These each man should follow, and correct the courses of the head which were corrupted at our birth, and by learning the harmonies and revolutions of the universe, should assimilate the thinking being to the thought, renewing his original nature, and having assimilated them should attain to that perfect life which the gods have set before mankind, both for the present and the future.
Thus our original design of discoursing about the universe down to the creation of man is nearly completed.
A brief mention may be made of the generation of other animals, so far as the subject admits of brevity; in this manner our argument will best attain a due proportion.
On the subject of animals, then, the following remarks may be offered.
Of the men who came into the world, those who were cowards or led unrighteous lives may with reason be supposed to have changed into the nature of women in the second generation.
And this was the reason why at that time the gods created in us the desire of sexual intercourse, contriving in man one animated substance, and in woman another, which they formed respectively in the following manner.
The outlet for drink by which liquids pass through the lung under the kidneys and into the bladder, which receives then by the pressure of the air emits them, was so fashioned by them as to penetrate also into the body of the marrow, which passes from the head along the neck and through the back, and which in the preceding discourse we have named the seed.
And the seed having life, and becoming endowed with respiration, produces in that part in which it respires a lively desire of emission, and thus creates in us the love of procreation.
Wherefore also in men the organ of generation becoming rebellious and masterful, like an animal disobedient to reason, and maddened with the sting of lust, seeks to gain absolute sway; and the same is the case with the so-called womb or matrix of women; the animal within them is desirous of procreating children, and when remaining unfruitful long beyond its proper time, gets discontented and angry, and wandering in every direction through the body, closes up the passages of the breath, and, by obstructing respiration, drives them to extremity, causing all varieties of disease, until at length the desire and love of the man and the woman, bringing them together and as it were plucking the fruit from the tree, sow in the womb, as in a field, animals unseen by reason of their smallness and without form; these again are separated and matured within; they are then finally brought out into the light, and thus the generation of animals is completed.
Thus were created women and the female sex in general.
But the race of birds was created out of innocent light-minded men, who, although their minds were directed toward heaven, imagined, in their simplicity, that the clearest demonstration of the things above was to be obtained by sight; these were remodelled and transformed into birds, and they grew feathers instead of hair.
The race of wild pedestrian animals, again, came from those who had no philosophy in any of their thoughts, and never considered at all about the nature of the heavens, because they had ceased to use the courses of the head, but followed the guidance of those parts of the soul which are in the breast.
In consequence of these habits of theirs they had their front-legs and their heads resting upon the earth to which they were drawn by natural affinity; and the crowns of their heads were elongated and of all sorts of shapes, into which the courses of the soul were crushed by reason of disuse.
And this was the reason why they were created quadrupeds and polypods: God gave the more senseless of them the more support that they might be more attracted to the earth.
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 text links human anatomy directly to cosmic structures like the marrow passing from head to back.
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 explicitly states that the gods have set a perfect life before mankind for both present and future.
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.
Cowardice and unrighteousness are described as conditions that cause a change in nature and create disease.
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 passage explicitly states that men should assimilate the thinking being to the thought of the universe.
The text mentions that men may change into the nature of women in the second generation. [quarantine-w3: soul_migration x platonism — see rellm data/quarantine/dossiers.jsonl]