The Texts · Corpus Hermeticum V

Though Unmanifest, God Is Most Manifest
(Corpus Hermeticum V)

The argument runs in three steps. Whatever appears has come into being, so the God who always is cannot appear. Yet everything that appears is God’s work, so God can be seen in all of it, from the stars to the body forming in the womb. A hymn closes the lesson.

On this page: what it is · the sections · section map · translations compared · hidden and manifest · the design argument · the hymn · where to read it

What Corpus Hermeticum V is

It is the fifth of the seventeen Greek treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum, a monologue in which Hermes teaches and Tat only listens. Its heading states the thesis, and each translator words it differently. John Everard, the first English translator, made it “The Fifth Book. That God is not manifest, and yet most manifest” (The Divine Pymander, 1650, p. 62). John David Chambers wrote “That the Invisible God is most Manifest” (1882, p. 36). G.R.S. Mead chose “Though Unmanifest God is Most Manifest”, numbered V, with his own count VI in brackets (Thrice-Greatest Hermes, II, 1906, p. 99). Walter Scott printed “That God is hidden from sight, and yet is most manifest” (Hermetica, I, 1924, p. 157). Brian Copenhaver (1992) uses “invisible” and “visible” (pp. 18-20).

The first words, “This discourse also, O Tat” (Chambers, p. 36), show that it was taken from a series. Mead thought it was lifted from a set of teachings “to Tat”, and that the heading was “superscribed by some later Byzantine editor” out of the treatise’s second sentence (II, p. 106). Scott, from the Greek verb for going through a subject in detail, placed it among the “detailed discourses” (diexodikoi logoi) addressed to Tat (Hermetica, II, 1925, p. 157). The site’s CH IV, The Mixing Bowl, is another Hermes-to-Tat lesson. It closes with a likeness of God to be looked at “with the eyes of your heart”; CH V asks Tat to see God “with the eyes of the mind” (Scott, I, pp. 157 and 159), and Scott linked the two phrases (II, p. 154).

Nothing in the text names its author, place or date. Scott conjectured the third century CE (II, p. 157) and found “no trace of Christian influence” (II, p. 156). Latin readers met it in Marsilio Ficino’s translation (Treviso, 1471), which “contains only Corp. I-XIV” (Scott, I, p. 31).

The eleven sections, in plain words

The summaries follow Mead’s eleven numbered sections. Scott numbers the same way but splits §1 and §10 into a and b; Copenhaver’s [1] and [2] begin where Mead’s do (of his version we have seen only the opening that Cambridge Core shows). They paraphrase; the tables further down quote.

§1 · The thesis. What seems hidden to most people will become plain to Tat. Whatever appears has come into being; what does not appear always is, having no need to appear. God makes all other things appear while remaining unseen. Coming into being, the text says, is nothing but appearing.

§2 · How the unseen is seen. So God can be seen through all things, most of all to those he chooses. Tat must pray first, so that one ray of God may reach his mind, for only thought, being hidden itself, sees what is hidden. The Lord does not grudge himself, and Tat can see and touch God’s image. Mead took that image to be the intelligible cosmos, Scott the visible one (Mead, II, p. 100 n. 3; Scott, I, p. 159 n. 2, and II, p. 161).

§3-4 · The order of the sky. Who keeps the order of sun, moon and stars? The sun, “the greatest god of gods in heaven” (Mead, II, p. 101), still lets smaller stars circle above it: whom does it fear? The Bear turns and carries the cosmos with it: who owns that instrument? Someone has bounded the sea and fixed the earth, for place, number and measure cannot be kept without a maker. Even disorder has a master, who has not yet put it in order.

§5 · The view from the air. If Tat could fly up between earth and heaven and take in earth, sea, air, fire and stars at once, he would see “the motionless in motion, and the unmanifest made manifest” (Mead, II, p. 102).

§6 · The body in the womb. God is seen in mortal things too. Who traced the eyes, opened nostrils and mouth, tied the sinews, hardened the bones, shaped the heart “like to a pyramid” (Mead, II, p. 103) and the lungs like a sponge, and hid the less honourable parts?

