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This post is number two in a series of three looking into Hermes Trismegistus. The first introduced Hermes and Hermeticism and looked at what the Renaissance thought they were getting when Marsilio Ficino translated a Greek manuscript of Hermetic dialogues [click for the link]. This post will look at what Hermes actually was and how Hermetic ideas were part of the cultural inversion of the West that began in the Renaissance. After this, we'll carry Hermeticism into modern times.
A quick note on symbolic patterns before we get started.
Octave Denis Victor Guillonnet, Astrology, 20th century, oil on canvas, private collection
The Band doesn't argue that there's no truth in occult secrets, or that everything associated with Hermeticism is willfully evil. A lot of astrological and alchemical lore is just pattern recognition - empirical observations expressed in different metaphorical ways. We're looking at Hermeticism as a system of thought - what it's underlying principles are, and how they line up with what we can know and how we can know it.
Put differently, noticing that the Farmer's Almanac can be unexpectedly accurate doesn't mean you have to believe all men are gods, able to rule reality and soar beyond the heavens through secret knowledge and will. We're interested in the people who do.
In 1614, Isaac Casaubon used linguistic analysis to prove that the Corpus Hermeticum was written at some point in the first few centuries of the first millennium and not near the beginning of history. In the last post we saw how the Renaissance theory of knowledge was based on 'older is better', so this was a death-blow to Hermes' authority. On the whole Hermes craze in general really - there aren't any hermetic books published in Europe between the middle of the 1600s and the middle of the 1800s.
Nicholas Stone, Isaac Casaubon Monument, 1634, Westminster Abbey
Casaubon showed that the Corpus used language that post-dated the Bible. So the similarities with the New Testament aren't because the Corpus is ancient revelation confirmed by Christianity. It's because Christian and Platonic concepts got churned into the Hermetic spray of symbols.
Hermeticism will come back in the late 19th-century supernatural movement in another churn and spray in the life of the old symbols. That will be for a following post.
Hermes Trismegistus is hard to figure out because he never existed. There is no original to go back to. 19th-century Hermeticism is different from the Ancient or Renaissance versions because it wasn't based on the idea of the ancient sage anymore. After Casaubon, Hermeticism becomes a more general set if occult beliefs and principles and not the work of one individual. But the seeds for transformation into generic occult lore were laid in the Renaissance - when Hermes became a central part of the unity of all religions jackassery used by the satanic to guide the retarded.
There are also many Hermes, each connected in some way to the same central tenets, but all different and often without direct connections to each other. This is why we're using the Dance of the Symbols model - the Life, Spray, and Churn of Symbols - that we worked out for Prometheus.
Kircher depicted as a new Hermes Trismegistus, surrounded by symbols and marvels, frontispiece from Gioseffo Petrucci's Prodomo apologetico alli studi Chircheriani, 1677
The portrayal of the Jesuit esoteric polymath Athanasius Kircher as a scribe sets up a comparison to Hermes/Thoth, the inventor of writing and scribe of the gods. The crocodile and solar lion are other Egypt-flavored symbols - one for the difficulty of his work, the other for his enlightenment.
The occult is based in inversion. That means it never ends - at least, not until the world does. There's always something to invert, always some way to blow new life into old symbols. Settling on a frame of reference or descriptive language is a necessary first step for something this fluid and recurring. What are we even talking about?
Evdokia Fidelskaya and Grigoriy Kabachnyi, Hermes Trismegistus, Cultural Museum Grev Kafi
Hermes had many forms before "he" hit the Renaissance - there are Hellenistic, Roman, Arab and Medieval versions.The caduceus is Greek Hermes, the tiny gods in the corners are Egyptian, the Emerald Tablet first appears in the early Arab Middle Ages, the headdress recalls Isis, the halo is more Buddhist than Christian, but the face resembles Jesus paintings. And trampling the serpent is a Christian symbol. Except the serpent looks like an Egyptian crocodile. Spray of symbols.
And unity of all religions jackassery. We don't know enough about these false prophets to file them satanic or retarded, but their "Great Masters" series fits both. Somehow Jesus is Krishna and Prometheus and Hermes turn up! It's a kick line of new age fakes.
Thinking of Hermeticism as a churning spray of related arcana living on through time pretty much sums it up. Hence the layout of these posts - they follow the spray through time and expose the inverted heart beneath the churning surface. Bits and pieces of this mess feed into the more modern versions of Hermes and Hermeticism in different ways. There is no one comprehensive list defining what the official Hermetica is. But there are two general categories that the tradition is divided into.
The Philosophical-religious texts deal with speculative subjects like theology, cosmology, and ontology, and the technical ones with more practical matters like astrology, magic, and alchemy.
Daniel Gautier, ReUnion, 2012, acrylic on canvas
The Italian Renaissance hermeticism sparked by Ficino belonged mainly to the philosophical-religious branch. It included the eighteen treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum, written during the 1st -3rd centuries, the Latin Asclepius that had been around through the Middle Ages, and the references to Hermes in the Christian Fathers like Tertullian, Lactantius, and Augustine. The Hermetic works in the Dead Sea Scrolls would go here too, but they weren't known before 1945.
The technical texts were more influential in Northern Europe, where they spurred alchemical, astrological and magical researches. The hermetic medicine and alchemy of Paracelsus would be prime Renaissance example - the northern version of Ficino and Pico della Mirandola in the south.
