I’ve been reading the “Corpus Hermeticum: The Divine Pymander” (2015 edition edited by Tarl Warwick, see post photo) and I wanted to share this section. The book itself is quite interesting though some parts are a bit hard to understand/read. Not sure if it’s just this particular edition/translation or the fact it’s my first time reading through it. Anyway, I really liked this section and I am going to reprint the entire section below for you all to enjoy. This particular edition can be found on Amazon for $6, so if you are interested in reading the rest of the book, you can get it there. Other editions/translations are available as well.
VIII: THE GREATEST EVIL IN MAN IS NOT KNOWING GOD
- Where are you carried, Oh men, drunken with the win of ignorance? When you see that you cannot hold it down, why do you vomit it up again?
- Stand, and be sober, and look up again with the eyes of your heart, and if you cannot all do so, yet do so as many as you can.
- For the malice of ignorance surrounds all the Earth, and corrupts the soul, shut up in the body, not suffering it to arrive at the havens of salvation.
- Suffer not yourselves to be carried with the great stream, but stem the tide you that can lay hold of the haven of safety, and make your full course towards it.
- Seek still what may lead you by the hand, and conduct you to the door of truth and knowledge, where the clear light is that which is pure from darkness, where there is not one drunken, but all are sober, and in their heart look up to him, whose pleasure it is to be seen.
- For he cannot be heard with ears, nor seen with eyes, nor expressed in words; but only in mind and heart.
- But first you must tear to pieces, and break through the garment that you wear; the web of ignorance; the foundation of all mischief; the shackles of corruption; the cloak of darkness; the living death; the corruptible corpse; the sepulcher, carried about with us; the domestic thief, which in what he loves us, hates us, envies us.
- Such is the hurtful apparel, with which you are now clothed, which draws and pulls you downward by its own self, lest looking upward and seeing the beauty of truth, and the good that is reposed therein, you would hate the wickedness of this garment and understand the traps and ambushes which it had laid for you.
- Therefore it labors to make good those things that seem, and are by the senses, judged and determined; and the things that are true, it hides, and veils in much matter, filling what it presents unto you, with hateful pleasure, that you may neither hear what you should hear, nor see what you should see.
Culmination of Wisdom 