The Divine Pymander of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus (2023 Modernized Edition): A carefully composed plain language rendition for modern readers of Hermetic philosophy

by Hermes Trismegistus

Ancient philosophers and early Christian scholars like Tertullian and Justin Martyr believed that anyone seeking God and truth should include the works of Hermes Trismegistus in their studies.

Texts from the Hermetic library – the Pymander foremost among them – have clearly and heavily impacted many of humanity’s most revered sages, innovators, artists, writers, and possibly several authors of biblical scripture. Extrabiblical writings with this level of reverence, devotion to God, and clear, consistent dedication to the pursuit of truth and wisdom are rare and precious treasures to behold.

he who is Religious knows where and what the truth is; and learning of this truth, he will be increasingly Religious.

Religion, as defined here, is the pursuit of truth

For never shall or can that soul slide back to the opposite which, while it is in the body, lightens and lifts itself up to know and comprehend that which is good and true. For it is infinitely enamored by the good and true, forgetting all evils; and when it has learned and known its Father and Progenitor, it can never break faith or depart from that good.

Accordingly, he replied, understand it. That in you which sees and hears; the Word of the Lord; the Mind; the Father; God; these do not differ one from the other, and the union of them is Life.

And immediately God said to the Holy Word, Increase in increasing, and multiply in multitude, all my Creatures and Workmanships. And let him who is endued with mind know himself to be immortal, and that the cause of death is the love of the body, and let him learn all things that exist.

God and the Father is Light and Life, of which man is made. Therefore, if you learn and believe yourself to be of the Life and Light, you shall again pass into Life.

Be careful what you say, for I the mind come to men who are holy and good, pure and merciful, and who live piously and religiously. My presence is a help to them and they immediately know all things, lovingly asking for things and making peace with the Father; and blessing him, they give him thanks and sing hymns to him, being ordered and directed by familial Affection and natural Love. And before they give up their bodies to death, they hate their senses, knowing their Works and Operations. 55. Rather I, who am the Mind itself, will not allow the operations or Works, which happen or belong to the body, to be finished and brought to perfection in them; but being the Porter or Doorkeeper, I will shut up the entrances of Evil, and cut off the thoughtful desires of filthy works. 56. But to those who are foolish, evil, wicked, envious, covetous, murderous, or profane, I am far off, giving place to the revenging Spirit, which applies the sharpness of fire to him, tormenting the senses of such a man and arming him so much more to all wickedness, that he may obtain the greater punishment. 57. And such a one never ceases, having unfulfilled desires and unsatisfiable Lustful passions, always fighting in darkness; for that Spirit always afflicts and torments him continually, increasing the fire on him more and more.

For the sleep of the body was the sober watchfulness of the mind, and the shutting of my eyes was the true sight. My silence was great with child and full of good, and my words and pronouncements were the blossoms and fruits of good things.

And so it came to pass that I received Pimander, the Lord of the Word, in my mind, by whom God inspired me with Truth. 85. Because of this, I give praise and blessing to God the Father with my whole strength and soul. 86. Holy is God, the Father of all things. 87. Holy is God, who performs and accomplishes his will by his own powers. 88. Holy is God, who determines to be known, and is known by those who are his. 89. You are holy, who has established all things by your Word. 90. You are holy, of whom all Nature is the Image. 91. You are holy, who Nature has not formed. 92. You are holy, who is stronger than all power. 93. You are holy, who is stronger than all excellency. 94. You are holy, who is better than all praise. 95. Accept these sacrifices of reason from a pure soul and a heart that stretches out to you. 96. O unspeakable, unutterable, to be praised with silence! 97. I ask of you that I may never err from the knowledge of you. Look mercifully on me, enable me, and enlighten those who are in Ignorance with this Grace; the brothers of my kind, but your Sons. 98. Therefore, I believe you and bear witness, going into the Life and Light. 99. You are blessed, O Father; your man would be sanctified with you, as you have given him all power.

So the knowledge began to live in them, and to be wise according to the operation of the course of the circular Gods, and to be resolved into that which would be great Monuments and Remembrances of the cunning Works done on earth, leaving them to be read by the darkness of times.

For what is God, and the Father, and the Good, but the Being of all things that do not yet exist, and the existence itself of those things that do exist? 6. This is God. This is the Father. This is the Good, to which no other thing is present or approaches.

The Soul of Man is carried in this way: the Mind is in Reason, Reason in the Soul, The Soul in the Spirit, The Spirit in the Body.

