Hermes Trismegistus and Hypatia

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Alexandria and Rome
Presentation 12 of 14

Hermes Trismegistus and Hypatia
The Mystical Philosophy of Alexandria
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, September 16, 1982

Transcript:
We have a, we have a great difficulty in trying to understand this particular aspect of history. Western history about the time of Jesus becomes so intertwined and prolific the capacities become so untenanted. It was noted in later times, some 200 years, 300 years after the millennium that the visionary capacity of man seemed to be dying down at last. And there seem to be less of this being seized by cosmic visionary structures. And I think we're to take it from anonymous commentator in Rome that it had become a commonplace for several generations, perhaps five or six generations after the turn of the millennium. And perhaps two or three generations before for there to be literally hundreds, if not thousands of individuals who finally found themselves at some point of their life completely opened up and inundated by visions of great design. And probably the only other time in human history that we've had so many visions was around the year 1000 when there was a tremendous proliferation of what were referred to since then as millennial visionaries. And I suppose at one time next year we'll have to get into the millennial speculations, the brethren of the free spirit and, and that sort of a group.

But the all-time record is held by those from about 100 B.C. until about 280 A.D. That time space. And there seemed to be two poles to this activity. One was Rome, which was the center of physical power. Almost unparalleled. And the other was Alexandria, which was a center of metaphysical power. Almost unparalleled. We think in ourselves of Jerusalem being the symbol of spiritual power, but it was actually Alexandria that had this tremendous capacity. And especially after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Alexandria became nearly the only oasis in the Roman world for those spiritual saviors who finally had boxed themselves into a situation where they had to know come death or madness or oblivion. They had come to the point where they had to know. They had to find out the truth. And they would go to any lengths to discover this.

So that Alexandria, especially across Lake Mariout towards the desert, the beginnings of the desert. The [inaudible] down the coast and some of the caravan routes that went directly from Alexandria down to where Cairo or Memphis would have been on the Nile. There was a direct caravan road, which today is a highway, going through that part of the Egyptian desert. All along that route were monastic communities, retreats. There would be a population sometimes of many thousands of individuals, much like ourselves, men and women. Sincere seekers. The founder of Christian monasticism, [inaudible], towards the end of his career had over 7,000 men and women in monastic cells in his communities of which there were about 11 of them straggled along the Nile. So that the deserts were filling up with literally tens of thousands of individuals for whom the Pax Romana no longer held any charm. And for whom the call to spiritual enlightenment was just overwhelmingly urgent. And their anxieties had brought them finally to the impasse that they must find out or die.

So, the deserts around Alexandria as they were filling up with individual began the old [inaudible] activity again. And if we can characterize it in a nutshell, Ptolemaic Alexandria was the city of the great library. The learning took place by the [inaudible], the scholars, in the library. In Roman Alexandria the learning took place by lay people like ourselves who had come to this spiritual impasse. And who went out into the desert into their own experience, into their own communities, to learn. So that the library of Alexandria was transformed into the desert communities the world of personal experience. And the positions of the elite were being transformed. And in this process, there was a need of spiritual honesty for all the great teaching traditions of the past, which had been held by sacred priesthoods to open up and disseminate their information to fertilize this religious milieu that was just rising like flooding, spiritual flooding, among the populations of the people. Especially in Alexandria, but it had its reverberations in Rome also. And in a sense the tremendous catacomb structure under Rome mirrors the urge for spiritual solitude of the Alexandrian deserts.

I've got a book, an old book, on the Roman catacombs. Maybe we'll, we'll get some slides of that before we're through with this series. There were catacombs in Alexandria also, but not so extensive.

This development of ancient traditions, which had been held in secret largely in an oral form to transform them into written material, which then be passed hand by hand from eye to eye. Translated from language to language. Included many great traditions. The one that we're going to look at tonight that Hermes Trismegistus is probably one of the most interesting.

It's difficult to imagine, for us, but in the Renaissance when the Byzantine learning was brought in the 14th early 15th century, especially to Northern Italy. You can think of the grandeur of Cosimo de' Medici setting up a wonderful villa outside of Florence and setting up his scholar Marsilio Ficino to make translations. I think that Ficino’s translations of the Platonic works altogether. It's interesting to note that they were called the Platonic theology. That philosophy was taken extremely seriously. And it was Ficino who first made some translations into Latin of The Corpus Hermetica, the writings of the Hermes Trismegistus. Later on, that literature had a traded and [inaudible] again, because anytime that you have real spiritual vitality. It had the form, as they would say, in the Hermetic treatises of energized vibrant space, which is able to penetrate all the realms and all the worlds and engender life and light.

And so, this energized vibrant spatiality again in the Renaissance in Europe penetrated through the world of learning. And flourishing again, but in a different form, the Hermetic treatises began to resemble what we now would classify as alchemical treatises, that began to talk in terms of the ancient chemistry. Mercury, sulfur, salt. That triangle. We will not tonight talk about the Hermetic treatises that are alchemical. That's a subject of itself. It's up a different time period. It's of a whole different outlook. And incidentally, Mr. Hall is working on a bibliography of alchemical texts. That'll be one of the first real great complete bibliographies illustrated. Because most of the really great alchemical works are available here. We have some of the most rare manuscripts and scrolls in the vault.

