Hellenic · Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. III · 17 of 20
Excerpt XXVII: From the Sermon of Isis to Horus (Part 1)
Commentary
Argument
Title and Ordering
The Watery Sphere and Subtle Body
The Habitat of Encarnate Souls
II. REFERENCES AND FRAGMENTS IN THE FATHERS
I. JUSTIN MARTYR
i.
The Most Ancient of Philosophers
The “Words of Ammon”
The Ineffability of God
ii.
Hermes and Asclepius Sons of God
iii.
Hermes the Word who brings Tidings from God
The Sons of God in Hellenistic Theology
An Unverifiable Quotation
II. ATHENAGORAS
III. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
i.
Many Hermeses and Asclepiuses
ii.
The Apotheosis of Hermes and Asclepius
iii.
The Books of Hermes
The General Catalogue of the Egyptian Priestly Library
IV. TERTULLIAN
i.
Hermes the Master of all Physics
ii.
Hermes the Writer of Scripture
iii.
Hermes the First Preacher of Reincarnation
iv.
Hermes on Metempsychosis
Frag. I.
V. CYPRIAN
God is beyond all Understanding
VI. ARNOBIUS
The School of Hermes
VII. LACTANTIUS
i.
Thoyth-Hermes and his Books of the Gnosis
Frag. II.
The Historical Origin of the Hermetic Tradition
ii.
Uranus, Cronus and Hermes, Adepts of the Perfect Science
iii.
Divine Providence
iv.
On Mortal and Immortal Sight
Frag. III.
v.
Man made after the Image of God
vi.
Hermes the First Natural Philosopher
vii.
The Daimon-Chief
viii.
Devotion in God-Gnosis
Frag. IV.
ix.
The Cosmic Son of God
Frag. V.
x.
The Demiurge of God
xi.
The Name of God
Frag. VI.
xii.
The Holy Word about the Lord of All
Frag. VII.
xiii.
His Own Father and Own Mother
xiv.
The Power and Greatness of the Word
xv.
The Fatherless and Motherless
xvi.
Piety the Gnosis of God
xvii.
The Only Way to Worship God
xviii.
The Worthiest Sacrifice to God
Frag. VIII.
xix.
Man made in the Image of God
xx.
Contemplation
xxi.
The Dual Nature of Man
Frag. IX.
Wonder the Beginning of Philosophy
xxii.
The Cosmic Restoration
Frag. X.
xxii.
Of Hermes and his Doctrine Concerning God
xxiv.
A Repetition
xxv.
Plato as Prophet follows Trismegistus
VIII. AUGUSTINE
i.-iii.
Three Quotations from the Old Latin Version of the “Perfect Sermon”
IX. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA
i.
Cyril’s Corpus of XV. Books
ii.
The Incorporeal Eye
Frag. XI.
iii.
The Heavenly Word Proceeding Forth
Frag. XII.
The Pyramid
Frag. XIII.
The Nature of God’s Intellectual World
Frag. XIV.
The Word of the Creator
Frag. XV.
iv.
Mind of Mind
Frag. XVI.
He is All
Frag. XVII.
Concerning Spirit
Frag. XVIII.
The “To Asclepius” of Cyril’s Corpus
v.
From “The Mind”
vi.
Osiris and Thrice-greatest Agathodaimon
Frag. XIX.
“Let there be Earth!”
Frag. XX.
The Generation of the Sun
Frag. XXI.
“Let the Sun be!”
Frag. XXII.
vii.
The Firmament
Frag. XXIII.
viii.
From the “To Asclepius”
ix.
The Sole Protection
x.
The Supreme Artist
Frag. XXIV.
xi.
An Unreferenced Quotation
Frag. XXV.
X. SUIDAS
Hermes speaks of the Trinity
An Orphic Hymn
XI. ANONYMOUS
III. REFERENCES AND FRAGMENTS IN THE PHILOSOPHERS
I. ZOSIMUS
On the Anthrōpos-Doctrine
The Processions of Fate
“The Inner Door”
Against Magic
Frag. XXVI.
Thoth the First Man
The Libraries of the Ptolemies
Nikotheos
From the Books of the Chaldæans
Man the Mind
Frag. XXVII.
The Counterfeit Daimon
His Advice to Theosebeia
II. JAMBLICHUS
Abammon the Teacher
Hermes the Inspirer
Those of the Hermaïc Nature
The Books of Hermes
The Monad from the One
The Tradition of the Trismegistic Literature
Bitys
Ostanes-Asclepius
From the Hermaïc Workings
The Cosmic Spheres
III. JULIAN THE EMPEROR
The Disciples of Wisdom
IV. FULGENTIUS THE MYTHOGRAPHER
Frag. XXVIII.
IV. CONCLUSION
An Attempt at Classifying the Extant Literature
Of Hermes
To Tat
To Asclepius
To Ammon
Of Asclepius
Of Isis
From the Agathodaimon Literature
Of Judgments of Value
The Sons of God
Concerning Dates
The Blend of Traditions
Of Initiation
A Last Word
V. INDEX
Gnosticism and Hermetica
Excerpts by Stobæus
EXCERPT I.
OF PIETY AND [TRUE] PHILOSOPHY
(Title from Patrizzi (p. 4); preceded by “Of Thrice-greatest Hermes.”
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. 1
Ménard, Livre IV., No. i. of “Fragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,” pp. 225-230.)
1. 2 Her. Both for the sake of love to man, and piety 3 to God, I [now], my son, for the first time take pen in hand. 4
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, 1 son! Who pious is, doth reach the height of [all] philosophy 2; 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
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, 4 ’tis filled with wondrous love, 5 and
with forgetfulness 1 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, 2 too, did set their feet, and, setting them, did find the Good. 3
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, 4—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 1 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 2; but if the one be worsted, ’tis harried by the two, and driven about, being tortured by the life down here.
This 3 is, [my] son, the one who leadeth thee upon the Thither 4 Path.
Thou must, [my] son, first leave behind thy body, 5 before the end [of it 6 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 7; 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 1 for ever, for ever also is destroyed 2; 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. 3
The Cosmos, for man’s sake; and man, for God’s.
The soul’s irrational part 4 is mortal; its rational part, immortal.
All essence [is] immortal; all essence, free from change.
All that exists 5 [is] twofold; naught of existing things remains.
Not all are moved by soul; the soul moves all that doth exist. 6
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 1; 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 2 in man.
The reason’s in the mind; the mind’s above all suffering.
Nothing in body’s true 3; 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. 4
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] 5 is the good law; good law’s the law.
Time’s for the gods; the law for men. 1
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. 2
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. 3
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, 1 [returns; and what returns] departs [again]. 2
14. Of things existent, some are in bodies, some in forms, and some [are] in activities. 3
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 4 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 1 [is] God’s Order; Necessity[’s] handmaiden to Fore-knowledge.
Fortune[’s] 2 the course of the disorderly,—the image of activity, 3 untrue opinion.
What, [then] is God? The Good that naught can change.
What, man? The bad that can be changed. 4
16. If thou rememberest these heads, 5 thou wilt remember also what I have already set forth for thee with greater wealth of words. For these are summaries 6 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. 7
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. 8
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-knowledge 1 and by Necessity, Fate ruling all,—in no long time it would grow worse than it is now, 2 [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.
COMMENTARY
Patrizzi thought so highly of this excerpt that he chose it for Book I. of his collection. He, however, erroneously made the persons of the dialogue Asclepius and Tat, instead of Hermes and Tat—an unaccountable
mistake, in which he has been followed by all the editors of Stobæus except Wachsmuth.
In the introduction the treatise purports to be a letter written to Tat,—a new departure, for it is “for the first time”; on the other hand the form of the treatise is the usual one of oral instruction, of question and answer (§ 2). Nevertheless in § 16 we learn that the definitions given in §§ 7-15 are intended as heads or summaries of previous sermons.
But already in C. H., x. (xi.) 1, we have an abridgment or epitome (or rather a summation) of the General Sermons delivered to Tat, just as we have in C. H., xvi., “the summing up and digest, as it were, of all the rest’’ of the Sermons of Asclepius to the King, under the traditional title, “The Definitions of Asclepius.” The headings in our sermon, then, may probably have been intended for the summary of the teaching of the Expository Sermons to Tat (see in Cyril, Frag. xv.). Some of our definitions, however, are strikingly similar to those in C. H., x. (xi.), but this may be accounted for by supposing that “The Key” itself was one of, or rather the continuation of, the Expository Sermons. 1
The warning to use great discretion in communicating the instruction to the “many,” because of the danger of teaching the Gnosis to the morally unfit, seems to be an appropriate ending to the sermon; we may then be fairly confident that we have in the above a complete tractate of “The [? Expository] Sermons to Tat”; the title, however, is the invention of Patrizzi, and not original.
Footnotes
3:1 G. = Gaisford (T.), Joannis Stobæi Florilegium (Oxford, 1822), 4 vols.; Io. Stob. Ec. Phys. et Ethic. Libri Duo (Oxford, 1850), 2 vols.
M. = Meineke (A.), Joh. Stob. Flor. (Leipzig, 1855, 1856), 3 vols.; Joh. Stob. Ec. Phys. et Ethic. Lib. Duo (Leipzig, 1860), 2 vols.
W. = Wachsmuth (C.), Io. Stob. Anthologii Lib. Duo Priores . . . Ec. Phys. et Ethic. (Berlin, 1884), 2 vols.
H. = Hense (O.), I. Stob. Anth. Lib. Tert. (Berlin, 1894), 1 vol., incomplete.
3:2 I have numbered the paragraphs in all the excerpts for convenience of reference.
3:3 εὐσεβείας,—it might also be rendered by worship.
3:4 τόδε συλλράφω.
4:1 Or give worship unto God,—εὐσέβει.
4:2 In its true sense of wisdom-loving.
4:3 ἐπιτρόπῳ πιστῷ.
4:4 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 3, Comment.
4:5 Cf. P. S. A., ix. 1; xii. 3.
5:1 Where λήθη (forgetfulness) is opposed to ἔρως (love),—that is to say, reminiscence, the secret of the μάθησις (mathēsis) of the Pythagoreans, the knowledge of the Author of our being or of our “race” within,—ψυχὴ μαθοῦσα ἑαυτῆς τὸν προπάτορα (cf. Ex. iii. 6).
5:2 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 5; P. S. A., xi. 4; xxxvii. 3; Lact., D. I., i. 11.
5:3 Cf. C. H., xi. (xii.) 21.
5:4 The “one” is the rational element (τὸ λογικόν) and the “two” are the passional (τὸ θυμικόν) and desiderative (τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν) elements of the irrational nature (τὸ ἄλογον, or τὸ αἰσθητὸν as below), the “heart” and the “appetite.” Cf. Ex. xvii.; see also “Orphic Psychology” in my Orpheus (London, 1896), pp. 273-275.
6:1 Lit. of the two.
6:2 That is, the one.
6:3 Sc. the one.
6:4 ἐκεῖσε—that is, to the Good and True, or God.
6:5 Cf. Ex. ix. 12.
6:6 Sc. the Path.
6:7 Or summarily; cf. § 16 below.
7:1 Or is born.
7:2 Or dies.
7:3 πρῶτον ὁ θεὸς, δεύτερον ὁ κόσμος, τρίτον ὁ ἄνθρωπος. Cf. P. S. A., x.: “The Lord of the Eternity (Æon) is the first God; second is Cosmos; man’s the third.”
7:4 Lit. sensible part,—τὸ αἰσθητόν.
7:5 πᾶν τὸ ὄν,—as opposed to οὐσία. (essence).
7:6 The meaning of ex-istence, being the coming out of pure being into the state of becoming.
8:1 Or animal; perhaps this and the following interjection are glosses.
8:2 ὁ λογισμός,—perhaps a mistake for λόγος, as Patrizzi has it.
8:3 Or real.
8:4 But see § 15 below; and cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 12.
