The Hermetica…Death and Immortality

The Hermetica…Death and Immortality

From mankind’s perspective, time is a destroyer. Through the process of time we age and die. From a cosmic perspective, time is an endlessly repeating cycle, measured by the constant revolution of the stars. Whilst the things of the Earth are always changing, the orbits of the stars always remain the same. Hermes asks, could something as impermanent and transitory as our earthly existence be regarded as anything other than an illusion? Yet this illusion arises from an underlying permanent reality. The discovery of the permanent within the impermanent is the reward of the spiritual quest. 

Hermes teaches that we must accept the inevitable transitory nature of all physical things. Everything is in a process of being born and then dying. The old must pass away so that the new can come into existence. New shoots are born from the decaying remains of old vegetation. And these new shoots will in turn eventually decay and die. He teaches, however, that a human birth is not the beginning of the soul, only of its incarnation as that particular person. Death is simply the end of this particular person and the soul’s transformation into another state. Death is just the discarding of a worn-out body. Most people are ignorant of this fact, and therefore needlessly fear death. 

After leaving the body at death, the individual soul is judged by the chief of the gods, to see if it is pure and honorable. Pure souls are assigned to a heavenly realm. Ignorant souls fall once again into the material realms and are reincarnated. A soul which during its earthly life has come to know God, will have become all Mind. When it leaves the body it takes on a body of Light and is freed from all limitations. Such an enlightened soul has recognized that its essential nature is god-like, and on death it communes with God. It has 'run the race of purity' and is now completely spiritual and devine. such a soul has become a 'god'. 

The Hermetica,
Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy