Corpus Hermeticum 12: The Prayer · 2 of 5 · tr. G.R.S. Mead
Section 1b
But for the moment, [Tat,] let be the teaching as to vice and Fate, for we have spoken of these things in other [of our sermons]; but now our teaching (logos) is about the Mind: - what Mind can do, and how it is [so] different - in men being such and such, and in irrational lives [so] changed; and [then] again that in irrational lives it is not of a beneficial nature, while that in men it quencheth out the wrathful and the lustful elements.
Of men, again, we must class some as led by reason, and others as unreasoning.
7.
But all men are subject to Fate, and genesis and change, for these are the beginning and the end of Fate.
And though all men do suffer fated things, those led by reason (those whom we said Mind doth guide) do not endure <a> like suffering with the rest; but, since they've freed themselves from viciousness, not being bad, they do not suffer bad.
Tat: How meanest thou again, my father?
Is not the fornicator bad; the murderer bad; and [so with] all the rest?
Hermes: [I meant not that;] but that the Mind-led man, my son, though not a fornicator, will suffer just as though he had committed fornication, and though he be no murderer, as though he had committed murder.
The quality of change he can no more escape than that of genesis.
But it is possible for one who hath the Mind, to free himself from vice.
8.
Wherefore I've ever heard, my son, Good Daimon also say - (and had He set it down in written words, He would have greatly helped the race of men; for He alone, my son, doth truly, as the Firstborn God, gazing on all things, give voice to words (logoi) divine) - yea, once I heard Him say: "All things are one, and most of all the bodies which the mind alone perceives.
Our life is owing to [God's] Energy and Power and Aeon.
His Mind is good, so is His Soul as well.
And this being so, intelligible things know naught of separation.
So, then, Mind, being Ruler of all things, and being Soul of God, can do whate'er it wills." 9.
So do thou understand, and carry back this word (logos) unto the question thou didst ask before - I mean about Mind's Fate.
For if thou dost with accuracy, son, eliminate [all] captious arguments (logoi), thou wilt discover that of very truth the Mind, the Soul of God, doth rule o'er all - o'er Fate, and Law, and all things else; and nothing is impossible to it - neither o'er Fate to set a human soul, nor under Fate to set [a soul] neglectful of what comes to pass.
Let this so far suffice from the Good Daimon's most good [words].
Tat: Yea, [words] divinely spoken, father mine, truly and helpfully.
But further still explain me this.
10.
Thou said'st that Mind in lives irrational worked in them as [their] nature, co-working with their impulses.
But impulses of lives irrational, as I do think, are passions.
Now if the Mind co-worketh with [these] impulses, and if the impulses of [lives] irrational be passions, then is Mind also passion, taking its color from the passions.
Hermes: Well put, my son!
Thou questionest right nobly, and it is just that I as well should answer [nobly].
11.
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 passage discusses Fate as ordered by God's Energy and Mind ruling over Fate and Law.
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 God's Mind rules over Fate, Law, and the material world.
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.
The text argues that those who are 'not being bad' do not suffer bad, implying evil is a lack of Mind or virtue.
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.
Irrational lives are described as working with impulses and passions rather than reason.
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 Mind-led man frees himself from vice and participates in the divine nature as the 'Soul of God'.