*Hermes Trismegistus

Anointed the god of knowledge by Alexandrian thinkers in gratitude for his founding of Hermetism, is today seldom mentioned. This is probably because little of his writing has survived to this day, and if it has, through Platonic thought etc., it is not credited to him but to the philosopher who speaks his creed. The early Christians did not help either, as while they were busy censoring their own scriptures they also saw the importance of defiling and destroying any possible outside threat to their congregation. Hermes was also referred to as the Egyptian god Thoth, in line with the Egyptian custom of transforming a prominent mortal into a deity after death. Alexander the Great is thought to have searched for his tomb, legend has it that he was successful and retrieved the legendary Emerald Tablet, this tablet was similar to the first tablet made by Moses, and it should perhaps be noted that the similarity between Moses and Hermes caused some medieval scholars to speculate that they were one and the same. Today modern day scholars conjecture that the various texts are written by more than one writer, they also believe that the age of the texts to be no older than AD 300. ................

In 1463, Marsilio Ficino translated into Latin the first fourteen chapters of the Corpus Hermeticum. These ancient texts, first printed in 1471, would soon set Europe ablaze with avid interest in the legendary Hermes Trismegistus. Because some of Hermes's discourses were akin to Biblical thought (particularly Hermes view of creation titled 'Poimandres', which was thought to be similar to Genesis) they were readily accepted by a new and eager audience. Other chapters which were pagan and Platonic in nature, would infiltrate old ideas anew: Here rebirth, reincarnation, astrology, talismans, demons and angels abounded, power was here to be found and Hermes was clearly showing how to find it.

CHAPTER XV

Tat can now see where he1s from,

Now with life he will bind strong.

Tat: Father, are you there and can I enter?

Hermes: Yes my son, I am over here, come and sit with me and tell me how is your dreaming now?

Tat: Father I know why you have asked me that question! Did you see me walk on water when I slept last night?

Hermes: Tat tell me all that you did.

Tat: Last night in my dream, I stopped as you have taught me, I slowed it down and kept it slow by looking at my dream hands. I was in a landscape which was all green and lush in vegetation, I could not see the desert or our mountains. There was a lake with an island on it. I remembered what you said.

Hermes: Well done, tell me when you reached the lake, how far away from it were you and how many times did you pull your hands up to hold the dream? Tat: That's the funny thing, normally I have to keep pulling my hands up otherwise the dream moves too quickly and I lose it, but last night I knew I really didn't need to keep looking at my hands. It was a long distance away but I only pulled my hands up 2 or 3 times, and even then this was because of past habit.

Hermes: Tell me when you saw the water how did it look?

Tat: Father it was so clear, I saw small fishes, weed and the contours of the lake floor made by the moon as well as the moving reflection of my face and light shimmering on its surface. But I remembered what you said and I looked ahead and kept walking towards the island. Only when I was half way there did I look down to confirm that I was walking on the water and not in it! I could now also see larger fishes and I realised that the lake was very deep, for the fishes would disappear down into it's dark depths, Reuel would have wished to cast his net in this lake! I lifted my head and continued to reach the island.

Hermes: Did you see anyone else?

Tat: Yes! A man approached me from the island as I crossed the Lake, he also walked on the water, he looked vaguely familiar but I didn't want to think much about him as I felt I might be distracted by him, I briefly thought about you, and wondered if you would be pleased enough to stand on one leg when I told you about this when I woke later.

Hermes: Tat! This is important, what did you see on the island?

Tat: When I reached the island, I saw some stone steps which went to some sort of ruin on a hill. I climbed the steps. When I reached the top I stood around some broken pillars and looked up at the sky. I then floated upwards. I started to rise faster and faster, and soon found myself in a sort of tunnel with two red insect like creatures at the far end, they were as big as me. Though I feared them, I went up to them to pass, things started to fade. At the same time I felt my whole body tingle, like I was being touched all over by fine sweeping twigs.

Hermes: Tat well done! When I next see Ganem, I shall tell him how wrong about you he was, he said you'd slip and spill your seed before the Sun had reached the Thigh. You've proved him wrong and I am so very proud of you!

Tat: Father, what does all this mean?

Hermes: Last night you rose and past two deacons on the Tree, they are now your allies. But let me remind you of why you were able to walk on water, when you dreamed, the dream you were in was created by you, every thing you saw in front of your eyes was literally that! For example, if you dreamt of a large boulder rolling along a path with a tree on the other side of the path, then when the boulder rolls in front of the tree, the parts of the tree hidden by the boulder actually disappears!

Tat: Father that's impossible! Surely it is easier to make a landscape with depth than it is to make a flat landscape that has to merge all the time in order to keep up with moving objects as well as when I also move? And what about my hands, with them I can reach out and grasp things, last night I could have put my hands through the water and caught a fish!

Hermes:Tat, don't be fooled by the laws of this life! You are not realising that your dream hands are also made by you, put them behind the boulder and they will also disappear or if you put them in water and your hands would appear to merge with the weed and fish as it would in this life, but when you dream it might look like you hands are amongst fish in water, but if you remember that every thing you see is made by you, you will begin to see your potential. Remember the painter from Thebes who paints on flat panels objects and that have depth, when you first saw his lute you tried to pluck one of its strings!

Tat: Yes I remember and I do now see, you are saying that everything in my dream is me, I don't just end at my fingertips!

