The Texts · Corpus Hermeticum · Concordance

Corpus Hermeticum concordance
(Divine Pymander, Mead, Scott, Copenhaver)

John Everard’s Divine Pymander (1650) is the first fourteen treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum in English, in Patrizi’s order rather than the usual one, plus three excerpts from Stobaeus, so its “Fourth Book” is the text G.R.S. Mead heads “X. (XI.)” and a modern note calls “CH X”. It takes a concordance to see that, because four centuries of editors have numbered the seventeen Greek treatises in different ways. They were printed without numbers (Ficino’s Latin, 1471; Turnèbe’s Greek, 1554), with a chapter XV that is not part of the collection (Flussas, 1574), in a new order (Patrizi, 1591, whom Everard follows), with two numbers each (Mead, 1906) and with two of them cut in half (Scott, 1924). “Book 4” is The Key in Everard and The Mixing Bowl in The Way of Hermes (Salaman and others, 1999). The tables below line the numberings up, treatise by treatise and, for the Poimandres, section by section. Every page number in them was checked in a scan or, for Copenhaver, in the publisher’s contents.

The name in Everard’s title is older than Everard. Ficino took the heading of the first treatise for the title of the whole book; Turnèbe and Flussas kept it, Patrizi kept the name for the first treatise only, and Parthey (1854) went back to the old usage (Walter Scott, Hermetica I, 1924, p. 17). So “Pymander” can mean treatise I or all seventeen, and the number that follows it depends on the edition.

The seventeen treatises in every numbering

The first column gives the number used today. Scott spelled out the compromise behind it: Flussas and Parthey for I-XIV, Flussas and Reitzenstein (1904) for XVI, Reitzenstein for XVII and XVIII (1924, I, p. 19). Nock and Festugière (1945) keep it, and so do translations made from their text, such as Copenhaver (1992) and, in Polish, Aneta Tylak (2021). The Way of Hermes writes them in Arabic figures as “Book 1”, “Book 4” (checked in the publisher’s excerpt for Books 1, 4, 5 and 6). Ficino and Turnèbe print I-XIV in this order with no numbers (Scott, pp. 18-19). Everard’s book numbers record Patrizi’s order (Scott, p. 43 n. 3), with the first page as given in Everard’s contents list. Mead’s first number is the usual one and the bracketed one Reitzenstein’s count, explained below; each Mead entry links to that page of his volume II in the scan. For Scott the page is where the Greek begins, with the English facing it. Nock-Festugière is given by volume only: we have not checked its pages in a copy.

Everard’s seventeen books, and the three that are not in the Corpus

Everard’s English, printed in London in 1650 as The Divine Pymander of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus, in XVII. Books, says on its title page that it was “Translated formerly out of the Arabick into Greek, and thence into Latine, and Dutch”. Scott identified what it is: a translation of CH I-XIV and three Stobaeus excerpts, made from Patrizi’s text, with the treatises in the order Patrizi gave them (1924, I, p. 43 n. 3). Mead had taken it for a version of Ficino’s Latin (1906, I, p. 12 n. 1). Patrizi printed XVI-XVIII at the end of his collection (Mead’s headings say “Pat. at end”); Everard’s seventeen books stop before them.

Everard’s contents page, “The Titles of every Book of Hermes Trismegistus”, lists three books that are not in the Corpus. All three survive in the Anthology of Stobaeus (see The Stobaean Fragments), and Mead prints each of them among his Stobaeus excerpts:

• Book 1, “His first Book” (pp. 1-12), which opens “O my Son, write this first Book, both for Humanity sake, and for Piety towards God”: Mead’s Excerpt I, “Of Piety and [True] Philosophy” (1906, III, p. 3), which is SH 2B followed by the 48 short headings of SH 11 on our Stobaean page. Mead notes that Patrizi “chose it for Book I. of his collection” (p. 12).
• Book 14, “Of Operation and Sense” (from p. 179): Mead’s Excerpt VIII, “Of Energy and Feeling” (p. 34), SH 4.
• Book 15, “Of Truth to his son Tat” (from p. 191): Mead’s Excerpt III, “Of Truth” (p. 17), SH 2A.

Aneta Tylak, describing the Polish Boski Pymander (Sandomierz, 2012), which Agata Staszewska translated from Everard, writes that in place of XVI-XVIII it has three other treatises, two of which are fragments of Stobaeus (Tylak 2021, p. 29 n. 73). On the texts themselves the count is three: Mead’s heading over each gives its place in Stobaeus (“Text: Stobæus, Phys., xxxv. 1”, “Stob., Phys., xxxv. 6”, “Stob., Flor., xi. 23”). A Polish reader of Staszewska has Everard’s order and needs the Everard column above.

