THE DIVINE PYMANDER v0.4

BACKGROUND

• This text has been translated all to hell and back. Started as Arabic, translated to Greek, then to Latin, then to Dutch, then to English
• Modern translations try to go from the arabic to english
• I am working from the Mead Translation
• Apparently Pymander means “The Witness”

https://www.curezone.org/upload/PDF/tatuoscuro666/Hermetica_G_R_S_Mead.pdf

https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-jcWLRBnyXg-DUcMH/The%20Corpus%20Hermeticum_djvu.txt

https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th2/index.htm

HIS FIRST BOOK

• Divinely inspired
• The ultimate end goal is Apotheosis
• “For first it must be a war against itself”
• “Forsake the body before the end”
• Huge list of “Heads” or summaries of concepts that will be dealt with later
• Lines 14-79 are Heads like:
• Every essence is immortal
• Evry essence is unchangeable
• Everything that is, is double
• God is Good; Man is evil
• Good is voluntary, or of its own accord
• Evil is involuntary, or against its will
• The Generation of Man is corruption; The corruption of Man is the beginning of Generation
• Operations or Workings are not carried upwards, but descend downwards.
• Of things that re, some re in bodies, some in their IDEAS
• The Wizard Autism is showing here hell yeah
• Avoid all conversation with the multitude or common people; for i wouldn not hve thee subject to envy, much less to be ridiculous unto the Many.
• I am not going to include all the Heads there are so many.
• Basically says “not everyone will understand, and many will use this for evil”

THE POEMANDER

• I was sleeping and saw a huge dude whisper to me
• “What wouldst thou hear and see?”
• “I am Poemander (The Shepherd of men) Mind of all-masterhood; I know what thou desirest and I'm with thee everywhere”
• Poemander gives us visions and is like “do u get it bro”
• “I am that Light, The Mind, thy God, who am before that moist nature that appeared out of darkness; and that bright and lightful Word from the mind is the Son of God”
• “Fire is comprehended or contained in, or by a great moist Power, and constrained to keep its station”
• “For the mind eing God, Male and Female, Life and Light, brought forth by his Word another Mind or Workman which being God of the Fire, and the Spirit, fashioned and formed sven other governors, wich in their circles contain the Sensible World, whose government and disposition is called Fate or Destiny”
• Hello Gnosticism nice to see you
• Theres a fun little exchange where Trism. Interrupts poemander who goes “dude stfu” and Trism replies
• “Behold, I am silent.”
• “And therefore being above all Harmony, he is made and become a servant to Harmony, he is Hermaphoridite, or Male and Female, and watchful, he is governed by and subjected to a Father, that is both Male and Female, and watchful.”
• “When he had thus said, Providence by FAte of Harmony, made the mixtures and established the Generations, and all things were multiplied according to their own kind. And he that knew himself came at length to the Supersubstantial of every way substantial good.”
• Basically, this is sorta Divine Clockmaker Deism.
• Theres a lot of depicting the suffering body as something inherently evil and dirty, something to be escaped.
• The magic here comes out to a sort of extremely advanced alchemical purification ritual
• “The senses of the body return to their font, being parts and again made up into Operations”
• To the first zone, it giventh the power it had of increasing and diminishing
• To the second, plotting and evil
• To the third, the idel deceit of Concupiscence. (lust)
• To the fourth, the desire of Rule
• To the fifth, profane boldness
• To the sixth, evil and ineffectual occasion of riches
• To the seventh, subtle falsehood, always lying in wait
• Ridding yourself of these allows one to reach the 8th state, oneness with god
• Poemander leaves like “go tell people about immortality”
• Trism. “ok”

THE THIRD BOOK THE HOLY SERMON, fragmented

• For there were in the Chaos an infinite darkness in the Abyss or bottomless Depth, and Water and a subtle in Spirit intelligible in Powerl and there went out the Holy Light, and the elements were coagulated from the sand out of the moist substance.
• Almost a daoist conception of the world here. A hierarchy with darkness at the bottom and light at the top.
• Trism shows us the world being created
• God
• The Mind
• Chaos and the abyss
• The physical world
• Nature
• Heaven
• “And the gds were seen in their Ideas of the Stars, with all their signs and the stars were numbered with the gods in them.”
• Animals
• Men
• The Soul
• The world was set in motion

