Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. II (the Corpus Hermeticum) — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
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9. And God-the-Mind, being male and female both, as Light and Life subsisting, brought forth another Mind to give things form, who, God as he was of Fire and Spirit,3 formed Seven Rulers who enclose the cosmos that the sense perceives.4 Men call their ruling Fate.5
10. Straightway from out the downward elements God's Reason (Logos)6 leaped up to Nature's pure formation, and was at-oned with the Formative Mind; for it was co-essential with it.7 And Nature's downward elements were thus left reason-less, so as to be pure matter.
11. Then the Formative Mind ([at-oned] with Reason), he who surrounds the spheres and spins them with his whirl, set turning his formations, and let them turn from a beginning boundless unto an endless end. For that the circulation
1 Nature and God's Will are identical.
2 That is, the ideal world-order in the realms of reality.
3 Presumably the Pure Air of § 3.
4 rl>v cuVflTjT&v K^IJLOV. The sensible or manifested world, our present universe, as distinguished from the ideal eternal universe, the type of all universes.
5 fifj.apiJ.fVTj.
6 The Logos which had previously descended into Nature.
7 6/ioouo-tos, usually translated " consubstantial " ; but oitala is
" essence " and " being " rather than " substance."
of these [spheres] begins where it doth end, as Mind doth will.
And from the downward elements Nature brought forth lives reason-less ; for He did not extend the Keason (Logos) [to them]. The Air brought forth things winged; the Water things that swim, and Earth-and- Water one from another parted, as Mind willed. And from her bosom Earth produced what lives she had, four-footed things and reptiles, beasts wild and tame.
12. But All-Father Mind, being Life and Light, did bring forth Man l co-equal to Himself, with whom He fell in love, as being His own child ; for he was beautiful beyond compare, the Image of his Sire. In very truth, God fell in love with His own Form 2 ; and on him did bestow all of His own formations.
13. And when he gazed upon what the Enformer had created in the Father, [Man] too wished to enform ; and [so] assent was given him by the Father.3
Changing his state to the formative sphere,4 in that he was to have his whole authority,5 he gazed upon his Brother's creatures.1 They fell in love with him, and gave him each a share of his own ordering.2
1 The Prototype, Cosmic, Ideal or Perfect Man. 3 Or Beauty (pop^s).
3 Of. The Gospel of Mary in the Akhmim Codex : " He nodded, and when He had thus nodded assent . . . ." (F. F. F., 586).
4 The Eighth Sphere bounding the Seven.
6 For note on c|oi,<r/a, see R. in loc. and 48, n. 3.
And after that he had well-learned their essence and had become a sharer in their nature, he had a mind to break right through the Boundary of their spheres, and to subdue 3 the might of that which pressed upon the Fire.*
14. So he who hath the whole authority o'er [all] the mortals in the cosmos and o'er its lives irrational, bent his face downwards through 5 the Harmony,6 breaking right through its strength, and showed to downward Nature God's fair Form.
And when she saw that Form of beauty which can never satiate, and him who [now] possessed within himself each single energy of [all seven] Rulers as well as God's [own] Form, she smiled with love ; for 'twas as though she'd seen the image of Man's fairest form upon her Water, his shadow on her Earth.
1 That is the Seven Spheres fashioned by his Brother.
2 T<(£IS, rank or order.
3 Or " wear down " (Karairovrjo-cu). The reading Karavoriffai, however, may be more correct ; " he had a mind to come to knowledge of" this Boundary or Ring Pass not. See R. 49, n. 1.
4 Sc. the Mighty Power of § 9.
5 *apc'fci46y. Cf. Cyril, C. /., i. 33 (Frag, xiii.) ; R. 50 : " beugt sich . . . nieder" But compare especially Plato, Phcedrus, 249, c., where he speaks of the soul " raising up her face (O.VO.K itya<ra) to That which is." Cf. also Apion in Clement. Horn., vi. 4, in Comment. C. #., xi. (xii.)
6 That is, the harmonious interplay, concord or system of the spheres ruled by the Rulers ; in other words, the cosmos of Fate.