For regular videos on ancient cultures and forgotten civilizations, please subscribe. If you would like to support the channel and become part of our ancient history fan community, visit patreon.com/worldofantiquity. - Have you ever heard of the
Hermetica - the Hermetic texts? These are ancient books that purport to
contain the wisdom of one of the greatest sages who ever lived: Hermes Trismegistus, who
is said to have passed on lost secret knowledge from the distant past to the Egyptians.
Who was this enigmatic figure? And did he write the books of the Hermetica?
We’re going to find out right now.
Peter Gandy is a British author, who is known
for some controversial theories about the ancient past, and especially ancient religion
and philosophy. He is probably best known for the book, The Jesus Mysteries, which he wrote with
Timothy Freke, about the origins of Christianity, which was heavily criticized by historians
and scholars. But he and Freke wrote a number of books, and one of them was called The
Hermetica: The Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs, which is basically a curated collection of
Hermetic writings that Gandy translated into English. This is not to be confused with the
book of collected Hermetic writings called The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean by
Maurice Doreal, which is really “out there.” Both of these books are meant to be used as spiritual
guidebooks, but we’re going to talk about the one that makes more reasonable historical assertions.
Gandy at least has a Masters degree in Classics, from what I understand. I recently came across
a talk that Gandy gave at the Eternal Knowledge Festival in April of 2012 in Suffolk in the UK.
It is posted on the Megalithomania UK channel. Gandy makes some claims about the Hermetica that
I think are worth addressing, and it will serve as a handy vehicle through which we can approach
the topic together. Not everything in the talk is pertinent to ancient history, so I won’t respond
to all of it. I will leave a link below if you want to watch the whole thing. Here we go. - I'm going to talk about the Hermetica, which is, I noticed, actually on the
banner up here. You've got Thoth, the ibis-headed god of Egypt. It's him you've
got to blame for all of this. It all goes back to ancient Egypt, which is why we use the sub-head
on the book: ‘The Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs.’
- Is the Hermetica really the “lost wisdom of
the Pharaohs”? This is the question we will be exploring. The Hermetica can certainly be called
“wisdom,” at least in the sense that it offers knowledge and principles to its readers - it
falls into the genre of writing we call wisdom literature (whether that wisdom has any value
or truth in it is another story and not our concern at present). But specifically we will
be inquiring whether the wisdom came from the pharaohs of Egypt and whether it was ever lost.
- So yes, is it the lost wisdom of the pharaohs? In the however-many years it is since we wrote
this, that's actually become the major issue for me. The fact is that I do think this text
gives us the best possible lens for looking back into the mind-world of the ancient Egyptians. - That’s an interesting claim, because, while the Hermetica, or at least a good part of it,
was apparently written in Egypt, it was written in Greek by Greeks. So why does he not call it the
wisdom of the Greeks? We will see as we go along.
- And unfortunately, the books of the Hermetica
have really had a terrible press. For many years they were outlawed in Europe. They just simply
weren't available during the Christian period. The Arabs nurtured them, kept them
alive, and then during the Renaissance, they were reintroduced back into Europe. - I went and checked this out and found no evidence that the Hermetica was ever outlawed
in any country of Europe. I couldn’t find a single law or proclamation or order that
called for either the burning of the books or a penalty being imposed for possessing them. In
fact, Hermetic writings were remarkably well-known during the Middle Ages in Europe. The Asclepius
was translated into Latin and commented on. There were even Hermetic books that were
written during the Middle Ages in Europe, most notably the Book of the 24 Philosophers,
and a number of astrological tracts.
What Gandy probably means is that
the scholars of Europe, mostly monks, did not as a matter of practice put
much effort into preserving pagan books, while in the Byzantine and Arab worlds, they
did. But that’s not the same as being outlawed, and it isn’t the same as being lost. The Hermetic
texts were part of the cultural consciousness among European scholars even in Christian Europe.
They may not have been widely published, but they were there, especially from the High Middle Ages
forward and were held in high esteem by some.
- But even then, there was a
hatchet-job done on them, saying these aren’t the books of Thoth. These don't
tell you anything about ancient Egypt. These are Greek texts, written in Greek for a Greek-speaking
audience, who were living in Alexandria in Egypt, and really the Egyptian stuff
in it - it 's just decoration, just ornamentation to give it the
impression that it's ancient wisdom. And that's why they've languished
in such obscurity for so long.
- Okay, tell us how you know
this view is incorrect.
- And in fact, until we did our
book, they were only available as difficult, impenetrable texts, badly translated by
a bunch of 19th-century occult obscurantists, and nobody could really understand them. And I first
came across them a long time ago, 1978. I was 18, and I got inducted into a Western magical order,
which claimed to go back to the famous Golden Dawn, or infamous Golden Dawn, and we used to do
these magical path-workings, during which I had the most extraordinary experience in the temple
of Thoth. And I was an impressionable young man, and I thought: that's amazing spirits. - The Western magical order that he joined when he was 18 was a Hermetic order that
was a splinter group of the Golden Dawn, a secret society that had its heyday in the
late 19th century. So Gandy is very much coming from the viewpoint that the Hermetic texts
have spiritual value. He even says he had a spiritual experience in Egypt when he visited
a temple of Thoth. But I am not here to talk about the truth or value of Hermeticism.
I do ancient history. So let’s move on.