8:5 The text is faulty; as is also apparently that of the following sentence. None of the conjectures yet put forward are satisfactory.
9:1 Or time is divine, the law is man’s.
9:2 I have not adopted W.’s lengthy emendations.
9:3 This is the idea of sempiternity—of things which have a beginning but no end.
10:1 Or dies.
10:2 There is a lacuna in the text.
10:3 Or energies.
10:4 Lit. go.
10:5 Lit. comes.
11:1 Or Providence. Cf. P. S. A., xxxix. 2; § 17 below; and Ex. xi. 1.
11:2 τύχη.
11:3 Or energy.
11:4 Reading τρεπτὸν for the hopeless ἄτρεπτον of the text. Cf. 11 above.
11:5 Cf. § 7 above.
11:6 περιοχαί.
11:7 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 13 and 22.
11:8 Cf. P. S. A., xxii. 1.
12:1 Or Providence; cf. § 15 above.
12:2 Lit. than itself.
13:1 Cf. R. (p. 128), who calls them a “Collection of Sayings of Hermes.”
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT II.
[OF THE INEFFABILITY OF GOD]
(I have added the title, the excerpt not being found in Patrizzi.
Text: Stob., Flor., lxxx. [lxxviii.] 9, under the heading: “Of Hermes from the [Book] to Tat”; G. iii. 135; M. iii. 104, 105. 1
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.
COMMENTARY
Justin Martyr quotes these opening words of our excerpt verbatim, assigning them to Hermes (Cohort., 38; Otto, ii. 122). 1
The substance of the second sentence is given twice by Lactantius in Latin (Div. Institt., ii. 8; Ep. 4); in the second passage the Church Father also quotes verbatim the first sentence of our excerpt, and from his introductory words we learn that they were the beginning of a written sermon from Hermes to his son (Tat).
The first four sentences are also quoted in almost identical words (there being two variants of reading and two slight additions) by Cyril,—Contra Julianum, i. 31 (Migne, col. 549 B), who, moreover, gives some additional lines, beginning (Frag. xi.): “If, then, there be an incorporeal eye,” etc.
If, furthermore, we are right in supposing that Frag. xv. (Cyril, ibid., i. 33) is from the same sermon, then this sermon is the “First Sermon of the Expository [Sermons] to Tat,” and the Stobæan heading, “From the [Book] to Tat,” will mean the collection of Expository Sermons (see Comment, on Frag. xv.).
Footnotes
14:1 Hense’s text ends with xlii. 17; the second part has apparently never been published.
14:2 Or think of.
15:1 Which see for Commentary under “Fragments.”
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT III.
OF TRUTH
(Title from Patrizzi (p. 46b), preceded by: “Of Thrice-greatest Hermes to Tat.”
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 1 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, 2—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 2 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,
[paragraph continues] —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. 2
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. 1 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. 2
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, 1 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 2 is not true. “Man’s” an appearance. And appearance is extreme untruth.
6. [Tat.] But these external bodies, 3 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 4 [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, 1 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 2 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 3; 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 4 as the Demiurge for birth-and-death 5 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 1 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. 2
COMMENT
The excerpt seems complete in itself, but whether it lay before Stobæus as a single sermon or as a part of a sermon it is impossible to say.
Footnotes
17:1 σκῆνος. Cf. Ex. vii. 3 note, and also § 5 below.
17:2 Or real.
18:1 Compare Lact., D. I., ii. 12.
18:2 That is, Truth’s.
19:1 This presumably refers to the simple elements of things in themselves.
19:2 τὴν θεοπτικὴν . . . δύναμιν.
20:1 Taking ἐνθάδε with the preceding clause.
20:2 Cf. § 1 above.
21:1 Lit. becoming.
21:2 Neuter, that is, the series of temporary appearances of the true man.
21:3 The heavenly bodies presumably.
21:4 τοῦ προπάτορος; cf. Ex. i. 3.
22:1 Cf. Ex. vii. 2, and § 7 below.
22:2 Or perishing.
22:3 Or are corrupted, or perish.
22:4 That is, the Sun; cf. § 6 above.
22:5 Lit. genesis.
23:1 Lit. manhood’s.
23:2 Or operation; ἐνέργημα.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT IV.
[GOD, NATURE AND THE GODS]
(Patrizzi (p. 51b) gives no title; but simply the heading “In Another [Book].”
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, 1—beyond all things existent, and all that really are.
For That-transcending-being is [that mystery] because of which exists that being-ness 2 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. 3
And Nature is an essence which the senses can perceive, containing in itself all sensibles.
2. Between these 1 are the intelligible 2 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. 4
COMMENT
I have supplied the title for the sake of uniformity. If we compare our extract with Ex. vii, and especially the last sentence of the former with the first sentence of § 2 of the latter, and note that in Stobæus the one excerpt follows almost immediately on the other, we shall be fairly well persuaded that they both come from the same collection—namely, the Sermons to Tat.
Footnotes
24:1 Or the pre-existent; τὸ πρὸ ὄν, or τὸ προόν.
24:2 οὐσιότης; or essentiality.
24:3 This seems to refer to the seven spheres of difference or otherness (κατὰ τὸ ἕτερον) moving symbolically against, or “crosswise with,” the all-embracing sphere of sameness (καθ᾽ ἑαυτό); or it may mean that they have a sameness in the fact that their motions enter into themselves “again.”
25:1 Presumably God and Nature.
25:2 νοηματικοί,—a very rare form, and may possibly mean perceptible.
25:3 νοημάτων.
25:4 Or spirits. The last clause, “and regulates,” etc., is absent from some MSS., and is, therefore, considered spurious by some editors; but its unexpectedness is a strong guarantee of its genuineness. The “spirits” are the prāṇa’s of Hindu physiological psychology; cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 13, Comment., and Exs. xv. 2, xix. 3.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT V
[OF MATTER]
(I have added the title, it being the same as that of the main section of Stobæus, Patrizzi (p. 51) giving only the simple heading “From the [Sermons] to Tat.”
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, 1 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 1 of Matter, then, was formlessness 2; its genesis is its being brought into activity.
Footnotes
26:1 Or receptacle or field of genesis, or birth (ἀγγεῖον γενέσεως). The idea of a vessel or vase of birth was a familiar symbol with the Pythagoreans; μεταγγισμός (from the simile of pouring water out of one vessel into another) being one of their synonyms for metempsychosis.
27:1 ἀγεννησία
27:2 ἀμορφία. Compare this with the Christian Gnostic commentator of the Naassene Document, quoted by Hippolytus (Philos. v. 7), and the comment of Hippolytus on him: “Their first and Blessed Formless Essence (ἀσχημάτιστος οὐσία), the cause of all forms” (“Myth of Man,” § 7).
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT VI.
OF TIME
(Title from Patrizzi (p. 38b); followed by: “To the Same Tat.”
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. 1
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, 1 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 in-stant (ἐνεστώς), 2 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 3 in their sameness, and their oneness, and their continuity.
Thus, [then], time’s both continuous and discontinuous, though one and the same [time].
Footnotes
28:1 That is, apparently, you cannot think of the present until it is already past.
29:1 That is, apparently, “present.”
29:2 The usual term in Greek for “present,” but I have here translated it by “instant” in order to keep the word-play, which would otherwise entirely vanish in translation.
29:3 That is, apparently, any one without the other two, or any two without the other one.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT VII.
OF BODIES EVERLASTING [AND BODIES PERISHABLE]
(Title (first half) from Patrizzi (p. 45b), followed by “To the Same Tat.”
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, 1 however, who is [himself already] in a body, 2 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 3 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, 4 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. 1
Wherefore the body, too, feels keen delight in sleep, for it is sleep that brings this [feeling of] delight into activity.
COMMENT
Patrizzi’s title is by no means descriptive of the main contents of the excerpt, which is evidently from the Sermons of Hermes to Tat, and from the same collection of these from which Stobæus has taken the previous two extracts,—that is, presumably, the Expository Sermons.
Footnotes
31:1 That is, the Demiurge of our bodies, which are not everlasting.
31:2 The Sun, perhaps; cf. C. H., xvi. 18; and Ex., iii. 6 and iv. 2; and Lact., D. I., iv. 6.
31:3 σωματώσεως,—cf. Ex. viii. 5.
31:4 Sc. the elements.
32:1 σκῆνος,—used by Plato (ap. Clem. Alex., 703), and the Pythagoreans (Timæus Locr., 100 A, 101, C, E), and the Later Platonists, for the body as the tabernacle of the soul. See especially the response of the Oracle at Delphi, when consulted concerning the state of the soul of Plotinus after death, as quoted by Porphyry in his Life of Plotinus: “But now since thou hast struck thy tent, and left the tomb of thy angelic soul” (see my “Lives of the Later Platonists” in The Theosophical Review (July, 1896), xviii. 372. Cf. Ex. iii. 1 and 5; and C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 12 and 15.
32:2 Added by Heeren to complete the sense.
33:1 Cf. C. H., xvi. 7, note.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT VIII.
OF ENERGY AND FEELING
(Title from Patrizzi (p. 44); preceded by “Of Thrice-greatest Hermes.”
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 1 that science and that art do constitute the rational’s energy. 2
But now thou say’st that the irrational lives, 3 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. 1
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 2 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,
[paragraph continues] [others another thing], science and art being active 1 [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, 2 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” 3 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, 1 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, 2 co-operate with the soul’s rational part.
But all these energies depend on bodies. From godly 3 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. 1
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, 2 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. 3
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,
[paragraph continues] —stocks, stones, 1 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 2 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 3 for aye in its own self, it bears existent things,—[things] that shall never cease from being destroyed again. 4
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 1 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. 2
For that the feelings 3 follow on the energies or rather are completions 4 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. 1
Moreover, passion and sensation depend from one [same] head, 2 and they are gathered up again into the same, and that, too, by the energies.
14. Of lives 3 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 4 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 5 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 1 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.
COMMENT
Again, as with the last excerpt, the earlier editions of Stobæus have Asclepius and Tat as the persons of
the dialogue instead of Hermes and Tat. Wachsmuth gives them correctly.
The second sentence is of great interest, for it refers us presumably to C. H., x. (xi.), 22: “God’s rays, to use a figure, are his energies; the Cosmos’s are natures; the arts and sciences are man’s.” Seeing, however, that “The Key” is an Epitome of the General Sermons to Tat, the statement may also have been made in one of these sermons.
In either case the existence of these General Sermons is presupposed, and, therefore, it may be that our excerpt is, again, one of the Expository Sermons to Tat.
The beginning of the Sermon has clearly been omitted by Stobæus, and apparently the end also.
Footnotes
34:1 That is in some previous sermon.
34:2 Action or operation,—ἐνέργειαν εἶναι τοῦ λογικοῦ. Cf. § 11 below.
34:3 Or animals.
35:1 καὶ τὰ ἀέρια ζῶα ὁμοίως καλιὰς ἑαυτοῖς συντιθέντα, τὰ δὲ τετράποδα γνωρίζοντα τοὺς φωλεοὺς τοὺς ἰδίους. Compare Matt. viii. 20 = Luke ix. 58 (word for word): αἱ ἀλώπεκες φωλεοὺς ἔχουσιν καὶ τὰ πετεινὰ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ κατασκηνώσεις—“The foxes have holes and the birds of the air nests.” The first and third Evangelists here copy verbally from their “Logia” source.
35:2 Or energized.
36:1 Or energizing.
36:2 Lit. energize.
36:3 σωμάτωσιν,—cf. Ex. vii. 2; cf. also the ψύχωσις of K. K., 9.
37:1 That is, if it goes on continually.
37:2 κατὰ μεταβολὴν τῆς ἡλικίας,—generally supposed to be the seventh year. Compare the apocryphal logos: “He who seeks me shall find me in children from the age of seven years”—quoted by the Christian Overwriter of the Naassene Document from the Gospel according to Thomas (Hipp., Philos., v. 7; § 7 in “Myth of Man”).
