Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination: Altered States of Knowledge in Late Antiquity
Source entries are currently shown in Spanish; English-first entries arrive with the next cataloguing pass.
Un libro sobre el conocimiento entendido como estado: «This book is about the search for knowledge, the human experience of being in touch with how things really are» «Hanegraaff — Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination (2022) · p. 26». Su objeto son los Hermetica del Egipto romano, y su tesis es que no son filosofía sino práctica: gente que se reunía en casas, santuarios y descampados «to learn a powerful practice of spiritual liberation» «Hanegraaff — Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination (2022) · p. 45».
De ahí el cambio de rótulo que ordena el volumen. Hablar de «espiritualidad hermética» y no de «filosofía hermética» «means breaking with a longstanding tradition in academic research» «Hanegraaff — Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination (2022) · p. 47»: el adjetivo «filosófico» servía para trazar una frontera normativa entre lo respetable y lo desacreditado, «Philosophers did not practice magic, for magicians were not thinking straight» «Hanegraaff — Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination (2022) · p. 53». Y el objeto de estudio no es ni «la tradición hermética» ni «la literatura hermética»: la primera es «a scholarly construct of considerable popular appeal but questionable validity» «Hanegraaff — Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination (2022) · p. 37».
Su postura declarada es de «radical methodological agnosticism», que no afirma ni niega la verdad última de las creencias herméticas: la gnōsis que ellos tenían por posible queda «beyond either verification or falsification» «Hanegraaff — Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination (2022) · p. 30». Y el Epílogo devuelve el arma contra la propia academia: lo que hicieron Hans Jonas con el «gnosticismo» y Frances Yates con «la tradición hermética» fue contar historias del pasado que eran historias del presente «Hanegraaff — Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination (2022) · p. 766».
1300 claims · 1 source · 1 attribution
Attribution
recorded, never asserted«Hanegraaff — Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination (2022) · p. 6»
The chain of the work
the processed witness, in emeraldClaims
1300 entries — the work's own voice, with its passage«This book is about the search for knowledge, the human experience of being in touch with how things really are.» — la primera frase del Prólogo.
«Can scholars tell the truth about truths beyond scholarship? Or can truth not be told but only experienced? If what we call knowledge is a function of our state of mind, then could there be other ways of knowing than those of reason and the senses?» — las preguntas que declara no poder responder.
«All writers try to put a spell on their audience.» — Lo aplica a los autores herméticos, a los especialistas que los estudiaron y a sí mismo.
«Readers who decide to follow my lead through the Hermetic labyrinth will learn about the spell of phantasmata, the unruly stream of mental imagery charged with emotion that fills much of our conscious and unconscious life on a daily basis.»
«consciousness is not stable and reliable but fluid and susceptible to alteration» — el hecho incuestionable al que apunta el subtítulo: «Alterations of consciousness result in altered states of knowledge.»
«which means that I neither affirm nor deny the ultimate truth of Hermetic beliefs» — la fórmula del «radical methodological agnosticism» que declara para todo el libro.
«The gnōsis that they considered possible I see as beyond either verification or falsification.» — Añade: «After all, what do I know? I have not been there.»
«I have not been there. The divine nous has not appeared to me, my body has not been exorcized, my soul has not been reborn, nor have I ever traveled in my mind to an utterly nondual reality of pure spiritual bliss.» — su declaración de límite.
«I consider it my job as a scholar to do what I can to understand what they were trying to tell their readers.»
«the Hermetic discourse of gnōsis and noēsis (direct “noetic” perception of ultimate reality) confronts us with the unavoidable aporias of human understanding.»
«A practice of radical empiricism and methodological agnosticism is central to my understanding of the study of religion as a neither religionist nor reductionist field of research.»
«whereas my earlier work was focused on the Renaissance revival of the Hermetica, in this book I travel back all the way to the sources in Roman Egypt.» — el corte respecto de su obra anterior, dicho por él.
«it requires a reading practice of hermeneutic circularity: while the argument as a whole is built up from its component parts, presented one by one in linear succession, to understand those parts you need a synthetic view of the whole.»
«But does it help us understand what Chopra meant?» — objeta el método genealógico dominante con el ejemplo de una historiadora del futuro que estudia el «quantum healing» de Deepak Chopra rastreando la física cuántica.
«Shouldn’t we rather begin by asking what quantum healing meant for him, within his discourse, rather than what quanta “really” meant in the twentieth century or what they meant for others?»
«Instead of assuming that I already know what this word means […] I want the authors of the Hermetica to tell me what it meant for them.» — sobre nous.
«scholars are no exception to the rule that humans tend to explain the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar, the unknown in terms of the known. In academic research, this has profoundly conservative effects.»
«The object of study in this book is neither “the Hermetic tradition” nor “the Hermetic literature” per se.» — la primera es «a scholarly construct of considerable popular appeal but questionable validity»; la segunda, textos dispares que a veces solo comparten la referencia a Hermes como autoridad.
«Its purpose was to heal the soul from negativity, free it from such powerful influences as fear and aggression, and open its eyes to the beauty of existence.» — así cierra el Prólogo, tras llamar a la espiritualidad hermética un camino gozoso que celebraba la vida y la luz.
«It was not concerned with domination but with knowledge and understanding – or, more precisely, with knowledge as understanding.»
«In Egypt during the first centuries of the Common Era, men and women would meet discreetly in their homes, in temple sanctuaries, or in solitary places to learn a powerful practice of spiritual liberation.» — la frase con que abre el capítulo 1.
«But the Way of Hermes was not an easy path. It required patience and devotion, trust and discipline, diligent study, persistent practice, and a willingness to question conventional wisdom.»
«of Hermetic philosophy instead, but we will see that this terminology is misleading» — los estudiosos llevan mucho tiempo hablando así; usar en cambio «Hermetic spirituality» significa romper con una larga tradición de la investigación académica.
«faculties rather resided in the heart» — según las antropologías egipcia, semítica y griega antiguas, las facultades intelectuales estaban ahí; de ahí las referencias herméticas al conocimiento del corazón y a los ojos del corazón.
«In our efforts to reveal the meaning of ancient words, we have to resort to modern equivalents that in fact conceal their meaning; and yet we have no choice, because only through such acts of concealment can we hope to reveal at least something of the original.»
«once you enter the rabbit hole of translation in pursuit of just one single word, you find yourself in a wonderland of meaning where literally nothing is what it seems and there are no stable rules to hold on to.»
«In short, translation presupposes the untranslatable.» — porque el puente entre emisor y receptor lo tiende «something» que no puede ponerse en lenguaje.
«They strongly believed in the metaphysical stability of meaning and the accessibility of truth, while insisting that ultimate meaning and truth could be found only beyond the sphere of thought and language.» — los autores de los Hermetica, ajenos al relativismo lingüístico.
«“Noetic perceptions” as understood in the Hermetica […] are not the normal “intellectual” or “mental” activities we commonly have in mind today but are claimed precisely to go beyond them. They have absolutely nothing to do with thinking, let alone with sensory perception.»
«What their authors meant by “knowledge” is something entirely different from the intellectual understanding achieved through mental activity – thinking – that our modern philosophical traditions have taught us to understand by that word.»
«A second reason not to speak of Hermetic “philosophy” has less to do with the exact content of that term than with its polemical function in common academic and even in everyday discourse.»
«Philosophers did not practice magic» — La frase se cierra con la premisa tácita que reconstruye en los especialistas: los magos «were not thinking straight».
«intimately linked to the liberal neo-humanist» — así adjudica el sesgo de los clasicistas profesionales: su filhelenia estaba ligada a las perspectivas neohumanistas del Kulturprotestantismus alemán del siglo XIX, con su hostilidad hacia Egipto.
«an irritant to the scholarly imagination» — que los Hermetica fueran textos griegos escritos en Egipto lo fue, y por eso, dice, se volvieron campo ideal de disputa ideológica.
«Zielinski’s “higher Hermetism” stood for Greek philosophy, while its “lower” counterpart stood for Egyptian magic; the former was worthy of attention, the latter was not.»
«classicists responded by claiming the Hermetica for themselves – that is to say, for “Greece.”» — la reacción al desdibujamiento de fronteras que había hecho Reitzenstein, vivido como provocación.
«these developments did not lead scholars to abandon the basic distinction between two types of Hermetica. … Only the terminology was adapted somewhat» — tras el abandono, desde los años setenta, de la ideología pro-griega y antiegipcia.
«No comprehensive study or textual edition of the “popular” Hermetica has been published after Festugière’s first volume of 1942.»
«often determine which other texts, practices, ideas, or traditions will be seen as most» — las terminologías que elegimos no solo colorean la interpretación: deciden con qué se compara.
«By speaking of “Hermetic spirituality,” I hope to highlight precisely those dimensions that philosophers […] have always found most difficult to handle but which are central to the study of religion: experiences and practices.»
«Yet Fowden never explained what he meant by» — de la espiritualidad hermética: «he seemed to take the term for granted», y él declara dar el paso extra de explicitar la terminología.
Adopta de Streib y Hood la definición de espiritualidad como «privatized, experience-oriented religion», y la desglosa en tres rasgos: religiosa antes que racional o científica, centrada en la experiencia directa antes que en la doctrina, y de práctica individual privada antes que de pertenencia a una organización.
«Their purpose, as will be seen, was to heal the soul from its afflictions and restore the human spirit to its original condition of wholeness, divine consciousness, omniscience, even omnipotence.»
«I need to emphasize that my approach does not» — implicar un mero reordenamiento de los textos que sustituya el marco de «philosophical versus technical Hermetica» por otro de espirituales frente a no espirituales.
«I ask my readers to visualize the situation not in terms of two separate blocks at all, but as one single field of texts and ideas arranged in a circular manner around a center.» — con el Camino de Hermes en el corazón del círculo y, en el centro, un punto de trascendencia donde solo queda el silencio.
Nombra los textos que se mueven al primer plano de ese círculo — CH I, CH XIII y NH VI6 — y advierte que algunos autores rara vez incluidos en el corpus, «notably Zosimos of Panopolis and Iamblichus of Chalcis», resultan más importantes que componentes estándar de él.
Data el Logos teleios en la crisis del siglo III y lo llama «the longest and most explicitly Egyptian text among all the spiritual Hermetica that have come down to us».
«In the older scholarly literature the Logos teleios has often been described as an “optimistic” treatise, but something is wrong with that assessment.» — Hermes anuncia allí que la sabiduría se extingue en la tierra y que los dioses abandonan Egipto.
Consigna que del Logos teleios griego solo quedan unos pasajes citados por escritores cristianos y la plegaria final conservada en el Papiro Mimaut, y que el Asclepius latino se produjo en el norte de África algún tiempo después del 320, «more concerned with solemnity than with precision».
Adjudica al traductor latino la condición de simpatizante externo y no de practicante: le incomodaban los pasajes sexuales explícitos y atenuó el énfasis en la inmortalidad del alma y en la divinidad interior del hombre.
Sostiene que la versión copta hallada en Nag Hammadi «is considerably more precise and reliable than its parallel in the Latin Asclepius», y de ahí que no convenga apoyarse demasiado en el Asclepius latino.
Consigna que algún copista clasificó por error el Asclepius como obra filosófica de Apuleyo, y que a ese error se le debe su supervivencia: condenado como idolátrico por Agustín, se transmitió como obra de un autor latino respetado.
Registra que Walter Scott, en su versión de 1924, llevó tan lejos el «mejorar» el texto que acabó transformando «an obscure religious document into a clear philosophical treatise, which it had never been».
«we are hearing echoes of distant voices and often cannot make out for sure what they were trying to say.» — su balance del estado del Asclepius.
Registra que el autor del Asclepius describe Egipto como «the Temple of the Whole World», un espacio sagrado lleno de santuarios hechos para que los dioses se sientan en casa.
Sitúa a Theosebeia en Panópolis (Akhmīm), en el Alto Egipto, a fines del siglo III o comienzos del IV, enseñando «some kind of secret knowledge to small circles of initiates», posiblemente al frente de un collegium de artesanos heredado.
«a chief pioneer of the technical practice that» — hoy se conoce como alquimia, «the Hermetic art» — así presenta a Zosimos de Panópolis, artesano del metal que conocía los secretos de fabricar estatuas de templo casi vivas.
«All three of them were followers of Hermes Trismegistus – in fact, it so happens that they are the only Hermetic practitioners still known to us by name.» — Zosimos, Theosebeia y Jámblico de Calcis.
Adjudica a Jámblico la tesis de que la filosofía no basta para la salvación: el alma debe ser sanada y su vaso corporal potenciado por los dioses mediante teurgia ritual, «the work of the gods», como la cultivaban los sacerdotes egipcios en la tradición de Hermes.
«this theme of embodiment is of central» — Sigue: «to what Hermetic spirituality was all about». El paralelo es entre estatuas habitadas por dioses y almas encarnadas en cuerpos.
«Nobody knows who wrote the Hermetic treatises, and we have no direct descriptions by independent observers of Hermetic groups or individual practitioners. Zosimos, Theosebeia, and Iamblichus are as close as we ever get.»
Adjudica el debate sobre las comunidades herméticas a un defecto hermenéutico: los participantes «succumbed to the power of the anachronistic imagination and its vulnerability to suggestive language» — Reitzenstein pensó en una Gemeinde protestante, Festugière en clero, iglesia y sacramentos católicos.
«In this short review of the scholarly debate about Hermetic communities, we have already encountered Protestant church services, Gnostic sacraments, Pietist conventicles, Roman Catholic Masses, Masonic ceremonies, and Occultist ritual. All of these have been casually imposed on the Hermetica as hermeneutical prototypes»
«These texts are all about teachers and pupils meeting in intimate, private, confidential settings. […] In short, Hermetic spirituality seems to have been a very low-key affair.»
«The case of Theosebeia suggests that devotees could be either male or female and might get together simply in somebody’s home.»
«of Hermetism were neglected for decades, until the spell was finally broken by Garth Fowden with his» — seminal study The Egyptian Hermes (1986) — los medios sociales del hermetismo, dice, quedaron desatendidos por el dominio de la perspectiva de las «ficciones literarias» de Festugière.
«were central to what the Way of Hermes was all about» — lo dice de las prácticas espirituales de liberación de las pasiones destructivas, y añade que lo eran en mucho mayor grado de lo reconocido.
«They were after total liberation, radical enlightenment, perfect gnōsis.» — los herméticos iban más lejos que el ejercicio espiritual filosófico corriente: su camino sí involucraba esos estados.
Recoge de Plutarco la distinción entre las pasiones naturales, necesarias para toda actividad ética y política, y las pasiones dañinas que causan la corrupción (diastrophē) del alma.
«it begins misperceiving its own condition so that it believes itself to be healthy while it is actually sick» — el alma, enferma por esas infecciones, deja de percibir su propio estado.
«This is how we end up living our lives in profound confusion and spiritual ignorance, believing we are in control of ourselves where in fact we are enslaved by harmful passions.»
«it falls under the spell of delusionary images» — lee con Macrobio el descenso del alma como embriaguez progresiva: la encarnación implica una alteración profunda de la conciencia que le hace perder su claridad original y olvidar de dónde vino.
«Powerful texts appeal to your emotions so as to capture your attention and keep you engaged. Academic writing is no exception.» — el Epílogo, que aplica a la academia lo dicho en el Prólogo.
«The mental imagery must be powerful and the story must seem plausible – but here’s the thing: the information does not need to be correct. None of these phantasmata needs to be real.»
Data en 1934 la primera parte de Gnosis und spätantiker Geist de Hans Jonas y en 1958 The Gnostic Religion, y adjudica su enorme atractivo a la alienación: apareció «in the shadow of the holocaust and the atomic bomb».
«the gnostic “principle” or “syndrome” as the core phenomenon of late antiquity was certainly not correct» — dice del relato de Jonas, y consigna que los especialistas lo desarmaron como «dubious category».
Adjudica el atractivo de Festugière a su propia biografía y su época: perdió a dos hermanos joven, lo obsesionaba el problema del mal y añoraba un paraíso terrenal sin la Caída.
«because it resonated with what those scholars feared might be happening all around them in their own time as well» — No porque esa visión de la antigüedad tardía emergiera con claridad de las fuentes primarias.
Consigna que Yates se apoyó en Festugière para toda su información sobre la literatura hermética original «but she entirely sidelined the pessimistic-existentialist “gnostic” outlook while enthusiastically embracing the “religion of the world”», que en Festugière tenía un papel muy menor.
«magic plays no role of any significance in the Corpus Hermeticum» — pese a lo cual los estudiosos dieron por sentado que los Hermetica trataban de magia natural egipcia.
«What Hans Jonas did for “gnosticism,” then, Frances Yates did for “the Hermetic Tradition.” She brought it to the attention of a mass audience, by telling stories about the past that were really stories about the present with implications for the future.»
«Both perspectives have powerful appeal for the modern and postmodern imagination, but my argument is that neither of them is adequate to make sense of Hermetic spirituality.» — ni la de Jonas ni la de Yates.
«those categories are inflexible and misleading» — dualismo y monismo; y añade que las dinámicas de simpatía y antipatía cósmicas «were of little theoretical or practical importance to Hermetic spirituality per se».
«practitioners were not concerned with “operating on the world” by manipulating its powers along Yatesian lines but were trying to achieve spiritual liberation on an individual level.»
«It was not really about where the soul was, or where it would go, but about the state it was in.»
«the sense of alienation that we do» — encontrar en los Hermetica «is best understood» psicológicamente — como estado mental o modificación de la conciencia, explicado en términos de esclavitud o adicción a imágenes mentales delirantes.
«it provided for the soul to achieve spiritual» — liberation «in a fully embodied state» — el desafío positivo de la encarnación era justamente esa oportunidad: no es catástrofe que corregir.
«Two dimensions, one reality. The core metaphysics of Hermetic spirituality, or so I have argued, should be understood in terms of radical nonduality.»
«Hermetic gnōsis could be defined with great precision as being “wakeful to the difference” not just after having actually woken up but even while still being in the embodied state of imaginal consciousness.»
«The guiding virtue in this supreme enterprise was eusebeia, an attitude of profound reverence for the Source of universal Light and Life, and the ultimate goal was to be fully alive and conscious in a permanent state of gnōsis.»
«Nonduality and embodiment must therefore take the place of monism and dualism in our interpretations»
Adjudica a la Deconstrucción la consecuencia de volver imposible la hermenéutica: si el contenido significativo está ausente por definición, el desvelamiento cede su lugar a un desenmascaramiento que solo puede exponer mecanismos de poder.
Lee la «Farmacia de Platón» de Derrida como inversión radical de Hermes: «the place of Hermes the mediator, the communicator par excellence and messenger of the gods, is taken over by a deity who erases mediation!».
Consigna que la Hermenéutica de Gadamer se llama así por Hermes «because its most basic sympathies lie not with rupture and revolution but with mediation and communication».
«Paradoxically, we do not begin to understand unless we understand that we do not understand; misunderstanding is always easy while understanding is always hard, and it can never be taken for granted or treated as final.»
«the critical tools of Hermeneutics must first be directed not at our textual or personal others but at ourselves, and therefore our understanding of otherness rests ultimately on our capacity of self-understanding.»
Distingue la gnōsis hermética del autoconocimiento gadameriano: la primera accede a un horizonte de nous que no es horizonte porque no tiene límites temporales ni espaciales; la segunda exige que el horizonte humano permanezca intacto para poder fundirse con el del otro.
«I will be analyzing a collection of ancient texts that claim to reveal the true nature of reality and describe a way toward liberation from mental delusion.» — así define el objeto en la primera plana del Prólogo.
«Their anonymous authors referred to such knowledge as gnōsis and described it as ultimately inexpressible in human language.» — el conocimiento que esos textos dicen alcanzar queda declarado inexpresable por ellos mismos.
«And yet they were using language to make such claims, and in writing a book about them I have been doing the same.» — la paradoja de la que arranca el libro: usar palabras para hablar de lo que se declara indecible.
«My objectives in this book are far more modest in comparison, although admittedly still ambitious.» — acota sus objetivos frente a las preguntas filosóficas de fondo que acaba de enunciar.
«On the first and most obvious surface level, you will be reading a study of the Hermetic literature from Roman Egypt in which I deliberately attempt to change the narrative of what these treatises are all about.» — el primero de los cinco niveles en que declara organizado el argumento.
«On a second level immediately below the surface, this book is concerned with the historical imagination and the powerful effects of telling stories.» — el segundo nivel, del que sale el subtítulo del volumen.
«We use words to tell other people about what we have understood or think we have understood, but our language and our way of using it is never just a simple tool of translation and communication – it is always a means of enchantment as well.» — sostiene que el lenguaje académico no es instrumento neutro sino también medio de encantamiento.
«Most obviously, of course, it is true of myself as well.» — se incluye a sí mismo entre los autores que intentan hechizar a su público.
«Hermetic practitioners believed that the horizon of human consciousness could not just be expanded but» — el tercer nivel del argumento: para ellos ese horizonte podía además trascenderse, y de ahí la gnōsis.
«They would have argued that scholarly or academic knowledge of any kind (empirical, historical, phenomenological, hermeneutic, exegetical, rational, critical, and so on) could never be more than the product of a comparatively low-level, low-quality, altered, narrowed, reduced, and therefore ultimately untrustworthy type of consciousness.» — reconstruye la objeción que los propios herméticos harían a cualquier estudio académico de ellos.
«the easiest way for me to respond to such scepticism would be to flip the argument around – as almost all scholars in this field have done – by assuming implicity, or stating explicitly, that not my reliance on scholarly methods but their belief in gnōsis must be an irrational illusion, a pious “mystical” dogma without any true foundation.» — describe la salida fácil que dice no tomar; la fuente imprime *implicity*.
«I am not making that assumption. This book as a whole (and here I reach the fourth dimension of my argument) exemplifies a perspective of radical methodological agnosticism, which means that I neither affirm nor deny the ultimate truth of Hermetic beliefs.» — el cuarto nivel, y la postura metodológica declarada para todo el volumen.
«The authors of the spiritual Hermetica claimed to have attained perfect knowledge of realities far beyond the scope of what most scholars would consider possible, and I see no reason not to take them seriously.» — tomarlos en serio no equivale, en su planteo, a suscribir lo que dicen.
«If I hypothesize that they did, as I am willing to do, still I cannot claim to possess some superior level of insight that would allow me to explain with any certainty what really happened to them.» — el límite que se pone incluso si concede que alcanzaron lo que dicen haber alcanzado.
«What I do know is that these authors left us a series of fascinating texts in which they speak about their beliefs, their practices, and their experiences.» — lo único que declara saber, y de donde arranca el trabajo del historiador.
«Rather than presenting these five dimensions separately as theoretical perspectives explained in general or abstract terms, I have adopted a deliberately narrative procedure in that I allow them, like the characters of a novel, to unfold and unveil themselves gradually over the course of ten chapters.» — declara narrativo, y no expositivo, el procedimiento del libro.
«Unless you are blessed with an extraordinary memory, be warned that by the time you reach the final pages, you may need to go back and read the whole thing again to pull the various strands together.» — advierte al lector el costo de esa forma narrativa.
«Specialists of late antiquity will notice quickly that my approach to Hermetic spirituality is somewhat different from the usual one.» — anuncia el corte con la práctica corriente de la especialidad.
«Most scholarship in this domain is ultimately less concerned with meaning and the understanding of content than with tracing the genealogy of separate elements from a historical and comparative perspective.» — su diagnóstico del método dominante: genealogía de elementos antes que comprensión del sentido.
«Thus when the Hermetica use a certain term or describe a certain concept, the first thing that most scholars will ask themselves is “where does this originally come from?” and “where else do we find this in the literature of the period?”» — las dos preguntas con que, dice, arranca casi siempre el estudio de estos textos.
«However, the methodology carries considerable risks of misinterpretation, as may be illustrated by an example» — el ejemplo que sigue es la historiadora del futuro que estudia el sanar cuántico de Deepak Chopra rastreando la física de los quanta.
«Few scholars would disagree with the principle that an adequate historical approach to Hermetic spirituality, as to any other religious or spiritual phenomenon, must begin with studying the relevant primary sources in their own right and on their own terms.» — el principio que dice compartido, y que en su lectura la práctica genealógica incumple.
«Hermetic spirituality was a joyful path that celebrated life and light.» — el retrato con que cierra el Prólogo, contra la imagen de un hermetismo pesimista.
«We end up with the art and practice of hermēneia, interpretation or understanding, that takes its name from Hermes.» — el quinto nivel del argumento, que da nombre a la hermenéutica y cierra el círculo del libro.
«I offer this book to my readers for their pleasure and education.» — la última frase del Prólogo.
«Whether state-specific sciences are possible or not, the relevant point for me is that different modalities of consciousness imply different types of knowledge.» — en nota, acota hasta dónde le importa la discusión sobre ciencias específicas de estado.
«I would respond that the aporias of knowledge, the limits of human horizons, and the biological conditioning of human brains make the alternative cognoscemus or cognoverimus (“we will get to know,” “we will have come to know”) even far more implausible.» — contra la confianza en que el conocimiento llegará a completarse.
«When my New Age Religion and Western Culture was published in 1996, it was virtually the first academic study (for the exception see ibid., 3 note 11) based on actually reading the primary sources of the New Age, focusing on their contents and trying to understand what the authors meant to say.» — presenta su libro de 1996 como el primer ensayo del mismo método que aplica aquí.
«Almost all existing scholarship at that time showed far more interest in making the New Age fit already-existing theoretical frameworks that made sense to academics than in finding out what made sense to New Agers.» — el defecto que dice haber encontrado entonces, y que reencuentra en el estudio de los Hermetica.
«I concur, although with the Gadamerian proviso that any description is already an interpretation, informed by comparison with what falls within the reader’s hermeneutic horizon.» — acepta el principio de describir antes de comparar, con la salvedad de que no hay descripción previa a la interpretación.
«They would learn about the supreme universal Source of Life and Light that was ever-present behind the screen of appearances and in the depths of their own minds.» — lo que iban a aprender quienes se reunían en el Egipto romano: una Fuente única, a la vez tras las apariencias y en el fondo de la propia mente.
«The teachers claimed to have gone through profound experiences of inner transformation and spiritual rebirth; they had encountered transcendent beings and traveled out of their bodies to places beyond the stars; and so they could offer guidance and advice to pupils who wished to follow in their footsteps.» — la autoridad del maestro hermético descansa, en su reconstrucción, en la experiencia y no en la doctrina.
«To speak about these practices as “Hermetic spirituality” means breaking with a longstanding tradition in academic research.» — enuncia el cambio de rótulo que ordena el volumen entero.
«Scholars have long been used to speaking of Hermetic philosophy instead, but we will see that this terminology is misleading.» — la razón del cambio: el rótulo de filosofía induce a error sobre lo que estos textos hacían.
«Nothing less is at stake here than the paradox of translation across the threshold of language itself.» — lo que está en juego al traducir *nous*, palabra que declara central para todo el libro.
«For moderns like us, to say that something “cannot be thought” means that our mind cannot grasp it.» — el desplazamiento moderno que hay que deshacer para leer *anoēton*.
«This must very much be kept in mind (or taken to heart) while reading the Hermetica, where we often encounter references to “knowledge of the heart” or perception through the “eyes of the heart.”» — de ahí que las fórmulas herméticas del corazón no sean metáfora sino localización de la facultad.
«Nevertheless – and this is where we encounter the essential dilemma – we still cannot avoid using such terms as mind, spirit, soul, or the heart in our attempts to convey how Hermetic authors thought of the faculties for gaining access to higher salvational “knowledge,” often referred to as gnōsis.» — el dilema queda declarado sin solución: los términos disponibles ocultan lo que deben revelar.
«How radical the implications really are becomes clear when we realize that, logically, this “idea” or “thought” itself therefore cannot be translated.» — si el traductor reescribe el texto guiado solo por la idea de la fuente, esa idea misma queda fuera de la traducción.
«Communication is therefore made possible only by “something” that itself cannot be communicated and, by definition, cannot even be understood.» — el puente entre emisor y receptor queda hecho de aquello que no puede pasar por el puente.
«The Hermetica are full of statements to the effect that true knowledge of ultimate realities “that cannot be thought” is not just possible, but essential to human salvation and true felicity;» — la pretensión hermética es justo la inversa del relativismo lingüístico moderno.
«The human faculty of direct perception known as nous was believed to make such knowledge possible; but because this word was also used for normal thinking, as Festugière pointed out, the unfortunate result is that none of its translations will work in English – or, for that matter, in other modern languages.» — la ambigüedad no es del traductor sino del griego mismo.
«If they still preferred to speak of Hermetic philosophy, this was because it helped them draw a normative boundary.» — la función del rótulo no era descriptiva sino de frontera entre lo respetable y lo desacreditado.
«armchair intellectuals trained to value thinking as a noble pursuit and dismiss “occult” practices as embarrassing nonsense.» — así describe a los estudiosos que fijaron esa frontera.
«This stance was accompanied by profound feelings of suspicion, hostility, and contempt for anything reminiscent of its traditional competitor, that is to say of Egypt, the symbolic center of pagan idolatry, the primitive heart of irrational darkness.» — el filhelenismo decimonónico traía adosado su reverso egipcio.
«In other words, anything philosophical in the Hermetica must be Greek by definition, for even the very language of the Egyptians prevents them from understanding rational thought.» — reconstruye así la premisa de la que parte la división de Zielinski entre hermetismo alto y bajo.
«Festugière, in his four-volume standard work published between 1942 and 1954, spoke of a “popular” Hermetism as opposed to its “learned philosophical” counterpart, devoting one volume to the former and three» — la proporción del reparto, dice, mide el valor que se le daba a cada mitad.
«Because of the power that language exerts over our minds.» — su respuesta a por qué importa cómo se rotule este material.
«If we call them “philosophical” we will try to analyze their philosophy and compare them with other philosophical traditions, and if we call them “theoretical” we will be looking for theories and systematic speculation.» — el rótulo decide de antemano qué se busca en el texto y con qué se lo compara.
«As we have just seen, even modern scholars with deep linguistic training such as Fowden, Hadot, and Van den Kerchove feel at liberty to use this modern coinage in discussing traditions of late antiquity where the term did not yet exist.» — el anacronismo de hablar de espiritualidad en la antigüedad tardía ya estaba admitido antes que él.
«Based on extensive empirical research of what the term “spirituality” actually means in contemporary discourse, the sociologists Heinz Streib and Ralph W. Hood conclude that it can be defined with sufficient precision as “privatized, experience-oriented religion.”» — de ahí toma la definición operativa que aplica a los Hermetica.
«With respect to our topic, of course this does not mean that in the Hermetica we encounter no rational or scientific elements, no doctrines and beliefs, and no forms of social organization – far from it.» — el límite de su propia tesis, puesto en la misma plana en que la enuncia.
«Rather, the argument is that their primary focus is not on those particular dimensions but on practices for the cultivation of private individual experiences.» — la tesis queda en términos de foco primario, no de presencia o ausencia.
«If Hermetic spirituality was a type of privatized, experience-oriented religion, this has consequences for conventional ways of categorizing the materials.» — de la definición adoptada se sigue la reorganización del corpus.
«I need to emphasize that my approach does not imply a mere reshuffling of the texts according to a somewhat different principle of division, replacing the traditional framework of “philosophical versus technical Hermetica” by one of “spiritual versus non-spiritual Hermetica.”» — descarta que su propuesta sea cambiar una dicotomía por otra.
«The spiritual Way of Hermes forms the heart of this circle (at the very center of which we might wish to imagine a dot, to indicate the nondimensional point of utter transcendence where words fail and only silence remains), while at its outer periphery» — la figura que sustituye a los dos bloques: un campo único dispuesto en círculo, con el silencio en el centro.
«One further important implication of my approach is that on our way toward the center, we will encounter some texts and authors (notably Zosimos of Panopolis and Iamblichus of Chalcis) who are seldom included in the corpus of Hermetic materials but happen to be far more important to Hermetic spirituality than some standard components of that corpus.» — la consecuencia práctica del reordenamiento: Zósimo y Jámblico se vuelven centrales.
«The term “mysticism” would deserve separate treatment and is particularly problematic in the work of Roman Catholic authors such as Festugière.» — en nota, aparta el término místico del vocabulario del libro.
«Philosophers are those who have recognized their own ignorance and desire to become wise: therefore Plato’s ideal philosopher, Socrates, is precisely not the man of wisdom» — en nota, el contraste entre el filósofo socrático, que sabe que no sabe, y el sabio hermético.
«Christian Bull is now working on a study that should fill this gap.» — en nota, sobre la falta de una edición y estudio de conjunto de los Hermetica llamados populares.
«Scholars of the Hermetica have a way of admitting their limitations at the very end of their books.» — la observación con que introduce, en nota, las palabras finales de Festugière sobre CH XIII.
«Streib and Hood argue at length that “spirituality” should be understood as a subcategory of “religion,” not as a separate genus» — en nota, precisa que espiritualidad no se opone aquí a religión sino que es una especie suya.
«It follows that the latter concept should not, along Durkheimian lines, be limited to social formations alone.» — la consecuencia: religión no puede definirse solo por sus formaciones sociales.
«Alexandria was the greatest of the provincial capitals in the Roman Empire, and scholars have long seen it as the “crucible” from which Hermetism was born.» — el capítulo 2 arranca poniendo en duda ese lugar común, y baja el Nilo buscando el otro Egipto.
«The capital city and the Egyptian province were practically two separate countries with different civilizations, and Alexandria and Memphis have been described as “culturally antithetical cities.”» — la distancia cultural entre Alejandría y el país egipcio es, para él, el dato que la historiografía pasa por alto.
«As late as the early fourth century, priests in the city referred to Thrice-Greatest Hermes as their ancestral god and protector, and a stone-paved processional way towards the temple carried his name.» — sobre Hermópolis Magna, donde el culto a Thot-Hermes seguía vivo cuando se escribían los Hermetica.
«Traveling further south and venturing ever deeper into Upper Egypt, our traveler would pass by the city of Akhmīm, called Panopolis in Greek.» — el recorrido imaginario por el Nilo es el recurso con que sitúa geográficamente el material.
«Nobody could know that in some unimaginable future, about sixteen centuries later, the place would become famous under its new name Nag Hammadi.» — el hallazgo de 1945 se lee aquí desde el lugar mismo, no desde la historia de la erudición.
«It is not surprising that in the centuries after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander, Thebes had emerged as a center of resistance against Greek and Roman rule.» — Tebas entra en el argumento como foco de resistencia y no solo como sede de templos.
«This legendary Egyptian king and astrologer had been receiving revelatory epistles from the sage Petosiris and claimed superior knowledge about astrological plant medicine,19 allegedly due to ecstatic visions and revelations from Hermes and Asclepius.» — sobre Nechepso, cuyo tratado de plantas astrológicas dispara el viaje de Tésalo; el número es la llamada de nota.
«but now the country was subjected to a political regime of unprecedented severity, inspired partly by Octavian’s personal animosity to all things Egyptian and partly by its economic importance as the “imperial granary” responsible for about one third of Rome’s annual grain supply.» — el marco político del que sale el sacerdocio empobrecido que el capítulo describe.
«They were aged, impoverished, socially isolated men, humiliated and demoralized by the decline of their ancient traditions and undoubtedly resentful of the foreign powers responsible for destroying their ancestral traditions and their way of life.» — el retrato de los sacerdotes tebanos con que explica que uno de ellos aceptara el encargo de un extranjero.
«The priests seemed friendly enough to Thessalos, but withdrew in indignation when he inquired about magic.» — el episodio de Tésalo empieza por un rechazo, no por una transacción.
«Just one of them did not turn away but mentioned that he knew the procedure for seeing visions in a bowl of water.» — el único sacerdote que accede lo hace por la vía de la lecanomancia.
«The god’s facial expression and the beauty of his surroundings were so wondrous that he writes he cannot describe them, but felt that the spectacle “released him from body and soul.”» — el relato de la aparición de Asclepio termina en lo indecible, como los Hermetica.
«Of course we cannot know for sure where his narrative should be placed on a scale between pure fiction and literal autobiography, but we may assume it is somewhere in between.» — el límite con que trata el relato de Tésalo como testimonio.
«Whether the author of our text ever sat in a closed chamber gazing at an apparition is impossible for us to determine, but it is important to consider all the possibilities.» — declara indecidible el hecho y, aun así, obligatorio explorar cómo habría funcionado.
«By accepting Thessalos’ request, he could get into serious trouble with his colleagues, for what happened inside the temples was supposed to be secret, and “Asiatics” – foreigners such as Thessalos – were specifically excluded from the sacred rites and spaces.» — el riesgo que corría el sacerdote es parte del argumento sobre su motivo económico.
«the priest seems to have been commodifying temple rituals to supplement a meager income, and Thessalos» — adjudica al sacerdote la venta de un ritual y a Tésalo la condición de turista espiritual.
