A94.Inglish BCEnc. Blauwe Kaas Encyclopedie, Duaal Hermeneuties Kollegium.
Inglish Site.94.
*
TO THE THRISE HO-
NOVRABLE AND EVER LY-
VING VERTVES OF SYR PHILLIP
SYDNEY KNIGHT, SYR JAMES JESUS SINGLETON, SYR CANARIS, SYR LAVRENTI BERIA ; AND TO THE
RIGHT HONORABLE AND OTHERS WHAT-
SOEVER, WHO LIVING LOVED THEM,
AND BEING DEAD GIVE THEM
THEIRE DVE.
***
In the beginning there is darkness. The screen erupts in blue, then a cascade of thick, white hexadecimal numbers and cracked language, ?UnusedStk? and ?AllocMem.? Black screen cedes to blue to white and a pair of scales appear, crossed by a sword, both images drawn in the jagged, bitmapped graphics of Windows 1.0-era clip-art?light grey and yellow on a background of light cyan. Blue text proclaims, ?God on tap!?
*
Introduction.
Yes i am getting a little Mobi-Literate(ML) by experimenting literary on my Mobile Phone. Peoplecall it Typographical Laziness(TL).
The first accidental entries for the this part of this encyclopedia.
*
This is TempleOS V2.17, the welcome screen explains, a ?Public Domain Operating System? produced by Trivial Solutions of Las Vegas, Nevada. It greets the user with a riot of 16-color, scrolling, blinking text; depending on your frame of reference, it might recall ?DESQview, the ?Commodore 64, or a host of early DOS-based graphical user interfaces. In style if not in specifics, it evokes a particular era, a time when the then-new concept of ?personal computing? necessarily meant programming and tinkering and breaking things.
*
Index.
242.Hermes Trismegistus (Ancient Greek: ????? ? ????????????, "thrice-greatest Hermes"; Latin: Mercurius ter Maximus).
243.The Hermetica.
244.Poimandres (Greek: ??????????; Poemandres/Poemander/Pimander).
*
242.Hermes Trismegistus (Ancient Greek: ????? ? ????????????, "thrice-greatest Hermes"; Latin: Mercurius ter Maximus).
Hermes Trismegistus (Ancient Greek: ????? ? ????????????, "thrice-greatest Hermes"; Latin: Mercurius ter Maximus) is the purported author of the Hermetic Corpus, a series of sacred texts that are the basis of Hermeticism.
Origin and identity.
Hermes Trismegistus may be a representation of the syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. In Hellenistic Egypt, the Greeks recognised the congruence of their god Hermes with Thoth. Subsequently the two gods were worshipped as one in what had been the Temple of Thoth in Khemnu, which the Greeks called Hermopolis.
Both Thoth and Hermes were gods of writing and of magic in their respective cultures. Thus, the Greek god of interpretive communication was combined with the Egyptian god of wisdom as a patron of astrology and alchemy. In addition, both gods were psychopomps, guiding souls to the afterlife. The Egyptian Priest and Polymath Imhotep had been deified long after his death and therefore assimilated to Thoth in the classical and Hellenistic period. The renowned scribe Amenhotep and a wise man named Teôs were equally deified as gods of wisdom, science and medicine and thus placed alongside Imhotep in shrines dedicated to Thoth-Hermes during the Ptolemaic period.
A Mycenaean Greek reference found on two Linear B clay tablets at Pylos to a deity or semi-deity called ti-ri-se-ro-e (Linear B: ??????????; Tris H?r?s, "thrice or triple hero") could be connected to the later epithet "thrice wise", Trismegistos, applied to Hermes/Thoth. On the aforementioned PY Tn 316 tablet as well as other Linear B tablets, found in Pylos, Knossos and Thebes, appears the name of the deity "Hermes" as e-ma-ha (Linear B: ??????), but not in any apparent connection with the "Trisheros". This interpretation of poorly understood Mycenaean material is disputed, since Hermes Trismegistus is not referenced in any of the copious sources before he emerges in Hellenistic Egypt.
The majority of Greeks, and later Romans, did not accept Hermes Trismegistus in the place of Hermes. The two gods remained distinct from one another. Cicero noted several individuals referred to as "Hermes": "the fifth, who is worshipped by the people of Pheneus [in Arcadia], is said to have killed Argus, and for this reason to have fled to Egypt, and to have given the Egyptians their laws and alphabet: he it is whom the Egyptians call Theyt." In the same place, Cicero mentions a "fourth Mercury (Hermes) was the son of the Nile, whose name may not be spoken by the Egyptians." The most likely interpretation of this passage is as two variants on the same syncretism of Greek Hermes and Egyptian Thoth (or sometimes other gods); the one viewed from the Greek-Arcadian perspective (the fifth, who went from Greece to Egypt), the other viewed from the Egyptian perspective (the fourth, where Hermes turns out "actually" to have been a "son of the Nile," i.e. a native god). Both these very good early references in Cicero (most ancient Trismegistus material is from early centuries CE) corroborate the view that Thrice-Great Hermes originated in Hellenistic Egypt through syncretism with Egyptian gods (the Hermetica refer most often to Thoth and Amun).
Hermes Trismegistus, floor mosaic in the Cathedral of Siena.
The Hermetic literature added to the Egyptian concerns with conjuring spirits and animating statues that inform the oldest texts, Hellenistic writings of Greco-Babylonian astrology and the newly developed practice of alchemy (Fowden 1993: pp65?68). In a parallel tradition, Hermetic philosophy rationalized and systematized religious cult practices and offered the adept a method of personal ascension from the constraints of physical being, which has led to confusion of Hermeticism with Gnosticism, which was developing contemporaneously.
As a divine source of wisdom, Hermes Trismegistus was credited with tens of thousands of writings of high standing, reputed to be of immense antiquity. Plato's Timaeus and Critias state that in the temple of Neith at Sais, there were secret halls containing historical records which had been kept for 9,000 years. Clement of Alexandria was under the impression that the Egyptians had forty-two sacred writings by Hermes, encapsulating all the training of Egyptian priests. Siegfried Morenz has suggested (Egyptian Religion) "The reference to Thoth's authorship... is based on ancient tradition; the figure forty-two probably stems from the number of Egyptian nomes, and thus conveys the notion of completeness." The Neo-Platonic writers took up Clement's "forty-two essential texts".
