The Texts · Corpus Hermeticum XII
Corpus Hermeticum XII: On the Mind Shared in Common
Corpus Hermeticum XII is a dialogue in which Hermes teaches his son Tat that mind (nous) is of God’s own substance, governs some human souls as a physician governs a body, and rules even over fate. Quoting sayings of the Good Daimon, it goes on to argue that speech is one for all peoples, that nothing in the living cosmos dies, and that God is the All; its last line, that the only way to worship God is not to be bad, was quoted by Lactantius in the early fourth century.
Corpus Hermeticum XII is the Hermetic dialogue on the mind shared in common: Hermes tells his son Tat that mind (nous) is of God’s own substance, that it rules even over fate, and that nothing dies in a cosmos full of life. It is the twelfth of the seventeen Greek treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum and runs to twenty-three numbered sections. Like the rest of the collection it is a pseudepigraph: a Greek text put in the mouth of Hermes Trismegistus, probably written in the second or third century CE (Lira 2023), and not the work of an Egyptian sage of remote antiquity. What sets it apart inside the Corpus is that Hermes himself appeals to a higher teacher: three times he quotes sayings of the Good Daimon (Agathos Daimon), and once he regrets that they were never written down.
Who speaks, and where it sits
Two voices. Hermes teaches; Tat keeps interrupting, and his objections drive the argument: about fate and punishment (§5, §7), about whether mind is itself a passion (§10), about animal speech (§13), about whether living things die (§16), whether the earth moves (§17), whether all this is mere activity (§21) and whether God is in matter (§22). There is no vision, as in Poimandres (CH I), and no revealing Mind speaking in person, as in CH XI; the higher voice here is only reported. The section numbers on this page are those of the critical edition by A. D. Nock and A.-J. Festugière (vol. I, Paris, 1945), which Copenhaver (1992) follows and which recent studies cite (CH 12.5-9, 12.19). Older English books label it in their own ways: G.R.S. Mead (1906) heads it “XII. (XIII.) About the Common Mind of Hermes to Tat”, where the first number is the one used today and the bracketed one an older count, and John Everard’s Divine Pymander (1650) prints it as “The Eleventh Book of Hermes Trismegistus. Of the Common Minde to Tat”, cut into 127 short verses of its own. Mead’s twenty-three sections use the same breaks; Everard’s verse numbers do not, so the key line quoted from Everard below carries his own verse number as well.
CH XII section by section
The table groups the twenty-three sections into nine movements. The headings are ours; the numbers and the content belong to the text. Mead’s public-domain translation (Thrice-Greatest Hermes, vol. II, 1906, pp. 199-212) uses the same section breaks, so you can follow along for free.
| Sections | What happens |
|---|---|
| §1 · Mind of God’s substance | Mind is of God’s very essence, if God has an essence at all, and only God knows exactly what that is. Mind is not cut off from God but joined to him as light to the sun. In human beings this mind is God, which is why some people are gods and their humanity is close to divinity. The Good Daimon said it: gods are immortal humans, and humans are mortal gods. |
| §2-4 · Mind among souls | In animals without reason mind works as their nature and goes along with it; in human souls it works against them, for their good. Every soul that enters a body is at once corrupted by pleasure and pain, which seethe in the compound body like juices, and the soul is plunged into them (§2). Mind treats the souls it governs as a physician treats a sick body, by burning and cutting: it inflicts pain to pull the soul away from pleasure, for the soul’s great illness is godlessness (§3). Human souls without mind as their pilot fare like animals: mind lets their desires run, and they never stop raging and craving. Over the passions God has set mind as judge and executioner (§4). |
| §5-7 · Tat’s objection: fate | Tat objects that this threatens what Hermes taught him about fate (heimarmene): if a man is fated to commit adultery or sacrilege, why is he punished? Hermes answers that all works belong to fate and nothing bodily, good or bad, happens without it; but it is also fated that the one who does wrong will suffer (§5). He sets the question of vice and fate aside, as treated in other discourses, and returns to mind: what it can do, and how it differs in humans and in animals (§6). All people are subject to fate, to coming-to-be and to change, but those led by reason, whom mind guides, do not suffer in the same way. Pressed by Tat, he explains: the mind-led man will suffer as though he had committed adultery or murder, though he has done neither; he cannot escape change, but he can free himself from vice (§7). |
