The vision — light, then the sinking dark, then the watery deep
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Τοῦτο εἰπὼν ἠλλάγη τῇ ἰδέᾳ, καὶ εὐθέως πάντα μοι ἤνοικτο ῥοπῇ, καὶ ὁρῶ θέαν ἀόριστον, φῶς δὲ πάντα γεγενημένα, εὔδιόν τε καὶ ἱλαρόν· καὶ ἠράσθην ἰδών· καὶ μετ' ὀλίγον σκότος κατωφερὲς ἦν ἐν μέρει γεγενημένον, φοβερόν τε καὶ στυγνόν, σκολιῶς πεπεραμένον· ὡς εἰκάσαι με ἰδόντα μεταβαλλόμενον τὸ σκότος εἰς ὑγρᾶν τινα φύσιν ἀφάτως τεταραγμένην, καὶ καπνὸν ἀποδιδοῦσαν ὡς ἀπὸ πυρός, καί τινα ἦχον ἀποτελοῦσαν ἀνεκλάλητον γοώδη. εἶτα βοὴ ἐξ αὐτῆς ἀσυνάρθρως ἐξεπέμπετο, ὡς εἰκάσαι φωνῇ φωτός.
When he had said this he changed in his form, and at once, in an instant, all things opened to me, and I saw a boundless view: all had become light, serene and glad; and I loved it as I gazed. And after a little there was a downward-sinking darkness, come to be in one part, fearful and gloomy, coiling in tortuous folds — so that, seeing it, I likened it to the darkness changing into some watery nature, unspeakably troubled, giving off smoke as from a fire and making an unspeakable, wailing sound. Then an inarticulate cry was sent forth from it, as if likening it to the voice of the light.
Poimandres changes his form and the whole scene opens. Hermes sees boundless Light — serene, glad, loved at sight — and then a downward-sinking darkness that coils like a serpent and turns into a troubled, smoking, watery nature, out of which comes an inarticulate cry, 'like the voice of the light.'
The answer to Hermes's threefold request comes not as doctrine but as a seen thing. First there is only Light — and the seer's response is love: ἠράσθην ἰδών, 'I loved it as I gazed,' planting ἔρως at the origin of knowledge. Then the counter-image: a darkness that sinks, coils like a serpent, and dissolves into a troubled, smoking, watery chaos. Light and its opposite are shown before either is named.
The undercurrent is that this is a cosmogony disguised as an experience. The 'watery nature' is the deep of Genesis and the raw material of every creation myth, and the strange closing phrase — a cry 'like the voice of the light' — hints that even the chaos is trying to speak the Word that will order it. Hermes is not being told how the world was made; he is being made to watch it happen.
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