Nothing of What Exists Perishes — What Men Call Death Is Transformation

In the eighth book of Ficino's Pimander, Hermes addresses Tatius on the soul and the body. The argument is etymological and cosmological: Thanatos (death) is merely Athanatos (immortal) with its first letter dropped — a confusion of names for a confusion of minds. Nothing in the world is destroyed; the world as second god is immortal; its members, including human bodies, only transform. The book moves from cosmic architecture — the Father impressing ideas onto spherical matter — down to man as the third living being, who holds both worlds in himself and whose end is not destruction but return.

This translation renders Book VIII from Ficino's Latin as preserved in the 1505 Lefèvre d'Étaples edition. The underlying text is designated Corpus Hermeticum VIII in modern scholarship.

On soul and body, my son, we must speak: how the soul is immortal, and what power it holds in the body's coming together and dissolution. Death has nothing to do with either of them.

For Thanatos — death — is a term that belongs to the language of mortality: either it is something empty, or it comes from dropping the first letter. For ithanatos, meaning death, stands in place of athanatos, meaning immortal. Thanatos signifies destruction; but nothing of the bodies that exist in the world is destroyed. For if the world is a second god — a living and immortal being — then it is impossible for any part of an immortal creature to perish. Whatever exists within the world is a member of the world, and man above all — that rational animal.

The first of all things: the truly eternal, immortal, unbegotten God — the maker of all. Second in order, in his image: the world, begotten by him, maintained and nourished by him, endowed with immortality — like a child of its own proper father, always living and immortal. For it is always living: always, and immortal. Always living and eternal are not two things; they do not differ from each other. Because the eternal was not made by another — it always was of itself, made by none, because it always is. Everything is eternal insofar as it is eternal. The Father is eternal through himself. The world, on the other hand, was made always-living and immortal by the Father.

Such matter as was at hand: the Father himself, working on the corporeal, gathered it into a mass and rendered the whole of it spherical — impressing quality on matter that was already immortal in its existence, matter that bore the eternal in its own nature. Full of all ideas, the Father brought qualities into the sphere, and as if into a circle enclosed all quality within it. He wished to adorn what comes after him — to undergird all body with immortality — so that matter, wishing to withdraw from this bestowment, would not dissolve back into its own shapelessness.

When matter was still incorporeal, my son, it was more shapeless than it is now. This matter holds certain slight qualities: a revolving nature of growth and diminishment — which men call death. This confusion belongs to earthly living things. The celestial bodies hold one and the same order: the one they received in the beginning from their Father. Each is preserved by the restoration of its indissoluble unity. But the restoration of the constitution of earthly bodies, when dissolution comes, restores them to immortal and indissoluble form. And so there is a deprivation of perception — not a destruction of bodies.

The third living being: man, born in the image of the world, bearing himself toward the other earthly creatures by the will of the Father. He has kinship not only with the second god, but through intelligence he reaches even toward the first. The second god he takes in as a corporeal power through the senses. The first God — incorporeal, the good mind — he rises toward through mind.

TATIUS: Does that living being not then perish?

TRISMEGISTUS: Better to speak more carefully, my son — and to understand what God is, what the world is, what the immortal living being is, what the dissoluble living being is. Know that the world is from God and in God; man is from the world and in the world; and the beginning, the comprehension, and the constitution of all things: God.

Colophon

Translated from Ficino's Latin Pimander as preserved in the 1505 Lefèvre d'Étaples edition: Contenta in hoc volumine. Pimander. Mercurij Trismegisti liber De sapientia et potestate dei. Asclepius. Eiusdem Mercurij liber De voluntate divina. Item Crater Hermetis a Lazarelo Septempedano (Rome, 1505). Digital text from the Internet Archive, identifier bub_gb_SbGbIvDI0ekC, held by the National Central Library of Rome. Public Domain Mark 1.0.

This is Book VIII of Ficino's Pimander — the text Ficino designates Nihil eorum quae sunt interit, sed mutationes decepti homines interitum nominant, ad Tatium, corresponding to Corpus Hermeticum VIII in modern scholarship. G. R. S. Mead's 1905 English was not consulted; translation is derived independently from Ficino's Latin. The underlying Greek Hermetica (Nock-Festugière critical edition) was not consulted.

Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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Source Text: Nihil Eorum Quae Sunt Interit — Liber VIII

Latin source text from Ficino's Pimander as preserved in the Lefèvre d'Étaples 1505 edition, accessed via the Internet Archive (identifier: bub_gb_SbGbIvDI0ekC). Transcribed from the OCR text with corrections for long-s rendering (ſ → s), hyphenated line-breaks rejoined, and obvious OCR splits resolved.

De anima et corpore, fili, dicendum est: quonam modo immortalis anima, quantaque sit agendi virtus in concretione dissolutioneque corporis. Mors ad horum nullum attinet. Thanatos enim — mors — conceptus quidem est mortalis appellationis: vel vanum quiddam, vel per ablationem primae litterae. Ithanatos enim, id est mors, pro eo quod dicitur athanatos, id est immortalis. Thanatos enim interitum significat; at nihil corporum quae in mundo sunt interit. Si enim secundus deus est mundus, necnon immortale vivens: impossibile est immortalis animantis partem aliquam interire. Quaecunque mundo insunt, mundi sunt membra: homo praesertim, animal rationale.

Primus omnium vere totipiternus, immortalis, ingenitus deus, omnium auctor. Secundus deinde ad illius imaginem: mundus ab eo genitus et ab eodem servatus, nutricus, immortalitate donatus, velut a proprio patre vivens quidem semper et immortalis. Est enim semper vivens quidem: semper et immortalis. Et enim semper vivens et sempiternum nec invicem differunt: quia sempiternum quidem ab altero factum non est; fiebat a seipso, nec ab aliquo factum fuit, quia fit semper. Sempiternum enim quatenus sempiternum est omne. Pater autem ille suiipsius sempieternus. At vero mundus, a patre semper vivens immortalisque factus.

Quantaque materiae fuerat subiectum: pater ipse corporeum agens et in molem congregans, id totum sphaericum reddidit, imprimens qualitatem materiae existenti immortali, rationeque materiae sempiternum habenti. Plenus autem ideis omnibus, qualitates pater inferens in sphaeram velut in gyrum, omni qualitate circumscripsit. Exornare autem voluit id quod post ipsum est, quasi in immortalitate fulciens omne corpus, ne materia ab huis concessu discedere volens in suam deformitatem iterum resolvatur.

Quando enim incorporea erat materia, o fili, deformior erat. Habet haec quoque materia qualitates quasdam exiguas, revolutam crescendi pariter et decrescendi naturam, quam homines mortem vocant. Huiusmodi autem confusio circa terrena viventia. Caelestium quippe corpora unum atque eundem servant ordinem, quem scilicet primum a patre suo sortita sunt. Servatur autem ipse restitutione cuiusque indissolubilis. Restitutio vero constitutionis corporum terrenorum: facta dissolutio in corpora indissolubilia et immortalia restituit. Atque ita sensus privatio fit, non destructio corporum.

Tertia autem animal homo, ad imaginem mundi genitus, secundum patris voluntatem sese habens inter ceteras terrenas viventia. Non modo cum secundo deo cognationem habet, verum etiam intelligentia primi. Secundum plane deum, ut potentiam corporalem, sinus comprehendit. Primum vero deum, ut incorporeum bonaque mentem, mente consurgit.

TAT: Id ergo animali nonne destrui? TRISME: Melius me in omni nominare, o fili, ac intelligens meditare quid deus, quid mundus, quid animal immortale, quid animal dissolubile. Scito quoque mundum a deo simul atque in deo; hominem vero a mundo et in mundo consistere: principium autem comprehensioque omnium et constitutio: deus.

Source Colophon

Latin source text drawn from Contenta in hoc volumine. Pimander. Mercurij Trismegisti liber De sapientia et potestate dei (Rome: Lefèvre d'Étaples, 1505), digitized by the National Central Library of Rome and made freely available on the Internet Archive (identifier: bub_gb_SbGbIvDI0ekC). Public Domain Mark 1.0. OCR text corrected for long-s rendering (ſ → s) and standard Latin abbreviations expanded.

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