87 Spiritual Hermes Trismegistus Quotes: Hermetica

1. “The “Seven Planets” are the Seven Principles which constitute the universe, and which are at least “potentially” contained in everything. Paracelsus speaks of them in a very mystical language, as follows:

2. “The hearer must be of one mind with the speaker, my son, and of one spirit as well; he must have hearing quicker than the speech of the speaker.”

3. “For the sun is situated in the center of the cosmos, wearing it like a crown.”

4. “Devotion is God-Gnosis.” 4

5. “Man is the most divine of all the beings, for amongst all living things, Atum associates with him only – speaking to him in dreams at night, foretelling the future for him in the flight of birds, the bowels of beasts, and the whispering oak.”

6. “But this discourse, expressed in our paternal language, keeps clear the meaning of its words. The very quality of speech and of the Egyptian words have in themselves the energy of the object they speak of.

7. “Such a person does not cease longing after insatiable appetites, struggling in the darkness without satisfaction. This tortures him and makes the fire grow upon him all the more.”

8. “Planets are states of mind, and as the mind has a higher and a lower aspect, consequently each planet has its two aspects correspondingly.

9. “As Above, So Below”

10. “My discourse leads to the truth; the mind is great and guided by this teaching is able to arrive at some understanding. When the mind has understood all things and found them to be in harmony with what has been expounded by the teachings, it is faithful and comes to rest in that beautiful faith.”

11. “Exploration is curiosity put into action.”

12. “For the sun is situated in the center of the cosmos, wearing it like a crown”

13. “Renewal” Is Our Moment-to-Moment Choice

14. “His Word (Logos), all-perfect as he was, and fecund, and creative, falling in fecund Nature, yea in fecund Water, made Water pregnant.” 1

15. “My silence is filled with budding life and hope, and is full of good. My words are the blossoms of fruit of the tree of my soul. For this is the faithful account of what I receive from my true Mind …. through whom I became inspired by God with the Truth. Since that day my Mind hath been ever with me and in my own soul it hath given birth to the Word: the Word is Reason, and Reason hath redeemed me.”

16. “against me,” or it may perhaps be “up to me.” Migne’s Latin translator gives “qui in mea potestatis estis,” and Chambers (p. 153), “those from me”; neither of which can be correct.

17. “Without this is nor god, nor angel, nor any other being. For He is Lord and Father, and the God of all; and all things are beneath Him, [all things are] in Him. 2

18. “As within, so without”

19. “Humanity looked in awe upon the beauty and the everlasting duration of creation. The exquisite sky flooded with sunlight. The majesty of the dark night lit by celestial torches as the holy planetary powers trace their paths in the heavens in fixed and steady metre – ordering the growth of things with their secret infusions.”

20. “Before Intellectual Light was Light Intellectual; Mind of mind, too, was there eternally, Light-giving. There was naught else except the Oneness of this [Mind] and Spirit all-embracing.

21. ‘Above’ as outside of body or space /conscious mind. Reflection.

22. “To the mystic the word illumination means inward enlightenment. As the sun lights the physical world and sustains all life with its energies, so the Self, the spiritual sun, lights the inner world of spirit and preserves with its power the spiritual aspirations and ideals of mankind.

23. “Unto this Word (Logos), my son, thy adoration and thy homage pay. There is one way alone to worship God,—[it is] not to be bad.”

24. “Man is the most divine of all the beings, for amongst all living things, Atum associates with him only - speaking to him in dreams at night, foretelling the future for him in the flight of birds, the bowels of beasts, and the whispering oak.”

25. “This is what you must know: that in you which sees and hears is the word of the lord, but your mind is god the father; they are not divided from one another for their union is life.”

26. “To know divine thought, O souls, you descend and painfully ascend the path of the seven planets and of their seven heavens.”

27. “We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sacred; but once it’s gone - its value is incontestable.”

28. “This cosmos is large, then, and no body is larger?” “Agreed.” “And is it densely packed? For it has been filled with many other large bodies or, rather, with all the bodies that exist.” “So it is.” “But is the cosmos a body?” “A body, yes.” “And a moved body?” [3] “Certainly.” “The place in which it moves, then, how large must it be, and what is its nature? Is it not larger by far so as to sustain continuity of motion and not hold back its movement lest the moved be crowded and confined?”

29. “If thou but settest foot on this path, thou shalt see it everywhere.”

30. “The punishment of desire is the agony of unfulfillment”

31. “As above, so below. As within, so without.”

32. “No eyes will raise to heaven. The pure will be thought insane and the impure will be honoured as wise. The madman will be believed brave, and the wicked esteemed as good.”

33. “Life is happening with or without you”

34. “you are the creator of your reality, and life can show up no other way for you than that way in which you think it will.”

35. “Birth is not the beginning of life – only of an individual awareness. Change into another state is not death – only the ending of this awareness.”

36. “The excellence of the soul is understanding; for the man who understands is conscious, devoted, and already godlike.”

37. “Do you not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is an image of heaven or, to be more precise, that everything governed and moved in heaven came down to Egypt and was transferred there? If truth were told, our land is the temple of the whole world.”

