What it is
Hermetic literature is the body of writing attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, "Hermes the thrice-greatest", a legendary sage in whom the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth were combined. No such person wrote these books. They were composed by unknown authors, mostly in Greek and mostly in Roman Egypt, and they were added to in Arabic and Latin for another thousand years.
Scholars divide the Hermetica into two families. The philosophical Hermetica are dialogues and sermons about God, the cosmos, the mind, and the rebirth of the soul. The technical Hermetica deal with astrology, alchemy, medicine, and magic. The two were once thought to have little to do with each other. More recent scholarship reads them as parts of a single way of life, and takes their Egyptian background more seriously than was once usual.
Where to begin
Read the Poimandres, the first treatise of the Corpus Hermeticum. Then read the Emerald Tablet, which will take two minutes, and then the Asclepius. Together they come to fewer than fifty pages, and they contain most of what later ages meant by "Hermetic".
The philosophical Hermetica
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Corpus Hermeticum Greek. Composed about 100 to 300 CE. D 1
Seventeen short treatises, numbered I to XVIII with no XV in modern editions. Treatise I, the Poimandres, is a vision of creation and salvation. Treatise XIII describes spiritual rebirth. Others are dialogues between Hermes and his pupils Tat, Asclepius, and Ammon. The collection was preserved by Byzantine copyists and reached Florence about 1460.
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Asclepius Latin translation, probably of the fourth century, of a lost Greek work called the Perfect Discourse. D 1
The only philosophical Hermetic text known in western Europe throughout the Middle Ages. It contains the lament for Egypt, with its prophecy of the departure and return of the gods, and the passages on ensouled statues that troubled and fascinated later Christian readers. A Coptic version of part of it was found at Nag Hammadi.
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The Stobaean excerpts Greek. Preserved in an anthology compiled in the fifth century. D 1
Some forty Hermetic extracts that survive nowhere else, among them the Kore Kosmou, in which Isis teaches Horus about the creation of souls and their descent into bodies.
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The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth Coptic. Nag Hammadi Codex VI, copied in the fourth century. D 1
A dialogue of initiation in which Hermes leads a pupil in prayer to the eighth and ninth spheres. Found in 1945 and unknown to all earlier readers, it shows Hermetism as something practiced, with hymns, a ritual embrace, and instructions to inscribe the teaching for a temple.
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The Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius Armenian translation, probably of the sixth century, of a lost Greek original. D 1
A collection of brief sayings that may preserve some of the oldest Hermetic teaching in its simplest form.
The technical Hermetica
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The Emerald Tablet (Tabula Smaragdina) Arabic, earliest known versions of the eighth or ninth century. Latin from the twelfth century. D 1
A dozen cryptic sentences on the unity of what is above and what is below and the working of "the one thing". It first appears at the end of an Arabic Book of the Secret of Creation attributed to Balinus, the Arabic name of Apollonius of Tyana. No Greek original is known. Alchemists treated it as the charter of their art, and Isaac Newton made his own English translation.
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The astrological Hermetica Greek and Latin, from Hellenistic sources. L 3
Hermes was credited with founding astrology, and a scattered literature under his name deals with the decans, the lots, and astrological medicine. The Latin Liber Hermetis preserves early material on the thirty-six decans.
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The Kyranides Greek. Compiled in late antiquity. L 6
A handbook of the healing and magical properties of stones, plants, birds, and fish, arranged by the letters of the Greek alphabet and attributed in part to Hermes.
Arabic and medieval Latin Hermetica
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Picatrix (Ghayat al-Hakim) Arabic. Compiled in Muslim Spain in the tenth or eleventh century. Castilian and Latin translations from 1256. D 1
The most comprehensive medieval handbook of astral magic: how the powers of the stars may be drawn into talismans. Hermes appears throughout as an authority, and the fourth book tells the story of his city, Adocentyn. See the Journal essay Reading the Picatrix.