37:3 Or divine,—the bodies of the Gods, the heavenly bodies, or the spiritual and immortal bodies of the soul.
38:1 συνεστάναι μὲν σῶμα χωρὶς ψυχῆς οὐ δύναται, τὸ δὲ εἶναι δύναται,—“its being” presumably refers to the abstract “bodying” (σωμάτωσις) referred to above.
38:2 Lit. this body.
38:3 Sc. dissolution and disappearance.
39:1 Cf. Naassene Document, § 4, and § 13 below.
39:2 Or activity.
39:3 Or conceived.
39:4 Reading αὖθις for αὐτοῦ, with Heeren.
40:1 Or feelings.
40:2 ἐνεργημάτων,—cf. § 1 above.
40:3 Or sensations.
40:4 Or effects—ἀποτελέσματα.
42:1 Cf. § 8 above, and note.
42:2 ἀπὸ μιᾶς κορυφῆς ἤρτηνται. Compare this with Plato, Phædo, i. 60 B, where Socrates speaks of the pleasant and the painful as “two (bodies) hanging from one head” (ἐκ μιᾶς κορυφῆς συνημμένω).
42:3 Or animals.
42:4 That is, the sensation of pleasure and pain.
42:5 Sc. by contrast.
43:1 That is, soul and energies.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT IX.
OF [THE DECANS AND] THE STARS
(Patrizzi (p. 38b) does not give the first third of the text (§§ 1-5), and his title, “Of the Stars,” is evidently incomplete; it is followed by “To the Same [i.e. Tat].”
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 1), [father,] thou didst promise me an explanation of the Six-and-thirty Decans, 2 explain, I prithee, now concerning them and their activity. 3
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, 1 of the Five Planets, and of Sun and Moon, and of the Circle 2 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 3 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 1 share the motion of the Planetary Spheres, and [yet] have equal powers with the [main] motion of the Whole, 2 crosswise 3 the Seven.
They’re 4 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 5 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,
[paragraph continues] —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 1; nor are they kept away from 2 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 3 upon us?
Her. The greatest, O [my] son. For if they act in 4 them, 5 how should they fail to act on us as well,—both on each one of us and generally? 6
Thus, O [my] son, of all those things that happen generally, the bringing into action 7 is from these 8; 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. 1
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 2 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 3 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. 4
7. Further the Stars 1 in heaven as well do in their several [courses] bear them 2 underworkers 3; and they 4 have ministers and warriors 5 too.
And they 6 in [everlasting] congress with them 7 speed on their course in æther floating, fullfilling [all] its 8 space, so that there is no space above empty of stars.
They are the cosmic engine of the universe, 9 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 10 with souls, and hosts of [lesser] lives that spoil the fruit.
8. And under them 11 is what is called the
[paragraph continues] Bear, 1—just in the middle of the Circle of the Animals, 2 composed of seven stars, and with another corresponding [Bear] 3 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 4 to the Life-producing Circle, 5 and handing over this whole universe from night to day, from day to night.
And after this 6 there is another choir of stars, to which we have not thought it proper to give names; but they who will come after us, 7 in imitation, will give them names themselves. 8
9. Again, below the Moon, are other stars, 9 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, 1 which owe their birth to her extravagance. 2
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], 3 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 4 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 5 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. 1
11. Such is the nature of the stars. The stars, however, differ from the star-groups. 2
The stars are they which sail 3 in heaven; the star-groups, on the contrary, are fixed in heaven’s frame, 4 and they are borne along together with the heaven,—Twelve out of which we call the Zōdia. 5
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 6 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? 1
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.
COMMENTARY
The earlier editors of Stobæus (apparently following the mistake of Patrizzi) have Asclepius instead of Tat as the second person of the dialogue, which is clearly wrong according to the text itself (see the first sentence given to Hermes, and §§ 9 and 10). 2
The excerpt is from a sermon in the Collection to Tat. It belongs to the further explanation of things referred to only generally in the General Sermons; it is, therefore, again probably from one of the Expository Sermons, in which series already a sermon has been given on the Zodiacal Twelve and on the Seven Spheres.
Seeing also that it is stated that this sermon is “most authoritative and the chiefest of them all,” we must suppose that it came at the end of one of the Books of the Expository Sermons.
We seem to have the beginning of the sermon, but not the end, for Stobæus breaks off in an aimless and provoking fashion in the midst of a subject.
For a list of the Egyptian names of the Decans, with their Greek transcriptions and symbols, see Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 304-308.
Footnotes
45:1 ἐν τοῖς ἔμπροσθεν γενικοῖς λόγοις. Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 1 and 7; xiii. (xiv.) 1; and Ex. xviii. 1.
45:2 These are the “Horoscopes” of P. S. A., xix. 3. Cf. also Origen, C. Cels., viii. 58; R. 225, n. 1.
45:3 Or energy.
46:1 The zodiac; περὶ τοῦ ζωδιακοῦ κύκλου ἢ τοῦ ζωοφόρου,—of which the second member is probably a gloss; but see § 8 below.
46:2 Or sphere.
46:3 Or body.
47:1 That is, the Decans.
47:2 Or Universe.
47:3 This refers to the astronomical system underlying the Pythagoreo-Platonic tradition, as, for instance, set forth allegorically and symbolically by Plato in the famous passage in The Timæus (36 B, C). “The entire compound he (the Demiurge) divided lengthways into two parts, which he joined to one another at the centre like the letter X, and bent them into a circular form, connecting them with themselves and each other at the point opposite to their original meeting point; and, comprehending them in a uniform revolution upon the same axis, he made the one the outer and the other the inner circle. Now the motion of the outer circle he called the motion of the same, and the motion of the inner circle the motion of the other or diverse” (Jowett’s Translation, iii. 454, 455). The X symbolizes the “crosswise,” which in terms of motion may be translated as “inverse to.”
47:4 Sc. the Decans.
47:5 The Decans.
48:1 Referring, presumably, to the fixed stars and the planets.
48:2 Reading ἀπὸ for ὑπὸ,—referring to eclipses.
48:3 Or energy.
48:4 Or energize.
48:5 That is, the Seven Spheres.
48:6 The rest of the fragment is also found in Patrizzi (p. 38b) under the title “Of the Stars.”
48:7 Or energy.
48:8 Sc. the Decans.
49:1 Cf. C. H., xvi. 10.
49:2 τὺπος. The question concerning the spiritual and other spaces and their inhabitants, “Of what type are they?”—occurs with great frequency in the Bruce and Askew Gnostic Codices.
49:3 Or energies.
49:4 ὅτι καὶ εἰς τὴν γῆν σπερματίζουσιν ἃς καλοῦσί τάνας, τὰς μὲν σωτηρίους, τὰς δὲ ὀλεθριώτατας. Neither Patrizzi nor Gaisford, nor Meineke, nor Wachsmuth, nor Ménard, has a word to say on this most interesting passage. I would suggest in the first place that the text is faulty, and that we should read “οὓς καλοῦσι Τάνας, τοὺς μὲν σωτηρίους, τοὺς δὲ ὀλεθριωτάτους”; and in the second that Τάνας is a shortened form of Τιτᾶνας or Titans. Τάνας (? from Τᾶν) is connected with ταναός, “stretched out,” from √ταν, just as Τιτὰν is connected with τιταίνω,—Τιτᾶνες thus signifying the Stretchers or Strivers. It may, however, also be connected with τίτας (τίτης)—from τίνω, and so mean Avengers. Cf. J. Laurent. Lydus, De Mensibus, iv. 31 (W. 90, 24), as given in note to P. S. A., xxviii. 1.
50:1 The planetary spheres, presumably.
50:2 Sc. the Decans.
50:3 ὑπολειτουργούς—a ἅπαξ λεγόμενον. The term λειτουργοί, however, is of frequent occurrence in the Askew and Bruce Codices. See, for instance, Pistis Sophia (Schwartze’s Trans.), p. 10: “Atque δεκανοι ἀρχοντων eorumque λειτουργοι”
50:4 The Decans.
50:5 στρατιώτας—soldiers; one of the most famous of the degrees of the Mithriac mysteries was that of the Soldier. See Cumont (F.), Textes et Monuments Figurés relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra (Bruxelles; 1899), i. 315, and especially 317, n. 1.
50:6 The Star-spheres.
50:7 The Decans.
50:8 Æther’s.
50:9 συγκοσμοῦντες τὸ πᾶν.
50:10 Or animals.
50:11 The Decans.
51:1 The Great Bear. Compare “Behold the Bear up there that circles round the Pole.”
51:2 The zodiac.
51:3 The Little Bear.
51:4 Lit. energy.
51:5 Cf. § 1 above.
51:6 Sc. the Bear.
51:7 Cf. P. S. A., xii. 3; xiv. 1.
51:8 That is, apparently, invent them out of their own heads haphazard.
51:9 Referring, presumably, to the phenomena of “shooting stars.”
52:1 παρακολουθήματα—sequellæ.
52:2 See the same idea in Plutarch, De Is. et Os., iv. 5, concerning lice.
52:3 The comets—τῶν καλουμένων κομετῶν.
52:4 ἀποτελεσμάτων.
52:5 Lit. below.
53:1 μάντεις, seers or diviners.
53:2 ἀστέρες δὲ ἄστρων διαφορὰν ἔχουσιν. The ἀστέρες are the planets, aerolites and comets; the ἄστρα are the sidera, signs of the fixed stars or constellations.
53:3 Or float (αἰωρούμενοι), lit. are raised aloft.
53:4 Or body.
53:5 The zodiac; lit. the animal signs, or signs of lives.
53:6 Cf. Ex. i. 6.
54:1 Or body.
54:2 Ménard and Wachsmuth have Tat. For other changes of a similar nature cf. Exx. i. and viii., and C. H., ii. (iii.), and xvii.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT X.
[CONCERNING THE RULE OF PROVIDENCE, NECESSITY AND FATE]
(Title in Patrizzi (p. 38), “Of Fate,” simply; followed by “From the [Sermons] to Tat.”
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 1; it thus is colourless, figureless, massless, 2 proceeding out of the First Essence in itself, sensed by the mind alone. 3
And there are also, [secondly,] in us, opposed
to this, 1 configurings, 2—of which this serves as the receptacle. 3
But what has once been set in motion by the Primal 4 Essence for some [set] purpose of the Reason (Logos), and that has been conceived 5 [by it], straightway doth change into another form of motion; this is the image of the Demiurgic Thought. 6
2. And there is [also] a third species of incorporals, which doth eventuate round bodies,—space, time, [and] motion, figure, surface, 7 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. 1
The latter with the former have no part.
3. The Intelligible Essence, then, in company with God, 2 has power o’er its own self, and [power] to keep 3 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. 4
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.
COMMENT
I have taken the title from the concluding words, which are evidently the end of the sermon. Stobæus thus seems to have reproduced the whole of this little tractate, which should be read in connection with Exx. xi., xii. and xiii. C. H., xii. (xiii.) 6 (see Commentary), seems to presuppose this sermon.
Footnotes
55:1 Or an intelligible something.
55:2 Or bodiless.
55:3 That is, the intelligible essence.
56:1 Sc. of opposite nature to the first incorporal, as negative to positive, say.
56:2 σχηματότητες—that is, the “somethings” more subtle or ideal than figures or shapes,—types, or prototypes, or paradigms of some kind.
56:3 That is, plays the part of matter, “womb,” or “nurse” to these.
56:4 Lit. intelligible.
56:5 Or received.
56:6 Or Mind. Heeren (as also all editors subsequent to him) thinks that something has here fallen out of the text, because he finds no second incorporal specifically mentioned; but the duality of the demiurgic thought, active and passive, creative and conceptive, will do very well for the second.
56:7 Or appearance.
57:1 The distinction seems to be between colour, form, etc., “in itself,” and differentiated colours, forms, etc.
