(12) We have told how this vision is to be procured, whether by the mode of separation or in identity: now, seen in either way, what does it give to report?

The vision has been of God in travail of a beautiful offspring, God engendering a universe within himself in a painless labour and- rejoiced in what he has brought into being, proud of his children- keeping all closely by Him, for pleasure He has in his radiance and in theirs.

Of this offspring- all beautiful, but most beautiful those that have remained within- only one has become manifest without; from him the youngest born, we may gather, as from some image, the greatness of the Father and of the Brothers that remain within the Father's house.

Still the manifested God cannot think that he has come forth in vain from the father; for through him another universe has arisen, beautiful as the image of beauty, and it could not be' lawful that Beauty and Being should fail of a beautiful image.

This second Kosmos at every point copies the archetype: it has life and being in copy, and has beauty as springing from that diviner world. In its character of image it holds, too, that divine perpetuity without which it would only at times be truly representative and sometimes fail like a construction of art; for every image whose existence lies in the nature of things must stand during the entire existence of the archetype.

Hence it is false to put an end to the visible sphere as long as the Intellectual endures, or to found it upon a decision taken by its maker at some given moment.

That teaching shirks the penetration of such a making as is here involved: it fails to see that as long as the Supreme is radiant there can be no failing of its sequel but, that existing, all exists. And- since the necessity of conveying our meaning compels such terms- the Supreme has existed for ever and for ever will exist.

(39) Then Hermes asked how the righteous and wise pass to God, to which Poimandres replied: "That which the Word of God said, say I: 'Because the Father of all things consists of Life and Light, whereof man is made.' If, therefore, a man shall learn and understand the nature of Life and Light, then he shall pass into the eternity of Life and Light."

(1) [Asclepius] All things, then, in themselves (as thou, Thrice-greatest one, dost say) are cosmic [principles] (as I should say) of all the species which are in them, [or] as it were, the sum and substance of each one of them.

[Trismegistus] So Cosmos, then, doth nourish bodies; the Spirit, souls; the [Higher] Sense (with which Celestial Gift mankind alone is blest) doth feed the mind. And [these are] not all men, but [they are] few, whose minds are of such quality that they can be receptive of so great a blessing.

(1) [Asclepius] [Is Cosmos] good, Thrice-greatest one?

[Trismegistus] [’Tis] good, as I will teach thee, O Asclepius. For just as God is the Apportioner and Steward of good things to all the species, or [more correctly] genera, which are in Cosmos,—that is to say, of Sense, and Soul, and Life,—so Cosmos is the giver and bestower of all things which seem unto [us] mortals good;—that is to say, the alternation of its parts, of seasonable fruits, birth, growth, maturity, and things like these. And for this cause God doth transcend the height of highest Heaven, extending everywhere, and doth behold all things on every side.

(2) For this [Re-] birth of Cosmos is the making new of all good things, and the most holy and most pious bringing-back again of Nature’s self, by means of a set course of time,—of Nature, which was without beginning, and which is without an end. For that God’s Will hath no beginning; and, in that ’tis the same and as it is, it is without an end.

[Asclepius] Because God’s Nature’s the Determination of the Will. Determination is the Highest Good; is it not so, Thrice-greatest one?