{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th2/th214.htm","path":"gno/th2/th214.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th2/th214.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 2, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\nThis sermon, which bears no proper title, but has been headed by some editor with the enunciation of the subject taken from the opening sentence of the treatise itself, belongs to the Asclepius-group.\nReitzenstein (p. 194) thinks that this tractate and the previous Asclepius-Dialogue\u2014C. H., ii. (iii.)\u2014may very well have formed part of the same collection of Asclepiana.\nThe teaching of our sermon is apparently dualistic; but is it not only formally so, and as an exercise to raise the thought of the pupil away from the \u201cthings he has grown used to\u201d? For at the end Hermes declares:\n\u201cSuch are the things that men call good and beautiful, Asclepius\u2014things which we cannot flee or hate; for hardest thing of all is that we\u2019ve need of them and cannot live without them.\u201d\nThis is a clear advance on the formal Tat-teaching as to \u201chating\u201d the body given in C. H., iv. (v.) 6, and points clearly to an instruction in which the cosmos was not regarded as the pl\u0113r\u014dma of bad, in spite of the formal and emphatic statement in \u00a7 4:\n\u201c\u1f41 \u03b3\u1f70\u03c1 \u03ba\u03cc\u03c3\u03bc\u03bf\u03c2 \u03c0\u03bb\u03ae\u03c1\u03c9\u03bc\u03ac \u1f10\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9 \u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 \u03ba\u03b1\u03ba\u03af\u03b1\u03c2.\u201d\nMoreover, if we turn to C. H., ix. (x.), 4\u2014another treatise of Hermes to Asclepius, and curiously enough having as superscription almost the same proposition as heads our present treatise we read:\n\u201c\u03c7\u03c9\u03c1\u03af\u03bf\u03bd \u03b3\u1f70\u03c1 \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2 [\u03ba\u03b1\u03ba\u03af\u03b1\u03c2] \u1f21 \u03b3\u1fc6, \u03bf\u1f50\u03c7 \u1f41 \u03ba\u03cc\u03c3\u03bc\u03bf\u03c2, \u1f61\u03c2 \u1f14\u03bd\u03b9\u03bf\u03b9 \u03c0\u03bf\u03c4\u1f72 \u1f10\u03c1\u03bf\u1fe6\u03c3\u03b9 \u03b2\u03bb\u03b1\u03c3\u03c6\u03b7\u03bc\u03bf\u1fe6\u03bd\u03c4\u03b5\u03c2.\u201d\n\u201cBad\u2019s place is earth, and not the world, as some will sometimes say with impious tongue.\u201d\nHere we have a formal denial in an Asclepius-tractate of the formal proposition in our Asclepius-sermon.\nThe cosmos is not evil; it is the beautiful world-order. Evil is a thing connected with the earth; there is no such thing as a \u03c0\u03bb\u03ae\u03c1\u03c9\u03bc\u03b1 of evil; evil has at best only a \u03c7\u03c9\u03c1\u03af\u03bf\u03bd. They who say such things blaspheme.\nThis is strong language, and there seems no other conclusion to be drawn from it but that there were various schools within the Trismegistic tradition, and that they wrangled theologically together.\nIs it, however, possible that the Hermes of our treatise is only speaking metaphorically, so that he may intensify the ideal of the Good, and that he was subsequently taken as speaking literally? For he must have known that the Cosmos was regarded as the Son of God, par excellence, the fairest and best-beloved of all, God\u2019s Very Image.\nOn the other hand, we know that in the Trismegistic doctrine the \u201ccosmic man\u201d was opposed to the \u201cessential man,\u201d that, in fact, the term \u201ccosmic\u201d was used in the nomenclature of the time in a theological as well as in a philosophical sense. This was especially the case in Christianity. Many instances could be cited from the New Testament documents; and we have also a striking example of the use of \u201ccosmos\u201d in this sense in the second logion of the First Oxyrhynchus Fragment:\n\u201cJesus saith: Except ye fast to the world (\u03c4\u1f78\u03bd \u03ba\u03cc\u03c3\u03bc\u03bf\u03bd), ye shall in no wise find the Kingdom of God.\u201d\nAs, moreover, we nowhere else find mention of a \u201cpleroma of evil,\u201d we may permissibly conclude that it is here not intended to be taken literally, but only as a metaphorical expression.\n\u201cGod is the Pleroma of Good, and Good is the Pleroma of God.