Hermes to His Son (Lecture 2)
Presented on: Tuesday, March 18, 1986
Presented by: Roger Weir
Hermetic Tradition: From Egypt to America, From Osiris to Benjamin Franklin
Presentation 11 of 52
Hermes to His Son Part 2
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, March 18, 1986
Transcript:
The date is March the 18th, 1986. This is part 11 in this series by Roger Weir on the subject of Osiris to Franklin, the Hermetic tradition.
Colleagues bear witness to Weir's ability. But it wasn't me.
Comment from the room: Who was it then?
Peter Weir the director. Film director from Australia. But the headline...I usually read just the sports page you see. And I was throwing it away and then I saw that headline I thought well how did that happen? Very few people prized anonymity more than me. And I am glad. I'm glad to be able to walk out and just walk around and be alright. Some of you remember when I was on Hollywood Boulevard. And I could walk anywhere in Hollywood and be known. I was the, I was the Hermetic priest for Hollywood Boulevard for seven years. Oh yeah.
Comment from the room: That was really impressive.
Yeah. So, if I seem capable of accepting a lot of vulgarity it's because it doesn't surprise me. Nor frighten me.
We're gonna finish up the Hermetic dialogues, Hermes to Thoth. And then I'm gonna try to get over to the beginning of the Greek Hermes. Because we have to catch that up. So, we'll begin where we left off last week. And I'm sorry to make it so stiff. It's difficult I know to come in off the streets of Los Angeles in 1986 and find someone like me that has zero to 60 in two picoseconds. So, I'll try and tone it down a little bit. And then we'll get to Homer.
One thing that will be surprising to you, we have an Egyptian soul in the West. The Western world has an Egyptian soul. Which is why it's so difficult for us to resolve ourselves in terms of a Judeo-Christian civilization. Or in terms of a Greco-Roman history. Because we actually have an Egyptian soul. And one of the great appeals of Jesus was that he was Egyptian more than he was Jewish. It's highly symbolic that he was not blessed in the Temple in Jerusalem but was taken to Egypt as a babe. And the first years of his life were spent there in Egypt. So, our Egyptian soul is very difficult to come into contact with because we don't have the right perspective. And it takes us a while to penetrate through and realize that the Judeo-Christian religion for us is a ritual comportment and is not natural. It's richly sound and excellent. But it is not natural to us. And we have to get down to the ancient Egyptian Hermetic roots for it to be natural. And then when it's natural. Then when it grows back through the Judeo-Christian experience and the Greco-Roman history. Then it picks up veracity from the ritual comportment and the rituals become true. Rather than very good approximations they become true. And then all of the mythologies ring true for us. So, it's a very odd experience.
In order to restore people to their health now in the late 20th century we have to take them and baptize them back into the ancient Egyptian sagacity and bring them back through, rebirth them back through history. Back through all the levels so that when they reach the 20th century they reach it whole and are able to withstand the nightmare. Because our time is a thorough nightmare. The only thing that saves us in our time is that we have so many distractions. And we don't believe that it's actually happening. That were actually saved just on those grounds alone. If we had the same moral intensity that our grandparents had in 1986, we would not be able to survive psychologically. So, in a way we are here by grace of our insincerity. So, sin a little. And don't feel so bad about it. Because when the time for purity comes you will be more than able to do it. More than able. And a pure time is coming. A very pure time is coming. Everything will be restored.
So, we're going back now. We're going back to, by way of this volume. This is volume 1 of 4 of the Hermetica edited by Walter Scott. Published in 1924, Oxford University Press. And it has as a frontispiece here a photograph of the pavement. The floor. In the cathedral in Siena Italy. Siena is a Tuscan city south of Florence. And there in the pavement of Siena Cathedral is the great Hermes Trismegistus. who is showing the savants of the Renaissance the Emerald Tablet. And explaining to them as a good sage should that the tradition is sound and comes to them whole and will work. and actually, our lecture series here in a place like this is very kosher in terms of the Hermetic Tradition. This is a self-selective process of coming here. And there's no guarantee or coercion or lure actually on any level. And the fact that we are all here on a regular basis is a great tribute to the capacity for honesty. Even in the midst of a nightmare. And of course, the nightmare is worse just before you wake up. Just before the dawn. And so, times are very bad right now. But dawn comes. What does Shelly say? In the great Prometheus Unbound at the end, the Demogorgon says to hope till hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates. Love, hope, charity, empire and victory. Or in the ode to the west wind, if winter comes can spring be far behind. In the cycle, in the turn, new things come.