But before that Hermetic literature, before the alchemical emphasis, was this spiritual emphasis from roughly the 1st century B.C.to about the 3rd century A.D. There was a great argument in the 18th and 19th centuries as to how old this material was. And the argument centered around two types of personality. One was the encyclopedic German personalities clustered usually around Leipzig or Bonn. Some of the areas of sentencing, which saw in the Hermetic material imitations, poor second-rate imitations, of Christian material that had come into writing about the second century and that the Hermetic material was in response and reaction to this. And consequently, was sort of the last gasp of paganism.

On the other hand, where the French [inaudible], who felt that somehow the Hermetic literature was related to the Neoplatonic realm and writings. And that if one could study Hermes along with Plotinus one would get an insight into the total picture of pagan philosophy at its final apex. Both these viewers turn out to be rather mistaken and misleading. But it's difficult for us to swing our entire mind and worldview back sufficiently to the situation at the time. Those of coming to this lecture series, I think we'll be in a better position to form an idea of the world at that time, but I'll try my best. The position in Alexandria can best be described I think by this quotation. This is from [inaudible] translated by a friend Budge, Wallis Budge. It's called Paradise, Or the Garden of The Holy Fathers and Its Histories of Anchor Writes, Req Loses Monks, Other Ascetics Living in The Deserts of Egypt Between The 2nd And 4th Centuries A.D.

And just to bring our imagination back to that time, here's a, here's a group of devout women headed by Melania the Elder who had visited many recluses in their [inaudible]. She was of Spanish origin. And was the daughter of a man who had held councilor rank in the Roman Legionary ranks. And was left a widow at the age of 22. “She left her native land, having realized much of her property.” In other words, she had sold her whole estate and had realized probably quite a lot of money out of it.
Had come to Alexandria. Whence she went into the desert and lived in Nitria for six months. Here she met Pambo Arsenious, Serapeum [inaudible] and many others. She next went to Jerusalem where she dwelt for 27 years. And there she spent large sums in supporting the faithful and then receiving strangers. She studied and read the works fathers with great diligence and was a wise and understanding woman. Her generosity was boundless. And she gave everything she could to help her religion. She had become a Christian. Melania the younger withdrew from the world at the age of 20. And she gave 35,000 [inaudible]
Money, “to the churches in Egypt, Palestine, Antioch” and so on and so on.

Story after story. And as these individuals would report the transformation in their lives and by their own visage, showing up, in contrast to the increasing insanity, which was at large and the world at that time, especially in the capital in Rome. The message could hardly have been missed. The common people, the true seekers, silently and enmasse increasing in an avalanche of a conversion began to follow suit. For those who could not leave the communities began to develop in all of the cities of the Roman empire.

But it is especially this Alexandrian connection that I wish to emphasize with the Hermetic literature. There is, I think, proper starting place by recapping just a little bit what we went through last week. We came to Origen and Clement of Alexandria. And we saw that Clement had lived, flourished between 158 A.D. and about 215 A.D. around that period. That Origen lived from about 185 A.D. to about 254 A.D. And we saw that very early on and formulating the essential doctrines of the Christian Church. We also saw Irenaeus was Bishop in Lyon, in Gaul. France. Who had written against terraces and about [inaudible] 178 A.D.

And we saw also that the earliest evidence of a Christian writer of some note was Justin Martyr, who had been born about 100 A.D. and had been martyred about 165-166 A.D. We find in the writings of Justin Martyr in the Hermetic writings and this reference describes the wonderful antiquity of which the Hermetic literature was blessed with. I think the quote is something like this. And this is preserved for us in Latin collection of early church fathers’ writings translated into English about 1849. “Now, if any of you should think that he has learned doctrine concerning God from those of the philosophers who are mentioned among you as most [inaudible] let him give ear to Amman, Hermes. For Amman in the words,” words in parenthesis, logoi. Logoi the word. “For Amman in the words concerning himself calls God utterly hidden. While Hermes clearly and plainly declares to understand God is difficult. To speak of him impossible. Even for one who can understand.”

So, this and the evidence of the writings of Justin Martyr, probably around 140. How are we to comport? How are we to look at this Hermetic literature? If it's mentioned as early as 140, what literature is it? What writings are?

