NOTES ON TRISMEGISTUS v1.0

BACKGROUND

• This text has been translated all to hell and back. Started as Arabic, translated to Greek, then to Latin, then to Dutch, then to English
• Modern translations try to go from the arabic to english
• I am working from the Mead Translation
• Apparently Pymander means “The Witness”

HIS FIRST BOOK

• Divinely inspired
• The ultimate end goal is Apotheosis
• “For first it must be a war against itself”
• “Forsake the body before the end”
• Huge list of “Heads” or summaries of concepts that will be dealt with later
• Lines 14-79 are Heads like:
• Every essence is immortal
• Evry essence is unchangeable
• Everything that is, is double
• God is Good; Man is evil
• Good is voluntary, or of its own accord
• Evil is involuntary, or against its will
• The Generation of Man is corruption; The corruption of Man is the beginning of Generation
• Operations or Workings are not carried upwards, but descend downwards.
• Of things that re, some re in bodies, some in their IDEAS
• The Wizard Autism is showing here hell yeah
• Avoid all conversation with the multitude or common people; for i wouldn not hve thee subject to envy, much less to be ridiculous unto the Many.
• I am not going to include all the Heads there are so many.
• Basically says “not everyone will understand, and many will use this for evil”

THE POEMANDER

• I was sleeping and saw a huge dude whisper to me
• “What wouldst thou hear and see?”
• “I am Poemander (The Shepherd of men) Mind of all-masterhood; I know what thou desirest and I'm with thee everywhere”
• Poemander gives us visions and is like “do u get it bro”
• “I am that Light, The Mind, thy God, who am before that moist nature that appeared out of darkness; and that bright and lightful Word from the mind is the Son of God”
• “Fire is comprehended or contained in, or by a great moist Power, and constrained to keep its station”
• “For the mind eing God, Male and Female, Life and Light, brought forth by his Word another Mind or Workman which being God of the Fire, and the Spirit, fashioned and formed sven other governors, wich in their circles contain the Sensible World, whose government and disposition is called Fate or Destiny”
• Hello Gnosticism nice to see you
• Theres a fun little exchange where Trism. Interrupts poemander who goes “dude stfu” and Trism replies
• “Behold, I am silent.”
• “And therefore being above all Harmony, he is made and become a servant to Harmony, he is Hermaphoridite, or Male and Female, and watchful, he is governed by and subjected to a Father, that is both Male and Female, and watchful.”
• “When he had thus said, Providence by FAte of Harmony, made the mixtures and established the Generations, and all things were multiplied according to their own kind. And he that knew himself came at length to the Supersubstantial of every way substantial good.”
• Basically, this is sorta Divine Clockmaker Deism.
• Theres a lot of depicting the suffering body as something inherently evil and dirty, something to be escaped.
• The magic here comes out to a sort of extremely advanced alchemical purification ritual
• “The senses of the body return to their font, being parts and again made up into Operations”
• To the first zone, it giventh the power it had of increasing and diminishing
• To the second, plotting and evil
• To the third, the idel deceit of Concupiscence. (lust)
• To the fourth, the desire of Rule
• To the fifth, profane boldness
• To the sixth, evil and ineffectual occasion of riches
• To the seventh, subtle falsehood, always lying in wait
• Ridding yourself of these allows one to reach the 8th state, oneness with god
• Poemander leaves like “go tell people about immortality”
• Trism. “ok”