JackDaydream wrote: ↑August 12th, 2021, 8:50 am
…one strong influence has been the figure of Hermes Trismegistus, who wrote, 'The Hermetica.
The Corpus Hermeticum Investigated
A monk (speech in regular type, no quotes)
And a nun (speech in italic type, no quotes)
Talk a bit and then meet Hermes’ spirit
(Speech in regular type, in double quotes.)
I have read in the current ancient tome
That a man’s mind is God in human form
Though it does admit this idea is rough
And might not with normal logic conform.
So, like you and me, mind and God unite
Just as the sun is connected to light.
I am guessing this goes for women too
And need to ask you now if this is right?
What’s here now has to be as that long before,
Not new out of the blue, for there is no more;
So we and all are akin to what is,
Ne’er less—we're united beyond the door.
Why do we wander around in the dark,
In the middle of the night like this?
Well, if we knew the answer to that one,
We would have been home hours ago.
Whatever is eternal and is so well defined
Could never be as so, for it was never defined
In the first place, for that there never was
To define all that it forever did and does.
Every-thing, every order happens for a reason.
Yes, for the most part, for most seasons,
But not for the bottommost cause the first,
For there was nothing before it to reason it forth.
Hermes’s now arrived, full of energy.
“Hail to the All, philosophical clergy.
I’ve read your poems’ presents to the forum.
I a-rose from death, from fumes down the stems.”
The young nun now caught in the light that shined,
Stilled her racing heart and then searched her mind
For questions fit for resurrected Guides
To ask the Apparition by her side.
She hoped that in some miraculous ways
Her monk was included in the god’s gaze
But fearing that she might be all alone
She addressed the spirit in trembling tone.
Great Hermes, I have lately read your words
And have some questions you might find absurd
My abiding wish is to understand
And beg your patience with my learning bland.
I’m seeing, said her monk, his spectral form.
He’s moving, by Something, out of his norm.
We’ve stirred him from the underground city—
Of unity in multiplicity.
The spirit then turned as the world stood hushed,
Regarded the nun with her young face flushed,
“Your quest and your love are both holy pure
And deserve answers you are seeking for.
“All must at last to itself return One,
When each age of long existence is done.
Matter exists by reconstitution
And existence works by revolution.
“The One splits and breaks to diversity,
So becoming the All that you can see.
Humanity, twixt their birth and their death,
Is the turning point of this Holy Breath.
“All matter is chains of numbers composed,
Built into each entity’s science code.
That’s how Life keeps order within the change,
As One to All simply builds and erodes.
“This is the message so plain and so clear
That you two alone are given to hear,
The Will of each living self-conscious mind
Chooses animal death or spiritual bind.”
The Spirit, casting a gentle eye, smiles
As confusion grips the two neophiles.
“Come, I will show you through simpler means
How the Cosmos turns as wheels within wheels.”
The monk asks Herm, How did you figure some—
That Something is both the All and the One?
Why doesn’t stillness reign, in the solid One,
It thereby e’er inert—as its nature’s sum?
“I’ll soon have at that one, but first the move,
As I’ve not done much of that in the tomb.
See the flowers waved by the mixing airs?
Fluidity must be, and we’ll get there.”
“All that’s moved, is it not moved in something
And by something?”
If it’s not the same thing.
“Mustn’t that in which it’s moved have greater aim
Than the moved?”
Yes, if not one and the same.
“Mover has greater power than movable?”
If coterminous, not cosubstantial,
Yet then there’s still but One at work—4D,
Casting here its shadow in space 3D.
“The nature of that in which it is moved
Must differ from the nature of the moved?”
If there are two enfolded as the One.
“Is not this Cosmos so vast?”
If none sum.
“And massive too, crammed with multitudes?”
Extravagance beyond measure, dude.
“Yet the Cosmos is a body, one that’s moved?”
Or ongoing continuation of IS.