«It is not easy for us moderns to take the required leap of imagination, but we need to understand that he was not playing around.» — el salto que pide al lector: para Tésalo los dioses eran reales y poderosos.
«the gods were perfectly real and extremely powerful, and so the prospect of encountering a great deity like Asclepius face to face would be literally awe-inspiring.» — la reserva irónica posmoderna, dice, le habría sido ajena.
«If we add to this the fact that a burnt offering was standard in Egyptian rituals of apparition,43 we can see the situation move into focus.» — la ofrenda quemada entra como pieza material de la explicación; el número es la llamada de nota.
«Therefore it is safe to assume that Thessalos beheld Asclepius in an altered state of consciousness.» — la conclusión del análisis, formulada como suposición segura y no como hecho probado.
«Contrary to what we might think, such a scenario does not need to imply any conscious fraud (even though» — la producción técnica de la luz no equivale, en su lectura, a engaño deliberado.
«Iamblichus is perfectly clear about the fact that luminous effects in which divinities appeared could be produced by technical artifice:» — el propio Jámblico admite el artificio técnico sin que eso invalide la aparición.
«Again we must beware of jumping to modern conclusions and reading this passage in terms of priestly deception or magical trickery.» — la advertencia se repite porque, dice, es el reflejo interpretativo dominante.
«In other words, the human imagination was considered not as an agent of illusion but as a faculty of perception that made it possible to see the gods.» — el estatuto antiguo de la *phantasia*, invertido respecto del moderno.
«The ritual setting had to be right, you had to follow the right procedures, and you had to be in the right mental state.» — las condiciones del ritual teúrgico, que no fuerzan a los dioses sino que preparan su venida.
«it will not do to dismiss such claims as mere “literary fictions” grounded in “irrational superstition.”» — objeta la salida escéptica corriente ante los relatos de aparición.
«is in fact deeply irrational itself, because it fails to provide any realistic account of what, according to the textual evidence, may actually have happened in theurgic rituals and related practices.» — lo dice de esa misma salida escéptica.
«it seems clear that this “breath from the rays” must mean the divine pneuma that is emanating from the supreme source of light.» — su lectura del aliento que la Liturgia de Mitra manda inhalar.
«In sum, there is really no mystery here.» — sobre el silencio académico ante las hierbas de la Liturgia de Mitra: la clave, dice, estaba disponible.
«We do in fact find a detailed recipe affixed to the “Mithras Liturgy.”» — la receta anexa es la evidencia material del argumento farmacológico.
«It is known that Egyptian water lilies (lōtos, genus Nymphaea) had narcotic and hallucinogenic properties,65 and myrrh (hcl) is described in the Demotic Magical Papyri as a component of an eye paint prescribed for visionary applications.» — identifica los componentes psicoactivos que la receta enumera; el número es la llamada de nota.
«The author claims that he has often done this himself and has been “super-amazed” (huperethaumasa) by the effect.» — el propio texto ritual declara la experiencia repetida de su autor.
«Since we cannot decipher all the components of these recipes, the exact psychological effects of combining myrrh, water lilies, and kentritis with other unidentified ingredients, while simultaneously inhaling kuphi, must remain a matter of speculation.» — el límite explícito de la explicación farmacológica que propone.
«reassuring the gods that she is no alien intruder but an immortal being like themselves: “I am a star, wandering about with you.”» — la practicante se declara astro ante los dioses que encuentra.
«From a perspective informed by modern psychology, all of this makes perfect sense: whenever some new phenomenon threatens to throw her off balance in her fragile state, she can hold on to the formula and the sounds to help her restore a sense of balance and control.» — lee las fórmulas verbales como estabilizadores del estado alterado.
«She must repeat it seven times, for each of the seven planetary gods, until finally (with a great noise and shaking, to which she can respond again with the “Silence…” formula) the doors open.» — la secuencia de ascenso de la Liturgia, con la fórmula del silencio como ancla.
«The practitioner is told that she will be left behind feeling “weak in her soul” and quite beyond herself, speechless and wondering how to comprehend the message.» — el propio ritual prevé el agotamiento posterior.
«Later on, her father/guide assures her, she will find it all back in her memory.» — la memoria queda como el lugar donde la revelación se recupera.
«A mountain of theoretical scholarship would like to convince us that the problem of “magic versus religion” is enormously complicated and probably impossible to resolve, yet it seems to me that the situation is more simple than it might seem.» — descarta la complicación teórica y devuelve el problema a una diferencia de perspectiva histórica.
«The conclusion is simple: “Roman notions of ‘magic’ were alien to Egypt, and Egyptian practices were suspect to Rome.”» — la magia como categoría negativa es romana, no egipcia.
«In reality, it is clear that the Egyptian authors of the papyri simply did not share the opinion of their Roman occupiers that “magic” (mageia) was something negative, nonreligious, or shameful.» — el rótulo que la traducción moderna impone invierte el valor que la fuente le daba.
«This means that the “Theban Magical Library” should better be referred to as the “Theban Priestly Library,” simply because it documents the activities of Egyptian priests.» — propone el cambio de nombre como consecuencia práctica del argumento.
«Referring to these practitioners as “magicians” while pretending to take them seriously is equivalent to insulting them while claiming to be impartial.» — el costo de conservar el rótulo pese a conocer su carga.
«While most classicists keep speaking of “magic” in spite of its pejorative connotations, they avoid mentioning “drugs” probably because it carries such connotations!» — señala la asimetría entre los dos tabúes de la especialidad.
«From the 1980s, a new generation of excellent scholars began challenging the old patterns of prejudice against theurgy and finally succeeded in restoring it to academic agendas.» — la rehabilitación de la teurgia ya está hecha; lo que falta, dice, es el capítulo de las sustancias.
«while it is one thing to convince your colleagues that theurgy is governed by “a rationality of its own,”88 having to tell them that it involved drugs is something else entirely – the latter suggestion might easily lead them to conclude that those old prejudices were perhaps not so wrong after all, and those alternative rationalities might not be so rational.» — su explicación del silencio académico sobre las sustancias psicoactivas; el número es la llamada de nota.
«If our own hinterland of cultural biases makes it hard for us to consider this dimension seriously, then the burden is on us to do something about it.» — pone la carga de la prueba del lado del historiador y no del texto.
«The former were inherently conservative, as they represented ancient cultic traditions tied to specific places: the temples and sanctuaries where the gods were at home.» — la religión locativa, atada a sus lugares, frente a las formas no locativas que la desplazan.
«What we see here is a truly momentous development that is typical of cosmopolitan situations (including, obviously, what we would call globalization today).» — el paso de lo locativo a lo no locativo como fenómeno de cosmópolis.
«Not by any coincidence, this is the very definition of what we call “spirituality” today.» — de ahí que el término moderno le resulte utilizable para la antigüedad tardía.
«The emerging market for spirituality provided Egyptian priests with obvious opportunities.» — el mercado espiritual explica, en su reconstrucción, la reconversión del sacerdocio empobrecido.
«Forced to redefine their role in society, they discovered the great appeal that they held for a new audience willing to look up to them as spiritual leaders and teachers.» — la autoridad sacerdotal se desplaza del templo al maestro.
«If I have called some special attention to the role of psychoactive substances in this context, it is because the relative neglect of that dimension needs to be corrected while the underlying mechanisms of discursive marginalization must be properly understood.» — acota el alcance de su insistencia en las sustancias.
«The implication is not that psychoactives are in any way central to the spiritual culture under discussion or to the Hermetica more specifically.» — el límite explícito, en la misma plana en que enuncia el argumento.
«Rather, they should be seen as part of a much broader, far more diverse and complex repertoire of techniques and procedures that were available to spiritual practitioners in late antiquity.» — las sustancias entran como una técnica más dentro de un repertorio amplio.
«The impact of such technologies on an individual’s state of consciousness could range from subtle perceptual changes to powerful altered states.» — la gama de efectos que atribuye a las tecnologías del yo tomadas de Foucault.
«The argument of this book is that such psychological effects are key to some of the most important Hermetic treatises (notably CH I, CH XIII, and NH VI6) and are taken for granted even in philosophical or theological discussions with a theoretical rather than practical focus.» — enuncia el alcance de la tesis sobre los estados alterados.
«This is true to such an extent that if we fail to take them seriously, the most important dimensions of the Hermetic literature will remain incomprehensible for us.» — el costo de no tomarlos en serio, dicho como condición de lectura.
«It is hard to think of a better short summary of what Hermetic spirituality was all about.» — lo dice de la fórmula foucaultiana de las tecnologías con que uno transforma su cuerpo y su alma.
«As recently as 2005, van den Broek could still speak of a “general consensus” on this point (“Hermetism,” 567).» — en nota, sobre cuán reciente es el consenso que este libro discute.
«Hermes and Asclepius can perhaps be identified in this case with Amenhotep son of Hapu and Imouthes son of Hephaistos (Imhotep)» — en nota, la identificación sincrética entre los dioses griegos y sus contrapartes egipcias.
«On the ecstatic experience of the soul “walking in heaven” or “entering the sky” while the body remains on earth, and its relevance to the Hermetica (notably CH I 1, 4; CH X 25) and Egyptian temple rituals, see Heilen» — en nota, remite la experiencia del alma que camina por los cielos a los rituales de templo egipcios.
«Purity was “the essential element of a temple” (Dieleman, Priests, 211- 213; Sauneron, Priests, 35–42).» — en nota, sobre la exigencia de pureza del recinto; el troceo une el guion de corte de la referencia.
«I am referring to Frankfurter’s oft-quoted concept of “stereotype appropriation”» — en nota, el marco con que se explica que el sacerdote egipcio se ajuste al estereotipo helenístico.
«I am less than convinced by Moyer’s argument that Thessalos himself tries to appropriate the stereotype» — en nota, se aparta de esa aplicación del concepto al propio Tésalo.
«The ochēma-pneuma was regarded as the seat of both sensation and imagination» — en nota, la definición del vehículo luminoso del alma sobre la que descansa el capítulo.
«The priest had claimed that he knew its secret, but it is never mentioned again, and he might have decided on a different procedure.» — en nota, sobre la adivinación en el cuenco de agua que el relato de Tésalo anuncia y no vuelve a mencionar.
«Festugière’s blind spot is on full display in his statement that “the authors who speak of ecstasy and celestial ascent are perfectly aware that this does not concern a real fact but a psychological phenomenon” (RHT I, 315): apparently he does not consider psychological phenomena to be “real facts” or entertain» — el punto ciego que le adjudica: contar el fenómeno psicológico como no-hecho.
«Bull contests this interpretation, while emphasizing the inhalation of kuphi incense instead (Tradition, 417–424).» — en nota, el desacuerdo sobre si el pneuma solar se inhala o se trata del incienso.
«Johnston assigns a central place to the “Mithras Liturgy” in her reconstruction of theurgic ritual (“Rising to the Occasion,” 183) and asks the crucial question “How often did practitioners really manage to see or hear the remarkable things that ancient spells promised them they would see and hear” (“Authority,” 51).» — en nota, retoma la pregunta de Sarah Iles Johnston sobre la frecuencia real de esas percepciones.
«She answers it in terms of their mental conditioning by the “vivid story-world” of Greek Mythic narratives (ibid.); but although she seems to assume that practitioners were in a “trance state” (ibid., 52), she does not address the question of how it might have been induced» — el hueco que señala en esa respuesta: cómo se inducía el trance.
«an authoritative but problematic analysis that shows how even a very great scholar can be led astray by popular stereotypes about “drugs”).» — en nota, sobre la literatura que trata las sustancias desde el estereotipo.
«For the classicist Carl A.P. Ruck and academic responses to his thesis of a psychoactive sacrament at the heart of the Eleusinian Mysteries» — en nota, uno de los casos con que documenta el costo profesional de plantear la hipótesis psicoactiva.
«For the Dead Sea Scrolls specialist John M. Allegro, who ruined his academic reputation with his bestseller» — en nota, el segundo de esos casos.
«But as we read further, it becomes evident that those evils are very much present, like a rumbling noise in the distance that keeps coming closer.» — el tono del Logos teleios, dice, no es el de un tratado optimista sino el de una catástrofe que se acerca.
«Hermes is telling his pupils that all true spiritual wisdom is in decline on earth: just a few people are still keeping it alive, but very soon there will be literally none of them left.» — el contenido del anuncio con que arranca el tratado.
«It is important to gauge the distance that existed already between this Latin translation and its lost Greek original.» — la advertencia metodológica que gobierna todo su uso del Asclepius latino.
«It would seem that the Latin translator was a warm supporter of traditional Egyptian worship but not an active participant in the Way of Hermes – if any such practice still existed.» — adjudica al traductor la condición de simpatizante externo, con la reserva incluida.
«We can draw these conclusions because, independently but around the same time (arguably between 340 and 370),12 some lengthy passages from the Logos teleios were translated from Greek into Coptic as well.» — la comparación con el copto es lo que permite medir al traductor latino; el número es la llamada de nota.
«Close comparison shows that the Coptic version is considerably more precise and reliable than its parallel in the Latin Asclepius; and this conclusion is further confirmed by comparing the Greek fragments known from Christian writers with their parallels in the Latin and the Coptic versions.» — el resultado de esa comparación, con su tercera vía de control.
«This means that we must be careful not to rely too easily on the Latin Asclepius for learning what Hermetic spirituality was originally all about.» — la consecuencia práctica para cualquiera que cite el Asclepius.
«While the Latin treatise must have been written during the fourth century (in any case prior to Augustine’s City of God, composed after 410 ce, where it is quoted at length), our earliest surviving manuscripts are much more recent: they date from the eleventh century and are based on a lost “archetype” from the final decades of the ninth.» — el estado de la transmisión manuscrita, con sus fechas.
«We should be grateful for this mistake, because otherwise our text – condemned as idolatrous by no one less than St Augustine15 – would certainly not have survived.» — la atribución errónea a Apuleyo es, dice, la razón de que el texto llegara; el número es la llamada de nota.
«As a result, already the ninth-century archetype seems to have been corrupt or mutilated “in a quite exceptional way,”17 and the process of adaptation and emendation continued through the eleventh-century manuscripts up to the first printed edition of 1469 – and indeed from there to all later editions and translations even up to the very present.» — la corrupción no se detiene en el manuscrito: sigue en las ediciones modernas.
«Famously, the author of the Asclepius describes Egypt as “the Temple of the Whole World.”» — la fórmula que organiza la geografía sagrada del tratado.
«He sees the country of the Nile as a sacred space designed for divine worship, a marvelous structure of supreme harmony and beauty, filled with countless sanctuaries that are made to accommodate the gods so as to make them feel at home.» — Egipto no como escenario sino como estructura construida para alojar a los dioses.
«Thus Egypt, the temple of the soul, is located at the heart of the world.» — la correspondencia entre el país y el alma que sostiene la profecía posterior.
«they have a special responsibility to act and behave with priestly devotion as servants of divinity.» — lo dice de los egipcios, por vivir en el espacio más sagrado de la tierra.
«Human beings and the world are designed as “ornaments to one another,”25 for both are divine,» — la reciprocidad entre hombre y mundo, que él llama el tono espiritual del Asclepius; el número es la llamada de nota.
«To minimize the risk of overdetermination by our common religious language, where the word “God” cannot but evoke specifically Christian associations and assumptions, I will give preference whenever possible to terminology that emphasizes the functional role of this mysterious divine reality in the Hermetic imagination.» — declara por qué prefiere hablar de Fuente y no de Dios a lo largo del libro.
«What it really is, in and of itself, we do not know.» — el límite de lo que puede decirse de esa Fuente.
«All we know is that there is this mysterious Source from which comes everything that we take to be real.» — lo único afirmable, y de donde arranca la actitud de gratitud que describe.
«As it turns out, terms such as “Lord” or “Father” are truly misleading, for the great Source cannot be reduced to one gender,» — los nombres personales de la Fuente son concesiones al entendimiento limitado.
«The Asclepius says clearly that the internal male/female duality of the Source is mirrored on all levels of the reality to which it gives birth.» — la polaridad se reproduce en el mundo y en cada ser humano.
«“Love” is therefore understood in sexual and erotic terms, as the ultimate mystery of birth or creation:» — el amor hermético no es la *agapē* cristiana ni exactamente el *erōs* platónico, sino la potencia misma de la vida.
«we are able to see the world that has come from the ultimate Source, we are barred from direct perception of the creative process itself.» — el proceso generador queda fuera de la percepción, aunque su resultado esté a la vista.
«Hermes spends much energy trying to explain the nature of the world in philosophical terminology that would be understandable for an educated audience in the third century.» — el vocabulario filosófico del tratado es recurso de comunicación, no su sustancia.
«The Asclepius is concerned much more with evoking an imaginal vision of reality, as a beautiful whole in which human beings have a meaningful role to play, than with resolving technical problems of natural philosophy and metaphysics.» — el criterio con que propone leerlo.
«Judged by strictly philosophical criteria, the text is a mediocre composition and an easy prey for critical deconstruction.» — concede el defecto filosófico y lo declara irrelevante para lo que el texto hace.
«We do not know, but to be honest, it does not really matter all that much.» — sobre si las contradicciones del tratado vienen del original griego o del traductor.
«Note that the passage in question nicely illustrates the pattern of contradictions and inconsistencies referred to above, for although man has been described as a “third god,” first we read that he is merely connected to the gods through his nous, and can “almost” (but not quite, presumably) attain divinity, whereas elsewhere we are told that precisely his share in mortality makes him even superior to the gods.» — la inconsistencia sobre el estatuto del hombre queda consignada sin armonizarse.
«It is easy to see why this inspired passage made such an impression on later authors such as the Renaissance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), who used it to exalt man as the only creature in the universe who can freely determine his own destiny for better or worse.» — la recepción renacentista del pasaje, mencionada al pasar en un libro que se detiene en el Egipto romano.
«We are not dealing here with a spiritual elitism according to which only a few human beings are privileged to have nous and are capable of finding salvation.» — descarta la lectura elitista del *nous* en el Asclepius.
«Rather, the universal divine Source has generously made the gift of nous available to all human beings,55 but the sad reality is that only few of them show any interest.» — el don es universal y el acceso depende del interés; el número es la llamada de nota.
«It should be noted that even if nous illuminates the inner universe of the human soul with divine light, still this does not necessarily imply perfect or absolute knowledge of transcendent reality in its true essence» — el límite de la iluminación noética, puesto donde se la describe.
«Asclepius readily admits to being confused and at a loss about what to say, but declares himself willing to be convinced.» — el discípulo entra en el diálogo desde la incomprensión, no desde el asentimiento.
«At the very heart of their religious identity was a radical rejection of religious image worship, denounced by both traditions as the ultimate sin of “idolatry.”» — el conflicto cultural del Egipto romano, entre el culto a las imágenes y su prohibición judeocristiana.
«What really defined the radical or exclusive monotheism of Jews and Christians, even more than their belief in One God, was an absolute horror of worshiping “graven images” (Exodus 20: 4–5) – this was the sin par excellence, the point on which no compromise could ever be possible, “the thick wall that separated the nonpagans from pagans.”» — desplaza el eje del monoteísmo antiguo del número de dioses al culto de las imágenes.
«That Asclepius does not understand the true nature of the gods is confirmed later on, when he refers to them as mere “statues,” using Latin and Coptic words that suggest they are really just matter.» — el discípulo confunde al dios con su materia, y esa es la incomprensión que Hermes corrige.
«Hermes exclaims, they are living beings endowed with nous and spirit! They deliver oracles and accomplish great wonders – for they are in fact gods.» — la réplica de Hermes según su reconstrucción del pasaje.
«The key lies in the embodied condition of human beings, the makers of those gods.» — la encarnación es lo que habilita al hombre a hacer dioses vivos.
«It is because they participate simultaneously in the world of matter and in the generative power of divinity that humans have the unique ability to imitate their creator74 by making, that is, “making alive” or “giving birth to,”75 gods in their own image.» — el arte teléstico se deriva de la doble participación humana; los números son llamadas de nota.
«Obviously the divine Source of All That Is need not fear competition from any other god; he is far above such petty feelings as jealousy or anger anyway, and cannot be hurt or offended by our actions; he just generously dispenses Life and Light to all beings no matter what happens, without the slightest reservation.» — la Fuente hermética no es celosa, y por eso la idolatría no la ofende.
«They are only hurting themselves by neglecting the very source of universal energy that sustains their own existence.» — el daño de apartarse de la Fuente recae sobre quien se aparta.
«Such is the power of the superior spiritual entities, he explains, that nothing can prevent them from being present in all things, very much like the rays of the sun.» — resume así el argumento de Jámblico sobre la presencia divina en cualquier nivel material.
«There is general agreement among specialists that such materials were supposed to work through the universal power of sympathy.» — hierbas, piedras y aromas actúan por simpatía cósmica, y en la teurgia se llaman *sunthēmata* materiales.
«However, we are not just dealing with theories but primarily with practice.» — desplaza la discusión de la doctrina de la simpatía a lo que ocurría en el culto.
«Our culture predisposes us to see god statues as inanimate “art objects” displayed in artificial environments far removed from their original setting: “standing on pedestals by themselves, unadorned, carefully spotlighted by track lights, against a subdued background.”» — el museo moderno como obstáculo para imaginar el culto antiguo.
«We are dealing here with a pre-rational phenomenon of “primary response” that makes it easy for human beings to invest god images with a mysterious power of life and agency, particularly in ritual settings that impinge directly on the senses of sight, hearing, and smell simultaneously.» — la animación de la imagen se explica por la respuesta perceptiva, no por una teoría.
«when the gods appear directly, they shine with a formless brilliance greater than any earthly light that moves more rapidly than the human intellect, although the god himself remains motionless.» — así resume las teofanías descritas por los teúrgos.
«can be tolerated only briefly by terrestrial eyes – and even when it enters the eyes, such light is actually “seen” only by the soul.» — la luz divina no la ve el ojo sino el alma, y solo por un momento.
«Although a brief encounter with divinity in this form could help purify the soul of the theurgist and enhance his long-term health, he was enfeebled and struggled to breathe while experiencing it.» — el efecto es a la vez curativo y físicamente extenuante.
«Whether this dimension was also present in the ritual practices alluded to in the Asclepius is impossible for us to establish, but we can say with confidence that it was part of the complete scope of what “statue illumination” could mean» — el límite de lo que puede afirmarse sobre las fumigaciones psicoactivas en el rito del Asclepius.
«If those sacred practices are ever neglected or abandoned, the gods will surely leave their statues and return to where they came from, leaving nothing behind but empty shells.» — la condición del culto: sin práctica diaria, las imágenes quedan vacías.
«According to the unknown author of the Logos teleios, that is precisely what he sees happening in his own time.» — la profecía de abandono se lee, en su reconstrucción, como diagnóstico del presente del autor.
«It has been referred to as an “apocalypse” and a “prophecy,” but neither of those labels is entirely right.» — sobre el pasaje más famoso de toda la literatura hermética.
«Technically we are reading a “prediction” of events that still lie in the future, but in fact it is clear that the author speaks from personal experience.» — la predicción funciona como testimonio de lo ya vivido.
«What we are reading may be described as the vivid and almost visionary nightmare of a Hermetic devotee who is watching helplessly how his spiritual world is falling apart» — el género que propone para el pasaje, en lugar de apocalipsis o profecía.
«It is not hard to place this description in the context of real life in Egypt under the impact of the third-century crisis.» — lee el pasaje contra la crisis del siglo III y no como topos literario.
«but whatever its effectiveness, such an imperial decree meant that from the beginning of the third century onwards, not just ritual worship of temple images but even divinely inspired discourses such as we find in the Asclepius were officially illegal and punishable by death.» — el decreto del prefecto Q. Aemilius Saturninus vuelve delito capital lo que estos textos describen.
«No wonder then that the author of the Logos teleios believed the end was near.» — la conclusión del recorrido por la crisis política y religiosa.
«Henceforth deprived of any spiritual protection, human beings would be exposed helplessly to the malice of demons or wicked angels bent on poisoning their souls through the passions of the body.» — lo que la partida de los dioses deja tras de sí, según el tratado.
«The most serious contender would be the collection of Isis-Horus discussions known as SH XXIII–XXVII, which I see as marginal to the spiritual Hermetica for reasons explained below» — en nota, sitúa los discursos de Isis y Horus fuera del núcleo espiritual.
«It has been abandoned as a misleading straitjacket by modern scholars in the wake of Mahé» — en nota, sobre la oposición entre un hermetismo optimista y otro pesimista.
«Scott’s editorial procedures have been universally condemned: see reviews by Cumont (1925), Nock (1925, 1927), Puech (1925), Reitzenstein (1925, 1927), Rose (1925, 1926, 1936), Coppens, (1926), Riess (1926, 1927).» — en nota, la lista de reseñas que reprobaron la edición de Walter Scott.
«Arthur O. Lovejoy never mentions the Hermetic literature in his classic The Great Chain of Being, his discussion of the “two Gods of Platonism” (ch. 2) nevertheless remains the most incisive and perceptive analysis of basic Hermetic theology known to me.» — en nota, adjudica a Lovejoy el mejor análisis de la teología hermética sin que este la nombre.
«Whether this religious conception is ultimately Egyptian or Greek may be left for specialists to decide, but it is clear that the author of the Logos teleios tried to discuss it in Platonic terminology.» — se abstiene de la cuestión del origen y se queda con el vocabulario efectivamente usado.
«This fact alone undermines the old idea of a conflict between an “optimistic” and a “pessimistic” strand in the Hermetica: in fact, far from demonstrating the inconsistency or superficiality of Hermetic “philosophy,” this conflict is inherent in Platonism itself.» — los dos polos —fuente generadora y absoluto autosuficiente— ya conviven en el platonismo.
«I consider this misleading because all human beings have consciousness, whereas nous has a much more specific meaning» — en nota, rechaza traducir *nous* por conciencia.
«I am using the word “consciousness” not as a direct rendering of a Latin, Greek, or Coptic term but according to our modern understanding of the word.» — en nota, declara en qué sentido usa él mismo el término.
«it is not the force of desire that impels us to move toward the eternal beauty of the forms or ideas but, on the contrary, a force that flows outwards from the eternal Source» — en nota, distingue el amor hermético del *erōs* platónico por la dirección del movimiento.
«I translate despicit as “looks down on” (rather than “despises”) and diligat as “values” (rather than “loves”) to suggest a predominantly spatial rather than moral perspective.» — en nota, declara y justifica dos opciones de traducción que cambian el sentido del pasaje.
«It is crucial to distinguish between two ways in which nous is understood: ontologically as primary being (ousia,» — en nota, el doble registro ontológico y epistemológico del término.
«as nevertheless attempted by Van Liefferinge, who calls the parallels “almost perfect” but for some reason finds that fact “very troubling”» — en nota, sobre el intento de emparentar la animación de estatuas del Asclepius con antecedentes antiguos.
«Johnston insists that no such practices are attested earlier than “very late antiquity” (“Animating Statues,” 447; same point in HHE II, 228) because they presuppose a cosmology with “firm boundaries between each of the different ontolog» — en nota, la razón cosmológica que Johnston da para datar tarde esas prácticas.
«note that Bull is understandably puzzled by a Greek classicist agenda that seems to minimize Egyptian elements even in such texts as the Mithras Liturgy» — en nota, recoge la extrañeza de Christian Bull ante la minimización de lo egipcio.
«The standard translation (see e.g. Cop, 90) says that man not only discovered the “divine nature” (divinam naturam, i.e. not “the nature of the gods”) but learned how to make it.» — en nota, la traducción corriente del pasaje sobre el hombre que hace dioses.
«This would imply a bizarre worldview reminiscent of Feuerbach but incompatible with everything the Asclepius and the rest of the Hermetica have to say about God, and is hard to reconcile with the later statement that humans “could not make souls”» — en nota, su objeción a esa traducción por lo que obliga a atribuir al texto.
«Augustine was happy to choose the most direct and literal translation and conclude from it that humans therefore created idols because they were unbelievers (De Civitate Dei VIII.24).» — en nota, el uso agustiniano del pasaje como prueba de idolatría.
«My translation avoids an argument of direct causality (“unbelief leads to idolatry”) while mitigating this suggestion of a sudden revolution; rather, it simply emphasizes that the discovery was beneficial and welcome as a corrective» — en nota, declara qué evita su propia traducción y por qué.
«Johnston points out that symbola and sunthēmata are virtually synonymous terms in these contexts, and to understand them we need to “forget the connotations of our own word ‘symbol’”» — en nota, la equivalencia entre los dos términos y el estorbo de la noción moderna de símbolo.
«The ritual “establishment” (pratiṣṭhā) of images as described by Davis (Lives of Indian Images, 33–37) is remarkably close to what we know of the “telestic art” of animation.» — en nota, el paralelo indio del arte teléstico.
«Śrīvaiṣṇavas have a special ontological category for the god’s “pure, luminous, immaterial matter” (śuddhasattva; cf. Iamblichus’ “pure and divine matter”) and animation is often thought of in terms of illumination or kindling a fire» — en nota, el paralelo śrīvaiṣṇava con la materia divina de Jámblico.
«Contrary to e.g. Quack (“Der Asclepius,” 265) I therefore see a clear connection between the discussion of the statues and the famous “apocalyptic” passage that follows.» — en nota, une el pasaje de las estatuas con la profecía que le sigue.
«This metaphor comes from Assmann and rests on the very architecture of temples such as that of Horus at Edfu» — en nota, el origen arquitectónico de la imagen de Egipto como templo del mundo.
«I would turn the argument around, reading the Asclepius as reflecting real conversations of the kind that must have taken place between Hermetic teachers and their pupils, but slightly fictionalized so as to enhance their authority and their claim to universal validity» — en nota, invierte la lectura del diálogo como pura ficción literaria.
«Hermes’ prediction makes no reference to Christians and is unrelated to the systematic “holy war on idolatry” that would get underway after Constantine the Great; yet even as recently as 1986, Garth Fowden could still write that this basic fact “has not hitherto penetrated the scholarly mind”» — en nota, la lectura cristiana de la profecía no tiene apoyo en el texto y sigue circulando.
«As was to be expected, Christian authors since the fourth century began interpreting Hermes’ prediction, with obvious glee and Schadenfreude» — en nota, el uso apologético cristiano de la profecía hermética.
«At the end of that age, God will finally restore the world» — en nota, el anuncio del final del Asclepius 26 y de NH VI8 74; la frase termina en la plana siguiente con la restitución de la antigua belleza.
«By the end of the third century or the beginning of the fourth, in or around the city of Panopolis (Akhmīm) in the Thebaid region of Upper Egypt, an Egyptian woman named Theosebeia was teaching some kind of secret knowledge to small circles of initiates.» — la frase con que abre el capítulo 4, y que pone a una mujer en el arranque.
«This man was an artisan specialized in metalworking – among other things, he knew the secrets of manufacturing temple statues that almost looked as though they were alive.» — así entra Zósimo de Panópolis: por el taller, antes que por la doctrina.
«While such artisans and alchemists stood laboring in their workshops to discover the secrets of matter, philosophers were pondering mysteries of the soul.» — el capítulo se organiza sobre esa simultaneidad entre taller sirio-egipcio y escuela platónica.
«The human soul must be healed of its afflictions and its bodily vessel empowered by the gods, but none of that was just a matter of intellectual contemplation.» — la tesis de Jámblico contra la suficiencia de la filosofía.
«Salvation required ceremonial practice, ritual theurgy or “the work of the gods,” as cultivated by Egyptian priests in the tradition of Hermes Trismegistus.» — la teurgia queda definida por su etimología y por su linaje sacerdotal egipcio.
«He thought of them as the sacred scriptures of a sectarian movement that must have been founded by some Egyptian priest during the first century ce and had presumably led to “numerous Hermes communities” spread all over the Roman Empire.» — la hipótesis de Reitzenstein sobre comunidades herméticas.
«When Festugière published the first volume of his Révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste in 1942, he sharply dismissed the whole idea as a fantasy» — el rechazo que fijó la posición dominante durante décadas.
«But if we take a closer look at Festugière’s arguments, they quickly begin to crumble.» — anuncia el desarme de las cuatro objeciones.
«The problem is that his polemics left no room for anything else than either a church-like sectarian movement or a purely literary phenomenon.» — el defecto es la disyuntiva misma, que deja fuera la práctica discreta y doméstica.
«This narrow perspective can be explained in terms of a commonly overlooked pitfall of textual hermeneutics: if we look closely at how they present their arguments, we can see that most participants in this debate succumbed to the power of the anachronistic imagination and its vulnerability to suggestive language.» — adjudica el debate entero a un defecto hermenéutico y no a la evidencia.
«Father Festugière, for his part, had Roman Catholic models in the back of his mind: he disagreed with Reitzenstein because he assumed that if any Hermetic groups had existed, we should have evidence of “a clergy, a church, and sacraments.”» — el prototipo católico funcionando como criterio de existencia histórica.
«Since he found nothing reminiscent of “the sacraments of the gnostic sects: no baptism, no communion, no confession of sins, no laying-on of hands to consecrate the ministers of the cult,”15 it followed for him that there had been no Hermetic communities, period.» — el salto de la ausencia de sacramentos a la inexistencia de grupos; el número es la llamada de nota.
«None of that makes any historical sense.» — su veredicto sobre esa inferencia.
«Even though in most cases nothing specifies the location of the encounter, the atmosphere is that of a closed chamber, or even (as seen in the Asclepius) of a solitary chapel, a Holy of Holies.» — el escenario que los propios textos dejan entrever.
«There is nothing to indicate large numbers of participants, and this makes it easy to see how Hermetic gatherings could escape the attention of external observers.» — la discreción explica el silencio de los observadores externos.
«Contrary to the notion of an organized “cult,” such private settings are easily compatible with what we find in the sources.» — la hipótesis doméstica se ajusta a la evidencia mejor que la eclesial.
«To Fowden’s further credit, he clearly saw the relevance of those few historical personalities who had not just been physically around in Roman Egypt during the period when the Hermetica were written, but had spoken highly about them as well – the alchemist from Panopolis and the philosopher from Chalcis.» — lo que Fowden aportó: mirar a Zósimo y a Jámblico como testigos.
«It is a common mistake to assume that such descriptions by the earliest alchemists must either be just fanciful allegories of strictly chemical processes (as we understand them today) or refer to purely spiritual processes that are just being “projected” onto chemical materials.» — descarta la disyuntiva entre alegoría química y proyección espiritual.
«What makes the Cleopatra fragment important for our concerns is that salvation is described there not as a liberation of spiritual essence from the gross material body but the exact opposite: as a process of healing that restores the lost harmony of body, soul, and spirit.» — el fragmento de Cleopatra invierte el esquema de fuga del cuerpo.
«On the contrary, they were trying to understand how body, soul, and spirit could be manifestations of one single dynamic reality.» — la visión monista que atribuye a Zósimo y a sus contemporáneos.
«But this understanding of “gnosticism” has been thoroughly dismantled since the 1990s and is now widely seen as “a dubious category” invented by Christian theologians.» — el rótulo gnóstico llega desmontado a la discusión sobre Zósimo.
«The all-important point is that while such extremist worldviews of radical dualism were entertained in some milieus during the period of late antiquity, most religious or spiritual traditions that have come to be categorized as “gnostic” do not fit the description – and this definitely includes the Hermetic writings.» — el dualismo radical existió, pero no es lo que los Hermetica sostienen.
«The result of all this is a vague and expansive terminology that works well in popular books for the general market, but is concocted of two different concepts that have little or no real connection:» — sobre la fusión moderna entre *gnosis* y gnosticismo.
«He was undoubtedly a Hermetic practitioner in search of gnōsis, but that does not make him a gnostic.» — la distinción con que resuelve el caso de Zósimo.
«The spirit seems to carry the color and the other particular properties of the metal.» — la teoría del color en la operación alquímica de Zósimo.
«It is crucial to see that within the general “divine economy” (oikonomia)39 of these processes, tincturing/dyeing was strictly equivalent to spiritualization.» — teñir el metal y espiritualizarlo son la misma operación; el número es la llamada de nota.
«Zosimos uses fire – in distillation, sublimation, volatilization, and so on – to separate the spirits from the bodies.» — el procedimiento técnico sobre el que descansa la doctrina.
«They were working with kairikai katabaphai, “propitious” deep tinctures whose effectivity depended on the observance of astrologically opportune times.» — el procedimiento de los adversarios de Zósimo, atado al momento astral.
«He insisted that the true and authentic tinctures worked all by themselves, in a manner that was wholly “natural” yet independent of astral powers.» — la posición de Zósimo en la disputa técnica.
«This controversy involved much more than just a technical disagreement.» — la disputa sobre las tinturas es, en su lectura, una disputa sobre la libertad frente al destino astral.
«He was warning Theosebeia that [T]here is a race of daimons who avail themselves of women.» — así introduce la advertencia de Zósimo a su discípula; el corchete es del autor.
