CHAPTER THREE
From Hermes-Mercury to Hermes Trismegistus: The Confluence of Myth and the Mythical
Introduction
The title of this study calls, at the outset, for a precise definition of what is meant by myth, the mythical, and confluence. I use “myth” in the sense understood by anthropology, by comparative religion, and by formalistic and figurative structuralism. A myth is a metahistorical and foundational story concerning the origin, nature, and end of things; or, as is the case here, it is a story, generally initiatic, which features one or more divine heroes. The “mythical” here is everything that is left when explicit reference to the gods is omitted. Examples are literary myths such as those of Don Juan, Faust, Tristan and Isolde, who are not divine personages but belong to our own world;1 or the mythical in cities or in society, as treated by such as Pierre Sansot or Michel Maffesoli. “Confluence” designates the place of transition between myth and the mythical. Myth necessarily makes use of our own space and time, which favors the transition into the latter, hence into history, of the gods of mythology. Thus Hermes came to leave Olympus and descend from the illo tempore of myth to occupy an intermediate space and time under the name of Hermes Trismegistus, and sometimes even to come right down to earth where, as Hermes the god of crossroads, he at least seems less out of place than his peers.
We are not concerned here with the presence of Hermes within ourselves, on the psychological plane, though others have spoken of him in this fashion, such as Ginette Paris, Jean Bolen, William G. Doty, and James Hillman. Mine is the more limited goal of gathering from the documents certain moments at which Hermes has been seen to leave Olympus and pass into the mythical realm, as defined above. Certainly the myth, as Gilbert Durand has recalled it, does not always carry Hermes's proper name; but this will enable us to pinpoint the confluence, the place where two Mercuries become distinguishable and rejoin, or separate and fuse together: they are respectively the Mercury of mythology, and an Egyptian priest of some historical substance: on the one hand, the god of the caduceus;2 on the other, Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary author of the writings called the Hermetica.
1. Thoth, Hermes, Trismegistus; or the Ancient Faces of Mercury
A. The Appearance of Trismegistus
The Greeks are known to have given the name of Hermes to Thoth, a local divinity of Middle Egypt; worshipped at Khmonou (now called Achmounein), which they renamed Hermopolis. The assimilation of Thoth to Hermes had become official by the third century BCE, as attested by a decree of the priests of Rosetta (196 BCE): a Hermes in whom Thoth is to be understood under the name of Hermes the Great, the god who helped Horus to reconquer the Delta. From this point onwards, it seems justifiable to see resemblances between Thoth-Hermes and Hermes-Trismegistus. There is nothing fortuitous about their sharing a name in common: Thoth was the magician-god who appeared to Isis while she was trying to bring the members of Osiris back to life; he was also the “hypomnematographer” or secretary of the gods. Even today, Trismegistus has kept this dual function of assembler and maintainer, in an eclecticism inseparable from the Western notion of esotericism, and as the guarantee of a tradition.
There is another striking connection. A little after the decree of 196 BCE, the Jewish writer Artapan assimilated Thoth-Hermes to Moses. The historian of Alexandrian Hermetism, A.-J. Festugière, noticed this same amalgam reappearing in the eighth century CE with Cosmas of Jerusalem, and I will be citing some other comparable instances. This process of transition, by which a god slips into a historical personality, also occurs in the reverse direction: it seems in part to be the result of the activities credited to Thoth-Hermes. Hecateus of Abdera, who calls him Osiris's secretary, attributes to Hermes the invention of writing, astronomy, music, the games of the palaestra, eurhythmy, the three-stringed lyre, the cultivation of the olive—and interpretation. Not long after, taking his inspiration from Hecateus, Artapan tells us more: besides writing, Thoth-Hermes “taught the Egyptians navigation, the lifting of stones with cranes, weapons, water pumps, war machines, and philosophy”!3 In this way, the attributes gradually come together to make up a mythical figure: Hermes Trismegistus. Although it seems that one cannot say exactly when this figure became distinct from Hermes-Mercury, Artapan (circa 200 BCE) is an important reference point.
In addition to this, there was in Egypt from perhaps the third century BCE an esoteric literature in Greek, particularly astrological, part of which seems definitely to have been ascribed to Hermes. This must imply the god Hermes, whose patronage may have increased the prestige of such texts. The Egyptian name of Thoth was such as to confer on them a more mysterious or occult flavor than that of Hermes-Mercury, already so evocative. Thus books of philosophy or theosophy under the name of Hermes could have been in circulation from the first century CE and perhaps even before, though it seems to have been from the third century onwards that they received serious attention.4 The point in common of all these Hermetic writings or Hermetica, treating astrology, alchemy, and theosophy, is that they present themselves as scriptures revealed by Hermes, who under the name of Hermes Trismegistus puts his definitive stamp—though not without ambiguity—on the so-called “philosophical” Hermetica written in the Delta in the second and third centuries CE. Essentially this means the collection known as the Corpus Hermeticum, plus the Asclepius and the Fragments known as Stobaeus's.5 The eighteen treatises of the Corpus are variously addressed: some by Hermes to his son and disciple Tat; others by Hermes to his disciple Asclepius and to other disciples; yet others, including the Poimandres, by the god Nous (Supreme Intellect) to a personage who may be Hermes, though this name does not appear here, nor in some other treatises.6 In these theosophic Hermetica, Hermes plays the role of initiator, being the epitome of a master of wisdom. The authors have introduced him not only to adorn their gnosis with the patina of antiquity, but also out of a need to link their doctrine to a sacred tradition.
The author of the twenty-third Fragment of Stobaeus (The Sacred Book of Hermes Trismegistus, called “Pupil of the World” or Kore Kosmou, sometimes published under the title The Virgin of the World) describes the court of the Lord, maker of the universe, before mortals lived on the earth. Hermes appears there as “the soul [psyche] who possessed the sympathetic link with the mysteries of heaven: that is what Hermes was, who knew all things” (an interesting passage, recalling the biblical Book of Wisdom 7.17ff. and 9.11). God calls Hermes “soul of my soul, sacred intellect of my intellect.” But the text does not explain the precise status of this “soul” or this “intellect” which constitute Hermes.7 It seems to be a case of one of those psychai that are not discarnate souls, but a sort of composite organism: probably a subtle body, since Hermes, Isis, and Horus accomplish acts that require a body. In any case, Hermes enjoys a privileged place among these entities, for it is he whom God sends to this lower world to teach it, to make known the gnôsis and to abolish agnôsia (i.e., voluntary ignõrance, whereas agnôia is accidental ignorance), by addressing certain select disciples who, like him, are of divine origin—seeing that the earth was so far inhabited only by divine beings: Tat, Asclepius, Imouthes, and Hermes himself. These disciples, destined to perpetuate the Hermetic gnosis in obedience to the divine will, are not really celestial gods, but also not ordinary men, since humanity only appears later. It is more a matter of celestial emanations on the earth, charged with a divine mission, who will return to heaven when their task is done, as is generally told of Isis and Osiris.
The beautiful text of the Kore Kosmou adds to this mission of Hermes another one: the Lord, having asked him to assemble the other gods in order to discuss the plan for creating mankind, then asks him to take part in this creation:
As for me, said Hermes, I declare that I will not only create the nature of mankind, but I will make them the gifts of Wisdom, Temperance, Persuasion, and Truth, and will give myself ceaselessly to Invention; moreover, I will always assist the mortal life of men born under my signs (for the signs attributed to me by the Father and Creator are at least sensible and intelligent), and all the more so, when the movement of the planets that rule them shall be in accord with each one's natural energy.
In this context, it is the planet Mercury who speaks, and as such it is not different from the other six planets. Nevertheless, it is tempting to interpret this text in the sense that Hermes found himself designated by the Master of the universe as his steward and administrator, even to the point of being the principal actor, after the supreme God, on the anthropogonic stage (as also in the text of the Strasburg Cosmogony), while Adrastea, the goddess with piercing eyes, is appointed “watcher” of the universe. Hermes is therefore a god, or a soul, or a psyche, that has come down as the first divine emanation, while Isis and Osiris represent the second emanation, also sent into this world to teach mankind. But Isis and Osiris were able to teach only because they had rediscovered the writings to which Hermes had consigned his gnosis.
Since Hermes has a progeny, it is difficult to tell in each text which Hermes is intended, and which of them can be identified as Trismegistus. At every epoch, the documents seem to contradict each other. But if the number of Hermeses is variable, and if their identity is unstable, their number is three by definition whenever it is a question of the Trismegistus(es). This inclines to connect the latter with the tricephalus or three-headed Mercury (tricephalos,triplex), thus named to suggest his belonging to the three worlds: celestial, terrestrial, and infernal or subterranean. The epithet also evokes the three-sided stones erected on roads where three routes meet, which is natural enough, considering that Mercury is a god of the crossroads. Mercury has moreover been depicted with a three-pointed golden wand. Trismegistus, for his part, is “thrice great,” trismegistos resulting from the marriage of a superlative in the repetitive Egyptian style, as in “great, great” (megas, megas). At the end of the third century CE, this superlative was translated into Greek, with reference precisely to Hermes, by the superlative pronounced three times.