“What size, then, be the space in which it’s moved;
What must be the nature of that so huge?”
It must be far vaster than the Cosmos,
In order to be able to find room.
Thrice-greatest one, it’s immensely vast.
Since your template’s used, then you must again,
But if it has only one usage, then…
“I’ll study anew—more’s known since back then.”
(Hermes may get back to us on the different natures.)
All from stardust begins and ends in thee.
The mighty wrecks of the elements are strewn
Across the universe, like chaff from the harvest,
Much of the Cosmos still a vast wasteland.
The timeless-formless contains every path,
Though as useless as a library of all books;
For its sum of information is zero,
But one of these possible avenues became ours.
As for more unneeded but curious whys
About all that must move in Cosmos’ skies,
Energy is not a quiet something;
Inside the Something, it is everything!
Newton noted motion moves if not stopped,
Continuing on its steady way, adept;
So there’s no force to constrict it in place,
Since there’s nothing beyond the Everything.
Ah, yes, movement’s natural, not stillness,
For sure, since we see it, and none the less.
You may have just identified a proof,
But no one needs that when we have the truth!
Well, we are all part and parcel of the IS,
And some may well call it the Great Wiz,
But I shan’t yet make Person upon it,
Yet ‘being’ here’s the same Being Everywhere—IT.
Being and all that it is not exhaust
All Possibility, as opposites,
And so they must form a duality,
For there’s no point to specify either.
Object and Subject are of what Man is made,
Qualia brightly floating in Nature’s shade
Of consciousness, and so then down through history
Duality’s track of steps is there to see.
The underwriter of the universal wave of matter
Covers all loss and liability,
Guaranteeing payment, by dipping into Possibility,
Issuing both the credit and the debit.
We do not just live and love; we are life and love.
They do not flee on, just ahead, unreachable,
Leaving us but to lean and drink their wind.
We are the universe turned around to view itself.
Zest, desire, caring, and other feelings sweet
Are our lightning feet for triumphant feats.
All manner of shapes haunt the wilds of the mind,
Just waiting and asking to be tamed as sane.
Thoughts fly in the mind like birds wing the wind;
Imagination is the atmosphere wherein ideas are born
And borne on the waves of the sea in which one sees,
Thereupon sprouting from the wings into actions seized.
“Aren’t we somethings the Something the same,
Not a part or apart, but the whole shebang?”
On this we agree, naming differently,
God’/All is inclusive of you and me.
What IS both must be, and it must be what it be
Not only temporally but also spatially.
For What IS to be across times is for it
To be ungenerated and deathless;
And for it to be what it is across times is for it to be ‘still’.
For What IS to be everywhere is for it to be whole.
For it to be what it is at every place is for it to be uniform;
And to be so everywhere is for it to be ‘complete’.
And for IS to be across times is to be ‘still’.
To be everywhere is for it to be whole.
To be what it is every place is to be uniform;
To be everywhere is to be ‘as whole’.
Altogether, IS is everlasting, immutable,
Internally invariant of uniform wholeness,
And invariant of being optimally shaped.
What IS is necessary and perfect.
We are as beings of the everlasting light dream,
As products time and time again by its means,
Of the eternal return, as baubles blown and burst,
Though frames of time that quench life’s thirst.
Time future, time present, and time past
Are all at once, with not a bit of it to last.
The glorious light flashes us into being shone,
As the light ‘eternal’ of all time to be known.
Life’s matters here are but significant
To themselves, which, all the same, grants,
For All is all, and so there is no more,
Just diverse realities through the doors.
Meaning’s not caused; All had no creation—
IT has no time or place of origin;
So the meaning’s ‘meaning’ is ‘experience’,
Which is a deduction, but it makes sense.
Sensing that Hermes was on their side
Angelina was prompted to confide
Her deepest ideas on the old book’s words
With the hope her ideas were not backwards.