He then goes on to explain how he compiled the
texts from the Hermetica for his book. If you want to hear about that, you can check it out in the
original video. I’m going to fast forward a bit.
- So I was reading through the introduction. I
thought, “I've got to put an introduction to this, so that people can really get a grasp on
the history of it,” because it's not just a set of interesting texts. These have had a
profound influence on our culture. In fact, the very best things of our culture
originate from the ancient teachings, which were mediated through the Greeks. - Notice he says “mediated through the Greeks.” So his position is that the Hermetic texts
may be Greek, but the Greeks were just the mediators of an older Egyptian tradition. Is
this borne out by the evidence? Let’s see.
- And I ... So what I thought I'd do
is actually read the introduction, because I looked through it, and I thought,
yeah, it's still good. It's, you know, there's a few things I would add now, but actually
it'll give you a good idea of the history and the influence of the Hermetica. So, with your
permission, I'll read from the introduction.
The Hermetica is a collection
of writings attributed to Thoth, a mystical ancient Egyptian sage, whose wisdom
is said to have transformed him into a god.
- This statement is misleading. The Hermetica
is a collection of writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Who is Hermes Trismegistus?
He is a Hellenistic god (by Hellenistic, I mean he was invented in the Hellenistic
period - the time when the Ptolemies ruled Egypt (332-30 BCE) - and also that he is a
product of Hellenism - the synthesis of Egyptian and Greek culture). Hermes Trismegistus is a
combination of the Egyptian god Thoth (or Djehuty) and the Greek god Hermes. So he’s not
simply Thoth, and he’s not simply Hermes. He's Thoth/Hermes. So I feel like Gandy is deliberately
misleading his audience, because he wants them to believe that the Hermetica comes from ancient
Egypt. So he takes Hermes right out of it. You can’t take Hermes out of the Hermetica. This is not to say that the Greeks who worshipped him considered him to be a new god. No, from
their point of view, the gods go way back. To them, Hermes Trismegistus was the same as
the god called Djehuty by the Egyptians (Thoth) and the same as the god called Hermes by the
Greeks, both of whom had been worshipped for centuries. But, they thought, it wasn’t until
the Greeks came to Egypt and the two cultures shared their knowledge with each other, that
the full nature of this god became known.
For us, though, who look back on these
developments with an eye for history, we can see that this is all a fiction. Thoth
and Hermes are completely fictitious characters, invented independently by their respective
cultures and then synthesized at a later time.
The other statement that Gandy makes, that Thoth
was “a mystical ancient Egyptian sage whose wisdom is said to have transformed him into a god” is
an idea originally connected with the physician and architect Imhotep, a real person who lived
during the 3rd dynasty and who was the designer of the Step Pyramid of Saqqara, the first of
its kind. Nowhere in Egyptian myth, from the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, or New Kingdom, as far as I can find, was
the god Thoth said to be a mortal sage who was transformed into a god. Thoth appears virtually
everywhere in ancient Egyptian visual art, in literature (like the Pyramid Texts, Coffin
Texts, Book of the Dead, and temple inscriptions), and in all these Egyptian texts, Thoth is a god,
and has always been a god. He was never a human. Here’s what happened: There were some sages from
Egypt that were deified, real historical figures, like Imhotep, whose spirits were venerated after
their death, and by the New Kingdom Imhotep had become a demigod, a patron of doctors and scribes.
In the Saite period (7th-6th centuries BCE), Imhotep was finally merged with Thoth.
It was common in polytheistic societies for gods eventually to merge with one another
over time if they had similar characteristics, minor gods being absorbed by the major ones. And
this is what happened to Imhotep. But earlier, the two were worshipped in separate cults completely
distinct from one another. So it is important to remember that the Thoth cult existed long before
Imhotep ever became associated with Thoth.
Unlike the god Osiris, about whom it’s possible
to formulate a biography based on the myths about him, despite variant traditions, the Thoth stories
do not allow us to establish a mythological biography like that, because the sources about him
are highly contradictory, and none of them can be confidently assumed to be primary. In one tale,
Thoth is said to have been born autogenously, with no mother. Other sources say he is the son of
a goddess - and different goddesses are named as his mother. There are no tales about his childhood
or growing to maturity. He is always presented as an adult god and as if he has always been so. It’s not until we get to later times that we see Thoth being spoken of as someone who was once
mortal that was made immortal by reason of his good services to the gods. That’s because he
had by this time absorbed the Imhotep tradition. And so that’s why, at the time that Hermeticism
was beginning to sprout, Hermes Trismegistus, was thought to be an ancient sage who was
transformed into a god. But we need to avoid making the mistake Gandy does, of assuming this
idea comes from earlier times and of assuming Thoth and Hermes Trismegistus are identical. - Thoth, who was venerated in Egypt from at least 3000 BCE, is credited with the
invention of sacred hieroglyphic writing, and his figure, portrayed as a
scribe with the head of an Ibis, can be seen in many temples and tombs. - The oldest texts that mention Thoth are the Pyramid Texts, which date to
the 5th and 6th dynasties, around 2400 BCE. But Thoth was probably worshipped before
that. How much further back is difficult to say. Yes, he was portrayed as an ibis and sometimes a
baboon. And he was also associated with the moon. Sometimes he was spoken of as the moon itself.
The fact that there are so many stories about him, and he has so many symbols, many of which are
contradictory and inconsistent with each other, suggests he is a fairly old god,
maybe even before the 1st dynasty.
