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

The whole of [this grand scale of] Rulership,
however, seems to Him [who is] the Highest
Lord, either to be not many things, or rather
[to be] one.

For that from One all things depending,4 and flowing down from it, — when they are seen as separate, they're thought to be as many as they possibly can be ; but in their union it is one [thing], or rather two, from which all things are made ; — that is, from Matter, by means of which the other things are made, and by the Will of Him, by nod of whom they're brought to pass.

1 Quoted in the original Greek by loan. Laurentius Lydus, De Mensibus, iv. 7 ; Wiinsch (Leipzig, 1898), p. 70, 22 ; as follows : " And Hermes is witness in his [book], called ' The Perfect Sermon,' when saying : ' They that are called the Seven Spheres have a Source that is called Fortune or Fate, which changes all things and suffers them not to remain in the same [conditions].' " The quotation is continued without a break ; the rest of it, however, corresponds to nothing in our context, but is somewhat similar to ch. xxxix. 1, 2,

2 That is, the region of things subject to death. The text is faulty. Cf. with this "engine" the "cylinder" of the K. K. Fragments (10).

3 Ab imo ad summum se admoventibus ; for admoventibus compare " genus admotum superis" Silius Italicus, viii. 295.

4 Cf. iv. 1 above, and the note.

XX

1. Asc. Is this again the reason, 0 Thricegreatest one ?

Tris. It is, Asclepius. For God's the Father or the Lord of all, or whatsoever else may be the name by which He's named more holily and piously by men, — which should be set apart among ourselves for sake of our intelligence.

For if we contemplate this so transcendent God, we shall not make Him definite by any of these names.

For if a [spoken] word l is this : — a sound proceeding from the air, when struck by breath,2 denoting the whole will, perchance, of man, or else the [higher] sense, which by good chance a man perceives by means of mind, when out of [all his] senses,3 — a name the stuff of which, made of a syllable or two, has so been limited and pondered, that it might serve in man as necessary link between the voice and ear ; — thus [must] the Name of God in full consist of Sense, and Spirit, and of Air, and of all things in them, or through, or with them.1

1 Vox (=name), presumably \6yos in the original; a play on "word" and "reason," but also referring to the mysterious " name" of a person.

2 Spiritu, or spirit.

3 Ex sensibus = presumably, in ecstasis.

2. Indeed, I have no hope that the Creator of the whole of Greatness, the Father and the Lord of all the things [that are], could ever have one name, even although it should be made up of a multitude — He who cannot be named, or rather He who can be called by every name.

For He, indeed, is One and All 2 ; so that it needs must be that all things should be called by the same name as His, or He Himself called by the names of all.

3. He, then, alone, yet all-complete in the fertility of either sex, ever with child of His own Will, doth ever bring to birth whatever He hath willed to procreate.

His Will is the All-goodness, which also is the Goodness of all things, born from the nature of His own Divinity, — in order that all things may be, just as they all have been, arid that henceforth the nature of being born from their own selves may be sufficient to all things that will be born.

1 The text of this paragraph is very unsatisfactory.

2 Cf. i. 1 above.

Let this, then, be the reason given thee,
Asclepius, wherefore and how all things are made
of either sex.

XXI

1. Asc. Thou speak'st of God, then, 0 Thricegreatest one?

Tris. Not only God, Asclepius, but all things living and inanimate. For 'tis impossible that any of the things that are should be unfruitful.

For if fecundity should be removed from all the things that are, it could not be that they should be for ever what they are. 1 mean that Nature,1 Sense, and Cosmos, have in themselves the power of being born,2 and of preserving all things that are born.

For either sex is full of procreation ; and of each one there is a union, or, — what's more true, — a unity incomprehensible ; which you may rightly call Eros3 or Aphrodite, or both [names].

2. This, then, is truer than all truth, and plainer than what the mind ['s eye] perceives ;— that from that Universal God of Universal Nature all other things for evermore have found, and had bestowed on them, the mystery of