Hermes: That's right Tat, and last night you made a big step, you also made two allies, dreaming is but one way to have faced them as many roads lead to a city. This is your first step on the path of wisdom, before you die I believe there is every chance that you will merge with God and become one with him. Before last night, you were a son of man. Now the womb of wisdom is opening to you and you will soon rebirth and become a son of God, then I believe you might be able to merge with God in order to become a true Son of God, then you will find that you are connected to all things and can influence your own destiny, you will be free of the 7 governors. You will also be able to do in real life as you have done in your dreams, because this life is someone's continuing dream, and now not only will they be dreaming it but you as well, because you will have reconnected to it's maker to make the two of you one.

Tat: Do you mean I shall then be able to walk on the sea? What will Reuel say if he saw me walking past his boat as he casts his nets!

Hermes: Tat, show your powers off and you will be hounded by the sick and the lost. And your life will start to feel as it was when I first saw you when you were begging in the market at Edom. And when you die they will fight over you and kill in your name thinking that they are serving you when really they are doing nothing but serving their own selfish ambitions. They will build blocks of stone to keep you in, and worship altars and idols and make laws in your absence. All their years of ritual will achieve little because they will be reliant on you to offer them salvation, but the only salvation they will ever find is if they realise that it is up to each and every individual to return to God by their own efforts. Your memory to them should be that of an example, but all to often this won't happen as knowledge is nearly always lost or hidden.

Tat: Father, surely if I am able to connect with God in this life, it will not be by my efforts but because of you!

Hermes: Tat, one day you will realise that I am just a part of you, you could say that I am a bit of you from the future, and that I keep returning to you to help you to aid yourself so that you can merge with God. When you merge and join the light you will then realise that you are also me, and everything else on this Earth as well as the stars and sky. Learn to love all that you see and you will merge quicker with it, like your dream everything around you is actually a part of you waiting to reconnect with you.

Tat: Father, please tell me of sin, where is it hiding. And how can I avoid it?

Hermes: Tat, sins made in our past will govern our present and determine our future. If we have no sin, then we would not be here, as sin separates us from God. When all sin is redeemed then we will reconnect with God and become one with him. The problem we have is that every time we are reborn into this world, the world due to our past sins becomes harder and harder to exist in without creating further sin. Nevertheless it can be done.

Tat: Father, how do I sin?

Hermes: Tat, the answer to this is so simple, you will sin, to varying degrees, when ever you kill, harm, enslave encroach on any other living thing. And the reason why you harm other things is simply because you do not love them or withhold your love from them so that you can use them for your own ends. Take the bean tree the carpenters cut down near the village, if they they were connected with it they would have seen its right to exist, however they were blinded and saw only their own ends and not the tree's. People find this hard to believe, because there appears to be no retribution due to the span of time, people cannot see that their actions are not only harming others but will inevitably also harm themselves.

Tat: So do you mean if some one goes to the market and buys some roots to eat, they will pay two prices, one for the roots to the seller and one for killing them?

Hermes: Yes Tat! But The grower, all the traders who handle the roots and also those who prepare them, they will all get a share of the roots death.

Tat: Will the share be in proportion to the money spent by the buyer and the percentage received by the grower and traders?

Hermes: No Tat, to find this out you will have to go into the root by connecting with God. Remember Tat, every thing you see before you is Gods dream, and therefore a part of God, the element out side this is man because of his sin which keeps him unconnected.

Tat: But what about beasts, they kill to live, are they connected?

Hermes: No Tat, but they like us are part of God and God's plan to make more conscious thought, they will one day gain the intellect of man, man remember is just one of the high beings of this planet.

Tat: I now see why you refuse certain foods and live of locust bean husks, fruits and seeds. As all these things are harvested with out harming the plant or in the case of the grasses, after the grass itself has died.

Hermes: That's right Tat, seeds are acceptable to eat until they start to grow, then they also flow with destiny, but you cannot live on just this alone, you must know how to flow in life's course and not your own selfish one, for the flow of life is God's .

Tat: But tell me, there are groups of people who believe that they can cancel sin by sacrificing animals to their god, why is this?

Hermes: They are deluded, they think the animal or plant is theirs to give, and that by giving away something that they would desire themselves, they will gain some benefit, they will only gain the sin of killing another being. They believe that because they treat other beings as their possessions then God does also, but this God does not do because he is all things. The thing they should give is themselves, but they would not wish to do that so offer something that is not theirs in their place.

Tat: It is also said that children inherit their ancestors sins, is this true?

Hermes: If a man dies with some sins that he has not resolved, he will rise again later on Earth, if he has a great deal of unresolved sins he might be born with an ailment or have some hardship befall him, this is the only way to keep all things balanced. Some souls, by their own choosing will be born with some ailment, for they will grow nearer to God by enduring hardship. Because souls often come back to the same family line, some who do not see this, suggest that because they are born with an ailment then they have inherited their fathers sins, they have in fact inherited their own. However when a man inherits a place of work from his father and the workplace incurs sin, if he accepts the business he will inherit similar sins that his father had found.

Tat: Father, I now see why when you brought me here from Edom, you found me work in the eating house, and left strict instructions that I was to be paid for my duties by choosing any leftovers before they were thrown to the swine.

Hermes: Yes Tat, this has enabled you to cancel some of the sins you incurred in your last life. Tat: Thank you for this father now I can see more clearly.