Corpus Hermeticum 10: The Sermon on the Mount · 5 of 6 · tr. G.R.S. Mead
Section 1e
And for this cause is water poured around earth, to be a guard and wall, to keep the blazing of the fire away.
But mind, the swiftest thing of all divine outthinkings, and swifter than all elements, hath for its body fire.
For mind being builder doth use the fire as tool for the construction of all things - the Mind of all [for the construction] of all things, but that of man only for things on earth.
Stript of its fire the mind on earth cannot make things divine, for it is human in its dispensation.
19.
The soul in man, however - not every soul, but one that pious is - is a daimonic something and divine.
And such a soul when from the body freed, if it have fought the fight of piety - the fight of piety is to know God and to do wrong to no man - such a soul becomes entirely mind.
Whereas the impious soul remains in its own essence, chastised by its own self, and seeking for an earthly body where to enter, if only it be human.
For that no other body can contain a human soul; nor is it right that any human soul should fall into the body of a thing that doth possess no reason.
For that the law of God is this: to guard the human soul from such tremendous outrage.
20.
Tat: How father, then, is a man's soul chastised?
Hermes: What greater chastisement of any human soul can there be, son, than lack of piety?
What fire has so fierce a flame as lack of piety?
What ravenous beast so mauls the body as lack of piety the very soul?
Dost thou not see what hosts of ills the impious soul doth bear?
It shrieks and screams: I burn; I am ablaze; I know not what to cry or do; ah, wretched me, I am devoured by all the ills that compass me about; alack, poor me, I neither see nor hear!
Such are the cries wrung from a soul chastised; not, as the many think, and thou, son, dost suppose, that a [man's] soul, passing from body, is changed into a beast.
Such is a very grave mistake, for that the way a soul doth suffer chastisement is this: 21.
When mind becomes a daimon, the law requires that it should take a fiery body to execute the services of God; and entering in the soul most impious it scourgeth it with whips made of its sins.
And then the impious soul, scourged with its sins, is plunged in murders, outrage, blasphemy, in violence of all kinds, and all the other things whereby mankind is wronged.
But on the pious soul the mind doth mount and guide it to the Gnosis' Light.
And such a soul doth never tire in songs of praise [to God] and pouring blessing on all men, and doing good in word and deed to all, in imitation of its Sire.
22.
Wherefore, my son, thou shouldst give praise to God and pray that thou mayst have thy mind Good Mind.
It is, then, to a better state the soul doth pass; it cannot to a worse.
Further there is an intercourse of souls; those of the gods have intercourse with those of men, and those of men with souls of creatures which possess no reason.
The higher, further, have in charge the lower; the gods look after men, men after animals irrational, while God hath charge of all; for He is higher than them all and all are less than He.
Cosmos is subject, then, to God, man to the Cosmos, and irrationals to man.
The material body viewed as a prison, tomb, or source of error that hinders spiritual knowledge and return.
[auto] The text explicitly states that the mind cannot dwell in its proper robe of fire while in an earth-body and is limited in divine capacity when stripped of fire on earth.
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 'Law of God' is described as actively guarding the human soul from falling into irrational bodies.
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 describes post-mortem chastisement for the impious soul based on its lack of piety.
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.
Evil is characterized as 'lack of piety,' which acts as a fierce fire and chastisement rather than a positive substance.
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.
The human Mind is contrasted with the Mind of all things, suggesting a reflection of the cosmic builder in man.
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.
The pious soul becomes 'entirely mind' and is guided to the Gnosis' Light, indicating transformation into a divine state.