57:2 πρὸς τῷ θεῷ γενομένη.
57:3 Or save, preserve.
57:4 This sentence seems to be corrupt.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT XI.
[OF JUSTICE]
(I have added the title, the excerpt not being found in Patrizzi.
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 1 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. 1
’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. 3
COMMENT
The title and place of this excerpt has been discussed in the Commentary on C. H., xii. (xiii.) 6. It belongs to the Tat-Sermons, and in the collection of Lactantius probably stood prior to the Sermon of Hermes to Tat, “About the General Mind.” 4
Footnotes
58:1 Or Providence. Cf. Ex. i. 15, note.
59:1 This recalls Philo’s description of the Therapeuts, who were “taught ever more and more to see,” and strive for the “intuition” or “sight of that which is,”—τῆς τοῦ ὄντος θέας (Philo, D. V. C., 891 P., 473 M.).
59:2 That is, through the natural accidents that attend life in a body.
59:3 That is, in their way of living—ἐν τῷ βίω.
59:4 Compare with it Exx. x., xii., xiii.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT XII.
OF PROVIDENCE AND FATE
(Title from Patrizzi (p. 38); followed by: “From the [Sermons] to Ammon.”
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 1 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 2 do minister.
For Fate no one is able to escape, nor keep himself from their 3 shrewd scrutiny. 4
For that the Stars are instruments of Fate; it is at its behest that they effect all things for nature and for men. 5
Footnotes
60:1 αὐτοτελὴς λόγος,—complete in itself.
60:2 That is, the Seven Spheres.
60:3 Sc. of the Stars.
60:4 δεινότητος.
60:5 With this extract compare Exx. x., xi., xiii.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT XIII.
OF THE WHOLE ECONOMY
(Patrizzi (p. 38) gives no title, but only the heading: “To the Same Ammon (Αμμωνα).”
Text: Stob., Phys., v. 16, under sub-heading: “Of the Whole Economy,” followed by: “Of Hermes from the [Sermons] to Ammon (Ἀμοῦν 1)”; 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, 2 is Providence; what holdeth it together and encircleth it about, is [called] Necessity; what drives all on and drives them round, 3 is Fate, bringing Necessity to bear on them (for that its nature is the bringing into play of [this] Necessity); [it 4 is] the cause of birth and death 5 of life.
So, then, the Cosmos is beneath the sway of
[paragraph continues] Providence 1 (for ’tis the first to meet with it); but Providence [itself] 2 extends itself to Heaven.
For which cause, 3 too, the Gods revolve, and speed round [Heaven], 4 possessed of tireless, never-ceasing motion.
But Fate [extends itself in Cosmos]; for which cause, too, Necessity [encompasses the Cosmos]. 5
And Providence foreknows; but Fate’s the reason of the disposition of the Stars. 6
Such is the law that no one can escape, by which all things are ordered. 7
Footnotes
61:1 The only place in which this form occurs in Stobæus; cf. v. 20, and xxxv. 4, 7, 8.
61:2 Or Cosmos.
61:3 Or makes them to revolve
61:4 Fate—εἱμαρμένη.
61:5 Or destruction.
62:1 Lit. “first has Providence.” The following words in parentheses seem to be the gloss of a scribe who was puzzled by the sentence. Usener, however, would detect a lacuna after the parentheses and the beginning of a new excerpt after that, and Wachsmuth agrees with him. This seems to me to be unnecessary.
62:2 That is, pure Providence unmixed with Necessity and Fate.
62:3 That is, because of Providence, the law of heaven.
62:4 αὐτόν.
62:5 The text is hopeless, being simply: εἱμαρμένη δὲ, διότι καὶ ἀνάγκη.
62:6 That is, the Seven Spheres.
62:7 Cf. Exx. x., xi., xii.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT XIV.
OF SOUL [I.]
(Title from Patrizzi (p. 40); preceded by “Of Thrice-greatest Hermes,” and followed by “To the Same Ammon.”
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
Footnotes
64:1 Or thinking according to essence,—ἡ κατ’ οὐσίαν νόησις.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT XV.
[OF SOUL, II.]
(Patrizzi (p. 40) runs this on to the preceding without a break.
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 1 Power, the other that according to [its] Operation. 2
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 1 of all things supplies the things produced with [power of re-] production, sowing the seeds of its own self, [and] having its becomings 2 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 3 was excessively dried up, 4 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, 5—hot with cold, [and] dry with moist.
And from the union 6 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, 1 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 2 [only], the Harmony composed the latter as the receptacle 3 of rational life. 4
This [life] is indivisible and changeless; it never changes from its changelessness.
It 5 ruleth the conception of the thing within the womb, by means of numbers, delivereth it, and bringeth it into the outer air.
The Soul 6 dwells very near to it 7;—not owing to some common property, but under the constraint of Fate; for that it has no love to be with body. 8
Wherefore, [the Harmony 9] according unto Fate doth furnish to the thing that’s born [its] 10
rational motion, and the intellectual essence of the life itself.
For that [this 1] doth insinuate itself into the spirit, and set it moving with the motion of the life. 2
COMMENTARY
Patrizzi is evidently at fault in running this on to Ex. xiv. without a break. The subject again is not so much “Of Soul” as “Of Conception and Birth,” but as the general exposition falls in very well with the nature of the subjects treated in Exx. xiv. and xvi., we may keep the same general title, though we may be quite certain that it was not that of the original.
The exposition in § 2 is reminiscent of an apocalyptic style, and seems to be a Greek overworking of Egyptian ideas; for though the details are different and the precise meaning difficult to disentangle, the general point of view may be compared with the embryonic stages of incarnation given in the Pistis Sophia (pp. 344 ff.).
THE EMBRYONIC STAGES OF INCARNATION
“Then the Rulers summon the workmen of their æons, to the number of three hundred and sixty-five, and hand over to them the soul and the counterfeit of the spirit bound together, the one to the other, the counterfeit of the spirit being outside the soul, and the
compound of the power within the soul being inside both, that they may hold together.
“(345) And the Rulers give commandment to the workmen, saying: ‘This is the type which ye shall set in the body of the matter of the world. Set ye the compound of the power which is in the soul within all of them, that they may hold together, for it is their support, and outside the soul place the counterfeit of the spirit.’ This is the order which they have given to their workmen, that they may set the antitypes in bodies.
“Following this plan the workmen of the Rulers bring the power, the soul and the counterfeit of the spirit, and pour them all three into the world, passing through the world of the Rulers of the Midst.
“The Rulers of the Midst also inspect the counterfeit of the spirit and also the destiny. The latter, whose name is the destiny, leadeth on a man until it hath him killed by the death which is destined for him. This the Rulers of the Great Fate have bound to the soul.
“And the workmen of the Sphere bind the soul with the power, with the counterfeit of the spirit and with the destiny. And the whole is divided so as to form two parts, to surround the man and also the woman in the world, in whom the sign hath been set for them to be sent unto them. (346) And they give one part to the man and the other to the woman in the food of the world, either in the aery, or watery, or etheric substance which they imbibe. . . .
“Now, therefore, when the workmen of the Rulers have cast one part into the woman and the other into the man in the manner which I have just related, even though [the pair] be removed to a great distance from one another, the workmen compel them secretly to be
united together in the union of the world. Then the counterfeit of the spirit which is in the male cometh unto the part [of itself] which hath been sent into the world in the matter of the body [of the man], and sacrificeth it and casteth it into the womb of the woman, a deposit of the seed of iniquity. And forthwith the three hundred and sixty-five workmen of the Rulers enter into her, to take up their abode in her. The workmen of the two parts are all there together.
“(347) And the workmen check the blood that cometh from all the nourishment that the woman eateth or drinketh, and keep it in the womb of the woman for forty days. And after forty days, they work the blood [that cometh] from the essence of all the nourishment, and work it together carefully in the woman’s womb.
“After forty days they spend another thirty days in building its members in the likeness of the body of a man; each buildeth a member. I will tell you of the decans who thus build [the body] . . . when I explain the emanation of the plērōma.
“Afterwards, when the workmen have completed the body entirely with all its members in seventy days, they summon into the body which they have builded, first the counterfeit of the spirit, next they summon the soul within those, and finally they summon the compound of the power within the soul, and the destiny they place outside all, for it is not blended with them, but followeth after and accompanieth them.”
(An elaborate account of the “sealing” of the members of the plasm is then given.)
“And when the number of the months of the child’s conception is full, the babe is born, the compound of the power being small in it, the soul being small in it, and the counterfeit of the spirit being small in it;
whereas the destiny, being vast, is not mingled with the body, according to the regulation of the three (350), but followeth after the soul, the body and the counterfeit of the spirit, until the soul passeth from the body according to the type of death whereby he shall die according to what hath been decreed unto him by the Rulers of the Great Fate.”
Footnotes
65:1 Sc. Nature’s.
65:2 Or energy.
66:1 φύσις simply; but as there is a play in the original on the words φύσις, φύουσα, φυήν, and φυομένοις, I have tried to retain it in translation by a series of allied words.
66:2 γενέσεις.
66:3 Sc. Fire.
66:4 περιξηραινομένου.
66:5 Or law of Harmony,—κατὰ τὸν τῆς ἁρμονίας λόγον.
66:6 Lit. “breathing with one breath,”—ἐκ τῆς συμπνοίας—a wordplay on πνεῦμα (spirit). For “spirit,” cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 13, Comment., and Exx. xix. 3; iv. 2.
67:1 Or image of a figure,—εἴδωλον . . . σχήματος.
67:2 τὴν δὲ βραστικήν.
67:3 Or vehicle,—ὑποδοχήν.
67:4 τῦς διανοητικῆς ζωῆς,—of the purposive rational life, otherwise called the Harmony.
67:5 Sc. the Harmony.
67:6 Reading ψυχὴ for ψυχῇ.
67:7 The new-born babe.
67:8 Compare Plutarch, Frag., v. 9 (ed. Didot): “For you should know the intercourse and the conjunction of the soul with body is contrary to nature.”
67:9 It is not easy to disentangle the subjects of some of the above clauses.
67:10 Sc. the thing’s.
68:1 Sc. the rational movement.
68:2 ζωτικῶς,—this may perhaps have some reference to the circle of lives, or the zodiac.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT XVI.
[OF SOUL, III.]
(I have added the title, Patrizzi (p. 40b) having only the heading: “To the Same Ammon.”
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. 1
For every body needeth being; it needeth also ordered life 2 as well.
For that for every thing that comes to birth, 3 change also must succeed. 4
For that which doth become, 5 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, 1 it 2 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 3 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, 4 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 1 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 2 makes it fit according to the ruling Star 3 in the star-mixture.
And Soul receiving it, 4 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.
Footnotes
72:1 Or of saving itself.
72:2 ζωῆς τῆς ἐν τάξει κειμένης,—lit. life set, or placed, in order (as distinguished from intellectual life), that is, presumably, sensible or cosmic life.
72:3 Or has becoming, or genesis.
72:4 Or follow.
72:5 Or is born.
73:1 εἴδους ζωῆς,—that is, formal life, or life set in order.
73:2 Sc. body, or that which comes to birth.
73:3 ζῶον (subs.) according to Gaisford,—that is, an animal; but I prefer ζωόν (adj.), taking it with the following λογικὸν and θνητόν.
73:4 Or animal.
74:1 κοῦφος (mas.),—the subject is, therefore, man, the rational animal.
74:2 Sc. Nature.
74:3 Or, presumably, planetary sphere.
74:4 Sc. the body-compost.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT XVII.
[OF SOUL, IV.]
(Patrizzi (p. 41) runs this on to the preceding without a break.