We find further, going back, going back to Plato. Going back here to around 390 B.C.in The Phaedrus. There is a conversation in, they’re concerned here in The Phaedrus with various capacities. And [inaudible] Socrates finally brings the conversation around to the capacity to Phaedrus and Socrates are talking. And Phaedrus says, your project seems to be excellent. Socrates. If only one could carry it out. And Socrates said Well, then a man, when a man sets his hand to something good, it is good that he should take what comes to him. Phaedrus says, yes, of course. Socrates, then we may feel that we have said enough about the art of speech, both the true art and [inaudible] certainly. But there remains the question of propriety and impropriety in writing. That is to say the conditions, which make it proper or improper. Isn't that so? Phaedrus yes. Socrates, now, do you know how we may best please God in practice and in theory in this matter of word? We're talking about writing things down. Taking it up the oral secret tradition and putting it down. And Phaedrus says, no, indeed, do you? Socrates, I can tell you the tradition that has come down from our forefathers, but they alone know the truth of it. However, if we could discover for ourselves, should we still be concerned with the fancies of mankind? Phaedrus says what a ridiculous question but tell me the tradition you speak of.

And so, Socrates is relating a tradition, which was ancient in his time, about 450 B.C. He would [inaudible] talking.
Socrates then, very well the story is that in the region of now Kratos in Egypt now. Kratos was in lower Egypt in the Delta, almost in the center of it. It was a Greek trading colony from earliest [inaudible]. The story is that in the region of no crutches in Egypt there dwelt one of the many old Gods of the country. The God to whom the bird called Ibis. His own name being Thoth. He, it was that invented number and calculation. geometry and astronomy. Not to speak of dice and other implements and above all writing.

Now the [inaudible] of the whole country at that time was [inaudible] who dropped in the great city of upper Egypt with which the Greeks call Egypt [inaudible]. They call Amun. To him came Thoth and revealed his art saying that they ought to be passed on to the Egyptians in general. [inaudible] asked what was the use of them all. And when Thoth explained and condemned what he thought the bad points were and praise those that where the good. But the basic bad point of writing, which the Pharaoh Aman, the King [inaudible] pointed out is that you have, I made an instrument which will make man stupid because it will externalize his learning. He will think because it is written down and preserved that all he need do then is consult that writing and he will leave him his in own experience vacuous. And as more and more wisdom is externalized, we will build up this wonderful ornate collar, which man will no longer be able to wear. And in his vacuous ignorance will even forget why it was made in the first place. This from Plato’s Phaedrus.

All of this was held to be the case in point with the Hermetic tradition. It was never to have been committed to writing. It was to have been strictly oral passing on. The fact was that the entire world structured was cracking and dissolving and transforming. They had seen not only the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem, they had seen in their own tradition and histories, the destruction of all kinds of capacity for belief, Pistis, or knowledge, gnosis. And so, it was under the gun of inevitable circumstance of dissolution that the Hermetic writings were committed to the public in the time, around time of the 1st century A.D.

These first committees to writing sought to present the information in a dialogue form. So that the original verbal passage of wisdom could be preserved. And there were always three students who were present. Usually, the dialogues would center around Hermes and one of the students. Occasionally another one would be brought in. but there was a reason for this, for the three. They were Asclepius, Tat and Amun. And those three are archetypal [inaudible] is that person who formulates by intellect mainly. Who perceives the world and himself by his mind and intellectual structures. And so that person is signified by Asclepius. Tat is the intuitional person. The one for whom insight is the key. And who needs to be led to a moment of realization and let be free to carry on with his own intuition. And usually this is contrasted with the intellectual. Then there is the mystical type. The person for whom in normal life everything is ostensibly on the practical side. Everything is basically [inaudible] in nature, but whose underside is completely opened up to a mystical apprehended.

I know that there was a time when the mystic was considered somebody who was in a pleasant mood. That if you played Mantovani and looked at flowers, you were mystic. That has very little to do with the mysticism that you're talking about. It's not a pleasant afternoon mood. So, there are these [inaudible]. There are these styles of persons.

The dialogues when they were committed to writing were committed to writing in an atmosphere where there were all kinds of competition from other sects. And especially if you recall, from last week, the emphasis on the early Christian writers was that the Greeks had stold knowledge, the theft of the Greeks who had, they stole it from. They had stolen it from the old Jewish tradition. From Moses. Because Moses and the Old Testament writers had antedated the Greeks by centuries, if not by full a millennia. And so it was with the writing, many of the early Christian fathers, they began to dismiss the illusion from the theft of the Greeks as being an endless labyrinth of philosophic underbrush. And that one would return back to the true tradition.

In this emphasis on antiquity, the origins of traditions, the Hermetic writing looked back to their Egyptian origins. And further it looked back to the archetypal origins of the knowledge, which had even preceded Egypt. And for this we have an ancient Phoenician writer in the ancient world. He was considered the most ancient of all writers. And he wrote, he lived apparently in the area that's under siege now. Beirut Lebanon area. His name is Sanchuniathon, or [inaudible]. S-a-n-c-h-u-n-i-a-t-h-on.

