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A Short Guide to Hermetic Right-Living

From book I, section 22 of the Corpus Hermeticum:

Παραγίνομαι αὐτὸς ἐγὼ ὁ Νοῦς τοῖς ὁσίοις καὶ ἀγαθοῖς καὶ καθαροῖς καὶ ἐλεήμοσι, τοῖς εὐσεβοῦσι. (Paraginomai autos egō ho Nous tois hosiois kai agathois kai katharois kai eleēmosi tois eusebousi.)

"I myself, the Mind, am present to the blessed and good and pure and merciful—to the reverent."

These four qualities:

Make up this one state:

Those who have these four qualities and become one of the reverent:

…quickly recognize everything, propitiate the Father lovingly, and give thanks, praising and singing hymns affectionately and in the order appropriate to him. Before giving up the body to its proper death, they loathe the senses for they see their effects. Or rather I, the Mind, will not permit the effects of the body to strike and work their results on them. As gatekeeper, I will refuse entry to the evil and shameful effects, cutting off the anxieties that come from them.

As opposed to the reverent, Mind will "remain distant" from "the thoughtless and evil and wicked and envious and greedy and violent and irreverent".

Right knowledge necessarily precedes right action (because you need to know not just what and how to do something but why), but knowledge alone is insufficient. Once we know better, we also need to do better; willful ignorance is worse than plain ignorance.