The Aphorisms
Hermetic principles as escribed in the 6th century Armenian text 'Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius'
NOTE: This is the second part of a series on how the Hellenic and Egyptian high magic tradition of Hermeticism may be the basis of the beliefs held by the ancient paganic Armenians. Please read the first part if you haven’t yet done so…
There is a collection of aphorisms, concise statements of principles, collectively known as The Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius, herein referred to as DH. The original text, if there ever was one, has been lost. The definitions were preserved in six Armenian manuscripts copied between the 13th and 16th centuries. They were first published in 1956 in Cairo by H. Manandyan, though they attracted zero attention from historians or occultists. In 1976, Jean Pierre Mahé translated the Armenian text into French to earn his doctorate.
Here is the first published aphorism (Armenian to French to English)…
DH1.1
Աստված՝ հասկանալի աշխարհ; աշխարհ՝ խելամիտ Աստված; մարդ՝ կործանվող աշխարհ; մարդ. ողջամիտ աշխարհ Ապա կան երեք աշխարհներ: Այժմ անշարժ աշխարհն Աստված է, իսկ խելամիտ աշխարհը մարդն է, քանի որ այս երկու միավորներն էլ մեկ են՝ տեսակից հետո Աստված և մարդը:
Dieu : un monde intelligible ; monde : un Dieu sensible ; l'homme : un monde destructible ; l'homme : un monde raisonnable Ensuite, il y a trois mondes. Or le monde immobile c'est Dieu, et le monde raisonnable c'est l'homme : car ces deux unités ne font qu'un : Dieu et l'homme selon l'espèce.
God: an intelligible world; world: a sensible God; man: a destructible world; man: a reasonable world Then there are three worlds. Now the immovable world is God, and the reasonable world is man: for both of these units are one: God and man after the species.
As can be seen, the DH is a series of definitions and brief discussions of concepts and entities, including the nature of god, the soul, humans, intellect, etc. It makes great use of rhetorical questions, which are, in turn, answered in dogmatic formulas. Ideas are developed by the association and progression of keywords and imagery—not through the dialectical to-and-fro of the Platonic tradition.
In his commentary, now Professor Mahé discusses a fascinating point—a magical one. He argues that the literary corpus was structured around the linking and interpreting of the INDIVIDUAL SENTENCES—each expressing fundamental concepts, concerns, and structures. Specific mythological, theological, or philosophical doctrines derived are secondary. They arise out of traditions of speculation on these sentences—sentences that remain embedded in other, later Hermetic writings.
The Basics of Hermeticism
Hermeticism isn’t just a philosophical system. I’ve come to know it as a way—the Way of Hermes if you will. The literature doesn’t postulate theoretical teachings. Instead, it’s meant to bring about progress, to raise the individual from the realm of the material bodies, beyond the intelligence of the visible world and the fiery astral gods, up to the supreme God, who is “Nous” and pure, endless, and incorporeal light.
How?
Through the successive development of three faculties:
Gnosis (Greek for unfettered knowledge; omniscience, so to speak)
Logos (reason and language)
Nous (a mysterious, still ill-defined word, in this context, meaning, roughly, mind)
The process starts with an awakening and a conversion from the addled ways of society. The Initiate begins, spontaneously, to make connections between experiences and ideas they’ve held, either throughout their life or, potentially, a ritual involving entheogens. This requires a lusory attitude and an earnest interest in understanding perennial human conceptions like time/space, death/life, etc. Pious living apart from crowds becomes necessary for the Hermeticist, just to keep from being distracted by all the noise the addled society I mentioned earlier blasts out.
Then, by paying heed to Hermetic preaching and reading Hermetic books, or by following a gradual course of Hermetic education provided by a teacher/hierophant—the legendary first of whom was Hermes Trismegistus (Greek) or Mercurius ter Maximus (Latin), the initiate develops a theoretical approach to the structure of the world and the different kinds of beings in it—from supreme gods to specks of dust.
Nous
Most interesting to me is Nous. I think of it as intuition or imagination, a facility for abstraction (abstract thought). It’s like sight since it encompasses everything at once, including the infinite essence of all. It’s both enlightenment and, in a very physical way, light itself. But it’s completely inaccessible to us past a certain age (I put it roughly at six to eight years of age). However, it can be retained and even expanded via mystical processes (again, including paganic ritual practices and the use of entheogens and other physical stressors).
Further, unlike most wisdom traditions, these disciplines can only be attained by the disciple/initiate themself. A teacher can only set out an idea or point in a direction. If the disciplines are not freely discovered by the initiate and through their OWN quest, they will only work as intellectual narratives—not sensational experiences. Meditation must be by oneself. Only then will their own Nous be revealed—by availing themself of the teaching delivered to them as a plain instrument/vessel. It requires silence—the silence between sentences.
When you keep silent, you understand; when you talk, you just talk. Since Nouse conceives speech in silence, only that speech which comes from silence and Nous is salvation (DH5.1)
The DH is a general outline of Hermetic exercises aimed at developing individual Nous and making the disciple/initiate worthy of undergoing mystic initiation.
