(7) Among the fragmentary writings believed to have come from the stylus of Hermes are two famous works. The first is the Emerald Table, and the second is the Divine Pymander, or, as it is more commonly called, The Shepherd of Men, a discussion of which follows. One outstanding point in connection with Hermes is that he was one of the few philosopher-priests of pagandom upon whom the early Christians did not vent their spleen. Some Church Fathers went so far as to declare that Hermes exhibited many symptoms of intelligence, and that if he had only been born in a more enlightened age so that he might have benefited by their instructions he would have been a really great man!

(364) sins by sacrifices or charms, with rejoicings and feasts; and they promise to harm an enemy, whether just or unjust, at a small cost; with magic arts and incantations binding heaven, as they say, to execute their will. And the poets are the authorities to whom they appeal, now smoothing the path of vice with the words of Hesiod;— ‘Vice may be had in abundance without trouble; the way is smooth and her dwelling-place is near. But before virtue the gods have set toil 6 ,’ and a tedious and uphill road: then citing Homer as a witness that the gods may be influenced by men; for he also says:— ‘The gods, too, may be turned from their purpose; and men pray to them and avert their wrath by sacrifices and soothing entreaties, and by libations and the odour of fat, when they have sinned and transgressed 7 .’ And they produce a host of books written by Musaeus and Orpheus, who were children of the Moon and the Muses—that is what they say—according to which they perform their ritual, and persuade not only individuals, but whole cities, that expiations and atonements for sin may be made by sacrifices and amusements which fill a vacant hour, and are equally at the service of the living and the dead; the latter

(5) The lifework of Hermes seems to have been in the direction of planting the great Seed-Truth which has grown and blossomed in so many strange forms, rather than to establish a school of philosophy which would dominate, the world's thought. But, nevertheless, the original truths taught by him have been kept intact in their original purity by a few men each age, who, refusing great numbers of half-developed students and followers, followed the Hermetic custom and reserved their truth for the few who were ready to comprehend and master it. From lip to ear the truth has been handed down among the few. There have always been a few Initiates in each generation, in the various lands of the earth, who kept alive the sacred flame of the Hermetic Teachings, and such have always been willing to use their lamps to re-light the lesser lamps of the outside world, when the light of truth grew dim, and clouded by reason of neglect, and when the wicks became clogged with foreign matter. There were always a few to tend faithfully the altar of the Truth, upon which was kept alight the Perpetual Lamp of Wisdom. These men devoted their lives to the labor of love which the poet has so well stated in his lines: "O, let not the flame die out! Cherished age after age in its dark cavern--in its holy temples cherished. Fed by pure ministers of love--let not the flame die out!"

(12) One of the greatest tragedies of the philosophic world was the loss of nearly all of the forty-two books of Hermes mentioned in the foregoing. These books disappeared during the burning of Alexandria, for the Romans--and later the Christians--realized that until these books were eliminated they could never bring the Egyptians into subjection. The volumes which escaped the fire were buried in the desert and their location is now known to only a few initiates of the secret schools.

(2) And the sun's face, uprising, overshadowed So that by tempering influence of vapours For a long interval the eye sustained it; Thus in the bosom of a cloud of flowers Which from those hands angelical ascended, And downward fell again inside and out, Over her snow-white veil with olive cinct Appeared a lady under a green mantle, Vested in colour of the living flame. And my own spirit, that already now So long a time had been, that in her presence Trembling with awe it had not stood abashed, Without more knowledge having by mine eyes, Through occult virtue that from her proceeded Of ancient love the mighty influence felt. As soon as on my vision smote the power Sublime, that had already pierced me through Ere from my boyhood I had yet come forth, To the left hand I turned with that reliance With which the little child runs to his mother, When he has fear, or when he is afflicted, To say unto Virgilius: "Not a drachm Of blood remains in me, that does not tremble; I know the traces of the ancient flame."

(1) The natural thirst, that ne'er is satisfied Excepting with the water for whose grace The woman of Samaria besought, Put me in travail, and haste goaded me Along the encumbered path behind my Leader And I was pitying that righteous vengeance; And lo! in the same manner as Luke writeth That Christ appeared to two upon the way From the sepulchral cave already risen, A shade appeared to us, and came behind us, Down gazing on the prostrate multitude, Nor were we ware of it, until it spake, Saying, "My brothers, may God give you peace!" We turned us suddenly, and Virgilius rendered To him the countersign thereto conforming. Thereon began he: "In the blessed council, Thee may the court veracious place in peace, That me doth banish in eternal exile!" "How," said he, and the while we went with speed, "If ye are shades whom God deigns not on high, Who up his stairs so far has guided you?" And said my Teacher: "If thou note the marks Which this one bears, and which the Angel traces Well shalt thou see he with the good must reign.