Two library copies of the 1650 printing are scanned at the Internet Archive. The Wellcome Collection copy jumps from page 2 to page 15, so most of the First Book and the opening of the Poimandres are missing from it; a copy filmed for Early English Books has those pages.

Poimandres: Everard’s verses against the 32 sections

Everard cut each book into numbered verses of his own. The Poimandres, his Second Book (pp. 13-35), runs to verse 98; modern editions divide the treatise into 32 sections (a guided reading is in Reading Poimandres). Mead numbers them 1-32; Nock’s Greek, printed with Tylak’s Polish translation (2021, from p. 190), has the same 32 breaks, and the opening of Copenhaver’s version (§§1-4, seen in the publisher’s preview) has the same breaks. The verses were read page by page in the copy filmed for Early English Books. Where a section begins inside a verse, the table says so: §21 opens with Poimandres telling Hermes that he has understood rightly, and Everard turns those words into a question at the end of verse 46, “Hast thou understood this aright?” The 1650 printing also misnumbers twice: verse 39 is printed “29”, and the last three verses are numbered 97, 95 and 98.

Why Mead’s numbers run one ahead

Mead heads treatises II-XIV with two numbers, as in “Corpus Hermeticum X. (XI.)”, and his notes cite them the same way (“C. H., xiii. (xiv.)”). The first is the usual number. The second is not Mead’s invention: Scott’s table shows the same bracketed numbers, II (III) to XIV (XV), in Reitzenstein’s Poimandres of 1904 (Scott 1924, I, p. 19). Mead gives the reason on page 58 of volume II: a heading, “Corpus Hermeticum (II.) The General Sermon”, with no text under it, because only the title is preserved, “the text having disappeared with the loss of a quire or quires before the parent copy came into the hands of Psellus.” On page 69 he credits the idea to Reitzenstein: the supposition that Sermon (II.) dropped out “has only to be brought forward, as it has been by Reitzenstein, to carry conviction.” Count that lost sermon and II-XIV each move up by one; the bracketed numbers then run without a gap to (XVI), (XVII) and (XVIII), the three treatises for which Mead prints no other number.

So “Mead’s XI” can mean The Key (his bracketed number) or Mind to Hermes (the usual one). His headings also locate each Greek text in three older editions. For the Poimandres they read “R. 328-338; P. 1-18; Pat. 5b-8”: Reitzenstein’s Poimandres, Parthey’s edition of 1854, and the folios of Patrizi’s Venice printing of 1593 (P. and Pat. in vol. II, p. 3 n. 1; R. in his list of abbreviations, vol. I, p. vii).

Where Book XV went

Turnèbe’s first printing of the Greek (Paris, 1554) set three Hermetic excerpts from Stobaeus after XIV, under the same title as I-XIV: Scott’s Excerpts II A and I, which are SH 2A and SH 1 on our Stobaean page, and the Greek of a passage of the Latin Asclepius (Scott 1924, I, p. 34). XVI-XVIII followed under a separate title, Aesculapii definitiones, with XVI and XVII as one piece and XVIII in two parts, as in the manuscript Scott calls R (pp. 18-19, 33). Flussas (Bordeaux, 1574), who worked from Turnèbe’s text and used no manuscript, called the treatises chapters and made the appended excerpts, with an extract from the Suda, into “Caput XV”. His Caput XVI is our XVI; he dropped XVII and XVIII (pp. 34-35). Later editions dropped Caput XV but kept the numbers after it, and Scott, judging that it was never part of the Corpus, printed no Libellus XV (pp. 19-20).

One text sits on both sides of the gap. The excerpt on truth (SH 2A) is part of Flussas’s Caput XV and is also Everard’s fifteenth book, which he took, title and all, from Patrizi (Mead 1906, III, p. 17).

Scott’s nineteen documents

Scott kept the usual numbers but split XI and XII into two documents each, which raised the count from seventeen to nineteen; he explains that he kept the old numbering so that references would not be confused (1924, I, p. 19). His “XI. ii” begins on page 210 with §1b, moved there from the head of the treatise, and goes on with §6b; §1a now closes “XI. i”. His “XII. ii” begins on page 232 at §14b. Within each treatise he followed, for the most part, Reitzenstein’s sections for I, XIII and XVI-XVIII and Parthey’s for the rest, added letters (3a, 3b) where he wanted finer divisions, and here and there moved a boundary (p. 20). A reference to Scott therefore needs his letter and, for XI and XII, his part number.

