The Vision of Poimandres
The Teaching
I seemed to see a presence vast beyond all measure, who called my name and said to me: “What do you want to hear and see, and learn and come to know through thought?”
“I am Poimandres,” he said, “the mind of sovereignty; I know what you want, and I am with you everywhere.”
Then he changed his form, and in an instant everything was opened to me, and I saw a vision of light, unbounded and joyous.
“That light is I,” he said to me, “the mind, your god, who existed before the wet and dark beginning that appeared in your vision. The radiant word that comes from mind is the son of god.”
“Focus your thought on the light and come to know it.”
Commentary
The Poimandres is one of the oldest Hermetic texts and one of the clearest accounts of what all the mystical traditions are pointing at: direct encounter with the divine mind as the ground of one’s own consciousness.
‘The radiant word that comes from mind is the son of god’, this is John’s Logos made explicitly philosophical. The Nous (divine mind) of Plotinus’s Neoplatonism is the same figure. The Upanishadic Brahman as pure consciousness is the same.
The instruction ‘focus your thought on the light’ is the universal contemplative method: turn attention toward its own source. What you discover is not a separate divine entity but the divine as the very ground of awareness itself.
Themes
Connections 15
Unsure
Hermeticism and Christianity were in contact, but no influence of Christianity on Hermeticism is documented. Tertullian named ‘Mercurius Trismegistus’ (c. 200–210), Lactantius (c. 300) quoted Hermes Trismegistus as a pagan prophet. Ficino translated the Corpus Hermeticum for the Medici (1463).
Arose apart
Both took shape before Hermeticism and Neoplatonism were in documented contact (from 300 CE).
Arose apart
No known transmission between Hermeticism and Hinduism while these teachings took shape.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Buddhism and Hermeticism while these teachings took shape.
Travelled
Hermeticism reached Christianity by 200 CE. Tertullian named ‘Mercurius Trismegistus’ (c. 200–210), Lactantius (c. 300) quoted Hermes Trismegistus as a pagan prophet. Ficino translated the Corpus Hermeticum for the Medici (1463).
Arose apart
No known transmission between Hermeticism and Taoism while these teachings took shape.
Arose apart
No known line from Hermeticism to this scientific work.
Unsure
Christianity and Hermeticism were in contact, but no influence of Christianity on Hermeticism is documented. Tertullian named ‘Mercurius Trismegistus’ (c. 200–210), Lactantius (c. 300) quoted Hermes Trismegistus as a pagan prophet. Ficino translated the Corpus Hermeticum for the Medici (1463).
Arose apart
No known transmission between Hermeticism and Hinduism while these teachings took shape.
Unsure
C. H. Dodd (1935) read the Poimandres as drawing on Genesis. Argued.
Unsure
No documented reading of Hermeticism by Alan Watts.
Travelled
Terence McKenna read and drew on Hermeticism.
Arose apart
Both took shape before Hermeticism and Sufism were in documented contact (from 800 CE).
Travelled
Egyptian religion reached Hermeticism by 100 CE. The Hermetica were written in Greek in Roman Egypt, and Hermes is Thoth. Fowden traces their Egyptian elements.