{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th2/th244.htm","path":"gno/th2/th244.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th2/th244.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 2, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\n1. [VIII. M.] Asc. What dost thou call, Thrice-greatest one, the heads of things, or sources of beginnings?\nTris. Great are the mysteries which I reveal to thee, divine the secrets I disclose; and so I\nmake beginning of this thing 1 with prayers for Heaven\u2019s favour.\nThe hierarchies 2 of Gods are numerous; and of them all one class is called the Noumenal, 3 the other [class] the Sensible. 4\nThe former are called Noumenal, not for the reason that they\u2019re thought to lie beyond our 5 senses; for these are just the Gods we sense more truly than the ones we call the visible,\u2014just as our argument will prove, and thou, if thou attend, wilt be made fit to see.\nFor that a lofty reasoning, and much more one that is too godlike for the mental grasp of [average] men, if that the speaker\u2019s words are not received 6 with more attentive service of the ears,\u2014will fly and flow beyond them; or rather will flow back [again], and mingle with the streams of its own source. 7\n2. There are, then, [certain] Gods who are the principals 8 of all the species.\nNext there come those whose essence 1 is their principal. These are the Sensible, each similar to its own dual source, 2 who by their sensibility 3 affect all things,\u2014the one part through the other part [in each] making to shine the proper work of every single one.\nOf Heaven,\u2014or of whatsoe\u2019er it be that is embraced within the term,\u2014the essence-chief 4 is Zeus; for \u2019tis through Heaven that Zeus gives life to all.\nSun\u2019s essence-chief is light; for the good gift of light is poured on us through the Sun\u2019s disk.\n3. The \u201cThirty-six,\u201d who have the name of Horoscopes, 5 are in the [self] same space as the Fixed Stars; of these the essence-chief, or prince, is he whom they call Pantomorph, or Omniform, 6 who fashioneth the various forms for various species.\nThe \u201cSeven\u201d who are called spheres, have essence-chiefs, that is, [have each] their proper rulers, whom they call [all together] Fortune and Heimarmen\u0113, 7 whereby all things are changed\nby nature\u2019s law; perpetual stability being varied with incessant motion. 1\nThe Air, moreover, is the engine, or machine, through which all things are made\u2014(there is, however, an essence-chief of this, a second [Air])\u2014mortal from mortal things and things like these. 2\n4. These hierarchies of Gods, then, being thus and [in this way] related, 3 from bottom unto top, are [also] thus connected with each other, and tend towards themselves; so mortal things are bound to mortal, things sensible to sensible.\nThe whole of [this grand scale of] Rulership, however, seems to Him [who is] the Highest Lord, either to be not many things, or rather [to be] one.\nFor that from One all things depending, 4 and flowing down from it,\u2014when they are seen as\nseparate, they\u2019re thought to be as many as they possibly can be; but in their union it is one [thing], or rather two, from which all things are made;\u2014that is, from Matter, by means of which the other things are made, and by the Will of Him, by nod of whom they\u2019re brought to pass.\n1. Asc. Is this again the reason, O Thrice-greatest one?\nTris. It is, Asclepius. For God\u2019s the Father or the Lord of all, or whatsoever else may be the name by which He\u2019s named more holily and piously by men,\u2014which should be set apart among ourselves for sake of our intelligence.\nFor if we contemplate this so transcendent God, we shall not make Him definite by any of these names.\nFor if a [spoken] word 1 is this:\u2014a sound proceeding from the air, when struck by breath, 2 denoting the whole will, perchance, of man, or else the [higher] sense, which by good chance a man perceives by means of mind, when out of [all his] senses, 3\u2014a name the stuff of which,\nmade of a syllable or two, has so been limited and pondered, that it might serve in man as necessary link between the voice and ear;\u2014thus [must] the Name of God in full consist of Sense, and Spirit, and of Air, and of all things in them, or through, or with them. 1\n2. Indeed, I have no hope that the Creator of the whole of Greatness, the Father and the Lord of all the things [that are], could ever have one name, even although it should be made up of a multitude\u2014He who cannot be named, or rather He who can be called by every name.