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Quick Conceptual Question: Pymander

To: alt.magick
From: Harold Piser 
Subject: Re: Quick Conceptual Question: Pymander
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 05:30:06 GMT

On Mon, 13 Mar 2000 18:23:54 GMT, aeternitas@my-deja.com wrote:

>Since English is not my native language... could
>someone, please, tell me what is "Pymander" [the
>divine omniscientia] as in the "Divine Pymander"
>of Corpus Hermetica?
>
>Is Pymander a proper name or some kind of title?
>Or, should it be understood as a kind of mixture
>of both, as "Pistis Sophia" et al.?
>
>Summum Bonum,
>Kristian A.
>
>
I have in my library a book titled "Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus: His
Divine Pymander" by Paschal Beverly Randolph (1889). Here is the first
paragraph of the preface.

"The Divine Pymander, or Poemander, as it is now more commonly rendered,
meaning "Shepherd of Men," comes from Egypt. It is not a child's book, nor
a sectarian work; but it is a divine revelation! It opens the way from the
World of Shadows to the realm of Spirit. Among other matters it treats of
things that are: of Knowledge; of Truth; of the Human Soul; of
Regeneration; of Immortality, and of God. These are high and mighty themes.
The study of them ennobles the student. Different grades of mind see them
from different points of view. Few minds have contemplated them from
loftier eminences that he who wrote the Poemander."

The  book also containes The Asiatic Mystery, The Smaragdine Table and the
Song of Brahm.

The book or a copy might be available from The Philosophical Publishing Co.
- http://www.philpub.com/ .  You will find an 800 number there to call for
availability.

Harold

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From: "Tom Schuler" 
Newsgroups: alt.magick
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Subject: Re: Quick Conceptual Question: Pymander
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 wrote in message
news:8alkn2$qq7$1@nnrp1.deja.com...
> In article ,
> "Tom Schuler"  wrote:
> >
> > Pymander, or Poimandres, or Poemander, depending on whose translation
> > you read, was the name of the Great Dragon who appeared to Hermes
> > Trismegistus in the Second Book of the Corpus Hermeticum. I have
> > heard it transliterated as "shepherd of men", but I don't know Greek
> > myself, so I can't attest to the accuracy of that.
>
> It can't be Greek unless it was written in one of the forever obscure
> dialects (read in ancient local slang).  All the words I know in the
> three main ancient dialects and what my resources (the best I could
> find) have come up with phonetically make no sense  (this could
> possibly be due to all the different spellings).  It may be Aramaic,
> kinda sounds that way.  Although according to the Hermetic myths it
> could be Coptic, or possibly another language translated through
> Phoenician.

Possibly.  I thought it was of Greek origin because of the similarity to
"salamander", which is of Greek derivation.  It's probably deliberately
coined, rather than a naturally developed word (if any word can be thought
to develop naturally).

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