| §8-9 · The Good Daimon’s sayings | Hermes recalls that he always heard the Good Daimon say, and wishes he had put it in writing, since he alone, as first-born god, speaks divine words: all things are one, above all the bodies known only by the intellect; we live by God’s energy, power and eternity (aion); his mind is good and so is his soul; intelligible things know no separation, so mind, ruler of all and soul of God, can do whatever it wills (§8). Applied to Tat’s question: mind, the soul of God, rules over fate, law and everything else, and nothing is impossible for it, neither to set a human soul above fate nor to put under fate a soul that neglects what happens (§9). |
| §10-11 · Is mind a passion? | Tat presses again: if mind works with the impulses of animals, and their impulses are passions, then mind too is a passion (§10). Hermes praises the question. Everything incorporeal that is in a body is subject to passion: what moves is incorporeal, what is moved is body, and both mover and moved are affected. Strictly nothing is free of passion; action and passion are the same thing, and Tat should not let words trouble him (§11). |
| §12-14a · Mind and speech | God gave human beings, beyond all mortal creatures, two gifts equal to immortality: mind, for knowing God, and speech (logos), for praising him; whoever uses them rightly differs in nothing from the immortals and after death is guided by them to the company of gods (§12). Animals have voice, not speech. When Tat objects that speech differs from nation to nation, Hermes answers that humanity is one, so speech is one, translated and found the same in Egypt, Persia and Greece. Then the third saying of the Good Daimon: soul is in body, mind in soul, reason in mind, mind in God, and God is father of them all (§13). Reason is the image of mind, mind of God; the subtlest part of matter is air, of air soul, of soul mind, of mind God, and God surrounds and passes through all (§14). |
| §14b-18 · A cosmos that does not die | Necessity, providence and nature are instruments of the cosmos and of the ordering of matter. Composite bodies exist by number, and units generate number and take it back when bodies dissolve (§14-15). The cosmos is a great god, image of a greater, full of life, and nothing in it has ever been dead (§15). When Tat asks whether its living parts die, Hermes silences him: Tat is misled by a word; dissolution is not death but the breaking up of a compound so that it can be renewed (§16). Even the earth moves, the one thing that is both in rapid motion and stable, since a nurse that brings everything to birth cannot be inert (§17). Everything in the cosmos is moved toward increase or decrease; life is not coming-to-be but sensation, and death is not change but forgetting (§18). |
| §19-20 · The human as God’s companion | All that lives owes its immortality to mind, and the human above all, who receives God and shares his substance. With the human alone God keeps company: by dreams at night and signs by day, by birds, entrails, wind and tree, he foretells the future, which is why humans claim to know past, present and future (§19). Every other creature lives in one element; the human uses earth, water, air and fire, sees heaven and touches it with the senses. God surrounds and pervades all, and it is not difficult to conceive God (§20). |
| §21-23 · God is the All | To contemplate God, look at the order of the cosmos, necessity in what appears, providence in what has come to be, matter full of life. Tat calls these mere activities (energeiai); Hermes asks who activates them, if not God, whose parts are life, immortality, energy, spirit, necessity, providence, nature, soul and mind, and their lasting, which is called the Good (§21). Is God in matter, then? Matter is set apart from God so that it can be thought of as place, but matter, body and essence are all energies of God, and this is God, the All (§22). Nothing in the All is not God; neither size, place, quality, form nor time surrounds him. Worship this teaching: there is one way to worship God, not to be bad (§23). |
Two words in that table already carry interpretation. “Mind” renders nous, which here is at once God’s substance, the governor of good souls and the nature of animals; any single English word narrows it. “Plunged” in §2 renders the same Greek verb, baptizein, that CH IV uses for the immersion in the bowl of mind; here it is used for the soul sinking into the body’s pleasure and pain (see CH IV, The Mixing Bowl).
Key lines in a public-domain translation
Quoted from Mead (1906), with Nock and Festugière’s section number and Mead’s page, except the last, from Everard (1650), with his verse number and old spelling, the long s modernised. Square brackets are Mead’s own.