Theasathi
To the Hermeticist, the mind is an intuitive faculty. So if one wants to strengthen the mind, the job is to learn to see/contemplate the All. That’s what theasathi1 means in Greek—to behold. Several DH aphorisms are designed to do just that—see god. And they’re all based on this simple principle:
Pure perception perceives the unmanifest, as it is itself also unmanifest. If you are strong enough, He will appear in the eye of Nous, o Tat. For the Lord appears in His bounty throughout the whole universe. Can you see pure perception and take hold of it with these hands and contemplate the image of God? But if you cannot see what is within, how can God, himself within you, appear to you through your eyes? (Corpus Hermeticum, CH, 5.2)
The development of the discipline is centered on one’s attention control (meditation/focus). Accordingly, through the sustained practice of controlling one’s attention properly and releasing complete control of one’s attention, the initiate may unlock humanity’s vision of the image of God seen through the whole cosmos.
The Heretical Part
Now, here’s just one of the tenets of Hermeticism that caused it to be driven underground so many times through the ages: the image of god as twofold. God has two images—the world (cosmos) and humans. That’s at least how it’s stated in the tract To Asclepius (CH).
Nous, which governs reasonable speech, gives humans the privilege of raising our eyes to heaven and overcoming our mortal condition (DH6). Our immortal being endows us with cosmic ubiquity and vouches for our immortality. And though humans submit to natural laws, we can in our lives become gods (DH8).
I’m sure you can see how problematic this message to the masses can be if one is trying to control/enslave/govern the masses.
Becoming Aeon
The claim is that Hermeticism has worked out a method that enables the seeker to go further into contemplation, transcending the limit that we set between us and the other, the inside and the outside, the present, past, and future, our individual being, the immensity of the universe, etc. The method described in CH 11 and CH 13 is called Becoming Aeon.
The contention is that humans are not confined to one part of the universe, like fish may be confined to the sea and gods may be confined to the heavens. By becoming Aeon, humans may be at once on Earth, in the sea, and in heaven. Consider the eloquence of the following (from Corpus Hermeticum, or CH, 11.20-21)…
Behold what power, what swiftness, thou dost have! And canst thou do all these things, and God not [do them]? Then, in this way, know God; as having all things in Himself as thoughts, the whole Cosmos itself. If then, thou dost not make thyself like unto God, thou canst not know Him. For like is knowable to like [alone]. Make, [then,] thyself to grow to the same stature as the Greatness which transcends all measure; leap forth from everybody; transcend all Time; become Eternity, and [thus] shalt thou know God. Conceiving nothing is impossible unto thyself, think thyself deathless and able to know all—all arts, all sciences, the way of every life.
Become loftier than all heights and lower than all depths. Collect all senses of [all] creatures,—of fire, [and] water, dry and moist. Think that thou art at the same time in every place—in the earth, the sea, the sky; not yet begotten, in the womb, young, old, [and] dead, in after-death conditions.
And if thou knowest all these things at once —times, places, doings, qualities, and quantities; thou canst know God.
But if thou lockest up thy soul within thy body, and dost debase it, saying: I nothing know; I nothing can; I fear the sea; I cannot scale the sky; I know not who I was, who I shall be;—what is there [then] between [thy] God and thee?
For thou canst know naught of things beautiful and good so long as thou dost love thy body and art bad. The greatest bad there is not to know God’s Good, but to be able to know [Good], and will, and hope, is a Straight Way, the Good’s own [Path], both leading there and easy.
If thou but settest thy foot thereon, ’twill meet thee everywhere, ’twill everywhere be seen, both where and when thou dost expect it not,—waking, sleeping, sailing, journeying, by night, by day, speaking, [and] saying naught. For there is naught that is not the image of the Good.
What does all that mean? Here’s a crack at it: not only can humankind push away the barriers of space, but they can also escape the bondage of time by imagining/conjuring the dawn of existence in the womb or even the soul before entering the body and after leaving it.
Quite a meditation, don’t you think? It’s a way of seeing the invisible and anticipating immortality. Because apparently, becoming immortal is just a matter of will.
Il Dottore’s More Favored Aphorisms from the DH…
DH1.5
God is eternal and uncreated; man is mortal (although) he is ever-living.
DH2.2
Heaven is an eternal body, an immutable body, unalterable and mixed up out of soul and Nous. Air is the separation of heaven from the earth or the conjunction of heaven with earth. What is air? They call ‘air’ the interval between heaven and earth, by which they are not separated from each other, since heavens and earth ar united (with each other) by the air.
DH4.2
And among the living (beings), some are immortal and animated; some have Nous soul and spirit, and some (have) only spirit, some (have) soul and spirit, and others only life. For life can acquire consistency without spirit, Nous, soul and immortality, but all of the others without life cannot possibly exist.
DH6.2
Just as you went out of the womb, likewise you will go out of this body; just as you will no longer enter the womb, likewise you will no longer enter this material body. Just as, while being in the womb, you did not know the things which are the world, likewise, when you are outside the body, you will not know the beings outside the body. Just as when you have gone out of the womb, you do not remember the things which are in the womb, likewise, when you have gone out of the body, you will be still more excellent.
The Greek word for theater (theatron) comes from the verb theasthai. You are likely to behold a play or a film inside a theater.