§7-8 · No work without a worker. What mother or father made so many crafts in one body, if not the unseen God? Nobody says a statue made itself; to say it of the body is blindness and impiety. Then the Greek breaks off: Mead calls his next sentence “conjectural” because of a lacuna (II, p. 104 n. 1).

§9 · God is what God does. God’s work is to be father of all, and his being is to make. He would not exist if he were not always making everything. He is both the things that are, which he has made manifest, and the things that are not, which he keeps within himself.

§10 · All names and none. God is hidden and most manifest, bodiless and in every body. Because all things come from him he has all names; because he is father of all he has none. Then Hermes turns to God: who can praise you, and facing which way?

§11 · How to praise the All. When, for what, and as whom? The singer is not other than God. The hymn ends with four titles: Mind, Father, God and Good. A last line on matter, air, soul and mind follows; see the hymn.

Section map: four editions side by side

Everard used 49 verses of his own, Mead and Scott eleven sections. Pages were checked in the scans; Scott prints the Greek on even pages, the English on odd ones.

Copenhaver’s version occupies pp. 18-20 of his Hermetica (Cambridge, 1992). Parthey’s Greek with a Latin version runs from p. 41 to p. 48 of his 1854 edition.

Where the translations part company

The Greek has gaps (Scott marks lost words in §§1b, 4, 6, 8 and 10b) and words that editors replace. At three points the free English versions part company. Quotations are checked against the scans.

1. Whom Tat prays to (§2). The manuscripts speak of a source “from whom the One” comes; Scott removed it as foreign to the treatise (II, p. 160).

• Everard 1650: “to the Lord and Father, and to the Alone, and to the One, from whom is one” (v. 9, p. 63)
• Mead 1906: “the One-and-Only One, from whom the One doth come” (p. 100)
• Scott 1924: “the Lord and Father, who alone is good” (p. 159)

2. God’s being (§9). The manuscripts have kuein, to be pregnant; Scott changed it to kinein, to move (II, p. 165).

• Everard 1650: “his Essence to be pregnant, or great with all things, and to make them” (v. 28, p. 68)
• Mead 1906: “His being is conceiving of all things and making [them]”, glossed “The male and female energies of the Divine Parent” (p. 104 and n. 2)
• Scott 1924: “his very being to set all things in motion”, with the note “MSS.: ‘to give birth to all things’” (p. 163)

3. The last line. Everard and Mead print it; Scott brackets it in the Greek and leaves it out of his English (I, pp. 164-165).

• Everard 1650: “Of the Matter, the most subtile and slender part is Air, of the Air the Soul, of the Soul the Minde, of the Minde God” (v. 49, p. 71)
• Mead 1906: “(For that the subtler part of matter is the air, of air the soul, of soul the mind, and of mind God.)” (p. 106)
• Scott 1924: omitted

The second row matters most: read as “pregnant”, the sentence gives God a mother’s role as well as a father’s, and Mead’s note reads it that way; Scott replied that nothing else in the treatise suggests a God who is male and female (II, p. 165). Chambers (1882) kept “pregnant” with the Greek word beside it (p. 40). Copenhaver keeps the source “from whom the one comes” that Scott deleted.

Hidden and manifest: what the key words mean

The treatise turns on one Greek family of words: aphanês, unseen or hidden, against phaneros, manifest, together with phainesthai, to appear, and phantasia, the image something presents to the senses. Mead listed the forms of the root that occur in §1 and the start of §2, said that “this subtle word-play has been entirely missed by all previous translators”, and kept “the somewhat clumsy term ‘manifest’” throughout to preserve it (II, pp. 106-107). That is why his version reads oddly, and also why it lets a reader follow the argument word by word.