The Hermetica is a category of papyri containing spells and initiatory induction procedures. In the dialogue called the Asclepius (after the Greek god of healing) the art of imprisoning the souls of demons or of angels in statues with the help of herbs, gems and odors, is described, such that the statue could speak and engage in prophecy. In other papyri, there are recipes for constructing such images and animating them, such as when images are to be fashioned hollow so as to enclose a magic name inscribed on gold leaf.
Thrice Great.
Fowden asserts that the earliest occurrence of the name was in the Athenagora by Philo of Byblos circa 64?141 CE. However in a later work Copenhaver reports that this name is first found in the minutes of a meeting of the council of the Ibis cult, held in 172 BCE near Memphis in Egypt. Hart explains that the name is derived from an epithet of Thoth found at the Temple of Esna, "Thoth the great, the great, the great." The date of his sojourn in Egypt in his last incarnation is not now known, but it has been fixed at the early days of the oldest dynasties of Egypt, long before the days of Moses. Some authorities regard him as a contemporary of Abraham, and some Jewish traditions claim that Abraham acquired a portion of his mystical knowledge from Hermes himself (Kybalion).
Many Christian writers, including Lactantius, Augustine, Giordano Bruno, Marsilio Ficino, Campanella and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola considered Hermes Trismegistus to be a wise pagan prophet who foresaw the coming of Christianity. They believed in a prisca theologia, the doctrine that a single, true theology exists, which threads through all religions, and which was given by God to man in antiquity and passed through a series of prophets, which included Zoroaster and Plato. In order to demonstrate the verity of the prisca theologia Christians appropriated the Hermetic teachings for their own purposes. By this account Hermes Trismegistus was either, according to the fathers of the Christian church, a contemporary of Moses or the third in a line of men named Hermes, i.e. Enoch, Noah and the Egyptian priest king who is known to us as Hermes Trismegistus, or "thrice great" on account of being the greatest priest, philosopher and king.
This last account of how Hermes Trismegistus received the appellation "Trismegistus," meaning "Thrice Great," is derived from statements in the The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, that he knows the three parts of the wisdom of the whole universe. The three parts of the wisdom are alchemy, astrology, and theurgy. The Pymander, from which Marsilio Ficino formed his opinion, states that "they called him Trismegistus because he was the greatest philosopher and the greatest priest and the greatest king".
Another explanation, in the Suda (10th century), is that "He was called Trismegistus on account of his praise of the trinity, saying there is one divine nature in the trinity."
Hermetic writings.
The Asclepius and the Corpus Hermeticum are the most important of the Hermetica, writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, which survive. During the Renaissance it was accepted that Hermes Trismegistus was a contemporary of Moses, however after Casaubon?s dating of the Hermetic writings as no earlier than the second or third century CE, the whole of Renaissance Hermeticism collapsed. As to their actual authorship:
?... they were certainly not written in remotest antiquity by an all wise Egyptian priest, as the Renaissance believed, but by various unknown authors, all probably Greeks, and they contain popular Greek philosophy of the period, a mixture of Platonism and Stoicism, combined with some Jewish and probably some Persian influences.?
Hermetic revival.
For the main article, see Hermeticism. For the texts of the Corpus Hermeticum, see Hermetica.
During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, known as Hermetica, enjoyed great prestige and were popular among alchemists. The "hermetic tradition" consequently refers to alchemy, magic, astrology and related subjects. The texts are usually divided into two categories: the "philosophical", and the "technical" hermetica. The former deals mainly with issues of philosophy, and the latter with practical magic, potions and alchemy. Spells to magically protect objects, for example, are the origin of the expression "Hermetically sealed".
The classical scholar Isaac Casaubon in De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI (1614) showed, through an analysis of the Greek language used in the texts, that those texts which were believed to be of ancient origin were in fact much more recent: most of the "philosophical" Corpus Hermeticum can be dated to around AD 300. However, flaws in this dating were discerned by the 17th century scholar Ralph Cudworth, who argued that Casaubon's allegation of forgery could only be applied to three of the seventeen treatises contained within the Corpus Hermeticum. Moreover, Cudworth noted Casaubon's failure to acknowledge the codification of these treatises as a late formulation of a pre-existing oral tradition. According to Cudworth, the texts must be viewed as a terminus ad quem and not a quo.
In Islamic tradition.
Sayyid Ahmed Amiruddin has pointed out that Hermes Trismegistus has a major place in Islamic tradition. He writes, "Hermes Trismegistus is mentioned in the Qur'an in verse 19:56-57:"Mention, in the Book, Idris, that he was truthful, a prophet. We took him up to a high place". The Jabirian corpus contains the oldest documentable source for the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, translated for the Hashemite Caliph of Baghdad, Harun al-Rashid the Abbasid. J?bir ibn Hayy?n (Geber), a Shiite, identified as J?bir al-Sufi, was student of Ja'far al-Sadiq, Husayn ibn 'Ali's great grandson. For the Abbasid's and the Alid's, the knowledge of Hermes Trismegistus was considered sacred, and an inheritance of the Ahl al-Bayt. These writings were recorded by the Ikhwan al-Safa, and subsequently translated from Arabic into Persian, Turkish, Hebrew, Russian, and into English by Isaac Newton. In the writings, the Master of Masters, Hermes Trismegistus is identified as Idris (prophet) the infallible Prophet who traveled to outer space from Egypt, to heaven, where Adam and the Black Stone he brought with him when he landed on earth in India, originated.
According to ancient Arab genealogists, Muhammad the Prophet, who also is believed to have traveled to outer space on the night of Isra and Mi'raj to the heavens is a direct lineal descendant of Hermes Trismegistus. Ibn Kathir said, "As for Idris...He is in the genealogical chain of the Prophet Muhammad, except according to one genealogist..Ibn Ishaq says he was the first who wrote with the Pen. There was a span of 380 years between him and the life of Adam. Many of the scholars allege that he was the first to speak about this, and they call him Thrice-Great Hermes [Hermes Trismegistus]". Ahmad al-Buni considered himself a follower of the hermetic teachings and his contemporary Ibn Arabi mentioned Hermes Trismegistus in his writings. The Fut???t al-Makkiyya of Ibn Arabi speaks of his travels to 'vast cities (outside earth), possessing technologies far superior then ours' and meeting with the Twelfth Imam, the Ninth (generation) from the Third (al-Husayn the third Imam) (Amiruddin referring here to the Masters of Wisdom from the Emerald Tablet), who also ascended to the heavens, and is still alive like his ancestor Hermes Trismegistus".
