If you want a video version of some of the information in this, check out Esoterica’s video linked below. They provide an incredible collection of videos that look at the history of magic with real respect to sources, so their videos are incredibly useful to real magicians. Watching the video below might make it easier for you to remember the content of these articles.
What is the Corpus Hermeticum?
It’s a book. Well, actually it is many books. But today it is one book. An ancient one. Probably not as ancient as it claims, but older than most books on the Occult, spirituality and mysticism. The version we have today is a translation from the 15th century Latin which itself was a translation of something written in Greek in Egypt with references to Egyptian gods, but showing clear signs of influence from Neoplatonism and gnostic philosophy.
We call it the Corpus Hermeticum which means “body of hermetic stuff”. Until the 15th century, it was just Hermetica (or hermetic stuff). That is until someone decided to collect it together into one piece, one body, one corpse, one “corpus”. A couple of translators, Marsilio Ficino and Lodovico Lazzarelli, translated the collection of 17 treatises in one work. Suddenly they were available in Latin not Greek and that made them dangerously more accessible to the public at large.
I don’t ask you to respect it just because it is old. Old science and medicine documents got a lot wrong and we know better today. Magic is much the same. Being old doesn’t mean it is right. It doesn’t make it any more authoritative, but I ask you to respect this work because it has definitely stood the test of time. The pieces from which it is composed were only read by a few select individuals, but each treated it with great respect and it created the hidden underground philosophy of Hermetics. A philosophy that existed through Christianity despite being very pagan. A lot of witches talk about a pagan witchcraft practice existing through Christian persecution, for which there is very little evidence to support it. Hermetics, on the other hand, was a pagan spiritual philosophy that actually has a recorded history of practitioners popping up throughout the last 2000 years hidden under Christian rule each with recorded workings, speculations and quotations from these pagan texts. And there was barely a gap of 200 years at even the sparsest parts. Parts of the Hermetic treatises were used by Hermeticists and Alchemists, including a member of Queen Elizabeth I’s court and Isaac Newton.
People do not like the Corpus Hermeticum because it does not lure them in with claims of being all-natural, feminist, edgy, organic and fair-trade. It doesn’t pat them on the back because they drank a glass of “blessed” reiki water and created a mood-board of the things corporate marketing told them they can’t live without. In fact, it does very little to advertise itself to a modern audience, yet it has been there hidden behind the modern Occult current for centuries. Resurfacing time and time again. Why then would a text be so constantly quoted and re-used if it did not pat the reader on the back? Answer: because it contained true magic.
The Hermetica offers difficult magic. Not pat-yourself-on-the-back magic. Not easy peasy magic. There’s no real I-shoved-a-crystal-up-my-yoni-and-then-watched-the-good-witch magic. This is tough magic. Magic that is hard to read. Magic that makes you question your life and your place in the world. Magic that speculates about how the world works and what we can learn from it.
It didn’t need to make itself known, it didn’t advertise on Facebook with snappy lines like “become a god”. It didn’t present itself as anything other than what it is. Yet it continued to appear time and time again, throughout history. Without a marketing team, without someone financially benefitting. It continued.
Whenever Hermetica or the Corpus Hermeticum shows up there is a blossoming of art, inspiration and spiritual culture. It existed in Arabic culture during the rise of Islam and Sufi philosophy. It was seen side by side the development of alchemy and chemistry. When it was translated just happened to coincide with the transition from the middle ages to the renaissance with sudden advances in science, changes in politics and massive changes in the arts. It has been a backbone to modern Rosicrucianism groups and naturally a central text in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which gave birth to English translations of Buddhist texts, Wicca and Neopaganism (through the much-maligned Crowley) and the much-beloved, Sherlock Holmes. Also hailing from this secret club, the famous playwright Bernard Shaw, the poetry of Yeats, Fu Manchu, Dracula-author Bram Stoker, famous actresses, artists, 95% of the current tarot decks and modern astrology. This sudden fruition of creativity, art and spiritual growth every time this text shows up indicates that it is powerful or at least very very lucky. Imagine what would happen if this philosophy arose again.
If a text resurfaces time and time again, then there must be something relevant about it. And if it is relevant to someone in first-century Pagan Egypt, 9th century Shia Islamic Kufa, a 15th-century Catholic priest in Rome and 19th-20th century Occultists, then there must be something to it that transcends religion and scientific understanding. True magic should do this.
