{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th2/th215.htm","path":"gno/th2/th215.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th2/th215.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 2, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\n(Text: P. 54, 55; Pat. 18a.)\n1. Whither stumble ye, sots, who have sopped up the wine of ignorance unmixed, and can so far not carry it that ye already even spew it forth?\nStay ye, be sober, gaze upwards with the [true] eyes of the heart! And if ye cannot all, yet ye at least who can!\nFor that the ill of ignorance doth pour o\u2019er all the earth and overwhelm the soul that\u2019s battened down within the body, preventing it from fetching port within Salvation\u2019s harbours.\n2. Be then not carried off by the fierce flood, but using the shore-current, 1 ye who can, make for Salvation\u2019s port, and, harbouring there, seek ye for one to take you by the hand and lead you 2 unto Gnosis\u2019 gates.\nWhere shines clear Light, of every darkness clean; where not a single soul is drunk, but sober all they gaze with their hearts\u2019 eyes on Him who willeth to be seen.\nNo ear can hear Him, nor can eye see Him, nor tongue speak of Him, but [only] mind and heart.\nBut first thou must tear off from thee the cloak which thou dost wear,\u2014the web of ignorance, the ground of bad, corruption\u2019s chain, the carapace of darkness, the living death, sensation\u2019s corpse, the tomb thou carriest with thee, the robber in thy house, who through the things he loveth, hateth thee, and through the things he hateth, bears thee malice.\n3. Such is the hateful cloak thou wearest,\u2014that throttles thee [and holds thee] down to it, in order that thou may\u2019st not gaze above, and, having seen the Beauty of the Truth, and Good that dwells therein, detest the bad of it; having found out the plot that it hath schemed against thee, by making void of sense those seeming things which men think senses.\nFor that it hath with mass of matter blocked them up and crammed them full of loathsome lust, so that thou may\u2019st not hear about the things that thou should\u2019st hear, nor see the things that thou should\u2019st see.\n120:1 Lit. back or up-current.\n120:2 Cf. C. H., iv. (v.) 11; ix. (x.) 10; x (xi.) 2; R. 23, n. 5.","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 2: I. Corpus Hermeticum: VII...","type":"page"}