Hermes Trismegistus, woodcut from the title page of Zadith Ben Hamuel's De chemica Senioris..., Strassburg, 1566
This German print shows Hermes as an enlightened sage with alchemical symbolism.
The technical sources include the astrological writings attributed to Hermes, Hermes as healer in the Greek Magic Papyri, and various alchemical works from late antiquity.
One of the things that makes the occult annoyingly confusing is when disconnected movements claim the same terminology, symbols, and/or lineage. The Italian philosophical-religious and Northern alchemical-technical forms were both "Renaissance Hermeticism", but they were also largely distinct. Both claim the authority of the same Hermes, but don't have a lot of overlap. Certainly not enough to claim to be connected. They do come together, but later, with the Hermetic revival of the 19th century.
What happens is that by the time the 1600s' Hermetic craze ends, Hermeticism had come to be defined as by its alchemy or occult theology sides. So it's these two lines that will churn and recombinate again when the spray of symbols resumes in the 19th century
From Darkness to Light, Masonic poster by Hazen (New York, 1908) with symbols based on 19th century sources.
The towers of antediluvian knowledge are a major Hermetic influence in Masonic symbolism. The idea that and the concept that enlightenment comes from transformation through combining opposites is a mix of Hermetic philosophy and alchemy.
This picture is a spray of symbols. The post it appeared in before is where the spray of symbols first appeared as a concept.
All the offshoots of the satanic discourse family tree have a formlessness to them. Hermeticism isn't really a philosophy, an art, a theology, or a science. It's a Dance of Symbols. Theosophy would be a good word if it weren't already claimed by one clump of the 19th-century idiot fringe.
So what is Hermeticism?
Casuabon showed that Ficino's Hermetic literature dated to the post-Christian period. This meant that the supposed foreshadowings of Christianity were really Christian influence on the spray of symbols. The exact dates of the Hermetic works are unknown, but somewhere between the first and fourth centuries. This places it in the same environment as other esoteric belief systems like Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, as well as early Christianity. The best way to think of it is as a form of gnosis - like Gnosticism, only derived more from Neoplatonism than Christianity.
The early centuries of the first millennium were a time of religious ferment in the Roman Empire.
Roman Mithras described as Sol Invictus (the unconquered sun god), with the sun and moon in the corners, 184 AD, Vatican Museum
The official state religion based on Greco-Roman mythology and emperor worship was insufficient in a sprawling and culturally diverse state. Pagan cults from Egypt and the East like Isis and Mithras sprung up next to more traditional gods.
More importantly, new concepts of God and religion were forming.
Consider - Christianity comes together during this time.
The books of the Greek New Testament were written in the second half of the first century. The canonical 27 books were in use by the early third century and solidified in the fourth.
Codex Vaticanus B, around 312 AD, Vatican Library, Vat. gr. 1209, and page with 2Thess. 3,11-18 and Hebr. 1,1-2,2
This early Bible may have been ordered by Emperor Constantine. It is very similar to the 27 book canon first identified by Athanasius of Alexandria in 367 and approved by the Third Synod of Carthage in 397.
St. Jerome's Latin translation of the New Testament was finished by 384 and the entire Bible - the Vulgate - by 405.
Christian thinkers were also working out methods of Biblical exegesis and determining what in this chaotic religious environment was orthodox. Clement of Alexandria (150 - c. 215), was a Christian theologian who was heavily informed by Greco-Roman pagan philosophy. The controversial Origen lived between 184-254 and was probably the most influential of the early Christian interpreters, despite being too heterodox to be considered a Father like Clement. Origen's Christology has been accused of diminishing the status of the Son and being a forerunner to Arianism.
Judaism was also changing.
Earliest printed copy of the Mishnah, Naples : Joshua Solomon Soncino, 1492
The Mishnah - he first major written treatment of the Oral Torah traditions - was prepared around the turn of the third century by Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi (circa 135-217 AD). The Mishnah was one of the sources for the Talmud, and a cornerstone in the development of the modern religion.
The Mishnah became the subject of it's own Rabbinical commentaries called the Gemara over the next couple of centuries. The Talmud is a redaction of the Mishnah and the Gemara commentary into a single text - the earlier Jerusalem version appeared in the second half of the fourth century and the more influential Babylonian one around the turn of the sixth.
Neoplatonism was a thriving Hellenistic philosophical school with mystical similarities to the monotheistic religions.
The leading "pure" Neoplatonic thinker is probably Plotinus (204-270), who also came from Roman Egypt. Ficino translated him too.
Attavante degli Attavanti, illuminated preface of Ficino’s Latin translation of Plotinus’ Enneads, dedication copy for Lorenzo the Magnificent, Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 82.10, fol. 3r.
The presence of Neoplatonic influence in late antique Christianity and Judaism, makes it harder to differentiate them cleanly, but there was a Neoplatonism distinct from Neoplatonic influence.
These twist, blend, and invert in the unstructured world of Late antique religion, ringing us to Hermeticism and Gnosticism (H&G). They're together because even though they're different, they appear in the same time and in similar contexts. And they're similar enough that we can think of them as an inversion packages on other belief systems.
Gnosticism takes its name from the Greek gnōsis or knowledge. There was no organized Gnostic faith - the name came later. The origins of the first teachers are also unclear, but it appears to have come out of speculative Christian and Jewish movements of the first centuries with possible Neoplatonic shading. Not sure if it's a religion or synthesis of religious movements. Hermeticism is similar to Gnosticism, only with the base system being more Neoplatonic than Christian.
