>>325655>>325665"Hermes Trismegistos" was the pseudonym of an anonymous Greek forger who wrote an account approximate of what he imagined Ancient Egyptian Paganism to have been. There almost certainly never existed any historical figure hight "Hermes Trismegistos." Even the preface to the "Corpus Hermeticum" reads in Greek: "Ὁ τοῦ Ἑρμοῦ Τρισμέγιστου Ποιμάνδρης συνεγράφετο περὶ τὸ ἔτος 200 μετὰ τὴν Χριστοῦ γενετήν," The Poimander (ie, shepherd of men) of Hermes Trismegistos was written around the year 200 after the birth of Christ." And again 200 years after the birth of Christ — “intellectually speaking” — is actually quite a late point in the history of human thought (much too late chronologically to have accommodated the first literary appearance of a claimed ancient).
But with this premised, however, I will speak to your quoted lines in logically allowing the notion of the legend of a Hermes-like figure having taken a tablet of green stone and thereon having etched cryptic philosophical opinions whose true meanings endure in excess of common human understanding; and I will further grant that everything this personified mystic is discovered to have written is potentially possessive of actual philosophical value (while remembering that it is peculiar of these sorts of systems that you must first sift through huge layers of fluff and misdirection to arrive at a concrete worthwhile understanding).
So to begin: Hermeticism is modeled on Ancient Egyptian Paganism (as is Platonism) and shares in similar features to all occultic/gnostic systems, these especially include
1 - emphasis on immortality
2 - emphasis on non-duality/oneness
3 - emphasis on escaping reincarnation cycles
4 - emphasis on the falseness of sense impressions/anti-materiality
5 - heavy ritualistic use of psychogenic drugs/mushrooms (look at Hermes' hat in near all idealized drawings of him: it is a stylized psilocybin mushroom in a certain middle growth phase, much like the crowns of the Ancient Egyptians, which were also stylized mushrooms).
In connection with point 5, I’m somewhat surprised that hereto no wiz here has yet evidenced understanding that the renaissance alchemists were wont to call the dried sclerotia of psychogenic mushroom species “lapides viventes” or “living stones.” Emeralds in particular were “stones” conceptually bound up with the idea of immortality, owing entirely to their verdure (as the season of spring is that of rebirth and renewal), and plant and fungal species about this time of year do blossom in broad variety.
>The wind carried it in its womb, the earth is the nurse thereof.It is the father of all works of wonder throughout the whole world.
The power thereof is perfect.
If it be cast on to earth, it will separate the element of earth from that of fire, the subtle from the gross.
This makes sense as wind scatters bovine manure by virtue of the air and earth is the nurse whereon the manure takes root allowing the “stone” to flourish into maturity. I suppose it could be argued that it has “perfect power” also, as usually the experience of ingesting these sorts of plants radically changes one’s view of reality.
The Latin in question more exactly reads (as best as I could make it out, had to zoom in really close!): “Vis eius, integra est. Si versa fuerit in terram, separabis terram ab igne, subtile a spisso, suaviter cum magno ingenio ascendit a terra in coelum, iterumque descendit in terram, & recepit vim superiorum & inferiorum. Sic habebis gloriam totius mundi, ideo fugiat a te omnis obscuritas.”
By my own translation then: Its power, is whole. If it shall have been turned into the earth, you will separate earth from fire, thin [subtle] from thick, pleasantly with great genius it ascends from the earth into the sky, and again descends into earth, and receives the power of higher and lower things. Thus you will have glory of all the world, therefore from you may flee all darkness.
The Platonists believed in the existence of two suns : one visible (oratos) and one noetic/purely mental (noetos). They considered the noetic sun to be god (separate from the demiurge, of course, whom the common people in their ignorance think is god, but is not). Supposedly the brightness of this sun is far greater than the earthly sun. It is through the “power” of entheogenic drugs that it [the enlightened human soul] rises out of the demiurgic cave and arrives into the supermundane realm of the forms and the noetic sun. Read carefully and review the following poetical stanza from an adjacent anonymous author before we return to hermeticism proper:
Ὁ γὰρ πατὴρ ἅπαντα ἐξετέλεσε, τὰ νοητὰ δηλαδὴ
εἴδη, ταῦτα γάρ ἐστι, τὰ ἐκτετελεσμένα τε καὶ
τέλεια, καὶ τῷ μεθ’ ἑαυτὸν δευτέρῳ θεῷ
παρέδωκεν, ἄρχειν δηλαδὴ καὶ ἡγεῖσθαι αὐτῶν·
ὥστε ἦν τι καὶ διὰ τούτου παράγηται τοῦ θεοῦ,
πρὸς παράδειγμα ἑαυτοῦ τε καὶ τῆς ἄλλης νοητῆς
οὐσίας, καὶ τοῦτο ἐκ τοῦ ἀνωτάτω πατρὸς ἴσχειν
τὴν γένεσιν. Τοῦτον τὸν δεύτερον θεόν, πρῶτον
φησιν ἑαυτοῖς τίθεσθαι τὰ τῶν ἀνδρῶν ἔθνη,
ὁπόσα δηλαδή, τοῦ μὲν κόσμου τοῦδε προσεχῆ
τινα δημιουργὸν νομίζει, τούτου δ’ οὐκ ἔτι ἀνωτέρω οὐδένα.
For the father did perfect all things, manifestly the noetic
forms, for these are, perfected and perfect,
in accordance with himself to the second god
did he give, manifestly to rule and manage them.
So that if something through this god may be led,
toward the paradigm of himself and of the other noetic
substance, and this to have genesis from out of
the highest father. This second god, whom the
tribes of men place first to themselves, they consider a certain
maker (demiurge) next of this world, and still none higher than this.
They also thought that everything had emanated from this source point — including material creation itself, thus “And as all things were, and came from one, through the mediation of one: so all things were born from this one thing, by adaptation.” The Jews call this process “tsimtsum” but in the original greek (prior to jewish mysticism) it is called aporrhoia (off-flowing).
Further, the “traveling up and down” of which Hermes speaks is symbolic language used to describe the psychedelic revelations these mystics would experience through the use of certain drugs.