The Asclepius is printed with the Corpus, not in it

The Asclepius is a separate dialogue whose Greek original is lost; in Mead’s words, “only a Latin version remains to us” (1906, II, p. 307). It is not one of the seventeen and has no CH number, but editions print it beside them: Mead as a second part of his volume II (from p. 307), Scott straight after XVIII (I, from p. 286), Nock and Festugière in their volume II, Copenhaver on pp. 67-92 of his Hermetica. Everard’s second edition (London, 1657) added it as “his Second Book, Called Asclepius; Containing fifteen Chapters, with a Commentary” (title page). Flussas left it out on purpose, suspecting that Apuleius had corrupted the Latin (Scott 1924, I, p. 36).

Two other titles invite the same mistake. CH XVI, the Definitions of Asclepius to King Ammon, is a Greek treatise of the Corpus. The Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius are a different collection of sayings, translated by Jean-Pierre Mahé for The Way of Hermes.

How to cite a passage so that any edition can find it

Cite the text, not the book: the usual treatise number in Roman figures and the section in Arabic, then the translation and page you used, for example “CH I.26 (Mead 1906, II, p. 16; Everard 1650, Book 2, v. 68)”. A reader with another translation can then find the place without owning yours, for the same reason that a Bible verse is cited by chapter and verse rather than by page. When you meet a bare number, ask whose it is. Everard’s book numbers match the usual ones only for III, V and VI. Mead’s bracketed number is one higher than the usual one from II to XIV. “XI. ii” or “XII. i” is Scott’s. And a “Book XV” is not a lost treatise but Flussas’s appendix of excerpts, or Everard’s book on truth. For what each treatise says, see the Corpus Hermeticum treatise by treatise.

Key facts

What it maps	CH I-XIV and XVI-XVIII in Ficino 1471, Turnèbe 1554, Flussas 1574, Everard 1650, Mead 1906, Scott 1924, Nock-Festugière 1945 and Copenhaver 1992; Poimandres section by section in Mead and Everard
Usual numbers	Flussas and Parthey for I-XIV, Flussas and Reitzenstein for XVI, Reitzenstein for XVII-XVIII (Scott 1924, I, p. 19); kept by Nock-Festugière and Copenhaver
Divine Pymander	Everard 1650: 17 books, CH I-XIV in Patrizi’s order plus three Stobaeus excerpts (Books 1, 14, 15); no XVI-XVIII. Book 2 is CH I, Book 4 is CH X
Mead’s two numbers	The usual number, then Reitzenstein’s count (1904), one higher for II-XIV because a lost General Sermon is (II) (Mead 1906, II, pp. 58 and 69; Scott 1924, I, p. 19)
No XV	Flussas’s Caput XV (1574) held three Stobaeus excerpts and an extract from the Suda; later editions dropped it and kept the numbers
Scott’s split	XI and XII each in two parts (XI.i, XI.ii; XII.i, XII.ii): nineteen documents (1924, I, p. 19)
Asclepius	A separate dialogue surviving in Latin, with no CH number; printed with the Corpus by Mead, Scott, Nock-Festugière and Copenhaver, and by Everard’s 1657 edition
Free scans	Mead 1906, vol. II; Scott 1924, vol. I; Everard 1650 (the Wellcome copy lacks pp. 3-14, the Early English Books copy has them)

Fair questions

Is the Divine Pymander the same as the Corpus Hermeticum?

Not quite. Everard’s Divine Pymander (1650) translates CH I-XIV, in Patrizi’s order, and adds three texts that are not in the Corpus: Books 1, 14 and 15, all excerpts preserved by Stobaeus. Mead (1906) prints them as his Excerpts I, VIII and III and Scott (1924) calls them three Stobaeus excerpts, while Aneta Tylak (2021) counts two of them as fragments of Stobaeus. Everard has nothing of CH XVI-XVIII.

Which Corpus Hermeticum treatise is Book 4 of the Divine Pymander?

CH X, The Key. Everard’s Divine Pymander (1650) follows Patrizi’s order, so its book numbers match the usual ones only for III, V and VI: Book 2 is CH I (Poimandres), Book 7 is CH XIII (On Rebirth), Book 12 is CH IV (The Mixing Bowl) and Book 17 is CH XIV.

Why is there no Corpus Hermeticum XV?

Because the number belonged to an appendix. Flussas (1574) printed three Stobaeus excerpts and an extract from the Suda as Caput XV after treatise XIV; later editions removed it but kept XVI as the next number, and Scott (1924), judging that it was never part of the Corpus, printed no Libellus XV.

Why does Mead write “Corpus Hermeticum X. (XI.)”?

