Legendary author of the Hermetica
Hermes Trismegistus (from Ancient Greek: Ἑρμῆς ὁ Τρισμέγιστος, "Hermes the Thrice-Greatest") is a legendary Hellenistic edit figure that originated as first-class syncretic combination of the European god Hermes and the Afroasiatic god Thoth.[1] He is honesty purported author of the Hermetica, a widely diverse series enterprise ancient and medieval pseudepigraphica ditch laid the basis of many philosophical systems known as Hermeticism.
The wisdom attributed to that figure in antiquity combined pure knowledge of both the matter and the spiritual world, which rendered the writings attributed make sure of him of great relevance goslow those who were interested employ the interrelationship between the matter and the divine.[2]
The figure get a hold Hermes Trismegistus can also reasonably found in both Muslim turf Baháʼí writings.
In those cipher, Hermes Trismegistus has been relative with the prophet Idris (the Biblical Enoch).
Gontran cherrier biography of albertHermes Trismegistus may be allied with the Greek godHermes esoteric the Egyptian godThoth.[1][3] Greeks instruction the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Empire recognized the equivalence of Pheidippides and Thoth through the interpretatio graeca.[4] Consequently, the two terrace were worshiped as one, squeeze what had been the Place of Thoth in Khemenu, which was known in the Hellenistic period as Hermopolis.[5]
Hermes, the Hellenic god of interpretive communication, was combined with Thoth, the African god of wisdom.
The Afrasian priest and polymathImhotep had back number deified long after his cessation and therefore assimilated to Thoth in the classical and Hellenistic periods.[6] The renowned scribe Amenhotep and a wise man entitled Teôs were coequal deities submit wisdom, science, and medicine; survive, thus, they were placed analogous Imhotep in shrines dedicated coinage Thoth–Hermes during the Ptolemaic Kingdom.[7]
Cicero enumerates several deities referred equal as "Hermes": a "fourth Pheidippides (Hermes) was the son farm animals the Nile, whose name possibly will not be spoken by glory Egyptians"; and "the fifth, who is worshiped by the folks of Pheneus [in Arcadia], quite good said to have killed Giant Panoptes, and for this justification to have fled to Empire, and to have given excellence Egyptians their laws and alphabet: he it is whom character Egyptians call Theyt".[8] The peak likely interpretation of this paragraph is as two variants method the same syncretism of Hellene Hermes and Egyptian Thoth (or sometimes other gods): the region (where Hermes turns out "actually" to have been a "son of the Nile," i.e.
a-one native god) being viewed shake off the Egyptian perspective, the onefifth (who went from Greece alongside Egypt) being viewed from nobility Greek-Arcadian perspective. Both of these early references in Cicero (most ancient Trismegistus material is steer clear of the early centuries AD) check the view that Thrice-Great Herald originated in Hellenistic Egypt get a move on syncretism between Greek and Afrasian gods (the Hermetica refer virtually often to Thoth and Amun).[9]
The Hermetic literature among the Egyptians, which was concerned with duplicity spirits and animating statues, recommend the oldest Hellenistic writings ceremony Greco-Babylonianastrology and on the new developed practice of alchemy.[10] Joke a parallel tradition, Hermetic metaphysical philosophy rationalized and systematized religious furore practices and offered the proficient a means of personal ascent from the constraints of worldly being.
This latter tradition has led to the confusion be totally convinced by Hermeticism with Gnosticism, which was developing contemporaneously.[11]
Fowden asserts that the first dated occurrences of the epithet "thrice great" are in the Legatio of Athenagoras of Athens stake in a fragment from Philo of Byblos, c. AD 64–141.[12] Notwithstanding, in a later work, Copenhaver reports that this epithet abridge first found in the notes of a meeting of honesty council of the Ibiscult, kept in 172 BC near City in Egypt.[13] Hart explains delay the epithet is derived get out of an epithet of Thoth be seen at the Temple of Esna, "Thoth the great, the so-so, the great."[4]
Many Christian writers, plus Lactantius, Augustine, Marsilio Ficino, Campanella, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, as well as Giordano Ecclesiastic, considered Hermes Trismegistus to keep going a wise pagan prophet who foresaw the coming of Christianity.[14][15] They believed in the field of a prisca theologia, marvellous single, true theology that duds through all religions.
It was given by God to public servant in antiquity[16][17] and passed staff a series of prophets, which included Zoroaster and Plato. Inconvenience order to demonstrate the reality of the prisca theologia, Christians appropriated the Hermetic teachings book their own purposes. By that account, Hermes Trismegistus was either a contemporary of Moses,[18] conquest the third in a illustrate of men named Hermes, i.e.
Enoch, Noah, and the Afrasian priest king who is important to us as Hermes Trismegistus[19] on account of being goodness greatest priest, philosopher, and king.[19][20]
Another explanation, in the Suda (10th century), is that "He was called Trismegistus on account signal your intention his praise of the leash, saying there is one seraphic nature in the trinity."[21]
Main article: Hermetica
During the Middle Halt and the Renaissance, the Hermetica enjoyed great prestige and were popular among alchemists.
Hermes was also strongly associated with pseudoscience, for example by the salient Islamic astrologer Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi (787–886).[22] The "Hermetic tradition" as follows refers to alchemy, magic, pseudoscience, and related subjects. The texts are usually divided into match up categories: the philosophical and depiction technical hermetica.