“This Mind in men is God, and for this cause some of mankind are gods, and their humanity is nigh unto divinity.” (§1, Mead 1906, p. 199)
“But it is fated too, that he who doeth ill, shall suffer.” (§5, Mead 1906, p. 202)
“Yea, son, but man is one; so also speech is one and is interpreted, and it is found the same in Egypt, and in Persia, and in Greece.” (§13, Mead 1906, p. 206)
“For ’tis not genesis that constituteth life, but ’tis sensation; it is not change that constituteth death, but ’tis forgetfulness.” (§18, Mead 1906, p. 210)
“This Word, O Son, worship and adore. And the onely service of God, is not to be evil.” (§23, Everard 1650, Eleventh Book, verse 127, p. 158; scan)
Mead ends the same sentence with “There is one way alone to worship God; [it is] not to be bad” (p. 212). No line of this treatise travelled further: Lactantius quoted it in the early fourth century.
What the treatise does not say
It never says how a soul comes to have mind as its pilot, or how anyone could tell. Mind is “common”, present even in animals as their nature, yet it governs only some human souls, and the treatise gives no rite, teacher or test that would explain the difference. It also leaves the discussion of fate unfinished on purpose: Hermes refers Tat to other discourses on vice and fate (§6) and then answers the objection with a saying of the Good Daimon rather than an argument. Finally, it never explains who the Good Daimon is, beyond calling him the first-born god whose words were not written down.
Disputed points
Mind for all, or for some? The title says the mind is shared in common, and the treatise-by-treatise guide sets CH XII, mind common to all, against CH IV, where mind is offered in a bowl to those who choose to be immersed. Read closely, CH XII is less simple. Mind is everywhere, in animals as nature, but in humans it presides only over some souls (§3), and souls without it as pilot live like animals (§4); §1 says that “some” people are gods, not all. That brings it closer to CH I 22, where Mind is present to the pious and absent from the wicked. Whether the three treatises contradict each other or describe one teaching from different sides is not settled by the texts. Mead (1906, p. 213) took the common mind to be the same as the Good Mind and the Good Daimon, a single benefactor of humans; that identification is his reading.
Stoic fate, or Platonist fate? Sections 5-9 are the most studied part of the treatise. Walter Scott judged its idea of fate Stoic. Festugière, in an appendix to the Nock-Festugière edition (“XII 5-9: Fatalité et libre arbitre”), saw two theories set side by side, a Stoic one in §5 and a Gnostic one in §6-9, with the power of mind as the real theme and fate confined to bodily things; Lira treats the Gnostic part with caution. Nicola Denzey Lewis (2013, pp. 118-119) finds older Stoic views evident but new the idea that those who have reason are joined to the divine Mind and so transcend fate. David Pessoa de Lira (2023) argues that the theory is mainly Middle Platonist, a “conditional” fate of the kind found in Plutarch’s On Fate, Alcinous and Apuleius: what is fixed is not the act but the consequence that follows if the act is chosen. The “as though” of §7, the mind-led man suffering as if he had committed adultery or murder, is the crux of that debate (all four views as summarised and cited in Lira 2023). Mead (1906, pp. 215-216) compared §7 with a fragment of the second-century teacher Basilides, preserved by Clement of Alexandria, which uses the same two examples of adultery and murder; he thought both drew on a common body of teaching, not on each other.
Who is the Good Daimon? The treatise calls him the first-born god and says his words were heard, not written. His first saying, “gods are immortal men, and men are mortal gods”, reworks a well-known saying of Heraclitus (fragment 62 in Diels’ numbering, which in Greek speaks only of “immortals” and “mortals”), as Mead pointed out (1906, p. 213); his second opens with the Heraclitean “all things are one”. How far the second quotation runs is uncertain: Mead understood Reitzenstein to end it, apparently, at the word “aion”, while Mead himself carried it to the end of §8 (p. 214). Mead also noted that the third saying (§13) is close in form to CH XI 4, which is spoken by Mind itself, and from this built a theory of graded teaching, with a more intimate doctrine kept back from beginners like Tat (pp. 214-215). That theory rests on no evidence outside the text.
