18 Hermes Trismegistus. De potestate et sapientia dei.
[Translated by Marsilio Ficino]. Ferrara, Andreas Belfortis 1472
(London, British Library)

Another edition of Ficino's translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, in which many compositorial errors were corrected and many lacunae filled. The Sibyls (CH XII), who detracted from the alleged Egyptian background of Hermes, are here omitted: the compositor had read Ficino's correct translation dia druos, per silvam (through the trees) as per Sybillam: there were no Sibyls in Egypt at the time of Moses and Hermes Trismegistus (cf. Purnell Hermes and the Sibyl). In later editions, with the exception of the Florence 1512 edition [no 25], this compositorial error remained unchallenged, as the first edition of Ficino's translation (1471) was used as copy-text.

The first discourse of the Corpus Hermeticum, entitled Poimandres (Pimander) describes a revelation to a seer, who can be identified with Hermes Trismegistus. The text was probably written in the first century CE. The famous opening is as follows:

Once, when thought came to me of the things that are
and my thinking soared high and my bodily senses were
restrained, like someone heavy with sleep from too
much eating or toil of the body.

It is in this condition that Hermes meets Poimandres, 'the mind of absolute omnipotence' (ho tès authentias nous; mens divinae potentiae). He shows Hermes a vision, a boundless spectacle: everything turns to light, to which Hermes feels drawn. In one part of this light darkness ensues.

darkness arose separately and descended - fearful and
gloomy - coiling sinuously so that it looked to me like
a <snake>. Then the darkness changed into something of a
watery nature, indescribably agitated and smoking like a
fire; it produced an unspeakable wailing roar. Then an
inarticulate cry like the voice of fire came forth from it.

From the light a holy Word (Logos, verbum) descends, separating the elements: fire and air ascend from the moist substance; earth and water, still mixed, remain behind. Poimandres explains that he is Mind (Nous), God:

The lightgiving word who comes from mind is the son of
god [...] that in you which sees and hears is the Word of
the lord, but your mind is god the father, they are not
divided from one another for their union is life.

Next Hermes learns to know the light and sees that it consists of countless 'Powers' and has become a boundless Cosmos.
Now he has seen mind in its archetypal form Hermes asks to what the elements of nature owe their existence. Poimandres answers:

From the counsel of god which, having taken in the word and
having seen the beautiful cosmos, imitated it, having become
a cosmos thorugh its own elements and its progeny of souls.

God the Mind, who is androgynous, and life and light, brought forth an 'other Mind as Maker' through his word (Nous demiourgos; mens opifex). This one, as God of fire and the breath of life (pneuma; spiritus), made seven 'Governors', the planets. Their government is called 'Fate' (heimarmenè; fatum).

the word of god leapt straight up to the pure craftwork of nature
and united with the craftsman-mind (for the word was of the same
substance). The weighty elements of nature were left behind, bereft
of reason, so as to be mere matter.

The creative Mind together with the Word put into motion the planets and brought forth the senseless animals out of the lower elements.
The Nous, which is life and light, brought forth Anthropos, the archetypal Man. He was very beauteous as he carried his Father's image. When Man saw what the Maker had made he, too, wanted to create. In the sphere of fire he noticed the products of the Maker, the planets, who imparted the characteristics of their hierarchy to him.

Learning well their essence and sharing in their nature, the man wished to break through the circumference of the circles to observe the rule of the one given power over the fire.
Having all authority over the cosmos of the mortals and unreasoning animals, the man broke through the vault and stooped to look through the cosmic framework, thus displaying to lower nature the fair form of God. Nature smiled with desire when she saw the reflection of Anthropos in the water. When Man saw his reflection in the water, he fell in love with himself like Narcissus, wanting to dwell in the senseless matter.

Nature took hold of her beloved, hugged him all about and embraced, for they were lovers.
Because of this, unlike any other living thing on earth, mankind is twofold - in the body mortal but immortal in the essential man.

Nature brought forth seven androgynous men after her union with Man, in nature like the the seven Governors:

<Earth> was the female. Water did the fertilizing. Fire was the maturing force. Nature took spirit from the ether and brought forth bodies in the shape of the man.

Next the androgynes were separated in males and females. God then uttered a sacred word:

Increase in increasing, and multiply in multitude, all you creatures and craftworkw, and let him <who> is mindful recognize that he is immortal, that desire is the cause of death, and let him recognize all that exists.

Providence (Pronoia; providentia) then instituted births. However, he who loves the body, remains lost in the darkness; he who has come to know himself as immortal comes to God: self-knowledge implies knowledge of God.

In the ascent to God man sheds the barriers which physicality caused to exist: the senses return to their sources, passion and desire return to senseless nature. Man returns to the seven spheres their characteristics and, divested of astral influences, attains the eighth sphere. Above that sphere he relinquishes himself to the Powers and comes into God.

After this explanation Poimandres mingles with the Powers. Hermes comes to himself again and starts proclaiming the beauty of Gnosis to men.


19 Hermes Trismegistus. De potestate et sapientia Dei
[Translated by Marsilio Ficino]. Venice. Lucas Dominici 1481

Another edition of Ficino's translation of the Corpus Hermeticum [no 17].

Discourse II contains A general discourse of Hermes with Asclepius, in Ficino's translation: Sermo universalis, which Scott dates to between 100 and 250.

The rather abrupt opening of the discourse in Ficino's translation is due to the Greek text. In all manuscripts that have survived the beginning is lacking. After the publication of Stobaeus' Eclogae in 1575 [no 16] this lack was supplemented by Foix de Candale (1579) [no 56] and Patrizi (1591) [no 47] with fragment 1.18.2, the conclusion of which overlaps the beginning of the second discourse as it has been preserved in the manuscripts. This discourse nevertheless remains incomplete.

