“Holy is God” — the closing hymn
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Ἅγιος ὁ θεὸς ὁ πατὴρ τῶν ὅλων· ἅγιος ὁ θεὸς, οὗ ἡ βουλὴ τελεῖται ἀπὸ τῶν ἰδίων δυνάμεων· ἅγιος ὁ θεός, ὃς γνωσθῆναι βούλεται καὶ γινώσκεται τοῖς ἰδίοις· ἅγιος εἶ, ὁ λόγῳ συστησάμενος τὰ ὄντα· ἅγιος εἶ, οὗ πᾶσα φύσις εἰκὼν ἔφυ· ἅγιος εἶ, ὃν ἡ φύσις οὐκ ἐμόρφωσεν· ἅγιος εἶ, ὁ πάσης δυνάμεως ἰσχυρότερος· ἅγιος εἶ, ὁ πάσης ὑπεροχῆς μείζων· ἅγιος εἶ, ὁ κρείττων τῶν ἐπαίνων· δέξαι λογικὰς θυσίας ἁγνὰς ἀπὸ ψυχῆς καὶ καρδίας πρὸς σὲ ἀνατεταμένης, ἀνεκλάλητε, ἄρρητε, σιωπῇ φωνούμενε.
Holy is God, the Father of all; holy is God, whose will is accomplished by his own powers; holy is God, who wills to be known and is known to his own. Holy are you, who by a word established the things that are; holy are you, of whom all nature became an image; holy are you, whom nature did not shape; holy are you, mightier than all power; holy are you, greater than all pre-eminence; holy are you, better than all praises. Receive pure, rational sacrifices from a soul and heart stretched up to you — O unspeakable, O ineffable, uttered by silence.
The great doxology that crowns the Poimandres, as the genre promised: an argument risen into a hymn. Nine times 'Holy' — God the Father of all, whose will his own powers fulfil, who wills to be known and is known to his own; holy are you who by a word made the things that are, of whom all nature is an image, whom nature did not shape, stronger than all power, greater than all pre-eminence, better than all praise. Receive pure, rational sacrifices from soul and heart stretched up to you — unspeakable, ineffable, uttered by silence.
The dialogue ends where the Hermetic genre always aims: in a hymn. Nine times the word ἅγιος, 'holy,' tolls — three of God in the third person, six of 'you' in direct address — a doxology whose cadence would sit unremarked in a synagogue or a church, and which the interlinear can let a reader hear as the ancestor of the Sanctus. Each line names a paradox already argued: God's will done by his own powers (I.9), the world his image yet himself unshaped by nature (I.12, 31), the maker who is 'better than all praises' — so that the truest praise concedes praise's failure.
The offering asked for is the book's own theology made liturgy: 'rational sacrifices (λογικαὶ θυσίαι), pure, from soul and heart stretched up.' No blood, no smoke — worship of λόγος and νοῦς, the very faculties the vision restored, lifted toward a God who is finally beyond words: ἀνεκλάλητε, ἄρρητε, σιωπῇ φωνούμενε — 'unspeakable, ineffable, uttered by silence.' The book that was all speech ends by naming silence as the only adequate speech. The interlinear keeps that closing paradox exact.
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Corpus Hermeticum CH1.31 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/hermetica/CH1.31/