The Asclepius of Hermes Trismegistus: On the Immortality of the Soul

Book VI. Commentary I. Chapter 1. 3. On the Im-

B 3

-mortality of the soul. The text continues from the previous page, refining the metaphor of God's "members." ...although God is not corporeal; yet they are called the members of God because God flows life and motion into them, just as the head of an animal flows into the other members of the body; and God works through them. Nevertheless, not all these members are a single member, nor are all souls a single soul. They are distinguished, he says, not insofar as they are members of one body, but insofar as one member is distinguished from another by its office, shape, position, and peculiar property: about which I shall discourse more broadly later.

But now, let the discourse return to the proposed intention of Mercury The author refers to Hermes Trismegistus by his Latin name, Mercurius., namely to declare and elucidate the immortality of the human soul. Since indeed the whole hope of Christians—and indeed of all men—is situated in the immortality of the soul, I have therefore decided to speak professionally regarding the weight and dignity of so great a matter, doing so by authority, by reason, and by example. Thus, once the truth of the matter is perceived, anyone may strive to accommodate their habits to the immortality of the soul and lead their life as one who is to be immortal, rather than as a brute animal that will perish along with the body.

What Mercury felt regarding this business I have briefly written down, and it has pleased me to bring it into the open. His first foundation is of this sort: namely, that man consists of a double nature—the mortal and the immortal; specifically, the body and the soul, or the soul and the mind. For this reason, he calls man both mortal and immortal. It is from this that God loves man as a part of His own divinity. For, as he says in the Asclepius: so that man might be most full from both parts, He formed him from a double nature.

The mind of man, therefore, is immortal, a part of God—not indeed of the same substance, but of the same image—insofar as it is a spiritual substance, living forever after the beginning of its creation. In the eighth book of the Pymander original: "Pymandri." This refers to the 'Poimandres', the first and most famous book of the Corpus Hermeticum., he seems to hold the same view, where he proposes three immortal worlds: God, the World, and Man. Man, he says, born in the image of the world according to the will of the Father, not only has kinship with the second world, but even possesses the intelligence of the first. Man is created in the image of the world because his body consists of the four elements; his temperament and affections, however, have their beginning from the impression of the higher world.

Again, in the ninth book of the Pymander, he says, man is divided into soul and body; and when these parts agree with each other, then the understanding conceived by the mind is brought forth. For the mind conceives all good notions as often as the seed is infused by God. From this it is clear that the mind of man is capable of receiving the divine seed; this certainly could not happen unless the mind were immortal and bore the mark of the divine image. From this manner of understanding divine things, its immortality is shown, because understanding occurs through things that are similar.

In the tenth dialogue, he asserts that the immortal souls of men pass into daemons original: "dæmones." In this context, 'daemons' refers to intermediary spirits or angels, not evil demons., that is, into angels; and finally, they fly back happily into the choir of the Gods. This certainly would not happen if the soul perished at the same time as the body. Hence, he distributes rewards to the pious and punishments to the impious souls—a theology which Plato the Greek and Virgil the Latin studiously imitate.

He afterwards describes the order of the whole man so that it is easy to see in what part man is called immortal and in what part mortal. The order of man. The soul of man, he says, is carried in this manner: the Mind is in the reason, the reason in the soul, the soul in the spirit, and the spirit in the body. The spirit, diffused through the veins, arteries, and blood, moves the animal everywhere and sustains and carries about the suspended mass of the body. Therefore, man is called immortal in regard to the mind—that truly more divine part by which he agrees and has kinship with the angels and God; but in regard to the fact that he animates the body and diffuses animal life through the arteries, veins, and vital spirits, he is called mortal.

The mind, he says, is separated from the soul, and the soul from the spirit. The mind has taken up the soul like a garment, because the mind, being naked in itself, cannot settle within the earthly mass. The soul, however, uses the spirit as a vehicle, and the spirit runs through the whole animal. Nor should anyone think that three souls were divided by Mercury, since the soul is one according to essence, but manifold according to its power. Hence, it is clear enough among the philosopher Likely referring to Aristotle, who defined the "three souls" as powers (vegetative, sensitive, and intellective) of a single soul. that the intellective soul contains within its own power both the sensitive and the vegetative souls. Di...