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

There is no way, no place [is there] about
Thee, nor any other thing of things that are.

All [are] in Thee ; all [are] from Thee, 0 Thou who givest all and takest naught, for Thou hast all and naught is there Thou hast not.

11. And when, 0 Father, shall I hymn Thee?
For none can seize Thy hour or time.

For what, again, shall I sing hymn? For things that Thou hast made, or things Thou hast not? For things Thou hast made manifest, or things Thou hast concealed ?

How,5 further, shall I hymn Thee ? As being
of myself ? As having something of mine own ?
As being other ?

For that Thou art whatever I may be ; Thou art whatever I may do ; Thou art whatever I may speak.

For Thou art all, and there is nothing else

For emended reading, see R. 244.

That is, of all names. For the following, cf. P. S. A., xxxi. 3

Text from here on given in R. 68, n. 4.

which Thou art not. Thou art all that which doth exist, and Thou art what doth not exist, — Mind when Thou thinkest, and Father when Thou makest, and God when Thou dost energize, and Good and Maker of all things.

(For that the subtler part of matter is the air,
of air the soul, of soul the mind, and of mind
God.)

COMMENTAKY

THE TITLE

The redactor of our Corpus must have taken this sermon from some collection of " Those to Tat," for it begins " KOI rovSe <TOL TOV Xo'yoi/." One other sermon at least, then, must have preceded it ; but whether it was our G. H.y iv. (v.), " The Cup," or the lost 0. H. (ii.), " The General Sermon," it is impossible to say.

The sermon bears no title proper, and the enunciation of the subject, which stands in its place, is derived from the second sentence of the treatise itself, and has plainly been superscribed by some later Byzantine editor.

MAYA

The opening paragraphs of this fine tractate are very difficult to render into English in any way that can preserve the subtle shades of meaning of the Greek. As this subtle word-play has been entirely missed by all previous translators, I have made a rough attempt to preserve it by using the somewhat clumsy term "manifest." The word-play in Greek may be seen from the following list of the original terms taken in the order of their occurrence : a0ai/e?, tfiaveparraTov, efjL<f>av€$, (paivojuievov, €(pdvr}, agaves, (fiavrjvai, <f>avepd, a^ai/jj?, 0aj/e/oeoy, <f>avepovTai, 0cu/Ta<r/a, <j>avTa<Tiwv, (fiavTGKria, a0ai/ra<r/ac7TO9 KOI a^aw}?, (fiavTaa-icov, <f>aivercu, (^avrfvai. These all occur in § 1 and the first two lines of § 2.

I have translated ^avraoria by "thinking-manifest," seeing that it is the power by which an object is made apparent or manifest. The doctrine is the same as that of the Vedanta philosophy, the Maya of the Vedantavadins. Maya is generally translated "illusion," but this is not a good equivalent, for it comes from the root ma, to make or measure. The Logos is called in the Vedanta, Mayin (masc.), the Maker, Measurer, or Creator, and His Power, or Shakti, is Maya (fern.). It is the Power of the Divine Thought, and so far from being illusion in any ordinary sense of the word, is very real for us, and is only non-real as compared to the Logos Himself, the One Reality in the highest philosophical sense of the term.

The idea is magnificently summed up for us in a logos of Phosilampes,1 quoted by the redactor of the Untitled Apocalypse of the Codex Brucianus, which runs as follows :

"Through Him is that-which-really-is and thatwhich-really-is-not, through which the Hidden-whichreally-is and the Manifest-which-really-is-not exists."

Also compare Hippolytus' summary of the " Simonian"
Gnosis :

" Of this Twofold Nature he calls the one side the
Hidden and the other the Manifest, saying that the
concealed [parts] of the Fire are hidden in the manifest,
and the manifest produced by the concealed. . . .
1 Perhaps a by-name of Basilides ; see F. F. F.y p. 554.