Some might ask, “Isn’t there a very ancient text
called the Book of Thoth, that contains wisdom in it reminiscent of the Hermetic writings?” What
they are probably referring to is a book mentioned in the Egyptian short story, "Setne Khamwas and
Naneferkaptah," sometimes called "Setne I." This story isn’t itself the Book of Thoth - it mentions
the Book of Thoth, which is said to contain two powerful magical spells, one that enables a person
to speak to animals and the other that enables a person to see the gods. Well, this is a fictional
story, written in Demotic, an Egyptian script used during the Ptolemaic period. So although the
character of Setne is based on a real person, the famous son of Ramesses II, who lived
during the 19th dynasty, this story is not a history. It’s a fun little tale that features
a book, which itself is probably fictional.
But wait, wasn’t the Book of Thoth actually
discovered recently? There was indeed a book found, in fragmentary form, which modern
Egyptologists have dubbed the Book of Thoth. But it is not the same as the one from the story. It
has nothing in it as described in the short story. Neither does it have a title on it, “The Book
of Thoth.” It is a text, written in Demotic, also from the Hellenistic period, that
features a god in it that presumably is Thoth, though that is not said explicitly, and so the
researchers have named it The Book of Thoth. It contains teachings in it that resemble
Hermetic ideas, but its contents aren’t in any of the known Hermetic collections. It’s
from that time, though, so it fits in with the intellectual traditions of that period. - He is the dispatcher of divine messages and recorder of all human deeds. In the Great Hall of
Judgment, the afterlife-court of the god Osiris, Thoth would establish whether the deceased had
acquired spiritual knowledge and purity and so deserved a place in the heavens. Thoth was said
to have revealed to the Egyptians all knowledge on astronomy, architecture, geometry, medicine, and
religion, and was believed by the ancient Greeks to be the architect of the pyramids. - Note how Gandy is synthesizing Egyptian and Greek thought here. - The Greeks, who were in awe of the knowledge and spirituality of the Egyptians,
identified Thoth with their own God Hermes, the messenger of the gods and the guider
of souls in the realm of the dead. To distinguish the Egyptian Hermes from their
own, they gave him the title Trismegistus, meaning “thrice-great” to honor his sublime
wisdom, and the books attributed to him became collectively known as the Hermetica. - The name Trismegistus was not given to Thoth to distinguish him from Hermes. In the minds of
the Greeks, Thoth and Hermes were the same god, and the name Trismegistus was a
way to acknowledge their synthesis, not their difference. “Trismegistus” does
mean “thrice great.” Repeating something three times was frequently used for emphasis.
Diodorus Siculus, an ancient Greek historian who wrote in the 1st century BCE,
during the Hellenistic period, describes Hermes Trismegistus in this way:
Note how Diodorus combines the stories the
Egyptians of his time told about Thoth with the beliefs of the Greeks about Hermes and considers
them both as referring to the same god. There are even some new embellishments. In the Hellenistic period, when the Greeks began
ruling foreign lands, a phenomenon known as interpretatio graeca began to occur. It refers
to Greek interpretations of the religions and philosophies of these countries by using
Greek religious concepts and practices, deities and myths, equivalencies and shared
characteristics. But the Greeks often did great damage to the original concepts, because
they often did not understand them fully, and because they often forced the meaning in
order to make them compatible with their own ideas. As time passed, and the concepts saw
further additions and expansion, including new vocabulary, rites, magic words, and alchemy,
the beliefs became less and less Egyptian.
Gandy continues to read his intro, which
at this point name drops a bunch of famous people throughout history who presumably were
influenced by Hermetic thought. He exaggerates the Hermetica’s influence, but we’re not going
to concern ourselves with that. Let’s skip ahead to where he talks about the Hermetica’s origins.
- The early origins of the
Hermetica are shrouded in mystery, but the evidence suggests it is a
direct descendant of the ancient philosophy of the Egyptians. - All right. Here we go. Let’s consider the evidence. - However, the handful of surviving works attributed to Hermes are not written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, but in Greek, Latin, and Coptic. - This is a strong reason for doubting the purely Egyptian origin of the
philosophy of the Hermetic texts.
- They were collated in the city of Alexandria
in Egypt during the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. Here the Hermetic philosophy
helped inspire some of the greatest intellectual achievements of the ancient world.
- He deliberately uses the word “collated” instead of the word “written.” We know the bulk of the
Hermetic texts were written during this period, because they are in Greek and Coptic. We
don’t know that they were merely collated. We don’t have any evidence they were
translated from Egyptian either. But now Gandy gives his reason for
why he thinks they were collated from earlier Egyptian sources. - Alexandria was a great center of learning, surpassing even Athens. Its founder, Alexander the
Great, had conquered and united Greece, Persia, Egypt, and India into one vast empire. Cultures
that had grown up more-or-less independently were brought together, and there was no bigger melting
pot than Alexandria. Into this new cosmopolis or universal city poured men and women of every race
and nation - Greeks, Jews, Egyptians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, and even Buddhists from India -
associated here together in relative peace. The Alexandrians were renowned
for their thirst for knowledge and under the enlightened Greek ruler,
Ptolemy I, a library and museum were founded, where human beings first systematically
collected the wisdom of the world. At its height, the Library of Alexandria
housed some half a million scrolls.