The Corpus Hermeticum was written as a number of separate texts around 300BCE to 100CE these went on to inspire many Arabic texts and a lot of speculative texts. It was however the early Egyptian texts written in Greek that went on to become the Corpus. According to Brian Copenhaver’s Hermetica, it was first compiled by Byzantine philosophers into a single body and quite famously it was translated into Latin by Marsilio Ficino and Lodovico Lazzarelli into Latin. At this time they attempted to translate the entire body of Hermetic texts into Latin calling it the Corpus Hermeticum (the Hermetic Body). However, there are many texts which were not included in that translation so philosophers prefer the collective term Hermetica to refer to them all. It moved over to Arab culture which flourished into the Ottomon empire, but began to be banned around that time.
What sort of information does it contain?
The texts include dialogues about the nature of God and gods, the process of creation, the layout of the heavens (7 circles) and more. I hope to explore some of the contents here.
The aim of the Hermeticist is to ascend through the planetary spheres through ethical purity and mental contemplation, to achieve a state of unity with God while alive.
Some of the contents contain techniques for statue animation and religious meal taking. So it is meant to be a religious practice as well as a collection of works of philosophy.
Often tagged onto the end is a prophecy which suggests that the Hermetic wisdom will be hidden. I’ve written shortly about this here. This is technically from a similar quite clearly Hermetic text called Asclepius.
As I skim through and remind myself of the contents and remove the assumptions I made when I have been through them before I will try to compile a collection of information about the texts here and their possible meanings.
Monotheistic
While the text makes references to different gods sometimes referred to as governors of fate, it often appears to be monotheistic or at least it makes reference to a One god, frequently referred to as “the all” (or “to pan” in Greek) or “mind”. Some modern translations render this as Atum, but to be honest I struggle to find that name in the original text. People who have studied the Egyptian language will note a similarity between the name of this god and the formation of the reflexive in Egyptian “tam” / “tem” / “tum”. This the equivalent of when we say “-self” in English. as in “myself”, “yourself”, “himself”, “herself”, “themself”, “themselves”, etc. This god’s very name signifies he makes himself or does actions upon himself or even he completed himself. In the text however this name doesn’t seem to actually appear instead he is called Poemandres.
When references are made to this deity in the text, however, he symbolises “a true knowledge”, “a supreme mind” and “supreme absolute reality”. For me, he is like a symbol for a shared objective reality that exists in the imagination of a great mind; a universe that we are looking at through little slits and trying to get a shared view.
There are constantly postulations that this god is good. A claim is made here which has always caused issues with theologians throughout the history of Christianity. A claim which has always given rise to questions like “If there is an omnipotent deity, who is all good, why does he allow evil to exist?”
Creation
The process of creation is depicted in the first book of the Corpus Hermeticum which describes the vision of Hermes Trismegistus who see Poemandres.
Poemandres attempts to show him mankind’s divine nature, by showing the process of creation.
First, there is divine light. Second, there is earth and water with fire within it moving a chaotic way like a serpent. Thirdly, a word comes from the mind of Poemandres and brings order symbolised by putting the elements in their places. Fire at the top, air also light so just beneath fire and earth and water mixed below. Next, the elements each give forth animals however the animals are dumb.
The universe gets 7 governors of fate (probably something like the 7 visible wondering bodies in the sky the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, but it doesn’t specifically say this). Mankind is initially made by Poemandres and his mind is one with Poemandres. His ability to watch the world is considered to be one with Poemandres’ son the word that brought order to the chaos. The governors of fate give their powers to man and man has them within him.
Man is at this point an immortal divine being, but he becomes the lover of lady nature. She makes him into an animal housing his divine mind. Suddenly he has a dual nature being animal he is ignorant of his divine nature, but he still is that divine nature.
Initially, everything is made androgynous but it gets split into male and female. This reminds me to “The Origin of love” a song from Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
Return to divinity
In the same vision Poemandres makes the road to godhead clear. He says mankind must stop making himself sick with alcohol. Learn to have reason. It talks about not sleeping, but I think that is the mind being asleep to reason, doing everything on autopilot. They must also have awareness of god.
They should act morally and without evil to be suitable for Poemandres’ help. They should “release the mortal body” (which means surrendering it for change). Move the awareness over to the source of the mind. Then they must overcome the 7 governors who each have a moral lesson associated with passing them such as increase and decrease, evil plotting, longing, arrogance, excess, recklessness, not being overcome by wealth and deceit.
The human enters the “ogdoad”‘s world. They then sing a hymn rise up to god and enter into god.