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Hermes Trismegistus is a legendary Hellenistic 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 pseudepigraphical texts that lay the basis of various philosophical systems known as Hermeticism.
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Hermeticism or Hermetism, the practice of which is sometimes called Hermetics, is a label used to designate a philosophical system that is primarily 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 are usually subdivided into two main categories, the "technical" and "religio-philosophical" Hermetica.
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The Mirror of Alchimy is a short alchemical manual, known in Latin as Speculum Alchemiae. Translated in 1597, it was only the second alchemical text printed in the English language. Long ascribed to Roger Bacon (1214-1294), the work is more likely the product of an anonymous author who wrote between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries.
Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio was an Italian itinerant preacher, Hermeticist, and alchemist. Due to his bizarre appearance in Rome on Palm Sunday 1484 he has been believed by some scholars to have not actually existed, but this has been contested with other reports that corroborate his eccentricities. His most notable follower was Lodovico Lazzarelli, an Italian humanist poet and alchemist, who writes his accounts of da Correggio in his Epistola Enoch.
References
- ↑ JOSÉ RODRÍGUEZ-GUERRERO, Desarrollo y Madurez del Concepto de Quintaesencia Alquímica en la Europa Medieval (s. XII-XIV). pp. 30-56. http://www.revistaazogue.com/azogue5.htm
- ↑ Bibliotheca Chemica, Part 1 By John Ferguson p.420
- ↑ JOSÉ RODRÍGUEZ-GUERRERO, Desarrollo y Madurez del Concepto de Quintaesencia Alquímica en la Europa Medieval (s. XII-XIV). p. 40. http://www.revistaazogue.com/Azogue5-3.pdf
- ↑ The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus: Hermeticism from Ancient to Modern Times. Florian Ebeling. Cornell University Press, 2007. p.51
- ↑ Introduction to the history of science, Issue 376, Volume 3. George Sarton. Published for the Carnegie Institution of Washington by the Williams & Wilkins Co., 1947