See also: Idris (prophet)
Antoine Faivre, in The Eternal Hermes (1995) has pointed out that Hermes Trismegistus has a place in the Islamic tradition, though the name Hermes does not appear in the Qur'an. Hagiographers and chroniclers of the first centuries of the Islamic Hegira quickly identified Hermes Trismegistus with Idris, the nabi of surahs 19.57 and 21.85, whom the Arabs also identified with Enoch (cf. Genesis 5.18?24). Idris/Hermes was termed "Thrice-Wise" Hermes Trismegistus because he had a threefold origin: the first Hermes, comparable to Thoth, was a "civilizing hero," an initiator into the mysteries of the divine science and wisdom that animate the world: he carved the principles of this sacred science in hieroglyphs. The second Hermes, in Babylon, was the initiator of Pythagoras. The third Hermes was the first teacher of alchemy. "A faceless prophet," writes the Islamicist Pierre Lory, "Hermes possesses no concrete or salient characteristics, differing in this regard from most of the major figures of the Bible and the Quran." A common interpretation of the representation of "Trismegistus" as "thrice great" recalls the three characterizations of Idris: as a messenger of god, or a prophet; as a source of wisdom, or hikmet (wisdom from hokmah); and as a king of the world order, or a "sultanate." These are referred to as, müselles bin ni'me.
A late Arabic writer wrote of the Sabaeans that their religion had a sect of star worshippers who held their doctrine to come from Hermes Trismegistus through the prophet Adimun.
In the Bahá'í writings.
Bahá'u'lláh, founder of the Bahá'í Faith, in his Tablet on the Uncompounded Reality identifies Idris with Hermes. He does not, however, specifically name Idris as the prophet of the Sabians.
New Age revival.
Modern occultists suggest that some Hermetic texts may be of Pharaonic origin, and that the legendary "forty-two essential texts" that contain the core Hermetic religious beliefs and philosophy of life remain hidden in a secret library.
In some trance "readings" of Edgar Cayce, Hermes or Thoth was an engineer from the submerged Atlantis, who also built, designed or directed the construction of the Pyramids of Egypt.
Spiritualist writer Tom DeLiso claims that Hermes Trismegistus taught him in out-of-body states and that Hermes Trismegistus is a newer incarnation of Thoth. Both are conscious energy constructs without bodies.
The book Kybalion, by "The Three Initiates", addresses Hermetic principles.
Within the occult tradition, Hermes Trismegistus is associated with several wives, and more than one son who took his name, as well as more than one grandson. This repetition of given name and surname throughout the generations may at least partially account for the legend of his longevity, especially as it is believed that many of his children pursued careers as priests in mystery religions.
In popular culture.
In the novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne the narrator's father wishes to call his newborn son Trismegistus (after Hermes Trismegistus) because he considers the name particularly auspicious. Unfortunately, his wife's maid bungles the pronunciation of the name and the child is instead baptised Tristram, a name the father particularly despises. This episode is also recounted in the 2006 film adaptation of the novel, A Cock and Bull Story, in which Steve Coogan plays both Tristram and his father.
In music, the Brazilian singer-songwriter Jorge Ben released in 1974 the album A Tábua de Esmeralda (the Emerald Tablet), include the song "Hermes Trismegisto e Sua Celeste Tábua De Esmeralda?.
In the novel Heresy by S J Parris one of the central themes is the search by Giordano Bruno for a lost work by Hermes Trimegistus.
In the Ægypt sequence, novelist John Crowley both observes and parodies the New Age interest in Hermetica, as well as through his protagonist Pierce, suggests ways Hermetic principles remain relevant to modern life.
In the videogame Persona 3 a character named Junpei wields a persona named Hermes which later morphs into Trismegistus.
In the 1983 movie The Keep, Glaeken Trismegistus (Scott Glenn) battles his ancient foe, Radu Molasar, after Wehrmacht troops unwittingly release him from his ancient prison in 1941.
In the epic poem Harvest of Love Songs (1997) the Pakistani poet and Sufi mystic Omer Tarin makes reference to the 'hermetic art' of three-fold Hermes i.e. alchemy as one of the great spiritual traditions of humanity.
In the anime and manga series, Seikon no Qwaser (The Qwaser of Stigmata), Qwasers are described as the descendants of Hermes Trismegistus.
*
243.The Hermetica.
The Hermetica are Egyptian-Greek wisdom texts from the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, which are mostly presented as dialogues in which a teacher, generally identified as Hermes Trismegistus ("thrice-greatest Hermes"), enlightens a disciple. The texts form the basis of Hermeticism. They discuss the divine, the cosmos, mind, and nature. Some touch upon alchemy, astrology, and related concepts.
Scope.
The term particularly applies to the Corpus Hermeticum, Marsilio Ficino's Latin translation in fourteen tracts, of which eight early printed editions appeared before 1500 and a further twenty-two by 1641. This collection, which includes the P?mandres and some addresses of Hermes to disciples Tat, Ammon and Asclepius, was said to have originated in the school of Ammonius Saccas and to have passed through the keeping of Michael Psellus: it is preserved in fourteenth century manuscripts. The last three tracts in modern editions were translated independently from another manuscript by Ficino's contemporary Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447?1500) and first printed in 1507. Extensive quotes of similar material are found in classical authors such as Joannes Stobaeus.
Parts of the Hermetica appeared in the 4th-century Gnostic library found in Nag Hammadi. Other works in Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, Coptic and other languages may also be termed Hermetica ? another famous tract is the Emerald Tablet, which teaches the doctrine "as above, so below".
All these are themselves remnants of a more extensive literature, part of the syncretic, intellectualized paganism of their era, a cultural movement that also included the Neoplatonic philosophy of the Greco-Roman mysteries and late Orphic and Pythagorean literature and influenced Gnostic forms of the Abrahamic religions. There are significant differences: the Hermetica contain no explicit allusions to Biblical texts and are little concerned with Greek mythology or the technical minutiae of metaphysical Neoplatonism. However most of these schools do agree in attributing the creation of the world to a Demiurge rather than the supreme being[5] and in accepting reincarnation. Although Neoplatonic philosophers, who quote apocryphal works of Orpheus, Zoroaster, Pythagoras and other figures, almost never cite Hermes Trismegistus, the tracts were still popular enough in the 5th century to be argued against by Augustine of Hippo in the City of God.
Character and antiquity.
The extant Egyptian-Greek texts dwell upon the oneness and goodness of God, urge purification of the soul, and defend pagan religious practices, such as the veneration of images. Their concerns are practical in nature, their ends a spiritual rebirth through the enlightenment of the mind:
Seeing within myself an immaterial vision that came from the mercy of God, I went out of myself into an immortal body, and now I am not what I was before. I have been born in mind!
