Podcast episode
October 7, 2020
Episode 103: Corpus Hermeticum I, the Poimandres
Corpus Hermeticum Tractate I is one of the few Hermetica with something like a genuine ‘title’: Poimandres, a mysterious word which has been the subject of much speculation – could it be Egyptian, could it be Greek, could it perhaps be a mixture of both? Be that as it may, the Poimandres is the most mind-blowing text in the Corpus Hermeticum. The literary form is apocalyptic: a divine guide, ‘Poimandres, Nous of Power’, guides an unnamed visionary seeker (whom we assume for intertextual reasons to be Hermes Trismegistos himself) on a visionary journey attained in a quasi-dream state, exploring the reality of true being, Hermes’ own noetic divinity, and the story of cosmogenesis.
The Poimandres is one of those texts which just gets better the more you read it. In this episode we discuss the text and many of the questions surrounding its interpretation – who or what is a Poimandres, and how does Hermes fit into this story? What are we to make of the extraordinary framing of the text as a waking vision? What is a nous in the text, and what is the relationship between Poimandres, the Nous of Power, and the noetic experiences of the human being? What is the Hermetist supposed to do with all the information granted in the visions of Poimandres to Hermes?
Come for the creation of reality, the cosmos, and the primordial human being, stay for the ecstatic reunion with the divine nous beyond the ogdoad. ‘There and back again’; this text has it all.
Works Cited in this Episode:
Primary:
- Hermes discusses Poimandres: C.H. XIII 15, 19. Hermetic recommendations of asceticism aside from the Poimandres: C.H. VI.3; X.8; XI.21; XII.11; XIII.3, 7; Ascl. 6.
- Zosimus on ‘Poimenandra’: M. Berthelot and C.-E. Ruelle, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs, Paris 1887-88, ii, p. 245.6-7 = Zosimo di Panopoli, Visioni e risvegli, ed. A. Tonelli, Milan 1988, pp. 120.28-122.2.
Secondary:
- J. J. Collins. Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre. Semeia, 14:1–20, 1979.
- Kingsley 1993: see below.
Recommended Reading:
On the meaning of the name ‘Poimandres’:
- H. M. Jackson. A New Proposal for the Origin of the Hermetic God Poimandres. Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 128:95–106, 1999 [an intriguing hypothesis based in an Egyptian deity popular in the Fayyum].
- Anna van der Kerchove. Poimandrès, figure d’autorité dans la tradition hermétique. Revue de l’histoire des religions, 231(1):27–46, Jan.-Mar. 2014 [a good survey of previous theories].
- Peter Kingsley. Poimandres: The Etymology of the Name and the Origins of the Hermetica. The Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 56:1–24, 1993 [gives a revised version of the ‘Coptic origins’ thesis propounded by Scott].
- Thomas Schneider. The Name and Identity of Poimandres in the First Treatise of the Corpus Hermeticum. In G. Gafus and S.J. Wimmer, editors, „Vom Leben umfangen“. Ägypten, das Alte Testament und das Gespräch der Religionen. Gedenkschrift für Manfred Görg, pages 363–368. Ugarit-Verlag, 2014.
On Rituals of Apparition in the PGM: please see the bibliography to episode 77.
Themes
Astrology, Cosmology, Esotericism, Fate, Hermes, Hermetica, Hypnagogy, Lesemysterium, Metaphysics, Middle Platonism, Philosophy, Poimandres, Silence, Soul, Stoicism
Albert Hand
October 8, 2020
I really appreciate the level of detail you go to in explaining this stuff.
Mystieke School
October 8, 2020
Thanks for this great summary and your insights. I like how enthusiastic you are about the ‘depths’ in this text
Tamara Sanders
October 10, 2020
I bought The Corpus by Copenhaver. Also Complete works of Plato. I had been blown away several years ago by The Secret History of John, didn’t even know where the stuff was coming from. This podcast is just what I needed.
James Butler
October 10, 2020
Earl — I’m delighted you’ve reached the Hermetica. These last few episodes have been a special pleasure, and now that my circumstances allow it (and knowing how precarious these times are for people who make work like this) I’m pleased to be a subscriber.
