The Maker who made all by word — a God beyond touch and sight
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Hermes — ᾿Επειδὴ τὸν πάντα κόσμον ἐποίησεν ὁ δημιουργός, οὐ χερσὶν ἀλλὰ λόγῳ, ὥστε οὕτως ὑπολάμβανε ὡς τοῦ παρόντος καὶ ἀεὶ ὄντος καὶ πάντα ποιήσαντος καὶ ἑνὸς μόνου, τῇ δὲ αὐτοῦ θελήσει δημιουργήσαντος τὰ ὄντα· τοῦτο γάρ ἐστι τὸ σῶμα ἐκείνου, οὐχ ἁπτόν, οὐδὲ ὁρατόν, οὐδὲ μετρητόν, οὐδὲ διαστατόν, οὐδὲ ἄλλῳ τινὶ σώματι ὅμοιον· οὔτε γὰρ πῦρ ἐστιν οὔτε ὕδωρ οὔτε ἀὴρ οὔτε πνεῦμα, ἀλλὰ πάντα ἀπ' αὐτοῦ. ἀγαθὸς γὰρ ὢν, οὐ μόνῳ ἑαυτῷ τοῦτο ἀναθεῖναι ἠθέλησε καὶ τὴν γῆν κοσμῆσαι,
Since the Demiurge made the whole cosmos not with hands but by word, understand him thus: as the one who is present and ever-being, who has made all things, who is one and alone, and who by his own will fashioned the things that are. For this — the cosmos — is his body: not tangible, nor visible, nor measurable, nor extended, nor like any other body; for it is neither fire nor water nor air nor spirit, but all things are from him. For being good, he willed not to keep this to himself alone, but also to adorn the earth.
The Mixing-Bowl opens with the Demiurge. Since the Craftsman made the whole cosmos not with hands but by word, understand him thus: as the one present and ever-being, who made all things, who is one and alone, and who by his own will fashioned the things that are. For this — the cosmos — is his body: not tangible, nor visible, nor measurable, nor extended, nor like any other body; for it is neither fire nor water nor air nor spirit, but all things are from him. For being good, he willed not to keep this to himself alone, but also to adorn the earth.
The fourth treatise opens on the Maker, and its first move is to purify the very idea of making. The Demiurge fashioned the cosmos 'not with hands but by word (οὐ χερσὶν ἀλλὰ λόγῳ)' — a phrase that at once distances the Hermetic God from the hammer-and-anvil craftsman of Plato's Timaeus and aligns him with the God of Genesis, who creates by speaking, and with the Logos of CH I. The interlinear keeps χερσίν against λόγῳ so the reader feels the polemic: creation is an act of word and will, not of labour.
Then a cascade of negations. The cosmos is called God's 'body,' but immediately stripped of every bodily quality — 'not tangible, nor visible, nor measurable, nor extended (οὐχ ἁπτόν, οὐδὲ ὁρατόν, οὐδὲ μετρητόν, οὐδὲ διαστατόν).' This is the apophatic method the whole Corpus loves: God is named only to have every category denied of him, so that 'all things are from him' without his being any of them. The section closes on the treatise's engine, which is ethical: 'being good (ἀγαθὸς ὢν),' God would not 'keep this to himself alone' but willed to adorn the earth. Goodness overflows — the same axiom as CH II.16 ('the good one gives all and takes nothing'), here set in motion as the reason there is a world and a humanity at all. The verb κοσμῆσαι ('to adorn/order') quietly puns on κόσμος itself: to make the world is to beautify it.
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