But Alexandria was also rich in esoteric
knowledge. Pythagoreanism, Chaldean oracles, Greek myths, Platonic and Stoic philosophy,
Judaism, Christianity, the Greek mystery schools, Zoroastrianism, astrology, alchemy, Buddhism, and
of course, the ancient Egyptian religion were all practiced, studied, compared, and discussed.
- Okay, so if I am following his point properly, he is saying that, since the Library of
Alexandria had hundreds of thousands of scrolls, collected from all over, they must have had
scrolls of ancient Egyptian wisdom; therefore, the philosophy of the Hermetic texts could easily
have been taken from earlier Egyptian texts. All this does, however, is show the possibility that
the Hermetica could contain Egyptian ideas. Gandy would have to agree it doesn’t prove that the
Hermetica is wholly Egyptian. Anyway, modern scholars are of the opinion that the Hermetica
draws from the ancient Egyptian tradition. No one argues that the Hermetic texts are 100%
Greek in origin. This is a synthesis, after all. It brings together Greek ideas and Egyptian
ones. And the very fact that the intellectuals of Alexandria were gathering wisdom from many
different places is evidence in favor of a mixing of ideas. The point here is that the Hermetica
can’t be older than the Hellenistic period, because its existence requires the interaction
between the Egyptians and the Greeks.
- The golden age of Alexandria came to an end
with the birth of the intolerant Christian Holy Roman Empire. Despite the sophistication
and cultural achievements of the ancients, the Christians refer to them dismissively as ‘pagans,’
which means country-dweller. In 415 CE, Hypatia, one of the last great scientists and pagan
philosophers working at the Library of Alexandria, was seized by a mob of Christians, who removed her
flesh with scallop shells and burnt her remains. Their leader, Bishop Cyril was later canonized
Saint Cyril. The Great Library was finally destroyed as so much pagan superstition, and this
wealth of knowledge was scattered to the wind. The Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius closed
pagan temples across the empire and began the previously-unknown phenomenon of book burning. - What Gandy appears to be trying to do here is make it seem as if the Christian church tried to
wipe out the wisdom of Hermes Trismegistus - and unfairly at that. It’s certainly true that
pagan religion was the target of Christian attacks. But it would be too simplistic to say
that they tried to eradicate all pagan ideas. There were many pagan ideas that were accepted by
Christians and made their way into Christianity.
The fact is, Hypatia in her time was beloved by
both pagans and Christians. She wasn’t murdered because she was a pagan. She was murdered for
political reasons. She had been the advisor of the Roman prefect of Egypt, a Christian,
who was in the middle of a dispute with the archbishop Cyril of Alexandria. It was thought
she was getting in the way of the two reconciling, and she was killed for it. But many Christians
mourned her death, and in the Middle Ages she was even upheld as a symbol of Christian virtue.
The library had already been in decline for some centuries, and many
of its books had been sent to other libraries. What was left of the main library was destroyed
either in 272, when the emperor Aurelian was fighting to take back Alexandria from
Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, or in 297, when the emperor Diocletian laid siege
to the city. These events occurred long before Cyril was ever born.
As for the wisdom of Hermes Trismegistus, it was embraced, perhaps not by all, but certainly
by some Christians, including influential leaders. Clement of Alexandria, a Christian theologian and
head of the catechetical school in Alexandria, was one. Lactantius, Christian advisor to
Constantine the Great, was another. Many Gnostic Christians also embraced it.
- For the West, the 5th century ushered in at the thousand-year-period appropriately known as the Dark Ages. History shows, however, that wherever the works of
Hermes have been studied and venerated, civilization has flourished. - This sounds like a correlation-indicates-causation
argument. Let’s see.
- Pagan scholars and sages fled to
the newly-emerging Arab culture, taking their knowledge and the Hermetic
writings with them. Two-hundred years later, the Muslims created an empire, whose learning
and scientific achievements were unsurpassed. By the beginning of the ninth century, the
first university was established in Baghdad, called the House of Wisdom. Here many
pagan works were translated. The sciences that have reached such heights
in Alexandria was significantly developed, and the ancient pagan spiritual wisdom
was covertly studied and practiced.
- Gandy is implying that the reason for the
flourishing of Arab civilization, and for the decline of European civilization during the Dark
Ages, is that pagan writings like the Hermetica, were preserved and studied in the Muslim world,
but not in Christian Europe. This would be a simplistic reading of history that assumes cause
and effect without justification. Dozens of books have been written about why Rome fell in the
West and how the Dark Ages came to be, and the causes were numerous. And I think it would be
difficult to find any support for the belief that the neglect of pagan philosophy had anything to do
with it, especially considering that, even in the Arab world, the study of pagan works was never
a primary practice and so would have had little effect on the prosperity of that culture. - With the Arab Empire becoming increasingly intolerant, the owners of the Hermetic books travelled in search of a safe refuge. In the 15th century, many fled to the tolerant city-state
of Florence in northern Italy, where this wisdom again inspired a great cultural flowering. In
1438, the Byzantine scholar Gemisto Plethon made available to the awestruck Florentines the entire
lost works of Plato. These and other pagan works were translated into Latin for the first time. - While the works of Plato were translated into Latin for the first time in the 15th century, it
was not the first time for pagan works in general. In the 12th century, 300 years earlier, Greek
philosophical texts began to be translated from Arabic into Latin, and it’s not because pagans
were fleeing the Muslim world into Europe. It’s because there was an increased interest
in these works by Europeans. So, for example, the Tabula Smaragdina, known more popularly as
the Emerald Tablet, a Hermetic text that formed the basis of medieval alchemy, was translated from
Arabic into Latin several times in the 12th and 13th centuries. It was extremely popular. About
40 Hermetic texts appeared at this time, most of which were translated from Arabic, but some
were brand new. The Book of the 24 Philosophers, for example, is a Hermetic text that seems to have
made its first appearance. Indications are it was composed in the second half of the 12th century.
