Corpus Hermeticum The Good is Only in God Explained
- Dec 21, 2025
- 4 min read
Tractate V — The Good Is Only in God
The Hermetic Understanding of the Highest Good
This Tractate shifts the entire mood of the Corpus Hermeticum.
Here Hermes no longer describes visions or initiations.
He contemplates the nature of the Good itself, what it is, where it comes from, and why it cannot be found in anything mortal.
It is a philosophical teaching, a devotional insight, and a corrective against the ancient
confusion between what feels good and what truly is Good.
For readers of any level, this Tractate is grounding.
It reframes desire, suffering, moral striving, and spiritual aspiration with a single assertion:
Only God is Good.
Everything else is good by participation.
Understanding this is the beginning of Hermetic wisdom.
The Nature of the Good
Hermes teaches that the Good is not a quality that things possess.
It is the essence of the Divine.
Human beings can become wise, courageous, disciplined, compassionate,
but these qualities are reflections, not origins.
He makes a sharp distinction:
Mortals can do good things
but they cannot be the Good.
Why?
Because all mortal things are mixtures,
light and shadow,
clarity and confusion,
selfishness and sincerity.
But the Divine is simple, unified, unmixed.
Pure goodness without opposites.
Hermes compares the Divine Good to the sun.
It does not choose whom to shine on.
It does not withhold itself.
It radiates because of what it is.
Everything that lives receives warmth, light, movement, and growth
only because the sun is what it is.
So it is with God.
Creation receives goodness
not because it earns it,
but because the Divine cannot be anything else.
What Is Not Good
Hermes is honest about the nature of the world.
Most of the things humans chase, pleasure, status, security, praise, wealth, emotional
comfort, are not evil, but they are not the Good.
Why?
Because they are unstable.
They rise, fall, shift, break, disappoint, age, fail, and disappear.
The Good does none of these things.
Hermes warns gently that human suffering often comes
not from the hardships of life,
but from confusing the temporary with the eternal.
When we mistake comfort for Goodness, we cling.
When we mistake achievement for Goodness, we exhaust ourselves.
When we mistake praise for Goodness, we become dependent on the moods of others.
Hermes is not moralizing.
He is freeing the mind from a category error.
The Good is not something we chase.
It is something we recognize.
The Human Path to the Good
If only God is Good, what hope is there for mortals?
Hermes answers clearly.
We come into contact with the Good through contemplation of it.
By turning inward toward the Divine Mind,
by aligning our will with clarity,
by loving truth more than illusion,
by seeking what is stable rather than what is fleeting,
we begin to participate in the Good.
Not possess it.
Not become it in essence.
But express it in our nature,
the way a mirror reflects the sun.
Hermes emphasizes humility here.
A human being becomes wise the moment they realize
that wisdom is received, not manufactured.
The Divine pours,
and the human receives.
When the receiving is clear,
virtue arises naturally.
What This Means for You
This Tractate is gentle but uncompromising.
It invites you to examine:
Where are you looking for Goodness?
In approval?
In control?
In emotional comfort?
In having life go your way?
Hermes is not asking you to reject these human desires.
He is asking you to stop mistaking them for the highest truth.
When you stop expecting the temporal to act like the eternal,
you suffer less.
You cling less.
You see more clearly.
Hermeticism is not interested in guilt or moral rigidity.
It is interested in alignment with what is real.
IFS Integration
Letting Parts Discover What Is Truly Good
Parts often carry their own definitions of what is “good”:
a protector may think safety is the highest good
a manager may believe success is
a firefighter may believe relief is
None of these are wrong.
They are simply incomplete.
Reflection Questions
Choose one or more.
Which part of you equates goodness with being approved of or liked?
Which part believes goodness is the same as performance or productivity?
Which part feels unworthy of the Good because of past mistakes?
Which part relaxes when it hears that the Good is not earned but received?
Optional Deep Dive
IFS Practices for Contacting the Inner Good
IFS Journal Prompt
Invite a part to speak about what being good means to it.
Ask it to share:
where it learned that definition•
what it fears will happen if you stop striving for it•
what it needs from you right now
Meet it with softness and curiosity.
Parts Art Exercise
Draw two images:
one showing how a part tries to grasp goodness•
one showing the quiet, stable Good that exists beneath striving
Let the contrast teach you something directly.
Somatic IFS Practice
Sit quietly and breathe.
Place your hand on your chest.
Whisper inward:
Show me the place in me that knows the Good is not earned.
Notice:
any softening in your breath•
any release in your shoulders•
any subtle sense of relief or resistance•
any warm, spacious quiet rising inside you
This Tractate teaches a simple, liberating truth:
The Good is not something you achieve.
It is something you open to.
As you continue through the Corpus Hermeticum,
this understanding becomes the foundation for all deeper work.deeper work.
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