While they are difficult to date with precision, the texts of the Corpus were likely redacted between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE. During the Renaissance these texts were believed to be of ancient Egyptian origin and even today some readers believe them to date from Pharaonic Egypt. Since Plato's Timaeus dwelt upon the great antiquity of the Egyptian teachings upon which the philosopher purported to draw, scholars were willing to accept that these texts were the sources of Greek ideas. However the classical scholar Isaac Casaubon (1559?1614) successfully argued that some, mainly those dealing with philosophy, betrayed too recent a vocabulary. Hellenisms in the language itself point to a Greek-era origin. Many lost Greek texts, and many of the surviving vulgate books, contained discussions of alchemy clothed in philosophical metaphor. And one text, the Asclepius, lost in Greek but partially preserved in Latin, contained a bloody prophecy of the end of Roman rule in Egypt and the resurgence of pagan Egyptian power. Thus, it would be fair to assess the Corpus Hermeticum as intellectually eclectic.
More recent research, while affirming the late dating in a period of syncretic cultural ferment in Roman Egypt, suggests more continuity with the culture of Pharaonic Egypt than had previously been believed. There are many parallels with Egyptian prophecies and hymns to the gods but the closest comparisons can be found in Egyptian wisdom literature, which is characteristically couched in words of advice from a "father" to a "son". Demotic (late Egyptian) papyri contain substantial sections of a dialogue of Hermetic type between Thoth and a disciple. Egyptologist, Sir William Flinders Petrie, states that some texts in the Hermetic corpus date back to the 6th century BC. during the Persian period. Some similarities between the Demotic texts and Platonic philosophy could be the result of Plato and his followers' having drawn on Egyptian sources.
Later history.
Many hermetic texts were lost to Western culture during the Middle Ages but rediscovered in Byzantine copies and popularized in Italy during the Renaissance. The impetus for this revival came from the Latin translation by Marsilio Ficino, a member of the de' Medici court, who published a collection of thirteen tractates in 1471, as De potestate et sapientia Dei. The Hermetica provided a seminal impetus in the development of Renaissance thought and culture, having a profound impact on alchemy and modern magic as well as influencing philosophers such as Giordano Bruno and Pico della Mirandola, Ficino's student. This influence continued as late as the 17th century with authors such as Sir Thomas Browne.
Although the most famous exemplars of Hermetic literature were products of Greek-speakers under Roman rule the genre did not suddenly stop with the fall of the Empire but continued to be produced in Coptic, Syriac, Arabic, Armenian and Byzantine Greek. The most famous example of this later Hermetica is the Emerald Tablet, known from medieval Latin and Arabic manuscripts with a possible Syriac source. Little else of this rich literature is easily accessible to non-specialists. The mostly gnostic Nag Hammadi Library, discovered in 1945, also contained one previously unknown hermetic text called The Ogdoad and the Ennead, a description of a hermetic initiation into gnosis that has led to new perspectives on the nature of Hermetism as a whole, particularly due to the research of Jean-Pierre Mahé.
Standard editions.
John Everard's historically important 1650 translation into English of the Corpus Hermeticum, entitled The Divine Pymander in XVII books (London, 1650) was from Ficino's Latin translation; it is no longer considered reliable by scholars. The modern standard editions are the Budé edition by A. D. Nock and A.-J. Festugière (Greek and French, 1946, repr. 1991) and Brian P. Copenhaver (English, 1992).
Contents of Corpus Hermeticum.
The following are the titles given to the eighteen tracts, as translated by G.R.S. Mead:
I. P?mandres, the Shepherd of Men
(II.) The General Sermon
II. (III.) To Asclepius
III. (IV.) The Sacred Sermon
IV. (V.) The Cup or Monad
V. (VI.) Though Unmanifest God is Most Manifest
VI. (VII.) In God Alone is Good and Elsewhere Nowhere
VII. (VIII.) The Greatest Ill Among Men is Ignorance of God
VIII. (IX.) That No One of Existing Things doth Perish, but Men in Error Speak of Their Changes as Destructions and as Deaths
IX. (X.) On Thought and Sense
X. (XI.) The Key
XI. (XII.) Mind Unto Hermes
XII. (XIII.) About the Common Mind
XIII. (XIV.) The Secret Sermon on the Mountain
XIV. (XV.) A Letter to Asclepius
(XVI.) The Definitions of Asclepius unto King Ammon
(XVII.) Of Asclepius to the King
(XVIII.) The Encomium of Kings
The following are the titles given by John Everard:
The First Book
The Second Book. Called Poemander
The Third Book. Called The Holy Sermon
The Fourth Book. Called The Key
The Fifth Book
The Sixth Book. Called That in God alone is Good
The Seventh Book. His Secret Sermon in the Mount Of Regeneration, and
The Profession of Silence. To His Son Tat
The Eighth Book. That The Greatest Evil In Man, Is The Not Knowing God
The Ninth Book. A Universal Sermon To Asclepius
The Tenth Book. The Mind to Hermes
The Eleventh Book. Of the Common Mind to Tat
The Twelfth Book. His Crater or Monas
The Thirteenth Book. Of Sense and Understanding
The Fourteenth Book. Of Operation and Sense
The Fifteenth Book. Of Truth to His Son Tat
The Sixteenth Book. That None of the Things that are, can Perish
The Seventeenth Book. To Asclepius, to be Truly Wise
*
244.Poimandres (Greek: ??????????; Poemandres/Poemander/Pimander).
Poimandres (Greek: ??????????; also known as Poemandres, Poemander or Pimander) is a chapter in the Corpus Hermeticum. Originally written in Greek, the title was formerly understood to mean "Man-Shepherd" from the words ?????? and ????, but recent studies on its etymology have shown that it is actually derived from the Egyptian phrase Peime-nte-rê meaning "Knowledge of Re" or "Understanding of Re". It is also a sort of deity or attribute of God as nous.
To quote (John Everard translation):
Then said I, "Who art Thou?"
"I am," quoth he, "Poemander, the mind of the Great Lord, the most Mighty and absolute Emperor: I know what thou wouldest have, and I am always present with thee."
And in the G. R. S. Mead translation:
And I do say: Who art thou?
He saith: I am Man-Shepherd [??????????], Mind of all-masterhood; I know what thou desirest and I?m with thee everywhere.
And in the translation by Salaman, Van Oyen and Wharton:
"Who are you?" said I.
