Why the ignorant deserve death — darkness watering death
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Τί τοσοῦτον ἁμαρτάνουσιν, ἔφην ἐγώ, οἱ ἀγνοοῦντες, ἵνα στερηθῶσι τῆς ἀθανασίας; Ἔοικας, φησίν, ὦ οὗτος, μὴ πεφροντικέναι ὧν ἤκουσας. οὐκ ἔφην σοι νοεῖν; Νοῶ, ἔφην, καὶ μιμνήσκομαι· εὐχαριστῶ δὲ ἅμα σοί. Εἰ ἐνόησας, φησίν, εἰπέ μοι, διὰ τί ἄξιοί εἰσι τοῦ θανάτου οἱ ἐν τῷ θανάτῳ ὄντες. Ὅτι προκατάρχεται, φημί, τοῦ οἰκείου σώματος τὸ στυγνὸν σκότος, ἐξ οὗ ἡ ὑγρὰ φύσις, ἐξ ἧς τὸ σῶμα συνέστηκεν ἐν τῷ αἰσθητῷ κόσμῳ, ἐξ οὗ θάνατος ἀρδεύεται.
Why do the ignorant sin so greatly, I said, that they should be deprived of immortality? You seem, he says, O you, not to have pondered what you heard. Did I not tell you to think? I do think, I said, and I remember; and I give thanks to you as well. If you have understood, he says, tell me: why are they worthy of death, those who are in death? Because, I say, the gloomy darkness is the prior origin of one's own body, from which comes the moist nature, from which the body is composed in the sensible world, from which death is watered.
Hermes asks why the ignorant sin so greatly that they lose immortality; Poimandres rebukes him for not pondering, and tests whether he has understood. Hermes answers with the aetiology of death: the gloomy darkness is the prior origin of one's own body, whence the moist nature, whence the body is composed in the sensible world — and from that, death is watered like a crop.
The dialogue turns catechetical. Hermes asks why ignorance should cost immortality; Poimandres will not simply answer, but rebukes and tests — 'you seem not to have pondered what you heard' — and makes the pupil demonstrate understanding. Gnosis here is not information received but comprehension proven, held in memory (νοῶ καὶ μιμνήσκομαι, 'I understand and I remember').
Hermes's answer traces death to its root, backward down the chain of I.4-5: the gloomy darkness is the 'prior origin' of one's own body; from it the moist nature; from that the body composed in the sensible world; and from that — the startling verb — 'death is watered' (ἀρδεύεται). Death is irrigated like a crop from the body's moisture: the very wetness that lets a body form is the water that feeds its death. The interlinear keeps the agricultural image the word carries, which 'death arises' would lose entirely.
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Corpus Hermeticum CH1.20 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/hermetica/CH1.20/