature accompanies [this body] and receives the more perfect life the soul pours into it. But with regard to superior existences and those that surround the Source of All as perfect existences, the inferior are set within the superior, bodies in bodiless existences, things made in their makers; and the former are kept in position by the latter enclosing them in a sphere.
“The revolutions of the heavenly Bodies, therefore, being from the first set in the celestial revolutions of the æthereal Soul, for ever continue in this relationship; while the Souls of the [invisible] Worlds, extending to their [common] Mind, are completely surrounded by it, and from the beginning have their birth in it. And Mind in like manner, both partially and as a whole, is also contained in superior states of existence.”
And again in another passage Jamblichus writes:
“We say that [the Spiritual Sun and Moon, and the rest] are so far from being contained within their Bodies, that on the contrary, it is they who contain these Bodies of theirs within the Spheres of their own vitality and energy. And so far are they from tending towards their Bodies, that the tendency of these very Bodies is towards their Divine Cause. Moreover, their Bodies do not impede the perfection of their Spiritual and Incorporeal Nature or disturb it by being situated in it.”
To this we may add what Proclus writes in his Commentary on the Timæus of Plato:
“Each of the [Seven] Planetary Spheres is a complete World containing a number of divine offspring, which are invisible to us, and over all of these Spheres the Star we see is the Ruler. Now Fixed Stars differ from those in the Planetary Spheres in that the former have but one Monad, namely, their system as a whole; while the latter, namely the invisible globes in each of the Planetary Spheres, which globes have an orbit of their own determined by the revolution of their respective Spheres, have a double Monad—namely, their system as a whole, and that dominant characteristic which has been evolved by selection in the several spheres of the system. For since globes are secondary to Fixed Stars they require a double order of government, first subordination to their system as a whole, and then subordination to their respective spheres. And that in each of these spheres there is a host on the same level with each, you may infer from the extremes. For if the Fixed Sphere has a host on the same level as itself, and Earth has a host of earthy animals, just as the former a host of heavenly animals, it is necessary that every whole should have a number of animals on the same level with itself; indeed it is because of the latter fact that they are called wholes. The intermediate levels, however, are outside the range of our senses, the extremes only being visible, the one through the transcendent brilliance of its nature, the other through its kinship with ourselves.”
It is evident that we are here dealing with what are known to Theosophical students as the “planetary chains” of our system, and that therefore these Spheres are not the physical planets; the visible planets are but a very small portion of the globes of these chains, of some of which there are no globes at all visible. The ascription therefore of the “influence” of these Spheres to the sun, moon, and five of the visible planets is at best a makeshift, a “correspondence,” or a “symbolism.”
The evidence of Jamblichus is of prime importance seeing that it was he who put the Later Platonic School, previously led by the purely philosophical Ammonius, Plotinus and Porphyry, into conscious touch with those centres of Gnosis into which he had been initiated, and instructed it especially in the Wisdom of Egypt in his remarkable treatise generally known by the title On the Mysteries. The authorship of this treatise is usually disputed; but as Proclus, who was in the direct tradition, attributes it to Jamblichus, the probabilities are in favour of its authenticity.
Jamblichus writes with the authority of an accredited exponent of the Egyptian Wisdom as taught in these mysteries, and under the name of “Abammon, the Teacher,” proceeds to resolve the doubts and difficulties of the School with regard to the principles of the sacred science as formulated by Porphyry. Jamblichus begins his task with these significant words:
HERMES THE INSPIRER
“Hermes, the God who is our guide in [sacred] sermons, was rightly held of old as common to all priests. And seeing that it is he who has in charge the real science about the Gods, he is the same in all [our sacred sermons]. And so it was to him that our ancestors attributed all the discoveries of their wisdom, attaching the name of Hermes to all the writings which had to do with such subjects. And if we also enjoy that share of this God which has fallen to our lot, according to our ability [to receive him], thou dost well in submitting certain questions on theology to us priests, as thy friends, for their solution. And as I may fairly suppose that the letter sent to my disciple Anebo was written to myself, I will send thee the true answers to the questions thou hast asked. For it would not be proper that Pythagoras and Plato, and Democritus and Eudoxus, and many others of the ancient Greeks, should have obtained fitting instruction from the recorders of the sacred science of their times, and that thou, our contemporary, who art of a like mind with these ancients, should lack guidance from the now living bearers of the title ‘Common Teachers.’”
