The Asclepius

1Hermes said to Asclepius: God, who is in himself unbegotten, has made all that comes into being out of himself. He has set in the cosmos all the things that are, that they may be — and he has set them under laws by which they continue.

2Asclepius said: How then, master, has this happened, that the many should arise from the One?

3Hermes answered: The One is not many; but from the One the many are made. As light is one and yet falls upon many surfaces, so the Source is one and yet animates every form.

4Hear, my son, and know: a great wonder is man — a being worthy of reverence and honor. He passes into the nature of God as if he were himself a god; he is at home with the kindred of the demons, knowing that he is sprung from the same source. He looks down upon the part of him that is human, having put his trust in the divinity of the other part.

5What an excellent thing, then, is the nature of man, that he is joined to the gods through that part of him that is divine, and yet he despises the part of himself by which he is mortal. For all the others he binds to himself with the bond of love, but to himself he is bound by his own kindred to that which is above him.

6He looks up to heaven, and he tills the earth. He passes through the air with the swiftness of his thought; with the keenness of his sight he beholds even the deep. Nothing is hidden from him: not the density of earth nor the height of heaven nor the distance of any place, however great, can keep him back from understanding.

7O Asclepius, what a great being is man! He has been given a nature compounded of all natures; he has been made a thing of so great dignity that he is brought near to the gods. He is the priest of all visible things, the steward of all that is below, while in his thought he stands among the host of those who are above.

8And yet, my son, hear this: there will come a time when it will be seen that the Egyptians have honored the gods in vain, with all their pious labor — and all the holy worship will be brought to nothing.

9For the gods will leave the earth and go back into heaven, and they will forsake Egypt; and the land that was once the seat of holy rituals will be widowed of the gods and left bare of their presence.

10Strangers will fill this country and this land. Not only will men neglect the worship of the gods; but, what is harder, laws will be established forbidding piety and reverence under the name of impiety. And the gods, instead of being honored with appropriate offerings, will be cursed.

11O Egypt, Egypt — there will remain of your religion only fables that the next generation will not believe; only words that the stones will keep, when they are graven on the walls of your ruined temples.

12And in that age men will be weary of life, and they will cease to think the universe worthy of reverent wonder. Religion, the greatest of all blessings — for there is nothing, nor has been, nor ever shall be, that can be deemed a greater boon — will be threatened with destruction; men will think it a burden, and will come to scorn it.

13They will no longer love this world about us, this incomparable work of God, this glorious structure which he has built, this sum of good made up of things of many forms, this instrument by means of which the will of God operates in his creation, this conjoint multitude of all that is good, summed up in unity.

14Darkness will be preferred to light, and death will be thought more profitable than life; no one will raise his eyes to heaven; the pious will be deemed insane, and the impious wise; the madman will be thought a brave man, and the wicked will be esteemed as good.

15As to the soul, and the belief that it is immortal by nature, or that it can attain to immortality, all this they will mock at, and will even persuade themselves that it is false. No word of reverence or piety, no utterance worthy of heaven and of the gods, will be heard or believed.

16And so the gods will withdraw from mankind — a grievous thing — and only evil angels will remain, who will mingle with men, and force the wretched ones by violence into all manner of crime, into wars and robberies, and frauds, and all things hostile to the nature of the soul.

17Then will the earth tremble, and the sea bear no ships; heaven will not support the stars in their courses, nor will the stars hold to their tracks in heaven. Every divine voice will fall silent, and be still. The fruits of the earth will be corrupted; the soil will turn barren, and the very air will sicken with sullen stagnation.

18Such will be the old age of the world: irreligion, disorder, the confusion of all good. And when these things have come to pass, my son, then the Lord and Father, the God supreme — the only One who governs the world — looking on what is done, and setting against disorder his will, which is the good, will recall to the right path those who go astray.

19He will wash away the wickedness of the world by floods, or burn it up with fire, or sweep it out with the plague of war and pestilence; and so he will bring back the world to its former aspect, that the cosmos may again be deemed worthy of worship and of reverent wonder.

20Such, Asclepius, is the great gift to come, and the renewal of the nature of the world: the restoration of all good, the restoration made by the holy and most solemn act of God’s will, in the course of time and in eternity. For the will of God has no beginning; in him it is and ever was, and to him it is what nature is. From the will of God all good takes its beginning.

21Hermes lifted up his hands in prayer, and said: We give thanks to thee, supreme and most high God, by whose grace alone we have attained the light of knowledge of thee. To thee we have offered no other sacrifice but this — that we have known thee.

22Holy art thou, who declarest thyself by what thou makest. Holy art thou, of whom all nature is the image. Holy art thou, whom nature has not formed. Holy art thou, who art mightier than all power. Holy art thou, who art greater than all eminence. Holy art thou, who surpassest all praises.

23Accept, O God, these reasonable offerings — pure words from a soul and heart upraised to thee — thou who art unutterable, unspeakable, named only by silence.

24Give thy grace that we may not fall away from this knowledge of thee, suited as it is to our nature; confirm us in this gnosis. So strengthened, we will save those who are still in error, our brothers — and thou, our father.

25This we believe, and to this we bear witness. We go in peace and in purity, having known thee, having known the very Light, by which alone the soul lives.

26And having said this prayer, we embraced one another, and went forth to take our food, the food that has nothing slain in it.