And that's the theme of the 13th book in The Corpus Hermeticum. Its theme is rebirth. The Greek word for rebirth is very strange. Polygenesis. Polygenesis. And it's a very strange usage. there is no usage in terms of the Greek other than this polygenesis. Rebirth. It means coming being a generated back again. So, the sense in in the Greek, which is the Platonic as they say, because it's there in Plato. And of course, Plato received a great deal of this from Egypt. Plato and Pythagoras were both initiated in Egypt. And Mr. Hall years ago published in facsimile the Benben tablet. Which is the hieroglyphic tablet that was in the temple in Heliopolis. The priests of Om, O-M, in the temple of Heliopolis initiated both Pythagoras and Plato. And the very same temple on the very same tablet. And we have that book here in PRS reprint. And maybe next week we'll bring it out.
So, polygenesis, rebirth, this is a secret discourse from Hermes Trismegistus to his son Thoth concerning rebirth. And as you recall last week, it ends with a great peon. on a great sacred hymn which Hermes utters to the Great Spirit of the universe. And then his son Thoth, who has understood. Understood in the mind by his gnosis. But understood also in his spirit by polygenesis. it's not a question of being born again. It's not a question of you coming back well-scrubbed. It's a question of refashioning. So that instead of the physical person that was there, there is an invisible person who is there, regardless of the body.
The Hermetic key is that we, we do not get reborn as we are. That our being as we are becomes ossified. It becomes a shell which we leave behind. And of the great precondition for being reborn is to be alienated. One has to be willing to accept alienation. Which is very, very difficult. the most poignant aspect of alienation is loneliness. Far worse than death or madness is loneliness. You see death is tragic and madness horrible. But loneliness is existentially unsustainable. Especially loneliness to the point of being completely cut off from everything for all time forever. And being able to accept that as an experience frees one forever. Part of the salvation that comes in the Hermetic tradition is being able to penetrate through. For one then understands that that condition could only happen in an illusion because there is no such thing as an alienation from everything forever. That the cosmos is a whole. And that we are indelible in that cosmos. And that what is indelible. And the unity of the cosmos is largely invisible. Those who come on Saturday recognize the, the key there. that the invisible universe, the x-ray universe, the infrared universe. All the universe outside of the narrow band of electromagnetic energy that is visible light. comprises most of the, most of the reality of the universe. Most of the physical that is the energy reality of the universe is largely invisible. Well the spiritual reality is very much in that full spectrum.
So, Thoth begins saying, you've talked to me before, but you've always talked in riddles. Will you now talk straight to me? That every time we talk about the divinity of man you use riddles. And Hermes will tell him that's right my son. Because this is appropriate. We should use parables and riddles whenever we talk about the divinity of man. Because if we talk about the divinity of man in a straightforward, rational fashion we are doing great disservice to the divinity. The divinity can never be approached directly. Why? It would be on the level of etiquette and impunity to walk right up to the divinity. Bad etiquette. But on a somewhat deeper level, it is also quite unlikely that we would have anything to meet. And thus, in our desire for making something happen we would project out something to meet. And only encourage in ourselves this projecting capacity. This transference capacity. And indeed, that happens almost all the time. But on the most profound level, it is impossible to do. For the divinity is not objectively in front of us but permeates the entire context in which we occur. And therefore, to think that we could meet the divinity directly, on the most profound level, is a complete misunderstanding of our nature and of the nature of the divine. So, the spiritual thing to do. The psychologically intelligent thing to do. the etiquettely proper thing to do, is to move in a circumambulation or obliquely. Or talk about it in terms of riddles or parables.
"Hermes says, my son the womb is wisdom conceiving in silence." If you want to talk about rebirth, the womb of the wisdom of rebirth is silence. There's no language that we can talk. But since we're going to talk, we're going to talk with language in such a way that we're going to take the lines of argument and we're going to tie very peculiar kinds of knots. That if you pull anywhere on the argument for soundness, it'll pull the knot apart. And the only way to have the knot is to leave it there and just let it be. and it will be apparent. And eventually you will see that the line of language that we are using is only making shapes through which we will look. And rather than concentrate on the knot we will look through the knot to the context.