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From the above important passage we learn that among the Egyptians the books which dealt technically with the science of sacred things, and especially with the science of the Gods, that is to say, with the nature of the hierarchy from man upwards to the Supreme Ruler of our system, were regarded as “inspired.” The Ray of the Spiritual Sun which illumined the sacred science was distinguished as a Person, and this Person, because of a partial similarity of attributes, the Greeks had long identified with their God Hermes. He was “common” to the priests of the sacred science, that is to say, it was this special Ray of the Spiritual Sun which illumined their studies. Not, however, that all were equally illumined, for there were many grades in the mysteries, many steps up the holy ascent to union with Deity. Now the Rays of the Spiritual Sun are really One Light, “polarised” variously by the “spheres” of which we have heard so much in the Trismegistic treatises. These Rays come forth from the Logos, and each illuminates a certain division of the whole hierarchy of beings from the Logos to man, and characterises further the lower kingdoms, animals and plants, and minerals. Hence, for instance, among animals, we get the ibis, the ape and the dog as being especially sacred to Thoth or Hermes.
THOSE OF THE HERMAÏC NATURE
Among men generally, also, there are certain whose characteristics are of a “Hermaïc” nature; the more evolved of these are adapted to certain lines of study and research, while again among those few of these who are beginning to be really conscious of the science of sacred things, that is to say, among the initiated students or priests, the direct influence of this Ray or Person begins to be consciously felt, by each, as Jamblichus says, according to his ability, for there are still many grades.
Now the peculiar unanimity that prevailed in these strictly hierarchical schools of initiation, and the grand doctrine of identification that ran throughout the whole economy—whereby the pupil became identified with the master when he received his next grade of initiation, and whereby his master was to him the living symbol of all that was above that master, that is to say, was Hermes for him, in that he was the messenger to him of the Word, and was the channel whereby the divine inspiration came to him—rendered the ascription to Hermes of all the sacred scriptures, such as the sermons of initiation, a very natural proceeding. It was not the case of a modern novel-writer taking out a copyright for his own precious productions, but simply of the recorder, scribe or copyist of the sacred science handing on the tradition. As long as this was confined to the disciplined schools of the sacred science it was without danger, but when irresponsible people began to copy a method, to whose discipline they refused to submit, for purposes of edification, and so appended the names of great teachers to their own lucubrations, they paved the way for that chaos of confusion in which we are at present stumbling.
THE BOOKS OF HERMES
Towards the end of his treatise Jamblichus, in treating of the question of the innumerable hierarchies of being and their sub-hierarchies, says that these are so multiplex that they had to be treated by the ancient priests from various aspects, and even among those who were “wise in great things” in his own time the teaching was not one and the same.
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“The main states of being were completely set forth by Hermes (in the twenty thousand books, as Seleucus writes, or in the thirty-six thousand five hundred and twenty-five as Manetho relates), while the sub-states are interpreted in many other writings by the ancients, some of them sub-dividing some of the sub-states and others others.”
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At first sight it would seem that we are not to suppose that it took 20,000 volumes to set forth the main outlines of the cosmic system. Jamblichus would seem to mean that in the library or libraries of the books treating of the sacred science, the general scheme of the cosmos was set forth, and that the details were filled in very variously by many writers, each according to the small portion of the whole he had studied or speculated on. As to the number of books again we should not be dismayed, when we reflect that a book did not mean a large roll or volume but a division or chapter of such a roll. Thus we read of a single man composing no less than 6000 “books”!
But on further reflection this view does not seem satisfactory. The ghost of the very precise number 36,525, which Jamblichus substitutes from Manetho for the vague total 20,000 of Seleucus, refuses to be laid by such a weak-kneed process.
We see at once that 365⋅25 days is a very close approximation to the length of the solar year. We know further that 36,525 years was the sum of 25 Sothiac cycles (1461 × 25 = 36,525), that most sacred time-period of the Egyptian secret astronomy, which was assigned to the revolution of the zodiac or the Great Year. Now supposing after all that Jamblichus does mean that Hermes actually did write the scheme of the cosmos in 36,525 “books” or “chapters”; and supposing further that these “chapters” were not written on papyrus, but in the heavens; and supposing still further that these “chapters” were simply so many great aspects of the real sun, just as the 365⋅25 days were but aspects of the physical sun—in such case the above favourite passage, which every previous writer has referred to actual books superscribed with the name of Hermes, and has dragged into every treatise on the Hermetic writings, will in future have to be removed from the list, and one of the functions of the real Hermes, the Initiator and Recorder, will become apparent to those who are “wise in greater things.”