And in his writings and these are from a rare book in the vault. The first edition was 1828. But this is the second edition, 1832, which was amended. Its ancient fragments collected by Cory, who was Isaac Cory, who was a professor at Cambridge University. Ancient Fragments of the Phoenician, Chaldean, Egyptian, Tyrian, Carthaginian, Indian, Persian, and Other Writers. He prepares for us here in translation from the Greek. And the reason we have Sanchuniathon is because the early church historian Eusebius saved Sanchuniathon because he found that this was proof of the early origins of certain ideas, which had been completely transformed and superseded by the New Testament. And so, this was to be preserved.

Sanchuniathon in this this fragment. And it's a total fragment. It's not just a piece of a writing, but it's a short treatise, not very long. And is it's a cosmogony. And it ends very, very similarly to that of Genesis.

It begins,
He supposes that the beginning of all things was a dark and condensed windy air or breeze of thick air. And the chaos [inaudible] in black is the [inaudible]. And that these were unbounded and for a long series of ages destitute of form. But when wind became enamored of its own first principle and an intimate union took place that connection was called Pathos. And it was the beginning of the creation of all things. And it knew not its own production, but from its embrace with the wind was generated,
Here it’s spelled Mot. In ancient Egyptian it would have been transliterated Amat.

Mot and [inaudible] are in the Egyptian Book of The Dead. And they are present at the weighing of the souls. And Mot in the old Egyptian formulation was the feminine counterpart to Thoth [inaudible]. If you follow that direction his complete counterpart. And Mot later on transforms into Sophia many ages later.

But what is interesting in Sanchuniathon is that he gives us a chronology of the ages. And he tells us that in fact the ages go back quite a long time. That the earliest records that we have shown us that there was a tremendous, long chronological time, which was accounted for. And that to an enormous number of years, some 36,525 years. And that only the very latest tip of this time scale was the ancient Egyptian time frame. That this entire frame had 113 descents, that is levels. And that there were in the Egyptian time period three dynasties, which added up to 2,357 years. This was the time of dynastic Egypt. And that before that there was a timeframe which total 3,984 years. And this timeframe was Kronos and the other divinities. These added together give you 6,341.

And that, before this [inaudible] these great epical measurements of time, there was a space in here filled by [inaudible]. And it was [inaudible] years. [inaudible] IAD [inaudible] to close to the blackboard. 300 years, which is about 30,000 years.

And it's interesting that the earliest part of this chronology is a no time element that isn't taken into consideration. And that that realm is the realm of [inaudible]. And Sanchuniathon relates that this tremendous chronology had been kept intact. And in fact, had been engraved upon a tablet, a single tablet. And that it was called the ancient chronicle. And if you know it was 36,525. And it was like 365 days of the year. So, what is related to an annual cycle, which is quite accurate in the solar year.

This ancient time period, especially in the time of the change between the realm of Kronos and the beginnings of Egypt, had a time when there was an invasion of Egypt. And those persons who came in were called the Shepherd King. And these Shepherd Kings brought with them a high religion, and they reigned for some 260 years. They were then expelled from Egypt but came back about a generation later. And the total years of their occupation of Egypt was about 511 years from the first [inaudible] to the last time they were thrown out the second time. This period of 511 years. Now, this was known as the invasion of the Hyksos in terms of our understanding of history. And the Hyksos were known as the Shepherd Kings and the man who expelled them was [inaudible] was very close to Plato's King [inaudible] in name and time period.

And fact it's at that period that Hermes Trismagistus first becomes noticeable as the great counselor to the King who capacities and counseling set around the fact that he controlled an understanding of language and spiritual mysteries. And that by having this dual capacity of understanding the inner spiritual truth and the way in which it may be expressed for that Hermes Trismagistus or Thoth or in the ancient Phoenician, I think I should put this out it T-a-a-u-t. [inaudible] This is the Phoenician form of Thoth, of Hermes.

This development is mirrored from another angle, from the old Masonic angle, and given further flushing out. The great universal moving forward. And the Masonic tradition was Chiram spelled Chiram, c-h-i-r-a-m. Chiram literally means the universal force. The [inaudible] is a person, but it also is the universal force and capacity. Chiram for instance, the words for fire, air and water. Ancient Hebrew Chama, Magi. Those first letters put together give us Chiram. In writing Chiram in Hebrew, the first character letter, which has Chet, it looks very much like a Hey. And if you replaced [inaudible] you get very close to Hermes. So that Chiram and Hermes are related linguistically. And that the early Canaanites, the original Canaanites in that area, where of course Phoenician.

So Sanchuniathon in talking about the ancient Phoenician tradition, which was from the same root source as the Egyptian. They shared an even more ancient tradition. So that from the old Masonic probing back into the origins of the way in which physical reality or emblematic language, body spiritual principles, we get back here to Chiram. And of course, Chiram if you write the C-h as K, you come out with Kam. And Kam is the ancient name for Egypt. And when should we get a Kam, chemistry, Kam. And without the initial constant in there you have Ham. Ham, one of the sons of Noah, who after the flood brought in a learning into manifestation. And one of the creations of Ham, according to Masonic legend, was the Emerald tablet. And that this Emerald tablet was a codification, a basic bringing together and focusing of the ultimate capacities of language and learning to focus universal truths that really could not be expressed, were unutterable of an invisible presence. But that the best attempt that could be made would be this sort of a focus. So that this Emerald tablet from Ham or Chiram or Hermes. And if you look in Mr. Hall's big book, you'll find that the figure of Hermes carries the old traditional conduces in one hand. And then the other hand is the Emerald tablet.

