Corpus Hermeticum Quotes

Birth is not the beginning of life - only of an individual awareness. Change into another state is not death - only the ending of this awareness.

No eyes will raise to heaven. The pure will be thought insane and the impure will be honoured as wise. The madman will be believed brave, and the wicked esteemed as good.

As above, so below. As within, so without. Originated by Hermes TRISMEGISTUS!

If then you do not make yourself equal to God, you cannot apprehend God; for like is known by like. Leap clear of all that is corporeal, and make yourself grown to a like expanse with that greatness which is beyond all measure; rise above all time and become eternal; then you will apprehend God. Think that for you too nothing is impossible; deem that you too are immortal, and that you are able to grasp all things in your thought, to know every craft and science; find your home in the haunts of every living creature; make yourself higher than all heights and lower than all depths; bring together in yourself all opposites of quality, heat and cold, dryness and fluidity; think that you are everywhere at once, on land, at sea, in heaven; think that you are not yet begotten, that you are in the womb, that you are young, that you are old, that you have died, that you are in the world beyond the grave; grasp in your thought all of this at once, all times and places, all substances and qualities and magnitudes together; then you can apprehend God. But if you shut up your soul in your body, and abase yourself, and say “I know nothing, I can do nothing; I am afraid of earth and sea, I cannot mount to heaven; I know not what I was, nor what I shall be,” then what have you to do with God?

O ye people, earth-born folk, ye who have given yourselves to drunkenness and sleep and ignorance of God, be sober now,cease from your surfeit, cease to be glamored by irrational sleep!

For the sun is situated in the center of the cosmos, wearing it like a crown

The hearer must be of one mind with the speaker, my son, and of one spirit as well; he must have hearing quicker than the speech of the speaker.

The present issues from the past, and the future from the present. Everything is made one by this continuity. Time is like a circle, where all the points are so linked that one cannot say where it begins or ends, for all points precede and follow one another for ever.

Humanity looked in awe upon the beauty and the everlasting duration of creation. The exquisite sky flooded with sunlight. The majesty of the dark night lit by celestial torches as the holy planetary powers trace their paths in the heavens in fixed and steady metre - ordering the growth of things with their secret infusions.

Do you not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is an image of heaven or, to be more precise, that everything governed and moved in heaven came down to Egypt and was transferred there? If truth were told, our land is the temple of the whole world.

83. Avoid all conversation with the multitude or common people; for I would not have you subject to envy, much less to be ridiculous unto the multitude.

This is what you must know: that in you which sees and hears is the word of the lord, but your mind is god the father; they are not divided from one another for their union is life.

Man is the most divine of all the beings, for amongst all living things, Atum associates with him only - speaking to him in dreams at night, foretelling the future for him in the flight of birds, the bowels of beasts, and the whispering oak.

65. The generation of man is corruption; the corruption of man is the beginning of generation.

But this discourse, expressed in our paternal language, keeps clear the meaning of its words. The very quality of speech and of the Egyptian words have in themselves the energy of the object they speak of. Therefore, my king, in so far as you have the power (who are all powerful), keep the discourse uninterpreted, lest mysteries of such greatness come to the Greeks, lest the extravagant, flaccid and (as it were) dandified Greek idiom extinguish something stately and concise, the energetic idiom of usage. For the Greeks have empty speeches, O king, that are energetic only in what they demonstrate, and this is the philosophy of the Greeks, an inane foolosophy of speeches. We, by contrast, use not speeches but sounds that are full of action. (Chapter XVI)

Having made them rise, I became guide to my race, teaching them the words – how to be saved and in what manner – and I sowed the words of wisdom among them, and they were nourished from the ambrosial water.

74. The Earth is brutish; the Heaven is reasonable or rational.

80. What is God? The immutable or unalterable good. 81. What is man? An unchangeable evil.

55. Nothing in Heaven is enslaved; nothing upon Earth is free.

72. Things upon Earth, do not advantage those in Heaven; but all things in Heaven do profit and advantage all things upon Earth.

This cosmos is large, then, and no body is larger?” “Agreed.” “And is it densely packed? For it has been filled with many other large bodies or, rather, with all the bodies that exist.” “So it is.” “But is the cosmos a body?” “A body, yes.” “And a moved body?” [3] “Certainly.” “The place in which it moves, then, how large must it be, and what is its nature? Is it not larger by far so as to sustain continuity of motion and not hold back its movement lest the moved be crowded and confined?

For body's sleep became the soul's awakening, and closing of the eyes − true vision

Such a person does not cease longing after insatiable appetites, struggling in the darkness without satisfaction. This tortures him and makes the fire grow upon him all the more.

This hollow of the world, round like a sphere, cannot itself, become of its quality or shape, be wholly visible. Choose any place high on the sphere from which to look down, and you cannot see bottom from there. Because of this, many believe it has the same quality as place. They believe it is visible after a fashion, but only through shapes of the forms whose images seem to be imprinted when one shows a picture of it. In itself, however, the real thing remains always invisible. Hence, the bottom - {if it is a part or a place} in the sphere - is called Haides in Greek because in Greek 'to see' is idein, and there is no-seeing the bottom of a sphere. And the forms are called 'ideas' because they are visible forms. The (regions) called Haides in Greek because they are deprived of visibility are called 'infernal' in Latin because they are at the bottom of the sphere. Such, then, are the original things, the primeval things, the sources or beginnings of all, as it were, for all are in them or from them or through them.

If you are mindful, Asclepius, these things should seem true to you, but they will be beyond belief if you have no knowledge. To understand is to believe, and not to believe is not to understand. Reasoned discourse does get to the truth, but mind is powerful, and, when it has been guided by reason up to a point, it has the means to get the truth. After mind had considered all this carefully and had discovered that all of it is in harmony with the discoveries of reason, it came to believe, and in this beautiful belief it found rest. By an act of god, then, those who have understood find what I have been saying believable, but those who have not understood do not find it believable. Let this much be told about understanding and sensation.

