by admin » Fri Aug 12, 2022 11:22 pm
Part 2 of 2
[22] “The reverent are not many, in any case, no more than a few whose number in the world can be counted, whence it happens that evil remains in the many because they lack wisdom and knowledge of all the things that are. Scorn for the vices of the whole world — and a cure for those vices — comes from understanding the divine plan upon which all things have been based. But when ignorance and folly persist, all vices thrive and wound the soul with incurable disorders. Tainted and corrupted by them, the soul grows inflamed as if poisoned — except the souls of those who have the sovereign remedy of learning and understanding.”
“Therefore, since my help is only for the few, it will be worthwhile to follow and finish this treatise, which tells why divinity deigned to impart its understanding and learning to humans alone. Hear me, then.”
“God, the father and master, made gods first and then humans, taking equal portions from the more corrupt part of matter and from the divine; thus it happened that the vices of matter remained coupled with bodies, along with other vices caused by the foods and sustenance that we are obliged to share with all living things. Hence it is inevitable that the longings of desire and the other vices of mind sink into human souls. Even though immortality and unaging vigor were wisdom and learning enough for the gods, who were made of nature’s cleanest part and had no need of help from reason and learning, nonetheless, because god’s plan was a unity, he established in eternal law an order of necessity framed in law, which stood in place of learning and understanding lest the gods be detached from them, for among all living things god recognized mankind by the unique reason and learning through which humans could banish and spurn the vices of bodies, and he made them reach for immortality as their hope and intention. In short, god made mankind good and capable of immortality through his two natures, divine and mortal, and so god willed the arrangement whereby mankind was ordained to be better than the gods, who were formed only from the immortal nature, and better than all other mortals as well. Consequently, since he is conjoined to them in kinship, mankind honors the gods with reverent and holy mind; the gods also show concern for all things human and watch over them in faithful affection. [23] But one may say this only of the few people endowed with faithful mind. Of the vice-ridden say nothing, lest we profane this most holy discourse by considering them.”
“And since this discourse proclaims to us the kinship and association between humans and gods, Asclepius, you must recognize mankind’s power and strength. Just as the master and father – or god, to use his most august name – is maker of the heavenly gods, so it is mankind who fashions the temple gods who are content to be near to humans. Not only is mankind glorified; he glorifies as well. He not only advances toward god; he also makes the gods strong. Are you surprised, Asclepius? Surely you do not lack confidence, as the many do.”
“I am confused, Trismegistus, but I gladly agree to what you say, and I find mankind most fortunate to have attained such happiness.”
“Mankind certainly deserves admiration, as the greatest of all beings. All plainly admit that the race of gods sprang from the cleanest part of nature and that their signs are like heads that stand for the whole being. But the figures of gods that humans form have been formed of both natures – from the divine, which is purer and more divine by far, and from the material of which they are built, whose nature falls short of the human – and they represent not only the heads but all the limbs andthe whole body. Always mindful of its nature and origin, humanity persists in imitating divinity, representing its gods in semblance of its own features, just as the father and master made his gods eternal to resemble him.”
[24] “Are you talking about statues, Trismegistus?”
“Statues, Asclepius, yes. See how little trust you have! I mean statues ensouled and conscious, filled with spirit and doing great deeds; statues that foreknow the future and predict it by lots, by prophecy, by dreams and by many other means; statues that make people ill and cure them, bringing them pain and pleasure as each deserves.”
“Do you not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is an image of heaven or, to be more precise, that everything governed and moved in heaven came down to Egypt and was transferred there? If truth were told, our land is the temple of the whole world.”
“And yet, since it befits the wise to know all things in advance, of this you must not remain ignorant: a time will come when it will appear that the Egyptians paid respect to divinity with faithful mind and painstaking reverence – to no purpose. All their holy worship will be disappointed and perish without effect, for divinity will return from earth to heaven, and Egypt will be abandoned. The land that was the seat of reverence will be widowed by the powers and left destitute of their presence. When foreigners occupy the land and territory, not only will reverence fall into neglect but, even harder, a prohibition under penalty prescribed by law (so-called) will be enacted against reverence, fidelity and divine worship. Then this most holy land, seat of shrines and temples, will be filled completely with tombs and corpses.”
