3.3.1. Poimandres, Shepherd of Man

“If then you do not make yourself equal to God, you cannot apprehend God; for like is known by like. Make yourself grow to a greatness beyond measure… believe that nothing is impossible for you… ascend to the highest height, from body to the vast expanse, and having become eternal you will know God.”

— Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum XI (Scott translation)

There is a peculiar kinship among seekers across traditions — a silent recognition that the deepest truths wear many garments. It was thus inevitable I would stumble into the strange light of the Hermetica, a body of mystical writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Though couched in Hellenistic imagery rather than Indian metaphysics, I was struck by how intimately these teachings mirrored the insights of the Buddha. In Poimandres, the first of these texts, we are led by a divine intellect — a shepherd of mankind — through a sweeping cosmogony that uncannily echoes our own explorations of mind and matter.

When my senses are held back by stillness or exhaustion, I sometimes glimpse peculiar architectures of awareness — scenes not quite dream nor vision. Poimandres begins with just such an episode. A figure appears to Hermes (or the narrator who becomes him), vast beyond imagining, calling his name and offering wisdom. This figure reveals itself as a Poimander, literally “shepherd of men,” and beckons Hermes to learn the nature of reality.

What follows is a cosmogony rendered in symbols: a radiant, joyous light pervading all, suddenly opposed by a thrashing, serpentine darkness that emits terrible cries. From this primal tension emerge the elements — water, fire, air — tempered by the appearance of the Logos, the divine Word, which brings order to chaos. This Logos, the creative utterance, fashions a mind beyond time, which acts as a blueprint. Through it arises another mind — the demiurge — who governs seven rulers, each enclosing the cosmos our senses perceive.

These seven divide again: one aspect soars upward, rational and knowing, drawn back into the divine; the other sinks downward, becoming matter itself. Thus the cosmos is structured — a mingling of the sensible and the intelligible.

Unlike the beasts formed by ignorant nature, humanity is created differently. A luminous, ethereal “man,” brother to the demiurge, is fashioned by God and loved by nature for his divine beauty. Nature, longing to mirror this perfection, creates a bodily form — and entwines herself around it. So humanity becomes a wondrous union: divine and material, sevenfold in consciousness like the seven rulers, yet also twofold — of spirit and clay.

In those early days, humans are hermaphroditic, embodying the concord of the seven, until their divine bond loosens and they split into male and female. Yet even divided, the call to transcendence remains. Poimandres tells Hermes:

“He who knows himself reaches that Good which transcends abundance; but he who loves the body wanders in darkness, suffering through the senses the things of death.”

It is a lesson familiar to any student of Dharma. Attachment to body and sense is a cage wrought by primordial delusion. The “gloomy darkness,” as Poimandres describes it, is the very root of materiality, the moist seed of the body, and from this comes death. To awaken, one must become pious, turning away from sense-objects. Only then does the Mind, the divine shepherd, intervene — closing the gateways of the senses and shielding the inner sanctum from base impulses.

But for those who remain ensnared, an avenging daemon arises. This being serves a dual role: both tempter (like Satan) and harsh teacher (like Moloch), pressing the soul to exhaust the bitter fruit of sensory indulgence. Thus humanity stands at a forked tree — one branch leads to gnosis, the other to repeated blows of suffering until wisdom dawns.

Poimandres outlines the path back to the divine. The seeker “surrenders the body to the work of change,” letting its senses dissolve into their elemental sources. Passions and desires retreat into the irrational nature from which they sprang. Through this self-offering, one ascends the seven zones, purifying each distortion of consciousness.

The Seven Zones of Purification

Only after passing through these refinements does one enter the “harmony of the eighth,” what some would call Ālaya, the ground consciousness. Purified, this eighth rises untainted — the Dharmakāya, or awakened mind.

Poimandres closes with a clarion call:

“O you people, earth-born, drunken with ignorance of God — be sober now! Cease from your surfeit, awake from irrational sleep!”

Moved by this revelation, Hermes devotes his life to guiding humanity out of its sensory stupor. I, too, find in these strange Greek-Egyptian words a companion to the Buddha’s diagnosis. Though clothed differently, the wound and its cure remain the same.

Thus does Poimandres speak across centuries — a shepherd calling us home. Whether by Pāli or Greek, whether through Dharma or Hermetica, the teaching is clear: to awaken, one must turn inward, relinquish the fleeting sweetness of sense, and rediscover the boundless light that was always our true inheritance.

This text is excerpted from the upcoming book Citrinitas: A Course in Modern Alchemy. The complete volume will include additional study guides, glossaries, and extended teachings. Learn more about the book here.