(22) Hermes: Happy am I, my son, that though hast brought the good fruits forth of Truth, products that cannot die. And now that thou hast learnt this lesson from me, make promise to keep silence on thy virtue, and to no soul, my son, make known the handing on to thee the manner of Rebirth, that we may not be thought to be calumniators. And now we both of us have given heed sufficiently, both I the speaker and the hearer thou. In Mind hast thou become a Knower of thyself and our [common] Sire.

(9) And if at any time there is the want of an animal, they are satisfied with bleeding their own finger for a sacrifice. The prophetess Diotima, by the Athenians offering sacrifice previous to the pestilence, effected a delay of the plague for ten years. The sacrifices, too, of Epimenides of Crete, put off the Persian war for an equal period. And it is considered to be all the same whether we call these spirits gods or angels. And those skilled in the matter of consecrating statues, in many of the temples have erected tombs of the dead, calling the souls of these Daemons, and teaching them to be wor-shipped by men; as having, in consequence of the purity of their life, by the divine foreknowledge, received the power of wandering about the space around the earth in order to minister to men. For they knew that some souls were by nature kept in the body. But of these, as the work proceeds, in the treatise on the angels, we shall discourse.

(3) "My Master," I replied, "by hearing thee I am more sure; but I surmised already It might be so, and already wished to ask thee Who is within that fire, which comes so cleft At top, it seems uprising from the pyre Where was Eteocles with his brother placed." He answered me: "Within there are tormented Ulysses and Diomed, and thus together They unto vengeance run as unto wrath. And there within their flame do they lament The ambush of the horse, which made the door Whence issued forth the Romans' gentle seed; Therein is wept the craft, for which being dead Deidamia still deplores Achilles, And pain for the Palladium there is borne." "If they within those sparks possess the power To speak," I said, "thee, Master, much I pray, And re-pray, that the prayer be worth a thousand, That thou make no denial of awaiting Until the horned flame shall hither come; Thou seest that with desire I lean towards it." And he to me: "Worthy is thy entreaty Of much applause, and therefore I accept it; But take heed that thy tongue restrain itself.

(2) "Now the weak eateth herbs," according to the noble apostle. The Instructor, divided by us into three books, has already exhibited the training and nurture up from the state of childhood, that is, the course of life which from elementary instruction grows by faith; and in the case of those enrolled in the number of men, prepares beforehand the soul, endued with virtue, for the reception of gnostic knowledge. The Greeks, then, clearly learning, from what shall be said by us in these pages, that in profanely persecuting the Godloving man, they themselves act impiously; then, as the notes advance, in accordance with the style of the Miscellanies, we must solve the difficulties raised both by Greeks and Barbarians with respect to the coming of the Lord.

(1) Hermes, the God who presides over language, was formerly very properly considered as common to all priests; and the power who presides over the true science concerning the Gods is one and the same in the whole of things. Hence our ancestors dedicated the inventions of their wisdom to this deity, inscribing all their own writings with the name of Hermes. If, therefore, we participate of a portion of this God, adapted and commensurate to our powers, you do well to propose your theological doubts to the priests, as friends, and to make these doubts known to them. I also very properly conceiving that the epistle sent to my disciple Anebo was written to me, shall give you a true answer to your inquiries. For it would not be becoming, that Pythagoras and Plato, Democritus and Eudoxus, and many other of the ancient Greeks, should have obtained appropriate instruction from the sacred scribes of their time, but that you who are our contemporary, and think conformably to those ancients, should be frustrated of your wish by those who are now living, and who are called common preceptors. I, therefore, thus betake myself to the present discussion; and do you, if you please, conceive that the same person to whom you sent the letter returns you an answer. Or, if it should seem fit to you, admit it to be me who discourses with you in writing, or some other prophet of the Egyptians, for this is of no consequence. Or, which I think is still better, dismiss the consideration whether the speaker is an inferior or a superior character, but direct your attention to what is said, so as readily to excite your mind to survey whether what is asserted is true or false.

