The archetypal Form — and whence the elements
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Ὡς δὲ ἦν ἐν ἐκπλήξει φησὶ πάλιν ἐμοί, Εἶδες ἐν τῷ νῷ τὸ ἀρχέτυπον εἶδος τὸ προϋπάρχον τῆς ἀρχῆς τῆς ἀπεράντου. ταῦτα ὁ Ποιμάνδρης ἐμοί. Τὰ οὖν, ἐγώ φημι, στοιχεῖα τῆς φύσεως πόθεν ὑπέστη; Πάλιν ἐκεῖνος πρὸς ταῦτα, Ἐκ βουλῆς θεοῦ, ἥτις λαβοῦσα τὸν λόγον, καὶ ἰδοῦσα τὸν καλὸν κόσμον, ἐμιμήσατο, κοσμοποιηθεῖσα διὰ τῶν ἑαυτῆς στοιχείων καὶ γεννημάτων ψυχῶν.
When I was in amazement, he says to me again: You saw in the Mind the archetypal Form, that which pre-exists the beginning without end. So Poimandres to me. Then, I say, whence did the elements of nature come to be? Again he, in answer to this: From the will of God, which, taking the Word and seeing the beautiful cosmos, imitated it, becoming a cosmos through its own elements and offspring souls.
Poimandres tells Hermes what he saw: the archetypal Form, prior to the beginning that has no end. Hermes asks where the elements of nature came from, and is answered: from the will (βουλή) of God, which, taking the Word and seeing the beautiful cosmos, imitated it — becoming a world through its own elements and offspring souls.
Two orders of reality are now distinguished. What Hermes saw was the ἀρχέτυπον εἶδος — the archetypal Form that exists before any beginning. The visible cosmos is a copy of it, and the mechanism of copying is named: the βουλή of God, the divine Will, 'takes the Word and, seeing the beautiful cosmos, imitates it.' Model and image, Form and world — the Platonic architecture stated in a sentence.
The undercurrent is that even the making is an act of contemplation. Nature does not fabricate blindly; she looks at the beautiful pattern and imitates what she sees. Creation is imitation of a beauty already there — which is why, later, the contemplation of that beauty will be called the whole purpose of Man.
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