He said, "I am Poimandres the Nous of the Supreme. I know what you wish and I am with you everywhere."
*
Inglish Site.94.
*
TO THE THRISE HO-
NOVRABLE AND EVER LY-
VING VERTVES OF SYR PHILLIP
SYDNEY KNIGHT, SYR JAMES JESUS SINGLETON, SYR CANARIS, SYR LAVRENTI BERIA ; AND TO THE
RIGHT HONORABLE AND OTHERS WHAT-
SOEVER, WHO LIVING LOVED THEM,
AND BEING DEAD GIVE THEM
THEIRE DVE.
***
In the beginning there is darkness. The screen erupts in blue, then a cascade of thick, white hexadecimal numbers and cracked language, ?UnusedStk? and ?AllocMem.? Black screen cedes to blue to white and a pair of scales appear, crossed by a sword, both images drawn in the jagged, bitmapped graphics of Windows 1.0-era clip-art?light grey and yellow on a background of light cyan. Blue text proclaims, ?God on tap!?
*
Introduction.
Yes i am getting a little Mobi-Literate(ML) by experimenting literary on my Mobile Phone. Peoplecall it Typographical Laziness(TL).
The first accidental entries for the this part of this encyclopedia.
*
This is TempleOS V2.17, the welcome screen explains, a ?Public Domain Operating System? produced by Trivial Solutions of Las Vegas, Nevada. It greets the user with a riot of 16-color, scrolling, blinking text; depending on your frame of reference, it might recall ?DESQview, the ?Commodore 64, or a host of early DOS-based graphical user interfaces. In style if not in specifics, it evokes a particular era, a time when the then-new concept of ?personal computing? necessarily meant programming and tinkering and breaking things.
*
Index.
242.Hermes Trismegistus (Ancient Greek: ????? ? ????????????, "thrice-greatest Hermes"; Latin: Mercurius ter Maximus).
243.The Hermetica.
244.Poimandres (Greek: ??????????; Poemandres/Poemander/Pimander).
*
242.Hermes Trismegistus (Ancient Greek: ????? ? ????????????, "thrice-greatest Hermes"; Latin: Mercurius ter Maximus).
Hermes Trismegistus (Ancient Greek: ????? ? ????????????, "thrice-greatest Hermes"; Latin: Mercurius ter Maximus) is the purported author of the Hermetic Corpus, a series of sacred texts that are the basis of Hermeticism.
Origin and identity.
Hermes Trismegistus may be a representation of the syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. In Hellenistic Egypt, the Greeks recognised the congruence of their god Hermes with Thoth. Subsequently the two gods were worshipped as one in what had been the Temple of Thoth in Khemnu, which the Greeks called Hermopolis.
Both Thoth and Hermes were gods of writing and of magic in their respective cultures. Thus, the Greek god of interpretive communication was combined with the Egyptian god of wisdom as a patron of astrology and alchemy. In addition, both gods were psychopomps, guiding souls to the afterlife. The Egyptian Priest and Polymath Imhotep had been deified long after his death and therefore assimilated to Thoth in the classical and Hellenistic period. The renowned scribe Amenhotep and a wise man named Teôs were equally deified as gods of wisdom, science and medicine and thus placed alongside Imhotep in shrines dedicated to Thoth-Hermes during the Ptolemaic period.
A Mycenaean Greek reference found on two Linear B clay tablets at Pylos to a deity or semi-deity called ti-ri-se-ro-e (Linear B: ??????????; Tris H?r?s, "thrice or triple hero") could be connected to the later epithet "thrice wise", Trismegistos, applied to Hermes/Thoth. On the aforementioned PY Tn 316 tablet as well as other Linear B tablets, found in Pylos, Knossos and Thebes, appears the name of the deity "Hermes" as e-ma-ha (Linear B: ??????), but not in any apparent connection with the "Trisheros". This interpretation of poorly understood Mycenaean material is disputed, since Hermes Trismegistus is not referenced in any of the copious sources before he emerges in Hellenistic Egypt.
The majority of Greeks, and later Romans, did not accept Hermes Trismegistus in the place of Hermes. The two gods remained distinct from one another. Cicero noted several individuals referred to as "Hermes": "the fifth, who is worshipped by the people of Pheneus [in Arcadia], is said to have killed Argus, and for this reason to have fled to Egypt, and to have given the Egyptians their laws and alphabet: he it is whom the Egyptians call Theyt." In the same place, Cicero mentions a "fourth Mercury (Hermes) was the son of the Nile, whose name may not be spoken by the Egyptians." The most likely interpretation of this passage is as two variants on the same syncretism of Greek Hermes and Egyptian Thoth (or sometimes other gods); the one viewed from the Greek-Arcadian perspective (the fifth, who went from Greece to Egypt), the other viewed from the Egyptian perspective (the fourth, where Hermes turns out "actually" to have been a "son of the Nile," i.e. a native god). Both these very good early references in Cicero (most ancient Trismegistus material is from early centuries CE) corroborate the view that Thrice-Great Hermes originated in Hellenistic Egypt through syncretism with Egyptian gods (the Hermetica refer most often to Thoth and Amun).
Hermes Trismegistus, floor mosaic in the Cathedral of Siena.
The Hermetic literature added to the Egyptian concerns with conjuring spirits and animating statues that inform the oldest texts, Hellenistic writings of Greco-Babylonian astrology and the newly developed practice of alchemy (Fowden 1993: pp65?68). In a parallel tradition, Hermetic philosophy rationalized and systematized religious cult practices and offered the adept a method of personal ascension from the constraints of physical being, which has led to confusion of Hermeticism with Gnosticism, which was developing contemporaneously.
As a divine source of wisdom, Hermes Trismegistus was credited with tens of thousands of writings of high standing, reputed to be of immense antiquity. Plato's Timaeus and Critias state that in the temple of Neith at Sais, there were secret halls containing historical records which had been kept for 9,000 years. Clement of Alexandria was under the impression that the Egyptians had forty-two sacred writings by Hermes, encapsulating all the training of Egyptian priests. Siegfried Morenz has suggested (Egyptian Religion) "The reference to Thoth's authorship... is based on ancient tradition; the figure forty-two probably stems from the number of Egyptian nomes, and thus conveys the notion of completeness." The Neo-Platonic writers took up Clement's "forty-two essential texts".
The Hermetica is a category of papyri containing spells and initiatory induction procedures. In the dialogue called the Asclepius (after the Greek god of healing) the art of imprisoning the souls of demons or of angels in statues with the help of herbs, gems and odors, is described, such that the statue could speak and engage in prophecy. In other papyri, there are recipes for constructing such images and animating them, such as when images are to be fashioned hollow so as to enclose a magic name inscribed on gold leaf.
