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

19. This increasing and multiplying, the perpetual coupling of bodies, and the birth of new ones, is effected by the Fate, or Harmony of the Formative Spheres, the Engine of Birth, set under Forethought or Providence (Trpovoia). This Pronoia can be none else than Nature herself as the Wisdom or Knowledge of God — in other words, His Will.

LOVE

The motive power of all is Love. If this Love manifests itself as Desire for things of Matter, the Lover stays in Darkness wandering ; if it becomes the Will to know Light, the Lover becomes the Knower of himself, and so eventually at-one with Good.

20. But why should love of body merit Death — that is to say, make man mortal ? The disciple attempts an explanation from what he has seen. Although his answer is approved, the meaning is by no means clear.

The physical body, or body in the sense-world, is composed of the Moist Nature, which in a subsequent phase remains as Water-Earth, and in a still subsequent phase divides itself into the elements of physical earth, water, and air. The dissolution of the combination of these elements is effected by Death — that is, Darkness, the Drainer of the Water, the Typhonean Power. Water must thus here symbolize the Osirian Power of fructification and holding together. The Moist Nature then seems to be differentiated from the Darkness by the energizing of Light in its most primitive brooding. But seeing that the Light is also Life, the Darkness, which is posited as the ultimate opposite, is Death.

THE WAY OF DEATHLESSNESS

21. The Way of Deathlessness is then considered. The disciple repeats his lesson, and the Master cominends him; the Way Up is the Path of Self-knowledge.

Still the disciple cannot believe that this is for him ; he cannot understand that Mind is in him, or rather is himself, in so much as Mind as Teacher seems to be without him. The play is on Mind and mind ; the one gives the certitude of Immortality, the other is still bound by the illusion of Death. The disciple has not this certitude ; Mind, then, is not his.

22. The Master then further explains the mystery. Gnosis must be preceded by moral purification ; there must be a turning-away before the Ee-turn can be accomplished. The whole nature must be changed. Yet every effort that the little man seems to make of his own striving is really the energizing of the Great Man.

23. Those, however, who yield themselves to lower desires, drive the Mind away, and their appetites are only the more strengthened by the mind.

The text of this paragraph is very corrupt, so that the exact sense of the original is not recoverable ; and this makes it all the more difficult to understand what is meant by the Avenging Daimon, the Counterpart of the Mind. This difficulty is increased by § 24, where we are told that the " way of life " (TO ?#o?) is at death surrendered to the Daimon.

If, however, the reader will refer to the section on " The Vision of Er " (in the Miscellanea of the " Prolegomena"), which in my original MS. followed as a Digression on this passage, he will be put in contact with the Platonic view of the Daimon and " way of life"; in our treatise, however, the teaching is of a more intimate character, and must be taken in conjunction with C. H.y x. (xi.) 16 and 21, where we shall comment on it at further length.

THE ASCENT OF THE SOUL

24. The subject of instruction is now the Way Above (avoSos), or ascent of the soul out of the body at death.

The physical body is left to the work of change and dissolution. The life of integration and conservation ceases, and the life of disintegration begins.

The form (elSoi) thus vanishes, apparently from the man's consciousness ; that is to say, presumably, he is no longer clothed in the form of his physical body, but is apparently in some other vehicle ; the particular fixed form, or " way of life," or " habit," he wore on earth being handed over to the Daimon deprived of all energy, so that apparently it becomes an empty shell.