“O Egypt, Egypt, of your reverent deeds only stories will survive, and they will be incredible to your children! Only words cut in stone will survive to tell your faithful works, and the Scythian or Indian or some such neighbor barbarian will dwell in Egypt. For divinity goes back to heaven, and all the people will die, deserted, as Egypt will be widowed and deserted by god and human. I call to you, most holy river, and I tell your future: a torrent of blood will fill you to the banks, and you will burst over them; not only will blood pollute your divine waters, it will also make them break out everywhere, and the number of the entombed will be much larger than the living. Whoever survives will be recognized as Egyptian only by his language; in his actions he will seem a foreigner.”
[25] “Asclepius, why do you weep? Egypt herself will be persuaded to deeds much wickeder than these, and she will be steeped in evils far worse. A land once holy, most loving of divinity, by reason of her reverence the only land on earth where the gods settled, she who taught holiness and fidelity will be an example of utter (un)belief. In their weariness the people of that time will find the world nothing to wonder at or to worship. This all – a good thing that never had nor has nor will have its better – will be endangered. People will find it oppressive and scorn it. They will not cherish this entire world, a work of god beyond compare, a glorious construction, a bounty composed of images in multiform variety, a mechanism for god’s will ungrudgingly supporting his work, making a unity of everything that can be honored, praised and finally loved by those who see it, a multiform accumulation taken as a single thing.”
“They will prefer shadows to light, and they will find death more expedient than life. No one will look up to heaven. The reverent will be thought mad, the irreverent wise; the lunatic will be thought brave, and the scoundrel will be taken for a decent person. Soul and all teachings about soul (that soul began as immortal or else expects to attain immortality) as I revealed them to you will be considered not simply laughable but even illusory. But – believe me – whoever dedicates himself to reverence of mind will find himself facing a capital penalty. They will establish new laws, new justice. Nothing holy, nothing reverent nor worthy of heaven or heavenly beings will be heard of or believed in the mind.”
“How mournful when the gods withdraw from mankind! Only the baleful angels remain to mingle with humans, seizing the wretches and driving them to every outrageous crime – war, looting, trickery and all that is contrary to the nature of souls. Then neither will the earth stand firm nor the sea be sailable; stars will not cross heaven nor will the course of the stars stand firm in heaven. Every divine voice will grow mute in enforced silence. The fruits of the earth will rot; the soil will no more be fertile; and the very air will droop in gloomy lethargy.”
[26] “Such will be the old age of the world: irreverence, disorder, disregard for everything good. When all this comes to pass, Asclepius, then the master and father, the god whose power is primary, governor of the first god, will look on this conduct and these willful crimes, and in an act of will – which is god’s benevolence – he will take his stand against the vices and the perversion in everything, righting wrongs, washing away malice in a flood or consuming it in fire or ending it by spreading pestilential disease everywhere. Then he will restore the world to its beauty of old so that the world itself will again seem deserving of worship and wonder, and with constant benedictions and proclamations of praise the people of that time will honor the god who makes and restores so great a work. And this will be the geniture of the world: a reformation of all good things and a restitution, most holy and most reverent, of nature itself, reordered in the course of time (but through an act of will,) which is and was everlasting and without beginning. For god’s will has no beginning; it remains the same, everlasting in its present state. God’s nature is deliberation; will is the supreme goodness.”
“Deliberation (is will), Trismegistus?”
“Will comes to be from deliberation, Asclepius, and the very act of willing comes from will. God wills nothing in excess since he is completely full of all things and wills what he has. He wills all that is good, and he has all that he wills. All things are good that he considers and wills. Such is god, and the world is his image – (good) from good.”
[27] “Good, Trismegistus?”
