The New Birth Experience In Hermeticism

"Will it, and it comes to be. Stop the working of your bodily senses, and then will deity be born in you." – HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. On its metaphysical side Hermetic rebirth involved nothing less than deification. "This is the good; this is the consummation for those who have got gnosis--they enter into God," was the last word of the Shepherd of Men to his prophet before giving him his commission. Hermeticism emphatically maintained that it was perfectly possible for man, even while residing in the human body, to become deified. With this exalted thought of possibilities within human reach, the Hermetic … could ascend to heaven and make himself divine--such was the power of his ecstasy. "We must not shrink from saying," Hermes concluded, "that a man on earth is a mortal god, and that a god in heaven is an immortal man"…