Prayer of Thanksgiving

Hermeticism
Part of a series on
Hermes Trismegistus
Hermetic writings Liber Hermetis (astrological) Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus Corpus Hermeticum Poimandres Asclepius Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth Prayer of Thanksgiving Korē kosmou Cyranides The Book of the Secrets of the Stars The Secret of Creation Emerald Tablet Kitāb al-Isṭamākhīs Liber Hermetis de alchemia
Historical figures Ancient and medieval Zosimos of Panopolis Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (may be legendary) Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi Ibn Umayl Maslama al-Qurṭubī Aḥmad al-Būnī Early modern Marsilio Ficino Lodovico Lazzarelli Giovanni da Correggio Pico della Mirandola Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa Paracelsus John Dee Giordano Bruno Jakob Böhme Robert Fludd Christian Rosenkreuz (legendary, see Rosicrucianism)
Modern offshoots As above, so below Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Hermetic Qabalah Rosicrucianism The Kybalion Hermetism and other religions
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The Prayer of Thanksgiving is a Hermetic Gnostic prayer text preserved in Coptic, Greek and Latin.^[1]

The Coptic version is found in Nag Hammadi Codex VI, where it is text no. 7 at pages 63–65. The Greek version is found in the Papyrus Mimaut, one of the Greek Magical Papyri, now Papyrus 2391 in the Louvre, where the prayer is at column XVIII, lines 591–611. The Latin version is found at paragraph 41b at the end of the translation of the Greek treatise Asclepius, part of the Hermetica. All three texts were printed together by Jean-Pierre Mahé.^[2]

The Prayer is addressed to God in thanks for his gift of revelation. It says that God is called "Father" because he "giv[es] us mind, speech, and knowledge" out of fatherly love.^[1] It has a typically Gnostic view of salvation:

We rejoice, having been illumined by Thy knowledge. We rejoice because Thou hast shown us Thyself. We rejoice because while we were in (the) body, Thou hast made us divine through Thy knowledge.^[1]

In the Nag Hammadi codex, the Prayer follows the Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth and shares its bipartite, as opposed to tripartite, anthropology.^[1] The scribe who copied it may have considered the Discourse to be the knowledge the Prayer was thankful for. A short scribal note in the first person comes immediately after the Prayer and indicates that it was selected for copying from a larger library of texts.^[3] In the Latin Asclepius, the Prayer follows Hermes Trismegistus' admonition to his disciple Asclepius that "[G]od finds mortal gratitude to be the best incense".^[4]

The Prayer is evidence for the existence of ritual kissing and communal meals among the liturgical practices of the Hermetic community in Roman Egypt.^[3]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Roig Lanzillotta 2021.
^ Mahé 1978–1982, vol. I, pp. 157–167 (cited by Roig Lanzillotta 2021, p. 61).
^ ^a ^b Brashler, Dirkse & Parrott 1981.
^ Copenhaver 1992, p. 92 and 259n.

Sources

Brashler, James; Dirkse, Peter A.; Parrott, Douglas M. (1981). "The Prayer of Thanksgiving (VI, 7)". In Robinson, James M. (ed.). The Nag Hammadi Library in English. Harber & Row. pp. 298–299.
Copenhaver, Brian P. (1992). Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation, with Notes and Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-42543-3.
Mahé, Jean-Pierre (1978–1982). Hermès en Haute-Egypte. Vol. I–II. Quebec: Presses de l'Université Laval. ISBN 9780774668170.
Roig Lanzillotta, Lautaro (2021). "The Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth (NHC VI,6), the Prayer of Thanksgiving (NHC VI,7), and the Asclepius (NHC VI,8): Hermetic Texts in Nag Hammadi and Their Bipartite View of Man". Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies. 6 (1): 49–78. doi:10.1163/2451859X-12340102.