Hermes rises to preach — “O peoples… be sober!”
Read the full text in our reader
Ταῦτα εἰπὼν ὁ Ποιμάνδρης ἐμοὶ ἐμίγη ταῖς δυνάμεσιν. ἐγὼ δὲ εὐχαριστήσας καὶ εὐλογήσας τὸν πατέρα τῶν ὅλων ἀνέστην ὑπ' αὐτοῦ δυναμωθεὶς καὶ διδαχθεὶς τοῦ παντὸς τὴν φύσιν καὶ τὴν μεγίστην θέαν· καὶ ἦργμαι κηρύσσειν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις τὸ τῆς εὐσεβείας καὶ τὸ τῆς γνώσεως κάλλος. Ὦ λαοί, ἄνδρες γηγενεῖς, οἱ μέθῃ καὶ ὕπνῳ ἑαυτοὺς ἐκδεδωκότες καὶ τῇ ἀγνωσίᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ, νήψατε, παύσασθε κραιπαλῶντες, θελγόμενοι ὕπνῳ ἀλόγῳ.
Having said these things, Poimandres mingled with the powers. And I, having given thanks and blessed the Father of all, rose up, empowered by him and taught the nature of the whole and the greatest vision; and I have begun to proclaim to men the beauty of piety and of knowledge: O peoples, earthborn men, who have given yourselves to drunkenness and sleep and ignorance of God — be sober! cease being besotted, bewitched by irrational sleep.
Poimandres departs, mingling back into the powers. Hermes — empowered and taught the nature of the whole and the greatest vision — rises and begins to proclaim to humanity 'the beauty of piety and of knowledge.' His preaching opens with the great wake-up cry: O earthborn peoples, given to drunkenness, sleep, and ignorance of God — be sober, cease being besotted, bewitched by irrational sleep.
The commission of I.26 is obeyed at once. Poimandres withdraws — 'mingled with the powers,' returning to the divine world — and Hermes, empowered by God, becomes what he was told to become: a herald. The private vision turns public; the seer steps down to preach 'the beauty of piety and of knowledge (εὐσέβεια and γνῶσις),' the two things the whole book has been about.
His opening cry is the classic Gnostic reveille, and the interlinear keeps its physical force. Humanity is drunk (μέθη), asleep (ὕπνος), and ignorant of God (ἀγνωσία) — not wicked so much as unconscious, besotted, 'bewitched by irrational sleep.' The remedy is a single imperative: νήψατε, 'be sober' — wake up. It is the same summons the New Testament makes, and the same one McKenna heard as the perennial call to come out of the trance of ordinary, forgetful life.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Corpus Hermeticum CH1.27 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 CH1.27 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/hermetica/CH1.27/