‘Wait,’ you might be saying to yourself, ‘are you suggesting that not all the Hermetic texts were
written by the same person? That’s right. Since the texts don’t all originate in the lifetime of
one individual, then they couldn’t possibly have been written by the same individual.
- The ruler of Florence, the philanthropist and scholar Cosimo de Medici, established a new
Platonic Academy, a group of intellectuals and mystics, who found their inspiration
in the ancient pagan philosophy.
Cosimo Medici sent out agents to look for other
lost pagan works that might still be awaiting discovery. In 1460, one of them came across
the lost works of thrice-great Hermes and brought them to Florence. The Florentines,
already reeling from the discovery that an ancient civilization of immense sophistication had
risen and fallen nearly 2,000 years before them, the Greek civilization, now believed they had in their hands one of the most ancient sages of them all. - As we know, Hermetic texts were already available in Europe at the time that Cosimo de
Medici lived. When Gandy says an agent of de Medici “came across the lost works of thrice-great
Hermes,” he is referring to Leonardo de Pistoia, a monk who worked for de Medici, who found
in Macedonia a copy of the Corpus Hermeticum, a collection of 18 tractates attributed to
Hermes Trismegistus and written in Greek, which had been preserved by Christian
scholars in the Byzantine Empire. Scholars today estimate that these texts
were written some time between the 1st and 4th centuries CE, when Rome ruled Egypt. - Cosimo ordered his young Greek scholar, Marsilio Ficino, to cease his work on translating Plato and
to begin immediately on this new Egyptian text. Ficino had it in ready in time to
read to Cosimo just before his death.
- Marsilio Ficino is an important figure in the
history of Hermeticism, because not only was he the one who made the Corpus Hermeticum
available in Latin for Europeans to read and this laid the foundations of modern
Hermeticism, but because he is the inventor of new mythology around Hermes Trismegistus that
will be adopted by Hermetic groups of Europe, like the Rosicrucians, Freemasons and others.
In the preface he wrote for the Poimandres, aka the Pimander, the first tractate in the
collection, Ficino outlined a refurbished portrait of Hermes Trismegistus for his European
readers. In the medieval Arabic literature, there were three Hermes - based on the assumption
that the name Trismegistus was equivalent to “the third." The first Hermes they identified with the
patriarch Enoch from the Bible, who lived before the Great Flood. He built the pyramids and wrote
the whole scientific knowledge of the human race on the walls of Egyptian temples. The second
Hermes lived after the Flood and studied science in Babylonia. The third was a ruler in Egypt and
wrote many books, including those on alchemy, and he was the one called Trismegistus.
This view had been adopted by medieval European Hermetic enthusiasts prior to Ficino.
The story will change again with Ficino’s bio of Hermes. Basing it on other legends he had read
and picking out what he thought was the best, Ficino said that Hermes Trismegistus was the
5th in the line of men named Hermes (or Mercury, as he says, since he is writing in Latin - Mercury
is the Latin form of Hermes). Hermes Trismegistus, he wrote, lived a few generations after Moses,
and he ruled Egypt and gave them laws and letters. He was so loved by the Egyptians that they
made him a god and called him Thoth. He is called “thrice-great” because he was the greatest
philosopher, the greatest priest, and the greatest king. He was the first theologian, teaching about
the majesty of God, the ordering of the spirits, and the changes of the soul. He taught Orpheus,
who taught Aglaophemus, who taught Pythagoras, who taught Philolaus, who taught Plato. So he
is the originator of many of Plato’s ideas, so claims Ficino. He was a prophet who
foretold the coming of Christ.
It’s interesting to see how stories grow and
change over time. How much more Christian this sounds compared to the description of
Diodorus. But Ficino’s portrayal of Hermes will prove to be highly influential.
- The emergence of a glorious new culture in Florence signaled the end of the Dark
Ages. We call this period the Renaissance, meaning “rebirth,” which is a fitting name,
for at the heart of the Hermetic philosophy is the idea of being spiritually reborn, and the ancient pagan wisdom arrived in
Florence at a fortuitous moment in history.
- Gandy goes on for a while about how the
pagan wisdom of the Hermetica was responsible for almost every great advancement made in Europe
after that, even crediting them for Copernicus’ discovery that the sun was at the center of the
solar system. This is not my area of history, but he seems to be stretching quite a bit. We’ll fast forward to where he talks about the age of the Hermetic writings. - Previously these works had been believed to be of extreme antiquity,
dating back to the time of the Pharaohs, but in 1640, a scholar called Isaac Casaubon
published the textual analysis of the Hermetica, which showed, quite correctly, that the grammar,
vocabulary, form, and content of the Greek versions of these works dated them to no earlier
than the 2nd and 3rd century CE. They were not written by an ancient Egyptian sage, he claimed,
but by scholars working in the city of Alexandria. Their philosophy was nothing more than an exotic
blend of Greek, Christian, and Jewish philosophy, mixed up with astrology and magic. The Egyptian
names that pepper the text were mere decoration.