What the play of words claims is strong: coming into being and appearing are the same thing, so only the unseen truly is. Scott traced the idea to Plato’s split between what is grasped by thought and what is perceived, noted that Plato did not use these two terms for it, and thought phantasia was borrowed, probably from Stoic theory of knowledge (II, pp. 156-160). He also asked where the word “hidden” came from and pointed to Egyptian usage: in the New Kingdom, he quoted, the name of the god Amen was explained as “The Hidden One” (II, p. 158).

Mead read the same passage through Indian philosophy: “The doctrine is the same as that of the Vedanta philosophy, the Maya of the Vedanta-vadins”, with Maya understood not as illusion but as the power of divine thought (II, p. 107). That is Mead’s theosophical reading, written in 1906. Scott, who knew the comparison, considered contact with India possible in Roman Egypt but unnecessary here: the doctrine “can be sufficiently accounted for as a development of Platonism, without assuming Indian influence” (II, p. 159 n. 1). For the faculty that does the seeing, see the site’s page on nous; for the knowledge it reaches, gnosis.

The opening promise needs the same care. Hermes says he speaks so that Tat will not stay “uninitiated”. Scott pointed out that the mystery here is “a ‘mystery’ only in a metaphorical sense”: there is no ritual, only teaching by word of mouth (II, p. 157).

The argument from design

Sections 3 to 8 are the best-known part of CH V, and the site’s treatise-by-treatise guide sums them up as an argument “from the order of the visible world to an unseen maker”.

Scott was not impressed. He judged that the writer “handles in a cursory and superficial way a topic on which the Stoics were accustomed to dilate”, and pointed to Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods 2.134-146, probably drawn from Posidonius, as the kind of model (II, p. 156). The list of organs echoes Plato’s Timaeus; the remark about hiding the less honourable parts goes back to Panaetius by way of Cicero’s On Duties 1.126 (II, pp. 163-164).

The sentence on disorder in §4 is the treatise’s one brush with the problem of evil. Scott read it to mean that what is out of order is matter the maker has not yet arranged, a survival of the first chaos, and that order will be imposed on it in time (II, p. 162). The site’s guide adds the critical point: the treatise never shows why order needs a maker rather than being a property of things. For a darker view of the world, compare CH VII, The Greatest Evil.

Mead and Scott both connect the womb passage in §6 with Lactantius, Divine Institutes 2.10 (Mead, II, p. 102 n. 4; Scott, II, p. 163). Scott also set CH XI, Mind to Hermes, a similar argument for a maker, beside these sections (II, p. 161).

The closing hymn

From §10 the lesson turns into prayer. The hymn asks who can praise God, facing which way, when, for what and as whom, and answers by denying the distance the questions assume. Its key lines in Mead’s English: “Thou art whatever I may be; Thou art whatever I may do; Thou art whatever I may speak” (II, p. 105), and the closing titles, “Mind when Thou thinkest, and Father when Thou makest, and God when Thou dost energize” (p. 106).

Mead called it “one of the most magnificent Hymns to God ever written in any language”, set §10 under the heading “The Higher Pantheism or Panmonism”, and compared an address to the Logos in the apocryphal Martyrdom of Peter (II, p. 108). Scott cited the Martyrdom too, called the answer to “Am I other than Thou?”, that God is whatever the singer is, “the typical utterance of mysticism”, and concluded from Egyptian formulas of identity with a god that “The tone of this hymn is not Greek, but Egyptian” (II, pp. 167-168). He also printed “And what offering shall I bring Thee?” in braces, his own supplement for a lost question that “Thou givest all, and receivest nothing” seems to answer (I, p. 165; II, p. 166).

The last line, about matter, air, soul, mind and God, both editors treat as a reader’s note copied into the text. Mead blamed “some foolish copyist” who had spoilt the hymn by tagging on a marginal gloss (II, p. 108); Scott called it “evidently out of place here”, since the same statement stands in a better context in CH XII (II, p. 168). Scott set the hymn beside those in CH I, CH XIII, On Rebirth and the end of the Latin Asclepius (II, p. 166).

Where to read Corpus Hermeticum V free

All of the following are free and legal to read, except the modern editions at the end, which are in copyright. Links go to scans at the Internet Archive, plus two plain-text transcriptions (not editions; quote from the scans), all checked on 4 November 2026.

