Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. III — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

This fragment belongs to a type of Hermetic literature of which it is the sole surviving specimen. It is in form identical with the Isis and Horus type ; but what the name of the questioner of Aphrodite could have been is difficult to say.

EXCERPT XXIV.

[A HYMN OF THE GODS]

(Text : Stob., Phys., v. 14, under the simple heading : " Of
Hermes " ; G. p. 65 • M. i. 45 ; W. i. 77. The same verses
are read in the appendix to the Anthologia Palatina, p.
768, n. 40.)

SEVEN Stars far varied in their course revolved upon the [wide] Olympian plain; with them for ever will Eternity1 spin [fate]2: — Mene that shines by night, [and] gloomy Kronos, [and] sweet Helios, and Paphie who's carried in the shrine,3 courageous Ares, fair-winged Hermes, and Zeus the primal source4 from whom Nature doth come.

Now they themselves have had the race of

1 Or ^Eon.

2 eViJ/^o-cTai. But the Anthology reads ' ' «oi roiffiv ael ttavovl CETCU "

— that is to say, Eternity or ^Eon is for ever regulated or measured by the Seven ; which seems to have no sense unless it means that the Seven are the instruments, whereby Eternity is divided into time.

3 That is, Venus, the image of whom was, presumably, carried in a small shrine in processions.

men entrusted to their care ; so that in us there is a Mene, Zeus, an Ares, Paphie, a Kronos, Helios and Hermes.

Wherefore we are divided up [so as] to draw from the setherial spirit,1 tears, laughter, anger, birth, reason, sleep, desire.

Tears are Kronos, birth Zeus, reason [is] Hermes, courage Mars, and Mene sleep, in sooth, and Cytherea desire, and Helios [is] laughter — for 'tis because of him that justly every mortal thinking thing doth laugh and the immortal world.

COMMENT

This is the only known specimen of verses attributed to the Trismegistic tradition. Liddell and Scott, however, under " VVKTL$OVYI$" do not question this attribution, while Clement of Alexandria (Strom., vi. p. 633 [this is a reference of Wachsmuth's which I cannot verify]) praises the " Hymns of the Gods " of Hermes. On the contrary, in Anthol. Palat., p. 442, n. 491, the seventh verse is ascribed to Theon of Alexandria.

1 Meaning the one element or ether simply.

EXCERPT XXV.

THE VIRGIN OF THE WORLD [I.] *

(Title in Patrizzi (p. 27b), in the Latin translation,
" Minerva Mundi." 2

Text : Stob., Phys., xli. 44, under heading : " From Thrice- Greatest Hermes' Sacred Book ' The Virgin of the World ' " ; G. pp. 395-419; M. i. 281-298; W. i. 385-407.

Menard, Livre III., No. i. of " Fragments of the Sacred
Book entitled 'The Virgin of the World,'" pp. 177-200.)

I.3 So speaking Isis doth pour forth for Horus the sweet draught (the first) of deathless-

1 Or "Apple of the Eye of the World"— see Commentary.
Referred to as K. K., — i.e. Kdprj K&r/toi/.

ness1 which souls have custom to receive from Gods, and thus begins her holiest discourse (logos) :

2 Curiously enough, though the page-headings throughout have "Minerva Mundi," the heading of p. 28 still stands "Pupilla Mundi" — showing that Patrizzi himself was puzzled how to translate the Greek, and had probably in the first place translated it throughout "Pupilla Mundi," or "Apple of the Eye of the World." In his Introduction (p. 3), however, Patrizzi writes : " But there is extant also another [book of Hermes] with the title of ' The Sacred Book,3 which we found in Cyprus, in a monastery called Enclistra, at the same time as the rest of the books, and which John Stobseus has inserted in his Physical Eclogues together with other fragments." This would seem to suggest that Patrizzi had seen the original Sermon, and that its main title was " The Sacred Book."

3 I have numbered the paragraphs for convenience of reference.

Seeing that, Son Horus, Heaven, adorned with many a wreath [of starry crowns], is set o'er every nature of [all] things beneath, and that nowhere it lacketh aught of anything which the whole cosmos now doth hold, — in every way it needs must be that every nature which lies underneath, should be co-ordered and full-filled by those that lie above ; for things below cannot of course give order to the ordering above.