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.” 1
“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] 1 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, 2 however, is the penetrating essence of all thought, 3 its self by its own self, [working] in its own reason that doth think round everything, 4 with its own reason as its rule. 5
It is the essence that doth lead and guide as ruler; its reason is as ’twere its counsellor who thinks about all things. 6
3. The reason of the essence, then, is gnosis of those reasonings which furnish the irrational [part] with reasoning’s conjecturing, 7—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. 8
Footnotes
75:1 In a metaphorical sense,—θυμὸν καὶ ἐπιθυμία; terms originally belonging to a primitive stage of culture, and often translated “anger and concupiscence”—positive and negative, denoting the “too much” and the “too little” of the animal nature, and to he paralleled with the νοῦς and ἐπίνοια of the rational nature. Cf. Ex. i. 5 and xviii. 3.
76:1 Sc. virtues,—courage and temperance.
76:2 Sc. two virtues.
76:3 ἡ διανοητικὴ οὐσία,—that is, the essence which penetrates, or pervades, all things by means of thought.
76:4 ἐν τῷ αὐτῆς περινοητικῷ λόγῳ.
76:5 Or power, or ruling principle.
76:6 ὁ περινοητικός.
76:7 εἰκασμόν.
76:8 διάνοια.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT XVIII.
[OF SOUL, V.]
(Patrizzi (p. 41) runs this on to the last without a break.
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 1 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 1 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. 2
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 1 enters in a mortal frame, they 2 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 3 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.
COMMENT
The mention of the General Sermons (§ 1) raises the question as to whether or no our extract may not be from one of the Sermons to Tat, for in all other cases these General Sermons are referred to in the Tat-literature. The contents, however, are so similar to the extracts from the Sermons to Ammon that we keep this excerpt with them.
Footnotes
77:1 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 1 and 7; xiii. (xiv.) 1; and Ex. ix. 1.
77:2 Or energies.
78:1 The former is here the body; the latter, the motion of waxing and waning.
78:2 Cf. Ex. xvii.
79:1 Sc. the divine part.
79:2 The irrational parts.
79:3 The other kinds presumably operating in bodies from within.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT XIX.
[OF SOUL, VI.]
(Patrizzi (p. 41b) runs this on to the last without a break.
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 1 the reason of itself; and when it thinks with 2 [it,] 3 it doth attract [unto itself] the Harmony’s intention. 4
But when it leaves behind the body Nature makes, 5 it bideth in and by itself,—the maker of itself in the noëtic 6 world.
It ruleth its own reason, bearing in its own thought 7 a motion (called by the name of life)
like unto [that of] that which cometh into life. 1
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. 2
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 3 [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 1; a part of it becometh spirit by means of which we see, 2 [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 3; 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. 4
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.
COMMENT
As Exx. xvi.-xix. follow one another in Stobæus, it is highly probable that they are all taken from the same group of sermons, and as their contents are so similar to those of Exx. xiv. and xv., and these are stated by
[paragraph continues] Stobæus to be from the “Sermons to Ammon,” we are fairly justified in grouping them all together. How many Sermons to Ammon there may have been in the collection used by Stobæus we have no means of knowing; they may also perhaps have had no distinctive title; but as Stobæus usually leaves out the titles in quoting, even when we know them from other sources, there is no definite conclusion to be drawn from his silence.
Footnotes
80:1 νόημα.
80:2 συννοοῦσα.
80:3 Sc. the reason.
80:4 διάνοιαν.
80:5 Lit. the physical body.
80:6 This might here be translated “the self-purposive,” to pick up the word-play on νόημα and διάνοια.
80:7 Or purpose,—νοήματι.
81:1 That is, presumably, of the same nature as the motion of the soul in incarnation or perhaps of the animal soul.
81:2 νόησιν.
81:3 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 13, Comment.; and Exx. xv. 2, iv. 2.
82:1 Lit. organic senses; cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 17.
82:2 Lit. spirituous sight.
82:3 That is, the sensible or phenomenal world.
82:4 τὸ φρονοῦν.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT XX.
[THE POWER OF CHOICE]
(Patrizzi (p. 42) runs this on to Ex. xix. without a break.
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, 1 perception. 2
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. 1
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. 2
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 3 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. 4
Thus furnishing it first from the First God, it 5 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 1 of [all] the parts, in no way differs from that which is fated.
COMMENT
I have supplied a temporary heading for the sake of uniformity. Our extract, however, seems to be taken from a lengthy treatise, and was probably one of the Sermons to Tat.
Footnotes
84:1 νόημα.
84:2 διάνοια.
85:1 διὰ τῶν μαθημἄτων.
85:2 Reading ἑκουσίως for the meaningless ἀκουσίως of the text.
85:3 Reading νοηματικὴ with Patrizzi, instead of σωματικὴ as with G. W. prefers ἀσώματος (incorporal).
85:4 Sc. the reason.
85:5 The Soul, or intellectual essence. The text is very obscure, and Wachsmuth does not seem to have improved it. Cf. C. H., xii. (xiii.) 8.
86:1 Lit. interweaving.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT XXI.
OF ISIS TO HORUS
(Title in Patrizzi (p. 45) is “From Isis.”
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.” 1
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.
COMMENT
This fragment is clearly not in the style of the excerpt from the “Sermon of Isis to Hermes” (Ex. xxvii.); it is far more closely reminiscent of C. H., xvi. or xvii., and is, therefore, probably from the Sermon of Asclepius to the King.
Footnotes
87:1 R. (p. 134, n. 3) says simply that the last word (“Horus”) is missing in the Vindobonensis, and finds no difficulty in recognizing a type of literature in which King (Ammon) is a pupil of Isis.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT XXII.
[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.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT XXIII.
FROM “APHRODITE”
(Title in Patrizzi (p. 45) is “The Likeness of Children,” followed by: “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 1 to [their own] species 2?
[Aphrodite.] I will set forth the reason. When generation stores up seed from the ripe blood being sweated forth, 3 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.
COMMENT
This fragment belongs to a type of Hermetic literature of which it is the sole surviving specimen. It is in form identical with the Isis and Horus type; but what the name of the questioner of Aphrodite could have been is difficult to say.
Footnotes
89:1 ἀποδίδοται,—referring, presumably, to the idea of metempsychosis.
89:2 Or families.
89:3 ἐξαφεδρουμένου. But W. has ἐξαφρουμένου (turned into foam), following the emendation of Usener, based on Clem. Al. Pædagog., I, vi. 48.
89:4 Lit. body.
90:1 λόγον.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT XXIV.
[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 1 spin [fate] 2:—Mēnē that shines by night, [and] gloomy Kronos, [and] sweet Hēlios, and Paphiē who’s carried in the shrine, 3 courageous Arēs, fair-wingèd Hermēs, and Zeus the primal source 4 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.
COMMENT
This is the only known specimen of verses attributed to the Trismegistic tradition. Liddell and Scott, however, under “νυκτιφανής,” do not question this attribution, while Clement of Alexandria (Strom., vi. p. 633 [this is a reference of Wachsmuth’s which I cannot verify]) praises the “Hymns of the Gods” of Hermes. On the contrary, in Anthol. Palat., p. 442, n. 491, the seventh verse is ascribed to Theon of Alexandria.
Footnotes
91:1 Or Æon.
91:2 ἐπινήσεται. But the Anthology reads “καὶ τοῖσιν ἀεὶ κανονίζεται”—that is to say, Eternity or Æon is for ever regulated or measured by the Seven; which seems to have no sense unless it means that the Seven are the instruments, whereby Eternity is divided into time.
91:3 That is, Venus, the image of whom was, presumably, carried in a small shrine in processions.
91:4 ἀρχιγένεθλος.
92:1 Meaning the one element or ether simply.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT XXV.
THE VIRGIN OF THE WORLD [I.] 1
(Title in Patrizzi (p. 27b), in the Latin translation, “Minerva Mundi.” 2
Text: Stob., Phys., xli. 44, under heading: “From Thrice-Greatest Hermes’ Sacred Book ‘The Virgin of the World’”; G. pp. 395-419; M. i. 281-298; W. i. 385-407.
Ménard, Livre III., No. i. of “Fragments of the Sacred Book entitled ‘The Virgin of the World,’” pp. 177-200.)
1. 3 So speaking Isis doth pour forth for Horus the sweet draught (the first) of
deathlessness 1 which souls have custom to receive from Gods, and thus begins her holiest discourse (logos):
Seeing that, Son Horus, Heaven, adorned with many a wreath [of starry crowns], is set o’er every nature of [all] things beneath, and that nowhere it lacketh aught of anything which the whole cosmos now doth hold,—in every way it needs must be that every nature which lies underneath, should be co-ordered and full-filled by those that lie above; for things below cannot of course give order to the ordering above.
It needs must, therefore, be the less should give place to the greater mysteries. The ordinance of the sublimer things transcends the lower; it is both sure in every way and falleth ’neath no mortal’s thought. Wherefore the [mysteries] below did sigh, fearing the wondrous beauty and the everlasting durance of the ones above,
’Twas worth the gazing 2 and the pains to see Heaven’s beauty, beauty that seemed like God,—God who was yet unknown, and the rich majesty of Night, who weaves her web with rapid light, 3 though it be less than Sun’s, and of the other mysteries 4 in turn that move in Heaven, with ordered motions and with periods
of times, with certain hidden influences 1 bestowing order on the things below and co-increasing them.
2. Thus fear succeeded fear, and searching search incessant, and for so long as the Creator of the universals willed, did ignorance retain its grip on all. But when He judged it fit to manifest Him who He is, He breathed into the Gods the Loves, and freely poured the splendour 2 which He had within His heart, into their minds, in ever greater and still greater measure; that firstly they might have the wish to seek, next they might yearn to find, and finally have power to win success as well. But this, my Horus, wonder-worthy son, could never have been done had that seed 3 been subject to death, for that as yet had no existence, but only with a soul that could vibrate responsive to the mysteries of Heaven.
3. Such was all-knowing Hermes, who saw all things, and seeing understood, and understanding had the power both to disclose and to give explanation. For what he knew, he graved on stone; yet though he graved them onto stone he hid them mostly, keeping sure silence though in speech, that every younger age of cosmic time
might seek for them. And thus, with charge unto his kinsmen of the Gods to keep sure watch, he mounted to the Stars.
To him succeeded Tat, who was at once his son and heir unto these knowledges; and not long afterwards Asclepius-Imuth, according to the will of Ptah who is Hephæstus, 1 and all the rest who were to make enquiry of the faithful certitude of heavenly contemplation, as Foreknowledge 2 willed, Foreknowledge queen of all.
4. Hermes, however, made explanation to surrounding [space], how that not even to his son (because of the yet newness of his youth) had he been able to hand on the Perfect Vision. But when the Sun did rise for me, and with all-seeing eyes I 3 gazed upon the hidden [mysteries] of that New Dawn, and contemplated them, slowly there came to me—but it was sure—conviction that the sacred symbols of the cosmic elements were hid away hard by the secrets of Osiris.
5. [Hermes], ere he returned to Heaven, invoked a spell on them, and spake these words. (For ’tis not meet, my son, that I should leave this proclamation ineffectual, but [rather] should speak forth what words [our] Hermes uttered
when he hid his books away.) Thus then he said:
“O holy books, who have been made by my immortal hands, by incorruption’s magic spells, . . . 1 free from decay throughout eternity remain and incorrupt from time! Become unseeable, unfindable, for every one whose foot shall tread the plains of this [our] land, until old Heaven doth bring forth meet instruments for you, whom the Creator shall call souls.”
Thus spake he; and, laying spells on them by means of his own works, he shuts them safe away in their own zones. And long enough the time has been since they were hid away. 2
6. And Nature, O my son, was barren, till they who then were under orders to patrol the Heaven, approaching to the God of all, their King, reported on the lethargy of things. The time was come for cosmos to awake, and this was no one’s task but His alone.
“We pray Thee, then,” they said, “direct Thy thought to things which now exist and to what things the future needs.”
7. When they spake thus, God smiled and said: “Nature, arise!” And from His word
there came a marvel, feminine, possessed of perfect beauty, gazing at which the Gods stood all-amazed. And God the Fore-father, with name of Nature, honoured her, and bade her be prolific.
