The PŒmandres Tractate
I Apologize for the lack of material lately. I have been working hard on music, and my time has been filled. I will be posting soooooon, lol. Until then, here is one of the most important document in the Hermetic Tradition. It comes from the "Corpus Hermeticum" translated, with commentary, by G.R.S. Mead. Thanks to Gnosis.org for posting the entire treatise.
P.S. In the future I will be focusing more on my own experience with the inner and outer realities, as there is numerous sources that already have the same take on this material as I do. I see no need to overlap ideas of my contemporary bloggers.
Thrice Greatest Hermes Vol.2
PŒMANDRES, THE SHEPHERD OF MEN
(Text: R. 328-338; P. 1-18; Pat. 5b-8.) 1
1.
It chanced once on a time my mind was meditating on the things that are,
2
my thought was raised to a great height, the senses of my body being
held back—just as men are who are weighed down with sleep after a fill
of food, or from fatigue of body.
Methought a Being more than vast, in size beyond all bounds, called
out my name and saith: What wouldst thou hear and see, and what hast
thou in mind to learn and know?
2. And I do say: Who art thou?
He saith: I am Man-Shepherd,
3 Mind of all-
p. 4
masterhood
1; I know what thou desirest and I’m with thee everywhere.
3. [And] I reply: I long to learn the things that are, and comprehend
their nature, and know God. This is, I said, what I desire to hear.
He answered back to me: Hold in thy mind all thou wouldst know, and I will teach thee.
4. E’en with these words His aspect changed,
2
and straightway, in the twinkling of an eye, all things were opened to
me, and I see a Vision limitless, all things turned into Light,—sweet,
joyous [Light]. And I became transported as I gazed.
But in a little while Darkness came settling down on part [of it], awesome and gloomy, coiling in sinuous folds,
3 so that methought it like unto a snake.
4
And then the Darkness changed into some sort of a Moist Nature,
tossed about beyond all power of words, belching out smoke as from a
p. 5
fire, and groaning forth a wailing sound that beggars all description.
[And] after that an outcry inarticulate came forth from it, as though it were a Voice of Fire.
5. [Thereon] out of the Light . . .
1 a Holy Word (
Logos)
2
descended on that Nature. And upwards to the height from the Moist
Nature leaped forth pure Fire; light was it, swift and active too.
The Air, too, being light, followed after the Fire; from out the
Earth-and-Water rising up to Fire so that it seemed to hang therefrom.
But Earth-and-Water stayed so mingled each with other, that Earth from Water no one could discern.
3 Yet were they moved to hear by reason of the Spirit-Word (
Logos) pervading them.
6. Then saith to me Man-Shepherd: Didst understand this Vision what it means?
Nay; that
shall I know, I said.
That Light, He said, am I, thy God, Mind, prior to Moist Nature which appeared from Darkness; the Light-Word (
Logos) [that appeared] from Mind is Son of God.
p. 6
What then?—say I.
Know that what sees in thee
1 and hears is the Lord’s Word (
Logos); but Mind is Father-God. Not separate are they the one from other; just in their union [rather] is it Life consists.
Thanks be to Thee, I said.
So, understand the Light [He answered], and make friends with it.
7. And speaking thus He gazed for long into my eyes,
2 so that I trembled at the look of Him.
But when He raised His head, I see in Mind the Light, [but] now in Powers no man could number, and Cosmos
3
grown beyond all bounds, and that the Fire was compassed round about by
a most mighty Power, and [now] subdued had come unto a stand.
And when I saw these things I understood by reason of Man-Shepherd’s Word (
Logos).
8. But as I was in great astonishment, He saith to me again: Thou
didst behold in Mind the Archetypal Form whose being is before beginning
without end. Thus spake to me Man-Shepherd.
And I say: Whence then have Nature’s elements their being?
To this He answer gives: From Will of God.
p. 7
[paragraph continues] [Nature
1] received the Word (
Logos), and gazing on the Cosmos Beautiful
2 did copy it, making herself into a cosmos, by means of her own elements and by the births of souls.
9.
And God-the-Mind, being male and female both, as Light and Life
subsisting, brought forth another Mind to give things form, who, God as
he was of Fire and Spirit,
3 formed Seven Rulers who enclose the cosmos that the sense perceives.
4 Men call their ruling Fate.
5
10. Straightway from out the downward elements God’s Reason (
Logos)
6 leaped up to Nature’s pure formation, and was at-oned with the Formative Mind; for it was co-essential with it.
