Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. II (the Corpus Hermeticum) — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
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3 Reitzenstein (p. 22, 2) says that it was in error that the Greeks stated the Egyptians believed in metempsychosis ; in this I believe that Reitzenstein is himself in error. The Egyptians at any rate demonstrably believed in soul metamorphosis ; and when we find people who lived in Egypt teaching this metamorphosis in connection with metempsychosis, it is but natural to conclude that the Greeks, who were in touch with the living tradition of Egypt, knew more about the matter than modern scepticism.
THE LADDER OF BEING
The Hermetic doctrine of the evolution of the soul, by means of multitudinous transformations, is characterised by certain main moments, for in the course of it it passes through definite stages of existence designated as animal, human, daimonic, and god-like ; there being, further, two grades of being within the choir of gods — the errant and inerrant. The final stage is the most perfect glory (So£a) or power of the soul.
With all of this there is a strikingly exact parallel of ideas in the Pauline Letters.
" But some one will say : How do the dead rise, and with what body do they come [? back] ?
" Thou foolish one ! That which thou sowest is not made quick unless it die.
"And that which thou sowest — 'tis not the body that shall be thou sowest, but a naked grain of wheat or of one of the other seeds.1
" 'Tis God that gives to it 2 a body as he will, — yea to every one of the seeds its proper body.
" Not every flesh is the same flesh ; but there is one of men, another flesh of beasts, another flesh of birds, and another of fishes.
"There are also bodies celestial, as well as bodies terrestrial. But the glory of the celestial [bodies] is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.
" [And of the former] the glory of the sun is one, and the glory of the moon is another, and [yet] another is the glory of the stars ; for star diff ereth from star in glory.
" So also is the resurrection of the dead. " 3
1 The " grain of mustard seed "— " wheat" if a good body comes therefrom, " tares " if an imperfect growth results.
2 Sc. the soul as grain. 3 1 Cor. xv 35-42.
And by " resurrection of the dead," I believe that Paul meant what all the instructed of the time meant — namely, the " reaching the first step of deathlessness," as Hermes has it in our treatise. The death or vice of the soul is ignorance, the virtue or life of the soul is Gnosis.
" For he who knows, he good and pious is, and still while on the earth, divine."
CONCERNING TRANSMIGRATION
8. With § 8, however, we are confronted with what appears to be a great difficulty. Hermes here seems to teach distinctly that a vicious (that is, an ignorant) soul, one who has not attained to Gnosis, goes back to attachment to animal bodies, while in §§ 19 ff., he at great length denies that a human soul can possibly do so. Is there any solution of this apparently complete self-contradiction in one and the same treatise ?
Far as I am from desiring to play the apologist for any scripture, I am prevented from appending an impatient " No " to this query, for the following considerations :
In the first place, Hermes in § 8 is speaking of the vicious or ignorant soul, while in § 19 he is speaking not only of the " human " soul, but of the human soul that hath the Good Mind (§ 23); whereas the ignorant soul " doth not have Mind, and, therefore, such an one should not be called a man " (§ 24). Here, then, we have a fundamental distinction in souls incarnated into the " body of a man " (§ 8) ; they are of two classes.
The doctrine of § 8 applies to one class, the doctrine of § 19 to another.
Metempsychosis, in the sense of continued revolution on the wheel of life and death, is only for him who "persisteth in his vice" — that is to say, is still ignorant. Gnosis thus means the freedom from samsara, to use a common Brahmanical and Buddhistic term.
The ignorant soul does not see the Light, being
" blinded by the body's passions, and tossed about " ;
this is the "turmoil" of which Plato speaks in the
Timceus.
And here I must refer the reader to " Plato Concerning Metempsychosis," in the "Prolegomena," a chapter which I have written mainly in elucidation of the problems raised by our treatise.
GNOSIS THE VIRTUE OF THE SOUL
9. So much, then, for the soul which persisteth in its vice or ignorance ; but the virtue of the soul is Gnosis.
"For he who knows, he good and pious is, and still while on the earth, divine."