Hermes Trismegistus on the Fate of Egypt

[sdi]

A land once holy, most loving of divinity, by reason of her reverence the only land on earth where the gods settled, she who taught holiness and fidelity will be an example of utter (un)belief. In their weariness the people of that time will find the world nothing to wonder at or to worship. [...] People will find it oppressive and scorn it. [...] They will prefer shadows to light, and they will find death more expedient than life. No one will look up to heaven. The reverent will be thought mad, the irreverent wise; the lunatic will be thought brave, and the scoundrel will be taken for a decent person. [... T]hat soul began as immortal or else expects to attain immortality [...] will be considered not simply laughable but even illusory. [...]

How mournful when the gods withdraw from mankind! Only the baleful angels [(e.g. wicked dæmons)] remain to mingle with humans, seizing the wretches and driving them to every outrageous crime—war, looting, trickery and all that is contrary to the nature of souls. Then neither will the earth stand firm nor the sea be sailable; stars will not cross heaven nor will the course of the stars stand firm in heaven. Every divine voice will grow mute in enforced silence. The fruits of the earth will rot; the soil will no more be fertile; and the very air will droop in gloomy lethargy.

Such will be the old age of the world: irreverence, disorder, disregard for everything good. When all this comes to pass, [...] then the master and father, the god whose power is primary, governor of the first god, will look on this conduct and these willful crimes, and [...] will take his stand against the vices and the perversion in everything, righting wrongs, washing away malice in a flood or consuming it in fire or ending it by spreading pestilential disease everywhere. Then he will restore the world to its beauty of old so that the world itself will again seem deserving of worship and wonder [...].

(Asclepius XXV, as translated by Brian P. Copenhaver)

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Hermes Trismegistus is speaking here of the fate of Egypt: once the land most beloved by the gods, now a sandy ruin and tomb of the ancient dead. Obviously it is pertinent to our times as well.

I have mentioned my opinion (shared by Pythagoras) that we live in Hades: a gray waste without beauty, where even the greatest delicacies taste of dust. Even those of us who hold to virtue and are desperately pious are too weary to find much purchase, here. Hard though it is to find any joy, we ought to rejoice nonetheless that the time comes when blessed Mars steps in to cleanse the world, that it may be remade anew and Beauty may reign here again, at least for a little while.