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This is a comparative religion article which outlines the similarities and interactions between Hermeticism (or Hermetism) and other religions or philosophies. It highlights its similarities and differences with Gnosticism, examines its connections in Islam and Judaism, delves into its influence on Christianity, and even explores its potential impact on Mormonism. In essence, it unveils how Hermeticism has engaged with, influenced, and been influenced by a diverse array of spiritual and philosophical traditions throughout history.
Hermetism had a strong philosophical influence, [1] especially from Stoicism and Platonism. [2]
Hermetism is related to a wider intellectual current known as Gnosticism. [3] Both flourished in the same period in Roman Egypt, in the same spiritual climate, [4] sharing the goal of allowing the soul to escape from the material realm, and emphasizing a personal knowledge of God. Both groups held that the fundamental relationship between God and man could be found through gnosis (knowledge, understanding), with the goal to "see" God, and in some instances to become one with God. [1]
However, there are also some significant differences between Hermetism and Gnosticism with regard to philosophical theology, cosmology, and anthropology. [5] Though both agreed about God's transcendence over the Universe, Hermetists believed that God could still be comprehended through philosophical reasoning, in agreement with philosophers and Christian theologians, whereas many Gnostics felt that God was completely unknowable. [6] While the Gnostics often indulged in mythological references, Hermetic texts are relatively devoid of mythology [7] (the Poimandres being an exception). [8] Hermetism is generally optimistic about God, while many forms of Christian Gnosticism are pessimistic about the creator: several Christian Gnostic sects saw the cosmos as the product of an evil creator, and thus as being evil itself, while Hermetists saw the cosmos as a beautiful creation in the image of God. [9] Both held that mankind was originally divine and has become entrapped in the material world, a slave to passion and distracted from divine nature. However, the Gnostics as a result often adopted a pessimistic view of mankind, while the Hermetic belief system generally retained a positive attitude towards mankind. [10] Hermetists believed that the human body was not evil in and of itself, but that materialistic impulses such as sexual desire were the cause of evil in the world. [11]
According to ninth- and tenth-century Arabic authors, the pagan community from the Upper-Mesopotamian city of Harran (who self-identified as the Sabians mentioned in the Qur'an) counted Hermes Trismegistus as one of their major prophets. [12] In the same period some Muslims started to identify the Qur'anic prophet Idrīs (the Islamic equivalent to the Biblical Enoch) with Hermes. In this context, Hermes came to be seen as a 'prophet of science'. [13]
The relationship between Judaism and Hermetism has been one of mutual influence and a subject of controversy within the Jewish religion. [14]
This identification paved the way for the exchange and melding of ideas between Judaism and Hermetism during the Middle Ages. [14] The most prominent interrelation between the two systems is in the development of Kabbalah which developed into three separate brands: a Jewish stream, a Christian stream ( Cabala in Christianity), and a Hermetic stream ( Qabalah in Hermeticism). [15] Medieval Hermetism, aside from alchemy, is often seen as analogous to and was heavily influenced by these Kabbalistic ideas. [15] [16]
Hermetism and Kabbalah arose together in the 12th and 13th centuries. The Practical Kabbalah also relied upon magic and astrology but focused more on the Hebrew language in its incantations than the general language of Hermetism in general. [17]
Secondly, Jewish scholars of the Middle Ages attempted to make use of treatises on astrology, medicine and theurgy as a justification for practicing natural magic forbidden by a number of commandments in the Torah and reinforced by prophetic books codified by rabbinic authorities. They noted the wonders performed by celebrated biblical figures such as the patriarchs and King Solomon and which were seen as a God-given and condoned use of natural magic. They attributed these arts to divine knowledge imparted by Jewish heroes to gentiles such as the Indians, Babylonians, Egyptians, and Greeks, and felt that by approaching magic from a religious standpoint would legitimize their use of the sciences. In particular, they believed the Hermetic teachings to have its origins in ancient Jewish sources. [14]
These Jewish scholars, particularly the ones who distrusted Aristotelian rationality, looked to Hermetism as a backing to discuss theological interpretation of the Torah and the Ten Commandments. Fabrizo Lelli writes: "As for Christians and Muslims, so likewise for Jews, Hermetism was an alternative to Aristotelianism--the likeliest prospect, in fact, for integrating an alien system into their religion. This was because the response of the Hermetica to intellectual problems was generally theosophical." [14]