(3) Nor that the keys which were to me confided Should e'er become the escutcheon on a banner, That should wage war on those who are baptized; Nor I be made the figure of a seal To privileges venal and mendacious, Whereat I often redden and flash with fire. In garb of shepherds the rapacious wolves Are seen from here above o'er all the pastures! O wrath of God, why dost thou slumber still? To drink our blood the Caorsines and Gascons Are making ready. O thou good beginning, Unto how vile an end must thou needs fall! But the high Providence, that with Scipio At Rome the glory of the world defended, Will speedily bring aid, as I conceive; And thou, my son, who by thy mortal weight Shalt down return again, open thy mouth; What I conceal not, do not thou conceal." As with its frozen vapours downward falls In flakes our atmosphere, what time the horn Of the celestial Goat doth touch the sun, Upward in such array saw I the ether Become, and flaked with the triumphant vapours, Which there together with us had remained.

The fifteen tractates of the Corpus Hermeticum , along with the Perfect Sermon or Asclepius , are the foundation documents of the Hermetic tradition. Written by unknown authors in Egypt sometime before the end of the third century C.E., they were part of a once substantial literature attributed to the mythic figure of Hermes Trismegistus, a Hellenistic fusion of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. This literature came out of the same religious and philosophical ferment that produced Neoplatonism, Christianity, and the diverse collection of teachings usually lumped together under the label "Gnosticism": a ferment which had its roots in the impact of Platonic thought on the older traditions of the Hellenized East. There are obvious connections and common themes linking each of these traditions, although each had its own answer to the major questions of the time. The treatises we now call the Corpus Hermeticum were collected into a single volume in Byzantine times, and a copy of this volume survived to come into the hands of Lorenzo de Medici's agents in the fifteenth century. Marsilio Ficino, the head of the Florentine Academy, was pulled off the task of translating the dialogues of Plato in order to put the Corpus Hermeticum into Latin first. His translation saw print in 1463, and was reprinted at least twenty-two times over the next century and a half. The treatises divide up into several groups. The first (CH I), the "Poemandres", is the account of a revelation given to Hermes Trismegistus by the being Poemandres or "Man-Shepherd", an expression of the universal Mind. The next eight (CH II-IX), the "General Sermons", are short dialogues or lectures discussing various basic points of Hermetic philosophy. There follows the "Key" (CH X), a summary of the General Sermons, and after this a set of four tractates - "Mind unto Hermes", "About the Common Mind", "The Secret Sermon on the Mountain", and the "Letter of Hermes to Asclepius" (CH XI-XIV) - touching on the more mystical aspects of Hermeticism. The collection is rounded off by the "Definitions of Asclepius unto King Ammon" (CH XV), which may be composed of three fragments of longer works. The Perfect Sermon The Perfect Sermon or Asclepius , which is also included here, reached the Renaissance by a different route. It was translated into Latin in ancient times, reputedly by the same Lucius Apuleius of Madaura whose comic-serious masterpiece The Golden Ass provides some of the best surviving evidence on the worship of Isis in the Roman world. Augustine of Hippo quotes from the old Latin translation at length in his City of God, and copies remained in circulation in medieval Europe all the way up to the Renaissance. The original Greek version was lost, although quotations survive in several ancient sources. The Perfect Sermon is substantially longer than any other surviving work of ancient Hermetic philosophy. It covers topics which also occur in the Corpus Hermeticum, but touches on several other issues as well - among them magical processes for the manufacture of gods and a long and gloomy prophecy of the decline of Hermetic wisdom and the end of the world. The Significance of the Hermetic Writings The Corpus Hermeticum landed like a well-aimed bomb amid the philosophical systems of late medieval Europe. Quotations from the Hermetic literature in the Church Fathers (who were never shy of leaning on pagan sources to prove a point) accepted a traditional chronology which dated "Hermes Trismegistus," as a historical figure, to the time of Moses. As a result, the Hermetic tractates' borrowings from Jewish scripture and Platonic philosophy were seen, in the Renaissance, as evidence that the Corpus Hermeticum had anticipated and influenced both. The Hermetic philosophy was seen as a primordial wisdom tradition, identified with the "Wisdom of the Egyptians" mentioned in Exodus and lauded in Platonic dialogues such as the Timaeus . It thus served as a useful club in the hands of intellectual rebels who sought to break the stranglehold of Aristotelian scholasticism on the universities at this time. It also provided one of the most important weapons to another major rebellion of the age - the attempt to reestablish magic as a socially acceptable spiritual path in the Christian West. Another body of literature attributed to Hermes Trismegistus was made up of astrological, alchemical and magical texts. If, as the scholars of the Renaissance believed, Hermes