«So we are told that human beings learned “all the works of nature” from daimons or angels, and this included the art of chēmeia.» — el origen mítico del arte remite a la tradición de los ángeles caídos del Libro de Enoc.
«Zosimos therefore believed that the “propitious tinctures” used by his opponents stood under the influence of dubious entities, daimons or fallen angels, who used them to keep the human soul and spirit under their dominion.» — el argumento por el que Zósimo rechaza esas tinturas.
«taken full possession of them, these entities are constantly influencing us from within, secretly and without our conscious awareness, by arousing our passions and shaping our souls in accordance with their own astral energies.» — los daimones ocupan el cuerpo al nacer y operan desde dentro.
«In short, we may think we are in charge of ourselves, but in truth we are possessed by invisible forces that limit our freedom and control us from within.» — la formulación breve de la esclavitud daimónica.
«Only the natural tinctures that had been revealed by Chemeu since the beginning of the world were free of such astral determination.» — la revelación de Chemeu como criterio de autenticidad.
«The point is not that matter is evil and the world a prison from which the spirit must escape50: in modern terminology, we might say that the problem is not physical but psychological – it is not about the properties of matter or who made it, but about the soul’s vulnerability.» — el desplazamiento decisivo respecto de la lectura gnóstica; el número es la llamada de nota.
«The world is a dangerous place full of powerful forces that seek to enslave our souls and make us forget our true divinity.» — el diagnóstico de Zósimo, que no acusa a la materia sino a las fuerzas que operan en ella.
«As newborns we simply cannot resist the powerful daimonic invasion of our bodies and souls that takes place at our moment of birth; but what we can do is free ourselves from their dominion later on in our lives.» — la invasión es inevitable; la liberación, posterior y trabajosa.
«Difficult as this may be (whence the small number of practitioners), we can learn to first recognize and then resist the powerful forces of daimonic temptation that try to keep us enslaved.» — el escaso número de practicantes se explica por la dificultad, no por un privilegio.
«In Letter Omega, Zosimos is telling Theosebeia that according to Hermes himself, those who have not been liberated from dominion by the astral powers are like sleepwalkers, marching along like mindless zombies in a procession ruled by astral fate, with no conception of anything incorporeal.» — la imagen del sonámbulo con que Zósimo describe la vida bajo la heimarmenē.
«While Zoroaster recommended magic as a means to vanquish fate, Hermes rejected such methods.» — la diferencia que Zósimo establece: contra el destino no va la magia sino el autoconocimiento.
«Further on in Letter Omega, the human nous itself confirms once more that “the son of God” is “capable of everything and becoming everything, when he wills and as he wills.”» — la fórmula de la potencia del hombre espiritual en Zósimo.
«Zosimos must have known them well and appears to have developed a low opinion of their characters and motivations.» — lo dice de los sacerdotes y artesanos que manipulaban la fe popular.
«He cannot help admiring the brilliance of his own art: “how moving it is to admire the invention of these arts, how beautiful is the sight!”» — el asombro de Zósimo ante su propio oficio, aun cuando denuncia a quienes lo ejercen.
«He speaks in tones of disgust about their envy, vanity, foolishness, malice, and poverty of spirit, and declares that he has finally turned his back on them and their writings, “but without jealousy on my part, for that is a product of passion.”» — la ruptura de Zósimo con sus colegas, contada con la reserva que él mismo se impone.
«Hermes seems to represent the traditional perspective of an Egyptian priest, familiar with the daily temple practice and horrified about its decline,» — la tensión generacional que lee entre Hermes y Zósimo.
«He still believes that statues can come alive and the true gods inhabit them as long as the sacred practice of daily sacrifice continues; but in fact he is being duped by ruthless priests of Neilos’ ilk.» — la posición de Hermes vista desde la de Zósimo.
«although the statues are empty of any divine power, the temples are in fact full of sinister daimons!» — el reverso de la animación de estatuas en la denuncia de Zósimo.
«but from confidence in traditional cultic and communal worship controlled by the priesthood to a universal path of “inner liberation” centered on the individual.» — el desplazamiento que documenta: del culto controlado por el sacerdocio al camino individual.
«How did the story end? Did Theosebeia heed Zosimos’ advice or did she end up listening to Neilos and his companions? We do not know, but there are clear signs of anxiety on Zosimos’ part about the circle of initiates in secret knowledge that she had gathered around her.» — el desenlace queda declarado desconocido.
«In the end, there was only one kind of knowledge that really counted.» — el saber técnico queda subordinado al autoconocimiento.
«Those details in the text that have been read as an “anti-cosmic” rejection of the body I believe should be understood in a slightly different manner.» — su reserva ante la lectura anticósmica de Zósimo.
«The reason, as will be seen below, is that it has literally been born again in a new body that is invisible and not made of matter (hulē).» — el hombre espiritual no abandona el cuerpo: recibe otro.
«This is why, in Zosimos’ formulation, being reborn as a son of God means “becoming everything,” “pervading every body,” and “filling everyone’s mind.”» — el renacimiento se describe como expansión y no como fuga.
«In other words, one’s consciousness will be literally “everywhere,” exactly like God himself who is “everywhere and nowhere,” not pinned down to any particular space or place.» — la conciencia del renacido queda sin localización, como la divinidad.
«Immediately after making these statements, Zosimos asks Theosebeia to consider “the tablet that Bitos wrote, and Plato the thrice-great [trismegas] and Hermes the infinitely great [muriomegas].”» — la cadena de autoridades que Zósimo invoca; los corchetes son del autor.
«Now it so happens that the only other ancient writer who mentions Bitus is Iamblichus of Chalcis – and what is more, he does so in the very sentence where he coins the concept of a “way” or “path” [hodon] of Hermes.» — el hilo que une a Zósimo con Jámblico y con la expresión Camino de Hermes.
«Be that as it may, we have every reason to assume that it was largely thanks to these texts that Iamblichus attributed his praxis of theurgy to “the Egyptians.”» — de dónde le viene a Jámblico la adjudicación egipcia de la teurgia.
«However, although the two philosophers must have met at some point somewhere in Italy, most probably in Rome, there is no evidence that Iamblichus ever saw Porphyry as his master or Porphyry thought of Iamblichus as his pupil.» — desarma la relación maestro-discípulo que suele darse por hecha entre Porfirio y Jámblico.
«Nor do we have any certainty about Iamblichus’ movements between his departure from Syria and his return.» — el límite de lo que se sabe sobre su itinerario, incluida la estancia alejandrina.
«There is no mystery then about Iamblichus’ concern with Egyptian religion and his familiarity with the Hermetic literature.» — la riqueza personal y los viajes de Jámblico explican, dice, su acceso a esos materiales.
«Iamblichus responded on behalf of Anebo while presenting himself as another priest, “Master Abamon.”» — el seudónimo con que responde a la carta de Porfirio.
«It has been known as De mysteriis since 1497, when Marsilio Ficino published his translation» — el título corriente del tratado no es el suyo sino el que le puso Ficino.
«Porphyry writes that knowledge of our immortal essence can lead us beyond the realm of mere speculation to direct contemplation of “the beings that really are” (tōn ontōs ontōn),» — la posición de Porfirio: la contemplación filosófica basta para despertar la esencia inmortal.
«Porphyry told Iamblichus that those who prefer their mortal terrestrial body over their immortal essence should be regarded with “pity and ridicule» — el desprecio del cuerpo que Jámblico le discute.
«It seems that Porphyry was in fact “ashamed of being in the body,”» — la fórmula con que Porfirio describía a Plotino y que, dice, lo describe a él.
«Iamblichus believed that the soul descends completely, so that no part of it stays in the noetic» — la tesis del alma plenamente descendida, que rompe con Plotino y Porfirio.
«If the liberating knowledge to which it aspired was unattainable for human beings, because our soul cannot connect with the divine, then no hope was left in this life.» — lo que estaba en juego en la disputa sobre el descenso del alma.
«Paradoxical as it might seem at first sight though, Iamblichus’ doctrine of the fully descended soul was not an argument for existential despair.» — la tesis pesimista en apariencia sostiene una respuesta afirmativa del mundo.
«The essential point is that Iamblichus did not read Plato from a dualist perspective.» — la clave de la lectura que propone del De mysteriis.
«In the famous terms of Arthur O. Lovejoy, he did not think of divinity as the “self-sufficient absolute” residing in an alien otherworld of pure spirit (the object of a possible “flight of the alone to the alone”),112 but as the “generative source” of manifestation that works from within.» — aplica a Jámblico los dos polos del platonismo que tomó de Lovejoy; el número es la llamada de nota.
«The point is not to escape from the cave of embodiment to a bodiless state of pure spiritual bliss, but quite the contrary:» — el sentido invertido de la caverna en esta tradición.
«Therefore the gods, who are supremely powerful, need to come to our aid – and that is what theurgy was all about: the healing work or activity of the gods on earth.» — la definición operativa de teurgia que usa el libro.
«Difficult and painful as embodiment may be, there simply is no other way for goodness, beauty and truth to become manifest in reality – literally, to get incarnated in this world.» — la encarnación como condición de la manifestación, no como caída.
«Iamblichus spends much energy correcting Porphyry’s misconception that theurgists are therefore trying to evoke, command, or otherwise exert power over the gods. On the contrary, he insists, the gods are wholly superior and infinitely more powerful than we are;» — el ritual no ejerce control sobre lo divino.
«A “magical” interpretation of theurgy would be similarly mistaken as Plotinus’ “mystical” interpretation of philosophy, insofar as both give human beings some kind of control over divinity whereas in fact they have none.» — la simetría entre los dos malentendidos.
«It is nevertheless clear that in one way or another, theurgical practice involved visible manifestations or revelations of divine Light.» — el dato que sobrevive a todas las reservas sobre el ritual.
«Depending on the kinds of gods that were present – for Iamblichus insists that they are multiple and cannot be reduced to one single essence133 –, such divine possession could take different outward forms: practitioners’ bodies would start making involuntary movements, they might find themselves dancing to the harmony of inspirational music, sometimes they would be singing, but they could also be shouting.» — los signos externos de la posesión divina; el número es la llamada de nota.
«However, the principal sign of divine possession was that both the director of the procedure and the person about to be possessed, but sometimes even outside spectators too, would be able to see the god’s fiery spirit (pneuma) come down as a luminous form and enter the practitioner’s body.» — el signo principal es visible también para terceros.
«In a fascinating passage, Iamblichus explains how we are able to observe such phenomena in a conscious although altered state.» — la posesión no suprime la conciencia: la altera.
«Remembering Plutarch’s remarks about the effects of kuphi incense on the imaginative faculty,137 one would like to know more about the “drugs” or “potions” mentioned twice in this same passage,138 but Iamblichus does not spill any entheogenic secrets.» — el silencio de la fuente queda consignado como silencio, no como ausencia; los números son llamadas de nota.
«What he does make clear is that, like ritual possession trance in many other periods and cultural contexts, the essential purpose of theurgy was healing.» — la finalidad de la teurgia es terapéutica.
«As regards the former, this passage claims that the gods could do what Plotinus’ and Porphyry’s philosophy could not: during the ritual, they made it possible for the soul to leave its body at least for a while, so that it could turn toward its noetic origin and unite with the life of the gods.» — lo que la teurgia ofrece y la contemplación filosófica no.
«Moreover, during rituals the theurgists themselves would be working with gods or good daimons on healing the physical body, “when we clean it of old impurities, or free it from diseases and fill it with health, or remove from it what is heavy and sluggish while giving it lightness and energy.”» — la cura alcanza también al cuerpo, y no solo al alma.
«Iamblichus begins the systematic part of his treatise by objecting to Porphyry’s statement that he “concedes the existence of the gods.”144 This very formulation is totally wrong, he points out, because it makes the existence of the gods a matter of philosophical dialectics, something we can acquire by reason, a matter for agreement or disagreement.» — la objeción de fondo: la existencia de los dioses no es materia de concesión racional; el número es la llamada de nota.
«Gnōsis, however, is of a wholly different kind: The innate knowledge [emphutos gnōsis] concerning the gods coexists with our very being.» — introduce así la noción de conocimiento innato de Jámblico; el corchete es del autor.
«Iamblichus insists that gnōsis has nothing to do with human conjecture, reasoning, or opinions because such common understandings of what “knowledge” means are all subject to the restrictions of temporality:» — el argumento por el que la *gnōsis* no puede adquirirse.
«gnōsis is not something we ever need to learn or acquire, because it is the superior understanding inherent to our soul that we have received from the gods since all eternity.» — la consecuencia: se trata de una familiaridad preexistente.
«It is true that these names are unknowable for us, but they do in fact have meanings that are known to the gods.» — sobre los *nomina barbara* que la teurgia emplea sin traducir.
«It is very difficult for us to appreciate what was meant by the power of the spoken word during late antiquity,» — el obstáculo para entender la resistencia antigua a poner por escrito.
«He explained to Phaedrus that in contrast to the written word, “the living and ensouled word of him who sees”151 is far less vulnerable to misinterpretation.» — el Sócrates del Fedro como antecedente de esa preferencia; el número es la llamada de nota.
«Oral communication allows meaning to be transmitted not indirectly but straight to the mind of the listener;» — la ventaja de la palabra hablada, en su reconstrucción.
«if the speaker notices that his pupils do not understand, he can act immediately to protect his true meaning from misinterpretations;» — la corrección inmediata que el texto escrito no permite.
«Having pointed out that his writings might seem clear at first sight but in fact contain many hidden meanings, Asclepius advises the king against having them translated:» — introduce el pasaje de CH XVI contra la traducción al griego.
«Of course, the great irony is that this text has reached us in Greek!» — la advertencia contra la traducción sobrevive traducida.
«When written down, they are weakened even more.» — lo dice de los nombres sagrados, ya debilitados al traducirse.
«This superiority of Egyptian religious practice over Greek philosophy was basic to Iamblichus’ worldview.» — la jerarquía que gobierna el De mysteriis.
«Iamblichus will answer Porphyry by referring to the same “ancient steles of Hermes” that were already consulted by Pythagoras and Plato themselves – who ended up building their entire philosophy on them.» — la genealogía egipcia de la filosofía griega según Jámblico.
«It is therefore clear that the Hermetic writings carried enormous traditional authority for Iamblichus.» — el peso que los Hermetica tenían para un filósofo del siglo IV.
«Therefore if we accept Iamblichus as a contemporary authority who must have known firsthand what Hermetic spirituality was all about, then it cannot have been just a Lesemysterium (a “reading mystery”), an intellectual exercise for philosophers without practical application.» — el testimonio de Jámblico contra la tesis del misterio de lectura.
«Quite the contrary – the Way of Hermes was all about experiential practice.» — la conclusión del capítulo 4.
«Just a tiny part of Zosimos’ output has been preserved, which leads Mertens to call him a beautiful or sad example of “a literary shipwreck”» — en nota, el estado de conservación de la obra de Zósimo.
«Festugière’s four objections as presented in RHT I, 81–87, are surprisingly weak.» — en nota, su veredicto sobre los argumentos que cerraron durante décadas la cuestión de las comunidades herméticas.
«that discussions of natural philosophy were often combined with devotional passages carries no evidential force;» — en nota, desarma la primera de esas objeciones.
«the idea of a doctrinal conflict between “optimistic” and “pessimistic” treatises is little more than an obsession of modern scholars» — en nota, sobre la segunda objeción.
«the idea that communities require “doctrines” to exist is yet another example of Christian-theological prejudice.» — en nota, el prejuicio que sostiene la exigencia de doctrina formal.
«Interestingly, many of these ideas seem to have been born in the Netherlands.» — en nota, sobre la línea neerlandesa de la discusión, de Van Moorsel a Quispel.
«who introduced the fantasy (rightly dismissed by Bull, “Ancient Hermetism,” 116–117) of a “Hermetic lodge”» — en nota, sobre la imagen masónica proyectada en los grupos herméticos.
«It is striking how many practitioners and authorities of early Graeco-Roman alchemy, whether fictional or historical, are depicted as female:» — en nota, la presencia femenina en la alquimia grecoegipcia.
«Zosimos speaks with the greatest respect about Mary the Jewess and has Theosebeia as his chief pupil;» — en nota, los nombres con que documenta esa presencia.
«I find it unfortunate that in her recent discussion of Zosimos, Grimes (Becoming Gold, 127ff) still continues the “literary fiction” tradition by speaking of “allegories styled as a series of dreams.”» — en nota, la tradición de la ficción literaria sigue viva en la bibliografía reciente.
«As conveniently summarized by Burns, this third way defines the “‘Gnostic’ school of thought” in terms of “a distinction between God and an evil or incompetent creator-deity, and … the kinship of humanity with the truly divine, as opposed to the creator or creation”» — en nota, la tercera vía en la definición de lo gnóstico.
«For The Final Account, unfortunately we still have to use the unreliable Greek edition by Berthelot, CAA II, 239–246.» — en nota, el estado de las ediciones de Zósimo.
«In a fascinating Letter from Isis to Horus, a female practitioner describes how two angels wished to have intercourse with her and in return she made them reveal to her the mysteries of preparing gold and silver» — en nota, la transmisión del arte por ángeles en la literatura alquímica.
«I follow Jackson’s assumption that the person of wisdom must “hold fast to the ineffable Triad” rather than “dominate it”» — en nota, una opción de traducción y su razón: se domina el destino, no la tríada divina.
«As persuasively argued by Thomas Cowan, “archontism” should not be seen as identical to “gnosticism” but as referring to a more specific “transhistorical, theoretical pattern of spiritual thought” exemplified in Sethianism but also for instance in a literary author such as William Burroughs.» — en nota, la noción de arcontismo como patrón y no como escuela.
«Methodologically, I am arguing against the effects of a “gnostic confirmation bias” that risks overestimating the importance of “gnostic” materials to any text that merely refers to them.» — en nota, nombra el sesgo contra el que trabaja en el caso de Zósimo.
«Given Zosimos’ concern with the evil machinations of daimonic powers, it is no surprise that such “Sethian” ideas would interest him; but he was clearly a voracious reader, and I see no good reason to assign a pivotal importance to these particular myths for understanding his worldview as a whole.» — en nota, el interés documentado no autoriza a hacer de esas ideas la clave del autor.
«More specifically, the deities are described as κατὰ τόπον, “guardians with respect to place” (ibid., 24), that is, they are not universally present but tied to specific places.» — en nota, la localización de las divinidades guardianas.
«It is possible that as an expert in manufacturing temple statues, Zosimos himself held priestly rank» — en nota, una hipótesis que declara sin evidencia directa.
«The question is not crucial to the present argument.» — en nota, acota el peso de esa hipótesis sobre el rango sacerdotal de Zósimo.
«What he means is that the soul is cleaned of its astral imperfections and regains a state of perfect spiritual health» — en nota, sobre qué quiere decir perfección del alma en Zósimo, sin las connotaciones cristianas del término.
«This admittedly drastic expression is usually seen to confirm a “gnostic” rejection of matter» — en nota, sobre el término *pēlos*, residuo o barro, en las cartas siríacas.
«While the entheogenic hypothesis should not be pushed farther than the evidence allows, note that here we have another practitioner inhaling the smoke of incense» — en nota, vuelve a acotar el alcance de la hipótesis enteogénica.
«Iamblichus seems to differ from Zosimos’ more radical perspective in suggesting that although we are elevated above the realm of fate, the ascent must still be timed for the right astrological moment.» — en nota, la diferencia entre los dos sobre el destino astral, consignada sin resolverse.
«Our direct evidence of their association is not overwhelming» — en nota, sobre lo que puede afirmarse del vínculo entre Zósimo y los textos herméticos.
«On the contrary: Eunapius writes that Alypius was a native of Alexandria who died there too, and describes how at a time when the fame of both philosophers was in the ascendant, their paths just happened to cross one day, “like the course of two planets.”» — en nota, el testimonio de Eunapio sobre el encuentro con Alipio.
«Dillon can avoid such a conclusion only by moving Alypius together with all his students from Alexandria to Apamea or its environs, so that Iamblichus can come to “visit” him there (“Iamblichus,” 873) – a scenario for which we truly have no evidence.» — en nota, objeta la maniobra con que se evita situar a Jámblico en Alejandría.
«Quack rejects their argument on linguistic grounds and shows that “Anebo” and “Abamon” are both attested as genuine Egyptian names» — en nota, sobre la autenticidad egipcia de los dos nombres del intercambio con Porfirio.
«My concern here is less with how Plotinus himself might actually have meant these words (see Corrigan, “‘Solitary’ Mysticism”) than with their mnemohistorical impact.» — en nota, sobre la fórmula de la huida del solo hacia el solo: le interesa su efecto, no su intención.
«The notion was too radical even for Iamblichus’ exegete Proclus, who to some extent returned to Plotinus’ position (ibid., 73).» — en nota, la tesis del alma plenamente descendida no prosperó ni entre sus continuadores.
«Shaw points out that “by opposing the supernatural to nature Clarke reinforces the rationalist paradigm she means to refute”» — en nota, sobre las interpretaciones modernas de la teurgia.
«Note that a very small number of “noetic” souls with extraordinary powers descend voluntarily for the sake of “the salvation, purification, and perfection of things in this world,”» — en nota, la excepción que Jámblico admite dentro del descenso completo del alma.
«Note the paradox: Iamblichus’ embodied Platonism (based on the fully descended soul) made it necessary for the soul to actually leave the body, whereas Plotinus’ partially descended soul implied that it could wake up to its noetic side while remaining in the body.» — en nota, la paradoja que invierte lo que cada posición parecía implicar.
«Elaine Pagels points out that English is unusual in having just a single verb (“to know”) for expressing both general intellectual knowledge and the more intimate kind of knowledge suggestive of personal relationships» — en nota, el problema léxico que arrastra toda traducción de *gnōsis*.
«As pointed out by Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, 182–183, this was not an argument for some special sacrality of the Egyptian language; rather, the Egyptians just happened to be there first.» — en nota, acota la primacía egipcia de Jámblico: es cronológica, no lingüística.
«Of course this is the basic Pythagorean premise of esotericism in the sense of secret teachings for a chosen elite: the teacher addresses only those whom he thinks will be able to understand, and can correct them immediately if he notices they do not get it.» — en nota, la premisa pitagórica del esoterismo como enseñanza reservada.
«Iamblichus points out, the ancient prayers too are losing their efficacy.» — en nota, el desgaste de las oraciones antiguas que Jámblico consigna.
«We may reasonably assume that some of Iamblichus’ Egyptian students were Hermetic practitioners, but he tells us nothing more than the name of one otherwise unidentified priest and never quotes any Hermetic treatise.» — el límite de lo que Jámblico permite saber sobre practicantes concretos.
«we simply do not know what she and her pupils were doing in their restricted meetings.» — lo dice de Theosebeia: el testimonio existe y no describe la práctica.
«The conclusion is unavoidable: in our efforts to reconstruct Hermetic spirituality as a lived practice, we have to depend almost entirely on evidence internal to the texts themselves.» — no hay observadores externos, y de ahí el método del capítulo.
«We read there how authoritative teachers, respectfully addressed as “father,” are offering their spiritual “children”4 two things: theoretical instruction about the true nature of reality and practical guidance about how to move beyond mere theory and actually reach a state of divinely enlightened consciousness.» — los dos registros que los tratados combinan; el número es la llamada de nota.
«We learn from these texts that the theoretical part of the Way of Hermes is necessary as a preparation but not sufficient to reach the goal:» — la teoría es propedéutica, no el fin.
«Not, as far as we can tell, from any earlier written “master source” that they were just copying or using as their basis.» — de dónde sacaron sus contenidos los autores anónimos: no de un texto matriz.
«Theoretical knowledge, oral instruction and book learning were important but ultimately just propaedeutic.» — la formulación breve de esa jerarquía.
«It seems most likely that the Way of Hermes was practiced in very small gatherings, probably not much larger than what we find in the texts themselves: one teacher and one to three pupils – hardly more.» — el formato que propone para las reuniones, derivado de los propios textos.
«Some teachers may well have been priests who could receive their pupils in a temple sanctuary,12 but other scenarios are possible too, for instance meetings at private homes or in remote places outdoors.» — deja abiertos los tres escenarios; el número es la llamada de nota.
«Rather than writing under their own names and giving literal descriptions of what had happened at this-or-that meeting or location, Hermetic practitioners were exchanging inspirational texts describing the ideal teacher, the ideal student, the ideal discussion, the ideal message, the ideal proceedings, the ideal rewards.» — el género de los tratados es idealizante, y por eso el anonimato y la atribución a Hermes.
«Rather, they tell us what devotees of Hermes were supposed to learn and what they should expect to happen if they managed to get it all right.» — lo que el texto documenta es la expectativa, no el suceso.
«However, all these different manuscripts on which our Corpus Hermeticum is based are derived from just one textual original, or archetype, which is no longer extant and must already have been in a very bad condition at the time it was copied.» — la fragilidad material de toda la base textual.
«First, there is no proof that these seventeen treatises were originally part of one “Hermetic corpus”; it is only with Ficino’s Latin translation (1471) that the collection was presented as if it were a book with seventeen (still unnumbered) chapters.» — el corpus como unidad es un efecto de la edición, no un dato antiguo.
«Third, and most seriously, for many passages it is completely impossible to reconstruct the exact original formulation with any degree of certainty.» — la tercera y más grave de las incertidumbres que enumera.
«The sobering but unavoidable truth is that often we do not know the exact words that were written down by the original authors of the Corpus Hermeticum.» — el estado del texto, dicho sin atenuantes.
«This uncertainty is caused partly by the dependence of all our manuscripts on that single damaged and long vanished archetype; but in addition, there is the absolutely crucial question of how reliable were the scribes to whom we owe our manuscripts in the first place.» — las dos causas de la incertidumbre, y la segunda es la que abre el capítulo.
«Arthur Darby Nock was concerned to play down the implications of tampering by Byzantine scribes, because he preferred to think of the collection as an “esoteric book” composed by some “devotee” already during the Roman period.» — adjudica a Nock un interés en minimizar la intervención bizantina.
«He concluded that “the son of God,” “the Lord’s,” and “nous is God the Father” must all be interpolations by a Byzantine scribe.» — las tres expresiones de CH I 6 señaladas como añadidos cristianos.
«Specialists have discussed the dilemmas of this case in erudite texts and long footnotes, but this has led to no conclusive outcome.» — la cuestión de CH I 6 queda declarada abierta.
«As for how modern scholars have dealt with those elements in the Hermetica that seem suggestive of Christian theology, no strategy has been more popular than to explain them as depending on Philo and Alexandrian Judaism.» — la vía de escape dominante ante los rasgos cristianos del corpus.
«this approach confirmed the dominant apologetic tradition (at least since Lactantius and in spite of Augustine28) of reading the Hermetica as broadly compatible with Christian theology and its Jewish origins.» — el primer efecto de esa estrategia; el número es la llamada de nota.
«Secondly, it meant that the Hermetica had to be products of Alexandria, so that the rest of Hellenistic Egypt along with Egyptian religion could drift to the margins of scholarly attention.» — el segundo efecto: el Egipto no alejandrino sale del foco.
«In light of Kaldellis’ observations, it seems plausible that passages such as CH I 6 are exactly what they seem to be: not echoes from Alexandrian Judaism but pious “improvements” made by Christian scribes.» — la conclusión que saca para el pasaje discutido.
«Byzantium was not an intellectually free society; it did not encourage such rarefied ideals as “disinterested” philological scholarship; and its authorities would be distrustful of the notion that “pagan superstitions” should be transmitted to posterity with scrupulous care and respect.» — el marco institucional que hace verosímil la domesticación de los textos.
«As they were faced with a wealth of original sources, scribes did not have the luxury of copying them all.» — la selección era inevitable, y por eso significativa.
«and it was perfectly common for ancient manuscripts to be “significantly rewritten by Byzantine writers who abridged, expanded, and combined material from different sources.”» — la reescritura no era excepción sino práctica corriente.
«There would simply be no incentive for him to spend much time copying stuff that would strike his readers as clearly idolatrous and offensive to Christian tastes.» — el filtro por el que pasó lo que llegó hasta nosotros.
«Stobaeus was interested in Hermes as a philosopher and placed him next to such great authorities as Plato and Pythagoras.» — el criterio de Estobeo explica qué recogió y qué dejó fuera.
«This makes it likely that materials with a more practical and experiental focus would not have made it into his collection to begin with.» — la consecuencia para lo que falta en la antología; la fuente imprime *experiental*.
«Moreover, as pointed out by David Litwa, Stobaeus “probably edited his Hermetic material to increase its intelligibility and to fit the scope of his (mainly philosophical) project.» — la antología no solo selecciona: corrige.
«The main reason why the Hermetic fragments preserved in his writings read so much clearer than our manuscripts is not that he had access to an unspoiled tradition, but rather that he doctored, corrected, and emended for the benefit of his own readers, not at all unlike what modern editors have done.» — la claridad de Estobeo mide su intervención, no su cercanía al original.
«In a fascinating analysis, he demonstrates that although the short treatise known as CH III consists of just 326 words, it contains no fewer than nine substantial marginal notes that did not belong in the original version at all but were inserted into the main text by incompetent or irresponsible scribes, possibly at» — el caso de CH III según Christian Wildberg.
«But if Wildberg is right, we need an entirely new edition, and it is likely to change our understanding of the Hermetica in many fundamental respects.» — la consecuencia editorial de ese análisis.
«In other words, if Stobaeus provides us with a “better text” of parallel passages in CH II, IV, X and the Asclepius, this does not prove that his version is closer to the original.» — un texto más claro no es un texto más antiguo.
«The break of 555 ce led to a wave of new translations into Armenian to support the creation of a national educational curriculum that should replace dependence on Greek.» — el contexto en que se tradujeron las Definiciones herméticas al armenio.
«Because neither the Greek original nor the translator’s own manuscript still exist, all we have is a series of later transcripts dating from between the thirteenth and the eighteenth centuries.» — el estado de la única transmisión que conserva ese material.
«It is therefore no surprise that they read like smooth statements of philosophical theology without overt references to religious cultic practice or religious experience.» — la lisura filosófica del material transmitido es efecto de la transmisión.
«All these materials went through a narrow bottleneck of Byzantine transmission that functioned very much like a black box: we know what came out of it at our end, but we hardly know what went in.» — la imagen de la caja negra con que resume el estado de la evidencia.
«It is perfectly clear that much has been lost that will never be recovered; and there is no doubt that most of what was recovered has been severely damaged in the process of transmission.» — el balance, sin atenuantes, de lo que queda.
«We tend to take for granted that in such an undertaking, our superior technical skills and philological sophistication give us an advantage over medieval and early modern scribes and intellectuals.» — la confianza moderna que el capítulo pone en duda.
«We will have ample occasion to see that in modern scholarship of the Hermetica, powerful patterns of intellectual prejudice have distorted the evidence at least as seriously as happened in the work of our medieval and early modern predecessors.» — equipara el daño del prejuicio moderno al del copista bizantino.
«Even early critics of philhellenism such as Reitzenstein participated in a cultural discourse where Christian theology determined the basic rules of engagement» — hasta los críticos del filhelenismo jugaban dentro de sus reglas.
«All these heavy ideological assumptions, agendas, commitments, frames, and narratives created a systemic pattern of intellectual prejudice that automatically privileged Christian theology, rational science and philosophy, and “civilized values” as understood by modern intellectuals, while discrediting everything that had traditionally been perceived as their radical counterpart.» — el patrón sistémico que describe, y del que Egipto fue el ejemplo mayor.
«Now Gadamer’s point is that without any Vorurteil there can be no hermeneutics, no interpretation, no understanding.» — el prejuicio no es un defecto corregible sino la condición de comprender.
«But this does not imply a relativist perspective in which “anything goes” and scholars are free to impose their own subjective readings on ancient texts; on the contrary, hermeneutics is all about trying to understand those texts as adequately as possible, by listening to what they have to tell us.» — el límite que le pone al principio, en la misma plana.
«On the contrary, hermeneutics is all about leaving our intellectual comfort zone and “placing ourselves there.”» — el encuentro con la otredad como programa de lectura.
«If we just keep speaking our own language and do not listen, we learn nothing.» — el primero de los dos modos de no aprender nada.
«But if we think we can somehow remove ourselves from the situation, together with our patterns of prejudice, we fall into the contrary delusion of false objectivity and will learn nothing either.» — el segundo: la ilusión de dejar hablar a las fuentes por sí solas.
«It follows that our core problem lies not in the unavoidable presence of Vorurteil in any act of interpretation, but in a lack of full engagement with the otherness of the Hermetica.» — el diagnóstico que reordena el problema entero.
«Understanding requires an encounter of subjectivities in which as readers we move out of our comfort zones to confront the otherness of a world that challenges and violates our own assumptions and patterns of prejudice.» — su respuesta al problema de la transmisión corrupta: no abstenerse de interpretar sino exponerse a la otredad.
«This cannot be the “knowledge” familiar to us from our common intellectual culture – it must be something else.» — lo dice de la *gnōsis* hermética.
«As we have seen already in the discussion of Iamblichus’ concept of “innate knowledge” (emphutos gnōsis), this means that grasping the meaning of gnōsis may very well require questioning our most basic concepts of what “knowledge” is all about.» — la lectura exige poner en cuestión la propia noción de conocimiento.
«What they all have in common is a strong emphasis on experience and praxis as opposed to mere theoretical reflection.» — el rasgo que define a los textos del centro de su círculo.
«This simple fact speaks for their authenticity and for comparatively low probabilities of scribal tampering.» — cuanto más extraño y menos asimilable el texto, menos probable la corrección piadosa.
«I would see it as a prime example of the phenomenon, mentioned towards the end of the previous section, of a text getting misframed as something different from what it really was.» — sobre un tratado leído como otra cosa de lo que es.
«In sum, statistically the chances both of survival and of corruption increase as we move further away from the center.» — la regla que gobierna su disposición circular de los tratados.
«I do not mean to suggest that theoretical reflection was unimportant to Hermetic spirituality.» — el límite de su desplazamiento hacia la práctica.
«Still, how important it really was remains a matter of speculation.» — y el límite del límite: no hay manera de medir ese peso.
«They certainly do not allow us to recreate a “systematic theology” of Hermes.» — lo dice de los tratados teóricos conservados.
«CH III. Only the title, “A Sacred Discourse of Hermes,” is Hermetic.» — en su tabla de tratados, uno de los que quedan fuera del núcleo espiritual.
«CH XVIII. A piece of rhetorical praise of God and Kings, without any clear connection to the Hermetica.» — otro de los descartes, dicho con su motivo.
«I do not include these treatises under the spiritual Hermetica because they are sharply different from the rest of our treatises in terms of their alleged authors, contents, worldview, and literary style.» — el criterio con que aparta SH XXIII–XXVII.
«Only the generative source of all that is, referred to as God, can really be considered good.» — de su resumen de la teología de los tratados teóricos.
«Death does not exist, for all change is transformation.» — otra de esas tesis resumidas, y una de las que el libro desarrolla al final.
«Perception through the bodily senses is unreliable because they get infected by daimons; but our nous allows a higher perception of divine realities, noēsis.» — la psicología del *nous* condensada en una línea de su tabla.
«We are dominated by cosmic fate through the agency of daimons, but can be saved by divine light» — otra de esas líneas, sobre la heimarmenē y la salvación.
«Salvation through nous requires liberation from the bodily passions because the object of divine knowledge is purely incorporeal.» — el resumen de la condición de la salvación noética.
«It goes without saying that this procedure of reshuffling in a circular arrangement must be seen as a heuristic device, and my sequential order of the theoretical treatises can never be more than a rough approximation.» — declara heurístico y aproximado el ordenamiento que propone.
«While the authors of the Hermetica were obviously using elements from a great variety of previous traditions (Egyptian, Greek, or Jewish) as their building materials, out of them they created something new and distinctive.» — la originalidad que reclama para estos textos, sin negarles fuentes.
«My emphasis on the creative novelty of Hermetic spirituality stands in complete and deliberate opposition to Festugière’s endlessly repeated refrain (rightly criticized e.g. by Kingsley, “Poimandres,” 68–69) of how utterly unoriginal and “banal” the contents of the Hermetica are.» — la oposición declarada al veredicto de banalidad.
«In this regard, his work exemplifies a methodological pitfall of great scholarly erudition: by focusing just on the building blocks and where they came from, we risk overlooking the building, as though recycled materials could not be used to build something new.» — el símil con que nombra el defecto del método genealógico.
«We should add the manuscript Clarkianus 11 discovered in Oxford (Bodleian library) by Mahé and Paramelle and published by them in 1991» — en nota, el testigo manuscrito que se añade a la tradición conocida.
«Because they sometimes give a better version than the standard edition published by Nock and Festugière, they cannot come from the lost archetype on which the other CH manuscripts are based but must depend on a different, parallel source» — en nota, la consecuencia estemática de ese hallazgo.