In the use of these Hermetic treatises, these Jewish scholars, though at times inadvertently, introduced Hermetic ideas into Jewish thought. Shabbetay Donnolo's 10th century commentary on the Sefer Yezirah shows Hermetic influence, as well as the 13th century texts later compiled into the Sefer ha-Zohar , and in the contemporary Kabbalistic works of Abraham Abulafia as well as of other Jewish thinkers influenced by Kabbalah [14] such as Isaac Abravanel who used Hermetic Qabalah to affirm the superiority of Judaism. [18] Lelli suggests that it was natural for these Jewish Kabbalists to elevate Hermetic teachings to a major role in Jewish thought in a time when they began to produce their own "antirationalist--exegesis of scripture." This was despite the fact that many Hermetic works were ascribed to Aristotle in the time through pseudepigrapha; these scholars saw that as a justification to give the same elevated authority to the medical, astronomical, and magical Hermetic texts. [14]
However, most Medieval Jewish scholars aware of the Hermetic tradition did not mention Hermetism explicitly, but rather referred to them through Hermetic ideas that were borrowed from Islam or brought Hermeticism up only to reject it. While scholars such as Moses ibn Ezra, Bahya ibn Paquda, Judah ha-Levi, and Abraham ibn Ezra specifically brought up Hermeticism to integrate into their philosophies, others such as Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides) specifically rejected anything Hermetic as being responsible for counterparadigmic views of God. Maimonides warned his readers against what he viewed as the degenerative effect of Hermetic ideas, particularly those of the Sabians, and was effective in persuading many Jewish thinkers away from Hermetic integration, known as Hebrew Hermetism. [14]
Scholars, such as Abraham ibn Ezra, felt justified in invoking the authority of Hermes to offer esoteric explanations of Jewish ritual. This culminated in a wide use of Hermetic texts for the use of theurgy and talisman construction. The Jewish version of the theurgic practice of drawing divine spirits down to Earth was horadat haruhaniyut, "the lowering of spirituality." Books such as the Sefer Mafteah Shlomoh , Sefer Meleket Muskelet , Sefer ha-Tamar and Sefer Hermes . The Hermetic texts most valued by Jewish scholars were those which dealt with astrology, medicine, and astral magic; however shunned by Maimonides as dangerous and destructive. [14]
Despite Maimonides' denunciation of Hermetism, Jewish scholars in the Renaissance struggled to reconcile his beliefs with those of the proponents of Hermetic thought within Judaism. Renaissance scholars argued that the rationalism of Maimonides drew upon the prisca sapienta that had both Mosaic and Hermetic origins and that Abraham ibn Ezra's Commentary on the Pentateuch was evidence that they shared the same views on the relationship between religion and science. [14]
However, scholars such as Averroist Elijah del Medigo carried on Maimonides' crusade. Medigo claimed that the theurgic practices of Hermetism were against the teachings of the Torah. Others, such as Yohanan Alemanno, claimed that the Hermetic teachings were part of a primordial wisdom of the ancients and put the writings of Hermes as being equal to those of King Solomon. Hermetism was also prominent in the works of David Messer Leon, Isaac Abravanel, Judah Abravanel, Elijah Hayyim, Abraham Farissol, Judah Moscato and Abraham Yagel. [14]
The works of Baruch Spinoza have also been ascribed a Hermetic element [19] and Hermetic influenced thinkers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe have accepted Spinoza's version of God. [20]
Christianity and Hermetism have interacted in such a way that controversy surrounds the nature of the influence. Some, such as Richard August Reitzenstein believed that Hermetism had heavily influenced Christianity; while others, such as Marie-Joseph LaGrange, believed that Christianity heavily influenced Hermetism; most see the exchange as more mutual. [21]
According to Mary E. Lyman, both religions hold redemption, revelation and focus on the knowledge of God as the meaning of humanity's existence. This knowledge of God comes upon a mystical experience dependent upon rebirth, the focal point of arguments for influence from one of these religions upon the other. [22] The focus of this rebirth are the words "Life," "Light," and "Truth" as well as a moral attitude of the seeker in his attainment of higher knowledge. Both also share a dualistic philosophy which comes from a shared philosophical background in popular schools of Hellenistic thought. [23] Early Christianity and Hermetism both are esoteric without having an excessive emphasis on secrecy, relying upon inward experience, assisted by instruction and ultimately the result of revelation by God. [24]
Lyman also sees important similarities between the Fourth Gospel , or Gospel of John, and the Corpus Hermeticum , in religious thought and religious questing. [21] However, she points out that there are some deep differences as well. [25]