was a historical person who had written all these things, and if Church Fathers had quoted his philosophical works with approval, and if those same works could be shown to be wholly in keeping with some definitions of Christianity, then the whole structure of magical Hermeticism could be given a second-hand legitimacy in a Christian context. This didn't work, of course; the radical redefinition of Western Christianity that took place in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation hardened doctrinal barriers to the point that people were being burned in the sixteenth century for practices that were considered evidences of devoutness in the fourteenth. The attempt, though, made the language and concepts of the Hermetic tractates central to much of post-medieval magic in the West. The Translation The translation of the Corpus Hermeticum and Perfect Sermon given here is that of G.R.S. Mead (1863-1933), originally published as Vol. 2 of his Thrice Greatest Hermes (London, 1906). Mead was a close associate of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the founder and moving spirit of the Theosophical Society, and most of his considerable scholarly output was brought out under Theosophical auspices. The result, predictably, was that most of that output has effectively been blacklisted in academic circles ever since. This is unfortunate, for Mead's translations of the Hermetic literature were until quite recently the best available in English. (They are still the best in the public domain; thus their use here.) The Everard translation of 1650, which is still in print, reflects the state of scholarship at the time it was made - which is only a criticism because a few things have been learned since then! The Walter Scott translation - despite the cover blurb on the recent Shambhala reprint, this is not the Sir Walter Scott of Ivanhoe fame - while more recent than Mead's, is a product of the "New Criticism" of the first half of this century, and garbles the text severely; scholars of Hermeticism of the caliber of Dame Frances Yates have labeled the Scott translation worthless. By contrast, a comparison of Mead's version to the excellent modern translation by Brian Copenhaver, or to the translations of CH I (Poemandres) and VII (The Greatest Ill Among Men is Ignorance of God) given in Bentley Layton's The Gnostic Scriptures , shows Mead as a capable translator, with a usually solid grasp of the meaning of these sometimes obscure texts. There is admittedly one problem with Mead's translation: the aesthetics of the English text. Mead hoped, as he mentioned at the beginning of Thrice Greatest Hermes , to "render...these beautiful theosophic treatises into an English that might, perhaps, be thought in some small way worthy of the Greek originals." Unfortunately for this ambition, he was writing at a time when the last remnants of the florid and pompous Victorian style were fighting it out with the more straightforward colloquial prose that became the style of the new century. Caught in this tangle like so many writers of the time, Mead wanted to write in the grand style but apparently didn't know how. The result is a sometimes bizarre mishmash in which turn-of-the-century slang stands cheek by jowl with overblown phrases in King James Bible diction, and in which mishandled archaicisms, inverted word order, and poetic contractions render the text less than graceful - and occasionally less than readable. Seen from a late twentieth century sensibility, the result verges on unintentional self-parody in places: for example, where Mead uses the Scots contraction "ta'en" (for "taken"), apparently for sheer poetic color, calling up an image of Hermes Trismegistus in kilt and sporran. The "poetic" word order is probably the most serious barrier to readability; it's a good rule, whenever the translation seems to descend into gibberish, to try shuffling the words of the sentence in question. It may also be worth noting that Mead consistently uses "for that" in place of "because" and "aught" in place of "any", and leaves out the word "the" more or less at random. Finally, comments in (parentheses) and in [square brackets] are in Mead's original; those in <angle brackets> are my own additions.

(255) 295 To say: The Horizon burns incense to Horus of Nn; provisions for the lords. 295 The horizon burns incense to Horus of Nn, 295 the heat of its flaming breath is against you who surrounded the chapel, 295 the poison of its flaming breath is against you who wear the Great (Lower Egyptian crown). 296 The horizon burns incense to Horus of Nn; provisions for the lords. 296 O the ugly, the ugly of form (speech?), the ugly of form, 297 remove thyself from thy place, lay down on the ground the dignity for N. 297 If thou removest not thyself from thy place and layest (not) down on the ground thy dignity for N.; 297 then will N. come, his face like the Great One, lord of the .thelmet, 297 mighty through that in which he is, injured; 298 then will he impart heat to his eye, which will surround you, 298 and will let go a tempest on those who did wrong, 298 and will let loose an inundation over the Ancients; 299 then will he strike away the arms of Shu under Nut, 299 and then will N. put his arm on the wall (protection) on which thou leanest. 300 The Great (R`) stands tip in the interior of his chapel, 300 and lays down to the ground his dignity for N., 300c, after N. had taken command (w) and had laid hold of knowledge (i).