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The Book of the Twenty-Four Philosophers Latin. Twelfth century. Attributed to Hermes. D 1
Twenty-four definitions of God. The second, that God is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere, echoed through medieval and Renaissance thought.
The Renaissance revival
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Pimander Marsilio Ficino's Latin translation of Corpus Hermeticum I to XIV. Made 1463, printed 1471. D 1
Ficino set aside his translation of Plato to put Hermes into Latin first, at the wish of his patron Cosimo de' Medici. His preface presents Hermes as the first in a line of ancient theologians leading through Orpheus and Pythagoras to Plato. The book went through many editions and fixed the image of Hermes for a century and a half.
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Crater Hermetis Lodovico Lazzarelli. Latin. Printed 1505. D 1
A Christian Hermetic dialogue by the poet who also translated the treatises missing from Ficino's manuscript.
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The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast Giordano Bruno. Italian. 1584. D 1
One of the Italian dialogues Bruno wrote in London. It quotes the lament of the Asclepius at length and turns it into a program of religious reform. Bruno was burned at Rome in 1600.
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Exercitationes Isaac Casaubon. Latin. 1614. D 1
In the course of a long work of church history, Casaubon showed from their Greek style and vocabulary that the Hermetic treatises were written in the early Christian era and not in the days of Moses. The demonstration ended the standing of Hermes as an ancient prophet, though not his readership.
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The Divine Pymander John Everard. English. 1650. D 1
The first English translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, made from Ficino's Latin. Long superseded and often reprinted.
Modern Hermetic writing
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Thrice-Greatest Hermes G. R. S. Mead. Three volumes. 1906. D 1
An English translation of all the Hermetic texts then known, with long commentaries. Mead was a Theosophist and a careful scholar by the standards of his day. The style is dated and the work is honest.
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The Kybalion By "Three Initiates". 1908. D 5
Seven "Hermetic principles" presented as ancient teaching. The book is a product of the American New Thought movement and is generally attributed to William Walker Atkinson. Its principles are not found in the ancient Hermetica. It belongs to the history of twentieth-century esotericism and should be read as such.
Landmark studies
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Corpus Hermeticum Edited by A. D. Nock, translated into French by A.-J. Festugiere. Four volumes. 1945 to 1954. D 1
The critical edition of the Greek and Latin texts, and the basis of the modern translations.
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La Revelation d'Hermes Trismegiste A.-J. Festugiere. Four volumes. 1944 to 1954. D 1
The classic study, setting the Hermetica within the religious philosophy of the Roman Empire. Festugiere judged them Greek through and through, a verdict that later scholars have revised.
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Hermetica Walter Scott. Four volumes. 1924 to 1936. D 1
Text, English translation, and commentary. Scott rewrote the Greek so freely that his text cannot be relied on, but his notes and the collection of ancient testimonies in the fourth volume are still used.
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Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition Frances A. Yates. 1964. T 3
The study that made Renaissance Hermetism a subject of mainstream history. See Reference and Bibliography.
Things to watch for
- Hermetism and Hermeticism. Many scholars keep "Hermetism" for the ancient texts and their immediate world, and "Hermeticism" for the broader currents of alchemy, magic, and philosophy that claimed Hermes from the Renaissance onward.
- The word on the cover. Modern books use "Hermetic" for almost any esoteric teaching. Check whether a book actually engages the texts listed here.
- "As above, so below." The phrase is a compression of the second sentence of the Emerald Tablet, whose wording differs from version to version.
- Egypt. The treatises are not translations of Egyptian temple scriptures, but they are not purely Greek either. Read claims at both extremes with caution.
On the shelves
The philosophical Hermetica, the Emerald Tablet, and the Picatrix are shelved at the North Gate in class D 1. The technical works stand with their subjects at the South Gate, astrology in L 3 and natural magic in L 6, and are cross-referenced from D 1. Related guides: Alchemy, Astrology, and Gnostic and Neoplatonic Texts. On the survival of the texts, see Monastic Libraries and the Survival of Hermetic Texts.