The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan MindSage, 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. |
Contents
PART I MODES OF CULTURAL INTERACTION | 13 |
The gods of Egypt | 14 |
Hermes Trismegistus | 22 |
The Hermetica | 31 |
Translation and interpretation | 45 |
Manetho and Chaeremon | 52 |
Books of Thoth and technical Hermetica | 57 |
Instructions and philosophical Hermetica | 68 |
PreIamblichan theurgy | 126 |
lamblichus of Apamea | 131 |
Hermetism and theurgy | 142 |
Bitys | 150 |
THE MILIEU OF HERMETISM | 155 |
The evidence of the Hermetica | 156 |
Firstcentury Alexandria and beyond | 161 |
Temples and priests | 166 |
THE WAY OF HERMES | 75 |
Magic | 79 |
Occult properties and alchemy | 87 |
Astrology | 91 |
Religio mentis | 95 |
The philosophical paideia | 97 |
Gnosis | 104 |
Towards a via universalis | 116 |
Zosimus of Panopolis | 120 |