• Everard, 1650. The Divine Pymander, “The Fifth Book”, verses 1-49, pp. 62-71. Copy filmed for Early English Books; Wellcome Collection copy. Seventeenth-century spelling, short numbered verses. Transcription with modernised spelling at the Alchemy Web Site.
• Chambers, 1882. The Theological and Philosophical Works of Hermes Trismegistus, chapter V, pp. 36-42, with biblical parallels in the notes. Scan.
• Mead, 1906. Thrice-Greatest Hermes, vol. II, “Though Unmanifest God is Most Manifest”, pp. 99-106, commentary pp. 106-109. Scan, opened at p. 99. Keeps the word-play visible; theosophical commentary. Plain-text transcription at the Gnosis Archive, text only.
• Scott, 1924-1925. Hermetica, vol. I, Libellus V, Greek and English, pp. 156-165 (scan); vol. II, notes, pp. 155-168 (scan). An emended text; the notes say what was changed.
• Parthey, 1854. Hermetis Trismegisti Poemander, cap. 5, Greek with a Latin version, pp. 41-48. Scan. For readers of Greek.
• Nock and Festugière, 1945. Corpus Hermeticum, vol. I (Paris: Les Belles Lettres), critical Greek text with a French translation. In copyright.
• Copenhaver, 1992. Hermetica (Cambridge University Press), CH V at pp. 18-20, with notes at the back. Chapter page on Cambridge Core. In copyright.
• Salaman, van Oyen and Wharton, 1999. The Way of Hermes (London: Duckworth), an English translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, with Jean-Pierre Mahé’s translation of the Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius. Library record. We have not seen a copy, so no pages. In copyright.

For a first reading, Mead’s eight pages are enough; Scott’s notes show where the text rests on editors’ choices.

Key facts

Position	Fifth of the 17 Greek treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum, between IV (The Mixing Bowl) and VI (the Good in God alone)
Title	Mead 1906: Though Unmanifest God is Most Manifest; Parthey 1854 (Latin): quod immanifestus deus manifestissimus sit; other English titles under What it is
Speakers	Hermes teaching his son Tat; Tat does not speak
Length	11 sections (Mead 1906, vol. II, pp. 99-106); Everard 1650: verses 1-49, pp. 62-71
State of the text	Readable, with gaps that Scott marks in §§1b, 4, 6, 8 and 10b, and a last line that Mead and Scott treat as a reader’s note
Date	Unknown; Scott conjectured the third century CE (1925, II, p. 157)
Free English	Everard 1650, Chambers 1882, Mead 1906, Scott 1924, all scanned at the Internet Archive
Checked	4 November 2026, against the scans listed under sources

Fair questions

What is Corpus Hermeticum V about?

A short lesson from Hermes to his son Tat: God never comes into being, so he cannot be seen as things are seen, yet he can be seen in everything he makes, from the sky to the human body. It ends with a hymn to a God who is all things.

What does “unmanifest” mean in the Corpus Hermeticum?

It translates the Greek aphanês, unseen or hidden, the opposite of phaneros, manifest. In CH V, whatever appears has come into being, so God, who always is, does not appear. Mead (1906) kept “unmanifest” and “manifest” to preserve the Greek word-play; Scott (1924) used “hidden”, Chambers (1882) “invisible” and “nonapparent”, Copenhaver (1992) “invisible” and “visible”.

Is Corpus Hermeticum V pantheism?

It says both that God makes all things and that God is all things. Mead (1906) headed §10 “The Higher Pantheism or Panmonism”; Scott (1925) found the two claims “hardly consistent”, traced the first to Plato’s Timaeus and suggested Stoic theology or Egyptian hymns as sources for the second (II, p. 156).

Does Corpus Hermeticum V say God is male and female?

Only on one reading. In §9 the manuscripts say God’s being is to be pregnant with all things (Greek kuein); Everard (1650) and Chambers (1882) translate “pregnant”, and Mead (1906) adds a note on male and female energies. Scott (1925) argued the word is corrupt and read kinein, “to set all things in motion”.