THE MONAD FROM THE ONE
In the next chapter, after first speaking of the God over all, Jamblichus refers to the Logos, the God of our system, whom he calls “God of gods, the Monad from the One, prior to being and the source of being.” And then continues:
“For from Him cometh the essence of being and being; wherefore is He called Father of being. For He is prior to being, the source of spiritual existences; wherefore also is He called Source of spiritual things. These latter are the most ancient sources of all things, and Hermes places them before the æthereal and empyrean and celestial gods, bequeathing to us a hundred books on the history of the empyrean, and a like number on that of the æthereal, but a thousand of them concerning the celestial.”
I am inclined to think that there is a mistake in the numbers of these books, and that we should have 10 assigned to the first class, 100 to the second, and 1000 to the third. In any case we see that all are multiples of the perfect number 10; and that thus my theory is still supported by the further information that Jamblichus gives us.
THE TRADITION OF THE TRISMEGISTIC LITERATURE
We next come to a passage which deals directly with our Trismegistic literature. Jamblichus tells Porphyry that with the explanations he has already given him, he will be able to find his way in the Hermetic writings which have come into his hands.
“For the books in circulation bearing the name of Hermes contain Hermaïc doctrines, although they often use the language of the philosophers, seeing that they were translated from the Egyptian by men well skilled in philosophy.”
The information given by Jamblichus is precise; they were translations, but instead of a literal rendering, the translators used the usual phraseology of the Greek philosophical writers.
Jamblichus then goes on to say that physical astronomy and physical research generally were but a very small part of the Hermaïc science, by no means the most important.
For “the Egyptians deny that physics are everything; on the contrary they distinguish both the life of the soul and the life of the mind from nature, not only in the case of the cosmos but also in man. They first posit Mind and Reason (Logos) as having a being peculiar to themselves, and then they tell us that the world of becoming [or generation] is created. As Forefather of all beings in generation they place the Creator, and are acquainted with the Life-giving Power which is prior to the celestial spaces and permeates them. Above the universe they place Pure Mind; this for the universe as a whole is one and undivided, but it is variously manifested in the several spheres. And they do not speculate about these things with the unassisted reason, but they announce that by the divine art of their priestly science they reach higher and more universal states [of consciousness] above the [Seven Spheres of] Destiny, ascending to God the Creator, and that too without using any material means, or any other [material] assistance than the observation of a suitable opportunity.
“It was Hermes who first taught this Path. And Bitys, the prophet, translated [his teachings concerning it] for King Ammon, discovering them in the inner temple in an inscription in the sacred characters at Saïs in Egypt. [From these writings it was that Bitys] handed on the tradition of the Name of God, as ‘That which pervadeth the whole universe.’”
“As to the Good Itself [the Egyptians] regard It in Its relation to the Divine as the God that transcends all thought, and in Its relation to man as the at-onement with Him—a doctrine which Bitys translated from the Hermaïc Books.”
From these two passages we learn that the ancient doctrine of Hermes concerning the Path, which is the keynote of our Trismegistic tracts, was to be found either in inscriptions in the sacred script in the secret chambers of the temples, into which no uninitiated person was ever permitted to enter, or in “books,” also in the sacred script; that these had never been translated until the reign of King Ammon But what are we to understand by translated? Into Greek? Not necessarily, but more probably interpreted from the hieroglyphic symbols into the Egyptian vernacular and written in the demotic character. The term used (διερμηνεύειν) clearly bears this sense; whereas if translation from Egyptian into Greek had been intended, we should presumably have had the same word (μεταγράφειν) employed which Jamblichus uses when speaking of the Hermetic books that had been read by Porphyry. Reitzenstein (p. 108), however, has apparently no doubt that the writings of Bitys were in Greek, and that these writings lay before Jamblichus and were the only source of his information. But I cannot be certain that this is the meaning of the Greek.