THE FOURTH BOOK, CALLED THE KEY

• This is basically describing the Hermetic idea of “The Soul moves, the Body follows.”
• “The knowledge of god is a Divine Silence”
• “For it is possible for the soul, ,O son, to be deified while yet it lodgeth in the Body of Man, if it contemplates the beauty of the good.”
• “The Wickedness of a soul is Ignorance; for the soul that knows nothing of the things that are, neither the nature of them, nor that which is good, but is blinded, rusheth and dasheth against the bodily passions; and unhappy as it is, and not knowing itself, it serveth strange bodies and evil ones, carrying the Body as a burden, and not ruling but ruled: And this is the mischief of the soul.”
• Basically, ignorance makes a man live a venal life
• The virtue of the soul is Knowledge.
• “Knowledge is the gift of god; for all knowledge is bodily, but useth the mind as an instrument as the Mind useth the Body.”
• Therefore, the soul is made of Intelligible and Material things
• “What about god?”
• God is immaterial
• “The whole is a living wight, and therefore consisteth of material and intellectual.”
• Now thats interesting, the comparison of the world to a living corpse.
• Man is evil because he is mortal. The world is not evil because it is immortal.
• Idk that feels like it contradicts how Trism talks about the world, he clearly finds it a fascinating but sinful place, perhaps because of man?
• Actually, Trism seems to claim that changeability makes something evil in the sense that because something can be changed, it has the CAPACITY for evil.
• Therefore the world is not evil because it does not change?
• “The soul was the clothing of the Mind, and the Body of the Soul.”
• The body is Earthly
• The soul is Firey
• The mind is Fog, of both Air and Water
• The relationship between the Mind / Body / Soul here is interesting. The three categories kinda blend into each other. Trism talks about them as partners who need each other but also flow into each other.
• Trism conceptualizes the Mind as a sort of insulator that protects the body from the intense glory of the soul, but also the soul from being snuffed out by the earthy body.
• “The strife of piety is to know god and injure no man, and in this way it becomes the mind.”
• “When therefore the mind is Separated and departed from the Earthly Body presently it puts on its Firey Coat which it could not do when dwelling in the earthly body.”
• Weve got another hierarchy
• The beams of god are operations and the beams of the world are natures and the beams of man are arts and sciences
• All things are governed by the World and Man; but the World and Man are governed by god.

THE FIFTH BOOK - That god is not manifest and yet most manifest

• Seems to be dealing with the material nature of god. We’ve got the words Manifest and Apparent: Able to be perceived.
• Manifest: Is physical, can be touched
• God is unapparent and unmanifest, but generates all things, and is apparent in its manifestation
• Hes making the watchmaker argument.
• This entire chapter is a watchmaker argument

THE SIXTH BOOK - That in god alone is Good.

• GOD, O ASCLEPIUS, is in nothing but in God alone, or rather God himself is the Good always.
• “For in all things that re made or generated, are full of passion, Generation itself being a passion; and where Passion is, there is not the Good; where the Good is, there is no Passion; where it is day, it is not Nightl where it is night is is not day.”
• “It is impossible therefore that the Good should be here pure from Evil; for here the Good groweth Evil, and growing Evil, it doth not still abide Good, and not abiding good, it becomes Evil”
• Alright got some moral nuance here keep going
• “For all things that are subject to the eye are Idols and as it were Shadows; but those things that are not subject to the eye, are ever, especially the Essence of the Fair and the Good.”
• “And as the eye cannot see God, so neither the Fair and Good”
• Basically, everything can lie to you. Love has no color, you can’t see it. It must be known.
• “Such, O Asclepius, are the good and fair things of Men, which we can neither love nor hate; for this is the hardest thing of all, that we have need of them, and cannot live without them.”
• Awh. That’s genuinely really sweet.

THE SEVENTH BOOK - His Secret Sermon in the Mount of REgeneration, and the Profession of Silence

• “No man can be saved before Regeneration”
• “Of what seed is man born?”
• “This wisdom is to be understood in Silence, and the seed is the true Good.”
• Trismethius is asking what Herme’s nature is in relation to man, Hermes is saying Occult riddles.
• Oh okay this is genuine esoterica
• “Thou has driven me, O Father, into no small fury and distraction of mind, for I do not now see myself”
• Same bud
• Tat: Who is the Author and Maker of Regeneration?
• Hermes: “THe Child of God, one Man by the Will of God.”
• Hes doing a whole “You are the master of your own destiny” thing with an occult twist thats fun
• Herm (23) Gives us an actual riddle now
• Basically he says transcendence requires a purging of sinful Tormentors
• He names 12: Wrath, Sorrow, Ignorance, Envy, etc
• As antidote, he names 12 virtues and links them to the zodiac
• “As Pymander said by way of Oracle to the Octonary”
• I think this is a reference to Psalm 119

THE SECRET SONG

• This is basically “Big thanks to god for the world”

THE EIGHTH BOOK - The greatest evil in man is the not knowing god.

• Oh wow this is really short
• Its basically “hey being ignorant is cringe come know god”

THE NINTH BOOK - A universal Sermon to Asclepius

• Bitch you wrote this you dont get sermons
• Why are you calling this a sermon, this is a dialogue
• Hes kinda describing newtons 2nd law, kinda
• Huh hes kinda describing normal force kinda
• Okay okay hes observing natural laws and attributing them to a sort of universal animism.
• “An empty barrel is not empty, for it is full of air and spirit”
• Asclepius asks “okay but what does that make god?”
• Herm responds: “God isnt a mind, but the closest thing we can understand them as having is a mind. God is not a spirit, but acts upon the world like a spirit. God is not light, but the Cause that light is.”
• Kind of a topic change here
• He basically says God is Good and only God is Good
• Also god is called the father so you better have kids
• Lots of really long sections to say very simple things

THE TENTH BOOK - The Mind to Hermes

• Back off the moral philosophy and back into cosmology
• This is notably less intimate
• Oh we are getting into AEonology here
• “For all things are full of Light, but the Fire is nowhere”
• “How then are mortal Whights other from immortal?” (74)
• There is so much gnostic context being stripped here in favor of bland christianity
• “As man cannot live without life, God cannot live without doing good”
• Author compares Life to Motion
• If the soul moves, and the body follows, it follows that a lack of motion is death
• Wait hold up
• “And judge of this by thyself , command thy Soul to go into india, and sooner than thou cans’t bid it, it will be there”
• What
• Oh lord its a reference to Apollonius of Tyana
• Can this even be called Orientalism?
• Comparisons of understanding to freedom
•