ABSTRACT
Hermeticism (or Hermetism) refers to a diverse body of religious, magical, astrological, and alchemical teachings associated with the ancient Egyptian god Thoth, whom the Greeks called Hermes Trismegistus. These teachings originated c. A.D. 100-500 in the chaotic social and political climate of Greco-Roman Egypt, which nourished a melange of religious cults. A number of treatises attributed to Hermes or involving him and his descendants survived these cults and disseminated an arcane, fragmentary knowledge of alchemy, astrology, magic, and religion to Byzantium, echoes of which rever-berated in the West, often in the specialized and secretive world of chemists, metallurgists, astrologers, and healers. By the late European Middle Ages, the name “Hermes” was connected to such esoteric knowledge, much of which had come to the Latin West by way of Islam. One well-known example of this literature is the Emerald Table of Hermes, which was embedded in the Arabic alchemical works attributed to Jabir Ibn Hayyan (Geber), who flourished in the eighth or ninth century. It presents thirteen aphoristic statements that were fundamental to medieval and Renaissance occult philosophy, including the well-known statement of the harmony between the macrocosm and the microcosm, “that which is above corresponds to that which is below.” However, a Hermetic religious text, the Asclepius, was also known to Christian scholars in Latin translation since the time of Augustine (354-430).
