The history of Hermeticism is a history of rediscovery. Again and again the writings of Hermes have been lost, found, misdated, translated and put to new uses, and each age has read in them what it most needed. What follows is the outline that a careful student should carry in mind. It separates, as far as the evidence allows, what is known from what was once believed.
In brief
- The Hermetic writings were composed in Greek in Egypt, mostly between the first and third centuries of the common era.
- They were preserved and extended by Arabic speaking scholars, then translated into Latin in Florence in 1463.
- Renaissance readers believed them to be as old as Moses. In 1614 they were shown to be much later.
- The tradition survived the correction and was reshaped into its modern form in the nineteenth century.
The tradition in nine stages
-
Before the common era
Thoth and Hermes
In Egypt, Thoth was the divine scribe, lord of writing, measurement and magic. Greeks settled in Egypt after the conquests of Alexander identified him with their own Hermes, guide of souls and messenger of the gods. From the union came Hermes Trismegistus, Hermes the Thrice Great, imagined as an ancient sage who had written down all wisdom.
-
First to third centuries
The Hermetica are written
In the mixed Greek and Egyptian culture of Roman Egypt, unknown authors composed treatises in Hermes' name. The philosophical works draw on Platonism, Stoicism and Egyptian religion. The technical works deal with astrology, alchemy and sympathetic magic. They were probably used in small circles of teacher and pupil.
-
Fourth to sixth centuries
Late antiquity
Christian writers quoted Hermes as a pagan prophet who had foreseen their own teaching. A Latin version of the dialogue called the Asclepius circulated in the West. Around the fifth century the anthologist Stobaeus preserved some forty extracts that would otherwise be lost.
-
Eighth to twelfth centuries
The Arabic Hermes
Scholars writing in Arabic honored Hermes as a prophet and father of the sciences. Alchemical and astrological works multiplied under his name. The Emerald Tablet first appears in Arabic in this period, and the great manual of astral magic later known in Latin as the Picatrix was compiled. From the twelfth century these works began to be translated into Latin.
-
1460 to 1471
Florence
A Greek manuscript of the philosophical treatises reached Florence around 1460. The ruler of the city, Cosimo de' Medici, is said to have ordered his translator Marsilio Ficino to set Plato aside and translate Hermes first. The Latin version was finished in 1463 and printed in 1471. It went through many editions and made Hermes one of the most admired authors in Europe.
-
1486 to 1600
The Renaissance magus
Believing Hermes to be a contemporary of Moses, Renaissance thinkers built on him a vision of the human being as a free and creative power. Pico della Mirandola joined Hermetic philosophy to Kabbalah. Cornelius Agrippa organized the whole of learned magic in his Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Paracelsus reformed alchemy and medicine. John Dee and Giordano Bruno carried the synthesis to its limits.
-
1614
The dating corrected
The classical scholar Isaac Casaubon showed from their language and ideas that the Hermetic treatises could not be older than the first centuries of the common era. The claim to primeval antiquity collapsed. Learned opinion turned away, but alchemists and the authors of the Rosicrucian manifestos, published in the same decade, kept the Hermetic vision alive.
-
Nineteenth century
The occult revival
In France, Eliphas Levi recast the old material as a single doctrine of high magic and gave it much of its modern vocabulary. In the following decades small initiatory groups in Britain and elsewhere wove Hermetic philosophy, Qabalah, astrology, alchemy and tarot into graded systems of training. In 1908 a short book called The Kybalion set out the seven principles that are now the most widely known summary of Hermetic thought.
-
1945 to the present
Recovery and scholarship
Hermetic texts in Coptic were found among the codices unearthed near Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, proving that the treatises were used in a devotional setting. Critical editions and reliable translations followed. Historians now treat Hermeticism as a serious current in the intellectual history of the West, and practitioners have better sources than any generation before them.
Who wrote the Hermetica?
We do not know their names. The authors wrote in Greek, knew the philosophy taught in the schools of Alexandria and had some acquaintance with Egyptian temple religion. How much of the content is authentically Egyptian has been argued for a century. Earlier scholars saw only Greek philosophy in Egyptian dress. More recent work, helped by the Nag Hammadi discoveries, allows a larger Egyptian share: the dialogue form resembles Egyptian wisdom literature, and the texts speak with feeling about the temples and their decline.
What can be said with confidence is that there was no single author and no fixed doctrine. The treatises disagree with one another, some praising the cosmos as a beautiful god and others treating it as a prison. Hermeticism was a conversation before it was a system.
The idea of an ancient theology
The Renaissance revival rested on a belief that scholars call the prisca theologia, the ancient theology. It held that a single true wisdom had been revealed at the dawn of history and handed down through a chain of sages, among them Hermes, Zoroaster, Orpheus, Pythagoras and Plato. On this view the Hermetica were not one philosophy among others but the fountainhead.
The belief was mistaken as history. It was also extraordinarily fruitful. It gave readers permission to look for agreement between traditions, to treat pagan philosophy as an ally of religion rather than its enemy, and to imagine a reform of all knowledge. Much of what is attractive in the Western esoteric tradition, and some of what is careless in it, descends from this habit of seeing one teaching behind many masks.
Why the tradition survived its correction
If Hermes was not older than Moses, why did anyone go on reading him? Partly because the dating took time to be accepted. Chiefly because the appeal of the texts never depended on their age. A philosophy that calls the mind divine, the cosmos alive and knowledge a form of salvation does not need a pedigree. The alchemists continued to cite the Emerald Tablet as their charter. In the nineteenth century, when the mechanical picture of nature seemed to many to leave no room for meaning, the Hermetic picture offered an alternative.
The modern student inherits both the texts and the correction. It is possible to love the Hermetica and to know exactly how old they are. We would say it is necessary.
Reading the history well
Three habits will protect you from most errors. First, ask of any claim how we know it, and be content with we do not. Second, distinguish the ancient philosophical Hermetica from the later technical and magical literature and from modern systems that use the Hermetic name. They are related, not identical. Third, do not mistake age for authority in either direction. A teaching is not true because it is old, nor worthless because it was written in 1908.