For the Hermeticist knowledge of the structure and the workings of the Cosmos is an important means to come to knowledge of God, as the Maker reveals himself in what he has made. The larger part of this discourse concerns the Cosmos and its motion. Hermes denies in passing that there is a vacuum:

Not one of the things that are is empty - by reason of their substantiality. For a being could not be a being if he were not full of substance. The subsistent can never become empty.

Neither is there emptiness outside the Cosmos. The space in which the All moves may best be characterized as incorporeal. The incorporeal is:

Mind as a whole fully enclosing itself, free of all body, unerring, unaffected, untouched, at rest in itself, capable of all things and preserving all that exists, and its rays (as it were) are the good, the truth, the archetype of spirit, the archetype of soul.

The cause of this is God, who is above thought and being, who may best be indicated as 'the Good' or 'Father'.

20 Hermes Trismegistus. De potestate et sapientia dei.
[Translated by Marsilio Ficino]. Venice, Maximus de Butricis 1491

Another edition of no 18, with manuscript emendations, correcting not only obvious compositorial errors, but also the Latin translation itself.

Discourse III from the Corpus Hermeticum contains A sacred discourse of Hermes, a prose hymn, translated by Ficino under the title: Mercurii sermo sacer. The tone of the discourse is Stoic, and is reminiscent of the Septuaginta, the Greek biblical translation. The 'natural science', i.e. the cosmological and astrological ideas contained in this work would suggest that it belongs to the older Hermetica (first or second century BCE). The work begins as follows:

God is the glory of all things, as also are the divine and the divine nature. God, as well as mind and nature and matter, is the beginning of all things that are since he is wisdom meant to show them forth.
The divine is also a beginning, and it is nature and energy and necessity and completion and renewal.

In Ficino's somewhat compressed translation this passage reads as follows: 'Gloria omnium deus, divinum, divina natura, principium universorum, deus, mens, natura, actus, necessitas, finis, et renovatio'.

Hermes continues with a cosmological explanation reminsicent of Genesis:

In the deep there was boundless darkness and water and fine intelligent spirit [Ficino: spiritus intellectualis], all existing by divine power in chaos.

Out of this chaos the elements are separated and divided in light (fire and air) and heavy (earth and water) elements. The heaven unfolded in seven spheres and 'the gods became visible in the shape of the stars'. These planet-gods brought forth plants, animals and men, to the end that the latter should 'know the works of god; to be a working witness to nature'. This knowledge of 'divine power' can be obtained by contemplation: beholding the works of God leads to finding God.

21 Hermes Trismegistus. De potestate et sapientia dei.
[Translated by Marsilio Ficino]. Venice, Damianus de Mediolano 1493

Another edition of no 17.

The fourth treatise from the Corpus Hermeticum contains a discourse between Hermes and Tat, entitled: The mixing bowl or the monad, in Ficino's translation: Crater sive monas. Scott places it in the second or third century CE and characterizes it as Platonic, in view of the evident influence of Plato's Phaedo, the dialogue on the ascent of the soul.

Hermes opens the conversation with the assertion that the Demiurge has made the Cosmos by means of the Logos and not with his hands. In Ficino's translation: 'Universum mundum verbo non manibus fabricatus ex opifex'. This means that man, too, was made by the Logos, contrary to what we find in Genesis 1, 26 and 2,7, in which man is said to be a product of God's hands.

The Demiurge should be seen as one who is 'present, as always existing, as having made all things, as the one and only and as having crafted by his own will the things that are'. His creativity is as it were his 'body'. God sent man to earth as the 'adornment of the divine body', as microcosmos within macrocosmos. 'The man became a spectator of god's work. He looked at it in astonishment and recognized his Maker'. In Ficino's words: 'Homo enim effectus est divini operis contemplator'.

Next Hermes makes a distinction between intellect (logos) and mind (nous), and typifies the nous as a divine gift which is added to the logos of the elect. He says: 'Now it is true, Tat, that God has given intellect (logos) to all men, but he did not go so far with the mind (nous)'.

Ficino here translates logos with sermo: word, conversation, speech, which could provide a different interpretation: 'Sermonem quidem o Tati singulis hominibus deus impertit, mentem [nous] vero nequaquam'. The distinction here is: those who speak versus those who possess speech and mind.

Hermes says in fact that those who have intellect and mind obtain access to their own core of being. This access implies self-knowledge and as a result knowledge of God. In gnostic terms these initiates are called 'pneumatici'. (The nous in CH IV corresponds with the pneuma which characterizes the gnostic).

Tat's question, why God has not awarded mind to all, is answered by Hermes with: 'He wanted it put between souls, my child, as a prize for them to contest'. This prize has the shape of a 'great mixing bowl' filled with mind. Those who drink from it acquire liberating insight: they 'participated in knowledge and became perfect people because they received mind'.

The 'logikoi', who only possess knowledge, and 'divert their attention to the pleasures and appetites of the body'. Those who also possess mind consider life on earth a disaster. They hasten towards the One and Only, having 'scorned every corporeal and incorporeal thing'. (NB the 'unphysical', asoomatoon, was lacking in Ficino's Greek text).

This is 'the way to learn about mind' [scientia mentis]: to contemplate the divine and to behold God. (NB the printing error scientia metitus in Ficino's translation of 1471, is replaced in later editions with scientia mentis).

After these observations Hermes mentions the doctrine of metempsychosis, as adhered to by the Pythagoreans, Platonists and some gnostic movements: 'Do you see how many bodies we must pass through, my child, how many troops of demons, (cosmic) connections and stellar circuits in order to hasten to the one and only?' Ficino interprets the bodies (soomata) as the heavenly bodies, and translates: corpora coelestia, which in this context puts the emphasis on the ascent of the soul through the spheres. This translation does not, incidentally, exclude the idea of metempsychosis; in principle the soul can return from the spheres.