38. “LET THE SUN BE!”

39. “Now to the Father of all no name can be given; seeing that He is ingenerable; for by whatsoever name one may be called, he has as his elder the one who gives the name. But ‘Father,’ and ‘God,’ and ‘Creator,’ and ‘Lord,’ and ‘Master’ are not names, but terms of address [derived] from His blessings and His works.”

40. “There are seven elementary powers or principles — four lower ones belonging to mortal and changeable things, and a trinity of celestial power, which is also called the quinta essentia.

41. “Philosophy is nothing else than striving through constant contemplation and saintly piety to attain knowledge of God.”

42. “The present issues from the past, and the future from the present. Everything is made one by this continuity. Time is like a circle, where all the points are so linked that one cannot say where it begins or ends, for all points precede and follow one another for ever.”

43. “In order then that we may come to things of a like nature (?),—have you not heard that our Hermes divided the whole of Egypt into allotments and portions, measuring off the acres with the chain, 1 and cut canals for irrigation purposes, and made nomes, 2 and named the lands [comprised in them] after them, and established the interchange of contracts, and drew up a list of the risings of the stars, and [the proper times 3] to cut plants; and beyond all this he discovered and bequeathed to posterity numbers, and calculations, and geometry, and astronomy, and astrology, and music, and the whole of grammar?”

44. “His own father and His own mother.” 2

45. “As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul…”

46. “And after this: “…, o my mind. I love the word also.” Poimandres said: “This is the mystery that has been kept hidden until this very day. When nature made love with the man, she bore a wonder most wondrous. In him he had the nature of the cosmic framework of the seven, who are made of fire and spirit, as I told you, and without delay nature at once gave birth to seven men, androgyne and exalted, whose natures were like those of the seven governors.”

47. “WHEN I go from hence let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable. I have tasted of the hidden honey of this lotus…

48. “We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.”

49. “Avoid all conversation with the multitude or common people; for I would not have you subject to envy, much less to be ridiculous unto the multitude.”

50. “Things upon Earth, do not advantage those in Heaven; but all things in Heaven do profit and advantage all things upon Earth.”

51. “Thee, Heaven, I adjure, wise work of mighty God; thee I adjure, Word 2 of the Father which He spake first, when He established all the world!

52. “Nothing in Heaven is enslaved; nothing upon Earth is free.”

53. “Listen within yourself and look into the infinitude of Space and Time. There can be heard the songs of the Constellations, the voices of the Numbers, and the harmonies of the Spheres.”

54. “What is God? The immutable or unalterable good.

55. “Humanity looked in awe upon the beauty and the everlasting duration of creation. The exquisite sky flooded with sunlight. The majesty of the dark night lit by celestial torches as the holy planetary powers trace their paths in the heavens in fixed and steady metre - ordering the growth of things with their secret infusions.”

56. “This hollow of the world, round like a sphere, cannot itself, become of its quality or shape, be wholly visible. Choose any place high on the sphere from which to look down, and you cannot see bottom from there. Because of this, many believe it has the same quality as place. They believe it is visible after a fashion, but only through shapes of the forms whose images seem to be imprinted when one shows a picture of it. In itself, however, the real thing remains always invisible. Hence, the bottom - {if it is a part or a place} in the sphere - is called Haides in Greek because in Greek 'to see' is idein, and there is no-seeing the bottom of a sphere. And the forms are called 'ideas' because they are visible forms. The (regions) called Haides in Greek because they are deprived of visibility are called 'infernal' in Latin because they are at the bottom of the sphere.

57. “ as within so with out” means exactly that what do you have within you? organs, chakras etc the earth has its chakras, The first chakra is located at Mount Shasta in Northern California; the second is in Lake Titicaca in South America; the third chakra is in Uluru-Kata Tjuta in Australia; the fourth chakra resides in Glastonbury in England; the fifth chakra is at the Great Pyramid in Mount of Olives; the sixth chakra is in Kuh-e Malek Siah in Iran, and the seventh chakra is in Mount Kailas in Tibet. In addition to her seven major chakras, she has minor chakras and other vortexes of energy tha… (more)

58. “LET THERE BE EARTH”

59. “For that they have in them something of fire, something of air, something of water, and something of earth,—and yet they are not fire [in itself], nor air, nor water, nor earth.”

60. “Close your eyes and let the mind expand. Let no fear of death or darkness arrest its course. Allow the mind to merge with Mind. Let it flow out upon the great curve of consciousness. Let it soar on the wings of the great bird of duration, up to the very Circle of Eternity.”

61. “As Above So Below; As Outide, So Inside" mean?

62. “The generation of man is corruption; the corruption of man is the beginning of generation.”

63. “That which is below is like that which is above & that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing.”

64. “The sleep of the body is the sober watchfulness of the mind and the shutting of my eyes reveals the true Light.”

65. ‘Below’ as inside of body or subspace /semi conscious mind. Truth.

66. “If then you do not make yourself equal to God, you cannot apprehend God; for like is known by like.