Now the peculiar quality of the tablet. And it's a mysterious force. I think more than an object. We have an old alchemical manuscript, [inaudible] a reproduction of the Emerald tablet. And Mr. Hall was telling me that when he opened this up in the late 1930’s and was showing it to a very great Navajo medicine [inaudible] informed Mr. Hall, that his ancestors could read this. That these letters were intelligible to his people. That he himself had not ever learned how to read it specifically, but he could recognize this. Yet another mystery involved with the Emerald tablet.

The basic notion in the Emerald tablet, that what is below is like or mirrors, that which is. As above, so below. So that in the all the realms and all the hierarchy of the material expression of reality is also the sense and order of the archetypal reality, which is invisible and inexpressible. And that we made by instruction and patience and learning come to such a close approximation below as be able to finally intuit the gaps and spaces missing and to envision that above. And that this process of slowly attuning ourselves to a completer and completer sense of illusory structure, which mirrors that of the archetypal we finally will come to a point where, as Kierkegaard would have said, by a leap of faith we transcend. We understand. We are no longer bound. We did not physically go there step by step all the way, but we got close enough so that we could leave our feet and jump and make that final leap and thus transcend that way.

So that in terms of spiritual understanding and man's true capacity, there is a quantum jump in the energy understanding capacity, which exists just as in the world of physics and the electromagnetic spectrum. It's not solid. Not every wave is there. There are gaps. There are jumps. So that the purpose of man's life is to circumambulate in a sacred way through his life and his companionship to begin to zero in on the correct patterning. So that he may eventually achieve that [inaudible], that quality of presence, wherein the privacy of his own spirit he may join the cosmos. And so, this sacred task was the task of the Hermetic tradition.

And if you can envision just for a moment and then we'll have a short break and then we'll come back. The Emerald tablet, like a jewel. Like a sacred secret stone. Like a philosopher's stone. Coming up, and it's blending. The capacities for a physiological electrical energy to coalesce and to be corporealized and to be regenerate into a form, which could like a prism display for us, the entire spectrum capacity. So that we could then end our pattern of lives choose a true calibration and a true way of comportment. This I offer to you.

And the final point in this, just to sum up the sonic traditional insight here. There are three in one. There are three manifestations, the mental, the emotional, and the vital, the world of action. Those three have a bonding together, a unified in a quality, which is usually an ancient writings called the ether with the aether, with an a-e-t-h-e-r. That aether is really, if you like I think Mr. Hall points this out to his writings, better understood in our time as a vibrant space capacity. And that vibrant space is a quality of spiritual presence. And in that spiritual presence, all the realms meet. They all come together. The pieces fit not as a physical puzzle, but as a focus where the transcendence came to take place. This was the purpose of sacred writing in philosophy, which the Hermetic literature seemed to sum up from most ancient times.

And so, the Hermetic writings and to one in particular called The Poimandres, the shepherd of men. Where The Poimandres begins, not with a question, but what the physiological experience of being lifted up into an ultimate spatiality and light. And from there, he begins to hear.

Well, let's take a little break and then we'll come back to this.

I think most of you know what a crozier is. Crozier is the staff that is held in the Christian Church by bishops. Sometimes abbotts in our tradition and history. In the, in the Eastern church there is a [inaudible] here. The [inaudible] are the [inaudible] tightened together in a the straight-line. [inaudible] straight line. The [inaudible] also has a winged top with the [inaudible]. It's almost like the disc of the sun and the winged Horace. When, when the ancient historical Egyptian Sage, who was Thoth, designed an emblem for the Pharaoh. He designed an emblem, symbolic emblem, which had two pairs of eyes. One pair was open, and one pair was closed. And it had four wings. One pair were up flying and the other pair of were in repose. And it meant that even when he was asleep, the Pharaoh was all seeing. And when he was flying, he was still in repose. And when he was in repose, he was still able to fly, to transcend. So, the winged eye in its ambidextrous universality was the emblem that the ancient Egyptian Hermes designed for the Pharaoh at the time.

Hermes in the Greek tradition was the shepherd of the dead. The guider of souls. The psychopompus. And he had winged helmet and winged feet. It is the mind, which is winged, which is able to transcend. To fly. And it is the capacity of the Hermetic tradition to engender and pass on this capacity for winged thought. And of course, we note that as a relation to Homer's idea of speaking in winged words.

The Hermetic tradition [inaudible] speaks of the axiom that whatever is below is like that above. And that this archetypical penetration of materiality by a cosmic pattern has a theological purpose in mind. And its purpose is to raise up from that materiality and anthropogenesis, which is the third element to go with the cause magnetic. And the theological, the anthropological, has to meet it. So that man as the purposeful which this lower realm is patterned and structured. So that man may free this pattern and bring it back home. And this is the semiquinone of the Hermetic tradition.