And what is the context? The context is our making of the knot with a line of argument that leads nowhere particular. This is the closest thing we can come to in terms of language being silent. we're going to use language in such a way that it will not found anything. But will confound our sense of needing to found something. And only by doing that will we be able to lead ourselves to, I think the term I used Friday night the Greek word for it is an epicli...it's punctuation. An epiclesis. Which is a spiritual infusion. which is, which is laid in. Not from the teacher. the teachers just a prism. But it comes through the teacher. And in the best teachers the teacher does not focus the prism but the whole situation, the community is the focus. And the epiclesis comes in the middle of the community. It comes in the shared companionable space of the community.
The, the classic presentation of Moses in an epiclastic mood is the horns of light coming out of him. The horned Moses where his horns are of light. The classic community mode where everyone shares is a Quaker meeting. A friends meeting. Or sometimes you see monks, not just Buddhists but Christian monks, who will who will meditate together and sit together. Pray together. That's an epiclesis.
In the Essene tradition it was the common meal that was shared together. And in the therapeuti outside of Alexandria you had the common meal only once a week on the Sabbath. That was what would made the Sabbath. That the communion was a communion together. And it was a chance to bring everyone together to form the Holy Communion as in community. And then the Spirit of the Divine would come in. And every seventh Sabbath one would add to the nourishment of the food, one would add sacred hymns. And everyone with him together. And this would all be sung at night. So, that towards the end of the night after all the individual hymns just before dawn the whole therapeuti community, the men and women together, would sing in a celestial harmony together. And in tone to the dawn, the Rising Sun. And this would be the Jubilee of the Sabbath. And this is the way Jesus was raised. In this kind of a situation. And so, they, the last supper which is that night is actually a very sacred ritual. Not sharing of the body but sharing the community so that the spirit of the divine they come into the community. It's a different emphasis somewhat.
You can see that where we're needing purification in our time a great deal.
So, "Hermes says my son the womb is wisdom conceiving in silence. And the seed is the true good." And he uses the Platonic term good instead of God here because what he's saying what comes into this is that emanation. That form of God which is the good. The good. The good is the form of all forms. Whatever can be understood has to be in a shape. We cannot understand meaning without a shape is not understandable. But meaning given shapes is understandable. And the archetype shape, of shape is the good. What is the best? The best is that one can know that one knows. that's the archetype of understanding. The good. So, the divine in that form. and the seed. The seed that goes into the womb of silence is the good.
"Thoth says and who is it father that begets? I am holy out of loss." Why is he? because he's still thinking metaphorically. He's still thinking in sexual terms. He's still thinking that you're talking about a womb that's in a woman and that's a seed that it comes from impregnation. And Hermes is now having to tell him that don't get mixed in the metaphor. Or as Krasinski would say the map is not the territory.
"Don't, don't think in this way my son. Hermes says, the will of God my son is the begetter." The will of God. And to a Greek mind they would think well like Zeus. Is it like Zeus then? Coming in the form of a shower of gold. Or in lightning. Or in a cloud. Or it's like that see. Because the mind was habitual thinking in these terms.
Thoth says tell me this to who is the minister int by whom the consummation of the rebirth is brought to pass. Hermes, some man who is a son of God working in subordination to God's will. and what manner of man is he that is brought into being by the rebirth? He that is born by that birth is another. He is a God and son of God. he is the all and is in all. For he has no part in corporeal substance. He partakes of the substance of things intelligible. Being wholly composed of the powers of God. Your words are riddles father you do not speak to me as a father to a son. This sort of thing cannot be taught my son. but God when he so wills recalls it to our memory.
Recalls it to our memory. Now in Greek the term for memory is Mnemosyne. Mnemosyne is the mother of muses. How many muses are there? There are nine muses. Nine muses.
We have to digress here for a second. And we're going to get into this, and this is appropriate to what we get out of Homer. We're talking mysteries here and we don't, we don't know it. We're talking we're talking profound deep mysteries. We're being told something which is so startling and revelatory, but we don't have any way to hear it. To understand it. So, we have to weave a little bit of fabric here.
