---
title: "Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius"
author: "Hermes Trismegistus (attributed)"
translator: "G. R. S. Mead"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Hermetica & Gnostics"
section: 14 of 45
url: https://scriptura.si/works/corpus-hermeticum-mead/14/
cite: "Hermes Trismegistus (attributed), tr. G. R. S. Mead, Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius, section 14. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/corpus-hermeticum-mead/14/"
---

# Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius

*Hermes Trismegistus (attributed), tr. G. R. S. Mead*

Poimandres and the other Hermetic tractates, with the Latin Asclepius, in Mead's 1906 English.

## 14. X. (XI.) The Key · 1 of 3

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/corpus-hermeticum-mead/14/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/corpus-hermeticum-mead/14/#p-N

[¶0] THE KEY

[¶1] OF THRICE-GREATEST HERMES

[¶2] 1. Hermes. My yesterday’s discourse (logos) I did devote to thee, Asclepius, and so ’tis [only] right I should devote to-day’s to Tat; and this the more because ’tis the abridgment of the General Sermons (Logoi) which he has had addressed to him.

[¶3] “God, Father and the Good,” then, Tat, hath the same nature, or more exactly, energy.

[¶4] For nature is a predicate of growth, and used of things that change, both mobile and immobile, that is to say, both human and divine, each one of which He willeth into being.

[¶5] But energy consists in something else, as we have shown in treating of the rest, both things divine and human things ; which thing we ought to have in mind when treating of the Good.

[¶6] 2. God’s energy is then His Will; further His essence is to will the being of all things. For what is “God and Father and the Good” but the to be of all that are not yet? Nay, subsistence self of everything that is;—this, then, is God, this Father, this the Good; to Him is added naught of all the rest.

[¶7] And though the Cosmos, that is to say the Sun, is also sire himself to them that share in him; yet so far is he not the cause of good unto the lives, he is not even of their living.

[¶8] So that e’en if he be a sire, he is entirely so by the compulsion of the Good’s Good-will, apart from which nor being nor becoming could e’er be.

[¶9] 3. Again, the parent is the children’s cause, both on the father’s and the mother’s side, only by sharing in the Good’s desire [that doth pour] through the Sun. It is the Good which doeth the creating.

[¶10] And such a power can be possessed by no one else than Him alone who taketh naught, but wills all things to be; I will not, Tat, say makes.

[¶11] For that the maker is defective for long periods (in which he sometimes makes, and sometimes doth not make) both in the quality and in the quantity [of what he makes]; in that he sometimes maketh them so many and such like, and sometimes the reverse.

[¶12] But “God and Father and the Good” is [cause] for all to be. So are at least these things for who can see.

[¶13] 4. For It doth will to be, and It is both Itself and most of all by reason of Itself. Indeed all other things beside are just because of It; for the distinctive feature of the Good is “that it should be known.” Such is the Good, O Tat.

[¶14] Tat. Thou hast, O father, filled us so full of this so good and fairest Sight, that thereby my mind’s eye hath now become for me almost a thing to worship.

[¶15] For that the Vision of the Good doth not, like the sun’s beam, fire-like blaze on the eyes and make them close; nay, on the contrary, it shineth forth and maketh to increase the seeing of the eye, as far as e’er a man hath the capacity to hold the inflow of the radiance that the mind alone can see.

[¶16] Not only does it come more swiftly down to us, but it does us no harm, and is instinct with all immortal life.

[¶17] 5. They who are able to drink in a somewhat more than others of this Sight, ofttimes from out the body fall asleep into this fairest Spectacle, as was the case with Uranus and Cronus, our forebears. May this be our lot too, O father mine!

[¶18] Her. Yea, may it be, my son! But as it is, we are not yet strung to the Vision, and not as yet have we the power our mind’s eye to unfold and gaze upon the Beauty of the Good—Beauty that naught can e’er corrupt or any comprehend.

[¶19] For [only] then wilt thou upon It gaze when thou canst say no word concerning It. For Gnosis of the Good is holy silence and a giving holiday to every sense.

[¶20] 6. For neither can he who perceiveth It, perceive aught else; nor he who gazeth on It, gaze on aught else; nor hear aught else, nor stir his body any way. Staying his body’s every sense and every motion he stayeth still.

[¶21] And shining then all round his mind, It shines through his whole soul, and draws it out of body, transforming all of him to essence.

[¶22] For it is possible, my son, that a man’s soul should be made like to God, e’en while it still is in a body, if it doth contemplate the Beauty of the Good.

[¶23] 7. Tat. Made like to God! What dost thou, father, mean?

[¶24] Her. Of every soul apart are transformations, son.

[¶25] Tat. What meanest thou? Apart!

[¶26] Her. Didst thou not, in the General Sermons, hear that from One Soul—the All-soul—come all these souls which are made to revolve in all the cosmos, as though divided off?

[¶27] Of these souls, then, it is that there are many changes, some to a happier lot and some to [just] the contrary of this.

[¶28] Thus some that were once creeping things change into things that in the water dwell, the souls of water things change to earth-dwellers, those that live on the earth change into things with wings, and souls that live in air change into men, while human souls reach the first step of deathlessness changed into daimones.

[¶29] And so they circle to the choir of the Inerrant Gods; for of the Gods there are two choirs, the one Inerrant, and the other Errant. And this is the most perfect glory of the soul.

[¶30] 8. But if a soul on entering in the body of a man persisteth in its vice, it neither tasteth deathlessness nor shareth in the Good; but speeding back again it turns into the path that leads to creeping things. This is the sentence of the vicious soul.

[¶31] And the soul’s vice is ignorance. For that the soul who hath no knowledge of the things that are, or knowledge of their nature, or of Good, is blinded by the body’s passions and tossed about.

[¶32] This wretched soul, not knowing what she is, becomes the slave of bodies of strange form in sorry plight, bearing the body as a load; not as the ruler, but the ruled. This [ignorance] is the soul’s vice.

[¶33] 9. But on the other hand the virtue of the soul is Gnosis. For he who knows, he good and pious is, and still while on the earth divine.

[¶34] Tat. But who is such an one, O father mine?

[¶35] Her. He who doth not say much or lend his ear to much. For he who spendeth time in arguing and hearing arguments, doth shadow fight. For “God, the Father and the Good,” is not to be obtained by speech or hearing.

[¶36] And yet though this is so, there are in all the beings senses, in that they cannot without senses be.

[¶37] But Gnosis is far different from sense. For sense is brought about by that which hath the mastery o’er us, while Gnosis is the end of science, and science is God’s gift.

[¶38] 10. All science is incorporal, the instrument it uses being the mind, just as the mind employs the body.

[¶39] Both then come into bodies, [I mean] both things that are cognizable by mind alone and things material. For all things must consist out of antithesis and contrariety; and this can otherwise not be.

[¶40] Tat. Who then is this material God of whom thou speakest?

[¶41] Her. Cosmos is beautiful, but is not good —for that it is material and freely passible ; and though it is the first of all things passible, yet is it in the second rank of being and wanting in itself.

[¶42] And though it never hath itself its birth in time, but ever is, yet is its being in becoming, becoming for all time the genesis of qualities and quantities; for it is mobile and all material motion’s genesis.

[¶43] 11. It is intelligible rest that moves material motion in this way, since Cosmos is a sphere—that is to say, a head. And naught of head above’s material, as naught of feet below’s intelligible, but all material.

[¶44] And head itself moved in a sphere-like way—that is to say, as head should move, is mind.