However, the coupling of “Hermes” with “Trismegistus” is rarely met with outside the Hermetic texts, that is, scarcely before the second century CE. One cannot fail to associate this epithet with the alchemical ternary. In fact, an Alexandrian alchemist who saw Hermes as the first master of the Work, read his name as indicating that the operation should be done according to a threefold ontological activity_? The Suda (=Suidas) recognized it as the sign of the Trinity, an idea supposedly brought to mankind by Hermes. Bernard of Trevisan (Liber de secretissimo philosophorum opere chemica, fifteenth century) detects in it an allusion to the three realms, mineral, vegetable, and animal. In a treatise dated 1736 and published under the pseudonym of Pyrophilus, one reads that this number is an allusion to the three alchemical principles of salt, sulphur, and mercury. It is most often interpreted as meaning “great philosopher, priest, and king.”8 We must not forget another Hermes, or rather a homonym of our own: Hermogenes, who is treated in the Golden Legend and represented in certain stained-glass windows: he, too, is sometimes “triplex.”9 His name should probably be connected with that of the priest Hermon, spoken of by Galen (IV, 1) in the first century CE, in connection with the making of remedies.
B. Genealogies of the Triplex
I spoke above of slippages and transitions, taking place in more than one direction. Trismegistus is a fictional personage who nonetheless “authored” some important books; his status is ambiguous precisely because he stands at the confluence of myth and the mythical. He is both the precipitation of Mercury into history, and the return of the historical to Olympus. These fluctuations, or if one prefers, this double movement, favors an open genealogy and the presence of more than one Hermes.
The most “classic” genealogy of Hermes in the Hellenistic era was set down in the third or second century BCE. It begins the series of Hermeses with Thoth, who engraved his knowledge on stelae, then hid them. His son was Agathodemon, sometimes credited with the editing of his father's teachings, and their conservation. The son of Agathodemon was the second Hermes, who later, in the second century CE, was often called Trismegistus—although this word is not always enough for his certain identification in the succession of Hermeses. Lastly, the son of Trismegistus was Tat. Nothing is more uncertain than divine genealogies: one even finds Isis as a daughter of Hermes, according to traditions handed down by Plutarch.10 And however “classic” the above succession may be, it can only serve in certain cases. Cicero, in De natura deorum (III, 22), enumerates no fewer than five Mercurys: the son of Heaven and Light; the son of Valens and the nymph Phoronis; the son of Jupiter and Maia; the son of Nilus. The fifth, called “Theyt,” is the one whom Cicero seems to intend as Trismegistus, for he says of him: “He is the one worshipped by the Pheneatae (in Arcadia) and who is said to have slain Argus, for which he fled to Egypt and there taught the Egyptians laws and writing.” Lactantius later speaks of the son of Jupiter and Maia, but also of the son of Bacchus and Proserpine, and the son of Jupiter and Cyllene!
Relying on different sources still, Saint Augustine in the City of God makes Mercury the great-grandson of a contemporary of Moses:
In [King Saphrus's] time Prometheus (as some hold) lived, who was said to make men out of earth, because he taught them wisdom so excellently well, yet there are no wise men recorded to live in his time. His brother Atlas indeed is said to have been a great astronomer, whence the fable arose of his supporting heaven upon his shoulders: yet there is an huge mountain of that name, whose height may seem to an ignorant eye to hold up the heavens. And now began Greece to fill the stories with fables…Some of the dead kings were recorded for gods, by the vanity and customary superstition of the Greeks…and in these times also lived Mercury, Atlas's grandchild, born of Maia his daughter: the story is common. He was a perfect artist in many good inventions, and therefore was believed (at least men desired he should be believed) to be a deity. Hercules lived after this, yet was he about those times of the Argives: some think he lived before Mercury, but I think they are deceived. But, howsoever, the gravest historians that have written of them avouch them both to be men, and that for the good that they did mankind in matter of civility and other necessaries to human estate, were rewarded with those divine honors. (Civ. Dei. XVIII, 8)
In the same City of God, Augustine suggests an etymology for the name “Mercurius” which he says means medius currens (running in the middle), “because language ‘runs’ like a sort of mediator between men.” Elsewhere he returns to the genealogy of Hermes with a reprise of the above, which interests us for two reasons. First, Augustine is a euhemerist in that he sees outstanding human acts (on whose historical reality he casts no doubt) as the origin of the Greek gods; thus Mercury now ascends from humanity to Olympus, whereas before we saw him descend thence to incarnate into a mythical personage. Augustine leaves open the question of whether Hermes Mercury and Hermes Trismegistus were originally one and the same personage, but one has the impression that he thinks so, and that he thinks it a human being. He cites the discourse of Hermes to Asclepius (a text contained in the Asclepius), where the latter is presented as the grandson of another Asclepius or Aesculapius. The grandfather is buried in a temple “on a mountain of Libya, not far from the bank of the crocodiles,” but from heaven “he now assures the sick of receiving through his superhuman power all the succour which he was wont to give them through his medical art.” It is on this occasion that Hermes actually introduces himself to Asclepius as the descendant of another Hermes: “Hermes, my ancestor, whose name I bear…” (compare the quotation above). Saint Augustine comments:
This was Hermes, the elder Mercury, buried (they say) in Hermopolis, the town of his surname. Behold now, here are two new gods already, Aesculapius and Mercury for the first, the opinion of both Greeks and Latins confirms it. But the second many think was never mortal: yet he says here that he was his grandfather, for this is one and that another, they both have one name. But this I stand not upon: he and Aesculapius were both made gods from men, by this great testimony of his grandson Trismegistus.11
In other words, Trismegistus is the grandson of the divine or human Hermes of Hermopolis. One can see how the shift took place: it is this very ancestor whom many other authorities attest to having been Trismegistus, and not the descendant who talks with Asclepius.
The other reason for our interest in the genealogy of Hermes as presented by Augustine is that it would serve more or less as a prototype in the following centuries, copied in this form or presented in a more or less fragmented or contradictory fashion. The book believed to be the earliest Latin work on alchemy, dated 1144, includes a preface by the translator from the Arabic original (Robert of Chester), who writes:
We read in the ancient histories of the gods that there were three Philosophers who were all called Hermes. The first was Enoch, whose names were also Hermes and Mercury. The second was Noah, also called Hermes and Mercury. The third was the Hermes who ruled Egypt after the Deluge and long occupied that throne. Our predecessors called him Triplex by reason of his threefold virtue, bestowed on him by God. He was king, philosopher, and prophet. It was this Hermes who after the Deluge was the founder of all the arts and disciplines, both liberal and mechanical.12
From the thirteenth century, we call on three witnesses. The Summa philosophia, sometimes attributed to Robert Grosseteste, tells us that Atlas had a nephew called Mercury, whose grandson was our hero. The author repeats Saint Augustine's statement, adding to it from other sources.13 Daniel of Morley distinguishes between “two most excellent authorities,” the “great Mercury” and his nephew “Trismegistus Mercurius.”14 Lastly, a Hermetic text that roughly repeats this information adds that the third Hermes was the first to provide an explanation of astronomy.15
Naturally all this recurs at the Renaissance. Marsilio Ficino is followed by many other authors, including Ludovico Lazarelli. The latter tells us that Moses was born in anno mundi 2374 (1598 BCE):
[At that time] there flourished a most expeŕt Astrologer named Athlas, the brother of Prometheus, a man much esteemed in Physics, and ancestor on the maternal side of the great Mercury, whose nephew was Mercury Trismegistus the present ambassador, surely a man of singular and memorable virtue, a most noble and excellent Mathematician, as Saint Augustine has fully told. […He drew up the characters of laws and letters,] showing them by the figures of beasts and trees, in order to make them easier and more open to understanding. And he was in such high esteem of men for his integrity, goodness, prudence, diligence, knowledge, kindness, and every other virtue in which he was perfect and accomplished, that they spoke of him and placed him among the number of their gods, and built many temples in his name. No one was permitted to use his name, nor to utter it in vulgar speech or in anger, such was the honor and reverence in which he was held. The Egyptians called the first month ofthe year by his name. They also dedicated to him all the books which they wrote, calling him the inventor of all things, prince, and author of wisdom and eloquence. Likewise he built a city, which to this day bears his own name and is called Hermopolis.16
In his handsome book Symbola aureae mensae duodecim nationum, published 1617 in Frankfurt, Michael Maier presents twelve characters who defend alchemy against an opponent set on sapping its foundations and its spiritual reality.17 Presiding over this fictitious “turba” of twelve is Trismegistus, in the place of honor and occupying the entire first chapter of the book. Maier spins the following yarn about him:
