Corpus Hermeticum 11: The Hymn · 5 of 5 · tr. G.R.S. Mead
Section 1e
And, thus, think from thyself, and bid thy soul go unto any land, and there more quickly than thy bidding will it be.
And bid it journey oceanwards; and there, again, immediately 'twill be, not as if passing on from place to place, but as if being there.
And bid it also mount to heaven; and it will need no wings, not will aught hinder it, nor fire of sun, nor auther, nor vortex-swirl, nor bodies of the other stars; but, cutting through them all, it will soar up to the last Body [of them all].
And shouldst thou will to break through this as well, and contemplate what is beyond - if there be aught beyond the Cosmos; it is permitted thee.
20.
Behold what power, what swiftness, thou dost have!
And canst thou do all of these things, and God not [do them]?
Then, in this way know God; as having all things in Himself as thoughts, the whole Cosmos itself.
If, then, thou dost not make thyself like unto God, thou canst not know Him.
For like is knowable unto like [alone].
Make, [then,] thyself to grow to the same stature as the Greatness which transcends all measure; leap forth from every body; transcend all time; become Eternity <literally, Aeon>; and [thus] shalt thou know God.
Conceiving nothing is impossible unto thyself, think thyself deathless and able to know all - all arts, all sciences, the way of every life.
Become more lofty than all height, and lower than all depth.
Collect into thyself all senses of [all] creatures - of fire, [and] water, dry and moist.
Think that thou art at the same time in every place - in earth, in sea, in sky; not yet begotten, in the womb, young, old, [and] dead, in after-death conditions.
And if thou knowest all these things at once - times, places, doings, qualities, and quantities; thou canst know God.
21.
But if thou lockest up thy soul within thy body, and dost debase it, saying: I nothing know; I nothing can; I fear the sea; I cannot scale the sky; I know not who I was, who I shall be - what is there [then] between [thy] God and thee?
For thou canst know naught of things beautiful and good so long as thou dost love thy body and art bad.
The greatest bad there is, is not to know God's Good; but to be able to know [Good], and will, and hope, is a Straight Way, the Good's own [Path], both leading there and easy.
If thou but settest thy foot thereon, 'twill meet thee everywhere, 'twill everywhere be seen, both where and when thou dost expect it not - waking, sleeping, sailing, journeying, by night, by day, speaking, [and] saying naught.
For there is naught that is not image of the Good.
22.
Hermes: Is God unseen?
Mind: Hush!
Who is more manifest than He?
For this one reason hath He made all things, that through them all thou mayest see Him.
This is the Good of God, this [is] His Virtue - that He may be manifest through all.
For naught's unseen, even of things that are without a body.
Mind sees itself in thinking, God in making.
So far these things have been made manifest to thee, Thrice-greatest one!
Reflect on all the rest in the same way with thyself, and thou shalt not be led astray.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The instruction to reflect 'in the same way' establishes a structural parallel between divine action (God in making) and human cognition (Mind in thinking).
Disciplined inward attention — sitting, focused, or open-awareness practice — as a stand-alone term that umbrellas active_contemplation, inner_silence, and dhyana-style sitting.
The practice of reflecting 'with thyself' constitutes a disciplined inward attention characteristic of meditation.
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 text draws a direct analogy between the human Mind seeing itself and God seeing Himself in making, positioning the human intellect as a mirror of the divine.
Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight.
[auto] The claim that 'naught's unseen, even of things that are without a body' uses a paradoxical statement to challenge ordinary perceptions of visibility.