Hermeticism

A Greco-Egyptian esoteric philosophy of cosmic correspondence and the soul’s ascent.

c. 100 – 300 CE → · Greco-Roman Egypt · Ancient Near East

Hermeticism gathers the teachings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, a legendary fusion of the Greek Hermes and the Egyptian Thoth, that arose in Hellenistic Egypt. Its texts describe a living cosmos in which the human being is a microcosm of the divine whole — "as above, so below" — and offer a path of ascent through knowledge, alchemy, and astrology. Revived in the Renaissance, it became a taproot of nearly all later Western esotericism.

Key figures

• Hermes Trismegistus (legendary sage)

Texts

• The Corpus Hermeticum
• The Emerald Tablet

Beliefs

• As above, so below — cosmos and self mirror one another
• A divine mind pervading all things
• Ascent of the soul through knowledge

Rituals

• Contemplation and study
• Alchemy as spiritual work
• Astrology and theurgy

Grew from

• Ancient Egyptian Religion
• Ancient Greek Religion

Connections in the atlas

• Paracelsus
• The Key of Solomon (Clavicula Salomonis)
• Unicursal hexagram
• ? What is the Voynich manuscript?
• The sacred marriage
• Hellenistic horoscopic astrology
• The Trickster
• Angels
• The Greeks
• Judaism
• Jakob Böhme
• On the Infinite Universe and Worlds