A thought came upon me — the Being appears
Read the full text in our reader
Ἐννοίας μοί ποτε γενομένης περὶ τῶν ὄντων καὶ μετεωρισθείσης μου τῆς διανοίας σφόδρα, κατασχεθεισῶν τε τῶν σωματικῶν μου αἰσθήσεων— καθάπερ οἱ ἐν ὕπνῳ βεβαρημένοι ἐκ κόρου τε καὶ τρυφῆς ἢ ἐκ κόπου σώματος— ἔδοξά τινα ὑπερμεγέθη μέτρῳ ἀπεριορίστῳ τυγχάνοντα καλεῖν μου τὸ ὄνομα καὶ λέγοντά μοι, Τί βούλει ἀκοῦσαι καὶ θεάσασθαι καὶ τί νοήσας· μαθεῖν καὶ γνῶναι;
Once, when a thought came upon me about the things that are, and my understanding was lifted high while my bodily senses were held fast — as with those weighed down in sleep by surfeit and indulgence, or by bodily weariness — it seemed to me that a being of immense size, boundless in measure, was calling my name and saying: What do you wish to hear and behold, and what, having grasped it, to learn and to know?
The opening of the Poimandres (Corpus Hermeticum I). Hermes, his bodily senses stilled as if in deep sleep, falls into a state of raised thought; an immense, boundless Being appears and asks what he wishes to learn and know. The revelation-dialogue begins.
The book opens not with an argument but with a state of consciousness. Hermes's ordinary senses are shut down as though by heavy sleep, and in that stillness a second, higher awareness — his διάνοια — rises. Only then does the vision come. The Hermetic path is set from the first sentence: knowledge of the real begins where bodily perception leaves off.
The Being asks a fourfold question — to hear, to behold, to learn, to know — that quietly maps the whole treatise to come: a revelation that is at once heard as words and seen as vision, and that turns into knowledge only when the mind grasps it. The undercurrent is that the questioner already assumes Hermes can rise to this; the vast figure has come because a mind was ready to receive it.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Corpus Hermeticum CH1.1 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Corpus Hermeticum — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Corpus Hermeticum CH1.1 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/hermetica/CH1.1/