Colored frontispiece to "Brunnen der Weissheit" or "The Fountain of Wisdom" in Fünff curieuse chymische tractätlein, an anthology of five alchemical texts, Frankfurt, 1757
All of these belief systems deal with the problem of the one and the many - how to bridge from the infinite, eternal, and all-encompassing to the finite, time-bound, and individual. Where does Creation come from? And what is the nature of reality and man's place in it?
This is a later alchemical book, but the idea of ascending to some higher reality is clear. Something else to be clear on - the triangle isn't the Christian Trinity.
Here's the actual book - for readers who enjoy old tomes.
Johfra Bosschart, The Vision of Hermes Trismegistos, second version, 1985
And all assume man is made up of body and soul, tying him to the world in some way but with the ability to overcome that tie.
The image of Anthropos, the essence of man rising from a divided world with through a divine spark applies to H&G. The Craftsman Demiurge and radient aeons representing the godlike nature of man that empowers the ascent are Hermetic. The Gnostic Demiurge in malevolent.
But the conclusions of H&G invert what looks like a structural similarity to Christianity. It was the similarities that let Renaissance deceivers like Ficino try and blend them all. Underneath, the infinitely more profound differences mark them as complete opposites.
Both H&G hold that God is unaware of his creation or at least disinterested in it in any terms we can understand. They resemble Neoplatonism in the belief that material reality emanated from an ultimate, unknowable God through levels of reality. And they resemble Christianity in the belief that the material world is created Genesis-style by the lowest of these emanations.
The chemical preparation of Aurum Portabile, from Microcosmus Hypochondriacus sive de Melancholia Hypochondriaca Tractatus, M. Geiger, 1652, Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de santé, Paris
The problem is that there is no reason for creation to happen. An infinite, eternal, and perfectly complete God somehow produces an awareness of itself - despite being all-encompassing - and this self-awareness creates material reality without it's all-encompassing awareness realizing.
But H&G are non-logical at heart - they are based on a mystical revelation beyond rational theology. A prophetic peep at ultimate reality.
In contrast, Christianity has a motivated God. Not that His motivations are knowable in themselves to finite mortal minds. We don't even know if "when" applies before existence existed. But it does tell us that Creation was a willed choice, and that this is consistent with the cause and effect nature of reality. This isn't breaking news - Aristotle showed that causality describes how the world works, if you have a First Cause to get things started. God's will is a first cause. It gets rid of the randomness of 'why did this project now?' and gets the whole ball rolling.
Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Fourth day, God separates the day from the night and puts lights on the sky, woodcut from The Bible in Pictures, 1860
God doesn't look like an old man. But the human metaphor captures the idea that Creation was a deliberate, willed action.
This makes Christian creation causally-driven, and therefore more consistent with the operations of the material world than H&G or Neoplatonism. Plotinus tries to account for time and causation by describing reality as an endless cyclical flow out from and back into God. But this comes back to the problem of origins - how does it start? How does the infinite cross into the timebound? H&G have to assume Creation was somehow random or took place in some mythic dream time with no clear relationship to our reality.
Consider this difference:
God wills Creation vs. Creation just happens
The first is a divine act. Everything following is an extension of God's will - whatever that means. Not just the material world, but abstract and theoretical realities too. The natural order of creation and abstract reasoning line up with the nature of what is on the most fundamental level.
Contemporary Christ Pantocrator Icon
This is the complex term Logos. It applies to material reality - that there are ordered patterns in nature that we can see and learn. In more abstract terms it means an appeal to logic - how it can consistently indicate truth and falsehood. And it applies to a generative aspect of God when it is used to describe the Son in the Bible.
We've written a lot on the concept of logos because the harmony between it as nature, as logic, and as Providence makes Christianity such an essential part of Western culture.The Pantocrator type is actually Eastern Orthodox, but the it's a great depiction of the divine Logos, it's representation in the word, and connection to the material world. Note the sun and moon. These are popular Hermetic symbols, but here they are clearly subordinate to Jesus - Logos and Word.
If Creation is a willed act, there is alignment between the the material and the metaphysical. And alignment between material and metaphysical means that there is an objective higher moral direction that is applicable to the physical world. The Christian world is Fallen, so that direction can be misunderstood or rejected. But it means moral reasoning is possible. When the divine Logos self-sacrifices and offers redemption, faith lets human logos follow the opened path.
Sebastiano Ricci, The Resurrection, 1715-16, Dulwich Picture Gallery
In H&G, the part of the Logos is played by Neoplatonic-style emanations from God. This is a series of stages like the Neoplatonists claimed, where God produces an entity that is functionally omnipotent in material terms, but finite compared to God. For the Neoplatonist Plotinus, the One projects a divine mind calls the Nous as a creative potential within its infinite perfection and completeness. The Nous projects the World Soul, and through that material reality is created. Here's a graphic of the process made up for an earlier post.
Plotinus' One is a disinterested God that somehow produces a surplus within itself. Even though it's infinite. It's easy to take shots at this, but Plotinus was trying to use words to describe things that the mind can even positively conceptualize.
God develops a creative potential "external" to His infinite completeness called the Nous. The Nous projects the World Soul - abstract forces that run the material world. Humanity is in-between, made of matter, but possessing an immortal soul. The arrows indicate that the lower states are constantly projecting out from the higher while seeking to return in an endless cycle.