The first number is the usual one. The bracketed one is the count Reitzenstein had used in his Poimandres (1904), as Scott’s table shows (1924, I, p. 19): it counts a lost General Sermon as (II), an idea Mead credits to Reitzenstein (1906, II, p. 69). So Mead’s bracketed numbers for II-XIV are one higher, and XVI-XVIII get only bracketed numbers, (XVI) to (XVIII).

Is the Asclepius part of the Corpus Hermeticum?

No. It is a separate dialogue that survives in Latin and has no CH number, although Mead, Scott, Nock-Festugière and Copenhaver print it with the Corpus and Everard’s 1657 edition added it as Hermes’ Second Book. CH XVI, the Definitions of Asclepius to King Ammon, is a different text.

Sources & further reading

• John Everard (tr.), The Divine Pymander of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus, in XVII. Books (London: Robert White for Thomas Brewster and Gregory Moule, 1650): contents page “The Titles of every Book of Hermes Trismegistus” (book numbers and first pages), Book 1 pp. 1-12, Book 2 pp. 13-35 (verses read page by page), Books 9, 13, 14, 15 and 16 at their openings; copy filmed for Early English Books and Wellcome Collection copy (pp. 3-14 missing), both at the Internet Archive, viewed 31 October 2026.
• John Everard (tr.), Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus, his Divine Pymander, in Seventeen Books. Together with his Second Book, Called Asclepius; Containing fifteen Chapters, with a Commentary (London: J.S. for Thomas Brewster, 1657), title page; Glasgow University Library copy, filmed, at the Internet Archive.
• G.R.S. Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes, vol. II: Sermons (London and Benares: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1906): headings with both numbers and the first page of each treatise (pp. 3-288), the abbreviations P. and Pat. (p. 3 n. 1), “Corpus Hermeticum (II.) The General Sermon” (p. 58), the lost Sermon (II.) credited to Reitzenstein (p. 69), the Poimandres sections (pp. 3-20), the Asclepius (pp. 307-390); scan at the Internet Archive. Source of the quotations marked Mead.
• G.R.S. Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes, vol. III: Excerpts and Fragments (London and Benares: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1906): Excerpt I p. 3 and commentary p. 12 (Patrizi’s Book I), Excerpt III p. 17, Excerpt VIII p. 34; scan at the Internet Archive.
• G.R.S. Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes, vol. I: Prolegomena (London and Benares: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1906), p. vii (R. = Reitzenstein’s Poimandres), p. 12 and n. 1 (Everard’s editions; his view that Everard translated Ficino’s Latin); scan at the Internet Archive.
• Walter Scott, Hermetica, vol. I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924): p. 17 (the name Poemander), pp. 18-20 (tables of the numberings; no Libellus XV), pp. 33-37 (Turnèbe 1554, Flussas 1574, Patrizi 1591 and 1593), p. 43 n. 3 (Everard follows Patrizi’s text and order), pp. 114-286 (the libelli; XI.ii p. 210, XII.ii p. 232; Asclepius from p. 286); scan at the Internet Archive.
• Richard Reitzenstein, Poimandres: Studien zur griechisch-ägyptischen und frühchristlichen Literatur (Leipzig: Teubner, 1904): Greek text of CH I, XIII and XVI-XVIII, pp. 328-360, as cited in Mead’s headings; scan at the Internet Archive.
• A. D. Nock (ed.) and A.-J. Festugière (tr.), Corpus Hermeticum, vol. I: Traités I-XII; vol. II: Traités XIII-XVIII. Asclepius (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1945); BnF catalogue.
• Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992): chapter pages from the publisher’s contents (CH I pp. 1-7 to CH XVIII pp. 63-66, Asclepius pp. 67-92), CH I §§1-4 in the preview; Cambridge Core.
• Clement Salaman, Dorine van Oyen, William D. Wharton and Jean-Pierre Mahé (tr.), The Way of Hermes (London: Duckworth, 1999; Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2000): headings “Book 1”, “Book 4”, “Book 5” and “Book 6” in the publisher’s excerpt.
• Aneta Tylak, Bóg - świat - człowiek w traktatach Corpus Hermeticum na tle greckiej tradycji filozoficznej (Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2021): p. 29 n. 73 (Staszewska’s Boski Pymander), Greek text after Nock with Polish translation, CH I from p. 190; open access in the University of Łódź Repository.
• Marsilio Ficino (tr.), Mercurii Trismegisti Liber de potestate et sapientia Dei (Treviso: Gerardus de Lisa, 1471): CH I-XIV in Latin; Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze copy at the Internet Archive.