- As you can see, it didn’t take long to
realize that the texts couldn’t be as old as Ficino claimed. Casaubon was the first European
scholar to systematically analyze the language of the Hermetica. He won’t be the last. - Casaubon was one of the most brilliant Greek scholars of his time, and with the
encouragement of the Christian status quo, his damning criticism was generally accepted.
Casaubon had dealt the Egyptian sage a fatal blow, and the books of Hermes were destined
to be forgotten as fakes and forgery.
- Well, history shows they most certainly were not
forgotten. And it wasn’t the church that generally accepted his conclusions; it was other scholars.
And yes, to this day, scholarship classifies the Hermetica as pseudepigrapha, that is, writings
whose claimed author is not the real author. But you know what? It’s not so much because of the
analysis of the language - that helps to date the texts - but it’s because Hermes Trismegistus is
a fictional character. Any text claiming to have been written by him cannot actually have been.
- In the modern world, we know from the actions of the tabloid press just how one well-timed hatchet job can unjustifiably undermine someone's reputation for good, and this is exactly what happened to thrice-great Hermes. Casaubon was a fine scholar,
but he was motivated by a hidden political agenda. The ultra-orthodox James I was now on the throne
of England, and he employed Casaubon and others to purge the magically-inclined court of Elizabeth.
Hermeticists like John Dee were ostracized, and later, Casaubon’s son Meric wrote a book,
which portrayed the great philosopher as a confused occultist. Dee died alone and forgotten. - Casaubon’s work speaks for itself, whatever “hidden agenda” he may or may not have
had. I don’t know. No scholar today believes that these works are falsely-attributed merely because
Casaubon said so. That’s not how scholarship works. Scholars don’t believe something based on
who says it. The arguments themselves are tested. And many scholars since Casaubon have continued
to study the Hermetica and have arrived at similar conclusions, refining and correcting the work of
Casaubon and others that came after him. So we really don’t need to be hung up on this one guy. - Nonetheless, some of Casaubon’s claims regarding the Hermetica are true. The books of Hermes
are undoubtedly the product of many authors and not one ancient sage, and they were certainly
composed in the first few centuries of our era.
- Okay, so then, does that not indicate that these
writings are not from the time of the pharaohs?
- Hermes was credited with these writings, even
though we know they become the composite works of many scholars, but this does not discredit them
or Hermes. It was a common practice in antiquity for authors to ascribe their work to the god who
gave them inspiration. This was a mark of respect, not an attempt to deceive.
- When scholars say the Hermetic texts are from the Hellenistic period, they are not trying to “discredit” them. If you want to believe in the wisdom contained
in them, that’s entirely up to you. And I will agree that, just because someone
wrote in the name of Hermes Trismegistus, that doesn’t necessarily mean they were attempting
to deceive their readers. It was common in the ancient world to write in the name of a famous
person from the past as a gesture of respect or as an expression of inspiration. - On the second charge, Casaubon is also right to claim that the Hermetica was written down in 2nd-century Alexandria, but all the modern evidence suggests that it does express Egyptian beliefs filtered through the understanding of the Greek scholars of the period. - Gandy never presents this evidence, but having gone and looked it up, it is true that
modern scholars in examining the texts have come to the conclusion that they do not merely reflect
Greek philosophy, but Egyptian wisdom as well. But it’s not that Egyptian wisdom simply was filtered
through the understanding of Greek scholars, as Gandy says, but it is a true mixture of
both Egyptian and Greek thought, with the scale tilted more towards the Greek side. - And even if all Casaubon’s criticisms were correct, this would neither diminish the Hermetica’s wisdom, nor alter the fact that it has profoundly
influenced some of the greatest minds in history. It is as old as the Christian
Gospels. It's older than the Quran. It is one of the great sacred texts of the
world, and it's worthy of respect and study for these reasons alone.
- I’m not going to argue with him on this point. He’s making a value judgment and is
entitled to rank his holy books however he wants.
- But when Casaubon was writing, very little
was actually known about ancient Egypt. The hieroglyphs themselves were not translated
until two centuries after his death. Consequently, many modern scholars now believe
that he was wrong to see the Hermetic philosophy as a second century innovation, especially since
the discovery of the Pyramid Texts of Saqqara at the end of the last century.
These hieroglyphs are over five thousand years old and yet contain doctrines that
are identical to those expounded in the Hermetica. This suggests that the Hermetica may
indeed contain the wisdom of the Pharaohs, which scholars in 2nd-century Alexandria
reworked for a contemporary readership.
- But a reworking of this wisdom is an innovation.
It takes something old and adds something original to it, thus creating something new.
I wish he would have given a couple of examples of doctrines in the Hermetica that are “identical”
to those found in the Pyramid Texts. The Pyramid Texts consist of spells, not doctrines. There are
beliefs expressed in the Pyramid Texts that may be reflected in the Hermetica. But I would guess that
no Egyptian belief came through to the Hermetica without some innovative adjustment.
- The Hermetica contains passages reminiscent of Jewish Christian and Greek works, which Casaubon
saw as proof that the Hermetica is a forgery, created from a hotchpotch
of these other philosophies. Alexandria was such an eclectic environment. This
is plausible. The ancients themselves, however, believed that these traditions were influenced
by the Egyptian philosophy contained within the Hermetica. The Jews are said to have
lived for many years in exile in Egypt, and their greatest prophet Moses was brought up as
an Egyptian. Many early Christians lived in Egypt, and the Greeks were in awe of the Egyptians,
compared to whom they felt like children.