The Neoplatonic world isn't Fallen in a Christian sense, but it is debased by it's distance from God. It is a "fallen" state for the soul because it's trapped in a world of suffering, death, and decay, and unable to return to it's source. The mystical or religious side of Neoplatonism was based on using philosophical knowledge to reconnect the soul to God and escape this plane of reality. This is the same process as H&G, where humans rise or fall on their own will and gnosis. There is no need for a savior to connect the physical and metaphysical - they already are. We just need to know how to find the connection. The failure to recognize the fallen, entropic nature of human existence is a major blind spot with all of these. The problem:
The detached, disinterested God also give H&G and Neoplatonism problems with creation, only different kinds. Neoplatonism has no beginning - casting us as striving cogs in a insensate perpetual motion machine foreshadows modern materialism. H&G have dogmas that require a specific moment or act of creation when reality first appears.
José Gabriel Alegría Sabogal, Yaldabaoth
For the Gnostics, the ultimate God emanates Sophia - Divine Wisdom - and Sophia projects a demiurge called Yaldabaoth that creates the universe. This creature is often described as a lion-faced serpent. Gnostics are big on the serpent. Note the sun and moon -
For Hermes, the ultimate God emanates the divine mind Poimandres or Pymander, and Poimandres project Demiurge, who creates reality.
This multi-stage process between us and a hidden God is opposite Christianity. Secret knowledge with power over reality is what makes this so appealing to magic and other luciferian forms of occultism that lift will over all else. It's also why some argue H&G have some Neoplatonic DNA. But where H&G differ on the nature of this creation.
Gnosticism perverts Christianity, so it keeps the Christian notion of a Fallen world. Only twisted to give humans power over reality. The Gnostic demiurge Yaldabaoth is malevolent, so the material reality he created is inherently evil rather than fallen from grace. Since Gnostic teachers parasitize the Bible, Satan and Yahweh are among the spray of symbols tied to this being. He also creates the chain of planetary deities - called archons - that imprison the world.
William Blake, Elohim Creating Adam, 1795-1805, print, ink and watercolor on paper, Tate, London
Blake - a gifted English artist and poet - has a strong Gnostic thread in his art. Not that he declared himself "Gnostic". That didn't exist as an option in Blake's time. It's that his "Christian" art looks more Gnostic than Christian - more evil than divine. Does this look like a glorious act?
There are different variations of "Gnosticism", but the general idea is that our divine souls are trapped in evil material bodies. Gnosis reconnects with Sophia and that reunites us with the source. This inversion of Creation is part of the Gnostic love of serpents. The Gnostic version of Garden of Eden has the snake as the good guy. This Tree of Knowledge is a Tree of Gnosis, and the apple the way for the trapped mortal "god" to get out of Yaldy the demiurge's evil material prison.
William Blake, Eve Tempted by the Serpent, 1799-1800, tempera and gold on copper, Victoria and Albert Museum
Blake again - with the serpent as a trail of light. Note the contrast between the exaltent enlightened Eve and the still sleeping Adam. It's the inverse of the Fall - the Tree of Gnosis.
Hermetic creation is more Neoplatonic in attitude, so the Demiurge is benign. Our destinies are governed by the planets it creates, but they aren't deliberately hostile or malevolent. Gnosis is also needed for the divine soul to escape the material - to reawaken us to our origins in the One. But Hermetic "knowledge" is more open than Gnostic. Because reality isn't intrinsically evil, signs in creation can lead back to God. This is where the Astrology and Alchemy components of Hermeticism come in.
Johfra Bosschart, Virgo, 1975
One of the occult painter's Hermetic Zodiac series. Virgo is a spray of qualities associated with Holy Wisdom (Gnostic Sophia, Christian Hagia Sophia) and the primal Earth Mother.
In astrology, Virgo is governed by Mercury - note the passage from her to the cosmos. It goes between Hermes on the top left and Thoth in baboon form with scales and scroll on the right. Hermes and Thoth. Hermes Trismegistus as the conduit to the stars.
It's a Hermetic belief - and a big difference with Gnosticism - that astrology and alchemy can help the soul recall it's divine nature. Astrology deals with the order of the heavens and alchemy the material world and it's elements. Understanding the hidden nature of creation puts the occultist in the perspective of the maker - a God's-eye view, or at least a Poimandres-level one. And this reconnects the soul to the divine, opening the path out of the material.
The "theoretical" and "practical" sides of Hermeticism are connected on our alchemical title page. The cosmic emanations from the highest God pass through the Zodiac archons or governers before becoming material reality. The same material reality to be studied and transformed through Hermetic alchemy.
The Renaissance interest in Hermeticism is inseparable from interest in astrology and alchemy in the north and south.
As above so below.
H&G are hyper-dualistic, even more than Christianity with it's fundamental Heaven/earth and soul/body distinctions. The difference is irreconcilable because it comes from a fundamental difference in the nature of Creation. To no one's surprise, H&G reject the Christian alignment between the physical and metaphysical worlds and invert the notion of a knowable objective moral direction with human self-deification. Old friends de-moralization and inversion. Also to no one's surprise, the "arguments" are weak to the point of idiocy.