\nFor He, indeed, is One and All 2; so that it needs must be that all things should be called by the same name as His, or He Himself called by the names of all.\n3. He, then, alone, yet all-complete in the fertility of either sex, ever with child of His own Will, doth ever bring to birth whatever He hath willed to procreate.\nHis Will is the All-goodness, which also is the Goodness of all things, born from the nature of His own Divinity,\u2014in order that all things may be, just as they all have been, and that henceforth the nature of being born from their own selves may be sufficient to all things that will be born.\nLet this, then, be the reason given thee, Asclepius, wherefore and how all things are made of either sex.\n1. Asc. Thou speak\u2019st of God, then, O Thrice-greatest one?\nTris. Not only God, Asclepius, but all things living and inanimate. For \u2019tis impossible that any of the things that are should be unfruitful.\nFor if fecundity should be removed from all the things that are, it could not be that they should be for ever what they are. I mean that Nature, 1 Sense, and Cosmos, have in themselves the power of being born, 2 and of preserving all things that are born.\nFor either sex is full of procreation; and of each one there is a union, or,\u2014what\u2019s more true,\u2014a unity incomprehensible; which you may rightly call Er\u014ds 3 or Aphrodit\u0113, or both [names].\n2. This, then, is truer than all truth, and plainer than what the mind [\u2019s eye] perceives;\u2014that from that Universal God of Universal Nature all other things for evermore have found, and had bestowed on them, the mystery of\nbringing forth; in which there is innate the sweetest Charity, [and] Joy, [and] Merriment, Longing, and Love Divine.\nWe might have had to tell the mighty power and the compulsion of this mystery, if it had not been able to be known by every one from personal experience, by observation of himself.\n3. For if thou should\u2019st regard that supreme [point] of time when . . . 1 the one nature doth pour forth the young into the other one, and when the other greedily absorbs [it] from the first, and hides it [ever] deeper [in itself]; then, at that time, out of their common congress, females attain the nature of the males, males weary grow with female listlessness.\nAnd so the consummation of this mystery, so sweet and requisite, is wrought in secret; lest, owing to the vulgar jests of ignorance, the deity of either sex should be compelled to blush at natural congress,\u2014and much more still, if it should be subjected to the sight of impious folk.\n1. The pious are not numerous, however; nay, they are very few, so that they may be counted even in the world. 2\nWhence it doth come about, that in the many\nbad inheres, through defect of the Gnosis and Discernment of the things that are.\nFor that it is from the intelligence of Godlike Reason, 1 by which all things are ordered, there come to birth contempt and remedy of vice throughout the world.\nBut when unknowingness and ignorance persist, all vicious things wax strong, and plague the soul with wounds incurable; so that, infected with them, and invitiated, it swells up, as though it were with poisons,\u2014except for those who know the Discipline of souls and highest Cure of intellect.\n2. So, then, although it may do good to few alone, \u2019tis proper to develope and explain this thesis:\u2014wherefore Divinity hath deigned to share His science and intelligence with men alone. Give ear, accordingly!\nWhen God, [our] Sire and Lord, made man, after the Gods, out of an equal mixture of a less pure cosmic part and a divine,\u2014it [naturally] came to pass the imperfections 2 of the cosmic part remained commingled with [our] frames, and other ones 3 [as well], by reason of the food and sustenance we have out of necessity in common with all lives 4; by reason of which\nthings it needs must be that the desires, and passions, and other vices, of the mind should occupy the souls of human kind.