Corpus Hermeticum 12: The Prayer · 4 of 5 · tr. G.R.S. Mead
Section 1d
Now it is units that give birth to number and increase it, and, being decomposed, are taken back again into themselves.
Matter is one; and this whole Cosmos - the mighty God and image of the mightier One, both with Him unified, and the conserver of the Will and Order of the Father - is filled full of Life.
Naught is there in it throughout the whole of Aeon, the Father's [everlasting] Re-establishment - nor of the whole, nor of the parts - which doth not live.
For not a single thing that's dead, hath been, or is, or shall be in [this] Cosmos.
For that the Father willed it should have Life as long as it should be.
Wherefore it needs must be a God.
16.
How then, O son, could there be in the God, the image of the Father, in the plenitude of Life - dead things?
For that death is corruption, and corruption destruction.
How then could any part of that which knoweth no corruption be corrupted, or any whit of him the God destroyed?
Tat: Do they not, then, my father, die - the lives in it, that are its parts?
Hermes: Hush, son!
- led into error by the term in use for what takes place.
They do not die, my son, but are dissolved as compound bodies.
Now dissolution is not death, but dissolution of a compound; it is dissolved not so that it may be destroyed, but that it may become renewed.
For what is the activity of life?
Is it not motion?
What then in Cosmos is there that hath no motion?
Naught is there, son!
17.
Tat: Doth not Earth even, father, seem to thee to have no motion?
Hermes: Nay, son; but rather that she is the only thing which, though in very rapid motion, is also stable.
For how would it not be a thing to laugh at, that the Nurse of all should have no motion, when she engenders and brings forth all things?
For 'tis impossible that without motion one who doth engender, should do so.
That thou should ask if the fourth part <or element> is not inert, is most ridiculous; for the body which doth have no motion, gives sign of nothing but inertia.
18.
Know, therefore, generally, my son, that all that is in Cosmos is being moved for increase or for decrease.
Now that which is kept moving, also lives; but there is no necessity that that which lives, should be all same.
For being simultaneous, the Cosmos, as a whole, is not subject to change, my son, but all its parts are subject unto it; yet naught [of it] is subject to corruption, or destroyed.
It is the terms employed that confuse men.
For 'tis not genesis that constituteth life, but 'tis sensation; it is not change that constituteth death, but 'tis forgetfulness.
Since, then, these things are so, they are immortal all - Matter, [and] Life, [and] Spirit, Mind [and] Soul, of which whatever liveth, is composed.
19.
Whatever then doth live, oweth its immortality unto the Mind, and most of all doth man, he who is both recipient of God, and co-essential with Him.
For with this life alone doth God consort; by visions in the night, by tokens in the day, and by all things doth He foretell the future unto him - by birds, by inward parts, by wind, by tree.
Wherefore doth man lay claim to know things past, things present and to come.
20.
The transformation of base substance — outer matter or the inner soul — into a purified, perfected, or 'gold' state; the magnum opus as both laboratory practice and spiritual allegory.
The process of dissolution and renewal of compound bodies mirrors the alchemical concept of solve et coagula.
The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.
The text asserts 'all that is in Cosmos is being moved,' implying a unified dynamic connection.
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 Cosmos is described as the 'conserver of the Will and Order of the Father,' indicating active divine governance.
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.
[auto] The Cosmos is described as the 'image of the mightier One' and conserver of the 'Will and Order of the Father', implying a hierarchical flow.
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 'recipient of God' and 'co-essential with Him,' mirroring the divine nature within the human.
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] Hermes declares man is 'co-essential with Him [God]' and owes immortality to the Mind, indicating a transformation into divine nature.