Hermetic School of Ancient Greek Philosophy Texts
The name Hermes Trismegistus joins the Greek god Hermes to the Egyptian god Thoth, and the writings that travel under it are the work of many anonymous hands rather than of a single founder. Composed in Greek, most likely in Roman Egypt between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE, the Hermetic texts form a corpus of philosophical and theological treatises produced during a period of intense religious blending in the Roman Empire.
Their teaching mixes ideas drawn from Platonism, Stoicism, and Egyptian religious thought, and it turns on a sharp division between the divine realm and the material world. A supreme and ineffable God stands as the source of all things, and from this God emanates a divine Mind (Νοῦς) that structures the cosmos.
Human beings are double creatures in this account: a mortal body joined to a divine ψυχή that is a fragment of the divine realm. The aim of the teaching is γνῶσις — not ordinary knowledge but a direct, revelatory understanding of God and the divine order. Attaining it purifies the ψυχή and frees it from the cycle of material existence.
The historical figures attached to the tradition are readers rather than authors. The Neoplatonic philosopher Iamblichus drew on Hermetic ideas; the Christian writer Lactantius cited Hermes as a pagan who had anticipated Christian truths; Augustine later argued against the tradition. Marginalised in the Christian West, the writings survived in Byzantine copies and returned to prominence in the Renaissance, when Marsilio Ficino translated a collection known as the <cite>Hermetic Corpus</cite> into Latin in 1463. The texts were then mistakenly taken to preserve ancient Egyptian wisdom older than Plato, an error that lent them great authority and gave them lasting influence on Western esoteric thought, alchemy, and early modern science.
The corpus itself comprises seventeen Greek treatises gathered as the <cite>Hermetic Corpus</cite>, the Latin <cite>Asclepius</cite>, and the <cite>Kore Kosmou</cite>; further fragments survive in the anthology of Stobaeus and in Coptic translations found at Nag Hammadi.