Corpus Hermeticum 10: The Sermon on the Mount · 1 of 6 · tr. G.R.S. Mead
Section 1a
The Key <This longer tractate presents itself explicitly as a summary or abridgement of the General Sermons (CH II-IX), and discusses the Hermetic view of knowledge and its role in the lives and afterlives of human beings.
The attentive reader will notice certain contradictions between the afterlife-teachings of this and previous tractates.
<One of the central concepts of The Key , and of Hermetic thought generally, is the distinction between ordinary discursive knowledge which can be expressed in words (in Greek, episteme , which Mead translates somewhat clumsily as "science") and transcendent, unitive knowledge which cannot be communicated (in Greek, gnosis , which Mead simply and sensibly leaves untranslated).
The same distinction can be found in many systems of mystical thought.
Unlike most of these, though, the Hermetic teachings place value on both.
<Readers without much experience in the jargon of Classical philosophy will want to remember that "hylic" means "material", "passible" means "subject to outside forces or to suffering", and "intelligible" means "belonging to the realm of the Mind", and "motion" includes all kinds of change.
The special implications of "good" in Greek thought - of self-sufficiency and desirability - should also be kept in mind.
1.
Hermes: My yesterday's discourse (logos) I did devote to thee, Asclepius, and so 'tis [only] right I should devote toafy's to Tat; and this the more because 'tis the abridgement of the General Sermons (Logoi) which he has had addressed to him.
"God, Father and the Good", then, Tat, hath the same nature, or more exactly, energy.
For nature is a predicate of growth, and used of things that change, both mobile and immobile, that is to say, both human and divine, each one of which He willeth into being.
But energy consists in something else, as we have shown in treating of the rest, both things divine and human things; which thing we ought to have in mind when treating of the Good.
2.
God's energy is then His Will; further His essence is to will the being of all things.
For what is "God and Father and the Good" but the "to be" of all that are not yet?
Nay, subsistence self of everything that is; this, then, is God, this Father, this the Good; to Him is added naught of all the rest.
And though the Cosmos, that is to say the Sun, is also sire himself to them that share in him; yet so far is he not the cause of good unto the lives, he is not even of their living.
So that e'en if he be a sire, he is entirely so by compulsion of the Good's Good-will, apart from which nor being nor becoming could e'er be.
3.
Again, the parent is the children's cause, both on the father's and the mother's side, only by sharing in the Good's desire [that doth pour] through the Sun.
It is the Good which doeth the creating.
And such a power can be possessed by no one else than Him alone who taketh naught, but wills all things to be; I will not, Tat, say "makes".
For that the maker is defective for long periods (in which he sometimes makes, and sometimes doth not make) both in the quality and in the quantity [of what he makes]; in that he sometimes maketh them so many and such like, and sometimes the reverse.
But "God and Father and the Good" is [cause] for all to be.
So are at least these things for those who can see.
4.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The text emphasizes that God wills all things to be, ordering existence actively.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
A hierarchy is implied where the Good causes the Sun/Cosmos, which in turn sires lives by compulsion.