“Good, Asclepius, as I shall teach you. For just as god dispenses and distributes his bounty – consciousness, soul and life – to all forms and kinds in the world, so the world grants and supplies all that mortals deem good, the succession of seasons, fruits emerging, growing and ripening, and other such things. And thus, seated atop the summit of the highest heaven, god is everywhere and surveys everything all around. For there is a starless place beyond heaven remote from all bodily objects. The one who dispenses (life,) whom we call Jupiter, occupies the place between heaven and earth. But Jupiter Plutonius rules over earth and sea, and it is he who nourishes mortal things that have soul and bear fruit. The powers of these gods invigorate crops, trees and soil, but powers and effects of other gods will be distributed through all things that are. The gods who rule the earth will (withdraw), and they will be stationed in a city founded at Egypt’s farthest border toward the setting sun, where the whole race of mortals will hasten by land and sea.”
“But tell me where these gods of yours are now, Trismegistus?”
“Stationed in the great city on the Libyan mountain. And, for the time being, let that be their story.”
“We must talk now about the immortal and the mortal, for anticipation and fear of death torture the many who do not know the true account of it. Death results from the disintegration of a body worn out with work, after the time has passed when the body’s members fit into a single mechanism with vital functions. The body dies, in fact, when it can no longer support a person’s vital processes. This is death, then: the body’s disintegration and the extinction of bodily consciousness.
Worrying about it is pointless. But there is another problem worth worrying about, though people disregard it out of ignorance or disbelief.”
“What is it that they ignore, Trismegistus, or whose possibility they question?”
[28] “Listen then, Asclepius. When soul withdraws from the body, it passes to the jurisdiction of the chief demon who weighs and judges its merit, and if he finds it faithful and upright, he lets it stay in places suitable to it. But if he sees the soul smeared with the stains of wrongdoing and dirtied with vice, he sends it tumbling down from on high to the depths below and consigns it to the storms and whirlpools of air, fire and water in their ceaseless clashing – its endless punishment to be swept back and forth between heaven and earth in the streams of matter. Then the soul’s bane is its own eternity, for an undying sentence oppresses it with eternal torment. To escape this snare, let us recognize what we must fear, dread and avoid. After they have done wrong, the unbelievers will be forced to believe, not by words but by example, not threats but real suffering of punishment.”
“Is it not human law only that punishes the wrongs that humans do, Trismegistus?”
“In the first place, Asclepius, everything earthly is mortal, as are also those beings that live in a bodily state and fade from life in that same bodily state. They are all subject to penalties for the right or wrong they have done in life, and the penalties after death are more severe in so far as their wrongdoing may have been hidden during life. The divinity foreknows all of it, so one pays the penalty precisely in proportion to one’s wrongdoing.”
[29] “Who deserve the greater penalties, Trismegistus?”
“Those condemned by human laws who lose their lives violently so that they seem to have been penalized deservedly and not to have paid their debt to nature with a soul. On the other hand, the upright person’s defence lies in reverence for god and supreme fidelity. God protects such people from all evils. For the father and master of all, who alone is all, shows himself freely to all – not where as in a place nor how as through some quality nor how much as in a quantity but by illuminating people with the understanding that comes only through mind. And when the shadows of error have been scattered from a person’s soul and he has perceived the light of truth, he couples himself with divine understanding in his whole consciousness, and when his love of it has freed him from the part of nature that makes him mortal, he conceives confidence in immortality to come. This is what will separate the good from the wicked. When he has seen the light of reason as if with his eyes, every good person is enlightened by fidelity, reverence, wisdom, worship and respect for god, and the confidence of his belief puts him as far from humanity as the sun outshines the stars. In fact, the sun illuminates the other stars not so much by the intensity of its light as by its divinity and holiness. The sun is indeed a second god, Asclepius, believe it, governing all things and shedding light on all that are in the world, ensouled and soulless.”
“For if the world was and is and will be a living thing that lives forever, nothing in the world is mortal. Since each part of it, as such in its actual state, lives forever and also lives in a world which is itself a single living thing that lives forever, there is no place in it for mortality, so if the world must always live, the world must be completely full of life and eternity. Just as the world is everlasting, then, so the sun is ever the governor of things that have life and of all their power to live, dispensing and continuing it. Hence, god is the everlasting governor of things living in the world and of those that have life, and he dispenses this life eternally. He dispensed it all at once, however: life is supplied by eternal law to all that have it, in the way that I shall describe.”
[30] “Eternity’s lifegiving power stirs the world, and the place of the world is in living eternity itself; since everlasting life hedges it about and, in a manner of speaking, holds it together, the world will never stop moving nor be destroyed.
The world itself dispenses life to everything in it, and it is the place of all things governed under the sun. The world’s motion is a twofold activity: eternity enlivens the world from without, and the world enlivens all within it, dispersing them all according to numbers and times fixed and appointed by the action of the sun and the movements of the stars, the whole chronological scheme framed in divine law. On earth one tells time by the quality of the air and the change of hot seasons and cold, but in heaven time runs by the return of the coursing stars to the same places in chronological cycles. The world is time’s receptacle; the cycling and stirring of time invigorate it. Yet time works by orderly rule: order and time cause the renewal of everything in the world through alternation.
Nothing in this situation is stable, nothing fixed, nothing immobile among things that come to be in heaven and earth: the lone exception is god, and rightly he alone, for he is whole, full and perfect in himself and by himself and about himself. He is his own steadfast stability, and no external impulse can move him from his place since everything is in him and he alone in everything – unless one ventures to say that his motion is in eternity. But eternity, toward which all the stirring of time recedes and from which all the stirring of time takes its rise, is itself immobile.”
[31] “Therefore, god has (always) been stable, and eternity likewise has always stood still along with him, holding within it a world that had not come to be, the one we correctly call sensible. This sensible world, which imitates eternity, was made in the image of that god. Though it always stirs, time in its own way still has the power and character of stability by the very necessity of recurring upon itself. Thus, although eternity is stable, immobile and fixed, yet because the stirring of time (which moves) always comes back to eternity and because the movement turns in a temporal pattern, it happens that eternity (which in itself does not move) seems to be stirred through the time in which it is, and it is in time that all the stirring goes on. So it happens that eternity’s stability is moved and that time’s mobility becomes stable by the fixed law of its cycle. Thus may one also believe that god stirs within himself – but in the same immobility, for because of its immensity the stirring of his stability is in fact immobile. The law of immensity itself is immobile. This being, then, which is not of a kind to be accessible to the senses, lies beyond limitation, comprehension and calculation. It cannot be carried or fetched or hunted down. Where it is, whither it goes, whence it came, how it acts, what it is – uncertain. It carries on in exalted stability, and its stability acts within it: god, eternity, both, one in the other or both in both. Consequently, eternity has no limitation within time. But time, granted that it can be limited by number or alternation or periodic return through recurrence, is eternal.
Both are infinite, then; both seem eternal. For stability, firmly fixed to sustain the things that can be stirred, rightly takes first place owing to its steadfastness.”
[32] “The beginnings of everything, then, are god and eternity. But because it is mobile the world does not hold first place; mobility exceeds stability in it even though, conforming to the law that keeps it ever stirring, it has a steadfastness free of motion.”
“The total consciousness that resembles divinity, immobile in itself, moves itself in its own stability. It is holy, uncorrupted, everlasting and whatever one can say better of it – if anything can be better than the eternity of the supreme god that rests in truth itself – completely full of all sensible forms and of the whole ordering, resting, so to speak, with god. The world’s consciousness is the receptacle of all sensible forms and orderings. But to be mindful of all that it has done, human (consciousness depends on) memory’s tenacity. In its descent, the divinity of consciousness reaches down only as far as the human animal, for the supreme god did not want the divine consciousness to mingle with every living thing. He did not want it to be ashamed from coupling with the other living things. The understanding of human consciousness, what it is and how great it is, comes entirely from memory of past events. (Because of his tenacity of memory, he was even made governor of earth.) The understanding of nature, however, and the quality of the world’s consciousness can be fully perceived from all the things in the world that sense can detect. Eternity’s understanding, which comes next, is a consciousness gained from the sensible world, from which its quality can be discerned. But the quality of consciousness in the supreme god and the understanding of that quality is truth alone. Not a shadow, not even the faintest trace of this truth can be discerned in the world, for there is falsehood wherever one discerns anything by measuring time, and where there is geniture one finds error.”
“So you see the depth of the subjects we deal with, Asclepius, and what we venture to achieve. But to you, supreme god, I give thanks for enlightening me with the light by which divinity can be seen. And you, Tat and Asclepius and Hammon, hide these divine mysteries among the secrets of your heart and shield them with silence.”
“Understanding differs from consciousness in this, however: that our understanding comes to understand and discern the quality of the consciousness of the world by concentrating the mind, while the world’s understanding comes to know eternity and the gods who are above the world. And thus it comes about that we humans see the things that are in heaven as if through a mist, to the extent that we can, given the condition of human consciousness. When it comes to seeing great things, our concentration is quite confined, but once it has seen, the happiness of our awareness is vast.”
[33] “On the void that so many consider an important topic now, I hold the following: there is no such thing as a void, nor can there have been, nor will there ever be. For all the members of the world are completely full so that the world itself is complete and filled with bodies diverse in quality and form, each having its own shape and size. Some are larger than others, some smaller, and they differ in density and rarity. The denser, like the larger, are easier to see, but the smaller and rarer are very difficult or altogether impossible to see, and we can detect them only by touch. Hence, many believe that these are not bodies and that they are empty places – which is impossible.
For just as that which is said to be `beyond the world’ (if there is any such thing, I do not believe that (it is void)) is full of intelligible things resembling it in divinity, as
I take it, so also is this world that we call `sensible’ completely full of bodies and living things that conform to its nature and quality. We do not see them all in their true aspects, but some as far too large, others as much too tiny; they look like this to us either because they are far away from us or because our eyes have gone bad. Or else, because they are so very tiny, many believe that they do not exist at all. (I am speaking now of the demons who always stay near us, so I believe, and the heroes who dwell between the purest part of the air above us and the place where there are no fogs or clouds or disturbance from the stirring of the signs.) Consequently, Asclepius, you are to call nothing `void’ unless you mean to say that what you call `void’ is `void-of’ something – void of fire or void of water and so on. Thus, though one may see something that can be void of such things as these, in no event can it be empty of spirit and air, no matter how small or large the thing that seems void.”
[34] “One must say the same about place, which lacks meaning as a term in isolation. For the evidence of place is from that whose place it is; indeed, take away this most important feature, and you truncate the sense of the word. This is why we may speak correctly of the place of water, the place of fire, and so on. Just as it is impossible for anything to be void, so the meaning of place in isolation is indiscernible. If you assume a place apart from that of which it is the place, it would seem to be an empty place, which, I believe, cannot exist in the world. If nothing is void, it is also evident that nothing is place as such, except as you add visible marks to it – length, breadth, height – as you would to human bodies.”
“Asclepius and the rest of you here: given these conditions, know that the intelligible world, discernible only through mind’s intuition, is incorporeal and that nothing corporeal can be combined with its nature, nothing discernible by quality, quantity and number, for there is no such thing in it.”
“The world called `sensible’ is the receptacle of all the sensible forms or qualities of bodies, none of which can be invigorated without god. For god is everything; everything comes from him; everything depends on his will. And the whole of it is good, fair, wise, inimitable, to god alone sensible and intelligible. Without god there was nothing, nor is, nor will be, for all things are from him, in him and through him: qualities multiform and various, great quantities, all immeasurable magnitudes and omniform forms. If you come to understand them, Asclepius, you will thank god. And if you consider the whole, you will learn that thesensible world itself and all it contains are in truth covered over by that higher world as if by a garment.”
[35] “Each kind of living thing, Asclepius, no matter whether mortal or immortal, rational (or irrational), whether ensouled or soulless, every one has the appearance of its kind in keeping with its relation to the kind. And although each kind of living thing possesses the whole form of its kind, within that same form each of them differs from the other: for example, although man-kind is one in form, so that a human can be distinguished on sight, each person within the same form differs from the others. For the class is divine and incorporeal, as is anything apprehended by the mind. Therefore, since these two components that make up forms are bodies (and) the non-bodily, it is impossible for any form to come to be in close similarity with another at distant points of time and latitude. The forms change as often as the hour has moments in the turning circle where the god resides whom we have called Omniform. The class persists, begetting copies of itself as often, as many and as diverse as the rotation of the world has moments. As it rotates the world changes, but the class neither changes nor rotates. Thus, the forms of each kind persist, though within the same form there are differences.”
[36] “And does the world change its form, Trismegistus?”
“You see, Asclepius: it is as if I had been telling you all this in your sleep. What is the world, really? Of what does it consist if not of all the things that have come to be? What you mean to ask about, then, is heaven, earth and the elements. What else changes its form more continually? Heaven becomes wet or dry, cold or hot, clear or foul; these forms keep changing into one another under the one form of heaven. Earth is always undergoing many transformations in form as it begets its fruits, as it promotes the growth of what it has begotten, and as it produces the various qualities and different quantities of all its fruits, their stages or courses of growth, and especially the qualities, odors, tastes and forms of trees, flowers and shrubs. Fire causes many alterations that are divine. Indeed, the appearances of sun and moon are omniform, rather like our mirrors that reproduce likenesses through reflections comparable in brilliance. [37] But now enough has been said of such things.”
“Let us turn again to mankind and reason, that divine gift whereby a human is called a rational animal. What we have said of mankind is wondrous, but less wondrous than this: it exceeds the wonderment of all wonders that humans have been able to discover the divine nature and how to make it. Our ancestors once erred gravely on the theory of divinity; they were unbelieving and inattentive to worship and reverence for god. But then they discovered the art of making gods. To their discovery they added a conformable power arising from the nature of matter. Because they could not make souls, they mixed this power in and called up the souls of demons or angels and implanted them in likenesses through holy and divine mysteries, whence the idols could have the power to do good and evil.”
“Take your ancestor, for example: he was the first to discover medicine, Asclepius. They dedicated a temple to him on the Libyan mountain near the shore of the crocodiles. There lies his material person – his body, in other words. The rest, or rather, the whole of him (if the whole person consists in consciousness of life) went back happier to heaven. Even now he still provides help to sick people by his divine power, as he used to offer it through the art of medicine. And Hermes, whose family name I bear, does he not dwell in his native city that was named for him, where mortals come from all around for his aid and protection? Isis, wife of Osiris: we know how much good she can do when well disposed, when angered how much harm! Anger comes easily to earthly and material gods because humans have made and assembled them from both natures. Whence it happens that these are called holy animals by the Egyptians, who throughout their cities worship the souls of those deified while alive, in order that cities might go on living by their laws and calling themselves by their names. For this reason, Asclepius, because what one group worships and honors another group treats differently, Egypt’s cities constantly assail one another in war.”
[38] “And the quality of these gods who are considered earthly – what sort of thing is it, Trismegistus?”
“It comes from a mixture of plants, stones and spices, Asclepius, that have in them a natural power of divinity. And this is why those gods are entertained with constant sacrifices, with hymns, praises and sweet sounds in tune with heaven’s harmony: so that the heavenly ingredient enticed into the idol by constant communication with heaven may gladly endure its long stay among humankind. Thus does man fashion his gods.”
“Do not suppose that these earthly gods act aimlessly, Asclepius. Heavenly gods inhabit heaven’s heights, each one heading up the order assigned to him and watching over it. But here below our gods render aid to humans as if through loving kinship, looking after some things individually, foretelling some things through lots and divination, and planning ahead to give help by other means, each in his own way.”
[39] “Then what part of the plan belongs to Heimarmen? or the Fates, Trismegistus? The heavenly gods rule universals, but singulars belong to the earthly gods – correct?”
“What we call Heimarmen?, Asclepius, is the necessity in all events, which are always bound to one another by links that form a chain. She is the maker of everything, then, or else the supreme god, or the second god made by the supreme god, or the ordering of all things in heaven and earth made steadfast by divine laws. Therefore, this Heimarmen? and Necessity are bound to one another by an unbreakable glue, and, of the two, Heimarmen? comes first, begetting the sources of all things, but the things that depend on her beginning them are forced into activity by Necessity. What follows them both is Order, the structure and temporal arrangement of the things that must be brought about. For without the fitting together of an order, there is nothing, and in everything the world’s order is complete. Order is the vehicle of the world itself, and the whole consists of order.”
[40] “These three, then – Heimarmenê, Necessity and Order – are in the very fullest sense the products of god’s assent, who governs the world by his own law and divine plan, and god has barred them altogether from every act of willing or willing-not. Not disturbed by anger nor swayed by kindness, they subject themselves to the necessity of the eternal plan. And the plan is eternity itself: irresistible, immovable, indestructible.
First comes Heimarmen?, then, who provides progeny enough for all to come with the seed she has sown, as it were, and Necessity follows, forcing them all into activity by compulsion. Order comes third to preserve the structure of the things that Heimarmen? and Necessity arrange. This is eternity, then, which can neither begin to be nor cease being, which turns round and round in everlasting motion under the fixed and unchanging law of its cycle, its parts rising and falling time and again so that as time changes the same parts that had fallen rise anew. Circularity gives the turning a pattern that crowds everything together so that you cannot know where the turning starts (assuming that it starts) since everything always seems to follow and also to precede itself. But accident and chance are also mixed into everything material in the world.”
“I have told you everything that a human being could say, with god’s willingness and permission. Blessing god and praying, it remains for us only to return to the care of the body. We have dealt enough with theology, and we souls have eaten our fill, so to speak.”
[41] As they left the sanctuary, they began praying to god and turning to the south (for when someone wants to entreat god at sunset, he should direct his gaze to that quarter, and likewise at sunrise toward the direction they call east), and they were already saying their prayer when in a hushed voice Asclepius asked: “Tat, do you think we should suggest that your father tell them to add frankincense and spices as we pray to god?”
When Trismegistus heard him, he was disturbed and said: “A bad omen, Asclepius, very bad. To burn incense and such stuff when you entreat god smacks of sacrilege. For he wants nothing who is himself all things or in whom all things are. Rather let us worship him by giving thanks, for god finds mortal gratitude to be the best incense.”
“We thank you, supreme and most high god, by whose grace alone we have attained the light of your knowledge; holy name that must be honored, the one name by which our ancestral faith blesses god alone, we thank you who deign to grant to all a father’s fidelity, reverence and love, along with any power that is sweeter, by giving us the gift of consciousness, reason and understanding: consciousness, by which we may know you; reason, by which we may seek you in our dim suppositions; knowledge, by which we may rejoice in knowing you.
And we who are saved by your power do indeed rejoice because you have shown yourself to us wholly. We rejoice that you have deigned to make us gods for eternity even while we depend on the body. For this is mankind’s only means of giving thanks: knowledge of your majesty.
We have known you, the vast light perceived only by reason.
We have understood you, true life of life, the womb pregnant with all coming-to-be.
We have known you, who persist eternally by conceiving all comingto-be in its perfect fullness.
Worshipping with this entire prayer the good of your goodness, we ask only this, that you wish us to persist in the love of your knowledge and that we never be cut off from such a life as this.”
“With such hopes we turn to a pure meal that includes no living thing.”