In Lyman's analysis, both texts utilize the concept of Logos [26] and emphasize that the followers of their respective religions are apart from the rest of the world, suitable for only a few followers. [27] Each of the two texts stress the importance of redemption, revelation, and rebirth to find knowledge of God [22] and contain striking similarity in the wording of how moral attitudes promote higher knowledge in general. [23] Opposed to the basis of the contemporary mystery cults, both texts relayed that the core of religious practice should be done internally through the personal experience of the believer rather than externally through sacramental ritual. [28] Dualism plays a strong part in each of the two works. [23]
Lyman also points out four distinct contrasts between the two works despite their similarities. First, that the Fourth Gospel is a homogeneous work while the Corpus Hermeticum is a work which is found in fragments which she suspects were written by many authors over a wide range of time. [28] Second, cosmic speculation is paramount to the Hermetic work while the fourth Gospel focuses on issues of religion. [29] Third, the Hermetic text focuses on the asceticism of the day while the Fourth Gospel ignores it completely. [30] Fourth, the Gospel's figures are all unique and grounds itself in the life of Jesus of Nazareth while the Hermetic text uses an "elusive literary tradition" which does little to identify or separate its characters. [31] Though she relays that a scholar named Angus believed that the two would be more similar if they had the same proportion of Hermetic writings as Christian writings. [32]
A theory by John L. Brooke, an author and professor at Tufts University, suggests that Mormonism has its roots in Hermetism and Hermeticism after following a philosophical trail from Renaissance Europe. The early Mormons, most notably Joseph Smith, were linked by Brooke with magic, alchemy, Freemasonry, divining and "other elements of radical religion" prior to Mormonism. Brooke attested correlations with the view that spirit and matter are one and the same, the covenant of celestial marriage, and the ability of humanity to become deified or ultimately perfect. [33]
Further, Brooke argued that Mormonism can only be understood in conjunction with the occult and the Reformation-era sectarian idea of restoration. He sees ties to Hermeticism in Mormon support for Pelagianism, communitarianism, polygamy and Dispensationalism.
However, Philip I. Barlow has criticized Brooke's work as carelessly seeking out relations to Hermeticism which Brooke knows better than Mormonism, and believes that Brooke's links to Hermeticism can be explained away with "a particular and selectively literal reading of the Bible." [33]
Gnosticism is a collection of religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) above the proto-orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority of religious institutions.
Kabbalah or Qabalah is an esoteric method, discipline and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal. The definition of Kabbalah varies according to the tradition and aims of those following it, from its origin in medieval Judaism to its later adaptations in Western esotericism. Jewish Kabbalah is a set of esoteric teachings meant to explain the relationship between the unchanging, eternal God—the mysterious Ein Sof —and the mortal, finite universe. It forms the foundation of mystical religious interpretations within Judaism.
The Sophia The Christ, also known as the Wisdom of Jesus Christ, is a Gnostic text that was first discovered in the Berlin Codex. More famously, the Sophia of Jesus Christ is also among the many Gnostic tractates in the Nag Hammadi codices, discovered in Egypt in 1945. The Berlin-Codex manuscript probably dates to c. AD 400, and the Nag-Hammadi manuscript has been dated to the 300s. However, these are complemented by a few fragments in Greek dating from the 200s, indicating an earlier date for the contents.
Hermes Trismegistus is a legendary Hellenistic period figure that originated as a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. He is the purported author of the Hermetica, a widely diverse series of ancient and medieval pseudepigraphica that laid the basis of various philosophical systems known as Hermeticism.
Jewish philosophy includes all philosophy carried out by Jews, or in relation to the religion of Judaism. Until modern Haskalah and Jewish emancipation, Jewish philosophy was preoccupied with attempts to reconcile coherent new ideas into the tradition of Rabbinic Judaism, thus organizing emergent ideas that are not necessarily Jewish into a uniquely Jewish scholastic framework and world-view. With their acceptance into modern society, Jews with secular educations embraced or developed entirely new philosophies to meet the demands of the world in which they now found themselves.
Hermeticism or Hermetism is a philosophical and religious system based on the purported teachings of Hermes Trismegistus. These teachings are contained in the various writings attributed to Hermes, which were produced over a period spanning many centuries and may be very different in content and scope.
The Hermetica are texts attributed to the legendary Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus, a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. These texts may vary widely in content and purpose, but by modern convention are usually subdivided into two main categories, the "technical" and "religio-philosophical" Hermetica.