«Note that Adrien Turnèbe composed a “CH XV” from some excerpts of Stobaeus in the first edition of the Greek text; but while later editors kept his numbering, this fifteenth treatise was thrown out again» — en nota, por qué la numeración del corpus salta el tratado XV.
«Mahé states quite bluntly that “the Byzantine excerptor has not faithfully reproduced the original text of our treatises.”» — en nota, el veredicto de Mahé sobre el excerptor bizantino.
«The long discussion in Scott II, 23–26, nicely illustrates the ease with which he rewrites the manuscripts to solve any problem» — en nota, el método editorial de Walter Scott.
«That those difficulties might be removed at least as easily by interpreting υἱὸς θεοῦ as a Christian interpolation is never seriously considered.» — en nota, la hipótesis que la erudición no llegó a plantearse.
«As many critics have noted, his second volume (the largest of the four) in fact discusses the Hermetica only in the introduction (pp. 1–71), while the remainder of its 610 pages» — en nota, sobre la proporción real de Hermetica en la Révélation de Festugière.
«One may add that while G.R.S. Mead’s edition and translation (1906) was universally ignored by scholars because of the author’s Theosophical commitments (see Hanegraaff, “Out of Egypt”), he sometimes saw more clearly than his learned despisers» — en nota, la marginación de Mead y lo que aun así aportó.
«The first critical edition (with Russian translation) was published in 1956 by the Armenian scholar H. Manandyan (“Ermeay Eṙameci aṙ Asklepios Sahmank‘”), and noted only by Dörrie, Review of Banber Matenadarani vol. 3 (1957).» — en nota, la historia editorial de las Definiciones armenias.
«The well-known fascination with decadence and decline in the decades around 1900 found its classic formulation in Oswald Spengler’s bestseller Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West, 1918/1922).» — en nota, el clima declinista en que se formó el estudio de los Hermetica.
«This fear that we might be entering a new “age of darkness” explains much of the frantic obsession, among turn-of-the-century philhellenists, with defending rationality against the rise of “irrational cults.”» — en nota, el miedo contemporáneo que animaba la defensa de la razón antigua.
«The emic/etic terminology is not used by Gadamer but may be helpful to connect his argument to relevant methodological discussions in the study of religion.» — en nota, declara suyo el injerto de vocabulario.
«I see remarkable resonances with van de Port’s anthropological analysis of bafflement as central to Candomblé» — en nota, el paralelo antropológico del desconcierto como forma de conocimiento profundo.
«The placement of this short fragment, of which we do not know the original context, is admittedly questionable.» — en nota, declara discutible una de sus propias ubicaciones en el círculo.
«Because its point is that incorporeal essences can be reflected in corporeal images, I provisorily place it between CH XVI and V, which both focus on the relation between the invisible incorporeal God and the visible corporeal world» — en nota, el criterio de esa ubicación provisional.
«Together with Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, Plutarch is among the very few classical authors who have left us writings about the practice of meditation.» — el lugar de Plutarco en la documentación antigua del ejercicio espiritual.
«As Plutarch pointed out, these were not the natural passions, which have a useful and necessary role to play because without them, humans would simply lack the drive for any ethical, social or political activity.» — la distinción de Plutarco entre pasiones naturales y dañinas.
«Worse than that, as our soul itself gets diseased by those infections, it begins misperceiving its own condition so that it believes itself to be healthy while it is actually sick.» — el rasgo que vuelve grave la enfermedad: se pierde la percepción de estar enfermo.
«However, it is important to see that what the Hermetists were doing went considerably beyond the profound but still relatively gentle meditative exercises practiced widely by philosophers trained in the standard traditions of Stoicism, Epicureanism, or Platonism.» — el diagnóstico es compartido; la terapia hermética no lo es.
«Pierre Hadot is at pains to draw a sharp distinction between those types of spiritual exercise that were central to standard philosophical training and those that resulted in more extreme alterations of consciousness, insisting that the former “has absolutely nothing to do with a state of trance or» — la distinción de Hadot, que él acepta y luego aplica al revés.
«In this he is certainly correct. However, the Way of Hermes did involve such states.» — concede el punto a Hadot y separa de él a los herméticos.
«Like Iamblichus and his students in Egypt and Syria, Hermetic practitioners believed that to really break our condition of enslavement to the harmful passions, more was needed than calming the mind and cultivating states of serene equilibrium and equanimity.» — hacía falta más que serenidad: hacía falta intervención divina.
«The text is explicit: having been plunged into this bubbling cauldron that is the body, our soul fully drowns in it.» — la imagen del caldero de dolor y placer en que el alma se ahoga.
«The soul has to be healed and rescued by the gods: lost in the body, it cannot save itself but is in need of divine intervention.» — la consecuencia: la salvación no es autosuficiente.
«Therefore it makes perfect sense that we read in CH IV how God decided to send down the means of salvation: He filled a large mixing-bowl [with nous] and sent it down.» — el *kratēr* lleno de *nous* como respuesta a esa condición; el corchete es del autor.
«However, it is up to them to actually take the plunge and profit from its curative powers.» — el don está disponible; sumergirse en él es decisión de cada uno.
«By logical contrast, all those who fail to pursue that path remain in a deplorable state of ignorance and imperfection.» — el reverso del camino, dicho sin categorías morales.
«Only if he first “hates his body” will he be able to “love himself” and embark on the path of true knowledge,26 for only what is incorporeal and divine deserves his love – not this corporeal vessel» — la fórmula más dura del corpus, que el capítulo se encarga de acotar; el número es la llamada de nota.
«However, it is important to note that the image of the garment is intermingled here with yet another one, that of possession by a sinister demonic entity operating from within.» — las metáforas no son intercambiables y conviene separarlas.
«Strictly speaking, the efficient cause of this sickness is not the body as such but the destructive passions that are active in it.» — la distinción de la que depende todo el capítulo.
«If we read the passage closely, we see that the person who does know himself and is able to “perceive the things that really are, their nature, and the Good” will no longer be dominated by the passions and should be able to rule the body instead of being ruled by it.» — el desenlace no es dejar el cuerpo sino gobernarlo.
«Admittedly this distinction is rather subtle, and so it may not have been fully evident even to some of the Hermetic authors themselves.» — el límite de su propia distinción entre causa eficiente y causa material.
«My suggestion is that its unusually drastic language must be read in that context and may well betray the alarmist sense of high urgency typical of recent converts.» — su hipótesis sobre el tono extremo de CH VII.
«What the vessel and garment metaphors have in common is a strong suggestion of entrapment and vulnerability, a sensation of no escape.» — lo que las dos imágenes comparten.
«In modern terminology, what we are really seeing here is a Hermetic psychology of addiction, in the sense of strong mental dependency or enslavement to what is harmful to the soul.» — el vocabulario moderno que propone, declarado como tal.
«Hence when the soul is liberated and finds its way back to the realm of truth, the “garments” that it sheds in the process are described precisely as those harmful passions and their negative results: malice, desire, the arrogance of power, recklessness, brutality, craving for wealth, and falsehood.» — lo que el alma se quita no es el cuerpo sino las pasiones.
«should not lead us to conclude too hastily, along with countless modern scholars, that it is therefore the body that must be left behind.» — la conclusión apresurada que rechaza.
«On the contrary, we will see that Hermetic practitioners believed it possible for the soul’s condition of ignorance to be healed already during life here on earth.» — la curación ocurre en vida y en el cuerpo.
«It would be difficult to overstate the importance of this point.» — lo dice de la distinción entre causa eficiente y causa material del mal del alma.
«If the body as such causes the sickness of the soul, then that condition can obviously not be cured in a state of embodiment, and therefore salvation can happen only after death.» — la primera rama de la alternativa.
«By contrast, if the efficient cause lies in the destructive passions that are active as daimonic energies in the body, then it should not be impossible to drive them out and purify the vessel, presumably leaving it open to be filled with divine light.» — la segunda rama, que es la que atribuye a los Hermetica.
«Zosimos’ advice to Theosebeia now appears in its true light.» — el consejo de Zósimo se explica desde esa segunda rama.
«Having thus been baptized in the mixing-bowl of nous, she can afford to “spit on matter” and hasten up to her own spiritual “tribe” – the community of souls that are already united with Poimandres.» — el desenlace del proceso descrito por Zósimo.
«Because this sickness of the soul is an unavoidable effect of embodiment as such, all human beings without exception suffer from its afflictions.» — la condición es universal y no una falla moral de algunos.
«In modern terms, what we consider to be normal human consciousness is in fact an altered state of knowledge: a delusionary condition of mental alienation and profound confusion that makes it very hard for us to see reality as it actually is.» — la inversión que da título al libro: lo normal es ya el estado alterado.
«To put it very bluntly, the Hermetica are telling us that as embodied human beings, we are living our lives in a dreamlike state of hallucination.» — la formulación más directa de esa tesis.
«Some of us may experience fleeting moments of enlightenment, when the mental fog is momentarily lifted and we see glimpses of the real; but ultimately the spell is much too powerful for any of us to truly break it by ourselves.» — de ahí la necesidad de la revelación.
«The Greek word for a revelation is apokalupsis, “apocalypse.”38 Its most evident example for us is the first treatise of the Corpus Hermeticum,39 where a divine being named Poimandres appears to Hermes Trismegistus40 and promises to answer his questions.» — así entra CH I en el argumento; los números son llamadas de nota.
«This overwhelming sense of reality, of having the veil of appearances torn away and perceiving what is true, is crucial to understanding the life-changing impact that such visions can have on those who experience them.» — lo que distingue a estas visiones no es su contenido sino su carácter de realidad.
«It is clear that Poimandres appears while Hermes is in such a state.» — la aparición se sitúa en un estado de conciencia descrito por el propio texto.
«Here it must be noted that while the term “hallucination” may be suggestive of psychopathology in the minds of many readers, that assumption is not supported by the medical and statistical record.» — desliga el término de la patología antes de usarlo.
«It is not the nature of hallucinatory experiences per se that determines whether people become psychotic, but the manner in which individuals react to their experiences.» — el criterio clínico que invoca para sostener esa desligadura.
«Thus when the author of CH I claims to have talked with Poimandres, this tells us nothing about his state of sanity.» — la consecuencia para la lectura del tratado.
«All it means is that his consciousness must have been altered temporarily, probably through spiritual practices that are known to be capable of such effects.» — hasta ahí llega la afirmación, y no más.
«If a visionary revelation is reduced to just a “literary fiction,” this has far-reaching effects on how we are led to perceive and interpret the text as a whole.» — el costo interpretativo de la etiqueta de ficción.
«Poimandres responds by giving his name58 and revealing his true identity: he is no one less than the nous of the sovereign power or divine source itself.» — quién es Poimandres según el propio tratado; el número es la llamada de nota.
«nous is to be understood simultaneously on two different levels that may strike us as incommensurable or even contradictory but are considered to be one.» — el doble registro del término, sostenido a la vez y sin síntesis.
«Ontologically it is an ultimate reality, while epistemologically it is the capacity to access or comprehend that very same reality» — los dos niveles, nombrados.
«Poimandres tells him: “know the light then and get acquainted with it!”» — la instrucción con que la revelación pasa de la visión al conocimiento.
«He did this not by any verbal explanation or rational analysis but, exactly as promised at the outset, by giving Hermes what he wished to hear, see, and understand noetically.» — la revelación de Poimandres no procede por explicación sino por percepción.
«The divine nous and logos appear as realities that are being perceived by Hermes and therefore seem external to himself.» — el punto de partida de la visión, que luego se disuelve.
«It is at this point that Poimandres takes one further and truly radical step: he makes it clear to Hermes that in truth there is no distinction between the universal divine nous and logos that he is watching and the nous and logos that are watching them!» — el paso decisivo del tratado: cae la separación entre sujeto y objeto.
«He himself is “the nous of the sovereign power” and its logos as well; or in modern terminology, the very distinction between a subject that observes and an object that is being observed turns out to be an illusion, a trick of the mind.» — la formulación moderna que propone para esa identidad.
«This then is Hermes’ moment of illumination in the most radical sense of the word: he understands himself to be divine light gazing at divine light.» — el contenido de la iluminación, dicho con la imagen del propio texto.
«Because the perceiver is identical with that which is being perceived and even with the very capacity of noetic perception, this is the true actualization of nous in its ability to “understand itself”: gnōsis as unmediated knowledge of one’s own divine nature.» — la definición de *gnōsis* que saca del pasaje.
«When Hermes returns from his moment of ultimate gnōsis, his noetic senses reopen so that his logos (“that in you which sees and hears”) is able again to perceive the world of his nous by something resembling bodily vision and hearing.» — el regreso de la unión a la percepción noética.
«The dark and moist substance of nature received the luminous logos in her womb, and this act of insemination allowed her to imitate the beauty of the noetic world by using “her own elements and her own offspring, the souls” and transform them into an ordered cosmos.» — la cosmogonía de CH I en su reconstrucción.
«This vision is entirely in line with standard Aristotelian understandings of sexual generation, which required the female menstrual blood (vehicle of the nutritive soul) as the passive material cause to be inseminated by the male seed (vehicle of the sentient soul) as the active efficient cause.» — la biología antigua que sostiene la imagen.
«To understand what happens next, we must emphasize once more that only one ultimate reality is said to truly exist.» — la clave no dualista con que lee toda la cosmogonía.
«The moist darkness of nature does not have the same metaphysical status – it is not the noumenon but just a phenomenon, an appearance.» — la oscuridad no es un segundo principio.
«Hence it would be a serious mistake to think that the cosmos is born from the sexual union of two preexisting gendered realities (light versus darkness, nous versus matter, God versus nature, and so on), for this polarization happens not on the primary level of essential being but only on the secondary level of phenomenal manifestation.» — el error que produce la lectura dualista del relato.
«And that is what it does: out of itself, the nous now brings forth a secondary nous, a “god of fire and spirit” who acts as a demiurge, a cosmic architect or craftsman.» — el demiurgo sale del *nous* mismo, no de un principio rival.
«Their governance is called heimarmenē, the cosmic machinery of fate that rules everything in the world of the senses.» — la definición de heimarmenē que usa el libro.
«Having already brought forth the cosmos and the demiurge, the nous now gives birth to yet a new offspring, a supremely beautiful Human very similar to itself.» — el nacimiento del Humano noético.
«One could argue that by definition, a truly androgynous deity must be both father and mother; but it seems more likely that whether deliberately or not, the Hermetic perspective ultimately prioritizes masculinity as the active principle of generation, the» — la reserva que pone a la andrógina hermética.
«We will see in a moment that this account is challenged by an influential tradition of scholarship; but before addressing objections, let me summarize my interpretation.» — anuncia el enfrentamiento con la lectura de la caída.
«Already Reitzenstein makes the demiurge into a demonic opponent of the Human, introducing an element of fraternal strife that resonates with biblical models but has no support in our text.» — la primera de las proyecciones bíblicas que documenta.
«Festugière has already decided that these are “gnostic speculations”; for him it is axiomatic that such speculations see matter as bad; ergo the desire to create can only be “a kind of original sin.”» — reconstruye el silogismo con que se llega al pecado original.
«So what about the love story? When Festugière remarks that “Man’s sin is to love something material,”98 we do not know whether we are listening to a classicist analyzing a pagan hellenistic text or a celibate priest pondering the human condition.» — la observación biográfica queda dicha como pregunta abierta; el número es la llamada de nota.
«Ernst Haenchen, too, imposes a “gnostic” framework by default while interpreting the love scene as a sinister seduction; but he adds a remarkable twist by claiming that the Human resists the attempt.» — otra variante de la misma proyección.
«When they see CH I 13- 14 as an account of “The Fall of Man” into matter and sin, this can in no way be seen as “dispassionate” scholarly analysis.» — el veredicto sobre esa tradición de lectura; el troceo une el guion de corte de la cifra.
«We are dealing with heavily sexualized and misogynic imaginaries of Adam’s temptation by Eve projected onto the Hermetic text.» — nombra lo que, en su lectura, se proyecta sobre el pasaje.
«It is true that Nature with whom the Human is making love is described as an “unreasoning form” (alogon morphēn); but that was only to be expected, since we already saw that after having inseminated the material elements, the noetic logos had withdrawn himself from Nature.» — el término no es una descalificación moral sino una consecuencia del relato.
«Embodiment is not to be seen as a regrettable fall into materiality, let alone a sin, but as a divine gift.» — la tesis del capítulo, enunciada.
«However – and this is the crux of the matter, as will be seen – the gift comes at a price.» — el límite, puesto inmediatamente después.
«Pure noetic beings will have to make do without the joys and pleasures that come with embodied existence and the life of the senses; on the other hand, embodiment means coming under the dominion of the planetary spheres, the heimarmenē, while losing the crystal-clear consciousness of pure noetic Life and Light.» — el precio, en sus dos direcciones.
«Out of the union of Nature and the Human comes not some kind of monster or regrettable miscarriage but nothing less than a “most wondrous wonder” or» — el resultado de la unión, según el propio texto.
«Note that the nous is not yet described as a gift that needs to be “sent down” or a “prize that must be won,” as in CH IV, but is inherent in the very constitution» — la diferencia entre CH I y CH IV en este punto, consignada sin armonizarse.
«The lapidary statement “erōs is the cause of death” (ton aition tou thanatou erōta) has been hugely over-interpreted, again under the influence of biblical notions of sexual sin and transgression that are alien to the Hermetic worldview.» — la frase más citada del pasaje, devuelta a su sentido biológico.
«In fact the text is just making a perfectly straightforward observation: not only are all material bodies mortal composites, but all such bodies are born from sexual desire.» — la observación llana que el texto hace, sin condena.
«Here and elsewhere it is clear that the Hermetic divinity, the generative Source of all that is, has no objection to sex at all; on the contrary, it is he who introduces this remarkable innovation and orders human beings to try it out!» — la divinidad hermética ordena el acto sexual en vez de prohibirlo.
«Only knowledge of what is truly eternal, the nous, enables human beings to cultivate their immortal potential; and only by understanding that no other reality truly exists will they realize that in gaining knowledge of themselves, they gain knowledge of all that is.» — autoconocimiento y conocimiento de todo coinciden.
«However, this gnōsis is a prize that must be won.» — el límite: el don está disponible y no es automático.
«They have been granted a unique ability to seed the world with the divine light of goodness, beauty and truth, so that matter may become a mirror of noetic perfection that will give birth to ever new forms of life in splendid abundance – this is the essence of the love story between the Human and Nature.» — la tarea del alma encarnada, en positivo.
«If they lose their balance by getting obsessed with the experience of embodiment while forgetting their noetic potential, they will “keep wandering in darkness, deluded by the senses and subject to death.”» — el riesgo del don, dicho con las palabras del tratado.
«When Poimandres makes that statement, Hermes cries out in shock: “But the ignorant…! What terrible fault have they committed that they should be deprived of immortality?” – yet another confirmation that nothing up to this point had suggested some “fall into sin.”» — la reacción del propio Hermes funciona como prueba interna contra la lectura de la caída.
«It is because an individual’s body, as it is shaped in the world of the senses, is made from the dark and depressing substance that he had seen in his first noetic visionwithin-the vision.» — la respuesta de Poimandres sobre la mortalidad; el troceo une el guion de corte en *vision-within*.
«If this is your entire reality, so the message goes, it means that you are wandering in darkness – you are literally living your life “in death” because everything you hold to be real is only finite and mortal.» — la muerte como estado presente y no como suceso futuro.
«However, we can be healed from these afflictions if we break the powerful spell of enchantment that tempts the soul to forget its true origin and keeps it running after empty pursuits and illusory goals.» — la cura es posible y consiste en romper el hechizo.
«The goal is spiritual knowledge, gnōsis – literally re-cognition or re-membering of one’s true self as identical with the divine Light and Life, as Poimandres points out to Hermes once again.» — la *gnōsis* como reconocimiento y recuerdo.
«And that, it has to be said, is not an easy thing to do.» — la reserva que acompaña a esa meta.
«The very formulation confirms his understanding that even though he has seen his true identity while looking into Poimandres’ eyes, that was just a momentary glimpse.» — la visión no es todavía la *gnōsis* permanente.
«No – as stated explicitly in CH IV, the divine Source did not just share his nous with everybody but offered it to human souls “as a prize to be won.”» — la formulación de CH IV sobre el *nous* como premio.
«Like Nock and Festugière, I translate enthumēseis (emotions, passions, or drives) as “imaginations” because these disturbances are not a matter of ratiocination but of the subtle life of internal images and fantasies that are continuously at work in everybody’s mind.» — declara y funda su opción de traducción.
«Poimandres is saying that this gift of nous is like an antidote against the negative passions and their effects, because it blocks them from contaminating the human imagination.» — la función psicológica del don, en su lectura.
«Poimandres’ explanation implies that this natural noetic connection was broken only when God split the humans into male and female and ordered them to procreate.» — el corte de la conexión noética se fecha en la división de los sexos.
«Embodiment is a good thing, then, but very risky.» — la fórmula que resume la posición del capítulo.
«If this happens to an individual, Poimandres refuses to let him play the victim or allow him to blame others for his misery or his bad behavior (whether those others are human beings or the divinity itself); on the contrary, he insists that human beings are fully responsible for their own actions and must reap the consequences of their choices.» — la ética de la responsabilidad individual en CH I.
«Virtue is its own reward – even in a purely mortal world, one can still choose to be a good person and resist the seductions of vice.» — la virtud no depende de la recompensa póstuma.
«Those who refuse to strive for goodness simply do not deserve to be enlightened, and they are making it impossible for themselves to receive the gift of nous:» — la exclusión es autoinfligida, no decretada.
«Note that the Greek does not imply any causal connection between the absence of nous and bad behavior: it is not the case that those who lack it are necessarily evil.» — la lectura moralizante no se sostiene en el griego.
«Rather, the meaning is that among the ones without nous, Poimandres will stay away from those who behave badly but will come to those who practice virtue.» — la lectura que propone en su lugar.
«As the soul transcends the dominion of the lunar sphere, it is no longer afflicted by restless change but moves into a state of peaceful stability.» — la primera de las siete esferas del ascenso y el vicio que deja atrás.
«As the soul ceases to be influenced by Venus, it can no longer be led astray by sexual desires.» — otra estación del ascenso planetario.
«Leaving Jupiter’s dominion, the soul is no longer addicted to material possessions either.» — otra más, en la misma serie.
«And that,” Poimandres concludes, “is the happy end for those who have received gnōsis: to become divine.”» — el término del ascenso, en las palabras del tratado.
«His consciousness has changed: I recorded Poimandres’ blessing in myself, and was filled with happiness because my wishes had been fulfilled.» — lo que le queda a Hermes tras la revelación, dicho por él mismo.
«This does not mean that he is now uttering nomina barbara but simply that his discourse is full of noetic power – or at least,» — sobre el discurso con que Hermes sale a enseñar.
«Hermes reports that some listeners responded to his words with mockery and left, thus abandoning themselves to the way of death, while others begged him to teach them.» — la predicación divide al auditorio, y el tratado lo registra.
«the claim is that he transmits real power to them by means of his spoken logos.» — la enseñanza no informa: transmite potencia.
«Throughout this chapter, we have seen that those stark oppositions do not reflect any “dualist” worldview, as countless scholars have imagined under the influence of Christian-theological morality» — el balance del capítulo sobre el supuesto dualismo hermético.
«We have encountered no “Fall into Sin,” no “divine spark trapped in matter,” no “bad or evil demiurge,” and no “rejection of the body.”» — la lista de lo que, leído de cerca, no está en el texto.
«All those elements that have been read in terms of theology or mythology are much more easily understood in terms of human psychology, as suggested by the very themes that these texts never cease to emphasize.» — el desplazamiento de la teología a la psicología espiritual.
«The efficient causes of ignorance are not matter or the body, but the harmful passions to which the soul is vulnerable.» — la tesis del capítulo, repetida en su cierre.
«Therefore the recipe for healing does not consist in ascetic rejection of embodied existence, but in a process of internal illumination that requires a profound alteration of human consciousness.» — la consecuencia terapéutica.
«As for the word “affect,” it has lost most of its poignancy for us and hardly survives as a noun at all.» — en nota, sobre las dificultades de traducir el vocabulario de las pasiones.
«Hadot’s discussion is understandably dominated by the controversial thesis of an “ancient Greek shamanism,” which I believe has created more confusion than clarity.» — en nota, su reserva ante esa tesis.
«the point is not that humanity is “evil” but that human beings inevitably get corrupted.» — en nota, sobre cómo traducir *kakia* sin connotación cristiana.
«While highly ingenious, the hypothesis leaves me unconvinced, and Van den Kerchove admits herself that it rests on minimal foundations (ibid., 312).» — en nota, una hipótesis descartada con su propia salvedad.
«It is not clear to me why Van den Kerchove finds the reference to loving oneself “étonnante” (“astonishing”; La voie, 315).» — en nota, sobre el amarse a sí mismo de CH IV.
«The Dutch translation of addiction is verslaving, which literally means enslavement; in French one speaks of dépendance, dependency.» — en nota, el vocabulario moderno de la adicción y su parentesco con la esclavitud hermética.
«Attempts to synthesize these two different meanings of apocalypse as a genre of “revelations” and as “end-of-time visions” have led to an unstable and highly confusing discourse in modern scholarship:» — en nota, el problema del género apocalíptico.
«I will adopt this identification here, while acknowledging the distinct possibility that CH I is the reflection of a proto-Hermetic cult of Porramanres (Amenemhet III), in which case CH XIII 15 reflects a later interpretation of the visionary as Hermes» — en nota, adopta la identificación del visionario dejando abierta la hipótesis alternativa.
«To Rouget’s elements of silence, solitude and physical immobility I have added darkness as a possible contributing factor, in view of Ustinova’s discussions in Caves and the Ancient Greek Mind.» — en nota, declara suyo el añadido de la oscuridad a la lista de condiciones.
«Collins’s influential “morphology of a genre” suffers from an attempt to combine ἀποκάλυψις in its general sense of “revelation” with an overemphasis on the eschatological content congenial to biblical scholars and theologians» — en nota, la crítica a la definición corriente del género.
«Another problem is the relative neglect of materials beyond the spheres of Judaism and Christianity» — en nota, el segundo defecto de esa definición.
«Banner suggests that Plotinus may have pioneered this idea (Philosophic Silence, 196), but I will be arguing that we find it in the Hermetica as well.» — en nota, disputa la primacía de Plotino en un punto doctrinal.
«CH I 2. Contra Haenchen (“Aufbau,” 153), Poimandres is therefore not identical with the supreme “sovereign power” or divine source: he represents the level of the Ennead, as will be seen.» — en nota, sitúa a Poimandres en la Enéada y no en la Fuente.
«Typical of his trademark editorial distortions, Scott (Scott I, 116; Scott II, 23; cf. Haenchen, “Aufbau,” 159 with note 2) “corrects” ὁ σὸς θεός (“your god”) to ὁ πρῶτος θεός (“the first god”)!» — en nota, un caso concreto de la enmienda editorial de Scott.
«Because the question does not crucially affect my argument here, I leave the matter open while bracketing these contested words.» — en nota, deja abierta la cuestión de las interpolaciones cristianas en CH I 6.
«Instead of “get to know it” I write “get acquainted with it” in the second instance, primarily to avoid repetition of the word “know”; but this choice also owes something to the discussion in Chapter 4 of Iamblichus’ concept of ἔμφυτος γνῶσις» — en nota, declara la razón doble de una opción de traducción.
«I see no reason to follow Scott (Scott I, 116) and Haenchen (“Aufbau,” 161 with note 1) in changing the Greek so as to make Hermes turn his gaze away.» — en nota, rechaza una enmienda que cambiaría el sentido de la visión.
«As far as I can tell, among all modern scholars only Reitzenstein saw the significance of the passage, identifying it correctly as a “second vision” in which Hermes noetically perceives τὸ ἀρχέτυπον εἶδος (Poimandres, 38).» — en nota, reconoce a Reitzenstein el único acierto sobre ese pasaje.
«Because strictly speaking the noetic light world is not a “cosmos,” I find it reasonable for Nock and Festugière to translate τὸν καλὸν κόσμον as “le beau monde archétype” (“the beautiful archetypal world”; cf. CH I 7, where they translate the “immeasurable cosmos” as “un monde sans limites”).» — en nota, respalda una opción de traducción por razones de contenido.
«I translate ἀρρενόθηλυς as “androgynous” rather than “bisexual” (which in common language refers rather to biological males or females who are sexually attracted to both sexes); I prefer “androgynous” over “hermaphrodite” because the text does not use the term ἑρμαφρόδιτος.» — en nota, declara sus dos descartes léxicos y el porqué.
«Almost all editors and translators follow Tiedemann in deleting τοῦ θεοῦ, probably on the assumption that the “lower elements of nature” cannot be “of God” (CHD, 13 note 31; Cop, 106); but this intervention has subtle dualistic implications, whereas in fact everything in this Hermetic account is ultimately divine.» — en nota, una supresión editorial que introduce dualismo donde el texto no lo tiene.
«However, I do not believe that neophytes “would be encouraged to interpret the embodiment of the primal Human as a great disaster”» — en nota, se aparta de esa reconstrucción de la enseñanza inicial.
«The German has nuances that are difficult to capture in translation: umschlingen rather than umarmen carries the suggestion of capturing and binding, while brünstig has strong connotations of animal lust.» — en nota, cómo la traducción alemana convierte el abrazo en captura.
«In short: love is a trap.» — en nota, resume así el efecto acumulado de esas traducciones.
«However, nothing indicates that either the demiurge or the governors are evil (as admitted, against his own agenda, by Haenchen, “Aufbau,” 172).» — en nota, la concesión que el propio intérprete hace contra su lectura.
«None of this is even remotely suggested by the text.» — en nota, sobre las lecturas del ouroboros y del amor como trampa.
«Thus e.g. Scott II, 43: “Narcissus-like, he loves it”; Haenchen, “Aufbau,” 171, 174, where this “love of a Narcissus” allows Hermes to let the Human off the hook.» — en nota, la lectura narcisista del pasaje y su función exculpatoria.
«Only van den Broek writes clearly that it is her shape that resembles his own (HG, 99).» — en nota, sobre la ambigüedad del reflejo en CH I 14.
«I do not see why πῶς ἀκοῦσαι βούλομαι from CH I 3 should be inserted here in this sentence, as suggested by Mahé.» — en nota, rechaza un traslado de texto propuesto por Mahé.
«Interestingly, only Mead seems to see the point, writing “the Mind-less ones”» — en nota, sobre cómo traducir *anoētoi*: Mead acierta y aun así iguala falta de mente con maldad.
«SH XVII 2 describes how the nous can turn θυμός into courage and ἐπιθυμία into self-control.» — en nota, la transformación de las pasiones en virtudes por obra del *nous*.
«Again, and contrary to common assumptions, the problem for the Hermetic authors lies not in sex as such but in the soul’s enslavement to sexual desire (that is, not in the body but in the passions); see e.g. HO IV 2–4.» — en nota, repite la distinción en el punto donde más se confunde.
«Like Van den Kerchove (La voie, 34–39), I am unconvinced by the attempts of modern scholars to draw parallels with the apostle Paul’s missionary activities.» — en nota, descarta el paralelo paulino para la predicación de Hermes en CH I.
«Note that Poimandres is described here not as the nous but more specifically as the logos of sovereignty, presumably because they had communicated through “that in you [Hermes] which sees and hears.”» — en nota, la precisión sobre cómo se nombra a Poimandres en el cierre de CH I; el corchete es del autor.
«On God being above praise, cf. V 10–11» — en nota, remite al himno de CH V, que el capítulo 8 discute.
«We are told that around 440 bce, a priestess from the city of Mantineia in Arcadia came to Athens.» — así abre el capítulo 7, con Diotima y no con un tratado.
«Public sacrifices were performed under her direction or at her suggestion, and there were those who came to think that thanks to her intervention, the gods had postponed the terrible plague that would hit the city ten years later.» — la autoridad ritual que el Banquete le atribuye.
«In Plato’s Symposium, this priestess speaks with considerable authority while young Socrates is cast in the role of a respectful pupil, aware of his ignorance and eager for instruction.» — la inversión de papeles que le interesa: Sócrates como discípulo.
«Diotima was not a philosopher – not in our modern sense of the word and not even in the original sense of a person driven by desire for wisdom.» — la distinción entre el filósofo que busca y la *mantis* que ya vio.
«She came from a city known for the predominance of women in its religious practices; and with strong connections to Pythagorean tradition, Mantineia was one of the last bastions of the ancient musical tradition favored by Plato.» — el trasfondo femenino y pitagórico de la figura.
«The Greek word mantis derives from an Indo-European root that means “one who is in a special mental state” or “one who speaks from an altered state,” and this is what it meant for Plato too.» — la etimología que enlaza a Diotima con el argumento del libro.
«But all such communication still relies on dianoia, the kind of “articulated thinking or reasoning” that lends itself to verbal expression.» — el límite del discurso frente a la *noēsis*.
«She cannot tell because this knowledge is not discursive but noetic.» — por qué Diotima solo puede señalar y no transmitir.
«It cannot be mediated by language or discourse but reveals itself only in immediate experience.» — la condición de ese conocimiento.
«We have every reason to assume that Plato’s Socrates is referring to such experiences when he states, elsewhere, that the love of wisdom begins with wonder or astonishment (thaumazein).» — el asombro como origen de la filosofía, leído desde la experiencia.
«far from being merely “aesthetic” or “erotic” in our restricted modern senses (and hence marginal to the search for truth), our human experiences of beauty are completely central to the human search for knowledge and meaning.» — la experiencia estética como contacto con lo real.
«Because nothing else than this reality is perfectly good and true (or even more strongly, because nothing else has true being), whatever we say about “goodness” and “truth” will be meaningful only in reference to this mysterious “open sea”20 which we conventionally refer to as “beauty.”» — la belleza como referencia última de lo bueno y lo verdadero; el número es la llamada de nota.
«Giving birth to bodies through sexual generation is a “divine work” (theion to pragma), because this is how something immortal is allowed to enter into what is mortal.» — la generación corporal como obra divina en el Banquete.
«Festugière was right to mention Diotima as a model of the ideal Hermetic teacher,26 for she appears not as a “philosopher” in search of wisdom but as a mantis whose nous has perceived the source and essence of beauty itself» — le concede a Festugière el modelo y lo usa contra su propia lectura; el número es la llamada de nota.
«Her advice to Socrates is to break the spell of epithumia through which we get enslaved to sex, wealth, power, or prestige – very much like the Hermetic diagnosis of human suffering as caused by the passions and seductive delusions.» — el paralelo entre el consejo de Diotima y el diagnóstico hermético.
«the concern is not with how to find salvation in the afterlife but with how one should live» — la espiritualidad hermética no apunta a la salvación póstuma sino a la vida encarnada.
«Hermetic spirituality is not really so much concerned with doctrinal assertions, but focuses on opening a person’s eyes» — de ahí que la falta de fe se diga en el vocabulario del asombro y no en el de la doctrina.
«As Hermes puts it in the Asclepius, “The standard for this double entity – the human being – is first of all reverence, followed by goodness.”» — la jerarquía de las dos virtudes según el tratado.
«In other words, it is a human being’s basic attitude that counts.» — la reverencia es actitud, no creencia.
«The virtue of eusebeia is absolutely central to Hermetic spirituality.» — la tesis del capítulo 7.
«Only irreverence comes under their judgment.» — los dioses perdonan la debilidad; la irreverencia, no.
«While the authors seem to be skirting around the issue, they share a consistent assumption that although not all humans will receive enlightenment, they all have the capacity to live» — la iluminación es de pocos; la reverencia, accesible a todos.
«This suggests that eusebeia comes first: only those who deserve it can receive the gift.» — la respuesta que da a si la reverencia precede al *nous*.
«Nevertheless – and this is consistent with the constant emphasis on God’s universal benevolence – at least some kind of latent or dormant noetic capacity must be present in all human beings, allowing them to experience the impact of noetic realities at all.» — la reserva que vuelve interdependientes a las dos condiciones.
«The general implication seems clear: as noetic humans we are responsible for our own fate, because deep down we know better than to act the way we often do.» — la responsabilidad se funda en esa capacidad latente.
«We are literally surrounded by beauty and endowed with a noetic capacity to perceive it, so we can always make the effort to stop and listen.» — la reverencia queda siempre al alcance.
«Hermes asks Tat to consider the beauty of an innocent newborn whose soul has not yet been corrupted by the effects of embodiment:» — el ejemplo con que el tratado enseña a mirar.
«Since Hermes is discussing visible beauty, it makes no sense to translate noēsai in terms of “thinking” or “understanding,”48 and a verb like “noeticizing” is not current in our language.» — el problema de traducción que resuelve con una perífrasis; el número es la llamada de nota.
«If we take the baby as an example of divine beauty made visible, noēsai here means something like watching with the eyes of wonder.» — la perífrasis que propone.