Where can I read Corpus Hermeticum V for free?

Mead’s Thrice-Greatest Hermes, vol. II (1906), pp. 99-106; Everard’s Divine Pymander (1650), Fifth Book, pp. 62-71; Chambers (1882), pp. 36-42; and Scott’s Hermetica, vol. I (1924), pp. 156-165, Greek and English. All are scanned at the Internet Archive; plain-text transcriptions of Mead and Everard are at gnosis.org and alchemywebsite.com. Copenhaver’s Hermetica (1992), pp. 18-20, is in copyright.

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 (“5. That God is not manifest, and yet most manifest. 62”) and “The Fifth Book”, verses 1-49, pp. 62-71; copy filmed for Early English Books and Wellcome Collection copy, both at the Internet Archive, read 4 November 2026. Source of the quotations marked Everard.
• Gustav Parthey (ed.), Hermetis Trismegisti Poemander (Berlin: Nicolai, 1854), cap. 5, Greek with the Latin heading “Hermetis Trismegisti ad filium suum Tat, quod immanifestus deus manifestissimus sit”, pp. 41-48; scan at the Internet Archive.
• John David Chambers (tr.), The Theological and Philosophical Works of Hermes Trismegistus, Christian Neoplatonist (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1882), chapter V, “That the Invisible God is most Manifest”, pp. 36-42 (“pregnant” with the Greek kuein, p. 40); University of California copy at the Internet Archive.
• G.R.S. Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes, vol. II: Sermons (London and Benares: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1906), “Corpus Hermeticum V. (VI.) Though Unmanifest God is Most Manifest”, pp. 99-106, with notes (p. 100 n. 3, p. 102 n. 4 on Lactantius, p. 104 nn. 1-2); commentary pp. 106-109 (title and “Those to Tat” p. 106, word-play and Maya pp. 106-107, Timaeus 29E and “Higher Pantheism” p. 108, the hymn and the copyist’s gloss p. 108); scan at the Internet Archive. Source of the quotations marked Mead.
• Walter Scott (ed. and tr.), Hermetica, vol. I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), p. 31 (Ficino’s edition of 1471, Corp. I-XIV), Libellus V, Greek with apparatus pp. 156, 158, 160, 162, 164, English pp. 157, 159, 161, 163, 165 (notes p. 159 n. 2, p. 163 n. 1); scan at the Internet Archive.
• Walter Scott, Hermetica, vol. II: Notes on the Corpus Hermeticum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925), p. 154 (the “eyes of the heart” in CH IV 11b set against “the eyes of the mind” in CH V 2); Libellus V, pp. 155-168: contents p. 155; sources, Stoic design argument and no Christian influence p. 156; date, title and “mystery” p. 157; Amen p. 158; Platonism without Indian influence p. 159 n. 1; the One deleted p. 160; image of God and CH XI p. 161; disorder p. 162; Lactantius p. 163; Panaetius p. 164; kuein and kinein p. 165; the hymn beside CH I, CH XIII and the end of the Asclepius, and the offering p. 166; “I am Thou” p. 167; Egyptian tone and the gloss p. 168; scan at the Internet Archive.
• A. D. Nock (ed.) and A.-J. Festugière (tr.), Corpus Hermeticum, vol. I: Traités I-XII (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1945): critical Greek text of CH V with French translation; BnF catalogue.
• Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation, with Notes and Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), “Corpus Hermeticum V”, pp. 18-20; chapter page and opening on Cambridge Core, read 4 November 2026.
• Clement Salaman, Dorine van Oyen and William D. Wharton (tr.), The Way of Hermes: The Corpus Hermeticum, with The Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius, tr. Jean-Pierre Mahé (London: Duckworth, 1999), 124 pp., ISBN 0-7156-2939-5, OCLC 42360158; contents as given in the Wellcome Collection catalogue, pages and OCLC number from the Open Library record, both read 4 November 2026. Copy not seen.