7 And Nature’s downward elements were thus left reason-less, so as to be pure matter.
11. Then the Formative Mind ([at-oned] with Reason), he who surrounds
the spheres and spins them with his whirl, set turning his formations,
and let them turn from a beginning boundless unto an endless end. For
that the circulation
p. 8
of these [spheres] begins where it doth end, as Mind doth will.
And from the downward elements Nature brought forth lives reason-less; for He did not extend the Reason (
Logos)
[to them]. The Air brought forth things winged; the Water things that
swim, and Earth-and-Water one from another parted, as Mind willed. And
from her bosom Earth produced what lives she had, four-footed things and
reptiles, beasts wild and tame.
12. But All-Father Mind, being Life and Light, did bring forth Man
1
co-equal to Himself, with whom He fell in love, as being His own child;
for he was beautiful beyond compare, the Image of his Sire. In very
truth, God fell in love with His own Form
2; and on him did bestow all of His own formations.
13. And when he gazed upon what the Enformer had created in the
Father, [Man] too wished to enform; and [so] assent was given him by the
Father.
3
Changing his state to the formative sphere,
4 in that he was to have his whole authority,
5 he
p. 9
gazed upon his Brother’s creatures.
1 They fell in love with him, and gave him each a share of his own ordering.
2
And after that he had well-learned their essence and had become a
sharer in their nature, he had a mind to break right through the
Boundary of their spheres, and to subdue
3 the might of that which pressed upon the Fire.
4
14. So he who hath the whole authority o’er [all] the mortals in the
cosmos and o’er its lives irrational, bent his face downwards through
5 the Harmony,
6 breaking right through its strength, and showed to downward Nature God’s fair Form.
And when she saw that Form of beauty which can never satiate, and him
who [now] possessed within himself each single energy of [all seven]
Rulers as well as God’s [own] Form, she smiled with love; for ’twas as
though she’d seen the image of Man’s fairest form upon her Water, his
shadow on her Earth.
p. 10
He in his turn beholding the form like to himself, existing in her,
in her Water, loved it and willed to live in it; and with the will came
act,
1 and [so] he vivified the form devoid of reason.
And Nature took the object of her love and wound herself completely round him, and they were intermingled, for they were lovers.
15. And this is why beyond all creatures on the earth man is twofold;
mortal because of body, but because of the essential Man immortal.
Though deathless and possessed of sway o’er all, yet doth he suffer as a mortal doth, subject to Fate.
Thus though above the Harmony, within the Harmony he hath become a slave. Though male-female,
2 as from a Father male-female, and though he’s sleepless from a sleepless [Sire], yet is he overcome [by sleep].
16. Thereon [I say: Teach on],
3 O Mind of me, for I myself as well
4 am amorous of the Word (
Logos).
The Shepherd said: This is the mystery kept hid until this day.
p. 11
Nature embraced by Man brought forth a wonder, oh so wonderful. For as he had the nature of the Concord
1 of the Seven, who, as I said to thee, [were made] of Fire and Spirit
2—Nature
delayed not, but immediately brought forth seven “men,” in
correspondence with the natures of the Seven, male-female and moving in
the air.
3
Thereon [I said]: O Shepherd, . . .
4; for now I’m filled with great desire and long to hear; do not run off.
5
The Shepherd said: Keep silence, for not as yet have I unrolled for thee the first discourse (
logos).
Lo! I am still, I said.
17. In such wise then, as I have said, the generation of these seven
came to pass. Earth was as woman, her Water filled with longing;
ripeness she took from Fire, spirit from Æther. Nature thus brought
forth frames to suit the form of Man.
And Man from Life and Light changed into soul and mind,—from Life to soul, from Light to mind.
And thus continued all the sense-world’s
p. 12
parts
1 until the period of their end and new beginnings.
18. Now listen to the rest of the discourse (
logos) which thou dost long to hear.
The period being ended, the bond that bound them all was loosened by
God’s Will. For all the animals being male-female, at the same time with
man were loosed apart; some became partly male, some in like fashion
[partly] female. And straightway God spake by His Holy Word (
Logos):
“Increase ye in increasing, and multiply in multitude, ye creatures
and creations all; and man that hath Mind in him, let him learn to know
that he himself is deathless, and that the cause of death is love,
2 though Love is all.”
3
19. When He said this, His Forethought
4
did by means of Fate and Harmony effect their couplings and their
generations founded. And so all things were multiplied according to
their kind.
And he who thus hath learned to know himself, hath reached that Good
which doth transcend abundance; but he who through a love that leads
astray, expends his love upon his body,—
p. 13
he stays in Darkness wandering,
1 and suffering through his senses things of Death.
20. What is the so great fault, said I, the ignorant commit, that they should be deprived of deathlessness?
Thou seem’st, he said, O thou, not to have given heed to what thou heardest. Did not I bid thee
think?