Hermes concludes the discourse with a refelction on God in Pythagorean terms: He is the One or the Monad, who is origin and root (radix atque origo) of the differentiated multiplicity which is called Cosmos.

Philosophers such as Ficino and Lazarelli saw in the krater an allusion to the sacrament of baptism. CH IV inspired the latter to write his Crater Hermetis [no 24]. Some have noticed parallels between the krater and the Grail (Cf. H. and R. Kahane The Krater and the Grail: Hermetic sources of the Parzival (1984).


22 Hermes Trismegistus. De potestate et sapientia dei.
[Translated by Marsilio Ficino]. Paris, [Johannes Higman and] Wolfgang Hopyl 1494
(The Hague, Royal Library)

First edition of Ficino's translation of the Corpus Hermeticum outside Italy, edited by the French humanist Jacques Lefèvre d'Etaples (ca 1460-1536). During his travels through Italy in the winter of 1491-92 Lefèvre met amongst others Pico della Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino, who drew his attention to the work of Dionysius Areopagita and the writings of Hermes Trismegistus.

The editor appended a commentary to Ficino's translation, in which he noted correspondences between the teachings of Hermes and those of the Bible. Although he did not have a Greek text at his disposal, he made one or two emendations with a view to the context. With regard to discourse IX he rightly replaced motus by intelligentia: Ficino's Greek manuscript indeed had kinesis where it should have read noèsis (see the summary of CH IX under no 30).

Ref. Pantin

23 Hermes Trismegistus. De potestate et sapientia dei.
[Translated by Marsilio Ficino]. Mainz, Johann Schoeffer 1503

Another edition of no 17.

Discourse V, entitled That God is invisible and entirely visible, bears in Ficino's translation the heading: Quod deus latens simul ac patens est. Scott places the text in the third century after Christ.

Hermes turns to Tat in order to discuss a 'doctrine' with him, so that he does not '[remain] uninitiated in the mysteries of the god who is greater than any name'. (The indication that God may be characterized as nameless, but also as bearer of all names, also recurs in the Latin Asclepius, paragraph 20). The doctrine in question contains the well-known Stoic 'physico-theological' insight that God may be known through His creation, i.c. the Cosmos with in it man. Although God is invisible, incorporeal, eternal and is not begotten, he nevertheless manifests himself in His works:

Clearly, the one who alone is unbegotten is also unimagined and invisible, but in presenting images of all things he is seen through all of them and in all of them; he is seen especially by those whom he wished to see him.

Hermes advises Tat to pray to God for grace and for enlightenment of the mind. 'Only understanding, because it, too, is invisible, sees the invisible'. For like is understood by like. When God bestows grace, the 'mind's eye [nous] will see it' and the mind shall receive 'the image of God'.

God is visible, Hermes continues, in the order of what has been made, that is to say in the harmonic structure of the macrocosmos and in the anatomy of man, the microcosmos. All this is the product of God's creative will. One should therefore never 'deprive the craftworks of their craftsman'.

The 'Supreme Architect' is God, the 'Father of All'. It is his essence to 'be pregnant with all things and to make them'. With this statement Hermes also attributes female characteristics to God, making the Father androgynous.

The discourse ends with a hymn in which the identity of the creator is expressed by means of what has been created. (This passage may be older than the rest of the text). The hymn contains a phrase which will recur in later mysticism with great frequency: 'For you are whatever I am; you are whatever I make; you are whatever I say'.

In the Greek manuscript which Ficino had at his disposal there is an addition here which actually comes from discourse XII, 14: 'Materiae namque purissimus aer, aeris anima, animae mens, mentis denique deus', that is to say: because the thinnest of matter is air, of air it is the soul, of the soul it is the mind, of the mind it is God.

The Hermetic poem which is included in no 14 together with the Tabula smaragdina is largely inspired by the discourse discussed above.

24 Hermes Trismegistus. Pimander. Asclepius.
Ludovico Lazarelli. Crater Hermetis.
Paris, Henri I Estienne 1505

First edition of Ficino's translation of the Corpus Hermeticum in which the Asclepius is presented as a complement. The commentaries by Lefèvre d'Etaples have been added to the separate discourses in this edition. The Asclepius is divided into fifteen paragraphs, and likewise provided with explanatory notes.

Lefèvre categorically rejects the famous magical passage from the Asclepius; it is an 'error' of Hermes. In the margin of Chapter XIII he writes in capital letters: 'lapsus Hermetis'. In the explanation he refers to Augustine's De civitate Dei VIII [see no 1].

Added to this edition is a hymn by Ludovico Lazarelli (1450-1500), the translator of the Definitiones Asclepii (CH XVI-XVIII) [see no 9], which is entitled Crater Hermetis, a text modelled after CH IV, in which the magical passage from Asclepius is interpreted in a Christian sense. Lazarelli explains the animation of statues as an act of creation through the Word - with reference to the Kabbala - and he compares the animation of statues by demons with Christ's inspiration of the apostles: a rebirth which the master brings about in the disciple, who as a result comes to self-knowledge and the knowledge of God.

Ref. Pantin; Rice, 133-37; Walker 1958, 64-72


25 Apuleius, De asino aureo libelli XI.
Florence, Filippo Guinta 1512

The collected works of Apuleius, which in addition to the Latin Asclepius also contains Ficino's translation of the Corpus Hermeticum. The latter text was added with a view to the relationship between the two texts ('adnexus operi propter materiae affinitatem').

