In 1462, the Italian physician, priest, and scholar Marsilio Ficino was hard at work translating the complete works of Plato into Latin for his patron, Cosimo de Medici. But then, another manuscript appeared in Florence, one thought to be even more ancient, more authoritative, and more important than Plato: the Corpus Hermeticum. Such was the excitement around this discovery that—apparently at Cosimo’s direction—Ficino immediately stopped working on his translation of Plato and began translating the Corpus instead.
What was so exciting about this ancient text that Ficino—who Cosimo had placed at the helm of his attempt to re-create Plato’s famous Academy—would prioritize it over even the works of that great philosopher?
Enter The Corpus Hermeticum
The Corpus Hermeticum is a collection of texts attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, or Thrice-Greatest Hermes, a legendary figure combining the Greek messenger god Hermes with the ibis-headed Egyptian god Thoth. The texts take the form of philosophical dialogues explaining the creation of the cosmos, the nature of consciousness, and the place of humankind in the universe. At at a time when the Church still had a monopoly on people’s view of the world, the teachings of the Corpus Hermeticum were revolutionary—and they still challenge our worldview today.
At the time, Hermes was thought to be a historical figure, a contemporary of Moses, which would have made the Corpus as old or older than the earliest books of the Bible. At the time of the Renaissance, the older a text was, the more authoritative it was seen to be. As such an ancient work of philosophy and cosmology, the Hermetica lended support for Ficino’s theory of a prisca theologia, an ancient, divinely-inspired spiritual philosophy that preceded Christianity but ran through the teachings of all religions.
Today, we know that the Hermetica were written not at the time of Moses, but in Alexandria—then part of Roman Egypt—between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE. At the time, Alexandria was an incredibly cosmopolitan city, the melting pot of the Mediterranean. Rather than predating Christianity, the Hermetic writings were most likely influenced by early Christian and Jewish teachings and contemporary philosophies like Neoplatonism and Stoicism, as well as native Egyptian spiritual teachings.
The Secret Teachings of Hermes
The Hermetica express a holistic view of the cosmos—that is, one in which we are part of a greater whole. God creates the physical universe out of and within himself; therefore the cosmos is alive, conscious, and part of God. Humankind, likewise, is part of the cosmos as well as part of God.
While the human body is part of the physical cosmos, human consciousness is divine, not separate from the Nous or mind of God. Like God, then, we are creative beings, endowed with infinite potential.
Within the Hermetic cosmos, in fact, nothing exists that is not God (a parallel to the Hindu teaching that “nothing exists which is not Shiva”):
“There is nothing in all this which is not Himself…. He is unmanifest, yet He is most manifest; He can be perceived by Nous; He can be seen by the eyes. He is bodiless, yet He has many bodies, or rather every body. Nothing is which He is not. For He is all that exists…”
However, as in the Asian nondual teachings, we humans aren’t born with a conscious realization of our divine nature. We have to come to it through meditation, prayer, right living, and contemplative inquiry.
In Book 5 of the Corpus Hermeticum, Hermes asks his son Tat “Can you see pure perception and take hold of it with these hands and contemplate the image of God? But if you cannot see what is within, how can God who is Himself within you appear to you through your own eyes?”
The Corpus Hermeticum describes a path by which human beings can transcend ordinary consciousness and become one with God—something like a Western equivalent to yoga. Though the actual instructions given in the Corpus are cryptic, they were inspirational for Renaissance humanists, who wanted to realize humanity’s greatest artistic, spiritual, and scientific potential.
Ficino’s translation of the Hermetica went on to inspire many important thinkers, including Pico della Mirandola, Giordano Bruno, Paracelsus, and Robert Fludd. Along with Ficino’s translations of Plato and the Neoplatonists, it was one of the key Greek texts that inspired the “rebirth” of classical civilization that began in Florence and became known as the Renaissance.
Why The Corpus Hermeticum Matters Today
The philosopher and cognitive scientist John Vervaeke has spoken eloquently about the “meaning crisis” facing modern civilization. People today are increasingly anxious, depressed, distracted, addicted, lonely, and even suicidal. Vervaeke sees this mental health crisis as part of a larger political, economic, and environmental crisis in which modern ways of looking at the world have left us bereft of the sources that traditionally gave life meaning, and placed us at the brink of self-destruction as a species.
In his work, Vervaeke has focused on western philosophies like Platonism and Neoplatonism, as well as eastern philosophies like Buddhism, in search of ways to make meaning in our present mess.
Of course, Vervaeke isn’t the first to notice the mess we’re in. Carl Jung, who witnessed the horror of both World Wars, made much the same observation. And any number of people today, including myself and many readers of this newsletter, are engaged in the quest for renewed meaning. We’ve sought it in Eastern philosophy, yoga, meditation, psychedelic drugs, Stoicism, and resurgent forms of Christianity, among other places.
I would humbly submit that alongside other ancient philosophies that are popular today, such as Stoicism and Buddhism, Hermeticism has an important role to play.
For those of us in the West, the Corpus Hermeticum gives us a Western vision of a cosmos that is alive, ensouled, and divine in its origin and nature. A cosmos in which we are not separate from God, from other forms of life, or from anything that exists. A meaningful vision of the cosmos and of human existence that can stand beside the great Eastern nondual philosophies, as well as indigenous animist cosmologies from around the world.
It’s part of our intellectual and spiritual heritage—its roots in the ancient world, rediscovered in the Renaissance, temporarily forgotten in the modern era—but now ours to reclaim.
Make no mistake; the Corpus Hermeticum is not a straightforward read. It’s a short book, but extremely dense with meaning. At times, it’s unclear what the authors meant. At others, it seems to contradict itself. But for all that, it expresses an inspiring view of reality, one that shows how we as humans are part of a living, intelligent cosmos and are heirs to a higher consciousness.
Just as the Hermetica inspired Renaissance philosophers like Ficino, Pico, and Bruno, I believe it can inspire us today in our search for a more holistic understanding of human consciousness and our relationship to the cosmos. Perhaps it can even help us arrive at a new Renaissance worldview, one that incorporates both science and spirituality, matter and meaning, within a greater whole.
For the purposes of this review, I relied on The Way of Hermes: New Translations of The Corpus Hermeticum and The Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius by Clement Salaman et al. The Brian Copenhaver translation is the most frequently cited scholarly edition of the Corpus, but The Way of Hermes provides an engaging, poetic, and less expensive edition while still being scholarly and accurate.
That’s all for today! As always, I appreciate your feedback on Mindful Mondays. What was your favorite thing I shared this week? What would you like to learn more about? Let me know by replying to this email or leaving a comment, below.
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Chris Cordry, LMFT
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