We have rather, according to my view, probably two strata of “translation”—from hieroglyphic into demotic, from demotic into Greek. As to Bitys, we know nothing more definite than Jamblichus tells us. Perhaps he was the first to translate from the sacred hieroglyphs into the vulgar tongue and script; and by that we mean the first to break the ancient rule and write down in the vulgar characters those holy sermons and treatises which previously had never before been inscribed in any but the most sacred characters. We are not, however, to suppose that Bitys was the only one to do this.
Now in our Trismegistic literature we have a deposit addressed to a King Ammon. Is it then possible that this King, whoever he was, was the initiator of a change of policy in the immemorial practice of the priests? It may be so, but at present we have not sufficient data to decide the point.
BITYS
A further scrap of information concerning Bitys, however, may be gleaned from Zosimus (§ 8), when, speaking of the Logos, the Son of God, pouring His Light into the soul and starting it on its Return Above, to the Blessed Region where it was before it had become corporeal (as described in the Trismegistic tractate, entitled “Concerning the Inner Door”)—he writes:
“And there shall it see the Picture (πίναξ) that both Bitos hath described, and thrice-greatest Plato, and ten-thousand-times-great Hermes,—for Thōythos translated it into the first sacred tongue,—Thōth the First Man.”
The identity of Bitys and Bitos is thus unquestionable. Reitzenstein, however, asserts that neither of these name-forms is Egyptian, and therefore approves of the identification of our Bitys with “Pitys the Thessalian” of the Papyri, as Dieterich has suggested. The headings of the fragments of the writings of Pitys in the Papyri run: “The Way [or Method] of Pitys”; “Pitys to King Ostanes Greeting”; “The Way of Pitys the King”; “Of Pitys the Thessalian.”
From this Reitzenstein (n. 2) concludes that already in the second and third centuries (? A.D.) Pitys is included among the prophetical theologi and Magians. What the precise date of these Papyri may be it is not easy to determine, but, whether or not they belong to the second and third centuries, it is evident that Pitys was regarded as ancient and a contemporary of the Magian Sage Ostanes.
King, referring to a passage of the Elder Pliny (Nat. Hist., xxx. 4), which remarks on the similarity of the Magian Gnosis with the Druidical Gnosis of Gaul and Britain, says: “Pliny by his ‘Magica’ understands the rites instituted by Zoroaster, and first promulgated by Osthanes to the outer world, this Osthanes having been ‘military chaplain’ to Xerxes during his expedition to Greece.”
This date, if we can rely upon it, would take us back to the Persian Conquest of Egypt, but what has a Thessalian Pitys to do with that?
Curiously enough also Pliny in his xxviiith Book makes use of the writings of a certain Bithus of Dyrrachium, a city on the coast of Illyricum in the Ionic Gulf, known in Grecian history as Epidamnus.
All of this is puzzling enough; but whatever conclusions may be drawn from the evidence, the clearest indication is that Bitys was ancient, and therefore that whatever translating or rather “interpreting” there may have been, it was probably from hieroglyphic into demotic, and the latter was subsequently further “interpreted” into Greek.
OSTANES-ASCLEPIUS
But is Ostanes the Magian Sage of tradition, or may we adopt the brilliant conclusion of Maspero, and equate Ostanes with Asclepius, and so place him in the same circle with Bitys, or rather see in Bitys an “Asclepius”?
At any rate the following interesting paragraph of Granger deserves our closest attention in this connection, when he writes:
“Maspero, following Goodwin, has shown that Ostanes is the name of a deity who belongs to the cycle of Thoth. His name, Ysdnw, was derived by the Egyptians themselves from a verb meaning ‘to distinguish’ and he was a patron of intellectual perception. As time went on, he gained in importance. Under the Ptolemies he was often represented upon the Temple walls (l.c.). In Pliny he appears as an early writer upon medicine. Some of the prescriptions quoted as from him are quite in the Egyptian style. Philo Byblius, on whom, to be sure, not much reliance can be placed, mentions a book of Ostanes—the Octateuch. It is tempting to identify this with some such collection as the six medical books which occupy the last place in Clement’s list. Now Pliny, as appears from his list of authorities, does not quote Ostanes directly. If we note that Democritus is mentioned by Pliny in the same context, and that Ostanes is the legendary teacher of Democritus upon his journey to Egypt, we shall consider it at least probable that Pliny depends upon Democritus for his mention of Ostanes. The Philosopher, whose visit to Egypt may be regarded as a historical fact, would in that case be dealing with a medical collection which passes under the name of Ostanes. Asclepius, who appears in the Pœmander, will be the Greek equivalent of Ostanes. Thus the collocation of Hermes and Asclepius is analogous to the kinship of the Egyptian deities, Thoth and Ysdnw.”