Palaephastus, in his Second Book, writes that the father of Hermes or Mercury was Philon. He begat this son of his daughter Proserpine, after beholding her in her bath. Wishing to expose the child [on water, like Moses], because of shame at the incest, he consulted a mathematician celebrated at that time for his predictions and prophecies, who replied to Philon that the son born of his daughter would become a very great and very learned interpreter of divine matters, and that he would win high authority and power among men This, he said, was a most certain event, promised by the stars. The father, his mind changed by the reply of this sage, preserved his son and had him educated in literature and the liberal arts to the point at which, with time, he was considered by all as a prodigy for his teaching and the acuteness of his intelligence. But no one sees that this story is a fable falsely attributed to Hermes, like that of Mahomet. And there is no need to seek another father for him, seeing that he himself, as has been said, acknowledged Hermes, not Philon, for his father.18
Even as late as the eighteenth century, the alchemist F. J. W. Schröder identified Trismegistus with Joseph, while Lenglet de Fresnoy and Michael de Ramsay thought that he was the same as King Siphoas who reigned around 1900 BCE.19 Dom Pernéty seemed less keen on dispelling an ambiguity favorable to his project of alchemical hermeneutics. If the text of the Emerald Tablet, he says, contains the words “nutrix eius est terra,” it is in allusion to Maia, the mother of Mercury, who is identical to Cybele or the Earth. And the Mercury who conducts the dead to Pluto's realm and draws them back from thence corresponds to the dissolution and coagulation, fixation and volatilization, of the matter of the Work. Pernéty adds a little further on, concerning the five Mercuries of Cicero: “There has never been more than a single Mercury to whom one can credibly attribute all that the fables tell of him; and this Mercury can be none other than that of the Hermetic philosophers.”20
C. Books and Seals of Hermes
There is no lack of books attributed to Hermes. At about the time when the Corpus Hermeticum was being compiled, Manetho reported 36,525 books, and Seleucus, 20,000! Iamblichus, towards 300 CE, suggested a more modest number. The testimony of Clement of Alexandria is instructive, as, writing in the same period as Manetho, he describes a contemporary Egyptian religious service. First appeared the cantor, who had to be able to recite by heart two of the books of Hermes, one containing hymns to the gods. He was followed by a celebrant who carried a palm branch and an instrument for measuring time, who must always have in his memory the Astrologumena of the four books of Hermes that treat of the planets. Clement enumerates “forty-two indispensable books of Hermes,” of which thirty-six had to be known by heart by certain officiants “because they contain all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” while the pastophoroi (bearers of the images of the gods) had to know the other six, which were medical, “treating the constitution of the body, maladies, organs, remedies, the eyes, and questions relating to women.”21
None of these texts have come down to us. The presence of medical writings is especially interesting in view of the fact that Thoth was known for his medical activity: this could have suggested that Isis should have used him to help resuscitate Osiris. When Thoth also became an astrologer, namely at the time when astrology came into vogue in Egypt, books on this science were attributed to him, and not just medical ones.22 Lastly, the idea that the god was the author of books may have favored his slide from divine stature to that of historical personage. A twelfth-century text23 attributes to him a Golden Bough and a treatise on the astrolabe, while in the Renaissance the astrolabe is often given him as an attribute.24
At the same time, he did not only teach astrology and alchemy but also magic, which uses material supports such as the statues described in the Asclepius, or stones and metals. The borderline between the god Mercury and Trismegistus is not clear here, either, whether regarding the attribution of texts or that of seals and talismans. One Medieval treatise that exists in several manuscripts is ascribed sometimes to Hermes, sometimes to Enoch: it is the Liber hermetis de quindecim stellis, tot lapidibus, tot herbis, et totidem figlris, which contains a repertory of images for engraving on stones. Guillaume d’ Auvergne and Albertus Magnus were well up in these practices, and helped to make them known.
Documents of this kind were frequently printed in the Renaissance. Giovanni da Fontana, circa 1540, gives among the names to be engraved those of Hermes, Enoch, Tot, Aaron, and Evax. The Naturae Liber (Frankfurt, 1625), teaches how to inscribe seals and characters, with therapeutic intention, and shows what are the signs of Hermes, Thetel, and Chael. Among many astrological seals and images, Leo Allatius in Ars magica sive magis naturalis (Frankfurt, 1631) gives those of Hermes, Chael, Thetel, and Solomon; a similarly intentioned work is the Mirabilium of Rudolf Göckel or Glocenius (1572-1621).25 In these talismanic repertories, Hermes finds himself associated with entities of which many have a purely magical function. In the next section we will see how Hermes the magus also operates by means of statues.
II. Scenarios and Tablets, or Secrets of the Tomb of Hermes
A. Statues and Cities of Hermes
The long speech of Hermes in the Asclepius about the Egyptian statues has caused much ink to flow, irritating Saint Augustine and even upsetting the hermetically inclined authors of the Renais sance. It seems to reflect a widespread practice or belief of the Alexandrian domain,26 to which Michael Maier makes an interesting allusion in his Symbola aureae mensae:
Among other statues [of Hermes], there was a stone one at Achaia Pharis, which gave out oracles. In the evening, they would light incense on its altar, filling the lamps with oil, and place money in the right hand of this statue, then murmur prayers into the ear of the god. These rites completed, the querents would disperse, leaving the temple, and go home with their ears blocked. Then they would go to the market place and unblock their ears, whereupon the first word they heard was to be interpreted as a response from Mercury.27
But which one?. The god Mercury, or Trismegistus? Maier, although he saw this as an example of superstition, still felt the need of including it in his chapter devoted to the Triplex. Hermetic imagery found the opportunity in such vacillations of expanding in the form of strange pictures constellated around our key-figure. They show him as the founder of a city, or associate him with the discovery of documents containing ineffable revelations. Considered as urbis conditor, Mercury-Thoth is the object of an inspired page of that celebrated medieval text, the Picatrix, which makes a fairly confused assemblage of more or less vanished traditions. The Arabic original seems to date from the tenth century, the Latin translation used here, from 1256:
[According to the Chaldeans] Hermes was the first who constructed images by means of which he knew how to regulate the Nile against the motion of the moon. This man also built a temple to the Sun, and he knew how to hide himself from all so that no one could see him, although he was within it. It was he, too, who in the east of Egypt constructed a City twelve miles long within which he constructed a castle which had four gates in each of its four parts. On the eastern gate he placed the form of an Eagle; on the western gate, the form of a Bull; on the southern gate the form of a Lion, and on the northern gate he constructed the form of a Dog. Into these images he introduced spirits which spoke with voices, nor could anyone enter the gates of the City except by their permission. There he planted trees in the midst of which was a great tree which bore the fruit of all generation. On the summit of the castle he caused to be raised a tower thirty cubits high on the top of which he ordered to be placed a light-house the color of which changed every day until the seventh day after which it returned to the first color, and so the City was illuminated with these colors. Near the City there was abundance of waters in which dwelt many kinds of fish. Around the circumference of the City he placed engraved images and ordered them in such a manner that by their virtue the inhabitants were made virtuous and withdrawn from all wickedness and harm. The name of the City was Adocentyn.28
Hermes figures here as a benevolent priest, philosopher, and magician. Our ignorance of the epoch at which the author of Picatiix imagined Adocentyn to have been built only serves to increase the seductive and mysterious aspects of his description.
B. The Book of Crates and the Emerald Tablet
Just as interesting as these statues and cities, and much more numerous, are the scenarios in which someone discovers tablets containing theosophical, astrological, or alchemical revelations. This theme of the revelation of a book or a stele by fortuitous discovery is widespread in the literature of all lands. The revelation may take place in the course of a dream or ecstastic state, or an encounter with a god, or through a sign from heaven. But the name of Hermes is more often linked to the kind obtained from discovering an old book, hidden like a treasure. In the alchemical literature, Bolos the Democritean's speech on the evocation of Ostanes contains the scene in which a column of the temple opens to reveal a book. This topos flourished in the Syriac, and even more in the Arabic, alchemical writings. Especially popular among the Arabs was the discovery of the document in a tomb: thus the first Hermes, who lived before the Deluge and foresaw it, built the pyramids in order to deposit the secrets of science there before the world was destroyed. This is how the Pseudo-Manetho makes the gnosis go back to the books which he has found in the adyta of the Egyptian sanctuaries where the second Hermes, father of Tat, hid them after writing them. In the Kore Kosmou, Hermes, before returning to heaven, engraved and hid his teachings, “so that every generation born after the world would have to search for them.” One of the first Arabic texts of this genre, the Book of Crates, which dates at the earliest from the sixth century, is fairly typical. The influence of that Arabic literature on Medieval Latin Hermeticism persuades me to include this extract from it:
I suddenly felt myself swept up into the air, following the same path as the sun and the moon Then I saw in my hand a parchment entitled…: That which repels the darkness and makes the light to shine. On this parchment were drawn figures representing the seven heavens, the image of the two great shining stars, and the five wandering planets which follow a contrary path. Each heaven was surrounded by a legend written in stars.