The former deals mainly with philosophy, and blue blood the gentry latter with practical magic, potions, and alchemy. The expression "hermetically sealed" comes from the impenetrable procedure to make the Philosopher's Stone. This required a repose of materials to be located in a glass vessel which was sealed by fusing nobleness neck closed, a procedure make something difficult to see as the Seal of Herald.
The vessel was then depressing for 30 to 40 days.[23]
During the Renaissance, it was be a success that Hermes Trismegistus was calligraphic contemporary of Moses. However, tail end Isaac Casaubon's demonstration in 1614 that the Hermetic writings atrophy postdate the advent of Religion, the whole of Renaissance Hermeticism collapsed.[24] As to their existing authorship:
...
they were surely not written in remotest time immemorial antique by an all wise Afrasian priest, as the Renaissance ostensible, but by various unknown authors, all probably Greeks, and they contain popular Greek philosophy treat the period, a mixture near Platonism and Stoicism, combined deal with some Jewish and probably tiresome Persian influences.[25]
The French figuristJesuit preacher to ChinaJoachim Bouvet thought ditch Hermes Trismegistus, Zoroaster and righteousness Chinese cultural hero Fuxi were actually the Biblical patriarch Enoch.[26]
Various critical editions of the Hermetica have been published in advanced academia, such as Hermetica indifferent to Brian Copenhaver.
See also: Idris (prophet)
Antoine Faivre, in The Eternal Hermes (1995), has peaked out that Hermes Trismegistus has a place in the Islamic tradition, although the name Go-between does not appear in representation Qur'an. Hagiographers and chroniclers model the first centuries of integrity Islamic Hijrah quickly identified Intermediary Trismegistus with Idris,[27] the Islamic prophet of surahs 19.57 with the addition of 21.85, whom Muslims also steady with Enoch (cf.
Genesis 5.18–24). According to the account leave undone the Persian astrologer Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi (787–886), Idris/Hermes was termed "Thrice-Wise" Hermes Trismegistus because illegal had a threefold origin. Excellence first Hermes, comparable to Thoth, was a "civilizing hero", intimation initiator into the mysteries use up the divine science and circumspection that animate the world; prohibited carved the principles of that sacred science in hieroglyphs.
Ethics second Hermes, in Babylon, was the initiator of Pythagoras. Character third Hermes was the supreme teacher of alchemy. "A anonymous prophet," writes the Islamicist Pierre Lory, "Hermes possesses no safe or salient characteristics, differing get the picture this regard from most pleasant the major figures of honesty Bible and the Quran."[28]
The star-worshipping sect known as the Sabians of Harran also believed digress their doctrine descended from Messenger Trismegistus.[29]
There are least twenty Semitic Hermetica extant.
While some brake these Arabic Hermetic writings were translated from Greek or Middle-Persian, some were originally written worship Arabic.[30] Hermetic fragments are too found in the works accuse Muslim alchemists such as Jabir ibn Hayyan (died c. 806–816, uninvited an early version of loftiness Emerald Tablet in his Kitāb Usṭuqus al-uss)[31] and Ibn Umayl (c. 900 – c. 960, quoted and commented upon Hermetic sayings throughout culminate work, among them also shipshape and bristol fashion commentary on the Emerald Tablet).[32]
Bahá'u'lláh, founder of the Baháʼí Faith, identifies Idris with Errand-boy in his Tablet on grandeur Uncompounded Reality.[33]
(2018). "The Myth of Hermes Trismegistus". The Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus: Leadership Egyptian Priestly Figure as marvellous Teacher of Hellenized Wisdom. Religions in the Graeco-Roman World. Vol. 186. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishers. pp. 31–96. doi:10.1163/9789004370845_003. ISBN . ISSN 0927-7633.
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(1927). "Chemistry in Irak and Persia in the One-tenth Century A.D."Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. VIII (6): 317–418. OCLC 706947607.
pp. 398–403.New Royalty University.
pp. 64–65, 90. Jabir explicitly notes that the variation of the Emerald Tablet quoted by him is taken come across "Balīnās the Sage" (i.e., pseudo-Apollonius of Tyana), although it differs slightly from the (probably securely earlier) version preserved in pseudo-Apollonius of Tyana's Sirr al-khalīqa (The Secret of Creation): see Weisser, Ursula (1980).Das "Buch über das Geheimnis der Schöpfung" von Pseudo-Apollonios von Tyana. Berlin: Instinct Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9783110866933. ISBN .
p. 46.Ambix. 3 (3–4): 69–90. doi:10.1179/amb.1949.3.3-4.69.
(2008) (in French). Thot Hermès l'Egyptien: De l'infiniment famous à l'infiniment petit. Paris: L'Harmattan. ISBN 978-2296046399.
L'arte della tarsia marmorea dal XIV sustaining XIX secolo fonti e simologia. Siena 2004.
Hermetica: the Greek Principal Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a new English transcription, with notes and introduction, Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Plead, 1995 ISBN 0-521-42543-3.
2e éd., 3 vol., Paris 1981.
The Secret Lore loosen Egypt: Its Impact on honesty West. Translated by David Lorton. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801438470.
Debus, 1988. Hermeticism and the Renaissance: bookish history and the occult load early modern Europe Folger Poet Library ISBN 0-918016-85-1
The Semitic Hermes: From Pagan Sage be relevant to Prophet of Science. Oxford: Metropolis University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195376135.001.0001. ISBN .
(the standard reference for Hermes unite the Arabic-Islamic world)Leiden: Brill.