Discourse VI is entitled in Ficino's translation Quod in solo deo bonum est, alibi vero nequaquam, that is to say: the good is only in God and nowhere else. Scott places this discourse, which is intensely pessimistic in tone, in the second or third century CE.

'The Good' (to agathon), Hermes says to Asclepius, 'is always God himself'. The Good is also the principle of movement and generation. (Ficino translates: 'motionis atque cognitionis': of movement and knowledge, because the Greek manuscript which Ficino had at his disposal here read gnooseoos instead of geneseoos).

The Good is only in God, as He is free of every affect (pathos). Like the Stoics, Hermes regards subjection to affections as a form of suffering and thus as an evil. God, however, exists in a state of tranquility, the divine apatheia, free of emotions.

The cosmos on the other hand is full of pathos and as such 'the totality of evil'. With this Hermes adopts a radical gnostic principle (which is, incidentally, challenged in CH IX, 4). However, he adds a qualification where it concerns the productive aspect of the Cosmos, which is good 'in that it also makes all things', as matter participates in all things and consequently participates in the Good.

In man the Good cannot at all be found; what he calls 'good' is relatively speaking the least evil. Furthermore, there is no place for the Good in the body, as it is 'squeezed on all sides by vice, sufferings, pains, longings, angry feelings, delusions and mindless opinions'. There is only one way leading to God i.c. the Good and that is that of 'reverence combined with knowledge'. In Ficino's translation: 'unica via est: pietas cognitione coniuncta'.


26 Hermes Trismegistus. Pimander. Asclepius. Crater Hermetis
Ed. J. Lefèvre d'Etaples. [Venice, Petrus de Quaerengiis 1517?]

The printer and date of this edition have not been established. The above suggestion is taken from the BM Short-title catalogue of Italian books by A.F. Johnson. He therefore considers this edition to be reprinted from the edition of 1505 [no 24]. Goff gives as possible printers Petrus Liechtenstein and Peter Hamman (Incunabula in American Libraries H 83). Dannenfeldt agrees with him and gives 'after 1500?' as approximate date.

In the new Dutch translation Discourse VII bears the title Ignorance of God: the greatest evil among men. Ficino calls it Quod summum malum hominibus ignorare deum. The discourse is presented in the form of a Hermetic sermon, and links up with CH I, Poimandres, 27-29. On this basis Scott, too, dates the text to between 100 and 200 CE. The author admonishes mankind to soberness, that is gnosis (Their intoxicated state is a metaphor for ignorance, agnosia). He advises to look up 'with the eyes of the heart', in Ficino's translation oculis mentis. The evil of ignorance floods the world, causing the soul to perish.

One must try to gain 'the havens of deliverance'. In Ficino's translation this is called a return to the source of life (ad fontem vitae recurrite). 'Seek a guide', Hermes admonishes, 'to take you by the hand and lead you to the portals of knowledge'. (Ficino translates: 'gate of truth', aditum veritatis).

Scott sees in this passage a reference to the Nile, travelled by pilgrims under the supervision of a guide who points the way to the temple. There, at the gate of Gnosis,

There shines the light cleansed of darkness. There no one is drunk. All are sober and gaze with the heart toward one who wishes to be seen, who is neither heard nor spoken of, who is seen not with the eyes but with mind and heart.

Compare Ficino's translation 'Sola mens eum perspicit, sola mens predicat', whereby mens is the translation of the Greek nous in the sense of intuitive faculty, enabling man to have a comprehensive insight in the cohesion and the essence of things. That the author here uses the word 'heart', reveals his Jewish origin.

In order to gain the light, 'the garment of ignorance' must be cast off. This is the body, which in Orphic terms, as dungeon of the soul, thwarts the orientation towards the divine with physical desires that corrupt the soul.


27 Hermes Trismegistus. Pimander: Mercurij Trismegisti liber de sapientia & potestate dei.
[Translated by Marsilio Ficino]. Ed. J. Lefèvre d'Etaples. Paris, Simon de Colines 1522

Another edition of no 25.

28 Hermes Trismegistus. Pymander. Asclepius. Jamblichus. De mysteriis Aegyptiorum. Proclus. In Alcibiadem. De sacrificio.
Ed. J. Lefèvre d'Etaples. Basel, Michael Isengrin 1532

Lefèvre d'Etaples' edition of Corpus Hermeticum I-XIV and the Latin Aclepius, enlarged with Jamblichus' De mysteriis Aegyptiorum, and a work by Proclus (410-85), who is the most important thinker of late Platonism after Plotinus. Like Jamblichus he unites philosophy with theurgy: in his view the philosopher is the 'hierophant of mankind'.

Discourse VIII of the Corpus Hermeticum bears the title: Nothing of that which is perishes. There are only changes, which are mistakenly called destruction and death. In Ficino's translation: 'Nihil eorum quae sunt interitus sed mutationes, decepti homines interitum nominant'. Scott believes the translation was written between 150 and 300.

The contention of this philosophical discourse is that 'death' is only a notion; in reality there is only change (metabolè):

Death has to do with destruction, yet none of the things in the cosmos is destroyed. If the cosmos is a second God and an immortal living thing, it is impossible for any part of this immortal living thing to die. All things in the cosmos are part of the cosmos, but especially mankind, the living thing that reasons.

In Ficino's translation:

Thanatos enim interitum significat. At nihil eorum, quae in mundo sunt, interit. Si enim secundus deus est mundus, nec non immortale vivens, impossibile est immortalis animantis partem interire. Quaecunque mundo insunt, mundi sunt membra, homo praesertim animal rationale.

There is only change, metamorphosis. This thought was already formulated by Anaxagoras in the fifth century BCE. Instead of rise and decline he speaks of 'being merged' and 'being separated', which is strongly reminiscent of well-known alchemistical maxims such as 'solve et coagula' and 'corruptio est nova generatio'.

