[Sidenote: _Poimandres_ and the Hermetic _Corpus_.] There has come down to us under the name of Hermes a collection of seventeen or eighteen fragments which is generally known as the Hermetic _Corpus_. Of the fragments the first and chief is entitled _Poimandres_ (Ποιμάνδρης), a name which is sometimes applied to the entire _Corpus_. Another fragment entitled _Asclepius_, since it is in the form of a dialogue between him and “Mercurius Trismegistus,” exists in a Latin form which has been ascribed probably incorrectly to Apuleius of Madaura as translator (_Asclepius ... Mercurii trismegisti dialogus Lucio Apuleio Madaurensi philosopho Platonico interprete_). None of the Greek manuscripts of the _Corpus_ seems older than the fourteenth century, although Reitzenstein thinks that they may all be derived from the version which Michael Psellus had before him in the eleventh century.[1298] But the concluding prayer of the _Poimandres_ exists in a third century papyrus, and the alchemist Zosimus in the fourth century seems acquainted with the entire collection. The treatises in this _Corpus_ are concerned primarily with religious philosophy or theosophy, with doctrines similar to those of Plato concerning the soul and to the teachings of the Gnostics. The moral and religious instruction is associated, however, with a physics and cosmology very favorable to astrology and magic. Of magic in the narrow sense there is little in the _Corpus_, but a Hermetic fragment preserved by Stobaeus affirms that “philosophy and magic nourish the soul.” Astrology plays a much more prominent part, and the stars are ranked as visible gods, of whom the sun is by far the greatest. All seven planets nevertheless control the changes in the world of nature; there are seven human types corresponding to them; and the twelve signs of the zodiac also govern the human body. Only the chosen few who possess _gnosis_ or are capable of receiving _nous_ can escape the decrees of fate as administered by the stars and ultimately return to the spiritual world, passing through “choruses of demons” and “courses of stars” and reaching the Ogdoad or eighth heaven above and beyond the spheres of the seven planets.[1299] Such Gnostic cosmology and demonology, especially the location of demons amid the planetary spheres, provides favorable ground for the development of astrological necromancy. [Sidenote: Astrological treatises ascribed to Hermes.]