Or do you not see how many Evils the wicked Soul suffers, roaring and crying out, I am burned, I am consumed, I do not know what to say or do; I am devoured, unhappy wretch, by the evils that surround and lay hold on me; being miserable, I neither hear nor see anything.

For when the Mind is ordered or appointed to get a Fiery Body for the services of God and comes down into a wicked soul, it torments the soul with the whips of Sins. In this way, the wicked Soul is scourged, turning itself to Murders, Abuses, Blasphemies, diverse forms of violence, and other things by which men are injured. 73. But when the mind enters into a pious soul, it leads that soul into the Light of Knowledge. 74. Such a Soul is never satisfied with singing praise to God and speaking well of all men; and always doing good in words and deeds, in imitation of her Father. 75. Therefore, O Son, we must give thanks and pray that we may obtain a good mind.

Therefore, O Tat my Son, you must pray first to the Lord and Father; to the Alone and the One, from whom is one to be merciful to you, that you may know and understand so great a God. Pray that he would shine one of his beams on you in your understanding. 10. For only the Understanding see that which is not manifest, or apparent, as being itself not manifest or apparent; and if you can, O Tat, it will appear to the eyes of your Mind.

O Son, what a happy sight it would be, to see all of these at one instant: the motion of that which is immovable, and the visible manifestation of that which is hidden! 23. And if you would see and behold this Workman, even by mortal things that are on earth and in the deep, then consider, O Son, how Man is made and framed in the Womb. Diligently examine the skill and cunning of the Workman and learn who wrought and fashioned the beautiful and Divine shape of Man. Who circumscribed and marked out his eyes? Who bored his nostrils and ears? Who opened his mouth? Who stretched out and tied together his sinews? Who channeled out the veins? Who hardened and made the bones strong? Who clothed the flesh with skin? Who divided the fingers and joints? Who flattened and broadened the soles of the feet? Who dug the pores? Who stretched out the spleen? Who made the Heart like a Cone? Who made the Liver broad? Who made the Lungs spongy and full of holes? Who made the belly large and spacious? Who set the more honorable parts to outward view and hid the filthy ones? 24. See how many arts in one Matter, and how many Works in one Composition; all so extremely beautiful and well measured, yet all so different. 25. Who made all these things? What Mother? What Father? Except for only God, who is not manifest; who made all things by his own will.

This is God, who is better than any name; this is he who is secret; this is he who is most manifest; this is he who is to be seen by the Mind; this is he who is visible to the Eye; this is he who has no body; and this is he who has many bodies; rather, there is nothing of any body which he is not. 33. For he alone is all things. 34. And because of this he has many Names, because he is the One Father; therefore, he has no Name, because he is the Father of all.

I wish, O Son, that you were also gone out of yourself, like those who Dream in their sleep.

One Torment, Son, is Ignorance; a second, Sorrow; a third, Overindulgence; a fourth, Lustful Passion; a fifth, Injustice; a sixth, Covetousness; a seventh, Deceit; an eighth, Envy; a ninth, Fraud or Guile; a tenth, Wrath; an eleventh, Rashness; a twelfth, Maliciousness. 32. They are twelve in number, and many more under these; some of which force the inner self to suffer through the prison of the Body and the senses. 33. They do not suddenly or easily depart from him who has obtained mercy from God; and herein consists both the method and the reason of Regeneration. 34. For the rest, O Son, hold your peace and praise God in silence. In this way, God’s mercy will not cease or be lacking to us.

This is Regeneration, O Son: that we should not fix our imagination on this three-dimensional Body any longer. This is in accordance with the speech which we have now commented, so we may not misrepresent the Universe in the slightest way.

The sensible body of Nature is far from the Essential Generation, for the one is subject to Dissolution, but the other is not; and the one is mortal, but the other immortal. Do you not know that you are born a God, and a Son of the One, as I am?

O Son, learn this from me: entertain silence above all other virtues, and do not teach the tradition of Regeneration to anyone, lest we gain reputations as deceivers. For we have both now sufficiently meditated; I in speaking, and you in hearing. Now you intellectually know yourself and our Father.

