The Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius: 1.1

God is an intelligible world; the world is a sensible God; man is a dissoluble world. God is an unmoved world; heaven is a moving world; Man is a rational world. There are therefore three worlds. Now, the unmoved world is God, and the rational world is Man; since the two monads (are): God and Man as Form.

Translation choices

  • "dissoluble" - Mahé renders it as "destructible"
  • "man is a dissoluble world" ... "Man is a rational world" - the text as I read it switches between man as a physical being and the Form of Man / Anthropos. I attempt to render this by capitalising Man where appropriate
  • "since" - Mahé renders it as "for", the Armenian word is an equivalent of Greek explanatory word γάρ
  • "monad" - Mahé renders this as "unit"
  • "the Form of Man" - The word that Mahé rendered as "after" ("after the species", in archaic English sense "according to / in the manner of" as in "a painting after Rembrand") is an aspect marker, and can be translated as "as, qua, in respect of, according to", therefore: the Form aspect of Man, Man as Form, or the Form of Man
  • "two monads: God, and Man as Form" - there are several variants of this phrase in manuscripts. In his edition, Mahé selects the variant that adds "one" after "monads", which he reads as "two monads are one". I am selecting the version which only enumerates the two monads because it is equally well-attested.
  • "form" - the word used for form/image/species is the equivalent of Greek εἶδος (Platonic Form) or εἰκόνα (more literally image, as used in the Bible). In the French translation, Mahé leans on the biblical "man in the image of God" and in his English, a more biological "species"

Definitions

  • "world" - κόσμος, meaning an order or arrangement, refers to the universe as an orderly system (contrasted to chaos)
  • "intelligible" - that which we can grasp with intellect (νοῦς)
  • "sensible" - that which we can perceive with our senses
  • "dissoluble" - the opposite of simple; something that consists of parts and therefore can dissolve back into components - in this text, specifically the composite body subject to physical dissolution
  • "unmoved" - also immobile, not subject to change
  • "moving" - also mobile, in motion, motion is a type of change
  • "heaven" - used later in the text in the sense of heavenly spheres (part of the world above air), the movement indicating the visible planets
  • "rational" - endowed with λόγος
  • "monad" - conveys fundamental non-divisibility
  • "Form" - also Idea, Platonic term, a timeless, absolute, non-physical, and unchangeable essence of a thing

Interpretation

The two triads do not have the same subjects. God, (sensible) world/cosmos, embodied-man trace descent of a human towards the mortal. On the other hand, God, heaven (which contains planets, considered in Hermetica to be bodies of gods) and Man as Form is an enumeration of types of immortal beings. Together, the two triads point to the dual nature of man (explicitly called out by the text in a later definition).

Categories: Definitions · Hermetica