FROM THE HERMAÏC WRITINGS
That these Bitys-books contained the same doctrines as our Trismegistic writings is evident from the whole treatise of Jamblichus. Jamblichus throughout bases himself upon the doctrines of Hermes, and clearly suggests that he does not owe his information to translations only, as was the case with Porphyry, but to records in Egyptian; but whether to the demotic treatises of the Bitys-school or to the heiroglyphic records themselves he does not say. That these doctrines were identical with the teachings in our Trismegistic literature requires no proof to any one who has read our treatises and the exposition of Jamblichus; for the benefit, however, of those who have not read Jamblichus, we append a passage to show the striking similarity of ideas. Treating of the question of freewill and necessity raised by Porphyry, and replying to the objection that the Egyptians taught an astrological fatalism, Jamblichus writes:
“We must explain to you how the question stands by some further conceptions drawn from the Hermaïc writings. Man has two souls, as these writings say. The one is from the First Mind, and partakes also of the Power of the Creator, while the other, the soul under constraint, comes from the revolution of the celestial [Spheres]; into the latter the former, the soul that is the Seer of God, insinuates itself at a later period. This then being so, the soul that descends into us from the worlds keeps time with the circuits of these worlds, while the soul from the Mind, existing in us in a spiritual fashion, is free from the whirl of Generation; by this the bonds of Destiny are burst asunder; by this the Path up to the spiritual Gods is brought to birth; by such a life as this is that Great Art Divine, which leads us up to That beyond the Spheres of Genesis, brought to its consummation.”
THE COSMIC SPHERES
With regard to the nature of these Spheres, Jamblichus shows very clearly that they are not the physical planets, as may be seen from the following passages of his De Mysteriis:
“With regard to partial existences, then, I mean in the case of the soul in partial manifestation, 3 we must admit something of the kind we have above. For just such a life as the [human] soul emanated before it entered into a human body, and just such a type as it made ready for itself, just such a body, to use as an instrument, does it have attached to it, and just such a corresponding nature accompanies [this body] and receives the more perfect life the soul pours into it. But with regard to superior existences and those that surround the Source of All as perfect existences, the inferior are set within the superior, bodies in bodiless existences, things made in their makers; and the former are kept in position by the latter enclosing them in a sphere.
“The revolutions of the heavenly Bodies, therefore, being from the first set in the celestial revolutions of the æthereal Soul, for ever continue in this relationship; while the Souls of the [invisible] Worlds, extending to their [common] Mind, are completely surrounded by it, and from the beginning have their birth in it. And Mind in like manner, both partially and as a whole, is also contained in superior states of existence.”
And again in another passage Jamblichus writes:
“We say that [the Spiritual Sun and Moon, and the rest] are so far from being contained within their Bodies, that on the contrary, it is they who contain these Bodies of theirs within the Spheres of their own vitality and energy. And so far are they from tending towards their Bodies, that the tendency of these very Bodies is towards their Divine Cause. Moreover, their Bodies do not impede the perfection of their Spiritual and Incorporeal Nature or disturb it by being situated in it.”
To this we may add what Proclus writes in his Commentary on the Timæus of Plato:
“Each of the [Seven] Planetary Spheres is a complete World containing a number of divine offspring, which are invisible to us, and over all of these Spheres the Star we see is the Ruler. Now Fixed Stars differ from those in the Planetary Spheres in that the former have but one Monad, namely, their system as a whole; while the latter, namely the invisible globes in each of the Planetary Spheres, which globes have an orbit of their own determined by the revolution of their respective Spheres, have a double Monad—namely, their system as a whole, and that dominant characteristic which has been evolved by selection in the several spheres of the system. For since globes are secondary to Fixed Stars they require a double order of government, first subordination to their system as a whole, and then subordination to their respective spheres. And that in each of these spheres there is a host on the same level with each, you may infer from the extremes. For if the Fixed Sphere has a host on the same level as itself, and Earth has a host of earthy animals, just as the former a host of heavenly animals, it is necessary that every whole should have a number of animals on the same level with itself; indeed it is because of the latter fact that they are called wholes. The intermediate levels, however, are outside the range of our senses, the extremes only being visible, the one through the transcendent brilliance of its nature, the other through its kinship with ourselves.”