67. “To comprehend God is difficult, to speak [of Him] impossible, even for one who can comprehend; for the Perfect cannot be comprehended by the imperfect, nor the Invisible by the visible.” 2

68. “The sole protection—and this we must have—is piety. For neither evil daimon, yea nor Fate, can ever overcome or dominate a man who pious is, and pure, and holy. For God doth save the truly pious man from every ill.” 3

69. “Birth is not the beginning of life - only of an individual awareness. Change into another state is not death - only the ending of this awareness.”

70. “That which is below is like that which is above, and that which is above is like that which is below, to perform the miracles of one only thing.”

71. “Love is the law of God. You live that you may learn to love. You love that you may learn to live. No other lesson is required of Man. And…

72. “Holy is God, who is determined that He shall be known, and who is known by His own to whom He reveals Himself.”

73. “As above, so below. As within, so without. Originated by Hermes TRISMEGISTUS!”

74. “Whether the real setting and dating of the Hermetic tradition in late antiquity are, in fact, irrelevant to its reception in the Renaissance is an interesting hermeneutic question that cannot be answered here. In any case and for many other reasons, Yates’s views on the Hermetica became famous for some, notorious for others, especially when, in a 1968 article, she made Hermes a major figure in the preliminaries to the scientific revolution, just two years after J.E. McGuire and P.M. Rattansi had connected Newton’s physics with the ancient theology theme so closely associated with Hermes.”

75. “Thee I adjure, [O Heaven], by the alone-begotten Word (Logos) himself, and by the Father of the Word alone-begotten, yea, by the Father who surroundeth all,—be gracious, be gracious!”

76. “If you are mindful, Asclepius, these things should seem true to you, but they will be beyond belief if you have no knowledge. To understand is to believe, and not to believe is not to understand. Reasoned discourse does get to the truth, but mind is powerful, and, when it has been guided by reason up to a point, it has the means to get the truth. After mind had considered all this carefully and had discovered that all of it is in harmony with the discoveries of reason, it came to believe, and in this beautiful belief it found rest. By an act of god, then, those who have understood find what I have been saying believable, but those who have not understood do not find it believable. Let this much be told about understanding and sensation.”

77. “If you are mindful, Asclepius, these things should seem true to you, but they will be beyond belief if you have no knowledge. To understand is to believe, and not to believe is not to understand. Reasoned discourse does [not] get to the truth, but mind is powerful, and, when it has been guided by reason up to a point, it has the means to get [as far as] the truth. After mind had considered all this carefully and had discovered that all of it is in harmony with the discoveries of reason, it came to believe, and in this beautiful belief it found rest. By an act of god, then, those who have understood find what I have been saying believable, but those who have not understood do not find it believable. Let this much be told about understanding and sensation.”

78. “The punishment of desire is the agony of unfulfillment.”

79. “The “king” refers to the lapis. That the lapis is the “master” is evident from the following Hermes quotation in the Rosarium:- “Et sic Philosophus non est Magister lapidis, sed potius minister” (And thus the philosopher is not the master of the stone but rather its minister). Similarly the final production of the lapis in the form of the crowned hermaphrodite is called the aenigma regis.- A German verse refers to the aenigma as follows:

80. “Having made them rise, I became guide to my race, teaching them the words – how to be saved and in what manner – and I sowed the words of wisdom among them, and they were nourished from the ambrosial water.”

81. “If you are mindful, Asclepius, these things should seem true to you, but they will be beyond belief if you have no knowledge. To understand is to believe, and not to believe is not to understand. Reasoned discourse does (not) get to the truth, but mind is powerful, and, when it has been guided by reason up to a point, it has the means to get (as far as) the truth. After mind had considered all this carefully and had discovered that all of it is in harmony with the discoveries of reason, it came to believe, and in this beautiful belief it found rest. By an act of god, then, those who have understood find what I have been saying believable, but those who have not understood do not find it believable. Let this much be told about understanding and sensation.”

82. “O ye people, earth-born folk, ye who have given yourselves to drunkenness and sleep and ignorance of God, be sober now,cease from your surfeit, cease to be glamored by irrational sleep!”

83. “At the foot of the picture is a sleeping Sphinx, whose upper part (representing the higher principles) is human while the lower parts (symbolizing the lower principles) are of an animal nature.

84. “The Pheneatians have also a sanctuary of Demeter sumamed Eleusinian, and they celebrate mysteries in her honour, alleging that rites identical with those performed at Eleusis were instituted in their land. . . . Beside the sanctuary of the Eleusinian goddess is what is called the Petroma, two great stones fitted to each other. Every second year, when they are celebrating what they call the Greater Mysteries, they open these stones, and taking out of them certain writings which bear on the mysteries, they read them in the hearing of the initiated, and put them back in their place that same night. I know, too, that on the weightiest matters most of the Pheneatians swear by the Petroma.” Frazer’s Translation, i. 393 (London, 1898).

85. “Windows To Spirituality”

86. “The Earth is brutish; the Heaven is reasonable or rational.”

87. “I cannot escape death, but at least I can escape the fear of it.”