As we've pointed out, Biblical creation is a series of distinctions, divisions, and definitions done by the ultimate God. The Creator of Genesis is fundamentally different from the disinterested projection of minds and demiurges. Gnostics will flip this and argue that the Bible is an imperfect metaphor for Gnostic creation by a Demiurge. Hermeticists don't even bother - Genesis isn't as big a part of the spray of symbols.
William Blake, Angels Ministering to Christ, 1816-1820, print, ink and watercolor on paper
This is why some Gnostic schools accepted Jesus as a divine being sent to guide man back to the light but not somehow God Himself, while Hermeticism doesn't really deal with Jesus at all.
So Christian Creation is ordered by the divine will. There is an objective morality, truth in logic, and a natural structure to the physical world that man is born into. The Fall is the consequence of the human failure to check ego and accept his place in this larger universe. We are seeing today the accumulating consequences of pretending reality is what we want it to be. Authoritarianism, degradation, decline.
H&G makes division into twos the central theme of Creation, but in a way more rigid, arbitrary, and imbecilic way. H&G creation is the division of a primal unity - the oneness of God - into polarities. Binary opposites that define the created world. Consider this Hermetic print - note how the unity in the highest divine sphere turns into paired opposites down below.
Alchemical illustration in the "Basilica Philosophica" section of Johann Daniel Mylius' Medico Chymicum, 1618
This is where the obsession with balancing and erasing distinctions comes in - the feature that connects to the formless, gray goo, anti-Creation drive of the luciferians and Satanists. You'll notice how this occult garbage always balances sun and moon. The other big contrast is male and female - it all jumbles together in an overall obsession with binary opposition. Hermetic imagery sets up balances between "male" and "female" sides to show the path to enlightenment in their unification.
The Lunar Queen and Solar King Meet, from the Splendor Solis, attributed to Salomon Trismosin, 1532-1535, Kupferstichkabinett Berlin
Trismosin was a semi-legendary alchemist from the late 15th & 16th-century who was claimed to be the teacher of Paracelsus. In Hermetic alchemy - practical Hermeticism magically expressing theoretic Hermetic principles - this coming together was called the chemical wedding. It uses these symbols as a metaphor for combining opposites into a purer unity. The figures are female and male, moon and sun, and represent opposite element pairs.
A Freemason-Rosicrucian compass, 1779, originally from Adam Michael Birkholz' Compass Der Weisen (Compass of the Wise), 1746-1818, published in Eugen Lennhoff's The Freemason, 1932.
Here's the same symbolism in a spray of the Masonic-Rosicrucian version of alchemical symbolism. The sort of stuff we've seen in earlier occult posts. The masonic geometry is there. The two masonic columns come right out of Hermetic lore - the pillars that recorded the Ademic wisdom from before the Flood that Hermes recovered. Everything else is binary oppositions - note the sun and moon with male and female labels (PATER and MATER).
The Grand Hermetic Androgyne trampling underfoot the Four Elements of the Prima Materia, 1417, from the Codex Germanicus Monacensis 598
This is why the androgyne is such a common figure of enlightenment in Hermeticism and alchemy. The spray here unifies the male and female and overcomes the limits of the Four Elements - the material world. You escape the world by destroying distinctions between binary opposites. Because the way one reconnects to the divine nature is by "overcoming" the polarized nature of the material world and restoring primal unity.
This picture was cited by Jung in his own sprays of symbols.
If we put it together in a single graphic, it is a lot easier to see the inverted nature of Hermeticism. Because underneath the spray there is a recurring pattern that we are all familiar with. The recurring pattern that first appears when this crap was getting made up in late antiquity and gets nailed down during the Renaissance.
The steps of the pattern are numbered in red. Quotes from the Copenhaver translation of the Poimandres are in purple italics.
This also clarifies the earlier occult post on Gnostic balance - click for a link. Hermetic enlightenment goes beyond balance to dissolution. To dissolving the distinctions that God laid out in Creation to create a place for existence to unfold. The definitions and contrasts that give existence meaning and distinction. The God of Genesis doesn't create through mitosis, and the sun and moon are things He puts in the "space" He defines.
Mark Keathley, Moonshine
The distinctions aren't even balanced - Genesis refers to the sun and moon as being lights, with the moon being the lesser one.
They are his creations, but they aren't our pathways out of the material...
Julius Klever, Christ Walking on the Waters
...There is only one of those.
At best, the beauty of Creation leads you to the light of Truth.
Hermeticism inverts the mechanics of Christian salvation. It replaces God's grace with human knowledge. It holds we're inherently perfect and reverse the Fall ourselves. And it twists salvation into dissolving God's Creation into formless gray goo. It's this hatred of distinction that makes Hermeticism resemble an occult version of Postmodernism. The idea that the divisions and definitions that make reality possible are somehow a prison to overcome. Think how powerful fake unities are in occult thinking. All the spray of symbols, unity of all religions retardation, alchemical unities, the whole range of perverse fertility and sex magics. Or magicks. Or whatever.
Then think how virtue, responsibility, and truth depend on meaningful categories. And how category meanings depend on relations between definitions and distinctions.
Caspar Jacob van Opstal the Younger, An Allegory of Time and Idleness, late 17th century, oil on canvas, private collection
We make moral judgments, like between industriousness and idleness relative to standards and other people.
These moral terms are meaningless without distinctions.
