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

It is a curious fact, however, that Stobaeus starts his quotations from this treatise precisely with the same words with which our text begins ; nevertheless these words plunge us so immediately into a secondary subject, that Reitzenstein thinks there may have been a more general introduction which Johannes may very well have omitted.

That, however, the lost pages of our Corpus should have contained such an introduction, broken at precisely the very same point to a word, would seem to be a coincidence the reverse of probable ; nevertheless the treatise itself purports to be a very formal one, for we learn from the concluding words (§ 17) that it was intended to be " An Introduction to the Gnosis (ir poyvwcria) of the Nature of All Things."

We are, therefore, driven to conclude that, in spite of a most improbable coincidence, the beginning may have been lost, and that we have therefore to regret the loss not only of the whole of the " General Sermon " to Tat, but also of the introduction to the " Introduction to the Gnosis" addressed to Asclepius, and therewith, in all probability, some precious indications of how " Tat " and " Asclepius " are to be precisely defined.

Parthey's conflated title (p. 19) from the MSS., and Stobaeus, " Of Hermes the Thrice-greatest, the General Sermon to Asclepius," must therefore be definitely abandoned, and, in lieu of the lost general title, we must be content with the simple heading, "To Asclepius."

SPACE is A PLENUM

The subject is that of the Fullness of Being or the >/ Plenum of things. Space is a Plenum, — the fundamental concept of modern scientific speculation.

Asclepius, however, must guard himself against the confusion of Space with God ; for God is not Space, but Cause thereof, — the True Transcendency of "that which can contain all things" (§ 6).

" In Him we move. " " All that is moved is moved in what is stable," or " in Him who stands" (cv earrwri) ; where it is to be noticed that the term, " He who stands," is found in Philo, and is made much of in Gnostic tradition, especially in the so-called Simonian Gnosis, for in The Great Announcement, from which Hippolytus has preserved some passages, the Logos is called "He who stands" or "He who has stood, stands and will stand."1 This is the aspect of the Reason of things that holds and compacts all together, the Stock or Pillar of Immobility, the opposite aspect being that of the Separator or Divider ; the two together forming the Cross of Manifestation, the resolution of the Sphere of Sameness.

The World-Soul is in perpetual motion ; this perpetual motion is ordered and reduced to a cosmos and harmony of motion by the introduction into it, by means of the Reason, of the root-forms of motion (mentioned in the Timceus and elsewhere) ; — up, down ; right, left; front, back ; in, out ; round, — and no-motion*

All bodies are essentially inert ; it is the soul that
moves them, either immediately or mediately (§ 9).
1 R., p. 305, also makes a brief reference to this.

What the precise meaning of § 10 may be I cannot say; the tradition of the original text was variable, showing that the copyists had difficulty with it. As, however, the doctrine throughout is that of a Plenum (as, indeed, it is elsewhere in the Trismegistic writings), I can only suppose that the instructor of " Asclepius " was endeavouring to clinch his point by arguing that the only Void was the " is-not " or non-being ; now as non-being cannot possibly "exist," there can be no such thing as Void.

THE SPOUSE OF DEITY

That, then, in which " the All doth move," in which all things "live and move and have their being," is the Bodiless ; in other words, the Mind or Reason of God, the Logos, — who, as Philo tells us, is the Place of God, — that is, Infinite Space itself, the Container of all things, the very Spouse of Deity. Spouse or Son, it matters not; that in which all moves and lives and breathes is Wisdom, Good and Truth, the ^Eon of aeons, Light of light, Life of life, the Archetype of Soul itself (§ 12).

GOD is CAUSE THAT SPIRIT is

" God, then, is not Spirit," l much less " a spirit," 2
" but Cause that Spirit is " ; for God is " Good alone."
Therefore : " Call not thou aught else Good."

And now let us turn to F. C. Conybeare's important criticism of Matt. xix. 17 = Mk. x. 18 = Lk. xviii. 19, in the first number of The Hibbert Journal? where he

1 Cf. Joh. iv. 24 :

2 As the A.V. has it erroneously.