(1) This deific and anagogic path Hermes, indeed, narrated, but Bitys, the prophet of King Ammon, explained it, having found it in the adyta of Saïs in Egypt, written in hieroglyphics; and the same prophet also delivered the name of God, which pervades through the whole world. But there are, likewise, many other coarrangements of the same things; so that you do not appear to me to act rightly in referring all things with the Egyptians to physical causes. For there are, according to them, many principles and many essences; and also supermundane powers, which they worship through sacerdotal sanctimony. To me, therefore these things appear to afford common auxiliaries to the solution of all the remaining inquiries. But since it is necessary not to leave any one of them uninvestigated, we shall add them to these problems, and examine them on all sides, in order that we may see where there is any thing futile in your opinions.

(3) Whereat I moved mine eyes, and I beheld In rear of Mary, and upon that side Where he was standing who conducted me, Another story on the rock imposed; Wherefore I passed Virgilius and drew near, So that before mine eyes it might be set. There sculptured in the self-same marble were The cart and oxen, drawing the holy ark, Wherefore one dreads an office not appointed. People appeared in front, and all of them In seven choirs divided, of two senses Made one say "No," the other, "Yes, they sing." Likewise unto the smoke of the frankincense, Which there was imaged forth, the eyes and nose Were in the yes and no discordant made. Preceded there the vessel benedight, Dancing with girded loins, the humble Psalmist, And more and less than King was he in this. Opposite, represented at the window Of a great palace, Michal looked upon him, Even as a woman scornful and afflicted. I moved my feet from where I had been standing, To examine near at hand another story, Which after Michal glimmered white upon me.

(8) In his Stromata, Clement of Alexandria, one of the few chroniclers of pagan lore whose writings have been preserved to this age, gives practically all the information that is known concerning the original forty-two books of Hermes and the importance with which these books were regarded by both the temporal and spiritual powers of Egypt. Clement describes one of their ceremonial processions as follows:

(4) But the other, magnanimous, at whose desire I had remained, did not his aspect change, Neither his neck he moved, nor bent his side. "And if," continuing his first discourse, "They have that art," he said, "not learned aright, That more tormenteth me, than doth this bed. But fifty times shall not rekindled be The countenance of the Lady who reigns here, Ere thou shalt know how heavy is that art; And as thou wouldst to the sweet world return, Say why that people is so pitiless Against my race in each one of its laws?" Whence I to him: "The slaughter and great carnage Which have with crimson stained the Arbia, cause Such orisons in our temple to be made." After his head he with a sigh had shaken, "There I was not alone," he said, "nor surely Without a cause had with the others moved. But there I was alone, where every one Consented to the laying waste of Florence, He who defended her with open face." "Ah! so hereafter may your seed repose," I him entreated, "solve for me that knot, Which has entangled my conceptions here.

(5) There is a very great difference between the earlier and the later texts of this chapter. Former translators, having chiefly the Turin text before them, have understood the title of the chapter as intended “to remove the impurities from the heart of the deceased person.” The Turin text of the chapter is really unintelligible, and even in the earlier texts certain passages are so corrupt as to defy translation

(7) Tat: I am incapable of this, O father, then? Hermes: Nay, God forbid, my son! Withdraw into thyself, and it will come; will, and it comes to pass; throw out of work the body's senses, and thy Divinity shall come to birth; purge from thyself the brutish torments - things of matter. Tat: I have tormentors then in me, O father? Hermes: Ay, no few, my son; nay, fearful ones and manifold. Tat: I do not know them, father. Hermes: Torment the first is this Not-knowing, son; the second one is Grief; the third, Intemperance; the fourth, Concupiscence; the fifth, Unrighteousness; the sixth is Avarice; the seventh, Error; the eighth is Envy; the ninth, Guile; the tenth is Anger; eleventh, Rashness; the twelfth is Malice. These are in number twelve; but under them are many more, my son; and creeping through the prison of the body they force the man that's placed therein to suffer in his senses. But they depart (though not all at once) from him who hath been taken pity on by God; and this it is which constitutes the manner of Rebirth. And... the Reason (Logos).