Then I saw an ancient one, the most comely of men, seated at a lectern; he was clothed with white raiment and held in his hand a board of the lectern, on which was placed a book. In front of him were wonderful vessels, the most marvelous I had ever seen. When I asked who this ancient one was, I was told: “He is Hermes Trismegistus, and the book that is before him is one of those that contains the explanation of secrets that he has hidden from men. Remember well all that you see, and retain all that you read or hear, to describe it to your fellow men after you. But do not go beyondwhat you will be commanded…”
Here is what was there, first of all: figures of circles, around which there were inscriptions…
When I had finished examining these figures and had grasped their secret qualities, I leaned over to read what was contained in the book which Hermes held in his hand.29
Settling in Egypt from 640 onwards, the Arabs found manuscripts and inscribed tablets in the pyramids. The Arabic manuscripts mention the edifice Abou Hermes at Memphis, in which Hermes (the father of Thoth!) was reputedly buried; it comprised two pyramids, one for him and one for his wife.30 In the tenth century, all the conditions were therefore present for the elaboration of tales of the discovery of a tablet of instruction in a tomb of Hermes, while at the same time alchemy had become fashionable among the Arabs. One of these revelations is called The Treasure of Alexander: an Arabic treatise on astrology and alchemy, it also contains reflections on the microcosm and the macrocosm, talismans, and mentions Hermes as well as Apollonius of Tyana.31
The short but very celebrated text of the Emerald Tablet belongs to this literature. Compared to the long narrative of The Treasure of Alexander, its brevity makes it seem, in Julius Ruska's words, like “a grain of sand beside a mountain.”32 It was E. J. Holmyard who discovered the oldest known version, which dates from the eighth century: it was inserted in a text of the Arab Geber, called The Elementary Book of Foundation, which was certainly translated from the Greek. Without presenting a full scenario, this mentions Balinus, i.e., Apollonius of Tyana, as having discovered an engraved tablet in the hand of Hermes.33 Thus it is the first known document which mentions an inscription on an emerald tablet, found in a tomb of Hermes. Apollonius's appearance in this kind of story is almost natural: he had long been familiar through the account of his life by Philostratus (170-230 CE), which was widely distributed—in which, however, there was no mention of Hermes. The stories of this thaumaturge, a rival to Trismegistus in the Hermetic imagination, are largely set in Syria. The idea of placing the tomb of Hermes at Tyana and of having Apollonius discover Hermetic texts there, as happens in several of these narratives, could only have occurred after all precise historical knowledge of him had vanished.34
We also find the text of the Emerald Tablet as the fourth part of another Arabic writing that can scarcely date from before the twelfth century, attributed to the Christian priest Sagijus, a fictitious character. Sagijus's text begins thus:
This is what the priest Sagijus of Nabulus dictated on the subject of Balinas's entry into the dark chamber. He said: “I found the following precepts of wisdom at the end of the book of Balinas the Wise: ‘When I had penetrated into the chamber above which the talisman was placed, I went forward until I reached an ancient man, seated on a golden throne and holding a tablet of emerald in his hand. It was written in Syriac, in the original language, and it read: [here follows the text of the Emerald Tablet].' And such was the plan of Hermes, on whom be the threefold grace of Wisdom.”35
Syriac was then regarded as the primordial language of mankind, so that if Hermes was supposed to have lived before the Deluge, of course he would have used it! Quite different from the preceding version, this one is almost identical to the one which we have in t4e Latin translation of Hugo Sanctalliensis, done in the twelfth century. Only the preamble varies substantially. From Hugo's text we learn that Hermes buried these secrets to keep them away from those of insufficient learning, and erected a statue above them. Incidentally, if emerald is again in question here, it is because that was one of the traditional attributes of Hermes, along with quicksiver—just as iron and hematite were ascribed to Mars, lead and black stones to Saturn.36
C. The Liber de Causis and other Scenarios
Apollonius and Hermes return to the scene together in the Book of Causes of Apollonius the Wise, otherwise called the Book of the Secrets of Creation. Written at the latest in 750, and at the earliest in the sixth century, it must have been known to Geber. The copy of 1266 contains a third Arabic version of the Emerald Tablet. Another copy, the oldest, dates from 934. Its introductory scenario closely resembles that of Crates, but now transported onto Egyptian soil. Here is an extract from it, in which the speaker is Apollonius:
I will now make known to you my ancestry and my origins. In my native land I was an orphan, and lived in a town called Tuwana. I was destitute. Now there was there a stone statue upon a golden column, on which was written: “Behold! I am Hermes, he who is threefold in Wisdom. I once placed all these marvelous signs openly before all eyes; but now I have veiled them by my Wisdom, so that none should attain them unless he be a sage like myself.” On the breast of the statue, one could read in the original language (Syriac): “Let him who would learn and know the secrets of creation and of nature look beneath my foot.” But none could understand what this signified: they would look under his foot, and find nothing there.
I was still young and timid; but when my spiritual nature became stronger, I read what was written on the breast of the statue, reflected on what this might mean, and started to dig beneath the plinth. And behold, I came into an underground chamber, so dark that not a single ray of sunlight could penetrate it, though the sun was right overhead, and in which winds arose and blew without ceasing…. Because of the darkness I could go no further, and no torch could bum in these winds. I was impotent and gnawed by chagrin; I could not sleep while my heart was so full of care and worry about the difficulties into which I had brought myself.
It was then that an old man appeared, resembling myself in build and appearance. He said to me “O Balinus! Rise, and enter into this chamber to gain knowledge of the secrets of creation, so as to obtain a representation of nature!” I replied: “I can see nothing in that darkness, and the winds that blow there put out every flame.” Then he said to me: “0 Balinus! Put your light into a glass vessel…” I said: “Who are you that allows me to profit from your favor?” He said to me: “I am your own being, perfect and subtle.” Then I awoke full of joy, set a light inside a glass just as my spiritual being had told me to, and entered the chamber. And there I found an ancient man seated on a golden throne, holding in his hand an emerald tablet on which was written: “This is the secret of the world and the knowledge of nature.” And before him was a book on which one could read: “This is the secret of the creation, and the knowledge of the causes of things.”37
New tales began to flower forth in the Middle Ages. One might mention the romance of Perceval, in which the hermit called Trevizrent (i.e., “triple science”) is the revealer of the Graal history. Here, incidentally, there is also a reference td a reliquary “green as grass,” hence the color of emerald. We should also draw attention to the work of two American scholars, Henri and Renee Kahane, who derive the word “Graal” from the Greek krater (“bowl”), in reference to the Bowl of Hermes which appears in the Corpus Hermeticum. A text attributed by esoteric tradition to Saint Thomas Aquinas, and cited by Michael Maier, recounts how Abel, the son of Adam, wrote about the virtues and properties of the planets, but was well aware that the Deluge would happen, and so was careful to engrave his teachings on stones. Several centuries after Noah, these stones passed to Mercury Trismegistus—then to Saint Thomas himself, who used them to draw up talismans.38 Maier's book, recalling the existence of a Liber de secretis chymicis attributed to Albertus Magnus, states that Alexander the Great, when visiting the Oracle of Ammon, discovered a tomb of Hermes containing a tabula Zaradi, that is, “smaragdine” or emerald. The story had already appeared in Jerome Torella, in a book published in 1496 that deals with astrological images.
