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

never again make itself visible to the perfect ^Eons, the Father Himself also sent forth the additional emanation of a single Mon, the Cross [or Stock, rbv a-Tavpfo], which being created great, as [the creature] of the great and perfect Father, and emanated to be the Guard and Wall of protection [lit. Paling or Stockade — xapa/co>,ua, the Roman vallum] of the jEons, constitutes the Boundary (8pos) of the Pleroma, holding the thirty JSons together within itself. For these [thirty] are they which form the divine creation." See F. F. F., p. 342.

1 That is, the Mon. 2 Receptaculum.

3 Of. 0. H., xi. (xii.) 2.

there's nothing stable, nothing fixed, nothing immoveable, of things that are being born, in Heaven or on the Earth.

Tmmoveable * [is] God alone, and rightly [He] alone ; for He Himself is in Himself, and by Himself, and round Himself, completely full and perfect.

He is His own immoveable stability. Nor by the pressure of some other one can He be moved, nor in the space [of anyone].

4. For in Him are all [spaces], and He Himself alone is in them all ; unless someone should venture to assert that God's own motion's in Eternity2; nay, rather, it is just Immoveable Eternity itself, back into which the motion of all times is funded, and out of which the motion of all times takes its beginning.

XXXI

1. God, then, hath [ever] been unchanging,3 and ever, in like fashion, with Himself hath the Eternity consisted, — having within itself Cosmos ingenerate, which we correctly call [God] Sensible.4

Of that [transcendent] Deity this Image 5 hath been made, — Cosmos the imitator of Eternity.

1 That is, changeless. 2 That is, again, in the

3 Stabilis. 4 Of. viii. 1 above.

5 Cf. x. 3 above.

Time, further, hath the strength and nature of its own stability, in spite of its being in perpetual motion, — from its necessity of [ever] from itself reverting to itself.

2. And so, although Eternity is stable, motionless, and fixed, still, seeing that the movement of [this] Time (which is subject to motion) is ever being recalled into Eternity, — and for that reason Time's mobility is circular, — it comes to pass that the Eternity itself, although in its own self, is motionless, [yet] on account of Time, in which it is — (and it is in it), — it seems to be in movement as all motion.

So that it comes to pass, that both Eternity's stability becometh moved, and Time's mobility becometh stable.

So may we ever hold that God Himself is moved into Himself by [ever-] same transcendency of motion.1

For that stability is in His vastness motion motionless ; for by His vastness is [His] law exempt from change.2

3. That, then, which so transcends, which is not subject unto sense, [which is] beyond all bounds, [and which] cannot be grasped, — That

1 Eadem immobilitate. The whole is an endeavour to at-one the "Platonic" root-opposites "same" (ravr6v) and "other" (edrepov}— the "Self" and the "not-Self," sat-asat, dtmdndtman, of the Upanishads.

2 Lit. motionless.

VOL. ii. 24

transcends all appraisement ; That cannot be supported, nor borne up, nor can it be tracked out.1

/ For where, and when, and whence, and how, \ and what, He is, — is known to none.2 For He's borne up by [His] supreme stability, and His stability is in Himself [alone], — whether [this mystery] be God, or the Eternity, or both, or one in other, or both in either.

4. And for this cause, just as Eternity transcends the bounds of Time ; so Time [itself], in that it cannot have bounds set to it by number, or by change, or by the period of the revolution of some second [kind of Time], — is of the nature of Eternity.

Both, then, seem boundless, both eternal. And so stability, though naturally fixed, yet seeing that it can sustain the things that are in motion, — because of all the good it does by reason of its firmness, deservedly doth hold the chiefest place.

XXXII

1. The principals of all that are, are, therefore,
God and JEon.3

The Cosmos, on the other hand, in that 'tis moveable, is not a principal.4

1 Cf. C. H.j xiii. (xiv.) 6 ; also xxxiv. 3 below.

2 Compare the Hymn in C. H., v. (vi.) 10, 11.

3 Or Eternity. 4 Lit. does not hold the chief place.

For its mobility exceeds its own stability by treating the immoveable fixation as the law of everlasting movement.

The Whole Sense,1 then, of the Divinity, though like [to Him] in its own self immoveable, doth set itself in motion within its own stability.