One thing that Hermes invents is the lyre. The seven stringed lyre. The seven stringed lyre that Hermes will invent in the Homeric hymn. The sounding board of it is a tortoiseshell. And the strings of the lyre are strung between two horns. Two horns of a bull. The horns of a bull are fashioned to a tortoiseshell and then seven lyre strings are strung between the horns of the bull. So, a plectrum is used then to pluck those seven strings. That lyre will be given from Hermes to Apollo. And Apollo's then will become the God of music as well as a God of medicine and the God of Prophecy. He will become the God of music with the seven stringed lyre. The seven strings of the hebdomad. Like the seven planets. It's destiny. Its form is what can be formed.
The instrument upon which a song is played is a seven stringed lyre. But the song which is sung by man in language to accompany the instrument is a song given to him by the muses, who are a nine stringed lyre. The muses are nine. So, that the lyre of man's intelligence, his spiritual intelligence is a nine stringed lyre whose strings are the muses. What are those muses? Poetry, history etc., etc., etc. You can look up the nine muses.
The mind tuned by those nine disciplines comes into a tonic which has nine strings. And Mnemosyne, memory is the mother of those muses. She is the tenth. She is the all. So, when Hermes now in this very esoteric document is saying, "This kind of thing cannot be taught my son. but God when he so wills it recalls it to our memory." That means that our whole sense of what is intelligible about what can be talked about comes into play in terms of its comprehension when God through an epiclesis moves in and plays that lyre. we then are that lyre. So that what we can understand can be played on a seven stringed lyre, which is sacred. but is sacred in a psychic way. Music is psychic. But the nine-string lyre of language is pneumatic. It's spiritual. And only God can play that.
So that the correct etiquette. The etiquette that Homer had and in which any of us who are in that tradition observe, is that if you want to sing sacredly the first thing you do is address the muse. It is not me who was singing this. Old muse tell me and sing the song. It's like in The Bhagavad-Gita, Bhagavan Vinyasa does not write the Bhagavad-Gita. He says that a blind sage is seeing this in his inner eye and he's just writing down what that blind sage sees. He's the muse. In India the muse was masculine. In Greece the muse was feminine. Same family. Just that kind of a, of an interchange.
So, this whole dialogue, this whole Hermetic dialogue, the whole strategy of it is right here at the beginning. Hermes is telling Thoth now we can talk and make sense. But what we're trying to understand today is not something that makes sense in the way in which your mind can understand it. But an experience which you must open yourself to, to have. And that it is a memory function. You're going to remember who you are. Who you really are.
And of course, the great Hermetic tradition in the Renaissance will all be around the notion of the memory theater. The whole notion in the Renaissance will be that spiritual wisdom is learned in what used to be the dialogue and now is the theater. Drama. And of course, the greatest memory theater writer of all time will be Shakespeare. Shakespeare's plays are not plays but they're Hermetic dialogues cast in the great English Renaissance Hermetic mode. And if there's any kind of a magus in European civilization it is Shakespeare. Just like Homer as the real Hermetic master in ancient Greece.
That's why when I say the Hermetic tradition is the major tradition. It's not a little offshoot. it's the very core, the sound core of our whole civilization. Back as far as it goes. As far as you want to go. So, we're studying the royal road. This is the, this is the real stuff. This is the highfalutin professional actual truth. And everything else, literally, are offshoots. Everything else is just an offshoot. Just I say. Some of the offshoots are huge. But it only indicates how enormously profound the main spine is.
"Thoth says but what you say is impossible Father." You see he's honed his mind. And his mind has been honed to understanding or bringing his understanding just right to meet the understanding that is presented to him. So that whatever is told to him he understands what has been told to him. And if it's told in one way he'll understand, and everything will meet. It's this equivalency of being able to follow the logic that Hermes is now going to try and break him of that addiction. Break him of that habit. That there is such a thing as letting the mind find equanimity by approaching it from all directions at once. So that one has to meet all directions at once. And sustaining that and holding that. And that quality, in Greek it was called Sige. S-i-g-e. Sige. Sige is a profound meditational trance. But it's not a trance that is disembodied. But it's a trance which is actively, electrically, scintillating and dynamic that one holds it precisely exactly here. And the overwhelming awareness is that kinesthetically one realizes that this is actually occurring and enduring. And that in this somehow there is no time and no space. And in this Sige, that's where the epiclesis comes. And it rises. It's a sudden vertical rising from complete obscurity into, into thusness. And it's just like you stop reading a newspaper and you looked up and there's the world. It's about that kind of a difference in texture of reality.