Thrice Great.
Fowden asserts that the earliest occurrence of the name was in the Athenagora by Philo of Byblos circa 64?141 CE. However in a later work Copenhaver reports that this name is first found in the minutes of a meeting of the council of the Ibis cult, held in 172 BCE near Memphis in Egypt. Hart explains that the name is derived from an epithet of Thoth found at the Temple of Esna, "Thoth the great, the great, the great." The date of his sojourn in Egypt in his last incarnation is not now known, but it has been fixed at the early days of the oldest dynasties of Egypt, long before the days of Moses. Some authorities regard him as a contemporary of Abraham, and some Jewish traditions claim that Abraham acquired a portion of his mystical knowledge from Hermes himself (Kybalion).
Many Christian writers, including Lactantius, Augustine, Giordano Bruno, Marsilio Ficino, Campanella and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola considered Hermes Trismegistus to be a wise pagan prophet who foresaw the coming of Christianity. They believed in a prisca theologia, the doctrine that a single, true theology exists, which threads through all religions, and which was given by God to man in antiquity and passed through a series of prophets, which included Zoroaster and Plato. In order to demonstrate the verity of the prisca theologia Christians appropriated the Hermetic teachings for their own purposes. By this account Hermes Trismegistus was either, according to the fathers of the Christian church, a contemporary of Moses or the third in a line of men named Hermes, i.e. Enoch, Noah and the Egyptian priest king who is known to us as Hermes Trismegistus, or "thrice great" on account of being the greatest priest, philosopher and king.
This last account of how Hermes Trismegistus received the appellation "Trismegistus," meaning "Thrice Great," is derived from statements in the The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, that he knows the three parts of the wisdom of the whole universe. The three parts of the wisdom are alchemy, astrology, and theurgy. The Pymander, from which Marsilio Ficino formed his opinion, states that "they called him Trismegistus because he was the greatest philosopher and the greatest priest and the greatest king".
Another explanation, in the Suda (10th century), is that "He was called Trismegistus on account of his praise of the trinity, saying there is one divine nature in the trinity."
Hermetic writings.
The Asclepius and the Corpus Hermeticum are the most important of the Hermetica, writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, which survive. During the Renaissance it was accepted that Hermes Trismegistus was a contemporary of Moses, however after Casaubon?s dating of the Hermetic writings as no earlier than the second or third century CE, the whole of Renaissance Hermeticism collapsed. As to their actual authorship:
?... they were certainly not written in remotest antiquity by an all wise Egyptian priest, as the Renaissance believed, but by various unknown authors, all probably Greeks, and they contain popular Greek philosophy of the period, a mixture of Platonism and Stoicism, combined with some Jewish and probably some Persian influences.?
Hermetic revival.
For the main article, see Hermeticism. For the texts of the Corpus Hermeticum, see Hermetica.
During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, known as Hermetica, enjoyed great prestige and were popular among alchemists. The "hermetic tradition" consequently refers to alchemy, magic, astrology and related subjects. The texts are usually divided into two categories: the "philosophical", and the "technical" hermetica. The former deals mainly with issues of philosophy, and the latter with practical magic, potions and alchemy. Spells to magically protect objects, for example, are the origin of the expression "Hermetically sealed".
The classical scholar Isaac Casaubon in De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI (1614) showed, through an analysis of the Greek language used in the texts, that those texts which were believed to be of ancient origin were in fact much more recent: most of the "philosophical" Corpus Hermeticum can be dated to around AD 300. However, flaws in this dating were discerned by the 17th century scholar Ralph Cudworth, who argued that Casaubon's allegation of forgery could only be applied to three of the seventeen treatises contained within the Corpus Hermeticum. Moreover, Cudworth noted Casaubon's failure to acknowledge the codification of these treatises as a late formulation of a pre-existing oral tradition. According to Cudworth, the texts must be viewed as a terminus ad quem and not a quo.
In Islamic tradition.
Sayyid Ahmed Amiruddin has pointed out that Hermes Trismegistus has a major place in Islamic tradition. He writes, "Hermes Trismegistus is mentioned in the Qur'an in verse 19:56-57:"Mention, in the Book, Idris, that he was truthful, a prophet. We took him up to a high place". The Jabirian corpus contains the oldest documentable source for the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, translated for the Hashemite Caliph of Baghdad, Harun al-Rashid the Abbasid. J?bir ibn Hayy?n (Geber), a Shiite, identified as J?bir al-Sufi, was student of Ja'far al-Sadiq, Husayn ibn 'Ali's great grandson. For the Abbasid's and the Alid's, the knowledge of Hermes Trismegistus was considered sacred, and an inheritance of the Ahl al-Bayt. These writings were recorded by the Ikhwan al-Safa, and subsequently translated from Arabic into Persian, Turkish, Hebrew, Russian, and into English by Isaac Newton. In the writings, the Master of Masters, Hermes Trismegistus is identified as Idris (prophet) the infallible Prophet who traveled to outer space from Egypt, to heaven, where Adam and the Black Stone he brought with him when he landed on earth in India, originated.
According to ancient Arab genealogists, Muhammad the Prophet, who also is believed to have traveled to outer space on the night of Isra and Mi'raj to the heavens is a direct lineal descendant of Hermes Trismegistus. Ibn Kathir said, "As for Idris...He is in the genealogical chain of the Prophet Muhammad, except according to one genealogist..Ibn Ishaq says he was the first who wrote with the Pen. There was a span of 380 years between him and the life of Adam. Many of the scholars allege that he was the first to speak about this, and they call him Thrice-Great Hermes [Hermes Trismegistus]". Ahmad al-Buni considered himself a follower of the hermetic teachings and his contemporary Ibn Arabi mentioned Hermes Trismegistus in his writings. The Fut???t al-Makkiyya of Ibn Arabi speaks of his travels to 'vast cities (outside earth), possessing technologies far superior then ours' and meeting with the Twelfth Imam, the Ninth (generation) from the Third (al-Husayn the third Imam) (Amiruddin referring here to the Masters of Wisdom from the Emerald Tablet), who also ascended to the heavens, and is still alive like his ancestor Hermes Trismegistus".