Yea do I think, and I remember, and therefore give Thee thanks.
If thou didst think [thereon], [said He], tell me: Why do they merit death who are in Death?
It is because the gloomy Darkness is the root and base of the material frame; from it
2 came the Moist Nature; from this
3 the body in the sense-world was composed; and from this [body] Death doth the Water drain.
21. Right was thy thought, O thou! But how doth “he who knows himself, go unto Him,” as God’s Word (
Logos) hath declared?
And I reply: the Father of the universals doth consist of Light and Life, and from Him Man was born.
Thou sayest well, [thus] speaking. Light and Life is Father-God, and from Him Man was born.
If then thou learnest that thou
art thyself of
p. 14
[paragraph continues] Life and Light, and that thou [only]
happen’st to be out of them, thou shalt return again to Life. Thus did Man-Shepherd speak.
But tell me further, Mind of me, I cried,
how shall
I
come to Life again . . . . for God doth say: “The man who hath Mind in
him, let him learn to know that he himself [is deathless].”
22. Have not all men then Mind?
Thou sayest well, O thou, thus speaking. I, Mind, myself am present
with holy men and good, the pure and merciful, men who live piously.
[To such] my presence doth become an aid, and straightway they gain
gnosis of all things, and win the Father’s love by their pure lives, and
give Him thanks, invoking on Him blessings, and chanting hymns, intent
on Him with ardent love.
And ere they give the body up unto its proper death, they turn them
with disgust from its sensations, from knowledge of what things they
operate.
1
Nay, it is I, the Mind, that will not let the operations which befall
the body, work to their [natural] end. For being door-keeper I’ll close
up [all] the entrances, and cut the mental actions off which base and
evil energies induce.
23. But to the Mind-less ones, the wicked and depraved, the envious
and covetous, and those who murder do and love impiety, I am far off,
p. 15
yielding my place to the Avenging Daimon, who sharpening the fire,
tormenteth him and addeth fire to fire upon him, and rusheth on him
through his senses, thus rendering him the readier for transgressions of
the law, so that he meets with greater torment; nor doth he ever cease
to have desire for appetites inordinate, insatiately striving in the
dark.
1
24. Well hast thou taught me all, as I desired, O Mind. And now,
pray, tell me further of the nature of the Way Above as now it is [for
me].
2
To this Man-Shepherd said: When thy material body is to be dissolved,
first thou surrenderest the body by itself unto the work of change, and
thus the form thou hadst doth vanish, and thou surrenderest thy way of
life,
3 void of its energy, unto the Daimon.
4 The body’s senses next pass back into their sources, becoming separate, and resurrect as energies; and passion and desire
5 withdraw unto that nature which is void of reason.
25. And thus it is that man doth speed his way thereafter upwards through the Harmony.
p. 16
To the first zone he gives the Energy of Growth and Waning; unto the second [zone], Device of Evils [now] de-energized
1;
unto the third, the Guile of the Desires de-energized; unto the fourth,
his Domineering Arrogance, [also] de-energized; unto the fifth, unholy
Daring and the Rashness of Audacity, de-energized; unto the sixth,
Striving for Wealth by evil means, deprived of its aggrandisement; and
to the seventh zone, Ensnaring Falsehood, de-energized.
2
26. And then, with all the energizings of the Harmony stript from
him, clothed in his proper Power, he cometh to that Nature which belongs
unto the Eighth,
3 and there with those-that-are hymneth the Father.
They who are there welcome his coming there with joy; and he, made
like to them that sojourn there, doth further hear the Powers who are
above the Nature that belongs unto the Eighth, singing their songs of
praise to God in language of their own.
And then they, in a band,
4
go to the Father home; of their own selves they make surrender of
themselves to Powers, and [thus] becoming Powers they are in God. This
the good end for
p. 17
those who have gained Gnosis—to be made one with God.
Why shouldst thou then delay? Must it not be, since thou hast all
received, that thou shouldst to the worthy point the way, in order that
through thee the race of mortal kind may by [thy] God be saved?
27. This when He’d said, Man-Shepherd mingled with the Powers.
1
But
I, with thanks and blessings unto the Father of the universal [Powers],
was freed, full of the power He had poured into me, and full of what
He’d taught me of the nature of the All and of the loftiest Vision.
And I began to preach to men the Beauty of Devotion and of Gnosis:
O ye people, earth-born folk, ye who have given yourselves to
drunkenness and sleep and ignorance of God, be sober now, cease from
your surfeit, cease to be glamoured by irrational sleep
2!
