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

2. As for [true] Music, — to know this is naught else than to have knowledge of the order of all things, and whatsoe'er God's Reason hath decreed.

For that the order of each several thing when set together in one [key] for all, by means of skilful reason, will make, as 'twere, the sweetest and the truest harmony with God's [own] Song.1

XIV

1. Asc. Who, therefore, will the men be after us2?

Tris. They will be led astray by sophists' cleverness, and turned from True Philosophy, —the Pure and Holy [Love].

For that to worship God with single mind and soul, and reverence the things that He hath made, and to give thanks unto His Will, which is the only thing quite full of Good, — this is Philosophy unsullied by the soul's rough curiousness.

But of this subject let what has been said so far suffice.

2. [VII. M.] And now let us begin to treat of Spirit and such things.

There was first God and Matter,3 which we in Greek 4 believe [to be] the Cosmos ; and Spirit was with Cosmos, or Spirit was in Cosmos, but not in like way as in God 5 ; nor were there things [as yet] from which the Cosmos [comes to birth] in God.

1 Cf. "Heaven's harmonious song" in xxviii. 11 below.

2 Of. xii. 3 above, and notes.

3 The Greek v\-ri is here retained by the translator. 4 Greece.

5 The Latin translation is confused. The original seems to have stated that Spirit and Cosmos (or Matter) were as yet one, or Spirit-Matter.

They were not ; just for the very reason that they were not, but were as yet in that [condition] whence they have had their birth.1

For those things only are not called ingenerable which have not yet been born, but [also] those which lack the fertilizing power of generating, so that from them naught can be born.

And so whatever things there are that have in them the power of generating, — these two are generable, [that is to say,] from which birth can take place, though they be born from their own selves [alone]. For there's no question that from those born from themselves birth can with ease take place, since from them all are born.

3. God, then, the everlasting, God the eternal,
nor can be born, nor could He have been born.
That2 is, That was, That shall be ever. This,
therefore, is God's Nature — all from itself
[alone].

But Matter 3 (or the Nature of the Cosmos) 4 and Spirit, although they do not seem to be things born from any source,5 yet in themselves possess the power of generation and of generating, —the nature of fecundity.

1 That is, presumably, they were in potentiality. 2 Hoc.

3 Again flAi? in the Latin text.

4 Cf. "Matter or Cosmos" of xvii. 2.

6 Principio, "beginning" • the same word as that used in the Vulgate translation of the Proem of the fourth Gospel.

For the beginning1 [truly] is in [just that] quality of nature which possesses in itself the power and matter both of conception and of birth.2 This,3 then, without conception of another, is generable of its own self.

XV

1. But, on the other hand, [whereas] those things which only have the power of bringing forth by blending with another nature, are thus to be distinguished, this Space of Cosmos,4 with those that are in it, seems not to have been born, in that [the Cosmos] has in it undoubtedly all Nature's potency.5

By "Space" I mean that in which are all things. For all these things could not have been had Space not been, to hold them all. Since for all things that there have been, must be provided Space.

For neither could the qualities nor quantities, nor the positions, nor [yet] the operations, be distinguished of those things which are no where.

1 Initium.

2 This seems to make it clear that the idea "Cosmos" is regarded under the dual concept of Spirit- Matter.

3 Sc. Primal Nature, or Spirit- Matter.

4 Cf. xxx. 1, and xxxiv. 1 below.

5 The Latin construction is very faulty.

2. So then the Cosmos, also, though not born, still has in it the births l of all ; in that, indeed, it doth afford for all of them most fecund wombs for their conception.

It, therefore, is the sum of [all that] quality of Matter which hath creative potency, although it hath not been [itself] created.

And, seeing that [this] quality of Matter is in its nature [simple] productiveness ; so the same [source] produces bad as well [as good].

XVI