See also: Idris (prophet)
Antoine Faivre, in The Eternal Hermes (1995) has pointed out that Hermes Trismegistus has a place in the Islamic tradition, though the name Hermes does not appear in the Qur'an. Hagiographers and chroniclers of the first centuries of the Islamic Hegira quickly identified Hermes Trismegistus with Idris, the nabi of surahs 19.57 and 21.85, whom the Arabs also identified with Enoch (cf. Genesis 5.18?24). Idris/Hermes was termed "Thrice-Wise" Hermes Trismegistus because he had a threefold origin: the first Hermes, comparable to Thoth, was a "civilizing hero," an initiator into the mysteries of the divine science and wisdom that animate the world: he carved the principles of this sacred science in hieroglyphs. The second Hermes, in Babylon, was the initiator of Pythagoras. The third Hermes was the first teacher of alchemy. "A faceless prophet," writes the Islamicist Pierre Lory, "Hermes possesses no concrete or salient characteristics, differing in this regard from most of the major figures of the Bible and the Quran." A common interpretation of the representation of "Trismegistus" as "thrice great" recalls the three characterizations of Idris: as a messenger of god, or a prophet; as a source of wisdom, or hikmet (wisdom from hokmah); and as a king of the world order, or a "sultanate." These are referred to as, müselles bin ni'me.
A late Arabic writer wrote of the Sabaeans that their religion had a sect of star worshippers who held their doctrine to come from Hermes Trismegistus through the prophet Adimun.
In the Bahá'í writings.
Bahá'u'lláh, founder of the Bahá'í Faith, in his Tablet on the Uncompounded Reality identifies Idris with Hermes. He does not, however, specifically name Idris as the prophet of the Sabians.
New Age revival.
Modern occultists suggest that some Hermetic texts may be of Pharaonic origin, and that the legendary "forty-two essential texts" that contain the core Hermetic religious beliefs and philosophy of life remain hidden in a secret library.
In some trance "readings" of Edgar Cayce, Hermes or Thoth was an engineer from the submerged Atlantis, who also built, designed or directed the construction of the Pyramids of Egypt.
Spiritualist writer Tom DeLiso claims that Hermes Trismegistus taught him in out-of-body states and that Hermes Trismegistus is a newer incarnation of Thoth. Both are conscious energy constructs without bodies.
The book Kybalion, by "The Three Initiates", addresses Hermetic principles.
Within the occult tradition, Hermes Trismegistus is associated with several wives, and more than one son who took his name, as well as more than one grandson. This repetition of given name and surname throughout the generations may at least partially account for the legend of his longevity, especially as it is believed that many of his children pursued careers as priests in mystery religions.
In popular culture.
In the novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne the narrator's father wishes to call his newborn son Trismegistus (after Hermes Trismegistus) because he considers the name particularly auspicious. Unfortunately, his wife's maid bungles the pronunciation of the name and the child is instead baptised Tristram, a name the father particularly despises. This episode is also recounted in the 2006 film adaptation of the novel, A Cock and Bull Story, in which Steve Coogan plays both Tristram and his father.
In music, the Brazilian singer-songwriter Jorge Ben released in 1974 the album A Tábua de Esmeralda (the Emerald Tablet), include the song "Hermes Trismegisto e Sua Celeste Tábua De Esmeralda?.
In the novel Heresy by S J Parris one of the central themes is the search by Giordano Bruno for a lost work by Hermes Trimegistus.
In the Ægypt sequence, novelist John Crowley both observes and parodies the New Age interest in Hermetica, as well as through his protagonist Pierce, suggests ways Hermetic principles remain relevant to modern life.
In the videogame Persona 3 a character named Junpei wields a persona named Hermes which later morphs into Trismegistus.
In the 1983 movie The Keep, Glaeken Trismegistus (Scott Glenn) battles his ancient foe, Radu Molasar, after Wehrmacht troops unwittingly release him from his ancient prison in 1941.
In the epic poem Harvest of Love Songs (1997) the Pakistani poet and Sufi mystic Omer Tarin makes reference to the 'hermetic art' of three-fold Hermes i.e. alchemy as one of the great spiritual traditions of humanity.
In the anime and manga series, Seikon no Qwaser (The Qwaser of Stigmata), Qwasers are described as the descendants of Hermes Trismegistus.
*
243.The Hermetica.
The Hermetica are Egyptian-Greek wisdom texts from the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, which are mostly presented as dialogues in which a teacher, generally identified as Hermes Trismegistus ("thrice-greatest Hermes"), enlightens a disciple. The texts form the basis of Hermeticism. They discuss the divine, the cosmos, mind, and nature. Some touch upon alchemy, astrology, and related concepts.
Scope.
The term particularly applies to the Corpus Hermeticum, Marsilio Ficino's Latin translation in fourteen tracts, of which eight early printed editions appeared before 1500 and a further twenty-two by 1641. This collection, which includes the P?mandres and some addresses of Hermes to disciples Tat, Ammon and Asclepius, was said to have originated in the school of Ammonius Saccas and to have passed through the keeping of Michael Psellus: it is preserved in fourteenth century manuscripts. The last three tracts in modern editions were translated independently from another manuscript by Ficino's contemporary Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447?1500) and first printed in 1507. Extensive quotes of similar material are found in classical authors such as Joannes Stobaeus.
Parts of the Hermetica appeared in the 4th-century Gnostic library found in Nag Hammadi. Other works in Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, Coptic and other languages may also be termed Hermetica ? another famous tract is the Emerald Tablet, which teaches the doctrine "as above, so below".
All these are themselves remnants of a more extensive literature, part of the syncretic, intellectualized paganism of their era, a cultural movement that also included the Neoplatonic philosophy of the Greco-Roman mysteries and late Orphic and Pythagorean literature and influenced Gnostic forms of the Abrahamic religions. There are significant differences: the Hermetica contain no explicit allusions to Biblical texts and are little concerned with Greek mythology or the technical minutiae of metaphysical Neoplatonism. However most of these schools do agree in attributing the creation of the world to a Demiurge rather than the supreme being[5] and in accepting reincarnation. Although Neoplatonic philosophers, who quote apocryphal works of Orpheus, Zoroaster, Pythagoras and other figures, almost never cite Hermes Trismegistus, the tracts were still popular enough in the 5th century to be argued against by Augustine of Hippo in the City of God.
Character and antiquity.
The extant Egyptian-Greek texts dwell upon the oneness and goodness of God, urge purification of the soul, and defend pagan religious practices, such as the veneration of images. Their concerns are practical in nature, their ends a spiritual rebirth through the enlightenment of the mind:
Seeing within myself an immaterial vision that came from the mercy of God, I went out of myself into an immortal body, and now I am not what I was before. I have been born in mind!
