Corpus Hermeticum 6: The All-Father
§ About this work
The collection opens with the narrator's vision of the Being Man-Shepherd (Poimandres), Mind of all-masterhood, who reveals the Light, the making of Man, the ascent through the Harmony to the Eighth, and sends the narrator to preach Gnosis. In the Serapeum, Hermes leads Asclepius to establish that the bodiless space containing all motion is God, Cause named Good and Father. The Sacred Sermon narrates cosmogony from Chaos, Darkness, and Water to men born for gnosis. Hermes then addresses Tat across several discourses: the Epistles, where Mind is set as a prize in a Cup; a discourse on the Unmanifest God who is all names and no name; the All-Father, locating Good in God alone; the Seven Powers, rebuking ignorance; and the Eight Sphere, denying true death. The Decalogue treats sense and thought and Cosmos as God's Son; the Sermon on the Mount describes souls' transformations and Gnosis as the Way Up. In the Hymn, Mind instructs Thrice-greatest Hermes on God, Aeon, Cosmos, Time, and Becoming; the Prayer teaches Mind as pilot against passion and Fate; the Discourse to Tat unfolds Rebirth, the twelve Tormentors driven out by ten Powers, and the Secret Hymnody. Hermes writes to Asclepius (to Ammon) on the One Maker who sows Immortality, Change, Life, and Motion. In the Definitions, Asclepius addresses King Ammon on God as All and One, the Sun as Demiurge, and Heimarmenē; a fragmentary discourse treats bodiless things in bodies and reflexions, the King postponing converse. The Encomium of Kings closes with musician analogies, ascending to God then descending to praise Kings, where Love works the harmony.
An introductory note explains the sermon's use of Greek philosophical terms "Good" and "passion." The speaker addresses Asclepius, declaring Good resides in none save God and is God Himself, needing nothing and free of pain, envy, and anger. He argues things subject to birth abound in passion, where Good cannot be, and calls the Cosmos Good only insofar as it makes all things. In man, good is fouled with bad; only the name of Good exists in men. He names belly-lust the greatest ill, gives thanks to God for the Gnosis of the Good, and identifies God's essence with the Beautiful and Good. He tells Asclepius the single Path is Devotion joined with Gnosis, and that men mistakenly call bad things good.
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