I don’t envy you the task of condensing the Poimandres; you’ve done so admirably. I’m pleased you’ll be spending some more time on it as well. A couple of questions that immediately spring up:
1. I think you’re right to dwell on the opening passage, because it seems to me there’s a lot going on there. My question is about the sort of state Hermes is in in that very first sentence. I find the Copenhaver translation a little conservative (not a bad thing in a foundational work of translation) in this respect – I think you can plausibly translate γενομένης a bit more strongly, to suggest some agency and activity on Hermes’s part. So rather than ‘thought came to me…’ you’d want something that suggests an activity of concentration or meditation on Hermes’s part. You might object this is splitting hairs, or rampant speculation (though what else is a comments section for?) but it does seem to me significant to interpret it as suggesting that there is a specific mental discipline involved which allows Hermes these revelations, rather than his becoming elect for a vision simply because he happened to be thinking, in an ordinary and presumably unsystematic way about τῶν ὄντον – whatever *that* refers to, exactly.
I think you can see what I’m driving at here: that although frame narratives exist, yes, mainly to allow the main part of the text to be delivered, they also tell us lots of important things. So what *is* that first line telling us, exactly — that the Hermetic revelation is the result of particular mental disciplines, and therefore replicable for a reader, who might be part of a community and familiar with those disciplines, or something very like them? (And that, by implication, they are replicable for the reader?) Or that the revelation here is a singular event, given to Hermes specially, and not repeatable (even if it does suggest other kinds of transformation are possible)? Or something else entirely? Is this discussed in the critical literature?
2. I was sad time escaped you for discussion of the hymn. Perhaps one to revisit in parallel/contrast with CH XIII.17?
Thanks for all the marvellous work. It’s a real accomplishment.
Earl Fontainelle
October 12, 2020
James,
Keep those questions ready for coming epsisodes, and then see what you think.
I think there is without a doubt a specific [mental] discipline lying behind these texts; to think otherwise is really to ignore all the comparative data from, say, Sufism, Christian monasticism, Buddhism, and so forth. The exact nature of that discipline, however ….
It’s an open question whether the encounter with the ὄντα should be seen primarily as a ‘mental’ encounter at all; after all, the ὄντα are, well, beings, not knowings.
But I am less and less sure that I understand what the Hermetist means by noêsis, and need to consider whether my reading is too Plotinian. The work continues.
Thomas Kiefer
October 22, 2020
I don’t know how to say what follows precisely, but the “explosion” of the importance of nous here, and subsequently in “Neoplatonism”, seems to hint to me we are missing, or aren’t seeing, a chunk of intellectual history connecting the Poimandres and its surrounding culture or Weltanschauung to Aristotle’s De Anima 3.4-5. After listening to your podcast here twice, I grew inclined to think that maybe those passages in the De Anima are spurious, inserted by some Alexandrian scribe who saw a gap, or a completely butchered text, and threw some stuff in there floating around. If it weren’t for the discussion of nous in the Philebus, and in Anaxagoras (who Aristotle riffs off of in DA 3.4-5), I’d be convinced of this, thanks to the missing links mentioned at the beginning. After rereading the DA passages today after a long lapse, I’m more inclined to think there are texts we’re missing that bridge the DA to the noetic turn/explosion here–perhaps Aristotle’s report of Plato’s On the Good lecture? Perhaps a lost dialogue of Aristotle’s? Something else, like huge chunks of DA 3.5 that got lost at some point?
Aristotle was a relatively minor figure it seems until Alexander Aphrodesias appeared, hence my suspicion that there’s a missing link. (By the way, and relatedly, I think Plotinus is one of the best interpreters of Aristotle, and was responding to Alexander in many places–he just does so implicitly.) I just can’t imagine building a system like the Poimandres exhibits just off of DA 3.4-5, especially with the mess that is DA 3.5. But a genius or geniuses could I suppose.
Someone needs to write a history of nous from Anaxagoras to Plontinus, or right before.
Thomas Kiefer
October 23, 2020
Something came to me today–perhaps the missing link isn’t Greek, but Egyptian. Perhaps when the priests and scholars were translating Egyptian religious texts into Greek (which must have occurred, cf. the Septuagint) they chose ‘nous’ as the term to translate some major term. Then a real fusion occurred between Egyptian religion and Greek philosophy thereafter.
Earl Fontainelle
October 24, 2020
Thomas,
I too wonder about what you so-aptly call the noetic turn. Keep these intriguing thoughts coming!
Travis Wade ZINN
November 5, 2020
Excellent episode – I’d like to look over practical material about the process of ascent and transformation in the hermetic tradition, perhaps outside the original texts. What do you suggest?
Earl Fontainelle
November 5, 2020
Hello, Travis,
To save myself work, I refer you to the bibliography for Episode 109, which will concentrate on those precise matters, even though it currently does not exist. Wouter Hanegraafs’s also-forthcoming book on Hermetic Spirituality will be right up your alley when it arrives, which should I suppose be in 2021.
Travis Wade ZINN
November 5, 2020
Perfect! Looking forward to it!