The motivated Christian concept of Creation holds that distinction and meaning are set into reality by divine will through Logos. Is anyone surprised that the occult inversions all try and redefine the world as a place where truth and virtue are undefinable? It is a valley of shadows, but there is still a lot of space between seeing as through a glass darkly and not seeing at all.
And how do we gain the power for mastery of reality? Why the divinity of humanity of course - Hermes says we all get to be
Jean-Leon Gerome, A Soul Taken Away by an Angel, 1853, oil on canvas, private collection
Because Christian Creation is motivated, our souls are part of God's intentional handiwork like everything else. They aren't chips off the divine block that He doesn't know He lost. They're part of Creation.
Our decisions in the material world will determine the fate of our souls, but through His grace, not our knowledge.
Mark Scheider, New vanitas - Avaritia (greed), 2013
And we fall for reasons we can see everyday - because we're finite we are morally lacking. Driven by pleasure and vanity and delusion to destructive material obsessions.
The Fall in H&G is completely different. It doesn't change our nature or the nature of the world - it changes our awareness of it. In H&G our souls are "bits" of God that are trapped in some way in the material world. This means that they are not created when man is, but are literally divine - actual stuff of God fallen into Creation.
Josef Abel, Self-Portrait in the Studio, between 1808 and 1810, oil on canvas. Hungarian National Gallery
Gosticism inverts Christianity specifically, so they turn the God of Genesis into an evil Demiurge and claim the world was always a corrupt and wicked trap. The serpent becomes the symbol of knowledge that lets man remember his divine nature. Hermeticism is pretty much the same process, only it doesn't invert Christianity in such a specific, point-by-point way. There are Christian influences, but its world is less overtly evil. The Fall is the divine soul becoming attracted to and trapped into the material world. Hermetic gnosis reawakens it to its nature.
Caravaggio, Narcissus, 1597-1599, oil on canvas, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome
Think Narcissus trapped by a reflection of his appearance more than the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
So the Fall has nothing to do with human limits or moral choice. It's that something unsullied and divine is lost in a maze of base material distraction. And it isn't the mechanics of faith and grace that brings immortality, it's becoming aware of our inherently godlike nature through knowledge. It isn't virtue, it's remembrance.
[Note: all quotes are coming from the Copenhaver translation. This seems to be the standard for academic research. The Mead translation is popular with occultists, since Mead was a Theosophist, and approched the Corpus from that angle. It's all nonsense - just a question of the translator's shading. Click for a link to the full Copenhaver pdf.]
For the human is a godlike living thing, not comparable to the other living things of the earth but to those in heaven above, who are called gods.. the human rises up to heaven and takes its measure and knows what is in its heights and its depths, and he understands all else exactly and - greater than all of this - he comes to be on high without leaving earth behind, so enormous is his range. Therefore, we must dare to say that the human on earth is a mortal god but that god in heaven is an immortal human. Corpus Hermeticum X.24-25
Humanity is fallen because we are all secretly gods trapped in matter, only we don't know it. Christianity requires us to recognize our limits and take responsibility for them. Hermeticism?
We're all secret kings! Everyone's a gamma, but whether everyone can get a trophy depends on if their particle of divine light can remember.
And how do we remember? By balancing and eliminating the differences between arbitrary fake opposites. That's the common theme in the Boschra ascent pictures.
See the binary polarities - the feminine, the moon, and the man-made on one side, the masculine, the sun, and the natural on the other.
Man - Anthropos, the essential man - ascends through knowledge in the manner of the Divine Craftsman that creates the material world. The caduceus of light is the Hermetic symbol for bringing together opposites.
The serpent coiled around man represents the serpent of knowledge and the seven coils the seven planetary governors or archons that have to be passed through.
It's a self-powered ascent. There is no redemption, no opening of the narrow path, because the Fall is a forgetting, not an intrinsic change. In Christianity, God has to become man because man is sundered from God. In Hermeticism, man is a god already. He just needs a talking snake with a pen of light to remind him.
That's why the Christian influences in Hermeticism make it easy to thing they are similar on some deeper level. That's what Ficino thought and that's what the spray of symbols is based on. I mean, this sounds loosely Christian or at least Christian compliant.
When they heard, they gathered round with one accord. And I said, "Why have you surrendered yourselves to death, earthborn men, since you have the right to share in immortality? You who have journeyed with error, who have partnered with ignorance, think again: escape the shadowy light; leave corruption behind and take a share in immortality. Corpus Hermeticum 1, 28
But it isn't.
"Because of this, Asclepius, a human being is a great wonder, a living thing to be worshipped and honored: for he changes his nature into a god's, as if he were a god... Everything is permitted him: heaven itself seems not too high, for he measures it in his clever thinking as if it were nearby... He is everything, and he is everywhere. Asclepius 6
One is compatible with our existence in reality. The other claims we're all secretly gods and can power our way out of our mortal limits, in this material world, with our own material knowledge. Inversion.
The blend of human knowledge and cosmic structure is the root of the split between technical or practical and religious or theoretical lines of Hermetica in the Renaissance. Both are present in the late antique sources - the Asclepius included magical, alchemical, and demonological aspects as material examples of the power of gnosis. Astrology and alchemy are operations of this gnosis in the heavens and on earth.
Astrology marks the pathway for the soul's cosmic ascent back to the source. Movement through the planets into a more primal celestial unity.
Alchemy teaches the secrets of unification and transformation in the material world. Movement through the elements into a more primal earthly unity.
