Poimandres (Corpus Hermeticum)

Discussion on literature other than by the Star of Azazel.
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Beshiira
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Re: Poimandres (Corpus Hermeticum)

Post by Beshiira »

Hermes Trismegistus wrote:13. And when he gazed upon what the Enformer had created in the Father, [Man] too wished to enform; and [so] assent was given him by the Father.

Changing his state to the formative sphere, in that he was to have his whole authority, he gazed upon his Brother's creatures. They fell in love with him, and gave him each a share of his own ordering.

And after that he had well learned their essence and had become a sharer in their nature, he had a mind to break right through the Boundary of their spheres, and to subdue the might of that which pressed upon the Fire.

I see this as a depiction or summary of the human being as the magician. Something rises from among all creation, something with a stronger, distinct vision and will, the Man, and the Father permits him/her to take part in creation as a conscious force.

The ”Brothers” here are said to be seven in number in the Everard translation (not so surprisingly...). They all give the Man ”a share of their ordering”; they all take part in what will become the Work of the Man. I guess you could say that they all come together in the human being, and the human being becomes a tool for all of them to act together in the world, in manifestation, in creation - and in the physical reality. The human pentagram once again comes clearly to mind; or the Man as the cross between worlds, the Man into whose heart all the forces are gathered.

The last part in my mind has a very Satanic/Luciferian/LHP tone. Via the Great Work the human being eventually ”breaks through the spheres” and becomes a new kind of a ”god”, ultimately perhaps a God greater than God (cf. ”In caelum conscendam super astra Dei” = ”I will ascend into heaven, above the stars of God”, Isaiah 14:13 & SoA's Hymn to the Son of Dawn).

Or, as one might also say, this is how God him-/herself does the Great Work, this is how God breaks through the spheres with the help of the Man; a ”task” that would be impossible without the human being who starts from the lowest point of ”reasonless matter” and makes an incredible journey back to the realms of spirit – and beyond. An idea came from this: the human being as the "Image of God" could be seen also as "The ultimate Other in God's perspective". And God grows as the human being grows, and thus the boundaries He once set are transcended. Hail Satan!
"Ja kun minun kirkkauteni kulkee ohitse, asetan minä sinut kallion rotkoon ja peitän sinut kädelläni, kunnes olen kulkenut ohi.
Kun minä sitten siirrän pois käteni, näet sinä minun selkäpuoleni; mutta minun kasvojani ei voi kenkään katsoa."
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Re: Poimandres (Corpus Hermeticum)

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Hermes Trismegistus wrote:and to subdue the might of that which pressed upon the Fire.
The verb 'subdue' in this translation reminded me once again how we are looking at the details of what have been previously said, where the fire was subdued "by a most mighty Power". I'll try to make my interpretation under this assumption.

Poimandres wrote:"And after the man had observed what the craftsman had created with the father's help, he also wished to make some craftwork, and the father agreed to this."

I think we are talking about a whole new level of existence in the "hierarchy" of beings. The divine man, embodying the seven brothers, still exists within the divine realm. 'The middle-earth', or the world as we human beings experience it, did not exist as such but in essence of the brothers and the potential of the divine man.


Poimandres wrote:"Entering the craftsman's sphere, where he was to have all authority, the man observed his brother's craftworks; the governors loved the man, and each gave a share of his own order."

I've tried to keep to the idea that the craftsman's sphere is strictly related to the sphere of fire and the elemental entities of fire crucial to the process of "crafting" out the manifested world. Then the governors would be the ruling entities of the seven brothers within the realm of fire, corresponding to each of the brothers, one in essence, part of the hierarchy of these spirits.

Poimandres wrote:"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."

The divine man finally breaking from the divine realm to a creation of it's own, which is the "middle-earth", the human experience. "To observe the rule of the one given power over the fire", seems to suggest the divine man changes in the process, it is a different being, a different spirit in it's hierarchy, who enters the sphere of the craftsman, and the one who wields the fire in to a sphere of it's own. For example, these spirits can be observed through the seven brothers. Lucifer showing up quite clearly amongst them when thinking about breaking in to a sphere of it's own from the divine realm. And the realm of fire is wherefrome Prometheus came carrying the fire of the gods.

To come back to the first quote, I assume the subduing of the fire relates to the process where the divine man shares and learns the essence and nature of the brothers. Gathering them as a one whole. The fire is playful, and whimsical, which is hard to "subdue". It is through love rather than by force the divine man learned the craft of the governors and was loved back.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: Poimandres (Corpus Hermeticum)

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Hermes Trismegistus wrote:14. So he who hath the whole authority o'er [all] the mortals in the cosmos and o'er its lives irrational, bent his face downwards through the Harmony, breaking right through its strength, and showed to downward Nature God's fair form.

And when she saw that Form of beauty which can never satiate, and him who [now] possessed within himself each single energy of [all seven] Rulers as well as God's own Form, she smiled with love; for 'twas as though she'd seen the image of Man's fairest form upon her Water, his shadow on her Earth.

He in turn beholding the form like to himself, existing in her, in her Water, loved it and willed to live in it; and with the will came act, and [so] he vivified the form devoid of reason.

And Nature took the object of her love and wound herself completely around him, and they were intermingled, for they were lovers.

This verse seems like an elaboration of what has been said previously. Is ”he” here the Man or God; I guess it could be interpreted in both ways. Anyway, ”he” ”bending his face downwards through the Harmony” etc. again speaks of the descending movement that then makes ascension possible.

”...for 'twas as though she'd seen the image of Man's fairest form upon her Water”; it's as if Nature herself looks at her own reflection in water, and ”sees that it is good”. Through the eyes of the Man, that is. Also, what can directly be seen here ”on her Earth” is the Man's reflection and shadow, not the guy himself in essence. This is noteworthy.

The next part seems like the same thing from a different point of view; the Man sees himself in Nature – as Nature basically. Then he starts to act, and the first steps (of the whole ”reasonless” world, together with the Man) back towards divinity begin. The Man (that is ultimately God) and The Nature (here feminine; also ultimately God) become intermingled, and they start their ascending process together as lovers. This is as tantric as it gets.
"Ja kun minun kirkkauteni kulkee ohitse, asetan minä sinut kallion rotkoon ja peitän sinut kädelläni, kunnes olen kulkenut ohi.
Kun minä sitten siirrän pois käteni, näet sinä minun selkäpuoleni; mutta minun kasvojani ei voi kenkään katsoa."
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Re: Poimandres (Corpus Hermeticum)

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Hermes Trismegistus wrote:15. And this is why beyond all creatures on the earth man is twofold; mortal because of body, but because of the essential man immortal.

Though deathless and possessed of sway o'er all, yet doth he suffer as a mortal doth, subject to Fate.

Thus though above the Harmony, within the Harmony he hath become a slave. Though male-female, as from a Father male-female, and though he's sleepless from a sleepless [Sire], yet is he overcome [by sleep].

This verse stresses again the metaphysical duality of the human being. Might seem repetitive, but then again; it is a crucial – if not in a way the most crucial – point of occult worldview. The role and purpose of the Man in all of this. The ”human pentagram” or the ”human on the cross” etc., being between the worlds; it is something quite hard to truly grasp in a living manner, and then act accordingly in one's personal life. Thus it does make sense to stress this.

”Though deathless and possessed of sway o'er all, yet doth he suffer as a mortal doth, subject to Fate.” A few years ago I got this idea: What unites us (people in general) with Christ; what is it that is common between both us and Christ – Death. And thus, ours is also the Eternal Life. How miraculous is that!

”Though male-female, as from a Father male-female”; people come in all sorts of outer forms, as ”Father” also encompasses all the forms (and thus, each of us encompasses all the forms as well in a way, and we are all brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers). This realization of essential unity makes it utterly absurd to see anyone ”higher” or ”lower” than someone else, based on some outer differences etc. (Ultimately that is; I'm not trying to say that I would be somehow immune to such idiocy myself either on many occasions. Anyway, in practice the idea of universal brotherhood is a very good guiding star.) The underlying male-female polarity can of course be seen as a ”basic duality” behind all the more defined forms, but in esoteric context I tend to think that this sort of duality (and all gender-based symbolism in general) doesn't necessarily have much to do with whatever genders people ”in the world” identify themselves with (or don't for that matter). The talk of the Man and the Woman in this sort of a context is a bit like when we talk about our ”higher selves” and such; we don't actually talk so much about physical or ”visible” things to begin with, but much stranger phenomena that are also much harder to verbalize. Some sorts of ”fundamental building blocks of the soul” anyway, I guess you could say.

”...though he's sleepless from a sleepless [Sire], yet is he overcome [by sleep].” As I've said elsewhere too, I've found ”being asleep vs. being awake” a very accurate way to describe mental/spiritual state (my own in practice more than anything, basically). It feels intuitively very correct that deeply material life (in the metaphysical sense) can be called a state of sleep, whereas being aware of the reality of Spirit can be called being awake. Then again, it could be also argued that dwelling one-sidedly in any one of these two can be seen as sleep, and being awake happens only when we realize the essence of both; or in other words, their unity.
"Ja kun minun kirkkauteni kulkee ohitse, asetan minä sinut kallion rotkoon ja peitän sinut kädelläni, kunnes olen kulkenut ohi.
Kun minä sitten siirrän pois käteni, näet sinä minun selkäpuoleni; mutta minun kasvojani ei voi kenkään katsoa."
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Re: Poimandres (Corpus Hermeticum)

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I'll try to catch on before Thursday. Here's my take on the verse of latter half of last week.
Poimandres wrote:"Having all authority over the cosmos of mortals and unreasoning animals, the man broke thruogh the vault and stooped to look through the cosmic framework, thus displaying to lower nature the fair form of god."
Again, this is the divine man who has differentiated the five elements in to distinct tools. It's gender polarities was divided in to two as the heavier elements needed to stay on their own side according to their nautre, while the lighter elements rose up. Thus the heavens and the earth were created, the dualism of spirit and matter, male-female, the friction of which casts out the illusion of the sensory world through the senses corresponding to the seven heavenly powers (five of which most of us has gained, while two are still mostly seedlings within us). After the man gained power over the heavenly spheres he broke through beyond them (the cosmic framework) to the lower elements - the feminine nature. A Satanic quest for fulfilment of the Work, as it can be viewed as. The subtle and the coarse exponents of nature could start to interact and bring out the consciousness of the subject in to the spectrum of manifested abilities of God.
Poimandres wrote:"Nature smiled for love when she saw him whose fairness brings no surfefit (and) who holds in himself all the energy of the governors and the form of god, for in the water she saw the shape of the man's fairest form and upon the earth its shadow."
Here we can make an interpretation of the elements of water and earth. The former can be seen as the astral over which all the ideas as pressed on. On the coarse physical level we can see the water element in it's coarse form being the first to take a shape of a human being in the human embryo. Then from the water slowly a more defined form takes place and little by little more and more coarse forms take place as the blueprint is slowly pressed also to the element of earth. Skin and even bones are formed, and all the organs that carry the heavenly fire within the nervous system of the organism. Thus the water saw the beautiful first image of the heavenly man, while the earth element reflected it's shadow. When the inner life is pulsating within the electricity of the nerves of the individual, the outer, symbolic and corresponding, organs respond to the impulses of the fire, which we command by our actions. The concepts of karma and ethics are thus woven deeply in to how the organism constantly rearranges itself from the electricity in the nerves to the waters and more coarse parts of the body. Thus the coarse body is a puppet like shadow of the being within. Even the water we are familiar in this coarse world of senses is within the realm of the Earth element, while the astral world is the world of the Water element. The elements exists within each other in such ways, like all the gods are within each others as aspects.
Poimandres wrote:"When the man saw in the water the form like himself as it was in nature, he loved it and wished to inhabit it;"
This seems to be again the same thing I referred to earlier as the point where the Gods of Tolkien's mythical creation fancy the vision their own song had created and then proceeded to take forms to create this vision in actuality. "[Nature] received the Word (Logos), and gazing upon the Cosmos Beautiful did copy it, making herself into a cosmos, by means of her own elements and by the births of souls." The feminine elements emphasised here have their elaborate expression in the following part:
Poimandres wrote:
"wish and action came in the same moment, and he inhabited the unreasoning form. Nature took hold of her beloved, hugged him all about and embraced him, for they were lovers."
This, I take, is the exact moment of the manifested world starting to exist as we see it in our fifth age. The decagram in the Star of Azazel logo emphasises this state where the two pentacles, the downward and the upward is joined. Left-hand path is taken to the whole, the feminine is not excluded, and thus spiritual striving is not mere strive to stay cowardly in the heaven of the masculine portions, but to acknowledge the feminine portions and thus having a true possibility to ascend as a whole. There is no ascending above the creation and dualism of heaven and earth if we leave the other half below. If we manage to unite and rule the five elements as one whole, to become masters of these powers, we have done so for good, and we can help the rest of the existence towards such attainment and further with creater ease in the following incarnations. In most cases the practitioners of ascetic paths run in to problems if they don't find a way to unite the powers of the elements, remaining on every level within the sterility of the heavens, but they can do so in their own way, which might not be apparent to the tantric practitioner who approaches the divine love affair also on the more apparent physical spheres. Similarly the tantric practitioner runs in to problems if the intricate challenges of the divine love affair remains blinded by the disguising powers of earthly love.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: Poimandres (Corpus Hermeticum)

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Poimandres wrote:"Because of this, unlike any other living thing on earth, mankind is twofold - in the body mortal but immortal in the essential man."

This idea I'm sure doesn't sit well with the contemporary times where it is very hard for people to understand hierarchy without total abuse of power. The contemporary soul fears to place oneself above other species, which still manages to reveal the challenge which need to be answered in order to take on the responsibility of the divine man.

Other species not being dual I interpret to mean they are essentially part of the same powers, the hierarchies of the governors, but are yet to gather into a whole microcosm. In such states they are not ethically bound creatures, but lay on the shoulders of ethically striving beings. Thus their relationship to human beings through Genius Loci's, who are in part tying together the matrix of manifestation which works according to karma (the cross is kind of Genius Loci on to which the human being is nailed on), still allow the elemental powers within these creatures to develop. The spirits within minerals turn towards the flora and the spirits within flora turn towards the fauna as man manages to govern their surroundings (localities) with splendor.
Poimandres wrote:"Even though he is immortal and has authority over all things, mankind is affected by mortality because he is subject to fate; thus, although man is above the cosmic framework, he became a slave within it. He is androgyne because he comes from an androgyne father, and he never sleeps because he comes from one who is sleepless. <Yet love and sleep are his> masters."
Fate is defined by karma and ethics, and these laws also set the stage for the mystery of Hieros Gamos. The dual state of man asks of him to find the way to unite the polarities that define the human struggle. The elemental split in world creation was a necessity for manifestation, and so these polarities happen on multiple stages. The animal side of man might go through the needs to unite with someone outerly representing the opposite sex, but the Hieros Gamos is a challenge which asks to seek accomplishment in it on the level the existential wound of a human being is in it's deepest form.

The ever awake side of man refers to the higher self as a masculine power, while the sleep and love refer to the feminine powers, both of which can be seen as masters. The latter is usually seen the master of the Left-hand path, ofcourse, and is as such the Mahasakti, the Great Mother of all forms. Within the SoA sphere of ideas 'uniting the hands' can be seen as a glimpse, or an area, through which the work of Hieros Gamos can be recognized and worked on.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: Poimandres (Corpus Hermeticum)

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Hermes Trismegistus wrote:16. Thereon [I say: Teach on], O Mind of me, for I myself as well am amorous of the Word (Logos).

The Shepherd said: This is the mystery kept hid until this day.

Nature embraced by Man brought forth a wonder, oh so wonderful. For as he had the nature of the Concord of the Seven, who, as I said to thee, [were made] of Fire and Spirit - Nature delayed not, but immediately brought forth seven "men", in correspondence with the natures of the Seven, male-female and moving in the air.

Thereon [ I said ]: O Shepherd, ..., for now I'm filled with great desire and long to hear; do not run off.

The Shepherd said: Keep silence, for not as yet have I unrolled for thee the first discourse (logoi).

Lo! I am still, I said.

The part in square brackets in the beginning is missing from the Finnish translation, as if there's some confusion considering the original text. Anyway, again, a union of Hermes and Poimandres and the Mind and the Word can be seen. Who speaks, who teaches and who receives the teaching? Is it but some wondrous play that we see here?

”The mystery kept hid until this day” makes me think of how similar underlying basic principles can been seen in pretty much every religion and spiritual philosophy. Truth is one, ultimately, even if it can be (re)presented in countless ways; and what really is true in these teachings, will be there to be found throughout all eras.

”Nature embraced by Man bringing forth a wonder” continues the very tantric-sounding idea of the merging of worlds (for the lack of better verbalization) and creating something new. ”The Concord of Seven” seems like the Seven appearing in their highest form, which then take their next step in creation and emanation by appearing as seven ”men”, as it's written here. The ”men” seem like ”the lower selves of the Seven”, in the same way as we can see a higher and a lower triad; I see this as a kind of a continuation of that same thing – the recurring function where higher forms assume lower forms for themselves, in order to act in the world of lower forms. These ”lower seven” are born from the union of Nature and Man. Thus, the Concord of Seven eventually ”descends” to be reached by creatures of the Earth. The ”men” ”moving in the air” denotes a spiritual essence still, even if the ”men” are reachable in this state of theirs.

I hope this makes some sense. This is a difficult and multifaceted verse, and I feel that my best way to approach it is some quite subjective and more or less ”poetic” interpretation.
"Ja kun minun kirkkauteni kulkee ohitse, asetan minä sinut kallion rotkoon ja peitän sinut kädelläni, kunnes olen kulkenut ohi.
Kun minä sitten siirrän pois käteni, näet sinä minun selkäpuoleni; mutta minun kasvojani ei voi kenkään katsoa."
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Re: Poimandres (Corpus Hermeticum)

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Hermes Trismegistus wrote:And after this: ". . ., o my mind. I love the word also."

It seems the student is paying tribute to the divine man - the logos - and the feminine nature as an aspect of the Master of man through love an sleep (referring to the ending of the previous verse), making a bridge to the following elaboration of their creative powers.
Hermes Trismegistus wrote: Poimandres said: "This is the mystery that has been kept hidden until this very day. When nature made love with the man, she bore a wonder most wondrous. In him he had the nature of the cosmic framework of the seven, who are made of fire and spirit, as I told you, and without delay nature at once gave birth to seven men, androgyne and exalted, whose natures were like those of the seven governors."

Because the divine man is androgyne, yet it is referred to by masculine words, it is the seed-giving aspect which is metaphysically important here when we are talking about the emanation proceeding from one layer of existence to the next. I guess the mystery Poimandres introduces is the doctrine of correspondences. It is interesting how he describes them appearing without delay. As if a mirror surface would have appeared and created on it the corresponding seven powers written on the countenance of the cosmic man.

There's so much details we could go in to researching these metaphysial notions, starting from the lightning fast nature of Fohat whispered of in the instant nature of creation, and how the principles reflect each others creating the "hologram" reality. But I will settle for only mentioning them as I have a point to make regarding the correspondences.

While the different bodies, layers, aspects and principles of the world are crucial to be understood as one whole, we are left slaves of the tools if we do not purify them of the dross and mudd that is the unclear, undistinct view of them. The tools are corresponding to these new layers of emanation, the creation of one Poimandres is describing here. Personally, I think it is crucial for the practice of tantras to understand that while the correspondences reflect an aspectual facet of the great divinities, they are not completely the same and equal. There is likeness, and their essence is the same, but the essential core remains always hidden and need to be searched beyond the aspectual appearing of the divinity. Keeping this in mind and working accordingly, not only guides the practitioner to the distinct clarity regarding their tools and reality (a path of downward distinction), but it also makes possible the tantric exaltation through the countenance of the correspondence without falling in to a delusion of oneness (upward unification actually touching the uplifting clarity made by the work of distinction).

The part of Kalacakratantra introduction shared in another topic recently, expressed a similar idea regarding the divine self corresponding to the lower self, and the divine pride transmitted between them:
Kalacakratantra introduction wrote:This future-self Vajradhara, the goal of one's practice, is taken as the subject of divine pride and posited as existing now. Divine pride does not mean thinking "I am a buddha, and that buddha is me as an ordinary being." Such a perception is distorted in the same way that the perception of a piece of rope as a snake is distorted. With this distortion ordinary or habitual perception cannot be transformed. Therefore the "I" of the divine pride that thinks "I am the deity" is the "I" of our future enlightened form.
Hermes Trismegistus wrote:And after this: "O Poimandres, now I have come into a great longing, and I yearn to hear; so do not digress."

And poimandres said, "Be silent; I have not yet unfolder to you the first discourse."

I assume this means the following verses continue the elaborations of the initial vision.

Hermes Trismegistus wrote: "As you see, I am silent," said I.

The practice of listening to the words of silence continues.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: Poimandres (Corpus Hermeticum)

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Hermes Trismegistus wrote:17. In such wise than, as I have said, the generation of these seven came to pass. Earth was as woman, her Water filled with longing; ripeness she took from Fire, spirit from Aether. Nature thus brought forth frames to suit the form of Man.

And Man from Light and Life changed into soul and mind - from Life to soul, from Light to mind.

And thus continued all the sense-world's parts until the period of their end and new beginnings.

”The generation of these seven” makes me think of multitudes of forms or beings that are ”under” the ”fundamental forms”; or rather – included in them. Legions, if you will. A generation exists in time and denotes continuity and multiplying. However, what is probably meant here foremost is a kind of a stage in creation, where the seven are in their ”primordial” state; that stage being the ”generation”.

”Earth was as woman, her Water filled with longing...” This feels like a beautiful poem, which I feel I could ruin with trying to analyze it too much. All the classic elements are mentioned except Air, which could have to do with ”reason” not yet being present, as here the ”form of Man” is only starting to take shape. (Interestingly enough though, the Everard translation says: ”The Air being Feminine and the Water desirous of Copulation”.)

”And Man from Light and Life changed into soul and mind - from Life to soul, from Light to mind.” This make sense intuitively. ”Light” and ”Life” can be seen as aspects of Spirit, which then take their more ”concrete” forms as ”mind” and ”soul” as we proceed in emanation.

”And thus continued all the sense-world's parts until the period of their end and new beginnings.” This stresses the cyclical worldview of esotericism. And the ”stage” presented here feels like a turning point for ”all the sense-world's parts”. There is still strong harmony, even though the next step towards the ”widening of the crack in the unity” is just around the corner.

It's curious that in most creation depictions I've come across, so much time is spent on ”the early stages”; stages that are even quite far from physicality, matter, concreteness, not to mention human beings (individual creatures that is, not the ”Cosmic Man”). A bit like with physical evolution of planet Earth and its life - the era of humanity covers a minuscule amount of the time in the whole of the planet's age. In spiritual evolution, maybe when the process of division and multiplying has reached a certain point (in the physical world), nothing ”new” really happens before the direction changes: emanation becomes remanation and we move from matter back to spirit.
"Ja kun minun kirkkauteni kulkee ohitse, asetan minä sinut kallion rotkoon ja peitän sinut kädelläni, kunnes olen kulkenut ohi.
Kun minä sitten siirrän pois käteni, näet sinä minun selkäpuoleni; mutta minun kasvojani ei voi kenkään katsoa."
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Re: Poimandres (Corpus Hermeticum)

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Poimandres wrote:As I said, then, the birth of the seven was as follows.
Text seems to be pointing the manifested correspondences of the seven brothers starting from the four elements: Earth, Water, Fire and spirit (air) through which the manifested creation appears. Ether is the fifth, and I wonder whether it is the one I called earlier as 'prima materia', the conglomeration wherefrom the three other elements differentiated from, or if it is the light wherefrom the word descended above the prima materia to disturb the differentiating elements out of. Spirit is often synonymous to wind and word, so I'm personally leaning towards the latter interpretation. Which ever it is, I think the two (light and prima materia) correspond to each other, mirror each other from the distance of different metaphysical spheres of emanation. Approximately in this text Earth seems to corresponds to linga sharira, Water corresponds to kama rupa, Fire corresponds to atma-prana with the emphasis on the latter, and spirit-wind corresponds to manas-kama manas. Ether as prima materia would then correspond to manas-prana with the emphasis on the former as undifferentiated matter under the undifferentiated intelligence.

Here we have five correspondences to the seven. The remaining two seems to be soul and mind, that are also portions of the manifested world - "the cosmos of the senses". They are instruments of higher principles, instruments by which the manifested human being reaches the spheres of heaven above the manifested world. Fire and Spirit are also licking the gates of heavens as seen in the text, these elements rise above, and as seen in the SoA point of view to the tabulation of the principles: manas is seen part of the higher triad and prana is the intermediary between the higer and the lower. Theosophical tabulations agree to this in some respect but also makes a more strict definition where the two last ones, buddhi and atma form the nucleus of the higher principles, while manas is already descending (and ascending) in it's nature, the Luciferian light falling to the lower worlds. This fits well with the idea of manas licking the gates of heavens. The reality of principles and their instruments above the elemental spheres (here: mind and soul) is what can be seen creating the doctrine of ascension back to the heavens and beyond from the elemental creation.

"From light came mind" can be seen pointing how mind is the instrument of manas - the higher intellect. To some degree mind can be seen as kama-manas, but it is also the word Poimandres is called by. I think Poimandres is the Windwalker - Hermes with winged sandals and Venus-Lucifer with the lightbringing, mind creating qualities - and thus the higher entity of the mind, a deity of manas. The receiving student seems to be identifying more to kama manas as he learns of the visions and metaphysical elaborations of the teacher, and could be seen fulfilling the role of the mind instead of light in this sentence. As Ether already occupies the correspondence of manas in this interpretation of mine, we could also interpret this Light-mind emphasising the oneness of atma-manas. I remember interpreting the vision of everything being light as a field of monads. Each of these monads are holding individual atma within, and from the atma also pours out the shining starlight of manas.

From the abstraction of life (force), the principle looming above prana-shakti - buddhi -, formed the soul. The idea of circumference (center-circumference, spirit-soul, male-female) as the uniting principle speaks of the gathering of powers within a single soul and how the soul of an individual reflects the whole of a microcosm, the intactness of the individual sphere, and thus its ability to connect to all these higher and lower spheres and other individuals who have the same instruments and access to the spheres above and their corresponding lower manifestations. Soul is the "sphere" as an instrument of buddhi.


To enrich the interpretation of mere principle correspondences and what they could reveal, I'll try to look in to the texts own definitions with a bit more free form interpretation.

Poimandres wrote:<Earth> was the female.

We can remember receptivity as virtue of the feminine, which pertains to the memory holding idea (karma). All our deeds embedded to our body, to which our Will (to unload the accumulated burden) corresponds to.

Poimandres wrote:Water did the fertilizing.

The Water fertilizes the ground, as the feelings lure out the embedded burdens from the body. The water starts to desolidify the ground and all sorts of tensions and problems begin to appear in the form of feelings.

Hermes Trismegistus wrote:her Water filled with longing

This is an interesting variation between translations. The same idea seeps through as the Water longs the secrets of the body. Relating to this, I find it immensely beautiful formation of English language how the word secretion means "a functionally specialized substance released from a gland or cell".

Poimandres wrote:Fire was the maturing force.

Again, fire as the element which licks the gates of the heavens, thus it "matures" the other elements towards ascension. It does it by processing the feelings waken in the waters. Fire sort of forces the feelings in touch with the other principles, forces the substances to be refined in the vial of the alchemist. Fire and spirit bring out reasoning upon the feelings.

Poimandres wrote:Nature took spirit from the ether and brought forth bodies in the shape of the man.

The five-fold shape of man, which is seen defining the instrumental demands of a human being - a microcosm, an image of the divine man. These human shapes can be interpreted in this sequence of interpretations as the deeds where manas - kama-manas axis has been set upon the feelings that have been risen from the body.through the element of water.

Poimandres wrote: From life and light the man became soul and mind; from life came soul, from light came mind, and all things in the cosmos of the senses remained thus until a cycle ended <and> kinds of things began to be.

This whole of the cycles make up the journey of atma. This is also the very same teaching the early Theosophists wrote about as the seven cycles, greater and lesser, going forth until the creation manages to reach pralaya.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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