{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th2/th218.htm","path":"gno/th2/th218.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th2/th218.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 2, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\nThe superscription enunciates the nature of the treatise. It is evidently taken from the Dialogues to Tat, and originally formed part of some General Dissertation or of a collection of Dissertations.\nIt formed part of an instruction in which the Cosmos\nwas treated of as \u201cSecond God,\u201d as we find it also in Philo 1; but just as Philo guards against any idea of duality, so does our treatise when it ends with the words (\u00a7 5):\n\u201cThe source and limit and the constitution of all things is God.\u201d\nThe Great Body of the Cosmos, the Sphere or Perfect Form, the root of all forms, seems to be bounded by the idea of the \u00c6on or Eternity, or Deathlessness. It is, as it were, the Cave or Womb of all things in genesis, centred in the Pleroma of ideas, the Intelligible Cosmos, which is full-filled with the ideas of God (\u00a7 3).\nThe eternal order and life of Cosmos is preserved by the law of apokatastasis or restoration (\u00a7 4), the law of ever-becoming, and cyclic renewal, the making-new-again (\u1f00\u03bd\u03b1\u03bd\u03ad\u03c9\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2) of C. H., iii. (iv.) 1.\nThere is no question of loss of body,\u2014this is an illusion; there is a privation of sense, a going into latency of some particular phase of consciousness.\nThere are then Great Lives\u2014God, Cosmos, Man. Cosmos is made in the image of God, Man in the image of Cosmos. Therefore has Man sense and mind; by the former he is \u201cin sympathy with\u201d the Cosmos, as Body by the latter he is conscious of God as Mind,\u2014that is the Bodiless. Or as we might phrase it, by sense Man knows the Sensible Cosmos, by mind the Intelligible Cosmos, the Good Mind; for God is Source and Limit and the Constitution of all things\u2014the Cosmos, both Intelligible and Sensible, included.\n128:1 Leg. Alleg., \u00a7 21; M. i. 82; P. 1103 (Ri. i. 113); Qu\u00e6st. Sol., i. (quoted by Euseb., Pr\u00e6p. Evang., vii. 13). See in the \u201cProlegomena,\u201d \u201cPhilo Concerning the Logos.\u201d","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 2: I. Corpus Hermeticum: Commentary","type":"page"}