- Gandy’s argument here is that, yes, there
are Jewish ideas reflected in the Hermetica, but since the Jews lived in Egypt, it makes sense
that their ideas made it into the Hermetica. He’s absolutely right. Everyone agrees on that.
But we are talking about Hellenistic Jews, those who lived in Egypt during the time of the
Ptolemies, who were very much involved in the intellectual tradition of Alexandria. As for the
Israelites who were slaves in Egypt at the time of Moses long before that, no, it was not their
ideas that entered into Egyptian wisdom. That is implausible for a couple of reasons: First, it
doesn’t seem credible that the Egyptian elites would have readily incorporated the ideas of
foreign slaves into their own wisdom tradition. Second, and more significantly, the Jewish ideas
found in the Hermetica are often later Jewish ideas, that is, ideas that were not yet part of
Jewish thought at the time that Moses would have lived. Examples would be philosophical concepts
of the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo, the idea that the first man Adam was a
transcendent being with superhuman qualities, and mystical descriptions of the ascent
of the soul through celestial spheres. No ancient Israelite believed in any of that stuff.
- The ancient Greek historian Herodotus writes, “The Egyptians are religious to excess
beyond any other nation in the world. They are meticulous in anything which concerns
their religion. It was only, if I may put it so, the day before yesterday that the Greeks came to
know the origin and forms of the various gods. The names of all the gods came to Greece from
Egypt, for the names of all the gods have been known in Egypt from the beginning of time.”
- Yes, Herodotus does say that the Greek gods - or actually the names of the Greek gods -
came originally from the Egyptians. Gandy takes this as evidence that the Greek religion owes
its existence to Egyptian religion and from this apparently infers that the Hermetica must be
essentially Egyptian, even if written by Greeks.
But how would Herodotus, who lived in the 5th
century BCE, know where the Greek gods came from? Their roots extend back to well before
written records. The fact is, Herodotus, and the Greeks themselves, were as ignorant as we
are about the origin of their gods, if not more. We know that they often projected present ideas
into the remote past and constructed continuities that were frequently fantastic or inaccurate.
Even if it were the case that the Greeks somehow got their gods from the Egyptians
in a time before they ever interacted, in order to consider this evidence that the
Hermetica is primarily an Egyptian set of works, we would have to assume that no changes
occurred in either of their religions, no innovations were ever made by the
Greeks in the centuries that ensued, that the Greek and Egyptian religions are
more-or-less indistinguishable, and furthermore that when the Hermetica was written, none of
the newer ideas of either Greeks or Egyptians made their way into it. But of course, that
set of assumptions would be ridiculous. Gandy also implies that since
the Egyptians were meticulous in the preservation of their ideas, then the ideas
of theirs that are preserved in the Hermetica must be ancient. But the documentary history of
Egypt demonstrates beyond a doubt that their ideas changed over time and were not static.
- Casaubon particularly claims that the Hermetic philosophy plagiarized The Timaeus, a work written
by the Greek philosopher Plato in the fifth century BCE. Like the Hermetica, it too includes
the doctrines of astrology and reincarnation, yet these ideas played no
part in early Greek religion, so where did they come from? The answer is
ancient Egypt. Over a hundred years before Plato, the Greek sage Pythagoras had set out on a
journey to acquire the knowledge of the world. This led him to Egypt, where he spent 22 years
in the temples, being initiated into the religion of the Egyptians. According to the ancient Greek
scholar Diogenes Laërtius, Plato purchased three books of Pythagorean doctrines based on Egyptian
wisdom, and these he adapted into The Timaeus, so the similarities between the works of
Plato and the Hermetica are not surprising, since many of Plato's ideas were direct
descendants of ancient Egyptian philosophy.
- Here Gandy is simply repeating Ficino’s claim
that Plato’s ideas can be traced back to Hermes, or at least to the Egyptians, and he follows
the same line of descent. Therefore, he can say, the Hermetica didn’t copy Plato; Plato copied the
Egyptians. The only problem is that the evidence for this is tenuous. Diogenes Laertius, whom Gandy
refers to as a source, was a biographer of the Greek philosophers, who lived after the Hermetic
writings appeared. He lived long after Plato and Pythagoras, and is known for often repeating
stories he heard or read without any critical evaluation of them. Various ancient writers
have all kinds of contradictory accounts of the countries Pythagoras may or may not have visited.
It is tough to untangle the fact from the fiction. But even if we assumed Diogenes was right and
Pythagoras really did visit Egypt, we can’t just conclude that all Pythagoras’ philosophy was
simply a repetition of what he learned in Egypt, because both Diogenes and other ancient writers
say Pythagoras learned wisdom from many different sources in several countries. Diogenes
does say that he read in a book by Satyrus that Plato bought 3 Pythagorean books from
Philolaus, but he doesn’t say the books were based on Egyptian wisdom - he doesn’t say what was in
them at all, and I doubt they were the only books Plato had. And Diogenes doesn’t say that Plato
adapted Pythagoras’ books into the Timaeus. Gandy is putting words into Diogenes’ mouth.
The bottom line is: Pythagoras added his original ideas to ideas he gathered from the places he
traveled. Plato, too, developed his own concepts out of ideas garnered from many sources. So it is
not possible that they simply were passing down Egyptian wisdom from generation to generation.
