Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. II (the Corpus Hermeticum) — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
6 Lit. a man's soul, where tyvx'h is used in a general sense, and not in the particular sense applied to it in the category which immediately follows.
6 wtfiari. 7 Of. P. S. A., Vi. 4.
withdraw into the soul, whereon the blood congeals and veins and arteries are emptied, and then the living creature is withdrawn ; and this is body's death.
14. Now from One Source1 all things depend ; while Source [dependeth] from the One and Only [One]. Source is, moreover, moved to become Source again ; whereas the One standeth perpetually and is not moved.
Three then are they : " God, the Father and the Good," Cosmos and man.
God doth contain Cosmos ; Cosmos [containeth] man. Cosmos is e'er God's Son, man as it were Cosmos's child.
15. Not that, however, God ignoreth man; nay, right well doth He know him, and willeth to be known.
This is the sole salvation for a man — God's Gnosis. This is the Way Up to the Mount.2
By Him alone the soul becometh good, not whiles is good, whiles evil, but [good] out of necessity.
Tat. What dost thou mean, Thrice-greatest one?
Her. Behold an infant's soul, my son, that is not yet cut off,3 because its body is still small and not as yet come unto its full bulk.4
1 apx"fi- 2 Lit. to Olympus. 3 Sc. from the world-soul.
4 Of. the instructive exposition of Basilides in F. F. F., pp. 274 f.
Tat. How?
Her. A thing of beauty altogether is [such a soul] to see, not yet befouled by body's passions, still all but hanging from the Cosmic Soul!
But when the body grows in bulk and draweth down the soul into its mass, then doth the soul cut off itself and bring upon itself forgetfulness, and no more shareth in the Beautiful and Good. And this forgetfulness becometh vice.
16. It is the same for them who go out from the body.
For when the soul withdraws into itself, the spirit doth contract itself within the blood, and soul within the spirit.1 And then the mind, stript of its wrappings, and naturally divine, taking unto itself a fiery body, doth traverse every space, after abandoning the soul unto its judgment and whatever chastisement it hath deserved.
Tat.2 What dost thou, father, mean by this?
The mind is parted from the soul and soul from
1 This is generally translated " the spirit is contracted into the blood, and the soul into the spirit," but such a translation contradicts § 13, where we are told that " the spirit withdraws into the soul" at death. It seems to mean that the spirit passes within, out of the blood, and the soul is then clothed in a spiritvesture, or borne in a spirit- vehicle.
2 From here to the end of § 18 is quoted by Stobseus, Phys., xl. 3 (G. i. 312, 313 ; W. 310, 25 ff.) ; only the dialogue is ascribed in error to Asclepius and Tat and not to Hermes and Tat.
spirit? Whereas thou said'st the soul was the mind's vesture, and the soul's the spirit.
17. Her. The hearer, son, should think with him who speaks and breathe with him l ; nay, he should have a hearing subtler than the voice of him who speaks.
It is, son, in a body made of earth that this arrangement of the vestures comes to pass. For in a body made of earth it is impossible the mind should take its seat itself by its own self in nakedness.
For neither is it possible on the one hand the earthy body should contain such immortality, nor on the other that so great a virtue should endure a body passible in such close contact with it. It taketh, then, the soul for as it were an envelope.
And soul itself, being too a thing divine, doth use the spirit as its envelope, while spirit doth pervade the living creature.
18. When then the mind doth free itself from the earth- body, it straightway putteth on its proper robe of fire, with which it could not dwell in an earth-body.
For earth doth not bear fire ; for it is all set in a blaze even by a small spark. And for this cause is water poured round earth, to be a guard and wall, to keep the blazing of the fire away.
But mind, the swiftest thing of all divine out- 1 Cf. P. s. A., x. i.
thinkings, and swifter than all elements, hath for its body fire.
For mind being builder1 doth use the fire as tool for the construction of all things — the Mind of all [for the construction] of all things, but that of man only for things on earth.
Stript of its fire the mind on earth cannot make things divine, for it is human in its dispensation.2
19. The soul in man, however, — not every soul, but one that pious is — is a daimonic something and divine.