So, Thoth is saying, "but what you say is impossible Father. It does violence to common sense. When you treat me thus, I have good reason to ask, am I an alien to my father's race?" You see he thinks he's just talking. But Hermes has been preparing him all the time. For what? For alienation. For the experience of alienation. And the son doesn't even know. He's starting to use that language. And for the spiritual teacher he's realizing good, he's using that language. He just off-the-cuff beginning to speak this way. He's just off the cuff being riled in just this right way.
So, the function at that point of a spiritual teacher as opposed to a psychic conman is not to assuage the student. To say well it's okay, it's all right. But to turn the heat up and say you think you're alienated now wait till I tell you what's next.
So, the whole procedure here, the whole correct procedure is to force the issue. Why to force the issue? Not to force the issue through violence. Or through the forcing the issue of overloading so much in any one direction. But to force it by bringing it up so that it's confronted on every possible level. So that the student has to fend on almost every possible level. And in doing so comes into a state of equanimity. Almost just backs into it. Doesn't realize until it's happening. And until there actually are walking on this tightrope. And in this experience then they're para...prepared, purified. All the P's. Presented. Then polygenesis can happen. Then rebirth can happen. Because then the rebirth that happens is that it occurs to one, it's like one fills up the neurological bodying fills right up to the paint of the head. And one occurs above that. It's as if one drank the anxiety of electrical energy and it filled right up to the pate of the head and it stops there, and you don't.
Which is why very often the Hermetic symbol would be an infinity sign over the head. In the child deck the magician card has the infinity sign over his head. And his female counterpart strength has the infinity sign over her head. This is the man and the woman in the Tarot cosmology who are reborn. Palingenesis. There are spiritual beings now. They're not physical beings at all. The body can be or cannot be. It's just an expressive convenience then. It's like it's like a shorthand cursive way of presenting the spirit in a realm but it's not necessary.
Am I an alien to my father's race? Hermes says, what can I say my son. This thing cannot be taught. it is not possible for you to see it with your organs of sight which are fashioned out of material elements. I can tell you nothing but this, I see that by God's mercy there has come to be in me a form which is not fashioned out of matter. And I have passed forth out of myself and entered into an immortal.
And they use the term body here but it's misleading. It's not immoral body.
I am not now the man I was. I have been born again in mind. And the bodily shape which was mine before has been put away from me. I am no longer an object colored and tangible. a thing of spatial dimensions. I am now alien to all this and to all that you perceive when you gaze with bodily eyesight. To such eyes as yours my son I am not now visible.
Do you see how it makes sense now? With just a little bit of the background it reads intelligible now. Whereas before it would have been metaphorical at best.
"Thoth says, father you have driven me to raving madness." Why? Because it's not just a casual conversation. Why is it not just a casual conversation? Because one doesn't get to this conversation until one has been put through the wringer a number of times. Until one is really desperate. What is the saying that I think Tolstoy had? Man's extremity is God's opportunity. It's only when you've been wrung out more times than you can count. When you've lost count.
He said,
You've driven me to raving madness. Will you tell me that I do not at this moment see my own self. Hermes said, would that you to my son had passed forth out of yourself. So that you might have seen not as men see dream figures in their sleep but as one who is awake. Thoth says now indeed father you have reduced me to speechless amazement.
Amazement is the wrong translation here. The word is what we would mean by wonder. As in philosophy begins in wonder. it's only what in a state of wonder that Philo Sophia, that the love of understanding is born. It's a love. It's like falling in love one no longer desperately needs to know but one really loves to know. One becomes a lover of truth. It is different. It is different. One then comports as a lover comports to truth. One takes one's care. One is womanly and manly. And one is uh addresses this with, with fullness and respect and dearness. This is different. This is different.
But Thoth yet does not know. He says,
Why I see you Father with your stature unchanged. And your futures just the same as ever. And Hermes says, even in this you are mistaken. The mortal form changes day by day. It is altered by lapse of time. Becomes larger and smaller for it as an illusion.