28. And when they heard, they came with one accord. Whereon I say:
p. 18
Ye earth-born folk, why have ye given up yourselves to Death, while
yet ye have the power of sharing Deathlessness? Repent, O ye, who walk
with Error arm in arm and make of Ignorance the sharer of your board;
get ye from out the light of Darkness, and take your part in
Deathlessness, forsake Destruction!
29. And some of them with jests upon their lips
1
departed [from me], abandoning themselves unto the Way of Death; others
entreated to be taught, casting themselves before my feet.
But I made them arise, and I became a leader of the Race
2 towards home, teaching the words (
logoi), how and in what way they shall be saved. I sowed in them the words (
logoi) of wisdom
3; of Deathless Water were they given to drink.
4
And when even was come and all sun’s beams began to set, I bade them
all give thanks to God. And when they had brought to an end the giving
of their thanks, each man returned to his own resting place.
30.
But I recorded in my heart Man-Shepherd’s benefaction, and with my
every hope fulfilled more than rejoiced. For body’s sleep became
p. 19
the soul’s awakening,
1 and closing of the eyes—true vision, pregnant with Good my silence, and the utterance of my word (
logos) begetting of good things.
All this befell me from my Mind, that is Man-Shepherd, Word (
Logos) of all masterhood,
2 by whom being God-inspired I came unto the Plain of Truth.
3 Wherefore with all my soul and strength thanksgiving
4 give I unto Father-God.
31. Holy art Thou, O God, the universals’ Father.
Holy art Thou, O God, whose Will perfects itself by means of its own Powers.
Holy art Thou, O God, who willeth to be known and art known by Thine own.
Holy art Thou, who didst by Word (
Logos) make to consist the things that are.
Holy art Thou, of whom All-nature hath been made an Image.
Holy art Thou, whose Form Nature hath never made.
Holy art Thou, more powerful than all power.
Holy art Thou, transcending all pre-eminence.
Holy Thou art, Thou better than all praise.
p. 20
Accept my reason’s
1
offerings pure, from soul and heart for aye stretched up to Thee, O
Thou unutterable, unspeakable, Whose Name naught but the Silence can
express.
32. Give ear to me who pray that I may ne’er of Gnosis fail, [Gnosis] which is our common Being’s nature
2;
and fill me with Thy Power, and with this Grace [of Thine], that I may
give the Light to those in ignorance of the Race, my Brethren, and Thy
Sons.
For this cause I believe, and I bear witness; I go to Life and Light. Blessed art Thou, O Father. Thy Man
3 would holy be as Thou art holy, e’en as Thou gavest him Thy full authority
4 [to be].
Footnotes
3:1 P. = Parthey (G.),
Hermetis Trismegisti Poemander (Berlin; 1854). Pat. = Patrizzi (F.),
Nova de Universis Philosophia (Venice; 1593).
3:2 περὶ τῶν ὄντων.
3:3 Ποιμάνδρης.
4:1 ὁ τῆς αὐθεντίας νοῦς. The αὐθεντία was the
summa potestas of all things; see R. 8, n. 1; and § 30 below.
Cf. also
C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 15.
4:2 ἠλλάγη τῇ ἰδέᾳ.
4:3 σκολιῶς ἐσπειραμένον. The sense is by no means certain. Ménard translates “
de forme sinueuse”; Everard, “coming down obliquely”; Chambers, “sinuously terminated.” But
cf. in the Sethian system “the sinuous Water—that is, Darkness (see Hipp.,
Philos., v. 19).
4:4 Cf. Hipp.,
Philos., v. 9 (S. 170, 71): “They say the Serpent is the Moist Essence.”
5:1 A lacuna of six letters in the text.
5:2
The idea of the Logos was the central concept of Hellenistic theology;
it was thus a word of many meanings, signifying chiefly Reason and Word,
but also much else. I have accordingly throughout added the term
Logos after the English equivalent most suitable to the context.
5:3 Cf. Il., vii. 99, as quoted by Apion in the chapter “Concerning the Æon” as Comment, on
C. H., xi. (xii.).
6:1 That is, in vision.
6:2 Cf. C. H., xi (xii) 6.
6:3 κόσμον. The word
kosmos
(world-order) means either “order” or “world”; and in the original
there is frequently a play upon the two meanings, as in the case of
logos.
7:1 Nature and God’s Will are identical.
7:2 That is, the ideal world-order in the realms of reality.
7:3 Presumably the Pure Air of § 3.
7:4
τὸν αἰσθητὸν κόσμον. The sensible or manifested world, our present
universe, as distinguished from the ideal eternal universe, the type of
all universes.
7:5 εἱμαρμένη.
7:6 The Logos which had previously descended into Nature.