Where are you carried, O Men, intoxicated from drinking the strong Wine of Ignorance? If you can’t bear the sight of it, why do you vomit it up again? 2. Stand and be sober, and look up again with the Eyes of your heart. If all of you cannot do it, still do it as much as you can. 3. For the malice of Ignorance surrounds all the Earth and corrupts the Soul, locked away in the Body, not allowing it to arrive at the Havens of Salvation. 4. Do not allow yourselves to be carried with the Great Stream, but you who can lay hold of the Haven of Safety, stem the tide and make your full course towards it. 5. Seek one who may lead you by the hand and conduct you to the door of Truth and Knowledge, where the clear Light is found that is pure from Darkness; where no one is drunken but all are sober. In their hearts they look up to him, whose pleasure it is to be seen. 6. For he cannot be heard with ears, nor seen with eyes, nor expressed in words; but only in mind and heart. 7. But first you must tear the garment you wear to pieces and break through it; that web of Ignorance; the foundation of all Mischief; the bond of Corruption; the dark Shroud; the living Death; the sensible Carcass; the Sepulcher, carried around with us; the domestic Thief who, in this, loves us, hates us, envies us. 8. Such is the hurtful Apparel with which you are clothed, which draws and pulls you downward with itself to prevent you from looking upward and seeing the beauty of Truth and the Good that rests there...

Therefore, be sure that you do not call anything else Good at any time, for in doing so you shall be impious. Nor should any other be called God, but only the Good, for so you shall again be impious. 72. Men often use the Word Good, but not all men understand what it is. Through Ignorance, they call both the Gods and some men Good who can never be so; nor can they be made to be so.

Therefore, O Hermes, do not think that any of these things below or the things above are similar to God in any way; for if you do, you err from the Truth. 45. For nothing can be like the unlike, and the only, and the One; nor may you think that he has given of his Power to any other thing. 46. For who can make anything after him, either of Life or Immortality; of Change or of Quality? And he himself – what other things should he make?

For the friendship and mixture of opposites and things which are dissimilar become Light, shining from the Act or Operation of God, the Father of all Good, the Prince of all Order, and the Ruler of the Seven Worlds.

But being himself the only Workman, he is always in the work, being himself the thing which he does or makes. 99. For all things, if they were separate from him, would have to fall and die, as there would be no life in them. 100. Again, if all things are living spirits (those in heaven and on earth), and if there is one Life in all things made by God, and that Life is God, then certainly all things are made or done by God. 101. Life is the union of the Mind and the Soul. 102. Death is not the destruction of those things that were gathered together, but a dissolving of the Union.

Grow yourself into an immeasurable greatness, leaping beyond every Body, and transcending all Time. Become Eternity, and you shall understand God – if you believe in yourself that nothing is impossible and account yourself immortal, and that you can understand all things; every Art, every Science, and the way and custom of every living thing. 129. Become higher than all height and lower than all depths. Comprehend in yourself the qualities of all the Creatures; of the Fire, the Water, the Dry, and Moist. In the same way, imagine that you can be everywhere simultaneously; in the Sea and in the Earth. 130. Instantly you’ll understand yourself; not yet begotten in the Womb; young; old; to be dead; the things after death; and all these together, as also times; places; deeds; qualities; and quantities. Or else you cannot yet understand God. 131. But if you lock away your Soul in the Body and abuse it, saying, I understand nothing, I can do nothing, I am afraid of the Sea, I cannot climb up to Heaven, I do not know who I am, I cannot tell what I shall be – what have you to do with God? For you can understand none of those Fair and Good things while being a lover of the body and Evil. 132. For the greatest Evil is not knowing God. 133. But to be able to know, will, and hope is the straight and Divine way, proper to the Good. It will meet you everywhere and be seen in you everywhere, plain and easy when you do not expect or look for it. It will meet you waking, sleeping, sailing, ...

There is nothing invisible, no; not of those things that are incorporeal. 139. The Mind is seen in understanding and God is seen in doing or making.

The Mind, O Tat, is of the very Essence of God, if yet there is any Essence of God. 2. Only he knows exactly what kind of Essence it is. 3. Therefore, the Mind is not cut off or divided from the spiritual being of God, but united as the light of the Sun. 4. And this Mind in men is God; therefore, some men are Divine and their Humanity is near Divinity.

Therefore, the Mind shows its own Light to those Souls that it governs or overrules, resisting their biases or presumptions. 14. As a good Physician distresses the biased or diseased Body by burning or lancing it for health's sake; 15. In the same way, the Mind also distresses the Soul by drawing it out of Pleasure, from which every disease of the Soul proceeds.

Therefore, because it is possible that the Mind – the Prince of all things – can do whatever it wills, the same is true for the Godly Soul.

First, O Son, if you diligently withdraw yourself from all contentious speeches, you shall find that in Truth the Mind- the Soul of God- rules over all things; over Fate, Law, and all other things. 44. Nothing is impossible for him; no, not concerning the things of Fate. 45. Therefore, although the Soul of Man is above it, let it not neglect the things that happen to be under Fate.