\u201d\nAnd so, speaking of the Triumphant Christ as the Cosmic Logos, Paul writes:\n\u201cAnd Him hath He (God) given as Head over all things unto the Church, 1 which is His Body\u2014the Fullness (Pl\u0113r\u014dma) of Him who doth fulfil all things in all.\u201d 2\nThe thought-atmosphere in which the idea of the \u201cChurch\u201d as the Pleroma arose may be sampled from Philo, De Pr\u0153m. et P\u0153n., \u00a7 xi. (M. ii. 418, p. 920; Ri. v. 232):\n\u201cAnd thus the soul, becoming a Pleroma of virtues by means of the three best [blessings]\u2014nature, instruction (math\u0113sis) and practice (ask\u0113sis),\u2014leaving no vacant spot in her for entrance of aught else, brings unto birth a perfect number,\u2014her two hexads of sons, a miniature and copy of the circle of the types of life, 3 for the improvement of the things down here.\n\u201cThis is the House 4 that naught can harm, the perfect and continual in the public scriptures, and also in the secret meanings of the mystic ones,\u2014the House that won the prize, as I have said, of lordship o\u2019er the tribes of its [own] race.\u201d\n\u201cIt was thus from this House in course of time, as it increased and became populous, that well-regulated cities were established, yea, disciplines of wisdom and of righteousness and holiness, in which the\ntransmutation (\u03bc\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03c0\u03bf\u03af\u03b7\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2) of the rest of virtue was sought out in manner worthy of so high a work.\u201d\nIn the Trismegistic tradition, however, the idea is simpler, as we learn from \u201cThe Definitions of Asclepius,\u201d C. H. (xvi.) 3:\n\u201cFor that the Fullness of all things is One and is in One,\u2014this latter One not coming as a second One, but both being One. . . .\n\u201cFor should one try to separate what seems to be both All and One and Same from One,\u2014he will be found to take his epithet of \u2018All\u2019 from the idea of multitude and not from that of fullness (pl\u0113r\u014dma),\u2014which is impossible; for if he put All for the One, he will destroy the All.\u201d\nNevertheless, the Pleroma 1 of Life is more specially the Cosmos as the Son of God\u2014that is, as the Logos. Thus in C. H., xii. (xiii.) 15, we read:\n\u201cMatter is one; and the World-order (Cosmos), as a whole,\u2014the Mighty God and Image of the Mightier One, both with Him unified, and the Conserver of the Will and Order of the Father,\u2014is Life\u2019s Fullness (Pl\u0113r\u014dma). . . .\n\u201cHow then, O son, could there be in the God,\u2014the Image of the Father, the Plenitude (Pl\u0113r\u014dma) of Life, 2\u2014dead things?\u201d\nAnd again in C. H., ix. (x.) 7:\n\u201cFor [Cosmos] being a most wise Breath, bestows their qualities on bodies together with the one Pleroma\u2014that of Life.\u201d\n5. This Pleroma of God is the Good and Beautiful. The Path to this True Good is one of balance,\u2014for it\nis the Way of Devotion united unto Gnosis\u2014in Sanskrit terms, the Bhakti-M\u0101rga and J\u00f1\u0101na-M\u0101rga combined. 1\n6. Finally we learn, though inferentially, that things are not bad in themselves; the evil is that men are content with the little goods they have and cling desperately to these, in ignorance of the greater blessings to which they could attain, did they but open their spiritual eyes for the True Vision of the Good. For even the psychic visions of the soul, in spite of their beauty, give man no hint of that Most Blessed Sight of All.\n117:1 \u03c4\u1fc7 \u1f10\u03ba\u03ba\u03bb\u03b7\u03c3\u03af\u1fb3, that is, the Spiritual Body of the \u201cElect.\u201d\n117:2 Eph. i. 23. Cf. Col. ii. 19: \u201cIn Him dwelleth the whole Fullness of the Godhead as in a body.\u201d\n117:3 Sc. the Zodiac.\n117:4 Sc. of God.\n118:1 Cf. John i. 16: \u201cOf His Fullness we have all received, and grace on grace.\u201d\n118:2 Cf. John i. 4: \u201cIn Him was Life and the Life was the Light of men.\u201d\n119:1 Compare C. H., i. 27: \u201cAnd I began to preach to men the beauty of Devotion and of Gnosis.\u201d","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 2: I. Corpus Hermeticum: Commentary","type":"page"}