If you had a camera that would focus on the person for 50 years and you could condense that within one minute, you would see the person bloom and wilt. Everyone would bloom and wilt. That cannot be real. Or rather yes that's real or that but that can't be it. Are we grapes going to be turned into raisins that just dry up? That doesn't make sense. Why doesn't it make sense? It doesn't even feel right. It doesn't feel right on the level of unacceptability. This is the whole, this is a whole courage you see in The Book of Job. It's unacceptable. One says no, if that's the case then it is rejected. You see. And that that level of profundity.
Thoth says, "Well what then is real thrice greatest one?" Already he's shifted. Already in the dialogue he shifted. He's no longer talking to Hermes. At this point he realizes he's talking to thrice greatest. He's talking to Trismegistus.
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He shifted. he's no longer talking to Hermes. At this point he realizes he's talking to the thrice greatest. He's talking to Trismegistus. The teacher has changed. The teacher is still a companion. But the teachers now left that realm where they were there and something else is occurring. Something else. They're no longer ordinary.
Hermes says, "That which is not sullied by matter my son nor limited by boundaries. that which has no color and no shape. That which is without integument and is luminous. That which is apprehended by itself alone. That which is changeless and unalterable. That which is good." And this is the good again.
Thoth says, "I must indeed have gone mad father for I have lost the wits I had. I thought your teaching had made me wise. But when you put this thought before me my senses are stopped up." And this is as it should be. This is this is the way it should be. Bottled up.
In the Vajrayana sometimes in making the transformation all of the senses of a person need to be completely cut off and stopped up. One does this through the sound of the an ahata chakra mantra, karee. And sends that out and stops everything up.
"I thought your teaching had made me wise but when you put this thought before me my senses are stopped up. And Hermes says, it is even so my son. it's true. It is even so. The fire which rises and the earth which sinks..." Talking about physical elements now. "The fire that rises in the earth that sinks. the liquid water and the air we breathe are perceived by the senses. But how can you perceive? By mere sense a thing of other nature, alien." This is alien God. It's the alien God.
What is God alien to? He's not alien to nature. In some pick eon way that he belongs to. It's that the elements that make up physicality have a different quintessence from their functions. And that the fifth element. The, the quintessential. The Hermetic element is the transformational silence.
How can you perceive that which is incomposite and indissoluble. A thing which can be apprehended only by divine power and demands one who has power to apprehend the incorporeal. Is it then beyond my power father? Heaven forbid my son. Draw it into you and it will come. Will it and it comes to be. Stop the working of your bodily senses and then deity will be born in you. But if you would be born again you must cleanse yourself from the irrational torments of matter. What father have I torturers within me? Yes, my son and not a few. They are terrible and they are many. I do not know them father. This very ignorance my son is one of the torments.
The very ignorance. And of course, they the obverse of that ignorance is arrogance. And the ignorance and arrogance together keep one locked in.
He gives the 12 major torments. Ignorance, grief, incontinence, desire, injustice, covetousness, deceitfulness, envy, fraud, anger, rashness, vice. And he says,
There are many others under these. And by means of the senses they forced the man who is bound in the prison of body to suffer what they inflict. But when God has had mercy on a man, they depart from him together one and all. And then his reason built up in him. such as the manner of the rebirth.
The reason is built up.
The schooling of the mind. And as the mind is schooled the mental structure is tutored and brought into intelligibility. And it's got to be done so that the intelligibility is no longer patterned on the body. Because if mind is only a metaphor of the body then one has a psychic nature. And then one is susceptible to all kinds of influences. This is where Gnosticism gains in its power. Because in the process of saving oneself from the sensate world, from the material world, one has to build up the mind world, the mental world. But if the mental world is mirrored and imaged on the physical world then you're open to all the demonic forces. Then they raise hell with you. Because all you've done is you've made efficient highways for them to come in. The whole purpose is to make the mind spiritual and not psychic. This is why we have to constantly be in our guard and not fall for surrogates of the spirit. We can't live by the metaphysical mental systems. If we try to then we become psychic. And this is a derisive use of the term psychic here. One has to be able to transform. And almost everyone that we see today or meet today are caught in this limbo of the psychic realm. And of course, that just raises the nightmare level. The transformation to the pneumatic is what has to be done. And for that the mind has to be open. Because when the mind is open, open-ended, then the psychic forces blow through it like winds and don't have any place to stay. But the very openness of it makes one affine to the silence. And it is in the silence, which is the womb, where the seed can be placed, and one can have this rebirth.
You can see I hope that this is very precarious at this state. this is why the...you know the colloquial saying a little learning is a dangerous thing. It's better not to know at all in a way than to know only half of it. Or to know it in an incorrect way. Blessed are the meek. And they should be taken care of and loved as dear companions. Because those of very sophisticated minds, spiritual minds, are very close to the animals and the children and, and those that need taken care of. There's not an inch of difference between the most enlightened of being in bodily form is extremely close to children and animals. And the naive and so forth. There's almost, there's no difference at all really. But the psychics, they're like the arrogant older children who will tear the wings off everything.
"And now my son speak not but keep selling silence so the mercy will come down on us from God." Notice it isn't going to come down on you but it's going to come down on us. Because it's shared. The communion is a communion of the spirit between.
Then there's a hiatus in the Greek. There's a hiatus. The Greek runs line by line and then all of a sudden there's a break. And there's no line there, which in the text you can see. And the fact that there's no line there is the silence. It's the silence in the text. It's like in in the oral instructions one would have just held up the hands. In the Christian benediction there's the, the raising up like that. The benediction is always really the silent presentation.
"Rejoice now my son." It is a totally different... "Rejoice now my son you are being cleansed by the powers of God. For they have come to build up in you the body of reason." They translate this reason here. The Greek word is logos. Logos. The body of logos. The body of the word, you see. What is the word that only silence can present? So that's a mystery.
"The knowledge of God has come to us. The gnosis of God has come to us. And at its coming ignorance has been driven out." Why? Because the ignorance was sort of like a bubble. And as the bubble collapses the bowl of communion occurs. It's the most esoteric chalice in world. That when the bubble of arrogance collapses as it collapses it makes the chalice. It makes the communion cup. It makes a communion space. The arrogance that one had collapses and makes a humility. The very same movement creates it. And it's in that humility that the presence of the divine can be experienced.
"Truth has come to us. And on it has followed the good with life and light." Notice how close to Saint John. Because Saint John is one of the originators in his gospel. The way in which the gospel sent a beam, spiritual beam, into this Hermetic archetype. This Hermetic literature comes out of that. That's why it's so close to Saint John in its language. Truth. You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.
"Truth has come to us. and on it has followed the good." As the truth has come the good is there. "With life and light life." And light are the communion in the cup of humility. Which is the good because the form of all forms is as profound a divine humility.
"No longer has there come upon us any of the torments of darkness. They have flown away with rushing wings. Thus, my son has the intellectual being then made up in us." This intellectual being as is really the logos. The logos. One then becomes a, a brother in the mystical word.
"Whoever then has by God's mercy attained to this divine birth abandons bodily sense. He knows himself to be composed of powers of God. And knowing this is glad. Thoth says,
Father God has made me a new being. And I perceive things now not with bodily eyesight but by the working of mind. Even so it is my son when a man is born again, he is no longer body of three dimensions that he perceives but the incorporeal. Father now that I see in mind, I see myself to be the all. I am in heaven and in earth and in water and in air. I am in beasts and plants. I'm a babe in the womb. And one that is not yet conceived. and one that has been born. I am present everywhere. Now my son you know what the rebirth is.
Then comes this hymn from the rebirth. And this is the hymn that Hermes teaches to his son. "Be still then my son and listen to the hymn of praise which is appropriate to the rebirth. I had not meant to make it known to you so readily. Let every recess of the universe be flung open to me."
See this openness because now everything is going to be a sounding board for the real. The Spirit, the Holy Spirit, of the divine will now rush in to all the recesses. all the recesses of the universe. Though the whole universe will be an organism that will sound in the harmony of this profound silence.
"Let all nature receive the sound of my hymn." The sound of his hymn the sound of the words is now going to be a form which opens itself up to receive the formless presence of the divine. This is the great, this is the great Hermetic transformation. Nowhere in the Hermetic tradition are we encouraged to have sacrifices which are sacramental. Don't go through those sacrifices. Don't make those sacraments out there. That the sacrum, the only sacrament that's effective is the life lived in a way where we become open ourselves. This is why the great Rosicrucian doctrine will be, the term in Latin was mentee devagor, the life lived is the doctrine received.
