Poimandres

The teaching

As the Poimandres of the Corpus Hermeticum teaches it.

The seer and Mind

The treatise is told by a seer. Once, it begins, when his thought had turned to the things that are and his bodily senses were held back, as in the heavy sleep after a full meal or great weariness, a being of boundless size seemed to call him by name and ask: what do you want to hear and see, and what to learn and know? The seer asked who he was. I am Poimandres, he answered, the mind of sovereignty; I know what you want, and I am with you everywhere. I want to learn the things that are, said the seer, to understand their nature and to know God. Hold in your mind what you wish to learn, said Poimandres, and I will teach you.

Light, darkness and the Word

Then everything opened before him and became light, calm and joyful, and he loved what he saw. After a while a darkness appeared below, fearful and gloomy, coiled like a serpent, and it changed into a watery nature, churned beyond words, giving off smoke as from a fire and a wailing sound like a cry without words. Out of the light a holy Word came down upon that watery nature. Pure fire leapt up from it to the height; air, being light, followed the fire; and earth and water stayed below, mixed together and moved by the Word.

Poimandres explained: that light is I, Mind, your God, who was before the watery nature that appeared out of darkness, and the bright Word that came from Mind is the son of God. They are not separate, for their union is life. So it is in you: what sees and hears in you is the Word, and your mind is God the Father.

The craftsman and the seven governors

Mind the Father, who is life and light and both male and female, brought forth by a word a second mind, a craftsman, the god of fire and spirit. The craftsman made seven governors, the planets, which hold the visible world in their circles, and their government is called fate. The Word then leapt up out of the heavy elements and joined the craftsman, being of one substance with him, and the lower elements were left without reason, mere matter. The craftsman set the circles turning, and from the turning nature brought out of the lower elements living things without reason: the air gave birds, the water things that swim, and the earth beasts and creeping things.

The Human

Then Mind, the Father of all, brought forth a Human like himself and loved him as his own child, for he was very beautiful and bore his father's image, and God handed over to him all that had been made. The Human saw the craftsman's work and wished to make things too, and the Father allowed it. He entered the craftsman's realm with all authority; the seven governors loved him, and each gave him a share of its own rank.

The descent

Knowing their natures, the Human wished to break through the bounds of the circles, and he leaned down through the framework of the heavens and showed to nature below the beautiful form of God. Nature saw that beauty and smiled with love, for she had seen the reflection of the Human's form in the water and his shadow on the earth. He, seeing a form like his own in the water, loved it and wished to live there; the wish became act at once, and he came to dwell in the form without reason. Nature took her beloved and wrapped herself wholly around him, and they were joined, for they were lovers.

Twofold, mortal and immortal

That is why the human being, alone of all living things on earth, is twofold: mortal because of the body, immortal because of the essential Human. Though immortal and given authority over all things, he suffers what is mortal and lies under fate; though above the framework of the heavens, he has become a slave within it; though born of a father who is male and female and never sleeps, he is ruled by desire and by sleep.

Increase and multiply

When the first age was complete, all living things, which had been male and female together, were parted by the will of God, and God spoke a holy word: increase and multiply, all you creatures and works; and let whoever has mind recognise that he is immortal and that the cause of death is desire, and let him know all that is. Those who recognised themselves came to the chosen good. Those who loved the body, which comes from the error of desire, stay wandering in darkness, suffering through their senses the things of death.

The seer asked why those who do not know deserve death. Because, said Poimandres, the body comes from the hateful darkness: from darkness came the watery nature, from that the body, and on the body death feeds. But whoever has understood himself goes toward God. If you learn that you are made of life and light, and that you come from them, you will return to life.

Mind beside the good

Mind is not with everyone alike. I, Mind, says Poimandres, am present to the holy and the good, the pure and the merciful, the reverent, and my presence is a help: they know everything at once and win the Father's favour with love, giving thanks and singing to him. Before they give the body up to its own death they turn from the senses, knowing what the senses do, and I stand as a gatekeeper and do not let the body's attacks reach their end. From the foolish, the wicked, the envious, the greedy, the murderous and the irreverent I stand far off, and leave them to the avenging power that sharpens their fire, so that they rush to ever more lawless acts and are never satisfied.

The way up through the seven zones

Then Poimandres told the seer of the way up. When the body dissolves, its form vanishes, its character is handed to the daimon, its senses go back to their sources, and its passions and desires return to nature without reason. The rest rises through the framework of the heavens and gives back at each zone what it took on there.

To the first zone it gives back the power of growing and waning; to the second the devices of evil, now idle; to the third the illusion of longing, now idle; to the fourth the arrogance of rule, now without its aim; to the fifth unholy daring and rash boldness; to the sixth the evil striving for wealth, now idle; and to the seventh the lie that lies in wait. The treatise only numbers the zones; read with the planets in their old order from the Moon upward, the first is the Moon's and the seventh Saturn's.

Stripped of all that the framework worked in it, it enters the nature of the eighth, having its own power, and with those who are there it sings hymns to the Father. They rejoice at its coming, and made like them, it hears powers above the eighth singing to God with a sweet voice. Then in order they rise to the Father, give themselves up to the powers, become powers and come to be in God. This, says Poimandres, is the good end for those who have received knowledge: to be made god.

The call and the hymn

Why do you delay, Poimandres asked: having received everything, become a guide to the worthy, so that through you the human race may be saved by God. Then he mingled with the powers and was gone. The seer began to preach the beauty of reverence and knowledge: you earthborn, given over to drink and sleep and ignorance of God, be sober, you who are charmed by a sleep without reason. Some mocked and went off on the road of death; others threw themselves at his feet and asked to be taught, and he raised them and became a guide of the race, sowing words of wisdom. At evening, as the light of the Sun began to fade, he told them to give thanks to God, and each went to his own bed.

He found that the sleep of the body had become the soberness of the soul, the closing of his eyes true sight, his silence pregnant with good, and his speaking a birth of good things. The treatise ends with his hymn: holy is God, the Father of all, who wills to be known and is known by his own; holy, whose image all nature is; holy, beyond all praise, whose name only silence can speak. He asks never to fall from the knowledge that suits his nature, promises to bring light to those of his race still in ignorance, and says: I believe and bear witness; I go to life and light.