The sermon — repent, and partake of immortality
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Οἱ δὲ ἀκούσαντες παρεγένοντο ὁμοθυμαδόν. ἐγὼ δέ φημι, Τί ἑαυτούς, ὦ ἄνδρες γηγενεῖς, εἰς θάνατον ἐκδεδώκατε ἔχοντες ἐξουσίαν τῆς ἀθανασίας μεταλαβεῖν; μετανοήσατε οἱ συνοδεύσαντες τῇ πλάνῃ καὶ συγκοινωνήσαντες τῇ ἀγνοίᾳ, ἀπαλλάγητε τοῦ σκοτεινοῦ φωτός, μεταλάβετε τῆς ἀθανασίας, καταλείψαντες τὴν φθοράν.
And those who heard came with one accord. And I say: Why, O earthborn men, have you given yourselves over to death, having the power to partake of immortality? Repent, you who have travelled with error and shared in ignorance; be freed from the dark light, partake of immortality, leaving behind corruption.
The hearers gather with one accord, and Hermes preaches: Why have you handed yourselves over to death, when you have the power to partake of immortality? Repent, you who have travelled with error and shared in ignorance; be freed from the 'dark light' of this world, partake of immortality, and leave corruption behind.
The sermon states the wager plainly. Death is not fate but a choice: 'you have given yourselves over to death, having the power (ἐξουσία) to partake of immortality.' The tragedy of the human condition, in the Hermetic reading, is self-inflicted — the immortal self of I.15 has handed itself to death by loving the body.
The cure is one word — μετανοήσατε, 'repent' — but the interlinear keeps its literal sense: change your νοῦς, turn the mind wholly around. And the great paradox lands in the phrase 'be freed from the dark light (τὸ σκοτεινὸν φῶς)': the light everyone lives by, the light of the senses and the sun, is itself a darkness beside the true Light of I.6. To wake is to see that what you took for day was night. It is the same reversal the whole vision has taught, now preached to the crowd.
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Corpus Hermeticum CH1.28 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/hermetica/CH1.28/