The Corpus Hermeticum: Greek treatises attributed to Hermes Trismegistus

The name Corpus Hermeticum refers to a collection of philosophical and religious treatises in Greek, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, «thrice greatest». In this figure the Greeks of Egypt had fused their own Hermes with Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing and wisdom. The texts take the form of dialogues between Hermes and his disciples, Tat, Asclepius and Ammon, or of revelations received from a divine mind.

When and where they were written

Modern scholars place the composition of the treatises between the first and third centuries AD, probably in Egypt, in Greek-speaking circles familiar with Platonic and Stoic philosophy, the Jewish tradition and Egyptian religion. They are not the work of a single author: each treatise has its own style and doctrine, and some ideas contradict one another.

The collection of seventeen treatises, as we read it, was formed in the Byzantine period. The scholar Michael Psellos already knew it in the eleventh century. The traditional numbering runs from I to XVIII, but number XV is missing: a gap born of an old editorial decision and kept so as not to confuse references. Other Hermetic excerpts are preserved in the anthology of John Stobaeus, from the fifth century.

The Poimandres and the other treatises

The first treatise, the Poimandres, is the most famous. It recounts a vision in which a divine figure, presenting itself as the supreme Mind, reveals to the narrator the origin of the cosmos, the creation of man and his fall into matter, and finally the return of the soul through the heavenly spheres. The text has points of contact with the biblical account of Genesis and with Platonic cosmology.

Other treatises take up different themes. The fourth, called The Mixing Bowl, speaks of a vessel full of intellect that God is said to have sent down to humankind. The thirteenth describes a spiritual rebirth, passed on by Hermes to his son Tat. The tenth, The Key, summarises the doctrine of the knowledge of God. The tone is often that of prayer and hymn rather than philosophical argument.

Philosophical and technical Hermetism

Historians distinguish between philosophical Hermetic texts, such as those of the Corpus, and technical Hermetic texts dealing with astrology, alchemy, magic and the properties of plants and stones. The latter also circulated under the name of Hermes. The distinction is useful, but the two fields arose in the same cultural world and shared the idea of an ancient revealed wisdom.

From ancient wisdom to critical dating

For centuries readers believed Hermes was an Egyptian sage contemporary with, or even earlier than, Moses. In 1614 the Genevan philologist Isaac Casaubon, analysing the language and ideas of the treatises, showed that they belonged to the Roman imperial age and not to ancient Egypt. His discovery diminished the authority of Hermes as a pagan prophet of Christianity.

In the twentieth century the critical edition by Arthur Darby Nock and André-Jean Festugière, published in four volumes between 1945 and 1954, established the text on solid foundations. Today the Corpus Hermeticum is studied as a document of late antique religiosity, a meeting point of Greek philosophy and Egyptian spirituality that would fascinate the European Renaissance.