The Corpus Hermeticum are a series of tractates. In antiquity that were said to be 42 of them. We have about 14. Several of them are badly damaged and manuscript. They were in fact saved by one single manuscript. And I think it was Michael [inaudible] who saved this about the year 1008 A.D. Very interesting that it should have been at that millennial period.
This body of writings is extremely difficult to get involved in. So, I've chosen the most famous. The first. The Poimandres. Now it's spelled Pomanders sometimes or many other ways. The correct way to spell it is P-o-i-m-a-n-d-r-e-s. Poi-mandres. Poimandres. Who is the shepherd of men. Who is the Hermetic shepherd. Who is from the upper light realms. Who comes with instruction with the gift of language, which man through his anthropogenesis must have learned to speak. Otherwise, he cannot hear. So that his capacity to hear is a direct compliment to the capacity for the divine to reach down to him and teach. And the meeting of the two together completes the cosmos.

This is how The Poimandres begins. This is very good English translation. I don't much care for the comments that this Oxford professor makes. I liked G.R.S. Mead's comments better. But this is a better translation. It's in four volumes. This tractate from The Poimandres begins this way.
Once on a time, when I had begun to think about the things that are, and my thoughts had soared high aloft while my bodily senses had been put under restraint by sleep. Yet not such sleep as that of men weighed down by the fullness of food or by bodily weariness. Me thought there came to me a being of vast and boundless magnitude who called me by my name. and said to me, what do you wish to hear and see? What do you wish to learn and to come to know by thought? Who are you? I said. I, said he, am Poimandres the mind of the sovereignty. I would learn, said I, the things that are and understand their nature. And get thus knowledge of God. These I said are the things of which I wish to hear. He answered to me, I know what you wish. For indeed I am with you everywhere. Keep in mind, all that you desire to learn, and I will teach you.

So, at the beginning of this dialogue, this conversation is already a glint, a clue, a hint. Poimandres knows him by name as an individual. And he who would be called by name. His capacity to hear and understand has already been manifest. Already been fulfilled. Now it's ready to be filled in by language in interchange. And by interchange, I mean to stress that word interchange. That there is a transition and a disposition that goes on from above to below and from below to above. There is a exchanging, if you like, of capacities.
This downward realm is the motion of Heavenly man come back to save his brother. And the motion upward is of aspiring man to achieve absorption in the divine. And the one cannot happen without the other, because it is a cosmic happening that's eternal. And always has it's dynamic in just that way. There never is a time when it is not. So that for it to effect for any individual in time, that individual in time must participate with this eternal exchange, this eternal transition. So that's what's going on here.

“When he had thus spoken forthwith all things changed an aspect before me and were opened out in a moment.” All things were changed and in a moment they all opened out. In other words, the horizon, his horizon is no longer egotistically bound. It's no longer intellectually bound. It's not even any longer, just personally bound. But it has extended into an infinity. This kind of kinesthetic attentiveness preparatory to receiving this divine exchange.

“When he had thus spoken forthwith all things changed an aspect before me and were opened out in a moment And I beheld a boundless view.” Boundless. Boundless view. Imagine what that was. “All was changed into light. A mild and joyous light. And I marveled when I saw it. And in a little while there had come to be in one part downward tending darkness. Terrible and grim.” And this boundlessness and this light and joyous light somewhere, a downward tending darkness, terrible and grim.

“And thereafter, I saw the darkness changing into a watery substance, which was unspeakably tossed about and gave forth smoke as, as from fire. And I heard it making an indescribable sound of lamination. For there was set forth from it and inarticulate cry”. In other words, we have language which is articulate and can be summed up into like a sacred symbolic [inaudible] which has all of its order compressed. And contrapositive to that, we have an inarticulate cry, which is chaotic. Which is anguish. So, from this downward tending darkness, which became a watery substance and thus like an ocean in turmoil. I think now of an illustration from William Blake, where the Pilgrim is going up the mountain. I think it's from Dante Purgatorio, in fact. Where he's clinging to the narrow path. Going up because down below is this a fierce ocean in a turmoil. An archetypal image of ultimate chaos.
“From it and an inarticulate cry. But from the light there came forth a Holy word, which took its stand upon the watery substance and me thought this word was the voice of the light.” You see it came in response to it. Inarticulate cry in the word. Because they're related. Because they must interchange.

And Poimandres spoke for me to hear and said to me, do you understand the meaning of what you have seen? That light, he said, is I. that light is me. Even mind the first God who was before the watery substance, which appeared out of the darkness. And the word which came forth from the light is the son of God.
The word is the son of God.

“How so? said I. Learn my meaning, said he, by looking at what you yourself have in you. For in you too the word,” meaning the word there, “is son. And the mind is father of the word.” They have both the father and the son. The capacity of light and the word. “They are not separate. One from the other for life is the union of word and mind. Said, I for this, I thank you.”