Another text, known only through the copy of it made in the seventeenth century, pretends to be a “Commentary by Toz Graecus, philosopher of great renown, on the books given by Solomon to Rehoboam concerning the Secret of Secrets.” The preface reveals that Solomon gathered his vast learning into a book intended for his son Rehoboam, which he locked up in an ivory coffer concealed in his tomb. Later Toz (Thoth) discovered it, and as he was weeping for his incapacity to understand its contents, an angel of the Lord came to reveal its meaning to him, but enjoined him not to disclose it to any but those who were worthy of it.39 We also learn, thanks to the Liber de secretissimo philosophomm opere chemica (fifteenth century) that Hermes traveled to the Valley of Hebron, where Adam was buried, and there found seven tablets of stone written before the Deluge, containing the doctrine of the Seven Liberal Arts. And the title of a Latin treatise On the Quintessence, published in 1460/1476, announces that the latter was given to “Hermes, the prophet and king of Egypt, father of the philosophers, after Noah's flood and by the revelation of an angel sent to him by God.”40
Of course, these echoes often serve simply for stylistic purposes, obligatory as subtitles or decorative elements that proclaim the nature of the genre. In the eighteenth century, the alchemist Naxagoras says that “a plaque of precious emerald” engraved with inscriptions was made for Hermes Trismegistus after his death, and discovered in his tomb by a woman named Zora, in the Valley of Hebron41 Naxagoras, who had read this somewhere or other, makes this kind of detail proliferate as he pleases. His confrère, Hermann Fictuld, found it enough to invent a fiction solely for the sake of setting up a décor: one of his books opens with a scene representing Hermes, an Egyptian priest, strolling between the Elysian Fields and the great World Ocean: accessories which frame a long dialogue inspired by the Turba philosophomm and by Maier's Symbola aureae.42
III. The Beacon of Hermes, or Avatars of the Tradition
A. Philosophia perennis
Thanks to the rich variety of his attributes and to his intermediary position betweeen myth and the mythic, Hermes Trismegistus fulfilled all the conditions necessary for becoming an axial personality of a philosophical history of the human race. Strabo already said of Mercury that he gave laws to the Egyptians, and taught philosophy and astronomy to the priest of Thebes, while Marcus Manilius went so far as to see in him the founder of the Egyptian religion. These were bold visions, to be taken up again by Dom Pernéty in the eighteenth century.43 The most daring chronologies are sometimes the most interesting ones. We cite two of them. According to Roger Bacon, intellectual history began with a plenary divine revelation, of which the Patriarchs were the beneficiaries. The knowledge thus acquired declined because of the sins of humanity, the invention of magic by Zoroaster, and the corruption of wisdom in the hands of Nimrod, Atlas, Prometheus, Aesculapius, Apollo—and Hermes Trismegistus. Bacon is a noteworthy exception in the gallery of guardians of a tradition in which Trismegistus holds a dominant place. He goes on to say that wisdom, restored with Solomon, suffered a new decline that lasted until Thales and Aristotle put philosophy back on its feet again44
A very elaborate historical vision was offered by Scribonius, writing in Marburg in 1583. He states that one should distinguish four schools of physics, i.e., of natural philosophy—a curious theory that resembles that of the four monarchies held by the historiographers of his time. Scribonius names: (A) The Assyrian School, founded by Adam, emphasizing astronomy, astrology, and the interpretation of dreams, and including Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Solomon. (B) The Egyptian School, taught by Abraham, in which Hermes and the Persian Magi flourished. They were concerned with natural magic, and invented the division of the day into twelve hours, following the urination of the sacred animals. (C) The Greek School, in which he includes the Druids, the Brahmins and Gymnosophists of India, and also the astrologers and magicians of Scribonius's time who, if one is to believe the Portuguese voyagers, could still enter at will into communication with discarnate entities. (D) The Roman or Latin School, with Cicero and physicians such as Vesalius.45
There are also lists of what are called the “sectaries” of Trismegistus. Maier, in Symbola aureae, offers us his own version: Mena, king of Egypt, whose tutor was Hermes Trismegistus; Busiris, who founded Heliopolis; Sesostris, who raised the great statues at Memphis in the Temple of Vulcan; Sethon, in the 3228th year of the world; Adfar Alexandrinus, who taught the art of alchemy to Morienus (an allusion to the text of 1144, cited above); lastly, Calid the Saracen, an Egyptian who was the pupil of Morienus.
There is further the notion of “tradition,” more specific than the foregoing testimonies would give one to suppose, but still suggested by them, whose adherents claimed authority in the Renaissance. This term “Tradition,” much in vogue today, has been current since the last century, and increasingly so since René Guénon adopted it in the first half of our own. Its underlying idea contains a history that has yet to be written. It seems that the need to conceptualize “Tradition” was felt in the sixteenth century, when it went under the name of philosophia perennis; and that it was Agostino Steuco, long before Leibniz, who explained with relative clarity what it consists of.46 Now, it is a remarkable thing that at the very moment it appeared, the name of Trismegistus was inseparably linked to it. Pico della Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino prepared the way for Steuco, who called our Mercury the “first theologian,” and had him succeeded by Orpheus, who then initiated Aglaophemus into his teachings. Then followed Pythagoras, whose disciple was Philolaus, the master of the divine Plato—in whom culminated a prisca theologia that began with Mercury. The typical list, being the common denominator of a very large number of those proposed in the course of the sixteenth century and at the beginning of the seventeenth, seems to go as follows: Enoch, Abraham, Noah, Zoroaster, Moses, Hermes Trismegistus, the Brahmins, the Druids, David, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, and the Sibyls.47 Among several authors with interesting views on the subject, we single out that of Symphorien Champier. The chain of transmission varies somewhat from one of his works to another, but generally one finds, in order: Hermes Trismegistus, Asclepius, Zoroaster, Orpheus, Musaeus, Abraham, Moses, Daedalus, Homer, Lycurgus, Solon, Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Eudoxus, Democritus, the Magi, the Gymnosophists, the Hebrew Prophets, the Sibyls, the Druids, Plotinus, Numenius, Philo, and Augustine.48
Not the least curious aspect of this version of the Western tradition is its pervasive confusion of the mythological with the real. The need for this distinction had not, in fact, yet been felt, whereas it was thought very important to affirm the existence of an intellectual and spiritual tradition that was unique, or at least relatively homogeneous.
B. Hermeticism and Esotericism
This need for a chain of authorities manifested most notably at the very same moment as the emergence of what would later be called esotericism, i.e., towards the end of the fifteenth century. The discovery of the Jewish Kabbalah, especially after the Diaspora of 1492, was one of the major events after which this esotericism lost no time in taking on its specific form. The other one is the rediscovery of the Corpus Hermeticum, brought to Florence in about 1460 by Leonardo da Pistoia, a monk returning from Macedonia. The Middle Ages had not known of it, though they did have the Asclepius. Ficino translated the Corpus almost in its entirety; it was published in 1471, and had no fewer than sixteen editions before the end of the sixteenth century, not counting partial ones. Before its discovery, Ficino had conceived the ambition of translating Plato: the insistence of Cosima de’ Medici that he set the Platonic texts temporarily aside, those of the Corpus being considered more urgent, is some indication of the tenor of the times.
Pico della Mirandola, living in the same Florentine circles, joined to the “magical” philosophy of the Renaissance a Kabbalah which would become more and more Christian; having discovered the Trismegistfan Corpus through Ficino, he allied it with this Kabbalah through the basic theme of Creation through the Word. This was a marriage with weighty consequences for the evolution of Western esotericism, for this union would give birth to what Frances A. Yates called a “Hermetico-Kabbalistic tradition” of twofold character: on the one hand theosophic, that is to say, here, speculative and neo-Pythagorean; on the other, magical, and more theurgical than in Ficino.
In the Renaissance, commentaries on the Corpus Hermeticum and texts inspired by it are virtually innumerable. Some authors or publishers attributed to Trismegistus texts and teachings that did not even come from the Alexandrian milieu. The Middle Ages had already practised this kind of amalgam, but now it took on different forms. Texts of iatro-mathematics, for example, were often published under the signature of Trismegistus. Conversely, certain commentators struck out passages that did not please them, calling them interpolations. This was especially the case with the Asclepius, which contained passages of magical content, particularly the one about statues, that had already scandalized Saint Augustine. Symphorien Champier, acting as the interpreter of many authors, attributed to Apuleius, or even to Geber, the texts that shocked him by being too theurgical. It was in fact precisely in the periods when Hermetic magic was represented as infamous, e.g., in the Latin countries during the Renaissance, that Hermes Trismegistus was made Apollonian.
This “Apollonization” of Trismegistus could be seen as an important trait of the imagination of the epoch. It occurs in exemplary fashion in the collection titled Champ Fleury, where the author, on the authority of Boccaccio, makes Mercury the messenger of Light (Jupiter). Mercury comes to rescue Io (Letters) from the prison of Argus (Night), the servant of Juno (Wealth), thus putting back into circulation a knowledge that has been blocked by the guardians of the established intellectual order (Argus), and abolishing fruitless hoarding. Thus Mercury represents the new spirit of Humanism.49 In the same epoch, one can see even in Ficino how Mercury annexes the figure of Saturn and presents himself in the form of a wise old man, bearded like Moses, thereupon identifying himself with Trismegistus! The fortunes of the latter profited greatly in the Renaissance from the general enthusiasm for the god Mercury. Gilbert Durand has enumerated seven appearances of this enthusiasm, or this event, the last of them occurring in the nineteenth century.50; Certainly, the sixteenth century saw Hermes enter the cultural imagination forcibly under his two forms, Mercury and Trismegistus, to the point of serving as a catch-all for a number of derived forms.