There is another aspect of Hermetic dualism that is way stronger than it is in Christianity that we'll look at in a moment: "as above, so below". The movements of the higher levels of reality influence the lower.
Italian Renaissance Hermeticism was more theoretical because it was trying to unify different esoteric beliefs with Christianity into a Neoplatonic-Hermetic reformation. These humanists were interested in alchemy and astrology too - it just wasn't their primary focus. Northern Renaissance Hermeticism was interested in theoretical ideas - their practical activities were based on them. The difference is that practical activities took up most of their attention.
Practical Hermeticism was influenced by the Arab and medieval strains of Hermeticism as well as the Corpus. The Asclepius was known through the Middle Ages and is more openly alchemical than the Greek Corpus. Arabic Hermetism seems important but is hard to get a handle on because of lack of available source material.
Kyranides, 14th century, The Bodleian Library, MS. Arab. d. 221, f.68r, University of Oxford
Here's an Arabic translation of a 4th-century Greek collection of medical magic. Note the scorpio - it's Hermetic and astrological too. Spray of symbols.
Arabic Hermeticism developed between the 7th and 11th centuries but doesn't seem based on the exact same ancient texts the Renaissance were using. The timing is consistent with the early medieval Arab push to codify the ancient knowledge they inherited. The so-called Golden Age, where it looked like they might pick up the classical torch. Circumstances snuffed that potential, but a lot of material was preserved. Arabic manuscripts were one of the main sources of classical learning in the Middle Ages.
There's a moral here about abandoning logos.
Without the texts, Arab Hermetica is pretty much a lost world. Ironically, much of what we do know comes from echoes in European collections. The most important piece for the West was the Emerald Tablet, known also as the Tabula Smaragdina. [click for different translations].
The Emerald Tablet is a short text claimed to have been found carved into a green tablet held in the mummified hands of a corpse in the "Tomb of Hermes Trismegistus".
It's like Indiana Jones without the pedophilic undertones, and it was hugely influential in Europe.
The origins of the Emerald Tablet are unknown. Nonsense merchants claim it was carved by the non-existant older-than-Moses Hermes with the kernel of his wisdom. The first actual appearance is in an Arabic book written sometime between the sixth and eighth centuries called the Book of the Secret of Creation and the Art of Nature. This was a compilation of pieces of lost older works that was translated into Latin in the twelfth century.
It's not an exaggeration to call the Emerald Tablet the cornerstone of medieval Hermeticism and alchemy.
Tabula Smaragdina (The Emerald Tablet of Hermes), colored version of the engraving from Heinrich Khunrath's Amphitheatrvm sapientiae aeternae, solivs verae, 1609
No one knows what the real tablets looked like. It's doubtful that there were real tablets.
Hermes Trismegistus & Wilhelm Christoph Kriegsmann, and Arnoldus de Villa Nova, Tabula Smaragdina a situ temerariisque..., 1657, copper engraving on paper, Austrian National Library
The influence of the Emerald Tablet was a lot stronger in the practical Northern Renaissance tradition because of it's importance to alchemy. According to Infogalactic, it was "associated with the creation of the philosopher's stone, laboratory experimentation, phase transition, the alchemical magnum opus, the ancient, classical, element system, and the correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm".
It was even translated by Newton in his own alchemical papers.
The Emerald Tablet is brief and somewhat cryptic, but it conveys a focused message that is central to all the forms of the occult, and the bedrock foundation of gnosis:
as above, so below.
Benjamin Vierling, Microcosmos Melothesia,
The seven archon planets, four elements in the corners, and zodiac signs show the astrological and alchemical connection between heaven and earth. The zodiac signs on the body show the microcosm and the macrocosm - that the human body corresponds to the heavens. And the pointing up and down pose is a standard occult gesture for the knowledge that heaven and earth correspond.
Note the Hermetic salvation. The man is surrounded by the ouroboros - the serpent biting its tail that symbolizes the cyclical nature of time. He is trapped in the material world. But knowledge of correspondences lets the upward pointing hand pass over serpent and into the metaphysical.
As with so much of the occult, it isn't the message itself, but how it is interpreted. What does a correspondence between heaven and earth mean? Christianity refers to man being created in God's image but doesn't claim creation somehow divides or duplicates God. That would be far to limiting. Being created in God's image means we are aligned with Him. We are part of Him in the sense that everything is, but our material existence is closer to sculptures than mitoses. We can align with God, but we aren't gods - there is no perfection or divinity here. We conform to the image of God in our limited way and He permits our return.
The Hermetic as above, so below is different...
But those who participate in the gift that comes from god, O Tat, are immortal rather than mortal if one compares their deeds, for in a mind of their own they have comprehended all - things on earth, things in heaven and even what lies beyond heaven. Having raised themselves so far, they have seen the good and, having seen it, they have come to regard the wasting of time here below as a calamity.
Ficino and the Renaissance humanists knew Asclepius and the Emerald Tablet but were more taken with the Corpus. This was their newly rediscovered "antique" lore and it gave their Hermeticism more of a theoretical cast. And their main interest was in metaphysics and cosmology more than practical applications. The humanists were a lot like 20th century astrophysicists claiming Grand Unified Theories of everything. Only they were doing it by trying to weave together all this dreck here and a lot more.