In the same text of the Corpus Hermeticum in which Hermes referred to Egypt as the “image of heaven,” he prophesied a coming period in which the temples of Egypt would be abandoned and the voices of the gods would no longer be heard, and at which time humanity would prefer darkness to light. But he went on to say that this would prompt a revival of sacred consciousness in which the temples would be restored. Such a revival seems to be occurring in the world today with books such as this providing the modern spiritual seeker with a bridge to an ancient spiritual tradition that reveals itself to be increasingly relevant to these times in which we live.

In the same text of the Corpus Hermeticum in which Hermes referred to Egypt as the “image of heaven,” he prophesied a coming period in which the temples of Egypt would be abandoned and the voices of the gods would no longer be heard, and at which time humanity would prefer darkness to light. But he went on to say that this would prompt a revival of sacred consciousness in which the temples would be restored. Such a revival seems to be occurring in the world today with books such as this providing the modern spiritual seeker with a bridge to an ancient spiritual tradition that reveals itself to be increasingly

The basic teachings of the Corpus Hermeticum are found in The Emerald Tablet. This text explains that the cosmos was constructed on the principle “as above, so below,” for the purposes of accomplishing the “mystery of the One Thing.”19 As Hermes explains to his adepts, this One, or All, extends itself through complex hierarchies of interdependence, from the stars down to the human soul. The microcosm is constituted by the same principles as the macrocosm, and the stars have an influence that is as much personal as it is physical. A

And of the matter stored beneath it , the Father made of it a universal body, and packing it together made it spherical - wrapping it round the life - [a sphere] which is immortal in itself, and that doth make materiality eternal.

In Book XI of the Corpus Hermeticum, Nous explains to Hermes that “within God everything lies in the imagination,” and goes on to give a description of what he can expect from gnosis. Command your soul to go anywhere and it will be there quicker than your command. Bid it to go to the ocean and again it is there at once . . . Order it to fly up to heaven and it will need no wings . . . If you do not make yourself equal to God you cannot understand him. Like is understood by like. Grow to immeasurable size. Be free from every body, transcend all time. Become eternity and thus will you understand God . . . Consider yourself immortal and able to understand everything: all arts, sciences, and the nature of every living creature . . . Sense as one within yourself the entire creation . . . Conceive yourself to be in all places at the same time . . . Conceive all things at once: times, places, actions, qualities and quantities: then you can understand God.26

[16] And after this: “…, o my mind. I love the word also.” Poimandres said: “This is the mystery that has been kept hidden until this very day. When nature made love with the man, she bore a wonder most wondrous. In him he had the nature of the cosmic framework of the seven, who are made of fire and spirit, as I told you, and without delay nature at once gave birth to seven men, androgyne and exalted, whose natures were like those of the seven governors.

Whether the real setting and dating of the Hermetic tradition in late antiquity are, in fact, irrelevant to its reception in the Renaissance is an interesting hermeneutic question that cannot be answered here. In any case and for many other reasons, Yates’s views on the Hermetica became famous for some, notorious for others, especially when, in a 1968 article, she made Hermes a major figure in the preliminaries to the scientific revolution, just two years after J.E. McGuire and P.M. Rattansi had connected Newton’s physics with the ancient theology theme so closely associated with Hermes.

If you are mindful, Asclepius, these things should seem true to you, but they will be beyond belief if you have no knowledge. To understand is to believe, and not to believe is not to understand. Reasoned discourse does [not] get to the truth, but mind is powerful, and, when it has been guided by reason up to a point, it has the means to get [as far as] the truth. After mind had considered all this carefully and had discovered that all of it is in harmony with the discoveries of reason, it came to believe, and in this beautiful belief it found rest. By an act of god, then, those who have understood find what I have been saying believable, but those who have not understood do not find it believable. Let this much be told about understanding and sensation.

If you are mindful, Asclepius, these things should seem true to you, but they will be beyond belief if you have no knowledge. To understand is to believe, and not to believe is not to understand. Reasoned discourse does (not) get to the truth, but mind is powerful, and, when it has been guided by reason up to a point, it has the means to get (as far as) the truth. After mind had considered all this carefully and had discovered that all of it is in harmony with the discoveries of reason, it came to believe, and in this beautiful belief it found rest. By an act of god, then, those who have understood find what I have been saying believable, but those who have not understood do not find it believable. Let this much be told about understanding and sensation.

This hollow of the world, round like a sphere, cannot itself, become of its quality or shape, be wholly visible. Choose any place high on the sphere from which to look down, and you cannot see bottom from there. Because of this, many believe it has the same quality as place. They believe it is visible after a fashion, but only through shapes of the forms whose images seem to be imprinted when one shows a picture of it. In itself, however, the real thing remains always invisible. Hence, the bottom - {if it is a part or a place} in the sphere - is called Haides in Greek because in Greek 'to see' is idein, and there is no-seeing the bottom of a sphere. And the forms are called 'ideas' because they are visible forms. The (regions) called Haides in Greek because they are deprived of visibility are called 'infernal' in Latin because they are at the bottom of the sphere. Such, then, are the original things, the primeval things, the sources or beginnings of all, as it were, for all are in them or from them or through them.

76. Heaven is the first element.

The first is what is known as the Corpus Hermeticum, named for Hermes, under whose name many of the treatises were circulated, due to His syncretic association with the Egyptian God Djehuty, or ‘Thoth’, as His name was transliterated in Greek. Plato had already known this God, and refers to Him in the Phaedrus (274c) not as Hermes, but under His Egyptian name, as best he can sound it out: ‘Theuth’.