«It will be objected that some Hermetic treatises seem to defend a radical “dualistic” perspective that denies the presence of beauty in our material world and presumably leaves no room for “reverence” or “astonishment” about visible things.» — plantea él mismo la objeción antes de responderla.
«All of this is perfectly compatible with the explicitly world-affirming perspective of other Hermetic treatises: none of them ever claims that beauty and goodness come from any other source than the divine,» — su lectura del pasaje: no hay dos fuentes, hay dos grados.
«Our sensory organs show us only phantom images and illusions, whereas the nous shows us the only true reality of divine Beauty and Goodness.» — la posición de CH VI sobre los dos órdenes de percepción.
«It is clear then that without reverence there will be no gnōsis, no noetic illumination, no liberation from our enslavement to bodily passions and sensory delusions.» — la reverencia queda como condición y no como adorno.
«while the author of CH VI wanted to emphasize that nothing except God is strictly “good” and “beautiful,” the author of CH X now wants to make clear that nothing except God is strictly “true” or “real” either.» — las dos posiciones se consignan como distintas y no se funden.
«However, in CH IX we find a slightly different theory of perception (peri aisthēseōs logon),58 by an author who seems less concerned with metaphysical absolutes than with a psychological understanding of phenomenal experience.» — una tercera posición dentro del mismo corpus; el número es la llamada de nota.
«They ignore the fundamental fact that nous in the Hermetica does not mean what we today mean by “thinking, intellectual knowledge, or understanding” but is the name for the ultimate reality of divine Light and Life as well as the faculty for perceiving it.» — el error que atribuye a las traducciones corrientes de CH IX.
«If we are willing to accept that logos and noēsis in the Hermetica do not mean what we moderns have come to understand by these terms, we discover that the discussion in CH IX is much more subtle and interesting than one would gather from the standard translations.» — lo que se gana al soltar el sentido moderno de los dos términos.
«We easily forget that while we experience the latter through our five senses, the world does not speak to us directly either, except through mediation of whatever it causes our consciousness to see and hear.» — también la percepción sensorial está mediada.
«In sum, logos seems to be understood as that which mediates between human consciousness and the two most fundamental polar opposites in Hermetic metaphysics, matter and nous, neither of which can ever be truly known otherwise than in immediate personal experience.» — la función mediadora del *logos* entre materia y *nous*.
«Once again, we must be sensitive to the fact that by definition, such immediate experiential knowledge (whether through the bodily senses or through the nous) never occurs otherwise than at some specific point in time and space and always does so only» — el conocimiento inmediato siempre ocurre en algún punto del tiempo y del espacio.
«the ultimate truth cannot be communicated, and whatever can be communicated is not ultimately true.» — la consecuencia extrema de esa jerarquía.
«Imagination (phantasia) is distinct both from sense perception (aisthēsis) and noetic perception (noēsis).» — la tercera facultad, situada entre las otras dos.
«once phantasmata appear to our consciousness, they easily become objects of either avoidance or desire:» — de la imagen mental nace el deseo, y del deseo la esclavitud.
«the ultimate act of noeticizing must be focused not on images that belong to the world of multiplicity and impermanence but on the supreme unchangeable image» — la visión noética se dirige a la imagen única, no a las múltiples.
«Hermes points out that the actual vision involves a properly ecstatic out-of-body experience:» — la visión de la Mónada exige salir del cuerpo.
«The active force of attraction is nothing else than the ultimate noetic reality of true beauty and goodness, the Monas radiating from the One.» — la atracción que eleva al alma, descrita como magnética.
«But is this the sum conclusion of Hermetic psychology?» — la pregunta con que abre la sección del tercer género.
«It seems to me that one must go even one step further and recognize that the very distinction between dualism and monism is itself a reflection of dualistic thinking.» — el paso que da respecto del debate corriente.
«Thus the timeless noetic reality of “what really is” stands against our perceptual space-time reality of impermanence and multiplicity, sense perception and mere opinion.» — los dos géneros del Timeo, antes del tercero.
«Notoriously, however, Plato was preparing the way here for his introduction of a “third kind,” something utterly mysterious referred to as the chōra.» — el tercer género que rompe la pareja ser-devenir.
«While the chōra lacks any formal qualities, it both receives and reveals them; while it never appears itself, yet it makes everything apparent.» — la paradoja de la *chōra*, que él traslada a la imaginación.
«While we cannot presume to know for certain what Plato meant by chōra, I suggest that it would be natural» — el límite de la analogía que propone.
«This elusive faculty never appears directly but only through what it does; it is “different from either sense perception or discursive thinking (dianoia), although it is never found without sense perception”94; and it enables human consciousness to store images and remember them.» — la *phantasia* aristotélica, definida por sus efectos; el número es la llamada de nota.
«If we approach the Hermetica from the dualistic perspective that comes to us so naturally, we must conclude that “waking up” can only imply what is promised in the passage from CH X discussed above» — la conclusión a la que lleva la premisa dualista.
«And of course, that is exactly what Hermetic spirituality was all about: waking up from the dreamlike spell of delusionary images to the truth of what really is.» — el despertar como fórmula del programa hermético.
«However, profoundly liberating as it may be, note that this would still be a limited “view from some» — la reserva: aun esa visión sigue siendo una vista desde algún lugar.
«However, it is far from insignificant that Hermes’s initial vision of nous as an unlimited “clear and friendly light” stands at the very beginning of his experience as described in CH I, not at its conclusion.» — el orden del relato importa: la visión no es el término.
«Therefore it undercuts the dualism of Being and Becoming just like the chōra does in Plato’s Timaeus.» — lo dice del *aiōn* de CH XI.
«Therefore it is easy to simplify this five-part division by reducing it to a more basic triple division: God – Aiōn – The World (= Cosmos/Time/Becoming).» — la reducción de los cinco niveles de CH XI a tres.
«The treatise continues by explaining that while God is the ultimate source (pēgē) of all things, the aiōn is their true being (ousia); more specifically, it is the divine power or soul that allows the cosmos to function and move.» — la función del *aiōn* dentro de esa jerarquía.
«As it always remains identical, it is imperishable, indestructible, immortal, and wholly envelops the cosmos.» — los atributos del *aiōn*.
«Regretfully, one has to conclude that modern scholars have not heeded the request for special attention.» — el propio tratado pide atención en ese punto, y la erudición pasó de largo.
«And yet, precisely that statement is of key importance, not only for CH XI as a whole but also (as will be seen in Chapter 8) for CH XIII, the pivotal treatise on Hermetic rebirth.» — el pasaje desatendido es la clave del renacimiento hermético.
«But in CH XI we are presented with a third kind of imaginal awareness.» — la imaginación incorpórea como tercer modo de conciencia.
«The truly remarkable statement made by CH XI is that human consciousness is not separate from this divine consciousness but is capable of full participation in its universal mode of imaginal perception.» — la participación humana en la conciencia imaginal divina.
«It is therefore misleading to translate aiōn simply as “eternity,” as in most modern translations.» — la traducción corriente borra el tercer género.
«Thus the nous explains to Hermes in CH XI 17, again with that characteristic request for special attention (“try to understand noetically [ennoēson] what I’ve been telling you…”), that the notion of an incorporeal idea, a word that comes from idein (“seeing”), is not so astonishing as he might think:» — la etimología de *idea* como puente entre lo incorpóreo y lo visible; el corchete es del autor.
«Again there is no conflict between the strongly world-affirming perspective of CH XI as a whole and the message that divine knowledge will escape those who are “in love with the body.”» — las dos afirmaciones del tratado no se contradicen, en su lectura.
«The soul must be liberated from enslavement by opening its eyes to the beauty and goodness of divinity that literally surrounds it on all sides.» — la liberación es un cambio de percepción, no un traslado.
«True salvational gnōsis must mean something more and different.» — la visión pasajera no basta: hace falta un estado permanente.
«Thus having returned from a state of “astonishment” to normal consciousness, practitioners would still be faced with the daily challenge of living a life of reverence, of “giving birth in beauty, both in body and soul” instead of getting sucked back into limited awareness and negative patterns all the time.» — el problema práctico que abre el capítulo del renacimiento.
«To this question the answer was “yes, that is possible – but you need to be reborn.”» — la respuesta hermética a si el estado puede volverse permanente.
«We have no independent proof of Diotima’s historicity but no particular reason to doubt it either.» — en nota, deja el punto abierto en las dos direcciones.
«As concluded by Evans (“Diotima and Demeter,” 8) “human knowledge is indirect, dependent, and always mediated.» — en nota, sobre el estatuto del conocimiento humano en el Banquete.
«The conclusion is that in Plato’s dialogues, “every philosophic speech is bounded at its beginning and its end by a noetic vision,” while dianoia (relevant to epistēmē) is an attempt to bridge the gap between these two» — en nota, el discurso filosófico queda enmarcado por dos visiones noéticas.
«Contrary to common assumptions, “lower” stages in the ascent are not supposed to be “left behind” but to get integrated in a progressively more expansive world-affirming perspective that embraces beauty in all its manifestations.» — en nota, el ascenso platónico integra en vez de descartar.
«Evans (“Diotima and Demeter,” 18) points out that even the word theory did not have our abstracted and disembodied meaning but meant very concretely “to travel as a pilgrim to a religious site to see (theaomai) things related to the gods and to the sacred realm.”» — en nota, la teoría como peregrinación y no como abstracción.
«the nous does not reside in the soul by necessity but due to a choice or judgment» — en nota, sobre la túnica ígnea que atormenta al alma irreverente.
«Hence statements such as “if you are able to” (CH IV 4) or “this is how it is – for the one who can see it” (CH X 4) do not imply a spiritual elitism where only a noetic minority has the capacity to gain enlightenment, but mean that reverence is a condition» — en nota, las fórmulas condicionales del corpus no fundan un elitismo.
«Hermes answers that although humans whose souls are governed by nous are subject to astral fate like everybody else, yet they are capable of resisting bad temptations.» — la libertad no cancela la heimarmenē: permite resistirla.
«For instance, CH X 10 says that the cosmos is beautiful but not good, and this makes sense.» — la belleza del mundo no implica su bondad.
«Note that according to Heidegger, thinking never gets farther from its original meaning than “when it gets the idea that thinking must begin with doubting”» — en nota, la duda cartesiana como alejamiento máximo del pensar.
«This remark is of course directed at Descartes and suggests what we find in the Hermetica too: knowledge consists rather in a revelation or disclosure of true being.» — en nota, el paralelo entre Heidegger y los Hermetica sobre qué es conocer.
«Heidegger’s point is confirmed by von Fritz: “Hellenistic philosophy replaced the contrast between νοῦς and αἴσθησις, which is characteristic of the latest stage of pre-Socratic philosophy, by the contrast of λόγος and αἴσθησις”» — en nota, el desplazamiento del par conceptual en el helenismo.
«Heidegger notes correctly that investigating the meaning of logos and nous means questioning the very foundations of Western thought.» — en nota, el alcance de la indagación léxica que el libro emprende.
«he points out that without λέγειν and λόγος and what these words signify, we would have had no Christian trinitarian speculation, no modern technology, no Age of Enlightenment, no dialectical materialism, and so on:» — en nota, lo que se sigue de esos dos términos griegos.
«Thus calculative rationality is no more than a dim imitation of true reason: to unreasoning (alogos) nature it appears like the echo of a voice or sunlight reflected by the moon.» — en nota, la razón calculadora como sombra del *logos*.
«I owe this idea of logos as “that which makes sense” to Christian Bull (personal communication).» — en nota, declara de quién toma esa definición operativa.
«The stand-alone statement that God made everything “through his logos” (CH IV 1) occurs in a corrupt and contested passage and is most plausibly interpreted as a Christian interpolation» — en nota, un pasaje que la lectura trinitaria aprovecha y que él da por interpolado.
«The common formulation “mental images” begs the question here, as it comes from mens, i.e. νοῦς, so I prefer to use the term consciousness.» — en nota, otra opción de vocabulario declarada y fundada.
«Contrary to e.g. Festugière (HT I, 57 note 29) and Van den Kerchove (“L’image de Dieu,” 79) I do not believe that the “image” (εἰκῶν) refers to the text itself, our CH IV, understood as an “écrit iconique.”» — en nota, rechaza que el tratado se llame a sí mismo imagen.
«words are not images and a spoken discourse is not an image either.» — en nota, la razón del rechazo.
«I take the liberty to translate κατακοιμίζονται as “losing their waking consciousness” because the author clearly does not mean just normal sleep.» — en nota, una traducción declarada como licencia y su motivo.
«Hermetic spirituality is not “introvertive” but “cognitive,” although for this latter category I would prefer the term “noetic”» — en nota, rechaza la clasificación de CH XIII como introvertido.
«For reasons explained above (pp. 13 note 4, 191), I avoid the term “mysticism.”» — en nota, repite su descarte del vocabulario místico.
«This direct equivalence of divine light with soul, life, and even matter (ὕλη) is a particularly strong confirmation of the nondualistic perspective of CH XI.» — en nota, la equivalencia que sostiene la lectura no dualista.
«Since God is only life and abundance, what we call death and dissolution is really just change and transformation (CH XI 14–15)» — en nota, la muerte como transformación y no como destrucción.
«Festugière’s sixty-page discussion of CH XI and the aiōn manages to overlook almost everything of importance.» — en nota, su veredicto sobre esa exposición.
«It is not that the eyes allow the nous to see, but rather that the nous allows the eyes to see reality as it truly is; hence this is not about rejecting the senses but about using them noetically.» — en nota, la inversión que evita leer el pasaje como rechazo de los sentidos.
«Festugière qualified this as “décidément fausse” (RHT IV, 141 note 3) but provided no plausible alternative.» — en nota, un descarte sin recambio.
«I see neither of those interpretation as obvious, since the statement refers to the soul’s transcendence of temporality (“before you were born, in the womb, young, old, dead, in the hereafter”).» — en nota, se abstiene entre dos lecturas, incluida la reencarnacionista; la fuente imprime *interpretation*.
«However, what can it possibly mean to “become alive” at birth if the soul is considered immortal to begin with?» — la pregunta con que abre el capítulo 8.
«Macrobius describes what happens when souls travel downwards into the realm of matter.» — el comentario al Sueño de Escipión como fuente del descenso del alma.
«Now as soon as this happens to the soul, its dimensionality renders it vulnerable to material influences:» — la mónada esférica se vuelve cono, y con la dimensión llega la vulnerabilidad.
«Macrobius points out that according to the followers of Pythagoras and Plato, we must distinguish between the death of the living organism [animal] and the death of the soul [anima]:» — la distinción de la que sale la paradoja del nacer como morir; los corchetes son del autor.
«In order for an organism to exist at all, the body must “bind” the soul, so that it loses the freedom of its true spiritual life and gets confined by materiality as in a tomb.» — la encarnación descrita como atadura, en el vocabulario de Macrobio.
«By calculating the exact constellation of stars and planets at the moment of birth, astrologers sought to determine the unique spatiotemporal quality of an individual’s “nativity” and what it could» — el horóscopo natal como inscripción del alma en la cuadrícula cósmica.
«Thus “being born” in late antiquity meant much more than just “becoming alive” – if indeed it meant that at all.» — el desplazamiento de sentido que el capítulo reconstruye.
«Macrobius at least suggests that it was rather like losing one’s true life, losing one’s clarity of consciousness, losing one’s spiritual freedom, losing oneself in a maze of» — la serie de pérdidas con que Macrobio describe el nacer.
«According to both texts, human beings are supposed to take care of the world.» — el punto en que los Hermetica se apartan del pesimismo del descenso.
«When we read that birth really means death for the soul, we assume automatically that therefore it should not happen, that being born means a tragical fall or degradation that should be prevented.» — la inferencia automática que los Hermetica no hacen.
«But the Hermetica are explicit in rejecting that logic.» — el rechazo está en los textos y no es lectura suya.
«They never stop praising God as the generative source of all that is, the infinite fountain of fertility from which everything is born into existence.» — la razón por la que nacer no puede ser una desgracia en este marco.
«Being born is certainly difficult, and our bodies resist the influx of divinity; matter is heavy while divinity strives upwards; bodies exist in space and time while the spiritual influx is infinite and eternal; and so it is hard to keep the balance and maintain» — la dificultad se consigna sin convertirla en condena.
«Still, that is the task of the soul: to enter the darkness of matter so as to bring it to life and fill it with Light.» — la tarea del alma encarnada, enunciada.
«After Garth Fowden introduced the concept of a “Way of Hermes” in 1986,18 many scholars have tried to distill from the Hermetica something resembling a “coherent course”19 or systematic training program.» — la historia del intento de reconstruir un programa formal; los números son llamadas de nota.
«Fowden spoke of “different levels of enlightenment” and different “steps” (bathmoi) along the Hermetic paideia, suggesting that “Hermetic initiates were expected to proceed systematically from elementary to more sophisticated texts.”» — la reconstrucción de Fowden, con sus grados.
«While Christian Bull dismisses Quispel’s fantasy of a quasi-masonic Hermetic “lodge” in Alexandria,23 still he writes that “there seems to have been outer and inner grades of initiation, corresponding to the level of insight gained”;» — el grado de iniciación reaparece incluso donde se descarta la logia; el número es la llamada de nota.
«There is a tendency in scholarship to conflate the “spiritual exercises” highlighted by Pierre Hadot with concepts of “ritual” or ritual performance, so that the Way of Hermes comes to be imagined as a sequence of formal ceremonial acts.» — la confusión que separa: ejercicio interior no es ceremonia.
«By sharp contrast, the notion of spiritual exercises reflects the idea of interior training that is supposed to result in demonstrable and lasting personal transformation.» — la definición que opone a la de ritual.
«As formulated in one of the Stobaean fragments, already here on earth one must exercise (progumnazein) one’s soul, so that it will not “slip from the path” by the time it has arrived at the superior level where immediate vision becomes possible.» — el entrenamiento previo documentado en la propia fuente.
«Nevertheless, I will argue that the Way of Hermes as a whole is more easily understood in terms of spiritual training than in those of a formal ritual system or method.» — su tesis sobre el Camino de Hermes, con el matiz de que no excluye lo ritual.
«Rather, we are told about practitioners who have been doing all that was necessary to make it possible for them to receive such a gift at all;» — ni gracia pura ni resultado del esfuerzo: disposición para recibir.
«Think of the difference between ordering a beautiful book and paying for it, as opposed to hoping you might receive it as a birthday present – and then receiving it.» — el símil con que separa transacción de don.
«Hence we should be very precise in our formulations: the candidate neither receives this spiritual blessing by a pure sovereign act of divine grace, nor does he obtain it as a result of his actions.» — la formulación exacta que propone, con las dos negaciones.
«The chief elements of communal practice suggested by the sources are prayers or hymns, and it seems that meetings were followed by a vegetarian meal.» — lo que las fuentes permiten reconstruir de la práctica comunitaria.
«Hence at the beginning of the Asclepius, we are told that the room falls silent while the four men feel the divine presence taking possession of the space,32 and the experiential part of NH VI6 begins with a prayer.» — los dos indicios textuales de esa práctica; el número es la llamada de nota.
«It goes without saying that given the paucity of hard data, this reconstruction must necessarily be speculative to some extent; but unless better scenarios are forthcoming, it seems the most economical way of explaining why our Hermetic literature was produced and how it may have functioned in these communities and networks.» — declara especulativa su reconstrucción y la defiende por economía.
«Precisely if Hermetic communities were tiny, with participants scattered over large areas, they would need written treatises to stay in contact at all.» — la escritura como efecto de la dispersión, no de la institución.
«In all likelihood, meetings would be concluded by a prayer of thanksgiving or praise, possibly in the form of a hymn.» — el cierre probable de las reuniones.
«Therefore when God “imagines all things,” this has nothing to do with our idea of “fantasizing” or daydreaming but means his active generation (production, creation, engendering, bringingforth) of images.» — la imaginación divina es producción y no fantasía; el troceo une el guion de corte en *bringing-forth*.
«Note how radical this is: literally everything that gets born is in fact imagined by God.» — la consecuencia de esa definición.
«Paradoxically, then, the divine source is being praised here for the fact that it neither can nor needs to be praised!» — la paradoja del himno de CH V.
«We see here how the radical nonduality of Hermetic spirituality could be seen as undermining the very possibility for humans to actually “interact” with God, whether ceremonially or otherwise.» — el problema que la no dualidad le crea al culto.
«How exactly they resolved this dilemma is not entirely clear.» — el límite: la solución de los propios herméticos no se conoce.
«All this makes perfect sense: the attainment of gnōsis is what the path is all about, we can receive it only thanks to our noetic capacity, and thanks to logos we can communicate with others to speak on divinity’s behalf.» — los tres agradecimientos de la plegaria hermética, encadenados.
«They seem to have reached agreement about the solution: to enjoy gnōsis on a permanent basis, one would have to be reborn.» — el renacimiento entra como respuesta a un problema práctico.
«The initial revelation (apokalupsis) as described in CH I happened to a practitioner who had been preparing himself for the eventuality of such an event by training his mind to focus on ta onta, the things that truly are.» — la revelación llega a quien se preparó para ella.
«I will be arguing that the Hermetic rebirth as described here was not a formal ceremony or ritual performance but a dramatic alteration of consciousness that could happen to practitioners as a desirable outcome of their spiritual training regime, a reward for their efforts at opening their internal senses to perceive reality as it really is.» — su tesis sobre CH XIII, enunciada de una vez.
«When he pressed his teacher to be more explicit at that time, the answer was that for anybody to be saved, he or she would need to be reborn.» — el arranque del diálogo entre Tat y Hermes.
«Since birth means embodiment, rebirth would in some sense have to mean disembodiment, an escape from the body. However, this cannot be what the author of CH XIII has in mind.» — la consecuencia de la lectura de Jonas y su rechazo.
«On the contrary, sexuality, procreation, and giving birth in the Hermetic universe are always good by definition, because this is how the divine activity of Life and Light manifests itself in the world (and as the world).» — la generación es buena por definición en este marco.
«It cannot mean turning one’s back on the world that God has created.» — el límite que le pone al hacerse extraño al cosmos.
«Again, there is nothing “bad” about this process in any moral or metaphysical sense – on the contrary, it is good and necessary.» — lo dice de la encarnación y de la generación.
«Hermes responds that the womb of rebirth consists of “noetic wisdom in silence” (sophia noera en sigēi) while its semen is “the true good” emitted by “the will of God.”» — la matriz y la semilla del renacimiento, en los términos del propio tratado.
«It is not that he deliberately tries to be vague, but that what the rebirth is all about simply cannot be taught.» — la reticencia de Hermes no es pedagógica sino estructural.
«Only God can make this knowledge appear in a person’s mind.» — la condición del acceso, dicha sin atenuantes.
«So Hermes’ answer is clear: “Sorry, I can tell you nothing.”» — la respuesta del maestro al discípulo que exige claridad.
«He has been practicing so hard to make himself ready for rebirth, but Hermes seems unwilling to keep his promise.» — la frustración de Tat, que el diálogo registra.
«Hermes confirms that the nature of the newborn entity will indeed be different entirely from that of a normal human being:» — el renacido no es una versión mejorada del hombre.
«His bodily sight is useless, his sense of touch is useless too.» — la insuficiencia de la percepción sensorial ante el cuerpo noético del maestro.
«Surely this is what was meant by the statement in CH IX that logos cannot get to the truth.» — el enlace entre los dos tratados en este punto.
«Hermes, for his part, takes Tat’s exclamation as a hopeful sign that what happened to himself may now be happening to Tat as well:» — el desconcierto del discípulo se lee como signo favorable.
«The process is set in motion not by any human act, Hermes explains in response to Tat’s question, but by the agency of no one less than the great Human that we encountered» — quién engendra el renacimiento, según el tratado.
«Therefore it seems that even in his newly acquired state of modified consciousness he remains blind to true reality.» — el estado alterado todavía no es la *gnōsis*.
«Now, however, he becomes active and begins giving Tat instructions.» — el punto en que el diálogo pasa de la doctrina al procedimiento.
«Alogos is usually translated as “irrational,” “reasonless,” or “unreasoning,” but in our post-Enlightenment culture those terms carry an enormous amount of additional baggage that obscures the original meaning.» — el problema de traducir *alogos* aplicado a los tormentos.
«It is crucial to see the simple underlying logic at work here: if being born means getting possessed by these negative energies, then being reborn on a higher level requires expelling or exorcizing them from one’s body and soul.» — la lógica que hace del renacimiento un exorcismo.
«Thus while Tat is allowing entrance to the healing energies, Hermes tells him what this exercise is really all about: “Cleanse yourself of the alogon timōriōn of matter.”» — la instrucción central del procedimiento.
«Hence it affects us mutely: it just does what it does, and we cannot engage it in conversation or persuade it to act differently.» — el carácter mudo de los tormentos, que no admiten negociación.
«Tat is an advanced student who should presumably know about daimons, but still he seems surprised that they are present in his body.» — la sorpresa del discípulo mide la novedad de la doctrina.
«Hermes confirms that “they are dreadful, and there are many of them.”» — la respuesta del maestro sobre los tormentos alojados en el cuerpo.
«Again, note the underlying logic: these tormentors enter our body when we are born and leave them when we are reborn.» — la simetría entre nacimiento y renacimiento.
«They are ten in number, and while coming from the Father, they are all of them feminine:» — las diez potencias que sustituyen a los doce tormentos.
«It is somewhat unclear whether a deliberate distinction is implied between the first two powers that arrive unsummoned and then five further ones that require a verbal call to make their appearance.» — la duda sobre la estructura de la serie, declarada.
«When a surgeon removes the cancer from a patient’s body, he is not performing a ritual or ceremony but is following a technical procedure.» — el símil con que niega carácter ritual al pasaje.
«Since in God there is no place for anything that is not good, presumably their opposites (the torments) do not have true existence in his consciousness as separate or autonomous powers.» — el estatuto de los tormentos desde la Fuente: no tienen ser propio.
«I assume that the author means to say that once Truth has been attained, Goodness is there immediately; and because it is one with Life and Light, those two are there as well.» — su reconstrucción de la tríada final que completa la década.
«Again, I find it important to point out that from the dualistic perspective of human consciousness, the dodecad and the decad appear as contraries, but this very opposition can only be a delusion from the non-dualistic perspective of divinity because ultimately all reality exists only in Nous.» — la oposición entre tormentos y potencias es de perspectiva.
«Because his strictly material (hulic) body is now thoroughly cleansed of everything bad, it is able to contain this good energetic body of spiritual Life and Light.» — el cuerpo purificado se vuelve receptáculo, no despojo.
«Most important of all, we have seen that what characterizes logos is its unique capacity of acting as an intermediary between matter and nous: it can retain and transmit knowledge over time.» — la función del *logos* en el renacimiento.
«Therefore it must be the logos, fully endowed with noēsis and phantāsia but henceforth unhindered by any bodily passions or daimonic energies, that is assembled into bodily shape during the rebirth.» — qué es lo que toma cuerpo en el renacido.
«Once more I find it important to emphasize that the physical body does not get left behind in the rebirth; it» — el cuerpo físico permanece, purificado.
«This body is made of noetic energies that are inherently beyond space and time, hence it is free from the constraints of heimarmenē, invulnerable to daimonic contamination, and serves as the vehicle for a universal conscious soul whose range of perception is literally unlimited.» — las propiedades del cuerpo noético.
«Deification therefore means full participation in God’s own incorporeal imagination (phantasia), filled with the noēmata of all that is.» — la definición de deificación que propone.
«Some critics will object that the state of rebirth was never more than just a theoretical desideratum for Hermetic practitioners» — plantea él mismo la objeción de que nadie lo experimentó.
«However, it is actually not so difficult to assume that some Hermetic devotees did experience alterations of consciousness consistent with the description given in CH XI.» — su respuesta a esa objeción.
«It is not sufficiently recognized that some people possess a much stronger natural talent for seeing internal imagery than others, so that they find it easy to “travel in their mind” to what is experienced subjectively as other times and places.» — la diferencia individual en la capacidad imaginativa como parte del argumento.
«He does not actually perceive God, nor does he experience divine self-consciousness or self-knowledge; rather, what happens is that he shares in the mode of imaginal perception by which God perceives the world.» — la precisión que acota la deificación de Tat.
«Bucke claims that while the experience lasted just a few moments, “its effects proved ineffaceable” for the rest of his life.» — el paralelo moderno de la conciencia cósmica de R. M. Bucke.
«This comparison is not meant to imply any quasi-perennialist claim about ancient Hermetic practitioners and modern transcendentalists dipping into “the same uni» — el límite explícito del paralelo.
«We know that people can have intense visionary experiences; we know that these can involve a vivid sensation of boundless perception unrestricted by time and space; we know that these experiences can be strongly enhanced by alterations of consciousness; and we know that this can happen either spontaneously or be induced artificially by specific spiritual techniques.» — la serie de lo que sí puede afirmarse, y hasta donde llega.
«That he has been deified in this manner does not mean he is identical with God, but that his consciousness is filled with noetic power so that he can share in modes of perception unavailable to unregenerate human beings.» — la deificación acotada otra vez, ahora en su conclusión.
«It should be noted that he keeps referring to Hermes as “father” while Hermes keeps addressing him as “my child” and continues to teach him new things while correcting his mistakes.» — el renacimiento no cancela la relación de discipulado.
«As will be seen, there lies a deep but hitherto unnoticed significance in the fact that even after his rebirth, Tat’s internal ears have still not been opened.» — el renacimiento no completa el camino, y ese detalle organiza los dos capítulos siguientes.
«Although liberated in principle from astral constraints, for the moment he still resides in his physical body.» — el estado en que queda Tat tras el renacimiento.
«He could not have revealed it to Tat in his unregenerate state, because like the rebirth itself, the hymn is “not taught, but hidden in silence.”» — el himno sigue la misma regla que el renacimiento.
«Hermes remarks that he had not planned to reveal it so readily, which probably means that Tat’s successful rebirth has taken him by surprise.» — el maestro adelanta la revelación por el éxito del discípulo.
«He certainly hears a hymn, but it is sung or intoned by Hermes.» — la precisión que decide la lectura del pasaje: Tat no oye a las potencias.
«We will see that the experience has a strong impact on his inner noetic world; but it is clearly implied that whereas Hermes can hear the powers because he has already made his ascent to the Ogdoad, at least temporarily, Tat has not yet made that ascent and therefore still cannot hear them directly.» — la diferencia de nivel entre maestro y discípulo, sostenida por el texto.
«Hermes mentions nine of the ten powers by name – poor perseverance is forgotten or, more likely, got overlooked by a scribe. But it does not matter much, for the noetic energies respond to the invocation and begin to sing.» — la laguna del texto queda consignada como tal.
«Again we see confirmation that the grand Human who united with Nature (CH I 14) is the generating agent active behind the scenes; he caused these divine energies to be born in Hermes and Tat, as a noetic logos that drove away the torments and assumed their place.» — el hilo que une CH I con CH XIII.
«This can only be a reference to the inner world of the incorporeal imagination to which Tat gained access when he became the aiōn.» — dónde queda inscrito el himno, según su lectura.
«Hermes warns him to be cautious (mē askopōs), another reminder that terminological precision is of the essence.» — la exactitud de las palabras como parte del procedimiento.
«incense or perfumes are not appropriate for the divine Source,143 this confirms that the offering must be verbal – but not purely noetic, for Tat has as yet no personal experience with “hymns sung in silence.”» — la ofrenda verbal frente a la material; el número es la llamada de nota.
«And thus we reach the end of the treatise. Hermes expresses his delight at how the truth has given birth in Tat to something immortal, reminding him to preserve silence so as not to betray the palingenetic secret.» — el cierre de CH XIII.
«The daimonic powers of the cosmos have no control over him anymore, the passions no longer cloud his consciousness, and he is capable now of perceiving all things in God’s incorporeal imagination.» — el balance de lo que Tat ha ganado.
«Nevertheless, as we have seen, he has not yet reached the end of the path of Hermes.» — y el balance de lo que le falta.
«SH III 7, IV 8 and VII 3 all confirm the same point that we carry such harmful energies (referred to as θυμος and ἐπιθυμία) with us from the moment of birth.» — en nota, la base textual de la doctrina de los tormentos natales.
«Fowden noted quite correctly that while “such insensitive theories as that of the so-called Lesemysterien have proved depressingly popular … this sort of desk-bound religion has little connection with the way of Hermes”» — en nota, retoma de Fowden el rechazo del misterio de lectura.
«Van den Kerchove points out correctly that Hermetic practitioners do not try to influence the deity or petition him for material gifts, but do express hopes for salvation and knowledge» — en nota, qué pide y qué no pide la plegaria hermética.
«I agree with Holzhausen and van den Broek (CHD, 62–63 and HG, 120, supported by Zuntz, “On the Hymns,” 68), who bring out the hymnic structure by printing it as such.» — en nota, una decisión editorial sobre el himno de CH V.
«I follow the manuscript version τί (instead of Scott’s emendation τίς: Scott I, 164; HT I, 64; Cop, 20; HG, 120).» — en nota, conserva el manuscrito contra la enmienda.
«Rather than asking who can praise God, the following questions where and when are intended to specify the initial how question.» — en nota, el sentido que se gana al conservar la lectura del manuscrito.
«The discrepancy leads Holzhausen to translate the Latin austrum as “West” (CHD, 313), without further discussion.» — en nota, sobre la orientación de la plegaria del Asclepius.
«I prefer “offering” over “sacrifice” because Hermetic practitioners are typically just offering something to God (mostly a prayer or hymn) as a token of gratitude, without the connotations of “sacrificing” something that will be missed: an attitude of do ut des seems alien to their mindset.» — en nota, declara y funda la opción de traducción de *logikē thusia*.
«The more literal translation “logical offering” would obviously not do for us moderns, and again confirms the problem of translation discussed above with reference to Heidegger» — en nota, el mismo problema léxico visto desde el otro lado.
«The Greek πλάσμα comes from the editor of PGM III (Papyrus Mimaut) and should undoubtedly be replaced by σῶμα» — en nota, una corrección textual que atribuye al editor y no al texto.
«The past tense indicates that this is not knowledge in the sense of information that is absorbed and then stays in the mind (wissen, savoir etc.), but an immediate experience of gaining knowledge in the sense of getting acquainted with that which is known (kennen, connaître etc.)» — en nota, la distinción de los dos verbos de conocer aplicada al tiempo verbal del texto.
«I assume that a communal meal was probably customary, and the vegetarianism is suggestive of Pythagorean backgrounds,» — en nota, la comida comunal vegetariana como hipótesis.
«but I doubt whether much more can be said about it» — en nota, el límite inmediato de esa hipótesis.
«However, Fowden points out that “[i]n Egypt, ὄρος/mons meant both ‘mountain’ and ‘desert,’ the abrupt edge of the desert plateau to either side of the Nile being the only ‘mountain’ visible to the Egyptian eye.”» — en nota, la razón por la que el monte del texto es el desierto.
«Hence there is no ground for Reitzenstein’s emendation and we end up with the much more plausible reading “as we were leaving the desert”» — en nota, la lectura que adopta en consecuencia.
«I strongly agree with Holzhausen (CHD, 175 with note 499; see also Jonas, Gnosis and spätantiker Geist, vol. 1, 201; WHCH, 65), who rejects this deletion as “unfounded.”» — en nota, rechaza una supresión de texto en CH XIII.
«I interpret γένος as referring to the phenomenon of the new birth under discussion, similar to Holzhausen’s “Dieses Geschehen der (Wieder-)Geburt,” “this event of (re)birth” (CHD, 176).» — en nota, su lectura del término disputado.
«I am inclined to interpret the sentence as a question: “am I born a son foreign to the paternal lineage?”» — en nota, propone leer como pregunta lo que otros leen como contraseña ritual.
«Note that it remains unclear whether the “father” is meant to be Hermes (Tat’s “spiritual father”), the grand Human, or God as the ultimate generator of all that is.» — en nota, deja abiertas las tres identificaciones.
«Grese’s belief that the sentence is “Tat’s attempt at a little humor” (Corpus Hermeticum XIII, 95) is utterly bizarre and has dramatic consequences for the rest of his analysis.» — en nota, una lectura que juzga insostenible y de efectos largos.
«Evidently Hermes’ powers of perception have not been lessened but expanded due to this altered state, as he remains quite capable of seeing Tat’s physical body.» — en nota, el argumento contra leer el estado de Hermes como ceguera.
«Nothing suggests that the expanded perception of rebirth would be preceded by an intermediary period of blindness.» — en nota, el mismo punto, dicho como negativa.
«Obviously, dreaming “without sleeping” means dreaming in full consciousness» — en nota, la fórmula del tratado leída como conciencia plena y no como sueño.
«Van den Kerchove takes ἀφασία rather literally and thinks that Tat has trouble expressing himself coherently (La voie, 337–338), but in fact he explains his speechlessness quite eloquently.» — en nota, la objeción es interna al texto: el mudo se explica muy bien.