Then The Poimandres goes on. “Now, fix your thought upon the light, he said, and learn to know it.” Get acclimated to it. You remember Plato says that when you first come out of the cave of habitual forms and you first see the light, many are so blinded by it that they voluntarily go back into the cave. Don't be blinded by it. Don't be disconcerted by this.
Fix your thought upon the light and learn to know it. And when he had thus spoken, he gazed long upon me, eye to eye. So that I trembled at his aspect. And when I raised my head again, I saw in my mind that the light consisted of innumerable powers and had come to be an ordered world. But a world without bounds.
In other words, it was ordered, but it's patterning went on into infinity. There was no limit to this.

And in one of the Hermetic treatises. Hermes, I think in that case, he's talking to Tat who was the one who has the insight. And he says, thank you. How many forms there are totally in the cosmos. In the universe. And think you, now that all that must move and that there must be a space, a specialty larger than the cosmos to contain its movement. Think how vast that is. So that Poimandres is working with that. And when he looks eye to eye with his tutor honesty. And I think it's in the, the old ancient saying that it's in the dark of their eyes that men get lost.

But out of that experience, as he looks up, he's able to envision in his mind the celestial hierarchies. That the light had become differentiated and ordered and yet infinite. “So that in this infinity without bounds, I perceived this in my thought. My thought, he says. Seeing it by reason of the word, which Poimandres had spoken to me. And when I was amazed, he spoke again and said to me, you have seen in your mind, the RK type of form.” RK. The Greek word RK. Now this isn't a Jungian term. This is from the old Greek. RK means first.

“You have seen in your mind, the RK type of form, which is prior to the beginning of things.” That is before there are things there's an archetypal form, “which is no thing in and out itself and is limitless. Thus, spoke Poimandres to me.”

So, we have the beginnings of The Poimandres, this first Hermetic treatise. And you can see the serious, specific religious character of the document.

But tell me, said I, where did the elements of nature come into being? If this is so, if I can see this, then what is all this? What is this world? What is nature? Why is this here at all? Is it that I useless ossification? How does this fit in? He answered. They issued from God's purpose.
God has a purpose. And that purpose engendered.
They issued from God's purpose, which beheld that beauteous world and copied it. The watery substance having received the world, word, was fashioned into an ordered world. The elements being separated out from it and from the elements came forth the brood of living creatures.

And from there, he goes on into a declension of nature, physical reality. The [inaudible] of the Greeks. The emerging constantly emerging physical nature reality. And he talks about how all the primal elements separated and how man came to be. And how man is really related to mind the maker. And that nature loves man. In fact, nature enfolds man with herself. Nature as a, as feminine aspect. Nature loves man and clasps. She clasps him to herself.

So that there's this constant interchange, which produces the generation of life. But this life is a life which produces death and constantly death is coming out of it. Out of this desire and out of this interchange. And man, also has this capacity to look away from this world. This worldliness. And in himself to perceive the eternal patterning, which is there. And by philosophy he is able to acclimate himself to this inner patterning. And there is a point at which he will be absorbed back into the world of real life of divine light. If he can turn himself inside away from that.

The Poimandres goes on. And he talked, he writes in here. This is it. “Full well, have you taught me? Oh, mind, said I. Even as I wished. But tell me furthermore, the ascent, the way by which men mount. Tell me how I shall enter into life.” He says, I understand now, somewhat of this. What are the steps? What is the exact way.

Poimandres answered at the dissolution of your material body. You first yield up the body itself to be changed. And the visible form you bore is no longer seen. So that it no longer works in you and the bodily senses go back to their own sources, becoming parts of the universe and entering into fresh combinations to do other work. And there upon the man mounts upward through the structure of the Heavens.
And then he gives us a series of structures of the Heavens. Seven of them crown by an eighth. And it's interesting because these seven Heavenly levels, they were called Hermetically the administrators. They mean the planetary levels in terms of Ptolemaic astrology.

The first level is the zone where you must give up the force, which works increase and that which works decrease. There are forces for increase and decrease. And that's in the first level. The second zone is the zone of the machinations of evil cunning. The third, the lust, whereby men are deceived. Those [inaudible] images that one seeks to grasp. That, that loss. That's the third zone. The fourth zone is the one of domineering arrogance. The fifth zone one which we're prone to in our time, unholy [inaudible] and rash audacity. We love that. We call it action. That's where the action is it's in that fifth Hermetic zone of entanglement. You see. The sixth zone evil strivings after wealth. Well, no, one's perfect. And the seventh zone, the false hood, which lies in wait to work harm. That falsehood, which is always there to nab us at the end. That vanity fair. We think we've done it all and that thought itself traps us. We're so proud that we've done it all. We've escaped and aren't we fine. And suddenly we're trapped. The seventh is that false hood, which lies in wait to work harm.