But you may say, “Surely it is possible that some Egyptian wisdom made it into Plato’s Timaeus,
so just because Hermetic texts have some of the same things as the Timaeus does not necessarily
mean the Hermetic writers got it from Plato. Those similar ideas both could have an Egyptian
origin.” Potentially, yes. But here’s the thing: we have no ancient Egyptian texts from before
Plato’s time that express such ideas. There thus is no evidence that such ideas existed in Egypt.
We do have Plato’s writings that express those ideas, and we know that Plato was extremely
influential. So when we see a text from after Plato’s time - in fact, in a period when Plato
was especially popular - repeating ideas found in Plato, by Greeks who knew Greek philosophy better
than any other philosophy, the most reasonable conclusion is that they got it from Plato.
- Hermetic philosophy also influenced Christianity through the Alexandrian Church Fathers: Saint
Clement and Saint Origen, who synthesized pagan and Christian religious doctrines. It is due
to such theologians that the Hermetic concept of the Word is found in the opening verse of the
Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word.”
- Um...Clement and Origen lived centuries after
the Gospel of John was written. But the fact is, the concept of the Logos (the Word) is
found in Philo’s writings. He was a Jewish Platonic philosopher, who lived in
the first century CE in Alexandria, where the Hermetic writings were produced.
Scholars have shown that it was he who influenced Hermetic writing, not the other way around.
- Hermes-Thoth was known to the ancients as the scribe of the gods and master of the
word. In the Hermetica, God utters a word which calms the chaotic waters of
creation. The Word is even called the son of God. In Christianity, Jesus Christ,
who is also called the Son of God, is identified as an embodiment of the power of the Word.
- This is a chicken-or-egg question. Which came first? Can he demonstrate that
the Hermetic teaching of the Logos as the Son of God was earlier than
the Christian? I don’t think he can.
- Saint Augustine, the influential 4th-century
theologian, who was familiar with the works of Hermes writes, “That which is called the
Christian religion existed amongst the ancients and never did not exist from the beginning of
the human race until Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion, which already
existed, began to be called Christianity.”
- The argument he seems to be making
here, assuming I am catching his drift, is that when Augustine of Hippo says that the
Christian religion began at the beginning of the human race, he is referring to the
teachings of Hermes. This can’t be so, because Augustine explicitly calls Hermes
Trismegistus a liar and without any holy spirit. Alternatively, Gandy may be arguing that, since
Augustine says that the Christian religion began at the beginning of the human race, then
that means that the Hermetica must have too, because it influenced Christianity. This
reasoning makes two unfounded assumptions: 1) that Augustine’s view of the origins of
religion are correct, and 2) that the Hermetica could not have influenced the Christian religion
after the religion started. It had to come before. I don’t mean to straw man him, so if I am
misinterpreting his argument, let me know in the comments. - The influence of the Hermetica on early Christianity is beyond doubt. In 1945, works of Hermes were discovered amongst scriptures belonging to Gnostic Christians of
the first centuries, and according to a note on one of the texts, early Christian communities
possessed many copies of the works of Hermes. Just a few yards from the place where these
scriptures were found are ancient Egyptian tombs, and these were inhabited by early Christian
hermits, such as Saint Pachomius, the founder of the first Christian monastic community. The
walls of these tombs are covered in hieroglyphs ascribed to the great god Thoth. They describe
a spiritual rebirth into knowledge of God, and in such places early Christians poured over
the Hermetica. Under its powerful influence, they composed their own philosophy of a
saving gnosis, a direct knowledge of God, but this time bestowed by their Messiah Jesus.
- Yes indeed. In a collection of Coptic texts that was discovered near Nag Hammadi in Upper
Egypt there were five Hermetic texts, which were written in the Sahidic dialect, two of which
were previously unknown. These books were from the 4th century CE and belonged to a group of
Gnostic Christians. Clearly this group integrated Hermeticism into their version of Christianity.
I’m not sure why Gandy is bringing this up.
- All the evidence suggests that Casaubon
was wrong to simply dismiss the Hermetica as some cobbled together mixture of different
philosophies. The Hermetica was undoubtedly written by Alexandrian scholars for a
Greek-speaking readership, but it contains a powerful echo of the ancient wisdom on which it
was based. It offers us one of the best windows available to gaze into Egypt's remotest past. With
its help, we can understand the mystical vision that inspired the awesome pyramids.
- Since the only evidence Gandy gave us that the contents of the Hermetica came from Egypt’s
remotest past is the Pyramid Texts, but he didn’t show us any of the doctrines that the Hermetica
took from the Pyramid Texts, it’s kind of hard to judge. If any Hermeticists out there can provide
such evidence, or any evidence at all, that the contents of the Hermetica are from Egypt’s early
days, we would be very grateful. As always, you can leave comments below the video. But most of
the arguments in Gandy’s intro boils down to: you can’t disprove it; therefore it’s right. That’s
not a strong support to build a belief upon.
Thank you for watching all the way to
the end. I’ve got more videos like this, so please browse through the catalog and
watch another that appeals to you.
You might like my little e-booklet, Why Ancient
History Matters. It's designed to persuade people that the subject is important, even in the modern
world. You might also wish to use it to help spread the word, so feel free to share it with someone
you know. It's free for anyone who wants it. I've left a link in the description box below
the video for you to grab a copy. Catch you later.