«Scott (II, 384) observes correctly that the common translation of τιμωρίαι as “punishments” (cf. “avengers,” in Bull, Tradition, 260 and further) is not appropriate here because “the writer of CH XIII does not speak of them as punishments of previous sin.”» — en nota, concede el punto a Scott sobre los tormentos.
«Contrary to e.g. Scott (II, 385) and Grese (Corpus Hermeticum XIII, 121, 127–128), I attach importance to the specificities of the list.» — en nota, la lista de tormentos no es ornamental.
«Tröger sets up a list of seventeen (!) oppositions to strengthen his programmatic argument for “Hermetic dualism” (Mysterienglaube, 91–92).» — en nota, sobre la construcción del dualismo hermético por acumulación de pares.
«This is correct only up to a point, for the twelve “torments” should not be understood just as moral vices but as actual energetic powers that are active in the cosmos and negatively affect the human soul and body.» — en nota, los tormentos son energías y no solo vicios.
«There is no evidence for Mahé’s belief that “the visible body dematerializes” (HT V, cxcviii).» — en nota, el cuerpo visible no se desmaterializa en el renacimiento.
«Admittedly CH X 6 says that the soul cannot be deified while still in a human body, whereas CH XIII says that it can» — en nota, consigna la discrepancia entre dos tratados sin resolverla por decreto.
«I see no reason to assume that ἀκλινὴς γενόμενος refers to such formulas as “the immovable race” in several Nag Hammadi treatises» — en nota, descarta el eco setiano y lee la expresión como reposo.
«I do not read this as meaning that the soul has left the body, but that it is now free from the burden of daimonic energies.» — en nota, la clave de su lectura del *skēnos*.
«This interpretation is confirmed by CH XIII 15 (see below, p. 257): Tat seems eager to leave the skēnos behind, which implies that he had not yet done so.» — en nota, el argumento interno que la sostiene.
«I consider this a clear indication that while normal physical death is a defective incorporeal birth of the soul into immateriality, only rebirth in a superior spiritual body allows the soul to attain gnōsis of true reality.» — en nota, la diferencia entre morir y renacer.
«I take this to be the state of “cosmic consciousness” described in CH XI 20 and XIII 11» — en nota, identifica el estado con los dos pasajes del corpus.
«It is important to reject Reitzenstein’s and Nock’s emendation of μου to σου» — en nota, una enmienda que cambia quién oyó el himno.
«While the skēnos is strictly no longer an instrument of daimonic control at this point, it is still there as a physical vessel containing Tat’s new noetic body in which his soul now resides.» — en nota, la estructura de los dos cuerpos tras el renacimiento.
«The word “beauty” occurs in the Hermetic writings much more frequently than one might infer from most translations,» — en nota, un dato léxico que las traducciones apagan.
«it is possible that Hermes means to leave it up to Tat to decide whether he will just escape from the body or choose to share humanity’s burden of suffering as long as his physical body remains alive.» — en nota, deja abierta la decisión que el texto no resuelve.
«I was therefore mistaken in my initial and much shorter analysis» — en nota, corrige por escrito una lectura suya anterior.
«Note how this hymn emphasizes the two forces of Life and Light that dominated a country like Egypt:» — en nota, el anclaje egipcio del himno del renacimiento.
«Hermes is praising the noetic world of Life and Light, but in fact this means that those powers are praising themselves.» — en nota, la circularidad de la alabanza en un marco no dual.
«Contrary to commentators such as Scott (II, 405–406; see Bull, Tradition, 310–311), I see nothing puzzling in this remark.» — en nota, sobre la instrucción final de Hermes a Tat.
«To argue that Tat has already been enlightened and therefore cannot get enlightened even further reflects a far too rigid way of thinking; on the contrary, as indicated above, Tat’s education is far from completed after the rebirth.» — en nota, la formación del discípulo continúa después del renacimiento.
«Festugière thinks that ἐπιμελεῖσθαι “leads us back to the classroom” where teacher and pupil work together on “a school exercise or a declamation” (RHT IV, 209–210). In a context such as this I consider that utter nonsense.» — en nota, rechaza la lectura escolar del pasaje.
«However, “the Egyptians call you Thiouis, since you alone are all the other goddesses invoked by the nations.”» — los himnos de Isidoro hacen de Hermouthis-Isis la madre de todas las diosas del Mediterráneo.
«Perhaps most striking about Isidorus’ hymns is the exuberance with which they embrace and celebrate life, health, and the pursuit of happiness.» — el tono de los himnos del Fayum, contra la imagen de una antigüedad tardía deprimida.
«Isidorus tells us, for he was born from the “great, great, and most great” agathos daimo-n Sokono-pis (Sobek, Souchos) himself.» — la fórmula tres veces grande aplicada al buen daimon; el troceo une los guiones de corte de *daimōn* y *Sokonōpis*.
«Jan Assmann points out that “the Egyptians hated death and loved life,” as reflected already in one of the earliest wisdom texts that remained popular during the Roman era» — el marco egipcio contra la lectura decadentista de la antigüedad tardía.
«We will see in this chapter that even the treatise about the soul’s ascent from the realms of matter and the body towards those of “the Ogdoad and the Ennead” beyond the stars is not really about postmortem existence.» — anuncia la tesis del capítulo 9.
«often spoke about the noetic unity of the all, but to Hermes’ deep regret he never put his words down in writing.» — Agathos Daimon aparece como maestro oral de Hermes.
«Thus the anonymous author of this treatise presents him as a human being whom he used to know, whose words carried very great authority, but who presumably is no longer alive.» — el estatuto de esa figura: un maestro humano, no un dios.
«This would make him the predecessor of both Hermes and Tat, an ideal model of spiritual accomplishment.» — el lugar de Agathos Daimon en la cadena de maestros.
«The Christian author who made the excerpt went on to praise the nobility of this teaching about “the self-sufficient Triad which is undefiled, immeasurable, unspeakable, and forever the same.”» — el excerptor cristiano elogia lo que transmite, y así se conserva.
«The special importance of this passage lies in the fact that it focuses not on the divine nous that dominates almost all of the literature in which Hermes plays the central role, but on a level that is even beyond it.» — el pasaje introduce un nivel más allá del *nous*.
«In short, there is a nous beyond the nous; we might perhaps say that it is that which appears as “noetic” to the nous itself, similar to how the nous is noetic for us.» — la formulación de la Fuente hipernoética.
«Although technically this makes it “hypernoetic,” the text does not bother to make such a distinction.» — el término es suyo y no de la fuente, y lo dice.
«the continuous and infinitely generous self-manifestation of divinity in its own sacred space. Moreover, no other space exists!» — el cosmos como templo, y no hay afuera.
«human beings therefore need to “open their heart” and see what is already there all around them.» — la práctica consiste en reconocer lo presente, no en alcanzar lo ausente.
«But while those who had become aiōn enjoyed a superior cosmic consciousness, this still did not mean that they had been joined in communion with the other souls in the Ogdoad beyond the cosmos, had achieved perfect union with the Nous in the Ennead, or had perceived the ultimate Source itself.» — el límite del renacimiento, que abre el capítulo 9.
«The basic point is very simple: it does not exist!» — lo dice de la muerte en el marco hermético.
«The Source brings forth only life, never death. What human beings refer to as “death” is therefore an empty word with no reference to anything real.» — la consecuencia léxica de esa doctrina.
«Now that the body dissolves, the nous can shed its envelopes. It replaces them» — la disolución descrita como cambio de envolturas y no como destrucción.
«While death had no true reality in the Hermetic worldview, it did have a meaning.» — la muerte funciona como nombre de un estado de vida disminuida.
«Because this condition of “living in darkness” was an almost inevitable side effect of embodiment, as we have seen, such a severely diminished way of living (a kind of dim or shadowy half-life) was the default human condition from which Hermetic practitioners were trying to heal themselves and others.» — de qué curaba la práctica hermética.
«That most people “keep wandering in darkness, deluded by the senses and subject to death” therefore does not refer to their physical mortality but to their failure to live life as it should be lived.» — la fórmula del corpus, leída en clave de vida y no de biología.
«Hermes laments a future time when Egypt will be a spiritual desert “filled completely with tombs and corpses” because “shadows will be preferred over light” and “death will be considered more meaningful than life,”» — la profecía del Asclepius releída como diagnóstico espiritual.
«We have seen that as the nous abandons the scene to go roaming the cosmos in its fiery vehicle, it leaves the soul to “the judgment and justice it deserves.” Yet the Hermetica tell us remarkably little about the soul’s afterlife, and even less about its pre-incarnational existence.» — el silencio de las fuentes sobre el más allá, consignado como silencio.
«In line with the concept of continual transformation of all things in the cosmos, most of our treatises speak in general terms about reincarnation in human or animal bodies.» — la reencarnación aparece, y sin desarrollo doctrinal.
«It says that the test is administered by a powerful divinity (daimōn)48 who resides halfway between earth and heaven and whose job is to examine a person’s previous behavior.» — la prueba de la reverencia y quién la administra; el número es la llamada de nota.
«It would seem then that not all Hermetic practitioners had exactly the same ideas about what would happen to those who failed the test of reverence.» — las divergencias internas del corpus se consignan sin armonizarse.
«An attitude of reverence, not rebirth or gnōsis, was therefore the principle of separation between the good and the bad.» — el criterio decisivo no es la iluminación sino la reverencia.
«Therefore this “happy end” is not restricted to just a spiritual elite of Hermetic virtuosos.» — la consecuencia antielitista de ese criterio.
«Admittedly though, the reverent would not receive it until after their bodies had been left behind.» — el límite: para la mayoría la gnōsis llega después de la muerte corporal.
«In fact the source cannot be superior, either spatially or even ontologically, because nothing else is – not even non-being.» — la Fuente no ocupa la cima de una jerarquía porque no hay jerarquía.
«Thus it is not out of obscurity but because they wanted to be precise, that our authors are struggling so hard to convey some sense of perfect gnōsis through the imperfect medium of logos» — la oscuridad de estos textos se explica por exigencia de precisión.
«Far from being located at the top of a vertical hierarchy, the One is therefore beyond space and time altogether.» — la Ogdóada y la Enéada no son pisos de un edificio.
«What this all means is that the Ennead and the Ogdoad should not be understood as “levels” or even as true realities “below” the One and the Good, but as different ways in which the latter manifests itself in the mirror of our dualistic and spatiotemporal consciousness.» — la lectura no espacial que propone para los niveles cósmicos.
«It is of course confusing that in the Neopythagorean system provided by Iamblichus, the Source (pēgē) that is called the One brings forth another unity, the Monas, which is therefore equivalent to the Ennead of NH VI6, the ninth.» — la confusión terminológica queda declarada en vez de resuelta.
«If so, the Ogdoad becomes the realm of individual living souls, while the Ennead is the boundless noetic realm of Light beyond individuality.» — el reparto que propone entre las dos esferas superiores.
«The community of living souls that constitute the Ogdoad are gennētos (“begotten”): generated by or born from the Ennead.» — la relación generativa entre las dos.
«While comparisons with modern cosmology are obviously risky, it might perhaps be helpful to think of the Hermetic triad as a metaphysical (obviously not a physical) parallel to how we imagine the relation between our world of living conscious organisms, the sun on whose Light all life in our solar system depends, and the strictly unimaginable concept of some ultimate “(non)reality” on the other side of the Big Bang.» — el símil moderno que ofrece, con su advertencia adosada.
«He tells him that he has “very many,” indeed “numerous” Hermetic texts in his possession but did not copy them because his client might already have them.» — el copista copto del siglo IV declara tener muchos más tratados de los que copió.
«Thus we learn that a great number of Hermetic treatises in Coptic must have been circulating in this area at the time.» — la nota del copista mide lo que se perdió.
«As specialists began studying the Nag Hammadi Hermetica, they believed to see strong similarities between CH XIII and NH VI6.» — el punto de partida de la discusión sobre los dos tratados.
«The authoritative voice of Jean-Pierre Mahé went an important step further, insisting already in his earliest publications that both texts do not just display similarities but describe one and the same process: that of Hermetic regeneration or rebirth.» — la tesis de Mahé que este capítulo discute.
«In principle these two themes are distinct, and in fact it so happens that other Hermetic writings present them separately.» — ascenso del alma y palingenesia son dos temas, y el corpus los separa en otros textos.
«Much of his argument reflects the widespread but incorrect assumption that CH I describes a catastrophic Fall or degeneration of the primal Human, which then needs to be repaired by regeneration as in CH XIII.» — su objeción de fondo a esa equivalencia.
«Mahé provides no clear evidence for his belief that Tat’s rebirth occurs in the Ogdoad and the Ennead;78 on the contrary, it seems evident from CH XIII that it happens here on earth in an Egyptian desert.» — dónde ocurre el renacimiento, según su lectura; el número es la llamada de nota.
«The Ogdoad and the Ennead describes something new and different: a direct experience of supra-cosmic realities that was possible only for those who had already become the aiōn.» — la tesis alternativa que propone.
«But while the rebirth results in an embodied state of cosmic consciousness, it does not give access automatically to hypercosmic realities beyond the seven planetary spheres.» — la distinción que sostiene todo el capítulo.
«Hermes is perceived as more than just the facilitator or midwife of the rebirth – he is nothing less than Tat’s spiritual father.» — la relación paterno-filial que el tratado establece.
«This is obviously a point of great importance, as it establishes a unique personal relation between the individual Hermetic practitioner who has experienced rebirth and the spiritual master to whom he owes his new life.» — el vínculo personal como estructura de la comunidad.
«Hermes confirms this: it is important that Tat recognizes them as his brothers and honors them properly, as fits the beauty of the rebirth.» — el renacido entra en una fraternidad de renacidos.
«Hermes tells him “Child, let us pray to the Father of the All, together with your brothers who are my sons, that he may grant his pneuma so that I may speak.”» — la plegaria conjunta con que arranca la parte experiencial de NH VI6.
«The significance of this statement lies in the suggestion that those brothers are therefore physically present with them.» — la consecuencia: hay más gente en la escena que maestro y discípulo.
«I assume that the ceremony would not be open to all pupils, because the not-yet reborn who were merely living lives of eusebeia and remained on the level of the general discourses would not be able to understand what was happening or share in the experience.» — una restricción que declara como suposición propia.
«They will pray to God that he may grant his power [dunamis],96 so that Hermes can transmit this noetic energy to Tat by means of his voice.» — la transmisión noética pasa por la voz; el corchete es del autor y el número es la llamada de nota.
«The ultimate Source rules over the kingdom of power, which must be the Ennead, the domain of noetic powers.» — su identificación de los términos de esa invocación.
«All these entities together constitute the unitary divine fullness of true reality, the God who is All in All.» — el plēroma hermético, sin escalones.
«Clearly we are dealing here with those “sounds full of power” that, according to CH XVI 2, are superior to the “empty words” of the Greeks.» — enlaza las series vocálicas de NH VI6 con la doctrina de CH XVI.
«The first and final word, zōxathazō and zōzazōth, have no literal parallels elsewhere in Greek or Coptic literature but are reminiscent of well-known palindromes that occur in the Greek “magical” papyri and contemporary “magical” amulets, notably zōthaxathōz and thōzaxazōth.» — el parentesco con los palíndromos de los papiros.
«That the versions in NH VI6 are not palindromes is unlikely to be the result of transcription errors – most probably we are dealing with a deliberate attempt to make the formula ineffective for non-initiated readers.» — la deformación como medida de seguridad y no como error de copia.
«After all, the authors were extremely serious in their belief that these sounds would unleash real and supremely sacred energetic power.» — la razón por la que valdría la pena inutilizar la fórmula.
«Keeping in mind the Hermetic refusal to accept death as something real, this suggests that “life” was associated with the cosmic domain (7 planetary spheres) while so-called “death” was understood as true life in the Ennead (9), the ultimate noetic reality of eternal Light.» — el valor numérico de zeta y theta leído contra la doctrina de la muerte.
«Rather than slipping back into his habitual clouded state of consciousness “under the sway of death” that is conventionally referred to as “life,” he must return to the superior state of Life and Light that we ignorantly call “death.”» — la inversión que explica la orden de volver al estado de muerte.
«The first thing to note is the succession of the seven vowels of the Greek alphabet: this string “a e ē i o u ō” appears in many places elsewhere in the PGM as well, and was often understood as a divine name that could be turned into a formula.» — la serie vocálica como nombre divino.
«The vowels appear to represent divine powers that reside in the seven planetary spheres, and as the number of vowels is successively expanded, we get 1+2+3+4+5+6+7=28 powers.» — la aritmética de la invocación.
«Since the ceremony is initiated from down below, the intended sequence must be as follows: Moon (α), Mercury (ε), Venus (η), the Sun (ι), Mars (ο), Jupiter (υ), and Saturn (ω).» — la correspondencia entre vocales y planetas que propone.
«Therefore we are watching an exponential build-up of numinous power, culminating in the long series of fifteen omegas sealed by the word zōzazōth.» — la progresión de la fórmula.
«We do not know exactly how these names were spoken or intoned, but the effect must certainly have been impressive, resulting in a solemn ceremonial atmosphere pregnant with expectation.» — el límite de lo reconstruible sobre la ejecución.
«An important point that has not received enough attention is that next to being linked to the planetary spheres, the seven vowels could also be mapped on one of the musical scales or “modes.”» — la dimensión musical de la serie.
«According to an oft-quoted passage of uncertain date, the Egyptian priests in fact used to sing successions of the seven vowels in their hymns of praise to the gods, “and the sound of these vowels has such euphony that men listen to it instead of the flute and the lyre.”» — el testimonio antiguo del canto vocálico sacerdotal.
«I find it significant that the chant from down below receives an echo from up above.» — la estructura de llamada y eco entre los dos coros.
«We may assume that in actual practice, the brethren around them would be giving voice to this echo by chanting the omegas at a low pitch, and the volume of singing would get louder as the invocation progressed.» — la reconstrucción práctica de la ceremonia.
«It is important to emphasize that we are not witnessing a musical performance here115 but a ceremonial invocation in which the human voice is used to achieve a strong “hypnotic” effect on the participants’ consciousness.» — el canto es técnica de conciencia, no música; el número es la llamada de nota.
«Comparison with similar invocations from the papyri makes it likely that the altered state was further enhanced by inhalation of kuphi incense.» — el incienso vuelve a entrar como coadyuvante.
«In the pregnant silence that follows the invocation, Hermes now prays directly to the ultimate unbegotten Source itself, asking it to send down its power (dunamis) that will grant wisdom (sophia), so that he and Tat will be able to share their experience of the Ogdoad and the Ennead.» — la petición de *dunamis* y *sophia* como bisagra del rito.
«Therefore their consciousness is still within the cosmic domain, but they are ready to move beyond it.» — dónde están los practicantes al terminar la invocación.
«As this downward stream of divine pneumatic energy meets the upward stream of “eloquent pneuma,” the latter will be ignited as by a spark of fire, thereby illuminating the practitioners’ nous and give them divine gnōsis.» — la corriente ascendente y la descendente se encuentran.
«This condition enables Hermes to receive power “from the Source that wells up in [him]” so that he can pass it on to Tat, whose nous will thereby be opened to the vision of truth.» — la transmisión de maestro a discípulo, en los términos del texto; el corchete es del autor.
«Ultimately, it is the one sovereign active force on which all else depends entirely, as it has brought forth both the Self-Begotten (the Ennead) and the Begotten (the Ogdoad), as well as everything else that has been generated and filled with soul.» — la Fuente como origen de las dos esferas superiores.
«Again, our attention is drawn to the intimacy of filial rapport that has been established between the spiritual “father” and his reborn “son.”» — el abrazo ritual dentro de esa relación.
«I would consider the possibility that the embrace is not just short and transitory but is maintained as long as the vision lasts.» — una hipótesis que declara como tal.
«While this interpretation must obviously remain speculative, it would fit what we know about physical procedures for inducing visionary trance, involving an active director and a passive recipient who establish a closed “energy circuit” while using» — el límite y el apoyo de esa hipótesis, en la misma frase.
«As “father and son” connect in this embrace, suddenly everything happens very fast, as shown by Hermes’ words: “Rejoice in this! For the Power that is Light is already coming down from them to us!”» — el momento en que la luz noética desciende.
«Because we do not know for certain which lines in the following section are supposed to be spoken by Hermes and which ones by Tat, any reconstruction must remain speculative to some extent.» — el estado del texto impide fijar quién habla.
«The few words that follow have been destroyed almost completely (see line 4 in figure 9.2), but most likely should read “I am nous” – a statement that gets repeated no fewer than three times in the short piece of text that follows and is clearly important.» — la restitución de la fórmula y su frecuencia.
«If a woman tells her daughter “I am your mother,” she is making a statement of fact; but what she really means to say depends very much on the context.» — el símil con que explica la fuerza de esa declaración.
«All of a sudden, Tat finds he is no longer facing the human person he knew, but is being addressed directly by Hermes’ immortal noetic essence.» — el desplazamiento de la voz del maestro.
«Embodiment causes us to forget who we really are; but reversely, this ecstatic “death-state” of noetic illumination allows the speaker to forget his embodied state of clouded consciousness.» — el olvido funciona en las dos direcciones.
«not only does Tat gain true gnōsis, self-knowledge, by seeing in this instance who and what he really is – but moreover, he even glimpses the mysterious origin (archē) of All That Is, the unbegotten One beyond the Ennead, the ultimate generative Source (pēgē) itself.» — el alcance máximo de la visión.
«So there is such a thing as powerful noetically inspired speech (logos), but it can only be understood in immediate noetic perception.» — la distinción entre las dos clases de *logos*.
«But again it is not clear who speaks the next sentence.» — la incertidumbre de atribución vuelve a declararse.
«Note the nuance: although it might seem as though Tat is singing a hymn to Hermes, in fact it will not be addressed to the human teacher anymore but to the universal nous who has been speaking» — a quién se dirige el himno del discípulo.
«it is also the Nous who responds to Tat’s plea, speaking through Hermes’ mouth:» — Hermes queda reducido a conducto del Nous.
«Hermes urges his pupil to keep a reverent silence about the vision rather than rushing to speak about it to others, and tells him that henceforth it is fitting to never stop hymning the Father until the day he will leave his body.» — la instrucción final sobre el silencio y el himno.
«Hermes responds that it is right for him to do so, and his words may “get inscribed in this imperishable book.”» — el libro imperecedero donde queda la plegaria.
«I would suggest that Tat’s words will be “engraved” or “imprinted” in his internal noetic world exactly as happens at the end of CH I» — su lectura de ese libro como registro interno.
«Spoken language, logos, is insufficient even if it is “hidden,” “secret,” or “occult” (for as formulated in CH IX 10, it cannot reach as far as the truth), but vocal music will rise higher than words.» — la música por encima del *logos* oculto.
«Fourthly, no longer do the vowels sung from down below receive a lengthier and more powerful echo from the superior noetic powers up above; I suggest that the series of omegas and vowels are of equal length because Tat’s level of consciousness now equals that of the noetic powers.» — la simetría del segundo canto mide el nivel alcanzado.
«As Tat is now one with the Nous, he has reached a state of perfect self-sufficiency, and this makes it unlikely that the omegas are sung by the brethren this second time.» — la consecuencia práctica para la ejecución del canto.
«I assume that we are hearing nothing now but Tat’s voice alone, singing the vowels at their proper pitches and probably drawing them out at length.» — la reconstrucción del cierre del rito.
«the Egyptians perceived an unbroken continuity rather than a sharp boundary between life and death, and rather than suppressing death, they sought to “handle” the fact of bodily mortality by creating powerful “counter-images” of survival.» — en nota, el trasfondo egipcio de la doctrina hermética de la muerte.
«Here my concern is with Agathos Daimōn’s relevance to the spiritual Hermetica; but note that the name goes back to ancient Greece and appears in various other contexts in Hellenistic Egypt as well:» — en nota, acota el alcance de su tratamiento de esa figura.
«As indicated earlier, the distinction is of great importance to my general argument because, in line with Festugière, the “generative source” would suggest the “optimistic” and “world-affirming” perspective of la religion du monde (RHT II) as opposed to the “self-sufficient absolute” that became a “gnostic” dieu inconnu (RHT IV).» — en nota, los dos polos de Festugière puestos a trabajar dentro de su propio argumento.
«Like Holzhausen (CHD, 299 note 178), I assume that sensibilis in the first sentence of Ascl. 31 must be understood in terms of this text’s convention of translating νοῦς by the Latin sensus:» — en nota, cómo el traductor latino vertió *nous* y qué se sigue de ello.
«the word “death” refers to some kind of destruction, but in fact nothing in the cosmos ever gets destroyed» — en nota, la razón por la que la muerte es un nombre vacío.
«the speaker even suggests that the actual meaning of the word “mortal” may be “immortal” – it’s just that the first syllable got lost.» — en nota, la etimología juguetona que el texto hermético propone.
«I am grateful to Nicholas Banner for stimulating noetic discussions that directed me towards the Numenius fragment.» — en nota, declara la procedencia de una de sus fuentes clave.
«Holzhausen seems to have found the most convincing solution (CHD, 108 note 299): Hermes means to say that during incarnation the soul is in the pneuma that circulates through the body by means of the blood, whereas disincarnation means that the pneuma withdraws into the soul because the coagulated blood can no longer contain it.» — en nota, la fisiología de la desencarnación.
«Unlike Van den Kerchove (La voie, 48, 105), I see no evidence for attitudes of “distrust” or “suspicion” (méfiance) towards the unenlightened multitudes, but rather of regret and sadness about their blindness and ignorance.» — en nota, corrige el tono que se atribuye a los herméticos frente a la mayoría.
«Note that the Hermetic affirmation of life has extremely severe consequences in CH II 17: the souls of those who remain childless are “condemned to enter a body that is neither male nor female, the kind that is cursed under the sun.”» — en nota, el reverso duro de la afirmación hermética de la vida.
«the answer to Tat’s question about how one should live one’s life is “be reverent, my child!”» — en nota, la respuesta ética del corpus, en una línea.
«but clearly this judge or overseer is a divinity in charge of punishing evildoers and not to be confused with the astral daimons» — en nota, distingue al daimon juez de los daimones astrales.
«I read it as a radical implication of Hermetic nonduality, peculiarly reminiscent of Derridean deconstruction: if there is no such thing as non-being, that makes it impossible to think of being as its counterpart, so the binary breaks down and “what truly is” could as well be called “what truly is not.”» — en nota, la no dualidad llevada hasta el colapso del par ser/no ser.
«Likewise the intentional paradoxes in HD I 1 (continued in I 2) imply radical nonduality: that the noetic God is immobile would seem contradictory from our perspective but is correct from the perspective of the Source (which “moves in sovereign stillness”: Ascl. 31)» — en nota, la paradoja del movimiento en quietud soberana.
«Note that I bracket entities which I consider questionable: I am unconvinced by Mahé’s argument (ibid., 164, 167, 169) that the Logos in CH I is equivalent to the Ogdoad» — en nota, marca en su propia tabla lo que no da por firme.
«Could we be dealing with a scribal error and the author meant ennead instead of henad? This would make the argument much more logical: if Light and Life are a unity, the decad is reduced to an ennead, which again becomes a decad if one separates the two.» — en nota, una conjetura textual planteada como pregunta.
«See also HD X 4: “Evil is the absence of Good, the Good is its own fullness.”» — en nota, la definición hermética del mal como pura ausencia.
«We have seen that as the body dissolves, the nous leaves the soul to be judged: clearly it carries no responsibility for the soul’s individual actions.» — en nota, el reparto de responsabilidad entre alma y *nous*.
«Note the divergent statement in HD X 5, where nous is called unbegotten.» — en nota, consigna la divergencia interna del corpus sin resolverla.
«CH XIII 13 does not actually say that “seeing oneself” is what defines the rebirth, but rather specifies it as “to no longer picture reality in three bodily dimensions.”» — en nota, corrige qué define el renacimiento según el texto.
«The rebirth has nothing to do with a primal “Fall” of man (see text).» — en nota, repite la negativa en el punto donde más se supone lo contrario.
«Van den Broek points out that while the Coptic ⲣ̅ ⲡⲙⲉⲉⲩⲉ means “remembering,” the intention here is that Tat must “have insight” in the sense of noēsis» — en nota, recordar y percibir noéticamente se solapan en el copto.
«Mahé notes that the “human condition” mentioned in NH VI6 52, 10 refers to the state of forgetfulness caused by coming under the dominion of the planetary powers at being born» — en nota, la condición humana como olvido de origen astral.
«Although we have reason to assume that Hermetic practitioners could be both male and female (see above, Chapter 4, p. 82 with note 19, 92), NH VI6 makes no allusion to “sisters.”» — en nota, el dato y su límite, en la misma frase.
«I would agree with Keizer that these possibilities remain a matter of speculation and are not necessary to interpret the passage.» — en nota, deja fuera lo que no hace falta para leer el texto.
«I resist the common translation of ϣⲁϫⲉ as “discourse.” Keizer (97 note 12) points out that it could just as well mean “word, matter, revelation” and Camplani (SEC, 137) suggests “prayer.”» — en nota, la ambigüedad del término copto y las opciones en juego.
«I find the second part of the final sentence too corrupt to allow speculation about its meaning.» — en nota, se abstiene ante un tramo corrupto.
«by contrast, the instances in NH VI6 60–63 clearly refer to books.» — en nota, resuelve por tramos la ambigüedad de la palabra libro.
«I consider this option more likely because neither of the two versions is a palindrome, in spite of the fact that such words were likely to be copied with extra care precisely because they were not readily understandable.» — en nota, el argumento a favor de la deformación deliberada.
«The commentator reversed these technical terms in accordance with Plato’s account in the Republic (617a–b; see Levin in Nicomachus, Manual of Harmonics, 52), making the Moon hupatē and Saturn neatē, a move that seems counter-intuitive in terms of their spatial locations but more logical in terms of their tonal pitches.» — en nota, la correspondencia entre planetas y tonos según Nicómaco.
«This critique misses the point, for the “melodies” should not be seen as attempts to make music but as a translation of cosmic powers into audible sounds, regardless of musical effect.» — en nota, defiende las reconstrucciones musicales cambiándoles el criterio.
«Whether the fixed stars should be included or should rather be associated with the Ogdoad remains an open question for me.» — en nota, declara abierta una pieza de su propia reconstrucción.
«While Mahé assumes that the omegas represent the Ogdoad, my interpretation confirms Bull’s argument (Bull, Tradition, 334–353, reached by an entirely different route) that they refer to Saturn» — en nota, dos caminos distintos que llegan a la misma lectura.
«As pointed out by Bull in an important remark, plēroma should not be understood in a “gnostic” sense as referring to the supernal or hypercosmic realms; on the contrary, in the Hermetica the term always refers to the plenitude of the cosmos» — en nota, el término *plēroma* no significa aquí lo que significa en el vocabulario gnóstico.
«Mahé recently changed the translation to “c[ommen]ce dès main[tenant à tendre vers] les lieux!” (from now on, do begin reaching towards the places! HT V, 94), but this seems less convincing given the fact that Tat has already arrived there.» — en nota, objeta una restitución por incoherencia con la escena.
«I was inspired to draw this analogy by Robert Musil’s short story “Der Amsel”» — en nota, declara de dónde le viene una comparación literaria.
«Bull argues that Hermes’ embrace has roused Tat from his contemplative sleep (ibid., 359–361), but this cannot be right: on the contrary, the true ecstatic vision or holy sleep clearly begins with the embrace.» — en nota, sitúa la visión extática después del abrazo y no antes.
«Theoretically these words plus the next sentence (58,15) could all be spoken by Hermes (in which case the “power” mentioned in the first sentence is that of the nous) but this assumption would weaken the clearly intended sense of bafflement and utter novelty.» — en nota, el argumento con que reparte las voces del pasaje.
«I assume rather that whereas noetic understanding happens in silence, giving expression to what is understood requires speech – and the second part of the first sen» — en nota, su lectura de la relación entre silencio y palabra en NH VI6.
«The point is that while salvational speech comes from the silence of the Source by mediation of nous (hence it is “a gift of God”: HD V 3), speech that originates merely from logos is just a “human invention” that leads nowhere (HD V 3, “he who talks without nous says nothing”).» — en nota, la distinción entre palabra salvadora y palabra vacía.
«This means that logos has noetic potential, and speech can be more than just empty talk; thus in NH VI6 53, 31 we are told that the gift of divine pneuma makes it possible for Hermes to speak.» — en nota, el reverso positivo de esa distinción.
«I propose we use the unamended text.» — en nota, prefiere el texto sin enmendar en un pasaje disputado.
«The Coptic ⲁⲅⲁⲡⲏ reflects the Greek ἀγάπη for “love” and is surprising here, partly because it is typical of the Christian New Testament but does not occur elsewhere in the Hermetica» — en nota, una palabra que desentona con el resto del corpus.
«Mahé admitted in HHE I, 124 that he failed to understand the difference between the two vowel sequences and the absence of nomina barbara.» — en nota, un problema que su predecesor dejó por escrito sin resolver.
«Note, however, that neither such good intentions nor the virtue of eusebeia will ultimately be enough, for Hermes points out that even those who have done nothing to be ashamed of and have a perfectly clear conscience will still be unable to understand the mystery.» — el límite de la reverencia: no garantiza la comprensión.
«But is it, really? I just summarized what the author of NH VI6 means to tell his readers at the end of the treatise; but his text tells us more than he intends, and something different as well.» — el giro con que abre el capítulo 10: el texto excede a su autor.
«I have argued that its purpose must have been to show practitioners not just what they should think or do, but also what they could expect to experience» — la función del tratado dentro de la práctica.
«But in fact, the Hermes who is giving instructions here appears to be someone else – this is no longer Tat’s thrice-greatest teacher but the ancient Egyptian deity Thoth, known» — el cambio de identidad del que habla en el cierre del tratado.
«The text leaves no doubt about this point: place the steles “in my sanctuary,” Tat is told, and do it “when I am» — la prueba textual de ese cambio: el mandato astrológico de Mercurio en Virgo.
«The authors are using language to tell us that language is powerless to convey the truth.» — la paradoja que gobierna el capítulo final.
«Thoth showed him all the useful arts he had just invented, asking Ammon to make them available to the Egyptians.» — el mito del Fedro entra en el argumento.
«Writing is described as a pharmakon. This term stands at the center of a famous analysis by Jacques Derrida, who called attention to its profound ambivalence.» — el término del que sale toda la última sección del libro.
«A pharmakon could be a beneficial medicine as well as a harmful poison, and in Plato’s account it has been variously translated not just as “remedy” but also as “recipe,” “potion,” or “elixir.”» — la ambivalencia del término, desplegada.
«Writing is a surrogate that usurps the place of legitimate speech, logos, described as “the living and ensouled word of him who sees [eidotos]” which is “written in the soul of the learner”17 immediately – by the agency of the living voice.» — la palabra viva frente al sustituto escrito; los corchetes son del autor y el número es la llamada de nota.
«But Ammon, by sharp contrast, gives voice to a profound linguistic pessimism.» — las dos posiciones del mito, nombradas.
«He knows that in the very act of translation, the essence of divine truth will get lost.» — el pesimismo de Ammón, formulado.
«Is it not a great thing that, thanks to this splendid invention, our spoken words can now be preserved for posterity?» — la posición contraria, la de Thot, dicha en su favor.
«All this leads to an inevitable conclusion: noēsis is not just difficult to convey, but a strict impossibility in the order of discourse.» — la conclusión que el capítulo asume sobre sí mismo.
«Once the verbal exchange is over, nothing remains but fading memories in mortal brains.» — la fragilidad de la oralidad, que es también su límite.
«Not only is it a simulacrum of a simulacrum, twice removed from noetic truth and therefore doubly deceptive; but it carries a unique and unheard-of potential for enchantment, precisely because it is not transient but permanent and not living but dead.» — la escritura como simulacro doble y por eso más poderosa.
«Contrary to spoken words, writings can be disseminated among a potentially unlimited number of readers; it is impossible to control who will get access to them over long stretches of time;» — la diseminación como propiedad del texto escrito.
«and as the author is no longer there to push back against misinterpretations, the text becomes autonomous while losing its protection – henceforth it is entirely at the mercy of its readers.» — la autonomía del texto es también su desamparo.
«I want to emphasize the radicality of that conclusion, which means nothing less than that even the written sentence you just read is questionable at best, as the word noēsis suggests a presence where in fact there is an absence.» — aplica la conclusión a su propia frase.
«if we follow Ammon’s perspective to its logical conclusion, there is no way to avoid the implication that the entire book you have been reading must be an act of delusion.» — la consecuencia extrema, asumida en primera persona.
«No reader can escape the influence of this potent pharmakon, this hallucinatory drug known as writing.» — el lector queda incluido en el hechizo.