Despite reticence with regard to magic, linked in the Latin lands to this form of Apollonism described above, one often sees the Corpus Hermeticum accepted as a whole.51 A prelate like Foix de Candale, author of a very lengthy commentary on it in 1579, regrets that these texts translated by Ficino are not canonical, and suggests that they might deserve to be so. But he piously passes over the magical passages of the Asclepius. At the end of the century, Francesco Patrizi tried to convince the pope to have this Hermetic Platonism taught in all Christian schools. Finally, one of the most striking traits of this influence of Trismegistus in the Renaissance is his irenic aspect: in the circles where Hermes passes, one can be sure that tolerance reigns.
C. Resistances and Permanencies
The extreme importance attaching to the idea of a prisca philosophia presented a certain danger from the outset, in that it made the authority of a text depend for validation on its antiquity. In 1614, the inevitable happened—and it is astonishing that it happened so late—when a Genevan Protestant, Isaac Casaubon, discovered and proved that these Trismegistic texts were no earlier than the first centuries of the Christian Era. Casaubon did not ask himself whether the error he had uncovered had not proved itself, in the end, a fruitful one: such was not his intention. Some authors deliberately ignored his discovery. Others, at least in the years immediately following, were simply not aware of it. But the result was that these books of Hermes, because they were now known to be far less ancient than had been believed, ceased to command the veneration of as many people as they had done in the past. This disaffection was however a relative one, being amply compensated at the very same moment by the appearance or development of groups and doctrines that would henceforth occupy the vacant place, as it were: Rosicrucianism, and the creation of a Germanic theosophy. One contributory factor in these movements was the slight degree to which Hermeticism had penetrated German thought in the sixteenth century, thanks to the very nature of Lutheranism which stood in the way of Humanism, hence of all that came from the Hellenistic world.
This is not the place to recount the history of Hermetism, let alone of Hermeticism, in modern times, which would involve both its influence and the oppositions it encountered. Let us mention only two tardy and curious examples, which seem to illustrate the theme of this essay. In 1684, Kriegsmann, an author who otherwise distinguished himself with a commentary on the Emerald Tablet, published at Tübingen a work entitled Conjectures on the origin of the German people, and their founder Hermes Trismegistus, who is Chanaan to Moses, Tuitus to Tacitus, and Mercury to the Gentiles.52 He studies at length the evidences of Antiquity concerning Ascenates, Tuiton, the Phoenician Taaut, the Egyptian Thoth, and other names. His conclusion is that a Phoenician colony came to Europe, led by Tuiton, i.e. Chanaan and Mercury Trismegistus, or by his son Mannus, and deduces that our Mercury was the founder of Germany.
A little later, in 1700, the Jesuit Joachim Bouvet, a mathematician and musician, was corresponding with Leibniz about the I Ching. This Chinese document, wrote Bouvet, is in accordance with “the most admirable remains we have of the wisdom of the Ancients.” And this is how Bouvet links up with the idea of tradition:
[It comes] from the same source, and [represents] as precious a remains from the debris of the most ancient and excellent Philosophy, taught by the first Patriarchs of the world to their descendants, then corrupted and almost entirely obscured by the course of time…The diagram of Fo-Hi's system was as it were a universal symbol, invented by some extraordinary genius of Antiquity, like Mercury Trismegistus, to represent visually the most abstract principles of all the sciences.53
For Bouvet, Fo-Hi was not only a representative of the ancient theology: he actually was Zoroaster, Hermes, or most probably Enoch, and he lived before Moses. Knowing the universal system of this ancient and divine magic would allow us not only to possess the religion of the first patriarchs, but also the ancient and universal system of the sciences. Fo-Hi is the same as Enoch, who is the same as Hermes Trismegistus, and both are prototypes of Christ. Enoch/Fo-Hi/Hermes taught the mathematical symbols of the I Ching, but only to men endowed with superior intelligence.54
Not long after, Michael de Ramsay, in his Voyages de Cyrus (172 7), has his protagonist Cyrus encounter our hero in a scenario as inspired as Bouvet's, with many picturesque touches added. After having conversed with the pagan theologians of Antiquity, beginning in Persia with Zoroaster—who preaches the Newtonian doctrine of the ether—Cyrus travels to Thebes, where he undergoes instruction by a pontiff. The latter says: “To make known to you the origin of our religion, our symbols, and our mysteries, you must hear the history of Hermes Trismegistus who founded them. Siphoas, or the second Herme5 of this name, was of the race of our first sovereigns.” Pregnant with him, his mother was shipwrecked, gave birth on a desert island, and died. “A young goat answered his cries, and fed him with its milk until he grew out of infancy.” Thus he passed his early years browsing and eating dates. When the goat died of old age, Hermes had the revelation of life and death: it was then that the First Hermes, or Mercury, appeared to him, taught him, and gave him the name of Trismegistus. Later he concealed the mysteries of religion, the teachings that he had received from the First Mercury, in hieroglyphs and allegories.
The fable of the shipwreck and the goat, somewhat allied to that of “Hai Ibn Yoqdan, the Self-Taught Philosopher” whose history was popular at this period, 55 seems to have been intended to introduce the moral of the story: Cyrus understood, says Ramsay, that the mythologies of the Egyptians and the Persians were founded on the same principles, for “they were merely different names for expressing the same ideas.”56 One also notes the bucolic aspect of this description, inspired by the myth of Hermes-Mercury's birth. Before Ramsay, up to the Renaissance and even afterwards, it was customary to be more prudent in treating mythological subjects, probably because belief was stronger in the tales handed down by tradition.
But beyond its conciliatory and irenical aspect, this passage contains a symbolism worth reflecting on. One thinks of another goat: Amalthea, who nursed Zeus, one of whose horns became the Horn of Plenty. This animal, or the ibex, is the one which mounts highest and can get a foothold on the utmost peaks. Now, island and mountain are traditionally isomorphic, and it is on an island that the story is set. We know, too, that the Tarot relates Jupiter to Hermes, for if Arcanum IV is connected to the former, Arcanum V, the Pope, is reminiscent of the latter. The so-called “papal cross” shown on the Fifth Arcanum, with three horizontal bars intersected by a vertical one, is not without resonances of the symbolism of Fo-Hi, in which Bouvet and Leibniz were interested. Finally, the two axial columns of this Arcanum evoke not only the caduceus, but also, by their verticality, the statue-columns of certain tombs of Hermes as described in legends57
At the dawn of the Enlightenment, Bouvet and Ramsay were not the only ones to testify to the presence of Trismegistus, despite the intervention of Casaubon. It had been realized, meanwhile, that the dating of the Corpus Hermeticum was after all of only relative importance, and entirely secondary to the content of the work—a view eloquently defended by Ralph Cudworth, the Cambridge Neoplatonist.58 This rather mixed assemblage of inspired texts has always had its hermeneutists, and the eclipses it has undergone since the Renaissance have each been followed by a revival of interest. One of the latter was aided by the vogue of Egyptomania in the eighteenth century, but that alone does not serve to explain it, particularly since Hermes then assumed the role of Isis and Osiris in their functions of veiling and unveiling. Nowadays, exclusively scholarly works, such as those of Festugière, have not exercised the demythologizing function one might have feared, or hoped for (according to one's preferences): our contemporary esotericists read them with as much fervor as the commentaries that Anglo-Saxon Theosophists of the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century devoted to these same Hermetic texts.
Trismegistus's fortunes have not depended on historical records, any more than the philosophical value of the Corpus Hermeticum depended on its age. No one worries about his birth certificate, whether he is identical to Mercury, the brother of that god, an Egyptian priest contemporary with Moses, an Alexandrian philosopher, or what not. A tenacious hypostasis of the god Hermes, he holds an ambiguous place between mythology and historical myth, as well as a favored position in the list of representatives of the philosophia per ennis: the fact that authors often repeat and recopy the same list, with few variations, can be interpreted as new manifestations of Hermes. Thus when Ficino, Lazarelli, Champier, or Maier mention him in this traditional succession, it is always his presence that actualizes it, as it had done in the Alexandrian writings, simply under a different form. Generally he is present wherever the Western tradition speaks ex officio; and even when it does not even mention his name, we suspect that he is present implicitly: we have the impression that he might have been mentioned, for he is the signbearer of this tradition, its marker and beacon—to use the Celtic etymology that Court de Gébelin proposed for the Latin name of Hermes, in which he heard mere (“sign”) and cur (“man”).
