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The Virgin of the World

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

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Various Hermetic Fragments – Part II

THERE is, then, a state of Being superior to all beings, and to all that actually is. Being is that by which universal essentiality is common to all intelligible entities actually existing. . . Nature is sensible essentiality, including in itself all sensible objects. Midway are the intellectual and sensible gods. The concepts of intelligence are related to the intellectual gods, the concepts of opinion to the sensible gods, which are reflexions of the intelligences; as, for instance, the sun is the image of the creative and celestial God. For as God has created the universe, so the sun creates animals, produces plants, and governs fluid things.

[These fragments are from Stobæus' Eclogues, "Physical and Moral."]