«The textual universe that is conjured into existence by the pharmakon has no place for noēsis as “knowledge,” but the reverse is true as well: the noetic has no place for written discourse as “knowledge” either.» — los dos órdenes se excluyen mutuamente.
«The crucial point to note about this extraordinary passage is that epekeina tēs ousias in Plato’s Republic refers to the Good, equivalent to the Hermetic pēgē, but Derrida reverses the logic and tells us that writing is “beyond what is”!» — la inversión derridiana del lugar del Bien.
«While noēsis leaves no place for textual discourse and textual discourse leaves no place for noēsis, yet we can never move from one order of knowledge to the other one.» — la imposibilidad de pasar de un orden al otro.
«Still, over a length of 267 erudite pages, the closest Festugière ever got to answering it was in the very final sentences, where he admitted his ultimate perplexity about what Hermetic gnōsis was all about.» — la perplejidad final de Festugière, otra vez al cierre de un libro.
«Festugière was explicit in pointing out that henōthēnai here means unity in the strongest sense of the word, “since subject and object are no longer distinct, but identical.”» — el acierto que le reconoce en ese mismo cierre.
«That was exactly the right point to make, and with this conclusion he was actually holding the key that could have resolved the question to which his volume was devoted.» — la llave que, en su lectura, Festugière tuvo y no usó.
«What he could not see is that Hermetic metaphysics is grounded in an opposition not of spirit against matter, but of the nonduality of ultimate reality against the dualism of human consciousness.» — la reformulación que propone del eje entero.
«We have seen that The Ogdoad and the Ennead culminates in a silent noetic (comm)union with the Source – a perception that is no perception, an experience that is no experience, and a vision that is no vision either, because there is no subject to perceive or experience or see and no object to be perceived or experienced or seen.» — el desenlace de NH VI6 dicho en negaciones.
«What “knowledge” means in the one is not what it means in the other; therefore gnōsis cannot be what we would describe as knowledge, and our concepts of knowledge cannot capture what gnōsis means.» — la incomensurabilidad entre los dos sentidos de conocimiento.
«Secondly, it was defined not as learning something previously unknown, but as re-cognition or anamnēsis of innate gnōsis, not a new insight coming from outside but a reawakening of mnēmē “from within oneself.”» — la *gnōsis* como reconocimiento y no como adquisición.
«Hermes states in CH IX that “logos does not get to the truth,” but adds that it is capable of guiding a person’s nous up to a certain point from where it will then be able to reach the truth “by its own power.”» — la función auxiliar del *logos*, con su límite dentro.
«they did not have to do with reasoning but with direct perception44; however, while it was believed that nous “always sees the truth,” this perception could be “stunned, dulled, or taken away” under the influence of passions such as greed or anger.» — la percepción noética no falla por sí misma: la anulan las pasiones; el número es la llamada de nota.
«However, we have also seen that for those in the lineage of Diotima and Iamblichus, that was a misconception in the most literal sense of the word.» — el linaje que él traza contra la lectura corriente.
«the vital function of logos in noetic understanding leads us back to the second key theme (next to nonduality) that has been neglected in previous scholarship but is in fact central to Hermetic spirituality: that of embodiment.» — los dos temas que el libro reclama como desatendidos.
«Logos first became a topic of philosophical discussion in the fragments of Heraclitus, where it did not actually mean “word” or “speech” at all, but referred to the order or structure of the world of experience.» — el punto de partida de la historia del término.
«In Stoic thought, logos came to be understood as an active force operating in the universe, manifesting as multiple logoi spermatikoi that were capable of “impregnating” receptive entities; again, these were not “words” as we understand them, but rather something like spiritual spermatozoa, living seeds of vital generative power that permeated the whole of reality.» — el *logos* estoico como semilla, y no como palabra.
«Finally, when Tat gets to experience the Ogdoad and the Ennead, this happens because a stream of pneumatic energy has come down to ignite his own pneuma and thereby illuminate his nous – yet another instance of spiritual fertilization.» — la fertilización espiritual como forma común de todos los episodios.
«Whereas written words can be disseminated all over the world, logos may be immediately present but can never travel anywhere else.» — la contrapartida de la presencia: no viaja.
«In CH I we read how after Hermes’ encounter with Poimandres, he “sowed” the words of wisdom in his listeners and found that his logos now “[gave] birth to good things.”» — la predicación descrita como siembra; el corchete es del autor.
«This logos itself is described as a luminous seed coming from the Father74; it carries salvational power because it consists not just of words referring to other words but has welled up directly from noetic silence.» — de dónde le viene al *logos* su poder salvador; el número es la llamada de nota.
«All these references confirm that logos was understood as active divine energy, the fertile power of life itself that had to be transmitted through the human voice.» — la conclusión sobre el *logos* hermético.
«You could not initiate yourself or achieve rebirth just by reading about it; unless Poimandres himself chose to intervene in your solitude, you needed a human teacher who would not just tell you the right things but could transmit the noetic power of Light and Life.» — la necesidad del maestro presente, con su excepción declarada.
«If the authors were at all serious about what they were writing, they would have to come together and actually do what they claimed had to be done.» — el argumento contra la hipótesis del misterio de lectura, dicho en una línea.
«Plato’s Socrates says that this living and ensouled logos must be written (graphetai) in the pupil’s soul, and this brings me to a final dimension of “embodiment” in Hermetic practice.» — la inscripción en el alma como forma de encarnación.
«Logos works as an active noetic power or energy that comes flowing from the hidden Source and impresses its fertilizing sunthēmata (signatures) on whatever is sufficiently receptive in the world of manifestation.» — el *logos* como firma que se imprime, no como signo que remite.
«A person could be touched by noetic energy transmitted through the living logos of a person who had “seen,” for instance Socrates, Diotima, Agathos Daimōn, or Hermes.» — la cadena de quienes vieron y pueden transmitir.
«Clearly this was not a matter of learning things at school or copying information from a book, but of receiving the impact of logos and integrating not just its discursive meanings but its energies in one’s memory, the storage function of the imagination (phantasia).» — lo que se recibe no es información sino energía.
«But neither did it consist of signifiers that would somehow be capable of doing the impossible, that is to say: of actually signifying the transcendental Signified, the pēgē beyond human understanding.» — el límite por el otro lado: tampoco es un significante que alcance lo trascendente.
«If this is what logos was all about, again the implication is that Hermetic spirituality could not possibly survive without a living community (small as it may have been) of devotees who were cultivating a practice of intimate personal contact requiring direct physical interaction.» — la consecuencia social de la doctrina del *logos*.
«To receive spiritual power at all, you needed to participate, you needed to be involved, you needed to be there.» — la formulación más breve de esa consecuencia.
«Once Hermetic treatises would get “disseminated” beyond such personal networks of dedicated practitioners, nothing could be left of the logos: its place would be taken by a play of self-referential written signifiers, “a drug not of memory [mnēmē] but of reminding [hupomnēsis].”» — la diseminación como pérdida del poder salvador; los corchetes son del autor.
«As formulated with remarkable precision in one of the Armenian Definitions, logos could never be salvational for the followers of Hermes unless it had been conceived in silence by the nous and therefore came directly from silence; that is to say, from the Source.» — la condición de origen que hace salvador al *logos*.
«The overwhelming majority of readers whose statements have survived were Christians.» — quiénes son los lectores de los que queda testimonio.
«If they occasionally quoted or referred to fragments from the Hermetica, the truth is that this did not reflect any great desire on their part to understand Hermetic spirituality on its own terms, to recover what it had really been all about.» — el interés de esos lectores no era comprender.
«Their intention was not to learn but to teach.» — la fórmula breve de esa apropiación.
«Regardless of whether these Christian authors sympathized with Hermes or rejected him as a peddler of pagan delusions, their central motivation was always to bolster their own theological discourse and promote their own apologetic agendas.» — simpatía y rechazo cumplen aquí la misma función.
«A rare exception was discussed in Chapter 9, where we saw that a fragment preserved in (ps.-)Didymus the Blind and Cyril of Alexandria contains a precious quotation about the Hermetic pēgē attributed most probably to Agathos Daimōn.» — la excepción que confirma la regla, con su atribución probable.
«Cyril first quoted a passage preserved by Stobaeus, where Hermes writes that it is difficult to noeticize God and impossible to put such noēsis into words.» — lo que Cirilo transmite, y por qué le servía.
«the author of this passage meant to say that one should seek to behold the supreme beauty of the pēgē through the eye of the nous in a state of ekstasis.» — lo que el pasaje dice en su contexto propio.
«But Cyril’s audience would read it essentially as a theological statement: for them, this would be a commendable description of the utterly transcendent Christian deity, suggesting that even pagan authorities like Hermes had sometimes glimpsed the truth.» — y lo que ese mismo pasaje decía a su público cristiano.
«The most important of these authors next to Cyril are Lactantius and Augustine.» — los dos ejes de la recepción cristiana latina.
«It helped a lot that he personally agreed – in the sharpest possible contrast with his successor Augustine a century later – that human error resulted not from sin but from “ignorance of oneself” (ignoratio sui).» — por qué Lactancio pudo usar a Hermes con simpatía.
«Lactantius thought of Jesus Christ as “a teacher who saves through gnōsis and the example of a virtuous life.”» — la cristología que hacía compatible a Lactancio con el vocabulario hermético.
«He believed that the Egyptian Hermes had lived after Moses but earlier than Plato, and dismissed him as an advocate of pagan idolatry.» — la posición de Agustín, opuesta a la de Lactancio.
«We have no evidence that he knew the original Logos teleios or any other treatises in Greek that would eventually be included in the Corpus Hermeticum.» — el límite de lo que Agustín pudo leer.
«We have seen that by the eleventh century, just one single damaged manuscript of the Greek treatises had survived apart from the fragments in Johannes Stobaeus’ collection.» — el estado de la transmisión griega al filo del medioevo.
«Only the Asclepius was known to Western intellectuals during the Latin Middle Ages.» — lo único disponible en Occidente durante siglos.
«As for the Hermetic Definitions translated into Armenian, they were resting undisturbed among countless other manuscripts in a library in Yerevan,107 while the Coptic Hermetic papyri lay hidden in a cave near Nag Hammadi.» — dónde estaba, mientras tanto, lo que hoy se lee; el número es la llamada de nota.
«These data demonstrate that at least some parts of the spiritual Hermetica got disseminated through Persian, Syriac, and Arabic translations, but the evidence is fragmentary and hard to interpret.» — lo que la evidencia oriental permite afirmar, con su reserva.
«None of the above provides evidence for a Hermetic tradition in the Arabic context, only for the continuing presence of “Hermes” in Christian and Muslim discourse.» — la distinción entre tradición y presencia de un nombre.
«The revelation left Suhrawardī convinced that true knowledge could not be gained indirectly through cogitation and rational demonstration but only by an immediate experience of illumination» — la tesis iluminacionista de Suhrawardī.
«In his subsequent writings, he claimed that this path had been taught by all the ancient sages ever since the time of Hermes, “the father of philosophers.”» — la genealogía que Suhrawardī se atribuye.
«Suhrawardī was emphatic that spiritual essence could be known only through immediate experience, direct acquaintance.» — el conocimiento por presencia.
«Self-knowledge therefore had to consist in recognizing the identity of one’s own essence with that very same universal light» — el autoconocimiento como reconocimiento de identidad con la luz.
«“To know is to exist and to exist is to know” therefore constitutes a major epistemological theme» — la fórmula que resume esa epistemología.
«for “without a master one does not get anywhere.”» — también aquí la transmisión exige maestro.
«It is very likely that as early as the third century ce, when Hermetic practice was still alive in Egypt, works attributed to Hermes Trismegistus were translated from Greek to Middle Persian.» — la hipótesis de las traducciones persas tempranas.
«Furthermore, of course, we simply do not know how many spiritual Hermetica in Arabic might still have been floating around at the time» — el límite documental de esa hipótesis.
«A recurring theme in the sayings attributed to D-ū l-Nūn is the “invisible community” of awliyāʾ (God’s friends or pious servants), who live anonymous lives in this world while their hearts and spirits “travel in the upper, spiritual worlds, reaching and even penetrating the highest veils that separate God from creation.”» — la comunidad invisible de los amigos de Dios; la transliteración es la del facsímil.
«They were believed to function as “ultimate mediators,” whose devotion guaranteed the world’s spiritual wellbeing and even its physical existence.» — la función cósmica que se les atribuye.
«Because this point is somewhat controversial among specialists, I will here briefly summarize the documentary evidence on which it rests.» — anuncia que va a exponer la evidencia por ser disputada.
«He was credited with several alchemical works that are no longer extant but seem to have been criticized as “fanciful presumptions” in the work (lost as well) of a rival alchemist from Akhmīm.» — la obra alquímica perdida y su crítica, también perdida.
«Abū ʿUbayd al-Bakrī, wrote more specifically that D-ū l-Nūn in his youth had been in the service of a priest (rāhib) at the temple of Akhmīm, who had taught him the hieroglyphic writings on its walls “and showed him the sacrifice, the incense and the name of the spiritual power, ordering him to conceal this.”» — el testimonio que enlaza la tradición árabe con el templo egipcio; la transliteración es la del facsímil.
«D-ū l-Nūn’s involvement in alchemy was bound to be controversial among Sufis and has remained so among scholars of Sufism,151 largely because the practice was often associated with theurgy and magic.» — la controversia y su motivo; el número es la llamada de nota.
«The important fact about al-Ǧalā’s response is that, in spite of the suspicions it might evoke among Sufis, he confirmed his master’s identity as an alchemist.» — lo que vale del testimonio del discípulo, pese a su reserva.
«Summing up, all this information about D-ū l-Nūn, his pupils, and his wider context, lends plausibility to Suhrawardī’s claim about» — el balance de la evidencia reunida, en clave de plausibilidad.
«Since Suhrawardī defined true illumination in terms of knowledge by presence, the unavoidable implication is that for him, what passes as written “knowledge” must refer ultimately to an absence of true knowledge.» — el reencuentro con el problema de Ammón por vía islámica.
«Again, what he called the “light of lights” cannot be understood in modern linguistic terms as a transcendental Signified (the essentially passive object of signification).» — la luz de las luces no es un significado, sino un significante activo.
«The Light from the Source was present. Therefore the sense of it being “absent” from human consciousness had to be the very definition of “ignorance.”» — la ignorancia definida como sensación de ausencia.
«In this triple constellation based on two different texts, Ammon stands for the ultimate Source of meaning beyond human comprehension, Tat is the representative of humanity, and Thoth is positioned halfway between the two.» — el reparto de papeles del mito con que cierra el libro.
«The implication is that without a community of practitioners in which the Hermetic logos was kept alive, one would have nothing else to rely on than Thoth’s pharmakon, the art of writing.» — lo que queda cuando la comunidad se apaga.
«If that is the final word about how immediate human experience relates to written language, one is forced to conclude that Thoth’s instructions to Tat – “write it all down, so that the knowledge may not get lost!” – are not just futile and empty but may even be deceptive.» — la consecuencia extrema del pesimismo de Ammón.
«This general line of argument has the further implication that any attempt to recover the meaning of the Hermetica – including the entire project to which this book is devoted – must be rather pointless as well.» — vuelve a aplicar la conclusión a su propio libro.
«Such conclusions follow with inexorable logic from the basic premises of Deconstruction and allied perspectives known as Theory or Critique, all of them marked by a (post)structural emphasis on discontinuity, rupture, gaps, hiatuses, and lacunae.» — de dónde se siguen esas conclusiones.
«Thoth’s true objective is to break the structure of meaningful communication through logos, and his vote of confidence in the beneficial powers of written discourse is exposed by Derrida as nothing but a mask for hiding the usurper’s patricidal strategy: to erase the very Source of Life and Light from living memory and replace it by the totalizing regime of l’écriture générale.» — la lectura de Derrida como parricidio de la Fuente.
«Derrida’s deconstruction of the Greek “metaphysics of presence” is operated by Thoth’s pharmakon, the infinite web of mutually self-referential signifiers that keep self-disseminating in perpetuity.» — el instrumento con que opera esa deconstrucción.
«Interpretation (hermēneia) is understood quite literally in terms of translation across boundaries, the transfer of significant meaning in the service of dialogue and understanding.» — la definición gadameriana que opone al programa anterior.
«The basic instrument of interpretation is our own human consciousness, that is to say, everything that falls within the horizon of the person who seeks to understand.» — el instrumento y su límite son el mismo.
«they must agree about the very possibility of understanding, its fundamental desirability, the nature and purpose of critique, and its dialectical interdependence with self-critique.» — las condiciones sin las cuales no hay conversación posible entre dos posiciones.
«These boundary conditions turned out to be absent during the most paradigmatic encounter between Deconstruction and Hermeneutics, a famous or notorious “conversation that never took place” in 1981 between its two leading representatives at the Goethe Institute in Paris.» — el encuentro fallido entre Gadamer y Derrida como caso ejemplar.
«Gadamer, who was fluent in French, had been studying Derrida since the early 1960s and was eager to discuss their perspectives on text and interpretation (the title of his paper).» — la disposición de una de las dos partes.
«However, he discovered with dismay that all his attempts to reach out to his colleague in search for common ground, all his professions of genuine interest in finding a basis for mutual understanding (Verständigung) and engage in an actual discussion, were interpreted by default as attempts at appropriation, manipulation, and domination.» — lo que ocurrió con esa disposición.
«Derrida’s response made perfectly clear that, for him, “good will” could only be a mask of the will to power.» — la premisa que hace imposible la conversación.
«Expressions of openness, trust and the search for understanding are therefore dismissed by default, as pious humanistic delusions or manifestations of false consciousness that must be met with eternal suspicion.» — la consecuencia sistemática de esa premisa.
«To borrow a formulation from Roland Barthes, the assumption was that “[t]o speak, and even more so to discourse, is not to communicate … it is to subjugate.”» — la fórmula con que nombra el supuesto; los corchetes son del autor.
«Gadamer as an avatar of Hermes, the promotor of Hermeneutics, could not appear otherwise than as the Thoth of Derrida’s imagination.» — la constelación mítica con que lee el episodio.
«Mediation was ruled out in advance, because even the metaphorical gesture of reaching out a hand could only be an act of concealed aggression.» — el resultado: la mediación queda excluida de antemano.
«In sum, Gadamer assumed the double role of mediator (Hermes) and Source of meaning (Ammon).» — el reparto de papeles, primera mitad.
«Derrida, for his part, assumed the position of Thoth as both the breaker of mediation and the usurper of meaning.» — el reparto de papeles, segunda mitad.
«The revolutionary takeover described in “Plato’s Pharmacy” can be seen as a mythical blueprint for the spectacular career of radical Deconstruction, Critical Theories, and the hermeneutics of suspicion as it would unfold in the humanities.» — el mito egipcio leído como plano de una trayectoria académica.
«The beneficial secret he knew is that texts can be profoundly meaningful as texts.» — el secreto de Thot, en su lectura afirmativa.
«We overlook something essential if we see nothing in them but intermediaries that can be dismissed after the message has been received.» — el texto no es un envoltorio desechable.
«Thoth’s secret is that texts, in addition to their function as media for communication, can also be potent signifiers in their own right.» — la doble función del texto escrito.
«They do not just speak on behalf of an other but possess agency of their own.» — la agencia propia del texto.
«But as a rule, I further suggest, there is no need for us to apply hermeneutic violence to our texts so as to make them confess their crimes.» — la hermenéutica de la confianza que propone frente a la de la sospecha.
«Even the Source does not have a clue in that regard – if it did, it would not be the Source!» — el límite del origen mismo, dicho con humor.
«We are thrown back on connections of meaning and sound that articulate the structure of the whole, and this happens not just once, but always again and again.» — el círculo hermenéutico como proceso sin término.
«Rather, their meaning unfolds in the very process of reading, the hermeneutical circle of interpretation:» — dónde ocurre el sentido de estos textos.
«This is because, far from being just a collection of philosophical banalities (as believed by an older generation of scholars), far from being reducible to a play of empty signifiers (as critical theorists would have it), and in spite of all the damage and corruptions that were inflicted on them during centuries of transmission, somehow these texts still possess a dimension of depth that is the mark of literary classics.» — las dos reducciones que rechaza, y lo que queda en pie.
«I have absolutely no doubt that next time I enter this textual world, I will discover new dimensions that escaped me so far.» — el libro se declara inconcluso respecto de su propio objeto.
«Thoth did invent a drug, not just of reminding but “of memory and wisdom.”» — la conclusión que devuelve a Thot su promesa.
«To be conscious is not to be in time» — la frase con que cierra el capítulo 10, sobre la conquista del tiempo.
«In fact, pharmakon had an even much wider range of meanings, including “pictorial color, painter’s pigment, cosmetic application, perfume, magical talisman, and recreational intoxicant”» — en nota, el abanico semántico completo del término.
«Plato’s εἰδότος is usually translated as “the one who knows,” but it is of great importance that this knowledge is described by visual metaphors of immediate perception, as conveyed in English by our expression “I see!” when we want to say that we understand» — en nota, la metáfora visual escondida en el verbo saber.
«Plato’s famous analogy of the “divided line” in Republic 509d–511e distinguishes between four “passions [παθήματα] of the psyche” on which we rely for all our knowledge: εἰκασία (perception of imaginal appearances), πίστις (belief or trust in a reliable core of perception), διάνοια (discursive thought), and νόησις (noēsis).» — en nota, las cuatro pasiones del alma de la línea dividida; los corchetes son del autor.
«Specifically, Plato writes that the word that is “written in the soul of the learner” by means of oral conversation is thereby capable of “defending itself”» — en nota, por qué la palabra hablada se defiende y la escrita no.
«The idea of mediation is utterly central to the etymology of the English mean as both a noun and an adjective (see also the German Mittel, French moyen), and essential to understand meaning both as a noun and as a verb» — en nota, la mediación inscrita en la etimología de significar.
«Note that the argument affects the very meaning of “meaning”: if the latter exists only in the very act of mediation, then that which it mediates must be strictly without meaning.» — en nota, la consecuencia extrema de esa etimología.
«What Plato really dreams about is “a memory without sign, that is to say, without supplement. Mnēmē without hupomnēsis, without pharmakon”» — en nota, la formulación de Derrida sobre el sueño platónico.
«This terminology of “the source” as a dazzling light is therefore original with Derrida himself: “In this play of representation, the point of origin becomes ungraspable.» — en nota, el origen luminoso e inalcanzable en el propio Derrida.
«How central this universal Source is to Derrida’s thinking about language is further confirmed by the opening quotation of De la grammatologie (p. 11), taken from a scholarly article about cuneiform script that finishes with the words of an anonymous Assyrian scribe: “He who will excel in the science of writing will shine like the sun”» — en nota, el epígrafe con que abre la Gramatología.
«Therefore it is no over-interpretation to conclude that “the Other of scripture” in Derrida’s thought would be precisely gnōsis of the pēgē.» — en nota, la equivalencia que propone entre los dos vocabularios.
«But far from deconstructing metaphysics as such, his own argument is metaphysical through and through.» — en nota, su objeción de fondo a la deconstrucción.
«Therefore nous is certainly not to be understood as a “metaphysical reality”; rather, it defines the limit of metaphysics.» — en nota, la precisión que separa su posición de la metafísica que Derrida ataca.
«Festugière’s Dieu inconnu clearly echoed the “alien God” evoked in Adolf von Harnack’s famous volume Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott (1921)» — en nota, la genealogía del dios desconocido de Festugière.
«He must have been horrified: after fifteen years of diligent labor he finally believed to have demonstrated, once and for all, that “Hermetism is specifically Greek [and] had no profound connections with Egyptian thought or with the oriental gnosis,” and there had never been a “Hermetic church” or “confraternity of mystics” either.» — la reacción de Festugière ante el hallazgo de Nag Hammadi; los corchetes son del autor.
«Again, however, the paradox is that in the absence of a signified, there are no signifiers either; the very distinction on which the entire argument is built is itself a product of différance.» — en nota, la objeción interna a la deconstrucción.
«points out correctly that immediate experience is the blind spot in Derrida’s argument, causing him to remain trapped in the framework of Western metaphysics that he claims to deconstruct» — en nota, la crítica de David Loy que hace suya.
«I hesitate to call the pēgē androgynous, as it seems to be beyond any male-female distinctions.» — en nota, corrige su propio vocabulario sobre la Fuente.
«Significantly (sic), Derrida refers to the limitless dispersal of textual signifiers in written discourse as dissemination, the spreading of seeds.» — en nota, el vocabulario seminal reaparece en el adversario.
«He turns the Source from which signification wells up – the actual Signifier – into the transcendental Signified to which signs claim to refer; therefore the usurpation implies a reversal of the hierarchy, since the original source from which meaning flows now becomes the unattainable telos of the quest for meaning.» — en nota, la inversión que atribuye a la deconstrucción.
«Wildberg confirms Peter Kingsley’s remark that the semantic scope of Logos teleios is “much wider than any English translation” and allows for all these adjectives.» — en nota, sobre cómo traducir el título del tratado perdido.
«The most precise and philosophically sophisticated description of this perspective, which I see as absolutely central to Hermetic spirituality, remains Iamblichus, Response to Porphyry I 3» — en nota, el pasaje que declara central para toda su reconstrucción.
«Most of the other fragments from Cyril are about the logos.» — en nota, qué conserva la cita cristiana y qué deja fuera.
«Van Bladel emphasizes correctly that before Ficino’s translation of the Corpus Hermeticum (1471), Hermes Trismegistus’ fame rested essentially on talismanic, astrological, and alchemical texts attributed to him» — en nota, sobre qué Hermes circulaba antes de 1471.
«Suhrawardī is explicit that the insights of his H.ikmat al-ishrāq “first did not come to me through thinking or discourse but its attainment was of a different nature,” i.e. it came from his direct vision» — en nota, la declaración de método de Suhrawardī; la transliteración es la del facsímil.
«what differentiates these sciences … is that they are experiential sciences (ʿulūm dhawqiyya) which like the sweetness of sugar cannot be described discursively, but must be tasted; they cannot be learned» — en nota, las ciencias del gusto frente a las discursivas.
«they sought to gain control over “the subtle desires and hidden passions of the soul, its voracity, evil intention, and destructive inclinations,” involved a practice of “scrupulous examination and self-observation” in order to cultivate inner and outer stability» — en nota, las prácticas meditativas del linaje sufí.
«Van Bladel’s convincing deconstruction of H.arrān as the center of a “Hermetic school” with a “Hermetic theology” (see above, note 109) does not affect the evidence for H.arrān as a “pagan city” where Hermetic writings were held in esteem» — en nota, distingue lo que cae y lo que queda en pie de esa ciudad; la transliteración es la del facsímil.
«Aristotle himself tells Suhrawardī that not the Peripatetics but “the Sufis Bastāmi and Tustari are the real philosophers”» — en nota, la visión en que Aristóteles desautoriza a sus propios seguidores.
«Ebstein seems to have an agenda of minimizing or dismissing references to “alchemy and the occult” wherever possible» — en nota, adjudica un programa a esa lectura.
«Brockelmann, Massignon, Ullmann and Van Ess all expressed doubts concerning the authenticity of these poems and alchemical works, but without giving arguments» — en nota, dudas repetidas y sin fundamento explícito.
«these connections have been “a source of embarrassment for those interested in maintaining the purely Islamic nature of Sufism and denying its links with previous, non-Arab traditions.”» — en nota, el motivo del malestar ante el vínculo alquímico.
«Ebstein’s scepticism about “Ḏū l-Nūn the Occultist” (ibid., 597–612) is built on the widespread assumption that Hermetism and alchemy imply somewhat distasteful “occult tendencies”» — en nota, el supuesto que sostiene ese escepticismo.
«My previous discussions of Zosimos, Iamblichus, and indeed of Hermetic spirituality as a whole shows that these are polemical stereotypes which fail to account for the evidence» — en nota, la respuesta que da desde el resto del libro.
«It all depends on whether the so-called transcendental Signified is framed as the passive object or the active subject of signification.» — en nota, la bisagra entre las dos lecturas del origen del sentido.
«From a perspective of consistent methodological agnosticism (Hanegraaff, “Empirical Method”; above, Prologue, pp. 4–5), the challenge rather is to take the “emic” perspective seriously» — en nota, la metodología que propone frente a la exclusión de lo no secular.
«Derrida insists on the revolutionary violence of the takeover: “One would have understood nothing about this ‘linguistic’‘immanence’ if one saw in it just the peaceful element of a fictitious war» — en nota, la violencia declarada por el propio Derrida; el facsímil junta las dos comillas simples.
«Hermeneutics is born from the basic experience of strangeness and the universal possibility of misunderstanding (Gadamer, Hermeneutik I, 182–183), to such an extent that its actual occurrence may be qualified not as natural but as a miracle» — en nota, la comprensión como excepción y no como norma.
«Derrida’s “Three Questions to Hans-Georg Gadamer” were originally titled “Good Will to Power” (“Bonnes volontés de puissance”) and attacked Gadamer’s prior assumption of “good will”» — en nota, el título original delata el planteo.
«The virulent antihumanism of Deconstruction and critical theories is well known (e.g. Ferry and Renaut, La pensée 68; Baring, Young Derrida, 4–5, 21–47, 259–294; Cusset, French Theory, e.g. 7–8, 32, 62, 123, 316) and does stand in utter contrast to the deep humanistic commitments of Hermeneutics;» — en nota, el contraste que organiza el capítulo.
«It is not possible here to unpack the notion of “quality” (and its relation to the category of qualia, important in modern philosophies of consciousness), but I see it as arguably the most important and certainly the most neglected key term in the humanities.» — en nota, señala un término que declara pendiente.
«The flip side of that assumption is that in the absence of a message (the signified), texts become mediators with nothing to mediate.» — en nota, la consecuencia de reducir el texto a información.
«The famous slogan “the medium is the message” has a different meaning in Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media (ch. 1) than in the present context, where it means that form and content cannot be analytically separated in high-quality texts,» — en nota, reusa la fórmula declarando el cambio de sentido.
«All good writers put a spell on their audience.» — la primera frase del Epílogo, que retoma la del Prólogo con un adjetivo distinto.
«The real-life influence of scholarly narratives relies not just on factual evidence and reasonable arguments but at least as much, if not more, on their ability to use words for the purpose of enchantment.» — el criterio con que va a leer a Jonas y a Yates.
«Still, no spell will take hold unless it finds a receptive target.» — el hechizo requiere un público dispuesto.
«The imagery must speak to the readers’ lived experience, and historical narratives must resonate with what they feel is happening in their own world.» — la condición de esa recepción.
«I can think of no better example than the story of “gnosticism” told by scholars during the twentieth century.» — el caso que elige para demostrarlo.
«It planted a powerful image in the minds of its readers: that of the gnostic as a stranger, a homeless wanderer lost in a hostile world.» — la imagen que fijó el relato de Jonas.
«Alienation was the key to its enormous appeal.» — la razón de ese éxito, en una línea.
«Seduced by the spell of consumer society, the masses seemed now so alienated from reality that they had lost even the sense of their own alienation – “the society of the spectacle” had become their only reality.» — el clima de época que hizo resonar la figura del gnóstico.
«As famously formulated by Heidegger in a 1966 interview, “only a god can save us now.”» — la fórmula que condensa ese clima.
«But eventually, the directional logic got reversed: for many scholars and philosophers in the wake of Jonas’ work, this concept» — el concepto pasó de describir la antigüedad a describir el presente.
«That very concept, however, was a modern phantasm.» — el veredicto sobre el gnosticismo como categoría.
«A very different spell of phantasmata was set loose in the scholarly community by the publications of André-Jean Festugière.» — el segundo caso del Epílogo.
«Having lost two of his brothers at an early age, Father Festugière was obsessed with the problem of evil and tormented by doubts about whether God loved humanity.» — la biografía que adjudica al atractivo de su obra.
«He deeply longed for an earthly paradise unspoiled by the Fall of Man.» — el anhelo que, en su lectura, se cuela en la investigación.
«Festugière referred to this spiritual perspective as La religion du monde (The Religion of the World).» — el nombre de la visión que Yates tomaría de él.
«Mircea Eliade describes how for large parts of the population, the atmosphere of French existentialism had given way during the 1960s to something entirely different:» — introduce el testimonio de Eliade sobre el cambio de humor.
«Eliade’s immediate reference here was to the “fantastic realism” associated with the French journal Planète and its many international offshoots, which has made a big career in popular culture up to the present; but he might just as well have been writing these lines about the Hermetic Tradition as described by Frances A. Yates» — el puente entre el realismo fantástico y la tradición hermética de Yates.
«Jonas conjured up the frightening modern vision of an inhuman universe, a mute world of spiritual desolation» — el reverso del retrato de Yates.
«It is certainly true that many Hermetic materials concerned with magic or astrology reflect a “holistic” (rather than monistic) worldview of correspondences and occult causalities;23 but the dynamics of cosmic sympathy and antipathy were of little theoretical or practical importance to Hermetic spirituality per se.» — la concesión y su límite, en la misma frase; el número es la llamada de nota.
«Such liberation, however, did not imply an escape from the body and materiality, in terms of the soul’s return from a hostile cosmos to its true spiritual home as imagined by Porphyry or depicted by Hans Jonas.» — la liberación hermética no es la fuga que se le atribuye.
«It is true that this problematic condition was seen as resulting from the soul’s descent into the “seething cauldron” of the body, but it does not follow that embodiment was therefore considered a mistake or catastrophe that must be corrected by returning to a disembodied state.» — la premisa se concede y la conclusión no se sigue.
«Rather, if the soul suffered risks and discomforts, that was the price for leaving home and venturing out into wholly new realities.» — el costo de la encarnación como precio de una aventura, no como castigo.
«This means that the experiential world of multiple phenomena in which we find ourselves is not ultimately real, in the sense that how things appear to our dualistic consciousness is not how things really are.» — el contenido de la no dualidad radical.
«It follows that embodiment cannot be understood in dualistic terms (as the descent of something purely spiritual into its purely material opposite) but should rather be imagined as a unitary spiritual event that is experienced in terms of materiality.» — la encarnación como acontecimiento único vivido como materia.
«He wrote that his great predecessor, Father Festugière, had made an excellent start with his highly innovative» — así introduce el balance de Mahé sobre el estado del campo.
«Mahé was of course referring to the extreme philhellenist agenda of minimizing any Egyptian or “Oriental” influence in the interest of Greek or Hellenic superiority.» — el programa que hay que abandonar, nombrado.
«Rejecting philhellenism means accepting Egypt, along with other parts of what used to be called “the Orient” (the world of the “barbarians” from a Greek perspective), as integrated completely and on terms of full equality in the complex fabric of Hellenistic culture in the Roman period.» — qué implica en concreto abandonarlo.
«One important implication, in my opinion, is that there should really be no room for disparaging terminologies (such as “magic” understood as the Romans did, not to mention references to “murky” practices or “sub-philosophical” thinking, and the like) that send a normative message of superiority/ inferiority» — la consecuencia léxica del programa.
«My insistence on this point is part of a larger reconstructionist agenda of moving beyond traditional grand narratives of “Western culture” towards new, entirely different, and far more complex ones that must fully include and integrate what used to be marginalized or excluded as “rejected knowledge.”» — declara el programa mayor en el que este libro se inscribe.
«Such a program of anti-eclectic historiography is incompatible not just with normative programs of any kind, but also, more generally, with any procedure» — la historiografía antiecléctica y lo que excluye.
«Precisely because philhellenists were so passionately committed to nineteenth-century idealizations of “Greek rationality,” as the superior and exclusive foundation of all true and reliable knowledge, they were singularly ill-equipped to understand what Hermetic authors actually meant» — el compromiso ideológico como impedimento de lectura.
«Philhellenism as a historical phenomenon is defined not just by a Greek-Hellenic bias, but by a “Judeo-Christian” one as well.» — los dos sesgos que van juntos.
«Finally, no factor has dominated the historical imagination more powerfully than the very language of Western metaphysics.» — el tercer y mayor de los factores que enumera.
«The sober fact is that we have no equivalents for these words in our modern languages.» — lo dice de *nous*, *logos*, *noēsis* y *gnōsis*.
«they add themselves to the original words, only to usurp their very meaning and put themselves in their place.» — lo que hacen las traducciones modernas de esos términos.
«However, the meanings and resonances that occur to us when we use that language are very different from those that informed the discourse of the authors.» — el desfase que el libro entero trabaja.
«The central tradition of Aristotle and Kant insists (and I concur) that its activity is not limited to the production of merely “imaginary” or “imaginative” deceptions or delusions, but pertains without restriction to all operations of human cognition – including, of course, everything that is involved in historical research and textual hermeneutics.» — la imaginación como facultad cognitiva y no como adorno.
«Alternative modern terms are needed to capture the meaning of Aristotle’s phantasia: “actual vision” or “true appearance,” that is, expressions that mean exactly the opposite of what literal translations such as “imagination” and “fantasy” would convey to modern readers.» — la traducción literal invierte el sentido del término.