The Renaissance introduced its own gnosis - recombinating what was already a mess of late antique jibberjabber. This spray mixed H&G, Neoplatonism, actual Platonism, and a lot of other esoteric junk from antiquity with Christianity.
An image of Zoroaster on mirrored etched glass at the Zoroastrian fire temple, Taft, Iran
Like the Chaldean Oracles. These 2nd century AD fragments were claimed to reflect the Chaldean or Babylonian wisdom of Zoroaster - an ancient sage who may have existed. The Oracles are like the Hermetica - a later antique text claiming to be the ancient wisdom of Persia, as Hermes did Egypt. And like Hermes, they're really rehashed Neoplatonism, only with some Babylonian or Persian and Gnostic elements.
If you wondered how Hermeticism survived the exposure of Hermes by Casuabon, this is how. Once Hermetic knowledge was synthesized with all this other nonsense, a single figure didn't matter anymore. This was prisca theologia - a chain of esoteric revelations from the beginning of time. Whether the Corpus was written in the 2nd century AD or the 22nd century BC was irrelevant if the wisdom it contained came from that secret source. Modern Hermeticism doesn't disavow Hermes as much as treats him like a symbol.
Plato, Opera, translated from Greek into Latin by Marsilio Ficino, 2nd edition, Venice, 1491.
Remember Ficino also translates Plato and Plotinus as well. He isn't a Hermeticist - he's a humanist with an eye for synthesizing ancient knowledge and a believer that older is better. So he's translating with his own spray in mind.
Ficino's prisca theologia is an imaginary genealogy of enlightened sages and philosophers carrying a pure knowledge through time. He puts Hermes is the first, followed by Orpheus, Aglaofemo, Pythagoras, Philolaus, and then Plato. And since the Renaissance humanists subscribed to the older-is-better school of thinking, this made Hermes a towering figure. This Hermes was also a prophet who saw the coming of Christ and the revelation of Christian truth.
Which is how he wound up inlaid into the floor of Siena Cathedral. Just like the sibyls we saw on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Hermes Trismegistus, 1480s, floor inlay, Siena Cathedral
Because this is all fake, there's nothing stopping other fabulists from making up more chapters. The following generations of humanists modified the list. Hermes would lose first place to Zoroaster - supposedly the author of the Chaldean Oracles and a way to churn Persia and the East into the spray. As humanism spreads, more and more fake history is churned into the spray. Enoch and Noah from the old Testament, the Indian Bramins, the Celtic Druids, the Greek and Roman Sibyls - all swirled into one grand unified fake history where all the esoteric and occult can find a home.
Luca Della Robbia, Plato and Aristotle, or Philosophy, marble panel from the basement of the bell tower of Florence Cathedral, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence
They could even cheap shot the Middle Ages. Medieval philosophy and theology leaned on Aristotle's logical and empirical philosophy. To the prisca theologia clowns, this made it an interruption in this otherwise unbroken mystical chain of Hermetic wisdom.
A chain that these humanists claimed they were picking up again.
Historians who don't specialize in esoterica tend to downplay the Hermetic component of Renaissance humanism. Ficino is generally described as a Neoplatonist - and he is - but he is also Hermetic. His Platonic theology is really a hybrid form of Hermetic-Neoplatonic Christianity with the parts interwoven into a tight spray. It's every bit as heretical as it sounds, but Ficino and the Christian humanists were tight with the popes. Pico della Mirandola was censored, but Ficino blasphemed on with Medici-funded impunity.
Domenico Ghirlandaio, Four Humanists - (L-R) Marsilio Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, Angelo Poliziano and Gentile de' Becchi, detail of Zachariah in the Temple, 1486-1490, fresco, Tornabuoni Chapel, Florence
Ficino and the Hermetic "Christians" were well connected at the highest levels. Here's Ficino with three others by a contemporary painter. Landino looking ridiculously like George Soros.
His vision was an overflow from a singular divine source into a hierarchy down to the material world. Souls. The creator is good, but like Plato, matter is unreal, deceptive, and to a degree evil. Humanity occupies the exact midpoint, capable of sinking into depravity or rising above creation.
The Hermetic description of man as a godlike demiurge who can transcend material reality through knowledge is right out of Hermes. This quote is from the Allen translation of Ficino's Platonic Theology - "with heavenly power he [man] ascends and measures the heavens; and with his superheavenly mind he transcends the heavens" (Platonic Theology iv, 172–173).
Pamela Coleman Smith, The Magician tarot card from the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck, 1909
This famous deck was designed by occulists Arthur Edward Rider and Pamela Colman Smith. The Magician is a Hermetic alchemist, with his Emerald Tablet knowledge of correspondences allowing him to reach beyond the infinite cycle of the material world. The items on the table - the cup, pentacle, sword, and wand - are the four suits of a tarot deck.
That's the Hermes that the Renaissance really got. A late antique churn of the generic be your own god, do what thou wilt, spray of satanic inversion that never goes away. And because he never existed, he could wear any face that was wanted. God, priest, king, wizard, seer, alchemist, astrologer, scribe, healer, prophet... eventually no more than a name and a symbol. A churn that could be remixed so completely into whatever the latest spray of satanic inversion happened to be that even Casuabon couldn't get rid of him.
Johfra Bosschart, Unio Mystica, 1973
And that's why Hermeticism can be so long lasting while being so hard to define.
This is pretty long for an occult post. The next post will look at the alchemical side of Hermeticism and its continuance into the present.