Everything that moves is incorporeal; everything that is moved is a Body. Incorporeal things move Bodies through the Mind. Now, Motion is passion, and there they both suffer; as much for the mover as for that which is moved, and as much for the ruler as for that which is ruled.

Herm: Consider also, O Son, that God has freely bestowed on man, above all other living things, these two things: namely, Mind and Speech, or Reason, equal to immortality. 61. If any man uses or employs these on what he should, he will be no different than the Immortals. 62. Truly. Rather, going out of the Body, he shall be guided and led by them into the Choir and Society of God and the blessed ones.

Therefore, the Word is the Image of the Mind, and the Mind of God, and the Body of the Idea, and the Idea of the Soul.

Tat: Therefore, O Father, don’t the living things in the World die, though they are parts of it? 88. Herm: Be wary in your speech, O Son, and do not be deceived in the names of things. 89. For they do not die, but they are dissolved as Compound bodies. 90. But dissolution is not death; and they are not dissolved so they may be destroyed, but so they may be made new.

For the whole world is unchangeable while it is together, O Son, but all of its parts are changeable. 101. Yet nothing is corrupted or destroyed and completely abolished; but the terminology troubles men. 102. For Generation is not Life but Sense, as Change is not Death but Forgetfulness, or rather Occultation and lying hidden. Or better thus:-- 103. For Generation is not the Creation of Life, but a production of things to Sense and making them manifest. In the same way, Change is not Death, but an Occultation or hiding of that which was. 104. These things being so, all things are Immortal- Matter, Life, Spirit, Soul, Mind; of which every living thing consists.

God foretells Man of things to come by all things: by Birds, by Fowl, by the Spirit, or the Wind, and by an Oak.

Of all that has existed and all that exists, there is nothing where God is not.

In the whole, there is nothing that is not God. 127. For this reason, there is neither Greatness, Place, Quality, Figure, or Time around God, for he is All, and the All, through all, and around all.

Therefore, think of him as omnipresent, eternal, and the maker of all things; and even better, that by his Will he has framed the things that exist. 3. For his Will is his Body; not tangible, nor visible, nor measurable, nor extensible, nor like any other body. 4. For it is neither Fire, nor Water, nor Air, nor Wind, but all these things are of him; for being Good, he has dedicated that name to himself alone.

Therefore, those who understood the Proclamation and were baptized or dowsed into the Mind were made partakers of knowledge and became perfect men, receiving the Mind. 17. Those who missed the Proclamation received Speech but not Mind, being ignorant of the purpose for which they were made, or by whom. 18. But their Senses are just like that of brute Beasts, and having their temper in Anger and Wrath, they do not admire things worthy of looking at. 19. But wholly addicted to the pleasures and desires of the Body, they believe that man was made for them. 20. But in comparison of their works, O Tat, those who partake of the gift of God are immortal, rather than mortal men. 21. Comprehending all Earthly things in their Mind, in Heaven, and above it, if anything is above. 22. And lifting themselves up so high, they see the Good; and seeing it, they account it a miserable calamity to make their abode here. 23. Despising all things bodily and bodiless, they make haste to the One and Only.

Unless you first hate your body, O Son, you cannot love yourself. But loving yourself, you shall have the Mind; and having the Mind, you shall also partake of Knowledge or Science.

51. I have described this Image of God to you, O Tat, as well as I could. If you diligently consider it, view it with the eyes of your Mind and hear it; believe me, Son, you shall find the way to things above, or rather, the Image itself will lead you. 52. But the vision or sight has this distinctive property: it holds firmly and draws those who can see and behold it as, they say, the Lodestone [or magnet] draws Iron.

Piety is the knowledge of God. Those who know him are full of all good things, have Divine Understanding, and are not like the many. 17. Therefore, those who have knowledge neither please the multitude, nor does the multitude please them; but they seem to be out of their minds and to be the cause of laughter. They are hated, despised, and often murdered.

This then is the difference between an Immortal Body and a Mortal one: the Immortal body consists of one kind of Matter, so the Mortal body does not. The immortal one takes actions, but the mortal body suffers.

But other operations are proper to the Souls of Men by Arts, Sciences, Studies, and Actions.

Because Sense is in the Body and has its essence from it. When it receives Act or Operation, it manifests it, making it corporeal, in a way. 47. Therefore, I say that the Senses are both corporeal and mortal, having as much existence as the Body, for they are born with the Body and die with it.