Is matter good? In §22 matter is separated from God only so that it can be thought of as place, and matter, body and essence are all called energies of God. Mead (1906, p. 218) concluded that the charge of dualism against the Hermetists should be dropped and that the world-denying treatises use dualism only as a teaching device. That is a harmonisation; within the same collection CH VI holds that the Good is in God alone and CH VII calls the body a tomb, and the Corpus never reconciles them.
One language, or untranslatable Egyptian? §13 says that speech is one and the same in Egypt, Persia and Greece. CH XVI, the Definitions of Asclepius to King Ammon, opens with the opposite warning: that its teaching will be spoiled when translated from Egyptian into Greek (see the guide to CH XVI). The two treatises do not refer to each other; the contrast is ours, and it is one more sign that the Corpus is an anthology of different authors rather than one system.
A wandering sentence. The sentence in §14 on the subtlest part of matter being air, of air soul, of soul mind and of mind God is also found tacked on to the end of CH V in the manuscripts, which Mead (1906, p. 207, n. 1) put down to a scribe. Anyone quoting it should say which treatise they are quoting.
Reception
Late antiquity. The earliest outside witness is Lactantius, the Latin Christian apologist, writing in the early fourth century. In the Divine Institutes (VI.25) he quotes the closing lines of §23 as words of Hermes “concerning justice” and treats them as agreeing with the prophets: “Adore and worship this word, O son. But the worship of God consists of one thing, not to be wicked” (tr. William Fletcher, 1886, text). His quotation shows that the treatise existed in some form by his time. Mead (1906, pp. 217-218) inferred from Lactantius’ heading, and from the Hermetic excerpts on justice, providence, necessity and fate preserved by Stobaeus (see The Stobaean Fragments), that the “other discourses” on fate mentioned in §6 really existed and that one of them was called “On Justice”; the inference is his. Lactantius’ wider use of Hermes as a pagan witness to Christian truth is described under Prisca theologia.
Renaissance. CH XII reached Latin readers among the fourteen treatises that Marsilio Ficino translated, finishing in 1463; the translation was printed in 1471 as the Pimander. Lodovico Lazzarelli later translated the three treatises Ficino lacked (XVI-XVIII); XII was not among them. The Greek text was first printed at Paris in 1554 by Adrien Turnèbe, whose edition gave CH I-XIV as the Poemander (Scott 1924, I, pp. 21, 33-34).
In English, Everard’s Divine Pymander (1650) gave it as the Eleventh Book, “Of the Common Minde to Tat”, and Mead as “About the Common Mind” in 1906, with a commentary on the sayings of the Good Daimon. Recent scholarship has studied the treatise mostly in parts: the fate passage (Lewis 2013; Lira 2023), the argument from divination in §19 (Lira 2018) and the chain of mind, reason and God in §12-14a (Lira 2021).
Translations to read
| Translation | Where CH XII is | Status | Our note |
|---|---|---|---|
| G.R.S. Mead, 1906 | Thrice-Greatest Hermes, vol. II, pp. 199-212 (text), 213-218 (commentary); headed “XII. (XIII.)” | Public domain; scan at the Internet Archive | Free and complete; made before Nock’s critical text, and the commentary is Theosophical |
| John Everard, 1650 | The Divine Pymander, “The Eleventh Book: Of the Common Minde to Tat”, verses 1-127, pp. 138-158 | Public domain; Wellcome Library copy at the Internet Archive | For the history of reception; it follows Patrizi’s text and order (Scott 1924), not Ficino’s Latin as Mead thought |
| Walter Scott, 1924 | Hermetica, vol. I (Greek and English) | Copyright status varies by country; free scan | Scott reorders and emends freely; compare, do not quote as the text |
| A. D. Nock and A.-J. Festugière, 1945 | Corpus Hermeticum, vol. I: Traités I-XII (Greek and French), with an appendix on §5-9 | In copyright | The critical text all section numbers here refer to |
| Brian P. Copenhaver, 1992 | Hermetica, CH XII, pp. 43-48, with notes (Cambridge Core) | In copyright | The scholarly standard in English, based on Nock and Festugière |
| Salaman, van Oyen, Wharton, 1999 | The Way of Hermes | In copyright | A readable first pass |
For the whole Corpus, every translation we know of, in English, Polish and Spanish, is listed on the Corpus Hermeticum hub.