Hermes Trismegistus obviously possesses several of the essential attributes of this god Hermes: mobility, mutability (eclecticism), discourse and interpretation (hermeneutics), the function of crossroads (tolerance, irenicism). Most important, it seems, is this role of the middle term, held by both figures: Mercury holds the equilibrium between Apollo and Dionysus, while Trismegistus is a catalyst for the union of reason and inspiration, the logos and the Sibyls, 59 history and myth. Omnipresent in certain circles such as the Florentine Academy, he does not even have to appear by name: one can sense his spirit in Botticelli's Primavera, at the crossroads of mythologizing academicism and the heights of esoteric inspiration, or in a Ficinian talisman. Like Hermes-Mercury, he runs between various currents, linking the separate, skimming over oppositions while stealing their substance, so as to get the Chariot moving, which is the Seventh Arcanum of the Tarot. He is medicurrius or medius currens, as Saint Augustine and Servius said, while suggesting their own interpretations as given above, hence “he who runs between two” or “in the middle”: a fluid place, occupied by an ungraspable personage. But he is not a kind of quicksand or devourer, nor a figure of pure fiction like the masonic Hiram, whose role is merely to function inside a narrative (but with whom he has sometimes been identified).60 As the place of theosophic, astrological, and alchemical convergences—as the binder of cultural epochs and currents—Trismegistus has been adorned with human and spiritual dimensions according to the requirements of a tradition which he readily symbolizes. Certainly Mercury is more than a messenger—one can see in him a “conductor”—but it is far more to Trismegistus, who is not merely the Medieval pharmacist attentive to the virtues of the peony, that is due the role of “regenerator.”61 The passage from the first to the second, from Olympus to history, corresponds to a fruitful form of reverse euhemerism.
The gods would remain invisible without our aptitude to receive them. Their luminous source passes through various channels, or mirrors, thanks to which they become intelligible to us. The Hermetic works are one of the mirrors of Hermes-Mercury, who signs them as “Hermes-Trismegistus,” the figure who holds the armillary sphere.
Notes to Chapter 3
1. Among the most fruitful recent approaches to the idea of literary myth, see Philippe Sellier, “Qu'est-ce qu'un mythe littéraire?” in Littérature, no.55 (Paris: Larousse, Oct. 1984), special number entitled La Farcissure: intertextualités au XVIe siècle.
2. Among a mass of works of varying inspiration and methodology, one should not omit the following: Charles Ploix, “Hermès,” in Mémoires de la Société linguistique, vol. II (Paris, 1873L p.22; Laurence Kahar, Hermès passe, ou les ambiguïtés de la communication (Paris: Maspero, 1978); Karl Kerenyi, Hermes Guide of Souls: The Mythologem of the Masculine Source of Life, translated from the German (Dallas: Spring Publications, 1976); Pierre Gordon, Le Mythe d'Hermès (Paris: Arma Artis, 1985); Rafael Lopez-Pedraza, Hermès et ses enfants dans la psychothérapie (Paris: Imago, 1977); William G. Doty, Masculinity 1n Man (New York: Crossroad, 1993).
3. André-Jean Festugière, La Révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste, vol. I: L ‘astrologie et les sciences occultes (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, ed. of 1981), pp.66-88. The reference to Artapan is taken from Eusebius, Praep. Evang. IX, 27, 6. Cf. several references in Johann Albrecht Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca (1705/1728), vol. I, chs. 7-10; also Socrates's statement in Plato, Phaedrus 274c-d.
4. Festugière, op. cit., p. 78.
5. The most recent presentation, with Greek and French in facing columns, is the best: Corpus Hermeticum, text established by A. D. Nock and A.-J. Festugière (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 4 vols., 1954-1960). The Asclepius is contained in vol. IV. Cf. also Festugière's useful summary of the question in his Hermétisme et gnose païenne (Paris: Aubier, 1967), pp.28ff. An excellent recent work is Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind (Cambridge University Press, 1986). The Asclepius is the Latin adaptation of the Perfect Discourse, which is known thanks to short Greek fragments and to one or two large extracts from a very literal Coptic translation (cf. Jean-Pierre Mahé, Hermès en Haute-Egypte, val. II: Le fragment du “Discours Parfait” et les définitions hermétiques arméniennes, Québec: Presses Universitaires de Laval, 1982). On the new Hermetic writings, see Jean-Pierre Mahé, “La voie d'immortalité…”, pp:347-375 in Vigiliae Christianae 45 (1991), which contains a full bibliography. Mahé has written a most informative article on the Hermetica: “La Création dans les Hermetica,” pp.3-53, in Recherches Augustiniennes (21), 1986. See also, besides val. II of Hermès en Haute-Egypte (cited above), val. 1: Les textes hermétiques de Nag Hammadi et leurs parallèles grecs et latins, Québec: Presses Universitaires de Laval, 1978.
6. Festugière, Hermétisme, p.30; La Révélation, val. I, p.81.
7. In Coptic treatise “The Eighth Reveals the Ninth” (Codex Nag Hammadi, 6), p.58, lines 4-6, Hermes says: “I am the Intellect and I see another Intellect who sets the soul in motion”: here, Hermes identifies himself with the divine Intellect who sets in motion the Soul of the World as well as all the individual souls; cf. also Jean-Pierre Mahé, Hermès en Haute-Egypte, val. I [see n. 5], p.77.
8. Michael Maier, Symbola aureae mensae duodecim nationum (Frankfurt, 1617), pp. 10f.; facsimile with introduction by Karl R.-H. Frick (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1972). But there are abundant examples of the interpretation as “philosopher, priest, and king.” Cf. also Francoise Bonardel, L ‘Hermétisme (Paris: P.U.F., 1985, collection “Que sais-je?”), p.14. On the number three, cf. Mirko Sladek, “Mercurius triplex, Mercurius termaximus et les ‘trois Hermès’” in Présence d'Hermès Trismégiste (Paris: Albin Michel, 1988), pp.88-99.
9. Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, 7 vols. (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1923-1958), val. II, pp. 219, 253.
10. Festugière, La Révélation, val. I, p.75; Corpus Hermeticum, ed. cit. [see n.5], val. Ill, pp.clxiii, clix.
11. Corpus Hermeticum, val. II, p.357. St. Augustine, City of God, bk. xviii, chs. 8 [citation given here], 39; bk. vii, ch. l4 (medius currens); bk. viii, ch. 26 (reference to Asclepius), trans. John Healey (1610). Cf. also Bonardel, L'Hermétisme [see n.8], p.57.
12. Edition consulted: Jo. Jacob Manget, Bibliotheca chemica curiosa (Geneva, 1702), vol. I, p.509; facsimile ed., Sala Bolognese: A. Forni, 1976. The title of this alchemical text is Liber de compositione Alchemiae, quem edidit Morienus (pp.509-519).
13. Summa Philosophia Roberto Grosseteste ascripta, ed. L. B. Baur, in Beiträgezur Geschichte des Mittelalters, ed. Bäumker, vol. IX (1912), pp.275-643. Cf. pp.275ff.
14. British Library, Ms.Arundel377, Philosophia Magistri Daniels de Morlai, fols.892,892v. Cited in Thorndike [seen.9], vol. II, p.223.
15. Hermes Triplex de VI rerum principiis multisque aliis naturalibus, partitusque quinque; cum prologo de tribus Mercuriis. Also titled: Hermetis Trismegisti opuscula quaedam: primum de VI rerum principiis. Cited in Thorndike [see n.9], vol. II, p.223.
16. Cited after the French ed. of 1549 (Mercure Trismégiste Hermès, Paris, trans. Gabriel du Préau); original ed., 1507. On Ficino's text, cf. Michael Allen, “Marsile Ficin, Hermès et le Corpus Hermeticum,” in Présence [see n.8], pp.ll0-119.
17. Symbola aureae [see n.8].
18. Symbola aureae, pp.9ff. I have not found this passage in the editions of Palaephastus’ book consulted in the Bibliothéque Nationale.
19. F. J. W. Schröder, Bibliothek für die höhere Naturwissenschaft und Chemie (Marburg & Leipzig, 1775-1776), vol. I, p.l45; Nicholas Lenglet-Dufresnoy, Histoire de la philosophie hermétique (Paris, 1742), vol. I, p.10; M. de Ramsay: see n.56.
20. Dom Antoine Joseph Pernéty, Les Fables égyptiennes et grecques dévoilées et réduites au même principe (Paris, 1786), vol. I, pp.l65, 174, 177 (1st ed., 1758).
21. Stomata VI.4, 35ff. Manetho, Selencus, Iamblichus: cf. Les Mystères d'Egypte (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1966), p. l95.
22. Festugière, La Révélation [see n.3], p. l25.
23. Cited in n.l5. Cf. Thorndike [see n.9], val. II, p.223.
24. Cf., for example, the title page and p.5 of Symbola [see n.8]; also J. Boissard, De divinatione et magicis praestigiis (Oppenheim, n.d. [beginning of 17th cent.]), p. l40. And Chapter 5 in this book.
25. Cf. numerous references in Thorndike [see n.9], vol. II, pp.220, 228,247,254,258. Leo Allatius wrote on the Art of Memory—to be added to the dossier on the subject by Frances A. Yates:
26. See M. Weynants-Ronday, Les Statues vivantes: Introduction à 1’ étude des statues égyptiennes (Brussels: Fondation égyptologique, 1926); George Maspéro, “Le double et les statues prophétiques,” in Etudes de mythologie et d'archéologie égyptiennes, vol. I of Bibliothéque ègyptienne (Paris, 1893), especially pp.82ff.
