Poimandres

A single page of a manuscript written in Ancient Greek. The text is written in a neat 18th-century cursive hand with numerous ligatures and abbreviations. In the upper left margin, there is a blind-embossed heraldic stamp featuring a crown above a coat of arms, likely representing a royal or institutional library collection.

" own powers. Holy is God, who wills to be known and is known by His own works; and the rest of the discourse follows. Then, wishing to teach these things to men, he first of all prays to obtain a certain divine inspiration and strength, so as to go through these things accurately. Having said this, he turns the discourse toward Asclepius, and in response to him, says: "The Divine and God, O Asclepius, is unbegotten; and if it is unbegotten, it is also immaterial. But that which is immaterial is by no means perceptible to the senses, but only intelligible. This, while being immovable, moves and provides for all things, being by nature good," and the remaining matters concerning the foreknowledge and nature of all things. Then, having proposed this for the dialogue, he appears first to perform a prayer, and seems to praise the Divine; then, here too, demonstrating the matters of the divine nature, he also teaches clearly the return of souls, who are baptized into the krater mixing bowl/vessel of the intellect, through the proclamation sent from God to the earth, saying these things: "Those who understood this proclamation and were baptized into the intellect, these share in the divine knowledge; but those who missed the proclamation and have not received the rational intellect, the senses of these are similar to those of irrational animals. But no one can be baptized into it," he says, "unless he first hates his own body—that is, the material and earthy mind of the flesh—and becomes entirely directed toward that divine intellect." This is an excellent and...