| Position | Twelfth of the 17 Greek treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum |
|---|---|
| Usual English title | On the Mind Shared in Common (Mead: About the Common Mind) |
| Speakers | Hermes and his son Tat; the Good Daimon is quoted three times |
| Length | 23 sections (Nock-Festugière) |
| Other numberings | Mead 1906: XII (XIII); Everard 1650: Eleventh Book, verses 1-127 |
| Date | Probably 2nd-3rd century CE; pseudepigraphic, attributed to Hermes |
| Earliest outside witness | Lactantius, Divine Institutes VI.25 (quotes §23) |
| Free translation | Mead 1906, vol. II, pp. 199-212 |
Fair questions
What is the “common mind” in Corpus Hermeticum XII?
Mind (nous) as something of God’s own substance, joined to him as light to the sun. It is present everywhere: in animals it works as their nature, in humans it governs only some souls, working against their pleasures like a physician. The treatise never says how a soul comes to be governed by it.
Who is the Good Daimon in CH XII?
An authority Hermes quotes three times (§1, 8, 13) and calls the first-born god, whose sayings were heard but never written down. The first saying, gods are immortal men and men mortal gods, reworks a known saying of Heraclitus (fragment 62). Who the Good Daimon is beyond that, the text does not say.
Does CH XII say everything is fated?
It says all bodily works fall under fate, and that it is fated that wrongdoers suffer. But mind, the soul of God, rules over fate and can set a human soul above it. Scholars disagree whether this is Stoic fate (Scott), Stoic and Gnostic theories set side by side (Festugière), Stoic fate overruled by mind (Lewis) or a Middle Platonist conditional fate (Lira 2023).
How does CH XII differ from CH IV on mind?
CH IV has God send mind down in a bowl that people may choose to be immersed in. CH XII calls mind common and present everywhere, yet says it presides only over some human souls. The Corpus never reconciles the two pictures.
Where can I read CH XII for free?
In G.R.S. Mead’s Thrice-Greatest Hermes, vol. II (1906), pp. 199-212, and in John Everard’s Divine Pymander (1650) as the Eleventh Book, both public domain and scanned at the Internet Archive. For study, Copenhaver’s Hermetica (1992) is the standard.
Sources & further reading
- A. D. Nock (ed.) and A.-J. Festugière (tr.), Corpus Hermeticum, vol. I: Traités I-XII (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1945): Greek text of CH XII, section numbers 1-23, and Appendix E on XII 5-9.
- Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica (Cambridge UP, 1992), CH XII, pp. 43-48, with notes; Cambridge Core.
- G.R.S. Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes, vol. II (London and Benares: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1906), pp. 199-218: translation, notes (Lactantius, the wandering sentence of §14) and commentary (Heraclitus, Reitzenstein, Basilides, the sermons on fate); scan at the Internet Archive.
- John Everard (tr.), The Divine Pymander of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus (London: Robert White, 1650), “The Eleventh Book: Of the Common Minde to Tat”, pp. 138-158; scan at the Internet Archive.
- Lactantius, Divine Institutes VI.25, tr. William Fletcher, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7 (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886); text at New Advent.
- David Pessoa de Lira, “A teoria do destino condicional no Corpus hermeticum 12.5-9”, Griot: Revista de Filosofia 23.1 (2023), pp. 209-228, with the views of Scott, Festugière and Lewis summarised and cited; open access.
- Nicola Denzey Lewis, Cosmology and Fate in Gnosticism and Graeco-Roman Antiquity: Under Pitiless Skies (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 109-119.
- David Pessoa de Lira, “O argumento das artes mânticas no Corpus Hermeticum 12.19”, Griot 17.1 (2018), pp. 283-303.
- David Pessoa de Lira, “O λóγος noético: análise da lógica proposicional e dos conceitos lógico-dialéticos no Corpus Hermeticum 12.12-14a”, Griot 21.2 (2021), pp. 311-331.
- Walter Scott, Hermetica, vol. I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), pp. 21, 33-34 (the 1554 Turnèbe edition).