Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth

The fifth chapter begins with the appearance of the term heimarmene in one of the Nag Hammadi library s three Hermetic writings, the Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth. The nature of the concept of astral fatalism in the Hermetica has been just as badly presented and misunderstood as astral fatahsm in Christian Gnosticism, thus this chapter presents a more nuanced presentation of the enslavement to fate trope in Hermetism. I demonstrate that the Hermetica and Christian hterature grappled with an identical set of issues the precise relationship between heimarmene and pronoia, and the degree to which humans are at the mercy of either. 

Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth. Edited and translated by Peter A Dirkse, James Brashler, and Douglas M. Parrott In Nag Hammadi Codices V, 2-5 and VI, with PapyrusBeroiinensis 8502,1 and4, edited by Douglas M. Parrott 341-374. NHMS u. Leiden E.J. Brill, 1979. 

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