The Hermetics Texts - Reading and Commentary

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The Corpus Hermeticum is a collection of ancient Greco-Egyptian texts collected from around the time of Christ and the few centuries following, when Greco-Egyptian culture was at its apogee; they are a series of dialogues between different Egyptian sages and students, discussing the nature of the cosmos, the relationship between man and the Gods, the reason for sin, suffering and death, the immortality of the soul, the nature of love and sexuality and much else besides. These texts were forgotten about except by various esoteric groups after the official Christianization of the Roman Empire swept away paganism and forced it underground. They survived also in Arabic translation and were well known to Islamic esotericists, who identified Hermes with Idris and Enoch, saying that the ancient Egyptian sage Hermes, Thoth was the same as the Biblical figure Enoch. Hermeticism has always been an important undercurrent in European thought, especially after these texts were translated into Latin by Marsilio Ficino in Florence at the Medici Academy. They were seminal texts read throughout Renaissance Europe and influenced the entire climate of renaissance thought, everywhere from Italy to Scotland, with Dr John Dee, Guillaume, Postel, Cardinal Egidio, Pico della Mirandola and many others extolling their importance. They certainly carry the imprint of ancient Egyptian wisdom from the remotest antiquity, combined with Hellenic Neo-Platonism and are of great interest to historians of esoteric ideas, including astrology, alchemy, polytheism, and transcendental monotheism. Christianity, Judaism and Islam bear the imprint of many Egyptian or Hermetic influences and thus to understand and reconcile the rival monotheisms fighting for hegemony today, a close study of these texts is essential.