Corpus Hermeticum 9: The Decalogue · 1 of 3 · tr. G.R.S. Mead
Section 1a
On Thought and Sense <This somewhat diffuse essay covers a series of topics, starting with (and to some extent from) the concept that the set of perceptions we call "thoughts" and the set we call "sensory perceptions" are not significantly different from each other.
The implications of this idea play a significant role in later Hermetic thought, particularly in the areas of magic and the Art of Memory; in this tractate, though, the issues involved are barely touched, and the argument wanders into moral dualisms and the equally important, but distinct, idea that the Cosmos is itself a divine creative power.
1.
I gave the Perfect Sermon (Logos) yesterday, Asclepius; today I think it right, as sequel thereunto, to go through point by point the Sermon about Sense.
Now sense and thought do seem to differ, in that the former has to do with matter, the latter has to do with substance.
But unto me both seem to be at-one and not to differ - in men I mean.
In other lives <or living creatures> sense is at-oned with Nature, but in men thought.
Now mind doth differ just as much from thought as God doth from divinity.
For that divinity by God doth come to be, and by mind thought, the sister of the word (logos) and instruments of one another.
For neither doth the word (logos) find utterance without thought, nor is thought manifested without word.
2.
So sense and thought both flow together into man, as though they were entwined with one another.
For neither without sensing can one think, nor without thinking sense.
But it is possible [they say] to think a thing apart from sense, as those who fancy sights in dreams.
But unto me it seems that both of these activities occur in dream-sight, and sense doth pass out of the sleeping to the waking state.
For man is separated into soul and body, and only when the two sides of his sense agree together, does utterance of its thought conceived by mind take place.
3.
For it is mind that doth conceive all thoughts - good thoughts when it receives the seeds from God, their contraries when [it receiveth them] from the daimonials; no part of Cosmos being free of daimon, who stealthily doth creep into the daimon who's illumined by God's light <i.e., the human soul>, and sow in him the seed of its own energy.
And mind conceives the seed thus sown, adultery, murder, parricide, [and] sacrilege, impiety, [and] strangling, casting down precipices, and all such other deeds as are the work of evil daimons.
4.
The seeds of God, 'tis true, are few, but vast and fair, and good - virtue and self-control, devotion.
Devotion is God-gnosis; and he who knoweth God, being filled with all good things, thinks godly thoughts and not thoughts like the many [think].
For this cause they who Gnostic are, please not the many, nor the many them.
They are thought mad and laughted at; they're hated and despised, and sometimes even put to death.
For we did say that bad must needs dwell on earth, where 'tis in its own place.
Its place is earth, and not Cosmos, as some will sometimes say with impious tongue.
But he who is a devotee of God, will bear with all - once he has sensed the Gnosis.
For such an one all things, e'en though they be for others bad, are for him good; deliberately he doth refer them all unto the Gnosis.
And, thing most marvelous, 'tis he alone who maketh bad things good.
5.
Ecstatic irrational rapture — Plato's mania, Bruno's furore — by which the soul transcends ordinary reason and attains direct contact with divine reality; madness reframed as higher knowledge.
Gnostics are described as being 'thought mad and laughted at' by the many for their higher knowledge.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
Those who know God are 'filled with all good things' and think godly thoughts, suggesting transformation into the divine nature.