Ref. Scott II, 190

30 Jamblichus. De mysteriis Aegyptiorum [...].
Venice, heirs of Aldus Manutius and Andrea Torresano 1516

Collection of translations by Ficino (first edition 1497), to which the Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius are added, with a commentary by Lefèvre d'Etaples. The title of the text by Jamblichus is an invention of the translator.
Jamblichus (ca 275-ca 330) was a student of Porphyry. De mysteriis Aegyptiorum contains a summary of late-Greek paganism written before Porphyry's death (304). Jamblichus gave the Neo-Platonism of his day another direction by being the first to place 'theurgy' - the actions of divine grace - above the rational 'theoria' of Plotinus and Porphyry. Like magic, theurgy involves the manipulation of the network of universal sympathy. Its object is to cleanse and redeem the soul from its earthly bonds, to establish a 'theurgic union' with the godhead. The first stages in the ascent of the soul are ritualized; the final union, however, involves an intuitive leap for which the vocabulary of rational philosophy is inadequate. Although Jamblichus does not reject this philosophy, he desires a theurgic component. He rejects philosophy purely based on rational thought (ennoia).

His work begins with a reference to the Egyptian Hermes (Thoth) as the God of script and the 'pillars of Hermes', inscribed with hieroglyphics, from which Pythagoras and Plato were to have drawn their wisdom. In Book VIII Jamblichus refers to Manetho, who stated that Hermes was to have written 36,525 books (= hundred times the number of days in the year).

Fowden notes in Book VIII, 4-6 allusions to the existence of a 'theurgic Hermetica': the 'way' of Hermes.

Ref. Fowden, 131-141; Sicherl.


31 Jamblichus. De mysteriis Aegyptiorum [etc.].
Venice, heirs of Aldus Manutius and Andrea Torresano 1516
(Washington, Folger Shakespeare Library)

Another copy of this collection of translations, with marginal notes by the English Hermetist John Dee (1527-1608). Unfortunately the notes on the Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius are rather meagre. Dee apparently used his copy for study purposes; he underscored passages and made summarizing notes in the margin.

He interpreted the Nous as mens adepta, a gift of God, something which can be acquired by an elite. Dee refers to CH IV, Crater sive monas, in his marginalia to De insomniis, a work by Synesius of Syrene (370/75-413/14), a Neo-Platonist philosopher, who, although he was ordained bishop, did not abandon his ideas concerning the pre-existence of the soul and the eternity of the world. He is the author of hymns which are thematically related to the Hermetica. He is also the reputed author of an alchemical commentary on a text by Pseudo-Democritus: physika kai mystika. The commentary is added to the Latin translation of Pseudo-Democritus, which appeared in 1572 under the title De arte magna.

De insomniis is concerned with the revelation of the divine in dreams. The underlying ideas are derived from the work of Aristotle and Plotinus: the Nous understands the true, archetypal Being through immediate intuition. The soul on the other hand can only grasp the phenomena by means of impressions; they form the basis for concepts. Imagination, the spiritus phantasticus (to phantastikon pneuma), serves as intermediary, as 'vehiculum animae', to enable the soul to communicate with the divine: the imagination can draw impressions from the Nous and bring them in touch with the individual nous.

This is the mens adepta, the acquired spirit, to which Agrippa van Nettesheim also refers in De occulta philosophia III, 44: 'verum non omnes homines mentem adepti sunt, quoniam (ut inquit Hermes) voluit illam deus pater tanquam certamen praemiumque animarum proponere', that is to say: not all men will participate in the Mind, because God the Father has offered this as a prize for the souls.

Ref. Bundy, 147-53; Vollenweider; John Dee's library catalogue no 256


32 Jamblichus. De mysteriis Aegyptiorum [...].
Lyon, Jean de Tournes 1549

Another edition of no 30.

Discourse X, Clavis, discusses focal ideas of Hermetic philosophy: God and gnosis, the cosmos, man and his return to God. Scott places the text in the second or third century.

God 'the Father and the Good' are one in the effect they have (energeia): 'his essence is to will all things to be'. In Ficino's translation: 'Huius actus voluntas est, huius essentia velle cuncta subsistere'. He is eternal and always 'the Being of the All'.

God illuminates, 'to the extent that one capable of receiving the influence of intellectual splendor can receive it'. A precondition is the suppression of the physical:

In the moment when you have nothing to say about it, you will see it, for the knowledge of it is divine silence (Eius cognitio divinum silentium est) and suppression of all the senses.

Who has experienced this can observe nothing else:

Having illuminated all his mind, this beauty kindles his whole soul and by means of the body draws it upward, and beauty changes his whole person into essence (ousia; in Ficino's translation: in essentiam denique dei transfigurat). For when the soul has looked on <the> beauty of the good, my child, it cannot be deified while in a human body.

The souls have their origins in the World soul and whirl about in the cosmos. The evil to which the soul can fall prey is ignorance (agnosia, ignorantia).

For the soul, when it is blind and discerns none of the things that are nor their nature nor the good, is shaken by the bodily passions, and the wretched thing becomes - in ignorance of itself - a slave to vile and monstrous bodies.

The greatest good for the soul is gnosis. There is a great difference between gnosis and aisthèsis, the sensual perception. The latter is a pathos; she 'comes when the object prevails'. Gnosis on the other hand is a knowledge granted by God.

The soul has a pneuma as a vehicle and is clothed as follows: the mind (nous) is lodged in the intellect (logos), this intellect is lodged in the soul, the soul is lodged in the astral body (ochèma/pneuma). This body penetrates the veins and arteries and the blood: thus it animates every living being and in a sense carries it. In Ficino's translation:

Anima hominis in hunc vehitur modum. Mens in ratione. ratio in anima. anima in spiritu. spiritus in corpore. Spiritus per venas arteriasque: sanguinemque diffusus: animal undique ciet: molemque corporis suspensam substinet: atque circumferet.

