Hermes and Plato

Book excerpt: Blind soul! Arm thyself with the torch of the Mysteries, and in the night of earth shalt thou uncover thy luminous. Double, thy celestial Soul. Follow this divine guide and let him be thy Genius, for he holds the key of thy lives, both past and to come. Appeal to the Initiates (from the Book of the Dead). Listen within yourselves and look into the infinitude of Space and Time. There can be heard the songs of the Constellations, the voices of the Numbers, and the harmonies of the Spheres. Each sun is a thought of God and each planet a mode of that thought. To know divine thought, O souls, you descend and painfully ascend the path of the seven planets and of their seven heavens. What do the Constellations? What say the Numbers? What revolve the Spheres? O lost or saved souls, they speak, they sing, they roll . . . your destinies! Fragment (from Hermes).