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Corpus Hermeticum

Corpus Hermeticum: The Power & Wisdom of God

Translated by Marsilio Ficino

Introduction – The argument of Marsilio Ficino of Florence in Mercurius Trismegistus’ Books, to Cosimo de’ Medici

Truly, the light of the divine mind had never poured into a soul unless it could have turned itself towards the mind of God, inwardly, as moonlight is reflected by the Sun. The soul is not turned towards the mind unless it is when the mind itself also comes into existence. Truly, a mind shall not come into existence until the deceptions of the senses and nebulous fantasies are laid aside. From this cause Mercurius merely strips the senses and fogs of fantasy, recalling them to the shrine of the mind. (xv)

Pimander Commences (Corpus Hermeticum 1)

Pimander (P): Meditate! What is seen and heard inside you is the word of the Lord, the mind, yet God the Father. For they are not very far away from each other. Theirs is a union of life. (4)

Pimander: For it always begins there: where it ends. (6)

Sages (S): You must live sober lives and refrain from the indulgence of filling your belly. Those who get a reasonable sleep in are soothed. (11)

Pimander: The ineffable which needs to be made known is from silence alone, and from silence, whoever has turned aside from contradictory deceits is to learn of the truth. (12)

Mercurius’ Universal Sermon to Asclepius (Corpus Hermeticum 2)

Trismegistus: In truth, opposition holds together the stable reverberation of motion. For rebounding movement is stationary, and for that reason is contrary to erring spheres, and must run a contrary course, one after the other on a subalternate plane of existence, by meeting the contrary and circling opposition of this sort, which is driven forwards from where it stands out. Indeed, it is not possible to have it any other way. (14)

Trismegistus: ‘O Asclepius, lines and stones, and everything else, wherever they are have a soul and are unmoved by bodies. For what inside the body, moving, is actually inanimate? At least not that body is and where each is moved. It is both his body which he carries, and his other body which is carried. (15)

T: …what you suppose are empty are in fact full. (15)

The Sacred Sermon of Mercurius (Corpus Hermeticum 3)

Mercurius to Tatius The Bowl or the Monad (Corpus Hermeticum 4)

Trismegistus: Matters which are understood in their entirety are grasped, both on Earth and in the sea and if anything, this understanding is beyond the sky above. (22)

A beginning displays an understanding of itself, and so we should embrace a beginning. For understanding this, we will wander the universe at the fastest speed. However, the difficulty is relinquishing habits and the present circumstances to convert them to higher, better ones. (23)

Evils lean on their manifestations. For this reason neither any form nor figure of the good is completely similar to the rest, but in truth, goodness is unlike any of these things. (23)

Because even the image itself leads you along, for the vision has sure power over them, directed towards those who burn with inordinate desire. It seizes and drags from the way in which a gemstone or an iron magnet does, which is said to have such attraction. (24)

From Mercurius to Tatius, his son, Because God is Hiding and at the Same Time Opening Up (Corpus Hermeticum 5)

Although the whole might become truly clear to the senses through it, a phantasm flashes back through everything and in everything. And this appears especially while he meditates, by which means knowledge is imparted. (25)

In God Alone is what is Good, and Truly not Elsewhere with Anyone else, to Asclepius (Corpus Hermeticum 6)

Nevertheless, o Asclepius, you must esteem the physical body lowest of all. As I said, what every one of them believed is the body to be the highest good. In the first place, to shun evil is a must: the luxurious foods of the stomach, the kindling of all evils, hence an error, hence the privation of the good. (30)

That The Highest Evil In Men Is To Not Know God (Corpus Hermeticum 7)

You must live sober lives, seeing introspectively with the eyes of the mind! If you are unable to do less than this, at least all are able to do what they can. (33)

He who wants to see, the spirits look at him more keenly. God is neither entirely grasped with the ears, nor perceived with the eyes, nor is he carried out in conversation. Only the mind sees into him, only the mind might prophesy the future. (33)

Souls Which Exist; Nothing of Them is Destroyed but Changes, they Name Men that have been Deceived and Destroyed, to Tatius (Corpus Hermeticum 8)

Yet nothing which exists in the world really dies. (35)

Because in God Alone is Beauty and Goodness, in Truth, Searching Anywhere else is in Vain, to Asclepius (Corpus Hermeticum 9)

After the body and man are united as one into the soul, they are in concord both as a sense and with his every particle. (39)

No part of the world is actually destitute of the presence of demons. (40)

The turning of the world keeping the generations in motion works out the qualities. Certain souls are straining and polluting by their evil. Certain souls are protecting and purifying by their goodness. The world, o Asclepius, possesses sense and motion. (40)

In truth, bodies are composed of different kinds of material, of these kinds of bodies some are composed of earth, certain kinds out of water, out of air, another out of fire, certainly very many had been composed of all the elements. (41)

From where time is not always about to happen, there are moments appearing wherein something might vanish into nothing. In truth, I’m talking about how often the appearances of God happen. I speak about treasure. For God himself embraced the appearances. (42)

Mercurius Trismegistus gives the Keys to Tatius (Corpus Hermeticum 10)

For the good of practical things is to meet another that’s incapable, since what should be accepted is that nothing wants to be everything. (43)

Surely the mind is separated from the soul. The soul is truly separated from the spirit. The garment of the mind is the soul. The garment of the soul is the spirit. One ought to share understanding, o son, when speaking to an audience and has a voice that harmonises and listens more closely to sayings. (48)

Nature’s movements are through the elements, men’s through the arts and sciences. (50)

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