God wishes to be known by man. The condition is that the soul does not become subservient to the physical. If this happens, she becomes alienated from herself and no longer participates in the Good. Oblivion (lèthè, oblivio) causes her to loose sight of her origin and makes her evil. This also happens to those who leave their bodies:

When the soul rises up to itself, the spirit is drawn into the blood, the soul into the spirit, but the mind, since it is divine by nature, becomes purified of its garments and takes on a fiery body, ranging about everywhere, leaving the soul to judgement and the justice it deserves.

In Ficino's translation:

Idemque accidit iis: qui egrediuntur ex corpore. Recurrente enim anima in seipsam: spiritus in sanguinem: anima in spiritum contrahitur. Mens a velaminibus libera et divina existens: suapte natura igneum fortita corpus: per loca omnia circumvagatur, animamque iudicio iusto ac merito supplicio dereliquit.

The Mind therefore separates from the soul at death and the soul in turn separates from the pneuma, the vehiculum animae. The pious soul who ignores the physical, can become pure Mind. When the Mind lodges itself in her, it leads the soul to the light of gnosis (tès gnoseoos phoos; sapientiae lumen).


33 Jamblichus. De mysteriis Aegyptiorum [...].
Lyon, Jean de Tournes 1552

Another edition of no 30.

Discourse XI, Mens ad Mercurium is placed by Scott in the second or third century. The text is concerned with the relationship between God and cosmos. Man may know God through contemplation of the cosmos, in which the unity of the All is experienced.

On the relationship between God and the All the Mind (Nous) says:

God, eternity (aioon; aeternitas), cosmos, time, becoming (genesis; generatio). God makes eternity; eternity makes the cosmos; the cosmos makes time; time makes becoming. The essence (ousia; essentia) (so to speak) of God is wisdom; the essence of eternity is identity, of the cosmos, order; of time, change (metabolè; transmutatio), of becoming, life and death.

But the energy (energia; actus) of god is mind and soul (nous kai psyche; mens et anima). The energy of eternity is permanence and immortality (athanasia. Ficino translates: immortalitas); of the cosmos, recurrence and counterrecurrence [namely of the stars. Literally: return (apokatastasis) and opposite return (anapokatastasis); Ficino translates: institutio et resititutio]; of time, increase and decrease; of becoming quality <and quantity).
[...]
The source of all things is god; eternity is their essence; the cosmos is their matter. Eternity is the power (dynamis; potentia) of god, and the cosmos is eternity's work, but the cosmos has never come into being; it comes to be forever from eternity.

In the first edition of Ficino's translation (1471) a passage was omitted from the above, which was supplied in later editions.

Discourse XI continues:

And god is the soul (psyche) of eternity; eternity is the soul of the cosmos; heaven is the soul of the earth. God is in mind, but mind is in soul (psyche), and soul is in matter, yet all these exist through eternity. Inward;y, a soul full of mind and god fills this universal body in which all bodies exist, but outwardly soul surrounds the universe and brings it to life.

In Ficino's translation:

Aeternitatis anima deus est: anima mundi aeternitatis: terrae anima: coelum. Deus in mente: mens in anima: anima autem in materia. omnia vero ista per aevum: totum hoc corpus: in quo corpora omnia: anima mente: deoque plena [...]

'Eternity holds all this together, either through necessity (anagkè; necessitas) or providence (pronoia; providentia)'. All this is the product of the energy (energeia) of God. For everything is full of God.

God can be known through contemplation of the Cosmos. Whoever beholds the Cosmos in the Mind becomes aware of beauty, harmony, movement and 'inspiration'. All this presupposes a 'Coordinator'. He is the One, perfect and always active. He is Life, the Beauteous, the Good, God.
Life is 'the union of mind and soul' (with the body). 'Death is not the destruction of things that have been combined but the dissolution of their union'. In Ficino's translation:

Vita vero est unio mentis ac animae: mors autem non pernicies concretorum: sed unionis plurium dissolutio.

There is no death in the Cosmos, only change (metabolè).
Everything is in God 'because it is anchored in the pure thought of God' (Ficino translates: in phantasia). 'So you must think of god in this way', the Mind says to Hermes:

as having everything - the cosmos, himself, <the> universe - like thoughts (noèmata) within himself. Thus, unless you make youurself equal unto god, you cannot understand god; like is understood by like. Make yourself grow to immeasurable immensity, outleap all body, outstrip all time, become eternity and you will understand god.

To wish to know God is the true path to the Good. He then reveals himself to the mind's eye and shows himself through all.


34 Jamblichus. De mysteriis Aegyptiorum [...]
Rome, Antonio Blado 1556

Another edition of no 30.

The twelfth discourse of the Corpus Hermeticum contains a conversation between Hermes Trismegistus and Tat on the Nous, 'the mind which penetrates the All' (peri nou koinou). Ficino gave this discourse the title De communi. In the Greek manuscript which he had at his disposal the word Nous was lacking in the title. Foix de Candale (1574) [no 44] translated the supplemented title with De mente communi: on the communal mind.

Scott characterizes the discourse as Stoic-Platonic: the concept Nous (mind) and the functioning of the Nous in the soul are similar to related Platonic concepts. The use of the concept heimarmène, fate, is also Stoic. The combination of these facts led Scott to place the text in the second or third century of our era.