27. Symbola aureae [see n.8], p.l9.
28. Sunt etiam magi qui in hac sciencia et opere seintromiserunt Caldei; hi namque in hac perfectiores habentur sciencia. Ipsi vero asserunt quod Hermes primitus quandam domum ymaginum construxit, ex quibus quantitatem Nili contra Monter Lune agnoscebat; hie au ter domum fecit Solis. Et taliter ab hominibus se abscondebat quod nemo secum existens valebat eum videre. Iste vera fuit qui orientalem Egipti edificavit civitatem cuius longitudo duodecim miliariorum consistebat, in qua quidem construxit castrum quod in quatuor eius partibus quatuor habebat portas. In porta vera orientis formam aquile posuit, in porta vera occidentis formam tauri, in meridionali vera formam leonis, et in septentrionali canis formam construxit. In eas quidem spirituales spiritus fecit intrare qui voces proiciendo loquebantur; nee aliquis ipsius port as valebat intrare nisi eorum mandata. Ibique quasdam arb ores plantavit, in quarum media magna consistebat arbor que generacionem plantavit, in quarum media magna consistebat arbor que generacionem fructuum omnium apportabat. In summitate vero ipsius castri quandam turrim edificari fecit, que triginta cubitorum longitudinem attingebat, in cuius summitate pomum ordinavit rotundum, cuius color qualibet die usque ad septem dies mutabatur. In fine vero septem dierum priorem quem habuerat recipiebat colorem. Illa autem civitas quotidie ipsius mali cooperiebatur colore, et sic civitas predicta qualibet die refulgebat colore. In turris quid em circuitu abundans erat aqua, in qua quidem plurima genera piscium permanebant. In circuitu vero civitatis ymagines diversas et quarumlibet manerierum ordinavit, quarum virtute virtuosi efficiebantur habitantes ibidem et a turpitudine malisque languoribus nitidi. Predicta vero civitas Adocentyn vocabatur.
Arabic text published by H. Ritter: “Picatrix, ein arabisches Handbuch hellenistischer Magie,” in Studien der Bibliothek Marburg, vol. XII (1933). German translation of this Arabic text by H. Ritter & M. Flessner, in Studies of the Warburg Institute, vol. 27 (University of London, 1962). Latin ed. by David Pingree (London: Warburg Institute, 1986): passage cited, pp.188f. I cite the English translation by Frances A. Yates in her Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964), p.54. Achmounein, or Hermopolis: the first name signifies “eight,” the number of divinities worshipped in this city. Hermes was sometimes known there as “Lord of the City of the Eight.” Cf. Mirko Sladek, Fragmente der hermetischen Philosophie in der Naturphilosophie der Neuzeit (Bern: Peter Lang, 1984), p.42.
29. Text in Marcellin Berthelot, La Chimie au Moyen Age (Paris: Steinheil, 1893).
30. Ibid., p.27.
31. Julius Ruska, Tabula Smaragdina: Bin Beitragzur Geschichte der hermetischen Literatur (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1926), pp.68-79 (original text and Arabic translation of The Treasure of Alexander).
32. Ruska, p.79.
33. Ruska, pp.120ff.
34. Ruska, the entire chapter, which is most illuminating on this question.
35. Ruska, pp.ll4f. See also Aurei Velleris Oder Der Guldin Schatz-und Kunst-Kammer, Tractatus III (Rorschach, 1598). Concerning the Emerald Tablet, one learns that Hermes lived before the Deluge and went to the Valley of Hebron, where he found marble columns on which the Seven Liberal arts were carved. The scenarioin which Hermes is discovered in a tomb or secret chamber is found again in the Arabic anonymous studied by Ruska in “Studien zu Muhammad Ibn Umail,” in Isis 22, no. 37, val. XXIV/1 (Dec. 1935), pp.310-342. This Arabic text was the subject of Latin adaptations and of a fine illustration; cf. plates II, VII, and VIII in the present book, and Barbara Obrist, Les Débuts de l'imagerie alchimique (XIVe-XVe siècles) (Paris: Lé Sycamore, 1982).
36. Ruska [see n.31], pp.178f.
37. Ruska, pp.138f. This citation is based [by J. Godwin] on Ruska's German translation from the Arabic.
38. Symbola [see n.8], p.20; text attributed to St. Thomas: De Ente et Essentia.
39. Symbola, pp.24f. Jerome Torella, Opus praeclarum deimaginibus astrologicis (Valencia, 1496), fol. e.v., recto; cited in Thorndike [see n.9], Vol. IV, p.580.
40. Thorndike, Vol. I, p.219. Text published by Frederick Furnival (London 1886; edition seen, 1889). See also A urei Velleris [see n.35].
41. Supplementum Aurei Velleris, pp.1 lf., in Aureum Vellus oder Güldenes Vliess (Frankfurt, 1733).
42. Turba Philosophorum, das ist: Gesammelte Sprüche der Weisen zur Erläuterung der hermetischen Schmaragd-Tafel (n.p., 1763); written in 1759.
43. Pernéty [see n.20], pp.172f.
44. Opus Maius, ed. J. H. Bridges (London, 1897), val. I, pp.20, 45f., 65.
45. Guilielmus Adolphus Scribonius, Rerum naturalium doctrina methodica (2nd ed., 1583); cf. Scribonius's own letter at the head of the work, dated 1583. Cited in Thorndike [see n.9], val. VI, p.353.
46. Agostino Steuco, De perenni philosophia (Lyon, 1540). Cf. Charles B. Schmitt, “Perennial Philosophy: from Agostino Steuco to Leibniz,” in Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. XXVII (Jan-March 1966), pp.505-532.
47. Cf. especially D. P. Walker, The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (London: Duckworth, 1972), p.20.
48. Brian P. Copenhaver, Symphorien Champier and the Reception of the Occultist Tradition in Renaissance France (The Hague: Mouton, 1978), pp.l l9f. Almost the same list is found in Lazarelli [see n. l6], p.8.
49. Geoffroy Tory, Champ Fleury, ou l'Art et Science de la Proportion des Lettres Attiques et vulgairement lettres Romaines proportionnees selon le Corps et Visage humain (Paris, 1526); facsimile, ed. G. Cohen, 1931. See also supra, Chapter 1, p.35.
50. Gilbert Durand, “Permanence et dérivations du mythe de Mercure,” in Actes del Colloqui Internacional {1985) sobre els valors heuristica de la Figura d'Hermes, ed. Alain Verjat in the series “Mythos,” of the Grup de Recerca sabre l'Imaginari (Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona: Facultat de Filologia, 1986), pp.5-27. Cf. the end of Chapter 1 in the present book.
51. Cf. Copenhaver [see n.48], index of names.
52. W. Chr. Kriegsmann, Conjectaneorum de Germanicae gentis origine, ac Conditore, Hermete Trismegisto, qui S. Moysi est Chanaan, Tacita Tuito, Mercuriusque Gentilibus. Liber unus. Isque in Taciti de Moribus Germanorum Opusculum, diversis locis Commentarius posthumus (Tübingen, 1684). This author is the same as that of the treatise on the Emerald Tablet published by Manget [see n.l2].
53. Quoted by Walker [see n.47], p.22l.
54. Ibid., pp.224, 226.
55. See Abu Bakr ibn al-Tufail, Philosophus autodidactus, sive epistola Abi Jaafar Ebn Tophail de Hai Ebn Yokdhan, in qua ostenditur quomodo ex inferiorum contemplatione ad superiorum notitiam ratio humana ascendere possit, trans. E. Pococke (Oxford, 1671); English trans., London, 1674.
56. Voyages of Cyrus, Edition of 1730, pp.l20ff., 129ff.
57. I am grateful to Paul-Georges Sansonetti for drawing my attention tb this symbolic similarity.
58. Cf. the excellent passage on Cudworth in Ernest Lee Tuveson, The Avatars of Thrice Great Hermes: An Approach to Romanticism (London & Toronto: Associated Univ. Presses, 1982), pp.67-75.
59. On this aspect of Trismegistus, see Bonardel's fine study [see n.8].
60. As an example of this identification, see the masonic ritual of the “Magi of Memphis,” in “Zwei Hochgrad-Rituale des 18. Jahrhunderts,” translated by Otto Schaaf, published in Das Freimaurer-Museum. Archiv für freimaurerische Ritualkunde und Geschichtsforschung, t.IV (Zeulenroda/Leipzig: B. Sporn, 1928), pp.207-245.
61. A comparison borrowed from F. Bonardel, see supra, n. 8, p.l8.