Hermeticism

Hermeticism, or Hermetism, is a philosophical and religious tradition rooted in the teachings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, a syncretic figure combining elements of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. These teachings are contained in the various writings attributed to Hermes (the Hermetica), which were produced over a period spanning many centuries (c. 300 BCE – 1200 CE) and may be very different in content and scope. One particular form of Hermetic teaching is the religio-philosophical system found in a specific subgroup of Hermetic writings known as the 'religio-philosophical' Hermetica, which were written in Egypt between approximately 100 and 300 CE. The most famous of these are the Corpus Hermeticum (a collection of seventeen Greek Hermetic treatises) and the Asclepius (a closely related treatise mainly surviving in a Latin translation). This specific, chronologically and geographically limited form of Hermetic philosophy is sometimes more narrowly referred to as Hermetism, to distinguish it from the philosophies inspired by the many Hermetic writings of a completely different period and nature. A more open-ended term is Hermeticism, which may refer to a wide variety of philosophical systems drawing on writings attributed to Hermes, or even merely on subject matter generally associated with him. Most notably, alchemy often went by the name of "the Hermetic art" or "the Hermetic philosophy". A famous use of the term in this broader sense is in the concept of Renaissance Hermeticism, which refers to the wide array of early modern philosophies inspired by Marsilio Ficino's (1433–1499) and Lodovico Lazzarelli's (1447–1500) translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, as well as by Paracelsus' (1494–1541) introduction of a new medical philosophy drawing upon the 'technical' Hermetica (i.e., astrological, alchemical, and magical Hermetica, such as the Emerald Tablet). In 1964, Frances A. Yates advanced the thesis that Renaissance Hermeticism, or what she...