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The Corpus Hermeticum (Deluxe Library Edition)
Published by: Engage Books
The Corpus Hermeticum is a collection of Egyptian-Greek wisdom texts from the 2nd century or earlier. The texts form the basis of Hermeticism, which is a religious, philosophical, and esoteric tradition that held great importance during both the Renaissance and the Reformation periods. The work discusses the divine, the cosmos, the mind, alchemy, astrology, and nature.
The Corpus Hermeticum dwells upon the oneness and goodness of God, urges purification of the soul, and discusses a spiritual rebirth through the enlightenment of the mind. Much of the importance of Hermeticism arises from its connection with the development of science between 1300 to 1600 AD. The prominence that it gave to the idea of influencing or controlling nature led many scientists to look to magic and its allied arts. Sir Isaac Newton placed great faith in the concept of an unadulterated, pure, ancient doctrine, which he studied vigorously to aid his understanding of the physical world.
Hermes Trismegistus is the purported author of The Corpus Hermeticum, a series of sacred texts that are the basis of Hermeticism. Hermes Trismegistus may be associated with the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. Greeks in the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt recognized the equivalence of Hermes and Thoth through the interpretatio graeca. Consequently, the two gods were worshiped as one, in what had been the Temple of Thoth in Khemenu, which was known in the Hellenistic period as Hermopolis. Hermes, the Greek god of interpretive communication, was combined with Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom. The Egyptian priest and polymath Imhotep had been deified long after his death and therefore assimilated to Thoth in the classical and Hellenistic periods. The renowned scribe Amenhotep and a wise man named Teôs were coequal deities of wisdom, science, and medicine; and, thus, they were placed alongside Imhotep in shrines dedicated to Thoth-Hermes during the Ptolemaic Kingdom. Some authorities regard Hermes Trismegistus as a contemporary of Abraham, and claim that Abraham acquired a portion of his mystical knowledge from Hermes himself. Christian writers considered Hermes to be a wise pagan prophet who foresaw the coming of Christianity. They believed in the existence of a single theology that threads through all religions. It was given by God to man in antiquity and passed through a series of prophets, which included Zoroaster and Plato. In order to demonstrate the verity of this thesis, Christians appropriated the Hermetic teachings for their own purposes. By this account, Hermes Trismegistus was either a contemporary of Moses, or the third in a line of men named Hermes.
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