7:7 ὁμοούσιος, usually translated “consubstantial”; but οὐσία is “essence” and “being” rather than “substance.”
8:1 The Prototype, Cosmic, Ideal or Perfect Man.
8:2 Or Beauty (μορφῆς).
8:3 Cf. The Gospel of Mary in the Akhmīm Codex: “He nodded, and when He had thus nodded assent . . . .” (
F. F. F., 586).
8:4 The Eighth Sphere bounding the Seven.
8:5 For note on ἐξουσία, see R.
in loc. and 48, n. 3.
9:1 That is the Seven Spheres fashioned by his Brother.
9:2 τάξις, rank or order.
9:3
Or “wear down” (καταπονῆσαι). The reading κατανοῆσαι, however, may be
more correct; “he had a mind to come to knowledge of” this Boundary or
Ring Pass not. See R. 49, n. 1.
9:4 Sc. the Mighty Power of § 9.
9:5 παρέκυψεν.
Cf. Cyril,
C. J., i. 33 (Frag. xiii.); R. 50: “
beugt sich . . . nieder” But compare especially Plato,
Phædrus, 249 C., where he speaks of the soul “raising up her face (ἀνακύψασα) to That which is.”
Cf. also Apion in
Clement. Hom., vi. 4, in Comment.
C. H., xi. (xii.)
9:6 That is, the harmonious interplay, concord or system of the spheres ruled by the Rulers; in other words, the cosmos of Fate.
10:1 ἐνέργεια, energy, and realization.
10:2 That is “a-sexual” but having the potentiality of both sexes.
10:3 For the various suggestions for filling up this lacuna, see R.
in loc.; and for that of Keil, see R. 367.
10:4 Sc. as well as Nature.
11:1 Harmony.
11:2 See § 9.
11:3 μεταρσίους. A term that must have a more definite meaning than the vague “sublime” by which it is generally translated.
11:4 For Keil’s completion of the lacuna, see R. 368.
11:5 μὴ ἔκτρεχε, perhaps meaning diverge from the subject, or go too fast; lit., it means “do not run away.”
12:1 That is, the parts of what Hermes elsewhere calls the “cosmic man.”
12:2 Cf. C. H., xvi. 16.
12:3 Omitting the τἀ before ὄντα.
12:4 πρόνοια, that is Nature as Sophia or Providence or Will.
13:1 There is a word-play between πλάνης and πλανώμενος.
13:2 Sc. Darkness.
13:3 Sc. The Moist Nature.
14:1 εἰδότες αὐτῶν τὰ ἐνεργήματα.
15:1 The text of this paragraph is hopelessly confused in the MSS.
15:2 περὶ τῆς ἀνόδου τῆς γινομένης.
15:3
τὸ ἦθος, the “habitual” part of man, presumably way of life impressed
by habit on the body; or it may be “class” of life as in the Vision of
Er.
15:4 Cf. C. H., x. (xi.) 16.
15:5 ὁ θυμὸς καὶ ἡ ἐπιθυμία,—the masculine and feminine as positive and negative aspects of the “animal soul.”
16:1 ἀνενέργητον.
16:2 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 7.
16:3 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 15.
16:4 τάξει, order, group,
sc. of the Nine;—the Father being the Ten, or consummation.
17:1 Cf. K. K., 25: “Thus speaking God became Imperishable Mind.”
17:2 Cf. the
logos,
“Jesus saith, I stood in the midst of the world, and in the flesh was I
seen of them, and I found all men drunken, and none found I athirst
among them, and my soul grieveth over the sons of men, because they are
blind in heart.”
Sayings of Our Lord from an Early Greek Papyrus, Grenfell & Hunt (London; 1897).
18:1 Cf. P. S. A., xii. 2.
18:2 The Race of the Logos, of all who were conscious of the Logos in their hearts, who had repented and were thus logoi.
18:3 Cf. Mark iv. 4: “He who soweth soweth the Word (
Logos)”
18:4 Cf. K. K., 1—the drink given by Isis to Horus.
19:1 νῆψις, lit. soberness, watchfulness, lucidity.
19:2 See § 2 above.
19:3 Cf. K. K. (Stob.,
Ec., i. 49; p. 459, 20, W.), and Damascius, in Phot.,
Bibl., p. 337b, 23.
19:4 εὐλογίαν,—a play on λόγος.
20:1 λογικάς.
20:2 τῆς γνώσεως τῆς κατ᾽ οὐσίαν ἡμῶν, “
our being,” that is, presumably, the “being” of man and God, the “being” which man shares with God.
20:3 Cf. C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 20.
20:4 ἐξουσίαν.
