The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus: Hermeticism from Ancient to Modern Times Review

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(More customer reviews)While the traditional discussion of the Corpus Hermeticum begins with Marsilio Ficino's 1471 translation for Cosimo de' Medici, the discussion soon stalls with the centuries' old debate of the text and if the ideas it expresses are truly Egyptian wisdom or are merely a Hellenistic patch-work infused with Egyptian atmosphere.
In The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus: Hermeticism from Ancient to Modern Times, Florian Ebeling takes a fresh approach by focusing on the character/author Hermes Trismegistus within countless literary sources attributed to him from Coptic, European and Arabic sources. Florian, beginning in Antiquity, isolates two distinct traditions and then follows them through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the enlightenment up to the twentieth Century, arguing that Hermes Trismegistus did not spontaneously appear in Italy during the Renaissance but was consistently popular, often referenced in both Europe and in the Middle East since his first appearance over 2000 years ago. Ebeling continues by outlining how Hermes as well as hermetic wisdom was eventually discredited then more recently vindicated by historic, religious and scientific opinion.
This new approach benefits from recent scriptural finds from Nag Hammadi, decipherment of Egyptian Hieroglyphics, and a greater, more critical understanding of the Hellenistic cultural milieu. By building on recent scholarly works like The Eternal Hermes by Antoine Faivre, The Egyptian Hermes by Garth Fowden and Hermetica by Brian P. Copenhaver, Florian Ebeling, breathes fresh life into the religious tradition of the Thrice Great Hermes allowing these ancient scriptures an increasingly wider audience.

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Perhaps Hermeticism has fascinated so many people precisely because it has made it possible to produce many analogies and relationships to various traditions: to Platonism in its many varieties, to Stoicism, to Gnostic ideas, and even to certain Aristotelian doctrines. The Gnostic, the esoteric, the Platonist, or the deist has each been able to find something familiar in the writings. One just had to have a penchant for remote antiquity, for the idea of a Golden Age, in order for Hermeticism, with its aura of an ancient Egyptian revelation, to have enjoyed such outstanding success."--from the IntroductionHermes Trismegistus, "thrice-great Hermes," emerged from the amalgamation of the wisdom gods Hermes and Thoth and is one of the most enigmatic figures of intellectual history. Since antiquity, the legendary "wise Egyptian" has been considered the creator of several mystical and magical writings on such topics as alchemy, astrology, medicine, and the transcendence of God. Philosophers of the Renaissance celebrated Hermes Trismegistus as the founder of philosophy, Freemasons called him their forefather, and Enlightenment thinkers championed religious tolerance in his name. To this day, Hermes Trismegistus is one of the central figures of the occult--his name is synonymous with the esoteric.In this scholarly yet accessible introduction to the history of Hermeticism and its mythical founder, Florian Ebeling provides a concise overview of the Corpus Hermeticum and other writings attributed to Hermes. He traces the impact of Christian and Muslim versions of the figure in medieval Europe, the power of Hermeticism and Paracelsian belief in Renaissance thought, the relationship to Pietism and to Freemasonry in early modern Europe, and the relationship to esotericism and semiotics in the modern world.

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Secret Source: The Law of Attraction Is One of Seven Ancient Hermetic Laws: Here Are the Other Six Review