«Aristotelian insight was ignored and misunderstood for about twenty-two centuries, until its rediscovery by Kant and Fichte – after which it got covered up once again, first by Kant himself and then by Hegel, who reestablished the well-known but reductive view of imagination as merely reproductive, recombinatory, deficient, illusory, deceptive, or suspect.» — la historia larga de un malentendido.
«All forms of scholarly practice in the humanities (notably translation, interpretation, and understanding) depend on the unique capacity of our imagination to re-present reality so as to make it appear to our consciousness and, in the very act of doing so, “to see in a thing what it is not, to see it other than it is.”» — la imaginación histórica como condición de las humanidades.
«The practice of history, too, is therefore “impossible and inconceivable outside of the productive or creative imagination” that manifests itself inevitably in the constitution of “a universe of significations.”» — la historia como práctica imaginativa.
«But is it still the same message? To be perfectly honest, we have every reason to doubt it.» — la duda que el libro deja abierta sobre su propio resultado.
«I find it significant that after his 1,700-page attempt to interpret the Hermetic literature, Festugière’s final words were about the limits of communication and understanding: “the historian knows only what he is being told. He does not penetrate the secret of the heart.”» — el cierre de Festugière, leído como confesión de límite.
«On a very similar note of resignation, Fowden finished his monograph by admitting that the spiritual way of Hermetic gnōsis remains “immune from the scrutiny of philologist, philosopher, and historian alike.”» — el cierre de Fowden, en la misma clave.
«Scholarly writing is indeed a pharmakon of enchantment, as I have been arguing throughout this Epilogue: it induces altered states of knowledge that cause the imagination to be filled with phantasmata.» — el diagnóstico aplicado a su propio género.
«The pharmakon to which you have been exposed, dear reader, was designed to change your consciousness, stimulate your imagination, broaden your horizon, even open doors to noetic insight.» — declara el efecto que buscó producir.
«I have deliberately tried to draw your mind into profoundly ambiguous realms of human experience and practice, for although their very existence has seldom been recognized in academic research, I see them as essential to human psychology and deserving of very serious attention.» — el propósito declarado del libro, en su última plana de argumento.
«Actually, Garin’s and Yates’ view of “hermeticism” was remarkably close to earlier understandings» — en nota, la genealogía del paradigma de Yates.
«I see Hermetic nonduality as extremely similar to the famous perspective of Parmenides and its dazzling implications (see Mansfeld and Primavesi, Vorsokratiker, 322): nothing is but what is, and therefore what is not is not and cannot be considered to be.» — en nota, el paralelo parmenídeo de la no dualidad hermética.
«The paradox is deliberate and inevitable, because the distinctions of dualism versus nondualism and unreality versus reality are themselves dualistic» — en nota, asume la paradoja de su propio vocabulario.
«Philhellenism and Orientalism are best understood as two sides of the same coin» — en nota, la relación entre los dos marcos.
«this means that much of Edward Said’s well-known critique of Orientalism should better be directed at Philhellenism.» — en nota, redirige la crítica de Said.
«the fact that they undoubtedly accepted its premise that the foundations of Western civilization are Jewish and Christian but not Islamic.» — en nota, la premisa que sostiene esa construcción de lo occidental.
«who distinguishes between Aristotle’s “second imagination” understood as a “superfluous doublet” dependent on sensation (ibid., 223–225) and the “first imagination” that is basic to any kind of thinking» — en nota, las dos imaginaciones aristotélicas.
«Modern cognitive reseach confirms that “imaginative operations of meaning construction … work at lightning speed, below the horizon of consciousness”» — en nota, el respaldo cognitivo moderno; la fuente imprime *reseach*.
«The question of whether “noeticizing” must be understood here just in our restricted sense of “thinking” or should include the broader range of meaning explored throughout this book is fascinating and important, but not essential to my present argument.» — en nota, deja abierta una pregunta y dice por qué puede dejarla.
«The concept of “radical imagination” implies that its ultimate root (radix) is beyond definition and discursive analysis» — en nota, la etimología que sostiene el término.
«My 1996 study New Age Religion and Western Culture focused on what happens when traditional forms of Western esotericism get reflected “in the mirror of secular thought,” that is, when they get re-interpreted in the secular imagination.» — en nota, cómo sitúa su propia obra anterior dentro de este argumento.
«My 2012 monograph Esotericism and the Academy explored how, in the imagination of Protestant and Enlightenment thinkers, these traditions appeared as the radical counterpart of their own ideal identity.» — en nota, la otra mitad de esa autoubicación.
«In using the term “imaginal,” I take my cue from the excellent discussion by Bottici: “in contrast to the unreal and fictitious, which is associated with the imaginary, the imaginal has no embedded ontological status; it makes no assumption as to the reality of the images that fall within its conceptual domain”» — en nota, de dónde toma el término *imaginal* y con qué carga.
«Contrary to the perspectives of Henry Corbin (who introduced the term to current philosophical debate; ibid., 55; cf. Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy, 299–302) and James Hillman (who developed it further and whose ontological assumptions are noted by Bottici, Imaginal Politics, 58–59), this reflects the radical agnosticism basic to my own work» — en nota, se separa de Corbin y de Hillman en el mismo término.
About the work
145 entries — what the apparatus and scholarship say about it«primarily as philosophical treatises about» — temas teológicos — así resume la CONTRATAPA la interpretación dominante de los escritos herméticos, y anuncia que el autor la desafía mostrando que se ocupaban de prácticas experienciales para sanar el alma de la ilusión mental.
La ficha catalográfica de la Library of Congress da el título completo, «Hermetic spirituality and the historical imagination : altered states of knowledge in late antiquity», y clasifica la obra bajo «Hermetism», «Spirituality – History» y «Knowledge, Theory of – History».
Los agradecimientos consignan que Liana Saif verificó la transliteración árabe del libro, Gregory Shaw comentó los capítulos sobre Jámblico y la teurgia, y Matthew Melvin-Koushki aportó materiales sobre Suhrawardī y el pitagorismo.
El epígrafe del Prólogo es de Gadamer: «Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache» — el ser que puede ser comprendido es lenguaje, en traducción nuestra.
El epígrafe del capítulo 1 es de Lutero: «Qui non intelligit res, non potest ex verbis sensum elicere» — quien no entiende la cosa no puede sacar el sentido de las palabras.
«philosophical language of Platonism lacked a specific term for referring to an organ of perception meant exclusively for mystical intuition» — Festugière sobre el nous, en traducción del propio Hanegraaff.
«the same word nous refers at the same time to the normal instrument for knowing things that can be thought and to the instrument of mystical intuition that enters into contact with the anoēton» — Festugière, continuación del mismo pasaje.
«a person in effect rewrites a text entirely» — David N. Wigtil sobre la traducción: se abandonan la gramática y el vocabulario del original, y el único control del proceso es la idea o pensamiento de la fuente.
«Reitzenstein’s chief error was that he completely obscured the distinction between higher and lower Hermetism.» — Tadeusz Zielinski en 1904, la reacción filhelénica que Hanegraaff reproduce entera.
Consigna que Walter Scott, en el primer volumen de su edición inglesa de 1924, se limitó a las enseñanzas «religious or philosophic» y excindió formalmente las «masses of rubbish» de astrología, magia y alquimia.
«At heart [Hermetism] was a spiritual way, the way of Hermetic gnōsis – a means to an end immune from the scrutiny of philologist, philosopher and historian alike.» — la última frase de The Egyptian Hermes de Garth Fowden (1986).
«In antiquity, true philosophy … means spiritual exercise.» — Pierre Hadot, citado in extenso al abrir el capítulo sobre la sanación del alma.
Registra que Hadot distingue tajantemente los ejercicios espirituales de la formación filosófica corriente de los que producen alteraciones extremas, e insiste en que aquéllos no tienen nada que ver con un estado de trance o catalepsia.
«j’avoue que tout cela me paraît du roman» — Festugière en 1942, despachando la comunidad hermética de Reitzenstein como novela.
«At first encountering the writings of Zosimos, one has the feeling of having entered a chapel, of having access to an esoteric religion full of passwords, fantastic beliefs, and strange rites.» — Festugière, en el pasaje que Hanegraaff lee como argumento contra sus propias conclusiones.
«[W]hat was new and exhilarating for the French reader was the optimistic and holistic outlook which coupled science with esoterism and presented a living, fascinating, and mysterious cosmos» — Mircea Eliade sobre el cambio de humor de los años sesenta.
«where every thing, every being, every force is like a voice yet to be understood … where every word that is pronounced has innumerable echoes and resonances; where the stars are looking, listening, and exchanging signs among themselves the way we do ourselves.» — Eugenio Garin, la visión cosmológica de la que Yates es deudora según Hanegraaff.
«What there is, then, in a dream is an image that goes unrecognized as an image, an image that in the dream is simply taken as the original.» — John Sallis sobre la chōra, en el análisis del que Hanegraaff extrae su definición de la gnōsis.
«a term is a paralyzed word, and terminological use of a word is an act of violence committed against speech» — Gadamer, citado en nota.
«is not the intellect but a principle of lucidity superior to» — ordinary reason, y «strictly untranslatable» — Godel sobre el Νοῦς, citado en nota.
«The historian must ‘get it right.’ He must determine not only what was said […] but what was meant to be said and at what diverse levels of understanding the saying was to be received» — George Steiner, en After Babel.
«Who would disagree? We must describe what we are comparing before we compare.» — Jonathan Z. Smith, con la salvedad gadameriana que Hanegraaff le añade.
El epígrafe del capítulo 4 no es de un clásico sino de la banda de rock progresivo Van der Graaf Generator.
El epígrafe del Epílogo es de Goethe: «Die Geisterwelt ist nicht verschlossen; / Dein Sinn ist zu, dein Herz ist todt!».
En nota remite a su propia obra anterior para el problema de la «tradición hermética» reificada: «On the problematics of a reified “Hermetic tradition,” see e.g. Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy, 327–334 (focusing on Frances Yates)».
«Wouter J. Hanegraaff challenges this dominant narrative by demonstrating that Hermetic literature was concerned with experiential practices intended for healing the soul from mental delusion.» — la contratapa, en tercera persona, anuncia así el giro del libro frente a la lectura de los Hermetica como tratados filosóficos.
«The Way of Hermes involved radical alterations of consciousness in which practitioners claimed to perceive the true nature of reality behind the hallucinatory veil of appearances.» — así resume la contratapa el Camino de Hermes.
«Hanegraaff explores how practitioners went through a training regime that involved luminous visions, exorcism, spiritual rebirth, cosmic consciousness, and union with the divine beauty of universal goodness and truth to attain the salvational knowledge known as gnōsis.» — la contratapa enumera el régimen de entrenamiento que el libro reconstruye.
«They thought of themselves as followers of Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary master of ancient wisdom.» — contratapa, sobre quienes se reunían en casas y santuarios del Egipto romano.
«He is the author of six monographs, including New Age Religion and Western Culture (1996) and Esotericism and the Academy (2012), and editor of eight collective works, including the Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism (2005).» — la nota biográfica editorial, que declara la relación de este libro con el resto de su obra.
«There was quite some interest for Hermetic literature in the Netherlands at that time, largely due to the spectacular and widely publicized efforts of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam.» — los agradecimientos datan en 1991 el arranque de su interés, ligado a la traducción neerlandesa del Corpus Hermeticum.
«The historian of Christianity Roelof van den Broek, one of the two scholars responsible for the 1991 Dutch Corpus Hermeticum translation, became my first model of scholarly excellence in these domains.» — los agradecimientos nombran a van den Broek como su primer modelo académico en el campo.
«It so happened that around the same time, Rosalie Basten, a Dutch businesswoman fascinated by the Hermetica, was reading the Dutch Corpus Hermeticum as well.» — los agradecimientos atribuyen a ese encuentro el origen institucional de la cátedra de Ámsterdam.
«Their meeting was a success, and what came out of their collaboration was a unique academic chair and Centre for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents (HHP), created at the University of Amsterdam in 1999.» — los agradecimientos fechan en 1999 la creación de la cátedra y del centro HHP.
«For any errors that might still remain, the responsibility is of course entirely mine.» — cierra la lista de colegas y lectores que revisaron el manuscrito.
«Whenever I think about the pharmakon of gnōsis and the Hermetic kratēr filled with nous, I see the face of Norberto Jurasek.» — la dedicatoria, que enlaza dos de las imágenes centrales del libro con una figura personal.
«Hermès Trismégiste, vol. 1: Corpus Hermeticum I-XII (A.D. Nock and A.-J. Festugière), Les Belles Lettres: Paris 1991» — la lista de abreviaturas declara las ediciones que el libro cita por sigla; HT es la de Nock y Festugière, Cop la de Copenhaver, HHE la de Mahé y HG la de van den Broek y Quispel.
«interestingly enough “we still do not fully understand what knowledge is” (Nagel, Knowledge, 6, 116).» — Jennifer Nagel, citada en nota al plantear qué se entiende por conocimiento.
«If one divides all that exists in noēton [that which can be thought] and aisthēton [that which can be perceived by the senses], then God belongs evidently on the side of the former.» — Festugière, en el pasaje que Hanegraaff traduce del francés y comenta; los corchetes son suyos.
«But by calling him that, one simply wants to make clear that he does not have a body – one does not mean to say that he can actually be known or understood through discursive language and can be named.» — Festugière, continuación del mismo pasaje sobre la ambigüedad de *noēton*.
«no Platonist would have dreamed even for a second to apply it to phenomena that, while beyond human understanding, still implied the entire intellectual ascent towards the prime noēton.» — Festugière sobre por qué *pneuma* no pudo hacer en griego el oficio que hace *espíritu* en las lenguas modernas.
«although pneuma was latinized as spiritus, in a Greek philosophical or scientific context the adjective ‘pneumatic’ has, if anything, more in common with pneumatic drills than with Christian spirituality.» — David Sedley, citado en nota.
«In what follows, to the theoretical or philosophical writings of Trismegistus we will therefore oppose his technical or practical works.» — Festugière enunciando la oposición que este libro desarma, citado en nota.
«It is an ecstasy … How much illusion may be mixed up in it? We do not know. … It is beyond the domain of reason.» — Festugière cerrando 1 700 páginas de análisis sobre CH XIII, citado en nota.
«All priests were required to wear linen (but never wool) and to be circumcised, unblemished and, subject to a 1,000drachma fine, shaven bald.» — Robert K. Ritner, citado en bloque sobre las restricciones romanas al sacerdocio egipcio; la fuente imprime *1,000-drachma* con guion de corte de línea, que la herramienta une.
«The Chaldaean says that we cannot be borne upwards towards god, unless we empower the vehicle of the soul by material sacraments.» — Miguel Pselo transmitiendo a Proclo, citado en bloque sobre la necesidad de piedras, hierbas y conjuros.
«I said fictions because for us, moderns, it is evident that the Hellenistic stories of revelation contain absolutely no foundation of truth» — Festugière explicitando en qué sentido llamaba ficciones a los relatos de revelación, citado en nota.
«He has no name, or rather, he has every name, because he is One and All; so that one would have to call all things by his name, or give him the name of all things.» — el Asclepius sobre la Fuente innombrable, citado en bloque en traducción del autor.
«Such a being, then, that cannot be perceived by the senses, is unlimited, incomprehensible, and immeasurable.» — el Asclepius, continuación del mismo pasaje.
«It cannot be captured, nor grasped, nor hunted down.» — el Asclepius sobre la Fuente; la serie de negaciones es del propio tratado.
«Where it is, whither it is going, whence it has come, or how it is, or what – all that is uncertain.» — el Asclepius, cierre del pasaje que continúa en la plana siguiente con el movimiento en quietud soberana.
«He, the only one and all things, infinitely full of the fertility of both sexes and ever pregnant with his own will, always begets whatever he wishes to procreate.» — el Asclepius sobre la Fuente masculina y femenina a la vez, citado en bloque.
«Man is therefore a great miracle, a being to be admired and honoured.» — el Asclepius sobre la condición intermedia del hombre, citado en bloque.
«He passes into the nature of a god as if he is a god himself.» — el Asclepius, continuación del mismo pasaje sobre la mezcla afortunada de la naturaleza humana.
«For the teaching about divinity requires a divine noetic concentration if it is to be understood.» — el Asclepius, en boca de Hermes, pidiendo atención plena antes del pasaje difícil.
«It is just like a torrential river, plunging headlong down from the heights so violently that with its rapidity and speed it outstrips the attention not only of whoever is listening but also of whoever is speaking.» — el Asclepius, el símil con que Hermes describe la enseñanza sobre lo divino.
«And it seems to me that the ancient wise men who made temples and statues so that the gods might be present in them, showed insight in the nature of the All.» — Plotino, citado en bloque como testimonio favorable a la animación de estatuas.
«Not only does [man] advance towards God, but he also makes gods.» — el Asclepius en la traducción que él propone; los corchetes son suyos.
«So nobody should be surprised if we say that there is such a thing as pure and divine matter [which] possesses a perfection that makes it suitable to receive the gods.» — Jámblico, citado en bloque sobre la materia pura como receptáculo.
«They are entertained by frequent sacrifices, hymns, praises, and lovely sounds in a mode that reflects the divine harmony, so that the part in them that is celestial, which through constant celestial practice was drawn into the statues, may be content to endure the presence of humanity and remain there for a long period of time.» — el Asclepius, en boca de Hermes, sobre el trato debido a los dioses terrestres.
«All that is divine will depart from Egypt and return to heaven, and Egypt will be a widow, abandoned by the gods.» — el Logos teleios, apertura del anuncio del fin de la misión sagrada egipcia.
«It will no longer be filled with temples but with tombs, and no longer with gods but with corpses.» — el Logos teleios sobre el Egipto profanado.
«Shadows will be preferred over light, death will be preferred over life. Nobody will raise his gaze to heaven.» — el Logos teleios, continuación del mismo pasaje.
«The reverent man will be considered crazy, the irreverent man will be honoured like a sage, the coward will be considered strong, and the good man will be punished like a criminal.» — el Logos teleios: la inversión de la reverencia es el signo del fin.
«I condemn Neilos’ disciples, who are astonished [about] and admire things that do not deserve admiration.» — Zósimo, citado en traducción del autor; los corchetes son suyos.
«And while being calm in your body, calm also your passions of desire and pleasure and anger and grief and the twelve portions of death [moirai tou thanatou].» — Zósimo instruyendo a Theosebeia, citado en traducción del autor.
«So even as sunlight envelops what it illuminates, likewise the power of the gods embraces from outside all that participates in it.» — Jámblico, citado en bloque sobre la luz divina que envuelve lo que ilumina.
«But if they are pushed towards a brief action and up to a certain measured degree, they find their pleasure and satisfaction within measure; and once they are purified profoundly, they are brought to peace through persuasion and without violence.» — Jámblico, citado en bloque sobre el tratamiento medido de las pasiones.
«there exists a unitary connection with the gods that is natural [and indivisible].» — Jámblico, citado en bloque; los corchetes son del autor.
«Therefore we should not claim that this is something to which we can concede or not concede, or consider it as something open to question …, nor is it correct to discuss it as though it were in our power to accept or reject it; for it is rather the case that we are enveloped by it, we are filled with it, and in fact it is only by virtue of knowing that the gods exist that we grasp what we are.» — Jámblico, continuación del mismo pasaje sobre el conocimiento innato.
«Expressed in the language of our fathers, the discourse preserves the clear spirit of the words.» — CH XVI, en boca de Asclepio al rey Amón, citado en traducción del autor.
«For the very quality of the sound [to tès phōnes poion] and the <?> of the Egyptian names [onomatōn] carry in themselves the energy of what is being said.» — CH XVI; los corchetes y el signo de interrogación entre ángulos marcan el estado del texto.
«We, by contrast, do not use mere words but sounds [phōnais] full of power.» — CH XVI, el contraste entre la filosofía griega y los sonidos egipcios.
«For the Greeks, o King, use empty words suitable only for [dialectical] demonstration, because really that is the philosophy of the Greeks: just a noise of words.» — CH XVI, continuación del mismo pasaje.
«For over a thousand years the fate of the Greek tradition was in the hands of those who saw themselves as its opponents in a fundamental sense, albeit in a sense that was always negotiable.» — Anthony Kaldellis, citado en bloque de *Hellenism in Byzantium*.
«Otherwise, these writings seem to have had little impact on the development of Greek or Jewish culture in antiquity, a fact that usually goes unnoticed.» — Kaldellis sobre Filón y Josefo, continuación del mismo pasaje.
«In particular it must be emphasized that this small work, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus because of its pagan contents that were disparate and unfamiliar and unintelligible to scribes with a Christian view of the world, has been sensibly altered by them.» — el primer editor moderno de las Definiciones armenias, citado en bloque.
«He who wants to understand a text always practices some kind of projection.» — Gadamer, citado en bloque; la frase abre el pasaje del que sale el círculo hermenéutico.
«The process of understanding what has been written consists in the further development of such an initial projection, which, however, is revised continuously because of what emerges as one delves deeper into the meaning.» — Gadamer, continuación del mismo pasaje.
«Wishing to avoid one’s own concepts in the act of interpretation is not just impossible but an evident absurdity.» — Gadamer, citado en bloque contra la abstención interpretativa.
«Interpreting means precisely bringing in one’s own prior concepts, so that the text may truly be allowed to express its meaning.» — Gadamer, cierre del mismo pasaje.
«It is therefore impossible to understand the philosophical theories of antiquity without taking into account this concrete perspective that gives them their true significance.» — Pierre Hadot, citado in extenso al abrir el capítulo sobre la sanación del alma.
«One day when I had come to reflect on the things that truly are, and my mind was soaring high while my senses were restrained (as happens to someone overwhelmed by sleep from too much food or from physical exhaustion), an enormous being of immeasurable dimensions seemed to appear to me and call my name.» — CH I, la aparición de Poimandres, citada en traducción del autor.
«A major characteristic of these states is suppression of “objective relativistic framework” that allows an experience to be evaluated as real or unreal.» — Yulia Ustinova, citada en bloque sobre los estados alterados.
«During these states, people often feel that they are in contact with supreme reality, and everything in the world becomes salient and deeply meaningful.» — Ustinova, continuación del mismo pasaje.
«The noetic quality of these experiences manifests itself in feelings of illumination and ultimate salience, and they may change the person’s attitude towards life.» — Ustinova, cierre del pasaje.
«They are not separate, for their union is life.» — CH I sobre la luz, la vida, el *nous* y el *logos*, citado en traducción del autor.
«I myself, nous, come to those who are blessed and good and pure and merciful, to those who have reverence, and my presence brings them help.» — CH I, el *nous* hablando en primera persona, citado en traducción del autor.
«As a gatekeeper I will refuse entry to these bad and shameful impulses by cutting short the imaginations that are built on them.» — CH I, el *nous* como portero de las imaginaciones dañinas.
«But as for those without nous [tois de anoētois] who are bad and envious and greedy and murderous and without reverence – I stay away from them, giving room to the avenging daimōn.» — CH I, el *nous* sobre el daimon vengador; los corchetes son del autor.
«He attacks such a person with his fiery arrow, assails him through the senses, and makes him ready for even worse acts of lawlessness so that the punishment will be even harsher.» — CH I sobre el daimon vengador, continuación del pasaje.
«All this happened to me because I listened to my nous – that is to say, to Poimandres, the word of sovereignty.» — CH I, en boca de Hermes, citado en traducción del autor.
«So don’t let yourself be carried along with that powerful current, those of you who can, but use a counter-current to enter the haven» — CH I, la predicación de Hermes, citada en traducción del autor.
«You cannot hear him and words cannot describe him – you cannot see him with your eyes but only with your nous and your heart.» — CH I, continuación de la misma predicación.
«Thus I believe and bear witness: I go towards Life and Light!» — CH I, la declaración final de Hermes, citada en traducción del autor.
«Once you have seen it, you will never be seduced again by the charm of gold, or clothes, or handsome boys or youths; you will care nothing for those beauties that now take your breath away and kindle such a longing in you and many others like you…» — Diotima en el Banquete, citada en bloque.
«The astonishment that leads to admiration plays an important role in philosophy: it is at the origin of knowledge [Plato, Theaet 155d] and is a motor of contemplation.» — Anna Van den Kerchove, citada en bloque sobre el vocabulario del asombro en el Asclepius.
«For the cosmos is the totality of all that is bad, whereas God is the totality of what is good, or if you will, the Good is the totality of God.» — CH VI, citado en bloque como el pasaje más aparentemente dualista del corpus.
«One must dare to say it, Asclepius, that God’s being (if he has one) is Beauty; but neither the Beautiful nor the Good are to be found in anything that exists in the cosmos.» — CH VI, continuación del mismo pasaje.
«If you can perceive God noetically, then you will perceive the Beautiful and the Good, that which illuminates everything and is illuminated by God alone.» — CH VI, la salida noética que el mismo tratado ofrece.
«Logos does not get to the truth, but nous is powerful, and when it has been guided by logos up to a point, it has the means to get [as far as] the truth.”» — CH IX, citado en traducción del autor; el corchete es suyo.
«the soul never noeticizes without a phantasm” (oudepote noei aneu phantasmatos hē psuchē).» — Aristóteles, citado sobre la dependencia del pensar respecto de la imagen.
«Visible appearances [phainomena] delight us, but we doubt what we cannot see.» — el Corpus Hermeticum sobre la inversión de la evidencia; los corchetes son del autor.
«the Monas is the origin and root of all things, it is present in all things as their root and origin.» — el Corpus Hermeticum sobre la Mónada, citado en traducción del autor.
«Yes indeed, my son. But we are still too weak now for this vision, we are not yet strong enough to open the eyes of our nous and look on the imperishable, incomprehensible beauty of that Good.» — el Corpus Hermeticum, en boca de Hermes, citado en traducción del autor.
«He who has once come to this knowledge [noēsai] can know nothing else, he who has seen it can see nothing else, he cannot hear of anything else, nor can he move his body at all.» — el mismo pasaje: la visión suspende todos los sentidos; los corchetes son del autor.
«For it is impossible, my child, for the soul to see the beauty of the Good and be deified while still being in a human body.» — el mismo pasaje, con la reserva sobre el cuerpo.
«Tell your soul to travel to India, and it will be there faster than your command.» — CH XI, la instrucción de Nous a Hermes, citada en traducción del autor.
«Nothing can stop it, neither the fire of the sun, nor the ether, nor the cycles of the stars, nor the other heavenly bodies.» — CH XI, continuación del mismo pasaje.
«If your nous can behold all these things simultaneously [noēsas] – times, places, actions, qualities, quantities – then you can know [noēsai] God.» — CH XI, el cierre del ejercicio; los corchetes son del autor.
«So will you say “God is invisible”? Don’t speak like that.» — CH XI, en boca del Nous, citado en traducción del autor.
«He has made everything so that you might see him through all that is.» — CH XI, continuación del mismo pasaje.
«For nothing is invisible, not even among the incorporeals.» — CH XI, cierre del pasaje sobre la visibilidad de lo incorpóreo.
«But while all are deceived, yet usually those are less deceived who at some time, as happens occasionally during sleep, become suspicious and say to themselves: “Perhaps those things are not true which now appear to us; perhaps we are now dreaming.”» — el epígrafe del capítulo 8, de Marsilio Ficino.
«the organism dies when the soul leaves the body, but … the soul itself dies when it leaves the single and indivisible source of its true nature and is dispersed in a mortal frame.» — Macrobio, citado en bloque sobre las dos muertes.
«The solution is therefore kosmou apallotriousthai (“to become a stranger to the cosmos,” Corp. Herm. XIII 1), but also: eauton diexerchesthai (“to pass out of oneself,” ibid. 4), and the more this gnostic principle is transformed into practical mysticism, the more the two fall together, both conceptually and in terms of praxis.» — Hans Jonas, citado en bloque; de aquí sale, según Hanegraaff, la idea de un dualismo tajante hermético.
«The gnōsis of God [gnōsis theou] has come to us.» — CH XIII, la llegada de la primera potencia, citada en traducción del autor; los corchetes son suyos.
«And with its coming, ignorance was driven out, my child.» — CH XIII, continuación de la misma serie.
«Fourth now I summon perseverance [karterian], the power against lust.» — CH XIII, la invocación de la cuarta potencia; los corchetes son del autor.
«The next step, o child, is the seat of justice [dikaiosunēs], for see how without trial it has driven out injustice.» — CH XIII, la quinta potencia.
«I call towards us the sixth power, generous sharing [koinōnian], the one opposed to greed.» — CH XIII, la sexta potencia.
«See how the good [to agathon] finds its fulfilment, my child, at the arrival of truth.» — CH XIII, el cierre de la séptupla con la llegada de la verdad.
«No torment attacks from the darkness anymore.» — CH XIII, el resultado del procedimiento.
«Watch your language and do not give voice to what is impossible! Otherwise you will go astray and the eye of your nous will get clouded.» — CH XIII, la corrección de Hermes a Tat, citada en traducción del autor.
«They fulfill your will, for your will comes from you and returns to you, the All.» — CH XIII, del himno del renacimiento, citado en traducción del autor.
«It is you who are God, and your Human is shouting through fire, through air, through earth, through water, through the spirit, through your creatures!» — CH XIII, continuación del himno.
«the soul has no quality or quantity, but as it is born it acquires them by necessity as accidents of matter.» — un fragmento hermético citado en nota sobre lo que el alma adquiere al nacer.
«Although existing eternally in it, it eternally contains everything by its own nous and light and pneuma.» — el fragmento hermético sobre la Fuente, citado en traducción del autor.
«For he is Lord of all, and Father, and God, and source [pēgē], and life, and power, and light, and nous, and Pneuma, and everything is in him and under him.» — el mismo fragmento; los corchetes son del autor.
«There has never been anything dead in the cosmos, nor is there or will there be any such thing.» — el Corpus Hermeticum sobre la inexistencia de la muerte, citado en traducción del autor.
«Likewise if God would not do them – but it isn’t right to even say this – then he would not be God.» — el Corpus Hermeticum sobre la generación incesante de la Fuente, citado en traducción del autor.
«But one of the features that are original in CH XIII and NH VI6 consists in posing that the soul’s regeneration by the divine intellect is an anticipation of the ascent to the heavens; let us go further and state that the two realities are equivalent.» — Jean-Pierre Mahé, citado en bloque; la formulación de la que Hanegraaff se aparta.
«I call upon you who rules over the kingdom of power, whose Logos is an offspring of Light, whose words are immortal, eternal and immutable,» — NH VI6, la invocación inicial, citada en traducción del autor.
«But logos that comes [only] from logos is perdition.» — NH VI6, citado en traducción del autor; el corchete es suyo.
«For the human being is mortal through his body but immortal through logos.» — NH VI6, continuación del mismo pasaje.
«I understand [noeticize] the Nous: Hermes, who is beyond Hermeneutics because he rests within himself!» — NH VI6, en boca de Tat; el corchete es del autor.
«Return to the death-state, my child, and do it all in silence.» — NH VI6, la orden del Nous por boca de Hermes; el estado de muerte es aquí el de la luz.
«Theuth said “O King, here is a knowledge that, once it is learned, will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory; for it is a drug [pharmakon] of memory and wisdom that I have discovered.”» — el Fedro de Platón, citado en traducción del autor; el corchete es suyo.
«They will cease to exercise their memory because they will rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance by means of external signs [hup’allotriōn tupōn] and no longer from within themselves.» — el Fedro, la respuesta de Ammón; los corchetes son del autor.
«You will enable them to hear of many things without proper instruction, and so they will seem to know many things, whereas in fact they will for the most part be ignorant – and unpleasant too, because they will not really be wise but will only appear so.» — el Fedro, continuación de la objeción de Ammón.
«So if there is an incorporeal eye, let it go out from the body to the vision of the Beautiful, fly up and soar on high, seeking to behold not a shape nor a body, nor forms [ideas], but rather that which made these things, that» — un fragmento hermético conservado por Cirilo, citado en traducción del autor; los corchetes son suyos.
«For logos cannot attain to God, who is totally untouchable and unattainable, but it subsides and ebbs away, unable to find the proper words to use as a basis to reveal … even his attendant powers» — un fragmento hermético citado en nota sobre el límite del *logos*.
«There are probably more works attributed to Hermes surviving in Arabic than in any other language, and the majority of them are still unknown and unpublished.”» — Kevin van Bladel, citado en nota sobre la abundancia de Hermetica árabes.
«The problem of Hermes Trismegistus is a scholarly swamp of substantial acreage, muddiness, and gloom, and its Arabic bayous are far less explored than the Greek.”» — John Walbridge, citado en la misma nota.
«Man was no longer condemned to a rather dreary condition humaine; instead he was called both to conquer his physical universe and to unravel the other, enigmatic universes revealed by the occultists and gnostics.» — Mircea Eliade, citado en bloque sobre los años sesenta.
Concepts treated
Gnosis (conocimiento salvífico) — Estado de conocimiento absoluto y percepción directa alcanzado al trascender el horizonte de la conciencia humana; queda más allá de verificación y falsación.
Nous — Facultad de percepción directa cuyas operaciones «no tienen absolutamente nada que ver con el pensar»; ninguna traducción moderna le sirve.
Eusebeia — La virtud rectora: reverencia profunda ante la Fuente de la Luz y la Vida universales.
Imaginación (phantasia) — El «hechizo de los phantasmata», la corriente indócil de imágenes mentales cargadas de emoción, es la condición que la práctica hermética venía a curar.
Theurgia (obra divina) — Jámblico la sostiene como necesaria para la salvación: el alma debe ser sanada y el cuerpo potenciado por los dioses, y no basta la contemplación intelectual.
Microcosmos (el hombre-mundo) — Estatuas y seres humanos son «entidades dobles» con la capacidad única de participar a la vez en lo espiritual y lo corporal.
Ocultismo (occultisme) — El rótulo de filosofía hermética servía para separar la reflexión respetable de la práctica «oculta» desacreditada, no para describir los textos.
Alquimia Espiritual — Zosimos de Panópolis, artesano del metal y pionero de la práctica que hoy llamamos alquimia, es uno de los tres únicos practicantes herméticos conocidos por su nombre.
Logos — Media entre la materia y el nous: no es palabra que remita a otra palabra sino energía fertilizadora que imprime sus signaturas en lo receptivo.
Noesis — Percepción directa que no admite discurso: el logos guía al nous hasta cierto punto y desde ahí el nous alcanza la verdad por su propia fuerza.
Aion — El tercer género de CH XI, entre Dios y el Cosmos, que rompe la pareja ser-devenir como la chōra del Timeo; traducirlo por eternidad borra la distinción.
Heimarmene — La maquinaria cósmica del destino administrada por los siete gobernadores planetarios; el nous, situado por encima, permite resistirla sin cancelarla.
Daimon (entidad intermedia, ni ángel ni demonio) — Fuerzas que ocupan el cuerpo al nacer y operan desde dentro, arrastrando las pasiones; el renacimiento consiste en expulsarlas.
Pneuma — Aliento divino que enciende el vehículo luminoso del alma y hace posible la visión; latinizado como spiritus, en griego no significa lo que espíritu significa hoy.
Mónada (el glifo que condensa el esquema entero) — Imagen interior única e inmutable que solo percibe el ojo del corazón, origen y raíz de todas las cosas y presente en todas ellas.
Iniciación (recepción por grados / metamorfosis del ser) — No hay ceremonia ni grados: el Camino de Hermes se entiende mejor como entrenamiento espiritual en grupos de un maestro y uno a tres discípulos.
Secreto (lo que se jura no fijar por escrito) — El silencio es a la vez condición y contenido: la matriz del renacimiento es sabiduría noética en silencio, y Tat recibe la orden de no divulgar la visión.
Cadena de transmisión (quién tomó de quién) — Zósimo remite a la tablilla de Bitos, a Platón el tres veces grande y a Hermes el infinitamente grande; Jámblico menciona a Bitos en la frase donde acuña el «camino» de Hermes.
Prisca theologia (la teología antiquísima) — Jámblico responde a Porfirio invocando las antiguas estelas de Hermes que ya habrían consultado Pitágoras y Platón para levantar sobre ellas toda su filosofía.
Crítica de fuentes (criterios de inclusión y descarte) — Los manuscritos dependen de un arquetipo dañado y de copistas bizantinos que «domesticaron» el texto; la claridad de Estobeo mide su intervención, no su antigüedad.
Magia Natural — Los materiales herméticos de magia y astrología reflejan un mundo de correspondencias, pero las dinámicas de simpatía y antipatía cósmicas tenían poca importancia para la espiritualidad hermética.
Philosophia perennis (filosofía perenne) — La superioridad de la práctica religiosa egipcia sobre la filosofía griega es básica en Jámblico, y de ahí la autoridad tradicional que los escritos herméticos tenían para él.