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

Thus the literature that was produced was anonymous or pseudepigraphic. There was first of all a nucleus of personal vision and direct illumination, then a grouping of similar matter from various sources into a whole for didactic purposes. Nor was there any idea among these mystics and scripturewriters that the form once issued should become for ever stereotyped as inerrant; there were many recensions and additions and interpolations. It was left to those without the sense of illumination to stereotype the forms and claim for them the inerrancy of verbal dictation by the Deity. Those who wrote the apocalypses from personal knowledge of vision could not make such claim for their scriptures, for they knew how they were written, and what was the nature of hearing and sight.

We have accordingly to treat all such documents as natural human compositions, but while doing so, while on the one side analyzing them with microscopic attention as literary compositions, put together from other sources, over-written, redacted and interpolated, we have also, on the other, to bear in mind that this was not done by clever manipulators and literary charlatans, but by men who regarded such work as a holy and spiritual task, who endeavoured to arrange all under the inspiration of a sweet influence for good, who believed themselves under guidance in their selection of matter, and in recombining the best in other scriptures into a new whole that might prove still better for the purpose of further enlightenment suitable to their immediate environment.

The " Poemandres " treatise is of this nature — that is to say, though we have not the original form before us, we have what was intended to be read as a single document. We shall accordingly endeavour in our comments not to allow the anomalies of its outer form to detract from our appreciation of its inner spirit, and yet, on the other hand, not to permit the beauty of much that is in it to blind us to the fact that the present form has evolved from simpler beginnings.

THE GREAT AND LITTLE MAN

1. In deep meditation the disciple reaches the consummation of his efforts, and receives initiation from the Master of the masters, who is to confer upon him authority (e£ova-iav — see § 32) to teach, that is, to be a master or a Hermes.

2. That this Grand Master of the Inner Mysteries was Man and Shepherd of men, the Very Self of men, has been amply shown in the Prolegomena, but the striking parallelism with the very wording of our text, the Great Man, the " Being more than vast," who tells the little man, that though for the first time he now knows his Greater Self, that Self has ever been " everywhere with thee," is best shown by the beautiful logos from the Gospel of Eve (presumably an Egyptian gospel), which we have already quoted elsewhere l :

"I stood on a lofty mountain,2 and saw a gigantic Man and another, a dwarf; and I heard, as it were, a voice of thunder, and drew nigh for to hear ; and He spake unto me and said : I am thou, and thou art I ; and wheresoever thou mayest be, I am there.3 In all am I scattered, and whencesoever thou wiliest, thou gatherest Me ; and gathering Me, thou gatherest Thyself."

THE PRESENCE

3. The conditions of the seeing of the Holy Sight had been fulfilled by the disciple ; he had weaned himself from all lower desires. No longer, like the theurgist in the Hermes-invocations of the popular cult, does he pray for wealth and fame and cheerful countenance, and the rest; his one desire, his only will, is now to "learn the things that are, and comprehend their nature and know God." He craves for Gnosis, — Gnosis of Cosmos and its mysteries, Gnosisp. 25 of Nature, the Great Mother, and, finally, Gnosis of God, the Father of the worlds. This is the one question he "holds in his mind," his whole nature is concentrated into this one point of interrogation.

1 From Epiphanius, Hceres., xivi. 3 ; see note to the first Hermes- Prayer (i. 11).

2 Symbolical of a high state of consciousness, the Mount of Perfection.

3 Cf. the Oxyrhynchus logion 5 : " Jesus saith : Wherever there are [two], they are not without God, and wherever there is one alone, I say, I am with him."