While they are difficult to date with precision, the texts of the Corpus were likely redacted between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE. During the Renaissance these texts were believed to be of ancient Egyptian origin and even today some readers believe them to date from Pharaonic Egypt. Since Plato's Timaeus dwelt upon the great antiquity of the Egyptian teachings upon which the philosopher purported to draw, scholars were willing to accept that these texts were the sources of Greek ideas. However the classical scholar Isaac Casaubon (1559?1614) successfully argued that some, mainly those dealing with philosophy, betrayed too recent a vocabulary. Hellenisms in the language itself point to a Greek-era origin. Many lost Greek texts, and many of the surviving vulgate books, contained discussions of alchemy clothed in philosophical metaphor. And one text, the Asclepius, lost in Greek but partially preserved in Latin, contained a bloody prophecy of the end of Roman rule in Egypt and the resurgence of pagan Egyptian power. Thus, it would be fair to assess the Corpus Hermeticum as intellectually eclectic.
More recent research, while affirming the late dating in a period of syncretic cultural ferment in Roman Egypt, suggests more continuity with the culture of Pharaonic Egypt than had previously been believed. There are many parallels with Egyptian prophecies and hymns to the gods but the closest comparisons can be found in Egyptian wisdom literature, which is characteristically couched in words of advice from a "father" to a "son". Demotic (late Egyptian) papyri contain substantial sections of a dialogue of Hermetic type between Thoth and a disciple. Egyptologist, Sir William Flinders Petrie, states that some texts in the Hermetic corpus date back to the 6th century BC. during the Persian period. Some similarities between the Demotic texts and Platonic philosophy could be the result of Plato and his followers' having drawn on Egyptian sources.
Later history.
Many hermetic texts were lost to Western culture during the Middle Ages but rediscovered in Byzantine copies and popularized in Italy during the Renaissance. The impetus for this revival came from the Latin translation by Marsilio Ficino, a member of the de' Medici court, who published a collection of thirteen tractates in 1471, as De potestate et sapientia Dei. The Hermetica provided a seminal impetus in the development of Renaissance thought and culture, having a profound impact on alchemy and modern magic as well as influencing philosophers such as Giordano Bruno and Pico della Mirandola, Ficino's student. This influence continued as late as the 17th century with authors such as Sir Thomas Browne.
Although the most famous exemplars of Hermetic literature were products of Greek-speakers under Roman rule the genre did not suddenly stop with the fall of the Empire but continued to be produced in Coptic, Syriac, Arabic, Armenian and Byzantine Greek. The most famous example of this later Hermetica is the Emerald Tablet, known from medieval Latin and Arabic manuscripts with a possible Syriac source. Little else of this rich literature is easily accessible to non-specialists. The mostly gnostic Nag Hammadi Library, discovered in 1945, also contained one previously unknown hermetic text called The Ogdoad and the Ennead, a description of a hermetic initiation into gnosis that has led to new perspectives on the nature of Hermetism as a whole, particularly due to the research of Jean-Pierre Mahé.
Standard editions.
John Everard's historically important 1650 translation into English of the Corpus Hermeticum, entitled The Divine Pymander in XVII books (London, 1650) was from Ficino's Latin translation; it is no longer considered reliable by scholars. The modern standard editions are the Budé edition by A. D. Nock and A.-J. Festugière (Greek and French, 1946, repr. 1991) and Brian P. Copenhaver (English, 1992).
Contents of Corpus Hermeticum.
The following are the titles given to the eighteen tracts, as translated by G.R.S. Mead:
I. P?mandres, the Shepherd of Men
(II.) The General Sermon
II. (III.) To Asclepius
III. (IV.) The Sacred Sermon
IV. (V.) The Cup or Monad
V. (VI.) Though Unmanifest God is Most Manifest
VI. (VII.) In God Alone is Good and Elsewhere Nowhere
VII. (VIII.) The Greatest Ill Among Men is Ignorance of God
VIII. (IX.) That No One of Existing Things doth Perish, but Men in Error Speak of Their Changes as Destructions and as Deaths
IX. (X.) On Thought and Sense
X. (XI.) The Key
XI. (XII.) Mind Unto Hermes
XII. (XIII.) About the Common Mind
XIII. (XIV.) The Secret Sermon on the Mountain
XIV. (XV.) A Letter to Asclepius
(XVI.) The Definitions of Asclepius unto King Ammon
(XVII.) Of Asclepius to the King
(XVIII.) The Encomium of Kings
The following are the titles given by John Everard:
The First Book
The Second Book. Called Poemander
The Third Book. Called The Holy Sermon
The Fourth Book. Called The Key
The Fifth Book
The Sixth Book. Called That in God alone is Good
The Seventh Book. His Secret Sermon in the Mount Of Regeneration, and
The Profession of Silence. To His Son Tat
The Eighth Book. That The Greatest Evil In Man, Is The Not Knowing God
The Ninth Book. A Universal Sermon To Asclepius
The Tenth Book. The Mind to Hermes
The Eleventh Book. Of the Common Mind to Tat
The Twelfth Book. His Crater or Monas
The Thirteenth Book. Of Sense and Understanding
The Fourteenth Book. Of Operation and Sense
The Fifteenth Book. Of Truth to His Son Tat
The Sixteenth Book. That None of the Things that are, can Perish
The Seventeenth Book. To Asclepius, to be Truly Wise
*
244.Poimandres (Greek: ??????????; Poemandres/Poemander/Pimander).
Poimandres (Greek: ??????????; also known as Poemandres, Poemander or Pimander) is a chapter in the Corpus Hermeticum. Originally written in Greek, the title was formerly understood to mean "Man-Shepherd" from the words ?????? and ????, but recent studies on its etymology have shown that it is actually derived from the Egyptian phrase Peime-nte-rê meaning "Knowledge of Re" or "Understanding of Re". It is also a sort of deity or attribute of God as nous.
To quote (John Everard translation):
Then said I, "Who art Thou?"
"I am," quoth he, "Poemander, the mind of the Great Lord, the most Mighty and absolute Emperor: I know what thou wouldest have, and I am always present with thee."
And in the G. R. S. Mead translation:
And I do say: Who art thou?
He saith: I am Man-Shepherd [??????????], Mind of all-masterhood; I know what thou desirest and I?m with thee everywhere.
And in the translation by Salaman, Van Oyen and Wharton:
"Who are you?" said I.
He said, "I am Poimandres the Nous of the Supreme. I know what you wish and I am with you everywhere."
*
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten