Corpus Hermeticum: The Divine Pymander

by Hermes Trismegistus

1. Where are you carried, Oh men, drunken with the wine of ignorance? When you see that you cannot hold it down, why do you vomit it up again? 2. Stand, and be sober, and look up again with the eyes of your heart, and if you cannot all do so, yet do so as many as you can. 3. For the malice of ignorance surrounds all the Earth, and corrupts the soul, shut up in the body, not suffering it to arrive at the havens of salvation. 4. Suffer not yourselves to be carried with the great stream, but stem the tide you that can lay hold of the haven of safety, and make your full course towards it. 5. Seek still what may lead you by the hand, and conduct you to the door of truth and knowledge, where the clear light is that which is pure from darkness, where there is not one drunken, but all are sober, and in their heart look up to him, whose pleasure it is to be seen.