Hermes instructs Tat on the nature of the Nous. 'Mind', he says, 'comes from the very essence of God', emanates from Him, as does the sunlight from the sun. 'In humans this mind is god': he struggles against physical desires which corrupt the soul and cures the 'sicknesses of the soul' such as ungodliness and self-conceit. (Ficino here gives impietas and opinio, from the Greek doxa: '(wrong) opinion', because the soul follows the body and not the guiding Mind).

'Mind displays its own splendor to those souls that it commands'. Those souls on the other hand which do not receive the Mind as their guide, fall prey to irrational desires.

Tat then asks the classical question whether someone predestined to do evil can be blamed for acting in accordance with his fate. Hermes does not deal with this directly, but declares further on that the Mind rules over everything, including fate. Everybody is subject to fate, but the people 'whom mind commands', in whom mind has extinguished passion and desire, do not suffer as the others do', since 'they have been freed from vice, they are not affected as a consequence of being evil'.

Hermes then associates the various meanings of pathos: change, passion and suffering and infers from them that both the mover (Mind) as well as the moved (body) are subject to suffering. 'If there is release from the body, there is also release from passion'.

Hermes continues his instruction with views on the cosmos. The principles according to which the cosmos is structured are: fate (here: anagkè; necessitas), providence (pronoia; providentia) and nature (fysis, natura). The cosmos is a god and an image of an even greater God: the Father.

This entire cosmos ... united with god and helping preserve the father's will and order - is a plenitude (pleroma, plenitudo) of life.

In connection with CH VIII Hermes explains that there is no death in the cosmos, but only a 'dissolution', which is a separation of the composite parts, after which new bodies are formed. As a whole, the cosmos is not subject to change. Death is change, 'transition' (metabolè).

Hermes comes to the conclusion that every living being is in itself immortal. This is especially so for the man who can receive God in his inner being. God of course stands above man. 'He surrounds everything and permeates everything'. His presence can be seen in the order of the cosmos.

Tat then suggests that 'energies' (energeiai, operationes: workings) of God may perhaps be perceived in the cosmos, but not God himself. Hermes explains that God and his energies are inseparable, because 'in the all there is nothing that He is not'.


35 Jamblichus. De mysteriis Aegyptiorum [...].
Lyon, Jean de Tournes 1570

Another edition of no 30.

Discourse XIII is one of the most important discourses from the Corpus Hermeticum. It bears the title The secret revelation on the mountain about rebirth and the commandment of secrecy. The first part of the title (en orei logos apokruphos) was lacking in the Greek manuscript which Ficino used. Accordingly, his translation is: De generatione et impositione silentii. There is no consensus on how to date this discourse. Scott believes it was written at the close of the third century; Festugière places it at the end of the first century (Hermétisme et mystique paienne, 90).

Tat says to Hermes that until now he has spoken 'in riddles' concerning the 'divinity', and that in fact he has revealed nothing. The reason Hermes gives for this is that nobody can be redeemed unless he is born again in mind. In Ficino's translation: 'ante regenerationem salvum fieri neminem'. Tat wishes to know what rebirth (palingenesia) is. For Hermes had earlier promised to reveal this when Tat '[was] about to become a stranger to the cosmos'. Tat has now prepared his soul 'against the deceit of the cosmos', and asks how Man - the archetypal Anthropos - has come into existence. Hermes answers that man has come into existence through the seed of 'the true good', God, through the womb of the 'wisdom of understanding (sapientia contemplativa) in silence'. (NB: Ficino here translates mètra, the womb, as materia). This Man is 'a god and a child of god, the all in all, composed entirely of the powers', that is of all Ideas or Archetypes which have flown forth from God.

Tat then asks again what rebirth is. Hermes answers:

What can I say, my child? I have nothing to tell except this: seeing within me an unfabricated vision that came from the mercy of god, I went out of myself into an immortal body, and now I am not what I was before. I have been born in mind.

In order to reach rebirth the sensory and physical must be entirely eliminated. Hermes says to Tat:

Draw it to you (recurre in te ipsum), and it will come. Wish it, and it happens. Leave the senses of the body idle, and the birth of divinity will begin. Cleanse yourself of the irrational torments of matter.

These torments are twelve in number. The greatest torment is ignorance (agnoia; ignorantia). Then follow grief, incontinence, lust, injustice, greed, deceitfulness, envy, craftiness, rage, irascibility and malice. These torments will disappear 'from one to whom God has shown mercy, and this is the basis of rebirth'. Ten powers of God then take the place of the twelve torments. They are: gnosis, joy, self-control, perseverance, justice, generosity, truthfulness, happines, light and life.

Therefore, whoever through mercy has attained this godly birth and has forsaken bodily sensation recognizes himself as constituted of the intelligibles and rejoices.

Tat, purified of the twelve torments, then experiences rebirth:

Since god has made me tranquil, father, I no longer picture things with the sight of my eyes but with the mental energy that comes through the powers. I am in heaven, in earth, in water, in air; I am in animals and plants; in the womb, before the womb, after the womb; everywhere. [...] Father, I see the universe and I see myself in mind.

In Ficino's translation, 'Eia pater universum video, meque ipsum in mente conspicio'.

The discourse concludes with a hymn, which in Ficino's translation was added to the text without title. In the Greek manuscript which Ficino used the caption was hymnodia, in other Greek manuscripts: hymnodia kryptè, logos d.: 'Esoteric songbook, song 4'.

At the end of the text Hermes commands to keep the 'miracle of rebirth' a secret and not to disclose what has been revealed.


36 Jamblichus. De mysteriis Aegyptiorum [...].
Lyon, Jean de Tournes 1577

Another edition of no 30.

Discourse XIV contains a letter from Hermes to Asclepius, discussing the relationship 'between the Maker and that which is made', that is between God and cosmos. The discourse forms the Epilogue of Ficino's translation. In the Greek manuscript used by Ficino, this discourse was entitled Hermes to Asclepius; in other manuscripts an address is added, wishing Asclepius 'sound intellectual well-being' (eu phronein). According to Scott, this letter belongs to the later hermetica (second or third century).

