Corpus Hermeticum 10: The Sermon on the Mount · 3 of 6 · tr. G.R.S. Mead
Section 1c
For that the soul who hath no knowledge of the things that are, or knowledge of their nature, or of Good, is blinded by the body's passions and tossed about.
This wretched soul, not knowing what she is, becomes the slave of bodies of strange form in sorry plight, bearing the body as a load; not as the ruler, but the ruled.
This [ignorance] is the soul's vice.
9.
But on the other hand the virtue of the soul is Gnosis.
For he who knows, he good and pious is, and still while on the earth divine.
Tat: But who is such an one, O father mine?
Hermes: He who doth not say much or lend his ear to much.
For he who spendeth time in arguing and hearing arguments, doth shadow-fight.
For "God, the Father and the Good", is not to be obtained by speech or hearing.
And yet though this is so, there are in all the beings senses, in that they cannot without senses be.
But Gnosis is far different from sense.
For sense is brought about by that which hath the mastery o'er us, while Gnosis is the end <i.e., goal> of science, and science is God's gift.
10.
All science is incorporeal, the instrument it uses being the mind, just as the mind employs the body.
Both then come into bodies, [I mean] both things that are cognizable by mond alone and things material.
For all things must consist out of antithesis and contrariety; and this can otherwise not be.
Tat: Who then is this material God of whom thou speakest?
Hermes: Cosmos is beautiful, but is not good - for that it is material and freely passible; and though it is the first of all things passible, yet is it in the second rank of being and wanting in itself.
And though it never hath itself its birth in time, but ever is, yet is its being in becoming, becoming for all time the genesis of qualities and quantities; for it is mobile and all material motion's genesis.
11.
It is intelligible rest that moves material motion in this way, since Cosmos is a sphere - that is to say, a head.
And naught of head above's material, as naught of feet below's intelligible, but all material.
And head itself is moved in a sphere-like way - that is to say, as head should move, is mind.
All then that are united to the "tissue" of this "head" (in which is soul) are in their nature free from death - just as when body hath been made in soul, are things that hath more soul than body.
Whereas those things which are at greater distance from this "tissue" - there, where are things which have a greater share of body than of soul - are by their nature subject unto death.
The whole, however, is a life; so that the universe consists of both the hylic and of the intelligible.
12.
Again, the Cosmos is the first of living things, while man is second after it, though first of things subject to death.
Man hath the same ensouling power in him as all the rest of living things; yet is he not only not good, but even evil, for that he's subject unto death.
For though the Cosmos also is not good in that it suffers motion, it is not evil, in that it is not subject to death.
But man, in that he's subject both to motion and to death, is evil.
13.
Now then the principles of man are this-wise vehicled: mind in the reason (logos), the reason in the soul, soul in the spirit <or, rather, vital spirits>, and spirit in the body.
Final, collective cosmic judgment as an event in which the wicked are sentenced and the cosmos restored; distinct from psychopomp_journey (individual passage at death) and emphasising verdict where Zoroastrian frashokereti emphasises restoration.
The text pronounces a 'sentence of the vicious soul' based on its persistence in vice.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
Vice is explicitly defined as ignorance, a lack of knowledge of the Good and nature.
Gurdjieff and Ouspensky's claim that ordinary human beings live in a state of waking sleep, reacting mechanically without unified will or consciousness, and that the spiritual path begins with recognising this condition.
The ignorant soul is described as ruled by the body and tossed about mechanically.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
Man is described as second after the Cosmos but possessing the same ensouling power, reflecting cosmic structure.
The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.
The soul is described as a slave of bodies and blinded by passions, indicating exile from its divine nature.
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.
[auto] The text states that the one who knows is 'still while on the earth divine', indicating transformation into a divine state.