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wisdom that the initiate must acquire before enjoying the rebirth offered in
C.H. XIII or NHC VI.6.[132]
If the preliminary states of spiritual growth differed from one another, the
changes among them may explain a striking feature of the Corpus, the
apparently great divergences in doctrine between its component treatises
and even within an individual logos. Scholars have taken pains to analyze
and schematize parts of the Corpus as monist or dualist, optimist or
pessimist, but Fowden proposes to see such variations as sequential rather
than contradictory. Thus, a positive view of the cosmos as good and worth
understanding would suit an earlier stage of the initiate's labors and,
hence, a treatise focusing on a time when the body's needs were still great,
while a negative treatment of the world as evil and unworthy of thought
might befit a farther station in the spirit's journey and a different treatise on
topics closer to the culmination of gnosis, which entailed liberation from the
body. In any event, the texts themselves show that the Hermetic authors
felt no obligation to respect the boundaries drawn around their writings by
modern critics. NHC VI.6, for example, seeks nothing less than "the great
divine vision," but it also contains two ritual passages that would not be
out of place in the Magical Papyri (one of which includes the same prayer
that concludes the Asclepius). In the second such passage, the initiate says,
I give thanks by singing a hymn to you. For I have received life from you, when you
made me wise. I praise you. I call your name that is hidden within me: a ö ee ö ëë
öö ii öööö oooo ööö uuuuu öööööööööööö. You are the one who exists with the
spirit. I sing a hymn to you reverently.
Hermes, the mystagogue, then directs his "son to write this book for the
temple at Diospolis in hieroglyphic characters, entitling it 'The Eighth
Reveals the Ninth.'"[133] This exchange between Trismegistus and his
disciple confirms what Iamblichus said about Egyptian theology, that
they certainly do not just speculate about these things. They recommend rising up
through priestly theurgy toward the higher and more universal levels above fate, to
the god and craftsman, and without material attachment or any other help at all
except observing the proper time. Hermes also gave instruction in this way, which
Bitus the prophet translated for King Ammon after finding it carved in
hieroglyphic letters in shrines of Sais in Egypt.
Although Iamblichus seems to exclude any "material attachment" from
Hermetic theurgy, the same cannot be said of the Asclepius, which in its "art
of making gods" permitted "a comformable power arising from the nature
of matter" and even mentioned "a mixture of plants, stones and spices, in
describing the nature of the gods called down to animate their statues.
PGM IV.475-829, formerly known as the "Mithras Liturgy," begins by
calling for "the juices of herbs and spices," and it addresses the elementary
powers of spirit, fire, water and earth with mystical noises like those that
appear on almost every page of the Magical papyri: "EY EIA EE, water of
water, the first of the water in me, OOO AAA EEE, earthy material, the first
of the earthy material in me, YE YOE, my complete body." The same
invocation seeks deliverance beyond the bodily elements "to immortal birth
and...to my underlying nature, so that...I may gaze upon the immortal."
Just as Iamblichus said, this famous document exhorts the initiate to rise up
through theurgy to a divine rebirth; its devices are concrete and technical,
but it sets those procedures in a matrix of theory explored more thoroughly
in the Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius.[134]
Hermetic Collections
When A.D. Nock edited the Corpus, he used twenty-eight manuscripts
dating from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries, but fifteen of
them contain only the first fourteen treatises, or in some cases, even fewer.
Two manuscripts that include all seventeen logoi also preserve a comment
on C.H. I.18 written by Michael Psellus, an important Byzantine scholar of
the eleventh century. Finding the words of the biblical Genesis in this
heathen cosmogony, Psellus remarked of its author that "this wizard seems
to have had more than a passing acquaintance with holy writ. Making an
eager go of it, he tries his hand at the creation of the world, not scrupling to
record the cherished Mosaic expressions themselves." It is noteworthy that
a Byzantine Christian learned in Neoplatonism wished to defame the Bible-
reading Hermes as a goes or "wizard," especially since the seventeen Greek
treatises say so little about occult topics. Passages on astrology and magic [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]