In the letter to Asclepius Hermes expounds the main issues of what he has discussed with his son Tat, but more profoundly, in a more mystical sense, as Asclepius has already acquired 'greater...learning in the nature of things'.

All phenomena, Hermes writes, have once been begotten or are about to be begotten. Since all that has been begotten has not been begotten out of itself, but out of something or someone else, there must be a Maker who precedes what has been begotten and who himself is unbegotten.

This Maker is the first, because 'In quantity, in magnitude, and in being different than what comes to be, such a one comes first, as also in the continuity of his Making', that is to say in an everlasting emanation.

The Maker reveals himself through his actions in what has been made, 'so assuredly he is seen'. Hermes calls Him God, Maker, or Father, and wonders how he may be known intuitively. He describes this unknown, unknowable one, who expresses himself in what has been created, as:

God [...] because of his power (dynamis; potentia)
Maker (poiètès; factor) because of his actions (energeia; actu)
Father because of his goodness (agathon)

There is nothing else between the Maker and that which he has made, Hermes writes, and implicitly objects to those gnostic systems which postulate all sorts of entities as intermediaries. There is a oneness in difference between God and cosmos:

Thus, if one agrees, that there exist two entities, what comes to be and what makes it, they are one in their unification, an antecedent and a consequent.

There is no evil in God. Hermes objects to the idea of the malicious Demiurge, as for instance adhered to by Jewish gnostics. God brings forth the All, 'and this making is like the body of God'. (In Ficino's translation, 'corpus dei effector'). Unfortunately the progress and evolution of what has been made is coupled with evil, degeneration and corruption. Therefore, God has instituted the 'change' (metabolè; mutatio) that is to say death, which cleanses the soul.

Hermes emphasizes once more that there is no difference between God and the Maker and at the end of his letter uses an image in which the action of God is compared to a farmer sowing seeds and planting fruit trees, 'In the same way, god sows immortality in heaven, change in the earth, life and motion in the universe'. These principles: immortality, change (death), life and motion, form together with God and 'generation' the six principles underlying reality. Hermes thus implicitly objects to the complexity of certain gnostic systems.


37 Jamblichus. De mysteriis Aegyptiorum [...].
Geneva, [Jean de Tournes] 1607

Another edition of no 30.


38 Jamblichus. De mysteriis Aegyptiorum [...]
Lyon, Jean de Tournes 1607

Another edition of no 30.


39 Marsilio Ficino. Opera.
Basel, Heinrich Petri 1561. 2 vols

Collected works of Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499). The first part contains original work, including the Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animorum XVIII comprehensa. In this work, the author refers on a number of occasions to texts of Hermes Trismegistus: 'The cosmos is an image of God' (XI, 4), 'man is a great miracle' (XIII, 2) and 'the soul can fall prey to the evil Demon'. In XIII, 2 he refers to the beginning of Poimandres, where Hermes is in a susceptible state of mind, comparable to sleep, and overpowered by the Nous. Ficino refers to his translation with regard to this passage: 'Hac divinatione polluit Mercurius Trismegistus: quos eius liber de dei potentia et sapientia, e graeca in latinam a nobis translatus ostendit'.

Part one of the collected works naturally includes De vita libri tres, a work which is also interesting from the hermetic point of view. The third part of this work, De vita coelitus comparanda, is nominally an elucidation of a passage from Plotinus' Enneads, but is in fact a commentary on magical passages from the Asclepius.

The second part of Ficino's collected works contains his translations, including the Corpus Hermeticum, with comments by Lefèvre d'Etaples which for a long time were incorrectly attributed to Ficino himself. The Asclepius, which has survived in Latin versions and thus cannot be listed amongst Ficino's translations, was added as a complement. This and other evidence suggests that the editor of the collected works used for the hermetica an edition of Lefèvre d'Etaples which included both the Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius.


40 Marsilio Ficino. Opera.
Basel, Heinrich Petri 1576

Another edition of no 39.


41 Marsilio Ficino. Opera.
Paris, Guillaume Pelé 1641
(The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek)

Another edition of no 39.


42 Symphorien Champier. Liber de quadruplici vita. Theologia Asclepii Hermetis Trismegisti discipuli cum commentariis [...].
Lyon, Jacques Huguetan for Stephan Gueynard 1507

Lazarelli's Latin translation of CH XVI-XVIII [see no 9] - the discourses lacking in Ficino's Greek manuscript - published by Symphorien Champier (ca 1470-1538), a physician practising in Lyon. Champier was a friend and admirer of Lefèvre d'Etaples, who in 1505 published Lazarelli's Crater Hermetis as part of his edition of the Corpus Hermeticum [no 24]. Lazarelli's tutor, Giovanni Mercurio da Coreggio, stayed in Lyon a few years earlier, a fact mentioned by Trithemius in his Annales Hirsaugiensis.

Champier was one of the first to propagate Ficino's works in France. The title of the present book is a clear allusion to Ficino's Liber de vita, otherwise called: De vita libri tres. Champier's attitude towards magic, however, was much more moderate than Ficino's. He thought of an elegant solution for the problem of the magical passages in the Asclepius: these were to have been the interpolations of the translator, the magus Apuleius, and were alien to the original teachings of Hermes Trismegistus.

Although Champier was well-favoured towards the hermetica, he had considerable reservations about alchemy. The Hermes who lent his name to these works had, in his opinion, nothing in common with the author of the Corpus Hermeticum. This insight may be called astonishing for Champier's age.

Ref. Copenhaver; Rice 166-69