So that these seven levels, the spirit rising through them and with instruction may pass through. May be, they may be permeable to his or her progress. And so, we come to the eighth realm, the eighth level. And this eighth sphere now being possessed of his own proper power, all these hindrances, as they are transcended and gone through, relinquish their quote power back to the soul. And as it goes through level after level, all seven of them and enters into the eighth, it has its fullness of power. Power in the sense of capacity. Capacity to manifest. And there in that eighth sphere, that power finally is brought into play for the purpose for which it was made in the first place. And what was it made for? The only reason that man exists at all, to praise God. To sing hymns of praise. And we'll see about those hymns in just a minute.

And he sings together with those who dwell there. Hymning the Father. And they that are there rejoice with him at his coming. Because the only thing the universe needs is the consecration of man to complete it. By his being able through courage and consciousness, through character and purpose to come home and mirror the glory of God with his hymning, his praising.

And being made like to those, with whom he dwells. He hears the powers who are above the substance of the eighths fear. When he is able to sing in praise with his full presence capacity, when he's together spiritually, then he also hears that there is a above praising and hymning going on above the eighth sphere, harmonizing with his praising and those with him.
So that in this harmonizing between the eighth, that which is above that, there is a transition. There is an exchange. There is a power jump. Is a quantum leap into life and light.

“This is the good. This is the consummation.” And then they use the Greek term here for those who have got gnosis. For those who have gotten gnosis. And we can see how Clement of Alexandria acquainted with this sort of thing would have raved so wonderfully about gnosis and his Stromateis. This was before of course, all the great arguments with the Gnostics.

So, all of this transpires. “And Poimandres when he had thus spoken mingled with the powers.” That is, he, he vanishes back into the universe. Back into this boundless vast magnitude of being of spatiality. And then he, who has heard this in the Hermetic treaties relates.
And I inscribed in my memory, the benefaction of Poimandres and I was exceedingly glad for, I was fed full with that, for which I craved. My bodily sleep had come to be sober wakefulness of soul. And the closing of my eyes, true vision. And my silence pregnant with good. And my barrenness of speech even a brood of Holy thoughts. And this befell me and that I received from Poimandres that is from the mind of the sovereignty, those teachings, whereby becoming God inspired by a team to the abode of truth.

So that this entire experience then is engraved on his memory. And further, he sought then to communicate this. First with his wife, he says. And then his children. And then those companions around him. And finally,
Some of them mocked at my words and stood alone for, they had given themselves up to the way of death. But others besought me that they might be taught and cast themselves sat down at my feet. I bade them to stand up and I made myself a guide to mankind teaching them the doctrine. How and in what wise we all might be saved. And when the evening was come and the light of the sun was beginning to go down, I bade them all with one accord to give thanks to God. And when they had accomplished their thanks giving, they be took them every man to his own bed.

Well, this is a sample of a Hermetic treatise. And you can see just from this cursory glance at one of them, that its totally different realm from an alchemical treaties that is looking at physical material world of metals and their transformation. The language and the purpose here totally spiritual. Absolutely unconcerned with whether or not one could make goal. And in fact, if one is talking about a philosopher's stone in a Hermetic way, one can only envision the Emerald tablet glittered with that Hermetic creed. What is about is like that below.

Well, this, this capacity, I think, to generate this kind of wisdom literature and teaching in Alexandria emphasize the fact that man could learn. That we are in fact teachable. That there is never a condition that we have gone so far from that we cannot be saved. Resuscitated. In fact, the old Hermetic emblem is a winged [inaudible] Hermes with this [inaudible] raised high, almost a fit for a torch reaching down with the other hand to help another man out of a hole and bring him back up from that lower world into the upper world. And this was on an old gem that I saw carved one time from Alexandria.

This capacity to hold aloft this torch of symbolic understanding and to reach with the other hand for men. The soul must have these capacities for intelligence. It must have the capacities to form into language and expressive word that approximates close enough so that there can be this [inaudible] jump and leap in understanding. That, so that this process of exchange between the Heavenly man coming down to help and the anthropogenic being rising above to transcend, that these two motions together.

Well, I had many other things to show. I had some quotations from The Book of The Dead. I had some other things in here. But I think that this is enough for one evening. We don't want to overload.

I will, I will come back to Hypatia at the beginning of the lecture next week. And we will take Marcus Aurelius and Plotinus. And I think, again, here we find an interesting contrast between a Roman emperor, who from the pentacle of his greatness wrote this a tremendous treatise on human character and Plotinus, who was an Egyptian. He was from Alexandria. had learned from the same teacher as Origen, Ammonius, Ammonius Saccas. The sack bearer in the works of Alexandria. Because the interesting position that happened to the world about the end of the 2nd to 3rd century was that we have a sack bearer and an emperor talking about the same kinds of wisdom. The opposite ends of human capacity meeting together. And inside that parenthetically phrase was this tremendous transition that phased out the ancient world and brought in the beginnings of our own.

Well, we'll look at that next week. Thank you very much.

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