The two roads — the surpassing Good, or wandering in the dark
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Τοῦτο εἰπόντος, ἡ πρόνοια διὰ τῆς εἱμαρμένης καὶ ἁρμονίας τὰς μίξεις ἐποιήσατο καὶ τὰς γενέσεις κατέστησε. καὶ ἐπληθύνθη κατὰ γένος τὰ πάντα. καὶ ὁ ἀναγνωρίσας ἑαυτὸν ἐλήλυθεν εἰς τὸ περιούσιον ἀγαθόν, ὁ δὲ ἀγαπήσας τὸ ἐκ πλάνης ἔρωτος σῶμα, οὗτος μένει ἐν τῷ σκότει πλανώμενος, αἰσθητῶς πάσχων τὰ τοῦ θανάτου.
This being said, Providence, through Fate and harmony, made the minglings and established the generations; and all things were multiplied according to kind. And he who recognized himself came into the surpassing Good; but he who loved the body — sprung from the error of desire — this one remains in the darkness, wandering, suffering through the senses the things of death.
Providence, working through Fate and the Harmony, makes the minglings and sets the generations going; all things multiply by kind. Then the fork stated plainly: he who recognized himself enters the surpassing Good; but he who loved the body — born of the error of desire — remains lost in the darkness, wandering, suffering through the senses the things of death.
Providence does not fight Fate; it works 'through Fate and harmony' — the planetary machinery of I.9 is now the very instrument of divine forethought. The distinction McKenna drew (escape fate by magic, not flight) is grounded here: Fate is not the enemy but the medium.
Then the whole Hermetic ethic in one antithesis. He who 'recognized himself' (the imperative of I.18-19) enters τὸ περιούσιον ἀγαθόν, the surpassing Good; he who 'loved the body,' born of the 'error of desire' (πλάνη ἔρωτος), stays in the dark, πλανώμενος — wandering, a planet off its course. Self-knowledge and desire-of-body are the two roads, and the pun the interlinear preserves — error (πλάνη) and wandering (πλανάω) from one root — makes the body-lover literally a wanderer, lost from the fixed Good.
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Corpus Hermeticum CH1.19 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/hermetica/CH1.19/