Valeria Nagy > Valeria's Quotes

“As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul…”
― Hermes Trismegistus

“If then you do not make yourself equal to God, you cannot apprehend God; for like is known by like.
Leap clear of all that is corporeal, and make yourself grown to a like expanse with that greatness which is beyond all measure; rise above all time and become eternal; then you will apprehend God. Think that for you too nothing is impossible; deem that you too are immortal, and that you are able to grasp all things in your thought, to know every craft and science; find your home in the haunts of every living creature; make yourself higher than all heights and lower than all depths; bring together in yourself all opposites of quality, heat and cold, dryness and fluidity; think that you are everywhere at once, on land, at sea, in heaven; think that you are not yet begotten, that you are in the womb, that you are young, that you are old, that you have died, that you are in the world beyond the grave; grasp in your thought all of this at once, all times and places, all substances and qualities and magnitudes together; then you can apprehend God.

But if you shut up your soul in your body, and abase yourself, and say “I know nothing, I can do nothing; I am afraid of earth and sea, I cannot mount to heaven; I know not what I was, nor what I shall be,” then what have you to do with God?”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius

“Close your eyes and let the mind expand. Let no fear of death or darkness arrest its course. Allow the mind to merge with Mind. Let it flow out upon the great curve of consciousness. Let it soar on the wings of the great bird of duration, up to the very Circle of Eternity.”
― Hermes

“The punishment of desire is the agony of unfulfillment”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Poimandres

“As Above, So Below”
― Hermes Trismegistus

“If thou but settest foot on this path, thou shalt see it everywhere.”
― Hermes

“The excellence of the soul is understanding; for the man who understands is conscious, devoted, and already godlike.”
― Hermes Trismegistus

“As above, so below. As within, so without. Originated by Hermes TRISMEGISTUS!”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius

“That which is below is like that which is above, and that which is above is like that which is below, to perform the miracles of one only thing.”
― Hermes Trismegistus

“My discourse leads to the truth; the mind is great and guided by this teaching is able to arrive at some understanding. When the mind has understood all things and found them to be in harmony with what has been expounded by the teachings, it is faithful and comes to rest in that beautiful faith.”
― Hermes Trismegistus

“O ye people, earth-born folk, ye who have given yourselves to drunkenness and sleep and ignorance of God, be sober now,cease from your surfeit, cease to be glamored by irrational sleep!”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus hermeticum

“Birth is not the beginning of life - only of an individual awareness. Change into another state is not death - only the ending of this awareness.”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum

“But this discourse, expressed in our paternal language, keeps clear the meaning of its words. The very quality of speech and of the Egyptian words have in themselves the energy of the object they speak of.

Therefore, my king, in so far as you have the power (who are all powerful), keep the discourse uninterpreted, lest mysteries of such greatness come to the Greeks, lest the extravagant, flaccid and (as it were) dandified Greek idiom extinguish something stately and concise, the energetic idiom of usage. For the Greeks have empty speeches, O king, that are energetic only in what they demonstrate, and this is the philosophy of the Greeks, an inane foolosophy of speeches. We, by contrast, use not speeches but sounds that are full of action. (Chapter XVI)”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius

“For the sun is situated in the center of the cosmos, wearing it like a crown”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius

“No eyes will raise to heaven. The pure will be thought insane and the impure will be honoured as wise. The madman will be believed brave, and the wicked esteemed as good.”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum

“The hearer must be of one mind with the speaker, my son, and of one spirit as well; he must have hearing quicker than the speech of the speaker.”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation, with Notes and Introduction

“Humanity looked in awe upon the beauty and the everlasting duration of creation. The exquisite sky flooded with sunlight. The majesty of the dark night lit by celestial torches as the holy planetary powers trace their paths in the heavens in fixed and steady metre - ordering the growth of things with their secret infusions.”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum

“Philosophy is nothing else than striving through constant contemplation and saintly piety to attain knowledge of God.”
― Hermes Trismegistus

“The present issues from the past, and the future from the present. Everything is made one by this continuity. Time is like a circle, where all the points are so linked that one cannot say where it begins or ends, for all points precede and follow one another for ever.”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum

“That which is below is like that which is above & that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing.”
― Hermes Trismegistus

“Man is the most divine of all the beings, for amongst all living things, Atum associates with him only - speaking to him in dreams at night, foretelling the future for him in the flight of birds, the bowels of beasts, and the whispering oak.”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum

“Do you not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is an image of heaven or, to be more precise, that everything governed and moved in heaven came down to Egypt and was transferred there? If truth were told, our land is the temple of the whole world.”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius

“As above, so below. As within, so without.”
― Hermes Trismegistus

“65. The generation of man is corruption; the corruption of man is the beginning of generation.”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum: The Divine Pymander

“72. Things upon Earth, do not advantage those in Heaven; but all things in Heaven do profit and advantage all things upon Earth.”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum: The Divine Pymander

“74. The Earth is brutish; the Heaven is reasonable or rational.”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum: The Divine Pymander

“80. What is God? The immutable or unalterable good.
81. What is man? An unchangeable evil.”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum: The Divine Pymander

“83. Avoid all conversation with the multitude or common people; for I would not have you subject to envy, much less to be ridiculous unto the multitude.”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum: The Divine Pymander

“Having made them rise, I became guide to my race, teaching them the words – how to be saved and in what manner – and I sowed the words of wisdom among them, and they were nourished from the ambrosial water.”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation, with Notes and Introduction

“This cosmos is large, then, and no body is larger?” “Agreed.” “And is it densely packed? For it has been filled with many other large bodies or, rather, with all the bodies that exist.” “So it is.” “But is the cosmos a body?” “A body, yes.” “And a moved body?” [3] “Certainly.” “The place in which it moves, then, how large must it be, and what is its nature? Is it not larger by far so as to sustain continuity of motion and not hold back its movement lest the moved be crowded and confined?”
― Hermes Trismegistus, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation, with Notes and Introduction