"let all nature then receive the sound of my hymn." And was the hymn say? "Be opened oh earth. be opened ye trees. wave not your boughs. I'm about to sing the praise of him who is both the all and the one." The Alpha and the Omega. The all and one.
"Be opened ye heavens." Man, now is talking that he's commanding in the name of the divine which he can do. Big magic.
Be opened ye heavens and ye winds be still. But the immortal sphere of heaven received my utterance. For I'm about to sing the praise of him who created all things. And who fixed the earth and hung heaven above. Who made the sweet water flow from ocean into the lands where in men dwell. That it might serve for the sustenance of all mankind.
And it should be all living creatures. Not just mankind but all living creatures. In Buddhism the term is all sentient creatures which goes even further. Which is better.
And gave command that fire should come forth and should be used by Gods and men and all their works. Let us all with one accord give praise to him who has seated high upon the heavens. Creator of all that is. It is he that is the eye of the mind. May he accept the praises sung by my powers. Ye powers that are within me. Praise He the one and they all. Sing me in accord with my will all he powers that are within me. Oh, holy gnosis, by thee am I illumined. through thee do I sing praise to incorporeal light. I rejoice a joy in mind. Rejoice thus all ye powers in me.
So that man's mind has now been opened and becomes this open chalice. what was egotistically arrogant now is an open mind. It's the open mind. That's the alter. It's the bloodless alter. The open mind. You can't desecrate the open mind. For it to be opened it can only be pure. The ultimate altar for the divine, Hermetically, is the open mind. If it has any kind of projections. If it has any kind of transference. If it has any kind of content. If it has any kind of metaphors. Any kind of allegories, plans, strategies of its own it is not empty. Is not open. The point is, is that it doesn't matter how well your strategy was thought-out and hammered out, having a strategy is the wrong thing. Give it up. Give it up.
Then he is able to say, "Oh good now in me praise the good. Oh, life in light from you comes the song of praise. And to you does it go forth." The Coming of Forth by Day or The Coming of Forth by Day was the name for The Egyptian Book of the Dead, see. This is the coming forth by open mind day or night any time. Any time.
"I give thanks to the your father who workest in my powers. I give thanks to the Oh God. Thus, crying the powers that are in me accomplish your will. Praising the all fulfill your purpose. it is your word that through me sings praise for by thee old mind is my speech shepherded." Shepherded. And this is where the term Poiman or the Greek term poiesis. It means making, creating poetry. Poiesi. Poimandre, mind Shepherd.
The mind is shepherded. That is a graceful way of saying that the mind is now given its open form. Not a closed form but an open form. You see Jesus is not a priest but a shepherd in many ways. It's very true. What does a shepherd do? A shepherd makes a flock of sheep together in a form of community where they are all one.
For by the oh mind is my speech shepherded. Through me except from all an offering of speech. For the all is from thee and to thee returns. Thee all. Oh, light illumined now the mind that is in us. Oh, life keep my soul alive. Light illumines the mind. Life gives vitality to the soul. My man cries to thee by means of the things thou hast made. But he has got from you eternity the praises which he utters.
Man, cries to you. We cry to you by means of things that you have created. But the praises which we utter in this crying out to you come from eternity and are not created. They are the uncreated. They are before creation. The meaning was there before. It is thereafter. It's just what is created and what is temporal and what is composite is the means to, to affect this.
This is by the popular phrase Hermetically sealed means two things brought together so that they are sealed so they could not be pulled apart. What are the two things that are sealed? The Eternity before and the Eternity after. How are they sealed? They're sealed through the horizon of language in life which we inhabit. And we purify ourselves so much that the infinity behind us and the infinity in front of us come together in the presence which we are and are one. And that done the illusion is over. There never was and never will be anything else but that. That is real. Everything else is just convenient illusion.
So, the dialogue ends with his son Thoth being able then to make a hymn.
Now I didn't get to Homer, so we'll have to take up Homer next week. And we'll take a look at the way in which the Greek Hermes rushes esoterically in to meet the Egyptian Thoth. And that an element that is almost incomprehensible to us in the Hermetic tradition is how does the Hermes of the Greek tradition become the Trismegistus. Because it's not Thoth Trismegistus but Hermes Trismegistus. And so, we have to understand that point next week. And we'll do that thanks for your generosity.
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