Then gazing fixedly on the surrounding space, He spake these words as well: “Let Heaven be filled with all things full, and Air, and Æther too! “God spake and it was so. And Nature with herself communing knew she must not disregard the Sire’s command; so with the help of Toil she made a daughter fair, whom she did call Invention. And on her 1 God bestowed the gift of being, and with His gift He set apart all them that had been so-far made, filled them with mysteries, and to Invention gave the power of ruling them.
8. But He, no longer willing that the world above should be inert, but thinking good to fill it full of breaths, so that its parts should not remain immotive and inert, He thus began on these 2 with use of holy arts as proper for the bringing forth of His own special work.
For taking breath from His own Breath and blending this with knowing Fire, 3 He mingled them with certain other substances which have
no power to know; and having made the two 1—either with other—one, with certain hidden words of power, He thus set all the mixture going thoroughly; until out of the compost smiled a substance, as it were, far subtler, purer far, and more translucent than the things from which it came; it was so clear that no one but the Artist could detect it.
9. And since it neither thawed when fire was set unto it (for it was made of Fire), nor yet did freeze when it had once been properly produced (for it was made of Breath), but kept its mixture’s composition a certain special kind, peculiar to itself, of special type and special blend,—(which composition, you must know, God called Psychōsis, after the more auspicious meaning of the name and from the similarity of its behaviour 2)
[paragraph continues] —it was from this coagulate He fashioned souls enough in myriads, 1 moulding with order and with measure the efflorescent product of the mixture for what He willed, with skilled experience and fitting reason, so that they should not be compelled to differ any way one from another.
10. For, you must know, the efflorescence that exhaled out of the movement God induced, was not like to itself. For that its first florescence was greater, fuller, every way more pure, than was its second; its second was far second to the first, but greater far than was its third. 2 And thus the total number of degrees reached up to sixty. 3 In spite of this, in laying down the law, He ordered it that all should be eternal, as though from out one essence, the forms of which Himself alone could bring to their completion.
11. Moreover, He appointed for them limits and reservations in the height of upper Nature, 4
that they might keep the cylinder 1 a-whirl in proper order and economy and [thus] might please their Sire. And so in that all-fairest station of the Æther He summoned unto Him the natures of all things that had as yet been made, and spake these words:
“O Souls, ye children fair of Mine own Breath and My solicitude, whom I have now with My own Hands 2 brought to successful birth and consecrate to My own world, give ear unto these words of Mine as unto laws, and meddle not with any other space but that which is appointed for you by My will.
“For you, if ye keep steadfast, the Heaven, with the star-order, and thrones I have ordained full-filled with virtue, shall stay as now they are for you; but if ye shall in any way attempt some innovation contrary to My decrees, I swear to you by My most holy Breath, and by this mixture out of which I brought you into being, and by these Hands of Mine which gave you life, 3 that I will speedily devise for you a bond and punishments.”
12. And having said these words, the God,
who is my Lord, mixed the remaining cognate elements (Water and Earth 1) together, and, as before, invoking on them certain occult words, words of great power though not so potent as the first, He set them moving rapidly, and breathed into the mixture power of life; and taking the coagulate (which like the other floated to the top), when it had been well steeped and had become consistent, He modelled out of it those of the [sacred] animals 2 possessing forms like unto men’s.
The mixtures’ residue He gave unto those souls that had gone in advance and had been summoned to the lands of Gods, to regions near the Stars, and to the [choir of] holy daimones. He said:
13. “My sons, ye children of My Nature, fashion things! Take ye the residue of what My art hath made, and let each fashion something which shall bear resemblance to his own nature. These will I further give to you as models.”
He took and set in order fair and fine, agreeably to the motions of the souls, the world of sacred animals, appending as it were to those resembling men those which came next in order, and on these types of lives He did bestow
the all-devising powers and all-contriving procreative breath of all the things which were for ever generally to be.
And He withdrew, with promises to join unto the visible productions of their hands breath that cannot be seen, 1 and essence of engendering its like to each, so that they might give birth to others like themselves. And these are under no necessity to do aught else than what they did at first.
14. [And Horus asked:]
What did the souls do, mother, then?
And Isis said:
Taking the blend of matter, Horus, son, they first looked at the Father’s mixture and adored it, and tried to find out whence it was composed; but this was not an easy thing for them to know.
They then began to fear lest they should fall beneath the Father’s wrath for trying to find out, and so they set to work to do what they were bid.
Thereon, out of the upper stuff which had its topmost layer superfluously light, they formed the race of birds; while they were doing this the mixture had become half-hardened, and by this time had taken on a firm consistency—thereon they fashioned out the race of things
which have four feet; [next they did fashion forth] the race of fish—less light and needing a moist substance of a different kind to swim in; and as the residue was of a cold and heavy nature, from it the Souls devised the race of creeping things.
15. They then, my son, as though they had done something grand, with over-busy daring armed themselves, and acted contrary to the commands they had received; and forthwith they began to overstep their proper limits and their reservations, and would no longer stay in the same place, but were for ever moving, and thought that being ever stationed in one place was death.
That they would do this thing, however, O my son (as Hermes says when he speaks unto me), had not escaped the Eye of Him who is the God and Lord of universal things; and He searched out a punishment and bond, the which they now in misery endure.
Thus was it that the Sovereign King of all resolved to fabricate with art the human frame, in order that in it the race of Souls throughout might be chastised.
16. “Then sending for me,” Hermes says, “He spake: ‘Soul of My Soul, and holy mind of My own Mind, 1 up to what point, the nature of the
things beneath, shall it be seen in gloom? How long shall what has up to now been made remain inactive and be destitute of praise? Bring hither to Me now, My son, all of the Gods in Heaven,’ said God”—as Hermes saith.
And when they came obedient to His command,—“Look down,” said He, “upon the Earth, and all beneath.” And they forthwith both looked and understood the Sovereign’s will. And when He spake to them on human kind’s behalf, they [all] agreed to furnish those who were to be, with whatsoever thing they each could best provide.
17. Sun said: “I’ll shine unto my full.”
Moon promised to pour light upon the after-the-sun course, and said she had already given birth to Fear, and Silence, and also Sleep, and Memory—a thing that would turn out to be most useful for them. 1
Cronus announced himself already sire of Justice and Necessity.
Zeus said: “So that the race which is to be may not for ever fight, already for them have I made Fortune, and Hope, and Peace.”
Ares declared he had become already sire of Struggle, Wrath, and Strife.
Nor yet did Aphrodite hesitate; she also said: “I’ll join to them Desire, my Lord, and Bliss,
and Laughter [too], so that our kindred souls, in working out their very grievous condemnation, may not exhaust their punishment unto the full.”
Full pleased were all, my son, at Aphrodite’s words.
“And for my part,” said Hermes, “I will make men’s nature well endowed; I will devote to them Prudence and Wisdom, Persuasiveness and Truth, and never will I cease from congress with Invention, but ever will I benefit the mortal life of men born underneath my types of life. 1 For that the types our Father and Creator hath set apart for me, are types of wisdom and intelligence, and more than ever [is this so] what time the motion of the Stars set over them doth have the natural power of each consonant with itself.”
18. And God, the Master of the universe, rejoiced on hearing this, and ordered that the race of men should be.
“I,” Hermes says, “was seeking for the stuff which had to be employed, and calling on the Monarch for His aid. And He gave order to the Souls to give the mixture’s residue; and taking it I found it utterly dried up.
“Thereon, in mixing it, I used more water far than was required to bring the matter back unto
its former state, so that the plasm was in every way relaxable, and weak and powerless, in order that it might not, in addition to its natural sagacity, be full of power as well.
“I moulded it, and it was fair; and I rejoiced at seeing mine own work, and from below I called upon the Monarch to behold. And He did look on it, and was rejoiced, and ordered that the Souls should be enfleshed.
“Then were they first plunged in deep gloom, and, learning that they were condemned, began to wail. 1 I was myself amazed at the Souls’ utterances.”
19. Now give good heed, son Horus, for thou art being told the Mystic Spectacle which Kamēphis, our forefather, was privileged to hear from Hermes, record-writer of all deeds, and I from Kamēphis, most ancient of [us] all, when he did honour me with the Black [Rite] that gives perfection; hear thou it now from me!
For when, O wondrous son of mighty fame, if they were about to be shut in their prisons, some simply uttered wails and groans—in just the self-same way as beasts that once have been at liberty, when torn from their accustomed haunts they love so well, will be bad slaves, will fight
and make revolt, and be in no agreement with their masters; nay more, if circumstance should serve, will even do to death those that oppress them. 1
Others with louder outcry hissed like snakes; another one shrieked shrilly, and ere he spake shed many tears, and, turning up and down what things served him as eyes, he said:
20. “O Heaven, thou source of our begetting, O Æther, Air, O Hands and holy Breath of God our Monarch, O ye most brilliant Stars, eyes of the Gods, O tireless light of Sun and Moon, co-nurslings of our origin,—reft from [you] all we suffer piteously.
“And this the more, in that from spacious realms of light, from out [thy] holy envelope and wealthy dome, and from the blessed government we shared with Gods, we shall be thus shut down into these honourless and lowly quarters.
“What is the so unseemly thing we miserables have done? What [crime] deserves these punishments? How many sins await us wretched ones? How many are the things we have to do in this our hopeless plight, necessities to furnish for this watery frame that is so soon dissolved?
21. “For that no longer shall our eyes behold
the souls of God; when through such watery spheres as these we see our own forefather Heaven grown small and tiny, we shall dissolve in sighs,—nay, there’ll be times we shall not see at all, 1 for sentence hath been passed on us poor things; the gift of real sight hath not been given to us, in that it hath not been permitted us to see without the light. Windows they are, not eyes! 2
“How wretchedly shall we endure to hear our kindred breaths breathe in the air, when we no longer shall be breathing with them! For home, instead of this great world high in the air, a heart’s small mass awaits us. Set Thou us free from bonds so base as these to which we have sunk down, and end our grief!
“O Lord, and Father, and our Maker, if so it be Thou hast thus quickly grown indifferent unto the works of Thine own Hands, appoint for us some limits! Still deem us worthy of some words, though they be few, while yet we can see through the whole world-order bright on every side!”
22. Thus speaking, Horus, son, the Souls gained their request; for that the Monarch came, and sitting on the Throne of Truth made answer to their prayers.
“O Souls, Love and Necessity shall be your lords, 1 they who are lords and marshals after Me of all. 2 Know, all of you who are set under My unageing rule, that as long as ye keep you free of sin, ye shall dwell in the fields of Heaven; but if some cause of blame for aught attach itself to you, ye shall dwell in the place that Destiny allots, condemned to mortal wombs.
“If, then, the things imputed to your charge be slight, leaving the bond of fleshly frames subject to death, ye shall again embrace your [father] Heaven, and sigh no more; but if ye shall commit some greater sins, and with the end appointed of your frames be not advanced, no longer shall ye dwell in Heaven, nor even in the bodies of mankind, but shall continue after that to wander round in lives irrational.” 3
23. Thus speaking, Horus mine, He gave to all the gift of breath, 1 and thus continued:
“It is not without purpose or by chance I have laid down the law of your transformings 2; but as [it will be] for the worse if ye do aught unseemly, so for the better, if ye shall will what’s worthy of your birth.
“For I, and no one else, will be the Witness and the Watcher. Know, then, it is for what ye have done heretofore, ye do endure this being shut in bodies as a punishment.
“The difference in your rebirths, accordingly, for you, shall be as I have said, a difference of bodies, and their [final] dissolution [shall be] a benefit and a [return to] the fair happiness of former days.
“But if ye think to do aught else unworthy of Me, your mind shall lose its sight so as to think the contrary [of what is true], and take the punishment for benefit; the change to better things for infamous despite.
