Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. II (the Corpus Hermeticum) — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

" They see themselves in others. For all things are transparent, and there is nothing dark or resisting, and everyone is manifest to everyone internally, and all things are made manifest ; for light is manifest to light. For everyone has all things in himself, and again sees in another all things, so that all things are everywhere, and all in all, and each in all, and infinite the glory. For each of them is great, since the small also is great. And the sun there is all the stars, and, again, each and all are the sun. In each, one thing is preeminent above the rest, but it also shows forth all." 3

1 This belief, indeed, is the power of the Japanese in our own day.

2 He thus, apparently, would take the &cef<re as referring to these subject kings and rulers.

3 ^n., V. viii. 4.

Compare this also with the intuition of the seer in
The Untitled Apocalypse of the Codex Brucianus :

"Their Crowns send forth Eays; the Brilliancy of their Bodies is as the life of the Space into which they are come ; the Word (Logos) that comes out of their mouth is Eternal Life, and the Light that comes forth from their Eyes is Eest for them; the Movement of their Hands is their Flight to the Space out of which they are come, and their Gazing on their own Faces is Knowledge of themselves ; their Giving to themselves is a repeated Eeturn, and the Stretching out of their Hands establishes them ; the Hearing of their Ears is the Perception in their Heart ; and the Union of their Limbs is the Ingathering of Israel ; their Holding to one another is their Fortification in the Logos." *

This is the Egyptian counterpart of the Plotinian
Ecstasis ; and Plotinus was by birth an Egyptian.

p. 557

II

The Perfect Sermon

VOL. II.

,

THE PERFECT SERMON

OR THE ASCLEPIUS

(Text : The Greek original is lost, and only a Latin version remains to us. I use the text of Hildebrand (G. F.), L. Apuleii Opera Omnia ex Fide Optimorum Codicum (Leipzig, 1842), Pars II., pp. 279-334 ; but have very occasionally preferred the text in Patrizzi's Nova de Universis Philosophia (Venice, 1593), or of the Bipontine edition of Appuleius, Lucii Apuleji Madaurensis Platonici PMlosophi Opera (Biponti, 1788), pp. 285-325.)

I.1 [I. M.2] \_Trismegistus.'] God, 0 Asclepius, hath brought thee unto us that thou mayest hear a Godly sermon,3 a sermon such as well may seem of all the previous ones we've [either] uttered, or with which we've been inspired by the Divine, more Godly than the piety of [ordinary] faith.

1 I have added numbers to the paragraphs for greater convenience of reference.

2 Menard has divided the treatise into fifteen parts, which I have thus distinguished ; the numbering of the chapters are those usually found.

3 Or, a sermon about the Gods.

If thou with eye of intellect1 shalt see this Word2 thou shalt in thy whole mind be filled quite full of all things good.

If that, indeed, the "many" be the "good," and not the " one," in which are " all." Indeed the difference between the two is found in their agreement,— " All" is of "One"3 or "One" is " All." So closely bound is each to other, that neither can be parted from its mate.

But this with diligent attention shalt thou learn from out the sermon that shall follow [this].

But do thou, 0 Asclepius, go forth a moment and call in the one who is to hear.4

(And when he had come in, Asclepius proposed
that Ammon too should be allowed to come.
Thereon Thrice-greatest said :)

[ Tris.~\ There is no cause why Ammon should be kept away from us. For we remember how we have ourselves set down in writing many things to his address,5 as though unto a son most dear and most beloved, of physics many things, of ethics [too] as many as could be.