Corpus Hermeticum 13: The Discourse of Hermes to Tat · 2 of 5 · tr. G.R.S. Mead
Section 1b
Thou seest me with eyes, my son; but what I am thou dost not understand [even] with fullest strain of body and of sight.
4.
Tat: Into fierce frenzy and mind-fury hast thou plunged me, father, for now no longer do I see myself.
Hermes: I would, my son, that thou hadst e'en passed right through thyself, as they who dream in sleep yet sleepless.
Tat: Tell me this too!
Who is the author of Rebirth?
Hermes: The Son of God, the One Man, by God's Will.
5.
Tat: Now hast thou brought me, father, unto pure stupefaction.
Arrested from the senses which I had before,...<lacuna in original text>; for [now] I see thy Greatness identical with thy distinctive form.
Hermes: Even in this thou art untrue; the mortal form doth change with every day.
'Tis turned by time to growth and waning, as being an untrue thing.
6.
Tat: What then is true, Thrice-greatest One?
Hermes: That which is never troubled, son, which cannot be defined; that which no color hath, nor any figure, which is not turned, which hath no garment, which giveth light; that which is comprehensible unto itself [alone], which doth not suffer change; that which no body can contain.
Tat: In very truth I lose my reason, father.
Just when I thought to be made wise by thee, I find the senses of this mind of mine blocked up.
Hermes: Thus is it, son: That which is upward borne like fire, yet is borne down like earth, that which is moist like water, yet blows like air, how shalt thou this perceive with sense - the that which is not solid nor yet moist, which naught can bind or loose, of which in power and energy alone can man have any notion - and even then it wants a man who can perceive the Way of Birth in God?
7.
Tat: I am incapable of this, O father, then?
Hermes: Nay, God forbid, my son!
Withdraw into thyself, and it will come; will, and it comes to pass; throw out of work the body's senses, and thy Divinity shall come to birth; purge from thyself the brutish torments - things of matter.
Tat: I have tormentors then in me, O father?
Hermes: Ay, no few, my son; nay, fearful ones and manifold.
Tat: I do not know them, father.
Hermes: Torment the first is this Not-knowing, son; the second one is Grief; the third, Intemperance; the fourth, Concupiscence; the fifth, Unrighteousness; the sixth is Avarice; the seventh, Error; the eighth is Envy; the ninth, Guile; the tenth is Anger; eleventh, Rashness; the twelfth is Malice.
These are in number twelve; but under them are many more, my son; and creeping through the prison of the body they force the man that's placed therein to suffer in his senses.
But they depart (though not all at once) from him who hath been taken pity on by God; and this it is which constitutes the manner of Rebirth.
And...
<lacuna in the original text> the Reason (Logos).
8.
And now, my son, be still and solemn silence keep!
Thus shall the mercy that flows on us from God not cease.
Henceforth rejoice, O son, for by the Powers of God thou art being purified for the articulation of the Reason (Logos).
Eckhart's signature doctrine that the Father eternally begets the Son in the ground of the soul; the human interior as the actual site of the divine generative act, distinct from inner_light's static indwelling.
The text speaks of being born in Mind and the Divinity coming to birth within the human.
The material body viewed as a prison, tomb, or source of error that hinders spiritual knowledge and return.
[auto] The text describes the 'compounded element' and 'former composed form' as limitations that must be dismembered or transcended to achieve rebirth.
Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.
The instruction to throw out of work the body's senses aligns with radical letting-go.
Ecstatic, non-rational receptivity to the divine figured as drunkenness — Plato's symposium wine, Rumi's sukr, Eckhart's 'sober drunkenness'; the passive/receptive metaphor for divine encounter, distinct from divine_madness's active possessing rapture.
Tat describes being brought to pure stupefaction by the teaching.
Ecstatic irrational rapture — Plato's mania, Bruno's furore — by which the soul transcends ordinary reason and attains direct contact with divine reality; madness reframed as higher knowledge.
Tat describes being plunged into fierce frenzy and mind-fury as part of the spiritual process.
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.
Tormentors like Not-knowing and Error are presented as deficiencies rather than positive beings.
Sufi self-effacement in God — the via by which the lover is unmade as a separate ego and recovered as God's act; specifies the practice/event rather than mystical_union's resulting state.
The former composed form is described as being dismembered for the initiate.
Salvation through direct experiential knowledge of the divine nature, not through faith, ritual, or moral works alone.
[auto] The transformation is achieved through a 'Simple Vision' that cannot be seen by ordinary sensory means, emphasizing direct experiential knowledge.
Bruno's eroici furori — a passionate, ennobling spiritual ardor that drives the soul toward divine wisdom; distinguished from base or animal passions by its orientation to infinite truth.
Mind-fury is described as a state induced by the father for spiritual progress.
Disciplined inward attention — sitting, focused, or open-awareness practice — as a stand-alone term that umbrellas active_contemplation, inner_silence, and dhyana-style sitting.
Withdrawing into oneself is presented as a disciplined inward attention to birth Divinity.
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 interior is presented as a site where the Divine nature can be realized and reflected.
The recognition of one's own true divine nature as the primary path to liberation; 'know thyself' as soteriology.
[auto] The process involves passing 'right through thyself' and no longer seeing oneself in the ordinary sense, highlighting introspection as soteriology.
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 initiate is described as being born in Mind and passing into a body that can never die through divine transformation.