“But the more righteous of you, who stand upon the threshold of the change to the diviner state, shall among men be righteous kings, and genuine philosophers, founders of states, and lawgivers, and real seers, and true herb-knowers,
and prophets of the Gods most excellent, skilful musicians, skilled astronomers, and augurs wise, consummate sacrificers,—as many of you as are worthy of things fair and good.
24. “Among winged tribes [they shall be] eagles, for these will neither scare away their kind nor feed on them; nay more, when they are by, no other weaker beast will be allowed by them to suffer wrong, for what will be the eagles’ nature is too just [to suffer it].
“Among four-footed things [they will be] lions,—a life of strength and of a kind which in a measure needs no sleep, in mortal body practising the exercises of immortal life—for they nor weary grow nor sleep. 1
“And among creeping things [they will be] dragons, in that this animal will have great strength and live for long, will do no harm, and in a way be friends with man, and let itself be tamed; it will possess no poison and will cast its skin, 2 as is the nature of the Gods.
“Among the things that swim [they will be] dolphins; for dolphins will take pity upon those who fall into the sea, and if they are still breathing bear them to the land, while if they’re dead they will not ever even touch them, though they will be the most voracious tribe that in the water dwells.”
25. Thus speaking God became imperishable Mind. 1 Thereon, son Horus, from the Earth uprose a very Mighty Spirit which no mass of body could contain, whose strength consisted in his intellect. And though he knew full well the things on which he questioned—the body with which man was clothed according to his type, a body fair and dignified, yet savage overmuch and full of fear—immediately he saw the souls were entering the plasms, he cried out:
“What are these called, O Hermes, Writer of the Records of the Gods?”
And when he answered “Men!”—“Hermes,” he said, “it is a daring work, this making man, with eyes inquisitive, and talkative of tongue, with power henceforth to hear things even which
are no concern of his, dainty of smell, who will use to its full his power of touch on every thing.
“Hast thou, his generator, judged it good to leave him free from care, who in the future daringly will gaze upon the fairest mysteries which Nature hath? Wouldst thou leave him without a grief, who in the days to come will make his thoughts reach unto mysteries beyond the Earth?
26. “Men will dig up the roots of plants, and will find out their juices’ qualities. Men will observe the nature of the stones. Men will dissect not only animals irrational, but they’ll dissect themselves, desiring to find out how they were made. They will stretch out their daring hands e’en to the sea, and cutting self-grown forests down will ferry one another o’er to lands beyond. [Men] will seek out as well the inner nature of the holy spaces which no foot may tread, and will chase after them into the height, desiring to observe the nature of the motion of the Heaven.
“These are yet moderate things [which they will do]. For nothing more remains than Earth’s remotest realms; nay, in their daring they will track out Night, the farthest Night of all.
27. “Naught have they, then, to stop them from receiving their initiation in the good of
freedom from all pain, and, unconstrained by terror’s grievous goads, from living softly out a life free from all care.
“Then will they not gird on the armour of an over-busy daring up to Heaven? Will they not, then, reach out their souls freed from all care unto the [primal] elements themselves?
“Teach them henceforth to long to plan out something, where they have as well to fear the danger of its ill-success, in order that they may be tamed by the sharp tooth of pain in failure of their hopes.
“Let the too busy nature of their souls be balanced by desires, and fears, and griefs, and empty hopes.
“Let loves in quick succession sway their souls, hopes, manifold desires, sometimes fulfilled, and sometimes unfulfilled, that the sweet bait of their success may draw them into struggle amid direr ills.
“Let fever lay its heavy hand on them, that losing heart they may submit desire to discipline.”
28. Thou grievest, dost thou, Horus, son, to hear thy mother put these things in words? Art thou not struck with wonder, art thou not terror-struck at how poor man was grievously oppressed? Hear what is sadder still!
When Momos said these things Hermes was pleased, for what he said was said out of affection
for him; and so he did all that he recommended, speaking thus:
“Momos, the Nature of the Breath Divine which doth surround [all things] shall not become inert. The Master of the universe appointed me as steward and as manager.
“Wherefore the overseer of His command will be the keen-eyed Goddess of the all, Adrasteia 1; and I will skilfully devise an instrument, mysterious, possessed of power of sight that cannot err, and cannot be escaped, whereto all things on earth shall of necessity be subject, from birth to final dissolution,—an instrument which binds together all that’s done. This instrument shall rule all other things on Earth as well [as man].”
29. These words, said Hermes, did I speak to Momos, and forthwith the instrument was set a-going.
When this was done, and when the souls had entered in the bodies, and [Hermes] had himself been praised for what was done, again the Monarch did convoke the Gods in session. The Gods assembled, and once more did He make proclamation, saying:
“Ye Gods, all ye who have been made of chiefest Nature, free from all decay, who have
received as your appointed lot for ever more to order out the mighty Æon, through whom all universal things will never weary grow surrendering themselves in turn the one to other,—how long shall we be rulers of this sovereignty that none can ever know? How long these things, shall they transcend the power of sight of Sun and Moon?
“Let each of us bring forth according to his power. Let us by our own energy wipe out this inert state of things; let chaos seem to be a myth incredible to future days. Set hand to mighty work; and I myself will first begin.”
30. He spake; straightway in cosmic order there began the differentiation of the up-to-then black unity [of things]. And Heaven shone forth above tricked out with all his mysteries; Earth, still a-tremble, as the Sun shone forth grew harder, and appeared with all the fair adornments that bedeck her round on every side. For beautiful to God are even things which men think mean, in that in truth they have been made to serve the laws of God.
And God rejoiced when now He saw His works a-moving; and filling full His Hands, which held as much as all surrounding space, with all that Nature had produced, and squeezing tight the handfuls mightily, He said:
“Take [these], O holy Earth, take those, all-
honoured one, who art to be the mother of all things, and henceforth lack thou naught!”
31. God spake, and opening His Hands, such Hands as God should have, He poured them all into the composition of the world. And they in the beginnings were unknown in every way; for that the Souls as newly shut in prison, not enduring their disgrace, began to strive in emulation with the Gods in Heaven, in full command of their high birth, and when held back, in that they had the same Creator, made revolt, and using weaker men as instruments, began to make them set upon each other, and range themselves in conflict, and make war among themselves.
Thus strength did mightily prevail o’er weakness, so that the strong did burn and massacre the weak, and from the holy places down they cast the living and the dead down from the holy shrines, until the Elements in their distress resolved to go to God their Monarch [to complain] about the savage state in which men lived.
The evil now being very great, the Elements approached the God who made them, and formulated their complaint in some such words as these:
32. It was moreover Fire who first received authority to speak. He said:
“O Lord, Artificer of this new World, thou
[paragraph continues] Name mysterious among the Gods, and up to now revered by all mankind, how long hast Thou, O Daimon, judged it right to leave the life of mortals without God?
“Show now Thyself unto Thy World consulting 1 Thee; initiate the savagery of life with peace; give laws to life; to right give oracles; fill with fair hopes all things; and let men fear the vengeance of the Gods, and none will sin.
“Should they receive due retribution for their sins, they will refrain henceforth from doing wrong; they will respect their oaths, and no one any more will ponder sacrilege.
“Let them be taught to render thanks for benefits received, that I, the Fire, may joyfully do service in the sacrificial rites, that they may from the altar send sweet-smelling vapours forth.
“For up to now I am polluted, Lord; and by the godless daring of these men I am compelled to burn up flesh. They will not let me be for what I was brought forth; but they adulterate with all indecency my undecaying state.”
33. And Air too said:
“I also, Master, am made turbid by the vapours which the bodies of the dead exhale, and I am pestilential, and, no longer filled with health, I gaze down from above on things I ought not to behold.”
Next Water, O my son of mighty soul, received authority to speak, and spake and said:
“O Father, O wonderful Creator of all things, Daimon self-born, and Nature’s Maker, who through Thee doth conceive all things, now at this last, command the rivers’ streams for ever to be pure, for that the rivers and the seas or wash the murderers’ hands or else receive the murdered.”
34. After came Earth in bitter grief, and taking up the tale, O son of high renown, thus she began to speak:
“O sovereign Lord, Chief of the Heavenly Ones, and Master of the Wheels, 1 Thou Ruler of us Elements, O Sire of them who stand beside Thee, from whom all things have the beginning of their increase and of their decrease, and into whom they cease again and have the end that is their due according to Necessity’s decree, O greatly honoured One, the godless rout of men doth dance upon my bosom.
“I hold in my embrace as well the nature of all things; for I, as Thou didst give command, not only bear them all, but I receive them also when they’re killed. But now am I dishonoured. The world upon the Earth though filled with all things [else] hath not a God.
“For having naught to fear they sin in everything, and from my heights, O Lord, down [dead] they fall by every evil art. And soaking with the juices of their carcases I’m all corrupt. Hence am I, Lord, compelled to hold in me those of no worth. With all I bear I would hold God as well.
“Bestow on Earth, if not Thyself, for I could not contain Thee, yet some holy Emanation 1 of Thyself. Make Thou the Earth more honoured than the rest of Elements; for it is right that she should boast of gifts from Thee, in that she giveth all.”
35. Thus spake the Elements; and God, fullfilling all things with the sound of His [most] holy Voice, spake thus:
“Depart, ye Holy Ones, ye Children worthy of a mighty Sire, nor yet in any way attempt to innovate, nor leave the whole of [this] My World without your active service.
“For now another Efflux of My Nature is among you, and he shall be a pious supervisor of all deeds—judge incorruptible of living men and monarch absolute of those beneath the earth, not only striking terror [into them] but taking vengeance on them. And by his class of birth the fate he hath deserved shall follow every man.”
And so the Elements did cease from their complaint,
upon the Master’s order, and they held their peace; and each of them continued in the exercise of his authority and in his rule.
36. And Horus thereon said:
How was it, mother, then, that Earth received God’s Efflux?
And Isis said:
I may not tell the story of [this] birth 1; for it is not permitted to describe the origin of thy descent, O Horus, [son] of mighty power, lest afterwards the way-of-birth of the immortal Gods should be known unto men,—except so far that God the Monarch, the universal Orderer and Architect, sent for a little while thy mighty sire Osiris, and the mightiest Goddess Isis, that they might help the world, for all things needed them.
’Tis they who filled life full of life. ’Tis they who caused the savagery of mutual slaughtering of men to cease. ’Tis they who hallowed precincts to the Gods their ancestors and spots for holy rites. ’Tis they who gave to men laws, food, and shelter.
’Tis they who will, says Hermes, learn to know the secrets of my records all, and will make separation of them; and some they will keep for themselves, while those that are best suited for the benefit of mortal men, they will engrave on tablet and on obelisk.
’Tis they who were the first to set up courts of law; and filled the world with justice and fair rule. ’Tis they who were the authors of good pledges and of faith, and brought the mighty witness of an oath into men’s lives.
’Tis they who taught men how to wrap up those who ceased to live, as they should be. 1
’Tis they who searched into the cruelty of death, and learned that though the spirit which goes out longs to return into men’s bodies, yet if it ever fail to have the power of getting back again, then loss of life results.
’Tis they who learned from Hermes that surrounding space was filled with daimons, and graved on hidden stones [the hidden teaching].
’Tis they alone who, taught by Hermes in God’s hidden codes, became the authors of the arts, and sciences, and all pursuits which men do practise, and givers of their laws.
’Tis they who, taught by Hermes that the things below have been disposed by God to be in sympathy with things above, established on the earth the sacred rites o’er which the mysteries in Heaven preside.
’Tis they who, knowing the destructibility of [mortal] frames, devised the grade of prophets, in all things perfected, in order that no prophet who stretched forth his hands unto the Gods,
should be in ignorance of anything, that magic and philosophy should feed the soul, and medicine preserve the body when it suffered pain.