So taking a grip on monk Peter’s hand
And praying that Hermes would understand,
She took a step forward and raised her eyes
To gaze at the Spirit so old and wise.
We read of your words to Asclepius.
The depth of talk was confusing to us
But, as a woman, I see through the dross,
So here’s my take, without all the gloss.
You’re trying to show us what God is not
By the differences in creation’s lot.
So we can gain some plain, simple idea
Of a state contrary to all that’s here.
God is not space, nor empty voids
And for God, movement is underemployed.
God's still and God’s nothing under the sun,
Neither of which exists in creation.
Creation by ‘somethingness’ is defined.
What looks empty is a trick of the mind.
And creation is in constant motion.
Molecules move despite static notions.
We must imagine the opposite plot
Of what we know and what we’ve got.
To understand just what God is about,
We must trust to ideas that reason doubts.
Hermes was trying to hide his surprise
At the words from the girl in young nun’s guise.
As he nodded and smiled, the nun was relieved
To think that the answer was as she believed.
Emboldened and flushed with this first success,
Our nun then, unwisely, sought to express
Her next thought on all that Hermes had said,
Concerning production of babies’ thread.
Great Hermes, she said,
it just can’t be right,
That to die without child is grievous blight!
Your own words tell how creation is part
Of all that is manifest—God’s apart.
So God would not judge the content of soul
By children produced, but on spirit whole.
I fear (as a woman) this tale is told
To prompt the female to productive mould.
Fabuloso, J!
All gold and no dross.
The old guy has some catching up to do.
Or he may start fuming.
(Hey Hermes, “Happy Mother’s Day.”)
Our monk steadied himself, as the Soul groaned,
Of Brother, Sister, no child’s to be grown,
For we range far around the world, Hermes.
Plus, people abound, so no hers and me’s.
I have read of your ‘bodiless’ behind,
That matter bodies are not in kind,
But secondary, which they must all be,
And agree, since they’re definite forms, see;
But I note for spirit to move body,
Intangible affecting tangible,
That it must walk the walk of the matter,
And talk the talk, making it similar.
There have been advances since your old age—
Watch the new ‘Cosmos’ TV show’s voyage.
What is there in one dimension higher
Can at once touch all of the things here, sire.
I do enjoy your attempt to define
Something beyond, as undefinable,
Although this usually only tells us
What it isn’t, since ne’er definable.
For what hasn’t been established as known,
It’s then neither here nor there, but unknown,
So if one speaks its particulars first,
The proof becomes circular, at the worst.
Peter turns to view Angelina’s awe and woes,
Noting she’s already up on her toes.
Think I hear the evening dinner bell chimes;
Let us be off to our supper in time.
(What a relief!
Now I don’t have to translate ten more sections.
I have a few to put before your finale.)
Hermes runs after them, uninvited,
“Give me more; I’ll take it, unincited,
I’m of the mythic age, yet I am swayed,
To reexamine in the light of day.”
Stating genderless ends for the childless
Informs us you’re prone to greatly digress—
To the extremes of making stories up;
We might suspect pervasions fill your cup.
Human nature’s ranges of inclinations
Will, to no surprise, express themselves
Far and wide, as such they ought, regardless
Of that constitution being intended.
But especially if human recipe
Was thought out, planned, designed notably,
And so implemented accordingly,
Then the results will be just as they should be.
If mistakes crept into the formulas,
Then we’re still as made, outcomes expected,
So one’s own creation’s still respected.
Seems time to go back to that of the Same
For one and All, obviating all blame.
But you see, that we will do too, as made,
So we may often get stuck in our trade,
Until philosophers come out of the shade,
Wielding wise parries with light’s reason’s blade.
Ah, good; they have air-conditioning there,
Tennis courts, the net of evil to bear,
Or stay within the white lines, pool tables,
And a Bridge Club for the tricks playable.
- By Fried Egg
- By Sanju Lali
- By Thrylix
- By Pattern-chaser