Corpus Hermeticum 13: The Discourse of Hermes to Tat · 3 of 5 · tr. G.R.S. Mead
Section 1c
Gnosis of God hath come to us, and when this comes, my son, Not-knowing is cast out.
Gnosis of Joy hath come to us, and on its coming, son, Sorrow will flee away to them who give it room.
The Power that follows Joy do I invoke, thy Self-control.
O Power most sweet!
Let us most gladly bid it welcome, son!
How with its coming doth it chase Intemperance away!
9.
Now fourth, on Continence I call, the Power against Desire.
<lacuna in the original text> This step, my son, is Righteousness' firm seat.
For without judgement <other translators read this "without effort"> see how she hath chased Unrighteousness away.
We are made righteous, son, by the departure of Unrighteousness.
Power sixth I call to us - that against Avarice, Sharing-with-all.
And now that Avarice is gone, I call on Truth.
And Error flees, and Truth is with us.
See how [the measure of] the Good is full, my son, upon Truth's coming.
For Envy is gone from us; and unto Truth is joined the Good as well, with Life and Light.
And now no more doth any torment of the Darkness venture nigh, but vanquished [all] have fled with whirring wings.
10.
Thou knowest [now], my son, the manner of Rebirth.
And when the Ten is come, my son, that driveth out the Twelve, the Birth in understanding <literally "intellectual birth", noera genesis > is complete, and by this birth we are made into Gods.
Who then doth by His mercy gain this Birth in God, abandoning the body's senses, knows himself [to be of Light and Life] and that he doth consist of these, and [thus] is filled with bliss.
11.
Tat: By God made steadfast, father, no longer with the sight my eyes afford I look on things, but with the energy the Mind doth give me through the Powers.
In Heaven am I, in earth, in water, air; I am in animals, in plants; I'm in the womb, before the womb, after the womb; I'm everywhere!
But further tell me this: How are the torments of the Darkness, when they are twelve in number, driven out by the ten Powers?
What is the way of it, Thrice-greatest one?
12.
Hermes: This dwelling-place through which we have just passed <i.e., the human body>, my son, is constituted from the circle of the twelve types-of-life, this being composed of elements, twelve in number, but of one nature, an omniform idea.
For man's delusion there are disunions in them, son, while in their action they are one.
Not only can we never part Rashness from Wrath; they cannot even be distinguished.
According to right reason (logos), then, they <the Twelve> naturally withdraw once and for all, in as much as they are chased out by no less than ten powers, that is, the Ten.
For, son, the Ten is that which giveth birth to souls.
And Life and Light are unified there, where the One hath being from the Spirit.
According then to reason (logos) the One contains the Ten, the Ten the One.
13.
Tat: Father, I see the All, I see myself in Mind.
Hermes: This is, my son, Rebirth - no more to look on things from body's view-point (a thing three ways in space extended)...
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 goal is the 'articulation of the Reason (Logos)' within the purified soul.
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 (Unrighteousness, Error, Darkness) is described as fleeing or being chased away by the Good.
Salvation through direct experiential knowledge of the divine nature, not through faith, ritual, or moral works alone.
[auto] The passage explicitly states 'Gnosis of God hath come to us' and describes it as casting out Not-knowing, making direct knowledge the central mechanism of salvation.
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 'solemn silence' and stillness is prescribed as a spiritual discipline.
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.
Tat realizes he is 'In Heaven... in earth... everywhere' and the body is constituted from cosmic elements.
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 text explicitly states that through intellectual birth 'we are made into Gods' and filled with bliss.
Iamblichean ritual practice that engages the gods directly through consecrated material symbols and actions, on the premise that divine power descends into properly prepared matter — distinct from philosophical contemplation alone.
Hermes invokes specific Powers (Self-control, Continence, etc.) to effect purification and drive out torments.