38. And having done all this, my son, Osiris and myself perceiving that the world was [now] quite full, were thereupon demanded back by those who dwell in Heaven, but could not go above till we had made appeal unto the Monarch, that surrounding space might with this knowledge of the soul 1 be filled as well, and we ourselves succeed in making our ascent acceptable [to Him]. . . . For that God doth in hymns rejoice.
Ay, mother, Horus said. On me as well bestow the knowledge of this hymn, that I may not remain in ignorance.
And Isis said: Give ear, O son! 2
* * * * *
Footnotes
93:1 Or “Apple of the Eye of the World”—see Commentary. Referred to as K. K.,—i.e. Κόρη Κόσμου.
93:2 Curiously enough, though the page-headings throughout have “Minerva Mundi,” the heading of p. 28 still stands “Pupilla Mundi”—showing that Patrizzi himself was puzzled how to translate the Greek, and had probably in the first place translated it throughout “Pupilla Mundi,” or “Apple of the Eye of the World.” In his Introduction (p. 3), however, Patrizzi writes: “But there is extant also another [book of Hermes] with the title of ‘The Sacred Book,’ which we found in Cyprus, in a monastery called Enclistra, at the same time as the rest of the books, and which John Stobæus has inserted in his Physical Eclogues together with other fragments.” This would seem to suggest that Patrizzi had seen the original Sermon, and that its main title was “The Sacred Book.”
93:3 I have numbered the paragraphs for convenience of reference.
94:1 τὸ πρῶτον ἀμβροσίας.
94:2 Or contemplation, θεωρίας.
94:3 Sc. The weft and warp of stars.
94:4 The planetary spheres.
95:1 ἀπόροιαι, or emanations. Cf. R. 16, n. 4, for the conflation of the pure Egyptian emanation doctrine with astrological considerations.
95:2 Radiance or light.
95:3 Sc. the race of the Gods.
96:1 For the restored text, see R. 122.
96:2 Or Providence, πρόνοια.
96:3 The masculine is here used, the writer forgetting for the moment that he had assumed the person of Isis.
97:1 The text is here again hopeless. Meineke’s emendation (Adnot., p. cxxx.) ἃς . . . φαρμάκῳ χρίσας ἐπικρατῷ—which makes Hermes smear the books with some magical ointment—is ingenious, but hardly satisfactory, though Wachsmuth adopts it.
97:2 This is purely conjectural; the text is utterly corrupt.
98:1 Sc. Invention.
98:2 Sc. the breaths or spirits.
98:3 πῦρ νοερόν—a term in frequent use subsequently among the Later Platonists; cf. Porphyry, ap. Euseb., Præp. Ev., XV. xi. 16
99:1 Sc. the knowing and unknowing primal elements. Cf. P. S. A., vi.
99:2 The text is very involved and obscure, and the meaning of the writer is by no means clear. Psychōsis (ψύχωσις) means either animation (quickening) or “making cold” (cf. ψύχω and ψυχόω); the name Psychōsis is thus apparently supposed by the writer to have some connection with the term ἔψυχε (“freeze,” or grow cold), which he has just employed in his description of the behaviour of the mixture. In its less auspicious sense ἔψυχε meant “grow cold”; in its more auspicious meaning it signified “breathe.” But even so it must be said that the further reason (viz., similarity of behaviour) given for the choice of the term Psychōsis is the exact opposite of what is stated in the description of the soul-stuff’s nature; and this is all the more puzzling when we recall the theory of Origen and his predecessors that the soul (ψυχή) was so-called precisely because it had grown cold and fallen away from the Divine heat and life. With the term cf. the σωμάτωσις of Exx. viii. 5, vii. 2.
100:1 Cf. Plato, Tim., 41: “He divided the whole mixture into souls equal in number to the stars, and assigned each soul to a star.” So also Philo, who speaks of the souls as “equal in number to the stars”—De Som., i. § 22; M. 642, P. 586 (Ri. iii. 244).
100:2 Cf. Plato, ibid.: “They [the souls] were not, however, pure as before, but diluted to the second and third degrees.
100:3 See § 56 below.
100:4 Of the Nature Above (τῆς ἄνω φύσεως); cf. the “Jerusalem Above” of the “Gnostics.” Cf. also Tim., 41 D: “And having there [that is, among the stars] placed them as in a chariot, he showed them the nature of the universe, and declared to them the laws of destiny, according to which their first birth should be one and the same for all,—no one should suffer a disadvantage at his hands; they were to be sown in the instruments of time severally adapted to them, and to come forth the most religious of animals; and as human nature was of two kinds, the superior race would hereafter be called man.” With the last sentence, cf. also 12 below.
101:1 Cf. P. S. A., xix.
101:2 Cf. § 31 below.
101:3 Cf. Hermes-Prayer, iii. 3, and note.
102:1 We have had previous mention of fire, (æther) and air,—the psychōsis being the quintessence.
102:2 These are presumably the types of life in the upper world, symbolized by the zodiac.
103:1 So Meineke in notes, following Cantor,—instead of the traditional “visible.”
104:1 Cf. Cyril, C. J., i. 15 (Frag. xvi.).
105:1 Cf. Plat. Crit., 108.
106:1 Sc. “signs of the zodiac,” so-called.
107:1 There is a lacuna in the text, which I have thus conjecturally completed.
108:1 The reading of this sentence has not yet been properly emended, so that its translation is somewhat conjectural.
109:1 An Orphic verse has here crept into the text from the margin. It runs: “By light it is we see; by eyes we naught behold.” Fragm. Monad., x., p. 504, Herm.
109:2 Cf. Plat., Men., 76; Seneca, Quæst. Nat., iv. 9.
110:1 Cf. Tim. 42 A: “When they should be implanted in bodies by necessity . . . they should have . . . sensation . . . and love.”
110:2 Cf. Frag. xxiii.
110:3 Cf. Tim., 42 B: “He who lived well during his appointed time was to return and dwell in his native star, and there he would have a blessed and congenial existence. But if he failed in attaining this, at the second birth, he would pass into a woman, and if, when in that state of being, he did not desist from evil, he would be continually changed into some brute who resembled him in the evil nature which he had acquired, and would not cease from his toils and transformations until he followed the revolution of the ‘same’ and the ‘like’ within him, and overcame by the help of reason the turbulent and irrational mob of later accretions, made up of fire and air and water and earth, and returned to the form of his first and better state.” Notice the omission of any reference to the inferior status of woman in the Egyptian tradition.
111:1 Lit. “their spirits”—which apparently link the souls with their bodies.
111:2 Reading μεταβολάς.
112:1 Cf. Manetho, cited in the Orthography of Chœroboscus (Cramer, Anecd. Ox., ii. 235, 32; Ælian, H. A., v. 39, who follows Apion; R. 145, n. 3). But indeed this queer belief is a commonplace of the Mediæval Bestiaries, which all go back to their second century Alexandrian prototype, the famous Physiologus, which was doubtless in part based on Aristotle’s History of Animals and Pliny’s Natural History.
112:2 ἐάσει δὲ καὶ γηράσαν. The reading is corrupt. But if we read γῆρας for γηράσαν, we have in the writer’s ornate and somewhat strained style ἐᾶν γῆρας for the usual γῆρας ἐκδύνειν found in Aristotle (H. V., 5. 7. 10; 8. 17. 11) for the changing of a serpent’s skin. The phrase “as is the nature of the Gods” may then be explained as referring to the parallel between the anciently supposed rejuvenescence of the serpent and the perpetual growing young of the Gods.
113:1 Cf. C. H., i. 27: “This when he’d said, the Shepherd mingled with the powers.” Cf. Tim., 42 E: “When the Creator had made all these ordinances He remained in His own accustomed nature.”
116:1 Nemesis, the kārmic deity, “she from whom none can escape, according to the generally accepted derivation of the name.
119:1 Sc. as supplicants consulting an oracle.
120:1 Or disks, presumably the world-wheels.
121:1 τινὰ ίερὰν ὰπόρροιαν.
122:1 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 3 (Com.).
123:1 Sc. mummification.
124:1 θεωρία, contemplative science, face to face knowledge.
124:2 The Commentary begins at the end of the following excerpt.
Gnosticism and Hermetica
EXCERPT XXVI.
THE VIRGIN OF THE WORLD [II.]
(Patrizzi (p. 32b) runs this on to the last without a break.
Text: Stob., Phys., ili. 45, under heading: “In the Same”; G. pp. 420-427; M. i. 299-304; W. i. 407-414.
Ménard; Livre III., No. ii. of “Fragment,” etc., as above, pp. 201-208.)
39. Now if thou wouldst, O son of mighty soul, know aught beside, ask on!
And Horus said: O mother of great honour, I would know how royal souls are born?
And Isis said: Son Horus, the distinction which marks out the royal souls is somewhat of this kind.
Four regions are there in the universe which fall beneath a law and leadership which cannot be transgressed—Heaven, and the Æther, and the Air, and the most holy Earth.
Above in Heaven, son, the Gods do dwell, o’er whom with all the rest doth rule the Architect of all; and in the Æther [dwell] the Stars, o’er whom the mighty Light-giver the Sun holds sway; but
in the Air [live] only souls, 1 o’er whom doth rule the Moon; and on the Earth [do dwell] men and the rest of living things, o’er whom he who doth happen to be king holds sway.
40. The Gods engender, son, the kings it has deserved, to rule [the race] that lives on Earth. The rulers are the emanations of the king, of whom the nearer to him is more royal than the rest; for that the Sun, in that ’tis nearer than the Moon to God, is far more vast and potent, to whom the Moon comes second both in rank and power.
The king, then, is the last of all the other Gods, but first of men; and so long as he is upon the Earth, he is divorced from his true godship, but hath something that doth distinguish him from men and which is like to God.
The soul which is sent down to dwell in him, is from that space which is above those regions whence [the souls] descend to other men. Down from that space the souls are sent to rule for those two reasons, son.
41. They who have run a noble, blameless race throughout the cycle of their lives, and are about to be changed into Gods, [are born as kings,] in order that by exercise of kingship they may train themselves to use the power the Gods enjoy; while certain souls who are already Gods, but
have in some slight way infringed the rule of life which God inspired, are born as kings, in order that they may not, in being clothed in bodies, undergo the punishment of loss of dignity as well as nature, and that they may not, when they are enfleshed, have the same lot as other men, but have when bound what they enjoyed when free.
42. The differences which are, however, in the dispositions shown by those who play the part of kings, are not determined by distinguishing their souls, for these are all divine, but by the constitution of the angels and the daimons who attend on them. For that such souls as these descending for such purposes do not come down without a guard and escort; for Justice up above knows how to give to each what is its due estate e’en though they be made exiles from their country ever fair.
When, then, my son, the angels and the daimons who bring down the soul are of a warlike kind, it has to keep firm hold of their proclivities, forgetting its own proper deeds, but all the more remembering the doings of the other host attached to it.
When they are peaceful, then the soul as well doth order its own course in peace.
When they love justice, then it too defends the right.
When they are music-lovers, then it also sings.
And when they are truth-lovers, then it also doth philosophize.
For as it were out of necessity these souls keep a firm hold of the proclivities of those that bring them here; for they are falling down to man’s estate, forgetting their own nature, and the farther they depart from it, the more they have in memory the disposition of those [powers] which shut them [into bodies].
43. Well hast thou, mother, all explained, said Horus. But noble souls,—how they are born, thou hast not told me yet.
As on the Earth, son Horus, there are states which differ one from other, so also is it in the case of souls. For they have regions whence they start; and that which starts from a more glorious place, hath nobler birth than one which doth not so. For just as among men the free is thought more noble than the slave—(for that which is superior in souls and of a ruling nature of necessity subjects what is inferior)—so also, son, . . . . 1
* * * * *
44. And how are male and female souls produced?
Souls, Horus, son, are of the self-same nature
in themselves, in that they are from one and the same place where the Creator modelled them; nor male nor female are they. Sex is a thing of bodies, not of souls.