\n3. As for the Gods, in as much as they had been made of Nature\u2019s fairest 1 part, and have no need of the supports of reason and of discipline, 2\u2014although, indeed, their deathlessness, the very strength of being ever of one single age, stands in this case for prudence and for science, still, for the sake of reason\u2019s unity, instead of science and of intellect (so that the Gods should not be strange to these),\u2014He, by His everlasting law, decreed for them an order, 3 circumscribed by the necessity of law.\nWhile as for man, He doth distinguish him from all the other animals by reason and by discipline alone; by means of which men can remove and separate their bodies\u2019 vices,\u2014He helping them to hope and effort after deathlessness.\n4. In fine, He hath made man both good and able to share in immortal life,\u2014out of two natures, [one] mortal, [one] divine.\nAnd just because he is thus fashioned by the Will of God, it is appointed that man should be superior both to the Gods, who have been made\nof an immortal nature only, and also to all mortal things.\nIt is because of this that man, being joined unto the Gods by kinsmanship, doth reverence them with piety and holy mind; while, on their side, the Gods with pious sympathy regard and guard all things of men.\n1. But this can only be averred of a few men endowed with pious minds. Still, of the rest, the vicious folk, we ought to say no word, for fear a very sacred sermon should be spoiled by thinking of them.\n340:1 Initium facio; or perhaps perform the sacred rite, or give initiation.\n340:2 Genera.\n340:3 Intelligibilis (= \u03bf\u1f31 \u03bd\u03bf\u03b7\u03c4\u03bf\u03af); lit. that which can be known by intellect (alone).\n340:4 Sensibilis (= \u03bf\u1f31 \u03b1\u1f30\u03c3\u03b8\u03b7\u03c4\u03bf\u03af); lit. that which can be known by the senses.\n340:5 That is, the \u201cSense\u201d of those who have reached the \u201cTrismegistic\u201d grade, though of course beyond the range of the normal senses.\n340:6 The text is faulty.\n340:7 Cf. x. 1 above; and C. H., x. (xi.) 17.\n340:8 Principes.\n341:1 The Greek original \u03bf\u1f50\u03c3\u03af\u03b1 being retained.\n341:2 That is, presumably, essence and sensibility.\n341:3 That is, presumably, their power of affecting the senses.\n341:4 The Greek \u03bf\u1f50\u03c3\u03b9\u03ac\u03c1\u03c7\u03b7\u03c2 is retained in the Latin.\n341:5 Horoscopi (= \u1f61\u03c1\u03bf\u03c3\u03ba\u03cc\u03c0\u03bf\u03b9); generally called Decans; cf. Ex. ix., where the Decans are explained.\n341:6 \u03a0\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03cc\u03bc\u03bf\u03c1\u03c6\u03bf\u03bd vel omniformem; see xxxv. below; also C. H., xi. (xii.) 16, Comment.\n341:7 That is, Fate, \u03b5\u1f31\u03bc\u03b1\u03c1\u03bc\u03ad\u03bd\u03b7.\n342:1 Quoted in the original Greek by Ioan. Laurentius Lydus, De Mensibus, iv. 7; W\u00fcnsch (Leipzig, 1898), p. 70, 22; as follows: \u201cAnd Hermes is witness in his [book], called \u2018The Perfect Sermon,\u2019 when saying: \u2018They that are called the Seven Spheres have a Source that is called Fortune or Fate, which changes all things and suffers them not to remain in the same [conditions].\u2019\u201d The quotation is continued without a break; the rest of it, however, corresponds to nothing in our context, but is somewhat similar to ch. xxxix. 1, 2.\n342:2 That is, the region of things subject to death. The text is faulty. Cf. with this \u201cengine\u201d the \u201ccylinder\u201d of the K. K. Fragments (10).\n342:3 Ab imo ad summum se admoventibus; for admoventibus compare \u201cgenus admotum superis,\u201d Silius Italicus, viii. 295.\n342:4 Cf. iv. 1 above, and the note.\n343:1 Vox (= name), presumably \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2 in the original; a play on \u201cword\u201d and \u201creason,\u201d but also referring to the mysterious \u201cname\u201d of a person.\n343:2 Spiritu, or spirit.\n343:3 Ex sensibus = presumably, in ecstasis.\n344:1 The text of this paragraph is very unsatisfactory.\n344:2 Cf. i. 1 above.\n345:1 Here, presumably, meaning hyle.\n345:2 Naturam again.\n345:3 Cf. 1, 2, above.\n346:1 Quo ex crebro attritu prurimus ut . . . .\n346:2 Cf. Ex. i. 16.\n347:1 Cf. vii. 1 above.\n347:2 Vitia; lit. vices.\n347:3 Sc. imperfections.\n347:4 Lit. animals.\n348:1 Mundissima\u2014that is, most cosmic, or \u201cadorned.\u201d\n348:2 Or science.\n348:3 Ordinem\u2014that is, Cosmos. Compare this also with the idea of the Gnostic Horos which \u201csurrounds\u201d the Pl\u0113r\u014dma.","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 2: II. The Perfect Sermon; or the Asclepius: Part VIII","type":"page"}