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(More customer reviews)The book The Secret Source might at first appear to be a outright criticism of the book The Secret or perhaps a book hoping to sell it's own brand of self help to confused consumers who mistake one title for the other but as good fortune would have it, it's neither. What The Secret Source offers is a highly detailed history of Prosperity Consciousness, the New Thought movement, Alchemy, Rosicrucianism, even Mesmerism and others and how they all can be traced back to Hermetic origins. It gets better though, the true story and recurring trend of Prosperity Consciousness doesn't exist in a historical bubble, the Secret Source shows the interlinked timeline of how it's Hermetic roots are bound within Christian, Judaic and Islamic history as well. The research in this book is highly detailed with all the major players, important texts, and movements laid out. The level of detail presented in this book is commendable and I'm sure in another life D'Aoust and Parfrey were detectives. One of the books strength is it's academic approach rather than being a self help book. Over 100 footnotes are present to site for anyone who would like to follow up with their own investigation. One criticism I would offer, though a very minor one at that, is that the order of some of the information in the early chapters seems to be not as well organized as it could have been for maximum comprehension. There is a lot of dense material to cover in the beginning of the book and for someone not completely acquainted with the subject there are a lot of names and connections to keep straight. Most chapters read like one major epiphany after the other. The authors make amazing connections and trace almost unbelievable timelines of major religious intrigue. I won't spoil it for the potential reader but I think one of my favorite things about this book is when it finally comes to the question of where do Hermetic Laws come from? Every great detective wants to peel away the layers of the onion but what happens when you get to the very last layer? What is the secret source of the secret source? It doesn't matter if you have never read The Secret to enjoy this book. You don't even have to know anything about hermeticism or the occult . Readers that like real life mysteries, history, religious study or anyone remotely curious about the self help trends they see in the media today can fully appreciate this book.

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The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind Review

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(More customer reviews)Fowden, as a writer, is admittedly no model of lucidity; at the same time, he is writing for academics, and is thus able to compress a huge amount into a small space. If you are not used to academic prose, you will find this book very difficult; it would also help if you know a certain amount about the reception of the Hermetica in 19th and 20th century historiography, and perhaps a bit about the late Classical era.
At the same time, this book has been reprinted for a reason: it's the single most important historical argument about the Hermetica. For a long time, the Hermetica were understood to be purely Greek, essentially Hellenic misappropriations of pseudo-Egyptian ideas, recast in Neoplatonic style. What Fowden does is to show that these texts do have an important base within the dying Egyptian traditions of their day.
For non-specialists, this may seem like small potatoes. But it changes everything. If you have read Frances Yates, for example, she argued that these texts were grotesquely misread by Ficino and the Renaissance tradition, on three counts: (1) they thought the texts were really, really ancient, more or less contemporary with Moses; (2) they thought the texts were Egyptian, not Greek; and (3) they thought the texts were really about magic (and not philosophy). Now there's no question that the Hermetica are from 1st-2d century Alexandria, but they are _not_ simply Greek; they are, in a sense, Egyptian formulations that draw on the then-influential Greek modes of philosophical thought. Furthermore, it means that the texts we usually think of as the Hermetic Corpus can and should be correlated with the PGM (the Greek Magical Papyri and their Demotic associates), changing the whole character of the texts by giving them a wildly different literary and ritual context. In other words, the Renaissance got the dating wrong, but in many respects got the rest more or less right; as a result, Fowden's book not only changes the way we read the Hermetica in their Alexandrian context, but also how we make sense of the Renaissance magical revival (Ficino, Pico, Agrippa, Bruno, etc.).
If, having read this review, you think, "Who cares?" then this book is certainly not for you. If you think, "Wow! That's fascinating," then this is essential. I have seen the odd quibble with small points in Fowden's arguments, but I have not seen any serious attack on the main thrust of the book. Considering when it was first written, that's extraordinary.
But you do need to be comfortable with academic prose.

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Sage, scientist, and sorcerer, Hermes Trismegistus was the culture-hero of Hellenistic and Roman Egypt. A human (according to some) who had lived about the time of Moses, but now indisputably a god, he was credited with the authorship of numerous books on magic and the supernatural, alchemy, astrology, theology, and philosophy. Until the early seventeenth century, few doubted the attribution. Even when unmasked, Hermes remained a byword for the arcane. Historians of ancient philosophy have puzzled much over the origins of his mystical teachings; but this is the first investigation of the Hermetic milieu by a social historian.

Starting from the complex fusions and tensions that molded Graeco-Egyptian culture, and in particular Hermetism, during the centuries after Alexander, Garth Fowden goes on to argue that the technical and philosophical Hermetica, apparently so different, might be seen as aspects of a single "way of Hermes." This assumption that philosophy and religion, even cult, bring one eventually to the same goal was typically late antique, and guaranteed the Hermetica a far-flung readership, even among Christians. The focus and conclusion of this study is an assault on the problem of the social milieu of Hermetism.

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