It is evident that we are here dealing with what are known to Theosophical students as the “planetary chains” of our system, and that therefore these Spheres are not the physical planets; the visible planets are but a very small portion of the globes of these chains, of some of which there are no globes at all visible. The ascription therefore of the “influence” of these Spheres to the sun, moon, and five of the visible planets is at best a makeshift, a “correspondence,” or a “symbolism.”
JULIAN THE EMPEROR
Text: ap. Cyril, Contra Julianum, v. 176; Migne, col. 770 A. See also Neumann (C. I.), Juliani Imperatoris Librorum contra Christianos quæ supersunt (Leipzig, 1880), p. 193.
THE DISCIPLES OF WISDOM
That God, however, has not cared for the Hebrews only, [but rather] that in His love for all nations He hath bestowed on them [sc. the Hebrews] nothing worth very serious attention, whereas He has given us far greater and superior gifts, consider from what will follow. The Egyptians, counting up of their own race the names of not a few sages, can also say they have had many who have followed in the steps of Hermes. I mean of the Third Hermes who used to come down [to them] in Egypt. The Chaldæans [also can tell of] the [disciples] of Oannes and of Belus; and the Greeks of tens of thousands [who have the Wisdom] from Cheiron. For it is from him that they derived their initiation into the mysteries of nature, and their knowledge of divine things; so that indeed [in comparison] the Hebrews seem only to give themselves airs about their own [attainments].
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Here we learn from Julian that the Third Hermes, the Hermes presumably of our Sermons, was known, by those initiated into the Gnosis, to be no physical historical Teacher, but a Teaching Power or Person, who taught from within spiritually.
THE DISCIPLES OF WISDOM
That God, however, has not cared for the Hebrews only, [but rather] that in His love for all nations He hath bestowed on them [sc. the Hebrews] nothing worth very serious attention, whereas He has given us far greater and superior gifts, consider from what will follow. The Egyptians, counting up of their own race the names of not a few sages, can also say they have had many who have followed in the steps of Hermes. I mean of the Third Hermes who used to come down [to them] in Egypt. The Chaldæans [also can tell of] the [disciples] of Oannes and of Belus; and the Greeks of tens of thousands [who have the Wisdom] from Cheiron. For it is from him that they derived their initiation into the mysteries of nature, and their knowledge of divine things; so that indeed [in comparison] the Hebrews seem only to give themselves airs about their own [attainments].
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Here we learn from Julian that the Third Hermes, the Hermes presumably of our Sermons, was known, by those initiated into the Gnosis, to be no physical historical Teacher, but a Teaching Power or Person, who taught from within spiritually.
FULGENTIUS THE MYTHOGRAPHER
An intermediate of the parent copy of our Corpus in every probability lay before Fulgentius. Thus we find him (p. 26, 18 H) referring to the first sermon, though barbarously enough, in the phrase: “Hermes in Opinandre libro,” and quoting from the introductory words; he also quotes (p. 88, 3) some words from C. H., xii. (xiii.), stupidly referring them to Plato, adding in Greek:
FRAGMENT XXVIII.
The human mind is god; if it be good, God [then] doth shower His benefits [upon us].
And twice (p. 85, 21, and p. 74, 11) Fulgentius refers in all probability to the lost ending of “The Definitions of Asclepius,” in the latter passage telling us, “as Hermes Trismegistus says,” that there were three kinds of music,—namely “adomenon, psallomenon, aulumenon,”—that is, singing, harping, and piping.
FRAGMENT XXVIII.
The human mind is god; if it be good, God [then] doth shower His benefits [upon us].
And twice (p. 85, 21, and p. 74, 11) Fulgentius refers in all probability to the lost ending of “The Definitions of Asclepius,” in the latter passage telling us, “as Hermes Trismegistus says,” that there were three kinds of music,—namely “adomenon, psallomenon, aulumenon,”—that is, singing, harping, and piping.