The Corpus Hermeticum is a collection of 17 Greek writings whose authorship is traditionally attributed to the legendary Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus, a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. The treatises were originally written between c. 100 and c. 300 CE, but the collection as known today was first compiled by medieval Byzantine editors. It was translated into Latin in the 15th century by the Italian humanist scholars Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) and Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447–1500).
The Gospel of the Hebrews, or Gospel according to the Hebrews, is a lost Jewish–Christian gospel. The text of the gospel is lost, with only fragments of it surviving as brief quotations by the early Church Fathers and in apocryphal writings. The fragments contain traditions of Jesus' pre-existence, incarnation, baptism, and probably of his temptation, along with some of his sayings. Distinctive features include a Christology characterized by the belief that the Holy Spirit is Jesus' Divine Mother and a first resurrection appearance to James, the brother of Jesus, showing a high regard for James as the leader of the Jewish Christian church in Jerusalem. It was probably composed in Greek in the first decades of the 2nd century, and is believed to have been used by Greek-speaking Jewish Christians in Egypt during that century.
Academic study of Jewish mysticism, especially since Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941), draws distinctions between different forms of mysticism which were practiced in different eras of Jewish history. Of these, Kabbalah, which emerged in 12th-century southwestern Europe, is the most well known, but it is not the only typological form, nor was it the first form which emerged. Among the previous forms were Merkabah mysticism, and Ashkenazi Hasidim around the time of the emergence of Kabbalah.
Hermetic or related forms may refer to:
The Sethians were one of the main currents of Gnosticism during the 2nd and 3rd century AD, along with Valentinianism and Basilideanism. According to John D. Turner, it originated in the 2nd century AD as a fusion of two distinct Hellenistic Judaic philosophies and was influenced by Christianity and Middle Platonism. However, the exact origin of Sethianism is not properly understood.
Norea is a figure in Gnostic cosmology. She plays a prominent role in two surviving texts from the Nag Hammadi library. In Hypostasis of the Archons, she is the daughter of Adam and Eve and sister of Seth. She sets fire to Noah's Ark and receives a divine revelation from the Luminary Eleleth. In Thought of Norea, she "extends into prehistory" as "she assumes the features here of the fallen Sophia." In Mandean literature, she is instead identified as the wife of either Noah or Shem. She is also sometimes said to be the syzygy of Adam.
Elia del Medigo, also called Elijah Delmedigo or Elias ben Moise del Medigo and sometimes known to his contemporaries as Helias Hebreus Cretensis or in Hebrew Elijah Mi-Qandia. According to Jacob Joshua Ross, "while the non-Jewish students of Delmedigo may have classified him as an “Averroist”, he clearly saw himself as a follower of Maimonides". But, according to other scholars, Delmedigo was clearly a strong follower of Averroes' doctrines, even the more radical ones: unity of intellect, eternity of the world, autonomy of reason from the boundaries of revealed religion.
Gilles Quispel was a Dutch theologian and historian of Christianity and Gnosticism. He was professor of early Christian history at Utrecht University.
Wouter Jacobus Hanegraaff is professor of the History of Hermetic Philosophy and related currents at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. He served as the first president of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) from 2005 to 2013.
Ludovico Lazzarelli was an Italian poet, philosopher, courtier, hermeticist and (likely) magician and diviner of the early Renaissance.
The Hypostasis of the Archons, also called The Reality of the Rulers or The Nature of the Rulers, is a Gnostic writing. The only known surviving manuscript is in Coptic as the fourth tractate in Codex II of the Nag Hammadi library. It has some similarities with On the Origin of the World, which immediately follows it in the codex. The Coptic version is a translation of a Greek original, possibly written in Egypt in the third century AD. The text begins as an exegesis on Genesis 1–6 and concludes as a discourse explaining the nature of the world's evil authorities. It applies Christian Gnostic beliefs to the Jewish origin story, and translator Bentley Layton believes the intent is anti-Jewish.
The Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius is a collection of aphorisms attributed to the legendary Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus, most likely dating to the first century CE.
The Asclepius, also known as the Perfect Discourse, is a religio-philosophical Hermetic treatise. The original Greek text, which was likely written in Alexandria between 100 CE and 300 CE, is largely lost and only a few fragments remain. However, the full text is extant in an early Latin translation, and fragments from a Coptic translation have also been found among the documents discovered in Nag Hammadi.