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The Virgin of the World

By Hermes Mercurius Trismagistus tr. A. Kingsford, E Maitland

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Fragments of the Writings of Hermes to Ammon – Part III

THE soul is, then, an incorporeal essence, and even when she is in a body, she does not wholly lose her manner of being. Her essence is that of perpetual movement, the spontaneous movement of thought; yet is she not moved in any thing else, nor towards any thing else, nor for any thing else. For she is a primordial force, and that which is primal needs not that which is secondary. The expression "in any thing" is applicable to place, to time, to nature; "towards any thing" is applicable to a harmony, to a form, to a figure; "for any thing" is applicable to the body, because time, place, nature, and form are related to the body. All these terms are conjoined by reciprocal bonds. The body requires place, for it is not possible to conceive of a body unless also of a place occupied by it; a body changes its nature, such change is not possible unless in time, and by means of movement in nature; nor can the component parts of a body be united unless by harmony of form. Space exists on account of corporeity, it contains the changes thereof and suffers it not to be annihilated in these changes. The body passes from one condition to another, but in quitting its first condition it ceases not to be body, it takes only another condition. It was body, it remains body, its state alone varies; wherefore, that which changes in corporeity is quality and mode of being. Place, time, and natural movement, themselves bodiless, have each their special property. The property of space is to contain; the property of time is interval and number; the property of nature is movement; the property of harmony is affinity; the property of body is change; the property of soul is thought.